Philosophers You Have Never Heard Of
Which "God" should you believe in... or none of the above.
*Mike Newton: Baruch Spinoza Oil on Linen.
Let me ask you a strange question. Can an Atheist believe in God?
No, right? The very definition of “atheist” (‘a’ without + ‘theos’ God) is the absence of belief in God. There are a few things it seems one can be certain of. A dog can’t be a cat, a fruit can’t be a vegetable, a Red Sox fan can’t be a Yankees fan, and an Atheist can’t believe in God.
And then there was Baruch Spinoza.
Spinoza is arguably one of the most radical and controversial philosophers. He may not have the same name recognition as Socrates, Immanuel Kant or Friedrich Nietzsche, but Spinoza’s philosophical insights revolutionized metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental structure of reality.
Look out of your window and look at the world. What exactly is all that? Once you penetrate through all the layers of how things appear, what exactly are they in their essence? When you look at the world are you looking at a bunch of different things, or is it really just one thing? Depending on which it is, your entire understanding of existence and your place in it, could be radically altered.
These are the kinds of questions Spinoza sought to answer.
It’s an odd fact that Baruch Spinoza is widely considered an Atheist, yet he insisted upon calling his central philosophical insight, “God”. By doing so, he confused the hell out of everyone! For a person considered a diehard unbeliever, no philosopher talked more about God than Spinoza.
Spinoza is my favorite heretic. He wrote, “I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.” He definitely disturbed quite a few people.
I relate to Spinoza in several ways. I still remember when I was informed by that largest Christian book distributer and bookstore chain that they would no longer carry my books in their stores or online. This was on the heels of the abrupt cancellation of my two-book publishing contract with a major Christian publisher. Upon submitting the manuscript for my first book, they concluded that my spiritual journey could no longer be considered “Christian” and accused me of heresy.
Being Jesus: New Edition
Likewise, Spinoza’s books were listed in the Catholic Church Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“Index of Forbidden Books”). The naughty list was established in 1557 by Pope Paul IV, and was a list of books that Catholics were prohibited from reading on pain of excommunication. The books were prohibited because they contained material considered dangerous or contrary to the Christian faith. Noteworthy figures on the Index include Simone de Beauvoir, who was the philosopher I covered in the second article in this series. It even got worse for Spinoza with an ex-communication, which makes you wonder why he ever bothered talking about “God” again.
Baruch Spinoza: An Introduction
In a letter to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein, who pressed Albert Einstein about his belief in God, Einstein wrote, “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who is revealed in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
Who was Baruch Spinoza and who was “Spinoza’s God”?
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Jewish-Dutch philosopher. One of the early thinkers of the Enlightenment (the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and the 18th centuries) and modern biblical criticism (the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to the supernatural). Spinoza had a monumental impact on the modern conceptions of the self and the universe. He came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy.
Rationalism regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. Many toxic, absurd or fundamentalist religious beliefs cannot stand the test of reason, rational thinking or even common sense, but are accepted on the basis of “faith” alone.
Spinoza was raised in a Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem (חרם) against him, causing him to be effectively expelled and shunned by Jewish society at age 23, including by his own family.
This religious expulsion and shunning still happens today. I addressed this dynamic in my recent article that discussed ex-Mormons.
As mentioned, Spinoza’s books were banished by the Catholic Church to the Index of Forbidden Books. Despite the label “atheist”, no philosopher spoke more about God and evoked the concept of God in his writings than Spinoza. I see many people who leave religion spin their wheels about what to believe about God. The issue comes up because many people who leave religion can no longer believe in the “God” they learned at church. I discuss at length the problem of Christian Theism for those who leave church or having a faith crisis. This also came up in my series: unChristian: Deconstruction for the rest of us. In my estimation, understanding Spinoza’s views could provide a meaningful pathway out of this dilemma.
Spinoza 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. By the way, “heterodox” means any opinions, views or doctrines at variance with official or orthodox religious positions.
Spinoza published little in his lifetime and most of his formal writings were in Latin, which would have reached only a small number of readers. He actively told supporters not to translate his works, but following his death, his supporters published his works posthumously, in Latin and Dutch and later into English.
Spinoza’s most known writings includes Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics (we will discuss this later) in which “God” and “Nature” are identified as one phenomenon.
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