Lecture Supplement
on Spinoza’s The Ethics:
Copyright © 2019
Bruce W. Hauptli
Note: there is a later version of this Supplement developed for a course on Spinoza which I taught for Midcoast Senior College. It is available by selecting the link in the last sentence.
The Ethics:[1]
[Lectures will emphasize the “*”ed passages]
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*Definitions:
31 *1.
Self-caused—essence involves existence.
-In his
Spinoza, Stuart Hampshire maintains
that: “what is common to Spinoza’s use and to our contemporary use of the word
is simply that a cause is taken to be anything which
explains the existence or qualities
of the effect; but the two senses of explanation are widely different, following
the differences in the pattern of scientific knowledge envisaged.
To Spinoza (and by definition to all rationalist philosophers) to
‘explain’ means to show that one true proposition is the logically necessary
consequence of some other; explanation essentially involves exhibiting necessary
connexions, and ‘necessary connexion’ in this context means a strictly logical
connexion’ to be discovered by logical analysis of the ideas involved.”[2]
2. Finite in its own kind.
*3.
Substance—that which is in itself
and is conceived through itself.
-In his
The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the
Latent Processes of His Reasoning [1934], Harry Wolfson provides a
chapter-long discussion of the notion of substances and modes tracing its
history back to Aristotle’s “...statement that ‘some things can exist apart and
some cannot, and it is the former that are substances’.”[3]
-Hampshire maintains
that the notion of substance has “...a continuous history in philosophy from
Aristotle to Descartes. Philosophers had
developed the distinction between a substance and its attributes partly in order
to mark the logical difference between the ultimate subjects of knowledge or
judgement and what we can know or say about these subjects, and partly also to
answer puzzles about change and identity; the subject of a judgement, that which
we know about, may significantly be said to possess different qualities at
different times, while itself persisting through time as an identifiable subject
with a whole series of different qualities inhering in it.
Whenever we make a statement and add to our knowledge, we are saying of
some subject or substance that it possesses some quality or attribute, or
perhaps that it stands in some relation to some other subject or substance.
The next step is to divide the attributes of a substance—or the qualities
which it may be said to possess—into two categories: first, the essential or
defining attributes or properties, those which make it the kind of thing it is,
and, secondly, the accidental attributes, which it may acquire and lose without
changing its essential nature; in Spinoza’s terminology the words ‘necessary’
and ‘contingent’ are generally substituted for ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’.”[4]
-While substance, attributes, and
modes constitute the basic metaphysical categories for Spinoza (and Descartes,
and Leibniz), it is important to note that other philosophers have emphasized
“relations,” “qualities,” “processes,” “events,” etc., as “basic categories.”
*4. Attribute—that which
intellect perceives as essential to a substance.
*5. Mode—that which exists in and
is conceived through something else.
*6. God—absolutely
infinite—not “infinite in its kind.”
-“...whatever expresses
essence and does not involve any negation belongs to its essence.”
-In his
A History of Western Philosophy, A.
Robert Caponigri notes: “the key definition is clearly number six, the
definition of God. It is the key
definition in the sense that all the others, from number one through number five
prepare for it and are summed up in it.
It is, further, the key definition in the sense that the two subsequent
definitions follow from it and specify it.
It is almost universally stated by historians and commentators that the
basic idea in Spinoza’s exposition is that of substance.
There can be no doubt that this is an absolutely fundamental idea.
However, weight must also be given to the fact that he starts with the
definition of “causa sui.” The
force of this beginning is to place his whole argument in the existential order.
Substance is that which is conceived
through itself and which is in
itself, the radical principle through which both of these characteristics
pertain to substance is “causa sui.”
Spinoza’s is therefore not a metaphysics of the abstract, but a
metaphysics of the concrete and the existent.
It is not the idea of God
which controls the whole, but His
actuality.”[5]
*7. Freedom—that which exists
solely by the necessity of its nature.
8. Eternity.
32 *Axioms:
Read them carefully—what
guarantees their truth?
Propositions:
(a) The proof of the deity’s
existence occupies the first fourteen propositions of Part I:[6]
*1. Substance is by nature prior
to its affections.
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*2. Two substances whose
attributes are different have nothing in common.
*3. Things which have nothing in
common cannot be the cause of one another.
-discuss “causation” and how
Spinoza equates it to “rational explanation.”
Cf., p. 25 and the editor’s
comment on terminology.”
33 *4. Two different things would
have to be distinguished by either their modes or attributes.
*5. There can’t be two or more
substances having the same attribute.
*6. One substance can not be
produced by another.
-Corollary: substance
cannot be produced by anything external to itself.
34 *7. Existence belongs to the
nature of substance.
-Caponigri maintains
that: “the argument rests on a concealed definition, which when brought into the
light alters its form. The
concealed definition is the real
definition of substance in Spinoza, as distinct from that which he gives in
Definition III. Substance is that
which is causa sui.
Causa sui is, according to Definition I “that whose essence involves
existence or that, whose nature cannot be conceived of as otherwise than
existing.”[7]
*8. Every substance is
necessarily infinite.
-Individuals are often not
sufficiently careful in their thoughts and judgments and, thus, confuse modes
with substance.
-The nature of substance
is either finite or infinite; it can not be finite, because it would then be
limited by something else (of the same kind), and then two things of that kind
would exist; therefore it is infinite.
-35-36 *A
Second Proof: There can be only one substance of the same nature:
each thing which exists must have a cause; this cause must be either in its
nature or in the nature of something else; if a more than one substance exists,
there must be some cause of exactly that number of substances; this cause would
have to be external to the substances themselves; this would mean that these
“substances” were limited; therefore there can be but one substance.
36 *9. The more real a thing is
the greater the number of its attributes.
10. Each attribute of substance
must be conceived through itself.
*-Scholium[8]:
we can not conclude that because we can detect two attributes, there are two
substances—each attribute can be conceived only through itself.
Each expresses the reality or being of substance.
-*In his
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept
of Substance in Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics, R.S. Woolhouse maintains
that: “according to the Ethics ‘all attributes...[substance] has have
always been in it together’ (1P10S), but it does not explain what reason there
is for saying this or how things would otherwise have been....However, in his
earlier Short Treatise Spinoza explains ‘why we have said that all these
attributes which are in Nature are only one, single being, and by no means
different ones (though we can clearly and distinctly understand the one without
the other’....At least partly it is [citing Spinoza]
[be]cause of the unity
which we see everywhere in Nature; if there were different beings in Nature, the
one could not possibly unite with the other.
(I.e., if there were different substances which were not related to one
single being, then their union would be impossible, because we see clearly that
they have absolutely nothing in common with one another—like thought and
extension, of which we nevertheless consist.)
So, the difference between there being many substances each with one
attribute and there being one with many is that the former situation lacks a
‘unity’ to be found in the latter; for the only way there could be any ‘union’
between two attributes is for them to belong to the same substance.[9]
37 *11. God [the one substance
with infinite attributes] necessarily
exists.[10]
A
priori proofs:
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*A. Essence and existence
(proposition 7).
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*B. “Of everything whatsoever a
cause or reason must be assigned either for its existence, or for its
non-existence....this reason or cause must either be contained in the nature of
the thing in question, or be external to it....”
