1. "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful
harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself
with the fate and the doings of mankind." Einstein

3. Spinoza posited "a universe ruled only by
the cause and effect of natural laws,
without purpose or design." The God of this
universe was a noninterventionist
whose essence and pervasiveness might
best be described as Nature...
Given God's noninterference policy,
Spinoza believed the modern state had
the responsibility of looking after the
common man, and the common man had
the responsibility of looking after himself.
In all this, Spinoza saw freedom and
"anticipated later philosophical and
scientific developments by two and
sometimes three centuries."

4. Baruch Spinoza(1632-1677).
Despite its imposing
mathematical
structure, the Ethics was "a
heartfelt proposal for a better
way to live, a solution to
loneliness and isolation, an
answer to the suffering and
frustration of life...
a Stoic text..."

5. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
“I do not know how
to teach philosophy
without becoming a
disturber of
established religion.”
Some of us know how
he felt.

6. Benedict de Spinoza was among the most
important of the post-Cartesian philosophers
who flourished in the second half of the 17th
century. He made significant contributions in
virtually every area of philosophy, and his
writings reveal the influence of such divergent
sources as Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism,
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety
of heterodox religious thinkers of his day.

7. For this reason he is difficult to categorize,
though he is usually counted, along with
Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three
major Rationalists. Given Spinoza’s
devaluation of sense perception as a means of
acquiring knowledge, his description of a
purely intellectual form of cognition, and his
idealization of geometry as a model for
philosophy, this categorization is fair. But it
should not blind us to the eclecticism of his
pursuits, nor to the striking originality of his
thought...

8. Among philosophers,
Spinoza is best known for his
Ethics, a monumental work
that presents an ethical
vision unfolding out of a
monistic metaphysics in
which God and Nature are
identified. God is no longer
the transcendent creator of
the universe who rules it via
providence, but Nature itself,

9. understood as an infinite, necessary, and fully
deterministic system of which humans are a
part. Humans find happiness only through a
rational understanding of this system and their
place within it.
IEP

10. “The world would be happier if men had the
same capacity to be silent that they have to
speak”
“The highest activity a human being can attain is
learning for understanding, because to
understand is to be free”
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule,
not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to
understand them”

11. For the radical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was the
first man to have lived and died as a true atheist. For
others, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he provides
perhaps the most profound conception of God to be found
in Western philosophy. He was bold enough to defy the
thinking of his time, yet too modest to accept the fame of
public office, despite numerous offers
He can claim influence on both the Enlightenment
thinkers of the 18th century and great minds of the 19th,
notably Hegel, and his ideas were so radical that they
could only be fully published after his death...

12. But what were the ideas that caused such
controversy in Spinoza’s lifetime, how did they
influence the generations after, and can Spinoza
really be seen as the first philosopher of the
rational Enlightenment? -“In Our Time”
Top 10...
IOT Philosophy Resource
Jonathan Rée, historian and philosopher and Visiting Professor at Roehampton
University. Sarah Hutton, Professor of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
But what were the ideas that caused such controversy in Spinoza’s lifetime, how did they
influence the generations after, and can Spinoza really be seen as the first philosopher of
the rational Enlightenment? John Cottingham, Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Reading

13. Spinoza on determinism, fate, acceptance, bliss...
and pantheism.

14. Pantheism: God and the universe are one and the same.
One universal substance, infinitely modified: this is a
technical solution to the mind-body problem, but is its
message of reconciliation between persons, nature, and
“God” - "our sense of distance from God is mistaken" -
worth the price of determinism or fatalism?
"Whatever happens to us happens for a reason" and by
necessity. "It is pointless to want that which we are not
determined to have... much of what we want–union with
other people, oneness w/God–we already have. what we
need is control of our emotions... the proper philosophical
attitude is acceptance or ‘resignation' leading to bliss...
Does Spinoza's version of freedom sound blissful to
you?

15. GW von Leibniz (1646-1716). The world consists of
innumerable simple substances, "monads," self-contained,
independent, and windowless. God is the Super-monad.
"No monad actually interacts with any other." There is a
divinely-ordered, pre-established harmony governed by the
Principle of Sufficient Reason. This is the best of all possible
worlds.
"In times of turmoil, it is always a relief to believe that there
is some reason behind whatever happens...”
But as Voltaire acerbically noted, some events defy reason...
and some philosophies defy credulity.

16. Leibniz's monads -
Gottfried Leibniz's squashed Monadology

17. “All hail the monad!”:
this was Leibniz’s
motto...
Gottfried Leibniz
(1646 — 1716)

18. Originally designed in 1673 and first built in
1694, the Leibniz Calculator had the ability to
add, subtract, multiply, and divide. By using
wheels placed at right angles which could be
displaced by a special stepping mechanism, it
could perform rapid multiplication or division.
Just as with the Pascaline, the Leibniz
Calculator required that the operator using the
device had to understand how to turn the wheels
and thus, know the "programming language" of
the calculator.

