Spinoza: Essays In Interpretation [Hardcover ed.] 0875480799, 9780875480794

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Maurice Mandelbaum and Eugene Freeman

NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE

THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY TRENT UNIVERSITY

Spinoza

1 Essays In Interpretation

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Spinoza 1 Essays In Interpretation Edited by Eugene Freeman and Maurice Mandelbaum

Open Court

LaSalle, Illinois

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H O

SPINOZA: ESSAYS IN INTERPRETATION

Copyright ® 1975 by Open Court Publishing Co. 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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Open Court Publishing Co., Box 599, La Salle, Illinois 61301. Printed in the United States of America.

The essays by G. H. R. Parkinson, Stuart Hampshire, Wallace I. Matson, Douglas Odegard, Robert J. McShea, Willis Doney, Warren Kessler, Lee C. Rice, Ruth Saw, and Errol E. Harris were first published in The Monist, Volume 55, Number 4 ® 1971, The Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Illinois

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Freeman, Eugene, 1906comp. Spinoza: essays in interpretation.

(Monist library of philosophy) Bibliography: p. 1. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Mandelbaum, Maurice H., 1908joint comp. B3998.F7 1974 199'.492 72-84079 ISBN 0-87548-079-9 ISBN 0-87548-196-5 (pbk.)

Contents Preface by Maurice Mandelbaum

3

Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, and Politics G. H. R. Parkinson Spinoza on the Power and Freedom of Man

(l)

Stuart Hampshire Spinoza’s Theory of Human Freedom

135)

Wallace I. Matson Spinoza’s Theory of Mind

Douglas Odegard The Body Identical with the Human Mind: A Problem in Spinoza’s Philosophy

61

William K. Frankena Spinoza’s “New Morality”: Notes on Book IV

85

Robert J. McShea Spinoza: Human Nature and History

101

William Sacksteder Spinoza on Democracy

117

Epistemological and Metaphysical Issues Willis Doney Spinoza on Philosophical Skepticism

139

E. M. Curley Descartes, Spinoza and the Ethics of Belief

159

Warren Kessler A Note on Spinoza’s Concept of Attribute

191

Contents

VI

Lee C. Rice Spinoza on Individuation Frederick C. Copleston Spinoza as Metaphysician Ruth Saw The Task of Metaphysics for Spinoza Errol E. Harris Spinoza’s Theory of Human Immortality

, (195j v' 215 235 245

Bibliojfraphy (Compiled by E. M. Curley)

263

Index (Arranged by William Sacksteder)

317

Index of Authors Index of Topics

317 319

Spinoza

1 Essays In Interpretation

Maurice Mandelbaum Preface In introducing an earlier volume in this series, Lewis White Beck remarked, “The reputation of, and the interest in, a philosopher of the past rises and falls from decade to decade. Some will see in this only fads in intellectual history. But there is more to it than that. Philosophy uses its past.”1 One can see such fluc¬ tuations in the reputation of Spinoza; for more than a generation scholarly interest in his work has been at a relatively low ebb in the English-speaking countries, as an inspection of the bibliographies compiled by Oko2 and by Wetlesen,3 and the present bibliography compiled by Professor Curley, will serve to show. However, as is the case with all of the great philosophers, there has always remained at least an appreciable interest in his thought. What is perhaps more striking in his case than in others is that the focus of interest in his work has so frequently shifted. Such a shift is apparent in the papers which are here published, and it was also apparent among many other papers which, for lack of space, we could not include. The intense interest which Spinoza’s religious thought former¬ ly aroused among both his antagonists and his devoted followers seems now to have all but disappeared. Unless or until the orienta¬ tion of contemporary religious thought in the West undergoes a radical revision, one cannot expect any echoes of the feelings of those generations during which he had been anathematized, nor of those in which he had been extolled. In order to remind us of the depth of feeling which his name at one time aroused, a single passage from Schleiermacher should be sufficient: Offer with me reverently a tribute to the manes of the holy, re¬ jected Spinoza. The high World-Spirit pervaded him; the Infinite

4

Maurice Mandelbaum was his beginning and his end; the Universe was his only and everlasting love. In holy innocence and in deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how he also was its most worthy mirror. He was full of religion, full of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, he stands there alone and unequalled; master in his art, yet without disciples and without citizenship, sublime above the profane tribe.4

