I: Preliminary & Groundwork of Spinoza’s philosophy
In this section, I will attempt to synthesize the most crucial ideas of Spinoza’s metaphysics and his conception of God. Readers who are familiar with Spinoza will realize that I have omitted his laborious and rationally methodical proofs so as not to detract from our task, i.e. the Kantian critique of dogmatic thinking and an understanding of the importance of Kant’s teleological judgment.
Spinoza’s philosophical system like Descartes, does not aim at effacing the theological conception of “God.” Spinoza found traditional religion or what Kant would call as theism – that an intentionally productive, originally living intelligent being created (caused) the world to be highly problematic. Theism is what Descartes’s philosophical system in fact mirrors paralleling the biblical picture of the genesis of the world as caused by God. God as a substance caused light, water, expanse, living creatures, man etc. and hence God, through his causation, created a plethora of independent extended and thinking substances in the natural world who have the will to act in this or that way. In the theological-political treatise and the ethica, such an idea was inherently prone to prophetic speculation and misuse for “God” as we know from Kant, cannot be empirically intuited and so, the idea of “God” was open to manipulation by anyone who simply claims he has received signs and revelations from God. Spinoza found this highly problematic. Now, for our purposes, Spinoza’s rationalist solution then, is analogous to a revolutionary project aimed at dethroning the Descartes-theism system by eliminating causation and conflating all substances into inhering modes of God’s essence. All things in the natural world then is not caused by God but flows from the necessity of God’s divine essence.
“From the necessity of divine nature, there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes… under his infinite intellect.”
(Ethics I: of God - proposition 16)
“Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be conceived without God.”
(Ethics I: of God – proposition 15)
“God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.”
(Ethics I of God – proposition 11)
In the natural order then, God is the only infinite substance whose essence is to by proposition 7, necessarily exist as a substance with infinite reality thereby encompassing everything. Thus in a Spinozistic system, there is no contingent cause-effects. Everything is conceived under the attributes of God, from the necessity of his nature. In other words, God is the ‘proximate cause’ of everything and everything inheres in God. Everything is then conceived as natura naturata i.e. modes or everything that follows from the necessity of God’s nature and his attributes. God then, is the only substance in-itself and conceived through itself as opposed to the Descartes-theism multiplicity of substances.
II: Kantian Critique of Spinoza: The problems of the Spinozistic God
But the very idea of “God” is in itself, inconceivable empirically. Spinoza claims that God is the only proximate cause of all his inhering modes. But wherein lies the basis for this claim? In Kant’s view, just from a posteriori experience of the very mechanisms of nature, we cannot perceive or infer a concept of “God” – things in themselves. Kant’s analogy of the watch is instructive in this case. Like the things in nature, parts of the watch exist simultaneously in the watch such that they are instruments for motions of each other. Yet, we do not assert “one wheel is the efficient cause for the other… [or that] one part is present for the sake of the other” (Kant, pp. 246). Just from the mere mechanisms of nature, we cannot determinatively infer much. Similarly, we cannot make God a constitutive determinative concept for all the things in nature or parts of the watch and claim dogmatically that this is certainly the way things are. This will precisely give rise to all sorts of antinomies if or when we take regulative principles of our teleological judgments as objective principles for our determining power of judgment (Kant, pp. 259). This matter will be dealt with in greater depth later.
But now, it is crucial to note that it is in the nature of our reason (contingent and subordinated to nature), to seek a sum total, a unifying ground, final causes of nature.
“If one looks at the vegetable kingdom, one could initially be led by the immeasurable fertility by which it spreads itself over practically every terrain to think of it as a mere product of the mechanism of nature… [but once we start asking, as in the nature of our reason] why do these creatures exist? If one answers: For the animal kingdom, which is so nourished by it so that it is able to spread itself over the earth in so many genera, then the question arises again: Why do these herbivorous animals exist…?”
