BRILL'S STUDIES

IN
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
General Editor

A.J. VANDERJAGT, University of Groningen

Editorial Board

M . COLISH, Oberlin College

J . I . ISRAEL, University College, London
J . D . N O R T H , University of Groningen
R . H . POPKIN, Washington University, St. Louis — U C L A
V O L U M E 14
 SPINOZA
ISSUES AND DIRECTIONS

The Proceedings of the Chicago Spinoza Conference

Edited by

Edwin Curley and Pierre-François Moreau

N E G / ^

E.J. BRILL
LEIDEN · NEW Y O R K · K 0 B E N H A V N · KÖLN
1990
T h e paper in this book meets the guidelines for performance and durability of the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chicago Spinoza Conference (1986: Chicago, 111.)

Spinoza: issues and directions: the proceedings of the Chicago
Spinoza Conference/edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-François
Moreau.
p. cm.—(Brill's studies in intellectual history, ISSN
0920-8607: v. 14)
Contributions in English and French.
Includes indexes.
ISBN 90-04-09334-6
1. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677—Congresses. I. Curley, E.
M . (Edwin M . ) , 1937- . II. M o r e a u , Pierre-François, 1948-
III. Title. IV. Series.
B3950.C35 1986
199'.492—dc20 90-49020
CIP

ISSN 0920-8607
ISBN 90 04 09334 6

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 CONTENTS

Preface ix

Citations xii

METAPHYSICS

Paul Eisenberg, "On the Attributes and their Alleged Independence

of One Another: A Commentary on Spinoza's Ethics IP10" 1

Roger Ariew, "The Infinite in Spinoza's Philosophy" 16

Willis Doney, "Gueroult on Spinoza's Proof of God's Existence" 32

Edwin Curley, "On Bennett's Spinoza: the Issue of Teleology" 39

Jonathan Bennett, "Spinoza and Teleology: a Reply to Curley" 53

Etienne Balibar, "Causalité, individualité, substance: Réflexions

sur l'ontologie de Spinoza" 58
Daniel Garber, "Spinoza's Worlds: Reflections
on Balibar on Spinoza" 77

Wallace Matson, "Body Essence and Mind Eternity in Spinoza" 82

Henry Allison, "Spinoza's Doctrine of the Eternity of the Mind:

Comments on Matson" 96

EPISTEMOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

Alan Donagan, "Homo Cogitat: Spinoza's Doctrine

and some Recent Commentators" 102
Genevieve Lloyd, "Spinoza on the Distinction
between Intellect and Will" 113
Wim Klever, "Anti-falsificationism: Spinoza's Theory
of Experience and Experiments" 124
Filippo Mignini, "In Order to Interpret Spinoza's Theory
of the Third Kind of Knowledge: Should Intuitive Science
be Considered Per causam proximam Knowledge?" 136

Herman De Dijn, "Wisdom and Theoretical Knowledge in Spinoza".... 147

Yirmiyahu Yovel, "The Third Kind of Knowledge

as Alternative Salvation" 157
VI CONTKN're

PSYCHOLOGY

Jean-Marie Beyssade, "De l'émotion intérieure chez Descartes

à l'affect actif spinoziste" 176

Margaret Wilson, "Comments on J.-M. Beyssade: 4De l'émotion

intérieure chez Descartes à l'affect actif spinoziste*" 191

Amélie Rorty, "The Ένο Faces of Spinoza" 196

José Benardete, "Therapeutics and Hermencutics" 209

MORAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Don Garrett, "A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively':
Freedom and the Good in Spinoza's Ethics" 221
Emilia Giancotti, "Théorie et pratique de la liberté au jour
de l'ontologie spinoziste: Notes pour une discussion" 239

Alexandre Matheron, "Le problème de l'évolution de Spinoza

du Traité théologico-politique au Traité politique" 258

Lee Rice, "Individual and Community

in Spinoza's Social Psychology" 271

Manfred Walther, "Negri on Spinoza's Political

and Legal Philosophy" 286

Pierre-François Moreau, "Fortune et théorie de l'histoire" 298

André Tbsel, Ύ-a-t-il une philosophie du progrès historique

chez Spinoza" 306
Pierre Macherey, "Spinoza, la fin de l'histoire,

et la ruse de la raison" 327

SPINOZA'S INFLUENCE

Richard Popkin, "Spinoza and the Three Imposters" 347

Errol Harris, "Schelling and Spinoza: Spinozism and Dialectic" 359

George Kline, "Pierre Macherey's Hegel ou Spinoza" 373

Hubertus Hubbeling, "Spinozism and Spinozistic Studies

in the Netherlands Since World War II" 381
 CONTENTS vii

of Proper Names
Index of Names...................................................................................... 395
Index of
of Subjects..................................................................................................
Subjects 397
 PREFACE

