Spinoza, but without skipping demonstrations

In February 2025, I devoted my spiritual life to an experiment that was long overdue: reading the Ethics of Spinoza without skipping its very dry & demanding demonstrations. I call it overdue because, for years, I have tried to internalize Spinoza’s philosophy, and finally, my experiment of March 2024 with “spinozist mindfulness” forced me to confront the fact that this could not be done fully without actually taking the plunge into spinozist logic. This new experiment gave me a new fervent appreciation of the paradigmatic spinozist philosophical exercise: reasoning in geometrical order.

Last time I talked about practising Spinoza’s philosophy on this blog, I was trying to figure out what the paradigmatic spinozist philosophical exercise would be, and if it could be a form of mindfulness meditation. This reflection culminated in the following conclusion/confession: the “geometrical order” that Spinoza claims as a method, and which consists in demonstrating his metaphysical theses deductively (deriving propositions from fundamental axioms, and deriving effect from cause, & never the other way around), all of that seemed really relevant to the discussion, yet I had never felt inspired by it. I had always taken it to be a weird and quirky way to present one’s philosophy and so I never quite grappled with what the point of it was. This means that I tended to skip a lot of Spinoza’s demonstrations when I read the Ethics! I very much preferred to read the commentaries that Spinoza added after the demonstrations, where he summarized his conclusions.

I don’t want to exaggerate my previous ignorance of Spinoza and the Ethics. I wasn’t completely skipping everything! (I have my pride) Yet, it is true to say that I behaved a little bit like the hypothetical reader that Pierre Macherey criticizes in his Introduction to the Ethics of Spinoza when he writes:

“And if one lets themself be intimidated by these difficulties, to the point that one might judge them to be insurmountable, then one might be tempted to give up on a methodical reading of the text, and instead switch to explaining or interpreting the text mainly by highlighting certain great “ideas” attributed to Spinoza (his “monism”, his “necessitarianism”, his “immanentism”, his “pantheism”, his “utilitarianism”, his “atheism”, his “rationalism”, etc); great ideas detached from the medium of the argumentative text and re-contextualized in the broader context of a theoretical worldview which would be “the philosophy of Spinoza”, and whose rigor would be conditional on the adoption of a certain point of view on reality which would be more or less relative and arbitrary.”¹

In other words, when the text was very difficult – which happened fairly often – I would focus on the conclusions that Spinoza seemed to have reached. Since a lot of these conclusions were very cool (non anthropomorphic God, lack of libertarian free will, etc) I thought: well, I already agree with the conclusion, so how important can his demonstration be? 

Since I could tell that something was missing from my relationship with spinozist philosophy, I decided to take the plunge and to really read Spinoza’s demonstrations this month. I resolved to never proceed to the next proposition until I fully understood the demonstration of the one before. It was challenging at times, but thanks to Pierre Macherey’s excellent series of Introductions to Spinoza, it was a manageable challenge, in the end.

What I will do now is recount all the “Eureka” moments I had along the way. These were moments where I truly broke through to a new level of understanding of the Ethics. As you will see, I never gave up on the question that was nagging at me, last time: is it possible to combine mindfulness meditation and Spinoza? I found that this question, though very personal to me, was pretty useful to reveal certain aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy.

And now, for my hard-earned Eurekas:

1) Non-dualism, but without pessimism about logic and language

Non-duality is the ability to see that there is no substantial distinction between subject and object, between objects themselves, and between subjects themselves. All distinctions between them are added after the fact. After the bare fact of existence, that is. They are added by our linguistic and conceptual schemes. We trick ourselves into thinking that there really is an ontological gap between different entities. Rather than see many drops in the same ocean, we see different oceans. To understand this mistake is an experience which is at the heart of many philosophical traditions. In Nonduality, David Loy makes a simple and elegant point: many philosophical traditions can be compared to each other by analysing the different – seemingly incompatible – ways they decided to tackle the difficult task of expressing this ineffable experience of non-dualism. 

