Was de naturalist en rationalist Spinoza tegelijk ook een mysticus? [11] de casus Eldridge
In zijn doctorsthesis uit 1985 beargumenteert Michael
Eldridge (die ik in een apart blog nader introduceerde), nadat hij studie maakte
van Spinoza’s Ethica en literatuur over mystiek, dat Spinoza geen mysticus was,
althans niet in enige significante betekenis. Hij laat zien dat Spinoza wel
religieus was, maar geen mysticus.
MICHAEL ELDRIDGE, Philosophy as religion: a study in critical devotion. Dissertatie UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, 1985 [archive.org]
Daarin behandelt hij in aparte delen achtereenvolgens Socrates, Spinoza en Dewey die in zijn ogen hun filosofie als een vorm van religie zagen. Aan het eind van zijn conclusie over Socrates motiveert hij waarom “Spinoza is worthy of examination, for he provides us with an example of a very different type of religio-philosopher. Where Socrates was relatively un- metaphysical, Spinoza was a metaphysician par excellence. Where the theism of Socrates is difficult to make out, Spinoza's theism, or, more precisely, his pantheism, is carefully elaborated in his major work.” [p. 81]
Hierna volg ik zijn betoog door (met weglating meestal van referenties) grote grepen te doen uit zijn
CHAPTER THREE - SPINOZA'S RATIONAL RELIGION
Spinoza has been interpreted, as many have pointed out, in a great many, often contradictory ways. It is not unusual for a widely-read philosopher of great range and subtlety to be seen as a reflection or foil of many readers. Bringing to the text their various interests and attitudes, they come away with views that may bear little resemblance to one another. Spinoza has been accused of atheism, notably by his early critics, and has also been described as "a God-intoxicated man.” H.A. Wolfson portrays him as the last of the Jewish medievals, but Stuart Hampshire makes him more accessible to the twentieth century, presenting him as a modern European metaphysician. Of course he has long been regarded as one the three classical Rationalists, along with Descartes and Leibnitz. Yet Jon Wetlesen argues that he was a sage-mystic. Spinoza defies easy categorization. [p. 82]
[…]
It is Spinoza writing about religion; it is not reflective of his own personal religion.
Of course Spinoza was religious; he was a mystic. In his influential book, Mysticism and Philosophy, W.T. Stace [“Walter Terence Stace is the most frequently quoted expert when defining mysticism” cf. citaat ingelast door SV]] argues that Spinoza's pantheism is the product of the logical paradox of his metaphysics: God is both nature and distinct from nature. Since "mysticism is always a series of logical paradoxes", then Spinoza is, "possibly against his will", a paradoxical pantheist and thus a mystic. Stace writes of Spinoza:
If one interprets his phrase "God or Nature" to mean that God is just another name for nature, that in short God is just a piece of verbiage, one will naturally conclude that he is nothing but an atheist. But if one interprets him mystically, so that God, as well as being identical with the world, is also distinct from it, then his very moving religious language acquires meaning and may well justify the phrase "God-intoxicated man." My suggestion is that he exhibited in himself the living paradox of being a God-intoxicated atheist.
The dilemma that Stace has set up is that for Spinoza either God is nothing but nature or that God is both identical to and distinct from nature. If the former is the case, then Spinoza is an atheist, that is, one who thinks there is nothing that is divine. If the latter, then he is a mystical paradoxical pantheist—Stace's "God-intoxicated atheist". But what if the latter horn of the dilemma is not a paradox? What if we can render it non-paradoxically? Spinoza, it appears to some, identified God and nature and yet the two terms have different connotations. Since Frege many of us have been taught that two terms may differ in sense and yet refer to the same thing. Thus Thomas Carson Mark argues:
. . . the terms "God" and "nature" are not synonymous for Spinoza. They do refer to the same thing—they have the same extension—but from that it does not follow that they have the same meaning. The words have different associations for Spinoza, just as they have in ordinary Latin. He speaks of "amor intellectualis Dei," not "amor intellectualis Naturae," not because "Deus" and "Natura" do not refer to the same thing (they do), but because "natura" does not have the religious significance of "Deus".
The burden of Spinoza's Ethics is to invest "Natura
" or the totality of things with the religious significance of
"Deus", for the totality of things is divine. And also to
de-anthropomorphize our understanding of "Deus ". for
"Natura" is all there is.
Thus Stace is wrong to see Spinoza as "a God-intoxicated atheist".
Moreover, whatever Spinoza is needs a more subtle designation than
"God-intoxicated" or "atheist" or a paradoxical
juxtapositioning of these terms.