This volume contains the texts of the papers presented at the conference
on Spinoza held over a period of six days in Chicago in September 1986, with
support from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University, and
the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. For a long time the climate of
opinion in American philosophy was not favorable to the history of philosophy
or to the kind of metaphysical system-building of which Spinoza is one of the
outstanding historical examples. But in the past twenty years or so there has
been renewed interest both in the history of philosophy and in metaphysical
systems. This change of climate has brought with it a flood of work re-
interpreting and re-evaluating the philosophy of Spinoza. One major purpose
of the conference was to reflect collectively on recent work on Spinoza, and to
identify the major issues in current Spinoza studies and the lines of work most
likely to be fruitful in the future.
But the conference was also intended to bring together the two worlds of
Spinoza scholarship. One feature characteristic of post-war philosophy has
been the split between the styles of philosophy popular in the U. S. and on the
Continent. This has made communication difficult between philosophers
educated in the different traditions. Tb help improve communication we
invited a broad cross-section of scholars from all over the world. About half
of the 31 speakers came from the U.S., but the remainder came from England,
France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Israel and Australia. Tb the best of
my knowledge, this was the first time that a conference on Spinoza of this
scope has been held in the United States.
The reader will see that this did indeed result in a variety of approaches.
One characteristic of American scholarship, it seems, is a tendency to focus on
the traditional problems of Spinoza's metaphysics and philosophy of mind,
treated with particular emphasis on Spinoza's mastcrwork, the Ethics: the
interpretation of the arguments for the existence of God (Doney), the status
of the attributes (Eisenberg, Ariew), the concept of infinity (Ariew), the
doctrine of the eternity of the mind (Maison, Allison), the status of teleology
(Curley, Bennett), the nature of ideas and their relation to judgment and error
(Donagan, Lloyd). It is more characteristic of Continental scholars, on the
other hand, to encompass the whole range of Spinoza's writings, focussing
particularly on problems in ethics, social and political philosophy, and
philosophy of history. Thus we have Malhcron writing on the evolution of
Spinoza's political thought from the Theological-Political Treatise to the Political
Treatise, Moreau on the role of fortuna in history, Macherey and Tbsel on
questions of development and progress in history, Giancotli on the problem of
freedom in Spinoza.
Various of our authors, of course, escape these generalizations: e.g.,
Balibar treats central problems in Spinoza's metaphysics, causality and
individuality; Garrett focuses on the problem of reconciling the claim that the
free man never acts deceptively with the foundation of Spinoza's ethical theory
χ PREFACK

in the principle of self-preservation; and all of the essays dealing with topics in
Spinoza's theory of knowledge come from authors who are more or less in the
Continental tradition (Klever, Mignini, Yovcl, and DeDijn). And the
geographical base of the author is by no means a reliable guide to the style of
treatment (cf., e.g., the essay by Rorty). But surely one result of the
confrontation of the two worlds of Spinoza scholarship is a broader sense of
the range of problems which might attract an interpreter.
It is also encouraging to see the extent to which American scholars are
attending to the work of such masters of the Continental tradition as Gueroult
(e.g., Doney, Donagan, Eisenberg, Ariew, Matson) and Matheron (Rice,
Matson), and Continental scholars to the work of Bennett (Balibar, Yovel).
Some of our articles devote themselves explicitly to giving an account of
important scholarly works which, given our various cultural preoccupations,
might otherwise escape attention: e.g., Walther on Negri, and Kline on
Macherey. And the late Professor Hubbcling, who died only a few weeks after
our conference and who will be very much missed, has provided us with a
splendidly illuminating survey of work on Spinoza in the Netherlands since the
end of the Second World War.
The relation between Spinoza and other philosophers is a frequent theme
in these papers. Thus we have Beyssadc, Wilson, Rorty, Ariew, Donagan, and
Lloyd all dealing with the relation between Spinoza and Descartes; Macherey,
Harris, and Kline all dealing with the relation between Spinoza and Hegel (and
in Harris' case, with the German idealists generally); Ariew again on Spinoza
in relation to the scholastics; Benardete on Spinoza's relation to Freud; and
finally, Popkin on Spinoza's relation to an underground critique of religion, The
Three Imposters.
This conference was, we believe, an important event in the history of
Spinoza scholarship and we arc pleased to present this record of it here. The
papers have been arranged, however, according to their subject matter, and not
according to the order in which they were presented at the conference.
Between the time of the conference and the time of the publication of the
proceedings one of the papers (that of Amélie Rorty) has been published in the
Review of Metaphysics. We reprint it here with their permission. Edwin Curley
has been responsible for editing the papers written in English and Pierre-
François Moreau for those written in French. We are both enormously
indebted, however, to others for their help: Jacqueline Lagrée, who assisted
with getting the French papers on disk; Lee Rice and Mike Friedman, who
helped us to deal with papers which had been written in alien wordprocessing
systems and had to be converted to WordPerfect; the support staff at
WordPerfect, who provided at great deal of assistance in learning the ins and
outs of their program; and the National Endowment for the Humanities, whose
funding supported the year of research at the National Humanities Center
where the ms. finally was completed.
But the person we are most indebted to is Ruth Curley. Not only did she
do a great deal to make the conference itself run smoothly, but at the critical
moment she volunteered to see the ms. through the laborious process from
 PREFAΠXI

copy-editing to the production of camera-ready copy. This cost her what must
have seemed endless hours of painstaking effort, learning the mysteries of
desktop publishing, trying to make sure that the final disk versions of the mss.
corresponded to the intentions of the thirty-one different authors, and at the
same time trying to preserve a reasonably uniform style of citation. This was
service beyond any call of wifely duty. Without her determination and
persistence this book would never have appeared.
 CITATIONS OF PRIMARY SOURCES

