Monism and individuation in Anne Conway as a critique of Spinoza

ABSTRACT

In chapter IX of the Principles, Anne Conway claims that her metaphysics is diametrically opposed to those of Descartes and Spinoza. Scholars have analyzed her rejection of Cartesianism, but not her critique of Spinoza. This paper proposes that two central points of Conway’s metaphysics can be understood as direct responses to Spinoza: (1) the relation between God, Christ, and the creatures in the tripartite division of being, and (2) the individuation of beings in the lowest species. I will argue that Conway, in criticizing Spinoza’s identification between God and nature, defends a paradoxical monism, and that her concept of individuation is a reductio ad absurdum of Spinoza’s criterion of identity in the individuation of finite modes.     

SPINOZA'S SUMMUM BONUM

Abstract: As Spinoza presents it, the knowledge of God is knowledge, primarily, of oneself and, secondarily, of other things. Without this know‐ledge, a mind may not consciously desire to persevere in being. That is why Spinoza claims that the knowledge of God is the most useful thing to the mind at IVP28. He claims that the knowledge of God is the highest good, however, not because it is instrumental to perseverance, but because it is also the best among those goods that we seek for their own sakes. It is acquiescentia in se ipso, the highest form of laetitia.     

Spinoza’s Arguments for the Existence of God*

It is often thought that, although Spinoza develops a bold and distinctive conception of God (the unique substance, or Natura Naturans, in which all else inheres and which possesses infinitely many attributes, including extension), the arguments that he offers which purport to prove God’s existence contribute nothing new to natural theology. Rather, he is seen as just another participant in the seventeenth century revival of the ontological argument initiated by Descartes and taken up by Malebranche and Leibniz among others. That this is the case is both puzzling and unfortunate. It is puzzling because although Spinoza does offer an ontological proof for the existence of God, he also offers three other non‐ontological proofs. It is unfortunate because these other non‐ontological proofs are both more convincing and more interesting than his ontological proof. In this paper, I offer reconstructions and assessments of all of Spinoza’s arguments and argue that Spinoza’s metaphysical rationalism and his commitment to something like a Principle of Sufficient Reason are the driving force behind Spinoza’s non‐ontological arguments.     

Spinoza and the problem of other substances

Most of Spinoza’s arguments for God’s existence do not rely on any special feature of God, but instead on merely general features of substance. This raises the following worry: those arguments prove the existence of non-divine substances just as much as they prove God’s existence, and yet there is not enough room in Spinoza’s system for all these substances. I argue that Spinoza attempts to solve this problem by using a principle of plenitude to rule out the existence of other substances and that the principle cannot be derived from the PSR, as many claim.

Abbreviation: PSR: Principle of Sufficient Reason     

What is the relationship between ideas in the human mind and ideas in the mind of God for Spinoza?

The relation between ideas in the human mind and ideas in the mind of God in Spinoza is problematic because it is often expressed in obscure language and because Spinoza seems to be making puzzling and contradictory statements about it. I try to eliminate the problem by going from the idea that God has of himself to his idea of the essence and existence of the human mind and the human body. I then go from the idea of the essence of the human mind to the idea of the essence of other things, including God.     

Structural causality in Spinoza's Ethics

In this paper, I argue that Spinoza's claim at E1P15 that “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God” remains exegetically troubling. Briefly noting some unresolved difficulties with the two dominant interpretations of Spinoza's account of the relationship between finite modes and God (these being the inherence and causal dependence readings), I move to claim that there is a third, neglected reading available which deserves consideration. I argue that, perhaps surprisingly, Althusser's notion of “structural causality,” putatively derived from Spinoza himself, can be used to construct this reading. Althusser's original notion of “structural causality” is explained and clarified further, its advantages outlined over competing readings of Spinoza, and exegetical evidence for its applicability to Spinoza is then produced.     

The Susceptibility of Intuitive Knowledge to Akrasia in Spinoza's Ethical Thought

Spinoza unequivocally states in the Ethics that intuitive knowledge is more powerful than reason. Nonetheless, it is not clear what exactly this greater power promises in the face of the passions. Does this mean that intuitive knowledge is not liable to akrasia? Ronald Sandler offers what, to my knowledge, is the only explicit answer to this question in recent Spinoza scholarship. According to Sandler, intuitive knowledge, unlike reason, is not susceptible to akrasia. This is because, intuitive knowledge enables the knower to greater power over the passions due to its immediacy, its foundation and because it engenders the boundlessly powerful intellectual love of God. In this paper, I consider to what extent (if at all) intuitive knowledge is liable to akrasia by exploring whether Sandler's claim can justifiably be attributed to Spinoza. I argue that, given our modal status, it is not plausible to claim that akrasia would never apply to intuitive knowledge. Since intuitive ideas are the ideas of a finite mind actually existing as a part of Nature, even the intellectual love of God accompanying these ideas cannot provide a boundless power guaranteeing that the power of these ideas will not be overridden by passionate ideas.     

