Alan Saunders: Today on The Philosopher's Zone, we meet Spinoza's god.

Now that might seem an odd thing to do. Baruch Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers of his day, was expelled from the Amsterdam Synagogue in 1656, probably because of his unorthodox religious views.

Ever since, Spinoza has been regarded as the great atheist of the Western tradition. Between the 17th and the 19th centuries, not only were his works periodically suppressed, but even being named 'a Spinozist' could have had grave consequences.

Hello, I'm Alan Saunders. And here's the odd thing. Spinoza refers to God throughout his writings. His central work, the Ethics, opens with a definition of God, and closes with a discussion of divine love.

Another of his book, The Treatise of Political Theology deals extensively with the law of Moses and the role that religion plays in the formation and perpetuation of states.

So how are we to reconcile the paradox in Spinoza between his perceived atheism and his constant references to the divine?

Well, to help us with our reconciliation, we're joined now by Beth Lord, who teaches philosophy at the University of Dundee, and is the Director of the Spinoza Research Network. Beth, welcome to The Philosopher's Zone.

Beth Lord: Thank you very much, it's a pleasure to be here.

Alan Saunders: Let's begin, not with Spinoza but with somebody we can all agree genuinely is an atheist, Richard Dawkins. Now he entertains in his central book on atheism, he entertains the idea of Einstein's God. And Einstein's God, the God who as Einstein said does not play dice with the universe, Einstein's God is essentially Spinoza's God. So what is Dawkins getting at?

Beth Lord: This is a really interesting point. Dawkins actually opens his book The God Delusion, with a discussion of what he calls Einsteinian Religion, and essentially what he's talking about is Spinoza's God. Now Spinoza's God is essentially equivalent to nature, and by nature we don't just mean the whole of the experienced and perceived world around us, but actually all of being, which for Spinoza is infinitely rich and expresses itself in infinite ways.

So when Dawkins refers to Einstein's God or Einsteinian religion, of course Einstein was a great reader of Spinoza, he was a great fan of Spinoza, and he claimed on more than one occasion that the God he believed in was Spinoza's God. And when Dawkins quotes this material, he makes clear that the God that he is denying in his book and the delusion that he associates with that God, is not concerning Einstein's God or Einsteinian religion but is concerning the God of theology, supernatural Gods essentially.

Alan Saunders: So Dawkins' view basically is that you can have Einstein's Gods, Spinoza's God, if you want to, but why bother?

Beth Lord: Essentially that's right. He seems to be perfectly happy to accept that some scientists and other atheists might well want to hold to a notion of the Einsteinian God, or the Spinozistic God, but he has problems with calling that being 'God'. Dawkins thinks that if we call Nature God, we're kind of confusing our terminology, and why would we do that if we're really atheists? Why would we call Nature God? Why not call Nature, Nature, and take God out of the equation altogether?

Alan Saunders: Well indeed, why not call Nature, Nature? Why does Spinoza talk so much about God?

Beth Lord: Well Spinoza believes that the true understanding of God really does equate to the whole of being. So let me put a little bit more detail on that. Spinoza thinks that any kind of basic theological definition of God, whether that be from a Jewish, Christian, Muslim perspective, or even from other religious perspectives, any basic definition of God is going to include the definition that God is a substance of infinite attributes.

Now what does that mean? Well for Spinoza, 'substance' basically means an independently existing being, that is something that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence, and 'infinite attributes' really means that this being exists in infinite different kinds of ways. So Spinoza thinks that if you take your basic theological definition of God and you strip away all the stuff that's said about this God in the Bible, or through conventional religion, then what you'll be left with is that definition, a being of infinite attributes.

Spinoza thinks that there's good reason to carry on calling this being 'God', because that for him, is basically what God is. So we should carry on calling it God, but his point is that the theologians and people who believe in religion, need to understand, they need to come to true understanding of the fact that the God that they believe in truly turns out to be 'being,' the substance of infinite attributes.

Alan Saunders: If that's who God is, or if that's what God is, doesn't that make Spinoza a pantheist?

Beth Lord: Yes. Spinoza is certainly a pantheist. He's usually called an atheist, and it's also true to say that he's an atheist in the sense that he denies the God of theism. So the God of theism would be God as he is described in the Bible let's say, and Spinoza certainly thinks that that God is a fiction, a fictional construct that human beings use, for very good reason.

So Spinoza can be said to be an atheist in that sense, but as you've pointed out already, it's pretty strange to call someone an atheist whose work is so infused with the notion of God. So the term Pantheist is often used to describe Spinoza, and a Pantheist is really someone who believes that God is everywhere, God is in everything. But even the word 'Pantheist' can be a bit problematic when talking about Spinoza, because you know, really Spinoza believes that God IS being, not that God is in being, or that God is dwelling in things, or anything like that, but that God just is equivalent to all of existence.

