Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Spinoza doc

 

            In all of our lives, we would agree that while there are some things that we cannot control, for example the beating of our hearts or the inhaling and exhaling through our lungs which allows us to survive, there are indeed certain things which we feel we are able to manipulate and control. We believe that we make judgments regarding certain choices we have available at our disposal on the basis that one path would be more beneficial to us than another however Baruch Spinoza argues that all of these "choices" are illusory. .
             To begin this line of thought, Spinoza claims that because God and nature cannot be divided, nothing is outside of nature. God, he says, has infinite attributes-or ways of being- that he has passed on to mankind in the form of thought and extension. For this reason Spinoza states that "it follows that the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God (Spinoza, 1992; 70) or put differently, that we are not truly the owners of our thoughts. Proposition sixteen in part one of his Ethics makes clear that everything that is in the world flows from Gods nature by necessity, and it is this necessity which Spinoza believes is the control for mankinds" actions. Everything then in the unfolding of nature is necessitated and could not be any other way. The only free entity is God. .
             To relate this theory to the idea of free will, we can begin by saying that because we are part of nature, we are subject to the same causal chain of unfolding events and that events we regard as "choices" or "judgments" act under a necessity similar to that of a mathematical equation. Freedom, according to Spinoza, is the acceptance and recognition of this necessity-meaning god or nature- which is the basis for Spinoza's reasoning here. What this mode of reasoning leads us to ask is how do we explain our personal, individual emotions such as love or anger and the effect these emotions have on our thoughts and our physical actions? Spinoza states these too are determined by necessity.


Essays Related to Spinoza doc