| [ PhilosophyThought ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): limelite (깜찍이중독) 날 짜 (Date): 1999년 5월 7일 금요일 오후 07시 30분 49초 제 목(Title): 백과사전에서의 스피노자 두산세계 백과사전과 Britannica 백과사전에 있는 스피노자에 대한 약력을 올립니다. 백과사전 수준의 지식이라서 얼마나 도움이 되실지... Britannica 사전의 영문 약력은 번역을 해 볼려고도 했으나, 제 실력으로 번역하면 영어 고생시킨다고 화 내실 분들이 많을까봐서(^^) 안했습니다. <Baruch de Spinoza> (1632.11.24~1677.2.21) 네덜란드의 철학자. 암스테르담 출생. 포르투갈계 유대인 상인의 아들로 태어났다. 처음에 유대교단의 학교에서 헤브라이어와 성전(聖典)을 공부하였고, 카바라의 신비사상에도 접하였으나, 졸업 후에는 고전어를 공부하고 인문주의적인 교양을 쌓아 점차 이단적인 서구적 사상으로 기울어졌다. 수학·자연과학도 공부하였고, 데카르트 철학에서 결정적 영향을 받았으며, 이 학설에 의거하여 성전과 조상의 학문을 대담하게 비판하였기 때문에 유대인들의 비위를 거슬려 1656년 끝내 파문선고를 받았다. 유대교 광신자 중에는 그의 암살을 기도하는 자까지 출현하였으므로, 그는 각지를 전전하면서 극도로 고립된 생활을 계속하였다. 그 때문에 오히려 한가한 시간이 생겨 연구생활에 몰두할 수 있게 되어 《신(神)·인간 및 인간의 행복에 관한 짤막한 논문》 《지성 개선론：Tractatus de intellectus emendatione》을 집필하였고, 《데카르트 철학 원리：Renati de Cartes principiorum philosophiae》(1663)를 출판하였다. 63년 폴부르크로 이사하였고, 70년 다시 헤이그로 이사하였다. 73년 하이델베르크대학에서 철학 정교수로 초청하였으나, 사상의 자유와 《에티카(윤리학)》의 완성을 생각하여 이를 거절하였다. 이해에 《신학정치론：Tractatus Theologico-Politicus》을 익명으로 출판하였으나, 이것이 신을 모독하는 책이라고 비난당하는 고초를 겪었다. 이 때문에 그는 15년의 세월을 들여 완성한 주저 《에티카：Ethica in Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata》(75년 완성)를 생전에 출판하는 것이 불가능해졌을 뿐만 아니라, 스피노자 철학 그 자체가 사후 100년 동안 무용지물로 매장되었다. 그는 평생 결혼하지 않았고, 명성과는 인연이 없는 생활을 하였으며, 여가에 렌즈를 갈아서 생활비를 조달하였다. 그는 《국가론：Tractatus politicus》(77)을 마지막 저작으로 남기고 폐결핵으로 죽었다. F.노발리스가 스피노자를 평하여 ‘신에 취한 사람’이라 한 것은 유명한 이야기이며, 스피노자는 “모든 것이 신이다”라고 하는 범신론(汎神論)의 사상을 역설하면서도 죽은 후에까지 유물론자·무신론자로서 두려움의 대상이 되었다. 왜냐하면 그의 신이란 그리스도교적인 인격의 신이 아니고, ‘신은 즉 자연이다’라고 생각하였기 때문이다. 자연에 있어 만물은 신의 형태를 빌린 것이고, 자연을 초월한 곳에 신이 있는 것이 아니다. 이 세상에 있는 개물(個物:個體)은 신의 내적 필연에 의해 존재하는 것이다. 스피노자는 이와 같이 신에서 유래된 인과(因果)의 사슬에 의해 엄밀히 결정되는 필연(必然)의 세계를 말하면서, 인간의 최상의 행복을 추구하려고 한다. 스피노자는 사물에는 자기 존재를 유지하려는 경향(자존성)이 있다고 생각하였으며, 이것을 근거로 정치와 도덕의 사상을 전개하였다. 인간에게 있어 자율적인 이성의 작용이 자존성(自存性)이며, 도덕의 실제 목적은 이성의 작용으로 생기는 희열에 의해서 얻을 수 있다. 이성의 최고 작용은 신과의 필연적인 관계에서, ‘영원한 형상 밑에서’ 사물을 직관하는 것으로서 이것에 따르는 자족감이 바로 ‘신의 지적 사랑’이며, 여기에서 도덕의 최고 이상이 추구되었다. 스피노자 자신은 무신론자·유물론자로 불리는 것을 매우 싫어하였지만, 그의 철학 특히 자연이라는 범신론이나 연장(延長)의 속성 사고방식 속에는 이러한 해석을 낳을 소지가 전혀 없다고는 할 수 없다. Spinoza, Benedict de, or Baruch Spinoza, or Bendictus Spinoza, or Bento de Espinosa (Du.-Jewish philos.) Spinoza, Benedict de (English), Hebrew forename BARUCH, Latin forename BENDICTUS, Portuguese BENTO DE ESPINOSA (b. Nov. 24, 1632, Amsterdam--d. Feb. 21, 1677, The Hague), Dutch-Jewish philosopher, the foremost exponent of 17th-century Rationalism. * Early life and career. Spinoza's grandfather and father were Portuguese and had been crypto-Jews after the Spanish Inquisition had compelled them to embrace Christianity. Later, after Holland's successful revolt against Spain and the granting of religious freedom, they found refuge in Amsterdam. His mother, who also came from Portugal, died when Benedict was barely six years old. The Spinozas were prosperous merchants and respected members of the Jewish community, and it may be assumed that Spinoza attended the school for Jewish boys founded in Amsterdam in about 1638. Outside school hours the boys had private lessons in secular subjects. Spinoza was taught Latin by a German scholar, who may also have taught him German; and he knew to some extent all of the other significant continental languages. In March 1654 Benedict's father died. There was some litigation over the estate, with Benedict's only surviving stepsister claiming it all. Benedict won the lawsuit but allowed her to retain nearly everything. His studies so far had been mainly Jewish, but he was an independent thinker and had found more than enough in his Jewish studies to wean him from orthodox doctrines and interpretations of Scripture; moreover, the tendency to revolt against tradition and authority was much in the air in the 17th century. But the Jewish religious leaders in Amsterdam were fearful that heresies (which were no less anti-Christian than anti-Jewish) might give offense in a country that did not yet regard the Jews as citizens. Spinoza soon incurred the disapproval of the synagogue authorities. In conversations with other students, he had held that there is nothing in the Bible to support the views that God had no body, that angels really exist, or that the soul is immortal; and he had also expressed his belief that the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was