SPINOZA'S GOD

Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story (New York: Liveright/Norton, 2012) ("Of all the possible resolutions to the mystery of existence, perhaps the most exhilarating would be the discovery that, contrary to all appearances, the world is cause sui: the cause of itself. This possibility was first rasped by Spinoza, who boldly (if a little obscurely) reasoned that all reality consists of a single infinite substance. Individual things, both physical and mental, are merely temporary modifications of this substance, like waves on the surface of the sea. Spinoza referred to this infinite substance as Deus sive Natura: 'God or Nature.' God could not possibly stand apart from nature, he reasoned, because then each would limit the other's being. So the world itself is divine: eternal, infinite, and the cause of its own existence. Hence, it is worthy of our awe and reverence. Metaphyiscial understanding thus lead to 'intellectual love' of reality--the highest end for humans, according to Spinoza, and the closest we can come to immortality." "Spinoza's picture for the world as cause sui captivated Albert Einstein. In 1921, a New York rabbi asked Einstein if he believed in God. 'I believe in Spinoza's God,' he answered, 'who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.'" Id. at 34.).