Meaning in Spinoza's method

MEANING IN SPINOZA’S METHOD

Readers of Spinoza’s philosophy have often been daunted, and sometimes been enchanted, by the geometrical method which he employs in his philosophical masterpiece the Ethics. In Meaning in Spinoza’s Method Aaron Garrett examines this method and suggests that its purpose, in Spinoza’s view, was not just to present claims and propositions, but also in some sense to change the readers and allow them to look at themselves and the world in a different way. His discussion draws not only on Spinoza’s works, but also on those of the philosophers who influenced Spinoza most strongly, including Hobbes, Descartes, Maimonides, and Gersonides. This original and controversial book will be of interest to historians of philosophy and to anyone interested in the relation between form and content in philosophical works. a a ro n v. g a r re t t is Assistant Professor at Boston University. He has contributed to a number of publications and is the editor of Francis Hutcheson’s An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (2003), and of Animal Rights and Souls in the Eighteenth Century (2000).

M E A N I N G I N S P I N O Z A ’S METHOD A A RO N V. G A R R E T T Boston University

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521826112 © Aaron V. Garrett 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-06253-7 eBook (NetLibrary) - isbn-10 0-511-06253-2 eBook (NetLibrary) - isbn-13 978-0-521-82611-2 hardback -  hardback isbn-10 0-521-82611-X

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Let us conceive now, if you please, that there is a little worm living in the blood which is capable of distinguishing by sight the particles of the blood, of lymph, of chyle, and the like, and capable of observing by reason how each particle, when it encounters another, either bounces back, or communicates a part of its motion, and so on. Indeed, it would live in this blood as we do in a part of the universe, and would consider each particle of the blood as a whole, not as a part. Nor could it know how all the parts of the blood are regulated by the universal nature of the blood, and compelled to adapt themselves to one another, as the universal nature of the blood requires, so that they harmonize with one another in a certain way. (Letter XXXII – Voorburg, 20 November 1665)

Contents

page viii x xi

Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Texts and editions

1

Introduction 1

A worm in the blood: some central themes in Spinoza’s Ethics

20

2

A few further basic concepts

50

3

Emendative therapy and the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione

73

4

Method: analysis and synthesis

97

5

Maimonides and Gersonides

123

6

Definitions in Spinoza’s Ethics: where they come from and what they are for

144

The third kind of knowledge and “our” eternity

181

7

224 231 234

Bibliography Index of passages referred to and cited General index

vii

Acknowledgments

After I defended my dissertation my supervisor, Yirmiyahu Yovel, suggested that I try to answer two further questions: (1) What did Spinoza understand by the third kind of knowledge in the Ethics? (2) What is the relation between the Ethics and Spinoza’s earlier work, the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione? At the time I did not realize that, in trying to answer these two questions, I would need to rethink and revise how I understood Spinoza’s method and ultimately reject most of what I had written in my dissertation. My deepest thanks to Yirmiyahu Yovel for supervising my dissertation and then helping me to move well beyond it. The manuscript from which this book was built was originally called “A Worm in the Blood.” My editor properly pointed out that the title was somewhat nauseating and would probably condemn the book to be shelved in the biology section of bookstores. But please keep in mind that this was the original title and my guiding theme for finding some meaning in Spinoza’s method. Many people have helped me with writing this book, only a few of whom I can list. The community of Spinoza scholars is, fittingly, one of the kindest and most thoughtful in academe, and I have benefited greatly from it. Henry Allison, Michael Della Rocca, Shelly Kroll, Justin Steinberg, Amelie Rorty, and Andrew Pyle all read the manuscript in full and provided many helpful comments. Michael, in particular, read two drafts (!), forced me to clarify much murk in the manuscript (although there is much remaining), and gave me countless specific criticisms and corrections from which I benefited enormously. All aided me greatly in turning a draft into a book. Tom Cook, Brett Doyle, Knud Haakonssen, Genevieve Lloyd, David Lyons, Regan Penaluna, Gideon Segal, Fred Tauber, and Wayne Waxman have all read sections of the manuscript and provided helpful comments. Roger Ariew, Ken Bronfenbrenner, Edwin Curley, Johannes Fritsche, Don Garrett, Ian Hunter, and Richard Tuck have helped me with specific ideas and I am very grateful to them. Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau very kindly gave me a copy of his translation of Meyer. Many thanks to Piet Steenbakkers, Ron viii

Acknowledgments

ix

Bombardi, and above all Frank Mertens for helping me to track down the source of the cover illustration. I have also been aided by the many students I have taught Spinoza to over the years. Hilary Gaskin has been an ideal editor, and I am grateful to her for all her help, as well as Gillian Maude and the staff at Cambridge University Press. Thanks also to my friends and advisors at the NSSR, Richard Bernstein, Teresa Brennan, Agnes Heller, and Morgan Meis. I have benefited from the work of many scholars (as will be apparent), but I would like to thank a few who inspired me from the very beginning of my interest in Spinoza, in addition to those I have thanked above: Jonathan Bennett, Herman De Dijn, Stuart Hampshire, Alexandre Matheron, and G. H. R. Parkinson. Thanks to Iain McCalman and the Humanities Research Center of the Australian National University, and the Humanities Foundation of Boston. I owe a great debt to Charles Griswold and Knud Haakonssen, and to my many intellectually stimulating and thoughtful colleagues at Boston University. Thanks also to my family for constant support. This book is dedicated to my late grandfather Abraham Klein and to my late teacher Carl Cohen. Carl Cohen taught me that if human history is not rational at least humans ought to be. My grandfather taught me that some of the deepest ties can be elective. It was on his bookshelf I found my first copy of Spinoza’s Ethics. The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that any URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Abbreviations

AT CM CW DC DM KV NS PP PWD TIE TP TTP

Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964–76). Cogitata Metaphysica The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton University Press, 1985). De Corpore Discourse on Method Korte Verhandeling Nagelate Schriften Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ed. and trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1988–91). Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione Tractatus Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

x

Texts and editions

All English translations of Spinoza’s Ethics are my own except when noted. Some are taken from Edwin Curley (ed. and trans.), The Collected Works of Spinoza (Princeton University Press, 1985). Translations from Curley’s Ethics will be abbreviated as CW , and this abbreviation will also be used when I make reference to his editorial apparatus and commentary. Curley’s translations are far superior to mine, but I have relied on my clumsier translations to get across some of the technical oddities in Spinoza’s Latin. All passages cited from the Principia Philosophia Cartesianae, the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, and the Korte Verhandeling are from Curley’s edition, and Curley’s translation is used. The abbreviation NS in some of Curley’s translations refers to variant readings from the Nagelate Schriften, the Dutch translation of Spinoza’s works. Thanks to Princeton University Press for allowing me to cite from Curley’s edition. Latin quotes will be referenced to Carl Gebhardt (ed.), Spinoza Opera, 6 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1925). Although the new French critical edition of Spinoza, Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau (ed.), Spinoza: Oeuvres (Paris: PUF, 1999–), establishes texts which supersede Gebhardt, the edition references the standard Gebhardt page numbers. I will use the following standard abbreviations throughout: quotes from the Ethics will be simply referenced by part and number (i.e., “iiip4”). The Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione will be abbreviated TIE and referenced by paragraph number (i.e., “TIE 99”). Abbreviations employed in the text to refer to Spinoza’s other works will be TTP (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus), TP (Tractatus Politicus), PP (Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae), and KV (Korte Verhandeling). All will be referenced by chapter and section numbers and when necessary Gebhardt page (abbreviated by volume and page), except the PP which will be referenced by proposition. Spinoza’s letters will be cited in the text as “Letter” followed by a roman numeral number; i.e. Letter 30 will be cited as “Letter XXX.” All translations from Spinoza’s letters are from, Abraham Wolf (ed. and trans.), The Correspondence of Spinoza (London: Allen and Unwin, 1928), xi

xii

Texts and editions

except when noted. Hobbes’ De Corpore will be abbreviated in the text as DC followed by chapter and section numbers. Descartes’ “Essay” which opens the Discourse on Method will be abbreviated DM and referenced by its sections (i.e. DM III). All passages from Descartes will be abbreviated AT and cited from the Adam and Tannery edition, Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1982). Translations are from John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny (ed. and trans.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1988–91).

Introduction

This is a book about Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers of the seventeenth century, or of any time. He is also a particularly controversial philosopher and particularly difficult to understand. The controversies primarily stem from the fact that Spinoza’s two best-known works, the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, contain forceful criticisms of some of the central pillars of revealed religion. As an alternative to revealed religion, Spinoza offered a rigorous and powerful philosophy – most notably a metaphysics that demonstrated the necessity in and eternity of nature and equated nature with God – that, he argued, underlay whatever truths could be found in religion and philosophical theology.1 Consequently, Spinoza was viewed by many of his contemporaries as a dangerous and nearly Satanic figure. Dutch Calvinists, liberal Hobbesians, and many key Enlightened figures of the scientific revolution all united in vigorously attacking the TTP and the Ethics.2 Furthermore, these attacks 1

2

Spinoza’s main disagreement with his friend Lodewijk Meyer on this issue draws out Spinoza’s position on the relation between and distinctness of philosophy and religion. Whereas the Lutheran Meyer (like Maimonides) thought that there was philosophy in Scripture, and that Scripture ought to be understood as expressing the truths of philosophy, Spinoza thought that Scripture contained no philosophy, a few moral truths, and a great deal of history of brutal and primitive desert nomads. Spinoza did not think philosophy could or would replace religion, but rather that the truth of philosophical theology lies in any proximity it bears to the truth of the metaphysics and epistemology that he argues for. The rest is history, politics, and stubborn superstition. Given that one cannot get rid of religion, the problem is how to control it in such a way as to allow for freedom of thought – see TTP XX. See also J. Samuel Preus, Spinoza and Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge University Press, 2001). As examples of the attacks on him by contemporaries who differed on many other substantive issues: the Calvinist Blijenburgh attacked Spinoza in letters and publications, the powerful liberal Hobbesian Lambertus Velthuysen, whose favor Spinoza wished to curry, was horrified by the TTP and wrote a book against it, and the great ideologist of early modern science Robert Boyle both attacked Spinoza in his publications and left a bequest to set up a series of lectures – the Boyle lectures – combating the sort of “atheism” represented by Spinoza.

1

2

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

did not subside with Spinoza’s death in 1677, but rather continued for centuries.3 Spinoza’s philosophy was also admired by many free-thinkers and philosophes.4 In the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century Spinoza even became the secular saint of a kind of mystical pantheist deism for authors like Goethe, Schelling, and Coleridge. In the twentieth century Spinoza has been credited with, among many other things, a founding role in modern empirical psychology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, Nietzscheanism, liberalism, the modern Jewish secular identity, and too many other -isms and -ologies to mention. This brings up the issue of the difficulties that all readers have understanding Spinoza. A quick look at the very truncated list above of -isms and -ologies with which Spinoza has been credited reveals that there is little that holds them together other than a general agreement on Spinoza’s importance. This is a function of the difficulty of Spinoza’s texts, so daunting that some of Spinoza’s most virulent detractors hardly read his works at all! In the eighteenth century even those who did read Spinoza often relied on popular presentations of his philosophy, most influentially Pierre Bayle’s entry “Spinoza” in the Dictionnaire. Accordingly Spinoza has sometimes seemed to function less as a philosopher than as a sort of cipher of Enlightenment aspirations, a Rorschach test through which to read heterodoxy, reason, mysticism, and whatever else one might like. Who was this philosopher who elicited such responses: contemptuous, devoted, confused, yet persistent and powerful? He was born in 1632 – the same year as John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf, and Richard Cumberland (and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe). He belonged to the first generation of philosophers to look back at the anarchic religious war of the late sixteenth and early and mid-seventeenth centuries from a comparatively stable polity periodically erupting in spasms of violence.5 He was born into the fairly conservative Jewish community of Amsterdam. Amsterdam was one of the 3

4 5

Nearly one hundred years later the scandal attached to Spinoza was still profound enough that Lessing’s reported and disputed deathbed announcement to Jacobi that he (Lessing) was a Spinozist resulted in the greatest scandal of the German Enlightenment. For example Toland, Boulanvillier, Bayle, Lessing, Diderot, and La Mettrie (as discussed in Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2001)). This state of stability was a long and ongoing process: the Peace of Augsburg and Westphalia and the conclusion of the English Civil War were gradually followed by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Glorious Revolution, and the end of the Dutch conflicts between the Gomarists and Remonstrants, as well as the Orthodox and Republicans like Jan de Witt. Still Spinoza, like Locke, Pufendorf, and Cumberland, and unlike Hobbes and Descartes (much less the philosophers of the preceding generations like Lipsius and Bodin), was trying to make sense of the end of violence.

Introduction

3

most economically, politically, artistically, and intellectually vibrant cities in Europe, although still caught in religious and political struggles which rose and ebbed over the course of Spinoza’s brief life. His father Michael was a merchant. Spinoza worked with him until his death, and then briefly and unsuccessfully attempted to run the family business with his brother. At some point, likely in the early to mid 1650s, Spinoza began to drift away from the Jewish community and into various free-thinking circles centered around Franciscus Van den Enden.6 Whatever caused him to drift away probably also eventually resulted in his excommunication in 1656, although we cannot be sure. By 1656 Spinoza had already set a drastically different intellectual course from most of the other Jews of Amsterdam.7 But expulsion from the Jewish community meant an inability to communicate and thus to financially interact with other Jews. Consequently, Spinoza had to pursue a different means of making a living, and so he became a lens grinder. We have a tendency sometimes to view early modern science through the writings of the great theorists, but it was an intellectual world centered on observation, scientific instruments, and experiments. Spinoza was respected for the quality and precision of his lenses, and the excellence of his work placed him within the experimental circles at the cutting edge of early modern science, even if he was far more notorious – from the early 1660s onward – for his heterodox teachings and works. I consider relevant details of Spinoza’s biography over the course of this book. But rather than give more of the particular details of Spinoza’s life I will provide a broad sense of Spinoza’s intellectual milieu. The spheres in which Spinoza circulated were unusual for an early modern philosopher, although the Dutch rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel (who was perhaps one of Spinoza’s teachers) engaged with a similar variety of intellectual circles, as did a few others. I would like quickly to sketch the variety of these intellectual and social spheres by considering a contingent fact about Spinoza: his first name and the many languages into which it was rendered. Through this device we can get a synoptic view of the many milieus through and in which he circulated.8 6 7

8

These biographical remarks are taken from Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and supplemented by Israel, Radical Enlightenment. There were other excommunications, though, and there are some parallels between Spinoza’s relatively happy life and the far sadder tale of Uriel da Costa. See Carl Gebhardt (ed.), Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa (Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1922). On the issue of the complexity of signification for Spinoza see Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics (Princeton University Press, 1989), vol. 1. Much of the following is indebted to his discussion.

4

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

In Latin Spinoza’s name was Benedictus or Benedict. Latin was the language of most of Spinoza’s philosophical writings and correspondence. It was the common language of European intellectuals that bridged their many linguistic and political rifts. It was the language of erudition and learning, the language in which Spinoza and the students of Franciscus Van den Enden performed Roman dramas, including works by Spinoza’s beloved Terence. It was the language of Spinoza’s major ancient influences: Seneca, Tacitus, Cicero, and Lucretius. Spinoza used Latin to communicate with intellectuals like Leibniz, Huygens, Oldenburg, Tschirnhaus, and many others. Latin was the language of science and thus was integral to his economic pursuits. Latin is the main language through which we know Spinoza the philosopher. In Hebrew, Spinoza’s first name was Baruch. It was the language of Scripture and religious observance in the community in which he was raised.9 Hebrew was the religious language of the community he was eventually excommunicated from, and the language of the theologians he coolly criticized in the TTP. Spinoza knew the language intimately and even wrote a Hebrew grammar (although he probably wrote it for the use of radical Gentiles in understanding Scripture as a historical document). Spinoza’s first name in Portuguese was Bento. Portuguese was the language of his home and family, the language of the country from which his family had emigrated to Amsterdam. It was also the workaday language of the Jewish community that he grew up in and of the business he shared with his brother upon his father’s death: “Bento y Gabriel d’Espinosa.”10 This language was, like Hebrew, intertwined with his Jewish roots. In the TTP Spinoza notes that, since the King of Spain granted civic rights and privileges to Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity, the converso families quickly forgot their identity. But, as the King of Portugal denied the Portuguese Jews any social or political status, they held fast to the Judaism that had been taken away from them even after their forced conversion. Why not? For, despite their professions of Christian faith, they were still treated like Jews (TTP iii, iii/42). The Portuguese community in which Spinoza grew up, with its traditional culture and languages and insular nature, was likely viewed by Spinoza the philosopher as 9

10

It is notable that Spinoza equates one of the lower forms of knowledge with the calculations of merchants (iip40s2). This is also the sort of knowledge on which theocratic authority is based. See W. G. Van der Tak, “The Firm of Bento and Gabriel de Spinoza,” Studia Rosenthaliana 16 (1982), 178–89.

Introduction

5

pathological. At the same time Portuguese, and Spanish, clearly always had an appeal for Spinoza, and he owned a number of literary works including the novels of Cervantes. Portuguese was literally his mother tongue, the language of his mother Hanna and probably the language of his lullabies. Spinoza, of course, spoke a fourth language: Dutch. Dutch was the language of everyday life once he left the Jewish community, the language of his discussion circles, and the language of politics. It was also the language of important Dutch radical texts like his friend Adriaan Koerbagh’s Een Blomhofvan allerley Lieflijkheyd sonder verdriet, influential political works like Pieter De La Court’s Politike Discoursen, as well as religious polemics like William van Blijenburgh’s De waerheyt van de christelijcke godst-dienst (against Spinoza). One of Spinoza’s works, the KV , has been handed down to us in Dutch, although it was probably translated from a lost Latin original. Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma was translated into Dutch immediately upon his death as De Nagelate Schriften (CW x), showing that Spinoza’s circle wished to expand his philosophy from highbrow Latin to the more colloquial but extraordinarily intellectually rich Dutch language. Benedict, Baruch, and Bento all mean the same thing, blessed or blessing. Spinoza’s goal in his most important work, the Ethics, was to lead readers, who were capable, to their own blessedness, or more accurately to help them lead themselves. In his writings Spinoza used the Latin word “beatitudo” for blessedness (wisely he did not use his own name), which he described as “our greatest happiness” consisting “in the knowledge of God alone, by which we are led to do only those things which love and morality advise” (ii49s). But the many translations of his name and many words for blessedness point toward the difficulty intrinsic to his undertaking. Spinoza straddled numerous communities with different cultures and needs and had many influences arising from his engagements with these different communities. How to show those who were capable the way to blessedness? How to help them to recognize their power and to understand God and nature? How to show them that the desire for blessedness underlaid their many tongues, and their many ways of speaking, even when they did not know this? How to show them that blessedness arose from understanding the metaphysical underpinnings of an apparently chaotic world, underpinnings which showed much that we take for granted to be either false or so many expressions of a unified God or nature? And, not the least, how to show that which he wished to show them was true?

6

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

Spinoza tried numerous tactics to get these points across in his different works, but the Ethics is clearly his ultimate statement on blessedness.11 To this end, Spinoza employed a particular method, different from many of the other ways in which he had presented his philosophy over the course of his intellectual career. This book is concerned with exploring Spinoza’s method, and seeing how the method bears on and is related to the goals of the Ethics. “ i n m o r e g e o m e t r i c o ” – s p i n o z a ’s g e o m e t r i c a l m e t h o d Philosophical interest in method, interest in the best way to access and to express truths about morals, God, nature, mathematics, and reality as such, is as old as philosophy itself. This is not surprising. If all men, or at least all philosophically disposed men, desire to know, some obvious questions arise quite immediately and naturally: “Can we know at all?” “If we can, what can we know?” “What is the best way to know and to access the most important truths?” These have not turned out to be the easiest philosophical questions, but they are some of the most fruitful, witness Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics, Descartes’ Discourse on Method , Locke’s Essay, Hume’s Treatise, and many other of the greatest works of philosophy ancient, modern, and contemporary. A number of recent works in the history of philosophy have emphasized that many disparate sorts of philosophers – from Plato, Plotinus, and the Stoics to Locke, Hume, and Smith to Wittgenstein – share the idea that the purpose of a philosophical method is not just to offer a series of valid propositions or claims, but rather in some way to transform or change readers, to allow them to look at themselves in the world in a different way. What this different way is varies from philosopher to philosopher, but one constant is that a method must be constructed in such a manner as to allow readers to see the ways that the philosophy impacts them and their lives, and to learn to look at the world from a different perspective than they might otherwise. The issue of the transformative purpose of method is interrelated with the questions of whether we can know, what we can know, and how best to know. Many of the best-known philosophers prior to the twentieth century were not primarily interested in providing ingenious arguments in response to outstanding problems or questions, but wanted to change 11

The TP was written after the Ethics and was at least fairly complete, so one might claim it is the final word, but, as the TP is incomplete, and as it does not discuss metaphysics or mind, the Ethics still has pride of place.

Introduction

7

readers, dialogue partners, or listeners, or to allow them to change themselves, in such a way that they might become happier and wiser. Philosophy was not only viewed in terms of the solving of problems, but was also considered worth pursuing insofar as it was edifying and therapeutic; and these two goals clearly ought not be mutually exclusive. Clarifying a philosophical problem or better understanding an important issue are also sorts of selfclarification, clearing up our heads and making us think a little straighter. This sort of procedure of clarification also might make us happy and wise, or at least not so sad and stupid. Much of what I will say about Spinoza in the following chapters will respond to and follow from this basic point: that Spinoza’s philosophy is a kind of self-clarificatory therapy for those capable of self-clarification; that this self-clarification arises not just from reflection but also from other sorts of knowing; and finally that the choice of the method by which to establish appropriate knowledge and the vehicle or means by which to present it, as a consequence, is absolutely central. Now I hope you are thinking: “That is an interesting, if somewhat fuzzy, way of presenting Spinoza and some of the motivations for his philosophy. But I have looked a bit at the Ethics, and no work of philosophy seems more ill-suited for such therapy. Spinoza’s Ethics is an exemplar of a sort of philosophical formalism that places validity of argument far above the needs of the reader. The Ethics is a geometrical method, a philosophy bound by the laws of mathematical deduction. If this is a philosophical therapy, it seems to be a philosophical analogue of the Polar Bear’s Club – the best therapy is to jump into freezing cold water, only in this case into the iciest and least human reaches of reason.” This is a fair objection. I will try to respond to it in the chapters that follow, but first we need to know something about Spinoza’s method and its historical context. In the Ethics Spinoza derived a sequence of numbered propositions from definitions and axioms – much as Euclid did in the Elements – building each link in the expanding chain on the definitions, axioms, and propositions prior to it. Euclid derived the celebrated Proposition 47 of Book I of the Elements – the claim that “in right-angled triangles the square on the side subtending the right angle is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle” – from prior and apparently far more obvious propositions about parallelograms (i.41) and angles (i.14).12 In a 12

John Aubrey described Hobbes as converting to the geometrical method while reading Euclid’s Elements i.47. Hobbes was astonished by the content of Euclid’s proposition while at the same time recognizing the necessity by which i.47 had been derived from far more obvious propositions. See Aubrey’s “Life of Hobbes,” iii [1] and iv [8], in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. and intro. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1994), lxiv and lvi–lxvii.

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Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

similar manner Spinoza drew dramatic metaphysical and ethical results such as that “God is an extended thing” (iip3) from prior and apparently more obvious propositions.13 Spinoza called the Euclidean manner in which he presented his philosophy the ordo geometricus or mos geometricus14 – the geometrical order or manner or way. To present a philosophy in a geometrical manner was to write in ordine geometrico or in more geometrico. The mos geometricus is a striking way of arranging propositions, but what is most arresting is the way the arrangement affects readers of the Ethics. Gilles Deleuze opens his book Spinoza: Practical Philosophy with a quote from Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. One of Malamud’s characters comments about his experience reading Spinoza’s Ethics: “I read through a few pages and kept on going as though there were a whirlwind at my back. As I say, I didn’t understand every word but when you’re dealing with such ideas you feel as though you were taking a witch’s ride. After that I wasn’t the same man.”15 Although the character is not describing the geometrical method, it is certainly a crucial part of the “witch’s ride,” the (apparently) strict necessity by which the reader and all things great and small, from God to the lowliest worm, are pushed forward, necessarily in a universe without end. The reader of the Ethics feels rather as if he or she plunged into a world of necessary reason where metaphysical principles, human actions, and appetites are treated – just as if it were a “Question of lines, planes, and bodies” (III “Preface,” ii/138). 13

14

15

Where Spinoza derived his propositions primarily from axioms and definitions, Euclid employed a third category of “postulates” or rules of construction. Spinoza employed postulates in the “physics” after iip13, but not in the main demonstrations of the Ethics. I will discuss this difference in chapter 5. Piet Steenbakkers distinguishes between Spinoza’s method and the geometrical form or external order in which Spinoza presented a number of his works. See Spinoza’s Ethica from Manuscript to Print: Studies on Text, Form and Related Topics (Aachen: Van Gorcum, 1994). This is quite proper as the subtitle of the Ethics reads ordine geometrico demonstrata, not in more geometrico, and as the logic textbooks of the seventeenth century commonly distinguished between method and order, following on the famous Renaissance controversy between Jacobo Zabarella and Francisco Piccolomini. See “De Doctrina Ordine Apologiae” (1584) in Jacobo Zabarella, Opera Logica (Cologne: Zetzneri, 1597), 3rd edn. In a crucial passage in the “Preface” to Ethics III, Spinoza claimed that for those who prefer to curse or laugh at the affections “it will doubtless seem strange that I should undertake to treat men’s vices and absurdities in the more geometrico.” Here Spinoza explicitly treats geometry as a mos, an essentially untranslatable term, meaning “way” or “manner” but also “custom” and, in the genitive plural, morals, character, and so on (and thus similar to ethica). Mos [I will leave the word untranslated as mos (singular) or mores (plural)] also usually signals a method and not just a mere ordering. I will argue that the mos geometricus is both a form or ordering and a method. But I certainly agree with Steenbakkers that this would be untenable if we construed the mos as a linear deduction from premise to consequence. See the excellent discussion in Steenbakkers, Spinoza’s Ethica From Manuscript to Print. Quoted in Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 1. See also Thomas Cook, “A Whirlwind at my Back . . . Spinozistic Themes in Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer,” Studia Spinoziana 5 (1989), 5–28.

Introduction

9

There is an important difference in the uses made by Spinoza and Euclid of the geometrical method. Unlike Euclid’s theorems, the propositions that Spinoza derived geometrically were not about secants and quadrilaterals, but rather concerned metaphysical first principles, minds, and that which is advantageous to human life and makes us happy and free. In Spinoza’s hands the method applies to all beings, not just geometrical figures, and it applies with equal necessity. Thus, in the Ethics Spinoza brought one of the most formal and rigorous mathematical methods to bear on philosophy and on our shared world. Spinoza was far from unique in presenting his philosophy in a geometrical manner. Writing in more geometrico was relatively common in the early and mid-seventeenth century. Such familiar philosophers as Pufendorf, Hobbes, and Descartes16 presented some of their works or sections of their works in a geometrical manner, as did less-known figures like Cumberland, Arnold Geulincx, Jean-Baptiste Morin, and Erhard Weigel.17 Well after Spinoza’s death Locke argued for a deductive science of morals (although not necessarily a geometrical science of morals) as did Samuel Clarke. And many who never wrote in a geometrical manner, like Francis Bacon, emphasized the utility of geometry (and pure mathematics generally) in remedying defects of the intellect and teaching men to avoid miring themselves in the senses.18 Bacon also built his own philosophy on axioms and definitions – although not arranged in a geometrical order. In fact, the generation of philosophers born in 1632, Spinoza, Pufendorf, Locke, and Cumberland all at one time or another either tried to mathematize (if not always geometrize) morals or present morals as a deductive system. The reason why they all did this can best be seen through the example 16

17

18

I will discuss Hobbes and Descartes at length below. For Pufendorf see Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (ed.), Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis in Thomas Behme (ed.), Samuel Pufendorf: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999). Arnold Geulincx, Ethica (1665) in J. P. N. Land (ed.), Opera Philosophica (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1893), iii, 1–271; Jean-Baptiste Morin, “Quod Deus Sit” (1635), translated in Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell (eds.), Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials (Cambridge University Press, 1998, 230–51); Erhard Weigel, Analysis Aristotelica ex Euclide restituta (Jena, 1659). There is some question as to whether these authors influenced Spinoza. I believe Geulincx’s work appeared too late to be an influence on Spinoza’s mos geometricus, however Bernard Rousset argues that Spinoza’s choice of the title Ethica and other particulars of Spinoza’s “ethical” and political doctrines can be understood in relation to Geulincx in Geulincx entre Descartes et Spinoza (Paris: J. Vrin, 1999). It is hard to chart any direct influence between Morin and Spinoza. Weigel is the most underexplored connection. He was an important influence on Leibniz (cf. Konrad Moll, Der Junge Leibniz (Stuttgart: Fromman Verlag, 1978), vol. 1.), and on Pufendorf, and was well known in Protestant countries for Euclid Restituta which attempted to reconcile Aristotle and the moderns via geometry. Bacon describes pure mathematics as a kind of gymnastic or tennis for the mind in Of the Advancement of Learning (iii. 360).

10

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

of Richard Cumberland. In his influential De Legibus Naturae Cumberland set out to combat Hobbes by presenting an alternative theory of natural law emphasizing man’s fundamentally benevolent character. Cumberland argued that in order to do this we need to render moral and political philosophy as a mathematical calculus. Cumberland – like Pufendorf, Locke, and Spinoza – was dramatically impacted by Hobbes’ De Cive. De Cive was published in 1642, a month after the beginning of the English Civil War. Hobbes intended it to be the third work in a trilogy called Elementa Philosophiae, the first part of which was De Corpore, Hobbes’ physics and methodology (not published until 1655 but existing in manuscript long before) and the second part De Homine (not published until 1658 but also long in manuscript) Hobbes’ theory of perception and his psychology of the passions. Even without the rest of the Elementa, De Cive had an enormous impact on European intellectuals. In it Hobbes proposed that man was fundamentally self-interested, that morals was an artificial structure imposed on the passions by authority, and that these were harsh realities and harsh solutions that had to be taken into account in helping men to lead relatively happy lives in the chaos of early modern Europe. In the “Epistle Dedicatory” to De Cive Hobbes made a remarkable assertion: Philosophy is divided into as many branches as there are areas where human reason has a place, and takes the different names which the difference of subject matter requires, In treating of figures it is called Geometry, of motion Physics, of natural law, Morals, but it is all Philosophy; just as the sea is here called British, there Atlantic, elsewhere Indian, so called from its particular shores, but it is all Ocean. The Geometers have managed their province outstandingly. For whatever benefit comes to human life from observation of the stars, from mapping out of lands, from reckoning of time, and from long-distance navigation; whatever is beautiful in buildings, strong in defence-works and marvelous in machines, whatever in short distinguishes the modern world from the barbarity of the past, is almost wholly the gift of Geometry; for what we owe to Physics, Physics owes to Geometry.19

This claim about the centrality of geometry, that it distinguishes the ancients from the moderns and that the moderns owe all their successes to it, is startling. Philosophers like Cumberland – who saw themselves as responding to Hobbes – also accepted Hobbes’ elevation of geometry and attempted to use it against the “Monster of Malmesbury” as Hobbes was sometimes called. If Hobbes was correct, then philosophy could be 19

Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed., trans. & intro. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 4–5. On the history and import of De Cive see Richard Tuck’s excellent introduction to this volume, viii–lii.

Introduction

11

geometrized like physics and natural reason could demonstrate necessary and unshakeable truths about metaphysics, morals, and politics, as certain as the truths of mathematics. It could establish moral principles of a different sort than Hobbes, if Hobbes could be shown to have made errors in his arguments. But Spinoza was clearly deeply sympathetic to Hobbes and took over many of Hobbes’ key insights. Hobbes’ mos geometricus could also shear away the rhetoric and cant of despots and bigots, and leave bare and shining propositions that held even when they most “kicked against the pricks,” truths that no rational mind could deny. In advocating the deductive science of morals, Locke argued it would provide a candle in the soul, illuminating even when the bigots “cram their Tenets down all Men’s Throats.”20 Thus the mos geometricus had great allure to heterodox intellectuals, given the religious and social controversy surrounding much early modern philosophy. And it had particular allure to those like Locke, Cumberland, and Pufendorf who admired Hobbes (to varying degrees) and attempted to use his discoveries to counter him on particular issues. It is important to remember, though, that the mos geometricus was just one of many mores with which early modern philosophers tinkered. Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, and numerous others offered their philosophies in a variety of dresses both to communicate with different audiences and to most effectively present different kinds of content. Descartes remarked in his early notes called Olympian Thoughts that, “[a]ctors taught not to let any embarrassment show on their faces, put on a mask . . . I will now do the same . . . [and] mount the stage masked.”21 As a philosopher he followed his own advice and donned many formal masks. The Principles offered the Cartesian philosophy as a synthetic curriculum to replace the scholastic manuals and compendia of Dutch universities like Utrecht, and the Discourse spoke to the community of early modern mathematicians and natural scientists as a prelude to a new science and a reform of the old ones. The Meditations provided a rigorous treatment of metaphysics and epistemology cloaked in an astonishing synthesis of Jesuit, Augustinian, and Stoical meditative literature, and in the “Replies to Second Objections” Descartes presented some cardinal insights of the Meditations in more geometrico. Leibniz employed countless literary forms in his writings ranging from the semi-commentary of the Theodicy, to the pseudo-dialogue of the New Essays, to the Christological structure of the Discourse on Metaphysics (moving from God the Father to Jesus), and to the distilled Monadology. 20

Locke, Essay, iv.3 §20.

21

AT x 213 (Philosophical Writings of Descartes, i, 2).

12

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

Malebranche ranged from the rambling – and extremely popular – essayistic style of The Search after Truth to the Dialogues on Metaphysics and the skeletal Treatise on Nature and Grace. And so on down the list of seventeenthand early eighteenth-century authors, major and minor. The mos geometricus was one of these many forms taken by early modern philosophy and seen as by no means unique to Spinoza, although indicative of a particular set of philosophical interests. Spinoza himself experimented with other forms, incorporating a dialogue into the KV , using the scholastic manual style in the “Metaphysical Thoughts” attached to the PP, and even opening the TIE with a Cartesian/Augustinean autobiographical prelude. Yet readers of early modern philosophy associate the mos geometricus with Spinoza alone. And this is unsurprising: many of the other authors who employed the style are now obscure, or, as with Descartes and Locke, it is considered tangential to their philosophies, or they are known through one of their less-geometrical works (as Hobbes is in the English-speaking world). Further, Spinoza’s mos geometricus is far more rigorous than the mores of the others (with the exception of Descartes), so, once a reader experiences the Ethics, it is difficult to view many of these other works as geometrical. Spinoza’s rigor makes his mos seem something entirely different. There is also the basic question of the relation of style to content in these different works. The fact that many early modern philosophers presented core sets of philosophical claims – whether Hobbes’ contract or Descartes’ cogito – in different works garbed in different rhetorical forms, implies that the content which they wished to express was divorced from the masks used to present it to different audiences. Spinoza wrote several other important philosophical works in addition to the Ethics. Some of these works share themes, arguments, and concepts, but, for Spinoza, the Ethics is clearly the cardinal presentation of his general philosophy, the TIE is at best a prelude to it, the KV a draft, and the TTP and the TP are concerned primarily with politics and not metaphysics.22 As a consequence the Ethics has an authority among Spinoza’s works quite different from the Leviathan for Hobbes, the Monadology for Leibniz, or even the Meditations for Descartes (although this is the closest analogue). Spinoza wrote another work in ordine geometrico, the Principles of Descartes’ 22

The Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE), which I will treat at length in chapter 3, is a prefatory treatise to the Ethics concerned with method. The Korte Verhandeling (KV ) is an early draft of the Ethics, only made widely available since 1851. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) is Spinoza’s political masterpiece arguing that a tolerant state will be a successful state. The Tractatus Politicus (TP) is an unfinished late theoretical work on politics, Spinoza’s final work. I will make a great deal of all of these works (with the exception of the TP) and Spinoza’s letters in this book.

Introduction

13

Philosophy, a work I will discuss in the following, but this is a geometrical rendering of Descartes’ philosophy for the purposes of teaching students not yet ready for Spinoza’s own philosophy. The Ethics is Spinoza’s metaphysics, philosophy of mind and ethics. Although there are important passages in other works, the Ethics is the only sustained and integrated presentation of the whole of Spinoza’s philosophy (excepting political philosophy). Given the cardinal place of the Ethics among Spinoza’s works and its striking presentation, we might expect there to be a relation between the presentation and the content (although keeping in mind that it is not necessarily a unique relation, as the PP is also presented in a geometrical form). In order to begin to think about what this connection is we ought to examine the content of the Ethics. The Ethics is divided into five relatively distinct sections made up of propositions that ultimately rest (either implicitly or explicitly) on the definitions and axioms which begin Part I. The structure of the Ethics mirrors one of Spinoza’s central metaphysical claims, that all follows from first principles and that philosophers err when they fail to identify and begin with adequate first principles. For Spinoza, the first principle from which all others arise and to which all others refer is God. The philosophers before him failed to create adequate philosophies because they misdefined, misunderstood, and anthropomorphized God, and thus misunderstood the various principles arising from God. Conversely, to understand first principles is to see the way in which all things necessarily follow from God. And, as this reflects the real metaphysical structure of nature, so Spinoza sets out a definition of God at the beginning of Ethics I from which he derives its many propositions. In this way, Spinoza’s mos geometricus seems uniquely suited for his content, as it shows how and that propositions arise necessarily from a definition. If the definition the mos geometricus begins with is the adequate definition of God, then the necessary propositions which arise from this definition parallel and follow with the same necessity that all in nature follows from God. This is reinforced by a passage from the TIE: As for order, to unite and order all our perceptions, it is required, and reason demands, that we ask as soon as possible, whether there is a certain being, and at the same time, what sort of being it is, which is the cause of all things, so that its objective essence23 may be the cause of all of our ideas, and then our mind will (as we have said) reproduce Nature as much as possible. For it will have Nature’s essence, order and unity objectively. (TIE 99) 23

I will return to the distinction between objective essences and formal essences in chapter 3.

14

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

This passage seems to imply that our minds ought to reproduce nature as much as possible by discovering the certain being which is the cause of all things, and understanding what sort of being it is. Through this, our minds will “reproduce” the order, unity, necessity and essence of nature. This appears to be what the Euclidean structure of the Ethics attempts to do, to order philosophy, and our ideas and minds, in relation to our understanding of the definition of God. Unfortunately there are some basic and oft-repeated inadequacies of the mos geometricus which make the relation between the medium and the message, if suitable in theory, seemingly untenable in practice. First, the crucial feature of a Euclidean deduction, on which rests the claim to “reproduce” the objective order of nature, is that a geometrical method begins with definitions and axioms and derives propositions from them. The axioms are common features of minds and bodies, and Spinoza treats them as if they are intuitively obvious to all readers. We may, and should, interrogate them. But it is not difficult to see where they come from and why Spinoza thinks them clear (even if he is wrong that these are truly common notions).24 The definitions with which one begins a deduction, though, are the crucial support and warrant of the deduction. They lead to adequate principles when they are adequate and result in inadequate ideas when they are inadequate. Spinoza assumes the former in the quote from the TIE cited above and apparently assumes that the definitions with which he begins the Ethics are adequate and will lead to adequate cognition. In the PP Spinoza assumes that the inadequate Cartesian principles upon which his geometrical presentation of Descartes’ philosophy are based result in various “errors,” or inadequate ideas.25 Thus, in either case, the definitions are crucial for what follows from them. But from whence come the definitions and how are they justified? How do we justify the definition of God from which all derives, as well as the many other definitions employed throughout the work? It is not clear what such a justification would be. The definitions themselves must be clear and evident ideas, but this does not explain where they come from nor why a reader ought to agree to them if he does not recognize the ideas as 24 25

See particularly iip40s1, where Spinoza distinguishes axioms from “universals” arrived at through induction from the imagination. In the “Preface” to the PP, likely written by Meyer but clearly agreed to in all its details by Spinoza, Meyer remarks the “Author has only set out the opinions of Descartes and their demonstrations, insofar as these are found in his writings, or are such as ought to be deduced validly from the foundations he laid. So let no one think that he is teaching either his own opinions, or only those which he approves of ” (i/131).

Introduction

15

evident. This problem would have been evident to Spinoza, as Descartes spelled it out explicitly in the “Replies to the second set of Objections” to the Meditations, and used it to plead for the superiority of the analytic or investigative method over synthetic procedures such as the mos geometricus. One might hope to justify the definitions through the propositions that arise from them. This approach would be circular though, and to justify a cause through its effects would be invalid for Spinoza as knowledge of an effect26 depends on knowledge of the cause (ia4), but the converse is clearly not always the case. A second problem is, if the Ethics presents the necessity of nature, why so many alternative proofs, scholia, and digressions? These seem to lessen the necessity and rigor of the deduction insofar as they make the deduction less of an efficient causal process directed toward a single end, like the efficient processes of nature. If the goal of the method is to allow the mind to represent nature, why so much in addition to definitions, axioms, propositions, and demonstrations? A third objection was offered in a famous letter from Tschirnhaus to Spinoza (which I will discuss in chapter 6) – Letter LXXXII. In geometry one rarely if ever infers a string of propositions from one definition or principle, rather propositions are inferred from a number of definitions. This is also the case in Spinoza’s Ethics. God is the first principle of Spinoza’s metaphysics from which all else derives. God has an infinite infinity of attributes, two of which are thought and extension. All modes of extension, all extended things, are what they are insofar as they are in and through the attribute of extension. Is Spinoza then saying that we literally deduce all extended things from the definition of attribute, that from a string of words or a group of ideas – “By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence” – arises all of extended nature? This would seem to be a rather unfortunate consequence of Spinoza’s claims about definitions representing the essences of things and from the demonstration of ip16: I p 1 6 : Out of the necessity of the divine nature, an infinity of infinite modes (that is, everything which can come under an infinite intellect) must follow. d e m . : This Proposition ought to be manifest to anyone, if he attends to this fact, that the intellect infers many properties from the given definition of any thing which truly do follow necessarily from it (i.e., from the very essence itself ); and that it infers more properties the more the definition of the thing 26

By “knowledge” here Spinoza means true or adequate knowledge. I will discuss this at some length in chapter 2.

16

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method expresses reality, i.e., the more reality the essence of the defined thing involves. But since the divine nature has absolutely infinite attributes (by d6), each of which also expresses an essence infinite in its own kind, from its necessity there must follow infinitely many things in infinite modes (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect).

This proposition, the cornerstone of Spinoza’s metaphysics, implies that just as many properties are derived from any given definition, so everything which falls under an infinite intellect can be inferred from the divine nature. Thus, it seems, if the definition of God that begins the Ethics is a true definition, then everything in our world should be able to be derived from it. But this is, at least on the surface, absurd. It seems to trade on an apparently insupportable ambiguity between real things and ideas of things and appeared hopelessly unworkable to Tschirnhaus and many of Spinoza’s otherwise sympathetic readers. I will argue that there are answers to these questions in Spinoza’s philosophy, and provide two sorts of justifications for Spinoza. First, I will argue that careful attention to the mos geometricus will help us better to understand the role of definitions in his philosophy, how Spinoza conceives them, and why he thought them justified. This will show that the Ethics is not a dogmatic work in any normal sense. Second, I will argue that a basic puzzle in Spinoza’s philosophy – the importance that Spinoza accords to a third kind of knowledge – can be clarified through understanding Spinoza’s method. In order to address these and other questions I will assume the importance of the geometrical form of the Ethics for understanding some of its central philosophical claims. I will also assume that the structure of the Ethics is best understood in relation to Spinoza’s theory of knowledge. Spinoza argues in Ethics II that there are three sorts of knowledge (derived from a theory of four sorts of knowledge in the TIE). The first kind of knowledge, which Spinoza calls imagination, is primarily concerned with testimony, sense perception and the sorts of ideas that are derived from testimony and sense perception. Spinoza thinks knowledge of the first kind to be extremely defective, although he also acknowledges that imagination is essential to human life and has a pivotal role to play in making our human lives happy and powerful. The second kind of knowledge, which Spinoza calls reason, arises from and responds to those common features found in the parts and wholes of bodies and their correspondent ideas. Scientific theories, for example, would likely fall in this category as would much we know by logic. All common notions or axioms fall into the second kind of knowledge. The third kind of knowledge, which Spinoza calls the

Introduction

17

“scientia intuitiva,” is far more mysterious. Spinoza decribes the third kind of knowledge as proceeding from “an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essences of things,” (iip40s2). The final chapter of this book will attempt to make some sense of the third kind of knowledge. The crucial point will be that Spinoza considers this “adequate” knowledge and so I will have to consider adequacy at some length. I will also argue that the third kind of knowledge is connected with issues of individuation. There is something satisfying about using a philosopher’s own theories to evaluate basic points of his or her own doctrine. Furthermore, the two philosophers whose works Spinoza cites far and away the most, Maimonides and Descartes, both thought their theories of understanding central for understanding their works. But, as opposed to Maimonides, and in tandem with Descartes, Spinoza’s deep suspicion of language seems to preclude the Ethics being anything but the first kind of knowledge. Words are always testimonies of someone else’s mental states, of someone else’s experience, and we have “mutilated” (Spinoza’s technical term) access at best to what the words stand in for. And, as in the philosophies of both Descartes and Maimonides, it is not clear how the theory of understanding is to be applied. The resolution of these issues will be important for my argument and will rest on the centrality of the mos geometricus to Spinoza’s philosophy. In centralizing the mos geometricus in this work I am also posting a claim in the various debates over Spinoza’s philosophy. Commentators have placed differing degrees of emphasis on the importance of the mos geometricus for understanding the Ethics. At one extreme, Harry Wolfson discounts it, remarking, “there is no logical connection between the substance of Spinoza’s philosophy and the form in which it is written.”27 At the other extreme, the most dominant French Spinoza scholar of the twentieth century, Martial Gueroult, places it at center stage, as does his great successor Alexandre Matheron and some of Spinoza’s most important critics such as Hegel and critical commentators like Harold Joachim. My interpretation of Spinoza’s method will be closer to Gueroult’s and Matheron’s interpretations than Wolfson’s, although it will also be substantially different from their interpretations. I will claim that the most important function of the mos geometricus is tied up with what Spinoza calls “emendation” in the TIE, ridding oneself of inadequate ideas so that those adequate ideas that already make up our minds can better be expressed. 27

Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), i:55.

18

Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

What results is not merely a formal knowledge or anatomy of our mind, but rather the discovery and augmentation of those very powers always already in the human mind and body. This discovery is a process of “becoming what you are” to use Nietzsche’s famous expression, recognizing that the being you always were was different from the myriad ways you represented yourself via the imagination. The ultimate goal of this emendation – which I have discussed in the first section of the Introduction – is succinctly expressed in the brief “Preface” to Book II: I pass now to explaining that which must necessarily follow from God, or an eternal being, and its infinite essence. Not, indeed everything; for we have demonstrated that an infinity of infinite modes must follow from it (ip16): but that alone, which is able to lead us as if by the hand, to knowledge of the human Mind and of its highest blessedness.

The title of Spinoza’s Ethics is aptly chosen. Spinoza’s work is not just a metaphysics, although the first part of the Ethics is one of the most powerful metaphysics ever thought up by a philosopher. It is an “ethics,” by which Spinoza means an account of how one ought to act in order to attain joy and blessedness. Yet the metaphysics is not just preparatory, it is the necessary precondition of a therapy – an emendative therapy – that allows readers to see what the relevance of the metaphysics is to them and to “become what they are.” This is through proper knowledge God, of the human mind, and then its highest blessedness. I will try to show the ways in which Spinoza’s mos geometricus bears on this goal. The book is divided into seven chapters excluding this Introduction. Chapters 1 and 2 will present some of the basic concepts in Spinoza’s philosophy – nature, laws, the three kinds of knowledge, adequacy, the infinite – that are important for understanding Spinoza’s method. It will not be entirely obvious how all these concepts bear on the mos geometricus initially, but it will become clear as the book progresses. That this is the case, i.e. that apparently unrelated concepts are interconnected in often surprising ways is itself one of the hallmarks of Spinoza’s method. In chapter 3 I will discuss the key idea of emendation in Spinoza’s philosophy. I will argue that Spinoza believes that adequate knowledge arises from a process of emending and clarifying the confused and mutilated ideas we already have, and with them ourselves. That self-clarification and the clarification of our ideas are interconnected is obvious, but it also points to the fact that the clarification of our ideas is therapeutic in a very particular way.

Introduction

19

The fourth and fifth chapters present some background for Spinoza’s discussion of method, both the frequently discussed early modern background – Hobbes and Descartes – and two Jewish philosophers – Maimonides and Gersonides. I argue that Spinoza’s geometrical method develops aspects of the work of all of these philosophers (as well as Bacon who is considered at length in chapter 3). As I noted above, one of the unique things about Spinoza is the diversity of contexts in which he circulated. The tension between these contexts and the single-minded force with which Spinoza expressed himself is one of the most exciting things to consider as an interpreter of Spinoza. The sixth chapter is the heart of the book and provides an interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of definition. I argue in this chapter that the sort of emendative therapy that Spinoza proposed in the TIE is part and parcel of the Ethics itself. Spinoza sought to move us from confused and mutilated ideas which we access through the flawed medium of language to those ideas that already make up our minds and have our bodies as their ideas. I will argue that some of the difficulties of interpreting Spinoza, of getting just at what he meant, are a necessary consequence of his method. I grant from the outset that this is an interpretation of the Ethics; there cannot be final proof in matters about which Spinoza says so little. But different sorts of evidence, both internal to the Ethics and from the TIE, the TTP, and the very important letter to Spinoza from his friend Tschirnhaus, will be brought to bear on the theory of definition. The final chapter will apply the account of method developed in prior chapters to one of the cognitive goals of Spinoza’s Ethics, forming a special sort of knowledge called the “third kind of knowledge” or “scientia intuitiva.” Spinoza, unfortunately, says little about the content of this special sort of knowledge, and what he does say is extremely confusing. I do not promise entirely to sort out the third kind of knowledge, but I will argue that understanding how and why it is the cognitive goal of the mos geometricus helps bring light to some of Spinoza’s more perplexing claims about it. In particular I will argue that the third kind of knowledge arises from knowledge we have of a very special essence, the human essence, and the way that this knowledge can augment our power and beatitude.

chapter 1

A worm in the blood: some central themes in Spinoza’s Ethics

The Emmet’s Inch & Eagle’s Mile Make Lame Philosophy to smile. William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

In order to understand why Spinoza embraced the geometrical method in the Ethics it necessary to reflect on the general contours of his philosophy. It is also important to have a sense of what Spinoza’s method – geometrical or otherwise – is trying to get at, what Spinoza is seeking to discover with it. The purpose of this chapter and the next is to set the stage for the chapters that follow, while at the same time developing a few basic questions about Spinoza’s method. The first section of this chapter provides a brief sketch of Spinoza’s Ethics and introduces some of Spinoza’s key definitions and concepts. The middle sections will present a problem in Spinoza’s Ethics: “What does it mean to be a part of nature?” “Part of nature” is one of Spinoza’s most potent concepts but it needs careful interpretation in order not to render it inconsistent with other aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy, particularly his criticisms of anthropomorphism and teleology.1 The final section of the chapter will consider Spinoza’s system from the “emmet’s inch”2 or the bottom-up perspective, as opposed to the “eagle’s mile” or top-down perspective of Part I of the Ethics and the first section of this chapter. I will introduce the “bottom-up” perspective through a letter written by Spinoza to his friend Oldenburg describing a “worm” (by which Spinoza understood a small simple particle or being) floating through the bloodstream of a giant being and trying to make 1

2

This is an important theme throughout Spinoza’s philosophical works. Philosophers “place true happiness solely in virtue and peace of mind, and they strive to conform with nature, not to make nature conform with them; for they are assured that God directs Nature in accordance with the requirements of her universal laws, and not in accordance with the requirements of the particular laws of human nature” (TTP VI, Samuel Shirley (trans.), Theological-Political Treatise [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991], 78). “Emmet” is an eighteenth-century word for ant.

20

Some central themes in Spinoza’s Ethics

21

sense of the vast circulatory maze it finds itself within. Finally I will consider the problem of combining these two perspectives with an allusion to Wilfred Sellars’ distinction between the manifest image and the scientific image. a n o u t l i n e o f s p i n o z a ’s e t h i c s Spinoza divided the Ethics into five parts.3 Part I presents Spinoza’s metaphysics. Spinoza populated his metaphysics with three basic sorts of entities – substance, attributes, and modes. A worm, for example, is a mode or a collection of modes. Ideas are also modes. Thus the idea of a worm, as well as any and all ideas worms might have, are modes. Thought as opposed to a thought or a group of thoughts, is an attribute. God is the only substance. These entities – substance, attributes, and modes – are referred to over and over again in the Ethics. Spinoza considers them to be exhaustive of what there is – anything and everything belongs to one of these three categories. A central question the Ethics investigates is: what are the consequences of holding these three entities as basic for one’s understanding of self and world? Here are Spinoza’s definitions of each: d e f i n i t i o n 3 : By substance I understand what is in itself and conceived through itself, i.e., that the concept of which does not require the concept of another thing from which it must be formed. d e f i n i t i o n 4 : By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence. d e f i n i t i o n 5 : By mode I understand the affections of substance, or that which is in another, through which it is also conceived.

What can we tell about the three definitions on a quick examination? It is clear that substance is fundamentally different from attributes or modes insofar as substance is what it is independent of modes and attributes, while modes and attributes both presuppose substance. What it means to be a mode is to be an affection of a substance, and an attribute is “what the intellect perceives of substance, as constituting its essence.” Consequently substance has pride of place among the basic entities in Spinoza’s ontology. These definitions also point toward another of Spinoza’s basic distinctions, a metaphysical distinction between natura naturans and natura 3

It appears that at a relatively early stage of its composition the Ethics was divided into three parts and what eventually became Ethics III–V was all one large section. The five-part structure of the Ethics appears to have evolved as the work was written. See Letter XXVIII.

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Meaning in Spinoza’s Method

naturata.4 The Latin expression Natura naturans means “naturing nature” or “nature insofar as it natures.” Spinoza understood this to denote nature considered as fully actual and causal (ip29s). Natura naturata literally means “natured nature” or “nature insofar as it is natured.” All modes are natura naturata since they are not free causes – causes arising only from their own essences or natures (id7) – but rather they are what they are in and through another. They are natured, they derive some of their essence or nature from another. Thus there is a kind of divide in Spinoza’s metaphysics with substance and attributes, natura naturans, on one side, and modes or natura naturata, on the other. When taken all together they are the whole of nature. There is no reference to “cause” in Spinoza’s definitions of substance, modes, and attributes. In fact one of the main purposes of Book I is to develop an account of causation. I consider this theory of causation – which links divine causation, modal causation, and the causal individuation of modes (to be discussed at greater length in later chapters) – to be the buttress of Spinoza’s metaphysics. But, even if the distinction is not really implicit in the initial definitions of substance, attribute, and mode, it is important to keep in mind that, from the three basic entities in his philosophy, and a fairly general and abstract notion of cause (id1, ip16), Spinoza developed this important metaphysical division. Spinoza did not invent the terms substance, attributes, and modes. From Aristotle to Descartes many or even most mainstream philosophers were interested in understanding substances, attributes, and modes, and consequently there was some sort of shared tradition in how the concepts were discussed. This is not to imply that Spinoza just took over traditional terms. Rather, over the course of the Ethics Spinoza invests each of these definitions with his own particular sense. For Spinoza there is only one substance, in contrast to Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and most Aristotelians. This one substance has infinite attributes. Spinoza’s attributes are not the sorts of attributes that many medieval philosophers predicated of God, like omnipotence or omniscience, but rather thought and extension. Finally, each attribute has an infinity of modes that necessarily follow from the divine essence.5 4 5

These terms are traditionally left untranslated. When Spinoza introduces them at ip29s he implies that they are technical terms that most of his readers would know. In The Philosophy of Spinoza Harry Wolfson emphasizes that the definition of substance is traditional but the definition of mode is a break with the Aristotelian idea of accident (cf., Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza 2 vols. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934] i, ch. 3). I will argue that the definition of mode is sufficiently vague that it is not at all clear, on an initial reading, whether it is a Scotistic mode or an Aristotelian accident. As the Ethics unfolds it becomes clear that Spinoza’s modes are very different from Aristotelian accidents.

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All three of Spinoza’s definitions are quite controversial. Spinoza’s definition of substance has been widely criticized, most famously by Hegel.6 Generally these criticisms are directed less at the definition itself than at the perceived consequences of the definition, i.e., that it commits Spinoza to only one substance that is God or nature, and the denial of the independent reality of individuals. There are many problems with Spinoza’s derivation of this one substance, but these problems seem less to be a direct consequence of the definition as stated by Spinoza, and more to arise from the ways in which Spinoza argues from the definition. Spinoza’s definition of attribute as “what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence” is also extremely general. The most notable feature of the definition is Spinoza’s emphasis on “intellect,” that there seems to be some epistemic aspect to the attributes. There is much ambiguity as to what sort of intellect we are talking about (human or divine), and whether the attribute is to be understood as a subjective perception of a substance (what one thinks of substance) or as an objective set of facts about substance perceived by an intellect.7 This is further exacerbated by Spinoza’s tendency to use both “perceive” and “essence” differently in different contexts. And there are further points of contention. One controversy concerns just how many attributes there are. I will discuss this in passing in the next chapter. Another controversy – closely connected to the question of whether the attributes are subjective or objective – concerns the differences between substance and attributes. If an attribute is what an intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence, and if attributes are objective in some sense (which there are many reasons to believe they are), then what is the difference between attribute and substance? This is a notoriously difficult problem. Spinoza’s definition of mode is perhaps most intriguing of all. The definition is neutral as to what sort of content a given mode has. This neutrality is a consequence of the generality of Spinoza’s definition. Take, for example, my goldfish Charlie. The idea of Charlie, Charlie’s body, and Charlie himself are all modes, even though each mode has a very different content. The idea of Charlie is a mode of thought (it is conceived in and through something else, the attribute of thought), Charlie’s body is a mode of extension 6

7

See particularly G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), i.3.3c (i:456–7), ii.3.1c (ii:195–200), in English, A. V. Miller (trans.), Hegel’s Science of Logic (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1969) 382–3, 536–40. For a thorough defense of Spinoza see Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris: Editions la D´ecouverte, 1990), ch. 1. The consensus is that Spinoza meant attributes to be objective. But see Charles Jarrett, “Some Remarks on the ‘Objective’ and ‘Subjective’ Interpretations of the Attributes,” Inquiry, 20 (Winter 1977), 447–56.

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(it is conceived through the attribute of extension), and Charlie himself is a mode expressing itself both as thought (Charlie’s mental states or thoughts) and extension (Charlie’s body, Charlie’s swimming, etc.). Furthermore, Charlie is both a mode and composed of many modes. This brings up an obvious question: are the mind and the body of a given thing the same mode (Charlie) now considered as an extended mode (Charlie’s body), and now as a thinking mode (Charlie’s mind) or are they two different modes? Substance, attributes, and modes, despite the many controversies concerning how precisely to understand them, are the basic categories of Spinoza’s metaphysics, and by extension Spinoza’s account of nature and the world. There are two further definitions from Part I of the Ethics that are important for understanding Spinoza’s basic metaphysical commitments: d e f i n i t i o n 1 : By causa sui I understand that, the essence of which involves existence, or that, the nature of which is not able to be conceived, except as existing. d e f i n i t i o n 6 : By God I understand an absolutely infinite being, that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, [all of] which express the same eternal and infinite essence.

The definition of causa sui, or “cause of itself,” is only rarely invoked in the Ethics, but its prominent place as “Definition 1” signals its importance. It is a somewhat peculiar definition as it equates a causal concept – cause of itself – with two ontological claims. What seems important about causa sui is that it implies that the primum ens in Spinoza’s universe, that being whose essence involves existence and who cannot be conceived except as existing, is caused. Of course it is caused by itself, but the implication is that causation and reason extend to all beings. In principle there is nothing beyond cause and nothing beyond reason. This has many striking and heterodox consequences. Ultimately, Spinoza equated causa sui with God. Although the definition of causa sui is first among Spinoza’s definitions, the definition of God is the cardinal and crucial definition of the Ethics. For Spinoza, the definition of God does not supplant the definition of substance. Rather, in Ethics I Spinoza argues that God is the one substance from which infinite attributes and an infinite infinity of modes arise and which are understood and comprehended, insofar as they are capable of being understood and comprehended, in and through God. I will have much to say about Spinoza’s definition of God in what follows. The metaphysics that Spinoza presents in Ethics I is derived not just from definitions but also from seven axioms or common notions. Spinoza

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presents these axioms as if they are philosophical commitments that anyone and everyone might hold. But, like the definitions, they are highly equivocal. It is really only over the course of reading the Ethics that the reader begins to understand them.8 They are all very important but there are two that demand particular consideration for my purposes: a x i o m 3 : Out of a given determinate cause an effect necessarily follows, and conversely, if no determinate cause has been given it is impossible that an effect will follow. a x i o m 4 : Understanding an effect depends on and involves understanding the cause.

Both of these axioms concern causes. Axiom 4 is a strong claim, one might imagine the following far weaker version that “Understanding an effect depends on and involves the cause.” In this variant one need not understand the cause, it is just the case that when one understands an effect this depends in some way on the cause of that effect. For example, the variant could just assert that if it were not for the cause there would be no effect to understand at all, hence to understand an effect there must be a cause. Spinoza’s real axiom is far stronger, understanding the effect depends on understanding the cause. This has an obvious but important consequence for the Ethics. We need to first understand causes (not just recognize them) in order to understand effects. Consequently, a proper philosophy needs to be structured in accordance with this axiom; we need to build our philosophy in such a way as to understand causes. There is still the problem of how we access these causes, but our need to access them and understand them is clear. Axiom 3 states that an effect will follow when there is a determinate cause, and, conversely, if there is no determinate cause it is impossible that an effect will follow. It is not clear exactly what Spinoza meant by “determinate,” but the axiom has the following powerful consequence. If there is no determinate cause as to why something does not exist, God for example, then it is impossible for that thing not to exist, and consequently it necessarily must exist. This functions as a kind of principle of sufficient reason in some of Spinoza’s most important propositions. Taken together with 1a4 and the definition of causa sui they support a fully causal and fully rational world where everything has a cause, all causes entail reasons, and, 8

Margaret Wilson, “Spinoza’s Causal Axiom (Ethics I, Axiom 4),” in Y. Yovel, ed., God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 133–60.

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consequently, to be is to have a cause and a reason. This identification of causation and existence, which I noted in the discussion of causa sui, is a central feature of Spinoza’s metaphysics. In the latter half of Ethics I (ip16–33) Spinoza works out some very dramatic consequences that these considerations have for metaphysics. One notorious consequence is determinism – “that every event is causally determined from antecedent conditions by the laws of nature.” Spinoza also seems to be committed to some sort of “necessitarianism,” either to the strong claim that “every actual state of affairs is logically or metaphysically necessary, so that the world could not have been in any way different than it is” or to something a bit weaker that does not require that all finite states are necessitated in all ways.9 Over the course of Part I of the Ethics, Spinoza argues for an infinite and necessary world where all things arise from one fully rational God through which all things are what they are. I will discuss a number of the propositions of Ethics I in the following chapters at some length. I would like to briefly sketch the remainder of the Ethics to provide a general sense of its overall structure. Part II of the Ethics, “Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind,” offers the consequences for minds (infinite and finite) of Spinoza’s account of God. Spinoza argues that thought and extension – both of which are substances for Descartes10 – are each separate attributes expressing the eternal and infinite essence of God. Thus, Spinoza takes the heterodox step of identifying both the mental and physical with the divine attributes. Once Spinoza establishes this, he develops a number of surprising theses about the mind, including his notorious claim that the will is just a mode of the mind and thus that the will is as necessitated and as necessary as any other mode (iip48, iip49c). He also argues that thought and extension exhibit the same “order and connection” (iip7), that the mind understands itself and all else through the body, and that the mind is literally the idea of the body (iip11–13). There are a number of definitions in Book II that will be important in later chapters. But, since I have been using “essence” willy-nilly, it seems particularly important to present this definition at the outset. Actually, 9

10

Don Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in Y. Yovel, ed., God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 191–2. Garrett provides a highly convincing argument that Spinoza is a rather strong necessitarian. But see Edwin Curley and Charles Huennemann, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered,” in Rocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (eds.), New Essays on the Rationalists (Oxford University Press, 1999), 241–62. Principles of Philosophy, i.52–3.

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strictly speaking, Spinoza does not define essence as such, but rather “belongs to an essence”: I i d 2 : To the essence of something belongs that which when given, the thing is necessarily put forward, and which when removed the thing is necessarily taken away; or that, without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and vice-versa.