But what would happen if someone had this experience of non-duality and didn’t think it was ineffable? I think Spinoza would happen. I think his philosophy is exactly what you would expect from someone who, contrary to the cases examined by David Loy, has absolutely no qualm about using language and logic to express non-dualism. This is the reason why trying to think of a spinozist version of mindfulness presented such an interesting challenge for me, last year. On the one hand, Spinoza is a non-dualist. He delivers to us “knowledge of the union between the mind and the whole of Nature”². On the other hand, Spinoza has absolutely none of the anxieties I have been accustomed to when it comes to expressing non-dualism! He believes that language can be adequate to express this reality, with a little bit of effort.

As I have said before, “a change of emphasis, even slight, is very helpful when it comes to meditation! Very very helpful!” and so I welcome this new version of non-dualism to my spiritual life. That said, I was a bit worried… I thought “isn’t Spinoza naive about logic and language?” I surveyed his conceptual tools and I thought that they looked weird. Glancing at these conceptual tools, I was worried that Spinoza was optimistic about the reach of logic and language because he was very naive about it.

2) Logical Tools to safeguard the Question of Being

My second eureka moment came with a comparison to Heidegger (who, by the way, also gets a cameo in Nonduality as someone whose weird philosophical language can be explained as trying very hard to communicate the non-dual experience). In passing³, Pierre Macherey made a comparison between Spinoza’s central point in the first section of the Ethics (De Deo) and Heidegger’s distinction between Being and beings. Heidegger felt that philosophical attention to Being itself, the very fact of existence, had been neglected, in favour of philosophical questions about beings (the entities that populate existence). He thought that it was very important to focus on the question of Being and to be vigilant so that our thinking does not slip back into considerations about beings. Once we have intuited Being, we must not confuse Being and beings again. As soon as I realized that this was also what was happening with Spinoza and that his philosophical tools were meant to safeguard the question of Being from any slippage, I was able to do a lot of progress with the text!

First of all, I started seeing that all intimidating passages could be broken down by asking myself two questions: 1) in this very sentence, is Spinoza talking about substance (Being) or modes (beings)?, 2) In this passage, what slippage is Spinoza trying to prevent? If the answers didn’t come right away, Pierre Macherey’s excellent books supplied these answers eventually.

Second of all, once all of this was in view, I was able, not only to understand the tools that were being used to safeguard the question of Being, but also to see that these were pretty good tools! I started to find them compelling, and not naive or arbitrary like I used to. I started tackling them on their own terms.

One excellent piece of advice that Pierre Macherey gives is this: to read the axioms and definitions at the beginning, you need to try to understand them in isolation. But you do not need to surrender your critical thinking when you read them, as they are not meant to be “unquestioned axioms”. You need to think about them. Yet, you should not read them like one big syllogism, and you should not read them like something you can criticize from the outside. You have to tackle them on their own terms. You have to be patient. And eventually they will combine into syllogisms and propositions, and you will understand. In a way, this is very usual for Philosophy as a Way of Life: you need to be willing to “try on” what is being offered to you, and so you need to accept the axioms, but you cannot accept the axioms without critical thinking. You need to give them a genuine try. You need to be open-minded about the whole project. Before I understood what the axioms, definitions & weird logical commitments were for, I worried that they were naive or arbitrary. After I understood that they were here to safeguard and communicate a primary intuition (the intuition of existence itself), I was as ready to accept them as you might accept “points, lines, and surfaces” as tools used to do geometry.

3) The Geometrical Order

I had never understood what the geometrical order (Spinoza’s method) truly was. So I am glad Pierre Macherey could tell me⁴. Apparently, Spinoza took a stance against Descartes and argued that “synthetic order”, which proceeds deductively, by deducing the effect from a given cause, is not merely a pedagogical tool that one would use to present various truths that one would have found using a different method. On the contrary, synthesis, a.k.a the geometrical order, is the way you should find these truths in the first place, according to Spinoza. Reason should proceed deductively, and mentally & identically reproduce the order in which causes produce their effects in reality. To do it the other way around, to go from effect to cause, creates a confused picture of reality.