The standard edition of Spinoza's works in their original languages is that

edited by Carl Gebhardt, Spinoza Opera, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925, 4 vols.
References to this edition will be abbreviated as follows: G II/37/5-9 = volume
II, page 37, lines 5 through 9 of the Gebhardt edition. Some scholars still find
it convenient to use the editions of J. van Vloten and J. P. N. Land: Spinoza,
Opera quotquot reperta sunt, The Hague, 1st edition, 2 vols., 1895, 2nd edition,
3 vols., 1914. References to these editions will be abbreviated: VVL(l) and
WL(2).
The English language edition of Spinoza's works most commonly used by
contributors to this volume is that edited by Edwin Curley, The Collected Works
of Spinoza, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985, vol. 1, abbreviated: Curley (1985).
Though this edition is incomplete (the political works and the bulk of the
correspondence being reserved for vol. 2, which is yet to appear), it has the
advantage of giving the Gebhardt pagination in the margins. For the political
works the most commonly used edition is that of A. G. Wernham, Benedict de
Spinoza, The Political Works, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, abbreviated:
Wernham. For the correspondence, the edition of A. Wolf is frequently cited:
The Correspondence of Spinoza, New York: Dial Press, n.d., abbreviated: Wolf.
There are two French language editions of Spinoza's works in common
use by French scholars, that of Charles Appuhn, Oeuvres de Spinoza, Paris:
Gamier, 1965, 4 vols, (abbreviated: Appuhn) and that of Roland Caillois,
Madeleine Frances, and Robert Misrahi, Oeuvres complètes de Spinoza, Paris:
Gallimard, 1954 (abbreviated: Pléiade).
Usually it is possible to make a fairly specific textual reference which is
independent of the particular edition used. For that purpose the following
system of abbreviations is employed:
E = the Ethics
KV = the Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being
TdlE = the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
PP = Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy1"
CM = the Metaphysical Thoughts
Ep = the correspondence
TTP = the Theological-Political Treatise
TP = The Political Treatise
I, II, III, etc., refer to parts of the work cited if it is divided into parts
(e.g., E, KV, PP, CM) and to chapters if they form the major principle of
division (e.g., TTP, TP).
1, 2, 3, etc., refer to axioms, definitions, propositions, etc. in the case of
works organized geometrically (E, PP), to chapters if the main division of the
work is into parts and the work is not geometrical (KV, CM), and to section
numbers if the main division of the work is into chapters (TTP, TP).
A = axiom
D (following a roman numbcral) = definition
 CITATIONS Xlll

Ρ = proposition
D (following an arabic numeral) = the demonstration of the proposition
cited
C = Corollary
S = Scholium
Post = Postulate
L = Lemma (in the Ethics these occur after IIP13)
Exp = Explanation
Pref = Preface
App = Appendix
DefAff = the definitions of the affects at the end of E III.
So Έ ID1" refers to the first definition of Part 1 of the Ethics, "KV I, 2" refers
to the second chapter of Part I of the Short Treatise, "TP I, 5" refers to chapter
I, section 5 of the Political Treatise, etc.
Because of the important influence of Descartes on Spinoza, contributors
to this volume frequently cite his works in the standard edition of Charles
Adam and Paul Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris: Vrin, 1974-86, 11 vols.,
abbreviated: AT. The works of Leibniz are cited in the edition of C. I.
Gerhardt, Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Hildesheim: Olms, 1978, abbreviated: Gerhardt.
Some of the more recent works of scholarship arc cited frequently enough
in these essays to make it sensible to use the following system of shortened
references:

Alquié (1981) = Alquié, E Le rationalisme de Spinoza. Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1981.
Bennett, (1984) = Bennett, Jonathan. A Study of Spinoza's Ethics.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984.
Blackwell (1985) = Blackwell, Kenneth. The Spinozistic Ethics of Bertrand
Russell. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985.
Curley (1988) = Curley. E. M. Behind the Geometrical Method.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Curley (1969) = Curley, E. M. Spinoza's Metaphysics: an Essay in
Interpretation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.
DeDeugd (1984) = Spinoza's Political and Theological Thought. Ed. C.
DeDeugd. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1984.
Deleuze (1968) = Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza et le problème de l'expression.
Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1968.
Den Uyl (1983) = Den Uyl, Douglas. Power, State, and Freedom: An
Interpretation of Spinoza's Political Philosophy. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983.
Giancotti (1985) = Proceedings of the First Italian International Congress
on Spinoza. Ed. Emilia Giancotti. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985.
Grene (1973) = Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Majorie
Grene. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1973.
Gueroult (1968, 1974) = Gucroult, Martial. Spinoza. Hildesheim: Georg
XIV CITATIONS

Olms Verlag, Tbme I 1968, Tbme II 1974.