no wiser in physics or even in theology than were they, the students. The Jewish authorities, after trying vainly to silence Spinoza with bribes and threats, excommunicated him in July 1656, and he was banished from Amsterdam for a short period by the civil authorities. There is no evidence that he had really wanted to break away from the Jewish community, and indeed the scanty knowledge available would suggest the opposite. On Dec. 5, 1655, for example, he had attended the synagogue and made an offering that, in view of his poverty, must have been a rare event for him, and, about the time of his excommunication, he had addressed a defense of his views to the synagogue. (see also Index: Judaism) Among Spinoza's Christian acquaintances was Franciscus van den Enden, who was a former Jesuit, an ardent classical scholar, and something of a poet and dramatist and who had opened a school in Amsterdam. For a time, Spinoza stayed with him, helping with the teaching of the schoolchildren and receiving aid in his own further education. In this way he improved his knowledge of Latin, learned some Greek, and was introduced to Neoscholastic philosophy. It may have also been through van den Enden's school that Spinoza became acquainted with the "new philosophy" of Rene Descartes, later acknowledged to be the father of modern philosophy. Spinoza's other Christian acquaintances were mostly of the Collegiants, a brotherhood that later merged with the Mennonites; they were especially interested in Cartesianism, the dualistic philosophy of Descartes and his followers. At the same time, he was becoming expert at making lenses, supporting himself partly by grinding and polishing lenses for spectacles, telescopes, and microscopes; he also did tutoring. A kind of reading and discussion circle for the study of religious and philosophical problems came into being under the guidance of Spinoza. In order to collect his thoughts, however, and reduce them to a system, he withdrew in 1660 to Rijnsburg, a quiet village on the Rhine, near Leiden. Rijnsburg was the headquarters of the Collegiants, and Spinoza's lodgings there were with a surgeon named Hermann Homan. In Homan's cottage Spinoza wrote Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en deszelfs Welstand (written c. 1662; Spinoza's Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, 1910) and Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione ("Treatise on the Correction of the Understanding"), both of which were ready by April 1662. He also completed the greater part of his geometrical version of Descartes's Principia Philosophiae and the first book of his Ethica. Spinoza's attitude in these works already showed a departure from Cartesianism. It was also during this stay that he met Heinrich Oldenburg, soon to become one of the two first secretaries of the Royal Society in London. * Influence of Descartes and the geometrical method. His version of Descartes's Principia was prepared while Spinoza was giving instruction in the philosophy of Descartes to a private pupil. It was published by his Cartesian friends under the title Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I et II, More Geometrico Demonstratae, per Benedictum de Spinoza (1663), with an introduction explaining that Spinoza did not share the views expressed in the book. This was the only book published in Spinoza's lifetime with his name on the title page. The philosophy of Spinoza may thus be regarded as a development from and a reaction to that of his contemporary Descartes (1596-1650). Though it has been argued that Spinoza was also much influenced by medieval philosophy (especially Jewish), he seems to have been much more conscious of the Cartesian influence, and his most striking doctrines are most easily understood as solutions of Cartesian difficulties. Clearly, he had studied Descartes in detail. He accepted Descartes's physics in general, though he did express some dissatisfaction with it toward the end of his life. As for the Cartesian metaphysics, he found three unsatisfactory features: the transcendence of God, the substantial dualism of mind and body, and the ascription of free will both to God and to human beings. In Spinoza's eyes, those doctrines made the world unintelligible. It was