This geometrical order was the main reason why I had felt like mindfulness meditation and Spinoza’s philosophy mixed poorly, like oil and water, in spite of some convergence of views. With mindfulness meditation, I am happy to openly monitor the phenomena that appear in consciousness, whatever they may be, and to acquire equanimity as I frequent them, beneath the need to use language. Phenomena assail my mind, but if I remain still, I find that it removes their sting. I find tranquillity in “going along” with them without being “taken in” by them. At all times, I remain vigilant about the fact that trying to intellectualizing these phenomena, is a subtle way of trying to gain control over them, which inevitably turns into a subtle way that they gain control over me. With Spinoza, on the contrary, there is no reason to accept this “wild monkey mind” as the field in which the therapeutic method operates. Spinoza calls the phenomena that usually arise in consciousness “mutilated thoughts” because they are like “conclusions without their premises”. They spontaneously go in the wrong direction, from effect to cause. The synthetic method, a.k.a geometrical order, dictates that you should not take an “effect” as it presents itself and hope that it can tell you something about its “cause”, as if you could swim upstream from effect to cause. Instead of accepting that starting point, you are supposed to reject it, and airdrop yourself in an intellectual position located upstream, to consider the cause that caused the effect. And most importantly, the ultimate cause: Being itself.

Before I fully understood this geometrical order exercise, I used to not find the idea of being “airdropped” back to the First Cause very compelling. Nowadays, I like it a lot. When I practice it, it goes a little something like this:

“- Alright, so many trains of thought lead nowhere. So many mutilated thoughts lead me astray. There might be a better way of doing this.

- So… Can I deduce my way back to these random impressions pestering me? By starting from absolute certainty, can I find my way back here again and have a better view of what is going with these random impressions?

- Alright, well, damn… What is absolutely certain? That’s a pretty demanding start.

- Well… It is absolutely certain that “there is existence”. Absolutely certain. But as soon as I try to put this insight into words, I find that I can slip back into uncertainty. For instance, if I say “there is something rather than nothing” I can lose the intuition depending on how I define “something” and “nothing”. The intuition of existence itself can escape my grasp, if I am not careful. Oh man… If only I had useful tools to articulate that intuition without losing it. Without losing any of it!

- Oh! Spinoza gives me those tools in the Ethics! Awesome!

- I use those tools to keep the intuition of “existence itself” fully whole. This removes any imaginary gaps that might threaten the intuition. For example a gap at the periphery of existence that might make the universe look finite, or an imaginary gap between causes and effects that might make it look like humans have libertarian free will, or imaginary gaps between subjects and objects, which would threaten the “knowledge of the union between the mind and the whole of Nature”.

- I successfully deduce my way back to the random impressions that were pestering me: they are things that happen because of the nature of my mind & body and the world around me. Now that I am no longer merely a passive recipient, they have lost some of their power over me.

It’s a very therapeutic exercise.

4) Mapping it all out

Let’s map it all out, based on what we have learned so far. I made the following diagram to explain the difference between mindfulness meditation and Spinoza’s geometrical order. Be not afraid of this monstrosity! I will explain each part below.

Phenomenon and Language. First, notice that the diagram is divided between the upper half, titled “phenomenon”, and the lower half, titled “logic & language”. This is important to represent the fact that mindfulness meditation is seeking to transcend language, whereas Spinoza is comfortable with plunging into language. Spinoza doesn’t think that non-dual experience is ineffable, as long as you are using the language of geometry.

Confusion. Secondly, let’s notice that both mindfulness meditation and the geometrical order share the same existential starting point. The starting point is “Confusion”, which you can see here on the left. In both philosophies, "confusion" is described as a state in which you are burnt out and confused by life. You have been chasing leads for a while. You are starting to see the vanity of all the usual goods that you can pursue (honours, riches, sensory pleasures), and you are starting to wonder if there is not a “highest good” that you can aspire to. "Can I transcend the rat race?” one could say. Spinoza describes this beginning in the introduction of Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Reading that description really helped me understand the Ethics more. This very “personal” existential beginning was the missing piece to make the geometrical order very concrete.

