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Friday, February 8, 2019

Eastern philosophy (updated)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Eastern philosophy or Asian philosophy includes the various philosophies that originated in East and South Asia including Chinese philosophy, Japanese philosophy, and Korean philosophy which are dominant in East Asia and Vietnam, and Indian philosophy (including Buddhist philosophy) which are dominant in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet and Mongolia.

Indian philosophy

Indian philosophy refers to ancient philosophical traditions (Sanskrit: dárśana; 'world views', 'teachings') of the Indian subcontinent. Jainism may have roots dating back to the times of the Indus Valley Civilization. The major orthodox schools arose sometime between the start of the Common Era and the Gupta Empire. These Hindu schools developed what has been called the "Hindu synthesis" merging orthodox Brahmanical and unorthodox elements from Buddhism and Jainism. Hindu thought also spread east to the Indonesian Srivijaya empire and the Cambodian Khmer Empire. These religio-philosophical traditions were later grouped under the label Hinduism. Hinduism is the dominant religion, or way of life, in South Asia. It includes Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism among numerous other traditions, and a wide spectrum of laws and prescriptions of "daily morality" based on karma, dharma, and societal norms. Hinduism is a categorization of distinct intellectual or philosophical points of view, rather than a rigid, common set of beliefs. Hinduism, with about one billion followers is the world's third largest religion, after Christianity and Islam. Hinduism has been called the "oldest religion" in the world and is traditionally called Sanātana Dharma, "the eternal law" or the "eternal way"; beyond human origins. Western scholars regard Hinduism as a fusion or synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions, with diverse roots and no single founder.

Some of the earliest surviving philosophical texts are the Upanishads of the later Vedic period (1000–500 BCE). Important Indian philosophical concepts include dharma, karma, samsara, moksha and ahimsa. Indian philosophers developed a system of epistemological reasoning (pramana) and logic and investigated topics such as Ontology (metaphysics, Brahman-Atman, Sunyata-Anatta), reliable means of knowledge (epistemology, Pramanas), value system (axiology) and other topics. Indian philosophy also covered topics such as political philosophy as seen in the Arthashastra c. 4th century BCE and the philosophy of love as seen in the Kama Sutra. The Kural literature of c. 1st century BCE, written by the Tamil poet-philosopher Valluvar, is believed by many scholars to be based on Jain philosophies.

Later developments include the development of Tantra and Iranian-Islamic influences. Buddhism mostly disappeared from India after the Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent, surviving in the Himalayan regions and south India. The early modern period saw the flourishing of Navya-Nyāya (the 'new reason') under philosophers such as Raghunatha Siromani (c. 1460–1540) who founded the tradition, Jayarama Pancanana, Mahadeva Punatamakara and Yashovijaya (who formulated a Jain response).

Orthodox schools

The principal Indian philosophical schools are classified as either orthodox or heterodox – āstika or nāstika – depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Vedas are a valid source of knowledge; whether the school believes in the premises of Brahman and Atman; and whether the school believes in afterlife and Devas.

There are six major schools of orthodox Indian Hindu philosophyNyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā and Vedanta, and five major heterodox schools—Jain, Buddhist, Ajivika, Ajñana, and Cārvāka. However, there are other methods of classification; Vidyaranya for instance identifies sixteen schools of Hindu Indian philosophy by including those that belong to the Śaiva and Raseśvara traditions.

Each school of Hindu philosophy has extensive epistemological literature called Pramana-sastras.

In Hindu history, the distinction of the six orthodox schools was current in the Gupta period "golden age" of Hinduism. With the disappearance of Vaisheshika and Mīmāṃsā, it became obsolete by the later Middle Ages, when the various sub-schools of Vedanta (Dvaita "dualism", Advaita Vedanta "non-dualism" and others) began to rise to prominence as the main divisions of religious philosophy. Nyaya survived into the 17th century as Navya Nyaya "Neo-Nyaya", while Samkhya gradually lost its status as an independent school, its tenets absorbed into Yoga and Vedanta.

Sāmkhya and Yoga

King Amsuman and the yogic sage Kapila. The Samkhya school traditionally traces itself back to sage Kapila.
 
Sāmkhya is a dualist philosophical tradition based on the Samkhyakarika (c. 320–540 CE), while the Yoga school was a closely related tradition emphasizing meditation and liberation whose major text is the Yoga sutras (c. 400 CE). Elements of proto-Samkhya ideas can however be traced back all the way to the period of the early Upanishads. One of the main differences between the two closely related schools was that Yoga allowed for the existence of a God, while most Sāmkhya thinkers criticized this idea.

Sāmkhya epistemology accepts three of six pramanas (proofs) as the only reliable means of gaining knowledge; pratyakṣa (perception), anumāṇa (inference) and śabda (word/testimony of reliable sources). The school developed a complex theoretical exposition of the evolution of consciousness and matter. Sāmkhya sources argue that the universe consists of two realities, puruṣa (consciousness) and prakṛti (matter).

As shown by the Sāṁkhyapravacana Sūtra (c. 14th century CE), Sāmkhya continued to develop throughout the medieval period.

Nyāya

The Nyāya school of epistemology, explores sources of knowledge (Pramāṇa) and is based on the Nyāya Sūtras (circa 6th-century BCE and 2nd-century CE). Nyāya holds that human suffering arises out of ignorance and liberation arises through correct knowledge. Therefore, they sought to investigate the sources of correct knowledge or epistemology.

Nyāya traditionally accepts four Pramanas as reliable means of gaining knowledge – Pratyakṣa (perception), Anumāṇa (inference), Upamāṇa (comparison and analogy) and Śabda (word, testimony of past or present reliable experts). Nyāya also traditionally defended a form of philosophical realism.

The Nyāya Sūtras was a very influential text in Indian philosophy, laying the foundations for classical Indian epistemological debates between the different philosophical schools. It includes, for example, the classic Hindu rejoinders against Buddhist not-self (anatta) arguments. The work also famously argues against a creator God (Ishvara), a debate which became central to Hinduism in the medieval period.

Vaiśeṣika

Vaiśeṣika is a naturalist school of atomism, which accepts only two sources of knowledge, perception and inference. This philosophy held that the universe was reducible to paramāṇu (atoms), which are indestructible (anitya), indivisible, and have a special kind of dimension, called “small” (aṇu). Whatever we experience is a composite of these atoms.

Vaiśeṣika organized all objects of experience into what they called padārthas (literally: 'the meaning of a word') which included six categories; dravya (substance), guṇa (quality), karma (activity), sāmānya (generality), viśeṣa (particularity) and samavāya (inherence). Later Vaiśeṣikas (Śrīdhara and Udayana and Śivāditya) added one more category abhava (non-existence). The first three categories are defined as artha (which can perceived) and they have real objective existence. The last three categories are defined as budhyapekṣam (product of intellectual discrimination) and they are logical categories.

Mīmāṃsā

Mīmāṃsā is a school of ritual orthopraxy and is known for its hermeneutical study and interpretation of the Vedas. For this tradition, the study of dharma as rituals and social duties was paramount. They also held that the Vedas were "eternal, authorless, [and] infallible" and that Vedic injunctions and mantras in rituals are prescriptive actions of primary importance. Because of their focus on textual study and interpretation, Mīmāṃsā also developed theories of philology and the philosophy of language which influenced other Indian schools. They primarily held that the purpose of language was to clearly prescribe proper actions, rituals and correct dharma (duty or virtue). Mīmāṃsā is also mainly atheistic, holding that the evidence for the existence of God is insufficient and that the Gods named in the Vedas have no existence apart from the names, mantras and their power.

