01. Spinoza's path to philosophy: What could give us everlasting joy? (Part 1)

Hi, welcome to Spinoza and Raveled. I'm Michael Gottlieb and I teach Spinoza at New York University. Hi, I'm Claire Carlow and I teach Spinoza at King's College London. In this podcast, we're going to be unraveling Spinoza's philosophy line by line. We'll be taking it slowly, reading his words, listening to what Spinoza has to teach us. In this first episode, we'll meet Spinoza. And we're going to be doing it by reading the very beginning of one of the first things he wrote. A book with the thrilling concise title of "Treaties on the Emendation of the Intellect" and on the way by which it is directed towards the true knowledge of things. And this little book actually starts with a very moving autobiographical description by Spinoza of his inner struggles about turning to philosophy for the sake of seeking joy and the psychological difficulties he encountered when deciding to embark on this journey. We'll be reading three passages where Spinoza says that what he really wants is lasting joy, but he worries and wonders about whether this is even attainable. So, Michael, how long have you been reading Spinoza for? Well, I actually began reading Spinoza, say about 27 years ago. I was, yeah, it's been a while. It was when I was doing my PhD. Actually, I started doing my PhD at Indiana University. And I kind of had to encounter Spinoza. I had actually been a little bit averse to reading Spinoza beforehand. Yeah, because I was raised as a religious Jew and Spinoza was known to be this heretic. But I came to really read Spinoza as I kind of had to come to read it for my PhD dissertation, which was on Moses Mendelssohn and a lot of it had to do with his reading of Spinoza. So, I figured, well, I have to read Spinoza myself. I took a course with Professor Paul Eisenberg and I kind of got hooked then with Spinoza. And I recall one time when I was, after we had a session, a reading class with Professor Eisenberg, I was walking through the streets of Indiana and I had the sensation of something shifting that I really kind of was understanding something different. Hume had said, "The scales feel from my eyes," and I kind of felt like that. And that was the beginning of my encounter with Spinoza. Wow, like I wrote to Damascus moments. Yeah, almost. Exactly. Wow, wow. And what about you? Well, I think it's actually a similar number of years ago. Yeah, I was also at university in Cambridge and I was in my third year. And so I studied Spinoza as part of my philosophy degree. And yeah, I just fell in love with Spinoza then. I was lucky to have an amazing teacher, so the person who taught me Spinoza was Susan James, who's now a good friend of mine and she's an amazing Spinoza scholar. And she taught it really well. And I do think, well, one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast is you kind of need help getting to grips with Spinoza because it's not so easy to just open the ethics and dive into it. So yeah, 20, I don't know, 28 years ago or something. And I have been reading him, you know, I wouldn't say nonstop ever since then. But yeah, quite a lot since then. And what do you, what do you love about Spinoza? Well, I guess for me the way he writes about the emotions in a way that I find really really helpful. So he's got a really, I think, insightful account of what human emotions are. He sees humans as very much emotional beings. And I guess that's his starting point. And he thinks that, yeah, it's helpful to understand our emotions. And other philosophers say that too. But I don't think that other philosophers have actually then helped me do that, you know. So when I read Spinoza, I feel like I'm in this often feel like I'm in this kind of calmer space where maybe a more contemplative space where it's possible to see things a bit more clearly than in my ordinary life. And yeah, to be honest, there aren't that many other philosophers here. I feel actually genuinely helped me to live. I mean, there's many other philosophers I enjoy reading and I've learned a lot from. But with Spinoza, there is something special there. And I think it's amazing that even though he's, you know, this man from the 17th century and I'm a woman in the 21st century, the way he understood his experience in the world actually helps me to understand my experience in my world. And yeah, that's pretty amazing. How about you? What do you most love about Spinoza? Yeah, well, I think we're very much on the same page here and I think that's also why we had this idea of doing this podcast because, yeah, people would ask me, who's your favorite philosopher? And I would say, well, you know, there's something to learn from all of them. And then at some point I realized my answer became Spinoza. It's clearly Spinoza. And I felt that what's amazing about Spinoza is that once he's the most abstract, it seems to be the most abstract philosopher. The most one really in some sense, one of the most difficult philosophers. That seems the most remote from life. But actually, he's actually the closest to life. He's the one who