Many have interpreted Spinoza’s so-called pantheism as equating God with nature, maintaining a position in which the two are interchangeable. This oversimplification misses the finer points of Spinozan philosophy, which holds that God’s immanence is in evidence everywhere in the countless manifestations of his presence in nature. God transcends the physical world, is beyond it, and exists in a sense whereby the physical, natural world cannot exist without his overarching presence. In a sense, Spinoza helped establish a conception of the deity that is vastly different from the traditional idea of God the Father, a human projection that belongs more to a puritanical construct (the “angry God”) than to the unperceivable force that creates life and animates the natural world. Spinoza’s God is not the planning, orchestrating intellect, but something much more profound. He is the creator of the world but not in a sense that man can define according to his own understanding. Spinoza put forth an idea of unity that made little sense within the belief systems of organized religions.
Rene Descartes, who was himself an important influence on Spinoza’s philosophy, held that there was a dualism at work in the relationship between mind and body, which are distinct entities. As such, Descartes believed in a systematic universe that could be explained as a process. Material objects that exist in the world are themselves expressions of creation that can be explained in their component roles and functionality. Where man was concerned, Descartes was taken up with explaining how man’s “components,” his body and mind, interact and what their exact natures might be. Cartesian dualism is a belief system that philosophers like Spinoza could not resolve for themselves. Spinoza objected to Descartes’ ideas about will and its role as a tempering force. “For Spinoza…the control of the passions is possible not through the freedom of the will, but through proper knowledge of God or Nature” (DaSilva, 2013). Thus, we see in their treatment of human nature the essential difference between Cartesian and Spinozan thought. Spinoza, by arguing for the importance of God in controlling passion/emotion, emphasizes unity where, for Descartes, it is a question of one component wielding control, or power, over another component. This systematic dichotomy between Spinoza and Descartes extends into many areas, including politics, religion and anthropology.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Resolution or Accommodation: Descartes’ and Spinoza’s Divergent Philosophical Systems".
Ultimately, Spinoza believed that Descartes’ vision was limited, that his conception of a systematic, explainable universe was inadequate to an explanation of the universe as a whole, unified and indivisible. Descartes’ attempt to compartmentalize philosophy and religion flows from his contention that the mind’s eminence over the body is proof of the spirit of eternal mind (or the soul). It seeks to explain man as a being composed of distinctively separate elements, just as the world as a whole is composed of separate parts. Spinoza, on the other hand, objected that the human mind is incapable of wielding true control over the body. Rather, the two are part of a continuous whole, co-existing and mutually dependent, as man and the natural world around him are mutually dependent. Spinoza’s position on unity stood in opposition to the Judeo-Christian teachings that dominated his 17th-century European world, and led to his excommunication from the Jewish faith. But his then-radical perspective served the worthwhile purpose of taking
Descartes’ dualistic model to its next logical step.
Spinoza’s monism, as it extends to the substantive world, suggests that the exercising of mind and body mirror each other, and are inextricably linked. In fact, it is quite possible that the reverse of the Cartesian position is true, that the mind receives signals from the body that lead to perceptions and imagery Descartes saw as evidence of the brain’s preeminence and, as such, of its divine nature. If this is true, and that there could be no mental activity in the absence of physiological phenomena, then Spinoza’s influence on Cartesian philosophy can be seen as positively expansive. To take the point a step further, Spinoza may have proven that there is a continuum between his philosophy and that of Descartes’ in much the same way that Spinozan monism helps explain, and even expands on, the Cartesian dualistic system.
And yet the essential difference between Spinoza and Descartes persists. Even today, key voices in the fields of philosophy and theology often find themselves at odds over the basic precepts of the dualistic/monistic debate. Those who maintain the Cartesian position insist that the mind-body duality is, in itself, evidence of God’s presence in man. Spinozan monists counter that only the unity between mind and body, between God and the natural world, can produce a plausibly philosophical explanation for the existence of God. I believe that Spinoza seeks to resolve the component parts of man and of the natural world, and that to “settle” for a Cartesian model is tantamount to seeking an accommodation, rather than a resolution, of positions that are intrinsically divergent. As such, Spinoza must be seen as essentially correct in his criticisms of Descartes.
- DaSilva, Wanderley Dias. “Spinoza Against Descartes’s Physical Theory.” Universidade Catolica de Leuven-Belgica. Academia.edu, 2013.