“If...no cause or reason can be given [for the deity’s
non-existence]...we must certainly conclude that he necessarily does
exist.....as, then, a reason or cause which would annul the divine existence
cannot be drawn from anything external to the divine nature, such cause must
perforce, if God does not exist, be drawn from God’s own nature which would
involve a contradiction.”
37-38
A
posteriori proof: Note:
Spinoza terms it an a posteriori
proof, but given his commitment to deductivism, and the fact that we are
involved in a discussion about substance itself (and conceived through itself),
there is really no room for a truly a
posteriori proof—it is, actually, a
reduction ad absurdum proof regarding finitude and infinitude!
*C. “The potentiality of
non-existence is a negation of power, and contrariwise the potentiality of
existence is a power, as is obvious.
If, then, that which necessarily exists is nothing but finite beings,
such finite beings are more powerful than a being absolutely infinite, which is
obviously absurd; therefore, either nothing exists, or else a being absolutely
infinite necessarily exists also.
Now we exist either in ourselves, or in something else which necessarily
exists....therefore a being absolutely infinite—in other words, God—necessarily
exists.”
39 13. Substance absolutely
infinite is indivisible.
*14.
God is the only substance.
-In his
Behind the Geometrical Method, Edwin
Curley offers an extended, and detailed, analysis of Spinoza’s argument for
Proposition 14.[11]
(b) Having proven the existence of
the deity (the one-and-only thing-which-is), Spinoza turns to a discussion of
the main characteristics of its nature.
This discussion occupies the remainder of Part I (Propositions 15-36 and
the Appendix).
40 *15.
Whatever is, is in God, and without God
nothing can be, or be conceived.
41 Some claim that extension can
not apply to the deity because this leads to problems (contradictions about
infinitude and finitude, and about divisibility and perfection).
These individuals make an assumption that material substance (extension)
is composed of parts, however, and this clearly can not be the case (given the
definition of substance).
-42 We need to
distinguish between conceiving “quantity” through the imagination and through
the intellect: “...if we consider it intellectually and conceive it in so far as
it is substance—and this is very difficult—then it will be found to be infinite,
one, and indivisible, as we have already sufficiently proved.
This will be quite clear to those who can distinguish between the
imagination and the intellect, especially if this point also is stressed, that
matter is everywhere the same, and there are no distinct parts in it except in
so far as we conceive matter as modified in various ways.
Then its parts are distinct, not really but only modally.”
The extended footnote on pp. 42-43 is helpful here!
Here we need to understand
that the unity of substance requires that in fundamental reality it can have no
parts—such distinctions, then, can only be “modal.”
43 *16. The necessary divine
nature “generates” an infinite number of things....
-The explanation/proof here is
that: “this proposition will be clear to everyone, who remembers that the given
definition of any thing the intellect infers several properties, which really
necessarily follow therefrom (that is, from the actual essence of the thing
defined); and it infers more properties in proportion as the definition of the
thing expresses more reality, that is, in proportion as the essence of the thing
defined involves more reality. Now,
as the divine nature has absolutely
infinite attributes (by def. vi.), of which each expresses infinite essence
after its kind, it follows that from the
necessity of its nature an infinite number of things (that is, everything which
can fall within the sphere of an intellect) must necessarily follow.
Q.E.D.
--
Critical Comment: Here an important criticism
looms however: Copleston says that “one great difficulty about this theory,
however, is that of seeing how any logical deduction of
Natura naturata [substance as passive
(that is, as effect), and conceived of as a consequence (that is,
considered as an infinite system of modes)] is possible, unless the initial
assumption is made that substance must
express itself in modes; and this is precisely the point which ought to be
proved, not assumed....but it is difficult to see that it follows even from
Spinoza’s definitions that substance as he defined it
must have modes.
On the one hand he started with the idea of God.
On the other hand he knew very well by experience, as we all know, that
finite beings exist. In developing
a deductive system he thus knew in advance the point of arrival, and it seems
probable that his knowledge that there are finite beings encouraged him to
believe he had achieved a logical deduction of
Natura naturata.”[12]
44 *17. God acts solely by the
laws of his nature.
-45 Spinoza discusses
the impropriety in attributing (in the normal sense) “will” or “intellect” to
the deity. Regarding “intellect,”
he says: “if intellect does pertain to the divine nature, it cannot, like man’s
intellect, be posterior to (as most thinkers hold) or simultaneous with the
objects of understanding, since God is prior in causality to all things....On
the contrary, the truth and formal essence of things is what it is because it
exists as such in the intellect of God as an object of thought.
Therefore God’s intellect, in so far as it is conceived as constituting
God’s essence, is in actual fact the cause of things, in respect both of their
essence and their existence.”
46 18. God is the immanent, not
the transitive cause of all things.[13]
47 *21. All things which follow
from the absolute nature of any attribute of God must have existed always, and
as infinite; that is, through the said attribute they are eternal and infinite.
49 *25. God is the efficient
cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.
-Corollary: individual
things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which
the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed number and definite manner.
50 *28. Every individual thing,
i.e. anything whatever which is finite and has a determinate existence, cannot
exist or be determined to act unless it be determined to exist and to act by
another cause which is also finite and has a determinate existence, and this
cause again cannot exist or be determined to act unless it be determined to
exist and to act by another cause which is also finite and has a determinate
existence, and so ad infinitum.
-The proof here is
important—it shows that if [and I say ‘if’ here intentionally—though Spinoza
would leave out the conditional here, I believe] “anything” (finite) follows
from the deity’s nature, then an infinitude of things must so follow!
51 *29. Nothing in the universe
is contingent...all is conditioned to exist by the necessity of the divine
nature.
-51-52 Scholium:
Natura naturans [substance as active
(that is, as cause), and as conceived through itself (and, thus, without
reference to its attributes and modes)].
Natura naturata [substance as
passive (that is, as effect), and conceived of as a consequence (that is,
considered as an infinite system of modes)].
This distinction is not one between two different things!
-Copleston notes that:
“...if we propose to start with God and to proceed to finite things,
assimilating causal dependence to logical dependence, we must rule out
contingency in the universe....Any contingency which there may seem to be is
only apparent.”[14]
54 *33. Things could not have
been brought into existence differently by God.
-“Since
I have here shown more clearly than the midday sun that in things there is
absolutely nothing by virtue of which they can be said to be ‘contingent,’ I now
wish to explain briefly what we should understand by ‘contingent’; but I must
first deal with ‘necessary’ and ‘impossible.’
A thing is termed ‘necessary’ either by reason of its essence or by
reason of its cause. For a thing’s
existence necessarily follows either from its essence and definition or from a
given efficient cause. Again, it is
for these same reasons that a thing is termed ‘impossible’—that is, either
because its essence or definition involves a contradiction or because there is
no external cause determined to bring it into existence.
But a thing is termed ‘contingent’ for no other reason than the
deficiency of our knowledge.”
Moreover, such notions are “not only...nonsensical but...a serious obstacle to
science.”
-55 Many endeavor to
attribute to the deity a different notion of freedom from that which Spinoza
attributes, and he tries to show that this notion is inappropriate and contrary
to the deity’s nature.
57
(c) Appendix:
The first paragraph contains an
overall summary of Part I. In the
remainder of this Appendix, Spinoza
tries to rid us of certain pervasive misunderstandings.
He claims that “...men think themselves free inasmuch as they are
conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their
ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire....men
do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them....thus it
comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events,
and when these are learned, they are content....”