Hardin (1978) = Hardin, C. L. "Spinoza on Immortality and Time."
Spinoza: New Perspectives. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1978.
Hampshire (1962) = Hampshire, Stuart. Spinoza. Baltimore: Penguin,
1962.
Hessing (1977) = Speculum Spinozanum. Ed. Siegfried Hessing. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
Joachim (1901) = Joachim, M.M. A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901.
Kashap (1972) = Studies in Spinoza. Ed. S. P. Kashap. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972.
Kennington (1980) = The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Ed. R.
Kennington. Washington, D. C: The Catholic University of America Press,
1980.
Kline (1977) = Kline, George L. O n the Infinity of Spinoza's
Attributes." In Hessing (1977).
Macherey (1979) = Macherey, Pierre. Hegel ou Spinoza. Paris: François
Maspero, 1979.
Mandelbaum and Freeman (1975) = Spinoza: Essays in Interpretation. Ed.
M. Mandelbaum and Eugene Freeman. LaSallc: Open Court, 1975.
Matheron (1971) = Matheron, Alexandre. Le Christ et le Salut des
Ignorants chez Spinoza. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1971.
Matheron (1969) = Matheron, Alexandre. Individu et Communauté chez
Spinoza. Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1969.
McKeon (1928) = McKeon, Richard. The Philosophy of Spinoza. Ν.Y.:
Longmans, 1928.
Negri (1981) = Negri, Antonio. L'anomalia Selvaggia: Saggio su potere e
potenza in Baruch Spinoza. Milano: Feltrinclli, 1981.
Rice (1985) = Rice, Lee C. "Spinoza, Bennett, and Tfeleology." Southern
Journal of Philosophy XXIII (1985), 241-254.
Shahan and Biro (1978) = Spinoza: New Perspectives. Ed. R. W. Shahan
and J. J. Biro. Norman:University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
Walther (1971) = Walthcr, Manfred. Metaphysik als Antitheologie: Die
Philosophie Spinozas im Zusammenhang der religionsphilosophischen Problematik.
Hamburg: Meiner, 1971.
Wolfson (1969) = Wolfson, Harry Austryn. The Philosophy of Spinoza.
2 vols. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
 ON THE ATTRIBUTES AND THEIR ALLEGED INDEPENDENCE
OF ONE ANOTHER:
A COMMENTARY ON SPINOZAS ETHICS IP10

PAUL EISENBERG
Indiana University

Ρ10: Unumquodque unhis substantiae attributum per se concipi debet.

Dem.: Attributum enim est id, quod intellectus de substantia percipit tanquam ejus
essentiam constituens (per Defin. 4.)\ adeoque (per Defin. 3.) per se concipi debet. Q.E.D.
Ρ10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.
Dem.: For an attribute is what the intellect perceives concerning a substance, as constituting
its essence (by D4); so (by D3) it must be conceived through itself, q.e.d.
Coming upon this proposition, the interpreter of Spinoza is most pointedly
confronted by the question of the ontological status of the attributes and, more
particularly, by the question whether any subjectivistic interpretation of their
status does not run counter to the present proposition's insistence that "each
attribute... must be conceived through itself." By the phrase 'any subjectivistic
interpretation' I mean to refer both to what I shall call the extreme or strong
subjectivism advocated, e.g., by Wolfson (1969), according to which any attribute
is an "invention" of the finite human intellect, and the more moderate position
which, apparently somewhat unfashionably now, I am inclined to favor, the
position according to which any attribute is a product of the workings of
intellect as such, whether the intellect in question be finite or infinite.
But is that interpretation correct? Are the attributes indeed mind- or intel­
lect-dependent? More generally, is it or is it not the case that substance is
identical formaliter with the attributes? Three types of answer have been
proposed to that question - the objective, the subjective, and the linguistic - and
each of them does have, prima facie, some textual support, even as each of them
has its special difficulties. Not to make matters too complicated, however, I shall
discuss in the body of this paper only the two leading types of interpretation,
viz., the subjective and the objective. In the Scholium, however, I discuss
variants of the linguistic interpretation, including the recent and radical version
offered by Bennett.
Although I do not have the space to argue this point in proper detail here,
I think that the bulk of the evidence weighs against the objective interpretation.
For example, it seems to me to be very difficult, if not impossible, to inter­
pret along objectivist lines Spinoza's explanation in Ep.9:

By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., whose
concept does not involve the concept of another thing. I understand the same by
attribute, except that it is called attribute in relation to the intellect, which attributes
such and such a definite nature to substance (IV/46/20-23).
2 PAUL EISENBERG

