Speculum Spinozanum, 1677-1977

Siegfried Hessing

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000448900
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Business General

Originally published in 1978. These essays are written by distinguished philosophers from many countries and were published as a homage to Spinoza in the year which marked the three-hundredth anniversary of his death. A special feature of the book is that it includes a recently discovered letter by Spinoza, reproduced for the first time in English and in facsimile, with a commentary. The controversial influence of Spinoza on Freud is discussed, and illustrated by facsimile reproductions of original letters, hitherto unknown to Freudians and Spinozists alike. These letters direct revealing light on some of Freud's attitudes. Important parallels between East and West will also attract the student of Spinoza.

1Psychotherapeutic principles in Spinoza’s Ethics

Walter Bernard, New York

What Spinoza has to say about passion, desire, drive, but above all, about reason and knowledge, undoubtedly belongs to the most profound and sublime, to the most ingenious and richest in thought that has ever been said about these subjects (Ludwig Feuerbach).

In a recently discovered, hitherto unknown, letter of Freud’s (discussed elsewhere in this volume; pp. 223ff.) – originally written 28 June 1931 but discovered in Toronto in 1974 among the literary effects of the late Dr Lothar Bickel – Freud clearly avows Spinoza’s definite influence on him. I quote only the first paragraph here:

I readily admit my dependence on Spinoza’s doctrine. There was no reason why I should expressly mention his name, since I conceived my hypotheses from the atmosphere created by him, rather than from the study of his work. Moreover I did not seek a philosophical legitimation.

Towards the end of the letter he significantly added: ‘I never claimed priority’ (translated by H. Z. Winnik).

The purpose of quoting from this letter of Freud’s is not to bring up again the question of the extent of Spinoza’s anticipation of Freud, or of his direct or indirect influence on psychoanalysis, and on other psychotherapies or, for that matter, on psychology in general. This has been dealt with in a number of previous investigations,¹ The purpose of quoting Freud’s own words admitting his ‘dependence on Spinoza’s doctrine’ is mainly to draw attention again to the Ethics of Spinoza, as an original rich source of psychological ideas and insights from which many basic principles of the various psychotherapies have been derived whether directly or indirectly. By going back to Spinoza, who is often praised but not often read, psychotherapists as well as laymen are bound to discover new aspects of the psychology of man that they were not aware of before. Spinoza’s psychology is not antiquated; it is still a part of modern psychology. It was above all his influence, as was shown by this writer, that was most important in shaping the rise of modern scientific psychology.² His classical study of the affects was incorporated verbatim in Johannes – Muller’s epoch-making Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen (1834–40). Spinoza’s timelessness is due to the fact that he dealt with the inner dynamics of the invariant emotional life of man and with the constants of human nature.

His psychological principles therefore have validity and relevance at all times, but they may perhaps be more appealing today, especially in conjunction with his philosophical insights. This because our modern age, troubled by anxiety (the danger of a nuclear war), by the loss of faith in both religion and in science, and by the breakdown of some long-established cultural and social institutions is markedly characterized by ‘anomie, amorality, anhedonia, rootlessness, emptiness, hopelessness, the lack of something to believe in and to be devoted to’.³ Hence its great need to find its bearings again; hence its search for self-knowledge, self-fulfilment, finding meaning in life and in the cosmic totality. Witness the growth – in the USA especially – of the ‘human potential’ movement, of the encounter groups, the search for gurus and the study of the mystics, especially those of the Orient. Many people are thus troubled by the so-called ‘existential question’. They feel a great need for the healing of their minds, for the ordering of their distraught emotions, for the therapy of their souls. So they flock now in great numbers to the new specialists in salvation, to the psychologists and psychiatrists, which seems to justify the sociologist Philip Rieff’s remark that ‘therapeutic theory is to modern culture what theology and philosophy were to systems of culture preceding our own’;⁴ an assertion he later elaborated in his own book with the significant title The Triumph of the Therapeutic.⁵ It is clear, at any rate, that the vast majority of those who now go for therapy are not really sick with one of the typical, clinical neuroses. Their neurotic disorders are of a more general type, indicative of the general malaise of the age, and are thus often referred to as ‘existential neuroses’. Chessick, in his book Why Psychotherapists Fail,⁶ reports that at present many patients bring up problems relating to life’s absurdity and lack of meaning. He also remarks that especially ‘near the end of therapy patients often bring up questions that are basically philosophical and that cannot be approached by the method of science or psychotherapy’, and for this reason he recommends a knowledge of philosophy as an invaluable diagnostic and therapeutic tool. Carl Jung, Victor Frankl and others have also emphasized man’s unfulfilled philosophic and spiritual needs that must be considered in any successful therapy.