Alan Saunders: Spinoza thinks that there are three ways of apprehending the world. There's intuition, there's reason, philosophy and science and so on, and there's the imagination. Now we can presumably use all of them to understand God, but imagination is very important here, isn't it?

Beth Lord: That's right. The three kinds of knowledge are crucial to Spinoza's system. Imagination is the way we know through experience. So anything that has to do with the way we experience and perceive the world with our memories, with our anticipations, with our dreams, all of these kinds of things are what Spinoza calls imagination. And imagination, while it's less adequate than rational knowledge, as Spinoza puts it, it's a kind of confused and partial and mixed-up version of true knowledge, nevertheless, it's not entirely false or illusory, we shouldn't take the word 'imagination' necessarily to mean made up, or anything like that. Imagination is essentially empirical knowledge, and empirical knowledge is hugely important in building up our true rational knowledge, which is sort of the next stage up.

Now imagination is important with respect to this question of God and religion, because through the imagination we build up what Spinoza calls 'fictions', and fictions, they have quite an interesting status in Spinoza's epistemology. Fictions are neither true nor false, they're kind of organised systems of images based on our experiences, based on the experiences that human beings share. These fictions are hugely useful in structuring our experience and helping us to decide how to behave and how to live our lives. And religion, and the Biblical notion of God, fit in to this idea of fiction.

Alan Saunders: So religion is a fiction. Does that mean that again, contrary to Dawkins, it's not among those things that can be said to be either true or false?

Beth Lord: That's right. Spinoza thinks that because religion is fictional, it means that it's not the kind of thing that can be demonstrated to be true or false. It's a useful organising structure that helps us to organise our experience. And Spinoza thinks that religion is specifically useful in helping people to behave better and to be obedient to the law. So this is quite an interesting factor of Spinoza's thought. He's all in favour of religion, not because he thinks that religion gives us a true understanding of God, but because religion interprets God to people in a way that they can easily understand. And Spinoza thinks that that's far preferable than that people should hold false notions or that they should just be left to their own devices, he thinks religion is actually quite a useful structure, in making people kind of get along well with one another, and, as he puts it, loving their neighbour and living peacefully and harmoniously. And that's really what fictions are for.

Alan Saunders: Let's just tease out the notion of fictions a bit more. And let's take an example: Hamlet. OK Hamlet is a fiction, however there are things I can say about Hamlet which are not true. If I say that Hamlet is a black man who lives in Venice I've confused him with Othello. And it is not true that Hamlet is a black man who lives in Venice. So I can make true or false statements about a fiction.

Beth Lord: You can, but the truth and falsity of those statements are only relative to the fictional world of Hamlet. In a sense there is no true or false statement that can be made about Hamlet because Hamlet isn't a true idea. So Spinoza really holds to a very specific understanding of truth. And true ideas for Spinoza are ideas that exist in God, that is, in being. So Hamlet for Spinoza really isn't a true idea but nor is it false idea. Again, it's a fiction, it's an idea that's neither true nor false, that might be useful for us.

So the story of Hamlet and the play of Hamlet might be useful for our society, or just useful for entertainment or for telling a story. But the whole question of true and false statements about it, while we might say one could make true and false statements about the events in the play, they're not ultimately true or false, for Spinoza they're just imaginary.

Alan Saunders: So the function of religion then is that it promotes peace and harmony. It has a social utility?

Beth Lord: Yes, that's right.

Alan Saunders: And it needs to be kept away, theology and faith need to be set apart from reason and philosophy.

Beth Lord: Exactly. What Spinoza says is that reason and philosophy have a different aim from religion. The purpose of reason, philosophy and science, are to discover the truth. So through our rational thought, we attain more and more true knowledge, or adequate knowledge, and what that means really is that we tap in to true ideas as they exist in God. It's quite a strange notion, but Spinoza explains it quite clearly.

How we do this is basically through things like scientific experiments, where we pick up on what's called the common notions, and these are kind of ideas that are common to ourselves and to the things that we interact with. So as build up more and more of these common notions, we attain more and more true knowledge, and we do that through science, through philosophy, through various other kinds of human endeavours as well. So the aim of science, philosophy and reason is to get at the truth.

Now the aim of religion is rather different. Spinoza again, because he thinks that religion is fictional, and he thinks that therefore its status is neither true nor false, and in a sense truth and falsity just don't really pertain to religion. Religion's job is to interpret the truth about God to people in a way that they can understand. So its role is to tell stories, to interpret sort of the truth about the world to people, and therefore its aim is not to tell the truth or even to discover the truth, its aim is to make people behave better, and to keep people obedient.