Curley (CW 447n1) points out that this a more restrictive definition of essence than the Cartesian definition of essence Spinoza offers in the Principles (the clause “that which when given, the thing is necessarily put forward” prevents God from necessarily belonging to the essence of each individual (iip10cs)). The definition of essence is a touchstone throughout the Ethics connected with Spinoza’s theory of definition, and thus relevant to his thinking about method. Parts I and II of the Ethics form a unit for reasons I will discuss in a later chapter. Parts III, IV, and V also form a unit – although Part V provides a kind of syncretic conclusion to the entire book and is in this way different from any of the chapters that come before it. I will discuss why and how this is the case in the concluding chapter of this book, but, for the moment, “On the Origin and Nature of the Affects” (III) presents a theory of the affections and the passions grounded on the metaphysics presented in the first two parts of the Ethics. Spinoza’s theory of the passions is extremely interesting, and built on one of his most fundamental concepts, the conatus. The conatus is a sort of metaphysical principle of inertia, the drive each individual has to persist in its existence: a human to persevere as a human, a rock to persevere as a rock, and so on. Spinoza uses the conatus to develop a theory of the passions and an account of the ways in which human beings persevere in their existence. In defining the passions in this way, Spinoza is developing some suggestions derived from Hobbes’ and Descartes’ theories of the passions. Theories of the passions were central to the projects of many of the best-known philosophers of the eighteenth century (Descartes, Hobbes, Malebranche, Gassendi) as they provided a means to explain the ways in which the body affected the mind. The ways these philosophers defined the passions, and what precisely they meant by the body affecting the mind were quite diverse. But there is a general sense that a mechanistic physiology would provide a wedge into a rich variety of ethical phenomena. Spinoza diverges from all of the above philosophers in (1) denying that the passions were ways in which the body disturbed the mind and (2) considering the

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mental and the bodily as autonomous. Descartes and Malebranche accept (2) but not (1), Hobbes and Gassendi (1) but not (2). The conatus was, for Spinoza, the concept that anchored (1) and (2), as the tendency to persevere in existence holds of all modes, mental, physical, or both, yet it does not imply that mental is reducible to the physical. There has been a tendency when considering Spinoza’s philosophy to view Parts III and IV as interesting but ancillary to the meat of Spinoza’s arguments. I think this is because when teaching philosophy there is a tendency to make major divisions between moral philosophy, philosophy of mind or epistemology, and metaphysics. Part I of Spinoza’s Ethics is clearly a metaphysic. Part II is, at least in part, a philosophy of mind and theory of knowledge. In Part II Spinoza analyzes and compares different sorts of knowledge and cognition as well as issues surrounding the relation (or lack of relation) between mind and body. In addition he develops a theory of truth and adequacy. Much of what he has to say about issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of knowledge is relevant to current philosophical practice. The case is somewhat different with moral theory. Although there has been a real resurgence of interest in the emotions and the passions among moral philosophers and philosophers of psychology, and an attendant resurgence in interest in Spinoza, most issues in moral philosophy are still dictated by a few philosophers writing before Spinoza – Aristotle and Plato – or after – Kant, Mill, Bentham, and Hume. Spinoza’s concerns overlap with all of these philosophers on particular issues. But his way of doing moral philosophy built on a theory of the passions, although akin to Hume, is still foreign to the ways in which most contemporary moral philosophers do moral philosophy.11 Part IV of the Ethics, “On Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects,” describes the ways in which we are limited and buffeted by our passions such that they diminish our power. But Spinoza also concurrently develops his concept of a “free man,” a person who, despite the power of his (or her) passions, manages to be as little impacted by contingent circumstances as possible and to be happy, powerful, and free. The discussion of the “free man” includes some of the most powerful passages in the Ethics including two of Spinoza’s best-known maxims: that the free man thinks least of all about death (ivp67) and that if men were born free they would have no ideas of good and evil (ivp68). 11

There is a notable list of counter examples, Annette Baier, Martha Nussbaum, and Am´elie Rorty being some of the best known.

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Part V, “On the Power of the Intellect or Human Freedom,” is the culmination of the propositions in Parts III and IV of the Ethics and the Ethics as a whole. In the final sections of Part V of the Ethics, Spinoza once again adopts the austere metaphysical lens of Part I of the Ethics to develop two crucial concepts. First, he argues that there is a part of the human mind that is eternal. These arguments provide a stepping-stone toward a second claim – that we can know through what Spinoza calls the third kind of knowledge or the “scientia intuitiva.” This knowledge is “sub specie aeternitatis” or “beneath a species of eternity” and Spinoza claims that from the third sort of knowledge arises an intellectual love of God in and through which we are the very love by which God loves itself. These aspects of Part V, in tandem with Part I, gave rise to Goethe’s “goddrunken” Spinoza, as well as the interpretations of Coleridge and a host of other admirers who wished to view Spinoza’s highest sort of knowledge as an intuitive understanding of the deep unity of nature. This is at odds with the more “naturalistic” picture of Spinoza’s philosophy emphasized by many recent Anglo-American interpreters. a part of nature One of Spinoza’s most celebrated claims is that we – human beings – are a “part of nature.” By describing human beings as a “part of nature” Spinoza meant above all that man should be explained through the laws of nature that hold of all natural beings. This is the cardinal thesis of Spinoza’s naturalism. Undergirding all “parts of nature” – humans, lumpfish, telephones, and neutrinos – are metaphysical and physical laws which relate the “parts of nature” back to a cause that explains what they are. The laws of nature are not only physical laws, although physical laws are clearly part of what Spinoza meant by laws of nature. Since the attribute of thought expresses the essence of substance, and yet is fully independent of the attribute of extension, it, too, seems to have laws. Since the attribute of thought is part of natura naturans – “naturing nature” – its laws are also laws of nature. Spinoza presents the basic tenets of his naturalism eloquently in the “Preface” to Ethics III: There is nothing that happens in nature which can be attributed to a vice; for nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws of nature, and rules, according to which all things are made, and are changed out of one form and into another, are everywhere, and always, the same, and so also the nature of things must be understood by one and the same reason, namely through universal laws and rules of nature.

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The laws of nature are uniform and universal and hold of all of nature. As there is nothing outside of nature, all beings must be understood through these laws of nature. Supernatural explanations as well as explanations that depend on a transcendent realm can be ruled out. They lack a referent since there is nothing above or beyond nature. Spinoza’s denial of any realm external to nature and any human laws operating in opposition to the laws that guide all natural beings is expressed succinctly in a well-known passage (also from the “Preface” to Part III of the Ethics) criticizing philosophers who elevate man as beyond nature: Rather they seem to conceive man in nature as an imperium12 within an imperium. For they believe man more disturbs, than follows, the order of nature, and that he has absolute power over his actions, and he is determined from nowhere and by nothing other than himself.

This claim (and Spinoza’s naturalism more generally) is both deflationary and explanatory. Jonathan Bennett states the deflationary side of Spinoza’s naturalism well: “His thinking is firmly grounded in the conviction that there is nothing fundamentally special about mankind as compared with chimpanzees and earthworms and cabbages and rivers; for Spinoza, man is just a part of Nature.”13 Humans have no supernatural powers, like selfdetermination, that place them in a different imperium from chimps and cabbages, and if they claim they do, they could be up to some dangerous nonsense.14 But Spinoza also understands the fact that human beings are parts of nature as a thesis about explanation. If I am capable of discovering general laws that hold of all natural beings then nothing is in principle beyond explanation. Bennett refers to this, aptly, as Spinoza’s “explanatory rationalism” – everything has a cause, every cause provides a reason, and consequently everything is rationally explicable.15 This general naturalistic framework is clearly one motivation for Spinoza’s geometrical method in the Ethics. In fact, the paragraph I have just quoted is offered by Spinoza as an explanation for why he employs the geometrical method in explaining “human vices and ineptitudes.” He concludes the “Preface” to Part III with his strongest characterization of the geometrical method as deflationary and explanatory naturalism. Spinoza 12

13 14 15

Curley translates imperium as “dominion.” “Imperium” is a key term in Spinoza’s political philosophy, translating as “dominion,” “empire,” and “command.” But these words are only able to hint at the rich uses Spinoza makes of it. As with conatus, I will leave imperium untranslated. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 36. They could use their supposed special access to the laws of the human imperium to add legitimacy to their political authority. Bennett, A Study, 29.

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remarks that in Part III he will consider the nature and force of the affects as if they were questions concerning “lines, planes, and bodies” just as he had considered God in Part I and Mind in Part II. Thus, due to the uniformity and universality of the geometrical method, we can show that human follies and absurdities are no more or less explicable than anything else in nature. They are explicable in precisely the same way as anything else is, through necessary reasons. So, Spinoza assumes that there are general laws of nature and that these laws have great explanatory power. He assumes that we are parts of nature. There has been a tendency in reading Spinoza to consider this dictum to imply that we are all parts that interlock in a vast whole or community of nature. I will argue that to be a part of nature means something different than being a part of a whole in this sense. In other words, if we examine what it could possibly mean for Spinoza to be a part, we see that it cannot mean anything so teleological. There is a general strategy in all of Spinoza’s major works, but particularly the Ethics and the TTP, of taking over loosely defined terminology, like “part,” and using it in a determinate way which is sometimes at odds with the colloquial sense of a term. I will argue in subsequent chapters that this strategy is important for how Spinoza understands method. So what does “part” mean? By extension, what is the relation between nature and the individual and how and what can the individual know of nature? Spinoza’s answer is one of the most thoroughly naturalistic, in the above sense, that has ever been put to paper. pa rts i n t h e w h o l e o f n at u re 1665 was not a happy year for Amsterdam or London, and it was a low point in relations between Holland and England. The Anglo-Dutch war flared for a second time, eventually to be settled by the Peace of Breda. A devastating plague first struck Holland, and then moved on to London in late 1664, the plague remembered and immortalized more than fifty years later in Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. In 1666 the Great Fire of London followed the plague. Comets and portents were sighted all over Christendom. Millenarians and religious enthusiasts awaited the end of the world in the year 1666, as “prophesied” in the Book of Revelations. Sects, ranging from large groups such as the followers of the self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbatai Sevi to small collections of radicals, proclaimed the end of the world, salvation for the blessed, and punishment of the wicked; and the signs, the plagues and violence, seemed to confirm it everywhere.

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The Thirty Years War, life before the Peace of Westphalia, and the religious anarchy of Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century were all within the reach of memory. The English Civil War had recently concluded, and the failure of the revolution would lead to another political rapprochement between the Dutch and the English: the Glorious Revolution and the ascent of the House of Orange. At the end of the previous century the religious discord had led the great Dutch neo-Stoic Justus Lipsius to write De Constantia presenting a Christianized path of removal from the chaotic and heaving world of sectarian violence.16 But, even by the rather high standards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 1665 was a remarkable year. If not as violent as many years in the preceding century, 1665 looked back toward grim religious and national violence, to present plagues and to the near future as many tongues proclaimed the millennium. In such times an ordinary, powerless man or woman might feel like a mere worm or particle, caught in machinations far beyond their control. Henry Oldenburg, Spinoza’s most prolific correspondent, the secretary of the famed Royal Society, and a central figure in the organization and proliferation of early modern science had a bad time of it. In late 1666 he was thrown into prison on suspicion of being a Dutch spy, and briefly condemned to the Tower of London. After 1666 Spinoza and Oldenburg did not correspond again for ten years. Perhaps this was due to Oldenburg’s perception that friendship with Spinoza – who was already gaining a reputation for impiety – was dangerous, particularly given Oldenburg’s own contingent situation. Perhaps it was aggravated by Oldenburg’s horror at Spinoza’s criticisms of revealed religion in the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus.17 Whatever the reason the end of this correspondence must have been a great loss to Spinoza, as Oldenburg was one of his main conduits (along with Johannes Hudde and Huygens) into the scientific world. Through Oldenburg, Spinoza communicated with Robert Boyle, heard word of other luminaries in the burgeoning days of the Royal Society, and participated in the “Republic of Letters.” 16

17

Stoicism is a good philosophy for bad times. What the times were like is evident from Lipsius: “who is of so hard and flinty a heart that he can ani longer endure these evils? wee are tossed, as you see, these manie yeares with the tempest of civill warres: and like Sea-faring men are wee beaten with sundrie blasts of troubles and sedition. If I love quietness and rest, the Trumpets and ratling of armour interrupt mee. If I take solace in my countrey gardens and farmes, the souldiers and murtherers force mee into the Towne,” Two Bookes Of Constancie Written in Latine by Iustus Lipsius, ed. R. Kirk and C. M. Hall (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1939), 72 (critical reprint of Sir John Stradling’s translation of 1594, De Constantia originally published in Latin 1584). Although Oldenburg would write that he had qualified his negative judgments somewhat when he resumed correspondence with Spinoza in 1675 (Letter LXI).

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The seven letters exchanged in 1665 are significant documents for understanding Spinoza’s philosophy. Although today letters might seem peripheral to a philosopher’s central doctrines, early modern letters were widely disseminated. They were an integral part of a philosopher’s corpus; a testing ground for theories as criticisms flowed in from other scientists and philosophers. They also allowed intellectuals to forge personae in the “Republic of Letters.” This particular correspondence allows us quickly to glimpse some of the issues that underlie Spinoza’s complex corpus as he attempted to explain his philosophy to Oldenburg during what was one of Spinoza’s greatest periods of intellectual ferment. They give us a brief and vivid sketch of some central problems in Spinoza’s philosophy through which we can clarify a few key philosophical issues in the Ethics. Spinoza invested a great deal of thought in his correspondence. He was doubtless excited to communicate his philosophy to an open-minded and intellectually capable listener, as his letters to Oldenburg began amid his extended and taxing exchanges with the maddening Dutch Calvinist William van Blijenburgh.18 Spinoza could only take so much of Blijenburgh’s questions and brought the correspondence to an end in June of 1665. Oldenburg’s letter, coming after “a space of so many months,” and word of the continuing interest of the great Boyle in Spinoza, must have been a gust of fresh air from more liberal and congenial thinkers abroad. Oldenburg (and by proxy Boyle, who had discussed Spinoza’s letters with Oldenburg) asked Spinoza the following: “We warmly beseech you to communicate it to us, if you see any light on the most difficult investigation, which turns on the question of our knowing how each part of nature agrees with the whole, and in what way it coheres with the rest” (Letter XXXI).19 This question arose in response to Spinoza’s claim, in the previous letter that “men, like the rest, are only a part of nature, and that I do not know how each part of nature agrees with the whole, and how it coheres with the 18

19

Curley has speculated that Blijenburgh’s inability to understand Spinoza’s arguments made Spinoza realize time was not yet ripe for the Ethics (CW 350). Subsequent to the end of their correspondence, Blijenburgh wrote polemics against Spinoza. Spinoza owned a copy of Blijenburgh’s polemic De waerheyt van der christelijcke godts-dienst etc. of een Wederlegginge van dat Godt-lasterlijcke Boeck, genoemt Tractatus Theologico Politicus etc. (Leiden: D. V. Gaesbeeck, 1674). See Catalogus, 16. There are affinities between my emphasis on wholes and parts, Letter XXXII, laws and causes, and the role of the infinite intellect in two essays: Wolfgang Bartuschat, “The Infinite Intellect and Human Knowledge,” in Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (eds.), Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 187–208; and Richard Mason, “Spinoza on the Causality of Individuals,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 24 (1986), 197–210. What I make of these concepts is quite different from Bartuschat’s interpretation that emphasizes the centrality of the finite human intellect (although I will also centralize the human intellect in a different way in the following chapters). My interpretation is closer to Mason who emphasizes the fictive character of parts (210) and the distinction between finite and infinite.

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rest,” (Letter XXX).20 Spinoza must have been flattered by interest from such important figures in the Royal Society and the European Republic of Letters – although this did not stop him from criticizing Boyle and Bacon.21 Spinoza immediately ruled out two answers that might be thought promising – “I should like first to warn you that I do not attribute to Nature beauty or ugliness, order or confusion. For things cannot, except with respect to our imagination, be called beautiful or ugly, ordered or confused.” We might argue for a hierarchy in nature from more ugly and less beautiful to more beautiful and less ugly allowing us to view all of nature as fitting into a beautiful whole. This was the line pursued in the more aesthetic eighteenth-century variants on the argument from design such as Lord Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks and George Berkeley’s Alciphron. Or, we might view all of the parts of nature as either ordered or confused (as was assumed by countless philosophers both before and after Spinoza) and thereby infer that the parts fit into an ordered whole.22 Both assumptions project anthropomorphic prejudices onto nature and assume that the whole of nature has features much like those we access through our imaginations. Spinoza rejected all forms of anthropomorphism and teleology when applied to nature as a whole.23 Furthermore, he 20

21

22

23

For the entire letter to Boyle, see A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall (eds. and trans.), The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 557– 8 (Letter 430). There is further information in a letter to Sir Robert Moray in ibid., 549–50 (Letter 427). Boyle apparently never saw Spinoza’s response to his question. Oldenburg wrote to Boyle: “I had lately another letter from Sigr Spinosa, who is very much yr servant, and who entertains me wth a discourse of his, concerning ye agreement and coherence of ye parts in ye World wth the Whole; wch is not unphilosophicall, in my opinion, though it would perhaps be tedious to you, to have a letter filled wth it; and this makes me forbeare to send it to you,” ibid., 615 (Letter 457). Boyle was horrified by the Ethics and the TTP, and the Boyle lectures were partially instituted to fight against Spinozism. Some of the differences between Boyle and Spinoza on parts and wholes can already be seen in Letter VI from 1662, where Spinoza criticizes Boyle’s experiments on the reconstitution of nitre. For a compelling presentation of the disagreements in this correspondence see A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, “Philosophy and Natural Philosophy: Boyle and Spinoza,” in M´elanges Alexandre Koyr´e (Paris: Hermann, 1964), ii:241–56. Oldenburg did not understand Spinoza’s rejection of “order” (and how could he, without the Ethics or the TIE). He noted in his response to Spinoza’s letter: “Your philosophic reflections on the agreement and connection of the parts of Nature with the whole give me much pleasure, although I do not follow sufficiently how we can exclude order and symmetry from Nature, as you seem to do; especially as you yourself admit that all its bodies are surrounded by others, and are mutually determined in a definite and constant manner both as to their existence and their action, while the same proportion of motion to rest is itself the sufficient ground of a true order,” Letter XXXII. Spinoza’s reply is missing. Almost all Anglo-American interpreters of Spinoza agree that Spinoza argues against anthropomorphism. How resolutely anti-teleological Spinoza was, and what teleology meant for Spinoza, are matters of dispute. Jonathan Bennett has argued that Spinoza is thoroughly, in some cases misguidedly, anti-teleological (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 213–30). Edwin Curley has disputed

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considered the idea of “perfection” as particularly suspicious (IV “Preface”), and, since “beauty” and “order” often draw on some notion of perfection, they should also be rejected. But what are we then left with? If we reject order and disorder or beauty and ugliness as poor characterizations of Nature, then it is not so clear how we can speak of parts and whole of nature much the less of the agreement of parts of nature. Here is Spinoza’s explanation: By agreement of the parts, then, I mean nothing other than how the laws, or nature, of one part adapt themselves to the laws, or nature, of another part so as to cause the least opposition. Concerning whole and parts, I consider things so far as they are parts of some whole, insofar as their natures mutually accommodate themselves as much as possible; but insofar as things differ among themselves, each produces an idea in our mind, which is distinct from the others, and is therefore considered to be a whole, not a part. (Letter XXXII)

We can still talk about parts and wholes but in terms of laws or “natures” which may differ from region to region. To know about parts and wholes is to know about these laws and how they adapt from one region to another. l aw s a n d i n f i n i t e m o d e s 24

In the TTP Spinoza defined law in its “absolute sense” as “that according to which each individual acts, [the individuals] taken all together or as belonging to some species, according to one and the same certain and determinate reason” (TTP IV, iii/43). From this, Spinoza delineated two different senses of “law”: laws that depend on human wills and laws that depend on “Nature’s necessity” (TTP IV, iii/43).

24

Bennett’s claim as being too strong (Edwin Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza: The Issue of Teleology,” in Edwin Curley and Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau [eds.], Spinoza: Issues and Directions [Leiden: Brill, 1990], 39–52), as has Don Garrett (Don Garrett, “Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism,” in Rocco Gennaro and Charles Huenemann [eds.], New Essays on the Rationalists [Oxford University Press, 1999], 310–35). It seems clear that Spinoza writes on numerous occasions in a way that accepts teleological descriptions of human actions. It also seems fairly clear that, if human beings are a part of nature and determined by the laws of nature, this determination cannot be teleological (as it would imply that nature is teleological. I will discuss this issue at length below as well as in succeeding chapters. Because TTP was being written at the same time as, or after, the letters to Oldenburg, as well as after major portions of the Ethics, I think it is quite reasonable to use the TTP to illuminate Spinoza’s ways of thinking about laws (I think, in fact, it is not used enough), and vice versa. I can see no major discrepancies between the TTP and the Ethics, other than that Spinoza is far more guarded in the TTP. But, as the TTP presents some of Spinoza’s central concepts to a broad audience, it can be an enormous aid to understanding the Ethics. It seems to me strangely underutilized in the Anglo-American Spinoza literature and I will, accordingly, make heavy use of it. See Edwin Curley, “Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece (I): Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics,” in Graeme Hunter (ed.), Spinoza: The Enduring Questions (University of Toronto Press, 1994).

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Both senses of law assume “acting,” which Spinoza defined at Ethics iiid2 as: “when something is done, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is (by d1) when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which is able to be understood clearly and distinctly through it alone.” The basic point of the definition is quite clear, that we can only be said to be the cause of something when it arises from us and can be understood through us. Of course this is not easy to cash out. What does it mean to follow from our nature? Is God the only adequate cause and all adequate causes consequently refer back to the divine nature? There are also problems individuating acts. If I pull a trigger on a gun and the gun shoots, this appears to be my act in any ordinary usage of “act.” But does the bullet follow from my nature? Does anything follow from my nature in such a manner that I could properly be said to act? And there are parallel problems, so to speak, as to whether or not an act arises from my thoughts or my body. The individuation of beings and acts is central to Spinoza’s discussions of part and whole, law, and (as I will show later) the third kind of knowledge. I will touch on this issue only tangentially at the moment, but it is important to see that individuation bears on how we understand laws. The TTP definition of law – “that according to which each individual acts, [the individuals] taken all together or as belonging to some species, according to one and the same certain and determinate reason” – is strikingly similar to Spinoza’s definition of “singular thing”: If more Individuals than one so concur in one action, that they are all simultaneously causes of one effect, I consider them to that extent all the same and as one singular thing. (Iid7)

The two definitions seem to present two perspectives on the same thing: the acting individual. When an acting individual is evaluated qua laws they are evaluated qua the necessary conditions for their agency, as an individual acting from determinate reasons and principals. The definition of “singular thing” explains what individuates the acting being or group of beings: being a cause of one effect.25 Iid7 is likely derived from the idea in Hobbes, best exemplified by the Leviathan itself, i.e., that being the cause of an effect results in the unity of an apparently diverse group of singular things. For example if I cede from 25

Of course, expressions like “law-guidedness” and “governed” imply a law that acts upon, organizes, gives causal force, normativity, or necessity to something external to it. Spinoza is rejecting this, but unfortunately the way we talk about law seems to have externality built into it. I will try to avoid these idioms as much as possible, but sometimes they are unavoidable.

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the Leviathan and am in a state of war with it, this is a combat between two singular things, one quite small and one terrifyingly big. Hobbes maintains a difference between artificial and natural beings (for example me and the Leviathan) although he views them both as singular things. An important and interesting fact about Spinoza is that he makes no such distinction. For Spinoza, the Leviathan and I are equally singular things if we are the causes of one effect. A car phone and a molecule of water are both singular things insofar as each of them unites in a cause. The difference between the car phone and a molecule of water is explanatory, a car phone arises from human practices and through human natures, a molecule of water does not. But they are both singular things, and both modes. I will return to this issue in a few paragraphs once I have introduced infinite modes. What are examples, then, of laws? In the case of human laws the answer is obvious, laws are products of human wills that compel or direct human beings to act in a certain and determinate way: “No jaywalking.” This picture of laws as arising from wills was a normal one in Protestant countries throughout the seventeenth century.26 But, as opposed to voluntarists like Pufendorf and Locke, for Spinoza only human laws are really products of the will, although not free wills.27 “Natural laws” are not rules legated and sanctioned by a divine will, but are instead generalities holding of all modes within an attribute; for example “the motion of a thing decreases by the same amount as the motion that it imparts to another body.” This sort of law has its support not in a divine legation but in “motion and rest,” an “absolute feature” of the attribute of extension, and one of a class of modes that Spinoza referred to as the infinite immediate and mediate modes. As discussed in the first part of this chapter, for Spinoza there are three basic sorts of beings: substance, attributes, and modes. These three beings 26 27

Of course, for Hobbes, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Locke, God is a willing lawmaker. Spinoza claims that the will can apply to modes, but does not apply to substance or attributes. Consequently it does not apply to God (ip31). In modes “will” is the conatus or striving of a given mode “related only to the mind” (iiip9s, iip49s). There is no such thing as a free will in modes or human beings, the will is determined and is just a particular facet of determinate individuals, how their striving is understood in relation to their minds. Although God is free (id7), will does not apply properly to God. Consequently “free will” is derived from a concept properly predicated of modes (“will”) and a concept properly predicated of God (“free”) that cannot be predicated of God without contradiction. One possible objection to my interpretation is that “freedom” comes in degrees, that a “free man” is a mode, and has a degree of freedom although not the absolute freedom of God. But this line of argument would not apply to God, as I do not think we have degrees of will in the same sense. See Don Garrett, “ ‘A Free Man always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively’: Freedom and God in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Edwin Curley and Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau (eds.), Spinoza: Issues and Directions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 221–38.

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are grouped into an even more fundamental distinction between natura naturata (natured nature) and natura naturans (naturing nature). Right at the limit of the division between natura naturata and natura naturans are the infinite modes. They have some of the content we associate with attributes: they are eternal. But they are also modes. They have a crucial systemic place – as those modes that give rise to general laws – and yet they are most decidedly not natura naturans. Spinoza draws a number of distinctions among modes in the Ethics. As modes are an exceptionally broad category – all beings that are in and through other beings – we can refer to modes of attributes (a mode of extension, or a mode of thought), modes of substance (all modes are in and through substance in some very abstract sense), and modes of other modes (a moving being is a mode in the attribute of extension as well as a mode of another mode – “motion and rest”28 ). We can distinguish between infinite and finite modes. Finally we can distinguish between the representative content of modes: among infinite modes there are those that are eternal and express the absolute nature of substance, and those that have duration and do not express the absolute nature of the attribute. That all these sorts of modes exist follows from Spinoza’s “principle of plenitude” as captured at ip11s, ip16, and ip35. Spinoza asserts that an infinity of modes arises29 from substance, everything which falls under an infinite intellect (ip16), and everything comprehended by the divine power must actually exist. Thus, if something can follow from the divine power and is represented in the infinite intellect, it does follow unless there is some reason why it does not exist. Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason as expressed in ip11s asserts that everything that exists has a reason or cause for existing, and whatever cannot exist has a reason for its not existing. The infinite modes are some of the infinity of beings arising from substance (ip16) and are thus clearly within God’s power. “Whatever we conceive as being within God’s power, necessarily exists” (ip35). There is no de facto reason why they do not exist (ip11s).30 Hence they necessarily exist. 28 29

30

I place “motion and rest” in scare quotes because Spinoza views them as forming an entity when taken together, not individually. It is important to be careful not to interpret the immediate infinite modes as emanating from God. They are eternal and not created in time. Consequently, it makes no sense to view them as arising in any temporal sense. There could be reasons why the infinite modes do not exist, just as there are reasons why an infinite substance, God, is not a willer. For example it could be inconsistent to be both infinite and a mode. But, given Spinoza’s emphasis on there being different kinds of infinites (cf. Letter XII to be discussed in the next chapter), it does not seem to be incompatible for Spinoza to be infinite in a derivative sense (to be explained in the next section) and not eternal.

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The infinite immediate modes (IIMs) and infinite mediate modes (IMMs) are some of these many modes following31 from substance. They have a particularly important systematic place in Spinoza’s metaphysics: they are eternal and infinite.32 They are modes that share some of the properties of substance and attributes, and hence they sit at the edge of the fault line between natura naturata and natura naturans. IIMs and IMMs are two of the toughest technical concepts in Spinoza’s philosophy. They are not attributes but are coextensive with attributes. “Motion and rest” applies to all extended things and consequently to all of extension, all extended bodies are moving or at rest. IIMs and IMMs are not the only infinite modes,33 but the most important infinite modes distinguished by their distinctive representative content.34 Although all modes exist out of divine necessity (i.e., God is the necessary condition of their existence [id7]), not all modes exist in an eternal manner. IIMs and IMMs differ from each other in precisely the way that their names suggest. IIMs follow immediately from the absolute nature of the attribute and therefore are modes of the attribute, eternal and infinite through the attribute. IMMs are modes of IIMs and thus are eternal and infinite through them. Almost all of the modes we encounter in the everyday world have duration and are finite. IIMs and IMMs are thus modes that are substance-like and attribute-like (in that they are eternal) but still modes. This raises an obvious question. Are the infinite modes necessary in the strong sense? Must they exist in the way that substance and attributes must exist? Does existence belong to the essence of these modes? The answer is clearly no. Since all modes are considered by Spinoza to be natura naturata, their essences are caused by another and they cannot be conceived as causa sui (ip24). But, then, since these infinite modes are eternal, what does it mean to say that they are eternal if they are not necessary in a strong sense? I will return to this issue in the final chapter, but one interesting feature of Spinoza’s definition of eternity is that an infinite mode can satisfy it without being causa sui. Spinoza defines eternity as “existence itself, insofar as it is conceived to follow necessarily from the definition alone of the eternal 31 32 33

34

I mean “following” in a logical sense – i.e., “If substance then modes” – not in any temporal sense. Some have argued that they ought properly to be considered sempiternal and not eternal. That they are not the only infinite modes seems to follow from the fact that Spinoza differentiates degrees of infinity in Letter XII. But it does seem the case that all infinite modes that are not IMMs or IIMs are modes of IMMs or IIMs. By the “representative content” of Y, I understand anything Y expresses that refers back to and is derived from some X. The “eternity” that an infinite mode has and expresses refers back to and derives from the attribute of which it is an infinite mode. A “distinctive representative content” distinguishes a group of modes from all other modes.

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thing” (id8). Thus eternity is not just a property of God, but a property of anything that follows necessarily from the divine essence.35 The main systemic role of IIMs and IMMs in Spinoza’s metaphysics is to provide general laws holding of all modes, and thus to anchor the ways in which particular beings unite with others in a given attribute. They are thus an important means by which the nature of the attribute is present to the modes in a given attribute. For example, a basketball game is a shared practice of a group of finite modes, human basketball players. But it also is a concourse of causally interrelated bodies understood through motion and rest, and plays and strategies of individual modes and groups of modes understood through the infinite understanding (or at least some aspects of it are explicable in this manner, the fact that my body stops moving when we collide and yours starts to move). “Motion and rest” is a modification of the attribute of extension, coextensive with it, necessary and eternal but logically dependent on it (there is no “motion and rest” without extension) and in and through it qua mode (id5). One question is whether or not there exists a bottom level of atomic, material individuals from which singular things are built up. I can see no reason why, for Spinoza there must be, although simple bodies have a systematic importance in his physics. Rather iid7 seems to be a general causal variant of the physical principles of individuation of bodies that Spinoza gives in the “Definition” in his physics after iip13.36 That a body is individuated by ratios of “motion and rest” means that it falls under the IIM of “motion and rest”. The fixed ratio is the reason for the unity of the body arising from the IIM. This reason entails a cause, that all of the parts that make up a human body, can together “move and dispose external bodies in a great many ways” (iip13postulate6). Consequently, with ultimate reference to the IIM of “motion and rest,” the body is as the body does. Although crucial, IIMs and IMMs are also notoriously difficult to make sense of because there is very little text in the Ethics to go on, and what text there is – particularly ip21 – is intractable to the point of 35

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Spinoza explicates id8 with the remark, “such existence, like the essence of a thing, is conceived as an eternal truth, and on that account cannot be explained by duration or time, even if the duration is conceived to be without beginning or end” (id8 Exp.). This implies that any “existence” that a mode derives necessarily from the definition of an eternal thing – God – is also eternal. Spinoza does not say how we are to understand this existence, but, whatever it is, the infinite modes would seem to have it since they arise from the “absolute nature” of the attribute which, in turn, expresses the essence of substance. So as the infinite modes follow directly from the essence of substance they are, by definition, eternal. See Don Garrett, “Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation,” in Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge J. E. Gracia (eds.), Individuation and identity in early modern philosophy: Descartes to Kant (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 73–101. Garrett makes a compelling case for “individual” extending to all modes.

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incomprehensibility. It is clear that for Spinoza there are IIMs and IMMS in each attribute, that the “infinite understanding” is an IIM in thought, “motion and rest” an IIM in extension, and “the face of the whole universe” an IMM in extension.37 But what are they, other than shadowy entities that Spinoza considers to be necessary consequences of his metaphysics? Spinoza’s friend Georg Schuller asked him this question, albeit more politely. In response, Spinoza provided the example above of an IMM in the attribute of extension: the “face of the whole universe.” According to Spinoza, although the modes that make up the “face” may change, the “face” “remains always the same” (Letter LXIV). Spinoza’s discussion of the “face of the whole universe” is similar to the discussion of natural laws in TTP IV, where, as I have noted, Spinoza gave a version of the conservation of motion as an example of natural law. Although the “face” is the eternal, unchanging unity of all bodies in motion and at rest, the bodies themselves may and do move in infinite ways, but these “infinite ways” are always modes of this unchanging unity.38 Given that in TTP IV Spinoza identifies laws with the activities of individual modes, it makes sense to view the IMMs as the infinity of actual modes,39 finite and infinite.40 This interpretation is supported by the simple point that it is not clear what the “total face of the universe” could mean as something independent of the many bodies that are or make up the “face.” By the “face” Spinoza just seems to mean that all modes that move and are moved and rest “always remain the same” can be taken together because qua moving bodies they act as expressions of infinite and eternal laws – in this case something like a law41 of conservation of motion. Corroboration is found in iip13l7s where Spinoza refers to the whole of nature (by which he clearly means material nature) as “as one individual varying in infinite 37 38

39 40

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See Letter LXIV. One of the most notorious consequences of this picture is that time is not absolute, but only properly predicated of finite beings and in some sense unreal. It seems fairly indisputable that Spinoza believed this, at least insofar as the beings were finite, and many readers of Spinoza have found this to be a disastrous consequence of his metaphysics. This assumes the difference between an infinity of modes and an infinite mode. This interpretation follows Emilia Giancotti, who makes a helpful distinction between the infinite immediate modes as real systems of laws, and infinite mediate modes as “the infinite totality of all the bodies which make up the physical universe and the infinite totality of the minds of these bodies,” Emilia Giancotti, “On the Problem of Infinite Modes,” in Yirmiyahu Yovel (ed.), God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 113. My only objection to this is Giancotti’s expression “infinite totality.” Totality has a somewhat Hegelian flavor, and seems to me to imply a sense of whole different from “totius.” For the interpretation of infinite modes as laws see Yirmiyahu Yovel, “The Infinite Modes and Natural Laws in Spinoza” in Yovel (ed.), God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 79–96. See also Emilia Giancotti, “On the Problem of Infinite Modes,” and Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 111.

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ways but unchanging as a whole.” And as these laws of motion and rest are eternal and unchanging, so also is the IMM that they comprise, insofar as they are expressions of the absolute features of the attribute. We then have established the following: (1) Oldenburg asked Spinoza how he thought the parts of nature cohered with the whole; (2) Spinoza responded that they agree or disagree in relation to laws, i.e. when one part adapts itself to the laws of another part; (3) Laws holding of modes are ultimately rooted in the absolute features of an attribute; (4) IIMs are eternal and in some sense coextensive with the attribute; (5) The IMMs are the infinity of infinite and finite modes since they are, taken together, a mode of the IIM in a given attribute; (6) Somewhere in the activities of the modes that taken together form the IMM, which in turn is necessary in and through the IIM, are the laws that govern nature. Now we have a problem. If Spinoza has IMMs in mind in his reply to Oldenburg, it is not clear how they might be used to explain the conflicts and coherences among laws, the main issue discussed in Spinoza’s response. Spinoza considers something to be “a part of a whole” when that thing is adapted to other parts such “that they are in accord among themselves as much as possible.” There can be no conflicts between parts dictated by infinite modes, or coherences between them, as that would imply a conflict in the absolute nature of the attribute. The attribute is necessary, eternal, and fully rational. How then are we to understand parts in terms of laws as Spinoza suggests we ought to? The problem is further exacerbated by a claim Spinoza made in the KV : “The part and whole are not true or actual beings, but only beings of reason; consequently in Nature there are neither wholes nor parts” (KV i:25). This remark is supported and explained by another passage in the KV . The KV includes two interconnected dialogues, one between Intellect, Love, Reason, and Lust, and another between Erasmus and Theophilus (Spinoza’s stand-in). In the Second Dialogue Theophilus remarks:42 To this we may add that the whole is only a being of reason and differs from the universal only in these respects: that the universal is made of various disunited individuals, whereas the whole is made of various united individuals, and that the universal includes only parts of the same kind, whereas the whole includes parts of the same kind and another kind. (KV i/32–3) 42

There is some dispute about this passage; see CW 78n6. I see no reason not to ascribe this view to Spinoza. In general the KV is a difficult text to work with. Numerous passages appear corrupt, it is clearly a draft, and it was likely translated from Latin into the Dutch we now have it in. But it is also full of valuable material. Although there are important inconsistencies between doctrines in the KV and the Ethics, there is far, far greater consistency.

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It seems that Spinoza has something like the following in mind. Universals and wholes are both beings of reason, fictitious products of human (or other finite) minds. Universals are beings of reason arising from our experiences of multiple distinct individuals of similar sorts and then predicated of these individuals.43 We form a universal “horse” from our experiences of many distinct particular horses. Wholes are also beings of reason, but with the following difference. Wholes do not just hold of the same individual, i.e. gnus, but also of different parts all united in a whole, i.e., cheetahs, tsetse flies, and horses are all united in a whole ecosystem. But what wholes and universals have in common is far more important: they are both beings of reason, fictive products of the imagination. Why? Well, given Spinoza’s emphasis on laws as providing reasons for action, it would seem that both wholes and universals are lacking any ultimate reasons of the sort that moving bodies have; there is no warrant for them as an individuated class or group deriving from the attribute, IIMs or IMMs.44 In the letter to Oldenburg Spinoza emphasizes a reciprocal aspect of wholes: “To produce an idea in our mind which is distinct from the others, and is therefore considered [emphasis added] to be a whole, not a part.” Thus, when we judge X to be a whole, we judge it to be a whole precisely because it does not agree with Y, and we assume it to be an independent whole because it conflicts with another from whom we distinguish it. When we normally judge something to be a part, we judge it to be united with 43

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It should be remembered that when Spinoza criticizes the term “universal” he means any universal built up from sense experience. He certainly has room for general concepts, such as modes, and there is no doubt that he thinks modes are real. The real problem comes with concepts that we both gain knowledge of through the senses and have a variety of rational theses about, “man” for example. Bennett provides an excellent analysis of how Spinoza uses similarities between individuals to generate classes like “man” (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 279). Take, for example, horses. Many humans have reason to need a good horse, but the definition of “good horses” varies according to circumstance (desert, mountain) and needs (Pony Express, 1/4 mile race track, farm). A universal concept “horse” built up in a human mind on this sort of knowledge would be a bad universal for Spinoza. Horses have various reasons for acting as they do, and they recognize various similarities between themselves that are important to these actions. Some, speed, may overlap with the content of our universal “horse.” Others, “ferocious biting teeth,” “musky smell only discernible by horse nose,” may not. We have very limited knowledge of any reasons and relevant similarities among horses. What we do know is that the drives, the bodily constitution, and the mental constitution of horses dictate these reasons. These are features of all modes, and thus arise from the attribute. We also know they move and rest in relation to the IIMs and IMMs in the attribute of extension. Consequently, we can really only provide a very general metaphysical analysis of horses, but being men we can have much more specific knowledge of human beings. Bennett takes the universal “man” as being paradigmatic for Spinoza’s attitude toward universals (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 40), but it is actually a special case, one of the few determinate universals (i.e. not mode, extension, etc.) that we have access to. We have special access to it because we have direct knowledge of the human essence. I will return to this point in chapter 7.

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others in the manner described in the KV . Parts and wholes are fictive when we consider them as limited and interrelated, as parts forming wholes and wholes dictating the nature of parts. Furthermore, when we view the parts as not cohering, we view each part that does not cohere as a whole. You view my gang as a whole and vice versa when we are at war. We consider these parts to form wholes in turn when we find another part with which they do not cohere, and thus consider each other as wholes. My gang becomes the Sharks when the Jets appear. We imagine these wholes in turn to be parts of other wholes – all our gangs are New Yorkers when the wars with Boston begin – which are in turn limited by other wholes with which they do not cohere. This dialectic is then precipitated by ignorance. Wholes are, at least in part, a consequence for human minds of their lack of knowledge of the coherence of parts as well as a way in which we feign the unity of different sorts of individuals. So what makes the difference between this negative sense of parts and wholes as arising from our failure to understand, and Spinoza’s claim that we are a “part of nature”? In the letter that initiated Spinoza’s consideration of parts and wholes, Oldenburg made a grim comment about the Anglo-Dutch war: “There will be wickedness as long as there are men” (Letter XXIX). Spinoza responded: I will expect news of what they have done recently, when the warriors are sated with blood, and rest in order to renew their strength a little. If the famous scoffer were alive to day, he would surely die of laughter. These disorders, however, do not move me to laughter nor even to tears, but rather they incite me to philosophizing, and to the better observation of human nature. I do not think it right for me to laugh at nature, much less to weep over it, when I understand that men, like the rest, are only a part of nature, and that I do not know in what way each part of nature agrees with the whole, and in what way it coheres with the rest; and I find that it is only through this defective cognition that I perceive some parts of nature, and then only in part and mutilated, and furthermore these parts agree little with our minds philosophically, all of which had seemed to me before to be vain, disordered, and absurd.45

In this passage Spinoza emphasizes that we perceive most parts of nature only dimly, and we have no knowledge of what makes them parts in the sense that we do not understand their principles. This deflates whatever pretension we might have to being the center of nature, to being an imperium within an imperium. Yet we do know that all these things we only dimly understand are parts of nature. This does not mean that they 45

The Correspondence of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Abraham Wolf (London: Allen and Unwin, 1928).

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are parts of a greater whole, fitting with other parts into the vast eco-jigsaw puzzle that is nature. This sort of talk would demand a kind of knowledge of the constituent parts we are lacking. Rather “part” can only mean “has the same reasons for acting as all other natural beings” or has “determinate reasons for acting that we do have some access to since we belong to the part.” Consequently, although we can only know surprisingly little about a very few particular things, mainly human things, we can know a lot about the most universal and powerful things, those metaphysical truths that hold of each and every being which makes them all parts of nature. When we understand that all beings are constituted by and act from nature, we cease to laugh at or bemoan the conflicts between parts and wholes – British Navies and Dutch Navies – as both are only consequences of the limits of our cognition.46 Rather, we try to understand parts in a different sense, as groups of modes that are together due to common determinate reasons for acting or laws. This, of course, has many resonances of the Stoic sage living according to nature. When Spinoza claimed in the KV that “the part and whole are not true or actual beings, but only beings of reason” and that “in Nature there are neither wholes nor parts,” he referred to wholes and parts as finite and fictional groupings of beings that need to be dispelled like Scholastic universals. This is much harder than it seems. Most things that we consider important in our ordinary life are parts of this sort. This dichotomy, between the absolute laws that govern nature and what appears to us, even after it has been carefully philosophically analyzed, has been described by Wilfred Sellars as the conflict between the “scientific image” and the “manifest image” of man.47 More colloquially than Sellars meant the distinction, what is manifestly most important to us, grim wars for example, are in the absolute sense, from the perspective of the IIMs or the “scientific image,” not real. They are imaginary conflicts and imaginary wholes. The problem then, as framed by Sellars, is how to place man, and man’s careful philosophical understanding of the world in the scientific image.48 46

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Unfortunately sometimes we need to worry rather a lot about advancing armies. Spinoza’s point is that, even though this is the case, we need not consider this as arising from the laws of nature, i.e. as a dispensation of providence. Wilfred Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), ch. 1. This appears to conflict with the reality of something like a cell phone. But a cell phone has a causal description in terms of the laws of physics which explains how it results in an effect, much like a water pump or a triangle. This analysis would not hold for war since it would be difficult to provide a discrete effect. This issue will be returned to in the final chapter.

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This problem is brought to the fore by perhaps the most striking analogy in Spinoza’s work.49 In Letter XXXII Spinoza presents us with the following example. Imagine a worm – the seventeenth-century term for a simple organism – is placed into the blood of a larger being. The chyle, the lymph and the other constituent elements of the blood are all parts, which when taken together can be said to cohere with other parts and form a whole – the circulatory system – but which, when viewed individually, by the worm, they are considered wholes in so far as they are differentiated from other parts, this bit of chyle from that bit of lymph, or chyle from lymph more generally. The worm lives in the blood, Spinoza writes, as “we live in this part of the universe” and as we attempt to make sense of and untangle our world, so the worm does with its world. Thus we are to make an analogy between the little worm’s condition and our own human attempts to understand our place in the universe. The worm observes the various ways which the blood particles counteract one another, and communicate part of their motion – how they differ. For this reason it considers each particle of blood as a whole, and sees itself within a universe of discrete, particular, imaginary wholes,50 interacting, counteracting, and communicating their respective motions. The worm has no idea how all the imaginary wholes that it distinguishes within the blood – the chyle, lymph, etc. – are “moderated by the universal nature of the blood” (an expression clearly evocative of IMMs). The worm does not know how the chyle and lymph cohere together and are the blood. Furthermore, any access the worm has to the ebb and flow of the blood is through these imaginary wholes, and if the cohering parts that make up the blood are in turn parts of other sorts of systems or wholes, this is even more remote. Spinoza is clearly placing the worm into the condition he investigates in more geometrico in the middle sections of Part II of the Ethics and the opening of Part IV. Humans are like the worm, endemically overawed by external causes, ignorant of the bodies that impact their bodies, yet thoroughly dependent on them also. 49

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Spinoza and Oldenburg had been discussing the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher’s popular (and strange) Subterranean World , a work that probably prompted Spinoza to think about the worlds of microscopic beings. Another possible source might be Christopher Wren’s gruesome experiments injecting fluids and foreign agents into the bloodstreams of animals. They were discussed by both Oldenburg and Boyle. See Hall and Hall (eds. and trans.), The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ii, 336–8, particularly 338n1. As Spinoza had a practical interest in microscopy, given his occupation as a lens grinder, there were also probably many sources in his experience. I use “imaginary wholes” to mean wholes arrived at by the imagination.

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How to deal with this predicament? Spinoza suggests that, to best understand our human bodies and minds, we should understand them as a “part of nature” in “the way we have here conceived the blood.” Our human minds and bodies move through nature and attempt to understand nature just as the worm does, as a “manifest image” in Sellars’ terms. We are continuously confronted by false and finite wholes and continuously stymied in our attempts to access the laws that temper our lives, the laws which endow us with that very motion by which and through which we course through the “blood” – our intellectual and bodily experiential worlds. The “blood” we seek to understand – as opposed to the blood within which the worm finds itself – seems if anything to inspire even greater desperation as we attempt to make sense of it. Nature is infinite and infinitely more inaccessible than the bloodstream of a giant being. And the caveats that we began with – that we ought to give up hope of understanding how the parts of nature cohere and concentrate on truth, recognizing that we are only one part of nature – seem to point to the impossibility of affirmatively answering Oldenburg’s question: why ought we think they cohere at all? So we seem to be the most hopeless of worms: when we perceive wholes we have no access to parts, and when we perceive parts the whole seems infinitely remote due to our inadequacies. As Spinoza claimed above: I do not know in what way each part of nature agrees with the whole, and in what way it coheres with the rest; and I find that it is only through this defective cognition that I perceive some parts (quaedam) of nature, and then only in part and mutilated, and furthermore these parts agree little with our minds philosophically, all of which had seemed to me before to be vain, disordered, and absurd.

Yet Spinoza sees a glimmer of hope, and points to two possible answers to our predicament. First, we must consider Spinoza’s advice that we “are only one part of nature” and see the positive content in the expression “part of nature.” Our partitude is something that we share not only with men but with many other sorts of beings. We are just one part of nature so we ought not make too much out of our limitations, we ought not view them as something which elevates us above the rest of nature in sublimity or drops us below in depravity. Of course, this does not mean that the goal of the Ethics is not to speak to like-minded humans, it is. Nor does it mean we have ultimate access to what they are, we do not. But part of the purpose is also to show humans that they are not so different from the rest of nature as they might think, as well as to explain from whence these feelings of superiority come.

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Second, at the end of Letter XXXII Spinoza remarks: “I conceive that with regard to substance each part has a closer union with its whole.” Here Spinoza is clearly using whole in a positive sense, as well as part. There is something about the relation of substance to mode, as opposed to that of worm to blood, which, although apparently infinitely more inaccessible, abstract, and remote, is actually more proximate and draws out a different sense of part. Substance has no parts, so we cannot be a part of substance. But a “part” of nature has a special relation to substance through the general metaphysical features that hold of all beings as such. They arise from substance and attributes, are through substance and attributes, and all beings manifest these features whatever their finite contexts. This body and that thought are modes of substance, strive to persist in their existence, have God as their absolutely first cause, etc. – i.e. infinite mode laws.51 In this sense “part” means a modification of the infinite modes, and whole means the ways in which the infinite modes express the nature of substance. “Part” does not mean constituent part or a thing teleologically interlocking with and fitting together with other parts. If we are “part” of the face of the whole universe, this means that we share certain features with other sorts of beings and, as such, are modifications of infinite modes – the whole is just the ways in which all extended beings are modifications of the laws of nature. “Parts” cannot be determined by final causes or teleological principles; they do not fit together into systems nested like Russian dolls. They are not moving toward perfection, order, or beauty. Our partitude is just that we, like other beings, “take part” in attributes and substance via the ways in which we are determined.52 This sense of part and whole cannot explain coherence or conflict. It has nothing to do with orders or aesthetic hierarchies. Nor can it make sense of how and why we know this. Spinoza adds somewhat mysteriously in the next sentence that the human mind is “the infinite power of Nature” in thought, “not insofar as it is 51

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A possible criticism of this might be that, whereas motion and rest is an infinite mode and expresses the absolute nature of the attribute, it expresses the attribute of extension, not attribute as such, and not those metaphysical features which hold of all attributes. But, insofar as the attribute expresses substance, the absolute nature of the attribute must express the whole of substance, and thus all those features that hold of each and every attribute. This is part of why one might want to refer infinite mode laws not only to the distinctive features of a given infinite mode, but also to those general features whereby it represents the absolute nature of substance. Put in Spinoza’s terms, this is why iip1 and iip2, God is a thinking thing and God is an extended thing, hold; the attribute represents both extension and the trans-attributal character of God. Both that Spinoza understands parts in this sense, and views this knowledge as therapeutic, is reinforced by Spinoza’s conclusion to the “Appendix” to Ethics IV: “Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things which happen to us . . . if we are conscious . . . that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order we follow” (IV “Appendix” XXXII).

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infinite and perceives the whole of Nature, but insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human Body.” This is the crucial fact that Spinoza seems to think will help us to understand, as opposed to laughing and crying at, the various parts of nature that we see about us, and to leave them to their own inclinations. But how are we to make sense of our access to ourselves as infinite perceivers, qua our finite understanding of our own bodies? In sum, then, Spinoza’s answer to Oldenburg is in a sense simple. There are abiding metaphysical principles which are expressed in our world, and these metaphysical principles offer whatever unity there is. These principles when properly recognized undermine many of the pretensions humans have about their importance in the world. They allow us to cease worrying about things beyond our control and teach us to live for truth and allow others to live after their own inclinations. But how do we get to these principles? And what is the infinite power of nature in so far as we finitely perceive our bodies?

ch a p ter 2

A few further basic concepts

This chapter introduces some important concepts in Spinoza’s philosophy that will be drawn upon extensively in subsequent chapters. In the Ethics it seems as if every concept is quite literally interconnected with every other concept, and there is no way to explain the part without reference to many other parts and the whole. Trying to understand the Ethics we are in the position of our worm in the previous chapter, trying to make sense of a whole through the parts yet at the same time recognizing that all the parts are interconnected through principles that seem out of our reach. In order to cope with this problem, many of the best-known works on Spinoza are written as commentaries on the Ethics as a whole. By commenting on the Ethics section by section, Spinoza’s terminology and concepts can be introduced in the narrative sequence in which they arise. This is, of course, very advantageous, but it makes it difficult to concentrate on a specific issue – like Spinoza’s method. For this reason I pursue only two partially satisfactory alternatives. In this chapter I treat a few key concepts in order that discussion of them does not unduly detract from the larger narrative; and then, as the book proceeds, I introduce technical issues and technical problems. So this excursus into some of Spinoza’s concepts does not seem too unmotivated, I will point at the conclusion of the chapter toward their relevance for Spinoza’s claim introduced at the end of the last chapter: the human mind is “the infinite power of Nature” in thought “not insofar as it is infinite and perceives the whole of Nature, but insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human Body.” To understand this claim we need to understand Spinoza’s take on the infinite. We need to have some background in Spinoza’s theory of knowledge. Finally, we will need to know something about Spinoza’s ways of thinking about external and internal causes. 50

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t h e t h re e k i n d s o f k n ow l e d g e a n d a d e quac y In Part II of the Ethics (iip40s2) Spinoza introduces a distinction between three kinds of knowledge. Throughout the Ethics Spinoza implies that this typology of kinds of knowledge is exhaustive – any new kind of knowledge one might think up would really just be one of these three. Spinoza calls the first kind of knowledge “imagination” or experientia vaga and it actually includes two (or perhaps three) identifiably different sorts of knowledge: sensory knowledge and knowledge from testimony or signs. Spinoza also implies that memory falls under the first kind of knowledge (iip18s). From the fact that the first kind of knowledge includes a number of different ways of knowing – immediate sensory perception, memory, beliefs based on testimony or signs – we can see that Spinoza’s distinction between kinds of knowledge is based both on the way in which knowledge is received and the nature of the content. Memory, knowledge by testimony or signs, and sense perception are all received by happenstance, what Spinoza calls the “common order of nature,” and are all lacking in intrinsic order. For this reason, Spinoza lumps them together as one kind of knowledge, the first kind of knowledge: “mutilated, confused, and without order for the intellect” (iip40s2). In the Ethics Spinoza refers to the second kind of knowledge as reason. Reason regards “things as necessary” and views them “under a species of eternity.” By this Spinoza meant that reason gets at those eternal scientific, metaphysical, and logical ideas and structures that are only accessed in a damaged and limited way by the first kind of knowledge. The central objects of reason are “common notions”: our ideas of those properties of bodies that “all bodies agree” on, for example “now they move slowly, now quickly, and now they absolutely are able to be moved, now they are able to rest” (iip13l2dem). Each of these predicates applies to each and every body there is. Since all bodies agree in them, the ideas we form of them are common to all modes in the attribute of extension. Spinoza further implies that the common properties the bodies agree on are a consequence of properties that hold of the attribute as a whole – for example motion and rest (iip13l2dem.). Consequently commonality – i.e. that a property holds of each and every mode in a given attribute – is an important marker of the second kind of knowledge.1 But there are other ways of characterizing the difference 1

It would appear, although Spinoza does not say it explicitly, that knowledge arising from or grounded in common ideas is also understood via the second kind of knowledge. If I formed an idea of a group of common ideas, let’s say a complex idea of a body (X and Y and Z) built on common features of

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between the first and second kinds of knowledge. One difference is that the content of the first kind of knowledge is contingent (“I see this or that”) and arises from contingent circumstances (“that I am impacted in such and such a way by such and such a body”), whereas the content of the second (and third) kind of knowledge is eternal. Another important difference is the way that we receive the knowledge. We receive the first kind of knowledge according to the common order of nature (iip29c): it is caused by bodies and by properties of bodies that we do not share and thus have no knowledge of their causal antecedents.2 The second kind of knowledge is of properties common to each and every body and the common notions arising from them. We have these ideas regardless of whether or not we are impacted by a body since we have a body (that has these common properties) and this body is the object of our minds. One last important distinction between the second kind of knowledge and the first kind of knowledge is in terms of “adequacy.” Adequacy is one of Spinoza’s most important concepts. Spinoza claims that the second and third kinds of knowledge are adequate as opposed to the first kind of knowledge, which is inadequate (p41dem.). Consequently, in order to understand the second (and third) kinds of knowledge we need to get a handle on adequacy. Spinoza seems to have been led to adequacy, and his distinction between truth and adequacy, via Descartes’ distinction between “clear and distinct ideas” and truth as correspondence, and the Cartesian notion that some ideas – like the cogito – are certain independent of any external verification. Descartes’ argument in the Second Meditation that “I am, I exist” is certain holds independent of the existence of my body or of anything beyond “I” and the deceiver. Spinoza is drawing on this Cartesian insight when he defines an adequate idea as that “which, insofar as it is considered in itself (in se) without relation to an object, has all the intrinsic properties or denominations of a true idea” (iid4). He does not define truth in the Ethics but he does give us at least one characteristic of a true idea, it “should agree with its object (ideatum),” (iid6). But truth is clearly important in understanding adequacy for Spinoza, at least negatively,

2

bodies (X), (Y), and (Z), this idea would also be rational if X, Y, and Z were interconnected through causal laws. This is important for two reasons. First, if the second kind of knowledge was only to be had of those common notions holding of all bodies, it is hard to imagine how this knowledge could get very far. To know that all bodies move is good, but one might want to know other things about bodies that are a trifle more complex. Second, if common notions can be causally interconnected in such a way that adequacy is preserved, we can begin to see how we can have adequate knowledge of differences between entities. Michael Della Rocca, following Jonathan Bennett, emphasizes this as the “inadequacy” of the first kind of knowledge (Michael Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind–Body Problem in Spinoza [Oxford University Press, 1996], 56). I will return to this below.

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since he adds the following “explanation” to his definition of adequacy at iid4 – “I say intrinsic in order to exclude that which is extrinsic, namely the agreement of the idea with its object.” Is adequacy a property of ideas or a relation? Jonathan Bennett has argued that adequacy is “a relation, not a property.”3 Bennett emphasizes that adequacy is a relation because for Spinoza ideas are clearly inadequate in relation to minds. For example, I may have an inadequate idea – the idea of that chair I receive through my senses – but the same idea may be adequate in the “divine mind.”4 Consequently, it seems proper to characterize inadequacy as a relation or a relational property that holds of ideas in relation to minds, just as truth is a relation holding between an idea and its object. The fact that inadequacy is relational does not necessarily mean that adequacy is relational. In fact, the definition of adequacy appears to describe an intrinsic property and not a relation: an adequate idea “has all the intrinsic properties or denominations of a true idea” (iid4). What does “intrinsic denomination” mean? There is some evidence from the TIE that Spinoza thought of “intrinsic denomination” as first of all ruling out cases where agreement with an object was merely extrinsic (TIE 69).5 Thus, if someone has the belief that Peter exists but does not know if Peter exists or not (i.e., has no warrant for their belief ), we might say that the idea was true just if Peter happened to exist. In this case there would be agreement between an idea (“Peter exists”) and a state of affairs (that Peter does exist) and a purely “extrinsic denomination”: true but inadequate. There is further evidence concerning the distinction between truth and adequacy in a letter to Tschirnhaus from 1675, although it is terse and difficult to interpret.6 3 4

5

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Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 178. What adequacy means in relation to the divine mind is, like much in Spinoza’s philosophy, elusive. By “divine mind” I understand nothing anthropomorphic, but rather what Spinoza expresses at iip1, God as a thinking thing. In the demonstration Spinoza refers to ip25c to characterize those singular thoughts that express God’s nature in a certain determinate way. I think that Spinoza considers adequacy in the divine mind to be just this fact, i.e. that ideas belong to the attribute of thought and follow from the divine essence (iip3) when taken individually (as opposed to in relation to an object). Inadequacy arises when our minds fail to express the entirety of this content, or when we have only partial access to more than one idea which we then conflate and confuse. See G. H. R. Parkinson, Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 128–32. Spinoza does not use the term “adequacy” in the TIE, this is one of the most salient differences between the TIE and the Ethics. Rather he uses “truth” to characterize what will be divided into both true and adequate ideas in the Ethics. He does, though, primarily identify “clear and distinct” ideas in the TIE with what will be called “adequate ideas” in the Ethics. This is reinforced by the fact that Spinoza refers to adequate ideas as clear and distinct at vp3. “Between a true and an adequate idea I accept no other difference than that the word ‘true’ considers only the agreement of the idea with its ideatum; the word ‘adequate’ considers the nature of the idea in itself. Thus there is no real difference that may be given between a true and an adequate one beyond (praeter) this extrinsic relation” (Letter LX). This passage can be interpreted in two ways. It

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Spinoza gives a second example that expresses a positive property of adequate ideas. “If a craftsman (faber) properly conceives of an object he wishes to make (fabricam), although this object may not exist or even will never exist, nevertheless the thought the craftsman has is true, and the thought is the same whether the object exists or not” (TIE 69). This is a positive characterization of “intrinsic denomination” and Spinoza’s point seems to be that an idea can have some sort of content, as a consequence of being “properly” conceived, that is independent of its relation to the object to which the content apparently refers. This content would seem to have to arise from common features of objects. For example, there is clearly some sort of difference between a craftsman’s plan to build a clock that is in accordance with the laws of nature (mathematical and physical laws, for example) and a crazy fantasy clock planned on misinterpretations of the laws of nature. The difference between the two clocks holds independent of whether either clock will ever exist. Still, I think these passages from the TIE are consistent with viewing adequacy as a relation. Although to be adequate assumes some sort of internal coherence, Spinoza also always presents adequacy as something minds have in relation to this internal coherence. By internal coherence I understand the sort of thing implied by the clock example, consistent with the laws of nature in such a way that the various determinate features of the idea of the clock – ideas of gears, pendulums, etc. – do not contradict one another. An ideal candidate for an adequate idea in this sense would be an essence; of course the clock example brings up the tricky problem that it is not actualized, and it seems for Spinoza that everything that has an essence would be actualized.7 In Part III of the Ethics Spinoza introduced a way of characterizing adequate ideas as “adequate causes,” i.e., in terms of their efficaciousness. But this presupposes adequacy, so it does not explain what adequacy is simpliciter.

7

can be interpreted strongly as saying that the set of adequate ideas is a subset of the set of true ideas, i.e. true ideas have both extrinsic and intrinsic markers and adequate ideas only intrinsic markers. On this reading, all true ideas are adequate but not all adequate ideas (necessarily) are true. Or it can be read weakly as stating that what distinguishes a true idea from an adequate idea (as opposed to an adequate idea from a true one) is the presence or absence of the extrinsic relation. On the weak reading, adequate ideas may also be true (although they are not necessarily true) and true ideas may also be adequate (although they are not necessarily adequate). If an idea is true but not adequate then we get the first state of affairs that Spinoza describes in the TIE, a mere extrinsic correlation. If it is adequate but not true we get the second state of affairs described in the TIE, the unrealized machine. As the weak reading is consistent with the TIE, it seems preferable to me. I am not really sure how to deal with this very basic problem. One could say, on the one hand, that the essence of the thought clock is something different from the essence of a given real clock, it is a reflection on the structural features of clocks more generally, an essence of an essence, but this does not seem to get one very far.

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Spinoza seems to have something of the following sort in mind. An idea is adequate if (1) it is internally consistent (i.e. does not entail a logical contradiction or a contradictory application of the laws of nature), (2) it need not refer to anything external to itself (as a true idea does), but (3) it must have an internal cause of which we also have adequate knowledge and it must depend on no inadequate ideas (iip34dem.). This last criterion is recursive but not destructively so. If adequacy is a relation then (1) and (2) are defined in relation to a mind: ultimately the divine mind. The regress of (3) stops at God’s idea in thought, and this is the fundamental relation that each adequate idea must have – to “the perfect idea in God insofar as he constitutes the essence of our Mind” (iip34dem.). That Spinoza has something like (3) in mind follows from his claim that inadequate ideas are like “a conclusion without premises” (iip28). If this is the case, then it seems to follow that adequate ideas are like conclusions with premises. Consequently I take Spinoza to mean that adequate ideas are ideas whose causes we know, as well as knowing how and that these causes result in the idea.8 Knowing the causes is a basic support of (1) and (3). Conversely, an idea is inadequate if: (1) it is internally inconsistent, (2) it necessarily refers to something external, or (3) we lack knowledge of its cause or it has an inadequate cause or it depends on inadequate ideas. It is important to note that any positive content in an inadequate idea must come from somewhere, and the logical place from which to imagine it comes is an adequate idea or, to follow Spinoza’s example through, a conclusion with a premise. A paradigmatic example of adequate knowledge would be the knowledge we have of properties of bodies that “all bodies agree” on, such as they are “now they move slowly, now quickly, and now they absolutely are able to be moved, now they are able to rest” (iip13l2dem). It does not depend on the existence of a particular body as its ideatum since it is a general idea of a property shared by all bodies. It is internally consistent since it follows directly from the laws of nature. Since our body, too, follows from these laws, we can understand general properties of bodies without having to include inadequate ideas of bodies external to us of which we have only partial and inadequate knowledge. And, finally, we have knowledge of the cause of these relations or properties – the idea of God that we all have. For Spinoza, the second kind of knowledge extends to most of what we ordinarily think of as proper reason and reasoning. As I have noted, reason 8

In a way this is just a consequence of ia4, “understanding an effect depends on and involves understanding the cause.”

