One distortion of his views arising from religious quarrels
that I think Spinoza suffers from is the notion that his philosophy is somewhat
pantheistic which can also lead to the mistaken notion that he was an atheist.
As I explained when answering a follow-up question after I presented my paper
‘Was Spinoza a Forerunner to Darwin’ at Groningen University 2016, I am working
on a reading of Spinoza’s metaphysics and writings on God and nature which
shows that he was not a pantheist, although he may have agreed with a type of
panentheism which is compatible with Judaism. A reason for this is proposition
15 in the first part of his Ethics which states “Whatever is, is in God…”
(EIp15)1. In other words, everything is in God and God is in
everything because everything only exists as a result of God. Moreover, in
White’s translator’s note to EIp29s, he states that the expressions natura
naturata and natura naturans “signify by the same verb the oneness of God and
the world, and yet at the same time to mark by a difference of inflexion that
there was not absolute identity.”2 Indeed, Spinoza wrote to Oldenburg3
(letter 73) affirming that he did not equate God with nature in his
terminology. This would mean that Spinoza cannot be a pantheist because
pantheism sees God and the world as being identical. Furthermore, the
Panentheistic description of God inhering in things in the world, as opposed to
pantheism which would see things in the world as being identical to God,
resembles Spinoza’s description of things being a mode of God and godliness
inhering in things. An example of this difference: the Pantheist would think
this tree in front of me is one and the same thing as God. Whereas the
Panentheist would think that the tree is a tree but that it has the property of
God in it and that its existence comes from God.
On reading around, I discovered that Martial Guéroult
(1891-1976) suggested Spinoza may have been more panentheistic than pantheistic
so I shall look into his writings on this. However, I shall be connecting
panentheistic elements in Spinoza’s writings with Judaism especially since it
appears around the same passages where Spinoza emphasizes that God is one and
that “nothing can either be or be conceived without God” (EIp15)4. I
have been working on to what extent the concept of Tzimtzum5 in
Judaism can be found in Spinoza’s passages on God conceiving.
On this picture, God is transcendent in the sense that God
is different, unique, perfect with a different quality of attributes, a bit
like Spinoza’s analogy of the difference between the “celestial constellation
of the Dog and the animal which barks” (EIp17s)6. However, God is
not transcendent in the sense of being outside of the world.
To illustrate this, I think of Spinoza’s claim that
everything is in God yet not identical to God to be a bit like an Eulerian
circle which shows a smaller circle, call it x and think of it as the world,
within a larger circle, call it y and think of it as God. In this way, x and y
are not identical, and the world, represented by the smaller circle x, is
within God, represented by the larger circle y. And there is nothing outside of
God since God is the main circle, y, but God is not strictly speaking outside
of the world because that would be like being outside of Himself since God is
the larger circle and is encompassing the whole world rather than being outside
of it in the sense of being an external circle, z, which doesn’t overlap with
the world, circle x. Or, to see the visual representation of this, see this
image available at:
Here, God would be like the red circle, the world would be
like the yellow circle and the blue circle is like the mistaken notion,
according to Spinoza, of God being outside of the world. The adjustment to this
mathematical representation is that the yellow circle representing the world
only exists through and because of the red circle representing God and
everything in the yellow circle is a mode (property) of the red circle. And
perhaps, if it were to fit with Tzimtzum, then the yellow circle exists because
it has been created in the sense of it being conceived out of and by the red
circle, rather than it being created in the sense of the blue circle bringing
it into existence from outside of itself. In this way, God can be the only
substance (substance monism), whereas if God were like the blue circle, this
would lead to substance dualism which Spinoza rejects. Another Spinozian adjustment
would be that the red circle representing God causes everything that happens in
the yellow circle, representing the world, by acting in it through the laws of
nature (not through emotion or willing).
Also, this style of Euler diagram suits panentheism because
it retains the different identities between God and the world and reflects the
language of the world being in God. It also avoids the possible panentheist
language describing the world as a part of God which would be a problem for
Spinoza given that he rejects breaking up wholes into parts yet it retains the
underlying panentheist view. I imagine that the pantheist diagram would look
like the red circle and the blue circle are the same size and completely
overlapping, making it impossible to refer to one as x and the other as y
because they would be identical. (Again, the blue circle would represent the
mistaken notion of God being outside of the world completely and being referred
to as z.)
1Spinoza, Benedict
de., ‘Ethics’, translated by White, W. H., revised by Stirling, A. H.,
Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, Wordsworth editions, (2001) p14
2ibid footnote 4 on
p28
3letters between
Spinoza and Oldenburg available at:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/spinoza1661.pdf
and for this passage on God and nature see p104-5 in this pdf.
4Spinoza, Benedict
de., ‘Ethics’, translated by White, W. H., revised by Stirling, A. H.,
Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, Wordsworth editions, (2001) p14
5Tzimtzum: the idea that God contracted Himself
and partially withdrew Himself to provide a conceptual space within which the
world could exist. Although it is a kabbalistic explanation for the final
stages when God created the world, I don’t interpret Spinoza as a Kabbalist
because it is a type of Jewish mysticism and Spinoza is very much into reason
so I think is more generally in line with Jewish Rationalism. However, it is
possible he may have drawn some metaphysical inspiration from such
descriptions, given that the notion of Tzimtzum predates Spinoza’s era.
6Spinoza, Benedict
de., ‘Ethics’, translated by White, W. H., revised by Stirling, A. H.,
Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, Wordsworth editions, (2001) p20
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