Re: Where was 'god' before 'he' created the universe?
Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 1:59 pm
by Hobbes' Choice
A bit from my book on Spinoza.
4:0 Spinoza
Spinoza was born into a world of religious conflict that affected his family and himself more personally. A detailed exposition of his life and such can be found in the numberless books about him and his philosophy. Suffice it to say that Spinoza was a man whose roots bestrode several cultures: Portuguese, Jewish, Maranos, Dutch, Protestant. And his life experience, particularly in the matter of his charem was liable to provide Spinoza with a unique view, peripheral to the established norms of the society in which he lived. His experiences were likely to have engendered in Spinoza a speculative and even suspicious view of religious orthodoxy, having suffered from the distain of his own community, whilst his peripheral position of solitude was likely to have provided him with a unique outsider’s point of view. Though it is possible to unpack Spinoza’s philosophical roots from Judaism, Protestantism, and ancient writings, it is his personal reception of those ideas that provide his unique philosophy. Spinoza published only two major works in his lifetime; Descartes Principles of Philosophy (1663), under his own name, and Tractatus Theologio-Politicus (1670) , anonymously for fear of further sanctions. Despite his short life, he was a vigorous man of letters and his legacy was a range of correspondence to and from, major figures in science and philosophy, a range of shorter works such as; Political Treatise, Compendium of Hebrew Grammar, Emendation of the Intellect, Short Treatise on God and the posthumously published monumental Ethics. With the possible exception of his work of Descartes’ philosophy, most of his writings were radical and were challenging to the orthodoxy of his time. But even before he had published, his reputation was wide enough to attract a visit from Oldenburg of The Royal Society of London in c.1661, and others, with some of whom is preserved a detailed correspondence.
It seems clear that Spinoza’s project was to dismiss commonly held conceptions of God, to examine what philosophers had erroneously said of him, and to reinstate a de-anthropomorphic God that avoided any logical and reasonable contradictions. In his Letter to Oldenburg, he says that he is working on a short treatise concerning the origin of all things, how they have begun and how they depend on a first cause. This was a reference to the Short Treatise on God where he further points out his intention to…
discuss those attributes which are commonly ascribed to God, but which do not belong to him and to investigate what the philosophers can tell us about him. They have defined God as a being existing of himself, cause of all things, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, simple, infinite, the greatest good, of infinite compassion, etc.
His examination of these attributes, using the geometric method is a way of building a complete ontology and metaphysical system, which rejects Scripture as a primary source, and invokes a strict logical scheme that would offer an iron-clad argument as certain as Euclid’s mathematics. At the heart of Spinoza’s concern is religious conflict. Reflecting upon the Reformation he said:
I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.
Such a noble aim, to quiet such animosity, had to remain largely hidden until Spinoza’s death made him safe from the harm of censure and vilification. It was with the posthumous publication of Ethics, that his remarkable philosophy became more widely known. The Ethics is divided into five parts. These are not separate parts, but are specifically designed to demonstrate a thorough human ontology, with each part depending on the last. He first tackles the proof of the existence of God; with this builds to understanding the human mind; thence to an account of man’s emotional nature in what we would call a system of psychology; he then looks at the passions, asking why we are so self-destructive, proposing an ideal that we ought to strive to attain. Finally he concludes to demonstrate how through of all this, by the power of understanding we are able to achieve personal salvation, though not an immortal kind. We may also achieve a state equivalent to freedom, as through our understanding we can engage with our determined selves. It is the first part of Ethics that this dissertation is most concerned to understand.
4:1 Proving God’s Existence by the Geometric Method
Two species of proof, relevant to Spinoza and Hobbes preexisted the 17thC: the ontological proof of God and the cosmological proof, though variations of the arguments from design and other justifications can also be found. Anslem is often attributed to the first formulation of the ontological proof, accepted and repeated by Duns Scotius.
The first, and best-known, ontological argument was proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th. century A.D. In his Proslogion, St. Anselm claims to derive the existence of God from the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. St. Anselm reasoned that, if such a being fails to exist, then a greater being—namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists—can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived —i.e., God—exists.