He discusses “the mistaken
doctrine of final causes:”
-final causation does away with
the perfection of God;
-final causation leads men to
mistake the useful for the essential; and
-final causal explanations are
mere confusions.
--Does this discussion introduce
a core interpretive problem (or, even, a core problem in his philosophy)?
He seems to be committed to saying both: (a) everything occurs
necessarily, and (b) we should
endeavor to change our views regarding final causation!
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Part II. The Nature
and Origin of the Mind:
A. Robert Caponigri offers a helpful observation about Part
II:
Spinoza’s treatment of
man occupies the attention of the remainder of the
Ethics; and it is correct to say that
all that has gone before concerning God, is really a preface for the
treatment of man. For Spinoza
is not so much directly concerned with the nature of God as an object of
knowledge in itself; he is more directly concerned with human happiness, with
man’s attainment of his salvation.
His devouring interest in God is born of the conviction that only by reaching
God and transforming the whole of his life in the light of God can man be
rendered “beatus.” The
Ethics is a treatise, not so much
De Deo,[15]
as De Vita Beata[16]
of man.
The second book of the
Ethics...is...the most important part
of the work; for it delineates the nature of man in such a way as to indicate
how, in the descending order so to
say, he derives his being from God and possesses that being wholly in God,
though in an inferior and less conscient way; and in the ascending order, how,
by grasping the principles of truth that lie within him, precisely because his
being is in God, he may begin the laborious ascent back to God, and hence effect
that transformation of his own life.[17]
Caponigri offers a helpful metaphor to understand Spinoza’s
view of the relation of the deity and its attributes and modes:
substance may be compared
to the sea; the modes to the individual waves which we think we can distinguish
in the sea. The waves are born
along by themselves and communicate a movement which is not the separate
movement of each wave, but a common movement running through them all.
This is the attribute. The
correlation, therefore, is sea-movement-wave; substance, attribute, mode.[18]
63 Spinoza begins the part with a sentence clarifying where he
intends to go. This aid to the
reader is worth careful study. In
reading the phrase “must necessarily have followed from” it is good to read
Samuel Shirley’s remark about Spinoza’ use of ‘followed’ on p. 24, and in
reading the phrase “essence of God” it is good to read Shirley’s remarks
regarding ‘essence’ and ‘existence’ on pp. 21-22.
*Definitions:
*1. Body—a mode which
expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God...in so far as he
is considered as an extended thing.
2. Essences and necessity.
*3. Ideas—mental conceptions of a
mind.
*4. Adequate ideas—not related to
an object but, rather, an idea considered in itself which has the intrinsic
marks of truth.
5. Duration.
6. *‘Reality’ and ‘perfection’
are synonyms.
7. Particular things.
64 *Axioms—read
them all.
Propositions:
(a) The first nine Propositions of Part II deal with the
deity and discuss what A. Robert Caponigri calls “the descending path:”
“...by which the being of man flows
from,
but not
out of,
the being of God:”[19]
64 *1. Thought is an attribute of
God.
*2. Extension is an attribute of
God.
66 *7. The order and connection
of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
-67 Scholium: a mode of
extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing though expressed
in two ways....whether we conceive nature under the attribute of extension, or
under the attribute of thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find the
same order, or one and the same chain of causes—that is the same things
following in either case.
Consequently, thinking substance and extended substance are one and the same
substance, comprehended now under this attribute, now under that.
So, too, a mode of Extension and the idea of that mode are one and the
same thing, expressed in two ways.
(b) Beginning with Proposition 10, Spinoza turns to a
discussion our nature.
In a section from
Propositions 10 through 30, he elaborates his monism and tries to show how
Cartesian dualism may be avoided:
In Propositions 10-13, Spinoza
begins by discussing the status of man
vis-à-vis substance.
69 10: The being of substance
does not pertain to the essence of man; i.e. substance does not constitute the
form (forma) of man.
-Corollary: Hence it
follows that the essence of man is constituted by definite modifications of the
attributes of God.
70 Proposition 11: That which
constitutes the actual being of the human mind is basically nothing but the idea
of an individual actually existing thing.
*-Corollary: Hence it
follows that the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of the deity; and
therefore when we say that the human
mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing else but this: that God—not
in so far as he is infinite but in so far as he is explicated through the nature
of the human mind, that is, in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human
mind—has this or that idea.
--As A. Robert Caponigri
notes, “...through this...he has resolved in principle the psychophysical
parallelism which was encountered in Descartes.
He has done this because he sees this parallelism, or rather its terms,
thought and extension, not in direct opposition to each other as two
heterogeneous substances, but as attributes of one substance.
Further, this parallelism is reduced by the priority or preferential
status which...belongs to thought and the idea.”[20]
-Spinoza's scholium here
is a gentle request that the reader follow him carefully and limit
himself/herself to the deductive process which is guiding the "unfolding" of the
consequences of the definition and axioms.
71 12: Whatever happens in the
object of the idea constituting the human mind is bound to be perceived by the
human mind; i.e., the idea of that thing will necessarily be in the human mind.
That is to say, if the object of the idea constituting the human mind is
a body, nothing can happen in that body without its being perceived by the mind.
[P13-P31 material
not assigned: ]
Proposition 13: The object
constituting the human mind is the body—i.e.
a definite mode of extension actually existing and nothing else.
-72-76 Lemmas to Proposition
13: A. Robert Caponigri maintains that: “...the examination of the attribute
of extension leads to what may be called
Spinoza’s philosophical physics or philosophy of matter.
This is not highly developed; the whole of what he has to say on this
subject seems limited to Lemma 1-7 which fall between Propositions XIII and XIV,
Book II.”[21]
76
Postulates—note that these are placed
here since they were unnecessary for propositions 1-13, but they are necessary
for the Lemmas. Propositions 14-30
continue Spinoza’s discussion of our nature, and these postulates help set up
this discussion.
(c) Propositions 31-47 distinguish
inadequate and
adequate ideas:
85 *31. We can have only a very
inadequate knowledge of the duration of particular things external to ourselves.
*32. All ideas, in so far as they
are referred to God, are true.
86 33. There is nothing positive
in ideas, which causes them to be called false.
34. Every idea, which in us is
absolute or adequate and perfect, is true.
**35. Falsity consists in the
privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas
involve.
-Scholium: men are
mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness
of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned.
Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause
for their actions....So, again, when we look at the sun, we imagine that it is
distant from us about two hundred feet; this error does not lie solely in this
fancy, but in the fact that, while we thus imagine, we do not know the sun’s
true distance of the cause of the fancy.
For although we afterwards learn, that the sun is distant from us more
than six hundred of the earth’s diameters, we none the less shall fancy it to be
near; for we do not imagine the sun as near us, because we are ignorant of its
true distance, but because the modification of our body involves the essence of
the sun, in so far as our said body is affected thereby....
88 *40. Whatsoever ideas in the
mind follow from ideas which are therein adequate, are also themselves adequate.
-*This proposition is
self-evident.
-89-90 *
Knowledge of the first kind:
opinion/imagination.
-*
Knowledge of the second kind:
reason/common notions.
-*
Knowledge of the third kind:
intuition. This kind of knowledge
proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of
God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.
I will illustrate all three kinds of knowledge by a single example.
Three numbers are given for finding a fourth, which shall be to the third
as the second is to the first [here he is speaking of ratios].
