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Spinoza and the Intellectual Dialogue with God-Nature

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Spinoza and the Intellectual Dialogue with God-Nature CHAPTER 39 SPINOZA AND THE INTELLECTUAL DIALOGUE WITH GOD-NATURE my peace is mine, and it seeks to be actualized between you and me. not “mine” as in possessions, for it is freedom we seek: “mine” as in my in-born ability to offer it to another being. those who love know that love is inexhaustible, except when we don’t give it to another being. in that case it extinguishes itself like a candle in the rain. for there is grace in the-between of you and me and everywhere in this world. just look. just touch. the world will show you. in that sense, when “the tragic jew of Amsterdam,” as unamuno called baruch spinoza, said ‘deus sive natura,’ he was saying that to love god is to love nature and to love nature is to love god. in other words, all real life is meeting. spinoza said “all happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.” this statement recognizes both the connection between happiness and love, and the independent objective reality of the outer world. the outer world is one of the elements that conditions the quality of our individual lives. for spinoza it is not all psychology, or a projection of our own inner consciousness: happiness is the existential dialogue between the inner and the outer. compare this with the popular saying: “if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” this statement denies that there is an objective reality that exists independent of our perception of it. i imagine some telling moses to change his view of slavery, but moses knew well that in that case slavery not only will not change but it will become even harsher. as harriet tubman said: i could have freed many more slaves if only they realized they were slaves. according to spinoza, love is the one kind of relationship (“attachment”) that causes happiness. but our love towards an object is not enough, since the objective qualities of the object itself may cause unhappiness in us. this is the paradox of love according to spinoza: only love can cause happiness, but happiness does not depend solely on our deed of loving. we can recognize this fact when we think of unrequited love or lack of human reciprocity. but at the same time, and in contrast, unhappiness does depend on our deeds of loving, as this emotion would not otherwise arise. we accept the risk of 227 chapter 39 loving even when the object of our love may potentially be imbued with the wrong qualities. the qualities of the object do not depend on our observation of them, they are inherent to the object itself. we do not construct the objects of our relationships, we recognize them. how do come to recognize love? by loving. if for spinoza happiness depends on love, can we then say that in order to avoid unhappiness we should avoid love? after all, choosing the object with the proper qualities is a very difficult task. when the buddha said that all life is dukkha, he did not teach to avoid life, only to transform it from dukkha to nirvana. likewise spinoza does not argue that the answer to unhappiness is to withdraw from the relationship of love. spinoza wants us to understand the nature of happiness and freedom so we might learn how to find true liberation. renunciation, therefore, is an error, as happiness depends on love, not on its dismissal. with love, as buber said, there is an element of will and an element of grace. without the will to love we are condemned to a life of unhappiness. at the same time, following spinoza, if not by the grace of finding the object of love with the right qualities, that same act of love will not lead us to happiness. same as spinoza argued, it is not love itself, but the love for the object with the wrong qualities what the buddha spoke of as attachments causing dukkha. for that reason buddha taught, as spinoza did too, that we must attain “right understanding.” to understand spinoza we need to understand his essential “dialogical” conception of god and love. when love is seen as a different category than happiness, as the case might be in a dualistic perspective, the question arises as to what should the true logos of life be, love or happiness? “all beings only seek happiness” says the dalai lama. but we were also told that all we “need is love.” in the mind of many poets speaking of happiness or love, both terms often conflate into one single meaning. but perhaps, after spinoza, we should ask not the meaning of the terms, but the existential question as to whether seeking love is different from, and perhaps even more important than the pursuit of happiness. arguing that for spinoza love is the highest form of existence, the love we seek is agape, that is, love for love’s sake, regardless of its material rewards or emotional consequences. like parenting for instance. we might still be unhappy with our relationships with our children, but our deeds of love to them must be unconditional. the talmud reminds us that we are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are we free to exempt ourselves from pursuing it. if the completion of love is happiness, the unhappiness that might ensue from our deeds of love are of no consequence to our human responsibility to love. 228.
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