Nature and necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy 9780190879990, 0190879998, 9780190880019, 0190880015

Table of contents :
Introduction --
Overview. 1. Spinoza's Ethics: The Metaphysics of Blessedness (2003) --
Section I: Necessity and God's Nature
2. Spinoza's "Ontological" Argument (1979) --
Postscript: Arguments for God's Existence Revisited --
3. Ethics Ip5: Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza's Monism (1990) --
Postscript: Shared Attributes and Monism Revisited --
4. Spinoza's Necessitarianism (1991) --
Postscript: Necessitarianism Revisited --
Section II: Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge 5. Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (1986)6. Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz (1990) --
7. Spinoza's Theory of Scientia Intuitiva (2009) --
Section III: Nature as Necessarily Extended and Thinking --
8. Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings (2009) --
9. Spinoza on the Essence of the Human Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal (2009) --
10. The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza's Logic of the Attributes (2017) --
Section IV: Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures. 5. Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (1986) --
6. Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz (1990) --
7. Spinoza's Theory of Scientia Intuitiva (2009) --
Section III: Nature as Necessarily Extended and Thinking --
8. Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings (2009) --
9. Spinoza on the Essence of the Human Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal (2009) --
10. The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza's Logic of the Attributes (2017) --
Section IV: Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures --
11. Spinoza's Theory of Metaphysical Individuation (1994)12. Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism (1999) --
13. Spinoza's Conatus Argument (2002) --
Section V: Naturalistic Representation and Consciousness --
14. Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza's Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination (2008) --
Postscript: Consciousness Revisited --
15. Representation, Misrepresentation, and Error in Spinoza's Philosophy of Mind (2013) --
Section VI: Naturalistic Ethics --
16. "A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively": Freedom and the Good in Spinoza's Ethics (1990) 17. Spinoza's Ethical Theory (1996)18. "Promising" Ideas: Hobbes and Contract in Spinoza's Political Philosophy (2010) --
Index

Citation preview

Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy

Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy

z

DON GARRETT

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Garrett, Don, author. Title: Nature and necessity in Spinoza’s philosophy / Don Garrett. Description: New York City : Oxford University Press, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2017051639 (print) | LCCN 2018002208 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190879990 (updf) | ISBN 9780190880002 (epub) | ISBN 9780190880019 (online component) | ISBN 9780195307771 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632–1677. Classification: LCC B3998 (ebook) | LCC B3998.G29 2018 (print) | DDC 199/.492—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051639 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Contents

Publication Information 

ix

Acknowledgments 

xi

Introduction 

1

Overview  1. Spinoza’s Ethics: The Metaphysics of Blessedness (2003) 

11

SECTION I: Necessity and God’s Nature 2. Spinoza’s “Ontological” Argument (1979) 

31

Postscript: Arguments for God’s Existence Revisited 

53

3. Ethics Ip5: Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza’s Monism (1990) 

62

Postscript: Shared Attributes and Monism Revisited 

91

4. Spinoza’s Necessitarianism (1991) 

98

Postscript: Necessitarianism Revisited 

125

SECTION II: Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge 5. Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (1986) 

151

vi

Contents

6. Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz (1990) 

176

7. Spinoza’s Theory of Scientia Intuitiva (2009) 

199

SECTION III: Nature as Necessarily Extended and Thinking 8. Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings (2009) 

221

9. Spinoza on the Essence of the Human Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal (2009) 

243

10. The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza’s Logic of the Attributes (2017) 

263

SECTION IV: Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures 11. Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation (1994) 

295

12. Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism (1999) 

321

13. Spinoza’s Conatus Argument (2002) 

352

SECTION V: Naturalistic Representation and Consciousness 14. Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory



of the Imagination (2008) 

393

Postscript: Consciousness Revisited 

415

15. Representation, Misrepresentation, and Error in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Mind (2013) 

424

SECTION VI: Naturalistic Ethics 16. “A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively”: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics (1990) 

441

Contents 17. Spinoza’s Ethical Theory (1996) 

vii

462

18. “Promising” Ideas: Hobbes and Contract in Spinoza’s Political Philosophy (2010) 

504

Index523

Publication Information

  1  “Spinoza’s Ethics: The Metaphysics of Blessedness,” in The Classics of Western Philosophy:  A Reader’s Guide, edited by Jorge Gracia, Greg Reichberg, and Bernard Schumacher (Malden: Blackwell, 2003)   2  “Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument,” The Philosophical Review 88.2 (April 1979): 198–​223   3  “Ethics Ip5: Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza’s Monism,” in Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy: Essays Presented to Jonathan Bennett, edited by J. A. Cover and Mark Kulstad (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990): 69–​107   4  “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in God and Nature:  Spinoza’s Metaphysics, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel (Leiden:  Brill, 1991):  191–​218; reprinted in The Rationalists, edited by Derk Pereboom (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999)   5  “Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione,” Studia Spinoza 2 (1986): 56–​86  6   “Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz,” Studia Spinozana 6 (1990): 13–​43   7  “Spinoza’s Theory of Scientia Intuitiva,” Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Tom Sorrell, G.  A. J.  Rogers, and Jill Kraye (Dordrecht:  Springer, 2009): 99–​116   8   “Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings,” in Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, edited by Jon Miller (Dordrecht:  Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2009): 85–​104  9   “The Essence of the Human Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal,” in A Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, edited by Olli Koistinen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 284–​302 10  “The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza’s Logic of the Attributes,” in The Cambridge Critical Guide to Spinoza’s Ethics, edited by Yitzhak Melamed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

x

Publication Information

11  “Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation,” in Individuation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Jorge Gracia and Kenneth Barber (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994): 73–​101 12  “Teleological Explanation in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism,” in New Essays on the Rationalists, edited by Charles Huenemann and Rocco J. Gennaro (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 310–​335 13  “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Spinoza’s Metaphysics:  Central Themes, edited by John I.  Biro and Olli Koistinen (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2002): 127–​158 14  “Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Mind and Imagination,” in Interpreting Spinoza:  Critical Essays, edited by Charles Huenemann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 4–​25 15   “Representation, Misrepresentation, and Error in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Mind,” in The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, edited by Michael Della Rocca (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013): 190–203 16   “ ‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively’: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-​François Moreau (Leiden: Brill, 1990): 221–​238 17  “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett (New  York and Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1996): 267–​314 18  “ ‘Promising’ Ideas: Hobbes and Contract in Spinoza’s Political Philosophy,” in Spinoza’s ‘Theological-​Political Treatise’ A Critical Guide, edited by Yitzhak Melamed and Michael Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 192–​209

Acknowledgments

Spinoza states in Ethics 4p71, “Only free human beings are very thankful to one another.” I find this encouraging, because I am very thankful indeed. Individual chapters contain acknowledgments specific to those chapters, but I also express special gratitude to inspiring teachers including David Bennett (with whom I first encountered Spinoza’s Ethics as an undergraduate), Harry Frankfurt (with whom I first studied Spinoza as a graduate student), and Ruth Marcus; generous senior colleagues and mentors who encouraged my early efforts, including Margaret Wilson, Alan Donagan, Jonathan Bennett, and most especially Edwin Curley, who has done so much to make Spinoza scholarship what it is today; outstanding former students including Michael Della Rocca, John Carriero, Chye Koh, Sherry Deveaux, Angela Coventry, Colin Marshall, and John Morrison; and other  insightful colleagues and friends whose conversations, comments, objections, and suggestions have been invaluable, including Jan Cover, Alan Gabbey, Daniel Garber, Aaron Garrett, Rebecca Goldstein, Michael Griffin, Charles Heunemann, Susan James, Matthew Kisner, Wim Klever, Olli Koistinen, Mark Kulstad, Mogens Laerke, Michael LeBuffe, Vincent Legeay, Martin Lin, Yitzhak Melamed, Pierre-​ François Moreau, Steven Nadler, Samuel Newlands, Kristin Primus, Ursula Renz, Michael Rosenthal, Piet Steenbakkers, Justin Steinberg, Valtteri Viljanen, Andrew Youpa, and Yirmiyahu Yovel. I am also grateful to Peter Ohlin of Oxford University Press for his encouragement, assistance, and patience. My deepest gratitude, as always, is to my wife Frances.

Nature and Necessity in  Spinoza’s Philosophy

Introduction

Benedict de Spinoza was one of the most important philosophers of the early modern period and one of the most systematic. Before his death in 1677, at the age of forty-​four, he developed a comprehensive conception of the universe and of the place of humanity within it, one that offers distinctive and powerful answers to many of the most fundamental questions that human beings face about how to think, feel, and act. The framework in which Spinoza developed that conception relies on his own carefully adapted and refined versions of a constellation of key philosophical concepts. These include those of infinite and self-​sufficient substance, essential attributes, and resulting modes; of God or Nature; of absolute necessity, determining causation, and self-​determining freedom; of finite singular things, their conatus for self-​preservation, and their affects or emotions; of contract, rights, law, and the state; and of virtue, love, and blessedness. The framework also employs a number of crucial distinctions, including those between God as absolutely infinite and God insofar as it constitutes particular modes; between natura naturans (Nature as original cause) and natura naturata (Nature as everything resulting from that cause); between eternity and duration; between essence and existence; between a singular thing’s unchanging formal essence within an attribute and its actual essence in duration; between internal immanent causation and external transitive causation; between physical extension and mental thought; between objective being in thought and formal being outside of thought; between ideas that are true and adequate, and ideas that are false and inadequate; between the intellect and the imagination; between actions and passions, and so between freedom and bondage; between philosophy and theology, and so between reason and faith; and between good and evil. Within this framework, Spinoza propounds a series of connected theses that are initially astounding: that there exists only one substance, which is both God and Nature; that this one substance exists necessarily; that every singular thing, including every human being, is a mode of that one substance; that every state of

2 Introduction

affairs and every occurrence, including every human action, follows necessarily from the nature of that substance and could not have been otherwise; that God is not a person and has no purposes or desires; that reality and perfection are the same thing and come in degrees; that everything that exists is necessarily both extended and thinking; that extension and thought cannot causally influence one another; that the human body and the human mind are one and the same thing; that the human mind is literally a part of God’s infinite intellect; that every being is thinking to some degree; that the endeavor to persevere in being is the fundamental principle of the activity of every human being and every other singular thing as well; that reason can motivate actions; that virtue is power; that an obligation to keep promises exists only as long as it is advantageous to do so; that it is sometimes reasonable to love, praise, and feel approval for human beings, but never reasonable to hate, blame, or feel indignation for them; that the highest good for a human being is understanding, which may be shared with others and can only be achieved with their aid; and that adequate understanding is the source of an intellectual love of God that constitutes participation, during one’s lifetime, in eternal blessedness and largely allows one to overcome the fear of death. Just as remarkably, he claims to establish these conclusions with the force of geometrical demonstration almost entirely through the resources of the intellect, with minimal direct appeal to sense experience. Yet despite his initially astounding conclusions, no important philosopher of the seventeenth century strikes a deeper chord with a broader range of contemporary readers than Spinoza. In part, this is because he is systematic: his approach aims to derive ethics from psychology, and psychology from epistemology and metaphysics. In part, it is because he is edifying: his comprehensive philosophical system naturally inspires in readers a sense of the unity and interrelatedness of all things, and it is intended not merely to increase their knowledge but also to bring them joy while freeing their minds and improving their characters as citizens. In part, it is because he is personally admirable: he lived with integrity and without ostentation, in harmony with his neighbors and in abiding fellowship with his devoted friends. Bertrand Russell called him, for this reason, “the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers.” Spinoza also strikes a deep chord with many readers, however, because he is progressive:  surprisingly often, his philosophy seems to anticipate and point the way to ideas—​whether in science, religion, psychology, politics, or ethics—​that prove to be strikingly apt for the modern world. Many of his most progressive ideas, in this sense, reflect his naturalism—​that is, his refusal to countenance the reality of anything that would be outside of nature. Thus, he resolutely rejects supernatural or transcendent beings, real abstract beings, and Platonic universals; explanatorily basic normative properties of goodness or “oughtness” and explanatorily basic intentional properties of meaning or “aboutness”; and miraculous

Introduction

3

events and uncaused acts of “free will” that would be outside the natural causal order of things. Thus, for example, Albert Einstein famously replied to a question about his own belief in God by asserting “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” No doubt Spinoza strikes a chord in some readers, too, precisely because he seems esoteric: his ideas, arguments, and manner of expression are all highly demanding, directed primarily at the philosophical few rather than the common multitude. He highlights this feature of his philosophy himself in the famous final line of the Ethics: “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” The present volume contains most of my writings on Spinoza’s philosophy, brought together for the first time from many different original sources, some of them now difficult to find. All are intended, at least in large part, to resolve challenging and central problems in the interpretation of Spinoza’s difficult but important philosophy, and I  hope that bringing them together in this way will help to illuminate the systematic connections among those problems and their solutions. These writings are published here without alteration in their original formats, even when this involves some diversity from chapter to chapter in manners of citation and style. The volume also contains new substantial postscripts to four of the earliest articles to be published. Each of these postscripts, like the chapters to which they are now appended, concerns a central topic in Spinoza’s philosophy: the ontological argument for the existence of God, substance monism, strict necessitarianism, and consciousness, respectively. They do not constitute by any means a comprehensive review of subsequent Spinoza scholarship even on the specific topics they address. Rather, they provide what I take to be essential supplements to the original cases for my interpretive theses, presented chiefly as direct responses to forceful criticisms and detailed alternative interpretations subsequently developed by a few of the Spinoza scholars I admire most and have learned the most from over the years. I have also used these postscripts to register a few corrections and improvements to my earlier terminology and argumentation. In identifying God with Nature—​as “Deus sive Natura” in his memorable phrase—​Spinoza in effect divinizes Nature, finding in it many perfections traditionally associated only with a supreme deity. At the same time, however, he also naturalizes God, finding in it many features traditionally associated with an impersonal natural world. The title of this volume, Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy, is intended in part to reflect the crucial role in Spinoza’s philosophical system of his distinctive conception of Nature as the only substance and the first cause of all things, outside of which nothing could exist or act. However, he also uses the term “nature” (“natura”) to refer to a thing’s nature or “essence” (“essentia”), and the title is intended equally to reflect the crucial role that such

4 Introduction

natures play, within Spinoza’s philosophical system, in producing and explaining the properties and actions of things within Nature. God or Nature itself has a nature or essence in this second sense, consisting of infinitely many attributes—​ including extension and thought. Importantly, however, singular things, as modes of God or Nature, each have their own natures or essences (both “formal” and “actual”) as well, through which they approximate to the absolute thing-​hood of substance and from which their activity flows. Finally, the title is intended to reflect the crucial role that Spinoza assigns to the strict logical-​metaphysical necessity (“necessitas”) with which God or Nature exists and has the nature or essence that it does, and the equally strict necessity with which everything else follows from that nature, including the natures of singular things and the events that follow necessarily from the interactions among them. After a preliminary overview of the primary themes of Spinoza’s Ethics in Chapter 1 (“Spinoza’s Ethics: The Metaphysics of Blessedness”), the volume is divided into six sections of three, or in one case two, chapters each, sometimes with postscripts. Within each section, the chapters are ordered by date of original publication. Because my own order of investigation and understanding on a topic has often followed Spinoza’s own “geometrical” order of deduction and explanation, however, the two orders often coincide. What follows is a brief summary of each section. Section I: Necessity and God’s Nature. Spinoza first states his pantheistic substance monism in Ethics 1p14: “Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.” His demonstration of this proposition depends chiefly on two previous propositions: “In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute” (1p5) and “God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists” (1p11). Chapter  2 (“Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument”) examines Spinoza’s arguments in 1p11d for God’s necessary existence and the relations among those arguments. Although he agrees with proponents of the traditional ontological argument that one can recognize the logical-​metaphysical necessity of God’s actual existence simply by understanding the essence of God as expressed in its definition (1d6), he also argues there could not be a sufficient explanation for the existence or nonexistence of things—​as there must be, on his deepest principles—​unless God’s essence did entail God’s existence in this way. It also seeks to show how he could block the objection that, by parity of reasoning, God could not exist after all because it would have to share attributes with substances of fewer attributes, each of which would also necessarily exist through its own essence. The postscript to this chapter makes several important corrections, including a new analysis of the first of the four “proofs” in 1p11d. It also rebuts an alternative interpretation, due to Michael Della Rocca, of how Spinoza would reject substances of fewer than all attributes. Chapter  3 (“Ethics Ip5:  Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza’s

Introduction

5

Monism”) examines Spinoza’s highly compressed argument in 1p5d for the doctrine that substances cannot share attributes. From the premise that each thing is either a substance or a mode of substance, he infers that two substances sharing an attribute must be distinguished either by a difference of attribute or a difference of mode, and he then argues that neither kind of distinction would be possible. The chapter reconstructs a version of Spinoza’s argument that makes it—​contrary to initial appearances and two well-​known objections—​a legitimate inference from his previous definitions and axioms. The postscript following this chapter again rebuts an initially appealing alternative interpretation due to Michael Della Rocca. Chapter 4 (“Spinoza’s Necessitarianism”) argues that Spinoza is fully committed to and consistently maintains the doctrine that every state of affairs is strictly metaphysically necessary, and so could not have been any other way, without restriction. The long postscript to this chapter substantially clarifies and reconfigures my argument for this interpretation by replying in detail to an often-​cited article by Edwin Curley and Gregory Walski that criticizes “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism” and proposes an alternative “moderate necessitarian” interpretation. More broadly, however, the postscript answers critics of Spinoza who hold that he cannot coherently regard an eternal and unchanging divine nature as fully necessitating a world of changing things. In doing so, it also investigates such related topics as the “following from” relation, the “infinite individual,” formal essences, ways of conceiving actuality, and the “order of nature.” Section II:  Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge. Spinoza’s strict necessitarianism makes possible a distinctive conception of truth according to which the internal consistency and coherence by which an idea is able to show the genuine possibility of what it represents is at the same time also sufficient to show the actual existence of what it represents. Chapter 5 (“Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione”) shows how Spinoza’s conception of truth allows him to develop, in an early and unfinished work, a consistent non-​ Cartesian theory of philosophical method, one that makes room for an investigation of ideas of imagination as a means to the strategic preemption of skeptical doubt. Chapter 6 (“Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz”) compares the criticisms that Spinoza and Leibniz offer of Descartes’s method of doubt and of his use of “clarity and distinctness” as a sign of truth. It concludes that Leibniz, too, is committed by his principles—​though perhaps against his intentions—​to a strong form of necessitarianism. Chapter 7 (“Spinoza’s Theory of Scientia Intuitiva”) explains in detail the nature and application of Spinoza’s crucial distinction among three kinds of cognition in the Ethics (derived from the “four kinds of perception” in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect). In doing so, it shows how the highest kind of cognition—​scientia intuitiva—​can proceed, as Spinoza requires, from knowledge of essences as causes to knowledge of properties as effects in a way that is in principle applicable to every truth whatever.

6 Introduction

Section III: Nature as Necessarily Extended and Thinking. In Spinoza’s panpsychist version of necessitarian substance monism, everything is both extended and thinking, and the causal order and connection of things precisely parallels the causal order and connection of the ideas of those things—​even though extended things and thinking things are characterized by different and even incompatible properties. Chapter  8 (“Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings”) analyzes the very different ways in which Spinoza and Locke would reject Descartes’s two arguments of the Meditations—​the arguments from separate conception and from divisibility, respectively—​against the possibility of things that are both extended and thinking. It finds Spinoza’s panpsychist response to Descartes to be especially promising. Chapter 9 (“The Essence of the Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal”) resolves three puzzling but central questions about Spinoza’s doctrine of the mind’s eternity as expressed in Ethics Part 5: (1) what the “idea of the formal essence” of the human body is in his metaphysics; (2)  how he can hold that the persistence of this idea after the death of the human body renders a part of the mind eternal in a way that is compatible with the parallelism and identity between the mind and body; and (3) how he can hold that increasing one’s knowledge renders a greater part of one’s mind eternal. Chapter 10 (“The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza’s Logic of the Attributes”) proposes and defends an interpretation of God’s attributes in Spinoza as fundamental manners of existing. This understanding of the attributes, when taken together with his distinctive theory of truth as the adequacy of an idea, finally renders intelligible his apparent flagrant violations of two fundamental logical principles: the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity. Section IV: Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures. Substance monism entails that different singular things cannot be individuated or distinguished from one another in virtue of their being different substances, and hence they must be individuated in some other way. Chapter  11 (“Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation”) analyzes Spinoza’s theory of individuation—​presented in a lengthy excursus following Ethics 2p13s—​as a function of relatively self-​sustaining “fixed ratios of motion and rest.” In doing so, it also offers an interpretation of the metaphysical foundations of his physics in the differential distribution of a force of “motion-​and-​rest” through an infinite extended substance. Chapter 12 (“Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism”) examines the controversial role in Spinoza’s philosophy of teleological explanation—​that is, explanation by appeal to likely or presumptive consequences, which some commentators have interpreted him as rejecting entirely​. It argues that, despite his mechanistic physics, Spinoza’s views are in some important ways in closer accord with Aristotle’s version of teleology than are the views of either Descartes or Leibniz. Spinoza’s key teleological proposition, Ethics 3p6, states that each singular thing, “insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being.” By elaborating Spinoza’s conception of what it

Introduction

7

means for something to be “in itself” and the ways in which self-​preservatory activity makes a singular thing a kind of “quasi-​substance,” Chapter 13 (“Spinoza’s Conatus Argument”) provides an original interpretation of that proposition and of his argument for it, one that acquits it of the charge of multiple equivocations that has often been lodged against it. Section V:  Naturalistic Representation and Consciousness. Spinoza offers an account of human minds as integral parts of Nature, one according to which they differ in degree of perfection but not in fundamental metaphysical kind from the minds of all other singular things. Yet the account he offers has many highly counterintuitive consequences: that every singular thing whatever has a mind that perceives everything that happens in its body; that every such perception is also always a perception of external bodies; and that all such perceptions are conscious to at least some degree. Chapter 14 (“Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination”) deploys Spinoza’s conceptions of inherence, individuality, conatus, power of thinking (“cogitandi potentia”), minds, confusion, and intellection—​many of which have been elaborated in chapters of Section IV—​in order to explain how he can understand mental representation and consciousness in a way that renders these seemingly counterintuitive consequences plausible. A postscript to this chapter defends its identification of consciousness (“conscientia”) with power of thinking (“cogitandi potentia”) in Spinoza against (1)  an alternative interpretation of consciousness as “complexity” proposed by Steven Nadler and (2) an argument offered by Michael LeBuffe for a significant limitation on that identification. Chapter 15 (“Representation, Misrepresentation, and Error in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Mind”) develops further the interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of mental representation set out in Chapter 14, including its use of the conatus doctrine (that “each thing, insofar as it is in itself strives to persevere in its being”) as explained in Chapter 13. It does so in order to answer two further and challenging questions: (1) how he can limit the primary representational content of a sensory-​imaginative idea to only some of the causes of the bodily state that is identical with that idea, and (2) how he can reconcile his strict parallelism between things and their ideas with the possibility of misrepresentation and hence of error. Section VI:  Naturalistic Ethics. The ethical theory in which Spinoza’s Ethics culminates is a fully naturalistic one grounded in his psychology and formulated largely in terms of the “good” (defined as what is advantageous to persevering in being), “virtue,” the “dictates of reason,” and the model of “the free human being.” Chapter 16 (“ ‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively’: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics”) takes up one puzzle about that theory:  how Spinoza can maintain in 4p72 that “the free human being” who constitutes our ethical model “always acts honestly” (“cum fide”), given that deception can sometimes be advantageous to self-​preservation and

8 Introduction

hence, by Spinoza’s definition “good.” The solution, it argues, lies at least in part in the recognition that what is required to achieve an ideal state of being is not always what one would do if one were already in that ideal state. Chapter 17 (“Spinoza’s Ethical Theory”) provides a more comprehensive analysis of Spinoza’s ethics, with particular attention to the derivation of ethics from psychology; the meaning of moral language; motivation by reason; the possibility and moral status of altruism; the role of freedom and responsibility in the context of a necessitarian metaphysics; and the relation of Spinoza’s ethics to other ethical traditions. Chapter 18 (“‘Promising’ Ideas: Hobbes and Contract in Spinoza’s Political Philosophy”) explains several puzzling features of Spinoza’s relation to Hobbes on the topics of promising and contract—​especially as Spinoza addresses them in his Theological-​Political Treatise and his unfinished Political Treatise. It does so by analyzing and comparing their doctrines about rights and powers, good and evil, reason and passion, and—​especially—​faith and deception (“dolus”). Understanding how Spinoza draws on a distinction between “bad deception” (“dolus malus”) and “good deception” (“dolus bonus”) sheds crucial new light on the topic of Chapter 16 as well.

Overview

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Spinoza’s Ethics The Metaphysics of Blessedness

Benedict (Baruch) de spinoza composed the philosophical classic Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order) over the course of more than a decade while earning his living primarily as a lens-​grinder in his native Holland. Although he was rightly cautious about disseminating his radical views—​indeed, he traveled to Amsterdam in 1675 to arrange for the publication of the Ethics, only to change his mind in response to rumors about the book’s “atheism”—​he shared his work in draft form with a circle of close friends, who arranged for the publication of the Ethics as part of his Opera Posthuma in 1677, following his death at the age of forty-​four from respiratory disease. The Ethics challenged many traditional philosophical conceptions and offered a bold philosophical system—​at once a naturalization of the divine and a divinization of nature—​that shocked many of his contemporaries but has nevertheless provided intellectual stimulation and inspiration to generations of readers. It remains, more than three centuries later, one of the most remarkable philosophical treatises ever written. The most immediately striking features of the Ethics is its axiomatized “geometrical” format. Spinoza sought to demonstrate his doctrines not only in proper order (that is, in such a way that a conclusion is never employed until the arguments for it have been presented) but also in what he called the “geometrical style.” Accordingly, the book is a deductive structure essentially composed—​ much like Euclid’s Elements of Geometry—​ of numbered definitions, axioms, propositions, corollaries, and demonstrations. Within this structure, definitions state the intended meanings of key terms; axioms state fundamental doctrines proposed for acceptance without demonstration; propositions and corollaries (which differ only in that the latter are treated as subsidiary to the former) state theses for which demonstrations are provided that appeal (almost always) to previously

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stated definitions, axioms, propositions, and corollaries. These logical elements are fleshed out by prefaces, notes (scholia), and appendices. Spinoza did not always expound his views in the geometrical style; aside from the Ethics, he used it extensively in only one of his other works (his first published work, a geometrical reconstruction of parts of Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy that established his credentials as an interpreter of Descartes). Nor was Spinoza the first to apply this style to philosophical writing; on the contrary, he was inspired to use it at least partly by Descartes’s sample geometrical treatment, in his Objections and Replies, of some key doctrines of the Meditations. The Ethics remains, however, the only original philosophical classic of the first rank written “geometrically.” The geometrical format of the Ethics serves several closely related purposes for Spinoza. In theory, if not quite always in practice, it imposes a rigorous discipline on the author, requiring him to identify his presuppositions explicitly as axioms and to propound no claims other than these axioms without explicit proof. At the same time, the format imposes a corresponding discipline upon his readers: if they accept the definitions and axioms, and cannot identify a specific fallacy or defect in the reasoning, then they are bound to accept the propositions and corollaries as well, no matter how unpopular those doctrines might be or how strange they might seem. Moreover, the format’s demand for austere reasoning—​instead of emotional appeals or rhetorical flourishes—​helps Spinoza and his readers alike to maintain his desired stance of detached scientific objectivity in considering “human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies” (Ethics Part 3, Preface). Even more remarkable than the format of the Ethics, however, is its scope. Divided into five parts—​“On God,” “On the Nature and Origin of the Mind,” “On the Origin and Nature of the Affects,” “On Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects,” and “On the Power of the Intellect, or on Human Freedom”—​it begins with a proposition about the metaphysical and conceptual priority of a substance over its modes and concludes with a proposition about the nature of blessedness itself. Spinoza’s ambition was nothing less than to deduce the nature of blessedness (“man’s highest happiness”) and the path to it by demonstrating a science of ethics (“knowledge of the right way of living”) from the fundamental structure (“metaphysics and physics,” as he wrote to a correspondent) of the universe itself. Thus, the metaphysics of Part  1 is meant to support the general theory of matter and mind of Part  2, which supports the account of human nature and the emotions (i.e., “affects”) in Part 3; and this account of human nature and the emotions, in turn, supports the ethical theory of Part 4, which supports the explanation of what blessedness is and how it is possible in Part 5. In fact, the Ethics offers what might be called a “metaphysics of blessedness” in two quite distinct senses:  its metaphysics provides the intended foundation for an understanding of what blessedness is and how it is possible; and, in addition, this blessedness



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turns out to consist largely in understanding that very metaphysics and its many consequences.

Spinoza’s Approach to Philosophical Understanding In order to understand the system that Spinoza proposes, it is helpful first to understand his conception of the nature of understanding itself, for it is a conception that underlies his entire approach to philosophy. Spinoza is deeply and irrevocably committed to the idea that all facts can in principle (though not, of course, all within a finite human mind) be conceived or understood through their necessitating causes. This commitment is embedded in Axioms 2–​4 of Part 1 of the Ethics: Axiom 2: What cannot be conceived through another, must be conceived through itself. Axiom 3:  From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily; and conversely, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow. Axiom 4: The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowl­ edge of its cause. Axiom 2 entails that every aspect of reality is conceivable—​that is (as Spinoza makes clear), knowable or capable of being understood. Axiom 3 characterizes the causal relation as one of necessitation, in which effects are necessitated by causes and are impossible without them. Finally, Spinoza intends the distinctive Axiom 4 to require that every aspect of reality can be known or understood only through its causes (for although Axiom 4 explicitly applies only to “effects,” his use of the axiom shows clearly that he regards all states of affairs as “effects”). Thus, Spinoza holds that everything can be understood, and can only be understood, by understanding the causes that necessitate its being just as it is. Falling within the scope of this principle are not only all facts about what exists but also all facts about what does not exist. Accordingly, Spinoza writes in his demonstration of the existence of God (Proposition 11 of Part 1): “For each thing, there must be assigned a cause, or reason, as much for its existence as for its nonexistence.” That he neglects to cite Axioms 2–​4—​or any other axiom, definition, proposition, or corollary—​as support for this premise of the demonstration is an indication of just how deeply embedded in his thinking the principle is. An adequate understanding of things through their causes demands, in Spinoza’s view, the use of what he calls the intellect. He thus distinguishes between

14 Overview

two different kinds of ideas or mental representations. Whereas ideas of the imagination are like sensory images—​indeed, for Spinoza, sense perception itself is classified as a kind of imagination in this broad sense—​ideas of the intellect constitute a higher, more adequate, and nonimagistic form of understanding. Although the distinction between intellect and imagination dates back to the ancient Greeks, its significance was particularly emphasized by those early modern philosophers (including Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz) who are now commonly classified as “rationalists,” and it was disparaged or ignored by those early modern philosophers (including Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) who are now commonly classified as “empiricists.” For Spinoza, one of the chief aims of philosophical method is to develop reliance on the intellect in preference to the imagination; indeed, one of his earliest works was an unfinished Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Precisely because he believes that the intellect provides the mind with a higher and more adequate form of understanding than does the imagination, he holds that sensory observations alone provide an inadequate basis for one’s theories; rather, principles derived from the intellect can and must be used to determine the proper interpretation of what would otherwise be highly inadequate, confused, and unreliable sensory observations. This is one sense, at least, in which Spinoza is indeed a “rationalist.”

Metaphysics Spinoza employs a substance/​ mode metaphysics. According to this general metaphysical scheme, the fundamental entities that constitute the universe are substances, which are the entities capable of existing independently of other things. Each substance has or is constituted by an essence that makes the substance the thing that it is; thus, a substance exists only so long as it retains its essence, and it is best understood through an understanding of that essence. This essence consists of an essential or principal attribute—​which Spinoza calls simply an attribute. As an expression or further qualification of its essential attribute, each substance has modes, which are the qualities or characteristics of the substance; these are all to be understood as determinate modifications of, or particular ways of instancing, the substance’s essential attribute—​in the way, for example, that spherical shape is a determinate modification or particular way of instancing spatial dimensionality (which Spinoza calls extension). Modes can exist only in the substance of which they are modes. It should be emphasized, however, that the relation of being in that holds between modes and substances is not a relation of spatial containment nor of parts to wholes; rather, it is intended to be a metaphysical relation of dependence that is exemplified (among other ways) in the relation between qualities of things and the things of which they are qualities.



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Although Descartes and many other early modern philosophers also employed this general metaphysical scheme, Spinoza’s unique transformation of it provides much of the initial impetus that his philosophy derives from the definitions and axioms of Part 1 of the Ethics. For Spinoza, the relation of being in necessarily runs in parallel with the relation of being conceived through, so that the order of dependence among ideas in thought must correspond precisely to the real order of ontological dependence among the intended objects of thought. Since Spinoza holds (in Axioms 1 and 2 of Part 1) that each thing must be in and conceived through something, and since substances are not in anything other than themselves, he defines a substance as that which is in itself and conceived through itself (Definition 3 of Part 1). He defines a mode, in contrast, as whatever is in another and conceived through that other (Definition 5 of Part 1). He defines an attribute (i.e., an essential attribute, or what Descartes called a principal attribute) as “what the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence” (Definition 4 of Part 1). From the doctrine of Axiom 4 of Part  1 (already cited) that things must be conceived through their causes, together with the doctrine of the parallelism of the relations of being in and being conceived through, it follows that whatever is in something is also caused by it. Hence, for Spinoza, modes must be caused by the substances of which they are modes, and substances themselves must be self-​caused. Perhaps the best-​known and most important metaphysical doctrine of the Ethics is Spinoza’s conclusion that there is only one substance, God. His argument for this conclusion in the demonstration of Proposition 14 of Part 1 invokes two previous propositions of Part 1: Proposition 5:  In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute. Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, necessarily exists. Proposition 11’s characterization of God as a substance of infinite attributes is just an application of Spinoza’s definition of God at the beginning of Part 1: Definition 6: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each expresses an eternal and infinite essence. Spinoza’s definition of the infinite (Definition 2 of Part  1) entails that whatever has infinite attributes must have all possible attributes. Hence, the argument runs, since God exists (Proposition 11), all attributes are already present and realized in God; and since substances cannot share attributes (Proposition 5)  but must

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each have some attribute (to serve as its essence), no substance can exist other than God. The soundness of this demonstration largely depends, of course, on the two propositions (Propositions 5 and 11) that serve as its premises. The demonstration of Proposition 11 offers several different proofs of God’s necessary existence; the first and simplest, however, applies, to the special case of God, Proposition 7’s claim that “it pertains to the nature of substance to exist.” By this, Spinoza means that every possible substance must have a nature such that it could not possibly fail to exist, so that the existence of any possible substance follows immediately and with logical necessity from any definition of the substance that properly states its nature or essence. That this kind of necessary and eternal existence must indeed be a feature of any possible substance can be seen most easily from the fact that every substance is, by definition, conceived through itself and so also the cause of itself; for a thing could cause itself (as Definition 1 of Part 1 affirms) only if it pertained to the thing’s own nature to existence, so that its nonexistence would be inconceivable and impossible. Of course, since it pertains to the nature of any possible substance to exist and since no substance other than God actually exists, according to Spinoza, it follows for him that no other substance than God is really even so much as possible; any attempted definition of another substance must contain either an explicit or a hidden contradiction, consisting in the attempt to specify something as substance, and so entirely independent of other things, while nevertheless limiting its number of attributes and hence also its power. Spinoza’s demonstration of Proposition 5 (that substances cannot share attributes) is highly compressed. Its strategy, however, is reasonably clear: to argue that there could be no conceivable—​and hence no genuine—​distinction between two substances sharing the same attribute, on the grounds that they could be distinguished as two different substances sharing that attribute neither by appeal to the attribute itself (which by hypothesis is the same in each) nor by appeal to any difference in their modes of that attribute. They could not differ in their modes because modes are subsequent (by Proposition 1 of Part 1) to the substance of which they are modes. That is, they are entirely in and conceived through (by Definitions 3 and 5), and hence entirely caused by (in consequence of Axiom 4), the substance of which they are modes. But to be conceived through and caused by a substance is to be conceived through and caused by its attribute. Accordingly, there could be no conceiving of a difference of modes that did not require conceiving a preexisting difference in the attribute of which they were modes. In thus denying that two substances could share an essential attribute, Spinoza is rejecting a key part of Descartes’s metaphysics. According to Descartes, all human minds are substances that share the essential attribute of thought (understood broadly enough to include emotion and volition), and all bodies are substances that share the essential attribute of extension (i.e., spatial dimensionality). Descartes could allow that



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there are substances that share an essential attribute yet differ in modes partly because he accepted the possibility of causal interaction between substances, so that the modes of a substance need not all be causally determined entirely by their substance’s own essential attribute; Spinoza’s conception of substance requires that he deny the possibility of such interaction and hence also the possibility of such a resulting difference of modes. In traditional Western philosophical theology, God is regarded as a substance or being distinct from the natural world, which consists of God’s many creatures. Spinoza’s substance monism—​the doctrine that there is only one substance—​ demands a different account of the relation between God and Nature in general and a different account of the relation between God and his creatures—​including individual minds and bodies—​in particular. In the context of his substance/​ mode metaphysics, Spinoza’s doctrine that God is the only substance entails that everything that exists is either God or a mode of God; thus, as Spinoza expresses it in Proposition 15, “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.” It follows that if Nature is to be conceived as a substance, Nature must be identical with God—​hence Spinoza’s famous phrase “God, or Nature” (“Deus, sive Natura”), a phrase that has contributed to the common but reactionary imputation of concealed atheism to the Ethics. Since particular things are not themselves individually identical with God, for Spinoza, they must be modes of God, as he explicitly confirms in the Corollary to Proposition 25 of Part 1: “Particular things are nothing but affections [i.e., qualities or modifications] of God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way.” Understandably, Spinoza’s assertion that human beings and other particular things are not really substances in their own right but are instead modes of substance evokes approval from some readers and consternation from others. Edwin Curley (1969, 1988, 1991)  has sought, in his interpretation of the Ethics, to reduce the element of consternation by emphasizing the cause/​effect implications and minimizing the subject/​quality implications of the substance/​mode relation. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to avoid reading the Ethics as claiming that modes of extension, including particular bodies, are ways in which God is extended and that modes of thought, including particular minds, are ways in which God is thinking. Jonathan Bennett (1984, 1991, 2001) has argued that one should see Spinoza’s assertion that particular things are modes of a single substance as an early forerunner of the “field metaphysic” of contemporary physics—​that is, the view according to which the universe is not, at the ultimate level, a composite of ontologically independent elementary particles but is instead a unitary being, a medium in which particular individual “things” arise as and ultimately consist of varying and moving distributions of different forces, properties, or fields that qualify or modify regions of that permanent medium.

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Spinoza’s view of the relation of God to Nature is often characterized as pantheism—​that is, as the doctrine that everything is God. This characterization is not unwarranted, for Spinoza does hold that every substance is God. Some commentators, however, have preferred to call his doctrine panentheism, intending by this coinage to emphasize his doctrine that everything (including God Itself) is in God, so that different particular things are only modes of God and are not themselves identical with God. Although Spinoza is also often described as holding that everything is a part of God, this characterization is not accurate, since for him modes are not parts: wholes are ontologically dependent on the existence of their parts, which bring wholes into existence by composing them; a substance, in contrast, is ontologically prior to its modes, which are modifications, or “affections,” of the substance that follow from its essence. Spinoza’s reconception of the relation between God and Nature demands a reconsideration of the question of how God acts. Traditional Western philosophical theology holds that God (i) created a world distinct from Himself, (ii) choosing to do so without acting from necessity, (iii) in order to achieve some good. As has already been observed, Spinoza denies the first element of this theory. According to him, all of God’s causal activity is immanent causation (Proposition 18 of Part 1): the production of modes that are in rather than external to God. According to Spinoza, some of these modes—​the infinite modes—​are pervasive and eternal features of God; the others, including such individual things as human beings, are finite modes that exist locally rather than pervasively, and come into and pass out of existence. While all modes of God have real causal power, on Spinoza’s view, their causal power is not distinct from or in addition to God’s own infinite power, since they are not themselves substances external to God. Spinoza equally rejects the second element of the traditional theory of God’s causal activity, for he denies that God chooses to act and he affirms that God acts from absolute necessity. Spinoza’s God does not in any sense choose from among alternatives, for his God conceives of no alternatives. Because he holds that everything must be conceivable through necessitating causes, Spinoza is a necessitarian; that is, he holds that everything true is so necessarily, and that nothing could possibly have been otherwise than it is. God could not possibly have had an essence different from the essence that God actually has, he argues; for God is by definition the absolutely infinite or unlimited substance, and it necessarily pertains to the nature of just such a substance to exist with the most unlimited nature or essence. Furthermore, everything that is genuinely conceivable or possible must follow with absolute causal necessity from that essence (Proposition 16, Proposition 29, and Proposition 33 of Part 1, with demonstrations and scholia), for an absolutely infinite nature must cause everything that is possible to exist, and causes necessitate absolutely. Despite this, however, God is free in Spinoza’s own sense of the term, according to which a thing is free if it “exists from the necessity



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of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone” (Definition 7 of Part 1). God satisfies this definition, for Spinoza, because the causal necessity by which God exists and acts is entirely internal to God’s own essential nature; indeed, there is nothing outside God by which it could be imposed. Spinoza rejects the third element of the traditional theory of divine causal activity as well: his God acts for the sake of no end or good. If God were to act in order to achieve some end, Spinoza argues in the Appendix to Part 1, that would only show that God desired something that he lacked and so (contrary to Definition 6 of Part 1) was not absolutely infinite. For Spinoza, all goodness is relative: something is good for a thing if it benefits that thing. Since nothing can benefit or harm God, it follows that nothing is good or evil for God—​even though many things are, of course, good or evil for human beings. Because Spinoza’s God has no desires and acts with no end in view, his God does not act in order to benefit human beings, is neither pleased nor displeased by their actions, and has no interest in being worshipped by them. Although Spinoza’s God is an infinite thinking—​and also an infinite extended—​thing, his God is in no sense a person. Accordingly, the traditional problem of how a perfectly benevolent God could permit evils to befall human beings simply does not arise for Spinoza.

Theories of Matter and Mind In Cartesian metaphysics, extension and thought are each essential attributes—​ some created substances (bodies, in the broad sense encompassing all physical objects) have the former, and other created substances (minds) have the latter. Descartes’s God thinks but is not extended. If there is only one substance, as Spinoza maintains, then what is to become of thought and extension as essential attributes? Spinoza’s bold answer is that they are both essential attributes of the one substance, God. Spinoza conceives of thought and extension as two fundamentally different kinds of God’s being—​that is, as two fundamentally different manners in which God, the absolutely infinite being, exists. Just as God is an infinite thinking being whose thinking nature is expressed through the being of infinitely many—​that is, all possible—​modes of thought, so God is also and equally an infinite extended being whose extended nature is expressed through the being of infinitely many—​that is, all possible—​modes of extension. God is thus both Res Extensa (the Extended Thing) and Res Cogitans (the Thinking Thing). The essence of Res Extensa is extension; the essence of Res Cogitans is thought; extension and thought are each the essence of God, insofar as God is conceived in the one manner or the other. In fact, God’s attributes are not limited to extension and thought, on Spinoza’s view, for God has, by definition, infinite attributes. All possible attributes of God must also be possessed and conceived by God; however,

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Spinoza maintains that no attributes in addition to extension and thought can be conceived by a human mind. Because every attribute is a fundamental manner of being, none can be conceived through the conception of any other, and no mode of one can be conceived through any mode of any other; the attributes are conceptually, and hence also causally, closed and self-​contained. Thus, for example, each fact of extension is conceived through and caused by only facts of extension, not by facts of thought; and each fact of thought is conceived through and caused by only facts of thought, not by facts of extension (Propositions 5 and 6 of Part 2). Since Spinoza’s God is an infinite thinking thing, however, there is nevertheless in God an actual idea of each thing that actually exists; and since each thing must be conceived through its causes (Axiom 4 of Part 1), the causal order of dependence among things is mirrored by the causal order of dependence among their ideas. Thus, Spinoza affirms a strict but noncausal parallelism between things and ideas:  “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (Proposition 7 of Part 2). Nor is this all; he holds not only that a mode of extension is always paralleled by a corresponding mode of thought having that mode of extension as its object; he also holds that a mode of extension is identical with the mode of thought that has it as its object (scholium to Proposition 7 of Part 2). Thus, just as extension and thought are two different manners of being through which one and the same substance, God, causes Itself to exist and conceives Itself, so also they provide two different manners in which each particular mode of God is caused to exist and can be conceived. This theory of the relation between extension and thought in general provides the basis for Spinoza’s account of the relation between the human body and the human mind in particular: the mind of a human being is the complex idea having that human being’s body as its object, and hence the human mind and the human body are the very same thing, expressed under different attributes. The human body is a local and temporary expression of God’s own infinite extension; and the human mind is the corresponding, and indeed identical, local and temporary aspect of God’s own infinite thought. Spinoza’s substance monism entails that the human mind is not a substance in its own right, engaged in thinking ideas that are numerically distinct from God’s ideas; instead, Spinoza holds that each human mind is a complex idea contained within God’s infinite intellect (Corollary to Proposition 11 of Part 2), so that ideas in a human mind are literally shared with God. The human mind is, as it were, some of God’s own knowledge—​namely, God’s knowledge insofar as it constitutes knowledge specifically of that human body, or God’s knowledge of things from the limited perspective of that human body. When a mind has ideas of things together with the ideas of their causes, the mind has ideas that are adequate and true—​ideas of the intellect—​and it understands in just the same way that God does. When the mind has ideas of things without the ideas of their causes, it has inadequate and false ideas, ideas



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of the imagination, and the mind’s understanding is mutilated and confused in comparison with God’s more comprehensive and complete understanding, which does include ideas of these causes. All ideas by their nature involve an affirmation of their content, according to Spinoza (Proposition 49 of Part  2). He therefore denies Descartes’s doctrine that a mind can sometimes choose whether to affirm or deny the content of its ideas; instead, the mind will necessarily affirm that content unless it also has other ideas that necessarily lead the mind to reject it.

Human Nature and the Emotions Spinoza’s account of human nature and the emotions is the result of conjoining his general conception of the nature of finite beings with his theory of the distinguishing features of human beings. This account is often called his “psychology,” and this designation is not entirely erroneous; but it is misleading if it is taken to imply that his account concerns only the mental, or the realm of thought, for on Spinoza’s conception of the emotions, they are equally modes of thought and of extension (Definition 3 of Part 3). Although Spinoza asserts clearly and emphatically that there is only one genuine substance, he does not deny that some modes of this substance, including human beings, are what we may also properly call things—​that is, proper subjects for the ascription of qualities in their own right. Modes of God qualify as things to the extent that they constitute a (finite) approximation to the nature of a (necessarily infinite) substance. Since substance is, for Spinoza, entirely self-​caused, something is a thing to the extent that it approximates to being self-​caused—​i.e., to the extent that it constitutes the sufficient necessitating explanation for its own existence. Of course, no finite mode is eternal, and so every finite mode must be brought into existence originally by something other than itself; but a finite mode can nonetheless be a cause of its own continued existence to the extent that it exerts causal power to maintain itself in existence. Hence, as Spinoza claims in Proposition 6 of Part 3, “Each thing, insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being.” His argument for his doctrine that all things have a striving (conatus) for self-​preservation offers a good example of his “rationalistic” method. He justifies the doctrine not on the basis of extensive observation—​although he no doubt thinks that it is confirmed by observation—​but rather on the basis of a consideration of the conditions for being a thing—​that is, for being substance-​ like—​at all. The more something constitutes a finite approximation to a genuine infinite substance, the more power it will have and exert to preserve itself in being. For a finite thing truly to act (i.e., to be active) is for it to be the cause of effects through its own essential endeavor to persevere in being (Definition 2 and Proposition 7 of Part 3).

22 Overview

Like all things in nature, human beings strive to persevere in their being, according to Spinoza; but they differ from most other things in three related respects. First, like some other animals but unlike other beings, they have highly complex bodies that are capable of forming, retaining, and utilizing (for purposes of self-​preservation) relatively distinct images of things. That is to say, they have highly developed sense organs that provide them with imaginative (including sensory) representations of the world. These representations, considered as modes of the attribute of thought, are ideas of states of the human being’s own body, states that own a considerable part of their natures to—​and hence also represent, although incompletely and inadequately—​states or qualities of external things. Second, because human beings are such complex mechanisms, they are not only capable of exerting considerable power for self-​preservation, they are also capable of undergoing increases and decreases in the amount of power for self-​ preservation they possess. Third, and most distinctively, as they increase their capacity for active self-​preservation, they are capable not only of imagination but also of a considerable degree of conscious intellection—​that is, of consciously forming adequate ideas of things. The nature of human beings thus makes them susceptible to three basic emotions, or affects, which are “affections of the Body by which the Body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and at the same time, the ideas of those affections” (Definition 3 of Part  3). The first of these basic emotions is desire, which is the basic endeavor toward self-​preservation as it becomes directed toward some particular object that a human being represents to itself. The second is joy (laetitia), which is an increase in self-​preservatory power for action. The third is sadness (tristitia), which is a decrease in self-​preservatory power for action. Desires and joys can be either passions or active emotions, but sadness can only be a passion. Spinoza catalogs and explains the enormous variety of other human emotions as particular combinations or kinds of these three basic emotions insofar as they have various causes and objects. Whenever an emotion is caused by external forces of one kind or another, it is a passion; when it results entirely from the human being’s own power, it is an active emotion.

Ethical Theory This description of human nature and emotions raises, and at the same time provides Spinoza with much of his basis for answering, the question of what the right kind of life for a human being is. He firmly rejects legalistic conceptions of ethics, according to which the right way of living is determined by conformity to a code specifying that some actions or omissions of actions are obligatory while others are impermissible: “Absolutely, it is permissible for everyone to do, by the



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highest right of nature, what he judges will contribute to his advantage” (Article 8 of the Appendix to Part 4). Although citizenship is properly concerned with obedience to laws enacted by the State, ethics for Spinoza is concerned not with edicts of permission and obligation but with discovering the best way of living. Popular religion, he believes, errs in conceiving of ethics as a matter of obedience to the positive commands of an anthropomorphized and monarchical God, when in fact true ethics requires understanding not divine commands but rather the natural laws governing human well-​being or advantage. For the best way of living is that which maximizes one’s advantage—​that is, one’s good—​and thereby achieves that for which (as Spinoza has argued in Part 3 of the Ethics) every human being naturally and necessarily strives—​namely, the preservation of his or her being. Since the preservation of one’s being must be everyone’s goal as a matter of metaphysical necessity, no one can consistently deny that it constitutes his or her good. Accordingly, there is no need for an ethics that externally commands or enjoins; for to know ethics is simply to understand adequately where one’s true advantage or good lies (i.e., what will truly preserve one’s being), and the very ideas that constitute this true knowledge will necessarily also constitute emotions of desire for what is known to be one’s good. Spinoza does not, of course, deny (indeed, he emphasizes) that human beings frequently desire what is not really good for them; but he does hold that this occurs only through their having inadequate ideas of things, ideas which manifest their own lack of power to understand more adequately. Such desires are passions, external perversions of the natural direction of human conatus. Subjection to passions is what Spinoza calls human bondage; and it is the task of ethics to show how such bondage may be overcome. Spinoza uses four closely related concepts to express his specific ethical doctrines. The first of these is the concept of the good—​that is, the concept of that which is useful in the endeavor to persevere in one’s being (Definition 1 of Part 4), or (equivalently for Spinoza) that which aids one in “approaching the model of human nature that we set before ourselves” (Preface to Part 4). The second concept is that of virtue, which he regards as identical to that of power (Definition 8 of Part 4). The third concept is that of guidance of reason or dictate of reason, which signifies what one does insofar as one understands things adequately. The fourth is the concept of the free man, which is the concept of a model of human nature that we properly strive to exemplify. Part 4 of the Ethics offers a number of specific claims about what is good or evil, what one does from virtue, how one acts under the guidance of reason, and (in its final propositions) the nature and behavior of the free man. The last three concepts are, in fact, practically equivalent. Although only God absolutely satisfies Spinoza’s definition of freedom, human beings can approximate more or less closely to doing so:  to act freely—​that is, to be determined from one’s own nature alone—​is to be the adequate cause of one’s own perseverance in being. To whatever extent human beings act freely, however, they

24 Overview

also exert their own power—​that is, their virtue. Moreover, one acts freely, or from one’s own power or virtue, just to the extent that one has adequate ideas and so is guided by reason, for only to the extent that one’s ideas are adequate are they the result of one’s own power rather than one’s weakness and the impositions of external forces. The good is therefore equivalently whatever enables us to become free, virtuous, or guided by reason. Although its basis is undeniably egoistic, the ethical theory that Spinoza provides in these terms is nevertheless a cooperative rather than a competitive one. This is because “knowledge of God is the Mind’s greatest good” (Proposition 28 of Part 4), and this good “can be enjoyed equally by all” (Proposition 36 of Part 4), for someone’s acquiring it leaves no less for others. On the contrary, Spinoza holds that nothing is more useful to a human being in the pursuit of knowledge than the genuine friendship of other human beings. Spinoza argues that knowledge is the highest good on the grounds that what each individual thing strives to achieve in order to persevere in being must be its good, and the human mind’s endeavor to persevere in its being is nothing other than its endeavor to realize understanding (Demonstration of Proposition 26). For Spinoza, of course, knowledge of God is not distinct from knowledge of other things; because God is the only substance, all knowledge is really knowledge of God. The content of Spinoza’s ethical theory thus emphasizes the joy (i.e., increase in self-​preservatory power for action) that consists in the achievement of adequate—​that is, intellectual—​understanding, understanding that allows one to acquire further adequate understanding and to live freely and virtuously under the guidance of reason. Those who come to understand the divine nature as it manifests itself in the natural world and in human life will remain undisturbed by reverses, Spinoza thinks, and will not be tormented by “what ifs,” for they will understand that what occurs must occur of necessity and could not have failed to occur. Blame and disapprobation for others are species of hatred, which is a form of sadness; hence, those who are virtuous and free are less subject to these passions and instead pursue the joy of understanding in fellowship through the resources provided by the knowledge that they already enjoy. To the extent that they are virtuous and free, they also do not feel pity, humility, or repentance, for these, too, are all species of sadness. They do not even fear their own dissolution, for “a free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is meditation on life, not on death” (Proposition 67 of Part 4).

Blessedness As will be apparent from the foregoing sketch, Spinoza seems to provide two quite different and seemingly conflicting conceptions of the nature of the good for a



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human being. On the one hand, it consists, as it does for all things, in persevering in existence—​that is, in not ceasing to exist (as is confirmed in Proposition 39 of Part 4). On the other hand, it consists in adequate understanding (as emphasized in Proposition 27 of Part 4). Yet humans and other beings often continue in existence for many years in relative ignorance; and adequate understanding of things, while sometimes useful in avoiding or forestalling death, is nevertheless frequently accompanied by an early demise—​as it was in Spinoza’s own case. Part 5 of the Ethics serves, in part, to reconcile these seemingly conflicting conceptions by showing how adequate understanding constitutes a higher kind of perseverance in being even when it does not lengthen the duration of one’s biological life. In doing so, it also explains what true blessedness is and how it is possible that human beings achieve it. Because of his doctrine that the human mind is identical with the human body, Spinoza’s philosophy offers no prospect of an afterlife in which an individual human mind continues to experience and remember its earlier experiences without the existence of its body; the death of the finite body must equally be the death of the finite mind. Nevertheless, he argues that an important part of the human mind is eternal (Proposition 39 of Part  5). This part is the intellect (Corollary to Proposition 40 of Part  5). For the intellect, as distinguished from the imagination, consists of adequate ideas of pervasive and eternal features of the universe that are not dependent on the particular perspective of a particular human being. These very ideas (and not merely ideas similar in content) are therefore in God, not only insofar as he constitutes a particular human body, but also eternally and pervasively. They did not come into existence with a particular human being, and they will not go out of existence with that human being. Rather, some of the very ideas that are eternal in God’s infinite intellect come also to be included, with greater or less conscious power of thinking, in the mind of a particular human being during that human being’s lifetime. The greater the extent to which the intellect dominates the imagination of a particular human being, the more he or she understands the universe from an eternal, rather than a local, perspective, and the greater the part of his or her mind that remains—​although not, of course, as his or her mind—​after death. Eternal life is not, for Spinoza, something that a human being achieves after death; rather, it is an eternal way of being in which the intellect allows a human being to participate while he or she is alive. Yet, because it is at once the maximization of one’s present being and a participation in the eternal, it constitutes the highest kind of perseverance in being of which human beings are capable. To improve one’s intellect is to participate in God’s eternal intellect, on Spinoza’s view, but it is also something more: it is to participate in God’s blessedness itself. Whenever a human being acquires adequate understanding, this event is an increase in his or her power for action (because it facilitates further

26 Overview

understanding) and so constitutes active joy while at the same time giving power over the passions. To the extent that one understands that God is the ultimate cause of this joy, it will be (by the definition of love in the Scholium to Proposition 13 of Part 3) a love of God. This intellectual love of God, like everything else that exists, must itself be in God; and hence there is, in some sense, an “emotional” as well as an intellectual character to God’s thought. Speaking loosely, Spinoza states that this intellectual love of God is a share of the very love with which God (through a mode constituting a human being) loves Itself (Proposition 36 of Part 5) and with which God loves (as modes of Itself) human beings (Corollary to Proposition 36). But the emotion that human beings experience as love cannot literally be joy or love on the part of God as God, since God is eternally and absolutely perfect; an increase in power for action on the part of a finite mode of God is not an increase in God’s own power for action. God’s eternal perfection, of which human joy is a temporally occurring manifestation, is what Spinoza calls “blessedness.” To the extent that a human being participates in the eternal perspective, not merely increasing capacity for action but enjoying its already eternal perfection, he or she participates in divine blessedness. This blessedness is not, as popular religion would have it, an externally bestowed reward for obedience and restraint of our corrupt natures; as Spinoza says in the final proposition of the Ethics, “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor do we enjoy it because we restrain our lusts; on the contrary, because we enjoy it, we are able to restrain them” (Proposition 42 of Part 5). Instead, the achievement of Spinozistic blessedness consists in adequate philosophical and scientific knowledge of God-​or-​Nature—​including the very kind of knowledge that makes it possible to understand what blessedness is and how it is possible. It is a fitting kind of salvation for a philosopher who sought to break down the dichotomy between the natural and the divine.

Bibliography P r im a ry   T e x t s Spinoza, Benedict de. 1925. Spinoza Opera. Edited by Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1928. The Correspondence of Spinoza. Edited and translated by A. Wolf. London: Allen & Unwin, 1928. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. 1. Edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1989. Tractatus Theologico-​Politicus. Edited and translated by Samuel Shirley. Leiden: Brill. Spinoza, Benedict de. 2000. The Ethics. Edited and translated by G. H. R. Parkinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press.



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S e c onda ry   T e x t s Allison, Henry. 1987. Benedict de Spinoza:  An Introduction. Revised edition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett. Bennett, Jonathan, 1991. “Spinoza’s Monism,” in Yovel 1991. Bennett, Jonathan. 2001. Learning from Six Philosophers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Curley, Edwin. 1969. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Curley, Edwin. 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Curley, Edwin. 1991. “On Bennett’s Interpretation of Spinoza’s Monism,” in Yovel 1991. Curley, Edwin and Pierre-​ François Moreau, editors. 1990. Spinoza:  Issues and Directions. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 14. Leiden: Brill. Delahunty, R. J. Spinoza. 1985. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem in Spinoza. New York: Oxford University Press. Donagan, Alan. 1988. Spinoza. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Garrett, Don, editor. 1996. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. New York: Cambridge University Press. Garrett, Don. 1991. “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism” in Yovel 1991. Garrett, Don. 2001. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument” in Koistinen and Biro 2001. Gueroult, Martial. Spinoza. 1968–​74. 2 Volumes. Vol. 1:  Dieu (Ethique, 1); Vol. 2: L’âme (Ethique 2). Paris: Aubier. Grene, Marjorie. 1973. Spinoza:  A Collection of Critical Essays. New  York:  Anchor/​ Doubleday. Hampshire, Stuart. 1951. Spinoza. New York: Penguin. Spinoza:  Metaphysical Themes. 2001. Edited by Olli Koistinen and John Biro. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mason, Richard. 1997. The God of Spinoza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matheron, Alexandre. 1969. Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza. Paris:  Les Editions de Minuit. Parkinson, G, H. R. 1954. Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. 1934. The Philosophy of Spinoza. 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. 1989. Spinoza and Other Heretics. 2 Volumes. Vol. 1:  The Marrano of Reason; Vol. 2:  The Adventures of Immanence. Princeton:  Princeton University Press. Yovel, Yirmiyahu, editor. 1991. God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics. Leiden: Brill.

SECTION I

Necessity and God’s Nature

2

Spinoza’s “Ontological” Argument

Proposition XI of Part I of Spinoza’s Ethics is the claim that “God or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.” Spinoza employs four proofs to establish this important proposition, but it is far from obvious how they are to be construed. Almost the only point on which commentators agree is that the proofs include an ontological argument—​and even in this, I believe, they are somewhat mistaken. I hope to show that Spinoza is best understood as offering four interrelated arguments which resemble ontological arguments in being essentially a priori and relying on a definition of “God,” but which resemble cosmological arguments in depending on a version of the principle of sufficient reason. After some preliminaries, I will discuss the four proofs in order, showing how they rely on the principle of sufficient reason and how they relate to each other. The last two proofs, it will be seen, serve partly to forestall an objection which can be raised about the generalizability of the first two. Finally, I will discuss the implications of Spinoza’s proofs and their relation to traditional ontological and cosmological arguments.

I  Standard interpretations. First, let us briefly consider two prominent interpretations of the proofs of Proposition XI. Harry Wolfson proposes that the proofs should be reduced to trivial “analytical syllogisms.” He reconstructs the first proof, for example, as follows: If we have a clear and distinct idea of God as a being whose essence involves existence, then God is immediately perceived by us to exist. But we have a clear and distinct idea of God as a being whose essence involves existence. Therefore, God is immediately perceived by us to exist.1

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The second and fourth proofs are rendered similarly with “God as a being whose essence involves existence” being replaced by “God as a being whose existence is necessary by His own nature” and “God as a being of the highest power,” respectively; the third proof Wolfson regards as straightforwardly cosmological. According to Wolfson, the first, second, and fourth proofs simply report that we have an immediate rational perception or intuition of God’s existence, and then claim that such an intuition is veridical. A variant of Wolfson’s view is developed by William Earle, who maintains that Spinoza’s entire discussion of Proposition XI “may not be an argument at all,” but that it does express an “intellectual intuition” (in the Kantian sense) of God’s essence and necessary existence.2 On the Wolfson-​Earle view, Spinoza is essentially reporting, rather than arguing, that we have or can have an experience of God’s nature in which we rationally perceive His existence as necessitated by His essence. Nevertheless, both Wolfson and Earle claim that we should regard Spinoza as giving an “ontological argument,” and both are willing to make this claim for the same reason. Wolfson argues, and Earle implies, that ontological arguments, properly understood, never do more than report, analyze, and elucidate such a rational perception. This interpretation has something to recommend it. There is good evidence in Spinoza’s writings that he regards such an experience as the best way to come to know of God’s existence. In the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, for example, he maintains that the best method of epistemology would be to begin, before all else, with the clear and distinct idea of God, an idea which makes it clear that God exists. Yet in the Ethics, Spinoza does not simply invite us to reflect upon this idea until God’s existence becomes certain. As Earle admits, Spinoza certainly seems to provide arguments for Proposition XI. And these apparent arguments have the following property:  not a single premise or conclusion of Wolfson’s “analytical syllogisms” about our experience occurs anywhere among them. An interpretation which could account more plausibly for Spinoza’s argumentation is therefore to be preferred. H. H. Joachim does claim to find a full-​blooded argument in Proposition XI, and seeks to explain the difficulty philosophers have had in agreeing about it as due to the fact that it contains a missing premise. He writes: Except in the third proof, Spinoza has not expressly supplied the minor premise for this reasoning and hence he has been misunderstood. The cogency of the argument depends upon the unexpressed postulate that “something—​at any rate some contingent modal being, some being which therefore implies self-​determined or substantial being—​does exist.” But this is a postulate which assuredly does not require explicit statement. For



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deny that anything in any sense is, and in your denial you assert at least your own existence.3 Joachim claims that all four proofs are variations on a single theme: “once grant that anything is actual and you must admit that God necessarily is actual.” He further claims that Spinoza’s argument, alone among formulations of the ontological argument, escapes Kant’s criticism and is in fact valid. I agree that, when his tacit premises are included, Spinoza’s arguments are valid; but I disagree as to what their premises are. Spinoza does employ a largely unexpressed “postulate.” It is easy to see, however, that this postulate cannot be the claim that something or other exists. Spinoza calls the third proof of Proposition XI a posteriori because it relies on the proposition that “we ourselves exist.” According to Joachim, it is the certainty of this proposition which underlies the certainty of the more general claim that something or other exists: we can know that something or other exists before we know that God exists chiefly because each of us knows himself to exist. But Spinoza clearly regards the other three proofs as a priori, as Joachim himself remarks.4 If Spinoza had meant them to rely upon a tacit premise that we exist, or upon the more general premise that some contingent being exists, then presumably he would have regarded them as a posteriori as well. One does not make a posteriori argument into an a priori one by making all of the empirically-​supported premises tacit. (As we shall see later, Spinoza is entitled to take the proposition that something or other exists as a priori—​but this follows only with the tacit premise which I attribute to him, and does not follow from any claim which Joachim ascribes to him.) It is in fact very odd that Joachim persists in calling the arguments “ontological” while attributing to them a missing premise to the effect that something or other exists—​the sort of premise which constitutes the essential feature of cosmological arguments. It is not at all surprising, on the other hand, that an essentially cosmological argument should be found to escape Kant’s criticism of ontological arguments. For the reasons cited, and others as well, neither the Joachim interpretation nor the Wolfson-​Earle interpretation is satisfactory as an account of Spinoza’s intentions. Nevertheless, each of them is partly right. Although Spinoza’s arguments do not employ the premise Joachim proposes, they do rely on a largely tacit premise, and they do bear important resemblances to cosmological arguments. Like many cosmological arguments, they rely on a principle of sufficient reason. And although the arguments for Proposition XI are neither trivial nor based on the report of a personal experience, Wolfson and Earle are clearly correct when they say that Spinoza believes it is possible to know of God’s existence by means of a “rational perception” of His essence. As we shall see, however,

34 Necessity and God’s Nature

Spinoza’s strategy is to give a set of original—​and nonexperiential—​arguments to show that such an experience is possible.

II  Definitions. Before turning to the proofs themselves, a few words must be said about the terms “cause,” “effect,” “cause of itself,” and “essence involving existence,” as they occur in the Axioms and Definitions. Axiom III of Part I  of the Ethics reads: From a given determinate cause an effect necessarily follows; and, on the other hand, if no determinate cause be given, it is impossible that an effect can follow. “X causes Y,” in Spinoza’s usage, is best understood as meaning “X provides (at least part of ) the reason for the being or nature of Y.” Spinoza mentions several kinds of causation (immanent, transient, efficient, proximate, and remote), several kinds of things which can be causes (individual things, infinite and eternal modes, and substance itself ), and several kinds of things which can be effects (existences, essences, and actions); but this is the central meaning these uses share. If we read Spinoza’s term “effect” liberally, as “state of affairs,” Axiom III then claims that the full reason or explanation of a state of affairs must constitute a sufficient condition for it, and that no state of affairs can lack such a reason; in other words, that a sufficient reason can be given why everything should be as it is. This claim can fairly be called a principle of sufficient reason. On the other hand, if we read “effect” more strictly, as “state of affairs having a cause,” then Axiom III makes a more trivial claim, one which must be supplemented by the claim that every state of affairs is an effect in order to provide us with a principle of sufficient reason. There are several reasons for adopting the former, more liberal, interpretation of “effect.” Doing so permits us to find a basis in the Axioms for claims that Spinoza makes later; furthermore, adopting the stricter interpretation renders Axiom III analytic in a way that would make it more suited to being a Definition than to being an Axiom. But it is difficult to be certain how Axiom III is intended, since, curiously enough, it is cited by number only once—​at Proposition XXVII—​ and then in a way consistent with either interpretation. I will, nevertheless, refer to the principle that every state of affairs has a sufficient reason or explanation as “Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason.” For it is clear that Spinoza does believe every state of affairs to have a cause, even if he does not intend to make this claim in the Axioms.5 It is equally clear that he cites a corollary of this principle—​ the corollary that there is a sufficient reason or cause for each of those states of



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affairs which consists of the existence or nonexistence of a particular thing—​in Proposition XI, and that he employs the corollary in his effort to prove the existence of God. According to Definition I of Part I, the expression “cause of itself” is to denote those things whose essences “involve existence” or which “cannot be conceived not to exist.” The two parts of this definition provide logical and psychological ways, respectively, of describing logically necessary existence. It is not obvious that having an “essence involving existence” should entail having logically necessary existence, but that is the case for Spinoza. He insists that an adequate definition should capture the essence of the thing defined; it follows that a being whose essence involves existence will be one whose existence follows from its definition. Indeed, Spinoza expressly states, in Section 97 of the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, that the definition of an uncreated (that is, self-​caused) being must leave “no room for doubt as to whether the thing exists or not.” Any being whose existence follows in such a way from definitions alone may fairly be said to exist as a matter of logical necessity. Axiom VII of Part I later assures us that everything meeting the logical condition—​having an essence involving existence—​will also meet the psychological condition:  its nonexistence will be inconceivable. Thus, self-​causation is identified in Definition I with logically necessary existence.6 It is also logically necessary existence that Spinoza intends when he speaks simply of “necessary existence”; this is shown by his definitions of “necessary existence” as existence whose denial implies a contradiction, in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (Section 53) and the Ethics (Book I Proposition XXXIII). The first proof. We can now outline the first proof of Proposition XI. It argues that if God’s existence were not necessary, then His nonexistence would be inconceivable, in which case, by Axiom VII, His essence would not involve existence. But, Spinoza reminds us, Proposition VII states that the essence of a substance does “involve existence, or, in other words, it pertains to its nature to exist.” And the definition of “God” (given in Definition VI) is the definition of a substance. Hence, God’s nonexistence cannot be conceivable, and His existence must be necessary. We may summarize the argument as follows (note that the first premise does not follow from any of Spinoza’s earlier claims unless, as I argued, he identifies self-​ causation with necessary existence): (1)

If a thing does not exist necessarily, then its nonexistence is conceivable. [From Definition I and the identification of self-​causation with necessary existence]

(2)

If the nonexistence of a thing is conceivable, then its essence does not involve existence. [Axiom VII]

36 Necessity and God’s Nature

(3)

God is defined as a substance. [From Definition VI]

(4)

The essence of a substance involves existence. [Proposition VII]

(5)

God exists necessarily.

From premises (1)–​(4), Spinoza constructs a reductio ad absurdum for the conclusion. The form of the argument is dictated by two considerations: Spinoza’s expressed preference for reductio arguments, and his desire to utilize both of the alternative definitions of “cause of itself” given in Definition I.  If it were not for these considerations, he could just as well infer directly from premises (3) and (4) that God’s essence involves existence; and from this, Definition I, and the identification of self-​causation with necessary existence, he could infer that God’s existence is necessary. In this way, he could preserve the fundamental nature of the proof without the need to mention inconceivability or Axiom VII. Proposition VII. Clearly, the heart of the first proof is Proposition VII, the proposition that “it pertains to the nature of substance to exist.” Proposition VII is demonstrated by arguing that since a substance cannot be produced by another thing (by the Corollary of Proposition VI), a substance must be the cause of itself, and so (by Definition I) have an essence involving existence. To argue in this manner is undeniably to assume that no being exists without a cause, that is, without a reason or explanation. Even if this consequence of Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason is granted, however, it follows only that every actually existing substance is self-​caused, and so has an essence involving existence. For a possible substance might fail to have some other thing for its cause, and fail to be the cause of itself, and yet not be existing-​without-​a-​ cause—​by not existing at all. But the conclusion that the essence of every existing substance involves existence would be too weak for Spinoza’s purposes; if Proposition VII, and hence premise (4), meant only this, the first proof of Proposition XI could show only that if God exists at all, then He exists necessarily. If the first proof is to be valid, Proposition VII must mean that all possible substances have essences involving existence. Yet that conclusion does not follow from the argument actually given for Proposition VII, even when it is taken together with the additional premise that no being can exist without a reason or cause. Perhaps it is because he senses this apparent lacuna that Joachim is led to insist that Spinoza relies on an existential premise. But no such premise is needed to supplement Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason, as the second proof of Proposition XI makes clear. As he there reminds us, the nonexistence of a thing,



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the noninstantiation of an essence, is also an effect for Spinoza, and as such requires a reason or cause. His version of the principle of sufficient reason is strong enough to entail that everything which exists has a cause for its existence and that everything which fails to exist has a cause for its nonexistence. Let us add this corollary of Spinoza’s strong principle of sufficient reason to his two explicit premises for Proposition VII: (6)

Nothing can cause the existence of a substance other than the substance itself. [Corollary of Proposition VI]

(7)

If a thing is the cause of itself, then its essence involves existence. [From Definition I]

(8)

For everything (existing or not existing) there must be a cause either of its existence (if it exists) or of its non-​existence (if it does not). [From Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason; this corollary is stated in Proposition XI, second proof ]

Even from these premises it still does not quite follow that every possible substance has an essence involving existence, for it has not been ruled out that something should cause the nonexistence of a possible substance. No doubt Spinoza thinks it obvious that nothing could prevent the existence of a possible substance, and so endeavors only to show that every existing substance must be self-​caused. We may take this claim as a second tacit premise: (9)

Nothing can cause the nonexistence of a possible substance.

Let us agree to give Proposition VII, and hence premise (4), the strong reading Spinoza needs to validate his first proof. From premises (6)–​(9) this strong reading of Proposition VII follows: (10)

The essence of every possible substance involves existence.

We need not leave (9) unjustified, however. In his second proof of Proposition XI, Spinoza eliminates the alternative that something could cause the nonexistence of God. He does so in the following way. First, he argues that God’s nonexistence could not be caused by a substance with the same set of attributes that God has, apparently on the grounds that if two possible substances share the same set of attributes they are indistinguishable, and hence not really distinct. Such grounds would resemble the grounds he gives for Proposition V.  Next, he cites Proposition II, the proposition that “two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another.” As mentioned earlier, he

38 Necessity and God’s Nature

believes that any causal relation is a relation providing a reason or explanation; and he holds (Axiom V) that one thing cannot explain, or allow us to understand, another thing unless the two things have something in common. (We may speculate that this is in order to permit an aspect of one to play some role in the deduction of an aspect of the other.) With these grounds, he explicitly interprets Proposition II as entailing that no substance could either cause or prevent the existence of another possible substance—​such as God—​which had a different set of attributes. Finally, he maintains (in keeping with the spirit of Definition I) that God could not cause His own nonexistence because a thing could cause its own nonexistence only by being logically impossible. Thus, if we wish to borrow and generalize this argument from the second proof, we may justify premise (9) as follows: (9a)

The nonexistence of a possible substance cannot be caused by a substance with the same set of attributes. [Grounds similar to those for Proposition V]

(9b)

The nonexistence of a possible substance cannot be caused by a substance with a different set of attributes. [From Proposition II and Axiom V]

(9c)

Only an impossible being can cause its own nonexistence. [Parallel of Definition I]

Premises (9a)–​(9c) do not rule out all of the alternatives, however. We are still left with a need for the tacit premise: (9d)

The nonexistence of a possible substance cannot be caused by a nonsubstance.

It apparently does not even occur to Spinoza that a nonsubstance might prevent the existence of a substance; if pressed, however, he might derive (9d) from Proposition I, the proposition that “substance is by nature prior to its modifications.” And one more difficulty remains. When we combine (9a)–​(9d), we become aware of an ambiguity in (9), the premise that nothing can cause the nonexistence of a possible substance. If we interpret “nothing” as meaning “no state of affairs,” then (9) is adequate for the proof of Proposition VII but does not follow from (9a)–​(9d) alone. If we interpret it as meaning “no actual being,” on the other hand, (9) follows from (9a)–​(9d) but is not sufficient along with (6)–​(8) to obtain (10). That is, it is not sufficient unless we interpret “a cause” in (8) as meaning “an actual being which is a cause”; but then (8) will not follow from even a liberal



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interpretation of Axiom III. Therefore, unless Spinoza simply commits a fallacy in his argument to show that there could be no cause for God’s nonexistence, he must hold at least some principle like the following: (9e)

No state of affairs which does not involve an actual being can cause the nonexistence of a possible substance.

The ascription of (9e) to Spinoza is made plausible by his practice of referring only to existing beings as causes of the existence or nonexistence of other things (with the exception of impossible beings, which cause their own nonexistence). The same practice makes plausible the ascription to him of a version of (9e) extending to the nonexistence of all nonexisting possible beings. He clearly accepts the extension of (9e) to the existence of all actual beings (see note 5). Indeed, an extended version of (9e) applying to the existence of all actual beings and to the nonexistence of all nonactual beings would follow from (8) if we were to read (8)’s “a cause” as meaning “an actual being which is a cause.” It is quite reasonable to speculate that Spinoza at least half intends this reading of (8); however, I prefer to construe (8) as modestly as possible and to isolate (9e) as a separate premise. This moderate reading of (8) requires a strong reading of (9), a reading which follows from (9a)–​(9e). The second proof. The second proof of Proposition XI, we now see, is simply a more explicit formulation of the argument which is needed to justify Proposition VII, but made for the special case of God rather than the general case of substance(s). It begins with an explicit statement of the principle implicitly involved in the proof of Proposition VII, the principle that there must be a reason or cause for the existence or nonexistence of every possible thing. As noted, if Axiom III is given a liberal interpretation, this principle follows from it; otherwise, the principle does not follow from Spinoza’s earlier claims. Spinoza then argues that if there is a cause for God’s existence, it is either in Himself, in which case He is self-​caused and exists necessarily, or in some other being. But, as in the argument for Proposition VII, this latter alternative is ruled out. (It is done here in a trivially different way. Instead of employing the Corollary of Proposition VI, he observes that God is defined as a substance and cites Proposition VII itself.) It follows that God’s existence is logically necessary unless there is no reason at all for His existence. But by the principle cited at the beginning of the proof, if there is no reason for His existence, then there must be a reason for His nonexistence. As we have already seen, however, Spinoza argues that such a reason could not be found in another substance, and he assumes that it could not be found in a nonsubstance or in any state of affairs not involving the existence of some actual being. Such a reason would therefore have to be found in God’s own nature; in other words, God’s existence would have to be self-​contradictory, or logically impossible. This,

40 Necessity and God’s Nature

says Spinoza, would be “absurd.” Hence, he concludes, God necessarily exists. We may summarize the second proof: (11)

For everything (existing or not existing) there must be a cause either of its existence (if it exists) or of its nonexistence (if it does not). [From Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason]

(12)

God is defined as a substance. [From Definition VI]

(13)

Nothing can cause the existence of a substance other than the substance itself. [From Proposition VII]

(14a)–​(14e)

[Premises (9a)–​(9e), with “God” replacing “a possible substance.”]

(15)

To be self-​caused is to exist necessarily. [Identification made in Definition I]

(16)

God necessarily exists.

A difficulty with these proofs. Unfortunately for Spinoza, however, it seems that the form of argument given in the first two proofs is capable of proving too much. He defines “God” as “the substance consisting of infinite [that is, all possible, or unlimited] attributes.” But there are other possible definitions of substances which might be constructed in a similar way: for example, “the substance whose only attribute is extension,” and “the substance whose only attribute is Thought.” And if there are more than these two attributes in the universe, then there will be other such substances-​of-​one-​attribute definable, as well as a number of substances-​of-​ two-​attributes. If there are more than three attributes, there will also be a number of substances-​of-​three-​attributes definable, and so on. It should be emphasized that the proof of Proposition VII is a perfectly general proof of the necessary existence of substance. The first two proofs of Proposition XI seem on the face of them to serve just as well for any of these possible substances as they do for God. For example, it could be argued that, since the substance whose only attribute is Thought is by definition a substance, it cannot be conceived as not existing, since by Proposition VII it pertains to the nature of substance to exist. Spinoza is thus presented with the following problem. There are many possible definitions of substances (exactly how many is a function of the number of attributes there can be, but given that there are at least two attributes, there are at least three such definitions), each of which is apparently consistent. According to Proposition VII, any consistent definition of a substance must be instantiated. But the joint instantiation of all of the apparently consistent definitions would contradict Proposition V, which declares that no two substances can share the same



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attribute. If, for example, every definition of a substance-​of-​one-​attribute were instantiated, substances of more than one attribute could exist only by sharing attributes with substances-​of-​one-​attribute. The challenge for Spinoza is to show that some of the apparently consistent definitions are really inconsistent, and thus that they do not fall under the scope of Proposition VII. Wolfson believes that Spinoza has already concluded prior to Proposition VII that there is only one substance, but I can find little support for Wolfson’s view. In Proposition VIII Spinoza is still speaking of “every substance,” and he begins by mentioning “substance which has only one attribute,” arguing hypothetically that—​ just as I said—​any such substance would, by Proposition VII, exist necessarily. The conclusion of his hypothetical argument is only that any substance must be infinite within the realm of its own attributes. The possibility of the existence of more than one substance is not ruled out until Proposition XIV—​and then on the grounds that the existence of any other substances would be incompatible (by Proposition V) with the existence of God, whose existence was proven in Proposition XI. But of course this argument for Proposition XIV does not solve Spinoza’s problem. Why not instead have given a proof parallel to the first or second proof of Proposition XI—​as he tells us we could—​to establish the existence of, say, each substance-​of-​one-​attribute? Then at Proposition XIV we could have ruled out the existence of God, the substance of all attributes, by showing that His existence would (by Proposition V) be incompatible with the existence of all the other substances already “proven” to exist. This difficulty cannot be ignored. For it may be observed that the validity of the first proof and the justification of premises (14a)–​(14e) of the second proof depend on Spinoza’s assumption that the definition of “God” is consistent, or that God is a possible substance. And the possibility of an a priori proof of God’s nonexistence, like the one just outlined, calls that assumption into question. One way to show that—​contrary to first appearances—​no substance other than God is even possible, would be to show that the existence of any other substance entails a contradiction. Since Spinoza regards it as a proven necessity that no two substances can share an attribute, he can argue that the existence of any substance other than God entails God’s nonexistence. So if he could demonstrate at the same time that the existence of any substance entails the existence of God, he could then credibly claim to have derived a contradiction from the assumption that a substance other than God exists. In effect, the existence of any such substance would entail the existence of another being, God, incompatible with its own existence. Finally, if it could be safely assumed that the existence of God does not entail the existence of any other substance, then it could be argued that the definition of God had been shown to be the only consistent definition of a substance. I believe that Spinoza recognizes the problem I have described, and that the third and fourth proofs embody the strategy I have suggested. Let us now consider those proofs.

42 Necessity and God’s Nature

III  The third proof. In the third proof of Proposition XI, Spinoza first seeks to establish that if any being exists necessarily, God exists necessarily. It is self-​evident, he claims, that ability to exist is power and that inability to exist is a lack of power. This claim does not seem self-​evident, but we may regard it as a stipulative definition of “power.” From the definition, Spinoza is able to derive the premise: (17)

If the absolutely infinite being does not exist, but some necessary being does exist, then the existing necessary being is more powerful than the absolutely infinite being. [From the stipulative definition of “power”]

According to Spinoza, however, it is also self-​evident that the consequent of premise (17) is impossible: (18)

No being can be more powerful than the absolutely infinite being. [Self-​evident]

He need not rely on a claim of self-​evidence; as we shall see in the fourth proof, he does have grounds for premise (18). The absolutely infinite being, of course, is God. (19)

God is defined as the absolutely infinite substance. [From Definition VI]

Unfortunately, premises (17)–​(19) entail at best that God exists, not that God necessarily exists. Spinoza seems to assume that “power” and “ability to exist” apply only to necessary beings, and we could supplement his argument by adding a premise to that effect. More simply, however, we can appeal to Proposition VII: (20)

Every possible substance exists necessarily. [From Proposition VII (construed as (10)) and Definition I]

After showing that the absolutely infinite being, God, exists necessarily if any being exists necessarily, Spinoza rather hastily infers that either God exists necessarily or else nothing exists at all. This conclusion clearly depends on the proposition that if anything at all exists, a necessary being exists. He seems to think this proposition is obvious, but he does provide enough clues in the proof itself to enable us to reconstruct his argument for it:



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(21)

There is nothing other than substances and modes. [From Axiom I and Definitions III and V]

(22)

Any substances there may be are self-​caused, i.e., exist necessarily. [From Proposition VII (construed as (10)) and Definition I]

(23)

Any modes which may exist must be in, or explained by, some substance. [From Definition V]

It may be observed that premises (21)–​(23) also jointly entail a corollary of the principle of sufficient reason—​that everything which actually exists has a cause of its existence. They do not, however, entail the stronger claim made in the second proof that, in addition, everything which fails to exist has a cause of its existence. Later I will maintain that Spinoza could use the stronger claim of the second proof as part of an a priori argument for the conclusion that something or other does exist. For the sake of “ease,” however, he rules out the alternative that nothing exists at all with a contingent premise: (24)

We ourselves exist.

He infers from premises (17)–​(20) that God exists necessarily if any being exists necessarily, and from premises (21)–​(23) that some being exists necessarily if anything exists at all. Hence from these premises plus premise (24), he may conclude: (25)

God exists necessarily.

The fourth proof. In the fourth proof, Spinoza begins by taking it for granted that some being can “derive its existence from itself” (that is, be self-​caused and exist necessarily, as he makes clear in the discussion of the proof, where he stipulates that only substances derive their existence from themselves). He then tells us that he equates greater reality with greater power to exist, and he characterizes God as the most real being. Although it is not explicitly cited, it is Proposition IX which licenses this characterization of God as the most real being. Proposition IX identifies greater reality with having a greater number of attributes; it follows that God is most real because He has all possible attributes. Thus when reality is equated with power, Proposition IX supports the claim that God has the greatest power to exist—​a claim which is also the basis for premise (18) of the third proof. Since God has the greatest power to exist, Spinoza implies, He would overrule any conflicting substances, which, having fewer attributes, could only have less power to exist. Thus, if any being can derive its existence from itself, God does so;

44 Necessity and God’s Nature

and it has been assumed that some being can; hence God is self-​caused and exists necessarily. We may summarize the final proof: (26)

At least one being exists necessarily (derives its existence from itself). [Assumption]

(27)

Greater power to exist is greater reality. [Stipulation]

(28)

To have greater reality is to have a greater number of attributes. [Proposition IX]

(29)

If any being exists necessarily, the being with the greatest power to exist exists necessarily. [Self-​evident]

(30)

God is the substance of all possible attributes. [Definition VI]

(31)

God necessarily exists.

Some puzzles solved. It is difficult for the standard interpretations to account for the nature of the last two proofs. Joachim, for example, expresses understandable puzzlement that these two proofs should “rest upon the non-​Spinozistic assumption that there are or may be more substances than one,” a supposition which “if maintained, would destroy the validity of the arguments.”7 Wolfson, for his part, finds it possible to construe the third argument as ontological, and thus is led to claim that the two proofs are of radically different kinds, even though Spinoza describes them as based on “the same grounds.”8 The fourth proof is especially troublesome for Joachim. He promises, in his discussion of Proposition XI, to show that each of the four proofs is of the form, “if anything exists, then God necessarily exists.” He is immediately forced to go back on this promise in summarizing the fourth proof (which he considers first). He correctly sums up that proof as asserting: “admit that anything exists necessarily and you admit that God necessarily exists.”9 Yet if Spinoza is indeed offering an ontological argument in the fourth proof, as Joachim claims, it is very puzzling that Spinoza should assume that some beings can exist necessarily in order to prove that God does so. For it is the claim that some beings can exist necessarily which is likely to be the point of contention for anyone who doubts the ontological argument. But we are now in a position to solve these puzzles. First, we can see why Spinoza employs the “non-​Spinozistic assumption” that there is or may be more than one substance. He does so in order to justify the first two proofs, by showing that the existence of any substance entails the existence of God. The first two proofs have the advantage of being direct and to the point, but they have the disadvantage of failing to make clear why similar proofs could not be offered for other substances as well. The third and fourth proofs are intended as proofs in their



Spinoza’s “Ontological” Argument

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own right, even though they are more roundabout. But they also serve another purpose. Because they begin by establishing or assuming that some necessary being or other exists, their line of argument—​if correct—​illustrates that the existence of any lesser substance entails the existence of a substance, God, which is incompatible with the existence of the lesser substance. They thus presumably show the definitions of lesser substances to be defective. It is partly their similarity in this respect which allows Spinoza to regard the two proofs as versions of the same argument. Secondly, we can see that Spinoza is not offering ordinary ontological arguments for Proposition XI, but rather arguments based on the principle of sufficient reason; and we can see that his main interest in the fourth proof is to defend his first two proofs. So he simply assumes that at least one being can be self-​caused, since he concludes in Proposition VII that any substance is self-​caused. Still, he does not argue in the fourth proof that there is at least one substance, and it might be supposed that this assumption would render the fourth proof as a posteriori as the third. Such is not the case for Spinoza. Proposition VII, which is intended to be a priori, entails that any consistent definition of a substance is instantiated; and of course any instantiated definition of a substance will be consistent. Hence, a priori, some substance or other exists if and only if some definition of a substance is consistent. But the proposition that some definition of a substance is consistent is itself presumably a priori if it is true at all. Thus the fourth proof is, from Spinoza’s point of view, a priori if sound. This result clears the fourth proof of the charge of being unavoidably a posteriori. However, it ensures the truth of the assumption that some substance exists only if it can be shown that some definition of a substance is consistent, and Spinoza never makes a direct effort to show this. Of course, one method of learning the truth of the claim that a substance exists would be to have the “rational perception” which he believes we can have of God’s existence as necessitated by His essence. Perhaps he has this method in mind when he describes the fourth proof as the most difficult one. The third proof contains an argument to show that some substance or other exists, but the argument is a posteriori. However, the claim that there is at least one necessary being or substance might also be defended by argument in a way consistent with the a priori nature of the fourth proof. In the third proof, Spinoza argues a priori from premises (21)–​(23) that if anything exists at all, then there must be at least one necessary being. And he could also argue a priori that something or other does exist. In discussing premise (9e), we saw fairly good grounds for ascribing to Spinoza the view that only a state of affairs which involves an actual being can cause the existence of a possible being or cause the nonexistence of a possible being.10 Let us call this view the “principle of actual causes.” Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason, or its corollary (8), when taken together with the principle of actual causes, entails that if any beings are possible, then

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some being is actual. Some essences, according to Spinoza, are not in themselves contradictory; so it would follow that if none of them were instantiated, there would have to be at least one being whose existence caused their noninstantiation. If, as it is reasonable to assume, Spinoza regards the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of actual causes, and the consistency of some essences as a priori truths, then he can take the existence of something or other as a priori as well. In presenting the fourth proof Spinoza does not try to justify premise (26), the assumption that some necessary being exists, because his main interest is elsewhere. But we have seen that he could have employed two separate lines of argument to justify premise (26) in an a priori way. One line of argument employs Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason, or its corollary (8); the principle of actual causes; and premises (21)–​(23). The other employs Proposition VII and the undefended claim that some definition of a substance is consistent. Since the proof of Proposition VII relies on (8), however, the two lines of argument resemble each other in their dependence on the same corollary of the principle of sufficient reason. An old difficulty again. Nevertheless, someone might raise the following objection:  “Like his first two proofs, Spinoza’s third and fourth proofs succeed in establishing God’s existence only on the assumption that God’s existence is at least possible, or that His definition is consistent. If God’s existence is not possible, then there is no ‘absurdity’ in supposing that other beings exist necessarily while He does not, as the third and fourth proofs claim there would be; for the other substances themselves would then be the ‘most powerful’ beings, since the notion of a greater one, God, would be self-​contradictory. But there is no reason why one should be entitled to the assumption that God’s existence is possible. Indeed, we have already seen how one might argue within Spinoza’s system for the claim that it is not possible. The definition of ‘God’ may not appear inconsistent. But that proves nothing, for the definitions of other substances do not appear to be inconsistent either; yet if Spinoza is correct, at least some definitions of substances must be. From the assumption that some one of the definitions is consistent, Propositions V [that substances cannot share attributes] and VII [that every possible substance has an essence involving existence] can always be used to rule out some others as inconsistent. Thus to assume that the definition of ‘God’ is consistent, rather than the definitions of other substances, is simply to beg the question.” This objection, however, misses the full force of Proposition IX, the proposition that a greater number of attributes can be identified with greater reality in a thing’s essence (and hence greater power to exist). This principle is not at all obvious, although it is treated as if it were; it is claimed to follow simply from the definition of “attribute.” When it is added to his other principles, however, Spinoza gains a means of arbitrating among the competing definitions of substances and so of ruling out the existence of substances other than God.



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Without Proposition IX, he can say that some definitions of substances are inconsistent, but he cannot provide a method for determining which are the inconsistent ones. But once granted Proposition IX, he can also make a plausible claim to locate squarely the source of the inconsistencies. For he can argue thus: “It is clear that definitions of substances other than God are defective. For it belongs to the nature of substances that nothing can prevent them from existing (by Proposition VII); but the existence of any substance other than God would conflict with God’s existence (by Proposition V), and since God has the greater power of existence (by Proposition IX), God would prevent that substance from existing after all, contrary to the nature of substances. Thus we see that only a being with the greatest power of existence could fulfill all the conditions for being a substance. To speak of a substance which does not have the very greatest power of existence (that is, greatest number of attributes) is a contradiction, and any attempt to define such a substance will be inconsistent.” Of course, this argument relies on the claim that God really does have the greatest power to exist, and so it may be accused of assuming that God’s existence is possible, and that His definition is consistent. To this accusation Spinoza might reply by interpreting Proposition IX in such a way as to make it entail that God’s existence is possible if any substance’s is. He could do so by taking the scope of Proposition IX to be all definitions of beings, so that Proposition IX would grant greater reality and power to the object of whatever definition ascribed the greater number of attributes. Unfortunately for this construal of the proposition, however, it seems possible to construct patently inconsistent definitions of substances which ascribe just as many attributes to their objects as the definition of God ascribes to God. It is better, therefore, to regard the scope of Proposition IX as restricted to possible beings. If this is done, the argument just outlined for God’s priority over other substances does assume that God’s existence is possible. But with this assumption, Spinoza can locate and explain the exact source of the inconsistency in the definitions of other substances; whereas on the assumption that some other definitions of substances are consistent, he is without similar resources to explain precisely why the definition of God should be inconsistent (although of course Propositions V and VII will then entail that it is). The inconsistency of a definition must have some source within the definition itself; and it is prima facie very puzzling that two otherwise identical definitions should differ in their consistency solely on the basis of the number of attributes they ascribe. As we have seen, Proposition IX makes it easy to explain why ascribing only some attributes to a substance should lead to inconsistency even though ascribing all attributes to a substance would not. But if ascribing all attributes to a substance were to generate an inconsistency, there would be no comparably easy explanation of why the same defect should not also infect the definitions of other

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substances. While by no means conclusive, these are good grounds for Spinoza to think that God’s definition is consistent if any definition of a substance is consistent. Thus, Proposition IX creates at least a presumption in favor of God over other substances.

IV  Summary. We can now summarize and evaluate our results. We have seen that Spinoza does provide four nontrivial, interrelated arguments for the necessary existence of God, and that each of them relies—​implicitly or explicitly—​on the principle of sufficient reason. In Proposition VII, Spinoza argues that since a substance cannot be caused to exist by anything else, it must be the cause of its own existence (or nonexistence), obviously by the principle of sufficient reason. The first proof of Proposition XI in effect points out that God is defined as a substance, and thus is an instance of Proposition VII. The second proof puts the argument for Proposition VII into a more explicit form and applies it to the specific substance God, arguing by the principle of sufficient reason that God’s existence must either be logically necessary or logically impossible. Spinoza declares the latter alternative “absurd.” In the third and fourth proofs, Spinoza is concerned to show why similar proofs are not available for substances other than God. In the third proof, using premises which together amount to a corollary of the principle of sufficient reason, he concludes that if anything exists, some necessary being exists. He also argues that if any necessary being exists, God exists necessarily, and he then points to our own existence to prove that something does exist. In the fourth proof, he makes an assumption—​that beings can be self-​caused and exist necessarily—​the justification of which depends on the principle of sufficient reason. Then he argues, by a tacit application of Proposition IX, that one of these self-​caused beings must be God. Ontological and cosmological arguments. We may define an “ontological argument” as one which seeks to infer God’s existence solely from the nature of the concept of “God” and the concepts which make it up. Spinoza’s four proofs all rely on a definition of “God,” and three of them are a priori. But, unless the principle of sufficient reason or its corollary (8) can somehow be derived from the concept of God, only the fourth proof is arguably “ontological” in this sense; and even the fourth proof will not be ontological if the principle of sufficient reason or its corollary is employed to justify its primary assumption. That the proofs are not ontological should not be surprising. I think Earle is right to say that for Spinoza there is relatively little point in trying to explain the experience



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of seeing directly how God’s existence follows solely from the concept of a substance of all attributes; one is simply supposed to have a clear and distinct idea of God and see that in His essence His existence is necessarily involved, in much the same way that one sees immediately what is involved in the essence of a triangle. Instead, Spinoza argues that the truth of the principle of sufficient reason, in conjunction with his other principles, requires that there be at least one being whose existence is necessary. He then argues that God must be the only such being. Joachim claims that Spinoza’s argument avoids Kant’s criticism of ontological arguments; and I  indicated that this is to be expected, since as Joachim presents it, Spinoza’s argument seems to be cosmological. And the argument as Joachim presents it, with an ineliminable a posteriori premise, is vulnerable to Kant’s criticism of cosmological arguments. I take Kant’s criticism of cosmological arguments to be that they are just a front for ontological arguments. They are a front for the following reason: Cosmological arguments proceed from their empirical premise by demanding that everything have a sufficient explanation. The God whose existence they attempt to prove, therefore, cannot be a being who is Himself uncaused or unexplained. Rather, He must be self-​caused and self-​ explaining—​that is, a necessary being. Logical necessity is the only kind of necessity that will truly suit the purpose, Kant argues; but logical necessity must have a logical or conceptual origin; hence, if the existence of God is logically necessary, some form of ontological argument (that is, argument which seeks to infer God’s existence solely from the nature of concepts) must be correct. Thus the premise that something or other exists is superfluous, inasmuch as an adequate cosmological argument can be sound only if some version of the ontological argument is sound as well.11 Of course, the argument Joachim presents is not Spinoza’s. Except in the third proof, for the sake of being “more easily understood,” Spinoza does not take as a premise either the proposition that we or that something else exists. But his proofs do resemble cosmological arguments in employing a version of the principle of sufficient reason to deduce the existence of a God whose existence is necessary. His virtue is to dispense with the empirical premise and argue almost entirely from the principle of sufficient reason. He is entitled to dispense with the empirical premise, we have seen, because his principle of sufficient reason and his other principles are strong enough to entail that if any definition of a substance is consistent, then something (namely, that substance) exists; and the consistency of definitions is presumably a priori. Spinoza assumes and does not argue that some definition of a substance is consistent. However, his principle of sufficient reason is also strong enough to

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entail, when taken together with the principle of actual causes and the consistency of some essences, that something or other does exist; and he argues in the third proof that some substance must exist if anything exists. Spinoza’s belief that some definition of a substance must be consistent is, I think, chiefly based on his belief that nothing could ultimately explain the existence or the nonexistence of particular modes unless at least one substance which is a logically necessary being exists. Conclusion. We may characterize Spinoza’s main line of argument for the existence of God as a cosmological argument which dispenses with the empirical premise; or, if we modify our definition, we can characterize it as an ontological argument which relies on the principle of sufficient reason. In either case, the argument exploits the relationship, described by Kant, between ordinary ontological and cosmological arguments. If we accept Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason and the principle of actual causes, we must accept the existence of a logically necessary being and the soundness of an ontological argument in some form. The same conclusion follows if we accept his principle of sufficient reason, the requirement that actual beings have actual causes, and the empirical existence of something or other. Spinoza and Kant would agree on these points, and so would I.  I  do not, however, believe in nearly such strong versions of Spinoza’s principles, partly because of these consequences. Thus, I think Spinoza’s main line of argument is valid but not sound. Kant concludes that since there is no logically necessary existence, we cannot know the principle of sufficient reason to be true. From Spinoza’s point of view, however, our knowledge of the principle is not to be challenged, and so he believes he has succeeded in showing that the essence of God must involve His existence—​a truth which could be directly discovered only by those who have the private experience of a clear and distinct idea of God. This is how Spinoza is able to give a nontrivial and non-​“analytical” proof of the content of a “rational perception.”12

Notes 1. Wolfson, Harry. The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, Massachusetts:  1934), pp. 174–​213. 2. Earle, William A. “The Ontological Argument in Spinoza” and “The Ontological Argument in Spinoza:  Twenty Years Later,” both in Spinoza:  A Collection of Critical Essays, Marjorie Greene, ed. (Garden City, New York: 1973). 3. Joachim, H. H. A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (New York: 1901), pp. 51–​52. 4. Ibid., p. 45. Spinoza calls the fourth proof a priori, and implies a contrast to the first two proofs when he calls the third proof a posteriori. 5. For proof that Spinoza requires a cause for every state of affairs consisting in the existence of a thing, see Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione Section 92, Ethics



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Book I  Proposition VIII Note 2, and the second proof of Proposition XI. For proof that he requires a cause for every state of affairs consisting in the nonexistence of a thing, see the second proof of Proposition XI. For proof that he requires causes for other states of affairs, see Propositions XXV and XXVIII. 6. I believe this identification is fundamentally correct. Only if the existence of a thing were logically necessary would the understanding of its nature forestall the possibility of questions as to why it should exist rather than something else or nothing at all, and explain that existence without making reference to any other existing things. 7. Joachim, op. cit., p. 46. 8. Wolfson, op. cit., pp. 200–​201. According to Wolfson, one argument is ontological while the other is cosmological, one argument provides “direct knowledge” while the other provides “indirect knowledge,” and they have none of their premises in common. He explains Spinoza’s remark as due to the fact that both proofs mention the concept of power and, Wolfson believes, are both therefore derived from the same argument in Descartes. 9. Joachim, op. cit., p. 45. 10. It might be thought that the nonexistence of substance would very easily cause the nonexistence of modes. For Spinoza holds that every actual contingent being (every actual being whose essence is consistent but does not necessarily involve existence) requires some necessary being to cause its existence. Let us call this claim of Spinoza’s “Principle A.” If nothing existed, there would be no necessary being to cause the existence of the contingent beings; and the lack of such a necessary being would itself be a sufficient reason for the nonexistence of the contingent beings. Thus the absence of substances would cause the noninstantiation of consistent essences. The answer is that Principle A itself is derived from the principle of sufficient reason, and the mere fact that some state of affairs S would violate the principle of sufficient reason is not itself a sufficient reason for the occurrence of the state of affairs not-​S. For imagine that it were a sufficient reason. And suppose that in some circumstances it is entirely undetermined whether state of affairs S should occur or not—​suppose that it is entirely a matter of chance. Then, of course, the occurrence of S would violate the principle of sufficient reason, as would the occurrence of not-​S. But then by the principle that a state of affairs’ violation of the principle of sufficient reason is itself a sufficient reason for the nonoccurrence of that state of affairs, it would follow that there was after all a sufficient reason for both S and not-​S, since the occurrence of not-​S and of S, respectively, would each violate the principle of sufficient reason. Hence, each of S and not-​S both would and would not violate the principle of sufficient reason. This, of course, is a flat contradiction. The moral is that the principle of sufficient reason, if it is to be consistent, must be understood as demanding that every state of affairs have a sufficient

52 Necessity and God’s Nature reason—​and that this reason be something other than the principle of sufficient reason itself. It cannot be denied that the existence of contingent beings in the absence of a necessary being violates Spinoza’s principles. But this in no way alters the fact that the nonexistence of contingent beings (all of whose essences are consistent) in the absence of a necessary being may constitute, for him, an equal violation of them. 11. It is consistent to maintain both that God’s existence is necessary and that no ontological argument is correct, if the necessity ascribed to God is not logical necessity but some other, perhaps metaphysical, kind. Indeed, this is the option Kant himself holds open for faith. It is also consistent to maintain that there is a logically necessary being but that we are not sufficiently rational to see fully the soundness of the ontological argument for ourselves. This seems to be Saint Thomas’ position. It is fully consistent to maintain that it is futile to try to make someone directly grasp the correctness of the ontological argument by rhetorical means if he does not already grasp it. I believe this is roughly Spinoza’s position. But if one maintains that God’s existence does not follow at all from His and other concepts, then it is inconsistent to maintain that He nevertheless exists as a matter of logical necessity. 12. I  wish particularly to thank Harry Frankfurt, the editors of The Philosophical Review, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

Postscript

Arguments for God’s Existence Revisited

“Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument” (henceforth “SOA”) offers on Spinoza’s behalf (i) an argument against the existence of substances other than God (that is, substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes), and (ii) an explanation of why no such substances exist. In his important 2002 article “Spinoza’s Substance Monism,”1 Michael Della Rocca offers on Spinoza’s behalf an alternate argument and an alternate explanation, both of which he claims better serve Spinoza’s purposes and better capture Spinoza’s intentions than those provided in SOA. In this postscript, I dispute these claims. First, however, I wish to add three terminological clarifications concerning SOA and to propose two substantive amendments to it.

I.  Terminological Clarifications The first terminological clarification concerns the kind of necessity that SOA ascribes to the existence of God in Spinoza: “logically necessary” existence. This characterization is correct, I think, but it should not be understood as incompatible with, or even as being contrasted with, “metaphysically necessary” existence. For just as the power of things and the power of ideas are the very same power manifested “formally” and “objectively” for Spinoza (Chapters 10 and 14), so too the metaphysical necessity of things and the logical necessity of ideas is the same necessity expressed in different ways. Like most of his contemporaries—​but unlike Leibniz—​Spinoza does not conceive of logic as primarily formal. Logic for Spinoza is chiefly a matter of powerful ideas causing other ideas in virtue of their content, rather than of propositions entailing other propositions in virtue of their form. In particular, while a “contradiction” as he understands the term is intellectually absurd and may be shown to imply both a thesis and its denial, it need not itself be explicitly of the form “p and not-​p.”

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The second clarification concerns the source of the necessity that SOA interprets 1p11 (“God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists”) as ascribing to God’s existence. For although Spinoza does not distinguish between logical and metaphysical necessity, nor between different degrees of necessity, he does distinguish two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive sources for the necessity of a thing’s existence or nonexistence: (i) the thing’s own essence, and (ii) a cause other than the thing itself 1p33s1). Having established to his satisfaction that everything that is the case is logically and metaphysically necessary (see Chapter  4, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism”), Spinoza cautiously permits use of the terms “necessary” and “contingent” to distinguish between things necessary through their own essence and things necessary through an external cause, respectively; at least, he does so in the context of discussing human thought about these things (4d3, but compare 1p29). A being of the first kind is self-​caused and has an essence that “involves” existence (1d1), whereas a being of the second kind is caused by something else and has an essence that does not “involve” existence. (The Latin verb is “involvere.”) A reasonable question therefore arises concerning the meaning of “necessary existence” in 1p11:  Is this specifically the self-​caused necessity of existence that Spinoza attributes only to things whose essences involve existence, or is it merely the more general necessity of existence that Spinoza attribute to all things (whether through their essences or through external causes)? Martin Lin2 notes that SOA, without explicitly distinguishing the second alternative, clearly interprets God’s “necessary existence” in 1p11 in the first and more restrictive way, as self-​caused existence, and he suggests that it could instead be read in the second and more general way. There are, however, at least three different passages in the Ethics that show that 1p11 should be interpreted as asserting that God has necessary existence in the more restricted sense of self-​caused existence. First, and perhaps most obviously, in 1p334d Spinoza infers solely from 1p11 that “God is the cause of himself.” Second, in 1p17c2 he cites 1p11 as showing that “God exists from the necessity of his nature” (emphasis added). Third, in 1p19s he states that God’s “eternity” (that is, according to 1d8, existence that is “conceived to follow necessarily from the definition of the eternal thing”) follows simply from “the way in which I  have demonstrated” 1p11; but since a thing’s definition expresses the thing’s essence, only something whose existence is caused by its own essence could have a definition from which existence follows. In addition, Spinoza writes in Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” 1.11 (referenced in Letter 35) of the being of God as unique in “involving necessary existence.” The third terminological clarification concerns the terms “a priori” and “a posteriori,” which Spinoza employs in 1p11d. Prior to Kant, the distinction marked by these terms was typically understood in terms of causal priority: “a priori” signified “from cause to effect,” while “a posteriori” signified “from effect to cause,”



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and these are also Spinoza’s primary senses of the terms. With Kant, however, the kind of “priority” in question comes to characterize more specifically an epistemological relation to experience:  “a priori” now typically signifies “knowable independent of empirical evidence,” while “a posteriori” signifies “knowable only on the basis of empirical evidence.”3 SOA does not distinguish these historically different senses, and in its Section I it briefly invokes a relation to empirical support in discussing Spinoza’s use of the terms. SOA’s substantive claims, however, remain correct on either reading: Spinoza regarded the third proof as a posteriori because it relies on the premise that we ourselves exist (which is knowledge both from an effect and from experience) and the other proofs as a priori because they do not rely on such a premise.

II.  Substantive Amendments The first substantive amendment concerns SOA’s location of the axiomatic source of Spinoza’s Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth “PSR”) solely in Axiom 3 of Ethics Part 1: 1a3: From a given determinate cause the effect necessarily follows; and conversely, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow. As noted in Section II of SOA, deriving the PSR solely from 1a3 requires a strong reading of this axiom, one on which “an effect” refers to any being or state of affairs. As also noted there, however, Spinoza’s sole subsequent citation of the axiom does not require such a strong reading. Moreover, it might reasonably be asked why, if Spinoza intended the axiom to express the PSR, he did not render its broad scope more explicit. For both of these reasons, I now think it better to interpret 1a3 more minimally, as stating simply that the causal relation is a fully necessitating one. In line with that interpretation, I prefer to locate the axiomatic basis of the PSR itself in the conjunction of 1a3 with the axioms immediately preceding and following it: 1a2:  What cannot be conceived through another, must be conceived through itself. 1a4: The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause. As Chapter 1 (“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Blessedness”) proposes, the three axioms taken together require that everything must be conceived (1a2); that conception must be through causes (1a4); and that causes always necessitate (1a3). It follows,

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then, that everything must be the result of a necessitating cause—​that is, given the status that Spinoza accords to causes as reasons, each state of affairs must have a reason sufficient to necessitate it. It should be emphasized again, however, that Spinoza’s own later expressions of the PSR or its corollaries—​for example, the principle in the second proof in 1p11d that there must be a cause for the existence or nonexistence of each thing—​do not actually cite any axiomatic basis for it. This is evidence, I take it, of how deeply embedded in his thought the commitment to the PSR lies. The second substantive amendment I  propose concerns the demonstration and use of 1p7: 1d7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist. Dem: A substance cannot be produced by anything else (by P6C); therefore it will be the cause of itself, i.e. (by D1), its essence necessarily involves existence, or it pertains to its nature to exist, q.e.d. Section II of SOA notes that, for the purposes of the first proof in 1p11d, 1p7 must be interpreted as stating that every possible substance has an essence involving existence, so that it pertains to the nature of that substance to exist. Section II also notes that 1p7d presupposes (as a corollary of the PSR) that no being can exist without a cause of its existence. However, I would not now assert further, as I did then, that the demonstration of 1p7, even with that presupposition made explicit, still leaves it open that “a possible substance might fail to have some other thing for its cause, and fail to be the cause of itself, and yet not be existing-​without-​ cause—​by not existing at all.” I withdraw this claim because I now recognize that 1p6c (“a substance cannot be produced by anything else,”), which is the linchpin of the demonstration, can properly be interpreted as stating not merely that no actual substance is produced by anything else but that it is incompatible with the nature of substance for it to be producible by anything else. Granting as presupposed (via the PSR) that it is also incompatible with the nature of anything to be able to exist without any cause, it follows that it pertains to the nature of any possible substance to be self-​caused and hence to have an essence involving existence; this is because any possible thing the essence of which did not involve existence would not be even a possible substance. To put the same point in a difference way, consider an alleged possible substance: either existence is contained in its essence or not. If existence is contained, the thing actually exists as self-​caused. If existence is not contained, however, then it is not the essence of even a possible substance that we are considering, but rather at best the essence of some other kind of thing: for if the thing were actually to exist, it would have to have something other than itself as the cause of its



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existence, and hence it would be some other kind of being, and not a substance after all. For this reason, it is not necessary to supplement 2p7d, as Section II of SOA does, by appeal to further premises borrowed from the second proof of 2p11d. Accordingly, the first proof of God’s necessary existence in 2p11d could easily have proceeded directly by citing 2p7 and affirming that God is a possible substance. In fact, of course, it instead proceeds indirectly, by way of 1a7 (“if a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence”): Demonstration: If you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist. Therefore (by A7) his essence does not involve existence. But this (by P7) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists, q.e.d. Proceeding in this less direct way allows Spinoza to urge his readers to try for themselves the experiment of seeking to conceive of God as not existing—​an attempt that, if Spinoza is right, will lead the reader, in its failure, to experience instead the intellectual intuition of God’s existence in the ontological argument. Yet although the first proof need not rely on a full set of premises drawn from the second proof, as SOA proposed, the first proof is not entirely independent of the PSR. This is because the proof still depends on 1p7, the demonstration of which implicitly relies on the principle that nothing could exist without a cause of its existence; and this, of course, is a corollary or restricted application of the PSR.

III.  Reply to Della Rocca As previously noted, SOA offers on Spinoza’s behalf (i) an argument against the existence of substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes, and (ii) an explanation of why no such substances exist, to which Della Rocca offers alternatives that he regards as preferable for Spinoza’s purposes and better at capturing his intentions. The proposed alternative argument and the proposed alternative explanation both place particular weight on the PSR. I  compare first the contrasting proposed arguments and then the contrasting proposed explanations. I conclude that those presented in SOA are better for Spinoza’s purposes. Spinoza’s problem, as first formulated in SOA, is this: 1p14d argues that God (the substance of all possible attributes, by 1d6) is the only substance on the grounds that God exists (by 1p11) and that substances cannot share attributes (1p5), leaving no attributes for any substance other than God to have; prima facie, however, he might equally have used proofs parallel to the first two proofs of 1p11d to argue the existence of one or more substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes and then invoked 1p5 to conclude that God cannot exist. In response to this problem, SOA proposed

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that the third and fourth proofs in 1p11d, while intended as demonstrations of God’s existence in their own right, also serve to show why no substances of fewer-​ than-​all attributes exist instead of God. They do this by making obvious, if tacit, appeal to 1p9: “The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.” This appeal allows Spinoza to argue that God, the substance of all attributes, has more power to exist than any substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes would have, and that it would be contradictory if a substance of less power for existence existed when a substance with greater power for existence did not. Let us call this argument based on 1p9 the “Greater Power Argument.” Della Rocca agrees that Spinoza does seem to proceed in this manner in the third and fourth proofs of 1p11d. Nevertheless, prompted by a remark in Spinoza’s correspondence, he objects to the Greater Power Argument that the use of 1p9 begs the question against Cartesian opponents, who “deny that substances can have multiple attributes.” He therefore proposes to bypass 1p9 in favor of a further use of the PSR. He does so by asking us to consider, for any given attribute, the only substance that, by 1p5, has that attribute. If this substance is not God—​the substance of all possible attributes—​then the PSR would require that there be some sufficient explanation of why it lacks each attribute that it lacks and of why it is not instead identical with the only substance that does have that attribute. Crucially, however, 1p10 proclaims a conceptual barrier between attributes: “Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself,” and 1p10s treats this as implying that no attribute can be the reason why a substance lacks another attribute. Given the claim of 1p5d that substances cannot be distinguished solely by their affections,4 the existence of substances of fewer-​than-​all-​attributes would leave many unexplained brute facts, in violation of the PSR. Let us call this argument based on 1p10 the “Conceptual Barrier Argument.” Several considerations are relevant to determining whether it is preferable to the Greater Power Argument for Spinoza’s purposes. First, it is not obvious that the Greater Power argument as I have described it does beg the question against Cartesians in the way that Della Rocca describes. Descartes’s own limitation of each substance to one attribute (which he calls a “principal attribute”) is explicitly restricted to finite or created substances; his view of divine attributes is more difficult to fathom. Secondly, the Conceptual Barrier Argument, as Della Rocca formulates it, is subject to a similar objection of begging the question against Cartesians that is at least equally strong. The Conceptual Barrier Argument depends on the claim, derived from 1p10, that one attribute of a substance cannot be incompatible with or prevent the same substance from having another attribute. Yet this surely begs the question against Cartesians, who hold that the divisibility of extended substances and the indivisibility of thinking substances must preclude the same substance—​whether created or divine—​from having both the attribute of Extension and the attribute of



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Thought. (Spinoza himself argues against the divisibility of any substance, extended or unextended, only later, in 1pp12-​13.) Of course, it might be replied to this objection that Spinoza does not merely state 1p10 but derives from his own definitions of “attribute” and “substance” (1d4 and 1d3); but Spinoza does not merely state 1p9 either, instead deriving it directly from his own definition of “attribute” (1d4) alone. In either case, in fact, it is not incumbent on Spinoza to avoid using definitions or axioms just because he understands them as having consequences that Cartesians will reject; instead, he will simply ask his readers, Cartesian or not, to reconsider his axioms, definitions, and demonstrations carefully until they can recognize their truth, regardless of what they might previously have believed. A further problem for the Conceptual Barrier Argument is that it seems to beg the question not just against Cartesians but in its very structure, for it relies on the crucial but unsupported presupposition that the definition of “God” is in fact internally consistent and not contradictory. If that presupposition is rejected, then it could readily be argued that there is a sufficient reason for the existence of some substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes—​such as, for example, a substance-​of-​one-​ attribute for each of the possible attributes. As Della Rocca observes, Spinoza’s claim at 1p10 that all (possible) attributes are conceived through themselves implies (given 1a4) that all attributes must be the causes of their own existence and so must actually exist (i.e., be realized or instantiated); but if the existence of God is not really possible, then the attributes can only exist as attributes of substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes. As Della Rocca rightly observes, 1p10s implies that no attribute can be strictly incompatible with the existence of another attribute in the same substance; however, that removes only one potential objection to the possibility a substance of all attributes. It might instead be argued, for example, that all prospective substances would have in principle the same amount of power to exist, but that only in the case of substances-​of-​one-​attribute is this sufficient for actual existence because substances-​of-​one attribute require less power to exist than would any substance of multiple attributes. It is true, of course, that Spinoza could block this further line of argument—​but seemingly only by invoking the Greater Power Argument, with its appeal to 1p9. It appears, then, that the Greater Power Argument is preferable to the Conceptual Barrier Argument for Spinoza’s purposes in showing that there cannot be substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes. Still, it is one thing to argue successfully that a given proposition is true and another to explain successfully why it is true. Notwithstanding his claim that all cognition of effects involves cognition of their causes (1a4), Spinoza himself emphasizes this distinction between showing that and explaining why: it is the distinction between the “second kind of cognition” (ratio) and the higher “third kind of cognition” (scientia intuitiva; see Chapter 7). Because Spinoza accepts the PSR, he must allow that there is some sufficient explanation of why substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes cannot exist; and this, as

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Della Rocca notes, must—​as Spinoza insists in the second proof of 1p11d—​involve some internal contradiction or inconsistency in the attempted definitions of such substances. Corresponding to the Greater Power Argument, SOA proposed on Spinoza’s behalf what we may call a “Greater Power Explanation”: By 1p9, any definition of a substance as having fewer-​than-​all attributes defines it as having less than maximal power to exist, and hence as potentially capable of being prevented from existing by another substance—​which is absurdly contrary to the very nature of substance, as demonstrated in 1p7. In contrast to this explanation, Della Rocca renews his objection that appeal to 1p9 is question-​begging against Cartesians and offers instead what we may call a “Conceptual Barrier Explanation,” appealing to the violation of the PSR that would result if, for example, the unique substance having a given attribute and the unique substance having another given attribute were not identical: In the light of my argument earlier, we can now pinpoint the fault internal to [a substance-​of-​one-​attribute]: its existence . . . would involve many brute facts. By contrast, the existence of God . . . involves . . . none of the brute facts that afflict [a substance-​of-​one-​attribute]; it is precisely for this reason that God exists instead. (31) To be sure, the correct explanation of a state of affairs cannot be circular; but the Greater Power Explanation is in no way circular. It may “beg the question” against Cartesians in the sense that it appeals to purported facts (such as 1p9, derived from 1d4) that not all of Spinoza’s Cartesian readers would initially grant, but this does not affect the question of whether those facts are in fact part of the true explanation of what is to be explained. Indeed, the Conceptual Barrier Explanation’s invocation of the PSR equally begs the question in this sense against Cartesian readers, for they hold precisely that God’s original volitional acts occur without determination by any sufficient reason. The Conceptual Barrier Explanation is also open to a more damaging methodological objection, however. If the argument offered in footnote 10 of SOA is correct, then on pain of trivialization, the fact that the PSR would be violated if some state of affairs were not to obtain cannot itself, in the absence of some antecedent reason for that state of affairs, be the entire sufficient (explanatory) reason why it does obtain. To review that argument, let us consider a circumstance in which it is stipulated that (contrary to the PSR) there is absolutely no reason why either of p or not-​p should hold; and now suppose further that, just as a matter of absolute sheer chance, p happens to hold instead of not-​p. If the lack of an explanatory reason for not-​p to hold were itself a sufficient explanatory reason for p to hold, then p would have a sufficient explanatory reason after all and would not be a matter of chance, contrary to the (seemingly eminently coherent) stipulation. Similarly, if just as a



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matter of absolute sheer chance not-​p had happened to hold instead of p, then not-​p would have had a sufficient explanatory reason after all and would not have been a matter of chance, contrary to the (seemingly eminently coherent) stipulation. To put the same basic point in more general terms: the PSR, as a universal generalization about the existence of sufficient reasons, cannot properly quantify over itself by treating its own purported truth as an infallible second-​order back-​up reason in the absence of any first-​order reasons for a state of affairs; it can only affirm the universal existence of substantive explanatory reasons that are independent of its own alleged truth as a universal generalization about explanatory reasons. If it were to be allowed to quantify over itself, its truth as a quantification could not properly be fixed until its truth as an instance of itself were fixed, and vice versa. In fact, of course, for Spinoza there is one ultimate sufficient explanation to which every state of affairs must ultimately be traced back: God’s nature (1p16). The state of affairs described by the PSR—​namely, that every state of affairs has a sufficient reason—​is no exception to this requirement: it, too, obtains only because God’s nature is a sufficient cause of its obtaining. Accordingly, while anyone who knows the truth of the PSR may use it to argue that God exists, any attempt to explain why God exists (rather than substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes) by appealing to the PSR will not only permissibly beg the question argumentatively against Cartesians but will also, impermissibly, be explanatorily circular. Della Rocca is unquestionably right to emphasize that, according to 1p10 and 1p10s, no attribute of a substance can prevent that substance from having another attribute. Nevertheless, Spinoza’s own argument that there are no substances of fewer-​than-​all attributes evidently should be and is the Greater Power Argument, which is preferable for his purposes to the Conceptual Barrier Argument. Similarly, his explanation of why there are no substances evidently should be and is the Greater Power Explanation, which, unlike the Conceptual Barrier Explanation, is not viciously circular.

Notes 1. Michael Della Rocca, “Spinoza’s Substance Monism,” in Spinoza:  Metaphysical Themes, edited by Olli Koistinen and John Biro (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2002): 11–​37. 2. Martin Lin, “Spinoza’s Arguments for the Existence of God,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75.2 (2007): 269–​297. 3. See Jon Miller, “Spinoza and the A Priori,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34.4 (2004): 555–​590. 4. See the Postscript to Chapter 3, “Shared Attributes and Monism Revisited.”

3

Ethics IP5 Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza’s Monism

Proposition 5 of Part I of Spinoza’s Ethics states that: “In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.”1 This thesis, that substances cannot share an attribute, is crucial for the success of Spinoza’s metaphysics. It is used explicitly in the demonstrations of IP6 (“One substance cannot be produced by another substance”), IP8 (“Every substance is necessarily infinite”), IP12 (“No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided”), and IP13 (“A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible”). Moreover, it is the linchpin of his argument for substance monism at IP14D and IP14C1, an argument which reads as follows: PI4: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived. Dem.:  Since God is an absolutely infinite being, of whom no attribute which expresses an essence of substance can be denied (by D6), and he necessarily exists (by P11), if there were any substance except God, it would have to be explained through some attribute of God, and so two substances of the same attribute would exist, which (by P5) is absurd. And so except God, no substance can be or, consequently, be conceived. For if it could be conceived, it would have to be conceived as existing. But this (by the first part of this demonstration) is absurd. Therefore, except for God no substance can be or be conceived, q.e.d. Cor 1: From this it follows most clearly, first, that God is unique, i.e., (by D6), that in Nature there is only one substance. Is Spinoza entitled to assert that substances cannot share an attribute? His demonstration of this proposition at IP5D may be outlined in seven steps:



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(1) “If there were two or more distinct substances, they would have to be distinguished from one another either by a difference in their attributes, or by a difference in their affections.” [IP4] (2) “If [two or more distinct substances are distinguished] only by a difference in their attributes, then it will be conceded that there is only one of the same attribute.” (3) “[A]‌substance is prior in nature to its affections.” [IP1] (4) If two or more distinct substances are distinguished “by a difference in their affections, then . . . if the affections are put to one side and [the substance] is considered in itself . . ., one cannot be conceived to be distinguished from another.” [ from (3)] (5) Substance “considered in itself [is] considered truly.” [ID3, IA6] (6) If two or more distinct substances are distinguished “by a difference in their affections, then . . . if the affections are put to one side and [the substance] is . . . considered truly . . ., one cannot be conceived to be distinguished from another.” [ from (4)–​(5)] (7) “In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.” [ from (1), (2), and (6)] The overall strategy of Spinoza’s argument, at least, is clear. IP4 states that two things can be distinguished from one another only by a difference in attributes or by a difference in affections; and Spinoza proceeds to argue, at (2) and (3)–​(6) respectively, that neither alternative would be available in the case of substances sharing the same attribute. But as Jonathan Bennett has acutely argued in his landmark book, A Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,”2 Spinoza’s grounds for rejecting each of the two alternatives seem highly dubious. With respect to the latter alternative, Spinoza’s argument at (3)–​(6) seems to leave unexplained why the “priority” of substances over their affections should entitle us to “put to one side” all differences of affections in such a way as to preclude our using such differences to distinguish substances. In emphasizing this difficulty, Bennett is expanding on an objection also raised by Michael Hooker and explored by William Charlton.3 And with respect to the former alternative, Spinoza’s assertion of (2) seems to ignore the possibility of substances that share some attributes but are distinguished by their failure to share others. In emphasizing this apparent lacuna, Bennett is restating and reinvigorating an objection first made by Leibniz.4 If these two objections cannot be overcome with the definitions, axioms, and prior propositions at Spinoza’s disposal, then the demonstration of IP5 must be judged a failure. And if it is indeed a failure, it threatens to be a most disappointing one; for his attempt to deduce his metaphysics geometrically will apparently have failed at a very early point indeed—​and, moreover, a point on which much of what is most distinctive about his metaphysics depends. Furthermore,

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the threat of failure posed by the objections raises a serious problem for our very understanding of Spinoza. For surely he would not have offered the argument of IP5D unless he regarded it as providing rationally compelling grounds for its conclusion—​and, moreover, grounds to which he had devoted considerable thought. Hence, if we do not know why he fails to address the two objections more explicitly and how—​if at all—​he himself would reply to them, then to that extent we do not fully understand the basis of his monism.5 In the first section of this essay, I consider two recent responses to the Hooker-​ Bennett objection to (3)–​(6). I  argue that neither response can fully overcome the objection on the basis of resources available to Spinoza, and also that neither provides a likely interpretation of Spinoza’s own intentions with respect to (3)–​(6). In the second section of the essay, I propose an interpretation that, I argue, does overcome the Hooker-​Bennett objection, and also provides a likely interpretation of Spinoza’s intentions. In the course of doing so, I also argue that IP1 is deducible from the definitions and axioms of Part I of the Ethics. In the third section of the essay, I survey five recent responses to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection to (2). Once again, I argue that none can fully overcome the objection on the basis of resources available to Spinoza, and also that none provides a likely interpretation of Spinoza’s own intentions with respect to (2). In the fourth section of the essay, I propose an interpretation that, I argue, does overcome the Leibniz-​Bennett objection, and also provides a likely interpretation of Spinoza’s intentions. In the course of doing so, I also argue that IP4 is deducible from the definitions and axioms of Part I of the Ethics. Since the two objections to IP5D can be overcome, and since IP1 and IP4 are the only prior propositions of the Ethics employed in IP5D, I conclude in the final section that IP5 is in fact a justifiable inference from Spinoza’s definitions and axioms; and I comment briefly on the ultimate grounds of Spinoza’s monism. In the course of the essay, I consider several specific points and interpretive suggestions offered or described by Bennett, as well as points and suggestions due to others. But my debt to Bennett, in particular, goes far beyond his providing these specific objects of consideration. For the essay itself is largely inspired by the characteristically incisive way in which Bennett has rendered these issues about IP5 and its demonstration so unavoidable; and it is inspired, too, by what I regard as two of the most fruitful aspects of Bennett’s overall approach to the interpretation of Spinoza. These are, first, the endeavor to do justice to Spinoza’s thought by close attention to the actual content and logic of his arguments; and second, the use of “explanatory rationalism”—​i.e., the thesis that whatever is the case can be explained—​as a key to understanding Spinoza’s arguments and motivations. For Spinoza’s explanatory rationalism is derived, in part, from his thesis (embedded in his definitions and axioms) that whatever is, must be completely conceivable; and it is this latter thesis that constitutes, on my interpretation, the ultimate basis of Spinoza’s monism.



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1.  The Hooker-​Bennett Objection Let us turn first to the Hooker-​Bennett objection to (3)–​(6). On the basis of IP1’s claim that “a substance is prior in nature to its affections,” Spinoza infers that if the affections of substance are put “to one side,” so that substance is “considered in itself,” then two substances cannot be distinguished by a difference of affections. But, he continues, “substance considered in itself is (by ID3 and IA6) “substance considered truly”; thus, if we consider substance truly, we will not be able to distinguish two substances by their affections. This argument seems simply to trade on an ambiguity in the notion of “conceiving something in itself.” ID3 requires that a substance be “in itself,” in a sense opposed to “in something else”; hence, to conceive a substance as being “in itself in that sense is—​so far—​to conceive it truly (especially since IA6 requires that “a true idea must agree with its object”). But Spinoza seems to infer from this that substance is truly conceived “in itself in a different sense, a sense opposed to “being with something else.” And this inference does not seem valid. For substance also truly has affections, and hence to conceive it with its affections is to conceive it truly; to conceive it as being without its affections, in contrast, as IP5D seems to ask us to do, would be to conceive it falsely. Unless IP1 entitles us to “set the affections to one side” in some other way when we attempt to distinguish substances, IP5D must fail. Recent discussions of IP5 have yielded two proposals for justifying or explaining Spinoza’s willingness to set the affections aside in (6). Before offering my own interpretation, I will discuss these two proposals, considering both their ability to overcome the objection with the resources available to Spinoza, and their plausibility as interpretations of his intentions. In doing so, I  do not mean to imply that those who have offered or defended one of these proposals necessarily intended it to serve both of these purposes, or even that they were committed to its complete adequacy for either purpose. I am not, therefore, seeking to refute their authors. Nevertheless, both proposals do have a considerable degree of prima facie plausibility, both as ways of overcoming the objection and as interpretations of Spinoza’s intentions; each is therefore deserving of consideration in both respects. Bennett proposes an interpretation of Spinoza’s willingness to set the modes aside which depends on their character as “accidental.” He writes (using the term ‘state’ for ‘affection’ [‘affectio’]): The proposition that ‘A substance is prior in nature to its states’ [IP1] has been derived from the equation of ‘substance’ with ‘what is in itself and conceived through itself’ [ID3] and of ‘state’ with ‘what is in something else through which it is conceived’ [ID5]. If we take this to entail that any state of a substance is accident to it, i.e., that a substance could have lacked any of its actual states, then we get the following argument. Distinct substances

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must be unalike in respect of some properties which they cannot lose; for if they were unalike only in respect of their accidental properties they could become perfectly alike, and so, by the identity of indiscernibles, become identical. It is obviously intolerable to suppose that two substances could have been—​or could become—​one. So between any two substances there must be an unalikeness in respect of nonaccidental features, i.e., of attributes.6 While suggesting this argument as an interpretation of Spinoza, Bennett himself argues against its adequacy as a solution to the Hooker-​Bennett objection, on the grounds that it is a modal fallacy to infer that “x and y could become exactly alike” from “x and y are unalike only in respect of their accidental properties.” Edwin Curley, however, defends the proposed argument against Bennett’s claim of fallacy, at least in a Cartesian context. Descartes’ famous discussion of a piece of wax in his Second Meditation and his analogous discussion of a stone in the Principles of Philosophy (II.11) strongly suggest that all of the mere affections (as opposed to the principal attribute) of a substance can change without altering or undermining the identity of the substance. But, Curley, argues, given these passages, it is difficult to see how Descartes could block the possibility that two finite material substances might come to be exactly alike as regards their intrinsic properties (counting all the properties mentioned in the wax passage as intrinsic.)7 Furthermore, Curley continues, the two substances could not be distinguished by the “extrinsic” characteristics of their different locations in space, for Descartes identifies the extension which constitutes a body with the space that it is said to occupy; and his “relational” theory of space seems to imply that the distinction of substances is logically prior to the determination of their location. Although these points are valid and important, they do not fully overcome the Hooker-​Bennett objection with resources available to Spinoza from his definitions, axioms, and prior propositions (nor does Curley claim that they do). One problem lies in the fact that at IP5 Spinoza himself has not identified extended substances with the space they occupy, nor has he offered a relational theory of space; indeed, he has not even identified extension as an attribute. A second problem lies in the argument’s reliance on a principle of the identity of indiscernibles for substances. I will argue in the fourth section of this essay both that IP4D embodies an identity of indiscernibles for substances, and that it can be justified from the axioms and definitions alone. The version of the identity of indiscernibles needed for the present argument, however, is stronger than the general principle that different



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substances cannot be completely indiscernible; it requires that there not be even a single time for which they are indiscernible. It is not obvious how Spinoza could justify this stronger claim from his axioms, definitions, and prior propositions. More fundamentally, however, even if we waive the possibility of distinctions of location, and grant the temporal version of the identity of indiscernibles, the apparent difficulty (especially for Cartesians) of blocking the possibility of two substances coming to have indistinguishable affections does not entail that the possibility cannot be blocked. And in fact, there are two ways in which the affections of two or more substances might prevent the substances from becoming indistinguishable. First, substances might differ in affections that were necessarily permanent to them. As Curley points out in a footnote, Descartes himself is committed to the claim that the size of an extended substance is a necessarily permanent characteristic of it, Meditation II’s discussion of the piece of wax notwithstanding. And nothing in the Ethics entails or implies that all of the affections of a substance can change. Quite the contrary, Spinoza later goes on to describe, at IP21–​22, modes (i.e., by ID3, affections) of a substance that “have always had to exist and be infinite” in that substance. And although the interpretation I will later give of (3)–​(6) rules out the possibility of substances differing in such “eternal and infinite” modes (as, of course, will the monism that Spinoza eventually derives in part from IP5D), nothing in the argument presently under consideration does so. Secondly, even if substances did not differ in any necessarily-​ permanent affections, it might still be that each of two or more actual substances would give rise to a series of affections within itself in a way or order different from that in which any other substance gave rise to its affections, so that, although substances changed their affections, they would never become indistinguishable from one another. Furthermore, Spinoza’s denial of contingency at IP29 and IP33 seems to imply that, if any two substances do not in fact become indistinguishable, then they could not have become indistinguishable. To be sure, the principle that substances with indiscernible affections are identical entails that any substances x and y are either identical or have discernible affections; but it does not say which of these alternatives must be realized. Leibniz, for one, was sufficiently confident of the plurality of substances that he inferred from the identity of indiscernibles the doctrine that each substance has a unique way of developing its affections. If Spinoza is fully to overcome the Hooker-​Bennett objection, he must also have a positive way of refuting this Leibnizian alternative. But nothing provided by the argument presently under consideration does so. Moreover, it is clear that Spinoza himself would not defend his “putting the affections to one side” in the way suggested by the proposal presently under consideration. For one thing, he could reasonably be expected to understand his own definitions and axioms sufficiently well to realize that they leave the argument

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open to at least one (if not more) of the objections just surveyed. Even more fundamentally, however, if the present proposal were to provide a plausible interpretation of Spinoza’s language in IP5D, he would have to accept the argument’s assumption that all affections are accidental to the substances in which they occur. And as we have seen, this is an assumption that he clearly does not make; on the contrary, his doctrine of “eternal and infinite modes” at IP21–​22 clearly contradicts it. Hence, by the “priority” of substance over its affections, affirmed in IP1 and used to justify setting the affections to one side, he cannot mean the priority of substance over those of its characteristics that are accidental, as he would have to do if the present proposal were to serve as a plausible interpretation of his argument. Henry Allison proposes another basis for setting the affections aside, based on Russell’s discussion of the identity of indiscernibles as it occurs in Leibniz. Thus, Allison writes: According to Russell, the argument seems to be that, on the assumption currently under consideration [i.e., that substances are distinguished by their affections], the substances must be indistinguishable prior to the assignment of predicates (affections); however, the assignment of predicates cannot provide a basis for distinguishing otherwise indiscernible substances unless it is presupposed that they are numerically distinct to begin with. In other words, although we could certainly distinguish between the two Cartesian substances by referring to their distinct affections, we take this to mark a distinction between two substances only because we have already assumed that the distinct affections must belong to numerically distinct substances. After all, the same . . . substance could certainly have two distinct affections, even simultaneously. Consequently, Spinoza could claim that it is really the Cartesian [who distinguishes more than one substance], not he, who is begging the question by refusing to set the affections aside.8 That is to say, the identity of indiscernibles entails that substances are not distinct unless they differ in predicates; but unless there is some other basis for distinguishing substances besides differences of predicates, any predicates—​and hence any affections—​can always be assigned to the same substance. This argument, however, cannot fully overcome the Hooker-​Bennett objection, for two reasons. First, as long as it is established only that any set of predicates can be assigned to the same substance, both the “Cartesian,” who distinguishes multiple substances, and the “Spinozist,” who does not, will be equally begging the question. In order to avoid begging the question, the Spinozist would have to show not only that one can assign all of the predicates in question to one



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substance, but that one must do so; for otherwise, it will arguably remain equally true that one can assign them to more than one substance. Secondly, the claim that one can just as well assign all of the predicates to the same substance is itself a claim that stands in need of considerable justification. For although the same substance can have many different affections, it cannot have incompatible affections; hence, if there are incompatible affections, they will require us to distinguish two different substances. But there are many plausible candidates for pairs of incompatible affections. To take just one example from the attribute of thought: the predicate of presently feeling an intense pain is at least arguably incompatible with (i.e., cannot coexist in the same substance with) the predicate of presently believing that no intense pain is being felt. Moreover, it also seems unlikely that Spinoza would intend to justify his putting aside of the affections by means of the argument Allison describes, for several reasons (and Allison does not state that he would). For one thing, if Spinoza wished to rely on the argument, he could reasonably be expected to foresee at least one (if not both) of the objections just described, and to do something to forestall them; but he does not do so. Furthermore, because the argument is concerned with all predicates, it applies, at least prima facie, to attributes just as well or as poorly as it does to affections. If, therefore, he thought that the argument would justify assigning all affections to one substance, he would presumably have thought that it would also justify assigning all attributes to one substance. In that case, there would be no apparent reason why he should have restricted himself to using it to justify (6) of IP5D, when it would equally permit an immediate inference to monism itself, in a way much less complicated than the argument for monism that he actually gives. Thus, I conclude that neither of the two responses surveyed to the Hooker-​ Bennett objection fully overcomes the objection with resources available to Spinoza, and that neither provides a likely account of Spinoza’s own intentions. Of course, we cannot simply assume that the objection can be fully overcome with Spinozistic resources at all, nor that he had any determinate intentions with respect to it. Similarly, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that, despite the objections raised to them as interpretations, one of the proposals does nevertheless correspond to his own intentions. Clearly, however, it is worth investigating whether a better response to the objection, and a more likely interpretation, are possible.