A key text of the Mīmāṃsā school is the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra of Jaimini and major Mīmāṃsā cholars include Prabhākara (c. 7th century) and Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (fl. roughly 700). The Mīmāṃsā school strongly influenced Vedānta which was also known as Uttara-Mīmāṃsā, however while Mīmāṃsā emphasized karmakāṇḍa, or the study of ritual actions, using the four early Vedas, the Vedānta schools emphasized jñanakāṇḍa, the study of knowledge, using the later parts of Vedas like the Upaniṣads.

Vedānta

Adi Shankara (8th century CE) the main exponent of Advaita Vedānta
 
Vedānta (meaning "end of the Vedas") or Uttara-Mīmāṃsā, are a group of traditions which focus on the philosophical issues found in the Prasthanatrayi (the three sources), which are the Principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. Vedānta sees the Vedas, particularly the Upanishads, as a reliable source of knowledge. 

The central concern for these schools is the nature of and relationship between Brahman (ultimate reality, universal consciousness), Ātman (individual soul) and Prakriti (empirical world).
 
The sub-traditions of Vedānta include Advaita (non-dualism), Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism), Dvaita (dualism) and Bhedabheda (difference and non-difference). Due the popularity of the bhakti movement, Vedānta came to be the dominant current of Hinduism in the post-medieval period.

Other

While the classical enumeration of Indian philosophies lists six orthodox schools, there are other schools which are sometimes seen as orthodox. These include:

Heterodox or Śramaṇic schools

The nāstika or heterodox schools are associated with the non-vedic Śramaṇic traditions that existed in India since before the 6th century BCE. The Śramaṇa movement gave rise to diverse range of non-vedic ideas, ranging from accepting or denying the concepts of atman, atomism, materialism, atheism, agnosticism, fatalism to free will, extreme asceticism, strict ahimsa (non-violence) and vegetarianism. Notable philosophies that arose from Śramaṇic movement were Jainism, early Buddhism, Cārvāka, Ajñana and Ājīvika.

Jain philosophy

Jain philosophy deals extensively with the problems of metaphysics, reality, cosmology, ontology, epistemology and divinity. Jainism is essentially a transtheistic religion of ancient India. It continues the ancient Śramaṇa tradition, which co-existed with the Vedic tradition since ancient times. The distinguishing features of Jain philosophy includes a mind-body dualism, denial of a creative and omnipotent God, karma, an eternal and uncreated universe, non-violence, the theory of the multiple facets of truth, and a morality based on liberation of the soul. Jain philosophy attempts to explain the rationale of being and existence, the nature of the Universe and its constituents, the nature of bondage and the means to achieve liberation. It has often been described as an ascetic movement for its strong emphasis on self-control, austerities and renunciation. It has also been called a model of philosophical liberalism for its insistence that truth is relative and multifaceted and for its willingness to accommodate all possible view-points of the rival philosophies. Jainism strongly upholds the individualistic nature of soul and personal responsibility for one's decisions; and that self-reliance and individual efforts alone are responsible for one's liberation.

The contribution of the Jains in the development of Indian philosophy has been significant. Jain philosophical concepts like Ahimsa, Karma, Moksa, Samsara and the like are common with other Indian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism in various forms. While Jainism traces its philosophy from teachings of Mahavira and other Tirthankaras, various Jain philosophers from Kundakunda and Umasvati in ancient times to Yasovijaya and Shrimad Rajchandra in recent times have contributed to Indian philosophical discourse in uniquely Jain ways.

Cārvāka

Cārvāka or Lokāyata was an atheistic philosophy of scepticism and materialism, who rejected the Vedas and all associated supernatural doctrines. Cārvāka philosophers like Brihaspati were extremely critical of other schools of philosophy of the time. Cārvāka deemed the Vedas to be tainted by the three faults of untruth, self-contradiction, and tautology. They declared the Vedas to be incoherent rhapsodies invented by man whose only usefulness was to provide livelihood to priests.

Likewise they faulted Buddhists and Jains, mocking the concept of liberation, reincarnation and accumulation of merit or demerit through karma. They believed that, the viewpoint of relinquishing pleasure to avoid pain was the "reasoning of fools". Cārvāka epistemology holds perception as the primary source of knowledge, while rejecting inference which can be invalid. The primary texts of Cārvāka, like the Barhaspatya sutras (c. 600 BCE) have been lost.

Ājīvika

Ājīvika was founded by Makkhali Gosala, it was a Śramaṇa movement and a major rival of early Buddhism and Jainism.

Original scriptures of the Ājīvika school of philosophy may once have existed, but these are currently unavailable and probably lost. Their theories are extracted from mentions of Ajivikas in the secondary sources of ancient Hindu Indian literature, particularly those of Jainism and Buddhism which polemically criticized the Ajivikas. The Ājīvika school is known for its Niyati doctrine of absolute determinism (fate), the premise that there is no free will, that everything that has happened, is happening and will happen is entirely preordained and a function of cosmic principles. Ājīvika considered the karma doctrine as a fallacy. Ājīvikas were atheists and rejected the authority of the Vedas, but they believed that in every living being is an ātman – a central premise of Hinduism and Jainism.

Ajñana

Ajñana was a Śramaṇa school of radical Indian skepticism and a rival of early Buddhism and Jainism. They held that it was impossible to obtain knowledge of metaphysical nature or ascertain the truth value of philosophical propositions; and even if knowledge was possible, it was useless and disadvantageous for final salvation. They were seen as sophists who specialized in refutation without propagating any positive doctrine of their own. Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa (fl. c. 800), author of the skeptical work entitled Tattvopaplavasiṃha ("The Lion that Devours All Categories"/"The Upsetting of All Principles"), has been seen as an important Ajñana philosopher.

Sikh philosophy

Sikhism is an Indian religion developed by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) in the Punjab region during the Mughal Era. Their main sacred text is the Guru Granth Sahib. The fundamental beliefs include constant spiritual meditation of God's name, being guided by the Guru instead of yielding to capriciousness, living a householder's life instead of monasticism, truthful action to dharam (righteousness, moral duty), equality of all human beings, and believing in God's grace. Key concepts include Simran, Sewa, the Three Pillars of Sikhism, and the Five Thieves.

Modern Indian philosophy

In response to colonialism and their contact with Western philosophy, 19th century Indians developed new ways of thinking now termed Neo-Vedanta and Hindu modernism. Their ideas focused on the universality of Indian philosophy (particularly Vedanta) and the unity of different religions. It was during this period that Hindu modernists presented a single idealized and united "Hinduism." exemplified by the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. They were also influenced by Western ideas. The first of these movements was that of the Brahmo Samaj of Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833). Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) was very influential in developing the Hindu reform movements and in bringing the worldview to the West. Through the work of Indians like Vivekananda as well as westerners such as the proponents of the Theosophical society, modern Hindu thought also had an influence on western culture.

The political thought of Hindu nationalism is also another important current in modern Indian thought. The work of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo, Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan have had a large impact on modern Indian philosophy.

Jainism also had its modern interpreters and defenders, such as Virchand Gandhi, Champat Rai Jain, and Shrimad Rajchandra (well known as a spiritual guide of Mahatma Gandhi).

Buddhist philosophies

The Buddhist Nalanda university and monastery was a major center of learning in India from the 5th century CE to c. 1200.
 
