In the seventeenth century, there were many different kinds of republics in Europe, like the Swiss Confederation, the Italian republics (Venice and Florence), and the “free cities” of the German empire. But Europe was mostly governed by kings and lords supported by the Catholic Church. Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677) grew up in the Republic of the United Provinces (The Netherlands). Like the Swiss Confederation, the Netherlands were formed while getting rid of the Habsburgs. However, this time, it was the Spanish Catholic Habsburgs that were chased away by the Flemish Protestants. Certain movements within this republic had hoped to distribute the power to a greater number of citizens. They wanted to form a democracy in the image of the Athenian republic at the time of Pericles. They held power from 1653 to 1672. They installed Johan de Witt as the Grand Pensionary of Holland.
Spinoza felt this project needed the support of an appropriate global vision of the world. He decided to elaborate a proposition in that direction. He detailed his new vision of the place of humans in nature in his Ethics and in A Political Treatise, published the year of his death, 1677. These works are evidently a response to Plato’s Republic. They attempt to demonstrate that a democracy is a regime that conforms to nature’s functioning, and consequently is more creative than an enlightened tyranny that served as the model for most of the nobility, kings, and emperors of the Europe of his day, and even in most of the former republics.
That eternal and infinite being we call God or nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists. (Spinoza, 1677a, Ethics IV, preface, 11/207, p. 114)
As soon as we intend to know all the variety of causes and conditions influencing, directly or indirectly, a given event, causation appears so complicated that it practically becomes unrecognizable. No one short of an Omniscient Being could cognize the infinite variety of all circumstances that can influence the production of an event. (Stcherbatsky, 1930, Buddhist logic, II.II.6, p. 129)1
In the first part of his Ethics, Spinoza indicates that the notion of democracy is incompatible with that of a universe created by God. A creator God leads us to the concept of a universe that exists only by the grace of an exterior almighty force. Applied to human history, this metaphor suggests that a society is incapable of organizing itself without the intervention of an exterior almighty being, that is, a king. The more a sovereign is powerful, the more he lives beyond the rules that govern the citizens, and the more he has the capacity to impose the politics that structure his kingdom. On the contrary, if we conceive of a universe that created itself, it becomes possible to imagine that a population can govern itself. For Spinoza, this second conceptualization is the most probable. The fact that a creator God could exist is as extraordinary, inexplicable, and improbable as a universe capable of creating itself. It is therefore more economical2 and more rational to imagine a universe that created itself.
The terms God, nature, or universe3 are interchangeable in Spinoza’s mind. Nature has almost all of the properties previously attributed to God. It is infinitely vast and powerful. It is composed of an infinite number of elements, dimensions, and attributes. Because the universe has all of the properties of God, it has the power to create itself in a coherent fashion. The only one of God’s properties that the universe does not possess is that of being a spirit—a spiritual force that has a center, a will, a plan, and a goal that elaborates itself outside of the universe. Spinoza replaces an imaginary entity that fills fables and myths by an intellection4 of what exists and whose shape is about to be clarified by scientific research (Galileo, Newton, etc.). Spinoza breaks down this global universe into subsystems (galaxies, planets, societies, individuals, organs, etc.). Each system participates in the formation of its subsystems, all the while being structured by them. They emerge out of a coordination of subsystems that constitute themselves in function of what contains them. Nature is what emerges out of the interactions between all the existing systems. A human organism is a totality that emerges out of the interactions that combines all of its organs; it is also structured by the cultural systems (family, government, beliefs, knowledge, etc.) that contain it. The complexity of all of these connections is such that it is out of the question that a single subsystem, such as the mind, could apprehend everything that regulates it.5
In the following sections, I detail the three aspects of a system distinguished by Spinoza: the dimensions, the coordination of parts, and power. This analysis is used to introduce the notion of complexity in systemics. The complexity of an individual human system is necessarily nonconscious. Introspection and perception can only discover some manifestations of this complexity that organizes the mind of an individual. An individual system of representation does not have the capacity to apprehend an organization that follows rules more complicated than what the human mind can imagine. On the other hand, it happens that discoveries achieved by institutions, like institutes of scientific research, produce data that can enrich the imagination of those who have heard of their work. Therefore, all those who have seen cells or constellations in movies have an imagination capable of conceiving that these entities exist. Their mind, if it is taken up by these images, can then research supplementary sources of information by questioning those who study these phenomena, by reading, or by becoming capable of using certain optical tools. This metaphor is pertinent in this chapter because Spinoza was an optician.