Now that sounds rather sinister, but actually Spinoza thinks that's good thing. It's a good thing because most people are irrational most of the time, he thinks. Most people live according to their imagination. So they're driven by their experiences, by the feelings that they associate with their experiences, by different chains of association which differ from person to person. And when people are irrational, they tend to come into conflict with each other; they tend to desire the same things, and they fight over those things, and people don't get along very easily.

So the role of religion is really in controlling and kind of helping to manage people's feelings and images when they're in this irrational state. And Spinoza's aim is always for people to become more rational and to be able to govern themselves through their own true knowledge about the world. But he's kind of realistic about the prospects of that happening, and since he doesn't see humanity becoming enormously rational any time soon, he tends to think that structures like religion are necessary to keep people in line.

Alan Saunders: On ABC Radio National, you're with The Philosopher's Zone, and I'm talking to Beth Lord from the University of Dundee about Spinoza's God, who seems to be an atheist's God.

Beth, from what you've just said, it sounds as though what Spinoza might be hoping is that eventually we'll be able to do without these fictions, that we will learn to behave rationally, and we can put the fictional God behind us.

Beth Lord: Spinoza certainly would hope that we could do that, that human beings could become more and more and more rational, and when human beings are more and more and more rational, they understand themselves better and furthermore they come into communities with other rational human beings and they're able to manage themselves almost automatically without having to have organising structures like religion or politics.

However, Spinoza is also quite realistic about whether this might be possible. He doesn't really believe in this kind of ideal perfect rational community, or rather he doesn't believe that it could really come about. And the reason for that is that human beings are inevitably governed by images and feelings. We can't take ourselves out of the world of finite objects, such that we could somehow become unaffected by the things that we interact with.

It is of the nature to be a finite being, such as ourselves, that we are constantly interacting with other people, with other things. We need other things like food and water and shelter in order to keep ourselves alive, but furthermore we need these human interactions in order to do the things we do, and in order to keep ourselves going.

And when we interact with things, we are inevitably affected by them. And when we are affected by things, we tend to be overcome by our feelings, our passions, and those passions really cloud over our rational knowledge, and make it pretty unlikely that we're ever going to become 100% rational. So the best that Spinoza thinks we can hope for is that everybody becomes a little bit more rational than they were when they started life, and he does think that's a realistic prospect.

Alan Saunders: The definition of God which I mentioned at the beginning of the Ethics, is extremely similar to the definition put forward by the great mediaeval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides. Now Maimonides was also a Rabbi; I assume that really Spinoza is turning his back on a whole tradition of thinking about God, and he's turning his back on his contemporaries as well, like Descartes, isn't he?

Beth Lord: He is. I mean certainly Spinoza was thoroughly familiar with Maimonides, with Aristotle, with Plato, with Descartes and with a number of other thinkers from the classical and mediaeval traditions. Really he's turning his back on any theistic conception of God. So I think Maimonides is a kind of crucial turning point, because Maimonides of course is bringing the language of Aristotle into religious questions. But Maimonides doesn't quite make the move that Spinoza does to equating God entirely with 'being' I think.

Alan Saunders: And I presume one thing about Maimonides' God is that he is the God of the Old Testament, he does rule providentially over the universe and Spinoza's God presumably doesn't do that.

Beth Lord: That's right. Spinoza denies that God is a legislator, he denies that God is interested in human affairs, he denies that God is interested in intervening in human affairs. So Spinoza is really critical of the anthropomorphic notion of a God who kind of sits up there in Heaven and judges human actions and human behaviour. And Spinoza's God doesn't do any of those things of course, because God is being. God doesn't make judgments about good and evil or about rewarding good behaviour or punishing bad behaviour or anything like that.

So it's really a very radical shift in the notion of what God is and what God does. God just is is nature and God's being just goes on and on indefinitely, infinitely in fact. And God is really indifferent, Spinoza's God is really indifferent to human suffering and human actions.

Alan Saunders: So where does divine love, which as I mentioned, is discussed at the end of the Ethics, where does divine love come into it?

Beth Lord: This is a really interesting question because for many readers of Spinoza when you get to the end of the Ethics and Spinoza starts talking about eternal being and divine love, it's very strange; it almost seems that Spinoza is reverting to a kind of theological model of thinking about the relationship to God.

This is perhaps best explained through Spinoza's notion of 'blessedness,' and essentially he believes that as we become more and more rational, in other words, we gain more and more true knowledge, we kind of come to understand God more and more. Because God is equivalent to being, or nature, as we come to understand nature more and more, that obviously means we're coming to understand God and more and more.