describes my experience the best. And I think like what you're saying, absolutely, the emotions in part three is where it really kind of gets cashed out. Part three of the ethics is where it really gets cashed out. And I think he really is kind of providing a pathway to a kind of awakening, a kind of enlightenment. And I think that's why I'm also so excited to share this. Yeah, so, okay, so, well, I mean, this is episode one of the show. And we're going to start off where we think Spinoza started in a sense. And that's at the beginning of what's probably his very first book, the first book he wrote. It's called The Treaties on the Immundation of the Intellect. And Spinoza was like 28, 29 years old when he wrote it. And he wrote it, I think, because it was so important to him to share his philosophical vision with other people. He wanted to bring other people with him on his philosophical journey. And we'll see, he says this. He says that this is really important to him. He doesn't just want to do it all alone. So this is where we're going to start. I mean, I think it's safe to say, Michael, that this is not Spinoza's most famous work. Right, absolutely. And that would be the ethics. And in second place, I would say the theological political treaties, which was his work on religion and politics. But we're going to start reading the ethics in a few episodes. But I think the opening to The Treaties on the Immundation of the Intellect, I really love it. Because it's like the one place where Spinoza really talks about himself in a very personal way. And I think it makes it really accessible. It's a really great way into Spinoza. So much of Spinoza is this geometrical account of definitions and axioms that we're going to be getting into and help clarify for the audience. But I find this a very charming work because it's so real. It's so close to life. It's so relatable. And that's why when I teach, I always begin with this piece. So when I teach Spinoza. All right, so I'm just going to read the first sentence. And it's quite a long one. Here goes. "After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile. And I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except in so far as my mind was moved by them. I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself. And which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected. Whether there was something which once found and acquired would continuously give me the greatest joy to eternity." All right. There's a lot in this, isn't there? But he begins by saying, "After experience had taught me that all the things that occur in ordinary life are empty and futile. What kind of experience do you think he's getting at here, Michael?" Well, I love that he starts with experience, with his personal experience. And again, I think really it all comes down to experience when we're reading Spinoza and kind of confirming his teachings in our own experience. He begins with this, you know, it sounds kind of pessimistic, right? He learns that everything which is regularly occurs in ordinary life are empty and futile. And then he talks about an emotion that he felt that this precipitated. He said he saw that all the things that were the cause or object of my fear. So the overarching emotion he's describing is something that we can all relate to is fear. And he had a very good reason to experience fear. And maybe this is a good time just to say a little bit about his family background and what his experience was leading up to the time when he wrote this. So Spinoza, his grandfather had been a Marano and Maranos were Portuguese and Spanish Jews who under the pressure of the Inquisition converged Christianity but continued to practice Judaism and secret. And his grandfather Isaac made his way to Amsterdam where Jews could practice Judaism openly because Holland accepted Jews at that time. So he was born in 1632. His father was Miguel, his mother was Hannah Espinoza and he was given the name Baruch in Hebrew or a bento in Portuguese which means blessed. He was the fourth of five children and his father was this successful merchant and a respected member of the Amsterdam Jewish community. Already when he was six years old, things started to go wrong, things started to go off. His mother Hannah died and his father remarried a woman named Esther. In 1646, so he's now around 14, he has to leave school. He can't continue to hire education because he has to help out in the family business. He has to help his father with his merchant business. Then the tragedy just continues. It just continues to accelerate. 