Commonly known to both Hobbes and Spinoza is this proof in the form it appears in Descartes Fifth Meditations (7-14). God, then is postulated as a necessary being based on the simple fact that a non-existing God is inconceivable. However Aquinas with reference to the Scriptures had already rejected this species of proof, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God” (Psalm 52; 1). If the scriptures said that even a fool could imagine that there was no God, then it was simply possible for that thing to be conceived. Therefore it is not known “per se” that there is a God. For Aquinas the fact that any fool can reject God is not enough and he persists with five proofs of his own. However Spinoza implicitly rejects this route to understanding God. In his ontological proof there is no reference to the Scriptures. For Spinoza the only valid route to God is via reason. Why would Spinoza allow the Scriptures, that had caused so much conflict, be allowed to undermine a reasonable position?
In a time of uncertainty there is nothing more pleasing than a method that has remained unchallenged. Although Aristotle had suffered from a sustained attack especially after Kepler, Euclid’s method had remained unchallenged. Euclid’s system of building necessary conclusions from axioms, seemed unimpeachable. Spinoza was clearly inspired by the work of Descartes, but it perhaps goes too far to characterize him as a Cartesian. Indeed whilst his Descartes Principles of Philosophy stakes him out has a pupil of Descartes, the fact that this work led the work in a more ‘geometric’ position is enough to distance Spinoza from his master. Nonetheless, it was Spinoza’s application of these methodologies through the lens of Descartes that was so effective in his work.
A key problem with any proof of God, that nothing comes form nothing, will also involve the question, where does God come from. As early as Aristotle this problem has a rather unsatisfactory solution. (1)There is motion in the world; (2) this motion was caused by something else; (3) if everything there is were caused to move by something else there would be an infinite cause of things, which is absurd, (4) Therefore there must have been something that caused the first thing; (5) this first thing is God. However this is unsatisfactory because God is an exception to (2). This problem of infinite regression is the moment where Spinoza starts his Ethics. He starts with definitions;
I. By that which is self-caused (casua sui), I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent …III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived though itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.”
These definitions lay the ground for the entire system of philosophy, that there is a non-dependant unitary reality that is accessible through reason, and that this encompasses all that there is. The objection that a self causing cause is inconceivable, in terms of logic as the very existence of substance is reason enough to assert it as causa sui. This technical point asserts that the fact of existence is grounds for its own cause. Thus the proof of God:
God, or substance, consisting, of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists,
is based upon a reflection upon its own possible denial.
If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. But this (by Prop. vii) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.
This proof hangs solely on Spinoza’s conception of substance, defined above (Def III), and the proof of the proposition (VII) which insists that substance must exist, as it cannot be produced by anything external, as defined as fundamental (Prop VI), and by definition must be self caused.
Spinoza simply removes any doubt of his piety, (so thoroughly protested in his TTP), by rejecting doubt of any kind. Doubt is not even a consideration. However according to Mason (1997; 22), no atheist would be swayed by his proof of God. What Spinoza has proved is that something necessarily exists; that something is everything; and that everything, he claims be called God. To be uncharitable, this line of reasoning must seem somewhat circular, but the consequences of this clever method have staggering implications for the rest of Ethics. The first is that existence of a single substance is the necessary conclusion, and that God is equivalent to that substance, in that God is proved to be that substance. Thus God exists because there is something that exists, but God is only that which is conceivably evident in a physical sense. Thus God being evident as the fundamental substance of the world rejects any claim of transcendence. Transcendence was historically used as the only justification for making the necessary exception to establish a first cause, or prime mover. Spinoza’s God is thus immanent, in the following way. God by necessity looses his transcendence due to Prop III, Axiom V. Thus for God to have a hand in the world he must either be the originator (a deist god) or be the entire world. If his substance is not of the world, having nothing in common, by virtue of not being the same substance he must be that substance: either in the world; part of it (Axiom I); or all there is. Thus God is the substance, the only substance that is nature: Prop V. These interlocking statements support each other and Axiom I can be brought into service to support the claim that God is of one substance, both necessary and immanent, but most importantly extended and comprehensible through the evidence of the world around us. What is especially remarkable is that Spinoza begins by claiming the existence of God is necessary and substantial, and it is this necessity, which forms the basis of God’s character: a character uniquely described. Given that “things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.” In this Spinoza is denying that God has created the world by some arbitrary and undetermined act of free-will, but by necessity. God is not denied a will, as such, but it is an assertion that, everything is absolutely and necessarily determined. What Hobbes implied, Spinoza took to a logical conclusion: God is to be found through reason.
