Spinoza's GOD

He Spinoza's God responds to a philosophical concept that It differs from the traditional notion of God as a personal entity. Spinoza, a rationalist philosopher of the 17th century, defined this god as a reality made up of a single infinite substance with multiple properties. At unPROFESOR.com we delve below into what specifically the Spinoza's God.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a absolute radical rationalist philosopher since he starts from the idea that thanks to reason the human being can understand the rational structure of the world around him. This principle leads Spinoza to search for exact knowledge. To do this, and focusing on logic and mathematics, Spinoza explains his postulates through definitions and axioms.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you a summary of Spinoza's God, one of the most debated topics on the Internet following a statement by Einstein about his belief in a god like the one postulated by Spinoza.

As we have already pointed out, the Spinoza's philosophy

is characterized by its rationalism and the emphasis he places on reason as a means to understand the reality that surrounds us and achieve happiness. In his work "Ethical demonstrated according to the geometric order", his main works, Spinoza is governed by a geometric approach under the influence of the exact sciences and a radical rationalism. In addition to mathematics and logic, Spinoza's philosophy also encompassed other areas such as epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind.

For Spinoza, philosophy constituted a knowledge of divine character and he believed in the unity, rationality and immanence of everything real, as opposed to the existence of an ideal world transcendent of the material.

Spinoza's rationalism has its roots in some of the ideas and postulates of ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato, as well as also take concepts from scholasticism, stoicism, from the Hebrew tradition such as the work of Maimonides, the Talmud, the Kabbalah or the Bible. Furthermore, Spinoza was also inspired by his contemporaries such as, for example, the ideas of natural science by Giordano Bruno wave Hobbes political theory.

He said Einstein that he believed in Spinoza's God, a god who reveals himself in the harmony of the laws of the Universe and not that God who punishes and governs the destiny of men. In general terms, this would be Spinoza's God, a god who It was tremendously attractive to scientists and philosophers as he is more of a cosmic entity, without anthropomorphisms and far from the patriarchal and fearsome figure that the images of Christianity or other monotheistic religions reproduced. This idea of ​​God made Spinoza was even accused of atheism.

Thus, according to Spinoza, God is not corporeal, being an infinite being. A substance with infinite attributes and these expressing its infinite and eternal essence. Furthermore, Spinoza's God does not resort to miracles or supernatural appearances. Everything that happens obeys the laws of infinite nature of God and everything happens for necessity, not arbitrarily. A principle that falls within the logic of scientific or mathematical thought, a thought that seeks constants or equations in an eternal universe. In this way, the nature of all things can be known through universal laws. Some laws that are considered expressions of God and with a reality superior to the existence of individual and perishable things.

Other characteristics of Spinoza's God is that God is synonymous with Nature (“Deus sive Natura”), but not in a materialistic way, since he tells us about the eternity of the mind and how it participates in God. The human mind is not destroyed with the body, it is eternal and remains, thus being a kind of eternal mode of thought. This proposition about the immortality of the soul in Spinoza has generated discussions among philosophers when considering that the author refers to an individual immortality of the soul, while others consider that it is an impersonal immortality, that is, that which knows God and is God in itself same. This last vision would bring Spinoza closer to Buddhist philosophies and religions such as buddhism since these also consider that there is immortality of the mind, not that of the individual person.

For all these ideas about God, Spinoza he was considered an atheist, his view being an atheism. Thus, for some authors, although Spinoza dedicated himself to proving the existence of God, deep down he did not believe that existed and his philosophy is considered atheistic because he equates God with nature and does not invite his adoration of him. For other thinkers, Spinoza could be considered a panentheist, That is, God is not only the world that he does not surround, the world is in God: everything exists in God, but God is not limited by reality.

Finally, although Spinoza does not call for the worship of God, he does consider that the highest good and the highest virtue is for Spinoza the knowledge of God, that being the meaning of human existence: know and love God.