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is only one of the two adequate sorts of knowledge. Spinoza also introduces “a kind of knowing which proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the [NS: formal] essence of things” (iip40s2, CW 478). He calls this scientia intuitiva or the “third kind of knowledge.” I will turn to this sort of knowledge in the final chapter. i n t e r n a l a n d e x t e r n a l c au s e Adequacy draws on a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic, between externally caused and internal to an idea, that is not easy to understand. This distinction is employed in a number of Spinoza’s most important arguments, in particular his argument for the conatus at Ethics iiip4–6. I will argue that the distinction between internal and external is also implicit in the solution Spinoza proposed to the worm’s confusion about the blood that we considered in the conclusion to the last chapter: “the infinite power of Nature” in thought” (Letter XXXII). But how does this distinction work? I will take a preliminary step in this section toward understanding the distinction by presenting one of the most common ways that Spinoza draws the external/internal distinction, via external and internal causes. External causes are efficient causes – i.e., causes with effects – that are not part of the definition or essence of a thing. For example, in the scholium to ip11 – “God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists” – Spinoza notes: Still there may be many who will not easily be able to see how evident this demonstration is, because they have been accustomed to contemplate only those things that flow from external causes. And of these, they see that those things which quickly come to be, i.e., which easily exist, also easily perish. (CW 418)

Further on in the same scholium, Spinoza remarks: For things that come to be from external causes – whether they consist of many parts or of few – owe all the perfection or reality they have to the power of the external cause; and therefore their existence arises only from the perfection of their external cause, and not from their own perfection. On the other hand, whatever perfection substance has is not owed to any external cause. (CW 418)

When we view nature as external cause – as what Spinoza calls the “common order of nature” – we imagine that what each part of nature is, is only explicable in terms of how it arises from and is destroyed by efficient

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causes external to it. We observe that many of the things that can come into existence most easily via external causes – a milkshake or a desire for a milkshake (invoking Spinoza’s broad identification of mode and thing) for example – can cease to exist just as quickly. Through this association we come to the unwarranted conclusion that if something comes to exist simply or easily it can also cease to exist just as quickly or easily. The conclusion is unwarranted as it moves from judgments about the natures of various things via the imagination to claims about their existence or non-existence.9 Thus the induction that results from judging nature in re external causes leads to an impoverished and false understanding of nature and natures. When we consider God’s existence through internal causes we come to the opposite conclusion, that finite modes need the concurrence of multiple external causes to explain them, whereas God’s existence arises from its very essence or definition, as is obvious to those who attend to internal causes. And this holds not just of God, but of anything with an essence. To understand something’s essence is to understand its internal cause, whether this cause is self-sufficient or arises from some other being.10 This is further amplified in Spinoza’s discussion of ip7 – “It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist” – the primary proposition called upon in ip11. Spinoza remarked about this proposition that: I do not doubt that the demonstration of p7 will be difficult to conceive for all who judge things confusedly, and have not been accustomed to know things through their first causes – because they do not distinguish between the modifications of substances and the substances themselves . . . But men who would attend to the nature of substance, they would have no doubt at all of the truth of p7. Indeed this proposition would be an axiom for everyone, and would be numbered among common notions. (Ip8s2,CW 412–13)

This passage shows that Spinoza wants to provide us with a particular way of looking at the world, through the internal and first causes of things, as opposed to through contingent features immediately evident to the senses. One of the main purposes of the Ethics is to give readers access to first 9

10

The ultimate support for this is tied up with Spinoza’s arguments for the inadequacy of the first kind of knowledge – testimony or imagination – and that this knowledge, insofar as it is inadequate, is incapable of judging the ultimate contingency or necessity of its objects as it is intrinsic to imagination to consider everything to be contingent. Of course, we do not know the essences of all things just because we know God is their ultimate cause. We would need to know how God is the cause of the determinate features of their essence, i.e. what they are as this or that sort of mode not just a mode in general.

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principles and first causes and to understand how propositions like ip7, when considered in the proper way, are as evident as axioms.11 There are two main sources for Spinoza’s use of internal cause and external cause, one remote and one proximate. The remote source is the neo-Scholastic Heereboord’s distinction between an immanent cause as a cause which produces an effect in se ipsa and a transient cause as a cause which produces an effect extra se. Heereboord’s distinction between immanent and transient causes is similar to Spinoza’s differentiation between internal and external causes. Ultimately, though, this definition seems to warrant a neo-Aristotelian, and rather un-Spinozistic, distinction between essential predicates or propria which can be said to derive from the essence of something and accidental features external to the essence of a thing.12 The proximate source for Spinoza’s account of internal cause is Descartes’ distinction between external and internal causes. Spinoza presents the distinction in the PP as bisecting the category of cause into “either an external one, i.e., one outside the thing itself, or an internal one, i.e., one comprehended in the nature and definition of the existing thing itself ” (PP ia11). This is not terribly far removed from Heereboord’s sense, and thus was amenable to Cartesio-Scholastics.13 As I have noted, this sort of definition is far from unique to early modern philosophers. Scotus, for example used a similar distinction to build the contingency of creature into his proof of God via an emphasis on extrinsic 11

12

13

Spinoza’s category of axioms corresponds to Euclid’s “koina ennoia” or common notions. Spinoza understands axioms to be principles agreed upon by all people (but does not mean that all people grasp their power). I have claimed previously that Spinoza places his primary emphasis on definitions not axioms (as opposed to modern mathematicians or Leibniz). He does this for a fairly simple reason. Ultimately axioms derive from common features of various entities – substance, attribute, bodies, and minds. Axioms are logically dependent on entities such as substance and attributes, and substance and attributes have essences or definitions. Thus axioms ultimately reflect features of things defined, more particularly substance and attributes. Martial Gueroult emphasizes the importance of Heereboord in this context. He views Heereboord’s distinction as presenting an emanative conception of causation which Spinoza is seeking to criticize by the argument that to be a cause is to be immanent. See Martial Gueroult, Spinoza I – Dieu (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968), 297–8. Spinoza would not support the Aristotelian account of essential predicates nor the essence/accident distinction (as contingency is often a property not of the predicates themselves, but rather of our modes of cognizing them). See particularly Johannes Clauberg, Logica: Vetus et Nova (Amsterdam: Elzevir, 1658), i.6, 51. As Cartesio-Scholastics go, Clauberg was very much on the “Cartesio” side, but was clearly trying to reconcile the “vetus et nova.” This work was originally published in 1652 and Spinoza owned a copy. Often Aristotelians made an additional distinction grounded in Physics I (although Clauberg did not) between the constituent internal causes (matter and form insofar as they enter into a hylomorphic compound), and the four causes insofar as they act on a given hylomorphic compound.

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causes as over and against intrinsic causes.14 What distinguishes Descartes and Spinoza from their forebears is that they do not mention accidents and they only allow for efficient causes15 where the Aristotelians considered form and matter to be paradigmatic internal causes. Spinoza used “immanent cause” in a manner similar to internal cause. At Ethics ip18 Spinoza opposes “immanent cause” to “transitive cause”: Everything that is, is in God, and must be conceived through God (by p15), and so (by p16c1) God is the cause of [NS: all] things which are in him. (CW 428)

This implies that a cause is immanent of, or to, those things which arise “in” and “through” it, and a cause is transitive of those things which can be said neither to be caused “in” or “through” it.16 Thus, God would be immanent to a given mode, insofar as that mode is conceived through God and in God. Spinoza only applies immanent cause to God or substance, unlike the broader term internal cause that could apply to any mode. This is built into the proof of the proposition since Spinoza argues that, in order for there to be a transitive cause, it, too, would have to be a substance. As there are no other substances external to the one substance capable of functioning as transitive causes, God is the one and only immanent cause.17 In this way God as immanent cause is the ur-condition of everything that has an internal cause, each thing is what it is ultimately insofar as it has God as its immanent cause. This points to a notable difference from Descartes. In the Meditations God is both inside and outside – the idea of God is in each of our minds but God as cause of the idea in me is outside of my mind. This, in turn, is one of the cornerstones of Descartes’ arguments for the existence of the external world and the freedom of the divine will. Although the idea of God is in my mind, through an act of divine volition, the reality that it represents points outside my mind (or anyone else’s mind for that matter).18 In some 14

15

16 17 18

See, particularly, Duns Scotus, De Primo Principio, ii.8. On the impact of Scotism on Descartes, and the enormous popularity of Scotism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Roger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). Zabarella is a crucial figure, along with the Nominalists, in the changing emphasis from formal and final causes to efficient causes in definitions. Although Zabarella held final causes to be important, he interpreted material causes as a sort of efficient causa fluens (de Medio Demonstrationis, in Zabarella, Opera Logica, 592e) efficient causes qua matter, and formal causes as whatever of the other causes is the best explanation (ibid., 590–1, and also 440c). Adrian Heereboord, Melemeta Philosophica (Amsterdam: Joannem Ravesteinium, 1665), 229. His demonstration that God is not the transitive cause of things reads: “And then outside God there can be no substance (by p14), i.e. (by d3), thing which in itself is outside God” (ip18). Of course, this sort of interpretation of Descartes as a Scotistic voluntarist is disputable, but see Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, ch. 1.

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ways Spinoza is thinking in a way entirely at odds with this voluntarist conception of God and revisiting the Stoic distinction between inside and outside, inside and outside my power. Despite this major difference – which makes God also an external cause for Descartes – both Spinoza and Descartes agree that God is absolutely infinite (although they mean different things by this as I will show shortly). For Spinoza, the absolutely infinite is the key to understanding how God is an immanent cause, and how we are to understand things through internal causes. This is obvious in a sense, only if we understand how and that God is absolutely infinite can we then have any access to the adequate idea of God. But, as we just saw in the case of ip7, the fact that God is evidently infinite does not thereby mean that it is evident to everyone, as most of us are flummoxed by the inadequate testimonies of our imaginations. the infinite Early modern philosophers were fascinated by the infinite. This was for fairly obvious reasons: the power of the infinite in mathematics and the idea of the infinite universe were trumpeted by the philosophical and scientific avant-garde as signaling major dividing lines from the closed and finite universe that they associated with Scholastic physics. Scholastic philosophers had also emphasized the infinite, the infinite power of God for example, but they normally strongly opposed God’s infinity to the finite and closed cosmos. Nicolas of Cusa, though, placed the infinite at the center, literally,19 of the human world. Bruno radicalized Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus orbum caelestium by presenting it as an argument for an infinite cosmos.20 In 1643 Torricelli demonstrated that one could construct a solid of finite volume and infinite length, a result that prompted rich responses from some of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers writing in the third quarter of the seventeenth century.21 Although the infinite is particularly associated with Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes both made God’s infinity central to their philosophies. For Descartes, our idea of the infinite was our connection to God and the bridge between the individual cogito and the world. At the same time Descartes emphasized that positive infinity was solely predicated of God, the material 19 20 21

In particular see Nicholas of Cusa, De Ludo Globi (New York: Abaris Books, 1986). See Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), chs. 3, 6, and 7. See the excellent discussion in Paolo Mancosu, Philosophy of Mathematics & Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1996), ch. 5.

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world could only properly be considered indefinite or without end.22 What distinguished God’s infinity from the indefiniteness of the world was that in God “not only do we fail to recognize any limits in any respect, but our understanding tells us that there are none,” whereas in the case of the indefinite “we merely acknowledge that any limits which they may have, have not been discovered by us.”23 Spinoza wanted to extend and radicalize some of Descartes’ ideas about God’s infinity by extending God’s infinity to the world, i.e. by arguing like Bruno that nature is not only indefinite but actually infinite. In order to do this, Spinoza had to show that the strict Cartesian dividing line between infinite and indefinite did not hold, at least exactly in the way that Descartes construed it.24 Spinoza began a letter to his friend Meyer by announcing the singularity of his discovery, which he took great pride in since “the question of the Infinite has been found to be most difficult by everyone” (Letter XII). Spinoza claimed that people misunderstood the infinite for three reasons: (1) [T]hey have not distinguished between that which follows as infinite by consequence of its nature or by the force of its definition; and what has no ends, but not indeed by the force of its essence. (2) They have not distinguished between that which is called infinite because it has no ends; and that the parts of which, although (quamvis) we have its minimum and maximum, we are unable to explicate or equate with any number. (3) Finally, they have not distinguished between that which we can only understand, but not truly imagine, and that which we can indeed imagine. (g iv/53)25

These distinctions are quite ambiguous. It is not clear at first whether Spinoza is distinguishing between types of infinite or between the infinite and the indefinite like Descartes (although later in the letter it becomes apparent that Spinoza was distinguishing between types of infinity). But the ambiguity seems intentional since Spinoza clearly meant the letter for 22

23 24

25

Principles i.26–7 and ii.21. See Roger Ariew, “The Infinite in Descartes’ Conversation with Burman,” in Archiv f¨ur Geschichte der Philosophie 69 (1987), 140–63; Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, 170–1; Jean-Marie Beyssade, Etudes sur Descartes: L’histoire d’un esprit (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2001), 272–85. Descartes, Principles, i.27. Spinoza’s rendering of Descartes’ definition of “indefinite” is at PP iid4. This is already apparent in the PP. Spinoza remarks we “can conceive infinite variations of matter. I say we conceive them clearly and distinctly so long as we conceive them as modes of extension, but not as things really distinct from extension” (pp iip6s). This implies that “infinite” is properly predicated of matter, or of modes of matter. Spinoza ascribes this claim to Descartes, but Descartes never really says this. I have added the numbers.

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a Cartesian audience and remarks that Meyer can refer to his second sort of infinite as indefinite “if he prefers.” So what did Spinoza wish to claim about the infinite? His first distinction holds between infinite in itself, qua its definition or essence, and something we consider infinite but not through its essence. For readers today this will seem a bit odd, as Spinoza considers the infinite not to be a number in any of the ways we ordinarily think of number, but rather a metaphysical predicate attached to beings, i.e. “infinite substance,” “infinite mode.” When a mathematician constructs an infinite set or set theoretical hierarchy, the mathematician applies a recursive procedure to generate the counting infinite (1,2,3,4, . . .) from a finite set and then via the power set operation the various levels of the infinite (a1 ,a2 , . . .). This procedure moves from the finite to the transfinite and infinite. Spinoza’s metaphysical account of the infinite moves in the opposite direction, the infinite is not caused by or defined through a procedure applied to finite sets or numbers. Rather the infinite is defined as infinite in and of itself, and beings that are infinite but have a cause are caused by it. This distinction will be quite important when we consider the definition of God in subsequent chapters. At first glance, though, it makes sense to differentiate between something that is infinite in and of itself and something that is derivatively or transitively infinite. There is no reason per se that something could not be derivatively infinite, as opposed to merely indefinite. Allowing for “derivative infinity” has an important systematic place in Spinoza’s philosophy in distinguishing the sort of infinity that substance has and the sort of infinity that modes have. The second of Spinoza’s distinctions holds between that which has no ends and “that the parts of which, although we have its minimum and maximum, we are unable to explicate or equate with any number.” This could be interpreted in two different ways. First Spinoza could be distinguishing between either: (2A) What is called infinite because it has no ends and whose parts we cannot explain or equate with any number.

or (2Aì ) What is called infinite because it has no ends and whose parts we can equate with a number.

and (2B) that the parts of which, although we have its minimum and maximum, we are unable to explicate or equate with any number.

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It seems that the parallels with (1) suggest that Spinoza has (2A) in mind, not (2Aì ). In (1), both senses of the infinite are distinguished solely by the fact that one is infinite by force of its essence and the other is not. This is further supported by (3), which I will discuss in a moment, where Spinoza distinguishes between what I can understand and not imagine, and that which I can imagine (independent of whether I can understand it or not). In (3) once again only one distinction is at issue – whether when considering the infinite we are considering something we understand or something we imagine. From these parallels it would seem to follow, then, that (2) also presents one distinction (ends) as opposed to two (ends, numerable). Consequently I conclude that it is most obvious to read (2) as supporting (2A), that the infinite without limits also has no number.26 This, too, bears on basic metaphysical issues in Spinoza’s philosophy. Spinoza seems to be allowing for the infinite to apply to things that have maximums and minimums and thus to argue that in some sense the infinite is contained in what we consider to be limited or finite. In order to understand this we have to ask what Spinoza means by claiming that the infinite is not numerable. We might think he is pointing toward the mathematical distinction between the counting infinite (1,2,3, . . .) and the real infinite (the number of points in a given interval), but both of these definitions involve number. Spinoza clearly views the different derivative senses of infinite as referring back, causally, to that which is infinite in its essence or definition.27 This makes sense when we realize that, for Spinoza, “infinite” is a predicate that applies irrespective of quantity, i.e. infinite power does not mean a numerical scale applied to power which happens to be infinite but rather causal power without end which then may be enumerated by restricting it to a numerical genus. So, in order to get any purchase on the infinite, we have to understand what it means for something to be infinite through its definition. I will return to this issue below. We can use the fact that number does not apply to the absolutely infinite to rule out some sorts of explanations. Spinoza’s definition of God presents God as a being absolutely infinite or a substance with an infinite infinity of attributes each of which expresses the eternal and infinite essence of God. In this definition, Spinoza presents God and God’s absolute infinity in terms of substance and attributes. As also previously alluded to, at least two of these attributes will turn out to be thought and extension. A perennial problem for Spinoza’s interpreters has been whether there are just these 26 27

As a further support, Spinoza remarks later on in the letter that “it is sufficiently evident that neither Number, nor Measure, nor Time (since they are only aids to the imagination) can be infinite” (iv/58). “[O]thers [are infinite] by the force of the cause in which they inhere,” iv/61.

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two attributes that we experience, each of which is infinite, or an infinity of attributes that we never experience, and which thus appear inaccessible. What sort of infinity characterizes the attributes? The attributes are infinite in the sense described in the letter above – that “whose parts we cannot explain or equate with any number” – which they would appear to have to be (since they express the absolutely infinite nature of substance). It is misguided to think of the infinity of attributes as this numerical attribute (thought), and that one (extension), and a bunch more. Thought and extension are attributes, we know this as they satisfy the criterion for being attributes – they express the nature of substance.28 But, as number is not something which applies to essences (ip8s) and, as the infinity of attributes cannot therefore be a numerical infinite, it makes no sense to view them as this, that, and another – as numerable particulars.29 28

29

This is in contradistinction to many pseudo attributes which need to be ruled out, see KV i:4–7. Of course Spinoza needs a great deal of argumentation to show that they are to be ruled out. The argument, at least the one offered at iip1, is as follows. We know from Book I that modes express God’s nature in a certain and determinate way. Therefore, insofar as they express the essence, they either are or belong to an attribute. They cannot be the attribute because they are modes, and not necessary, they just express God’s nature in a certain and determinate way, but they require that God’s nature is expressed absolutely in order that it may be expressed determinately. This attribute is thought. The proof has two obvious difficulties. First there is no reason to assume that God’s essence would need be expressed as such, but this seems to follow from Spinoza’s version of a plenitude principle (ip33), the fact that everything that can be expressed is, and God’s essence is the paradigm of what can be expressed. A more serious problem is should we infer from the fact that mode X is a determinate thought, that the attribute it belongs to is the attribute of thought? Spinoza also provides an alternate a posteriori proof in the Scholium. Since we can conceive an infinite thinking being, and this infinite being is infinite in its power of thought, we are capable of representing an infinite being through thought alone. Thus thought is capable in itself of representing an infinite being, consequently is infinite, and satisfies the criterion of an attribute. This proof trades on the assumption that we do have a real concept of an infinite being. That this is a historically viable way of thinking about the infinite is apparent from Bruno’s Fifth Dialogue from De la causa, principio e uno as well as Cusa’s De Ludo Globi. Both Cusa and Bruno emphasize the convergence of the maximum and the minimum in the infinite. Bruno additionally strongly emphasizes that number in no way applies to the infinite as this would be a partitioning by magnitude: “[n]ow, if, in the infinite all these particular things are not differentiated, are not divided into species, it necessarily follows that they have no number” Sidney Greenburg (ed., and trans.), The Infinite in Giordano Bruno, with a Translation of his Dialogue, Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1950), 88. By this Bruno does not just mean that the infinite cannot be numbered. He means that number does not apply. This is a metaphysical as opposed to a mathematical conception of the infinite, one which post-Cantorians find odd, but that Spinoza holds a metaphysical conception of the infinite is clear from his definition of the “absolutely infinite”: “that therefore [is] absolutely infinite, which to its essence pertains whatever essence expresses”. I do not mean to imply by this that Spinoza was directly influenced by Bruno, just that emphasizing the non-numerable character of the infinite was plausible in the seventeenth century. Some, like Hampshire, have viewed Spinoza as a distinctively “mathematical” thinker with mathematics as a paradigm for knowledge (Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza: An Introduction to his Philosophical Thought (London: Penguin Books, 1987, rev. edn), 15). Given Spinoza’s emphasis on mathematical entities as

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The consistent position, given Spinoza’s account of the infinite, would seem to be the following. We know that there are at least two attributes. We also know that there are an infinity of attributes, but they are not numerable. We can only properly consider the attributes we know, and the non-numerically infinite character of attributes as such.30 We are misled into thinking we can speak of attributes as forming a numerical series because of our foggy understanding of the infinite, we think that the fact that we know two attributes makes us think three is a legitimate inference on the way to infinity. But it is not, as we are not discussing this sort of infinity. How Spinoza might think about this can be illustrated via his discussion of contingency and possibility at ivd3 and ivd4: I vd 3: I call those singular things contingent that while we attend solely to their essence, we discover nothing that necessarily posits their existence, or that necessarily excludes their existence. I vd 4: I call the same singular things possible, insofar as when we attend to the causes from which they ought to have been produced, we are unable to determine whether those causes have been determined to produce them. In ip33s1 I made no distinction between possible and contingent, because there was not the need there to distinguish them accurately.

Contingency describes our lack of access, when attending to the essences of things, to reasons as to why they exist or do not exist. Possibility concerns our lack of access to the causes of things, not to the essence of the thing itself. I say X is contingent when there is no means of knowing by examining X itself whether or not it has a reason for existing or not existing. I say X is possible, on the other hand, when I know what the cause of X must be, but I do not know whether said causes are determined to produce X.

30

beings of reason, his great interest in experimental physics and fairly meagre interest in mathematics, and his stock triangle examples, I think this is wishful thinking. For better or worse he is an extremely metaphysical thinker with a deep interest in the instrumental practices of science. In this I am in agreement with Jonathan Bennett, although via a somewhat different argument. See, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 75–7. I differ with Bennett, however, in that I do not agree that this limits us to two attributes, as two would also be a specific number of attributes, and this could not have a rational cause by ip8c. Thus I do not see Letter LXIV as posing a particular problem. Because we know that there are absolutely infinite attributes does not mean that we need have determinate acquaintance with finite modes in any but two. And there is no logical reason why the fact that we know that there are absolutely infinite attributes need imply that we know what they are. The problem is countenancing this sort of claim with iip7, as iip7 would seem to imply that there must be parallel “modes” in each of the infinity of attributes, and that this must be represented in each and every attribute. But again, if we understand the infinity of attributes as a statement about the absolutely infinite character of the attributes, it is a somewhat less severe problem. I think that in general this interpretation is sufficiently Cusan to be historically plausible and to satisfy the criteria established by Roger Ariew in Ariew, “The Infinite in Spinoza’s Philosophy,” in Edwin Curley and Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau (eds.), Spinoza: Issues and Directions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 16–31.

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So a triangle is “possible” when I have no acquaintance with its causes. A triangle is contingent when by attending to the triangle I cannot tell whether it exists or not in and through itself. From the perspective of ip33 – the powerful metaphysical claim that “Things could have been produced by God in no other way” – the distinction is entirely unimportant, it is a product of human confusion. But what is interesting for our purposes is that, although the distinction between possibility and contingency arises from human ignorance, both possibility and contingency are limited by the metaphysical distinction between necessity and “possibility and/or contingency” at ip33s1. Thus, we have a general metaphysical truth – ip33s1 – that acts as a constraint on cognition, and within this constraint we can make epistemic distinctions between types of cognition as long as they do not violate the wider constraints. In the case of the infinity of attributes we can provide a similar, albeit implicit, argument. We know that it must be the case, metaphysically, that there is an infinity of attributes. We are acquainted with two attributes and only two as far as we know. But the fact that we are only acquainted with two attributes is neither here nor there when it comes to arguing that there are an infinity of attributes, nor does it have any bearing on the metaphysical concept of infinity. We know in its broad lines what the infinite is not. This limits many explanations, notably religious ones, but it also limits apparently rational explanations that make unwarranted assumptions based on our finite experience. To return to Letter XII, (3) distinguishes between what we can only understand and what we can both understand and imagine. Although this distinction is epistemic, and consequently is not a necessary condition of the infinite, it is a prerequisite for our understanding the infinite. Being able to successfully distinguish between objects of the imagination and of the understanding allows us to see the differences between the other two senses, between (1) “what is infinite as a consequence of its own nature” and “what has no bounds” and (2) “what is called infinite because it has no limits” and “that whose parts we cannot explain or equate with any number.” This is far more difficult than it sounds. We continuously try to represent proper objects of the understanding through the imagination, even metaphysical first principles, as was evident in our attempts to understand the infinite character of the attributes. We try to visualize things, render them accessible and commonsensical. As a consequence we present and represent them in a mutilated and confused manner entirely different from the way we should represent the objects of the understanding. In some ways

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this is Spinoza’s cardinal epistemological insight – a deeply Cartesian insight, although one which leads in directions quite remote from Descartes through the ferocity of its application – that the intellect, and the objects of the intellect, cannot be judged by the imagination. As for Descartes, the implication is not that the imagination is intrinsically bad, but rather that the conflation of the imagination and understanding leads to error. The need to separate the understanding from the imagination holds most of all of understanding God. As I noted above, all senses of the infinite refer back to that which is infinite in its definition, God, and therefore to understand the infinite is to understand the definition of God. The definition reads in full: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence. Explication: I say absolutely infinite, not indeed infinite in its genus: for that which is only infinite in its genus, we are able to negate the infinity of its attributes; but that therefore [is] absolutely infinite, to which whatever expresses essence pertains to its essence, and involves no negation. (Id6)

This is one of a group of definitions that initiates Book I of the Ethics. These definitions have different sorts of structures. Some of the definitions have only one part, introduced by the clause “By X I understand that”: the definitions of attribute (id4) and eternity (id8). Some present a definition with two parts, introduced by the clause “By X I understand that” with the two halves separated by “or, that”: the definitions of causa sui (id1) and mode (id5). Some introduce the definitions with “That thing is called” as opposed to “By X I understand that”: the definitions of “finite in its kind” (id2) and a “free thing” (id7). Two definitions have additional “explications” attached to the definition proper, the definitions of God (id6) and eternity, and one has an example – (id2) “finite in its kind.” Finally some definitions are introduced by “By X I understand that” and contain a second clause which explicates the first clause linked together by the connective “that is”: substance (id3) and God. These last two definitions, along with the definition of “causa sui,” are the “first causes” of Spinoza’s metaphysics. It will turn out that they define the same thing: God is the one, unique substance. The definition of substance enters into the second part of the definition of God, insofar as God is “a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” With the definition of substance it is clear that the first half of the definition “By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself” is the definition proper. The second

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half of the definition – “that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed” – includes a negation. Spinoza does not think that a negation can be included in the presentation of the essence of something (although sometimes it is unavoidable due to the limitations on language, a point to which I will return at great length in chapter 6) so we can reasonably assume that the weight of the definition rests on its first half. The second half of the definition of God does not include any sort of negation, but given the definition of substance, and the structure of the definition, it seems that Spinoza views the primary definition as “a being absolutely infinite” and the second part of the definition as explicating it: “a being” (“a substance”) and “absolutely infinite” (“an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence”). At the very least it is consistent to view the definition of God as providing an explication in terms of substance and attribute of what absolute infinity means. Spinoza also provides a further explication that is clearly not part of the definition proper. He distinguishes absolutely infinite from “infinite in its own kind” and then adds a notable and strange clause: that therefore [is] absolutely infinite, to which whatever expresses essence pertains to its essence, and involves no negation.

It seems by this that Spinoza is claiming that the absolutely infinite being is not just a being that expresses the entirety of its essence. To its essence pertains whatever expresses essence (quicquid essentiam exprimit). I think Spinoza has in mind something like the following. Infinite numbers, infinite causal power, and the other licit and illicit ways that we represent the infinite, all are ways of expressing some sort of essence. We might think that we could get at what the infinite was by just adding together all things that have essences and express them – whatever expresses essence – but this would just result in a lot of stuff that is infinite, not the absolute infinite, as it would not provide a cause, merely an aggregate. Hence we need to look elsewhere, to that “to which its essence pertains” to move beyond this aggregative notion. Spinoza implies with this part of the definition that “infinite” means something like “given X, X is absolutely infinite if and only if for some y expressing essence, that y pertains to the essence of X” without negation. This criterion, a kind of essence criterion, holds of both substance and attributes. It also seems to constitute the connection between substance and attributes, substance is that through which all essences are what they are, attributes express the essence. In the case of substance, whatever has an essence has it in and through substance, and, in the case of

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attributes, whatever has an essence has that essence expressed by attributes. It is hard to put such an idea into non-technical language, but it seems clear that this is a sort of way of thinking about the infinite that Descartes would have some problems with, since it denies the centrality of the infinite will (if not its existence, for it still might exist as a mode of the divine mind). We can get some purchase on it in the following manner. Since for Spinoza the absolutely infinite is whatever expresses essence without negation, the infinite within a given genus ought to be understood as expressing the entire essence of a genus without end. So each and every essence of a number is expressed by the numerical infinite, although constrained by the genus number and thus not absolutely infinite. Each and every essence of an extended thing is expressed in the attribute of extension, but limited to extended things and hence not absolutely infinite. Consequently, from the structure of the definition and from the explication we can see that the “absolutely infinite” or God is not just one concept among others. It is something that, when we grasp through the understanding, and do not confuse through the imagination, we understand better and better. We understand it better by understanding all of the essences that arise from it, a process I will discuss in greater depth in later chapters, in particular chapter 6 and chapter 7. Conversely, it prevents us from making disastrous philosophical mistakes – anthropomorphizing God for example – and it moves us in the right direction for understanding many crucial concepts. It acts as an important metaphysical constraint on argument in the sense discussed above. When we grasp what absolutely infinite means, as distinguished from our desire to represent the infinite in terms of parts, numbers, genera, or the imagination, we begin to understand a number of ideas crucial for our power and joy which are stubbornly thwarted by our confusions. And, when we understand what it means for something to “express essence,” we better understand the absolute infinite and God.31 I would like briefly to discuss an important consequence this has for our understanding of the Ethics. It is clear in the Ethics that we have adequate cognition of the eternal and infinite essence of God (iip47). At first we might think that Spinoza meant something similar to what Descartes does, but this cannot be the case. For Spinoza, we do not have an infinite idea placed into our minds qua humans capable of reflection and made by God 31

This is how I understand vp24, “the more we understand singular things, the more we understand God.” Spinoza derives this from ip25c which states that “particular things are . . . modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way.”

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imago dei. Spinoza is making a very different claim, one not specific to humans or beings capable of reflection, attention, and meditation. Every part and every whole32 necessarily involves the idea of God (iip45). More strongly, each and every idea involves adequate and perfect knowledge of God’s essence (iip46). This includes not only all bodies and minds, but also each and every perception. Whatever a perception is, it is through ideas, as these ideas are how we perceive ourselves, our bodies, and other bodies as existing. So every perception involves the infinite and eternal essence of God. It is not clear what this means. Spinoza demonstrates iip45 by invoking ia4: Singular things (by ip15) are not able to be conceived without God; but because (by iip6) they have God for a cause, insofar as he is considered under an attribute of which the things themselves are modes, their ideas (by ia4) will necessarily involve the concept of the attribute itself (by id6), they will involve the eternal and infinite essence of God.

How do we have this idea of the infinite and eternal essence of God? ip15 asserts that nothing can be conceived without God. This seems to be a weak claim, that God is a necessary condition of anything we might conceive. We might wish to construe iip45–7 as simply implying that to have an idea is to know that the idea has a cause. But, Spinoza clearly construes it far more strongly since iip45–7 show that “God’s infinite essence and his eternity are known to all,” (iip47s). And he derives powerful consequences from it: “since all things are in God and are conceived through God, it follows that we can deduce from this knowledge a great many things which we know adequately, and so can form that third kind of knowledge” (iip47s, CW 482). These consequences derive from Spinoza’s invocation of ia4, that ideas involve the concept of their attribute and, since the attribute expresses the essence of God, involve the eternal and infinite essence of God. But how does Spinoza get from the fact that God is a necessary condition of ideas to there is actual knowledge of God in each idea? I think he has the following in mind. If adequacy is relational as Bennett suggests, it cannot be the case that an idea is adequate in my mind and not adequate in the infinite idea of God, since “when we say that there is in us an adequate and perfect idea, we are saying nothing but that (by p11c) there is an adequate and perfect idea in God insofar as he constitutes the essence of our Mind” (iip34dem., CW 472). Hence I take Spinoza’s reasoning, however dubious, as follows. 32

Spinoza means by this just that whatever unit you take, however you individuate modes of thought, the idea of God is in that individuated mode.

A few further basic concepts

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For an idea to be adequate means it relates to God’s idea and part of its adequacy derives from this relation, there is something of what it means to be God’s idea involved in each adequate idea. This “something” must be known adequately, otherwise we could not have adequate knowledge. To have adequate knowledge is to know the cause. The regress of causes stops at God’s infinite and eternal essence in thought. Consequently, to have an adequate idea is to have knowledge of God’s eternal essence in thought. Spinoza is drawing on the Cartesian account in Meditations III where each of our ideas has some sort of internal sanction of certitude in relation to our minds, ultimately going back to the infinite idea of God placed into each human being. Given that for Spinoza humans are no more or less special than any other part of nature, this must be a feature of each and every idea (iip46). And, since the idea is not placed into us through a special act of creation, but ultimately arises from the fact that we are beings in attributes like all other beings, it must be a very general sort of knowledge that each and every idea could involve, something like truth conditions perhaps. But how can we have access to the infinite at all? Is this a finite model that we have as finite beings of the infinite essence of God? How could something infinite be in every finite bit and not be mutilated and confused, in every idea of a periwinkle or widget? Can you jam something infinite into us?33 When we represent the infinite in terms of big and little, we represent it qua the imagination and any adequate cognition we might have must exclude the imagination. We have a tendency to think of infinity as gigantic, but the infinite is neither big nor small since nothing finite is more or less infinite and the infinite can broach no comparison for a comparison would imply finitude. We are reluctant to say that the infinite and eternal essence could be included in the whole and part of everything, because we imaginatively represent the infinite as the “much bigger than” or even the unlimited. But when we understand that the infinite has nothing to do with big and small, as big and small involve negation and the infinite is fully positive, it makes perfect sense to say that our minds have adequate cognition of the infinite. We get confused when we return to the representations of the imagination. Spinoza is not claiming anything mystical, but rather that the infinite is precisely what we know it to be through careful rational argumentation, and any illicit attempt to represent it destroys its role in the philosophy (as well as the philosophy itself ). We know, via the geometrical presentation 33

Spinoza clearly thinks that the “absolutely infinite” is adequate by definition since he identifies “absolute” with “adequate and perfect” (iip33).

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in the Ethics, that the eternal and infinite essence of God is part of ideas we have. We know that it is indivisible and in the part and whole, that it has little to do with our vision of the infinite bursting out of our little finite beings. So there really is no serious problem with claiming that the infinite is included in all of our ideas, even if we the beings that have them are finite and limited. The best way to intuitively get at what Spinoza is describing is to combine (1), (2), and (3) that the infinite as such, what Spinoza calls the “absolutely infinite,” is that which follows as a consequence of its nature, has no ends, and we cannot imagine. I think he has something in mind like unending causal efficacy or power and conversely unending rational explicability, the sort of thing presented in ip16. That he might have this in mind would explain the importance of the final proposition of Part I, ip36: “Nothing exists, out of the nature of which some effect does not follow.” This is a crucial proposition in the Ethics and I think in some ways the proposition that best represents Spinoza’s world for us, a world of infinite power without end in substances, attributes, and each and every mode. The fact that an effect follows from each and every mode, every mode that arises from us for example, each thought we have and thing we do, is the most tangible way that the infinite is present in the finite, finite modes have unending effects. This begins to get at what Spinoza means by “the infinite power of Nature” in thought,34 “not insofar as it is infinite and perceives the whole of Nature, but insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human Body.” The infinite power of nature is present in all thought and in each thought as the conditions that make them adequate. We feel it when we understand ourselves as arising from an internal cause, God. This includes even a finite worm’s perceptions of its own body. Throughout this discussion I have assumed the idea of God, the idea of the infinite, and Spinoza’s definitions. The question now is how do we get at these ideas? This will be the subject of the next three chapters. 34

In this use of part and whole Spinoza seems only to mean “in all things.”

chapter 3

Emendative therapy and the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione

In the last two chapters I have discussed a number of issues preliminary to considering Spinoza’s method. In chapter 1, I discussed the analogy of the worm in the blood and the problem of how we – natural beings – come to understand nature. In chapter 2, I considered a number of key concepts that all have bearing on the solution that Spinoza proposed to the worm’s problem, specifically on Spinoza’s definition of God. In this chapter and the three that follow it I will present what Spinoza and some philosophers who Spinoza drew on have to say about method. By “method” I understand what the Scholastics called a “via” and Spinoza calls a mos, a way or means to discover those truths “that can lead us, by the hand as it were, to the knowledge of the human Mind and its highest blessedness” (II “Preface”). For Spinoza this via is intertwined with what I call an “emendative therapy.” Why and that they are interconnected is the concern of this chapter. The first two sections concern the idea of “emendation” in Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. In these sections I will try to show that in the TIE Spinoza draws on and alters Francis Bacon’s theory of mental tools, Gersonides’ theory of emendation, and Descartes’ account of innate ideas, and uses them for his own ends. The final section will emphasize that emendation is the crucial first step to understanding Spinoza’s account of definition and the mos geometricus. I will discuss the definition of emendation in greater detail later on, but by emendation I understand the process of ridding oneself of confusions in order to think and act more clearly. m e t h o d i n t h e t r e at i s e o n t h e e m e n d at i o n o f t h e intellect Spinoza’s earliest extant attempt to supply a philosophical method capable of explaining where our definitions come from is in the TIE. The relation between the TIE and the Ethics has always been a matter of some dispute. It is not clear when the TIE was written, if the KV or the TIE was written 73

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first, and whether or not Spinoza had begun his initial drafts of the Ethics when the TIE was written (although it seems likely).1 But two facts are not disputed. First, the TIE was intended as a methodological/logical discussion providing the groundwork for another work called Philosophia.2 Second, and importantly, Spinoza never disassociated himself from the TIE. Even if particular details of the TIE differ from the Ethics including the general emphasis on mind as opposed to mind and body, Spinoza seemed to view the TIE as representing his philosophical views long after.3 And there seems not to be much conflict between the methodology of the Ethics and the methodological considerations in the TIE, despite the fact that there are a number of doctrines in the TIE that seem far less well thought out than those in the Ethics.4 This is fortunate, as the TIE provides Spinoza’s only sustained discussion of philosophical methodology and is the most important key to accessing the methodology of the Ethics. The TIE is also one of Spinoza’s most interesting works. It is sort of Spinoza’s version of Descartes’ Discourse on Method (DM ). Unlike Descartes’ DM , it is not followed by three “Essays” transforming science, but instead dramatically breaks off just as Spinoza is about to provide his method for discovering true definitions! But, like Descartes, Spinoza begins with a stylized autobiography after the manner of the opening section of the DM , and the Cartesian influence is more pronounced than in the Ethics. One of the most intriguing thoughts in the TIE is that philosophical method is a set of intellectual tools or instruments fashioned by the mind to clarify and empower it. This emphasis on mental tools antedates Spinoza, although Spinoza’s take on it is quite original. From the late Middle Ages through the late Renaissance and the early modern period, philosophers disputed whether logic5 was an instrument or a science. The primary 1

2 4

5

Curley gives an excellent summary of the chronology arguments at CW 49–51. The major work on the chronology of KV and the TIE has been done by Filippo Mignini in an important series of articles (see particularly “Per la datazione e l’interpretazione del Tractatus de intellectus emendatione di B. Spinoza,” La Cultura, 17:1–2 (1979), pp. 87–160, and “Un documento trascurato della revisione spinoziana del Breve Trattato,” La Cultura, 18:2–3 (1980), pp. 223–73) as well as a critical edition of the KV . Both works are valuable for understanding the Ethics. 3 See particularly Letters LIX and LX. See TIE §30n and §36n. Herman De Dijn (Spinoza the Way to Wisdom [West Lafayette, IN: Purdue, 1996]) and Bernard Rousset (Spinoza: Trait´e de la R´eforme de L’Entendement [Paris: J. Vrin, 1992]) both make good cases for the TIE as a methodological prelude to Spinoza’s Ethics. As to discrepancies, Curley notes that the “four kinds of knowledge” of the TIE are not as well thought out as the “three kinds of knowledge” of the Ethics. The TIE emphasizes the mind as source of salvation, and body as source of error, to a much higher degree than the Ethics does. Joachim argues that the TIE assumes a Cartesian theory of will, but there seems little evidence for this. These philosophers understood logic very broadly, as everything encompassed in the Organon as well as in the first book of Physics. Thus, as well as being syllogistic, logic included scientific and philosophical methodology.

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exponents of “logic as instrument” were Ockham and the Ockhamists, and those for “logic as science” Scotus and the Scotists. What was at stake in these debates was whether logic and syllogistics were instruments for attaining particular ends in a variety of general and special sciences (knowing something about a biological species, for example), or whether we ought to consider logic and syllogistics to be an object of scientific study. Science here is understood as Aristotelian episteme: certain knowledge of necessary causes. More succinctly: is there a science of logic or is logic a necessary precondition of science but not an object of science in and of itself? This question impacts not only how we understand logic itself but also how we understand the unity, authority, and structure of the sciences more generally. In the late Renaissance, Jacobo Zabarella wrote two influential treatises,6 De Natura Logicae and De Methodis, in which he argued that method was not a science – “firm and certain cognition, simpliciter, of necessary and sempiternal things”7 – but rather a particular sort of instrument, a mental instrument.8 Just as our hands fashion hammers and nails and the like, so our minds fashion tools that help us to better organize and understand the world. Zabarella equated these mental instruments with syllogisms, which he considered to be a tool for acquiring truths and for showing the necessity in demonstration.9 Zabarella’s texts were important, for by arguing that method is a creation of human minds for scientific investigation he removed arguments about method from their theological contexts in the late Middle Ages, i.e. questions about the scientia divina, and argued that method was a set of tools for human scientific investigation (not just demonstration). Consequently, human minds and the procedures created by human minds 6

7 8

9

Jacobo Zabarella was the most influential logician of the late sixteenth century, although his influence extends throughout the seventeenth century. A professor at the University of Padua, his discussions of scientific method have been claimed as an important influence on Galileo (Cf. William A. Wallace, Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992]). Zabarella’s ideas were widely disseminated throughout Italy, Germany, Holland, and Europe more generally both through his own works, which went through many editions, and logic handbooks (notably the handbook of Bartholomeus Kekkermann) that took his discussion of method as authoritative. For a sign of Zabarella’s influence, see Bayle’s article “Zabarella” in the Dictionnaire Philosophique. De Natura Logicae i.2, 3f, in Jacobo Zabarella, Opera Logica. Ibid., i.10, see particularly 21d–e. The theme goes back to the early Renaissance, notably Cusa’s wise spoon carver in De Docta Ignorantia. On Zabarella see William Edwards, “The Logic of Iacopo Zabarella (1533–1589)” (Columbia University Ph.D., 1960), 129. Although it is obvious that a syllogism can provide a necessary demonstration, it is not at all obvious that it is a tool for scientific inquiry. Zabarella thought that in empirical scientific investigations we know a conclusion (the sound of thunder) and from this we seek the middle term or cause (water quenching fire in the clouds). In this way the structure of syllogism points both to scientific demonstration (showing the necessity in a conclusion from the premises) and scientific investigation (given conclusions seeking middle terms or causes). This is, as has been often noted, a major change in thinking about scientific methodology, the use of formal procedures for scientific discovery.

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were, for Zabarella, the proper sources of method (as opposed to the divine order). Zabarella’s ways of presenting method from within the Aristotelian Organon tradition is quite similar in some fundamentals to Francis Bacon’s appropriately named Novum Organum.10 Although Bacon rejected the syllogism, the rejection was very much in line with Zabarella’s centering of method and logic on the human mind, as Bacon wished to replace formal syllogisms (which Zabarella viewed as a versatile mental tool) with the actual structures of human thought. This became a rallying cry in the early modern period, in Descartes’ Regulae, Arnauld and Nicole’s Logique ou L’Art de Penser, and Locke’s Of the Conduct of the Understanding. The second aphorism of the Novum Organum reads: Neither the bare hand nor the unaided intellect has much power; the work is done by tools and assistance, and the intellect needs them as much as the hand. As the hand’s tools either prompt or guide its motions, so the mind’s tools either prompt or warn the intellect.11

If Bacon is a major representative of this theory, and if both Bacon and Spinoza employed the language of mental tools, what did Spinoza think of Bacon? On the one hand, Spinoza’s general way of conceiving philosophy is very different from Bacon’s. Bacon emphasized sensory induction and experimental and natural history as the proper basis for all avenues of inquiry. In his very first extant letter to Henry Oldenburg Spinoza criticized Bacon in tandem with Descartes for having strayed from knowledge of first causes, for not having understood the human mind, and for not having understood true error. This letter includes the first dated reference to Spinoza’s geometrical method (October 1661) and evidence of the earliest propositions of the Ethics.12 Spinoza thought that Bacon’s errors would be 10

11 12

While Bacon is not as commonly read by philosophers and historians of philosophy as he was in the fairly recent past, he was a dominant influence on seventeenth-century philosophy and methodology. Why he is not read in as much earnest as he once was is not entirely clear to me. But nearly every well-known philosopher of the seventeenth century was greatly influenced him. Hobbes was briefly his secretary, Locke’s logic and understanding of method is suffused with Bacon as is Spinoza’s, and the list goes on. For an impressive attempt to reestablish the importance of Bacon, see Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (ed. and trans.), Francis Bacon: The New Organon (Cambridge University Press, 2000), §II, 33. All translations from The New Organon are taken from this volume. These letters are particularly interesting as they give us evidence of Spinoza’s attitude toward axioms as well as one of the only examples of his taking account of criticisms. Oldenburg criticized some of the axioms that Spinoza used in his proof of the one substance doctrine as being insufficiently evident (Letter III). Spinoza defended their truth, but did not try to defend their evidentness (Letter IV). In the 1677 Ethics, the Ethics as we know it, the disputed axioms became ip2 and ip3, and were

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evident to anyone who understood the opening propositions of the Ethics. For Spinoza, these errors resulted in, among other things, an incoherent discussion of the will and intellect. But, given that Descartes and Bacon are discarded in tandem, and given Spinoza’s obvious respect for Descartes, this letter should not weigh against Bacon’s influence on Spinoza. From Spinoza’s quoting of the Novum Organum it is clear that he had read this text seriously (as had most every seventeenth-century philosopher). Bacon’s influence is backed up by an important letter from Spinoza to his friend Bouwmeester. Spinoza had asked Bouwmeester, in a strangely and uncharacteristically beseeching letter (Letter XXVIII),13 if he would be willing to translate the Ethics up to the eightieth proposition of the third book. Bouwmeester’s response is lost, but he clearly had some difficulties with Spinoza’s philosophy, for Spinoza quotes the following question in response to Bouwmeester’s lost letter: Whether there is or can be such a Method that by means of it we can proceed safely and without weariness in the consideration of the most exalted subject? Or whether like our bodies, our minds also are subject to accidents, and our thoughts are governed more by chance than by art? (Letter XXXVII)

Spinoza’s responded by noting that our clear and distinct ideas only arise from other clear and distinct concepts in us, not from causes external to us: From whence it follows that whatever clear and distinct conceptions we form depend only on our nature and its definite and fixed laws, that is, on our absolute power, and not on chance – i.e. causes which, though they also act according to definite and fixed laws, are unknown to us, and are foreign to our nature and power. Therefore it seems clear what the true Method must be, and in what it especially consists, namely, only in the knowledge of the pure understanding, and of its natures and laws. (Letter XXXVII)

In the TIE Spinoza also emphasized that clear and distinct (or adequate) ideas only follow from other like ideas in us. I think this is clearly an

13

derived from somewhat “weaker” axioms, and ones that Spinoza thought apparently more evident. Thus it was important for Spinoza that his axioms be recognized by reasonable people as obviously true or evident. Margaret Gullan-Whur has a somewhat idiosyncratic reading of this letter, but concludes, I think correctly, that Spinoza seemed to have thought that Bouwmeester, who had access to all of Spinoza’s “secret teachings” as part of the Amsterdam circle, was slipping away from him. Gullan-Whur fails to note Spinoza’s comment about Bacon in this letter (but see p. 159), to be discussed below. See Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2000), 157–8. For an excellent discussion of Bouwmeester, doctor, close friend of Lodewijk Meyer, possible translator of Ibn Tufayl, and co-founder of “Nil Volentibus Arduum” with Meyer, see K. O. Meinsma, Spinoza et son cercle. ´ Etude critique historique sur les h´et´erodoxes hollandaise, eds. Henry M´echoulan and Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau, trans. S. Rosenburg, and Jean-Pierre Osier (Paris: Vrin, 1983).

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underlying assumption in the Ethics, but not explicitly stated. First, as Spinoza had by this time (1666) written the major portion of the first three parts of the Ethics, it seems unlikely that he changed his mind on this basic point about the relation between clear and distinct ideas in the process of revision. Second, he never wrote anything to contradict this in the Ethics, and he was always careful to distinguish adequate and inadequate knowledge in II and vp1–20. Third, he never gave any account of how the second kind of knowledge could be said to rise from the first kind of knowledge, and in fact claimed that the third kind of knowledge cannot arise from the first kind of knowledge (vp28). It is possible that he had in mind that the second kind of knowledge arises from the first kind, and the third from the second, but then it would seem that the third kind of knowledge is arising transitively from the first kind of knowledge via the second kind of knowledge. I conclude that on the basis of this evidence it seems far more likely than not that Spinoza held that adequate or clear and distinct ideas only follow from other adequate or clear and distinct ideas. The other interpretation is possible, but, given the chronology of the letter, the TIE, and supporting evidence in the Ethics, the weight of evidence is strongly against it. Accepting this maxim it follows that intrinsically inchoate ideas of the imagination are ruled out as the basis for true knowledge, and method is set out as a means to distinguish between clear and distinct or adequate ideas and confused ideas. In this context Spinoza invokes the difference between part and whole in stating that inadequate or false knowledge is partial, whereas adequate knowledge is whole (TIE 63). By this Spinoza seems to mean that inadequate knowledge is a partial or mutilated perspective on adequate knowledge in the sense I considered in the previous chapter; he does not seem to be evoking a part/whole relation. Returning to Bacon, Spinoza goes on to make the following far more surprising assertion: To understand this at least as far as the Method requires, there is no need to know the nature of the mind through its first cause; it is enough to get together a short account of the mind or of conceptions in the way Verulam [i.e. Bacon] teaches.

Spinoza follows this by remarking that, to do this, one must adopt a definite plan of life and a definite end, and have constant mind and purpose – the council of the first sections of the TIE.14 Given Spinoza’s rendering of 14

See De Dijn, The Way to Wisdom, 39.

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the TIE in a nutshell for Bouwmeester (at a time when the majority of the Ethics had already been written), and the fact that Bouwmeester had access to a major chunk of the Ethics (which Spinoza hoped he would translate), we can rule out this reference to Bacon as being merely placatory. Rather, Spinoza was here claiming that in its broad lines Bacon’s account of the human mind, and method is compatible with his own. Given his earlier rejection of Bacon’s account of the mind this is at first surprising. Likely, though, it shows that Spinoza was not rejecting this or that thing that Bacon said. Instead he was claiming that Bacon had no understanding of the way in which the human mind was related to first principles and thus fell into errors such as arguing for the existence of a faculty of will distinct from intellect.15 This would be very similar to his attitude toward Descartes. A problem for my emphasis on Bacon is posed by those passages in the TIE criticizing “knowledge by random experience” and attacking “the recent philosophers and the Empirics” (TIE, note “i”). These are the philosophers who do not think that philosophy extends beyond the cataloguing and categorization of random experience. The passage seems to refer to Bacon,16 but similar attacks on “empirics” can be found in Bacon, and in fact Spinoza’s attack is much like the Baconian attack on William Gilbert and the “empirical brand of philosophy” in the Novum Organum!17 Even if Spinoza has Bacon in mind, he is not thereby rejecting the Baconian “historiola mentis” or history of the mind;18 Spinoza is rejecting only the metaphysical justifications for Bacon’s philosophy and a number of bad results derived from them (like the confusion of the will and intellect and the excessive emphasis on the imagination, the notion of natural philosophy as starting and ending with experientia vaga). This is again the same sort of attitude Spinoza had toward Descartes. Once we see that Spinoza believes that we can discover some adequate ideas without recourse to metaphysics, we can note affinities between Spinoza’s and Bacon’s conceptions of philosophical method as expressed in the first few aphorisms of the Novum Organum and Spinoza’s conception of philosophical method in the TIE. In the TIE Spinoza claims that a true method is not susceptible to infinite regress for the following reasons: 15

16 17

A similar argument for a possible Baconian influence on Spinoza is made by Allen Gabbey, “Spinoza’s Natural Science and Methodology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 170–2, but Gabbey sees no real Baconian influence beyond natural historical taxonomy. See De Dijn, The Way to Wisdom, 53, and Rousset, Spinoza: Trait´e de la R´eforme de L’Entendement, 202. 18 See De Dijn, The Way to Wisdom, 39. Novum Organum, i.164.

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[j]ust as men, in the beginning, were able to make the easiest things with the tools they were born with (however laboriously and imperfectly), and once these had been made, made other, more difficult things with less labor and more perfectly, and so, proceeding gradually from the simplest works to tools, and from tools to other works and tools, reached the point where they accomplished so many and so difficult things with little labor, in the same ways the intellect, by its inborn power,k makes intellectual tools for itself, by which it acquires other powers for other intellectual works, and from these works still other tools, or the power of searching further, and so proceeds by stages, until it reaches the pinnacle of wisdom. (TIE 31)

Like Bacon, Spinoza argued that method is a mental tool or instrument. In the striking first aphorism of the Novum Organum Bacon famously (or infamously) claimed that: Man is Nature’s agent and interpreter; he does and understands only as much as he has observed of the order of nature in fact or by inference; he does not know and cannot do more.

The third aphorism reads: Human knowledge and human power come to the same thing, because ignorance of cause frustrates effect. For Nature is conquered only by obedience; and that which in thought is a cause, is like a rule in practice.

These two aphorisms together might be taken to present the following sort of theory of knowledge. (1) Humans act from nature and know insofar as they know nature. (2) As humans are natural agents they have mental tools that aid the intellect both in helping it to better understand nature and warning it when it falls into error. (3) This results in power, more particularly causal power, as a consequence of knowing effects through causes and acting through these causes to produce effects. Bacon’s aphorisms have clear affinities with some well-known propositions, axioms, and scholiums of Book I of the Ethics (ip16, ip30s, ip36, ia4). But there is a notable and central difference between Bacon’s aphorisms and the ways in which Spinoza takes them up. For Bacon, the mind must obtain tools in order to make an external nature obedient, and these tools may or may not be external to the mind (insofar as they arise from a process of induction moving from knowledge of sensory particulars to more general axioms).19 For Spinoza, nature manifests itself through, 19

The process of induction for Bacon is very nuanced as has become clear from recent Bacon scholarship. See Michele Malherbe, “Bacon’s Method of Science,” in Makku Peltonen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bacon (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 75–89. See also Antonio P´erez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), iv.17.

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indeed is, our natures and the intellectual tools are features of both nature as such and the nature of our minds. This general idea seems to underlie Spinoza’s claim that the human mind is “the infinite power of Nature in thought . . . not insofar as it is infinite and perceives the whole of Nature, but insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human Body.” For Bacon, man has an imperium within the larger imperium of nature, and consequently he tries to understand and dominate the imperium of nature in order to make his human imperium more powerful.20 For Spinoza, as I have emphasized in the preceding chapters, nature and man form only one imperium and man is made more powerful by understanding this one imperium.21 This does not imply that, for Spinoza, many natural things, like animals and old growth forests, are not to be used for man’s power. They are, Spinoza is quite explicit about this.22 This is also thoroughly Baconian and, in some ways, even more extreme than Bacon (I will return to this in the final two chapters). His disagreement concerns the divide between man and nature. Put in a different way, Bacon stated his credo to a priest worried about metaphysics: “When true Physics is discovered there will be no Metaphysics. Beyond the true physics is divinity only.”23 Man controls Nature through Physics and relates to God, in whose image he is made, through religion. For Spinoza, physics is explicitly grounded in metaphysics qua the attribute of extension and the infinite modes; divinity is in no way “beyond” physics, and metaphysics is the main part of the “true religion.”24 There are many reasons that Bacon and Spinoza might have come to disagree on this point, but a helpful way to look at the disagreement is through one of Spinoza’s most apparently Cartesian doctrines, his account 20 21

Novum Organum ii.1 See Spinoza’s Preface to Ethics III: Most of those who have written about the Affects, and men’s way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of nature, but of things which are outside nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only to be himself. (CW 491)

22

23

24

Whatever is in the nature of things beyond men, there is no demand on us by reason of their usefulness to preserve them. Rather we are taught to conserve and to destroy according to its various uses, or to adapt it to any use whatever. (IV “Appendix” XXVI). Given this, the interpretation of Spinoza as a proto-ecological philosopher is clearly wrong and seems to trade on a misinterpretation of Spinoza’s concept of nature. “Letter to Father Baranzano” (30 June 1622). I owe this to B. W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theological Debates from Locke to Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 83. For an excellent discussion of what underpins this sort of claim see chapter 3. On the “true religion” see TTP XIV.

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of inborn power in the TIE. If our natures are not distinct from nature but rather a part of nature, how do our tools for understanding nature arise from our natures? Where do they come from if we do not acquire them, causally, from the external world? It would seem, then, that they would have to be innate, but in what sense? Is Spinoza suggesting an innatist theory of the sort made famous by Descartes’ “wax argument” in the Second and Fifth Meditations, and claiming like Descartes that many of the ways in which we represent an object of the senses (such as the color of a ball of wax) are primarily derived from our minds and not in the sensible object we experience through our senses? If this is the case, are the essences of things innate in our minds? It seems that if Spinoza is an innatist he cannot, like Descartes, be implying that the mind is strictly independent of the body, i.e. that there can be a mind without a body.25 So what, then, does he mean? Fortunately there is no reason to read “inborn” in the TIE as requiring that the mind is more than causally independent of the body. Spinoza glosses the expression “inborn power” with note “k”: “By inborn power I understand what is not caused in us by external causes. I shall explain this afterward in my Philosophy.” He does not explicitly equate “inborn power” and “internal cause,” but by claiming that the inborn power “is not caused in us by external causes” Spinoza implies the equating of these two concepts by exclusion (as everything has a cause, and a cause of one sort or the other). Thus, what it means to be an inborn power or innate is to arise from internal causes. Unlike Descartes and other innatists (but perhaps like Leibniz) Spinoza does not imply that inborn powers hold only of minds, or that they hold of minds in exclusion of bodies. A mode of the body can just as well be said to have an internal cause as a mode of thought.26 The way in which Spinoza construes innateness also leads to a difference between Spinoza’s use of the tool-making analogy and Bacon’s similar ideas in the Novum Organum. Mental tools arise independent of external causes and all structures or processes external to our thoughts and bodies. It has been argued that Bacon belongs to the maker’s knowledge tradition, that “true knowledge can be had of what is made or can be made” since if we are able to make something we must understand it as we are the cause of 25

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The mind and the body are causally independent, as the two attributes (thought and extension) of which they are modes are causally independent (ivp2). But although they are causally independent it is still a necessary condition for there to be a mind that there be a body, and vice versa. Spinoza develops this last point in Ethics iip7–13. Spinoza wishes to replace the Cartesian inside/outside distinction with a very different account of inside/outside built on Descartes’ internal cause/external cause distinction as opposed to Descartes’ prioritization of the mental.

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its existence and its particular essence.27 Whether or not Bacon actually belongs to such a tradition, clearly we have dominion over nature as a result of our creating artifacts based on the discovery and manipulation of “forms,” the physical constituents of structures found in nature. Spinoza, like Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf, and others, far more clearly subscribes to a sort of “maker’s knowledge” as we ultimately know those things which we have definitions of and from which we are able to infer (concludi) all of the properties of the thing (TIE 96). We know them via a causal definition of a very strong sort that I will discuss in chapter 5 called a “genetic” definition.28 The same considerations that apply to method – that method is some sort of innate capacity for making tools – also apply to Spinoza’s discussion of truth and method, although with a notable difficulty.29 A few paragraphs after the quote I have just discussed, Spinoza makes two further important claims, first: From which it is gathered that Method is nothing but a reflexive cognition, or the idea of an idea; and because we can’t have an idea unless a previous idea has been given, thus we can’t have a Method unless we have a prior idea. From which it follows that Method will be good, which shows in what way the mind is to be directed according to the norm of a given true idea. (TIE 38)30

Two paragraphs later Spinoza states: For as clearly is gathered from what has been said, a true idea must exist in us before all else, as an innate instrument, by which the intellect understands. (TIE 39) 27

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P´erez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition, passim. This is controversial, though, as Bacon does not actually use the expression “maker’s knowledge.” Gaukroger, in particular, has criticized interpreting Bacon’s method as centered on “maker’s knowledge” (Gaukroger, Francis Bacon, 158–9). Although Gaukroger’s case is convincing, it still seems that post-Hobbesians like Spinoza would interpret the method as based in maker’s knowledge (whether this is what Bacon had mind or not). See Paolo Mancosu, Philosophy of Mathematics & Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1996), 98–100. Spinoza derives this theory from Bacon’s one time secretary, Thomas Hobbes. I will be discussing causal definitions at great length in subsequent chapters. Clearly, what Spinoza calls a “true idea” in the TIE includes his definition of an “adequate idea” in the Ethics. Since this is the aspect of true ideas in the Ethics I am interested in, for “true idea” in the TIE read “adequate idea” in the Ethics. When I use “true idea” in this chapter I use it in the broad sense of the TIE, as including adequacy. This is distinguished from the Cartesian theory of truth as elaborated in the Fourth Meditation, which emphasizes truth and falsity as arising from judgments. Spinoza cannot hold such a theory for two reasons. First he denies that the will has the sort of role in his philosophy that it did for Descartes. Second, and more importantly, he denies that there is a distinction ultimately between an intentional mental act and the idea that is the object of that mental act. Thus, for Spinoza, my thought about Sam and my mental act that has an idea of Sam as its object are one and the same. Consequently, there is no place to interpose a will in this scheme. On these issues see iip49.

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These passages contain an obvious sort of problem. On the one hand, Spinoza identifies method with the intellectual tools that we have and make. On the other hand, he identifies method with a reflexive cognition, an idea of an idea, ultimately referring back to an initial true idea, which he also calls an “inborn tool” (TIE 39). This method will show us how to direct our minds toward an initial true idea, the idea of “the most perfect Being” (TIE 38).31 Consequently it appears that, in the first case, our method is the actual intellectual tools that we find – for example our capacity for discerning truth from falsehood as derived from a true idea – in the second, a reflection on these tools. The obvious solution to this apparent confusion is that reflection is the process of drawing out intellectual tools through the use of “ideas of ideas” that clarify the ways in which our thoughts ought relate to and arise from our initial true idea.32 Spinoza discusses ideas of ideas in the Ethics at iip21s and explains ideas of ideas as nothing but “the form of the idea insofar as this is considered as a mode of thinking without relation to its object.” He adds at iip43: “He who has a true idea at the same time knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt the truth of the thing” with reference to iip21s. This parallels the following passage in the TIE: To know that I know, I first must know. From this it is clear that certainty is nothing but the objective essence itself, i.e., the mode by which we are aware of the formal essence is certainty itself . . . [t]he true Method is the way that truth itself, or the objective essences of things, or the ideas (all those things signify the same) should be sought in the proper order. (TIE 35–6)

Thus, in his discussions of method Spinoza consistently emphasizes33 that truth (or adequacy in the terminology of the Ethics) resides in the ideas themselves as opposed to an ancillary reflection or method that validate the ideas and provide truth conditions.34 Whatever truth the reflection on an 31

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Spinoza later will criticize “perfect” as ill suited for the definition of God (see chapter 6). In the “Preface” to Part IV Spinoza attempts to rid the word “perfect” of any teleological significance (ii/205–9) and instead identify it with reality and actuality. Consequently to say that God is “most perfect” need mean nothing more than that God is reality, or whatever expresses essence. That Spinoza is primarily interested in ideas in the TIE does not mean that there will not be some sort of physical analogue of the way in which ideas of ideas aid us. Bennett has a nice discussion of this, which he calls the Monitor of a brain subsystem (A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 355). On the consistency of the treatment of idea of ideas in the TIE and the Ethics see Alexandre Matheron’s important paper, “Ideas of Ideas and Certainty in the Tractatus de Emendatione and in the Ethics,” in Y. Yovel and G. Segal (eds.), Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 83–91. At iip43 Spinoza equates adequate knowledge with knowing a thing truly. So the true knowledge here is derivative of an adequate idea. As previously noted he uses truth in the TIE in much the sense he uses adequacy in the Ethics. And even in the Ethics he seems to use them fairly interchangeably when

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idea has (the objective essence of an idea) is derived from the initial idea (the formal essence) that has been reflected upon.35 The role of method is not to seek causes or warrant, those arise from the initial ideas to which we apply method, but rather to clarify and emend ideas in the proper order. This last point is supported by a further remark of Spinoza’s, that method is not “the reasoning by which we understand first causes or the causes of things”: it is understanding what a true idea is by distinguishing it from the rest of the perceptions; by investigating its nature, so that from that we may come to know our power of understanding and so restrain the mind that it understands, according to that standard, everything that is to be understood; and finally by teaching and constructing certain rules as aids, so that the mind does not weary itself in useless things. (TIE 37)

These “useless things” are unfortunately prevalent, as opposed to the difficult and rare things described in the final proposition of the Ethics vp42. It is difficult to avoid the useless and find the rare, but to find the rare we must consider our inborn power, a true (or adequate) idea, which we have in us independent of all external causes – of all useless things. How do we know we have a true (or adequate) idea? Spinoza claims “truth is its own standard” (iip43s). We always already know the difference between truth and falsity, and insofar as we know the difference between truth and falsity we know that we have a true idea by which to judge falsity (iip42dem).36 Hence we have a true idea from which we derive our capacity to distinguish truth and falsity. The true idea is also the initial mental instrument upon which we then reflect. The truth of this idea functions as a norm allowing us to make judgments distinguishing truth from the falsity. In reflecting on this norm we form an objective essence or reflection that then helps us to separate our

35

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not making a technical distinction. This also holds for the equally important distinction between passions and affects. Spinoza’s use of the Scholastic distinction between formal essences and objective essences parallels Descartes’ distinction between formal and objective reality. Cottingham explains the distinction clearly – “the ‘formal’ reality of anything is its own intrinsic reality, while the ‘objective’ reality of an idea is a function of its representational content” (PWD 28n1). Thus the essence is objective insofar as it has an object which it refers to and represents and from which it derives its representational content. I think that for Spinoza this argument is a variation on Descartes’ contradictory claims that clarity and distinctness is its own standard but also that the knowledge of God is the necessary basis for truly clear and distinct knowledge – the Cartesian circle (see DM IV in particular). In Spinoza’s case we have a sense of what is true and what is false, even though we err on many occasions, but as we begin to understand God better our standard of truth and falsity – the idea of God – becomes more evident and less prone to error.