4:2 Necessity and Substance
In Ethics Spinoza immediately challenges Christian orthodox raison d’etre, by challenging God’s plan for man;
It is accepted as certain that God directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence... I will point out its falsity… and how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad.
The idea that God acts day-to-day to provide for us, is rejected and the basis of false teleology, and on the understanding that God is not limited by desire or purpose: echoing Hobbes. On the doctrine of providence Spinoza states:
This doctrine does away with the perfection of God: for if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks.
Here we see the remarkable achievement of Spinoza, in continually asserting that God cannot be limited, he undermines much that is commonly believed of Him. But he does it in such a way as to employ the most cherished belief in a God who is Almighty. He merely takes that assertion to its most logical and reasonable conclusion. Free-will is also a limitation on God’s power. Man has not the ability to will a state of affairs other than that which God has already conceived. In this he points to the delusion for free-will and more subtly builds upon the Calvinist solution. With each step, by assuming God’s omnipotence, Spinoza denies and challenges orthodox and heartfelt characteristics. Appellant prayer is also implicated in this reasonable attack. In the introduction to TTP he characterises prayer as a response to a superstitious belief in the anger of God; a fantastical interpretation of religion. In what way would an all-powerful God be so lacking in forethought as to change his mind due to the pleas of mortals? In this way Spinoza brings nature to the forefront as that which is characteristic of God: impersonal, universal, infinite, necessary.
Descartes’ dualism enabled the study of the natural world of how by deferring God to the realm of the transcendent, and thus avoiding the disabling requirement to continually explain the world in terms of why or ends. Thus he sets up his metaphysics to enable a thorough investigation of causality, by deferring the persistent claims required of teleology. Such a telos requires a guiding hand, and that hand is God’s. Whilst this distances his material investigation from Aristotle’s fruitless final cause arguments, it does not completely divest scientific investigation of an overpowering transcendent God who may be mobilised at any time to explain the inexplicable and to satisfy the priesthood of the Catholic Church. Spinoza’s reaction to Descartes was that his work was ‘a brilliant but unsuccessful venture,’ this dualism has more than practical problems, it also has ethical ones, dividing the study of nature from philosophy’s aims of human happiness. Spinoza explicitly rejects this dualistic position by reinstating God as immanent. He rejects it not only in terms of God against nature, but also rejecting Descartes triple substances conception of reality: God, Mind, Body. Spinoza’s God is of one substance, and that substance is all that can exist. It is by this means that human ethics can be understood through reasoning from what is demonstrable through nature. For Leibniz and Descartes the world is constructed of more that one substance to account for differences in the world. For Leibniz there are substantial differences between rocks and people, between water and air: for Descartes, primarily between mind and body. In the Cartesian system
each substance has one principle attribute which constitutes it nature or essence. For minds, that attribute is thought, for bodies it is extension.
Spinoza accounts for differences and distinctions of material and of objects by endowing this single universal substance with a range of attributes and modes. Curley suggests that though different in description both these schemes are equivalent, but that the fault lies with Descartes not “properly worked out the logic of his own position.” In simple terms, all we have to do is to down grade a Cartesian substance to a Spinozan attribute of a single substance, and the conception of the world is equivalent. In a sense Curley is reducing the argument to a semantic game, that perhaps Spinoza and Descartes would have remained resolute as to their own positions. Spinoza’s God is preserved as unlimited, as we have no right to assume that different attributes imply different substances, whereas Descartes’ transcendent God is preserved by having unique and distinct substances, which God is separate from but limited by. For Spinoza, setting God outside reality is a move to limit God and is a contradiction of omnipresence, without which omnipotence would not be possible. Thus whilst establishing an immanent God he demands that transcendence is not possible, but urges a God which is not infinite in the sense of never ending, but infinite in that all that is possible which in effect improves Leibniz’s Theodicy without diminishing God’s omnipotence. Despite Curley diminishing the differences, it true that Spinoza made it quite clear to Oldenburg that he was no Cartesian dualist. It is clear enough from his correspondences with Oldenburg first, that he distances himself from his published exposition of Descartes philosophy; The Principles of Cartesianism. Second that his own conception of mind is embedded thoroughly in nature.