The term dimension designates, in Spinoza as in Descartes, entities that have different basic modes of functioning. Spinoza supposes that there exist an infinite number of dimensions in the universe; he admits that the human spirit can conceive of only two: matter and thought. The limits of the human mind make it impossible to know if the human organism has more than two dimensions, but Spinoza supposes that it is probably the case.
For Descartes, the notion of an organism exists only in as much as there is an H gland. Spinoza6 ridicules this reductionism and shows that the organism is a global system7 that has at least the two following functions:
In modern terms, the organism is an architecture that permits the hardware of a computer to support the exigencies of the software. This architecture has properties that are neither those of matter nor those of thoughts: they coordinate the dimensions and are sensitive to the dynamics of each dimension. These coordinating interfaces belong to that part of nature that can coordinate an infinite number of dimensions.
With Spinoza, the more dimensions a system contains, the more the coordination of the dimensions demands a powerful global architecture. At this point, it is useful to identify two criteria of complexity:
The human mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the more capable, the more its body can be disposed in a great many ways. (Spinoza, 1677a, Ethics, II proposition XIV, p. 44)
In proportion as a body is more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once. (Spinoza, 1677a, Ethics, II, Proposition XIII, scholium, p. 40)
The more subsystems that a system contains, the more complex it is because the possibility to organize the parts in different ways is greater. This argument allows one to distinguish between two types of complexity:
In an alphabet made up of two letters (A and B), it is possible to generate four basic combinations (words): A, B, AB, and BA. On the other hand, by adding the following two rules, I can generate an infinite number of words with two letters:
These are the basic rules of binary language, developed a little later by Leibniz, which is used today by computer programmers. The greater the number of elements in a system (for example, twenty-six letters instead of two), and the greater the number of different rules (like grammatical rules), the greater the possibility of generating a vast variety of combinations. The more these elements and rules are qualitatively heterogeneous, the greater the potential complexity of an organization.
A subsystem can be more or less active, that is, it can participate more or less actively in the organization of the relationships that it entertains with other subsystems. One of the implications of this way of thinking is that the more complex a system, the more it has the capacity to rearrange its organization locally and globally. The mind of an individual, for example, is capable of important rearrangements if society affords it new information. A society can rearrange the relationship between citizens if the citizens can be convinced to do so. For Spinoza, these changes are only improvements if the complexity of social dynamics becomes closer to the dynamics of nature.8 At this level the philosopher and the scientist can enrich the social system in which they are a part.
To the extent that a system perceives and masters its capacity to change, in a similar manner, it can adapt itself profoundly to the laws of nature. For Spinoza, to understand the laws of nature (he does not believe it is possible to function outside of these laws) is to accept the inevitable. It is also to be able to learn to better use available resources. For example, democracy would be superior to tyranny for at least two reasons:
A society that is maintained under the yoke of a tyranny allows for fewer combinations between citizens; therefore, it allows only for a restricted exploitation of the possibilities contained in a social system and within each of its citizens. In summary, tyranny has the tendency to reduce the functioning of a society to what the leaders have been able to imagine and conceptualize. On the other hand, democracy allows for a greater number of nonconscious regulations to be established, and it mobilizes a greater variety of individual forms of imagination.
ORGANISM, THOUGHTS, AFFECTS, PASSIONS, AND BODY
Mistake the false for the true,
And the true for the false,
You overlook the heart
And fill yourself with desire
An unreflecting mind is a poor roof.
Passion, like the rain, floods the house,
But if the roof is strong, there is shelter.
(Byron, 1993, Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha, I, p. 4)
At this moment, we have considered two notions that permit us to characterize the mechanisms of the functioning of an organism:
Like Descartes, Spinoza situates the affects in the organismic mechanisms that coordinate the mind and the body. To put this operation into effect in a manner coherent with his system, Spinoza introduces the notion of power. An organism has a basic power that can express itself more or less fully. This power is at its maximum when all of the possibilities of a system are immediately accessible (as in an ideal democracy), and at its minimum when many possibilities are inhibited, consider frozen (as in an unjust tyranny, or a body hampered by multiple chronic muscular tensions). This power gives an organism the force “to do something” and “to persevere in its own being” to attain a goal.9 The affects are part of the mechanisms that regulate this power. They are therefore neither part of the body nor of the mind,10 but of the architecture that connects them.
The quality of these organismic regulators modifies the power of the organism and depends on the adequacy of the thoughts. An inadequate thought is one that creates a partial or false representation of an event.11 When a person fully understands what is going on around him, the impact of the thoughts on the organism permits him to organize himself adequately and, consequently, to organize an adequate behavior. When a situation is perceived inadequately, the system of affective regulation becomes a passion— that is, a form of inadequate regulation of the organism that will diminish its power and the relevance of the behaviors that an individual system activates.12 Misunderstanding what is happening in one’s family automatically engenders passions that deregulate the organism.