Fixing Descartes: Ethical Intellectualism in Spinoza's Early Writings

This paper aims at reconstructing the ethical issues raised by Spinoza's early Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Specifically, I argue that Spinoza takes issue with Descartes’ epistemology in order to support a form of “ethical intellectualism” in which knowledge is envisaged as both necessary and sufficient to reach the supreme good. First, I reconstruct how Descartes exploits the distinction between truth and certainty in his Discourse on the Method. On the one hand, this distinction acts as the basis for Descartes’ epistemological rules while, on the other hand, it implies a “morale par provision” in which adequate knowledge is not strictly necessary to practice virtue. Second, I show that Spinoza rejects the distinction between truth and certainty and thus the methodological doubt. This move leads Spinoza to substitute the Cartesian Cogito with the idea of God as the only adequate standard of knowledge, through which the mind can attain the rules to reach the supreme good. Third, I demonstrate that in the Short Treatise Spinoza develops this view by equating intellect and will and thus maintaining that only adequate knowledge can help to contrast affects. However, I also insist that Spinoza's early epistemology is unable to explain why human beings drop conceive of the idea of God inadequately. Thus, I suggest that in his later writings Spinoza accounts for the insufficiency of adequate knowledge in opposing the power of the imagination and passions by reconnecting the nature of ideas with the mind's conatus.     

Spinoza’s Christology A Brief Summary

Abstract

This article summarizes a number of Spinoza texts relating to his Christology and soteriology based on his Christology. The texts show that Spinoza’s Christology underpins his formulation of human nature or the constitution of the essence of the human mind. Considering Spinoza’s texts concerning God or Nature, “Christ according to the spirit”, the spirit or mind of Christ, and human salvation or blessedness; this article illustrates that given the texts, the study of Spinoza’s Christian religion is skewed and ought to be more balanced. The author’s reading of Spinoza and its application to his work presented in this article provides a coherent and tenable understanding of Spinoza’s efforts “to commend and establish the authentic purpose of the Christian Religion”.     

Lucretius Hebraizant: Spinoza's Reading of Ecclesiastes

Spinoza viewed the book of Ecclesiastes, in its original Hebrew and thus cleared of the interpretations imposed upon it in the guise of translation, as a powerful critique of the two most important variants of the superstition that taught human beings to regard both nature and themselves as degraded expressions of an unattainable perfection. The first was organized around the concept of miracle, the divine suspension of the actual concatenation of things, as if God were an earthly sovereign declaring a state of exception. The second was the apparent opposite of this first, the idea that the concatenation of things has an origin and an end, that is, an order decreed by God. Spinoza reads Ecclesiastes through the lens of Epicurus and Lucretius, as if it were an attempt in the Hebrew idiom, an idiom in certain ways perhaps better suited for this task than either Greek or Latin, to shatter the decrees of destiny and to regard with pleasure those singular things (both human and non‐human) that cannot and need not be made straight.     

The Divine Essence and the Conception of God in Spinoza

I argue against a prevailing view that the essence of Godis identical with the attributes. I show that given what Spinoza says in 2d2 – Spinoza'spurported definition of the essence of a thing – the attributes cannot be identical withthe essence of God (whether the essence of God is understood as the distinct attributesor as a totality of indistinct attributes). I argue that while the attributes do notsatisfy the stipulations of 2d2 relative to God, absolutely infinite and eternal power does satisfythose stipulations. Hence, I conclude that absolutely infinite and eternal power is God'sessence and that the attributes are expressions of that power.     