Buddhist philosophy begins with the thought of Gautama Buddha (fl. between sixth and fourth centuries BCE) and is preserved in the early Buddhist texts. It generally refers to the philosophical investigations that developed among various Buddhist schools in India and later spread throughout Asia through the silk road. Buddhist thought is trans-regional and trans-cultural. It is the dominant philosophical tradition in Tibet and Southeast Asian countries like Sri Lanka and Burma
 
Buddhism's main concern is soteriological, defined as freedom from dukkha (unease). Because ignorance to the true nature of things is considered one of the roots of suffering, Buddhist thinkers concerned themselves with philosophical questions related to epistemology and the use of reason. Key Buddhist concepts include the Four Noble Truths, Anatta (not-self) a critique of a fixed personal identity, the transience of all things (Anicca), and a certain skepticism about metaphysical questions. Buddhist thinkers in India and subsequently in East Asia have covered topics as varied as phenomenology, ethics, ontology, epistemology, logic and philosophy of time.

Later Buddhist philosophical traditions developed complex phenomenological psychologies termed 'Abhidharma'. Mahayana philosophers such as Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu developed the theories of Shunyata (emptiness of all phenomena) and Vijnapti-matra (appearance only), a form of phenomenology or transcendental idealism. The Dignāga (c. 480–540) school of Pramāṇa promoted a complex form of epistemology and Buddhist logic. This tradition contributed to what has been called an "epistemological turn" in Indian philosophy. Through the work of Dharmakirti, this tradition of Buddhist logic has become the major epistemological system used in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and debate.

After the disappearance of Buddhism from India, these philosophical traditions continued to develop in the Tibetan Buddhist, East Asian Buddhist and Theravada Buddhist traditions. In Tibet, the Indian tradition continued to be developed under the work of thinkers like Sakya Pandita, Tsongkhapa and Ju Mipham. In China, new developments were led by thinkers such as Xuangzang who authored new works on Yogacara, Zhiyi who founded the Tiantai school and developed a new theory of Madhyamaka and Guifeng Zongmi who wrote on Huayan and Zen.

Buddhist modernism

Hu Shi and DT Suzuki during his visit to China in 1934
 
The modern period saw the rise of Buddhist modernism and Humanistic Buddhism under Western influences and the development of a Western Buddhism with influences from modern psychology and Western philosophy. Important exponents of Buddhist modernism include Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933) and the American convert Henry Steel Olcott, the Chinese modernists Taixu (1890–1947) and Yin Shun (1906–2005), Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki, and the Tibetan Gendün Chöphel (1903–1951). Buddhist modernism refers to "forms of Buddhism that have emerged out of an engagement with the dominant cultural and intellectual forces of modernity." Forces which influenced modernists like Dhammapala, and Yin Shun included Enlightenment values, and Western Science. A Neo-Buddhist movement was founded by the influential Indian Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar in the 1950s who emphasized social and political reform.

Buddhist modernism includes various movements like Humanistic Buddhism, Secular Buddhism, the Vipassana movement, and Engaged Buddhism. Chinese humanistic Buddhism or "Buddhism for Human Life" (Chinese: 人生佛教; pinyin: rénshēng fójiào) which was to be free of supernatural beliefs has also been an influential form of modern Buddhism in Asia.

East Asian philosophies

One of the main halls of the Guozijian (Imperial College) in downtown Beijing, the highest institution of higher learning in pre-modern China

Chinese

East Asian philosophical thought began in Ancient China, and Chinese philosophy begins during the Western Zhou Dynasty and the following periods after its fall when the "Hundred Schools of Thought" flourished (6th century to 221 BCE). This period was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developments and saw the rise of the major Chinese philosophical schools (Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism) as well as numerous less influential schools (Mohism, School of Names, School of Yin Yang). These philosophical traditions developed metaphysical, political and ethical theories which, along with Chinese Buddhism, had a direct influence on the rest of the East Asian cultural sphere. Buddhism began arriving in China during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), through a gradual Silk road transmission and gradually developed distinct Chinese forms (such as Chan/Zen).

Confucianism

Confucianism (Kǒngjiào — "Confucius' doctrine"), also known as "Ruism" (Rújiào — "doctrine of the scholars"), is a Chinese philosophical system with ritual, moral, and religious applications.[103] The tradition developed around the teachings of Confucius (Kǒng Fūzǐ, 孔夫子, "Master Kong", 551–479 BCE) who saw himself as transmitting the values and theology of the ancestors before him. Other influential classical Confucian philosophers include Mencius and Xun Kuang who famously disagreed on the innate moral nature of humans. 

Confucianism focuses on humanistic values like familial and social harmony, filial piety (孝, xiào), Rén (仁, "benevolence" or "humaneness") and (禮/礼) which is a system of ritual norms that determines how a person should act to be in harmony with the law of Heaven. Confucianism traditionally holds that these values are based on the transcendent principle known as Heaven (Tiān 天), and also includes the belief in spirits or gods (shén).

Confucianism was a major ideology of the imperial state during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and was revived as Neo-Confucianism during the Tang dynasty (618–907). During later Chinese dynasties like Song Dynasty (960–1297) and the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) as well as in the Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1897) a resurgent Neo-Confucianism led by thinkers such as Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Wang Yangming (1472–1529) became the dominant school of thought, and was promoted by the imperial state. Beginning in the Song dynasty, confucian classics were the basis of the imperial exams and became the core philosophy of the scholar official class. Confucianism suffered setbacks during the 20th century, but is recently undergoing a revival, which is termed New Confucianism.

Traditionally, East Asian cultures and countries in the cultural sphere are strongly influenced by Confucianism, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam as well as various overseas territories settled predominantly by Overseas Chinese, such as Singapore.

Legalism

Legalism (pinyin: Fǎjiā; school of "methods" or "standards") was a philosophical tradition which focused on laws, realpolitik and bureaucratic management. Largely ignoring morality or idealized views of how society should be, they focused on pragmatic government through the power of the autocrat and state. Their goal was achieving increased order, security and stability. They were initially influenced by Mohist ideas. A key figure of this school was administrator and political philosopher Shen Buhai (c. 400–337 BCE). Another central figure, Shang Yang (390–338 BCE), was a leading statesman and reformer who transformed the Qin state into the dominant power that conquered the rest of China in 221 BCE. Shen's successor Han Fei (c. 280–233 BCE) synthesized the thought of the other Legalists in his eponymous text, the Han Feizi, one of the most influential Legalist texts which was used by successive Chinese statesmen and rulers as a guide for statesmanship and bureaucratic organization of the imperial state.

Mohism

Mohism (Mòjiā; "School of Mo"), was founded by Mozi (c. 470–391 BCE) and his students. It was a major school of thought and rival of Confucianism and Taoism during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (c. 770–221 BCE). The main text of the school is the Mozi (book). The administrative thought of Mohism was later absorbed by Legalism, their ethics absorbed into Confucianism and its books were also merged into the Taoist canon, as Mohism all but disappeared as independent school after the Qin dynasty era. 

Mohism is best known for the idea of "impartial care" (Chinese: 兼愛; pinyin: jiān ài; literally: "inclusive love/care"). According to Master Mo, persons should care equally for all other individuals, regardless of their actual relationship to them. Mo also advocated impartial meritocracy in government which should be based on talent, not blood relations. Mozi was against Confucian ritualism, instead emphasizing pragmatic survival through farming, fortification, and statecraft. Tradition is inconsistent, and human beings need an extra-traditional guide to identify which traditions are acceptable. The moral guide must then promote and encourage social behaviors that maximize general benefit. As motivation for his theory, Mozi brought in the Will of Heaven, but rather than being religious his philosophy parallels utilitarianism

Mohism was also associated with and influenced by a separate philosophical school known as the School of Names (Míngjiā; also known as 'Logicians'), which focused on philosophy of language, definition and logic.