A thought is, by its very nature, inadequate to the extent that a thought is built on a partial perception of what is happening and is managed only by the tools of the mind. It is therefore predictable that from time to time the passions will take over the power in an organism. But there are moments, situations, and persons (e.g., trauma and abuse) who engender particularly inadequate thoughts. These deregulations inhibit the power of the organism, engender depressive moods, and increase the error of the initial capacity to understand. To the extent that organismic regulations influence behavior, there will also be dysfunction in the way the organism participates in the interactions of a group and influences the functioning of the group and the organisms that constitute the group. Thus, vicious circles can come about that increase the potential of a person’s passions within a group or even all the individuals in the group. If a psychotherapist can help someone better understand what happened and what is happening, not only will the mind be helped but the remainder of the entire system will be helped as well.
SPINOZA AND ANTIDEPRESSANTS
Clinical observation n. 5. A young family man is struck with a fast spreading melanoma already in multiple locations thus creating a serious risk of a brutal death caused by hemorrhaging. He refused to see his wife and children, and maintains a hostile attitude toward the staff because he deems his room unacceptable and his roommate disagreeable. Clearly, this man is extremely traumatized and in anguish. He is totally disconnected from his situation. He cannot reflect and adopt a mood to make better use of the time he has left. (Patrice Guex, 1989, An Introduction to Psycho-Oncology, p. 128; translated by Marcel Duclos)
Patrick Guex’s case illustrates the topic of this section if we admit that in this instance, the reactions of the patient were really irrational and were caused by an extreme dread, not only because of his reaction to having cancer but also by the impact of the disease on his psychophysiology. The example would be trivial if the extreme anxiety of the patient were caused only by a disagreeable roommate and the fears that cancer inevitably activates. We have here an example of the difficulty of evaluating clinical data. We must have confidence in Patrick Guex, who was at the time already a skilled clinician, and that what we have here is really anxiety amplified by the impact of the melanoma on the power of the organism.
Even if Spinoza does not envision an intervention that rises up from the body to influence thoughts, his theory allows for it. If the body functions inadequately, the organism will become dysfunctional, and it will engender inadequate reasoning such that renders the dysfunction of the organism even more severe. This is the reciprocal of the cognitive reasoning developed in the previous section. This is what psychiatrists observe and report when they study the impact of cancer on the mind, of neurotransmitters on depression, or of a thyroid disease on mood.
Spinoza’s systemic model allows one to understand how something as insignificant as a pill may improve the functioning of the affects and, through this, the dimensions of mind and body. Contemporary biological research demonstrates that depression is notably caused by the production of insufficient neurotransmitters like serotonin and/or by an underdevelopment of neurotransmitter receptor sites. Depression is generally characterized as a weakening of the power of the organism, a turning of aggression against this power, and repetitively devaluing thoughts. These thoughts are part of what Spinoza calls a passive spirit.13 Depressive feelings are typically a passion that turns aggression against self and engenders dark thoughts—sometimes suicidal ones. A classical cognitive treatment begins with work on the inadequate thoughts. A classical biological treatment starts by compensating for the lack of serotonin. Taken regularly for at least a year, the antidepressant “teaches” the mechanisms of the organism to live with a stronger dose of serotonin.14
It would therefore seem that the depressive affect is related to the organismic regulators that generate dark thoughts, which reinforce destructive vicious circles that install themselves in the dynamics of the organism. It is often impossible to know if depression is mostly created by inadequate thoughts or by a lack of serotonin. What is certain is that once a depression is established, these two dynamics mutually reinforce each other. It would seem that a therapy that acts on one of the dimensions can have an impact on the other. Sometimes, both modes of intervention must be used together.
Patients who take antidepressants and the patients whose depression is lifted through psychotherapy often report that they now react less violently to what is happening, that they no longer take every word or every phrase like a personal attack, or perceive every single tragedy in the world showed on television as a personal crisis. Something of the order of the regulation of the mind and the affects creates a personal space in which a patient can relax and rediscover his immediate needs. He takes anew the time to reflect on his personal preoccupations, without being distressed by everything that is going on around him. It is not so much a distancing oneself from others but the taking of one’s own personal space.
Therefore, I can also use Spinoza’s model to define certain outlines of mind-body interventions, even if this did not enter into his objectives. This is because he includes a parallelist constraint in the face of the “everything influences everything” that renders comprehensible the interaction between the mind and the body.