(TPJ: Appendix of Methodology of Teleological judgments pp. 294)
Our faculty of reason will without end, attempt to unify our thoughts. The question of “Why?” will go on in pursuit of a final cause. For Kant, it is in man’s nature to do exactly that. Yet, the final end cannot be an end that can be found in nature because nature itself is unconditioned (Kant, pp. 302).
“There is nothing in nature, the sensible ground of which, itself found in nature, is not always in turn conditioned.”
(TPJ: Appendix of Methodology of Teleological judgments pp. 302)
But what Spinoza tries to do to dogmatically to correct Descartes-theism is to use reason to infer from ends of nature to the supreme cause of nature and its properties by which the latter is empirically inconceivable and non-intuitable. The key then is that Spinoza (and man en generale) cannot (and cannot determinatively) make the defining leap from the perceived order of nature to “God” and claim that the latter is the proximate cause of the former because from nature, there is nothing to signify the real existence of God. “God” is an ideal construction of our pure reason by which there can be no corresponding intuitive association. Here, I think it is instructive to refer back to several important segments in Kant’s First Critique of Pure Reason:
“For that the concept precedes the perception signifies its mere possibility; but perception, which yields the material for the concept, is the sole characteristic of actuality.”
(CPR pp. 325)
Yet in nature, we can perceive nothing that instructs us determinatively of the ideal construction by reason, of the actuality of God. What Spinoza does by even establishing and continuing to maintain the real existence of God as the sole infinite substance, is simply what Kant would think of as a transcendental illusion from the first critique which is inevitable and which is the corollary of the very nature of our reason as a human faculty of cognition and which has certain maxims and principles (concepts of pure reason i.e. God) taken by our understanding for an objective necessity, the determination, determinatively of things in themselves. Reason directly bypasses or omits the faculty of intuition. “It has no immediate reference [to intuition] but deals only with the understanding and its judgments [of which the latter two faculties (but not the faculty of reason) will] apply directly to the senses and their intuitions to determine their object” (CPR pp. 391). Concepts of reason (i.e. God) will thus not let itself be limited to experience because it deals with a cognition which is the synthesis of the empirical whole (CPR pp. 394) of which what we can intuit in our actual daily experiences will never suffice for the concept of pure reason (which is the unconditioned: God).
Hence, the point is that Spinoza who firstly, kept the idea of God, is already confounding “possibility” with “actuality”. Secondly, he has mistakenly inferred from his view or experience of the things and mechanisms in nature to God (an idea of pure reason) from which based on both the first and third critiques of Kant, we know that we cannot infer from. On the one hand, from the mechanisms of nature, we can see nothing that signifies God’s existence and on the other hand, no actual experience is suffice for the concept of pure reason. What Spinoza is doing is also what Kant would claim as simply “dealing with a concept dogmatically” by considering all modes or everything in nature as contained in another concept i.e. of God and determining the former in accordance with the latter by reason (Kant TJ pp. 266). For Kant, the whole project of Spinoza is itself problematic for we cannot even be assured of the objective reality of the concept of God (TPJ pp. 267) since as shown afore, it is a concept of pure reason which does not imply directly intuition-actuality. If the concept of God that Spinoza establishes cannot be held with certainty not only logically and rationally but also in terms of empirical realness, then all the synthetic predicates held under God i.e. modes of God and the whole conception of it cannot be held with certainty.
“[Hence, the concept of God] is still not a concept that can be abstracted from experience, but [only] one that is possible in accordance with a principle of reason in the judging of the object.”
(TPJ, pp. 267)
The point then is that, reason cannot at all demonstrate the objective reality of God. This point is again re-asserted in Kant’s remark (TPJ: S76 pp. 271) where he writes that it is in our faculty of principles at its most extreme demand to reach to the unconditioned. i.e. of God. Our faculty of understanding however, “is always at a service of a certain condition which must be given” (TPJ: S76 pp. 271) i.e. implying that intuitions must be given to the a priori categories of our understanding to produce cognition or objective reality. If this condition is not fulfilled, whatever we may think we know maybe chimerical figments of our imagination and reason. Reason by itself, cannot at all judge objectively and synthetically and by itself, it contains no objective constitutive principles but only regulative ones (TPJ: S76 pp. 271). Thus, reason tends to be excessive for our faculty of understanding where the former can be so well grounded in its ideas regulatively (although not grounded in objectively valid concepts that has actuality) but our understanding is limited by the need to be grounded in sensibility (TPJ: S76 pp. 271). Hence, as shown also in the first critique, the possibility of a concept of pure reason must not be interlaced and confounded with the actuality of the concept on reality. Spinoza’s mistake from a Kantian perspective is thus to confound these two cognitive faculties.