Mindfulness’ answer to confusion. Look at the yellow and orange arrow on the diagram. This is mindfulness meditation as a way out of confusion. Language only furthers confusion, so the point is to move beyond language and to attain the non-dual experience, the pure phenomenon. Mindfulness can be subdivided into two paths: 1) the gradual path where you just become better and better at concentrating, in order to attain the non-dual experience, 2) the sudden path where you recognize that “trying” to attain the non-dual experience is the very thing that is preventing you from attaining it. The “sudden path” is the path that will give you paradoxical instructions along the lines of “do not try, you already have the non-dual experience. If anything, you are postponing it with your efforts”. Both paths work well together, though people will engage in fierce debate over which is better.

The Geometrical Order’s answer to confusion. The most important thing, Spinoza says, is to stop using “imagination”. It is an inadequate kind of knowledge. On this diagram, I have depicted “imagination” as a red loop that gets you stuck in confusion. You need to use reason to escape that. The geometrical order consists in using reason to clarify everything. The geometrical order can be subdivided into two paths: the path of the serpent and the path of the dove. Those names were invented by Michah Gottlieb and you can read his reasoning in the article “The Serpent and the Dove: Spinoza’s Two Paths to Enlightenment”⁵. “The Serpent slithers up from below using the second kind of cognition, while the Dove swoops down from above using the third kind of cognition”⁶ Let’s go into more details: 1) the serpent is said to slither up from below, because it uses reason (second kind of knowledge) to tear itself away from the state of confusion and imagination, and to attain a logical understanding of non-duality. 2) the dove is said to swoop down from above because it starts from the non-dual experience, and with this intuitive knowledge (the third kind of knowledge) it radically changes the way we see things and dissolves confusion.

I think it is very important to understand that the path of the serpent and the path of the dove are working together. You have to complete the circuit. If you are doing one but not the other, I wager that you are not actually practising reasoning in the geometrical order. The two paths feed into one another.

Similarities between the Two Exercises. I could always feel instinctively that the two exercises had similarities, even beyond the starting point of Confusion. I think that what I could sense is the fact that the Path of the Dove has the same movement as the Sudden Path. It starts from Non-Dual Experience, and without going through logical steps, it applies this knowledge directly and intuitively to mundane life. This is a big similarity. However, I do think that the Path of the Dove has to be connected to the Path of the Serpent for it to truly count as spinozist philosophy. In so far as I lacked understanding of the Path of the Serpent in the past, my comparison between mindfulness and the geometrical order was only too superficial.

Differences between the Two Exercises. When I see the diagram I created, I really want to do what they do in Interstellar to explain a “wormhole”: I want to take that piece of paper and fold it so that the two points of “Imagination” and “The Sudden Path” overlap completely, and then I want to puncture the paper with a pen to connect those two points three-dimensionally and declare “that is a wormhole!” Indeed, a lot of spirituality is about dealing with the paradox that the “deluded mind” (imagination) is the appropriate place for “enlightenment”. The gradual path tells you that this is because the deluded mind is the workbench of enlightenment. The sudden path, fond of paradoxes, will tell you that the deluded mind is already enlightenment. Either way, it is okay to stay there and contemplate the monkey mind going wild. But I think that with the geometrical order exercise, things are very different. You really need to tear yourself away from imagination, go through logic, and come back to delusion only when you are reaping the results of your spiritual transformation, to measure how far you’ve come.

Conclusion.