Men think of themselves as free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetite, and do not think, even in their dreams, of the causes by which they are disposed to wanting and willing, because they are ignorant of those causes. (Spinoza, 1677a, Ethics, I, appendix I, II/79, p. 26)
This doctrine concerning the end turns nature completely upside down. For what is really a cause, it considers as an effect, and conversely (what is an effect it considers as a cause). (Spinoza, 1677a, Ethics, I, appendix II, II/81, p. 28)
To reflect with ease, the thinking individual needs to have the impression that he is reasoning on all of the existing data. The mind has difficulty including in its reasoning the fact that it is influenced by the very forces it wants to control. Humans automatically have the impression that the functioning of nature is so simple that they can easily understand it.15 This impression creates a form of the reversal that characterizes perversion. The human being believes to be the cause of what is going on around him, whereas very often this perception is organized by an environment that thoughts perceive only in a partial way.
Primates are visual animals, and we think best in pictorial or geometric terms. Words are an evolutionary afterthought. The power of pictures, as epitomes or encapsulators of central concepts in our culture, may best be appreciated in studying what I like to call “canonical icons,” or standard images that automatically trigger a body of associations connected with an important theory. (Stephen Jay Gould, 1996, Dinosaur in a Haystack, p. 249)
Spinoza distinguishes among three subsystems of the mind:
These three subsystems are part of the psychic system, from which the mind emerges. They do not necessarily act on the same materials at a given moment. Identical perceptions are not organized in the same way in these three levels of the mind.
To illustrate this analysis, Spinoza takes the example of the impact of a sunset on a person’s thoughts. A first series of information about the sun comes from the way it is integrated in the physiological dynamics17 that are activated when the solar rays reach the retina. This activity unfolds automatically in a nonconscious way. The organism will then create in the mind representations derived from the activity of the sensory nervous system. The mechanisms that translate nervous impulses into thoughts are unknown. However, once these representations enter the mind, they first follow psychological laws such as those of Spinoza’s imagination. Given that these first mechanisms are primitive, they will create a kind of illusion that inspires poets but not the astronomer:18
When we look at the sun, we imagine it as about two hundred feet away from us, an error which does not consist simply in his imagining, but in the fact that while we imagine it in this way, we are ignorant of its true distance and of the cause of this imagining. For even if we later come to know that it is more than six hundred diameters of the earth away from us, we nevertheless imagine it as near. For we imagine the sun near not because we do not know its true distance, but because an affection of our body involves the essence of the sun insofar as our body is affected by the sun. (Spinoza, 1677a, Ethics, II, proposition XXXV, scholium, p. 53f)
Given that thoughts are not conscious of being fabricated by the nervous system, the individual has the impression that his perceptions correspond to reality. Siegfried Frey has recently indicated, with research to back it up, that this impression is not negotiable, even when various lectures and trainings indicate that these impressions are illusions. In this way, Frey and Masters explain the incredible impact of the visual media (especially television) on citizens.19 Spinoza’s imagination is thus a type of thinking that perceives the sun as a sphere that descends behind the horizon, and reacts as if what is perceived is what is. Imagination has no more critical sense than a camera.
Spinoza’s reason takes up this perception of the sun in a parallel fashion, without annulling the impression furnished by the imagination, and associates it to the understanding proposed by astronomers.20 Reason creates verbal and mathematical representations that can be combined in logical fashion. As far as an experience created in the nervous system, this second layer of information and reflection is of a different nature than those produced by the impact of the sun on the retina. Thoughts can distinguish between these two types of information, which explains why they do not match up. To the extent that information taught to people is often unreliable, it is probably useful that the human mind spontaneously distinguishes between information that comes from qualitatively different sources and uses different procedures to assimilate them. That is how Spinoza explains the fact that even astronomers like him love to look at the setting sun as it seems to slip below the horizon.
We therefore notice a parallel functioning of the mind that is made explicit by philosophers and some psychologists. Once this point is recognized by an individual, there are two different ethical positions that can be developed:
These are the types of issues that daily arise during a psychotherapeutic practice. We know that asking too much from oneself can bring about anxiety and depression (it is often one of the main causes of depression), whereas on the other hand, having too few expectations hinders the mobilization of a person’s resources or those of his environment. This way of distinguishing the relatively independent layers of the mind is useful for getting a handle on a delicate point for the psychotherapeutic profession: how to measure out personal authenticity and professionalism. To be able to experience the poetry of a sunset without forgetting one’s astronomy is to be on the road to becoming a therapist.