That Spinoza does not add "a nature (e.g., Extension) which it cannot but
suppose to be different from such and such another nature (e.g., Thought) which
it also attributes to substance" - i.e., that he does not assert what, according to
some objectivists, is the distinctive thesis of subjectivism - is in fact of no help
to them. What he does assert unambiguously is that the intellect "attributes
such and such a definite nature to substance." I take that to mean, to imply,
that apart from this activity of intellect substance would not have that definite
nature (certam naturam), even though, presumably, it would then still have
(and have necessarily) some nature - i.e., I take Spinoza to mean that the
intellect does not discover that definite nature in substance but, rather, renders
that nature definite for itself via the attributes.·* Moreover, it surely seems to
be the case that Spinoza's claim in, e.g., IP4D that "outside the intellect there
is nothing except substances and their affections" is meant to imply that in some
sense or in some way the attributes exist only in the intellect. Again, the view,
implied, e.g., by IP20D or by IP10S itself, that any attribute actually constitutes
the essence of God cannot be taken as clear-cut support for the objectivist
interpretation since, as will be indicated below, 'constitutes' seems to be
synonymous in such contexts with 'manifests,' 'expresses,' or 'explains'- words
which, however, are much more strongly suggestive than is 'constitutes' itself of
something's appearing so-and-so to some perceiving/conceiving subject(s). And
Spinoza's talk in, e.g., IP25C about the modes of God's attributes may well be
taken as a somewhat elliptical way of talking about the modes insofar as they
are conceived under or in terms of this or that attribute.4
On the other hand, one need not and cannot accept the full-blown
subjectivist position as it has been stated by Wolfson. In particular, Wolfson
himself (I, p. 146) contrasts the objectivist interpretation as holding that the
attributes are discovered by the mind with his own subjectivist interpretation,
according to which the attributes are invented by the mind. But to say that the
attributes are mind-dependent need not be taken to imply that they are somehow
invented by the mind, any more than to say, as do Descartes and Spinoza, that
the so-called secondary qualities of objects (e.g., colors) are mind-dependent is
to say or imply that they are invented by the mind. Or to take another (but
this time a post-Spinozistic) example: for Kant to say that the categories of the
understanding do not represent features of things in themselves that can be
discovered by human beings is not tantamount to his saying that they are so
many inventions of human beings. What all human beings - indeed, on Spinoza's
view, all intellects - always do cannot sensibly or truly be said to be something
invented by them.
Of course, if one thinks, as does Wolfson, that only the finite human
intellect perceives substance and its modes sub specie attributorum but that the
infinite intellect does not do so, it becomes easier for one to say that the finite
human intellect invents the attributes and to suggest that they are so many
means which the human intellect employs in its futile attempt to know the nature
of substance. One must, however, give heed to the suggestion that the reference
in D4 to "the intellect" may well be meant to include the infinite intellect as
well as all finite intellects (cf. IP30).5
 On the Attributes 3

It certainly appears, however, that even the moderate form of subjectivism

cannot plausibly be maintained in the face of the present proposition. How,
after all, can an attribute be "conceived through itself if, according to the very
definition of attribute (ID4), an attribute is what "intellect perceives of...sub-
stance, as constituting its essence"6 but intellect turns out, according to IP31D,
to be merely a mode - indeed, a mode of what Spinoza there calls "absolute
thought," i.e., Thought/œr se> Thought qua unmodified? Actually, however, that
question leads back to the yet more general - and the yet more troublesome -
problem: Whatever the ontological status of the attributes, how can Spinoza
consistently maintain that "each attribute... must be conceived through itself and
yet introduce a reference to intellect in the very definition of attribute?
Obviously, the objectivist (like Curley (1969) or Gueroult (1968, 1974)), who
wishes to identify substance with its attributes, owes us at this point an account
of how the alleged conceivability through itself of any attribute is to be squared
with Spinoza's own definition of attribute.
Perhaps, however, the objectivist will respond in some such fashion as this:
D4 is misleadingly stated. What Spinoza means to be saying, fundamentally,
is that an attribute constitutes the essence of a substance. Secondarily, however,
he means to be informing us that intellect can apprehend attributes and thus
is able to have real knowledge of what substance is. Given the further
suppositions that (i) 'constitutes' in such a context is synonymous with 'is
identical to' and that (ii) the essence of a thing (more exactly, a substance) and
the thing itself are for Spinoza essentially (!) identical, one can indeed proceed
to infer, apparently validly, from the very definition of substance as "what is in
itself and is conceived through itself that an attribute of substance must also
be conceived through itself - in fact, must also be in itself. (Actually, I shall
later be suggesting that Spinoza's sought-for proof does not go through thus
neatly even if one were to grant the two presuppositions just indicated.) But
these two presuppositions are in fact more or less problematic. The less
problematic of the two is the former, but even here the problems are not
insignificant. There is, after all, textual evidence within the Ethics itself which
indicates that Spinoza was prepared to employ explicare ('to explain') as a
synonym for constituere ('to constitute'): cf. IP20D, "the same attributes of God
which (by D4) explain God's eternal essence at the same time explain his eternal
existence, i.e., that itself which constitutes God's essence at the same time
constitutes his existence." But 'explain' is, rather more obviously than
'constitute,' an incomplete predicate or, better, a relational verb: to explain is
to explain something to someone. Hence, if indeed Spinoza is prepared to use
explicare interchangeably with constituere, it seems reasonable to conclude that
the latter should also be treated as a relational verb in fact (however elliptical
most of Spinoza's uses of it may be), so that one should understand him as
meaning that an attribute constitutes an/the essence of substance to or for
someone or something. Indeed, the someone or something in this case appears
to be intellect itself or, if you prefer, anyone or anything insofar as it possesses
and employs intellect. But if so, then there is always an at least implicit, as
sometimes there is an explicit, reference to intellect built into Spinoza's account
4 PAUL EISENBERG

