Michael: Alright Kevin, before we dive in, what do you know about Spinoza's Ethics? Kevin: I know it's the book philosophers pretend to have read. And that his main idea was basically 'God is everything, so chill out.' Is that close? Michael: Hilariously close, actually. 'Chill out' is the 300-page conclusion. But the journey to get there is one of the most mind-bending, controversial, and beautiful arguments in all of philosophy. Kevin: I’m ready to have my mind bent. Let’s do it. Michael: We are diving into The Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza. And you're not wrong about the controversy. This book was so radical for its time in the 1670s that it was published only after he died. His own Jewish community in Amsterdam excommunicated him for these ideas, which they considered dangerous heresy. Kevin: Excommunicated? For a philosophy book? The stakes were a little higher than getting a bad review on Amazon, I guess. Michael: Exactly. A friend of his who published similar ideas was actually imprisoned and died. Spinoza knew he was playing with fire. And that's because he wasn't just tweaking a few ideas; he was trying to rebuild our entire understanding of God, reality, and ourselves from the ground up, using pure logic. Kevin: Okay, so where does this grand reconstruction project begin? Michael: It all starts with his most explosive idea, the one that got him into all that trouble. He redefines God.

Kevin: Right, this is the 'God is everything' part. But what does that actually mean? Is this a spiritual 'we are all one' kind of vibe? Michael: That's the poetic version, but Spinoza's approach is much more like a mathematical proof. He calls it his "geometric method." He starts with a few basic definitions and axioms, just like in geometry, and builds his entire universe from there. Kevin: Hold on, you keep saying 'geometric method.' Is he literally writing this like a math textbook? Michael: He is. It's full of propositions, proofs, and scholia—which are like little explanatory notes. It's famously difficult to read, but the core idea is stunningly simple. He starts by defining "Substance." For Spinoza, Substance is that which exists in itself and is conceived through itself. It's the ultimate, self-caused, fundamental stuff of reality. It doesn't depend on anything else to exist. Kevin: Okay, a fundamental reality. I can sort of picture that. Like the foundational code of the universe. Michael: That's a great analogy. Now, here's the killer move. Spinoza proves, through pure logic, that there can only be one Substance. His argument goes something like this: if you had two or more Substances, they would have to be distinguished from each other. They would either have different fundamental properties—what he calls "attributes"—or not. If they have nothing in common, then one couldn't possibly create or affect the other. And if they do have something in common, then they aren't truly independent substances; they're just parts of some larger, more fundamental Substance. Kevin: Whoa. So any way you slice it, you're forced to conclude there's only one ultimate 'thing.' Michael: Exactly. One infinite, self-causing, all-encompassing Substance. And then he gives it a name. He calls it "God, or Nature." Deus sive Natura. Kevin: God or Nature. He uses the terms interchangeably? That feels like the most controversial part. He’s basically saying God isn't some old man with a beard sitting outside the universe, judging us. God is the universe. Michael: Precisely. God is the operating system, not the programmer. God is the laws of physics, the principles of logic, the totality of everything that is, was, and ever will be, all unfolding with logical necessity. There are no miracles, because a miracle would be Nature violating its own laws, which is a logical contradiction. There's no divine plan or purpose, because that would imply God wants something he doesn't already have. Kevin: This is definitely not the Sunday school version. So what are we then? If God is the whole ocean, what are people, trees, and planets? Michael: We are what Spinoza calls "modes." We are modifications of the Substance. We're like individual waves in that infinite ocean. A wave has a temporary, distinct form, but it's never separate from the ocean. It's just the ocean expressing itself in a particular way for a moment. We exist in God and are conceived through God. Without the ocean, the wave is nothing. Kevin: That’s a beautiful image, but it also feels like it erases me as an individual. And I can see why it was seen as atheism. If God is just another word for the laws of physics, then you've effectively gotten rid of God in any meaningful, personal sense. Michael: That was the charge, for sure. But Spinoza would say he wasn't getting rid of God; he was elevating the concept. He thought the idea of a human-like, judgmental God was a projection of our own fears and desires. He wanted a God worthy of a rational mind—an infinite, eternal, perfect system. But you're right, it completely changes the game for what it means to be human. If we're all just modes in this giant, logical system of God/Nature, it leads to a very uncomfortable question about our own lives. Kevin: Yeah, I'm already there. If we're all just waves following the necessary currents of the ocean, are any of our choices actually our own?