2.  Differences of Affections The Hooker-​Bennett objection arises from the fact that IP5D seems, at (3)–​(6), not to explain fully how the priority of substance over its affections, as asserted in IP1, can justify putting the affections aside in the attempt to distinguish substances.

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In order to see whether the affections might legitimately be put aside, therefore, let us focus on what is involved in the “priority” of substance over its affections. The demonstration of IP1 reads simply: “This is evident from D3 and D5.” Thus, the kind of priority involved should be a kind of priority immediately derivable from the definitions of ‘substance’ and ‘mode’; and the “priority” involved in those definitions is, of course, the priority of “being in” and of “being conceived through.” Can this kind of priority provide a justification for putting aside the affections in the attempt to distinguish substances? It can if the “in and conceived through” relation requires that every affection be conceived through its substance in such a complete way that any difference of affections would have to be conceived through a difference of substance. For in that case, Spinoza would not be setting the affections aside on the (false) grounds that substances, as truly conceived, do not have them; rather, he would be setting them aside on the grounds that differences in affections must be understood through, and hence require, differences of substance. Since Spinoza argues in IP4D that differences of substance reduce, in turn, to differences of attribute, he would then be entitled to restrict the search for substance-​distinguishing differences to differences of attributes, already considered at (2): for no differences of affections could occur without a logically or conceptually prior difference of attributes. Since Spinoza regards “being in” and “being conceived through” as parallel and mutually entailing relations (see note 24 below), it makes sense for him to add, at (5)–​(6), that in treating substance as “in itself” or as prior to its affections, we are considering it truly. Although this rationale for putting the affections aside requires that we construe the “in and conceived through” relation as a strong one, the construal is not unreasonable. For if substance x differs in affections from substance y without that difference being conceivable through a difference in the nature or essence of the substances themselves, then there will indeed be something about the affections of x that cannot be completely understood solely through conceiving the nature of substance x: namely, the reason or cause (these notions are equivalent in Spinoza) why the affections of x have that feature—​whatever it might be—​in which they differ from the affections of y. This in itself renders the strong construal of the relation at least somewhat plausible, aside from any other considerations. Furthermore, however, IA4 states that “The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause”; and at IP8S2, Spinoza paraphrases the definition of substance as “what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., that the knowledge of which does not require the knowledge of any other thing,” thereby showing that he is willing to interchange “conceiving” and “having knowledge.”9 IA4 thus entails that, if the reason or cause for some feature of the affections cannot be conceived through a substance, then that feature itself cannot be fully known or (by the equivalence employed at IP8S2) conceived through the substance.



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Thus, Spinoza could argue, ID5 requires that the affections of a substance be completely conceived through their substance. But the affections cannot be completely conceived through a substance unless all of their features are fully conceived through that substance. By IA4, however, the features of the affections cannot be fully known or (by the equivalence from IP8S2) conceived without the knowledge of their cause. Now, to have knowledge of the cause of something is to have knowledge of something that determines it to occur rather than not. Hence, any feature in which the affections of one substance differ from the affections of another must be conceived through some difference in the substances themselves which accounts for the difference of affections. Of course, this argument depends on an assumption about the meaning of ID5—​namely, that ID5 requires that the affections of a substance be completely conceived through the substance, in a sense strong enough to entail that every feature of the affections be fully conceived through the substance. It also depends on two assumptions about the meaning of IA4: first, that knowledge of the cause, in the sense employed in IA4, requires knowledge of something that determines that the effect will occur, rather than not; and, second, that in using the term ‘effects,’ Spinoza does not intend to limit the scope of IA4—​or at any rate, to limit it in such a way that features of affections might not fall within it—​but rather seeks only to emphasize the correlation between effect and cause. But each of these assumptions is a very plausible one in the context of Spinoza’s philosophy. Each is individually compatible with, and even suggested by, what he says elsewhere in his writings—​ and, indeed, he treats the claim that everything has a cause as a truism (e.g., at IP11D). To be sure, the assumption about the meaning of ID5 renders it richer in content than it would otherwise be, and the assumptions about the meaning of IA4 render it more powerful. But IP5 is itself a strong claim, and hence if it is to be validly inferred from the definitions and axioms, the definitions must be at least somewhat rich, or the axioms somewhat powerful. The question is whether the definitions and axioms can be reasonably understood in such a way as to bear the deductive weight that must ultimately be placed on them; and in the present case, it appears that they can. Still, it may be objected that the assumptions about IPD5 and IA4 required by the present proposal jointly entail that no substance could have had any affections other than the set of affections that it actually has, and that this conflicts with IP21 and IP28D, which require that finite modes do not “follow from the absolute nature of an attribute.” Hence, it may be argued, at least one of those assumptions must be wrong. However, I have argued at length elsewhere10 that the doctrine that no substance could have had any other affections is stated or entailed at a number of points of the Ethics—​including IP16, IP29, and IP33—​and is not contradicted anywhere. For although the finite modes do not follow from the “absolute nature” of the attributes, they do follow from the nature of the attributes (see IP16,

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IP17S, IP26D, IP33D, and IP33S1, plus IP29S); his distinction is thus not between following and not following from the nature of the attributes, but rather between two ways of following from the attributes. Although the relevant considerations are too lengthy to repeat here, if the distinction is properly understood, it will be seen not to conflict with the readings of IP5 and IA4 required by the present proposal. Thus, it appears that the argument outlined above can overcome the Hooker-​ Bennett objection. Moreover, considered as an interpretation of Spinoza’s intentions, the present proposal has three advantages. First, it does not require Spinoza to commit any errors of reasoning. Secondly, it takes the kind of “priority” mentioned in IP1 and employed in IP5D to be, quite straightforwardly, the kind of priority mentioned in ID3 and ID5, from which IP1 is derived. Finally, it makes good sense of the text of IP5D as it actually occurs. In the absence of any damaging objections to it as an interpretation, and in the absence of an equally plausible alternative, I conclude that it is a likely interpretation.

3.  The Leibniz-​Bennett Objection Let us turn now to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection to (2), the claim that if two or more distinct substances are distinguished “only by a difference in their attributes, then it will be conceded that there is only one of the same attribute.” The claim seems plausible when applied to substances each having only a single attribute; for if their single attributes differ, then their attributes are not, after all, the very same attribute. But (2) seems less plausible when applied to substances having more than one attribute. For such substances, it seems, could share one attribute, with no difference of that attribute, and nevertheless be distinguishable as different substances on the basis of a second kind of “difference in their attributes”—​namely, a difference in what other attributes the substances might have. For example, two substances might share attribute A1, and yet still “differ in their attributes” because one substance also had attribute A2 which the other substance lacked. Since Spinoza’s use of IP5 in the demonstration of monism at IP14D and IP14C1 obviously depends on applying IP5 to substances of more than one attribute, Spinoza’s use of (2) seems unwarranted. Recent discussions of IP5 have yielded five proposals for justifying or explaining his use of (2). Before presenting and arguing for my own interpretation, I will discuss each of those proposals in turn, considering both their ability to overcome the objection with the resources available to Spinoza, and their plausibility as interpretations of his intentions. (Once again, in doing so I do not mean to imply that each proposal was intended by its author to serve both of these purposes, or even that its author was committed to its complete adequacy for either purpose; as before, I am not, therefore, seeking to refute their authors.)



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One general strategy for overcoming the Bennett-​Leibniz objection is to justify (2) by supplementing IP5D with a further premise to which Spinoza is entitled. Bennett himself offers, without insisting on, a suggestion of this kind. He writes: There may be a Spinozistic way of closing the gap. For example, Spinoza may be able to argue that if x had only A1 while y had both A1 and A2, the demand of his explanatory rationalism to know why x did not have A2 as well could not be satisfied. (Study, p. 69) If this suggestion is correct, explanatory rationalism—​the doctrine that everything can be explained—​would thus prohibit the possibility of substances sharing some but not all attributes, the possibility on which the Leibniz-​Bennett objection depends. As I have indicated, I do believe that a thesis closely related to explanatory rationalism plays a crucial role in the demonstration of IP5. I do not believe, however, that explanatory rationalism can satisfactorily play the role suggested here, of directly prohibiting the possibility of the pairs of substances on which the Leibniz-​Bennett objection depends. Since, by definition, nothing can exist without its essence, in order to explain why a thing has a feature that pertains to its essence one need only show that it does pertain to the essence of that kind of thing—​as manifested in the thing’s proper definition, which will capture its essence11—​and then explain why that thing exists. For example, to explain why a particular circle is such that all of the points on it are equidistant from the center, one need only point out that this is of the essence of circles, as captured in the proper definition of the circle, and then explain why that particular circle exists. But a substance’s attributes pertain to its essence. This is a consequence of ID4, and is also indicated by the fact that the only formal definition of a substance Spinoza gives, that of ‘God’ at ID6, is in terms of that substance’s attributes. Hence, to explain why one substance has only attribute A1 while another substance has attributes A1 and A2, we need only to explain the existence of each. Now, Spinoza seems to take IP7 (“It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist”) to require that every possible substance exists necessarily, as his use of IP7 at IP11D strongly indicates.12 Moreover, in IP11D he cites IP7 as showing that “the reason why a substance exists . . . follows from its nature alone.” Thus, a potential explanation for x’s possessing only A1 while y possesses both A1 and A2 seems readily available: it is in the nature of substance x (as manifested in its definition as “the substance of attribute A1”) to have only A1, and since x is a possible (non-​ contradictory) substance, it necessarily exists from its own nature; at the same time, it is in the nature of substance y (as manifested in its definition as “the substance of attributes A1 and A2”) to have both attributes A1 and A2, and since y is also a possible (non-​contradictory) substance, it, too, necessarily exists from its own nature. Given the doctrine that substances exist from their own nature alone,

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it is not only possible but mandatory to suppose that the reason for the attributes and existence of every substance that exists will be found entirely within its own essence or definition in precisely this way.13 Thus, explanatory rationalism alone cannot overcome the objection to (2) in the way suggested. Moreover, the doctrine that a substance’s attributes are essential to it (required by ID4), and the doctrine that the reason why a substance exists must follow from its own nature (asserted in IP11D as a consequence of IP7, and also strongly implied by ID3), are both so central to Spinoza’s thought as to render it unlikely that he would believe that the objection could be overcome in this way. Bennett also reports a second suggestion for a supplementary premise, a suggestion due to Wallace Matson. IP2 states that:  “Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another.” Bennett notes that this proposition can be read in two ways. On the weaker reading, it is equivalent to: (IP2w): Two substances which share no attributes have nothing in common.14 On the stronger reading, it is equivalent to: (IP2s): Two substances which differ in respect of any attribute have nothing in common. If we adopt the stronger reading of IP2 (and assume that “x and y have nothing in common” entails “x and y do not share an attribute”), then IP2 will block the Bennett-​Leibniz objection by ruling out the possibility of substances sharing some but not all of their attributes. Which is the correct reading of IP2? Most commentators, including Bennett, find a weak reading more natural. Beyond the language of IP2 itself, there are two further sources of evidence about its meaning: Spinoza’s employment of IP2 and his demonstration of it. Since the former is not definitive,15 let us consider the latter. The demonstration of IP2 reads, in its entirety, as follows: This also is evident from D3. For each [substance] must be in itself and be conceived through itself, or [sive] the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other. The demonstration does not concern itself in any way with the question of whether “x and y have nothing in common” (and hence also “x and y differ in all attributes”) follows from “x and y differ in some attributes,” as the strong reading requires. This fact provides a powerful reason against supposing that



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the strong reading of IP2 is correct. Furthermore, it suggests that even if we do accept the strong reading of IP2 and, with it, Matson’s proposed reply to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection, we will only put the difficulty off one step: the objection that Spinoza has no basis for asserting (2)  in IP5D will simply be replaced by the objection that he has no basis for asserting IP2 in the strong sense needed to justify (2). However, not only does the demonstration make no apparent mention or use of the distinction between differing in some and differing in all attributes, it makes no explicit mention of the notion of sharing or differing in attributes at all. Hence it also makes no explicit use of the fact that the scope of IP2 has been limited to those substances “having different attributes” in any sense at all. For this reason it may seem, superficially at least, that the demonstration will prove the unrestricted conclusion that no two substances have anything in common with one another, precisely as well or as badly as it proves the stated conclusion that substances “having different attributes” have nothing in common with one another. And this unrestricted conclusion, of course, would entail IP5 directly. We must therefore ask why Spinoza did not draw the unrestricted conclusion at IP2 and then proceed immediately to infer IP5 from it. Why did he restrict IP2 to substances “having different attributes,” in whatever sense we take that phrase? Presumably, Spinoza restricts the scope of IP2—​ and, implicitly, of its demonstration—​to “substances having different attributes” because he doubts or denies that the demonstration would be sound in application to pairs of substances not meeting this condition. In linking “each must be conceived through itself with “the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other” by means of the term ‘sive’ (which carries the sense of “in other words”), Spinoza implies that he regards these characterizations as simply equivalent. (The use of ‘sive’ in IA5 also implies that “the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other” is equivalent to “cannot be understood through one another.”) Thus, IP2D involves only one real inference, that from: (a) Each substance must be in itself and be conceived through itself, i.e., the concept of one does not involve the concept of the other. to: (b) Two substances are such that they have nothing in common with one another. If Spinoza wishes to restrict the scope of this inference to substances “having different attributes,” it can only be because he is concerned that, unless the substances in question “have different attributes,” they might “have something in

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common” even though each is “in itself and conceived through itself” and (equivalently) “the concept of one does not involve the concept of the other.” Such concern would be well-​taken. For as its equation with “being conceived through” (at IP2D) and “being understood through” (at IA5) indicates, having concepts that “involve” one another is not merely a matter of two things having something in common; it requires that one thing have conceptual priority over the other. The possibility thus remains open that each of two substances could be understood without the aid of the concept of the other—​and thus neither would have a concept involving the other—​ and yet when both were understood, it would nevertheless be seen that they had something (i.e., an attribute) in common. Hence, if the inference from (a) to (b) is to be valid, it must (at least) be restricted to substances that do not share any attribute; and IP2’s phrase ‘having different attributes’ must be understood in that sense. Thus, if Spinoza intends a restriction of scope on IP2D, it must be a restriction that requires the weak reading of IP2. For the only plausible rationale for a restriction is that just described; and this rationale requires restricting the inference in IP2D to substances that do not share even a single attribute. In contrast, no rationale can be given for restricting the inference in IP2D to “substances that differ in one or more attributes,” as the strong reading of IP2 would demand. If the weak reading of IP2 is required, of course, then IP2 cannot be successfully used to justify (2) in IP5D. Moreover, if Spinoza intends a restriction of scope in IP2D, he would almost certainly be sufficiently aware of the rationale for his own restriction, and for the consequent weak reading of IP2 that the rationale requires, that he would not intend to use IP2 to justify (2). Perhaps, however, Spinoza restricts the scope of IP2 to substances “of different attributes” not because he thinks that the demonstration must be so restricted, but simply because he has no need of the more general conclusion, since he prefers to demonstrate IP5 in another way. If this latter interpretation is correct, then Spinoza would regard IP2D as itself strong enough to warrant the strong reading. Nevertheless, appeal to IP2D still would not fully overcome the Leibniz-​Bennett objection; for IP2D itself would be objectionable on the grounds that the inference from “two substances are in themselves and conceived through themselves” to “two substances are such that they have nothing in common” is valid only for substances that do not share any attribute. In other words, the proposed use of IP2D will be subject to the objection that Spinoza ought to have appreciated the rationale just described for restricting it, even if he did not actually appreciate it. Moreover, if Spinoza regards the restriction of IP2 to substances “having different attributes” as superfluous, then the fact that he nevertheless does not infer IP5 directly from IP2D would suggest that he does not wish to use IP2D in the derivation of IP5. If so, of course, then he would certainly not intend to justify premise (2) as a part of IP5D by appeal to IP2D. A third proposal, suggested by Allison, is to supplement IP5 with the thesis that each attribute is identical with its substance.16 Thus he writes:



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[F]‌or Spinoza, attributes are expressions of the essence, or nature, of substance. This allows him to claim that each attribute is substance, considered from a certain point of view or taken under a certain description, which, in turn, explains why he sometimes identifies substance and attribute. But if this is so, then it follows that attribute y of substance A is identical to attribute y of substance B, just in case they express the same nature or essence—​that is, are descriptions of the same thing. . . . Consequently, it turns out on analysis that if the two attributes are really identical, then they cannot express the nature of two distinct substances. Conversely, if they do express the natures of two distinct substances, then the attributes cannot be identical. The claim that Spinoza identifies a substance, not merely with the sum of its attributes, but with each of its attributes, is controversial. We need not decide its truth, however, in order to consider the proposal. For present purposes, the substance-​attribute identity thesis cannot be understood only to claim an identity between a substance and its own instance of each of its attributes. For that thesis would not prevent the existence of the pairs of substances on which the Bennett-​ Leibniz objection depends: one substance might be identical with its own instance of attribute A1, while another substance was identical with its own instance of A1 and with its own instance of A2.17 Hence, the substance-​attribute identity thesis must be understood to mean that for each kind of attribute, there is only one instance of it, identical with the substance that it characterizes. Then the thesis blocks the Bennett-​Leibniz pairs of substances—​but it is also an even stronger claim than IP5 itself, which it entails. As such, it is even more difficult to see how the identity thesis could be derived from Spinoza’s definitions and axioms than it is to see how IP5 itself could be. Certainly, the identity thesis does not occur in the Ethics prior to IP5. Hence, the problem of justifying (2) in IP5D will simply be replaced by the problem of justifying the strong identity thesis. For this reason, the proposed supplement to IP5 does not fully overcome the Bennett-​Leibniz objection. Moreover, it seems unlikely that Spinoza would rely on the strong identity thesis as a tacit premise of IP5D; for not only does he not state the thesis prior to IP5, but that thesis alone actually entails IP5, and would thereby render all the rest of his argumentation in IP5D entirely superfluous. Alan Donagan suggests a related but different proposal, relying not on an identity of substance and attribute, but rather on the relation by which attributes “constitute the essence” of substances. He writes: The supplement Spinoza’s proof needs to dispose of the objection is ready to hand. If the essences of the two substances differ because one is constituted by all the attributes that constitute the other, and by one more

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which the other lacks, then each of the attributes they have in common must constitute two different essences. However, the very idea of an attribute constituting really distinct essences seems unintelligible; and if it is, Leibniz’s objection fails. . . . Spinoza holds that an essence may be constituted by really distinct attributes, but nobody has seriously ascribed to him the inverse, that an attribute may constitute really distinct essences.18 In other words, from the proposed supplementary premise: (a) No attribute can constitute two or more distinct essences. together with the principle that: (b) If the essences of two substances differ because one is constituted by all the attributes that constitute the other, and by one more which the other lacks, then each of the attributes they have in common must constitute two different essences. taken together with the definition of ‘attribute’ given at ID4: (c) By attribute, I  understand what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence,19 it follows that: (d) Two substances cannot share some attributes but differ in others.

But it is upon the possibility of substances sharing some attributes while differing in others that the Leibniz-​Bennett objection depends; hence, if Spinoza is entitled to employ (a) and (b), the objection will be blocked. ‘Distinct [or ‘different’] essences’ in (a)  and (b)  clearly means “qualitatively different essences” and not merely “essences of numerically distinct substances.” For if it meant the latter, (a) itself would be highly controversial. Certainly, it would be disputed by any Cartesian who holds both that the essential attribute of all mental substances is thought, and that there is a multiplicity of such mental substances. Moreover, Donagan’s mention of (b) would then be superfluous, since (a) and (c) alone would entail IP5 itself. Interpreting ‘distinct essences’ to mean “qualitatively different essences,” however, does not remove all of the difficulties. For what, exactly, is the “constituting” relation? Does every attribute simply constitute its own essence of the substance which has it, or does every substance have



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a single essence constituted jointly by all of its attributes? If the first construal of the relation is correct,20 then the fact that substances of different attributes have different essences will not prevent them from also sharing some essences in common. Hence, if two substances which differ in some attributes share an attribute, that attribute will constitute the same essence for both substances—​in which case (b) will not be true, and so pairs of substances that share some but not all attributes need not run afoul of principle (a). Or suppose, on the other hand, that the second construal of the “constituting” relation is correct:  each substance must have only a single essence, but may have multiple attributes, each one of which “constitutes” that essence. Then the precise nature of the “constituting” relation between attribute and essence will be sufficiently open that the truth of (a)  will come into question. That is, it will not be obvious whether the same attribute cannot go to constitute different essences—​in particular, by “constituting” the essence of two different substances which have different total sets of attributes but which have that attribute in common. IP11 (“God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists”), a proposition on which Spinoza’s proof of monism depends, requires that at least one substance have multiple attributes; and Spinoza takes care to argue in IP10S that substances can have multiple attributes. The very question of whether the same attribute might not “constitute different essences” by belonging to substances with different sets of attributes is surely one of the first questions that any Cartesian who has been convinced by Spinoza’s arguments at IP10S or IP11D will want to raise. Prima facie, the possibility of one attribute constituting different essences is no less intelligible than the converse possibility of two distinct attributes each constituting the same essence of a substance to which they both belong. And although (as Donagan rightly remarks) acceptance of the former possibility has never been ascribed to Spinoza while acceptance of the latter possibility has been, that may only be because the former possibility is obviously incompatible with IP5 itself, whereas the latter possibility is (on the second construal of the “constituting” relation) required by IP10S and IP11. It is not because the former possibility is obviously ruled out by any thesis or argument Spinoza provides prior to IP5 or IP5D.21 On neither construal of the “constituting” relation, then, can the use of (a) and (b)  as supplementary premises fully overcome the Leibniz-​Bennett objection. Moreover, it seems unlikely that Spinoza would suppose that they should. For if the first construal were correct, (b)’s falsehood would surely be evident to him. And if the second construal were correct, then (a)’s need for justification in the light of the possibility of substances with multiple attributes should be almost equally evident; since he does nothing to justify (a) prior to IP5, it seems unlikely that he would nevertheless intend to use it as a tacit premise of IP5D.

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Not every response to the Leibniz-​ Bennett objection takes the form of proposing a supplementary premise. Thus, although Curley forcefully restates the objection, and observes that Spinoza himself asserts at IP10S that “it is far from absurd to attribute many attributes to one substance,” he nevertheless makes two important points in Spinoza’s (at least partial) defense. First, much of the metaphysics of the Ethics is developed against Descartes, and Descartes himself could not use the Leibniz-​Bennett objection to refuse assent to (2), since Descartes holds that no substance has more than one attribute. Secondly, Spinoza’s argument may also be effective for us, since to a large extent we share Descartes’s intuitions about this matter. There is, Curley remarks, a real problem involved in explaining how it is that a being with two attributes would constitute one being rather than two. If we can have no conception of substance apart from its principal attribute, what are we saying of a substance when we say that it is one, yet has two attributes?22 These points are important and valid; nevertheless, they cannot overcome the objection. Certainly, if Descartes were to read the Ethics, he would not avail himself of the Bennett-​Leibniz objection when (2) actually occurs in IP5D, since the objection depends on the possibility of substances with more than one attribute (or “principal attribute,” in Descartes’s terminology), a possibility which he rejects. However, Spinoza’s argument for monism at IP14D and IP14C requires acceptance of both IP5 and IP11 (i.e., that God, the substance of all possible attributes, necessarily exists). And if the demonstration of IP11 were to convince Descartes, he would at that moment be forced to grant not only the possibility but the reality of substances with more than one attribute. If the demonstration of IP11 becomes effective for Descartes, in other words, the use of (2) in the demonstration of IP5 must apparently then cease to be effective, and so the demonstration of monism will not be effective for Descartes either. And what is true of Descartes will also be true of us: if, as readers, we cannot accept IP11 without giving up the grounds of our previous commitment to IP5, then Spinoza cannot convince us of either IP14 or IP14C1, which depend on both.23 Thus, Descartes’s (and our) initial intuitions in favor of the “one attribute per substance” doctrine do not provide considerations capable of overcoming the Leibniz-​Bennett objection. Moreover, these intuitions must be overthrown by our acceptance of IP11; and since Spinoza shows himself in IP10S to be aware of the need to overthrow them prior to establishing IP11, it seems unlikely that he would nevertheless intend to appeal to them for the defense of IP5. I conclude that none of the proposals surveyed provides a way of fully overcoming the Leibniz-​Bennett objection on the basis of the resources available to Spinoza, and that none provides a likely account of Spinoza’s own intentions. It



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is therefore worth investigating whether a better response to the objection, and a likelier interpretation of Spinoza, is possible.

4.  Differences of Attributes The Leibniz-​Bennett objection arises from the fact that (2)  seems to ignore the possibility of substances that differ by sharing some but not all attributes. In order to see how this possibility might legitimately be ignored, let us focus on what is actually involved in two substances sharing a particular attribute. One way of putting the question Spinoza faces is this: Given that there may be a multiplicity of what we ordinarily call “things” present under a given attribute, how can it be established how many genuinely distinct substances are expressed or represented? More specifically, given all of the affections of an attribute A1, how, if at all, could two substances x and y be expressed within the realm of that attribute? In response to this question, we may distinguish four alternatives. The first alternative is that the two substances x and y will be distinct without any difference of affections or of attributes. Spinoza rules out this alternative, of course, at (1), by citing IP4 (to which I will return). The second alternative is that there will be a difference between the affections of x and the affections of y. This alternative, however, is the subject of Spinoza’s argument at (3)–​(6), an argument which, I have claimed, can plausibly be interpreted as showing that, on his definitions and axioms, differences of affections can be set aside because they will always be due to some prior difference of attributes. A third alternative is that there will be some difference of the attribute A1 itself—​prior to any difference of affections—​as it belongs to x and as it belongs to y. But such a difference, Spinoza argues in (2) of IP5D, requires that “A1” in fact be two different attributes and so “it will be conceded that there is only one [substance] of the same attribute” (emphasis added). Thus, the argument stipulates a strict criterion for two instances of attributes to be instances of “the same” attribute; and it is because of this stipulation that the argument is able to rule out the possibility of different instances of “the same attribute” having an intrinsic qualitative difference that is prior to any difference of affections. The criterion itself, as a stipulation, does not require defense. It is not, however, an unusual criterion: in gen­ eral, if two instances of characteristics differ intrinsically in some way, then they are instances of different characteristics. Furthermore, it is quite defensible: any way of trying to postulate an intrinsic qualitative difference between two instances of the same attribute would arguably amount either to regarding A1 as a compound of two other attributes, and hence not itself an attribute; or to regarding the difference simply as a difference of the affections of the attribute, rather than of the attribute itself.

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The fourth and remaining alternative is that the two substances will differ in attributes by differing not in the shared attribute A1 but only with respect to some other attribute or attributes. This is, of course, the kind of attribute-​sharing described by the Leibniz-​Bennett objection. But rather than concentrating on the relation of A1 to the other attributes of x and/​or y, let us instead consider for a moment how, precisely, x and y could share the given attribute A1 with no difference of that attribute. Since attributes constitute the essence of substances (ID4), every affection of substance must (by ID5) be conceived through some attribute (Spinoza confirms the correctness of this inference at IIP1D). The affections of a particular attribute are thus simply those that must be conceived through that attribute. Since, as argued in Section II of this essay, any difference of affections must be due to and conceived through some difference of the attributes through which they are conceived, it follows from the assumption that x and y do not differ in attribute A1 that x and y cannot differ in their affections of A1 either. This leaves only two subalternatives: that the affections of A1 in x are numerically identical with the affections of A1 in y; or that the affections of A1 in x are not numerically identical with the affections of A1 in y but are qualitatively identical with them in a way that results in no difference of affections of that attribute. However, the principle that a given affection can only be in one substance is not only universally conceded, it seems to be implied by ID5 (“By mode, I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived”), IA1 (“Whatever is, is either in itself or in another”), and IA2 (“What cannot be conceived through another must be conceived through itself”); and Spinoza’s later references to the substance/​affection relation also seem to presuppose that each affection is only in one substance. If we read ID5 and IA1 as indeed requiring that no affection can be in more than one substance, then substances x and y cannot share numerically identical affections; and this leaves only the subalternative that they share A1 without any difference of A1 by having qualitatively identical but numerically distinct sets of affections. But is it possible for two distinct substances to have qualitatively identical but numerically distinct sets of affections of an attribute in such a way that that there is no “difference of affections” between the two sets? ID5 states that: “By mode I  understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.” Yet if two sets of modes are qualitatively identical in such a way that there is no “difference of affections” between them, then it appears that they must be conceptually indistinguishable, i.e., conceived in exactly the same way. Hence, either both sets of modes can be conceived through a given substance or neither can be conceived through it. Accordingly, the supposition that two distinct substances have qualitatively identical sets of affections would lead to the conclusion that either both sets of affections can be conceived through both substances or neither set of affections can be



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conceived through either substance. But since the affections of substances are modes, which can only be conceived through exactly one substance (as we are interpreting ID5 and IA2), this will constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the supposition that two distinct substances can have qualitatively identical sets of affections. This conclusion could be resisted only if qualitatively identical sets of affections with no “difference of affections” could be conceptually distinguished from each other by their different relations to things that are themselves conceptually-​ distinguishable. But, by IP4D, differences of substance reduce to differences of attribute; and two qualitatively identical sets of affections of the same attribute could not be distinguished by their being affections of different attributes. Furthermore, since they are conceived completely through their own attribute, their difference also cannot be conceived through any other attribute; and, indeed, any reason to conceive of one set of affections as related to another attribute would equally be a reason to conceive of the other set as so related as well. Since the two sets of affections are qualitatively identical, neither can be conceptually distinguished by its relation to the other; and since there is no “difference of affections” between them, they also cannot be conceptually distinguished by the relations among their members. Finally, they cannot be distinguished by their relation to affections of other attributes, either. For once again, since they are conceived completely through their own attribute, their difference cannot be conceived through their relation to affections of any other attribute; and any reason for conceiving of one set of affections as related to a set of affections of another attribute would equally be a reason to conceive of the other set as so related as well. But according to IP4D, there are only substances and their affections.24 Hence, there cannot be two substances that share an attribute with no difference of affections of that attribute, as the fourth alternative would require. The Leibniz-​Bennett objection is therefore blocked. The argument just considered generates, in effect, a principle of the identity of indiscernibles for sets of affections. But this should not be surprising. For IP4D, on which IP5D partly depends, also embodies a principle of the identity of indiscernibles. It is instructive to compare them. IP4D may be outlined as follows:

(i) “Whatever is, is either in itself or in another.” (IA1) (ii) “By substance I understand what is in itself and conceived through itself, i.e, that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.” (ID3) (iii) “By mode I understand the affections of substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.” (ID5) (iv) “[O]‌ utside the intellect there is nothing except substances and their affections.” [ from (i)–​(iii); see note 25 below]

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(v) “[T]‌here is nothing outside the intellect through which a number of things can be distinguished from one another except substances  .  .  .  and their affections.” [ from (iv)] (vi) “By attribute I  understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence.” (ID4) (vii) “Two or more distinct things are distinguished from one another, either by a difference in the attributes of the substance or by a difference in their affections.” [ from (v)–​(vi)]

It may immediately be objected that (vii) does not follow from (v)  and (vi) except on the further assumption that two or more distinct things must be distinguished by a difference of something; and this assumption is a version of the identity of indiscernibles. Could not two substances be distinct without being distinguished at all? A line of reasoning similar to that just considered in connection with affections is also applicable to substances:  every substance must, by definition (ID3), be conceived through itself; but two indistinguishable substances are conceived in exactly the same way, and hence would either be conceivable through both substances or not conceivable through either substance. Since every substance must be conceived only through itself (ID3 and IA2), this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of the supposition that there could be two indistinguishable substances. Thus, I suggest that Spinoza neglects the Leibniz-​Bennett objection because, for the same reasons that had already led him to assume the identity of indiscernibles for substances in IP4D, he also assumes the identity of indiscernibles for sets of affections of an attribute in IP5D. Indeed, because IP4 applies not merely to distinguishing substances but also to any “two or more distinct things,” the version of the identity of indiscernibles tacitly employed in IP4D may itself be intended to have affections, and hence sets of affections, with its scope. Given the identity of indiscernibles for sets of affections, it follows that any difference between two substances sharing an attribute must manifest itself within that attribute, either as a difference of attribute or a difference of affections or both; for the situation envisioned by the Leibniz-​Bennett objection would require two substances to have qualitatively identical sets of affections, which then could not be conceived uniquely through either substance. Hence, only differences manifested within an attribute need be addressed in IP5D. Given the brevity of IP5D and the lack of any explicit consideration of the Leibniz-​Bennett objection, it is not possible to say with absolute certainty how, or whether, Spinoza would have tried to refute the objection. Nevertheless, there are several reasons to suppose that the interpretation of IP5D just described is a plausible interpretation of Spinoza’s own intentions. First, it allows Spinoza to reject



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the objection on grounds that do indeed follow from reasonable interpretations of his definitions and axioms, so that we need not ascribe to him any error about the consequences of his own axiomatic basis. Secondly, given the fact that Spinoza gives no explicit consideration to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection in IP5D, interpretations which make his grounds for rejecting it simple and fundamental are to be preferred over interpretations which make his grounds complicated and derivative. On the present interpretation, his grounds are simple and fundamental, depending chiefly on the definition of a mode or affection as being in and (completely) conceived through a substance to generate an identity of indiscernibles for sets of affections. Thirdly, the grounds suggested by the present interpretation also provide, at the same time, a plausible explanation for Spinoza’s tacit invocation of a principle of the identity of indiscernibles in the demonstration of the immediately preceding proposition, IP4; and the fact, if it is a fact, that Spinoza tacitly employs parallel considerations in IP4D would help to explain his willingness to do so also in IP5D. In the absence of any damaging objections to its adequacy as an interpretation, and in the absence of any alternatives of equal plausibility, therefore, I conclude that it is a likely interpretation of Spinoza’s intentions.

5. Conclusion In this essay, I have argued that Spinoza can overcome the Hooker-​Bennett objection to IP5D by construing the relation of being “in and conceived through” strongly enough to require that any difference in affections must be conceived through some difference in the nature of the substances themselves, and hence in their attributes. For on that construal, all differences of affections between substances will require a prior difference of attributes, and the attempt to find differences of affections can be reduced to the attempt to find differences of attribute. I  have also argued that, given this result, Spinoza can overcome the Leibniz-​Bennett objection by taking the relation of being “in and conceived through” in such a way that each thing (and hence each affection) must be in and conceived through exactly one substance. For then, since two instances of attributes cannot differ intrinsically in any way without being instances of different attributes, two substances sharing an attribute could not (by the previous result) differ in their affections of that attribute either, but then neither set of affections could be conceived uniquely through only one of the two substances, contrary to the nature of the substance/​affection relation. In addition, I have argued that it is plausible to suppose that Spinoza actually would have rejected the two objections for the reasons just described. Since the two objections can both be overcome, and since I have argued that the only two prior propositions employed in IP5D—​ namely, IP1 and IP4—​are themselves legitimate inferences from the definitions

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and axioms of Part I of the Ethics, I conclude that we may regard IP5 itself as a legitimate inference from those definitions and axioms. What then is the basis of Spinoza’s monism, and how is it related to Bennett’s explanatory rationalism? If a claim as strong as IP5 is indeed to be a legitimate inference from Spinoza’s definitions and axioms, then those definitions and axioms must themselves have considerable content. On my view, much of that content is to be located in the “in and conceived through” relation, which requires both that affections be completely conceived through their substances (in a sense strong enough to entail that differences in affections can always be conceived through differences of substance), and that everything be in and conceived through exactly one substance. Because the definitions of ‘substance’ and ‘mode’ that employ this relation are therefore rich in content, the claim that something is a substance or a mode is a powerful claim. Accordingly, claims about substances and affections might have been expected to leave many things outside their scope. This outcome is prevented, of course, by IA1 (“Whatever is, is either in itself or in another”) which, as we have seen in IP4D, Spinoza uses to infer that everything is either a substance or an affection of substance. (Spinoza repeats this use of IA1 in IP15D to infer from substance monism that everything whatever is in God; given the mutual entailment of “being in” and “being conceived through,” IA2 [“What cannot be conceived through another, must be conceived through itself”] would serve equally well for this purpose.) Thus, it is through IA1 (or, alternatively, IA2) that the ideal of complete conceivability which ID3 and ID5 apply to both substances and modes comes to be extended to everything whatever. The requirement that each thing be completely conceived, when combined with IA4’s requirement that everything be conceived through its cause (or reason), entails what Bennett calls explanatory rationalism: the thesis that whatever is the case can be explained. On my interpretation, the rejections of both the Hooker-​ Bennett objection and the Leibniz-​Bennett objection depend on the thesis that any difference of affections must involve a difference of attributes; and to the extent that the argument for that thesis depends on IA4, to that extent, at least, Spinoza’s monism depends on an application of explanatory rationalism. (In fact, the dependence is even stronger, since the second proof of IP11 also appeals to explanatory rationalism.) Bennett is therefore right to see explanatory rationalism near the heart of Spinoza’s metaphysics: it is an extension and application of his fundamental commitment to the complete conceivability and intelligibilty of all things. And it is that commitment, I suggest, that is at the very basis of Spinoza’s monism.

Notes 1. Quotations from Spinoza are taken from the Curley translation, CS. All abbreviations are those adopted by the present volume.



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2. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1984), Chapter 3, Section 17, pp. 66–​70. Following others, I shall cite this work as Study. 3. Michael Hooker, “The Deductive Character of Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, edited by Richard Kennington (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1980), pp. 17–​34; and William Charlton, “Spinoza’s Monism,” The Philosophical Review, vol. XC, no. 4 (October 1981), pp. 503–​529. Bennett cites both works in his bibliography, and mentions Charlton in a footnote to his discussion of the objection. 4. The objection appears in Leibniz’s reading notes (1678) to Part I of the Ethics (G I, 139–​150), at L 198–​199. 5. Partly for these reasons, perhaps, many commentators have sought to find a further Spinozistic argument for IPS at IP8S, in a discussion which concludes that “there exists only one [substance] of the same nature.” Although I cannot argue the point here, I believe that Spinoza’s argument at IP8S does not and is not intended to establish a conclusion as strong as that of IP5. On the contrary, it establishes, and is intended to establish, only the weaker conclusion that no two substances can share the same total set of attributes. This weaker conclusion, of course, could not serve in place of IP5 in Spinoza’s argument for monism. 6. Study, pp. 67–​68. Similar interpretations occur in Charlton, op. cit., pp. 514–​515, and R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza (London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 113–​114. 7. Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method:  A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 17–​18 and 145. 8. Henry Allison, Benedict de Spinoza:  An Introduction, revised edition (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 53–​54. The reference is to Bertrand Russell, A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (London:  Allen and Unwin, 1900), p. 59. 9. The importance of this paraphrase in applying IA4 to the definition of ‘substance’ is noted by Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 15. 10. In my “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” presented at the first Jerusalem Spinoza Conference at Hebrew University in 1987, and forthcoming in the volume of the proceedings of that conference, edited by Yirmayahu Yovel (Philosophia Verlag, 1990). 11. See Spinoza’s TdlE §95, II/​34/​29—​35/​9, at CS 39. See also Ethics IP19D. 12. Specifically, Spinoza infers God’s necessary existence from IP7 together with God’s definition as a substance consisting of infinite attributes. For more discussion of the use of IP7 in IP11D, see my “Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument,” The Philosophical Review, vol. LXXXVIII, no. 2 (April 1979), pp. 198–​223. 13. To be sure, this explanation could be blocked by IP5; for IP5 entails that, contrary to appearances, x and y could not both be possible substances. But of course it is precisely the truth of IP5 that is in question; to appeal to it in this context would be to incorporate IP5 into its own demonstration and thereby to argue in a circle.

88 Necessity and God’s Nature 14. A  slightly stronger but still weak reading—​one that I  prefer—​would be, “two substances, insofar as they have different attributes, have nothing in common.” For present purposes, however, nothing turns on the difference in scope between this weak reading and the one Bennett gives. 15. Spinoza explicitly employs IP2 three times in the Ethics, in IP6D, IP11D, and IP12D. IP6D and IP12D both use citations of IP5 to restrict the context in which IP2 is used to substances that share no attributes. Thus, only the weak reading of IP2 is needed in these demonstrations. IP11D initially appears to require the strong reading, but the weak reading suffices if it is combined with a tacit use of IP5 (which is, of course, available for use at this point of the Ethics). This tacit use of IP5 would not render the appeal to IP2 superfluous, since the point Spinoza wants to make in IP11D is one about causation, and Spinoza always mediates points about causation between substances by means of the concept “having nothing in common with”—​a concept that occurs in IP2 but not in IP5. 16. Henry Allison, op. cit., pp. 52–​53. 17. This version of the identity thesis does presumably entail by the transitivity of identity that, if there are any pairs of substances of the kind described by the Leibniz-​Bennett objection, then a substance y’s instance of an attribute A1 would be identical with y’s instance of an attribute A2, whereas a substance x’s instance of attribute A1 would not be identical with any instance of attribute A2. It may be argued that this consequence would be difficult to allow, and hence that this version of the identity thesis does count against the possibility of such pairs of substances. The consequence does not, however, seem to be ruled out by anything Spinoza provides prior to IP5. Furthermore, the consequence is not obviously any more difficult to allow than a consequence already entailed by this version of the identity thesis together with the transitivity of identity: namely, that each instance of an attribute in any multi-​attribute substance is identical to every instance of every other attribute of that substance. 18. Alan Donagan, Spinoza (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 70–​71. 19. Donagan does not cite ID4 explicitly, but it is clearly required in order to guarantee that every attribute “constitutes the essence” of the substance to which it belongs. 20. This alternative is perhaps especially suggested by the original 1677 Dutch translation (Nagelate Schriften) of ID6, which states that each attribute of God expresses “an” eternal and infinite essence. The lack of articles renders the original Latin ambiguous. See CS ix-​x and 405–​407 for an account of the relation of the Nagelate Schriften to the Latin original. 21. Nor is it ruled out, as far as I  can see, by the definition of ‘constitute’ that Donagan goes on to give later (Donagan, op. cit., p. 88): It is now possible to state generally what Spinoza means both when he says that an attribute ‘constitutes’ the essence of a substance, and when he says that two really distinct attributes ‘constitute’ the same essence. . . . Two or



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more attributes constitute the essence of the same substance if and only if it is a law of nature that whatever has either can neither be created nor destroyed, and that it immanently causes modes both in the same order as whatever has the other, and with the same interconnections, although insofar as it is constituted by one, its kind is distinct from what is insofar as it is constituted by the other. My uncertainty derives from my difficulty in interpreting the phrase I  have italicized. It would, of course, be possible to build into the definition of ‘constitute’ the requirement that no two attributes can “constitute” the essence of the same substance unless every substance having one of them also has the other, thus blocking the Leibniz-​Bennett objection. This would not be a satisfactory solution, however. For it would block the objection only at the cost of rendering it difficult or impossible for Spinoza to establish that any given characteristic is an attribute (i.e., something that constitutes the essence of a substance). In order to establish that a characteristic was an attribute, he would first have to establish the following: that if one substance has both that characteristic and also some attribute A1, then every substance has either both of them or neither. Furthermore, it would become debatable whether all or any substances had attributes in this sense. Thus, such a definition would only force the same difficulty to recur in a different form. 22. Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method, op. cit., pp. 15–​16. 23. The quotation from Curley cited above continues: In the special case of God, there may be a solution to that problem (see below, #11 [this refers to a later discussion of IP10 and IP10S]). In the case of beings with some, but not all, attributes, I can see no such solution. This may suggest to some a possible response to the difficulty I  have described: namely, to argue that, at IP10S (and hence prior to IP11 and IP14), Spinoza shows that God is the only possible exception to the general doctrine that there cannot be substances of more than one attribute. The response would not be sufficient, however, for two reasons. First, Spinoza’s declaration at IP10S that “it is far from absurd to attribute many attributes to one substance” is not directed towards an exception but is completely general, as are the grounds given for it. Secondly, and even more fundamentally, since IP10S does nothing of its own to rule out attribute-​sharing, the admission of God as the sole exception to the “one attribute per substance” doctrine would itself be sufficient to allow the formulation of a version of the Leibniz-​Bennett objection. The objection will now simply take the form of asking why God and a second substance could not share attribute A1 and yet “differ in their attributes” in virtue of the fact that God has all other attributes in addition to A1 while the second substance has no other attributes. This version of the objection is itself sufficient to undermine any version of IP5 that is strong enough to be useful in IP14D.

90 Necessity and God’s Nature 24. Spinoza deduces the claim that nothing exists except substances and their affections from IA1 (“Whatever is, is either in itself or in another”) plus ID3 and ID5 (the definitions of ‘substance’ and ‘mode’). It may be questioned whether the claim does follow, since it entails that something exists in itself if and only if it is conceived through itself, and that something exists in another if and only if it is conceived through that other. This suggests that Spinoza understands “a is in b” and “a is conceived through b” as mutually entailing, either through their own meaning, or through the mediation of one or more axioms. Such mediation may be supposed to occur either through IA4, in virtue of a relation between being “in” and being “caused by”; or it may be supposed to occur through IA6, on the assumption that the relation of being “in” is the relation that must hold between an object and the thing it is conceived through if true ideas are to correspond with their objects. In any case, given the fact that Spinoza seems to regard the inference from IA1, ID3, and ID5 to the claim that nothing exists but substances and modes as an obvious one, I take it as a constraint on the adequacy of the interpretation of the term “being in,” that “being in” and “being conceived through” should somehow be mutually entailing. For discussion of the relation between being “in” and being “conceived through,” see Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, op. cit., ­chapter 1.

Postscript

Shared Attributes and Monism Revisited

Crucial to Spinoza’s demonstration of Ethics 1p5 is his deployment of 1p1: “A substance is prior in nature to its affections.” Because he derives 1p1 from the definitions of “substance” (1d3) and “mode” (1d5), which are formulated in terms of “being in” and “being conceived through,” the priority in question can only be that of inherence, conception, or both. As Michael Della Rocca rightly notes in his important and influential article “Spinoza’s Substance Monism” (2002), such priority involves an asymmetry having two aspects: Positive: Modes are in and conceived through their substance. Negative: Substance is not in and not conceived through its modes.1 Whereas the replies I  developed on Spinoza’s behalf in “Ethics 1p5:  Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza’s Monism” to what I called the Hooker-​Bennett and Leibniz-​ Bennett objections2 depend primarily on Positive, Della Rocca develops replies to them based primarily on Negative. Although he allows that the Positive-​based replies would successfully refute the objections at which they are directed, he argues that the Negative-​based replies better capture Spinoza’s own thinking about the impossibility of shared attributes and his likely responses to the objections. In this postscript, I  will briefly compare the two Negative-​based replies with their Positive-​based counterparts and argue that, despite their ingenuity and Spinozistic tenor, neither Negative-​based reply is fully satisfactory on its own within the argumentative structure of the Ethics. For that reason, I conclude, the Positive-​based replies are more likely to capture Spinoza’s own thinking about the impossibility of shared attributes.

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I.  The Hooker-​Bennett Objection The Hooker-​Bennett objection is that the mere priority in nature of substances over their affections—​ that is, their modes—​ does not warrant putting those affections or modes “to one side” so as to dismiss the possibility of distinguishing two substances by a difference in their affections or modes, as Spinoza claims it does. Assuming that the conceptual dependence of affections or modes on substances described in 1p1 is strict and total, however, Positive, when added to 1p4d’s equation of distinction by substance with distinction by attribute, entails that any difference in affections or modes must be conceived through a difference in attributes. According to the Positive-​based reply I proposed to the Hooker-​Bennett objection, then, Spinoza can legitimately set aside the option of distinguishing two substances by means of a difference in their modes, because that will simply reduce to the other option of distinguishing substances by means of a difference of attributes—​an option that Spinoza rejects in 1p5d on the grounds that there will then not be two substances of the same attribute after all. The Negative-​based alternative proposed by Della Rocca holds, in contrast, that if there were two substances with the same attribute but differing in modes of that attribute, then neither substance could be conceived just through the attribute itself; we would instead have to conceive of one substance as “the substance with attribute A and modes m1,” another as “the substance with attribute A and modes m2,” and so on. Yet this, he argues, would seem to conceive of a substance through its modes after all, violating the priority of conception described in 1p1. In support of ascribing this Negative-​based reply to Spinoza, Della Rocca notes that, when setting the modes of substance “to one side,” 1p5d also refers to “substance considered in itself, that is, (by D3 and A6), considered truly,” a phrase that he proposes may be taken to invoke Negative rather than Positive. However, the appeal to this phrase as support for ascribing to Spinoza a fundamentally Negative-​based reply can be questioned. Substances do in fact have modes that are in them, and to conceive a substance as having modes in it is therefore to conceive the substance both truly and as it is in itself. Indeed, as Spinoza emphasizes in Ethics Part 5, all knowledge of modes is at the same time knowledge of the one substance, God, which those modes express; there is no evident need to “set them aside” in order to conceive or consider God truly or as it is in itself. Suppose then for a moment that (i) it were possible for two substances to have different total systems of modes of the same attribute, but that (ii) each such total system of modes could nevertheless be conceived entirely through the distinct substance of which it was a modal system. In that case, the difference of modes would arguably be an entirely true and legitimate way of conceiving the difference between the two substances in and through the substances themselves—​even if, at the same time, it would also be with and even by reference to the modes that were in them.



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In fact, of course, the stated supposition is absurd for Spinoza: the same attribute cannot have different total systems of modes in different substances. It seems, however, that that crucial absurdity can only be established and explained by the Positive-​based reply I have offered. I conclude that the full defense and explanation of the Negative-​based reply effectively requires appeal to its more fundamental Positive-​based counterpart.

II.  The Leibniz-​Bennett Objection The Leibniz-​Bennett objection is that two substances sharing the same attribute could after all be distinguished by their attributes, contrary to 1p5d, if they shared some attribute or attributes while differing in others. The Positive-​based reply that I proposed to this objection is that, given 1p1, it would be impossible to distinguish the modes of one such substance from the modes of any other substance within the domain (i.e., the manner of existence) of any purportedly shared attribute: either both sets of modes would be conceived through each substance or neither would be, since the character of the attributes through which they were conceived would be identical. The Negative-​based alternative that Della Rocca proposes, in contrast, requires that Spinoza employ the following principle, which we may call “Attribute Sufficiency”: Attribute Sufficiency: Each attribute of a substance, independently of any other attribute, is sufficient for conceiving that substance [in a way that uniquely distinguishes it from all others]. In addition to providing a name for the principle, I have added the bracketed phrase for the sake of clarity; for mere conception of a substance in a way that did not distinguish it from others (for example, as one might conceive of someone encountered on a crowded bus simply as “someone who was on the bus”) would not serve Della Rocca’s purposes. Understood as specified, at least, Attribute Sufficiency would be violated by any substance that shared some but not all of its attributes with a second substance, because, as Della Rocca argues, the substance could only be conceived—​or rather, it could only be conceived uniquely to the exclusion of any other substances—​via a thought that invoked both the shared and the unshared attributes. Della Rocca further proposes that Spinoza can derive Attribute Sufficiency from the conjunction of two definitions in the Ethics: 1d4: By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence.

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2d2: I say that to the essence of anything belongs that . . . without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing. Della Rocca acknowledges that Spinoza never actually states Attribute Sufficiency as he has formulated it. However, he notes that in 1p10s, Spinoza does make a seemingly less specific statement about the relation between a substance and an attribute of it: 1p10s: . . . each [attribute of a substance] expresses the reality, or being of the substance.3 This statement, Della Rocca argues, is in fact—​ and despite appearances—​ equivalent to Attribute Sufficiency given two assumptions about Spinoza’s use of the terms “expression” and “being”: Assumption 1: If something expresses the reality or being of a substance, then it also expresses the substance itself. Assumption 2: X expresses Y if and only if conceiving X is sufficient for conceiving Y [in a way that uniquely distinguishes it from everything else4]. In defense of ascribing Assumption 2 to Spinoza, Della Rocca points to an apparent use of Assumption 2 (or at least of one direction of the bi-​conditional) in a portion of 2p5d: 2p5d: The formal being of ideas is a mode of thinking (as is known through itself), i.e. (by IP25C), a mode that expresses, in a certain way, God’s nature insofar as he is a thinking thing. And so (by IP10) it involves the concept of no other attribute of God, and consequently (by IA4) is the effect of no other attribute than thought. And so the formal being of ideas admits God as its cause insofar as he is considered only as a thinking thing, etc., q.e.d. This defense of the ascription assumes, reasonably enough, that for Spinoza if X “involves” the concept of Y, then X is sufficient for conceiving Y. It is not obvious, however, that the argument of 2p5d employs any general assumption that if X expresses Y and “involves” the concept of Y, then it suffices for conceiving Y uniquely, in a way that distinguishes Y from everything else, as would be required for it to support an identification of 1p10 with Attribute Sufficiency. For the fact that the deployment of 1p10 in 2p5d concerns “the concept of no other attribute of God” than thought evidently results simply from the prior restriction of the subject matter of the demonstration solely to “modes of thinking,” and not from any



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general assumption about a necessary relation between “expression” and unique conception. Furthermore, the quoted statement from 1p10s occurs as part of Spinoza’s commentary on 1p10’s simple claim that “each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself,” a claim that has no obvious implications for the unique conception of substances themselves. Taken in context, the statement from 1p10s need mean no more than that each attribute of a substance is an expression of at least some of that substance’s reality or being, or that each attribute expresses that substance’s reality or being in at least one manner of way—​again without any implications about the unique conception of such a substance. Indeed, this reading is strongly suggested by the fact that Spinoza almost immediately goes on in 1p10s to elaborate on 1p9’s correlation of number of attributes with degree of reality, writing that “each being must be conceived under some attribute, and the more reality, or being it has, the more it has attributes which express necessity, or eternity, and infinity.” Finally, and tellingly, Spinoza concludes 1p10s by urging, But if someone now asks by what sign we shall be able to distinguish the diversity of substances, let him read the following propositions, which show that in Nature there exists only one substance . . . so that sign would be sought in vain. Yet if he had stated Attribute Sufficiency or its intended equivalent only a few sentences previously, there would have been no need to urge such patience on his readers, for any attribute of a substance would now be known to be a sign sufficient to distinguish that substance from the diversity of other substances. Even if 1p10s does not state anything like Attribute Sufficiency, however, Della Rocca holds that there remains an advantage in basing Spinoza’s reply to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection on such a principle because it grounds the reply broadly on Negative, which is the same aspect of substance-​mode asymmetry that he has already argued is central to Spinoza’s reply to the Hooker-​Bennett objection. But if, on the other hand, Spinoza’s reply to the Hooker-​Bennett objection depends more fundamentally on Positive, as I have just argued, then it is instead closeness of relation to that aspect of the asymmetry that will constitute an interpretive advantage. Furthermore, the Positive-​based reply to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection that I have proposed makes better sense of Spinoza’s statement in 1p5d that “if [a distinction of substances is drawn] only by a difference in their attributes, then it will be conceded that there is only one of the same attribute.” For this sentence can easily be understood as implying that different substances cannot be successfully distinguished or conceived within the realm of any given attribute; it seems much harder, in contrast, to interpret it as making an appeal to Attribute Sufficiency.

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The deepest difficulties with ascribing to Spinoza Della Rocca’s ingenious Negative-​based reply to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection, however, lie in the unavailability to Spinoza of its essential principle, Attribute Sufficiency, at 1p5 in the structure of the Ethics. First, it is doubtful whether Spinoza can derive the principle at all, understood with its needed qualification of unique conception, from 1d4 and 2d2 as Della Rocca proposes. For although 1d4 states that an attribute “constitutes the essence” of a substance that has it, Spinoza quite clearly seems to recognize elsewhere in the Ethics “essences” (such as that of “man” at 1p8s2 and 2a1) the conception of which suffices only for conceiving a kind of thing and not a unique individual of that kind. Second, even if Spinoza could derive Attribute Sufficiency from 1d4 and 2d2, Spinoza does not offer the latter definition until the beginning of Ethics Part  2. If he regarded it as essential to blocking the Leibniz-​Bennett objection in 1p5d, he would presumably have offered it at the outset of Part 1. To be sure, the statement that Della Rocca treats as a hidden equivalent to Attribute Sufficiency—​namely, the unargued remark of 1p10s that each attribute of a substance “expresses the reality or being of the substance”—​does occur prior to Part 2. Even it, however, still occurs only after 1p5d, where it would be needed. By the end of the Ethics, of course, Spinoza would certainly accept Attribute Sufficiency as a proposition about the unique conception of a substance through any one attribute, since the substance monism of 1p14 (“Except God, no substance can be or be conceived”) guarantees that any substance conceived through an attribute will be conceived uniquely. But since 1p5 is a crucial premise for 1p14, 1p14 cannot be employed in a defense of 1p5 without circularity. It appears that Spinoza does not state or employ Attribute Sufficiency in the Ethics, nor is it a principle that he would be entitled to employ at 1p5. I conclude that the Positive-​based reply to the Leibniz-​Bennett objection is preferable to and more likely to capture Spinoza’s intentions than the Negative-​based reply, just as the Positive-​based reply to the Hooker-​Bennett objection is both preferable to and more likely to capture Spinoza’s intentions than the Negative-​based reply to that objection.

Notes 1. Michael Della Rocca, “Spinoza’s Substance Monism,” in Spinoza:  Metaphysical Themes, edited by Olli Koistinen and John Biro (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2002): 11–​37. Della Rocca does not name these aspects, but he lists them in numbered order—​the reverse of the order here.



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2. Della Rocca calls these problems “the different modes problem” and “the different attributes problem,” respectively. 3. Della Rocca also reads Spinoza as presupposing a principle like Attribute Sufficiency in Epistle 9, to Simon de Vries. 4. I have again added the needed bracketed phrase for clarity.

4

Spinoza’s Necessitarianism

In a letter dated July 22, 1675, Henry Oldenburg advises Spinoza not to include in his “five-​part Treatise [the Ethics] anything which may appear to undermine the practice of Religious virtue” (Letter 62). In response to Spinoza’s subsequent request to know the specific doctrines that he intends (Letter 73), Oldenburg reports on the reactions of readers of the earlier Theologico-​Political Treatise: I will tell you what it is that causes them most distress. You seem to assert the fatalistic necessity of all things and actions: and they say that if this is admitted and affirmed, then the nerves of all laws, of all virtue and religion, are cut through, and all rewards and punishments are empty. (Letter 74) To this, Spinoza replies immediately and firmly: At last I  see what it was that you asked me not to publish. Since, however, this very thing is the principal basis of all those which are contained in the Treatise [the Ethics] I had intended to publish, I want to explain in what sense I maintain the fatalistic necessity of all things and of all actions. For in no way do I subject God to fate, but I conceive that everything follows with inevitable necessity from the nature of God, just as all conceive that it follows from the nature of God Himself that He should understand Himself. (Letter 75; my emphasis) Spinoza develops this “principal basis” throughout Part I of the Ethics, concluding that “In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way” (EIp29), and that “Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced” (EIp33).



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How are these conclusions to be understood? It is widely agreed that Spinoza’s position entails determinism: the doctrine that every event is causally determined from antecedent conditions by the laws of nature. But there has been little consensus concerning the further question of whether his position also entails what we may call “necessitarianism”: the doctrine 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 adopt the Leibnizian mode of expression, that the actual world is the only possible world. Stuart Hampshire has asserted that Spinoza is indeed committed to necessitarianism; Curley has argued that he is best interpreted as committed to its denial; Matson, Jarrett, and Bennett have maintained that he inconsistently commits himself to both necessitarianism and its denial; while Delahunty appears to hold that Spinoza’s formulations are sufficiently ambiguous that he commits himself neither to the doctrine nor to its denial.1 With respect to the actual substance, its attributes and its infinite modes, Spinoza’s position seems straightforward: they exist of necessity, and are the only ones there could have been.2 If there is any contingency to be found in his universe, therefore, it evidently rests with the finite modes. But the possibility of different finite modes is a more difficult question. EIp28 asserts that every finite thing is caused to exist and to produce an effect by another finite cause that is caused to exist and to produce an effect by yet another finite cause, “and so on, to infinity.” Since causes produce their effects necessarily for Spinoza (EIax3), it follows that the existence and action of each finite mode is, given the antecedent existence of its cause, inevitable at the time it is produced. Moreover, because the chain of prior finite causes for each finite mode reaches to infinity, it also follows that there has been no point in the entire duration of the universe at which two different prospective sets of finite modes constituted genuinely alternative possible futures. Nevertheless, even this latter conclusion does not entail that the actual total series of finite modes as a whole is a necessary one; for it leaves open the question of whether there could not instead have been, from eternity, some other equally possible total series of finite modes, one equally compatible with all of the necessary constraints on such a series. If Spinoza allows that there could have been a different total series of finite modes, then for all its invocation of necessity and inevitability his metaphysics will not be necessitarian. For, to each such total series there will correspond a different “possible world”—​that is, a different way the universe genuinely could have been. Thus, the question of Spinoza’s necessitarianism is largely centered on the necessity or contingency of the total series of finite modes. In this chapter I  will argue for three theses:  (1) Spinoza is not positively committed by anything he says to the denial of necessitarianism; (2) Spinoza is positively committed by what he says to the truth of necessitarianism; and (3) if we

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do understand Spinoza as a necessitarian, then we can make better sense of two fundamental Spinozistic doctrines—​his monism and his doctrine that every internally adequate idea corresponds to its object—​as doctrines that are indeed founded on the “principal basis” of the “necessity of all things and actions.” Although each of the three theses for which I will argue is deductively independent of the others, in the sense that they could be true or false in any combination without contradiction, they are nonetheless mutually supporting. Taken together, these theses constitute a strong case for regarding Spinoza as a necessitarian. I will defend the theses in order.

I There are three textual grounds on which Spinoza has been thought to be committed to a plurality of possible worlds and hence to the denial of necessitarianism: (1) the relation he describes between the finite modes and the “absolute nature” of the attributes; (2) his distinction between essences that involve necessary existence and those that do not; and (3) his distinction between essential and inessential characteristics of things. 1. Finite modes and the “absolute nature” of attributes. EIp28d states that: [W]‌hat is finite and has a determinate existence could not have been produced by the absolute nature of an attribute of God; for whatever follows from [sequitur] the absolute nature of an attribute of God is eternal and infinite. (by P21) There are two different ways in which this claim might be thought to commit Spinoza to a plurality of possible worlds.3 a. “Following from.” The first and more general of these ways does not demand that we assign any specific interpretation to the “absolute nature of an attribute” at all, so long as that “nature” is taken to be expressible in some propositional content. The argument, proposed by Bennett, is as follows: EIp21 and EIp28d both entail that finite modes do not “follow from” the absolute nature of any attribute; but it is a theorem in most systems of entailment logic that a necessary truth is entailed by—​i.e., “follows from”—​any proposition whatever; hence, we must conclude that the existence of any particular finite mode cannot be a necessary truth.4 Bennett himself sets this argument aside on the grounds that the relevant theorem of entailment logic has not always been well-​known and remains controversial, so that there is no reason to think Spinoza was aware of it or held it. In fact, however, we can go further: Spinoza can and must reject the theorem, at least as a claim about the relation that he intends by “following from.”



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He must reject it in view of its unacceptable consequences. To take one example, the existence of every infinite mode is necessary; but if every infinite mode therefore “followed from” every other infinite mode, Spinoza’s distinction between immediate and mediate infinite modes, which is drawn in terms of that relation (EIp23d; see also Letters 63–​64), would collapse. Moreover, he clearly intends “y follows from x” to entail “x causes y,” as the cited passage from EIp28d indicates.5 Yet, surely he could not accept the consequence that every necessary state of affairs is a cause of every other. If it were, then every infinite mode of a given attribute would be both cause and effect of every infinite mode of every other attribute, contrary to EIIp6; and, even worse, every infinite mode would also be the cause of God’s existence, contrary to EIIp6c. He can reject the theorem because, in saying that “y follows from x,” he means considerably more than simply that “x entails y,” as the latter proposition is understood in most contemporary modal and entailment logics. In these logics, the meaning of “x entails y” is exhausted by the claim that there is no possible world in which x is true and y is false. For Spinoza, in contrast, to speak of x as following from y is to locate x specifically as a necessitating cause and ground of y within a causal order of the universe that is at once dynamic and logical. Thus, if the Spinozist “following-​from” relation is to be identified with a kind of entailment at all, it must be identified with the entailment relation of a “relevance logic,” one whose relevance condition is satisfied only by priority in the causal order of nature.6 Relevance logics, because of the additional requirements they impose on the entailment relation, generally do not satisfy the theorem Bennett cites. b. “Absolute nature.” However, that theorem is by no means the only basis on which EIp21 and EIp28d may be thought to be incompatible with necessitarianism. For it may be argued that once we understand more specifically what is meant by “the absolute nature” of an attribute (alternatively:  an “attribute  .  .  .  insofar as it is considered absolutely” [EIp23d]), we will see that the failure of finite modes to follow from this nature will require them to be contingent. If, for example, we interpret the “absolute nature of an attribute” to be its true or complete nature, then it will be difficult to see how finite modes could be rendered fully necessary without following from an attribute’s “absolute” nature—​for the attributes constitute the essence of God, who is the only independently necessary being. There is reason to doubt, however, that “absolute nature” should be interpreted as “true or complete nature” in this context. For Spinoza also asserts repeatedly that all things—​clearly including finite modes—​must “follow from the necessity of God’s [or “the divine”] nature” (EIp16, EIp17s, EIp26d, EIp33d, EIp33s1). At EIp29s, moreover, he equates “following from the necessity of God’s nature” with following “from any of God’s attributes.” Hence, the finite modes do evidently follow from the attributes, but not from the “absolute nature” of the attributes—​which would be a contradiction if “absolute nature” meant simply “real or complete nature.”7

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Can the notion of “absolute nature” be given a different interpretation, not subject to this difficulty? Its use in the Ethics gives us two clues. The first clue is in EIp21d, where Spinoza offers two parallel reductio ad absurdum arguments. The first argument concludes that whatever follows from the absolute nature of an attribute of God must be infinite, while the second concludes that whatever follows from the absolute nature of an attribute must have always had to exist or be eternal. The first argument, which for the sake of definiteness uses “thought” as a representative attribute, may be outlined as follows: (1) “In some attribute of God [ for example, “thought”] there follows from its absolute nature something that is finite” (Spinoza’s assumption). (2) Every attribute of God, including thought, is “necessarily . . . infinite by its nature” (by EIp11). (3) A thing can be finite only if it is limited or “determined through” something of the same nature (by EIdef2). (4) There is thought that does not constitute the finite thing in question (from (1)–​(3)). (5) “On that account [the finite thing] does not follow necessarily from the nature [of this thought] insofar as it is absolute thought” (from (4); my emphasis). (6) Whatever “follows from the necessity of the absolute nature of the attribute itself . . . must necessarily be infinite” (from the contradiction between (1) and (5), thus discharging Spinoza’s original assumption). As the direct inference from (4)  to (5)  shows, Spinoza regards it as self-​evident that whatever follows from the “absolute nature” of a thing must necessarily be manifested pervasively throughout that attribute. The second, parallel argument of the demonstration—​concerning eternity and “determinate existence or duration”—​similarly takes it as self-​evident that whatever follows from the absolute nature of an attribute necessarily exists permanently, or without durational limits, throughout that attribute. The second clue is in EIp28d. There Spinoza argues that, since finite modes must be determined to exist and to produce their effects by God, yet cannot follow from the “absolute nature” of any attribute, they must follow instead from the attribute “insofar as it is considered to be affected by some mode.” “Following from the absolute nature of an attribute” is thus contrasted not with failing to follow from the attribute at all, but rather with following from the attribute as that attribute is considered in a different way.8 From these two uses of the notion of “absolute nature of an attribute,” we can form a reasonable hypothesis about its purpose. An attribute, if it is to have any internal diversity or change, must be qualified in different ways at different places and times. Now, some things about an attribute will follow from the very nature



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of the attribute regardless of how it is qualified or “affected,” and thus will follow equally from it under all circumstances; accordingly, things of this kind must be infinite and eternal, in the sense of being necessarily pervasive and permanent throughout the whole range of the attribute. This is the argument of EIp21d concerning infinite modes. Other things, however—​those local and temporary features that actually constitute the attribute’s diversification and change—​cannot similarly follow from the nature of the attribute without regard to how it is qualified or “affected”; otherwise, they would be necessarily pervasive and permanent as well. Hence, these finite things must follow only from some non-​pervasive or non-​permanent qualifications or “affections” of the attribute. In order to be non-​ pervasive or non-​permanent, these affections must themselves follow from non-​ pervasive or non-​permanent affections, and so on to infinity. This is the argument of EIp28d concerning finite modes. The distinction at issue—​between that which follows from the attribute “absolutely” or without regard to how it is affected, and that which follows from the attribute only where and when the attribute is qualified or affected in some particular way—​is, thus, one that Spinoza would be committed to drawing simply by a commitment to the attributes’ manifesting internal diversity and change through their modes, regardless of his attitude toward the contingency or necessity of the series of those modes. Still, it is one thing to say that Spinoza’s use of the distinction need not be motivated by a belief in the plurality of possible series of finite modes, and another to say that his use of the distinction does not require such a plurality. Could Spinoza allow the actual series of finite modes to be necessary while denying that those finite modes follow from the “absolute” nature of the attributes? In order to answer this, we must first ask how, if at all, he could suppose the actual series of finite modes to be necessary. How could the series of finite modes be the only possible one? To put the question more precisely, how could there be only one possible solution to the problem of how an attribute is to be diversely modified by an infinite series of finite modes? Of course, such necessarily pervasive and permanent features of the attribute as its laws of nature—​contained or “inscribed” in the attribute or its infinite modes (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect 101)—​will provide one kind of necessary constraint. Even so, however, the hypothesis that the actual total series of finite modes is the only one that is completely consistent with the laws of nature may seem too wildly optimistic for Spinoza to have accepted it. To this it might be replied simply that: (i) these laws of nature may be highly complicated, and (ii) it also seems wildly optimistic to suppose that the actual set of laws of nature is the only completely consistent set, yet Spinoza evidently does accept that hypothesis. However, there is another, fuller response available; for, in addition to the general laws of nature, Spinoza can allow a further, crucial, necessary constraint on the series of finite modes. He holds that everything

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whatever exists unless prevented from doing so (EIp11d), that a substance’s power to exist varies with its reality and perfection (EIp11s) and that everything expresses some degree or other of reality and perfection (EIp16d; reality and perfection are identified in EIIdef 6). Furthermore, he evidently holds that “substance with less than the greatest possible number of attributes” is a contradiction, on the grounds that greater number of attributes” is correlated with greater reality (by EIp9), so that the existence of God is necessary, while the existence of substances of fewer attributes is impossible.9 It is therefore plausible that he would also regard “substance whose attributes express less than the greatest possible reality and perfection through their series of finite modes” as a contradiction, thus making the series of finite modes that expresses the highest degree of reality and perfection necessary, and all lesser series impossible. As Donagan has noted, this constraint is suggested by EIp33s1:  “From the preceding it clearly follows that things have been produced by God with the highest perfection, since they have followed necessarily from a given most perfect nature.”10 (See also EIp16d itself.) It now remains for us to consider whether a series of finite modes that is necessary in such a way would be compatible with Spinoza’s claim that finite modes do not follow from the absolute nature of the attributes. For, after all, it might be objected, if there is only one possible solution to the problem of how to realize a series of finite modes for an attribute, then that series must, after all, follow (either immediately or mediately) from the absolute or unqualified nature of the attribute itself. To this objection there are two alternative replies. First, if Spinoza accepts the requirement that the series of finite modes must express the highest degree of reality and perfection, then he could well maintain that the series of finite modes does not follow from the absolute nature of the attribute, but only from that nature together with this additional necessary constraint. This constraint, it might be argued, pertains to the nature of the attributes, but not to their absolute nature, as evidenced by the fact that the constraint requires different modifications at different places and times. Second, however (and this reply is available whether he accepts the additional constraint or not), Spinoza nowhere denies that the whole series of finite modes follows from the absolute nature of the attributes. His claim is only that no individual finite mode follows from it. Indeed, if the total series of finite modes as a whole were itself an infinite mode—​not an implausible suggestion, given its pervasive and permanent extent—​then it would necessarily “follow from” the absolute nature of the attributes, by EIp23. In that case, the total infinite series of finite modes would be an infinite mode having finite modes as parts; but that is not unprecedented, since the human mind is a finite mode that is nevertheless a part of the infinite intellect of God, by EIIpllc. In fact, the total infinite series of finite modes might well turn out to be identical with the “whole of nature [as] one Individual, whose parts  .  .  .  vary in infinite ways, without any change [in]



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the whole Individual” that Spinoza describes in lemma7s preceding EIIp14, and which he seems, in Letter 64, to identify as a mediate infinite mode. The crucial point, however, is that no finite mode would follow, considered independently of its membership in this series, from the nature of an attribute. For, if the mode followed independently, it would have to be necessarily pervasive and permanent throughout the attribute, i.e., it would have to be an infinite mode. Instead, each finite mode would follow from the nature of an attribute, but only in virtue of its membership as part of the one consistently constructible or maximally perfect series of finite modes. As a result, it would follow from an attribute only insofar as the attribute is considered to be affected by particular modes —​just as EIp28d asserts.11 Hence, the failure of individual finite modes to follow from the nature of an attribute “considered absolutely,” is, on the proposed interpretation, compatible with there being only one possible total series of such modes. 2. Essence and necessary existence. EIIax1 reads: “The essence of man does not involve necessary existence.”12 At first glance, this axiom may suggest that the existence of particular men is not necessary, and hence must be contingent. Yet EIp29 asserts that “In nature there is nothing contingent,” and EIp33s1 asserts that “A thing is called contingent only because of a defect of our knowledge.” Is this not a contradiction? We may begin by noting that the axiom does not claim that the existence of particular men is not necessary; it claims, rather, that necessary existence is not “involved” in the essence of men. It is thus simply a particular instance of the distinction drawn at EIp33s1: A thing is called necessary either by reason of its essence or by reason of its cause. For a thing’s existence follows necessarily either from its essence and definition or from a given efficient cause. And a thing is also called impossible from these same causes—​viz. either because its essence, or definition, involves a contradiction, or because there is no external cause which has been determined to produce such a thing. But a thing is called contingent only because of a defect of our knowl­ edge. For if we do not know that the thing’s essence involves a contradiction, or if we do know very well that its essence does not involve a contradiction, and nevertheless can affirm nothing certainly about its existence, because the order of causes is hidden from us, it can never seem to us either necessary or impossible. So we call it contingent or possible.13 This distinction is often interpreted as one between two degrees of necessity: real logical or metaphysical necessity, on the one hand, and mere causal inevitability in virtue of antecedent conditions, on the other. The “contingency”

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that Spinoza contrasts with both would amount, on this interpretation, simply to chance, or an absence of inevitability; and his denials of such contingency would therefore be simply assertions of determinism rather than of necessitarianism. It must be emphasized, however, that Spinoza does not present the distinction as one between two degrees of necessity, but rather as one between two sources of necessity: a thing’s own essence, and a cause other than the thing itself. And, once again, this is a distinction that Spinoza would have to draw, given his commitment to the internal diversification of the attributes through a series of finite modes, whether he were a necessitarian or not. For the essence of an actually existing finite mode cannot contain a contradiction; if it did, it would be like a square circle, incapable of existing at all. On the other hand, the finite mode’s own essence cannot “involve,” or be the sufficient source of, its existence; for then it would require no external cause for its existence and could not be prevented, through the absence of such a cause, from existing pervasively and permanently (see EIp11d). Hence, the individual members of a series of finite modes must have essences that, taken by themselves, do not necessitate the thing’s existence without regard to external circumstances; rather, their essences must be capable of being instantiated under appropriate conditions (i.e., affections of the attribute), as part of a series of finite modes. (One might say that it pertains to their essence not to exist simpliciter, but rather to exist given the presence of a particular efficient cause.) If the cause of such a finite mode is itself inevitable but only contingent, then the resulting finite mode will be inevitable but contingent. If, on the other hand, the series of causes that determines the finite thing to exist and to act at a particular time and place is itself the only possible series, then the existence of the finite mode at that time and place will itself be completely necessary, even though the necessity of its limited durational existence is derived from its place in the only possible series, rather than from its own essence considered in isolation. It might of course be argued that if the series of finite modes is completely necessary, then the limited durational existence of a finite mode must after all “follow from,” and hence be “involved in” the thing’s own essence; but this conclusion is warranted only if we accept the theorem that whatever is necessary “follows from” everything whatever; and this is a theorem that, as we have already seen, Spinoza can and must reject. 3. Essential properties. Throughout the Ethics, Spinoza appears to employ a distinction between the characteristics of a thing that are essential and those that are not essential. It may be argued, however, that if every actual state of affairs is necessary, then every characteristic of a thing must be essential to it, so that Spinoza’s use of the distinction is incompatible with necessitarianism. As Bennett expresses it:



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The strongest pressure on Spinoza to allow that at least some propositions are contingent comes simply from its being hard to do good philosophy while staying faithful to the thesis that this is the only possible world . . . . for example, his uses of the concept of a thing’s essence, meaning those of its properties which it could not possibly lack, are flattened into either falsehood or vacuous truth if there are no contingent truths; because then every property of every thing is essential to it.14 Bennett offers EIp5d and EIIIp6d as examples of arguments that are said to rely crucially on an essential/​inessential distinction, and hence on the existence of contingent truths. a. Essence, property and accident. In assessing this line of argument, we must distinguish between two senses of “essence.” In the first sense—​due ultimately to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, and common particularly in scholastic philosophy—​the essence of a thing consists of the characteristics in virtue of which it is the thing that it is, and which, therefore, the thing must always have. This essence is distinguished both from the thing’s properties and from its accidents. The properties are characteristics that do not belong to the essence but follow from and are deducible from it; for this reason, a thing must always have all of its properties. The converse, however, does not hold: the essence is not properly deducible from the properties.15 Accidents, in contrast, are characteristics that do not follow from the essence of the thing at all, and which the thing may therefore either acquire or lose without affecting its identity; their source is thus at least partly outside the essence of the thing. In the second sense of “essence”—​ historically derivative from the first, and common particularly in contemporary modal logic—​a characteristic is said to be essential, or to be part of a thing’s essence, if it is a characteristic that the thing has in every possible world in which the thing exists at all. For lack of better terms, I will speak of essences of the first kind as “scholastic” essences, and essences of the second kind as “logical” essences. It is clear that Spinoza uses “essence” and related locutions to denote scholastic essences. At TIE 95, for example, he insists that a perfect definition “will have to explain the inmost essence of the thing, and to take care not to use certain properties [propria] in its place”; and at TIE 96, in discussing the conditions for a good definition of a created thing, he stipulates that 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.” The same distinction between essence and properties is clearly evident in the Ethics at EIIp40s2, where Spinoza contrasts knowledge of the second kind, which depends on “adequate ideas of the properties of things,” with knowledge of the third kind, which “proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the . . . essence of things.” Other particularly explicit

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invocations of the essence/​property distinction occur at EIp16d, and at EIIIdef.aff. VIexp and EIIIdef.aff. XXIIexp.16 The essence/​property distinction, as Spinoza draws it, does not require that a property belong to its bearer only contingently; on the contrary, it must belong to it necessarily, since all properties are deducible from the essence alone. Consider Spinoza’s own example: If a circle, for example, is defined as a figure in which the lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal, no one fails to see that such a definition does not at all explain the essence of the circle, but only a prop­ erty of it. (TIE 95) Spinoza is certainly well aware that this property, though not the essence of the circle, is a necessary rather than a contingent feature of it. Spinoza also clearly allows that things have characteristics that are neither part of the thing’s essence nor properties of it, characteristics that do not follow from the essence of the thing alone, and in that sense correspond to the “accidents” of the traditional distinction. Among the most important examples of such characteristics, for Spinoza’s purposes, are human passions. But the fact that such characteristics do not follow solely from the essence of their bearer requires only that their source be at least partly outside the bearer; it does not require that there be a possible world in which the bearer would not have been caused to have them. Hence, neither Spinoza’s own distinction between essence and properties, nor the distinction between these and characteristics that are imposed from outside, commits him to a denial of necessitarianism. b. Essence in EIp5d. Spinoza’s own uses of the term “essence” are most naturally understood in the scholastic sense, a sense in which the existence of “inessential” characteristics is compatible with necessitarianism. Still, it may be objected, Spinoza might nonetheless rely on the supposition that some things have some of their characteristics only contingently, without using the term “essence” in connection with it. And, in fact, in neither of the two arguments Bennett cites as examples—​ EIp5d and EIIIp6d—​does the term “essence” occur. Thus, we must still investigate whether these arguments commit Spinoza to the existence of logically inessential properties, under whatever name, and hence to a denial of necessitarianism. EIp5 and its demonstration read as follows: P5: In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute. Dem.: If there were two or more distinct substances, they would have to be distinguished from one another either by a difference in their attributes,



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or by a difference in their affections (by P4). If only by a difference in their attributes, then it will be conceded that there is only one of the same attribute. But if by a difference of their affections, then since a substance is prior in nature to its affections (by P1), if the affections are put to one side and [the substance] is considered in itself, i.e. (by D3 and A6), considered truly, one cannot be conceived to be distinguished from another, i.e. (by P4), there cannot be many, but only one [of the same nature or attribute], q.e.d. One of the main problems in understanding this demonstration is to understand why EIp1 (“A substance is prior in nature to its affections”) entitles us to put “the affections . . . to one side.” Bennett’s suggestion is that: If we take this [IP1] to entail that any state of a substance is accidental to it, i.e., that a substance could have lacked any of its actual [affections], then we get the following argument. Distinct substances must be unalike in respect of some properties which they cannot lose; for if they were unalike only in respect of their accidental properties they could become perfectly alike, and so, by the identity of indiscernibles, become identical. It is obviously intolerable to suppose that two substances could have been—​or could become—​one. So between any two substances there must be an unlikeness in respect of nonaccidental features, i.e., of attributes.17 Ingenious as this proposed interpretation is, it is nevertheless subject to a number of serious objections. First, as Bennett emphasizes, it would be a logical fallacy for Spinoza to argue from “x and y are unalike only in respect of their accidental properties” to “x and y could become exactly alike.” Second, it would be a further logical fallacy for Spinoza to move from “x and y could have been exactly alike” to “x and y could become exactly alike.” Third, although Spinoza would indeed reject the claim that two substances could have been or could become one, he is not yet in a position to reject such a claim at EIp5. Indeed, the clearest grounds on which Spinoza could reject it would be EIp14 and EIp14cl, which assert that God is necessarily the only substance; but EIp14 is derived in part from EIp5, and so could hardly serve as a justification for it. Fourth, the kind of priority at issue in EIp1 must be a kind of priority derivable from the premises of EIp1. These premises are simply EIdef3 and EIdef5, the definitions of “substance” and “mode,” which mention only the priority of “being in” and “being conceived through.” These kinds of priorities may well be related to the scholastic inessentiality to substance of its modes, but the definitions do not imply that modes must be logically inessential, as the proposed interpretation requires. Finally, and perhaps most decisively, the proposed interpretation requires that Spinoza identify the distinction between a substance’s attributes and its affections or modes—​as employed at

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EIdef1—​with the distinction between its logically essential and logically inessential characteristics; but this Spinoza could not and would not do, regardless of his attitude toward necessitarianism, since the infinite modes are, by EIp21, logically (although not scholastically) essential to God.18 For these reasons, it is unlikely that the proposed interpretation of EIp5d is correct. The interpretation could be rejected with greater certainty, of course, if we had a more satisfactory interpretation to offer in its place. I will outline such an interpretation—​one that depends on a necessitarian reading of Spinoza—​in the final section of this chapter. But the objections just considered are sufficient for us to conclude that he need not be construed as a necessitarian on the basis of EIp5d. c. Essence in EIIIp6d. EIIIp6 states that, “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.” The demonstration appeals, in part, to the claim that “no thing has anything in itself by which it can be destroyed, or which takes its existence away (by P4)”; or, as Bennett expresses it, that “nothing can, unaided, cause its own destruction.” Bennett then asserts that “if all a thing’s properties are essential to it, then this argument ought to conclude that nothing can, unaided, cause any change in itself.” His line of thought, presumably, is this: a logically essential characteristic of a thing is one that it has in all possible worlds in which the thing exists at all; necessitarianism requires that all characteristics of things be logically essential to them; hence, necessitarianism requires that if a thing lost one of its characteristics, it would cease to be that thing, so that all change would be destruction. We must distinguish, however, characteristics whose permanent possession is logically essential from characteristics whose temporary possession is logically essential. Spinoza certainly recognizes some characteristics of the first kind, such as each individual’s “fixed proportion of motion and rest.” Necessitarianism, however, by no means requires that every characteristic be of this first kind; it requires only that, whenever a thing has some characteristic for a temporary part of its duration in one possible world, it must have that characteristic for that same temporary part of its duration in every possible world. To put the point in another way, necessitarianism does not require that nothing undergo change, but only that the series of a thing’s actual changes constitute its only possible biography. For Spinoza, this would indeed be the case if the actual infinite series of finite modes was the only possible series. Necessitarianism is therefore compatible with EIIIp6d. Thus far, I have argued that Spinoza is not committed to the denial of necessitarianism by (1) his claim that finite modes do not follow from the absolute nature of the attributes, by (2)  his distinction between things whose essences include necessary existence and those whose essences do not or by (3) his explicit or implicit use of an essential/​inessential distinction. I have not yet argued that he is committed to necessitarianism. It is to this thesis that I now turn.



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II There are three chief textual grounds for the conclusion that Spinoza is committed to necessitarianism in Ethics I: EIp16, which claims that “infinitely many things in infinitely many modes” follow from the necessity of the divine nature; EIp29, which denies any contingency in nature; and EIp33, which claims that “Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order” than that in which they have been produced. I will consider these three grounds in order. In the course of considering EIp16, I will argue that, independently of these three propositions, Spinoza is also committed to the denial of other possible series of finite modes by the doctrines of Ethics II. 1. EIp16:  The divine nature and the infinite intellect. EIp16 and its demonstration read as follows: P16: From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect). Dem.: This Proposition must be plain to anyone, provided he attends to the fact that the intellect infers from the given definition of any thing a number of properties that really do follow necessarily from it (i.e., from the very essence of the thing); and that it infers more properties the more the definition of the thing 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), q.e.d. Bennett outlines two different ways in which this proposition appears to commit Spinoza to necessitarianism:  the first concerns the relation between the actual and the necessary, while the second concerns the relation between the possible and actual. I will argue that Spinoza is committed to necessitarianism in both ways.19 a. Necessity and actuality. Spinoza is committed to each of the following claims: (1) Everything that falls under an infinite intellect follows from the necessity of the divine nature. (2) “The necessity of the divine nature” is something necessary. (3) Whatever follows from something that is necessary, is itself necessary. (4) Everything that is actual falls under an infinite intellect.

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(1) is simply a paraphrase of EIp16 itself. Spinoza’s commitment to (2)  is evidenced not only in his reference to the “necessity” of the divine nature, but in the demonstration of EIp16 itself. For the demonstration argues as follows: (i) from the definition or essence of a thing, properties necessarily follow; (ii) the greater the reality contained in the essence, the more properties will follow in this way; (iii) God’s essence is utterly infinite (by EIdef6); and, hence, (iv) from God’s essence, infinitely many things must follow. The demonstration thus takes the “divine nature” to be equivalent to God’s essence, which, by EIp20c1, is an eternal and, hence, necessary, truth. (3) is an evident consequence of the character of the “following from” relation as a necessitating logical and causal relation, as is apparent from its use in EIp21–​28. It might be suggested, however, that we could reject the application of (3) in this context on the following basis: Even if the series of finite modes were contingent, each finite mode could still be said to follow at least partially from the nature of the attribute. For finite modes follow from other finite modes by means of the laws of nature governing them. And these laws, at least—​laws contained in the attribute or its infinite modes—​do follow from the absolute nature of the attribute, whether there could have been a different total series of finite modes or not. Hence (1)—​the claim that everything falling under an infinite intellect follows from the divine nature—​can be construed as claiming only that such things follow at least partially from the divine nature. But it is not true that whatever follows partially from something necessary must be itself necessary; hence (3) ought not be interpreted as applicable to (1). (A similar line of argument has been suggested to reconcile EIp16 with EIp21 and EIp28d; see note 7.) This argument, however, is subject to two serious objections. First, it requires Spinoza to trade tacitly (and equivocally, given EIp21 and EIp28d) on the very distinction between an adequate cause and a partial cause that he draws quite clearly at the outset of Ethics III, one that he could easily have drawn in Ethics I had he thought it would be useful. Second, the demonstration of EIp16 makes it clear that the relation between the divine nature and the infinitely many things said to follow from it is to be understood as the relation between a scholastic essence and its properties (in effect, the demonstration claims that infinitely many things are “properties” of God); yet, as we have already seen from TIE 96, the properties of a thing are all deducible from the essence of the thing alone. Finally, Spinoza’s commitment to (4)  is evident from the definition of “infinite” at EIdef2. For EIp16 equates “what falls under an infinite intellect” with “infinitely many things”; and, by definition, a collection of things cannot be infinite if it leaves any thing of the same kind outside itself. Moreover, numerous later passages (EIp17s, EIp26d, EIp33d, EIp33s) confirm that the “infinitely many things” that follow from the divine nature comprise “all” things, or everything. (4) is also independently required by Spinoza’s commitment to the parallelism of



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the attributes—​i.e., that “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (EIIp7; EIIp7c in effect draws (4) as a consequence). But from (1)–​(4) we can infer: (5) Everything that is actual is necessary. (5) is equivalent to necessitarianism. b. Actuality and possibility. As Bennett observes,20 Spinoza also appears to be committed to the following two claims: (6) Everything that falls under the infinite intellect is actual. (7) Everything that is possible falls under the infinite intellect. (6) is directly entailed by EIp16 itself, since EIp16 states that whatever falls under an infinite intellect actually follows from the divine nature. It is also confirmed in EIp30, which states that, “an actual intellect, whether finite or infinite, must comprehend God’s attributes and God’s affections, and nothing else”; and it is confirmed again in EIp33s2. Moreover, it is required by the parallelism of the attributes (EIIp7): for if the infinite intellect contained an idea of a non-​actual thing, it would be an idea without a corresponding object.21 Regarding (7), Bennett says only that “Spinoza sometimes uses the notion of an ‘infinite’ or unlimited intellect to express the notion of what is possible.”22 I have been unable to confirm this by a definitive passage, but it might be regarded as evident simply from the definition of “infinite” (EIdef 2), on the grounds that the failure to conceive something that is genuinely possible constitutes a limitation. This interpretation of the definition would be strengthened by Spinoza’s apparent willingness to construe “infinite attributes” in the definition of “God” (EIdef6) as meaning “all possible attributes.” But, from (6) and (7) we can infer: (8) Everything that is possible is actual. (8) is also equivalent to necessitarianism. c. Parallelism and causal independence. Even if we set aside EIp16 and EIdef2, however, Spinoza is still ultimately committed to (6) and (7) by doctrines he advances in Ethics II. We have already noted that he is committed to (6) by the parallelism of the attributes (EIIp7); I will now argue that Ethics II commits him to (7) as well. Since there is in God an idea of every actual thing (EIIp7c), and since there could have been no substances, attributes or infinite modes other than the actual ones, the question of how the infinite intellect could lack the idea of something genuinely possible may be reduced to that of how God could fail to have an idea of a possible but non-​existent finite mode—​i.e., of a finite mode that exists in some

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possible world, but not in the actual one. As we have already seen from EIp28, if there are to be genuinely possible but non-​existent modes, they must belong to a total causal series of finite modes that is itself possible but not actual. But if there are such possible series of modes, what could prevent the occurrence of a corresponding series of ideas of those modes in the infinite intellect? There are only three alternatives: (i) the cause is to be found in the attribute of Thought itself; (ii) the cause is to be found in the non-​existence of the objects of the ideas; or (iii) there is no cause, but the non-​existence of the series of ideas is a brute contingent fact. None of these alternatives, however, can be acceptable to Spinoza. If the non-​ existent series of finite modes is indeed a genuinely possible series, then the series of ideas of those finite modes must be a genuinely possible series of finite modes of thought; and hence we cannot say that the idea is prevented from existing by the attribute of Thought itself. Yet, to say that the series of ideas is prevented from existing by the non-​existence of their objects would be to contradict EIIp5: The formal being of ideas admits God as a cause only insofar as he is considered as a thinking thing, and not insofar as he is explained by any other attribute. I.e., ideas, both of God’s attributes and of singular things, admit not the objects themselves, or the things perceived, as their efficient cause, but God himself, insofar as he is a thinking thing. The remaining alternative is to say that, just as the series of finite modes itself could have existed but as a brute contingent fact did not, so the series of finite ideas of those objects could have existed but as a matter of brute contingent fact did not. But this too is unacceptable. For, if the existence or non-​existence of a particular series of finite modes is an independent matter of chance within each attribute, then it will be only a matter of chance whether the series of finite modes from different attributes happen to correspond with one another. Moreover, we will never be in a position to know whether or not they do correspond. For example, from the existence of one’s own mind, which is part of a series of finite modes in the attribute of Thought, one would not be able to determine whether the series of finite modes that includes one’s own body has or has not been realized in Extension. EIIp7 (which asserts the parallelism of the attributes) and EIax4 (from which EIIp7 is derived) would then be, if not false, at least contingent, uncertain and unknowable. Hence, the infinite intellect must contain an idea of every possible thing, since the idea of any possible thing could be excluded from it only by violating either the causal independence or the necessary parallelism of the attributes. But the claim that the infinite intellect contains an idea of every possible thing is (7); and together with (6)’s requirement that every idea in the infinite intellect have an actual object, it entails (8), the doctrine that everything possible is actual—​i.e., necessitarianism.



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We may also put this same line of argument in somewhat more popular theological terms. If God is to know everything that is the case without error, his set of ideas about what series of finite modes is actual in each attribute must correspond precisely to the actual series of finite modes in that attribute, without positing any other, non-​existent, finite modes as actual. But this perfect correspondence between things and ideas can be assured—​and hence a source of knowledge—​in only two ways: either (i) God’s ideas are caused or explained by the actuality of the series of things itself, or (ii) there is for each attribute only one possible total series of finite modes, and one corresponding possible series of ideas of finite modes. Since Spinoza rejects the former alternative, he must accept the latter. 2. EIp29: Necessity and contingency. EIp29 states: In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and [ . . . ] produce an effect in a certain way. EIp29 differs from EIp16 in only three respects: (1) its explicit use of the term “contingency,” (2) its reference to “all things” as opposed to “infinitely many things” and (3) its explicit application both to the existence of things and to their actions. The demonstration justifies this greater explicitness on the basis of the more specific developments of EIp21–​28. The heart of the demonstration, however, is the claim (EIp16) that infinitely many things follow in infinitely many ways “from the necessity of the divine nature.” If, as I have argued, the necessity of EIp16 must be construed as logical or metaphysical necessity, and not as mere “inevitability in light of antecedent conditions,” then the denial of contingency in EIp29, which is derived from and paraphrased in terms of that proposition, must be understood in the same sense. 3. Elp33: The order of nature. EIp33 and its demonstration read as follows: P33: Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced. Dem.: For all things have necessarily followed from God’s given nature (by P16), and have been determined from the necessity of God’s nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way (by P29). Therefore, if things could have been of another nature, or could have been determined to produce an effect in another way, so that the order of Nature was different, then God’s nature could also have been other than it is now, and therefore (by P11) that [other nature] would also have had to exist, and consequently, there could have been two or more Gods, which is absurd (by PI4C1). So things could have been produced in no other way and no other order, etc., q.e.d.

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The crucial question in the interpretation of this proposition is this: how are we to understand “in no other way, and in no other order?” If this expression refers only to the attributes, the infinite modes, and their laws—​which in a sense determine the “way” and “order” in which finite modes follow from one another—​then the proposition is compatible with a plurality of different possible series of finite modes. If, on the other hand, this “way” or this “order” includes the finite modes as well, then the proposition will deny the possibility of even finite modes other than the actual ones. As the demonstration makes clear, the “order” in question is the “order of Nature” (naturae ordo). Of Spinoza’s many uses of this term, in the Ethics and elsewhere, nearly all at least suggest that the order of nature includes particular finite modes as parts, and several imply it more directly. For example, in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, he proposes that we should “attend to the order of Nature” (TIE 65), as the chief remedy against the formation of imaginative “fictions” concerning the existence of particular durational things—​advice that would presumably be useless if such particular things were not to be found as parts of that order. EIp11d asserts that: [T]‌he reason why a circle or triangle exists, or why it does not exist, does not follow from the nature of these things, but from the order of the whole of corporeal Nature. For from this [order] it must follow either that the triangle necessarily exists now or that it is impossible for it to exist now. Perhaps most directly of all, EIIp24d speaks of the relation between a part of the human body and “a singular thing [i.e., a finite mode or a concerted association of them, by EIIdef7] which is prior, in the order of nature, to the part itself.” Spinoza also consistently uses such related terms as “common order of nature” (communis ordo naturae) and “order of causes” (ordo causarum) to include the finite modes.23 Moreover, as Bennett points out,24 Spinoza characterizes his position in EIp33d and EIp33s2 as a denial that ‘‘things could have been of another nature,” that God could “decree anything different,” that God could have “willed and decreed something different concerning nature” and that “things could have been produced otherwise than they are now.” Taken together with the demonstration’s reliance on EIp16 and EIp29, these facts strongly suggest that EIp33 is intended to rule out not merely any alternative possible attributes and infinite modes, but any alternative possible series of finite modes as well. In this section, I have argued that Spinoza is committed to necessitarianism by three propositions in Ethics I: EIpI6, EIp29, and EIp33. I have also argued that he is independently committed to that claim by the conjunction of two doctrines expressed in Ethics II: the causal and explanatory independence of the attributes (EIIp5), and the necessary parallelism of the attributes (EIIp7).



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III Thus far, I have argued that Spinoza is not committed to the denial of necessitarianism, and that he is committed to its truth. But, does the question of necessitarianism have any bearing on our interpretation of the rest of his philosophy? I believe that it does, with respect to at least two topics: his monism, and his view of the relation between the internal adequacy of an idea and its external correspondence to its object. We are now in a position to explore briefly the bearing of necessitarianism on these topics. 1. Monism and the sharing of attributes. Spinoza’s monism is stated in EIp14: “Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.” The formal demonstration is straightforward: (i) God is by definition a being “of whom no attribute which expresses an essence of substance can be denied” (by EIdef6), and (ii) “he [God] necessarily exists” (by EIp11); but (iii) two substances cannot share an attribute (by EIp5); hence (iv) God is the only substance. The demonstration of EIp14 relies, however, on EIp5; and the demonstration of the latter proposition has puzzled commentators. As we have seen, EIp5d begins by asserting (i)  that two or more distinct substances would have to be distinguished either by a difference of attributes or a difference of modes (“affections”). Spinoza then argues (ii) that a difference of attributes would entail that there was only one substance of the same attribute; and he infers from EIp1—​that is, “A substance is prior in nature to its affections”—​(iii) that we may set the modes “to one side.” He then concludes (iv) that there cannot be two substances with the same attribute. Perhaps the most puzzling feature of the argument is its claim that we are entitled by EIp1 to put the affections or modes of substance “to one side” in the attempt to distinguish two substances of the same attribute. Few commentators have agreed that Spinoza is entitled to do so. The fullest attempt to explain his grounds for so doing is that of Bennett, discussed above, according to which Spinoza’s argument commits him to a plurality of possible worlds. Bennett himself rightly characterizes as “fallacious” the argument he is forced to ascribe to Spinoza; and I have argued that it is subject to a number of additional difficulties as well. If, however, we interpret Spinoza as a necessitarian, then we find that he does have grounds for putting the modes “to one side” that are both comprehensible and sound. If all modes follow from attributes in such a way that no attribute could possibly have given rise to a different set of modes, then we will indeed be entitled to set the modes to one side in our attempt to distinguish two different substances with the same attribute; for any difference in modes will necessarily be due to some difference of attributes, and hence the second alternative for distinguishing two substances (difference of modes) will reduce to the first (difference of attributes).

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Spinoza’s necessitarianism is of course not yet articulated at this point in the Ethics. But it does not need to be for the purposes of EIp5. He needs only the claim of EIdef3 and EIdef5, that modes must be conceived through substance, together with the equation of “substance” with “attributes” that EIp4d makes for this context. From a strong reading of this claim of priority, expressed in EIp1, he can infer that any difference of modes must be conceived through a difference of attributes. He need not appeal to the more explicit claim that modes are conceived through their attributes because they are causally necessitated by them—​although this more explicit claim is arguably already available from the claim (in EIax4) that effects should be conceived through their causes, together with the description (in EIax3) of the causal relation as necessitating. The question of how Spinoza reduces differences of mode to difference of attribute is by no means the only question that can be raised about the argument for EIp5.25 But, if we construe the dependence of modes on attributes in the strict way dictated by a necessitarian interpretation of Spinoza, then we have a much more natural and persuasive basis for one crucial step of the demonstration of EIp5, and hence for one crucial step in his argument for monism. 2. Internal adequacy and correspondence. EIIdef4 states that: By adequate idea I understand an idea which, insofar as it is considered in itself, without relation to an object, has all the properties, or intrinsic denominations of a true idea. In the Meditations, Descartes devotes a great deal of effort to arguing that a certain internal characteristic of an idea—​namely, its clarity and distinctness—​is and should be treated as a reliable criterion of the idea’s agreement with or correspondence to that which it represents. In striking contrast, Spinoza seems at EIIdef4 simply to take it for granted that there is a certain internal characteristic belonging to all and only ideas that are true—​i.e., ideas that, by EIax6, agree with their objects. Similarly, in the TIE he asserts without argument that truth involves both an “internal” and an “external” denomination (TIE 69). How could Spinoza simply presuppose a correlation between an internal characteristic of ideas and their external correspondence to their objects, particularly when Descartes had tried so carefully and elaborately to establish such a correlation? If there are genuinely possible but non-​actual series of finite modes, then it is difficult to see how any intrinsic characteristic could reliably distinguish a “true” idea affirming the existence of a really existing finite mode from a “false” idea affirming the existence of a non-​existent but equally possible mode. Furthermore, as we saw in our earlier discussion of the infinite intellect, there could be no guarantee that such false ideas would not exist, given the requirement of the



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explanatory independence of the attributes in EIIp5. Hence, if Spinoza regards the series of finite modes as contingent, his assumption that there is an internal characteristic of ideas possessed only by those that correspond truly to their objects would be unwarranted. If, however, we interpret Spinoza as holding that the attributes necessitate a unique series of modes, so that no other series is possible, then he will have a comprehensible and sound justification for his assumption. Necessitarianism entails that nothing is logically or metaphysically possible except what is actual. Hence, if an idea possesses enough internal consistency or “adequacy” to show that what it represents is a genuine possibility, it will thereby also show it to be actual. Of course, in Spinoza’s view no idea affirming the existence of a finite mode actually possesses this degree of adequacy, as the idea exists in any human mind, since this adequacy requires a knowledge of all of the finite mode’s causes (EIIp24–​27). However, he also requires that ideas affirming the existence of particular finite modes must be “adequate” in God (EIIp9, EIIp32); and this internal adequacy could not guarantee the idea’s correspondence with actually existing modes unless those modes were the only ones genuinely possible.

Conclusion I have argued that Spinoza is not committed to the denial of necessitarianism by any of the three textual grounds on which he has been taken to be so committed. I have argued that he is committed to necessitarianism by three propositions of Ethics I, and, on independent grounds, by the doctrine of attributes contained in Ethics II. Finally, I have argued that if he is interpreted as a necessitarian, then both his monism and his view that internal “adequacy” is correlated with external correspondence can be given a sounder basis in his philosophy than they can be given otherwise. Taken together, these results make a strong case for the claim that Spinoza is a necessitarian. They also suggest that his doctrine of necessity is, indeed, a “principal basis” of at least some of the central doctrines of the Ethics.

Notes  . Yovel, ed., God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 191–​218. © 1991, E.J. Brill, Y Leiden-​New York-​København-Köln 1. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (New  York:  Penguin, 1951), p.  54; Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1969), especially pp. 106–​109; Wallace Matson, “Steps Towards Spinozism,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 31 (1979):  76–​83; Charles Jarrett, “The Logical Structure of Spinoza’s Ethics, Part I,” Synthese 37 (1978):  55–​ 56; Jonathan

120 Necessity and God’s Nature Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1984), 111–​124; R.J. Delahunty, Spinoza (London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 155–​ 165. Although I  am in general agreement with Hampshire’s characterization of Spinoza’s position, I find his one-​line justification of it, in terms of the co-​ extensivity of Natura naturans and Natura naturata, to be too brief and general to be helpful. I am inclined to classify J.I. Friedman with Curley, as one who interprets Spinoza as a non-​necessitarian, on the basis of his “Spinoza’s Denial of Free Will in Man and God,” in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Man, ed. Jon Wetlesen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1978), pp. 58–​63; I do not do so because I am not sufficiently confident that I know what he means by the locution “causally but not logically necessary” in the context of the paper. It should be noted that only Delahunty actually uses the term “necessitarianism,” and that he uses it in a somewhat broader sense than I have given it here. 2. In the course of Ethics I, he asserts that God necessarily exists (EIp11), and that there could exist no other substance but God (EIp14). He defines God as the substance of infinite (unlimited or all possible) attributes (EIdef6), which, given God’s existence, entails that there could have been no attributes other than those actually possessed by God; and he asserts that all of God’s attributes are eternal (EIp19), which, by the definition of “eternity” (EIdef8), entails their necessary existence. He affirms that whatever things follow from the absolute nature of any of God’s attributes have always had to exist and be infinite, and are eternal through that attribute (EIp21), and that every infinite mode must so follow, either immediately or mediately, from the absolute nature of some attribute of God (EIp23d). Assuming that no attribute could have had a different “absolute nature” from the one it actually has, and that nothing could have followed from such an absolute nature except what actually does follow from it, we may conclude not only that every infinite mode exists necessarily, but also that there could not have been any infinite modes other than the actual ones. Furthermore, Spinoza holds that nothing exists except substance and modes (EIp6c, EIp15d, and EIp28d), and does so on cited grounds (EId3, EId5, and EIaxl) that presumably render this restriction a necessary truth for him as well. 3. Of these two ways, only Bennett describes the first. The second is to be found in Curley, Matson, Jarrett, and Bennett (cited in n. 1). 4. Entailment is, of course, primarily a relation between states of affairs or propositions, whereas for Spinoza the “following from” relation is primarily between things. I shall not insist on the distinction here, however, and will instead speak indifferently of a mode, its existence and the proposition that it exists. For present purposes, nothing turns on the distinction. 5. This is clear from the fact that a claim about “production” is inferred directly from a claim about “following from.” It is also especially evident in the derivations of EIpI6c1–​3, each of which infers a claim about the character of



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God’s causality directly from EIp16’s claim that infinitely many things “follow from” the necessity of the divine nature. 6. This is presumably a condition that could not be formalized. For a discussion of formalizable relevance logics, see Alan Ross Anderson and Nuel Belnap, Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). As we shall soon see, Spinoza also holds that, in some cases, a y can “follow from” some x “insofar as” x is “considered in” one way, but not “insofar as” x is “considered in” another way. This is a related respect in which his “follows from” relation differs from, and is less formalizable than, other entailment relations. 7. One might seek, as Jarrett suggests, to reconcile this contradiction by interpreting Spinoza as employing his own later distinction between adequate and partial causation at this point, so that EIp21 and EIp28d refer to following adequately, while the other passages refer to following partially (p. 55). I discuss this interpretation and my reasons for rejecting it below, in section II. 8. Note that these two ways of following from the attribute need not be mutually exclusive; the demonstration implies that mediate infinite modes follow in both ways, although immediate infinite modes follow only in the former, and finite modes follow in only the latter. 9. For an examination of the role of this principle in explaining why God is the only possible substance, see my “Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument,” The Philosophical Review 88 (1979): 198–​223. 10. Alan Donagan, “Spinoza’s Proof of Immortality,” in Spinoza:  A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Marjorie Grene (New  York:  Doubleday, 1973), p.  249. This constraint would also explain why the attributes must express themselves through finite modes at all. To the question of why there are any finite modes, Spinoza could reply as he does to the question of why God has created men who are not governed by reason: “because the laws of his nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all things which can be conceived by an infinite intellect” (EIapp; Curley, p. 446). 11. Of course, the absolute nature of the attribute would “entail” the existence of each individual finite mode, in the sense that there would be no possible world in which the attribute had that absolute nature and yet the finite mode did not exist: but, as we have already seen, Spinoza requires more than this of the “following from” relation. In his view, a finite mode can be said to “follow from” an attribute “considered” in one way, but fail to “follow from” it when it is considered in another, more restricted, way—​a distinction that makes good sense when taken as expressing a finite mode’s dependence for existence on its membership in the only constructible or maximally perfect infinite series of such modes, but a distinction for which the modern entailment relation simply makes no allowance.

122 Necessity and God’s Nature 12. Spinoza’s own gloss of this axiom continues: “i.e., from the order of nature it can happen equally that this or that man does exist, or that he does not exist.” I discuss the interpretation of this gloss below, in n. 21. If what I argue in this section is correct, then it will be evident that both of the plausible interpretations of the gloss are compatible with necessitarianism. 13. For similar distinctions, see also TIE 53 and Metaphysical Thoughts 1:3. Reference to EIax2, EIp33s1, or both figure in Curley, Bennett, and Friedman. 14. Only Bennett offers this argument (p.  114). As the quoted passage suggests, however, it constitutes his chief grounds for regarding Spinoza as committed to a denial of necessitarianism. 15. If a thing’s having its essence is a necessary truth, of course, then its doing so is entailed by anything whatever, in one sense of “entailment” discussed above. This only shows, however, that the sense of “deducible from” in question here is not identical with that sense of “entailed by.” 16. The scholastic essence/​property distinction is also in accordance with the definition of the “essential” offered at EIIdef2:   D2: I say that to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited and 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.   For a thing can be conceived (simply by conceiving its essence) without conceiving its properties. This does not mean that we can conceive that the essence might fail to give rise to the properties, but only that conceiving the essence does not require us to conceive the properties. (This situation is somewhat analogous to that of the attributes: we conceive each attribute without the aid of any other (EIp10s), but we cannot conceive that one should exist and that another should not, since that would involve conceiving that an attribute failed to exist.) Similarly, the thing does not causally depend on the properties, and in that sense “can be” without (reliance on) them, even though it cannot fail to give rise to them through its essence. Indeed, EIIIdef.aff. XXIIexp speaks of “an effect or [sive] property.” 17. Bennett, pp. 67–​68. 18. The infinite modes do not, of course, constitute respects in which substances of the same attribute might differ. The objection is rather to the reading of EIp1 that Bennett’s interpretation requires. 19. These two ways, which I outline below, are based specifically on Bennett, p. 122; the argumentation that Spinoza is committed to their individual elements is my own. 20. Bennett, p. 122. 21. It is worth taking note of a weaker sense in which there are ideas of non-​existent finite modes—​for example, of unicorns, conceived as a species of one-​ horned equine animals. This is the sense of EIIp8; and if having an idea of a



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non-​existent thing in this sense were sufficient to make something “fall under the infinite intellect,” (7) would follow immediately. But as EIIp8 explains, such an idea is not an idea having no object, which would violate EIIp7; rather it is an idea having a truly existent thing as its object. This truly existent thing is not an existent unicorn, however, but rather the formal essence of a unicorn. This essence is “comprehended” in the attribute of Extension. As I understand it, this means that the essence is itself a real, existent, feature of Extension: specifically, the pervasive and permanent feature that Extension’s general laws are such as to permit the unicorn-​mechanism to exist whenever and wherever the series of finite modes and causes should dictate. The idea of a “non-​existent thing” in EIIp8 is simply the idea of this essence (which I construe to be an infinite mode); indeed, the idea is the very same mode as this essence, but manifested under the attribute of Thought (EIIp7s).   In the case of actually existing finite modes, however, there is in God not only an idea of their permanent essence, but also an idea of their actual existence (EIIp8c). This idea of the actual existence of a finite mode is itself a finite mode, and is indeed the very same finite mode manifested under the attribute of Thought, as part of a causal order paralleling the causal order containing its object (EIIp7s; EIIp9.d). The human mind is an example of such an idea of an actually existing finite mode (EIIp11), and all such ideas of the actual existence of finite modes are in the infinite intellect of God (by EIIp11c, whose demonstration is completely general). (To put the matter in more popular terms, God not only knows what essences there are, he knows which particular finite modes actually exist.) It is such finite ideas of the actual existence of finite modes that I am discussing in the text. 22. Bennett, p. 122. 23. In fact, there is only one passage that even appears to contradict this interpretation. Spinoza continues in EIIax1 (“The essence of man does not involve necessary existence”) as follows:  “i.e., from the order of nature it can happen equally that this or that man does exist, or that he does not exist [hoc est, ex naturae ordine, tam fieri potest, ut hic, & ille homo existat, quàm ut non existat].” There are two possible interpretations of this gloss that are compatible with Spinoza’s determinism: (a) that the existence of a particular man in itself neither contradicts nor is required by the general and pervasive laws (“order”) of nature, or (b) that the man’s essence does not determine whether he exists or not, but that his existence is instead determined as part of the actual series (“order”) of natural causes and effects. The first interpretation requires that the “order of nature” not include finite modes, but the second interpretation requires that it should include finite modes. The first interpretation is particularly suggested by the Curley and Shirley translations; the second is particularly suggested by the Elwes and White-​Sterling translations.

124 Necessity and God’s Nature 24. Bennett, pp. 119–​120. 25. For an excellent presentation of some of these issues, see Bennett, pp. 66–​70. I  have discussed these issues in “Ethics IP5:  Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza’s Monism,” contained in a collection of essays written in honor of Jonathan Bennett, ed. Mark Kulstad and Jan Cover (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990).

Postscript

Necessitarianism Revisited

“Spinoza’s Necessitarianism” [henceforth “SN”] argues that Spinoza is committed by at least three propositions of Ethics Part 1—​1p16, 1p29, and 1p33—​to the doctrine that every actual state of affairs holds with strict metaphysical necessity [henceforth simply “metaphysical necessity”].1 In addition, it argues that he is committed to that doctrine by his commitment to the necessary parallelism between extended things and the ideas of them (as entailed by 2p7) in conjunction with the causal and explanatory independence of divine attributes (2p5). In their widely cited and densely argued article “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered” [henceforth “SNR”],2 Edwin Curley and Gregory Walski raise objections to this interpretation of Spinoza. They agree that, for Spinoza, God exists as a matter of strict metaphysical necessity and that every finite mode follows with strict meta­ physical necessity from God’s nature when taken together with previous finite modes. They deny, however, that Spinoza regards finite modes themselves as existing with strict metaphysical necessity. Instead, they hold, Spinoza believes that there could have been (from all eternity) any one of many different possible complete systems (“series” in the terminology of SN and SNR) and that each of these systems would have been equally compatible with the divine nature.3 The doctrine attributed to Spinoza in SN they call “strict necessitarianism”; the doctrine that they attribute to Spinoza in SNR they call “moderate necessitarianism.” I am grateful for their in-​depth challenge, and I hope that my detailed reply to it here will help to clarify—​much better than I was able to do in SN itself—​the nature and basis of Spinoza’s strict necessitarianism. Moderate necessitarianism is a coherent view. Nevertheless, it sits uncomfortably with Spinoza’s apparent commitment to a strong principle of sufficient reason, because it requires that a crucial fact about the universe—​namely, that there is this complete infinite system of finite modes rather than others that were equally possible—​has no explanation at all.4 In order to alleviate this difficulty, SNR seeks to downplay the strength of Spinoza’s principle of sufficient reason. Although Curley and Walski do not attempt to rebut the argument of SN that

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Spinoza is effectively committed to strict necessitarianism by the conjunction of (2p7) and (2p5), they offer extensive objections to SN’s interpretations of 1p16, 1p29, and 1p33. It is clear, however, that their primary motivation for interpreting Spinoza as a merely “moderate” necessitarian is their belief that strict necessitarianism is not a fully coherent doctrine. Accordingly, I will address first the question of the coherence of strict necessitarianism for Spinoza and then SNR’s specific objections to my interpretations of 1p16, 1p29, and 1p33.

I.  The Coherence of Strict Necessitarianism Perhaps the simplest way to express a natural concern about the coherence of strict necessitarianism is this: How can every state of affairs hold of strict metaphysical necessity if (as we observe) different things exist and have different qualities at different times and places? In relation to Spinoza’s metaphysics, this general concern may be expressed more specifically thus: How can a spatiotemporally varying world of spatiotemporally limited finite modes follow with strict necessity from a necessary and eternally unchanging divine nature? For if some mode follows from the divine nature with strict necessity at one time and place, mustn’t it also follow with equally strict necessity at every time and place, precluding any possibility of variation?5 The simplest way to express an answer to the general concern is this: Different things can exist and have different qualities at different times and places even if every state of affairs holds with strict metaphysical necessity if it is a matter of strict metaphysical necessity that there should be a variegated world so ordered that just those different things exist and have just those different qualities at just those different times and places. In relation to Spinoza’s metaphysics, this answer can be expressed more specifically thus: A spatiotemporally6 varying world of spatiotemporally limited finite modes can follow with strict necessity from a necessary and eternally unchanging divine nature if it follows precisely from that divine nature that there should be a spatiotemporally variegated world so ordered as to have just those finite modes at just those times and places. That the world is spatiotemporally variegated in precisely this way will, of course, then itself be an eternal truth, always following from the divine nature. To be sure, allowing this to be an eternal truth may, in turn, require a view of time according to which past, present, and future are not fundamental determinations of things but are instead relative to a particular location within an ordered system, a system that can also be fully understood in a way that does not depend on occupying any particular location within it. But such a view of time or duration is itself fully coherent, or so Spinoza clearly assumes (see, for example, 2p44c2,d). Let us therefore examine more closely the resources offered by his metaphysics for implementing this answer to the general concern.



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For Spinoza, the divine nature or essence is constituted by the attributes (1d4 and 1d6). In 1pp16–​29, he describes all modes as “following from the necessity of the divine nature” (see p1p16, 1p17d, 1p29, and also 1p32c2) and (equivalently) “following necessarily from the divine nature” (see 1p16d, 1p29d, and also 2pp3–​5). However, he carefully distinguishes two different ways in which modes do so. The first of these ways, discussed primarily in 1pp21–​23, he calls “following from the absolute nature of the attribute” and (equivalently) “following from the nature of the attribute considered absolutely” (1p29d). Let us call this “following absolutely.” When a mode follows absolutely from the divine nature, it will be an infinite mode—​that is, one that, as SN puts it, “is pervasive and permanent through the entire attribute” of which it is a mode. Following absolutely can, in turn, be either immediate or mediate. The common term in the secondary literature for an infinite mode that follows “immediately” from the absolute nature of the attribute (1p21) is “immediate infinite mode.” Other infinite modes, however, follow only from “some mediating modification, which follows from [an attribute’s] absolute nature” (1p23d)—​or, as Spinoza also puts it, “insofar as [the attribute] is affected by some mode . . . which is eternal and infinite” (1p28d). The common term for an infinite mode of this latter kind, which follow from one or more other infinite modes, is “mediate infinite mode.” In 1p23d, Spinoza explains what he means by the phrase “the absolute nature of the attribute” in these descriptions: it is the attribute “insofar as that attribute is conceived to express infinity and necessary existence, or (what is the same, by D8), eternity, i.e., (by D6 and P19), insofar as it is considered absolutely” (emphasis added)—​that is, insofar as it is considered unconditionally or without respect to determinations of it. In contrast, the second way in which a mode can follow from the divine nature, discussed primarily in 1p28, is the way in which finite modes—​that is, modes that are not infinite but rather local and temporary, or as Spinoza puts it, have a “determinate existence and duration”—​follow from the divine nature. The following of one thing from another is, as SN argues, a causal relation for Spinoza;7 and 1a4—​“the knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause”—​requires that things be understood through their causes (see Chapters 7 and 14), whether those causes precede them in time or not. Thus, much as a mediate infinite mode cannot be understood to follow from an attribute as a pervasive and permanent modification of that attribute without first understanding how that mediate infinite mode follows from an immediate infinite mode, so too a finite mode cannot be understood to follow from the attribute as a determinate and finite modification of it without first understanding how that finite mode is produced (at least in part) by another finite mode as an element in the system of finite modes that all “follow necessarily from the divine nature.” Because this second kind of following requires that the mode be caused in part by a previous finite mode, Spinoza describes it as “following [ from the attribute] insofar as it is modified by

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a modification which is finite and has a determinate existence” or (equivalently) “insofar as [the divine nature] is considered to be determined to act in a certain way” (1p29d). Let us called this “following as determined.” It is evident that Spinoza draws his distinction between following absolutely and following as determined in order to explain why some modes are pervasive and permanent throughout the attribute while other modes are local and temporary:  the former follow immediately from the attribute or depend only on other pervasive and permanent expressions of the attribute, while the latter depend on prior modifications of the attribute that themselves constitute local and temporary variations within it. Curley and Walski seem simply to presuppose that no attribute—​which is of course something infinite—​could itself be causally sufficient for the existence of a local and temporary mode, and hence they assume that such a mode could follow from an attribute only with supplemental causal input from something else for which the attribute itself was also not sufficient. Spinoza, however, seems not to share this presupposition. On the contrary, he specifies that, even for finite modes—​that is, those that follow as determined from the divine nature—​there is “no cause, either extrinsically or intrinsically, which prompts God to action, except perfection of his nature (1p17c, emphasis added). Indeed, if the attributes constituting God’s essence were not causally sufficient for the actual finite modes, then God could be only an “inadequate” cause of them (by 1a4 and 3d1), and God would thereby properly be said to be “acted on” (extrapolating from 3d2)—​a claim that Spinoza would surely disallow.8 Of course, if Spinoza is to regard an attribute as sufficient for the existence of a given finite mode while at the same time regarding that finite mode as depending for existence on other finite modes, then he must treat the attribute as also being sufficient for the existence of those other finite modes. To see how he can do so, consider that all finite modes are local and temporary parts or elements of the mediate infinite mode that Spinoza calls “the infinite individual” (lemma 7s following 2p13s) which, insofar as it is extended, may also be the mediate infinite mode that Spinoza calls in Letter 64 “the face of the whole universe” (SN 198). Like any infinite mode, it is itself pervasive and permanent, following necessarily in its complete character from the attribute—​which is thereby also sufficient for it—​in a way that does not itself depend on any prior local or temporary expressions of the attribute and is therefore “absolute.” Equally, however, the generation, interaction, and subsequent destruction of the local and temporary finite modes that compose it constitute the only possible infinite internal history of this infinite individual and hence the only possible infinite system of finite modes.9 Furthermore, because this is a history of the causal generation, interaction, and destruction of finite modes with specific locations and durations—​and because things must be understood through their



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causes—​the complete understanding of the existence of any particular finite mode must depend on an understanding of its distinctive causal place in that history, and hence on understanding prior modifications or expressions of the attribute that are themselves local and temporary. In this way, each finite mode follows from the attribute not absolutely but as determined, even though the attribute is sufficient for the entire infinite system of finite modes—​and is sufficient for each finite mode within it, precisely through also being sufficient for each mode’s necessary finite causes. In SNR, Curley and Walski offer four objections to this proposal as it was less explicitly sketched in SN. The first is that if, as proposed, the infinite individual with its complete infinite history were to follow “from the absolute nature of the attribute,” then as a matter of logic so too would each of its finite parts, contrary to 1p28 (247). In Spinoza’s view, however, this is not a matter of logic but rather a simple fallacy of division.10 The precise character of the entire infinite system of finite modes that constitutes the only possible internal history of the infinite individual follows completely from the pervasive and permanent nature of the attribute, and in understanding it God does not require the logically antecedent understanding of any local or temporary variations in the attribute that would be prior to the infinite individual (nor could there be any); the infinite individual therefore follows absolutely from the attribute. However, the local and temporary parts of the infinite individual do not follow atomically or each in an independent way from the pervasive and permanent nature of the attribute, but rather only in virtue of their having a place as elements in the one possible complete system of causally interrelated finite modes that follows strictly absolutely from the nature of the attribute as an expression of the attribute’s absolute reality and perfection. God’s adequate understanding of any single element in the system therefore also requires and is inseparable from the understanding of other local and temporary elements in the same system. Thus, by definition, these finite modes each follow from the attribute not absolutely but as determined. The nature of the attribute is fully causally sufficient both for the infinite modes and for the finite modes, but in different ways. The second of these ways, unlike the first, necessarily involves being produced as an element of a varying system of parts within an infinite individual mode that is itself pervasive (present everywhere) and permanent (without beginning or end of existence). The second objection of Curley and Walski concerns causation more specifically. They write: If the attributes are not, by themselves, a sufficient condition for particular finite modes (as Garrett generally seems willing to concede)—​that is, if finite modes require for their explanation an infinite series of prior finite modes as their causes, in addition to the attributes and infinite

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modes—​then why should we expect them to share the absolute necessity of their partial cause? (252) On the view I propose, the attributes are completely sufficient for the existence of each and every finite mode. They are so, however, in a particular way:  by being sufficient for an infinite system of finite modes that the attributes produce through their own causal power partly as that power is expressed through other finite modes of the attribute in the same system. It is important to emphasize that because Spinoza is a substance monist, the causal power of each mode is a share of, rather than distinct from, the causal power of the attributes themselves (see Chapter  13); accordingly, an attribute produces a finite mode through some of its other modes, including some of its finite modes. Thus, although finite modes do, as Curley and Walski say, “require for their explanation an infinite series of prior finite modes as their causes,” this is emphatically not “in addition to the attributes and infinite modes” but rather in expression of those very attributes. As a third objection, Curley and Walski write, The ultimate cause is supposed to produce (be a sufficient condition for) the series as a whole without causing any individual members of the series. We have yet to see how that is possible. (253) But again, the ultimate cause—​that is, the attributes or divine nature—​does not produce the system as a whole (as a “causally sufficient condition for” it) without causing any individual members of the system. Rather, it causes each individual member at least in part11 by causing other individual members of the system, which are themselves produced at least in part by other individual members of the system, and so on. The fourth objection of Curley and Walski to the proposal is this: attributes and infinite modes are or correspond to “general facts” while finite modes are or correspond to “particular facts,” and “you cannot deduce any particular facts from general facts alone” (258). However, Spinoza does not distinguish some facts as “general” and others as “particular.” On the contrary, he regards all beings or facts as particular (see Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect §101); his distinction is rather between those that are “infinite” (that is, pervasive and permanent) and those that are “finite” (that is, local and temporary). And in his metaphysics, the infinite individual, as a pervasive and permanent being composed of local and temporary parts, is perfectly suited to provide a bridge between the two kinds of facts or beings. In effect, the attributes act uniformly and eternally to express their metaphysical reality and perfection through infinite internal variegation.



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II.  Whatever Is Actual Is Necessary (1p16) I turn now to SNR’s objections to SN’s interpretation of specific key propositions of Ethics Part 1. Ethics 1p16 and its demonstration state: 1p16: From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes [or ways], (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect.)12 Dem.: This Proposition must be plain to anyone, provided he attends to the fact that the intellect infers from the given definition of any thing a number of properties that really do follow necessarily from it (i.e., from the very essence of the thing); and that it infers more properties the more the definition of the thing 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), q.e.d. This proposition and its demonstration imply two principles, each bearing directly on necessitarianism: that whatever is actual is necessary and that whatever is possible is actual. Precisely how these two principles bear on necessitarianism, however, depends on their intended scope. If they are taken as ranging over all possible states of affairs, including those that are positive and those that are negative, then they are logically equivalent to each other and to necessitarianism itself.13 If, on the other hand, they are taken as ranging only over possible beings rather than possible states of affairs, then they are not equivalent to each other but rather complementary: only together would they entail that all facts about what beings do or do not exist are necessary.14 As a matter of textual interpretation, it is plausible that 1p16 explicitly concerns only the strict metaphysical necessity of all facts about what beings do or do not exist, while 1p29 explicitly extends this same necessity also to the actions of those beings, and 1p33 (with its scholia) explicitly extends it to all possible states of affairs. It may well be that, for Spinoza, the facts about what modes of God do and do not exist are sufficient to entail all of the facts about what states of affairs are and are not actual, so that the progression from 1p16 to 1p33 only renders more explicit what was implicit in 1p16. I will not press this fine point of scope interpretation, however, as the objections offered by Curley and Walski do not depend on their resolution. According to SN, 1p16 implies, via the following reasoning, that whatever is actual is metaphysically necessary:

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(1)   Whatever falls under the infinite intellect follows from the necessity of the divine nature. [ from 1p16] (2)  The necessity of the divine nature is itself necessary. (3)  Whatever follows from something necessary is itself necessary. (4)  Everything that is actual falls under the infinite intellect. (5)  Everything that is actual is necessary. [ from (1)–​(4)] Curley and Walski object to this argument by proposing that “follows” and “necessary” each have a stronger and a weaker sense for Spinoza, rendering (1) and (3) ambiguous in such a way that the conclusion (5) follows only in a weak sense that is compatible with moderate necessitarianism. Let us first consider in some detail their proposal to distinguish two senses of “follows.” On the basis of Spinoza’s distinction in 1pp21–​29 between following absolutely and following as determined, Curley and Walski propose two senses of “following,” which are intended to correspond to them: Following unconditionally: “following [ from features intrinsic to God’s nature] without the aid of any other propositions” Following conditionally: “following with the aid of [true] propositions which do not describe features intrinsic to God’s nature” Even on the assumption that Spinoza’s claims about how modes follow from the divine nature can be glossed in terms of “propositions,” however, these definitions are problematic as attempts to capture his distinction. For as we have seen, Spinoza holds that mediate infinite modes “follow from the absolute nature of the attribute,” but they nevertheless require the “aid” of (“insofar as [the attribute] is affected by”) at least one immediate infinite mode in doing so. Curley and Walski thus face a dilemma: Are immediate infinite modes “intrinsic to God’s nature” or not? If what is “intrinsic to God’s nature” is just God’s essence—​that is, the attributes themselves (1d4 and 1d6)—​then (contrary to their intentions) all of the mediate infinite modes will follow only “conditionally” (in their sense) from the necessity of the divine nature, because they follow only with the “aid” of an immediate infinite mode that is not itself intrinsic to that essence. If, on the other hand, what is “intrinsic to God’s nature” includes both God’s essence and everything for which that essence is sufficient, then (again contrary to their intentions) all modes, including the finite modes, will evidently follow “unconditionally” (again, in their sense) from the divine nature. This is because 1p16d requires that all modes are God’s “propria”—​which Curley translates as “properties”—​and “propria” is the technical Latin term for all of the things that, in contrast to mere “accidents,” necessarily follow entirely from the essence of a



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thing, which is therefore sufficient for them.15 For this reason, Curley and Walski are obliged to claim that Spinoza uses the term propria “carelessly,” applying it in 1p16d to finite modes that are not really propria at all (249). Yet even if this charge of Spinoza’s carelessness is granted, and “God’s nature” is initially restricted to all attributes plus all infinite modes that follow (“absolutely”) from it, the infinite mode that is the infinite individual will still follow “unconditionally” on this definition, and this infinite individual has all of the actual finite modes as its constituent parts. These difficulties of formulation aside, Curley and Walski state explicitly that the distinction they intend to attribute to Spinoza in this context mirrors a distinction that he introduces much later in the Ethics, in 3d1 and 3d2, between “adequate causes” and “inadequate causes”—​that is, between complete and sufficient causes, on the one hand, and merely partial and contributing causes on the other. Yet textual evidence that Spinoza already anticipates and employs such a distinction in 1pp21–​29 is lacking. Certainly, the simple fact that Spinoza describes finite modes as following from an attribute “insofar as the attribute is modified by some mode” does not show that he regards the divine nature as merely their partial or inadequate cause, for—​as we have seen—​he applies that description to mediate infinite modes as well (1p28d). Nor can we infer that Spinoza regards the divine nature as only a partial or inadequate cause of finite modes simply from the fact that he describes them as not following necessarily from an attribute insofar as that attribute is “considered absolutely” and “conceived to express infinity,” but as following necessarily instead from the attribute only insofar as it is considered and conceived in a different manner—​namely, insofar as it is “considered to be determined to act in a certain way.” For Spinoza readily allows that, in general, something Y can follow completely and adequately from something else X despite the fact that Y does not follow from X insofar as X is considered or conceived in one manner but only insofar as X is considered or conceived in a different manner. For example, he holds that the infinite modes of thought follow completely and adequately from the divine nature despite the fact that they do not follow from the divine nature insofar as that nature is considered or conceived to be extended but only insofar as it is considered or conceived to be thinking (2p6). Nor can we infer that Spinoza regards the divine nature as only a partial or inadequate cause of finite modes simply from the fact that he describes them, in a verbal variation, as not following “from the absolute nature” of an attribute. For as we have already seen, he means by this only that they do not follow from the attribute insofar as the attribute is conceived in a certain way—​namely, “considered absolutely” or as “expressing infinity” (1p23d), rather than as self-​conditioned and self-​variegated.