1649, his older brother Isaac died. 1650 a year later, his older sister Miriam died. And in 1654, so now you can see he's about 22 years old, his father and his stepmother both died. So within this very short period of time, he had experiences unbelievable tragedy. He became the head of the family. He was the oldest son who was still alive. But his father's business was in debt and he inherited the debt, which was obviously a very, very stressful thing at the time. And then in 1656, he was harboring religious doubts and at 1656, the Amsterdam Jewish community ex-communicated him with one of the harshest ex-communications that we have from the time. No Jew, we was allowed to do business with him, talk to him or even be in his presence. So he didn't have an easy life and he had very good reason to feel fear and to have a sense that the things which most people are pursuing, most people are valuing, that there's something empty in them. And he's looking for, you know, I think kind of a stronger basis of happiness that wouldn't be dependent on circumstances because his were so challenging. Yeah, I mean, he's, I mean, it's in a way he's describing something very familiar, just human suffering, a kind of human suffering where just hearing you talk about all the loss, all the personal loss he suffered, you know, losing his mother when he was six and then his siblings and then his father. And this is not something that Spinoza really talks about directly. He doesn't talk much about attachment to other people, but I can't help think that that's in the background here when he's talking about wanting something that lasts, something that will give him joy to eternity. And perhaps there's a sense of, you know, the transience of human attachments and human happiness that's maybe that's partly what's made. I don't want to say this is all about Spinoza's own psychology. I think it's much more that he's speaking from a human experience that we can all relate to, but that yeah, he's looking, as you say, for something that will last. And the anxiety, I think, I mean, he uses the word fear, but I think anxiety is also a good one. It's not just fear of specific things, but that kind of sense of unrest and unease that I think we humans often find ourselves experiencing as part of what he's addressing. Yeah, absolutely. At the same time, though, we wouldn't want to portray Spinoza as if he was some kind of recluse or some kind of person who wasn't connected to other people. Friendship was a very, very important thing to him. He had a whole circle of people and he was a very sociable person. Yes. And he also talks about friendship and he talks about community. So I think he also recognizes that the value of these things. Yes, of course. Yeah. So one thing that's really striking here is a kind of insight that Spinoza describes. He said he saw that all the things that were causing him fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves except in so far as my mind was moved by them. He's saying that it's not actually the things out there in the world that are the problem. It's something to do with the way those things out there in the world make us feel or something to do with the way we perceive them. I mean, is that a surprising thing to hear someone say, do you think? I think for most people it is. As I think most people are trying to get their happiness from external things. They want to arrange the world in a particular way in a way that will most generate their own happiness. Yes. And Spinoza is saying you really can't rely on that. The world is very unpredictable. You can't control it. And I think this is a real kind of stoic theme in Spinoza that really it's our own mind. It's our reactions. That's what we have more control over. And our happiness is really kind of located in our own minds. And if we can really form our own minds and align our own minds with truth, then we have a much more ability to attain in a kind of consistent happiness. He thinks that that gives us much more power and joy. And it's kind of a more direct route rather than trying to arrange the world in a particular way. So that my mind will be happy because all our happiness really only exists in our own mind. Why not work with the mind directly and form the mind and cultivate that happiness within our mind directly. Cut out the middle man. It sounds a bit like meditation or Buddhism or something. Well, I know you've also written about possible Indic influences on Spinoza and maybe we'll get to that at some point. So anyway, yeah, where he gets to at the end of this first sentence is he tells us that he's made this resolution. He's resolved to find out whether there's something that would be the true good. So the resolution is really to kind of set off on this philosophical quest, isn't it, that he's going to try to discover if there is a true good. And he thinks that something that's truly good is something that's going to last. It's not going to be fluctuating. It's going to continuously give me the greatest joy to eternity. For the high bar of the year. And I loved the fact that Spinoza mentions eternity right here, this very first sentence of his first attempt to communicate his philosophy because I mean, no spoilers, but when we get to the end, the very end of the ethics, eternity and the idea of some kind of eternal life or eternal happiness, eternal joy, that's where he's heading actually, it's a sort of almost, well, potentially an almost religious vision of the highest human good. So I loved the fact that he kind of slips that in. He goes from suffering at the beginning of the sentence to joy to eternity at the