Tradesmen without hesitation multiply the second by the third and divide
the product by the first; either because they have
not forgotten the rule which they
received from a mater without any proof [knowledge of the 1st kind—opinion],
or because they have often made trial of
it with simple numbers [knowledge of the 2nd kind—reason], or
by virtue of the proof of the nineteenth
proposition of the seventh book of Euclid, namely, in virtue of the general
property of proportionals [knowledge of the 3rd kind—intuition].
91 *41. Knowledge of the first
kind is the only source of falsity, knowledge of the second and third kinds is
necessarily true.
*42. Knowledge of the second and
third kinds, not knowledge of the first kind, teaches us to distinguish the true
from the false.
-“A true idea in us is an idea which is adequate in
God, in so far as he is displayed through the nature of the human mind.”
92 44. It is not in the
nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary.
93-94 45. Every idea of every
body, or of every particular thing actually existing, necessarily involves the
eternal and infinite essence of God.
94 *47. The human mind has an
adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God.
-94-95
Scholium: Hence we see that the
infinite essence and eternity of God are known to all.
Now as all things are in God, and are conceived through God, we can from
this knowledge infer many things, which we may adequately know, and we may form
that third kind of knowledge of which we spoke....Men have not so clear a
knowledge of God as they have of general notions, because they are unable to
imagine God as they do bodies....
(d) In Propositions
48-49 (and Scholium), Spinoza discusses free will and indicates that this
concept does not apply to man.
[not assigned]
Part III. On the
Origin and Nature of the Emotions:
As A. Robert Caponigri notes, |
with the opening of the
third book, the dominant purpose of the work as a whole emerges and takes clear
precedence; and the movement of the development changes from one of
preparation...to one of expansion.
Spinoza had announced the dominant motive very early in the book, and it is
reflected in the title: Ethics.
For him the motive of philosophy is still the classic motive of opening
to man the way of the good, the blessed life,
vita beata, and of placing his feet
on that way. To this end all of the
other labors of philosophy are directed, and noting short of this can adequately
define its character and goal.
The books which henceforth
comprise the Ethics trace the path to
the blessed life; each book is devoted so to say, to a stage of that way.
In its most general outline, this path leads by way of the passions to
dominance of the passions by the one supreme passion, the intellectual love of
God. In like manner, it may be
described as the path from slavery to the passions to the mastery of life which
only passion can give when it is directed to the all-encompassing good which is
God.[22]
Caponigri continues, stating
that: “the grand commanding line of these [later] books [of
The Ethics] moves from Proposition
I of Book III in an unbroken arch to Proposition III of the Fifth Book.
The former reads: our mind at times acts and at times suffers; insofar as
it has adequate ideas it necessarily acts; and insofar as it has inadequate
ideas, it necessarily suffers. The
latter reads: an affection which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as
we form a clear and distinct idea of it.
The movement between them is commanded by
the basic law of the good life: the
conversion of the inadequate idea into the adequate.
But this is possible only by the ascent of the mind to God, in which it
sees all in His essence, and by the simultaneous elevation of passion to the
sharing of the same vision by which it desires and loves all things according to
the order there revealed and hence is delivered from all its partial and wayward
attachments. But the way between
these terms is long and arduous....[23]
|
Because there is a seeming transition here (though, for
Spinoza, such a transition would be “merely apparent”), it may help us to
understand the whole work if we look to its title and if we briefly look at
Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
[1670, anonymously]. This work was
published anonymously because of its expected reception, and it produced the
expected controversy: it was banned by the States-General, and placed on the
Index of the Catholic Church. Even
the very tolerant low countries, it was too extreme in its call for tolerance!
In his “Preface,” Spinoza says:
now, seeing that we have
the rare happiness of living in a republic, where everyone’s judgment is free
and unshackled, where each may worship God as his conscience dictates, and where
freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, I have believed that I
should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that
not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but
also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be
secure.
Such is the chief conclusion I
seek to establish in this treatise; but, in order to reach it, I must first
point out the misconceptions which, like scars of our former bondage, still
disfigure our notion of religion, and must expose the false views about the
civil authority which many have most imprudently advocated, endeavoring to turn
the mind of the people, still prone to heathen superstition, away from its
legitimate rulers, and so bring us again into slavery.[24]
This work contains sections with the following titles: “A
mistake to suppose that prophecy can give knowledge of phenomena;” “Divine law
(1) universal; (2) independent of the truth of any historical narrative; (3)
independent of rites and ceremonies; (4) its own reward;” “Ceremonial laws of
the Old Testament no part of the Divine universal law, but partial and
temporary. Testimony of the
prophets to this;” “A miracle in the sense of a contradiction of natural laws an
absurdity;” “Current systems of interpretation [of Scripture] erroneous;” “An
Inquiry whether the Apostles wrote their Epistles as Apostles and Prophets, or
merely as Teachers, and an Explanation of what is meant by an Apostle;” “Of the
Foundations of a State; of the Natural and Civil Rights of Individuals; and of
the Rights of the Sovereign Power;” “As the danger of entrusting any authority
in politics to ecclesiastics—the danger of identifying religion with dogma;” and
“That in a Free State every man may Think what he Likes, and Say what he
Thinks.”
Such citations indicate that Spinoza was concerned with promoting
freedom, toleration, good citizenship, religious belief, and an appropriate
concern with the divine. The
remaining three parts of the Ethics
elaborate this concern!
*Preface:
102-103 ...in Nature nothing
comes to pass in nature which can be attributed to its defectiveness, for Nature
is always the same, and its force and power of acting is everywhere one and the
same; that is, the laws and rules of Nature according to which all things happen
and change from one form to another are everywhere and always the same.
So our approach to the understanding of the nature of things of every
kind should likewise be one and the same; namely, through the universal laws and
rules of Nature. Therefore the
emotions of hatred, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the
same necessity and force of Nature as all other particular things.
So these emotions are assignable to definite causes through which they
can be understood, and have definite properties, equally deserving of our
investigation as the properties of any other thing, whose mere contemplation
affords us pleasure. I shall, then,
treat of the nature and strength of the emotions, and the mind’s power over
them, by the same method as I have used in treating of God and the mind, and I
shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were an investigation
into lines, planes, or bodies.
103 *Definitions—read
them, they are all very important.
As Caponigri notes: “the first two concern adequate and inadequate cause on
which is predicated, in turn, the distinction between action and passion.
An adequate cause is one whose effect can be clearly and distinctly
perceived by means of the cause alone; that cause is inadequate and partial
whose effect cannot so be understood.
Men are said to act when
anything is done within or without of which they are the adequate causes; they
are said to suffer, to undergo
passion [emotion], when, in relation
to such effects, they stand only as inadequate or partial cause.[25]
Note: No Axioms!
Postulates.
(a) Propositions 1-9: here Spinoza discusses actions,
passions, conatus, and the primary emotions (desire, pleasure, pain):
103 *1. Our mind is in some
instances active and in other instances passive.
In so far as it has adequate ideas, it is necessarily active; and in so
far as it has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive.
-Cf.
the citation from Caponigri above, and examine Part V, Proposition 3.
The text from P1, III to P3, V is intended to help us move from
inadequate ideas to adequate ideas, passivity to activity, from human bondage to
De Vita Beata [the blessed life].
-104 Corollary: Hence it
follows that the more the mind has inadequate ideas, the more it is subject to
passive states...and, on the other hand, it is more active in proportion as it
has a greater number of active ideas.