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In addition, it is worth emphasizing that nowhere outside of 2pp21–​29 does Spinoza use “follows from” in a way that suggests merely partial or contributory causation. If he were nevertheless using the term in that way within 2pp21–​29, then we might expect him to say not merely that finite modes follow from the divine nature—​as he does—​but also that some finite modes follow from certain other finite modes.16 Yet he conspicuously avoids this latter claim. Furthermore, 1p15d requires that modes “can be in the divine nature alone, and can be conceived through it alone” (1p15d; emphasis added), and 1a4 requires (as previously observed) that each thing be conceived entirely through its cause. It seems to follow from these requirements on conception that finite modes could not qualify even as partial and contributory causes of other finite modes unless the divine nature were a complete and sufficient cause for them all. Let us now turn, somewhat more briefly, to the two senses of “necessary” that Curley and Walski propose as a second ambiguity in 1p16. As SN notes (see also the Postscript to Chapter 2, “Arguments for God’s Existence Revisited”), Spinoza in 1p33s1 distinguishes between two sources of necessity: 1p33s1:  A thing is called necessary either by reason of its essence or by reason of its cause. For a thing’s existence follows necessarily either from its essence and definition or from a given efficient cause. On the basis of this passage, they seek to distinguish two senses of “necessary” in Spinoza corresponding to different degrees of necessity: Absolutely (or unconditionally) necessary:  “necessary, not by reason of any external cause, but because of [the thing’s] intrinsic nature” Relatively (or conditionally) necessary: “necessary only given [the thing’s external] cause” (245) They then assert that the divine nature and everything that “follows unconditionally” from it is “absolutely necessary” for Spinoza, and that whatever follows only “conditionally” from the divine nature is only “relatively necessary.” The attributes and the infinite modes they place in the former category, and the finite modes they place in the latter category. As Curley and Walski later concede, however, only God satisfies Spinoza’s definition of “necessary by reason of its essence,” while every infinite mode and every finite mode instead satisfies his definition of “necessary by reason of its cause” (248–​9). Thus, Spinoza does not draw any distinction between kinds of necessity, or between senses of “necessity,” that places infinite modes and finite modes on opposite sides of the divide, as their interpretation requires; and the distinction



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that Spinoza does draw between sources—​not degrees—​of necessity is quite separate from the distinction that he draws between following absolutely (as infinite modes do) and following as determined (as finite modes do). Finally, let us examine the use that Curley and Walski make of their two proposed distinctions. They assert that in the line of reasoning outlined in SN as requiring that everything actual is necessary, (1) and (3) of should be interpreted only as: (1′)

Everything that falls under the infinite intellect follows in some way (either conditionally or unconditionally) from the necessity of the divine nature.

and (3′)

Whatever follows unconditionally from something which is absolutely necessary (i.e., necessary by reason of its essence) is itself absolutely necessary; but if something follows only conditionally from something which is absolutely necessary, then it is not itself absolutely necessary but only conditionally necessary (i.e., necessary by reason of its cause).

Accordingly, they conclude that Spinoza is committed only to the thesis that (5′)

Everything which is actual is either absolutely necessary or relatively [that is, conditionally] necessary.

Because they hold that only “absolute” necessity strictly excludes other metaphysical possibilities, they interpret Spinoza’s view as compatible with moderate necessitarianism (245–​6). This cannot be correct, however. Concerning (1’), although Spinoza distinguishes between following absolutely and following as determined, we have seen that there is no need to weaken (1)  to (1’) if “conditionally” means “partially,” as Curley and Walski require; for both of his kinds of following are evidently complete and adequate. Concerning (3’), Spinoza does not and cannot accept either of its clauses as Curley and Walski intend them. For as we have also seen, Spinoza denies that whatever follows from something that is necessary by reason of its essence is itself necessary by reason of its essence; on the contrary, it is necessary by reason of the cause from which it follows. And if something follows only partially and together with other propositions (that is, “conditionally”) from something that is “absolutely necessary,” then that by itself would not entail that it is necessary by reason of its cause (“relatively necessary”) since it does not by itself guarantee that the other part of its cause would

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not be contingent. Finally, concerning (5’), although Spinoza certainly grants that everything actual is either necessary by reason of its essence (as God is) or by reason of its cause (as all modes are), neither source of necessity allows for metaphysically possible alternatives in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Hence, (5’) properly interpreted requires strict necessitarianism.

III.  Whatever Is Possible Is Actual (1p16) The second proposition that bears on necessitarianism and is implied by 1p16 and 1p16d is that whatever is possible is actual. SN reconstructs the line of argument as follows: (6) (7) (8)

Everything which falls under the infinite intellect is actual. [1p16; see also 1p30 and 1p33s2] Everything which is possible falls under the infinite intellect. [1d2; see also 1d6 and 2p7] Everything which is possible is actual. [ from (6)–​(7)]

In SNR, Curley and Walski grant that Spinoza does and must accept (7). However, they argue that he need not and does not accept (8)  on its most natural reading, proposing instead that (6) involves yet another ambiguity, this one involving two senses of “actual” (251). They base this proposal on a passage from near the end of the Ethics: 5p29s: We conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar as we conceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and place, or insofar as we conceive them to be contained in God and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature. But the things we conceive in this second way as true, or real, we conceive under a species of eternity, and to that extent they involve the eternal and infinite essence of God (as we have shown in IIP45 and P45S). They interpret this passage as alluding, in turn, to 2p8 and its corollary: 2p8:  The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God’s infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s attributes. 2p8c: From this it follows that so long as singular things do not exist, except insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes, their objective being, or ideas, do not exist except insofar as God’s infinite idea exists. And when singular things are said to exist, not only insofar as they are



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comprehended in God’s attributes, but insofar also as they are said to have duration, their ideas also involve the existence through which they are said to have duration. To say that something is actual in 5p29s’s first sense, Curley and Walski propose, is to say that it “has spatio-​temporal existence.” However, to say that something is actual in 5p29s’s second sense, they continue, is to say only that there is a “formal essence contained in God’s attribute” of the thing as an “abstract type,” and this is compatible with the thing’s not existing. Thus, they write, when we conceive of something as actual in this second sense, we are “having an idea of a nonexistent singular thing, a thing which is nevertheless actual insofar as its formal essence is contained in God’s attributes” (250; emphasis in original). For convenience, let us call the first of these proposed senses “existence actuality” and the second “formal essence actuality.” Curley and Walski conclude that (8) is true for Spinoza only in the sense that whatever is possible has formal essence actuality, even though it may lack existence actuality. In the more natural (“existence”) sense of “actuality,” therefore, they interpret Spinoza as denying that whatever is possible is actual, and thus they deny that he is a strict necessitarian. There are at least five serious problems for this interpretation. First, 2p8 and 2p8c do not distinguish two senses of “actual.” Indeed, they do not contain that term at all. Instead, 2p8 and 2p8c concern the question of how there can be true thoughts about the “formal essences” or natures—​what Descartes called “true and immutable natures”—​of “singular things” that do not exist, even though (because they do not exist) there cannot be a true idea of those singular things as existing. As Chapter 9 argues in greater detail, singular things and their formal essences are different but closely related beings for Spinoza. While a singular thing is a finite mode, the formal essence of a singular thing is an infinite mode of (and hence equally a mode that is contained “in”) an attribute.17 More specifically, Chapter 9 argues, the formal essence of a singular thing is the pervasive and permanent feature of the attribute consisting precisely in the fact that a particular kind of singular thing with a tendency for self-​preservation is consistent with the laws of nature for that attribute. (Those laws of nature are themselves pervasive and permanent features of the attribute, and hence they are infinite modes as well—​ just as Curley was the first to propose that they are.18) The existence of a formal essence of a singular thing is a precondition for the actual existence of a singular thing instantiating that formal essence, but it is not sufficient for it, since other actual finite causes are required as well, as parts of the one possible complete system of finite modes. Although 2p8c does refer, as Curley and Walski emphasize, to singular things that “do not exist except insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes,” both 2p8 and 2p8c make it clear that the “non-​existent” singular things in question—​as opposed to their formal essences—​do not thereby

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themselves genuinely exist, let  alone as “actual.” Rather, what exist are formal essences that are preconditions for the existence of corresponding singular things and which provide objects for true thoughts about their natures. Second, Spinoza himself does not connect 2p8 and 2p8c with 5p29s. Neither 2p8 nor 2p8c refer forward to 5p29s or employ its key technical term, “actual”; and the latter does not cite or invoke either 2p8 or 2p8c, nor does it employ their key technical term “formal essence.” Whereas 2p8 and 2p8c concern the question of how there can be thought about things that (actually) do not exist, 5p29s concerns the quite different question of how we can conceive the existence of things that actually do exist. Third, and more importantly, even 5p29s itself does not employ or distinguish two senses of the term “actual.” Rather, it distinguishes two ways of conceiving something to be actual in the only sense of “actual” that Spinoza ever employs—​ namely, that of genuinely existing. (This sense of “actual” corresponds roughly to SNR’s “spatiotemporal existence,” although only extended things are literally spatial and God’s existence is not literally temporal.) For example, when 2p11 declares that “the first thing that constitutes the actual being of a human Mind is nothing but the idea of a singular thing which actually exists,” the term “actual” indicates that the mind and its corresponding object have genuine existence. Furthermore, in the particular proposition to which 5p29s is a scholium Spinoza states: 5p29:  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. (emphasis added).19 As the demonstration of this proposition goes on to remark, “it is the nature of reason,” as contrasted with imagination or sensation, “to conceive things under a species of eternity.” The immediately following scholium then merely explains more explicitly that this distinction in kinds of conceiving includes within its scope knowledge of things as having actuality: we can conceive of them “as actual” either by imagining or sensing them from a particular time and place that we occupy bodily, or we can conceive them as “as actual” through reason by understanding them as “following from the necessity of the divine nature”—​as all and only actually existing modes (infinite and finite) in fact do. Of course, human minds cannot conceive in full detail how any one singular thing follows from the necessity of the divine nature, but 1p16 itself shows us how to conceive through reason that they all follow in precisely this way. In whichever way we conceive it, however, it is the same actuality that is being conceived.



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Fourth, and equally importantly, the proposed interpretation would render 1p16 far too weak for the role it must play in the Ethics. Again, that proposition states: 1p16: From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect). In granting (7), Curley and Walski grant “that everything which can fall under an infinite intellect” includes everything that is possible, and on their interpretation this must include infinitely many things that lack existence actuality but have only formal essence actuality. Hence, when Spinoza states in 1p16 that all of these things “must follow from the necessity of the divine nature” (in a phrase repeated in 5p29), Curley and Walski must take him to be making a claim about these things that is silent about whether they have existence actuality—​that is, a claim without any actual-​existential import. Accordingly, 1p16 will amount on their interpretation only to the mild claim that whatever is possible (as falling under an infinite intellect) is indeed possible (as having a formal essence that follows from the divine nature) even though the thing itself may not have existence actuality. Yet, crucially, this weakened version of 1p16 would not be sufficient to provide a basis for any of the propositions with obvious actual-​existential import that Spinoza uses 1p16 to establish, including 1p16c3, 1p29, 1p33, and 1p35: 1p16c3: It follows, thirdly, that God is absolutely the first cause. 1p29: In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way. 1p33: Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced. 1p35: Whatever we conceive to be in God’s power, necessarily exists. An “absolute first cause” must be a cause of the actual existence of everything that has existence actuality, while a thing can neither “produce an effect” nor “be produced” without having existence actuality. And since whatever is possible must be within the infinite power of God, 1p35 requires that any possible alternative to the actually existing system of finite modes must also be not merely “actual” in an attenuated sense compatible with nonexistence, but must itself “necessarily exist.” Finally, the proposed interpretation of 1p16’s principle that whatever is possible is actual cannot be reasonably combined with SNR’s own treatment of 1p16’s principle that whatever is actual is necessary. The reason is simple: The proposed interpretation

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renders entirely pointless SNR’s previous insistence that the term “follows” in 1p16 should be interpreted as meaning only “follows unconditionally or conditionally” (emphasis added), where following conditionally requires additional true propositions about actually existing finite modes. For the modest question of what formal essences there are, as mere types of possibly nonexistent singular things, does not depend on any condition at all concerning which finite modes, if any, have existence actuality. Furthermore, if the existence actuality of a finite mode were really to follow even conditionally from the divine nature, the finite mode would thereby have existence actuality. But since SNR concedes that 1p16 includes all possible modes within its scope, even their following conditionally from the divine nature would thereby require that whatever is possible is (existentially) actual, contrary to the claim of SNR.

IV.  In Nature There Is Nothing Contingent (1p29) SN argues that if the necessity ascribed to all things by1p16 is strict metaphysical necessity, then the necessity of each thing’s existence and production of effects in 1p29, which is derived from 1p16, must also be strict metaphysical necessity. Curley and Walski do not dispute this claim but reply that if, on the other hand, 1p16 is consistent with the merely conditional—​that is, relative—​necessity of finite modes, then so too is 1p29. However, I have argued in Section II that 1p16 does not attribute merely relative or conditional necessity to finite modes. Curley and Walski also raise in connection with 1p29 objections to the intelligibility of strict necessitarianism for Spinoza that I have already answered in Section I. In addition, however, they raise a further objection that merits discussion: We do not see why we should suppose that there is exactly one consistently constructible series of finite modes, and we consider it question begging to assume that there will be. (251) That there is only one metaphysically possible complete infinite system of finite modes for Spinoza is not a mere supposition of SN, but rather a consequence of its positive text-​based arguments that he is a strict necessitarian. Nevertheless, it may still be asked how Spinoza can think that there is only one possible complete infinite system of finite modes.20 To this question, SN offers two alternatives: he may suppose either (1) that the constraints on that system provided by the laws of nature and other infinite modes (aside from the infinite individual itself) are so stringent when taken in combination that only one complete infinite system of finite modes can meet them all; or (2) an additional necessary constraint is provided by the necessary fact that the divine nature—​as the nature of a maximally perfect



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and real being (in the metaphysical senses of these terms)—​entails that things must “be produced by God with the highest perfection” (1p33s2), a constraint that is uniquely satisfied by the actual complete infinite system of modes. Each alternative, I think, is compatible with Spinoza’s texts. Curley and Walski do not directly respond to the first alternative. No doubt it strikes them as too implausible for Spinoza to accept, although it is not obvious that they can rule it out (especially for someone who, like Spinoza, does not provide a list of the laws of nature or other infinite modes). By way of analogy, a set of constraints on numerical sequences might each individually be satisfied by many or even infinitely many sequences and yet be such that, necessarily, they can only be jointly satisfied by one unique sequence. To the second alternative, however, Curley and Walski object: Garrett seems to think that, just as the ens realissimum must have all possible attributes (E1P9), so it must express itself in the series of finite modes which has the highest degree of reality and perfection (p.  197). But how are we to understand the idea that the actual series of finite modes has the highest degree of reality and perfection without comparing its degree of reality and perfection with those of other possible series? And doesn’t that bring in precisely the idea of a plurality of possible series, which Garrett’s interpretation was supposed to avoid? If there’s only one possible series, the claim that it has more reality and perfection than any other doesn’t seem to say much. (253) But it is one thing to say that a finite mode, or a system of finite modes, is compatible with the necessary laws of nature (and with other infinite modes aside from the infinite individual), and potentially quite another to say that it is compatible with the entirety of the divine nature as that nature requires expression with maximal reality and perfection. Let us call the former kind of compatibility “law compatibility” and the latter kind of compatibility “comprehensive compatibility.” This is an essential distinction for Spinoza, even in application to an individual finite mode; for example, any singular thing that has a formal essence is law compatible (as argued in Chapter 9), even if it does not actually exist because it lacks comprehensive possibility.21 Furthermore, Curley and Walski should agree about the importance of this distinction; for presumably the null complete system consisting of no actually existing finite modes would have law compatibility, but it seems highly implausible that Spinoza should regard even this null complete system as comprehensively compatible with the perfection of the divine nature. Spinoza’s strict necessitarianism requires that only one complete system of finite modes should have comprehensive compatibility; it does not by itself require that only one complete system should have law compatibility.

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Curley and Walski sometimes characterize Spinoza as holding that there is a plurality of possible worlds. This characterization is compatible with a strict necessitarianism that adopts the second alternative, so long as “possible world” (which is not Spinoza’s word, as they note) is interpreted to mean “law-​compatible complete system of modes” and not “comprehensively compatible complete system of modes.” Indeed, Michael Griffin argues persuasively that even Leibniz, the first to formulate explicitly a doctrine of the multiplicity of possible worlds, must grant, despite his many distinctions, that only one of his infinitely many (internally) possible worlds is fully compatible with the necessary constraints provided by God’s necessarily instantiated nature as a supremely perfect thinking and willing being. On Griffin’s reading, the difference between the necessitarianism of Spinoza and the necessitarianism of Leibniz lies not in their degree of ultimate strictness, but in the way in which they take things to be necessitated: for Leibniz through the necessary operations of a perfect intellect and will, for Spinoza through purposeless necessity on the model of the way in which the essence of the circle necessitates its many properties.22 Because Leibniz’s God transcends every world, He can fully conceive each world prior to necessarily choosing the best to actualize. Because Spinoza’s God is immanent, however, and things can only be fully conceived through their causes for Spinoza, only the actual complete modal system can be fully conceived as actualizable.

V.  Things Could Have Been No Other Way (1p33) Ethics 1p33 and its demonstration state: 1p33: Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced. 1p33d: For all things have necessarily followed from God’s given nature (by P16), and have been determined from the necessity of God’s nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way (by P29). Therefore, if things could have been of another nature, or could have been determined to produce an effect in another way, so that the order of Nature was different, then God’s nature could also have been other than it is now, and therefore (by P11) that [other nature] would also have had to exist, and consequently, there could have been two or more Gods, which is absurd (by P14C1). So things could have been produced in no other way and no other order, etc., q.e.d. SN argues that a complete infinite system of finite modes different in any way from the actual one would constitute a different “order of nature” (or, equivalently,



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a different “way” and “order” of God’s producing things), and hence that 1p33 commits Spinoza to strict necessitarianism. Curley and Walski concede that “frequently Spinoza uses that expression in such a way that finite modes are clearly included in the order of nature” (255, emphasis in original). However, they claim that in 1p33 Spinoza means by “order of nature” only the laws of nature, and that he is asserting only that those laws, as infinite modes, are strictly necessary. In support of this reading, they offer two passages (one from the Ethics) as “clear cases” of Spinoza using “order of nature” to refer only to the laws of nature, and three other cases (all from the Ethics) as “probable” cases. The only passage from the Ethics that Curley and Walski cite as a “clear” case is 2a1: [2a1] The essence of man does not involve necessary existence, i.e., from the order of nature it can happen equally that this or that man does exist, or that he does not exist.23 They write: This must mean that it is consistent with the laws of nature that any particular man should not exist, that the existence of any particular man requires (in addition to the laws of nature) the antecedent conditions which those laws specify; it cannot mean that it is consistent with the laws of nature and the past history of the world that a particular man who does exist should not exist. Otherwise, Spinoza would give up (what everyone agrees he held) determinism. (255) Certainly Spinoza is a determinist, but Curley and Walski misconstrue the force of his phrase “from the order of nature” (“ex naturæ ordine”). They interpret it as equivalent to “so far as the laws of nature are concerned,” so that 2a1 states that the laws of nature alone are insufficient to determine whether this man or that man exists or not. Yet Spinoza’s use of “i.e.” (“hoc est”) implies that what follows it should be a reasonable gloss on the clause that precedes it—​namely, “the essence of man does not involve necessary existence.” This condition is not satisfied by their proposed interpretation. On that interpretation, Spinoza would be explaining the claim that the essence of man is insufficient to determine man’s existence as meaning that some other infinite modes (the laws of nature) are insufficient either to determine or to prevent it. But such an explanation of the claim would be prima facie mistaken, on Spinoza’s view—​for much the same reason that it would be a mistake to explain the contrasting doctrine that God’s essence does involve necessary existence as meaning that the infinite modes constituting the

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laws of nature are sufficient to determine it. Instead, Spinoza means that man’s essence leaves it equally open whether this or that man exists, so that whether this or that man does exist or not is determined instead from the order of nature—​which of course must include the prior order of finite modes as at least part of what does the determining. Spinoza makes a similar point in more general terms in 1p33s1, where he writes of things whose essence does not involve existence and which we erroneously call “contingent” through the defect of knowledge that we “can affirm nothing certainly about its existence, because the order of causes is hidden from us” (emphasis added). In many cases, at least, this ignorance must surely be ignorance of the prior order of finite modes rather than of the relevant laws of nature. The only other “clear case” cited by Curley and Walski is from Cogitata Metaphysica, the appendix to Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy”: Then there is the ordinary power of God, and his extraordinary power. The ordinary is that by which he preserves the world in a certain order; the extraordinary is exercised when he does something beyond the order of nature, e.g., all miracles, such as the speaking of an ass, the appearance of angels, and the like. (DPP 1.9). Of course, as they note, Spinoza himself does not regard miracles as possible; here he is writing only as an expositor of Descartes. And they are certainly right that an historical event actually occurring “beyond the order of nature” would require a violation of the laws of nature. But it does not follow that by “the order of nature” he means just those laws, as opposed to the entire system of actual events that are determined in accordance with those laws—​for a miracle would be something occurring not as part of that system but beyond it. This latter more comprehensive reading is strongly suggested by the further statement that God preserves the world not merely with but in a certain order. Furthermore, Descartes’s only use of the phrase “order of nature” (Sixth Meditation, CSM II.55/​AT VII.83) clearly includes particular sensory perceptions as elements in “the order of nature.” The three “probable” cases cited (though without explanation) by Curley and Walski are 1p33s2, 2p7s, and the Preface to Ethics Part 5. None of these passages, however, treats the order of nature as equivalent to the laws of nature in contrast with the system of finite modes that are in accordance with them; quite the contrary, they seem in at least two cases positively to include the elements of that system as elements of that order. Ethics 1p33s2 treats the claim that “things could have been created by God in no other way or order” as equivalent to the claim that God “can never decree anything different, and never could have” (emphasis added). Ethics 2p7s identifies “the order of the whole of nature” with “the connection of causes” and in turn identifies “the same connection of causes” with “the same things follow[ing] one another” (emphasis added). Furthermore, the topic of 2p7 as



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a whole is not the parallelism between laws of nature governing things and the ideas of those laws but rather the parallelism between things and ideas themselves. The Preface to Part  5 criticizes philosophers who “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 by himself.” As with the passage from Cogitata Metaphysica, however, this need only mean that they suppose man to disturb and upset, rather than to participate fully in, the system of actual events that are be determined in accordance with those laws. Thus, many of Spinoza’s uses of the phrase “the order of nature” can only be interpreted as referring to the system of things operating in accordance with the laws of nature, and all of them readily accommodate that interpretation; in contrast, none require interpretation as referring only to the laws of nature themselves. Equally important, however, Spinoza in the course of the demonstration and scholia of 1p33 also characterizes the strictly alternative-​excluding necessitarianism of that proposition as applying not only to “the order of nature” but also to everything “concerning nature and its order,” to everything that “God decrees,” and, most strikingly, to “all things [that] depend on God’s power.” Accordingly, the strength of the interpretation of 1p33 as committed to strict necessitarianism by no means depends exclusively on the interpretation of the phrase “order of nature.”

VI. Conclusion I have argued in Section I that the strict necessaritarianism that SN attributes to Spinoza is a coherent doctrine, just as moderate necessitarianism is. I have further argued in Sections II–​V that 1p16, 1p29, and 1p33, when properly interpreted, require a strict necessitarian interpretation of Spinoza and cannot sustain a moderate necessitarian one. Given these conclusions, plus SN’s further undisputed conclusion that only a strict necessitarian reading can explain Spinoza’s commitment to the necessary parallelism between extended things and the ideas of them in light of the causal barrier between attributes, I conclude that the interpretation of Spinoza as a strict necessitarian is secure.24

Notes 1. For further discussion of logical-​metaphysical necessity, see the Postscript to Chapter 2, “Spinoza’s ‘Ontological’ Argument.” 2. Edwin Curley and Gregory Walski, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered,” in New Essays on the Rationalists, edited by Rocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1999):  241–​ 262. The article seeks to defend an interpretation of the modal status of the finite modes that was originally stated in Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics:  An Essay in

146 Necessity and God’s Nature Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1969). Because I take SNR to pose the strongest challenge in the literature to the interpretation of Spinoza as a strict necessitarian, I will not directly address such other challenges as Christopher Martin, “A New Challenge to the Necessitarian Reading of Spinoza,” in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume 5, edited by Daniel Garber and Steven Nadler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010): 25–​70. 3. Following common practice, both SN and SNR used the term “infinite series of finite modes.” However, because this term might suggest, contrary to Spinoza’s intention, that there is only one finite mode at any given time, I shall henceforth follow Olli Koistinen (“On the Consistency of Spinoza’s Modal Theory,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 [1998]: 61–​88) in using the preferable term “infinite system of finite modes.” 4. For a development of this theme, see Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2008). 5. Samuel Clarke raised this objection against Spinoza in Section X of his 1705 work, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, more particularly against Hobbes, Spinoza, and their Followers, originally presented as Boyle Lectures. See Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God and Other Writings, ed. E. Vailati, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 6. Spatial variation presumably applies literally only to the attribute of extension, but there will be parallel kinds of variation in other attributes. 7. Spinoza also writes frequently of “propositions” as following from other propositions; it is not necessary to determine here whether this usage is also causal or not, although ideas certainly stand in causal relations to one another for Spinoza. 8. 3d1 reads: “I call that cause adequate 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.” 3d2 reads in part: “I say that we are acted on when something happens in us, or something follows from our nature, of which we are only a partial cause.” 9. For some elaboration of this theme in response to Curley and Walski, see Michael V. Griffin, Leibniz, God and Necessity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013): 68–​79. 10. This is the fallacy of illicitly inferring that a property of a whole must also be a property of each part. A comparison may be useful. It might equally seem to be a matter of logic that if each item in a system has a sufficient causal explanation, then the entire system as a whole must have a sufficient causal explanation. However, Curley and Walski themselves must agree that this would be a fallacy of composition (illicitly inferring that a property of parts must also be a property of the whole). This is because they treat every finite mode as having (what is for them) a sufficient causal explanation in the divine nature plus previous finite modes, yet they deny that there is any causal explanation at all of why the entire system, rather than some other, exists.



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11. I say “at least in part” because I agree with Curley and Walski that for Spinoza some infinite modes are also contributing causes to the existence of finite modes. 12. Spinoza’s original Latin reads: “Ex necessitate divinæ naturæ, infinita infinitis modis (hoc est, omnia, quæ sub intellectum infinitum cadere possunt) sequi debent.” Curley mentions that “modis” might be intended nontechnically as “ways.” 13. In this case, the proposition that whatever is actual is necessary would entail that whatever is possible is actual, because for every nonactual state of affairs that p, the necessity of the contrasting actual state of affairs that not-​p would entail the impossibility of the nonactual state of affairs that p; hence, only actual states of affairs would be even possible. And conversely, that whatever is possible is actual would also entail that whatever is actual is necessary. For by simple contraposition, if whatever is possible is actual, then whatever is nonactual is impossible; hence, for every actual state of affairs that q, the impossibility of the contrasting nonactual state of affairs that not-​q would entail the necessity of the state of affairs that q. 14. On this weaker interpretation, it could be that all of the actual beings were necessary even if some merely possible beings were neither actual nor necessary (for example, if a necessary God failed to create anything else, even though it could have created them); or, alternatively, it could be that all of the possible beings were actual even if some of those actual beings were not necessary (for example, if all possible things were capable of existing together and a necessary God brought about every thing that was possible, even though God could have refrained from bringing them about). Neither of these alternatives is plausibly attributable to Spinoza, however. Although some commentators interpret him as holding that every formal essence is realized at some time or other (see Section III), they typically do so because they regard it as a necessary consequence of God’s infinite power. Curley and Walski do not propose this interpretation. 15. Martin, op. cit., proposes that only infinite modes are treated as propria in 1p16, but I do not see the textual basis for this distinction among the “infinitely many things” that follow from the necessity of the divine nature. Spinoza does not draw the distinction between infinite modes and finite modes until later in Part 1 of the Ethics. 16. This would be especially to be expected if, as Curley and Walski hold, and I agree, the causes of any finite mode include some finite modes and some infinite modes for Spinoza. 17. Koistinen, op. cit., proposes that the formal essences of singular things are infinite modes consisting in the unchanging “object-​of-​truth” that such a singular thing exists at a particular time and place, t. It is by no means obvious, however, that Spinoza would recognize an “object-​of-​truth” of this kind (as opposed to the singular thing itself) as an additional mode in his ontology. The proposal also does not easily square with the more general distinction Spinoza draws between the existences and essences of things (for example, at 1p25).

148 Necessity and God’s Nature 18. Curley, op. cit. 19. Spinoza holds that the human intellect operates by conceiving the formal essence of the body (see Chapter 14); hence the claim of 5p29 that conceiving “under a species of eternity” requires conceiving “the Body’s essence.” 20. Spinoza’s critic Samuel Clarke, op. cit., also found this claim incredible, although he was sure that Spinoza held it. 21. As remarked in footnote 14, some commentators have held that every formal essence is instantiated by an existing singular thing at least once, even if it is not instantiated at all times. While this is not implausible, I take no interpretative stand on the question, as nothing at issue in this postscript depends on it, and I am not confident that Spinoza’s texts provide a definitive answer. 22. Griffin, op. cit. 23. Spinoza’s Latin: “Hominis essentia non involvit necessariam existentiam hoc est ex naturæ ordine tam fieri potest ut hic et ille homo existat quam ut non existat.” 24. I  owe a particular debt of gratitude to Angela Coventry for discussions of “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered.”

SECTION II

Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge

5

Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione

Spinoza devotes well over a third of his unfinished Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE) to detailed discussions of three kinds of ‘ideas’ derived from the imagination:  fiction, falsity, and doubt. The discussions of these ideas play a crucial role in the overall plan of the TIE. This plan is laid out in §49, which both summarizes the progress of the TIE up to that point and indicates what is to follow. According to this summary, the prior portion of the work has served to motivate and introduce his philosophical Method by (a)  treating the end toward which we strive to direct all our thoughts [§§1–​17]; (b) teaching which is the best perception, by whose aid we can reach our perfection [§§18–​29]; and (c) showing which is the first path our mind must enter on to begin well—​which is to proceed in its investigation according to certain laws, taking as a standard a given true idea [§§30–​48]. With these things done, Spinoza indicates, we may now proceed to the Method itself, which is to consist of four parts: the Method must, first, show how to distinguish a true idea from all other perceptions, and to restrain the mind from those other perceptions; second, teach rules so that we may perceive things unknown according to such a standard; third, establish an order, so that we do not become weary with trifles. When we came to know this method, we saw, fourth, that it will be most perfect when we have the idea of the most perfect Being.1 Of these four projected parts of the Method, only the first, concerned with distinguishing true ideas from all other perceptions and restraining the mind from these others, is actually completed in the TIE, in §§50–​90; the second part, which begins with §91, remains unfinished when the work breaks of after §110.2 The

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discussions of fiction, falsity, and doubt constitute nearly all of this first part of the Method. Despite the prominence of these discussions, however, it has frequently been questioned whether their inclusion is compatible with the work’s conceptions of truth and Method. H.H. Joachim, in his influential book-​length study of the TIE, states the objection as follows: The true idea is an act of knowledge; and, as such, it is an experience true absolutely in its content and certain absolutely in its form. But, if so, the true idea, as the concrete indissoluble unity of absolute truth and absolute certainty, is an experience sui generis. It stands alone, unique and unmistakable, sundered utterly from supposals, fictions, errors, and doubts; and confusion either way is impossible. The true idea cannot be mistaken for any other experience, nor any other experience for the true idea . . . and the first part of the Doctrine of Method ought to have begun and ended with the exposition of the true idea as an act of absolute knowledge and certainty in one. (Joachim 1958, pp. 186s) And Edwin Curley writes in the Editorial Preface to his translation of the TIE that: The most important question, perhaps, is whether the whole concept of method, as Spinoza here presents it, is not incoherent, and so doomed to failure. On the one hand, the truth is supposed to require no sign, and having a true idea is supposed to be sufficient to remove doubt (§36); on the other, the method is supposed, among other things, to teach us what a true idea is, and how to distinguish it from other perceptions. (§37) (Spinoza 1985, p. 5)3 In this chapter, I will argue that Spinoza’s attempt in the TIE to distinguish true ideas from others by means of an extended treatment of fiction, falsity, and doubt is not incompatible with his accounts of truth and Method. In the first section of the chapter, I will examine his account of the nature of true ideas and the relation of this account to his conception of philosophical Method. In particular, I will seek to determine the meaning and bearing of his two claims that truth requires no sign and is sufficient to remove all doubt. In doing so, I will argue that these claims are best understood as responses to Descartes’ account of the relations between clarity and distinctness, certainty, and truth. In the second section, I will examine Spinoza’s stated goals for the first part of the Method and his pursuit of those goals in his discussions of fiction, falsity, and doubt. I will argue both that his rationale for discussing these ideas is sound and that the specific claims he makes about them are consistent with his accounts of truth and Method. In the final section, I will raise a related objection, not to the consistency of the Method, but to its execution.



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I Method and true ideas Spinoza describes the Method, true ideas, and the relation between them, in the third of the three preliminary sections summarized in §49, that devoted to considering which is the first path our mind must enter on to begin well—​which is to proceed in its investigation according to certain laws, taking as a standard a given true idea.4 He begins this section by announcing that we must first consider that there is no infinite regress here, i.e., that to find the best Method of seeking the truth, there is no need of another Method to seek the Method of seeking the truth, or of a third Method to seek the second, and so on, to infinity. Spinoza rejects the threatened regress by considering an analogous problem concerning tools: in order to make tools, it seems to be necessary to employ other tools, but the making of these tools, in turn, seems to presuppose the possession of yet prior tools, which require for their manufacture yet other tools, so that it seems that humankind could never come to the possession of tools at all. But of course men do have tools; and the problem is solved by realizing that, although men could indeed never make tools if they were utterly without them to begin with, men are in fact already equipped by nature at the outset with certain primitive tools (their hands and other parts of their bodies), which they can employ to make somewhat better tools, which in turn can be used in constructing a greater number of more sophisticated tools. By analogy, it may be possible for us to obtain better intellectual tools—​i.e., a Method—​if we already possess more primitive intellectual tools with which to make such better tools. In order to enable us to see what our primitive intellectual tools are, Spinoza offers a description of true ideas. This description occupies §§33–​36, and may be summarized as follows: [33] A true idea . . . is something different from its object. [34] A true idea [of a thing, e.g., Peter] is an objective essence of [that thing], and something real in itself. [35] [C]‌ertainty is nothing but the objective essence [true idea] itself, i.e., the mode by which we are aware of the formal essence is certainty itself. [36] [T]‌ruth, therefore, requires no sign, but it suffices, in order to remove all doubt, to have the objective essences of things, or, what is the same, [true] ideas. From this last remark, Spinoza derives several specific features of the Method: [36] [I]‌t follows that the true Method is not to seek a sign of truth after the acquisition of ideas, but the true Method is the way that truth itself, or the objective essence of things, or the ideas (all those signify the same) should be sought in the proper order.

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[37] Again, the Method must speak about Reasoning, or about the intellection; i.e., Method is not the reasoning itself by which we understand the causes of things; much less the understanding of 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. [38] From this it may be inferred that Method is nothing but a reflexive knowl­ edge, or an idea of an idea; and because there is no idea of an idea, unless there is first an idea, there will be no Method unless there is first an idea. So that Method will be good which shows how the mind is to be directed according to the standard of a given true idea.

Descartes and signs of truth With this much by way of background, let us now examine more closely the first of the claims that Curley identifies as posing a difficulty for Spinoza’s conception of Method. What does it mean to say that the truth requires no sign, and that the Method is therefore not to seek a sign of truth after the acquisition of ideas? One way to approach this question is to ask what it would be like to have a method that did seek for a sign of truth after the acquisition of ideas. The most obvious example of a philosopher having such a method is Descartes, who claims to locate a sign of truth in the clarity and distinctness of ideas. It is important to recall that at no time does Descartes identify the property of clarity and distinctness with the property of truth. Rather, his investigation of the reason for his certainty about his own existence as a thinking thing induces him—​ provisionally at first—​to adopt clarity and distinctness as a criterion, or sign, of truth. (So I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true.5) The adoption of this criterion, of course, raises an immediate question: how can we know that clarity and distinctness really provide a reliable indicator of what is, after all, a quite different property, namely truth? Descartes provides a proof that we could not be deceived in regarding our clear and distinct ideas as true, arguing from (1) God’s existence as a most perfect being, and (2) our introspectively discoverable lack of any faculty for withholding assent from present clear and distinct ideas. Since this proof itself relies on ideas whose acceptance is based on their clarity and distinctness, however, the further question immediately arises of whether Descartes is really entitled to regard the proof as satisfactory; and this, of course, is the problem of the Cartesian Circle. If



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the Cartesian cannot solve this problem, he will be unable to validate his grounds for accepting his criterion of truth, provoking just the kind of infinite regress Spinoza seeks to prevent. Spinoza deals directly with Descartes’ proof and its alleged circularity in his own geometrical reformulation of the Principles of Philosophy. In that work, the proposition that whatever we perceive clearly and distinctly is true is presented as Proposition 14 of Part I.  The demonstration of the proposition is an accurate rendering of the Cartesian proof from God’s perfection, and distinguishes clarity and distinctness as a property that is distinct from truth. Spinoza discusses the alleged circularity of Descartes’ procedure in his Prolegomenon to Part I, where he considers the possibility of the following objection: Since God’s existence does not become known to us through itself, we seem unable to be ever certain of anything; nor will we ever be able to come to know God’s existence. For we have said that everything is uncertain so long as we are ignorant of our origin, and from uncertain premises, nothing certain can be inferred. Descartes replied to this objection, Spinoza writes, by asserting that we cannot doubt whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly while it is so perceived, and that therefore we can come to a certain knowledge of God’s existence, even though His existence is known only through a proof, so long as we attend very accurately to all the premises from which we have inferred it. Spinoza immediately goes on to say, however, that since this answer does not satisfy some people, I shall give another. Although he does not explicitly state the reason why the first answer does not satisfy everyone, his supplementation of it makes clear why it is inadequate as it stands. Descartes has consistently maintained that we cannot doubt the truth of any clear and distinct idea while we are considering it. Afterwards, however, we can consider the hypothesis that we are deceived by God or an evil demon even about matters of which we are most certain, and we find that we can use this hypothesis to doubt whether clear and distinct ideas are really true. This is because, although no clear and distinct idea can be doubted while entertained, the proposition: (C)  Clear and distinct ideas are true. is not yet itself perceived clearly and distinctly. Accordingly, we can call (C) into doubt, and, through this general doubt, we can indirectly call into question all of those clear and distinct ideas that we found ourselves unable to question when we attended to them directly and individually. Now, Descartes’ subsequent proof of (C) aims, at least in part, to render (C) itself clear and distinct, and hence indubitable while it is being entertained. However, even if we assume that the proof

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is successful in this, what is to prevent the same skeptical difficulty from arising again? While we are considering Descartes’ proof very accurately, of course, we may not then be able to doubt (C). But what is to prevent us from afterward again calling (C)  itself into question by the familiar hypothesis that we are deceived? After all, Descartes himself admits that we can be certain of nothing so long as we are ignorant of our origin; hence, the old hypothesis seems to render the initial premises of the proof of (C) uncertain, and so to render the conclusion uncertain as well. In short, we seem to have the very same problem with (C) that we already had with our earlier clear and distinct ideas, and so we seem to have made no real progress. Spinoza’s own response avoids this difficulty by pointing out that, once we have actually formed a clear and distinct idea of God’s true nature, by whatever means, we will no longer be able to give serious consideration to the old hypoth­ esis that we are deceived by the author of our being even about those matters that we regard as most certain. There will therefore be no grounds left on which we can call the truth of (C) into question. The very attempt to find a ground for doubting (C) via such a hypothesis will now fail, since we will find the idea of such deception incompatible with our clear and distinct (and hence certain or indubitable) idea of God’s true non-​deceptive nature: Wherever we then direct our attention in order to doubt . . . we shall come upon nothing from which we must not instead infer that it is most certain. Accordingly, once (C) has been rendered clear and distinct, and therefore indubitable, by the proof from God’s perfection, it will remain completely indubitable through the absence of any seriously-​entertainable challenge. Our newfound certainty about the reliability of clarity and distinctness as a criterion of truth will remain unimpaired. Under these circumstances, we may add, Descartes would obviously be entitled to accept the reliability of his criterion. For the minimal principle of belief, accept that which is so completely and permanently indubitable that it cannot be seriously challenged, is one that every person cannot help but follow. But although Descartes could hardly be criticized for assenting under such circumstances, there remains something less than ideally satisfying about this proposed resolution of his skeptical doubts. For in spite of all our efforts, we can never really bring ourselves to see the truth of our ideas directly; we can only make ourselves fully certain of them, certain that our certainty will be permanent and unchallengeable, und certain that these certainties are not errors. Curley, who argues convincingly that Descartes himself intended something like the resolution Spinoza offers him, thus writes that, Descartes is working with a concept of proof for which it does not hold that if there is a proof of p, then p is true. He admits that indubitability is compatible with falsity (Curley 1978).6 This assertion, however, must be interpreted with some care. For Descartes is certain that he can demonstrate



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(via a proof of God’s non-​deceptiveness) that a contradiction follows from the hypothesis of someone’s having indubitable-​but-​false ideas. Thus, I prefer to put the point by saying that Descartes himself would have to admit (1) that anyone who had the power to doubt the truth of clear and distinct ideas (even while having them) would see no contradiction in the hypothesis that such ideas were false; and (2) that he can find no contradiction in the supposition that God might have created a world populated entirely by perfectly rational beings who had that power.

Spinoza and signs of truth In contrast, Spinoza’s own procedure in the TIE differs from Descartes’ in a notable and crucial respect:  it involves no effort to demonstrate the reliability of any criterion of truth. Given his familiarity with Descartes, it is unthinkable that Spinoza should neglect such a demonstration through mere oversight; if he does not attempt to provide one in a work like the TIE, it can only be because he thinks it unnecessary. Moreover, he has a strong potential motive to try to render such a demonstration unnecessary. For he could thereby avoid not only the infinite regress of Methods for finding proper Methods that is threatened by the Cartesian Circle, but also the less-​than-​ideally-​satisfying solution to that Circle just described. Finally, the identification of truth with objective essence in §34, along with the subsequent identification of objective essence with certainty in §35, suggests a reason why he could regard such a demonstration as unnecessary: namely, that truth itself is in his view a directly introspectible property. The view that Spinoza regards truth as directly introspectible finds additional support in a later remark as well: As to what constitutes the form of the true, it is certain that a true thought is distinguished from a false one not only by an extrinsic, but chiefly by an intrinsic denomination . . . [T]‌here is something real in ideas, through which the true are distinguished from the false. . . . So the form of the true thought must be placed in the same thought itself without relation to other things. [(§§69–​71)] Now, Spinoza’s claim that truth requires no sign immediately follows §§34–​35 and is drawn as a conclusion from them. It thus seems overwhelmingly likely that Spinoza means by this claim to deny the need for a separate criterion of truth—​ such as Descartes proposes—​and that he does so on the grounds that truth itself is an internal characteristic or intrinsic denomination of the true idea and is therefore directly accessible without the need for a criterion. I see no grounds in the TIE for thinking that he means by it anything other than or in addition to this.

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Intrinsic denominations and the Method It is likely to appear at this point as though Spinoza has avoided the need to demonstrate the reliability of a sign of truth in a purely formal way, by changing the meaning of the word ‘true’ so as to rob it of its ordinary meaning of correspondence with reality. Spinoza would not agree, however. As §69 itself suggests, he does not simply abandon the aspect of correspondence in the TIE: truth is still to involve both an intrinsic and an extrinsic denomination. More specifically, he has already claimed at §§41–​42 that the idea is objectively in the same way as its object is really . . .[A]‌n idea must agree completely with its formal essence. Yet reassuring as these remarks may be about the ultimate role of correspondence, they seem to resurrect a familiar problem. For hasn’t Spinoza now just replaced Descartes’ explicit problem—​how we can know clarity and distinctness to be a reliable sign of truth—​with an implicit problem of how we can know the truth to involve both an intrinsic and an extrinsic denomination? If we may extend Spinoza’s original analogy between true ideas and tools, we may say that the true idea is meant to be more like a level than a yardstick. For whereas both kinds of tools can be used as standards, the reliability of a yardstick must be established by an external criterion. The level, in contrast, requires no such criterion: it belongs to its very nature that, whenever it indicates levelness, that indication is at once a measure of the levelness of the object tested and of the level itself. Nonetheless, the fact that a level requires no external standard is not obvious at first glance, but rather only after one has grasped the physical principle on which the level works. Similarly, it appears that we must achieve some prior theoretical understanding of truth before we can be expected to agree that truth does always involve both an intrinsic and an extrinsic denomination, and hence that it is able to serve as a sign of itself in a way that does not simply abandon the original requirement of correspondence. Although it may be that some directly introspectible feature of ideas is not merely a sign of truth but truth itself, it still appears that we require some prior philosophizing if we are to recognize with confidence that this is really so.7 Spinoza is evidently quite aware that his identification of truth with a particular intrinsic characteristic of ideas requires support, and he seems to hold that some of this support, at least, cannot be given until the second part of the Method. For although he asserts in the TIE [§64, §68] that all clear and distinct ideas are true, and strongly implies the converse, he does not actually state whether clarity and distinctness are the intrinsic denomination that constitutes the form of truth. On the contrary, he puts off more specific inquiry with the explanation that what constitutes the form of the true thought . . . must be deduced from the nature of the intellect [§ 71]. The nature and definition of the intellect pertain to the second part of the Method, and are not fully settled when the TIE breaks off after §110.8



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But there is no inconsistency here. For although truth, Spinoza promises, will prove to be an internal characteristic of ideas that is directly introspectible (and thus requires no external criterion), that does not by itself entail that we must immediately and unproblematically know that this very characteristic is truth. Spinoza’s accounts of our need for a Method consistently imply that both the ability to avoid confusing this characteristic with others, and the full understanding of this characteristic as the proper object of our search for truth, lie at the end of a lengthy process of reasoning and reflection. That truth requires no sign, in the sense of a Cartesian criterion, does not entail that we require no labor to isolate and appreciate the truth that already characterizes some of our ideas.

True ideas and removal of doubt Still, if Spinoza is right about the need for a Method to distinguish and appreciate the internal characteristic of truth, then are we not threatened with something like another version of the Cartesian Circle? For if at the start we do not fully recognize and understand what truth is, what is to prevent us from supposing that we are deceived by a supreme deceiver in everything, even though (unappreciated by us at the time) we do in fact have some true ideas? And how can we then legitimately reject this skeptical supposition without attempting to rely on some of the very ideas that it calls into question? Spinoza answers this question in §79. It is an answer that will be familiar to readers of his Prolegomenon to Part I of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, cited earlier: [O]‌nly so long as we have no clear and distinct idea of God, can we call true ideas in doubt by supposing that perhaps some deceiving God exists, who misleads us even in the things most certain. I.e., if we attend to the knowledge we have concerning the origin of all things and do not discover—​by the same knowledge we have when, attending to the nature of the triangle, we discover that its three angles equal two right angles—​anything that teaches us that he is not a deceiver then the doubt remains. But if we have the kind of knowledge of God that we have of the triangle, then all doubt is removed. And just as we can arrive at such a knowledge of the triangle, even though we may not know certainly, whether some supreme deceiver misleads us, so we can arrive at such a knowledge of God, even though we may not know whether there is some supreme deceiver. Provided we have that knowledge, it will suffice, as I have said, to remove every doubt that we can have concerning clear and distinct ideas. As we have seen, Spinoza holds that the final part of the Method is to obtain a true idea of the cause of all, i.e., God. It does not matter that this idea of God is

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obtained before the skeptical doubts about even our most certain ideas have been completely refuted. For once it is obtained, by whatever means, this true idea of God will show us that such doubts are unwarranted, and it will prevent us from continuing to engage in them. Although this is essentially the same response that Spinoza recommends on Descartes’ behalf, Spinoza’s own position nevertheless differs in at least two respects from Descartes’, even if we suppose Descartes to adopt Spinoza’ s recommendation. First, Spinoza’s true idea of God will presumably block the hypothesis of deception not in virtue of God’s benevolence, but rather in virtue of his lack of personhood, and, more generally, through a resulting understanding of the fundamental structure of the universe and the place of the human mind within it. Secondly, Spinoza will not remain forced to admit even the theoretical consistency of a world in which false ideas meet his criterion of truth. For Spinoza’s final criterion of truth, unlike Descartes’, will be (directly introspectible) truth itself, and truth is not even theoretically compatible with falsity. He thus avoids the less-​than-​ideally-​satisfying character of the Cartesian solution as described earlier. Finally the discussion of skepticism at §79 also casts light on the second of the two claims that Curley identifies as problematic for Spinoza’s Method: the claim made at §36 that a true idea is sufficient to remove all doubt. Spinoza deduces this claim from the identification of truth with certainty, made at §35. His treatment of our idea of God and our idea of the triangle at §79 confirms that Spinoza holds two views about true (and therefore certain) ideas that Descartes holds concerning clear and distinct (and therefore certain) ideas: (1) their certainty entails that they cannot be doubted while they are actually being entertained; and (2) their certainty is compatible with their later being called indirectly into doubt by skeptical hypotheses, if such hypotheses have not themselves been ruled out. Thus, we must interpret Spinoza’s claim that true ideas are sufficient to remove all doubt to mean only what Descartes would mean by it, namely, that having such ideas is incompatible with doubt about their subject matter while they are being attentively considered or entertained. We must not interpret it to entail that the same subject matter cannot later be called into question while we are not entertaining those ideas. Just as there is no inconsistency in the notion of truth as a directly-​ introspectible property that can be well-​ distinguished from others and recognized as truth only after reasoning and reflection, so there is no inconsistency in Spinoza’s notion of true ideas that are indubitable-​while-​entertained but indirectly dubitable when not entertained, via skeptical hypotheses that may themselves eventually be blocked by the attainment of further true ideas. Although we may not be guaranteed in advance that we shall ever achieve the true ideas necessary to block these hypotheses, the fact that true ideas cannot be doubted while we are entertaining them will provide us with at least some power to persist in the right direction. What remains to be seen is whether



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Spinoza’s discussions of fiction, falsity, and doubt can be consistently supposed to play a role of the kind he gives them in our progress towards knowledge. It is to that question that we now turn.

II In his outline of the structure of the TIE at §49, Spinoza cites two goals for the first part of the Method, the part concerned with fiction, falsity, and doubt. These goals are:  (1) to show how to distinguish a true idea from all other perceptions, and (2)  to show how to restrain the mind from those other perceptions. I  will begin by considering the first of these goals, raising two questions about it: first, whether its pursuit can consistently constitute a part of the Method; and second, whether investigations of fiction, falsity, and doubt can consistently be regarded as useful means toward its achievement.

Distinguishing true ideas Spinoza grants that if anyone should happen to proceed in the proper order of investigation, he would never have any reason to doubt anything, and would proceed properly without an explicit plan [§44]. Because many causes prevent men from being so fortunate, however, it is necessary to acquire by a deliberate plan what we cannot acquire by fate. This plan requires us to consider an already existing true idea and to take its truth as a standard by which we can judge other ideas, derive the nature and powers of the intellect that produces it, and proceed to derive rules suitable to that nature for the furtherance of our understanding. In order to take truth as a standard in this way, it is clearly necessary first to distinguish true ideas from others, just as we must distinguish a level from other objects before we can use it as a standard to judge and investigate levelness. To this extent, the first goal of the first part of the Method seems unexceptionable. It may nevertheless be objected that we have no need of a special part of the Method to enable us to distinguish true ideas from others, on the grounds that having a true idea immediately enables us to distinguish true ideas from others. Spinoza remarks in general that investigating Nature in the proper order requires a considerable capacity for making accurate distinctions  .  .  .  and much effort [§45], which suggests that he does not regard the ability to make accurate distinctions as a simple matter. And as we have already seen, the assertion that truth requires no sign does not itself entail that everyone can immediately distinguish truth from other characteristics. On the other hand, he also claims in Ethics 2P43 that 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; and it may justly be questioned whether this proposition can be reconciled with the need for a Method to distinguish true ideas from others.

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First of all, it should be noted that the TIE contains no assertion similar to the first clause of Ethics 2P43. (The TIE does of course assert, as already noted, that whoever has a true idea cannot doubt the truth of the thing while he has this idea.) Spinoza demonstrates Ethics 2P43 from the same kind of considerations that he has already used earlier in Part II to support the identification of each idea with the idea of that idea [Ethics 2P21S, where it is also said that as soon as someone knows something, he thereby knows that he knows it]. But in the TIE, Spinoza emphasizes, as the very first point in his characterization of true ideas [§§33–​36], that an idea is something different from its object, and insists that this is as true when the object is itself an idea as when the object is anything else. Although the TIE emphasizes that knowing is a necessary precondition for knowing that one knows [§34], it does so in a way that seems intentionally to avoid asserting that the primary act of knowing is itself an act of knowing that one knows. If the Ethics contradicts the TIE on this point, that by itself does nothing to undermine the internal consistency of the TIE, which is our primary concern.9 Nonetheless, I think it is possible to reconcile the TIE with the Ethics on this point. The Ethics clearly makes room for some sense in which an idea and its object are different. A mode of extension and the idea of it can in this sense be considered as different—​despite their underlying identity—​just in virtue of their being considered under different attributes. Similarly, a mode of thought and the idea of that mode can be considered as different—​despite their underlying identity—​just in virtue of their being considered in two different ways (‘formally,’ in the one case; ‘objectively’ in the other). Surely even the Spinoza of the Ethics would grant that two different ways of considering the same mode (i.e., as a mode of extension and as a mode of thought; or as an idea, and as an idea of the idea) constitute two different ways of directing one’s attention. And if this is granted, then it will be possible to have a true idea of one’s true idea, or know that one knows, without having explicitly directed one’s attention to this reflective knowledge; and it may even be that achieving this reflective redirection of attention requires considerable preliminary effort. Moreover, even if reflective ‘knowing that one knows’ is itself meant to be immediate and utterly unproblematic in the Ethics, there remains a difference between knowing that a particular true idea is true, on the one hand, and knowing how to distinguish correctly the entire class of true ideas from the class of untrue ideas, on the other. This latter task may still require additional knowledge, such as the Method might provide. Indeed, the sentence immediately preceding Ethics 2P43 implies as much: For he who knows how to distinguish between the true and the false must have an adequate knowledge of the true and of the false [emphasis added].

Imagination and doubt of true ideas I conclude that distinguishing true ideas from others need not be so simple a matter, for Spinoza, as to render its inclusion as a goal of the first part of the



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Method pointless. We must now ask whether consideration of fiction, falsity, and doubt can play any significant role in achieving this goal. In trying to distinguish one kind of object it is sometimes useful to describe other kinds of things, particularly if they are otherwise likely to be confused with objects of the first kind. On the other hand, it is sometimes better simply to describe the first kind of thing itself in sufficient detail to prevent any confusion from arising. And in the case of true ideas, it is not yet obvious that discussion of other ideas would be useful at all. Spinoza provides an initial description of true ideas at §§33–​36, and additional information about them in later sections of the TIE. Is this not sufficient? Are not the differences between true ideas and others so great as to render confusion either way impossible, just as Joachim claims? There are several reasons why it might be useful to describe ideas of imagination even if there were no danger of confusing them with true ideas. It might be, for example, that by contrasting imaginative ideas with true ideas we could direct our attention to distinctive features of true ideas that might later be useful in defining and describing the nature and powers of the intellect. Spinoza does not actually reach the point of defining the intellect before the TIE breaks off, but he does provide a list of properties of the intellect from which the definition is to be derived. Although he remarks shortly thereafter that false and fictitious ideas, as such, can teach us nothing concerning the essence of thought [§110; emphasis added], several of the properties are arguably suggested, at least indirectly, by prior consideration of just these phenomena.10 More generally, Spinoza indicates that part of the point of the Method is to accustom men to their own internal meditations, and that, as noted, progress in investigating Nature requires considerable capacity for making accurate distinctions [§45]. If nothing else, reflecting on and distinguishing fiction, falsity, and doubt might be useful practice. But Spinoza goes much further than this in justifying his discussions of imaginative ideas. Despite Joachim’s claim that there could be no danger of mistaking true ideas for ideas of imagination or vice versa, Spinoza insists that there is just such a danger. He asserts that we must restrain the mind from confusing false, fictitious, and doubtful ideas with true ones. It is my intention to explain this fully here, so as to engage my Readers in the thought of a thing so necessary, and also because there are many who doubt even true ideas, from not attending to the distinction between a true perception and all others. [§50; added emphasis] How can we doubt true ideas when truth requires no sign and is sufficient to remove all doubt? He immediately goes on to explain: So they are like men who, when they were awake, used not to doubt that they were awake, but who, after they once thought in a dream that they were certainly

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awake (as often happens), and later found that to be false, doubted even of their waking states. This happens because they have never distinguished between the dream and the waking state. For Spinoza, as for Descartes, the distinction between waking and sleeping serves as a model and a metaphor for the distinction between intellect and imagination. This is no accident. Both conceive of dreaming as the lowest, least coherent, form of imagination; and as a result, the relation between dreaming and all waking experience is in some ways like that between imagination (which includes much waking experience) and intellect. Indeed, Spinoza characterizes false ideas as hardly anything but dreaming with eyes open, or while we are awake [§66].11 To apply the model, then, we may say that those who ‘doubt of true ideas’ are men who, when they entertained true ideas, used not to doubt the truth of those ideas. Later, however, they thought an untrue, or imaginative, idea to be true, and subsequently discovered it to be untrue. This now leads them to doubt the truth even of their previous true ideas, as a result of their failing to attend to the distinction between true ideas and imaginative ideas. Clearly, the fact that true ideas are distinguished from others by an internal and introspectible characteristic will not itself prevent us from doubting true ideas in this way; we must also learn what that characteristic is, and learn to attend to its presence or absence in distinguishing true ideas from false ones. Again, the fact that we cannot doubt of true ideas while they are entertained will not itself prevent us from later calling them into question as a result of our unfortunate experience with other ideas; we must also ensure that we do not confuse memories of our true ideas with our memories of those other ideas.12

False ideas It seems relatively easy to see how the existence of false ideas might cause us to doubt of true ideas in the way Spinoza describes. A false idea, on his account, is a confused perception, in which something is affirmed of a thing that is not contained in the concept we have formed of the thing. The tendency to affirmation, or assent, is a feature of every idea considered in itself; what distinguishes false ideas from fictions is only that while the presentations appear to him [who has the false idea], there appear no causes from which he can infer (as he who is feigning can) that they do not arise from things outside him [§88]. This assent is of course something less than the certainty of a true idea. The mere assent involved in an uncontroverted false idea can be overcome by the addition of concurrent ideas (as actually occurs in both fiction and doubt); whereas certainty is truth itself and cannot be overcome while we maintain our true idea. Nevertheless, if we think abstractly or universally [cf. §76] in such a way that one idea confusedly includes or extends to both remembered certainty



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and mere assent, without distinction, then our later recognition that we acquiesced wrongly in a false idea may cause us to doubt whether we did not also acquiesce wrongly in an idea that was in fact true and certain. For we will fail to notice that our earlier true idea involved something more than mere assent or affirmation. It may be questioned whether we can fail to remember that an earlier idea involved more than mere assent or affirmation, on Spinoza’s account, or whether we can think of it again in any way without once again being certain. But memory itself is at least often a matter of the imagination rather than the intellect [§§81-​83]. If we recall the experience of some or all true ideas only in abstract or otherwise confused terms,13 and do not recall to present attention the true ideas themselves, our recollection of the idea may well be confused, inadequate, and a cause or subject of doubt.

Fictions More difficult, perhaps, than the question of how false ideas can be confused with true ideas so as to produce doubt of true ideas is the question of how fictions can be confused with true ideas to produce such doubt. As noted, Spinoza holds that the only difference between fictitious and false ideas is that in fiction we do have other ideas that allow us to infer that our first idea does not arise from things outside us; thus our actual affirmation of it may be forestalled. But if we do not actually affirm our fictitious ideas, how can we confuse them with true ideas? Spinoza’s discussion of fictions is organized around his distinction between fictions concerning existence, and fictions concerning essences alone or essences together with some actuality or existence. I believe Spinoza thinks that there are two ways in which confusion of fictions with true ideas is possible, each related particularly to one kind of fiction. The first kind of confusion concerns those things that are supposed in Problems, the discussion of which concludes his consideration of fictions concerning existence. He provides two examples, expressed as follows:  (1) let us suppose that this burning candle is not burning; and (2)  let us suppose that it is burning in some imaginary space, or where there are no bodies [§57]. Neither of these, he claims, are really fictions. Rather, in the first case, we are recalling a candle that was not burning, and understanding concerning the present candle what we understood concerning the previous one, without attending to the flame. In the second case, we are directing the mind, toward the sole contemplation of the candle, considered in itself alone, perhaps so as to infer that the candle has within itself no cause for its destruction. In both cases, we have no fiction, but true and sheer assertions. Because the verbal expressions of these truths resemble those of fictions, someone who does not clearly grasp the distinction between true ideas and others may, in recalling these truths, incorrectly conclude that they are mere fictions, and so come to doubt the truths that they contain.14

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The second way in which confusion is possible concerning truth and fiction results from the fact that we derive conclusions both from fictions and from true ideas. At the conclusion of his consideration of fictions concerning essences alone or essences together with some actuality or existence, Spinoza writes: Someone, perhaps, will think that fiction is limited by fiction, but not by intellection. That is, after I have feigned something, and willed by a certain freedom to assent that it exists in nature in this way, this has the consequence that I cannot afterwards think it in any other way. For example, after I have feigned (to speak as they do) that body has such a nature, and willed, from my freedom, to be convinced that it really exists in this way, I can no longer feign an infinite fly; and after I have feigned the essence of the soul, I can no longer feign that it is square. [§59] This is to mistake what were, in fact, true ideas, necessarily entailed by other true ideas, for mere consequences of arbitrary fictions, and hence to doubt them. But who are ‘they,’ who confuse fiction and truth in this way? Alexandre Koyré (in Spinoza 1937)  suggests that Spinoza has in mind Hobbes, with his conventionalism about reason (particularly as expressed in De Corpore I, iii, 8), and also theologians who hold voluntaristic theories of belief. Although Hobbes, at least, may well be one object of attack in this passage, Chapter I  of Spinoza’s Short Treatise Concerning God, Man, and His Well-​Being suggests another, less individual, target. There Spinoza takes some care to defend his proofs of the existence of God from the objection that his idea of God, on which the proofs are based, is merely a fiction, without real consequences. This kind of objection would be familiar to him both from the history of the ontological argument in general, and from Descartes’ Fifth Meditation in particular. In the course of defending his ontological proof of God’s existence, Descartes considers the objection that: [W]‌hile it is indeed necessary for me to suppose God exists, once I have made the supposition that he has all perfections (since existence is one of the perfections), nevertheless the original supposition was not necessary. Similarly . . . it is not necessary for me to think that all quadrilaterals can be inscribed in a circle; but given this supposition, it will be necessary for me to admit that a rhombus can be inscribed in a circle—​which is patently false. [p. 46; Descartes, AT, 1976, VII, 67] Descartes’s response to this objection concludes: So there is a great difference between this kind of false supposition and the true ideas that are innate in me, of which the first and most important is the idea of



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God. There are many ways in which I understand that this idea is not something fictitious which is dependent on my thought, but is an image of a true and immutable nature. [p. 47; Descartes, AT, 1976, VII, 68; emphasis added] Since the idea of God is the true idea toward which Spinoza’s entire Method is aiming, the confusion of truth with fiction that gives rise to this objection is well worth defusing in advance. Moreover, unlike Hobbes or the voluntaristic theologians, the objector to the proof of God’s existence is concerned specifically with a fiction concerning essences alone, or essences together with some actuality or existence. Thus I believe that it is primarily the views of those objectors that are under attack.

Doubt Thus far, we have considered how falsity and fiction are relevant to the task of distinguishing true ideas; it remains to consider doubt. Spinoza characterizes doubt as the suspension of the mind concerning some affirmation or negation, which it would affirm or deny if something did not occur to it, the ignorance of which must render its knowledge of the thing imperfect [§80]. It arises when we have two ideas, one of which is not so clear and distinct that we can infer from it something certain about the thing concerning which there is doubt [§78]. As an example, he offers our belief about the size of the sun. If all we have is the sensory idea of the sun, then we will naturally affirm, and will not doubt, that it is just as it appears. When we come to have an idea of the general deceptiveness of the senses, however, we will doubt that the sun is as it appears, for we now have an idea that we can see to bear on the truth or correctness of the first, but without being able to see precisely how. If we come to have a clear and distinct idea of precisely how the senses operate and sometimes deceive, then we will know whether or not the apparent size of the sun is an illusion, and once again we will not doubt. Thus, he claims, we can see that doubt is produced by taking up ideas in the wrong order, in such a way that we cannot be confident of the bearing of a later idea on an earlier one. He concludes that the cure is to proceed in the proper order, deducing true ideas from those that entail them. In this way, we will always understand the relation among our ideas, and will never doubt [§§78–​80]. This account of doubt plays a double role in the first part of the Method. On the one hand, the first part of the Method is meant to show us how to distinguish true ideas from others so as to prevent doubt of true ideas. As a result, the discussion of doubt sheds light on the genus of which doubt of true ideas is a particular species. On the other hand, doubt is also itself one of the three kinds of imaginative ideas that are said to produce doubt of true ideas through our failure to distinguish them from true ideas.

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It is difficult, of course, to see how we could fail to distinguish a suspension of the mind from certainty. But if we consider the example of the size of the sun and the discussion of the deceiving God [§§78–​79], we can provide a plausible account of how doubtful and true ideas might be confused so as produce doubt of true ideas. For through observing instances of doubt, but without understanding the difference between an uncertain idea (such as the sensory idea of the size of the sun) and a true idea, we might come to doubt whether some or all of our true ideas are not potentially questionable or dubitable. This confused idea of the potential questionability or dubitability of our ideas would function exactly like the confused idea of the deceptiveness of the senses in Spinoza’s example. It would thus generate doubt even about ideas that are in fact true and cannot really be questioned or doubted when properly entertained. In such a case, there would be confusion with respect to both the idea that is the cause of doubt, and the idea that is the object of doubt. For first, we fail to notice whether the abstract and confused idea we employ to cast doubt on our true ideas is itself true; and secondly, we fail to distinguish ideas which are themselves doubtful, in the sense that they can be objects of doubt even when entertained, from those that can only be doubted when not fully entertained. I thus conclude that Spinoza can consistently regard his discussions of fiction, falsity, and doubt as legitimate aids to distinguishing true ideas from other ideas with which they are sometimes confused. In a way, Joachim is right when he claims that there can be no possibility for Spinoza of mistaking a true idea for an idea of imagination or vice versa; the intellect cannot mistake a true for an imaginative idea, or an imaginative idea for a true one. Unfortunately, however, the imagination can conflate them, and thereby call into question true ideas to which we are then not currently attending. To put the same point in other words, no one would confuse true ideas and imaginative ideas if he were thinking clearly; but the need for a Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione arises precisely from the fact that we do not always think clearly. Doubt about true ideas can arise because ‘thinking clearly’ is itself one of the subjects concerning which we do not always think clearly.

Restraint of the mind The second of the two stated goals of the first part of the Method is to restrain the mind from those other perceptions, i.e., ideas of the imagination. Thus far we have considered how to avoid one special kind of doubt, namely, doubt of true ideas. But the avoidance of all fiction, falsity, and doubt is a worthwhile goal, from Spinoza’s point of view. For to whatever extent the mind is occupied with these other ideas, it is to that extent prevented from attending to true ideas and deriving further true ideas from them. Moreover, the satisfaction of this goal would provide a sufficient



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rationale for including discussions of fiction, falsity, and doubt in the Method, even if those discussions had been of no use in satisfying the first goal of distinguishing true ideas from others. At the outset of the TIE, Spinoza describes his struggle against desires for three apparent goods:  wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure. Eventually, he reports, he came through persistent meditation to recognize clearly the need to give up pursuit of these apparent goods, because they were real evils, and to devote himself instead to the pursuit of the true good. Still, even this clear recognition, he writes, was not sufficient to make him resolve wholeheartedly to change his way of life; the desires for wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure remained insistent distractions that could not immediately be put away. Nevertheless he found remedies for those desires in the continued contemplation of the true good and the role of the three apparent goods as limited means to the true good. These remedies he claims, gradually brought it about that he was less and less distracted by desires for the three apparent goods. In a similar way, the ability to distinguish true ideas and the recognition of the need to pursue them are, though necessary, not in themselves a complete guarantee that we will not slide back into the constant distractions of the three kinds of ideas of imagination—​no more than grasping the distinction between waking and sleeping is a guarantee of never falling asleep. Accordingly, Spinoza takes special care to include in his discussion of each kind of idea of imagination specific remedies against that kind of idea, to enable us to see how we shall be freed from each of them [§51]. In the cases of either fictions or false ideas concerning existence alone,  the remedy depends on the nature of the object. For those objects whose existence is an eternal truth, we need only clearly conceive the thing in order to avoid forming a fiction or false idea about its existence, since there can be no fictions or false ideas concerning what is seen to be necessary. For those objects whose existence is not an eternal truth, we need only take care to compare the existence of the thing with its essence, and at the same time attend to the order of Nature. The rationale for the former remedy is that the existence of each thing is as particular as its essence, so that mistaken attributions of existence arise from an overly-​abstract conception of the thing’s existence; the rationale for the latter is simply that the existence of non-​eternal things arises from the order of Nature. In the case of fictions or false ideas concerning essences alone or essences together with some actuality or existence, the remedy is to render our ideas clear and distinct by attending to the most simple parts of component things. The reason for this is that fictions and errors arise from putting simple ideas together in a confused way, and attention to the simple parts prevents confusion. Finally, in the case of doubts, the remedy is, as already noted, to proceed in the proper order, so that we obtain no ideas whose bearing on other ideas is unclear. Since each of these remedies is derived from the specific account of the nature of the ideas of the imagination against which it is to

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be applied, the value of these remedies to the Method is itself sufficient justification for discussing the nature of those ideas.

III Summary and evaluation As I have described his position in the TIE, Spinoza denies any need for a criterion of truth in the Cartesian sense. He also maintains that true ideas cannot be doubted while they are being presently considered, but holds that they can sometimes be called into doubt when they are not presently considered. Such doubt is a result of their being conflated, by the imagination, with the imagination’s own products. In order to prevent this conflation and free the mind as much as possible from ideas of imagination, he holds that it is necessary to attend carefully and reflectively to the specific differences between true ideas and ideas of imagination, and to learn enough about the imagination to discover specific remedies against it. When this has been done, he maintains, we will be in a better position to derive the nature and powers of the intellect from our true ideas, and then to derive useful rules for gaining new knowledge and proceeding in the best order, with the result that we will be able to obtain the true idea of God. All of this, I have argued, is fully consistent. Of course, even with these remedies, there is no guarantee that ideas of imagination will be immediately banished. In fact, in the case of doubt, we can see that the conditions of the Method itself prevent us from being completely able to employ the remedy. For the remedy against doubt is to proceed in the proper order. But the true proper order must match the order of Nature, and hence must begin with the idea of the source and origin of Nature—​i. e., God [§§41–​42, §49]. Until we have this idea, we cannot be fully immune to doubt, as Spinoza seems willing to allow in his discussion of the ‘deceiving God’ hypothesis [§79]. Yet obtaining this idea is itself the final step of the Method, so that at no substantial time during the pursuit of the Method will we be immune to doubt. This by itself is by no means a fatal objection, however. For Spinoza has consistently maintained that a true idea grants truth and certainty, even if we obtain that idea under circumstances in which we were previously uncertain. It is thus one thing to admit that we are not yet immune to all doubt, and another to claim that we will be lost beyond hope in doubt forever. It is part of the role of the Method to guide us around dangerous spots and bring us, by whatever way is possible, to the greatest perfection of knowledge. The real objection is not to the formal plan of the Method, but to its execution. For although the TIE appears to invite the reader to develop the Method along with the author, using one’s own native tools, the reader is required at many



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crucial points—​including both the account of truth and the account of ideas of imagination—​simply to accept dogmatic and undefended assertions, with the explicit or implicit promise that the reasons will appear in the subsequent work referred to as my Philosophy. But to make assertions like these is to proceed out of order in a way that is indeed likely to produce serious doubt. When Spinoza writes, for example, that truth is an intrinsic denomination that also involves an extrinsic denomination, one simply doubts whether one should believe him or not. Ultimately, there is a great danger that the reader will give up on the Method without waiting to see whether it ultimately conducts him to certainty or not. Spinoza recognizes this danger, and urges the reader not to reject these things as false because of Paradoxes that occur here and there [§46]. But this appeal is not likely to have much effect on someone who has already lost faith. In a well-​known passage of the 2nd Replies [pp. 110–​122; Descartes, AT, 1976, VII, 155–​158], Descartes draws a distinction between a work’s order and its method of demonstration, and a second distinction between the analytic and synthetic methods of demonstration. Proper geometrical order requires simply that the items that are put forward first must be known entirely without the aid of what comes later; and the remaining items must be arranged in such a way that their demonstration depends solely on what has gone before. Both the analytic and synthetic methods of demonstration are instances of this order. Analysis shows the true way by which the thing in question was discovered methodically . . . so that if the reader is willing to follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make the thing his own. Synthesis, on the other hand, demonstrates the conclusion clearly and employs a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems, and problems. The TIE shows many signs of aiming to be an analytic work. It begins with a description of the author’s own starting point, provides (like Descartes’ Discourse) a list of provisional rules of life to be followed during the course of the project at hand, and constantly addresses the reader as a fellow-​inquirer in the attempt to develop knowledge from one’s own inner resources by means of a definite plan. The outline of the TIE calls for it to conclude with the attainment of the idea of God which, as the idea of the cause of all things, is the idea best-​suited to be the starting-​point of deductions. The TIE is then to be followed by the more systematic work, called my Philosophy. It is thus tempting to think of the TIE as an analytic introduction that leads us to the best starting-​place for a comprehensive work in the synthetic method. In the full Cartesian sense, however, the TIE cannot be considered a genuinely analytic work, because its frequent unargued assertions, to be defended only later, prevent its being fully in geometric order. Of course it may be replied that the requirement of absolute geometric order is too strict in a work of this kind, where all that matters is that we successfully arrive at the envisioned true ideas and certainty, by whatever route. Nevertheless, to the extent that Spinoza employs

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dogmatic assurances based on his grasp of the Philosophy that lies ahead, the TIE also fails to meet the condition of providing a plausible or natural way by which the thing in question was [or could be] discovered methodically. I think it likely that the TIE remained unfinished at least partly because he could not provide in it the fully plausible or natural ‘order of discovery’ that he seems initially to have aimed at. It may sound paradoxical to say of a philosopher that he could not present his own work in the analytic method. For it seems that all he need do is to present his claims in the order in which he himself methodically discovered them. The reason why Spinoza cannot do that, I believe, is simply that he did not discover the main tenets of his philosophy by a process of natural methodical discovery; rather he discovered them, in large part, by reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of other philosophers, including Descartes, whose analytic style he tried, in the TIE, to follow. My conclusion, then is that Spinoza’s unfinished Method is not internally incoherent, but, as written, does suffer from that lack of proper order that produces doubt. If it is true that he himself could not find a natural analytic order of methodical discovery for his views, the fact provides additional and ironic confirmation of his claim that all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Notes 1. All quotations of Spinoza are from The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley. 2. Curley’s editorial insertion at §49 treats §98 as the end of the second part of the Method, and §99 as the beginning of the third part. I do not think this can be right. Spinoza writes at §94 that the chief point of this second part of the Method is concerned solely with this: knowing the conditions of a good definition, and then, the way of finding good definitions. This can only be understood, I think, as treating the conditions of good definitions and the way of finding good definitions as the two elements of the main topic of the second part. (This reading is also consistent with his earlier characterization of the second part as concerned with teaching rules so that we may perceive things unknown according to such a standard [i.e., the true idea]. [§49],) But at §106–​107, he still writes that: we are necessarily forced, by what I  have taught in this second part of the Method, to deduce these [i.e., the powers of the intellect] from the very definition of thought and intellect. But so far we have had no rules for discovering definitions. . . . we cannot give them unless the nature, or definition, of the intellect, and its power are known. [emphasis added] It should also be observed that §99 contains no explicit declaration that a new part of the Method is beginning, such as occurs at the beginning of the first and



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second parts. The stated purpose of the third part of the Method is to establish an order [§49], and §99 does begin with the phrase As for order; but it then proceeds immediately to state that order requires us to inquire as soon as possible whether there is a cause of all things, an enquiry which will be fully satisfied only by the fourth part of the method. Although Sections 99–​106, taken together, do certainly have substantial bearing on the question of proper order, so too do a number of sections that are clearly within the first part of the Method, including §§41–​46 and §80. The main purpose of the comments concerning order in §99–​106 is to show how we must begin if we are to obtain rules for discovering definitions: that is, we must begin with a definition of the intellect itself, and generate rules for discovering other definitions from that. 3. Curley refers to Joachim in a footnote to this passage. For another statement of the objection, see Delahunty 1985. 4. In §29, he writes that we must teach the Way and the Method by which we may achieve this kind of knowledge of the things that are to be known. He then begins the next section with To do this, the first thing we must consider. . . It is therefore reasonable to suppose that he distinguishes the Way (i.e., the Way to the Method) from the Method itself, and that sections §30–​49 constitute the Way. 5. Meditation III of Meditations on First Philosophy, in Descartes 1984, vol. I, p. 24. AT VII, p. 35 (All citations of Descartes are from this edition, with additional page references to Descartes, AT, 1976). In the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes adopts the criterion of clarity and distinctness at Article XXX. The reader is there referred back to the Third Meditation for a fuller treatment. 6. That Descartes’ own resolution of the alleged Circle was in fact much like the one that Spinoza presents on his behalf is particularly suggested by Descartes’ response in the 2nd Replies to the objection that what we take to be true by the criterion of clarity and distinctness may appear false to God or an angel, so that it is, absolutely speaking, false. Descartes responds: Why should this alleged ‘absolute falsity’ bother us, since we neither believe in it, nor have even the smallest suspicion of it? [T]‌he evident clarity of our perceptions does not allow us to listen to anyone who makes up this kind of story. [Descartes, 1984, vol. I, pp. 103–​104; AT, 1976, VII, pp. 145–​146] He thus seems to grant a kind of internal consistency to the objection, but retorts that we cannot accept it or find any positive reason to take it seriously. 7. G.H.R. Parkinson (1954, pp.  13s) suggests that distinctness, in the Cartesian sense, may be an extrinsic property of ideas, since it involves an absence of confusion with other ideas. It seems to me, however, that Principles I.45 treats distinctness itself as clarity of the internal parts of an idea, and the distinct idea’s lack of confusion with other ideas merely as a consequence of this internal distinctness. There is evidence that Spinoza, at least, understood distinctness as internal. See §74, where Spinoza claims that distinct (and therefore true) ideas are sometimes

174 Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge not successfully distinguished from others that are themselves confused. See also §§63–​65 and §68. 8. The TIE itself, in its unfinished state, gives little indication of how truth can be an internal characteristic of ideas while at the same time necessarily involving correspondence. However, one can speculate that, since Spinoza identifies the truly possible with the actual, any idea that has enough internal adequacy to represent a genuinely possible state of affairs ipso facto represents an actual state of affairs. Indeed, given the identification of ideas with their objects in the Ethics, we might say that ‘internal’ adequacy and ‘external’ correspondence are ultimately just two different ways of considering the very same fact about true ideas. 9. In fact, there is at least one discrepancy between the TIE and Ethics 2P43: whereas §35 of the TIE identifies certainty with the objective essence (i.e., true idea) itself, Ethics 2P43D identifies certainty with true knowledge of one’s own knowledge. 10. For example, the sixth property of the intellect—​that clear and distinct ideas seem to depend on our power alone—​is explicitly contrasted with the contrary characteristic of confused ideas, that they are often formed against our will. The seventh property—​that the mind can determine in many ways the ideas of things that the intellect forms from other ideas—​is illustrated by our ability to determine the plane of an ellipse by feigning that a pen attached to a cord is moved around two centers; and notice of this general method of obtaining geometrical ideas first arose in the discussion of false ideas [§72]. The eighth property of the intellect—​that the more ideas express of the perfection of their object, the more perfect those ideas are—​is illustrated by the fact that we admire an architect who designs a notable temple more than we admire one who designs a chapel; and the illustration, at least, appears to be suggested by the example of the architect’s idea given earlier in the discussion of false ideas [§69]. 11. See also Ethics 3P3S, where those who believe they act from a free decision of the mind are described as dreaming with their eyes open. 12. There is one disanalogy between doubt of our waking states and doubt true ideas that he passes over in silence. Presumably, it is usually while we are again awake that we doubt even of our waking states; at least, that is when Descartes doubted them. However, Spinoza could not allow that we doubt of true ideas while we are again having only true ideas. First, such doubt is ruled out by the doctrine that true ideas are sufficient to remove all doubt while they are entertained. Secondly, doubting in general, and hence doubting true ideas in particular, is itself one of the states that he has just identified as analogous to dreaming (i.e., not having true ideas). He would explain the disanalogy, of course, as arising from the fact that much waking experience is still imaginative, after all, and hence compatible with present doubt. 13. Spinoza would presumably hold that Descartes does this in doubting the truth of all clear and distinct ideas at once via the hypothesis of the evil demon.



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14. Spinoza does not explicitly describe such a process of coming to doubt the contents of those things that are supposed in Problems, but it is clear that he is trying to forestall our confusing them with fictions; and the potential that this confusion would have for causing doubt seems to me the obvious explanation for his concern. It should be mentioned that Curley, in a note, questions whether ‘verae’ should really be translated as ‘true’ in the phrase ‘verae ac merae assertiones’ (rendered as ‘true and sheer assertions’). However, it seems to me that, given the way Spinoza describes his examples, they are intended as examples of true ideas. The first refers to understanding the candle, which for him entails truth; and the second involves the inference that the candle contains no cause for its own destruction, an inference that he would clearly regard as correct [cf. Ethics 3P4].

Bibliography Wor ks of   Sp inoz a Spinoza, B. de: The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol.1. Ed. and transl. by Edwin Curley. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985. Spinoza, B. de: Traité de la réforme de l’entendement et de la meilleure vote à suivere pour parvenir à la vraie connaissance des choses. Trad. et notes par Alexandre Koyré. Paris: Vrin, 1937. (Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques.) Curley, Edwin M.: Descartes Against the Skeptics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1978. Descartes, René:  The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Transl. by Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. (AT = page references to: Oeuvres de Descartes, C. Adam and P. Tannery, eds., Paris: Vrin, 1976.) Delahunty, R.J.: Spinoza. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. Hobbes, Thomas: De cive (= Elementorum philosophiae sectio tenia). In: Id.: Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia in unum corpus nunc primum collecta studio et laboe Gurlielmi Motesworth, vol. II, Aalen: Scientia, 1966 (2nd repr. of the ed. Londoni: apud Joannem Bohn, 1839), pp. 133–​432. Joachim, H.H.: Spinoza ‘s ‘Tractatus de Intellectus Emendation’: A Commentary. With a preliminary note by E. Joachim and a preface by W.D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958. (Repr. of the 1940 ed.) Parkinson, G.H.R.: Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.

6

Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz

In the Meditations, Descartes begins by deliberately seeking to set out and, if possible, to overcome the strongest sceptical considerations he can find. This enterprise—​which I will call “methodological scepticism”—​reaches a fundamental turning point in Meditation III when he proposes that, “I now seem able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly is true” (AT 7, p. 35/​CSM 2, p. 24). He then goes on to establish to his own satisfaction that he is indeed entitled to adopt this general rule, sometimes called his “truth rule.” Despite their stated admiration for many of Descartes’ innovations in philosophy, however, neither Spinoza nor Leibniz regards methodological scepticism as a crucial first step in philosophical method. Moreover, although Spinoza and Leibniz evidently agree that whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly is true, both are critical, in different ways, of the role Descartes gives to his truth rule in philosophical method. In this chapter, I will discuss Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s criticisms of Descartes’ use of his truth rule and explore the relation of these criticisms to the two philosophers’ conceptions of truth, method, and the ontological status of knowledge. In the first section of the chapter, I will consider Spinoza’s criticism of Descartes’ use of his truth rule. I will argue that his criticism derives from a conception of truth as, at least to some extent, an internal characteristic of true ideas (i.e., a characteristic not consisting in a relation to something outside the idea—​Spinoza’s term is “intrinsic denomination”); and I will argue that this conception of truth helps to explain his rejection of Descartes’ methodological scepticism. In the second section of the chapter, I will consider Leibniz’s criticism of Descartes’ use of the truth rule. I will argue that his criticism, too, derives from a conception of truth as (at least to some extent) an internal characteristic of true ideas and judgements themselves, and that this conception of truth helps to explain Leibniz’s rejection of Descartes’



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methodological scepticism. In the third section of the chapter, I  will argue that both Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s “internalist” conceptions of truth pose a problem for establishing the correspondence between true ideas or judgements and their objects; that Spinoza’s apparent logical necessitarianism—​i.e., the doctrine that the actual world is the only logically consistent world—​provides him with a satisfactory solution to the problem of correspondence; and that the only satisfactory solution to the same problem available to Leibniz is a similar logical necessitarianism. Thus, I conclude, a consideration of Leibniz’s theory of truth confirms the common suspicion that he is committed by his principles at least to Spinozistic necessitarianism, if not to Spinozistic monism or naturalism.

1.  Truth, Internality, and Method in Spinoza Spinoza utilizes three main distinctions, all co-​extensive with one another, in application to ideas. These are the distinctions between clear and distinct ideas and confused ideas; between adequate ideas and inadequate ideas; and between true ideas and false ideas. Although he uses all three distinctions in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE), he does not there formally define any of them; this is perhaps related to the fact that the TIE is an unfinished work that breaks off in the second part of a four-​part method, a part devoted precisely to “knowing the conditions of a good definition, and then, the way of finding good definitions” (TIE 94). In fact, he does not formally define ‘clarity and distinctness’ anywhere in his works. However, his frequent use of the term in his Descartes’ “Principles of Philosophy,” together with his consistent use of the term ‘confused’ to denote its opposite, strongly suggests that he intends the term in at least something like the Cartesian sense. In the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes writes: I call a perception ‘clear’ when it is present and accessible to the attentive mind—​just as we say that we see something clearly when it is present to the eye’s gaze and stimulates it with a sufficient degree of strength and accessibility. I call a perception ‘distinct’ if, as well as being clear, it is so sharply separated from all other perceptions that it contains within itself only what is clear. . . . Hence a perception can be clear without being distinct, but not distinct without being clear (Principles of Philosophy I. 45–​46; AT 8, pp. 21–​22/​CSM 1, pp. 207–​208). Spinoza does define ‘adequate idea’ in the Ethics, at 2D4; it is “an idea which, insofar as it is considered in itself, without relation to an object, has all the properties, or intrinsic denominations of a true idea.” He then adds, “I say intrinsic to exclude

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what is extrinsic, viz., the agreement of the idea with its object.” Spinoza defines ‘truth’ in the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being (KV 1/​15, I, p. 78) as “an affirmation (or denial) which one makes concerning a thing and which agrees with the thing itself.” However, in the Ethics, he offers no formal definition of truth; rather, he states as Axiom 6 of Part I that “a true idea must agree with its object.” Spinoza holds that every clear and distinct idea is true. He does so first in the TIE (64, 68), and again in the Ethics, where he more clearly treats “clear and distinct ideas” as co-​extensive with “adequate ideas,” and both as co-​extensive with “true ideas.” Nevertheless, Spinoza is critical of Descartes’ use of the truth rule. In order to understand his criticism, it is necessary to recall that for Descartes truth is one characteristic of ideas, while clarity-​and-​distinctness constitutes another, quite separate characteristic. Because he believes that clarity and distinctness is directly introspectible, but that truth is not, Descartes proposes, argues for, and ultimately adopts the rule that clarity and distinctness may be used as a criterion or sign of truth. That famous argument, of course, concerns the relations of clarity and distinctness to indubitability (a third characteristic of ideas) and to God, and is intended to render the judgement that “whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly is true” itself clear and distinct, and hence indubitable.1 Spinoza, in contrast, writes of true ideas in the TIE as follows: (34) A true idea [of a thing, e.g., Peter] is an objective essence of [that thing], and something real in itself. (35) [C]‌ertainty is nothing but the objective essence [or true idea] itself, i.e., the mode by which we are aware of the formal essence is certainty itself . . . [F]or the certainty of the truth, no other sign is needed than having a true idea. (36) Since truth, therefore, requires no sign, but it suffices in order to remove all doubt, to have the objective essences of things, or, what is the same, ideas, it follows that the true Method is, not to seek a sign of truth after the acquisition of ideas, but the true Method is the way that truth itself, or the objective essences of things, or the ideas (all those signify the same) should be sought in the proper order. Although Spinoza does not mention Descartes by name, his claims that the truth requires no sign and that the true Method is not to seek a sign of truth after the acquisition of ideas appear to be a rejection of the Cartesian attempt to employ a characteristic other than truth—​such as clarity and distinctness—​as a sign or criterion of truth.2



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1.1 The Internality of Truth This interpretation of his two claims is confirmed in several ways. First, Spinoza nowhere tries to justify any separate criterion of truth, despite the fact that he is obviously well aware of Descartes’ attempt to do so. (Indeed, he describes that attempt impeccably in Descartes’ “Principles of Philosophy.”) Secondly, he also claims, both in the TIE and again in the Ethics, that the true idea is “its own standard” (TIE 38–​49, E 2P43S). Thirdly, Spinoza asserts that his doctrine that “the truth requires no sign” follows from the quoted description of true ideas at TIE 34–​36, one that identifies the true idea both with the “objective essence” and with certainty, identifications which suggest that he regards truth itself as an introspectible prop­erty. (I have argued elsewhere (Garrett 1986) that this conception of truth as introspectible is compatible with his general conception of Method, according to which Method begins with the attempt to distinguish true ideas from others. For to say that an introspectible feature of ideas is truth itself is not to say that we will immediately recognize that feature as truth. Nor does saying that truth requires no sign entail that isolating it and appreciating it as the object of one’s search requires no labour.) And finally, he goes on to claim, at TIE 69–​70, that: As to what constitutes the form of the true, it is certain that a true thought is distinguished from a false one not only by an extrinsic, but chiefly by an intrinsic denomination . . . . [T]‌here is something real in ideas, through which the true are distinguished from the false . . . . So the form of the true thought must be placed in the same thought itself without relation to other things, nor does it recognize the object as its cause, but must depend on the very power and nature of the intellect. Thus, it appears that Spinoza rejects the need for a separate criterion of truth on the grounds that truth itself is, at least to some extent, an internal (i.e., non-​ relational), potentially introspectible feature of ideas. I say that Spinoza regards truth as internal “at least to some extent” because he also claims, at TIE 41–​42, that “the idea is objectively in the same way as its object is really . . . . [A]‌n idea must agree completely with its formal essence”; and even in TIE 69–​70, he affirms that the true is distinguished from the false by an “extrinsic” as well as an “intrinsic” denomination. Spinoza does not say what the internal “form” of the true thought is; rather, he explicitly (TIE 71) puts this question off until the second part of his Method, a part which remains unfinished when the TIE breaks off. However, it would obviously be a plausible hypothesis that this form either is, or is closely related to, internal clarity and distinctness. There are good reasons to believe that Spinoza continues to hold this conception of truth, as at least to some extent an internal characteristic of true ideas, in

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the Ethics. One reason, of course, lies in the fact that he affirms the “agreement” of a true idea with its object, not as a definition in the Ethics, but only as an axiom. The significance of this fact is sometimes de-​emphasized by citing Wolfson’s well-​ known claim that: [T]‌he terms ‘definitions,’ ‘axioms,’ ‘propositions,’ and their like are used by Spinoza more or less indiscriminately as conventional labels to be pasted on here and there in order to give to his work the external appearance of a work of geometry.3 The evidence Wolfson adduces, however, consists only in showing that several propositions of the final version of the Ethics were used by Spinoza in earlier writings as axioms. But the fact that Spinoza sometimes changed his mind about what to treat as axiomatic and what to demonstrate has no tendency to show that he attached no significance to the distinction between axioms (or propositions) and definitions. On the contrary, Spinoza has a quite well-​developed theory of definition, as both the correspondence (Ep 9)  and the TIE (91–​98) make clear. Moreover, in the TIE, he is particularly critical of the procedure of defining something by its mere properties, rather than by its essence. Part I of the Ethics received more careful review, with the assistance of more friends and correspondents, over a longer period of time, than anything else Spinoza ever wrote. That he declines to treat correspondence or agreement as a definition of truth, therefore, strongly suggests that he thinks such external correspondence or agreement does not fully capture the essence of truth. A further reason for thinking that Spinoza retains the conception of truth as consisting at least to some extent in an internal characteristic of true ideas lies in E 2P43S, where Spinoza asks rhetorically, “What can there be which is clearer and more certain than a true idea, to serve as a standard of truth?” He then goes on to reject the objection that “if a true idea is distinguished from a false one only insofar as it is said to agree with its object, then a true idea has no more reality or perfection than a false one (since they are distinguished only through the extrinsic denomination)” by rejecting the antecedent, remarking that he has already shown that the “true is related to the false as being is to non-​being.”

1.2  Methodological Scepticism We may distinguish three aspects of Descartes’ procedure in the First Meditation. The first aspect is what we might call “methodological caution.” Methodological caution is the endeavour, as Descartes puts it in the Discourse on the Method, “never to accept anything as true if I do not have evident knowledge of its truth; that is, carefully to avoid precipitate conclusions and preconceptions” (AT 4, p. 18/​CSM 1,



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p. 122). (Methodological caution also constitutes the first point of Descartes’ four-​ point general method for all sciences.) The second aspect is what we might call “methodological denial”: Descartes’ temporary endeavour to “turn my will in completely the opposite direction . . . by pretending for a time that my former opinions are [not just doubtful but] utterly false and imaginary” (AT 7, p. 22/​CSM2, p. 15). The purpose of methodological denial is to compensate for our natural credulity and thereby to strengthen our ability to engage in and maintain methodological caution. The third aspect is what I am calling “methodological scepticism”: this is the attempt to set out and, if possible, to overcome the strongest discoverable grounds for sceptical doubt. As Descartes notes in the Synopsis of the Meditations (AT 7, p. 12/​CSM 2 p. 9), this methodological scepticism is meant to serve two purposes. First, it is to free us “from all our preconceived opinions.” It will do this by contributing directly to our ability and resolve to achieve methodological caution; and it will also contribute indirectly, by contributing to our ability and resolve to achieve methodological denial, which in turn will contribute to our ability to engage in and maintain methodological caution. Secondly, however, Descartes states, “the eventual result of this [methodological] doubt is to make it impossible for us to have any further doubts about what we subsequently discover to be true.” It is to do this by providing a stringent test of indubitability which Descartes’ claims—​including, eventually, his claim about the criterion of truth itself—​can be made to pass, thereby justifying the acceptance of those claims. We can now see how Spinoza’s “internal” conception of truth helps to explain why Spinoza is unconcerned with methodological scepticism. Spinoza has no objection to methodological caution; he agrees that we should seek to avoid being taken in by false ideas and precipitate conclusions. However, he regards a positive study of the distinction between true ideas and imaginative ideas, and of the remedies for the latter, as sufficient for the purposes of methodological caution (TIE 37). And because truth is an internal characteristic of ideas, this study may begin immediately, by taking any given true idea as a “standard.” This positive study based on one’s given true ideas also obviates the need for methodological denial. Thus, methodological scepticism is not needed, for Spinoza, to contribute—​either directly or, through methodological denial, indirectly—​to methodological caution. But this was the first role of methodological scepticism in the Meditations. Furthermore, precisely because truth is an internal characteristic of ideas, its presence can serve as its own justification for the acceptance of ideas. Thus Spinoza writes: But perhaps, afterwards, some Skeptic would still doubt both the first truth itself and everything we shall deduce according to the standard of the first truth. If so, then either he will speak contrary to his own consciousness, or we

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shall confess that there are men whose minds also are completely blinded, either from birth, or from prejudices.  .  .  .  So they must be regarded as automata, completely lacking a mind. (TIE 47–​48; my emphasis) Accordingly, there is no need to justify the acceptance of true ideas by showing them to withstand the test of scepticism about their own reliability. But this was the second role of methodological scepticism in the Meditations. Moreover, sceptical doubt plays no other useful methodological role for Spinoza. On the contrary, doubt arises, on his view, only when we have two ideas, one of which is “not so clear and distinct that we can infer from it something certain about the thing concerning which there is doubt” (TIE 78). The remedy for doubt is to proceed in the proper order, deducing effects from causes, so that we never have ideas whose bearing on one another is uncertain (TIE 80). When ideas occur in the right order, true ideas will be followed by other true ideas, and doubt will be both impossible and seen to be unnecessary. The goal of Spinoza’s philosophical method is thus not to introduce grounds of doubt so as to overcome them by argument and thereby to vindicate the power of a chosen criterion of truth. For no such vindication is needed, and to search out grounds for doubt would simply be to guarantee proceeding in the wrong order, thereby throwing the largest possible number of obstacles in the way of one’s ultimate success. Rather, the aim of Spinoza’s method is to proceed, as far as possible, in the proper order so that doubt never occurs and is always understood to be groundless. The Cartesian confrontation with scepticism is rendered superfluous for Spinoza by his conception of truth as internal and hence as introspectible.

2.  Truth, Internality, and Method in Leibniz In order to appreciate Leibniz’s criticism of the Cartesian truth rule, it is necessary to understand his use of the relevant terminology. He distinguishes more sharply than Spinoza between ideas and concepts (which represent, or are of, a substance or property) on the one hand, and judgements and propositions (which affirm a predicate of a thing) on the other. Within the former realm, we may distinguish: (1) ideas, which he defines as faculties or abilities of particular minds for thinking of things or having concepts; (2) the concepts of substances or properties, which may be thought of either as combinations of primitive properties or, alternatively, as the ideal or divine thought of these combinations; and (3) our concepts of substances or properties—​or, indifferently, our knowledge of the concepts—​which consist in our thought of the concepts, and thereby manifest our ideas. He generally does not distinguish between propositions and judgements; however, I will use the term ‘judgement’ rather than the more common ‘proposition,’ both because it is the



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more Cartesian term and in order to emphasize that I am concerned with a psychological entity or act. Leibniz uses the term ‘thoughts’ for the genus of which our concepts and our judgements are both species. In Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas, and again in the Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz defines four distinctions directly applicable to our concepts, and one distinction applicable to our ideas (GP 4, pp.  422–​126, 452–​455/​L 1, pp.  448–​454, 490–​492). He distinguishes our concepts into the clear and the obscure; our clear concepts are further distinguished into the distinct and the confused; our distinct concepts are further distinguished into the adequate (or perfect) and the inadequate; our distinct concepts are also distinguished into the intuitive and the symbolic (or blind or suppositive); and all ideas are distinguished into the true (or real) and the false. (In the New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, Leibniz accommodates himself to Locke’s terminology and writes of all five of these distinctions as pertaining to “ideas” (NE = Leibniz 1962, pp. 254–​262, 269).) According to his definitions, a clear concept is one which “makes it possible for me to recognize the thing represented,” while an obscure one “does not suffice for recognizing the thing represented.” A  distinct concept is a clear concept of the kind “which assayers have of gold; one, namely, which enables them to distinguish gold from all other bodies by sufficient marks and observations”—​i.e., it is one in which we can “enumerate one by one the marks which are sufficient to distinguish the thing from others.” (A simple, primitive concept, although lacking the complexity required for it to contain “sufficient marks” as proper parts, may be regarded as itself a sufficient mark, and hence also as distinct.) A  confused concept, in contrast, is a concept in which one “cannot enumerate one by one the marks which are sufficient to distinguish the thing from others.” An adequate concept is a distinct concept in which “every ingredient that enters into a distinct concept is itself known distinctly, or when analysis is carried through to the end”; while an inadequate concept is one in which the “single component marks” are themselves known only confusedly. An intuitive concept is a distinct concept in which “we think simultaneously of all the concepts which compose it,” without the use of words or symbols; while a symbolic concept is one in which words or symbols are thought in place of one or more component concepts. Finally, “an idea is true when the concept is possible; it is false when it implies a contradiction.” This definition of the truth of ideas does not conflict with Leibniz’s more famous definition of truth, as the inclusion of the concept of the predicate in the concept of the subject; for the latter is, of course, a definition of the truth not of ideas, but rather of propositions or judgements. Part of the reason why Spinoza does not distinguish between ideas and judgements is that he regards every idea as involving an affirmation of the reality of what is represented (although that affirmation may be cancelled by simultaneous ideas that posit the non-​existence of that state of affairs) (E 2P49S). Leibniz, too, thinks of ideas as involving a tacit

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affirmation of the possibility of the thing represented (NE = Leibniz 1962, p. 269); he can thus regard the truth of ideas as an instance of the truth of judgements. He recognizes, however, that the Cartesian truth rule—​although sometimes phrased in terms of ideas—​is concerned primarily with the truth of what we would call judgements. He therefore treats the rule not in the form in which Descartes first presents it in the Third Meditation [cited above], but rather in the more predicative form of the Fifth Meditation, which he renders as: “whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly in some thing is true, or may be predicated of it.” Leibniz does not explicitly define the notion of “perceiving a thing clearly and distinctly (to be) in something else,” but he does remark that any proposition containing an obscure concept is itself obscure. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that he interprets the rule to mean that whenever we have a concept of a predicate contained as one of the clear elements in our clear and distinct concept of a subject, the judgement affirming that predicate of that subject is true. Leibniz’s criticism of Descartes’ use of the truth rule is as follows: [W]‌e can understand that it is not always safe to appeal to ideas and that many thinkers have abused this deceptive word to establish some of their own fancies. That we do not always at once have an idea of a thing of which we are conscious of thinking, the example of most rapid motion has shown. Nor is it less deceptive when men today advance the famous principle that whatever I perceive clearly and distinctly in some thing is true, or may be predicated of it. For what seems clear and distinct to men when they judge rashly is frequently obscure and confused. This axiom is thus useless unless the criteria of clarity and distinctness which we have proposed are applied and unless the truth of the ideas is established. (GP 4, p. 425/​L 1, p. 448) He recalls this objection in Thoughts on the Principles of Descartes by remarking that he has: elsewhere called attention to the fact that there is not much use in the celebrated rule that only what is clear and distinct shall be approved, unless better marks of clarity and distinctness are offered than those of Descartes. (GP 4, p. 362/​L 2, p. 640) We may detect two different objections in Leibniz’s remarks on Descartes’ truth rule. Both objections are to the usefulness of the rule, rather than to the proposed connection between clarity and distinctness and truth. The first objection is that the rule is useless unless we apply “the criteria of clarity and distinctness” that Leibniz proposes. Leibniz quite evidently holds that his definitions of clarity and



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distinctness provide a more definite standard of clarity and distinctness, and hence are clearer and more useful than Descartes’ definitions. The second objection, however, is one that still applies even after clarity and distinctness are understood in the proposed Leibnizian way: it is that the rule will also be useless unless “the truth of ideas is established.” This second objection calls for further comment. Although he does not say so explicitly, Leibniz seems to agree that all clear and distinct concepts—​at least, those that are clear and distinct by his own improved definitions of those terms—​manifest true ideas. For if an idea is not true, on his account, then its concept involves a contradiction, and it is difficult to see how a contradictory concept could really make it possible for us to “recognize” the impossible and contradictory thing represented, and to do so by “sufficient marks.” Leibniz’s favorite example of a false idea, to which he alludes in the passage quoted, is the idea of a most rapid motion, an idea which may seem to be consistent but which he believes can be shown, upon examination, to involve a contradiction. It seems unlikely that Leibniz would characterize anyone’s concept of a most rapid motion as clear and distinct, i.e., as enabling one to recognize a most rapid motion and to distinguish it from other motions by sufficient marks. In fact, several of his remarks in various places imply that purported ideas involving a contradiction are not really genuine ideas at all (e.g., Discourse on Metaphysics 23, 25), and hence that all genuine ideas—​and a fortiori the ideas manifested by clear and distinct concepts—​must be true. (On the other hand, there is no reason why all concepts manifesting true ideas must be clear and distinct, on his view. For even obscure concepts can represent—​obscurely, of course—​something possible and even actual.) Thus his emphasis on establishing “the truth of ideas” before using the truth rule does not arise from a concern that genuinely clear and distinct concepts might manifest false ideas. Rather, it arises from the concern that we are likely to suppose a concept to be clear and distinct even in the Leibnizian sense—​because seemingly sufficient to distinguish its object by sufficient marks—​when the concept in fact contains a hidden contradiction, and so is not really clear and distinct. Such hidden contradictions matter because, in Leibniz’s view (and despite the formal wording of his definition of true judgements), no true judgement can have an impossible subject, even if the concept of the predicate is contained in the (contradictory) concept of the subject. Hence, Leibniz’s objection to the Cartesian truth rule is not that a judgement in which our concept of the predicate is included as a clear element in our clear and distinct concept of the subject may be false. Rather, it is that, first, we must apply Leibniz’s own definitions of the relevant terms; and, second, that even then the rule is usable only if the truth of the ideas involved in the judgement is established. According to Leibniz, the truth of an idea can be established in either of two ways: “a priori when we resolve the concept into its necessary elements or into

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other concepts whose possibility is known, and we know that there is nothing incompatible in them”; and “a posteriori when we actually experience the thing to exist, for what actually exists or has existed is in any case possible” (GP 4, p. 424/​ L 1, p. 452). He adds that “whenever our knowledge is adequate, we have a priori knowledge of a possibility, for if we have carried out the analysis to the end and no contradiction has appeared, the concept is obviously possible.” His objection to previous versions of the ontological argument for the existence of God is precisely that they fail to establish the truth of the idea of God in either of these two ways. For although Descartes, for example, seems to himself to have a clear and distinct idea of God as involving existence, he has not established that this idea of God does not involve a hidden contradiction; hence he has not established that he really has a clear and distinct idea [i.e., concept] of God, and he has therefore not established the truth of the claim that God exists (GP 4, p. 359/​L 2, pp. 634–​635). Leibniz claims to remedy this fault by giving an a priori demonstration of the possibility of God’s existence—​that is, of the truth of the idea of God. Whereas Descartes conceived his truth rule as a substantive but ultimately irresistible affirmation of an external criterion of truth, Leibniz’s definition of the truth of judgements evidently renders the rule, as he understands it, fairly trivial. If it amounts to anything more than the rule that one can accept as true whatever one perceives to be true, it does so only by being more explicit about what perceiving the truth is, and under what circumstances one can be entitled to be confident that one has directly perceived it.

2.1  The Internality of Truth For Leibniz, then, truth is, at least to some extent, an internal characteristic of true ideas. For a true idea is a faculty or ability to represent a collection of simple, primitive properties that does not contain any contradiction, and is therefore a logically possible collection; the truth of an idea can therefore be identified with its logical consistency. Moreover, truth seems to be, at least to some extent, an internal characteristic of true judgements as well, since a true judgement is one in which the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. Whether this does entail that truth is an internal characteristic of our judgements, however, depends on the relation between our concepts in judging and the concepts in terms of which the truth of judgements or propositions is defined. (The question could be posed equivalently as that of the relation between our knowledge of the concepts and the concepts themselves.) There are two alternatives with respect to this relation. The first is that our concept of a thing contains everything (i.e., the concept of every property) that is contained in the concept of that thing, although our concept may, obviously, contain these things only confusedly and not distinctly. In this case, the truth of



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our judgements is ultimately a matter of the internal relations of containment among our concepts, and hence is an internal characteristic of our judgements. The second alternative is that our concepts do not contain, even confusedly, everything contained in the concepts in terms of which the truth of propositions and judgements is defined. In this case, truth need not be an internal characteristic of our judgements. Of these two alternatives, Leibniz fairly clearly intends the former. First, his frequent allusions, especially in the course of formulating and criticizing the Cartesian truth rule, to what is included in our concepts, though only obscurely or confusedly, strongly implies it. For there he makes it clear that he regards rendering a concept adequate as a matter of making distinct what is already contained in it, not as a matter of adding new elements. Secondly, his account of our perception of the whole universe helps to render it plausible. Thirdly, the absence of any discussion whatever of what, on the second alternative, would be a very serious problem indeed makes its adoption by Leibniz difficult to avoid. This is the problem of how one of our concepts comes to serve as a thought of a particular one of the concepts—​rather than a thought of any of the all-​but-​indistinguishably-​ similar other, closely ​related, concepts—​if this is not accomplished by identity of conceptual content. And finally, as we shall see shortly, the internalist conception of the truth of human judgements permitted by the first alternative allows us to explain why Leibniz rejects Cartesian scepticism about “the most evident things” out-​of-​hand. It may be remarked, however, that even if Leibniz intends the second alternative, truth would still be an internal characteristic of ideal or divine judgements; it is just that the truth of our judgements would depend, in part, on their standing in some unspecified relation to the ideal or divine judgements. Thus, I conclude that for Leibniz the truth of ideas and the truth of judgements both consist at least to some extent in internal characteristics of those kinds of thoughts. I say “at least to some extent” for two reasons. First, Leibniz often writes of truth in a way that does not involve mention of concepts, as involving the containment of the predicate in the subject; and he takes this conception of truth to have immediate ontological consequences about the nature of substances themselves. Secondly, he also claims, against Locke, that: It would be better to assign truth to the relationships amongst the objects of the ideas, by virtue of which one idea is or is not included within another. . . . Let us be content with looking for truth in the correspondence between the propositions which are in the mind and the things which they are about. (NE = Leibniz 1962, pp. 397–​398) Like Spinoza, Leibniz seems to think that an “internalist” conception of truth is compatible with treating truth as entailing a kind of external correspondence.

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2.2  Methodological Scepticism Leibniz’s internalist conception of truth helps to explain why he is unconcerned with confronting methodological scepticism. Like Spinoza, he has no objection to what we have called methodological caution. However, he regards an investigation into the grounds of particular beliefs as sufficient for that purpose. Thus, he writes: Descartes’ dictum that everything in which there is the least uncertainty is to be doubted might have been better and more exactly formulated in the precept that we must consider the degree of assent or dissent which a matter deserves or, more simply, that we must look into the reasons for every doctrine. This would end all the caviling about Cartesian doubt. (GP 4, pp. 354/​L 2, p. 630) Concerning methodological denial, he continues: “Furthermore, I do not see what good it does to consider what is doubtful as false. This would be not be to lay aside prejudices but to change them.” Thus, methodological scepticism is not needed as an aid either to methodological caution, which can be successfully maintained without it, or to methodological denial, which is itself useless. This is to reject the first of the two roles Descartes gives to methodological scepticism. Furthermore, there is no need, in Leibniz’s view, to justify the acceptance of judgements by subjecting them to the strongest sceptical arguments available—​ which is the second role of methodological scepticism in the Meditations. On the one hand, judgements in which the concept of the predicate is perceived to be contained as an element in an adequate concept of the subject can simply be seen to be true, without subjecting them to any sceptical test. Thus, Leibniz writes of Descartes’ “strange fiction or doubt as to whether we are not led to err even in the most evident things” that this doubt “should convince no one because the nature of evidence prevents it” (GP 4, p. 358/​L 2, p. 630; my emphasis). Similarly, even where our ideas are not adequate (so that we cannot see the “truth of the idea” a priori), judgements in which the concept of the predicate is perceived to be contained as a clear element in a clear and distinct concept of a subject can be known to be true, without any need for a sceptical test, if the truth of the idea can be established a posteriori. Where our concepts are not yet adequate but can be made adequate by our efforts, we should strive to achieve that result, and thereby make fully evident the truth of our judgements: So if Descartes had wished to carry out what is best in his rule, he should have worked at the demonstration of scientific principles and thus achieved in philosophy what Proclus tried to do [i.e., demonstrate the axioms] in geometry. (GP 4, p. 354/​L 2, p. 630)



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Where we cannot presently render our concept adequate, on the other hand, methodological scepticism is equally out of place, but for an opposite reason: namely, that it cannot be demonstratively overcome. If we cannot see the truth of a hypothesis, we must rely on its simplicity, plausibility, and fruitfulness in explaining the phenomena; in judging of the reality of sensible phenomena themselves, he argues in On the Method of Distinguishing Real from Imaginary Phenomena (GP 7, pp. 319–​322/​L 2, pp. 602–​607), we must rely on vividness, complexity, and coherence with other phenomena. But in neither case can scepticism be fully refuted, since these characteristics do not guarantee truth. Hence to engage in methodological scepticism would be an obstacle to such science as we can possess about many topics, which depends on deductions from merely assumed, though plausible, axioms; and it would be to impose an unreasonable standard on our knowledge of external objects: Moreover, the sceptics, who despise the sciences on the pretext that they sometimes use undemonstrated principles, ought also regard this as said also to them. I hold, in contrast, that the geometricians should be praised because they have pinned down science with such pegs, as it were, and have discovered an art of advancing and of deriving so many things from a few. If they had tried to put off the discovery of theorems and problems until all the axioms and postulates had been proved, we should perhaps have no geometry today. . . . About sensible things we can know nothing more, nor ought we to desire to know more, than that they are consistent with each other as well as with rational principles that cannot be doubted, and hence that future events can to some extent be foreseen from past. To seek any other truth or reality than what this contains is vain, and sceptics ought not to demand any other, nor dogmatists promise it. (GP 4, pp. 355–​ 356/​L 2, p. 631) Thus, Leibniz’s internalist conception of truth allows him to regard methodological scepticism as, in the most favourable cases, superfluous; and in the less favourable cases, he regards methodological scepticism as detrimental because it is more than we can strictly overcome.

3.  Internality, Necessitarianism, and Correspondence Descartes proposes that we take clarity and distinctness as a criterion or sign of truth because he regards truth as an external characteristic of true ideas or judgements; and he is evidently led to regard truth as an external characteristic, in turn, primarily because he thinks of truth as a matter of correspondence with

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reality.4 Thus, he undertakes the task of justifying a criterion of truth largely in order to preserve the correspondence of true thoughts with their objects. I have argued that Spinoza and Leibniz, in contrast, both reject Descartes’ proposal to use clarity and distinctness as a criterion or sign of truth largely because they regard truth itself as an internal characteristic of true ideas or judgements. This suggests, however, that Spinoza and Leibniz may perhaps avoid Descartes’ task of justifying a separate criterion of truth only at the expense of facing a different problem, concerning the correspondence between true thoughts and their objects. As we have seen, Spinoza in the TIE explicitly treats truth as both an internal characteristic of true ideas and also as involving or entailing external correspondence. And even in the Ethics, where the internality of truth is less explicit, he confidently takes the correspondence of true ideas as an axiom and proceeds to define “adequacy” as the possession of “all the properties or intrinsic denominations of a true idea.” He thereby assumes what Descartes struggled in the first three Meditations to establish, namely that there are internal characteristics possessed by all and only those ideas that correspond with their objects. Similarly, Leibniz treats the truth of judgements as an internal characteristic of true judgements and, at least in the New Essays and by implication elsewhere, as a matter of correspondence. But how can they be entitled simply to combine the advantages of an internalist and an externalist conception of truth in this way?

3.1  Necessitarianism and Correspondence One potential solution to this problem lies in necessitarianism—​and more particularly, in logical necessitarianism. As I will use the term here, ‘necessitarianism’ designates any thesis that can be expressed (equivalently) by saying that every state of affairs is necessary, or that things could not have been in any respect different than they are, or that the actual world is the only possible world. In this sense, every modality (i.e., every family of meanings for ‘necessary,’ ‘could have,’ ‘possible world,’ and related terms) gives rise to its own kind of necessitarianism. One specific kind of necessitarianism is logical necessitarianism, according to which everything is necessary for a reason that is ultimately logical in character: namely, that the actual world is the only logically consistent world. Necessitarianism, as here defined, must be distinguished from determinism, which is the doctrine that every occurrence is causally determined by antecedent conditions together with the laws of nature. For most (though not all) kinds of necessitarianism, necessitarianism and determinism are logically compatible with each other, but neither directly entails the other. On the one hand, determinism would be true and necessitarianism false if every occurrence was determined from antecedent conditions by the laws of nature, but the laws of nature were themselves not necessary in the relevant sense, or if there could have been some other



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series of causes and effects in accordance with those laws, or both. And on the other hand, necessitarianism would be true and determinism would be false if every occurrence were necessary (in the relevant sense) but some occurrences were necessary without being determined by laws of nature and antecedent conditions. How does necessitarianism help one to combine internalist and externalist conceptions of truth? If necessitarianism is false, then there are some possible states of affairs that are not actual. In that case, an internalist conception of truth that is also committed to external correspondence must then find some internal characteristic that is shared by all those ideas or judgements which affirm the reality of actualized possibilities, but which is not shared by any ideas or judgements affirming the reality of non-​actualized possibilities; and this is a difficult task. If necessitarianism is true, on the other hand, then nothing is possible except what is actual, and everything actual is necessary. Possibility, actuality, and necessity are thus equivalent, and if an idea has an internal characteristic which shows its object to be possible, it will thereby also show it to be actual (and, indeed, necessary). In the case of logical necessitarianism, in particular, any idea which possesses enough internal coherence, consistency, or adequacy to show that what it represents is a genuine logical possibility, will also suffice to show that what it represents is actual. Thus, any kind of necessitarianism can allow an internalist conception of truth to entail external correspondence if the mere possibility of a thing or state of affairs can be manifested in the thought of it; and logical necessitarianism, at least, can meet this condition, since the possibility of a thing or state of affairs will then be manifested in the logical consistency of its idea.

3.2  Necessitarianism and Correspondence in Spinoza Is Spinoza a necessitarian in any strong sense? He claims that “from the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect)” (E 1P16); that “in nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way” [E IP29]; and that “things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced” (E 1P33). I have argued elsewhere that these propositions commit Spinoza to a strong necessitarianism, and that nothing he says commits him to its denial;5 I will not repeat the arguments here. It is worth noting, however, that Leibniz, at least, took Spinoza to be a strong metaphysical necessitarian. He writes, for example, that Spinoza expounds the view that “the perfection of God consists in that magnitude of his activity by virtue of which nothing is possible or conceivable which he does not actually produce” (GP 4, pp. 281–​282/​L 1, p. 420; see also L 1, pp. 262, 409, 571). Concerning the logical character of Spinoza’s necessitarianism, it must be granted that his discussions

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of necessity are less explicitly concerned with logic than are those of the brilliant formal logician Leibniz. Nevertheless, the absoluteness of his pronouncements about the necessity of all things, the fact that Spinozistic necessity stems ultimately from the ontological argument for the existence of God, his use of logical vocabulary (‘following from,’ ‘contradiction,’ etc.) in connection with this necessity, the implication of E 1P16 and its uses that everything conceivable is actual, the fact that nothing he says is incompatible with logical necessitarianism, and the fact that logical necessitarianism can allow an internalist conception of truth to entail external correspondence more readily than can other kinds, together constitute a strong prima facie case that Spinoza’s necessitarianism is a logical necessitarianism. As noted, however, any kind of necessitarianism in which “possibility” could be reflected in an internal characteristic of ideas would serve the same purpose of accommodating both the internalist and the externalist demands on truth. Moreover, Spinoza’s metaphysics is especially well  ​suited to a necessitarian reconciliation of internalist and externalist demands on truth. For the Ethics goes so far as to identify ideas with their objects: an idea and its object are the same thing considered in two different ways. Hence, the internal adequacy of an idea, on the one hand, and its correspondence with its “external” object, on the other, can ultimately be seen as two different ways of considering the very same characteristic of true ideas. Just as the causal relation between two modes manifests itself as a kind of logical implication when the two modes are considered under the attribute of thought, and the same causal relation also manifests itself as physical causation when the two modes are considered under the attribute of extension, so the truth of an idea can manifest itself as adequacy (understood as manifesting the complete logical consistency of a represented object) when the idea is considered in itself, and as agreement or correspondence when that same idea is considered as also identical to its object.6 The most difficult problem for a non-​necessitarian internalist who wishes to preserve correspondence lies in distinguishing thoughts of actualities from thoughts of non-​actualized possibles. The most difficult problem for the necessitarian internalist, in contrast, lies in the apparent existence of thoughts of non-​ actualized possibles, when the theory requires that there are no such possibles. Spinoza, however, has a solution to this problem readily available. In his view, what may seem to be true and adequate ideas of non-​existent possibles are, strictly speaking, ideas of the formal essences of things (E 2P8). This doctrine does not violate the agreement or correspondence of true ideas with their objects, because formal essences are themselves real things, “comprehended” in the attributes of which they are modes. The formal essence of an extended thing, for example, is a real, pervasive feature of extension (i.e., of the Extended Substance): it is the feature of extension which consists in extension’s being able, under its general and pervasive laws, to sustain such an extended



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object, given the previous existence of the appropriate kind of cause. Thus, when Spinoza claims (TIE 69)  that an architect’s idea of a house may be true, even though the house is never actually built, this does not violate the correspondence requirement, because the architect’s idea is strictly of the formal essence of the house, and that formal essence does itself exist as a pervasive feature (in fact, as an “infinite mode”) of extension. Nor does this doctrine violate necessitarianism. The formal essence of a finite mode does not itself “involve existence” (as does the essence of God), nor does it “involve non-​existence” (as does the “essence” of a contradictory thing). Rather, it may be said to involve existence-​under-​certain-​circumstances: that is, it dictates not that the finite mode whose essence it is will actually exist, nor that it will not, but rather that it will actually exist given the presence of a certain kind of finite cause. Thus, from the nature of the formal essence of a finite mode alone, neither the existence nor the non-​existence of the finite mode follows. However, the actual existence of the finite mode will either be necessitated or rendered impossible by the nature of the only possible infinite series of finite modes compatible with the necessary divine nature. Spinoza thus distinguishes two sources of necessity—​necessity from a thing’s own essence, and necessity from a thing’s cause (E 1P33S1)—​but not two degrees of necessity. Everything actual remains equally necessary. This solution to the problem of ideas of apparently non-​actualized possibles, of course, raises a further question: how, if at all, does the true idea of the actual existence of something differ from the true idea of its formal essence? Once again, Spinoza has a bold solution available. In the case of God, there is no distinction between his existence and his essence (E 1P20). And in the case of finite modes, on his view, no finite mind can have a true idea of their actual existence. No finite mind can have a true idea of the actual existence of any finite mode because such an idea requires a complete knowledge of that mode’s causes (E 1A4, 2P27–​28); hence, true ideas of the existence of finite modes exist only in the infinite intellect of God. Furthermore, on his view, a human mind is the part of the infinite intellect which is the idea of the actual existence of a human body. As it constitutes a human mind, it is separate from the ideas of the causes of the human body, and so constitutes only inadequate knowledge of that body. As it exists in God, however, together with the ideas of the causes of the human body, it constitutes the only true idea of the existence of the finite mode which is that human body (E 2P7–​30). Since all of God’s ideas are true, and hence correspond to their objects, God does not have ideas of the actual existence of non-​existent finite modes—​although he does, of course, have true ideas of their (really existing) formal essences. Thus, I  conclude that logical necessitarianism would provide Spinoza with a consistent and coherent reconciliation of the internalist and externalist conceptions of truth. In fact, given the causal independence of the Spinozistic

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attributes (E 2P5–​6), it is hard to see how the correspondence described above, of actually existing finite modes, on the one hand, with ideas (in the infinite intellect) of the actual existence of those finite modes, on the other, could be guaranteed without logical necessitarianism.7

3.3  Necessitarianism and Correspondence in Leibniz Leibniz’s language, at least, is aggressively non-​necessitarian: he insists on a distinction between the necessary and the contingent; he contrasts reasons that incline and those that necessitate; and he affirms the multiplicity of possible worlds. It is thus of interest to determine whether he can reconcile his own internalist and externalist conceptions of truth without logical necessitarianism. As noted, the most difficult problem for a non-​ necessitarian internalist committed to correspondence is that of internally distinguishing true thoughts affirming actual states of affairs from false thoughts affirming non-​actual but possible states of affairs. For Leibniz, this problem takes the form of internally distinguishing true from false judgements of existence. Given his definition of truth, we may distinguish four possible approaches to this problem. The first is to claim that, in true judgements of existence, the concept of existence is included in the concept of the subject, in just the same way that the concept of the predicate is included in the concept of the subject in any other true judgement. Leibniz, however, must and does reject this alternative, for it would render all existing things necessary and all non-​actual things impossible, independent of God; indeed, it would make the existence of any actual thing the subject of an ontological argument.8 The second approach is to deny that there are any false judgements of existence at all, thereby rendering any judgement of existence true and obviating the need to distinguish them from the false. To adopt this approach would presumably be to grant existence to every conceivable subject. Not only is this prima facie implausible, but it would lead directly to necessitarianism and would also conflict with Leibniz’s doctrine that there are possible substances that are not compossible with each other. The third approach is to deny that there are any true judgements of existence, again obviating the need to distinguish the true from the false. Such an approach might even be suggested by Leibniz’s attempt in the General Inquiries to define or replace the concept of existence with some other concept: [A]‌n existent entity is that which is compatible with the most things. . . . Or, what comes to the same, ‘existent’ is what pleases something intelligent and powerful; but in this way existence itself is presupposed. However, this definition at least can be given: ‘existent’ is what would please some



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mind, and would not displease another more powerful mind, if minds of any kind were to exist. (Leibniz/​Parkinson 1966, p. 65) But Leibniz cannot really intend to deny that there are any true judgements of existence: besides being prima facie implausible, doing so would require him either to deny God’s omniscience or to deny the existence of everything. The fourth approach is to claim that what distinguishes a true from a false judgement of existence is some characteristic of the concept of the subject, but not its (explicitly) containing the concept of existence. This is clearly the strategy Leibniz ultimately adopts. The characteristic in question may be variously specified as “being compatible with the most things,” “being pleasing to a most powerful mind,” or simply “membership in the best of all possible worlds.” One thing to notice about this strategy is that it leaves both existence and non-​ existence explicitly out of the concept of every substance but God. To the extent that Leibniz thinks of the complete concept of a substance as one that contains, for each primitive property, either the concept of that property or its denial, therefore, the (Spinozistic) consequence follows that there is a sense in which only God is a full-​fledged substance. Furthermore, however, if the strategy is to reconcile successfully Leibniz’s internalist and externalist conceptions of truth, it must be true that every subject whose concept has the “bestness” characteristic in question does actually exist. But in what will this truth consist? For Leibniz, it can only be a consequence of the truth that the omnipotent God chooses to instantiate all and only subjects having this “bestness” characteristic. But in order for this to be true in turn, on Leibniz’s conception of truth, it must be the case that the choice to instantiate whatever concepts exhibit “bestness” is contained in God’s concept. If the choice of the best is contained in the concept of God, however, then it follows that, if any other world had been actualized, something would have been false of God—​ namely, omnipotently choosing to instantiate the best—​which is nevertheless contained in his concept. That is to say, the actual world—​when God is considered as included in it—​is the only logically consistent world. Thus, Leibniz’s language to the contrary notwithstanding, he is committed by his principles to logical necessitarianism, as defined above.9 To say that Leibniz is committed to logical necessitarianism in this sense does not mean that he cannot consistently distinguish between those concepts or essences that contain an internal necessity of existence, those that contain an internal contradiction, and those that internally contain neither. He can and does make this distinction—​but so, as we have seen, does Spinoza. Nor does it mean that he cannot consistently distinguish between truths that can be demonstrated by a finite proof and those that require an infinite analysis. He can and does make this distinction as well—​but, given that every finite mode has an infinite number of finite causes, so in effect can Spinoza. Indeed, to the extent that Leibniz’s theory

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of truth is more explicitly or formally logical in character than is Spinoza’s, there is a sense in which Leibniz is even more fully committed to logical necessitarianism than is Spinoza.

3.4 Conclusion In this chapter, I have explored Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s criticisms of Descartes’ truth rule. I have argued that both Spinoza and Leibniz have conceptions of truth as, at least to some extent, an internal characteristic of true ideas and judgements; and that Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s rejections of Descartes’ methodological scepticism depend on their internalist conceptions of truth. I have argued that logical necessitarianism provides Spinoza with a satisfactory way of reconciling his internalist conception of truth with his commitment to the necessary agreement or correspondence between true ideas and their objects. Finally, I have argued that Leibniz is committed, primarily by his theory of truth, to logical necessitarianism in spite of his non-​necessitarian language. The features of Spinoza’s philosophy that Leibniz seems to have found objectionable above all others were the doctrine that there is only one substance (i.e., monism), and the doctrine that the world exists without any volition or choice of the best on the part of God (i.e., naturalism). It must be emphasized that Leibniz’s logical necessitarianism does not obviously commit him to either of these further doctrines (although I  have remarked that his treatment of existential judgements at least suggests monism). Neither of those two further Spinozistic doctrines rests on the theory of truth and knowledge alone: the former doctrine depends also on metaphysics and the theory of individuation, while the latter doctrine depends also on theology and the theory of volitional action. Given their shared necessitarianism, I  suspect that Spinoza has the better side of the argument on both of those two doctrines—​but that is a topic for another occasion.

Notes 1 . For an excellent discussion of this topic, see Curley 1978, Chapter 5. 2. This is discussed at greater length in Garrett 1986. 3. See Wolfson 1934, vol. I, p 58. Wolfson’s remark is quoted to this effect in Mark 1972, p. 52. 4. For example, he writes in the Third Meditation that the chief error to be feared in judging is to judge that “the ideas which are in me resemble, or conform to, things located outside me” (AT 7, p. 37; CSM 2, p. 26). For an excellent fuller account



5.

6.

7 . 8. 9.

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of the reasons for ascribing a correspondence theory of truth to Descartes, see Curley 1978, pp. 108–​118. See Garrett 1990. More specifically, I argue that E IP16, 1P29, 1P33, and the doctrine of the parallelism of the attributes in Ethics Part 2 commit Spinoza to necessitarianism; and that 1P28, 1P29S, and his distinction between the essential and the inessential characteristics of things do not commit him to the denial of necessitarianism. This raises, of course, the problem of how there can be any false ideas. Without entering into a full discussion of this issue, it can be said that false ideas are “mutilated” and incomplete—​i.e., not fully ideas, and so not completely corresponding to their objects. For discussion of this topic, see Garrett 1990. See Grua, p. 288 and C, p. 23. Both passages are cited in Curley 1972. Leibniz seems hesitant to accept the view that God knows his own choice of the best by finding it in his own concept of Himself. Thus he writes: “For he sees those [things] that have a contingent existence by considering his free will and his decrees, the first of which is that everything shall work in the best manner and with the highest reason” (L 1, p. 409). Stuart Brown (Brown 1984, pp. 130–​134) interprets this passage to mean that God knows what is actual through his awareness of his own intentions, rather than by finding his intentions in his own concept. But this, as Brown admits, involves violating Leibniz’s own definition of truth.

Bibliography Wor ks of   Sp inoz a The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume I, edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. All translations of Spinoza are from this source.

Wor ks of   Le i b n i z Leibniz, G. W.: Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain. Edited by A. Robinet and H. Schepers. Berlin: Akademie-​Verlag, 1962. Leibniz, G. W.: Logical Papers, translated and edited by G. H.  R. Parkinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Leibniz, G. W.: New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1981.

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Ot h er l i t er at ur e Sources Descartes, René: Œuvres de Descartes, edited by D. Adam and P. Tannery. 13 volumes. Paris: Leopold Cerf, 1897–​1913. (Cited: AT, with volume and page number.) Descartes, René: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. 2 volumes. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1984. (Cited:  CSM, with volume and page number.) All translations of Descartes are from this source.

S e c onda ry L i t er at ur e Brown, Stuart: Leibniz. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Curley, Edwin: Descartes Against the Skeptics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. Curley, Edwin: “The Root of Contingency.” In: Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Harry G. Frankfurt, Garden City: Doubleday, 1972, pp. 69–​97. Garrett, Don: “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism.” In: Spinoza by 2000, volume 1, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel. Philosophia Verlag, 1990. Garrett, Don: “Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione.” Studia Spinozana 2 (1986), pp. 61–​92. Mark, Thomas Carson: Spinoza’s Theory of Truth. New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1972. Wolfson, H. A.: The Philosophy of Spinoza. 2 volumes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934.

7

Spinoza’s Theory of Scientia Intuitiva

Many prominent distinctions involving kinds of knowledge or cognition are dichotomous:  a priori or a posteriori, necessary or contingent, analytic or synthetic, conceptual or empirical, certain or probable, self-​evident or inferential, general or particular, intellectual or imaginative. In his Ethics, however, Spinoza distinguishes and discusses not two but three kinds of cognition [cognitio, often translated as ‘knowledge’].1 These three kinds are:  (i) opinion or imagination [opinio, vel imaginatio], which is further distinguished into random experience [experientia vaga]2 and cognition from signs [ex signis]; (ii) reason [ratio]; and (iii) scientia intuitiva [often left in Latin by commentators, but signifying “intuitive knowledge” in a much stricter sense of ‘knowledge’]. While they are foreshadowed by a similar distinction among “kinds of perception” in two earlier works (the unfinished Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect [TdIE §§ 18–​29] and the long-​ unpublished Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-​Being [KV II.1–​2]),3 Spinoza introduces them into the Ethics at the conclusion of a discussion of the “universal notions” that allow us “to perceive many things.” He begins by defining them: [I]‌t is clear that we perceive many things and form universal notions: I. from singular things which have been represented to us through the senses in a way that is mutilated, confused, and without order for the intellect (see P29C); for that reason I  have been accustomed to call such perceptions cognition from random experience; II. from signs, e.g., from the fact that, having heard or read certain words, we recollect things, and form certain ideas of them, which are like them, and through which we imagine the things (P18S). These two ways of regarding things I shall henceforth call cognition of the first kind, opinion or imagination. III. Finally, from the fact that we have common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things (see P38C, P39, P39C, and P40). This I shall call reason and the second kind of cognition.

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In addition to these two kinds of cognition, there is (as I shall show in what follows) another, third kind, which we shall call scientia intuitiva. And this kind of knowing proceeds from an adequate idea of the [NS: formal] essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate cognition of the essence of things. He then provides an example that he had also used in the earlier works: I shall explain all these with one example. Suppose there are three numbers, and the problem is to find a fourth which is to the third as the second is to the first. Merchants do not hesitate to multiply the second by the third, and divide the product by the first, because they have not yet forgotten what they heard from their teacher without any demonstration, or because they have often found this in the simplest numbers, or from the force of the Demonstration of P7 in Bk. VII of Euclid, viz. from the common property of proportionals. But in the simplest numbers none of this is necessary. Given the numbers 1, 2, and 3, no one fails to see what the fourth proportional number is 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. (E2p40s2)4 Spinoza clearly regards the third kind of cognition—​the only one on which the Ethics bestows the honorific title ‘scientia’—​as the best and most desirable of the three; yet in many ways it is also the most puzzling. One question concerns its very nature: What are the essences of attributes and of things on which scientia intuitiva depends, and how does it proceed from the former to the latter? A second question concerns its relation to other kinds of cognition: Given that all cognition, according to Spinoza, requires an adequate idea of an attribute of God, how does scientia intuitiva differ from other kinds of cognition? A third question concerns its scope: Given that it is characterized as “intuitive,” independent of “universal notions,” and concerned with “essences,” can everything be known by scientia intuitiva, or are some truths beyond its reach? A final question concerns the basis of its value:  Given that Spinoza characterizes cognition of both the second and third kinds as “adequate” and “true,” why does he nevertheless regard scientia intuitiva as the best and most valuable kind of cognition?

The Nature of Scientia Intuitiva In order to understand how scientia intuitiva depends on essences, it is necessary to understand both some familiar features of Spinoza’s metaphysics and some less familiar features of his theory of essences.