Taoism

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, embroidery, 1860–1880
Taoism (or Daoism) is a term for various philosophies and religious systems which emphasize harmony with the Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: Dào; literally: "the Way") which is seen as the principle which is the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists. Taoism tends to emphasize virtues such as wu wei (effortless action), ziran (naturalness), pu (simplicity), and spontaneity while placing less emphasis on norms and ritual (as opposed to Confucianism). The attainment of immortality through external alchemy (waidan) and internal alchemy (neidan) was an important goal for many taoists historically.

Early forms of Taoism developed in the 4th century BCE, influenced by the cosmological theories of the School of Naturalists and the I Ching. The School of Naturalists or Yin-yang was another philosophical school that synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements; Zou Yan is considered the founder.

The Dao De Jing (Tao-Te-Ching, c. 4th century BCE), traditionally attributed to Laozi, and the Nan Hua Jing (Zhuang Zi) are considered the key texts of the tradition. The first organized form of Taoism, the Tianshi (Celestial Masters') school arose in the 2nd century CE. Xuanxue ("deep learning", also "Neo-Taoism") was a major philosophical movement influenced by Confucian scholarship, which focused on the interpretation of the Yijing, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi and which flourished during the third to sixth centuries CE. The most important philosophers of this movement were He Yan, Wang Bi, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, Ge Hong and Guo Xiang. Thinkers like He Yan and Wang Bi focused on the deep nature of Tao, which they saw as being best exemplified by the term "Wu" (nothingness, non-being, negativity).

Other schools rose to prominence throughout Chinese history, such as the Shangqing school during the Tang dynasty (618–907), the Lingbao school during the Song dynasty (960–1279) and the Quanzhen School which develop during the 13th–14th centuries and during the Yuan dynasty. The later Taoist traditions were also influenced by Chinese Buddhism.

Modern East Asian philosophy

Chinese

Xiong Shili circa 1960
 
Modern Chinese thought is generally seen as being rooted in Classical Confucianism (Jingxue), Neo-Confucianism (Lixue), Buddhism, Daoism, and Xixue (“Western Learning” which arose during the late Ming Dynasty).

The Opium war of 1839–42 saw the beginning of Western and Japanese invasions and exploitation of China which was humiliating to Chinese thinkers. The late 19th and early 20th century saw Chinese thinkers such as Zhang Zhidong looking to Western practical knowledge as a way to preserve traditional Chinese culture, a doctrine that he defined as “Chinese Learning as Substance and Western Learning as Function” (Zhongti Xiyong).

Following the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 and the end of the Qing Dynasty, the May Fourth Movement sought to completely abolish the old imperial institutions and practices of China (such as the old civil service system). There were two major philosophical trends during this period. One was anti-traditional and promoted Western learning and ideas. A key figure of this anti-traditional current was Yan Fu (1853–1921) who translated various Western philosophical works including Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Mill's On Liberty. There were also attempts to incorporate Western ideas of democracy, and republicanism into Chinese political philosophy, notably by Sun Yat-Sen (1866–1925) at the beginning of the 20th century. Another influential modern Chinese philosopher was Hu Shi, who was a student of John Dewey at Columbia University and who promoted a form of pragmatism.

The traditionalists meanwhile sought to revive and fortify traditional Chinese philosophical schools. Chinese Buddhist thought was promoted by thinkers like Yang Rensan and Ou-Yang Jingwu while another influential movement is New Confucianism (Chinese: 新儒家; pinyin: xīn rú jiā). New Confucianism is a traditionalist revival of Confucian thought in China beginning in 20th century Republican China which is also associated with New Conservatism. Key New Confucians of the first generation are Xiong Shili and Fung Youlan. The second generation (1950–1979) include individuals like Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, and Xu Fuguan, all three students of Xiong Shili. Together with Zhang Junmai, the second generation published the New Confucian Manifesto in 1958.

The influence of Marxism on modern Chinese political thought is vast, especially through the work of Mao Zedong, the most famous thinker of Chinese Marxist Philosophy. Maoism is a Chinese Marxist philosophy based on the teachings of 20th-century Communist Party of China revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. It is based partially on earlier theories by Marx and Lenin, but rejects the urban proletariat and Leninist emphasis on heavy industrialization in favor of a revolution supported by the peasantry, and a decentralized agrarian economy based on many collectively worked farms. The current government of the People's Republic of China continues to espouse a pragmatic form of socialism as its official party ideology which it calls Socialism with Chinese characteristics. When the Communist Party of China took over the reign, previous schools of thought such as Taoism and Confucianism (except Legalism) were denounced as backward, and later purged during the violence of the Cultural Revolution which saw many Taoist and Buddhist temples and institutions destroyed.

Japanese

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1862) a key civil rights activist and liberal thinker
 
Modern Japanese thought is strongly influenced by Western science and philosophy. Japan's rapid modernization was partly aided by the early study of western science (known as Rangaku) during the Edo Period (1603–1868). Another intellectual movement during the Edo period was Kokugaku (national study), which sought to focus on the study of ancient Japanese thought, classic texts and culture over and against foreign Chinese and Buddhist cultures. A key figure of this movement is Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), who argued that the essence of classic Japanese literature and culture was a sense called mono no aware ("sorrow at evanescence").

In the Meiji period (1868–1912), the modernist Meirokusha (Meiji 6, formed in 1874) intellectual society promoted European enlightenment thought. Meirokusha philosophers like Mori Arinori, Nishi Amane, and Fukuzawa Yukichi sought ways to combine Western ideas with Japanese culture and values. The Shōwa period (1926–1989) saw the rise of State Shinto and Japanese nationalism.

Japanese Buddhist philosophy was influenced by the work of the Kyoto School which drew from western philosophers (especially German philosophy) and Buddhist thought and included Kitaro Nishida, Keiji Nishitani, Hajime Tanabe and Masao Abe. The most important trend in Japanese Buddhist thought after the formation of the Kyoto school is Critical Buddhism, which argues against several Mahayana concepts such as Buddha nature and original enlightenment.

Korean

Juche, usually translated as "self-reliance", is the official political ideology of North Korea, described by the regime as Kim Il-Sung's "original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought". The idea states that an individual is "the master of his destiny" and that the North Korean masses are to act as the "masters of the revolution and construction".

Syntheses of Eastern and Western philosophy

There have been many modern attempts to integrate Western and Eastern philosophical traditions.

Arthur Schopenhauer developed a philosophy that was essentially a synthesis of Hinduism with Western thought. He anticipated that the Upanishads (primary Hindu scriptures) would have a much greater influence in the West than they have had. However, Schopenhauer was working with heavily flawed early translations (and sometimes second-degree translations), and many feel that he may not necessarily have accurately grasped the Eastern philosophies which interested him.

Recent attempts to incorporate Western philosophy into Eastern thought include the Kyoto School of philosophers, who combined the phenomenology of Husserl with the insights of Zen Buddhism. Watsuji Tetsurô, a 20th-century Japanese philosopher attempted to combine the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger with Eastern philosophies. Some have claimed that there is also a definite eastern element within Heidegger's philosophy. For the most part this is not made explicit within Heidegger's philosophy, apart from in the dialogue between a Japanese and inquirer. Heidegger did spend time attempting to translate the Tao Te Ching into German, working with his Chinese student Paul Hsaio. It has also been claimed that much of Heidegger's later philosophy, particularly the sacredness of Being, bears a distinct similarity to Taoist ideas. There are clear parallels between Heidegger and the work of Kyoto School, and ultimately, it may be read that Heidegger's philosophy is an attempt to 'turn eastwards' in response to the crisis in Western civilization. However, this is only an interpretation. 

