4 - Harmony in Spinoza and his Critics

Summary

Men have been so mad as to believe that God is pleased by harmony. Indeed there are philosophers who have persuaded themselves that the motions of the heavens produce a harmony. All of these things show sufficiently that each one has judged things according to the disposition of his brain; or rather, has accepted affections of the imagination as things. (E IApp.)

Things which are of assistance to the common society of men, or which bring it about that men live harmoniously, are useful; those, on the other hand, are evil which bring discord to the state. (E IVP40)

Spinoza is in a potentially untenable position. On the one hand, he argues that those who claim to see harmony in the universe are badly mistaken; they are imagining falsely rather than reasoning properly. On the other hand, harmony is positively discussed in his ethical writings and even serves as the basis for his vision of society. How can both be maintained? In this chapter I argue that this prima facie conflict between the two treatments of harmony is resolvable, but that in resolving it a new set of questions for Spinoza is raised. The focus is on the Ethics, but the issues carry into the Political Treatise and various letters as well, so I will address them as they become relevant.

The chapter proceeds in three stages. In the first part, I introduce the prima facie conflict for Spinoza. Although he roundly criticises harmony, most notably in the Appendix to the first part of the Ethics, he also endorses a particular understanding of harmony that he relies on in his metaphysical, ethical, and political writing. I argue that there are two distinct concepts at work and that the prima facie conflict dissolves once this is recognised. In the second part, I show that the second (positive) concept in Spinoza generates a new set of questions. To accomplish this I explore how harmony was used in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, which will help us better situate Spinoza. In doing so, we can recognise new possibilities and new connections between Spinoza and philosophers who are not often discussed in connection with him. In the final section, I explore some of these new connections to reveal how they connect to recognised problems of Spinoza interpretation.