Like Hobbes, Spinoza portrays the social order as arising out of a state of nature in which people aren’t constrained by laws, in which we may do whatever we can do, and in which our natural egoism makes life insecure and wretched. Unlike Hobbes, Spinoza thinks right is coextensive with power even in civil society, not only in the state of nature. Spinoza’s best argument for this arguably relies on two assumptions: if there were a natural law constraining our behavior, it would have to be based on a divine command; but God cannot be a lawgiver; prescriptive laws assume that the commanded can disobey; and no one can disobey an omnipotent being. Although Spinoza takes right to be based on power, he denies that sovereigns have a right to rule just as they please. Like Machiavelli and Hobbes, he is conscious of the fragility of political power. Even if the sovereign’s right is theoretically absolute, individuals are roughly equal in power; so any sovereign must depend on having at his command a group of people who will obey his enforcement commands without being coerced. Like Machiavelli, he prefers forms of government in which this de facto constraint is institutionalized.

Substance (substantia, zelfstandigheid)’ is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate – that there is only one, unique substance – God (or Nature) – and that all other things are merely modes or states of God. In the first section, I examine Spinoza’s definitions of "substance" and "God" at the opening of the Ethics. In the second section, I study the properties of the fundamental binary relations pertaining to Spinoza’s substance: inherence, conception, and causation. The third section is dedicated to a clarification of Spinoza’s claim that God, the unique substance, is absolutely infinite. The fourth section studies the nature of Spinoza’s monism. It will discuss and criticize the interesting yet controversial views of Martial Gueroult, about the plurality of substances in the beginning of the Ethics and evaluate Spinoza’s kind of ontological monism. The fifth and final section explains the nature, reality, and manner of existence of modes.

Spinoza responds to the charge of atheism and the accompanying insinuation that his philosophy is irreligious by arguing that philosophy are theology distinct and autonomous practices. Each operates in accordance with its own epistemological standards and neither is the handmaid of the other. However, many of his readers have found his defense of this position unconvincing. Spinoza, they have claimed, awards priority to philosophy by endowing it with the authority to judge religion. In this chapter, I examine Spinoza’s response to their accusation. Religion, as he portrays it, can take various forms, of which the religion revealed in Scripture is one, and Spinozist philosophy is another. The shift from a theological to a philosophical mode of enquiry is not a move from a religious to a non-religious outlook, but a transition from one form of religious practice to another. This conclusion may disappoint critics who regard Spinoza as a predominantly secular philosopher, but I argue that they misidentify the nature of his radicalism. Spinoza undoubtedly aims to challenge the dominant religions of his time; but he also aspires to illuminate a form of religion that does justice to a philosophical understanding of God.

The way Spinoza lived and died has often played a part in the interpretation of his thought. Because his life is poorly documented, there is no lack of fictive anecdotes about his person and reputed character. This chapter offers an up-to-date scholarly account, based on a critical examination of the sources. After a discussion of method, issues, and background, it deals chronologically with the places where Spinoza lived. He was born (1632) and grew up in Amsterdam. In the years between his expulsion from the Jewish community (1656) and the earliest known correspondence (1661), Spinoza’s whereabouts are unknown. Apparently, he acquired renown as a philosopher in that period. From there we can trace the development of Spinoza’s oeuvre, as he moves from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg, where he wrote his first published work, Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy, thence to Voorburg, where he spent most of his time composing the Theological-Political Treatise, and eventually to The Hague. He had already started on his Ethics in Rijnsburg but only finished it in The Hague. In the year before Spinoza died, he began writing the unfinished Political Treatise. The chapter takes into account recent work on his health and demise (1677)

Ethics, for Spinoza, is knowledge of “the right way of living.” That ethics is central to his philosophical project is unmistakable from the title of his most systematic presentation of his philosophy: Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata). While that work seeks to demonstrate a broad range of metaphysical, theological, epistemological, and psychological doctrines, they are selected for inclusion, at least in large measure, because of the support he takes them to provide for his ultimate ethical conclusions. Many of those conclusions are distinctive and provocative, and many of his reasons for them are innovative and intriguing. This chapter begins by providing an outline of Spinoza’s ethical theory, including is naturalistic foundations; its primary terms of ethical evaluation; the nature and causes of bondage to the passions; the prescriptions of reason; the way to freedom and autonomy; and eternity, intellectual love of God, and blessedness. It then considers four important questions for Spinoza’s ethical theory: the nature and motivational force of ethical judgments; the conditions for ethical responsibility; the role of altruism in ethics; and the value of life and the harmfulness of death.

