SUB SPECIE SPINOZAE

 

(The title of this entry borrows Nietzsche’s Spinoza pun from his book Antichrist, #17. Like in a number of other instances, this entry is eminently postable on account of my original commentary. The selections of particular quotations, as opposed to others, no less well-known, yet ignored in this entry, are deliberate, and indicative above everything else of my personal preferences.)

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The following are a few of Spinoza’s aphoristic phrases, primarily found in his magnum opus Ethica.---

“Nature abhors a vacuum.” (Ethica, Part I, Proposition XV, Note.) This is a thought about life and death. Vacuum in this case is nothingness, and nature revolts against nothingness. The natural cycle goes on, of course, but something being natural, like death, does not preclude its being abhorred by the living nature.

“He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.” (Ethica, Part II, Proposition XLII, Proof.) My general appeal Definitions! Definitions! Definitions!, has the question of true and false as its particular. Remembering Epictetus, first learn the meaning of what you are going to say, and only then say it.

“Will and Intellect are one and the same thing.” (Ethica, Part II, Proposition XLIX, Corollary.) I would be in strong disagreement with this, just as much as Schopenhauer would, if we allow an element of irrationality to the Will, and limit the Intellect to rationality only.

“Sadness diminishes or hinders a man’s power of action.” (Ethica, Part III, Proposition XXXVII, Proof.) It is so true that powerful feelings, especially the most humane ones, like compassion, have a paralyzing effect on both our capacities: to act and to think!

“Fear cannot be without hope, nor hope without fear.” (Ethica, Part III, Definition XIII, Explanation.) This is true, of course. A fearless Siegfried has no capacity for hope, whereas all of us who hope are beset with a host of fears, not the least of which is that our hope will be murdered by circumstances beyond our control.

“Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.” (Ethica, Part III, Definition XXIX, Explanation.) Dickens’s Uriah Heep is of course a classic illustration of the thing that Spinoza is writing about. Compare this, although do not confuse it with, my observation that humility is the highest form of arrogance.

“One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e. g. music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.” (Ethica, Part IV, Preface.) This is so very true! A hurricane causing death and destruction in its path, is not an evil in itself, as it can also be good for something. In other words, evil is only a consequence, but not a thing in itself. I have elsewhere described evil as the wrong choice in our exercise of the God-given freedom of choice.

“Avarice, ambition, lust, etc., are nothing but species of madness, although not enumerated among diseases.” (Ethica, Part IV, Proposition XLIV, Note.) I like this, even if this sounds overly declarative. It is quite obvious that greed, covetous desire, and such, are ubiquitous qualities of human nature, but so is disease in the world and all around us. The fact that Spinoza’s examples of madness are so common among men has no proof in itself that they are the norm, rather than an aberration, natural states of man, rather than a disease.

“To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man… Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.” (Ethica, Part IV, Appendix, XVII.) Here is a straightforward advocacy of socialism, just as I espouse the socialist responsibilities of the State. In a future return to this ground theme of mine, I will be well served to quote Spinoza among my appeals to authority.

“Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.” This is a splendid proof of the fact that freedom as such is not possible in the world where all individual things are tightly interconnected.

“Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.” That’s precisely it! There is nothing heroic in one’s incapacity to play the villain. It is only the strength of character, directed toward the good, despite all the temptations of evil, which makes the hero. In other words, there is no hero without claws.

“If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.” Isn’t there an uncanny connection here to Nietzsche’s Jenseits von Gut und Böse?! Indeed, Spinoza clearly says here that the free dwell beyond good and evil. The difference between Spinoza and Nietzsche, though, comes down to Spinoza’s “if,” which obviously implies that men are not free, whereas for Nietzsche, the notion of freedom is heroically projected and taken for granted as the key characteristic that distinguishes the master from the slave, the Übermensch from the Untermensch.