Jung & Spinoza: Passage Through The Blessed Self

This dissertation explores Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung’s (1875-1961) curious relationship with the ideas of the 17th Century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). Despite mentioning Spinoza by name only seven times throughout his Collected Works, there is a strong affinity between the core ideas of both thinkers, most notably in regards to the transcendental immanence of Spinoza’s God and the monism implicit in Jung’s writings. Despite this accordance, wherever in Jung’s writings he seems to ‘meet’ Spinoza he also confusedly denounces him. To understand why Jung reads Spinoza the way he does, a rigorous comparison between the convergent ideas of both thinkers is undertaken. Various reasons for Jung’s perplexing attitude toward Spinoza are explored before reaching the most plausible conclusion: that Spinoza forces Jung into a confrontation with the unknown that strips Jung of the sanctuary of the inner world that he holds dear and that his psychology prioritizes. Ultimately however this introverted bias reveals a problem in Jung’s theories regarding his ability to treat the outer world equal to the inner realm. To solve this dilemma, Jung concedes to a Spinozist viewpoint. For Jung this results in a ‘tripartite monism’ of matter, psyche and spirit that differs from the dual-aspect monism outlined by the theoretical physicist and Jungian scholar Harald Atmanspacher. According to Jung and Spinoza, knowledge of the absolute does not come from tracing the aspects of mind and matter back to an original one but rather through understanding the relationships between the infinity of all finite things. This allows a comparison of Jung’s ideas of individuation and the unus mundus with Spinoza’s notions of virtue and blessedness. For both thinkers, knowledge of the self leads to knowledge of the Divine, and it is this championing of a transcendental immanence that makes Jung an unlikely yet consummate Spinozist.