A Short History Western Philosophy by Johannes Hirschberger

Author:Johannes Hirschberger [Hirschberger, Johannes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781000311457
Google: LWGlDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-23T01:41:04+00:00

(b) Individuality – Freedom – Purpose

Despite this Spinoza has given philosophy some very important concepts and doctrines. The foremost of these was the notion of the absolute necessity of natural laws. The nineteenth century above all adopted it. However, the necessity of natural laws has never been and never can be proved. It is a theory based on nothing more than a blind acceptance of Spinoza. It suited Spinoza to look at nature that way, and there was no metaphysical or other reason behind it. The British have been more realistic on this point. They protested that natural laws could not be strictly demonstrated as laws, they were more like probabilities. Nevertheless Spinoza made a decisive contribution to the idea of causal determination: not only was every event caused – this had always been accepted - but every cause was itself determined by something else. There was thus no free will. Kant re-emphasized the concept of freedom. He introduced it somewhat by the back door, firstly by denying Spinoza's complete causal determination, and secondly by holding that there was such a thing as free causality, that is, an independent beginning of a causal chain. Spinoza could never have admitted such independence because substance itself was responsible for everything. This was in effect the end of all individuality. As Goethe once wrote in a moment of fervour for Spinoza's pantheism (or acosmism, as Hegel called it): 'And a divinity spoke when I thought I was speaking, and when I thought a divinity spoke, it was I myself.' In Spinoza's philosophy, again, there was no purpose, either in man's mind or in nature. Purpose presupposes freedom. And for Spinoza there was no freedom, because he wanted to erect a philosophy of necessity in which everything was strictly controlled. Kant opposed him on this point too. He saw that purpose was indispensable for an intelligent understanding of change in the world. We cannot imagine so much as the tiniest blade of grass coming into existence on a totally mechanical determination. Spinoza, however, had no time for the changeableness of being, for its grades, analogies or modes. His philosophy was violent, uniform, narrow and rigid. As the subtitle of his major work implies, being was to be 'demonstrated on geometrical principles' only.

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