The philosophy of Spinoza which successfully integrates the psychologically therapeutic with the meaningfully philosophic seems to be singularly relevant to meet the present psychological and spiritual needs. His Ethics endeavours to lead man from an understanding of himself and the nature of his emotions to a lofty vision of his place in the cosmos and of his unitive relationship to the totality of Being, to the infinity and eternity of the One and All which he called ‘God or Nature’. Many illustrious minds,⁷ as well as a far greater number of unknown, ordinary people, have been profoundly moved by his psychology and philosophy, which they have found deeply satisfying, both intellectually and emotionally. The narrow scope of this article, however, allows only occasional reference to some of the philosophical ideas of Spinoza, since it will deal primarily with his theory of emotions, and even here, only limited aspects of his theory can be presented in order to arrive at the formulation of some important psychotherapeutic principles. These principles, as given here, were either stated directly by Spinoza or were extrapolated from his general psychology of man and his emotions.

In the field of psychology, Spinoza was the first clearly to state the principle of psychic determinism, the sine qua non for the scientific investigation of all mental and emotional events. But to reason scientifically one must be sure of the starting point of the logical process, the basic assumptions, which must be clear, simple, and in full agreement with experience. The starting point in psychology is the biological law of survival, of self-preservation, the conatus in man which is the endeavour to preserve himself, to continue his existence, for ‘everything in so far as it is in itself endeavours to persist in its being’ (III, 6).⁸ For Spinoza, the law of self-preservation is not so much a matter of experience as the logical determinant of the given premise, i.e. that an existing force – in this case, the complex force of life called organism – will continue to exist ‘with the same force with which it began to exist’ (IV, Preface). In other words, self-preservation is simply another instance of the general law of inertia, applying to all states of being or forces in nature, according to which anything in a state of rest or motion will continue in its present state until destroyed or changed in its direction by another stronger force. This force of self-preservation is partly expressed automatically and unconsciously by the organism’s vegetative and autonomic functioning -determined overall by homeostasis, the self-regulatory tendency of the body to maintain its inner balance – and partly by the organism’s more or less conscious activity in response to the various needs, wants, drives, tensions that arise concomitantly with life’s ongoing processes: the processes of continuous adaptation and adjustment to the incessant metabolic changes going on within, and to the stimulation and challenges of the environment forces impinging on the organism without. These continuous stresses and strains as well as the pleasurable sensations and stimulations become conscious in various degrees as a constant state of desire, which is the counterpart of the overall conatus, the body’s endeavour to maintain itself. Hence the significance of Spinoza’s statement that ‘desire is the very essence of man’, which hence determines man to respond and react to the continuous processes within and to their interaction with the events without.

Desire is not merely directed towards need-reduction in order to bring relief, satisfaction and pleasure. Pleasure is sought for its own sake, since the experience of pleasure or the recollection of it is ‘self-reinforcing’, and hence arouses the desire to attain it, to prolong it, and if possible, to increase it. Pain and pleasure are thus the concomitant factors of desire, and Spinoza calls these three the ‘primary emotions’; and from these three he then derives with penetrating logic, insight and clarity all the other principal emotions, such as love, hate, joy, fear, hope, envy, pride, and many others, the explanation and analysis of which, and the way reason and understanding can confront them, constitute the main subject matter of the last three parts of the Ethics.

All emotions are thus basically defined in terms of pain and pleasure with the necessary cognitive reference added of who or what is the cause of the pain or pleasure, or of the admixture of both. Some of the emotions are defined quite generally because of their wide scope. Thus love is defined as ‘pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause’, and hate, its anti-pode, as ‘pain accompanied by the idea of an internal cause’. Notice that the idea of love (or of hate) is universally applicable. In the case of love, for example, it includes the love of things as well as the love of people. Whether we love food, art, music, money, sport, or friends, wife, husband or child, the type of pleasure, to be sure, and the consequent attachment will differ, but essentially it is a kind of pleasure accompanied and aroused by the idea of the ‘object of our love’, of who or what causes it. From which it also follows that love is primarily egoistic pleasure (or serving personal interests), and the assumed ‘altruism’ in love follows secondarily, namely, from the desire to cherish and preserve the thing we love. Consequently, when the pleasure, the interest, the motivation in love disappears, then the love for the thing or person likewise disappears. Motivation – the motive to care, to respond, to do – must always spring from within, from the person’s experience of things or people as they affect his pleasure, his welfare, his social status, his pride, in short, his egoistic interests, or as they affect the welfare and interests of those who are close to him and are thus drawn within the orbit of his own ego-interests. There must always be some sort of ‘ego-involvement’. Even the most idealistic motivation for a cause must come from within, from the ego, from the feelings and emotions of the person, since he has made the cause ‘his own’. And like other attachments, idealistic motivations, too, change for a variety of personal reasons, and thus ideals, too, are frequently ‘disowned’ and abandoned.