20. Baruch Spinoza was the brilliant outcast heretic
who broke open the doors to modern thought with
his assertion that God is, essentially, Nature. No
more and no less. His great philosophical adversary
was the glittering Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
defender of the old, transcendent God. They met,
they fought, and the fight goes on today in the
dance of humanism and faith.
“On Point,” WBUR
Guests:
Matthew Stewart, author of “The Courtier and the
Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in
the Modern World”

21. Stewart is an Oxford-educated philosopher whose studies
presumably taught him the folly of waiting for providence,
contrived to create his own good luck. He helped build up a
successful management consulting firm, and the proceeds of
its sale allowed him to devote himself to a "life of
contemplation."
Part of this new life turned out to be an exploration of what he
portrays as a tale of 17th-century deceit: the dealings of a
"crooked and ungainly" philosopher, the bewigged Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz, with a beauteous contemporary with "dark,
languid eyes," the Portuguese-Dutch-Jewish thinker Baruch de
Spinoza, who, Stewart maintains, created the foundations of
modern philosophy.
-- Review by LIESL SCHILLINGER, nytbr 2.26.06

22. The
Courtier
and the
Heretic
nyt wbur

23. "The program at the core of all of Leibniz's political
activites throughout his career" can be summarized
in a single slogan: Stop Spinoza."
---The Courtier and the Heretic, by Matthew Stewart
In Spinoza's time, the question that
gripped hidebound thinkers leery of
flouting popular opinion or alienating
wealthy patrons, was this: If you
believed in Spinoza's God, were you
not in actuality an atheist, an
offense then punishable by exile,
imprisonment or death? Leibniz
thought so, and many others agreed?
like the bishop who denounced Spinoza
as "that insane and evil man, who
deserves to be covered with chains
and whipped with a rod" and the Jewish
community of Amsterdam, which
excommunicated him.

24. The mystery that grips
Stewart is whether Leibniz
himself believed in
Spinoza's God, cribbed his
teachings (while pretending
unfamiliarity with them) and
cynically invented his own
philosophy in reaction to
Spinoza's, to mask his
secret atheism.
“I believe in Spinoza's God...”

25. When Albert Einstein was asked if he believed in God, the great 20th
century scientist reached back to a 17th century philosopher for an
answer. “I believe,” said Einstein, “in Spinoza’s God.”
Baruch Spinoza was the brilliant outcast heretic who broke open the doors to modern thought
with his assertion that God is, essentially, Nature. No more and no less. His great
philosophical adversary was the glittering Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, defender of the old,
transcendent God. They met, they fought, and the fight goes on today in the dance of
humanism and faith.
Hear about Leibniz, Spinoza, and a new telling of the fate of God in the modern world. “On
Point,” WBUR
Guests:
Matthew Stewart, author of “The Courtier and the
Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in
the Modern World”

26. *Is Spinoza's pantheistic "bliss" a form
of stoicism, a way of "enduring" and
"transcending" an unpalatable and
uncontrollable reality? Do you see it
as "resignation" or as a more positive
vision of life?

27. Antonio Damasio’s Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain
...brings together Spinoza's account of the relationship between
body and mind with his program for increasing human happiness
and freedom, drawing upon up-to-the minute scientific knowledge -
Damasio is a neurologist - to establish that Spinoza's conceptual
framework is remarkably attuned with contemporary neurobiology.
...a feeling arises as "an idea of the body
when it is perturbed by the emoting
process." Because they "bear witness to the
state of life deep within," feelings are a
vital guide to decision-making.
Damasio sympathizes with Spinoza's
"secular religiosity," which identified God
with nature. He ends by discussing
spiritual feelings, which he relates to "the
sense that the organism is functioning with
the greatest possible perfection."

28. Spinoza's ambitions on behalf of
reason are staggering: he aims to
give us a rigorously proved view of
reality, which view will yield us, if
only we will assimilate it, a life
worth living. It will transform our
emotional substance, our very
selves. The truth shall set us free...
There are contemporary
physicists and cosmologists who
are inspired by the Spinozist
ideal of "a theory of
everything," one in which the
mathematics alone would
determine its truth.The spirit
motivating String theorists, in
particular, is Spinozism. Rebecca Goldstein

29. ...so mercilessly parodied by Voltaire
in Candide -- “all for the best in this,
the best of possible worlds”--and reviled
by William James as “superficiality
incarnate,” the blatherings of a wig-pated
age no longer credible in our time.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Is suffering necessary? One could “take
refuge in the mysterious and incomprehensible
nature of divine mind” and argue that, from a
God’s-eye perspective, human suffering is
necessary to bring about a greater good whose full
dimensions we can-
not see. This is
“theodicy,” the view
associated with the
German philosopher
Leibniz...
G. Leibniz (1646-1716)

31. .Leibniz: this universe must be in reality better than every other
possible universe...Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)

32. Master Pangloss taught the metaphysico-theologo-
cosmolonigology. He could prove to admiration
that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in
this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was
the most magnificent of all castles... "It is
demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be
otherwise than as they are; for as all things have
been created for some end, they must necessarily be
created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the
nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear
spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for
stockings, accordingly we wear stockings...
Voltaire, Candide
François-Marie Arouet
Voltaire 1694-1778

33. *Is the Matrix scenario (every living consciousness literally
contained and isolated from every other, but fed neural
illusions of external reality... to power a society of artificial
life forms with harvested human "energy" possible?
Plausible? Acceptable? Disturbing? Entertaining? [compare
to Descartes' speculations concerning an evil genius, &
Leibniz' "windowless monads"] What would constitute
evidence for or against the hypothesis?