end of the sentence. Yeah, and he uses very religious language there, which, you know, maybe we'll get to in five years or something, but also he's also not talking about what I also find very interesting here is he's not talking about a mild joy. He's talking about the greatest joy, right? There's he actually talking about a kind of very profound experience of joy. It's not that, okay, I'll be okay, I'll go along and you know, help me, you know, kind of relatively happy and, you know, feel he's talking about this profound sense of joy that will be experienced continuously. Yeah, right. So this is quite a goal. And that's really, yeah, that's, and that's really important because he's not just saying, "I don't want to suffer anymore." He's saying, "I want joy." And maybe that's a little bit of a different emphasis from, I mean, I mentioned Buddhism earlier, but Buddhism tends to begin with suffering and say, "How do we get out of suffering?" And Spinoza is also interested in that question, but then it's not just about getting out of suffering, it's about finding joy. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of when Spinoza talks about his theory of the emotions, and there's a lot of very strong profound psychological insights there, and Spinoza has been kind of connected to psychotherapy. And I think Freud talked about Spinoza also, but what's interesting is that it's very, very different from classical psychotherapy in the sense that Freud I talked about trying to get us to a regular level of unhappiness. Yes. So the idea is that we can have fun. Or unhappiness. Yeah. Right, exactly. So it's like a really kind of like a disease model. And then you can kind of hopefully get us to a place where we just experience every day unhappiness. And Spinoza is not satisfied with that. No. He's trying to get us not just out of that unhappiness, but to joy. In that sense he kind of seems almost like I anticipate some of the movement in kind of positive psychology, which is looking what positively actually leads to joy, not just how do we remove unhappiness. Interesting. Should we go on to the next sentence? Yes. Right. Yeah, for sure. So I say that I resolved at last for at first glance it seemed ill-advised to be willing to lose something certain for something then uncertain. I saw of course the advantages that honor and wealth bring, and that I would be forced to abstain from seeking them if I wished to devote myself seriously to something new and different. And if by chance the greatest happiness lay in them, I saw that I should have to do without it. But if it did not lie in them, and I devoted my energies only to acquiring them, then I would equally go without it. So, I mean, it sounds like Spinoza is taking a little while here to get started on his philosophical projects. And he starts off making this big resolution. I'm going to seek the true good. And now he seems to be, you know, fumbling around a bit. What's going on? What's he trying to tell us here? Well, again, this is again something I really, really love in Spinoza. You know, he says that I resolved at last. This was a process, right? It wasn't so easy to embark on this search for a different way of finding happiness. And I think we can all relate to that. I think we can all relate to the draw of trying to pursue what everyone says is worth pursuing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's your experience with that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think well, well, there's lots of things. I mean, it partly reminds me of Augustine's Confessions, where Augustine describes his process of conversion, where he's trying to become a Christian, and he describes how part of him wants to devote himself to God. But another part of him wants to just enjoy, you know, the pleasures of the flesh, basically, and sort of enjoy all the things that he thinks he might have to give up, if he really gets serious about his spiritual life. And so there's something of that sense of conflict there, and being torn, and not being whole-hearted. There's also something that strikes me. In this sentence, Spinoza is talking about certainty and uncertainty. You know, he's not yet sure whether there is such a thing as a true good. He's just decided to try and find out whether there is something like this, but he doesn't know if it exists. And that uncertainty about whether this is even attainable is really causing him difficulty, because, you know, it's kind of difficult to motivate himself to really go through it, when he's not even sure that it's going to lead him anywhere, that he's going to find what he's seeking, whereas on the other hand, I guess it's continuing this theme about, you know, watch reliable. Even if there's something unsatisfying about conventional values, he at least has some experience that the, you know, there's some satisfaction to be gained, and it's nice to do well in business, and earn a bit of money, and it's nice to enjoy a pleasant meal, and you feel good when somebody gives you a compliment, and you know, shows you respect, or whatever. So, you know, he has had