But perhaps a weaker version of mysticism is applicable to the rationalist Spinoza. If, unlike Stace, we do not insist that mysticism involves necessarily the ineffable or the paradoxical, then perhaps Spinoza should be regarded as a mystic. If mysticism Is an intimate experience of God or union with ultimate reality, then perhaps Spinoza was a mystic. According to Jon Wetlesen there have been in Holland "members of 'The Hague School', who argued for a mystical interpretation of Spinoza, "and members of 'The Rijnsburg School', who argued against it, since they were more in favour of a rationalistic point of view". Guido van Suchlelen, speaking of the restored Domus Spinozana at the Hague, adds, "It then served as a centre of living Spinozist thought, inspired by Dr Carl Gebhardt and Dr JH Carp, now referred to as the 'Hague School', and largely characterized by a mystical interpretation of the philosopher's works." This controversy is unavailable to me, but I will be able to make out a case for Spinoza as a mystic. Ultimately, however, I shall argue that he was no mystic, at least not in any significant sense. Thus I will have to show that he was religious, but no mystic. [p. 92-94].
Hierna behandelt hij Wolfson en beschrijft hij e.e.a. over religieuzesituatie in de 17e eeuw, over de collegianten enz. En vervolgens begint hij een paragraaf over Spinoza’s religie: leven volgens de rede.
“I begin this exposition of Spinoza's religion by identifying Spinoza's agenda. His cultural setting elicited from him a philosophy that would overcome the errors of his age. Then I elucidate the four central religio-phUosophical doctrines found in the Ethics. Finally I defend the description of Spinoza as a religious rationalist, arguing that he was sincere in his use of religious language and at best was a "cognitive mystic". [p.106]
Hij behandelt grote delen van Spinoza systeem, die ik allemaal oversla. Ik noteer dat hij Spinoza’s kenvormen voor het gemak aanduidt als K1,K2 en K3. Over de laatste zegt hij:
Given that we "form" the third kind of knowledge, and that it is an "application" of necessity to individuals, it is strange that he calls it "intuition". Both, H.H. Joachim and G.H.R. Parkinson have noted this oddity and have interpreted Spinoza's intuition either as something that includes inferential thinking, but is unlike K2, whose deductive process is external to the conclusion, or is "ordinary deductive knowledge" that is more detailed than K2 and does not make explicit use of rules (Parkinson, p. 186). Moreover Joachim thinks that intuition ideally would presuppose "a complete apprehension of the total nature of the universe, end a complete scientific demonstration of the coherence and inner articulation of all its properties". The latter talk leads W.H. Walsh to say that Spinoza's doctrine of intuition "clearly has strong mystical tendencies, and the mysticism of the last book of the Ethics is notorious". Similarly Thomas Carson Mark notes that for Spinoza (and Descartes too) ". . . the highest kind of knowledge is a direct personell experience which by its nature is incommunicable. There is an appeal to 'mental seeing,' and such an appeal makes knowledge into something mysterious or even mystical. Thus K3 is either a modified deductive process or mystical insight or something somewhere in between! (p. 118)
[…] Een uitgebreide behandeling van k3 loopt uit op:
Scientia intuitiva is the viewing of some particular, such as the person in need, in relation to Deus sive Natura and in so doing to know the essence of this situation, something that has come about "from the necessity of the divine nature". Or, to use Spinoza's own example. To see one's mind in relation to the totality of things is to know that the "essence of" one's "mind consists solely in knowledge" (E5P36N). Thus K3 is an act of understanding that is not mediated by a linear, logical process. But neither is it anti-logical or non-rational. Nor is it mystical, if we understand mysticism to be essentially non-cognitive. Rather K3's knowledge is necessarily true and portions of its field of vision can be arrived at deductively. It is a personal act, but it is not private. It is a cognition of something in its essence in relation to Deus sive Natura, which one can talk about and invite others to gaze upon. "Intuition", with its long- standing connotation of physically unmediated understanding, was an appropriate term for Spinoza to use. Unfortunately it is also misleading for those who do not take the time to understand it in its context in the Ethics . There we find that intuition is a contextual insight, in which the context is the widest one possible, Deus sive Natura. (p. 122)
Na interessante beschouwingen over ‘eeuwigheid’ en Spinoza amor Dei intellectualis die ik alle oversla (het blog wordt toch al te lang), neem ik de volgende paragraaf in z’n geheel.
A Religious Rationalist
We can see Spinoza's religion more clearly as a religious rationalism by stepping back somewhat from the texts of the Ethics and considering it in relation to mysticism. As I have already pointed out there are those who take Spinoza's talk of uniting with the whole as mystical in nature. I think this is a mistake and will show why, not only to set the record straight, but also to throw Spinoza's religious rationalism into relief.
