Spinoza - The three kinds of knowledge

Spinoza belongs to an age where they were witnessing the birth of modern science. At that time, Isaac Newton was revolutionizing the undertanding of nature through calculus along with Leibniz. In France, Renée Descartes was building, in solid, foundations of reason and the scientific method, Blaise Pascal was discovering the math behind chance, in politics, Europe was passing through times of war and tormoil. It was an age of changing.

There, in some room, grinding his lenses quietly, was a man. Dark melancholic eyes, curly hair, olive skin, small complexion and ordinary costumes. There was a man beyond any suspicion. But in his mind he was making the most eloquent thoughts. His name was Baruch de Spinoza. Spinoza's family fled from Portugal to Netherlands after the expelling of jews during the reform in catholic countries. He studied very hard and was about to become a rabine, but his ideas were to unberrable revolutionary to the community and he was banished.

Contrary to common sense, Spinoza wasn't much condemned for his writings because his major work "Ethics" was only published posthumously, but mainly for his ideas, his speech. But what this quiet man could've said that made such a impact. First we most try to understand a little his major work "Ethics". The word ethic in greek reffers to a practical side of philosophy, how man can behave in a right manner. So Spinoza tried to explain how someone can behave to attain ataraxia, or peace of mind.

The subtitle of Ethics is "shown by geometric method". When Spinoza wrote his work he chose to demonstrate his philosophy following Euclide's geometric rhetoric. But it does not consist in a work of math, it's the way Spinoza writes it. First he proposes a set o axioms which are proposition which are true without any proof. Then based on these axioms he starts making propositions and proving them. One who aproaches this work may become astonished by its clarity of thought, or, become confused as well.

What Spinoza wanted following the geometric rhetoric was to vanish any doubt from his work, basing his work on a solid base of truths, just like the "castesian building". First, Spinoza discusses the nature of God and how every thing is a direct consequence of his power. He divides the power of God into natura naturans and natura naturata. The former means the act of creation, the later all things which are created. Spinoza says God is the only substance in the universe and that we are modes of God, or, in other words, modifications of Him.

Second, Spinoza tries to explain the nature of ideas. He says that we have two kinds of them, the adequate and the inadequate ideas. The first set of ideas are the inadequate ideas which are the first impressions over an object through our senses. The adequate ideas, on the contrary are ideas made by the use of reason through inadequate ideas. So the inadequate ideas are contingent which means they do not represent the real nature of things because they seem to be chaotic, imprecise. Knowledge based on this kind of ideas are always incorrect as we see things by chance. No surprise Spinoza was appointed later as a early-enlightenment philosopher. For Spinoza reason was the most important thing and he believed that through reason we could understand the nature of God and the more we understand it the more our mind aims perfection thus we become happy. The second kind of ideas are ordered by reason and therefore they are seem as correct and necessary. To understand necessity is the key to Spinoza's philosophy.

Spinoza goes ahead on and says that our afections, our passions are fruits of incorrect thought. And he devotes the great part of his work explaining the various afections and their causes. Like love, hatred, jelousy and so many others. For him, men suffer from these passions because they do not undertand that things occur necessarily. Example, when someone shouts at another one its not because she wanted but because there were a reason which made her do it and that was hidden from her. Well, that's a great problem because, where does free will enter? For Spinoza free will is an inadequate idea.

Then Spinoza defines three kinds of knowledge we can attain. They were called First, Second and Third degrees knowledge. The first kind, or degree, is when someone see things as contingent, happening by chance and thus illusion of free will. By the use of reason we enter the second kind of knowledge, when we perceive things as necessary and eternal. But, that kind of knowledge isn't enough to make us realize the true nature of God, because, being finite, we cannot be infered directly by God who is infinite. God, being infinite, generates infinite modes, which we are part of.

For that reason, Spinoza believes in a knowledge of third kind which intends to know the adequate idea which comes from the essence of things. It's like throwing a candle into the fire, it melts into wax, the candle's gone but in essence it's wax, its essence is preserved. So the third kind talks about our own essence as modes of God in a state of pure perenity, eternity. It's the most mystical thing to do.

Now that I'm coming to the end of my exposition, we can undertand why Spinoza's view made such an impact. Today we may comfortably read Spinoza and find it interesting, but in his time his ideas was too much even for Netherlands which was always a pioneer country in freedom of ideas. Why? Well, the reasons are many, suffice to say that you don't have free will, God does not answer to your prayers, but, instead, He's everywhere; every thing can have a mind and so on. It's not easy, though, even today, to attain the peace of mind Spinoza desired. Because seeing things as necessary we may get more and more sad even, fatalist, or upset. There's nothing we can do in Spinoza's ethic except to use reason more and more. Some people can be sufficiently stoic to take his philosophy as a tenet and apply it to her life, I don't know, but one thing I can tell is, if someone get to the third kind of knowledge he will live his most mystic relationship with the universe and perhaps Spinoza did it.