As regards the human mind, I believe that it also is a part of nature; for I maintain that there exists in nature an infinite power of thinking, which, in so far as it is infinite, contains subjectively the whole of nature, and its thoughts proceed in the same manner as nature—that is, in the sphere of ideas. Further, I take the human mind to be identical with this said power, not in so far as it is infinite, and perceives the whole of nature, but in so far as it is finite, and perceives only the human body.
There is some academic disagreement that Spinoza is a dualist in spite of himself. This inheres in an argument between the conceptions of extension and corporeal, and relates to Spinoza’s conception of God as either a guiding principle of nature, or as nature and everything in it. The problem appears with two apparently inconsistent statements; that ‘God is a thing extended”; and that “it is a gross error to regard God as corporeal.” This apparent contradiction has found Curley concluding ‘radically’ that Spinoza’s God as more like “those general principles of order described by the fundamental laws of nature.” This alone does not answer the apparent contradiction, even though this error appears amongst others. Buckley (2004; 77), repeats this error in understanding the implications of Spinoza by describing God as, “He functions in the system and is the beginning and end of it,” and incorrectly quoting Collins (above p 10); “as a cog in the system.” This is not Spinoza’s intention, nor does it characterize God’s nature. For Spinoza God is the system, is the end and if there was a beginning then God is that too. If it can be accepted that Spinoza has a coherent philosophy, then it seems more consistent to follow such statements as would account for the majority of his opinion. And this is that God is not limited: not limited to a principle, not to a cog, nor to a cause. Thus the assertion that God is not to be thought of as corporeal, must be answered to find that God is more nature itself, and Spinoza’s project, again and again is to insist that the only limits to God are one and the same as the limits of the Universe - none. Thus is seems more likely that, rather than limit God to a principle, and characterise Spinoza as a dualist; is the connotation of “corporeal” qua Cartesian terminology that Spinoza here wishes to distances himself from, not any attempt to limit God to the laws of nature, nor to deny his extension. Thus God is extension, not merely corporeal.
The implications that everything is God, and that God is one inseparable substance, renders many conceptions about the nature of existence and people’s relationship with God void. The argument as to the divinity of Jesus becomes null and void, in the sense that we are all part of the substance of God. The Sacraments loose their mystical quality; and the trinity is rendered obsolete. The single substance brings into question the special role of a priest to form a ‘bridge’ to heaven, since God is now omnipresent. And whether the wine was literally the blood of Jesus, as in transubstantiation, or co-existed as in consubstantiation, neither now seem relevant or meaningful; God is now the cup and the wine, and that which remains in the bottle; God is already present, God is all that there can be the substance of all. Thus substantially the communion wine is that which is a finite mode of God, and the literal meaning of God’s blood is undermined so the argument is null and void. Whatever appears in the communion cup is of one substance. God becomes equivalent to nature, for which Spinoza offers the seldom used but much quoted phrase Deus sive Natura.
4:3 Spinoza and Scripture
Spinoza joins a growing group of thinkers who submit the Bible to the analysis of reason. Together with Hobbes, La Peyrère, and others Spinoza challenged the claim, believed and sworn to in the Westminster Confession of Faith, that Moses was the guarantee of God’s word in that he penned the Pentateuch – including passages that relate the story of his own funeral and death. Spinoza’s approach is to separate supernatural claims and read the Scriptures in their historical context. In chapter XVII of TTP Spinoza with great subtlety devastatingly unpacks the belief in a chosen people of God. With smooth alacrity he points out quoting the words of Quintus Curtius the political expediency of Alexander’s desire to be seen as the son of God. Then from Tacitus he points to the deification of Augustus through his association with Aeneas, and then smoothly segues directly to Moses and the chosen people with whom he treats with the same candor and veracity. But not before telling us “how easy it is to spread the belief that kingship is sacred, and plays the part of God on earth.” This calls into question the special role for the Mosaic version of God, as it is with equal reverence and signification that the pagan histories of deification are treated. With subtlety, as Hobbes speaks of Prometheus with the same certitude as the myths of the Bible, Spinoza also reduces the literality of the bible with such associations. By giving each case equal attention; heathen and Christian he points to the historical contingencies, by not giving one precedence over the other. In fact it seems that his project is to interpret the meaning of Scriptures through, “elucidating the linguistic formulation, the historical context, and the personality of the Biblical author.” At the heart of Spinoza’s philosophy is his claim that divine law is;
common to all men, for we have deduced it from universal human nature. That it does not depend on the truth of any historical narrative whatsoever, for in as much as this natural Divine law is comprehended solely by the consideration of human nature.