Like "religion" and "God" "mysticism" is difficult to define. If one takes it to be "an intimate experience of God" or "a union with ultimate reality", then it is difficult to separate mysticism from religion. If however we build into the notion ineffability, then we can often separate it from religion. But if we regard mysticism as an extra- or supra-rational experience, then Spinoza on my view was no mystic.* If, as I have argued, Spinoza's K3, scientia intuitiva, was an understanding that arose from a viewing of things in relation to Deus sive Natura, and was personal but not necessarily private, then this usual way of establishing Spinoza's mysticism is foreclosed. Mysticism is a non-cognitive relationship; K3 is cognitive; therefore Spinoza in using K3 was no mystic.
* For the view that mysticism is necessarily non-rational or even anti-rational see the classic philosophical studies, James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, lectures 16 and 17, esp. p. 292f; and Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, ch. 5, "Mysticism and Logic", and ch. 6, "Mysticism and Language", pp. 251-306.
But for the sake of argument let us use Ninian Smart's four criteria of mysticism, none of which appeal to ineffability or irrationality. Ever the careful scholar Smart specifies the kind of mysticism he has in mind by identifying some generally recognized representatives: Meister Eckart, Teresa of Avila, Sankara and the Buddha. Then, working from their statements about their experiences, he identifies four criteria: (1) timelessness, (2) an apprehension of the transcendent, (3) blissfulness or serenity and (4) the result of "a course of self-mastery and contemplation". With the exception of the transcendence condition one could make a case for Spinoza being a mystic on the basis of these features. But without doing undue violence to the mystical literature, primary or secondary, we can weaken this to "reality": mysticism is an apprehension of or union with reality. Now we can put Spinoza to the test. He thought that one could participate in eternity, or better, should recognize that we are a part of a timeless existence. So he meets condition (1). Being a pantheist who thought we could know and love God in this life by means of K3, he meets (2) revised and (4). Moreover this knowledge-love leads to, or better, is, "blessedness". So he meets (3). On this analysis Spinoza would be a mystic.
But this analysis is misleading. Spinoza's eternity turns out to be "necessary existence" (ElDef8). In so far as one sees his or her essence in relation to the essence of God, one recognizes himself or herself to be eternal. But in this "eternity" one is thinking and acting in this world (see E5P38-41). One would never escape, even mentally, time and space, even though one may be trying to conceive a non-space-time existence. The Spinozan K3er would be thinking and acting all the while. Much is made of Spinoza's desire to unite with nature, but this union is not a unio mystica, a mystical oneness, in which one loses himself or herself in the all. Rather Spinoza thinks that each one should view himself or herself, as well as other things, in relation to Deus sive Natura . There is always differentiation in K3. The knower, the object known and God are all distinct. They are related, but distinct from one another. The field of vision is inclusive, but it is not vague, clouded or undifferientiated. By engaging in K3 one achieves bliss, but this bliss is freedom from and power over the emotions (E5P42). Spinoza's blissful mystic is an active, effective individual. It is not that the mystical experience leads to effective action; the K3 experience is, when the object known is an emotion, itself effective action. Finally the discipline or contemplation is not the emptying of oneself or the contemplation of God as an end in itself. One sees God so one can understand some particular thing. Its aim is scientific and ethical. One contemplates in order to understand something that is Deus sive Natura, for nothing can be or can be conceived apart from God. But the something can be differentiated from and understood in relation to God. If it were not distinct but related, then Spinozan metaphysics would make no sense at all.
If we cock our heads just right and squint one eye, we may be able to see Spinoza as a mystic. But to do so is to fail to see him as the religious rationalist he was. Spinoza railed against the "Kabbalistic triflers" -medieval Jewish mystics, "whose insanity" provoked his "unceasing astonishment". He wanted nothing to do with their attempts to find a meaning in every mark in the Bible. In his corespondence he says he does not understand "certain Churches" talk of incarnation, adding, ". . . they seem to me to speak no less absurdly than if some one were to tell me that a circle assumed the nature of a square" (L73). One who blinks at allegorical interpretation and the paradox of the incarnation is not likely to be caught up in mystical experiences.
In an age that was full of superstitution and paradox Spinoza attempted to be consistently, thoroughly rational. This point is well made by Colie in her book on Renaissance paradox [Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia Epidemica. The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)]. She presents a great variety of material to support her thesis that there was an epidemic of paradox— rhetorical, epistemologicad and metaphysical— in Renaissance literature. But with the shift to a concern for exact knowledge at the end of the seventeenth century, paradoxy "lost its transcendent sense of 're-creation' to become mere 'recreation'", degenerating into "mere puzzles", whose answers were no longer expected to lead to truth (p. 509). She points to Galileo, Hobbes, Locke and Spinoza as some prominent figures who "drained the mystery out of paradoxes". This was so, in spite of, from the historian's point of view, the paradoxical questions with which philosophy is concerned (p. 513f).