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According to Spinoza, everything is either a substance or a mode of a substance (E1p4d). A  substance is both in itself5 and conceived through itself (E1d3), whereas the modes of a substance are in and conceived through the substance of which they are modes (E1d5). God (i.e., Nature) is the only substance (E1p14) and has infinitely many attributes, each in an infinite or unlimited way (E1d6). These attributes are fundamentally different dimensions (as we might put it) of God’s existence and reality, and they constitute God’s essence (E1d4). Of these attributes, our minds can conceive only two: Extension and Thought. Ethics 1a4 states that “the cognition of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause”; thus, just as whatever is in something must be conceived through it, so too whatever is conceived through something must also be caused by it, and vice versa.6 Hence, God, which is conceived through itself, must also be self-​caused; and the modes of God, which are conceived through God, must also be caused by God. Everything is necessarily caused to be just as it is by God and could not have been otherwise (E1p33). Furthermore, there is a precise parallelism between the causal “order and connection” of things and the causal “order and connection” of the ideas of those things (E2p7). In particular, every mode of Extension is both paralleled by and identical to the idea that is the idea of that mode of Extension (E2p7s); one example of this is the human mind, which is both “the idea of” and “one and the same thing as” the corresponding human body (E2p13). As the idea of the human body, the mind perceives—​i.e., has some idea of—​“everything that happens in” that body (E2p12).7 Moreover, every human mind is literally in God as an element in God’s infinite intellect (E2p11c), although ideas may have much less power as they are in a human mind in comparison with the power they have as they are in God. Causal relations themselves are attribute-​specific: for example, each mode, insofar as it is extended, has only extended causes and effects, whereas insofar as it is thinking, it has only thinking causes and effects (E2p6). Hence, the power of an idea is its “power of thinking” [potentia cogitandi].8 An adequate idea is one that has all of the “internal denominations” (notably, intellectual clarity and distinctness) of a “true idea” (E2d4). A true idea, according Ethics 1a6, is one that fully agrees with what it represents. God’s modes are of two kinds: infinite and finite. Infinite modes follow from the “absolute nature” of God’s attributes (E1p21-​E1p23), doing so either immediately or mediately (in the latter case, by following from other infinite modes that follow more directly from God’s attributes). They are therefore pervasive throughout the attributes of which they are modes. Among them are the pervasive features of the attributes that constitute the more general and more specific “laws of nature”—​included in what Spinoza in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect calls “the series of fixed and eternal things . . . and the laws inscribed in these things as in their true codes, according to which all singular things come to be and are ordered” (TdIE §§ 100–​101). Presumably, the more specific laws are

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caused by the more general laws from which they follow. Finite modes, in contrast, follow not from God’s “absolute nature,” but rather from God’s nature—​i.e., essence—​insofar as it is modified by other finite modes; thus, finite modes are local and temporary variations in the attributes of which they are modes (E1p28). The infinite individual composed of all finite modes, however, is itself an infinite mode (lemma 7s following E2p13s), one which therefore follows from God’s absolute nature. The finite modes are singular things (E1p25c)—​humans, animals, plants, stars, rocks, and all other things that “are finite and have a determinate existence” (E2d7). These singular things may in turn have their own modes or (as Spinoza often says) “affections.”9 According to Ethics 1d4, God’s attributes constitute his essence; but what is an essence? In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TdIE §§ 95–​96), Spinoza distinguishes a thing’s essence [essentia] from its properties [proprium or proprietas indifferently]. The essence of a thing makes it what it is and is captured by a satisfactory definition of it, whereas its properties (in this technical sense, henceforth always intended by the English term) follow from this essence without themselves constituting it.10 Since a thing’s properties follow strictly from its essence, the thing can never be without them—​in contrast to the thing’s merely accidental qualities, which may be either present or absent through the efficacy of external forces.11 In many cases, however, things with different essences may have some of the same properties in common. Spinoza applies the distinction between essence and properties throughout the Ethics, both to God and to the singular things that are among God’s modes. In Ethics 1p16 and its demonstration, he writes: P16: From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect). Dem:  This Proposition must be plain to anyone, provided he attends to the fact that the intellect infers from the given definition of any thing a number of properties that really do follow necessarily from it (i.e., from the very essence of the thing); and that it infers more properties the more the definition of the thing expresses reality. (emphasis added) As this indicates, Spinoza regards all of the modes of God as properties (in the technical sense) that follow from God’s essence; not surprisingly, given that everything happens by necessity and nothing is external to God, God has no mere accidents. Since a thing’s properties are conceived through its essence, from which they follow, they are also (as Spinoza repeatedly confirms) caused by that essence.12 In considering singular things, the Ethics discusses two different kinds of essences: the actual essence [essentia actualis] and the formal essence [essentia formalis].



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The actual essence of a singular thing is the thing’s conatus, or striving to persevere in its own existence (E3p7). This conatus—​which serves as the starting point for Spinoza’s psychology and political theory, as well as the basis for “teleological” explanation in natural science more broadly—​is possessed by every singular thing (E3p6), and it endures for as long as the singular thing endures. A singular thing acts only through its conatus (E3p7d), which is expressed in both Extension and Thought, and which may properly be called “appetite” (E3p9s). Through its conatus, a singular thing acts to preserve itself both by being the sole cause of its properties and by being a partial cause of other modes both of itself and of other singular things.13 The formal essence of a singular thing (sometimes simply “the essence,” where context makes this clear), on the other hand, is often contrasted with its existence: for example, Ethics 1p25 characterizes God as the efficient cause of not only the “existence” but also the “essence” of things. As Spinoza indicates at Ethics 2p8, there are formal essences even for singular things that do not exist: 2P8:  The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God’s infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s attributes. The corollary to this proposition refers to “singular things that do not exist, except insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes” (emphasis added), and its scholium compares the way in which such singular things are comprehended in God’s attributes to the way in which undrawn or undelineated rectangles are comprehended within a circle. Thus, as commentators have often noted,14 the formal essence of a thing constitutes in some way the “possibility” or “actualizability” of that thing. Since whatever is contained “in” God’s attributes is a mode for Spinoza (E1d5) rather than a substance, it follows that formal essences must themselves be modes; and since the formal essences of singular things do not come into and go out of existence as singular things themselves must do, these formal essences must be infinite modes rather than finite modes. More specifically, the formal essence of a singular thing is the pervasive feature of an attribute that consists in the compatibility of the laws of nature of that attribute with the existence of the thing itself, so that the thing itself can exist at any place where the requisite finite causes may prove to be present.15 Spinoza provides a general characterization of what “belongs to” an essence at Ethics 2d2: To the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited and which, being taken away, the thing is necessarily

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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. The distinction between actual and formal essences arises, then, because an essence can be “given,” and a thing can be “posited,” in more than one way. An actual essence is something such that when it is given as actually existing, the thing itself is posited as actually existing. A formal essence, in contrast, is something such that (i) when it is given as actually existing, the thing itself is posited as possible; and (ii) when it is given as instantiated, the thing itself is then posited as actually existing. Since a singular thing actually exists if and only if its actual essence does, we may also think of the actual essence of a singular thing as itself being the actualization or instantiation of the thing’s formal essence, and hence as that which renders the thing itself actual. Thus, the instantiation of the formal essence of a singular thing produces the singular thing by constituting that singular thing’s actual essence.16 In the case of a singular thing, as we have seen, there is an important distinction between its formal essence and its actual existence; this distinction collapses, however, in the case of God, for “God’s existence and his essence are one and the same” (E1p20). This is because God’s very existence consists in the divine attributes that are also God’s essence: Extension cannot be distinguished from the one infinite and necessarily existing extended substance, and Thought cannot be distinguished from the one infinite and necessarily existing thinking substance. Likewise, the distinction between the two kinds of essences, actual and formal, collapses in the case of God. Since God’s power for existing is infinite and cannot encounter any external obstacle, it is perhaps improper to characterize God as having a conatus or “striving” for existence at all; but in any case, the infinite power by which God exists is the same as the infinite power by which God acts, and this power, too, consists precisely in the attributes themselves (E1p34 and E1p34d). Because Extension is the extended substance and Thought is the thinking substance for Spinoza, God’s attributes are also their own instantiations. We are now in a position to see how scientia intuitiva depends on essences. It begins, as Spinoza says, from “an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God”—​that is, from an adequate idea of God’s essence itself as expressed in one or both of the attributes that we can comprehend as constituting that essence. (It is not entirely clear why Spinoza uses the seemingly redundant phrase ‘formal essence of certain attributes of God’ in Ethics 2p40s2. Presumably the formal essence of God’s essence, if there is such a thing, is just that very essence itself. Perhaps he was striving awkwardly to include both the term ‘essence’ [since reliance on essences is crucial to scientia intuitiva] and a reference to the plurality of attributes [since scientia intuitiva can be of either Extension or Thought]. In any case, Ethics 5p25d says more simply that scientia intuitiva begins from “an adequate idea of certain attributes of God.”) This idea is always available to the



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human mind because, according to Ethics 2p46, “the cognition of God’s eternal and infinite essence which each idea involves is adequate and perfect”: any idea of anything requires an adequate idea of the attribute of which that thing is an expression. From this starting point in adequate cognition of God’s self-​causing and self-​ caused essence, scientia intuitiva proceeds to an understanding of the effects of that essence, which are God’s properties. These properties include those infinite modes—​presumably following from the infinite modes that constitute the laws of nature—​that are the formal essences of singular things. However, they also include the finite modes, which are all actually existing singular things. To understand an actually existing singular thing, in turn, is to understand that thing’s actual essence—​i.e., the force that is brought into existence when the thing begins to exist, that constitutes its activity while the thing exists, and that ceases to exist when the thing is destroyed. Scientia intuitiva thus proceeds by its nature from adequate cognition of the necessarily-​existing divine attributes to adequate cognition of both the formal essences and the actual essences of singular things, essences that follow from and are caused by the divine attributes. Spinoza’s description of the highest kind of perception in the earlier Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect distinguishes two subclasses, one of which is characterized causally: “Finally, there is the Perception we have when a thing is perceived through its essence alone, or through knowledge of its proximate cause” (TdIE § 19). This is in no way incompatible with the corresponding definition in the Ethics. As he later clarifies in the same work, only something in itself and caused by itself—​i.e., God—​is perceived through its own essence alone (TdIE § 92); and this essence is constituted by the attributes that are the starting point of scientia intuitiva. When the mind proceeds to grasp the essences of singular things, it does so, as we have seen, precisely by grasping them through their causes in proper causal order—​concluding with the proximate (i.e., immediately preceding) cause.

Scientia Intuitiva and Other Kinds of Cognition Scientia intuitiva thus follows the causal order of nature, moving from cognition of causes to cognition of effects, beginning with adequate cognition of an attribute of God.17 According to Ethics 1a4, however, all cognition of things depends on and “involves” cognition of the causes of those things; and according to Ethics 2p46, all cognition “involves” an adequate idea of an attribute of God. How, then, is scientia intuitiva different from the other kinds of cognition? The most obvious way in which the highest and lowest kinds of cognition differ from each other is that scientia intuitiva is always adequate and true,

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whereas opinion or imagination is always inadequate and false. An idea is inadequate in a given mind if and only if the causes of that idea are fully within that mind, so that the mind is its adequate cause. As Spinoza explains it in the Ethics (E2p13-​E2p30), all imagination—​which includes sensory perception—​consists fundamentally in awareness of a state of one’s own body. (In the specific kind of opinion or imagination that is cognition through signs, one bodily state and its correlative idea reproduce, respectively, another bodily state and its correlative idea with which they have become associated.) However, in being aware of a state of one’s body, one is also indirectly and confusedly aware of the various external causes of that state of one’s body; when many such objects have contributed to the bodily state, one will be indirectly aware of them all together in a confused way. All ideas as they are in (and thought by) God are adequate and true (E2p32), with the ideas of causes producing ideas of their effects—​just as they do in human minds experiencing scientia intuitiva. Since the external causes of a human being’s bodily states are not themselves in the human body, however, ideas of these bodily states are not adequate and true in the human mind either, even though they are so, of course, in God. How is this compatible with Ethics 1a4? The term generally translated as ‘involve’ is ‘involvere’ a technical logical term in late scholasticism, perhaps best translated more specifically as ‘implicate.’18 And while it is true that ideas of effects always depend on and “involve” cognition of their causes—​which is why ideas of bodily states can also constitute some representation of their causes—​it is one thing to say that having an idea of an effect implicates (i.e., carries with it, or requires as a precondition) some conception of the cause, and another thing to say that an idea of an effect exists in a given mind because the presence of the idea of the cause explains its presence and power in that particular mind. In the case of scientia intuitiva, the mind produces or sustains its ideas of effects from the adequate ideas of their causes that it already possesses, a process that therefore serves to explain the possession of the ideas of the effects by that mind with whatever degree of power they may have. In imagination or opinion, in contrast, the mind has ideas of bodily states simply because the human mind is the idea of, and perceives everything that happens in, the human body; and in having ideas of these bodily states the mind also necessarily has an inadequate subsidiary or derivative conception of the cause, without fully understanding the essence of either the cause or the effect. Although opinion or imagination can be distinguished from scientia intuitiva in terms of the adequacy and truth of its ideas, reason [ratio] cannot: like scientia intuitiva, reason’s ideas are always adequate and true. As we have seen, however, reason does differ from scientia intuitiva—​and resembles opinion or imagination—​ for Spinoza in constituting a way in which we “perceive many things and form universal notions.” According to Ethics 2p40s2, reason arises from “the fact that



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we have common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things.” The “properties of things,” of course, are to be contrasted with their essences. Spinoza explains common notions in Ethics 2p37–​2p39: they are ideas of features that are “common to all” bodies and are “equally in the part and in the whole.”19 Because the human mind perceives everything that happens in its body, the human mind must include perception of these common features; and because they are equally in the part and in the whole—​i.e., fully and not merely partially present wherever they exist—​they can only be conceived fully and adequately. (His suggested example of a common notion is that bodies “can move now more quickly and now more slowly.”) Because these common features must be possessed by all bodies, they must themselves be properties of bodies, following from and “involving” their essences.20 Moreover, because the ideas of these bodies themselves involve the attribute of Extension, the ideas of these common properties must do so as well. Nevertheless, the common notions are in the mind, initially at least, not because they are caused to be in the mind by the presence in the same mind of the ideas of essences of bodies or ideas of the attribute of Extension; rather, they are in the human mind simply because they must be an element or aspect of any perception of any body whatever, whether one’s own or another. Just as the ideas of the attributes provide the starting point for scientia intuitiva, the common notions provide a starting point for reason. Precisely because they are common to all things, however, the objects of the common notions cannot themselves constitute the essence of any particular thing (E2p37). Common notions and adequate ideas of other properties of things allow the mind to “perceive many things” and to form “universal notions” because they allow the mind to represent in a single idea some or all of the many things, with different essences, that share in a certain property and to draw conclusions from these universal representations. Because these representations are adequate, they allow the mind to cognize or infer “without danger of error” (TdIE § 28) that something is true; because they do not proceed through the causal order of essences, however, they do not allow the mind to see how and why it is true. Thus, in Spinoza’s case of the fourth proportional, one who follows the demonstration of Euclid knows that it is a common property of proportions that the product of the means equals the product of the extremes, which allows a calculation that x = 6 in 1/​2 = 3/​x. But one who has the highest kind of cognition sees through an understanding of the particular ratio expressed by 1/​2 that 3/​6 is equally an expression of that same unique ratio. In Ethics 5p36s, Spinoza provides another example, one more important to his own philosophical project. There he contrasts the cognition of the human mind’s dependence on God that arises from reason with the cognition of it that arises from scientia intuitiva. In Part 1 of the Ethics, he writes, he had demonstrated (specifically, in E1p25) that all things depend for their existence and their essence on God.

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Since the human mind is something, it follows that it does so as well—​dependence on God is therefore a property of the human mind. But because the demonstration relies on this universal property without deriving it from the essence of the human mind in particular, it provides cognition only of the second kind. By Part 5 of the Ethics in contrast, he has explained how the essence of the human mind consists in cognition of the human body and how that cognition depends on and is in God. This cognition of the specific character of the mind’s essence and of its dependence on God, he claims, constitutes cognition of the third kind: 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. I thought this worth the trouble of noting here, in order to show by this example how much the cognition of singular things I have called intuitive, or cognition of the third kind (see IIP40S2), can accomplish, and how much more powerful it is than the universal cognition I have called cognition of the second kind. For 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. Just as the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect adds an explicitly causal element to the description of the highest kind of perception, so too it adds one to the description of the next highest kind of perception, that corresponding to reason: Then there is the Perception that we have when the essence of a thing is inferred from another thing, but not adequately. This happens, either when we infer the cause from some effect, or when something is inferred from some universal, which some property always accompanies. (TdIE § 19) In addition to stating that this kind of perception involves inference from some universal notion or idea of a property, Spinoza here explicitly states that causes can sometimes be inferred from effects21—​despite the requirement of Ethics 1a4 that cognition of effects already “involve” some cognition of causes. This occurs, presumably, when the mind observes or infers the presence of a property and, based on general knowledge of causal relations, infers something about the cause of that property in that case. Although he indicates that this inference may not proceed



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“adequately,” this does not entail that the resulting ideas are themselves inadequate and false ones in his later technical sense; since he claims in the Ethics that all ideas constituting reason are adequate and true, he presumably means only that the inference fails to show exactly what the essence of the cause is and how that essence produces the effect.

The Scope of Scientia Intuitiva The term ‘intuitiva’ suggests something direct and immediate in some manner; for example, in his Regulae ad directionem ingenii Descartes distinguishes between intuition and deduction, with the former constituted by immediate intellectual apprehension and the latter by a series of connected steps in which each step is an intuition. Moreover, in his description of the example of the fourth proportional in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza writes that those who perceive it by the highest kind of perception “see it not by the force of that Proposition [of Euclid] but intuitively, or without going through any procedure” (TdIE § 24). Spinoza cannot mean by this, however, that no cognitive steps can be distinguished in the highest kind of perception. The definition of the highest kind of perception on which this passage elaborates explicitly allows that it can occur in perceiving something through perception of its proximate cause (TdIE § 19).22 Furthermore, as G.H.R. Parkinson (1954) has observed, the definition of scientia intuitiva in the Ethics specifies that it proceeds from one cognition (of attributes) to others (of essences of things), and its description in the Ethics version of the example of the fourth proportional explicitly characterizes it as at least partly inferential: “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 to the second” (2p40s2). Indeed, Ethics 2p47s adds concerning God’s essence that “we can deduce from this cognition a great many things which we know adequately and so can form that third kind of cognition of which we spoke.” In denying that the highest kind of perception involves any “procedure,” therefore, Spinoza cannot mean that we are unable to distinguish ordered steps within it—​although in a sufficiently powerful mind, these steps might well be taken instantaneously—​but rather that these steps, proceeding as they do directly from ideas of essences, will not require any quasi-​syllogistic operations with generalizations and their instances.23 That such a grasp of the things themselves through their essences is intended to supersede inference through universal intermediaries is strongly confirmed by his remarks in the Short Treatise that the highest kind of cognition “has no need . . . of the art of reasoning” (KV II.1, emphasis added) but is “an immediate manifestation of the object itself to the intellect” (KV II.22).

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If scientia intuitiva does not operate with universal notions, then it may seem that there must be some general truths—​i.e., truths that are not about merely local or changeable matters—​ that it cannot reach. This impression may be strengthened by Spinoza’s description of his example at Ethics 5p36s as aiming to show “how much the cognition of singular things I have called intuitive, or cognition of the third kind . . . can accomplish” (emphasis added). Largely on the basis of this passage, it has been proposed that scientia intuitiva, in the Ethics at least, extends only to the essences of singular things and not to the attributes of God (Curley 1973). As Spencer Carr (1978) argues, however, Spinoza’s remark does not entail that scientia intuitiva is only of singular things, but merely that the example he is giving in Ethics 5p36s, concerning the human mind as a singular thing, does not illustrate how much can be accomplished by scientia intuitiva that is not of singular things. Certainly, all truths are in and known to God; and it would be surprising indeed if there were some general or pervasive truths—​and particularly truths about the divine essence itself—​that even God could not know by the highest kind of cognition. Fortunately, however, we are in position to see how God can know all general and pervasive truths by scientia intuitiva. For God’s knowledge simply follows the causal order of nature, beginning with an adequate idea of the essence of God—​which is self-​caused and so understood through itself—​and proceeding to adequate ideas of the essences of things. In proceeding to the formal essences of things, scientia intuitiva must follow the proper causal order, thereby grasping along the way the infinite modes that constitute the laws of nature. While these laws may properly be characterized as “general” insofar as they are pervasively true and not limited to specific times and places, Spinoza rejects the view that they are themselves “universals” (i.e., that they are either in nothing or in multiple things); rather they are properties in and of a single substance, God, and as such are present everywhere. Thus in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect he contrasts infinite modes (i.e., “fixed and eternal things,” presumably including both laws of nature and formal essences of things) with “singular changeable things”: [A]‌lthough these fixed and eternal things are singular [i.e., particular], nevertheless, because of their presence everywhere, and most extensive power, they will be to us like universals, or genera of the definitions of singular, changeable things, and the proximate causes of all things. (TdIE § 101, emphasis added) On the other hand, the fact that scientia intuitiva concerns essences may inspire a somewhat opposite worry about the scope of God’s cognition—​namely, that (aside from the case of God’s own existence, which cannot be distinguished



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from its essence) it cannot include cognition of the actual existence and changing accidental features of things. Formal essences, no matter how specific, seem at least in principle to be multiply-​instantiable—​indeed, instantiated whenever and wherever the requisite finite causes occur.24 The beginning and ending of existence of a singular thing cannot be determined from its formal essence alone, and each singular thing will have a succession of mere accidents that do not follow from that formal essence either. Fortunately, however, we are now in a position to see how God can know such local and changeable truths by scientia intuitiva as well. For the highest kind of cognition extends to the “essences of singular things” simpliciter—​presumably including not only their formal essences but also their actual essences. In understanding the actual essences of all singular things—​singular things that are part of the infinite individual, and which follow from the infinite modes together with other singular things—​in their proper causal order and relations, God is also able to grasp how those singular things necessarily come to be, interact with one another, and are then destroyed, permitting scientia intuitiva not only of what singular things exist at what times and places, but also what properties and mere accidents they have at each stage in their histories. God’s attributes, God’s infinite modes, and God’s finite modes (including all the modes and affections of these finite modes) together constitute all that there is to know. In having scientia intuitiva of them all, then, God understands everything: not only God’s own self-​sufficient essence but also how and why each mode follows as it does from that essence. Unfortunately, however, while all truths can thus in principle be known by scientia intuitiva, such omniscience is limited to God. For only God has such great power of thinking that it can deduce the actual existence of singular things from the divine essence. At best, human beings are limited to scientia intuitiva of the divine attributes and the infinite modes (including the formal essences of things). This may be one reason why, in the official definition of scientia intuitiva at Ethics 2p40s, Spinoza does not explicitly invoke the distinction between actual essences and formal essences: while God can know both kinds of essences by the highest kind of cognition, readers of the Ethics can know only formal essences in this way. Human cognition of actual essences—​ even one’s own—​is limited to cognition of the first kind. Human cognition also differs from divine cognition in another way. Human beings generally achieve scientia intuitiva as the result of their first achieving cognition through reason. For scientia intuitiva begins with adequate cognition of God’s attributes; but this adequate cognition is itself in the human mind originally because it is “involved” in the common notions that constitute the starting point of reason; and it is by developing the power of one’s thoughts of the common notions that one is able to think of God’s attributes themselves with sufficient power of thinking to make significant progress in the highest kind of cognition possible.25

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Of course, since everything is in God, there are no ideas in human minds that are not also in some way in God. This is true of ideas constituting the lower kinds of cognition as much as it is true of ideas constituting scientia intuitiva. But what an idea represents is relative to the mind in which it occurs.26 As the idea of a particular human body is in God, it occurs together with adequate ideas of the causes of that human body and its many modes or affections. While this idea of the human body of course “involves” (by E1a4) these other ideas of causes that are also present, the idea considered in itself, need only represent the human body itself, which is its proper object [objectum]. As this same idea constitutes a human mind, however, the ideas of the causes of the bodily affections are external to it, and hence (by E1a4), the ideas in the human mind must also serve in their own right to represent their external causes to at least some extent. Similarly, the ideas of properties that constitute the “universal notions” of reason, as they occur in God, represent them individually as properties of the particular things from whose essences they follow. As they occur in the less powerful mind of a human being cognizing by reason rather than scientia intuitiva, in contrast, they represent all of the things having that property collectively and without distinction among the essences involved.

The Value of Scientia Intuitiva Reason and scientia intuitiva both provide cognition that is adequate and true; only opinion or imagination is inadequate and false. Accordingly, both kinds of cognition put matters “beyond all chance of doubt” (E5p36s). Both together lessen the possessor’s fear of death (E5p38), and both together constitute the intellect, which is the “part of the mind that is eternal” (E5p40c). Yet Ethics 5p25 ascribes the highest value to scientia intuitiva alone: “The greatest striving of the Mind, and its greatest virtue is understanding things by the third kind of cognition.” Why is this so? The demonstration of Ethics 5p25 is as follows: The third kind of cognition proceeds from an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequate cognition of the essence of things (see its Def. in IIP40S2), and the more we understand things in this way, the more we understand God (by P24). Therefore (by IVP28), the greatest virtue of the Mind, i.e. (by IVD8), the Mind’s power, or nature, or (by IIIP7) its greatest striving, is to understand things by the third kind of cognition, q.e.d. This demonstration infers the greatness of the mind’s virtue in having scientia intuitiva—​which Spinoza equates, via Ethics 4d8, with greatness of power—​from



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its constituting a greater understanding of God; and it infers that scientia intuitiva constitutes a greater understanding of God, in turn, from Ethics 5p24: “The more we understand singular things, the more we understand God.” But this itself is initially puzzling: since there is nothing but God and modes of God, it seems that all adequate and true cognition—​reason as well as scientia intuitiva—​must be understanding of God. While reason may also provide understanding of God, however, it will not do so as powerfully nor in a way that is as fully of God as scientia intuitiva does. Since effects, for Spinoza, must acquire whatever power they have from their causes, the total cause of an effect is always more powerful than the effect itself. And since the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things, the idea of a total cause is always more powerful than the idea of its effect. But whereas reason proceeds from ideas of properties and from ideas of effects to ideas of causes, scientia intuitiva proceeds from ideas of essences, which are the causes of properties, and from ideas of causes to ideas of their effects; hence, the latter is naturally more powerful. Furthermore, in scientia intuitiva the mind appropriates within itself the same perfect causal structure of cognition that exists eternally in God: rather than employing universal notions, it allows the mind to understand God and God’s modes directly, in just the way that God itself does. Accordingly, scientia intuitiva provides not merely truths about God, but direct apprehension of the actual causal structure of God itself. Scientia intuitiva is not merely more powerful cognitively, however; it is also, as Ethics 5p36s emphasizes, more powerful emotionally:  “it affects our Mind” more. The emotional character of this kind of cognition was important to Spinoza from the beginning: in the Short Treatise, the lowest kind of cognition (there called “opinion” [Waan]) is identified as the source of passive emotions, the second kind of cognition (there called “belief” [Geloof]) is identified as the source of “good desires,” and the highest kind of cognition (there called “clear cognition” [klaare Kennis]) is identified as the source of “true and genuine love, with all that comes of that” (KV II.2). According to the mature Ethics, scientia intuitiva produces “the greatest satisfaction of Mind there can be” (E5p27) and gives rise to “the intellectual love of God” (E5p33). These conclusions of the Ethics are straightforward consequences of Spinoza’s psychology. Joy, according to Ethics 3p11s, is a passage to a greater perfection, which is also a greater power for action. Satisfaction of the mind or self-​esteem, by “Definition of the Affects” 25 of the appendix to Part  3 of the Ethics, is joy that results from considering oneself and one’s own power. Intellectual love of God, by Ethics 5p32, is joy together with the idea of God as the cause of one’s joy. Precisely because scientia intuitiva renders one most powerful intellectually, it provides the greatest increase in one’s own perfection and power, hence the greatest joy and satisfaction of mind. Because it proceeds from ideas of God’s very essence to ideas

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of God’s properties, mirroring and participating in God’s own cognition, it not only provides greater joy than mere reason can do; it also identifies God as the true cause of one’s joy far more fully and forcefully than mere reason can do. This intellectual love of God, considered as something eternal in which one participates, is blessedness (E5p33s). As Spinoza understands it, then, scientia intuitiva is the best and most powerful kind of cognition because it uniquely mirrors the causal structure of God (i.e., Nature). The fundamental causal structure of God, in turn, is one in which properties follow from essences; while he fully acknowledges and emphasizes the importance of “laws of nature,” these have the metaphysical character of properties (specifically, infinite modes) that follow from and are caused by the divine attributes that constitute God’s essence. The epistemological merits of scientia intuitiva as a kind of cognition are a consequence of its metaphysical correspondence with the divine. As with everything in Spinoza, however, its ultimate value lies in its ethical merits—​above all, in its capacity to make its possessor blessed.

Notes T.  Sorell et  al. (eds.), Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24, DOI 10.1007/​978-​90-​481-​3077-​1_​7, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010. 1. The English translation of Spinoza’s term ‘cognitio’ as ‘knowledge’ is well entrenched. However, following Jonathan Bennett (1984), I  will instead use the cognate term ‘cognition,’ since Spinoza’s ‘cognitio’ includes within its scope ideas that he characterizes as “inadequate” and “false.” In any case, it must be clearly distinguished from knowledge in the much stricter sense of ‘scientia,’ which constitutes just one kind of cognitio. 2. For a highly informative discussion of experientia vaga, see Gabbey 1996. 3. All quotations from the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect [Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione] and the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being [Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en deszelfs Welstand] employ the translation of Edwin Curley in Spinoza 1985, except that ‘cognition’ replaces ‘knowl­ edge’ in translating ‘cognitio’ and ‘scientia intuitiva’ is left untranslated. Citations of the former begin with ‘TdIE’ and give the paragraph numbers; citations of the latter begin with ‘KV’ and give the book and chapter numbers. The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect counts four kinds of perception rather than three because perception from signs and from random experience are counted as two different kinds of perception. The term ‘scientia intuitiva’ occurs only in the Ethics. 4. All quotations from the Ethics employ the translation of Edwin Curley in Spinoza 1985, except that ‘cognition’ is used to translate ‘cognitio.’ In the main



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text, citations from the Ethics begin with ‘E’ and the part number, employing the usual system of single-​letter abbreviations for ‘definition,’ ‘axiom,’ ‘proposition,’ ‘demonstration,’ ‘scholium,’ etc. In quotations, Spinoza’s own internal citations are left as they occur in the original—​i.e., without part numbers where reference is made to an element within the same part of the Ethics. ‘NS’ indicates an addition to the text derived from the Nagelate Schriften, the Dutch translation of Spinoza’s Opera Postuma that appeared in the same year (1677) as the Latin original. 5. This use of the term ‘in’ implies inherence, rather than a relation of parts to wholes or spatial inclusion. 6. Although it is not clear from the formulation of 1a4 whether it is intended as a biconditional or not, Michael Della Rocca (1996, Chapter 1) establishes from its employment that it is so intended. There is no significant distinction between conception and cognition in this context. 7. For further interpretation of the meaning and significance of this claim, see Garrett 2008. 8. For a discussion of power of thinking and its identification by Spinoza with consciousness, see Garrett 2008. 9. For fuller discussion of the way in which infinite and finite modes follow necessarily from God’s nature, see Garrett 1991. 10. Spinoza’s examples are often drawn from mathematics, even though mathematics concerns only “beings of reason.” In his example of a circle (TdIE § 96), the essence is being “a figure that is described by any line of which one end is fixed and the other movable”; the properties include “having the lines drawn from the center to the circumference equal.” As Spinoza here emphasizes, the understanding of a thing’s essence always involves an understanding of how it is or can be caused. In his example of the fourth proportional, having the product of the means be equal to the product of the extremes is a common property of all proportionals, as demonstrated by Euclid. 11. The distinction among essences, properties, and what I  am calling “mere” accidents, is of course a common scholastic one. In scholastic philosophy, the term ‘accident’ alone can cover both qualities that do and qualities that do not follow from the essence; hence, the latter are often called “contingent accidents.” However, this latter term has misleading connotations for a necessitarian such as Spinoza, and he does not use it. 12. For an excellent account of the significance to Spinoza of the idea that causation is fundamentally “immanent” causation (E1p18) in which a thing causes it properties through its essence, see Viljanen 2007. 13. For further discussion of conatus and its role is self-​preservation, see Garrett 2002. 14. See, for example, Donagan 1973 and 1988, Delahunty 1985, and Matson 1990. 15. See Garrett 2009 for a fuller argument for this interpretation of formal essences. Insofar as the singular thing is a complex body, its existence and maintenance

216 Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge can be understood as the existence and maintenance of a particular pattern or ratio [ratio] of motion and rest (“Physical Digression” following E2p13s). 16. Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being also use the term essentia objectiva [objective essence], a term that does not occur in the Ethics. An objective essence is simply the idea of an essence (specifically, it seems, of a formal essence), so that when an objective essence is given as existing, the formal essence of the thing is posited “objectively” in the scholastic and Cartesian sense—​i.e., posited in Thought. 17. This is the key element in the “ordering” interpretation of the third kind of cognition proposed and defended in the very important article Carr 1978. Carr does not, however, offer an interpretation of the essences of singular things that constitute the later elements in this ordering. 18. See Gabbey 2008 for a discussion of the history and interpretation of this term. 19. Presumably the parallelism of things and ideas guarantees that just as there are common notions concerning all bodies, so too there are common notions that concern all ideas or minds. For simplicity of exposition, however, I will follow Spinoza’s procedure in this part of the Ethics by discussing only the former, leaving the application to the latter as something easily made. 20. Miller 2004 identifies the common notions with (ideas of) the laws of nature. However, this seems to me to conflate common properties of bodies, which are therefore modes of those bodies, with pervasive features of Extension, which are therefore infinite modes of God. This is not, of course, to deny that there is an intimate relation between these properties and the infinite modes that constitute the laws of nature, whereby the latter explain the former through their causal contributions to the essences of things. 21. This runs directly contrary to the statement of Nadler (2006: 181) that cognition of the second kind proceeds by inference of effects from causes. 22. As Carr (1978) notes, this passage counts against the suggestion of Curley (1973) that the distinction between reason and scientia intuitiva originated as a distinction between an inferential and a non-​inferential kind of cognition in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect but changed its character in the Ethics. 23. Parkinson (1954) suggests that scientia intuitiva differs from reason in requiring no “application of a rule”; see also Miller (2004, Section 4). However, given that no “universal notions” are involved at all, it seems that a somewhat stronger conclusion, excluding the use of generalizations of any kind, may also be warranted. 24. For this reason, Bennett (1984) argues that ideas of essences, as general natures, cannot constitute thought specifically about particular individuals. But while it is plausible that an idea of a singular thing’s formal essence alone cannot achieve unique reference to that individual, the parallelism and identity of ideas with their objects guarantees, for Spinoza, the unique reference of each idea to that of which it is properly the idea. In particular, the adequate idea of a singular thing as it is in God achieves in this way unique reference to that singular thing.



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25. For an excellent account of the mutually reinforcing character of the two highest kinds of cognition in Spinoza’s account of human intellectual development, see Malinowski-​Charles 2003. 26. See Della Rocca 1996 for a compelling argument to this effect.

References Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press). Carr, Spencer. 1978. “Spinoza’s Distinction Between Rational and Intuitive Knowledge,” in The Philosophical Review 87: 241–​252. Curley, Edwin. 1973. “Experience in Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge,” in Spinoza, edited by Marjorie Grene (Garden City: Anchor). Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-​ Body Problem (New York: Oxford University Press). Delahunty, R. J. 1985. Spinoza (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Donagan, Alan. 1973. “Spinoza’s Proof of Immortality,” in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Marjorie Grene (New York: Anchor). Donagan, Alan. 1988. Spinoza (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Gabbey, Alan. 1996. “Spinoza’s Natural Science and Methodology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gabbey, Alan. 2008. “Spinoza, Infinite Modes, and the Infinitive Mood,” in Studia Spinozana 16: 41–​66. Garrett, Don. 1991. “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in God and Nature:  Spinoza’s Metaphysics, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel (Leiden: Brill). Garrett, Don. 2002. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, edited by John Biro and Olli Koistinen (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Garrett, Don. 2008. “Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination,” in Interpreting Spinoza:  Critical Essays, edited by Charles Huenemann (Cam-​bridge: Cambridge University Press). Garrett, Don. 2009. “The Essence of the Human Body and the Part of the Mind that is Eternal,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, edited by Olli Koistinen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Malinowski-​Charles, Sylvaine. 2003. “The Circle of Adequate Knowledge: Notes on Reason and Intuition in Spinoza,” in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume 1, edited by Daniel Garber and Steven Nadler (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Matson, Wallace. 1990. “Body Essence and Mind Eternity in Spinoza,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-​ François Moreau (Leiden: E. J. Brill). Miller, Jon. 2004. “Spinoza and the A Priori,” in Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34, 4: 555–​590.

218 Necessity, Truth, and Knowledge Nadler, Steven. 2006. Spinoza’s Ethics:  An Introduction (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press). Parkinson, G.H.R. 1954. Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Spinoza, Baruch. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume I, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Viljanen, Valtteri. 2007. Spinoza’s Dynamics of Being:  The Concept of Power and its Role in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Reports from the Department of Philosophy No. 19 (Turku: University of Turku).

SECTION III

Nature as Necessarily Extended and Thinking

8

Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke on Extended Thinking Beings

Introduction Can we know that nothing is in itself both thinking and spatially extended?1 This was among the most central and divisive philosophical issues of the early modern period, one with obvious relevance not only to the theoretical understanding of mind and matter, but also to the practical prospects for immortality and, with it, divine sanctions for morality. While many important philosophers—​including Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Samuel Clarke—​responded affirmatively, perhaps the most famous and influential defense of the affirmative answer was given by René Descartes. While many other important philosophers—​ including Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, and Anthony Collins—​answered negatively, perhaps the two most infamous and influential defenses of the negative answer were given by the two great philosophers born in 1632, Benedict de Spinoza and John Locke. Descartes’ position is expressed clearly in his confident assertion in Principles of Philosophy I.532 (published in 1644) that thought and extension are “principal attributes” of substances and that every substance has only one principal attribute.3 The assertion is undefended there, but behind it lie two arguments that he had already presented in the Sixth Meditation of Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)—​ one from separability and one from divisibility. Both Spinoza and Locke studied Descartes’ Meditations and Principles with care; Spinoza even included a version of the argument from separability in his own 1663 axiomatization of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy.4 Hence, they must have judged that they could evade the force of these two arguments. Yet neither philosopher directly attempts to diagnose an error in either argument. I have two primary aims in this chapter. The first is to explain precisely how Spinoza and Locke, respectively, would have rejected each of Descartes’ two

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famous arguments of the Sixth Meditation. Locke holds that, at least as far as we can tell, created extended thinking substances are entirely possible even if unlikely; but he also argues that no eternal thinking substance is or can be material. Spinoza, in contrast, holds that everything is both thinking and extended, but that no created thing can be a substance. It should not be surprising, then, that their ways of resisting Descartes’ arguments differ considerably. Those differences, in turn, motivate my second aim in the chapter:  to compare and evaluate their strategies for resisting Descartes’ arguments against extended thinking beings.

1  The Separability Argument 1.1  The Separability Argument in Descartes The first and more prominent of Descartes’ two arguments about the relation between thought and extension in the Sixth Meditation may be called the “Separability Argument.” As written, it is directed at the conclusion that there is a “real distinction” specifically between Descartes’ own mind and his own body—​ that is (as he explains most fully in Principles of Philosophy I.60), that his mind and his body are two different substances. His presentation of the argument may be outlined as follows: (S1) Everything which I  clearly and distinctly understand is capable of being created by God so as to correspond exactly with my understanding of it. (S2) [If I can] clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from another . . . [then] they are capable of being separated, at least by God. [ from (S1)] (S3)  T  he question of what kind of power is required to bring about . . . a separation does not affect the judgment that the two things [that can be separated] are distinct. (S4) [If I can] clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from another . . . [then] the two things are distinct. [ from (S2) and (S3)] (S5) [I see that] absolutely nothing else belongs to my [mind’s] nature or essence except that I am [i.e., it is] a thinking thing. (S6) I have a clear and distinct idea of myself [i.e., my mind], insofar as I am [i.e., it is] simply a thinking, non-​extended thing. [ from (S5)] (S7) I have a distinct idea of body, insofar as this is simply an extended, non-​thinking thing. (S8) I am [i.e., my mind is] really distinct from my body, and can exist without it. [ from (S4), (S6), and (S7)]



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Descartes refrains from giving this argument until the Sixth Meditation for three reasons: (i) only in the Third and Fifth Meditations does he argue that an omnipotent God exists, as required for (S1); (ii) only in the Fifth Meditation does he acquire a clear and distinct idea of body, as required for (S7); and (iii) only in the Fifth Meditation does he completely remove the skeptical doubt about whether clear and distinct ideas are true, a doubt that would otherwise call into question the entire argument. Although its stated conclusion and some of its premises are restricted to Descartes’ own mind and body, the argument may be readily generalized to conclude that every mind is distinct from every body, simply by replacing his references to his own mind and body with references to all minds and bodies, respectively.5 Given his view that everything that thinks is thereby a mind and everything that is extended is thereby a body, it follows from the generalized conclusion that there are no extended thinking beings.6

1.2  Spinoza and the Separability Argument Whereas Descartes concludes that every substance has only a single principal attribute—​thought for minds, extension for bodies—​Spinoza emphatically denies that a substance must be limited to a single such attribute.7 Thus he writes in Ethics Part I: P10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself. Demonstration: For an attribute is what the intellect perceives concerning a substance, as constituting its essence (by D4); so (by D3) it must be conceived through itself, q.e.d. Scholium:  From all these propositions it is evident that although two attributes may be conceived to be really distinct (i.e., one cannot be conceived without the aid of the other), we still cannot infer from that that they constitute two beings, or two different substances. For it is of the nature of a substance that each of its attributes is conceived through itself, since all the attributes have always been in it together, and one could not be produced by another, but each expresses the reality, or being of substance.8 Immediately thereafter, Spinoza argues that God, the substance of infinitely many attributes, necessarily exists9 and is the only substance that exists.10 He goes on to conclude that thought and extension are among God’s attributes.11 God, therefore, is both thinking and extended. It is initially surprising that Spinoza grants, in the scholium, that a real distinction between attributes may be conceived, since in Descartes’ use of the term a “real distinction” requires two substances and is not a distinction between attributes at all. However, Spinoza’s use of the term is readily explicable in light of his parenthetical clarification. Whereas Descartes defines a real distinction as a

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distinction between two different substances and specifies independent conceivability as a test for a real distinction,12 Spinoza takes the Cartesian test as constitutive of a real distinction; and since each attribute can (and must) be conceived independently (as Ethics I p10 requires), he concludes that there is a (conceived) real distinction between the attributes of a substance despite their being attributes of the same substance. Where, on Spinoza’s view, does Descartes’ argument go wrong? Spinoza does not deny (S1) of the Separability Argument; indeed, he holds that whatever can be conceived clearly and distinctly—​or, as he more usually prefers to say, conceived “adequately”—​actually has been created (i.e., caused to be) by God as it is conceived to be, since “God is the efficient cause of everything that can fall under an infinite intellect.”13 Nor would he have any objection to (S3):  things that can be separated are not identical, regardless of the power that is required to separate them. Moreover, he agrees with Descartes that we can conceive a thinking substance without employing any conception of extension, and an extended substance without employing any conception of thought; hence, he would not reject versions of (S5)–​(S7) generalized to thinking and extended substances, respectively. Rather, the error, for Spinoza, will lie in the inferences that appeal to “clearly and distinctly understanding one thing apart from another.” This term, he must say, is ambiguous, for it may refer either to the separateness of the conceptions of two things or to the conception of two things as being separated. That is, in saying that one can clearly and distinctly conceive of x apart from y, one may mean either: (A)  It can be that {I clearly and distinctly conceive x} without {I conceive y}. or (B)  I can clearly and distinctly conceive {x without y}. (S2) follows from (S1) only if its antecedent is (B): (S2’) If I can clearly and distinctly conceive {x without y}, then God can separate y from x. (S4), therefore, follows from (S2) and (S3) only if its antecedent is also (B): (S4’) If I can clearly and distinctly conceive {x without y}, then x and y are distinct.



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Yet (S6) and (S7) make claims not about conceived separation, but only about separate conception—​namely, that a mind can be clearly and distinctly conceived without conceiving a body, and a body distinctly conceived without conceiving a mind. Hence, (S8) follows from (S4), (S6), and (S7) only if the antecedent of (S4) is instead understood as (A): (S4”) If it can be that {I clearly and distinctly conceive x} without {I conceive y}, then x and y are distinct. Thus, the argument appears to equivocate on the term ‘clearly and distinctly conceive one thing apart from another.’ If (A) (i.e., separate conception) does not entail (B) (i.e., conceived separation), then there is no way to get from (S6) and (S7) to the desired conclusion. Descartes’ apparent implicit slide from (A) to (B) may nevertheless seem quite defensible; for if one can clearly and distinctly conceive x without conceiving y at all, what possible obstacle could there be to conceiving also that x exists in the absence of y? If the clear and distinct conceptions of x and y do not in any way depend on one another, how could x and y nevertheless be so related that even an omnipotent being could not separate them? Indeed, Descartes can be seen as offering just such a response in his Replies to the first set of Objections, in which Caterus in effect expresses concern about a slide from (A) to (B). By way of dealing with Caterus’ example—​God’s justice and God’s mercy, which Caterus claims can be separately conceived without being able to exist apart—​Descartes then goes on to explain that his argument requires that the two things in question be separately conceived clearly and distinctly as “complete” beings, rather than as “incomplete” ones, since two beings conceived as merely incomplete may yet prove to depend for their existence on inherence in a substance through which each must be conceived. Things conceived as substances, he notes—​unlike God’s justice and God’s mercy—​meet this conceptual “completeness” condition.14 However, this Cartesian defense of the slide from (A) to (B) ignores one crucial alternative: that neither x nor y depends on the other for its existence or conception, and yet that neither one could exist or be conceived to exist in the absence of the other because both are independently necessary existents whose nonexistence is inherently inconceivable. Since Descartes assumes that all extended substances and all non-​divine thinking substances are contingent beings, he silently ignores this alternative. But that is precisely the alternative that Spinoza adopts:  since God’s thought does not depend on God’s extension, nor does God’s extension depend on God’s thought, either can be readily conceived, for Spinoza, without conceiving the other. Moreover, each conception is “complete” in Descartes’ sense, since attributes are conceived through themselves,15 and not through something

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else. Yet since the thinking substance and the extended substance both necessarily exist, it is not possible that one should exist without the other. They are thus inseparable—​and hence, they escape the Separability Argument for their non-​identity. Although Spinoza recognizes only one substance, God, he allows many—​indeed, infinitely many—​thinking and extended “singular things” (res singulares) that are not substances but are instead “modes” of the one substance.16 Singular things, defined at Ethics 2d7 as “things that are finite and have a determinate existence,” include, but are not limited to, the human minds and bodies that Descartes intends to include within the scope of his Separability Argument. But although Spinoza grants that only God has a fully clear and distinct idea of any of these singular things as a whole, his explanation of how the Separability Argument goes wrong in application to them would parallel his explanation of how it goes wrong in application to the unique substance. As a thoroughgoing panpsychist, he maintains that all things are “animate,” though in different degrees.17 Hence, just as God can be conceived as either a thinking substance or an extended substance, without either conception depending on the other, so too every singular thing can be conceived either as a mind or as a body without either conception depending on the other. Since, however, there is a necessary parallelism between extended singular things and the ideas—​i.e., the minds—​of those things,18 all of which follow with equal and absolute necessity from the divine nature,19 it is not possible for an extended singular thing to exist without the mind of that thing, nor the mind without the extended singular thing.20 Such a separation is not even clearly and distinctly conceivable, for the only clearly and distinctly conceivable ways for thought and extension to be are the (parallel) ways they actually are. An extended singular thing and its thinking mind, while separately conceivable, cannot be clearly and distinctly conceived to be separated; hence, they may be—​and in fact are21—​identical.

1.3  Locke and the Separability Argument Whereas Descartes appeals to God’s power to establish that an extended substance cannot think, Locke appeals to God’s power to establish nearly the opposite: that, at least as far as we can tell, an extended substance can think: 6. We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any mere material being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover, whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance:  It being, in respect



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of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive, that God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first eternal thinking Being or omnipotent Spirit should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought. . . . What certainty of knowledge can any one have that some perceptions, such as, v.g., pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves, after a certain manner modified and moved, as well as that they should be in an immaterial substance, upon the motion of the parts of body? . . . I say not this, that I would any way lessen the belief of the soul’s immateriality: I am not here speaking of probability, but knowledge; and I think not only, that it becomes the modesty of philosophy not to pronounce magisterially, where we want that evidence that can produce knowl­ edge; but also, that it is of use to us to discern how far our knowledge does reach; for the state we are at present in, not being that of vision, we must, in many things, content ourselves with faith and probability; and in the present question, about the immateriality of the soul, if our faculties cannot arrive at demonstrative certainty, we need not think it strange.22 Locke, like Descartes and Spinoza, characterizes some ideas as “clear and distinct,” but he understands the distinctness of ideas rather differently, primarily in terms of the fixedness of their relation to terms signifying them.23 It is not clear that Locke would grant (S1) as Descartes formulates it, since conception might be clear and distinct in Locke’s sense and yet sufficiently partial as to hide a contradiction or impossibility. More to our purpose, however, Locke also has a notion of “adequacy” for ideas, which he explains as the perfection of an idea’s representation of its archetype.24 Let us suppose, therefore, that he interprets “clear and distinct understanding” throughout the Separability Argument as “understanding using adequate ideas.” Since he characterizes God as omnipotent (for example, at Essay IV.x.13), it seems likely that he would grant it to be in God’s power to create whatever can be adequately conceived, at least; hence, he would not object to this version of (S1). In addition, he would presumably allow that whatever things can be separated by any power are distinct from one another, and so would not object to a parallel version of (S2). Perhaps he would object, as Spinoza must, to the apparent equivocation involved in the inferences from (S2) to (S4) to (S8). But as the cited passage indicates, Locke’s central objection, unlike Spinoza’s, would surely be to the introspective claims made in (S5)–​(S7).

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Locke does not, of course, deny that minds, his own included, are things that think. They are, as he sometimes puts it, “cogitative” beings. He does deny, against Descartes, that cogitative beings must always think; it is, he claims, no more necessary that a cogitative being always think than that an extended being always move. Hence, constant thinking, at least, cannot be essential to such a being. But even assuming that ‘thinking thing’ means merely “a thing that can think,” Locke would still object to (S5)–​(S7). In order to understand that objection, it is necessary to understand something of his conceptions of substances and essences. According to Locke, we conceive of substances, of whatever kind, by combining the “obscure” and “relational” idea of “substance-​in-​general” with ideas of particular qualities. This idea of substance-​in-​general is the idea of a support of qualities, “some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result.”25 The idea of “body” or “material substance,” for example, results from combining the idea of substance-​in-​general with the idea of extension and the idea of “solidity”26—​solidity being the quality whereby bodies exclude other bodies from the places they occupy.27 But there is nothing in any of these ideas that prevents their combination with an idea of thinking into a single idea of a substance or that renders those ideas (in Locke’s phrase) “repugnant” to one another. So far, then, we can see no reason why the creation or generation of a thinking material substance should be outside the reach of God’s omnipotence. While we cannot see specifically how thinking and extension could be combined in a substance, this is not surprising given the obscurity of our idea of substance-​in-​general and our ignorance of the way in which the qualities of minds and bodies, respectively, “result” from the substrata in which they “subsist.” We are, as Locke remarks in the quoted passage, equally unable to see how motions of bodies could produce sensation in an unextended substance; yet that must happen somehow if our sensing minds are not extended. For all we know, then, our minds may be extended thinking substances. Locke goes on to distinguish two kinds of essences, “nominal” and “real.”28 A nominal essence is that which makes a thing be classified as belonging to the sort or species that it does—​thus, he asserts, a nominal essence is an abstract idea, often combining ideas of several qualities, and signified by a general term. A real essence, in contrast, is the real internal constitution of a thing from which its “properties” (i.e., “propria,” a technical term designating constant qualities following unchangeably from an essence) “flow.” Hence, thinking belongs to the nominal essence of “cogitative beings” considered as such (i.e., under that abstract idea); and, indeed, nothing else belongs to that particular nominal essence. In this sense, and thinking of one’s mind simply as a “thinking” or “cogitative” being, (S5) is true: one may well see that nothing belongs to “the mind’s” nominal essence other than thinking. But this is simply an arbitrary classificatory point; any particular cogitative being also falls under many other kinds, each with its own



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abstract idea serving as its nominal essence. From this nominal-​essence version of (S5), an acceptable version of (S6) would not follow, for it does nothing to show that an adequate idea of any particular thinking substance (including one’s own mind) would represent that substance as unextended—​the idea of extension being fully compatible with the ideas of thinking and of what he calls “substance-​in-​ general.” If, on the other hand, we interpret (S5) as a claim about the real essence of particular thinking substances such as one’s own mind, then (S5) will simply be false. For Locke claims that we cannot determine whether or not a particular finite thinking substance is a material substance to which God has “superadded” the power of thinking; and if it is such a material substance, it already has the nature or essence of a material, and hence extended, substance as well. (Indeed, it is not immediately clear whether thinking, or the power of thinking, would become even a part of its real essence, as opposed to being an accidental and transitory quality.) Locke would also object to (S7) on similar grounds. For although one can, without contradiction, form an idea of a body—​i.e., an extended, solid substance—​ without conjoining the idea of thinking to it, there is no guarantee that such an idea will be a distinct or adequate idea of any particular body. On the contrary, if God has superadded the ability to think to a body, then an adequate idea of that body, at least, will have to include an idea of that power.

2  The Divisibility Argument 2.1  The Divisibility Argument in Descartes The second of Descartes’ two arguments concerning the relation between thought and extension in the Sixth Meditation may be called the “Divisibility Argument.” It occurs in the course of his explanation of sensory error. His confidence in it, however, is indicated by his remark that “this one argument would be enough to show me that the mind is completely different from the body, even if I did not already know as much from other considerations.” The argument, as he presents it, may be outlined as follows: (D1) If a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind. (D2) It is one and the same mind that wills, and understands, and has sensory perceptions. (D3) The faculties of willing, of understanding, of sensory perception, and so on . . . cannot be termed “parts of the mind.” [ from (D2)] (D4) When I consider the mind, or myself insofar as I am merely a thinking thing, I  am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I  understand myself to be something quite simple and complete. [ from (D1) and (D3)]

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(D5) The mind is utterly indivisible. [ from (D4)] (D6) There is no corporeal or extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts. (D7) The body is by its very nature always divisible. [ from (D6)] (D8) The mind is completely different from the body. [ from (D5) and (D7)] As with the Separability Argument, the conclusion may be generalized to all minds and bodies;29 and given the Cartesian doctrine that everything that thinks is thereby a mind and everything that is extended is thereby a body, it follows that there are no extended thinking beings.

2.2  Spinoza and the Divisibility Argument As we have seen, Spinoza’s rebuttal of the Separability Argument takes a single gen­eral form whether its scope is taken to be substances or singular things:  in each case, the extended thing and the corresponding thinking thing, while independently conceivable because involving different attributes, can neither exist apart nor be conceived to exist apart because each exists necessarily whenever the other does. In contrast, Spinoza’s strategy for rebutting the Divisibility Argument will differ depending on whether it is taken as an argument concerning substances or singular things. This is because he regards substance as indivisible, but at least many singular things—​namely, those he also characterizes as “individuals” (individua)30—​as divisible. Spinoza argues for the indivisibility of substance in Ethics I p12 and I p13. The first of these propositions denies that a substance can be divided into its attributes, while the second denies that a substance can be divided within any of its attributes: P12:  No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided. Demonstration: For the parts into which a substance so conceived would be divided either will retain the nature of the substance or will not. If the first [NS31: viz. they retain the nature of the substance], then (by P8) each part will have to be infinite, and (by P7) its own cause, and (by P5) each part will have to consist of a different attribute. And so many substances will be able to be formed from one, which is absurd (by P6). Furthermore, the parts (by P2) would have nothing in common with their whole, and the whole (by D4 and P10) could both be and be conceived without its parts, which is absurd, as no one will be able to doubt. But if the second is asserted, viz. that the parts will not retain the nature of substance, then since the whole substance would be divided into equal



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parts, it would lose the nature of substance, and would cease to be, which (by P7) is absurd. P13: A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible. Demonstration:  For if it were divisible, the parts into which it would be divided will either retain the nature of an absolutely infinite substance or they will not. If the first, then there will be a number of substances of the same nature, which (by P5) is absurd. But if the second is asserted, then (as above [NS: P12]), an absolutely infinite substance will be able to cease to be, which (by P11) is also absurd. Corollary: From these [propositions] it follows that no substance, and consequently no corporeal substance, insofar as it is a substance, is divisible. Scholium: That substance is indivisible, is understood more simply merely from this, that the nature of substance cannot be conceived unless as infinite, and that by a part of substance nothing can be understood except a finite substance, which (by P8) implies a plain contradiction. It is clear from these arguments how Spinoza would object to a version of the Divisibility Argument formulated as an argument specifically about substances. While granting (D5), that a thinking substance is utterly indivisible, he would deny (D6), and hence also (D7), by insisting that there is an extended substance—​ indeed, the only extended substance—​that he cannot conceive to be divided. For although various operations might be properly conceived as dividing a singular thing into parts, no such operation would introduce any division into infinite extended substance itself. An extended substance, as extended, must have regions, of course (or, better, be regionalized), but these regions are not parts, in the sense of things prior to a whole out of which they are generated by composition (nor, indeed are they things at all by Spinoza’s standards); and any alteration of the modes of the substance is merely a qualitative regional change, not a division into parts. As noted, those singular things that are composed of parts are individuals, in Spinoza’s terminology, and these include human beings.32 To a version of the Divisibility Argument formulated in terms of individuals rather than substances, Spinoza would respond by granting (D6) and (D7) while denying (D5), the claim that minds are utterly indivisible. For the parallelism of thought and extension, according to which “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things”33 entails that the human mind—​which is the idea of the human body—​is literally composed of ideas of the parts of the human body. This is clearly stated in Ethics II p15: P15: The idea that constitutes the formal being [esse] of the human Mind is not simple, but composed of a great many ideas.

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Demonstration: The idea that constitutes the formal being of the human Mind is the idea of a body (by P13), which (by Post. 1) is composed of a great many highly composite Individuals. But of each Individual composing the body, there is necessarily (by P8C) an idea in God. Therefore (by P7), the idea of the human Body is composed of these many ideas of the parts composing the Body, q.e.d. Rejecting (D5), of course, requires rejecting (D4) as well—​and Spinoza emphatically does so. This does not mean that he denies (D2) or (D3): willing and understanding are not at all distinct parts of the mind for him, and while he writes as though intellect and imagination (which includes sensory perception) can be considered as “parts” of the mind, he does not suppose that one could have imagination without any intellect at all.34 But all human thinking is awareness of one’s own body, on Spinoza’s view, and one’s various ideas of how things are in the various parts of one’s body do constitute parts of one’s mind. Hence, he would deny (D1): the removal of a body part would necessarily be paralleled by the removal of the part of the mind that is the idea of that body; and an idea of that body part, although perhaps no longer part of a finite mind having as much consciousness as the human mind, would continue to exist as a singular thing and as a mode of thinking of the one substance. Because all singular things have minds, for Spinoza, similar points apply to all non-​human individuals as well. In addition to discussing the complex singular things that are individuals, however, he also writes in Ethics II p13s of the “simplest bodies” (corpora simplicissima) that are their ultimate constituents, distinguished from one another only by motion-​and-​rest. These simplest bodies presumably satisfy the definition of ‘singular thing’ at 2d7: they are finite, clearly have a spatially determinate existence, and are not said to be everlasting. Like other singular things that are modes of extension, then, they too must have corresponding ideas that are their minds. Simplest bodies, as modes of extension, are not unextended—​indeed, they may well have various shapes and sizes—​but they are spatially homogeneous distributions of different degrees of what he calls “motion-​and-​rest” (motus & quietis), the fundamental pervasive feature of infinite extended substance by which that substance is variegated.35 Spinoza does not explicitly state whether he regards simplest bodies as divisible or not. If he does regard them as divisible (if, for example, they can be split into two smaller simplest bodies by collision), then his response to a version of the Divisibility Argument directed at them and their minds will parallel his response to the Divisibility Argument directed at individuals: both the simplest body and its mind will be equally divisible. If he does not regard them as divisible, then his response will parallel his response to a version of the Divisibility Argument directed at substances: neither the simplest body nor its mind will be divisible.36 In either case, the Divisibility Argument is blocked.



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2.3  Locke and the Divisibility Argument Much as in the case of Spinoza, it will be useful to distinguish Locke’s response to the Divisibility Argument as it applies to created things from his response to it as it applies to an eternal substance. Let us consider first the application to created things. Locke must allow (D2) and (D3), for he emphasizes just as much as Descartes does that the various faculties of the mind are not distinct “agents” or “real beings”—​they are mere powers or capacities of one thinking agent that has a variety of ideas and volitions.37 Locke also appears not to dispute (D7), writing, for example, that “in any bulk of Matter, our Thoughts can never arrive at the utmost Divisibility, therefore there is an apparent Infinity to us also in that  . . . . ”38 Locke’s objection to the Divisibility Argument in the case of created beings—​like Spinoza’s in the case of created finite individuals—​must therefore be to (D5) and, with it, to (D4) and (D1). Unlike Spinoza, he does not claim to be able to discern parts in the created mind;39 but he will not allow that it follows from this that what thinks in him is definitely not a divisible system of bodies. For he claims no introspective or other access to the nature of the substance that thinks in him, beyond knowing that it sustains and supports his thoughts and volitions. This substance may be a brain or a “System of fleeting animal spirits,”40 and he even considers, in his discussion of personal identity, the possibility that a separated “little finger” might retain some consciousness.41 Hence, we cannot know that all thinking beings are indivisible. While Locke expresses openness to the possibility of created material thinking beings, however, he devotes considerable attention, at the conclusion of his demonstration of the existence of God in Essay IV.x (“Of the Existence of a GOD”), to arguing that there is no eternal material being—​and especially not an eternal material thinking being.42 Having demonstrated to his own satisfaction that there is an “eternal “most powerful and most knowing” being—​namely, God—​he reiterates that, just as “nothing” cannot give rise to “something” and what is “purely matter” cannot possibly give rise to motion, so “bare matter” cannot, even if it is in motion, of itself give rise to thought or any thinking thing. By ‘purely matter,’ he evidently means having just the basic material qualities of extension and solidity, plus whatever these necessarily entail; and by ‘bare matter,’ he appears to mean pure matter with or without motion added to it. It is “impossible to conceive” that bare matter could ever “have originally in and from it self Sense, Perception, and Knowledge,” he argues, for if it could do so then “Sense, Perception, and Knowledge must be a property [in the technical sense noted earlier] eternally inseparable from Matter and every Particle of it.”43 To see that these qualities are not distributed to every particle of matter, he claims, we need only note that, despite the common tendency to think of “matter” as a single thing, it is in fact an infinite number of material particles,

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so that to allow bare matter to be an eternal thinking thing would require an infinite collection of limited thinkers that would be “independent one of another, of limited force, and distinct thoughts” and hence could not be the source of the “order, harmony, and beauty” that we find in Nature.44 After noting that “whatsoever is first of all Things, must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least, all the Perfections that can ever after exist”—​including thought—​he concludes that “the first eternal Being cannot be Matter.”45 By this he means, presumably, that it cannot be “pure” or “bare” matter. Locke then considers two alternative hypotheses according to which something material would nevertheless be eternal. The second of these is not directly relevant to our main question; it is the hypothesis that matter, even if non-​thinking, might still be eternal in addition to a separate eternal but immaterial thinking being.46 The first hypothesis, however, is highly relevant: that an eternal thinking being—​which Locke assumes would be God—​might, even if not deriving its thought just from its purely material nature, nevertheless have a material as well as a cogitative nature.47 Even if not pure matter, it would nonetheless be some kind of thinking matter. In order to refute this hypothesis, Locke divides it into three alternatives: (i) that all matter is eternal and thinking; (ii) that one single atom of matter is eternal and thinking; and (iii) that some particular system of material particles is eternal and thinking even though its individual elements do not think.48 Against the first alternative, Locke claims that the result would be an “infinity of Gods,” something which defenders of eternal thinking matter will “scarce say.” Against the second alternative, which he declares to have “as many Absurdities as” the first, he offers a dilemma: either this single thinking atom is the only eternal thing or it is not. If it is the only eternal thing, then it must create all other matter—​doing so, presumably, by its powerful thought, since this will be its only evident difference from other matter. Accordingly, the friends of eternal thinking matter will be under pressure to admit, against their inclination, that some matter has been created by thought, and they will in any case be forced to give up their “great Maxim” that ex nihilo, nihil fit. Yet to maintain that the single atom is not the only eternal thing would be to hypothesize “without any the least appearance of Reason” that this one atom vastly surpasses the other eternal things. Finally, against the third alternative, Locke has two objections. First, it makes wisdom dependent on the mere juxtaposition of parts, whereas in fact it is “absurd” that any mere position of parts of matter could ever produce thought and knowledge. Second, the parts of such a system must either be at rest or in motion; but if they are at rest, the system is a mere lump equivalent in power to a single atom, while even if they are in motion, wisdom still cannot arise from the “unregulated” and “unguided” motions of the individual parts. Since these arguments appeal prominently to the thesis that all material things have material parts, it may appear that Locke is offering his own restricted



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analogue of the Divisibility Argument:  a version intended to demonstrate that, while all matter is inherently divisible, this divisibility in an eternal being is incompatible with thinking, so that any eternal thinking being must be unextended. The appearance is heightened by his references to the “impossibility of conceiving” bare matter to have thought “from itself” and to the “absurdity” of the three alternative versions of the more general hypothesis that some eternal matter thinks. This appearance is deceptive, however, for several reasons. First, Locke is best understood as arguing only that there is no eternal material cogitative being, not that such a being is literally impossible. For example, it is a key premise of the argument against thinking bare matter that an infinite number of finite Gods could not produce the order, harmony, and beauty that we actually see in nature, and this is presumably also the source of the “absurdity” of the first version of the more general hypothesis of eternal thinking matter. But in the absence of a further argument that such order, harmony, and beauty are themselves necessary and not merely contingent features of the universe, any argument relying essentially on this premise can at most show that an infinity of Gods is not actual. Since Locke explicitly declines to endorse the ontological argument for God’s existence,49 such a further argument does not appear to be forthcoming. Furthermore, the fact that a single eternal thinking atom would require the friends of eternal thinking matter to “allow” the creation of matter by thought and give up “their favourite maxim” is purely ad hominem; and the apparent absence of a reason why only some eternal atom (or atoms) among others should think does not show the impossibility of such an atom (or atoms) on any stated Lockean principle.50 If there is no internal contradiction in the supposition that a cogitative and a material nature are combined in a single substance, then it is hard to see how there could be a contradiction in the supposition that they have eternally been so combined. While Locke might well have wanted to be able to argue that eternal thinking matter is impossible, he simply lacks the resources to do so. Indeed—​and this is a separate point—​it is not clear that Locke is really even claiming to have knowledge, in his strict sense of the term, as opposed to probable opinion,51 that there is no eternal material thinking thing. For despite his frequent invocations of “absurdities” in his opponents’ position, his response to the objection that from God’s existence “it does not follow, but that thinking Being may also be material” begins, “Let it be so  . . . . ”52 Furthermore, he begins his three-​ part discussion of the general hypothesis of eternal thinking matter with the mild proposal: “But now let us see how they can satisfy themselves, or others, that this eternal thinking being is material.”53 More importantly, however, and perhaps more surprisingly, Locke does not deny that God, the eternal thinking being, is extended. As we have seen, materiality—​i.e., being a body—​requires both extension and solidity, according to Locke. He certainly denies that God has solidity; unlike Descartes, however, he allows that

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things can be extended without being bodies.54 This is perhaps most evident in his treatment of space, which he allows to be extended without being a body. But it is equally true of his account of God’s location, as he presents it in Essay II.xxvii, “Of Identity and Diversity.” For all identity requires, on his account, “Existence it self, which determines a Being of any sort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two Beings of the same kind.”55 Whereas immaterial finite spirits are located without being extended,56 God is “without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and every where.”57 Locke’s attribution to God of literal omnipresence—​and not merely a figurative omnipresence through the effects of divine power—​is confirmed by his pointed recommendation in Essay II.xiii.26 that we consider very seriously whether the words of “the inspired philosopher St. Paul” that it is “in God” that “we live, move, and have our being” should not be understood literally. God is thus co-​located with bodies and also with immaterial finite spirits; but as the passages already cited from Essay II.xxvii.1–​3 indicate, Locke has no objection to co-​location of substances, as long as the substances are not “of the same kind.” Locke does propose at one point that we may, if we wish, limit the term ‘extension’ to bodies, adopting the term ‘expansion’ for other spatial things; but he admits that, whichever term we use, we are signifying the same idea.58 Thus, while Locke denies that there are in fact any eternal material thinking beings, he can and should resist a version of the Divisibility Argument restricted to eternal things. First, it is not clear that he would claim to know even analogues of (D4) and (D5) that were restricted to eternal thinking things. Second, he would reject (D6)’s casual identification of extension with corporeality (i.e., materiality), and he could easily maintain, against (D6), that God is, in light of His omnipresence, both extended and indivisible. Most importantly, however, he would also resist the inference from an analogue of (D8), asserting that no eternal thinking substance is a body, to the conclusion that there cannot be an eternal extended thinking being; for he rejects the principle that every extended being is a body.

3.  Evaluation and Conclusion Many philosophers have found Descartes’ doctrine that there are no extended thinking things deeply attractive. Others, including most contemporary philosophers, have found it to be objectionably anti-​naturalistic. We may distinguish two broad strategies for denying that it can be established. The first strategy involves defending, primarily, an account of our cognitive faculties from which it follows that the doctrine cannot be known to be true. The second strategy involves defending, primarily, a broader positive metaphysics according to which the doctrine is definitely false.



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Locke’s approach to the issue is a prime example of the first strategy. His accounts of our limited conceptions of substance and essence leave us without the resources to establish the truth of Descartes’ key premises about thinking and material substances in both the Separability Argument and the Divisibility Argument. The central advantage of Locke’s approach is that it puts the burden of proof on Descartes to explain how we can have the kind of knowledge required to support his conclusions. At the same time, however, Locke’s position is also subject to serious limitations. He grants that the kinds of powers bestowed by a material nature seem to us naturally inadequate for thought. Moreover, he seems to concede—​especially in his objection that eternal thinking pure matter would require an infinity of “independent” thinkers of “distinct” thoughts—​that we cannot comprehend how something divisible could be a unified subject or bearer of thoughts.59 For while he proposes that God might be able to bestow the power of thought on a system of material bodies, he does not explain how God would bring it about that thought was a quality or modification of that entire system of bodies and no other. At least as we conceive things, for Locke, it is not sufficient simply for God to create thought; God must provide for some substratum in which that thought subsists. We can readily understand predications of qualities to complex material things—​say, a shape or motion to a tree—​in virtue of the qualities of the whole resulting simply from the combined qualities of the individual parts, parts themselves considered as substrata. But since Locke rejects panpsychism, it seems that he cannot avail himself of this strategy in the case of complex thinking things. The only alternative seems then that God (or perhaps just an eternal arrangement of things) must have specially constituted a particular system of bodies as a basic substratum in its own right, giving it the kind of unity that is evidently required for a mind. The deficiency of our idea of substance-​in-​general, however, prevents us from seeing how, or even whether, this can be so. Locke’s ultimate reply to objections to the effect that it is difficult to see how the materialist scenarios he considers could be realized is simply that it is also difficult to see how the alternatives to those scenarios could be realized either. Spinoza’s approach, in contrast, is an example of the second strategy. Whereas Locke’s overall position is subject to criticisms derived from the modesty of his epistemic resources, Spinoza’s is subject to criticisms derived from the strength of his metaphysical claims. He rejects the Separability Argument by holding that there is necessarily a substance with multiple separately conceivable attributes, including thought and extension. To Descartes’ predictable objection that it is impossible for one thing to have two different “natures,”60 he will reply that the perfection of the necessarily existing divine substance, as established by the ontological argument and the principle of sufficient reason, actually requires that one substance have all possible principal attributes, necessarily mirroring one another.

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Since Spinoza agrees with Descartes that thought and extension are principal attributes, this means that the one substance and each of the singular things that are its finite modes must exist in multiple fundamentally different yet complementary dimensions of being—​including as thinking and as extended. This is nothing less than panpsychism, a strong and counterintuitive claim indeed. Spinoza’s response to the Divisibility Argument equally implies panpsychism, for it depends on his doctrine that every individual thing with extended parts has a “mind” whose thinking parts are the minds of those parts. His response also implies that the very same idea can exist in multiple minds at the same time, and that individual human minds are fragmentary aspects (though not parts) of a single infinite thinking substance. These, too, are strong and counterintuitive claims. The attraction of Spinoza’s approach, however, is that it at least offers, as Locke’s does not, to explain how it can be that one thing can, in itself, be both thinking and extended. In the 350  years since Descartes wrote, many attempts to resist his denial of extended cogitative beings have taken a broadly Lockean approach, attempting to show that extended thinkers, while metaphysically puzzling, cannot be shown to be ruled out, so that empirical findings can convince us that they may or must somehow be actual. Thus, Jerry Fodor has written: Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness.61 If that is indeed so, then perhaps it is time to revisit what a bolder Spinozistic approach has to offer.62

Notes J. Miller (ed.), Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind 9, 85–​104. © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009. 1. I employ the qualification “in itself” so as to leave aside the question of whether a compound thing can be both thinking and extended in virtue of having a thinking but unextended part and a distinct extended but unthinking part. Descartes, at least, clearly allows that a human being, as a “substantial union” of mind and body, is both thinking and extended in this sense. In what follows, I will leave this qualification tacit. 2. See Descartes (1984). All translations of passages from Descartes are from this source. 3. A complication arises from Descartes’ doctrine that ‘substance’ is not applied univocally to God and to created things such as bodies and finite minds, and



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hence it is not entirely clear whether God has a principal attribute. I will ignore this complication, since Descartes is clear that God is not extended, and his reasons for thinking that God is not extended presumably parallel, at least in part, his reasons for thinking that finite minds are not extended. 4. The argument occurs as the demonstration of Part 1, Proposition 8 (I p8d) in Descartes’ “Principles of Philosophy” (Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae), which is included in Spinoza (1985). (All subsequent citations and translations of Spinoza’s texts refer to this standard edition.) The presentation corresponds very closely to the specific version that Descartes presents in the axiomatized section that concludes his second set of replies in Objections and Replies, published with the Meditations. 5. In saying this, I am assuming that Descartes holds that he can perceive clearly and distinctly the nature of minds generally as well as his own, or at least that he sees that any other mind would be in a position to give the same argument for itself. If he does not hold either of these things, then there is a serious question how he can claim to know that every substance has only one principal attribute that is either thought or extension. I will return to this question in the final section. 6. Descartes might well be willing to generalize the argument still further to include all possible minds and all possible bodies, so as to conclude that extended thinking beings are not even metaphysically possible. 7. Spinoza uses the simple term ‘attribute’ in place of Descartes’ ‘principal attribute.’ 8. Ethics I p10. 9. Ibid. I p11. 10. Ibid. I p14. 11. Ibid. II p1–​2. 12. Principles of Philosophy I.60. 13. Ethics I p16c1. 14. Wilson (1978, pp.  191–​ 198) formulates the ambiguity between (A)  and (B) and discusses the relevance of Descartes’ reply to Caterus at some length. She proposes using the reply to revise the Separability Argument itself fairly substantially. Rozemond (1998, Ch. 1)  proposes a very different reconstruction, incorporating the principle that a substance can have only one principal attribute—​stated only in Comments on a Certain Broadsheet and Principles of Philosophy—​into the Separability argument itself. Whether these are desirable interpretative reconstructions or not is a question beyond the scope of this paper. I am concerned primarily with the Separability Argument itself, as Spinoza and Locke found it in Meditation Six and as Descartes formalized it at the end of his Replies to the second set of Objections. 15. Ethics I p10. 16. They are finite modes that are to some extent “in themselves” and so approximate to being substances in a partial way—​quasi-​substances, as one might say. See Garrett (2002).

240 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking 17. 18. 19. 20.

Ethics II p13s; see also II p7,s and III p1d. Ibid. II p7. Ibid. I p33. Since singular things come into existence and go out of existence, it is important to distinguish the question of whether their existence at the particular times at which they exist is necessary or contingent, from the question of whether there is any time such that it is possible for them not to exist at that time. Singular things lack necessary eternal existence, for Spinoza, but they do not lack a necessary durational existence derived from the necessity of their causes. 21. Ethics II p7s. 22. Locke (1975) (Essay IV.iii.6). All subsequent citations of Locke’s texts refer to the standard edition. 23. Essay II.xxix, “Of Clear and Obscure, Distinct and Confused Ideas.” 24. Essay II.xxxi, “Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas.” 25. Essay II.xxiii.1. 26. Essay II.xxiii.15, 27. 27. Essay II.iv, “Of Solidity.” 28. Essay III.iii.15–​17. 29. As with the Separability Argument, Descartes may also be willing to generalize the argument further, to all possible minds and all possible bodies. 30. In Ethics II p13s, Spinoza mentions an “infinite individual” composed of all finite individuals. This individual would not be a “singular thing,” since singular things are by definition finite. 31. ‘NS’ indicates an interpolation from the Nagelate Schriften, the Dutch translation of Spinoza’s Opera Postuma prepared by his friends from his Latin manuscripts. 32. Ethics II p13s. For purposes of citation, I  am treating the so-​called “Physical Digression” that precedes Ethics II p14 as part of II p13s. 33. Ethics II p7. 34. Ethics II p46. 35. For a fuller account, see Garrett (1994). 36. Presumably this would be Spinoza’s response for the “infinite individual” (composed of all other individuals) mentioned in Ethics II p7, since he is unlikely to regard it as divisible, despite its composition of parts. 37. Essay II.xxi.6. 38. Essay II.xvii.12. 39. It is worth noting, however, that he does regard all body parts as parts of himself as a person, even if they are not parts of his mind (Essay II.xxvii.17–​21). 40. Essay II.xxvii.17–​21. 41. Essay II.xxvii.13. 42. For useful discussion of this argument, see Wilson (1979, 1982)  and Ayers (1981). 43. Essay IV.x.10.



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44. Spinoza would not insist on the “order, harmony, and beauty” of Nature, since he sees these characteristics merely as projections of human sensibility (as explained in the Appendix to Part 1 of the Ethics). He would also allow that thought is not the consequence of an extended nature. However, he would insist that every particle of matter is a mode that necessarily also thinks; and while these modes are indeed “limited,” they are not “independent,” since they are modes (not parts) of one infinite and eternal thing having the utmost perfection and reality. 45. Essay IV.x.10. 46. Essay IV.x.18–​19. 47. Essay IV.13–​17. 48. Notably absent from this list is the alternative that more than one eternal atom of matter thinks while other atoms do not. Presumably, however, Locke would make basically the same objections to this alternative that he makes to the alternative that only one atom thinks: either the thinking atoms are the only eternal ones, in which case they create the others, or the thinking eternal atoms differ from the unthinking ones for no reason. 49. Essay IV.x.7. 50. Locke’s own causal maxim, that “a cause is required for every beginning of existence,” could not establish such an impossibility, since we are concerned with an eternal cogitative atom. 51. Knowledge is “the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas” (Essay IV.i.1) and is limited to intuition, demonstration, and sensation. Probability is “the appearance of such an agreement or disagreement, by the intervention of proofs, whose connexion is not constant and immutable, or at least is not perceived to be so, but is, or appears for the most part to be so, and is enough to induce the mind to judge the proposition to be true or false, rather than the contrary.” (Essay IV.xv.1) If Locke’s arguments are meant to provide probability rather than knowledge, they must exemplify one or both of his two “grounds of probability”:  conformity to past experience and testimony. 52. Essay IV.x.13. 53. Italics in original. 54. Essay II.xiii.16: “Who told them, that there was, or could be nothing, but solid Beings, which could not think; and thinking Beings that were not extended? Which is all they mean by the terms Body and Spirit.” 55. Essay II.xxvii.3, emphasis added. 56. Essay IV.iii.6. 57. Essay II.xxvii.2; emphasis added. 58. Essay II.xiii.27. 59. For a compelling contemporary presentation of a related problem about how thoughts could belong to a concatenation of physical particles, see Unger (2006, Ch. 7). He calls this problem the “Experiential Problem of the Many.”

242 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking 60. Descartes makes this claim in Comments on a Certain Broadsheet. See Rozemond (1998, Ch. 1) for discussion. 61. Times Literary Supplement, July 3, 1992. 62. I have benefited greatly from the helpful comments of Marleen Rozemond, Olli Koistinen, Andrew Pessin, Charles Jarrett, Talia Bettcher, Amy Schmitter, and Jon Miller.

Bibliography Ayers, Michael. 1983. “Mechanism, Superaddition, and the Proof of God’s Existence in Locke’s Essay,” The Philosophical Review 90.2: 210–​251. Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. 2 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrett, Don. 2002. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, edited by John I. Biro and Olli Koistinen, 127–​158. Oxford: Oxford Universirty Press. Locke, John. 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rozemond, Marleen. 1998. Descartes’s Dualism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, volume 1, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wilson, Margaret. 1978. Descartes, London: Routledge. Wilson, Margaret. 1979. “Superadded Properties:  The Limits of Mechanism in Locke,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16: 143–​150. Wilson, Margaret. 1982. “Superadded Properties:  A Reply to M.R. Ayers,” The Philosophical Review 91.2: 247–​252. Unger, Peter. 2006. All the Power in the World, New York: Oxford University Press.

9

Spinoza on the Essence of the Human Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal

The second half of Ethics, Part 5, presents Spinoza’s theory of the participation of human minds in the eternal. Although this theory constitutes the culmination of the Ethics, it has often proven opaque to even its most attentive and penetrating readers. Edwin Curley has written candidly, “In spite of many years of study, I still do not feel that I understand this part of the Ethics at all adequately” (1988, 84). Jonathan Bennett memorably declared this part of the Ethics to be “an unmitigated and seemingly unmotivated disaster” and “rubbish which causes others to write rubbish” (1984, 357, 374). Spinoza’s central doctrines in this portion of the Ethics include the following: 1. There is in God an idea of the formal essence of each human body. 2. An idea of the formal essence of the human body remains after the destruction of the human body, and for this reason there is a part of the human mind that is eternal. 3. The wiser and more knowing one is, the greater is the part of one’s mind that is eternal. Each of these three central doctrines seems, on its face, to be inconsistent with the rest of Spinoza’s philosophy; in fact, for each of the three doctrines, there are two different ways in which it seems inconsistent with the rest of his philosophy. The key to resolving these apparent inconsistencies lies in understanding Spinoza’s theory of formal essences and its connection to his theories of intellection and consciousness. Accordingly, this essay takes up these three central claims in order, explaining in each case (i) why the claim must be attributed to Spinoza, (ii) why the claim seems difficult to reconcile with the rest of his philosophy, and (iii)

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how an understanding of his theory of formal essences can resolve the apparent inconsistencies.

1.  The idea of the formal essence of the body The second half of Part  5 begins with the demonstration of two crucial and contrasting propositions: The mind can neither imagine anything, nor recollect past things, except while the body endures. (5p21) The Mind neither expresses the actual existence of its Body, nor conceives the Body’s affections as actual, except while the Body endures (by 2p8c); consequently (by 2p26), it conceives no body as actually existing except while its body endures. Therefore, it can neither imagine anything (see the Definition of Imagination in 2p17s) nor recollect past things (see the Definition of Memory in 2p18s) except while the body endures, Q.E.D. (5p21d) Nevertheless, in God there is necessarily an idea that expresses the essence of this or that human body, under a species of eternity. (5p22) God is the cause, not only of the existence of this or that human Body, but also of its essence (by 1p25), which therefore must be conceived through the very essence of God (by 1a4), by a certain eternal necessity (by 1p16), and this concept must be in God (by 2p3), Q.E.D.1 (5p22d) It is clear from the demonstrations of these two consecutive propositions that Spinoza is invoking a distinction of some kind between the actual existence of a human body and the formal essence of a human body. The demonstration of 5p21 appeals to the corollary of 2p8, a proposition concerning the formal essences of “singular things [res singulares] that do not exist”:2 The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God’s infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s attributes. (2p8) “Singular things” are defined in 2d7 as “things that are finite and have a determinate existence,” and these include human beings. (Of course, the metaphysical status of all singular things in Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics is as finite modes of the one substance, God; see 1p25c.) The corollary to 2p8 itself (from which Spinoza concludes that the mind “expresses actual existence” only while the body endures) goes on to contrast what can be said of the ideas of singular things that do not exist with what can be said of the ideas of singular things that do exist:



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From this it follows that so long as singular things do not exist, except insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes, their objective being, or ideas, do not exist except insofar as God’s infinite idea exists. And when singular things are said to exist, not only insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes, but insofar also as they are said to have duration, their ideas also involve the existence through which they are said to have duration. (2p8c) Similarly, the demonstration of 5p22 appeals to 1p25, in which Spinoza sharply distinguishes between the essence and the existence of things in order to affirm that God is the cause of both: God is the efficient cause, not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence. (1p25)3 This use of the term “essence” (essentia) clearly refers to the formal essence (essentia formalis) of things. For although he later introduces (in 3p7 and 4p4) the separate and specialized notion of an “actual essence” (essentia actualis) of singular things—​ something identical to their striving to persevere in existence (i.e., conatus or appetite)—​the actual essence of a thing exists only so long as the thing itself does, and is not properly contrasted with the thing’s existence.4 Spinoza indicates (in 2p8, 2p8c, 1p33s1, and many other passages as well) that the reality or being of the formal essence of a singular thing—​such as the formal essence of a human body—​does not presuppose or entail the actual existence of that singular thing.5 On the contrary, 2p8s compares nonexistent singular things whose essences are contained in God’s attributes (i.e., thought and extension, as well as infinitely many unknown divine attributes) to actually undrawn or undelineated rectangles that are nevertheless contained within a circle (because points of the circle could constitute or determine their endpoints), even though the rectangles themselves could be said not to “exist” (at least not in the full-​blooded sense in which drawn or delineated ones do).6 On the other hand, he makes it equally clear, in many of the same passages, that the formal essence of a singular thing is directly related to the singular thing, and even provides a sense in which the singular thing itself can be said to have a kind of derivative being. (In 2p8c, for example, he writes of “singular things that do not exist, except insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes.”) Hence, Spinoza appears to regard the formal essence of a singular thing as somehow being or grounding the at-​least-​sometimes-​unactualized possibility of the singular thing’s existence—​as noted by Alan Donagan (1973, 1988), R. J. Delahunty (1985), and Wallace Matson (1990). In this respect, they resemble Descartes’s “true and immutable natures” of things or Leibnizian essences—​unchanging forms that can be instantiated or

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exemplified by existing things, and without which those things would not even be so much as possible. Yet this immediately raises two problems. The first problem arises from the fact that Spinoza endorses necessitarianism—​that is, the doctrine that whatever is possible is actual, and whatever is actual is necessary (see 1p16, 1p29, 1p33, 1p33s1, and 1p35d).7 For if necessitarianism is true, then there are no genuinely unactualized possibilities for formal essences to be. The second problem arises from the fact that Spinoza endorses parallelism—​that is, the doctrine that “the order and connection of ideas [of things] is the same as the order and connection of [those] things [themselves]” (2p7).8 This doctrine requires at least that, whenever there is a thing that stands in various causal relations to other things, there is also an idea of that thing, standing in parallel causal relations to ideas of those other things, and vice versa.9 It thus seems to entail that a thing and the idea of that thing must share the same status with respect to actual existence and nonactualized possibility:  that is, either a thing and its idea must be actualized together or they must be nonactualized together, for otherwise one of the two “orders”—​namely, things and their ideas—​will fail to be parallel to the other in its ontological and causal structure.10 Indeed, by the further mode-​identity doctrine of 2p7s, any mode of extension is really identical to the idea of that mode (being merely expressions under different attributes of the same modal being). Yet as 5p22d makes clear, the idea in God that “expresses the essence of this or that human body” is just the idea of the essence of the human body; for this idea is described simply as constituting the conception of that essence. Hence, if the essence of this or that human body is merely an unactualized possibility, then so, it seems, is the idea of (i.e., the “idea expressing”) the essence of that human body. Yet Spinoza disparages the idea that God has any “potential,” as opposed to “actual,” intellect (1p31s and 1p33s2), strongly suggesting that he would reject the notion that any mere possibilities of ideas ever remain unactualized in God. In any case, the mere unactualized possibility of an idea seems to be far less than what is required to support Spinoza’s theory of the real eternality of a part of the human mind. Thus, it seems that both Spinoza’s necessitarianism and his parallelism pose serious problems for the interpretation of formal essences of human bodies as at-​least-​sometimes-​unrealized possibilities. To resolve these two difficulties, we must clarify the ontological status of the formal essences of singular things and of the ideas that are of them. Spinoza strongly implies that formal essences are truly something in their own right: for example, 1p25d argues that essences must be conceived through (and hence caused by) God precisely because, by 1p15, “whatever is” must be conceived through God. But according to 1p4d, “there is nothing except substances and their affections” (emphasis added), and, by 1d3, the “affections” of a substance are simply its modes. Because only God is a substance (1p14), it follows that, in order to be counted



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among “whatever is,” formal essences of singular things must be modes of God. This conclusion—​that the formal essences of singular things are modes of God—​ is supported by the claim of 2p8 that these formal essences are “contained in the attributes” of God and by the corresponding claim of 5p22 that the idea of the essence of a human body is “in God.” This is because whatever is in a substance—​ other than that substance itself—​is by definition (1d5) a mode of that substance.11 Every mode (i.e., state, modification, aspect, affection) of God is either (i) infinite and eternal, following from God’s “absolute nature,” either immediately or via other infinite modes, and so pervasive throughout the attribute of which it is a mode (1p21–​p23);12 or (ii) finite and determinate (i.e., limited) in its existence, following with equal necessity from God but only as and when God is modified or affected by another finite mode (1p28d).13 But if the formal essences of singular things are modes of God, they can hardly be finite modes. Because they have their own being or existence contained in the attributes of God regardless of when or whether the corresponding singular things themselves exist, it is hard to see why or how they could ever come into or go out of existence, as finite modes do. Their status as infinite modes is strongly confirmed in 5p23s by Spinoza’s description of the parallel “idea, which expresses [i.e., is of ] the essence of the body” as “a mode of thinking . . . which is necessarily eternal.” Outside the Ethics, too, Spinoza indicates that (formal) essences are eternal, immutable, and infinite, writing in Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being 1.1.2 that “the essences of things are from all eternity, and will remain immutable to all eternity” (C, 61) and in Metaphysical Thoughts I.iii that the “existence” of things depends on the “series and order of causes,” whereas the “essence” of things “depends [only] on the eternal laws of nature” (C, 307). The formal essence of a singular thing is thus not identical to the singular thing itself—​for the singular thing, having “a finite and determinate existence” (by 2d7), is a finite mode, whereas its formal essence is an infinite mode. As we have already noted, the being of the formal essence of a singular thing is not alone sufficient for the singular thing’s actual existence; instead, the singular thing, as a finite mode, can actually exist only—​and also must actually exist—​whenever and wherever there actually exist finite causes with the causal power to bring that singular thing into existence. As we have also noted, however, the formal essences of singular things do somehow ground the actualizability of singular things themselves. From these various clues, we can infer what the formal essence of a singular thing must be: it is the omnipresent modification or aspect of an attribute of God that consists in the attribute’s general capacity to accommodate—​through the general laws of its nature as an attribute—​the actual existence of a singular thing of the given specific structure whenever and wherever the series of actual finite causes should actually determine it to occur.14 Although the singular thing itself can exist only for a limited duration, this general modification of the attribute

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constituting the thing’s formal essence is permanent and pervasive and follows universally, via the general laws of nature, from the “absolute” or unqualified nature of the attribute itself—​just as we would expect of an infinite mode. Although the formal essence of a singular thing is not identical to the singular thing, it is nevertheless the essence “of” that singular thing, in the sense that the instantiation of that essence produces the singular thing itself.15 On the interpretation just offered, Spinoza’s doctrine of formal essences is perfectly compatible with his necessitarianism. Because each formal essence is itself an infinite mode consisting in a permanent and pervasive feature of an attribute of God, following necessarily from that attribute’s necessary nature, each such essence exists necessarily—​as does the corresponding idea of that formal essence. Of course, it is true that the existence or nonexistence of a particular singular thing does not follow from the existence of its formal essence alone; and in this sense, the formal essence of a singular thing constitutes its actualizability without necessitating its actual existence. Nevertheless, for each particular point in what Spinoza calls “the order of nature” (ordo naturae), either the existence or the nonexistence of a given singular thing is fully necessitated at that point—​by the infinite modes (including the formal essences of things)16 in concert with the necessary infinite series of actual finite causes (see 1p33s1). Thus, whatever does not exist at a particular point in the order of nature is not, all things considered, within God’s power to produce at that point; the actualization of its formal essence at that particular point is not, all things considered, possible. The interpretation of formal essences just offered is also compatible with Spinoza’s parallelism. For according to this interpretation, the formal essences of singular things are existing infinite modes in their own right—​and so are the ideas of (i.e., the ideas “expressing”) those formal essences. Singular things themselves, in contrast, are finite modes that exist for a limited duration—​but so are the ideas of those singular things. In each case, the ontological status of an entity is precisely parallel to that of its corresponding idea.

2.  The eternal part of the mind that remains Ethics 5p23 states, “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal.” According to the demonstration of this proposition, which cites 5p22 and 2p8c, this eternal “something” that remains “pertains to the essence of the human mind” and is “an idea which expresses the essence of the human body.”17 Furthermore, according to 5p38d and its scholium,18 that which remains of the mind when the body perishes is also “a part of the human mind,” a part that—​as 5p39s and 5p40c reiterate—​is eternal. Because, as we have seen, the idea “expressing the essence of the human body” in 5p22 is



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simply the idea of the essence of the human body, Spinoza clearly holds that the idea of the essence of a human body remains after the destruction of that human body and that, for this reason, there is a part of each human mind that is eternal. However, this claim, too, is puzzling, and again in two different ways. First, Spinoza holds that the human mind just is the idea of the human body (2p13); so if there is some eternal part of the human mind that remains after the destruction of the body, then parallelism seems to require that there should likewise be an eternal part of the human body that remains after the destruction of the mind.19 Yet how can there be a part of the body that is eternal? Second, it seems that an idea of the essence of the human body should constitute cognition about the essence of the human body. The so-​called “Physical Digression” following 2p13s strongly suggests that this essence lies in or involves a certain “fixed pattern of motion and rest” that makes an extended singular thing what it is. Now, if an idea of the essence of the human body is the eternal part of the human mind, then it seems that cognition of the essence of the human body should be cognition that is somehow in the human mind. Yet human beings’ cognition of their own distinctive fixed patterns of motion and rest seems highly limited, even for most of the very wise. In fact, according to 5p40c, the part of the mind that is eternal is “the intellect,” which Spinoza identifies with the totality of one’s intellectual ideas (see 2p48s and 2p49s); but it seems that relatively little of one’s intellectual cognition concerns the pattern of motion and rest of one’s own body. Thus, it seems that an idea of the formal essence of the human body does not have the right content to be or to explain the eternal part of the human mind.20 Once we have seen what the formal essence of the human body is, however, we are also in a position to see how that essence can constitute an eternal part of the human body, and hence how it can survive the destruction of the actually existing human mind. In order to appreciate this, consider first the part of the mind that is eternal. Spinoza states in 5p40c, “the eternal part of the Mind (by 5p23 and 5p29) is the intellect, through which alone we are said to act (by 3p3). But what we have shown to perish is the imagination (by 5p21), through which alone we are said to be acted on.” As this suggests, the imagination consists, for Spinoza, of passive (and also inadequate) ideas (3p53d, 5p28d), which he calls “cognition [cognitio] of the first kind,” whereas the intellect consists of active (and also adequate) ideas, which he calls “cognition of the second and third kinds.” Together, the imagination and the intellect can be said to compose the mind, at least insofar as the mind has ideas.21 In Part 2 of the Ethics (2p17–​p31), Spinoza explains imagination as awareness of changing modifications (i.e., states or affections) of the actually existing body. Intellection, however, does not consist in the awareness of any changing modification of the actually existing body. Rather, according to 5p29, it occurs only insofar as the mind “conceives the body’s essence under a species of eternity.” Hence, in distinguishing the imagination and the intellect as parts of

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the mind, Spinoza also distinguishes two different objects of awareness: (i) the changing modifications of the actually existing human body and (ii) the formal essence of the human body. As his parallelism requires, Spinoza clearly includes among the parts of the human mind its ideas of individual organs constituting parts of the human body (2p15). But none of these ideas is itself the intellect or the (entire) imagination, which Spinoza also identifies as parts of the mind; and if the parts of the mind are not limited to ideas of spatially discrete parts of the body, then by parallelism, the parts of the body cannot be limited to its spatially discrete parts either. But if the parts of a body need not be limited to spatially discrete parts, then Spinoza is free to construe the formal essence of the human body as itself a part of the human body. For although it cannot be a spatially discrete part of the human body in the way that a particular organ is—​as an infinite mode, it is an omnipresent aspect of extension, not limited in spatial extent—​the formal essence of the human body is, nevertheless, part of what must be present at a particular time and place in order for the human body actually to exist there. This part of the human body, precisely because it is an infinite mode, will necessarily remain—​ there, and everywhere else as well—​after the actually existing human body and its actually existing human mind are destroyed. This provides the solution to the first puzzle, concerning parallelism, about the eternal part of the mind. Now, just as the formal essence of the human body is part of what must be present at a particular point in the order of nature for the human body to exist, so the idea of that essence is part of what must be present at a particular point in the order of nature for the human mind to exist. For according to 2p46, “the cognition of God’s eternal and infinite essence which each idea involves is adequate and perfect,” so that even the most inadequate imaginative ideas of the present affections of the body (5p45d, 5d47d) require some adequate cognition of God’s attributes. But all “adequate” cognition is cognition of the second or third kind, for Spinoza, and thus constitutes intellection; and as we have seen, Spinoza holds that the existence of the intellect requires the conception of the essence of the body “under a species of eternity” (5p29). In order to understand how Spinoza conceives the essence of the human body as required for all human intellection, however, we must briefly examine his explanations of how the second and third kinds of cognition—​the intellectual kinds—​are themselves possible. According to 2p40s2, we have cognition of the second kind through the “common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things.” As Spinoza explains in 2p38–​p40, this means that we can have adequate ideas of properties, shared by our bodies and other bodies, that are “equally in the part and in the whole,” and we can also have cognition of what follows from these properties. Cognition of the third kind, according to 2p40s2, “proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate cognition of the essence of things.” This third, and highest, kind of cognition is



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possible because every idea necessarily involves an adequate cognition of God’s essence (2p45–​p46; for example, cognition of what extension or thought is), the very cognition that is required to serve as the starting point for cognition of the third kind. In 5p31d Spinoza elaborates on this process: The Mind conceives nothing under a species of eternity except insofar as it conceives its Body’s essence under a species of eternity (by 5p29), i.e., (by 5p21 and 5p23), except insofar as it is eternal. So (by 5p30) insofar as it is eternal, it has cognition of God, cognition which is necessarily adequate (by 2p46). And therefore, the Mind, insofar as it is eternal, is capable of knowing all those things which can follow from this given cognition of God (by 2p40), i.e., of knowing things by the third kind of cognition. All of the human mind’s ideas, then, whether adequate or inadequate, are ideas of the human body (2p13). When it imagines, the human mind conceives affections or modifications of the body that are transitory and that depend on external causes, as well as on the nature of the body and the nature of its parts (2p17–​p28). But all understanding requires some understanding of causes (1a4); hence, in conceiving these changeable affections of the actually existing body, the mind also conceives, though confusedly and inadequately, the external objects that are among their causes. In order to conceive these changeable affections at all, however, the mind must also conceive something of the unchanging formal essence of the human body, which is also among their causes and through which, together with more changeable local causal circumstances, they must be understood. Indeed, more generally, any human cognition that is not limited to the awareness of any particular time or place is cognition of this essence. But in conceiving something of the essence of one’s human body, one conceives ipso facto something of the other infinite modes that are among its causes; and because at least some of these infinite modes—​as pervasive modifications of a divine attribute—​involve features that are equally in the part and in the whole, the mind’s conception of them serves as the basis for cognition of the second kind.22 Moreover, in conceiving something of the formal essence of the human body, one also conceives the nature of a divine attribute itself, and one thereby has the basis for cognition of the third kind.23 In this way, the awareness of one’s own formal essence that necessarily results from the instantiation of that essence provides the conceptual materials on which the mind’s cognitive power must operate in order to produce all of one’s adequate cognition—​that is, all the contents of the intellect. A human being’s actually realized intellect may not contain highly conscious cognition of everything there is to know about the distinctive character of his or her own pattern of motion and rest—​although such cognition is in principle attainable. But cognition “of” the

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formal essence of the human body is not limited to such cognition, for all one’s cognition that is not limited to a particular perspective is cognition of pervasive features of nature as they are manifested in the formal essence of the human body. Just as all imaginative cognition (cognition of the first kind) constitutes cognition of other things only by being first cognition of some accidental states of the actually existing body, so all intellectual cognition (cognition of the second and third kinds) constitutes cognition of other things only by being first cognition concerning the formal essence of the human body. This constitutes the solution to the second puzzle, concerning content, about the eternal part of the mind.

3.  Wisdom and the growth of the eternal part of the mind Spinoza states in 5p39: “He who has a body capable of a great many things has a mind whose greatest part is eternal.” In the scholium to this proposition, he remarks that human beings strive to change—​“as much as our nature allows and assists”—​from a state in which they do not meet this condition to a state in which they do meet it. He then characterizes the difference between these two states as a difference between having “a mind which considered solely in itself is conscious of almost nothing of itself, or of God, or of things” and having a mind “which considered only in itself is very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things.”24 In the final scholium of the Ethics, he asserts specifically that the ignorant man “lives as if he knew neither himself, nor God, nor things; and as soon as he ceases to be acted on, he ceases to be”; whereas the wise man “insofar as he is considered as such . . . is by a certain eternal necessity, conscious of himself, and of God, and of things [and] he never ceases to be.” (5p42s; see also 5p31s). Spinoza also indicates in 5p40c that the intellect—​which is, by this same corollary, the “eternal part” of the mind—​can vary in extent. Thus, it is clear that he regards wisdom as directly correlated in degree with having a mind whose greater part is eternal. Yet this final doctrine is puzzling as well, and again for two reasons. First, Spinoza regards human beings as more virtuous and hence (given his identification of virtue with understanding) as wiser than lower animals.25 Moreover, he must surely regard human beings as wiser than other singular things, such as rocks and trees. As we have seen, 5p23d claims that an idea of the formal essence of the human body is “the part of the human mind that is eternal.” Yet there exists a formal essence for each singular thing, whether human or not; and hence, by the parallelism of 2p7, there also exists for each singular thing an idea of this essence. Because all singular things are equal in respect of having such an idea, it seems puzzling that they can differ in the extent to which a greater part of their minds



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is eternal.26 Second, it seems that the formal essence of the human body, as an infinite mode, must be unchanging; and hence in the light of parallelism, it seems that an idea of the formal essence of the human body must remain exactly as unchanging as the formal essence of the human body itself. Thus, it seems hard to see how the part of the mind that is eternal could become greater or less even when one’s wisdom increased or decreased. To resolve these two difficulties, it is useful to draw two related distinctions. First, we must distinguish between (i) having an adequate idea of something by having an adequate idea of some feature (i.e., attribute, property, or affection) of the thing and (ii) having an adequate idea of something by having an adequate idea of all of its features. For example, Spinoza holds, as we have seen, that each human being has an adequate idea of God’s essence insofar as God is extended;27 and simply in having such an idea, each human being has an adequate idea of God. In fact, any adequate idea can be truly said to be an adequate idea “of God” at least in the sense that it adequately represents something about God. But no human idea represents God in all of God’s aspects; for no human being has an idea of any divine attribute other than extension and thought, and it seems unlikely that any human being represents all of God’s infinitely many finite modes.28 Similarly, 5p4 affirms that “there is no affection of the Body of which we cannot form a clear and distinct concept” by conceiving properties that the affection shares with other things (5p4d), even though we as finite beings cannot understand any changing affection of the body in detail and completely through its specific causes. Second, because the human mind is the idea of the human body and is itself in God, we must distinguish between the features of an idea as it is in God and the features of what is literally that very same idea as it is in the mind of a singular thing—​that is, as Spinoza puts it, between ideas as they are in God simpliciter and as they are in God insofar as God has or constitutes the mind of a singular thing (2p11c). In particular, we must apply this distinction to an idea’s degree of “power of thinking” (cogitandi potentia)29 or “consciousness” (conscientia)—​which Spinoza treats as identical, or at least coextensive.30 Thus, an idea exists in God as part of God’s infinite intellect, with sufficient power of thinking to produce, in fully conscious reality and perfection, all of the ideas that are its effects. In contrast, an idea actually exists in the mind of a singular thing only for as long as the singular thing exists, and it exerts within that mind a limited degree of power of thinking that reflects the singular thing’s finite share of divine power (4p4d). Because God’s power of thinking is infinite, God’s idea of every formal essence of every singular thing represents every aspect or property of that essence with a high degree of power of thinking. But it does not follow from this that a given singular thing will have sufficient power of thinking to possess, in full completeness, a similarly highly conscious idea of its own formal essence. On the contrary, a singular thing has power expressed under any attribute—​including the attribute

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of thought—​only to the extent that the singular thing approximates to the condition of causal self-​sufficiency that is characteristic of a substance. (It has this self-​sufficiency by having power to preserve itself—​see 3p6 and the propositions that immediately follow it.31) Because some kinds of singular things necessarily approximate to this causal self-​sufficiency less fully than do others, they necessarily also have less power of thinking.32 The mind of a lower animal, for example, has ideas of imagination, and hence it has some intellectual cognition as well. Like a human being, it achieves this intellectual cognition by conceiving the essence of its body in the course of imagining. However, there is no reason to suppose, and every reason to deny, that the mind of an animal will attain a very highly conscious or complete cognition of the essence of its own body. And although Spinoza allows that all “things” have “minds” (3p1d), rocks and trees will have even less power of thinking than lower animals. Rocks, trees, animals, and humans can differ in the extent to which the greater parts of their minds are eternal, then, because they conceive the formal essences of their bodies more or less fully with greater or lesser power of thinking—​that is, consciousness. Very rudimentary singular things, such as rocks, may not undergo any significant increase or decrease in their power during the period of their actual existence. Human beings, in contrast, do undergo such changes, according to Spinoza (see 3po1):  an increase in power is joy (laetitia), and a decrease in power is sadness (tristitia) (3p11s). Accordingly, a human mind’s overall power to produce highly conscious adequate ideas from other adequate ideas can easily vary through time, as can the specific degree of power and consciousness of any individual idea within that mind (4p5–​p18). Hence, the “proportion” of a human mind comprised by the intellect—​that is, by the part of the mind that is eternal—​can vary as well. The human intellect is eternal, for Spinoza, because whatever the human mind conceives adequately, it conceives by conceiving an eternal idea of the eternal formal essence of the human body, thereby incorporating an eternal idea into the human mind. Thus, although the idea of the formal essence of the human body, as it is in God, is a comprehensive and highly conscious idea that undergoes no change, the intellectual life of a human being is a struggle to actualize within that human being’s mind, as consciously as possible,33 as much adequate cognition as possible of the formal essence of his or her body and of other things as they relate to, and are involved in, that formal essence. Fully achieving a complete and highly conscious cognition of everything that can be known about the essence of the human body would require that the formal essence of the human body be instantiated with very great power indeed.34 How much power of thinking a person can actually exert on a particular occasion depends in part on favorable or unfavorable external circumstances. But to whatever extent human beings achieve more conscious adequate ideas, they have, to that extent, more fully appropriated into their



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own minds divine ideas that are eternal—​and thereby made a greater part of their minds eternal.35

4. Conclusion On the interpretation that I have proposed, the formal essence of a human body is a real infinite mode: the omnipresent (i.e., pervasive and permanent) modification of the attribute of extension that consists of its general capacity to accommodate and sustain—​through the general laws of extension expressible as the laws of physics—​the actual existence of a singular thing possessing a specific structure or nature whenever and wherever the series of actual finite causes mandates it. The formal essence of the human body thus grounds the actual existence of the finite human body, but it necessitates that existence only in concert with the infinite series of actual finite modes. Because the presence of the formal essence of a human body is required for the actual existence of a human body, this formal essence can be understood as a nonlocalized part of the human body. Furthermore, all intellection may be understood as deriving from the mind’s idea of this formal essence—​ an idea that, as an infinite mode of thought, has an ontological status entirely parallel to that of the formal essence of the body. Although the idea expressing the essence of the human body exists as a complete and highly conscious idea in God, human beings must struggle, with limited but varying power, to incorporate the various aspects of this idea into their actually existing minds with greater power and consciousness, just as they must struggle to instantiate more fully and powerfully the formal essence of their bodies. No matter what they do, of course, they cannot achieve personal immortality, with continuing sensation or memory. Their minds perish with their bodies—​because these are identical—​even though a part of each remains. But to the extent that they are successful in their struggle, Spinoza holds, human beings understand in the same way that God does. Indeed, they literally participate—​for a period of duration—​in God’s own eternally conscious cognition, and they thereby achieve a mind the greater part of which is eternal.36

Notes 1. All translations of Spinoza’s writings are from C. However, I have employed “cognition” rather than Curley’s “knowledge” as a translation for “cognitio,” because Spinoza recognizes cognitio that is false and inadequate. 2. Given the reference to “existence” in this definition, some explanation is needed of how Spinoza can then refer to “singular things that do not exist.” Presumably, 2d7 is meant to indicate what kind of existence singular things have if they exist.

256 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking 3. The demonstration of 1p25 reads, If you deny this, then God is not the cause of the essence of things; and so (by 1a4) the essence of things can be conceived without God. But (by 1p15) this is absurd. Therefore God is also the cause of the essence of things, Q.E.D. 4. Ethics 2d2 states that “to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited and 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.” Because the Ethics specifically mentions two kinds of essences—​formal essences and actual essences—​there are two main interpretive alternatives with respect to 2d2. First, we may suppose that it defines only one of these two kinds of essences. Second, we may suppose that there is some generality or ambiguity in the definition that allows both kinds of essences to be different species of essence in accordance with the definition. The second option seems preferable. (Compare Locke 1975, who gives a general characterization of “essence,” the specification of which allows things to have both a “real essence” and a “nominal essence.”) For an essence can be given, and a thing can be “posited,” in more than one way. Thus, an actual essence is something such that, when it is given as existing, the thing itself actually exists (i.e., is posited as existing). A formal essence, in contrast, is something such that (i) when it is given as existing, the thing itself is possible (i.e., is posited as possible); and (ii) when it is given as instantiated, the thing itself is posited as actual. Because a singular thing actually exists if and only if its actual essence does, we may also think of the actual essence of a singular thing as the actualization or instantiation of its existing formal essence, rendering the thing itself actual. Thus, the instantiation of the formal essence of a singular thing produces the singular thing by producing that singular thing’s actual essence. Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being also use the term “objective essence” (essentia objectiva), a term that does not occur in the Ethics. An objective essence is simply the idea of an essence (specifically, it seems, a formal essence), so that when an objective essence is given as existing, the formal essence of the thing is posited “objectively”—​that is, in thought. 5. In the unique case of God—​who is of course infinite, and hence not a singular thing—​essence alone is sufficient for existence, according to Spinoza. Indeed, God’s essence and his existence are one and the same thing (1p20), for both are constituted precisely by the divine attributes themselves. 6. Spinoza makes it clear that he intends this comparison only as a rough analogy, introducing it as follows: “If anyone wishes me to explain this further by an example, I will, of course, not be able to give one which adequately explains what I speak of here, since it is unique. Still I shall try as far as possible to illustrate



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the matter . . . . ” Curley’s footnote to the scholium in C provides a helpful explanation of the example and its accompanying diagram. 7. For a discussion of Spinoza’s necessitarianism, see Garrett 1991. 8. See Della Rocca 1996a for an excellent discussion of this central Spinozistic doctrine. 9. It should be noted, of course, that for Spinoza the idea that is “of” a human body, in this sense, is its mind, and that the idea of any other singular thing is the “mind” of that singular thing. The sensory or imaginative idea that a human being has “of” an external object is not the idea of the object, in this sense, but is rather an idea of a state of the human being’s own body, a state partially caused by the external object. See the Ethics, Part 2. 10. Donagan (1973 and 1988, 194–​200) argues that 2p7 must allow real ideas to correspond to merely possible things, and Matson (1990) agrees. Bennett (1984, 357–​8) holds that this would violate the parallelism, and Delahunty (1985, 294–​ 300) offers persuasive support for Bennett’s verdict. 11. Ethics 1d5 states, “By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.” This relation of being “in”—​ inherence, we might call it—​is absolutely central to Spinoza’s metaphysics. As 1p4d and many other passages make clear, he regards “being in” and “being conceived through” as necessarily coextensive where inherence in a substance is concerned. 12. Of course, even every infinite mode of an attribute is “limited” in one respect: it is not the attribute itself, nor is it identical to any other infinite mode of that attribute. I take it that this kind of “limitation” is perfectly compatible with the kind of eternity and pervasiveness that characterizes infinite modes. The infinity of infinite modes lies not in there being no other modes of the same attribute (because there obviously are), but rather in there being (as 1p21d puts it in application to the attribute of thought) “no Thought that does not constitute” the infinite mode—​that is, in its pertaining pervasively to all of the attribute in question at all times, wherever it is found. 13. For further discussion of the nature of infinite modes and of the way in which they follow (unlike finite modes) from “the absolute nature” of the attributes, see Garrett 1991. 14. Matson (1990) rightly states that for Spinoza the “essences of ‘nonexistent things’ ” must be “perfectly real, actual items” on the ground that “Spinoza has no truck with mere possibilities” (88); and he suggests, as I have here, that the “containment” of a thing’s essence in an attribute is equivalent to the attribute’s laws not ruling out the actual existence of the thing (89). He does not, however, propose that formal essences are infinite modes; and he goes on to treat the idea “expressing” the essence of the body as an actual idea strictly corresponding to a merely possible thing (89–​90). 15. By treating formal essences as infinite modes, Spinoza accounts for their being within the constraints of substance/​ mode metaphysics, according to which

258 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking everything that is, is either a substance or the mode of a substance; this is something that Descartes arguably failed to do with “true and immutable natures,” which are not easily construed either as modes of extension or as modes of God’s thought. 16. Although formal essences are among the infinite modes, they do not exhaust them. Surely general and more specific laws of nature will also be infinite modes (Curley 1969; 1988, 47–​8). It is also plausible to suppose that there will be more and less generic formal essences—​e.g., a formal essence of mammal, a formal essence of human, and a formal essence of a particular human being—​for the capacities of the attributes to support such beings are all different but omnipresent aspects of those attributes. Spinoza recognizes causal (i.e., explanatory) relations among infinite modes, and it is natural to suppose that laws of nature are prominent among the causes of formal essences, that more general laws are among the causes of more specific laws, and that more generic formal essences are among the causes of less specific formal essences. On the other hand, whatever violates the general laws of nature—​for example, a perpetual motion machine, or a talking tree—​will have no formal essence at all. It is not obvious that the formal essence of a particular individual could ever be so specific that another individual—​say, a genetically identical twin—​could not possibly coinstantiate it; however, nothing argued here depends on this. 17. The full demonstration reads as follows: In God there is necessarily a concept, or idea, which expresses the essence of the human Body (by 5p22), an idea, therefore, which is necessarily something that pertains to the essence of the human Mind (by 2p13). But we do not attribute to the human Mind any duration that can be defined by time, except insofar as it expresses the actual existence of the Body, which is explained by duration, and can be defined by time, i.e. (by 2p8c), we do not attribute duration to it except while the Body endures. However, since what is conceived, with a certain eternal necessity, through God’s essence itself (by 5p22) is nevertheless something, this something that pertains to the essence of the Mind will necessarily be eternal, Q.E.D. (5p23d) Just as a human mind is the idea of a human body, for Spinoza (2p13), so the idea of the formal essence of a human body is itself the formal essence of a human mind; this explains the reference in 5p23 itself to the eternal part of the mind as “pertaining to the essence of the human mind.” 18. These read: The Mind’s essence consists in cognition (by 2p11); therefore, the more the Mind knows things by the second and third kind of cognition, the greater the part of it that remains (by 5p23 and 5p29), and consequently (by 5p37), the greater the part of it that is not touched by affects which are contrary to our nature, i.e., which (by 4p30) are evil. Therefore, the more the Mind understands things by the second and third kind of cognition, the greater the part of it that remains unharmed . . . . (5p38d)



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From this we understand what I touched on in 4p39s, and what I promised to explain in this Part, viz. that death is less harmful to us, the greater the Mind’s clear and distinct cognition, and hence, the more the Mind loves God. Next, because (by 5p27) the highest satisfaction there can be arises from the third kind of cognition, it follows from this that the human Mind can be of such a nature that the part of the Mind which we have shown perishes with the body (see 5p21) is of no moment in relation to what remains. But I shall soon treat this more fully. (5p38s) 19. Bennett (1984, 358–​9) makes this point clearly. 20. Bennett (1984, 359–​63) and Allison (1990, 170–​72) raise this objection. 21. See 2a3 and 2p11 on the primary role of ideas in constituting the mind. 22. Ethics 2p37 states that “What is common to all things and is equally in the part and in the whole, does not constitute the essence of any singular thing.” As Antony Dugdale has pointed out to me, this raises the question of whether formal essences, even when conceived as infinite modes, can themselves be “common to all things and equally in the part and in the whole.” But there is no requirement that all infinite modes be “common to all things” in the sense employed in Spinoza’s account of the second kind of cognition. For although infinite modes are omnipresent, those that constitute the formal essences of singular things are not parts of or “common to” the actual existences of other singular things in addition to those whose formal essences they are. 23. A very helpful account of the interrelation between the second and third kinds of cognition has recently been provided in Malinowski-​Charles 2003. 24. The complete scholium reads: Because human Bodies are capable of a great many things, there is no doubt but what they can be of such a nature that they are related to Minds which have a great cognition of themselves and of God, and of which the greatest, or chief, part is eternal. So they hardly fear death. But for a clearer understanding of these things, we must note here that we live in continuous change, and that as we change for the better or worse, we are called happy or unhappy. For he who has passed from being an infant or child to being a corpse is called unhappy. On the other hand, if we pass the whole length of our life with a sound Mind in a sound Body, that is considered happiness. And really, he who, like an infant or child, has a Body capable of very few things, and very heavily dependent on external causes, has a Mind which considered solely in itself is conscious of almost nothing of itself, or of God, or of things. On the other hand, he who has a Body capable of a great many things, has a Mind which considered only in itself is very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things. In this life, then, we strive especially that the infant’s Body may change (as much as its nature allows and assists) into another, capable of a great

260 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking many things and related to a Mind very much conscious of itself, of God, and of things. We strive, that is, that whatever is related to its memory or imagination is of hardly any moment in relation to the intellect (as I have already said in 5p38s). (5p39s) 25. Thus, for example, he writes at 4p37s1, “Indeed, because the right of each one is defined by his virtue, or power, men have a far greater right against the lower animals than they have against men.” 26. See Garber 2005, which draws attention to this difficulty and concludes that Spinoza is discussing two different kinds of eternity. It is significant in this regard that 5p23d cites 2p13 to show that “the idea expressing the essence” of the human body “pertains to the essence of the human mind.” But the scholium to 2p13 notes that “the things we have shown so far are completely general and do not pertain more to man than to other individuals, all of which, though in different degrees, are nevertheless animate.” 27. Similarly, each human being, in conceiving of thought, has an adequate idea of the essence of God insofar as God is thinking. 28. An idea that did so would be “the idea of God” described in 2p3 and 2p4. 29. “Power of thinking” is a fairly common term in Spinoza’s writings, including the Ethics (2p1s, 2p7c, 2p21s, 2p49s, 3p2s, 3p11, 3p12d, 3p15d, and 3p28d). It designates “power of action” insofar as that power is expressed under the attribute of thought. Power of thinking is thus the power by which ideas produce other ideas. 30. I argue for this conclusion in Garrett 2008. One key piece of evidence is the strikingly parallel treatments of degrees of “excellence and reality” (which Spinoza regards as equivalent to power) at 2p13s and “consciousness” in 5p39s. 31. For more discussion of the ways in which singular things constitute finite approximations to a genuine substance, see Garrett 2002. 32. Singular things that less closely approximate a substance also have less of a genuine essence; and indeed, Spinoza writes of some things as having “more essence” than others (e.g., Short Treatise 1.2 and 2.26 and Ep19). See Garrett 2002 for further discussion of degrees of essence. 33. As 5p31s, 5p39s, and 5p42s all indicate, Spinoza thinks of intellectual progress in terms of achieving consciousness “of oneself, and of God, and of things.” The order in which these objects are listed is not coincidental: because all intellection requires conceiving the essence of the human body, one becomes conscious of God and other things through becoming conscious of oneself; and because all adequate cognition of other things requires an adequate idea of the essence of God, one becomes conscious of other things through becoming conscious of God. 34. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which the complete idea of the essence of the human body may be said to be already potentially in the human mind—​indeed, to constitute a kind of human potential intellect. Descartes famously held that



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certain ideas are already in the intellect innately even when they have not yet been consciously thought, on the ground that their content cannot be derived from the senses but only elicited from the intellect by thinking. Spinoza’s view is in many ways similar, for he regularly implies (5p23d together with 5p38d and 5p38s) that the idea of the essence of the human body is already a part of the human mind, and he maintains that the various adequate ideas that this idea would involve can be more consciously actualized in the actually existing human mind through a sufficient exertion of power of thinking. 35. Ethics 5p40s states that “our Mind, insofar as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking, which is determined by another eternal mode of thinking, and this again by another, and so on, to infinity; so that together, they all constitute God’s eternal and infinite intellect.” I take this to mean that the human mind—​like the “mind” of any singular thing—​is a mode of thinking that is eternal just insofar as it understands, although the inclusion of this mode of thinking in the mind of an actually existing thing depends on the infinite chain of thinking causes producing the actually existing idea of that actually existing thing. The understanding contained in the ideas of all modes and their causes taken together constitutes the infinite intellect of God, as described in 2p4d, 2p11c, and 2p43s. 36. I am grateful to Antony Dugdale, Charles Jarrett, Michael Della Rocca, Lee Rice, Alison Simmons, and Jonny Cottrell for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

Bibliography Allison, Henry E. 1987. Benedictus de Spinoza:  An Introduction. Revised ed., New Haven: Yale University Press. Allison, Henry E. 1990. “Spinoza’s Doctrine of the Eternity of the Mind: Comments on Matson,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-​ François Moreau, 96–​101. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, Indianapolis: Hackett. Bennett, Jonathan.1996. “Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett, 61–​ 88. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Curley, Edwin. 1969. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Curley, Edwin. 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method, Princeton:  Princeton University Press. Delahunty, R. J. 1985. Spinoza, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem in Spinoza, New York: Oxford University Press. Donagan, Alan. 1973. “Spinoza’s Proof of Immortality,” in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by, Marjorie Grene, 241–​258. New York: Anchor.

262 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking Donagan, Alan. 1988. Spinoza, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988. Garrett, Don. 1991. “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in God and Nature:  Spinoza’s Metaphysics, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel, 191–​218. Leiden: Brill. Garrett, Don. 1999. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, edited by John Biro and Olli Koistinen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. _​_​_​_​_​2008. “Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination,” in Interpreting Spinoza:  Critical Essays, edited by Charles Huenemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Hardin, C. L. 1978. “Spinoza on Immortality and Time,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, edited by Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro, 129–​138. Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press. Locke, John. 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matheron, Alexandre. 1969. Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza, Paris:  Les Editions de Minuit. Matson, Wallace. 1990. “Body Essence and Mind Eternity in Spinoza,” in Spinoza:  Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-​ François Moreau, 82–​95. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1972. Spinoza Opera, translated by Carl Gebhardt, 4 volumes. Heidelberg: Carl Winters. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, volume 1, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

10

The Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza’s Logic of the Attributes

Leibniz’s Law is the principle that numerical identity is co-​extensive with qualitative identity—​that is, that any x and y are the very same individual thing if and only if x and y share all their properties in common:

( x )( y ) ( x = y ) ≡ (F)(Fx ≡ Fy )

[Leibniz’s Law ]

As a biconditional principle, it is equivalent to the conjunction of two conditionals. One of these, the Identity of Indiscernibles is the principle that qualitative identity implies numerical identity or, in other words, that if x and y have exactly the same properties, then they are the very same individual thing:

( x )( y ) (F)(Fx ≡ Fy ) ⊃ ( x = y )

[Identity of Indiscernibles]

The Identity of Indiscernibles, championed by Leibniz, is controversial, at least on most construals of the range of its quantifier over properties.1 The other conditional, the Indiscernibility of Identicals, is the principle that numerical identity implies qualitative identity or, in other words, that if x and y are the very same individual thing, then they have exactly the same properties:

( x )( y ) ( x

= y ) ⊃ (F) (Fx ≡ Fy )

[Indiscernibility of Identicals]

Unlike the Identity of Indiscernibles, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is generally considered uncontroversial and, indeed, self-​evident. After all, it may be asked, if

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a thing does in fact have a property, how could what is that very thing also fail to have that very property? Among its many philosophical applications, the Indiscernibility of Identicals has often been employed to argue from Mind-​Body Property Difference: The mind and the body of a human being differ in their properties. to the denial of Mind-​Body Identity: The mind and the body of a human being are numerically identical. Descartes, for example, offers such an argument in his Sixth Meditation, based on the (alleged) indivisibility of the mind and contrasting divisibility of the body. Conversely, the Indiscernibility of Identicals has also often been employed to argue from Mind-​Body Identity to the denial of Mind-​Body Property Difference. Arguments in both directions—​and their correlates concerning the relation between mind and brain—​have featured prominently in arguments about human immortality. The Transitivity of Identity is the principle that whatever is numerically identical with a given thing is also numerically identical with whatever that thing is numerically identical with:

( x )( y )(z){( x = y ) & ( y = z) ⊃ ( x = z)}

[ Transitivity of Identity ]

Like the Indiscernibility of Identicals, the Transitivity of Identity is generally considered uncontroversial and self-​evident.2 Indeed, numerical identity is often cited as the paradigm of a relation for which transitivity holds. Despite their seeming self-​evidence, however, Spinoza appears to reject both the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity. Given their fundamentality to our own understanding of identity, we cannot fully understand Spinoza’s philosophy unless we understand how this is possible. The first main part of this chapter begins by showing from Spinoza’s texts where and how he appears to reject the Indiscernibility of Identity. It then examines and argues against two proposals for resolving the puzzle that this apparent rejection creates, one that appeals to so-​called intensional properties and one that interprets Spinoza’s key phrase “one and the same” (“una, eademque”) as not referring to numerical identity. Finally, it describes and defends a third proposal for resolving the puzzle, one that appeals to two Spinozistic doctrines that I call “Strong Ontological Pluralism



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of Attributes” and the “Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth,” respectively. The second main part of this chapter begins by showing from Spinoza’s texts where and how he appears to reject the Transitivity of Identity. It then examines and argues against two possible proposals for resolving the puzzle that this apparent rejection creates, again one that appeals to so-​called intensional properties and one that interprets Spinoza’s key phrase “one and the same” as not referring to numerical identity. Finally, it describes and defends a third proposal for resolving the puzzle, one that again appeals to the two Spinozistic doctrines of Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes and the Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth. This chapter concludes with some general observations about Spinoza’s attitudes toward existence and logic.

I.  The Indiscernibility of Identicals A. Spinoza’s Apparent Rejection of the Indiscernibility of Identicals In order to understand how Spinoza appears to reject the Indiscernibility of Identicals, it is necessary first to understand the most basic terms of his ontology, which are defined near the beginning of Ethics Part I.  (N.B.:  Here and throughout this chapter “or” in italics always translates “sive,” which carries the meaning “in other words,” rather than the meaning of logical disjunction.) The key definitions are: E1d3 By substance I understand what is in itself and conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed. E1d4 By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence. E1d5 By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived. E1d6 By God I  understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.3 “Affections,” in Spinoza’s usage, corresponds most closely to “property”4 as the latter term has been employed in our explication of Leibniz’s Law.5 A “mode” of substance is so called because it constitutes a “way” in which the existence of the substance is expressed. Although modes are, by definition, affections of a substance, some modes of substance are also what Spinoza calls “singular things” and/​or “individuals” in their own right, and these (at least6) can have “affections”

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of their own. Crucially for Spinoza, any substance or mode must be conceived through at least one attribute. Yet this crucial role of attributes notwithstanding, substances and modes are—​in a sense soon to be explored—​the only items formally contained within Spinoza’s ontology: E1p4d Whatever is, is either in itself or in another (by E1a1), i.e. (by E1d3 and E1d5), outside the intellect there is nothing except substances and their affections. Furthermore, he goes on to argue, there is actually (and, indeed, necessarily) only one substance, the absolutely infinite substance God: E1p14  Except God, no substance can be or be conceived. Of God’s infinitely many attributes, Spinoza holds that we know only two: Extension and Thought. The extended substance and the thinking substance are thus one and the same substance. He also holds that a mode of extension and the idea of that mode—​which, as an idea, is a mode of thought—​are one and the same thing: E2p7s The thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. So also a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing [una, eademque est res], but expressed in two ways . . . . [Substance-​Substance Identity, Mode-​Mode Identity]. The human body (that is, any particular human being’s body) is a singular thing that is a finite mode of extension, and Spinoza identifies the idea of that mode, also a singular thing, as the human mind (that is, the mind of that particular human being): E2p13 The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body, or a certain mode of Extension that actually exists, and nothing else. Hence, he draws the more specific conclusion about their identity: E2p21s This proposition is understood far more clearly from what is said in E2p7s; for there we have shown that the idea of the Body and the Body, i.e. (by E2p13) the Mind and the Body, are one and the same Individual, which is conceived now under the attribute of Thought, now under the attribute of Extension.



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This conclusion is reiterated in the scholium to E3p2: E3p2s These things are more clearly understood from what is said in E2p7s, viz., that the Mind and the Body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of Thought, now under the attribute of Extension. Spinoza thus seems clearly committed to Mind-​Body Identity. At the same time, however, Spinoza seems equally to commit himself to Mind-​Body Property Difference. From the definitions of “substance” (E1d3) and “attribute” (E1d4), he infers what Michael Della Rocca7 has usefully called the “Conceptual Barrier” between attributes: E1p10  Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself. [Conceptual Barrier] Spinoza’s so-​called Causal Axiom states: E1a4 The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause. [Causal Axiom] From the Conceptual Barrier and the Causal Axiom, Spinoza infers what Della Rocca calls the “Causal Barrier” between attributes: E2p6 The modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other attribute. [Causal Barrier] From the Causal Barrier, in turn, Spinoza concludes: E3p2 The Body cannot determine the Mind to thinking, and the Mind cannot determine the Body to motion, to rest, or to anything else (if there is anything else). [Mind-​Body Non-​interaction] He elaborates in the Preface to Part V: E5pref [S]‌ince there is no common measure between the will and motion, there is also no comparison between the power, or forces, of the Mind and those of the Body. (G II 280/​14–​16)

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In the paradigm cases, the willing or other affection of thinking that a mind determines or causes is its own, and the motion or other affection of extension that a body determines or causes is its own. Put simply, then, Spinoza seems committed to all of the following propositions (and many like them): H1 The human mind is (numerically) identical with the human body. [Mind-​Body Identity] H2 The human mind wills. H3 The human body moves. H4 The human mind does not move. H5 The human body does not will. The conjunction of these propositions, however, seems to violate the Indiscernibility of Identicals.