Some hundred years later the focus of interest had shifted from Spinoza’s religious thought to his system, considered as a metaphysical system; for example, problems concerning the relations of Substance and the modes tended to dominate most of the major works on Spinoza in that era, and A. E. Taylor saw these issues, rather than any others (such as Spinoza’s naturalism), as crucial to “Spinozism.”5 In this respect the focus of dominant in¬ terest has once again changed, although the essays of Father Copleston and Professor Saw, as well as Professor Curley’s recent book, serve to remind us that an interest in the nature and dif¬ ficulties of Spinoza’s systematic metaphysics is not likely to dis¬ appear. Judging by the papers which the editors received, the new focus of interest may be said to lie in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind. However, it is not in terms of traditional formulations of the mindbody problem that these discussions approach Spinoza’s theory; in fact, unlike earlier discussions, they tend to reject the relevance of any of the traditional formulations for an understanding of Spinoza’s thought. Instead, their attention is focussed directly on more specific problems, such as the nature of freedom, and the on¬ tological distinctions and problems which arise in connection with Spinoza’s view of human beings as seen under the attributes of thought and extension. It is here, perhaps, that the most original reformulations of Spinoza’s meaning are to be found, and these reformulations offer evidence of the ways in which present philosophic concerns can helpfully serve to highlight selected aspects of the past. Surprisingly enough, when one considers how large a role such issues play in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, there was a comparative dearth of papers on Spinoza’s ethical and social views. We were fortunate to have the papers here included to round out this important aspect of Spinoza’s thought. There was, however, no such dearth with respect to papers dealing with specific

Preface

5

aspects of Spinoza’s theory of knowledge and his metaphysics. As is suggested by the essays which are here published, there was con¬ siderable diversity in the methods of interpretation which these papers displayed. In general, however, most of the papers ap¬ proached their topics as epistemological or metaphysical issues which were of importance in their own right, rather than viewing them primarily in terms of their connections with Spinoza’s system as a whole. This fundamentally unsystematic mode of viewing philosophic problems can probably be said to be highly characteristic of recent Anglo-American philosophy, including our recent historical scholarship. While this is surely not the only legitimate form of such scholarship (and papers of the other type are also here included), it does constitute one legitimate way of making available the philosophic past; that it can do so without leading to a distortion of the thought of a great systematic thinker should be evident in many of these essays. It is the hope of the editors that the present volume may con¬ tribute to eliciting further studies of the various aspects of Spinoza’s thought, for there are many other topics, particularly in moral psychology, which contemporary Anglo-American philosophers should find it important to consider and discuss. Perhaps it is not too much to hope that by 1977, the tercentenary of his death, Spinoza studies will once again flourish in the Englishspeaking world. The editor of The Monist, Professor Eugene Freeman, joins me in thanking all of the contributors to this volume, which grew out of the special issue of The Monist devoted to the philosophy of Spinoza (Vol. 55, No. 4, October, 1971). In addition to the papers there published, we are happy to be able to include other papers written especially for this volume by Father Copleston and Professors Curley, Frankena, and Sacksteder. In addition, we are extremely grateful to Professor Curley for preparing a bibliography which brings the previous bibliographic work of Oko and of Wetlesen up to date through December, 1972.

Maurice Mandelbaum The Johns Hopkins University

6

Maurice Mandelbaum

1 Lewis White Beck, ed., Kant Studies Today (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1969), p. vii. 2 Adolph S. Oko, ed., The Spinoza Bibliography (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1964; published under the auspices of the Columbia University Libraries). 3 Jon Wetlesen, A Spinoza Bibliography: Particularly on the period 1940-1967 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1968). 4 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958), p. 40. 6 A. E. Taylor, “Some Incoherencies in Spinozism,” Mind, 46 (.1937), 137-158 and 281-301; also, “A Further Word on Spinoza,” Mind, 55 (1946), 97-112.

Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, and Politics

G. H. R. Parkinson Spinoza on the Power and Freedom of Man I At first sight, the philosophy of Spinoza may seem wholly alien to what is now generally regarded as philosophy in the Englishspeaking world. For some decades, the dominant trend in that philosophy has been linguistic and antimetaphysical; the philosopher is held to be concerned with the analysis of language, and not with speculative system-building. Spinoza, on the other hand, is very much a system-builder; as to the analysis of language, he says explicitly that this is of no interest to him. ‘It is not my in¬ tention’, he says, ‘to explain the meanings of words; it is my inten¬ tion to explain the nature of things’.1 However, the paper which follows will attempt to show that Spinoza’s philosophy is not wholly without relevance today. It will try to do this by placing one of Spinoza’s most important doctrines, his theory of human freedom, within the context of recent discussions. Before going into detail, it will be worth while to give a brief ac¬ count of the general framework of the discussion. What has already been said will have warned the reader (if, indeed, he needs any warning) not to expect from Spinoza what would be found in the majority of contemporary discussions of human freedom: that is, detailed analyses of the ordinary usage of terms such as ‘can’, ‘possible’, ‘cause’, ‘reason’, and so on. What, then, do we get from Spinoza? On the surface, we seem to have a deductive exercise in the working-out of the consequences of a technical and highly per¬ sonal vocabulary. But this is only on the surface. To see how Spinoza’s views are relevant today, one may look briefly at one of the problems which relate to human freedom and which still exer¬ cise contemporary philosophers: namely, the problem of the

