Yes. Research Spinoza in detail.
Jaspers' interpretation of Spinoza is by no means final. The thing about attributes being infinite is related to Cartesian thinking. Descartes imagined that there were two attributes (thought and extension) which comprised different substances. Spinoza, on the other hand, postulated one substance with two different attributes. But not only two... an infinite number of them.
Spinoza took an infinite number of attributes thing to be axiomatically true, and it's puzzling as to why. At least for me, anyway. It is almost impossible for a human being to conceive of a thing that doesn't have thought OR extension. Maybe Spinoza was just covering his bases here: whatever exists is part of this one substance, even if it does not fall under the headers of thought or extension. Or maybe he saw thought and extension as merely two of an infinite number of ways to categorize that "one substance."
I happen to disagree with Jaspers' reading that Nature does not equate with God in Spinoza's philosophy. I find it hard to interpret most of what Spinoza says unless God and Nature mean the same thing.
We should also take into account what The Grand Nudger said about freedom of expression those days. The only "pantheistic" work of Spinoza, the Ethics... where he identifies the whole of nature as God was published posthumously. Any guesses as to why? It is his Magnum Opus, the greatest of all his works. You'd think he'd want to be alive when the academic world read and responded to it. (If only to clarify things.) But nope. He waited until he died to have it published.
And seeing how the Catholic Church and other Christian entities (including Protestants) had his previous works banned throughout much of Europe, it is no surprise that he clothed his ideas about the natural world in divine raiment. (Even while he ridiculed the idea of an anthropomorphic god between the lines).
But it isn't that simple either. There is Spinoza's notion that we ought to love God (in order to attain what he called "inner freedom"). This is a seeming departure from pure materialism. But it makes sense in his broader philosophy. Whatever the case, it is a departure from a pure scientific assessment of the world. And maybe (in this one particular nugget) we find a true "pantheistic" notion in Spinoza's work.
But even this is overestimated by many of Spinoza's readers. First and foremost, he saw the world in causal terms. Causes lead to effects. There is no "humanlike intention" going on anywhere in it. After you understand THAT, then (in order to attain inner freedom) you need to love THAT. And so, in the end, there is no mysticism or classical theism present in Spinoza's ideas at all. But there is a concern for human wellbeing, which, strictly speaking, is unscientific... but par for the course when we're talking about philosophers, atheist or otherwise.
Jaspers' interpretation of Spinoza is by no means final. The thing about attributes being infinite is related to Cartesian thinking. Descartes imagined that there were two attributes (thought and extension) which comprised different substances. Spinoza, on the other hand, postulated one substance with two different attributes. But not only two... an infinite number of them.
Spinoza took an infinite number of attributes thing to be axiomatically true, and it's puzzling as to why. At least for me, anyway. It is almost impossible for a human being to conceive of a thing that doesn't have thought OR extension. Maybe Spinoza was just covering his bases here: whatever exists is part of this one substance, even if it does not fall under the headers of thought or extension. Or maybe he saw thought and extension as merely two of an infinite number of ways to categorize that "one substance."
I happen to disagree with Jaspers' reading that Nature does not equate with God in Spinoza's philosophy. I find it hard to interpret most of what Spinoza says unless God and Nature mean the same thing.
We should also take into account what The Grand Nudger said about freedom of expression those days. The only "pantheistic" work of Spinoza, the Ethics... where he identifies the whole of nature as God was published posthumously. Any guesses as to why? It is his Magnum Opus, the greatest of all his works. You'd think he'd want to be alive when the academic world read and responded to it. (If only to clarify things.) But nope. He waited until he died to have it published.
And seeing how the Catholic Church and other Christian entities (including Protestants) had his previous works banned throughout much of Europe, it is no surprise that he clothed his ideas about the natural world in divine raiment. (Even while he ridiculed the idea of an anthropomorphic god between the lines).
But it isn't that simple either. There is Spinoza's notion that we ought to love God (in order to attain what he called "inner freedom"). This is a seeming departure from pure materialism. But it makes sense in his broader philosophy. Whatever the case, it is a departure from a pure scientific assessment of the world. And maybe (in this one particular nugget) we find a true "pantheistic" notion in Spinoza's work.
But even this is overestimated by many of Spinoza's readers. First and foremost, he saw the world in causal terms. Causes lead to effects. There is no "humanlike intention" going on anywhere in it. After you understand THAT, then (in order to attain inner freedom) you need to love THAT. And so, in the end, there is no mysticism or classical theism present in Spinoza's ideas at all. But there is a concern for human wellbeing, which, strictly speaking, is unscientific... but par for the course when we're talking about philosophers, atheist or otherwise.