B.  Two Solutions Considered The two recent commentators who have confronted this puzzle most directly and fully are Michael Della Rocca and Colin Marshall.8 Della Rocca seeks to resolve the puzzle by denying, in effect, that H1–​H5 (and propositions like them) together violate the Indiscernibility of Identicals as it is commonly understood. Marshall seeks to resolve the puzzle by denying, in effect, that Spinoza is really committed to the conjunction of H1–​H5; specifically, he denies that Spinoza accepts H1, Mind-​ Body Identity. Intensional Properties. Della Rocca’s strategy for resolving the puzzle has three main elements. First, he appeals to the common semantic distinction between referentially opaque (“intensional”) and referentially transparent (“extensional”) linguistic contexts in order to define a corresponding metaphysical distinction between “intensional” and “extensional” properties: A context of the form “is the G” (or “is a G”) is referentially transparent if and only if an inference of the following form is valid: a is the G. a = b Therefore, b is the G. A context is referentially opaque if the truth value of the sentence resulting from completing the context does depend on which particular term is used to refer to that object. (Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem, 122)



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As I will use the term, a property is an intensional property if (and only if) contexts involving the attribution of that property to objects are opaque. I will call all other properties extensional9 properties. (128–​129) Hence, by definition, an “intensional property” is a property attributed by a context in which substitution of co-​referring terms does not always preserve truth. Second, Della Rocca characterizes Leibniz’s Law, and hence the Indiscernibility of Identicals in particular, as restricted to extensional (i.e., non-​ intensional) properties: Since intensional properties are not covered by Leibniz’s Law, we can formulate a version of Leibniz’s Law that is exceptionless: a = b if a and b have all their extensional properties in common. (130–​131) Third, Della Rocca cites Spinoza’s repeated descriptions of “one and the same thing” as “now extended” or “now thinking” depending on how it is “expressed” or “conceived” (E2p7s, E2p21s, E3p2s)10 to argue that “Spinoza regards the properties of being extended and being thinking as intensional,” along with “all the particular properties that presuppose one or the other of these general properties” (132). Because moving and willing are intensional properties by this standard, they fall outside the scope of the proposed version of Leibniz’s Law and hence do not violate it. As Della Rocca often puts it, whether a thing has one of these properties or not “depends on how the thing is described.” As just outlined, however, this strategy for reconciling H1–​ H5 with the Indiscernibility of Identicals is subject to three serious and closely related objections. First, while there are certainly referentially opaque contexts, it may be denied that there is any such thing as an intensional property. Commenting on Della Rocca, Colin Marshall expresses this thought as follows: If we step back for a moment and consult our intuitions, we should see that the very notion of intensional properties makes no sense: whether or not some thing has a property is just a fact about that very thing, and has no dependence on how it can be described (with the trivial exception of properties such as “being described as a mind”). (“The Mind and the Body,” 907) To be sure, it may initially seem that “being believed by Lois Lane to be strong”—​to take a paradigm example of the kind Della Rocca has in mind—​is a property that Superman has and Clark Kent lacks, despite the (secret) numerical identity of Superman and Clark Kent. Reflection suggests, however, that what we really have is not one “intensional” property but instead only an

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ambiguity between two different and fully “extensional” relational properties involving different “guises” (e.g., concepts or descriptions):  being believed-​to-​be-​ strong-​by-​Lois-​Lane-​under-​the-​guise-​“Superman” and being-​believed-​to-​be-​strong-​by-​ Lois-​Lane-​under-​the-​guise-​“Clark-​Kent.” It is equally true of the one individual, Superman aka Clark Kent, no matter what we may call him, that he has the former property but lacks the latter. (That individual also has, by virtue of having the former, a more general   “extensional” relational property of being believed-​to-​be-​strong-​by-​Lois-​Lane-​under-​some-​guise-​or-​other.) Second, even if we grant a new metaphysical category of “intensional” properties within our ontology, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is generally understood as applying to all genuine properties in the ontology; to allow that it fails to apply to some genuine properties in the ontology is therefore not to defend the principle as it is generally understood, but to reject it. Third, to define the class of properties to be excluded from the scope of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in terms of opaque contexts—​i.e., contexts in which substituting different terms referring to the same individual does not guarantee preservation of truth value—​ is to trivialize the principle:  in effect, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is being said to govern all properties except those (whatever they may be) that provide exceptions to it. To avoid this unhappy and trivially uninformative result, we need an independent explanation of how and why certain contexts, of an independently specifiable character, are opaque even though they attribute genuine properties. Put another way, we require an account of how certain genuine properties can really be possessed by things and yet be such that a thing may truly be said both to have the property and not to have it, depending only on how the thing is conceived or described. As Marshall notes, Della Rocca seeks such an account in the previously mentioned Conceptual Barrier (E1p10), but ultimately declares the rationale for that principle to be “inadequately defended” (150). So far, then, we lack a full understanding of how a substantive restriction on the Indiscernibility of Identicals of the kind needed to reconcile H1–​H5 could be well motivated. Non-​identity. Whereas Della Rocca’s approach seeks to restrict the scope of the Indiscernibility of Identicals on Spinoza’s behalf, Marshall’s seeks, in contrast, to deny Spinoza’s commitment to H1, Mind-​Body Identity.11 For convenience, Marshall refers to Spinoza’s various statements that the human mind and the human body are “one and the same thing” (“una, eademque res,” E2p7s and E3p2s) or “one and the same individual” (“una, eademque Individuum,” E2p21s) as “the O-​claims,” and he argues that Spinoza does not intend these passages to express numerical identity between a mind and a body. Instead, he proposes that they be interpreted as expressing at least one, and preferably both, of two alternative meanings for “one and the same”:12



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M1 Two things are both instances of some general type (alternatively:  they both instantiate some property). Example: “The book I was carrying and the book she was carrying were one and the same book.” M2 Two things are distinct constituents of some one thing that is manifesting itself in two locations [or location analogs]. Example:  “St Frances Drive and Riverside Drive are one and the same road (Highway 285), as you will see in Santa Fe and Española.” Spinoza’s previously noted statement that modes of extension and the ideas of them are “one and the same thing” occurs in a scholium to a proposition stating what is often called Spinoza’s “Parallelism”: E2p7  The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. [Parallelism] As Marshall emphasizes, picking up on an important point of Della Rocca’s, Parallelism entails that each mode of extension and the mode of thought that is the idea of it—​including a human body and the corresponding human mind—​will share many distinctive “attribute-​neutral” functional or relational properties (e.g., “having exactly five immediate causes and fifteen immediate effects”) resulting from their occupying parallel positions in parallel causal orders. Furthermore, this remains equally true whether we suppose a numerical identity between the mode of extension and the mode of thought or not. In saying that a human mind and a human body are “one and the same” in the sense of M1, Marshall suggests, Spinoza may be saying not that they are numerically identical, but rather that they are alike in having a particular set of attribute-​neutral functional or relational properties. Marshall further suggests, however, that this reading of the O-​claims should be combined with one that employs M2, so that a human mind and the corresponding human body would at the same time—​and perhaps even in consequence of their shared attribute-​neutral functional or relational properties—​be non-​identical parts of a unified cross-​attribute whole that is a complete human being. In defense of this interpretation, he notes that it would bring Spinoza’s view of human beings closer to that of Descartes: for although Descartes would reject Spinoza’s Mind-​Body Non-​interaction and his Parallelism, he also regards a human being as a compound or union of a human mind and a human body. Marshall describes this congruence as a “major advantage” of his non-​identity interpretation of Spinoza (913). Given that Spinoza expresses a negative view of Descartes’s treatment of the mind–​body relation,13 it is not clear that such congruence really would be an interpretive advantage, rather than a substantial disadvantage. Even if it were an

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advantage, however, the interpretation is subject to four serious objections. First, the key Latin term of the O-​claims—​“una, eademque” (“one and the same”)—​seems, like its English equivalent, quite explicitly to express numerical identity rather some other relation. Thus, even the provided (English-​language) illustrations of M1 and M2 seem rather strained. Concerning the illustration of M1, the phrase “one book” seems to count as one book type—​a type, such as the novel Jane Eyre, that is “carried” in virtue of the carrying of its copies or tokens—​and not the two copies or tokens themselves, as M1 requires. Concerning the illustration of M2, if St Frances Drive and Riverside Drive are only constituents of Highway 285, as M2 requires, then they are much more aptly described as different stretches of one and the same road, rather than as being one and the same road themselves—​as would be apt if “St Francis Drive” and “Riverside Drive” were both simply names, predominantly used in different locales, for all of Highway 285. Second, all of Spinoza’s other uses of “una, eademque” and its grammatical variants in the Ethics (e.g., as applied to “God’s essence and existence” at E1p20; to “body” at E2p13PhysDigA1; to “attribute” at E2p13s and E2p31s; to “law” at E3pref | G II 138/​13–​18; to “object” at E3p17s, E3p51d, and E4p33d; to “man” at E3p51s; to a “thing” [i.e., music] at E4pref | G II 208/​8–​14; to “emotion” at E4p44s; to “action” at E4p59d2s; and to “appetite” at E5p4s) are most naturally interpreted as referring to numerical identity; none of them naturally suggests a reading in accordance with either M1 or M2.14 Third, although an interpretation of the O-​claims as stating that the human mind and body are parts that together compose a whole human being would certainly put Spinoza’s view closer to Descartes’s, it would do so only by contradicting Descartes’s own primary usage of the term “one and the same” (“una et eadem”). For he uses this term precisely to express numerical identity in contrast with numerical plurality, and the contexts in which he does so specifically include discussions of the relation between the mind and the body. For example, in his Replies to the second set of Objections to the Meditations he writes: 2nd Replies Whether what we call mind and body are one and the same [una et eadem] substance, or two different substances, is a question which will have to be dealt with later on. (AT VII 161–​162 | CSM II 114) He then continues in his Replies to the third set of Objections: 3rd Replies Once we have formed two distinct concepts of these two substances, it is easy, on the basis of what is said in the Sixth Meditation, to establish whether they are one and the same or different. (AT VII 176 | CSM II 124) His answer, of course, is that they are two different substances, and so not one and the same. In his Replies to the sixth set of Objections, Descartes does concede a



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distinction between “unity of nature” as numerical identity and “unity of composition” as being distinct parts of a composite whole (AT VII 423–​434 | CSM II 285–​286), but it is clear in context that unity of nature is his own preferred meaning for “una et eadem.” It seems unlikely that Spinoza would expect his readers to understand him as agreeing with Descartes about the composition of human beings by adopting the very description of the relation between mind and body that Descartes treats primarily as expressing its denial. Finally, Spinoza asserts in a 1665 letter to Henry Oldenburg: Concerning whole and parts, I consider things as parts of some whole, to the extent that the nature of the one adapts itself to that of the other so that they agree with one another as far as possible. (Letter 32 | G IV 170a/​15–​18) In all of the examples he provides—​which concern particles composing fluids such as blood—​this adaptation is a process of causal interaction. By Mind-​Body Non-​interaction, however, minds and bodies could not compose a whole in this way. If Spinoza recognizes a kind of “adaptation” of parts to one another that does not involve causal interaction, he does not take this or any other opportunity to mention it.15

C.  A Better Solution The textual evidence that Spinoza accepts H1, Mind-​Body Identity, is sufficiently strong to warrant close reexamination of his attitude toward the Indiscernibility of Identicals. In a footnote, however, Marshall remarks: Some interpreters have been inclined to view Spinoza as accepting some fundamentally different logical or metaphysical principles than we do today, of a sort that could lead him to reject [the Indiscernibility of Identicals]. I know of no way of decisively ruling out such an interpretation, but since an approach of this kind can offer an easy “solution” to any apparent inconsistency an interpreter might face, it would require a great deal of independent motivation. (898) While this caution is entirely reasonable, such independent motivation is available in the conjunction of two of Spinoza’s most distinctive doctrines, one concerning ontology and one concerning truth.16 Let us examine these doctrines in order. Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes. It is now relatively commonplace to assume that, although many different kinds of things exist, each with many different properties, there is only one fundamental manner or kind of existence, reality, or being that any existing thing can have. Let us call this view “Ontological Monism” and the contrasting view that there is more than one fundamental

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manner or kind of existence, reality, or being “Ontological Pluralism”; for the sake of convenience, let us henceforth use simply “manner of existence” in place of “manner or kind of existence, reality, or being.” Even among those who might be sympathetic to Ontological Pluralism—​for example, on the grounds that fundamentally different manners of existence are required for concreta and abstracta, or for particulars and universals, or for actualia and possibilia, or for the divine and the mundane—​it remains common to assume that no one thing has more than one manner of existence. From his close study of Descartes, however, Spinoza was familiar with a theory according to which the same things can have at least two fundamental manners of existence: formal and objective. Although the distinction between formal and objective existence, being, or reality has deep scholastic roots,17 most contemporary readers will know it best from Descartes’s use of it as the linchpin of his demonstrations of God’s existence in his Third Meditation (described also in his Principles of Philosophy, Part I, Proposition 17). Spinoza employs the distinction regularly—​not merely in his exposition of Descartes in Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy (beginning with DPP 1d3), but throughout his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Ethics as well. In Descartes’s texts, the distinction seems at least in part to explain how intentionality18—​that is, the feature of thought whereby it is of or about something—​ is possible. As Descartes describes it, an idea is about a thing by “containing” its being in a certain way, and this containment is made possible by the fact that a thing can have two fundamental manners of existence rather than just one. The formal being of a thing is its existence outside of ideas of it; hence, it is what we would normally think of as its “real” existence, or its existence simpliciter. The objective being of a thing is its genuine—​but of course not formal—​existence “in” an idea that is (thereby) of or about it. This is evidently the doctrine that Descartes is expressing when he writes in his Replies to the first set of Objections to the Meditations (using “in the intellect” as equivalent to “in an idea of the intellect”): “[O]‌bjective being” simply means being in the intellect in the way in which objects are normally there. . . . By this I mean that the idea of the sun is the sun itself existing in the intellect—​not of course formally existing, as it does in the heavens, but objectively existing, i.e. in the way in which objects normally are in the intellect. Now this mode of being is of course much less perfect than that possessed by things which exist outside the intellect. But . . . it is not therefore simply nothing. (AT VII 102–​103 | CSM II 74–​75; emphasis added) Spinoza invokes the formal/​ objective distinction at important junctures throughout the Ethics. For example, he employs it in a corollary to E2p7 to elucidate



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the Parallelism of that proposition and to prepare the way for the Mode-​Mode Identity asserted subsequently in the corollary to that proposition: E2p7c From this it follows that God’s [NS: actual]19 power of thinking is equal to his actual power of acting. I.e., whatever follows formally from God’s infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea in the same order and with the same connection. One might well wonder how, for Descartes, the objective being of something that is formally both extended and a substance, such as the sun, could be contained in something that is formally unextended and a mere mode of a thinking substance, such as an idea is. However, Descartes offers no further explanation of how ideas, as modes of thought inhering in a thinking substance, are able to contain the objective being of other things, whatever those things might be; he treats it simply as a feature of the nature of ideas and the thinking substances in which they inhere.20 Spinoza, in contrast, introduces a radical explanatory simplification. For him, an idea is not a mode of a thinking substance that merely contains the objective being of the thing it is primarily of or about; rather, each idea itself, as a mode of thought, simply is the objective being of the thing that it is about and that is thereby its object. (See, for example, his reference at E2p8c to a thing’s “objective being, or idea”; see also E2p48s.) Furthermore, the idea of a singular thing that is a mode of extension is at the same time the “mind” of that singular thing. (For reference to the “minds of other things” generally, see E3p1d.) Thus, just as the human body is not itself an extended substance but rather a mode of the one extended substance for Spinoza, so too the human mind is not itself a substance, but is simply a mode of thought that is both the idea and the objective being of the human body. Spinoza intends the theory of sense perception and imagination that he develops in Ethics Part II to explain how what is fundamentally the idea of one’s own human body—​that is, the idea that has that human body as its object—​can also serve, secondarily, to represent to itself the external bodies that produce effects in that body. The crucial point for present purposes, however, is that Spinoza appropriates the Ontological Pluralism that is evidently already present in Descartes’s distinction between the formal and objective being of things, and applies it more directly to the relationship between each mode of extension and the mode of thought that, by Parallelism, corresponds to it. Furthermore, whereas Descartes asserts only that one and the same thing can have both of these two manners of existence, Spinoza holds that everything necessarily does have both formal and objective being. The doctrine that everything has multiple manners of existence we may call “Strong Ontological Pluralism.” Spinoza’s radical development of Descartes’s Ontological Pluralism of formal and objective being to include all modes of extension and their corresponding

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modes of thought in Mode-​Mode Identity readily suggests that, for Spinoza, the attributes of Extension and Thought are themselves fundamental manners of existence. This doctrine might also be expressed by saying that the attributes of Extension and Thought are “domains of existence” or “ways of existing.”21 The latter locution, however, risks serious confusion resulting from the fact that modus is both the common Latin term for “way” and Spinoza’s technical term for “mode.” In fact, despite the danger, Spinoza notoriously (and perhaps inadvertently) uses modus in precisely this nontechnical manner in E2p7s when he describes something that is both a mode of extension and a mode of thought as thereby existing and being conceived in different “ways,” in the very same sentence in which he twice uses modus technically as well: E2p7s [A]‌mode of Extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways [modis].22 Were it not for this danger, we might express the difference between modes and attributes by saying that whereas modes are ways of being “affected” or “modified,” attributes are ways of being, full stop. If Extension and Thought each constitute a different fundamental manner of existence, however, then it is natural to suppose that each of the infinitely many attributes that Spinoza posits does so as well, and this seems confirmed by his claim that “each of [God’s] attributes expresses existence” (E1p20d). Moreover, if each attribute constitutes a different manner of existence, then it is natural to infer, as Spinoza does, that greater total reality is correlated with a greater number of attributes: E1p9 The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it. (also stated in Letter 9 | G IV 45/​20–​21) Indeed, the demonstration of this proposition states simply that “this is evident from E1d4” (i.e., from the very definition of “attribute” as “what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence”). We may call Spinoza’s doctrine that infinitely many attributes each constitute a fundamentally different manner of existence that everything has his “Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes.” Four crucial points about Spinoza’s Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes deserve to be emphasized. First, although the doctrine is a natural development from the Strong Ontological Pluralism of formal and objective being that he adapts from Descartes, and although the two kinds of Strong Ontological Pluralism overlap in the central case of modes of extension (such as human bodies) and the modes of thought having those modes of extension as their objects (such as



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human minds), the two doctrines are not the same; and Spinoza retains both, even if that of the attributes is in some ways the more significant. On one hand, as Yitzhak Melamed emphasizes (Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 139–​152), every mode of substance exists in each of the infinitely many attributes (1p16), but the identity of modes across two different attributes, when neither of these is Thought, cannot be an instance of the duality of formal and objective being. On the other hand, as Melamed also highlights, the duality of formal and objective being is at the same time reproduced hierarchically within the single attribute of Thought without crossing attribute lines. For ideas are themselves things having their own formal being, and ideas of ideas—​which make thought about ideas possible—​are the objective being of the ideas that are their objects (TIE 34; E2pp21–​29). Moreover, those ideas of ideas are themselves things with their own formal being, and ideas of ideas of ideas of ideas—​which make thought about ideas of ideas possible—​ are the objective being of those ideas of ideas that are their objects; and so on ad infinitum. Second, although we have described various attributes as “manners of existence,” they are not species of existence for Spinoza, with existence as a genus that is conceptually prior to them. For if they were, that would violate Spinoza’s understanding of the requirement of the Conceptual Barrier (1p10) that each attribute be conceived entirely through itself, without requiring the conception of anything else. “Existence” is an attribute-​neutral term, but it can only be understood by understanding one or more particular attributes—​such as Extension or Thought—​that are not explicitly mentioned. In this sense, the concept of existence is, we might say, “disjunctively derivative” from the concepts of particular attributes. A  reference to “unknown attributes,” in turn, can be understood only by positing a kind of functional isomorphism to one or more known attributes. Similarly, such attribute-​neutral terms as “cause,” “power,” “essence,” and “inherence” or “being in” (along with “substance,” “attribute,” and “mode” themselves) signify disjunctively derivative concepts that can only be understood by understanding one or more attributes that are not explicitly mentioned. Third, attributes should not be thought of as mere “properties” or “qualities” of things. Whereas properties or qualities as we think of them correspond most closely to what Spinoza calls “affections,” each attribute is instead for Spinoza a different manner of existence that every affection of a thing has or expresses. Spinoza is not an ordinary “property dualist,” holding simply that human beings have both some physical properties and some mental properties; rather, his Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes holds that every affection of every thing exists in infinitely many different manners, including a physical manner (in Extension) and a mental manner (in Thought). Fourth and finally, as manners of existence, attributes are not elements in Spinoza’s ontology but rather structures of his ontology. It is for this reason

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that he writes in E1p4d (quoted previously):  “Outside the intellect there is nothing except substances and their affections” (emphasis added). Just as Descartes would consider formal being and objective being not as themselves substances or modes, but rather as manners in which substances and modes exist, so too Spinoza considers attributes not as substance or modes but rather as manners in which—​or “through which” or “under which,” as we might also say—​substance and modes exist. It must therefore be emphasized that although everything (in the ontology, whether substance or mode) exists in infinitely many attributes and thereby has infinitely many manners of existence, an attribute does not itself exist in infinitely many attributes and thereby have infinitely many manners of existence. Moreover, whereas being-​believed-​ by-​Lois-​Lane-​to-​be-​strong is standing in a certain relation to a guise (e.g., a concept or a linguistic description) that is itself something within the ontology, existing in (or through or under) an attribute is itself non-​relational—​that is, it is not itself a relation to anything else within the ontology. Similarly, whereas being-​believed-​by-​Lois-​Lane-​to-​be-​strong under two different guises (such as that of Superman and that of Clark Kent) is being related to two different things in the ontology, having a property or affection in (or through or under) two or more different attributes is not being related to two different entities within the ontology; rather, it involves having a property or affection in (or through or under) two or more distinctive manners of existence that provide structure to the ontology. If Spinoza’s Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes is correct, then each thing has each of its properties (i.e., affections or modes) in multiple—​indeed, infinitely many—​manners of existence. Thus far, then, it seems that Marshall’s previously quoted objection to Della Rocca is vindicated: “Whether or not some thing has a property is just a fact about that very thing, and has no dependence on how it can be described.” Importantly, however, “having a property,” like Spinoza’s own term “being affected,” is itself an attribute-​neutral term, and so signifies a disjunctively derivative concept that can only be understood through one or more particular attributes that are not explicitly mentioned. Because Spinoza often expresses the concept of having a property by saying that an affection is “in” a thing, let us for convenience call this the concept of “inherence.” The fact that the concept of inherence, too, is disjunctively derivative for Spinoza can—​and in the context of his conception of truth does—​have important consequences for the truth or falsity of predications. The Adequate-​ Idea Conception of Truth. The fundamental bearers of truth or falsity for Spinoza are ideas themselves; the truth or falsity of statements or assertions, in contrast, derives from the truth or falsity of ideas. In Part II of the Ethics, Spinoza defines “adequacy” as an intrinsic feature possessed by all and only true ideas:



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E2d4 By adequate idea I understand an idea which, insofar as it is considered in itself, without relation to an object [objectum] has all the properties, or intrinsic denominations of a true idea. This definition implies that there are “intrinsic” features or “denominations” that are possessed by all and only true ideas.23 As the rest of the Ethics makes clear, these intrinsic denominations include “clarity and distinctness,” which can only be achieved, as the Causal Axiom (E1a4) suggests, through an understanding of the causes of what is represented that is sufficient to show that it genuinely could be and is the case. Spinoza thus has very high standards for the truth of ideas, going far beyond merely representing, in some fashion or other, that a subject has some property that it does it fact have. Accordingly, he has similarly high standards for the truth of the statements that express ideas. His standards for both are described most explicitly in his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect: TIE 69 As for what constitutes the form of the true, it is certain that a true thought is distinguished from a false one not only by an extrinsic, but chiefly by an intrinsic denomination. . . . [I]‌f someone says, for example, that Peter exists, and nevertheless does not know that Peter exists, that thought, in respect to him is false, or, if you prefer, is not true, even though Peter really exists. Nor is this statement, Peter exists, true, except in respect to him who knows certainly that Peter exists. Thus, the sentence or statement, “Peter exists,” may express a true idea for one person and a false idea for another, according to Spinoza, and should strictly be considered “true” only when it actually expresses a true idea. We are now in a position to understand why Spinoza asserts H2–​H5. The concept of inherence is disjunctively derivative: we can only understand it through one or more particular manners of existence. That the human mind wills (H2) can be understood through the manner of existence that is the attribute of Thought. That the human body moves (H3) can be understood through the manner of existence that is the attribute of Extension. Cross-​attribute predications, however, such as that the human mind moves (H4) and that the human body wills (H5), fail to express any manner of inherence—​that is, any manner of existence through which inherence can be or be understood. Hence, a sentence or statement that directly ascribes a property or affection that is being conceived through one attribute to a subject that is being conceived through another attribute can never express a true idea. This explains why Spinoza rejects the following as false: H4~ The human mind moves. H5~ A human body wills.

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He accepts H4 and H5 themselves as true, we may infer, precisely because they express, or can express, an understanding of this falsehood of H4~ and H5~. Spinoza accepts the truth of H1, however, despite its use of terms expressing two different attributes as two different manners of existence. This implies that the locution “is one and the same thing as”—​which does not express inherence and is not a predication—​can be properly used, in Spinoza’s view, to express the understanding of a single thing under two or more different attributes at the same time. What then should we conclude about Spinoza’s attitude toward the Indiscernibility of Identicals? Taken together, his Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes and his Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth require him to reject the Indiscernibility of Identicals understood as a principle that allows cross-​ attribute predications, for he must regard such predications as incoherent and hence false. Such predications are incoherent, in his view, because there is no attribute—​that is, no manner of existence—​in which the inherence relations they propose could obtain. For example, motion cannot truly be said to inhere in the human mind, and willing cannot truly be said to inhere in the human body, because there is no manner of existence—​neither Extension nor Thought nor any other—​in which such an inherence relation could be realized or find expression. At the same time, however, Spinoza could grant the truth of a restricted version of the Indiscernibility of Identicals within each attribute other than Thought, for such a principle would involve no cross-​attribute predications. (The attribute of Thought poses a separate problem, for the hierarchical ontological pluralism of formal and objective being within Thought allows that a predication true about an idea may be false about the idea of an idea that is nevertheless numerically identical to the first idea. Within Thought, therefore, the principle would also require restriction to prevent cross-​level predications.) Furthermore, because cross-​attribute identifications—​in contrast to cross-​attribute predications—​can be true, we may infer that he could accept the following as expressing true ideas and hence as themselves true: H4 = A human mind is one and the same thing as something that moves. H5 =  A human body is one and the same thing as something that wills. This is because H4 = expresses an idea that can be understood through an inherence relation involving a body in Extension, while H5 = expresses an idea that can be understood through an inherence relation involving a mind in Thought. For similar reasons, we may infer that Spinoza could also accept the following as true: H4 =′ A  human mind has an affection that is one and the same thing as a motion. H5 =′ A  human body has an affection that is one and the same thing as a willing.



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This is because H4 =′ expresses an idea that can be understood through an inherence relation involving affections in the attribute of Thought, H5 =′ expresses an idea that can be understood through an inherence relation involving affections in the attribute of Extension. Accordingly, Spinoza could accept even an attribute-​ unrestricted Indiscernibility of Identicals if all of the predications within its domain were interpreted as involving an implicit “that-​is-​one-​and-​the-​same-​thing-​ as” in one (or both) of these two ways. With this resolution of the puzzle of Spinoza’s apparent rejection of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in hand, we turn now to the parallel puzzle of his apparent rejection of Transitivity of Identity.

II.  The Transitivity of Identity A. Spinoza’s Apparent Rejection of the Transitivity of Identity Spinoza makes each of the following claims: E1d6   By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence. E2p1    Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing. E2p2    Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing. E2p7s The thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. He thus seems fully committed to the conjunction that we may call “Substance-​ Substance Identity”: The thinking substance is God, and God is the extended substance. [Substance-​Substance Identity] At the same time, Spinoza also seems fully committed to the conjunction that we may call “Substance-​Attribute Identity”: The attribute of Thought is the thinking substance, and the extended substance is the attribute of Extension. [Substance-​Attribute Identity] For first, as previously noted, he holds: E1p4d  Outside the intellect, there is nothing except substances and their affections.

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It seems to follow from this that, if an attribute is anything at all, it must either be a substance or an affection of a substance. According to the Conceptual Barrier (E1p10), however, “Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.” Hence, each attribute violates the definition of “mode” as “an affection of a substance . . . which is in another through which it is also conceived” (E1d5). At the same time, by being “conceived through itself,” each attribute satisfies one of the two parallel—​and, for Spinoza, necessarily co-​extensive—​clauses of the definition of “substance” as “what is in itself and conceived through itself” (E1d3). The final line of E1p4d offers confirmation, glossing “substances and their affections” as “substances, or what is the same (by E1d4), their attributes, and their affections.” It appears, therefore, that Spinoza accepts Substance-​Attribute Identity. Furthermore, from the proposition that God is the only substance (E1p14), Spinoza draws the following disjunctive corollary: E1p14c2 An extended thing and a thinking thing are either attributes of God, or (by E1a1) affections of God’s attributes. Although extended human bodies and thinking human minds are singular things that are “affections of God’s attributes” for Spinoza, an extended substance or a thinking substance must, by the very definition of “substance” (E1d3) be “in itself” and hence cannot be an affection of—​i.e., “in”—​anything else. It thus seems to follow straightforwardly from this corollary that the extended substance and the thinking substance are instead “attributes of God.” In addition, Spinoza’s definition of “God” (E1d6) states that God’s essence is constituted by God’s attributes, and God’s essence is identified with God’s existence: E1p20  God’s existence and his essence are one and the same. Since attributes constitute God’s essence (E1d4), it seems to follow that they also constitute God’s existence as a substance. This, too, suggests that Spinoza is committed to Substance-​Attribute Identity. Nevertheless, Spinoza also regularly affirms or implies the doctrine that we may call “Attribute Non-​identity”: The attribute of Thought is not the attribute of Extension. [Attribute Non-​identity] For example, in a proposition noted previously, he treats greater reality as correlated with having more attributes: E1p9  The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.



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Furthermore, he defines God as having not one but “infinite” attributes (E1d6), and he declares: E1p11 God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. Even more directly, he writes concerning the attributes of Extension and Thought in particular: E2p7s [A]‌circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. (emphasis added) Similarly, he writes, in an explication of the first of his “Definitions of the Affects” at the end of Ethics Part III, of “an affection of the human essence . . . whether it is conceived through the attribute of Thought alone, or through the attribute of Extension alone, or is referred to both at once” (emphasis added). Taking Substance-​ Substance Identity, and Substance-​ Attribute Identity together, Spinoza appears to be committed to each of the following: G1 The thinking substance is God. G2 God is the extended substance. G3 The attribute of Thought is the thinking substance. G4 The extended substance is the attribute of Extension. From G3 and G1, however, the Transitivity of Identity would allow us to infer the lemma: L1 The attribute of Thought is God. [ from G3 and G1] Similarly, from G2 and G4 the Transitivity of Identity would allow us to infer a second lemma: L2 God is the attribute of Extension. [ from G2 and G4] Finally, from L1 and L2, the Transitivity of Identity would allow us to infer: G5 The attribute of Thought is the attribute of Extension. [ from L1 and L2] Yet Attribute Non-​identity states: G5~ The attribute of Thought is not the attribute of Extension.

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It appears that in order to avoid this contradiction of G5 and G5~, Spinoza must reject the Transitivity of Identity.

B.  Two Solutions Considered Intensional Properties. One might hope that Della Rocca’s distinction between “extensional” and “intensional” properties could be deployed to provide a solution to the puzzle of Spinoza’s apparent rejection of the Transitivity of Identity. Upon examination, however, it is hard to see how such a solution would proceed. The distinction between “extensional” and “intensional” properties seemed to have initial promise in application to the puzzle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals because the definitions of the terms seemed to explain why the substitution of one co-​referring term for another could fail to guarantee preservation of truth value, contrary to an unrestricted Indiscernibility of Identicals, whenever a context predicates a property of a thing in a way that crosses the Conceptual Barrier between attributes. Any connection of the distinction to the Transitivity of Identity, however, is much less obvious. It is true that the inference from L1 and L2 to G5 can be seen as substituting the term “attribute of Extension” for (what is by L2) the co-​ referring term “God” into a context (L1) that involves the attribute of Thought—​but L1 (like L2 and, indeed, like all of G1–​G5) is not a predicative context at all. Instead, it is an identity-​ascribing context, and, as we have seen, Spinoza finds substitution into identity-​ascribing contexts unproblematic: in these contexts, attributes can be mixed freely without courting incoherence or undermining truth. Spinoza asserts explicitly in E2p7s that the thinking substance is the extended substance, and he seems to regard this as a valid inference from G1 and G2 (as does Della Rocca); it remains to be explained, therefore, why the parallel inference from L1 and L2 to G5 should be invalid. Non-​identity. In contrast to Della Rocca, Marshall denies that Spinoza allows any numerical identities among the thinking substance, the extended substance, and God—​Spinoza’s explicit claim that the thinking substance and the extended substance are “one and the same” (E2p7s) notwithstanding. Instead, like several earlier commentators,24 he proposes that Spinoza’s God is a composite substance having the thinking substance, the distinct extended substance, and infinitely many other distinct substances of single attributes as its constituents. This interpretation would resolve the Transitivity of Identity puzzle by rejecting Substance-​ Substance Identity (G1 and G2). As Marshall recognizes, there are several obvious objections to the proposal that God is a composite substance, and, without considering them in detail, he broadly endorses Louis Loeb’s responses to them (“The Mind and the Body,” 898).



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One obvious objection is that God, as the absolutely infinite substance (E1d6), cannot be composed of parts: E1p13  A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible. Loeb’s reply to this objection is that God may be composed of parts without being divisible into parts if those parts cannot actually be separated, as the thinking substance and the extended substance cannot be (From Descartes to Hume, 160–​ 166). For Spinoza, however, there is an even deeper reason why God cannot be composed of parts. Early in Ethics Part I, he asserts (and demonstrates) that whatever substances there may be, each must exist necessarily, from its own nature: E1p7  It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist. And in a 1666 letter to Johannes Hudde—​in the course of seeking to prove that “there can only be one Being which subsists in virtue of its own sufficiency or force”—​Spinoza lists several features that such a “Being that includes necessary existence” must possess. The fourth feature of a necessary existent on Spinoza’s list is “indivisibility” itself, but the second is more directly relevant to the question of composition: (2) That it is simple, and not composed of parts. For component parts must be prior in nature and knowledge to what is composed of them. In a being eternal by its nature this cannot be. (Letter 35 | G IV 181/​24–​26) Here Spinoza indicates quite clearly that God cannot be composed of parts even if they are metaphysically inseparable from one another, because the metaphysical and conceptual priority of the parts would be incompatible with the self-​sufficiency and independent conceivability required of a genuine substance. A second obvious objection to the proposal that God is composed of other substances is that it seems to conflict with Spinoza’s claim that there is only one substance: E1p14  Except God, no substance can be or be conceived. Marshall and Loeb both grant that if God is a composite substance, then this proposition must be taken to mean only that no substance can be or be conceived that is entirely distinct from—​i.e., not a proper or improper part of—​God. While this is perhaps a possible reading of E1p14, however, it is certainly not the most natural

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one. Furthermore, Spinoza goes on in the same letter to Hudde to list as additional features of a necessary existent: (3) That it is not limited, but can be conceived only as infinite. For if the nature of that Being were limited, and also were conceived as limited, that nature would be conceived as not existing outside those limits, which would also be contrary to its definition. (Letter 35 | G IV 181/​28–​31) (5) That whatever involves necessary existence cannot have in it any imperfection, but must express pure perfection. (Letter 35 | G IV 182/​17–​18) These conditions imply that a substance limited to only one attribute, such as the thinking substance and the extended substance would be on the compositional interpretation, could not have the necessary existence that, by E1p7, all substances must possess. It seems, then, that Spinoza is committed to Substance-​ Substance Identity (G1–​G2) after all.

C.  A Better Solution Spinoza’s Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth implies that he can regard G1–​G4 as true and yet G5 as false if the former express true ideas while the latter does not. In order to see how that might be possible, it is necessary to determine what ideas these statements express in his metaphysics. It is not difficult to understand what Substance-​Substance Identity (G1–​G2) expresses, given Spinoza’s Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes. The one substance, God, has infinite attributes as manners of existence. Because Thought is one of these attributes, the only substance that thinks is God, and because Extension is another of these attributes, God is also the only substance that is extended. In order to understand what Spinoza means by Substance-​Attribute Identity, however, it will be helpful to compare Spinoza’s conception of Thought and Extension as attributes with Descartes’s. For Descartes, the attribute of extension is a “true and immutable nature” created by an unextended God logically prior to and independent of the instantiation of that nature by anything (and potentially by many things)—​just as Spinoza remarks in his Cogitata Metaphysica (CM, Chapter X | G I 269/​32–​36), appended to his Descartes’ “Principles of Philosophy.” This is why Descartes can claim to understand what extension is and to understand many things about it in Meditation V even while continuing to doubt whether there exists anything that is actually extended. The corresponding case of thought is complicated by the question of whether God itself thinks (see CM, Chapter X | G I 270/​1–​8) and by Descartes’s introspective knowledge of his own existence, but the same general principle applies: the nature of thought is one thing, and the existence of thinking things is something else. Such true and immutable natures are not themselves substances for Descartes, but



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they are at least not obviously modes, either. They therefore pose a dilemma for those, like Descartes, whose ontology is formally limited to substances and modes. For Spinoza, in contrast, the nature of Extension is not prior to the existence of an extended substance; nothing creates first the nature and then its instances. Rather, the fact that there is such a nature as Extension and the fact that there is one extended substance (i.e., God) are, as we might say, the very same fact; or, as Spinoza might prefer, both statements express the same truth. Similarly, the fact that there is such a nature as Thought and the fact that there is one thinking substance are also the very same fact, and the two statements express the same truth—​although a different truth from that about extension. It is for this reason that assertions of G3 and G4—​Substance-​Attribute Identity—​can express true ideas and can themselves be considered true statements in consequence. Given Spinoza’s doctrine that there is only one substance (E1p14), his Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes requires that the one substance have multiple manners of existence consisting of infinite attributes. For this reason, the two locutions “attribute of Extension” and “extended substance,” and the two locutions “attribute of Thought” and “thinking substance,” can function in different ways in the expression of other true and adequate thoughts. More specifically, the locutions “extended substance” and “thinking substance” lend themselves to counting substances in the ontology. The locutions “attribute of Extension” and “attribute of Thought,” in contrast, lend themselves to counting manners of existence that are not in the ontology but are rather structures of it. In saying that “the thinking substance is the extended substance,” one expresses, truthfully, the numerical identity of the substances themselves (or rather, the substance itself ). In denying that the attribute of Extension is the attribute of Thought, in contrast, Attribute Non-​identity (G5~) expresses the equally true thought that the extended and thinking manners of existence are plural rather than singular. Although both manners of existence are manners of existence of the same necessary and eternal substance, they are not simply the same manner of existence—​for then Strong Ontological Pluralism would be false, and God would not have the infinite attributes and greatest possible reality that it does. What then shall we say about Spinoza’s attitude toward the Transitivity of Identity? Although Substance-​Substance Identity, Substance-​Attribute Identity, and Attribute Non-​identity (G1–​G4, plus G5~) jointly violate the Transitivity of Identity if they are considered as statements about numerical identity, it is revealing that Spinoza does not employ the term “one and the same” to describe the relationship between the attribute of Thought and the thinking substance, or between the attribute of Extension and the extended substance. This restraint may be intended to mark the fact that the particular kind of sameness expressed by G3 and G4—​Substance-​Attribute Identity—​concerns a sameness of truths concerning

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substance and the manners of existence that structure the ontology, and does not constitute an identification of substances or affections within the ontology itself. If this is correct, then Spinoza can accept a version of the Transitivity of Identity understood as a principle governing the numerical identity of items—​namely, substances and modes—​within his ontology.

III. Conclusion I have argued that Spinoza’s apparent rejections of the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity can each be explained by his acceptance of (i)  a Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes, in which infinitely many attributes of the one substance God are each different fundamental manners of its existence; and (ii) an Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth, according to which statements are true only if they serve to express ideas that satisfy the high standard of truth that requires explanatory adequacy and coherence. This conception of the relation between substance and attributes in Spinoza can help to resolve related interpretive puzzles as well. For example, we can now understand why, in E1p4d, Spinoza includes the qualification “outside the intellect” in his statement that “outside the intellect there is nothing except substances and their affections.” For although the intellect can form true thoughts by distinguishing attributes from one another, this is a distinction of structures of the ontology, not a distinction of different items within the ontology.25 The attributes are instead diverse manners in which the substances and modes in the ontology have their place there. We can see also how Spinoza can suppose that a substance has multiple attributes, each of which “is perceived by the intellect as constituting its essence” (1d4). It is not, as some have suggested, that the intellect perceives attributes as if constituting the essence of God without their actually doing so. Nor is it that God has a compound essence composed of many different attributes as parts. Rather, a being having multiple manners of existence must have an essence in each of those manners of existence, and each attribute is God’s essence for and of the manner of existence that it is. Indeed, just as each attribute requires its own manner of inherence, so too each attribute may be considered to have its own manner in which substance has essence. For “inherence” and “essence” are both attribute-​neutral terms, each expressing disjunctively derivative concepts. Nevertheless, in whatever way we may seek to explain and formalize such logical principles as the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Transitivity of Identity, it must be remembered that Spinoza himself does not state or formalize such principles. Indeed he does not conceive of sound reasoning primarily in formal terms at all—​that is, as a matter of employing valid forms of inference on premises that are true simply by, for example, predicating properties of subjects that in fact



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possess them. Rather, he conceives of sound reasoning as a matter of powerful true ideas producing, through the power of Thought, other powerful true ideas—​ ideas that the mind can recognize to agree with reality through their own explanatory adequacy in showing how things can and must be. If potential co-​inquirers can be helped to discover for themselves the deep truth of the Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes by a violation of commonly accepted inferential forms, then that is a price that Spinoza is more than willing to pay.26

Notes 1. The principle is uncontroversial if the quantifier over properties—​ ‘(F)’—​ is allowed to range over all so-​called identity properties of the form “is numerically identical to a.” Spinoza’s use of E1p4 in the demonstration of E1p5 shows his commitment to a version of the Identity of Indiscernibles for substances. It is not obvious, however, that he accepts a version of the principle for the finite modes that he calls “singular things,” especially given that these include what he calls “simplest bodies” (E2p13PhysDigA’’), which lack internal qualitative diversity. 2. If the quantifier over properties—​‘(F)’—​of the Indiscernibility of Identicals is allowed to range over all so-​called identity properties of the form “is numerically identical to a,” then the Transitivity of Identity can be derived from that principle together with the (also uncontroversial) symmetry of identity: (x)(y)[(x = y) ≡ (y = x)]. 3. All translations from Spinoza’s writings are those of Edwin Curley in Spinoza, Collected Works of Spinoza. Internal references within passages have been altered to reflect the reference style of this chapter. 4. Spinoza employs the Latin terms proprietates and propria more narrowly, for just those features of a thing that do not constitute its essence but do follow from its essence, and that the thing therefore cannot be without. “Properties” of things in this restricted technical sense—​not employed in this chapter—​are affections or modes of a special kind. 5. More specifically, it corresponds to a fairly restrictive understanding of “property,” one that excludes the so-​called identity properties mentioned in notes 1 and 2, as well as most or all “relational properties”—​that is, properties of standing in a particular relation to something else. 6. I say “at least” because it is not obvious from the text that what Spinoza calls “infinite modes” have affections of their own. 7. Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem in Spinoza, 9–​17. 8. Marshall, “The Mind and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza.” 9. Although it should be obvious, it is worth emphasizing for the sake of avoiding confusion that this use of “extensional property” as an antonym for “intensional property” is entirely distinct in meaning from the use of “Extension” as the name of one of Spinoza’s two known attributes of substance.

290 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking 1 0. Spinoza also uses the terms “explained through” and “considered as” in this way. 11. Earlier commentators who have proposed a similar approach include Martial Gueroult, Spinoza II; Alan Donagan, Spinoza; and Louis Loeb, From Descartes to Hume. 12. The labels “M1” and “M2” are my own. Marshall also distinguishes a third possible meaning, which he discusses first: “Some one thing is present in two situations, but with some differences in its constitution.” On one natural interpretation, this affirms, rather than denies, numerical identity; from his discussion, however, it appears that he means that two numerically distinct things can be said to be “one and the same” when they share a common constituent. Because Marshall does not recommend using this sense in interpreting Spinoza, I do not discuss it further. 13. See, e.g., Letter 2 (“[Descartes and Bacon] did not know the true nature of the human mind” [G IV 8/​18–​23]) and E5pref. (“What, I ask, does [Descartes] understand by the union of Mind and Body? What clear and distinct concept does he have of a thought so closely united to some little portion of quantity?” [G II 279/​ 25–​27]). 14. Marshall suggests that the reference to music as “one and the same thing” in E4pref cannot be understood in the sense of numerical identity because the same music is said to be “good,” “bad,” and “indifferent” simultaneously, and these are incompatible predications. But Spinoza is clear in the passage that the only features he is ascribing to music are the mutually compatible predicates of being-​good-​for-​the-​melancholy, being-​bad-​for-​those-​who-​mourn, and being-​indifferent-​ for-​the-​deaf. Marshall also proposes that Spinoza’s reference in E5p4s to “one and the same appetite” should be understood in the sense of M1, on the grounds that the appetites in question are of two different people; in fact, however, Spinoza’s point is that the one numerically identical “appetite” of a single individual (an “actual essence” in the sense of E3p7 that the individual retains for its entire life) can be expressed in different desires at different times. 15. I owe this objection to Yitzhak Melamed. 16. In an unpublished article titled “Spinoza on Mind, Body, and Numerical Identity,” John Morrison develops an approach that interprets Spinoza as rejecting the Indiscernibility of Identicals for cases of temporal change and then extends that approach to differences across attributes. See also his chapter in this volume. 17. It is evident for example in St. Anselm’s non-​metaphorical claim, in the ontological argument for the existence of God in his Proslogion, that it is greater to exist in the mind and in reality than to exist in the mind alone. 18. Again to avoid confusion, note that this is not the same term that occurs in “intensional property.” 19. “NS” indicates an interpolation from the Nagelate Schriften, the Dutch version of Spinoza’s Opera posthuma, which included the Ethics.



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20. Because he offers no further explanation—​and lacks the scholastic resources of forms by which earlier philosophers might have sought to explain it further—​ many readers and commentators believe that Descartes is not serious in claiming that there are two fundamental kinds of being, instead using the scholastic language of “formal and objective reality” only as a picturesque way of stating that ideas have intentionality. We need not resolve this question of Descartes interpretation; for present purposes, it is enough that Spinoza could reasonably have interpreted Descartes as asserting that there are two fundamental manners of existence. 21. Melamed (in “The Building Blocks of Spinoza’s Philosophy” and Spinoza’s Metaphysics) suggests characterizing attributes as “aspects” of substance, and (in “Spinoza’s Deification of Existence”) as aspects of God’s existence, although he also describes both attributes and modes more broadly as “qualities.” Pollock (Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy) characterizes attributes as “aspects” and also as “domains.” 22. Melamed (Spinoza’s Metaphysics) also emphasizes that “modis” in E1p16 must be interpreted nontechnically as “ways,” designating attributes rather than modes, when Spinoza writes that an infinite number of things (i.e., modes) follow necessarily from the divine nature “in infinite ways.” 23. Spinoza does not define “truth,” but E1a6—​ “a true idea agrees with its ideatum”—​places an axiomatic requirement of correspondence on it. Garrett, “Truth, Method, and Correspondence,” argues that truth as correspondence and truth as internal adequacy are the same relation, considered formally and objectively. 24. As noted previously, these include Martial Gueroult, Spinoza II; Alan Donagan, Spinoza; and Louis Loeb, From Descartes to Hume. 25. In calling the attributes “structures” of the ontology, I of course do not mean to imply that the attributes themselves are divisible, either internally or from one another. 26. This chapter has benefited greatly from discussion with John Morrison, Kristin Primus, Martin Lin, Daniel Garber, Mark Johnston, Aaron Garrett, Karolina Hübner, Samuel Newlands, Elliot Paul, participants in a workshop on “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Attributes” at Barnard College, and audiences at Princeton University and Boston University. I am especially grateful to Yitzhak Melamed and John Morrison for comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.

Bibliography Aquila, Richard E. 1978. “The Identity of Thought and Object in Spinoza,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 16.3: 271–​88. Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing.

292 Nature as Necessarily Ex tended and Thinking Delahunty, R. J. 1985. Spinoza, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem in Spinoza, New York: Oxford University Press. Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 volumes, edited by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Deveaux, Sherry 2007. The Role of God in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, London: Continuum. Donagan, Alan. 1980. “Spinoza’s Dualism,” in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, edited by Richard Kennington. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. Garrett, Don 2014. “Representation and Misrepresentation in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Mind,” in The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, edited by Michael Della Rocca. New York: Oxford University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​​2009. “The Essence of the Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal,” in A Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, edited by Olli Koistinen, 284–​302. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 2002. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Central Themes, edited by John I. Biro and Olli Koistinen, 127–​158. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1990. “Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz,” Studia Spinozana 6: 13–​43. Gueroult, Martial. 1974. Spinoza II: L’Ame, Paris. Aubier-​Montaigne. Jarrett, Charles E. 1982. “On the Rejection of Dualism in Spinoza’s Ethics,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 20.2: 153–​75. Loeb, Louis. 1981. From Descartes to Hume:  Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Marshall, Colin. 2009. “The Mind and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza,” British Journal for History of Philosophy 17.5: 897–​919. Melamed, Yitzhak. 2018. “The Building Blocks of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance, Attributes, and Modes,” in The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza edited by Michael Della Rocca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 2013. Spinoza’s Metaphysics:  Substance and Thought. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 2012. “Spinoza’s Deification of Existence,” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 6: 75–​104. Morrison, John (unpublished draft). “Spinoza on Mind, Body, and Numerical Identity.” Pollock, Frederick. 1880. Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy. London: C. Kegan Paul. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1985 and 2016. The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volumes 1 and 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

SECTION IV

Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures

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Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation

A theory of metaphysical individuation seeks to explain what constitutes an individual thing; what constitutes the persistent identity of the same individual thing through time; and what constitutes the numerical difference among two or more individual things. (By way of comparison, a theory of epistemological individuation seeks to explain how one knows something to be an individual thing; how one knows something to remain the same individual thing through time; and how one knows individual things to be numerically different from one another.) In a discussion of physical topics that occurs between Ethics IIP13 and IIP14, Spinoza briefly presents a striking and original theory of metaphysical individuation for a class of entities that he calls “Individuals.”1 Among the theory’s most striking features is that identity and difference of substance play no role in it—​this despite the centrality of the notion of substance in both other seventeenth-​century discussions of metaphysical individuation and in Part I of the Ethics itself. Among the theory’s most original features is that it explains the existence, persistence, and difference of an individual as a function of what Spinoza calls its “ratio of motion and rest” (ratio motus et quietis). Striking and original as Spinoza’s theory evidently is, however, it has also been the object of considerable puzzlement. For he says surprisingly little in the Ethics about several crucial questions: what he means by the term ‘motion and rest’; what he conceives “fixed ratios” of motion and rest to be; what the scope of the term ‘individual,’ and hence of the theory as a whole, is intended to be; and how, if at all, his discussion of individuals in Part II is related to his pivotal claim at IIIP6 that “each thing, as far as it can by its own power [quantum in se est], strives to persevere in its being,” a claim that serves as the foundation for both his psychology and his ethical theory. Many readers have concluded that Spinoza’s theory is incoherent, unreasonable, narrow, and/​or irrelevant. In the first section of this chapter, I will

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describe Spinoza’s theory of metaphysical individuation as he presents it in Part II of the Ethics. In the remaining four sections, I will consider, in order, the four crucial questions about the theory just posed. In doing so, I will argue that, despite the brevity of Spinoza’s presentation, it is possible to determine the answers to these questions with a reasonable degree of probability; and I will argue that the resulting theory is a coherent, reasonable, inclusive, and powerful one.

Individuation and ‘Individuals’ Part II of the Ethics is entitled “On the Nature and Origin of the Mind.” In the Scholium to IIP13, however, Spinoza proposes to present some general facts about the nature of the human body, so that we can know “the excellence of one mind over the others, and also the cause why we have only a completely confused knowledge of our Body, and many other things which I shall deduce . . . in the following [propositions].” The presentation that then follows—​sometimes called the “Physical Digression”—​contains, in all, five “Axioms,” one “Definition,” seven “Lemmas,” and six “Postulates.” The Digression divides naturally into three parts:  first, Axioms 1ʹ  and 2ʹ  [ following Curley’s numbering convention], Lemmas 1–​3, and Axioms 1ʺ  and 2ʺ, all concerning bodies in general, including the “simplest bodies” (corpora simplicissima); next, the Definition, Axiom 3ʺ, and Lemmas 4–​7 plus a scholium to Lemma 7, all concerning composite bodies; and finally, Postulates 1–​6, all concerning the human body in particular. Of these various elements, Lemma 1, the Definition, and Lemmas 4–​7 bear most directly on the topic of individuation. Lemma 1, which immediately follows Axioms 1ʹ and 2ʹ, states that “bodies are distinguished from one another by reason of motion and rest, speed and slowness, and not by reason of substance.” The demonstration of this lemma does not cite either of the two preceding axioms, even though Axiom 1ʹ—​“all bodies either move or are at rest”—​arguably states a precondition for its truth. Instead, the claim that bodies are distinguished from one another by reason of motion and rest is said to be “known through itself,” while the claim that bodies are not distinguished by reason of substance is said to be evident from both IP5 and IP8, and “more clearly evident” from IP15S. Spinoza cites these three passages presumably because each entails—​when taken together with IIP2’s claim that extension is an attribute—​ that there can only be one extended substance. After two further lemmas and a pair of additional axioms, Spinoza then offers his Definition of the term ‘Individual’: Definition: When a number of bodies, whether of the same or of different size, are so constrained by other bodies that they lie upon one another, or if they so move, whether with the same degree or different degrees of



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speed, that they communicate their motions to each other in a certain fixed manner, we shall say that those bodies are united with one another and that they all together compose one body or Individual, which is distinguished from the others by this union of bodies. After one further axiom, Spinoza then presents four lemmas that describe the changes an individual can undergo while still “retaining its nature, without any change of form.” Specifically, it can undergo the replacement of some of the bodies composing it by others of the same nature (Lemma 4); it can undergo an increase or decrease of parts, so long as the parts increase or decrease in a proportion that allows them to retain the same ratio of motion and rest as before (Lemma 5); it can undergo a change of direction of some of its parts, so long as the parts can continue their motions and communicate them to each other in the same ratio as before (Lemma 6); and it can move in any direction or be at rest, so long as the parts retain their motions and communicate them as before (Lemma 7). In each case, Spinoza’s demonstration of the lemma is fundamentally the same: the “nature” or “form” of the individual is, by the Definition, constituted by a “certain fixed ratio of motion and rest,” in accordance with which the parts “communicate their motions to one another”; hence, an individual’s nature or form can withstand any change that does not alter this ratio. It is notable that in no case does the demonstration appeal to any of the preceding axioms, nor, indeed, to anything except the Definition of ‘individual’ and (in the case of the demonstration of Lemma 4) Lemma 1. Finally, in the Scholium to Lemma 7, Spinoza distinguishes between levels of composition: Schol.: By this, then, we see how a composite Individual can be affected in many ways, and still preserve its nature. So far we have conceived an individual which is composed only of bodies which are distinguished from one another only by motion and rest, speed and slowness, i.e., which is composed of the simplest bodies. But if we should now conceive of another, composed of a number of Individuals of a different nature, we shall find that it can be affected in a great many other ways, and still preserve its nature. For since each part of it is composed of a number of bodies, each part will therefore (L7) be able without any change of its nature, to move now more quickly, and consequently communicate its motion more quickly or more slowly to the others. But if we should further conceive a third kind of Individual, composed of [many individuals] of this second kind, we shall find that it can be affected in many other ways, without any change of its form. And if we proceed in this way to infinity, we shall easily conceive that the whole of nature

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is one Individual, whose parts, i.e., all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change of the whole Individual. It might be suggested that to interpret these brief passages as outlining a theory of metaphysical individuation is to overread them. Might not some or all of Spinoza’s remarks about bodies “being distinguished from one another by reason of motion and rest” rather than “by reason of substance,” about individuals “retaining their natures, without change of form,” and about individuals being “distinguished from others by this union of bodies” be regarded instead merely as a contribution to a theory of epistemological individuation, in the sense specified earlier? So construed, Spinoza would simply be proposing the existence of mechanistic explanations of how the discernible characteristics that we employ to identify, reidentify, and distinguish individuals actually arise, without commitment to any specific theory of metaphysical individuation. There can be little doubt that Spinoza does endorse the view that there are mechanistic explanations of the discernible characteristics of individuals (Epistle 6). There are three reasons, however, for thinking that he intends more than just this in the Physical Digression. First, even read in isolation, the Digression is more naturally interpreted as offering a theory of metaphysical individuation than as merely contributing to a theory of epistemological individuation. In particular, the Definition of ‘individual’—​and the very choice of the term ‘definition’ for it—​ strongly implies that Spinoza is describing what makes something an individual, and not merely what makes something be recognized as an individual. Second, his discussion of personal identity at IVP39D and IV39S (which cites the definition of ‘individual’) identifies an individual’s loss of nature or form with its destruction (see also IV Preface). Hence, it is clear that Spinoza’s claims in Lemmas 4–​7 about the ability of individuals to retain their “natures” or “forms” (claims that are of course also derived from the definition) are intended as a contribution to a metaphysical theory of individuation. Finally, in Appendix II.14 of his earlier Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being, Spinoza quite explicitly offers fixed ratios of motion and rest as the principle of metaphysical individuation, in all of its aspects, for all individual corporeal things. Thus he writes: [14] Here, then, we shall suppose as a thing proven, that there is no other mode in extension than motion and rest, and that each particular corporeal thing is nothing but a certain proportion of motion and rest, so much so that if there were nothing in extension except motion alone, or nothing except rest alone, there could not be, or be indicated, in the whole of extension, any particular thing. The human body, then, is nothing but a certain proportion of motion and rest. (emphasis added)2



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And there is no evidence that Spinoza later intended to withdraw the metaphysical role that this earlier passage clearly assigns to ratios of motion and rest—​whatever he may conceive those ratios to be. Thus, it is reasonable to interpret the Physical Digression following IIP13 as providing the outlines of a theory of metaphysical individuation. Moreover, this theory stands in marked contrast to at least one theory of metaphysical individuation naturally suggested by the writings of Descartes and others. For on that seemingly Cartesian theory, the only individual things are substances, and substance always plays the crucial role in individuation. Something is an individual thing, according to that theory, in virtue of being a substance supporting modes, qualities, or attributes; it remains identical through time simply in virtue of being the numerically same underlying substance; and two entities constitute numerically different individual things simply in virtue of being numerically different substances.3 In contrast, Spinoza maintains that there is only one substance (IP14 and C1). Thus, if he is nonetheless to affirm a real plurality of individual things, he must reject each of the doctrines just described; and so he does in Part II of the Ethics. The Definition implies that individuals are bodies, which, by IID1 (the Definition of ‘body’), are not substances but rather modes of substance. (The phrase of the definition translated as “one body or individual” is unum corpus, sive Individuum. Sive has the sense not of disjunction but rather of “in other words” or “that is to say.”) Something is an individual, according to the Definition, in virtue of having parts that communicate their motions in a “certain fixed ratio” (certa quadam ratione). These individuals remain identical through time, Lemmas 4–​7 conclude, in virtue of retaining this same fixed ratio of motion and rest. Finally, Lemma 1 entails that individuals are, like all bodies, distinguished from one another “by reason of motion and rest” and not by reason of substance; more specifically, according to the Definition, two entities constitute different “individuals” in virtue of their being (numerically) different “unions of bodies,” where this “union” is itself constituted simply by the fixed ratio of motion and rest among the component bodies.

Motion and Rest According to Spinoza, it is not ‘substance’ but ‘motion and rest’ that serves as the principle of individuation for individuals and, indeed, for all bodies. Yet the meaning of this term is not at all obvious. Most of the passages of the Ethics that refer to motion and rest—​including a significant number in the Physical Digression—​appear to treat motion and rest in a relatively ordinary way, as two different and contrary characteristics of particular bodies or individuals, consisting

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in their change or retention, respectively, of spatial relations. As we have seen, however, the Short Treatise describes a hypothetical situation in which there would be motion (or rest, but not both) without the existence of any particular things at all; and this seems to imply that motion and rest are two different and contrary characteristics not of particular bodies or individuals, but of the one extended substance itself. Furthermore, in IP21 Spinoza describes certain “eternal and infinite” modes that follow immediately “from the absolute nature of any of God’s attributes”; and in Epistle 64, he specifies that motion and rest is an example, for the attribute of extension, of such an immediate infinite mode. Yet this characterization seems to imply that motion and rest is somehow a single pervasive feature of the one extended substance. Nor is this all. As we have seen, Lemma 1 states that all bodies are “distinguished by reason of motion and rest,” and the Scholium to Lemma 7 states that the “simplest bodies” (corpora simplicissima) are “distinguished from one another only by motion and rest” (emphasis added; the latter claim also occurs in the paragraph just prior to the Definition). Yet as Jonathan Bennett points out, these two passages threaten Spinoza’s theory with incoherency if they are interpreted as referring to motion and rest in the ordinary sense (as characteristics of extended bodies consisting in their change or retention, respectively, of spatial relations). For how can motion and rest give rise to the metaphysical distinction of numerically different bodies if motion and rest themselves cannot exist except as characteristics of different bodies? Moreover, if at the ultimate level there is no qualitative diversity other than differences of such motion and rest by which bodies can be distinguished, then it seems that the extended world must be entirely homogeneous at any single moment, so that there cannot be any synchronic variety at all.4 And it will then be difficult to conceive of mere motion and rest as producing any distinction of bodies—​or, indeed, of any real motion as having actually taken place—​through time either, since the extended world will always remain an entirely homogeneous and seemingly undifferentiated whole from one moment to another. Thus, it seems that motion and rest, as ordinarily understood, cannot coherently do the job that Spinoza’s theory seems to assign them. This interpretive situation is difficult, but not hopeless. Spinoza wrote his first published work, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (cited henceforth as “PP”), as an explication of Descartes’s philosophy, not as a presentation of his own. As such, it contains a number of doctrines with which Spinoza clearly disagrees—​for example, the doctrine that individual bodies are “really distinct” in the technical Cartesian sense that entails their being different substances from each other (PP IIP8S). (The Preface to the work, written by Lodewijk Meyer, mentions other examples.) The work is, nevertheless, a useful guide to Spinoza’s own understanding and use of the standard Cartesian terminology from which his own terminology is often derived; and it is particularly helpful in the present case.



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In Part II of that work, Spinoza, following Descartes, defines ‘local motion’ as “the transfer of one part of matter, or one body, from the vicinity of those bodies that touch it immediately, and are considered as resting, to the vicinity of others” (PP IID8). However, in a note to the definition, he distinguishes this “transfer” from the “force or action” that moves the thing said to be in motion; and he also uses the term ‘motion’ for this force (e.g., PP IIP22). The quantity of this force is the “quantity of motion”; this is also a crucial magnitude of Cartesian physics, where it is equivalent to mass (or volume) times velocity. Spinoza asserts, in accordance with this Cartesian doctrine, that the quantity of motion is greater in a body of greater size than in a body of lesser size but equal speed (PP IIP21); and that it is greater in a body with greater speed than in a body of lesser speed but equal size (PP IIP21). A body has not only a quantity of motion, but also a quantity of rest, which varies inversely to its quantity of motion (PP IIP22 and C1; see also Short Treatise Appendix II, 15); and when one body transfers a portion of its motion to a second, the second body at the same time transfers an equal portion of its rest to the first (PP IIP18 and D). Force considered as quantity of motion can be distinguished from force considered as quantity of rest: “Note that here, by force in moving bodies, we understand a quantity of motion. . . . But in bodies at rest we understand by force of resisting a quantity of rest” (PP II22S). Nevertheless, in another way, these two forces or quantities can, it seems, ultimately be considered manifestations of the same force: It is commonly thought that this force or action is required only for motion, and not for rest. But those who so think are thoroughly deceived. For as is known through itself, the force which is needed to impart certain degrees of motion to a body at rest is also required to take away those certain degrees of motion from the body so that it is wholly at rest. (PP IID8S) Given these features of Spinoza’s use of ‘motion and rest’ in Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, it becomes possible to reconcile his uses of the term elsewhere. For it now becomes comprehensible how he could see not only motion-​ and-​rest as a force that constitutes a single pervasive feature of the extended universe—​as his apparent claim that motion and rest is an immediate infinite mode of extension implies—​but also as one that manifests itself in two different and complementary ways, as quantity of motion (in varying degrees) and as quantity of rest (in inversely varying degrees). (Descartes, too, speaks of “quantity of motion” as “force” or “power,”5 although he resists giving it the ontological status needed to make it function as a true explanation of local motion; this resistance is related both to the role of God’s will in the behavior of bodies and to Descartes’s desire to treat local motion as relative. No such resistance need be attributed to Spinoza, however. On the contrary, the passages already cited strongly suggest

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that he does treat quantity of motion and quantity of rest as a force that explains local motion and rest.) Furthermore, these dual quantities of force need not be distributed to a plurality of individual substances, but rather could be distributed differentially throughout the one extended medium that is Spinoza’s extended substance. This differential distribution of the dual manifestations of force would, of course, introduce synchronic diversity into his one extended substance, for even at a single time one region of the extended substance might contain greater force as quantity of motion and correspondingly lesser force as quantity of rest than another. From this diversity, in turn, there might arise the distinction among different bodies, as required by Lemma 1. In particular, the “simplest bodies,” which are said to be “distinguished from one another only by motion and rest” (Lemma 7 Scholium), might be supposed to be, at any given moment, constituted of those regions of the one extended substance that are, at that time, entirely homogeneous with respect to the distribution of quantity of motion (and, correlatively, quantity of rest). They might, in effect, be such homogeneities. And the changing positions—​what Spinoza calls the “local motion”—​of these simplest bodies might be constituted simply by the changing distributions of these homogeneities in the force of motion-​and-​rest, changing distributions that are required by what he elsewhere calls “the laws of motion and rest” (e.g., IIP2S). Bennett’s discussion of what he calls Spinoza’s “field metaphysics” provides a very useful account of how this constitution might work: the spatiotemporal path of bodies would be a function of momentary qualitative variety together with the continuous temporal “passage” of certain aspects of this momentary qualitative variety through contiguous regions of an extended medium. Much as the spatiotemporal path of a “thaw” through the countryside is determined by the continuous temporal passage of certain qualitative features through the medium of the countryside, so the path of a body will be determined by the passage of certain qualitative features through the one extended substance.6 But whereas Bennett implies that the qualitative features on whose variety the field metaphysics depends must be unknown for Spinoza, and are called “motion and rest” probably through confusion with the behavior of the individuals to which they give rise, I have suggested that Spinoza does have at least some conception of the nature of these underlying features—​as a force manifesting itself (in varying proportions) as the quantity of motion and quantity of rest familiar from Cartesian physics—​and that his use of the term ‘motion and rest’ for them is thus coherently related to his other uses of that term to designate the ‘local motion’ and ‘local rest’ of particular bodies. For what Spinoza calls the “local” motion or rest of the simplest bodies will be both the consequence of, and a measure of, the force or quantity of motion (and correlative quantity of rest) that belongs to them and, indeed, constitutes them.



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It is worth noting that, on this account, the particular quantities of motion and of rest constituting a simplest body need not remain the same throughout its spatiotemporal path, even if the size or volume of the body itself does not change; it will suffice that the path be continuous and that distribution of quantity of motion—​and corresponding quantity of rest—​remain homogeneous throughout the body. And indeed, the second axiom of the Digression asserts that “each body moves now more slowly, now more quickly,” while the Demonstration of Lemma 2 asserts that this is a respect in which all bodies agree. It is also worth noting that, on this account, a single simplest body may change sizes (and hence also that different simplest bodies may be of different sizes). But this changeability seems in any event required by the conjunction of Lemma 5, which states that the parts composing an individual may “become greater or less,” with the Scholium to Lemma 7, which states that in the preceding lemmas “we have conceived an Individual . . . composed of the simplest bodies.” Given the existence of simplest bodies, Spinoza’s individuals will just be, as the Definition states—​composites of such simple bodies, composites that maintain a fixed ratio of this same force of motion and rest among their parts, even as their particular component parts change. Some of the characteristics of these composites will be derived from characteristics of their constitutive fixed ratio, while other characteristics will be derived from other, more variable, aspects of the motion and rest of their component parts—​just as suggested by the Scholium to Lemma 7. In this way, then, ‘motion and rest’ can refer sometimes to local motion and rest, sometimes to the closely related underlying force(s) of motion and rest that produce local motion and rest, and sometimes—​since the former are a function of the latter—​to either one indifferently. At the same time, motion and rest, as forces, can be conceived as directly characterizing the one extended substance, and also as being possessed by the simple and composite bodies that they serve to constitute and whose local motion they explain, in accordance with the laws of motion and rest. This provides one account of how motion and rest could consistently be said to be (1) an infinite mode, and hence a single pervasive feature of the one extended substance; (2) two different features of the one extended substance; (3)  two different features of particular bodies; (4)  that which ultimately distinguishes all bodies; and (5) the only respect in which simple bodies are distinguished from one another. This account is naturally suggested by Spinoza’s use of the terms ‘motion’ and ‘rest’ in Principles of Cartesian Philosophy; and it is difficult to see what other account could so fully explain his various uses of those terms. Thus, I conclude that it is the most probable interpretation. If it is correct, then Spinoza’s conception of motion and rest as a principle of individuation is an eminently coherent one.

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Fixed Ratios Although the preceding account provides a likely interpretation of what the fixed ratios of motion and rest that constitute the forms of individuals are ratios of, it does not yet say what the ratios themselves are. Some commentators have claimed that Spinoza is referring to the specific mathematical ratio between an individual’s own quantity of motion and its own quantity of rest; and this ratio, in turn, is often identified with the mathematical ratio between the sum of the quantities of motion of the individual’s parts and the sum of the quantities of rest of the individual’s parts.7 The Preface to the Second Part of the Short Treatise strongly suggests that Spinoza has just such a specific mathematical ratio in mind: So if such a body has and preserves its proportion—​say of 1 to 3—​the soul and the body will be like ours now are; they will, of course, be constantly subject to change, but not to such a great change that it goes beyond the limits of from 1 to 3. . . . But if other bodies act on ours with such force that the proportion of motion (to rest) cannot remain 1 to 3, that is death, and a destruction of the soul. There are, however, a number of difficulties with this proposed interpretation. For example, according to Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, when a body is accelerated (say, by impact with another body), its quantity of motion thereby increases and its quantity of rest decreases, other things being equal (PP IIP22 and C1), thus greatly altering the ratio between the two. Yet individuals can generally survive acceleration, just as Lemma 7, and also the second axiom of the Digression, imply. It will not help to suggest that when acceleration increases the total quantity of motion of an individual, the quantity of rest of its parts will almost always increase proportionately. For according to Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, a body can only acquire rest from another body giving up rest (PP IIP18); and it is not easy to see how or why other bodies should be counted on to give up precisely the correct quantity of rest in every case of an individual’s acceleration. Yet these doctrines from Principles of Cartesian Philosophy are almost certainly principles that Spinoza himself would accept. They are practically constitutive of the concepts of ‘quantity of motion’ and ‘quantity of rest’; and they are both involved in his derivation of Descartes’s seven laws of motion (PP IIPP24–​31), all but one of which he accepts (Epistle 32).8 Second, Spinoza indicates in his correspondence with Oldenburg (Epistles 6 and 13)  that the difference between water and ice (and between nitre and spirit of nitre) is one of the amount of “agitation” of the parts. He should thus be at least willing to consider the possibility that lesser differences in temperature—​ differences that do not yet produce such radical changes as that between liquid



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water and solid ice—​ also involve different degrees of agitation of the parts. Moreover, he appears to agree with Boyle’s claim that heat is “nothing but a various and nimble motion of the minute particles of bodies” (see note 24 in the Curley edition). And Short Treatise Appendix 11.15 offers a related account of heat perception. But from this view of heat, it follows that the ratio of the quantity of motion of the parts to the quantity of rest of the parts would change very considerably when an individual became even slightly warmer; in fact, however, individuals can evidently survive even some quite considerable changes of temperature. It might be replied that the parts agitated in heating are not the primary parts of the individual itself, but only parts of its parts (or parts of those parts, etc.). If, however, the ratio of motion and rest of an individual is to be identified with the mathematical ratio of the sum of the quantities of motion of its parts to the sum of the quantities of rest of its parts, then presumably the quantities of motion and rest of the primary parts are, by the same token, to be identified with the sum of the quantities of motion and rest of all of their parts, and so on. Alexandre Matheron offers a proposal that might overcome both of these objections.9 If we can construe the motion of a body as composed of one or more different motions, then we might regard only some of the motions of the parts of an individual as contributing to the relevant sum of quantities of motion. The particular motions of parts resulting from acceleration of the individual as a whole, or from its increase in temperature, might then be excluded. This proposal, while helpful, is not without problems of its own. In the first place, it is not obvious how this proposal should treat the quantities of rest that also go to make up the ratio. (Matheron himself explicitly identifies the quantity of rest with mass, but this seems not to take into account the requirement that quantity of rest vary inversely with velocity.) Furthermore, if that problem were solved, it seems likely that any collection of bodies (of constant size) could be then construed as “preserving the same ratio of motion to rest” by abstracting out all motions whatever. Even if we put both of these problems aside, however, there remain difficulties with the original interpretation that Matheron’s proposal does not touch. For example, organic individuals can, it seems, lose one or more parts (a strand of hair, a tooth, a hand, or a leg) without losing their identity. These parts must either have the same mathematical ratio of motion to rest as the individual as a whole (for whatever motions are relevant for determining this ratio), or else a different ratio. But if the ratio is different, then the loss would presumably result in a change in the mathematical ratio of motion to rest of the remaining individual, and hence a change in its form and identity, contrary to the appearance that the individual can persist through such a loss. If, on the other hand, the ratio is the same, that entails the strange conclusion that a man has the same nature or form as a strand of hair, a tooth, a hand, or a leg. Since Spinoza claims at the end of the Preface to Part IV that a horse would be destroyed if it were changed into an insect

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or man only on the grounds that it would thereby lose its form, it would also follow that a man might be changed into a strand of hair, a tooth, a hand, or a leg without thereby losing his identity. Of course, it might be replied to this that the relevant mathematical ratio of motion to rest allows for a certain margin of variation. And certainly, the larger the margin of variation, the less likely it is that the loss of a single part will result in a loss of form. But no matter how large the margin, if the individual happens already to be near one of its limits, a very slight loss (say, of a single strand of hair) might still be enough to make the difference. Furthermore, the larger the margin is, the more likely it becomes that a man, for example, could after all share the same form as one of his parts. Finally, and most important, even if it were true that every individual somehow retains the same mathematical ratio of motion to rest for its entire duration, it is difficult to see how Spinoza could think himself to be in a position to know this fact. If this principle were merely an arbitrary stipulation of what is to be meant by the term ‘individual,’ then of course the problem would not arise. But Spinoza intends the term ‘individual’ to apply at least to human beings and animals (including horses, fish, and insects) (E IIIP57S). By what argument can he be assured that the total mathematical ratio of motion to rest in these organisms never changes outside narrow bounds, so that increased motion in some parts is always compensated by properly proportional increased rest in others? Matheron provides a nice example: in running, the muscles are stimulated and the brain dulled, while in intoxication the brain is stimulated and the muscles dulled.10 But to suppose that such compensations always occur, and occur in the right proportion, can only be sheer speculation. And the same epistemological problem also has a converse expression. Spinoza claims, as just noted, that a horse would be destroyed by transformation into an insect or a man; but by what argument can he be assured that the quantity of motion to rest of the parts of a horse is always different from the mathematical ratio of the quantity of motion to rest of the parts of a man or an insect? Once again, increasing the margin of variability of the mathematical ratio partially alleviates the first version of the problem only at the price of greatly exacerbating the latter. Thus, if Spinoza is committed to requiring definite mathematical ratios of quantity of motion to quantity of rest as the forms of individuals, then he is committed to an implausible and unreasonable position. However, it is possible to give a less restrictive interpretation of the term ‘fixed ratio of motion and rest.’ For the Latin term ratio is not nearly so specific as the English term ‘ratio’; it can mean simply “pattern” or “relation.” Thus, Samuel Shirley’s translation, for example, proposes ‘relation’ or ‘mutual relation of motion-​and-​rest’; R. H. M. Elwes gives ‘relation’ or ‘mutual relations of motion and rest’; and W. H. White and A. H. Sterling offer ‘proportion’ or ‘kind of motion and rest.’11 Accordingly, Bennett treats the phrase ‘ratio of motion and rest’ as designating simply a “coherence of organization”; the term ‘fixed ratio,’ he suggests, is “just a placeholder for a detailed analysis which (Spinoza) had not worked out, perhaps because it might



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involve a detailed anatomical and physiological theory of organisms which he knew was not yet available.”12 Knowledge of the specific character of the relations of motion and rest among the parts composing particular kinds of individuals does, no doubt, require detailed knowledge of a kind Spinoza is not prepared to provide. That fact does not, however, rob the phrase ‘ratio of motion and rest’ of all content, nor would Bennett suppose that it does. Given the requirement of the definition and Lemmas that the parts continue to “communicate” their motions to one another in a given “fixed” manner, we can interpret the definition as imposing at least two minimal conditions on individuals when it appeals to ratios of motion and rest: first, an individual must consist of parts whose quantities of motion and rest do not vary entirely independently of the motion and rest of the remainder of the parts; and second, the manner in which the motion and rest of these parts is interrelated must conform to some enduring pattern—​even though the identity, size, number, position, direction, and motion of the parts playing these roles may change. Presumably any such pattern could ideally be expressed by a mathematical formula describing the relations of quantities of motion and rest among parts that must be preserved; but the formula need not be so simple as a fixed ratio of quantity of motion to quantity of rest. On the other hand, a fixed ratio of quantity of motion to quantity of rest would be one such pattern. Evidently, it is just such a ratio that characterizes the individual constituting the “whole of nature,” described in the Scholium to Lemma 7, since Spinoza writes in Epistle 62 that “there is preserved in all together, that is, in the whole universe, the same ratio of motion to rest” (eadem ratione motus ad quietis). (The preservation of this mathematical ratio is, of course, required by Descartes’s principles of the conservation of motion and conservation of rest [PP IIP13].) Spinoza’s use in the Short Treatise of the example of “3 to 1” to describe the ratio of motion and rest characterizing a human body may be understood, not as a serious hypothesis about the nature of the human body, but simply as an arbitrary example of a pattern, chosen from the simplest kind of pattern available. This less restrictive interpretation, according to which ratios of motion and rest are simply fixed patterns of communicated motion and rest among parts, can thus accommodate everything that Spinoza says about fixed ratios of motion and rest. It also ascribes to him views that he would be far more likely to accept than those that must be ascribed on the alternative interpretation. I conclude, therefore, that it is the more likely interpretation; at the same time, it also renders the resulting theory of metaphysical individuation far more reasonable.

The Scope of ‘Individual’ I have argued that, on the most plausible interpretation, Spinoza’s conception of ratios of motion and rest provides a coherent and reasonable content to the theory of metaphysical individuation he proposes in the Physical Digression.

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Still unresolved, however, is the question of the theory’s scope and completeness. In particular, it may be questioned whether the theory applies to substances; to infinite modes; and to such finite modes as minds, inorganic objects, and the “simplest bodies” mentioned in Lemma 7—​and, if it does not, whether those restrictions undermine the completeness of the theory. There is a very broad sense in which substances may be considered individual things. Thus, in Ethics IP8S, Spinoza sets forth a principle concerning “individuals” (“no definition involves or expresses any certain number of individuals”) that he then explicitly applies to substances. (The 1677 Dutch translation13 adds the explanatory note that “by individuals are understood particulars which belong under a genus,” presumably in order to distinguish this sense of the term from that introduced in Part II.) But, while a substance may be an individual thing in this broad sense, it cannot be an individual in the sense defined in the Physical Digression, for two reasons. First, as already noted, the definition speaks of unum corpus, sive Individuum (see also Lemma 4), thereby implying that individuals are bodies, and hence (by ID1) modes of substance. Second, the definition requires that individuals be composed of parts, whereas substances (by IP12S and IP15S; see also Epistle 12) cannot be composed of parts. But although a substance is not an individual in the sense defined, this is not a serious lacuna in Spinoza’s theory of metaphysical individuation; for to the extent that such a theory is needed for substances, it can easily be inferred from Part 1 of the Ethics. Presumably, to the extent that a substance is an individual thing, it is so simply in virtue of its being a substance. A substance persists as the same individual thing simply by continuing to instantiate its definition, a definition that captures its nature or essence (IP8S). There cannot be more than one substance instantiating that definition (IP8S), and any substance that does so exists necessarily and so cannot fail to exist eternally with that nature or essence (IP7 and ID8). Finally, Spinoza’s monism—​the doctrine that there is only one substance (IP14 and C1)—​obviates the problem of distinguishing substances, either metaphysically or epistemologically. Hence he writes at IP10S: “If someone now asks by what sign we shall be able to distinguish the diversity of substances, let him read the following propositions, which show that in Nature there exists only one substance, and that it is absolutely infinite. So that sign would be sought in vain.”14 The Scholium to Lemma 7 states that “the whole of Nature is one Individual, whose parts, i.e., all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change of the whole Individual.” Since Spinoza also identifies nature with God, the only substance, in the recurrent phrase ‘God or Nature’ (Deus sive Natura), it may thus appear that a substance must, after all, be an individual. However, as Spinoza’s distinction between Natura naturans and Natura naturata at IP29S indicates, the sense in which “nature” is identical with God is only one sense of that term. After citing motion and rest as an immediate infinite mode in Epistle 64, Spinoza continues by citing



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as an example of a mediate infinite mode: “the face of the whole Universe (facies totius Universi), which, although it varies in infinite modes, yet remains always the same; on this subject see Scholium 7 to the Lemma before Proposition XIV, Part II.” The reference to the Scholium of Lemma 7 leaves little doubt that the individual identified there as the “whole of Nature” is the “face of the whole Universe” of Epistle 64 and hence an infinite mode of substance, rather than a substance in its own right. Yet, on the other hand, Spinoza also seemingly implies that infinite modes cannot be individuals. For he claims in the Demonstration of Lemma 3 that “bodies (by IID1) are singular things”; and singular things, by IID7, are “things that are finite and have a determinate existence.” Thus, if all individuals are bodies, it will follow that all individuals are finite. And as we have seen, the Definition’s reference to one “body or Individual” (corpus, sive Individuum) implies that all individuals are bodies. Thus, either the “whole of Nature” must be regarded simply as an exception to this implication, or else the Definition must be regarded as using the phrase corpus, sive Individuum to broaden slightly the sense of ‘body,’ so as to include at least one infinite mode. Could any other infinite modes be individuals as well? As already noted, Individuals are by definition composed of bodies; and any compound of bodies that lacked some bodies as members could hardly be “infinite,” in Spinoza’s sense of that term, which means “unlimited” (ID2). This is confirmed by the demonstrations of IPP21–​23, which treat infinite modes as pervasive throughout the attribute of which they are modes.15 Thus, no other infinite mode could be an individual, unless it shared all of the same parts as the “whole of Nature.” The possibility of different individuals sharing the same parts is a topic to which I will return; but in any case, any infinite modes that do not have all bodies as parts must be pervasive features of substance that are not compounds of bodies at all. But although such infinite modes will thus not be individuals, this is not a serious limitation on the scope of Spinoza’s theory of individuation. For such infinite modes are also unlikely to be anything that would ordinarily be construed as individual things; they will instead be such universal entities as general features of an attribute as a whole, laws of nature, and eternal essences of things.16 Because the definition specifies that individuals are composed of bodies, they are by definition extended things. Nevertheless, IIP7S states that a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are identical; and according to IIP21D, this entails that “the Mind and the Body, are one and the same Individual.” And in fact, throughout the remainder of the Ethics Spinoza consistently identifies human beings—​whether conceived under thought or extension—​as individuals. Moreover, in IIA3, he writes of different ideas as being “in the same Individual.” Thus, it seems that, for Spinoza, things are individuals not only insofar as they are extended but also insofar as they are thinking. Presumably, then, he restricts the Definition to extension only because it occurs in a discussion that is devoted

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explicitly to bodies and extension, rather than to minds and thought. Spinoza does not offer a theory of metaphysical individuation for individuals insofar as they are thinking; but given the parallelism of the attributes and the identity of ideas with their objects (IIP7 and S), it is not difficult to infer what that theory would be: a thinking thing is an individual in virtue of being the idea of a composite body with a fixed ratio of motion and rest; it persists as the same individual through time in virtue of being the idea of the same composite body, constituted by the same fixed ratio of motion and rest; and it is distinguished from another thinking individual in virtue of being the idea of a (numerically) different union of bodies, where each such union is constituted by a fixed ratio of motion and rest. Spinoza states explicitly that human beings are individuals; and IIIP57S implies that animals are also individuals. Postulate 1 entails that the organs of the human body, and even the primary parts of the organs of the human body and their primary parts, are individuals. Moreover, it appears that a group of human beings can also be an individual, as Spinoza indicates at IVP19S: For if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are joined to one another, they compose an individual twice as powerful as each one. . . . Man, I say, can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as it were, one Mind and one Body. If a group of persons can be an individual, of course, then it follows that an individual can be spatially discontinuous. This need not violate the requirement that motion and rest be communicated among the parts in a fixed pattern, however, for the parts may communicate motion and rest to one another by various media that are not themselves parts of the individual. In the case Spinoza is envisaging, human beings who live in accordance with reason have natures that agree with one another, or have a great deal in common. To the extent that such individuals are in (say, written or spoken) communication with one another, they tend to maintain one another in existence, and to maintain one another in the reasonable nature that they share. Hence the motion and rest of the parts of one such person consistently help determine the motion and rest of the parts of the others in a given fixed pattern—​namely, that pattern characteristic of reasonable persons. Although persons and animals are clearly identified as individuals, it is less obvious whether nonliving things, such as rocks or planets, tables or books, can be individuals. Thus Bennett, for example, while not positively asserting that only living things can be individuals, writes that ‘individuals’ means “something like ‘organisms’ ” for Spinoza; that “the paradigmatic individuals are organisms”; and that Spinoza usually reserves the term ‘individuals’ for “things having organic unity—​organisms or parts of organisms such as organs and cells.”17



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There are several reasons for thinking that Spinoza does intend the class of individuals to include ordinary nonliving things. As we have seen, the whole of nature is an individual, even though it is not obviously a living thing in the ordinary sense. Spinoza’s use of the phrase ‘body or Individual’ (corpus, sive Individuum) in the definition implies not only that every individual is a body, but also that every body is an individual. Moreover, he claims at IIP13S that all individuals are animate “in varying degrees”; if every body is indeed an individual, this suggests that the living/​nonliving distinction itself may be only a matter of degree for him. (See also his definition of ‘life’ as “the force through which things persist in their being” at Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, Appendix (“Metaphysical Thoughts”), Part II, Chapter  6; this, together with IIIP6, entails that every thing has life.) Perhaps most important, though, nonliving things do in fact generally satisfy the definition of ‘individual’ as we have interpreted it. To take a simple example: although some pages of a book may move a certain distance, in a certain direction, without moving the rest of the book, there is a definite limit to such motion; when part of a book is moved beyond this limit in a given direction, the other parts are compelled to move as well, by a communication of motion among the parts in a manner that remains constant throughout the duration of the book’s existence. There is thus a definite fixed pattern to the relation of motion and rest among its parts involving mutual dependence of motions; and the same holds for other ordinary nonliving individual things. Is there any reason to suppose that nonliving things are not individuals for Spinoza? One reason, of course, is Spinoza’s failure to mention them explicitly as individuals. However, this failure is easily explained given that Spinoza’s ultimate concern in the Ethics is for human beings, and that the topic of “individuals” is introduced primarily for the light it can shed on the relation between the human mind and the human body. A more complicated reason, however, may be found in IVP39S, where Spinoza makes it clear that when the human body dies and is transformed into a corpse, this constitutes the destruction of the human body as an individual. For if such nonliving things as rocks and books are individuals, then so presumably is the corpse, since the parts of the corpse maintain fixed mutual relations of motion and rest among themselves of much the same kind as those maintained by the parts of a rock or a book. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to say that the individual that is the corpse does not come into existence at death, but rather is the continuation of an individual that also existed before death, since these fixed mutual relations of motion and rest (supplemented, to be sure, by others of a more organic kind) already held prior to death. Yet the parts of this seeming-​individual were the same as those of the living human body; hence, unless two individuals can consist of the same parts at the same time, there follows the contradictory conclusion that death both is and is not the destruction of the individual that is the human body. One

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way to avoid this contradiction would be to deny that the corpse is an individual at all; and if the corpse is not an individual, consistency would seem to require that other nonliving objects, such as rocks and books, not be individuals either.18 This is not, however, the only way to avoid the contradiction. For one thing, Spinoza might well hold that the individual that is now the corpse did not exist prior to death. For although the pattern of motion and rest that now characterizes its parts also characterized them before, it did so only as a part of a larger and hence different pattern of motion and rest constituting the life of the human being. Alternatively, Spinoza might well deny the principle that two different individuals cannot be composed of the same parts at the same time. In IVP39S, he writes that: I understand the Body to die when its parts are so disposed that they acquire a different proportion of motion and rest to one another. For I dare not deny that—​even though the circulation of the blood is maintained, as well as the other (signs) on account of which the Body is thought to be alive—​the human Body can nevertheless be changed into another nature entirely different from its own. For no reason compels me to maintain that the Body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed, experience seems to urge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the same man. I have heard stories, for example, of a Spanish Poet who suffered an illness; though he recovered, he was left so oblivious to his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had written were his own. He could surely have been taken for a grown-​up infant if he had also forgotten his native language. If this seems incredible, what shall we say of infants? A  man of advanced years believes their nature to be so different from his own that he could not be persuaded that he was ever an infant, if he did not make this conjecture concerning himself from others. But rather than provide the superstitious with material for raising new questions, I prefer to leave this discussion unfinished. In this deliberately indeterminate passage, Spinoza’s language seems to imply both that the Spanish poet is the same individual who wrote the tales and tragedies (“oblivious to his past life”) and that he evidently is not (“indeed, experience seems to urge a different conclusion . . . a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the same man”). Similarly, Spinoza implies both that men of advanced years are not the same individuals they were as infants (by writing with seeming approval of the difficulty of being persuaded of an identity, given the great difference of nature involved), and also that they are the same individuals (by suggesting that one’s observation of others shows that such an



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identity nevertheless does hold). One possible interpretation of the passage is that, in such cases as that of the Spanish poet, there is an individual that does continue, constituted by the particular fixed ratio of motion and rest involved in continuation of the same animal functions, and another individual that does not, one for which the more complex fixed pattern of motion and rest involved in retaining memory and similarity of higher mental functioning is essential. I therefore conclude that there are several strong reasons to suppose that ordinary nonliving things in general are individuals for Spinoza, and no strong reasons to suppose that they are not. Still, even if ordinary nonliving things are individuals for Spinoza, it may appear obvious that at least one class of nonliving things cannot be—​namely, the “simplest bodies” (corpora simplicissima) mentioned prior to the definition and in the Scholium to Lemma 7.  For according to the definition, individuals are composite bodies; and according to the Scholium, individuals of the lowest level of composition are themselves composed of simplest bodies. Despite this appearance, however, Matheron suggests that we may regard simplest bodies as “composite” bodies with only one part.19 They would thus constitute a subset of the class of individuals of the lowest level of composition. Of course, if the fixed ratio of motion and rest constituting the form of such an individual were interpreted as a mathematical ratio of motion to rest, this would entail—​as Matheron observes—​that simplest bodies could not survive a change of speed (at least, unaccompanied by a corresponding change of size). And this consequence is contrary to the demonstration of Lemma 2, which states that “all bodies agree in that . . . they can move now more slowly, now more quickly, and absolutely, that now they move, now they are at rest.” On the less restrictive interpretation of ‘fixed ratios,’ however, the fixed ratio may consist simply in the continued homogeneity of the distribution of force as quantity of motion and of (corresponding) force as quantity of rest throughout these simplest bodies. This way of treating the fixed ratio of motion and rest of simplest bodies suggests, in turn, another way of construing those bodies as satisfying the definition: we may regard them as being composed of smaller simplest bodies all of which share a completely uniform distribution of force as quantity of motion and of (corresponding) force as quantity of rest. For by ‘simplest bodies’ Spinoza need not mean “bodies that are absolutely simple,” but only “bodies of the simplest kind there are.” If the universe contained ultimate simple atoms, of course, then composites of those simplest bodies could not themselves be bodies of the simplest kind. Atoms, however, are incompatible with Cartesian science as Spinoza presents it (PP IIP5). And if every body can be construed as a compound of other bodies, which are themselves compounds of other bodies, and so on, then the simplest bodies will be those that are internally homogeneous. Subregions of such bodies will, of course, themselves be homogeneous, and hence may also be construed as simplest bodies.

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There are thus at least two ways of interpreting simplest bodies as individuals. Such an interpretation is desirable, for as already noted, the Definition implies that all bodies are individuals. But even if the simplest bodies are not individuals, this would still not be a fatal objection to the completeness of Spinoza’s theory of metaphysical individuation. For we have already seen, in the second section of this chapter, how he can account for the identity, persistence, and distinction of simplest bodies as bodies distinguished “only by motion and rest,” even without the supposition that they are themselves individuals in the sense he defines. Spinoza’s ontology contains only substances (in fact, of course, only one substance) and modes (IP6C); modes, in turn, are either infinite or finite. I have argued that, although substances are not individuals in Spinoza’s sense, this fact does not constitute a serious limitation on the scope of his theory of metaphysical individuation. I have also argued that the only infinite modes that could be regarded as individual things are individuals for him and hence fall within the scope of the theory. Furthermore, I  have argued that all bodies, including nonliving and “simplest” bodies, are also individuals for him, and hence also within the scope of the theory. Since all finite modes of extension are bodies (ID1), and since (as I argued) the ideas of individuals are also individuals, it follows that all finite modes of the attributes of extension and thought are included within the scope of his theory. Of course, Spinoza also allows for at least the possibility of other attributes of substance (ID6, IP11) with other modes. Nevertheless, since his account of the human mind entails that we cannot have any knowledge of such additional attributes (IIP13), his silence on the individuation of their modes cannot be regarded as a serious limitation. Thus, I conclude that Spinoza’s theory of metaphysical individuation is not only coherent and reasonable, but also broadly inclusive.20

Individuals and Self-​Preservation At least as striking and original as the theory of metaphysical individuation presented in Ethics Part II is the application that Spinoza appears to make of fundamental considerations about the nature of individual things in Ethics Part III. At IIIP4, he appeals simply to the general concept of ‘the definition of a thing’ to argue for the proposition that “no thing can be destroyed except through an external cause”: Dem.: This Proposition is evident through itself. For the definition of any thing affirms, and does not deny, the thing’s essence, or it posits the thing’s essence, and does not take it away. So while we attend only to the thing itself, and not to external causes, we shall not be able to find anything in it which can destroy it, q.e.d.



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From IIIP4, he derives IIIP5, the claim that “things are of a contrary nature, i.e., cannot be in the same subject, insofar as one can destroy the other”: Dem.: For if they could agree with one another, or be in the same subject at once, then there could be something in the same subject which could destroy it, which (by P4) is absurd. Therefore, things etc., q.e.d. And finally, he appeals to both IIIP4 and IIIP5 in his demonstration of IIIP6, the pivotal claim that “each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being”: Dem.:  For singular things are modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way (by IP25C), that is, (by IP34), things that express, in a certain and determinate way, God’s power, by which God is and acts. And no thing has anything in itself by which it can be destroyed, or which takes its existence away (by P4). On the contrary, it is opposed to everything which can take its existence away (by P5). Therefore, as far as it can, and it lies in itself, it strives to persevere in its being, q.e.d. IIIP6, in turn, provides the foundation both of his psychology and of the ethical theory for which the Ethics is named. But how—​if at all—​is the argument at IIIPP4–​6 related to the theory of metaphysical individuation presented in the Physical Digression of Part II? Spinoza himself makes no formal connection between the Part II theory of individuation and the Part III argument for the doctrine of self-​preservation that he bases in large measure on the concept of ‘the definition of a thing.’ Accordingly, it can easily appear that the theory presented in Part II, though perhaps interesting, is largely irrelevant to the overall structure of the Ethics.21 But although the argument of IIIPP4–​6 does not formally appeal to any part of the theory of metaphysical individuation found in the Physical Digression, that theory nevertheless has a crucial bearing on the argument and its final conclusion, in at least two ways. First, the rejection of substance as a principle of individuation helps to motivate and to render more plausible Spinoza’s attempt to deduce strong conclusions about the behavior of individual things simply from the fact of their being individual things. From the claim that a thing is a Cartesian substance, nothing whatever follows about its behavior—​it follows only that it has qualities and is capable of existing without dependence on any other thing except God. Thus, consider Descartes’s own closest correlate to IIIP6: his claim at Principles of Philosophy II.37 that “each and every thing, in so far as it can, always continues in the same state,” to which he adds the remark that “nothing can by its own nature

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tend towards its . . . own destruction.” He deduces this claim not from the nature of individual things, but rather from God’s (volitional) immutability. In contrast, Spinoza argues in effect at IIIPP4–​6 that nothing can be an individual thing unless it tends to persevere in its own existence. While a full evaluation of that argument is beyond the scope of the present chapter,22 Spinoza’s rejection of substance as a principle of individuation at the very least clears the way for an alternative conception of individuality, one from which such a powerful conclusion about individual things might be derived. (There is an interesting comparison between, on the one hand, the way in which Spinoza derives a proposition closely related to the just-​ cited Cartestian metaphysical claim of Principles II.37, but without employing the Cartestian premise of God’s volitional immutability, and, on the other hand, the way in which Spinoza appropriates the Cartesian epistemological principle that “clear and distinct ideas are true,” but without employing the Cartesian premise of God’s volitional nondeception.23) Second, the theory of metaphysical individuation presented in the Physical Digression serves to confirm the conclusion of IIIP6 by providing a plausible instantiation of it. That is, it describes a very large class of individual things (namely, the class of individuals—​which is, I have argued, a very large class indeed) that arguably will tend to persevere in their own existence. For individuals, by definition, have as their form or nature a fixed ratio or pattern, in which motion and rest can continue to be communicated. The maintenance of this continuing ratio can thus be understood as the proper activity of the individual that has this form or nature. The disruption of this ratio, in contrast, can always be understood as the intervention of something not strictly pertaining to the individual’s own form or nature, and hence as external to it. The theory thus provides specific content to the otherwise empty conception of the ‘self’ that every self-​preserving thing endeavors to preserve;24 and it shows how the distinction between an individual thing’s own nature or essence, on the one hand, and that which is “external” to it, on the other, can be applied. In both of these ways, then—​by motivating and rendering more plausible the argument of IIIPP4–​6, and by instantiating and thus confirming its conclusion—​ Spinoza’s theory of individuation makes an important contribution to his larger ethical project. At the same time, the theory also bears directly, of course, on the question of personal identity (IVP39S), on the relation of the mind and the body, and on the philosophy of physics. I conclude that it is a theory of considerable importance and power in Spinoza’s overall philosophy. In this chapter, I have tried to provide the most likely interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of metaphysical individuation. I  have also argued that that theory has a number of important virtues: consistency, reasonableness, inclusivity, and power. It is important to emphasize, therefore, that I have not argued that the theory is true. Although the theory has many virtues, it can hardly be true just as it stands,



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since both the specific Cartesian physics and the resulting physical conceptions of motion and rest on which it relies are now in many ways out of date. Yet despite this fact, readers of the Ethics are often struck by a sense that modern science will eventually lead us to something very much like Spinoza’s approach to individuation.25 This need not be as surprising as it may initially seem. For Spinoza’s replacement of substance by motion and rest as the principle of metaphysical individuation is the result of his deep reflection on the best science of his time—​a science that, though distant, is still largely continuous with our own. Ironically enough, and yet appropriately too, the specific features of his theory that render it most outdated are thus the direct result of a method that renders it most modern—​a method that is most worthy of emulation.

Notes 1. The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1985). All quotations are from this translation unless otherwise indicated. The standard Latin edition is Spinoza Opera, 4 vols., ed. Carl Gebhardt (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925). For Spinoza’s later correspondence, see also The Correspondence of Spinoza, trans, and ed. A. Wolf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928). 2. This approach to individuation also occurs in the preface to the second part of the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being: “Each and every particular thing that comes to exist becomes such through motion and rest. The same is true of all modes in the substantial extension we call body. The differences between [one body and another) arise only from the different proportions of motion and rest, by which this one is so, and not so, is this and not that.” 3. This is the most natural reading of such passages as Meditation II and Principles of Philosophy I 51–​64, among others, in which Descartes gives individual bodies as examples of substances. See The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols., ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1985). It is, of course, widely questioned whether Descartes consistently treats individual bodies or “parts of matter” as substances. In particular, Descartes’s synopsis of the Meditations is often read as implying that only body in general is a substance, and that particular bodies are not. It is worth noting that Spinoza himself presents Descartes as committed to the view that individual bodies and parts of matter are “really distinct” from one another (PP IIP8S), which entails that they are different substances. I  have also ignored any complications resulting from Descartes’s doctrine that the human mind and body constitute a substantial union. 4. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1984), pp. 108–​9.

318 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures 5. See Descartes, Principles of Philosophy I.65 and II.43–​44 in Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch, Philosophical Writings. 6. Bennett, Spinoza’s Ethics, ­chapter 4. In a paper presented to the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1987, Edwin Curley usefully distinguishes two aspects or levels of Bennett’s “field metaphysics”:  first, an attempt to understand individual extended things as consequences of local diversity in the characteristics of a single extended substance; and second, an attempt to somehow reduce propositions whose logical subjects are regions of the extended substance to propositions about substance that do not refer to its regions. Spinoza is, I believe, committed by what he says about motion and rest and its role in individuation to the first of these projects. I am not convinced that he is committed by anything he says to the second of these two projects; at any rate, I am not concerned with it here. 7. David R. Lachterman, “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza:  New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman:  University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), pp. 71–​111, especially pp. 85–​86; and Martial Gueroult, Spinoza II: L’àme (Paris: Aubier 1974), Chapter 6. See also Alexandre Matheron, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Paris:  Les éditions de Minuit, 1969), Chapter 3, which is somewhat more skeptical of this interpretation as applied to the Ethics. 8. In Epistle 32, Spinoza corrects Oldenburg’s suggestion that he rejects Descartes’s other laws of motion. He also states that “there is preserved in all together, that is, in the whole universe, the same ratio of motion to rest” (eadem ratione motus ad quietis), which would certainly be the case if the total quantity of motion and the total quantity of rest were conserved. Leibniz reports showing Spinoza, during their interview in the last year of Spinoza’s life, the error of Descartes’s principle of the conservation of total quantity of motion. (It is force as mass times acceleration that is conserved, not mass times velocity.) Gueroult shows that his interpretation of the ‘fixed ratios of motion and rest’ preserved by the individuals of the Ethics is generally incompatible with the Cartesian principle of the conservation of motion (Gueroult, Spinoza II, Appendix 8). I take this to be a reason to reject Gueroult’s account. 9. Matheron, Individu et communauté, pp. 38–​43. 10. Ibid., p. 40. 11. The Ethics and Selected Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed. Seymour Feldman (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1982); Ethics, trans. W. H. White and A. H. Sterling (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927); and The Chief Works of Spinoza, vol. 2, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (London: George Bell and Sons, 1909). 12. Bennett, Spinoza’s Ethics, p. 232. 13. De Nagelate Schriften van B. D. S. (Amsterdam, 1677), published by Spinoza’s friends. It is uncertain to what extent Spinoza reviewed the translation prior to his death.



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14. The crucial premise in Spinoza’s proof of monism is IP5, which states that there cannot be two or more substances of the same attribute. I discuss his argument for this claim in “Ethics IP5:  Shared Attributes and the Grounds of Spinoza’s Monism,” in Essays in Honor of Jonathan Bennett, ed. Mark Kulstad and Jan Cover (Indianapolis:  Hackett, 1990), pp. 69–​107. I  argue there that Spinoza’s unwillingness to allow substances to share attributes is in large part a consequence of his view that all metaphysical differences must be epistemologically conceivable, and that attribute-​sharing would violate this requirement. 15. For fuller discussion of this point, see my “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in God and Nature:  Spinoza’s Metaphysics, vol. 1, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (Leiden: Brill, 1991). 16. See Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), Chapter 2. It should be noted that Spinoza’s own use of the term ‘universal’ is more restricted—​see IIP40S1. 17. Bennett, Spinoza’s Ethics, pp. 33, 107, 321, respectively. 18. Gueroult, Spinoza II, Appendix 6, argues that the corpse is not an individual; however, Gueroult is guided by a more restrictive interpretation of ‘fixed ratios of motion and rest.’ 19. Matheron, Individu et communauté, p. 51. 20. IID7 states: “By singular things I understand things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And 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, one singular thing.” The concept of a ‘singular thing,’ unlike that of a ‘body’ or a ‘mind,’ thus potentially applies across all attributes. The second sentence of the definition may also seem to suggest that there are extended singular things that are not individuals. For it seems that a number of individuals may concur in producing an effect without entering into any fixed pattern of motion and rest among themselves; and it is implausible to regard such collections of individuals as true individual things in their own right. Spinoza is better interpreted simply as engaging in a terminological maneuver. Thus, for example, he can say in Lemma 3 that each body is “determined to motion and rest by another singular thing,” when in fact the determination of the motion and rest of a given body is generally due to a very large number of different bodies that do not themselves compose any single individual thing. 21. Among commentators who have stressed at least some important relation of the Physical Digression to IIIP6 are Matheron and Lachterman. 22. For several challenging objections to the argument, see Bennett, Spinoza’s Ethics, Chapter 10; for responses to these objections, see Alan Donagan, Spinoza (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1988), 8.1–​8.2; Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 108–​12; and Henry Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 131–​34.

320 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures 23. For an account of the latter, see my “Truth, Method, and Correspondence in Spinoza and Leibniz,” Studia Spinozana 6 (1990), 13–​43. 24. See Bennett, Spinoza’s Ethics, p.  250. Bennett argues that ratios of motion and rest cannot solve the problem of the emptiness of “self-​preservation” as a criterion of individuality, because such ratios “concern diachronic counting of individuals, whereas we are asking about synchronic counting.” I  take it that Spinoza would reply that we can distinguish individuals at a given moment only by taking account of how that momentary state of the universe contributes, under the laws of motion and rest, to the preservation of such fixed ratios. 25. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (New York: Penguin, 1951), p. 72; Bennett, Spinoza’s Ethics, Chapter 4.

12

Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism

Roughly speaking, a teleological explanation explains why something is so by indicating what its being so is for. Somewhat more precisely, a teleological explanation is one that explains a state of affairs by indicating a likely or presumptive consequence (causal, logical, or conventional) of it that is implicated in the state’s origin or etiology. Such consequences often, if not always, take the form of ends, goals, or goods. All of the following are examples of possible teleological explanations: a sapling draws nourishment from the soil because doing so is likely to contribute to the end of its becoming a mature tree; a human being constructs a house because it is supposed that doing so will help to achieve the goal of protection from the rain and cold; and an arrangement of sharp teeth in front and flat teeth in back occurs in an animal’s mouth to serve the animal’s goods of strength and continued life by allowing it to tear and chew food efficiently. Teleology is the phenomenon of states of affairs having etiologies that implicate, in an explanatory way, likely or presumptive consequences of those states of affairs.1 No proposed teleological explanation, no matter how appealing or compelling, can be correct unless it cites an actual example of teleology. A mechanical explanation, in contrast, explains a state of affairs by indicating how it arises from a previously existing physical structure and the distribution of forces within it. Thus, one possible explanation for the rising of one end of a seesaw might be that the seesaw constituted a lever and that the weight of the individual on the other side exerted a force in a downward direction on that side. Mechanism is the phenomenon of states of affairs having etiologies that implicate, in an explanatory way, the previous arrangement and distribution of forces within an extended physical structure. No proposed mechanistic explanation, no matter now appealing or compelling, can be correct unless it cites an actual example of mechanism.

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Teleological explanations—​typically expressed in the terminology of “ends” and “final causes”—​played central roles in Aristotelian and scholastic conceptions of natural philosophy (that is, of what we would now call natural science). However, the growing prominence of mechanistic explanation in seventeenth-​century natural philosophy demanded a complete rethinking both of the role of teleological explanation in scientific methodology and of the nature and scope of teleology itself. In the vanguard of this rethinking were Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz—​ each of them a defender, in his own way, of the importance of mechanistic explanation in natural science. Descartes famously rejects teleological explanation in natural philosophy, asserting that “it is not the final but the efficient causes of created things that we must inquire into” (Principles 1:28; CSM I, 202), that “we shall entirely banish from our philosophy the search for final causes” (Principles 1:28; CSM I, 202), and that “the customary search for final causes (is) totally useless in physics” (Meditation IV; CSM II, 39). Spinoza evidently rejects at least some kinds of teleological explanation, writing: “Nature has no end set before it, and . . . all final causes are nothing but human fictions” (E IAP; Geb II, 80). Leibniz, in seeming contrast, insists that “all existent facts can be explained in two ways—​through a kingdom of power or efficient causes and through a kingdom of wisdom or final causes” (A Specimen of Dynamics; AG 126). He defends “the way of final causes” as often useful in “divining important and useful truths which one would be a long time in seeking by the other, more physical way.” As an example, he offers his observation that Descartes’s attempt to derive the laws of refraction “by way of efficient causes” is “not nearly as good” as Snell’s derivation of the same laws through “the method . . . of final causes” (“Reconciliation of Two Ways of Explaining Things”; AG, 55). Furthermore, he criticizes Descartes for “eliminating the search for final causes from philosophy” (Letter to Molanus, “On God and the Soul”; AG 242) and writes of himself as “cured” of his previous leanings toward “the Spinozist view which . . . dismisses the search for final causes and explains everything through brute necessity” (RB 71). Indeed, he charges that Descartes has “made himself suspect” of de facto Spinozism by, among other things, “rejecting the search for final causes” (“Two Sects of Naturalists”; AG 282). Following Leibniz’s lead, historians of philosophy often portray Descartes and Spinoza as staunch enemies of Aristotelian teleological explanation and portray Leibniz—​enthusiastic conciliator between ancient and modern that he so obviously was—​as seeking to rehabilitate Aristotelian teleology by reconciling it with the modern mechanistic philosophy. I believe that this common portrayal, while not entirely baseless, is largely misleading. Accordingly, I  will try to provide a more accurate, if somewhat more complicated, account of the relations among Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz on the nature and scope of teleology and teleological explanation. The three points that I want to emphasize are (i) that



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although Spinoza maintains a certain rhetorical distance from the Aristotelian vocabulary of final causes, he fully and consistently accepts the legitimacy of many teleological explanations, at least as I  have defined them; (ii) that in two of the most important respects, Leibniz’s position on teleology is not more, and is perhaps even less, Aristotelian than Descartes’s; and (iii) that overall, among the three seventeenth-​century philosophers under discussion, it is not Leibniz but Spinoza who holds the position on teleology and teleological explanation nearest to that of Aristotle. This is not to deny, of course, that Spinoza’s doctrines about teleology are embedded—​like those of Descartes and Leibniz—​in a metaphysical system very different indeed from Aristotle’s. In the first section of this chapter, I will try to establish claim (i). My approach will have three parts. First, I will summarize the reasons for interpreting Spinoza as accepting the legitimacy of at least some teleological explanations. Second, I will try to rebut each of five reasons usefully surveyed by Jonathan Bennett (1983; 1984, chap. 9; 1990) for interpreting Spinoza as rejecting all teleological explanations. Third, I will appeal to Spinoza’s distinction among three kinds of knowledge to indicate how teleological explanations can be accommodated within his mechanistic worldview. In the second section, I will try to establish claims (ii) and (iii). My method will be to explore the answers given by Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza to four basic questions about the nature and range of teleology and teleological explanation. To the first of these questions—​the question of whether there is teleology not dependent on thought—​Aristotle and Spinoza give an affirmative answer, whereas Descartes and Leibniz give a negative one. To the second question—​whether there is teleology through divine will or purpose—​Aristotle and Spinoza give a negative answer, whereas Descartes and Leibniz give an affirmative one. To the third and fourth questions—​whether there is subhuman teleology, and whether there is a substantive role for teleological explanations in natural philosophy—​Leibniz sides with Aristotle against Descartes in giving affirmative answers; however, Spinoza also sides with Aristotle against Descartes on these questions, and does so in a rather more Aristotelian way than does Leibniz.

Teleology in Spinoza Evidence That Spinoza Accepted Teleology Uses of Teleological Explanation There are at least four related textual reasons for concluding that Spinoza accepted the existence of teleology and endorsed the legitimacy of at least some teleological explanations. The first lies in the many perfectly ordinary teleological explanations that Spinoza offers for various human activities throughout his philosophical and

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political writings and correspondence. For example, he begins the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect by explaining much of human activity as performed for the “ends” of attaining “wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure,” and he goes on to explain his own philosophizing activity as the consequence of his desire to achieve a love whose object will be eternal, taking as “the end I aim at” the acquisition of a nature that will be “much stronger and more enduring” than the one he then has (Emendation, sects. 1–​14; Geb II, 5–​9).

Human Ends The second reason lies in Spinoza’s general remarks about human ends in the appendix to Ethics, part  1. Although he emphatically denies that the one substance, God-​or-​Nature, has any ends or purposes through which its actions can be explained, he appears to contrast this with the case of human beings: All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end. (E 1AP; Geb II, 78) Men act always on account of an end, namely, on account of their advantage, which they want. (E 1AP; Geb II, 78) These statements strongly imply that the actions of human beings can be explained by reference to desired ends involving what is (or is presumed to be) advantageous to them. Such explanations would be teleological in the sense that I have defined.

The Conatus of Singular Things The third reason lies in Spinoza’s doctrine of universal conatus (usually translated as “striving” or “endeavor”): “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being [in suo esse perseverare conatur]” (E 3P6; Geb II, 146). As Spinoza’s demonstration of this proposition makes clear, its intended scope is all “singular things.” He has already defined “singular things” as “things that are finite and have a determinate existence” (E 2D7; Geb II, 85). Ethics 3P6 therefore implies not merely that finite human beings strive to preserve themselves; it implies more generally that every finite thing,” whether “organic” by ordinary standards or not, strives to exert some power to preserve itself. Curley (1990) rightly notes that the terms conatur and conatus, which he translates as “strives” and “striving,” can mean simply “tends” and “tending” and need not be understood to involve conscious effort. Nevertheless, according to E 1P36 every singular thing has some power and produces some effects (Geb II, 77); and according to E 3P7D, the “power of each thing, or the striving by which it  .  .  .  does anything (is) the power, or striving, by which it strives to



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persevere in its being” (Geb II, 146). Hence, Spinoza seems to hold that each thing has at least some causal power whose exertion is a striving or tendency of the thing to persevere in its being.2 This doctrine provides an obvious avenue for explaining the behavior of singular things by appeal to the self-​preserving tendency of that behavior. These explanations may apply not only to humans, animals, and plants but even to such “inorganic” things as books and rocks; for in Spinoza’s metaphysics, even objects not usually considered to be living can be understood to have some causal resources for resisting dissolution in the face of external forces.3 It may be questioned whether the acceptance of teleology for all singular things implied by the conatus doctrine of E 3P6 is consistent with Spinoza’s just-​cited explicit denial in the appendix to Ethics, part 1, of the “prejudice . . . that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end.” To this there are two replies. First, Spinoza himself seems to treat his denial that “all natural things act . . . on account of an end” as interchangeable with his denial that nature as a whole “has no end set before it” (at Geb II, 80 of the appendix, for example), and his attempts to explain the origin, and establish the falsity, of this “prejudice” are directed entirely toward this latter doctrine.4 Thus, it seems likely that he means in the appendix to deny only that nature as a whole acts for a unitary end, not to deny that each singular thing in nature acts for its own self-​preservation. (There is, of course, no inconsistency between an affirmation of teleology for all singular things—​as implied by E 3P6—​and a rejection of teleology on the part of God-​or-​Nature. This is because singular things are by definition finite, whereas Spinoza’s God-​or-​Nature is an infinite thing and hence does not fall within the scope of the conatus doctrine of E 3P6.) Second, although Spinoza writes in the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​being that bees making honey have “no other end in view than to provide a certain supply for the winter” (II. xxiv.6; Geb I,105), the Ethics uses the terms “end” and “final cause” only in application to human beings. Thus, it may well be that he has made a decision to withhold the term “end” from nonhuman nature in the Ethics; but such a terminological decision—​motivated, presumably, by a desire to tie “ends” more directly to conscious intentions—​would not by itself settle the question of whether the actions of nonhuman things exhibit teleology in the sense in which we are using that term. For example, Spinoza’s own definition of “end” in E 4D7 reads as follows: “By the end for the sake of which we do something I understand appetite.” On the one hand, this suggests that his use of the term “end” is being restricted to the case of human beings because he defines only the phrase “end for the sake of which we do something”; but on the other hand, it simultaneously suggests that the underlying phenomenon of action for ends is itself nevertheless pervasive throughout nature, for according to E 3P9S human “appetite” is simply human conatus, and conatus itself belongs to each singular thing in nature.

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Human Striving The final reason for interpreting Spinoza as a committed teleologist lies in the many generalizations concerning human striving that Spinoza makes in Ethics, parts 3, 4, and 5. Here are just a few examples: We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to sadness. (E 3P28; Geb II, 161) When we love a thing like ourselves, we strive, as far as we can, to bring it about that it loves us in return. (E 3P33; Geb II, 165) A free man who lives among the ignorant strives, as far as he can, to avoid their favors. (E 4P70; Geb II, 262) Each of these claims seems intended to license teleological predictions and explanations of human actions. Furthermore, since these generalizations—​as well as claims in part 4 about the pursuit of objects under “the guidance of reason”—​ all trace their deductive ancestry to the conatus doctrine of E 3P6, there is further reason to interpret E 3P6 as providing a general basis for teleological explanation.

Did Spinoza Reject All Teleological Explanation? While fully aware of this evidence for Spinoza’s acceptance of teleology—​indeed, he acknowledges, cites, and discusses much of it—​Jonathan Bennett (1983; 1984, chap.  9; 1990)  argues that there is also very substantial evidence of opposition to all teleology and teleological explanation in Spinoza’s Ethics. He thus regards Spinoza as involved in at least some inconsistency in his treatment of teleology. Bennett surveys five different considerations as evidence of opposition to teleology in Spinoza: (i) a statement in the appendix to Ethics, part 1, rejecting “final causes”; (ii) Spinoza’s first argument in defense of this statement, concerning “necessity” and “perfection”; (iii) Spinoza’s second argument in defense of this statement, concerning “the order of nature”; (iv) a deeper, unstated argument against all teleology for which there appear to be premises in part 2 of the Ethics; and (v) Spinoza’s treatment, in part 3, of the concept of “appetite.”5

Final Causes as Human Fictions. In the appendix to Ethics, Part 1, Spinoza writes that “not many words will be required now to show that Nature has no end set before it, and that all final causes are nothing but human fictions” (Geb II, 80). Bennett reads the second clause of this statement, naturally enough, as a denial of the reality of all final causes and hence of all teleology. Curley (1990) emphasizes, however, that the second clause



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also admits of another natural reading, according to which it is merely restating the main idea of the first clause and hence is implicitly restricted to the denial of final causes considered as ends that are set before God-​or-​Nature. Curley notes that this reading has the advantage of greater consistency with the apparent endorsement of human teleology that occurs only two pages earlier in the same appendix, in passages already cited. It is also, of course, more consistent with the further evidence of commitment to teleological explanation later in the Ethics and elsewhere in Spinoza’s writings. Thus, Curley’s less radical reading of Spinoza’s claim concerning “final causes” is to be preferred unless support for the more radical reading is forthcoming from other features of Spinoza’s texts.

Necessity and Perfection Immediately after stating that “not many words will be required now to show that Nature has no end set before it, and that all final causes are nothing but human fictions,” Spinoza goes on to say that he has “sufficiently established” this claim “both by the foundations and causes from which I have shown this prejudice to have had its origin, and also by P16, P32C1 and C2, and all those (propositions) by which I have shown that all things proceed by a certain eternal necessity of nature, and with the greatest perfection” (E 1AP; Geb II, 80). The proposition and two corollaries that Spinoza cites by number in this passage read as follows: From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect). (E 1P16; Geb II, 60) God does not produce any effect by freedom of the will. (E 1P32C1; Geb II, 73) Will and intellect are related to God’s nature as motion and rest are, and as are absolutely all natural things, which (by P29) must be determined by God to exist and produce an effect in a certain way. (E 1P32C2; Geb II, 73) How does Spinoza intend these citations to support his claim about final causes? Bennett’s (1984, chap. 9) answer to this question is straightforward: Spinoza cites these three claims in order to infer a denial of teleology from his strict causal determinism. Bennett rightly judges the inference itself to be weak, on the grounds that teleology does not in fact require causal indeterminism; however, he justly emphasizes that what matters most directly for purposes of interpreting Spinoza’s conclusion is not the strength of his argument but its intended scope. Since a supposed purely general incompatibility between teleology and universal strict determinism would apply equally to divine and human teleology, Bennett suggests that Spinoza’s ambiguous claim about final causes should be interpreted as a denial of all teleology.

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However, as Curley (1990) notes, the three claims that Spinoza cites by number specifically concern only God and the divine nature. Although E 1P32 itself concerns freedom of will in general, Spinoza conspicuously does not cite it; instead, he limits his citation to the two corollaries concerning God that he draws from it. Furthermore, the only “prejudice” whose “foundation and causes” he has explained at this point of the appendix is the one that we have already noted:  namely, the “prejudice  .  .  .  that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end . . . [and] that God himself directs all things to some certain end, for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that he might worship God” (E 1AP; Geb II, 78).6 The “foundation and causes” he cites for this prejudice do not call into question whether humans act for ends. Instead, they simply explain—​as an overhasty extrapolation by human beings from their own case—​the common opinion that God shares this mode of activity with them. In light of these facts, plus the evident weakness of the inference from general determinism to the denial of all teleology, it is reasonable to wonder whether Spinoza is concerned instead with a more specific—​and perhaps more plausible—​objection to divine ends in particular, an objection founded in the specific necessity of the divine nature. Although he does not spell out such an objection explicitly, we can see how Spinoza might be thinking. The teleological functioning of an “end” or “final cause” arguably requires at least that something be selected from alternatives in a way that essentially involves some kind of goodness or fitness of its likely or presumptive consequences relative to those of other alternatives. For the actions of singular things, including human beings, the idea of such selection makes sense. Singular things have some causal power, for Spinoza, but their causality is not entirely self-​ sufficient (E 4A1; see also E 4P4). What they do is absolutely causally necessitated, but it is necessitated only by the nature and state of the singular thing together with the nature and state of the surrounding objects in the whole order of nature. Relative to the power of the surrounding objects, therefore, a variety of alternative actions are possible, depending on the nature and the present state of the singular thing—​just as relative to the power of the singular thing various outcomes of its action are possible, depending on the nature and state of the surrounding objects. Since singular things naturally pursue their own self-​preservation—​according to the conatus doctrine of E 3P6—​we can appeal to a specified action’s (likely or presumptive) beneficial consequences in order to explain why the singular thing “selected” that course of action over the alternatives that were equally possible relative to the power of the surrounding objects. In the special case of God, however, this teleological mode of explanation is doubly inappropriate. Because God is causally self-​contained and self-​sufficient, his actions are absolutely necessitated by his own nature; there is no surrounding context relative to whose powers various divine actions are possible. Indeed, when things are considered as divine actions,



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there are no unactualized possibilities (Garrett 1991). God’s action, therefore, does not select among possible alternatives. Furthermore, God’s necessary existence and perfection entail that nothing can be helpful or hurtful to God, because nothing can destroy him or make him less perfect. Hence, there is no divine “good” or “advantage” to serve as a principle of selection for God. In the appendix to part 1 of the Ethics, Spinoza is not yet in a position to elaborate the foregoing contrast between God and individuals because he has not yet provided his theory of individuation (beginning in the Physical Excursus following E 2P13), his account of the endeavor of singular things for self-​preservation (beginning with E 3P6), or any suggestion of a sense of “possibility” that is relative to limited powers (as suggested, for example, at E 3P6, 4D4, and subsequent discussions of human choice). He has, however, said enough to support his denial of divine ends. Spinoza’s reference to “P16, P32C1 and C2, and all those (propositions) by which I have shown that all things proceed by a certain eternal necessity of nature, and with the greatest perfection” can easily be understood as invoking his cumulative description of the divine nature from E 1P16, 1P22C1, 1P22C2, and elsewhere in part 1 to indicate that divine teleological explanation is inappropriate in both of the respects we have considered: the reference to “a certain eternal necessity of nature” concerns the absence of alternatives for selection, and the reference to “the greatest perfection” concerns the absence of a divine good or advantage to serve as a principle for selection.7 We need not interpret Spinoza as rejecting all teleology on the basis of this argument.

Reversing the Order of Nature In further defense of his remark that “Nature has no end set before it, and . . . all final causes are nothing but human fictions,” Spinoza writes that “this doctrine concerning the end turns the order of Nature completely upside down. For what is really a cause, it considers as an effect, and conversely. What is by nature prior, it makes posterior. And finally, what is supreme and most perfect, it makes imperfect” (E 1AP; Geb II, 80). At least the third point of this compound objection—​the point concerning perfection and imperfection—​appears to be concerned only with divine ends. For Spinoza goes on to defend it by making two observations specifically about God: (i) that the things God immediately produces are more perfect than things God produces only mediately, whereas the existence of divine ends would entail the reverse; and (ii) that God cannot act for the sake of an end unless he wants something that he lacks. Furthermore, there is no indication in the wording of the text that Spinoza intends his first two points of objection—​which he says are “manifest through themselves”—​to have any broader scope than the third. On the contrary, Spinoza’s further remarks about the ways in which the “followers of this doctrine” seek to defend it are likewise concerned exclusively with divine purposes. Nevertheless, as Bennett (1994, 216–​217) observes, at least

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the first point of objection—​namely, that the doctrine of ends at issue reverses the proper relation of cause and consequence—​could in principle be raised against all teleology. How compelling a reason is this to interpret Spinoza as rejecting all teleology, non-​divine as well as divine? Both Bennett and Curley (1990) recognize that human teleology would escape the first point of objection if it could be understood as a species of efficient causation; and they both agree that at least one way of so understanding human teleology would be to locate the cause of human action in the present representation of a future effect. (This is not to say that there might not also be ways to avoid the objection by appealing to efficient causes that do not involve representation at all, as we shall see later.) Furthermore, Curley emphasizes that Spinoza seems to endorse precisely this sort of saving efficient-​cause account of at least some human teleology in a passage from the preface to Ethics, part 4: What is termed a final cause is nothing but human appetite in so far as it is considered as the starting-​point or primary cause of some thing. For example, when we say that being a place of habitation was the final cause of this or that house, we surely mean no more than this, that a man, from thinking of the advantages of domestic life, had an urge to build a house. Therefore, the need for a habitation in so far as it is considered as a final cause, is nothing but this particular urge, which is in reality an efficient cause. (E 4PR; Geb II, 207) For Bennett (1984: 224), either (i) this latter passage is not intended (contrary to appearances) to explain the existence of a house teleologically by appeal to a process of efficient causation involving its imagined consequences, or (ii) it simply constitutes an inconsistency on Spinoza’s part. It is clear, however, that we are still not compelled to interpret Spinoza as rejecting all teleology.

The Causal Inefficacy of Representative Content Although the passages that we have considered thus far can be interpreted quite naturally as limited to a denial of divine ends or purposes, they can also be interpreted—​at the cost of attributing some inconsistency to Spinoza—​as denying all teleology whatsoever. Bennett prefers the more radically antiteleological reading, partly because he attributes to Spinoza a further, deeper argument concerning teleology, an unstated argument whose premises he thinks Spinoza must nevertheless have accepted and whose universally antiteleological conclusion he believes Spinoza must, at least at some level, have grasped. This deeper argument is roughly as follows. Teleology can exist only if some properties that have causal efficacy “map onto” representative properties—​ properties, that is, of representing something. (Presumably properties “map



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onto” others if and only if they can be related by identity, coextensivity, or a similar systematic correlation relation; “mapping onto” is thus a symmetrical relation.) But such properties of representative content are determined largely by causal origin, as Spinoza appears to recognize in E 2P16 (plus its corollaries), and in 2P40S1 as well.8 Representative properties are therefore not intrinsic but merely relational, and relational in such a way that intrinsic properties cannot be mapped onto them. The universality of mechanism within the physical or extended realm—​which requires that all causally efficacious physical properties be intrinsic properties such as shape or velocity—​thus dictates that any physical properties whatever that can be mapped onto representative properties are of the wrong kind to have causal efficacy. From this and Spinoza’s doctrine of the causal parallelism between the attributes of extension and thought (i.e., the physical and the mental), it follows that no mental properties that can be mapped onto representative properties are causally efficacious either. Hence, there are no causally efficacious physical or mental properties that map onto representative properties, and there is therefore no teleology. Bennett thus sees Spinoza as anticipating the concerns of many contemporary philosophers who doubt the causal efficacy of representative properties on the grounds that they do not map onto causally efficacious physical properties—​all of which, they maintain, are nonrepresentative. Somewhat more precisely, the argument that Bennett ascribes to Spinoza and the grounds that he cites for them may be outlined as follows (drawing on the presentations in Bennett 1983 and 1984 and on their defense and elaboration in Bennett 1990): (1) The causally efficacious properties of things under the attribute of extension are all intrinsic geometrical and dynamic properties, such as shape and velocity (inference from Spinoza’s so-​called “Physical Excursus,” the set of axioms and lemmas following E 2P13). (2) Whether an entity with a certain complete set of intrinsic properties counts as having this or that content or representative property depends on when its bearer got it, in what circumstances, in association with what other items, and so on (inference from E 2P16, 2P16C1, 2P16C2, 2P40S1). (3) No intrinsic property can be mapped onto any representative property [inference from (2)]. (4) Any properties of things under the attribute of extension that can be mapped onto representative properties lack causal efficacy [inference from (1) and (3)]. (5) The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things [Causal Parallelism, as stated in E 2P7). (6) Any properties of things under the attribute of thought that can be mapped onto representative properties lack causal efficacy [inference from (4) and (5)]

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(7) All teleology requires that some causally efficacious properties map onto representative properties. (8) There is no teleology [inference from (4), (6), and (7)]. Throughout this argument, the phrase “representative properties” must be understood to refer only to properties of what Bennett calls “indirect representation” (see Bennett 1984, 219). In Spinoza’s metaphysics, every mode of extension is represented primarily  —​“directly,” in Bennett’s terminology—​by a mode of thought with which it is identical. This doctrine entails that any versions of steps (2) and (3) concerned with direct representation would be false: for every intrinsic property of a mode of extension, there would be a corresponding idea directly representing precisely that property. Hence, a version of step (4)  concerned with direct representation would have to be false as well: for any causally efficacious property under the attribute of extension, there would be a corresponding idea directly representing that property under the attribute of thought. However, in the passages from Ethics, part 2, that Bennett (1990, 54–​55) cites as support for step (2), Spinoza is considering a metaphysically secondary, or “indirect,” way in which ideas can represent things with which they are not identical. In Spinoza’s example in E 2P17S, for instance, what directly represents Peter’s body is simply Peter’s mind; but an idea in Paul’s mind—​an idea that directly represents a state of Paul’s body—​can indirectly represent Peter’s body. It will do so, according to Spinoza, to the extent that the state of Paul’s body has been caused by Peter’s body, and so owes some considerable part of its nature to the nature of Peter’s body as well as part of its nature to Paul’s body. This would occur if, for example, the state of Paul’s body in question involved a physical image of a shape that corresponded to and was caused by the shape of Peter’s body. This is the kind of representation that occurs when human beings imagine other bodies; and Bennett plausibly assumes that it is the causal efficacy of this kind of representation that Spinoza would think relevant to teleology in step (7). Hence, the argument univocally concerns indirect, rather than direct, “representative properties” throughout.9 Is Spinoza likely to have grasped and been motivated by this deeper argument against all teleology? Two of its key premises are the nonmapping doctrine of step (3)  and the efficacy of representation requirement of step (7). It is not obvious, however, that Spinoza would accept either of them. Michael Della Rocca (1996, 252–​257) notes that Spinoza gives no textual indication of possessing a key distinction that is needed to grasp the efficacy in representation requirement of step (7): namely, the distinction between the causal efficacy of a thing or state, on the one hand, and the causal efficacy of the thing’s or state’s representative properties, on the other hand. Furthermore, we may add, there is a strong prima facie reason to suppose that Spinoza would reject this efficacy



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of representation requirement. All parties, including Bennett (1983, 1984, 1990), freely acknowledge that Spinoza often uses the general conatus doctrine of E 3P6 to underwrite teleological explanations. (Bennett regards this as inconsistent dealing on Spinoza’s part; although the argument is much too long to repeat here, I have argued elsewhere10 that Spinoza consistently construes the doctrine teleologically, both in his argument for it and in the consequences he derives from it.) Although most of his applications of the conatus doctrine are to human beings—​ which is understandable, given the primary purposes of the Ethics—​at no point does Spinoza explicitly require that conatus operate only through indirect representation. On the contrary, the scope of E 3P6 is “singular things” generally, and the presence of conatus is essential to his account of the individuation of all finite things.11 Yet many things (e.g., rocks, trees, and individual bodily organs) do not appear to have any indirect representations at all—​or at least none beyond rudimentary and obscure traces of impacts on their external surfaces. Even higher animals, which do have developed indirect representations, perform many self-​ preservatory activities—​the pumping of blood, involuntary respiration, perspiration, and so on—​that do not utilize indirect representations. If Spinoza allows even one instance in which an individual’s activity can be explained through its striving to persevere in being in a way that does not employ indirect representations, then he is obliged to reject step (7). It is also doubtful whether Spinoza would be willing to infer the nonmapping doctrine of step (3) from the relational character of indirect representation that is postulated in step (2) (derived from Ethics, part 2). For the nonmapping doctrine of step (3) requires not merely that some representative properties resist mapping from causally efficacious physical properties; it also requires that no causally efficacious properties be mappable onto any representative properties. Philosophers of mind now often distinguish between narrow and broad representative content. Whereas the latter can involve representations of specific individuals or natural kinds and depends essentially on relational (including causal-​history) properties of the representer that do not map onto intrinsic properties, the former is qualitative and may be supervenient on the intrinsic nonrelational properties of the representer. Adapting this distinction to Spinoza’s case of Peter and Paul, we might say that when Paul has an idea whose broad content is “Peter’s body,” he also has an idea (perhaps even the same idea) with a narrow content that captures only a certain size, texture, and arrangement of physical parts, some of which pertain to Peter. Even if the broad representative content property were disqualified from causal efficacy by its dependence on causal history, it does not follow that a narrow representative content property of the kind indicated is also causally disqualified. Whether there are in fact completely narrow representative contents that are completely independent of the representer’s external relations remains a disputed question and need not be settled here.12 But it should be emphasized that Spinoza’s

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psychology is particularly congenial to narrow content, inasmuch as indirect representation is for him ultimately a matter of having images, embedded in a particular causal framework, that resemble and often even reproduce particular features of their originals. (Such images also, of course, have some features that are contributed by the nature of the representer.) This conception of representation—​ which is potentially both mental and physical, thinking and extended—​makes it very plausible to suppose that, for Spinoza, indirect representation operates in the first instance to represent by resemblance the copied properties of objects and only more derivatively to represent the particular external objects themselves.13 Once again, we are by no means forced to the conclusion that Spinoza rejected all teleology.

The Concept of Appetite In E 4D7, Spinoza defines “end” in terms of appetite:  “By the end for the sake of which we do something I  understand appetite” (Geb II, 210). Bennett (1984, 222) writes that this definition “announces flatly that (Spinoza) will have no truck with the language of final causes unless it is construed in terms of his harmless (i.e., nonteleological) notion of appetite.” Bennett interprets E 4D7 in this way—​ that is, as a rejection of all teleology—​because he interprets Spinoza’s concept of “appetite,” first introduced in E 3P9S, as intended to provide a nonteleological substitute for the ordinary teleological concept of “desire.” Is Spinoza’s concept of “appetite” nonteleological? He introduces the concept in the course of his main discussion of conatus: When this striving [“by which each thing strives to persevere in its being,” i.e., conatus] is related only to the Mind, it is called Will; but when it is related to the Mind and Body together, it is called Appetite. This Appetite, therefore, is nothing but the very essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote his preservation. And so man is determined to do those things. Between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of their appetites. So desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite. From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it. (E 3P9S; Geb II, 147–​148) Bennett offers two reasons for interpreting this account of appetite as nonteleological. The first lies in his reading of Spinoza’s claim that an appetite or desire for persevering in being is “the very essence of man.” Bennett interprets this



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to mean that appetite is “causally potent only when construed in intrinsic rather than representational terms” (1990, 55; see also 1984, 221–​222). He interprets Spinoza’s claim in this way—​that is, as appealing to a distinction between intrinsic and representational properties, considered as mutually exclusive—​because he interprets “the essence” of a thing as consisting of all of its intrinsic, nonrelational properties. Accordingly, he holds that, for Spinoza, the proper notion of “appetite for x” is not the notion of a representative state but rather the notion of any intrinsic state “that causes one to move towards x” (1984, 221). As noted in connection with the “deeper” eight-​step argument that Bennett attributes to Spinoza, however, there is good reason to doubt whether Spinoza accepts the nonmapping doctrine expressed in step (3)  (i.e., that no intrinsic property can be mapped onto any representative property). Hence there is good reason to doubt whether Spinoza would make the inference Bennett proposes from the intrinsic character of appetite to the nonrepresentative character of appetite. Furthermore, even if Spinoza were to grant this inference, we have also found reasons to doubt whether he accepts the efficacy of representation requirement expressed in step (7) (i.e., that all teleology requires that some causally efficacious properties map onto representative properties). Hence there is also reason to doubt whether he would allow the further inference from the alleged nonrepresentative character of appetite to the nonteleological character of appetite. Both proposed inferences are particularly dubious in the present context, where the object of the appetite in question is simply a general perseverance in being. Fortunately, it is not necessary to see Spinoza as appealing to a radical distinction between intrinsic and representative properties in order to understand his remark at E 3P9S that appetite is “the very essence of man.” As the context of that remark indicates, he is referring specifically to the appetite of each human being to persevere in being, and this appetite is identical, in his view, with the striving to persevere in being, or conatus, of each human being. Hence, his claim in E 3P9S about the “essence of man” is simply an application to human beings of the more general doctrine of 3P7 that “the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” The essence of a thing, for Spinoza, is that which makes it what it is (so that its presence is necessary and sufficient for the existence of the thing) and from which follows everything that can be understood fully through the nature, power, or activity of that thing (E 2D3; Geb II, 84).14 Hence, to say that the appetite for self-​preservation is the essence of man is simply to say that its presence is necessary and sufficient for the existence of the man and that whatever activities can be understood through the nature of the human being at all are to be understood through this appetite or striving. For Spinoza, particular human desires are simply particular conscious aspects—​that is, conscious directions onto more specific objects—​of this general appetite for self-​ preservation.

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Bennett’s (1984, 223–​224) second reason for interpreting Spinoza’s concept of “appetite” as nonteleological concerns Spinoza’s doctrine about the causal priority of desire over judgments of goodness, as stated in the final paragraph of E 3P9S. More specifically, it concerns Spinoza’s remark that the causal priority doctrine follows “from all this”—​that is, from the previous two paragraphs of the scholium. Bennett suggests that only his own nonteleological interpretation of “appetite” can explain this remark. In Bennett’s nonteleological construal of “appetite,” all representative states—​including, therefore, those about goodness—​are merely derivative from the intrinsic states that are identified as appetites or desires. It is for this reason, he suggests, that Spinoza affirms that judgments about (i.e., representing) goodness do not explain, but rather are explained by, our appetites or desires in the Spinozistic sense. However, Spinoza’s doctrine in E 3P9S that the appetite to persevere in being is the “actual essence” of each human being—​that is, the explanatory essence from which the various actual properties and actions of the human being follow—​ provides the basis for a simple and plausible explanation of Spinoza’s remark that is entirely consistent with a teleological conception of appetite. For if appetite is the essence of each human being, it must causally explain, rather than be causally explained by, such other properties of the person as judgments about the good, regardless of the representative or teleological character of the appetite.