experience of these transient goods, and even though, yeah, they haven't delivered him what he's hoping for, you know, there's something there at least. Where is this other idea of the true good? He just doesn't know if it's out there, and so certainty and uncertainty is, I think, an important theme, and it links, as well. I mean, for me, in the background here is Descartes. So Descartes was a really influential kind of new philosopher that everyone was inspired by, and talking about at this time, and at the beginning of Descartes' meditations, I think Spinozes may be influenced by the way Descartes begins, because Descartes begins by questioning everything he's been taught, not so much everything he's been taught to value, but everything he's been taught to just accept is true. And at the beginning of this text, Spinozes offering a kind of, bit of a spin on that, because he's saying, well, I'm starting to question everything I've been taught to value. But then the other big theme of Descartes' philosophical project, famously, is the search for certainty. He's been taught to believe all these things, but he starts to question whether any of that's really certain, and he's pursuing certainty and trying to lay the foundations for knowledge and for philosophical knowledge, scientific knowledge. And so, in a way, Spinozes quest for certainty, I think, it's echoing what Descartes doing, but again, it's certainty about something else. It's not so much certainty about what we can know for sure. It's certainty about the good, and whether the good exists, and whether real happiness is attainable, so it's much more ethical, and you could say existential kind of project than Descartes, but it's hitting those same sort of beats of radical questioning and certainty and uncertainty. 100%, and I think that's why when people focus just on the first and the second part of the ethics, they kind of lose the point, because the book is called Ethics. It's really about how to live. It's not metaphysics. It's not epistemology. This is a book that it's a very practical book. It's the most practical philosophy book that I'm familiar with. And yeah, absolutely. I think I know I can certainly relate to this in the high school that I went to. The best thing you could do was maybe to be a doctor, a physician, earn a good living, get into a good college, and to pursue something very different was suspect. It was questionable. What are you doing with your life? And I think for Spinoza, at least at this point, he seems to be thinking that, well, I have to decide one or the other. And if I go for this highest good, I may be left with nothing, because it may be a phantom. And maybe it just makes sense. Go for the conventional goods. Go for honor. Go for wealth. They're not fully satisfying, but at least it's something. And maybe that makes sense. That might be the more rational line to pursue. And I think that's very relatable. I think he's describing a sense of risk. He's taking a risk here. And there is something to lose. In fact, there's a lot to lose. He stands to lose the respect and esteem of other people. It's something that I think is most gripping for him. He's not a carrot. He's actually less like Augustine. You don't get a sense that Spinoza's really attached to central pleasure or money or wealth. But you do get a sense that it does matter to him that he's esteemed. So what he calls honor, his standing. In a way, it connects to what you were saying earlier about the fact that Spinoza's like a sociable person. He's talking about how to be a human being in community in the world. He's not saying that the philosophical path is about going and being a hermit and cutting yourself off from society. So it matters to him to be with other people and to be judged well and so on. In this passage, he doesn't mention pleasure, but he does mention honor and wealth. And he had been and maybe those two are connected to each other. I think a lot of people today look for money to be respected. A lot of it's not just about being able to buy a lot of things. It's about social status. Especially if you come from a merchant family, then being successful is also wrapped up with making money, isn't it? Absolutely. And that hasn't changed that much today. Okay, so should we continue with one more paragraph? So I wondered whether perhaps it will be possible to reach my new goal or at least the certainty of attaining it without changing the conduct and plan of life which I shared with other men. Often I tried this but in vain. For most things which present themselves in life and which to judge from their actions men think to be the highest good may be reduced to these three wealth, honor and sensual pleasure. The mind is so distracted by these three that it cannot give the slightest thought to any other good. Yeah, powerful. All right, so Spinoza here is. This is really kind of Harkin's back to Aristotle and maybe hasn't changed that much today where he talks about what are the conventional things that people value most? And he has what I call the big three, wealth, sensual pleasure, sens pleasures, and honor. And