-Question:
to the extent that both the inadequate ideas and the adequate ideas are
“natural,” “follow from the nature of substance,” and “in substance,” what
legitimates the apparent higher value of the latter to the former?
Similarly, and more centrally, what legitimates his valuation of
natura naturans over
natura naturata?
[For an answer, look to the Preface to Part IV.
]
*2. The body cannot determine the
mind to think, nor can the mind determine the body to motion or rest, or to
anything else (if there is anything else).
-104-107 The scholium here uses examples (“the baby
which thinks it freely drinks milk, and angry child that [thinks that] it freely
seeks revenge,” etc.) to show how inadequacy [or emotion] is frequently our
condition.
107 *3. The active states of the
mind arise only from adequate ideas; its passive states depend solely on
inadequate ideas.
108 *6. Each thing, in so far as
it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being.
-In his “Introduction,”
Elwes maintains that: “this endeavor must not be associated with the ‘struggle
for existence’ familiar to students of evolutionary theories, though the
suggestion is tempting; it is simply the result of a thing being what it is.
When it is spoken of in reference to the human mind only, it is
equivalent to the will; in reference to the whole man, it may be called
appetite.”[26]
*7. The
conatus [note the translator’s footnote here on p. 108] with
which each thing endeavors to persist in its own being is nothing but the actual
essence of the thing itself.[27]
-In his “Minding the Brain,” Ian
Hacking maintains that:
…Damasio repeatedly mentions
conatus, which in Spinoza’s writings
is usually translated as “striving” or “endeavor.”
In fact it got into seventeenth-century English: the OED defines
conatus as “an effort, endeavor,
striving.” The
conatus of a moving body was its
disposition to continue in motion unless interfered with.
This was long conceived in human terms, as something like a striving of
the body to continue. Thanks to
monumental efforts by Descartes, Leibniz, and many others, the
conatus of moving bodies became two
concepts emptied of the mention of purpose or aim, namely momentum and kinetic
energy.
That done, Hume was able to go one step further.
He thought that we project onto things our ability to produce changes.
Thus when the baseball shatters the window pane, we think the ball caused
the window to break. Which it
did—but all that the “caused” means here, taught Hume, is that the collision
came first, the breaking next, and that balls flying in certain directions are
regularly followed by broken windows.
In short, Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume “de-anthropomorphized”
conatus and causation.
I suggest that in effect Damasio, and Spinoza as read by Damasio, are
engaged in a more heroic project: to “de-anthropomorphize”
anthropos.
If not to de-anthropropomize man himself, at least the human being as an
organism. Spinoza, thinker of
solitude, was not scared that by that thought, but most people are.
Let me try to explain.
The appendix of Part I of Spinoza’s
Ethics, a marvelous diatribe against
finding purposes in things: against “the notion commonly entertained, that all
things in nature act as men themselves do, namely with an end in view.”
When conatus in physics became
kinetic energy and momentum, physics ceased to be anthropomorphic.
Was Spinoza trying to do the same for living organisms?[28]
109 9. The mind, both in so far
as it has clear and distinct ideas and in so far as it has confused ideas,
endeavors to persist in its own being over an indefinite period of time, and is
conscious of this conatus.
-Scholium: When this
conatus is related to the mind alone,
it is called Will; when it is related to the mind and the body together, it is
called Appetite, which is therefore nothing else but man’s essence, from the
nature of which there necessarily follow those things that tend to his
preservation, and which man is thus determined to perform.
Further, there is no difference between appetite and Desire except that
desire is usually related to men in so far as they are conscious of their
appetite. Therefore it can be
defined as follows: desire is ‘appetite
accompanied by the consciousness thereof.’
(b) Propositions 10-14 discuss the “relationship” of the
mind and the body:
110 11. Whatsoever increases or
diminishes, assists or checks, the power of activity of our body, the idea of
the said thing increases or diminishes, assists or checks the power of thought
in our mind.
-Scholium: here Spinoza
offers his characterization of the three
primary emotions: desire, pleasure, and pain.
[Material not
assigned—P 12-56. ]
|
(c) Propositions
12-56: here Spinoza discusses the
derivative passive emotions—the emotions which can be “analyzed into”
desire, pleasure, and pain. Instead
of turning to them, it is perhaps best to turn quickly to the final section of
Part III and Spinoza’s “Definitions of The Emotions” (pp. 141-151].
As Wolfson notes,
a list of forty-eight emotions,
including the three primary ones [desire, pleasure, and pain], is given by
Spinoza at the end of Part III...Of these forty-eight emotions the first
forty-three are taken from Descartes....[and] are arranged according to the
following scheme: I. the three primary emotions (1-3).
II. The two emotions mentioned by Descartes which Spinoza himself does
not regard as emotions (4-5) [wonder and contempt].
III. Derivative emotions of pleasure and pain (6-31).
Derivative emotions of desire (32-48).
The terms in the last five definitions...are not taken from Descartes,
and according to Spinoza’s own statement they constitute a group by themselves
and are distinguished from the other emotions in that they have no contraries.[29]
(d) Propositions
57-59: here Spinoza discusses the “active emotions.”
In his “Introduction,” Elwes maintains that “almost all the emotions
arise from the passive condition of the mind, but there is also a pleasure
arising from the mind’s contemplation of its own power.
This is the source of virtue and is purely active.”[30]
(e) Definitions of
the Emotions”—here we have a condensed version of the discussion of most of
Part III. [See the discussion
above.]
141-151 Definitions 1, 2,
3, and the “General Definition of Emotions” are the important passages here.
Part IV. Of Human
Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions:
In his “Introduction,” Elwes maintains that
in the fourth part of the
Ethics, Spinoza treats of man in so far as he is subject to the emotions....Man,
being a part only of nature, must be subject to emotions, because he must
encounter circumstances of which he is not the sole and sufficient cause.
Emotion can only be conquered by another emotion stronger than itself;
hence knowledge will only lift us above the sway of passions, in so far as it is
itself “touched with emotion.”
Every man necessarily, and therefore rightly, seeks his own interest, which is
thus identical with virtue; but his own interest does not lie in selfishness,
for man is always in need of external help, and nothing is more useful to him
than his fellow-men; hence individual well-being is best promoted by harmonious
social effort. The reasonable man
will desire nothing for himself, which he does not desire for other men;
therefore he will be just, faithful, and honourable.
The code of morals worked out on
these lines bears many resemblances to Stoicism, though it is improbable that
Spinoza was consciously imitating.
The doctrine that rational emotion, rather than pure reason, is necessary for
subduing the evil passions, is entirely his own.[31]
*Preface:
152 I assign the term ‘bondage’
to man’s lack of power to control and check the emotions.
For a man at the mercy of his emotions is not his own master but is
subject to fortune, in whose power he so lies that he is often compelled,
although he sees the better course, to pursue the worse.
153 So perfection and
imperfection are in reality merely modes of thinking, notions which we are wont
to invent from comparing individuals of the same species or kind....
As for the terms
good and
bad, they likewise indicate nothing
positive in things considered in themselves, and are nothing but modes of
thinking, or notions which we form from the comparing things with one another.
Definitions.
|
Axiom.
(a) Propositions 1-18: As A. Robert Caponigri notes,
“here...we find expounded the mechanics...of the theory of the affections and
passions, which
answer how it comes about that man sees the better and follows the worse.”[32]
In the Scholium to Proposition 18 [p.