Teleology and the Second Kind of Knowledge If the foregoing analysis is correct, then (i)  Spinoza is committed to the existence of teleology in the behavior of human beings in particular and of singular things in general and (ii) nothing in his writings warrants the conclusion that he rejected all teleology. Yet the Physical Excursus following E 2P13 (Geb II, 96–​ 103) presents a theory of nature in which the individuation, form, and behavior of bodies is evidently determined entirely by their motion and rest.15 In light of this apparent commitment to mechanism for extended things and his clear doctrine of the causal parallelism of the attributes of extension and thought, we may still wonder whether there is any positive basis in his metaphysics and epistemology for teleological explanations. The answer to this question lies in Spinoza’s doctrine of three kinds of knowl­ edge or cognition (cognitio), a doctrine presented in E 2P40S (Geb II, 122) and, in a slightly different form, in Emendation, sections 18–​24 (Geb II, 9–​12).16 The first kind of knowledge is opinion (opinio). This kind of knowledge is based either on mere random experience (experientia vaga; see Gabbey 1996, 172–​175, for a fuller explanation of this term) or on words or other signs; it is based on the imagination and hence is “inadequate.” The second and third kinds of knowledge, in contrast, are based on the intellect and are entirely “adequate.” The second kind



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of knowledge, reason (ratio), is based on inference from “common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things,” and the third kind of knowledge, intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva), “proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.” These definitions appeal to the distinction between the essence of a thing and its properties. The essence of a thing, as we have seen, constitutes the thing’s nature, makes it what it is, and is the basis for an adequate understanding of the thing itself and its activities. A property of a thing is any other characteristic of the thing that follows from its essence; a property may be shared in common with other things, and it can be understood by understanding only enough of the essence of a thing to allow us to see that the property does follow. As Spinoza’s examples show, the same fact can be known through different kinds of knowledge by different people. His examples also illustrate a fundamental difference between the second and third kinds of knowledge: whereas the second kind of knowledge allows one to understand, correctly and with certainty, that something is so (by inferring it from some general property that one knows a thing must have), knowledge of the third kind allows one to understand, correctly and with certainty, how and why something is so (by allowing one to infer it from an adequate knowledge of a thing’s own essence). Although the distinction between the second and third kinds of knowledge is not itself a distinction between teleological and mechanistic modes of explanation, it does help us to understand how teleological explanation is possible and how it is related to mechanistic explanation. Mechanistic explanation of an effect can produce knowledge of the second kind. This occurs when, by knowing common properties of bodies pertaining to motion and rest, we can infer the production of the effect in the given circumstances. Such common properties play a central role in the epistemology Spinoza presents throughout Ethics, part 2. However, teleological explanation of an effect can also produce knowledge of the second kind. This occurs when, by knowing common properties of bodies or minds pertaining to their endeavor to persevere in being, we can infer the production of the effect in given circumstances. Such common properties play a central role in the psychology of emotions that Spinoza presents throughout Ethics, part 3. Consider, for example, a man who gives his beloved a beautiful and expensive gift. Striving to persevere in being is a property that (by E 3P6) we know all singular things to possess, despite the differences in their individual essences. One general consequence of this striving, in the case of all those singular things capable of love [defined in E 3PCS (Geb II, 151) as “joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause”], is demonstrated in E 3P33: “When we love a thing like ourselves, we strive, as far as we can, to bring it about that it loves us in return.” Using this knowledge, we may explain the man’s gift-​giving teleologically: it is an action

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performed to bring it about that the beloved love him in return, in circumstances in which the giving of the gift constitutes the greatest effort to bring about the return of love that is within the man’s power. The fact that the man strove to bring about a return of love explains his action teleologically because that likely or presumptive consequence is involved in the etiology of the action; were it not for its relation to that consequence, it is far less likely that he would have performed it. Thus far, however, our resulting understanding of the action is nevertheless only knowledge of the second kind, for we know only through a common property of lovers, rather than through the essence of the particular man, that such an action must occur in those circumstances. Knowledge of the third kind, we may suppose, must combine and integrate both teleological and mechanistic explanation in cases where we seek to understand the effects of singular things under the attribute of extension. For in understanding the essence of a singular thing, we must understand that essence as a specific force, striving for its own specific self-​preservation (by E 3P7). To understand in detail how a given extended thing strives for self-​preservation, however, we must understand how its various parts interact mechanistically to constitute a mechanism that tends to produce its own perseverance in being through the variety of self-​preservatory operations that it has within its own power or behavioral repertoire. We must, that is, understand how an extended thing’s teleological strivings are implemented or realized mechanistically. In the case of the lover and his gift, we must understand the essence of the particular man well enough to be able to understand not only that a gift must be given but also how the giving of the gift will be brought about through the specific mechanistic nature of this (extended) man. To understand fully by the third kind of knowledge how this mechanistic interaction occurs, however, we must in turn understand the nature of the divine attribute of extension itself, a nature that constitutes the essence of God; and this is why Spinoza writes in E 2P40S that knowledge of the third kind “proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.” Spinoza is a pivotal figure standing squarely between an older conception of natural philosophy that aims to understand things through their essences and a more modern conception of natural science that aims to understand events through their instantiation of laws. He combines these two conceptions in a distinctive way. The fundamental purpose of natural philosophy or science, he holds, is to understand in greater detail the one substance, God; but this proves to require, if it is to be done properly, an understanding of the general laws of nature that constitute the essence of each divine attribute. These general laws of nature give rise to particular kinds of singular things, each with its own nature or essence—​an essence that can, in turn, be understood in terms of what he sometimes calls the laws of that thing’s own nature. Understanding these essences



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of singular things is a matter of understanding them as systems tending toward self-preservation, and understanding their behavior is a matter of understanding how that behavior results from the self-​preservatory, law-​governed systems that they embody. In the ideal case of knowledge of the third kind, this knowledge of individual essences results from knowledge of the attributes and their most general laws as those laws give rise to particular essences. For Spinoza, understanding individual things and their behavior through their own essences is thus partly a teleological enterprise, but a teleological enterprise perfectly compatible with the mechanistic nature of extension. In fact, given the doctrine of the causal parallelism of the attributes, something analogous and parallel to mechanism must also be true in the attribute of thought.

Teleology in Early Modern Philosophy Is There Any Unthoughtful Teleology? Teleology requires that the etiology of a fact be correctly explainable by its likely or presumptive consequences. If consequences cannot directly produce their own antecedents, then it seems that teleology requires what may be called a teleological selection process—​that is, a process capable of selecting and producing states of affairs on the basis of their typical or presumptive consequences. We may say that an example of teleology is thoughtful if the selection process through which the consequences of a state of affairs explain the existence of that state of affairs is or essentially involves thought. We may call an example of teleology unthoughtful, in contrast, if the selection process neither is nor essentially involves thought.17 Aristotle would grant that some teleology is thoughtful—​as when one feeds oneself with the intention to be nourished. However, it is an important part of his metaphysics that much teleology is unthoughtful—​as when an animal’s development of an arrangement of teeth is explained by that arrangement’s serving the ends of tearing and chewing. For Aristotle, there is no sense in which the development of an arrangement of teeth is caused by thought or intention. It was partly in response to the felt need to provide an unthinking teleological selection process in individual substances that Aristotle’s scholastic followers elaborated a theory of substantial forms—​that is, forms that are specific to each kind of substance, are present in individual substances, and help to determine the course of a substance’s behavior and development in accordance with its natural ends. The denial of substantial forms is a hallmark of Cartesian natural philosophy, and it evidently leads Descartes to reject all unthoughtful teleology. Will, operating through acts of volition, is the only teleological selection process that he acknowledges. Although he does not specifically deny the existence of other teleological selection processes, he does deny that we should look for final causes in

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natural philosophy, and he explains the seemingly teleological workings of animals as resulting from divinely preprogrammed mechanisms specific to each animal operation, rather than by postulating any teleological selection process located in the animal itself or anywhere else within the natural world. Since the workings of nature in general, and those of animals in particular, constitute the most likely places to look for unthoughtful teleology, Descartes’s universal rejection of unthoughtful teleology seems evident. In fact, Descartes’s ontological dualism of extended and thinking substances seems to be reflected in a dualism of types of explanation. Extended substances, he implies, cannot themselves produce effects directly through teleological selection, whereas thinking substances cannot directly produce effects mechanistically. Because thinking substances and extended substances can interact causally, in Descartes’s view,18 a given state of matter may be explained teleologically (as when a muscle moves in order to move an arm), whereas a given state of mind (such as a physiologically induced passion) may be explained mechanistically. Of course, the alleged unintelligibility of Cartesian mind-​ body causal interaction may call into question the ultimate adequacy of these explanations. But in any case, whereas each kind of Cartesian substance may participate in either or both kinds of explanandum, each can evidently participate only in its own proper kind of explanans, each grounding or originating only its own proper kind of explanation. Minds, but not bodies, can have ends, goods, or purposes; and bodies, but not minds, can have physical structures and distributions of forces. Leibniz’s reputation as a friend of Aristotelian teleology depends largely on his attempted rehabilitation of the scholastic theory of substantial forms. But this attempted rehabilitation should not obscure the fact that Leibniz follows Descartes in requiring that all teleology be thoughtful. Indeed, his commitment to this doctrine is even clearer than Descartes’s. Although Leibniz finds loci of teleological selection pervasive throughout nature, this is only because he also finds thought itself to be pervasive throughout nature. Rather than conceiving of the universe in Cartesian fashion—​as divided into two distinct substantial realms, each having its own principal attribute—​Leibniz makes the realm of thinking substances metaphysically and ontologically primary, so that all of the simple substances that give rise to material nature are understood as more or less rudimentary thinking souls. Whereas the activity of these simple substances may not always warrant such terms as “desire” and “intention” (which properly belong to souls at the higher end of the scale of perfection), all substances achieve their successive states by striving after them through appetition, and so “act according to the laws of final causes, through appetitions, ends, and means” (Monadology 79; AG 223). Even in their most rudimentary forms, appetition and perception are, for Leibniz, aspects of thought.



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Spinoza is committed, as we have already seen, to the existence of teleology in the behavior of human beings and of all other singular things. Given that human beings are known only as modes of thought and of extension, the conjunction of this commitment with his doctrine of causal parallelism between the attributes of thought and extension (E 2P7) entails that teleology exists equally within both the attributes of thought and extension. But he also endorses, in E 2P6, a doctrine of explanatory dualism:  “The modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other attribute.” That is, aspects of extension can only be caused and explained through extension and not through thought, whereas aspects of thought can only be caused and explained through thought and not through extension. Hence, Spinoza is committed to the existence of unthoughtful teleology; indeed, he is committed to the existence of a parallel instance of unthoughtful teleology for each instance of thoughtful teleology involving ideas of extended things. Since (by E 3P7) each singular thing must have an actual essence that consists in a striving to persevere in existence, the continued existence of each singular thing with its own actual essence constitutes, in itself, a general teleological selection process. From the various effects permitted by the force or power of surrounding objects and circumstances, this process selects those within its own power that are likely or presumed to be conducive to self-​preservation. For Spinoza, as for Aristotle, this general teleological selection process involves various more specific processes that depend on the nature of the particular singular thing. In Spinoza’s metaphysics, these processes operate unthoughtfully under the attribute of extension and, in a parallel way, operate thoughtfully under the attribute of thought. Some of these specific teleological selection processes involve imagining objects of desire through indirect representation, but some do not. For there is equal room, among the class of such processes, for the hunting of prey by a predator and the molecular cohesion by which a crystal resists dissolution.

Is There Teleological Selection through Divine Will or Purpose? One obvious candidate for a teleological selection process is will or intention, for it is difficult to deny that voluntary or intentional actions are selected on the basis. of their expected consequences. Such a will or intention may, in principle, be that of a divine, angelic, human, or subhuman being. Although Aristotle finds teleology to be pervasive in nature, he does not judge any of it to involve divine will or purpose as a selection process. Aristotle’s Divinity, although it is thinking, does not act through will or intention at all (Metaphysics

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XII. ix). Whereas the Christian scholastics certainly invoked the concept of divine purpose in accounting for teleology in nature, Aristotle himself did not. According to Descartes, however, God creates and sustains all of nature through his divine will. Indeed, according to Descartes, God even creates the eternal truths of mathematics and logic through his will and determines what is good by willing that it shall be good. Although Descartes denies that God’s purposes or plans are knowable by human beings, he regularly allows that such purposes and plans do exist and that God chooses what to create. It appears, therefore, that Descartes’s God performs one or more creative (and sustaining) acts on the basis of his choice of what objects and truths to create (and sustain). If this is correct, then divine creative activity is an example of teleology for Descartes, and the divine actions themselves will have teleological explanations insofar as they are aimed at, and selected in order to produce, their objects. Indeed, since the divine will is, for Descartes, the source of all of nature, the divine will must also be the source of at least the existence of—​if not also the determinant of foreordained outcomes of—​ whatever teleological selection processes might exist in nature, including those of the human will. Nevertheless, for Descartes the teleological selection process of the divine will is—​unlike that of the human will—​an entirely indifferent one, not based on the perceived goodness of any consequences (Sixth Objections and Replies; CSM II, 291). In his view, God does not choose things because they are good; rather, things are good because God chooses them to be so. Moreover, God’s original creative choices are not ultimately limited or directed even by principles of logical consistency, for these principles themselves are true only in consequence of God’s choosing them to be. Hence, although Descartes’s God evidently performs creative acts so that what he has chosen shall exist, these choices themselves do not occur for the sake of anything else. Although God’s creative acts of will evidently have teleological explanations, his choices of what to create evidently do not. Leibniz, too, holds that divine will is the source of all of nature. While not extending this doctrine of volitional creation to include the eternal truths, Leibniz does go beyond Descartes in holding that every contingent truth has a teleological explanation in terms of God’s choice. If anything, Leibniz is much more insistent on the non-​Aristotelian doctrine of teleological divine will than is Descartes. For although he recognizes that Descartes formally acknowledges divine will, Leibniz doubts, in effect, whether a genuine will can operate with a truly indifferent selection process—​as opposed to one that is responsive to the perceived good, as Leibniz takes God’s will to be. As we have seen, Leibniz accuses Descartes of not wanting “his God to act in accordance with some end” (Letter to Molanus; AG 242). Accordingly, he suggests that “Descartes’s God is (really) something approaching the God of Spinoza, namely, the principle of things, a certain supreme power or primitive nature.”



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Spinoza’s God, in contrast to the God of Descartes or Leibniz, acts not through a divine will but solely through the necessity of the divine nature. Spinoza emphasizes—​as does Aristotle—​that any doctrine of divine will is incompatible with the divine perfection. For example, he writes in the appendix to part 1 of the Ethics that “this doctrine (of divine ends) takes away God’s perfection. For if God acts for the sake of an end, he necessarily wants something which he lacks” (Geb II, 80). He resolutely attacks the doctrine that “God himself directs all things to some certain end” (Geb II, 78), arguing instead that “Nature (i.e., God) has no end set before it.” Still, in the Ethics, Spinoza quite clearly accepts teleology—​in the form of conatus and appetite—​for non-​human singular things without explicitly attributing will or ends to them.19 Furthermore, he often implies that God produces the greatest possible reality and perfection. Hence, we may ask whether Spinoza does not after all accept some divine teleology even while he refrains from characterizing it in terms of will or ends. In E 5PP35–​36C (Geb II, 302), Spinoza recognizes a sense in which God emotionlessly “loves” both himself and human beings—​even though, more strictly speaking, God cannot love because he cannot have joy, which implies a change in degree of power and perfection that is incompatible with his eternal and infinite existence (E 5P17; Geb II, 291).20 Similarly, although he does not say so, Spinoza might be willing to recognize a sense in which God “strives” effortlessly to persevere in being—​even though, more strictly speaking, God cannot strive to persevere in being because he necessarily exists eternally. Nevertheless, there can be little question that Spinoza rejects the idea that the perfection of God’s modes explains God’s action of creating them in any way, just as he rejects the idea that the perfection of God’s modes explains God’s existence. It is the very essence of God both to exist necessarily and to be the infinitely perfect and real being, and hence only one set of divine modes is so much as possible (E 1P16, 1P33, 1AP; Geb II, 60, 73, and 83, respectively); there is no sense to the supposition that God might have selected or created another set of modes if they had been more perfect.21 Thus he elaborates his reasons for affirming that “Nature does nothing on account of an end” in the preface to Ethics, part 4: That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists. For we have shown (1P16) that the necessity of nature from which he acts is the same as that from which he exists. The reason, therefore, or cause, why God, or Nature, acts, and the reason why he exists, are one and the same. As he exists for the sake of no end, he also acts for the sake of no end. Rather, as he has no principle or end of existing, so he also has none of acting.

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Of course, Spinoza holds that everything is in God (E 1P15; Geb II, 56), and hence he must also hold that whatever teleological selection processes exist must exist “in God.” However, these teleological selection processes can be located only in the natures of the various individuals or singular things that constitute modes of God, not as teleological selection processes of God himself considered as an infinite whole.22 For Descartes and Leibniz, we may say, all of nature is ultimately the product of teleology. For Aristotle and Spinoza, in contrast, all teleology is ultimately the product of nature.

Are There Any Subhuman Teleological Selection Processes? Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza all accept—​what is difficult for anyone to deny—​the existence of teleological selection through human will and desire. Descartes and Leibniz also accept, whereas Aristotle and Spinoza deny, teleological selection through divine will. We can now consider the question of whether any teleological selection processes exist within the subhuman realm. For Aristotle, the answer to this question is obviously affirmative. His examples of unthoughtful teleology are at the same time examples of subhuman teleology. Not only does he hold that animals and plants develop and act so as to achieve their natural ends or goods, but he also holds that even inanimate objects move in order to attain their natural place in the universe. For Descartes, in contrast, the answer is evidently negative. While he regards divine will and its human counterpart as teleological selection processes, he holds that animals and plants are mere machines, the products ultimately of external divine design. Had he wished to make any allowance for unthoughtful teleological selection at all, he might have theorized that God creates mechanical animal bodies with their own intrinsic unthoughtful teleological selection processes. Instead, however, he writes of the apparent fitness of any animal’s action to its situation as resulting simply from “a particular disposition [of its organs] for each particular action” (Discourse on the Method, part 5; CSM I, 140), with no suggestion of a view that any kind of striving or teleological selection—​mechanically realized or otherwise—​occurs within the animal itself. Like Aristotle, Leibniz answers the question of subhuman teleology in the affirmative, holding that loci of teleological selection operate throughout nature. For Leibniz, nature is composed of organic substances, each of which exhibits at least rudimentary teleology through appetition. Only those composites—​such as rocks and tables—​that are not themselves organisms fail to exhibit teleology of their own, and even those composites are entirely composed of organisms. Although the Ethics does not use the terms “end” and “final cause” in application to subhuman nature, we have seen that Spinoza is committed by the conatus



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doctrine of E 3P6 to allow a pervasive teleology in nature. Neither E 3P6 nor its demonstration is in any way restricted to human beings; on the contrary, it is intended as a general truth about all singular things, one that follows from the nature of individuality, or “thinghood,” itself. In Spinoza’s view, something is an individual thing only to the extent that it has some nature or essence through whose genuine activity effects can be understood to follow. But that nature, he argues, can only be understood as a system endeavoring to persevere in its being.23 Hence, all individuals are active to some extent; and to whatever extent they act, they produce effects whose etiology must be understood through the tendency of those effects to contribute to the self-​preservation of the individual who acts. As we have observed, the very existence of a singular thing with its actual essence constitutes a teleological selection process for Spinoza. Even inorganic objects such as rocks and tables that lack powers of imagination and indirect representation have, through the mechanistic laws of motion and rest, rudimentary ways of persevering and preventing their own dissolution in the face of external forces.

Should Natural Philosophy Pursue Teleological Explanations? Thus far, we have considered questions concerning the nature and scope of teleology itself. Equally important, however, is the question of the methodological role of teleological explanations in natural philosophy. The prominence of final causes among Aristotle’s four kinds of causes leaves no room for doubt that teleological explanation plays an essential role of his conception of the methods of natural philosophy. It is equally obvious, from passages already quoted, that Descartes aims to purge “final causes” from the methodology of natural philosophy and that Leibniz self-​consciously seeks to reinstate them. Yet beneath this sharp rhetorical opposition between Descartes and Leibniz lies a surprising amount of room for agreement. To appreciate the agreement, let us distinguish two main kinds of states of affairs that natural scientists might seek to explain teleologically: (a) specific or localized states of affairs and (b) general laws. Consider first the more specific or localized states of affairs. Descartes’s oft-​ repeated reason for avoiding final causes in natural philosophy is that we “cannot guess God’s purposes.”24 His doctrine of the indifference of God’s will does indeed provide him with good reason to be skeptical of claims to know the divine purpose behind specific states of affairs. Yet Leibniz, too—​who regards God’s choices not as indifferent but as directed by independent knowledge of the good—​cannot help but be extremely modest in his own claims to be able to provide detailed teleological explanations for specific or localized states of affairs in nature, such as earthquakes or even the development of specific kinds of teeth. Knowledge of such explanations would have to appeal either to knowledge of the appetition of other

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(usually quite rudimentary) substances or to knowledge of divine purposes. But our direct perception of the appetition of most other substances is highly confused and obscure, in Leibniz’s view, and our confidence concerning God’s more specific purposes must surely be substantially weakened by the realization that God must compare infinitely many facts about infinitely many mutually perceiving possible substances in infinitely many possible worlds in order to choose the best world to actualize. It is not surprising, therefore, that Leibniz’s examples of “the way of final causes” in natural philosophy are not explanations of particular events in the natural world, such as earthquakes or the development of specific kinds of teeth. Rather, his prime example of using teleological explanation in natural philosophy is the deduction, by Snell, of the law of refraction from considerations of “ease” and “determinacy” for the passage of rays of light. Leibniz regards these considerations as relevant—​and teleological—​because they are related to the unity of principle and reliance on sufficient reason that he regards as characteristic of divine concern for the best, and he suggests that other uses of teleology in natural philosophy will be similarly concerned with explaining general laws rather than more particular facts. But Descartes, too, is willing (Principles 2:36–​42; CSM II, 240–​243) to appeal to aspects of the divine nature—​ particularly immutability and simplicity—​to explain general laws of nature (not the law of refraction, as it happens, but the basic laws of motion). Moreover, these aspects of the divine nature are said to govern God’s “creation,” “operation,” and “works.” Since Descartes presumably thought it within God’s absolute power to create other laws of motion instead of the actual ones, it is difficult to see why Descartes should not regard his derivation of laws of motion as a discovery and teleological explanation of the laws of nature on the basis of knowledge about God’s willing to exhibit his immutability and simplicity in creating the laws of nature. Unlike Leibniz, Spinoza never writes of using a “method of final causes” in natural philosophy. Yet he maintains that a striving for self-​preservation constitutes the actual essence of each singular thing, and his regular explanation of effects through this striving is, as we have seen, a teleological method. Bennett (1983, 147–​149) remarks provocatively that because Spinoza regards the causal order of the attributes of thought and extension as the same, he should be embarrassed to know so much of mechanics but so little of the corresponding psychology. In fact, however, Spinoza does not claim to present very much mechanical physics; indeed, in one of his last letters (Correspondence, Epistle 83; Geb IV, 334), he admits that he has been unable to “arrange these matters in proper order.” His hypotheses about the specific mechanisms of the human body (in the Physical Excursus immediately following E 2P13) are tentative at best. In contrast, he provides in parts 3 and 4 of the Ethics a fairly detailed psychology of human beings as teleological, self-​preservation-​seeking entities, a causal account that directly suggests a parallel account of human bodies as teleological, self-​preservation-​seeking entities. What



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Spinoza primarily lacks is not so much knowledge of psychology in comparison to knowledge of physics but rather the kind of knowledge of the inner workings of the essences of singular things—​under either the attribute of thought or the attribute of extension—​that would allow him to supplement his schematic (but still “adequate”) teleological knowledge of the second kind and his schematic (but still “adequate”) mechanistic knowledge of the second kind with the integrated knowl­ edge of the third kind, which would combine both kinds of considerations into a coherent whole. But as the Ethics illustrates, for Spinoza—​as for Aristotle, in contrast to Descartes and Leibniz—​it is specific features of organic and nonorganic behavior, rather than general or mechanistic laws of nature, that are the appropriate objects of teleological explanations in natural philosophy. Spinoza’s individual actual essences, understood as systems for producing self-​preservatory behavior, replace the substantial forms of the scholastics as the loci of teleological selection.

Conclusions On the questions of subhuman teleology and the methodological role of teleological explanations in natural philosophy, Leibniz sides with Aristotle and against Descartes—​although in the latter case, the difference between Descartes and Leibniz is perhaps not as substantive as it first appears to be. In two other important respects, however, Leibniz’s theory of teleology is not more but perhaps even less Aristotelian than Descartes’s. For whereas both Descartes and Leibniz appear to reject unthoughtful teleology, it is arguable that Leibniz does so more explicitly and definitively than Descartes. Whereas Descartes and Leibniz both accept teleology through divine will, Leibniz does so more enthusiastically and with a much broader scope than does Descartes, providing teleological explanations for divine choices of what to create, as well as for the creative acts of will themselves. In fact, close examination shows that it is not Leibniz but Spinoza—​whose acceptance of teleology I have tried to establish—​who holds the position on teleology and teleological explanation nearest to that of Aristotle in each of the four respects surveyed. Unlike Leibniz, Spinoza accepts unthoughtful teleology. Unlike Leibniz, he denies teleology through divine will. Spinoza allows teleological selection even more pervasively within the subhuman realm than does Leibniz, recognizing even inorganic teleological selection. Finally, far more thoroughly than Leibniz, Spinoza makes teleological explanation of particular events and features of nature part of the methodology of natural philosophy. I have not tried to determine whose account of teleology, among the four considered here, is closest to the truth. It is worth noting, however, that the recognition of biological evolution as a teleological selection process has produced a contemporary philosophical consensus concerning the answers to each of the

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four questions about teleology that we have considered. That consensus strongly suggests that it is Aristotle and Spinoza, rather than Descartes and Leibniz, who emerge—​on these four questions, at least—​as the more “modern” philosophers of teleology.25

Notes 1. I make no attempt to define the concept of “an explanatory way.” My purpose is only to set out my conception of which explanations are teleological, not to undertake the more difficult task of analyzing the concept of “explanation.” I will assume that the latter is clear enough for present purposes. 2. The phrase that Curley translates “as far as it can by its own power” in E 3P6 is quantum in se est—​more literally, “as far as it is in itself.” Spinoza’s definitions of “substance” and “mode” (E 1D3, 1D5), combined with his claim at 1P4D that everything is either a substance or a mode, make it clear that something is “in itself” exactly insofar as it is “conceived through itself.” But according to E 1A4, effects must be conceived through their causes. Hence, for Spinoza, something is “in itself” just to the extent that it is both conceptually and causally self-​contained, as opposed to being understood through and causally produced or affected by other things. Accordingly, E 3P6 implies that each thing tends to act to persevere in its being just to the extent that it is causally and conceptually self-​contained. I  discuss Spinoza’s conception of the “being in” relation and its bearing on the conatus of finite individuals more fully in “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument” (Garrett, forthcoming). 3. For further discussion of the conatus of “inorganic” things, see Hampshire (1951, 121–​125); Bennett (1984, 246–​251), and Garrett (1994). 4. Spinoza’s full description of the prejudice in question is as follows: “Men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some certain end, for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that he might worship God” (Geb II, 78). 5. Extremely helpful correspondence with Bennett concerning an earlier draft of this chapter has impressed on me that it is necessary to address all five considerations directly in order to establish Spinoza’s consistent acceptance of teleology. 6. Lines 7–​12 of Geb II, 78 make it unmistakable that Spinoza intends to discuss other prejudices only in the third section of the appendix, well after Geb II, 80. 7. For Spinoza’s conception of perfection as absolute reality and power and his discussion of the good for each thing as that which is useful to it for self-​preservation, see E 4PR and 4D1 (Geb II, 205–​209). 8. Ethics 2P16 and its corollaries read as follows:



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P16: The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same time the nature of the external body. Cor.1: From this it follows, first, that the human mind perceives the nature of a great many bodies together with the nature of its own body. Cor.2: It follows, second, that the ideas which we have of external bodies indicate the condition of our own body more than the nature of the external bodies. I have explained this by many examples in the Appendix of Part 1. I take it that the reference to “many examples in the Appendix” concerns his claim there that people disagree in applying such notions as “good, evil, order, confusion, warm, cold, beauty, ugliness” because these terms relate directly to the effects that things produce in us, which differ from person to person, and only indirectly relate to the things themselves. At 2P40S1, Spinoza again refers to this doctrine, noting that “these notions are not formed in all in the same way, but vary from one to another, in accordance with what the body has more often been affected by, and what the mind imagines or recollects more easily.” 9. Della Rocca (1996, ­chapter 3) argues that the distinction between direct and indirect representation does not involve two senses of “representation.” This does not, however, affect the present point. 10. I present the argument in “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” forthcoming. 11. Bennett (1984, chap. 10) suggests that E3P6 applies to all “individuals.” I have argued (Garrett 1994, where I also try to explain how conatus contributes to individuation) that “individuals” include “inorganic,” as well as organic, things for Spinoza. Bennett suggests that Spinoza generally restricts “individuals” to organic things, but he allows that these include organs and cells of larger organisms—​ and most of these do not appear to have their own indirect representations. 12. But see, for example, Jackson and Pettit (1993). 13. Furthermore, while an image resembling some individual i may obviously be produced by a variety of objects other than the individual i itself, it is much more debatable whether an image possessing certain specific properties can—​ as a matter of natural law—​be produced without any causal contribution from an individual possessing those very properties. This is so particularly in the context of a Spinozistic conception of causation, in which effects must in some sense already be contained in their causes. Note, too, that in Spinozistic psychology, if individual i is beneficial to individual i, then whatever shares the same nature as individual i is also, to that extent, beneficial to j (E 4PP29–​31; Geb II, 228–​230). This makes it even more plausible to say that, for Spinoza, a desire for object i is also, more narrowly construed, a desire for anything sufficiently i-​like.

350 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures 14. The “properties” of a thing, in Spinoza’s technical sense, follow from the thing’s essence. Properties themselves are not parts of the essence of the thing, however, since they must be conceived through the essence, which is therefore causally prior. For further discussion of the relation between essences and properties, see Garrett (1991 and forthcoming). 15. For further discussion of the nature of motion and rest in Spinoza’s philosophy, see Garrett (1994). 16. The Emendation distinguishes four kinds of “perception.” The first two of these become subcategories of what the Ethics calls “knowledge of the first kind.” What the Emendation classifies as the third kind of perception becomes “knowledge of the second kind” in the Ethics, and the fourth kind of perception becomes “knowledge of the third kind.” 17. The term “thoughtful teleology” is due to Jonathan Bennett (1990), although this formulation of its meaning is mine rather than his. As noted earlier, the present definition of “teleology” appeals, with intentional vagueness, to the etiological role of “consequences,” without specifying whether these must be causal consequences or may be consequences of another kind. Whatever kind of consequences are at issue, however, it seems fair to say that they cannot directly produce their antecedents and that therefore some kind of selection process, in at least a broad sense of “process,” must be involved. 18. Indeed, at least in the case of God—​who is, in a rather special sense, a thinking substance for Descartes—​a thinking substance can even create an extended substance. 19. As noted previously, the Short Treatise does refer to the “ends” of bees. The Ethics affirms that horses, insects, fish, and birds have their own appetites and lusts (3P57S; Geb II, 187), but does not mention will or ends. 20. See Garrett (1996) for further discussion of this topic. 21. See Garrett (1991). 22. Such processes would be, in Spinoza’s terminology, in God only insofar as God constitutes the nature of this or that particular thing. For some examples of this distinction of ways in which things can be in God, see E 2PP20D–​25D (Geb II, 108–​111), 2P36D (Geb II, 118), and 3P1 (Geb II, 140). 23. See Garrett (forthcoming) for a much fuller account of the argument. 24. This is a perfectly natural remark, of course, for someone seeking to replace the well-​scaled and religiously intelligible Ptolemaic cosmology with the apparent religious indecipherability and disproportion of Cartesian Copernicanism in an indefinite space. 25. I have benefited greatly from discussion of previous drafts of this chapter with Jonathan Bennett and Nicholas White. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at a conference organized by Kuno Lorenz under the auspices of the University of the Saarland in Saarbrücken, Germany, and I am indebted to those in attendance for their helpful questions and comments.



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Bibliography Bennett, Jonathan. 1983. “Teleology and Spinoza’s Conatus,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume VIII:  Contemporary Perspectives on the History of Philosophy, 143–​160. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —​—​. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing —​—​. 1990. “Spinoza and Teleology:  A Reply to Curley,” in Spinoza:  Issues and Directions, 53–​57. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Curley, Edwin. 1990. “On Bennett’s Spinoza:  The Issue of Teleology,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, 39–​52. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. “Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett, especially 252–​257. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrett, Don. 2002. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Central Themes, edited by John I. Biro and Olli Koistinen. New York: Oxford University Press. —​—.​ 1996. “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett, especially 252–​257. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —​—​. 1994. “Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation,” in Individuation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge J.  E. Gracia, 73–​101. Albany: State University of New York Press. —​—​. 1991. “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel, 191–​218. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Jackson, F., and J. Pettit. 1993. “Some Content Is Narrow,” in Mental Causation, edited by J. Heil and A. Mele, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Parkinson, G. H.  R. 1981. “Spinoza’s Conception of the Rational Act,” Studia Leibniziana Supplementa 20: 1–​19. Rice, Lee C. 1985. “Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 23.2: 241–​251. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume I, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

13

Spinoza’s Conatus Argument

Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur. So states proposition 6 of part 3 (3p6) of Spinoza’s Ethics, a proposition that Edwin Curley’s standard English translation renders, “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.”1 This doctrine of a universal conatus—​“striving” or “endeavor”—​for self-​preservation is central to Spinoza’s philosophy in many different ways. Because he attributes this striving toward self-​preservation to all organic and nonorganic things alike, it provides his theory of natural science with a source of teleological explanation.2 Because he construes all desire as the direction of this striving onto particular objects (3p9s), it provides his theory of human and animal psychology with a unified source of motivational power. Because he treats the activity of this striving as defining the scope of each thing’s natural right, it provides the starting point for his political theory. Because he regards a person’s virtue as the power of this striving (4d8), by which the person produces effects through his or her own nature (4p18s), it provides his ethical theory with a fundamental category of moral assessment. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that just as we must understand Spinoza’s argument for the substance monism of 1p14 before we can understand the foundations of his metaphysics, so we must understand Spinoza’s argument for the conatus doctrine of 3p6 before we can understand the foundations of his natural, psychological, political, and moral philosophy. Spinoza’s argument for the conatus doctrine stretches from 3p4d through 3p6d. It cites only two previous propositions of the Ethics and no empirical evidence whatsoever. While some readers are sympathetic to its conclusion, many who have closely examined the argument itself view it with serious misgivings. These misgivings are understandable, for the argument appears to equivocate on a number of key terms. Indeed, Jonathan Bennett (1984, 231–​46) has identified four apparent fallacies of equivocation in connection with the argument for the conatus doctrine—​three in the steps leading up to its conclusion and another in the conclusion itself. Michael Della Rocca (1996b, 194–​206) has identified what appears to be a further equivocation in Spinoza’s treatment of the conclusion. The argument thus appears to be one of the most egregiously equivocal in all of early modern philosophy.3

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In what follows, I try to show that, contrary to appearances, Spinoza’s argument for the conatus doctrine does not commit any of these five fallacies of equivocation. The key to a better interpretation of his argument lies, I believe, in understanding the role played within his metaphysics by what I call Spinoza’s “theory of inherence”—​ that is, his theory of what it is to be “in” something. In particular, it is essential to realize that he applies this theory not only to substances but also to what he calls “singular things” (res singulares), which he treats as finite and imperfect approximations to a Spinozistic substance. In section 1, I outline—​in his own words—​Spinoza’s twelve-​ step argument for the conatus doctrine. In section 2, I explain the five equivocations that he appears to commit in the course of the argument. In section 3, I set out some primary elements of his views concerning inherence, conception, causation, activity, essences, and singular things. In section 4, I use these primary elements to reinterpret the strategy and content of his argument. In section 5, I show how this reinterpretation resolves the five apparent equivocations. Finally, in section 6, I assess the plausibility and significance of the reinterpreted argument.

1.  The Conatus Argument Outlined The Argument of 3p4d Spinoza’s argument for the conatus doctrine begins with 3p4d, which seeks to establish that “nothing can be destroyed except by an external cause.” Although he asserts that this proposition is self-​evident—​indeed, he later compares it to “the whole is greater than its parts” (4p17s)—​he provides an argument for it nonetheless. This argument cites no previous definitions, axioms, or propositions of the Ethics but appeals instead to the nature of “the definition of a thing.” The three-​ step argument is as follows: 1. The definition of a thing affirms, and does not deny, the thing’s essence, or4 it posits the thing’s essence, and does not take it away. 2. While we attend only to the thing itself, and not to external causes, we shall not be able to find anything in it which can destroy it. (from 1) 3. 3p4—​Nothing can be destroyed except through an external cause. (from 2)

The Argument of 3p5d Spinoza’s three-​step argument in 3p5d appeals only to 3p4 (that is, step 3) plus an unargued premise concerning “agreement” or capacity to be “in the same subject at once”: 4. If [things insofar as they can destroy one another] could agree with one another, or be in the same subject at once, then there could be something in the same subject which could destroy it.

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5. [That there could be something in the same subject which could destroy it] is absurd. (from 3 = 3p4) 6. 3p5—​Things are of a contrary nature, that is, cannot be in the same subject, insofar as one can destroy the other. (from 4–​5)

The Argument of 3p6d The argument of 3p6d cites two propositions from part 1 of the Ethics, plus 3p4 and 3p5 (that is, steps 3 and 6): 7. 1p25c—​Singular things are modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way. 8. 1p34—​God’s power is his essence itself. 9. Singular things are modes that express, in a certain and determinate way, God’s power, by which God is and acts. (from 7–​8) 10. No thing has anything in itself by which it can be destroyed, or which takes its existence away. (from 3 = 3p4) 11. [Each thing] is opposed to everything which can take its existence away. (from 6 = 3p5) 12. 3p6—​Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being. (from 9–​11)

2.  Five Apparent Equivocations The four apparent fallacies of equivocation that Bennett identifies involve four key phrases:  “external cause” (causa externa) in step 3, “cannot be in the same subject” (in eodem subjecto esse nequeunt) in step 6, “is opposed to” (opponitur) in step 11, and “strives to persevere in its being” (in suo esse perseverare conatur) in step 12. At each of these four steps in the argument, one interpretation of the key phrase in question seems required if the statement containing it is to draw even a semblance of support from the preceding steps cited as evidence for it, whereas a quite different interpretation of the phrase seems required if the statement is to provide even a semblance of support to the further claims for which it is cited as evidence. (In the case of the final conclusion, step 12, these further claims are later propositions of the Ethics.) To make matters worse, the four equivocations that Bennett describes appear to constitute a cumulative series—​that is, it seems that Spinoza must commit each equivocation that is earlier in the series if he is to reach even the starting point for any later one. The fifth apparent equivocation, identified by Della Rocca, involves the phrase that Curley translates as “as far as it can by its own power, strives” (quantum in se est . . . conatur). Like the last of the

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four apparent equivocations identified by Bennett, it is located in step 12. It is, however, entirely independent of them.

“External Cause” According to step 3 (that is, 3p4), “nothing can be destroyed except through an external cause.” But what is an external cause? That is, to what is it external? The argument of 3p4d derives 3 entirely from 2, which in turn is derived entirely from 1—​that is, from the claim that the definition of a thing affirms or posits, and does not deny or take away, the “essence” of the thing. Since 3 is meant to be a consequence of 1, it seems that an “external cause” must be one that is external to what we might call the thing’s proper essence—​that is, to those states or qualities of a thing that are jointly sufficient and severally necessary for the thing’s identity as the particular thing that it is, and which would therefore be specified in an adequate Spinozistic definition of that thing.5 Accordingly, it appears that “attend[ing] only to the thing itself” in 2 means “attending to the thing’s proper essence” and that 3 itself means the following: [3–​proper essence] The set of states or qualities that are jointly sufficient and severally necessary for a thing’s individual identity cannot causally suffice for the thing’s nonexistence. Yet this interpretation does not seem to square with Spinoza’s own later uses of 3. He derives two later steps entirely from 3: step 5, which denies that anything can be destroyed by something that is “in the same subject”; and step 10, which asserts that nothing has anything “in” it by which it can be destroyed. These two steps do not seem to involve any restriction to qualities that are part of a thing’s essence. Whereas the “proper essence” reading of 3 is evidently compatible with a thing destroying itself through its nonessential qualities, 5 and 10 appear to rule out the possibility of a thing destroying itself through any of its qualities. This suggests that 3 should be interpreted instead as concerned with the whole natures of things: [3–​whole nature] The complete set of a thing’s nonrelational states or qualities cannot causally suffice for the thing’s nonexistence.6 As Della Rocca observes, this stronger reading of 3 seems obviously open to counterexamples:  human suicide, for instance, or the self-​exhaustion of a burning object like a candle or the sun. Whether these are also counterexamples to the weaker (“proper essence”) reading is much less certain. Nevertheless, given Spinoza’s use of 3 later in the argument, it seems that Spinoza must be equivocating on the term “external cause” in 3, relying on the weaker (“proper essence”) reading

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to derive 3 from 1 and 2—​and also to help avoid obvious counterexamples—​but relying on the stronger (“whole nature”) reading to derive 5 and 10 from 3.7

“Cannot Be in the Same Subject” Step 6 (that is, 3p5) states that “[t]‌hings are of a contrary nature, that is, cannot be in the same subject insofar as one can destroy the other.” But what does it mean to say that two things “cannot be in the same subject?” Step 6 is derived in part from 5, which is derived, in turn, entirely from 3; and step 3, as we have seen, can be interpreted as a claim about the whole natures of things. Accordingly, to say that two things “cannot be in the same subject” might plausibly mean that the whole natures of the two things are incompatible—​or, in other words, that the whole nature of the first and the whole nature of the second could not be co-​instantiated by the same thing at the same time. On the assumption that, for each nonrelational quality, the whole nature of a thing includes either that quality or its negation, this is equivalent to saying that two things “cannot be in the same subject” if and only if they have different whole natures and so differ in at least some of their nonrelational qualities. This interpretation is seemingly reinforced by Spinoza’s use of the phrase “of a contrary nature” as an alternative to “cannot be in the same subject.” If this interpretation is correct, 6 would mean the following: [6–​whole nature] Insofar as one thing can destroy another, they must have different whole natures (i.e., differ in at least some nonrelational states or qualities).8 Yet this interpretation seems inconsistent with Spinoza’s own later use of 6. Spinoza infers step 11 (“each thing is opposed to everything which can take its existence away”) directly from 6 and then infers 12 (that is, 3p6 itself, which ascribes to each thing an actual striving for self-​preservation) partly from 11. There appears to be no plausible inference from a mere difference of whole nature on the part of two things to their active opposition to one another. On the other hand, to say that two things “cannot be in the same subject” might instead be interpreted to mean that the two things cannot coexist as parts of the same whole; and it is at least somewhat appealing to suppose that insofar as things can destroy each other, they will have difficulty coexisting as parts of the same whole and hence may in some ways act in opposition to one another. On this latter interpretation, then, 6 would mean: [6–incompatible parts] Insofar as one thing can destroy another, they cannot coexist as parts of a larger whole. Taken at face value, step 6 states that things themselves of a certain character cannot be “in the same subject” and not that the whole natures of such things

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cannot be. This (as Bennett observes) is a strong reason to prefer the second reading to the first. On the other hand (as Bennett also observes), the second reading, unlike the first, appears to make a claim that Spinoza himself cannot accept without restriction. For the scholium to lemma 7 following 2p13 states that all finite individuals are parts of the same “infinite individual”; yet, according to Ethics 4a1, any singular thing can be destroyed by another.9 These conflicting considerations strengthen the appearance that Spinoza equivocates in 6 on the phrase “in the same subject,” relying on the “whole nature” reading in deriving 6 from 5 (which in turn is derived from 3), but relying on the “incompatible parts” reading in deriving 11 from 6.

“Is Opposed to” According to 11, “each thing is opposed to everything which can take its existence away.” But what does it mean to say that one thing is “opposed to” another? Since Spinoza infers 11 entirely from 6, 11 should make a claim that follows from 6. If 6 is given the “incompatible parts” reading just discussed, then the following interpretation of 11—​which treats the “opposition” of two things as consisting in their inability to coexist in a whole—​satisfies this condition: [11–​incompatible parts] Nothing can coexist in a whole with things that can destroy it or take its existence away. On the other hand, Spinoza infers 12 from the conjunction of 11 with 9 and 10; and 12 concerns an actual “striving” of each thing to persevere in being. Although things that have difficulty coexisting as parts of the same whole may act in opposition to one another in some cases, it does not appear that a reading of 11 simply in terms of the incompatibility of things as parts of a common whole warrants—​even when combined with 9 and 10—​such a strong conclusion as 12. The fact of a thing’s inability to coexist in a whole with certain things—​even if it is also granted that those things can destroy it—​does not seem to entail that the first thing will have any ability to exert itself against them in a self-​preserving way. The thing might instead simply disappear without resistance whenever it was faced with the threat of integration into a whole with such things—​or so it seems.10 Thus, Spinoza’s use of 11 in deriving 12 suggests that he interprets 11 to mean the following: [11–exertion] Everything exerts itself against things that can destroy it. In short, it appears that Spinoza equivocates on the phrase “opposed to” in 11, taking it to mean “cannot both be parts of the same whole” in inferring 11 from 6, but taking it to mean “exerts itself against” in inferring 12 from 11.11

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“Strives to Persevere in Its Being” The conclusion of Spinoza’s argument, step 12, states that each thing “strives, as far as it can by its own power, to persevere in its being.” But what does Spinoza mean by saying that each thing “strives to persevere in its being?” After suggesting that Spinoza treats 3 as affirming that “if x does f, then the doing of f does not destroy x,” Bennett proposes that the remainder of Spinoza’s argument is meant to facilitate two key transitions: first from “does not destroy x” to “does not tend toward x’s destruction,” and then from “does not tend toward x’s destruction” to “tends toward x’s preservation.” If this proposal is correct, then Spinoza’s conclusion in 12 is a claim about whatever actions a thing performs: namely, that they all are or tend to be conducive to the thing’s continued existence. On this interpretation, 12 should be read as follows: [12–​nonteleological] If a thing strives (as far as it can by its own power) to perform an action, then that action preserves or tends to preserve the thing in its being. Bennett calls readings of this kind “nonteleological” because they do not license inferences from the self-​preserving tendency of an action to the likelihood of its being performed; rather, they only license inferences from the performance of an action to its self-​preserving tendency. On the other hand, throughout the later propositions of the Ethics, Spinoza does regularly use the self-​preservation doctrine of 12 to support inferences from the self-​preserving tendency of an action to the likelihood of its being performed. Indeed, Bennett counts eleven such uses in Ethics part III, beginning with 3p12d. This suggests that Spinoza’s conclusion in 12 is meant instead as a claim about whatever actions are conducive to a thing’s continued existence: namely, that the thing will or will tend to perform those actions. If this suggestion is correct, 12 should be read instead as follows: [12–​teleological] If an action preserves or tends to preserve a thing, then the thing strives (as far as it can by its own power) to perform that action. Because readings of this kind do license inferences from the self-​preserving tendency of an action to the likelihood of its being performed, Bennett calls them “teleological” readings. Bennett cites one further consideration in favor of the “nonteleological” reading of 12:  its compatibility with the appendix to part  1 of the Ethics, which Bennett takes to express Spinoza’s rejection of all teleological prediction and explanation. However, Bennett also cites one further consideration in support of the

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“teleological” reading: the fact that the qualifying clause “as far as it can by its own power” has a natural syntactic place in the “teleological” reading of 12, but does not fit naturally into its “nonteleological” reading. Thus, it appears that Spinoza equivocates on the phrase “strives . . . to persevere in being” in 12, understanding 12 nonteleologically in order to see it as a plausible inference from 3 (and in order to reconcile it with whatever antiteleological tendencies, if any, he might have), but then understanding it teleologically when he applies it to human psychology and ethics.12

“As Far as It Can by Its Own Power, Strives” The claim of 12 that each thing “strives” to persevere in its being is modified by a restriction:  “as far as it can by its own power” (quantum in se est). But what does this restriction on striving mean? Della Rocca (1996b) surveys Descartes’s usage of both expressions in the treatment of physics in part II of the Principles of Philosophy. Della Rocca argues that, for Descartes, the Latin phrases translated in the form “x strives to do y” and “x, as far as it can by its own power, does y” are synonymous, both meaning roughly “x is in a state such that, unless prevented by external causes, x will do y.” (Of course, neither expression, for Descartes, connotes conscious trying or deliberation on the part of the x in question.) Furthermore, Della Rocca cites evidence from Spinoza’s Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy that Spinoza also uses these expressions (at least in that work) in something like their Cartesian senses. The fact that Spinoza uses both expressions in 12 therefore suggests that that proposition means something like the following: [12–​double qualification] For each thing x, x’s state is such that, unless prevented by external causes, x’s state is such that, unless prevented by external causes, x will persevere in its being. On this reading, a thing may sometimes continue to exist and yet cease tending to preserve itself, if it is caused to cease doing so by external causes. On the other hand, Spinoza uses 12 (that is, 3p6) to establish the immediately following proposition, 3p7, which states that a thing’s striving to persevere in its being is the “actual essence” of that thing. Since a thing presumably cannot exist even for a short time without its actual essence, however, this suggests that the addition of “insofar as it can by its own power” to “strives” is a simple redundancy. If this suggestion is correct, then 12 might more plausibly be taken to mean something like the following: [12–​redundancy] For each thing x, x’s state is such that, unless prevented by external causes, x will persevere in its being.

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Della Rocca notes that the “double qualification” reading more easily accommodates apparent counterexamples to 12, such as suicidal persons or burning candles, since these cases may be construed as involving individuals that usually strive for self-​preservation but have been caused by external circumstances (such as financial reverses or a lighted match, respectively) to cease this striving. Della Rocca also notes, however, that Spinoza sometimes drops the qualifying phrase quantum in se est from later derivatives of 12 in the Ethics (for example, 3p28 and 3p29); and this tendency can more easily be explained by the “redundancy” reading. Thus, it appears that Spinoza equivocates on the phrase translated as “as far as it can by its own power” when he adds it to “strives” in 12, regarding it as weakening the force of 12 when first formulating 12 and when considering potential counterexamples to that principle, but regarding it as an eliminable redundancy when deriving 3p7 from 12 and when citing 12 in other demonstrations.

3.  Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Inherence Can a fuller understanding of Spinoza’s metaphysics help to dispel this appearance of multiple equivocations? As we have already noted, the Latin phrase in 12 that Curley translates “as far as it can by its own power” is quantum in se est. A more literal translation of this phrase, however, would be “insofar as it is in itself.”13 This rendering reveals, as the other does not, that Spinoza’s conclusion employs the term “in itself” (in se). Spinoza introduces the notion of something being “in itself” at the very outset of the Ethics, in 1d3, when he defines “substance” as follows: “By substance I understand what is in itself [in se] and is conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.”14 He refers again to the underlying relation of “being in” something when he defines “mode” in 1d5: “By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.” The very first axiom of the Ethics, 1a1, also concerns this relation: “Whatever is, is either in itself or in another.” There is at least some reason to think that this relation of being in plays a key role in Spinoza’s conatus argument of Ethics 3p4d–​3p6d. In addition to the fact that its conclusion contains the same expression, “in itself” (in se) that Spinoza uses to define “substance,” it is noteworthy that all of the other seemingly equivocal propositions of Spinoza’s argument—​ 2, 6, and 11—​ also involve, in one way or another, notions of internality and externality, inclusion and exclusion. Accordingly, we might hope to shed light on the meanings of those propositions by investigating some of the features of Spinoza’s crucial relation of being in. For convenience, I generally refer to this relation as “inherence.” I use this term quite neutrally, however, simply to designate the relation of being in that Spinoza

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introduces at the outset of the Ethics. In particular, I do not mean to imply by using this term that Spinoza is committed to any doctrine that postulates an unknowable underlying substratum.15 The term inherence has at least one advantage over some of its obvious alternatives: it makes it clear that the particular sense of “in” at issue is not one of spatial containment or of the relation of parts to wholes. Because the English preposition in is such a common word, with so many different senses, I henceforth italicize those occurrences of it that are intended to bear the specific sense of Spinozistic inherence.

Inherence and Predication Spinoza’s definition of mode in 1d5 treats the claim that a mode is in something else as equivalent to the claim that it is the “affection” of that thing. Since the term affection, as it is used in medieval and modern philosophy, generally refers to the qualities of things, 1d5 strongly suggests that the term in is meant to express Spinoza’s version—​however reconstructive or revisionary it may be—​of a relation by which (whatever else may also be true of it) qualities can be said to be “in” the things whose qualities they are.16 This suggestion is strongly supported by the fact that elsewhere in the Ethics, Spinoza uses the term affection straightforwardly to characterize the qualities or states of such ordinary things as human bodies or minds (2p13d, 2p17d, 2p19, 2p39d, 3d3, 3p52s, 3p59s, 4p8d, 5p1, among many other passages). Of course, the relation between affections and the things or subjects of which they are affections is widely supposed to be expressed in language by grammatical predication. However, we should not assume that Spinoza would take linguistic predicative norms as an entirely reliable guide to what is in what. It is evident that for Spinoza not everything that is in something else must also be predicated of it. For one thing, he holds that ordinary entities such as human minds and human bodies are modes of, and hence in, the one substance, God; but he does not insist or even recommend that we revise our mode of speech to predicate them of “God.” Furthermore, he clearly holds that every substance is in itself; but he does not require that substances should be directly predicated of themselves.17 Conversely, Spinoza need not hold that everything that may properly be grammatically predicated of something is thereby necessarily in it. Like some scholastic and early modern philosophers, he may instead hold that many relational qualities are not really “in” the subjects of which they are grammatically predicated but are instead either “in” the other relatum or in neither. (One particularly well known example of such a philosopher is Locke, who expresses one aspect of his theory of primary and secondary qualities by saying that “Light, Heat, Whiteness, or Coldness” are not “really in bodies,”18 even though he frequently predicates these qualities of bodies.19) More generally, Spinoza regards common language

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as governed more by the imagination than by the intellect,20 so it would not be surprising if he thought that the linguistic relation of predication did not precisely correspond to the metaphysical relation of inherence.

Conception, Causation, and Action Inherence, for Spinoza, is intimately related to such matters as conception, causation, and action. According to 1d3, a substance is not only in itself but is also “conceived through itself”; and a mode, according to 1d5, is in another “through which it is also conceived.” In 1p4d, Spinoza infers from these two definitions plus 1a1 (“whatever is, is either in itself or in another”) that everything existing is either a substance or a mode. As his willingness to make this inference shows, Spinoza holds that whatever is in something is also conceived through it. That is, he holds what we may call the Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine: Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine:  If y is in x, then y is conceived through x. (from the use of 1d3, 1d5, and 1a1 in 1p4d)21 Ethics 1a4 states, “The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause.” Spinoza takes this to mean that things must be conceived entirely through their causes. For example, at 3d1 he identifies being the adequate cause of a thing with being an adequate source of conception (that is, a source of clear and distinct perception) of it: “I call that cause adequate whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it.” Spinoza thinks of conceiving something adequately not as merely forming some image of it, but as understanding why it is as it is—​that is, as understanding what causes it to be as it is. Thus, for Spinoza, 1a4 entails the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine: Conception Implies Causation Doctrine: If y is conceived through x, then y is caused by x. (from 1a4)22 Spinoza defines activity in terms of adequate causation in 3d3:  “I say that we act when something happens . . . of which we are the adequate cause.” Hence, Spinoza also maintains the Action as Adequate Causation Doctrine: Action as Adequate Causation Doctrine: A thing acts insofar as it is the adequate cause of an effect. (from 3d3) Furthermore, the Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine and the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine together entail the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine:

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Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine:  If y is in x, then y is caused by x. (from the Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine and the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine) This latter doctrine, when applied to the definitions of mode and substance, entails both that every mode is caused by the substance that it is in and that every substance is self-​caused—​both doctrines that Spinoza clearly accepts.23

Essences, Properties, and Accidents Spinoza follows the scholastic tradition in distinguishing three classes of qualities that a thing can have: (1) those that constitute the essence of the thing; (2) those that are properties of the thing; and (3) those that are sometimes called the mere accidents of a thing. The essence of a thing consists of those qualities in virtue of which it is the thing that it is; and it is for this reason that an adequate definition, for Spinoza, is one that captures the essence of the thing. As long as a thing’s essence persists, the thing will continue to exist; but nothing can exist without its essential qualities, since if it lost any of them, it would cease to exist. Ethics 2d2 states that “to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited, and which, being taken away, the thing is necessarily taken away.” As this shows, Spinoza accepts the Existence as Realized Essence Doctrine that is implicit in the very conception of a thing’s essence: Existence as Realized Essence Doctrine: x exists if and only if the essence of x is realized. (2d2) Ethics 2d2 continues that to the essence of any thing belongs “that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing.” This strongly implies that Spinoza also accepts the Conception Through Essence Doctrine: Conception Through Essence Doctrine: Whatever is conceived through x is conceived through the essence of x. (2d2) The properties of a thing, according to the traditional distinction, are qualities that do not belong strictly to its essence but that follow from it. Hence, a thing also cannot exist without one of its properties; for it could lose a property only by losing the essence from which that property followed, and thereby ceasing to exist.24 Mere accidents, unlike properties, are qualities that do not follow from the essence of the thing alone. Hence, the accidents of a thing may change without the thing ceasing to exist.25

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Spinoza clearly applies this distinction to the case of God. Ethics 1d4 states that “by attribute, I  understand what the intellect perceives of substance, as constituting its essence”; and 1d6 states that “by God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinite number of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” These definitions show that Spinoza accepts the Attributes as Divine Essence Doctrine: Attributes as Divine Essence Doctrine:  God’s attributes constitute his essence. (from 1d4 and 1d6) Furthermore, in 1p16d, Spinoza writes: The intellect infers from the given definition of any thing a number of properties that really do follow necessarily from it (i.e., from the very essence of the thing) [emphasis added]; and . . . it infers more properties the more the definition of the thing expresses reality, i.e., the more reality the essence of the defined thing involves. But since the divine nature has absolutely infinite attributes . . . there must follow infinitely many things in infinite modes (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect). Here Spinoza clearly implies that all of God’s modes are properties (proprietates),26 rather than accidents, of God. This is, of course, just what we should expect. For since nothing can be or be conceived except through God (1p15), while everything follows from the necessity of God’s essence, it follows that none of God’s affections or qualities can be accidental to God and that whatever qualities do not constitute God’s essence are instead properties of God.

Singular Things and Inherence In the Ethics, Spinoza ascribes affections and an essence not only to God but also to what he calls “singular things.” He defines the term singular thing in 2d7: By singular things I understand things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And 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. Thus, singular things can be “individuals” or combinations of individuals that act together to produce common effects.27 Individuals, considered as extended things, are constituted by a communication of motion among extended parts in a “certain

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fixed manner” (definition following 2p13s) so as to maintain the “same ratio [or pattern] of motion and rest” (lemma 5 following 2p13).28 There are several reasons to think that Spinoza regards singular things as finite approximations to substance—​finite approximations that therefore exemplify his theory of inherence to various degrees.29 First, as we have already seen, he claims in 12 (3p6) that each singular thing is to some extent in se—​in itself—​using the same phrase that is so central to his definition of substance. Second, he writes of singular things, as well as of substances, as being “subjects” (for example, 3p5, 5a1, Ep 23) and as having affections that are in them (for example, 2p13d, 2p22d, 2p38d, 2p39s, 3p52s). Third, he writes of singular things as having “essences” (for example, 2p8, 2p10ds, 2p37d, 2p40d, 2p44c2d, 2p45d, 4pref, 4d3, 4p4d, 5p36s), and he even writes of some singular things as having “more essence” than others (for example, KV I.ii and II.xxvi and Ep 19). Fourth, Spinoza’s argument for 3p6 begins in 3p4d with a claim about definitions and essences—​which at least suggests that the argument concerns subjects with essences and the kinds of qualities that are in them—​and then employs a number of steps that appear to concern what can and cannot be in a thing. Finally, when his argument for 12 is not interpreted as concerning the partial inherence of singular things in themselves, the argument appears to be radically invalid at nearly every turn; when the argument is interpreted as concerning the partial inherence of singular things in themselves, however, the argument appears—​as I hope to show—​in a new and much more promising light. There are, nevertheless, two prima facie reasons to question whether singular things can fall within the scope of Spinoza’s theory of inherence. The first reason is this. By the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine, whatever is in itself is self-​ caused; but according to 1d1, whatever is self-​caused has an essence involving existence and hence, by 1d8, has an existence that is eternal. Yet singular things, by definition (2d7), have only a determinate, not an eternal, existence. This objection is not as weighty as it might appear. For in fact, it is common for Spinoza to hold that finite things can have, in varying degrees, characteristics that only an infinite substance possesses absolutely. At 1d7, for example, he states, “That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone.” Understood in an absolute way, this Spinozistic freedom applies only to God, for only God’s existence follows necessarily from its own nature and is never determined by anything else. Yet despite this doctrine, the ethical theory of Ethics part 4 culminates in Spinoza’s account of the “free man,” describing what the free man does “insofar as he is free”—​that is, insofar as he approaches the condition in which his behavior is determined from his own nature alone. The freedom of human beings is thus a finite approximation to the infinite and absolute freedom that belongs only to God.30

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In a similar way, only God can be absolutely in itself. Nevertheless, a straightforward reading of 3p6 implies that singular things can be in themselves to limited but varying degrees. If singular things can indeed be in themselves to limited but varying degrees, then the application of Spinoza’s Inherence Implies Conception and Inherence Implies Causation Doctrines will entail that singular things can also be conceptually and causally self-​sufficient (that is, conceptually and causally self-​contained) to limited but varying degrees. These further consequences are surely correct on Spinoza’s view: the more of what is true about a thing follows from its essence—​that is, the more it has properties and the less it has qualities that are mere accidents—​the more conceptually and causally self-​sufficient it will be. Ethics 2d2 suggests that having an essence is the defining characteristic of things generally; and Spinoza indicates in Ep 19 that some things have “more essence” than others, in proportion to their degrees of perfection. (Absolute perfection, of course, like absolute freedom, belongs only to God.) Singular things, then, simply by being things and having essences (or, we might say, some degree of essence), are what we might call “quasi-​substances”—​that is, finite approximations, of greater or lesser degree, to a genuine substance. One might usefully compare this Spinozistic view of singular things as quasi-​substances with the Cartesian doctrine of substances. In Descartes’ view, only God is a “substance” in the fullest sense of the term—​a sense that crucially includes complete causal independence of existence—​but there is nevertheless a different and lesser sense in which minds and extended things are also “substances” and have a lesser kind of conceptual and causal independence of existence. Because Spinozistic singular things are only finite approximations to a substance, and hence are not completely in themselves, they will not be completely conceptually and causally self-​sufficient. Hence, they—​unlike God—​will have merely accidental qualities as well as properties. However, applying Spinoza’s Conception Implies Causation and Inherence Implies Conception Doctrines entails that the accidental qualities of a thing are only partially or to some extent in the things of which they are predicated. That is, because each accidental quality is only partly the result of the nature of the thing and partly the result of external causes, it is to some extent or degree not conceived through the subject of which it is typically predicated, and so it is to some extent or degree not in that subject.31 Nevertheless, to allow that singular things are even partly in themselves seems to raise a further problem. For each singular thing is a mode of God; but by 1d3, each mode of God must already be completely in God. How, then, can a singular thing also be partly in itself? This objection, too, is easily overcome. It is not that singular things are partly in themselves instead of being wholly in God. Rather, a singular thing’s being to some extent in itself is just one specific way of being in God. Compare the parallel case of power. All power is entirely God’s power, on Spinoza’s view, but this does

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not entail that singular things cannot have any power at all; rather, it entails that whatever power singular things have is at the same time also (a share of) God’s power, power that God expresses through singular things (4d4) that are themselves finite modes of God. Similarly, everything is in (and conceived through) God, for Spinoza, but this does not entail that nothing is to any extent in (or conceived through) singular things; rather, it entails that whatever is to any extent in a singular thing is in God as well, in God through being in one of his finite modes. This explains not only how Spinoza can regard singular things as being partly in themselves, but also how he can regard what he calls the affections of singular things as being in those singular things even though everything is (by 1p15) in God. For affections of singular things are not in singular things instead of being in God, but rather are in God through being in singular things that are themselves in God. This fact, in turn, provides at least one reason why Spinoza need not require that everything be predicated of God, even though every affection is, in his view, an affection of God. Because singular things themselves have essences (and hence are at least partly in themselves), some of God’s affections exist as affections of singular things, and hence those affections may properly be predicated of those singular things rather than of God.

4.  The Strategy of the Conatus Argument We are now in a position to reconstruct the strategy and content of Spinoza’s argument for his conatus doctrine by applying his theory of inherence and related doctrines to singular things. Let us reconsider the arguments of 3p4d, 3p5d, and 3p6d in order.

The Argument of 3p4d Reinterpreted Step 1, the initial step of 3p4d, makes two complementary claims about the definition of a thing. The first of these claims is that the definition “affirms” or “posits” the essence of the thing—​that is, that the definition of a thing expresses or explains a thing’s essence, so that the satisfaction of that definition is the realization of the essence. The second claim is that the definition “does not deny” or “does not take away” the essence of the thing—​that is, that the definition does not express anything incompatible with the realization of the essence, so that the satisfaction of a definition does not in any way prevent or destroy the realization of the essence. Thus, we may interpret step 1 as follows: 1′. The satisfaction of the definition of a thing is the realization of that thing’s essence and is not the realization of anything incompatible with [that is, that would prevent or destroy] the realization of that thing’s essence.

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Step 2 states that “while we attend only to the thing itself, and not to external causes, we shall not be able to find anything in it that can destroy it”; thus, 2 asserts the impossibility of something causing the destruction of what it is in. This claim can easily be derived from 1′ by employing several Spinozistic doctrines that we have already considered. By the Existence as Realized Essence Doctrine (2d2), a thing exists if and only if its essence is realized; hence, we may infer from 1′: (i). The essence of x cannot destroy x. (from 1′ and the Existence as Realized Essence Doctrine) Now consider any y that is in a thing x.  By the Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine, this y is also conceived through x; hence, by the Conception Through Essence Doctrine, this y is also conceived through the essence of x; and finally, by the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine, this y is caused by the essence of x. Thus: (ii). If some y is in x, then y is caused by x’s essence. (from the Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine, the Conception Through Essence Doctrine, and the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine) That is, whatever is in a thing x is caused by x’s own essence; hence, it follows: (iii). If y is in x and y destroys x, then the essence of x is the (ultimate) cause of x’s destruction. (from (ii)) From (i) and (iii), it follows that if y is in x, then y cannot destroy x. But this is equivalent to the following reformulation of (2): 2′. Whatever is in something cannot destroy it. (from (i) and (iii)) From 2′, 3p4 (“nothing can be destroyed except through an external cause”) follows immediately, understood as the claim: 3′. 3p4—​Whatever can destroy a thing is not in it. (from 2′)

The Argument of 3p5d Reinterpreted Spinoza’s theory of inherence can also help us to reconstruct the argument of 3p5d. The initial claim of this argument, step 4, concerns a variable relationship—​ which Spinoza characteristically expresses by the phrase “insofar as”—​between things’ abilities to destroy each other and their abilities to be “in the same subject

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at once.” This should not be surprising, since we have already seen that he treats a number of central notions, including inherence, as matters of degree. Step 4 may be paraphrased in terms of inherence as follows: 4′. If two things insofar as they can destroy each other could be in the same subject at once, then something could destroy a thing that it was in. Spinoza does not argue for this premise, and so one might suppose it to be self-​ evident. Yet it appears to be a rather mismatched conditional:  its antecedent is a proposition to the effect that two things that can, to some extent, destroy each other cannot, to that extent, exist in a subject; whereas its consequent concerns the ability of some one thing to destroy the thing that it is in. How can he suppose the connection between two such different propositions to be self-​evident? When applied explicitly to degrees of inherence, the same set of doctrines that entail (ii) also entail the following: (iv). Whatever is to some extent in a thing is to that extent caused by that thing’s essence. (from the Inherence Implies Conception Doctrine, the Conception Through Essence Doctrine, and the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine) Now, suppose for the sake of argument: (v). Some y and z could to some extent destroy each other [that is, had some power to destroy each other] and could nevertheless to that same extent be in the same subject x. (Assumption) By (iv), y is, to the extent in question, caused by x’s essence; and to the extent that y is caused by x’s essence, y can be destroyed only by destroying x’s essence. It therefore follows from (iv) and the supposition of (v) that (vi). z could to some extent be in x and destroy the essence of x. (from (iv) and (v)) But according to the Existence as Realized Essence Doctrine of 2d2, the existence of a thing is the realization of its essence; hence, it follows that (vii). z could to some extent destroy a thing x that it was in. (from (vi) and the Existence as Realized Essence Doctrine)

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By conditional proof, then, Spinoza can infer the content of step 4: 4′. If two things insofar as they can destroy each other could be in the same subject at once, then something could (to some extent) destroy a thing that it was in. (from (v)–​(vii), by conditional proof) From 3p4 it immediately follows: 5′. Nothing can (to any extent) destroy a thing that it is in. (from 3′) Thus, by modus tollens, Spinoza infers the falsehood of the antecedent of 4′, leaving us with the conclusion: 6′. 3p5—​Two things insofar as they can destroy each other cannot be in the same subject at once. (from 4′ and 5′) This is a simple paraphrase of 3p5, which reads, “[T]‌hings are of a contrary nature, that is, cannot be in the same subject, insofar as one can destroy the other.”

The Argument of 3p6d Reinterpreted As we have seen, Spinoza begins 3p6d by citing two propositions from Ethics part 1. The first of these propositions, 1p25c, states: 7′. 1p25c—​ Singular things are modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way. The second proposition is 1p34, which states: 8′. 1p34—​God’s power is his essence itself. The intermediate conclusion that Spinoza draws from these two premises does not follow without the connecting assumption that God’s attributes constitute God’s essence. But this assumption is simply the Attributes as Divine Essence Doctrine, which we have already seen to be implied by 1d4 and 1d6. Hence, Spinoza can legitimately conclude: 9′. Singular things express God’s power, by which God is and acts. (from 7′, 8′, and the Attributes as Divine Essence Doctrine) At the very least, this result shows how to reconcile singular things’ having whatever finite power they may possess with the doctrine that all power is divine power;

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for any share of power possessed by singular things would simply be a particular expression of God’s infinite power. In fact, given his practice elsewhere, it seems likely that Spinoza would be willing to go further, interpreting 9′—​and the conjunction of 1p25c and 1p34, from which it is derived—​as entailing that each singular thing does have some power. (See, for example, 1p36d, where he derives the claim that each existing determinate thing has some effects from 1p25c, 1p34, and 1p16; and see also 3p7d, where he derives from 1p36 the claim that, from the given essence of each thing, some things necessarily follow.) However, such a further entailment, while potentially helpful (as we shall see shortly), is not absolutely essential to the argument. If singular things at least can have causal power, how would that power be directed? According to the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine, whatever is in a thing is also caused by that thing. Hence, to the extent that something is in itself, it must also be, to that same extent, cause of itself. Since singular things cannot originally bring themselves into existence, they can be causes of themselves only to the extent that they exert power to cause their own continuation in existence. Thus, the more in itself a singular thing is, the greater the power for continued existence it will exert. This is, of course, just what the conatus doctrine of 3p6 states: “Each thing, insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being” (italics added). The obvious next question is this: Are singular things to any extent in themselves? Simply from the claim that each singular thing exerts some power for continued existence insofar as it is in itself, it does not follow that any singular things really are to any extent in themselves. Of course, the mere existence of some singular things that were not at all in themselves would not refute a claim about what singular things do to whatever extent they are in themselves; the existence of such singular things would simply limit the scope—​and, hence, the general interest—​of the conatus doctrine of 3p6. In fact, however, Spinoza can offer several reasons for thinking that all singular things are in themselves to at least some extent. First, every substance is in itself (1d3). Hence, if being a singular thing is modeled on (that is, constitutes an approximation to) being a substance, then whatever was not in itself to any extent would not be a singular thing at all. Second, since continuing to exist is a prerequisite for exerting any causal power, the very fact that each singular thing exerts some causal power—​as implied by 1p36 and, perhaps, by 9′ itself—​arguably requires that each singular thing exert some causal power for continuation in existence.32 Finally, at least some properties are caused by every essence (by 1p16d); and the production of a singular thing’s properties by its essence is itself a causal contribution to the existence of the complete singular thing. In fact, since a thing cannot be the adequate cause of either its own accidents or the accidents of another, it follows by the Action as Adequate Causation Doctrine that a singular thing can fully act only by producing (through its essence) the existence of its own properties and the continued realization of its own essence (see 3p7d).

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We can now see that the primary work of 3p6d is accomplished by the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine. Step 9 provides additional support to 3p6 chiefly by showing the compatibility of that conclusion with the doctrine that all power is God’s power. This kind of additional support is especially important for Spinoza; for he holds, quite generally, that it is always better to show how something is true than merely to show that it is true.33 Like step 9, steps 10 and 11—​derived from 3p4d and 3p5d, respectively—​contribute to the argument by demonstrating more fully how the conatus doctrine is true. Step 10 states that “no thing has anything in itself by which it can be destroyed, or which takes its existence away.” When understood as a claim about inherence, this step may be rendered as a simple reformulation of 3, just as Spinoza suggests: 10′. Nothing can be destroyed by something that is in it. (from 3′) If a thing could exert power for its own destruction, it would do so through its own essence and hence through something that was in it. Such power would be in conflict with the power for self-​preservation that, by the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine, it must exert insofar as it is in itself. Step 10 guarantees that no such internally originating obstruction to or cancellation of a thing’s conatus for self-​ preservation can occur; hence, it serves to confirm the conatus doctrine of 3p6. Furthermore, since a thing cannot exert any power to destroy itself but does (insofar as it is in itself) exert power to preserve itself, each thing (insofar as it is in itself) has some positive tendency—​which we might call “existential inertia”—​to continue in existence. This existential inertia can be understood partly through the thing’s tendency to preserve itself and partly through its lacking anything in it that could destroy it or oppose this tendency. To at least this extent, then, the thing’s continuing in existence can be understood or conceived through its own nature; and it follows, by the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine, that the thing’s continuing in existence is, at least to some extent, caused by its own nature. Spinozistic “individuals,” whose existence is constituted by a certain fixed pattern of motion or rest—​that is, a fixed pattern of motion and rest that tends to persist and maintain itself—​illustrate very neatly how such self-​causing existential inertia can occur. Step 11 states that each thing “is opposed to everything that can take its existence away.” Since 11 is itself derived entirely from 6, which explains contrariety in terms of the inability to be in the same subject, we may rephrase 11 as 11′ Each thing is opposed to—​that is, cannot be in the same subject with—​ whatever can destroy it (insofar as that thing can destroy it). (from 6′) Whenever there exists one of two things that cannot (to some extent) exist in the same subject, the nonexistence (or tendency not to exist) of the other can always

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be understood or conceived (to some extent) through the fact that the existence of the first thing excludes the second from existing in that subject. Hence, by the Conception Implies Causation doctrine, the existence of the one causes the nonexistence of the other. In fact, Spinoza often remarks (for example, in 1p11d) that just as each existing thing must have a cause through which its existence can be understood, so too the nonexistence of each thing that fails to exist must have a cause through which it can be understood; and such a cause usually lies in the existence of other things that exclude the first thing from existence.34 This tendency of a thing to prevent or destroy something whose existence in the same subject is to some extent incompatible with its own existence serves to confirm and explain the conatus doctrine in two different ways, depending on whether the “incompatible things” that cannot be in the same subject are affections that cannot be in the same singular thing or are themselves singular things that cannot both be affections in God. In the first case, either the essence or a property of a singular thing tends to prevent or destroy another affection of the singular thing that would be to some extent incompatible with that essence or property and hence also with the continued existence of the singular thing. In the second case, one singular thing tends to prevent or destroy another singular thing that would be an incompatible affection of the one absolute subject, God. In the first case, the exclusion from existence of an affection that could destroy a singular thing can be understood at least partly through the nature of the singular thing. In the second case, the exclusion from existence of another singular thing that could destroy the first singular thing can be understood at least partly through the nature of the first singular thing. In both cases, however, since the exclusion from existence of something dangerous to a singular thing can be understood or conceived through the nature of that singular thing, the singular thing is (by the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine) also to at least some extent the cause of that exclusion. The singular thing is therefore, to that extent, the cause of its own continued existence. In steps 9′, 10′, and 11′, respectively, Spinoza explains (1) how a singular thing can, as a mode of God, exert power, (2) how a singular thing’s own inertial persistence in being can be at least partially conceived through and hence caused by the thing itself, and (3)  how a singular thing’s exclusion from existence of affections and of other singular things that are dangerous to it allows its own continued existence to be conceived through and hence caused by itself. Thus, he can conclude confidently, just as the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine requires: 12′. 3p6—​Each thing, insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being. (from 9′, 10′, 11′, the Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine, and the Conception Implies Causation Doctrine)

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5.  Five Equivocations Resolved In section 2, I raised questions concerning the interpretation of each of the five key phrases involved in the apparent equivocations in Spinoza’s conatus argument. Interpreting that argument as concerning Spinozistic inherence allows us to answer those questions and, in each case, to combine the chief advantages of each of the earlier readings of the seemingly equivocal steps while avoiding their disadvantages.

“External Causes” Step 3 states that “nothing can be destroyed except through an external cause.” We can now see what Spinoza means by a cause that is “external” to a thing: he means a cause that is not in the thing. This interpretation represents a middle path between the “proper essence” and “whole nature” readings that Bennett suggests. For what is in a thing need not include everything that is predicated of it, and what is in a thing can also be a matter of variable degree. What is in a thing is more than just the thing’s proper essence, since it also includes the thing’s properties and, to greater or lesser extents, its mere accidents; yet what is in a thing is also less than its “whole nature,” since it need not include everything that is predicated of the thing, and it includes the thing’s accidents not completely but only to various degrees. Thus, although a human body may be described as “infected,” or a human mind as “depressed,” it does not follow that these qualities are, or are fully, in the things of which they are predicated. On the contrary, what is fully in a thing is only what follows entirely from its essence—​namely, its essence and its properties—​rather than from its accidents. This interpretation retains the two advantages of the “proper essence” reading of step 3. First, it makes 3 properly derivable from the content of 1, which concerns essences in the sense in which definitions express or describe essences. Second, it can accommodate such cases as suicidal persons and self-​exhausting objects, which can be construed as being destroyed through causes that are not, or are not fully, in them. At the same time, this interpretation also maintains the primary advantage of the “whole nature” reading: it blocks—​as the later uses of 3 in the argument must be able to do—​the possibility that a thing could destroy itself in a way that did not involve its essence. For although a thing may certainly be destroyed partly through a quality that is accidental to it, and so does not follow entirely from its essence, to the extent that such a quality can destroy the thing, it is also not in that thing; and hence the thing is destroyed not by itself or through its own power but rather by and through the power of whatever external cause has produced that accidental quality.

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“Cannot Be in the Same Subject” Step 6 states that “two things insofar as they can destroy each other cannot be in the same subject at once.” What does it mean to say that two things “cannot be in the same subject?” On the present interpretation, it means simply that they cannot be affections in the same thing (for example, in the same substance or the same singular thing). The resulting reading of 6 retains the two main advantages attributed to the “whole nature” reading of 6.  First, it allows 6 to be plausibly derived (via 5)  from 3 (which, on the present interpretation also concerns the relation of inherence in a subject). Second, because it does not construe “being in the same subject” in terms of being parts of the same whole, it is not open to the counterexample of mutually dangerous things existing as parts of the “infinite individual.”35 At the same time, it also has both of the advantages attributed to the “incompatible parts” reading of 6. First, it allows for a natural inferential path—​as described in the previous section—​to the active causal exertion for self-​ preservation described in 12. Second, in keeping with the phrasing of Spinoza’s text, it makes 6 a claim about the “things” themselves (that is, about particular affections either of substance or of singular things) that cannot exist “in the same subject,” rather than a claim about those things’ natures being “in the same subject.”

“Opposition” Spinoza’s step 11 states that each thing “is opposed to everything that can take its existence away.” What does it mean for one thing to be “opposed to” another? On the present interpretation, one thing is “opposed” to another to the extent that it cannot be in the same thing with another. As is suggested by the fact that Spinoza infers 11 directly from 6, the phrase “opposed to” is equivalent to “cannot exist in the same subject with”; both refer to the incompatibility of two things inhering in the same subject. However, “opposed to” more aptly expresses the conception of “degree” or “extent” that is already explicit in 6. Furthermore—​like “contrary,” which also occurs in 6—​it more strongly suggests the causal use that Spinoza intends to make of the concept. That is, it suggests that when the nonexistence of one thing in a subject is explained by its having been excluded from existence by something that is incompatible with it, the nonexistence of the first is conceived through, and hence caused by, the second.36 This interpretation has the chief advantage previously cited for the “incompatible parts” reading of 11, since it sustains the derivability of 11 from 6. Yet it also has the chief advantage of the “exertion” reading of 11, since it allows for the derivation of a claim about active exertion in 12.

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“Strives to Persevere in Its Being” Step 12 states that “each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.” But what does it mean to say that each thing “strives to persevere in its being?” Is this claim teleological—​that is, does it license inferences from the self-​preserving tendency of an action to (the likelihood of) its performance? On the present interpretation, the answer is yes, with a crucial qualification: namely, that the singular thing in question must be sufficiently in itself to have such an action within its behavioral repertoire under the specific circumstances in question.37 As one might expect, this interpretation of 12 enjoys the two advantages that Bennett cites for his “teleological” reading. First, it supports Spinoza’s later teleological uses of 3p6. In addition, it provides a natural syntactic place for the qualifying phrase quantum in se est, now translated as “insofar as it is in itself.” At the same time, it maintains both of the advantages that Bennett proposes for his nonteleological reading. First, it is the conclusion of the most plausible interpretation—​within the context of Spinoza’s philosophy—​for the argument of 3p4d–​3p6d. Furthermore, because Spinoza in fact opposes only divine teleology and not all teleology within nature, it is also entirely compatible with Spinoza’s antiteleological remarks in the Appendix to Ethics part I.38

“As Far as It Can by Its Own Power, Strives” Finally, what does it mean to add the restriction quantum in se est (insofar as it is in itself) to conatur (strives)? On the present interpretation, Spinoza’s use of the phrase quantum in se est is not meant to suggest, as the “double qualification” reading requires, that there may be circumstances in which a thing altogether loses its striving to persevere in being. Yet neither is his use of the phrase superfluous, as the “redundancy” reading requires. Rather, the phrase describes and restricts the extent to which a thing always strives—​and hence exerts causal power—​to persevere in its being: namely, a thing strives to do so to whatever extent it is in itself. This extent will, of course, be greater the more essence and power a thing has—​that is, the more it approximates to being a substance. However, a thing’s own power is only one of two variable features of any given situation, because the power of the external causes (each exerting power to preserve itself) that are arrayed against a thing can also vary, independently of a thing’s own causal power. Thus, Spinoza cannot say that each thing does persevere in its existence to the extent that it is in itself, but only that its own power or striving to do so varies with the extent to which it is in itself. This interpretation of 12 has both of the advantages of the “double qualification” reading. First, it accounts for Spinoza’s usage of both conatur and quantum in se est. Second, it avoids counterexamples such as suicides and self-​consuming

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objects, which can now be construed as cases of things destroyed by “external” causes rather than as things that have ceased striving, while still in existence, to persevere in their being. At the same time, this reading also preserves the advantages of the “redundancy” reading. First, it supports the requirement of 3p7 that a thing never lose its striving to persevere in being so long as it continues to exist. Second, because the specification of the degree or extent to which a thing strives to persevere is not always needed for Spinoza’s later purposes, it can explain why the phrase quantum in se est is not always included in later derivatives of 3p6.

6.  The Significance of Spinoza’s Conatus Argument If what I have argued is correct, Spinoza’s conatus argument depends essentially on his treatment of singular things as what we might call “quasi-​substances”—​ that is, as finite approximations to a genuine substance. One key aspect of this treatment is the application to singular things of the same theory of inherence that Spinoza applies to substance itself. As the one absolute substance, God is absolutely in itself. God therefore absolutely causes and eternally preserves himself, encountering no opposition to his existence, with an infinite divine power that flows from his own essence alone. Because nothing is external to God, he has an infinite essence and infinitely many properties but no mere accidents. Each singular thing, at the same time that it is necessarily in God, is also in itself to the limited extent that it approximates to substantiality. Although it has a limited duration in existence and is originally produced by things other than itself, it strives against the external opposition of other singular things to cause its own continued existence with a share of the divine power, a share of divine power that is proportional to the amount of essence it possesses. Because it is affected by external things, it has not only a share of essence and properties but also mere accidents.

The Conatus Argument in Its Seventeenth-​Century Context The application of his theory of inherence to singular things plays an important role in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Because some modes of God are singular things that have, like substance itself, essences and causal powers, Spinoza can explain how God’s attributes are expressed in local variation—​and hence in greater perfection—​by the instantiation of a variety of finite essences, each of which employs a share of the divine power to constitute one of infinitely many loci of causal activity within God’s infinite attributes. In offering this conception, Spinoza

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provides a theory of metaphysical individuation for finite things that does not depend (as Descartes’ theory of individuation evidently does depend) on differences of substance in order to allow individuation.39 For Spinoza, an individual or singular thing exists to the extent that there is instantiated a definite essence or nature that can serve as a locus of causal activity. Where there is such an essence, properties follow (both causally and logically) from that essence, and hence one can speak of a “subject” in which affections exist. Spinoza’s application of his theory of inherence to singular things also plays a crucial role in his epistemology. Early modern science involves a transition from a conception of scientific knowledge as the understanding of the essences of things to a conception of scientific knowledge as the understanding of natural laws. Spinoza’s conception of singular things as quasi-​substances makes room for both of these conceptions, each at two different levels. For while he takes the ultimate object of knowledge to be the divine essence, this essence—​consisting of the infinitely many divine attributes, of which we grasp only extension and thought—​is itself to be understood by understanding the most general laws of physics and the most general laws of psychology. In treating singular things as quasi-​substances—​that is, as quasi-​independent centers of inherence—​he is able to treat them as quasi-​independent objects of conception (that is, of explanation and understanding) and as quasi-​independent centers of causal activity as well. In order for singular things to approximate being conceptually self-​contained, they must have their own essences through which their own properties can be understood. Thus, the instantiation of various finite essences permits the existence of various special sciences concerned with understanding those essences. The understanding of the essences of particular things and of particular kinds of things, in turn, involves understanding what Spinoza sometimes calls “the laws of [things’] own natures,” which are the subjects of more specialized disciplines. These laws explain the behavior of individuals and species—​although they must, of course, be understood ultimately as applications of the more general laws governing thought and extension. Since teleology, in the form of a striving to persevere in being, is an aspect of all such laws of singular things, it becomes possible to give teleological explanations for the behavior of all singular things, including human beings. Finally, Spinoza’s application of the theory of inherence to singular things allows him to develop a substantive psychology, politics, and ethics. From Descartes’ conception of individuation by substance, nothing whatever appears to follow about the behavioral tendencies of individual things. For although Descartes offers a milder correlate of the conatus doctrine (Principles of Philosophy II.3, CSM I, 224: “Each and every thing, in so far as it can, always continues in the same state . . . [N]‌othing can by its own nature tend towards its . . . own destruction”); he must derive this principle from the volitional constancy of God. Spinoza, in

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contrast, derives a universal striving for self-​preservation directly from Spinozistic premises—​most of which Descartes would accept in milder forms—​concerning inherence and its bearing on essence, conception, causation, and action.40 With this universal teleological striving for self-​preservation established, Spinoza can appeal to it as a central motivating force in psychology and political theory. Even more important for his ultimate purposes, he can proceed to argue for ethical doctrines on the basis of the self-​preserving tendencies of certain actions and virtues with the assurance that such arguments will be internally motivating for those who read and understand them.

The Conatus Argument and Contemporary Philosophy If my interpretation is correct, Spinoza’s conatus argument does not, as it first appears, rely on multiple fallacies of equivocation; rather, it is a valid demonstration from Spinozistic premises about inherence, conception, causation, and related matters. But although Spinoza’s conatus argument appears to be valid when supplemented with premises from his theories of causation, conception, action, essence, and inherence, these are very strong premises that reflect his deep commitment to a rigorous Principle of Sufficient Reason, to a conception of things as causing their own properties through their essences, and to a closely related conception of causation as identical with or parallel to logical consequence. As such, the premises are unlikely to be acceptable as they stand. Thus, it appears that we can defend the validity of Spinoza’s argument, as supplemented, but not its soundness. Nevertheless, the general approach to substantiality or “thinghood” that Spinoza’s argument represents is attractive and deserving of serious consideration. According to this approach, the individuation of singular things is not a matter of distinguishing different underlying substances or substrata. Rather, substantiality or thinghood is a function of manifesting a nature suitable for playing a substantive role in explanations—​that is, having a nature from which things follow causally and through which they can be understood. For Spinoza, the universe itself satisfies the criteria for substantiality in the highest degree, but various local expressions of the nature of the universe satisfy them to varying degrees; and the causal activity most relevant to substantiality is the causal self-​maintenance or self-​ preservation of a distinctive pattern of physical operation. Because Spinozistic substantiality is conceptually related to causal self-​maintenance or self-​preservation, on Spinoza’s account, substantiality itself provides a potential basis for teleological explanation; and the higher the degree of substantiality, the greater the range of application for teleological explanation. Because Spinozistic substantiality is conceptually related to teleology, with self-​preservation as a natural “goal” or “drive” shared by all natural things, there is a basis already present in

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the most rudimentary of natural things for what may emerge as desire in systems with more sophisticated sensory and other representational systems. In drawing the distinction between those representation-​processing systems in which the representations mean nothing to the system itself (such as a standard computer) and those in which the representations do mean something to the system itself, therefore, appeal may be made to specific relations in which those representations stand to the basic drive of self-​preservation.41 Any attempt to explain the origins of intentionality as emergent in nature is Spinozistic in spirit, if not in letter; Spinoza’s proposal that substantiality is intrinsically related to self-​preservation is one possible contribution to that project.

Notes I am grateful to audiences at the University of California at San Diego, Utah State University, Northern Arizona University, Yale University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Princeton University for many helpful questions and comments. I  am particularly grateful to Olli Koistinen, John Biro, and Michael Della Rocca for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this chapter. 1. Spinoza 1985, henceforth cited as “C I”; all translations from Spinoza’s works are taken from this source unless otherwise indicated. 2. For defense of this interpretation of 3p6 as licensing a kind of teleological explanation, see Garrett (1999). 3. It would surpass, for example, Locke’s (1975) argument for the existence of God in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding IV.x, which appears to commit three distinct fallacies of equivocation within a span of fourteen steps. 4. In accordance with Curley’s useful convention, or in italics is the translation of sive, a term that has the sense of “in other words” rather than the sense of disjunction; it generally indicates the use of two equivalent expressions. 5. Each thing has, of course, many different qualities and so belongs to many different classes of things. It is important to note that Spinoza is concerned here with definitions capturing the essence of a particular thing—​that is, with what a thing must have to be the same particular thing—​and not merely with the conditions for retaining a certain quality or membership in a certain class. Spinoza offers an example of a “change” that he regards as incompatible with a particular thing’s maintaining its identity as such in the preface to Ethics part 4: “[A]‌horse is destroyed as much if it is changed into a man as if it is changed into an insect.” See also 4p39s, concerning personal identity. For Spinoza’s theory of definitions, see TdIE §§ 94–​97 in G or C I. 6. In formulating both of these readings of step 3, I follow Bennett’s phraseology closely, although I  have supplied the terms “proper essence” and “whole nature.” In explanation of the apparent equivocation in 3, Bennett suggests that

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Spinoza sometimes uses the term essence to refer to the jointly sufficient and severally necessary conditions for a thing’s identity but at other times uses it to refer instead to the complete set of a thing’s nonrelational states. Such a practice would make it easy for Spinoza to equivocate on the phrase “external cause” by equivocating between two senses of “external to a thing’s essence.” As I read Spinoza, however, he never uses the term essence in the latter way. Della Rocca also describes the apparent equivocation on the term “external cause,” but without mentioning Bennett’s explanation for it in terms of an equivocation on essence. 7. Alan Donagan (1988) seeks, in effect, to defend Spinoza from Bennett’s charge that 3 equivocates on the term “external cause.” Following Matheron (1969), Donagan interprets Spinoza as identifying essence with function, so that an “external cause” is one that does not follow from the “functional definition” of the thing, that is, from a definition that expresses the thing’s proper functions. Hence, Donagan interprets 3 as follows: [3–​Donagan] Self-​destruction can neither be among the functions by reference to which a complex body’s essence is defined, nor can it follow from those functions. (Donagan 1988, 150) Donagan holds that this univocal reading of step 3 should be accepted as expressing Spinoza’s meaning on the grounds that it does not invalidate any of the arguments in which Spinoza uses it. In fact, however, it appears that Spinoza’s very first use of 3—​namely, as the sole support of 5—​is invalidated by this interpretation. For 5 denies that “there could be something in the same subject which could destroy it”; yet Donagan does nothing to rule out the possibility of something destructive being “in a subject” without “following from its proper functions.” On the contrary, Donagan himself characterizes Seneca’s suicide as a case in which Seneca destroyed himself even though his self-​destruction was not “functional” (150). It thus appears that Donagan’s defense of step 3 against the charge of equivocation is not entirely successful. (Another difficulty with Donagan’s reading of 3 is that it arbitrarily limits the scope of 3 to complex bodies, thereby excluding both minds and simple bodies, even though Spinoza’s conatus doctrine is clearly offered as a claim about all singular things. Presumably, Donagan excludes simple bodies from his formulation because he doubts whether they have proper functions.) Henry Allison (1987) also addresses briefly Bennett’s charge that step 3 equivocates on the meaning of “external cause.” According to Allison, “external causes” for Spinoza are causes that are external to “idealized” things or “things as they are in themselves—​that is, as they are apart from their relations to other things in the order of nature” (132). As a univocal reading of 3, therefore, he proposes: [3—​Allison] [I]‌nsofar as we consider only the thing itself [that is, the thing as it is apart from its relations to other things in the order of nature], thereby

382 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures ignoring external causes, it is impossible to find anything that could destroy it. (Allison 1987, 131) The reference to “things as they are apart from their relations to other things” is reminiscent of Bennett’s “whole nature” reading of step 2, which concerns all “nonrelational properties.” Allison, however, has something far narrower in mind. For whereas Bennett’s “whole nature” reading excludes only qualities that consist in having a relation to something else, Allison means to exclude all qualities that result from relations with something else. He makes this point explicit when he invokes the distinction between (1)  “essential” or “intrinsic” qualities constituting the nature of the thing considered “as it is in itself” and (2) “accidental” or “extrinsic” qualities, which “pertain to it only by virtue of its relations to other things in the order of nature,” citing “duration” as a prime example of the latter kind of quality (Allison 1987, 133). In fact, Allison’s reading of step 3 is much closer to Bennett’s “proper essence” reading than it is to Bennett’s “whole nature” reading—​although it is not identical with either of them. Unlike Bennett, Allison seeks to interpret the later steps in Spinoza’s argument as being consistently dictated by a narrow interpretation of “external cause.” Thus, Allison construes step 3 as only ruling out destruction of a thing by a “nonessential” or “nonintrinsic” cause, and he construes “in the same subject” in steps 5 and 6 to mean only “contained in the same essence.” Accordingly, he freely grants that “it is [a thing’s] inherent nature, or essence, not the actually existing thing, that is supposed to exclude all contrary properties” (Allison 1987, 133). A difficulty arises for this interpretation, however, when Spinoza infers his final conclusion 12 from 9, 10, and 11. Allison takes 9, derived from 7 (that is, 1p25c) and 8 (that is, 1p34), to entail that each thing acts. Allison then remarks that “since things act, and since (by the preceding propositions they cannot act in ways that are contrary to their nature—​that is, which tend to their self-​destruction—​Spinoza concludes that “each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being” (Allison 1987, 133). Yet on Allison’s interpretation, these preceding propositions (that is, 10 and 11) establish only that a thing’s nature or essence excludes contrary properties from the thing’s essence (that is, from “the same subject” on Allison’s interpretation of that phrase), not from the thing considered as a whole. (Allison’s use of the phrase “the thing itself” to refer only to a thing’s essence may easily contribute to confusion about this.) It may be that a thing’s essence cannot act in ways that tend to the thing’s self-​destruction; but Allison offers no reason on Spinoza’s behalf for what he takes to be Spinoza’s conclusion that a thing cannot destroy itself even through its nonessential qualities. As long as it is still left open that things may destroy themselves through their nonessential qualities, it appears that things can sometimes fail to strive as far as they can for self-​preservation and can instead exert some power toward self-​destruction. Thus, it appears that Allison banishes the equivocation

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between whole natures and more narrowly conceived essences in step 3 only to force it to reappear at the final step of the argument. 8. Of course, it would still be a substantial inference from the claim that a thing cannot be destroyed by a state or quality actually existing within its own whole nature (3—​whole nature) to the claim that it cannot be destroyed by something else having the same whole nature (6—​whole nature). However, Bennett defends this inference—​at least in the context of Spinoza’s philosophy—​by appealing to Spinoza’s later discussion of “different,” “contrary,” and “agreeing” natures in Ethics 4p29–​34. It would also appear to be an open question whether two things could ever have the same “whole nature” in every respect if things are also to have fully individual essences. 9. For this reason, Bennett amends the reading I have labeled as “6—​incompatible parts” by artificially restricting its scope to wholes that are not “much bigger” than the things in question. 10. Garber (1994) develops a similar objection, which he traces to Leibniz. 11. In addition to his defense of Spinoza against the charge of equivocating in step 3 (see note 8), Allison also offers a defense of Spinoza against the charge of equivocating in step 11. Whereas Bennett sees 11 as equivocating between what I  have called “incompatible parts” and “exertion” readings, Allison takes 11 simply to restate 6, with 6 understood as a claim about the exclusion of qualities incompatible with a thing’s existence from that thing’s nature. Although Allison does not provide an explicit reformulation of 11, the following would perhaps be a fair rendering of his reading: [11–​Allison] Each thing is opposed to—​i.e., cannot have in its essence—​any quality that can take its existence away. He suggests that Spinoza can nevertheless use 11 to derive 12, because whenever a thing formally excludes from its own essence whatever is incompatible with its existence (as described in 6 and 11), this exclusion can become a kind of activity, since “insofar as a thing acts, this opposition to whatever tends to destroy it is expressed as an actual resistance; and . . . for a thing to act in such a way as to resist whatever tends to destroy it is to act in a self-​maintaining way” (Allison 1987, 134). However, from the proposition that “things act” and the proposition that they are “opposed to [that is, incompatible with] whatever can destroy them,” it does not follow that they ever act by resisting what can destroy them. For it may be that all of the actions of things take an entirely different form. Furthermore, even if it is granted that opposition does sometimes take the form of actual resistance, it would still appear to follow only that things sometimes do things that tend to preserve them in existence, and not that they actually resist “whatever tends to destroy them” (emphasis added). The latter claim follows only if opposition is equated with resistance—​that is, if all incompatibility results in actual resistance to whatever is incompatible. Even if opposition to (that is, incompatibility with) something can be manifested or expressed in

384 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures actual resistance, Spinoza would apparently be guilty of equivocation in treating such opposition as equivalent to actual resistance or exertion. 12. Curley appears to endorse Bennett’s objection that 11 involves a fallacy of equivocation on the term “opposed to” (Curley 1988, 165n.27), and he grants that “Spinoza is rather casual about proving the conatus doctrine” (113). Nevertheless, Curley does defend a univocal reading of 12. He formulates this reading as follows: [12–Curley] Each thing . . . to the extent that it is not prevented from doing so by something external to it, will do what would maintain it in existence in its present state, i.e., if doing x would maintain a thing in existence, then it will do x, if it is not interfered with. (Curley 1988, 108) This reading is (as Curley emphasizes) a “teleological” one in Bennett’s sense, because it licenses inferences from the self-​preserving character of actions to their tendency to be performed. However, Curley argues that his own version of 12 can be derived directly from 3 (that is, 3p4), thus blunting one of Bennett’s primary arguments in favor of the nonteleological reading of 12—​namely, that Spinoza has a short and plausible argument from 3 to 12 on its nonteleological version, but no similarly plausible argument for a teleological version of 12. Here is Curley’s argument: P4 says that if a thing is destroyed, it must be destroyed by an external cause. P6 says that each particular thing will do, to the extent that it is not prevented from doing so by something external to it, what would maintain it in existence in its present state. To imagine P6 false, we would have to imagine that, without any external interference, a thing does what will not maintain it in existence in its present state, i.e., something that would destroy it. And it does seem that this would violate P4. (Curley 1988, 109) This proposed derivation of 12 (3p6) from 3 (3p4) equates a thing’s self-​destruction with its “doing [without external interference] what will not maintain it in existence”—​where “doing what will not maintain it in existence” must (in order to warrant the inference from 3 to 12—​Curley) include any failure to do anything that would maintain it in existence. This equation may be questioned, however. Suppose, for example, that among the hundreds of species of edible plants flourishing within walking distance, only a single species, growing in one small spot five miles away, contains a vitamin necessary to sustain Jones’s life. Unaware of this obscure fact, Jones eats only nearby plants instead. In eating the nearby plants rather than the unknown vitamin-​containing one, Jones has failed to do what would preserve his being, and it appears that he has done so without any external interference. Yet it is highly doubtful that, in not somehow choosing the correct plant to eat, Jones could properly be said to have engaged in “self-​destruction.” More generally, it seems that 12 on Curley’s reading could not follow from 3, since his version of 12 entails that each thing always does act whenever there is any action that will preserve the thing in existence at a

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time when it is not interfered with; whereas 3, as a mere prohibition on self-​ destruction, seems on its face to have no such entailment. Of course, Curley’s willingness to derive 12 from 3 suggests that he does interpret 3 as having such an entailment, but it is difficult to see why it should have. For he treats 3 as being derived entirely from the very mild doctrine that the definition of a thing includes nothing that entails its nonexistence (Curley 1988, 111). It therefore appears that Curley’s teleological version of 12 cannot be derived from a defensible reading of 3 and hence that his defense of 12 against the charge of equivocation is not entirely successful. 13. The phrase is translated in this more literal way by R.  H. M.  Elwes (Spinoza 1909), by W. H. White and A. H. Stirling (Spinoza 1927), and by Samuel Shirley (Spinoza 1982). 14. When Curley translates Spinoza’s use of quantum in se est in 12 (3p6) as “so far as it can by its own power,” he observes that it could have been translated instead as “insofar as it is in itself,” thereby highlighting the fact that it contains the same phrase—​in se—​that occurs in Spinoza’s definition of “substance.” Curley rejects this translation on the grounds that “it is unclear whether quantum in se est should be regarded as an occurrence of the technical phrase used in the definition of substance” (C I, 498–​99). It is this decision to treat in se nontechnically in 3p6 that leads Curley to avoid using “in” altogether in his translation of that proposition. This is, of course, an entirely reasonable decision in the absence of reasons to the contrary. I am arguing in this work that closer examination of the argument of 3p4–​6 provides good reasons to regard quantum in se est as an occurrence of the technical phrase. 15. Whatever the nature of the distinction between substance and its affections may be, the postulation of anything unknowable or inconceivable seems incompatible with Spinoza’s philosophical outlook in general and with 1a2 in particular. 16. Curley and Bennett differ over how much Spinoza has reconstructed this relation. According to Curley (1969), the relation of being in is almost exclusively causal for Spinoza, with few of the usual thing/​quality implications remaining. According to Bennett (1984 and 1996), a “field metaphysic” allows Spinoza to retain the sense that affections are “adjectival” on substance. We need not seek to resolve this dispute fully for present purposes, since the only aspects of the inherence relation to which I appeal are those identified, from Spinoza’s text, in what follows. I do, however, agree with Bennett that Spinoza’s concept of inherence retains a great deal of the traditional subject/​quality relation and that the field metaphysic helps to explain this. My primary worry about Bennett’s way of characterizing Spinoza’s view on this matter concerns the description of affections as being “adjectival” on things, a characterization that seems to me to be too linguistic to match Spinoza’s primary metaphysical concerns. 17. Although Spinoza would surely allow us to say that “God is God,” this statement presumably employs the is of identity, not the is of predication. In C I Curley

386 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures emphasizes passages that suggest an identity between God and his attributes; and Michael Della Rocca has pointed out to me that, in light of these passages, one might construe predicating an attribute of God as, in effect, predicating a substance of itself. Whatever one might think of this interpretation of attribute predication, however—​and it is one that Della Rocca himself does not specifically endorse—​Spinoza does not seek to violate standard rules of grammar by directly predicating God of God, even though Spinoza is sure that, as a substance, God is in itself. 18. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke 1975): II.viii.17. 19. Some representative examples of such predications occur in ibid., I.iii.22; I.viii.16; I.viii.23; II.xxv.1; II.xxxi.2; and III.vi.4. 20. For an extreme statement of this point, see Savan (1973). 21. It is clear that, in this context, Spinoza also accepts the converse claim that “if y is conceived through x, then y is in x.” This applies, however, only in cases where y is completely conceived through x. For although a finite mode may be partly conceived through the other finite modes that are partial causes of it, it does not follow that it is in those finite modes. Rather, it is in the substance through which it—​as well as the finite modes that help to cause it—​may be completely conceived. 22. Spinoza also regards 1a4 as licensing the converse claim that “if y is caused by x, then y is conceived through x.” Della Rocca (1996a, 11)  provides passages showing conclusively that Spinoza regards 1a4 as a biconditional. 23. As this latter consequence shows, Spinozistic causes need not precede their effects. The Inherence Implies Causation Doctrine does not entail that things temporally precede either themselves or their affections. 24. The usual Latin term for this technical notion of property is proprium; however, Spinoza also often uses the term proprietas interchangeably with proprium for this purpose. See, for example, TdIE § 95 (G II, 34–​35). In his glossary (C I, 652), Curley briefly discusses Spinoza’s use of these two Latin terms. As Curley notes, Paul Eisenberg holds that Spinoza uses the terms interchangeably to express the technical notion of property throughout the TdIE. Curley himself neither accepts nor rejects Eisenberg’s claim, but he does assert that Spinoza at least sometimes uses proprietas to express a broader, nontechnical sense of “property” in other works. Spinoza does clearly follow Descartes’s nontechnical use of proprietas in PPC—​as one might expect—​but it is not clear to me that any of Spinoza’s uses of that term in the Ethics are truly nontechnical. In any event, there are a number of passages in the Ethics—​such as part III, Definition of the Affects 6, explication—​in which proprietas must be understood technically, as a synonym for proprium. 25. Influenced by Descartes’s usage, Spinoza’s early usage usually treats mode and accident as interchangeable terms. This obscures the distinction in question, since modes can be either properties or mere accidents. The specific sense of

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accident as involving qualities that do not follow from the essence of a thing appears in the Ethics chiefly in the distinction between something being a cause “through itself” (that is, through its nature or essence) and its being an “accidental” cause (that is, through its accidents). 26. It is clear that proprietates is being used here in the technical scholastic sense that makes it equivalent to proprium (see note 24), because it is only in this technical sense that “properties” follow from the definition of the thing whose properties they are. 27. Singular things, as “finite things” that have “a determinate existence,” presumably also include what Spinoza (in the discussion following 2p13s) calls “simplest bodies.” These are not technically “individuals,” because individuals are by definition complex bodies composed of smaller bodies as parts. Presumably a tribe or state composed of like-​minded human beings would be an example of a group of individuals operating together to produce common effects through the activity of the group as a whole. (See 4p18s, where Spinoza speaks of individual human beings joining to form another individual.) 28. For one account of “ratios of patterns and rest” and their role in Spinozistic individuation, see Garrett (1994); for another treatment, see Matheron (1969). 29. Naess (1975) also proposes treating singular things as being partly in themselves. He maintains in addition, however, that “that which is completely in itself does not exist, and that which exists is not completely in itself” (18). Charles Jarrett called this reference to my attention. 30. For further discussion of this example, see Garrett (1990) and (1996). 31. It may, of course, seem odd to say that an accident is not entirely in the subject of which it is predicated; but we have already seen that Spinoza need not regard rules of predication as completely mirroring the truth about inherence. In any case, it would sound no more odd for Spinoza to say this than it would be for him to say—​as he undoubtedly would—​that a person’s intentional but passion-​ influenced behaviors are not fully the person’s own actions, since “action” means “that of which the person is the adequate cause.” One might reasonably ask whether, if an accident is not entirely in the singular thing of which it is predicated, it must then be partly in the other singular things that contribute to its causation. Spinoza’s view seems to be that whatever is completely caused by x must be completely in x, but that we need not accept as a general principle that whatever is only partly caused by x is partly in x. That is, what Spinoza calls “immanent causation” implies inherence, but what he called “transient causation” does not. 32. Descartes’s doctrine that each finite thing would immediately go out of existence if it were not continually conserved—​that is, re-​created—​by God at each moment suggests that finite things have in themselves no power for continuation in existence. This Cartesian doctrine of continual divine re-​creation is one source of pressure for reading occasionalism into Descartes’s metaphysics; for it

388 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures is hard to see how things can really possess causal powers to affect other things if they lack any causal power of their own to remain in existence long enough to exert any power. 33. This is at least one of the main ways Spinoza intends his “third kind” of cognition (scientia intuitiva) (2p40s) to be superior to his “second kind” of cognition (ratio). 34. The only exception to this is a contradictory thing—​such as a chimera—​which is (through its contradictory essence) the cause of its own nonexistence. 35. It may seem, however, that a parallel problem arises in applying 3p5d and its conclusion (step 6) to singular things considered as affections of God. For how can we treat singular things as having any ability to “destroy one another” when they are all fully in God? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to recognize that degrees of ability of one thing to destroy another are rightfully applicable to the affections of a finite, quasi-​substance, but not to affections considered as affections of God. This is true because a finite subject can have powers (including powers of destruction) whose exercise is “contingent” in the sense that whether the powers are exercised or not depends not simply on the subject whose powers they are, but also on the nature of external circumstances. That is, from the nature of the finite subject alone, it does not always follow whether or when its powers are actually exercised. The extent to which one affection of a finite subject can destroy another affection of that subject is therefore sometimes a function of the ease with which the subject can combine with external circumstances to produce destruction. For God, in contrast, there are no external circumstances, so that whatever it is possible for God to do through any of his affections, God necessarily does; the distinction between the modalities of necessity, actuality, and possibility collapses (Bennett 1984 and Garrett 1991). One affection of God can therefore exclude another from existence in either of two ways: (1) preemptively, by preventing it from coming into existence at all, or (2) by destroying it as soon as it becomes capable (through some alteration either of it or of the other affection) of destroying the other. These exhaust the alternatives, for there are no unexercised capabilities, and hence no degrees of ability to destroy, from the stand-​point of the divine subject. In neither of these two cases will two affections of God that can destroy one another coexist in the subject God for any period of time. 36. Spinoza explains this conception of “contrary” qualities and individuals in 4p29–​35, where he indicates that things can only be harmed by what is contrary to them, and also that two contrary things must nevertheless fall under the same attribute, since contrariety involves some limitation within the same nature of one by the other. 37. It does not, in contrast, entail the content of Bennett’s nonteleological reading of 12: namely, that all of the activity of each thing strives for, or tend towards, self-​preservation. However, Spinoza also holds this further doctrine. For he states

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in 3p7d that “the power of each thing, or the striving by which it (either alone or with others) does anything, or strives to do anything [is] the power or striving by which it strives to persevere in its being” (emphasis added). He derives this claim not from 12 (that is, 3p6) alone, however, but only after the addition of 1p29, which states that “things are able to produce nothing but what follows necessarily from their determinate nature” (emphasis added)—​that is, from their essence. 38. See Garrett (1999). 39. See Garrett (1994). 40. There is an interesting similar contrast in epistemology: Whereas Descartes can validate the principle that “whatever is perceived clearly and distinctly is true” only on the basis of considerations of divine volitional goodness, Spinoza seeks to validate it directly from the nature of truth, without appeal to divine volition. 41. Dretske (1985; 1988) explains this distinction, partly by appeal to sensory systems and natural drives.

Bibliography Allison, H. 1987. Benedictus de Spinoza: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bennett, J. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. 1990. “Spinoza and Teleology: A Reply to Curley.” In E. Curley and P.–F. Moreau, eds. Spinoza: Issues and Directions (Leiden: Brill): 53–57. ——. 1996. “Spinoza's Metaphysics.” In D. Garrett, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): Curley, E. 1969. Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ——. 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Della Rocca, M. 1996a. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 1996b. “Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology.” In D. Garrett, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 192–266. Descartes, R. 1985 and 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, eds. Vols. 1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Donagan, A. 1988. Spinoza. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Dretske, F. 1985. “Machines and the Mental.”  Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 59: 23–33. ——. 1988. Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

390 Teleology and Necessarily Striving Natures Garber, D. 1994. “Descartes and Spinoza on Persistence and Conatus.”  Studia Spinozana 10: 43–67. Garrett, D. 1990. “Ethics IP5: Shared Attributes and the Basis of Spinoza's Monism.” In J. A. Cover and M. Kulstad, eds. Central Themes in Early Modern Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett): 69–107. ——. 1991. “Spinoza's Necessitarianism.” In Y. Yovel, ed. God and Nature: Spinoza's Metaphysics (Leiden: E. J. Brill): 191–218. ——. 1994. “Spinoza's Theory of Metaphysical Individuation.” In K. Barber and J. Garcia, eds. Individuation in Early Modern Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press): 73–101. ——. 1996. “Spinoza's Ethical Theory.” In D. Garrett, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 267–314. ——. 1999. “Teleology in Spinoza and Early Modern Rationalism.” In R. Gennaro and C. Huenemann, eds. New Essays on the Rationalists (New York: Oxford University Press): 310–35. Locke, J. 1975. John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. P. H. Nidditch, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Matheron, A. 1969. Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Nadler, S. 1993. “Introduction.” In S. Nadler, ed. Causation in Early Modern Philosophy (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press): 1–8. Naess, A. 1975. Freedom, Emotion, and Self-Subsistence: The Structure of a Central Part of Spinoza’s Ethics. Oslo: Universitetsvorlaget. Savan, D. 1973. “Spinoza and Language.” In M. Grene, ed. Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City: Doubleday/Anchor Press): 60–72. Spinoza, B. 1909. The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza. R. H. M. Elwes, ed. Vols. 1 and 2. London: George Bell and Sons. ——. 1927. Ethics, W. H. White and A. H. Sterling, trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ——. 1982. Baruch Spinoza: The Ethics and Selected Letters. S. Shirley, trans., S. Feldman, ed., with introductions. Indianapolis: Hackett. ——. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza. E. Curley, ed. Vol. 1. Princeton University Press. [cited as C I]

SECTION V

Naturalistic Representation and Consciousness

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Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination Don Garrett

I. Introduction Spinoza identifies the minds or souls of finite things with God’s ideas of those things. Margaret Wilson famously suggests that this identification prevents Spinoza from giving an adequate account of the human mind: Descartes’s position on the mind–​body issue is notoriously beset with difficulties. Still, [his] theory of res cogitantes does recognize and take account of certain propositions about the mental that seem either self-​ evidently true or fundamental to the whole concept. These include . . . that the mind (in a straightforward and common sense of the term) represents or has knowledge of external bodies; that it is ignorant of much that happens in “its” body; that having a mind is associated with thinking and being conscious; that mentality is recognizable from behavior of a certain sort, and the absence of mentality from “behavior” of other sorts. Will not Spinoza’s theory of “minds” simply fail to be a theory of the mental if it carries the denial of all or most of these propositions? More specifically, will it not fail to make sense of the specific phenomena of human mentality by attempting to construe the human mind as just a circumscribed piece of God’s omniscience? (Wilson 1980: 111) This is the primary question that I  will try to address:  Can Spinoza “recognize and take account of” such “specific phenomena of human mentality” as

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(i)  ignorance of many internal bodily states, (ii) representation of the external world, (iii) consciousness, and (iv) expression in behavior? In order to answer this question, we must solve four puzzles about his theory of the imagination, each corresponding to one of the four phenomena of our primary question. In order to solve these puzzles, in turn, we must first understand some of Spinoza’s central doctrines concerning a number of closely related topics—​and we must understand an aspect of Spinoza’s approach to philosophy that I will call his incremental naturalism. Doing so will allow us to see a good deal of his philosophy in a clearer and potentially more attractive light—​or at least, so I imagine.

II.  Four Puzzles about the Imagination Imagination defined

Spinoza defines “imagination” (imaginatio) in Ethics 2p17s: The affections of the human Body whose ideas represent external bodies as present to us, we shall call images of things, even if they do not reproduce the figures of things. And when the Mind regards bodies in this way, we shall say that it imagines.1 As this indicates, his use of the term “imagination” is broad enough to include sensation as well as mental imagery and to include modalities of bodily representation that do not represent shape. He goes on to identify imagination as the first and lowest of the three kinds of knowledge or cognition (cognitio), with the intellect (constituted by distinct and adequate ideas) providing the higher (second and third) kinds of knowledge.2

A puzzle about the scope of the imagination One puzzle about the imagination concerns its seemingly unlimited scope. Prior to his initial definition of “imagination,” Spinoza asserts in 2p12 that whatever happens in the object of the idea constituting the human Mind must be perceived by the human Mind, or there will necessarily be an idea of that thing in the Mind; i.e., if the object of the idea constituting a human Mind is a body, [then] nothing can happen in that body which is not perceived by the Mind. In the next proposition, he goes on to specify that “the object of the idea constituting the human mind” indeed is the human body—​with the obvious consequence that nothing can happen in the human body that is not perceived by the human mind.3 Furthermore, it is clear that this “perception of whatever happens in the human body” must be imagination, rather than intellection.4 Hence, it



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seems that, for Spinoza, a human being’s mind perceives by way of imagination everything that happens in his or her body—​including, to borrow Michael Della Rocca’s example (1996: 9), each specific chemical reaction in the pancreas. This result is surprising enough. But it seems that we have not yet reached the limits of imagination. For in the immediately following scholium, Spinoza remarks: The things we have shown so far are completely general and do not pertain more to man than to other Individuals, all of which, though in different degrees, are animate. For of each thing there is necessarily an idea in God, of which God is the cause in the same way as he is of the idea of the human Body. And so, whatever we have said of the idea of the human Body must also be said of the idea of any thing. (2p13s) Thus, every “individual” or “thing” has an idea that is related to that individual in just the way that the human mind is related to the human body; and, at least once (3p1d), he uses the term “minds” to designate these ideas of non-​human things.5 It appears, then, that even individual things whose behavior may seem to express no sentience at all will nevertheless have “minds” and perceive by imagination whatever happens in their “bodies”: it seems, for example, that toasters must perceive the flow of electricity to their heating elements. Hence, the first puzzle: How can Spinoza seriously maintain that the phenomenon of imagination is so pervasive as to include perception, by every individual thing, of “whatever happens in” its body?

A puzzle about the representational content of the imagination A second puzzle concerns the external representational content of imagination. According to Spinoza’s own definition, all imagination involves not merely perception of an internal state or “affection,” but also representation of an external body. Yet the seemingly universal scope of the Spinozistic imagination seems to render this utterly incredible. How can each individual’s perception of each occurrence within it—​seemingly including such occurrences as pancreatic chemical reactions or flows of electricity to heating elements—​also serve to represent one or more external bodies? Yet that is just what Spinoza seems to think they do. He asserts in 2p16: “The idea of any mode in which the human Body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human Body and at the same time the nature of the external body” (emphasis added). And in 2p17, he adds:  “If the human Body is affected with a mode that involves the nature of an external body, the human Mind will regard the same external body as present” (emphasis added)—​ which is the very condition that he immediately goes on to define in 2p17s as

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“imagination.” It seems to follow that a perception of any internal bodily state that has been even partly influenced by an external body will qualify as an imaginative representation of that body on Spinoza’s account. But while this may help to explain why so many internal states are supposed to qualify as representations of the external for Spinoza, so minimal a requirement on representation seems (as Wilson urges) not so much to account for external representation as to change the subject to a relation much weaker than genuine representation of the external. Hence, the second puzzle: How can Spinoza suppose that imagination as he conceives it always represents something external?

A puzzle about the consciousness of the imagination A third puzzle concerns the consciousness of imagination. It seems that Spinoza could render the seemingly incredible scope of the imagination less incredible if he could maintain that much of this imagination is unconscious, or at least of a very low degree of consciousness. And he does make a number of claims about consciousness in the Ethics6 that appear to be restricted to human beings. One might suppose, then, that only human beings—​and perhaps some higher animals7—​have conscious imagination on Spinoza’s view. As Wilson rightly argues, however, this interpretive supposition cannot be maintained. Whenever Spinoza offers a demonstration for a claim that human beings are conscious of something, the argument always takes the form of showing simply that an idea of that thing is in the human mind; and that argument, in turn, always appeals ultimately only to features of the human mind that are, according to 2p13s, “completely general and do not pertain more to man than to other Individuals.”8 It seems, then, that if human minds are conscious, so too must be the minds of all other individual things. Still, when he reaches Part 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza does clearly imply that there are at least degrees of consciousness. In 5p31s, he writes, “The more each of us is able to achieve in this [third] kind of knowledge, the more he is conscious of himself and of God, i.e., the more perfect and blessed he is” (see also 5p42s). In 5p39s, he explains further: He who, like an infant or a child, has a Body capable of very few things, and very heavily dependent on external causes, has a Mind which considered solely in itself is conscious of almost nothing of itself, or of God, or of things. On the other hand, he who has a Body capable of a great many things, has a Mind which considered only in itself is very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things. In this life, therefore, we strive especially that the infant’s Body may change (as much as its nature allows and assists) into another, capable of a great many things and related to a Mind very much conscious of itself, of God, and of things. We strive, that is, that



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whatever is related to its memory or imagination is of hardly any moment in relation to the intellect. These passages suggest that differences in degrees of consciousness are grounded in differences of bodily capacity and/​or intellectual knowledge. Yet upon examination, this suggestion does not seem to offer a promising approach to distinguishing degrees of consciousness in the imagination. The appeal to mere bodily capacities or skills of the sort that infants lack seems of doubtful relevance to degrees of consciousness of any kind. And the appeal to differences of intellect—​ such as greater achievements of “the third kind of knowledge”—​seems no more helpful, for two reasons. First, it is not obvious why differences of intellect should have any bearing on differences in the consciousness of imagination. Second, as Wilson argues, it seems doubtful whether Spinoza’s own account of the intellect provides any basis for distinguishing different minds with respect to the contents of their intellects. For according to that account (2pp37–​46), the foundation for knowledge of the higher, intellectual kinds lies in certain “common notions” that must be perceived adequately in any act of perception performed by any mind.9 For example, Spinoza holds that every idea—​and hence every idea of imagination, regardless of what mind perceives it—​necessarily involves an “adequate and perfect” knowledge of God’s essence. So far, then, it seems that the minds of even seemingly inanimate individuals, such as toasters, may well have as many adequate ideas of intellect as do human minds; and, if that is so, then the mere possession of ideas of intellect cannot provide any useful basis for distinguishing degrees of consciousness among things. Thus, the third puzzle:  How can Spinoza regard some instances of imagination as more conscious than others?

A puzzle about expression in behavior A fourth puzzle concerns the expression in behavior of imagination. Spinoza appears to hold that all individuals perceive, by way of imagination, whatever happens in them. Perception is a mental state. Yet it seems that many individuals, such as rocks and toasters, never express this or any other mental state in behavior. Hence, the fourth puzzle: How can Spinoza explain why many individuals’ mental states, such as imaginative perception, are seemingly never expressed in behavior?

III.  Some Central Doctrines and the Approach of Incremental Naturalism To resolve these puzzles, it is essential to understand some of Spinoza’s central doctrines concerning such topics as inherence, individuality, conatus, power

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of thinking, minds, confusion, and intellection. I  will take up these topics in that order.

Inherence Perhaps the most fundamental relation in Spinoza’s metaphysics is the relation of being in. Spinoza introduces the relation at the very outset of the Ethics, in 1d3 and 1d5, when he defines “substance” as “what is in itself and is conceived through itself” and “modes” as “the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived.”10 I will use the term “inherence” to designate this relation of being in and to distinguish it from the in of spatial containment and from the in of the relation of parts to wholes.11 Although the definition of “mode” indicates that the affections or modes of a substance are in that substance, it is not only substances that can have modes or affections in them.12 In 2d7, Spinoza defines “singular things” (res singulares) as things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And 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. Singular things are, of course, affections or modes of God, on Spinoza’s view. He nevertheless regularly refers to singular things as being “subjects” (e.g., 3p5, 5a1, Epistle 23) and as having affections that are “in” them (e.g., 2p13d, 2p22d, 2p38d, 2p39s, 3p52s). Thus, it is evident that he accepts the Inherence in Singular Things Doctrine:  Singular things have modes or affections that inhere in them.

Individuality Spinoza defines “individual” (individuum) (in a definition after 2p13s) as follows: When a number of bodies, whether of the same or of different size, are so constrained by other bodies that they lie upon one another, or if they so move, whether with the same degree or different degrees of speed, that they communicate their motions to each other in a certain fixed manner, we shall say that those bodies are united with one another and that they all together compose one body or Individual, which is distinguished from the others by this union of bodies.13 It follows from the definitions of “singular thing” and “individual” that every finite individual is also a singular thing.14 Hence, these definitions and the Inherence in Singular Things Doctrine together entail the



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Inherence in Finite Individuals Doctrine:  Finite individuals have modes or affections that inhere in them. Spinoza’s definition of the term “individual” suggests that he regards the persistence of an individual complex body through time as consisting not in the sameness of underlying substance but in the persistence of a distinctive pattern of communication of motion among parts. This is confirmed when he concludes (in lemmas 4–​7, plus the scholium following 2p13s) from the definition that individuals can undergo replacements of parts, growth and shrinkage, change of direction, change of overall speed, and changes within their parts, so long as the distinctive pattern of communication of motion that constitutes their “nature” or “form” is preserved. Thus, he is committed to the Extended Pattern Preservation Doctrine:  The persistence of an individual through time consists not in the sameness of underlying substance but, insofar as it is conceived through extension, in the persistence of a distinctive pattern of communication of motion among parts. In Ethics 2p7, Spinoza affirms the Parallelism Doctrine: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. In the scholium to the proposition, he also affirms the Mode Identity Doctrine: A mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways (i.e., under the two attributes of extension and thought, respectively). Thus, Spinoza also holds the Thinking Pattern Preservation Doctrine:  The persistence of an individual through time consists not in the sameness of underlying substance but, insofar as it is expressed and conceived through thought, in the persistence of an idea of a distinctive pattern of communication of motion among parts.

Conatus Ethics 3p6 states:  “Each thing, insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being.” In what follows, I will use Spinoza’s term “conatus” to designate this striving to persevere in being. His demonstration of this proposition makes it clear that the scope of the proposition includes all singular things. In the demonstration of the immediately following proposition,15 Spinoza asserts that each thing’s conatus, or specific striving to persevere in its being, is the thing’s actual essence and is “the power of each thing, or the striving by which it (either alone or with others) does anything, or strives to do anything” (emphasis added). Thus, Spinoza holds the

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Conatus as Power Doctrine: The power of each singular thing is (i.e., consists entirely in) its conatus, which is its striving to persevere in its being. The doctrine that every singular thing has some power to persevere in its being may seem surprising; but consider the central case of finite individuals. It is the nature of an individual to communicate motion among its parts in a fixed manner or pattern. But a communication of motion among elements that does not tend to persist cannot be a fixed manner or pattern; and whatever does tend to persist or repeat itself as such a pattern has a nature that serves to explain, at least in part, its persistence under particular circumstances. Take, for example, a rock or a toaster. If force is successfully exerted to move one part of a rock or a toaster, the rest of the rock or toaster will tend to move as well, maintaining contact with the part on which force was originally exerted in such a way that the rock or toaster remains able to continue communicating motion among its parts in its distinctive fashion. Some individual bodies, however, have far more resources than a rock or toaster for maintaining the distinctive patterns of communication of motion that constitute their continued existence. Specifically, some individual bodies have systems that register small differences in their environments and utilize the registration of those differences in pursuing bodies and circumstances that will be beneficial to their own preservation while avoiding bodies and circumstances that will be detrimental to it. In other words, they have relatively well-​developed sensory systems that are well integrated into their self-​ preservatory activities. Rudimentary self-​preservers such as rocks and toasters undergo very little if any increase or decrease in their power to preserve themselves. But bodies with well-​developed sensory systems can undergo far more variation in their degree of fitness to preserve themselves—​depending on the operational fitness of those sensory systems and of the information-​processing and motor systems with which those systems interact. Spinoza also identifies a thing’s power with its perfection. For example, he defines “joy” (laetitia) as “a passion by which the Mind passes to a greater perfection” (3p11s), but he characterizes it equally as one by which “the power of the Mind . . . is increased” (3p15c, citing the previous definition as support); and in the same passages he defines “sadness” (tristitia) in terms of passage to lesser perfection, while characterizing it equally in terms of decrease in power.16 And in 2d6, he writes, “By reality and perfection I understand the same thing.” Hence he is committed to the following: Power as Perfection Doctrine: The degree of a singular thing’s power is the degree of its perfection, which is also the degree of its reality. It is clear that, for Spinoza, different singular things can have different degrees of perfection-​or-​reality, of power, and hence of conatus. For example, when he affirms in 2p13s (a passage already quoted in part) that all individuals are animate “though



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in different degrees,” he goes on to explain these differences precisely in terms of differences of reality and power: However, we also cannot deny that ideas differ among themselves, as the objects themselves do, and that one is more excellent than the other, and contains more reality, just as the object of the one is more excellent than the object of the other, and contains more reality. And so to determine what is the difference between the human Mind and the others, and how it surpasses them, it is necessary for us, as we have said, to know the nature of its object, i.e., of the human Body . . . I say this in general, that in proportion as a Body is more capable than others of doing many things at once, and being acted on in many ways at once, its Mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once. And in proportion as the actions of a body depend more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in acting, so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly. And from these [truths] we can know the excellence of one mind over the others. But differences of power, perfection, and conatus are not limited to comparisons among different things. From the very existence of joy and sadness, as Spinoza has defined them, it follows that at least some singular things will themselves vary through time in the degree of their perfection, their power, and hence their conatus. Thus, it is clear that Spinoza is committed to the Variability of Power Doctrine: Different singular things have different degrees of power, perfection, and conatus; and the same singular thing may undergo increase or decrease in its power, perfection, and conatus.

Power of thinking Despite the Mode Identity Doctrine, God’s attributes, such as thought and extension, are causally independent of one another according to Spinoza—​that is, any effect produced in a given attribute must be produced through a cause belonging to that attribute (2p6). It is a mistake, on Spinoza’s view, to suppose that an act of thought causes a bodily motion as such, or vice versa; as a mode of extension, a given mode can only cause another mode of extension, while the idea of the first mode, as a mode of thought, causes the idea of the second mode. Just as God exists through multiple attributes constituting his essence, which is also his power (1p34), so too a singular thing is a mode of multiple attributes through which is conceived that singular thing’s actual essence—​i.e., its conatus (3p7)—​which is also its power. Since all power is God’s power, the power of a singular thing is an expression or share of God’s power. Spinoza calls God’s power as expressed and

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conceived under the attribute of thought “power of thinking” (cogitandi potentia) (2p1s, 2p7c, 2p21s); and, not surprisingly, he also uses this term very frequently to describe the power of each singular thing as that power is expressed and conceived in the attribute of thought (2p49s, 3p2s, 3p11, 3p12d, 3p15d, and 3p28d). This power of thinking is the power by which ideas produce other ideas—​ideas that follow from them. Thus, Spinoza holds the Power of Thinking Doctrine: The power of a singular thing, as it is expressed under the attribute of thought, is its power of thinking. From this plus the Conatus as Power Doctrine and the Power as Perfection Doctrine, it follows that a singular thing’s power of thinking is simply its conatus and perfection (and reality) insofar as these are conceived under the attribute of thought. By the Variability of Power Doctrine, it follows that different minds can have different degrees of power of thinking, and the same mind can have different degrees of power of thinking at different times. This is so even though all of these minds of singular things are themselves ideas in God. Thus, some of God’s ideas have more power of thinking than do others, and they can increase or decrease in their power of thinking. The same is true of particular ideas in human and other finite minds.17 The more power an idea has to determine how the singular thing whose idea it is does or does not exercise its power or conatus at a given time, the greater will be the power of thinking of that idea in that particular mind at that particular time—​for it is only or chiefly through contributing to the determination of the strength and direction of an individual’s conatus that an idea can exert power in that individual. Thus, Spinoza is committed to the Variable Power of Ideas Doctrine: Particular ideas in the mind of a singular thing may have more or less power of thinking than other ideas in the same mind, and they may increase or decrease in power of thinking at different times, depending at least in part on the idea’s power for determining how the singular thing strives for self-​preservation. As Spinoza indicates in 4p5, the power of thinking possessed by an externally caused idea in a particular mind is partly a result of the mind’s own power and partly a result of the power of that idea’s external cause.

Minds Human and non-​human minds have ideas that are “in” them; and yet everything is “in” God. Hence, it follows that some ideas are in human minds and in God; and Spinoza confirms this by writing of the same ideas “as they are in the human mind” and “as they are in God.” As Della Rocca (1996) has argued convincingly, the truth, adequacy, and representational content of an idea can be partly determined for Spinoza by what other ideas are in the same mind with it, so that the same idea can be true and adequate in God while being at the same time false and



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inadequate in a human mind, distinctly representing its object in God while confusedly representing many things in a human mind. Furthermore, because the common notions are ideas of things present everywhere and equally in the part and in the whole, these ideas must, on Spinoza’s account, literally exist in many different minds at the same time. In addition, because the human body is composed of bodies that are its parts, the human mind is, by the Parallelism Doctrine (2p7) and the Mode Identity Doctrine (2p7s), composed of the ideas of those parts, as Spinoza affirms in 2p15;18 and since individuals can have parts within parts, it follows that the same idea can be a part of more than one mind. There is no reason why an idea need have exactly the same degree of power in relation to each of the minds or thinkers that it is in, or of which it is a part. On the contrary, since the minds that have the common notions evidently include the minds of philosophers and the minds of their toasters, it seems impossible to deny that the common notions themselves will occur with different power of thinking relative to different minds. Thus, it seems that Spinoza must accept the Differential Power of Thinking Doctrine: The same idea may have greater or less power of thinking as it exists in, or as part of, different thinkers or minds.

Confusion In Cartesian psychology, the confusion or confusedness of ideas is to be contrasted with their distinctness, and Spinoza follows this usage (2p28, 2p28s, 2p29, 2p36, 3p9, 3p58d, 4p1s, 4p59, 5p3d). Confusion, he holds, is a “privation of knowl­ edge” (2p35) that prevents the mind from distinguishing things that are different (1p8d, 2p41s1). He regards all ideas of imagination as at least somewhat confused (2p40s2), but he does recognize degrees of confusion and distinctness in the imagination (2p40s1, 3p53d, 3p55d, 4d6, 5p6d), and he characterizes relative distinctness of imagination as allowing what is imagined to be distinguished from other things (see especially 2p40s1, 3p55d, and 4d6). As we have seen, Spinoza asserts (in 2p16d) that “the idea of any mode in which the human Body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human Body and at the same time the nature of the external body.” His grounds are that the conception of an effect always (by 1a4) involves the nature of the cause. Della Rocca (1996: 57–​64) has inferred that every idea of imagination is confused, for Spinoza, at least in part because it represents both an internal state of the body and the external cause of that state in such a way that the mind cannot distinguish between them. Even if this is correct, however, inability to distinguish between the internal state and an external cause is not the only aspect of confusion present in imagination. For one thing, Spinoza holds that an idea of imagination owes part of its nature to the nature of the human body itself and part of its nature to the nature of the parts of the human body (2p28d), as well as owing part of its nature to external causes, even though the idea often does not allow the mind to

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distinguish these contributions. Furthermore, an idea of imagination does not represent any of the finite causes of its corresponding bodily state adequately, but rather in a way that only reflects that cause’s ability to produce the particular state of the body in question. Yet a given state of the body can ordinarily be produced by things that otherwise differ in many respects; for example, the same bruise could be produced by a rock or a toaster, and the same state of the auditory processing areas of the brain could be produced by a live voice or a recording. Thus, an idea of imagination can also be confused because it does not itself allow the mind to distinguish among any of the various alternatives that could equally have produced the same effect. Since greater degrees of distinctness involve greater ability to distinguish that which is actually perceived from other things, degrees of confusion will be correlated with the variety of alternative causes among which the mind cannot distinguish. Hence, Spinoza accepts the Causal Confusion Doctrine: An idea is confused in a mind to the extent that it represents its object’s causes in a way that does not allow them to be distinguished from one another or from other possible causes. This helps to explain why an idea’s distinctness or confusion can vary depending on the mind or thinker that it is in—​for example, being confused in a human mind and yet distinct in God—​for the presence of other ideas in the same mind may allow the making of distinctions that could not otherwise be made.

Intellection Although persistence through time or duration is one kind of persevering in being, it is not the only kind, nor even the most important kind. Spinoza argues in Part 4 of the Ethics (4pp26d–​28d) that the mind strives to understand and that understanding God is the mind’s highest good. Yet “good” is defined as “what is useful to . . . preserving our being” (4p8d), and many individual things with little understanding seem to endure far longer than the individuals whose understanding is greatest. This seeming paradox is resolved in Part 5, where Spinoza argues that the intellect consists of ideas that are eternal, ideas that can nonetheless come to constitute a greater part of one’s own mind the more one understands by the second and third kinds of knowledge. Thus, Spinoza also holds the Perseverance through Intellection Doctrine: Development of the intellect constitutes a kind of persevering in being that consists in making a greater part of one’s mind eternal.

Incremental naturalism An especially important aspect of Spinoza’s approach to philosophy is what I will call his incremental naturalism. By “naturalism,” I  mean the project of fully



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integrating the study and understanding of human beings, including the human mind, into the study and understanding of nature, so that human beings are not contrasted with nature but are instead understood as entities ultimately governed by the same general principles that govern all other things.19 By “incrementalism,” I  mean the methodology of treating important explanatory properties and relations not as simply present-​or-​absent but rather as properties and relations that are pervasively present to greater or lesser degrees.20 His incremental naturalism is simply the result of applying this incremental approach to the project of naturalism: it consists in his seeking to explain such crucial elements of human life as intentionality, desire, belief, understanding, and consciousness as already present in their most rudimentary (and perhaps even initially unrecognizable) forms throughout all of nature, so that humanity can be seen as a complex and sophisticated expression of nature rather than as something arising from the introduction of non-​natural elements. With an understanding of this aspect of Spinoza’s approach to philosophy in place, we are now in a position to resolve the four puzzles concerning the imagination’s scope, representative content, consciousness, and expression in behavior.