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intellectual wheat from chaff but always in relation to the initial true idea.37 In Baconian terms (which Spinoza does not use) we will learn to diagnose our idols and “expurgate” our mind. It is crucial though, as I have noted, that method is not the true idea nor reasoning about things as such, but rather a reflection on true ideas and reasoning. Method has as its source the inborn power of a true idea (ultimately the idea of God). Now as for our worm we begin to see the first stage of responding to its conundrum. The worm is attempting to understand what is outside it and what the product of external cause is without first developing a method for distinguishing between true and false ideas. This method can only arise from a reflection on the true idea that arises from internal causes in the worm’s mind. Without first attending to this, the worm will be unable to really understand its own mind or separate its clear and distinct ideas about the parts of nature which it confronts from the many inadequate and confused ideas of the imagination it experiences. This is clearly one of the things that Spinoza was getting at when he described our minds “as the infinite power of nature insofar as we finitely perceive our bodies.” Since we are parts of nature, we somehow have within us a standard or norm that allows us to form true and adequate ideas, finite worms though we are. The problem remains, how do we get at it? In order to get at it, we must “emend” our minds. emending the mind What is the correct English translation of Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione? “Treatise” is an unproblematic translation of “Tractatus.” “Intellect” is the obvious translation of “intellectus.” And the obvious translation of emendatione is “emendation.” But what does emendation mean? It roughly means improving, mending, or correcting. For Spinoza, emendation cannot mean improving or correcting in the sense of adding something to our nature as we would add a new chess move to our arsenal of chess strategies. 37

Bennett has noted that the problem is how to stop the collapse of the idea of an idea, of X into the idea of X, “how can two items be intrinsically exactly alike and yet have different representative features” (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 186)? Bennett sees Spinoza as viewing ideas of ideas as providing a theory of self-knowledge. This is consistent with my more limited emphasis on ideas of ideas as providing a means for explaining method. Bennett also diagnoses a related problem: how to stop an infinite reduplication of ideas of ideas of ideas, etc. It seems that Spinoza’s best response would be that an idea of an idea, insofar as it is a formal essence of a formal essence, is just the initial idea of the idea, i.e. that above one iteration there is just the formal essence of the idea.

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This is because emendation, the process whereby method helps us to sort out our ideas, always returns us to adequate ideas already present in our minds that arise from internal causes. It must rather be closer to purification, not purifying the adequate (or clear and distinct or true) ideas we already have (for adequate or clear and distinct or true ideas are either adequate or not), but rather ridding ourselves of confused notions and ideae vagae that limit our adequate knowledge of those ideas that already make up our minds in order that we may “heal the intellect and purify it” (TIE 16).38 In other words, we emend our minds in order that the true idea or true ideas we already have, and which our minds already are, can be better expressed. Emendatione is therefore a particular procedure for “mending” our minds, mending them according to a proper method in relation to a true idea. And, when we emend our minds we need to mend them in such a way as to draw out what they always already were and are by ridding them of all the additions arising from our individual infirmities; ridding them of general bad propensities such as trusting the imagination, prejudice, bad philosophy, social influence, etc. – categories roughly corresponding to the Baconian idols of the theatre, of the cave, of the marketplace, and of the tribe – from which the mind must purify itself. As a result we will be better able to organize our minds and use our mental tools to be powerful and happy. How I have just described emendation implies that Spinoza’s philosophy has a therapeutic purpose. But what sort of therapy is Spinoza offering? Stuart Hampshire has compared Spinoza’s therapy to Freudian analysis39 and emphasized the generally therapeutic character of the Ethics. On Hampshire’s model, Spinoza’s philosophy offers an account of liberation from egocentricity, and recognition of one’s power through self-knowledge of the destructive character of the passions.40 38

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Tschirnhaus later took over this model in his work Medicina Mentis and Medicina Corporis (1695). Spinoza claims in the “Preface” to V that the perfection of the intellect as well as the health of the body are not the provenance of the Ethics, but rather belong to Logic and Medicine respectively. This might appear to be a difficulty for my claims that Spinoza’s Ethics is a kind of therapy. But the fact that the Ethics is not a logic – it provides no rules for the perfection of the intellect – does not mean that it does not use logic to bring its readers to a better understanding of its central doctrines. This is what Gersonides is suggesting, not a logic but rather how a philosophy can be most effectively communicated and bring about its goals. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza: An Introduction to his Philosophical Thought (New York: Penguin 1987 rev. edn), 110–12. Stuart Hampshire, Two Theories of Morality (Oxford University Press, 1977), 66.

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While admiring Hampshire’s interpretation in general, Jonathan Bennett has criticized Hampshire on a number of particular issues.41 First, Bennett claims that “[N]o philosopher was less inclined to make any theoretical use of the notion of the first person singular.”42 It is surprising that Bennett would write this, given that the TIE opens with a narrative of the conversion of the philosopher from egocentricity to recognition that we, too, are a part of nature. As I have previously noted, Spinoza never repudiated the TIE, quite the opposite. The fact that the Ethics does not use the first-person singular does not mean that the first person is not still something to be liberated from. “I” is often an inadequate idea and the assertion of “I” often involves misrecognition both of my nature (what I am) and my power (what I can do). The TIE discusses the first steps of our recognition of its inadequacy. Bennett’s criticisms of other points are more damning. Independent of his consideration of Hampshire he attacks three basic techniques in Spinoza’s “psychotherapy”: (1) separating and joining ideas, (2) turning passions into actions, and (3) reflecting on determinism. (3) is clearly something Spinoza views as therapeutic, at the very least insofar as it undermines our tendency to view our own wills as free and the origin of all that is interesting and compelling for us. This was operative, for example, in the extract from the letter discussed in chapter 1, where Spinoza considers the part of nature. Bennett’s case against this technique rests on detailed criticisms of the inadequacies of Spinoza’s arguments for iip48, iip49, and vp5, propositions I will discuss later in chapter 7. (2) is relevant to emendation. I will discuss passions in chapter 7 as well, but for the moment what is important is that to turn a passion into an action means for Spinoza to replace an inadequate idea with an adequate idea. Consequently Spinoza is offering a kind of cognitive therapy of the passions. One way we might understand this cognitive therapy (incorrectly, 41

42

Bennett thinks that there is something to Hampshire’s comparison of Spinoza with Freud, albeit not much (see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 352–3. Without belaboring the point, it seems that Freud and Spinoza drastically differ on basic issues of the constitution of the psyche to such a degree that the comparison is a bit pointless. Freud’s theory is built on a notion of conflicting drives. Spinoza’s theory of conatus is built on the idea of a fundamentally unifying conatus that must become adequate and conatus intellegendi (Bennett seems to note this at 352n15). As to the emphasis on medical intervention, Spinoza expressly identifies the medicina mentis with the TIE (cf., V “Preface,” ii/277). Here Hampshire and Bennett are quite correct, the TIE is an important text in a tradition that emphasizes philosophy as medical therapy – particularly via Mandeville and La Mettrie, but also Tschirnhaus, Nietzsche, Vygotsky, and many others. But this is far from a tradition exclusive to Freud and Spinoza, and Vygotsky and Luria make for far more apt comparisons with Spinoza. Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 348.

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I think) is along the following lines. Someone harms us, we suffer, and this has at its root an inadequate understanding of the event that led to our suffering. We eventually learn, through Spinozistic therapy, to form an adequate idea and this dissolves our initial inadequate idea. Bennett claims that a strong reading of (2), along the lines I have described “really . . . is nonsense, for no one could possibly acquire an adequate idea of an event after it has occurred . . . I can no more make I(x) adequate by bringing it about that I(y) was inside my mind than I can become royal by altering who my parents were.”43 On Bennett’s reading, then, Spinoza is claiming that we form an inadequate idea of event X, and later, through becoming clearer about our own minds, we then gain an adequate idea of X. I think Bennett is right, in that were Spinoza advocating the kind of strong picture I described it would be very hard to support. But, Bennett assumes that the event or the temporal sequence of events has some bearing on the adequate content of X. This seems a misreading of Spinoza, as adequate ideas are not about events – that such and such is the case or such and such state holds – since such ideas would require an external mark or object and hence be true (iid4). Although this idea might also be adequate (although I doubt it in these case), whatever reasons one uses to ascribe adequacy to this idea of an event will not include the agreement of the idea with an external event, as the status of the event would derive from the truth but not the adequacy of the idea. Nor do adequate ideas have anything to do with tensed sentences for the obvious reason that Spinoza emphasizes they are sub specie aeternitatis. I think what Spinoza has to say about turning passions into actions makes somewhat more sense if we assume the emendative picture I have pointed toward, that, for Spinoza, we do not gain new adequate ideas. We have greater or lesser capacity to adequately understand, to form the second and third kinds of knowledge, from and in relation to that stock of ideas that we always already have. These adequate ideas, taken together, are our eternal locus in the mind of God, our essence in the attribute of thought.44 If this is the case, then my inadequate idea of a harm someone has done 43 44

Ibid., 336. One problem for my claim that only adequate ideas make up an individual’s essence is iiip3. Spinoza states expressly that inadequate ideas belong to the essence of the mind (iiip3). I distinguish two senses of essence in the case of finite beings. In the first sense (1) we are trying to describe what goes into a finite being insofar as it is finite. This will include negation and inadequacy, since finitude involves negation and is inadequate. Spinoza explicitly notes that beings only are active insofar as they have adequate ideas, and, as I have noted before, I think Spinoza also implies that inadequate ideas only have any positive content via those adequate ideas of which they are adequate perspectives. But (2) finite beings also are bundles of ideas or groups of bodies that arise from the attribute.

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me is really just an inadequate perspective on adequate ideas that make up my own mind, however much it feels a fundamental part of me. More colloquially, when I hate Sam because Sam was mean to me, I cannot form an adequate idea of Sam in order to dispel my corrosive hate (although that would dispel the hatred were it possible). I only have very limited access to adequate ideas of what Sam is, arising from common features of our humanity. Any knowledge I have of Sam derived from my senses is the first kind of knowledge, inadequate and not able to give rise to adequate ideas. What I need to do, rather, is recognize that what bugs me about Sam is mostly the detritus of my own inadequate ways of understanding adequate ideas that make up my mind and that have my body as their objects, plus features common to my body and Sam’s body and, consequently, to my mind and Sam’s mind. But, regardless, this adequate idea will be quite different from what I thought the referent of the inadequate idea was. It will not be about the event, not about Sam. If I imagine the God of Job hurtling misfortunes at me, I might find inadequate ideas I have about these events alleviated by conceiving God properly. But this would not involve having adequate ideas of the events, it would involve having adequate ideas of God and relating various intrinsic ideas of the imagination45 to this adequate idea and separating them (1) from inadequate ideas (vp14). This is a Stoic element of Spinoza’s therapy, and it has often been pointed out that Spinoza has many affinities with Stoicism.46 Clarifying my passions is ultimately clarifying my own mind and separating that which I can use to form adequate ideas from that which I cannot. I will have more to say about how the therapy is non-Stoical in following chapters. We may not like Stoical therapy. We may rightly point out that, for many, such a 45

46

Spinoza claims at vp4 that “there is no affection of the Body of which cannot form some clear and distinct concept.” This would imply that there are no intrinsic ideas of the imagination. As Bennett often points out, sometimes Spinoza moves from saying all men can have “X to all will have X,” i.e. it is a bad inference to move from the fact that “all men eat” to “it is possible for all men to eat well.” But such an argument from possibility does not seem in keeping with Spinoza. It sounds more like a Humean criticism, which is why, despite the affinities between the two thinkers, I tend to doubt that this is what Spinoza means. He is addressing an ideal reader of the Ethics and stating that, in principle, vp4 holds, not that anyone can do this with all affects. That this is the case is evident from vp10–14 where there is no assumption of rationalizing all of our affects, but rather doing it as much as possible through a process of association. But what does this do for images? I think that Spinoza would claim that, although all affects are rationalizable, none of us will rationalize them all due to the variety of our minds and bodies. So instead we need to connect images to adequate ideas. I will return to this in chapter 7. On this theme see particularly Genevieve Lloyd, Spinoza and the Ethics (London: Routledge, 1996), 71–83. I will not really consider Stoicism at length, although it clearly is very important, as it will be treated in depth in a forthcoming book by Professor Lloyd. Furthermore, as is fairly obvious, I am primarily concerned with modern influences.

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therapy will not work. We may think that if Sam tortured me it is a lousy response to say that my hate can be dispelled by trying to understand the adequate idea of which the pain is an inadequate reflection, understanding something about human essences more generally while recognizing my lack of access to Sam’s particular determinate essence. But this sort of therapy has also worked for many in horrible circumstances and I think it is not unreasonable to consider it to be viable. Bennett is correct, though, that there are problems with the doctrine. How do we know when we have formed the adequate idea X which an inadequate idea X was a confused perspective on other than X being dispelled? As an explanation this would seem to be intolerably circular, although it certainly seems to me quite reasonable as therapy! Bennett further points out that there are many times when we know causes and nothing is dispelled (although as noted one can question whether we have adequate knowledge in these cases, whether we know the relevant causes). My interest is less in defending Spinoza than in trying to understand his position. And his position seems to be that inadequacy is what it is, ultimately, insofar as it is confused perspectives on adequate ideas. This assumption is what warrants a theory of emendation. Getting rid of inadequacy is not a replacement by adequacy. It is, rather, grasping whatever positive content there was, not adding anything but getting rid of confusion and clarifying those objective ideas involved in one’s essence (at least those ideas one is capable of clarifying) which always already were the positive content of confused ideas. There are antecedents of this theory of emendation in addition to Stoics and the Baconian account of idols, most notably Descartes’ Discourse on Method and the Meditations. Descartes stresses not only that we must gradually rid ourselves of all our false and misleading ideas in order to renovate ourselves, but also that we must dramatically renovate and reconstruct ourselves via the reconstituted understanding and the properly informed will. Descartes is like Bacon a clear model for emendation. I would like briefly to note another predecessor, Gersonides. When one thinks of Spinoza’s Jewish predecessors, one of course immediately thinks of Maimonides, the greatest of all Jewish medieval philosophers. Spinoza spent far more time criticizing Maimonides than any other Jewish philosopher, and cited him far more than any other philosopher aside from Descartes. Spinoza had far more affinities with Gersonides, though, than he did with Maimonides, as I will make clear in chapter 5. In the “Introductory Remarks” to The Wars of the Lord, Gersonides outlines what is necessary for the reader who is to take up his work. In The Wars of the Lord, he set out to treat a series of difficult questions, all of

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which concern the border between philosophy and theology, ranging from the relation between immortality and perfection of intellect, to whether the universe is eternal or created. Gersonides was interested in pushing the philosophical–theological question opened by Maimonides to even greater extremes: [A]n author realizes that some of his discussions explain things that are strange to the reader because of the opinions with which the latter is familiar and habituated from youth, so that the reader is upset by them even if he finds no logical inconsistencies in them, and hence for this reason would be prevented from obtaining knowledge from the rest of the book then the author should arrange the material in a way that is appropriate to what he wants to convey to his reader . . . This kind of tactic is similar to that employed by physicians of the body and of the soul, and it is necessary to use such a tactic because of the disposition of the patient. Such an ill person must be introduced gradually to the therapy . . . Therefore when an author realizes that the reader has corrupt opinions, whose contraries he is about to establish, he should uproot them step by step . . . Hence the author should try to dissipate that which nourishes those opinions before he actually uproots them.47

This presents Gersonides’ method as a kind of rational therapy that dissipates the false ideas which nourish false opinions, and gradually replaces these false opinions with true opinions. Gersonides emphasizes the imperfect state of his reader to a high degree, and views method as a way to aid readers with less than perfect intellects – although readers who obviously also have the desire to know. The arrangement of a book should take account of this, and operate as a therapy in such a manner as a physician would heal a sick patient. The therapy has as its goal that the author “turns the sustenance for that opinion into sustenance for the view that he wants to establish . . . This is like war where one tries to diminish the allies of his opponent; and if one is able to persuade one of these allies to come to one’s own side, one gains the ascendancy over the opponent.”48 This is a remarkable passage, and again has very interesting parallels with Spinoza. The trick is not merely to extirpate and cauterize bad opinions, it is also to turn the sustenance for inadequate ideas into the sustenance for truth and adequacy. For both Spinoza and Gersonides, to extirpate such opinions is literally “the wars of the lord,” in Spinoza’s case to transform the meaning of God and the metaphysics, physics, and politics that result from a true recognition of God. And the goal is to show 47 48

Gersonides (Levi Ben Gershom), The Wars of the Lord , ed. and trans. Seymour Feldman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984), 102. Ibid., 103.

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how we reexamine ourselves in light of the idea of God’s absolute infinity, the concepts that this insight transforms, and the cognition it engenders. s e pa r at i n g a n d s i f t i n g i d e a s In the TIE Spinoza divided the mending of the intellect into a method with two different parts.49 The first part concerns learning to separate true ideas from false ones and to restrain the mind’s tendency to falsity. Spinoza concludes his discussion of the first part of the method with the following remark: [W]hen we do not distinguish between imagination and intellection, we think that the things we more easily imagine are clearer to us, and think that we understand what we imagine. Hence we should put later what we put first, and so the true order of making progress is overturned, and no conclusion is arrived at legitimately. (TIE 90)

Through the first part of the method of the TIE we discover which classes of our ideas are clear and distinct, and which are not, and we learn to restrain ourselves from making judgment through or about those things that we know only inadequately. This is much like the process of distinguishing between the understanding and the imagination I discussed in relation to the infinite. But this is only a preliminary stage in the mending of our minds. The next stage is to lead back all our ideas to our true idea and to “strive to connect and order them so that our mind, as far as possible, refers back objectively to the formal character of nature, both as to the whole and as to the parts.”50 This passage is reminiscent of a well-known claim from the “Preface” to Part III of the Ethics, the “Preface” in which Spinoza discusses imperia. Spinoza concludes the “Preface” by claiming that in Part III (and IV) he shall “consider human actions, and appetites, as if it were a Question of lines, planes, or of bodies.” Why? Because there is only one imperium, and its laws are always the same, regular, and unchanging. The geometric rendering is accomplished with reference to our true idea, the idea of the 49

50

There is a controversy about how many parts there actually are to the method. Curley argues that there are three, and others, including De Dijn, that there are two. Not a great deal seems to rest on it for my arguments. What is important is that first comes a stage of purification, and this stage is a necessary precondition to our “perceiving things unknown” (TIE 49). Spinoza uses “whole and parts” often in the TIE, but not to claim any large-scale teleological holomerism. Rather, in keeping with his dictum from the KV , he uses it to say something is in both the whole and parts (i.e. common to all) or that one cannot understand the parts without understanding the whole (the more common knowledge is a precondition of the more specific knowledge).

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“most perfect being” (TIE 38), an absolutely infinite God or nature that dictates this objective order.51 The goal of the method is then an exact reversal of Bacon’s taming of nature. Man does not attempt to order nature but rather man gains power by discovering that he is natural. Our laws and acts are understood as manifestation of those infinite modal laws, which are the whole. But, of course, there are problems. First, how can we gain particular knowledge of anything from such an arid plain of abstraction? We may have clear and distinct (or adequate) ideas, but in order to know anything we also need definitions. We might be able to infer general laws of mind and bodies, but these laws will have little purchase on any singular thing. “[F]rom universal axioms alone the intellect cannot descend to singulars” since axioms extend to infinity, and do not determine the intellect to the contemplation of one singular thing rather than another. So “the right way of discovery is to form thoughts from some given definition” (TIE 93). Definitions are what give us the traction necessary to understand our laws through the infinite modes, and to see how we are part of the one imperium. These definitions are also adequate ideas; in fact the definition of God or nature seems the most likely candidate for the ur-adequate idea from which method arises and according to which method organizes itself. It is the most likely candidate not just because it is infinite, eternal, etc. If we each have an adequate idea, and this adequate idea provides a basis for recognizing truth and adequacy, the ultimate set of truth and adequacy conditions is found in the idea of God or nature. This is decisively affirmed52 at Ethics iip32 – “All ideas, insofar as they are referred to God, are true.” By this Spinoza means that if the characteristic feature of a true idea is to agree with its object, since all ideas and objects are included in God (ip15), then all ideas in God have objects and are true. The adequate idea that we seek must be sufficient to act as a standard for truth and adequacy, and the only idea that seems capable of doing this is the idea of God. Now we run into a real problem. The idea of God must have a definition for us to understand it. The Ethics opens with a set of definitions, including the central definition of God, without any additional justification as to why these definitions and not others. How to get at definitions, including the 51

52

Spinoza does not identify God and nature in the TIE to the extent he does in the Ethics. But he does not strongly distinguish them either, and makes comments such as the following: “we cannot understand anything of Nature without at the same time rendering our knowledge of the first cause, or God, more ample” (TIE 92 note f ). I say “decisively affirmed” because this proposition signals the end of a sceptical line of propositions from iip23–31.

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definition of God? We must consider Spinoza’s method generally in order to better understand the definitions that lie at its heart: the mos geometricus. Our first clue as to how Spinoza more generally understands the geometrical method is in the TIE. Spinoza claims of the true idea and its relation to method: When the mind attends to a thought – to wish it, and deduce from it, in good order, the things legitimately to be deduced from it – if it is false the mind will uncover the falsity; but if it is true, the mind will continue successfully, without any interruption, to deduce true things from it. This I say is required for our purpose. For our thoughts cannot be determined by any other foundation. If, therefore, we wish to investigate the first thing of all, there must be some foundation that directs our thoughts to it . . . nothing other than knowledge of what constitutes the form of truth, and knowledge of the intellect. (TIE 104–5)

Spinoza further claims that from this foundation we will be able to seek knowledge of eternal things. But first we must have “the very definition of thought and intellect” (TIE 106). Spinoza does not say that we need the definitions of our thoughts, but that we need the very definitions of thought and intellect. Thought is necessary to define intellect, and we know that already in 1661 (see Letter II, composed when or before the TIE was likely written) Spinoza was thinking of extension as self-contained, insofar as it is conceived through and in itself. Since the same criterion also applies to thought, it seems to me likely he already defined thought in a roughly similar way. So the definitions of thought and intellect that Spinoza is seeking are likely something along the lines of the definitions at the beginnings of Parts I and II of the Ethics. Spinoza does not use the mos geometricus as an example of a well-ordered and legitimate deduction, but it certainly would qualify as one. It seems for Spinoza, in fact, to be the paradigmatic well-ordered deduction. So it seems that, for Spinoza, in a well-ordered method like the mos geometricus the true wins out and the false is uncovered. In this way method functions something like the Sieve of Eratosthenes, the method used in discovering prime numbers by tossing out non-primes until only the set of primes persists.53 We can see this sieve operative in the PP as a means for Spinoza to point out Cartesian failures. In the case of the Sieve, though, we know that it has been completed when we have taken account of all the numbers in a given interval. In the case of the method proposed in the TIE, it can distinguish between true and false ideas, but it is not clear if it is ever really completed. Our self-clarification appears more open-ended than sorting primes. 53

My interpretation of these aspects of Spinoza’s method in the TIE has been deeply influenced by Jean-Marie Beyssade, “The Idea of God and the Proofs of his Existence,” in John Cottingham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 174–99.

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The truth does not just win out insofar as it is distinguished from the false through an effective well-ordered procedure. Spinoza also claims that if a given idea is true “the mind will continue successfully, without any interruption, to deduce true things from it.” This is reminiscent of Descartes’ famous criterion for innateness, that it is clear that the essence of a triangle in me is real since: Various properties can be demonstrated of the triangle, for example that its three angles equal two right angles, that its greatest side subtends its greatest angle, and the like; and since these properties are ones which I now clearly recognize whether I want to or not, even if I never thought of them at all when I previously imagined the triangle, it follows that they cannot have been invented by me. (Fifth Meditation, AT VII 64)

Descartes implies in this passage that we know our idea of the essence of a triangle to be innate because we can deduce a multitude of clear and distinct properties from it, which we then recognize as clear and distinct once they are present to our minds. Now the similarity between this passage and the above passage from the TIE is striking, if unsurprisingly so. Spinoza does not explicitly say that our criterion is that true ideas follow from a given true idea, but it does not seem that what he has in mind as following from a true idea are false ideas. However, there is a subtle difference of emphasis. Descartes is emphasizing the continued criterion of clarity and distinctness as the ongoing basis for the judgment of a given idea as clear and distinct. Spinoza is emphasizing the ongoing continuous deduction that, when the mind has grasped a powerful and true idea, it deduces and deduces without any interruption. The powerful idea manifests what Spinoza describes in the last proposition of Part I of the Ethics, that “nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow” (ip36). Even though this holds of all modes, insofar as they arise from and are in God, when it comes to human minds, some ideas have greater efficacy than others and result specifically in further true ideas. Furthermore Spinoza is interested in those ideas we can access and know are true, via our method, not just any idea. This has been apparent from our discussion of substance and God, and the role of the idea of God in fixing truth. These ideas are the ones we seek as definitions in the heart of our method.

chapter 4

Method: analysis and synthesis

The method of philosophizing of those who simply look for scientific knowledge, without any particular question being proposed, is partly analytic and partly synthetic. Hobbes, De Corpore

In this chapter and the next I will be providing some historical context for understanding Spinoza’s mos geometricus. We can better understand the Ethics by taking account of some of the many intellectual currents feeding it. But it is important that one not view influence as providing a rigid map, as ruling out many interesting things Spinoza could have said. This is a danger in Quentin Skinner’s well-known maxim: “No agent can eventually be said to have meant or done something which he could never be brought to accept as a correct description of what he had meant or done.”1 Skinner is, of course, quite careful in formulating his maxim as “be brought to accept,” but the problem is in defining what this means. If in our case “brought to accept” means to rule out the assumption that Spinoza’s theories should be evaluated as if a seventeenth-century Dutchman grasped quantum physics, this is, of course, reasonable. But, if it means that I should define what Spinoza was capable of saying in terms of what others said around him, this might have the negative consequence of stripping Spinoza of the capacity to say original things. Such an evaluative procedure also assumes that philosophers make complete sense to themselves and always know what they are doing, which is clearly not always the case. Influences are particularly elusive when dealing with early modern philosophers such as Descartes and Spinoza. Many early modern 1

This maxim is quoted by Richard Rorty in “The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres,” in Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 50. Rorty points out one sort of limitation of this approach, that qua philosophers we are interested in drawing out what a philosopher might have said in dialogue with ideas they could not access.

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philosophers took perverse pride in obscuring their sources. In Spinoza’s case there are only a few routes open to us for showing that he was influenced by a particular philosopher: (1) he quoted an author (like Descartes or Maimonides), or referred to them more generally in a way that exhibits familiarity with their work (like his reference to Machiavelli in the TP) or in a letter (like his reference to Athanasius Kircher’s Subterranean World in Letter XXX); (2) a particular work by an author was included in the posthumous inventory of his library (like Hobbes’ De Cive but not the Leviathan); (3) there are strict textual parallels between passages in Spinoza’s writings and passages in a text which Spinoza could have had access to; and (4) a text was written by one of his associates and very likely to have been read by Spinoza (like Adrian Koerbagh’s Een Bloemhof van allerley lieflijkheyd (A Flowergarden of all Lovelinesses)). Even these sorts of evidence are uncertain as early modern philosophers often discussed thinkers whom they knew second or third hand. For example St. Thomas Aquinas, who is mentioned by name in Spinoza’s KV (1/18), was rarely read first hand by early modern philosophers. Even with this caveat, we still have a fairly rigid and stifling vision of what qualifies for influence, and a limited and underdetermined context for understanding a text. Consequently, I will diverge slightly from evaluating Spinoza’s philosophy only via those texts for which we have some warrant in claiming that Spinoza read them. I will normally err on the side of caution for the following reason: I have never seen “Forrest Gump,” “Beaches,” or “Moonstruck,” but lacking further information one might have concluded it very likely that I would have seen at least one of these films. Unfortunately for my interpreter I have seen none of them, and so they would be an inadequate basis for interpreting my cinematic experience. Of course this does not mean that I do not have a vague sense of what took place in the films, nor that I could not refer to them based on this or the testimony of others. Early modern philosophers often operated on this sort of vague knowledge, but I will avoid trying to wrest too much out of specific knowledge of texts that I cannot demonstrate Spinoza read or had access to. Consequently I will discuss mostly works that fit into the first two categories above. But I will extend my analysis to two other important works both of which I have already mentioned: Gersonides’ Milchamot Ha’Shem (or Wars of the Lord) and Hobbes’ De Corpore. It seems clear from the strong parallels in Spinoza’s and Hobbes’ discussions of definition that Spinoza either had access to De Corpore or some fairly accurate presentation of its main ideas. In the case of Gersonides, as with Hobbes, Spinoza refers to

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him and clearly did read at least one of his texts2 but does not explicitly cite the Wars of the Lord . As it was an extremely famous Jewish rationalist work, and as Spinoza knew Gersonides’ other writings, I think it is likely that Spinoza had at least a passing acquaintance with it. In this chapter and the next I will present some early modern sources of Spinoza’s method. In the next chapter I will consider two important medieval Jewish sources, Maimonides and Gersonides. co n t e m p o r a ry d i s c u s s i o n s o f t h e m o s g e o m e t r i c u s It is helpful to make a broad distinction between two different functions of the geometric method. Some interpreters of Spinoza consider the mos geometricus to be primarily a teaching method used to dress up ideas acquired in some way independent of their geometrical presentation. Following Descartes’ distinction – to be discussed at length later in this chapter – between an analytic method (i.e. the actual process of discovery of truths) and a synthetic method (an a-posteriori presentation of the results of the analytic method in an easily digestible fashion), Spinoza’s method is taken to be a synthetic device to convince readers of truths which are first grasped analytically and in another order. To use Wolfson’s marvelous phrase it is an “ethica more Scholastico Rabbinicoque demonstrata” in a purely rhetorical geometrical cloak.3 There are very good reasons to interpret the geometrical method this way. Spinoza wrote the Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy to present Descartes’ works to a student not capable of fully grasping the ideas of the Ethics, a bright, but inconstant and troublesome young student named Caesarius (Letter IX). Hence one of the functions of the Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy is to present previously discovered results (i.e. Descartes’ philosophy) in accessible dress. As this is the function of the mos geometricus in Spinoza’s Principles, it is likely also a function of the method in the Ethics. This interpretation of the method is associated with two great Spinoza scholars, Harold Joachim and Harry Wolfson. Joachim argued that Spinoza took his conception of geometrical deduction directly from the aforementioned Cartesian distinction between synthesis and analysis. Geometrical 2

3

Spinoza refers to him in passing in the notes to the TTP, and rejects his account of a set of dates given in the Old Testament, but he remarks that Gersonides was a “virus eruditissimum.” Compliments by Spinoza are few and far between in the TTP. The importance of Gersonides in understanding Spinoza (as well as Maimonides) has been emphasized by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein. See Idit DobbsWeinstein, “Gersonides’ Radically Modern Understanding of the Agent Intellect,” in Stephen Brown (ed.), Meeting of the Minds (Tournhout: Brepols, 1998). Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), i, 59.

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demonstration is cogent, and has a non-teleological character, but is incapable of discovering first principles or definitions. Consequently the first principles, common notions, or definitions from which a given argument is derived must come from elsewhere. Joachim conjectured (as previously noted) that the TIE was the ultimate source of these first principles rather than the Ethics.4 Joachim therefore conceived Spinoza’s method roughly as follows. (1) The TIE presents an analytic a priori investigation of first principles, moving from individual lived experience, to abstract thought and discussions of definition and method, and finally to an attempt to discover the definitions with which one might begin a synthetic deduction. (2) A synthetic deduction must begin with the highest and best idea, God or nature, and may then follow in a variety of ways, each of which will necessarily and logically follow from the initial definitions posited. (3) The final result of the method will reflect, in some way, the order of the attributes and a part of nature. As a consequence of this interpretation, Joachim – quite reasonably – saw the geometrical method as having two fundamental flaws. First, the geometrical form was ultimately inadequate to the content that Spinoza wished to explicate, since geometric presentation stays at an abstract level and never really attains a concrete form, i.e., it can not really explain any determinate particulars. This criticism was ultimately derived from Hegel. The second, and closely related criticism was that the geometrical form presents itself as a synthetic deduction whereas it includes all sorts of analytic components. These are both serious objections that must be addressed by any account of Spinoza’s method, but unfortunately, while leveling these criticisms, Joachim did not present the Ethics in its best light. Notably, Joachim assumed that Spinoza followed Descartes in his understanding of synthesis, a thesis that will need testing. Also, Joachim seemed to assume that all of Spinoza’s definitions have equal status and weight, yet the definition of God is different from the others for reasons already alluded to. But this is obviously not the only way of interpreting Spinoza’s geometrical method. The method is also commonly viewed as a rigorous (or at least an attempt at a rigorous) deductive system, moving from ground to consequence in a logically necessary manner, and thus the only form for Spinoza’s subject matter – as opposed to an external structure applied to a content independent of said structure as proposed by Joachim. Viewing the mos geometricus as a rigorous deduction is not necessarily at odds with 4

Harold Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), 12.

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the didactic interpretation, one could discover a set of truths and then afterwards impart necessity into them via their arrangement. The problem is that then the truths might cease to be internal since they would be structured according to some external criterion – the issue to which I alluded in chapter 2. Irrespective of the compatibility of this position with the didactic one, there are clearly good grounds on which to argue that something like a rigorous deduction is also at work in the argument. It is in keeping with Spinoza’s determinism; each proposition is determined rigorously by other propositions. In the form which is least compatible with the didactic arrangement, i.e. the claim that there is an internal necessity of some sort arising from the very subject matter of Spinoza’s philosophy, it is clearly consistent with Spinoza’s emphasis on “immanence.” One way to interpret this is to argue that Spinoza’s Ethics is intended to exhibit the structure of nature, it is a rigorous deduction mirroring the immanent necessity of nature. This is an interpretation particularly associated with the great French Spinoza scholar Martial Gueroult. The crucial passage for reading Spinoza’s method in this manner is TIE 99. Spinoza claims: As for order, to unite and order all our perceptions, it is required, and reason demands, that we ask, as soon as possible, whether there is a certain being, and at the same time, what sort of being it is, which is the cause of all things, so that its objective essence may also be the cause of all our ideas, and then our mind will (as we have said) reproduce [my emphasis] Nature as much as possible (quam maxime referet Naturam). For it will have Nature’s essence, order, and unity objectively.5

As the Ethics begins with first principles and moves to the human mind and affects, it “mirrors” and “reproduces” the internal efficient, causal structure of nature, from God to modes. This is not strictly true, of course, as Part V also “returns” or “refers back” to God, and thus it is difficult to construe the work as an efficient causal deductive process mirroring and “reproducing” God’s structure (unless we get rid of Part V!). But, whatever the problems with Part V,6 Gueroult seems to have construed the Ethics 5

6

This is obviously a crucial passage for understanding Spinoza, but translating refero as “reproduce,” as Curley does, seems a bit strong, whereas a simpler translation would be “to refer back” or “to be brought back” (to make a distinction from the more common reduco). Gueroult does discuss Part V at numerous points in his commentary, in particular so as to emphasize that the proof of the immortality of the soul cannot be completed until Part V. He also discusses the relation between the last three parts of the Ethics in the extant “Introduction Generale” to his unfinished commentary on the final three parts of the Ethics (Martial Gueroult, “Le ‘Spinoza’ de Martial Gueroult,” Revue Philosophique 3 [1977], 285–302).

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in this way in keeping with his reading of Descartes’ Meditations, and ultimately his early readings of Fichte.7 Gueroult’s interpretation has been modified and strengthened by a number of commentators, notably Herman De Dijn. I will return to Gueroult’s position at greater length in chapter 6, as it has at its base an interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of definition. Each of these positions has something going for it, but each also leaves a puzzle. Obviously there is something didactic about the mos geometricus. If not, why would Spinoza have bothered to put the Principles in geometrical dress to teach Caesarius? But, if it is purely didactic, then we are left with a series of unfounded intuitions at the base of Spinoza’s philosophy (a common accusation against him). On the other hand, it seems untenable to view the mos geometricus as a thoroughly linear deduction given the structural difficulties I have just alluded to (as well as all of the scholia, alternate proofs, asides, proofs from one axiom (iip7) or even none (!) (iiip4 and iip13l6), etc.). A different way of thinking about how to approach Spinoza’s method has been offered by Vance Maxwell. Maxwell distinguishes between “formalist” interpretations of Spinoza, by which he understand “that generic view holding that Spinoza’s Ethics can be understood in itself and apart from the purification of the mind grounding deductive method.”8 For Maxwell, Joachim is a formalist, as would be Wolfson. Maxwell includes Jonathan Bennett’s claim that the Ethics is a kind of hypothetico-deductive method9 as a form of formalism as well. Although I mostly agree with Maxwell’s criticisms of formalism, I actually think that Bennett is, as is often the case, far closer to the truth than might at first appear to an uncharitable reader. But Maxwell effectively shows the difficulties with formalist interpretations. One crucial passage for understanding why the formal interpretation of the mos geometricus, in Maxwell’s sense, is insufficient is the aforementioned ip7: If men would attend to the true nature of substance, they would have no doubt at all of the truth of p7. Indeed, this proposition would be an axiom for everyone, and would be numbered among common notions. 7

8

9

See Descartes selon l’ordre des Raisons, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968), and his early L’´evolution et la structure de la Doctrine Ficht´eenne de la science (Paris: Les Belles-Lettres, 1930), to see the consistency of his methodological preoccupations. In fact, we might say that, for Gueroult, Fichte combines the best of Descartes and Spinoza in the immanent and rigorous character of his deduction. Vance Maxwell, “The Philosophical Method of Spinoza,” Dialogue 27 (1988), 89n1. I only discovered Maxwell’s excellent article after this book had been accepted for publication. There are many affinities between Maxwell’s interpretation and my own. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 20.

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It clearly reveals a number of important things about how Spinoza conceives of his method. First, the set of axioms that Spinoza has chosen for the Ethics is only one possible set of axioms (as ip7 could have been an axiom). Second, Spinoza does not presume that readers of the Ethics have perfect understandings (which would seem to strengthen the didactic interpretation) and consequently the goal of the Ethics is to teach readers the true nature of substance (and God). Substance and God are not necessarily evident to all readers, for if they were they would not need to have ip7 demonstrated to them. Finally, when readers understand the true nature of substance, and particularly that substance and God are not creatures of the imagination – they will look at some of the propositions of the Ethics quite differently and see them to be as evident as axioms. hobbes on method Hobbes was one of the greatest influences on the way in which Spinoza thought about method. Some of Hobbes’ general attitude toward method could be gleaned from De Cive, the work of Hobbes that we know Spinoza owned and the final volume of the Elements of Philosophy. But Hobbes set out his logic, basic philosophical terms, geometry, and physics, not in De Cive but in De Corpore – the first volume of the Elements.10 In introducing his definition of philosophy in De Corpore, Hobbes noted that the philosophy of his time was much like corn in the time of the ancients, common but uncultivated. Geometry was quite advanced, but the rest of it was full of quarrels, and vague opinions. Hobbes defined philosophy as: cognition acquired through right reasoning of effects or phenomena out of the concepts of their cause or generation, and also of generations which are able to be out of cognition of their effects. (DC i.2)11 10

11

De Cive was published first, but was the third part of the Elements of Philosophy. Hobbes also has a number of other presentations of his geometrical approach to mathematics and the method it entails (which he normally opposes to the work of his arch-enemy the algebraist John Wallis), most importantly in Mathematicae Hodiernae (or in English Contemporary Mathematics). This work also discusses definitions in the context of a criticism of Wallis’ theories. It is a dialogue between two characters, the evocatively named “A” and “B” (a joke about the algebraists love of variables?) discussing and criticizing Wallis’ mathematical arguments. It adds nothing important to the discussion in De Corpore as far as I can see (Thomae Hobbes Opera Philosophica, ed. William Molesworth [London: John Bohn, 1845], iv, 35–39). Gueroult was the first modern Spinoza scholar to point out the importance of Hobbes’ methodology for Spinoza. My translation of Hobbes. Unless otherwise noted I will use Aloysius Martinich’s translation throughout this chapter (Aloysius Martinich, Isabel Hungerland, and George Vick [ed., intro., trans., and comm.] Thomas Hobbes: Part I of De Corpore Computatio sive Logica [New York: Abaris, 1981]). Martinich’s Introduction is very interesting, and he emphasizes connections between Hobbes and Zabarella.

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Hence Hobbes, like other philosophers of the mid-seventeenth century, viewed philosophy (as well as science) as a broad enterprise of reasoning, including mathematical and scientific reasoning. The reasoning that makes up philosophy may arise from experience or sense perception, but is something more than an experience, a memory, or an act of the imagination. For Hobbes it is computation, specifically the addition (either conjoining a single idea to a group, or the composition of numerous single ideas into a group as a universal or a concept) or subtraction (as disjunction or analysis) of ideas.12 Reason derives from empirical, sensible experience, but in this case a particular sort of experience is then used to organize the ideas continually arising from our immediate experience. In De Corpore, Hobbes gives pride of place to a kind of knowledge called ex cognita generatione – to know something by knowing how it is generated. It is the only kind of reasoning, other than simple computational reasoning, treated in Book I of De Corpore. This is because, for Hobbes, it has a special relation to the goal of philosophy: after effects have been discovered by the mind, similar effects might be produced through the application of bodies to bodies by the industry of men, insofar as human power and the matter of things will allow for the use of human life. (DC i.6)

We can move from the discovery of the essence or definition of “circleness” to producing circles, and from understanding nature to artificially generating when needed what nature only provides us with irregularly, for example running water and cultured pearls. This is quite similar to Francis Bacon’s “scientia propter potentiam.” We construct mathematical theorems and speculate in order to solve problems and for the sake of some action or work. Hobbes believed that given this marvelous sort of knowledge we would be able to construct leviathans and avoid civil wars with their attendant “massacres, loneliness, and shortage of all things” (DC i.7) as well as make wondrous machines.13 Hobbes’ emphasis on construction as the goal of philosophy resulted in the restriction of the content of philosophy to those bodies that can be generated once properly analyzed (DC i.7). Consequently, philosophy itself was limited to knowledge ex cognita generatione (DC i.10)14 12 13

14

This may seem, at first glance, to be a “modern,” mechanistic conception of mind, but it is actually fully compatible with, and perhaps taken from, either the Parisian Nominalists, or Ockham himself. This is a common theme in early modern philosophy, often related to Galileo (see Hobbes’ friend Marin Mersenne, “Dans lequel on voit la Preface qui monstre l’utilit´e des Machines,” chapter 1 of Les M´echaniques de Galilee [Mersenne, Questions Inouyes (Paris: Fayard, 1986), 439–41]). Regardless of how similar Hobbes appears to many Scholastics in his ways of treating method, he is radically different from most of them by virtue of this limitation on the proper subject of philosophy. Philosophy and science have no continuity with theology.

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For Hobbes this knowledge ex cognita generatione both derives from and transforms the traditional Aristotelian distinction between tou dioti and tou hoti knowledge.15 We all begin tou hoti – or, as the Latin Scholastics called it, quia – with memory or sense experience. This sort of knowledge is most of what we use to navigate our ordinary life. But, tou hoti does not tell us much about the causes of things we experience via the imagination, much the less how we might produce them. It fails to give us any access to knowledge ex cognita generatione. A proper philosophical method therefore must lead us to tou dioti – or propter quid – knowledge – knowledge of causes. But how to move from quia to propter quid, i.e. to knowledge of causes? Hobbes’ argued in De Corpore that we should analyze the various causes of the particulars we experience and then compose them into wholes so as to provide an adequate causal explanation. In emphasizing the centrality of analysis and synthesis (composition) to method, Hobbes parallels the influential Renaissance logician Jacopo Zabarella16 who argued in De Methodis that all method is either compositive (synthetic) or resolutive (analytic).17 Composition and resolution are to be distinguished from order, which is merely the arrangement of propositions so that we might use them in the most expedient manner. Order is not an instrument of knowing, only method moves us from known sensibles to unknown principles and shows the necessity in the sensibles by making clear how and that they arise from known necessary causes.18 15 16

17 18

Hobbes uses the Greek terminology at dc i.6.1. It is not certain, nor even likely, that Hobbes knew Zabarella’s work. Although Zabarella was the most influential logician of the second half of the sixteenth century in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, he was less well known in England (and France). Given Hobbes’ breadth of knowledge and Continental sojourns, he could have come across Zabarella at some point, but many of the similarities between De Corpore and Zabarella’s arguments could come from a third party (like Galileo). Furthermore, the similarities between the two should not be overemphasized; Hobbes was far more nominalistically inclined than Zabarella. The most one should say is that Hobbes provides a modern fusion of some central aspects of Zabarellan and Ockhamist logic, whatever sources he ultimately derived this fusion from. He uses the Latin terms compositiva or demonstrativa, and resolutiva, as does Galileo. Compositiva and resolutiva directly correspond to the Greek synthesis and analysis. Jacobo Zabarella, Opera Logica, 3d edn (Cologne: Zetzneri, 1597), 224c–e. Zabarella’s Logic is a collection of treatises, which I will cite by their page number in the collection. Not all philosophers thought that method should be identified with analysis and synthesis. There were two other options, proffered by those who followed Galen, a definitive method and a divisional method. Zabarella showed neither was a proper method, but that both were rather parts of, or results from, the other two methods (ibid., 264f–266b). Only the resolutive and compositive viae were method proper, and of the two only the compositive method showed the necessary causes of a thing through a scientific syllogism (see, particularly, 267d–e). Unlike Zabarella, Hobbes emphasized the Ockhamist idea that philosophy “is the briefest investigation of effects through known causes or of causes through known effects.” Hence, reason can provide a number of computative sequences of effects known through causes, but philosophers

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For Zabarella, we are confronted with a sensible “mixta et composita” which we wish to understand.19 By looking at the mixta we know that it exists (quod est) but we only have confused, as opposed to causal, knowledge of it.20 Still, we know the mixta must have a cause, for example, if there are moving and changing things, there must be something like prime matter that underlies the moving and changing. In this case we recognize that prime matter is a cause, but we only know it in a confused way. Although we know it as a constant conjunction, prime matter is present whenever the effect is present, we do not really understand prime matter as cause. We are led to move from knowledge of the confused cause to knowledge of the distinct cause by: comparison of the cause we have discovered with the effect through which it was discovered, not indeed by understanding this to be a cause and that an effect, but this particular thing together with that contributing thing: thus we are led bit by bit to the knowledge of the conditions of this thing, and by one discovered condition we are led to discovering another one, up till the time when at last we know this to be the cause of that effect.21

Thus with regard to prime matter, we look at how it differs from privation, how it receives contraries, how it is the principle of all natural bodies, etc. All of these qualities show something peculiar to matter and its relation to its effects, they are per se predicates. We collect all these together, and we have a variety of propositions about matter that can be collected into a definition of prime matter. From this knowledge of our cause, prime matter, we may then construct a necessary demonstration that shows the necessity holding between cause and effect. This demonstration can, in

19

20

seek the most parsimonious computative sequence. This would seem to imply that what Zabarella distinguishes from method, as merely order or expedient arrangement, was viewed by Hobbes as a part of method. Unlike the Platonists, whom Zabarella was arguing against, Hobbes considered both method and order to be intellectual instruments fashioned by man and not pre-given by the order of nature (which is how the Platonists viewed order). So on this point the difference is not as substantial as it might first seem. In Physics i.1 (Physics 184a21–22), Aristotle called the object of knowledge that our method will analyze into causes, or elements, or principles the sunkexomena (usually translated into English as “composite” and into Latin as “confusa,” sunkexesthai means to add together). Aristotle gives no clue as to how we are to interpret this word, and medieval philosophers interpreted as best suited their respective philosophical systems. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example took confusa to be a confused universal that becomes a proper universal through scientia (“Quod autem universalia sint confusa manifestum est,” St. Thomas Aquinas, In Octo Libros Physicorum Aristotelis Expositio [Turin: Marietti, 1954], i:1.i, 7. They are potentially universals in actu for the intellect). For a detailed discussion of these issues see Johannes Fritsche, Methode und Beweisziel (Frankfurt/am Main: Hain Verlag, 1986). 21 Ibid., 487d. Zabarella, Opera Logica 484e–f.

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turn, be reformed into a causal definition of the effect, insofar as it is a per se accident and effect of the subject, and is caused by it.22 Zabarella equates the first part of this process,23 the move from confused causes to confused effects, and thus to a confused causal relation, with the resolutive (or analytic) method which arises from experience and sensible knowledge.24 This is the logic of discovery by which we discover causes.25 An example of this would be moving from our vague knowledge of how a car moves to discovering the causes of the car’s movement, but only understanding them quite vaguely – knowing that there is an engine for example. The second part, the mental examination of the various predicates, is neither resolutiva nor compositiva but an intermediate moment where we consider the effect and cause and come to a distinct knowledge of why this is the cause of that effect – the combustion of gasoline and oxygen mixture in the pistons communicating power through the drivetrain.26 The third and final part of the process demonstrates the necessity that relates cause to effect, and thus shows how the cause arises from the effect ex cognita 22 23

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Ibid., 573c–e. It is a causal, and not an essential definition, insofar as it is understood through the middle term, or proximate cause, of a scientific demonstration. The whole process can be looked at syllogistically as Zabarella does. The inquirer has the conclusion of a syllogism, for example that there is an eclipse, and knows the subject in which the effect inheres, the moon. The inquirer induces a probable cause of the effect, insertion of the earth (between the sun) and the moon, and resolves the conclusion into principles. Once this is clarified, she or he constructs a demonstration that shows necessity, a compositive and scientific demonstration, via the same syllogism we used to discover the cause. Many have argued, and continue to argue, that Galileo’s method is just a version of this Paduan method, with the addition of the mathematizing of the causes and effects in the middle section of the regressu, as previously noted. There is without a doubt some truth in this, although more in relation to his ways of presenting his experimental procedures, than in anything he has to say about method (see, W. A. Wallace, Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof [Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992], §§5–6). So, it would not be surprising that philosophers who so greatly admired Galileo, such as Hobbes, would take a route in their attempts to describe his methodology similar to that of his teachers, on the basis of Galileo’s own presentations of his philosophy (in particular in Two New Sciences). But note that Descartes, who also admired Galileo, went a very different route, emphasizing the “mathematical” part of the method to a great degree. And this mathematical part is far more than any of his Aristotelian forebears, still viewing the world in a qualitative manner, could imagine (Zabarella explicitly says that mathematical resolution is not the resolutive method, Zabarella, Opera Logica, 267a). Wallace is thus right in emphasizing that Galileo’s Aristotelian paternity does not undercut his revolutionary nature (Wallace, Galileo’s Logic, 299–303). “Resolution precedes demonstration, and is the discovery of principles,” ibid., 619c. What is the status of this intermediate moment, of the mental comparison? If it is not speculation in a high sense (for only demonstration can be considered as true scientific contemplation), then what is it? Unfortunately, Zabarella does not really explain the process of mental clarification of confused causes in any detail. One might be tempted to say that he was struggling for something to be achieved only by Galileo and Descartes, but this would be imparting a somewhat deranged hindsight (pace Hegel) into the history of philosophy. It is reasoning about causes, not causal reasoning, as with the other parts of the regress. It is not empirical inference, nor the strongest kind of scientific demonstration, but reasoning as such, the examination of the things now understood as standing in a relation of cause and effect in order to clarify what makes the cause a cause of this effect.

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generatione. This is the stage of considering the motion of the car insofar as it arises from our clear, causal knowledge of the combustion engine. The final stage is compositive and demonstrative, to “infer (colligere) a conclusion out of its principles, that is by a cause proceeding to the effect, consequently to compose rather than to resolve.”27 Consequently, for both Zabarella and Hobbes the analytic method is primarily used in finding principles. According to Hobbes, our intellects first look at singulars, sensible wholes containing universals that must be unearthed by reason. The parts of these sensible wholes are then analyzed in terms of universals such as figure, quantity, motion, etc. This is the analytic/resolutive portion of philosophical method. Once we discover the universals present in the confused singular, then we look at their causes. Unlike Zabarella or any of his Scholastic predecessors, Hobbes the materialist anchored the causes of all things in motion: “for the variety of all figures arises from the variety of motions by which they are constructed, and motion cannot be understood to have any cause other than another motion” (DC i.62). The motions can vary in kind, but all things can be explained through some sort of motion, and thus through efficient cause. When we arrive at these principles, then, we enter into the “compositive” part of the method. Hobbes’ take on composition is also distinctively modern. First, we examine the simplest motions, then more and more complex motions, and through this we clarify the confused singular that began our investigation, and explain it precisely through clear, as opposed to obscure causes. Thus, we are able to fulfill our initial goal of causal knowledge by constructing and generating a being through its causes in the simplest and briefest way, and thus explain it as fully as possible and show its necessity. So, when we have the sort of knowledge by which we can build a combustion engine, then we know ex cognita generatione. This procedure of Hobbes provides an archetypal example of maker’s knowledge, we know what we can make and we know it insofar as we can make it. How does Hobbes apply this regressus to a concrete example? To know “whether a given action is just or unjust” we must first resolve the sentence into its parts, for example “‘unjust’ into ‘fact’ and against the ‘laws’” and “‘law’ into the mandate of him who has the power to control,” etc. until we arrive at universals that can be analyzed in terms of motion. Then we “can proceed from this point to the determination of the justice or injustice of any proposed action by composition.” This method is “partly analytic, 27

Ibid., 619d.

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partly synthetic . . . it is analytic from the sense-experiences to the discovery of principles and otherwise synthetic” (DC i.66). The reader might ask: if the synthetic or compositive method is to provide an analysis of a given mixta understood either through signs or sense images, followed by a compositive construction of methodological ideal types that are compared to the situation, what sort of causal relations does this imply? Hobbes argues once again that a causal analysis has both a synthetic and an analytic component. We examine various accidents that contribute to the effect for which we are attempting to provide a causal explanation. Once we have the assembled accidents, we draw them together as an aggregate, and examine whether they are the cause of the effect, if when given the effect is given, and if when taken away the cause is taken away. All of which confirms why causal definitions, should be the basis of proof, as opposed to postulates (to be discussed at some length in chapter 6). As, “the goal of proof is the scientific knowledge of causes and the generations of things; and if this scientific knowledge is not in the definitions, it cannot be in the conclusions of the syllogism which is first built up from definitions” (DC i.73). Causal, generative definitions are ideal for proofs, as they maintain causal connections at each stage of the syllogism or proof, and thus are able to show that the conclusion is caused and or generated by the premise. But, it is always important to keep in mind that they are products of a human method, made by art, and applied to nature, not the eternal essences in themselves. Spinoza appears to emphasize a kind of synthesis similar to that discussed by Hobbes and Zabarella. We take a group of definitions of real things, and in tandem with axioms we interrelate them into compositive structures via a method arising from an inborn power in our minds. The interrelation of definitions and axioms provides reasons, and thus exhibits and imparts causal necessity to the effect.28 Such necessity is, for Spinoza (and Zabarella), both internal to the proofs of the proposition, and derivative of the first principles from which they arise. For Hobbes, the necessity of any given proposition is primarily hypothetical, as arising from first principles. All have different theories of cause, but all view causes qua method as reasons of some sort. And, insofar as a deductive method provides necessary causes, it also provides reason. 28

There is no such thing as a pseudo-reason for Spinoza, either it is a reason or it is not. If it is a reason, then it falls into the “second kind of knowledge” or the necessity arising from common features of bodies and their correspondent ideas. Any deduction depends precisely on these common features, a point emphasized by Spinoza in the “Preface” to Part 3 of the Ethics.

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The kind of reasons and the kind of necessity that we find in the geometrical demonstration are primarily what Spinoza calls the second kind of knowledge, or reason. In order to explain the second kind of knowledge, Spinoza draws an analogy with a procedure for discovering the ratios of numbers derived from Euclid that arises from and reflects necessary first principles about ratios and numbers (iip40s2). By virtue of this analogy, Spinoza seems to imply that computation, ordering, and Euclidean deduction are all reason. So, Spinoza’s mos geometricus seems to fit quite well with this Hobbesian picture. If Spinoza’s vision of the rational and necessary character of deduction is of a piece with the more avant-garde theorists of method whose work he had access to, and if in some sense his method can be understood as an extension of this tradition, there is also a more basic difference. As noted, Hobbes’ theory involves analysis of our sensible experience resulting in clarified definitions and universals, which may be used in synthetic deductions. Hobbes’ theory is fundamentally rooted in, derived from, and sometimes reducible to (as with the passions) the interactions of physical bodies, with imagination as the fundamental bridge between bodies external to us that we wish to understand, and our own physical systems. Hobbes’ composition and necessity are ultimate material, physical necessity as organized for the benefit of human bodies and minds. Spinoza’s composition obviously needs some sort of non-empirical basis, independent of the imagination if we accept that the imagination does not give rise to adequate ideas. How do I acquire adequate ideas? In order to think a bit more effectively about this, I will need to take an excursus into Spinoza’s account of individuation, an issue I have already touched on. I might wish to explain it by saying that an extended thing, which was external to my body, entered into a ratio of motion and rest with my body, and the idea of that body “entered” into or became part of my mind, since by Spinoza’s “Definition” of individuals (iip13 “Definition”) a body that enters into a ratio of motion and rest29 with my body becomes my body. The body can only do so if it has features in common with mine; for example 29

By ratios of motion and rest Spinoza understands the ways in which the parts of a body move in relation to each other such that the various speeds of the different parts are preserved. For example, the parts of my heart that pump preserve roughly the same speeds in relation to one another in order that the heart as an individual can pump consistently. As blood goes in and out of the heart, although the actual blood may change, the heart and the circulatory system remain the same (and hence the worms within them have a chance to understand them!). A heart attack is a breakdown in the ratio of motion and rest, either leading to the destruction of the individual qua individual, or to a resumption of the ratio of motion and rest and survival.

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it moves and rests in such a way as to be able to form a ratio (a delicately eaten fig as opposed to spoiled Chinese food). All bodies have some features in common – bullets clearly do as much as figs and bad egg rolls – but only some bodies can successfully enter into this ratio. Every body has a correspondent idea, and the bodies that are capable of entering into a ratio of motion with our own can be said to be part of our body. This does not mean that we have access to every feature of these bodies or our body – Spinoza explicitly claims we do not (iip24–25). That my blood is green or red may have little to do with the ratio of motion and rest into which they enter. But, when a new body does enter into this ratio, it may concur with our bodies in such a way as to result in new ideas that are relevant.30 Bodily ratios are Spinoza’s best way of describing local order in the attribute of extension (as opposed to the global order of the attributes themselves). I think that in some ways this emphasis on ratios, changing bodies entering and leaving the ratio, and minds corresponding in some way to this order, has a contemporary analogue in functionalism in the philosophy of mind.31 Della Rocca has convincingly argued that Spinoza assumes neutral properties that do not violate the causal barrier between attributes and derive from general metaphysical features and properties that hold of all attributes or all modes in attributes.32 For Della Rocca, this implies an identity thesis about mind and body. That there are such general metaphysical properties is clear from the ideas of modes, substance, and attributes themselves – there are modes in both the attributes of thought and extension for example. But there are also a number of more particular neutral properties, perhaps temporal predicates as well as the sort of “order” that goes into complex individuals. As I have noted previously, I take Spinoza to hold that there is a correspondence between causes and reasons. This does not mean that causation is logical entailment, but just that wherever there is a cause there is a 30

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Spinoza does not even hint at how this might work, but I can imagine the following sort of Leibnizian explanation as consistent with Spinoza’s general philosophical picture. Each complex body has a general ratio and is composed of other complex bodies with different subratios. A subratio can only persist if it abides by the general ratio – the dynamic structure of my spleen as opposed to another spleen that I might reject. Many other things can enter into my body though, and they, too, will have subratios. Some of these subratios will alter other existing subratios – ginseng will get my synapses moving. Many will do so in subtle ways we have little access to, but to each of these subratios will correspond structures that have mental analogues. I am not sure whether it makes much sense to move beyond this vague ascription of functionalism to specifying the kind of functionalism. Michael Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind–Body Problem in Spinoza (Oxford University Press, 1996), 133–6.

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reason of some sort, minimally the cause itself understood in the attribute of thought. I also take Spinoza to hold that, although a bodily ratio of motion and rest provides the way to describe the individuation of a complex body, like the human body, it has its “attribute neutral” version in iid7 – “If a number of Individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing.” The two definitions are not isomorphic: iid7 is a principle about acting and iip13 “Definition” describes the internal constituents of an individual. But they clearly pick out the same entities, and something like iid7 is implied as a consequence of iip13 “Definition.”33 Both principles describe complex individuals, but iid7 holds of minds and bodies, and the ratio of motion and rest just of bodies. Whither the functionalism? I take iid7 to be a principle saying that an individual is a function of how it acts and what it does. This is a very general characterization, a reason for acting, which has its physical analogue in the “bodily ratio of motion and rest.” But the way that Spinoza understands the bodily ratio implies a distinction between the actual matter that makes up the body – delicious figs, bad egg rolls, my pacemaker – and the function (iip13l4). This picture seems to me have the following consequence. If my identity is dictated by this functional principle of individuation, then, although bodies enter into my bodily ratio and become part of my complex bodily identity, this does not necessarily imply that I acquire ideas when I consider them just in terms of the mental. As stressed in chapter 3, I think Spinoza is a rather strong innatist, albeit of a unique sort emphasizing the distinction between external and internal causes. Consequently, if I have an adequate or true idea it is one of the adequate or true ideas that make up my mind. It does not make much sense to talk about acquiring it physically or temporally, first, because we are dealing with the attribute of extension and, second, because reason is sub specie aeternitatis and tenseless (iip44c2). I could talk about it in terms of inside and outside, for example an idea that was external to me now has an internal cause, but it did not really move from the outside in. Of course, I talk about getting adequate ideas from books or other people, but it seems that this is metaphorical. Rather my mind is having different 33

“The human Body can move and dispose external bodies in a great many ways” (iip13Post.6). I think Spinoza cannot give a general internal principle of individuation, like the bodily ratio of motion and rest, because attribute neutral properties, at least those we have access to, are not rich enough to do so. I think he will give a sort of mental individuation principle as I will argue in the last chapter of this book. A sign that Spinoza does not have the means, or the desire, to give internal principles of individuals insofar as they are defined in multiple attributes is the teleological character of his definition of the human essence at iiip9s: i.e. in terms of desires which are acts.

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ideas, and I am conceiving or expressing them more or less adequately. These ideas are some of the ideas that make up the eternal essence of my mind, and, insofar as this essence is eternal, they do not come and go temporally, rather I conceive them more or less adequately. On these issues I think Spinoza’s intuitions are much like Leibniz’s without the strong teleology, and by this I mean Leibniz’s claim that monads are windowless and arise from internal principles.34 None of these means, though, that when I consider myself as a finite being interrelating with other finite beings I do not represent myself as having gotten an idea. This is the normal way to view it. Accordingly, any lack of adequacy and truth should be understood as due to my partial and confused conception of an idea that is adequate or true insofar as it is related to God (iip32). Thus, idea X is adequate and true in God, but, since I have access only to common features shared by my essence and the essence of that idea, and since the idea has adequate features that are not part of my essence, I only glimpse it inadequately and confusedly. I may also conflate the idea with other ideas, for example images that only are related to the idea X by contingencies or association and the like – but these are not X.35 I still only understand what I understand of X in a mutilated36 manner via those common features which I have access to.37 The problem, then, is not with “acquiring” ideas but rather in explaining in what sense those ideas belong to my essence insofar as it is eternal (in that in this case the ideas do not “come” and “go”). This would depend on what sort of theory of essence was attributed to Spinoza. One way of thinking about how an essence works, or what it does, would be in parallel with the mediate infinite mode in the attribute of extension, i.e. as being that underlying unity which structures, connects, and gives unity to a variety of changing and apparently ephemeral phenomena. It would be those structural, causal features without which X is not X, which structure all predicates but which do not change in and of themselves. In the attribute 34 35 36

37

Monadology §7,11 in Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (eds.), G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 213–14. This is a crucial therapeutic process for Spinoza described in vp11–19. But Spinoza emphasizes that even when the images are organized around the idea of God they still remain images. Bennett objects to Spinoza’s term “mutilated” (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 178–9). It is not original to Spinoza, and is a variant on the common term manca (used by Zabarella, for example). Spinoza seems to want to use mutilatio as a synonym of inadequatio for a good reason. It makes us realize that whatever positive content it has derives from the adequate idea on which it is a confused perspective. It also emphasizes that the inadequate idea is not capable in and of itself of restoring the adequate perspective. A good example of this is Spinoza’s claim at iip28 that confused ideas are like conclusions without premises. I take this to mean a sort of knowledge where the causes cannot be inferred. See Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind–Body Problem in Spinoza, 112–15.

