Deus sive natura

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deus sive Natura - Spinoza's famous formula interpreted by Shoshannah Jeanne Brombacher.

The frequently quoted Latin phrase Deus sive Natura , which literally translates as God or nature , formulates in a memorable brevity the essence of so-called Spinozism , the philosophy of religion and Bible criticism of the freethinker of Sephardic descent Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677). The Spinozist doctrine , Nature itself is God , asserts his immanence , contrary to the prevailing view of his time that God was transcendent .

Identification of spirit and matter

Benedictus de Spinoza, the heretical Jewish philosopher from Amsterdam, advocates the blasphemous view from the Jewish point of view that spirit and matter are identical:

“ Substantia sive Natura declares Spinoza a pantheist , Deus sive Natura he declares a naturalist . Naturalism is any philosophy that explains and derives nature not from the spirit , but the spirit from nature . "

- Kuno Fischer : Spinoza's life, work and teaching, 1898, p. 550.

True to this monistic identification of spirit and matter, there is no transcendence , there is no otherworldly creator god, no personal god as we know him from biblical and Koranic tradition who could intervene in the world and pray to man. Spinoza identified the all-divine with the universe , the cosmos:

“The world is not teleological . That is, it is not directed towards a God-designed end. God or nature are in themselves strictly causal and unintentional. There is no place in the Deus sive Natura formula for an intervening God. Rather, Spinoza takes all being into God. One can no longer speak of God's free will and divine love in the traditional sense. The necessity of the divine all-nature, the holy reason, reigns in everything. "

- Matthias Jung: Spinoza: God is nature - nature is God

In the 18th century, the Irish freethinker John Toland coined the technical term pantheism for Spinoza's concept of the immanence of God in the world, the absorption of God in nature and in the cosmos , which replaced the term Spinozism in the course of the history of philosophy:

"There is no divine being different from matter and this world structure, and nature itself, ie the totality of things, is the only and highest God."

- John Toland: Origenes Juadaicae, 1709

The pantheistic formula in Spinoza's main work, ethics

The famous Latin formula Deus sive Natura appears four times in Spinoza's main work, Ethics in Geometric Order (1677), partially declined and connected with synonymous conjunctions , in the “Fourth Book”. Once with the conjunction sive as "Deus sive Natura" and three times with the conjunction seu as "Deus seu Natura":

"1. Potentia, qua res singulares et consequenter homo suum esse conservat, est ipsa Dei sive Naturae potentia.
The power by virtue of which individual things and consequently man preserves his being is precisely God's power, that is, that of nature . "

- Spinoza: Ethics , Part Four, Axiom, Theorem 4, Proof,

where Dei sive Naturae is in the Latin genitive , in contrast to the nominative formula Deus sive natura . So also in the following quote:

"2. Potentia itaque hominis, quatenus per ipsius actualem essentiam explicatur, pars est infinitae Dei seu Naturae potentiae, hoc est essentiae.
Man's power, insofar as it can be explained by his real essence, is part of God's or the nature of infinite power, that is, essence. "

- Spinoza: Ethics , Part Four, Axiom, Theorem 4, Proof

"3. Ostendimus enim in primae partis appendice naturam propter finem non agere; aeternunm namque illud et infinitum ens, quod Deum seu Naturam appellamus, eadem, qua existit, necessitate agit.
In the appendix to the first part we have shown that nature does not act for the sake of an end; for that eternal and infinite being that we call God or nature acts out of the same necessity out of which it exists. "

- Spinoza: Ethics , Part Four, Foreword

where Deum sive Naturam is in the Latin accusative .

"4. Ratio igitur seu causa, cur Deus seu Natura agit et cur existit, una eadamque est.
So the reason or the cause why God, that is, nature acts and why he exists, is one and the same. "

- Spinoza: Ethics , Part Four, Foreword

God and nature in Spinoza's letters

In letters to Heinrich Oldenburg , who as the long-time secretary of the Royal Society played a central role in the scientific community of the 17th century, Spinoza explains his new worldview:

"Furthermore, that I do not separate God from nature in the way that all of whom I have knowledge do."

