Spinoza and Leibniz: Exploring God, Geometry, and Individuality
Spinoza: God or the Perfection of a Geometric World
The Cartesian system consecrated a world divided, separating reality into two substances: mind and body, unable to communicate. Reconciliation between these areas was difficult, preventing a unified understanding of things.
Spinoza addresses this challenge by conceiving reality as a unit that unfolds according to a logical method.
God is Everything
The French philosopher Descartes defined God as a substance that exists by itself, distinguishing three types: the self, God, and the world. Spinoza, using the same definition, considers that the concept of substance can only be strictly applied to God.
Only God, an infinite being, can exist by itself, without any limitation or dependence. And if infinite, nothing exists beyond Him. Spinoza’s philosophy is a form of pantheism.
Spinoza distinguishes between the creative dimension and the dimension of created reality, referring to both as God or Nature.
Everything is God because there can be nothing but an infinite substance possessing infinite attributes: thought and extension.
Everything is Necessary: Determinism
The deductive system proposed by Spinoza reflects the unity of reality.
This model also reflects the necessity of reality. The first principles inevitably lead to consequences. Reality must necessarily be as it is. Therefore, every unit is unique.
The logical necessity that Spinoza reflects on in his work adds to the necessity of ontological reality. Reality is constituted in sequences of causes and effects and can only end up where they stop.
Spinoza states that whatever happens, happens necessarily. Accordingly, one is not free to act without reason, but is compelled by its nature and not by someone else.
The inflexible application of truths that are evident to reason leads to determinism. Everything is necessary, and God, infinite in its totality, is free in the sense that He is what He is by His very nature.
But freedom understood as the absence of necessity is only an illusion.
Ethics and Politics
The only freedom is responding to one’s own needs. Recognizing this fact, according to Spinoza, is the only way to contribute to human happiness.
Because everything is God, nothing is inherently bad, but every human experience is either useful or bad depending on whether it increases or reduces its power, its tendency to persevere in what it is.
The knowledge of God, that is, the comprehension of unity and the necessity of all that is governed, is the path to true happiness. In Spinoza’s philosophy, knowledge and happiness converge.
Leibniz: Individuality and the Differential
Leibniz attempts to build a system that safeguards the individual while integrating it into a harmonious scheme that recovers the personal God as a guarantee of order.
As in the case of Descartes, Leibniz’s philosophy maintains a common inspiration: the reconciliation of unity and diversity.
The Monad
Leibniz posits that reality consists of individual substances, which he calls monads. He states that what defines monads is their energy. The monads are the simplest components of reality, and cannot be divided, because any extension is divisible, then the monads would no longer be the simplest elements.
In addition to being inextensible, monads cannot be born or die; they can only be created or destroyed by God.
The monads do not support any interaction; they are not modifiable from the outside. They can only be what they are.
Leibniz argues that, beyond the observable, reason leads us to affirm that the components do not really have extension and do not work independently.
Every individuality is a unique perspective from which the whole is reflected.
Harmony Pre-established
Leibniz places the harmonization of infinite monads in the hands of God. Each monad follows its own course, and apparent interaction is due only to a pre-established harmony that matches them.
Like Spinoza, Leibniz also understands freedom as obedience to one’s own needs.