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Question In "Betraying Spinoza" by Rebecca Goldstein, it is stated that Spinoza was influenced by Plato rather than Aristotle. As far as I can tell, this was not explained. What is the connection between Spinoza and Plato? Thank you.

Accepted:
May 5, 2007

Comments

I haven't read the Goldstein book, so I can't comment on what she might have had specifically in mind. But, more broadly, there certainly is a strong Platonic (or, perhaps more accurately, Neoplatonic) flavour to Spinoza's metaphysics. One way of characterising the general philosophical outlooks of Plato and Aristotle would be to say that Plato focussed on an eternal and intelligible reality while Aristotle was more down to Earth, instead concerning himself with temporal and sensible things. Spinoza's substance was, first and foremost, supposed to be eternal and intelligible, and, as such, it would be likely to appeal to a Platonist. When Spinoza said that God was extended, a lot of his contemporaries took him to be saying that God was corporeal: but what he had in mind was really much closer to the uncreated and immutable Platonic Form of extension than to the created and ever-changing extensions that were commonly ascribed to bodies.

In many respects, Spinoza's God is a lot like the Neoplatonic concept of The One, which the Neoplatonists themselves would normally equate with God. And this is not just true of Spinoza's God as considered purely in its own right, but is to some extent also true of it when considered in relation to the sensible world. Although Spinoza perhaps pressed a little bit further in the direction of pantheism than the Neoplatonists themselves did, that theme was present in their writings too. It was standard for Neoplatonists to claim that the world was an emanation from The One and, although this notion of 'emanation' can be variously interpreted, what is pretty clear is that it was not to be understood as the sort of voluntary creative act that more orthodox theology would require. And some Neoplatonically-inclined authors did go some considerable way in undermining the ontological separation between The One and the sensible world. In such Medieval authors as John Scottus Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa, for instance, one finds the notion that God is the 'enfolding' of all things, while the universe is the 'unfolding' of God. This is a notion with which Spinoza would have been entirely comfortable.

However, one should always treat these 'either/or' claims with a certain caution. To say that Spinoza's philosophy had a Platonic character in some respects in no way entails that he could not also find considerable common ground with Aristotle. For an example, I'd say that Spinoza's theory of the relation between mind and body is extremely Aristotelian. Spinoza believed that, to every mode of extension, there would correspond a mode of thought. The former would be a particular body, the latter the idea of that body. And he claimed that, in the special case where the body in question happened to be a living human body, the corresponding mode of thought would be that person's mind. (See the early propositions of part two of the Ethics). Aristotle, meanwhile, felt that any ordinary object would possess both matter and form. In the special case where the object in question happened to be a natural, organised body, its form would qualify as its soul. (See the first chapter of book two of De anima). The two theories boil down to much the same thing.

Question In "Betraying Spinoza" by Rebecca Goldstein, it is stated that Spinoza was influenced by Plato rather than Aristotle. As far as I can tell, this was not explained. What is the connection between Spinoza and Plato? Thank you. Accepted:May 5, 2007

Question In "Betraying Spinoza" by Rebecca Goldstein, it is stated that Spinoza was influenced by Plato rather than Aristotle. As far as I can tell, this was not explained. What is the connection between Spinoza and Plato? Thank you.

Accepted:
May 5, 2007