Furthermore he pours doubt that any person can achieve the special quality of divinity. Though he falters in denying Jesus this special position it is clear that he does not accept it and finds such a claim absurd. He states,
The doctrines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon Himself human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand; in fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than would a statement, that a circle had taken upon itself the nature of a square.
Though Spinoza denies that God took on human form, he does allow Jesus a special place. Though, man is substantially a finite mode of God.
He (God) communicates to our minds His Essence; still, a man who can by pure intuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor deducible from the foundation of our natural knowledge, must necessarily possess a mind far superior to those of his fellow men, nor do I believe they have been so endowed save Christ. To him the ordinances of God leading men to salvation were revealed without words or visions.
There is a problem that emerges between this exalted position of Jesus as Spinoza seems to be coming close to attributing Christ a supernatural quality, which does not rest well with the equation Deus sive Natura. And why exalt Jesus when it is clear that Spinoza was no Christian? How could an impersonal God that is determined and necessary elect a son to go amongst his people? Spinoza is careful to avoid that direct conclusion, by allowing those that would support it not to be discouraged by the cleverness of his words. How could an impersonal God choose, where Spinoza later, specifically denies the “falsity” of the idea that God is capable of “directing” or that he made things for man? There seem to be a cognitive tension in Spinoza’s thoughts. The view of Jesus as ‘Envoy of God’, as characterised by Voltaire, that we see in TTP does not cohere well with conception of the natural God we find in Ethics, nor does trying to account for this discrepancy on terms of chronology of the work help ease the tension. It is not the fact that TTP was written before Ethics that can account for this discrepancy, as we learn form the Letters (e.g. II, VI, 1661) that Spinoza’s God was conceived some time before the publication of TTP in 1670, and that the writing of Ethics had begun as early as 1662.
It may be fair to conclude that TTP, as a published work, is more likely to have been an attempt to appeal or gentle dissimulation to an audience who would have been more likely to accept the elevation of Jesus, though mortal, to a special position. If this account is less than compatible with Ethics, it is Ethics that renders a bolder and a more close account of Spinoza’s actual position. Further it is possible that the tone and content of the TTP is a move to suggest, through biblical criticism, that “paper and ink” ought no to be worshipped, that the true nature of God is, and ever was ‘in our the world and in our hearts.’
We can thus easily see how God can be said to be the Author of the Bible: it is because of the true religion therein contained, and not because He wished to communicate to men a certain number of books. We can also learn from hence the reason for the division into Old and New Testament. It was made because the prophets who preached religion before Christ, preached it as a national law in virtue of the covenant entered into under Moses; while the Apostles who came after Christ, preached it to all men as a universal religion solely in virtue of Christ’s Passion: the cause for the division is not that the two parts are different in doctrine, nor that they were written as originals of the covenant, nor, lastly, that the catholic religion (which is in entire harmony with our nature) was new except in relation to those who had not known it: “it was in the world,” as John the Evangelist says, “and the world knew it not.”
Those who look upon the Bible as a message sent down by God from Heaven to men, will doubtless cry out that I have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost because I have asserted that the Word of God is faulty, mutilated, tampered with, and inconsistent; that we possess it only in fragments, and that the original of the covenant which God made with the Jews has been lost. However, I have no doubt that a little reflection will cause them to desist from their uproar: for not only reason but the expressed opinions of prophets and apostles openly proclaim that God’s eternal Word and covenant, no less than true religion, is Divinely inscribed in human hearts, that is, in the human mind, and that this is the true original of God’s covenant, stamped with His own seal, namely, the idea of Himself, as it were, with the image of His Godhood.