163], Spinoza indicates that in these propositions he has explained “...the
causes of human weakness and inconstancy, and why men do not abide by the
percepts of reason.” Here, then,
the “mechanism” of human bondage is explained.
156 *2. We are passive in so far
as we are a part of Nature which cannot be conceived independently of other
parts.
157 5. The force and increase of
any passive emotion and its persistence in existing is defined not by the power
whereby we ourselves endeavor to persist in existing, but by the power of
external causes compared with our own power.
158 **7. An emotion cannot be
checked or destroyed except by a contrary emotion which is stronger than the
emotion which is to be checked.
161 **14. No emotion can be
checked by the true knowledge of good and evil in so far as it is true, but only
in so far as it is considered as an emotion.
162 **15. Desire that arises from
true knowledge of good and evil can be extinguished or checked by many other
desires that arise from the emotions by which we are assailed.
163-164 *Scholium [to Proposition
18]: I have thus briefly explained the causes of human weakness and inconstancy,
and why men do not abide by the percepts of reason.
It now remains for me to demonstrate what it is that reason prescribes
for us, and which emotions are in harmony with the rules of human reason, and
which are contrary to them. But
before I embark on the task of proving these things in our detailed geometrical
order, it would be well first of all to make a brief survey of the dictates of
reason, so that my meaning may be more readily grasped by everyone.
Since reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it therefore demands
that every man should love himself, should seek his own advantage...should aim
at whatever really leads a man towards greater perfection, and, to sum it all
up, that each man...should endeavor to preserve his own being....
Again, since virtue is nothing other than to act from the laws of one’s
own nature, and since nobody endeavors to preserve his own being except from the
laws of his own nature, it follows firstly that the basis of virtue is in the
very conatus to preserve one’s own
being, and that happiness consists in a man’s being able to preserve his own
being. Secondly, it follows that
virtue should be sought for its own sake, and that there is nothing preferable
to it or more to our advantage, for the sake of which it should be sought.
[Material not assigned—P19-31.
] |
(b) Propositions
19-31: As A. Robert Caponigri notes, “here we find sketched that model of the
good life, the life according to man’s nature....”[33]
168 *28. The mind’s highest good
is knowledge of God, and the minds highest virtue is to know God.
(c) Propositions
32-73 and Appendix: here Spinoza discusses both solitude, society, and the free
man:
170 32. In so far as men are
subject to passive emotions, to that extent they cannot be said to agree in
nature.
171 35. In so far as men live
under the guidance of reason, to that extent only do they always necessarily
agree in nature.
173 37. The good which every man
who pursues virtue aims at for himself he will also desire for the rest of
mankind, and all the more as he acquires a greater knowledge of God.
-174-175 In the
Scholia to this proposition Spinoza
discusses piety, honor, and man in the state of nature as contrasted with man in
civil society. The discussion is an
excellent spot to speak of his ethical and social-political thought (one of his
primary purposes in writing, after all).
187 *59. In the case of all
actions to which we are determined by a passive emotion, we can be determined
thereto by reason without that emotion.
188 61. Desire that arises from
reason cannot be excessive.
189 *62. In so far as the mind
conceives things in accordance with the dictates of reason, it is equally
affected whether the idea be of the future, in the past, or the present....it
conceives under the same form of eternity or necessity.
195 *73. The man who is
guided by reason is more free in a state where he lives under a system of law
than in solitude where he obeys only himself.
-Scholium: “...every man
who is guided by reason aims at procuring for others, too, the good that he
seeks for himself....his prime endeavor is to conceive of things as they are in
themselves and to remove obstacles to true knowledge, such as hatred, anger,
envy, derision, pride, and similar emotions that we have noted.
And so he endeavors, as far as he can, to do well and to be glad....
(d) Appendix:
The Appendix to Part IV provides a more discursive
discussion of the “right way of living”—it offers a general discussion of the
central topics of this part organized in a “non-geometrical” manner.
It is important to note, especially given my emphasis in the lectures on
Spinoza’s metaphysics, that his prime motivation in philosophizing (see the
section in the introduction regarding his motivation) is to affect how
individuals live!
196 ...it is of the first
importance in life to perfect the intellect, or reason, as far as we can, and
the highest happiness or blessedness for mankind consists in this alone.
For blessedness is nothing other than that self-contentment that arises
from the intuitive knowledge of God.
Now to perfect the intellect is also nothing other than to understand God
and the attributes and actions of God that follow from the necessity of his
nature. Therefore for the man who
is guided by reason, the final goal, that is, the highest Desire whereby he
strives to control all the others, is that by which he is brought to an adequate
conception of himself and of all things that can fall within the scope of his
understanding.
A man is bound to be a part of
Nature and to follow its universal order; but if he dwells among individuals who
are in harmony with man’s nature, by that very fact his power of activity will
be assisted and fostered. But if he
be among individuals who are by no means in harmony with his nature, he will
scarcely be able to conform to them without a great change in himself.
200 But human power is very
limited and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes, and so we
do not have absolute power to adapt to our purposes things external to us.
However, we shall patiently bear whatever happens to us that is contrary
to what is required by consideration of our own advantage, if we are conscious
that we have done our duty and that our power was not extensive enough for us to
have avoided the said things, and that we are a part of the whole of Nature
whose order we follow. If we
clearly and distinctly understand this, that part of us which is defined by the
understanding, that is, the better part of us, will be fully
resigned and will
endeavor to persevere in that
resignation. For in so far as
we understand, we can desire nothing but that which must be, nor, in an absolute
sense, can we find contentment in anything but truth.
And so in so far as we rightly understand these matters, the endeavor of
the better part of us is in harmony with the order of the whole of Nature.
Part V. Of the
Power of the Understanding or Human Freedom:
In his “Introduction,” Elwes maintains that:
the means whereby man may
gain mastery over his passions, are set forth in the first portion of the fifth
part of the Ethics. They depend on
the definition of passion as a confused idea.
As soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of a passion, it changes its
character, and ceases to be a passion.
Now it is possible, with due care, to form a distinct idea of every
bodily state; hence a true knowledge of the passions is the best remedy against
them. While we contemplate the
world as a necessary result of the perfect nature of God, a feeling of joy will
arise in our hearts, accompanied by the idea of God as its cause.
This is the intellectual love of God, which is the highest happiness man
can know.[34]
*Preface:
201 I pass on finally to
that part of the Ethics which
concerns the method, or way, leading to freedom.
In this part, then, I shall be dealing with the power of reason, pointing
out the degree of control reason has over the emotions, and then what is freedom
of mind, or blessedness....
Axioms:
(a) Propositions 1-20: On the Power of reason:
203 1. The affections of the
body, that is, the images of things, are arranged and connected in the body in
exactly the same way as thoughts and the ideas of things are arranged and
connected in the mind.
204 *3. A passive emotion ceases
to be a passive emotion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.
-As noted above (in the
discussion of Part III), A. Robert Caponigri maintains that: “the grand
commanding line of these [later] books [of
The Ethics] moves from Proposition I
of Book III in an unbroken arch to Proposition III of the Fifth Book.”[35]
He contends that this extended passage traces “...the path to the blessed life;
each book is devoted...to a stage of that way.