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of extension this essence would be expressed via the ratio of motion and rest of my body. In the attribute of thought it would be that true and adequate idea in my mind from which and through which all the others arise.38 Those ideas acquired by X, of which X is the adequate cause are comprehended as effect by cause, and as such are “part of the essence,” all that they are is fully comprehended by the essence. This picture is backed by another feature of essences built on the “functional” account of individuation at iid7. Iid7 ascribes identity to a group of singular things when they are all the causes of an effect: “If a number of Individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing.” If there are causes then there are also reasons (although we might not want to say they are reasons for acting given how teleological that sounds39 ), finite reasons backed by infinite laws that explain the causal structure of a given being such that it produces effects. So I know how a gun fires, the dynamical physical processes that are essential for it to fire a bullet as well as the finite reasons that results in firing and the effect of a rapidly moving bullet. All of these reasons, causes, and effects are what they are through the IMMs in the attribute of extension. Put simply, they are finite mental and physical descriptions of finite sections of the infinite causal chains that make up the IMMS. Some of these descriptions are products of the imagination 38

39

The theory of the ratio of motion and rest as a plausible metaphysical account of individuation is argued for in Don Garrett, “Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation,” in Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge J. E. Gracia (eds.), Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 73–101. Garrett does not explain in this essay what the difference is between a theory of metaphysical individuation and a theory of essence. It would seem that the difference lies in that a theory of individuation is primarily concerned with how an individual exists over time and is distinct from other individuals, whereas a theory of essence concerns what it is for X to be X as such. It seems plausible, though, to view a theory of metaphysical individuation as part of an account of essence, insofar as it is expressed in the attribute of extension. Garrett points out the parallels between iiip4–6 and Spinoza’s theory of individuation. This is underlined by the obvious intentional similarity between iiip4 and iip13l6. It is clearly an intentional parallel being drawn by Spinoza as they are the only two propositions (or lemmas) which do not depend on any other propositions (a point to be returned to in chapter 5). Don Garrett has argued that there is more teleology in Spinoza than some, particularly Bennett, have allowed. Although Spinoza uses many sorts of teleological explanation throughout the Ethics, he only uses teleology when describing finite things. Given that there is no hint at all that teleology holds of the infinite realm, it seems to me that, although teleological explanation seems interconnected with finite beings, it is ultimately part of the essence of a thing. I tend to see him as having a similar position to Locke, in that, although teleological descriptions are essential to the ways in which beings negotiate a finite world, they are not essential predicates. Teleology may be the only way we have to pick out a given finite entity, and hence our language may be extremely teleological, but this does not mean there is ultimately any teleology in the being so picked out. This is again a normal position of functionalism, but see Don Garrett, “Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism,” in Rocco Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (eds.), New Essays on the Rationalists (Oxford University Press, 1999), 310–35.

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(“this gun will bring truth and justice to the world”), some have a true content which reflects said IMMs.40 These seem to me the likeliest candidate for what belongs to the essence of a given entity, the reasons or causes that give rise to effects insofar as these reasons and causes are specific to the individual and consequently satisfy iid2. To return to the method then, we do not need to consider adequate ideas as derived from the imagination – Hobbes’ position – to construe method as a mental tool arising from and related to a true idea. In a famous passage Spinoza calls demonstrations “eyes of the mind” and characterizes the mind as feeling and experiencing through these “eyes” as much as through the senses (vp23s). This feeling cannot be derived from the imagination, since Spinoza has characterized demonstration and deduction as providing a means for distinguishing between true and false; and knowledge of the first kind is incapable of making this distinction (iip42). Thus, those ideas that begin a deduction would have to arise in us independent of the imagination, in order to have the sort of compositive causal necessity that Hobbes, Zabarella, and seemingly Spinoza might wish it to have. There is one further intriguing aspect of both Hobbes’ and Zabarella’s treatment of method, besides the emphasis on compositive necessity. An apparently compositive and synthetic structure, like a syllogism, can also be analytic, and the same method can be both analytic and synthetic. For both Hobbes and Zabarella, formal structures like syllogisms are analytic or synthetic depending on how they are employed as mental instruments. This is an issue I will return to in chapter 6, but now let us consider Spinoza’s greatest influence. d e s c a rt e s a n d s p i n o z a’s “p re fac e” to t h e p p The Cartesian method is one of the most discussed topics in the history of philosophy. I will limit myself to Spinoza’s and his friend Lodewijk Meyer’s (I emphasize Spinoza and Meyer as it is generally thought that Meyer not Spinoza wrote the “Preface” to the PP) presentations of Descartes’ method and what I think Spinoza saw as its flaws.41 Spinoza, of course, was enormously influenced by Cartesianism. Spinoza must have felt elated 40

41

There is some question as to whether there is an IMM in the attribute of thought, given that Spinoza never provides an example of one. I take the IMM in the attribute of thought to be the unchanging totality of adequate ideas corresponding to the totality of bodies in the attribute of extension. In “Science and Certainty in Descartes” (in Michael Hooker [ed.], Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978], 114–51) Daniel Garber convincingly argues that there are serious consistency problems in Descartes’ method in Principles III, particularly in reconciling his hypothetical presentation of cosmology with a certain deduction from first

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when he read the opening lines of section 5 of the Discourse on Method , where Descartes tantalizingly describes the many truths he was capable of rigorously deducing with his method. Consequently the rigorous deduction, what Descartes called the “chain of ideas,” is one of the cardinal influences on Spinoza’s way of thinking about method. But there were important differences in their particular ways of thinking about just what a deduction was. Consequently Spinoza’s exposition of Descartes’ philosophy, Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae, was the only work published under his own name during his lifetime. It is not, however, the only work of the time that attempted to present Descartes’ philosophy in a more accessible form. Clauberg wrote a Paraphrasis42 of the Meditations as well as a lengthy Defensio Cartesiana owned by Spinoza.43 Although Spinoza disagreed with Descartes on many occasions in letters,44 and in the Ethics itself, there is little question of his intellectual debt to Descartes. The “Preface” to the PP is not signed by Spinoza, and was likely written by Lodewijk Meyer. Although not written by Spinoza himself, it is an excellent imitation of his prose and was certainly overseen by him. We have no reason to think that Spinoza strongly disagreed with its content.45 Furthermore, clearly there are signs of Spinoza’s own thoughts in the emphasis on the discrepancies between Spinoza’s own philosophical position and

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principles. Garber also shows fundamental differences between Descartes’ earlier work and the principles on the issue of method. Spinoza likely noticed similar problems in Principles III, although he was far more hopeful about providing a cosmology deriving from first principles (see Letter XXVI). It included a reprint of the Meditations and an extensive commentary intended for teaching students Descartes’ “esoteric” doctrine. It first appeared in 1658. See Theo Verbeek, Johannes Clauberg (1622– 1665): and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 191. This was Clauberg’s first published work, appearing in 1652. It is a very important work for those interested in the exoteric/esoteric distinction in Spinoza, as Clauberg distinguishes between an exoteric (the Discourses) and esoteric (the Meditations and the Principles) doctrine in Descartes’ philosophy. See Verbeek, Johannes Clauberg, 188. Of these, the most interesting for us is his criticism that Descartes did not follow his own method when he ignored the moons around Saturn (Letter XXVI [g iv/159]). But the criticisms are numerous, ranging from Descartes’ conception of the free will (Letter LVIII [g iv/265]), to his account of extension (Letter LXXXI [g iv/332]), to his proof of God (Letter xl/196–8), to his theory of the pineal gland (Ethics V “Preface”). Curley adduces some interesting evidence to counter this standard assumption. First, although it is fairly clear that Spinoza thinks that the axioms of Book I are evident, the axioms in the succeeding books are not so obviously common or evident (Edwin Curley, “Spinoza’s Geometric Method,” Studia Spinoziana 2 [1986], 152–8). Curley is certainly correct, but I imagine Spinoza believed that they would become evident to the reader as they worked through the Ethics. They are not evident to all, but they are evident to the reader who has thought a bit. This rests on Meyer’s key limitation, that the axioms would be evident and assented to if one “rightly understood the terms themselves.” The axioms in latter books often draw on terms made evident in the previous chapters. There is a kind of bootstrapping going on throughout the Ethics. I will discuss this, and Curley’s criticisms of Meyer’s discussion of definitions, in the next chapter.

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Descartes’.46 Hence I will refer to the author of the “Preface” as Meyer/ Spinoza. In the “Preface” Meyer/Spinoza celebrates Descartes for bringing mathematics out of the dark ages and providing firm foundations for philosophy upon which many truths could be built with mathematical order and certainty. But Meyer/Spinoza notes that, although Descartes’ works contain a mathematical rationale (rationem) and order, they are not set out in a Euclidean style, with definitions, postulates, and axioms, but rather they are presented in what Descartes called the analytic order. And, as Descartes wrote in the Reply to the Second Objections (which Meyer/Spinoza quotes), the analytic order shows “the true way by which things are discovered methodically, and a priori”(PP i/129). Analysis, as a logic of discovery, has certain similarities to the Zabarellan and Hobbesian discussions of resolutiva or analysis. For Hobbes and Zabarella, though, resolutiva begins in sense impressions, or imagination, whereas the entire Cartesian process of analysis is radically distinct from sense. Where Hobbes’ resolution derives from empirical considerations, Descartes’ interest in resolution was more mathematical47 and speculative. The Cartesian resolution is a meditative thought experiment, removed from the empirical world, through which all the fictions and untruths of the world are rejected, not as misunderstandings, but to their very root, and replaced by the firm foundations of the new method. Hence it rejects a priori all which is present but epistemically posterior and replaces it with what is absolutely, epistemically prior. The Hobbesian and Zabarellan resolutiva gives scientific emphasis to the compositiva, as it is in composition that causal necessity is imparted to the subject matter: springs and gears when put together become a watch. Descartes, on the other hand, claims that any necessity in a synthetic presentation is weak and a posteriori compared to analytic necessity, or, more correctly, the necessity that the analytic method uncovers. The model Descartes has in mind instead is the discovery of real, analytically describable classes of 46

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A weakness of Curley’s interpretation is that it assumes that Spinoza would be polite to Meyer and thus allow him to write the “Preface” while substantively disagreeing. Spinoza, though, did not shrink from criticizing Meyer; the TTP is an implicit and very strong criticism of Meyer’s Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres. The locus classicus of the analysis/synthesis distinction is Pappus. Pappus’ Problem, presented in his commentary on Apollonius’ Conics, was famously solved by Descartes in the opening sections of the Geometry. On the importance of Pappus for the development of analysis see Jaako Hintikka and Unto Remes, The Method of Analysis (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974). Hintikka and Remes’ discussion also provides an extremely convincing interpretation of Greek analysis and important cautions against treating Greek and early modern method as identical. On Pappus and Descartes see Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 124–6, 210–12.

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curves that underlie ordinary mathematical practice and become powerful tools for solving mathematical problems. Cartesian analysis depends on a prior distinction between order and method. Order, for Descartes, consists in the fact that, when one is presented with a chain of reasons, what comes first in the chain must be known entirely without the aid of what comes afterwards. It is a rule of logical priority. Order is opposed to method, which is divided into analysis and synthesis. The method of analysis shows the true way that things are discovered a priori, and is, in fact, the very act of the discovery of necessary truths. This act demands the attention of the investigator, and the reader, because there is no external necessity in the method to compel a thoughtless reader – only the internal necessity of the ideas as they arise in relation to the will. Furthermore, the objects of attention, primary notions, are difficult for many to understand (although clear and distinct and fully intelligible in themselves). But, if the reader follows through the analytic chain of discovery, by exertion of her will, she will be able to raze the poor foundations of her understanding, and replace the poor foundations with secure reasons. Synthesis, the geometrical method of Euclid, is a posteriori, its premises are epistemically posterior, and it demonstrates epistemically prior conclusions in such a fashion that exertion of the will is unnecessary, and even the most stubborn reader will have to assent. Thus, the sort of necessity that a synthetic method applies is compositive, it composes ideas together into propositions. The purely illative necessity that it presents is external to and different from the epistemic necessity of the individual clear and distinct ideas that it arranges (and which, in turn, have their own analytic order and necessity of discovery). Synthesis, thus, can only impart a secondary sort of necessity, which is useful only to convince the stubborn, stupid, and lazy, by prodding their wills along, whereas analysis imparts both true necessity (the necessity of ideas arising in their true order of priority in the investigating intellect), and the transformation of mind which comes with it. For Descartes, thus, synthesis is totally derivative of analysis. As derivative, it is dangerous, for one must never think that one can replace an a priori analytic investigation with an a posteriori synthetic proof, such a proof is merely an aid.48 48

This discussion is in AT vii:155–60. Descartes argues, somewhat humorously, that the ancient geometers knew of the analytic method, but kept it hidden from the masses as a sacred mystery (ibid., 156). Descartes thus makes over all ancient wisdom on the model of Cartesian investigation. Descartes’ conflict with the ancients is discussed, in earnest, in Jean-Luc Marion, Sur L’ontologie grise de Descartes (Paris: J. Vrin, 1981). Descartes himself uses a more traditional distinction between resolution and composition in Rule XII, but this was unavailable to Spinoza.

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Spinoza did not present the Meditations in the mos geometricus (this was already partially done by Descartes in the Second Replies to Objections and had also been explicated with commentary by Clauberg), but instead the Principles of Philosophy. The Principles is a far longer and more comprehensive work than the Meditations, in particular it includes Descartes’ physics. Descartes wrote it in such a way that it could take the place of the Scholastic textbooks of the Dutch universities, which would allow for the wide dissemination of his philosophy and the reformation of the Schools.49 The Principles is not in an analytic order, but instead a synthetic, although not Euclidean, order.50 Since it is clearly not analytic and, furthermore, since Meyer/Spinoza discusses the distinction at some length in the “Preface,” Spinoza must have assumed that the order of presentation was a Cartesian synthetic order, since this was the only other option that Descartes had proffered for proper presentation, but not a rigorously Euclidean one like the Second Objections and Replies. The first group of propositions in the Principles provides a capsule account of Cartesian doubt and Descartes’ discovery of the cogito. Spinoza, in his geometric presentation, does not place these passages into a Euclidean synthetic order. This shows at least one way in which Spinoza’s own philosophical position did not jibe with the philosophy he was presenting: he did not think for whatever reason that doubt was amenable to geometrical presentation. But his relation to the content he presented is somewhat more complicated. We know that the purpose of the PP was to teach a bright, but inconstant and troublesome, young student named Caesarius (Letter IX). To this end Meyer/Spinoza insisted in the “Preface” that, since Spinoza “had promised to teach his disciple the Cartesian philosophy,” he adhered religiously to the Cartesian doctrine, never contradicting it and presenting it as adequately as possible. At the same time, he (Spinoza) “judged some doctrines true, but many are rejected as false” (PP i/131). Meyer/Spinoza identified the central falsehood as Descartes’ belief that the will is free and distinct from the intellect. It is false because the fact that there is a thinking substance does not imply that the human mind is that thinking substance, but only thought determined in a certain way that begins to exist when the body begins to exist. It is easy to show from 49

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Like Burgersdijk, Heerebord, Kekkermann, and others. Descartes spent an enormous amount of time in controversies with Dutch Scholastics, first with Voetius, the rector of the University of Utrecht, and then with his once enthusiastic supporter Regius, who turned against Descartes (and wrote the Broadsheet responded to in Descartes, Comments on a Certain Broadsheet, AT viiia, 41–69). “In p r i n c i p i i s autem illud præmisit, quia alia est via et ordo inveniendi, alia docendi, in p r i n c i p i i s autem docet et synthetice agit,” Conversations with Burman (AT v:153). Clauberg transcribed the text, and hence knew this passage. Thanks to Roger Ariew for the citation.

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this that the will is not distinct from the intellect, and that “the faculty of affirming and negating is but a fiction” (PP i/132). If we apply this criticism to Spinoza’s rendering of the Cartesian doubt, which directly follows it, we see that the problem for Spinoza is not just doubt but also that which results from the fixing of the Archimedean point. Spinoza presented the laying aside of prejudices, the doubt of all things, and even the cogito in such a way that these three are not dependent on the separation of the will and the intellect. The problem is then to “know what we are” in order not to confuse our essence with those of others. To solve this problem Meyer/Spinoza suggests that we reject all the confused ideas that appear to us. Then, we affirm those ideas that are undoubtable, famously the cogito. Spinoza furthermore views the structure “I doubt I think therefore I am” and the fact that we cannot doubt ourselves, as the main step to maintaining “whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly is true” (PP i/144). This last for Meyer/Spinoza was the “firm foundation” as manifest “as Noon light” (PP i/128) and the “foundation of all science” (PP i/144). The problem, though, is that we are not willing to let it rest at that, nor can we, given the foundational role of the cogito in Descartes’ philosophy. When we attempt to infer facts about the human essence from the cogito, we run the risk of understanding ourselves only as affirming beings who think, and then ascribing qualities which are not clear and distinct to that which we are affirming and thinking. This is related to the point I made in chapter 3, that it is crucial for Spinoza to show how certain false ideas do not result in legitimate inferences. Spinoza remarks that the reader should particularly note that: (1) These modes of thinking are understood clearly and distinctly without the rest, of which there is doubt. (2) That the clear and distinct concept which we have of them will be made obscure and confused, if we wish to ascribe to them those things which we have doubt. (PP i/145, 19–23)

Thus we can make such claims about clear and distinct concepts, but to infer anything more than “we affirm a single concept” (for example that we have a faculty of the will), runs the risk of conflating a doubtful idea (the existence of a universal faculty) with a true idea (we affirm “X”). A similar problem to the one Spinoza points out concerning the cogito and what results from it holds for analysis and synthesis. Although the logic of discovery can come up with a series of clear and distinct ideas, some of them true, for Spinoza it will have a problem in generalizing from them and building upon them, because it has failed to fix the more general theses.

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Hence the logic of discovery will be forced to abstract from the existence of a clear and distinct idea, to a universal, or to a faculty, without being able to examine claims concerning universals or faculties. It will move directly from epistemology to ontology, grounding the ontology in the epistemology, without seeing how the more general ontological categories arise from the epistemology. Hence it will be a philosophical egomania, a conflation of my own affirmation, with the universal affirmation of a faculty or an ontological category, and consequently a dangerous sort of imperia. Furthermore, as opposed to the Hobbesian/Zabarellan theory of synthesis, rooted in the Ockhamist and Averroist traditions, there is no really clear notion of inference in the Cartesian analysis, just the clarity and distinctness found in successive discoveries (and hence the Cartesian formulation of innateness discussed in the conclusion of the previous chapter). The problem is still where does the necessity, however limited, found in a synthetic deduction come from? I can certainly affirm my ego, but to understand what this means, I will need to view it in terms of a general theory of affirmation through which my individual ego expresses itself (i.e. an account of the conatus). The synthetic method, although it may fail to provide the logic of discovery, is sufficiently pedantic and plodding and demands explicit connections at each stage such that it will not fall into error due to its need to abstract its contents, and thus remain clear and distinct. There is a further reason why Descartes’ distinction between analysis and synthesis, emphasizing the independence of analysis from synthesis as well as its priority to synthesis, is insupportable for Spinoza. The Cartesian priority of analysis depends on the will, insofar as the sceptical argument that generates and allows for Cartesian analysis assumes that the reader has the capacity to neither assent or dissent to the ideas we experience (PP i/146), a capacity Descartes identifies with the indifference of the will (AT vii, 58). This is the feature of the will that Spinoza expends great effort attacking in the Ethics (iip49s) and which careful readers of the PP would likely call into scrutiny as well (i/132, 173–6). A “normal” Cartesian (insofar as Spinoza might be considered a “radical” Cartesian) could in theory pursue analysis independent of doubt, but it would only be successful if she or he were already “free” (in Spinoza’s sense ivp66s) and without prejudices. Descartes seems to think this impossible (vii, 157–8). Like the analysis of the ancient geometers, such a procedure would be limited by the prejudices of the analyst and consequently fail to open the infinite vistas of Cartesian science. But if Spinoza is correct then the final step to opening said vistas is replacing an analytic method centered on the will with a method which emphasizes

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the equal importance, and mutual dependence of both analysis/emendation and synthesis. Furthermore, for Spinoza, as well as Hobbes and Zabarella, synthesis and analysis are not at odds with nature but are interconnected in our natures as we gradually discover use and refine mental and physical artifacts and instruments. This gradualist picture is presented quite clearly at TIE 31, the passage discussing mental tools I considered in chapter 3. Both synthesis and analysis are reason. In the conclusion to chapter 6, and the conclusion to chapter 7, I discuss how synthesis and analysis, in Hobbes’ and Zabarella’s sense, become incorporated into Spinoza’s method, and his conception of knowledge through method. In brief, there is a process of analytic discovery and synthetic demonstration in the Ethics itself. Given this, the following lacunae in Spinoza’s discussion are very interesting. Spinoza quotes Descartes as stating that the method of Analysis is “as it were a priori” (PP i/129), but notably does not say that the synthetic method is a posteriori. He does not mention that for Descartes the synthetic order is dependent on the analytic, or any of the features of the analytic method. In light of the preceding, we might conclude that he was attempting to present the distinction in a way that he could agree with, that was useful for his irksome student Caesarius, and so ignored much of what Descartes had to say about it. By deemphasizing both the posterior character and derivativeness of synthetic presentation he allowed for the importance of a synthetic presentation and did not imply that it must intrinsically arise after analysis.

chapter 5

Maimonides and Gersonides

I have now examined the two main early modern sources for Spinoza’s method, Hobbes and Descartes. We have seen the importance of synthesis and analysis, the different ways that they could be construed, the different functions ascribed to them, and finally the problems of reconciling them in a method not grounded in the imagination. But something is still lacking in this picture, there seems to be much more to the structure of Spinoza’s method that has not been discussed: the didactic features of Spinoza’s presentation and his attempts to instruct his readers. For Descartes this was, of course, the basic purpose of synthesis, and it was an important part of synthesis for Hobbes and Zabarella as well. In examining Maimonides and Gersonides I will stress some different didactic aspects of Spinoza’s method. I would like to say at the outset that I in no way consider Spinoza to be a Maimonidean. I am interested in Maimonides for three reasons. First, part of Spinoza’s own method (and I mean method broadly, not just the mos geometricus) seems to be a rejection of Maimonides, so by examining Maimonides we can learn about Spinoza. Second, in rejecting Maimonides, Spinoza still seems to hold on to some basic features of Maimonides’ method. Third, Maimonides was also extensively criticized by Gersonides, whose affinities with Spinoza I have already emphasized. There are further affinities with Gersonides to be explored in the final section of this chapter. qu otat i o n a n d i ro n y One notable feature of Spinoza’s method is the way in which a geometric deduction allows for a process of internal quotation. When I cite a definition or a proposition in the proof of another proposition I am not just using the proposition but also mentioning it. This feature is part of any deduction, although not particularly relevant for Descartes and Hobbes. It is clearly important to Spinoza, and he is quite brazen about it. For example, the demonstration of iip7, one of Spinoza’s most important propositions, the 123

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claim that “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” reads: This is clear from ia4. For the idea of each thing caused depends on knowledge of the cause of which it is the effect. (CW 451)

Generations of Spinoza scholars have had trouble seeing why iip7 is “clear” from ia4, even if it seems to follow from ia4. What is evident is that Spinoza’s demonstration tells us as much about ia4 as it does about iip7. Iip7 relates two very different sections of the Ethics: an axiom from Part I is used to derive a proposition from Part II. This “quotational” feature of the mos geometricus is most evident in Part V, where Spinoza syncretically combines definitions and propositions from different parts of the work to show that the most abstract claims about God (Part I) and mind (Part II) have bearing on our human blessedness. I will refer to this as contextual quotation insofar as the quotation refers us to, and consequently evokes, a different context from the immediate context in which the proposition first appears. A related way that Spinoza uses quotation is seen in another proposition from Part II: I i p 2 : Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing. d e m : The demonstration of this proceeds in the same way as that of the preceding Proposition. (CW 449)

This is one of the most controversial propositions in the Ethics for an obvious reason, it states that God is a material being. It led Bayle and other readers to think that Spinoza was a materialist. By referring the reader to 11p1, a far less controversial proposition, “Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing,” with exactly the same form both in its statement and in its demonstration, Spinoza is not showing just the necessity of iip2. He is also showing that the very same grounds for holding the uncontroversial iip1 also hold for the very controversial iip2, and thus the reader who holds one must hold the other (as they are both proven with the same necessity). Spinoza is not unique in employing this sort of irony; it is common in Hobbes’ works, particularly Leviathan. Iip1 is clearly being quoted to ironic purposes in iip2, in addition to actually providing the necessary deductive ground for iip2. This is not just an extraneous point of literary interpretation. Part of the purpose of showing the readers that iip1 and iip2 are kin is to help the readers rationally to emend themselves from the prejudices that lead to them holding iip1 and condemning those who hold iip2. I will call this ironic contextual quotation,

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since it does not only refer the reader to a different context but also uses quotations in a striking or surprising manner in order to make the reader think. I only mean “ironic” in this limited sense.1 The import of ironic contextual quotation in the Ethics rests on a fairly obvious structural feature of the Ethics, a kind of perspectivalism intrinsic to Spinoza’s system. Part I of the Ethics primarily concerns nature from the perspective of substance. In Part I Spinoza describes the ways that God can be said to be a cause, both causa sui and as the immediate cause of countless infinite modes. Hence, Spinoza treats highly abstract metaphysical questions from the rather lofty perspective of substance, in terms of the necessary causes which effect all things and through which all things are determined. These propositions are highly general, but Part I gives no account of how they are to be brought to bear on particulars. Part I just affirms that from first principles follow the determinations of modes and all particular beings (ip25c), and that any theory that contradicts this metaphysics is incorrect and its errors will show up in bad inferences (like Descartes’ theory of the will). Nor can Part I give an account of how substance bears on particulars in their particularity. To do so would be to explain how a finite particular cause arises from the absolutely infinite, which seems impossible for finite beings such as ourselves, given the strong divide between the finite and the infinite which Spinoza consistently maintains. Part II primarily concerns one particular attribute, the attribute of thought (and to a lesser extent the attribute of extension), whereas Part I concerns the infinite infinity of attributes. Part II describes how the attribute of thought is internally structured (insofar as it describes the relations among thoughts), how it expresses the essence of substance, and most importantly how human minds are what they are through it. Parts III–V, on the other hand, primarily concern modes, particularly human modes, in their interactions with other modes, aggregations, and most importantly their qualitative differentiation (for example, how this affect [joy] is more powerful than that one [jealousy] and why).2 Part V has a unique role in that it describes how modes are related to substance not because they are affections of it, but because they become affects3 which bring elation through the practice of the intuitive science. 1 2 3

On ironic therapy in Spinoza see Amelie O. Rorty, “Spinoza’s Ironic Therapy: From Anger to the Intellectual Love of God,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 17:3 (July, 2000), 261–76. This is primarily the province of iii–vp20s. It is well described in vp20s. Affectus (affect) and affectio (affection) are used differently by Spinoza, but represent two sides of the same reality, from the perspective of substance and of modes respectively. For an opposing opinion see Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 49.

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This tripartite division also points to two even more fundamental “directions” in the Ethics: the division, between natura naturata (modes) and natura naturans (substance and attributes) divides the work between Parts I and II and Parts III to V. It also points to two basic “directions.” Parts I and II are a top-down metaphysics, explaining how what we are follows from metaphysical principles, how, in the words of ip25c, “particular things are nothing other than affections of attributes, or modes, by which an attribute of God is expressed in a certain and determinate way.” Although this gives us some purchase on what a mode is in abstractu, it gives us very little purchase on what this or that thought is that a human has.4 This is the “direction” of metaphysics, from substance via attributes to modes. Although we know in Part II that “Man thinks” (iia2) and that the “essence of man does not involve necessary existence” (iia1) it is not until Part III that Spinoza offers a definition of the essence of man (“the appetite therefore is the very essence of man” – iiip9s). This makes a great deal of sense, since Part II explicates man primarily insofar as man is a thinking thing like other thinking things, i.e. investigates generic features of thinking beings. Part III begins with the particularity of the mode and moves toward the modes understanding of substance in Part V. Of course it is essential for understanding man that he be understood as a thinking thing, but in Parts III and IV man is understood as a thinking thing with particular determinate desires and particular affective structures which distinguish him from other beings. Although one may certainly dispute my reading of the difference between I and II and III to V, that Spinoza holds a distinction seems evident from the following passage from the TTP: All, which we desire honestly, to these three are referred most strongly, to understand a thing through its first causes, to tame the passions, or to acquire the habit of virtue, and finally to live securely, and with a healthy body (corpore).5 The means, which directly bring about the first and the second, and which are able to be considered as proximate and efficient causes, are contained in human nature itself . . . but the means which bring about secure living and conserving the body, are chiefly found in external causes. (TTP III, iii/46)

The third, living securely, refers to politics discussed in the TTP and beyond the ken of the Ethics (since it concerns external causes, which will unfortunately always exist and always remain external, the bodies and minds of 4 5

Book II distinguishes between types of knowledge, adequate and inadequate, and rules out certain sorts of cognition (and objects of cognition) as intrinsically inadequate. The word corpore applies both to an individual body, and a political body.

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violent and stupid people). Spinoza here also clearly draws a line between the understanding of things through their first causes – metaphysics and epistemology – and an ethics or theory of the passions, a line between I and II on the one hand and III to IV on the other.6 In these next sections I discuss how Spinoza’s way of using the geometrical method for the purposes of internal quotation, both contextual and ironic, has an analogue in Maimonides’ works, despite the fact that Spinoza likely agreed with the entirety of Gersonides’ criticisms of Maimonides (which I also discuss). I use this to return to the issue of definition to be treated in the next chapter. m a i m o n i d e s : co n t e x t a n d pe r p l e x i t y The only philosopher whom Spinoza discussed anywhere near as much as Descartes was Maimonides. His verdict was almost entirely negative, despite the fact that Maimonides was central to the Jewish rationalist tradition. Yet Maimonides’ model as presented in the Guide of the Perplexed still seems to have impacted Spinoza. Maimonides’ great work opens with an “Epistle Dedicatory,” to his pupil Rabbi Joseph. This Epistle asserts that the ideal reader of the Guide should have “a powerful longing for speculative matters,” a firm education in the prevalent Aristotelian curriculum, and a thirst for understanding theological issues that will be presented in “certain flashes.” But unfortunately teaching this pupil is not easy. Maimonides was separated from Joseph by the Diaspora as a result of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. In the Guide, Maimonides attempts to solve this problem. Maimonides was quite aware of the danger inherent in communicating important philosophical doctrines by letters or books; they could be read by others who are not equipped to understand them, and who, furthermore, could pervert them. Maimonides in fact emphasizes this danger, he quotes a saying of the sages throughout the Guide: that the “Account of the Beginning ought not be taught in the presence of two men” (“Introduction to the First Part”). If the Account of the Beginning (i.e., Genesis/ physics) is so great that it cannot be taught in the presence of two men, and the Account of the Chariot (i.e., The Prophets/ metaphysics) is even more exalted and hence more dangerous, then how can it be placed into a book which can be 6

There are two other notable pieces of evidence. First, Part II is in some sense an extension of Part I; the first 10 propositions of Part II are derived entirely from the propositions, definitions, and axioms which open Part I. Second, as noted, Part I has no preface, Part II a very brief one, and Part III a very substantial one. This seems to signal that Part III is being set off from the preceding Parts.

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read by anyone who picks it up? Furthermore Maimonides did not write the Guide in Hebrew, which would have limited his readership to Jews, but instead in the koine, Judeo-Arabic. Why did he write it in Judeo-Arabic, and not even in the Mishnaic Hebrew of the Mishneh Torah?7 There are two interpretations within the tradition of explication of the Guide. First, some argue that the remarks in the “Introduction” about the exalted nature of physics and metaphysics were hyperbolic and meant to scare readers away. Though Maimonides thought his work to be discussing loaded and difficult scriptural texts, the main job of the Guide was to show the brightest students how their “Greek” education did not contradict the truth of their Jewish heritage. This reading has been the norm from the medieval Jewish and Christian interpreters of Maimonides to recent interpreters like Harry Wolfson.8 For this reason the Guide could be written in Judeo-Arabic, to be dispersed widely among philosophically talented students. The other main interpretation is that of Leo Strauss and Shlomo Pines. Strauss felt that the hermeneutics proposed in the opening section of the work must be taken seriously to read the work as a whole effectively. As Strauss was nearly as willfully difficult as Maimonides, it is not at all clear how he understood the hermeneutics or its application. Furthermore, his opinions seemed to have changed over his forty-year engagement with the Guide; but his general emphasis is placed on the fact that reason and revelation are distinct and cannot be brought together, that Aristotelian rationalism is something that is both subordinate to and secured by the law.9 The hermeneutics are so difficult to apply that it can be written in Judeo-Arabic, hidden in plain sight. Whether or not we ultimately understand the conclusions that Strauss draws from his treatment of the Guide, we can certainly agree that the map of reading that Maimonides gives us must somehow be applied to the text. And the question of how to apply the map of reading should be central to how we ultimately interpret the Guide. Only by looking at Maimonides’ way of reading his own text can we really understand 7 8

9

For a clear discussion of this question, see Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Mishneh Torah (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 324–54. Wolfson has the most extreme interpretation and sees the Guide of the Perplexed as a “scholastic apology of religion” (Wolfson, “Maimonides and Halevi,” in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977], 160). cf., Leo Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Joseph Buijis (ed.), Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays” (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 30–58. In this essay Strauss argues that “the biblical tradition and the philosophic tradition are fundamentally irreconcilable” (ibid., 47). See also, Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, trans. Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

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his method (as with Spinoza). My reading of Maimonides is somewhat heterodox, since I emphasize the importance of Scripture for him and transcendent truths. I think ultimately that Maimonides believes in most every case that Scripture and reason can be reconciled, yet the fact that Scripture trumps in the end tells us something fundamentally important about their relation. But a reader who reads Maimonides quite differently from the way that I do can still accept my points about the relation between Maimonides and Spinoza. The “Introduction” to the Guide opens with the assertion: “The purpose of this Treatise is to explain the meanings of certain terms occurring in the books of prophecy.” Hence the work does not try to explain the whole Torah, but specifically those things associated with prophecy. Maimonides’ interpretation of who counts as a prophet is wide, in a way typical of the Islamic philosophers.10 As opposed to the Christians, the list of the prophets includes both Moses and King David (we will discuss his division of prophecy shortly). The mechanics he provides us with to understand the Guide are set out in the “Introduction” and over the course of the work. Prophets and sages use the form of the “parable” to tell their meanings to the worthy few. A parable is a story difficult to understand through itself, but which when approached with the proper keys reveals a “pearl.” Maimonides uses a quote from Proverbs xxv:11 to illustrate this: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”11 The silver exterior of the apple is enticing in itself and will satisfy those who do not have the wherewithal to continue searching for the gold. This insures that only the truly worthy will find its secrets. Parables are of two kinds. In the first type of parable, each individual word is coded in a different way and must be understood separately. By way of example Maimonides provides a selection from Genesis where each phrase is to be taken in a different way (though Maimonides does not tell us how to interpret it, we might guess from clues provided in Book I). In the second kind of parable the whole parable refers to a subject that is not contained in its parts. Maimonides chooses a lengthy quotation from Proverbs, concerning an adulterous wife seducing the youths away from the true way. Maimonides argues that the quote is a caution against sensual pleasures and the way that they may disrupt man’s pursuit of knowledge. 10

11

See, for instance, Avicenna’s “Commentary on De Anima,” in, Fazlur Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology (Oxford University Press, 1952), 36. This is a highly Neoplatonic account of prophecy, but it would include Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and many others. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed , trans. and comm. Shlomo Pines, with intro. Leo Strauss (University of Chicago, 1963), 11.

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The problem is then how to explicate these two sorts of parables. Maimonides does not wish to explicate them in an overt manner, as this would make the secrets of the Torah open to all. So his solution is: I know that among men generally, every beginner will derive benefit from some of the chapters of this treatise, though he lacks even an inkling of what is involved in speculation. A perfect man, devoted to Law and, as I have mentioned, perplexed, will benefit from all its chapters. How greatly I will rejoice in them and how pleasant it will be to hear them. But those who are confused and whose brains have been polluted with false opinions and misleading ways deemed by them to be true sciences, and who hold themselves to be men of speculation without having any knowledge of anything that can truly be called science will flee from many of its chapters.12

The reason for this is: They are concealed things; none of them has been set down in any book written in the religious community in the times of the Exile – the books composed in these times being in our hands. How then can I now innovate and set them down? However, I have relied on two premises, the one being [the Sages’] saying in a similar case, It is time to do something for the Lord and so on13 the second being their saying, Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven.14

Maimonides makes two important points in this passage. First, the Guide is constructed so as to instruct those who are both “perfect” and devoted to the Law, and to either partially or totally rebuff everyone else. Second, and of great importance, the Exile is somehow essential to the Guide and no instructive work has been written since the Exile. Only the nearly perfect one will be able to navigate the parables and find the pearls within. Hence, near perfection, or at least having mastered all the conditions for perfection, is a precondition of both perplexity and the resolution of perplexity. Since the secrecy of the message can no longer be maintained by a theocracy as in the past (as the Jewish theocracy ceased to exist with the destruction of the second temple) the text itself must prevent all access. This is a political and philosophical problem forced upon the Diasporic Jew. The quotation I have just examined, and to which I shall return, makes the reader aware of this duality. On the one hand, we are taking part in a generic, transtheological reason. This allows us to debate with Islamic, Christian, and Greek philosophers concerning abstract truths. On the other hand, we are in a specific religious and historico-religious circumstance, 12 14

13 Ibid. The text Maimonides quotes is Psalms 119:126. Ibid., 16. Mishneh, Aboth, ii:17.

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and within a tradition of local historical revelation.15 Does the historical specificity intrinsically conflict with reason?16 The opening of the Guide exemplifies this problem. Three quotes from Scripture are followed immediately by three different kinds of terms prevalent in the logic of Maimonides’ day, “equivocal,” “univocal,” and “amphibolous.”17 The introduction of the logical terms follows the classical Aristotelian order of education, that one begins with the Organon (Book I of the Guide), so as to set one’s terms into a definitional order, then proceeds to the natural sciences (Book II), and finally moves to metaphysics and theology (Book III). The three quotes which set off the Introduction are: [1] Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for unto Thee have I lifted my soul.18 [2] Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is the sons of men.19 [3] Incline thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thy heart unto my knowledge.20 Each of these quotes has surprising and interesting contexts, but I will only discuss the first to give the reader the gist of Maimonides’ use of quotation. It appears to be the prayer of a seeker of wisdom asking God for guidance, such as the reader about to begin the Guide and seek knowledge. It is in fact a prayer of David, after: the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath crushed my life to the ground; he hath made me dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead . . . I remember the days of old. 15 16

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18

This is why people fight over holy sites like the West Wall in ways Spinoza would have thought particularly detestable and idiotic. At the end of the “Introduction” there are a further set of hermeneutical principles for dealing with contradictions. They are of three sorts: (1) contradictions resulting from oversights of the author, (2) contradictions used to hide truths from some readers and to impart these truths, (3) contradictions which are in the nature of the material. The third kind is the most interesting, as we might ask whether the contradictions between reason and revelation are of this sort (Maimonides, Guide, 17–18). “Equivocal” means having different senses, “univocal” means having one sense, and “amphibolous” is an odd category. The history of this classification is treated in Harry Wolfson, “The Amphibolous Terms in Aristotle, Arabic Philosophy and Maimonides,” Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), i:455–75. All three terms derive from Aristotle, but the tripartite classification is due to Alexander of Aphrodisius and his Islamic interpreters. In medieval Christian philosophy the amphibolous term, or mushakkikah, becomes the “analogical.” The paronymous term of Aristotle, which is a grammatical concept, is placed in between the two other types of terms. It is very interesting that beginning with Alexander a grammatical alteration cannot have an existence of its own but must be seen as either univocal or equivocal. 19 Proverbs 8:4. 20 Proverbs 22:17. Psalms 143:8.

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This dreary passage directly precedes [1]. The psalm, from which [1] is taken ends on a retributive note: And in thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that harass my soul; for I am thy servant.

So what appeared, when taken out of its context, to be a perfectly harmless quote, is in fact from one of the darkest moments in the Psalms: David’s plea for the wrath of God from the cave. It speaks from a moment of persecution, to those who have been persecuted and scattered by the Diaspora. Maimonides is writing after having fled from Spain with his family, to a similarly dislocated student. The picture of David crouching in the cave, vanquished, calling the Lord to smite his enemies would appear quite appropriate. But only a reader familiar with Psalms would know this. Whenever confronted by a quote in Maimonides’ text, the reader must pause and ask himself or herself: why this quote and not another? The ability to uncover the nature of Maimonides’ quotational subtext, and the previous discussion, adds up to the following. The Guide: (1) presents a teaching method, used to present difficult material to students over the long and treacherous distance of the Diaspora; (2) assumes that the student is very advanced in both religion and philosophy – Maimonides emphasizes that these are not the same; (3) uses quotes in such a way that only the religiously attentive will understand their importance and context. Hence the ostensibly clarifying tools of Aristotelian logic point toward matters that are not “neutral” to their religious context, and the spiritual qualities of the individual, examining them as clarified independent of the capacities (moral and religious) of the reader to understand which parables are important, and which are not. Maimonides’ method then, in brief, has the following structure. (1) Philosophical and metaphysical doctrines are presented together in a book that ostensibly provides access to all readers, in the order appropriate to the subject. (2) Readers are equipped with a hermeneutics for decoding the structure. (3) But, the hermeneutics can only be properly applied if the reader is religiously, and morally, perfect enough to understand the contexts and canonical interpretations of the quotes, and their significance. (4) The reader must also have sufficient philosophical education to understand the philosophy, and its relation to revealed Scripture. The hermeneutics is only useful if its philosophical application is also understood. Finally, the whole method has a specifically Jewish context of the Exile, through which its particular choices of emphasis (Ezekiel as opposed to Isaiah), and quotation (the quote from Psalms above), can be really

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understood. This context has a peculiar relation to metaphysics, as it necessitates metaphysics (in that we have no theocracy, no temple, no Kingdom, no peace), both in its universality and commonality, while at the same time providing the moral ground and righteousness which allows us to make decisions concerning matters which metaphysics cannot come to a conclusion about: for example the creation of the world. As noted at the beginning of this section, one cannot imagine a method more different from Spinoza’s: convoluted, dependent on transcendent, and transcending norms (the Torah, the destruction of the Temple, the Creation, the coming Messiah) for its axioms, definitions (i.e., Book I describes various terms, whose sense is understood through the Torah), and ultimate conclusions. Under a veneer of apparent calm, rational Aristotelianism – analyzing words used in Scripture via the neo-Aristotelian distinction between univocal, amphibolic, and equivocal terms – Maimonides makes their true sense nearly impossible to access except by the few. Spinoza criticized Maimonides at great length in the TTP. He argued that the laws of nature are immutable and fixed and that nothing can transcend or surpass them, that God’s nature can be known by the fixed and immutable knowledge of nature, and that all decrees and volitions in Scripture should be understood as and through the order of nature (TTP VI, iii/82). At the same time he attacked the idea that Scripture is a secret repository of philosophical wisdom. Spinoza also developed his own anti-Maimonidean scriptural hermeneutics. Spinoza interpreted miracles as events surpassing human comprehension but having a natural cause (as opposed to a supernatural one embedded in a supernatural text [the Torah] for Maimonides) (TTP VI, iii/90). He replaced the Maimonidean context principles with his own historical context principle, which instructed the reader of Scripture to try to understand the motives of the actions described in “sacred texts” in terms of our historical knowledge of the period (as with any other ancient document) and the psychologies of the historical actors (TTP VI, iii/92). Also, he instructed the reader to understand the contexts of scriptural quotations, not in order to access deep theological meaning, but instead to show their commonsensical, or often false and ignorant meanings (TTP VI, iii/93). Finally, Spinoza’s method, although it rebuffs many, invites any reader to take up its historically and religiously neutral arguments. Yet there are still symmetries between the TTP and the Guide. Both Maimonides and Spinoza thought Scripture was concerned with the historical and the moral, and both emphasized the centrality of reason. But of course history and morality meant drastically different things for them.

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Spinoza took various Maimonidean ideas, and neutralized them in such a way as to show the truths they revealed as mundane. For example, Spinoza argued that Scripture should be treated like any other text, and that Maimonides viewed the actors and actions detailed in Scripture as involving philosophical truths, and religious miracles, when he should have simply viewed it as the primitive and superstitious ramblings of a tribe of on again, off again, desert nomads. It is really a historical text like any other (if not in influence or political dangerousness). It should be susceptible, in principle, to the same sort of analysis that Spinoza’s beloved Tacitus provided of Rome in the Annals. gersonides While this gives us an insight into what Spinoza viewed as wrong about Maimonides’ method, it also gives us some insight into what Spinoza thought right about his own. A method should be clear, should explain everything in terms of the order of nature and its immutable laws, and try to provide explicit intellectual and philosophical contexts. Spinoza was not the first to formulate a rational philosophical method in opposition to Maimonides. This was done by Spinoza’s great precursor along the Jewish philosophical line, Gersonides. Unlike Maimonides, and like Spinoza, Gersonides lived not in a dominantly Islamic culture but in a dominantly Christian one: Provence. In The Wars of the Lord , Gersonides set out to treat a series of difficult questions, all of which concern the border between philosophy and theology, ranging from the relation between immortality and perfection of intellect, to whether the universe is eternal or created. Gersonides was interested in pushing the philosophical–theological question opened by Maimonides to even greater extremes. The task is very difficult, and has the whole universe as its subject. Further: this question [i.e., whether the universe is created and how] is a fundamental principle for many other things. And it is clear that the true understanding of principles is exceedingly valuable, since it leads to a true understanding of those ideas that come after these principles; just as an error in principles is serious because it gives rise to errors in those beliefs which are based on the principles, and political happiness as is the case in this particular question.21 21

Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord , ed. and trans. Seymour Feldman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984), i:92.

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Gersonides believed that his questions, and particularly the question of creation, provided fundamental principles on which the ideas which follow from the principles rested. This was, of course, perfectly Aristotelian. But, in the characteristic fashion of Jewish (and Islamic) philosophy, he notes that the repercussions can diminish our political happiness.22 Hence the questions are, transitively, philosophical–theological–political questions. These questions, and most centrally the question concerning creation, are extraordinarily difficult. First, according to Gersonides his predecessors have said little of interest about them. And what Gersonides’ predecessors have said has had a deleterious effect on his potential readership. They are closed to Gersonides’ inquiries because they “find in them something unfamiliar to them by virtue of opinions they hold, which do not derive from philosophical or religious requirements but which they have inherited” and are unable to see past their traditional answers to such questions. Finally, many think that these questions cannot and should not be answered because Maimonides did not answer them.23 If the greatest Jewish philosopher could not answer them, they can only be answered by a prophet. Philosophers ought not bother. As previously discussed in the section on Maimonides, the teaching on prophecy is central to the Guide as it explains what sort of individuals are capable of the most perfect knowledge. Maimonides seems to be claiming that as the teaching on creation was initially divulged by a prophet (Moses), maybe only a prophet could, and should, interpret it. This is the orthodoxy that Gersonides attacks. He opposes it claiming that: It does not follow that what was not known by the former sages will also not be known by their successors . . . Were this not so, a man would not [for himself ] investigate any science but only accept what others have taught him . . . Moreover if what we say on the matter is right, that which was thought to be shameful on our part will turn out to be praiseworthy . . . If what we say turns out to be wrong, then we will be blameworthy, but for this reason only.24

The assumption of orthodoxy is that all questions were best answered by revelation at some point in the revealed past. As generations of philosophers, 22

23

24

Compare Averroes: “In addition to this knowledge of speculative science follows most eminently and nobly the affects, or mores, as the end of the natural order will be to make clear the necessity to be virtuous” (Averroes, Aristotelis De Physico Auditu Libri [ Venice: 1562], ii). Here Gersonides is, like Spinoza, clearly attacking the tradition that transformed Maimonides the philosopher into Maimonides the orthodoxy. Gersonides will make the philosopher’s point, “until a proof is forthcoming that shows the impossibility of such a philosophical demonstration, this is not a valid objection against us” (Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, 96). Ibid., 94.

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from Gersonides to Salomon Maimon realized, the very existence of philosophy challenges this assumption because it assumes the progress of knowledge, and natural truth as the sole arbiter of this progress. Gersonides’ formulation of the problem is strikingly bold, even to a modern reader. What sort of reader can take up this question? Gersonides assumes that his reader is familiar with the philosophy, mathematics, and science of his day, and accepts the principles demonstrated in them. But is the model of the wise man – the prophet in Maimonides’ sense – the philosopher who is additionally anointed by the powers of revelation? Gersonides gives a very explicit and powerful answer: A prophet is necessarily a wise man. Thus some of the things that are known by him are peculiar to him as a prophet, e.g., most of the things he predicts that will occur at a particular time; other things he knows simply because he is wise, i.e., the things that are known by him about the secrets of the world. The difference between a prophet and a wise man, however, lies merely in the relative ease with which the prophet obtains [his knowledge] . . . It is possible that there are things that a wise man who is not a prophet cannot apprehend, but which can be known by a wise man who is a prophet insofar as he is wise.

In Book II of the Guide, Maimonides sets out his account of prophets. Prophets might be viewed in the following three sorts of ways. First, they might be rude, untutored, but morally perfect individuals who are touched by God, and given the power of prophecy – pure revelation. Their prophetic skills are perfected irrespective of the perfection of their intellects. On the second view prophets might be philosophically perfected intellects and demand no additional supernatural anointing by God to be prophets, the only requirement of being a prophet would be reason. Third, they might be both morally and intellectually perfect as well as anointed by God. This third account of prophecy demands a conjunction of both reason and revelation. This seems to be the one that Maimonides opts for. Gersonides uses Aristotle’s logical tool, the “qua” or “insofar,” to attack Maimonides. The prophet, must, when compared to the wise man, be judged insofar as he is wise, not insofar as he is a prophet. We therefore compare wise man qua wise, and prophet qua wise, to discuss what they are capable of knowing. It is certainly possible, even likely, that a prophet can and does know more insofar as he is wise than a wise man. But there is a fundamental continuity between the kinds of knowledge they have, and thus the questions and subjects they investigate qua wisdom are the same.25 25

This attack is fulfilled in the opening chapter of the TTP.

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To investigate the questions qua wisdom one must be a wise man and part of the “community of the philosophers.”26 Hence, the Maimonidean criterion of moral and religious perfectibility27 for access to the golden apples of wisdom and Scripture is not really a pre-condition for Gersonides. In philosophy proper, qua philosophy, and not revelation and philosophy intertwined as in the case of Maimonides,28 there is no need to hide anything. In fact “it is not proper for someone to withhold what he has learned in philosophy from someone else. This would be utterly disgraceful.”29 If the investigator is a would-be wise man qua wisdom, and if the truth presented by Gersonides is universal and not grounded in any specific religious doctrines or traditions, then what sort of method and presentation is adequate to the task? Gersonides lays out seven criteria for his method. It is here that his similarities to Spinoza become most evident.30 First, “there are things such that the knowledge of some of them precedes by nature the knowledge of others.”31 This is both the case within a science and for multiple sciences. These things are prior both with regard to order (i.e., of demonstration) and nature. They are also, this is the second point, more general and their premises are employed to prove more specific theorems. Third, and crucially, a work of philosophy is not written primarily for the pleasure of the author but “to impart to someone else . . . [i]t is therefore necessary that he try to present the material in such a way that the reader will achieve the intended purpose of the book.” The author should therefore begin with the easiest subject matter and progress to the more difficult subject. Writing a book is a didactic duty, and on these grounds Gersonides opposes himself to both Maimonides and Averroes: 26 27 28

29

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31

Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, 97. Gersonides sarcastically refers to his detractors as “the perfect ones” (ibid., 97). “If the literal sense of the Torah differs from reason, it is necessary to interpret those passages in accordance with the demands of reason,” and also, “the Torah is not a law that forces us to believe false ideas; rather it leads us to the truth to the extent that it is possible” (ibid., 98). Because, “just as this entire universe emanated from God for no particular advantage to him, so too is it proper for someone who has achieved some perfection to try to impart it to someone else” (ibid., 97). There are a number of other similarities, particularly Gersonides’ Averroistic necessitarianism. But these similarities ought not to be overstated. Gersonides is a radical Aristotelian, but fundamentally an Aristotelian. The difference comes out strongly on the question of the infinite, as Gersonides denies the existence of an actual infinite. See Charles Touati, La Pens´ee Philosophique et Th´eologique de Gersonide (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1973), 221–3. Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, 99.

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Those authors, however, who do not follow this procedure but increase obscurity either because of poor organization or opacity of language so that the easy becomes difficult, defeat the purpose for which they have written their books. They have actually increased the perplexity of their readers as well as not having given them anything worthwhile, unless it was the intention of the author to conceal [his ideas] from the masses so that only a few would understand [his words], because such ideas would, if understood, cause harm to the masses. Occasionally the author intentionally adopts this device when he suspects [his book] contains flaws or weaknesses.32

The primary purpose is to teach, and, if the student discovers flaws in the argument, so much the better, for they do not destroy an orthodoxy which must be kept at all costs33 but help the universal progress of learning. Rather, a philosophical education is directly opposed to orthodoxy. The fourth point addresses the priority of demonstration. If a sentence is needed to prove multiple propositions it must come before. Similarly the fifth point states that if one must resolve one horn of a dilemma, before asserting the other, then the resolution of the dilemma should take place before one of the two propositions is asserted. Both of these are fairly evident principles of demonstration (but maybe not evident to a Maimonidean). Gersonides’ sixth point gets to the heart of the matter for both himself and Spinoza. I have quoted it in chapter 3 but it bears being quoted again in light of what we know about Maimonides and Gersonides: [A]n author realizes that some of his discussions explain things that are strange to the reader because of the opinions with which the latter is familiar and habituated from youth, so that the reader is upset by them even if he finds no logical inconsistencies in them, and hence for this reason would be prevented from obtaining knowledge from the rest of the book then the author should arrange the material in a way that is appropriate to what he wants to convey to his reader . . . This kind of tactic is similar to that employed by physicians of the body and of the soul, and it is necessary to use such a tactic because of the disposition of the patient. Such an ill person [i.e., the reader] must be introduced gradually to the therapy . . . Therefore when an author realizes that the reader has corrupt opinions, whose contraries he is about to establish, he should uproot them step by step . . . Hence the author should try to dissipate that which nourishes those opinions before he actually uproots them.34 32 33 34

Ibid., 101. Maybe they do destroy the orthodoxy, but nothing Gersonides cares to keep qua wisdom. Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, 102.

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Finally, it is essential that the reader be able “to discern the reason for the arrangement”35 that the author has adopted, and to see how the latter propositions in a work rely on the former. If this were not the case, the reader would have to look to an outside resource to interpret the work, and it would need a rabbi or an authority other than that of the author himself. Thus, whatever the presentation of the work, and to whatever didactic purpose, it must be evident to the reader. Perhaps Spinoza is not quite as successful at this as Gersonides (although the reason for the basic structure is quite evident). Most of Gersonides’ points are contrasted, often explicitly, with Maimonides’ method. Maimonides presents an esoteric and hermetic method demanding moral and intellectual near perfection, beginning with more particular theses and moving to more general ones. He provides little instruction and both affirms and uproots orthodox opinions. Gersonides attempts to instruct the reader in a clear manner from the most general theses in a way such that the arrangement is always apparent to the reader and will help to uproot irrational beliefs and replace them via a process of rational therapy with rational ones. As I have suggested, we can clearly see the didactic elements of Spinoza’s method in this presentation in the emphasis on: the precedence of the more general over the more particular; the lucidity of structure; the notion of method as therapy uprooting false and tenaciously held opinions and replacing them with true ones; the lack of reliance on transcendent or external sources; the notion of the prophet as the wise man; and so on. In fact, were we asked to read Gersonides’ “Preface” not knowing who had written it, we might suppose it to be penned by Spinoza. But despite these affinities there is also something Maimonidean in Spinoza, albeit drastically altered by context. In Maimonides’ Guide, scriptural quotation forms the axis of the work, the transcendent structure that grounds and responds to the metaphysics. Hence the work has a double structure, a transcendent core placed within a rational hermeneutical method. In Spinoza’s Ethics, there are no transcendent crowns – the term that Maimonides sometime used for the golden apples of wisdom only available to the select few. But there are certainly more or less powerful and important propositions, as Spinoza clearly thought to be the case with ip7, ip16, iip7, and iiip4. These are the propositions that are continually contextually quoted in such a way as to emphasize their importance. We see them 35

Ibid.

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as fonts of a variety of different rational claims, in our scholarly discussions of Spinoza as well as in reading the Ethics. But, when we view them this way, we only consider them in part qua the second kind of knowledge, i.e. as propositions chained together in a rigorous and necessary deduction. We also regard these propositions as powerful first principles that initiate sequences of propositions that are dependent on them, and draw together prior propositions in their demonstrations.36 Because we consider them in relation to and in comparison with other propositions, we clarify our own intellects when we compose and divide them. Our ultimate goal, though, is to consider such propositions in themselves and as arising from God. Now one might object that, although this may seem intuitively plausible, are not all propositions equally rational, equally necessary, and hence equally important – sub specie aeternitatis? There are two responses. First, what arises from a given idea seems for Spinoza a testimony to the power, importance, and reality of an idea.37 This is clear from his distinction between the properties that can be inferred from a real being, versus the properties that arise from a being of reason or a simple being.38 In this sense the mysterious principle espoused at ip9, “the more reality each thing has, the more attributes belong to it” assumes a far more general Spinozist principle: that reality is convertible with causal force and efficacy, that what a being is is its activity and its activity is to be understood as rational or causal activity. This can also be said of ideas, that the more causal (or deductive) force an idea and the more illative necessity arises from it, the more reality and importance that idea has. Second, when we continuously refer to certain ideas, and much comes of them, we know that these are important ideas, and so, in Spinoza’s deduction, they take the place of the role of scriptural quotation in a work like the Guide. One might comment that there is no particular intrinsic relation between Maimonides and Spinoza on this issue. This fact holds as much of Euclid’s geometry and the parallel line postulate as it does of Spinoza’s ia4. But, for Maimonides, as opposed to Euclid and like Spinoza, these propositions are particularly important to leading humans to greater 36

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38

There are numerous affinities between my interpretation of the importance of the non-linear character of some aspects of Spinoza’s method and the work of Diane Steinberg. See, Diane Steinberg, “Method and the Structure of Knowledge in Spinoza,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79:2 ( June 1998), 152–69. Steinberg’s paper had not appeared when I initially worked out this analysis of Spinoza’s method, but I have benefited since from her careful discussion. Each being, each mode, each idea has an effect, and this effect has an effect ad infinitum (ip28, ip36). Consequently it is trivial to say that some ideas result in infinite chains of ideas since all modes do. But some ideas are clearly more important for our particular human essences, and these are the ideas that we view as important. Cf. Letter LXXXIII, to be discussed in the next chapter.

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blessedness. Although they are in and of themselves truths, like any other truths, they are particularly important for us. Unlike Scripture, they are thoroughly accessible rational notions. Like Scripture, they are particularly fundamental claims from which other truths important for us derive, and their contextual quotation gives a work a synchronic structure (in addition to the obvious diachronic force of Hobbesian synthetic deduction or Cartesian analytic investigation). Spinoza’s Ethics attempts to provide a fully immanent, rational text, with no recourse to external justifications, i.e., particularly revealed ones. But in a strange way Spinoza retains something of the general structure of the Guide of the Perplexed , its emphasis on “crowns” and on both the linear and non-linear nature of method, while also accepting and incorporating all of Gersonides’ criticisms. In particular, like Gersonides, Spinoza views philosophy as a generally therapeutic venture for many sorts of intellects, not just communication between the cognoscenti and illuminati. Philosophy teaches all intellects to properly understand and reorient themselves toward God so as to make the idea of God the font of cognition. And all adequate ideas have a direct connection to God since they include adequate knowledge of God. It is recognizing which ideas help we human beings most in this search for beatitude that is key. Thus, in Spinoza’s Ethics we have a real guide for the perplexed, one that actually stimulates and gets rid of perplexity (by showing the irrationality of this perplexity). It is interesting to examine Spinoza’s discussion of prophecy in this light. As previously noted, Maimonides outlines three possible ways to interpret prophets. Prophets are the key to revealed knowledge as prophets are the means by which revealed knowledge is transmitted. First, a prophet might be an unphilosophical, morally perfect individual touched by God. Second, he might be a perfected intellect, as the philosophers say, and demand nothing additional to this. Third, he might be both morally and intellectually perfect and anointed by God. Maimonides seems to argue for the first. Gersonides argues for a restrained version of the second in emphasizing the continuity of revealed and non-revealed knowledge. He is close in this to Spinoza’s friend Meyer, another ultra-rationalist interpreter of Scripture (albeit a Lutheran). Spinoza agrees with Gersonides’ arguments that the sort of knowledge that philosophers have should not be degraded by comparison with the knowledge of prophets, per se. But he then uses this to argue for a position akin to the first, the orthodox position, since what characterizes a prophet for Spinoza is a powerful imagination, not the intellect (TTP II, iii/112–16)! Hence Spinoza rids the readers of the prophets of their perplexity not

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by showing the deep revealed fruits hidden within, nor by showing the fundamental rationality of everything, but by dividing between those sorts of things, beings, ideas, and types of knowledge capable of being adequate causes, and those terminally incapable. Prophecy is terminally incapable, and our perplexity will only be dissolved by recognizing it for what it is. co n c lu s i o n Spinoza is not interested in the force or power of ideas as such. He is interested in how these ideas are important for human minds, how they “can lead us, by the hand as it were, to the knowledge of the human Mind and its highest blessedness.” Thus, ideas will have more or less importance for humans pursuing their blessedness. A whippet, or a piece of stardust, need not “know” the structure of the human mind and body for its blessedness (whatever that might be). This does not mean that Spinoza views the world as anthropocentric in any way, shape, or form. Rather, he is able to instruct those whose essences are like his own, and this is beneficial for him as well as for those instructed (at least before his death in 1677, and perhaps for eternity depending on how one reads Part V!). One of the things we must learn is how to move from the sort of anthropomorphism used by theocratic communities to back their political authority to a true analysis of human nature. This is extraordinarily difficult, for it means learning to analyze man in a non-anthropomorphic way, moving from viewing man as an imperium within an imperium, to man as one part of nature, but the centrally interesting one for human blessedness. Ultimately, certain propositions are particularly important, not because man is made in the image of God but because man is the part of nature that man knows best and this knowledge can best express the power of nature. To return to our worm, we have now understood a bit more of its predicament. Let us imagine that as it floats through the blood it encounters other worms. These worms might suggest that the best way to understand the principles that regulate the blood is to allow that worms have a special access, a revealed access, to these regulative principles, as opposed to chyle and lymph. But our worm must recognize, like Gersonides and, above all, like Spinoza, that such a special status is deeply dubious and self-destructive. Rather, our worm needs to understand what it is in relation to other worms and in itself. This is where the clues lie to the mystery of the blood. When Spinoza suggests that the infinite power of nature insofar as we finitely perceive our bodies is the solution to the worm’s predicament, and ours, he is suggesting just this. The worm needs to examine and clarify its own

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ideas both through method and in relation to others in order to understand its own essence. Once it understands its essence it can begin to understand the adequate causes that will make it happy and free. In chapters 4 and 5 we have seen a number of different ways of thinking about method that are incorporated into the structure of the Ethics. As with Hobbes’ and Zabarella’s synthesis (or compositiva), a mos geometricus shows the causal force in propositions in relation to clarified first principles, and this arises in the form of a linear, necessary deduction. As with Descartes, this deduction cannot be derived from the senses, and rather entails an investigation and clarification of the understanding independent of the senses. As with Gersonides, and in opposition to Maimonides, the method must be lucid, therapeutic, move from the more general to the more particular, and link our desires to a proper understanding of God. Finally, as with Maimonides, the mos geometricus will display a synchronic structure in addition to the obvious linear illative necessity. But, if the mos geometricus has all these features, and if a radical “wiping the slate” of the Cartesian variety is unavailable to Spinoza, then we sorely need a means of finding definitions to get the method off the ground. The ways Hobbes and Maimonides might seek definitions will not do. So, where to find definitions?

chapter 6

Definitions in Spinoza’s Ethics: where they come from and what they are for

Here readers will doubtless come to a standstill and they will imagine many things that will give them pause. This is why I ask that they continue with me, stepping slowly, and that they move forward and not judge until they have read everything through. Ethics iip11s

Spinoza’s discussion of method in the TIE concludes with his incomplete attempt to provide a means by which to discover adequate definitions. Why are definitions so important for Spinoza? In order for a philosophy to be rational and adequate it must be grounded in a “true and legitimate definition” (TIE 99). This would hold for many philosophers other than Spinoza, notably Hobbes. It also seems to be a given of deductive or Euclidean modes of philosophizing. Weigel, Leibniz’s teacher and enthusiast for the mos geometricus, emphasized that the Euclidean method, unlike the account of science that Aristotle gives in Physics, moves from known to unknown.1 Rather the Euclidean method was consistent with Aristotle’s Analytics, and Weigel argued that it could lead to a reconciliation of the old and new wisdom. For Spinoza, the mos geometricus is a process that gets at things and ideas, and in so doing provides us access to the logical and metaphysical structure of the world we inhabit. And any geometric demonstration must begin with definitions. So definitions are the crucial wedge that moves us beyond our part of nature, our limitations, and opens up the understanding to those things excellent, difficult, and rare. But what are good definitions and how and where do we find them? In this chapter I will try to answer these questions. I will argue that, for Spinoza, definitions are both nominal and real, that we move from common and shared conventional linguistic definitions to real definitions, and adequate ideas, through a process of emendation like the one outlined in 1

Erhard Weigel, Analysis Aristotelica ex Euclide restituta (Jena, 1659), iii.2.13, §1.