Mixing Bodily Fluids: Hobbes’s Stoic God

The pantheon of seventeenth-century European philosophy includes some remarkably heterodox deities, perhaps most famously Spinoza’s deus-sive-natura. As in ethics and natural philosophy, early modern philosophical theology drew inspiration from classical sources outside the mainstream of Christianized Aristotelianism, such as the highly immanentist, naturalistic theology of Greek and Roman Stoicism. While the Stoic background to Spinoza’s pantheist God has been more thoroughly explored, I maintain that Hobbes’s corporeal God is the true modern heir to the Stoic theology. The Stoic and Hobbesian gods are necessitarian, entirely corporeal, and thoroughly intermixed with ordinary bodies, while also supremely intelligent, providential, and good. And both gods serve as the ultimate source of diversity and change in a material world divested of Aristotelian forms and causes. Unfortunately, scholars on both sides of the long debate about the sincerity of Hobbes’s theism have not taken very seriously his late articulation of a corporeal theology. One probable reason for this dismissive attitude is a lack of thorough investigation of the historical precedents for such an unusual godhead available to Hobbes. The first part of this article attempts to establish a close congruence between the Stoic and Hobbesian gods. The second part traces the likely sources for Hobbes’s Stoic theology in his intellectual context.     

Author's Précis of Henry James and Modern Moral Life

The sheer complexity of Spinoza's thinking makes it impossible for any movement to use him as a patron. But philosophically engaged ecologists and environmentalists may find in his system an inexhaustible source of inspiration. This holds good even if he was personally a ‘speciesist’ and uninterested in animals or landscapes. Underestimation of his potential help is due to a variety of factors: failure to pay enough attention to the structure of his system, belief in its close resemblance to that of Hobbes, and interpretation of ‘understanding love of God’ as a contemplative, general attitude incompatible with environmentalist activism and interest in every living being. The system of Spinoza is compatible with activism ‐ like that of Jan de Witt ‐ and with respect for all things as ‘expressions of the power of God or Nature’.     

Modern Philosophy,the Subject,and the God of the Bible

In my paper, I undertake to show that the God of the Bible is the subject of modern philosophy, i.e., that philosophy is biblical and that the Bible is philosophical. Central to the argument of my paper is an analysis of the fundamental difference between the philosophy of Aristotle (consistent with Socrates and Plato), as based on the law of contradiction and thus on the contradictory opposition between necessity and existence, and the philosophy of, in particular, Spinoza and Kant, as based on the transcendental logic of the necessary relationship of thought and existence. Thus, I argue that the ontological argument (proving the existence of God) demonstrates the necessary existence of the thinking subject and of the subject thought, at once human and divine. In short, metaphysics is practical reason, the practice of doing unto others what you want others to do unto you, and reason is metaphysical practice, the practice of proving that there is one thing that you, a subject, cannot think without it necessarily existing, and that is the other subject (the neighbor/God).     

“God … has sent me to Germany”: Salomon Maimon,Friedrich Jacobi,and the Spinoza Quarrel

Salomon Maimon's Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie [Essay in Transcendental Philosophy] (1790) challenges and reworks Kant's arguments in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] (1785, 2nd ed. 1787) about the foundations of natural science and of Newtonian physics in particular. Kant himself was impressed both with Maimon's grasp of his critical project and also with the force of his challenge to it. While Maimon's significance on the later development of German Idealism is now widely acknowledged, another aspect of Maimon's Versuch has not been fully appreciated, namely, its engagement with the central questions of the Spinozastreit [Spinoza Quarrel] that erupted in 1785 with the publication of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn [Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn]. The Spinoza Quarrel centered on whether and to what extent philosophy's rational understanding of God needs to be grounded in an unmediated and suprarational revelatory experience. This paper is the first extended effort at placing Maimon's Versuch into the context of the Spinoza Quarrel. I argue that the Spinoza Quarrel and Maimon's self‐proclaimed philosophical mission in response to it—the replacement of revealed faith by reason—deeply inform the goals he pursues in his Versuch. I show how Maimon's Versuch can be read as not only a response to Kant, but also to Jacobi's defense of the revelatory nature of sense experience in David Hume über den Glauben (1787), the book in which Jacobi offers his own skeptical challenge to Kant's Kritik. Situating Maimon's Versuch as a response to Friedrich Jacobi's David Hume allows us to understand how one of Maimon's objectives in his Versuch is to keep Jacobian Glaube [faith] at bay by demonstrating, using a revised Kantian framework, the conditions of the impossibility of experiencing miracles.     