impossible to explain the relation between God and the world or between mind and body or to account for events occasioned by free will. The publication of Spinoza's version of Descartes's Principia had been intended to prepare the way for that of his own philosophy, for he had both to secure the patronage of influential men and to show the more philosophically minded that his rejection of Cartesianism was not out of ignorance. Spinoza became dissatisfied with the informal method of exposition that he had adopted in the Korte Verhandeling and the De Intellectus Emendatione and turned instead to the geometrical method in the manner of Euclid's Elements. He assumed without question that it is possible to construct a system of metaphysics that will render it completely intelligible. It is therefore possible, in his view, to present metaphysics deductively--that is, as a series of theorems derived by necessary steps from self-evident premises expressed in terms that are either self-explanatory or defined with unquestionable correctness. His masterpiece, the Ethica, was set out in this manner-- Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, according to the reading of its subtitle. Its first part, "De Deo" ("Concerning God"), was finished and in the hands of his friends early in 1663. Initially the work was intended to have three parts only, but it eventually appeared (in 1677) in five parts. Spinoza's desire for an impersonal presentation was probably his chief motive for adopting the geometrical method, appreciating that the method guarantees true conclusions only if the axioms are true and the definitions correct. Spinoza, like his contemporaries, held that definitions are not arbitrary but that there is a sense in which they may be correct or incorrect. (see also Index: deduction, "Ethics," ) The question was discussed at length in his unfinished Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. A sound definition, he held, should make clear the possibility or the necessity of the existence of the object defined. Because the Ethica begins with the definition of "substance," the necessary existent, the entire system is vulnerable to anyone disputing that definition, however cogent the subsequent reasoning may be. In fact, as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a Rationalist philosopher and mathematician, pointed out, though the system is closely knit, its demonstrations do not proceed with mathematical rigour. (see also Index: language) Period of the "Ethica." In June 1663 Spinoza moved to Voorburg, near The Hague, and it appears that by June 1665 he was nearing the completion of the three-part version of the Ethica. During the next few years, however, he was at work on his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which was published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1670. This work aroused great interest and was to go through five editions in as many years. It was intended "to show that not only is liberty to philosophize compatible with devout piety and with the peace of the state, but that to take away such liberty is to destroy the public peace and even piety itself." As this work shows, Spinoza was far ahead of his time in advocating the application of the historical method to the interpretation of the biblical sources. He argued that the inspiration of the prophets of the Old Testament extended only to their moral and practical doctrines and that their factual beliefs were merely those appropriate to their time and are not philosophically significant. Complete freedom of scientific and metaphysical speculation is therefore consistent with all that is important in the Bible. Miracles are explained as natural events misinterpreted and stressed for their moral effect. (see also Index: hermeneutics) In May 1670 Spinoza moved to The Hague, where he remained until his death. He began to compose a Hebrew grammar, Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae, but did not finish it; instead, he returned to the Ethica, although the prospect of its publication became increasingly remote. There were many denunciations of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as an instrument "forged in hell by a renegade Jew and the devil." When the Ethica was completed in 1675, Spinoza had to