“The perspective of eternity?”
“Yes, Sophie. Do you think you can imagine your own life in a cosmic context? You’ll have to try and imagine yourself and your life here and now ...”
“Hm ... that’s not so easy.”
“Remind yourself that you are only living a minuscule part of all nature’s life. You are part of an enormous whole.”
“I think I see what you mean ...”
“Can you manage to feel it as well? Can you perceive all of nature at one time—the whole universe, in fact— at a single glance?”
“I doubt it. Maybe I need some lenses.”
“I don’t mean only the infinity of space. I mean the eternity of time as well. Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago there lived a little boy in the Rhine valley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too, Sophie, you too are living a tiny part of nature’s life. There is no difference between you and that boy.”
“Except that I’m alive now.”
“Yes, but that is precisely what I wanted you to try and imagine. Who will you be in thirty thousand years?”
“Was that the heresy?”
“Not entirely ... Spinoza didn’t only say that everything is nature. He identified nature with God. He said God is all, and all is in God.”
“So he was a pantheist.”
“That’s true. To Spinoza, God did not create the world in order to stand outside it. No, God is the world. Sometimes Spinoza expresses it differently. He maintains that the world is in God. In this, he is quoting St. Paul’s speech to the Athenians on the Areopagos hill: ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ But let us pursue Spinoza’s own reasoning. His most important book was his Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated.”
“Ethics—geometrically demonstrated?”
“It may sound a bit strange to us. In philosophy, ethics means the study of moral conduct for living a good life. This is also what we mean when we speak of the ethics of Socrates or Aristotle, for example. It is only in our own time that ethics has more or less become reduced to a set of rules for living without treading on other people’s toes.”
“Because thinking of yourself is supposed to be egoism?”
“Something like that, yes. When Spinoza uses the word ethics, he means both the art of living and moral conduct.”
“But even so ... the art of living demonstrated geometrically?”
“The geometrical method refers to the terminology he used for his formulations. You may recall how Descartes wished to use mathematical method for philosophical reflection. By this he meant a form of philosophic reflection that was constructed from strictly logical conclusions. Spinoza was part of the same rationalistic tradition. He wanted his ethics to show that human life is subject to the universal laws of nature. We must therefore free ourselves from our feelings and our passions. Only then will we find contentment and be happy, he believed.”
“Surely we are not ruled exclusively by the laws of nature?”
“Well, Spinoza is not an easy philosopher to grasp. Let’s take him bit by bit. You remember that Descartes believed that reality consisted of two completely separate substances, namely thought and extension.”
“How could I have forgotten it?”
“The word ‘substance’ can be interpreted as ‘that which something consists of,’ or that which something basically is or can be reduced to. Descartes operated then with two of these substances. Everything was either thought or extension.
“However, Spinoza rejected this split. He believed that there was only one substance. Everything that exists can be reduced to one single reality which he simply called Substance. At times he calls it God or nature. Thus Spinoza does not have the dualistic view of reality that Descartes had. We say he is a monist. That is, he reduces nature and the condition of all things to one single substance.”
“They could hardly have disagreed more.”
“Ah, but the difference between Descartes and Spinoza is not as deep-seated as many have often claimed. Descartes also pointed out that only God exists independently. It’s only when Spinoza identifies God with nature—or God and creation—that he distances himself a good way from both Descartes and from the Jewish and Christian doctrines.”
“So then nature is God, and that’s that.”
“But when Spinoza uses the word ‘nature,’ he doesn’t only mean extended nature. By Substance, God, or nature, he means everything that exists, including all things spiritual.”
“You mean both thought and extension.”
“You said it! According to Spinoza, we humans recognize two of God’s qualities or manifestations. Spinoza called these qualities God’s attributes, and these two attributes are identical with Descartes’s ‘thought’ and ‘extension.’ God—or nature—manifests itself either as thought or as extension. It may well be that God has infinitely more attributes than ‘thought’ and ‘extension,’ but these are the only two that are known to man.”
“Fair enough, but what a complicated way of saying it.”
“Yes, one almost needs a hammer and chisel to get through Spinoza’s language. The reward is that in the end you dig out a thought as crystal clear as a diamond.”
“I can hardly wait!”
“Everything in nature, then, is either thought or extension. The various phenomena we come across in everyday life, such as a flower or a poem by Wordsworth, are different modes of the attribute of thought or extension. A ‘mode’ is the particular manner which Substance, God, or nature assumes. A flower is a mode of the attribute of extension, and a poem about the same flower is a mode of the attribute of thought. But both are basically the expression of Substance, God, or nature.”
“You could have fooled me!”
“But it’s not as complicated as he makes it sound. Beneath his stringent formulation lies a wonderful realization that is actually so simple that everyday language cannot accommodate it.”
“I think I prefer everyday language, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Right. Then I’d better begin with you yourself. When you get a pain in your stomach, what is it that has a pain?”
“Like you just said. It’s me.”
“Fair enough. And when you later recollect that you once had a pain in your stomach, what is it that thinks?”
“That’s me, too.”
“So you are a single person that has a stomachache one minute and is in a thoughtful mood the next. Spinoza maintained that all material things and things that happen around us are an expression of God or nature. So it follows that all thoughts that we think are also God’s or nature’s thoughts. For everything is One. There is only one God, one nature, or one Substance.”
“But listen, when I think something, I’m the one who’s doing the thinking. When I move, I’m doing the moving. Why do you have to mix God into it?”
“I like your involvement. But who are you? You are Sophie Amundsen, but you are also the expression of something infinitely bigger. You can, if you wish, say that you are thinking or that you are moving, but could you not also say that it is nature that is thinking your thoughts, or that it is nature that is moving through you? It’s really just a question of which lenses you choose to look through.”
“Are you saying I cannot decide for myself?”
“Yes and no. You may have the right to move your thumb any way you choose. But your thumb can only move according to its nature. It cannot jump off your hand and dance about the room. In the same way you also have your place in the structure of existence, my dear. You are Sophie, but you are also a finger of God’s body.”
“So God decides everything I do?”
“Or nature, or the laws of nature. Spinoza believed that God—or the laws of nature—is the inner cause of everything that happens. He is not an outer cause, since God speaks through the laws of nature and only through