NEWTON AND SPINOZA: ON MOTION AND MATTER (AND GOD,OF COURSE)

This study explores several arguments against Spinoza's philosophy that were developed by Henry More, Samuel Clarke, and Colin Maclaurin. In the arguments on which I focus, More, Clarke, and Maclaurin aim to establish the existence of an immaterial and intelligent God precisely by showing that Spinoza does not have the resources to adequately explain the origin of motion. Attending to these criticisms grants us a deeper appreciation for how the authority derived from the empirical success of Newton's enterprise was used to settle debates within philosophy. What I emphasize is that in the progression from More to Clarke to Maclaurin, key Newtonian concepts from the Principia (1687), such as motion, atomism, and the vacuum, are introduced and exploited in order to challenge the account of matter and motion that is presented in Spinoza's Ethics (1677). Building on this treatment, I use the arguments from More and Clarke especially to help discern the anti‐Spinozism that can be detected in Newton's General Scholium (1713). Ultimately, the Newtonian criticisms that I detail offer us a more nuanced view of the problems that plague Spinoza's philosophy, and they also challenge the idea that Spinoza seamlessly fits into a progressive narrative about the scientific revolution.     

Spinoza's Rethinking of Activity: From the Short Treatise to the Ethics

This paper argues that God's immanent causation and Spinoza's account of activity as adequate causation (of finite modes) do not always go together in Spinoza's thought. We show that there is good reason to doubt that this is the case in Spinoza's early Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well‐being . In the Short Treatise , Spinoza defends an account of God's immanent causation without fully endorsing the account of activity as adequate causation that he will later introduce in the Ethics (E3def2). We turn to an examination of how God's immanent causation relates to the activity of finite things in the Ethics . We consider two ways to think about the link between God, seen as immanent cause, and the activity of finite things: namely, in terms of entailment and in terms of production. We argue that the productive model is most promising for understanding the way in which the activity of finite things and God's immanent causality are connected in Spinoza's (mature) philosophy     

Pure reason and contemporary philosophy of religion: the rational striving in and for truth

This essay urges contemporary philosophers of religion to rethink the role that Kant’s critical philosophy has played both in establishing the analytic nature of modern philosophy and in developing a critique of reason’s drive for the unconditioned. In particular, the essay demonstrates the contribution that Kant and other modern rationalists such as Spinoza can still make today to our rational striving in and for truth. This demonstration focuses on a recent group of analytic philosophers of religion who have labelled their own work ‘analytic theology’ and have generated new debates, including new arguments about Kant bridging philosophy and theology. Cultivation of a reflective critical openness is encouraged here; this is a practice for checking reason’s overly ambitious claims about God.     

Noumenalism and Einstein's argument for the existence of God

Einstein argued in his latter years that the intelligibility of the world was in the nature of a miracle, and that in no way could one have expected a priori such a high degree of order; this is why he rejected the atheist, positivist standpoint, and believed in a Spinozist God. Einstein's argument, however, is essentially a form of the ‘argument from design’ for a personal God based on the existence of beautiful, mathematically simple laws of nature; that physical order is a unique, improbable alternative compared to the infinite number of chaotic universes that might have existed. Einstein, in his early manhood, was a Humean, but in later years, as he moved toward Spinoza, from phenomenalism to noumenalism, he clearly rejected Hume's restriction of probable inferences to observed sequences. Darwin's arguments against biological design did not apply to Einstein's argument, because the laws of physics are not the outcome of any cumulative struggle for existence and natural selection. Perhaps the beautiful simplicity of basic physical laws helps account for the fact that relatively more physicists than biologists or psychologists hold to a theistic standpoint. Einstein's finite universe would have seriously weakened the argument that life, though infinitely improbable, would have been realized in an infinite world. But in any case, Einstein would have regarded ‘emergence’ theories of life as irrational. In accordance with the principle of identity of Emile Meyerson, the epistemologist whom he most respected, it would have followed that the occurrence of consciousness and intelligence was grounded in a God with those attributes, and that theism was consequently the basis for scientific knowledge.     

Two Kinds of Definition in Spinoza's Ethics

Spinoza scholars have claimed that we are faced with a dilemma: either Spinoza's definitions in his Ethics are real, in spite of indications to the contrary, or the definitions are nominal and the propositions derived from them are false. I argue that Spinoza did not recognize the distinction between real and nominal definitions. Rather, Spinoza classified definitions according to whether they require a priori or a posteriori justification, which is a classification distinct from either the real/nominal or the intensional/extensional classification. I argue that Spinoza uses both a priori and a posteriori definitions in the Ethics and that recognizing both types of definitions allows us to understand Spinoza's geometric method in a new way. We can now understand the geometric method as two methods, one resulting in propositions that Spinoza considers to be absolutely certain and another resulting in propositions that Spinoza does not consider certain. The latter method makes use of a posteriori definitions and postulates, whereas the former method uses only a priori definitions and axioms.