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chapter 3. I will argue that this is one of the primary purposes of the mos geometricus. ts c h i r n h au s’ qu e s t i o n As Spinoza lay sick with the illness that would shortly claim his life, he engaged in some of his most important correspondence. Notably, he answered a number of searching questions from Walther Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus. Tschirnhaus was a German nobleman of real philosophical skill (and later of some scientific import), who had met Spinoza in the mid-1760s and had been given a copy of at least a good part of the Ethics. He had a particularly lucid mind, and thought through and voiced some of his objections to Spinoza with impressive clarity. Spinoza thought well of Tschirnhaus, and responded to him with a bit less vagueness than was his usual custom. Spinoza’s final extant letter (excluding the late, undated “Letter to a Friend” which became the “Preface” to the unfinished TP) was to Tschirnhaus and concerned the status of definitions in the Ethics. Unfortunately the letter seems to shed little light on the apparently intractable problems posed by definitions. In fact, the letter seems to make a difficult problem that much more obscure. There are two obvious problems concerning definitions for Spinoza. First, how does one find and recognize adequate or true definitions? Where do the definitions that begin each part of the Ethics come from? One can try to answer the question by tracking down the sources of each definition, as Harry Wolfson attempted to, or one can analyze their structure in minute detail like Martial Gueroult and a host of others. The first approach tells you from whence but not why, the second theorizes why but is unable to explain how Spinoza arrived at these particular definitions as opposed to other plausible definitions. I have already engaged a bit in the why, with regard to the definition of God, now I will turn toward the whence as well. I cannot promise fully to answer this question, there is just not enough textual evidence in Spinoza decisively to come to a conclusion on it. But, I will offer a hypothesis, based on a few pieces of corroborating evidence, that provides a coherent means by which Spinoza could justify his choices of definitions, and is consistent with a convincing picture of the Ethics as a whole. A second problem is what Spinoza meant when he wrote in the demonstration of ip16 (“Out of the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite infinity of modes (that is all which can fall under an infinite intellect)”) that:

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[O]ut of the given definition of some thing the intellect infers (concludit) many properties, which in truth necessarily follow from the same (that is out of the very essence of the thing) and furthermore, the more reality the definition of a thing expresses, the more reality the essence of the thing defined involves.

There are many problems with this passage, among which are: Is “the intellect” finite, infinite or both? On what basis, given his emphasis on individuals, can Spinoza maintain a hierarchy of real definitions in terms of their expression? It is certainly the case that the attribute of thought, as a whole, expresses the essence of substance as such insofar as it is in the definition of an attribute to express the essence of substance. But it is not clear that the finite logical forms and definitions which we discover have such a purchase on metaphysical reality, nor that there is any way of claiming that X has more reality than Y. I believe part of the answer is in Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus. Tschirnhaus asked Spinoza: In Mathematics I have always observed that from anything considered in itself, that is from the definition of anything, we are able to deduce at least one property, but that if we desire more properties, then we must relate the thing defined to other things; then if at all, from the combination of the definitions of these things new properties result. For instance, if I consider only the circumference of a circle, I shall not be able to infer anything except that it is alike at all points, or uniform, in which property it differs essentially from all other curves. But I shall never be able to deduce any other properties. If I however relate it to other things, say, to the radii drawn from the center, or to two or also more intersecting lines, then I shall in this way be able to deduce some more properties. This seems to me to a certain extent to oppose Proposition XVI of the Ethics, which is almost the most important one in Book I of your Treatise. In this it is assumed as known that several properties can be deduced from the given definition of a thing. This seems to me impossible, unless we relate the defined thing to others. As a consequence of this I cannot see how from an Attribute, considered in itself, for instance from infinite extension, there can arise a variety of bodies. (Letter LXXXII)

This is a reasonable objection. In any sort of actual mathematical practice, definitions are incapable in and of themselves of producing various properties. It is only in combination with other definitions that a multiplicity of things, consequences, or inferences result. Furthermore, Tschirnhaus implies that Spinoza’s claim that definitions have different degrees of inferential power according to their different degrees of “reality” is false. Regardless of the reality of the thing and its correspondent definition, only one or at most a few properties can be inferred from a definition taken in isolation.

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Spinoza’s response is particularly mysterious: As to what you say . . . that from the definition of each thing considered in itself we can deduce one property only, this may be true in the case of the most simple things, or in the case of things of reason (under which I also include figures) but not in the case of real things. For from the mere fact that I define God as a Being to whose essence belongs existence I infer several of his properties, namely, that He exists necessarily, that he is unique, immutable, infinite, etc. And in this way I might adduce several other examples which I omit at present. (Letter LXXXIII)

This is not a very revealing answer, but it raises a number of questions about definitions. First, Spinoza distinguished between definitions of real things and definitions of beings of reason such as the sort of geometrical definitions that Tschirnhaus uses as an example, and the definition of the “most simple things.” Although it is not clear what the “most simple things” are, Spinoza is clearly implying that Tschirnhaus’ analogy from mathematical entities to real beings is unwarranted. Spinoza did not explain what the differences are between the definitions of real things, the definitions of the simplest things and beings of reason. But he gave an example, the definition of the most real thing: God. We can conclude from this that Spinoza thought the definition of God to be a far better model for ip16 than Tschirnhaus’ mathematicals, and unsurprisingly so. God is the one substance, the absolutely infinite being, the divine nature from which follow an infinite infinity of modes. Hence God is the appropriate being to discuss in re Spinoza’s claim. But, of course, by saying various sorts of things arise from the definition of God, Spinoza is just restating ip16, and not in a particularly edifying way. Why does Spinoza think this answers Tschirnhaus’ objection? It is a rich question. But first let us turn to Spinoza’s theory of definition. genetic definitions In the TIE Spinoza gave two basic criteria for definitions of created things: 1. If the thing is created, the definition, as we have said, will have to include the proximate cause. E.g., according to this law, a circle would be defined as follows: it is the figure that is described by any line of which one end is fixed and the other movable. This definition clearly includes the proximate cause. (TIE 34) 2. We require a concept, or definition, of the thing such that when it is considered alone, without any others conjoined, all the thing’s properties can be deduced from it (as we have seen in the definition of the circle). For from it we clearly infer that all the lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal. (TIE 34)

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He also emphasized that all the properties must be able to be inferred from the definition when considering the definitions of uncreated things: 4. Finally (though it is not very necessary to note this) it is required that all the properties follow from its definition. (TIE 35)

These passages are similar to Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus, showing continuity in Spinoza’s thinking about the question of definition over a long period of time. There is one additional passage in the account of definition in the TIE that does not appear to be so consistent with the Ethics. Spinoza claimed that the definition of an uncreated thing: Should exclude every cause, i.e., that the object should require nothing else except its own being for its explanation. (TIE 34)

It seems to directly contradict the following comment Spinoza made to Tschirnhaus in an earlier letter: In order that I may know from which idea of a thing, out of many, all the properties of the object may be deduced, I observe one thing only, that the idea or definition of the thing should express its efficient cause. For example, in order to investigate the properties of a circle, I ask whether from the idea of a circle, that it is composed of innumerable right angles, I can deduce all its properties: I inquire, I say, whether this idea involves the efficient cause of a circle. Since this is not so, I seek another, namely that a circle is the space which is described by a line of which one end is fixed and the other moveable. Since this Definition expresses the efficient cause, I know that I can deduce from it all the properties of a circle, etc. So also when I define God as the supremely perfect Being, since this definition does not express the efficient cause (for I conceive that an efficient cause can be internal as well as external) I shall not be able to discover all the properties of God from it; but when I define God as a being, etc. (See definition VI, Part I, of the Ethics; Letter LX).

Gueroult has noted that Spinoza is expressly altering his earlier stricture against ascribing causes to uncreated beings in this letter.2 Here, God is also expressly defined causally, in terms of an internal efficient cause. There is no need, though, to claim, like Gueroult, that the earlier stricture represents a drastically different theory of definition3 – despite the obvious difference in attitude toward the definition of uncreated things. It seems equally likely that, in the passage from the TIE quoted above, Spinoza is just ruling out external causes, and this is why he distinguishes between external causes and internal causes for Tschirnhaus. But, even if one need not agree with Gueroult that there is a drastic change in Spinoza’s theory of definition, it 2 3

Martial Gueroult, Spinoza I – Dieu (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968), 172–5. See Herman De Dijn, Spinoza the Way to Wisdom (West Lafagette, IN: Purdue, 1996), 189.

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is clear that Spinoza is emphasizing a particular sort of definition. Gueroult rightly considered “genetic” or generative definitions, definitions capable of generating the beings along the Hobbesian and maker’s knowledge lines I considered in prior chapters, as key to understanding the Ethics, and Spinoza’s philosophy as such.4 For Gueroult, the definition of God offered a synthesis of the infinity of attributes in and through one substance, which ruled out the possibility of a multiplicity of substances each with one attribute, and provided a causal account of God through this synthesis.5 Gueroult concludes his discussion of ip10 (which is the crucial proposition in this synthesis) with a catalogue of features of the definition of God which begins with, God “is explicated by its very being, because the infinity of attributes which give an account of it are precisely that which intrinsically constitutes its being.”6 Thus God is supremely intelligible and supremely rational. This, for Gueroult, is something both implicit in the definition of God which “is defined genetically by its internal structure (constitution intime)”7 and arrived at by a process culminating at ip10. Furthermore, he argued that through the genetic definition of God, Spinoza’s Ethics mirrors the structure of nature. The mos geometricus was consequently a necessary, strict, causal deduction dependent on genetic (or generative) definitions, particularly the genetic definition of God. According to Gueroult, Spinoza derived his theory from Hobbes’ De Corpore (the first part of his Elements of Philosophy) and Examinatio Mathematicae Hodierne.8 Gueroult treated genetic definition by first discussing definition in general in Spinoza’s philosophy. There are two possible ways to view Spinoza’s definitions, first as “definitions of things” and second as “definitions of words,” categories that roughly correspond to real or nominal definitions. 4

5

6 8

As will be obvious in the foregoing, I am indebted to Gueroult. I have two fundamental disagreements with his interpretation though. First, as will be evident, I do not view the Ethics as just a linear deduction (Matheron also diverges from Gueroult on this). Second, I do not view genetic definitions in quite the same way, and consequently I consider Spinoza’s method to be both synthetic and analytic, as is befitting a truly emendative therapy. These make my take on Spinoza look drastically removed from Gueroult. In many other ways, though, it is quite close to Gueroult (and Matheron). It does not seem to me that Spinoza has a strong commitment to substances with one attribute or substances with more than one attribute in the opening propositions of the Ethics. Consequently I do not view the definition of God as producing the sort of synthesis which Gueroult has in mind. As should be evident from the “Introduction,” I do not agree with Gueroult’s claim that “sovereign perfection and infinity does not rigorously define the essence of God, but arises from this essence insofar as it is constituted by an infinite infinity of eternal and infinite attributes” (Gueroult, Spinoza II – Dieu, 168), when Spinoza expressly claims God to be absolutely infinite in id6. 7 Ibid., 67. Ibid., 175. Gueroult discusses Hobbes and genetic definitions at length in both I and II, but see particularly Gueroult, Spinoza II – L’ˆame (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1972), 483–5.

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Both are mandated, to some extent, by passages in the PP (PP i:128). But how does this apply to the Ethics? Gueroult writes: On the one hand, they express that which we understand by such a word: in this sense they are nominal definitions; on the other hand, they describe that which the things are in themselves: in this sense, they are the definitions of things or true definitions. They are thus at once Definitions of words and Definitions of things.9

Gueroult illustrated this assertion with Spinoza’s primary example of the generative definition: If, for example, I say “I understand by a circle a figure produced by a straight line of which one extreme is fixed and the other moving,” I explicate that which I understand by the word circle: it is a nominal definition; and if at the same time I assert that it is the true nature of the circle: it is a definition of the thing. But, it is evident that a complete definition must be both at the same time.10

It is not exactly clear what Gueroult meant. Certainly it seems that, for Spinoza, definitions are “real” in the way Gueroult claims, that a true definition actually presents the nature or essence of some thing. And it also makes sense to say that a “nominal definition” explicates what is understood by the word “circle.” But what does it mean to say that a “complete definition” is both nominal and real? And is “a nominal definition” just a word attached to those mental sentences I associate with “circle” – a “nominal definition” in the narrowest sense – or is it what is generally commonly understood by “circle”? Regardless, the nominal and the real are united for Gueroult in genetic definition – and this seems quite correct as I will argue, although perhaps in a sense removed from Gueroult’s intentions.11 Gueroult treated genetic definition numerous times in his Spinoza volumes, and twice at some length, once in a general treatment of definitions in Book I and more thoroughly in his discussion of the “intuitive science” – iip45–7. It is treated twice because of the two sides of the issue, what genetic definitions are and how we know through and with them. The former question concerns the structure of a genetic definition and what it expresses. The latter concerns: 9 11

10 Ibid., 34. Gueroult, Spinoza I – Dieu, 33. Curley states: “I think we must quickly put to one side Gueroult’s suggestion that they are both real and nominal definitions. To say this would be to say both that a good definition must satisfy a condition of conformity to an object existing outside the intellect and also that it need not satisfy such a condition, but need only be internally consistent and consistently adhered to. And I do not see how any definition could be held, at one and the same time, to two incompatible sets of requirements,” (Curley, “Spinoza’s Geometric Method,” 159–60). Curley’s criticism is quite fair. I will respond to it below.

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the infinite or finite understanding, [which] knows God, not as an opaque fact (donn´e), but in his reason, and the things, not as just facts, but in their production by substance, and describes them, not externally, but according to their essence or their efficient cause. It follows that all his definitions are genetic.12

Thus, when the mind, whether finite or infinite, knows God and the things that arise from God according to their internal causes and essences, it knows them “genetically” – insofar as they arise from and are generated by their efficient causes. Gueroult believed Spinoza’s emphasis on definition in general to be an important divergence from Descartes, since Descartes had criticized the use of logical definitions “in an attempt to explain what was already very simple and evident” (Principles, i.10).13 Despite this, Cartesians did emphasize the importance of definition. Arnauld and Nicole discussed the need for philosophers to use explicit definitions14 but not for those things that are evident and need no definition. But certainly there is a drastic difference in emphasis between the Cartesians and Spinoza. Although there were many important terms that Spinoza left undefined, it is clear that he wished to define, explicitly, his most important metaphysical concepts, as opposed to recognize them as evident and undefineable. This is another feature of his philosophy that has much more in common with Hobbes and Bacon than with the Cartesians. h o b b e s , a r i s tot l e , a n d t h e a r i s tot e l i a n s o n definitions Spinoza’s way of treating definitions has four main sources. The first and most important source was the Hobbesian/Baconian way of treating definitions emphasized by Gueroult. A second somewhat less important source is to be found in the neo-Scholastic and Renaissance treatises on logic that Spinoza had in his library (Bartholomeus Kekkermann), and likely read (Franciscus Burgersdijk) or quoted (Adrian Heereboord). Burgersdijk and Heereboord were somewhat idiosyncratic Dutch neo-Scholastics who attempted to syncretically present a mixture of Scholasticism and the modern philosophy. The third source of Spinoza’s theory of definition is the Cartesians: Descartes, Arnauld, and Nicole, as well as Cartesio-Scholastics 12 13 14

Gueroult, Spinoza I – Dieu, 33. Descartes emphasized this consistently from the Regulae (AT x, 426) to the Search for Truth (AT x, 523). The first two rules of the method of the sciences were “Leave undefined no expression which is at all obscure or equivocal” and “In definitions use only those expressions which are perfectly understood or already explicated.”

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like Johannes Clauberg15 (whose works Spinoza owned and who influenced Spinoza’s friend Meyer’s Philosophia S. Scripturæ interpres) and the Hobbesio-Cartesian Velthuysen.16 The neo-Scholastics and Cartesians primarily influenced Spinoza’s theory of definitions negatively, they were a backdrop against which Spinoza developed his very different theory. A fourth and more remote source is to be found in Maimonides and Gersonides, but I will consider them only in passing as they seemed to have little impact on the more technical aspects of Spinoza’s theory of definition. Hobbes is the most important source of Spinoza’s theory of definition, and by far the greatest influence. Hobbes emphasized, in terms extremely similar to Spinoza’s, that scientific cognition is the understanding of effects through causes, in order, then to use causes to bring about desired effects. Describing the former, Hobbes wrote:17 How the cognition of an effect is acquired from cognition of a cause, is easily understood via the example of a circle. Given a roughly circular plane figure, it is difficult to tell whether or not it is a circle. But if the figure given is known through its generation, it is very easy to tell whether or not it is a circle. A figure is made by drawing one end of some body18 around the other end which remains fixed; thus we will be able to argue, this body drawn around is always joined first to one radius, then to another, then to a third, a fourth, and successively to each and every one; and therefore the same length touches the circumference everywhere from the same point. And thus it is understood that from this generation arises a figure where at each limit a radius touches one middle point. (DC i.5)

Genetic definitions should be the basis of proof because, “the goal of proof is the scientific knowledge of causes and the generations of things; and if this scientific knowledge is not in the definitions it cannot be in the conclusions 15 16

17 18

Catologus van de Bibliotheek, 28–9. On Clauberg see Theo Verbeek (ed.), Johannes Clauberg (1622–1665): and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999). Velthuysen was both an important popularizer of Hobbes, and a defender of Descartes. Cartesian and Hobbesian voluntarism fit together well (although this may seem odd to twentieth-century readers given that they are epistemologically at antipodes, and given the nastiness of Descartes’ replies to Hobbes’ Third Objections to the Meditations) within the avante-garde of Calvinist and Lutheran political theory. The most eminent example is Pufendorf (despite his numerous criticisms of Hobbes). Spinoza likely wished to have the favour of Velthuysen, who was horrified by the TTP to Spinoza’s great surprise. One wonders why Spinoza was surprised given Velthuysen’s voluntarist bent. On Velthuysen, see Catherine Secretan, “La r´eception de Spinoza aux Pays-Bas au XVIIe si`ecle,” Studia Spinoziana 3 (1987), 27–45. Spinoza seems to equate axioms and postulates (as opposed to postulates and definitions). See the “Postulates” after iip13. Hobbes’ discussion is quite clumsily written, given Hobbes’ rhetorical genius, as he is trying to present a particular anti-algebraic, constructivist account of geometry – that geometry concerns bodies. I have translated the passage quite loosely, but there is no way to get rid of (nor should one try) his constant use of the word “corporis.” This perhaps is not so surprising in a work called De Corpore.

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of the syllogism which is first built up from definitions” (DC i:73). Thus one builds up definitions ex cognitione generatione, as universal, compositive structures that allow us to generate and compose a wide range of artificial beings, figures, and notions, out of simpler notions and causes. We then may employ them to judge what a given thing is, and/or to know how and why it is. Obviously this theory eschews the diaretic mode of definition – i.e. defining a given being in terms of the genus/species hierarchy – that was employed by many “moderns” including Clauberg.19 Hobbes’ definitions are closer to the causal definitions arising from propter quid demonstrations discussed in Posterior Analytics. But there is an important difference. Aristotelian causal definitions arise from and are convertible with demonstrations. Hobbesian definitions are the basis for demonstrations. Genetic definitions are ideal for proofs, as they maintain causal connections at each stage of the syllogism or proof, and thus are able to show that the conclusion is caused and or generated by the premise. With genetic definitions the conclusion is both proof and pudding, so to speak. Traditionally, definitions are divided into two types, nominal and real (or essential), as seen in the discussion of Gueroult. As Arnauld and Nicole described it, nominal definitions were the provenance of the geometer, who operated with beings of reason, and thus stipulated and arbitrarily fixed nominal definitions in order that there could be no equivocation about their meanings.20 Nominal definitions were “nominal” insofar as they clearly set out what a name meant (as opposed to expressed the real essence of some thing). But according to Arnauld and Nicole, who emphasized the importance of nominal definitions in demonstration, even the geometers argued about the meaning and content of their supposedly secure nominal definitions. Obviously, one’s account of nominal definitions presupposes a theory of language, particularly of how words relate to and stand in for things, and an account of what sort of access nominal definitions give one to reality. A nominalist like Hobbes would limit all definitions to nominal definitions, understood to be conventionally agreed upon meanings of names that correspond to passions of the soul. This would deflate the pretensions of a science of universals that supposedly has some traction on “horseness” beyond this thing, the name horse, and the passion elicited in my soul. A 19

20

Johannes Clauberg, Logica: Vetus et Nova (Amsterdam: Elzevir, 1658), 127. Hobbes uses a diaretic procedure for the analysis of causes at DC iv.4. This method does not assume a pre-given genus and species hierarchy. Rather it appears to be derived from Zabarella’s regressus. See Spinoza’s criticism of definitions by genus and difference at KV i:7. Arnauld and Nicole, Logique ou L’Art de Penser, iv.4.

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realist might emphasize real definitions as over against nominal definitions and argue that each nominal definition is merely an imperfectly understood real definition. But the realist/nominalist distinction does not always mean either a great deal or quite what we think it does, even in the late Middle Ages.21 The dispute between a philosopher like Arnauld on the one side and Hobbes on the other concerns less what nominal definitions are than how important they are to knowledge and in what areas. For Arnauld, they are of limited but crucial importance in geometry, whether Cartesian or more traditional. For Hobbes, they are the basis of all understanding and what arises from it. Particularly in De Corpore, philosophy concerns two sorts of bodies: natural and civil. Natural bodies are considered in natural philosophy and civil bodies in civil philosophy, which is further subdivided into ethics and politics. Logic and method primarily deal with clarifying, organizing, and structuring language such that one clarifies, organizes, and constrains the bodies that are named by words. Whoever controls language, controls this process, and organizes and constrains bodies, civic and natural. By creating nominal definitions, and they must be nominal definitions in order to be mutable, one can constrain meanings in such a way as to generate a well-regulated, productive polity. One might wonder whether or not the distinction between real and nominal definitions, although important for Hobbes, Arnauld and Nicole, and the Cartesian and syncretic logicians gives us much purchase on Spinoza’s account of genetic definitions. Spinoza does not use this terminology. But, even if the terminology does not apply, the question is still important – does Spinoza view his definitions as nominal or real?22 First we need to examine genetic, causal definitions more carefully. The emphasis on causal definitions is as old as the first systematic theory of definition: Aristotle’s account of scientific definitions in the Posterior Analytics. Even the emphasis on efficient causal generation is not particularly original to Hobbes. It can be found to some extent in Bacon’s Forms, likely 21 22

See Gyula Klima, “Buridan’s Theory of Definitions in his Scientific Practice,” at http://www. fordham.edu/gsas/phil/klima/Burdef.htm. In a more general way we might say that Hobbes and Spinoza respectively seem to provide nominal and real variants on a shared genetic theory of definition. This is reflected in the ways that they define circles. Hobbes defines “circle” via experiences of sensible bodies. A circle is “a figure made by drawing one end of some body around the other end which remains fixed.” Spinoza’s definition is far more abstract and assumes no sensible particulars: “a circle is the space which is described by a line of which one end is fixed and the other moveable.” But, despite their drastically different theories of cause, both philosophers consider the mark of the adequacy of their respective definitions of the circle to be whether it gives the cause. So we must think about what it is that makes a causal definition causal.

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a major influence on Hobbes’ theory (even if Hobbes’ experience as Bacon’s secretary was not a pleasant one). But Hobbes, in locating the principles of generation in the definition, made methodologically explicit (via the use of genetic definitions) what was implicit in Bacon, that to know something was to organize it in such a way that it could be constructed by human method. As Hobbes states about philosophy as such: “The end or scope of philosophy is, that we are able to use previously observed effects for our benefit” (DC i.6): scientia propter potentiam (DC i.6). Hobbes seems to assume that there is one best genetic definition of a given thing, but this is not a necessary consequence of his theory. In a surprising discussion of Adam he makes an additional, important point. “A solitary can be a philosopher without a teacher. Adam was able to be one. But to teach, that is to demonstrate, assumes two, and syllogistic speech” (DC iv.11). According to Hobbes’ theory we may discover various propositions in a solitary manner, but we need explicit definitions when we demonstrate, and thus attempt to communicate and teach. Consequently, the “definition” sits in between the “analytic” Adamic investigation, and the “synthetic” post-Fall demonstration. Where, then, does the necessity lie in the definition? For Hobbes the necessity of a proposition is understood primarily in terms of the traditional identity of subject and predicate, an analytical necessity. Hobbes emphasizes that a proposition like “if X then Y” can be eternal and necessary even if X and Y do not exist, and this hypothetical necessity is the primary form of necessity.23 Hypothetically, necessary propositions ultimately rest on first principles as propositions and definitions capable of generating knowledge and power. Hobbes argues that these first principles arise from an analytical procedure that begins with the senses and moves to speculative knowledge through a process of resolution. Once discovered, the definition becomes the basis for a synthetic procedure that allows philosophy to be communicated to others, and to attain the goal of using definitions to organize and constrain bodies and citizens to and for productive ends. This is different (but perhaps not as different as one might expect) from the Cartesian picture, where analysis is communicable but only to a select few, and synthesis is necessary to popularize truths sanctioned by and communicable through analysis alone. Although Spinoza is in general agreement with much of this Hobbesian picture, and although it seems evident that much of Spinoza’s own theory 23

For Hobbes, all propositions are definitional, and, conversely, all definitions are also propositions. Definitions are just those propositions which function in a syllogistic chain as primary anchors (DC iii.9).

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as presented in the TIE is derived from it (or a parallel source), there are cardinal points of disagreement. For Spinoza, the first principles on which a method rests could not be derived from the senses, as they would ultimately be derived from the imagination or first kind of knowledge, and consequently they would be inadequate. Nor could a definition be hypothetically eternal and necessary in the sense that Hobbes advocates. Nor could the definition be primarily a nominal and linguistic entity as it is for Hobbes (to be discussed in the next section). Consequently genetic definitions must have a different source, which would result in a different account both of their generativity and of their necessity. spinoza on definition Given Hobbes’ theory of genetic definitions, let us now begin to consider Spinoza’s account of definitions as it is found in the TIE (which I have already quoted above) and in Spinoza’s letters. There is little explicit treatment of definition in the Ethics, excepting a brief discussion at IP852. I am assuming, in using the theory of definition as presented in the TIE to explicate the Ethics, that Spinoza did not alter his theory substantially. The one example of possible substantial change is Spinoza’s emphasis on causal definitions of the highest sorts of beings in the Ethics, as opposed to his denial that the highest sorts of beings are defined through causes in the TIE. But, as I noted, this distinction can be construed as between definitions of things with external causes and the highest sorts of beings which have no external causes and only internal ones (which is the same thing in beings whose essence involves existence). At iiip4 Spinoza counterposes determination by external causes with the definition that “affirms the essence of the thing itself, but does not negate.” Consequently “affirmation” seems interchangeable with internal causation. I can see no further evidence that he did alter his theory, and strong counterevidence that he chose to distribute the TIE late in his career, and espoused doctrines about definition similar to those presented in the TIE throughout the 1660s and 1670s. Thus the assumption seems relatively uncontroversial to me, but must be noted. In the TIE Spinoza laid out the following schema of definitions. The goal of a method requires that we conceive of a thing either through its essence alone, or through its proximate causes. If a thing is said to be causa sui or in se (TIE 92),24 then it should be understood through its essence alone. 24

This passage is of great importance for interpreting the Ethics: (1) because Spinoza explicitly identifies in se and causa sui; (2) causa sui is described as vulgo, or a common concept.

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The idea that one might have a perfect definition of infinite things went against the arguments of many of his contemporaries, including the theory of definition proposed by the Calvinist neo-Scholastic Burgersdijk (whose logical works Spinoza owned and almost certainly read).25 As we have seen it was also ruled out by Hobbes, but not necessarily by the Cartesians. To argue that infinite things have the most perfect definitions is extremely radical, it implies that the essential definitions of infinite beings are fully rationally accessible. If a thing is not in se, and if it requires some cause for its existence (whether external or otherwise), then its cause, or causa proxima, must be given. And conversely, if we acquire more perfect knowledge of the effect through the cause, we also gain more perfect knowledge of the cause. Spinoza goes on to say, in a footnote: Note, that by this it appears that nothing of Nature is able to be understood by us, which does not conversely render more ample [our] cognition of the first cause, or God. (TIE 92 n.f.)

Scientia provides definitions both of things that are causa sui (if you accept my argument that the TIE and the Ethics are basically consistent on this point) and things that have causes external to them. In the case of knowledge of things with external causes – causal definitions – we learn both about the definiens (the defining cause) and the definiendum (that which is defined through or by the cause). This also holds of the definition of God. Thus, the method which Spinoza describes provides us with greater knowledge of even causa sui things (or thing), through understanding their effects. A substance has an essential definition that posits no causes external to the substance itself. Modes are defined via their proximate causes, which must be substances or attributes if we are to show the necessity in the modes. But this does not mean that a mode relates to substance in such a way that it tells us nothing about substance. As Spinoza famously put it at vp24: “The more we understand singular things, the more we understand God”. As I have previously noted, this proposition is very controversial. It seems clear that Spinoza does not mean that all knowledge of modes results in 25

Burgersdijk described perfect definitions as explicating what a thing is in itself, and then immediately remarked that we cannot have perfect definitions of any infinite thing, much less of God (Franciscus Burgersdijk, Institutiones Logicorum Libri Duo [Amsterdam: Joannem Ravestinium, 1665], 150). Spinoza’s general framework (although obviously not its content) conflicts less with the more moderate Calvinist neo-Scholastic Heereboord, who advocated an innatist account of the idea of God in line with other aspects of the reformed tradition. See H. A. Krop “Natural knowledge of God in neo-Aristoteliaism,” in E. P. Bos and H. A. Krop (eds.), Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635) (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi BV, 1993), 81–2.

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a knowledge of substance, but only a particular sort (which I will discuss in the final chapter). Furthermore this does not mean that this knowledge enters into the definition of God, but rather we, humans and worms, learn something about God, and God’s definition, via this understanding. Why definitions and not axioms? In the TIE Spinoza emphasized that universal axioms (TIE 93)26 are incapable of determining us to the contemplation of one singular essence or another. Rather we need to discover definitions of singular things upon which the axioms can operate27 in order to form thoughts from some particular affirmative essence or from a true and legitimate definition. Only then will we be able to discuss particular things and their causes, and refer them back to the first cause.28 This does not mean that axioms are unimportant in comparison with definitions, they are extremely important, but ultimately they depend on definitions for any sort of “traction” they have on actual things. We are used to thinking of axioms, for example in axiomatic set theory, as fundamental and definitions as of far less importance, but for Spinoza axioms are literally subordinate to definitions insofar as they arise from common features of beings that have essences and definitions. For example Spinoza would have to view “All bodies move or are at rest” (iip13a1) as deriving from the definition of the IIM of motion and rest in the attribute of extension. This would be the case for all other axioms as well: there is evidence for this at iip40s1 (ii120) were Spinoza assumes that axioms are founded on secondary notions or general concepts. If this is the case, as it appears to be, then the better we understand axioms the better we understand the definitions from which they derive (and vice versa). Therefore, because definitions are more fundamental than axioms in the sense outlined above, it is very important that we have good definitions, 26

27

28

This changes somewhat in the Ethics where common notions have a more fundamental role, but we still do not derive individuals directly from them. On the normative status of common notions see Yirmiyahu Yovel, “The Second Kind of Knowledge and the Removal of Error,” in Y. Yovel and G. Segal (eds.), Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 93–110. Steenbakkers has noted that this differentiates Spinoza’s method from a modern axiomatic system like ZF (Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory), and thus implicitly criticizes authors like Joel Friedmann (see “An Overview of Spinoza’s Ethics,” Synthese 37:1 [1978], 67–106) and Charles Jarrett (see “The Logical Structure of Spinoza’s Ethics, Part I,” Synthese 37:1 [1978], 15–65) who have attempted to give axiomatic presentations of Spinoza’s Ethics. Although I agree that the Ethics is not an axiomatic system like ZF set theory (but for rather different reasons) it is not because of the importance of definitions. Set theory has objects that are organized into sets, and one can and does restrict ranges of objects and sets. One also defines objects. Steenbakkers is correct though that for Spinoza the definitions are fundamental and the axioms are dependent on them, where the converse is true in a modern axiomatic system. See Piet Steenbakkers, Spinoza’s Ethica From Manuscript to Print (Aachen: Van Gorcum, 1994). Hobbes is, again, quite similar on this point.

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definitions that explicate the most intimate (intimam) recesses of the thing. If we say that a circle is the figure that is defined by having only equal lines drawn from the center to the circumference, we know little about the circle (TIE 34).29 It may not matter much for some sorts of mathematics (although it probably does), but if we ignore it in physics, geometry, and metaphysics “we shall undermine (pervertemus) the necessary connection of the intellect, which ought to refer to the connections of nature.”30 The force of Spinoza’s claim (pervertemus) is surprising given the apparent similarity between this definition that Spinoza rules out and the definition he embraces in the earlier letter to Tschirnhaus, that “a circle is the space which is described by a line of which one end is fixed and the other moveable.” The difference between these two definitions lies in the fact that Euclid’s definition only describes the circle, Spinoza’s definition provides the means of generation, and consequently the proximate cause of any given circle.31 Furthermore, following Hobbes, it is generative since it is able to provide the conditions of circlehood, so we might see if a given closed, convex figure satisfies the conditions. A definition must also: require that all properties of the thing, when it is examined alone, and not conjoined with others, are able to be concluded from it, as it is seen in the definition of the circle. (TIE 96)32

This condition is the one that troubled Tschirnhaus in his letter to Spinoza. The legitimate definition of the circle is such that all properties of the 29 30

31

32

This is Euclid’s definition of the circle (Elements, ID15). “Concatenatio” is translated by Curley as “connection” (CW 39). This is the only reasonable way to translate it (as far as I can tell) but it fails to distinguish it from connexio which Spinoza uses in the formulation of iip7. Concatenatio has the sense of linking together, and thus emphasizes the active, creative aspect of method, the mind’s linking together of ideas and natures, as opposed to a connection which we passively receive. Another example of Spinoza’s ruling out of non-genetic definitions is his criticism of Borelli’s figurals: “I shall take Borelli’s example. Suppose someone says ‘Let two straight lines enclosing a space be called figurals.’ If he understands by a straight line what everyone understands by a curved line, then his definition will be a good one, provided he does not subsequently understand [by it] squares and other figures . . . But if by a straight line he understands what we commonly understand, the thing is completely inconceivable. So it is no definition. Borelli whose opinion you are inclined to embrace, confuses all these things completely” (Letter IX; CW 194–5) The passage from the TIE could be referring to any sort of “other,” as aliis is a dative plural, and the ending is the same irrespective of gender. Spinoza has often been accused of having bad Latin, because his constructions are very simple, and he tends to use a word order in his sentences not far removed from contemporary Dutch. Using the simplest word order, aliis would refer to other properties of a thing.

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circle,33 including Euclid’s definition of the circle, can be concluded out of it without recourse to anything beyond the properties of the circle. We might immediately object, there are countless facts about circles that cannot be derived from this definition. But there are a number of qualifications that must be kept in mind. First, in Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus’ question, he admits that only a few properties of mathematical or geometrical figures can be derived from a given definition. Second, there are many aspects of circles, particular circles of particular sizes for example, that Spinoza would discount by saying that number is external to the essence or definition of the circle (ei8s2), and whatever “circleness” said particular circle has is ultimately reducible to the definition. Third, and most controversially, Spinoza does not rule out the use of axioms in conjunction with the definitions of the circle, he is rather claiming that no other definition is necessary. It might be responded that in order to understand a particular given feature of a circle we might need to construct a tangent line or inscribe the circle. It seems that Spinoza would allow this – the definition does not rule it out – but would add that once a property of the circle is discovered it would have to be concluded out of the definition of the circle or it would be a definition of a circle and the definition of another figure, and consequently not a unique property of the definition of the circle. Spinoza adds the following qualification to this theory of definition: Every definition must be affirmative. I mean intellectual affirmation – it matters little whether the definition is verbally affirmative; because of the poverty of language it will sometimes perhaps, [only] be able to be expressed negatively, although it is understood affirmatively. (TIE 35)

This signals a great divergence from Hobbes. For Hobbes, philosophy is entirely intertwined with language as a consequence of the arbitrary imposition of names on things. Even truth and falsity do not exist independent of language (DC iii.8). For Spinoza, human language is just, at best, a pointing toward ideas that have all of their basic features (truth, adequacy, content, etc.) independent of language.34 A good definition as written or spoken in a natural language can at best point toward an idea, 33

34

Curley notes that perhaps Spinoza meant proprium, a property which all and only members of a species have, as opposed to proprietas or property (CW 652). It would be far easier to see how proprium might arise from a definition. Unfortunately Spinoza uses proprietas. This does not mean that thought does not have a logical structure; it does. Nor that there is not some sort of “language of thought” a` la Fodor, perhaps there is and perhaps that is what human language is pointing toward in a mutilated way. There is a long tradition of “mental-word” theory, of which Hobbes’ theory of mind is a nominalist variant.

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but the recognition of the idea to which the words point involves something quite different. Does the mind to which the word is pointing already have this idea? Steenbakkers remarks, after Jaspers, that “whoever is not a convinced Spinozist can simply ignore all the ‘cogently’ deductive proofs.” While this may be a bit overstated, it is certainly true that the proofs will mean nothing to one who does not already have the ideas in a manner sufficiently clear that they are able to recognize their ideas in Spinoza’s words.35 Hobbes concluded his discussion of the thoroughly pervasive nature of language with the remark: “Speech has something similar to spiders’ webs: for they stick in the words and the most squeamish and tender minds are ensnared, the strong however break through” (DC iii.8). Although the metaphor is confusing as a description of Hobbes’ philosophy of language,36 it is, with slight modification, appropriate for Spinoza. Much as was the case for Bacon and Descartes whose theories of language Spinoza’s own theory (as minimal as it is) closely resembles and derives from,37 language is a snare. It is a snare, though, which is useful for fixing and pointing to ideas, provided one admits its gossamer thinness and its stickiness.38 If definitions cannot be ultimately rooted in language (as they are for Hobbes), what then gives them sanction? At the root of all caused beings is the prima causa (or the uncreated thing of the TIE).39 Insofar as all definitions give a cause of the thing defined, that cause, too, must have a definition. The cause, in turn, must either be something not in need of definition, or have a cause in need of definition. We are led consequently to either an infinite regress or to definitions that have their causes 35

36 37 38

39

Parkinson notes, “I suggest, on the other hand, that Spinoza assumes that, before they read the Ethics, his readers already have some kind of knowledge of the truth of the proposition” (G. H. R. Parkinson, “Definition, Essence, and Understanding in Spinoza,” in J. A. Cover and Mark Kulstad [eds.], Central themes in Early Modern Philosophy: Essays Presented to Jonathan Bennett [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1990], 64). I owe the genesis of my own interpretation of method, and emphasis on the importance of the TIE in understanding the method, to this essay (as well as to the work of Edwin Curley). The metaphor is confusing in Hobbes as we ultimately burst through the spider web to language. So, from the spider web to another perhaps more useful web. See Marcelo Dascal, “Leibniz and Spinoza: Language and Cognition,” Studia Spinoziana 6 (1990), 119. This has an important consequence for a theory of toleration. Insofar as we can never be quite sure what ideas correspond to speeches, we need to be extremely liberal about the speeches we allow, and only ban them on the basis of empirical and pragmatic negative results – sedition or crowing “Fire” in a crowded movie theater. Of course, as Hobbes would likely point out, this is easier said than done, but see TTP XVII. Later Spinoza eschews the created, uncreated language, or reduces it to just causation. The fact that God is uncreated might lead to the idea that God is uncaused. I think, though, that by “uncaused” here Spinoza again means not having an external cause.

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internal to them or at the very least are affirmative in such a manner as to need no external cause. For Spinoza, the definition of an uncreated being ought to: 1 exclude all causes, and require only its own being to explicate it; 2 make all questions as to whether or not a thing is, extraneous; 3 be explained without recourse to abstractions and only through substantives which cannot be converted into adjectives; 4 be constructed such that all properties of the thing defined can be inferred from the definition (TIE 97). The fourth criterion is very similar to the second given in the definition of the created thing. The first is the negation of the first criterion given in the definition of the created thing (although with the caveat I have previously noted). The third criterion is strange, but very important for understanding Spinoza’s theory of definition. De Dijn has taken (3) to rule out the use of words like “infinite,” “good,” and “perfect” in defining God.40 Spinoza is likely ruling out “good” and “perfect” (insofar as they are also adjectives). He seems to have a particular aspect of Latin in mind with this criterion, that one can use an adjective like bonus also as a substantive in the plural, i.e., boni, the good (ones). Spinoza wants to rule out such usages since they are not grounded in any existent thing, but rather are substantives constituted from abstract, “universal” categories that have no grounding in metaphysics. This also explains one of Spinoza’s stranger definitions, id8. Although it is not entirely clear what Spinoza means by, “By eternity I understand existence itself, insofar as it is conceived to follow necessarily from the definition alone of the eternal thing” (CW 409), the form of the definition follows directly from this stricture. One might think that “eternity” means something in and of itself in the same way as “infinity.” But “eternity” only means something insofar as it refers to that being which is eternal, and more particularly the way in which “existence itself” follows from the definition of the eternal thing. Thus “eternity” only has meaning qua its referent. Now, given that these are the ingredients that go into a definition of an uncreated thing, we might think about whether or not the eight definitions that Spinoza presented us with at the beginning of the Ethics satisfy them. Both d2 (“finite in kind”) and d5 (“mode”) are clearly definitions of created things. d8 (“eternity”) violates the third criterion (as discussed above), although “eternal thing” likely does not. d7 (“that thing is called free”) could be considered a definition of an uncreated thing. It gives no cause 40

Helman De Dijn, Spinoza: The Way to Wisdom (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue, 1996), 158.

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beyond itself, but the word “free” is equivocal in the same sense as eternity, and the definition of the “free thing” is coupled to the definition of the “necessary” thing, which is describing being caused as such. There are four remaining definitions which might be considered definitions of uncreated things: God, substance, attribute, and causa sui. Of these four, two, that of substance and attribute are included in one: God. This is why Gueroult considers the definition of God to be the only real definition of an “uncreated” being. And then there is the definition of causa sui. As previously noted, Spinoza refers to the expression causa sui as vulgo in the TIE, and identifies it with “in-itselfness.” He does not define it in the Ethics as “in-itselfness” but rather as “that the essence of which involves existence, or that, the essence of which is not able to be conceived, unless as existing,” (id1). This definition is the crux of ip7, which identifies causa sui with substance and thus shows that it “pertains to the nature of substance to exist.” Ip7 is the proposition that Spinoza points to as a would-be axiom for those who are able to distinguish substance from its modifications (ip8s2). Ip7 is also the basis for ip11, the proof of God’s existence. Should we rule out “causa sui” on the basis of criterion 3, that it can be used adjectivally? Although “eternal” can apply to the infinite modes “causa sui” cannot – as previously noted the essence of eternal modes does not involve existence and thus they fail to satisfy the definition. Furthermore, although it is not part of d6, unlike substance and attribute, it is the “property” of God which allows us to prove God to exist, and thus to satisfy the second criterion above (ip11). Thus it is very difficult to rule out either as a definition of an uncreated thing (despite the expression being vulgo), or as an integral part of the definition of God, since it is that property of God from which arises the evident existence of the definiendum. a p re l i m i n a ry re s p o n s e to ts c h i r n h au s ’ qu e s t i o n There is a further reason for not ruling out causa sui, which returns us to Tschirnhaus’ objection, the problem which opened this chapter. Given what we now know about definitions and the ways in which they are to be understood as genetic and causal, it is high time to consider whether Spinoza responds to Tschirnhaus’ question “at its most important point.” Or is he merely avoiding it? G. H. R. Parkinson, sees this point as pivotal to understanding the inadequacies inherent in Spinoza’s method. As is clear from Spinoza’s response, Spinoza accepts Tschirnhaus’ objection as applied to beings of reasons,

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mathematicals, etc., but not as it applies to real things. Parkinson concludes that: the implications of Ep. 83 are that things do not follow from God in the same way that the theorems of mathematics follow from definitions and axioms; that, in other words, the Ethics presents in mathematical dress a system which is not strictly mathematical. Two main problems arise. First, what is the nature of this system? When Spinoza insists on the importance of deduction, going so far as to say that all things can be deduced from God, what exactly does he mean? Second how (in the light of what is shown of the nature of Spinoza’s system) is the “geometrical order” to be interpreted?41

Parkinson judges the method as in some ways appropriate, but more basically misguided and based on a misunderstanding of the distinction between analytic and synthetic a-priori truths, later to be clarified by Leibniz.42 He judges this misunderstanding to arise from Spinoza’s misguided desire to explain in what sense modes follow from God, and in particular how modes follow from the definition of God according to his poor analogy with mathematical deduction. Spinoza was thus unable to answer Leibniz’s friend Tschirnhaus. But the most interesting fact about Spinoza’s response goes unobserved by Parkinson (and any other interpreter I know of ). Spinoza writes that God’s properties can be deduced “out of this alone, that I define God to be a being to whose essence pertains existence.” Now, as we have seen from our survey of the definitions which open the Ethics, this is not the definition of God, but the definition of causa sui, with the replacement of“ involvit” in the original definition with“ pertinet” ! God is undoubtedly causa sui, as God is a substance, but the fact that substance is causa sui is not demonstrated until ip7! And it is here that Spinoza describes existence as pertaining to the nature of substance as opposed to involving it. Hence my trepidation in ruling out causa sui as a candidate for the second sort of definition described by Spinoza. What to make of this odd state of affairs? I think it is safe to conclude that if I know what the definition of God is then so did Spinoza, and it is safe to conclude that he knew what he wrote in the Ethics. Philosophers had far better memories, in general, in the seventeenth century than they do today, since their educations emphasized memorizing long passages from classical texts. This was likely part of Spinoza’s education at Franciscus van 41 42

G. H. R. Parkinson, Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 72–3. Ibid., 90.

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den Enden’s academy. Spinoza was ill when he responded to Tschirnhaus, but there are no signs of illness in his otherwise alert response. This ought to lead us to ask whether id6 is the generative definition of God that Gueroult sought. Up to ip16 (the proposition initiating Tschirnhaus’ question) the only definitions that Spinoza employed were id1 (causa sui), id3 (substance), id5 (attributes) and id6 (God). Of these, id3 and id5 enter directly into the definition of id6. Id1 perhaps also enters into id6 if one considers Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus above. If this is the case, then Spinoza’s attitude toward definition seems to be thoroughly circular, he seems to be justifying the choice of his definition by saying: “By the way, this too was part of the definition at the time and you didn’t realize it.” Or, worse still, his supposedly neutral definitions have so many presuppositions built into them that one must swallow the system hook, line, and sinker to enter (as Jaspers claimed). If we take Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus seriously, and combine it with a number of features of Spinoza’s discussion of definitions, then we have the following state of affairs. The definitions offered at the beginning of the work are the definitions of those things that they claim to define. But they are also definitions written in language for the purpose of communicating to those with like ideas.43 As this is the case, they are written in highly abstract terminology that can at best point to ideas which others already have, either in a partial or confused manner or adequately. If they have these ideas only in a partial and confused manner – which would likely be the case for many readers – then these readers will either draw a confused understanding from the definitions, or need to find a way to better understand the definitions. As many readers of Spinoza have noted, much of Spinoza’s language is traditional. In fact, the one definition we might immediately think not to be, causa sui, is according to Spinoza vulgo. The expression causa sui, the definition and Spinoza’s appraisal of it are likely derived from the Third Meditation (AT vii, 34), from Arnauld’s objection (AT vii, 208) and from Descartes’ unconvincing reply (AT vii, 242–3). The rest of the definitions use language that was common coin of Scholastics and Cartesio-Scholastics. Some even use terms, like “in suo genere” which Spinoza will bring into question later in the Ethics. Spinoza also clearly viewed terminology as something which is redefined through careful examination – for example 43

Spinoza emphasized this point a number of times over the course of the Ethics, but particularly in the latter stages of Book IV in his discussions of the free man (ivp70–1).

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his redefining of “perfection,” “will,” “possibility,” et alii. Other of his terms are highly conventional, at least at first glance. The definitions of “substance” and “attribute” provide good examples of this. It is difficult to look at Spinoza’s definition of substance with a na¨ıve eye. But let us attempt to do so. It reads: By substance I understand that, which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: i.e. that, the concept of which does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.

The definition is extremely ambiguous. There is nothing in the definition which would allow us to say whether this is a Cartesian substance (as Curley and Gueroult emphasized)44 or an Aristotelian separate substance. Given the definition, one could imagine a multiplicity of substances, until this option is ruled out. It could even be an Aristotelian singular, underlying subject of predication of the Categories ontology (i.e. things are said of it but it is not said of anything). All we know is that it is in itself (however we are to take that, metaphysically, ontologically, logically, or epistemically), conceived through itself, and its concept does not refer to the concept of another.45 Spinoza defined attribute as: That which the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence.

This definition has led to a great deal of controversy, about whether or not the attributes are to be understood as objective or subjective (given they are the perceptions of an intellect).46 Although Spinoza ultimately wishes to show us that attributes provide us with the objective essence of substance, this is not evident from the definition itself. 44

45 46

Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics (Princeton University Press, 1988), 6–9. The general argument strategy I am emphasizing is consistent with and ultimately derived from Curley’s arguments concerning Descartes (although my justifications via the accounts of definition and the geometrical method are my own). Curley, in turn, draws on Gueroult’s arguments concerning substances of one attribute, as Gueroult also wished to argue that Spinoza provides an immanent criticism of Cartesianism (Gueroult, Spinoza I – Dieu, ch. 3). As Curley notes: “If we can show that the Cartesian metaphysic leads by plausible steps to the Spinozistic one, then we will have shown that a very natural way of looking at the world is contained in the seeds of Spinozism” (8). Ultimately Spinoza wants to show that all metaphysics are Spinozistic metaphysics and all cognition has within it the seeds of Spinozism (insofar as it includes an adequate idea of God). This way of thinking about philosophy, that all philosophers draw on the same metaphysics (if confusedly), is exemplified by Aristotle, Metaphysics, α 1, 993a–b. Thanks to Johannes Fritsche and Ken Bronfenbrenner for help with this crucial point. See Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), i:146. See also Gueroult’s convincing attack on the subjectivist interpretation in Gueroult, Spinoza I – Dieu, 429–61 and a partial defense of the subjectivist intepretation in Charles Jarrett, “Some Remarks on the ‘Objective’ and ‘Subjective’ Interpretations of the Attributes.”

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In the CM Spinoza rules out Heereboord’s distinction between communicable and incommunicable attributes. The distinction holds between those attributes that are found in creatures and God and those that are found only in the deity. In considering this distinction, Spinoza claims that “God’s knowledge agrees no more with human knowledge than the Dog that is a heavenly constellation agrees with the dog that is a barking animal” (CM ii.12). But Spinoza’s censure of Heereboord’s distinction is not built into the definition he presents in the Ethics, since it is sufficiently ambiguous as to describe both God’s intellect perceiving his own incommunicable attributes and our intellect’s apprehension of communicable divine attributes. This is not to say that all interpretations of attributes are countenanced. One must assume that these concepts can be defined to begin with (a consequence of Spinoza’s high causal rationalism), and many did not (and do not) believe God, in particular, can be defined. Maimonides even denied that divine attributes can express the essence of God, and claimed that attributes describe God’s acts.47 If attributes say anything about the divine essence, they only describe our distance from God’s true nature.48 But, note that even in denying the applicability of attributes to God, Maimonides still maintains that attributes are the sort of things that express essence. So, oddly, Spinoza differs less from Maimonides on the theory of attributes than on what it means for God to have attributes.49 And the expression of attributes is also ambiguous enough to take into account more prosaic attributes much as was the case for the theory of substance. Clauberg provides multiple senses of attributes in the Logica. All the different senses of attribute share the core sense that “a thing is understood through its attribute, [which is] positive, absolute, and proper.”50 The most important of the attributes is the “essential” attribute “through which a thing is, and is that which it is.”51 Spinoza’s theory is, on the surface, perfectly consistent with Clauberg’s theory of the essential attribute (and the other sorts of attributes could be explained as modes). For Spinoza the examples that Clauberg gives of essential attributes – “Humanity is the essence of man, Deity of God”52 – would leave something to be desired. 47 49

50

48 Ibid, i:58. Maimonides, Guide, i:54. As previously noted, there is often a symmetry between Spinoza’s philosophical tenets and Maimonides’. When Spinoza claims, “God’s knowledge agrees no more with human knowledge than the Dog that is a heavenly constellation agrees with the dog that is a barking animal,” this on the surface sounds very much like Maimonides. Spinoza, of course, just means that God agrees very little with the way humans imagine him. For Spinoza, our understanding of God results in a revision of how we understand ourselves, for Maimonides there is no revision. 51 Ibid., i.vi.44. 52 Ibid. Clauberg, Logica, i.v.

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Even Descartes gives his definition of attribute as “when we are simply thinking in a more general way of what is in a substance, we use the term attribute . . . [w]e do not, strictly speaking, say that there are modes or qualities in God, but simply attributes, since in the case of God, any variation is unintelligible” (Principles i.56, AT viiia, 26). Of course Descartes will immediately make various qualifications on this initial definition, but the idea, that an attribute presents in a very general way what is in a substance (by which Descartes understands what the substance is), is perfectly consistent with Spinoza’s definition. This brings us back to the central definition: God. I will discuss the definition of God at greater length below in relation to the problem of the causal nature of the genetic definition. But pace Parkinson, Gueroult, and many others, many of the definitions are surprisingly vague and uncontroversial, and not terribly specific to Spinoza (much the less one thinker or a group of thinkers). It does not follow on the other hand, that we should view them like Wolfson as merely traditional,53 for, although clearly derived from the tradition, Spinoza will use them in ways which are hard to countenance with the existing philosophical tradition. Rather, they are vague definitions with broad extensions that include many of Spinoza’s predecessors – at least in their initial formulations. They are also, crucially, broad enough to engage a number of philosophers who are relatively likeminded, and have some commerce with philosophical vocabulary, to enter a philosophical system built on these premises. This is, of course, one of the stated goals of Part IV of the Ethics, to show free men that it is in their best interest to come into intellectual commerce with one another and to live together (ivp70). Where did Spinoza get them? I think much in the way described by Zabarella and Hobbes, he moved from vague concepts – many different ways of thinking about substance or attributes – to vague causes, inclusive “universal” definitions of important metaphysical concepts that many philosophers held. This is not included in the Ethics, but it is really something any of us could do, there is nothing terribly mysterious about it. That Spinoza can do it of course hinges on the assumption that philosophical language points, however confusedly, to real metaphysical features of nature.54 These general definitions then need to be clarified in order that they become genetic definitions. This is another sort of analysis or resolutiva for both Spinoza and Hobbes, but in Spinoza’s case I submit the analysis 53 54

See, for example, the “Introduction” to Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 3–31. I will justify this claim in the next section of this chapter.

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is internal to the geometrical method. Via the process of emendation described in previous chapters we get at the adequate ideas that underlie many of our confused philosophical thoughts. And, finally, there is synthesis or compositiva, the illative force present in the deductive aspect of the method as our minds draw consequences from our emended ideas. Yet, this appears to jibe poorly with what Spinoza had stated to Tschirnhaus, that the definition of a real thing, when taken singly, should result in a deduction of all its properties. So how does one move from these broad definitions to the controversial claims that ensue from them? And how does one explain the supposed capacity of perfect definitions to deduce an apparently inexhaustible quantity of properties (in the case of the definitions of uncreated things)? Curley states the problem clearly: Now consider Spinoza’s definitions of substance and God. These are supposed to account for the known properties of substance and God, and to be judged as better than alternative definitions in large part because they do so. But in fact Spinoza thinks people have very mistaken ideas about substance and God. They think that there can be more than one substance of the same kind. They attribute to God purposes which he cannot have, as well as all sorts of other anthropomorphic properties. So in the two cases that matter most, there simply is not a list of agreed properties that Spinoza’s definitions can undertake to account for. Spinoza really wants to radically revise our conception of the nature of the things he is discussing. But the revision is so radical that his definitions no longer seem to be alternative definitions of the same thing. Whereas the two definitions of the circle picked out the same class of geometric objects, Spinoza’s definition of substance does not pick out the same thing as more traditional definitions. Ordinary finite things, which on traditional definitions of substance turn out to be substances, are not, on Spinoza’s definition, substances.55

I think Curley is certainly right that Spinoza means us eventually to pick out things that are different from the traditional definitions. But Spinoza also means us initially to agree to the definitions, at least some of the most crucial ones, by virtue of their vagueness and breadth. This is the wedge into the process of emendation. The definitions that open Part I are broad enough and in suitably vague and traditional enough language that, when we first read them, they include a multiplicity of ways of understanding the definiendum (including likely our preferred ones), while only excluding those definitions which are antithetical to rational explanation (like Maimonides’ account of the attributes). It is also in keeping 55

Curley, “Spinoza’s Geometric Method,” 165.

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with a basic tenet of Spinoza’s theory of knowledge that I have emphasized throughout, that falsity is mutilated and confused adequacy or truth. Spinoza assumes that whatever is true in the content of many false definitions and inadequate ideas (and this only includes some definitions, some are just wrong – i.e., God is that frog) rests on a core adequate idea and true definition. However, this does not mean that from a given false claim we can reconstitute the true perspective on which the inadequate idea is a false and mutilated variant. This would imply that the particular true perspective is included in the false one and, if that were the case, it would be an adequate idea. As I have emphasized throughout, the adequate idea of God is in some sense included with every idea, adequate or inadequate, but we cannot reconstruct the particular determinate features of an adequate idea from an inadequate idea. Instead we have to get rid of the perplexity that arises from and relates to our false cognition by discovering those true perspectives that the false and mutilated perspectives only glimpse partially (vp3).56 To summarize so far, Spinoza’s definitions are broad enough to include a variety of perspectives adequate and inadequate, and a variety of ways of thinking about philosophical concepts. The main concepts which he employs – substance, mode, attribute, essence, God, eternity, etc. – are the stock and trade of metaphysics and philosophy. In employing them Spinoza is trying to include a wide variety of rational perspectives, and communicate a philosophy which claims to be the core set of rational philosophical commitments which numerous philosophers hold, although often in an inadequate and mutilated way. This is one reason that Spinoza, like Gersonides, stresses that the proper order in philosophy is to move from the more general to the more particular (iip10cs). By demonstrating what the adequate concepts are, which are at the bottom of this multiplicity of perspectives, he performs a kind of internal emendation for and through philosophers and philosophy. As noted, a stellar example of how Spinoza does this can be seen in Curley’s analysis of the opening passages of Ethics I, showing Spinoza to be drawing out the logical consequences of the Cartesian theory of substance and God.57 Since the Ethics is intended to lead the reader to blessedness through knowledge of the human mind, and more particularly of her or his own mind, insofar as her or his own mind both reflects and contains principles common to nature and other minds, to simply list off adequate ideas one 56 57

I will discuss this proposition at greater length in the next chapter. Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method, 19–23.

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after the other would only have the effect, at best, of reinforcing adequate ideas in those who already have them.58 The purpose of presenting them via these broad definitions is rather to show readers what lies at the root of their philosophical commitments. But how should this be done? Well, Spinoza has given us a partial answer in his claim in the TIE that a well-ordered method has the consequence that if an idea is false “the mind will uncover the falsity.” If the idea is true, “the mind will continue successfully, without any interruption, to deduce true things from it” (TIE 104). As a reader proceeds with the definitions, the axioms and the broad commitments they entail, he or she implicitly rules out many consequences that are unproductive. He or she could understand substance to be a multiplicity of singular underlying substances of predication, Cartesian substances, or separate substances. But, given her or his other basic philosophical commitments – to the other definitions and to the axioms – only certain interpretations of the definition are plausible and coherent. If she or he holds there to be only one substance this will restrict the ways in which he or she can construe “attribute.” Thus, he or she restricts the scope of the definition and slowly begin to understand what they entail – for example that causa sui-ness is implicit in my notion of God, that there is only one substance, etc. These are properties arising from the definitions – at least the unicity of substance – but they arise from restricting what the definition can and cannot refer to. If he or she holds such and such broad understanding of attribute, and such and such broad understandings of God, substance, and causa sui, he or she will actually have a very deep and strong core commitment arising from holding all of these concepts together. And for any given concept “if it is false the mind will uncover the falsity; but if it is true, the mind will continue successfully, without any interruption, to deduce true things from it” (TIE 112–13). Consequently I think Bennett is onto something when he sees the Ethics as a kind of hypothetico-deductive method, although, as I have argued, Spinoza wishes the “sturdy hypotheses” to arise through a process of emending our minds.59 The picture of definitions just described is interrelated with the point I made earlier in the chapter, that the definitions are written in flawed language. Donagan dismissed applying Spinoza’s theory of cognition to the Ethics itself since “cognition is a matter of ideas not words.”60 This is correct, but then Donagan immediately allowed that the job of the Ethics is 58 59 60

This might be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but it would not be a therapeutic method. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 20–25. Bennett has no confidence in the TIE offering an answer to how this works, whereas I do! Alan Donagan, Spinoza (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1988), 139.

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help us to “progress from limited cognition of the second kind to a measure of cognition of the third kind.”61 So the problem remains, how does the Ethics attempt to engender adequate cognition, given that the book itself is necessarily written in mutilated and confused words? Well, the answer again comes, in part, via the theory of definition. In restricting and emending nominal definitions I conversely get a better and better “fix” on the real “definition” – an adequate idea I likely already have – and better understand how said adequate idea informs the various “nominal definitions” (is the core commitment they all share). Furthermore, in re Tschirnhaus, I begin to understand how a multiplicity of properties arise from the adequate idea (quite literally). They arise not from the words of the definition, from Spinoza’s formulae, but from my own adequate ideas and most of all the adequate idea of God which is part of my mind. Thus my broad definitions will be placed in a method which will combine them with axioms in such a way62 that the truths internal to these traditional theses will surface. These truths will result as necessary consequences of my initial definitions, but will now be better understood through the emendative process that leads me to the consequences. Hence, in response to Curley, the definitions are both nominal and real, but not at the same time! They begin as nominal understandings of indeterminate extensions and gradually pick out more limited extensions and concrete adequate ideas as the method proceeds. In this sense both analysis and synthesis are to be found in Spinoza’s method. I analytically discover the definition moving from nominal to real as I proceed to strip away various false referents and limit extension. This is accomplished in tandem with a “synthetic” method: a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems, and problems, so that if the reader denies one of the consequences, the presentation shows him that it is contained immediately in the antecedents, and so forces his assent from him.63

When I “discover”64 new claims I also understand my initial definitions better – most centrally that of God – since “nothing of Nature is able to be understood by us, which does not conversely render more ample [our] cognition of the first cause, or God.” This does not mean that the 61 62

63 64

Ibid., 139–40. One might add that insofar as the axioms are expressions of the common features of bodies and ideas, and thus dependent on beings with particular definitions, they, too, will rule out some applications and warrant others. This is Descartes’ definition in the Second Replies as quoted in the “Preface” to the PP (PP i/129). In a sense it is more uncovering than discovery, but this would likely be the case for Descartes as well.

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definition is comprehended through its effects, but rather the effects rule out certain interpretations of what the definition was to begin with, and through this emendation both the initial definition and the necessary deduction that arises from it become more evident. Consequently, as opposed to a Hobbesian notion of construction as basic to definitions, for Spinoza a “genetic” definition entails an emendation and uncovering of what was already the basic constituent of the mind, the mental instruments, in a far more Cartesian fashion. This is how Spinoza draws together elements of Cartesianism and Hobbesianism in an original theory. Through reading the Ethics I first point toward and then discover the necessity in those adequate ideas that already made up and make up my mind. This holds only in a strong form of the definitions and axioms that open Part I. As we move through the process of emendation we can then access the definitions and bootstrap on them. A clear example of this is to be found in my discussion of possibility and contingency, which although derived from ip33 cannot be properly understood until Part IV (see chapter 2). a co r ro b o r at i n g e x a m p l e Spinoza does actually give us an example where he provides a broad definition to include a wide variety of positions and then submits it to an immanent criticism, although it is not an example usually thought of in relation to the Ethics.65 I am referring to Spinoza’s discussion of “prophets” that opens the TTP and which I touched on in my consideration of Maimonides. Spinoza begins the discussion of prophecy and prophets by defining prophecy or revelation as: Certain cognition of some thing [or state of affairs] revealed by God to man. (TTP I, iii/1)

A prophet: therefore is someone who interprets that which has been revealed by God for those who are incapable of having certain cognition of it, and are rather only able to receive it as simple faith. (ibid.)

Both definitions are constructed in order to include the three sorts of prophecy discussed in the Jewish philosophical tradition: (1) the unphilosophical, morally perfect, and anointed prophet (associated with Saadia 65

This is not the only example. See the discussion of attributes at KV i:4–7, and particularly i:7.