The 20th century Hindu guru Sri Aurobindo was influenced by German Idealism and his integral yoga is regarded as a synthesis of Eastern and Western thought. The German phenomenologist Jean Gebser's writings on the history of consciousness referred to a new planetary consciousness that would bridge this gap. Followers of these two authors are often grouped together under the term Integral thought

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was deeply influenced by the I Ching (Book of Changes), an ancient Chinese text that dates back to the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty (. 1,700–1,050 BCE). It uses a system of Yin and Yang, which it places into hexagrams for the purposes of divination. Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity moves towards an Oriental view of causality, as he states in the foreword to Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching. He explains that this Chinese view of the world is based not on science as the West knows it, but on chance.

Criticism

Some Western thinkers claim that philosophy as such is only characteristic of Western cultures. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is even reported to have said that only Greek and German languages are suitable for philosophizing. It is still commonplace in Western universities to teach only Western philosophy and to ignore Asian philosophy altogether, or consider only newer Western-influenced Asian thought proper "philosophy". Carine Defoort, herself a specialist in Chinese thought, has offered support for such a "family" view of philosophy, while Rein Raud has presented an argument against it and offered a more flexible definition of philosophy that would include both Western and Asian thought on equal terms. In response, Ouyang Min argues that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice and essentially different from zhexue, which is what the Chinese have, even though zhexue (originally tetsugaku) is actually a neologism coined in 1873 by Nishi Amane for describing Western philosophy as opposed to traditional Asian thought.

According to the British philosopher Victoria S. Harrison, the category of "Eastern philosophy", and similarly "Asian philosophy" and "Oriental philosophy" is a product of 19th-century Western scholarship and did not exist in East Asia or India. This is because in Asia there is no single unified philosophical tradition with a single root, but various autochthonous traditions which have come into contact with each other over time.

Spinozism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Spinozism (also spelled Spinozaism) is the monist philosophical system of Benedict de Spinoza that defines "God" as a singular self-subsistent Substance, with both matter and thought being attributes of such.

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, Spinoza wrote: "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken". For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world. According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") Spinoza meant God was Natura naturans not Natura naturata, that is, "a dynamic nature in action, growing and changing, not a passive or static thing."

Core doctrine

In Spinozism, the concept of a personal relationship with God comes from the position that one is a part of an infinite interdependent "organism." Spinoza argued that everything is a derivative of God, interconnected with all of existence. Although humans experience only thought and extension, what happens to one aspect of existence will affect others. Thus, Spinozism teaches a form of determinism and ecology, and uses these as a basis for morality.

Additionally, a core doctrine of Spinozism is that the universe is essentially deterministic. All that happens or will happen could not have unfolded in any other way. Spinoza claimed that the third kind of knowledge, intuition, is the highest kind. More specifically, he defined intuition as the ability of the human intellect to intuit knowledge based upon its accumulated understanding of the world.

Spinoza's metaphysics consists of one thing, Substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one Substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. Substance causes an infinite number of attributes (the intellect perceiving an abstract concept or essence) and modes (things following from attributes and modes). He calls this Substance "God", or "Nature". In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is "Deus sive Natura"), but readers often disregard his neutral monism. During his time, this statement was seen as literally equating the existing world with God - for which he was accused of atheism. Spinoza asserted that the whole of the natural universe is made of one Substance – God or Nature – and its modifications (modes).
It cannot be overemphasized how the rest of Spinoza's philosophy, his philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, moral philosophy, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion – flows more or less directly from the metaphysical underpinnings in Part I of the Ethics.
One should, however, remember the neutral monist position. While the natural universe humans experience in the realm of mind and physical reality is part of God, it is only two modes – thought and extension – that are part of infinite modes emanating from God. 

Spinoza's doctrine was considered radical at the time he published, and he was widely seen as the most infamous atheist-heretic of Europe. His philosophy was part of the philosophic debate in Europe during the Enlightenment, along with Cartesianism. Specifically, Spinoza disagreed with Descartes on substance duality, Descartes' views on the will and the intellect, and the subject of free will.

Substance

Spinoza defines "Substance" as follows:
By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed. (E1D3)
This means, essentially, that Substance is just whatever can be thought of without relating it to any other idea or thing. For example, if one thinks of a particular object, one thinks of it as a kind of thing, e.g., x is a cat. Substance, on the other hand, is to be conceived of by itself, without understanding it as a particular kind of thing, because it isn't a particular thing.

Attributes

Spinoza defines "attribute" as follows:
By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence. (E1D4)
From this it can be seen that Attributes are related to Substance. It is not clear, however, even from Spinoza's direct definition, whether, a) Attributes are really the way(s) Substance is, or b) Attributes are simply ways to understand Substance, but not necessarily the ways it really is. Spinoza thinks that there are an infinite number of Attributes, but there are two Attributes for which Spinoza thinks we can have knowledge. Namely, thought and extension.

Thought

The attribute of thought is how Substance can be understood to be composed of thoughts, i.e., thinking things. When we understand a particular thing through the Attribute of thought, we are understanding the mode as an idea of something (either another idea, or an object).

Extension

The Attribute of extension is how Substance can be understood to be physically extended in space. Particular things that occupy space are what is meant by extended. It follows from this that if Substance and God are identical, in Spinoza's view, and contrary to the traditional conception, God has extension as one of his Attributes.

Modes

Modes are particular modifications of substance, i.e., particular things in the world. Spinoza gives the following definition:
By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived. (E1D5)

Substance monism

The argument for there only being one Substance (or, more colloquially, one kind of stuff) in the universe occurs in the first fourteen propositions of The Ethics. The following proposition expresses Spinoza's commitment to substance monism:
Except God, no substance can be or be conceived. (E1P14)
Spinoza takes this proposition to follow directly from everything he says prior to it. Spinoza's monism is contrasted with Descartes' dualism and Leibniz's pluralism. Thus, Spinoza avoids the unsolvable problem of how mind and body interact, which troubled Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy. Specifically, how can immaterial mind interface with material body, and vice-versa? They exist in wholly different categories.

Causality and Modality

The issue of causality and modality (possibility and necessity) in Spinoza's philosophy is contentious. Spinoza's philosophy is, in one sense, thoroughly deterministic (or necessitarian). This can be seen directly from Axiom 3 of The Ethics:
From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily; and conversely, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow. (E1A3)
Yet Spinoza seems to make room for a kind of freedom, especially in the fifth and final section of The Ethics, "On the Power of the Intellect, or on Human Freedom":
I pass now to the remaining Part of the Ethics, which concerns the means or way to Freedom. Here, then, I shall treat of the power of reason, showing what it can do against the affects, and what Freedom of Mind, or blessedness, is. (E5, Preface)
So Spinoza certainly has a use for the word 'freedom', but he equates "Freedom of Mind" with "blessedness", a notion which is not traditionally associated with freedom of the will at all.

The principle of sufficient reason (PSR)

Though the PSR is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz, it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy. Within the context of Spinoza's philosophical system, the PSR can be understood to unify causation and explanation. What this means is that for Spinoza, questions regarding the reason why a given phenomenon is the way it is (or exists) are always answerable, and are always answerable in terms of the relevant cause(s). This constitutes a rejection of teleological, or final causation, except possibly in a more restricted sense for human beings. Given this, Spinoza's views regarding causality and modality begin to make much more sense.

Parallelism

Spinoza's philosophy contains as a key proposition the notion that mental and physical (thought and extension) phenomena occur in parallel, but without causal interaction between them. He expresses this proposition as follows:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. (E2P7)
His proof of this proposition is that:
The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause. (E1A4)
The reason Spinoza thinks parallelism follows from this axiom is that, since the idea we have of each thing requires knowledge of its cause, such a cause must be understood under the same attribute. Further, there is only one substance, so whenever we understand some chain of ideas concerning things, we understand that the way the ideas are causally related must be the same as the way the things themselves are related, since the ideas and the things are the same modes, but understood under different attributes.