In its most general outline, this path leads by way of the passions to
dominance of the passions by the one supreme passion, the intellectual love of
God. In like manner, it may be
described as the path from slavery to the passions to the mastery of life which
only passion can give when it is directed to the all-encompassing good which is
God.”[36]
-Corollary: so
the more an emotion is known to us, the more it is within our control, and the
mind is the less passive in respect of it.
-204-205 *Scholium:
...everyone has the power of clearly and distinctly understanding himself and
his emotions, if not absolutely, at least in part, and consequently of bringing
it about that he should be less passive in respect of them.
So we should pay particular attention to getting to know each emotion, as
far as possible, clearly and distinctly, so that the mind may thus be determined
from the emotion to think those things that it clearly and distinctly
perceives....it is one and the same appetite through which a man is said both to
be active and to be passive. For
example, we have shown human nature is so constituted that everyone wants others
to live according to his way of thinking.
Now this appetite in a man who is not guided by reason is a passive
emotion which is called ambition, and differs to no great extent from pride.
But in a man who lives according to the dictates of reason it is an
active emotion, or virtue, which is called piety.
In this way all appetites or desires are passive emotions only in so far
as they arise form inadequate ideas, and they are accredited to virtue when they
are aroused or generated by adequate ideas.
For all desires whereby we are determine to some action can arise both
from adequate and from inadequate ideas.
210 15. He who clearly and
distinctly understands himself and his emotions loves God, and the more so the
more he understands himself and his emotions.
17. God is without passive
emotion, and he is not affected with any emotion of pleasure or pain.
-Compare and Contrast with proposition 35 below!
212 *Scholium to 20: “with
this I have completed the account of all the remedies for the emotions: that is,
all that the mind, considered solely in itself, can do against the emotions.”
Spinoza offers a brief review of the remedy.
(b) Propositions
21-31: here Spinoza says that he discusses “...matters that concern the duration
of the mind without respect to the body.”
A. Robert Caponigri more helpfully notes, this section “...concerns
the formal structure...of that
blessedness...which proves to reside in the intellectual and eternal love for
God….”[37]
|
214 *25.
The highest
conatus of the mind and its
highest virtue is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge.
216 *Scholium to 29: we
conceive things as actual in two ways: either in so far as we conceive them as
related to a fixed time and place, or in so far as we conceive them to be
contained in God and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature.
Now the things that are conceived as true or real in this second way, we
conceive under a form of eternity, and their ideas involve the eternal and
infinite essence of God....
(c) Propositions
32-42 (end): A. Robert Caponigri maintains that this section is “...without
a doubt one of the most exalted passages in the whole literature of philosophy,
[it] may best be conceived as a hymn to this culmination of human life and
substance of its liberty, this...intellectual
love of God.”[38]
217 *32. We take pleasure in
whatever we understand by the third kind of knowledge, and this is accompanied
by the idea of God as cause.
-** Corollary: from the
third kind of knowledge there necessarily arises the intellectual love of God (amour
Dei intellectuais). From this
kind of knowledge there arises pleasure accompanied by the idea of God as cause,
that is, the love of God not in so far as we imagine him as present but in so
far as we understand God to be eternal.
And this is what I call the
intellectual love of God.
*33. The intellectual love of God
which arises from the third kind of knowledge is eternal.
218 Corollary to 34: ...no
love is eternal except for intellectual love.
35
God loves himself with an infinite intellectual love.
-Compare and Contrast with proposition 17 above!
218-219 *36. The mind’s
intellectual love towards God is the love of God wherewith God loves himself in
so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be explicated through the
essence of the human mind considered under a form of eternity.
That is, the mind’s intellectual love towards God is part of the infinite
love wherewith God loves himself.
-219 Corollary: ...God, in
so far as he loves himself, loves mankind, and, consequently, that love of God
towards man and the mind’s intellectual love towards God are one and the same.
|
221 40. The more perfection a
thing has, the more active and the less passive it is.
Conversely, the more active it is, the more perfect it is.
**42. Blessedness is not the
reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
We do not enjoy blessedness because we keep our lusts in check.
On the contrary, it is because we enjoy blessedness that we are able to
keep our lusts in check.
-** Scholium: ...the wise
man, in so far as he is considered as such, suffers scarcely any disturbance of
spirit, but being conscious, by virtue of a certain eternal necessity, of
himself, of God and of things, never ceases to be, but always possesses true
spiritual contentment.
(end)
Assorted Critiques
of Spinoza:
1. In her Upheavals
of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Martha Nussbaum offers an
interesting criticism of Spinoza’s notion of “intellectual love of his deity:”
the diagnosis of our therapists
[Plato, Spinoza, and Proust] can now, however, be questioned.
For they all begin with an understanding of love that derives from a
picture of infantile helplessness and the infantile wish for omnipotence—that
sees the wish of love in terms of the restoration of totality and a “Golden Age”
needless state. We might say that
they express what we have called pathological narcissism: for they long for
complete control over the world, and they refuse to abandon that wish in favor
of more realistic human wishes for interchange and interdependence.
Their characterizations of what human life is like are distorted by their
wish, for they see only agony and misery wherever there is incompleteness and
lack of dictatorial control, only the disgusting wherever there is a body going
its own way. Rather than learning
to live in a world in which every lover must be finite and mortal, the
contemplative lover finds marvelously ingenious devices to satisfy the desires
of infancy—deploying, to remarkable effect, the wonder and curiosity that are so
prominent in a human infant’s initial makeup.
Rather than renouncing the wish for totality in favor of a more appealing
human wish, this lover has continued to be motivated by infantile omnipotence
and has for this very reason had to depart from a world in which the infant’s
wishes can never be satisfied.
None of my three normative criteria can be satisfied, so long as the
ascending lover continues to hold onto omnipotence, or complete control of the
good, as a goal.
Reciprocity requires a willingness to
live alongside others who are equal, and this means a willingness to admit
limits to one’s own control of good things.
One cannot hate the very fact of another person’s uncontrolled existence
and still live with others on terms of reciprocity and justice.
Compassion typically involves
seeing oneself as one among others, similarly vulnerable, with similar
possibilities for worldly misfortune.
One cannot have compassion for others if one is unwilling to acknowledge
the reality and the salience of another human life alongside one’s own.
And, as Proust admits, seeing the
particularity of another truly and clearly requires a stance that does not
try to incorporate or swallow that other particular, the stance of one who is
willing to live in a world where there are agencies external to the self that go
on being the way they are.[39]
2. In his A History
of Philosophy v. 4, Frederick Copleston maintains that:
one great difficulty about this
theory, however, is that of seeing how any logical deduction of
Natura natura is possible, unless the
initial assumption is made that substance
must express itself in modes; and this is precisely the point which ought to
be proved, not assumed....But it is difficult to see that it follows even from
Spinoza’s definitions that substance as he defined it
must have modes.
On the one hand he started with the idea of God.
On the other hand he knew very well by experience, as we all know, that
finite beings exist. In developing
a deductive system he thus knew in advance the point of arrival, and it seems
probable that his knowledge that there are finite beings encouraged him to
believe he had achieved a logical deduction of
Natura natura.”[40]
Copleston also offers a version of one of the most common
criticisms of Spinoza as follows:
...even if we grant that to know
an effect adequately involves knowing its cause, it does not follow that the
causal relation is akin to the relation of logical implication.