- Baruch de Spinoza: Correspondence , 6th letter to Oldenburg. (April 1662), lines 25-27.

“So I have a very different opinion of God and nature than that which is usually held by modern Christians . I see God as the immanent and not the external cause of all things. I just maintain that everything lives and weaves in God. "

- Baruch de Spinoza: Correspondence , 73rd letter to Oldenburg. (Nov-Dec 1675), lines 17-22

The phrase “live and weave” is an allusion to the well-known speech of Paul on the Areopagus : see Acts 17, 28  EU . There, however, no pantheistic statement was made, but the majesty of God was emphasized.

Critic of the pantheistic formula

“The main thing I have against pantheism is that it says nothing. Calling the world God does not mean explaining it, but only enriching language with a superfluous synonym for the word world. Whether you say 'the world is God' or 'the world is the world' amounts to one thing ... It would be much more correct to identify the world with the devil: the evil spirit and nature are one. "

- Arthur Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena II, Part One , Chapter 5, A few words about pantheism , §69.
For Schopenhauer, pantheism is ultimately only a " euphemy for atheism ":

“Pantheism is a self-canceling concept because the concept of a god presupposes a world different from him. If, on the other hand, the world itself is to take on its role, an absolute world remains without God. "

- Arthur Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena I, first volume, fragments on the history of philosophy , §13. A few more explanations on the Kantian philosophy
  • Ludwig Feuerbach uses the atheistic and naturalistic formula Aut Deus aut Natura against Spinoza's pantheistic expression Deus sive Natura :

“Spinoza said: 'God or nature, they are the same' . Feuerbach said: ' Either God or nature, both are not the same'. "

- Joachim Kahl: Ludwig Feuerbach's contribution to a philosophy of naturalism.

"Why do you want as a naturalist theist and a theist also Naturalist be? Get rid of this contradiction! Not Deus sive Natura , but Aut Deus, aut Natura is the watchword of truth. Where God is identified or confused with nature or, conversely, nature with God, there is neither God nor nature, but a mystical, amphibolic hybrid. This is Spinoza's fundamental defect. "

- Ludwig Feuerbach: History of modern philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza. 1833.

“For Spinoza, man was a 'part' of nature. The idea of ​​development brought into Spinozism by Herder and Goethe turns the 'part' into the highest development product. God and man become identical ( Deus sive Homo ). Man is now nature or God in perfection. It can thus be seen that the Spinozist formula Deus sive Natura contains the formula Deus sive Homo . In both, in a negation of the negation, the positive abolition of God takes place in man. "

- Herbert Lindner: The course of development of philosophical thinking

“The last attempt to protect the old god from the onslaught of new natural knowledge. To at least save the word 'God' by hiding it behind the new deity, nature. This big Pan is also dead. ”“

- Fritz Mauthner: Atheism and its history in the West.
  • In contrast to pantheism, the atheist Joachim Kahl takes the position of materialistic naturalism and criticizes Spinoza's formula:

“Matter and spirit do not, as Spinoza said pantheistically, appear constantly in parallel. Rather, spirit emerges very late in the evolution of organisms, extremely rarely (possibly singularly) and always endangered: as a system property of the human brain. "

- Joachim Kahl: Ludwig Feuerbach's contribution to a philosophy of naturalism.
  • The philosopher Karl Löwith closes his essay Spinoza. Deus sive Natura with the words:

"Spinoza's Deus 'sive' Natura stands exactly at the limit at which trust in God expires and the critical step towards the recognition of a godless universe occurs that has no purpose and therefore has no 'meaning' or 'value'."