And understanding God more and more, Spinoza explains, also makes us more and more virtuous. And this is quite an interesting argument because virtue for Spinoza is equivalent to power. He draws on the Latin term virtus which means 'power', and so as we know more and more, we become more and more rational, we also become better at being human beings. We understand ourselves, we understand what's good for us and how to act, and how to become stronger and better at being what we are.

And so as we become more rational, more virtuous, we're sort of climbing up the ladder to greater virtue and knowledge, Spinoza says we also become more blessed. And what he really seems to mean by that is that we kind of regain more and more of our essence as it exists in God.

So human beings, along with all other finite beings, have an essence which exists in God, in being, that it to say for Spinoza. And as we regain more and more of our true essence, what we truly are, it's almost as if we come back to our true nature which is to 'be' in God. And that sort of how Spinoza understands blessedness and the notion of the love of God. It's kind of an affirmation of our being as being part of nature.

Alan Saunders: And the importance of religion, which you've already alluded to, it's not just bringing order to daily life, it actually plays a role in the formation and the perpetuation of political states.

Beth Lord: It does. One of the interesting aspects of the theological political treatise, this is the text that Spinoza wrote, well that he published in 1670 and which was promptly banned and censored all across Europe and was censored for hundreds of years. One of the interesting factors of this text is the way in which Spinoza brings religion and politics together.

So he offers an extensive analysis of the Bible, and he argues that in the Bible and particularly with respect to the Mosaic Law, the laws that Moses got supposedly directly from God, were actually laws about how to govern the State of the Israelites. And Spinoza's pretty clear throughout that politics holds a very similar role to religion.

Political systems, systems of civic laws are fictions in the same way that religion is a fiction. If people were perfectly rational, people would be able to govern themselves without recourse to laws, because everyone would behave according to their true nature, their true essence, and there wouldn't be any conflict or any problems.

But of course people aren't fully rational and therefore people need governance, and they need to be punished when they do the wrong thing and they need to be praised when they do the right thing. And therefore government systems of law work hand-in-hand with religion to keep people in check.

Alan Saunders: Well keep people in check, yes, you said earlier that this could potentially sound slightly sinister and I wonder, it's as though you, I and Spinoza can talk about atheism but not in front of 'the help' in case they get uppity. That's a bit worrying, isn't it?

Beth Lord: Spinoza certainly thinks that there is potential for these fictions, whether they be political or religious fictions, to be used in negative ways. For instance, if you had a leader of a group of people who was himself or herself not very rational and very dependent on their own emotions and passions and images, that person would likely not be a very good leader. They would probably rule tyrannically and they would make use of fictions and affects in order to rule people through fear, and Spinoza's pretty clear that that's a bad form of governance.

And of course religion can also effect fear and loathing among people as well. Again, as people become more and more rational, more and more rational forms of governance and civil state and religion come about. So Spinoza's clear that a democratic civil state is the best kind of political state, and the most rational kind of political state, the one which most allows people most freedom and tolerance among each other.

Alan Saunders: In the 18th century the German writer and philosopher, Novalis, referred to Spinoza as ein Gott betrunkene mensch â" a god-intoxicated man. Do you think that despite his notion that God is a fiction, this is an accurate description of Spinoza?

Beth Lord: I do in a sense. It's clear if you read the Epics that the notion of God as Nature is absolutely central to Spinoza's system. And as I was saying earlier, it is important that Nature is called God for Spinoza, because Spinoza thinks that this is what God is.

At the same time, I don't think it's essential that we use the term 'God' when we're talking about Spinoza's God. I often say to my students that, you know, if you don't like the word 'God', it's perfectly acceptable to use the word 'being' or to use the word 'energy' to refer to Spinoza's God or indeed to use the word 'nature' as he sometimes does.

So while I think Spinoza had good reason for using the word 'God' and while I think he believed that this is what God is, that God is being, nevertheless I think he thinks the word 'God' is really just a word, and we don't necessarily have to use that word.

Alan Saunders: Well for more on Spinoza or to share your thoughts on him, or for that matter, God, or Nature, with us and your fellow listeners, check our our website.

Beth Lord, thank you very much for joining us today.

Beth Lord: Thank you.

Alan Saunders: Beth Lord teaches philosophy at the University of Dundee. And she's the Director of the Spinoza Research Network, which itself has an extensive web page devoted to all things Spinozastic, including original texts by Spinoza and others, and an archive of podcasts dealing with the man and his thought. Links to that too on our website.

The show is produced by Kyla Slaven, Charlie McCune is the sound engineer, I'm Alan Saunders and I'll be back next week with another Philosopher's Zone.