Thus Spinoza does not deny that he has pointed to deficiencies in Scriptures. It seems Spinoza’s intention here is to prepare the way for his God of Nature, by reducing the value and importance of Scriptures to attain the nature of God, and to suggest that God is to be found first in the world. He is walking a tightrope between the need to prepare the way for his own developing concept of God on one hand and appeasing those who would protect the Scriptures on the other. Such is the difficulty with Spinoza’s attitude to the qualities of Jesus that it forces us to ask if it is possible that he has abandoned his attempt to vest his understanding without recourse to the supernatural. Popkin offers an interpretation that avoids this problem. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to comment fully why this not a completely satisfactory view. It is likely that Spinoza was willing to toy with ambiguity as he his interests lie in preserving something of the Christian message of goodness in response to an attack that would characterize Jesus as one of three imposters, whilst urging a rational and universal solution to the problem of Scriptural interpretation.
4:4 Spinoza in Conclusion
Spinoza next, to hide his black design
And to his side th’ unwary to incline,
For heaven his ensigns treacherous displays;
Declares for God, while he that God betrays;
For whom he’s pleased such evidence to bring,
As saves the name, while it subverts the thing.
Richard Blackmore
Spinoza’s achievement is that he takes all the medieval preconceptions of God, with all their inconsistencies; accommodates the latest logical necessities of the Protestant faith; and by application of the Euclidian method improving upon Descartes; solves problems inherent and inconsistent in conceptions of God. By creating a God who, whilst both remaining maximally powerful and becoming totally necessary, looses his personality and capriciousness. Perhaps the reason Spinoza was so vilified was the simple fact that Spinoza presents his theory as a proven case, using a method unchallenged since its first appearance in the postulates of Euclid nearly 2000 years before. For Ethics “On God” to be understood requires good intelligence, to refute it requires more. God is rendered as a necessary cause, self-caused, but without ad-hoc volition or personality. It is by emphasizing God’s omnipotence that, in a sense, God is made impotent, devoid of the power of miracles, as Nature is God’s will. A miracle being an act of a transcendent God intervening in nature is not a possible nor is it a necessary act. In a sense, what Spinoza is moving towards is a position in which it is possible to completely collapse Aristotle’s system of 4 causes (material, formal, efficient, final). God becomes the efficient cause of existence; “Prop. XXV. God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.” Any suggestion that the chain of necessary causality would require periodic intervention is ipso facto, a suggestion of a limitation of God’s ultimate power. For God’s power to be represented by the word omnipotent, God must be immanent in all things. This is Spinoza’s challenge. As Mason puts it;” if you want God to be without limit and you want to make consistent sense of the inheritance of substance and cause then you may face Spinoza’s conclusions.”
Spinoza’s role may well have been underestimated. Mason suggests that Spinoza had no real effects in his time because he was over shadowed by Descartes, “Though an attempt to recruit him as a modern, or even post-modern, figure can be even more anachronistic that trying to enlist him as a herald of the Enlightenment.” Such a statement is contrary to Margaret Jacob and others, and stands in anticipation against Jonathan Israel’s thesis. The problem with this view is that it is inclined to ignore the possibilities of negative influence, and by doing so inadvertently appeals to and repeats Spinoza’s censorship. The negative publicity that occasioned Spinoza’s work, was huge. Colie offers an impressive list of notable figures opposed to his views. Such opposition made Spinoza notorious but note worthy. On a positive note, Bayle’s kindly treatment of his character, though criticising his atheism, does change the situation for atheism by the end of the century. “Bayle though he did not describe himself as an atheist - had raised the possibility of a virtuous society of atheists, and for the first time real atheists could be named.” Spinoza’s main impact would have to wait until he was found by “Lessing, Goethe, Heine, Auerbach, Coleridge, Shelley, George Eliot; most of these not only admired him, but studied him deeply.” And it is, of course to Einstein to whom we have to look for his perhaps most famous follower, whose view, in The World As I See It, of an impersonal God, the denial of free-will, and of man moved by internal necessity is explicitly that of Spinoza.
