Absolutism 4 / Spinoza's Ethics

1. What were Louis XIV’s militaristic policies?
He hired François le Tellier (later marquis de Louvois) to secretary of state for war where he created a profes-sional army where the state employed the soldiers. Louis took command and directly supervised all aspects and details of military affairs. He personally directed all officers down to the rank of colonel. Louvois dragooned, in which press gangs seized lowly men off the streets. He conscripted and then had a lottery draft. He also re-cruited mercenaries and put them under the strict control of Jean Martinet. A commissariat was established to feed the soldiers, and uniforms and weapons were standardized. An ambulance corps was founded to heal, and a rational system of training and promotion was imposed. He was an expansionist who used war to grow France.

2. What did Louis XIV do to support his wars?
Minister of finance Claude Le Peletier devalued the currency and sold offices, tax exemptions, and titles of nobil-ity. Louis published a declaration in 1689 ordering that all the nation’s silverware be handed over to the mint. He personally handed over all the silver in Versailles over. Taxes were also increased.

3. Describe the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713). Which countries were part of it and what was the cause? How did the war end? etc.
It was provoked by the territorial disputes of the 1600’s caused by Louis’s wars. In 1698, the European powers agreed by treaty to partition Spanish possessions between the king of France and the Holy Roman emperor, who were the Spanish king Charles II’s brothers-in-law. When Charles died in 1700, his will left all of Spain’s land to Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson. Louis reneged on the treaty preventing the union of the French and Spanish crowns and accepted the will. The Dutch and English would not accept French control of the Spanish Netherlands and of Spain’s colonies, and the union would have upset the European balance of power. In 1701, the English, Dutch, Austrians, and Prussians formed the Grand Alliance against Louis. They claimed they were keeping the balance of power, but due to overseas maritime rivalry, serious international tension came. The powers also wanted to check France’s expanding commercial power in North America, Asia, and Africa. Eugene, prince of Sa-voy, and John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, defeated Louis in 1704 at Blenheim, Bavaria. Marlborough then won again at Ramillies near Namur in Brabant. The war ended in Utrecht in 1713.

4. What was significant about the Peace of Utrecht?
Philip remained the first Bourbon king of Spain, but the French and Spanish crowns could never be united. France surrendered Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territories to England, and England acquired Gibraltar, Minorca, and control of the African slave trade from Spain. Austria gained the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch got nothing. The Peace of Utrecht showed the balance of power in action. Spain’s decline was complete, the British Empire was greatly expanded, and European powers now had experience in international cooperation. France’s expansionist policy was over, thousands of families were now tax exempt, and the country was on the brink of financial bankruptcy in 1714.

5. Compare and contrast the French and Spanish governments politically and economically.
Spain had developed in the sixteenth century a permanent bureaucracy staffed by professionals in various coun-cil of state, a standing army, and national taxes that hurt the poor the most. France depended on financial and administrative unification within its borders while Spain had a system based on silver bullion from Peru. France represented absolutism in the seventeenth century while Spain was in decline. Silver from Mexico and Peru, as well as the selling of goods to its colonies, enriched Spain. However, the Dutch and English began to trade with the Spanish colonies, reducing the revenues that went to Spain. Mexico and Peru developed local industries, les-sening their need to buy from Spain. The silver lodes began to dry up, resulting in the quality of metal in Spain to decline. In Madrid, royal spending exceeding the income, causing a high state dept that had to be repudiated many times, lowering the public confidence in the state. There was a tiny middle class, and the Spanish money became severely inflated. The costs of production pushed goods higher than colonial and international goods. Spanish aristocrats increased the rents on their lands, driving the peasants from the land and to the city, where they became beggars. The kings of Spain became more sickly and stupid due to inbreeding and the decaying monarchy.

6. How did Gaspar de Guzmán, count-duke of Olivares, contribute to the downfall of the Spanish power?
He held on to the belief that the solution of Spain’s difficulties could be fixed by a return to the imperial tradi-tion. This meant war with the Dutch in 1622, a 31-year war with France over Mantua, and involvement in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1640, there were revolts in Catalonia and Portugal, and in 1643, the French defeated the Spanish army at Rocroi in present-day Belgium. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, Spain was compelled to surrender vast territories to France.

7. What were the values of the Spanish during the seventeen century? Why? Discuss how these ideals were related to their downfall.
Seventeen-century Spain could not forget the wealth of the previous century. Bureaucratic councils were ruled by the aristocrats, creating an aristocracy. Spain valued military glory and strong Roman Catholic Faith. However, Spain lacked the finances and the manpower to fight in the expensive wars it got involved with in the seventeenth century. Spain ignored the mercantile ideas and scientific methods of the Netherlands and England because they were heretic nations. The wealth of the Americas ended the Spanish middle class and created con-tempt for business and manual labor. Spanish rulers were pessimistic and fatalists who did not favor change.

8. How did Don Quixote effectively depict the seventeenth-century Spanish society?
The main character, Don Quixote, imagines that he is a knight and goes on a pursuit for military glory. However, his pursuit is futile. From him comes the word “quixotic,” which means idealistic but impractical, characterizing seventeenth-century Spain.

1. Benedict Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632 to Portuguese Jewish parents who fled Spain during the Inqui-sition. In his youth, he enjoyed philosophy and studied Hebrew books and the writings of Descartes and other mystical and cabalistic authors. He began to question the strict formalism of his youth and declared an open re-volt. In 1656, he was called before his synagogue on counts of heresy that God may have a corporal body. He re-jected Judaism and was essentially banished from Amsterdam.

2. Spinoza believed that God was in everything and knowledge of the universe could only be established by refe-rencing God. All understanding involved the location of isolated events and their causes within God’s picture, but God is substance and not a great being. God is the only independent thing and everything else depends on Him. Attributes are properties of a substance that humans can only see two of, mind and matter. Mode is the modifications of substance and is conceived through something else. Spinoza’s famous doctrine means that God makes up all substance and that all substances are the same.

3. Spinoza sees nature connected to the order of the mind. The mind is a complex organ that must make distinc-tions between false ideas and true ones. Ideas are true if they are connected to God. Without God, they have no purpose. The human mind is able to understand God. Emotions come from the necessity of nature and can be analyzed. Human beings can sense God’s eternal underlying structure. When humans are able to progress and pass through a higher state of being, they experience joy, and when they go through lower states, they feel sor-row.

4. Desire is what directs us to act and increases virtue. To resist negative pressures, humans must fend off the les-sening emotions. A high virtuous mind, one that knows God, will cause humans to have more desire and power for action. By achieving adequate, truthful ideas, humans become themselves adequate. Humans can modify their own characters and experience real joy.