abandon the idea of publishing it, though manuscript copies were circulated among his close friends. * Last years and posthumous influence. Spinoza concentrated his attention on political problems and began his Tractatus Politicus, which he did not live to finish. During the post- Ethica period, he was visited by several important people, among them Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus (in 1675), a scientist and philosopher, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (in 1676), like Spinoza, one of the foremost Rationalists of the time. Leibniz, having heard of Spinoza as an authority on optics, had sent him an optical tract and had then received from Spinoza a copy of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which deeply interested him. According to Leibniz' own account, he "conversed with him often and at great length." Spinoza, however, was now in an advanced stage of consumption, aggravated by the inhaling of glass dust from the polishing of lenses in his shop. He died in 1677, leaving no heir, and his few possessions were sold by auction. These included about 160 books, the catalog of which has been preserved. In accordance with Spinoza's previous instructions, several of his friends prepared his manuscripts secretly for the press, and they were sent to a publisher in Amsterdam. The Opera Posthuma (Dutch version: Nagelate Schriften), published before the end of 1677, was composed of the Ethica, Tractatus Politicus, and Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, as well as letters and the Hebrew grammar. His Stelkonstige reeckening van den regenboog ("On the Rainbow") and his Reeckening van kanssen ("On the Calculation of Chances") were printed together in 1687. The Korte Verhandeling was lost to the world until E. Boehmer's publication of it in 1852. Spinoza has an assured place in the intellectual history of the Western world, though his direct influence on technical philosophy has not been great. Throughout the 18th century he was almost universally decried as an atheist--or sometimes used as a cover for the detailing of atheist ideas. The tone had been set by Pierre Bayle, a Skeptical philosopher and encyclopaedist, in whose Dictionnaire historique et critique Spinozism was described as "the most monstrous hypothesis imaginable, the most absurd"; and even David Hume, a Scottish Skeptic and historian, felt obliged to speak of the "hideous hypothesis" of Spinoza. Spinoza was rendered intellectually respectable by the efforts of literary critics, especially of the Germans G.E. Lessing and J.W. von Goethe and the English poet S.T. Coleridge, who admired the man and found austere excitement in his works, in which they saw an intensely religious attitude entirely divorced from dogma. Spinoza has also been much studied by professional philosophers since the beginning of the 19th century. Both absolute Idealists and Marxists have read their own doctrines into his work, and Empiricists, while rejecting his metaphysical approach, have developed certain detailed suggestions from his theory of knowledge and psychology. * BIBLIOGRAPHY. An early biography is found in Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880), available in many later editions. Dan Levin, Spinoza, the Young Thinker Who Destroyed the Past (1970), focuses on the details of the philosopher's Sephardic Jewish background. Roger Scruton, Spinoza (1986), is a later biography. Important analyses of his ethical and philosophical thought are offered in Henry E. Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, rev. ed. (1987); Alan Donagan, Spinoza (1989); Paul Wienpahl, The Radical Spinoza (1979); and, more specifically, in Thomas C. Mark, Spinoza's Theory of Truth (1972); Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics (1984); Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics (1988); S. Paul Kashap, Spinoza and Moral Freedom (1987); Jon Wetlesen, The Sage and the Way: Spinoza's Ethics of Freedom (1979); James Collins, Spinoza on Nature (1984); and Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2 vol. (1989). On Spinoza as active scientist and on his epistemology, see Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails (eds.), Spinoza and the Sciences (1986). Copyright 1994-1999 Encyclopædia Britannica |