8

G.H.R. Parkinson

relations between human freedom and the causal explanations that are offered by the sciences. Some of the sciences, it is argued, offer causal explanations of human behavior. These sciences are still a long way from explaining all human behavior, but such explanation is in principle possible. That is, although scientists are not yet in a position to state the cause or causes of each and every human act, every such act has its cause or causes. Now, if all human behaviour is caused, then no human being can do other than what he does, for the effect of a given cause follows necessarily from that cause. From this it follows that no human being is free, if freedom is defined as the power of a human being, on some occasions at any rate, to do something other than what he actually did. This is the problem with which Spinoza’s theory of human freedom is concerned. One way of solving the problem would be to say that the causal explanations that are typical of the sciences are not applicable to human actions. This, however, is not Spinoza’s way. He maintains (to paraphrase the title of Professor Ayer’s Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture) that man is a subject for the sciences, and his concern is to work out the logical consequences of this. He would add that if some of these consequences conflict with certain of our everyday ways of thinking, then so much the worse for our everyday ways of thinkingHn fact (as is well known) Spinoza believes that in one sense of the term ‘free’, no man is free, but that in another sense of the term some men are free. It will be the task of this paper to explore the basis of his belief, and to offer some com¬ ments on it. It is clear that in the argument just stated there are two key concepts. One is the concept of cause; the other is the concept of power, particularly as it relates to human beings, and what they can and cannot do. Our first task must therefore be to examine what Spinoza means by such terms as ‘causa’ and ‘potentia’, naturally translated as ‘cause’ and ‘power’. The chief concern of this paper will be Spinoza’s concept of power in its relations to human freedom, and an attempt will be made to relate Spinoza’s views to some remarks made by M. R. Ayers in his book The Refutation of Determinism (London, 1968). However, if Spinoza’s views on freedom are to be discussed with anything approaching adequacy the notion of cause cannot be wholly neglected, and this will be discussed first.

On The Power and Freedom of Man

9

II What, then, does Spinoza mean by the term ‘cause’? The question cannot be answered satisfactorily if the discussion is restricted exclusively to Spinoza’s words; if we do that, we shall merely revolve in the squirrel-cage of his technical terminology. Instead, what he says must be put in the context of the thought, and in particular the scientific thought, of his age. It has already been suggested that Spinoza maintains that man is a subject for science, and indeed there can be no reasonable doubt that he was much influenced by the science of his times, and particularly by its physics. Now, it is well known that the method of the seventeenthcentury physicist was a mathematical one. He rejected the Aristotelian approach to the physical world, according to which things were regarded as striving for a certain end, and explained by reference to their end or ‘final cause’. Instead, he regarded things as having just those properties which can figure in mathematical calculations, and so he viewed the physical world as consisting of things which have such and such spatial dimensions and move at such and such speeds. These things were regarded as moving each other by means of impulse, i.e. by pushing one another. In traditional language, the causes which the seventeenth-century scientist sought when trying to explain physical events were ‘ef¬ ficient’, not ‘final’ causes. Since it is customary to regard explana¬ tion in terms of impulse as fundamental to explanation in mechanical terms, it may also be said that the physics of Spinoza’s time was fundamentally mechanistic. Relatively little is known about Spinoza’s physics, but it is clear that he was in general sympathy with the views that have just been described. He regards as fundamental concepts of physics what he calls ‘extension’, ‘motion’ and ‘rest’; he clearly approves of the mathematical trend of the new sciences (Eth. I App., G ii.79: ‘Unde pro certo . . .’). He is sharply opposed to the idea of explana¬ tion in terms of final causes (Eth. I App.), but is ready to talk in terms of efficient causes (e.g. Eth. I 16 Cor. 1, I 25, II 5). It will be seen later that he also holds that explanation in terms of efficient causes applies, not only to the physical world, but to the mind as well. (See below, II C.)