Pantheism controversy

In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called a heretic. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between theism and pantheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time, which Immanuel Kant rejected, as he thought that attempts to conceive of transcendent reality would lead to antinomies (statements that could be proven both right and wrong) in thought. 

The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:
  • the unity of all that exists;
  • the regularity of all that happens; and
  • the identity of spirit and nature.
Spinoza's "God or Nature" [Deus sive Natura] provided a living, natural God, in contrast to the Newtonian mechanical "First Cause" or the dead mechanism of the French "Man Machine." Coleridge and Shelley saw in Spinoza's philosophy a religion of nature and called him the "God-intoxicated Man." Spinoza inspired the poet Shelley to write his essay "The Necessity of Atheism."

Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" [Deus] to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian monotheism. "Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God; he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law...." Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God differs from the concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity.

Modern interpretations

German philosopher Karl Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence. Even God under the attributes of thought and extension cannot be identified strictly with our world. That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza insists that "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided" (Which means that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance), and that "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" (Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and 13). Following this logic, our world should be considered as a mode under two attributes of thought and extension. Therefore, the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things.

French philosopher Martial Guéroult suggested the term "panentheism", rather than "pantheism" to describe Spinoza's view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Not only do finite things have God as their cause; they cannot be conceived without God. In other words, the world is a subset of God. American philosopher Charles Hartshorne, on the other hand, suggested the term "Classical Pantheism" to describe Spinoza's philosophy.

Comparison to Eastern philosophies

Similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions have been discussed by many authorities. The 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstücker was one of the early figures to notice the similarities between Spinoza's religious conceptions and the Vedanta tradition of India, writing that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus, did his biography not satisfy us that he was wholly unacquainted with their doctrines... We mean the philosophy of Spinoza, a man whose very life is a picture of that moral purity and intellectual indifference to the transitory charms of this world, which is the constant longing of the true Vedanta philosopher... comparing the fundamental ideas of both we should have no difficulty in proving that, had Spinoza been a Hindu, his system would in all probability mark a last phase of the Vedanta philosophy."

It has been said that Spinozism is similar to the Hindu doctrines of Samkhya and Yoga. Though within the various existing Indian traditions there exist many traditions which astonishingly had such similar doctrines from ages, out of which most similar and well known are the Kashmiri Shaivism and Nath tradition, apart from already existing Samkhya and Yoga.

Max Muller, in his lectures, noted the striking similarities between Vedanta and the system of Spinoza, saying "the Brahman, as conceived in the Upanishads and defined by Sankara, is clearly the same as Spinoza's 'Substantia'." Helena Blavatsky, a founder of the Theosophical Society also compared Spinoza's religious thought to Vedanta, writing in an unfinished essay "As to Spinoza's Deity – natura naturans – conceived in his attributes simply and alone; and the same Deity – as natura naturata or as conceived in the endless series of modifications or correlations, the direct outflowing results from the properties of these attributes, it is the Vedantic Deity pure and simple."

Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Portrait of Benedictus de Spinoza
Spinoza lived from 1632 to 1677.
 
Spinoza's philosophy encompasses nearly every area of philosophical discourse, including metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. It earned Spinoza an enduring reputation as one of the most important and original thinkers of the seventeenth century. 

Samuel Shirley, who translated Spinoza's complete works into English, summed up the significance of Spinoza's philosophy as follows:
To my mind, although Spinoza lived and thought long before Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and the startling implications of quantum theory, he had a vision of truth beyond what is normally granted to human beings.
Spinoza's philosophy is largely contained in two books: the Theologico-Political Treatise, and the Ethics. The former was published during his lifetime, but the latter, which contains the entirety of his philosophical system in its most rigorous form, was not published until after his death in 1677. The rest of the writings we have from Spinoza are either earlier, or incomplete, works expressing thoughts that were crystallized in the two aforementioned books (e.g., the Short Treatise and the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect), or else they are not directly concerned with Spinoza's own philosophy (e.g., The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy and The Hebrew Grammar). He also left behind many letters that help to illuminate his ideas and provide some insight into what may have been motivating his views.

Philosophy of religion

Spinoza's philosophy of religion is largely contained in the Theologico-Political Treatise. In that work he argues for the view that we should interpret scripture solely on its own terms by carefully studying it, not with any concepts or doctrines that cannot themselves be derived from the text. If we do this, he thought, it would turn out that many things we believe or are told by religious authorities about God and the universe could be shown to be false (e.g., miracles). Spinoza's view is exemplified in the following sentence from the Preface to the Theological Political Treatise:
[It] is further evident from the fact that most of them assume as a basic principle for the understanding of Scripture and for extracting its true meaning that it is throughout truthful and divine--a conclusion which ought to be the end result of study and strict examination; and they lay down at the outset as a principle of interpretation that which would be far more properly derived from Scripture itself, which stands in no need of human fabrications.

Ontological argument

In Spinoza’s Ethics, he wrote a section titled “Treating of God and What Pertains to Him,” in which he discusses God’s existence and what God is. He starts off by saying: “whether there is a God, this, we say, can be proved”. His proof for God follows a similar structure as Descartes’ ontological argument. Descartes attempts to prove God’s existence by arguing that there “must be some one thing that is supremely good, through which all good things have their goodness”. Spinoza’s argument differs in that he does not move straight from the conceivability of the greatest being to the existence of God, but rather uses a deductive argument from the idea of God. Spinoza says that man’s ideas do not come from himself, but from some sort of external cause. Thus the things whose characteristics a man knows must have come from some prior source. So, if man has the idea of God, then God must exist before this thought, because man cannot create an idea of his own imagination.

Substance of God

After stating his proof for God’s existence, Spinoza addresses who “God” is. Spinoza believed that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”. Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences, and then demonstrating that God is a “substance” with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God”.

Political philosophy

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was published anonymously.

Spinoza's political philosophy is deeply influenced by both the turbulent time period in which he lived, and by the fact that he happened to live in a comparatively liberal place in Europe, which allowed him freedoms he wished to preserve and defend, as he says in the Preface to the Theological Political Treatise:
Now since we have the rare good fortune to live in a commonwealth where freedom of judgment is fully granted to the individual citizen and he may worship God as he pleases, and where nothing is esteemed dearer and more precious than freedom, I think I am undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task in demonstrating that not only can this freedom be granted without endangering piety and the peace of the commonwealth, but also the peace of the commonwealth and piety depend on this freedom.
Spinoza's political philosophy is scattered in three books, the Theologico-political Treatise, the Ethics and the Political Treatise. A first look at its main principles could bring the uninformed reader to believe that it is the same as Hobbes's. Yet both theories differ in their conclusions. Spinoza's political philosophy is also a philosophy of the conatus, the individual tendency to exist, which cannot be brought to extinction even in the most powerful Leviathan, even in the worst of authoritarian regimes. Every individual, in Spinoza's opinion, has a natural right. This right includes everything that he desires and he is able to obtain. As a result, my own natural right is the equivalent of my individual strength or power. Hence, in Spinoza's political philosophy subjective rights (e.g. human rights) do not exist by nature, they are an institution of society, they only exist in the civil state. Moreover, according to Spinoza the notions of right and wrong have no meaning before society, since in the natural state there are no common norms, only individual desires (desires which can bring some people to dominate other weaker people).