- Karl Löwith : Spinoza. Deus sive natura

See also

Web links

literature

Primary literature

Secondary literature

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Spinoza's Deus Sive Natura visualized in a pastel drawing (pdf).
  2. ↑ Helmut Seidel : Baruch de Spinoza for an introduction. 2nd Edition. Junius, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-88506-644-6 , p. 95.
  3. ↑ On July 27, 1656, Bento de Spinoza was given the cherem , the great curse, and excluded from the Jewish community by the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam because of his “ heresy ” .
  4. ↑ see also the article: Deus sive natura ( Memento of the original dated February 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and Natura naturans - natura naturata in: The UTB online dictionary of philosophy @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.philosophie-woerterbuch.de
  5. ↑ Kuno Fischer: Spinoza's life, work and teaching , Chapter 13: Characteristics and criticism of Spinoza's teaching, 2. Naturalism: S.550 , Salzwasser Verlag Paderborn, ISBN 978-3846026151 , reprint of the original from 1898. (Kuno Fischer: Geschichte of modern philosophy, second volume: Spinoza ]
  6. ↑ Matthias Jung: Spinoza: God is nature - nature is God . Emu Verlag, Lahnstein 2005, ISBN 3-89189-102-4 , p. 60, p. 121/122, p. 125.
  7. ^ John Toland: The Pantheisticon: or, the form of celebrating the Socratic-Society . (Published in Latin in 1720, in English in 1751 ). German translation by Ludwig Fensch, Leipzig 1897
  8. ↑ quoted from Siegfried Wollgast: Deus sive natura: On pantheism in European philosophy and the history of religion. . (= Report of the meeting of the Leibniz Society. Volume 27, 1998, H 8). 1999, ISBN 3-89626-207-6 , p. 5.
  9. ^ Siegfried Wollgast: Deus sive natura: On pantheism in European philosophy and the history of religion. . (= Report of the meeting of the Leibniz Society. Volume 27, 1998, H 8). 1999, ISBN 3-89626-207-6 , p. 15.
  10. ↑ Original Latin text: Ethica IV. Part Ethica - Pars quarta - De servitute humana seu de affectuum viribus and German translation: Spinoza Ethik IV. Part by Arthur Buchenau, 1841. Project Gutenberg - DE
  11. ↑ Original Latin text: Ethica IV. Part Ethica - Pars quarta - De servitute humana seu de affectuum viribus and German translation: Spinoza Ethik IV. Part by Arthur Buchenau, 1841. Project Gutenberg - DE
  12. ↑ Original Latin text: Ethica IV. Part Ethica - Pars quarta - De servitute humana seu de affectuum viribus and German translation: Spinoza Ethik IV. Part by Arthur Buchenau, 1841. Project Gutenberg - DE.
  13. ↑ Original Latin text: Ethica IV. Part Ethica - Pars quarta - De servitute humana seu de affectuum viribus and German translation: Spinoza Ethik IV. Part by Arthur Buchenau, 1841. Project Gutenberg - DE.
  14. ^ Karl Löwith : Spinoza. Deus sive natura. In: God, man and world in metaphysics from Descartes to Nietzsche. Göttingen 1967, IX. Chapter, pp. 213/213.
  15. ↑ Baruch de Spinoza: Correspondence. edited by Manfred Walther. Third edition. Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-7873-0672-2 , p. 30.
  16. ↑ Baruch de Spinoza: Correspondence. edited by Manfred Walther. Third edition. Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-7873-0672-2 , p. 276.
  17. ↑ Joachim Kahl: Ludwig Feuerbach's contribution to a philosophy of naturalism. In: Enlightenment and Criticism. Special issue 3/1999, p. 16.
  18. ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach: History of modern philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza. 1833, § 100. Critical concluding remarks from 1847
  19. ↑ Herbert Lindner: The course of development of philosophical thinking. VEB Berlin 1966, p. 267. See also: Regine Otto: Herder on the way to Spinoza. In: Weimar Contributions 14 (1978), pp. 166–177.
  20. ↑ quoted from: Siegfried Wollgast: Deus sive natura: On pantheism in European philosophy and the history of religion. . In: Report of the meeting of the Leibniz Society. Volume 27, 8 1998, ISBN 3-89626-207-6 , S. 11. Original source of the quote: Fritz Mauthner: Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendlande. Volume 2, p. 368.
  21. ↑ Joachim Kahl: Ludwig Feuerbach's contribution to a philosophy of naturalism. In: Enlightenment and Criticism. Special issue 3/1999, p. 17.
  22. ^ Karl Löwith : Spinoza. Deus sive natura. In: God, man and world in metaphysics from Descartes to Nietzsche. Göttingen 1967, IX. Chapter, p. 250.