Then, there is another more subsidiary lashing of Spinoza (TPJ: S73) where Kant seems to be claiming that Spinoza cannot extricate causality and simply say that everything flows from the nature of God’s essence. God’s essence is then the unity of end or the unity of ground for Spinoza that bequeaths purposiveness to the natura naturans or modes as part of God’s essence. Thus, there is in Spinoza’s system for Kant, no intentionality of nature, for all of which is just a natural necessity of God’s infinite essence or intellect. Yet Kant claims firstly that the “ontological unity is not immediately a unity of end and by no means makes the latter comprehensible.” (TPJ pp. 264) By this, Kant’s concerns seem to be that even if Spinoza unites everything under the eternal essence of God, logically, it still does not prove the necessity of God and thereby does not make the idea of God comprehensible. Again, for anything to be comprehensible and actual, it has to be intuitable but we cannot find in nature, anything that signifies the actuality of God as explicated afore. This is why Kant says that “[the idea of God] does not follow at all from the connection of the things in one subject [i.e. God].” The most significant part here however is when Kant says that:
“…no relation to an end would be exhibited unless one conceives of them first as internal effects of the substance, as a cause, and second, of the latter as a cause through its understanding.”
(TPJ: pp. 265)
The implications of this is of such great importance because it is a stern and poignant cry of Kant to Spinoza that even if his whole system of ends inhering in the one infinite God can be sustained, the grounds of the system is not God but the subject. It is the latter, the subject that can give purposiveness to his (Spinoza’s) system of relations of ends to God. Only the subject can conceive conceive these relations through his reflective judgment.
On the reflecting Power of Judgment
Hence, the grounds of every system of thought that speculates a final cause or that wants to explain the teleological judgments about nature lies in the subject’s reflecting power of judgment and not a real actually happening causality out there. To regard the latter as such would be to confuse the constitutive and objective principles of the determining power of judgment with the regulative power of judgment leading to the proliferation of antinomies and of systems of thoughts that endlessly barrage at each other.
The reflecting power of judgment however is “only a principle for reflection on objects for which we are objectively entirely lacking a law or concept” (TPJ: pp. 257). Thus, what Kant is claiming here is that, it lies entirely in the subject (us) to give a systematic unity, orderliness and coherence in nature. Hence, from our experience of the vastness of nature, we will naturally via our power of judgment think as if there is an objective material purposiveness in nature but this is only our reflecting power of judgment judging the relation of cause to effect in nature (TPJ: pp. 239). As Kant has established, in nature, things can at once be an end or a product but, to say objectively that the sea indeed exists for the sandy beaches and the sandy beaches indeed exists for the pine forests (as objective scientific facts) would be preposterous for then we would not be account for the so many diverse opinions of relations of things. Moreover we (our power of reflecting judgment) only think as if there were objective material purposiveness so as to give systematic unity to nature and for further inquiry into nature otherwise, we would yield only a chaotic and incomprehensible mess of nature for “matter is a multitude of things, which by itself can provide no determinate unity of composition” (TPJ: pp. 248). Hence, it is we as subjects who via an idea “ground the possibility of the product of nature” (TPJ: pp. 248). In other words then, I think we can say that it is we as subjects who create the whole relation of cause-effects to a supersensible determining ground (e.g. the example of the Botanist constructing or assuming a principle that nothing in a creature is in vain) beyond the blind mechanisms of nature and judge according to it (TPJ: pp. 248). This is important because in nature and its rawness, although there are specific constitutions of things (like how butterflies may differ from dogs etc), there is no law that is given to us as how to organize or conceive it so as to even form a coherent whole. Thus, since no use of the cognitive faculties can be permitted without principles, to judge raw nature, our reflecting power of judgment must serve as a ground principle itself for us to even cognize things coherently (TPJ: pp. 257). Yet, Kant is adamant in that such a reflective power of judgment can serve only as a subjective principle for the purposive use of the cognitive faculties – without which as said, we cannot even cognize things (TPJ pp. 257).
