The Historical Development of Philosophy

New Philosophy

The Doctrine of Substance According to Spinoza

The concept of "dogmatism," in the sense it is to be applied here, was introduced into philosophy by Kant. He termed as dogmatic all philosophical systems that existed prior to the advent of his critical philosophy, regardless of whether they adhered to a deductive-speculative or an inductive-empirical approach. With this designation, he intended to convey that all such systems rested on assumptions that had not been subjected to a proper critical examination of our reason's capacity to address the problems they presented. Consequently, for Kant, those systems particularly became dogmatic that attempted to resolve transcendental issues, and by employing the term "dogmatism," he aimed to evoke the notion of religious dogmas, to which philosophical dogmas bore similarity in that their acceptance was primarily a matter of faith rather than of science.

If the term "dogmatic," in the sense used by Kant, should not be restricted solely to the period under discussion but rather should find broad application in both earlier and later times; and even if one might question whether Kant's own philosophy is free from "dogmatism" in the sense he himself established, it is nonetheless necessary to acknowledge that such a term is especially applicable to the philosophical currents that prevailed from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century. This is primarily due to the fact that this era is predominantly characterized by the formulation of grand, self-contained philosophical systems, which, despite their internal logical coherence, ultimately rest upon unproven assumptions. This, in turn, constitutes a significant distinction that separates this period from the dominant currents of the subsequent critical and post-critical eras. Undoubtedly, the foundational tenets of the systems of the post-critical period are also subject to dispute and, as subsequent developments in philosophy have shown, are often precarious. Nevertheless, the drive in the formation of systems during this period remains a quest for absolutely certain propositions. Thus, the relationship between the dogmatic period and the critical period can also be characterized by the fact that dogmatism seeks to construct a logically coherent worldview based on specific assumptions derived from either brilliant intuition or external sources, which ultimately become arbitrary premises, whereas criticism primarily seeks trustworthy premises upon which a system of science may be erected, after which, believing that the correct premises have been identified, it often proceeds arbitrarily in the particulars.

The preceding period of competing worldviews provided the dogmatic systems with concepts that were almost ready-made, derived from their application and elaboration, forming the edifice of their thought. The significance of this struggle lay solely in the fact that it brought to the fore certain principles that direct the overarching investigation of the world, which, in general, required only clearer articulation and consistent elaboration in order to yield complete philosophical systems. The philosophy of Descartes provided the most immediate material for such systematic elaboration, as it itself might have constituted a finished system had it not borne the marks of having been influenced by mutually discordant motivations. Thus, the first of the great systems to emerge in the new period is Spinoza’s philosophy (1632—1677), which directly continues and systematically transforms Descartes’ ideas.

Certainly, this system also draws upon other historically preceding philosophical currents: it reveals an astonishing harmony with the mystical natural philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whose ideas are expressed in it in a rigorously logical form. Indeed, the concept of infinity articulated by Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno’s teaching on intuitive knowledge are revived within Spinoza’s system. Yet these elements are so closely intertwined with the strict adherence to Descartes’ perspectives that the system impresses one as a coherent whole, in which the synthesis of rational Cartesian thought with mystical natural philosophy, theosophy of the Renaissance, and early scholastic Platonism emerges as a systematic product of reasoning derived from a strictly limited number of immediately apparent premises.

For Spinoza, such premises, on one hand, are rooted in the Aristotelian-scholastic notion of substance, and on the other, in Descartes’ doctrine concerning the three fundamental ideas of God, the soul, and the corporeal world, to which Descartes himself applied the concept of substance, contrasting God—the eternal and uncreated substance—with the other two, which are created substances. Descartes had already proclaimed that, just as knowledge of the reality of the soul and the corporeal world is mediated through the idea of God, so too do the finite substances exist only through the substance of God, thus lacking in their own essence any substantial independence. From this perspective, it was a small step to attribute to them only significance in direct dependence upon God and therefore to entirely strip them of the characteristics of substances. Consequently, the ideas of the soul and the corporeal world are transformed by Spinoza into modes of existence of substance, while the properties that Descartes ascribed to each individual body and soul—extension and thought—are transmuted into attributes of the singular substance, which manifests in particular modes only in limited forms, while in the substance itself, namely God, they must be posited as infinite. Here, too, the notion of infinity derived from Cusa becomes an essential outcome of the unity of the concept of substance. A single substance cannot have any other substances alongside it; it cannot be limited or defined by anything external to itself. From this follows the absolute infinity of substance—an infinity that must not be restricted by anything: not only must each of its properties be infinite, but it must possess infinitely many properties, each of which is itself infinite. Even the thought that something could exist outside of substance, even merely in idea, would already limit its infinity. It naturally follows that the concepts of substance, God, and nature coincide: they express the same absolutely infinite entity, albeit from different perspectives.