IV.  The Four Puzzles Resolved The scope of the imagination

The first puzzle was this: How can Spinoza seriously maintain that the phenomenon of imagination is so pervasive as to include perception, by every individual thing, of “whatever happens in” its body? There can be no question that Spinoza does commit himself to this doctrine in 2pp12–​17s. It is a consequence of his monism and his conception of God as infinitely thinking, which together lead him to identify God’s ideas of things with the minds of those things. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the doctrine is in any way an unwanted or unintended consequence for Spinoza, for it constitutes a key element in his program of incremental naturalism. Of course, if the doctrine is to have plausibility as well as programmatic value, Spinoza must be able to explain why it is not simply belied by the facts of everyday experience. However, he has three resources available for doing so: the distinction among different senses of “in,” the distinction among degrees of imaginative confusion, and the distinction among degrees of power of thinking. The first of these allows him to limit the scope of “everything that happens in.” The second and third allow him to minimize the force of “perceives.” In claiming that each thing perceives everything that happens in it, Spinoza is not committed to the view that each thing perceives everything that occurs within its outer spatial boundaries. To take an obvious example, one need not perceive what occurs in an object that has been swallowed or implanted under one’s skin, if what occurs in that object has not been incorporated into the

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functioning of the structure of parts communicating motion in a distinctive manner that constitutes one’s own body. Spinoza’s argument in 2p12d that the mind perceives everything that happens in the body concerns the “in” of inherence, not the “in” of spatial containment. This is confirmed by Spinoza’s later applications of 2p12, all of which concern perception of affections of the body—​ i.e., qualities that inhere in a body, not things that are within the boundaries of a body. A thing must perceive any change of its affections, on Spinoza’s account, for that is a change in the thing, in the relevant sense. But many changes may occur within the external boundaries of an individual that are not such changes in the individual. Of course, as previously noted, Spinoza also holds that, just as an individual body is composed of bodies that are its parts, the mind of that body is composed of the ideas of those parts (2p15). Hence, ideas of bodily parts are “in” the mind in the non-​inherence sense that they are parts of the whole; and thus any change to an idea of a part of a human body is also a change to an idea that is a part of the human mind. Nevertheless, Spinoza asserts in 2p24 that the parts composing the human Body pertain to the essence of the Body only insofar as they communicate their motions to one another in a certain fixed manner . . . and not insofar as they can be considered as Individuals, without relation to the human Body. For the parts of the human Body are highly complex Individuals, whose parts can be separated from the human body and communicate their motions to other bodies in another manner, while the human Body completely preserves its nature and form. Thus, Spinoza need not maintain that every change involving a part of the body—​or even a complete replacement of one part by another—​would make any difference to the qualitative character of a mind’s perceptions, so long as the parts themselves were playing the same role, in the same way, in the functioning of that body. A  watch may, considered as a watch, undergo little or no qualitative change as the result of incidental changes to or complete replacement of one of its parts. In a similar way, although one’s mind includes as a part some idea of one’s pancreas, and the ideas of each part of the pancreas make some contribution, as parts, to the idea of the pancreas that is a part of one’s mind, the qualitative character of the ideas of one’s mind may change very little or perhaps not at all in response to some changes—​or even replacements—​that occur to parts of the pancreas. A change to a part of a body is something that happens “in” the body, in the sense relevant to Spinoza’s claim in 2p12, only to the extent that it also constitutes a change in affections of the body itself. Second, a mind’s perception of what happens in its body may be very highly confused.21 To the extent that a given state or affection of the body is something that



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any number of very different causes would have the power to produce, the mind will perceive the cause of that affection only very confusedly, without an ability to distinguish among these alternative causes. Consider, for example, the change in internal state that occurs when an apple is dropped and becomes slightly bruised. This state is, according to Spinoza, due partly to the nature of the apple, as an individual self-​preserving mechanism; partly to the nature of its parts; and partly to the external causes that operated on it. But there are many combinations of internal and external causes that could produce this same state or affection; merely from the bruise, one could discern very little about its causes, either internal or external. Thus, the idea consisting in the perception of this state in the “mind” of the apple will be extremely confused—​as contrasted with, for example, the complex and intricately structured state produced in the visual cortex of a mammal by exposure to a greengrocer dropping an apple in plain daylight. Yet, compared to most of the slow internal changes in an apple, the apple’s perception of its bruise, poor as it is, must no doubt constitute one of its least confused (i.e., most distinct) imaginative perceptions. Third, a mind’s perception of what happens in its body may have very little power of thinking. Rudimentary individuals such as rocks and toasters have very few ways of utilizing their internal states to persevere in their being, and hence they have very little conatus and very little power of thinking for any of their perceptions. Humans and animals with very sophisticated sensory and information processing systems, in contrast, have much greater conatus and hence power of thinking; but many of the internal states or affections of even a very powerful individual (for example, the pancreatic states of a human being) will be capable of only very minimal roles in shaping or determining the direction of that individual’s exertion of power; hence, the perceptions of those states or affections will occur, in those minds, with very little power of thinking. It should be emphasized that degree of power of thinking is not the same thing as degree of distinctness. For an idea that is very confused with respect to representation of its causes—​for example, a state of intense but nameless dread—​may still have very considerable power of thinking, while an idea that is very distinct with respect to representation of its cause—​such as the pictorial internal state of a high-​resolution digital camera—​may still have very little power of thinking, because it is capable of little in determining the individual’s striving to persevere in being.

Representational content The second puzzle was this:  How can Spinoza suppose that imagination as he conceives it always represents something external? While this supposition might appear to involve a merely naïve or simplistic view of representation, it should

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instead be viewed as an application of incremental naturalism to the relation of representation. Spinoza is not trying to replace a relation of genuine representation with the simpler relation of “being an effect of.” Rather, he is maintaining that a given internal state of a thing represents its external cause insofar as its production by that cause is able to play a role in determining the self-​preserving behavior of a self-​preserving individual. The pervasiveness of representation then follows from three further claims: (i) that every finite individual must tend, to some extent, to preserve itself; (ii) that even at the level of very rudimentary individuals, every affection of an individual has the capacity to play some role in determining the individual’s self-​preserving behavior; and (iii) that every affection of an individual involves to some extent the nature of the external causes of that state. At higher levels of “perfection,” some affections of some individuals—​such as human beings—​owe a great deal of their very specific natures to very specific features of their external causes in a way that allows them to represent their causes quite distinctly; and some of these affections have a great deal of power to determine the sophisticated and highly discriminating self-​preservatory behavior of the individuals in ways that are very sensitive to specific features of their causes. Since plants and animals occupy various points on the scale between rudimentary individuals and human beings, representation is not, on Spinoza’s account, a sudden addition to nature at a certain level of complexity. Rather, it is a development and articulation of a phenomenon that is already present even in the least complex of individuals, all of which are self-​preserving mechanisms to at least some extent. How distinctly or confusedly representation will occur depends, of course, on how specifically or narrowly an idea serves to distinguish its real cause from other things.22 How powerfully representation will occur depends on the power of the idea in determining self-​preserving activity.

Consciousness The third puzzle was this: How can Spinoza regard some instances of imagination as more conscious than others? Given the scope of the Spinozistic imagination, his willingness to infer propositions of the form “M is conscious of O” from propositions of the form “M has an idea of O” certainly commits him to the view that all finite individuals are conscious to at least some degree. Once again, however, this is not an embarrassment to Spinoza. Rather, it is a result that is entirely in accordance with his incremental naturalism: he intends to place human consciousness high on a scale that has its beginnings at the most rudimentary level of nature. Furthermore, he can do so, in his system, simply by identifying degrees of consciousness with degrees of power of thinking. This identification is almost irresistibly implied by the conjunction of 2p13s with 5p39s, both of which have been cited previously. In the former passage, he claims that a mind’s degree



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of “reality” or perfection—​which is its power of thinking—​increases “in proportion as a Body is more capable than others of doing many things at once” and is “more capable of understanding distinctly.” Similarly, in the latter passage, he claims that an individual’s mind is more conscious to the extent that it has “a Body capable of a great many things” and has an imagination that is “of little moment in relation to the intellect.” Ethics 5p31 strengthens the identification of consciousness with perfection and power: “The more each of us is able to achieve in this [third] kind of knowledge, the more he is conscious of himself and of God, i.e., the more perfect and blessed he is” (emphasis added).23 This identification of degrees of consciousness with degrees of power of thinking allows Spinoza to meet many of the explanatory demands on his theory of consciousness. First, it can explain why some minds enjoy a higher degree of consciousness than others, and why a given mind can increase or decrease in consciousness—​for, as we have seen, power of thinking varies in just this way. This is because some individuals are more powerful self-​preservers than others (i.e., are more capable of producing greater effects through efforts at self-​ preservation); and an individual’s conatus, or power for self-​preservation, can increase or decrease through time—​especially if the individual is a highly complex one with highly complex self-​preservatory systems. Second, it can explain why some ideas are more conscious than others in a given mind, and why the degree of consciousness of an idea in a given mind can increase or decrease; for, as we have seen, power of thinking varies in this way as well. This is because some ideas can exert more power on the determination of an individual’s self-​preservatory activity than others, and an idea’s degree of power to do so may change with other changes in the individual. For example, an idea of an object may suddenly become more powerful, and so more conscious, when it is recognized as the idea of a dangerous object. Third, it can explain why both confused and distinct ideas can be conscious; for either kind of idea may play a powerful role in determining self-​ preservatory activity. Fourth, it can explain why relatively distinct ideas are more likely to have higher degrees of consciousness than relatively confused ideas; for the more distinct an idea is, the better fitted it is likely to be for guiding the sophisticated self-​preservatory activity of individuals that have a high level of power of thinking. Fifth, it can explain why high degrees of consciousness should be correlated, as Spinoza says they are, with “having a body that is capable of many things at once”; for only individuals that have such bodies will have high degrees of conatus, which are expressed, under the attribute of thought, as high degrees of power of thinking. Finally, it can explain why higher degrees of consciousness are correlated with the development of the intellect; for although Spinoza’s theory requires (as Wilson argues) that all individuals have the intellectual ideas that constitute the common notions, those individuals who succeed in having these ideas with greater power of thinking thereby achieve the highest kind of power

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for perseverance in being, because they maximize the parts of their minds that are eternal.

Expression in behavior The fourth and final puzzle was this: How can Spinoza explain why many individuals’ mental states such as imaginative perception are seemingly never expressed in their behavior? Of course, the causal independence of the attributes in Spinoza’s metaphysics guarantees that no individual’s ideas strictly cause that individual’s bodily behavior; for Spinoza, ideas cause only other ideas (which may or may not be in the same mind as their causes). But bodily behavior can certainly be caused by bodily states that parallel (and by the Mode Identity Doctrine are identical to) an individual’s mental states, and in that sense bodily behavior might be said to “express” mental states such as imaginative perception. Once we understand Spinoza’s theory of the universality of conatus, however, we see that all individuals engage in at least some self-​preservatory bodily activity that is a result of their conatus or perfection, and hence in activity that expresses some power of thinking. We fail to recognize the tendencies of rudimentary individuals to resist destruction and to persist in their distinct patterns of communicating motion as tendencies to self-​preservatory activity only because the behavior is so minimal and undiscriminating. If Spinoza is right, however, it is nonetheless the rudimentary behavior of which more recognizably intentional activity is a sophisticated development.

V. Conclusion I conclude that Spinoza has surprisingly rich resources for answering Wilson’s original question:  namely, the question of whether he can identify the mind of a thing with God’s idea of that thing while still “recognizing and taking account of” the occurrence of such “specific phenomena of human mentality” as ignorance of many bodily states, representation of the external world, consciousness, and expression in behavior. The identification itself results, in part, from his joint commitment to substance monism and a requirement that God be infinitely thinking. While some of his readers may well share his commitment to one or the other of these two doctrines, perhaps very few will share his commitment to both. If the interpretation I  have offered is correct, however, Spinoza was encouraged by his identification of minds with God’s ideas to develop the outlines of a striking incremental naturalism concerning perception, representation, consciousness, and intentional behavior that may prove of considerable independent interest to philosophical naturalists as they seek to understand the human mind and imagination.24



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Notes 1 . Translations are those of Curley, in Spinoza 1985. 2. Thus, at 2p40s, he writes: It is clear that we perceive many things and form universal notions:

I. from singular things which have been represented to us through the senses in a way that is mutilated, confused, and without order for the intellect (see 2p29c); for that reason I have been accustomed to call such perceptions knowledge from random experience;



II. from signs, e.g., from the fact that, having heard or read certain words, we recollect things, and form certain ideas of them, which are like them, and through which we imagine the things (2p18s). These two ways of regarding things I shall henceforth call knowledge of the first kind, opinion or imagination.



III. Finally, [we have cognition] from the fact that we have common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things (see 2p38c, p39, p39c, and p40). This I shall call reason and the second kind of knowledge.



IV. In addition to these two kinds of knowledge, there is (as I shall show in what follows) another, third kind, which we shall call intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva). And this kind of knowing proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.

Ethics 2p17s treats imagination as the having of a certain kind of idea, while 2p40s2 characterizes it as a way of perceiving or having knowledge; but this does not mark any distinction between senses of imagination, since all ideation is perception or knowledge, and vice versa, for Spinoza. See, for example, his use of 1a4 (which concerns “knowledge”) in 1p25d. See also his comment about “perception” and “conception” in 2d3, and his very similar account of “four kinds of perception” in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect §§ 18–​29. 3. 2p13: “The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body, or a certain mode of Extension that actually exists, and nothing else.” 4. Spinoza regularly treats his distinction of three kinds of knowledge or cognition as jointly exhaustive of all perception. Yet he holds that the human mind’s perception of what occurs in the human body is both inadequate and confused. (According to 2p19, “the human Mind does not know the human Body itself, nor does it know that it exists, except through ideas of affections by which the Body is affected”; and according to 3p27, “the idea of any affection of the human Body does not involve adequate knowledge of the human body itself.” Furthermore, according to 3p28, “the ideas of the affections of the human Body, insofar as they are related only to the human Mind, are not clear and distinct, but confused.”) And of the three kinds of knowledge, only the first kind, imagination, can be either inadequate or confused (2p28s, 2p41d, 5p28d).

412 Natur alistic Representation and Consciousness 5. In 3p57d, he uses the term “soul” (anima), which is also suggested, of course, by his use of “animate” (animata) in 2p13s. 6. These claims include the following: that “men believe themselves free because they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined” (3p2s; see also Appendix to Part 1 and 2p35s); that “the Mind . . . strives, for an indefinite duration, to persevere in its being and it is conscious of this striving it has” (3p9); that “desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of their appetites [so that] desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite” (3p9s); that “man is conscious of himself through the affections by which he is determined to act” (3p30d); and that “knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of Joy or Sadness, insofar as we are conscious of it” (4p8; see also 4p19d and 4p64d). 7. In Part 3, Spinoza writes of animals such as horses as having “lusts” (3p57s); and a “lust” is defined as a kind of “love and desire” (3p56s, Definition of the Affects 48). From this it seems to follow (by 3p9s) that a lust consists partly in an “appetite together with consciousness of the appetite,” and hence that horses, at least, are also conscious to some extent. 8. Wilson devotes particular attention to the argument of 3p9d that human beings are conscious of the Mind’s striving to persevere in its being. The core of this demonstration is the citation of 2p23 to show that human beings are conscious of the ideas of the affections of their bodies. But 2p23 does not use the term “conscious” at all; rather, it claims that human beings have ideas of the ideas of the affections of the body, and the argument for this claim, in turn, depends on noting that God must have an idea of each of his affections including the human mind, and an idea of any mind must be united to that mind in the same way—​ i.e., by identity—​that a mind is united to the body that is its object. Her special attention to this argument is the result, in part, of the identification of consciousness with having ideas of ideas in Curley 1969 (see also Curley 1988: 71–​72). 9. These common notions must be adequately perceived in any act of perception, according to Spinoza, because they are ideas of things that are common to all and are “equally in the part and in the whole,” so that they cannot be perceived only incompletely. 10. The very first axiom of the Ethics (1a1) also concerns this relation: “Whatever is, is either in itself or in another.” 11. It is important to distinguish among these relations because, for Spinoza, the relation of inherence characterizes (non-​spatial) thought just as much as it does (spatial) extension, and while everything inheres in God (1p15), which is the only substance, God has no real parts at all (1pp12d–​15d). I choose the term “inherence” simply because it is commonly used for the relation between modes and substances; I do not mean to suggest that Spinoza’s conception of this relation (and its relata) is not highly distinctive; and I especially do not mean to suggest that it involves an unknowable substratum.



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12. In addition, it is not only affections or modes that can be in something, since, as Spinoza has already indicated in 1d3, a substance is also in itself. Furthermore, I have argued (Garrett 2001) that 3p6 should be read literally, as claiming that singular things (which are finite approximations to substance) are to some extent in themselves. 13. Although this definition specifies that individuals are complex bodies, elsewhere in the Ethics, Spinoza uses the term individual to characterize not only complex bodies but also their minds (2a3, 2p11d, 2p21d, 2p57d,s). 14. This is in contrast to the “infinite Individual” having all bodies as its parts, described in the scholium to Lemma 7 following 2p13s; this infinite individual is not a singular thing, for singular things are by definition finite. Likewise, some singular things may not be individuals. For a number of individuals “concurring together in one action” may count to that extent as a singular thing but perhaps not as a further individual; and, in addition, singular things, unlike individuals, are not required by definition to be complex. 15. 3p7:  “This striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” 16. See also 3p53d; Part 3 Appendix, Definition of the Affects 3; and, for confirmation of the general relation between power and perfection, the Preface to Part 4. 17. For example, most of the early propositions of Ethics Part 4 (up through 4p18) largely concern the circumstances under which particular ideas—​namely, the affects or emotions—​have greater or lesser power; and 4p44s explains how it is that especially powerful affects can lead the mind to think more of one thing than of other things. 18. Note that 2p15 is derived not from 2p12—​which concerns affections rather than parts—​but from 2p7 and 2p13. 19. Spinoza’s most memorable endorsement of naturalism, in this sense, occurs in the beginning of the Preface to Part 3 of the Ethics, where he describes those whose approach he opposes: 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 of 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 . . . 20. Spinoza’s incrementalism is evident in, among other things, the prevalence of the locution “insofar as” (quatenus) in his writing. 21. Curley 1988: 72 also mentions the inadequacy or confusion of many ideas as a factor ameliorating the incredibility of 2p12. 22. Error occurs when an idea is confused between several possible causes and the idea causes the mind to act in a way that would tend to be self-​preserving if one of the other possible causes had been the actual cause. Although there is not sufficient space to develop this idea here, I believe it is the key to explaining how mere confusion and inadequacy can give rise to actual error.

414 Natur alistic Representation and Consciousness 23. It is worth emphasizing also that Spinoza’s explanation, in the Definition of the Affects, for his inclusion of the phrase “from any given affection of it” in the definition of “desire” seems to indicate that this phrase allows the inference that desire is conscious precisely because it explains how desire derives its power. 24. I gratefully acknowledge the comments of Edwin Curley on the earliest version of this chapter, presented in a symposium at the Eastern Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in December 2001. I  also wish to thank Béatrice Longuenesse, Martin Lin, Michael LeBuffe, Aaron Garrett, and audiences at the University of Toronto, Georgetown University, Boston University, and Texas A&M University.

Bibliography Barker, H. 1938 [1978]. “Notes on the Second Part of Spinoza’s Ethics,” Mind 47, edited by S. Paul Kashap. Studies in Spinoza:  Critical and Interpretive Essays, Berkeley: University of California Press. Curley, Edwin. 1969. Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method, Princeton:  Princeton University Press. Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem in Spinoza, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garrett, Don. 2001. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” in Koistinen, Olli, and Biro, John. Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loeb, Louis. 1981. From Descartes to Hume, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Radner, Daisie. 1971. “Spinoza’s Theory of Ideas,” The Philosophical Review 80: 338–​359. Wilson, Margaret. 1980. “Objects, Ideas, and ‘Minds’,” in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, edited by Richard Kennington, 103–​ 120. Washington:  Catholic University of America Press. Yovel, Yirmiyahu, ed. 1994. Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind, Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Postscript

Consciousness Revisited

“Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Mind and Imagination” [henceforth RC] interprets Spinoza as identifying consciousness (conscientia) with “power of thinking” (“cogitandi potentia”), which is also identified with perfection and reality in the attribute of thought. This we may call the “Power of Thinking Interpretation” of Spinoza on consciousness. In “Spinoza and Consciousness,”1 Steven Nadler rejects this interpretation, proposing instead that, Consciousness for Spinoza . . . is a certain complexity in thinking that is the correlate of the complexity of a body, and human consciousness, for Spinoza, is nothing but the correlate in Thought of the extraordinarily high complexity of the human body in Extension. (575). He further proposes that this bodily complexity consists or is grounded in (i) “structural” complexity involving the number of parts and their arrangement; and (ii) complexity of the number of motions, or possible motions, that can be possessed by or communicated among those parts (587–​588). This we may call the “Complexity Interpretation.” In “Theories about Consciousness in Spinoza’s Ethics,” Michael LeBuffe proposes that the Power of Thinking Interpretation is “promising” but should be “refined.”2 Specifically, he agrees with RC that for Spinoza the consciousness of ideas within a mind is their power of thinking, at least in a sense that he calls “selective consciousness,” but he argues that this thesis should not be extended to the consciousness of minds themselves. In the first section of this postscript, I  will raise several objections to the Complexity Interpretation. In the second section, I will outline and reply to Nadler’s objections to the Power of Thinking Interpretation. I will conclude that, although the Power of Thinking Interpretation is preferable, Nadler’s discussion of complexity helps to flesh out that interpretation. In the third and final section, I will examine and reject LeBuffe’s proposal to restrict the Power of Thinking Interpretation.

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I.  Objections to Nadler’s Complexity Interpretation Spinoza holds that each extended “individual” (“individuum”), including the human body, communicates motion and rest among its parts in a certain fixed pattern (see Chapter 11). In Postulate 1 of the Physical Interlude following 2p13s, he asserts that the human body, in particular, has many parts: “The human Body is composed of a great many individuals of different natures, each of which is highly composite.” In contrast, he does not explicitly mention the number of motions of those parts. However, Postulate 3 does go on to add: “The individuals composing the human Body, and consequently, the human Body itself, are affected by external bodies in very many ways,” and it seems reasonable to expect that being “affected by external bodies in very many ways” will require, at a minimum, being affected by the reception of many different external motions that will be communicated internally in various ways. Still, even if that is so, Spinoza gives no indication of how the number of motions, or possible motions, is to be counted for a given individual, nor any indication that motions or possible motions are to be combined in some particular way with the number and arrangements of parts to yield something of metaphysical significance. Furthermore, in the key passage in which Spinoza explicitly invokes a bodily correlate to a high degree of consciousness, he writes not of complexity at all but of having “a Body capable of a great many things” (5p39s). RC argues, and Nadler agrees, that this passages echoes the earlier 2p13s, which states that a mind is more excellent and has more “reality” as it is of, and identical to, a body that is more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its Mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once. And in proportion as the actions of a body depend more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in acting, so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly. (2p13s) Yet the complexity of a thing’s parts can easily be mere filigree unrelated to its own activity and perception, and increasing the number motions or possible motions of those parts may simply increase the number of directions and speeds with which a thing and its parts are or can be pushed, or with which it and its parts can flail about aimlessly. Spinoza gives no indication of believing that increases in complexity of these kinds would be reflected in heightened consciousness. The same is true of an individual thing—​such as a highly sensitive camera—​in which internal complexity benefits something external to the thing without benefiting, or guiding any intrinsic activity of, the complex thing itself. Even in cases in which a thing engages in activity that is genuinely its own, there is no evidence that



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Spinoza believes that replacing each part of the relevant mechanism by a more complex “Rube Goldberg”–​style contraption serving the same function would be accompanied by an increase in degree of consciousness. Conversely, there is no obvious reason why increasing overall efficiency by simplifying the internal mechanism that performs a given broad range of important actions should be reflected in a decrease in a thing’s degree of consciousness. It is the power for activity itself that is correlated with consciousness, on Spinoza’s view; complexity that does not contribute to this power would evidently be, from the standpoint of consciousness, wasted complexity. Nadler appears to appreciate (at least on some level) the point that not all kinds of complexity, but rather only complexity that contributes to a thing’s power for activity, is relevant to consciousness for Spinoza. Thus, he invokes on successive pages as essential for greater consciousness not only sheer complexity but also “capacities” (587); “aptitudes” (588); “complexity, flexibility, and responsiveness” (589); and shortly thereafter, “complexity, initiative, motions, and activity and responsiveness” (590, emphasis added) and “intricacy of structure and flexibility of activity and response” (594–​5, emphasis added). He also suggests that “some parts” of a thing are “more important that others” (599) for complexity of the kind he has in mind. Yet for Spinoza, all of a thing’s capacity or power for action, however generated, is simply its conatus—​that is, its striving to persevere in its being—​and all of its activities are exercises of that power (3p7d). Furthermore, as RC shows, this power itself is simply the thing’s perfection and reality which, as expressed in thought, is precisely its power of thinking. Greater complexity is conducive to greater consciousness when, and only when, it conduces to greater power of thinking. Moreover, just as there can evidently be wasted complexity for Spinoza, so too there can be consciousness without complexity. At one end of this scale is God, which, as an infinitely thinking being, presumably has an infinitely powerful consciousness of all things—​yet Spinoza’s God is simple and has no parts (1pp12-​13; see also 1p15s). At the other end of the scale are the “simplest bodies” (“corpora simplicissima”), which lack any internal diversity, including that of having other bodies as parts, and “are distinguished from one another only by motion and rest, speed and slowness (Physical Interlude following 2p13s, between A2" and A3" and in lemma7s).3 Although Spinoza does not explicitly state that the simplest bodies have conscious minds, the parallelism doctrine of 2p7 requires that there are ideas of such bodies, and 3p1d presumably includes them among the “other things” said to have “minds.” Furthermore, it seems that all ideas must be conscious to at least some degree, for as RC emphasizes, whenever Spinoza offers a demonstration for a claim that there is consciousness of something, the argument always takes the form of showing simply that there is an idea of that thing; and that argument, in turn, always appeals ultimately

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only to features of ideas that are, according to 2p13s, “completely general and do not pertain more to man than to other Individuals,” and these features do not include different degrees of complexity.4 In addition, denying that the simplest bodies have any consciousness at all would violate the “incremental naturalism” that Nadler agrees is an attractive feature of Spinoza’s view of mentality (590, 597). Finally, the Complexity Interpretation does not allow Spinoza all of the explanatory resources that he needs. For as emphasized in RC, most of Spinoza’s statements about consciousness concern not a mind’s overall degree of consciousness but rather the degree of the mind’s consciousness of some particular modification or affect. (Indeed, LeBuffe goes so far as to claim that these statements collectively have implications only for the degree of consciousness of particular ideas, and never for the degree of consciousness of minds themselves.) By identifying consciousness with power of thinking, Spinoza can explain how such particular ideas can become more or less conscious in a mind by having more or less power of thinking to direct or influence the mind’s activity. In contrast, the identification of consciousness with mere complexity cannot explain such facts, because a particular bodily modification does not itself become more or less complex as the mind’s degree of consciousness of it increases or decreases.

II.  Nadler’s Objections to the Power of Thinking Interpretation Noting that 2p13s (quoted previously) refers to a body capable not only of “doing many things at once” but also of being “acted on in many ways at once,” Nadler objects to the Power of Thinking Interpretation as follows: It is difficult to see how, on Spinoza’s terms, something has more power or perfection by virtue of being more capable of being acted upon or suffering passive affects; by contrast, it is easy to understand how a more structurally complex individual is capable of being affected in a greater variety of ways by outside influences. (595) In a footnote, he goes on to claim, The rest of the paragraph of IIP13s suggests that what is a function of increased power in the body (“as the actions of a body depend more on itself alone  .  .  .”) is not consciousness, but adequate understanding or knowledge (“ . . . so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly”). (595n21)



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Both of these claims are confused, however. First, 2p13s does not make greater excellence and perfection a function of “being acted upon or suffering passive affects” in general. Rather, it ascribes greater excellence and reality or perfection to a mind when the corresponding body is “more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so [that] its Mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once.” The specific kind of capacity for “being acted on” that is relevant is thus the kind that allows the formation and subsequent utilization (“doing many things”) of relatively distinct and powerful imagistic representations of external things; and this, as 2p13s itself states, is a kind of excellence and perfection of mind—​and thereby also a contribution to power of thinking. Moreover, although this sophisticated sensory capacity certainly requires internal complexity, it is not just any kind of complexity, but rather the specific kind of interaction of “fluid” parts leaving traces in “soft” parts supported by “hard parts” described in the Postulates following 2p13s. As 5p39s—​the passage that explicitly mentions consciousness—​states very clearly, a mind that is merely “very heavily dependent on external causes” will instead be “very little conscious of itself, and of God, and of things.” Second, and contrary to Nadler’s footnote, 5p39s states explicitly that being “very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things” is a function of increased power in the body (“a body capable of a great many things”). When Spinoza writes in 2p13s first of a body “more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once” so as to “perceive many things at once,” and then of a body that depends “more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in acting, so [that] its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly,” he does so not because only the first of these corresponds to perfection and consciousness, but because the first corresponds to power of thinking and consciousness as manifested in the imagination and the second corresponds to power of thinking and consciousness as manifested in the intellect. Nadler’s primary and more general objection to the Power of Thinking Interpretation, however, is twofold: that it makes an unwarranted inference from correlation to identity, and that it does not go deep enough in explaining what consciousness is for Spinoza. His just-​cited treatment of 2p13s notwithstanding, he agrees that consciousness is correlated with power of thinking for Spinoza; but he denies that they should be identified with one another. Rather, Nadler explains the correlation as the result of (i) the causal correlation between complexity and power, both at an explanatorily grounding level of extended bodies and as they are then reflected in thinking, plus (ii) the identity between consciousness and the mental complexity that reflects bodily complexity. Thus he writes: Garrett concludes more than he is justified in concluding [and] his account does not go deep enough in explaining what consciousness is for Spinoza

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and what constitutes its grounding in the body. I  agree with Garrett that where there is an increase in a mind’s perfection or power of thinking, there is an increase in consciousness; and that this increase in the mind’s power is a reflection of an increase in its body’s power. This correlation follows from IIP13s and VP39s. But the question is, why is there this correlation between consciousness and power of thinking? My account provides an explanation without making the logical leap (from correlation to identity) that I believe Garrett makes. An increase in a body’s power (relative to other bodies and relative to the same body’s condition at another time—​for example, as an infant) is the result of an increase in that body’s structural complexity and in the complexity’s activation. In the mind, there will, for that increase in bodily complexity, be a direct corresponding increase in the complexity of thinking (i.e. consciousness); there will, for that increase in bodily complexity, also be an indirectly corresponding increase in the power of thinking that directly corresponds to the increase in the body’s power of persevering, which itself is brought about by the increased bodily complexity. Complexity in the body explains a parallel complexity in the mind (consciousness); higher complexity in the body also brings an increase in the body’s power, which explains a parallel increase in the mind’s power (resistance to passions). Thus, the more conscious a mind is, the more active and powerful it is, not because consciousness is identical with power but because both of these features of the mind are grounded (directly, in the case of consciousness; indirectly, in the case of power of thinking) in the same fact about the body, namely, its complexity. (594) Of course, Nadler is equally making a “leap” in inferring an identity between complexity and consciousness from their supposed correlation. Nevertheless, if complexity, power of thinking, and consciousness were all equally well correlated, it might indeed be a difficult problem to determine which correlations should be explained as identities and which as mere causal consequences. If, in addition, one theory promised to explain everything from a single ground, such as complexity of the body, that might be an important consideration in its favor. As I have argued, however, the existence of wasted complexity and consciousness without complexity shows that the mental reflection of bodily complexity is at best roughly and partially correlated with either consciousness or power or thinking, and hence cannot be identical with either. Accordingly, the exact correlation between consciousness and power of thinking that Spinoza asserts can only be explained by their identity with one another. In addition, the causal and explanatory barrier between the attributes (1p10 and 2p6) precludes any attempt to “ground” any features of the mind (whether power of thinking or complexity) in the corresponding and parallel features of the body with which it is identical.



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Yet although consciousness cannot simply be complexity, and consciousness can occur without complexity, complexity is nevertheless important for a full understanding of consciousness in Spinoza. For bodily power of acting and mental power of thinking are the same power expressed through different attributes. And in the case of singular things, lack of mental complexity places a serious constraint (in terms of both sensitivity of perception and flexibility of response) on how much power of thinking the singular thing can have, just as a parallel lack of bodily complexity places a serious constraint (again in terms of both sensitivity to surroundings and flexibility of responsive) on how much bodily power of action the singular thing can have. Accordingly, a singular thing’s having enough complexity will always be part of the explanation for its degree of power and hence also of consciousness. Complexity bears directly on a singular thing’s consciousness insofar as that complexity is recruited in such a way as to contribute to that thing’s power of thinking.

III.  LeBuffe’s Proposed Restriction of the Power of Thinking Interpretation LeBuffe fully grants that “more powerful ideas are more conscious” for Spinoza (557), but he insists that “Spinoza does not hold that minds are more conscious to the degree that they are more powerful” (558). Accordingly, he proposes restricting the scope of the Power of Thinking Interpretation, to include ideas but not minds. Given that more powerful ideas are always more conscious, however, the positive argument for extending the Power of Thinking Interpretation to minds is. For the human mind is itself just an idea—specifically, an idea thought by God of the human body. On LeBuffe’s own principles, therefore, its degree of consciousness must be the degree of power of thinking it has in God. But a singular thing’s power of thinking in God is just its power of thinking simpliciter. Nevertheless, from LeBuffe’s discussion we may distinguish three related reasons offered for the proposed restriction, and I  will consider each of them here. First, although 5p39s and 5p42s state that the wise and powerful are much more “conscious of themselves, and of God, and of things” than are the ignorant and the weak, LeBuffe interprets this as claiming only that the wise and powerful have greater consciousness of many particular items of knowledge, without any implications for their overall degree of consciousness. However, given that there is nothing of which one could be conscious aside from oneself, God, and things, it seems reasonable that someone who is more conscious of all of these things must also be more conscious overall.

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Second, and conversely, LeBuffe worries that, on the unrestricted Power of Thinking Interpretation, there is nothing to rule out the prospect of a more powerful mind all of whose ideas are less conscious than those in some less powerful mind. In support of this prospect, we might add, the total amount of power of thinking manifested in a mind’s ideas can be greater than that mind’s own power of thinking for Spinoza, because the power of a passion is derived partly from the mind’s own power and partly from the power of external causes. Yet if (as the unrestricted Power of Thinking Interpretation requires) minds are also more conscious to the degree that they are more powerful, LeBuffe urges, this would have the absurd consequence that a more conscious mind would have ideas all of which were less conscious than those of some less conscious mind.5 However, while such a situation might indeed seem paradoxical if taken to the extreme, there are natural limits to the extent to which it can be realized. The first is that a mind having greater power of thinking will naturally express itself (and be able to express itself) through more powerful affects than minds with less power (see 1p36). The second is that a mind’s adequate ideas and active emotions must derive all of their power from the mind in which they exist, so that very weak minds cannot have very strong active emotions. Finally, even passions, which derive some of their power from external causes, must derive much of their power from the mind in which they exist, so that very weak minds cannot generally have very strong passions. Third, LeBuffe worries that, as a matter of experience, the “intensity” of a mind’s overall consciousness does not in fact seem to vary in human beings in proportion to their (Spinozistic) power of thinking. In reply, however, it must be emphasized that Spinoza himself does not characterize degrees of consciousness as degrees of intensity of thinking, but rather with degrees of power of thinking. The term “intensity” is readily interpreted solely as a matter of sensory vivacity, whereas Spinoza evidently holds that the mind is more conscious in the penetrating focus of a powerful and deeply joyful intellectual insight than it is in any merely sensory experience. LeBuffe himself distinguishes two different “theories of consciousness” in the Ethics:  one in Ethics Parts  2–​4 (including notably 3p9 and 4p8) concerning consciousness in an “extensional” sense that does not imply adequate knowledge and one in Ethics Part 5 (including 5p31s, 5p39s, and 5p42s) concerning consciousness in a “knowledge” sense that does imply adequate knowl­edge. It is true that, as the contexts would lead one to expect, Spinoza is chiefly (though not exclusively) discussing consciousness in inadequate cognition in the early parts of the Ethics and chiefly discussing consciousness in adequate cognition in Part 5. However, this provides no reason to suppose that he is not making contributions throughout the Ethics to one theory of consciousness in a single sense of that term: namely, the awareness of something (oneself, God, or other things) that constitutes power of thinking in some degree.6



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Notes 1. Steven Nadler, “Spinoza and Consciousness,” Mind 117.467 (July 2008):  576–​ 600. In an article that appeared shortly after the publication of Nadler’s article,, Christopher Martin also proposes a view of consciousness as requiring complexity in “Consciousness in Spinoza’s Theory of Mind,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2007):  269–​ 287. See also Andrea Sangiacomo, “Adequate Knowledge and Bodily Complexity in Spinoza’s Account of Consciousness,” Methodus 6 (2011): 77–​104, which ascribes a role both to complexity and to adequate understanding. 2. Michael LeBuffe, “Theories about Consciousness in Spinoza’s Ethics,” The Philosophical Review 119.4 (2010): 531–​563. 3. Nadler writes, “All bodies have some degree of complexity” (590). In fact, however, this does not appear to be the case with “simplest bodies.” 4. Nadler writes in a footnote, “In IIIP11s . . . it is suggested that an affect in the mind (i.e., an idea) may, at least in principle, not be attended by consciousness” (581n10). The cited scholium does not mention consciousness, however, and I am unable to see how it might be read as making such a suggestion. 5. Eugene Marshall, The Spiritual Automaton:  Spinoza’s Science of the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) also mentions this objection. Although he writes, “Let me be clear: I take Garrett’s view to be largely correct” (117), he proposes to supplement it by means of the thesis that “for an idea to be conscious is for it to become involved in the conatus of the mind” (120), which he considers to constitute a new interpretation of consciousness in Spinoza as “affectivity.” He does add a number of interesting elaborations of the relations between consciousness and the affects in Spinoza, but the direct relation between the consciousness of particular ideas in a mind and their involvement with the conatus of that mind is already explicit in RC’s Variable Power of Ideas Doctrine, which I introduced as follows: The more power an idea has to determine how the singular thing whose idea it is does or does not exercise its power or conatus at a given time, the greater will be the power of thinking of that idea in that particular mind at that particular time—​for it is only or chiefly through contributing to the determination of the strength and direction of an individual’s conatus that an idea can exert power in that individual. Like Nadler, Marshall denies that there are conscious minds corresponding to simplest bodies for Spinoza. Yet as “singular things: (as defined at 2d7), simplest bodies must have conatus and hence appetite, even if they lack joy and sadness. 6. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Jenny Judge for discussions of Spinoza’s theory of consciousness and recent work on it. In particular, she emphasized the importance of the distinction between consciousness and sensory intensity.

15

Representation, Misrepresentation, and Error in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Mind

Axiom 6 of Part I of Spinoza’s Ethics, in the most widely used English translation, reads: “a true idea must agree with its object.” Spinoza also claims in Part II of the Ethics that every idea has an object with which it is parallel in an “order and connection” of causes (E2p7, E2p11, E2p13)—​and, indeed, with which it is identical or “one and same” (E2p7s, E2p21s).1 Jonathan Bennett has maintained that, because the parallelism and identity of idea and object entails their agreement, every idea must therefore be true for Spinoza2—​and, indeed, Spinoza explicitly states that all ideas, at least “insofar as they are related to God,” are true (E2p32). Yet one of the primary purposes of the Ethics is to overcome the prevalence of error—​a state that seems, at least for him, to involve assent to ideas that misrepresent how things are and so are not true but false. Is Spinoza in error about the possibility of error in his own philosophy of mind? In what follows, I will first examine Spinoza’s explicit statements about error and conclude that they approach but do not fully answer the question of how false ideas—​that is, misrepresentations—​are possible. In pursuit of a fuller Spinozistic answer to this question, I will then briefly explain his general theory of imaginative representation, and I will observe that it raises a complementary issue most forcefully formulated by Margaret Wilson3: just as it seems that no idea can represent what is not the case, so too it seems that every idea of imagination will represent an implausibly vast amount of what is or has been the case. In considering Spinoza’s possible responses to this latter charge, I will detail first the roles of confusion and causation in imaginative representation and then some of the various ways in which, on his account, we can imagine things and imagine them as being particular ways. These considerations, in turn, will suggest a promising way in which Spinoza could use his distinctive conatus doctrine—​that is, the doctrine that



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“each thing, insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being” (E3p6)—​both to delimit the otherwise vast extent of the imaginative representation of what is and to explain how imaginative misrepresentation (the representation of what is not) is possible. Thus armed with a Spinozistic account of misrepresentation and error—​if not quite an account Spinoza himself spells out—​I will return to the paradox of parallelism, identity, agreement, and truth with which we began.

Spinoza’s Account of Error Spinoza recognizes two kinds of ideas: those of the intellect and those of the imagination. The imagination includes, but is not limited to, sensation. Error arises, he holds, when an idea of imagination occurs in the absence of certain other relevant ideas: And here, in order to begin to indicate what error is, I should like you to note that the imaginations of the Mind, considered in themselves contain no error, or that the Mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea that excludes the existence of those things that it imagines to be present to it. For if the Mind, while it imagined nonexistent things as present to it, at the same time knew that those things did not exist, it would, of course, attribute this power of imagining to a virtue of its nature, not to a vice—​especially if this faculty of imagining depended only on its own nature, i.e. (by E1d7), if the Mind’s faculty of imagining were free. (E2p17s) Because Spinoza holds that “all ideas, as they are related to God, are true” (E2p32), it is important to him that error or falsity not consist in some positive feature of ideas considered in themselves (E2p33). Yet error also cannot be total ignorance or utter lack of ideas, for as he notes, bodies themselves (as distinguished from minds) cannot be in error, even though they can properly be said to lack knowledge. Hence, error must instead be “the privation of knowledge that inadequate knowledge of things, or inadequate and confused ideas, involves” (E2p35d). Spinoza offers two illustrations: Error consists in the privation of knowledge. But to explain the matter more fully, I shall give [NS4: one or two examples]: men are deceived in that they think themselves free [NS: i.e., they think that, of their own free will, they can either do a thing or forbear doing it], an opinion which consists only in this, that they are conscious of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. This, then, is their idea of freedom—​that they do not know any cause of their actions. . . . 

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Similarly, when we look at the sun, we imagine it as about 200 feet away from us, an error that does not consist simply in this imagining, but in the fact that while we imagine it in this way, we are ignorant of its true distance and of the cause of this imagining. For even if we later come to know that it is more than 600 diameters of the earth away from us, we nevertheless imagine it as near. For we imagine the sun so near not because we do not know its true distance, but because an affection of our body involves the essence of the sun insofar as our body is affected by the sun. (E2p35s) Yet how does an imaginative idea together with a mere lack of knowledge of the fact that p become the belief that not-​p or some other belief incompatible with p? In approaching this question, it is useful to note that Spinoza, unlike Descartes, holds that an idea we form is naturally an affirmation of its content (E2p49). But while this can help to explain how an imaginative idea becomes a belief, it cannot by itself explain how that believed imaginative idea became a misrepresentation—​a representation, contrary to fact, that (or entailing that) not-​p. Consider Spinoza’s example of the sun—​an example based on Descartes’s claim that 200 feet is the limit at which binocular vision can facilitate distance perception. Although it is true that we are initially ignorant that the sun of which we form an image is more than 600 diameters of the earth away from us, we are of course equally “ignorant” (that is, lacking knowledge) of its being 200 feet away. So why, on some particular occasion, do we imagine it as 200 feet away rather than as more than 600 diameters of the earth away? Indeed, given that we cannot tell the difference visually between things at these two distances, why wouldn’t it be equally true to say that we imagine other objects that really are 200 feet distant as being more than 600 diameters of the earth away? Perhaps better, why should we not say that seen objects more than 200 feet distant are imagined as being at least 200 feet away but not as being at any more specific distance? Similarly, to take Spinoza’s other example, although human beings may often be ignorant of the actual causes of their actions, they are equally “ignorant” of their actions’ lacking causes (which, according to Spinoza, they in fact do not lack). So why say that they “imagine” their actions as uncaused, rather than as caused, or neither as caused nor uncaused? These are the kinds of questions that Spinoza must answer if his theory of error is to be complete.

Intentionality and Imaginative Representation In order to answer these questions, we must first understand Spinoza’s theory of intentionality and its application to imaginative representation; and in order to do that, it is helpful to contrast it with Descartes’s. Like many scholastics, Descartes



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distinguishes between two ways in which a thing can have reality or being. It may have formal reality, corresponding to what we would ordinarily think of as its real existence as a thing in its own right, but it can also have objective reality that is present and contained in an idea of the thing. Intentionality is possible, on this account, because a thing can exist quite literally in two different ways in two different places. For Descartes, an idea that does this containing—​that is, the idea having the thing as its “object”—​has formal reality in its own right; in consequence, when that idea is in turn made a subject of thought, it will have objective reality that is contained in another idea. Although the identity between the thing existing formally and the thing existing objectively is meant to explain why thought can be about things, how exactly an idea is able to contain the objective reality of another thing is left largely unexplained in terms of anything else by Descartes: that is simply the kind of wonderful thing that ideas, as modes of thinking substances, can do. Spinoza, in contrast, offers a simple, original, and radical explanation of how an idea can encompass the objective reality of a thing: it does so simply by being that objective reality itself, and hence by being one and the same thing as that whose objective reality it contains. The idea of each thing is thus not a separate container of its objective reality; rather it is just a twin aspect—​the objective rather than the formal—​of the thing itself. In reducing this kind of intentionality to an aspect of identity, he offers a kind of naturalization of intentionality within the context of his multiple-​attribute substance monism.5 Spinoza applies his account of intentionality-​through-​identity-​with-​ideas not only to ideas of eternal things but also to the minds of individual singular things.6 For example, the human mind is the idea (the “awareness,” we might also say) of the human body, which is its object (E2p13): that is, the human mind is one and the same thing as the human body and thereby encompasses, by constituting, its objective reality. Similarly, an idea in the human mind is fundamentally an idea of the state of the body with which it is identical and which is its object. Moreover, “whatever happens in the object of the idea constituting the human Mind must be perceived by the human Mind, or there will necessarily be an idea of that thing in the Mind” (E2p12). Thus, the human mind perceives every affection (that is, modification, state, or event) of its body. But in this respect, Spinoza remarks, human beings do not differ in kind from other things in nature, for all things are “animate” in “different degrees” (E2p13s) and have minds that are the ideas of them (E3p1d).7 That every singular thing in nature—​even trees and rocks—​perceives everything that happens in its body is of course an initially shocking claim. Spinoza can mitigate the shock in at least two complementary ways. First, he can mitigate the scope of the phrase “everything that happens in” by emphasizing that it concerns not the “in” of spatial containment, but the “in” of inherence, the relation

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whereby states or events inhere in a subject. Thus, an individual thing need not perceive an event that occurs within its outer boundaries unless the event also constitutes a change to the self-​preservatory mechanism—​the distinctive “fixed pattern of motion and rest” (definition and lemmas 4–​7 following E2p13s)—​that constitutes its being as an individual. Second, he can mitigate the force of the term “perceives.” On his view, all ideas are conscious ones to at least some very minimal extent, but an idea’s degree of consciousness is equivalent or identical to the degree of its power of thinking [cogitandi potentia]—​that is, the force with which it is poised to contribute to the character and force of the striving for self-​preservation, or conatus, of that thing whose idea it is. Many animals have sophisticated sensory systems that can capture, retain, and employ detailed images of external things, and the ideas of these images may, at least on those occasions when they are poised to guide self-​preservatory behavior, be at a high level of consciousness. Their perceptions of other states of their bodies, in contrast, may be of very low consciousness. More rudimentary things, such as rocks and trees, have very little consciousness for any of their ideas. This is in keeping with what I have elsewhere called Spinoza’s incremental naturalism8 according to which important features of mentality—​such as consciousness, desire, and belief—​do not suddenly appear at a particular level of complexity in nature but instead are present in rudimentary forms throughout nature. The kind of intentionality described thus far is based on the identity between an idea and its object. However, Spinoza also recognizes a further, more merely representational, kind of mental content in connection with the imagination. Now, he clearly regards the perception of “whatever happens” within each thing’s body as imagination rather than intellection. As such, however, it always constitutes for him not merely perception of the internal state that is its object but also representation of an external cause.9 For in E2p16, Spinoza writes that “the idea of any mode in which the human Body is affected by external Bodies must involve the nature of the human Body and at the same time the nature of the external body”; and in E2p17, he adds that “if the human Body is affected with a mode that involves the nature of an external body, the human Mind will regard the same external body as present.” But in E2p17s, he defines this very condition of having “affections of the body whose ideas . . . present external bodies as present to us” as imagination. This schematic account offers at least a partial explanation of how imagination can represent the actual external causes of internal states—​namely, through carrying or encoding information about the natures of those causes, on which the characters of the internal states themselves partly depend. However, we do not yet have any explanation of how imagination can misrepresent, or carry misinformation about, those causes. Moreover, the account so far raises a further problem, emphasized by Wilson. For any given internal state of the body has a very wide variety of external causes, both at any given time and through time.



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Consider, to adapt an example from the Ethics, the idea that Paul has in his mind of Peter’s body.10 As we have seen, this idea will involve the nature of Paul’s own body and the natures of the external causes of the corresponding internal affection of Paul. But these external causes will presumably include not only Peter’s body but also the bodies constituting the intervening medium between Peter’s body and Paul’s sense organs; and not only these, but also, in the other temporal direction, the bodies of Peter’s parents, and their parents, and of various bodies that have interacted with those bodies, infinitely far into the past. Thus, for Spinoza, Paul’s mind includes representations of all of the causes, from the most proximate to the most remote, of his internal states. This seems, on the face of it, to be yet another highly implausible doctrine. How can Spinoza respond to this second charge of implausibility? First, he can restrict to some extent both the number of things and the aspects of things that an idea of imagination need represent. An idea of imagination need not specifically represent all of the things to which its object is related by some backward-​leading chain of causation. Only if a distant cause has affected a more proximate cause in such a way as to make a difference to the character of the internal affections of the object, so as to leave some specific trace of information about itself in the object, need he regard it as specifically represented in imagination. Many individuals that affect the proximate causes of an internal affection of a body will do so only by influencing features of the proximate cause that themselves have no influence on that internal affection. For example, imagination need not represent an external object that has dented only the unseen back surface of an object that is later seen. Even a direct but remote cause of existence—​such as a far-​distant ancestor—​might leave no specific trace of its nature that endures through succeeding generations. In such cases, it seems, the most that might be represented would be that there was, at some distant point in time, some remote cause or other. Second, however, Spinoza can insist that even a fairly vast scope for imaginative representation, when understood in the context of incremental naturalism about representation, is not as implausible as it might seem. Axiom 4 of Part I of the Ethics states that “knowledge [cognitio] of the effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause.” (The technical sense of “involve” employed here is roughly that of “implicate,” as in “he is implicated in the crime.”) There is no question that, for Spinoza, the intellect’s understanding of an eternal infinite mode11 requires a conception of what he regards as its causes. Understanding a particular law of nature as an infinite mode, for example, requires some knowledge both of the more fundamental laws from which it follows, and which he regards as its proximate causes, and (more remotely) of the nature of God under the relevant divine attribute, extension or thought. And there is no reason in principle why the imaginative cognition of finite durational things should be any different in this respect. The appearance

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of a difference, Spinoza may say, results from the fact that imaginative cognition, unlike intellection, is always confused—​blurring different things together in such a way that they cannot be fully distinguished from one another. Thus, as Michael Della Rocca12 has argued, imagination is confused at least partly because in it the mind typically cannot distinguish the contributions made by the nature of the body that is affected, the nature of the parts of the human body that is affected, and the nature of the external bodies that affect it. As I have argued elsewhere,13 imagination is also confused because in it the mind typically cannot distinguish among various potential causes of the affection of the body in question. For example, an auditory sensation is confused because we cannot distinguish whether it has been caused by a live human voice or a recording.14 But intricate and detailed human sensory perceptions must rank among the very least confused imaginative ideas; ideas of internal affections that are not produced through sophisticated and intricate sensory systems will almost certainly be extremely confused among a wide variety of potential external causes. It would not be surprising if such highly confused ideas—​ especially when nearly unconscious as well—​should not appear to represent anything at all.

Manners of Representation Nevertheless, it must be granted that Spinoza himself does not write of human beings or other singular things as representing in imagination any of the more remote causes of their current internal affections.15 What can explain this absence? Is it simply that an appropriate occasion to mention such objects of representation never arose? In response to these questions, it will be helpful to consider briefly some of the manners of representation that Spinoza does recognize in the course of the Ethics. Spinoza clearly recognizes imaginative representations that are specifically of particular things—​for example, “the idea of Peter’s body that is in Paul’s mind” already noted. For Paul to have such an idea specifically of Peter, there is no requirement that he be able to distinguish Peter from every other individual who might resemble Peter, such as an identical twin of Peter who is unknown to Paul. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that Spinoza regards the direct causal relation between Peter and Paul’s idea as sufficient in this case to secure the reference of the idea specifically to Peter to the exclusion of other similar individuals. On the other hand, Spinoza also explicitly recognizes that things can be imagined as present, as past, and as future (E4p10, E4p12, E4p13, E4p16), and this cannot always be a matter of causally secured reference to a specific individual. He suggests, at E2p44c1s, that the imagination of things as being at past or future times is accomplished through associative sequences of images either



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terminating or beginning, respectively, with the content of a present sensation. A past body that is imagined as past may, of course, easily be a direct cause of the affection of the body corresponding to and identical with the idea of that affection. But to say that we can imagine things as existing in the future—​particularly, as Spinoza says, things in the “far distant” future, whose existence can be the object of hope or fear16—​strongly suggests that we can also just imagine generally, or generically, that an object of a given kind will exist in the future, without specific causally secured reference to any particular individual of the kind. One can imagine meeting Peter next week; but one can also imagine meeting just some as-​ yet-​unknown person ten years hence. Presumably, Spinoza’s explanation for this capacity for general or generic imaginative representation lies in the confusion that characterizes the Spinozistic imagination generally. When an individual thing produces an internal affection in another thing in such a way that the mind cannot distinguish, from the information present, the actual cause from other potential causes, one may properly say that the idea of that affection represents the cause confusedly; but one might also say with equal propriety that the idea represents merely that feature of the actual cause—​perhaps even a highly disjunctive feature—​that it shares with the other possible causes that cannot be distinguished from it. For example, what is, considered in one way, an imaginative representation of a particular live human voice is, considered in another way, a representation of sound-​producing qualities that this voice shares with some other voices and with some recordings. In many cases, the confusion of an image is partly the consequence of its retaining traces of multiple similar external causes; this kind of confused retention results in the “universal images” or “universal notions” described in E2p40s1. In the case of these ideas, Spinoza remarks, the mind has been “affected most forcibly by what is common” to all the different instances; and the clear implication is that these ideas represent not merely the actual instances previously experienced but all things that resemble them. Such a general representation, associated with a particular time, could well serve to represent the existence of an object of that kind in the future. Just as Spinoza writes of imagining things as past, present, or future, so too he writes of imagining them as necessary, as contingent, and as possible (E4p11, E4p12, E4p13, E4p17). As he explains it, to imagine something as necessary (as opposed to conceiving it intellectually as necessary) is evidently to imagine the thing, as the result of a frequent and uniform past experience, in a way that is tightly associated with the imagination of something else now present (as suggested by E2p44c1s). To imagine something as contingent but presently nonexistent, in contrast, is to conceive the thing itself neither as necessary nor impossible from its own essence, while at the same time imagining something else as existing and incompatible with its present existence (E4p13d). To imagine something as

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possible is to imagine something as capable of producing the thing’s existence (E4d4, E4p12d) without being certain whether it will do so or not. Any of these imagined producers or excluders, as well as the contingent and possible things themselves, it seems, can again be conceived either generally or specifically—​and thus, either with or without any causally mediated reference to a particular thing that has caused the imagination in question. What is the moral to be drawn from these examples? For Spinoza, it appears that the very same kind of image can in some circumstances be best understood as being specifically “of” some one particular external cause, while in other circumstances it can be best understood as being more generally “of” any one or more things of a given kind. What determines which is the best or most proper interpretation in a particular case? One very natural proposal is that the difference lies in the functional role that the image is playing. Although Spinoza does not explicitly offer this explanation, he is particularly well-​positioned theoretically to endorse and deploy it. Wilson17 has objected that his philosophy of mind in effect replaces the relation of representation with the simpler relation of being an effect of, but Spinoza’s distinctive philosophical commitments in fact allow him to hold a much more attractive theory of representation. On this theory,18 the idea of an internal affection of a body represents the external cause of the affection to the extent that something carrying information about the cause is also able to play a role in determining the self-​preserving behavior of that thing.19 Spinoza’s doctrine of the pervasiveness of mental representation throughout nature can then be understood to result not from the conflation of representation with causation, but rather from the addition of three further Spinozistic doctrines: (i) the conatus doctrine that each thing strives, to the extent that it can, to preserve itself in being (E3p6); (ii) that even at the level of very rudimentary things, each genuine affection of a thing has the capacity to play some role in the thing’s self-​preservatory behavior (E1p36, E3p8d); and (iii) that every affection involves and to some extent carries information about the nature of the external causes of that state (E2p16).

Conatus and Content Given this understanding of the character of Spinozistic imaginative representation, it is reasonable to say that any idea of an internal bodily affection “involves” and so in principle represents many or all of its external causes, at least confusedly. It is likewise reasonable to say that any idea of an internal bodily affection involves and so in principle represents, at least confusedly, the perhaps highly disjunctive qualities required to produce that affection  —​and thereby, at least indirectly, represents confusedly all of the bearers of those qualities as well. We may therefore describe all of these represented causes as elements of an idea’s



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minimal representational content. But it is also reasonable to say that some ideas of internal affections—​particularly those that constitute the relatively distinct and conscious products of sophisticated sensory systems—​have in addition what we might call primary representational content. This primary content for the idea may be selected or determined from among the many elements of its minimal content by the manner in which the idea directs or influences self-​preservatory activity. Suppose, for example, that an image derived from Peter’s body largely guides and regulates Paul’s activity relative to a person resembling that image only when Peter regards the person as having caused the image—​so that similar men discovered by Paul not to be causally related to the production of his image would subsequently be ignored. Then Paul’s idea will be primarily “of” Peter. If, on the other hand, the image largely guides and regulates Paul’s behavior relative to anyone resembling Peter—​so that any discovered evidence of lack of previous causal relation to Paul would itself be ignored—​then Paul’s idea will be primarily “of” Peter-​ like individuals generally. One advantage of this two-​level approach to imaginative representation is that it can further mitigate the implausibility of Spinoza’s doctrine that internal affections represent a vast number of even quite remote external causes, while also explaining why Spinoza does not give any examples of ideas of imagination representing such remote causes. For while any idea of an internal affection will, in principle, minimally represent a vast number of its external causes—​as well as shared qualities and even potential causes having those shared qualities—​its primary self-​preservatory function, if it has one at all, will much more likely be (at least in creatures like humans) to guide behavior relative to things that are more proximate causes. Yet these “target” primary causes need not be, and typically will not be, the most proximate causes—​such as the bodies in the intervening medium between the perceiver and the distal stimulus. In romantic love, for example, the lover thinks primarily of the beloved, while thinking a great deal less about the air and the light rays that were between them, and thinking a great deal less, too, about the beloved’s remote ancestors. Most importantly for present purposes, however, the approach allows Spinoza to give a plausible answer to our original unanswered question of what must be added to ignorance of p in order to get error about p. Thus, if one imagines the sun to be 200 feet distant rather than 600 diameters of the earth distant, this will be because the image will guide one to act as though it were 200 feet distant—​meaning by this roughly that the image will guide the performance of the kinds of actions that would, ceteris paribus, be most conducive to self-​preservation if the sun were 200 feet distant, rather than those that would be most conducive to self-​preservation if it were 600 diameters of the earth distant. Suppose, for example, that one desires to alter the sun in some respect. Then under the influence of the image of it, one will one be guided to look for

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materials to build a 200-​foot ladder rather than a 600-​earth-​diameters-​ladder, or to build a cannon with a 200-​foot range rather than a 600-​earth-​diameter range. Similarly, to take Spinoza’s other example, if we imagine our actions to be uncaused rather than caused, this will be because we are guided by images of those actions to behave, for each particular potential cause of the action, in ways that would be, ceteris paribus, more conducive to self-​preservation if that occurrence were not the cause. At least at the level of primary representation, it is potentially faulty guidance that must be added to ignorance in order for an idea to misrepresent and so to be affirmed in error. In addition, however, at the level of minimal representation, every imaginative idea can be said to be minimally false at least insofar as it represents without distinction causes and potential causes that are in fact different from one another. Of course, the interpretation of the primary representational content of imaginative ideas will necessarily prove to be a holistic affair on this approach; what actions one will try to perform under the guidance of an image will be partly a function of what other beliefs and desires one has at the same time. But at least one constraint on the interpretation of primary content is not contingent: an individual must be understood as at least an imperfect striver for self-​preservation. We have now seen an explanation open to Spinoza—​and prima facie the only explanation open to Spinoza—​of how one can misrepresent the distance of the sun. The explanation exploits his fundamental doctrine of conatus and is fully compatible with his main doctrines about representation and imagination. What has not been explained is specifically why human beings misrepresent the distance of the sun. But there is good reason for that. The explanation for the human tendency to act towards certain seen distant objects as if they were 200 feet away (rather than some other distance) is to be found, for Spinoza, only deep within the specific physiological (and corresponding psychological) structure of human beings as self-​preservatory mechanisms. Other creatures with the same basic visual resources for distinguishing distances might nevertheless have been so constructed that they tended to act towards all objects 200 feet or more distant as if they were exactly 300 feet distant, or 900 feet distant, or 17 miles distant. The ultimate source of primary imaginative error lies in the imperfection of each finite thing considered as a self-​preservatory mechanism; but the particular kinds of errors to which a thing will be most prone is a function of where its own imperfections as a self-​preservatory mechanism actually lie. Given the potential depth and persistence of such structural imperfections, sensory illusions may continue to prime faulty actions and so continue to misrepresent, despite the fact that sensory images cannot be intrinsically erroneous for Spinoza and even when the illusion comes to be well-​understood and so, overall, ceases to deceive. In such a case, new and more accurate ideas countermand the tendency to faulty actions without entirely removing it.



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The Puzzle of Misrepresentation and Error Resolved We began with a textual puzzle posed by Bennett: How is error possible if (i) true ideas agree with their objects and (ii) the parallelism-​and-​identity of all ideas with their objects entails their agreement with those objects? To resolve the puzzle, we must understand Spinoza’s account of misrepresentation in the context of his overall theory of intentionality. But we must also observe that Spinoza uses two different terms, ideatum and objectum, that are often translated indifferently as object. For while a true idea agrees with [convenire] its ideatum according to E1a6, the human body is never described as the ideatum of the human mind, nor is that with which an idea is said to be “one and the same” ever described as its ideatum. This, I propose, is because (i) the objectum of an idea is simply the thing that it parallels and with which it is “one and the same”—​and hence, on Spinoza’s account, that whose “objective” reality it contains—​while (ii) the ideatum of an idea is whatever it is “of” in a sense that is broad enough to include the contents of imaginative representation. An idea need not, therefore, comprehend the objective reality of its full ideatum. For Spinoza, what is numerically the very same idea token can exist both in God and in one or more finite minds. Michael Della Rocca has argued that the representational mental content of an idea is relative to the mind in which it exists, so that the same idea can represent differently as it is in a human mind and as it is in God.20 In particular, he suggests that in God ideas always represent only their own objects, whereas in finite minds some ideas also serve to represent imaginatively (and hence confusedly and inadequately) external causes as well. As applied to our distinction between objectum and ideatum, this might be taken to suggest that in God an idea’s ideatum and its objectum are necessarily the same; the idea is “of” precisely the thing whose objective reality or being it contains by being identical with it; hence, in God every idea (i) is precisely of something that is the case, (ii) agrees with its ideatum, and (iii) is true. As the imaginative idea of a particular internal affection exists in the human mind, in contrast, it will be separated from God’s adequate ideas of its causes and will acquire additional representational content beyond the intentionality that it possesses by having an objectum. Thus, the ideatum of an imaginative idea in the human mind will consist of more than simply its objectum, and the parallelism and identity of the idea with its objectum would not guarantee its agreement with its full ideatum. Where the additional representational content concerning the ideatum misrepresents reality, agreement will fail and the idea in question will be false. This is a possible reading of Spinoza. However, the doctrine of E1a4 that cognition of effects always involves cognition of their causes suggests that it is preferable to continue to distinguish the ideatum of an idea from its objectum, even as that idea exists in God.21 Even in God, every idea will involve some thought

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“of” the causes of its objectum. This is not, to be sure, because God requires multiple different and distinct ideas of those causes, but rather because the ideas, like the causes and effects themselves, are not entirely distinct from one another: in thinking one, one is thereby also to some extent thinking of the other. On this interpretation, identity is a relation holding specifically between an idea and its objectum, while agreement is a broader relation sometimes holding between an idea and its full ideatum. As an idea exists in God, the full information provided by adequate and unconfused knowledge of all causes constrains the interpretation of the ideatum to precisely what is actually the case about it, rendering the idea true. Indeed, this same happy condition holds of an intellectual idea in the human mind as well:  adequate and unconfused knowledge of the causes of its object likewise constrains the interpretation of its ideatum to precisely what is true. In the case of an imaginative idea in the human mind, however, such adequate and unconfused knowledge of causes is absent from that mind, and the idea can therefore misrepresent its ideatum. Error then becomes all too possible—​and hence Spinoza’s Ethics can properly seek to offer at least a partial remedy.22

Notes 1. Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, offers a detailed account of this identity and of its relation to the specific identity of modes of extension with modes of thought. Marshall, “The Mind and the Body,” argues that the relation of being “one and the same” should not be understood as numerical identity. Nothing in the present chapter turns on whether Marshall’s thesis is correct or not, with the exception mentioned in note 5. 2. Learning from Six Philosophers, pp. 189–​90. 3. “Objects, Ideas, and Minds.” 4. “NS” indicates material included in translation from the Nagelate Schriften, the Dutch version of Spinoza’s Opera posthuma. 5. This is a fuller and more satisfying naturalization, I think, if being “one and the same as” is indeed understood as numerical identity. See note 1. 6. “Singular thing” and “individual” are largely overlapping categories. However, the “simplest bodies” are singular things but not individuals, while the “infinite individual” is not a singular thing. See Garrett, “Representation and Consciousness,” for a full discussion. 7. Spinoza’s reference in E3p1d to E2p11c makes it clear that the “other things” said to have minds include anything that can be perceived by the human mind. It is worth noting that, by E2p19, the human mind perceives only the affections of the human body, and not the human body itself—​of which it is, of course, nevertheless the idea. That is, while the human mind is the awareness of



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the human body, what stands in the perceived-​by relation to it is limited to what is in that body, in Spinoza’s sense of that term. 8. Garrett, “Representation and Consciousness.” 9. Spinoza uses the term “repraesentare.” For present purposes, nothing turns on whether this is understood as presentation or representation, so long as the distinction between it and the intentionality by which ideas are “of” the objects with which they are identical is maintained. Bennett, Learning from Six Philosophers, calls the latter “direct representation” and the former “indirect representation.” 10. This example is adapted from E2p17s, where Spinoza distinguishes between the idea of Peter’s body that is Peter’s mind (and so has Peter’s body as its object) and the idea of Peter’s body that is in Paul’s mind (which has an affection of Paul’s body, partly caused by Peter’s body, as its object). 11. For a discussion of both laws of nature and formal essences as infinite modes, see Garrett, “The Essence of the Body.” 12. Representation. 13. Garrett, “Representation and Consciousness.” 14. As the example suggests, the term “potential causes” refers in this context to things that, under the general laws of nature, are able to produce the effect under some circumstances. A plurality of “potential causes” in this sense is compatible with Spinoza’s strict necessitarianism. 15. Morrison, “Restricting Spinoza’s Causal Axiom,” makes this point forcefully. His solution to the problem involves a limitation of the scope of E1a4 to immanent causation (that is, a things causation of its own modes) and a consequent limitation of the representational scope of imaginative representation. The discussion of this solution is unfortunately beyond the scope of this chapter. 16. It should be noted that the explanation of imagined time at E2p44c1s does involve a present individual, seen in the past, imagined as still existing in the future. Spinoza often describes hope and fear, in contrast, in terms of imagined objects and outcomes that have not yet come to exist. 17. “Objects, Ideas, and Minds.” 18. This theory is discussed at greater length in Garrett, “Representation and Consciousness.” 19. It should be noted that the self-​preservatory activity of human beings has both a physical (“extended”) aspect and a mental (“thinking”) aspect, and that for Spinoza effects within an attribute—​extension or thought—​are produced only by causes within that same attribute. The primary representational content of an idea itself is thus determined strictly by the functional role of the idea within the attribute of thought, although the object of the idea—​which, as already noted, is “one and the same thing” as the idea—​plays a parallel functional role within the attribute of extension. 20. For example, Della Rocca writes: “Although in the human mind each idea is of its extended counterpart, in a great many cases, each idea is also of the cause of

438 Natur alistic Representation and Consciousness that counterpart. In God’s mind, as we have seen, those very same ideas are only of their extended counterparts” (Representation, p. 46). 21. In correspondence, Della Rocca has indicated that he, too, prefers an interpretation along these lines. Hence the previous reading, in which ideatum and objectum are always the same in God, should not be attributed to him. 22. I  have benefited greatly from discussions of these topics with Michael Della Rocca, Martin Lin, John Morrison, Colin Marshall, Alvin Plantinga, Lynn Joy, Samuel Newlands, Ted Warfield, Michael Griffin, Howard Robinson, Tom Stoneham, Alison Simmons, Jeffrey McDonough, Michael Rosenthal, Ursula Renz, and audiences at the University of Notre Dame, Central European University, Harvard University, and the University of Washington.

References Bennett, Jonathan. Learning from Six Philosophers. Vol. 1. Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 2001. Della Rocca, Michael. Representation and the Mind-​ Body Problem in Spinoza. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Garrett, Don. “The Essence of the Body and the Part of the Mind That Is Eternal.” In Koistinen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, pp. 284–​302. Garrett, Don. “Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination.” In Huenemann, ed., Interpreting Spinoza:  Critical Essays, pp. 4–​25. Huenemann, Charlie, ed. Interpreting Spinoza:  Critical Essays. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2008. Kennington, Richard, ed. The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Washington:  Catholic University of America Press, 1980. Koistinen, Olli, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Marshall, Colin. “The Mind and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (2009): 897–​919. Melamed, Yitzhak. Spinoza’s Metaphysics:  Substance and Thought. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2013. Morrison, John. “Restricting Spinoza’s Causal Axiom.” The Philosophical Quarterly 65 (2015): 40–​63. Wilson, Margaret. “Objects, Ideas, and Minds.” In Kennington, ed., The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, pp. 103–​120. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1980.

SECTION VI

Naturalistic Ethics

16

“A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, not Deceptively” Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’S  ethics

Spinoza devotes the last seven propositions of Part IV (PP67–​73) of the Ethics to “the free man’s temperament and manner of living.”1 Perhaps the most surprising and puzzling of these is IVP72, which asserts that: (1) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively. The proposition is surprising because by this point in the Ethics Spinoza seems already committed to three other claims which are jointly incompatible with it: ( 2) It is always good to act so as to best preserve one’s own being. (3) One can sometimes best preserve one’s own being by acting deceptively, not honestly. (4) It is never good to act contrary to the way in which the free man acts. This paradox is so striking and fundamental that we can hardly claim to understand, much less evaluate, Spinoza’s ethical views unless we know how—​or whether—​it can be resolved. In this chapter, I will be concerned with three questions. First, which if any of (1)–​(4) would he reject? Secondly, which of these propositions ought he reject, given the fundamental character of his system? Thirdly, to what extent can the resulting ethical theory be an adequate one? I will proceed by considering each of (1)–​(4) in turn, describing and evaluating both the grounds for ascribing the claim to Spinoza and the ways in which its ascription to him might be denied. I will argue that Spinoza accepts (1)–​(3), and that he would and should reject (4). I will conclude by considering the consistency and practical acceptability of the resulting ethical theory.

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I (1) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively. The evidence for claiming that Spinoza accepts (1)  appears at first sight to be incontrovertible:  he explicitly asserts it as IVP72. But the simple fact that Spinoza asserts (1) does not by itself entail that he actually accepts it. To reach that conclusion, we require two additional suppositions: first, that he aims to act honestly, not deceptively, at IVP72; and secondly, that he accurately formulates—​without, for example, inadvertent overstatement—​the proposition that he intends. Either of these suppositions may be questioned. With respect to the first supposition, the depth of Spinoza’s commitment to honesty is precisely what is in question in the interpretation of IVP72; and to cite the proposition itself as evidence of that commitment would simply beg the question in this context. For suppose that Spinoza believes both of the following: (A) that he would always do best to preserve his own being, or maximize his own advantage; and (B) that he can best preserve his own being or maximize his own advantage by insincerely claiming that the free man always acts honestly. Under those circumstances, consistency would not only permit him to make such an insincere claim, it would positively require it of him. Indeed, in thus asserting (1) insincerely, Spinoza might not even intend to deceive the truly wise or free among his readers. He might be aiming merely to obtain the honesty of the credulous or to mollify the ignorant, perhaps secure in the knowledge that those who had fully understood the preceding propositions would recognize both the ironic falsehood of (1) and the self-​interested grounds that compelled him, from consistency with his own principles, to assert it. The possibility that Spinoza asserts (1)  insincerely cannot, therefore, be dismissed without a hearing. Nevertheless, it is not ultimately convincing, for two main reasons. First, when we seriously consider the proposition’s context in the Ethics as a whole, it soon becomes implausible that Spinoza should suppose an insincere assertion of (1) actually to serve any useful purpose. Its mere inclusion in the Ethics would be unlikely to increase the honesty of others with whom he might have dealings. Nor could it be supposed to play any significant role in warding off persecution from persons otherwise likely to be scandalized by the Ethics. For reassuring as (1) is, it is hardly enough to remove the sting from Spinoza’s thoroughgoing determinism, his denial of a personal God, his mind-​body identity theory, or his rejection of such Christian virtues as pity, humility, and repentance. At the same time, the Ethics’ straightforwardness about these other doctrines would undermine any attempt to use (1) ironically. The second main reason is perhaps even more fundamental. If Spinoza did not accept (1), then not only the proposition itself but also the demonstration of it must be insincere. To be sure, Spinoza wrote demonstrations in Descartes’ “Principles of



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Philosophy” that he himself thought unsound—​he must have thought them so, since he rejects some of their conclusions. But there is no internal or external evidence that he fails to take his own demonstration of (1) seriously. The demonstration contains nine explicit steps, the first of which is:

(i) We call a man free only insofar as he acts from the dictate of reason.

This is stated at IVP66S, and is a consequence of his definition of freedom as adequate self-​determination [ID7] and his identification of human self-​determination with acting from reason [IIIP1]. It directly entails: (ii) If a free man did anything by deception, he would do it from the dictate of reason. He then cites IVP24, which is a central claim of Part IV: (iii) Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one’s own advantage. And from (ii) and (iii), he infers: (iv) If a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by deception, it would be a virtue to act deceptively. This, I  take it, means that if a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by deception, then at least some kinds of deceptive actions would be virtues. So construed, it is a reasonable inference from (ii) and (iii), since (iii) identifies acting from virtue with acting by the guidance of reason. Also from (iii) he concludes: (v) If it could be a virtue to act deceptively, then everyone would “be better advised” (consultius esset) to act deceptively to preserve his being. This follows, given the additional but Spinozistic-​sounding assumption that if one does something to preserve one’s being “by the guidance of reason from the foundation of seeking one’s own advantage,” then one is “better advised” to do it. Next, he states: (vi) If everyone would be better advised to act deceptively to preserve his being, then men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be contrary to one another in fact.

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This claim depends only on the assumption that if one acts deceptively to preserve one’s being, then one is agreeing with others only in words, and not in fact—​a reasonable assumption, since whoever acts deceptively brings it about that others believe something that he himself does not believe or vice versa. Following this claim, he cites IVP31C, which states: (vii) The more a thing agrees with our nature, the more useful, or better, it is for us, and conversely, the more a thing is useful to us, the more it agrees with our nature. IVP31C is ultimately derived from two Spinozistic principles:  that whatever pertains to a thing’s nature tends to the preservation of its being, and that the same cause always produces the same effect. From (vii), in turn, he derives: (viii) It is absurd that men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be contrary to one another in fact. This inference requires only the plausible assumptions that (a)  men are never “better advised” to pursue that which is not maximally useful to them, and that (b) “agreeing only in words while being contrary in fact” is a kind of “disagreement in nature” between two parties. Finally, then, from (iv), (v), (vi), and (viii), it follows that: (ix) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively. This is, of course, IVP72—​and (1)—​itself. Complex as this demonstration may be, it appears to consist of premises and inferences that Spinoza would be likely to accept; it does not look like an attempt at a fraudulent proof. Thus, the first supposition—​that Spinoza aims to act honestly at IVP72—​seems warranted. What of the other supposition, namely that he accurately formulates the proposition he intends? It might be argued that (1)—​though not intentionally dishonest—​is something of an overstatement, describing as universal what is true of the free man only generally speaking, or in most cases. But Spinoza seems specifically to block this suggestion, while reinforcing the serious intent of his original Demonstration, in the Scholium to IVP72: Suppose someone now asks: what if a man could save himself from the present danger of death by treachery? Would not the principle of preserving his own being recommend, without qualification, that he be treacherous?



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The reply to this is the same. If reason should recommend that, it would recommend it to all men. And so reason would recommend, without qualification, that men should make agreements to join forces, and to have common laws only by deception—​i.e., that they have no common laws. This is absurd. Given the apparent sincerity of IVP72, the intent of this Scholium can only be to defend it from even the most plausible of the potential exceptions to it. Thus, I conclude that Spinoza means what he says when he claims that the free man always acts honestly, not deceptively, and that he means the claim to admit of no exceptions. (2) It is always good to act so as to best preserve one’s own being. IVD1 and IVD2 present the formal definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’: Definition 1:  By good I  shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us. Definition 2: By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good. Since Spinoza identifies “one’s own advantage” with “preserving one’s being” (IVP20,S), however, he can also characterize good and evil in terms of self-​preservation; and this is just what he does, citing IVD1 and IVD2 as support, at the outset of IVP8D: “We call good, or evil, what is useful to, or harmful to, preserving our being.” (2) follows immediately. Spinoza’s commitment to (2) is thus both evident and fundamental. Since the good is the advantageous for Spinoza, and the advantageous is the preservation of one’s own being, nothing can be better for oneself than self-​preservation. To be sure, he also asserts that, “We know nothing to be certainly good or evil, except what really leads to understanding or what can prevent us from understanding” (IVP27). But the preservation of one’s being is a logical prerequisite for having understanding; and this fact in itself prevents the preservation or increase of one’s understanding from being a good that could override the preservation of one’s being. Moreover, whatever leads to understanding, in Spinoza’s view, by that very fact aids in the preservation of one’s being, for two reasons. First, any maintenance or increase in understanding is a maintenance or increase in one’s present power of action and the full realization of one’s own nature, so that understanding literally is a preservation or amplification of one’s own being. Secondly, precisely because it is the central element in one’s active power and resources, maintaining or increasing one’s present understanding also promotes the future preservation of one’s being.

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Spinoza also makes it clear that one’s own good cannot be overridden by the good or advantage of any other being. For example, he offers a prospectus of his theory of the relation among different persons’ interests at IVP18S: There are  .  .  .  many things outside us which are useful to us, and on that account to be sought. Of these, we can think of none more excellent than those that agree entirely with our nature. For if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are joined to one another, they compose an individual twice as powerful as each one. To man, then, there is nothing more useful than man. Man, I say, can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as it were, one Mind and one Body; that all should strive together, as far as they can, to preserve their being; and that all, together, should seek for themselves the common advantage of all. [emphasis added] Here Spinoza characteristically emphasizes the extent to which the advantage of different individual persons can coincide. Nevertheless, he states that the interests of other individuals enter into one’s own considerations only through their usefulness to oneself. This is just what one should expect, given his claim at IIIP20S that “no one, therefore, unless he is defeated by causes external, and contrary, to his nature, neglects to seek his own advantage, or preserve his being,” and his claim at IVApp8 that “it is permissible for everyone to do, by the highest right of nature, what he judges will contribute to his advantage.”2 Nor can the good or advantage of eternal things—​such as “the idea that expresses the essence of this or that human Body, under a species of eternity” (VPP22–​23), “the part of the Mind that is eternal” (VPP38–​39), or even God himself—​override one’s own preservation as a good. For nothing can hinder or aid the preservation of an eternal being, nor can such beings have any potential objects of desire for themselves. Hence there is nothing for their “advantage” or “good” to consist in. To be sure, an individual person has an advantage in bringing it about that his present stock of eternal (and hence always-​existing) ideas should remain as part of his mind, and also that it should come to be supplemented by other equally eternal and adequate ideas. But this is simply for that individual to increase his own knowledge, and not for him to benefit these eternal ideas. As we have seen, such an increase is not, for Spinoza, incompatible with one’s own advantage or preservation, but is instead precisely that in which one’s own highest advantage and preservation consist. Thus, the good, for Spinoza, is the advantageous; that which is most advantageous to oneself is one’s own preservation; and the advantage of others cannot be ranked ahead of one’s own as a good, even in the case of those beings that do have



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an “advantage.” I conclude, therefore, that he is fully committed to (2), without exception.3 3. One can sometimes best preserve one’s own being by acting deceptively, not honestly. Although Spinoza maintains that the greatest good—​understanding—​can be enjoyed equally by all (IVP36), he also holds that for the mind to be “equally capable of understanding many things,” the body must be “equally capable of all the things which can follow from its nature” (IVP45S), so that the pursuit of understanding also requires intermediate goods to keep the body functioning properly. Thus he states at IVP39: Those things are good which bring about the preservation of the proportion of motion and rest the human Body’s parts have to one another [i.e., continued life]; on the other hand, those things are evil which bring it about that the parts of the human Body have a different proportion of motion and rest to one another [i.e., death, as IVP39S indicates]. And again, at E IVApp27: The principal advantage which we derive from things outside us . . . lies in the preservation of our body. That is why those things are most useful to us which can feed and maintain it, so that all its parts can perform their function properly. It seems an unmistakable fact, however, that circumstances can arise in which one’s physical life can be preserved only by actions that would ordinarily be regarded as deceptive. Certainly there are cases in which successful competition for a limited supply of physical necessities will demand such actions. Moreover, there are also cases in which such actions are necessary to ward off an external danger—​for example, when escape from immediate execution requires fraudulently offering one’s guards a sum of money that one cannot actually command. Were it not for the Scholium to IVP72, it might be suggested that the abstractness of Spinoza’s argument prevents him from noticing such cases. But the Scholium makes it clear that he has indeed noticed the possibility of such cases, and takes them seriously. Given that he recognizes cases in which death can be avoided only by actions ordinarily deemed deceptive, then, Spinoza could deny (3)  only by holding either (a) that preserving one’s physical life in such cases does not constitute “best preserving one’s being,” or (b) that preserving one’s physical life in such cases does not constitute “deception.” Let us consider the first of these alternatives. Spinoza makes several mitigating claims about physical death. He asserts that “a free man thinks of nothing less than of death” (IVP67); that “the more the

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Mind understands things . . . the less it fears death” (VP38; see also VP39S); and that “death is less harmful to us, the greater the Mind’s clear and distinct knowl­ edge, and hence, the more the Mind loves God . . . [T]‌he human Mind can be of such a nature that the part of the Mind which we have shown perishes with the body . . . is of no moment in relation to what remains” (VP38S). Upon examination, however, none of these remarks implies that one can ever best preserve one’s being by actually choosing death over an alternative that involves continued life. The free man does not think of death, according to Spinoza, simply because he directly pursues the good rather than avoiding evil; hence the free man directly pursues the good of life, rather than being consumed with thoughts of death (1VP67D). The person with understanding has less fear of death because he is less subject to negative affects in general (VP38D). He is also less harmed by death, since, to the extent that a person gains knowledge, he brings it about that a greater and more important part of his mind consists of knowledge that is eternal. This means that a relatively smaller and far less significant portion of his mind is something that is absolutely destroyed by death (VP38D). As one gains in understanding, one begins to approximate, as a limit, a state in which one would be totally unaffected by death, or any other potential harm. But this limit could actually be reached only by an infinite being whose mind contained all knowledge and was not at all bound by imagination. Hence, Spinoza’s doctrine does not entail that death could ever cease to be of any harm at all for any finite human being, who must remain a part of nature (IVP4). On the contrary, death does constitute for us the end of at least some portion of the mind, even if the least important part, and hence constitutes a failure to preserve one’s being completely. Moreover, death is the end of any prospect of further increasing one’s understanding or that portion of one’s mind that is eternal; indeed, it is the end of any prospect of additional gain at all. Thus, Spinoza writes at IVP21: No one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to live well, unless at the same time he desires to be, to act, and to live, i.e., to actually exist. Hence, despite the declining importance of death to the wise man, any actual human being who acts, even deceptively, so as to save his physical life will always preserve his being better to at least some extent than one who does not. The second approach to denying (3)  would be to argue that no action can properly be regarded as deceptive if it is required to preserve one’s being. Spinoza maintains, following Hobbes, that it is impossible completely to promise or contract away one’s right of self-​preservation, regardless of what one may say or do (TTP XVII; see also TP II–​III). As a consequence, he holds that all compacts and promises should be understood to be operative only so long as they do not conflict with the preservation of one’s being, since no compact or promise could possibly



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prevent one from pursuing the preservation of one’s being. Because compacts and promises have this implicit limitation, it might be suggested, “violating” them for the sake of self-​preservation is not, in Spinoza’s view, really deception. This suggestion is unsatisfactory, however, for several reasons. First, although Spinoza states explicitly (TTP XVI) that everyone has the right to break a promise when he judges that doing so will be advantageous (a minimal claim that follows from his assertion that ‘right’ and ‘power’ are co-​extensive), he nevertheless characterizes such actions as practices of deceit (see also TP III, 17). And he does not give any indication that he is using the term ‘deception’ in any more restricted way in the Ethics. On the contrary, IVP72 and its Scholium strongly imply that he is speaking of deceit in the ordinary sense. For the reason why deception cannot be a virtue is said to be that it produces a circumstance in which persons do not agree in nature. And every case of deception in the ordinary sense—​whether for self-​preservation or not—​is a case in which persons disagree in nature, since deception of any kind entails producing in others beliefs different from one’s own. Thus, although he does not assert (3)  explicitly, Spinoza’s position clearly commits him to it, and does so in such a way that he could hardly have been unaware of that commitment. (4) It is never good to act contrary to the way in which the free man acts. In Part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza characterizes actions in four different ways, each prima facie relevant to ethics: he speaks (a) of “good” actions, or of those that achieve “a good”; (b) of actions performed “under the guidance of reason,” or “from the dictate of reason”; (c) of actions performed “from virtue,” or whose performance is “a virtue”; and (d) of actions that “a free man” would perform. Commentators generally treat the four characterizations as co-​extensive. And this procedure appears to have some basis in the text. For according to IVP18S, “reason demands . . . that everyone . . . seek his own advantage . . . (and) preserve his own being as far as he can,” i.e., do that which is good for him; (IVD1, IVP8D) while IVP66S states that “one who is led by reason . . . I call . . . a free man.” These statements seem to imply that “good actions” and “actions of a free man” are both co-​extensive with “actions performed from the dictate of reason,” and hence that they are also co-​ extensive with each other—​which entails (4). Virtue, in turn, enters in through IVP24 (cited in the demonstration of IVP72) which asserts that “acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being . . . by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one’s own advantage.” But does Spinoza really intend all of these terms to be co-​extensive? He devotes the Preface of Part IV to just two evaluative distinctions: “perfection and imperfection, good and evil.” He begins by explaining the use of the term ‘perfect’ (perfectus, from perficere) in terms of its etymological sense of “completed” or “finished.” Originally, he maintains, the term referred only to artifacts known or believed to be completed in the way intended by their authors. Under the influence of the

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false supposition that nature creates everything for a purpose, however, the term gradually came to refer more generally to the extent to which a thing, even a natural object, matches the generic “model” of its kind that each person forms on the basis of his own common experience.4 Thus the term generally reflects only a “mode of thinking” rather than a real feature of the objects themselves, and is applied differently by different persons depending on the character of the “universal ideas” or models that they happen to have formed. ‘Good,’ in contrast, primarily expresses our desire for something; as he has already claimed at IIIP9S, we do not “desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it.” Thus, it too reflects only a mode of thinking, and indicates “nothing positive in things, considered in themselves,” since “Music is good for one who is Melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf.” It too is highly variable in its application, since what is judged to be good will depend on the judger’s particular desires, which are often passions. Spinoza’s intent is to adapt these previously subjective predicates to designate objective practical relations. Thus he concludes near the end of the Preface: But though this is so, still we must retain these words. For because we desire to form an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to, it will be useful to us to retain these same words with the meaning I have indicated. In what follows, therefore, I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves. By evil, what we certainly know prevents us from becoming like that model. Next, we shall say that men are more perfect or imperfect, insofar as they approach more or less near to this model. (See also TdIE, 13, which is similar.) Although the definitions of both pairs of terms employ the notion of a “model of human nature,” they are by no means identical. The perfect/​imperfect distinction, as defined here, applies only to persons, whereas the good/​evil distinction applies to things of all kinds, including actions. Once we have the concept of perfection, of course, we can also speak of the actions that the perfect man would perform. But, although the point has apparently not been noted, even this latter concept need not be co-​extensive with the concept of good actions. Someone is perfect to the extent that he presently approximates to the model or ideal; whereas something is good to the extent that it aids us in becoming like this model or ideal. Prima facie, there is no reason why an action that would be good for someone to perform, in this sense, should also be the action that the perfect man would perform—​unless, perhaps, the agent in question were already perfect.



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Consider an analogy. Suppose that our model or ideal were that of a person leading the characteristic life of the idle rich. Now, for someone who is already one of the idle rich, idle behavior would be “good” in the sense that it would help him to remain or become even more like the chosen model. For the poor man, however—​who aspires to the model without having yet achieved it—​idle behavior would be an “evil,” likely to prevent him from obtaining the wealth needed to live the life of the idle rich; for him, in contrast, hard work would be a “good.” The point is a simple one: when one has not yet achieved a certain kind of existence, the actions that one must perform in order to achieve it are not necessarily the actions that one will characteristically perform once one has achieved it. After concluding his discussion of perfection and goodness in the Preface, Spinoza begins Part IV itself by offering formal, numbered definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (IVDD1–​2), and goes on to use them frequently. Strikingly, however, despite the fact that by far the largest part of Part IV’s Preface is devoted to a discussion of them, ‘perfect’ and its cognates do not occur at all in the Definitions, Axioms, Propositions or Demonstrations of Part IV, and they occur only four times, all in passing, in the Scholia (twice in IV 18S, once each in IVP45S and IVP58S). This omission is explicable, however. For the Preface defines “perfection” in terms of approximation to “the model that we set before ourselves,” without actually specifying what that model is. The model itself is developed gradually throughout the course of Part IV, culminating in the portrait of the free man at IVP 67–​72. (Presumably this initial lack of specificity about the model is also what accounts for the variation in the definition of “good,” which is defined at IVD1 simply in terms of what is useful “to us,” rather than in terms of what is useful for “approaching nearer to our model of human nature,” as in the Preface.) Hence, we are to understand what human perfection is, and how the perfect man acts, in large measure at least, by understanding what the free man is, and how the free man acts. Freedom provides a specification of what human perfection actually consists in. But for the same reason that the class of “good actions” need not be co-​ extensive with “actions of a perfect man,” in Spinoza’s sense, they also need not be co-​extensive with “actions of a free man.” Thus, I  propose that we interpret Spinoza as holding both that the ideal or model free man would never act deceptively, and that deception may under some circumstances nevertheless be good for actual human beings who have not fully achieved this ideal. These circumstances will be the (generally rare) ones under which deception is genuinely necessary to preserve one’s life or otherwise aid in the preservation of one’s being.5

II This proposed interpretation resolves the original paradox by rejecting (4). Before it can be accepted, however, it must be examined in greater detail. In particular, we

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must consider whether it is compatible with (a) IVP72 itself; (b) the Demonstration of IVP72; (c) the Scholium to IVP72; and (d) the remainder of Part IV IVP72 requires that the ideal free man would never act deceptively; but in discussing (3), we concluded that—​for Spinoza—​any actual human being would always best preserve his being by choosing an act of deception over death, if those were the only alternatives. Since the free man always does what is best to preserve his own being, we may appear to be involved in a contradiction that the mere rejection of (4) cannot resolve. In fact, however, what this shows is only that no actual human being is the ideal free man. But this consequence is just what we should expect, since the concept of a completely free man involves a contradiction. From a thing’s being completely free, it follows that it is completely self-​determined and utterly independent of external causes; on the other hand, from a thing’s being a man, it follows that it is necessarily a part of nature and subject to external causes. Like the concept of the complete “agreement in nature” among persons that would result in a complete coinciding of interests and advantage (see note 2), or like the complete understanding that would make the whole of one’s mind eternal so that death mattered not at all, the concept of the free man is the concept of a limit that can be approached but not completely attained by finite human beings.6 The final unattainability of these ideals does not completely undermine their cognitive value for Spinoza, however. For they can be used to convey at least two important things:  first, that the presence of one characteristic can be fully explained through the presence of another characteristic; and second, that the former characteristic will—​other things being equal—​vary with the increase or decrease of the latter. Thus, the beneficiality of human beings to one another can be fully explained through their agreement in nature, and will tend to increase as that agreement increases. Lack of concern with death can be fully explained through the eternal part of the mind, and the mind will tend to have less fear of death as this part of the mind becomes a larger part of the whole. Similarly, a person’s honesty (when it is a consequence of the endeavor to agree in nature with others) can be fully explained through his freedom, and his honesty will tend to increase along with his freedom, in Spinoza’s view. For as a person becomes more free, he will lose the characteristic motives for dishonesty: he will forego the pursuit of temporary, competitive goods such as wealth, fame, and sensual pleasure; he will come to understand more clearly the value of society, friendship, and human aid, and the importance of honesty in procuring those goods; he will become more able to achieve goods by cooperative rather than deceptive means; and he will become less and less susceptible to harm. On the other hand, whenever deception is still required, it must be explained at least partly through the person’s lack of freedom, including his dependence on external goods and his inability to achieve his ends by the more permanently beneficial means of producing agreement in nature between himself and others. Hence, those who are most free will also be



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most honest. Insofar as they are free, they will never deceive; though it will nevertheless remain true that, insofar as they are living, finite, human beings, they cannot be assured that they will never find it necessary to do so. The proposed interpretation is thus compatible with IVP72; and it is also, I believe, compatible with its Demonstration. As we have seen, the demonstration seeks in effect to provide a reductio ad absurdum of the supposition that a free man could act deceptively “insofar as he is free.” Insofar as he is free, Spinoza argues, the free man acts from the dictate of reason, hence virtuously, and hence does what he is “better advised” to do. But deception is an instance of persons failing to agree in nature, whereas what is best, or maximally useful, is that persons should agree in nature. Hence, he concludes, a free man cannot act deceptively insofar as he is free. The only difficulty here is with the meaning of the phrase ‘be better advised’ (consultius esset). The demonstration entails (via the simple conjunction of steps (vi) and (viii)) that one can never be “better advised” to act deceptively to preserve one’s being. Hence, if we interpret “one is better advised to do x” as simply equivalent to “it would be good for one to do x,” then it will follow that it can never be good to act deceptively, contrary to the proposed interpretation. I see no reason to interpret the two expressions as equivalent, however. Indeed, if we do so, we threaten to invalidate Spinoza’s inference from (vii) to (viii) (i.e., from the claim that things are best for us as they most agree with our nature, to the claim that it is absurd that men would be “better advised” to agree only in words and not in fact). For it is not always good to refrain from an action that will produce a less-​than-​optimal state of affairs—​not unless the alternative of producing the optimal state instead is actually within one’s power. More specifically, it need not be good for one to refrain from deception, even though it involves a lack of agreement in nature between persons, if all of one’s actually-​feasible alternatives also involve a lack of agreement in nature—​such as competition for scarce life-​ saving goods—​plus greater harms as well. (Compare, for example, IVP58S, which asserts that Shame, “though not a virtue,” is still “a good” if the only alternative is conceived as that of being shameless through lack of desire to live honestly.) Hence, if the Demonstration is to be valid, we must understand “better advised to do x” as meaning something more like “ideally advised to do x.” With that understanding, there is no conflict between the Demonstration and the proposed interpretation. Before leaving IVP72, we must also consider its Scholium. There, as we have seen, Spinoza asks whether, if one faced a choice between death and treachery, the principle of preserving one’s own being would not “recommend without qualification” that one be treacherous. His response is that “if reason should recommend that, it would recommend it to all men. And so reason would recommend, without qualification, that men should make agreements to join forces, and to have common laws only by deception,” which he says is absurd. On the proposed

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interpretation, the principle of preserving one’s own being does sometimes recommend treachery or deception—​but it does not do so “without qualification.” Specifically, it does not ever do so for the (ideal) free man, whose character is directly under discussion. To the perfectly free man, even death would be no harm whatever; rather, he would seek only to maximize the agreement in nature between himself and others. Similar considerations apply to the question of whether “reason” can recommend deception “without qualification.” Insofar as one is guided by reason, one maximizes one’s agreement in nature with others and cannot be harmed even by death, since the part of the mind involved in reason is eternal. In fact, since the free man’s freedom consists in his having and acting on adequate ideas, the ideal of a life completely guided by reason is simply another way of formulating the ideal of the completely free man. Moreover, reason itself, because it can be common to everyone, must give the same counsel to all, as the Scholium implies. It therefore cannot dictate the preservation of one being over another. The fact that our necessary preference for our own being is not at the same time equally a preference for preserving the being of others, arises not from our common reason but rather (inevitably) from our passivity, finiteness, and hence lack of agreement in nature with others. If we were perfectly guided by reason, our good and the good of others would indeed perfectly coincide. Finally, the proposed interpretation must be reconciled with the passages cited at the beginning of the present section [viz., IV 18S, IVD1, IVD8, IV 66S] which seemed jointly to suggest a commitment on Spinoza’s part to (4). The key passage is the one at IVP18S, which reads in full: Since reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it demands that everyone love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really useful to him, want what will really lead man to a greater perfection, and absolutely, that everyone should strive to preserve his own being as far as he can. [emphasis added] This seems to entail that, if deception is advantageous and hence good under some circumstances—​as the proposed interpretation requires—​then reason will demand deception; and since (by IVP66S and IVP72D) the free man does what reason dictates, it seems to follow that the free man will, after all, engage in deception. First, however, it must be noted why reason is said to demand that everyone seek his own advantage: because reason demands nothing contrary to nature. But for Spinoza, nothing occurs “contrary to nature,” so that in this sense, everything whatever occurs by the “demand of reason.” It is one thing to say that certain behavior is “demanded by reason” in this sense, and another to say that the behavior can be attributed entirely to one’s own exercise of reason, or to reason as it is manifested in the agent himself. Secondly, it is quite compatible with the present interpretation that reason in each person should demand the preservation



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of that person’s being, in the sense that whatever one does from the dictate of reason is, to that extent, conducive to one’s own being. The present interpretation requires only that for those who are not governed entirely by reason—​everyone at some time or another—​some of the acts conducive to the preservation of one’s being may not be entirely due to reason, or freedom. For both of these reasons, the passages cited need not entail a commitment to (4); hence the passages are compatible with the present interpretation. The interpretation I have proposed and defended is thus compatible with everything Spinoza claims in the Ethics. It not only resolves the original paradox, it also provides the only resolution of that paradox that does not violate fundamental Spinozistic doctrines. Finally, it is strongly suggested by his account of perfection and the good in the Preface to Part IV. I therefore conclude that he both should and would have rejected (4) for the reasons suggested by that interpretation.

III Consistency and Practical Acceptability. Of the various tests to which ethical theories can be submitted, two of the most fundamental are those of consistency and practical acceptability. An adequate ethical theory must be internally consistent; and it must also be such that we can, upon critical reflection, eventually bring ourselves to accept the judgments of approval and disapproval that the theory makes of various actions and features of character. Spinoza’s ethical theory is, I believe, often thought to fail one or both of these tests particularly with respect to IVP72. I have already argued that Spinoza is guilty of no direct inconsistency in the case of the paradox considered, since he rejects the last of the four jointly inconsistent propositions. Nor is his theory rendered inconsistent through its employment of such literally contradictory models as that of the “free man.” For Spinoza intends his assertions about such models to be understood only as describing certain relationships between two or more variable characteristics—​in the present case, freedom and honesty—​of real individuals. (See TdIE, 57 for a discussion of the way in which formulations that verbally resemble discussions of “fictions” can be used to state truths.) And although the completely free, reasonable, and virtuous man is a necessarily unreachable ideal, it is by no means unusual for an ethical theory to put forward an ideal that cannot, by the theory’s own lights, be fully achieved by any actual person. It is also not inconsistent to characterize as “good” some actions that are not regarded as completely “free,” “reasonable,” or “virtuous.” Spinoza aims, of course, to minimize the divergence between the “good” and the “perfect.” Nevertheless, some residual divergence is inevitable in his theory, as is evident most clearly in the case of choosing between death and deception. But some such divergence is a potential feature of any ethical theory that

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places, as Spinoza’s does, primary emphasis or value on features of character: in any such theory, the possibility exists, unless blocked by special features of the theory, that actions necessary to achieve the valued character should be different from those manifested by the valued character. Although this is certainly a complication in an ethical theory, it is not a contradiction. This complication does, however, pose some initial difficulty when we try to subject Spinoza’s ethical theory to the test of practical acceptability. For we cannot determine whether we can accept a theory’s judgments of approval and disapproval until we can determine what those judgments are; and it is not initially clear what actions and features of character Spinoza’s theory does approve. The Ethics avoids mere exhortation, aiming instead to state and demonstrate facts that will themselves be inherently motivating. But whose motivation provides the test of “approval”? On the one hand, we can speak of what the perfectly free man would be motivated to do by his knowledge (i.e., what actual persons would do insofar as they were motivated only by reason and not by features of their finiteness); or we can speak, on the other hand, of what even the most free and most knowledgeable of finite human beings would actually be motivated to do, given their finite knowledge and their finite situation. The perfectly free man would never be motivated to deceive others or harm their interests; an actual, relatively-​free individual, however, can at any time find himself in circumstances in which he would be necessarily motivated to deceive or otherwise harm others for his own advantage. Should we think of Spinoza’s ethical theory as “approving” the self-​ preserving deceptions of relatively free individuals, on the grounds that the theory pronounces those actions “good” for those individuals? Or should we rather think of such actions as outside the approval of the theory, on the grounds that they are—​though predictable and even inevitable—​due at least in part to our personal limitations and differences, and thus foreign to the very highest ethical ideals we can hold in common? One way to resolve this interpretive dilemma is to ask what kinds of actions and features of character Spinoza or the Spinozist himself would approve. The affects that come closest to capturing ethical approval and disapproval are “favor” (favor, translated by Elwes as “approval,” and by Shirley as “approbation”) and “indignation” (indignatio).7 The former is defined as “Love toward someone who has benefited another,” while the latter is defined as “Hate toward someone who has done evil to another” (IIIDefAff19, 20). Given these terms, we can now ask what the Spinozistic attitude would be toward someone who, for example, employs deceptive means to preserve his own life at the expense of the lives of several innocent persons; or toward someone who, in the same circumstances, chooses to sacrifice his own life to save the others. Let us consider first the person who chooses deception and self-​preservation. It follows from IVP51S that the Spinozist’s attitude toward him will not be one



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of indignation, for Spinoza there asserts that “Indignation, as we define it . . . is necessarily evil.” (Certainly many critics will hold that the Spinozist’s lack of indignation—​in this case, and in general—​by itself demonstrates that the theory cannot pass the test of practical acceptability. I am inclined to think, on the contrary, that the doctrine that indignation is always an evil is one of the theory’s most attractive features.) But if the Spinozist will not respond with indignation, neither will he respond with favor. For favor is a species of love, which, in turn, is defined as “Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause” (IIIP13S). Although the deceiver has benefited himself, he has also harmed others directly and harmed the institution of honesty as well. He will therefore not have produced much joy in the Spinozist. Nor will he himself have been the free or adequate cause of his own action, since to the extent that a person is free, he acts honestly and not deceptively. For each of these two reasons, he will not be the object of love or favor for his action. Rather, the Spinozistic attitude toward such a person will be that his action was a predictable phenomenon of nature, due in part to inevitable human weakness and deserving to be understood, but calling for neither indignation nor favor. What, then, of the person who makes the opposite choice, sacrificing through honesty his own life for the sake of benefiting others? Once again the Spinozist will not respond with indignation, since it is an evil. Favor, on the other hand, “is not contrary to reason, but can agree with it and arise from it” (IVP51). Yet in the case of any actual self-​sacrificing person, self-​sacrifice cannot be due to the person’s being so completely free that his own death does not matter to him at all. Any actual person who sacrifices his own life must therefore be failing to achieve his own advantage and the preservation of his own being. Hence the sacrifice must be the result of his being overcome by passions, such as pity, passionate love, fear of regret or punishment, or a misguided desire for fame or praise. For this reason, even though the action is beneficial to others, the person himself cannot be regarded as the free or adequate cause of the benefit. The Spinozist would therefore respond with little favor towards the agent, once again regarding his action instead only as an operation of nature—​this time, perhaps, a more fortunate one—​that results in innocent lives being saved. Thus on neither alternative would any actual person facing a choice between deception and death win Spinozistic favor. This is an example of a situation—​that in which one can benefit others only by deceiving them is another—​in which there simply can be no completely virtuous action to perform, because the situation itself involves a conflict that manifests ultimate lack of power. The conclusion which seems to follow, namely that Spinoza would never approve of a person who sacrificed his own life to save the lives of innocent persons, may be taken by many to show that his ethics cannot, after all, pass the test of practical acceptability. However, it is somewhat misleading to conclude that

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Spinoza would not approve of such a person. For just as we must distinguish the actions of the ideal free man from those of even the most free of actual persons, so we must distinguish the ethical reactions of the ideal free man from those of even the most free actual persons. Insofar as Spinoza himself is governed by reason, he will neither approve nor disapprove of self-​sacrifice. But insofar as he himself is a part of nature, and as such is subject to affects not entirely rational, it is quite possible that, through his imaginative fellow-​feeling with others and the natural tendency to ascribe freedom to human actions whose causes we do not know in detail, Spinoza himself might feel some considerable favor or approval for a self-​ sacrificing individual—​and perhaps even some indignation towards the person who preserves himself through deception. Thus, if we find that we cannot fully bring ourselves to adopt the ethical attitudes that Spinoza claims one must adopt insofar as one is guided by reason alone, Spinoza might well agree that we cannot permanently and completely attain those attitudes. Any actual human being will be influenced in his ethical judgments not only by pure reason, but by his passions as well. Spinoza would add only that, as we come to gain understanding, we must then at least begin to approximate those reasonable attitudes more closely. This claim, if not obviously right, is at least not obviously wrong. Spinoza’s own ethics at least, even if not also those of the Spinozistic perfectly free man, are arguably capable of passing the test of practical acceptability.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that Spinoza does not contradict other doctrines in the Ethics when he claims that the free man always acts honestly, not deceptively. I believe that, in coming to understand the reasons why he can make this claim without contradiction, we gain a better appreciation of the character of his ethical theory in general, and of the considerations that are involved in assessing its practical acceptability. I have not shown that his ethical theory is consistent in all of its parts, nor that it is practically acceptable in all of its consequences, nor that it passes the other important tests to which an ethical theory might be subjected. A fortiori, I have not shown that it is true. I do hope at least to have suggested, however, that Spinoza’s ethical theory has greater resources, and is of greater plausibility and philosophical interest, than is sometimes supposed.

Notes 1. All quotations are from Spinoza 1985, sometimes modified to incorporate corrections made in the second printing.



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2. It may be noted that the passage cited from IVP18S mentions another kind of being in addition to individual persons: the “one Mind and one Body” that all persons who strive together can compose. Certainly the advantage of this composite being will be the overriding good for that composite being, just as the advantage of an individual human being overrides the advantage of any individual bodily organ for that human being. But this does not entail that the advantage of the composite being as a whole could, in a case of conflict, override the advantage of an individual part or member for that part or member. Spinoza clearly implies the contrary when discussing the advantage of parts of the human body at IVP60,D. Steinberg (1984) argues that the relations of organs to the whole body and to each other provide a model of how human beings can be so related that the true advantage of each must always completely coincide with the advantage of mankind as a whole, and hence also with that of every other human being. Unfortunately, however, these relations cannot provide the required model. The well-​being of an organ, though intimately related to that of the body of which it is a part, does not completely coincide with it. The preservation of a particular body may require, for example, the non-​preservation of one of its organs (as in cases of surgical removal); correlatively, the preservation of a particular organ may be a long-​term harm to the body as a whole. The well-​being of an organ also does not coincide completely with the well-​being of any other individual organ—​for example, when medical treatment needed to save one organ causes the death of another. Steinberg’s conception does not explain why the advantage of an individual human being cannot similarly diverge from the advantage of another human being or from that of mankind as a whole—​particularly in such crucial cases as a forced choice between dishonesty and death. To be sure, Spinoza does hold that when human beings gain in understanding, they agree more closely in nature with one another (IVP35). And if human beings ever became exactly alike in nature, their advantages would then necessarily coincide completely (IVP31). But this ideal is only an approachable limit, not a completely attainable possibility. For as long as human beings remain finite parts of nature, they will always differ in at least some respects. Most importantly, perhaps, the specific “actual essence” of human being X will always be an endeavor to preserve the being of X, whereas the actual essence of human being Y will always be an endeavor to preserve the being of Y (IIIP7). One’s own being, though greatly aided by other human beings of similar nature, does not literally entail and is not literally entailed by the being of any or all others. Hence, one’s own good or preservation cannot be identified with the good or preservation of other persons or of mankind as a whole. 3. For a way of denying (2) based on a reading of IVDD1-​2 that I reject, however, see note 5 below. 4. Even the term’s most general and objective philosophical sense, in which it refers to a thing’s degree of reality or being, is originally due to this same false

460 Natur alistic Ethics supposition, combined with the tendency to think of all individuals in Nature as members of a single kind or genus. This is a sense that Spinoza has already employed at IP11S and IID6, and he regards his account of the “perfect man,” described below, as a special case of this philosophically useful—​though etymologically unfortunate—​meaning of the term. (See also Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​being II, 4 in Spinoza (1985)) For good discussions of Spinoza on moral language, see Curley (1973) and Bennett (1984: 289–​299). However, Curley suggests taking “perfection” to be an absolute notion and “goodness” to be a matter of approximation; he otherwise draws no distinction between them (see especially p. 359). Bennett suggests that the notion of a “model of human nature” in the Preface to Part IV is a “relic” of an earlier period of composition, and plays no role in the body of Part IV. 5. Two paradoxes similar to the original one can be generated by replacing the term ‘good’ in (1)-​(4) with ‘a dictate of reason’ and ‘a virtue,’ respectively. Since Spinoza equates “the free man’s actions” with “actions done from the dictate of reason,” (IVP66S and IVP72D) and further equates the latter with “actions done from virtue,” (IVP24 and IVP72D) he cannot deny the resulting correlates of (4). Precisely because of their equivalence to the actions of the ideal free man, however, the requirements of virtue and reason cannot, in his view, exhaust the good or the self-​preserving for finite human beings. Thus, he would reject the resulting correlates of (2). So, for example, where preserving one’s own being requires deception, doing so will be neither a dictate of reason nor a virtue—​ though it is a personal good. (For what may be a weaker use of ‘reason,’ according to which reason “teaches” whatever is advantageous under the circumstances, see TP II, 17.) It should also be noted that one might insist on treating the first person plural as essential to Spinoza’s definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ On this interpretation, the “good” would be only that which we know to be useful to all of us. If a case should then arise in which the preservation of one’s own being would conflict with the welfare of others, there would simply be no “good” thing to do. Although the text does not completely rule out this reading of his definitions, I do not believe that he intends it. However, if we do read the definitions in this way, then Spinoza must accept (4) but deny (2). For the “good” would then be restricted to that which reason could counsel all men jointly, so that good would become co-​extensive with the perfect—​at the expense of losing some of its connection to the preservation of one’s own being. 6. Bennett (1984), 317, rightly suggests that we “might see the concept of the ‘free man’ as a theoretically convenient limiting case, like the concept of an ‘ideal gas.’ ” 7. Although Spinoza also writes of “praise” (laus) and “blame” (vituperium), these are defined (IIIP29S) as “the Joy with which we imagine the action of another by which he has striven to please us,” and as “the Sadness with which we are averse



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to his action,” respectively. Favor and indignation are thus both more general in their scope and less tied to the imagination.

Bibliography Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics.” Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing. Curley, Edwin. 1973. “Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy,” in Spinoza:  A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Marjorie Grene. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday/​Anchor. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, volume 1, edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Steinberg, Diane. 1984. “Spinoza’s Ethical Doctrine,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 22: 303–​324.

17

Spinoza’s Ethical Theory So the Philosophers . . . follow virtue not as a law, but from love, because it is the best thing. (Ep 19)

Spinoza is in many ways—​and as many have observed—​a philosopher in the Cartesian tradition. His first published work was an elucidation of Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy, and Descartes is the only philosopher named and discussed in the Ethics. Some of his most fundamental metaphysical and epistemological doctrines are Cartesian, while many others appear to result from reflection on various difficulties in Descartes’s position. His physics, too, is largely Cartesian.1 Despite this unmistakable influence, however, Spinoza’s guiding intellectual purpose was quite different from Descartes’s. Descartes sought primarily to improve the sciences—​for himself and for others—​by providing a better foundation for them. He justified this endeavor ultimately on the grounds that it would bring human beings greater mastery over nature. Spinoza, in contrast, sought primarily to improve the character of human beings—​both himself and others—​by improving their self-​understanding. He justified this endeavor ultimately on the grounds that it would bring human beings peace of mind as integral aspects of nature. While Spinoza’s metaphysics, epistemology, and physics are in many ways Cartesian, his ethical purposes are in many ways Hobbesian. Like Hobbes, he conceives of human beings as mechanisms in nature that are motivated by self-​ preservation and individual advantage, and who, by the mutual employment of reason, can improve their way of life. Hobbes’s aim, however, is to show human beings how best to satisfy their desires by instituting mutually useful political and social constraints on their passions, and so to maximize their chances for a relatively long and pleasant life. Spinoza’s aim, while encompassing Hobbes’s, is much more ambitious: It is to show human beings how to achieve a mode of life that largely transcends merely transitory desires and which has as its natural



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consequences autonomous control over the passions and participation in an eternal blessedness.2 Ethics, for Spinoza, is knowledge of “the right way of living.”3 The centrality of ethics to his philosophical project is unmistakable in the title of his most systematic presentation of his philosophy: Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata). The Ethics seeks to demonstrate a broad range of metaphysical, theological, epistemological, and psychological doctrines. Most of these doctrines, however, either constitute, support, or elucidate the premises for his ethical conclusions. Moreover, Spinoza’s choices concerning which metaphysical, theological, epistemological, and psychological doctrines to emphasize and develop are largely determined by their usefulness in supporting his ethical conclusions. Because Spinoza wrote the Ethics in what he called “geometrical order”—​ which Descartes called the “synthetic” method of demonstration4—​the work itself contains relatively little explicit discussion of his purpose in writing. However, the opening lines of his earlier (and unfinished) Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect—​ written in what Descartes called the “analytic” method of demonstration5—​emphasize the personal and ethical character of his philosophical project: After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as my mind was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself, and which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected—​whether there was something which, once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy, to eternity. (TdlE 1)6 As its title implies, this early work seeks to develop a method for improving the intellect. That method involves finding remedies against three epistemological hindrances—​fiction, falsity, and doubt which the intellect must learn to distinguish from true ideas. As the initial paragraphs of the work make clear, however, Spinoza seeks improvement of the intellect (and, specifically, his own intellect) not merely as a theoretical exercise, but chiefly as a remedy against three ethical hindrances—​the overvaluings of wealth, fame, and sensual pleasure—​and as an instrument for distinguishing, appreciating, and achieving the one true and eternal practical good. On the whole, twentieth-​century interest in Spinoza’s writings focused—​in contrast with Spinoza’s own priorities—​more on his metaphysics and epistemology (especially in the English-​speaking world) and on his social and political

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theory (especially on the European continent) than it has on his ethical theory proper.7 It is not, of course, uncommon for a later generation of readers to neglect an aspect of a philosopher’s work that the philosopher valued most highly. Nevertheless, Spinoza’s ethical theory is innovative, systematic, and important. It is, in fact, despite the brevity of its presentation, one of the most important ethical theories of the modern era. I will begin by providing an outline of Spinoza’s ethical theory as he himself presents it in the Ethics. I will then draw on this outline to explore in somewhat greater detail his contributions to a half-​dozen central topics of ethics on which his views are often neglected and easily misunderstood. These topics are: (i) the meaning of ethical language; (ii) the nature of the good; (iii) the practicality of reason; (iv) the role of virtue; (v) the requirements for freedom and moral responsibility; and (vi) the possibility and moral significance of altruism. I will conclude by briefly characterizing his ethical theory within the history of ethical theory generally, and assessing its significance.

1.  An Outline of Spinoza’s Ethical Theory Spinoza touches on ethical topics in several of his works, as well as in his correspondence. Part 2 of the early Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being takes up the topics of good and evil, blessedness, and freedom, as well as discussing various affects. The Theological-​Political Treatise naturally bears on matters of ethics in the political context. By far Spinoza’s fullest, most systematic, and most mature discussion of ethical theory, however, is contained in Part  4 (“Of Human Bondage”) and Part 5 (“Of the Power of the Intellect or On Human Freedom”) of his Ethics, which I therefore follow.

The natural foundations of ethical theory In Parts 4 and 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza seeks to derive his ethical theory from an understanding of Nature in general, and of human psychological nature in particular, that he has already developed in Parts 1–​3. One measure of this dependence is the fact that, although Part  4 begins with eight new definitions, it adds only a single new axiom—​an axiom, moreover, that is not distinctively ethical. (The axiom states: “There is no singular thing in nature than which there is not another more powerful and stronger.”) Part 5 introduces two additional axioms; but again neither is distinctively ethical, and indeed Spinoza describes the second (despite its official status as an underived axiom) as “evident from” Ethics 3P7.8 One central feature of nature, for the purposes of Spinoza’s ethical theory, is of course the substance/​mode relationship between God and individual things



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that is implied by the monism of 1p15: “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.” Human beings stand, for Spinoza, in an intimate relationship both to God-​or-​Nature (Deus sive Natura) and to other things within Nature, from which they are not “really distinct” in the Cartesian sense.9 This implies, on the one hand, that human beings cannot act independently of, or separately from, God’s own activity, and that every human action must be conceived as a manifestation of nature; but it also implies, on the other hand, that there is a prospect for a kind of direct participation in the divine (see E 4p45C2s). Equally important is his necessitarianism, expressed in 1P29 (“In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way”; see also 1p16 and 1p33,d).10 This doctrine rules out the possibility of what Spinoza calls “free will” (i.e., freedom understood as the absence of causal determination of the will), helps to determine the character and structure of knowledge (in which 3PP26–​28 locate our true good),11 and provides prospects for consolation in misfortune (E 4ap32; cf. also E 5p6). Spinoza’s doctrine of the identity between modes of extension and their corresponding modes of thought (E 2p7s) entails the identity of the human mind with the human body, and the identity of both cognitions and “affects” (i.e., emotions) with bodily modifications or occurrences. It thereby extends the scope of ethics, as a doctrine about the right way of living, to both the mental and the physical, and proscribes any construal of ethics as involving fundamental conflict between the mind and the body. The distinction between intellect and imagination, and the doctrine of the three kinds of knowledge (experientia vaga, ratio, and scientia intuitiva; E 2p40s), define more specifically the cognitive categories on which his ethical theory rests and in terms of which it is formulated. The single most essential underpinning of Spinoza’s ethics, however, is clearly the conatus doctrine of 3p6, the doctrine that “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its existence,”12 from which he derives the closely related 3P7: “The striving (conatus) by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” These propositions constitute (among other things) an innovative solution to a problem that his substance monism raises concerning metaphysical individuation. For Spinoza, individual things in nature cannot be individuated from one another by a difference of substance, because there is only one substance. Individuals emerge instead only as finite approximations to substance: specifically, as finite natures that, within the attribute of extension, are distinguished from one another by the tendency of their essential “fixed proportions of motion and rest” to persist (and, within the attribute of thought, by the tendency of ideas of such extended individuals to persist). The tendency towards self-​preservation (perseverance in being) thus becomes, a priori,

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an essential and defining feature of the natures of all individual things, including all human beings.13 Because a thing is truly active only to the extent that it is an adequate cause through its own nature (E 3d1) and passive to the extent that it is only an inadequate cause through its own nature, and because each individual thing’s nature is simply to endeavor to preserve itself as a persistent pattern, it follows that a thing’s activity, however much or little it may have, always involves an effort at its own self-​preservation. Desire (cupiditas) is this striving or conatus, as it involves both mind and body, together with consciousness of it (E 3p9s), especially as it is directed toward particular objects. Joy (laetitia) and sadness (tristitia) are defined as the increase and decrease, respectively, in perfection, or capacity for being active (E 3p11s). Hence, desire, joy, and sadness—​together with the affects defined in terms of them—​play central roles in Spinozistic ethics. It is, in fact, largely the human capacity for so many varieties of desire, joy, and sadness (described throughout Ethics Part 3) that makes human ethics, for Spinoza, such a potentially rich and complex domain. Much of his ethics consists in his assessment, from an ethical perspective, of the various human psychological phenomena whose nature and causes he has already deduced, in Part 3, from this metaphysical basis.14 He concludes Part 3, and signals the transition to a discussion of ethics proper, by designating the source of genuine human activity (as distinguished from passion-​driven behavior) as strength of character (fortitudo). He then distinguishes two aspects of strength of character: tenacity (animositas), which is “the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to preserve his being”; and nobility (generositas), which is “the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to aid other men and join them to him in friendship” (E 3P59s).

Definitions of ethical terms Spinoza begins the preface to Ethics Part  4 by defining the term “bondage” as “man’s lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects.” He then sets out two aims for Part  4 itself:  first, to demonstrate the causes of bondage; and second, to demonstrate “what there is of good and evil in the affects.” The first aim corresponds to Ethics 4pp1–​18. The second corresponds to Ethics 4PP19–​73, plus the appendix to Part 4. Before pursuing these aims, however, Spinoza devotes the remainder of the preface to an account of two pairs of evaluative terms: “perfect” and “imperfect,” “good” and “evil.” The Latin meanings of “perfect” (“perfectus”) include “accomplished” or “finished.” Thus, he explains, something was said, in common usage, to be perfect when the speaker believed that the thing had been completed in accordance with the purpose of its creator. But human beings mistakenly suppose



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that Nature seeks to produce natural things in accordance with archetypes or forms corresponding to the ideas of imagination that human beings form as models or “universals” (see E 2p40s1). They have therefore accustomed themselves to apply the terms “perfect” and “imperfect” to natural things as well, depending on whether the things in question did or did not conform to their own imaginative models. In addition, because many have supposed that there is a highest genus or universal, that of “being” in general, the term “perfect” has also come to be used as a technical philosophical term for describing a thing’s degree of reality (as, indeed, Spinoza himself has already done in 2d6). Spinoza has already asserted that “good” and “evil” are applied to things in accordance with whether the things happen to affect us with desire or aversion, respectively. We do not desire things because they are “good,” or avoid them because they are “evil,” as those terms are generally used; rather, we call things “good” simply because we desire them, and “evil” because we are averse to them (E 3P9s). Here he adds that, at least in common usage, the same thing can be “good” for one individual, “evil” for a second, and indifferent for a third. Thus, these four terms in their common usage “indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves”; they “arise because we compare things to one another,” and they indicate rather our own personal and idiosyncratic modes of thinking (vague imaginative universal models, and personal desires and aversions, respectively). Instead of rejecting these terms outright, however, Spinoza retains them and refines their usage. He does so because he holds that it is advantageous to have a particular “model of human nature we set before ourselves.” Hence, he proposes definitions of “perfect” and “imperfect,” “good” and “evil,” in terms of relations to that model. The “good,” according to these definitions, is “what we know is certainly a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model,” and “evil” the opposite; while “men are more perfect or imperfect, insofar as they approach more or less near to this model” (E 4pr). In the formal definitions at the beginning of Part 4 proper, Spinoza reaffirms these definitions of “good” and “evil”; however he does so without explicit reference to the “model of human nature we set before ourselves,” referring instead simply to what is useful to us: D1:  By good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us. D2: By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good.15 These reformulations thus embody the assumption that what makes something useful “to us” is its capacity to enable us to approximate the model of human nature that Spinoza sets before us, and vice versa. Of the remaining six formal definitions of Part 4, only one employs ethical language.16 This is 4d8, in which Spinoza sets out his definition of “virtue”:

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D8:  By virtue and power I  understand the same thing, i.e., (by 3P7), virtue, insofar as it is related to man, is the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of bringing about certain things, which can be understood through the laws of his nature alone.

Bondage and its causes In explaining “the causes of man’s lack of power and inconstancy, and why men do not observe the precepts of reason” (E 4p18s), Spinoza emphasizes that human beings, as finite parts of nature, have a limited amount of power and are always subject to external forces, which may be more powerful than their own natures. These forces may prevent human beings from achieving or acquiring what is most advantageous to them. In particular, these forces can induce passions—​that is, affects of which the individual alone is not the adequate cause and which, therefore, may or may not be conducive to the individual’s well-​being. Among the harmful affects, some are affects of sadness, which decrease the individual’s capacity for action; some are affects of joy that increase the individual’s capacity for action in one respect but only at the expense of rendering the individual less fit for other kinds of actions (e.g., by increasing the power of one part of the body at the expense of others, or by rendering the individual incapable of perceiving or thinking of other things); and some are desires which misdirect the individual’s endeavor for self-​preservation onto the pursuit of objects that are not truly or entirely advantageous. Because they arise from external causes, passions may prevent human beings from appreciating where their own true good or advantage lies. However, passions can also prevent human beings from pursuing their advantage even when they do understand it; as Spinoza remarks (quoting Ovid), we sometimes “see and approve the better, but follow the worse” (E 4p17s). He must therefore explain how this phenomenon can be reconciled with his doctrine that human beings necessarily seek their own advantage as far as they can. He does so by citing features of affects that contribute to their motivational strength or weakness. Every affect is also at the same time an idea (i.e., a representation) of a state of the individual’s body, and (indirectly) of external bodies that have contributed to producing that state. However, the motivational force of an affect is not directly a function of its truth or falsity as an idea, but rather of its strength as an affect. The constraint or removal of affects—​including harmful ones—​therefore depends on the occurrence of opposite and stronger affects (E 4P7). An affect is more powerful if we imagine its cause to be present rather than past or future (E 4p9); more powerful if we imagine its object as being in the near, rather than the distant, future or past (E 4p10); more powerful if we imagine its object as free rather than necessary (E 3p49d); more powerful if we imagine its cause



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as necessary rather than possible (E 3p11); and more powerful if we imagine its object as possible rather than merely contingent (E 4p12; for the distinction between the contingent and the possible, see note 16). But “knowledge of good and evil” is simply the cognition that something affects us with joy or sadness, respectively (E 4p8). Therefore, an affect which is a passion (a desire, for example) can, in virtue of the ways in which it represents its object in the imagination, be stronger than another affect that constitutes knowledge of good or evil. Hence, the affect can overwhelm us into taking an acknowledged lesser good over an acknowledged, but less motivationally effective, greater good. In doing so, we find ourselves driven by passions to “act” (or better, to behave, because “passion” and “action” are opposites) against our own acknowledged best interests, interests that we thereby lack sufficient power of action to pursue.

The prescriptions of reason The remainder of Part  4 (E 4P18–​73 and E 4ap) is devoted to the second aim Spinoza sets out in the Preface—​specifically, to show “what reason prescribes to us, which affects agree with the rules of human reason, and which, on the other hand, are contrary to those rules” (E 4p18s). He indicates in advance the general character of reason’s prescription: Since reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it demands that everyone love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really useful to him, want what will really lead man to a greater perfection, and absolutely, that everyone should strive to preserve his own being as far as he can. This, indeed, is as necessarily true as that the whole is greater than its part. (E 4p18s) Spinoza proceeds in several distinct stages. The seven propositions of 4PP19–​ 25 concern the relation between virtue (as already defined at 4d8) and conatus—​that is, the endeavor at self-​preservation that he has attributed, at 3p7, to all individuals as the very essence of their individual existence. Because conatus constitutes the actual essence of each individual, it defines the power and activity of the thing’s own nature. It follows for Spinoza that a human being’s power, and hence virtue, is simply the capacity to strive for and achieve one’s own advantage, conceived as self-​preservation: “The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, i.e., to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue; conversely, insofar as each one neglects his own advantage, i.e., neglects to preserve his being, he lacks power” (E 4P20). Comparison of this account of virtue with 4p18s shows that “acting from virtue” and “acting under the guidance of reason” are equivalent, as Spinoza himself notes at 4P24.

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The three propositions of 4PP26–​28 concern the intimate relationship between virtue and understanding, and lead to the conclusion that “knowledge of God is the Mind’s greatest good; its greatest virtue is to know God” (E 4p28). The mind’s highest good is knowledge, according to Spinoza, because the mind’s own good must be understood as that which it actively strives for through its own nature—​that is, what it tends to produce or acquire insofar as it is genuinely active. But it is genuinely active only insofar as it is an adequate cause of its thoughts, and it is the adequate cause of its thoughts only when it is deriving adequate knowl­ edge from other adequate knowledge through its own rational power. Since the highest object of knowledge is the absolutely infinite being, God, through which everything else must be understood (E 1p15), it follows that knowledge of God is the mind’s highest good and that to know God is its highest virtue. Ethics 4PP29–​36 concern relations among human beings and the preconditions for sustained, mutually beneficial cooperation. Spinoza holds, as a general metaphysical thesis, that whenever two things “agree in nature” they will, to that extent, be mutually beneficial, since the nature that each strives to benefit is the same (E 4P31). Human beings necessarily “agree in nature” to the extent that they are guided by reason (E 4P35). For human reason, as reason, is the same in all, and aims at the same thing—​namely, knowledge or understanding. Understanding, moreover, is a good that can be shared by all without diminishing anyone’s enjoyment of it (E 4P36). In fact, Spinoza holds, nothing is more useful to a human being than another human being who is guided by reason (E 4P35C1). Hence, individuals who are virtuous, or guided by reason, will all seek, from their own self-​interest, the same goods for others that they seek for themselves (E 4P37). Indeed to the extent that a community of human beings is guided by reason, its members can “compose, as it were, one Mind and one Body” (E 4p18s)—​that is, a complex individual, composed of like-​minded human beings, that has its own endeavor for self-​preservation. In contrast, to the extent that human beings are not guided by reason, but are instead subject to passions, they are contrary in nature, and liable to come into conflict with one another (E 4P32). This is so even when the passions themselves seem similar (i.e., passionate love for the same person, prize, or reputation), since being subject to passions is a negation of power, rather than a positive source of agreement in nature (E 4P32). Moreover, individuals subject to such passions come into conflict not through their similarity, but through their difference. For example, they will not passionately desire the same apparent goods for others that they desire for themselves; rather, they will differ in each desiring a different disposition of those “goods” (namely, to themselves exclusively; see 4P33S for a slightly different example).17 Ethics 4pp38–​66 move from the general to the specific, indicating which things, affects, and behaviors are truly good, virtuous, or in accordance with



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reason, and which are not. Among things, the good include those that are conducive to preserving the proportion of motion and rest that constitutes the nature of the human body, and thereby serve to keep it alive (E 4P39); those that so dispose the human body that it can either be affected by many things (so that its mind can perceive many things), or affect many other things (E 4P38); and those that enable human beings to live harmoniously together (E 4P40). Among the affects, cheerfulness—​which is the kind of joy in which all parts of the body are equally affected—​is always good (E 4P42). More generally, all joy, as such, is good, and all sadness evil (E 4P41). However, pleasure (in contrast to cheerfulness) is joy in which one or several parts of the body are affected more than others; hence, it can be excessive when it prevents us from being affected in other advantageous ways (E 4P43), as also can desire and love (E 4P44). Pain, though directly evil, can be indirectly good when it restrains excessive pleasure (E 4P41). Favor (i.e., love toward one who has benefited another [E 4P51]), self-​ esteem (E 4P52), and love of esteem (E 4P58) can, when based on adequate ideas, be in accordance with reason. Hate can never be good (E 4P45), however, and the envy, mockery, disdain, anger, and vengeance that result from hate are all evil (E 4p45c1), as are overestimation and scorn (E 4P48). Indignation, pity, humility, and repentance—​sometimes regarded as virtues, but all species of sadness—​cannot arise from reason, and are not genuine virtues (E 4pp50,51,53,54). Among behaviors, seeking to repay hate, anger, or disdain with love and nobility is in accordance with reason (E 4P46), as is the policy of “following the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils” (E 4p65), even when the greater good or lesser evil is in the more distant future. More generally, any behavior leading to harmless pleasure is good: Nothing forbids our pleasure except a savage and sad superstition. . . . To use things, therefore, and take pleasure in them as far as possible—​not, of course, to the point where we are disgusted with them, for there is no pleasure in that—​this is the part of a wise man. It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. (E 4P45c2s). Ethics 4PP67–​73 conclude the main body of Part 4 by providing a description of the ideal “free man,” who, it is clear, constitutes Spinoza’s promised “model of human nature we set before ourselves.” “Free” has already been defined, at 1d7, as follows: “That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone.” Although only God is completely free in this sense, human beings can have degrees of freedom, corresponding to the degrees to which they are the

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adequate causes of their own actions. The free man directly pursues the good more than he seeks to avoid evil, so he “thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death” (E 4p67). The free man, if born free “would form no concept of good and evil” so long as he remained free (E4p68). The free man exhibits freedom by avoiding dangers as well as by overcoming them (E 4P69); seeks to avoid the favors of the ignorant (E 4P70); is most thankful to other free men (E 4P71); always acts honestly, not deceptively (E 4P72; but see Section 2 below); and is more free in a political state, where he can live in community with others in accordance with a common law, than in a condition of solitude (E 4P73). In the thirty-​two articles of the appendix to Part 4, Spinoza summarizes his ethical doctrines, discusses additional affects, and takes the opportunity to add a number of practical maxims concerning money, marriage, and other matters.