of attributes, a point which (if correct) certainly undercuts the objectivist reading
of that account.7
Even more problematic, however, is the second of the above-mentioned
presuppositions, namely, that an attribute of substance, as "constituting" the
essence of substance, is identical to substance as it essentially is. Here we do
come up against the very grave problem insisted upon, for example, by Gram
[5]: If (e.g.) Thought, as an attribute of God, is supposed to be identical to the
essence of substance but also Extension is identical to the essence of substance,
then two things which, according to Spinoza himself, are supposed to be
irreducibly different from one another (namely, Thought and Extension) turn
out to be identical to one and the same thing and, hence, identical to one
another - a manifest contradiction.8
It will hardly do to escape from that objectivist mess by arguing, as does
Gueroult, that God's essence consists of infinitely many elements, each of which
is a substance constituted by a single attribute. Gueroult has to argue at length
that in God, the ens realissimum, these diverse "substances" unite to form one
absolutely infinite substance - i.e., that the diversity of substances disappears in
God while the infinity of attributes remains. If I have so far represented
Gueroult's position accurately, however, it is very difficult to see that he really
can reconcile his view that Spinoza's one really existing substance is constituted
by or consists of infinitely many attributes with his further view that each
attribute satisfies the definition of substance and, therefore, is a substantial being
in its own right. Admittedly, however, a subjectivist interpretation of the
attributes is not without its problems, too. On the very face of it, it is odd -
not to say paradoxical - that all the attributes or, even for that matter, that one
of them (namely, Thought itself) should turn out to be dependent in any way
on what is, qua intellect, only a mode of Thought itself. Since, however, there
is no interpretation of the status of the attributes known to me which is
problem-free, I prefer to keep to a view which is merely odd than accept one
which (I believe) turns out to be self-contradictory.9 But the oddity of the
subjectivist position seems to turn all too quickly to a contradiction, too - if,
that is, one construes the attributes' dependence upon intellect as being at once
logical (conceptual) and ontological. For according to Spinoza's very definition
of mode, a mode is precisely that which is both conceptually and ontologically
dependent upon something else. It seems to follow, then, that on the
subjectivistic interpretation the attributes turn out to be modes (which they
cannot be).
Here, however, there are prima facie several ways out.10 Thus one might
insist that for Spinoza whatever is thus doubly dependent on any other thing,
whatever that other thing itself turns out to be, must be a mode; but one might
seek to argue that the attributes' dependence upon intellect is not thus a double
dependence. Since, clearly, the subjectivistic account is precisely the account
of the attributes which makes their ontological status to be dependent upon the
workings of intellect (inter alia), one would have to maintain that Spinoza does
not also think of the attributes as conceptually dependent upon intellect. That
is, one would have to maintain that for him the concept of (something's being
 On the Attributes 5

an) attribute does not depend upon (that is, does not logically presuppose) the
concept of intellect. That, however, raises the very problem with which we began
this discussion of Ρ10: how can the very definition of attribute make reference
to intellect without its being the case that the former notion depends somehow
upon the latter? Maybe there is no good answer to that question - that is,
maybe the best one can do is to insist that Spinoza meant to deny any logical
dependence of attributes upon intellect, but that he quite failed to indicate how
that denial is to be reconciled with his own definition of attribute.
Leaving that question deliberately unanswered, let us return to the
examination of Ρ10, continuing to investigate it on the supposition that somehow
for Spinoza an attribute is (at most) ontologically dependent upon intellect. Or,
rather, let us now turn our attention to the demonstration of Ρ10. I am not
at all sure that the demonstration of this proposition, so brief and apparently
so straightforward, really works. Even if it does, it remains unclear whether the
only things ever specified by Spinoza as attributes - namely, Thought and
Extension - really are such. At first, one might think that one could argue
(against Spinoza) thus:
While it is, in the context of Spinoza's philosophy, true by definition (D3)
that substance is to be conceived through itself and also true by definition (D4)
that an attribute is that which the intellect conceives of substance as constitut­
ing its essence, it does not clearly follow that any one attribute so-called by
Spinoza must therefore be conceived as logically independent of any and all other
attributes. For to conceive of substance through itself is, negatively, not to
conceive of it by reference to any (of its) modes or by reference to any other
substance (should there be any such) and, positively, it is to conceive of
substance in some one or more of its attributes, as res (substantia) extensa, res
(substantia) cogitans, etc. But what Spinoza is presently arguing or implying is,
inter alia, that Thought cannot truly be conceived as in any way dependent upon
Matter (= Extension), contrary to materialism and to so-called epiphenomenal-
ism, and equally that Extension (= Matter) cannot be truly conceived as in any
way dependent upon Thought, contrary to metaphysical idealism. The alleged
necessity of conceiving substance through itself does not, however, clearly carry
over to the case of the attributes.
Tb be sure, if substance is for intellect constituted by its attributes, it
follows that no "given" attribute can truly be conceived as in some way logically
dependent upon some mode(s), including modes of that attribute itself. Yet
to conceive of Matter per se as logically derivative from Thought per se, or
conversely, seems to be compatible with conceiving of either of them through
the concept of substance. Granted, Spinoza could have made the following
stipulation: as soon as one does conceive some alleged attribute by reference
to another, the former turns out to be no genuine attribute, but only a mode
of the latter attribute. Spinoza, however, is not seeking to define attribute in
that way. He is seeking, rather, to prove that any attribute, defined as he has
already defined it (D4), must be logically independent of any other attribute.
And that, I am suggesting, he does not prove.
6 PAUL EISENBERG