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Gaon); (2) the prophet with a perfected intellect and no anointing (associated with Gersonides and Averroism); and (3) the morally and intellectually perfect prophet anointed by God (associated with Maimonides). All three assume something roughly like Spinoza’s definition of prophecy, and Spinoza’s definition of prophecy arises in an attempt to provide a broad criterion that includes all theories of prophecy (as well as scriptural examples that he cites). After defining prophecy, Spinoza then defines a prophet as one who prophesizes to others who are not prophets. Again Spinoza assumes very little in this definition. But he immediately subjects it to criticism: From the definition just given, it follows that natural knowledge can be called prophecy. For that, which we know by the natural light, depends on knowledge of God and his eternal decrees.

Thus Spinoza claims that the definition in itself cannot justify the superiority of prophetic knowledge as against the natural light. Natural knowledge is just as certain as revealed knowledge, it arises just as much from God and his eternal decrees. Why then do many consider revealed knowledge to be superior to the lumen naturale? Because the multitude have a tendency to despise those things which are common to all men and seek those things which are strange and foreign. Thus, Spinoza gives an account of the error arising as a consequence of viewing prophecy as drastically different from, and superior to, natural knowledge. By understanding this error, we both rid ourselves of this tendency (by understanding the causes of the error – in this case a psychological disposition to admire the strange and foreign among the many) and replace the false and mutilated idea with a true one, hinted at and included (nominally) in the broad definition of prophecy. Ultimately, Spinoza shows that prophecy is understood in relation to prophets, and the many examples of prophets in the Old Testament point toward a particular definition. Insofar as prophets present their prophecy in images and words, and as Maimonides, Gersonides, and Saadia all agree that this is part of the character of prophecy, a prophet is best understood as one with an enlarged imaginative faculty. So Spinoza uses general definitions of prophecy and prophets to emend the reader’s deeply held beliefs about prophets, to characterize what prophets actually are, and to point toward both the actual character of prophecy and the superiority of natural knowledge (which is at the root of the definition of prophecy). This is paradigmatic for how I have argued Spinoza employs definitions in general, and it serves as an external corroboration for my interpretation of definition in the Ethics. Unlike Maimonides’s theory of education and much

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like Gersonides’ (or Descartes’ in the Discourse for that matter), the target is clearly those capable of understanding the true ideas on which the mutilated and confused ideas we have of prophecy rest, and helping them to emend themselves of inadequate ideas and move toward adequate cognition. The Ethics provides a very similar analysis of first principles, and for this reason it does not rest on Scripture. Also, unlike the TTP, the criticism must be internal to the ideas and axioms themselves, extruding a series of core definitions, and emending inadequate and mutilated ideas in such a way that the reader can begin to (1) clearly understand the definitions and axioms which initiate the work, (2) see how a variety of propositions arise from them necessarily, and (3) emend their own minds in the process.66 w h e re i s t h e c au s e i n t h e c au s a l d e f i n i t i o n ? I would like to provide an answer to Tschirnhaus’ question that began this chapter via a different question: “What is ‘causal’ about a causal definition for Spinoza?” The paradigmatic causal definition of an uncreated thing is the definition of God: “a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” Yet, if this is a causal or genetic definition, as Spinoza maintains in his earlier letter to Tschirnhaus, it is not obvious where the cause is in the definition. Spinoza claimed: when I define God as the supremely perfect Being, since this definition does not express the efficient cause (for I conceive that an efficient cause can be internal as well as external) I shall not be able to discover all the properties of God from it; but when I define God as a being, etc. (See Definition VI, Part I, of the Ethics)

Although he claims that there is an efficient cause, Spinoza does not help us to see where it lies in the definition. Spinoza implicitly rules out God as the supremely perfect being as being a definition of this sort, but that does not seem help much either. Gueroult maintained that the cause lies in the relation between substance and attributes. It is not quite clear why, for Spinoza, substance “causes” attributes in the sense Gueroult develops, although it appears that substance can be said to cause attributes and vice versa.67 Gueroult argued that, up to ip11, Spinoza is considering substances of one attribute, and these substances of one attribute are “synthesized” into a substance with an infinity 66 67

Spinoza’s point in the TIE is that any method that works is also a process of emendation. Insofar as substance is understood through attributes which express their essence, and reasons entail causes. This point was made clear for me by Michael Della Rocca, despite my stubborn resistance.

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of attributes. But, Spinoza never claimed that substance causes attributes in this sense, and, in fact, in ip16 the necessity of the infinity of modes, which are said to be “caused” by God, is the necessity expressed by the attributes, each “in suo genere.” Furthermore, given my arguments about Spinoza’s broad definitions, it would not be plausible for me to maintain that Spinoza is only discussing substances of one attribute in the opening propositions of the Ethics. Substance and attributes do have something in common though: they are part of the definition or essence of a being “absolutely infinite.” “Infinite” might appear to be an adjectival predicate like “eternal” which ought to be ruled out of a genetic definition. But “infinite” has two different senses as discussed in chapter 2. The derivative sense, which is much like “good” or “eternal,” is invoked when “infinite” is applied to something else – “the infinitely good,” “the infinitely big.” Spinoza clearly would like to rule out predicating “infinite” in this sense of an uncreated being or causa sui being and does so in Letter XII as well. But there is a difference between the infinite and the “absolutely infinite,” as well as between the “absolutely infinite” and eternity. Although, as I have discussed, there are a variety of interpretations of infinite modes, Spinoza seems to be maintaining that there are “things which follow from the absolute nature of any of God’s attributes” and are “eternal and infinite.” Even if they are not eternal in the same sense as God, and their eternity is derivative of the definition of the eternal thing, Spinoza is clearly using the word eternal here in a way which both assumes that “eternal” could apply to a number of beings, and that the ultimate referent of its adjectival use is that eternity from which all other eternal beings arise. The “absolutely infinite” differs in this regard from both “eternity” and the “infinite.” It is different from eternity as there are many eternal things but only one absolutely infinite being since “whatever expresses essence and involves no negation pertains to its essence” (id6exp). If there were two such beings each would pertain to the other’s essence since they would both express all essence and consequently have the same essence and be the same thing. The “absolutely infinite” differs from “infinite” since infinite is a general term applying both to things that are infinite in their own kind (and thus can have attributes denied of their nature) as well as the absolutely infinite. But the “absolutely infinite” cannot be predicated of anything other than God, it is the unique essential predicate of God. Therefore, although “infinite” as a description of an uncreated being might be ruled out in a perfect definition, “absolute infinity” would not be. Now any cause used to characterize God must be an internal or immanent

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efficient cause. As I argued in chapter 2 an internal cause explains how something is in and through another. In the case of both attributes and substance, they are “uncreated” entities and as such not in and through any other. In these cases the cause must be what generally expresses their essence. In the explanation of the absolutely infinite Spinoza claims “that therefore is absolutely infinite, which to its essence pertains whatsoever essence it expresses, and it involves no negation.” Since: (1) absolute infinity expresses all essence as such, and thus all attributes and modes; (2) no causal relation between substance and attributes is given in the definition; and (3) no causal relation is given between God and modes until ip16, (4) “absolute infinity” seems to me to be the “cause” in the definition. In order to explain, let me return to Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus: For from the mere fact that I define God as a Being to whose essence belongs existence I infer several of his properties, namely, that He exists necessarily, that he is unique, immutable, infinite, etc. (Letter XXXIII)

As I have noted, Spinoza is not presenting us with the definition of God at ID6, he is defining God as causa sui. Why? Remember, Tschirnhaus has asked for the way in which God is an immanent cause at ip16, and in his response Spinoza is attempting to explain God’s causal character to him. Spinoza is saying that, insofar as the definition of God is causal and genetic, all things arise from it. The infinite, the immutable, and the unique are all limited and derivative ways of characterizing a being that is causa sui, just as the infinite derives from the absolutely infinite and eternity from the eternal thing. Of course, these do not arise from the words that Spinoza has set out at the beginning of the Ethics. They arise from substance and attributes, as expressed in the attribute of thought and the idea of the eternal and infinite essence of God that is a part of our minds. The emendative process is an attempt to draw out that idea. Since our minds always already have an adequate knowledge of the idea of God (iip46), this process is not one of “constructing” a definition as Gueroult might have it. Rather, we uncover ideas we already have, ideas which are included in all of our many cognitions but which are confused by the imagination. We are brought to do so through various concepts we hold, and by learning what is fundamentally at issue in these concepts (as opposed to what we perhaps initially thought they involved) through ruling out various possible definitions and discovering those definitions that already form a part of our mind. Once we begin to distinguish these – and it is a messy process that each comes to with their own particular encumbrances – we connect other ideas and propositions that we have,

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some clear and some confused, to the idea of God. We begin to develop causal connections, between God and modes (ip25) and attributes and modes (ip16). As we do so, we turn “the sustenance” we had for false ideas, so eloquently described by Gersonides, into the sustenance for the idea of God and all of the ideas that flow from it. The discussion of perfect definitions in the TIE is best understood as pointing toward those definitions that have been gradually emended from the dross in our minds, not the definitions that begin the Ethics. When Spinoza emphasizes to Tschirnhaus that the definition of God is the definition of causa sui he is emphasizing that all arises from God as a being whose essence involves existence. Spinoza defines the “absolutely infinite” as “whatever expresses essence and involves no negation pertains to its essence” (id6exp). “Absolute infinity” and “causa sui” are similar : the former “whatever expresses essence and involves no negation pertains to its essence,” the latter “that whose essence involves existence.” The most notable difference between the two definitions is that causa sui involves existence, and absolute infinity is defined only in terms of essence.68 But this is perhaps deceiving, since there is a “being” in “absolutely infinite being.” Rather the definition of causa sui and the definition of absolutely infinite appear to describe different perspectives on substance and attributes, causa sui from the perspective of substance: attributes are causa sui insofar as they express the essence of substance – and absolutely infinite from the perspective of attributes – attributes express the essence of substance. The internal cause, then, in the definition is understanding the ways in which attributes and substance are causally interrelated as absolutely infinite and causa sui. Consequently, I think that Gueroult is correct in recognizing that Spinoza is trying to show us the necessary causal interdependence of substance and attributes. It is not effected in Book I alone though, nor through a discussion of substances of one attribute, nor as a process of synthesis, but rather over the course of the Ethics by each of our minds emending our own definitions in ways I have emphasized in preceding chapters. We come to understand causa sui as the only possible cause that avoids regress and, whatever we ultimately think of the oddity of causa sui, the only thing that is clearly identified as a cause in Part 1. What is “caused” 68

Both definitions seem to pick out the same beings, substance and attributes, so they appear to have similar extensions despite the fact that one definition uses “whatever” and the other “that.” There is also a difference between the two verbs used in the respective definitions – “pertains” and “involves” – but the difference is negated at ip7, “It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist. A substance is not able to be produced from another (by p6c); and thus it will be causa sui, that is (by id1), its essence necessarily involves existence, or it pertains to its nature to exist.”

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are substance and attributes (insofar as they are “causa sui”) and God taken as a whole is absolutely infinite, whatever expresses essence, both as substance and as attributes. Finally, the more we understand that the absolutely infinite is causa sui, that God is not a numerable and circumscribable being but rather all essence expressed without negation (thus ruling out the finite aspects of finite modes) and involving existence, through the infinite idea which is included in our minds, the more we understand the causa sui-ness of substance and attributes (ip36, vp24). This seems to me what Spinoza is tersely expressing to Tschirnhaus. The definition of substance at the beginning of the Ethics is not the genetic definition from which arise many ideas, but rather the definition or essence of God one comes to understand at the end of Part I or Part V or as a consequence of years of Spinozistic therapy, of understanding singular things and through them understanding God (vp24). After each of us works through the formal structure of the argument we slowly see how countless different properties of God all follow from God’s causa sui character just as the many properties of a circle follow from the proper genetic definition. And we see how each expresses essence. As Spinoza comments in Book II: “Here readers will doubtless come to a standstill and they will imagine many things that will give them pause. This is why I ask that they continue with me, stepping slowly, and that they move forward and not judge until they have read everything through” (iip11s). Thus the definition of God comprehends the definitions of all other uncreated things within it. To understand how all things are in and through God, either as God, or in God, is to understand how the definition is generative, and different from all other definitions. On this issue I am in agreement with Gueroult, as well as the centrality of causa sui. Where I differ is in not viewing this as a process of construction, but rather emendation. There is a place for construction related to how we understand God, and this will be considered in the final chapter. This picture of emendation and generative definition combines many of the themes I have discussed in the previous three chapters. The method is analytic, it gets at real definitions through generalizing the mixta et confusa (to use Zabarella’s expression) of the philosophers. The method is synthetic or compositive in the sense of Hobbes, it involves demonstration and seeing the necessities in many ideas as they follow from genetic definitions. The method is enormously influenced by Descartes, in particular the Cartesian idea of analysis and Cartesian innatism, although it has no truck with the Cartesian will. The method is clear, well ordered and, at least in theory, generally accessible, in the sense laid out by Gersonides. Furthermore the

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method precisely follows Gersonides’ requirement that a therapy extirpate false ideas and connect our selves to the idea of God. Finally, the method has two sorts of affinities with Maimonides. First, it draws out certain propositions as crucial for our happiness and well-being, although the happiness and well-being of all men not a historically and religiously specific group of men. Second, and perhaps most oddly, it rebuffs all but the most intellectually perfect, not because there are de facto requirements for what one must know in order to read the Ethics, but because only those who would go through the process of emending themselves by reading the Ethics, will.

chapter 7

The third kind of knowledge and “our” eternity

This final chapter is concerned with explicating what Spinoza refers to as the scientia intuitiva or the third kind of knowledge. The scientia intuitiva has pride of place among Spinoza’s three kinds of knowledge due both to its importance and difficulty. In the Ethics and the KV he related it to love of God and the part of us that is eternal. He emphasized it in the TIE as well, although in both the TIE and the KV he referred to it as the “fourth kind of knowledge” (Spinoza collapsed the first two sorts of knowledge described in the KV and the TIE into one category, imagination, in the Ethics). What is the third kind of knowledge? In the Ethics the third kind of knowledge is distinguished from the first kind of knowledge – imagination including memory and testimony, and from the second kind of knowledge, reason. After considering these other sorts of knowledge Spinoza described the third kind of knowledge as “a kind of knowing which proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the [NS: formal] essence of things” (iip40s2, CW 478). In the TIE Spinoza described it in similar terms: “a thing is perceived through its essence alone” and we know we are engaged in intuitive knowledge when “from the fact that I know something, I know what it is to know something” (TIE 22). In the KV it is described as seeing “the thing itself, not through something else, but in itself” (KV ii:1 n.f., 1/55). There are nearly as many interpretations of the third kind of knowledge1 as there are interpreters of Spinoza. It seems apparent that one of the goals of the Ethics is to allow readers to form this sort of knowledge, yet Spinoza is so vague about it that it is very hard to understand what we are forming. In this chapter I will explore the third kind of knowledge, its relevance for understanding Spinoza’s method and purpose in the Ethics, 1

Following Spinoza, I will use the expressions “the third kind of knowledge” and “scientia intuitiva” interchangeably.

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and conversely how the third kind of knowledge brings us to understand God, human beatitude, and the mos geometricus. I have already discussed the second kind of knowledge, or reason, in prior chapters. In order to understand the third kind of knowledge we must better understand the first kind of knowledge. I will also consider a number of Spinoza’s other important concepts that bear on the third kind of knowledge: the conatus of the mind, the eternity of the mind, and adequate causes. Their relevance may not be immediately obvious as I present them, but they will be drawn together in the concluding sections of the chapter and hopefully illuminate this very difficult concept and its relation to method. i m ag i n at i o n , t h e c o n at u s o f t h e m i n d , a n d t h e f u n d a m e n ta l pa s s i o n s Imagination, the first of the three kinds of knowledge presented in Ethics ii40s2, is made up of a number of different kinds of cognition, of which the first is knowledge “out of singular (things), represented to us by the senses as mutilated, confused, and without order to the intellect,” which Spinoza also calls experientia vaga. Also included under the rubric of imagination are knowledge from signs, either written or spoken, and memory which involves concatenated, habituated, imagined particulars. Hence imagination is a broad term which includes two apparently distinct forms of cognition. G. H. R. Parkinson argues that what links these two kinds of cognition is that “they do not give the same certainty as is given by deductive reason.”2 They are both instances of determination by an external and accidental cause,3 and as such dependent on the fortuitousness of external causes, on happenstance. Picture a world where we are impacted by happenstance in such a way that our inductions are always correct and we never see experience as random 2

3

G. H. R. Parkinson, Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 139. Thus Parkinson takes experientia vaga as knowledge from vague experience. Alan Gabbey has shown that the phrase experientia vaga refers to empirical experience as yet unconditioned by a causal method (Alan Gabbey, “Spinoza’s Natural Science and Methodology,” in Don Garrett [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza [Cambridge University Press, 1996], 176). This might go a long way to explaining the way in which Spinoza seems to hold a nominalistic theory of universals (iip40s1), as universals are “ideo summo gradu confusas” empirical concepts to the highest degrees attained via deduction from experience and awaiting a causal analysis of their essence in a real science. Then they will cease to be universals and become real, causal, generative essences of singular things. The word that I have rendered by “accidental,” fortuito, is translated by Parkinson as chance. The word also has a strong sense of fortuitous, as opposed to many of the other words that denote purely random occurrence or happenstance encounter. This sense is important for the reason outlined in the previous note.

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or fortuitous. For Spinoza, this would still be experientia vaga, not because we would not be able to predict what would happen to us, apparently we could, but we would not have causal knowledge of it that would show in each case how and why an initial occurrence or an inference from it were causes or effects. And consequently we would not have adequate knowledge, knowledge that would reciprocally tell us something about the cause. There is nothing wrong with imagination per se, or empirical knowledge, it just does not allow us to understand things causally, and thus does not allow us in and of itself to have power over effects (since we are not their adequate cause but they are rather merely conjoined to us by chance).4 Rather, Spinoza emphasizes that the imagination does not contain error, but is erroneous only insofar as it is judged in such a way that we assume something to exist which does not: For if the mind, insofar as it imagines things which do not exist as present to us, at the same time would know these things not to exist, this sound power of imagining is attributed to a virtue of its nature and not a weakness. (iip17s)

The problem, then, is not imagination, but improper use of it, or rather a lack of reason conjoined with imagination. If we understood imagination properly we would view it as a virtue, for it is through imagination that we experience, and it is through experience that we come into contact with those singular things which we judge truly or falsely (Letter XXXII). To better understand the virtues of the imagination, a point crucial for understanding the third kind of knowledge, we need to turn to another important concept. At the root of all our passions for Spinoza is what he calls the conatus: “the power . . . by which [a thing] endeavours to persevere in its being” (iiip7). For Spinoza, this perseverance is a kind of metaphysical principle of inertia holding not just of physical modes but of all modes, mental, complex, simple, etc. In Parts III and IV of the Ethics, Spinoza uses the conatus as the basis for his theory of human passions. Like Hobbes and many other early modern philosophers, Spinoza’s “ethics” was built on an account of the passions. But, for Spinoza, even more than Hobbes, we modes are what we are precisely insofar as we express our conatus. Put crudely, if I am a chimpanzee I desire chimp things and my activity expresses itself in my chimpness. There 4

Of course, this world might be just fine, something like Bill Murray’s world in “Ground Hog Day” where he can learn to predict most regular occurrences through studying them empirically, but gains no satisfaction or joy or causal knowledge of them. But, as in the “Groundhog Day” world, it would be a world where we would not understand God, and would not understand the ways in which causes arise from God, and thus could not attain beatitude and joy in Spinoza’s senses. We would be able to navigate a part of nature, but would not understand it.

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is no “chimpness” beyond the way that actual chimps persevere in their existence and express their desires. The same holds of all things, including human beings. Yet it is important to note that, for Spinoza, like Grotius and Pufendorf, neither chimps nor human beings express their essences in isolation. A human conatus manifests its essence through interactions with other modes and by producing effects in other modes as opposed to being effected by them. To follow through with the chimp analogy, an alpha chimp is not an alpha chimp in and of itself, but in relation to the many other chimps around that it subordinates to beta status. More abstractly, the effects a mode produces, the ways it interacts with (beta chimp), within (jungle, chimp social organization) and through (rock and stick) other modes, both finite and infinite, determine its essence. In addition this allows Spinoza to separate essence from any telos and fixed plan of natural reproduction or cosmic governance.5 Spinoza refers to a particular sort of conatus at crucial points in Parts III–V of the Ethics. Every mode or thing has a conatus: bodies have conatuses, as do individuals that express themselves through the attributes of both thought and extension. As noted, the conatus is just the tendency to persevere in existence. But, most importantly for the final book of the Ethics, the mind has a conatus. Our mind also continues to persevere in its existence, through the ways in which it expresses its ideas. For Spinoza, the more a mind expresses eternal ideas, the idea of God in particular, the more it is eternal, a point I will return to below. This also brings up an interesting “perspectival” aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy. Ideas can be understood as modes in an attribute, as they are most often in Book II of the Ethics, or they can be understood as the ways that a mind expresses its conatus, attempts to persevere in its existence. I will return to this point, but it is important to note that, for Spinoza, these two perspectives distinguish a theory of mind from a cognitive theory of the passions. How does the conatus of the mind function? Spinoza provides his explanation in iiip11, the proposition that describes the basic mechanisms underlying Spinoza’s theory of the passions. It reads: Whatever augments, diminishes, aids, or restrains the power of acting of our body, the idea of the same thing augments, diminishes, aids, or restrains, the power of thinking of our mind. 5

Which is not to say that the laws which govern the mode, the modal structures in which it acts and, most importantly, its determination by God, do not define the essence, but rather the actual essence is essence viewed from the perspective of the conatus expressing itself through and actualizing itself in and amongst these laws and structures.

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The proof derives directly from iip7 or iip14. Iip7 is, in turn, evident from ia4, so Spinoza places this proposition in a string of axiomatic claims. By deriving it from iip7, Spinoza makes clear that he is drawing on the parallelism between mind and body to explain that whatever restrains or augments the power of acting on the body restrains or augments the power of thinking of the mind. This might mean anything from “indigestion hinders my speculative capacities” to “brain and neural injuries impede thought.” Spinoza also provides a secondary genealogy, for those who do not see that it is obvious, from iip14: “The human body is able to perceive many things, and it is the more able, the more it can dispose its body by many modes.” This proposition (iip14) is proven via two of the postulates from Spinoza’s physics, directly preceding iip14 (Postulates 3 and 6), and a previous proposition from Book II (iip12). Iip11 therefore draws together one of the central propositions of the Ethics – iip7 – with Spinoza’s account of individual, physical bodies and individuation. The fusion of these two elements in iiip11 – general metaphysical claims and more particular mechanistic explanations – is central to how Spinoza understands his theory of the passions. Descartes’ and Malebranche’s theories of the passions primarily analyzed the ways in which the body’s mechanisms impede and disrupt thought. Hobbes’ theory explained the ways in which feelings and actions are caused by bodily mechanism. For Spinoza, since the body and mind are parallel and there is no causal interaction between them, the body cannot cause anything in the mind. Rather body and mind have their powers augmented and diminished in parallel. The mind and the body are, in turn, modes respectively in the attributes of thought and extension. As such they reflect general metaphysical features of nature, for example they are both individuated, they both arise from God, etc. In this manner Spinoza considers both mind and body to express general metaphysical principles and his ultimate goal is to use this fact to show how we are capable of a central passion: the intellectual love of God. This takes more than half of the Ethics to develop. Initially in iiip11 the capacities modes have to augment, diminish, aid, and restrict their power (insofar as they are and have conatus) give rise to two of Spinoza’s three fundamental affects: elation and sadness. A passion which moves the mind to greater perfection6 is elation, to lesser perfection, sadness. Elation, and sadness, along with desire, which is an appetite together with consciousness of that appetite, are the three fundamental affects. Unlike elation and 6

Spinoza means perfection in the non-teleological sense outlined in IV “Preface.”

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sadness, desire is the conatus as referred to both mind and body. Desire is the conatus insofar as it is intelligible. Now, to return to the initial subject of this section, why and how is the imagination important in this process? The initial means by which we affirm ourselves and seek our perfection in Spinoza’s sense is imagination. From the perspective of the attribute of thought, imagination is the weakest grade of knowledge, to be replaced by certain, clear, and thus causal, knowledge. From the perspective of the mode, the imagination is our navigation system, our ability to, and means by which we, constitute and grasp much of the world of modes. We feel our power being augmented or diminished, and we respond either by continuing to conjoin with a mode, or continuing to have an idea, or we remember an idea that excludes the existence of the diminishing idea, and correspondingly alters our body so that it ceases to diminish in power. This is because, “the mind insofar as it is able, strives to imagine that which augments or aids the body’s power of acting” (iiip12) and conversely, when the mind imagines things which diminish or restrain our body’s power of acting, we recollect other things which exclude their existence (iiip13). In other words, the imagination provides us with a procedure by which in many ordinary circumstances we can augment our power. I might imagine a fine feather bed at the end of my ten-mile run, which might exclude all sorts of thoughts I had been recently imagining about the asphalt pounding into my knees and help my power of acting over the last few miles. As previously noted, this is a view of mind not only as a subset of ideas in the infinite intellect of God but also in terms of the actual endeavors of its ideas (its ideas thus viewed as modes in themselves, and not as modifications of attributes) and the power that they constitute. The means by which mind does so is, at least in part, the imagination. The fundamental affects are the basic ways of characterizing this process. To return to the worm, when confronted with the blood, it is the power of imagination, and the virtue of the imagination, that is capable of concatenating the modes of the blood in such a way that the worm can have an idea which will allow it to “go with the flow” so to speak, and augment its power. It will also ask it to change its physical world, to imagine in the more conventional sense, which it can put into practice in conjunction with reason. Through the account of the conatus given in Part III, we see that the blood is not just that which the worm knows, or feels, but also the means by which the worm expresses its power through and by its ideas and bodily affects, and not least of all its actual essence, which is indistinguishable from the activity of its ideas and its body.

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I will now introduce some of the basic concepts of Part V and will shortly return to the imagination before considering the third kind of knowledge and our eternity. f o r m a l c au s e i n pa rt v o f t h e e t h i c s In Part V of the Ethics Spinoza asserts: The third kind (genus) of knowledge depends on the Mind, as on a formal cause, insofar as the Mind itself is eternal. (CW 610)

Vp31 comes directly after a string of propositions, beginning with vp22 that deal with “the eternity of something of the Mind.” Some of these propositions are agnostic as to what sort of mind we are speaking of – for Spinoza there are many kinds of minds – others pertain specifically to the human mind. There is one aspect of vp31 that might seem odd to a reader who has worked through hundreds of propositions in the Ethics and is now nearing the conclusion of the work. Vp31 is the only time in the Ethics that Spinoza used the expression “formal cause”7 (although he talks about forms in the Physics after iip13). Spinoza often discussed efficient causes and final causes. He identified causality as efficient causality throughout the Ethics and criticized the inherent anthropomorphism of final causation. “Formal cause,” which Aristotle closely identifies with final causes, is a strange choice to describe the interrelations between two of the most important concepts of Part V: the third kind of knowledge and the eternity of the mind. What does Spinoza think about this formal cause? It clearly cannot be a formal cause in the Aristotelian sense since then it would be closely interconnected with final cause. I propose we view this expression as useful for trying to understand what Spinoza’s goal is in Part V, as I used Spinoza’s response to Tschirnhaus in chapter 6 to illuminate the theory of definition. In Spinoza’s Ethics, as in Leibniz’s Monadology, small details are interconnected with far more complicated issues. In drawing out these details we are often able to understand the interconnection of distinct parts of Spinoza’s system, much like when a mathematician needs to use apparently unconnected mathematical tools and disparate branches of mathematics to solve a difficult problem. We can get a better sense of why Spinoza chooses to use the expression 7

Spinoza does discuss form in other places in order to criticize it. See Pierre-Franc¸ois Moreau, “The Metaphysics of Substance and the Metaphysics of Form,” in Y. Yovel and G. Segal (eds.), Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind , (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 27–35.

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“formal cause” in vp31 by considering the propositions that Spinoza draws on in vp31. The Demonstration of vp31 reads: The Mind conceives nothing under a species of eternity except insofar as it conceives its Body’s essence under a species of eternity (by p29), i.e., (by p21 and p23), except insofar as it is eternal. So (by p30) insofar as it is eternal, it has knowledge of God, knowledge which is necessarily adequate (by iip46). And therefore, the Mind, insofar as it is eternal, is capable of knowing all those things which can follow from this given knowledge of God (by iip40), i.e., of knowing things by the third kind of knowledge (see the Def. of this in iip40s2); therefore, the Mind, insofar as it is eternal, is the adequate, or formal, cause of the third kind of knowledge (by iiid1), q.e.d. (CW 610)

What are the constituents of this proposition? vp31 depends on the two propositions that come directly before it: vp29 and vp30. In addition it draws on two very important propositions from the earlier part of the chapter, vp21 and vp23, three propositions from Part II, and most importantly a definition from Part III. In addition, the four propositions from Part V that vp31 draws on, vp21, vp23, vp29, and vp30, are entirely derived from propositions in Parts I and II of the Ethics, or propositions directly derived from Parts I and II (vp21, vp22, and vp23). What can we make of this? Parts I and II of the Ethics clearly have great bearing on vp31, and on Part V in general. This is not surprising as Part I concerns God, Part II is Spinoza’s account of the nature and the origin of the mind, and Part V deals with the mind, the third kind of knowledge, and the intellectual love of God. The first section of Part V (vp1–20), which I will consider in the next section, describes our control of the affects and images. Spinoza distinguishes vp1–20 from the propositions following vp20 that concern “those things which pertain to the Mind’s duration without relation to the body.” Cardinal among these is the notorious proposition vp23 in which Spinoza states that there is something that pertains to the essence of the human mind that cannot be absolutely destroyed, but is eternal. We might expect that there is some sort of connection between the themes treated in one or the other of the parts, and particularly between the third kind of knowledge and the eternity of the mind.8 The question is, of course, how to bring the two problems to bear on one another. 8

See Henry Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), rev. edn., 172–4.

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t h e f i r s t s e c t i o n o f pa rt v The first section of Part V primarily concerns the organization of the first kind of knowledge in relation to the idea of God. As I have just emphasized, the first kind of knowledge is inescapable, so the question concerns not what life would be like without it, but rather how best to deal with it. Spinoza literally wishes us to organize the first kind of knowledge in such a way as to “be able to cause all of the affections of the body, or images of thing, to be related (referantur) to the idea of God” (vp14). This is done by clarifying our affects and forming clear and distinct concepts of them, engendering in ourselves that adequate idea of which our affect or passion provides an inadequate expression and then relating the adequate idea to God. But how do we do this? Vp11–15 depict the process by which we conjoin “images” – by which Spinoza understands both affects and ideas deriving from the imagination – to the idea of God. At vp4, Spinoza claims: “There is no affection of the body, of which we are unable to form some clear and distinct concept.” This might seem to imply that we can become completely adequate beings, but Spinoza qualifies this in the demonstration: Those things that are common to all can only be conceived adequately (by iip38), and so (by iip12 and l2 [ii/98]) there is no affection of the body of which we cannot form some clear and distinct concept, q.e.d. (emphasis added, CW 598)

Vp4 depends tacitly on the prior proposition where Spinoza claims: “An affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it” (vp3, CW 598), a proposition many have found perplexing to say the least.9 It is important to emphasize that Spinoza does not think that through clarifying our affects we become entirely clear and distinct beings. Rather, he is claiming that there is no affect of which we cannot in principle form a clear and distinct idea.10 All bodies agree in some things (l2) and, since the mind perceives everything in the body, it perceives these commonalities. These common features are adequate as they are in the part and whole. We relate as many of our body’s affects as we can to the idea of God, through whichever of these adequate ideas we 9

10

See particularly, J. Thomas Cook, “Adequate Understanding of Inadequate Ideas: Power and Paradox in Spinoza’s Cognitive Therapy,” in E. Yakira, Y. Yovel, and A. Garrett (eds.), Ethica V: Amor Dei Intellectualis: Spinoza on Intuitive Knowledge and Beatitude (New York, NY: Little Room Press, forthcoming). Granted, Latin lacks a distinction between indefinite and definite articles. I am claiming that this seems the most consistent way to construe the passage. For a justification see Spinoza’s invocation of the “some” variant of vp3 in the demonstration of vp14.

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can access. Since these commonalities exist, we can form some clear and distinct concepts of them via the second kind of knowledge. But this does not imply, and seems to me cannot imply, that we entirely rationalize our affects. In fact, most of us do not rationalize our affects to any significant degree and none of us turn all of our images into adequate ideas. Rather we come to understand that all of our images arise in a mind that ultimately has God as a cause. Whatever positive content these images have is a consequence of those clear and distinct or adequate ideas in the infinite intellect of which they are confused representations. Again, this does not mean we always or even often have access to these adequate ideas as such, rather we normally just have access to the ideas which have as their object those features of our bodies which are common with the bodies which impact them (vp4) and through which the affections are known. So I may not be able to know your particular affirmative essence to any degree, but I can know various things that you and I have in common as bodies and minds and know something about you insofar as these common features are included in your particular affirmative essence. This, in turn, dissolves certain passions I might form which depend on images that go against these commonalities. For example, Spinoza counselled his superstitious friend Balling (Letter XVII) that by understanding the commonalities between our beliefs in ghosts and other similar psychological experiences for which we have physiological explanations – i.e. by providing an account of why we feel like we experience ghosts – the fear will subside. This may not always work, but it is in principle the only solution, resting on Spinoza’s assumption that an inadequate idea is a limited perspective on an adequate idea, and, once the perspective is broadened (we understand the context that the ghost arises in via the commonalities between bodies as opposed to experiencing it independent of this context), we no longer have access to the inadequate perspective. For example, once I learn how to play the violin properly I have a general sense of the poor way I formerly played the violin. But it is impossible for me to play the violin in just the same shoddy way that I used to, i.e. to pick out the bad bowing pattern that used to come naturally to me. At best I sound like a violinist imitating a beginner, not like a beginner.11 11

A well-known pedal steel player, Buddy Emmons, remarked that once you become sufficiently proficient at an instrument, everything sounds like a well-crafted, intended “lick.” I think that this is a nice analogy for Spinoza’s virtuous man. The story is recounted by John Hartford in Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick (eds.), Masters of the Five String Banjo (Roanoke, VA: Acutab Publications, 2000), 203.

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What to do though with all of these intransigent and stubborn images that resist emendation? We order those features of images that remain after we form adequate ideas of some aspect of them, the difficult detritus of the first kind of knowledge which does not go away just because we have formed a few adequate ideas, by conjoining them to “images related to things we understand clearly and distinctly” (vp12). How? Through forming ideas of ideas, just as we do when we read the Ethics and examine the order of a variety of ideas, images and affections that make up our minds. Once we form ideas of ideas, we use them to organize our affects and relate them back to the idea of God – the first true idea we find in our minds (vp14).12 This is not to say that the use of ideas of ideas to organize our affects is not mysterious. Spinoza seems to think that it depends on parallelisms between ideas of ideas, ideas of the body, and bodily states, especially in vp1 (the root of all the subsequent claims about ordering in Part V).13 Changes in the body to greater or lesser power do not cause, but have parallels in changes in the mind as well as changes in formal representations or ideas of ideas. Of course, emending ourselves is not easy, nor does it always work. Furthermore, ideas of ideas are not really discussed by Spinoza in Part V. So I am filling in what I view as a gap in Spinoza’s argument and presenting what I think is the most consistent argument open to him. But, I cannot imagine anything else he could have in mind, as we need to identify and classify our affects and we can only compare them qua ideas of ideas. The next stage is to connect images that are difficult to clarify, with the idea of God (vp5, vp16). Why? The idea of God that we emend in our minds is an adequate and common idea, included in each and every other idea. Spinoza claims that “the more an image is joined with other images, the more it flourishes” (vp13). The demonstration of vp13 reads “the more an image is joined with other images, the more causes there are (iip18) by which it can be aroused.” If our images are associated with the idea of God, then when we think inadequate thoughts we can move by association to adequate ideas. This particular adequate idea we understand to be common to all of our ideas, and, although we do not know how our inadequate ideas are comprehended in the idea of God, we can still know that they include it and are understood in relation to it. This rids us of some of the grip of the negative aspects of our imagination and alternately leads us to think more and more about God. 12 13

Thanks to Henry Allison for suggesting the importance of ideas of ideas in this context. vp1 is derived from iip7 and thus assumes parallelism.

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What does this mean practically? It means that we ought to organize our necessary recourse to imagination – for eating, surviving, dreaming – in such a way that we do understand these actions in terms of their “virtue,” i.e. assisting our conatus. We also ought to connect it by association with ideas that make us happy and bring us greater power of thinking, those ideas that produce more and more ideas in the sense described in the previous chapter. Finally, in case we lose sight of the virtue of the imagination, we ought to associate the ideas of the imagination with the most comprehensive of all ideas, the idea of God. Even if we cannot ultimately gain adequate perspectives on all of our inadequate ideas, at least we can understand their place in relation to the most comprehensive of ideas. Now we can return to an earlier question: what does Spinoza mean when he claims that the human mind is “the infinite power of Nature” in thought “not insofar as it is infinite and perceives the whole of Nature, but insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human Body” (Letter XXXII), the solution he offered to the problem of the worm in the blood? Ultimately the human mind is made up of ideas, and these ideas are in and through God. We perceive our bodies finitely, and our minds have our finite bodies as their objects (iip13). When we understand how our adequate ideas are comprehended in the infinite intellect insofar as they are in and through God, we comprehend the infinite power of nature insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human body. This does not mean that we have infinite intellects. Our mind has an adequate knowledge of God’s eternal and infinite essence: it has knowledge of how it is in the part and whole and that other parts also are in nature even if we do not understand their determinate features and causes, but it does not comprehend the entirety of the infinite essence as such. We can have this knowledge because of the presence of the infinite in the finite in the sense that I described in chapter 2. As we understand the idea of God better, that it represents an absolutely infinite and causa sui being, we can emend ourselves further from confusion and relate our affects more and more to it. Consequently, we understand better how our finite minds and ideas are in and through it.14 14

This is a fairly orthodox interpretation. For Bartuschat, Spinoza “excludes that what man knows is part of what the infinite intellect knows . . . knowledge reaches into a sphere that is inaccessible to the infinite intellect since this sphere belongs to a temporally existing being” (Wolfgang Bartuschat, “The Infinite Intellect and Human Knowledge,” in Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal [eds.], Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994], 196). This claim seems too strong to me, Spinoza’s point is far simpler: whatever is positive in cognition is positive insofar as it is a representation, albeit confused, of the true ideas that make up the infinite intellect. I cannot see how Spinoza could have ever maintained that there is meaningful content in our ideas which is inaccessible to the infinite intellect. Bartuschat also claims: “Man is a singular being, and can

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t h e e t e r n i t y o f pa rt o f t h e m i n d Part V is unique in having no definitions of its own. This is because Part V is concerned with showing how prior definitions and propositions and how a particular sort of knowledge – the third kind of knowledge – and a particular sort of affect – the intellectual love of God – can be engendered in us. Each is crucially important for our beatitude. This follows from the general structure that I have outlined in the previous chapter, that Parts I and II concern first principles and how things arise from and are in and through first principles. Parts III and IV concern the power and servitude of minds and bodies, how we are what we are in and through these principles, and more particularly how we have more or less power in and through them. As noted in the previous section, the theory of the affects culminates in the attempt to harness the imagination in such a way as to have more adequate causation as a conatus. Spinoza picks up this theme in Part V after having considered all the difficulties in Part IV. Given that Part V has no definitions, we might assume that the two axioms are of great importance. Oddly, they are hardly employed in V, and not at all in the propositions after vp20 (va1 in vp7 and va2 in an alternative demonstration of vp8).15 Va2 is particularly interesting: “The power of an effect is defined by the power of its cause, insofar as its essence is explained or defined by the essence of its cause.” Although va2 is not invoked in the latter parts of Part V, it signals a central theme of this stretch of the Ethics: power and its interconnection with knowledge of essences. In addition, given that a1 and a2 are peripheral to the actual demonstrations in V, we should view the purpose of Part V primarily as syncretic: drawing together many important propositions in Parts I–IV that have a bearing on our blessedness. As noted previously, there are two major transitions in Part V. The first moves us from considering the connecting of images to the idea of God to the eternity of the mind. Spinoza alerts the reader to the transition with the famous remark: “It is time now, to move to that, which pertains to the duration of the mind without relation to the body” (vp20s). Many readers

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perceive only as such; yet, if the reality of a singular thing is marked by existence in time and by being not only pure essence, then man’s knowledge can only be achieved under the conditions of temporality” (206). This emphasis on the inaccessibility of the infinite intellect is reminiscent of Heidegger (or even Hegel on some interpretations) but not Spinoza. Despite this basic difference, I am, as previously noted, indebted to the way in which Bartuschat draws together important passages and shows their interdependence. For an interesting treatment, see Pierre Macherey, Introduction a` l’Ethique de Spinoza: La cinqui`eme partie, Les voies de la lib´eration (Paris: PUF, 1994), 45–7.

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of Spinoza have found this passage particularly troubling as it seems to imply that the mind can exist without the body, which would seem to go against the doctrine of parallelism. How then to cope with this passage? Martha Kneale influentially dismissed one approach, remarking “the reaction of commentators to these contradictions has for the most part been to say that, when Spinoza in this section uses language appropriate to duration, he does not mean what he says but is obliged to speak metaphorically.”16 Kneale is right in noting that claiming a difficult passage is ironic should be a last interpretive recourse. But in this case there are good reasons to view vp20s as intentionally paradoxical. Examine the Latin from the final line of vp20s that forms the transitional sentence to the final sections of the Ethics: Tempus igitur iam est, ut ad illa transeam, quae ad Mentis durationem sine relatione ad Corpus pertinent.

The passage seems at least partially ironic since, for a passage describing the eternity of the mind which cannot be explained via temporal predicates, the first clause is very heavy with temporal words – literally “Time therefore now it is.” More importantly, it is not necessary to read the clause as a declarative sentence. The passage is normally translated: “we will now see how it is the case that duration applies to the mind without the body.” One can equally well translate it as “it is time now to see what ‘pertains’ to the issue of the duration of the mind without relation to the body,” which does not assume that there is duration of the mind without the body. Why might Spinoza do this? In order to suggest a topic familiar to readers steeped in Descartes’ philosophy and the works of countless other philosophers of the religions of the Book – the immortality of the soul. The Ethics, too, will treat this topic, albeit in a drastically different way than other philosophers. But, from the way the expression is rendered, it is still not clear what it means to apply duration to the mind, and perhaps intentionally so. What pertains to the “duration of the mind without the body” is considered in the notorious vp23: V p 2 3 : The human mind is not able to be absolutely destroyed with its body, but something of it remains which is eternal. 16

Martha Kneale, “Eternity and Sempiternity,” in Marjorie Grene (ed.), Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Anchor, 1973), 237.

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We attribute no duration to the human mind, except insofar as it expresses the actual existence of the body, which is explicated through duration, and is able to be defined by time, that is (by 11p 8c ) we do not attribute duration to it, unless with regard to an enduring body.

Spinoza is stressing that “duration” is a property of actual existing bodies, and thoughts have duration only insofar as thoughts are referred to bodies.17 This passage is particularly mysterious because, when combined with other important passages in the Ethics, we get overt contradictions: (1) There is something of the mind that is eternal (vp23); (2) This something cannot be destroyed with the body (vp23); (3) The body can be and is destroyed when its ratio of motion and rest is altered (ivp39s); (4) The object of the idea constituting the mind is the actually existing body (iip13); (5) Whatever the mind understands under a species of eternity, it understands not from the fact that it conceives the Body’s present actual existence, but from the fact that it conceives the Body’s essence under a species of eternity (vp29). The most promising avenue to deal with this mess seems to be to emphasize that only a part of the mind is eternal. Since the mind is made up of adequate and inadequate ideas and only those ideas could be eternal which are adequate, and since the ideas which make up our perceptions of our body are inadequate, then just those ideas are eternal which are adequate. The crucial point to keep in mind is that, although it is clear that for Spinoza the object of the mind is the actually existing body (iip13), the actual body picks out the mind as a whole and our understanding of it as a whole: it includes not just adequate ideas but also the inadequate understanding of the body we have through the imagination. From this perspective, the mind includes many sorts of ideas, some adequate and some inadequate. When we separate out the adequate ideas from the inadequate ideas through a geometrical method in the fashion I have described in prior chapters, we attempt to distinguish them into two classes (although in practice we cannot do it neatly). Since Spinoza assumes that inadequate ideas are mutilated expressions of our perspectives on adequate ideas, and whatever reality they have arises from the mutilated adequate ideas, it could not be the case that the inadequate features of the inadequate idea could enter into the 17

In Letter XII Spinoza distinguishes between time and duration, and between duration and eternity, which makes vp23 all the more confusing as duration is opposed to eternity, but time is derivative of duration.

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eternal essence of anything as they are finite and involve duration. Thus only the adequate ideas of the body could make up the essence of the body understood under a species of eternity, and these are logically separable from the present actual existence of the body that in turn has a particular determinate essence.18 This is not meant to imply that we have total access to the essence of the body. Rather, insofar as we have adequate ideas they are adequate ideas of the body’s essence and form a part of the mind. Furthermore, if we consider parts of the mind not as parts fitting into a whole, but as parts of nature – modes guided by and deriving from the eternal laws of the attribute of thought – there is no reason why these parts of the mind cannot be understood independently of both the individuated body as a whole and a determinate mind made up of both adequate and inadequate ideas. What sort of ideas might these be? Since only the second and third kinds of knowledge are adequate, an adequate understanding of the actually existing body would have to arise from knowledge of all those features it has in common with other bodies, both globally and locally. We do not have access to an adequate understanding of many features of our actual existing body, as we only know them in terms of those affective features we have in common with the bodies we interact with. Of course, some of us have many adequate ideas and our adequate ideas assume and include knowledge of a great deal of causes through which we understand their adequacy as a consequence of the fact that for Spinoza every definition of an uncreated thing must include a cause. But there is no reason why part of our minds cannot be distinguished from the rest, at least logically, and this adequate part would be the eternal “part” of our minds, a part of nature in the sense considered in chapter 1. This is not an argument for the eternity of the mind, rather an argument that it would not be inconsistent for Spinoza to maintain that a part of the mind is eternal. The more serious problem concerns the immortality of the body. Spinoza cannot say that this particular, determinate body is eternal any more than he can say that this determinate mind as a whole is eternal. But if a part of the mind is eternal then, by iip7, is a part of the body eternal? I think that the answer must be yes, but not insofar as the stuff in my body is eternal. Rather the ratio of motion and rest that arises in the attribute of extension and is in and through the IIM of “motion and rest” is eternal. Clearly Spinoza cannot mean this particular ratio of motion and rest insofar as it 18

This distinction is made by Spinoza between “actual essence” (ivp4) and “essence of the body under a species of eternity” (vp23).

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organizes particular bits of matter as he makes clear that bodies dies when they acquires new ratios of motion and rest (ivp39s). Nor can he mean the bits of matter themselves, or their correspondent ideas, for reasons I will consider later. But the ratio itself, insofar as it derives from the IIM in the attribute of extension, could certainly be eternal, in fact would be eternal as it does not rely on a particular duration. Where is this ratio once my particular body dies? This is a nonsensical question, an attempt to make eternal constituents of the attribute of extension correspond to the finite and durational rules of the imagination. But none of the above explains why the mind is eternal. For this we need to examine the interrelation between the eternity of the mind and the third kind of knowledge, in particular how they are interrelated in the vp31 (the proposition concerning formal cause). i n t u i t i ve s c i e n c e Let us now reconsider the makeup of vp31, a proposition that signals a transition to the final section of Part V (vp31–42). Three of the propositions invoked in the demonstration of vp31 deal with the third kind of knowledge. As I have noted previously, it is not at all clear what Spinoza understands the third kind of knowledge to be. Spinoza asserts that it proceeds from the adequate idea of the formal essence of some attributes of God to adequate knowledge of the essence of things (iip40s2). The “essence of things” is a rather broad phrase, but it seems to imply that we move from a general sort of knowledge to a determinate knowledge of particular essences.19 Spinoza describes it by comparing it with the different sorts of ways one might discern ratios in numbers. If we have two proportional numbers 1 and 2, and we are given a third, 3, it is clear to all that the fourth proportional is 6, i.e., 1 is to 2 as 3 is to 6. But why? In a classic article, Alexandre Matheron has provided an excellent analysis of how the analogy of the fourth proportional bears on the third kind of knowledge.20 There are two discussions of the scientia intuitiva and the fourth proportional in Spinoza’s philosophy other than the discussion 19

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It is unclear from the way Spinoza presents the third kind of knowledge, whether the third kind of knowledge is both the adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God and the knowledge of the essences of things that arise from it, or just the knowledge of the essences of things (and the former belongs to the second kind of knowledge from which the third kind of knowledge arises). Alexandre Matheron, “Spinoza and Euclidean Arithmetic: The Example of the Fourth Proportional,” in Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails (eds.), Spinoza and the Sciences (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986), 125–50. [The article was translated by David Lachterman.]

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found in the Ethics, one in the TIE and one in the KV . In both the TIE and the KV the sort of knowledge that Spinoza calls knowledge of the third kind in the Ethics is referred to as a fourth kind of knowledge. Of these, the discussion in the KV is the least precise, although Mignini has argued for its superiority over the discussion in the TIE.21 In the KV Spinoza divides the four sorts of knowledge as follows. In the first case someone tells us a rule: if you multiply the second and third numbers, and divide the product by the first, you then find the fourth number, which has the same proportion to the third as the second to the first. Spinoza uses no numbers in this passage from the KV , but given two numbers a and b, which determine a ratio, and another number c, one can determine a fourth number d , which stands in the same ratio to c as a to b, by b × c/a. As Spinoza points out, if someone tells us this rule, and we have no sanctions for believing it beyond his or her authority, since he or she could be lying we have no “more knowledge of the rule of three than a blind man has of color” (KV ii:1, i/54). In the second case we might test it with particular calculations, and try to sanction the rule via induction. But this is also uncertain. To use an example not employed by Spinoza, given the fact that there are solutions of a2 + b2 = c 2 we might assume that there is a solution for a4 + b4 = c 4 , and we would be wrong (hence Fermat’s last theorem – although Fermat’s inductive hypothesis based on the fact that he could find no solution for a n + b n = c n for n > 2 is correct!). In the third case we consult reason, and reason tells us that “because of the property of proportionality in these numbers this is so, and could not have been or happened otherwise” (KV ii:1, i/55). Here Spinoza is referring to Euclid’s geometrical demonstration of the fourth proportional at Elements vii.19. But this is not the end of it since Spinoza offers “a fourth, who has the clearest knowledge of all. Has no need of either report, or of experience, or of the art of reasoning, because through his penetration he immediately sees the proportionality in all the calculations” (ibid.). Spinoza adds in a note that “this last one never opines or believes, but sees the thing in itself, not through something else, but in itself” (ii:1, n.d). In a further elaboration of this sort of knowledge Spinoza emphasizes that it is primarily to be understood as a union with God (KV ii:22, i/101). In the KV version Spinoza strongly emphasizes the proximity and immediacy implicit in the highest sort of knowledge. In the TIE Spinoza again presents four grades of knowledge considered via the example of the fourth 21

Filippo Mignini, “In Order to Interpret Spinoza’s Theory of the Third Kind of Knowledge: Should Intuitive Science be Considered Per Causam Proximam Knowledge,” in Edwin Curley and PierreFranc¸ois Moreau (eds.), Spinoza: Issues and Directions (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 136–46.

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proportional. Some seeking a fourth proportional will take over a rule that they have heard from their teachers, and apply it based on authority. This is similar to the first case from the KV . Others will try to construct a universal axiom on the basis of experience. They will discover the rule by trial and error, and “infer that the procedure is always a good way to find the number in the proportion.” This is noticeably different from the parallel stage in KV , as it is not merely a question of confirming a rule via experiment, but actually constructing a rule by empirical example.22 Mathematicians understand the rule from the rational evidence given in Euclid’s demonstration. Through this they come to understand the nature of proportion, and ipso facto how the nature of proportion applies to numbers such as 2, 4, 3, and 6. But “they do not see the adequate proportionality of the given numbers – [a]nd if they do, they see it not by the force of that proposition, but intuitively [NS: or] without going through any procedure” (TIE 24). Matheron notes that although there are many similarities between the TIE and the Ethics discussions (iip40s2) of the fourth proportional, there are also important differences. In the Ethics there are three kinds of knowledge and in the TIE (and KV ) four kinds (the Ethics lumps the first two sorts of knowledge in the TIE and the KV together as one kind of knowledge). But the most important difference appears at first glance far more trivial. The Ethics version of the fourth proportional is even briefer than the one in the TIE, and specifically used to illustrate the highest sort of knowledge. It reads: But in the simplest numbers none of this is necessary. Given the numbers 1, 2, and 3, no one fails to see that the fourth proportional number is 6 – and we see this much more clearly because we infer the fourth number from the ratio which, in one glance, we see the first number to have the second. (CW 478)

Matheron notes that where Spinoza uses 2, 4, 3, and 6 in the TIE, he uses 1, 2, 3, and 6 in the Ethics. In the Ethics Spinoza emphasizes adequate features of the “simplest numbers” and from this arises the fourth proportional, whereas in the TIE the proportional arises “not by the force of that proposition, but intuitively [NS: or] without going through any procedure.” This seems, in turn, consonant with the emphasis on the immediacy of the third kind of knowledge in the KV . Matheron uses this to argue that “the relevance of the case chosen by Spinoza derives precisely from the fact that, in the case of the discovery of the fourth proportional, the fourth mode of knowledge is not a simple concretization 22

As this is also how Spinoza considers it in the Ethics, this would seem to argue for the later date of the TIE rather than the KV , contra Mignini.

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of the third: their respective structures are entirely different.”23 The ratios “2/4 = 3/6” and “1/2 = 3/6” differ insofar as “1/2” is the structuring ratio itself and thus the cause of its multiple “3/6,” whereas “2/4” is a multiple of the more fundamental ratio “1/2.” When we reason that “1/2 = 3/6” we derive 3/6 from the essence of 1/2, and structure it via this ratio. We consider 3/6 as a sort of expression of “1/2,” i.e., 3(1/2). Matheron adds: But then what relation with the second kind of knowledge is involved? To understand this a single remark will be enough. Knowledge whose point of departure belongs to the third kind can indeed be, in respect to a given object, of the second kind as far as its point of arrival is concerned.

Matheron’s comment is elliptical, perhaps a single remark is not sufficient, but I construe his remark as follows. Both the second and third kind of knowledge deal with adequate ideas, even the same adequate ideas, as they do in the example of the fourth proportional. In Spinoza’s example of the second kind of knowledge, adequate ideas are deduced or discovered from common properties of proportionals. Thus 2/4 and 3/6 share a common property, 1/2, and this is a common property of proportionals as such. In the case of the second kind of knowledge we can deduce a rule via the Euclidean demonstration, and then apply this rule to different sorts of ratios, all resting on common features of numbers. But in the case of 1/2 we are dealing with a determinate ratio found only in the simplest numbers,24 and we can understand other ratios, 2/4 and 3/6, through 1/2. Both sorts of knowledge result in an adequate understanding of a ratio, but one is derived from a common feature applied to other numbers, whereas in the case of the third kind of knowledge “we seize the object directly as opposed to by rules that are applied externally.”25 a d e quat e c au s e s Now, given this very brief discussion of the third kind of knowledge and the fourth proportional, I would like to consider vp31. What provides the link between the eternity of a part of the mind and the third kind of knowledge? Our mind continually strives and this striving is its essence (iiip9s). It strives for all sorts of things, which both augment and diminish its power, both aid and abet its striving. The highest sort of striving or conatus of 23 24 25

Matheron, “Spinoza and Euclidean Arithmetic,” 143. This is strictly not true, take for example the ratio of two enormous prime numbers. But the point seems well enough taken. ´ Alexandre Matheron, Individu et Communaut´e chez Spinoza (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988), 581. See also Parkinson, Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge, 181–90. (Matheron cites Parkinson as the source of his discussion.)

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the mind we can attain is the third kind of knowledge, which arises from the second kind of knowledge, and gives us our greatest satisfaction and pleasure. Finally, the third kind of knowledge allows us to understand God, insofar as it is the most adequate way of understanding singular things, and the more we understand singular things, the more we understand God (vp24). The conatus of the mind attains the third kind of knowledge when we understand the singular essences of things that please us and help us to understand God. Viewing the third kind of knowledge in terms of the conatus of the mind combines two vantage points on this highest cognition. It is a form of cognition, as outlined in iip40s2 and it is also the highest sort of striving of the conatus. This shows how and why we attempt to take part in this third kind of knowledge: it is a striving that results in “the greatest kind of satisfaction” (vp27). It is notable that Spinoza only speaks of things that pertain to both the second and the third kind of knowledge in Part II, he needs the conatus as developed in Part III to be able to distinguish the second and the third kinds of knowledge.26 So, to summarize: (1) we move from imagination and memory, from the rejection of knowledge that is contingent and is of duration, to a knowledge that is adequate and explains the rational logical and physical features of our world (while still recognizing the virtue and necessity of the imagination); (2) out of this second kind of knowledge we strive toward a third kind of knowledge, which is an intuitive science of adequate essences insofar as they are singular or determinate; (3) mind is the formal cause of the third kind of knowledge; (4) our intellectual love of God ultimately arises from this third kind of knowledge. (3) was the idiosyncracy in vp31, Spinoza’s invocation of formal causes. As I have noted above, Spinoza equates formal cause with adequate cause. So, to understand formal cause, we must understand adequate cause. Adequate cause is defined at iiid1 as: that whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it. But I call it partial, or inadequate, if its effect cannot be understood through it alone. (CW 492)

This seems obvious enough. If I, for example, have two ideas, and if one is perceived through the other in a sufficiently precise and encompassing 26

As described in vp24 (as opposed to iip40s2). Spinoza chooses to add this criterion in Part V (although he derives it from ip25c [“Particular things are nothing but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way,”] which we have also seen was very important to iiip6). Knowledge of singular things in Part II is only through the imagination and the second kind of knowledge, whereas Part V considers knowledge of singular things as the third kind of knowledge.

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manner, then one is the cause of the other. An example might be the causal relation between a genetic definition of a triangle and the properties of a triangle. But this is not a sufficient explanation. First, Spinoza specifies that it is an adequate cause, so we might wonder what this has to do with adequacy. Adequate idea and adequacy are discussed at some length in Part II. Cause is a central but undefined concept throughout the Ethics. Much of Part I concerns cause, and how primary beings are related through causes. Part III begins with a uniting of two essential concepts that are central to the two preceding books. Why does Spinoza connect these two concepts? He is telling us that what he is about to discuss concerns how the metaphysics of substance is connected to the other fundamental categories in his philosophy, and how it is related to the adequacy of ideas. This is what we have seen in our analysis of propositions like iiip6 and others, that the key metaphysical, epistemological, and physical concepts of Parts I and II are now viewed insofar as they express the conatus, and insofar as the conatus ultimately seeks to express itself qua adequate cause. Spinoza chose to emphasize adequate causes, as opposed to true causes, because he wished to emphasize the cause as the entire ground of the effect with no need for an external referent. I do not, for example take a cause and effect, compare it to another cause and effect or to another set of necessitating conditions, and thereby determine whether the relation is satisfactory. It is rather an internal cause as set out in chapter 2, the truth and relevance of the effect arises entirely out of its relation to the cause, with no dependence on an external object. Why does Spinoza use the word “perceived” in the definition? In his definition of attribute, Spinoza says that an attribute is that which an intellect perceives of substance as its essence. This is contrasted with “conceives,” which Spinoza uses to define substance as that which is conceived through and in itself. Further, in a note to the definition of idea in Part II (iid3) Spinoza remarks that “perception” indicates that a mind is acted upon by an object, whereas “concept” expresses an activity of mind. This distinction is not terribly consistent in the Ethics. But, assuming that it holds for this passage, we see that the cause is adequate insofar as we can perceive the effect clearly and distinctly through it. I submit that this incorporates a broad epistemic notion into the definition. It is not sufficient that an effect follow from the cause to be an adequate cause. It must provide sufficient epistemic context within which to have clear and distinct knowledge of an effect. If some X is the cause of Y, for it to be the adequate cause of Y I must reciprocally be able to perceive what Y is

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entirely through X, I must need nothing additional to perceive Y. When Spinoza uses this definition in Part IV, he asserts that an adequate cause, in relation to human beings, is one whose effects can be deduced from the laws of our nature alone (ivp2). In other words, Spinoza uses “perceive” as opposed to “conceive” to emphasize that the relation from effect to cause is a passive one and that the effect is understood entirely within the context that its cause provides. The converse does not hold. A cause can certainly be conceived and one can conceive with it. For example, Spinoza does not imply that I have to know the microstructure of an entity down to its atomic constituents to be said to be its adequate cause, or have built a machine to be the adequate cause of its product. Therefore, the word “perceive” further emphasizes that “adequacy” in the expression “adequate cause” does its work as the ground through which an effect is understood irrespective of an external object. Now let us see how all of this is employed in vp31. Spinoza concludes his demonstration by asserting “the mind, insofar as it is eternal, is the adequate, or formal, cause of the third kind of knowledge (iiid1, CW 610).” Furthermore, as we have seen, the adequate cause is an efficient cause since it has an effect. Thus an efficient cause is a formal cause, an apparently difficult state of affairs for the theory of the four causes. Actually, though, Spinoza is not unique in this.27 Zabarella argued in De Medio Demonstrationis that the form is that cause which best exhibits necessity in a scientific demonstration.28 Bacon attempted to construct a theory of forms on the basis of efficient causes, and Hobbes similarly minimized the difference between “natural” and “artificial” forms insofar as both arise from efficient causes. For Spinoza, the mind, insofar as it is eternal, is the formal, or adequate and necessary cause, of the third kind of knowledge. The mind, insofar as it is eternal, has adequate knowledge of God, and can know the things that follow from this knowledge of God. Thus Spinoza is saying that our mind is the cause of the third kind of knowledge, since our mind, by virtue of being a mind, has adequate knowledge of God, and all those things that follow from the knowledge of God. Spinoza uses “formal” cause, as a way of signifying that the mind is the efficient cause, but specifically insofar as the effect (the third kind of knowledge) is understood through this cause alone (and thus nothing 27

28

There are also basic differences between Zabarella, on the one side, and Hobbes and Bacon, on the other, although I have emphasized the similarities. For example, Hobbes’ emphasis on genetic definitions has no analogue in Zabarella, despite the theory of mental instruments. See William Edwards, “The Logic of Iacopo Zabarella (1535–1589),” (Columbia University Ph.D., 1960), 286–322.

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external). Consequently the mind is the internal cause of the third kind of knowledge, through which the essences of the things – the “forms” – grasped by the third kind of knowledge are fully explained. How is this related to the eternity of the mind? Spinoza writes: But here it should be noted that although we are already certain that the mind is eternal, insofar as it conceives things under a species of eternity, nevertheless, for an easier explanation and better understanding of the things we wish to show, we shall consider it as if it were now beginning to be, and were now beginning to understand things under a species of eternity, as we have done up to this point.29 (CW 610)

This is a strong support for the “epistemological” interpretation of the eternity of the mind, as Spinoza clearly equates conceiving things under a species of eternity with the eternity of the mind.30 The simplest interpretation would be that our minds conceive things under a species of eternity when our ideas have no temporal markers or reference to the duration of the body, and are related to the definition of God and are seen to arise from the definition of God (and are consequently adequate). Then they satisfy id8: “By eternity I understand existence itself, insofar as it is conceived necessarily to follow solely from the definition of an eternal thing.” In other words (1) eternity is dependent on existence itself, (2) the absolutely infinite being is existence itself, and (3) God is the absolutely infinite being, to show how something arises from God is to show that it is eternal. But this only holds in a particular and limited way. Spinoza explains “absolutely infinite” in id7 as “that therefore is absolutely infinite, which to its essence pertains whatsoever expresses essence, and involves no negation.” Insofar as an essence of a mode expresses something positive it expresses an essence (iiip4). When we understand what an essence expresses, we understand something of God, as God is “whatsoever expresses essence.” This circumvents the problem that we cannot show how particular things arise from God qua finite particular things. We can understand that they have essences and this sort of eternity is just what they are in and through “whatsoever expresses essence” or “existence itself.” It is not sempiternal duration, nor any sort of stock of eternal essences through which beings manifest themselves. Rather eternity can have no referent beyond positive assertion of something, insofar as something positive is asserted through a positive essence, and ipso facto eternal. This may seem a rather trivial sort of eternity, but Spinoza would claim that if we seek immortal duration we 29 30

Vp31s. For the “epistemological” interpretation see Allison, Benedict de Spinoza, 116–19.

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are seeking to extend our imagined perceptions of what we are beyond its warrant.31 This, of course, does not mean that our eternity is a feature just of the activity of our minds. Much that we consider to be part of our selves could very well be eternal independent of any cognition I have of its eternity. Spinoza is discussing our certainty that the mind is eternal, and this can only arise from a particular sort of certain cognition and the objects of this cognition that we know to be eternal through this cognition. He wishes to argue that it is intrinsic to this sort of cognition that we understand the mind is eternal. But there are two stages in understanding the eternity of the mind, one associated with the second kind of knowledge and one associated with the third kind of knowledge. Via the second kind of knowledge, I know that ideas are eternal insofar as they have essences, and these essences express something positive which ultimately relates back to God. This is similar to how I understand things via the common properties of proportionals. Those common features which are in the part and the whole are common features of all bodies and minds, they are adequately conceived, and are part of the idea of God insofar as they are adequate in and of themselves, are comprehended in and through the idea of God (vp40c), and gain no additional adequacy from being in the idea of God. As God is the absolutely infinite being, whose infinity contains “whatever expresses essence, and involves no negation,” those things that express essence are referred to the eternal thing, and are thus eternal. Now this provides us with a highly schematic notion of the eternity of the mind, the mind is eternal just as many other things are – for example the essence of the body. And we have access to this via the way that we conceive them as eternal (although they are eternal independent of our conceiving them). Of course, one of Spinoza’s central philosophical messages, one which I emphasized in the discussion of imperia, is that we should not seek a sort of human eternity or special set of human privileges which set us above the rest of nature. We are part of nature in a rather deflated sense. Consequently, the fact that much is eternal besides a part of our minds is no argument against the importance of said eternity. Rather it is a powerful naturalistic argument against a tradition that privileges the immortality of the human soul, the tradition Spinoza referred to at vp20s. It is not this sort 31

Of course, not every way of looking at an essence renders it eternal. It is only insofar as we consider essences as arising from God that they are eternal, because this is the only way that we can consider a world with no external causes, and therefore no external causes capable of destroying a given thing.