Spinoza’s analysis of the emotions, based as it is on the pleasure-pain principle (cf. also Freud) brings us to the important insight – often denied by well-meaning moralists – of the fundamental self-concern of man, derived from the natural, and biologically necessary, self-reference of his feelings and emotions which, in turn, determine his actions, his attachments and aversions, his likes and dislikes. Love interests are essentially self-interests. If we no longer take pleasure in the company of a person, or he no longer serves our interests, we become indifferent in various degrees and our love diminishes. Similarly, if we fail to be pleasurable, pleasant, kind, helpful, considerate to others, their concern for us will vanish. What basic insight that should give us for our inter-personal relationships should be rather obvious, yet that insight is strangely lacking among many people. They frequently demand love, affection, loyalty, instead of exerting themselves to earn it, or they feel they have a right to expect love, friendship, loyalty, gratitude for past favours performed (‘What have you done for me lately?, a cynical joke has it), not realizing that ego-interests change and attractions wane, that new interests and pleasures frequently displace the old ones to the point where the old love attachments are abandoned. This realization of the essential egoistic nature of man – always coupled with the honest recognition of one’s own egoism – can help us relate realistically to other people and can prevent and attenuate many heartaches and traumas, caused by estrangements, abandonment and betrayal, and the consequent bitter disappointments and disillusionments. The other side of the coin is the denial of our own basic egoistic rights by other people. Many a therapist has had the frequent task of strengthening the self-regard, and self-concern of his patients against the dominance of other members of the family – usually father or mother – who consciously or unconsciously would deny them the right to lead their own lives and to follow their own interests by appealing to their moralistic filial duties and by demanding an excessive amount of devotion. Here the patient must learn to assert himself against the others, and to realize that he has just as much a duty to himself and to his own interests, as others have to theirs, ‘for virtue is nothing else than to act according to the laws of one’s own nature’ (IV, 18).

Thus the first therapeutic principle, though not directly referred to by Spinoza, can easily be distilled from his overall study of the emotions. It may be stated as the Principle of the basic right and self-concern of every organism:

I. A clearer understanding of the natural egoistic aspect of human nature, of the basic self-concern of everyone – including, of course, ourselves – will lessen our disappointments and disillusionments in people, will prevent us from feeling self-righteous, and will diminish our criticisms, scorn, hatred and contempt of others. While thus allowing for the rights of others, we shall also insist on our own rights, to live our own authentic lives, not controlled or dominated by others.

Most of the other therapeutic principles which Spinoza calls ‘the remedies for the emotions’ he himself summarizes in Part V, entitled ‘The Power of the Intellect’, especially in the Note to Proposition 20. One of the important principles emerges almost naturally from the affective-cognitive nature of each emotion. Since the affective disturbance is connected with the cognitive idea of an external cause (cf. Freud: ‘The repressed complex consists of a libidinal cathexis and an ideational content.’⁹), it is clear that if we could separate conceptually the effect from its cause, it would lose its anchoring support and very likely dissolve and disappear. This Principle of the Disassociation of the Emotion from its cause is clearly stated in V, Prop. 3

II. If we remove – [the] emotion from the thought of an external cause and unite it to other thoughts, the love or hatred towards the external cause, as well as waverings of the mind which arise from these emotions, are destroyed.

We know, of course – to give a simple example – that hatred of a person assumed to be the cause of some injury to us disappears when we learn that he was not the cause of that injury, or perhaps only the unwilling cause of it. Spinoza urges us here to unite the cause of hatred, fear, etc., to other true thoughts. One obvious and often used remedy is to view the cause from a higher level by seeing the specific cause as an instance of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Frontispiece
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Pathfinders pointing the rare way for pathseekers
• Prologue with Spinozana – parallels via East and West
• 1 Psychotherapeutic principles in Spinoza’s Ethics
• 2 On relationships between psychoanalysis and a dynamic psychology
• 3 Necessity and freedom – reflections on texts by Spinoza
• 4 Spinoza and the Kabbalah
• 5 Interpreting Spinoza: a paradigm for historical work
• 6 Spinoza – as an expositor of Descartes
• 7 Spinoza – my paean
• 8 Is Spinoza an ethical naturalist?
• 9 Reality or perfection
• 10 Spinoza – as Europe’s answer to China
• 11 Individuality and society in Spinoza’s mind
• 12 The cosmic creed and Spinoza’s third mode of knowledge
• 13 Finite and infinite in Spinoza’s system
• 14 L’Écho de Spinoza dans la littérature néerlandaise
• 15 Freud’s relation with Spinoza
• 16 Proton axioma kai proton pseudos
• 17 The logical and experiential roots of Spinoza’s mysticism – an answer to Jon Wetlesen
• 18 Spinoza and Chuang-Tzu
• 19 On the infinity of Spinoza’s attributes
• 20 Über die Staatslehre Spinozas
• 21 Femmes et serviteurs dans la Démocratie spinoziste
• 22 Spinoza and Christian thought: a challenge
• 23 Spinoza and ecology
• 24 Letter from Spinoza to Lodewijk Meyer, 26 July 1663
• 25 Spinoza et la révélation philosophique
• 26 Spinozism and Japan
• 27 La méthode et le donné
• 28 The Spinoza houses at Rijnsburg and The Hague
• 29 Body awareness as a gateway to eternity: a note on the mysticism of Spinoza and its affinity to Buddhist meditation
• 30 On translating Spinoza
• 31 Spinoza – the outsider
• 32 Spinoza et l’état des Hébreux
• Epilogue – ban invalid after death
• Index