What Spinoza is requiring is that for intellect - whatever (if anything) may
be true of substance per se - the essence of substance be completely unstructured
at the "level" of the attributes themselves. There can, therefore, be no reason,
even in principle - at least none which can be known - for God's manifesting
Himself both as Matter (if it is an attribute) and as Thought (if it is another).
Spinoza is, perhaps, correct in that point. Maybe it just is and, finally, has to
be recognized to be a brute fact that Extension is one kind of "thing" and
Thought another; but so far as I can see, Spinoza has not argued persuasively
here or later in the Ethics for there being no more than that bare difference
between them. (Indeed, the admission of a "brute fact" in this case hardly
squares with Spinoza's regular adherence to what Bennett has termed his
"explanatory rationalism"; see (1984) 29). More generally, even if we agree with
Spinoza's implicit view that if something - in this case, substance - has an
essence at all, it has exactly one essence and even if we remember that for him
the essence of substance is (as if) constituted by any one of its attributes, we
may still believe that some attributes are somehow more basic than others, i.e.,
that some attributes reveal to us the one essence of God more perspicuously
than do others.
Tb argue that God must be, even for Spinoza, as for the prior religious
traditions out of which his thought grew, essentially simple and, hence, not in
reality structured internally, is to forget that Spinoza's God, as identical with
Nature, must be the sole source of the infinite complexity of the world. But
if the modal complexity of Nature, a complexity which requires us, according
to Spinoza, to view one mode as the cause of another, is compatible with God's
unity or unicity, it seems reasonable to believe that the oneness of the essence
of God may be preserved compatibly with an insistence upon the attributional
complexity of substance, which would at least permit us to view one attribute
as the logical foundation, the "cause," of some other(s) among the attributes.
This attributional complexity of Spinoza's one and indivisible God is, however,
much easier to understand on a subjectivistic interpretation of the status of the
attributes than it is on any objectivistic account.
There is need, however, for a final turn of the dialectical screw: Given
Spinoza's belief in the perfect parallelism, if not indeed the identity, between
the order of Thought and the order of (material) things (cf. IIP7), it seems to
follow that what is logically grounded upon something else is also ontologically
grounded or dependent upon something else. If so, then there is open to him
no way of distinguishing between i) a logically derivative "attribute" of substance
and ii) a mode of substance. For, as we have already seen, that which is both
ontologically and logically dependent or derivative is a mode of substance and,
therefore, cannot be either substance itself or one of its attributes. It appears,
therefore, that a logically derivative "attribute," being also (on the subjectivistic
view, of course) ontologically derivative, can be no genuine attribute at all but
only a mode. Q.E.D.?
The immediately preceding argument still leaves it open whether both
Extension and Thought are attributes or, indeed, whether either of them is. In
fact, there is a real question whether there can be any attributes. The question
 On the Attributes 7

arises if one takes it to have been Spinoza's own doctrine that all attributes
depend upon intellect, which, we remember, he took to be a mode of Thought.11
The question is this: if that subjectivistic interpretation of Spinoza is correct,
and if it is also correct to hold that he maintains a sameness (unity) between
the order of logic and the order of what is, i.e., between the realm of logic and
the realm of ontology, then the ontological dependence of all attributes upon
intellect carries with it their logical dependence upon it and therefore destroys
their claim to be attributes, not modes.
We do seem entitled to conclude with the subjectivist that all the attributes
are ontologicalty dependent upon intellect - but also to conclude, by the
preceding reasoning, that they are logically dependent upon intellect. Yet what
is both ontologically dependent upon something else, that is, is "in another thing"
and logically dependent upon that other thing, that is, "through which it is also
conceived" is, by definition (D5), a mode. We seem, therefore, so far to have
located no attributes at all and to be incapable of finding any. The fault would
not be ours, however, but Spinoza's: his very doctrine of attributes would be
incoherent, if all of the foregoing is correct.
Thus consideration of the suggestion that no attribute can be logically
derivative from another because logical derivability carries with it, on Spinoza's
view, ontological derivability and because that double derivability or dependence
shows the thing in question to be a mode rather than an attribute turns out to
lead Spinoza's philosophy into contradiction. Perhaps, however, I have misinter­
preted his doctrine of the relation of attributes to intellect, as non-subjectivists
will certainly think. More plausibly, as it seems to me, it may be that Spinoza's
ambiguous doctrine concerning the relation between the order of thought and
the order of things is not to be taken as I have taken it here. Perhaps, that
is, he did consistently envisage something's being logically but not also ontologi­
cally dependent upon something else, or something's being ontologically but not
also logically dependent upon something else. If he allowed for the latter, what
I take to have been his general insistence on (divine) attributes as being
intellect-dependent is saved; for attributes would not then collapse into modes.
If, however, he allowed also for the former, his particular insistence, here in Ρ10,
on the conceptual ultimacy of each attribute would fail, for the reasons that I
have indicated.12
Scholium: On So-Called Linguistic Interpretations of the Status of the
Attributes and on the Debate concerning the Attributes as Constituting a
Pseudo-Problem
One form of the linguistic interpretation, a form according to which the
difference for Spinoza between substance and attribute is merely the difference
between senses of two terms (i.e., 'substance' and 'attribute') the referent of
which is identical, is strongly suggested by Spinoza himself in his response, in
Ep.9, to De Vries's question.
... I say that this definition explains clearly enough what I wish to understand by
substance, or attribute.
Nevertheless, you want me to explain how one and the same thing can be
8 PAUL EISENBERG

designated by two names (though this is not necessary at all). Not to seem niggardly,
I offer two: (i) I say that by Israel I understand the third patriarch; I understand the
same by Jacob, the name which was given him because he had seized his brother's
heel; (ii) by flat I mean what reflects all rays of light without any change; I understand
the same by white, except that it is called white in relation to a man looking at the
flat [surface].