A historical investigation into Spinozism teaches us at least as much about the interpreters of Spinoza as it does about Spinoza’s thought itself. More than any other philosophy, Spinoza’s has been held up like a mirror to the great currents of thought, providing a particular perspective on them: one can see reflected and revealed in the mirror of Spinozism the inner and outer conflicts and contradictions of Calvinism, Cartesianism, freethinking and libertinism, the Enlightenment, materialism, the Pantheismusstreit, German Idealism, French spiritualism, Marxism, British Idealism, structuralism, and other movements. This chapter provides a condensed overview of the European reception of Spinoza from the seventeenth century until today, in both minor and major thinkers.

This chapter locates Spinoza’s scientific interests and contributions in the context of the disciplinary categories of the seventeenth century, investigates the authorship of two small treatises (on the rainbow, and on the calculation of chances) often attributed to him, describes his scientific correspondence, evaluates his strengths and weaknesses as an expositor of Cartesian physics, assesses the role of Cartesian physics in his own philosophy, and explores his conception of methodology in the natural sciences.

Introduction to the second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza

Epistemology is in many ways important for Spinoza’s philosophy. It underlies his metaphysics, as well as his ethics and his political theory, and it also connected in many interesting ways with his psychological views on the mental life of human subjects. It is against this background that the present chapter discusses several key concepts and doctrines that Spinoza establishes in his epistemology, such as his views on truth and adequacy, the definition of idea and the denial of the notion of innate ideas, the famous distinction of the three kinds or rather “genera” of knowledge, the cognitive psychology underlying the discussion of the process of the imagination, humanity’s capacity for rationality, and finally the idea of our being blessed by intuitive knowledge. Moreover, regarding Spinoza’s denial of skepticism as the basic motivation driving his epistemology, the chapter also shows how his epistemological views develop over time. Altogether, it is argued that Spinoza manages to establish an epistemology that is both quite consistent on its own terms and successful in providing a stable foundation for his metaphysical, ethical and political views.

Spinoza’s philosophy of mind has been subject to widely divergent interpretations. What explains this lack of consensus? The principal reason is that Spinoza’s notion of an attribute and its relation to his substance monism is poorly understood. This chapter begins by setting out some interpretative difficulties regarding Spinoza’s notion of an attribute in general. It will then explain Spinoza’s conception of the attributes of thought and extension in particular. Next, it will explain how Spinoza argues for the structural similarity of the mental and physical realms from his claim that the mind and the body are one and the same thing conceived under different attributes. This will require developing a new interpretation of Spinoza’s notion of attribute. This interpretation will both explain why his philosophy of mind has been subject to such contradictory interpretations as well as solve a host of interpretative difficulties that have long vexed commentators. The chapter will conclude by explaining how Spinoza’s denial of mind-body causal explanation is compatible with his assertion of mind-body identity.

Spinoza developed a method of biblical interpretation which has guided most scholars ever since. It requires an understanding of the scriptural languages, a comparison of different discussions of the same topic (not assuming that Scripture, as the word of God, must be consistent), and an account of the authorship, date, circumstances, and transmission of each book. Renaissance humanists like Erasmus had anticipated some of his method, but Spinoza was more systematic and bolder: not only did Moses not write the Pentateuch, many of the traditional assumptions about the authorship of biblical books were mistaken. A late editor, working on now lost mss. of earlier histories, had compiled them. Spinoza writes mainly about the Hebrew Bible, but also draws challenging conclusions about the New Testament: the apostles didn’t write with prophetic authority; James was right (against Paul) to emphasize works over faith. He also suggests that the apostles probably wrote in Aramaic, so that the Greek text is a translation of a lost original. Like Erasmus, he emphasizes the moral teachings of Scripture and avoids philosophical speculations, of which the doctrine of original sin is probably the most important example. His advocacy of theological minimalism furthered the cause of religious liberty.

This essay explores the metaphysical foundations of Spinoza's psychology. A particular focus is Spinoza's conatus principle according to which each thing strives not only to persevere in existence but also to increase its power of acting. This striving is, for Spinoza, the actual essence of each thing, and it forms the basis of the three fundamental affects desire, joy, and sadness--which are central to Spinoza's accounts of weakness of the will, self-deception, the imitation of the affects, egoism, altruism, and teleology. Throughout, the essay emphasizes the ways in which Spinoza's psychology manifests his naturalism, his view that everything –including human beings and their various affects or emotions – is governed by the same laws that are found throughout nature.