I think it's good to unpack honor a little bit because I think there's different dimensions to honor. On the one hand, there's the idea of being famous, right? There's a lot of people who know you who you don't necessarily know. You know, there's getting awards and good exam results. And then there is social status. What's your standing in relation to other people? And I think as philosophers, you know, honor is something that may be the thing that most attract us. Absolutely. There's a lot of wealth and sensual pleasure, but honor there certainly is. So what is he saying here about what he says that often I tried this but in vain? What do you think? Oh, so he says that he's thinking, well, maybe because of the risk and the uncertainty of attaining his new goal, he's thinking, well, maybe the best thing to do is to just sort of try and have my cake and eat it, have it both ways. So I'm going to pursue the true good, but I don't really want to change my life. Yeah, I'm want to sort of keep hold on to conventional aspects of my life that are giving me wealth, honor and sensual pleasure. Yeah, to try to mitigate the risk of losing those things, but then he says, often I tried this but in vain, so he's trying this, but it's not working out for him. And the reason they're not working out for him is because the mind gets so distracted by these three things. Well, on a sensual pleasure, it gets consumed by them. It gets absorbed in them, and so there's no, there's no time or there's no kind of headspace to start thinking about the true good for as long as he's being distracted. It's a very relatable experience, isn't it, of being distracted, but it's this idea of being pulled away. Yeah, it's being pulled it pulled into things that it shouldn't be pulled into, but the sense of it being really like powerful and he can't resist the distraction. And so for as long as he's being pulled into these other things, he doesn't have the kind of presence of mind or the capacity to actually attend to the true good and pursue it. So basically, he gets to the point where he realizes that he can't just keep going and keep living the way he'd been living before he has to really make some choices and make some changes. It reminds me of a scene from the movie Wall Street. I don't remember if it's the first or the second movie, where one of the characters is getting advice about how to make a lot of money. And he basically says, you have to eat, sleep, and breathe money. You have to be obsessed with it. It has to be like some woman that you're constantly obsessed about. That's the only way to succeed. And I think there's kind of, for a lot of people, pursuing these goods is something which is all-consuming and that the idea is that the only way to really be successful is to really devote yourself single-minded to these things. Otherwise, there's going to be someone else who is better than you, who is more successful than you. And so this is like, you know, I think maybe there may be a kind of certain also, maybe competitive element. Something that strikes me is this mention here of the mind being really distracted. And that connects back to something he said in the first sentence, we read where he says that things aren't good or bad in themselves except as the mind is moved by them. So he's coming back to the sense of the state of the mind and how the mind is affected by things out there in the world and by its relationship to things out there in the world. So yeah, he's pulling it back to this idea of what kind of a mind, what kind of a mind does he need to cultivate to pursue the true goods. And it's like these things are like a bait, you know, it's like the bait of the world. And when you kind of turn and make these things the most important, they just draw you in. It's like we're like a fish to make me the mind is drawn to them, you know, drawn to these things, he gets pulled by them. And the move has to be to kind of he thinks we have to let go of that completely if you want to really kind of work on your own mind. I mean, that seems to be where he ends up here, but as we shall see, this is not this is not the end of the story because it might sound like Spinoza's telling us that actually we need to detach ourselves from worldly things, we need to focus only on the true goods and put all else aside. It sounds like a kind of ascetic path that he's he's laying out here. But it's will he will he remain? Will he just give it up or will he actually end up finding a way to pursue the true good? Well, we'll have to wait to find out. Thanks again for listening to Spinoza Unraveled, produced by Roderie Bynan. This episode is sponsored by Spa, Scarsdale Psychology Associates. With beautiful offices in Scarsdale, New York, Greenwich, Connecticut, Manhattan, and Viatel Therapy, at Spa, you'll be thoughtfully matched with a compassionate therapist. Feel cared for from beginning to end at Scarsdale Psychology Associates. If you would like to read along with us, order a Spinoza reader edited by Edwin Curley, direct from Princeton University Press, and use code Spinoza, all caps for 40% off.