How can civil society exist if people are only dominated by their own impulse to live? Through many ways. First, through the action of affections, the same ones that are described in the Ethics. Those affections, my feelings, will bring me to cluster, to gather with people similar to myself: this similarity reinforces the feeling or representation of my own existence. In a similar fashion, human needs will also play a role: society, through distribution and specialization of each task, can provide more goods than I can generate myself and with less effort. This is why the sciences and the arts can only develop in societies, where there is time to attend to things other than one's own survival. This fear, the need to constantly look after danger and threats and to live in constant tension, is the third cause or root phenomenon of society. Society brings me protection and security. We see hence that Spinoza, while incorporating in his work Hobbesian arguments (the argument of fear), develops a distinct analysis that will bring him to different conclusions: the need of a free society.

Here individuals never entirely renounce their individual right of nature. If in the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza refers to the notion of a pact that would be at the root of civil society, this notion disappears in the Political Treatise. People are not brought to form a society by their free will, but rather by their affections, or domination (a great number of individuals gathered through the authority of an unusually strong or charismatic man could also be a way to explain the birth of civil society). They are not passive subjects under the power of an absolute sovereign, but rather citizens that bring their own strength to the State. The power of the state exists in Spinoza's opinion only through the gathering of individual powers, powers which the society incorporates and can even develop if its political institutions are well designed. "Well designed" means that they must induce political leaders to act according to the rules, by their own will. In Spinoza's political philosophy, state is not opposed to the society but it is the apparatus that gives a certain form or existence to the society, to a gathering of human beings. It is not transcendent to it, as it is in Hobbes's philosophy.

These affirmations have some political implications. Here, individual rights exist only because we, as individuals, benefit from the power of our entire group. Members' rights are guaranteed by the strength of their political group (=State or imperium). Individual or subjective rights do not exist outside of a state, out of an organized society. But that doesn't mean that the government should have absolute power over us. To understand that well, we have to remember that according to Spinoza the government or society (there is no difference between them) are nothing else and do not exist without the individual conatuses of the individuals that are gathered in social entities. Individuals hold a part of their natural right in the civil state. They cannot restrain themselves from judging about the state of things as they wish, and any action that would go against this tendency can induce social unrest. It follows that the state must restrain itself from any action that could jeopardize its own integrity, as condemning determinate opinions can. In a broader perspective, a state that relies on fearsome and inhuman ways to preserve its power cannot survive for long, since those ways impede the development of its own strength, and reinforce the tendency of the multitudo, the masses, to unrest or to disobedience: obedience is necessary to preserve social order and peace. 

Thus, we can distinguish Hobbes and Spinoza through the way they see the normal operation of the state. For Hobbes, the object of the state is to preserve peace through security and fear if needed. According to Spinoza, that kind of peace would not be a true peace but only the absence of unrest. True peace implies a state of things where individuals can accomplish and realize their potentialities, where there is a minimum peace of mind. This is why Spinoza favors states that are organized so that citizens can participate in the elaboration of laws, as a way to improve their quality, and in the operation of the state. 

The vocabulary of Spinoza shows a modification of the way philosophers see politics compared to the Antiquity. In Plato's and Aristotle's works good politics imply good government (defined as the way decisions are taken in a certain political community), in the sense that the different types of government can be ranked according to their virtues (aristocracy is better than democracy, which is better than oligarchy and tyranny according to Plato, and so on). Spinoza goes beyond this way of seeing things. There is not a better government in this sense: the better government is the government that the people of a certain country have been accustomed to, and there is no good in changing it: such a change alters the balance of power already in place and can bring unrest, conflict between opposed or entrenched interests. According to him, one should rather aim to design better institutions: for type of regime or government (Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy) Spinoza implements the outlines of what should be the good institutions for this regime. For example, in Monarchy there should be an official Council of the king, whose members are chosen formally, and whose opinions form a set of possible decisions for the king. This is a way of avoiding the issue of the king's secret counselors or ministers, who have a lot of influence on the king and often are the true decision takers. This system makes public and transparent through a formal process a matter of fact, the existence of a circle of advisers around the king. 

For further reference, see Spinoza's Political Philosophy.

Philosophy of mind/psychology

The human mind

Spinoza argues for a distinct conception of the human mind in Part Two of The Ethics. He says the following:
The first thing that constitutes the actual being of a human Mind is nothing but the idea of a singular thing which actually exists.(E2P11)
He then argues that it follows that "the human Mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God."(E2P11c) Further, Spinoza says: "Whatever happens in the object of the idea constituting the human Mind must be perceived by the human Mind"(E2P12) From this we get a clear rejection of Descartes' mind/body dualism: "The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body, or a certain mode of Extension which actually exists, and nothing else."(E2P13)

The emotions

One thing which seems, on the surface, to distinguish Spinoza's view of the emotions from both Descartes' and Hume's pictures of them is that he takes the emotions to be cognitive in some important respect. Jonathan Bennett claims that "Spinoza mainly saw emotions as caused by cognitions. [However] he did not say this clearly enough and sometimes lost sight of it entirely." Spinoza provides several demonstrations which purport to show truths about how human emotions work. The picture presented is, according to Bennett, "unflattering, colored as it is by universal egoism" Spinoza's treatment of the emotions in Part Three of The Ethics, "On the Origin and Nature of the Affects", utilizes a broad set of terminology, clearly intended to cover the whole of human experience. He tells us in the Preface:
The Affects, therefore, of hate, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and force of nature as any other singular things. And therefore they acknowledge certain causes, through which they are understood, and have certain properties, as worthy of our knowledge as the properties of any other thing, by the mere contemplation of which we are pleased.

Human freedom

Whether there is any meaningful kind of freedom which humans may genuinely have is, in Spinoza's picture, at least contentious. He certainly claims that there is a kind of freedom, namely, that which is arrived at through adequate knowledge of God, or, what is the same: the universe. But in the last two propositions of Part Two of The Ethics, P48 and P49, he explicitly rejects the traditional notion of free will. In E2P48, he claims:
In the Mind there is no absolute, or free, will, but the Mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity.
So from this we get a strong sense of Spinoza's metaphysical naturalism, that is, that the natural and human orders are contiguous. With that being the case, human freedom of a kind which would extricate us from the order of physical causes is impossible. However, Spinoza argues, we still ought to strive to understand the world around us, and in doing so, gain a greater degree of power, which will allow us to be more active than passive, and there is a sense in which this is a kind of freedom.

Metaphysics

Spinoza's metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance "God", or "Nature". In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is "Deus sive Natura"). For Spinoza the whole of the natural universe is made of one substance, God, or, what's the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).
It cannot be overemphasized how the rest of Spinoza's philosophy—his philosophy of mind, his epistemology, his psychology, his moral philosophy, his political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion—flows more or less directly from the metaphysical underpinnings in Part I of the Ethics.

Substance

Spinoza defines "substance" as follows:
By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.(E1D3)
This means, essentially, that substance is just whatever can be thought of without relating it to any other idea or thing. For example, if one thinks of a particular object, one thinks of it as a kind of thing, e.g., x is a cat. Substance, on the other hand, is to be conceived of by itself, without understanding it as a particular kind of thing (because it isn't a particular thing at all).

Attributes

Spinoza defines "attribute" as follows:
By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence.(E1D4)
From this it can be seen that attributes are related to substance in some way. It is not clear, however, even from Spinoza's direct definition, whether, a) attributes are really the way(s) substance is, or b) attributes are simply ways to understand substance, but not necessarily the ways it really is. Spinoza thinks that there are an infinite number of attributes, but there are two attributes for which Spinoza thinks we can have knowledge. Namely, thought and extension.

Thought

The attribute of thought is how substance can be understood to give rise to thoughts, or thinking things. When we understand a particular thing in the universe through the attribute of thought, we are understanding the mode as an idea of something (either another idea, or an object).