10

G.H.R. Parkinson

Whether Spinoza can give an adequate account of the mind and its processes in terms of efficient causes is a matter which must be considered later; at present, it is necessary to take note of an ob¬ vious objection—namely, that Spinoza’s account of the nature of ef¬ ficient causation is notoriously inadequate. He regards an effect as following from its cause with logical necessity; in other words, to say that A is the efficient cause of B is to say that B follows logically from A. (See, besides the well-known phrase ‘causa seu ratio', Eth. I 11, G ii.52, the nature of the argument in Eth. 116 and 116 Cor. 1.) The unsoundness of such a view has been recognized since Hume, and this may seem to make it unnecessary for anyone to enquire further into Spinoza’s views about the causation of human actions. But this would be too easy a method of dismissal. What Spinoza says about human freedom is not linked inseparably with his views about the logical character of the causal relation. It is sufficient for his arguments that cause and effect shall be linked by some kind of necessity. It is now time to consider Spinoza’s concept of power. He speaks both of the power of God (e.g. Eth. I 34) and of the power of particular things, such as this or that mind or body (Eth. Ill 28). This paper is concerned primarily with the power of particular things, and especially of human beings—though it should not be forgotten that, for Spinoza, particular things are ‘modes’ of God. It will be convenient to begin, not with a discussion of power in general, but with a consideration of a particular sort of power, which is fundamental to Spinoza’s account of man. Spinoza asserts that ‘Each thing, insofar as it is in itself (quantum in se est), endeavours (conatur) to persevere in its being’ (Eth. Ill 6). In the next proposition (Eth. Ill 7) he speaks of this ‘endeavour’ (conatus) as a ‘power’ {potentia), referring to ‘the power, or endeavour, by which (each thing) endeavours to persevere in its being’.2 It is clear that in ordinary usage the terms ‘power’ and ‘endeavour’ are not equivalent. We say that a man may endeavour to do things which are beyond his power (e.g. to lift weights which turn out to be too heavy for him, to solve problems which turn out to be too difficult for him); conversely, we say that there are things that are in our power which, at some given time, we do not endeavour to do (e.g. a man may have the strength or power to lift heavy weights, but he is not always endeavouring to lift such weights). Spinoza would

On the Power and Freedom of Man

11

doubtless agree; but he would point out that when he seems to equate power and endeavour (i) he is speaking ofacertain^mTofv iiffmyw T»rr unffirnr m endeavour—the endeavour to persist in being, and (11) he is speaking of a thing insofar as it is in itself, by which he seems to mean ‘insofar as it is unaffected by anything else’.3 In effect, Spinoza is putting forward a theory about the way in which things interact. He is saying that the universe contains a large number of things, or ‘modes’, .which affect each other; each thing tries to preserve its own being, but what it actually does is not the outcome of this endeavour alone—rather, it is the outcome of the interaction between its endeavour or power and the endeavours or powers of other things which affect it. A number of questions arise here. A. What exactly is meant by the ‘endeavour (or power) to persevere in one’s own being’? B. How does Spinoza try to prove that there is such an endeavour or power? C. How is this endeavour or power related by Spinoza to efficient causality? A. The first of these questions is really two: first, what is meant by ‘being’ in this context? and second, what is meant by ‘endeavour’? An answer to the first of these can most easily be provided by a con¬ sideration of Spinoza’s physics, and in particular (since human beings are the chief concern of this paper) his account of the physics of the human body. Here it is necessary to refer to ‘a few remarks on the nature of bodies’ (Eth. II 13 Sch.) which are contained in the axioms, lemmata and postulates which follow Eth. II 13 Sch. For Spinoza, the fundamental units of physics are ‘most simple bodies’ (corpora simplicissima) which differ from one another only in respect of motion and rest, speed and slowness (Lemma 1 and Lem¬ ma 7 Sch.).4 Now, when a number of such bodies are so constrained (coercentur) by others that they lie upon each other, or move in such a way that they communicate their motions to each other in a certain determinate ratio,5 then it may be said that they constitute one body or ‘individual’, which is distinguished from others by this union of its component bodies (Def. after Ax. 2). Bodies of this sort, whose components are ‘most simple bodies’, will be called here ‘composite bodies of the first order’. Such composite bodies