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of cognition that makes us eternal or makes us special. Rather we recognize our eternity via this cognition. Similarly, we should not be upset by the fact that much of what we consider to be our personal identity is clearly not eternal, and thus belongs to the inadequate part of our minds and not that part which is eternal. In the second to last proposition of the Ethics, Spinoza claims: “Although we may be ignorant that our mind is eternal, piety, Religion . . . can and must be attained” (vp41). This quote, along with the subsequent discussion, asserts that our knowledge, or non-knowledge, of the eternity of our minds has no direct impact on morality and religion, on our behavior toward others, the communities we associate with, etc. Since morals for Spinoza primarily involve relations between limited finite beings (the passions that result from my being acted upon and acting) and assumes my individual desires that express themselves through thought and extension and unite them in its activity, to recognize that which in me is eternal is to have little to do with morals. And little that I recognize as mine, my vicious and virtuous acts, my passions and sentiments about others, are recognizable in the eternal at all. As such, they are not me in the deepest sense, or perhaps more accurately what I colloquially take to be “me” is not eternal. This goes for the ways in which I imagine my body, and those of others, and much more. What is death for Spinoza then? We might imagine it as a birth into freedom and clarity – as for Plotinus. For when I die, if that part of me which was most rational ceased to have any concern with that part of me which worried about death, my imagination, and good and evil, I would be reborn as a free man. The quote with which I introduced Spinoza seems to imply this: “a free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death” (ivp67), as well as “if men were born free, they would form no concept of good & evil so long as they remained free” (ivp68, CW 584). But to say that this part of us is what is eternal and free is idle speculation about death and terribly unfree. Those who pursue this sort of immortality through religions that promote personal immortality of the “vulgar” sort that Spinoza is trying to undermine, are mired in confused and inadequate ideas. As Spinoza remarks: These opinions seem no less absurd to me than if someone, because he does not believe he can nourish his body with good food to eternity, should prefer to fill himself with poisons and other deadly things, or because he sees that the Mind is not eternal, or immortal, should prefer to be mindless, and to live without reason. These [common beliefs] are so absurd they are hardly worth mentioning. (vp41s, CW 616)

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In worrying and idly speculating about my duration, I am preferring mindlessness to the activities of reason. I could at that very moment be manifesting eternity through my thoughts and acts, turning mere immortality into eternity, and becoming free irrespective of the when or where. our eternity This is a hard and simple eternity. Spinoza “personalizes”32 it, though, with the third kind of knowledge. This is important for understanding the concluding line from vp31s: we shall consider it as if it were now beginning to be, and were now beginning to understand things under a species of eternity, as we have done up to this point. We may do this without danger of error, provided we are careful to draw our conclusions only from evident premises. (CW 611)

Curley has faithfully rendered the strangeness of this passage. The second sentence gives pause. Why might we think it would be dangerous to draw conclusions? Have we not been drawing conclusions for well over two hundred propositions? And the first sentence is even stranger. Spinoza implies that we are both beginning to see things under a species of eternity and have been seeing things under a species of eternity up to this point. The most sensible way to read the passage is that we are beginning to “be” under a species of eternity although we have understood things under a species of eternity up to this point. We might wonder, what distinguishes the propositions before and after vp31? Although the distinction is less strict than might be implied by vp31s, many of the propositions after vp31 concern the intellectual love of God, culminating at vp36. Many of these propositions attempt to show what we are, insofar as we are eternal. Spinoza remarks at vp36, after having claimed that he has demonstrated how much more powerful the third kind of knowledge is than the second, that: Although I have shown generally in Part I that all things (and consequently the human Mind also) depend on God both for their essence and their existence, nevertheless that demonstration, though legitimate and put beyond all chance of doubt, still does not affect our Mind as much as when this is inferred from the very essence of any singular thing which we say depends on God. (vp36, CW 613) 32

Bartuschat also emphasizes the “personal” character of the third kind of knowledge but as a special and distinctive feature of humans (Bartuschat, “The Infinite Intellect and Human Knowledge,” 207–8). Still there is a consanguinity between Bartuschat’s emphasis on the third kind of knowledge as knowledge for the knower and my own interpretation (208).

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This passage shows that Spinoza understood Part V to have a similar content to Part I but a different emphasis. Unlike Part III and Part IV, Part V deals with first principles, God most centrally, but from the perspective of the human mode as opposed to from the perspective of the first principles themselves: the intellectual love of God, harnessing our passions to the idea of God, the eternity of part of the mind, and the third kind of knowledge.33 It is, above all, the last, the third kind of knowledge which distinguishes the latter sections of Part V from Part I. For example, in the demonstration to vp24 – “The more we understand singular things, the more we understand God” – Spinoza emphasizes that vp24 is directly derived from a single proposition, ip25c, which reads: “Particular things are nothing, unless affections or modes of the attributes of God, by which attributes of God are expressed in a certain and determinate mode.”34 Ip25c is the first definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics of the particular determinate mode. Book V concerns how human understanding leads us to God and freedom. Since vp24 is derived directly from ip25c, one could consider vp24 as ip25c from the perspective of Part V, the “thing” viewed not insofar as it arises from God in abstractu, but rather as a particular mode of which we have determinate knowledge that leads to our blessedness and freedom. We are clearly invited to try to understand this in terms of the third kind of knowledge. But what does it mean to show what something is, its essence and existence, from the “very essence of any singular thing which we say depends on God”? Vp31 showed that the third kind of knowledge has the mind, in our case the human mind, as its formal (or adequate efficient) cause. Thus, to understand the essences of things via the third kind of knowledge is to understand them through the essence of our mind (given the definition of adequate cause which Spinoza equated with formal cause at vp31). This risks being trivial, for it appears obvious that we always understand things via the essence of our mind. But I do not think it is true. For example, I might know that Lodewijk is a Lutheran, but, although this knowledge involves the essence of my mind in some sense (my mind has an essence and my mind knows this fact about Lodewijk), it does not entail that I know this about Lodewijk through the essence of my mind or that my knowledge of Lodewijk arises wholly from the essence of my mind in the way that a proportion arises from a ratio and is understood through a ratio. Rather it is a contingent fact, an inadequate idea that arises from 33 34

Part V is called “Of Human Freedom.” The syntax of this famous passage is somewhat odd. Ip25c is derived from ip15 and d5.

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the imagination, or more properly a confused representation of a mode with an external cause. My knowledge of Lodewijk is analogous to the sense in which I can know an external body insofar as I share common features with it, we both have ratios of motion and rest for example, but this adequate knowledge is different from the knowledge I would have if we knew the very ratio that structured a body (I will return to this point below). This would also hold of those things I understand via the second kind of knowledge, for example “bodies have motion.” I have adequate knowledge of “bodies have motion” and it is clearly one of the ideas that make up my mind. But “bodies have motion” does not arise from the essence of my mind in particular: it holds of any body. Something is said to belong to an essence if (1) when given the thing is given, and (2) if when taken away the thing is taken away, and an essence is (3) that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and conversely (4) that which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing (iid2). “Bodies have motion” satisfies neither (1) nor (4) as part of the essence of our minds since clearly “bodies have motion” can be conceived without human minds (Spinoza seems to be attempting to rule out general properties or causal antecedents as holding of particular essences (iip10cs)). To move toward what actually might qualify as the third kind of knowledge we should return to Spinoza’s remark in vp31s that “we shall consider it as if it were now beginning to be, and were now beginning to understand things under a species of eternity, as we have done up to this point” (CW 610) As previously noted, Spinoza seems to have the passages after vp31 in mind, and particularly those concerning the intellectual love of God, as those through which we understand how we are beginning to be eternal. The intellectual love of God is not the third kind of knowledge, but rather a rational affect arising from the third kind of knowledge.35 But, if we are to understand affects and cognition to be differing (and reciprocal) perspectives on the same ideas, then one way of distinguishing the third 35

An important question I have dodged is, if the third kind of knowledge is best understood as arising from the conatus of the mind and expressing something of our essence through adequately comprehending the essence of an artifact, then is it not an affect instead of a kind of knowledge? Spinoza states that “Out of the third kind of knowledge necessarily arises the intellectual love of God. For out of this kind of cognition arises Elation connected to the idea of God, insofar as the idea of God is the cause [of the third kind of knowledge]. That is the love of God, not insofar as we imagine God to be present, but insofar as we understand God to be eternal, that is what I call the intellectual love of God” (vp32c). For Spinoza it seems that the third kind of knowledge properly becomes an affection when it has an object, in this case God. Sometimes Spinoza minimizes the difference between cognition and affection: “Cognition of evil is itself sadness, insofar as we are aware (conscii) of it” (IVP64).

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kind of knowledge from the second kind of knowledge is that it picks out a unique affect: the intellectual love of God.36 It is through this reciprocal relation between the most important of the affects and the most important sort of knowledge that we understand what we are, without danger (and by danger I take Spinoza to be alluding to the possible heterodoxy of his position, which he hopes will be overcome by the rigor of his argument for it). In vp36s Spinoza takes the following claim to decisively show the superior power of the third kind of knowledge over the second: From this we clearly understand wherein our salvation, or blessedness, or Freedom consists, viz. in a constant and eternal Love of God, or in God’s Love for men. Again, because the essence of our Mind consists only in knowledge, of which God is the beginning and foundation (by ip15 and iip47s), it is clear to us how our Mind, with respect both to essence and existence, follows from the divine nature, and continually depends on God. (CW 612)

This passage shows that the intellectual love of God allows us to recognize the interchangeability of “a constant and eternal Love of God, or in God’s Love for men,” of “our salvation, or blessedness, or Freedom.” The second clause is intended to show that what is taken to be salvation in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is, when stripped of superstition and nonsense, really the kind of rational salvation Spinoza is describing in the Ethics (a point he illustrates with an extremely heterodox reading of Scripture).37 But the first clause clearly shows us that via the affects we come to “feel” what we are by expressing our adequate ideas in the third kind of knowledge, that our mind includes an adequate idea of the infinite and eternal essence of God, and this adequate idea of the eternal and infinite essence of God is the way we are in and through God. Although we may know via the second kind of knowledge that all things arise from God, we only know the power of our essence as cause of the power of effects (va2), and the way in which our mind is comprehended in the divine power, through the reciprocity of the third kind of knowledge and the intellectual love of God. Thus, we know how our minds, or more correctly parts of our minds, are in and through God via the causal power they have. This causal power, and the fact that effects are comprehended through us, tell us something quite 36 37

In the theory of the affects, Spinoza emphasizes that the more mutilated our knowledge is, the more diverse the affects (iiip56). Spinoza defines “true religion” as “whatever we desire and do of which we are the cause insofar as we have the idea of God, or insofar as we know God, I relate to religion” (ivp37s1). On the many complex issues involved in this see Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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different about eternity than knowing that all essences insofar as they arise from God are eternal in some sense. As described in vp23s, we feel through the causal efficacy of our mind that we are eternal. Thus the transition toward the third kind of knowledge is the recognition of how our minds are eternal in and through what follows from them. There is an important passage from the KV emphasizing just this. Spinoza claims of human freedom that: it is a firm existence which our intellect acquires through immediate union with God, so that it can produce ideas in itself, and outside itself effects agreeing well with its nature, without its effects being subjected, however, to any external causes by which they can be changed or transformed. (KV ii:26, i/112)

What I recognize myself, or perhaps more appropriately “itself,” as being on this picture is very, very different from what I ordinarily recognize myself as (!). I do not recognize myself in this way as father, mother, Boy Scout troop leader, obsessive mandolin playing hobbyist, sympathizer with the plight of the weak, lover of my children, etc. But this is, of course, the goal of the emendative process, to lead me back to those adequate ideas which make my mind in such a way that I can express their being and power, above all the idea of God. And this leads me back to much that is not part of my finite personal identity. Here I finally can get to the issue of what sort of knowledge Spinoza is describing and its bearing on Spinoza’s method. As I have emphasized in prior chapters, Spinoza’s geometrical method is both a process of emendation and illative deduction. In the Ethics Spinoza wishes to rule out all sorts of untenable readings of metaphysical, mental, and moral concepts in order to point to metaphysical definitions rooted in adequate ideas already in and making up our minds, above all the adequate idea of God included in our minds that Spinoza points to above in vp36s. But all ideas include an adequate idea of God. Part of the process of emending our minds is to see how a wide variety of ideas arise from ideas we already have, albeit often obscurely. We come to understand this through a process of geometrical deduction and emendation, seeing the ways in which certain ideas necessarily follow from others. But there is another set of connections in the Ethics, the ways in which we see how certain crucial ideas – like iiip7, iip7, ia4, ip7, ip15, ip16, and others – are the sources of many other ideas which are, in turn, comprehended through them. In Part V this becomes evident, as important propositions from the preceding sections of the book are brought together for their bearing on our blessedness. Ultimately all of these propositions must arise from our adequate understanding

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of the idea of God, which the Ethics has attempted to clarify, and to rid us of our tendency to understand God via the imagination. By recognizing the importance of these propositions, seeing the ways in which other propositions arise from them, and most importantly by recognizing that they are not just external, albeit necessary, strings of ideas guaranteeing certain illative consequences, we see that they are literally ideas in our minds from which a great deal follows (said ideas having been uncovered via the process described in the previous chapters). We see that many propositions arise from iip7, and thus recognize it is a particularly powerful idea for us. This exhibits a kind of diachronic structure in the Ethics, a variety of powerful ideas manifesting themselves in different propositions as opposed to the synchronic deduction. Propositions like iip7 also show us how a string of ideas can arise from one particularly powerful idea (in this case ia4) and teach us to view ideas as proximate causes. All these ideas are ultimately referred back to the definition of God, and through them we understand better and better the nature of this definition. It is a methodological version of ip16, a glimpse of the ways in which many modes arise from the idea of God. Margaret Wilson has stressed the similarities between the way in which Spinoza formulates ip16 and the third kind of knowledge.38 On my interpretation the third kind of knowledge is adequate causal knowledge ultimately deriving from the idea of God, a sort of localization of ip16 to the human mind. This is combined with Matheron’s interpretation of the fourth proportional, for the propositions arise directly from powerful propositions in our minds, which, in turn, are understood to arise directly from the definition of God. But the intuitive science is not a deduction, as Gueroult understood the third kind of knowledge, rather a proximate understanding39 of the ways in which ideas arise from those adequate ideas that make up our mind, which are, in turn, eternal. One criticism of my interpretation could be that, although it is in accord with some of the things Spinoza says about the third kind of knowledge, I have not shown that the third kind of knowledge is “a kind of knowing which proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the [NS: formal] essence 38 39

Margaret Wilson, “Infinite Understanding, Scientia Intuitiva, and Ethics i.16,” in Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 1999). On the intuitive knowledge of God and intuitive knowledge of things as per causam proximam knowledge see Filippo Mignini, “In Order to Interpret Spinoza’s theory of the Third Kind of Knowledge: Should Intuitive Science be considered Per Causam Proximam Knowledge,” in Curley and Moreau, Spinoza: Issues and Directions, 136–46. On what “deduction” might mean in a seventeenth-century context see Vance Maxwell, “The Philosophical Method of Spinoza,” Dialogue 27 (1988), 89–110.

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of things” (iip40s2). In order to explain how my interpretation is consistent with this version of the definition of the third kind of knowledge in Part II of the Ethics, I need to take account of the following difficulties: (1) What does it mean to have adequate knowledge of the formal essence of attributes? (2) What does it mean to have adequate knowledge of the formal essences of things? (3) How are they connected? What sort of knowledge would adequate knowledge of the formal essence of attributes be? By “formal essence,” Spinoza understood the essence in the actually existing thing, as opposed to the “objective essence” or its representative content. Knowledge of the “formal essence” of the attribute would be knowledge of bodies and ideas insofar as they are “parts” of their respective attributes representing something of substance. Why does Spinoza not emphasize our knowledge of the “objective essence”? Take the parallel with method, the context where Spinoza first presents the relevance of the formal/objective essence distinction to his philosophy (TIE 33–5). We know the truth or adequacy of a method – an “objective essence” dependent on its object – through the ideas that the method represents, our true ideas. To know the “objective essence” is to know about the method, the process of emendation, synthesis, and analysis, etc. But method is only interesting and only exists in relation to the content, the “formal essence.” Spinoza is trying to represent and emend, via method, our true and adequate ideas, and method is only justified and warranted as a reflection on these true ideas. In the case of the attribute, I think Spinoza is trying to make a similar distinction between reflecting on attributes, or infinite modes, the sort of process that the Ethics describes in great detail, and actually having ideas that express the eternity of substance. Spinoza clearly assumes that modes are capable of expressing the eternity of substance, for example finite human modes have an adequate idea of the eternal and infinite essence of God and the thoughts of finite human modes express the eternal and infinite essence of God (although that they express substance does not imply for Spinoza that modes are substance). As modes express substance, they reflect more and more the eternity of substance, and its unicity, absolute infinity, and causal power, etc. Don Garrett has, for this reason, argued that the indestructibility of the conatus is a quasi-substantial feature of modes, something that modes have insofar as they express substance and are substance-like.40 That modes are substance-like in some sense arises from their initial definition, they are 40

Cf. Don Garrett, “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Olli Koistinen and John Biro (eds.), Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes (Oxford University Press, 2002), 127–58.

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conceived through substance. Again this does not mean they are substance, but it means that many eternal and non-finite features of “modeness” are derived from substance.41 And this also explains how the “formal essence of the attribute” gives us knowledge of the “formal essence” of things, at least some things that belong to the formal essences of things. This knowledge would be coextensive with that part of our mind that is eternal. When described in this way, the third kind of knowledge would be very much like the second kind of knowledge. But there is an important difference of emphasis that I have already pointed to above. The second kind of knowledge would be knowledge of anything that is in the part or the whole, for example knowledge of common properties of bodies. The third kind of knowledge is knowledge of the essences of things, and therefore when the objects of the second kind of knowledge are considered via the third kind of knowledge they are not just considered as common properties but rather as belonging to and constituting essences. This criterion of belonging to or constituting essences also holds of the way in which we understand the attributes as constituting the third kind of knowledge. As Spinoza emphasized in vp31, we understand the third kind of knowledge as moving from knowledge of God to knowledge of essences of determinate things. This is an additional important criterion for knowledge of the formal essence of the attribute, that understanding an attribute as expressing substance is understanding it as “part” of God. So we must know the attribute not in and of itself, as extension or thought, but rather as expressing substance. As discussed in the previous chapter, Gueroult emphasized that the definition of God is the one properly generative definition. But the definition of God is not the bundle of words set out at the beginning of the Ethics. The definition of God is that adequate idea of God we come to understand as an adequate part of our minds (not via construction but via emendation). When we reorganize our mind according to this idea of God, we recognize how all the “parts” of our mind arise from this idea of God, and how they are eternal. This understanding is, of course, an individual process since we are all qua individuals different expressions of the divine essence. Through recognizing the ways in which our minds comprehend the divine 41

Individuation would be a good example of this, although individuation not understood via a finite external boundary delimiting the individual, i.e., not understood as a finite limitation on a mode arising from another mode (id2), but instead understood as a principle arising from and internal to an individual – as essence (iid2), or singularity (iid7), or bodily individuation via a ratio of motion and rest (the “Physics” after iip13). This kind of individuation does not necessarily assume anything about finitude. For example, Spinoza claims the “Whole of nature is one individual” (iip13l7).

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essence, we understand how parts of our minds are eternal (since they arise directly from the idea of God), and how powerful we are. This is the other aspect of what Spinoza understood in Letter XXXII by “the infinite power of Nature” in thought, “not insofar as it is infinite and perceives the whole of Nature, but insofar as it is finite and perceives only the human Body.” God’s absolute infinity, and the way we understand God’s absolute infinity to be included in each and every idea we have that has our body as its object, helps us to understand the ideas that make up our minds. So, when we understand the definition of God as it makes up part of our minds, we have precisely this sort of formal knowledge. So far I have only considered the third kind of knowledge as how ideas are adequately comprehended by other ideas. But then how to move to knowledge of the essences of everyday things? It could not be knowledge of this dog or horse, at least insofar as I perceive this being called “horse” or “dog” via the imagination, as this would be inadequate knowledge. I could understand the mechanistic causal structure of a dog or horse, but this would really only be access to those features I have in common with this dog or that horse, I would have no access to the internal constitution of the parts of their bodies (just as I would have none to the parts of my own body). Of what can I have this sort of knowledge? Spinoza says that the essence of man is appetite or desire, all of those ways we seek to persevere in our existence (iiip9s). So knowing my desire, the way in which I persevere in my existence, would qualify as this sort of knowledge. Knowledge of that eternal part of my mind, the eternal ideas that make up my mind, certainly qualifies as adequate knowledge of my essence as eternal ideas are preeminently how I persevere in my existence: the conatus of my mind. Although Spinoza says that “the first thing that constitutes the essence of the Mind is nothing but the idea of an actually existing Body” (iiip3dem, CW 498), this describes the whole essence of the mind, both the adequate and inadequate ideas that make up my mind. The eternal ideas of my mind are not my whole mind, but they satisfy Spinoza’s account of “belonging to an essence.” Since Spinoza does not say that we need to know the whole essence of our mind, any eternal adequate idea that we have satisfies the criterion for the eternity of our mind set out at iip40s2. And, since the knowledge of the rest of the essence of our mind is inadequate, it seems fairly clear that we cannot have adequate knowledge of this intrinsically inadequate portion of our minds. Finally, as I have stated previously, although the adequate ideas that make up my mind are not the entirety of my essence as a human mind, they are whatever of my mind is eternal and consequently is part of the essence of God.

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Is this the only knowledge I can have that constitutes the third kind of knowledge? In the “Introduction” I quoted a passage from Hobbes’ De Cive that stirred a whole generation of philosophers to think about the centrality of the mos geometricus: The Geometers have managed their province outstandingly. For whatever benefit comes to human life from observation of the stars, from mapping out of lands, from reckoning of time, and from long-distance navigation; whatever is beautiful in buildings, strong in defence-works and marvelous in machines, whatever in short distinguishes the modern world from the barbarity of the past, is almost wholly the gift of Geometry; for what we owe to Physics, Physics owes to Geometry.42

In past chapters I have argued that Hobbes’ influence was decisive for how Spinoza thought about definitions. We might think of Spinoza as attempting to make Hobbes’ and Bacon’s most central insights harmonize with the Cartesian philosophy, something common to his generation, most notably in Velthuysen43 and Pufendorf. But, as opposed to most CartesioScholastics, who emphasized similarities between Hobbesian, Baconian, and Cartesian divine voluntarism, Spinoza seems to have take the opposite path in using Hobbes’ criticisms of the free will to rid Cartesianism of voluntarism. Still, there are enormous affinities between Spinoza and this general Cartesio-Hobbesian project pursued by many philosophers of his generation, in particular the idea of maker’s knowledge that I have emphasized throughout. In the KV Spinoza emphasizes that the third kind of knowledge is a way of seeing “the thing in itself, not through something else, but in itself” (KV ii:1 n.f., 1/55). By “not through something else” Spinoza seems to mean not through some sort of mediating structure, but rather directly or immediately via its cause, in this case the eternal part of the essence of our mind. One notable sort of thing that would satisfy the criterion for the third kind of knowledge outlined in the KV would be the philosophy and methodology I build from adequate ideas and through which I have knowledge, as these are extensions of my essence via adequate causes without the mediation of external causes. This, internal causal knowledge of an essence in itself, has been an emphasis in many of the passages I have discussed, ip18, iiip4, vp31, as well as in the theory of generative definition. An immanent philosophy teaches us to look at things in themselves via 42 43

Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (ed., trans. and intro.), Hobbes: On the Citizen (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 4–5. This might explain why Spinoza seemed particularly hurt by his negative reception by Velthuysen, Spinoza thought that they were pursuing a related philosophical project; see Letter XLIII.

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internal causes and not through external causes. Internal causal knowledge is the way that Spinoza wishes us to look at definitions, the propositions of the Ethics, God, modes, and the world. In the TIE Spinoza gives an important example of the eternity intrinsic to the essential knowledge of an artifact: Nothing is done except to abstract the thoughts from the surrounding bodies so that the mind directs itself toward the sole contemplation of the candle, considered in itself alone, so that afterwards it infers that the candle has no cause for its destruction. So if there were no surrounding bodies, this candle, and its flame, would remain immutable, or the like. Here, then, there is no fiction, but pure and simple assertions. (TIE 57)44

Spinoza assumes two things in his discussion of the candle in the TIE. First, we are taking the candle in itself and alone, independent of any interaction with external bodies. Second, by doing so we view the candle independently of any external causes that might destroy it, and thus it “would remain immutable, or the like.” But Spinoza does not imply that the candle itself is imagined. He writes that we are considering the candle in an “imaginary space” but this does not mean that we are taking the candle itself as imagined since Spinoza wants to distinguish our knowledge of this candle viewed from a representation of a candle through the imagination. Are we then considering a given candle, or the essence of the candle as that which organizes, structures, and asserts the candle independent of its particular physical circumstances? What do we need to know in order to access the essence of a determinate thing? As discussed previously, X is said to belong to the essence of X “which being given the thing is given and that which, being taken away, the thing is necessarily taken away; or that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing” (iid2). As also noted, for Spinoza belonging to an essence is a very strong requirement. In fact it is such a strong requirement that it is hard to see that we have access to much that satisfies it. In the definition of God, both attributes and substance would satisfy the definition of essence as if either is given God is given, and if either is taken away God is taken away. But even very general properties that we might think of as belonging to essences, like extension belonging to the essence of a body, do not necessarily work on this definition. 44

I have modified Curley’s translation according to his footnote at CW 26n44. Curley points out both the importance of this passage, and the great difficulties of interpreting it. See Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method (Princeton University Press, 1988), 110.

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But we can have essential knowledge of those things we make; they are not derived from the imagination but rather are applied to the world from our minds and bodies. As noted previously,45 Bennett has argued that we do have adequate knowledge of human beings, and, in fact, man is one of the only modes (or class of modes) that Spinoza explicitly gives the essence of in the Ethics: “desire is the essence of man.” This essence – desire – holds of all singular things insofar as they have a conatus, but Spinoza only implies that we have determinate knowledge of this one, insofar as we have particular acquaintance with the content of human desires. We have adequate knowledge of human beings because we are human beings, and thus have access to our own essences. We are able to build up common notions about human beings in general through our interactions with them since “nothing can agree more with the nature of any thing than other individuals of the same species” (IV “Appendix” IX).46 A surprising example of knowledge that seems to satisfy the definition of essence is the brief description Spinoza gives of the TTP on its first page: Some dissertations, by which it is made clear that the freedom of philosophizing not only preserves piety and is consistent with the peace of the republic, but it is not able to be taken away without taking away the piety and peace of the republic.

Spinoza has presented “freedom of philosophizing” according to the formula for essence offered at iid2. When freedom of philosophizing is given, piety and peace are given, and when freedom of philosophizing is taken away, piety and peace are taken away. If freedom of philosophizing is an essential predicate of republics, it seems clear that Spinoza views republics as withering away in absence of this internal cause. This is one of a few things that we can know about politics that is an extension of our knowledge of the human essence via Spinoza’s arguments concerning freedom of thought in the concluding sections of the TTP. Unfortunately, most of politics is mired in the imagination and must deal with the violence and mayhem caused by desires arising from and through inadequate and confused ideas. 45 46

1n46 and n47. Spinoza also explicitly emphasizes that we do not have access to much knowledge about animals, and beyond animals our knowledge is far more limited. He remarks, “Besides men we know nothing singular in nature the Mind of which we are able to enjoy” (IV “Appendix” XXVI). It seems fairly evident that we know little about animals, rocks, and twigs and the various species that they may instantiate since we have very little in common with them, and to know via the second kind of knowledge assumes common ideas. Of course, we have many important things in common with them, we are all parts of nature, but this does not necessarily add up to knowledge of determinate essences.

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If these are primary examples in Spinoza’s philosophy of determinate essences we have access to, then this again puts him very much in the company of Hobbes and other purveyors of the geometrical method who wish to emphasize maker’s knowledge. Stephen Gaukroger emphasizes that this is what differentiates philosophers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and Vico from Bacon, that “[t]he maker’s knowledge principle is a way of delivering certainty in areas which might seem to offer no hope of certainty – political and moral philosophy – and as a result are typically raised above natural philosophy in terms of the degree of certainty attainable.”47 When I make a clock, candle, or a State, what essences are has my mind and body (and the minds and bodies of other human beings) as a cause, their ideas are comprehended in an adequate idea that I (and others) have and they are understood through this idea. This or that candle, insofar as it is a candle and not made of this bit of wax or this or that color, can literally arise from me, or through knowing it I can augment my power through it, light a candle in a dark hallway so I do not fall. An obvious objection is that we do not have adequate knowledge of much of the material structure of the candle. But we can see that it arises from the human essence quite literally if we consider it as an individual with a ratio of motion and rest and a structure created in order to conjoin with, or even in some cases enter into, our human ratio of motion and rest. Others may have this idea also, and then they are comprehended by the minds and bodies of others as well. Spinoza strongly emphasizes the distinction between a ratio of motion and rest and actual constituent matter (iip13def.) in order to explain how bodies can be individuals even though the matter that makes them up changes. This allows for a logical distinction between the ratio of motion and rest and the full material composition of a determinate individual, much like the distinction between the eternal core of our mind and our whole mind that I have previously considered (the former accessible through ideas of ideas). That Spinoza has something like this in mind is plausible for two reasons. First Spinoza concluded the KV with the statement: The human body, then, is nothing but a certain proportion of motion and rest. So this existing proportion’s objective essence in the thinking attribute is the soul of the body . . . [W]hen the degrees of motion and rest are not equal in all parts of our body, but some have more motion and rest than others, there arises a difference of 47

Stephen Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 159. Whether or not Bacon ultimately advocates maker’s knowledge, the tradition certainly is derivative of him.

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feeling (e.g. from this comes the different kind of pain we feel when we are struck with a little stick in the eyes or on the hands) . . . And again if the change which happens in a part is a cause of its returning to its original proportion, from this arises the joy we call peace, plausible activity and cheerfulness. (KV “Appendix II” 14–17; CW 155–6)

Spinoza goes on to emphasize that we now see how experience and reasoning arise, and how we understand the immortality of the soul. Although there are many differences between the Ethics and the KV , the parallels between the ratio of motion and rest and ratio or reason are consistent and important. As Matheron emphasized, what the Ethics adds is the recognition that we can know things through a fundamental ratio, and this seems to be an important addition in Spinoza’s understanding of the third kind of knowledge. We are not only interested in maintaining a consistent ratio of motion and rest, we are also interested in augmenting our power through it. To sum up, then, having the second kind of knowledge – knowledge of the rules that hold of bodies and minds – is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the third kind of knowledge – adequate knowledge of essences or forms having our essences as adequate causes. The difference between the two sorts of knowledge is that the third kind of knowledge comprehends the objects of the second kind of knowledge within essences, immediately insofar as they arise from our essence as a cause. The third kind of knowledge is in this sense both sui generis, and an extension of the second kind of knowledge. It uses the materials of the second kind of knowledge in order to understand essences each constituent part of which is understood via the second kind of knowledge, but which are only comprehended as essences via the third. What unites many of the sorts of things I have emphasized as being understood through the third kind of knowledge is that they are instruments. A candle is an instrument. So is a republic. A philosophy is a mental instrument. It is not surprising that Spinoza would emphasize instrumental knowledge, as he knew the importance of instruments first hand. The scientists he knew placed great emphasis on the importance of instruments in augmenting our bodies, minds and lives.48 The making of scientific instruments was an important part of his intellectual and practical life. 48

Leeuwenhoek, a central figure in Dutch microscopy, was a fellow lens grinder and Spinoza’s exact contemporary (b. 1632). Spinoza’s friend Johannes Hudde had been making microscopes since the early 1660s and was a major influence on the great Jan Swammerdam. See the excellent discussion in Edward G. Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic: The Shaping of Discovery (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 22–3. On Swammerdam and Hudde see Marian Fournier, The Fabric of Life: Microscopy in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 147.

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Microscopes, as Spinoza’s contemporary Robert Hooke claimed,49 provide “a new visible World discovered to the understanding.” Knowledge through augmentation of the causal power of my body would count as “having a body capable of a great many things” and would have its correspondence in a “mind whose greatest part is eternal” (vp39). That I can augment the causal power of my body in this way is a consequence of two definitions I have discussed in prior chapters at some length, iid7 and iip13 “Definition.” Iid7 emphasizes that finite determinate singular things can form complex individuals through being together the cause of one effect. A microscope or any sort of instrument seems to satisfy this. I and the microscope together as one individual are the cause of one effect, perceiving through the instrument. The microscope also enters into a ratio of motion and rest with me, and together we form a complex ratio of motion – this is precisely what makes an instrument instrumental as opposed to just a packet of matter conjoined with my body. Although microscopes are not pacemakers or Jarvik 7 artificial hearts, they do instrumentally extend the capabilities of our bodies, and I can see no reason not to view them as forming part of our ratio of motion and rest. But, just as many aspects of the determinate matter that makes up my body do not enter into the ratio of motion and rest that makes up my body – roughage for example – and constitutes what I am as a bodily individual,50 so many of the determinate material features of the microscope, its black matte finish or its chrome appointments for example, do not enter into the way in which it causes effects as an extension of my mind and body.51 Those material features that do enter into a ratio of motion and rest with me are part of my body (iip13 “Definition”), and give rise to correspondent 49

50

51

Robert Hooke, Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereunto (1165), b1v. Thanks to Christa Knellwolf for this citation. Spinoza was unable to read Hooke’s English though, according to Huygens (Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic, 22n89). That Spinoza holds this to be the case is clear from the fact that extended matter leaves and enters a ratio of bodily motion and rest, and both the ratio and the expelled matter continue in their existence independent of one another (iip13 “Definition”). This is a consequence of Spinoza’s theory of individuation, and my prior emphasis on it committing Spinoza, as opposed to Hobbes, to a vast population of real entities (cell phones and cabbages). Anything that enters into a ratio of motion and rest and brings about effects can be understood as part of that individual (the functional properties of my Jarvik 7 artificial heart that result in continuing my blood flow, the microscope function as an extension of my eyes). Whatever does not enter into this functional unity (some contingent feature of the plastic in the heart, black matte on the microscope and whether it is made of copper or steel) is not part of the individual, and is formally separable. It is also separable insofar as it is known only inadequately, as opposed to the adequate knowledge we have of the structure of an artifact, despite the fact that we have only sensible knowledge when we employ it.

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cognitions. But the important point is that qua these bits of glass and metal functioning as a microscope they are part of an act that has a cause and an effect (iid7) and are part of a single individual. The microscope as microscope is individuated via its function of extending my mind and body, and the knowledge I have of its ratio of motion and rest (independent of its constituent matter),52 the formal knowledge of the essence of the artifact. This knowledge could be ultimately understood as ideas parallel to the ratio of motion and rest of the microscope (a sort of subratio to my general bodily ratio, elating and augmenting it but also subordinate to it and arising from it as an internal cause). This is the sort of knowledge that Spinoza, Huygens, and Hudde discussed, pragmatically, in their correspondences about lens grinding.53 But, I emphasize that I do not have adequate knowledge of the blood I examine under the microscope. My looking through the microscope may help to engender adequate ideas in me as a consequence of the ways that I extend my body through the microscope (although this is not caused by the microscope). Perhaps I will think about how there are other sorts of tiny beings in the world inside of us, and I will begin producing adequate ideas about them. It will certainly give me a more powerful body and mind. Primarily, though, I mean the microscope as an example of how adequate knowledge, which arises from me as its adequate cause, can result in greater and greater power, whether through making scientific instruments or creating tolerant republics that give me the freedom to philosophize (but do not in and of themselves cause my philosophizing). The microscope is an example of the fact that, although the third kind of knowledge does not seem to give us knowledge of the essences of monkeys and dogs, it has causal consequences that are far more important. This also holds of the act of reading the Ethics itself, a mental instrument or artifact. Just like we access a slide under a microscope via the first kind of knowledge so, too, the Ethics first of all is a book we read and access via the first kind of knowledge. As we read it we begin to emend our minds and begin to understand our own adequate ideas. We understand that the propositions in the Ethics point to adequate ideas in our minds – above all the idea of God. We begin to analyze the various preconceptions we have 52

53

The emphasis on knowledge of ratio of motion and rest has interesting parallels with Bacon’s emphasis on the analysis of forms (see Gaukroger, Bacon, 138–41). Furthermore, both wished to replace the Aristotelian physics built on form with a new physics built on a new form based on efficient causation as, of course, did Boyle and many others. On the centrality of microscopy for early modern philosophers see Catherine Wilson, The Invisible World: Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope (Princeton University Press, 1995).

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had about concepts like substance and attributes and see that, as we sort true ideas from false, we already have adequate definitions of these concepts which, once obscure and mutilated, are now becoming clearer and clearer. What we thought the definitions meant initially could not hold up as we advanced through the process of emendation and examined their interconnections with other definitions, but this, too, is part of clearing away confusion from the mind. As we emend our minds further, we come to recognize that all of these adequate ideas have a special relation to the generative definition of God, and some are particularly important for helping us to be happy, powerful and free. The ways that we discover that adequate ideas arise from the generative definition of God in our minds will not be isomorphic with the order of Spinoza’s deduction in the Ethics. From these ideas arise other ideas, not considered in the Ethics but produced by our minds. And so our minds become more and more adequate. Like Spinoza we perfect our mental instruments, instruments that help us to understand both our selves and artificial forms like the State, and we create scientific instruments that allow us to think freely, to extend our bodies, and to have more and more adequate ideas. And thus, through a process of both analysis and synthesis, of both emendation and construction of “artificial” instruments premised on maker’s knowledge, the second kind of knowledge arising in our minds gives rise to the third kind of knowledge through which we cause and extend nature by building a world arising from and responding to human nature.

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Index of passages referred to and cited

ETHICS

pa rt ii

part i

“Preface” 18 d2 27, 115, 209, 214, 217, 218 d3 202 d4 52, 53, 89 d6 52 d7 112, 114, 214, 222 a1 126 a2 126 1 53, 64, 124 2 48, 124 3 8, 48, 53 7 26, 65, 102, 112, 123, 124, 139, 185, 191, 204, 211, 212 10cs 209 11s 144 12 185 13 8, 192, 195, 214 13definition 40, 110, 112, 219, 221 13postulate6 40, 112 13l2 51, 55, 189 13l6 102, 114 13l7 41, 214 14 185 17s 183 18s 51 21s 84 24 111 28 55, 113 29 195 29c 52 29s 22 32 94 33 71 34 55, 70 40s1 14, 182 40s2 4, 17, 51, 56, 85, 110, 181, 197, 199, 201, 213, 215 42 115

a3 25 a4 15, 25, 55, 70, 80, 124, 140, 212 d1 67, 163, 165 d2 67, 162, 214 d3 21, 67, 165 d4 21, 67 d5 21, 40, 67, 162, 165, 208 d6 67, 149, 163, 165, 176, 178 d7 22, 39, 67, 162 d8 40, 67, 162, 204 2 76 3 76 7 57, 60, 103, 139, 163, 164, 178, 211 8c 65 8s1 57, 64 8s2 160, 163 9 140 10 149 11 163, 175 11s 38, 179 15 70, 94, 208, 211 16 15, 38, 72, 80, 139, 145, 147, 165, 176, 177, 178, 211, 212 18 59, 69, 216 21 40 25 178 25c 53, 69, 125, 126, 201, 208 28 140 29s 22 30s 80 31 37 33 64, 66, 173 33s1 66 35 38 36 72, 80, 96, 140, 179

231

232

Index of passages referred to and cited

43 84 43s 85 44c2 112 45 70 46 70, 71, 177 47 69, 70 47s 70 48 88 49 83, 88 49c 26 49s 5, 37

part iii “Preface” 8, 29, 30, 81, 93, 109 d1 201 3 89, 215 4 102, 114, 139, 156, 204, 216 6 201, 202 7 183, 211 9s 37, 112, 126, 200, 215 11 184, 185 12 186 56 210

pa rt iv “Preface” 35, 84, 185 d3 65 d4 65 2 82, 203 4 196 37s1 210 39s 195 64 206, 209 67 28 68 28 70 165, 168 71 165 Appendix IX 218 Appendix XXVI 218 Appendix XXXII 48

pa rt v “Preface” 116 a1 193 a2 193 1 191 3 53, 170, 189

4 90, 189, 190 5 88 7 61, 193 8 193 10 90 11 113 12 191 13 191 14 90, 189, 191 16 191 20 193 20s 125, 189, 193, 194, 205 21 188 22 187 23 188, 194, 195, 196 23s 115 24 69, 157, 179, 201, 208 27 201 28 78 29 188 30 188 31 187, 188, 197, 200, 201, 203, 207, 208, 214, 216 31s 204, 207, 209 32c 209 36 207 36s 210, 211 39 221 40c 205 41 206 41s 206 42 85

PP “Preface” 14, 117, 119, 120, 122, 172 ia 2 iid4 61 ii6s 61 ii10cs 27

TIE §16 §22 §24 §30 §33 §34 §35 §36

87 181 199 74 213 147, 148, 159 84, 148 74

Index of passages referred to and cited LETTERS

§37

85 83, 84, 94 83, 84 §49 93 §57 217 §63 §90 93 §92 156, 157 §93 94, 158 §96 83 §97 162 §99 101, 144 §104 95, 171 §112 171 Note ‘i’ 79 Note ‘f’ 94 §38 §39

TTP I 173 III 4 IV 35, 41, 141 VI 20, 133 XVII 161 XX 1

II 95 III 76 IV 76–81 VI 34 IX 119, 159 XII 38, 39, 61–62, 63, 66, 176, 195 XVII 190 XXVI 116 XXVIII 21, 77 XXIX 44 XXX 34, 98 XXXI 33, 116, 192 XXXII 215 XXXVII 77 XL 116 XLIII 216 LVII 116 LIX 74 LX 74 LX 53, 148 LXI LXIV 41, 65 LXXXII 146, 183 LXXXIII 140, 177

233

General index

adequacy 17, 18, 52, 53, 54, 89, 94, 113 as relation or property 53, 54, 70, 71 adequate causes (see causes, adequate) adequate ideas (see ideas, adequate) affects and passions 27, 88, 89, 90, 125, 183, 184, 185, 189, 208, 210 Alexander of Aphrodisius 131 Allison, Henry 188, 191, 204 Amsterdam 2, 3, 4 analysis (see method, analytic) Aquinas, St. Thomas 98, 106 argument from design 34 Ariew, Roger 59, 61, 65, 119 Aristotelians and Aristotelianism 22, 132, 133 Aristotle 6, 9, 22, 28, 131, 153, 154, 166 Metaphysics 166 Organon 76, 144, 153, 154 Physics 58, 106, 144 Arnauld, Antoine 76, 151, 153, 154 artifacts 83, 122, 217, 222 attribute 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 64, 65, 68, 72, 167, 171 definition of 15, 21, 22, 23, 67, 146, 166 infinite 64, 66 of extension 15, 29, 37, 51, 64, 69, 81, 111, 112, 113, 185 of thought 29, 64, 89, 146, 185, 186, 196 pseudo 64 subjective or objective 23 Aubrey, John 7 Averroes and Averroism 121, 135, 137, 174 Avicenna 129 axioms or common notions 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 24, 51, 52, 58, 77, 94, 109, 116, 133, 158, 171, 175 Bacon, Francis 9, 19, 34, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 91, 94, 151, 154, 203, 216, 219, 222 Novum Organum 76, 77, 79, 81, 82 Baier, Annette 28 Bartuschat, Wolfgang 33, 192, 193, 207 Bayle, Pierre 2, 75, 124 beings or things

created definitions of 147, 162 definitions of 156 the most simple definitions of 147 real 140 definitions 144, 147, 154, 169 of reason 43, 140, 147, 153 simple 140 uncreated definitions of 148, 161, 162, 163, 169, 196 Bennett, Jonathan 30, 34, 41, 43, 52, 53, 65, 70, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 102, 103, 113, 114, 171, 175, 218 Bentham, Jeremy 28 Berkeley, George 34 Beyssade, Jean-Marie 61, 95 bigots 11 blessedness and beatitude 5, 18, 19, 141, 142, 170, 208 Bodin, Jean 2 body actual existence of 196 augmenting 220, 221, 222 Borelli, Giovanni 159 Boulainvilliers, Henri de 2 Bouwmeester, Johannes 77, 79 Boyle, Robert 1, 32, 33, 34, 46, 222 Blijenburgh, William van 1, 5, 33 Burgersdijk, Franciscus 119, 151, 157 Bronfenbrenner, Ken 166 Bruno, Giordano 60, 61, 64 Caesarius 102, 122 causa sui 24, 26, 39, 67, 125, 156, 157, 163, 171, 178, 192 definition of 24, 25, 67, 157, 163, 164, 178 causes 15, 22, 25, 36, 105, 111, 125, 202 adequate 36, 54, 141, 142, 193, 201, 202, 203, 208, 220 analysis of 13, 109

234

General index efficient 59, 107, 115, 148, 175, 202, 203, 222 external 56, 57, 58, 60, 82, 85, 112, 148, 156, 157, 182, 205, 209, 217, 220 formal 187, 188, 201, 203, 208 God as 22 immanent 58, 59, 60 internal 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 72, 82, 86, 112, 148, 204, 216 intrinsic 59 modal 22 remote 58 proximate 159 transient 58 transitive 59 Cervantes, Miguel de 5 Charlie 23, 24 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 4 clarification 7 of affects and passions 90, 189 of ideas 85, 142 self- 18, 95 Clarke, Samuel 9 Clauberg, Johannes 58, 116, 119, 151, 152, 153, 167 cogito 12, 52, 60, 119, 120 Coleridge, Samuel 2, 29 common ideas, features or properties 16, 51, 189, 200, 205, 214 common notions, see axioms common order of nature 51 conatus 27, 28, 121, 183, 184, 186, 192, 193, 202, 213 of the mind 184, 209 conception 202, 203 contingency 65, 66, 173 Cook, Thomas 8, 189 Copernicus 60 correspondence 52 Costa, Uriel da 3 Cottingham, John 85 Court, Pieter De La 5 Cumberland, Richard 2, 9, 10, 11 De Legibus Naturae 10 Curley, Edwin 26, 34, 35, 74, 93, 101, 116, 117, 150, 159, 161, 166, 169, 170, 172, 198, 207, 217 Dascal, Marcelo 161 death 206 De Dijn, Herman 74, 78, 79, 93, 102, 148, 162 deduction and demonstration 14, 95, 96, 100, 101, 102, 107, 109, 115, 121, 140, 141, 143, 149, 164 Euclidean 14, 15, 110, 117, 118, 144 definitions 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 19, 68, 73, 83, 94, 102, 104, 109, 110, 133, 144, 145, 146, 151, 155, 158, 159, 160, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 202

235

causal 107, 109, 153, 154, 156, 161, 163, 175, 177 External 157 essential 157 generative or genetic 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 163, 165, 173, 177, 202, 203, 214 nominal 149, 150, 153, 154, 156, 172 of God (see God, definition of ) real 144, 147, 149, 150, 153, 154, 172 Defoe, Daniel 2 Journal of the Plague Year 31 Robinson Crusoe 2 Deleuze, Gilles 8, 125 Della Rocca, Michael 52, 111, 113, 175 demonstration (see method and deduction) denomination or marker extrinsic 53, 54 intrinsic 53, 54 Descartes, Ren´e 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28, 58, 59, 60, 61, 76, 77, 79, 82, 83, 85, 91, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 107, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 127, 141, 143, 151, 152, 154, 161, 166, 168, 170, 172, 175, 179, 185, 194, 216 Comments on a Certain Broadsheet 119 Conversations with Burman 119 Discourse on Method 11, 74, 85, 91, 175 Geometry 117 Meditations with Objections and Replies 11, 12, 15, 59, 71, 82, 83, 91, 102, 116, 117, 119, 152, 172 Olympian Thoughts 11 Principles of Philosophy 11, 27, 61, 102, 115, 119, 151, 168 Regulae 76, 151 Search for Truth 151 desire 185 determinism 26, 88, 101 diachronic and synchronic structure 143, 212 Diaspora 127, 130, 132 Diderot, Denis 2 divine (see God) Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit 99 Donagan, Alan 171 doubt 119 Duns Scotus, Johannes 58, 59, 75 duration of mind 194 Edwards, William 75, 203 effects 25, 36, 109 egocentricity 87, 88, 121 elation 185 emanation 38 emendation of the mind or intellect 17, 18, 86, 87, 91, 93, 144, 169, 171, 175, 178, 191, 211, 213, 223

236

General index

emendative therapy (see therapy) essence 23, 26, 54, 68, 83, 89, 104, 113, 114, 115, 143, 158, 182, 184, 196, 197, 204, 205, 209, 210, 213, 214, 215, 217, 220, 222 determinate 57, 190, 196, 217 divine 22, 210, 214 expression of 68, 69 formal 13, 85, 86, 213, 214 human 19, 120, 140, 219 objective 13, 85, 213 of candle 217 of the mind 89, 113, 208, 215 part of 114 eternity and eternal 39, 40, 163, 176, 177, 181, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211, 213, 215, 217 definition of 67, 162, 176 of the mind 187, 188, 193, 195, 196, 197, 204, 205, 206, 208 sub specie aeternitatis 29, 89, 112, 140, 196, 207 Euclid 7, 9, 14, 58, 140, 159, 160, 199 Elements 7, 159, 198 experientia vaga (see imagination) external causes (see causes, external) “eyes of the mind” 115 face of whole universe (see modes, infinite, mediate) feeling 210 Fermat’s last theorem 198 Fichte, J. G. 102 finite in its kind 67 definition of 67, 162 Fodor, Jerry 160 forms 203, 222 Fournier, Marian 220 fourth proportional 197, 198, 199, 200, 212 free man 28, 37 free thing 67 definition of 67, 162 freedom of philosophizing 218, 222 Freud, Sigmund 87, 88 Friedmann, Joel 158 Fritsche, Johannes 106, 166 functionalism 111, 112 Gabbey, Alan 79, 182 Galen 105 Galileo 75, 104, 107 Garber, Daniel 115 Garrett, Don 25, 35, 37, 40, 114, 213 Gassendi, Pierre 27, 28 Gatti, Hilary 60 Gaukroger, Stephen 76, 83, 117, 219, 222 Gebhardt, Carl 3

generation 108 Gersonides (Levi Ben Gershom) 19, 87, 91, 92, 98, 99, 123, 127, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 143, 152, 174, 175, 178, 179 Seven criteria 137 Wars of the Lord 91, 98, 99 Geulincx, Arnold 9 Giancotti, Emilia 41 Gilbert, William 79 God or Divine 13, 15, 21, 23, 57, 86, 179, 204 as cause 59, 72, 190 definition or essence of 13, 14, 16, 24, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 84, 94, 100, 145, 147, 149, 157, 158, 162, 163, 164, 165, 168, 175, 177, 179, 192, 212, 214, 215, 217, 223 freedom of idea 71, 94, 96, 170, 184, 189, 191, 192, 193, 205, 211, 212 infinity of 60, 61, 67, 69, 71, 93 mind or intellect 23, 53, 69, 186 will of 37, 59, 69 Goethe, Johann, Wolfgang von 2, 29 Grotius, Hugo 37, 184 Gueroult, Martial 17, 58, 101, 102, 103, 145, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 163, 165, 166, 168, 175, 177, 178 Gullan-Whur, Margaret 77 Hampshire, Stuart 64, 87, 88 Heereboord, Adrian 58, 151, 157, 167 Hegel, G. W. F. 17, 23, 100, 193 Heidegger, Martin 193 Hintikka, Jaakko 117 Hobbes, Thomas 2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 19, 27, 28, 36, 37, 76, 83, 103, 104, 105, 108, 109, 110, 115, 117, 121, 122, 123, 141, 143, 144, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, 168, 173, 183, 185, 203, 216, 219, 221 De Cive 10, 98, 103, 216 De Corpore 10, 97, 98, 103, 104, 105, 108, 109, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 160, 161 De Homine 10 Elementa Philosophiae 10, 103 Leviathan 12, 36, 37, 98, 124 Mathematicae Hodiernae 103, 149 Hudde, Johannes 32, 220, 222 Huennemann, Charles 26 Hume, David 6, 28, 90 Huygens, Christiaan 4, 32, 221, 222 ideas adequate 14, 17, 52, 53, 54, 71, 78, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 141, 170, 171, 172, 190, 191, 192, 195, 196, 200, 210, 211, 214, 216, 219

General index clear (and distinct) 52, 53, 78, 86, 87, 94, 120, 121, 189 confused or mutilated 17, 18, 19, 78, 86, 91, 175 false 86, 92, 96, 170 getting vs. having 112 inadequate 14, 17, 52, 55, 86, 88, 89, 90, 113, 170, 175, 189, 190, 191, 195, 196 of ideas 84, 191 separating 88 and joining 88 true from false 93, 95 true 53, 54, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 93, 96, 114, 115 identity of mind and body 111 imagination 16, 17, 18, 51, 52, 60, 67, 69, 71, 78, 86, 90, 110, 115, 141, 156, 181, 182, 183, 186, 191, 193, 195, 201, 217, 218, 222 experientia vaga 51, 182, 183 inadequacy of 57 virtue of 192 immanence 101 immortality of soul 194, 205, 220 imperium 30, 44, 81, 93, 94, 121, 142, 205 inadequacy 53 inadequate ideas (see ideas, inadequate) indefinite 61 individuals 40, 110, 214, 219 individuation 17, 36, 44, 110, 112, 114, 214, 221 acts 36 causal 22, 36, 37, 40, 114 infinite 18, 60, 61, 64, 68, 71, 149, 176 absolutely 60, 64, 68, 69, 71, 72, 93, 94, 125, 176, 177, 192, 215 definition 176, 178 counting or numerable 63, 69 divine infinity (see God, infinite) in kind 68 not numerable 63, 64 propter quid 105 qua its definition or essence 62, 63 quia 105 transitive 62 infinite modes (see mode, infinite) infinite understanding (see mode, infinite, immediate) innate or inborn 82, 96, 112, 179 power 82, 86, 109 in se 156 intellect 23, 67, 77, 146 divine (see God, intellect) human 23 intellectual love of God 185, 188, 201, 208, 209 internal causes (see causes, internal) internal coherence or consistency 54, 55 Israel, Jonathan 2

237

Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 2 Jarrett, Charles 23, 166 Jaspers, Karl Theodor 165 Joachim, Harold 17, 74, 99, 100, 102 Kant, Immanuel 28 Kekkermann, Bartholomeus 75, 119, 151 Kircher, Athanasius 46, 98 Klima, Gyula 154 Kneale, Martha 194 Koerbagh, Adriaan 5, 98 knowledge, three kinds of 18, 51 adequate 15, 17, 18, 55, 78, 126, 141, 172, 175, 183, 196, 200, 201, 203, 211, 215, 218, 221, 222 ex cognita generatione 104, 105, 107, 108, 153 first kind of (see imagination) inadequate 55, 78, 113, 126, 215 of causes (see also causes, analysis of ) 106, 109, 216 of effects through causes 80, 107 of God 201, 212 second kind of (see reason) third kind of (Scientia Intuitiva) 16, 17, 19, 29, 36, 52, 56, 78, 150, 172, 181, 182, 183, 187, 188, 193, 196, 197, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 214, 215, 216, 220, 222 Krop, H. A. 157 La Mettrie, Julien Offray de 2, 88 language 17, 19, 144, 153, 160, 161, 168 Dutch 5 Hebrew 4 Latin 4 Portuguese and Spanish 4, 5 laws 18, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 47, 48, 94, 184, 196 of nature 29, 30, 31, 37, 41, 94 Leeuwenhoek, Antonie Van 220 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron von 4, 9, 11, 22, 60, 82, 111, 113, 144, 164 Discourse on Metaphysics 11 Monadology 11, 12, 113, 187 New Essays 11 Theodicy 11 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 2 Lipsius, Justus 2, 32 De Constantia 32 Lloyd, Genevieve 90 Locke, John 2, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 22, 37, 76, 83, 114, 144, 219 logic as instrument 75 as science 75 Lucretius 4 Luria, Aleksander R. 88

238

General index

Macherey, Pierre 23, 193 Machiavelli, Niccol`o 98 Maimonides 1, 17, 19, 91, 92, 98, 99, 123, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 152, 167, 169, 173, 174, 180 Guide of the Perplexed 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 139, 140, 141, 167 maker’s knowledge 82, 83, 108, 223 Malamud, Bernard 8 Malebranche, Nicolas 11, 12, 27, 28, 185 Malherbe, Michele 80 Mancosu, Paolo 60, 83 Mandeville, Bernard 88 manifest image 21, 45, 47 Marion, Jean-Luc 118 Martinich, Aloysius 103 Mason, Richard 33, 210 Matheron, Alexandre 17, 84, 149, 197, 199, 200, 212, 220 Maxwell, Vance 102, 212 Menasseh Ben Israel 3 mental instruments or tools (see tools, mental) Mersenne, Marin 104 method 73, 76, 83, 84, 85, 95, 96, chapters 4–5, 211 analytic or resolution (see also causes, analysis of ) 15, 99, 100, 105, 107, 109, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 141, 155, 172, 213 Geometrical (mos geometricus) 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 30, 31, 46, 71, 73, 93, 95, 97, 118, 123, 124, 143, 144, 145, 149, 155, 168, 182, 195, 198, 211, 216, 219 Hypothetico-deductive 102, 171 synthetic or composition 15, 99, 100, 105, 109, 118, 121, 122, 123, 141, 143, 155, 169, 172, 213 Meyer, Lodewijk 1, 14, 61–62, 63, 77, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 141, 152 microscopes 221, 222 Mignini, Filippo 74, 198, 199, 212 Mill, John Stuart 28 modes 21, 22, 24, 72 definition of mode 21, 22, 157, 162 infinite 37, 38, 41, 48, 81, 94, 125, 176 immediate modes (IIMs) 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 48: motion and rest (IIM of extension) 37, 38, 39, 40, 41; intellect (IIM of thought) 16, 40, 41, 190, 192 mediate modes (IMMs) 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46, 113, 114, 115: face of whole universe (IMM of extension) 41, 48 of attributes 38 of modes 38 of substance 38 Moll, Konrad 9

moral theory 28 Moreau, P.-F. 187 Morin, Jean-Baptiste 9 motion and rest (see modes, infinite, immediate) Nadler, Steven 3 nature 13, 18, 23, 30, 47, 80, 81 infinite power of 48, 72, 86, 192 in thought 50, 72, 81, 142, 192, 215 natura naturans 21, 22, 29, 38, 39, 126 natura naturata 21, 22, 38, 39, 126 parts of (see parts, of nature) whole of (see whole, of nature) naturalism 31 deflationary 30 explanatory 30 necessitarianism 26 necessity 35, 109, 115, 155 hypothetical 155 illative 118, 140, 211 neutral properties 111 Nicholas of Cusa 60, 64, 75 Nicole, Pierre 76, 151, 153, 154 Nietzsche, Friedrich 18, 88 Nussbaum, Martha 28 Ockham, William of 75, 104, 121 Oldenburg, Henry 4, 20, 32, 33, 34, 42, 43, 46, 47, 49, 76 opinions 92 false 92 true 92 order or presentation 118 analytic 117 geometrical 8, 12 synthetic 117, 119, 122 Pappus 117 parables 129, 130 parallelism 194 Parkinson, G. H. R. 53, 161, 163, 164, 168, 182, 200 parts 31, 45, 47, 48, 213, 214 and wholes 16, 31, 34, 35, 36, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 70, 72, 78, 189, 196, 205 of the mind 195, 196, 206, 214, 215 of nature 20, 29, 31, 44, 47, 48, 49, 71, 86, 88, 196, 205 passions (see affections) perception 23, 202, 203 P´erez-Ramos, Antonio 80, 83 perfection 35, 84, 130 perspectivalism 91, 125, 170, 184 physics 81 Piccolomini, Francisco 8

General index Pines, Shlomo 128 Plato 6, 28 Plotinus 6, 206 possibility 65, 66, 173 postulates 8 power 186 augmentation and dimunition 185, 186, 219 causal 80 inborn (see innate) Preus, J. Samuel 1 principle of plenitude 38, 64 principle of sufficient reason 25, 38 prophecy 129, 135, 136, 139, 141, 173 definition of 174 Pufendorf, Samuel 2, 9, 10, 11, 37, 83, 152, 184

239

rationalism, explanatory 30 ratios 110, 200, 208, 220 determinate 200 of motion and rest (bodily) 40, 51, 110, 111, 112, 209, 214, 219, 220, 221, 222 subratios 111 reality, formal or objective 85 reason 16, 51, 52, 55, 78, 104, 109, 110, 140, 172, 181, 183, 190, 196, 197, 201, 205, 209, 210, 214, 220 reasons 45, 51, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114 regius 119 regressus 107, 108, 153 Remes, Unto 117 relation adequate (see adequate, relation) extrinsic 54 representative content 39 Republic of Letters 32, 33, 34 Rorty, Am´elie O. 28, 125 Rorty, Richard 97 Rousset, Bernard 9, 74, 79 Royal Society 32, 34 Ruestow, Edward 220, 221

Secretan, Catherine 152 self-clarification (see clarification, self ) Sellars, Wilfred 21, 45, 47 Seneca 4 sense perception analysis of 110 separating ideas (see ideas, separating, true from false) Sevi, Sabbatai 31 Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper) 34 Sieve of Eratosthenes 95 singular thing 36, 37 Skinner, Quentin Smith, Adam 6 Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict) passim Ethics passim Korte Verhandeling 5, 12, 35, 42, 44, 45, 64, 73, 74, 93, 98, 153, 173, 181, 198, 199, 211, 216, 220 Opera Posthuma/ Nagelate Schriften 5 Philosophia 74 Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy 12, 13, 14, 99, 115, 119, 167 Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 53, 54, Chapter 3 passim, 73, 100, 117, 148, 156, 159, 171, 175, 178, 181, 198, 199 Tractatus Politicus 6, 12, 98, 126, 145 Tractatus-Theologico Politicus 1, 4, 12, 19, 31, 32, 35, 36, 82, 99, 133, 136, 152, 173, 175, 218 Spinoza, Gabriel (brother) 4 Spinoza, Hanna (mother) 4 Spinoza, Michael (father) 3 Steenbakkers, Piet 8, 158 Steinberg, Diane 140 Stoics (and Stoical) 6, 32, 45, 60, 90, 91 Strauss, Leo 128 sub specie aeternitatis (see eternity) sustenance 92 substance 21, 22, 24, 68, 72, 76, 103, 125, 171, 202, 213 definition of 21, 22, 23, 67, 157, 163, 166, 179 Swammerdam, Jan 220 syllogisms 75, 105, 107, 109, 153 synthesis (see method, synthetic)

Saadia Gaon 173, 174 sadness 185 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 2 Schuller, Georg 41 scientia intuitiva (see knowledge, third kind of ) scientific image 21, 45 scholia 15 Scripture 129, 132, 137, 140, 141

Tacitus 4 Terence 4 testimony 16 therapy 7, 18, 19, 48, 73, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 113, 139, 141, 143, 149, 171, 179 thought 95 definition of 95 time 41, 63 Toland, John 2

qua 136, 137 quotation, internal 123, 124, 127, 131, 132, 139 ironic contextual 124, 125, 127

240

General index

tools or instruments 82, 220, 221 inborn 84 mental 74, 75, 76, 80, 84, 85, 87, 115, 203, 222 Torricelli, Evangelista 60 truth 52, 85, 94, 96, 113 Tschirnhaus, Walther Ehrenfried von 4, 15, 16, 19, 87, 88, 145, 146, 147, 148, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 169, 172, 175, 177, 178, 187 Tuck, Richard 10 Twersky, Isidore 128 understanding 67 universals 43, 45, 106, 110, 153 Van Den Enden, Franciscus 3, 4, 164 Van der Tak, W. G. 4 Velthuysen, Lambertus 1, 152, 216 Verbeek, Theo 152 Vico, Giambattista 219 Voetius 119 Vygotsky, L. S. 88 Wallis, John 103 Weigel, Erhard 9, 144

wholes 43, 44, 46, 47, 48 of the mind 195 whole of nature 81 Will 26, 37, 77, 118, 119, 120, 179, 216 Divine (see God, will) Voluntarism 216 Wilson, Catherine 222 Wilson, Margaret 25, 212 Witt, Jan De 2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 6 Wolfson, Harry 17, 37, 99, 128, 131, 145, 166, 168 worm in the blood 20, 21, 46, 47, 50, 86, 142, 158, 186, 192 Young, B. W. 81 Yovel, Yirmiyahu 3, 41, 158 Zabarella, Jacobo 8, 59, 75, 76, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 115, 117, 121, 123, 143, 153, 168, 179, 203 De Doctrina Ordine Apologiae 8 De Medio Demonstrationis 59, 203 De Methodis 75, 105 De Natura Logicae 75