Michael: And Spinoza's answer to that is a resounding, unequivocal 'no.' Free will is an illusion. Kevin: Come on. I chose to drink this coffee this morning. I'm choosing to talk into this microphone. It feels incredibly real. How does he explain that away? Michael: He has a brilliant explanation for why it feels so real. He says, "Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined." Kevin: In other words, I know I'm lifting the coffee cup, but I have no idea about the infinite chain of neurological, biological, psychological, and social causes that led to the desire to lift it in the first place. Michael: You've got it. He uses a famous thought experiment. Imagine a stone thrown through the air. If that stone suddenly became conscious, it would think, "I am choosing to fly in this arc. I am striving to land over there." It would be aware of its motion but completely ignorant of the arm that threw it. We are that stone. Kevin: That is a deeply unsettling image. So every thought, every feeling, every action is just another effect in an unbreakable chain of cause and effect that stretches back to the beginning of time? Michael: Yes. Everything unfolds from the necessity of God's nature. This is a thoroughly deterministic universe. Spinoza even applies this to how our minds work. He gives this great example of a soldier and a countryman. They both see the tracks of a horse in the sand. The soldier's mind immediately jumps from the horse tracks to a horseman, and then to the thought of war. The countryman's mind goes from the horse tracks to a plough, and then to a field. Kevin: Because their minds have been conditioned by different experiences. Their train of thought is just a pre-programmed association. Michael: Exactly. There is no "free" thought that jumps in to direct the process. It's all just one idea triggering the next, based on the physical modifications of their bodies and brains. For Spinoza, the mind and body are not two different things. They are the same thing, viewed under two different attributes of God: the attribute of Thought and the attribute of Extension, or the physical world. The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. Kevin: That's the mind-body parallelism. So my thoughts don't cause my body to act, and my body doesn't cause my thoughts. They are two parallel tracks running in perfect sync, because they are both expressions of the same underlying event in God/Nature. Michael: You're a natural Spinozist, Kevin. And this deterministic view is what makes his ethics so unique. Most ethical systems are based on the idea that you can and should choose to do the right thing. But if choice is an illusion, what's the point of ethics? Kevin: Right! If it's all predetermined, why even try to be a good person? I'm going to do what I'm going to do anyway. It feels like a recipe for nihilism or fatalism. Michael: It would be, except Spinoza completely redefines the goal. The point isn't to make the 'right' choice. The point is to understand why no other choice was ever possible. And in that understanding, he argues, lies a new and more powerful kind of freedom.

Kevin: Okay, I'm intrigued. How do you find freedom in a world without choices? That sounds like a contradiction. Michael: For Spinoza, freedom isn't the ability to choose. Freedom is acting according to the necessity of your own nature, rather than being controlled by external causes. The only truly free being is God/Nature, because it's only determined by itself. We, as modes, are constantly being pushed and pulled by external things. Kevin: So we're un-free when we're just reacting to the world around us. Michael: Precisely. And our biggest source of unfreedom is our emotions, or what he calls "passions." A passion—like anger, fear, or obsessive love—is a confused idea where we are being passively controlled by an external object. When someone insults you and you get angry, that person is controlling your emotional state. You are in what Spinoza calls "human bondage." Kevin: I know that feeling. You see the better path, but you're compelled to follow the worse one. You know you shouldn't send that angry email, but you do it anyway. Michael: Spinoza actually quotes the Roman poet Ovid to describe this: "The better path I gaze at and approve, The worse—I follow." That, for him, is the definition of bondage. So, how do you break free? Kevin: Let me guess: with reason? Michael: With reason. He says an emotion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it. The path to freedom is the path of knowledge. He outlines three kinds of knowledge. The first is "imagination"—this is where we get our confused ideas from sensory experience and hearsay. This is the source of all our passions and errors. Kevin: That's most of us, most of the time. Michael: The second kind is "reason." This is where we understand the common properties of things and the logical chains of cause and effect. We start to see the 'why' behind things. The third, and highest, kind is "intuition," which is a direct, immediate grasp of how a particular thing fits into the entire system of God/Nature. Kevin: So the goal is to move from being tossed around by confused feelings to rationally understanding the world. How does that actually help me when I'm furious at someone who cut me off in traffic? Michael: Spinoza's advice would be this: instead of focusing on the person, focus on the causes. Use your reason to understand that this person's action was the necessary result of their genetics, their upbringing, the bad day they were having, the traffic patterns, the design of the car—an infinite chain of causes. When you truly and adequately understand this, the event is no longer a personal affront. It's just a necessary event in the universe. Kevin: And the anger, which is a passion tied to that external person, just... dissolves? Michael: It loses its power over you. It's transformed from a passive suffering into an active understanding. You are no longer a slave to the event; you are a rational observer of it. This is Spinoza's freedom: the power of the intellect to understand the world as it is, a necessary and determined system. Kevin: Wow. That is a huge mental shift. It's not about changing the world, but about achieving a state of mind where the world can't hurt you. What's the ultimate goal of this? What does he call the final state of enlightenment? Michael: He calls it "Blessedness." And it culminates in the most beautiful and mystical part of the book: the "intellectual love of God."

Kevin: 'Intellectual love of God.' That sounds very grand. Is it about worship or prayer? Michael: Not at all. It's an emotion, but it's an active emotion that arises from the highest form of knowledge—that intuitive understanding of the universe. It's the profound joy and peace that comes from grasping the perfect, logical, and necessary order of everything, and seeing your own place within it. You see the whole system, and you love it for its perfection. Kevin: So it's the feeling an astrophysicist might get when they finally understand a law of the cosmos. A kind of awe at the elegance of the system. Michael: That's a perfect modern translation. It's a love completely free from the passions of hope and fear, because you understand that things could not be otherwise. And this leads to his final, brilliant conclusion. He says, "Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself." Kevin: What does that mean? Michael: It means you don't act virtuously in order to get to heaven or achieve happiness. The very act of living rationally, of understanding the world, is happiness. The joy is in the process of understanding, not in some prize at the end. We don't rejoice in it because we control our lusts; on the contrary, because we rejoice in it, we are able to control our lusts. Kevin: That flips the whole script on morality. Good behavior isn't a painful sacrifice for a future reward; it's the natural outcome of a joyful state of mind. So the whole journey of The Ethics is from feeling like a powerless victim of circumstance to becoming a rational, joyful observer of a beautiful, logical system. Michael: That's the path. And Spinoza knew it wasn't easy. His very last sentence in the book is, "But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." Kevin: It's a tough path, but the destination is a kind of unshakable peace. It makes you wonder, what emotion in your own life would lose its power if you truly understood all the causes behind it? Michael: That's a powerful question to sit with. And it’s the core of Spinoza’s challenge to us, even centuries later. We'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Find us on our socials and share what you think. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.