Baruch Spinoza, who was considered one of the greatest among all philosophers renowned for his pursuit of knowledge through mental reasoning. His belief in moral conduct through active intuitive reasoning of the knowledge of right and wrong makes him a contemporary forward thinking philosopher of that time period. He displayed great wisdom in his work and complete view of the nature of God or for some may called it Divine Source. He was a forerunner in intellectual freedom where he questioned the traditional beliefs and conception of God, humans, nature and the entire universe as a whole and maintained his position as a distinguished influence on western philosophy and thought. He proposed that we are endowed with a reasoning mind and in order to decipher the true meaning of reality, we need to use our “mind” which is the mental processing of questioning to determine for ourselves what is truth also by virtue of intuition. His view of reality is such that we are connected by a web of causal relationships governed by natural laws from which we cannot escape. Such were the opposing ideas of the religious dogma during that time.
He was born on 24th November in the year 1632 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was a Dutch-Jew Philosopher of the 17th century period. A middle son of a prominent family in the Portugease-Jewish community. Even though he was intellectually gifted and well liked by many teachers, he was forced to cut short his studies to help out in his family’s business. Nevertheless, he managed to continue his academic pursuits later on.
He believed that God is essentially nature and exists in everything. Everything that exists is a part of God. This is contrary to the religious teachings of his time and considered controversial and heretical for the reason that it was taught that God is personal and a person. To him, humans are not “outside nature” but also an inherent part of nature, not above it but within it. He believes that all of us are expressions of the same infinite substance but in different ways. Another philosophical idea that sprung out from him was that God being the source of all things and if everything is interconnected as a result being part of nature, He is who He is as perfect as He is, He cannot change. This was highly contentious then and was greatly objected. Spinoza also believed that human intellect is a part of the divine intellect of God. He also proposed that human sufferings were due to inadequate understanding of things clearly. When we are perceiving through sense perception, we are sensing body emotions to a great degree like fear, sadness, anger etc. At the same time, with such negative strong emotions, it stops one from seeing the clear and bigger picture. The use of reasoning to find out true reality instead of immediate impulsive reactions through those negative emotions was what he put forward. Another notion which was distinctly misunderstood by many was that he believed acting in self-interest does notF negate the desire to help others. By contrast, although he advocates rational self-interest, rational self-interest in turn urges us to desire the good of others. So, this does not give us a reason to blindly seek advantage for oneself in a selfish manner without regard for others. Freedom of living through rational intellectual understanding is when we seek our greatest good through reasoning and this greatest good is understanding.
Spinoza determined that there were three types of knowledge. Opinion, reason and intuition. The first type is the lowest and inadequate type. It is through sensory input of what a person perceives through the lens of their own objective reception of what they saw. It is considered the imagination type. It was sensed and judged through what that person imagined it to be. However, this is not very reliable because it depends on personal opinions. The second type is the reasoning type which is better than the first type because there is a rational use of the implicit truth. To him, reasoning will lead to intuition since ideas will be formed. This type is a result of the second type. The third type is the use of intuition. For Spinoza, to intuit God is to love God. For this reason, the use of intuition which uses the connection to the whole of nature to perceive things coupled with a reasoning mind which is bestowed by God, we are perceiving rightly. This type is of the most value and of the highest virtue of the mind. It brought us closer to the substance, nature and God. Intuitive reasoning far surpasses the opinions of any since opinions are still a mental construct perceived by individuals even in ignorance. Like how the ancient people used to believe that the sun revolved around earth. The reverse was later discovered as truth. Or when someone who does not believe that there is a sun doesn’t negate the fact that the sun still shines every morning! Strongly believing something without rationality is ignorance. The possibility of the mind making mistakes is indisputable without reasoning intuition. With the observation of natural laws, studying nature, deriving reasoning deduction and intuition through the heart, we are able to get a true knowledge of what is.
He has an unconventional way of thinking that brought a lot of problems for him in the midst of broiling conflict and controversy with the Jewish and Christian communities then. There was once he was stabbed by a Jew while he was leaving a theater. Even though the wound wasn’t too serious, he was convinced the assassin was out to kill him. After which, he distanced himself from the synagogue and was even excommunicated ever since. He was not allowed into the community and banned from communicating with his family henceforth. Being exiled from Amsterdam, he continued his ideology unfazed. It was not just one event where attempts to hurt him happened. There was another occasion where he was coming out of an old Portuguese synagogue, he was assaulted with a dagger. Though the thrust was only received by his clothing, he still kept that piece of garment as a reminder. Well, in some other accounts, it seemed that both occasions could in fact be only one. Nonetheless, the assault was due to his heretical ideas of God which was contrary to what was being taught in the synagogue.
His existence challenged the collective consciousness of humanity during that time as it was customary to believe without questioning and heretical ideology like this was not accepted and in fact, could be dangerous even. Nobody was supposed to question what was to be accepted as truth. Sometimes, it could have been blindingly obvious and clear-cut noticeable, we missed it totally just because the whole world says the same thing and nobody even uses their rational mind to question things. This is the problem even in our times, isn’t it? When we are so immersed in the mainstream and accept everyone’s ideology of what things should be and must be, we are like having eyes but blind. What is right and wrong is no longer determined by our rational perception of reality through our own thinking but by the experiences and credibility of others only by how senior or prestigious they are in society. In spite of the fact that they may look “correct” but deep down within our hearts, we felt something is wrong about them and yet we disregarded our intuition which is an important component in making sense of things. We confound ourselves by believing what others believe and did not for a moment, stop and contemplate the truth of matter for ourselves. We stop questioning things and accept everything which was presented to us. Even when conflict arises in our hearts, we still dismiss them and continue to display ignorance. We forgot that God gave us a reasoning mind and it’s meant to be used. When we stop using our mind, we are allowing others to fill up our mind for us. There will be many occasions that we are prompted within us to think in a certain way which in reality is intuition. Somehow, we still refuse to acknowledge it and let it slide. Only to discover later on that we missed the promptings from within us. Whilst it’s important to heed the inner urges within us, without using our reasoning mind to make sense of things, we are still going nowhere. Too much reasoning without intuition and too much intuition without reasoning will only lead to lopsided single-way perception. Placing too much intuition into one’s own viewpoint will be confusing and unsure since there is a baseless assumption of reality without rational confirmation of things. On the other hand, basing solely on reasoning will take us to emphasize on concrete proof of matter and still miss the mark because in nature, there are unseen forces and universal laws acting in the background only for the intuitive heart to be able to know. We will still be oblivious to the truth. The best and most ideal way will be using our reasoning mind which needs things to make sense with logic as well as a guiding force of the heart by intuition. When we are able to do this, we will be closer to mastering the intellectual mind seeing a bigger and clearer picture of substance, nature and God.