Nicolas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno dealt paradoxically with paradoxical questions, but Spinoza, Colie argues, rejected this Renaissance style: ". . . few philosophers have so completely devoted themselves to the rationalization of the infinite as he did. . . . The infinite universe of Spinoza . . . was always orderly; his logic led progressively and inexorably to the total unity of mind and matter, . . ." (p. 514). She cites as an example E5P35, a proposition we have considered:
The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love whereby God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be explained through the essence of the humcin mind regarded under the form of eternity; in other words, the intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love whereby God loves himself.
It is misleading to pluck this proposition out of the context of Spinoza's geometrical presentation. Colie recognizes this and makes this significant point: "But the proposition is not just left therewith, to dazzle readers and to convince them by means of dazzle; Spinoza goes on to explicate and analyze the meanings contained within his propositions" (p. 514). She notes his "rigorous organization" and "linear logic" and concludes:
His subject might well have encouraged paradoxy, but for Spinoza conviction had to be intellectual rather than emotional. The short cuts of paradox were as unacceptable to him as they were to Galileo and Locke: rationalist and empiricist alike turned away from the method of paradox. (p. 515)
Spinoza was neither a rhetorician nor a mystic. His philosophy was an attempt to deal with difficult problems in as straight-forward a manner as he thought possible. The difficult subject-matter required an intricate yet logical presentation. Each step in the process was public. At no point did he veil what he was doing.
The "mystic" label depends on one's taking Spinoza's K3 as a private knowing. But it is not that at all. Spinoza is asking rather that his readers see any given individual in relation to the most pervasive phenomenon of all — Deus sive Natura . He was asking his readers to be precise, logical and comprehensive. In short, he was asking them to be philosophers. He was appealing for a philosophy different from what we find in the periods previous to him, a philosophy which he regarded as being entangled with pedantry and logic-chopping on the one hand and prejudice, superstition, trifles and wild theories on the other. He was calling for and exhibited a philosophy that is more like what we find in the succeeding centuries. If it is today regarded as more grand and linear than we prefer, we nevertheless recognize in it a naturalistic attempt to think consistently about what there is and how we should live. To categorize this as mystical is to miss the point. It is a rationalistic reconstruction of religion.
Conclusion
For Spinoza to philosophize was to engage in the second and third kinds of knowledge. Moreover to know things in their relation to an all-encompassing whole was not only to become free but also to devote oneself to that whole and to see oneself as part of it. Spinoza wrote in E4P37N1
. . . he, who endeavors to lead men by reason, does not act by impulse but courteously and kindly, and his intention is always consistent. Again, whatsoever we desire and do, whereof we are the cause in so far as we possess the idea of God, or know God, I set down to Religion.
Religion as he understood it was broader than that which he was doing in the Ethics . But his metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, ethical and religious thought as expressed therein was an endeavor "to lead men by reason". Even more telling is that his desire and deed in the Ethics sprang from the knowledge of Deus sive Natura. He was not "a God-intoxicated man" but his life and work as a philosopher were informed by his knowledge and love of Deus sive Natura . He was God-preoccupied.
Unlike Socrates, Spinoza's metaphysics was highly elaborated and his arguments aspired to the rigor of mathematics. But like Socrates, he was religious in his practice of philosophy. I began this chapter by noting the variety of interpretations of Spinoza that one encounters. I did so to prepare the way for my own argument that Spinoza was a religious rationalist. Alfred Gottschalk* also notes many of the conflicting views of Spinoza, but calls attention finally to the several philosophers and religious thinkers that have praised Spinoza. Then he observes:
Different as all of these paeans
are, they have one aspect in common. Disregarding the details of Spinoza's
philosophy they concentrate on the utter sublimity and divine serenity of this
teachings, on the incorruptible purity of his thought, and elevate the
philosopher to the rank of a moral model for any man. The only other
philosopher to whom this happened was Socrates.
* Alfred Gottschalk,
"Spinoza. A Three Hundred Year Perspective", in Barry S. Kogan (Ed.),
Spinoza. A Tercentenary Perspective. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, 1979, p. 4.
While not denying their status as moral exemplars, I am calling attention to their religiosity as philosophers. In spite of the differences in their philosophies, both were profoundly committed to that which they regarded as divine. Socrates served his good god through dialectical inquiry, and Spinoza sought union with Deus sive Natura through reason. Yet another form of religion through philosophy can be found in John Dewey. Although he has not achieved the "sainthood" of the first two, he nevertheless can be considered in connection with them. In his philosophic quest for wholeness he was their religious equal. (p. 125 - 131)