But the point is that Spinoza appears to have regarded the assertion of
this affinity as something clearly true and not as a mere assumption or
hypothesis....[41]
3. In his “Spinoza,” Alasdair MacIntyre offers this
criticism maintaining that:
…Spinoza has no clear theory of
entailment, of logical necessity, or of analytic truth.
These are notions upon which he habitually relies without ever passing
beyond formulations which blend Cartesian references to clarity of conception
with scholastic phrases of the “in itself” and “through itself” variety.
Yet unless a clear meaning can be assigned to the notions of a relation
which is both causal and logical, Spinoza cannot hope to identify clearly the
terms of this relation. His use of
the word “idea” helps him avoid clarity at this point.
Sometimes an “idea” appears to be a proposition, sometimes a concept, and
sometimes a concept or proposition as it is entertained in thought.[42]
4. In his Bacon to
Kant: An Introduction to modern Philosophy, Garrett Thompson offers several
additional criticisms as follows:
against Spinoza, we might argue
that it is possible to conceive of and know something without knowing its cause.
One way to substantiate this would be to claim that causation should be
distinguished from logical implication.
Another way to argue this would be to deny that ideally the concept of
anything must involve its cause.
Second, Spinoza defines substance as an
independent existent; his Rationalism
interprets the word independent so strongly that nothing but Nature as a whole
counts as independent. We could
argue against this by challenging Spinoza’s definition of substance as something
that is an independent existent. An
alternative definition of substance could be this: substance is that which has
properties but is not itself a property.
This alternative definition does not imply that substances must be
independent. According to this
alternative definition, ordinary finite objects can count as substances, even
though they are not independent.
Next, we must examine Spinoza’s assumption that everything must have a
complete explanation. This might be
portrayed as a demand that we make of the world: we expect the world to behave
rationally such that every event can be explained.
But even if this demand or expectation is coherent, there is no guarantee
that it will be met. There is no
logical guarantee that the world will conform to this expectation.
Moreover, Spinoza holds an especially strong form of the principle that
everything must have a sufficient cause.
For example, he claims that, if God does not exist, then there must be
some cause for his nonexistence.[43]
[1] The notes
below have citations from two different
translations: The Ethics in The Chief
Works of Benedict de Spinoza, trans. R.H.M.
Elwes (N.Y.: Dover, 1955), and Spinoza, The
Ethics, in The Ethics, Treatise on the
Emendation of the Intellect, and Selected
Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992).
The classic secondary text here is Harry
Wolfson’s The Philosophy of Spinoza:
Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning
[1934], (N.Y.: Schoken, 1969)—in two volumes of
about 400 pages each, Wolfson tries to give his
reader an understanding of Spinoza’s The
Ethics and his thought in general.
[2] Stuart
Hampshire,
Spinoza
(Harmonsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 35.
Emphasis added to passage.
[3] Harry
Wolfson,
The Philosophy of Spinoza,
op. cit.,
p. 63.
The citation to Aristotle is to his
Metaphysics, XIII.
Cf.
the whole of Wolfson’s Chapter III.
[4] Stuart
Hampshire,
Spinoza,
op. cit., pp. 31-32.
[5] A. Robert
Caponigri,
A History
of Western Philosophy: Philosophy from the
Renaissance to the Romantic Age (Notre Dame:
Univ. of Notre Dame, 1963), pp. 210-211.
Emphasis is added to the passage twice.
[6] I have
provided headings for sections of the text which
are based upon those employed by a variety of
scholars.
These are indented to help the reader
impose additional order upon the text to aid
understanding.
[7]
Ibid.,
p. 213.
Emphasis added to passage.
[8] According
to
Dictionary.com, a scholium is: “a
note added to illustrate or amplify, as in a
mathematical work” [accessed on 02/18/2010].
[9] R.S.
Woolhouse,
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of
Substance in Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics
(London: Routledge, 1993), p. 44.
Woolhouse quotes here from
The
Collected Works of Spinoza v. 1, trans. and
ed. E.M. Curley (
[10]
Cf.,
William Earle, “The Ontological Argument in
Spinoza,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research v.
11 (1951), pp. 549- 554.
The essay is reprinted in
Spinoza:
A Collection of Critical Essays, ed.
Marjorie Grene (Garden City: Anchor, 1973), pp.
213-219.
It is on reserve in the Green Library.
[11]
Cf.,
Edwin Curley,
Behind
the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s
Ethics (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1988),
pp. 9-30.
[12]
Frederick Copleston,
A History
of Philosophy v. 4
(Garden City: Image, 1963), p. 232.
[13]
Cf.,
Shirley’s comments in his “Translator’s Preface”
to his Ethics,
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and
Selected Letters, op. cit., p. 25.
[14]
Frederick Copleston,
A History
of Philosophy v. 4,
op. cit.,
p. 219.
[15] That is,
“about the deity.”
[16] That is,
about “the blessed life.”
[17] A.
Robert Caponigri,
A History
of Western Philosophy, op. cit., p. 218.
[18]
Ibid.,
pp. 215-216.
[19]
Ibid.,
p. 218.
Emphasis added to the passage.
[20]
Ibid.,
pp. 219-220.
[21]
Ibid.,
p. 217.
Emphasis added to passage.
[22]
Ibid., p. 223.
[23]
Ibid.,
p. 224.
Emphasis added to passage.
[24] Benedict
Spinoza,
A Theologico-Political Treatise [1670,
anonymously], in
The Chief
Works of Benedict de Spinoza v. 1, trans.
R.H.M. Elwes [1883],
op. cit.,
p. 6.
[25] A.
Robert Caponigri,
A History
of Western Philosophy, op. cit., p. 224.
[26] R.H.M.
Elwes, “Introduction,”
op. cit.,
p. xxvii.
[27] As our
translator, Samuel Shirley, notes in a footnote
to this proposition, Harry Wolfson’s discussion
of ‘conatus’
is helpful here—cf.,
Harry Wolfson,
The
Philosophy of Spinoza v. 2,
op. cit.,
pp. 195-202.
[28] Ian
Hacking, “Minding the Brain,”
The
[29] Harry
Wolfson,
The Philosophy of Spinoza v. 2,
op. cit.,
pp. 208-210.
[30] R.H.M.
Elwes, “Introduction,”
op. cit.,
pp. xxvii-xxviii.
[31]
Ibid.,
p. xxviii.
[32] A.
Robert Caponigri,
A History
of Western Philosophy, op. cit., p. 228.
[33]
Ibid.,
pp. 227-228.
[34] R.H.M.
Elwes, “Introduction,”
op. cit.,
pp. xxviii-xxix.
[35] A.
Robert Caponigri,
A History
of Western Philosophy, op. cit., p. 224.
[36]
Ibid.,
p. 223.
[37]
Ibid.,
p. 234.
Emphasis added to passage.
[38]
Ibid.
Emphasis added to passage.
[39] Martha
Nussbaum,
Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of
Emotions (
[40]
Frederick Copleston,
A History
of Philosophy v. 4 (Garden City: Image
Books, 1963), p. 232.
[41]
Ibid.,
p. 218.
[42] Alasdair
McIntyre, “Spinoza,” in
The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy v. 7, ed. Paul
Edwards (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1967), p. 535.
[43] Garrett
Thompson,
Bacon to Kant: An Introduction to modern
Philosophy (3rd edition) (Long
Grove: Waveland, 2012), pp. 63-64.
Last revised on: 10/05/19.