As Macherey says, “L'Éthique est par excellence un texte qu'on relit.” = “The Ethics is a text to be read and re-read par excellence”. At first you might think that there is only one chain of reasoning within its pages: a chain that starts with wonky and arbitrary premises and that runs (slavishly) straight to Spinoza’s vision of the highest good. Nothing can be further from the truth! The text is replete with different paths to freedom that intersect the geometrical order and motivate it in different ways. Spinoza is very generous with demonstrations: often demonstrating a proposition in different ways to accommodate for several imagined readers. Macherey makes it clear that the point is to “use” the Ethics in a very personal way, to activate it and to “make it work from the inside”; taking it on its own terms, yes, but without surrendering critical thinking. Eventually you come to understand the text so completely that you may “read it again, in any order”.⁷

In my previous spinozist experiment, I speculated that Spinoza’s central exercise might be closer to loving kindness meditation than to mindfulness meditation. (Again, this was a very superficial comparison; this time based on the movement of the path of the serpent). I no longer think this. Obviously, the central exercise is the geometrical order. That said, I can now see that the Ethics definitely allows for loving kindness meditation and also allows for mindfulness meditation. In the same way that it allows for many things, including perfume and dance. This time around I was struck by how Spinoza’s philosophy seemed so close to the ascetic hedonism of Epicureanism: the gods are not mad at us, you are allowed to enjoy all kinds of pleasure within reason, and you can rejoice while thinking about all the treasures that you hold, including existence itself! Yet, what I am truly excited about now, is the near certainty that the next time I plunge into the Ethics, I will find yet another path of freedom within its pages. The Ethics is like a computer I can use in so many different ways. It is fundamentally, a beautiful network of liberatory paths.

(PS: On this blog, we explore a new philosophical exercise every month. For example, we experimented with Daydreaming Meditation, that one time. And another time, we practised an ecophilosophical exercise called Walking the land.)

(17/03/2025)

Pierrick Simon

my email: lemiroirtranquille@outlook.fr

(do not hesitate to reach out)

Bluesky: @pierricksimon.bsky.social

Twitter: @PhiloTranquille

1“Et si on se laisse impressionner par ces difficultés, au point de les estimer insurmontables, on peut être tenté de renoncer à une lecture méthodique du texte pour substituer à celle-ci un type d'explication ou d'interprétation qui privilégie par-dessus tout certaines grandes "idées" imputées à Spinoza (son "monisme", son "nécessitarisme", son "immanentisme", son " panthéisme", son "utilitarisme", son "athéisme", son " rationalisme", etc.), détachées de leur support argumentatif textuel et réinscrites dans le cadre élargi d'une vision théorique du monde, "la philosophie de Spinoza", dont la rigueur serait subordonnée à l'adoption d'un point de vue sur la réalité plus ou moins relatif et arbitraire.” p.2.  Introduction to Part 5 of the Ethics,) Pierre Macherey

2Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, the first section, the introduction

3 p.91 (introduction to part 1 of Ethics, Macherey)

4 p.17 etc in Introduction to part 1 of the Ethics, Pierre Macherey

5 https://www.academia.edu/45686331/The_Serpent_and_the_Dove_Spinozas_Two_Paths_to_Enlightenment 

6 p.343.  A Companion to Spinoza, First Edition. Edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

7“Bref, le livre écrit par Spinoza, pourvu que soit respectée l'obligation d'une saisie intégrale de son contenu, qui s'exprime en totalité dans chacune de ses parties, est susceptible d'être lu dans tous les sens: et il ne faut pas lui prêter une rigidité qu'il n'a pas, dont il se passe parfaitement, et qui serait même en contradiction avec sa véritable signification rationelle. L'utilisateur de l'Éthique de Spinoza n'est donc pas condamné à adopter une attitude de docile obéissance, qui le priverait de toute marge d'initiative dés lors qu’il s’agit d’en maîtriser le contenu spéculatif: celui-ci, c'est la lecon essentielle qui s'en dégage, ne peut en effet intéresser que des esprits libres ou envoie de le devenir.” p.5 andt p.6 of Introduction to Part 1 of the Ethics, by Macherey

“L'Éthique est par excellence un texte qu'on relit “ p.6. of Introduction to Part 1 of the Ethics, by Macherey

“Se familiariser suflisamment avec le texte de l'Ethique pour pouvoir le faire soi-même fonctionner de I'intérieur, “ p.4 Introduction to Part 5 of the Ethics, by Macherey