Example research essay topic: Clear And Distinct Ideas Existence Of God - 1,437 words

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Spinoza And Descartes Spinoza enjoys a widespread reputation as the modern philosopher who makes the most thorough going and principled attack on teleology. Unlike Descartes who faint heartedly limits his attack on final causation to the question of its usefulness in physics, Spinoza boldly pushes further, or so the story goes, and denies the legitimacy of all teleological explanation, even with respect to God. Spinoza rejects final causation in physics and theology, as well as he rejects teleological explanations of human actions. That is, he denies that human actions are goal directed. Of course, Spinoza frequently does talk as if human action can be understood teleological ly, but he is inconsistent to do so. What is more interesting, in talking this way he is disloyal to some of his most important insights into the nature thought insights which are both largely correct and incompatible with teleological explanations of human action.

Rene Descartes brought the concept of idea into a central place in epistemology. Benedictus de Spinoza-made use of the same term idea, but had an entirely different view concerning the nature of ideas. Whereas Descartes thought that ideas are passive, Spinoza had the opposite view according to which ideas are active. Descartes thought that the human mind is capable of two kinds of performances-actions and passions.

There are two faculties in the mind performing the operations. One is called the intellect and the other is called will. Intellect is capable of passive operations only; it is totally passive. Conversely, will is active. The two faculties and their two separate domains of performances are Descartes link to ideas and judgments; he calls the passive operations of the intellect by the term idea and leaves the term volition to stand for the active operations of the will. A special class of volitions is the class of judgments.

According to Descartes, ideas belong to the passive side of the mind-the intellect-whereas judgments inhabit the active side-the will. Moreover, Descartes thinks that there is a one-way dependence relation between ideas and judgments: it needs ideas to be judgments, but not vice versa. Judgments are made towards ideas; they are acts of assenting and dissenting made towards ideas. Spinoza has a radically different view of ideas than Descartes. He denies that ideas are passive and maintains instead that they are active. Spinozistic ideas are conceptions, not perceptions, because conceptions are active and perceptions passive.

Now, Descartes called ideas passive and one of his terms standing for ideas was perception. It seems, therefore, very straightforward to regard Spinoza as reacting against Descartes. Contrary to Descartes, Spinoza thinks that there are no such things as faculties of intellect and will, only particular acts of mind. Furthermore, the supposed intellect and will are identical. Spinoza says that there is in the mind no volition, that is, affirmation and negation, except that which an idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves.

This seems not to leave room for saying that Spinoza wants to accept Descartes ideas. Of course, Spinoza thinks, disagrees with Descartes, that singular things, including bodies, have causal powers. But this is because he conceives of the relationship of singular things to God very differently than does Descartes. For Spinoza, each singular thing is itself a mode of God. That is to say that they are God, insofar as he is affected by some mode. So the power of each mode is the very power of God himself.

This explains why modes have causal power in virtue of their essences. Gods power is his essence. In his works, Descartes often makes use of the argument that: I have the idea of the perfect: If I did not possess it, I could never know that I am imperfect. Now, whence comes this idea of the perfect?

Not from myself, for I am imperfect, and the perfect cannot arise from the imperfect. Hence it comes from a Perfect Being, that is, from God. Spinoza's main question is: how is perfect happiness possible? Now he could only conceive of perfect peace and happiness on the supposition that all earthly happenings proceed as the necessary consequence of the nature of the absolutely infinite Being; whatever recognizes this and rests lovingly in this knowledge enjoys perfect peace. The aim of life is to attain this knowledge cognition sub specie? ternitatis.

From this opinion, however, it follows necessarily that the individual acts of knowledge proceed in some manner from God's own thought (the soul therefore is no substance), that the nature of the individual soul is an individual instinct towards perfection (coats in suo esse perseverance - in order to preserve the continuity of all self-consciousness), that evil proceeds from a lack of adequate knowledge, that the material is only another side of the spiritual, because otherwise Spinoza would have had to suppose a second source of evil besides imperfect knowledge. The very analysis of the idea of the perfect includes the existence of the perfect being, for just as the valley is included in the idea of a mountain, so also existence is included in the idea of the perfect. (the argument of St. Anselm). (See: Meditations on First Philosophy, V; Discourse on Method, IV. ) Regarding the nature of God, Descartes ascribes to it more or less the same attributes as does traditional Christian theistic thought. In Descartes, however, these attributes assume a different significance and value. God, above all, is absolute substance: the only substance, properly so-called (hence the way is open to the pantheism of Spinoza). An attribute which has great value for Descartes is the veracity of God.

God, the most perfect being, cannot be deceived and cannot deceive. Thus the veracity of God serves as a guarantee for the entire series of clear and distinct ideas. They are true because if they are not true, I, having proved the existence of God, would have to say that He is deceiving by creating a rational creature who is deceived even in the apprehension of clear and distinct ideas. Thus, with the proof of the existence of God, the hypothesis of a malignant genius falls of its own weight. According to Spinoza there are no universal notions. Only that is thinkable which actually exists or will exist at some time.

Further, only the necessary is thinkable. Existence and necessity, however, cannot be deduced from the nature of finite things; we must therefore conceive of a Being (God) necessarily existing and necessarily acting, from which all else follows of necessity. This Being is not the cause but the first principle in the manner of mathematical entities; the things come from it by mathematical sequence, for only in this way, says the philosopher, can the immutability of the first principle be maintained, only thus is a relation of the infinite to the finite thinkable; and only in this way is the unity of nature preserved, without fusing the substance of God with that of finite things. Yet the axion "God = Nature" is valid because the things necessarily following from the Being of God belong in some way to God. Only the Being of God is independent; Spinoza calls this Being alone substance. All things (modi) must be founded in the attributes of God.

This is one approach to Spinozism. Spinoza's philosophy mainly concentrates on the fact that he equates truth with certainty and sees ideas as acts of understanding involving truth. I think that the confusion arises out of bringing Descartes notion of mental activity into play in interpreting Spinoza. Spinozistic ideas can be like Descartes judgments, but they have the property of certainty as an additional element. Spinoza's theory of ideas is drastically different from Descartes theory and in many respects is a reaction against Descartes theory. The activity in Spinozistic idea should not be considered straightforwardly against Descartes theory, but instead it should be considered as involving a complete assurance or certainty.

This would mean that when Spinoza attacks the view that ideas are like dumb pictures on a tablet and argues for their activity, he does not want to change the reference of the term idea from Cartesian ideas to Cartesian judgments. What he wants to do is to attack a theory which construes ideas as mere opinions of imaginations. He wants to argue for a theory which packs certainty into the things that deserve to be called active ideas. Works used: Boucher, Wayne I. : Spinoza in English: a bibliography from the seventeenth century to the present. - 2. Aufl. - Bristol: Themes Press, 2002. Voss, Stephen (ed. ), Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Rene Descartes (OUP, 1993)

Research essay sample on Clear And Distinct Ideas Existence Of God