12

G.H.R. Parkinson

can be the components of composite bodies of a more complex kind, which may be called of the second order; these in turn can form composite bodies of the third order, and so on until we reach a com¬ posite body whose components are all the bodies there are (Lemma 7 Sch.). It is not clear from Spinoza’s account to what order the human body is to be assigned, though it is clear (Posts. 1 and 2) that it is of an order higher than two. —- It can now be seen what kind of ‘being’ Spinoza would have in mind in saying that the human body endeavours to persevere in its being. He would mean that it endeavours to maintain that union of component parts which makes it one composite body. In short, the ‘being’, the ‘esse’ that the human body, and indeed any composite body endeavours to preserve is a unity of order. In Lemmata 4-7 Spinoza shows how a composite bocly’s nature can be preserved even if its components change considerably: if, for example, they are replaced by others, or if they grow or diminish, or if they change the direction of their movement. In all cases, what is preserved is the ‘forma’, the structure of the composite body. However, it would be wrong to suppose that, according to Spinoza’s physics, all preser¬ vation of being is preservation of form. The ‘most simple bodies’, too, endeavour to persevere in being, but they are the ultimate units as far as physics is concerned; they are elements of a complex which has form or structure. Since they are differentiated only by motion and rest, speed and slowness, it may be assumed that what each of the ‘most simple bodies’ endeavours to preserve is the motion and rest, etc., which differentiates it from others.6 Obviously, there is more to be said about the ‘being’ which things endeavour to preserve—nothing has so far been said about the human mind and its ‘being’—but this must be deferred for the moment, for it is now time to consider the nature of ‘endeavour’, as Spinoza understands it. It is clear, to begin with, that Spinoza does not mean by ‘endeavour’ simply the endeavour of someone who has conscious aims, for the body as well as the mind is said to ‘endeavour’. What, then, does he mean by the term? It was noted earlier in this section that Spinoza identifies the terms ‘endeavour’ and ‘power’. In at least some cases (the reason for the caution will be clear shortly) he is also prepared to identify ‘essence’ and ‘power’ or ‘endeavour’. Thus, in Eth. I 34 the power of God is said to be his essence, and in Eth. I 36 it is said that what expresses the nature or

On the Power and Freedom of Man

13

essence of God expresses the power of God. Similarly (Eth. Ill 7) the endeavour by which each thing tries to persevere in its being is called the ‘actual essence’ of the thing, and in Eth. IV 53 it is said that to speak of the essence of man is to speak of the power of man. (Cf. Eth. V 9, in which the same is said of the human mind.)7 Spinoza offers deductive proofs of these propositions, proofs which rest in the last analysis on the ontological argument. (See especially Eth. I 34, with its reference to Eth. Ill.) However, expressed as far as possible in nonmetaphysical terms, his view seems to be that, in some cases at least, what follows from x’s nature or essence is in the power of x, and what is not in x’s power is what does not follow from x’s nature (Eth. I 17 Sch., G ii.61; Eth. II 49 Sch., G ii. 136). From this, it is easy to see how Spinoza can identify power and essence. This is at first sight a puzzling view, whose oddity can be brought out by a passage from Eth. I 17 Sch. (G ii.62). Spinoza says there that ‘from the supreme power of God, i.e. his infinite nature. . .all things have necessarily flowed, or always follow, with the same necessity; just as from the nature of the triangle it follows from eternity and to eternity that its three angles equal two right angles’. What is odd here is that one does not normally speak of the power of a triangle. Perhaps Spinoza might do so, but it is not cer¬ tain that he does, or that he need do. He could say that a triangle is an ‘entity of reason’, and that what he says about power holds only in the case of ‘real entities’; the triangle is adduced only as an ex¬ ample of something whose properties belong to it eternally, and is not adduced as an example of power. (Compare his distinction, in Ep. 83, between the definitions of entities of reason and of real things.) This is why it was suggested earlier that Spinoza identifies power and essence in some cases only—namely, in the " " case of real — " - ■

I

1

entities. But even if it is supposed that when Spinoza equates ‘essence’ and ‘power’ he is speaking only of real things, difficulties remain. First, when he says that what follows from x’s nature or essence is in the power of x, what exactly is it that is said to follow? In the case of God, Spinoza says that ‘all things’ {omnia) or ‘infinite things in in¬ finite ways’ {infinita infinitis modis) follow. (Eth. I 17 Sch., G. ii.62; cf. Eth. I 16.) Now, if one were describing x’s power in the normal sense of the te^m, one would refer to what x does and will, or would, do; one would not refer to things that ‘follow from’ x.8

IK

14