“…the reflecting power of judgment therefore has its maxims and indeed necessary ones, for the same of cognition of natural laws in experience, in order to arrive by their means at concepts, even if these are concepts of reason, if it needs these merely in order to come to know nature as far as its empirical laws are concerned.”
(TPJ: pp. 257)
Thus, the reason why we even need our reflecting power of judgment to produce such necessary maxims is so as to cognize nature and derive at a certain cognition or postulation at their empirical laws or why things are as they are (by which we cannot know of and is supersensible).
III: Back to Spinoza and Conclusion
Yet what Spinoza has done is to take these regulative principles that we should be using to understand nature as constitutive ones assuming that we can in fact know that there is an eternal essence of God. Spinoza assumes that we can know the supersensible. As established afore, God is the only substance and Spinoza defines substance as:
“what is in itself and conceived through itself, that is, whose concept does not require the concept of another thing from which it must be formed.”
(Ethics I of God: D3 pp. 85)
But this definition is in itself problematic because as Kant rightly argues, God is merely an idea (or ideal) of pure reason and cannot find its parallels anywhere in nature. Yet, a concept that cannot find its parallel in nature, cannot be actual. The actual cognition of anything requires empirical validation which Spinoza’s definition of God as substance totally overlooks. Hence, in the Kantian analysis of things then, many of Spinoza’s propositions are problematic for they are only principles of pure reason without empirical validation and actuality.
“It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist”
(Ethics I of God: P7 pp. 88)
“Every substance is necessarily infinite”
(Ethics I of God: P8 pp. 88)
These propositions of God, we cannot know and lies in the supersensible for nothing in empirical reality instructs us of how God is.
“…we have no insight into their primary internal ground, and thus we cannot reach the internal and completely sufficient principle of the possibility of a nature (which lies in the supersensible) at all …about this our reason which is extremely limited with regard to the concept of causality […] can give us no information whatever.”
(TPJ: pp. 260)
Hence, to reiterate, determinatively, for the determining power of judgment, we can have no proof of God. In taking “God” and the whole system of modes inhering in God determinatively as objective principles then, will only lead to endless contradictions with other systems of thought that establishes itself similarly and through reason. Antinomies between views will necessarily arise. There will surely be a conflict in the legislation of reason for,
“reason insofar as it has to do with nature… can [always] be grounded on laws which are in part prescribed a priori to nature by the understanding itself, and which can be […] extended beyond what can be forseen by empirical determinations in experience.”
(TPJ: pp. 258)
Hence, anyone who takes reason as constitutive objective principles can justify their system of views through reason but they can never prove its actuality. Thus, what Spinoza has done in attempting to understand a final cause in nature (which is the nature of our reason to do so) is not wrong if it is taken just as a regulative principle of our reflecting power of judgment for nature itself cannot provide us with any explanatory ground why things are as they are i.e. the generation of organized beings (TPJ pp. 260) and we as rational beings who inhere faculties of reason (and its autonomy) and understanding will always sought to piece a coherent comprehension of nature. Thus, Spinoza’s philosophical system maybe salvaged if it is taken as mere maxims of reason providing us with guidelines for reflection into nature. Although the metaphysical groundings of Spinoza may have begun on the wrong note, if we understand the Spinozistic philosophical system regulatively, it will be a system that can yield us much benefits and insights into the mechanisms and laws of nature we would otherwise not be able to unravel and comprehend.
No comments:
Post a Comment