What would he say about the climate crisis? 'Do something!' (And what would Spinoza say? 'Think about something else,' maybe?
One day during her years at Radcliffe in the 1890s, Gertrude Stein sat down to write a philosophy exam. She just wasn’t in the mood, though, so instead of answering its questions she penned a short note to her professor, William James: “Dear Professor James, I am so sorry, but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today”. In due course Stein received a response from James: “Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself”. He gave her an excellent grade.
When William James was born, in 1842, his father had begun moving the family away from Calvinism, with its belief that life’s moments are mere instruments to serve an end wholly external to humankind, God’s inscrutable will. When James died, in 1910, he had come to embrace the idea that life’s moments are instead to be savoured for their intrinsic worth, and that a person should rely ultimately on their own inner ends to endow them with meaning. That may explain why he rewarded Stein for her philosophical insight: she took her own feelings in the moment as the paramount value.
James’s quest – for meaning that is internally derived and intrinsic, not externally given and instrumental – took decades of writing to work out. And, as John Kaag shows in Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James can save your life, it was rife with doubt. Replacing the rock of God with the frail reed of oneself as a source of meaning, and accepting each ephemeral moment as a font of value instead of relying on a grander scheme, is an anxiety-making exercise. Yet once traditional religion had ceased to be an option for him, James was writing, Kaag says, to “save his own life”... (continues)
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And speaking of Wm James...
The Spinoza that I know right now would, I think, say that it would be irrational to not do something. He would explain to us that the causal forces of nature must be understood and we must act understanding them in addressing the problem of climate change. He would explain that the essence of man’s nature is desire (conatus), a striving to persist in one’s being. That we will desire what is “good” and what is useful to us. We will resist what is "bad" and harmful to us. When we develop active, self-caused, ideas, based on reason, we increase our power to act, and our power to affect others. He would say that this power to act in accordance with nature is virtue. With understanding of the laws of nature, man gains power to act to act in accordance with the laws of nature, and affect others, and affect change.
ReplyDeleteHow could he just say ‘think about something else’ in the face of a problem that threatens our “good” and the persistence of our being, and is the product of our ignoring the laws of nature, when we have the power to affect change? That would not be virtuous. That would not be rational of him, and he is all about rational thought. IMHO, but with an open mind.
Ed, I look forward to hearing your perspective on Spinoza after you've delved further into WJ's resistance to "block universe" schemes of metaphysical necessity. If you can still hold the line on pro-active Spinoza then, maybe you can sell me too. Meanwhile, I'm still skeptical. My old prof taught me that a Spinozism of freedom is mostly about understanding and accepting the world, not changing it. But I'd be happy to find him wrong. Activist Spinoza would be, um, what's the word... dope?
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