Spinoza also uses affects as an organismic regulator to show: (1) how the human organism defends a functioning that is its own; and (2) how it is regulated by social systems that direct it toward political, theological, economic, and military goals. This theme is developed in A Political Treatise,22 in a section where Spinoza discusses the relationship between individual and social rights.
Spinoza takes the example of a person who has given his word that he would accomplish a particular action. From the point of view of this person, his promise “remains valid so long as the will of him that gave his word remains unchanged” (Spinoza, 1677b, 11.12, p. 296). At this point, the individual has not engaged the power of his organism, only his words.
Spinoza continues by taking the case of two persons who have gone into a partnership based on this given word. They gather the power of the two organisms. The greater the number of partner organisms, the greater the power of the group, and “the more right they all collectively possess” (Spinoza, 1677b, 13, p. 296). The functioning of the group can help or hinder the power mobilized in each organism and consequently, the power of the group. This implies that a system can influence the way a subsystem (the organism) self-regulates. Because the affects are regulators of the power of the organism, the impact of the group influences the functioning of the affects. All of this occurs automatically and in a nonconscious way.
Let us take a secret, as an example.23 The group hides something from the person who gave his word. Without knowing why, things do not unfold as this person had expected. The group has taken control of some information; the mind of the individual now functions with an inadequate data base, which will transform the affective regulation into a passion. The individual in question will necessarily (according to Spinoza) become dysfunctional. For example, he will spend restless nights asking himself if he ought to take back his word while feeling guilty about it.
The other problem that Spinoza brings up for this person is that the part of the group that holds the secret has greater power. Because they lie, they may also have mobilized other forms of trickery and dangerous intentions that render the individual, who gave his word based on false information, even more vulnerable:
But inasmuch as in the state of nature each is so long independent, as he can guard against oppression by another, and it is in vain for one man alone to try and guard against all, it follows hence that so long as the natural right of man is determined by the power of every individual, and belongs to everyone, so long it is a nonentity, existing in opinion rather than fact, as there is no assurance of making it good. And it is certain the greater cause of fear every individual has, the less power, and consequently the less right, he possesses. To this must be added, that without mutual help men can hardly support life and cultivate the mind. (Spinoza, 1677b, 11.15, p. 296)
This individual will not find salvation unless he forges a new alliance that will serve him better. In a state with reliable rights, he would be able to file a complaint, that is, make an alliance with another group, which in this case would be the judicial system. An individual can only survive if he accepts becoming part of a group and seeks, as much as possible, constructive alliances for himself.
If this person consults a psychotherapist, the psychotherapist has at least three options:
The “Spinozan” psychotherapist has a systemic approach not only to the individual organism but also to the situation in which this individual is a part. This is a constant theme in body25 and systemic26 psychotherapy.
We see then, that every citizen depends not on himself, but on the commonwealth, all whose commands he is bound to execute, and has no right to decide, what is equitable or iniquitous, just or unjust. . . . And so, however iniquitous the subject may think the commonwealth’s decisions, he is none the less bound to execute them. (Spinoza, 1677b, III.5, p. 302f)
The flaws in Plato’s Idealism become particularly apparent in its political implications. It is the same with Spinoza. The quotes at the beginning of this section indicate how Spinoza’s thought can be used to justify the power of the masses on an individual, which can be as frightening as the power of the elite. Robespierre referred explicitly to Spinoza when he installed the reign of terror and the guillotine during the first French Revolution (1792–1794). He replaced the Christian religion with a religion proclaimed by the state: The Cult of the Supreme Being that is Nature and Reason. Robespierre also refers to Spinoza to insist that each citizen appreciate studies, solitary labor, temperance, incorruptibility, and the cult of virtue. He persecutes and condemns the aristocrats, the Freemasons, the bachelor (that is against nature) to the guillotine: requiring of each citizen the abdication of individual freedoms to the benefit of the supreme common good.
If Plato advocated the taking over of power by the elite, Spinoza did not wish to see the totalitarianism of the majority come about. But it appeared to him to be one of the risks implied in a democracy based on his principles. The trap that this risk affords us to unveil is that Spinoza’s system wants to be totally coherent, and it extolls a society that adopts this need to be coherent.
With Plato we discussed the danger of believing that only harmony is constructive. Now, with Spinoza, we have discussed the danger of believing that only coherence is creative. I shall not discuss Leibniz, who hoped that the world could be a harmonious and coherent system. None of these philosophers could explain in a satisfactory way why our world only had pockets of harmony and coherence. However, this bias did not prevent them from developing other themes in a particularly interesting way.