So is Spinoza a natural pantheist then? In what sense was Spinoza calling the universe God - just in awe astonishment or is there something more that differentiates him from an atheist?
There is very, very little that separates Spinoza from an atheist. His penchant for referring to the entirety of nature as "God" is the primary thing.
There is some scholarly debate about whether Spinoza really even
was a pantheist-- as we understand the term today. He was accused of atheism in his time, and all of his writings were banned across Europe for their supposed atheism. That leads some scholars to hypothesize that Spinoza's pantheism was merely a ruse to conceal his atheism. Spinoza himself denied being an atheist. But (again) he did not live in a time when it was wise to profess atheism.
But there is some pushback to the notion that Spinoza was a complete atheist. Novalis called him a "God-intoxicated man." And others have poured over his work and (supposedly) found pieces of mystical thought.
Fun fact: The term "pantheism" was first coined to describe Spinoza's ideas. I guess the jury is out on whether that has anything to do with whether he was really a pantheist or not. Supposing that Spinoza
was a pantheist, he was most certainly a natural pantheist, and not really any other kind.
Spinoza really didn't think that "awe or astonishment" were all that valuable of traits to cultivate as they pertain to God (or Nature). That's my own personal vision of pantheism that I arrived at chiefly through Thoreau.
Spinoza thought that emotions were distortions, and that they impair correct perception of the world. That isn't to say that Spinoza is "anti-emotion" or any kind of Vulcan. To the contrary he saw many emotions in a positive light. But he saw other emotions as forces which keep us bound to ignorance. Spinoza's theory of emotions is VAST and complicated. In his book,
The Ethics, he spends quite a lot of time going through every conceivable emotion that humans have, starting with the
natural cause of each emotion... ie how each particular emotion is aroused within us because of certain environmental conditions.... and then he proceeds to explain how each particular emotion alters our perception of the world in a specific way. He goes through love, hatred, anger, envy and other emotions one at a time... it's fascinating.
I gotta be careful not to ramble about Spinoza's theory of emotions. It is something I'm very, very interested in. If your curious, ask me anything. But I gotta stop here or I'll ramble.
PS:
I do want to also add that Spinoza thinks that an emotion is not a merely feeling. An emotion is a feeling that is
always paired with a thought. In other words, Spinoza doesn't think a person can simply "BE happy." They can only be happy ABOUT something. Other philosophers, like William James, disagree with this idea. James thinks that an emotion is constituted by
the feeling alone, and the thought that "corresponds" to the emotion is a side effect of us thinking about the thing that causes the feeling. ie. girl makes us feel love, when we feel that love we THEN have the thought about the girl because we understand that she is the cause of that feeling.
What's your personal take on emotion? Does it require a corresponding thought or is it "simply a feeling"?