The way to freedom If human beings are often in bondage to their passions, still they sometimes achieve a degree of freedom over them. Whereas the initial propositions of Part 4 set out the causes of human weakness, the initial propositions of Part 5 (E 5pp1–​20) set out “the means, or way, leading to freedom.” However, unlike Descartes—​who sought to describe the mind’s ability to restructure the nature of its command over the body through the interaction of mind and body at the pineal gland—​Spinoza seeks to describe the various respects in which the human mind’s own cognitive capacity to achieve adequate knowledge naturally gives it a certain degree of power over its own affects. Spinoza summarizes these means in 5p20s. The first means to freedom lies “in the knowledge itself of the affects.” To the extent that we understand a passion (which, as a passion, is a confused idea of a state of the body), our perception of it becomes adequate, and so we are no longer passive, but active; hence, the continuing affect ceases, to that extent, to be a passion (E 5P3). Furthermore, since all states of the body involve some common or pervasive features of extension that are equally in the part and in the whole (E 2P40S2), reason can form at least some adequate ideas of any state of the body, including any affect (E 5P4). In understanding the passions as bodily states of particular kinds, we gain some ability to control them and moderate them through knowledge of their nature. The second means lies “in the fact that it [the mind] separates the affects from the thought of an external cause, which we imagine confusedly.” Love and hate are forms of joy and sadness, respectively, that are combined with the idea of an external cause as their objects. When we undergo passionate love or hate, the intensity of the passion felt toward the object of the love or hate is decreased when we understand how limited the active causal agency of that object is (E 5P3). If, for



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example, we understand that a destructive love for a particular individual depends largely on accidental psychological associations, or that a person who has harmed us did so only because of his or her own passions and lack of power, our own passionate love or passionate hate will be diminished.18 Furthermore, to the extent that we understand the cause’s effect on us as a necessary activity of God, we will rejoice in our new understanding—​which, like all understanding, increases our power of thinking (E 4p15). The third means lies “in the time by which the affections related to things we understand surpass those related to things we conceive confusedly, or in a mutilated way.” Affects which arise from reason (and hence are not themselves passions) are derived from an adequate understanding of the “common properties” of things (E 2P40S2). Because these properties are equally in the part and in the whole of everything, nothing we imagine can exclude the existence of these properties, and hence the affects which arise from an understanding of them are, in the long run, more persistent and permanent. Ultimately, therefore, any affects that are contrary to them will tend either to be destroyed or to become accommodated to them (E 5P7). The fourth means lies “in the multiplicity of causes by which affections related to common properties or to God are encouraged.” Because affects resulting from reason are related to the common properties of all things, they are produced by a greater number of things; but an affect is stronger, Spinoza holds, when more things cause it (E 5p9). Furthermore, the more things cause it, the more frequently it will be produced (E 5p11). The fifth means lies “in the order by which the Mind can order its affects and connect them to one another.” When the mind is not being buffeted by contrary affects, it can understand its own psychology, and from this understanding it can form maxims concerning the best way of living. It can associate these maxims in the imagination with the common circumstances of life to which they are applicable, so that the maxims, and the ethical understanding and active desires that they represent, will come to mind when they are most needed. Although Descartes describes a similar remedy in his Passions of the Soul 1.50 (Descartes 1985: 1,348), Spinoza’s version of this method separates it from both the mind–​body dualism and the theory of free will with which Descartes connects it. A sixth respect in which Spinoza holds that reason has power over the affects is inexplicably omitted from his summary at 5p20s.19 This is the power the mind acquires over the affects when it understands all things—​and especially singular things—​as necessary. For according to Spinoza, affects are greatest towards a thing that we imagine as free by imagining it “while we are ignorant of the causes by which it has been determined to act” (5p5, derived from 3P49). Understanding a thing—​and, in particular, an evil or disappointing thing—​as necessitated and inevitable, decreases the power of the affects associated with it. This is a point for

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which, he thinks, “experience itself also testifies.” Thus, necessitarianism is not only true; it has positive psychological value as well. Not all of the “means” that Spinoza lists at 5p20s are therapeutic techniques that one could consciously adopt in order to increase one’s freedom and power over the passions—​nor are they intended to be.20 Indeed, it is arguable that only the fifth directly describes anything like a technique. The first and second (like the unlisted sixth remedy) do perhaps suggest the value of regularly undertaking specific lines of thought about affects, but it is hard to see the third and fourth as doing even this. Spinoza’s goal in the first half of Part 5, however, is not primarily to describe techniques that could be consciously undertaken as exercises, but rather to list the most important respects in which having adequate knowl­ edge tends to produce a lessened susceptibility to passions over the long run. He believes he has already shown, in Part 4, the value of such a lessened susceptibility to the passions. His authorial purpose in 5pp1–​20 is to strengthen the desire of his readers—​a desire that is of course already present with some degree of strength in all human beings—​to achieve more adequate understanding. He seeks to achieve this authorial purpose by showing that adequate knowledge has the power to produce, over time, the very lessening of susceptibility to passion that he has already shown to be desirable.21

Intellectual love of God and blessedness Spinoza strikingly concludes 5p20s: “With this I have completed everything which concerns this present life. . . . So it is time now to pass to those things which pertain to the mind’s duration without relation to the body.”22 The remainder of Part 5 of the Ethics accordingly deals with the eternal part of the mind, and with the intellectual love of God and blessedness in which the mind can participate. The eternality of the mind in Spinoza is a topic that defies easy categorization. It is at once metaphysical (because concerned with the relations between existence and essence, duration and the eternal), epistemological (because concerned with the character of the second and, especially, the third kind of knowledge), theological (because concerned with the relation between God and human beings), and ethical (because concerned with blessedness, as well as with the proper attitude toward life and death).23 Briefly, Spinoza holds that there is in God an idea which “expresses” the essence (as contrasted with the actual existence) of the human body. This idea, because it expresses the essence of the human body, pertains to the essence (as opposed to the actual durational existence) of the human mind.24 It consists entirely of adequate knowledge which, as adequate knowledge, is eternal in God; and in acquiring adequate knowledge a human being is always acquiring knowl­ edge that expresses the essence of the human body in just this way. Thus, as



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one gains a larger share of adequate knowledge, one’s mind becomes something “whose greatest part is eternal” (E 5P39). It is not that one achieves continued personal existence after one’s biological death. There can be no personal or individual persistence, for that involves imagination (including sensory awareness) or memory (E 5p21). Instead, one brings within the scope of one’s own mind adequate knowledge which has always been and always will be eternal in God, and one thus achieves for oneself the perspective of the eternal while one is alive. In consequence, a greater part of one’s mind is composed of ideas that are impervious both to harmful affects—​including fear—​and to death itself (E 5P38). That is, the mind is less affected by fear in general, and hence by fear of death in particular; and, at the same time, death becomes less harmful and so less to be feared, because the greatest and most important part of the mind will survive (although not, of course, as the idea of the actually existing body, since that body will have perished). But this is not all. In Spinoza’s view, human minds, considered as complex ideas or representations, are parts of the “infinite intellect of God” (2p11c), which is God’s own thought insofar as it involves or is composed of ideas or representations. However, human thought has not only a representational but also an affective aspect; and this is possible only if God’s thought itself—​of which human thought is of course a mode—​also has an affective aspect. Indeed, the existence of this affective aspect is one reason why the infinite intellect of God is only an infinite mode of God, and is not the entire attribute of thought itself. To the extent that one achieves knowledge of the third (and highest) kind—​which involves understanding the essences of singular things through the attributes of God, effects through their causes (E 2P40S2)—​one possesses knowledge in something like the way that God himself does. That is, one’s knowledge is in one’s own mind in the same way that that knowledge is in God, and so one participates more completely or adequately in the infinite intellect of God. In a similar way, knowledge of the third kind involves having affects in something like the way that those affects are in God, and so enables one to participate more completely in what might be called the affective life of God. Spinoza’s God, although an infinite thinking thing, is not a person. God’s eternally supreme perfection is incompatible with desire or purpose (both of which imply some lack), with joy (which requires a transition from a lesser perfection or capacity for action), and with sadness (which requires transition to a lesser perfection or capacity for action). It follows, of course, that God does not literally love any­ thing, since love is a kind of joy (E 2p13s), implying an increase in something that God already possesses to the maximal degree. Moreover, love is joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause, whereas nothing is or can be external to God. Nevertheless, because God eternally has the greatest perfection and capacity for action, he has a kind of eternal analogue of joy, an eternal “rejoicing” that

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we experience as joy whenever we increase our participation in it. Moreover, because God is self-​caused, God’s eternal rejoicing has God himself as its true object, and so God also has an eternal—​and internal—​analogue of “love.” As we come to participate in the third kind of knowledge, we come to participate in this eternal analogue of love, which Spinoza calls “the intellectual love of God.” Insofar as we are still durational existing beings in the process of coming to acquire this affect, we will experience it as actual love. But this affect pertains to that part of our mind that is eternal; and to the extent that we are enabled to take on the eternal viewpoint that is characteristic of adequate knowledge, we can recognize this affect as itself something eternal—​not merely a transition to greater perfection, but perfection itself (E 5P33s). This affect of perfection itself—​as opposed to the transition toward it—​is what Spinoza calls “blessedness” (E 5P33s). Blessedness, when considered as having an object, is the same thing as the intellectual love of God (E 5P36s). It is, in fact, an intellectual love that is “of” God in two different senses: It has God as its loved object, but it is also God’s own love of himself, and a love in which we, through the third kind of knowl­ edge, can participate. Furthermore, we recognize that, because we are modes of God, the object of this love includes ourselves as well. Accordingly, Spinoza says that knowledge of the third kind allows us to love God with the very same love with which God “loves” himself, and the same love with which God “loves” us (E 5PP35–​36,36c). We must, therefore, distinguish two senses of the term “affect.” In the narrower sense, Spinoza’s God has no affects, because an eternal being cannot have desire, joy, or sadness. In this sense, God does not love us, nor can we can strive that God should love us (E 5p17c,19). Yet in a broader sense, Spinoza’s God has the highest kind of affect: not literal joy, but the eternal blessedness of which joy is only a temporal participation.25 Similarly, while his ideal human being in one sense acquires temporal joy, considered as a transition to greater perfection, in another sense he or she takes on a perspective in which all affects are subsumed by participation in God’s eternal blessedness, which Spinoza also calls “peace of mind.”26 Spinoza emphasizes that knowledge of the doctrine of the eternality of the mind is not required for the motivational efficacy of ethics (E 5p41), because the advantageousness of tenacity and nobility were already fully demonstrated in Part 4, independently of this doctrine. Virtue is desirable for whatever duration one has it; to insist that it has no value unless it brings immortality would be “no less absurd . . . 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” (E 5P41s).



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2.  Six Central Topics in Spinoza’s Ethical Theory The foregoing outline raises a number of important questions concerning Spinoza’s position on some of the most central topics in ethical theory. In what follows, I will try to provide answers to some of these questions.

The meaning of ethical language Spinoza claims to demonstrate ethics in geometrical order. This requires that the ethical propositions of Parts 4 and 5 be deduced, ultimately, from the axioms and definitions of his system. Yet none of his axioms, even those of Parts 4 and 5, are ethical in character. Ethics is a prescriptive discipline; yet Spinoza claims to demonstrate ethical propositions entirely from the descriptive premises provided by his axioms plus a set of mere definitions (including just three definitions of ethical terms, at 4pp1–​2,8). How can he suppose this to be possible? The answer to this question lies in his conception of the meaning of ethical terms. One of the most striking features of Spinoza’s ethical writings is his distinctive ethical vocabulary, notable for what it omits as well as for what it contains. For example, despite his reference at 4p18s to “what reason prescribes to us,” there is an almost complete absence from his writings of such terms of obligation and duty as “ought,” “must,” “should,” and “may.” The concept of permission he introduces only to indicate how much is permissible—​namely, whatever seems to be to one’s own advantage—​without indicating that anything is impermissible: It is permissible for us to avert, in the way which seems safest, whatever there is in Nature which we judge to be evil, or able to prevent us from being able to exist and enjoy a rational life. On the other hand, we may take for our own use, and use in any way, whatever there is which we judge to be good, or useful for preserving our being and enjoying a rational life. And absolutely, it is permissible for everyone to do, by the highest right of Nature, what he judges will contribute to his advantage. (E 4ap8) Similarly, his uses of the term “right” do not mention anything that is not done by right: Everyone exists by the highest right of Nature, and consequently everyone, by the highest right of Nature, does those things which follow from the necessity of his own nature. So everyone, by the highest right of Nature, judges what is good and what is evil, considers his own advantage according

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to his own temperament, avenges himself, and strives to preserve what he loves and destroy what he hates. (E 4P37S2; see also TTP xvi.4)27 He defines the terms “sin” and “merit,” “just” and “unjust,” only in political or legal, not ethical, senses: Sin is disobedience to the State, and merit is obedience to it; justice is rendering to each what is judged to be his by the decision of the State, and injustice the opposite (E 4P37S2). These terms receive no ethical use in the Ethics, and they are applied to ethical questions in his other writings only in connection with the imaginative idea that God is himself a law-​giver. The ethical propositions of the Ethics themselves do not command, exhort, or entreat the reader. Rather, they evaluate, using four primary terms of positive ethical evaluation: “good,” “virtue,” “guided by reason,” and “free man.” As Spinoza uses these terms, each is, or can be, defined naturalistically—​that is, in natural, descriptive, nonethical terms. He defines “good,” as we have seen, as whatever is useful or advantageous (E 4d1), which in turn he defines as that which is conducive to self-​preservation (E 4p8d). “Virtue” he defines as (a human being’s) power (E 4d8). “The guidance of reason” is definable as the motivational force of the mind’s inferential faculty. “Free” is defined as being the adequate (i.e., complete) cause of one’s behavior, through one’s own nature (E 1d8). Accordingly, ethical propositions can report straightforward natural truths, and the subject matter of ethical propositions is not radically distinct from the study of nature. Rather, ethics is simply that particularly useful branch of the study of nature which compares ways of living in respect of goodness, virtue, reason, and freedom. Its usefulness as a branch of study consists in its ability to aid human beings in pursuing a way of life that will truly suit their purposes. From the attention that they receive in the preface to Part 4, one might have expected Spinoza’s primary terms of ethical evaluation to be “good,” and “evil,” “perfect,” and “imperfect.” “Good” and “evil” are, of course, frequently recurring terms in Parts 4 and 5 of the Ethics; but “perfect” and “imperfect” are not.28 Why not? One possible reason for this neglect of the latter pair is that he has already defined “perfection” nonethically, at 2d6, as a synonym for “reality,” and used it in that sense throughout the earlier parts of the Ethics. Another likely reason, however, is that ethical perfection, as defined in the preface to Part 4, is merely formal: Although it is defined in terms of approximation to a model of human nature that we are to set before ourselves, the definition itself does not specify what that model is. The specific character of the model is spelled out in Spinoza’s subsequent descriptions of “virtue” (defined at 4d8), of “the guidance of reason” (introduced at 4p18s), and, especially, of the “free man” (introduced at 4p66s); these more specific notions supplant the place-​holder concept of “perfection.” In characterizing Spinoza’s view of the meaning of ethical language, it is important to distinguish between the common usage of ethical terms and the



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philosophical extensions that he proposes. His remark at 3P9S that we call things “good” because we desire them, and not vice versa, suggests what would now be called “emotivism” about the common usage of “good” and “evil”—​that is, the view that applications of these terms are neither true nor false, but rather are primarily expressions of desire, rather than, for example, descriptions of desires, or statements concerning objective features of the objects evaluated. Other remarks (E 1ap, E 4pr), however, suggest that he thinks the common usage of these terms may also involve a misconstrual of states of desire and aversion as expressing or representing intrinsic states of the objects desired. His remarks about the common usage of the terms “perfect” and “imperfect” also suggest that their application embodies a mistake. That is, uses of these latter terms typically assert (though perhaps only vaguely, at this point in their evolution) the existence of a correspondence or noncorrespondence between the thing evaluated and the purposes of Nature, with imaginative models serving as the criteria for judging this relation. Since Nature in fact has no purposes, all such evaluations are false. (A similar claim would apply to ethical uses of such legalistic terminology as “just” and “unjust,” “sin” and “merit,” because ethical evaluations in these terms assert relations between human actions and the commands of a divine law-​giver. Since God does not literally give commands or laws, we may suppose that all such evaluations are also literally false.29) It is, evidently, only ethical evaluations understood in their naturalistic Spinozistic senses that are clearly true. What, then, are the relations among Spinoza’s terms of positive ethical evaluation? At least three of them (or their grammatical variants) prove to be coextensive in their application to action or behavior. As already noted, he identifies acting from virtue with acting from the guidance of reason (E 4P24, E 4P37S1). At 4p66s, he also identifies being “led [i.e., guided] by reason” with being “a free man.”30 Whoever acts under the guidance of reason also acts from his own power to preserve himself, and vice versa; and whoever acts from power to preserve himself is to that extent the adequate cause of his own actions, and so is free. This coextensivity suggests that Spinoza’s choice of which evaluative term to use in a given context may be largely arbitrary. And indeed, to a large extent he does simply alternate the cognitive-​advisory language of “guiding reason” with the character-​centered language of “virtues,” and also with the consequentialist language of “good and evil”—​as if to imply that at least many of his ethical doctrines can be expressed equally well in any of these terms. As he does also in his metaphysics, he takes some pains to show that his system accommodates many of the formulae of his disparate predecessors, once those formulae are properly interpreted with Spinozistic definitions. It is notable, however, that Spinoza saves his discussion of the free man for the conclusion of Part 4, and notable too that the propositions composing it are concerned primarily with evaluating ways of behaving. This contrasts with the

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immediately preceding propositions of Part  4, which are primarily (though not exclusively) concerned with evaluating affects, features of character, and external objects. This way of concluding Part  4 anticipates the fifth of the five “means leading to freedom” that he summarizes at 5P20—​that is, the technique of using one’s understanding to produce ethical maxims, which one can then associate in the imagination with the circumstances in which they are needed. His discussion of the “free man” is concerned chiefly with maxims of action, and his expression of these maxims in terms of the actions of “the free man” is evidently calculated to appeal to, or exploit, the imagination. For unlike doctrines about virtue and reason, the description of the free man allows us to imagine, not merely faculties or states of power, but the behavior of a complete ideal human being, whom we may then seek to emulate. In the language of the preface to Ethics Part 4, it provides us with “an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to.” The vindication of his claim in the preface to Ethics Part 4 that it is actually useful to have such a model must be found precisely in his later doctrine that an imaginative association of maxims of conduct with appropriate circumstances constitutes one of the means to freedom. Yet the idea of a perfectly free human being is, taken literally, inconsistent. For to be completely free, one must act from the necessity of one’s nature alone, uninfluenced by external forces (E 1d7). But this cannot be entirely achieved by any human being, because: “It is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his own nature alone, of which he is the adequate cause” (E 4P4). Since the very hypothesis that someone is a (completely) free man is inconsistent, it is possible to derive directly contradictory conclusions about the conduct of such a person. To take only one of many possible examples, 4p69 states that “the virtue of a free man is seen to be as great in avoiding dangers as in overcoming them.” Yet nothing can harm itself through its own nature alone (E 3p5), and a completely free man could not be affected—​and a fortiori could not be harmed—​by any external cause. It follows that nothing is dangerous to a free man, and hence also that he can neither avoid nor overcome any dangers, contrary to 4p69. Nonetheless, Spinoza believes that sober, literal truths can be expressed in terms of idealizations—​as he explains in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect in connection with the example of a “candle burning  .  .  .  where there are no bodies [i.e., in a vacuum].”31 The literal truth expressed in the idealizing portrait of the free man is that certain kinds of behavior become more prevalent as one becomes more free—​that is, they vary proportionately with freedom. They do so because they are products of human virtue and the use of reason, each of which renders us relatively more free, more able to act from our own nature rather than be determined by external causes.32 To use one of Spinoza’s most common



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expressions, the description of the free man is to be understood as a description of the condition and behavior human beings approach “insofar as” they are free.

The nature of the good What is the nature of the good, in Spinoza’s view? On the one hand, it seems to follow directly from his definition of the good (i.e., the advantageous) as what is conducive to perseverance in being that death is the greatest evil, and that whatever contributes to continued life is the good. This construal of the good is supported by 4P39, which holds that whatever is conducive to continued life is good. (See also 4p22c, which holds that self-​preservation is the “first and only foundation of virtue.”) Yet as we have seen, he also argues at 4PP26–​28 that the mind’s true good is understanding, or adequate knowledge, itself. R. J. Delahunty expresses the resulting apparent conflict well: The kind of power we must be after if we want to stay alive in a hostile world does not seem to be the power which consists in, or follows from, an enlarged understanding. A cool, controlling type of man, or a man who bows before every change in the wind, has at least as good a chance of survival as a dedicated thinker or scientist: who would reckon the odds on Spinoza to be better than those, say, on Cromwell? It is not so much that Spinoza goes wrong in saying that we must pursue more and more power in order to survive, as that he misdescribes the sort of power we must have more and more of. (Delahunty 1985: 227) While knowledge is often an aid to continuing one’s life, inadequate knowledge of the first kind is very often as advantageous, or more advantageous, for this purpose than most adequate knowledge of the second and third kinds. Adequate knowledge is not entirely correlated with long life. Spinoza himself, after all, lived only to the age of forty-​four. This conflict can be resolved only if understanding can itself constitute or guarantee a kind of perseverance in being. Spinoza’s doctrine of the eternality of part of the human mind, however, provides him with just such a resolution. That doctrine is not, therefore, a mere failure of naturalistic resolve on Spinoza’s part, and it is more than simply an indication of his ability to suit the language of religious aspiration to his own metaphysics. Rather, it is logically required to reconcile his twin conceptions of the good as perseverance in being and as adequate knowl­ edge, respectively. Gaining adequate knowledge, according to this doctrine, does more than merely provide one with more cognitive resources for preserving one’s life, while increasing the activity and perfection of the life that one leads. It also makes a greater part of the mind eternal, and so ensures that a larger part of

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the mind—​though not the whole of the mind—​is indeed something that has an eternal being. Because understanding allows one to participate in the eternal, it cannot help but constitute the most important kind of “perseverance in being,” whether the actual duration of one’s life is long or not. The doctrine of the eternality of part of the human mind reconciles Spinoza’s two conceptions of the good without denying the goodness of what is conducive to continued life. According to Spinoza, the more adequate knowledge one has, the less one is harmed by death, and the less one is disturbed by fear of death (E 5P38s). Nevertheless, it can never be to one’s own positive advantage to die. Death is always the end of some part of the mind—​namely, that part which is not eternal. Furthermore, it marks the end of any prospect of further understanding, and hence the end of any prospect for increasing the part of one’s mind that is eternal. Although “the free man thinks of nothing less than of death,” this is because the free man is motivated by direct pursuit of the good of continued life, and not because death is not always an evil for a human being. According to 4P39, “Those things are good which bring about the preservation of the proportion of motion and rest the human body’s parts have to one another.” And the preservation of this proportion is simply the preservation of one’s life, as 4P39S makes explicit. Since one’s own death is always an evil, it must always be good, on Spinoza’s view, to do whatever will prevent one’s own death. Yet this may seem to conflict with 4P72, which states that, “A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively.” The demonstration of 4P72 is as follows: If a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by deception, he would do it from the dictate of reason (for so far only do we call him free). And so it would be a virtue to act deceptively (by 4P24), and hence (by the same proposition), everyone would be better advised to act deceptively to preserve his being. I.e., (as is known through itself), men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be contrary to one another in fact. But this is absurd (by 4p31c). Therefore, a free man, etc. q.e.d. In other words, the free man seeks, through the guidance of reason, to join in cooperative action with others, and honesty is necessary to make genuine cooperation possible; honesty is therefore also a virtue. Accordingly, any failure of honesty may be ascribed to an individual’s lack of freedom, inability to be completely guided by reason, and lack of virtue. Yet it seems that it must, in at least some circumstances, be good to act deceptively. Suppose, for example, that one could successfully compete with fellow castaways for a limited food supply only by deception, or save oneself from certain death at the hands of one’s captors only by deceiving them. Because whatever preserves one’s life is good, and deception is required in this instance to preserve life, it seems to follow that it will be good to



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deceive. But how can it be good to deceive, when the free man always acts honestly, and not deceptively?33 The term “good” is the only one of Spinoza’s four main terms of positive ethical evaluation that he does not explicitly claim to be coextensive with one or more of the others. And indeed “good” does appear to have a somewhat different scope, in several respects. For one thing, “virtue,” “from the guidance of reason,” “free,” and their variants or extensions apply at most to states of character, to behavior, and to persons themselves, whereas not only these but also external objects may be characterized as “good.” Even restricting our attention to actions, however, it appears that what is good to do may diverge from what it is virtuous, or in accordance with reason, or like a free man, to do. The reason for this is simple. Someone who acts from virtue, reason, and freedom has, to that extent, already achieved a certain mode of being. The good, in contrast, is what will enable one to achieve a certain mode of being. And the kinds of actions that will enable one to achieve a mode of being are not necessarily the same kinds of actions that one will perform once one has achieved it. For example, the diet needed by the unhealthy person in order to become healthy may not be the same diet he or she will eat once health has been achieved. Since virtue, reason, and freedom aim at their own self-​maintenance, we can be confident that whatever an individual does from virtue, reason, and freedom will be good. But it does not follow that whatever is good for some individual will be a characteristic act of the virtuous, reasonable, or free person. Spinoza explicitly considers the choice between death and deception in the scholium to 4P72: Suppose someone now asks:  What if a man could save himself from the present danger of death by treachery? Would not the principle of preserving his own being recommend, without qualification, that he be treacherous? . . . If reason should recommend that, it would recommend it to all men. And so reason would recommend, without qualification, that men should make agreements to join forces and to have common laws only by deception—​that is, that really they should have no common laws. This is absurd. Reason cannot recommend treachery “without qualification,” in such a case, for reason always recommends most highly that human beings join forces through cooperation. And, no doubt, the perfectly free and virtuous man would always have sufficient means other than deceit available, or would successfully avoid situations in which a choice between death and deceit was inevitable in the first place. No actual human being, however, has enough freedom or virtue to ensure that a choice between death and deception need never be faced; as we have already

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seen, the life of “the free man” is an approachable but not a completely attainable model or limit. Rule utilitarians argue that it can be more useful in the long run to adopt exceptionless rules than to try to act by evaluating utility in individual cases. It may be tempting to suppose that, in a somewhat similar way, Spinoza in 4p72d and 4P72S is arguing, or at least implying, that it will be advantageous for a person to adopt an exceptionless policy of honesty even if this policy sometimes requires one to choose one’s own death over deception of others. In general, Spinoza might well admit that it can sometimes be advantageous to bind oneself to an exceptionless rule rather than to allow oneself to assess the merits of individual cases. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see where any Spinozistic advantage could lie in adopting a rule of honesty that forbade making an exception for a choice of deceit over one’s own death, for none of the considerations usually employed to justify the adoption of exceptionless rules over examination of particular cases apply. For example, the consequences of the two choices in such a situation need not be at all difficult to calculate; there can be no long-​term gain for oneself in compensation for an immediate choice of death; and there is no reason to suppose that others could be motivated to govern themselves by such a rule even on the condition that one adopted it oneself. Indeed, it seems that only perfectly free men (who cannot be harmed) could adopt such a rule—​and there are none. Thus, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, for Spinoza, a forced choice between deceit and one’s own death would be a situation in which it would be good for an actual human being to act in a way different from the way in which the ideal free man is said to act. This conclusion receives partial confirmation from the fact that Spinoza grants, in other contexts, that something can be “good,” at least to some extent or in some circumstances, even though it is not virtuous. For example, he holds that shame is a kind of sadness, and so is not a virtue. It is nevertheless “still good insofar as it indicates, in the man who blushes with Shame, a desire to live honorably” (E 4P58s). And more generally, he holds that “a lesser evil is really a good” in relation to a greater evil, since “good and evil are said of things insofar as we compare them to one another” (E 4p65d). When the only alternative is death, deceit may well be a “lesser evil,” for Spinoza, and hence a good, even though it is not an action of a free man. One possible strategy for denying this latter conclusion would be to emphasize the first-​person plural in Spinoza’s definition of the good as “what we certainly know to be useful to us.” That is, the definition might be interpreted to mean that only things that are beneficial to all should be called “good.” This interpretation is strengthened to some extent by the fact that Spinoza criticizes the common usage of the term “good” on the grounds that it makes what is good relative to each individual. On this interpretation, a situation in which no one could be benefited



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except at the expense of another would be a situation in which there would be nothing that it would be “good” to do. “Good” would thus be used to describe only the common human advantage, and not the conflicting advantages of individuals that (inevitably) arise when their interests diverge. But while this interpretation has some textual basis, it cannot entirely resolve the divergence between good actions and the actions of the ideal free man. For there can clearly be circumstances in which deceit would be advantageous to all, and not merely to its perpetrator. For example, an entire community might perish unless one of its members deceived all the rest into taking action that they could not be induced to take otherwise. Hence, we are still obliged to recognize that, in Spinoza’s ethical theory, a good action can sometimes differ from the action of a free man.34

The practicality of reason Spinoza regards reason as a cognitive, inferential process by which adequate knowledge is derived from other adequate knowledge. Yet he also writes of reason as guiding action (ex ducto rationis), and as offering counsels (consilium rationis), precepts (praeceptum rationis), rules (praescriptum rationis), and “dictates” (dictamen rationis). Writing seventy years after the publication of the Ethics, David Hume maintained that reason itself has no motivational force, so that it is only “the slave of the passions” (Hume 1978: 415). Immanuel Kant maintained, in response to Hume, that in morality reason must be practical and must have motivational force; but he also allowed that it is beyond our capacity to explain how it is that reason can have this motivating force. Can Spinoza explain how reason itself motivates? The key to understanding how Spinozistic reason can motivate lies in the account of the relation between ideas and affects that he gives in his explanation of the causes of bondage to the passions, in 4pp1–​18. Ideas, as they occur in human minds, are ideas that represent (are “of”) modifications, or features, of the human body. They may also indirectly represent external objects whose natures are involved in the causation of those modifications of the body. But ideas are not merely representations, for Spinoza; at least many of them also have an affective aspect or character. For example, a desire is not—​as Hume would later hold—​merely a simple feeling that is caused by, or accompanied by, an idea of some state of affairs involving its object. Rather, the desire is the idea of this state of affairs, occurring under certain circumstances. For example, an idea representing some food as present, occurring in a normally functioning individual who needs food, will, in its affective aspect, be a desire to obtain and eat the food. Reason, for Spinoza, is a cognitive process by which adequate ideas follow logically from, and are caused by, other adequate ideas. Many desires are, of course,

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merely passionate products of the imagination, with little or no involvement of reason. But it is also possible for an adequate idea, produced by reason, to constitute a desire. If, for example, one determines by reason that one’s own advantage lies in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the institution of a well-​ordered state, or in association with individuals like oneself, then the idea that constitutes this understanding will itself be a desire for the thing so conceived, in Spinoza’s view. It will not merely direct or stimulate such a desire; it will be such a desire. This is not to say that the desire cannot be overwhelmed by other, more powerful, passionate affects—​that, of course, is the primary moral of 4pp1–​18—​but it is to say that reason itself has motivational force. Spinoza is able to maintain this view of the practicality of reason because he identifies affects (emotions) with (representational) ideas. Whereas the common view, shared by Hume and Kant, treats affects and ideas as two classes of mental events or entities, Spinoza construes the affective and the representational as two aspects of the same mental events or entities. This ensures that, when reason produces the right kind of representation, it ipso facto produces a motivating affect. He is enabled to maintain this identity of affects and ideas, in turn, by the conatus doctrine that every individual, by its very essence, necessarily endeavors insofar as it can to persevere in its own existence. For it is the conatus doctrine that explains how, when an individual perceives an object as something advantageous or beneficial to it, that very perception can constitute a desire for it. Spinozistic desire is not something that must be added to a mind, conceived as a set of representational contents. On the contrary, it pertains to the very essence of minds to desire whatever they can perceive (adequately or inadequately) as conducive to their own advantage. There is no need for Spinoza to distinguish the perception and the desire as separate parts of the mind, for a mind that perceives something as advantageous and yet does not, at least to some extent, desire it, is a contradiction on his theory. Spinozistic reason, which can provide adequate perceptions of things and their uses, is inherently practical. This inherent practicality of reason, in turn, explains how Spinoza can conceive of ethical knowledge as both naturalistic and intrinsically motivating. There is no need, and no purpose, for Spinoza to command, exhort, or entreat his readers—​the reader’s own reason effectively does this for him. If his readers grasp his demonstrations that certain behaviors, character traits, and human relations are conducive to the preservation of their being, they will ipso facto be motivated to pursue them. The question, “Why be moral?” has no more skeptical force, for Spinoza, than the question, “Why seek to achieve your own ends?” Each individual, by metaphysical necessity, seeks its own self-​preservation. Ethics merely shows in what that self-​preservation consists and what are the most effective means to it.



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The role of virtue On the one hand, Spinoza’s ethics appear to be a version of what has come to be called “consequentialism.” That is, he appears to regard the most important or fundamental ethical evaluations to be evaluations of actions in terms of their consequences. The foundation of virtue, he insists, is self-​preservation; and it seems therefore that virtue must be desirable only instrumentally, as an aid to achieving self-​preservation—​and also, perhaps, as an aid to achieving the affective states of joy or blessedness. Yet Spinoza also seems to be a proponent of what has come to be called “virtue ethics,” according to which the most important or fundamental ethical evaluations are evaluations of a person’s character or virtue. In fact, he seems to deny that the value of virtue is instrumental at all, for he claims to demonstrate “that we ought to want virtue for its own sake, that there is not anything preferable to it, or more useful to us, for the sake of which we ought to want it” (E 4p18s). How can this conflict be resolved? In fact, Spinoza is both a consequentialist and a virtue ethicist.35 Although self-​ preservation first appears in the Ethics as a tendency towards continued temporal duration, we have seen that the achievement of adequate understanding—​which is the highest virtue—​brings a participation in the eternal that is itself a kind of perseverance in one’s being. Accordingly, the highest virtue is not merely a means toward self-​preservation; it is itself a kind of self-​preservation. That is, the very consequence at which Spinoza’s consequentialism aims is also, at least in its most important manifestation, a state of character. The value of joy, in contrast, is instrumental in Spinoza’s ethics. For it is only an indication of a transition to a greater state of perfection and capacity for action.36 It is this state of greater perfection and capacity for action itself that Spinoza values for its own sake, as that which his—​and each person’s—​conatus is necessarily seeking to produce. This state of greater perfection is virtue; but it is also the affective state of blessedness. For Spinoza, blessedness, as an affective state of mind, is not merely a consequence—​even an inevitable consequence—​of a virtuous character. As we have seen, he identifies affects with ideas. Because the highest virtue is the continued possession of adequate ideas, and the affective side of this adequate knowledge is blessedness, it follows that the pursuit of blessedness is the pursuit of virtue. Virtue and blessedness are equally valuable and fundamental—​for they prove in the end to be identical.37 Thus Spinoza asserts in the last proposition of the Ethics that, “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself” (E 5P42).38 Blessedness is the actual and eternal possession of the virtue of which joy is merely a temporal indicator.39

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The requirements for freedom and moral responsibility Spinoza is not a fatalist. For although he holds that all volitions, behaviors, and other events are completely determined by their causes, he does not deny that volitions are among the causes of behavior, nor that behaviors are sometimes among the causes of other events. His view is not that the same events would occur whether we acted or not, but rather that the causal determination of what we do contributes to the causal determination of what events will occur. Spinoza, is, however, a necessitarian; he does hold that everything true is true necessarily. One aspect of his necessitarianism is his determinism:  that is, his acceptance of the doctrine that the total state of the universe at any given time plus the laws of nature jointly determine the total state of the universe at any future time. And it is often supposed that determinism is incompatible with moral freedom and moral responsibility. Again, Spinoza adopts an objective, scientific attitude towards human beings, human actions, and human emotions, writing for example that he will “consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies” (E 3pr). And it is often supposed that this kind of objective attitude is incompatible with what P. F. Strawson has called the moral “reactive attitudes” that are essential to attributions of moral responsibility (Strawson 1974). So the question arises: Does Spinoza recognize moral freedom and moral responsibility? Spinozistic freedom, defined at 1d7, does not demand an absence of causal determination. It requires only that the free thing be determined by its own nature, rather than by external causes. As we have already noted, God alone is perfectly free in this sense; nevertheless, human beings can achieve a measure of freedom to the extent that they act through their own endeavor to persevere in their being. There is no incompatibility in saying both that God freely causes human behavior and that human beings sometimes freely cause their own behavior, for human beings are modes of God. Insofar as they act freely, God produces effects by constituting their own natures; insofar as they do not act freely, God produces effects through other means. But although Spinoza clearly allows a measure of freedom, it is unclear whether this will be a kind of moral freedom unless it bears some relation to moral responsibility. Since Spinoza does not use the term “moral responsibility,” we must look for his attitude toward it in his discussion of affects and attitudes toward those who do good and those who do evil. Spinoza does use the terms “praise” (“laus”) and “blame” (“vituperium”). As he defines them, however, they apply only to affects towards individuals who strive to benefit or harm the person who feels the affect. Thus, praise is “the Joy with which we imagine the action of another by which he has striven to please us,”



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while blame is “the Sadness with which we are averse to his action” when the other strives to harm us (E 3P29S). Of more interest for our purposes are “favor” (“favor”; sometimes translated as “approval” or “approbation”) and “indignation” (“indignatio”). Favor is “a Love toward someone who has benefited another,” while indignation is “a Hate toward someone who has done evil to another” (3da19,20). Favor and indignation differ from praise and blame in three ways: (i) they are instances of love or hate, rather than merely joy or sadness; (ii) they are not explicitly restricted to the imagination, and (iii) they are attitudes towards actions affecting human beings generally, and not merely oneself. I will assume that behavior toward “another” means behavior toward someone other than the author of the behavior, and hence can include behavior toward oneself. On this assumption one can feel favor or indignation for benefits or harms to oneself, as well as to others. Favor and indignation are Spinoza’s primary moral “reactive attitudes.” Spinoza asserts at 4P51s that “indignation . . . is necessarily evil.” As a form of hate, and hence of sadness, it is directly evil in itself. Moreover, it leads us to desire to harm or destroy the person we hate, which is contrary to reason’s aim of uniting human beings in friendship. It is also inappropriate for another reason:  As we become aware of the causes of someone’s doing harm to another person, we will inevitably become aware that the perpetrator is not the adequate cause of his or her own behavior. For the free man seeks to benefit, not to harm, other human beings. Those who do evil are never free and, accordingly, indignation toward them is never in accordance with reason.40 There is no need to disturb one’s peace of mind through feelings of hatred or desires for vengeance. In contrast, 4P51 affirms that “Favor is not contrary to reason, but can agree with it and arise from it.” This is because it can arise from an adequate understanding of another’s actions. This is not to say that all favor is in accordance with reason. If, for example, we feel favor toward someone who, from passion, has accidentally behaved in a way that has benefited others, that person is not the adequate cause of the benefit. Understanding this fact will result in a withdrawal of our favor or approval. When human beings benefit others out of nobility, however, seeking to unite others to themselves in friendship, they are the adequate causes of their actions; when we are guided by reason, therefore, we will feel favor toward them. That the beneficial acts flow from the necessity of the divine nature is no hindrance to our favor or approbation for the human agent. For as we have seen, God and the human agent are not competitors for the causation of the good; rather, God produces the benefit through the adequate causality of the human agent who is, of course, a mode of God, and whose own power is a share of God’s power. The two main parties in the so-​called free-​will debate are the compatibilists and the incompatibilists. The former hold that determinism is compatible with

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freedom and hence with moral responsibility for good and evil actions. The latter hold that determinism is incompatible with freedom, and hence also incompatible with moral responsibility for good and evil actions. These two parties thus share a common assumption that Spinoza denies: namely, that freedom to perform (and hence moral responsibility for) good actions and evil actions must go together. That is, the two parties agree that freedom and moral responsibility either apply to both good and evil actions, or they apply to neither. Spinoza denies this because he has a conception of “asymmetrical freedom.”41 By this I  mean that he holds that we sometimes freely do good, but can never freely do evil. Evil is always the result of passion or lack of power, and hence not the result of one’s own adequate causality—​that is, not the result of freedom. Because freedom is asymmetrical in this way, so too are rational assignments of moral responsibility. Reason counsels (i.e., moves us to) love and favor for those who freely do good, without hate or indignation for those who do evil. Spinoza emphasizes that a lack of indignation does not imply an unwillingness to engage in punitive action. But such action will be motivated entirely by an informed desire for self-​protection; it will not be motivated by resentment, or a desire for retribution. Thus, for example, he writes: “But it should be noted that when the supreme power, bound by its desire to preserve peace, punishes a citizen who has wronged another, I do not say that it is indignant toward the citizen. For it punishes him not because it has been aroused by Hate to destroy him but because it is moved by duty” (E 4P51s).42 Indignation is evil and not in accordance with reason; and hence the free man does not feel indignation. However, absolute freedom is an approachable but unreachable ideal; and this is true not just in application to the free man’s actions, but also in application to the free man’s affective reactions. Spinoza would certainly admit that he was not, and could not be, the model free man; and his seemingly indignant reaction to the murder of his friends, the De Witt brothers (as described by Leibniz and by Lucas; see Freudenthal 1899:  19) is evidence that Spinoza’s own affective reactions were sometimes passionate rather than determined entirely by reason. To the extent that one gains understanding, however, one’s power over the passions will tend to increase, and the more free one is, the less indignation one will feel.

The possibility and moral significance of altruism Spinoza holds that each thing’s genuine activity consists entirely in endeavoring to achieve its own advantage, construed as self-​preservation. Yet observation of human life suggests that human beings frequently seek to benefit one another independent of any prospect of advantage to themselves. Indeed, human beings often appear to sacrifice their own advantage for the welfare of others. Is Spinoza committed to denying these seemingly evident facts?



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In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, David Hume distinguishes two forms of psychological egoism: [i]‌There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many . . . that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy . . . and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations. [ii] There is another principle, somewhat resembling the former . . . that, whatever affection one may feel, or imagine he feels for others, no passion is, or can be disinterested; that the most generous friendship, however sincere, is a modification of self-​love. [One who holds this latter principle] readily allows, that there is such a thing as friendship in the world, without hypocrisy or disguise; though he may attempt, by a philosophical chymistry, to resolve the elements of this passion, if I may so speak, into those of another, and explain every affection to be self-​love, twisted and moulded, by a particular turn of imagination, into a variety of appearances. (Hume 1975: 295–​7) Hume himself, although he regards the second form of psychological egoism as compatible with morality, rejects both forms in favor of a psychology that makes room for sympathetic benevolence as an original principle independent of “self-​love.” In terms of Hume’s distinction, however, Spinoza clearly belongs, not with those who maintain that all apparent benevolence is hypocrisy and deceit, but rather with proponents of the “second principle”—​that is, those who seek to apply a kind of “philosophical chymistry” to resolve all behavior into modifications of a single original force of self-​interest, directed and redirected by circumstances. Spinoza need not deny that human beings are sometimes motivated in their behavior by thoughts of the welfare or harm of others without thought or concern of themselves. He need not deny that individuals sometimes forego something that they desire for themselves for the sake of the happiness or welfare of another. He need not deny even that individuals sometimes sacrifice their lives for the well-​being of others. Thus, he need not deny the phenomena of altruism. He is committed only to the view that the causal origins of these phenomena always lie in a single psychological force, which is the individual’s own endeavor for his or her own self-​preservation. This force can, through circumstance, come to be directed onto a variety of objects, objects which the agent may then experience himself or herself pursuing directly. As he emphasizes, we often know our desires while in ignorance of their causes (E 1ap and elsewhere).

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In order to explain altruistic behavior, then, Spinoza must explain how this self-​ preservatory force or conatus comes to be directed onto the well-​being of others. Hume mentions only one faculty by which his “philosophical chymists” might suppose an original egoistic force to be directed—​namely, the imagination. This is understandable, since Hume does not recognize a separate representational faculty of intellect in addition to the imagination. Spinoza, in contrast, distinguishes intellect and imagination as two distinct representational faculties; and for him, the individual’s endeavor for self-​preservation may be directed by either. The imagination can direct the conatus of an individual towards the well-​being of another in many ways. For example, if we perceive another individual as the cause of imaginative ideas that affect us with joy, we will love that individual and thereby seek to benefit him or her. If we perceive that an individual hates another individual whom we also hate, we will seek to benefit the first individual in order to harm the object of our hate. If we perceive an individual to be like ourselves, our affects will imitate the affects of that individual, and we will be motivated to pursue the well-​being of that individual as well as our own well-​being. In each case, the well-​being of another becomes one of the many objects onto which our fundamental self-​preservatory endeavor becomes directed. To the extent that this direction occurs through the imagination, we are passive. When the intellect, through the use of reason, directs the conatus of the individual toward the welfare of others, it does so through recognition that the true advantage of individuals largely coincides because “to man . . . there is nothing more useful than man” (E 4p18s). Among human beings, the most useful are those who are guided by reason, for to the extent that human beings are guided by reason they share the same nature, so that whatever is beneficial to one is beneficial to all. The good that such individuals pursue—​namely, knowledge—​is not only shareable rather than limited; it is also a good that can best be pursued in company with others. As we have observed, Spinoza regards altruistic behavior in these circumstances with “favor” or approbation. Nevertheless, as we have also seen (in connection with the choice between deceit and death, for example), a complete coincidence of human interests is not possible. Each individual necessarily endeavors to achieve his or her own advantage; and because individuals are finite beings who must maintain life in order to pursue even understanding, they may be in competition for limited resources. Hence, their interests can diverge. When such divergence occurs, a common cooperative course of conduct on which all can rationally agree is impossible. One may then be forced to choose between achieving one’s own advantage at the expense of others, and aiding others through sacrificing oneself. What is Spinoza’s assessment of such self-​sacrificing altruism? Although genuine self-​sacrifice is possible, it cannot be good for the sacrificing individual, and it cannot be the result of reason or virtue. Accordingly, it must



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result from being overcome by passion. Since the self-​sacrificing individual cannot be the adequate cause of his or her own action, favor is not a rational response. Neither, however, is indignation, since the individual has not harmed others. Hence, reason calls for neither favor nor indignation toward one who chooses self-​sacrifice in order to benefit others. On the other hand, an individual who refuses altruistic self-​sacrifice cannot be the object of favor either, since he or she has not benefited others. Yet neither does reason counsel indignation toward such an individual, since indignation is never in accordance with reason. Hence, the rational affect toward any person faced with a choice between self-​preservation at others’ expense and self-​sacrifice will be neither favor nor indignation, regardless of the person’s ultimate choice. Such a situation calls only for understanding; it is entirely outside the reach of moral reactive attitudes or moral responsibility—​at least, from the standpoint of reason. However, just as a complete coincidence of interests is an ideal that no human community can entirely attain, so the affective standpoint of reason is an ideal that no actual human being can entirely maintain. If a self-​sacrificing individual benefits individuals that we love, we—​and Spinoza among us—​are likely to feel at least some degree of favor, even if the ideally rational “free man” would feel none.

3.  The Place of Spinoza’s Ethics in Moral Theory Spinoza’s geometrical method of demonstration tends to obscure the historical context of his ethical theory. By way of conclusion, I will comment briefly on his ethical theory in relation to his Greek and Judeo-​Christian predecessors, to his seventeenth-​and eighteenth-​century contemporaries (and near-​contemporaries), and to more recent ethical theory.

Spinoza and his predecessors A number of ancient influences are evident in Spinoza’s ethical theory. From Plato, he accepts a conception of ethics as concerned with the conflict between reason and the passions, and the distinction between understanding the eternal, on the one hand, and sensing or imagining the merely durational, on the other. From Aristotle, he takes a conception of ethics as concerned with virtue and a kind of human flourishing whose highest expression lies in the life of active reason. From the Stoics, he appropriates the ideal of an internal freedom found in reconciling oneself to the necessities of nature. His own ethical theory, however, is distinctive, and not reducible to any of these influences.43

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Spinoza’s relation to the Judeo-​ Christian moral tradition is complex. He endorses the Christian view that hate is to be overcome by returning love to those who hate us (E 3PP43–​44, E4ap11). However, he rejects Christian asceticism and guilt, and maintains that such central Christian “virtues” as humility, repentance, and pity are not virtues at all but evils, because they are all species of sadness and hence indications of lack of power. Spinoza’s God does not issue any commands, nor does his God desire that human beings should live well. Nevertheless, Spinoza believes, one can appeal to the popular imagination by describing the content of ethics as though it consisted of a set of commands promulgated, with promises of rewards and punishments, by a divine law-​giver. As he writes to Willem van Blijenbergh: When we say that we sin against god, we are speaking inaccurately, or in a human way, as we do when we say that men anger god. . . . [B]‌ecause God had revealed the means to salvation and destruction, which are nothing but effects which follow from the means, [the prophets] represented him as a king and lawgiver. The means, which are nothing but causes, they called laws and wrote in the manner of laws. Salvation and destruction, which are nothing but effects which follow from the means, they represented as reward and punishment. They have ordered all their words more according to this parable than according to the truth. Throughout they have represented god as a man, now angry, now merciful, now longing for the future, now seized by jealousy and suspicion, indeed even deceived by the devil. So the Philosophers, and with them all those who are above the law, i.e., who follow virtue not as a law, but from love, because it is the best thing, should not be shocked by such words. (Ep. 19) Spinoza remarks at E2p7S, concerning the doctrine that a mode of extension and a mode of thought are the same thing expressed in two ways, that “the Hebrews seem to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God’s intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same.” In a similar way, Spinoza holds, the Hebrew prophets captured some of the content of ethics, but represented it as though the beneficial and harmful consequences of natural laws governing humans and their well-​being were instead freely chosen rewards and punishments of a passionate and purposeful God. Just as the religion of the philosophers has its imaginative reflection in the popular religion of the vulgar, so too the ethics of the philosophers has its imaginative reflection in the religious morality of the vulgar. As he makes clear in the Theological-​Political Treatise, popular religion can be extremely dangerous; but in a state where not all human beings are philosophers, and so must be governed by hope and (especially)



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fear, the imaginative morality based on popular religion is nevertheless essential for many.

Spinoza and his contemporaries Spinoza anticipates other modern ethical theorists in his effort to make ethics entirely independent of literal divine commands by locating ethical discernment, ethical authority, and the source of ethical motivation, entirely within the individual. The influence of Hobbes seems evident in Spinoza’s egoistic moral psychology founded on a fundamental drive for self-​preservation, and in his effort to reconcile freedom with the application of natural necessity to human beings. He differs from Hobbes, however, in his concurrent acceptance of Descartes’s ethical project of training the imagination and empowering the intellect—​the latter being a representational faculty for which Hobbes has no use. Indeed, more than any other single factor, it is his acceptance of the Cartesian distinction between intellect and imagination that separates Spinoza not only from the seventeenth-​century Hobbes but also from such eighteenth-​century British moral thinkers as Locke, Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hume. It is only a mild over-​simplification to say that Hume’s sentimental, sympathy-​based ethical judgments are what would remain of Spinoza’s ethical theory were Spinoza obliged to give up the existence of the intellect and, along with it, the second and third kinds of knowledge.44 Many seventeenth-​century philosophers undertook to adapt metaphysics to the content and methods of the New Science. Some, like Spinoza, sought also to render ethics scientific, by basing it on an entirely naturalistic and deterministic understanding of human beings, their passions, and their behavior. Spinoza stands alone, however, in aiming to marry science to ethics in a further respect as well. Unlike his contemporaries, he sought to construe natural scientific understanding itself (also describable, for him, as “knowledge of God”) as the highest virtue and, indeed, as eternal blessedness. His is not merely a scientifically informed ethics; it is an ethics whose very centerpiece is the practice of science. His ethical vision is one in which scientific understanding allows us to participate in a peaceful and cooperative moral community with other co-​inquirers, sharing and taking joy in one another’s achievements without being disturbed by one another’s human weaknesses.

Spinoza and his successors The immediate reception of Spinoza’s ethical theory was no more positive than was the reception of his metaphysics. Although German Romanticism rendered a more favorable verdict on Spinoza generally, it cannot be said that the romantic movement as a whole was deeply influenced by his ethical theory.

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Readers often find echoes of Spinoza in Nietzsche’s “will to power,” with its concurrent naturalism and rejection of Christian ethics. Nietzsche himself saw a predecessor in Spinoza, although only relatively late in his life.45 A  Spinozist approach is also echoed in the work of another astute psychologist, Sigmund Freud. For Spinoza’s is fundamentally an ethics of mental health, in which one achieves a healthy power to control the direction of one’s affects through knowl­ edge of their causes. Spinoza’s ethical theory has been historically less influential than the ethical theories of such other early modern philosophers as Hume and Kant. Nevertheless, in its naturalism, its practical rationalism, its asymmetrical conception of moral freedom and responsibility, its nonretributivism, its emphasis on virtue as well as consequences, and its close relation to social and political theory, it is a forerunner of, and of special relevance to, contemporary trends in ethical theorizing. Because Spinoza derives his ethical theory in formal geometrical order from his metaphysics, anyone who rejects that metaphysics may also reject his demonstration of ethics. His necessitarian, monistic metaphysics, in turn, is based largely on a strong Principle of Sufficient Reason (see Bennett’s discussion of “explanatory rationalism” in Chapter 1, and Garrett 1991). Few contemporary philosophers would accept his strong version of that principle, and few would accept his necessitarianism or his monism in the form in which he expressed them.46 Most contemporary philosophers, however, would agree that the universe in general, and human behavior in particular, are at least approximately deterministic at a large-​ scale level (allowing for quantum indeterminacies), and that the human mind is a part of nature that is identical with some part of the human body. The most important aspects of Spinoza’s ethical theory may well prove nearly as adaptable to this contemporary scientific metaphysics as they are to his own seventeenth-​century scientific metaphysics.

Notes 1. In his preface to the Nagelate Schriften, Spinoza’s friend Jarig Jelles wrote: He was driven by a burning desire for knowledge; but because he did not get full satisfaction either from his teachers or from those writing about these sciences, he decided to see what he himself could do in these areas. For that purpose he found the writings of the famous René Descartes, which he came upon at that time, very useful. (Akkerman 1980: 216–​17). 2. For a fine accessible treatment of Spinoza’s relation to both Descartes and Hobbes, see Curley 1988. 3. The phrase is from the first paragraph of the appendix to Ethics Part 4, and also occurs in the preface to Part 3. Spinoza uses the term “morality” not to designate a body of doctrine or knowledge, but as the name for a desire—​specifically,



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“the desire to do good generated in us by our living according to the guidance of reason” (E 4P37S). 4. For a description of Descartes’s distinction between the synthetic and analytic methods of demonstration, see the Introduction to Garrett 1996. 5. I  have argued elsewhere that Spinoza was unable to finish the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect partly because, having arrived at his epistemology artificially, by reflection on Descartes and others, he was not able to show “how the thing in question was discovered methodically,” which the analytic method requires (Garrett 1986). 6. See Wilson 1996 (Section 1) and Moreau 1996 (Section 3) for discussion of this passage in connection with Spinoza’s epistemology and Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Spinoza, respectively. 7. As Edwin Curley wrote in 1973: “It is a rare book on ethics which does not have at least a passing reference to Spinoza. But it is an even rarer book which has more than a passing reference” (Curley 1973). Curley mentions the exception of Broad 1930. Of recent works that have shed light on Spinoza’s ethical theory, most are works devoted to multiple aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy, including his ethical theory, rather than works devoted to ethical theory in Spinoza and others. Among the most stimulating recent treatments of Spinoza’s ethical theory are those in Delahunty 1985, Donagan 1988, and, especially, Bennett 1984. My own account owes more to Bennett’s incisive and uncompromising interrogation of Spinoza’s ethical thought than to any other single source. 8. Ethics 5a1 states:  “If two contrary actions are aroused in the same subject, a change will have to occur, either in both of them, or in one only, until they cease to be contrary.” Ethics 5a2 states: “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.” Ethics 3P7 reads: “The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” 9. “Strictly speaking, a real distinction exists only between two or more substances; and we can perceive that two substances are really distinct simply from the fact that we can clearly and distinctly understand one apart from the other” (Principles of Philosophy 2p6o, in Descartes 1985 I,213). 10. See Garrett 1991 for a fuller discussion of the meaning and grounds of this doctrine. While I still believe it is correct to say that Spinoza’s necessitarianism involves a kind of logical necessity, I would now emphasize that Spinoza’s conception of logic—​in contrast to Leibniz’s, for example—​makes logic a matter of content, rather than of form, and is closely related to conceptions of logic as “laws of thought,” analogous to laws of physics. 11. Since things must be understood through their causes (E 1a4), and these causes necessitate (E 1a3), the good of knowledge is achievable only to the extent that things are necessitated.

498 Natur alistic Ethics 12. For extended discussion of this proposition and its demonstration, see Della Rocca 1996, Section 1. 13. See Garrett 1994. 14. What we would call human psychology is, for Spinoza, a branch of the science of the attribute of thought in general. It is distinguished from other branches by its taking as its primary objects human beings, who are capable of reasoning, of having their power of acting increase and decrease, and of forming and retaining complex images of external things. (See the postulates at the beginning of Part 3.) 15. For another, somewhat different account of these definitions, see Curley 1973. Remarkably, Broad 1930:  44–​7 reports that Spinoza himself uses “good” as a measure of each thing’s powers within its own species, and that Spinoza restricts the use of the term “perfect” to products of deliberate human design. Broad’s description of “good” is evidently influenced by Short Treatise I.x. However, Spinoza’s definitions of “good” and “perfect” in the preface to Part 4 (as well as 4d1) show both of Broad’s claims to be incorrect. 16. Ethics 4d3 and 4d4 concern the “contingent” and the “possible” respectively: Singular things are conceived as contingent insofar as we attend only to their essences and find them to involve neither existence nor nonexistence. (This is in contrast, on the one hand, to God, whose essence involves existence and so necessitates his existence; and on the other hand, to contradictory things, whose essences involve nonexistence and so necessitate their nonexistence.) Things are called “possible” when we attend to the causes which would produce them, without knowing whether those causes are actually determined to produce them or not. Conceiving of something as contingent and conceiving of something as possible both involve ignorance of the thing’s actual existence; however, the latter requires a knowledge of and an attention to the thing’s manner of production that are lacking in the former. Ethics 4d5 defines “opposite affects” as those that “pull a man differently,” even if the affects themselves happen to be of the same genus. Ethics 4d6 refers the reader to 3p18s1 and 3p18s2 for explanation of affects toward “a future thing, a present one, and a past” (although these scholia are not very helpful in understanding how the mind represents things as future, present, or past, which is explained more fully at 2p44c1s). Ethics 4d7 states: “By the end for the sake of which we do something I understand appetite.” This definition reinforces Spinoza’s earlier claim (E 1ap) that “action for the sake of an end” is to be understood as the efficient causation of a present desire, and not as a species of final causation to be contrasted with efficient causation. 17. For more extensive discussion of the line of argument contained in 4PP29–​36, see Steinberg 1984. 18. As Bennett rightly observes, this leaves open the possibility that a passion of hate will remain as powerful as before, but will no longer constitute hate—​for example, it might simply become ordinary sadness (Bennett 1984: 333). Spinoza



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might reply that separating the affect from the idea of a cause can at least prevent the idea of the hated object from arousing or reinvigorating the affect. 19. Bennett discusses Spinoza’s treatment of this source of power over the affects, and notes Spinoza’s failure to include it in his summary (Bennett 1984: 337). 20. Bennett 1984: 345, for example, notes that not all the items on the list of 5P20S are techniques, and implies that this fact is an objection to Spinoza’s procedure. 21. In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza writes concerning his endeavor to replace “greed, desire for sensual pleasure and love of esteem” with love of something eternal: I saw this, however:  that so long as the mind was turned toward these thoughts, it was turned away from those things, and was thinking seriously about the new goal. That was a comfort to me. For I saw that those evils would not refuse to yield to remedies. And although in the beginning those intervals were rare, and lasted a very short time, nevertheless, after the true good became more and more known to me, the intervals became more frequent and longer. (TdlE 10–​11) The purpose of Spinoza’s discussion of the five (or six) “means to freedom” is to show his readers that, and how, a similar change can occur in them. 22. Margaret Wilson (1996) convincingly suggests that the final line results from a simple mistake on Spinoza’s part, and should have read: “Now it is time to pass on to those matters that concern the reality of the mind without respect to the duration of the body.” 23. For its metaphysical, epistemological, and theological dimensions, respectively, see Chapter 1, Chapter 3, and Chapter 8. 24. Certainly, the doctrine of the eternity of the mind stands in some prima facie tension with the parallelism of mind and body. This tension can, I believe, be removed by granting that a part of the human body—​its formal essence—​is also eternal for Spinoza. 25. At 5P36cs, Spinoza refers to this affect as “Joy (if I may still be permitted to use this term).” 26. There is an obvious parallel between this doctrine of blessedness or peace of mind (which implies lack of disturbance) as the highest affect which is at the same time literally no affect at all, and some forms of Buddhism. There is no evidence, however, of any direct causal connection. 27. For more on Spinoza’s conception of “right,” see Curley 1996. 28. The terms “perfect” and “imperfect” do not occur in any of the definitions, axioms, propositions, corollaries, or demonstrations of Part 4, although “perfect” occurs in several scholia (twice in 4p18s, and once each in 4P45S and 4p58s). “Perfect” and related terms recur several times, in application both to God and to man, in Part 5, where they are connected especially with the third kind of knowl­ edge. They also occur in ethical application in the Short Treatise and the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.

500 Natur alistic Ethics 29. Despite the literal falsity of these evaluations, Spinoza grants that thinking of God as a law-​giver is in many ways a good imaginative representation of the fact that the laws of nature involve necessary causal relations between particular ways of life and particular outcomes. 30. Spinoza writes: [W]‌e shall easily see what the difference is between a man who is led only by an affect, or by opinion, and one who is led by reason. For the former, whether he will or not, does those things he is most ignorant of, whereas the latter complies with no one’s wishes but his own, and does only those things he knows to be the most important in life, and therefore desires very greatly. Hence, I call the former a slave, but the latter, a free man. (E 4p66s) 31. Spinoza’s explanation is as follows: [W]‌e say “Let us suppose that this burning candle is not now burning, or let us suppose that it is burning in some imaginary space, or where there are no bodies.” Things like this are sometimes supposed, although this last is clearly understood to be impossible. But when this happens, nothing at all is feigned [i.e., we are not guilty of “fictitious ideas”]. For in the first case I have done nothing but recall to memory another candle that was not burning (or I have conceived this candle without the flame), and what I think about that candle, I understand concerning this one, so long as I do not attend to the flame. In the second case, 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 true and sheer assertions. (TdlE 57; emphasis added) As Bennett puts it, “we might see the concept of ‘the free man’ as a theoretically convenient limiting case, like the concept of an ‘ideal gas’—​one whose molecules have zero volume” (Bennett 1984: 317). And, in the light of the fifth of Spinoza’s five “means” to freedom (E 5P20s), we might add that it is not only theoretically convenient for him, but also ethically efficacious. The idea of a human being who could be entirely and completely guided by reason, or entirely and completely virtuous (i.e., powerful) would be another literally-​contradictory idealized limiting case. 32. For further discussion of this topic, see Garrett 1990. 33. What follows draws on the more detailed discussion of this problem in Garrett 1990. 34. Nor would it alter the situation materially to emphasize the “knowledge” or “certainty” requirement of Spinoza’s definition; for one could also know with certainty that it would be good to deceive whenever doing so was the only way to save an entire community.



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35. A third approach to ethical theory, in addition to consequentialism and virtue ethics, is of course deontology, which regards the most fundamental ethical evaluations as evaluations of actions for their conformity to duty or moral law. Although Spinoza makes little use of such concepts as “duty,” “obligation,” and “right,” his description of reason as providing “counsels,” “rules,” “precepts,” and “dictates” may be seen as also aligning him to some extent with the deontological approach to ethics. Certainly, he locates the source of these “rules” and “dictates” in the same faculty in which Kant locates the source of his moral imperatives—​namely, practical reason. 36. This point is made in Broad 1930: 51–​2. 37. Spinoza’s view of virtue may be profitably compared with Hume’s. Although the primary objects of ethical evaluation in Hume’s moral theory are features of character, and the fundamental term of ethical evaluation is “virtue,” the virtuousness of a feature of character is itself a consequence of its typical hedonic consequences. A Humean virtue’s source of value is therefore not intrinsic to it, as is the case with a Spinozistic virtue. 38. See also 2P49S: “Virtue itself [is] happiness itself, and the greatest freedom.” 39. I am grateful to Michael Slote, whose questions helped me to formulate this interpretation of the role of virtue in Spinoza’s ethical theory. 40. As Spinoza emphasizes in 4P51s, “when the supreme power, bound by its desire to preserve peace, punishes a citizen who has wronged another, I do not say that it is indignant toward the citizen. For it punishes him, not because it has been aroused by Hate to destroy him, but because it is moved by duty.” 41. The memorable phrase is Susan Wolf’s (Wolf 1979). She does not use the term in connection with Spinoza, however, but in connection with her own theory and with Kant. 42. It is also worth noting Spinoza’s willingness, in this passage, to refer to the affects of the State. The State is itself an individual thing, composed of human parts, that naturally endeavors to preserve its being. Although only human beings have human affects, just as only horses have equine affects (3P57s), it is no mere metaphor, for Spinoza, to speak of the desires and other affects of the state. 43. For discussion of the relation of Spinoza’s ethical theory to Aristotle and Seneca, see Wolfson 1934, Chapter xix. Wolfson notes the similarity between Spinoza’s portrait of the “free man” and Stoic descriptions of the “wise man.” 44. It may also be said that Humean epistemology is what would remain of Spinoza’s epistemology were Spinoza obliged to give up the intellect and, with it, the second and third kinds of knowledge. 45. The episode, reported by Nietzsche in a postcard to Overbeck in 1881, is described in Curley 1988: 128. 46. However, Bennett 1984 makes a strong case for interpreting Spinoza’s monism in line with a contemporary “field metaphysics.”

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Bibliography Akkerman, Fokke. 1980. Studies in the Posthumous Works of Spinoza: On Style., Earliest Translation, and Reception, Earliest and Modern Edition of Some Texts. Medelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis. Meppo: Krips Repro Meppel. Bennett, Jonathan. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics.” Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing. Bennett, Jonathan. 1996. “Spinoza’s Metaphysics, in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broad, C.D. 1930. Five Types of Ethical Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Curley, Edwin. 1973. “Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy,” in Spinoza:  A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Marjorie Grene. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday/​Anchor. Curley, Edwin. 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method. Princeton:  Princeton University Press. Curley, Edwin. 1996. “Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Khan,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Delahunty, R.J. 1985. Spinoza. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-​Body Problem in Spinoza. New York: Oxford University Press. Descartes, René. 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 volumes, edited by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Donagan, Alan. 1988. Spinoza. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Donagan, Alan. 1996. “Spinoza’s Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrett, Don. 1986. “Truth and Ideas of the Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione,” Studia Spinozana 2: 56–​86. Garrett, Don. 1990. “‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively’: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza:  Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-​François Moreau. Leiden: Brill. Garrett, Don. 1991. “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” in God and Nature:  Spinoza’s Metaphysics, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza by 2000:  The Jerusalem Conferences. Leiden: Brill. Garrett, Don. 1994. “Spinoza’s Theory of Metaphysical Individuation,” in Individuation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge J. E. Gracia. Albany: State University of New York Press. Moreau, Pierre-​François. “Spinoza’s Reception and Influence,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.



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Wilson, Margaret. 1986. “Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolf, Susan. 1979. “Asymmetrical Freedom,” Journal of Philosophy 77: 151–​166. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. 1934. The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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“Promising” Ideas Hobbes and contract in Spinoza’s political philosophy Broken promises don’t bother me. I just think, “Why did they believe me?” (Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handy) Like Hobbes, Spinoza prominently invokes promising and contract or covenant1 in his discussion of the foundations of the state—​primarily, though not exclusively, in his Theological-​Political Treatise. But how does Spinoza understand their nature and significance, and how, if at all, does his understanding of them differ from that of Hobbes? I begin by posing a set of related puzzles concerning the interpretation of Spinoza’s claims about promises and contracts specifically as they relate to Hobbes. I then compare the doctrines of Hobbes and Spinoza concerning several key topics: rights and powers, good and evil, reason and passion, and faith and deception. Finally, I appeal to these doctrines to resolve the puzzles about the nature and significance of promising and contract in Spinoza’s political philosophy.

1.  Puzzles about Hobbes and Spinoza on Promising and Contract The similarities between the political philosophies of Hobbes and Spinoza are striking, extensive, and deep. Both philosophers aim to ground a scientific treatment of politics on a fundamental principle of endeavor for self-​preservation. Both assign a theoretical role to a pre-​political “state of nature,” and both ascribe a nearly unlimited “right of nature” to human beings to do as they will in that state. Both conceive the commonwealth or state as a composite entity instituted through a contract in which its members transfer rights. Both maintain that the commonwealth has a right to determine the form of religion,2 and both invest substantial effort in the interpretation of Scripture—​in large part because of the



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political significance of scriptural interpretation for European states such as their own. Both are concerned, as part of that interpretation, with explicating the nature and terms of the particular contract reported in Scripture between God and the ancient Hebrews,3 as well as with understanding the contracts that give rise to commonwealths more generally.4 Some striking divergences of view are evident as well. For one, Hobbes argues that the best form of government is monarchy, whereas Spinoza argues that it is democracy. For another, Hobbes proposes that the state exercise substantial control over speech and religion, whereas Spinoza recommends that it generally allow broad latitude in both areas. Yet to a very considerable extent, these disagreements are practical rather than theoretical, grounded to be sure partly in different conceptions of the good but even more in different overall assessments of how best to enhance the prudential quality of public decision-​making and prevent civil instability5—​differing assessments no doubt related to the two philosophers’ differing experiences with their own commonwealths. Evidence of a subtler but potentially more fundamental difference—​despite the two philosophers’ seeming agreement about the importance of covenant in creating and maintaining a commonwealth—​appears in the opposing treatments they give to a stock problem concerning an explicit promise made to a robber in order to obtain one’s freedom. In De Cive—​which Spinoza had in his library—​ Hobbes writes: It is an usual question, whether compacts extorted from us through fear, do oblige or not. For example, if, to redeem my life from the power of a robber, I promise to pay him . . . next day, and that I will do no act whereby to apprehend and bring him to justice: whether I am tied to keep promise or not? But though such a promise must sometimes be judged to be of no effect, yet it is not to be accounted so because it proceedeth from fear . . . It holds universally true, that promises do oblige when there is some benefit received, and that to promise, and the thing promised, be lawful. But it is lawful, for the redemption of my life, both to promise and to give what I will of mine own to any man, even to a thief. We are obliged, therefore, by promises proceeding from fear, except the civil law forbid them; by virtue whereof, that which is promised becomes unlawful.6 In his TTP, in contrast, Spinoza writes without qualification: For the universal law of human nature is that no one fails to pursue any­ thing which he judges to be good, unless he hopes for a greater good, or fears a greater harm; nor does he submit to any evil, except to avoid a greater one, or because he hopes for a greater good . . . But from this it

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follows necessarily that no one will promise to give up the right he has to all things except with intent to deceive, and absolutely, that no one will stand by his promises unless he fears a greater evil or hopes for a greater good. To understand this better, suppose a Robber forces me to promise him that I will give him my goods when he wishes. Since, as I have already shown, my natural right is determined only by my power, it is certain that if I can free myself from this Robber by deceptively promising him whatever he wishes, I am permitted to do this by natural right, to contract deceptively for whatever he wishes . . . From these considerations we conclude that no contract can have any force except by reason of its utility. If the utility is taken away, the contract is taken away with it, and is null and void.7 This verdict, and particularly the final conclusion drawn from it, may seem in tension with what he goes on to say almost immediately: If all men could easily be led solely by the guidance of reason, and could recognize the supreme utility and necessity of the state, there would be no one who would not absolutely detest deceptions; with supreme reliability, everyone would stand by their contracts completely, out of a desire for this supreme good, the preservation of the state; above all else, they would maintain trust, the most important protection of the state.8 It seems equally in tension with Spinoza’s seemingly more demanding statements in Proposition 72 of Part 4 of the Ethics about the model “free man.” As Edwin Curley translates the proposition,9 it reads: Proposition 72: A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively. Demonstration: If a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by deception, he would do it from the dictate of reason (for so far only do we call him free). And so it would be a virtue to act deceptively (by P24), and hence (by the same Prop.), everyone would be better advised to act deceptively to preserve his being. I.e. (as is known through itself), men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be contrary to one another in fact. But this is absurd (by P31C). Therefore, a free man etc., q.e.d. Scholium: Suppose someone now asks: what if a man could save himself from the present danger of death by treachery? Would not the principle of preserving his own being recommend, without qualification, that he be treacherous? The reply to this is the same. If reason should recommend that, it would recommend it to all men. And so reason would recommend, without qualification, that men make agreements, join forces, and have common rights



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only by deception—​i.e., that really they have no common rights. This is absurd. In seeking to understand Spinoza’s views on promises and contracts as they contrast with those of Hobbes, we might hope for illumination from his own characterizations of his disagreements with Hobbes. Spinoza makes two remarks of this kind, both bearing clearly if somewhat indirectly on our topic; yet each is puzzling in its own way. Thus, he writes in an Annotation to Chapter  16 of the TTP: No matter what state a man is in, he can be free. For certainly a man is free insofar as he is led by reason. But (contrary to Hobbes) reason urges peace in all circumstances; moreover, peace cannot be obtained unless the common rights of the state are maintained without infringement. Therefore, the more a man is led by reason, i.e., the more he is free, the more will he steadfastly maintain the rights of the state and carry out the commands of the supreme power of which he is a subject.10 It seems surprising that Spinoza characterizes Hobbes as denying that reason urges peace in all circumstances, since Hobbes states that “the first, and fundamental law of nature”—​from which he derives the obligation to keep covenants—​ is “to seek peace and follow it,”11 and he characterizes all of the laws of nature as “dictates of reason.” Indeed, if anyone questions the universal rationality of peace, it would seem to be Spinoza himself, for no one seems more ready to allow violations of peace contracts, at least between states, than he: Allies are men of two states which, to avoid the danger of war, or to gain some other advantage, contract with one another not to harm one another, but on the contrary, to come to one another’s aid in cases of need, though each retains its own sovereignty. This contract will be valid just as long as its foundation, the principle of danger, or of advantage, is present. For no one makes a contract or is bound to stand by a contract, except out of hope for some good, or anxiety about some evil. If this foundation should be removed, the contract is removed of itself. Experience also teaches this, as clearly as one could wish. For though two different states may contract with one another not to harm one another, nevertheless, they strive, as far as they can, to prevent the other from becoming the more powerful, and they do not trust what has been said, unless they have seen clearly enough the end and advantage for which each one contracts. Otherwise, they fear deception, and not without just cause. For who trusts what someone else has said and promised, if the other person has the supreme power and retains

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the right to do whatever he likes? Who but a fool, who does not know the right the supreme powers have?12 While the note just cited constitutes Spinoza’s only use of Hobbes’s name in work originally intended for publication, he does mention Hobbes once more in his correspondence. Replying to Jarig Jelles four years after the publication of the TTP, he writes: With regard to Politics, the difference between Hobbes and me, about which you inquire, consists in this, that I ever preserve the natural right intact so that the Supreme Power in a state has no more right over a subject than is proportionate to the power by which it is superior to the subject.13 Yet this, too, seems at first sight to get the relation between Hobbes and Spinoza exactly backwards. For while Hobbes maintains that the fundamental natural right of self-​preservation, at least, is inalienable in the covenant instituting a commonwealth, Spinoza refers repeatedly not only to partial transfers of right to the sovereign power14 but also of subjects ceding “all their power of defending themselves—​i.e., all their right”15 and “completely surrendering their natural right.”16 Far from “preserving the natural right intact” in the social contract, Spinoza appears to annihilate it entirely.

2.  Key Doctrines in Hobbes and Spinoza In order to understand Spinoza’s view of promises and contracts, as well as his differences with Hobbes in this regard, it is necessary to understand some of their central doctrines concerning rights and powers, good and evil, reason and passion, and faith and deception. Let us turn to those topics in order. Rights and powers. For Hobbes, a right is a “liberty to do or forebear,” where a “liberty” is the absence of an impediment to the exercise of one’s power. The Right of Nature, in particular, is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of his own life, and consequently of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.17 To lay aside a right, whether by renouncing or transferring it, is to divest oneself, by sufficient signs of the will, either verbal or non-​verbal, of the liberty of hindering another of the benefit of his or her own right to a thing. He defines a



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contract as a mutual transfer of rights, and a covenant as a contract in which at least one party is to perform at a later time. In the covenant that constitutes the social contract, individuals agree to authorize the actions of “one man or an assembly of men” as their own and to give up their right of governing themselves to this man or assembly on condition that all others do likewise. While this covenant involves giving up the right to be judge for oneself of what is or is not conducive to one’s own preservation, it nevertheless has limits: individuals cannot give up their right to defend their own lives or bodies directly, nor can they give up certain other “liberties of subjects,” which include resisting physical harm, availing themselves of the necessities of life, and abstaining from executing dangerous or dishonorable offices.18 These exceptions are grounded ultimately for Hobbes at least in part in requirements on the interpretation of actions—​no one can be understood, by any word or action, to be willing the loss of these rights in a social contract.19 Indeed, in the absence of an enforcing power for covenants—​a “power to hold them all in awe,” in Hobbes’s well-​known phrase—​covenants are generally rendered void by the suspicion that the second party would fail to perform and would instead simply take advantage of the first performance by the other party. Spinoza, too, recognizes an extensive “right of nature.” Arguing from the principles (i) that God has sovereign right over all things, (ii) that the power of nature is the power of God, and (iii) that the power of nature is the power of individual things taken together, he concludes that each individual’s right of nature extends to “everything in its power” without restriction, so that nothing is outside natural right but “what no one desires and what no one can do.”20 His metaphysical doctrine that all activity is pursuit of self-​preservation21 renders Hobbes’s restriction of the right of nature to action aiming at self-​preservation trivial. But he also goes beyond Hobbes in claiming explicitly that natural right and power are necessarily coextensive. In addition to natural right, Spinoza also recognizes what he calls “private civil right”: “the freedom each person has to preserve himself in his state, which is determined by the edicts of the supreme power, and is defended only by its authority.”22 In principle, for Spinoza, a social contract creating the state would be one in which individuals cede all of their right to the state, so that private civil right would be limited to what the state in fact allows or protects. In practice, however, things are otherwise. Natural right is originally unlimited in theory, inasmuch as it is unrestricted by a state, but in practice it is extremely meager because human beings without the security of a state have very little power to do anything. Similarly, the right of the state against the individual is in principle unlimited by any restrictions imposed on it in a contract, but it is in fact limited by the inability of a state to acquire complete power over its subjects. Human beings cannot in fact give up the right to pursue their advantage or self-​preservation as they see it,

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nor to believe what seems to them most likely, nor to abstain from dangerous or dishonorable tasks. These limitations on the rights conveyed are not grounded, as for Hobbes, in the alleged impossibility of giving convincing tokens of the will to lay them down; rather, the rights themselves cannot be ceded simply because the corresponding power cannot be given up. While this may seem to be a distinction without a difference, it will prove to be significant. Given that whatever is done with right is permissible, it may seem that Spinoza’s doctrine that right is coextensive with power amounts to a kind of moral nihilism, since it follows that whatever anyone actually does is permissible. In fact, however, it amounts only to a rejection of the framework of obligations and permissions as a basis for drawing absolute moral distinctions. (In a parallel way, his necessitarianism, according to which whatever is possible is actual and whatever is actual is necessary, entails the rejection of a particular framework—​ in this case, a metaphysical framework—​as a basis for drawing absolute modal distinctions. And just as Spinoza’s necessitarianism still allows him to distinguish what is possible from what is impossible relative to some restricted set of laws or circumstances, so too he can still distinguish what is permissible from what is impermissible relative to some specified body of laws or commands.) Since Spinoza denies that indignation is ever appropriate—​both because it is a kind of sadness (tristitia) and because it always reflects an inadequate understanding of the causal history of the behavior in question23—​there is indeed some point in terms of appropriate moral attitudes to his rejection of the possibility of “impermissible” actions or actions “without right.” But this would constitute a rejection of moral distinctions altogether only if he rejected all other vocabularies and frameworks for drawing and embracing such distinctions as well—​and that he does not do. On the contrary, philosophers, in his view, “follow virtue not as a law, but out of love, because it is the best thing.”24 Good and evil. According to Hobbes, “whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good.”25 This designation of something as good is always “relative to the person that useth the terms, since no common rule is to be taken from the nature of objects themselves.” We nevertheless construe disagreements in what we call “good” as disagreements in judgment because we mistakenly take a projection of our own desires for the discernment of an objective feature of things. It is because ascriptions of goodness follow desire that Hobbes can assert that “of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself.”26 Hobbes insists, however, that there is no summum bonum or highest good. Rather, felicity consists in “a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the latter.”27 Spinoza agrees that, as the term “good” (“bonum”) is typically used, it cannot be said that we desire things because we see that they are good, but rather that



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we call things “good” because we desire them.28 It is with regard to this usage that he writes: For the universal law of human nature is that no one fails to pursue any­ thing which he judges to be good, unless he hopes for a greater good, or fears a greater harm; nor does he submit to any evil, except to avoid a greater one, or because he hopes for a greater good. I.e., between two goods, each person chooses the one he judges to be greater, and between two evils, the one which seems to him lesser. I say explicitly: the one which seems to the person choosing to be greater or lesser, and not that things necessarily are as he judges them to be. And this law is so firmly inscribed in human nature, that it ought to be numbered among the eternal truths, which no one can fail to know.29 In addition to this vulgar usage, however, Spinoza also stipulates in the Ethics a more scientific sense for “good” and “evil” (“malum”). Thus, in the Preface to Part 4, he defines “good” as “what we know certainly is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves,” and in Definition 1 of Part 4, he defines “good”—​presumably in a way that is meant to be equivalent—​as “what we certainly know to be useful to us.” It is in this more scientific sense of “good,” and not in the popular sense, that it is possible to “see and approve the better, but follow the worse.”30 Propositions 27–​50 of Ethics Part 4 are largely devoted to demonstrating what is good and what is evil in this sense. Particularly important for present purposes is the following: “Things which are of assistance to the common Society of men, or which bring it about that men live harmoniously, are useful; those, on the other hand, are evil which bring discord to the State”31—​a sentiment echoed and amplified, of course, in the TTP. Contrary to Hobbes, Spinoza affirms that there is a summum bonum, namely, “knowledge of God.”32 Possession of this highest good is not exclusive. On the contrary, one can hardly achieve any considerable degree of it without the cooperation of others who agree with oneself in nature (e.g., who are not pulled in opposing directions by contrary passions) and with whom one can, as it were, constitute “one Mind and one Body.”33 At a minimum, these are fellow citizens in a state; at best, they are fellow philosophers and intellectual co-​inquirers.34 Because one’s own advantage must be understood in terms of “persevering in one’s being,” however, Spinoza must offer an account of how knowledge of God constitutes35 a kind of persevering in being that is higher and more perfect than merely continuing to exist for a longer period of duration—​long life being an outcome that can hardly be guaranteed by any knowledge of God that human beings are likely to acquire. He offers this account in Ethics Part 5, where he argues that knowledge of

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God maximizes the “part of the mind that is eternal.” Having a mind the greater part of which is eternal gives one control over the passions and diminishes one’s fear of death. And indeed living a short life filled with the blessedness that comes from the knowledge of God (as Spinoza himself did, we may assume) is preferable to a life of longer duration and lesser knowledge.36 Reason and passion. Hobbes characterizes reason as the “reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts.”37 Because passions often lead one to act in ways that frustrate the satisfaction of one’s desires, reason and passion can come into conflict in motivating human beings. At times, Hobbes seems to imply that self-​preservation, as an end, has a particular relation to reason that is not exhausted by its status as the object of the most basic desire and one whose satisfaction is a prerequisite for the satisfaction of almost all other desires.38 In any case, however, reason is capable of providing general theorems about how to preserve oneself and achieve a more commodious life, and hence to obtain what individuals regard as good. These theorems are “dictates” of reason and constitute what can be called the “laws of nature.” Spinoza, too, ascribes a motivational role to reason, and one that is often in conflict with passions. Because every affect is also an idea, and each singular thing strives to persevere in its being as a matter of metaphysical necessity, to understand some object as genuinely good in the scientific sense is ipso facto to have some desire for it, a desire that may conflict with other desires. He identifies reason (ratio) as the second of three kinds of cognition.39 Unlike imagination (imaginatio), the lowest kind of cognition, reason is intellectual and consists in ideas that are adequate and true. Unlike intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva), the highest kind of cognition, it is a way of “perceiving many things at once,” and is therefore inherently general. Accordingly, it provides us with general “rules” or “dictates” of reason, and Spinoza seems very insistent on their universal form and high level of generality. Propositions 51–​66 of Ethics Part 4 are concerned primarily with acting under the guidance of reason and include the key claim: “From the guidance of reason, we shall follow the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils.”40 Because reason provides only general rules for action, it alone is insufficient for action in the external world:  one must have some awareness of one’s immediate situation, and this can typically only be achieved through sensation and memory, which are forms of imagination. Nevertheless, the more powerfully one’s reason-​produced adequate ideas play the leading role as desires in determining one’s actions, the more one is guided by reason. Guidance by reason is thus a matter of degree, as is resemblance to the ideal “free man”—​an ideal that is “the model of human nature we place before ourselves” mentioned in Spinoza’s definition of “good” and described in the final seven propositions of Ethics Part 4. Just as no one can be solely guided by reason, so no one can be a completely free



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man. To be completely free is to be determined to existence and action by one’s own nature alone,41 and hence to be God, whereas all human beings are to varying degrees subject to external forces. Nevertheless, just as some individuals are more guided by reason and others less, so some individuals are freer and others less. Likewise, to be free and guided by reason is to act from virtue—​that is, from power to persevere in one’s being.42 Because a virtuous and free individual guided by reason is genuinely the (relatively) adequate cause of his or her own actions, approbation (favor)—​unlike indignation—​can be appropriate; such approbation is itself, in Spinoza’s words, “not contrary to reason.”43 Reason tells us what is good or evil considered independent of the alternatives, but it does not prevent goods from coming into conflict within one another. Rather, it tells us to follow, in such cases, “the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils.” Spinoza gives revealing examples of such conflicts in the TP. He begins by noting, as he did in the TTP, that contracts between commonwealths are limited by their utility to both parties: Therefore each State has an undiminished right to break the treaty whenever it wants to; it cannot be said that it acts deceitfully or treacherously because it goes back on its assurance as soon as the cause of fear or hope is taken away, because this condition was equal for each of the contracting parties: whichever one could first be free of fear would be its own master, and would use its freedom as it thought best. Moreover, no one contracts for the future except on the assumption of certain anticipated circumstances. If these circumstances change, then the nature of the whole situation changes. That is why each of the allied States retains the right to look after itself, and why each of them strives, as far as it can, to be beyond fear, and hence, to be its own master, and why each of them strives to prevent the other from becoming more powerful. So, if any State complains that it has been deceived, it cannot condemn the honesty of the allied State, but only its own foolishness, because it entrusted its own well-​being to another State, which was its own master and for which the well-​being of its own state is the supreme law.44 He continues, however, by giving an example of a case in which a private individual should not keep his or her word, before returning to the case of a state: Moreover, what we have said here does not in any way eliminate the honesty [fides] which both sound reason and Religion teach us to observe. For neither reason nor Scripture teaches that every assurance we give is to be honored. When I have promised someone to guard the money he has given me to be kept in secret for him, I am not bound to make good my assurance once

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I know, or believe I know, that what he gave me was stolen. On the contrary, I will act more properly if I undertake to restore it to its owners. Similarly, if the sovereign has promised to do something for someone else, and afterward time or reason has taught, or seems to have taught, that it will harm the common well-​being of his subjects, surely he is bound to break his word. Therefore, since Scripture teaches only in general that we should keep our word, and leaves the particular cases where exceptions are to be made to the judgment of each person, it teaches nothing which is incompatible with what we have just shown.45 These are both cases, cleverly enough, in which one properly (that is, without acting contrary to reason) breaks one’s word for the sake of something else that is also good for others:  returning stolen property, or safeguarding the welfare of subjects. But given the definitional identity between what is good and what conduces to one’s own advantage, reason could hardly allow that one break one’s word for a sufficient good to others without also allowing that one break it for a sufficient good to oneself; on the contrary, it could only allow that one break it for others if doing so thereby brought or constituted a greater good for oneself as well. Faith and deception. In the Introduction to Leviathan, Hobbes criticizes the hearts of men “blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines,” but he does not list among the laws of nature any general prohibition against lying. He does, in contrast, state as the third law of nature “that men perform their covenants made,” and he characterizes violations of this law as “promise-​breaking” or “not keeping faith.” Since making a covenant involves an act of the will, Hobbes regards the breaking of covenant as a kind of practical contradiction and hence irrationality, in which an agent both does and undoes the same thing. The law of nature requiring performance of covenants applies only to valid covenants; and chief among the conditions that prevent or invalidate a covenant is the suspicion of non-​performance by a later party that typically results from the absence of a sovereign “power to hold them all in awe.” Nevertheless, Hobbes argues in his famous “Reply to the Fool”46 that, if the first party to a covenant does perform, the second party is then obliged to perform as well—​evidently, at least in part, because signaling in this way the importance one attaches to uniting in cooperative contractual arrangements is highly conducive to self-​preservation. Like Hobbes, Spinoza does not propound any general principle against lying. It may seem that he does so in the previously cited E4p72—​“A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively”—​but this appearance is an artifact of translation. The topic of that proposition is not deception generally, in the sense of inducing belief in what is not true. Spinoza would certainly have no compunction about deceiving non-​human animals in that sense, and arguably the TTP is intended to



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deceive its less astute readers in some respects. (Indeed, E4p72 itself is arguably intended to have the same effect.) Nor is the topic of the proposition even out-​and-​ out lying generally, in the sense of asserting what one knows or believes to be false. (Note that the TTP was published, presumably with Spinoza’s knowledge, under a false imprint [“Hamburg”].) Rather, “honestly” translates Spinoza’s “cum fide” and “deceptively” translates his “dolo malo.” Hobbes typically uses “cum fide” (“with faith”) and “dolo” (“by trickery or deception”) to describe keeping and breaking faith in his sense, which is specific to promises and contracts. Moreover, Spinoza always uses throughout E4p72, including its demonstration and scholium, the more specific term “dolus malus” (literally, “evil trickery or deception”), a term that can be readily contrasted with “dolus bonus” (literally, “good trickery or deception”). In well-​known Roman law, the former term designates fraud with “evil intent,” while the latter term designates appropriate shrewdness or trickery of precisely the kind that might be justified in dealing with a robber or enemy.47 Furthermore, in Annotation 32 to Chapter 16 of the TTP Spinoza explicitly recognizes the distinction between dolus malus and dolus bonus, indicating that the proscription of any deception as dolus malus depends on the state. As we have already seen, Spinoza maintains that “if the utility [of a contract] is taken away, the contract is taken away with it, and is null and void,” so that not merely the absence of an enforcing power but equally any other cause of a lack of relative utility in keeping faith for one partner or another can invalidate a contract. Furthermore, as we have also seen, he denies in the TP that a state breaking its word for reasons of utility thereby acts “deceptively or treacherously” [“dolo, vel perfidia”] and insists that whoever relies on a promise or contract while recognizing that faithful performance is not useful to the other party has only his only “foolishness,” not another’s bad faith, to blame.

3. Puzzles Solved We are now in a position to resolve the puzzles with which we began. Let us take them up in reverse order. 1. Why does Spinoza say that he, unlike Hobbes, preserves the right of nature intact? As we have seen, Spinoza’s social contract differs from Hobbes’s in that it does not, by its very terms, cede some rights (for example, the right to hold onto whatever goods one can acquire, the right to say whatever one thinks fit) while retaining others (for example, the right to take sustenance, the right to refrain from dangerous or dishonorable tasks). In particular, for Spinoza, one does not cede to the sovereign power the general right to judge what is most conducive to one’s self-​preservation while still retaining the particular right to judge whether one is subject to a (relatively?) direct attempt to kill or wound. Rather, right of

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whatever kind is transferred to precisely the same extent that power is actually transferred. Although in becoming a subject one’s power is lessened relative to the state, which acquires power over one, one’s “right of nature” remains formally just the same: namely, it is still the right to do whatever one can do. Moreover, in practical terms, one’s right of nature actually increases in the state, for one is far more able to act and to achieve one’s advantage in cooperation with others than one would be able to do outside it. Indeed, were that not true, one could hardly have been motivated to enter into the social contract at all. Furthermore, the gen­ eral right of nature itself—​in the sense of nature’s own right—​remains exactly as it was before the social contract, simply arranged differently as a different sum of individual powers of things in nature. 2. Why does Spinoza write that “contrary to Hobbes, reason urges peace in all circumstances?” Although Hobbes does formulate the first law of nature as “to seek peace and follow it,” he also expresses it disjunctively: “to seek peace, where it may be had, and where not, to defend ourselves.”48 Presumably, Spinoza saw this latter formulation as counseling the cessation of efforts towards peace under certain circumstances. For Spinoza, however, peace considered in itself is always a good in the scientific sense and hence always actually to be pursued. It is therefore a rule of reason that one seek it, and seek it “in all circumstances.” It does not follow, however, that engaging in war (even while continuing to seek peace) is never good relative to one’s other options—​or rather, it does not follow that war is never the lesser evil available under the circumstances, and hence an alternative that reason also counsels that one take. Indeed, Spinoza emphasizes that war may be relatively good (that is, the lesser evil) for a state in some circumstances, and presumably he allows that it can also be relatively good for competing individuals in the state of nature as well. The more one is guided by reason, of course, the more one will act as the model free man would act. And to the extent that one resembles the free man, the less one fears death and the more one values social and intellectual cooperation. Beyond that, however, the more free, virtuous, or guided by reason one is, the more power one has to prevent any need for war and to bring about cooperation instead; the inability to bring about this better outcome is always some kind of failing of one’s active power. The fact remains, however: what an ideal model would do is not always what it is good for someone to do in order to become closer to that model. This is true whether one’s model is that of the idle rich (which is not best attained by a poor man through a life of idleness) or the Spinozistic free man who always refrains from war. 3. Why does Spinoza write, on the one hand, that violating a promise is sometimes permissible, and yet on the other that if all human beings were solely guided by reason, they would stand by their contracts completely? Spinoza’s claim that some promise-​breaking is permissible is not as strong a claim as it may appear, for two reasons. First, we have seen that for Spinoza not all breaking of explicit promises



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or assurances need constitute either deception or the violation of a valid contract. Indeed, at least in some actual circumstances, it is not contrary to “the honesty which both sound reason and Religion teach us to observe.” Second, the claim that breaking a promise is sometimes permissible is simply a direct consequence of the claim that whatever is within one’s power is done by right; it does not by itself entail that doing so is either good, in accordance with reason, or an action of the model free man. In some cases, nevertheless, it may well be that breaking a promise by deception is not only permissible but the best alternative available—​that is, the lesser evil that, under the guidance of reason, one may therefore reasonably choose in a particular circumstance.49 Yet this is compatible with Spinoza’s claim that if all human beings were guided solely by reason, then they would all stand by their contract completely. For all would have a maximal appreciation of the value of cooperation50 and would presumably recognize that others did as well, even as they all jointly pursued the mutually acknowledged shareable highest good of knowledge of God in a well-​ordered state. Of course, an individual guided solely by reason would also be a completely free man. Such an individual would never find utility in breaking a promise, since he or she would never fear any harm and would always have the means to bring about the cooperation required for maintaining the shared highest good. Nevertheless, guidance solely by reason, like being completely free or perfectly virtuous is literally incompatible with being a human being. Human beings can only approximate these models without ever fully embodying them.51 For this reason, some deceptive promise-​breaking and renunciation of contracts may always remain the lesser of two evils for actual human beings. 4. Why does Spinoza reject Hobbes’s claim that one is obliged to keep a promise made to a robber to return with ransom in return for a present release? Hobbes and Spinoza agree that a contract can be valid even if the motivation for entering into it was fear. Hobbes justifies his claim that the robber’s contract is valid (unless explicitly forbidden by the sovereign) by appeal to a principle that “promises do oblige when there is some benefit received, and that to promise, and the thing promised, be lawful.” First performance, for him, renders even an otherwise invalid contract valid—​second performance, following trusting first performance, therefore falls under Hobbes’s law of nature “to keep covenants made.” He could, of course, regard the robber’s contract itself as invalid if it were impossible to interpret the captive as willing to perform his part. But while this might be a tempting suggestion, Hobbes cannot avail himself of it, for the robber’s own willingness to release the captive depends on the robber’s being able to interpret the captive as intending to comply. The captive, having successfully indicated by signs his or her intention to comply, cannot now fail to do so without a practical inconsistency. Spinoza, on the other hand, has no such commitments. Even if the released captive has successfully convinced the robber of an intention to pay, he retains the

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right to refrain from paying because he retains the power not to pay. The contract is invalid because the robber failed to provide the captive with an incentive to pay after release. Indeed, although the robber was misled, he has only his own foolishness to blame, at least if the captive’s lack of utility in repayment was evident. Of course, one possible incentive for paying the ransom would lie in the value to the captive of signaling his or her willingness to cooperate in other contractual arrangements. But while Spinoza certainly appreciates the value of cooperation, especially as it renders both the state and intellectual friendship possible, and presumably too appreciates the value of signaling to others that one appreciates it, the question of whether it is useful to try to do so by the surprising act of paying ex post facto ransom to a robber—​who is not likely to be a promising partner for joint ventures—​is a matter of judgment. To be sure, Spinoza does characterize the captive as giving the robber, despite the invalidity of the contract, a promise that is “deceptive”—​dolo. This is presumably because the captive, in making the promise and winning release, also convinces the robber, contrary to fact, that he will be motivated to return with the ransom, thereby hiding from the robber his own true assessment of the utility of returning. But there is no general obligation in Spinoza not to deceive. Indeed, although Spinoza does not specify whether this deception of the robber is dolus malus or dolus bonus, it is clearly the latter—​and it is only the former that E4p72 and its demonstration claim to be incompatible with freedom or (by implication) to be contrary to reason. Indeed, the passage cited previously from Chapter 3 of the TP strongly implies that dolus bonus quite generally is not contrary to “the honesty [fides] which both sound reason and Religion teach us to observe” and thus is in accordance with the requirement of E4p72 that the free man always act “honestly” [cum fide].

4. Conclusion A recent commentator has claimed that the difference between Hobbes and Spinoza in the case of the promise to the robber results from Hobbes’s being a contractualist and Spinoza’s being a consequentialist.52 While there is an element of truth in that verdict, it is much too simple as it stands. Hobbes does exhibit some attraction to thinking of contracts as generating practical obligations even independent of the evaluation of their utility, but his moral and political philosophy remains embedded in a broader context that assigns values on the basis of self-​preservation and desire satisfaction. Spinoza does employ a scientific conception of the good as the advantageous, or as what conduces to self-​preservation. But self-​preservation itself proves to consist not just in continued duration nor even in an affective or cognitive state alone, but also in a state of character—​virtue—​that is equally a matter of being such as to act in accordance with rules of reason, rules that one freely gives oneself. The full philosophical development of that scheme



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of value is Spinoza’s principal aim of the Ethics. His aim in the TTP, in contrast, is largely to understand and to help bring about the political conditions that can enable each person to live the best kind of life of which he or she is capable—​ peaceful contentment for the multitude, true freedom and blessedness for the philosophers.

Notes I  wish to thank Yitzhak Melamed, Michael Rosenthal, Aaron Garrett, Susan James, Susanne Sreedhar, Justin Steinberg, John Morrison, and audiences at Boston University and the conference “Thinking with Spinoza” at Birkbeck College, London, for helpful questions and comments on an early version of this chapter. 1. Unlike Spinoza, Hobbes distinguishes explicitly between contract (contractus) and covenant (pactum): a covenant is a contract in which at least one party is to perform his or her part at a later time. 2. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 199–​200; TTP Ch. 19; G iii 228, 230, 232, 233–​ 234. Translations from Spinoza’s Theological-​Political Treatise are from Edwin Curley (forthcoming). 3. For recent discussion, see Curley, “The Covenant with God,” and Martinich, “The Interpretation of Covenants.” 4. These are all features of Spinoza’s TTP; they do not all feature in his later but incomplete Political Treatise. I  will assume that their absence from the later work—​written for quite different purposes—​does not constitute a renunciation of them. 5. For example, Spinoza explains his preference for democracy over monarchy in the TP (also Curley forthcoming) thus: “The will of a very large council cannot be determined so much by inordinate desire as by reason” (TP Ch. 8; G iii 326). 6. De Cive 2.16; see also Leviathan i.14.27 for a similar passage. References to De Cive are to Hobbes, De Cive: The English Version; references to Leviathan are to Curley, ed., Leviathan. 7. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 191–​192. 8. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 192. 9. All translations from Spinoza’s Ethics are from C. 10. TTP Ch. 16 Annotation 33; G iii 263. 11. Leviathan i.14.4. 12. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 196–​197; see also TP Ch. 2; G iii 281. 13. Ep. 50. References to Spinoza’s correspondence are to Wolf, ed., The Correspondence of Spinoza. 14. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 193. 15. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 193. 16. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 195.

520 Natur alistic Ethics 17. Leviathan i.16.1. 18. De Cive 2.18; Leviathan ii.21.10. 19. Sreedhar, “Defending Hobbes’s Right,” distinguishes three principles gov erning what rights can and cannot be laid down in any given contract. 20. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 189. For a discussion of this argument, see Curley, “The State of Nature.” 21. E3p7. 22. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 196. 23. E4p51s. 24. Ep. 6. 25. Leviathan i.6.7. 26. Leviathan i.14.8. 27. Leviathan i.11.1. 28. E3p9s. 29. TTP Ch. 16; G iii 191–​192. 30. E4p17s, quoting Ovid. 31. E4p40. 32. E4p28. 33. E4p18s. 34. For a good discussion of issues concerning the rationality of cooperation in Spinoza’s philosophy, see Rosenthal, “Two Collective Action Problems.” 35. Given the way in which Spinoza has defined “good,” he is not committed, as Aristotle was, to the doctrine that the summum bonum is non-​instrumental. In fact, however, it is plausible to regard knowledge of God not just as producing but as constituting the highest kind of perseverance in being. 36. Youpa, “Spinozistic Self-​Preservation,” has argued that, because the free man guided by reason has a greater part of his mind that is eternal, he would not harm his eternal part for the sake of a lesser good by breaking his word. However, Youpa does not show how breaking one’s word would itself be a cause (as opposed to a relatively common effect) of lack of virtue or freedom. 37. Leviathan i.5.2. 38. See Bernard Gert’s Introduction to Hobbes, Man and Citizen. 39. E2p40s. 40. E4p65. 41. E1d7. 42. E4p8. 43. E4p51. For more discussion of these matters, see Garrett, “ ‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly,’ ” and “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.” 44. TP Ch. 3; G iii 290. 45. TP Ch. 3; G iii 291, emphasis added. 46. Leviathan i.15.4–​5.



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47. See, for example, Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, p. 440 (entry for “dolus”). 48. De Cive 2.1; see also Leviathan i.xiv.4. In Leviathan, Hobbes indicates that, when the prerequisites for the successful pursuit of peace are absent, the law of nature requires only that one intend to pursue peace whenever they become present. In a note to his translation of the TTP, Curley calls attention to the disjunctive character of the passage from De Cive as a possible explanation for Spinoza’s note concerning Hobbes. 49. It is worth noting that in the demonstration of E4p72, Spinoza does not state that the principle of preserving one’s being would not dictate treachery (perfidia) to save one’s life, but only that it would not do so “without qualification” [“omnino”], a term that recurs elsewhere in his discussions of rational guidance and the ideal of the free man. See Garrett, “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.” In fact, action undertaken to preserve one’s own life may never qualify as treachery for Spinoza, but only as deception in the broad sense of dolus generally (and not as dolus malus). 50. In fact, anyone promising first performance in a Hobbesian covenant could then generally count on second performers to appreciate the value of cooperation and perform their part as well, leading to general assurance about first performance. 51. In addition to Garrett, “ ‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly,’ ” see also Garber, “Dr. Fischelson’s Dilemma.” 52. See Marinoff, “Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant.”

Bibliography Berger, Adolf. 1953. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, Philadelphia:  The American Philosophical Society. Curley, Edwin. 1991. “The State of Nature and its Law in Hobbes and Spinoza,” Philosophical Topics 19.1: 97–​117. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1996. “Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Khan,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 2004. “The Covenant with God in Hobbes’s Leviathan,” in Leviathan After 350 Years, edited by Tom Sorrell and Lic Foisneau. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Della Rocca, Michael. 2008. Spinoza, London: Routledge. Garber, Daniel. 2004. “Dr.  Fischelson’s Dilemma:  Spinoza on Freedom and Sociability,” in Spinoza by 2000:  The Jerusalem Conferences. Ethica IV:  Spinoza on Reason and the “Free Man,” edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal. New York: Little Room Press. Garrett, Don. 1990. “‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively’: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-​François Moreau, 221–​238. Leiden: Brill.

522 Natur alistic Ethics _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1996. “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobbes, Thomas. 1983. De Cive:  The English Version, in The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Volume 2, edited by Howard Warrender. Oxford: Clarendon Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1991. Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive), edited by Bernard Gert, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1994. Leviathan, edited by Edwin Curley, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Marinoff, Louis. 1994. “Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Highway Robbery, and Game Theory,” The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72.4: 445–​462. Martinich, A. P. 2004. “The Interpretation of Covenants in Hobbes’s Leviathan,” in Leviathan After 350 Years, edited by Tom Sorrell and Lic Foisneau. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rosenthal, Michael. 1998. “Two Collection Action Problems in Spinoza’s Social Contract Theory,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 15.4: 389–​409. Spinoza, Benedict de. 1927. The Correspondence of Spinoza, translated and edited by A. Wolf, New York: Lincoln MacVeigh. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume 1, translated and edited by Edwin Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ 2016. The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume 2, translated and edited by Edwin Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Sreedhar, Susanne. 2008. “Defending Hobbes’s Right of Self-​Defense,” Political Theory 36.6: 781–​802. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Youpa, Andrew. 2003. “Spinozistic Self-​Preservation,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 41.3: 477–​490.

Index

accidents, contingent (or mere), 107–​09, 132, 202, 211, 215, 363–​66, 371, 377, 386–​87. See also modes action, 131, 362–​63, 383, 387, 416–​17,  509 actuality, 111–​15, 123, 131, 136–​40, 165–​69, 191–​93, 204, 211, 246, 388. See also essence, actual existence actuality, 137–​40 formal essence actuality, 137–​40 adequacy and adequate ideas, 20, 23–​24, 100, 117–​19, 174, 183–​88, 190–​92, 200–​01, 206–​09, 224, 227–​29, 253, 278–​79, 288–​91, 402, 413 Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth, 264–​65, 278–​81, 286–​88. See also adequacy and adequate ideas; and truth affections. See modes affects (emotions), 21–​22, 213–​14, 413–​14, 418–​23, 448, 456–​58, 464–​76, 485–​501 active, 22, 422 (see also passions) affirmation, 21, 164–​68, 178, 184–​86,  426 Allison, Henry, 68–​69, 76–​77, 87, 259, 319,  381–​83 altruism, 8, 490–​92 Anselm, 290

appetite, 12, 203, 245, 272, 290, 325–​26, 330, 334–​36, 350, 412, 423, 488, 498, 510. See also conatus and desire approval. See favor Aristotle, 107, 322–​23, 339–​48, 493, 501, 520 Attribute Non-​Identity, 282–​83, 287 Attribute Sufficiency, 93–​97 attributes, 15–​20, 58–​59, 69, 72–​73, 89, 115–​19, 137–​45, 192–​97, 200–​ 14, 221–​25, 230, 237–​38, 245–​50, 256–​58, 263–​91, 299–​300, 314–​15, 319, 336–​41, 364, 370, 377–​78, 386, 401, 410–​11, 420–​21, 475. See also extension, attribute of; thought, attribute of; and nature of, absolute Ayers, Michael, 240 being, formal and objective, 53, 136, 162, 245, 274–​80, 426–​27, 435 Bennett, Jonathan, 17, 63–​66, 73–​74, 86–​88, 99–​101, 107–​13, 116–​17, 120, 122, 124, 214, 216, 243, 257, 259, 300–​02, 306, 310, 318–​20, 323, 326–​336, 346–​50, 352–​58, 374–​76, 381–​85, 424, 435, 437, 460, 497–​501. See also Hooker-​Bennett Objection and Leibniz-​Bennett Objection

524

Index

blame, 24, 460, 488. See also responsibility blessedness, 12–​13, 24–​26, 214, 463–​64, 474–​76, 487, 495, 499, 512, 519 Blijenbergh, Willem van, 494 bodies, 17–​22, 207, 216, 227–​30, 236–​40, 275, 296–​319, 332, 337–​42, 349, 361, 394–​413, 416–​20, 428–​30 simplest, 232, 289, 296, 300–​03, 308, 313–​14, 381, 387, 417, 423, 436 bondage (to passions), 23, 466–​69 Boyle, Robert, 304–​05 Broad, C. D., 497–​98, 501 Brown, Stuart, 197 Butler, Joseph, 495 Carr, Spencer, 210, 216 Cartesian Circle, 154–​59, 173 Caterus, 225, 239 Causal Axiom (1a4), 13, 56, 71, 86, 127–​29, 134, 205–​06, 267, 279, 437 Causal Barrier Argument, 145, 267 causation and causes, 34, 101, 121, 127–​34, 160, 192, 349, 353, 362–​63, 379, 424, 429, 432, 485, 489 adequate, 112, 121, 133, 146, 362 efficient, 105–​06, 203, 224, 322, 330, 498 external, 54, 105–​06, 134, 206, 212, 251, 259, 314, 337, 353–​59, 366–​68, 374–​84, 396, 402–​08, 419–​22, 428–​33, 435, 452, 457, 468, 472, 475, 480, 488 final, 322–​23, 326–​30, 339–​40, 344–​46, 498. (see also teleology) immanent, 18, 142, 215, 387, 437 of itself (self-​caused), 15–​16, 21, 34–49, 54–56, 201, 210, 365, 371–72, 476​ in kinds of cognition, 208 partial (inadequate), 112, 121, 130, 133–​34, 146, 203, 386 proximate, 205, 209–​10, 429, 433

certainty, 152–​56, 160, 164, 170–​71, 178–​79, 188, 227, 337, 500 character, strength of, 466 Charlton, William, 63, 87 Christianity, 442, 493–​96 clarity and distinctness, 5, 152–​59, 167–​69, 173–​76, 178–​79, 184–​85, 224, 227, 279 Clarke, Samuel, 146, 148, 221 Collins, Anthony, 221 cognition, kinds of, 5, 59, 199–​205, 250, 259, 336–​39, 394, 512. See also imagination; reason; and scientia intuitiva commonwealth. See state compatibilism and incompatibilism, 490 compatibility comprehensive,  141–​42 law,  141–​42 complexity, 7, 408–​09, 415–​21, 423, 428 composition, fallacy of, 146 conatus, 7, 21–​23, 203–​04, 245, 324–​28, 333–​35, 343–​44, 348–​49, 352–​85, 399–​410, 417, 423–​24, 428, 432–​ 34, 465–​66, 469, 486–​92 conception and conceivability, 13–​18,  224–​26 through, 15, 71–​72, 75–​76, 84–​85, 90–​96,  362–​63 unique,  94–​96 concepts, 182–​87,  194–​95 disjunctively derivative, 277–​79, 288 Conceptual Barrier, 58–​61, 267, 270, 277, 282, 284 Conceptual Barrier Argument, 58–​61 confusion and distinctness, 152, 163–​69, 173, 183, 227, 349, 403–​07, 413,  430–​31 consciousness, 7, 22, 181, 215, 232–​38, 252–​55, 260–​61, 396–​97, 405, 408–​10, 412–​23, 428–​30,  466 consequentialism, 487, 518

Index contingency, 54–​67, 98–​99, 105–​08, 111, 115, 140–​45, 194–​96, 388, 431–​32, 498. See also necessity contract (compact), 448–​49, 504–​09,  513–​20 covenant. See contract Coventry, Angela, 24 Curley, Edwin, 5, 17, 66–​67, 80, 87, 89–​90, 99, 119, 120–​23, 125–​48, 152, 154, 156, 160, 172–​73, 175, 196–​97, 210, 216, 243, 245, 257–​58, 296, 305, 318–​19, 324–​28, 330, 348, 352, 354, 360, 380, 384–​86, 412–​14, 460, 496–​99, 501, 506, 520–​21 death, 24–​25, 212, 259, 304, 311–​12, 444–​59, 472–​75, 481–​84, 492, 506, 512, 516 deception, 7–​8, 160, 441–​60, 482–​84, 505–​08,  514–​18 deduction, 209 definitions, 180, 298, 314–​15, 367 Delahunty, R. J., 87, 99, 120, 173, 215, 245, 257, 481, 497 Della Rocca, Michael, 4–​5, 53, 57–​61, 91–​97, 146, 215–​17, 257, 267–​71, 278, 284, 332, 349, 352–​55, 359–​60, 381, 386, 395, 402–​03, 430, 435, 437–​38, 498 democracy, 505, 519 Descartes, René, 5–​6, 12–​21, 51, 58, 66–​67, 78–​80, 118, 137, 144, 152, 154–​60, 164–​67, 171–​82, 184–​97, 209, 221–​33, 235–​42, 245, 258, 260, 264, 271–​78, 286–​87, 290–​91, 299–​307, 315–​18, 322–​23, 339–​50, 359, 366, 378–​79, 386–​89, 393, 426–​27, 462–​63, 472–​73, 495–​97. See also Cartesian Circle Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” (DPP), 144, 155, 159, 177, 179, 221–​22, 239, 274, 286, 300–​04

525

desire, 19, 22–​23, 36, 169, 213, 290, 324–​25, 334–​36, 340–​41, 344, 352, 380, 405, 412, 414, 421, 433–​34, 446–​57, 462, 466–​79, 484–​86, 489–​91, 496–​501, 506, 509–​12, 519. See also appetite determinism, 99, 106, 123, 143, 190–​91, 327–​28, 442,  488–​90 De Vries, Simon, 97 De Witt, Johan and Cornelis, 490 distinction, real, 222–​24, 300, 497 distinctness. See clarity and distinctness; and confusion and distinctness diversity, 103. See also variegation divisibility and indivisibility, 58–​59, 229–​38, 240, 285 Divisibility Argument, 229–​238 division, fallacy of, 129, 146 Donagan, Alan, 77–​79, 88, 104, 121, 215, 245, 257, 290–​91, 319, 381, 497 doubt, 35, 75, 151–​75, 178, 181–​82, 188–​89, 208, 212, 223, 286, 463 dreaming, 163–​64, 174 Dretske, Fred, 389 duration. See eternity Earle, William, 32–​34, 48–​49 egoism, 24, 491, 496. See also altruism Einstein, Albert, 3 Eisenberg, Paul, 386 Elwes, R. H. M., 123, 306, 385, 456 emotions. See affects empiricism, 14 error, 152, 156, 169, 229, 413, 424–​37 essence, 3–​6, 14–​19, 31, 37, 46, 49–​57, 73–​74, 77–​79, 82–​84, 88–​89, 94–​96, 100–​101, 105–​12, 117, 122–​23, 127–​28, 131–​48, 165–​69, 180, 193, 195, 200–​16, 222–​23, 228–​29, 237, 244–​46, 250–​51, 256–​57, 260, 276–​77, 282–​83, 288–​89, 308–​09, 314–​16, 334–​47, 355, 363–​89, 397–​401, 426, 431, 446, 468–​69, 474–​75, 486,  497–​99

526

Index

essence (cont.) actual, 202–​11, 245, 256, 290, 335–​36, 341, 345–​47, 359, 399–​401, 413, 459, 465, 469, 497 constituting, 77–​79,  88–​89 formal, 5–​6, 107, 123, 136–​41, 147–​48, 153, 158, 178–​79, 192–​93, 200–​05, 210–​11, 215–​16, 243–​59, 337–​38, 411, 437, 499 of the human body, 6, 246–​61, 474 involving existence, 31–​37, 46, 50, 54–​ 56, 93, 195, 365, 498 and laws, 338–​39, 378 logical, 107–​12, 122 of man, 105, 143, 334–​35 nominal, 228–​29, 256 objective, 153, 157, 174, 178–​79, 216, 256 real, 228–​29, 256 scholastic, 107–​12, 122 eternity, 6, 54, 102, 120, 125–​27, 136–​38, 148, 247–​57, 260, 463 of mind (the part of the mind that is eternal), 25, 212, 243–​62, 474–​76, 482, 499, 511–​12, 520 under a species of (sub specie aeternitatis), 136, 138, 148, 244, 249–​51,  446 Euclid, 11 evil. See good and evil existence, 123, 147, 204, 207–​08, 244, 277 concept of, 277 manners of, 18–​20, 93, 274–​80, 288 necessary, 32–​43, 50, 53–​54, 57, 87, 100, 105–​12, 110, 120, 123, 127, 143, 225, 285–​86, 329 and non-​existence, 35–​39, 50 spatio-​temporal,  137–​38 expression, 94–​95, 130 extension, attribute of, 1–​4, 6, 14–​21, 40, 58–​59, 66, 114, 123, 146, 162, 192–​93, 201–​07, 216, 221–​39,

245–​58, 266–​89, 296–​300, 309–​ 10, 314, 317, 331–​32, 336–​41, 346–​47, 378, 399–​401, 411–​12, 422, 429, 436–​37, 465, 472, 494 face of the whole universe, 128, 309. See also individual, infinite facts (general and particular), 130 faith. See deception and promises falsity and false ideas, 20, 151–​73, 278, 325, 425, 463, 468 fatalism, 488 favor (approval), 456–​61, 471, 489–​93 fiction and fictitious ideas, 116, 151–​52, 161–​69, 175, 322, 326–​29, 455, 463, 500 Fodor, Jerry, 238 following from, 100–​13, 120–​21, 125–​40 absolutely, 127–​29,  132–​35 conditionally, 132, 135, 139–​40 considered in a particular way, 133 as determined, 127–​29, 132, 135 unconditionally, 132, 135, 139–​40 force, 301–​04, 311–​13, 321, 338–​40 forms or natures, 297–​98, 305–​06, 316, 399 substantial, 339–​40, 347 freedom, 18–​19, 23, 174, 327–​28, 365–​66, 425, 443, 451–​58, 464–​65, 471–​83, 488–​93, 495–​501, 509, 513,  518–​20 asymmetrical, 490 the free man, 23–​24, 326, 365, 441–​60, 471–​72, 478–​93, 500–​01, 506,  512–​21 Freud, Sigmund, 496 Friedman, J. I., 120, 122 friendship, 24, 452, 466, 489–​91, 518 Gabbey, Alan, 214, 216, 336 Garber, Daniel, 260, 383, 521 Gert, Bernard, 520

Index God or Nature, 1, 4, 17, 26, 201, 266, 308, 324–​27, 343, 465. See also nature arguments for the existence of, 31–​61, 166, 186, 235 attributes as essences of, 288 blessedness and, 25–​26 definition of, 6, 19, 35, 40–​41, 48, 59, 113, 117 impersonality of, 2, 160, 475 as law-​giver, 23, 479, 494, 500, 510 omnipresence of, 236 power of, 509 true idea of, 160, 170 understanding or knowledge of, 213, 404, 470, 511 will of, 341–​44 good and evil, 7–​8, 19, 23, 169, 328–​29, 335–​36, 349, 404, 412, 445–​51, 457, 460, 464–​72, 479, 481–​84, 490, 504, 510–​12, 517 highest good (summum bonum), 510–​11,  520 Greater Power Argument, 58–​61 Griffin, Michael, 142, 146 Gueroult, Martial, 290–​91, 318–​19 Hampshire, Stuart, 99, 119–​20, 348 Handey, Jack, 504 hatred, 24, 472–​73. See also love Hobbes, Thomas, 166–​67, 221, 448, 462, 495–​96,  504–​21 honesty. See deception Hooker, Michael, 63 Hooker-​Bennett Objection, 64–​72, 85–​86,  91–​96 Hudde, Johannes, 285–​86 Hume, David, 14, 485–​86, 491–​92, 495–​96,  501 humility, 24, 442, 471, 494 Hutcheson, Francis, 495 identity. See Mind-​Body Identity; Mode-​Mode Identity; Identity of

527

Indisceribles; Indiscernibility of Identicals; Substance-​Attribute Identity; Substance-​Substance Identity; and Transitivity of Identity Identity of Indiscernibles, 66–​68, 83–​85, 109, 263 indignation, 456–​61, 471, 489–​93, 510 Indiscernibility of Identicals, 6, 263–​73, 280–​84,  288–​90 indubitability, 156–​57, 160, 178, 181. See also certainty imagination, 5, 14, 21–​25, 138, 151, 163–​71, 199, 206, 212, 232, 244, 249–​54, 260, 275, 336, 345, 362, 393–​97, 403–​11, 415, 419, 425–​34, 448, 461, 465, 467, 469, 473, 475, 480, 486, 491–​95,  512 of past and future, 430–​31 immortality, 221, 255, 264, 476. See also eternity of mind individual, the infinite, 128–​33, 140–​41, 202, 211, 240, 297–​98, 303, 307–​09, 357, 375, 413, 436 individuals, 216, 230–​33, 240, 260, 265, 295–​320, 329, 333, 344–​45, 348–​49, 355–​60, 364–​65, 399, 413, 436, 446, 455–​56, 459–​60, 465, 469. See also things, singular individuation, 6, 295–​349, 377–​79, 387, 465 information,  428–​29 inherence (being in), 14–​15, 70, 84–​85, 90–​96, 215, 225, 257, 277–​88, 352–​53, 360–​79, 385–​87, 397–​99, 406, 412, 427 intellect, 13–​15, 20, 22, 25–​26, 32, 78, 83–​84, 93, 113, 142, 148, 158–​74, 179, 191–​94, 199–​202, 209, 212, 223, 232, 246, 249–​54, 256, 260–​61, 265–​66, 274–​79, 281, 288, 324, 327, 336, 362, 364, 393, 397, 404, 409, 411, 419, 425, 463–​65, 492–​95,  501

528

Index

intellect (cont.) actual, 113, 246 infinite intellect of God, 20, 25, 104, 111–​14, 118–​23, 131–​39, 191–​94, 201–​02, 224, 253, 261, 327, 364, 475 potential, 246, 260 intentionality, 274, 281, 380, 405, 426–​30,  435–​37 intuition, 209. See also scientia intuitiva involving, 206, 212, 429, 435–​36. See also essence involving existence Jarrett, Charles, 99, 119–​21, 387 Jelles, Jarig, 496, 508 Joachim, H. H., 32–​36, 44, 49, 152, 163, 168, 173 joy, 22–​26, 213–​14, 254, 326, 337, 343, 400–​01, 412, 423, 457, 460, 463, 466, 468–​69, 471–​76, 487–​89, 492, 495, 499. See also sadness Judge, Jenny, 423 Kant, Immanuel, 32–​33, 49–​50, 52, 54–​55, 485–​86, 496, 501 knowledge. See cognition, kinds of Koistinen, Olli, 147 Koyré, Alexandre, 166 Lachterman, David, 319 law, 272, 494. See also nature, laws of civil, 505, 513 compatibility,  141–​42 and essence, 338–​39, 378 -​giver, God as, 23, 478–​79, 494, 500, 510 of motion and rest, 302 of refraction, 346 Roman, 515 LeBuffe, Michael, 7, 415, 418, 421–​23 Leibniz, G. W., 53, 62–​68, 73, 93–​96, 142, 176–​96, 318, 322–​23, 340,  342–​48

Leibniz-​Bennett Objection 72–​89,  93–​96 Leibniz’s Law, 263, 265, 269. See also identity Lin, Martin, 54 Locke, John, 6, 14, 129, 187, 221–​29, 233–​41, 256, 361, 380, 495, 497 Loeb, Louis, 284–​85, 290–​91 logic, 53, 100–​01, 107, 146, 191–​92, 195–​ 96, 265, 342, 497 entailment, 100–​01,  121–​22 modal, 107 relevance, 101 love, 26, 213, 324–​26, 337–​38, 338, 343, 412, 433, 456–​57, 462, 470–​73, 476, 489–​90, 492–​94, 499, 510. See also hatred of God, intellectual, 2, 26, 213–​14,  474–​76 Malebranche, Nicolas, 14, 221 Malinowski-​Charles, Sylvaine, 217 Marinoff, Louis, 521 Marshall, Colin, 268–​73, 284–​85, 290, 436 Marshall, Eugene, 423, 446 Martin, Christopher, 146–​47, 423 Martinich, A. P., 519 Matheron, Alexandre, 305–​06, 313, 318–​19, 381, 387 Matson, Wallace, 74, 99, 120, 215, 245, 257 matter, 19–​21, 226–​27, 233–​37, 241, 301, 317, 340 Melamed, Yitzhak, 277, 290–​91, 436 memory, 255, 512 metaphysics, 2, 6, 8, 12–​19, 62–​63, 86, 99, 126, 130, 136, 192, 200, 236, 244, 257, 286, 325, 336, 339–​41, 353, 377, 387, 398, 410, 462–​63, 479–​81,  495–​96

Index field, 17, 302, 318, 385, 501 substance/​mode,  14–​17 method, 5, 14, 21, 32, 45–​47, 151–​54, 171–​74, 176–​82, 188–​89, 192, 317, 322, 345–​47, 405, 463, 473, 493, 497 Meyer, Lodewijk, 300 Miller, Jon, 61, 216 Mind-​Body Identity, 20, 264–​70, 273 Mind-​Body Non-​interaction, 267, 271 Mind-​Body Property Difference, 264, 267 minds, 223–​40, 252–​55, 273–​75, 340, 393–​95,  402–​03 miracles, 144 Mode-​Mode Identity (Mode Identity Doctrine), 266, 275–​76, 399, 403 modes, 14, 18–​22, 26, 43, 50–​51, 65–​84, 92–​93,  201 finite, 18, 71, 98–​106, 109–​23, 92, 147, 193–​94, 202–​05, 211, 238–​39, 244, 246–​48, 253–​55, 265, 289, 308, 314, 361, 367, 386 infinite, 18, 67–​68, 99–​103, 109–​13, 116, 120–​22, 127–​34, 137, 140–​43, 147, 193, 201–​05, 210–​16, 247–​51, 257–​59, 289, 300, 308–​09, 314, 364, 437 total system (or series) of finite, 92–​93, 99–​146,  193 monarchy, 505 monism, substance, 3–​6, 17, 62–​89, 91–​97, 100, 117–​19, 130, 177, 196, 308, 319, 352, 405, 410, 427, 464–​ 65, 496, 501 More, Henry, 221 Morrison, John, 290, 437 motion and rest, 6, 110, 184–​85, 216, 232–​34, 237, 249, 251, 267–​68, 280, 295–​320, 327, 336–​37,

529 345–​46, 364–​65, 372, 399–​401, 410, 416–​17, 428, 447, 465, 471, 482 fixed pattern (or ratio) of, 6, 110, 249, 295–​99, 303–​07, 310–​20, 365, 372, 399–​400, 419–​28,  465 local motion, 301–​03 quantity of, 301–​04

Nadler, Steven, 7, 216, 415–​20, 423 Naess, Arne, 387 Natura naturans, 1, 120, 308 Natura naturata, 1, 120, 308 naturalism, 2–​3, 196, 413, 496 incremental, 394, 404–​05, 408–​10, 413, 418, 428–​29 nature, 1–​7, 17–​18, 26, 161–​63, 234, 308–​09, 322–​29, 343, 460, 464–​67, 477–​80, 516. See also God or Nature absolute, of attributes, 71–​72, 100–​04, 110–​12, 120–​21, 127, 132–​33, 201–​02, 247–​48, 257, 300, 344 agreement in, 354, 383, 443–​59, 470, 511 divine, 5, 24, 98, 101, 111–​15, 121, 125–​ 27, 328–​29, 343–​46, 364–​65, 489 or form, 297–​98, 305–​06, 316, 399 laws of, 89, 103, 112, 123, 137, 140–​41, 190, 201, 203, 214, 247–​48, 255, 258, 349, 429, 507, 512, 514–​16 order of, 5, 101, 115–​16, 121, 123, 142–​45, 169–​70, 205, 210, 248, 250, 329–​30, 381–​82,  412 right of, 477–​48, 506–​09, 515–​16 state of, 504 true and immutable, 137, 167, 245, 258,  286–​87 necessitarianism, 3–​5, 18, 99–​145, 177, 190–​97, 246–​48, 437, 465, 473–​74, 488, 496–​97, 510 moderate vs. strict, 5, 125–​26, 140–​45

530

Index

necessity, 1–​5, 13, 53–​54, 98–​99, 103–​04, 111–​15, 125, 131, 134, 140–​45, 191–​96, 327–​29, 388, 431–​32, 510. See also contingency and existence, necessary absolute (unconditional), 134–​35, 140 by reason of cause, 54, 105–​06, 134–​36,  193 by reason of essence, 54, 105–​06, 134–​36,  193 relative (conditional), 134–​35, 140 Negative,  91–​96 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 496, 501 nobility, 276, 471, 489 notions common, 199, 206–​07, 211, 216, 250, 337, 397, 473 universal, 199–​200, 210, 212, 216, 431, 450 object (objectum), 20, 212, 257, 266, 272, 275–​79, 394, 401, 403, 411–​12, 424–​29,  435–​37 obligation, 22–​23, 477, 501, 507, 510 Oldenburg, Henry, 98, 273, 304, 318 opinion (first kind of cognition), 199, 206, 212–​13, 235, 249, 251, 336, 411, 500. See also imagination order, geometrical, 4, 11–​12, 167, 171, 463, 477, 496 Ovid, 468 panpsychism, 5, 226, 237–​38 pantheism, 4, 18 parallelism, 6–​7, 15, 19–​21, 112–​16, 125, 145, 197, 201, 216, 226, 231, 246, 248–​53, 257, 271, 274–​75, 310, 331, 336, 339, 341, 399, 403, 417, 424–​25, 435, 499 Parkinson, G. H. R., 173, 209, 216 passions, 22–​26, 108, 357–​58, 422, 450, 461–​62, 468–​74, 490–​95, 512–​14. See also affects

perception, sensory, 14, 189, 206, 229, 232, 255, 275, 400–​01, 406–​07, 419, 512 perfection, 2, 7, 26, 104, 128–​30, 140–​41, 151, 155–​56, 174, 180, 191, 213, 227, 237, 241, 253, 286, 326–​29, 340, 343, 348, 366, 377, 400–​02, 408–​ 10, 413, 415–​20, 449–​51, 454–​55, 460, 466–​67, 469, 475–​78, 487. See also reality permission and permissibility, 22–​23, 510, 516–​17. See also obligation Physical Digression (Physical Interlude, Physical Excursus), 215–​16, 240, 249, 296–​308, 315–​19, 331, 416–​17 pity, 24, 442, 457, 494 Plato, 493 Pollock, Frederick, 291 Positive,  81–​91 possibility, 113–​14, 119, 131, 184–​86, 191–​92, 203, 245–​46, 329, 388, 431–​32,  498 power, 16–​18, 21–​26, 32, 51, 53, 110, 130, 139, 144–​45, 147, 154, 160, 172, 174, 206, 212–​15, 224, 226–​29, 236, 247–​48, 260, 342–​48, 366–​67, 372–​73, 397–​414, 445, 449, 453, 466–​74, 478–​96, 506–​518 of existing, 42–​47, 57–​61 (see also Greater Power Argument) of thinking, 7, 25, 201, 211, 215, 229, 253–​54, 261, 275, 402–​10, 415–​23, 428, 473 (see also consciousness) praise, 460, 488. See also responsibility predication, 278–​81, 359–​62, 367,  385–​87 Principle of Actual Causes, 45–​46, 50 Principle of Sufficient Reason, 33–​37, 40–​52, 55–​61, 125, 237, 379, 496 promises, 448–​49, 504–​18. See also contract properties attribute-​neutral, 271, 277, 288

Index intensional, 264–​65, 268–​70, 284,  289–​90 property (proprium), 5, 107–​08, 111, 122, 131–​33, 142, 147, 180, 199–​202, 205–​07, 214, 228, 233, 289, 337, 350, 363–​64,  386–​87 prophets, 494 psychology, 7–​8, 21–​22, 352, 359, 379, 498 quasi-​substances, 6–​7, 239, 366, 377–​78,  388 rationalism, 14, 21 explanatory, 64, 73–​74, 86, 496 reality, 2, 43–​47, 58, 94–​96, 104, 111–​12, 129–​31, 141, 180, 253, 260, 273–​76, 282, 343, 348, 400–​02, 415–​19, 427, 435, 459, 467, 478. See also perfection reason (ratio), 1–​2, 138, 199, 206–​09, 211–​16, 251, 337, 458, 462, 472–​73, 485–​86, 490–​93,  505–​20 beings of, 215 guidance, dictates, demands, or prescriptions of, 23–​24, 326, 443, 449, 454–​55, 460, 469–​72, 478–​ 82, 483–​86, 497, 501, 506–​07, 512,  516–​18 second kind of cognition, 59, 199, 206–​09, 211–​16, 251–​52, 336–​39,  388 refraction, Snell’s Law of, 322, 346 religion, 23, 26, 494–​95, 504–​05, 513–​18 repentance, 24, 442, 471, 494 representation, 7, 206, 227, 330–​49, 380, 393–​410, 424–​38, 486, 500 responsibility, moral, 8, 24, 456–​61, 464, 488–​93. See also favor and indignation right, 1, 352, 449, 499, 504–​09, 515, 520 private civil, 509 romanticism, German, 495

531

Rosenthal, Michael, 520 Rozemond, Marleen, 239, 242 Russell, Bertrand, 2, 68 sadness, 22–​24, 254, 400–​01, 412, 423, 460, 466, 468–​76, 484, 489, 494, 498, 510. See also joy Sangiacomo, Andrea, 423 Savan, David, 386 scepticism, methodological, 5, 176, 180–​82,  188–​89 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 497 scientia intuitiva (third kind of cognition), 5, 59, 107, 199–​216, 250–​52, 258–​59, 337–​39, 347–​50, 388, 396–​97, 411, 465, 474–​76, 499, 512 scripture, 504–​05,  513–​14 self-​preservation, 21–​24, 137, 215, 314–​17, 320, 325–​29, 335–​41, 345–​48, 352–​ 60, 372, 376, 379–​80, 380–​84, 388, 400–​10, 413, 428–​437, 445–​60, 465–​81, 486–​95, 505–​20. See also conatus senses. See perception, sensory Separability Argument, 222–​30, 237–​40 Shaftesbury, third Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper), 495 Shirley, Samuel, 123, 385, 456 Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-​Being (KV), 166, 178, 199, 209–​16, 247, 256, 260, 298–​07, 317, 325, 350, 360, 464, 498–​99 Slote, Michael, 501 solidity,  228–​35 Sreedhar, Susanne, 520 Strong Ontological Pluralism of Attributes, 264–​65,  273–​88 state (commonwealth), 478, 501–​18 states of affairs, 131 Steinberg, Diane, 459, 498 Stirling, A. H., 385 Stoics, 493

532

Index

Strawson, P. F., 488 substance, 1–​7, 14–​18, 21, 32–​51, 53–​61, 81–​91, 192–​96, 201–​04, 221–​39, 246–​47, 254–​60, 265–​91, 295–​316, 338–​40, 348–​50, 352–​53, 360–​66, 371, 375–​78, 385–​88, 398–​99, 412–​23, 464–​65. See also monism, substance definition of, 14 of fewer than all attributes 40–​44, 57–​61, 72–​73, 81–​91, 104,  285–​86 priority of, 62–​72, 76–​77, 91–​96,  117–​18 quasi-​ (see quasi-​substances) Substance-​Attribute Identity, 77, 281–​88 Substance-​Substance Identity, 266, 281, 286 superaddition,  226–​29 teleology and teleological explanation, 6, 19, 203, 321–​50, 352, 358–​59, 376–​80, 384–​88. See also causation and causes, final tenacity, 466, 476 things fixed and eternal, 210 singular, 1–​7, 114–​16, 136–​40, 147, 199–​213, 216, 226, 230–​32, 238–​40, 244–​48, 252–​55, 259–​60, 265, 282, 289, 309, 315, 319, 324–​25, 328–​29, 333–​47, 353–​54, 364–​88, 398–​402, 411, 413, 421–​27, 436, 473–​75, 498 (see also individuals) that do not exist, 136–​37, 192–​93, 203, 244–​45, 255, 257 thought, attribute of, 6, 16, 19–​22, 40, 58–​59, 69, 94, 102, 114, 123, 192, 201–​04, 216, 221–​39, 257, 260, 266–​89, 331–​32, 339, 341, 347, 401–​ 02, 409, 437, 465, 475, 498 time, 126

Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TdIE), 5, 14, 32–​35, 50, 103, 107, 116, 130, 151–​75, 177, 199–​205, 208–​10, 214–​16, 256, 274, 279, 324, 336, 350, 411, 463, 480, 497, 499 Tractatus Politicus (TP), 8, 519 Tractatus Theologico-​Politicus (TTP), 8, 98, 448–​49, 463–​64, 478, 494, 504–​15 Transitivity of Identity, 6, 88, 263–​65,  281–​89 truth and true ideas, 5–​6, 20, 65, 90, 118–​20, 151–​97, 201, 206–​13, 268–​ 69, 273–​80, 286–​91, 340, 402, 424–​25, 435, 463, 468, 480. See also adequacy and adequate ideas; and Adequate-​Idea Conception of Truth and coherence, 5, 288 and correspondence (agreement), 115–​ 19, 158, 174, 176–​97, 291 internality of, 177–​79, 181–​96 rule, 176, 178, 182–​96, 223 sign (criterion) of, 5, 153–​63, 170–​74, 178–​79, 182,  189–​90 understanding, 13–​14, 24. See also intellect Unger, Peter, 241 universals, 165, 210 universe. See face of the whole universe variegation, spatio-​temporal, 126, 130, 134, 146, 232. See also diversity Viljanen, Valtteri, 215 virtue, 1–​2, 6–​7, 23–​26, 98, 212, 252, 260, 352, 379, 443, 449–​54, 460, 462–​71, 476–​87, 492–​96, 501, 506, 510, 513, 518–​20 Walski, Gregory, 5, 125–​47 White, W. H., 123, 306

Index Wilson, Margaret, 239–​40, 393, 396–​97, 409–​10, 412, 428, 497, 499, 501 wisdom, 24, 234, 243, 252–​55, 322, 421, 448, 471–​72, 501 Wolf, Susan, 501

533

Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 31–​33, 41, 44, 51, 180 worlds, possible, 99–​101, 107–​21, 142, 190–​95,  346 Youpa, Andrew, 520