This idea of absolute infinity, as it appears in Spinoza, represents a further logical development of the Aristotelian notion of substances in its application to the innate ideas of Descartes, and it also resolves the problem of interaction—a resolution that the occasionalists vainly sought to achieve. The absolute infinity of substance encompasses every possible body and every possible idea of a body. In such an infinity, it is evident that there is no bodily mode without a corresponding spiritual one, nor is there any idea for which there would not be a corresponding bodily existence. From the infinity of attributes thus arises Spinoza’s established principle of metaphysical parallelism: “ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum.”

In this light, the problem of knowledge is similarly resolved. Sensory perception and any particular knowledge arising from it are limited, thus imperfect, failing to grasp the essence of things, which is reached through the knowledge of God and His infinite attributes. For the nature of imperfect, inadequate knowledge lies in its tendency to perceive the singular as self-sufficient rather than understanding it solely in relation to substance. Therefore, inadequate knowledge in Spinoza is akin to ordinary empirical knowledge, which, being limited itself, accepts the limited and hence conditioned as unconditional and genuinely real. In contrast, adequate knowledge consists exclusively in the knowledge of God and His attributes; it is directed toward the singular only when the latter is understood not as an independent entity or idea but as a mode of substance and defined through it, thus being apprehended from the perspective of eternity, "sub specie aeternitatis."

From inadequate knowledge also arise affects, which constitute the suffering of the soul, for it is in them as much dependent on external representations as one body is dependent on another. Conversely, clear knowledge, encompassing the immediate intuitive awareness of unity with substance, necessarily leads to the freedom of the spirit, independent of any external mental or bodily influences, for the latter are merely modifications of the infinite substance. The mental state that necessarily and directly accompanies clear knowledge is "the intellectual love of God," in Spinoza's words, formed analogously to the names of transient affects. From the perspective of substance, this love, since it encompasses all, is also part of God's infinite love for Himself. Just as this love is eternal because its object is eternal, every idea pertaining to the eternal, to substance, is itself eternal. In this sense, Spinoza believes that although the soul, as it is merely a link of ideas related to an individual body, perishes with that body, the infinitely clear idea of the essence of every human person continues to exist in God.

Thus, in Spinoza's system, everything is logically derived from a single premise, which resides in the definition of substance as an absolutely self-sufficient entity. However, this definition possesses a distinctly dogmatic character, and the concept of substance embedded within it is wholly arbitrary. Yet, upon this foundation, Spinoza develops a system that exclusively addresses the general problems concerning God, the world, and the soul, thus eschewing attempts to explain particular problems. Therefore, the speculative method of the system operates entirely within the realm of pure concepts; in them alone does genuine knowledge exist, while experience in itself and for itself is merely a negation of true knowledge, a boundary that, appearing to sense-limited thought as reality, represents inadequate knowledge. Thus, Spinoza's speculative system is, at the same time, absolutely transcendent; it has completely closed itself off from empirical reality, which Cartesian philosophy sought to retain. By ignoring the relationship to empirical knowledge, this system consequently lacks a foundation in practical ethics: instead of moral affects arising, as do sensory representations from which they derive, as a result of limited understanding of things, there emerges here the intellectual love of God, which is neither an affect nor a moral necessity but a purely religious sentiment. Hence, Spinoza's system is speculative and deductive in method, and strictly monistic in its metaphysical nature; this monism, under the influence of the prevailing religious direction, becomes pantheism. Yet, while for Spinoza the concept of God coincides with the concept of the world, he understands the world not as the empirical sensory world but as a transcendent reality, with the empirical being merely its inadequate representation or, more accurately, a boundary that simultaneously represents a negation of the true essence of things. Here, the relationship of Spinoza's system to the earliest prototype of such a transcendent system, that of Plato, is clearly discernible. Only in Spinoza does the absolutely transcendent, speculatively understood world acquire, through the requirement of its ultimate unity with the actual world and the resulting pantheism, a mystical character alongside the transcendent. For adequate knowledge fundamentally consists only in being the complete opposite of empirical knowledge; thus, it can be captured in concepts only by its abstract content, just as love for God can be characterized only by the fact that it consists in the negation of all love for finite things, and consequently, through the negation of what forms the empirical concept of love.