Extension

The attribute of extension is how substance can be understood to be physically extended in space. Particular things which have breadth and depth (that is, occupy space) are what is meant by extended. It follows from this that if substance and God are identical, on Spinoza's view, and contrary to the traditional conception, God has extension as one of His attributes.

Modes

Modes are particular modifications of substance, i.e., particular things in the world. Spinoza gives the following definition:
By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.(E1D5)

Substance monism

The argument for there only being one substance in the universe occurs in the first fourteen propositions of The Ethics. The following proposition expresses Spinoza's commitment to substance monism:
Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.(E1P14)
Spinoza takes this proposition to follow directly from everything he says prior to it. Spinoza's monism is contrasted with Descartes' dualism and Leibniz's pluralism. It allows Spinoza to avoid the problem of interaction between mind and body, which troubled Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy.

Causality and modality

The issue of causality and modality (possibility and necessity) in Spinoza's philosophy is contentious. Spinoza's philosophy is, in one sense, thoroughly deterministic (or necessitarian). This can be seen directly from Axiom 3 of The Ethics:
From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily; and conversely, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow.(E1A3)
Yet Spinoza seems to make room for a kind of freedom, especially in the fifth and final section of The Ethics, "On the Power of the Intellect, or on Human Freedom":
I pass, finally, to the remaining Part of the Ethics, which concerns the means or way, leading to Freedom. Here, then, I shall treat of the power of reason, showing what it can do against the affects, and what Freedom of Mind, or blessedness, is.(E5, Preface)
So Spinoza certainly has a use for the word 'freedom', but he equates "Freedom of Mind" with "blessedness", a notion which is not traditionally associated with freedom of the will at all.

The principle of sufficient reason (PSR)

Though the PSR is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz, it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy. Within the context of Spinoza's philosophical system, the PSR can be understood to unify causation and explanation. What this means is that for Spinoza, questions regarding the reason why a given phenomenon is the way it is (or exists) are always answerable, and are always answerable in terms of the relevant cause(s). This constitutes a rejection of teleological, or final causation, except possibly in a more restricted sense for human beings. Given this, Spinoza's views regarding causality and modality begin to make much more sense.

Parallelism

Spinoza's philosophy contains as a key proposition the notion that mental and physical (thought and extension) phenomena occur in parallel, but without causal interaction between them. He expresses this proposition as follows:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.(E2P7)
His proof of this proposition is that:
The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause.(E1A4)
The reason Spinoza thinks the parallelism follows from this axiom is that since the idea we have of each thing requires knowledge of its cause, this cause must be understood under the same attribute. Further, there is only one substance, so whenever we understand some chain of ideas of things, we understand that the way the ideas are causally related must be the same as the way the things themselves are related, since the ideas and the things are the same modes understood under different attributes.

Epistemology

Spinoza's epistemology is deeply rationalist. That is, unlike the empiricists who rejected knowledge of things as they are in themselves (in favor of knowledge merely of what appears to the senses), to think we can have a priori knowledge, knowledge of a world external from our sense perceptions, and, further, that this is tantamount to knowledge of God. The majority of Spinoza's epistemological claims come in Part Two of The Ethics.

Truth and falsity

Spinoza's notions of truth and falsity have to do with the relation between ideas and their objects. He thinks that:
Every idea that in us is absolute, or adequate and perfect, is true. (E2P34)
Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge which inadequate, or mutilated and confused, ideas involve.(E2P35)

Adequate and inadequate ideas

From this it is clear that the notions of adequate and inadequate ideas are important for understanding how Spinoza's view works. This may be explained in the following way. Spinoza argues that "All ideas, insofar as they are related to God, are true."(E2P32) Since by "God", he means the one substance which exists necessarily and absolutely infinitely, it follows that an idea as it is with no reference to knowledge a particular person has, is necessarily true, since it just is a particular instance of God. (E2P32)

On the other hand, Spinoza argues: "All ideas are in God; and, insofar as they are related to God, are true, and adequate. And so there are no inadequate or confused ideas except insofar as they are related to the singular Mind of someone."(E2P36d). That is, even though ideas considered objectively as elements of the universe are always adequate (meaning their relation to their object is total), when a particular individual has an idea of something, such an idea is necessarily incomplete, and therefore, inadequate. This is the source of falsehood.

Three kinds of knowledge

Spinoza discusses the three kinds of knowledge in E2P40s2.

The first kind of knowledge

Spinoza thinks there are two ways we can have the first kind of knowledge:
  1. From random experience: "from singular things which have been represented to us through the senses in a way that is mutilated, confused, and without order for the intellect; for that reasons I have been accustomed to call such perceptions knowledge from random experience."
  2. From imagination: "from signs, e.g., from the fact that, having heard or read certain words, we recollect things, and form certain ideas of them, which are like them, and through which we imagine the things."
He calls these two ways "knowledge of the first kind, opinion or imagination."

The second kind of knowledge

Spinoza argues that the second kind of knowledge arises:
...from the fact that we have common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things.
He goes on to explain what this means in the propositions which immediately follow.

The third kind of knowledge

This can be referred to as Intuition, but it means something rather technical for Spinoza. The third kind of knowledge is a particularly important part of Spinoza's philosophy because it is what he thinks allows us to have adequate knowledge, and therefore know things absolutely truly. As he says:
...there is (as I shall show in what follows) another, third kind, which we shall call intuitive knowledge. And this kind of knowing proceeds from an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.

Ethics

The opening page of Spinoza's magnum opus, Ethics

Spinoza's ethical views are deeply tied to his metaphysical system. This is evident from the following claim:
As far as good and evil are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves, nor are they anything other than modes of thinking, or notions we form because we compare things to one another.(E4, Preface)
It is also apparent from this that he is a kind of subjectivist about moral values. That is, he does not take good and evil to be real properties/facts in the objects we attribute them to, but rather, they are simply thoughts we have about the comparative value of one thing to another for a particular person.

"Good" and "Evil"

Spinoza gives the following definitions of "Good", and "Evil":
By good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us.(E4D1)
By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good.(E4D2)
From this it is clear that Spinoza's view of moral value is in some sense instrumental. That is, the goodness or badness of a particular object or action is measured not by some essential property. The emphasis on "essential knowledge" is important, given Spinoza's view of what epistemic certainty amounts to, i.e., adequate knowledge of God (a notion which is briefly elaborated on in this article).

Blessedness

Spinoza's notion of blessedness figures centrally in his ethical philosophy. Blessedness (or salvation or freedom), Spinoza thinks,
...consists...in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God's love for men.(E5P36s)
And this means, as Jonathan Bennett explains, that "Spinoza wants "blessedness" to stand for the most elevated and desirable state one could possibly be in." Here, understanding what is meant by 'most elevated and desirable state' requires understanding Spinoza's notion of conatus (read: striving, but not necessarily with any teleological baggage) and that "perfection" refers not to (moral) value, but to completeness. Given that individuals are identified as mere modifications of the infinite Substance, it follows that no individual can ever be fully complete, i.e., perfect, or blessed. Absolute perfection, is, as noted above, reserved solely for Substance. Nevertheless, mere modes can attain a lesser form of blessedness, namely, that of pure understanding of oneself as one really is, i.e., as a definite modification of Substance in a certain set of relationships with everything else in the universe. That this is what Spinoza has in mind can be seen at the end of the Ethics, in E5P24 and E5P25, wherein Spinoza makes two final key moves, unifying the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical propositions he has developed over the course of the work. In E5P24, he links the understanding of particular things to the understanding of God, or Substance; in E5P25, the conatus of the mind is linked to the third kind of knowledge (Intuition). From here, it is a short step to the connection of Blessedness with the amor dei intellectualis ("intellectual love of God").

Hydrogen-like atom

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