Especially the first example here suggests that the referent of 'substance' is
identical formaliter with the referent of 'attribute' (and, hence, of 'extension,'
'thought,' etc.) and that the difference consists only in the fact that the sense
of the name (or, designating expression) 'substance' is not the same as the sense
of the name 'attribute.'
In my opinion, however, this version of the linguistic interpretation seems
to be, not an alternative interpretation to the modified subjectivistic view which
I am defending, but only an alternative formulation of that same view. Tb be
sure, Spinoza's own first example in Ep.9 of how "one and the same thing can
be designated by two names" does nothing to suggest that the difference between
substance and attribute is the difference between a thing conceived without
reference to any (possible) perception of it and that same thing so far as it is
"colored" by perception. But Spinoza's own second example seems to be much
more apt: the difference between substance and attribute is like the difference
between a two-dimensional surface (of a physical object) and a white patch
(which is seen as part of the surface of a physical object). It should be added
that on Spinoza's view, as on Descartes' or Locke's, the color of physical objects
is not invented by (human) percipients of them, at least not by any of those
percipients with "normal" color vision; but neither do physical objects, on their
view, possess colors independently of being perceived. (It would, I think, be
pointless or foolish to push this example very hard; for it is by no means clear
that Spinoza designed it to be, or hoped it to be, a perfect analogue to the
relation which on his view obtains between substance and its attributes.)
Recently, however, Bennett has revived the linguistic interpretation or, more
exactly, he has offered what may be regarded as a new and radical version of
it, a version according to which there is for Spinoza no real difference between
substance and attribute, not even, apparently, a difference in senses of the
corresponding terms. Rather, the alleged difference is merely linguistic or, as
Bennett prefers to say, "a bit of formal apparatus" to which no real difference
(in content) attaches. In effect, Bennett is dismissing the very question whether
an objectivist or a subjectivist reading of Spinoza on the status of the attributes
is preferable. He thinks that both in D4 and in Ep.9 Spinoza is saying (or, at
any rate, is trying to say) "that substance differs from attribute only by the
difference between a substantival and an adjectival presentation of the very same
content... he [Spinoza] is rejecting the view that a property bearer [i.e., a
substance] is an item whose nature qualifies it to have properties, in favour of
the view that the notion of a property bearer... is a bit of formal apparatus,
something which organizes conceptual content without adding to it" (Bennett
(1984), pp. 62-63). This is a position, however, which - although it may
 On the Attributes 9

represent good philosophy in itself - lacks textual warrant and so seems to be

untenable as an interpretation of Spinoza. Surely the central notion in Spinoza's
metaphysics is the notion of substance. While, on the one hand, it is perfectly
true that Spinoza's understanding of substance focusses primarily on the concept
of substance as an or the independent being as against the concept of substance
as the (in itself unknowable?) subject of "predicates" - on that much I certainly
agree with Bennett or, for that matter, with Curley (1985), p. 404), yet, on the
other hand, it is hard (for me) to see why Spinoza gives the emphasis he does
to the notion of substance if in fact he believes that it has the same content
as does the notion of attribute(s). Further, there are, according to Spinoza,
infinitely many attributes of that one substance (namely, God) which, he thinks,
exists (and by existing precludes the existence of any other substance). Spinoza's
insistence on the unity of substance despite the infinite multiplicity of attributes
cannot, I think, be intelligibly interpreted by anyone who thinks that the only
difference here is that "between a substantival and an adjectival presentation of
the very same content." Finally, Bennett's refusal to take the reference to
intellectus seriously in D4 or in comparable passages in the Ethics or in the
letters - that is, his insistence that Spinoza is not making an ontological-
epistemological point (viz., about how we or, for that matter, about how any
entity insofar as it is using its intellect apprehends substance) but, instead, is
making a "logical" one (viz., the point about the notion of a property bearer
as just "a bit of formal apparatus") - arises (p. 62) all too quickly from his claim
there that "in fact Spinoza often uses psychological language to make logical
or conceptual points," a claim about Spinoza which Bennett previously elaborated
in sec. 14. While I think Bennett is (or may well be) correct in this latter claim,
by itself that claim or acceptance of it does little to show that in this particular
context a logical point is being made, albeit misleadingly, in Spinoza's talk about
what intellectus apprehends/perceives of substance.
In a somewhat different way from Bennett's, Arthur W. Collins has also
recently suggested [2] that the perennial debate about whether the attributes have
an objective status in substance (are there independently of the action of the
intellect) or, instead, a subjective status of some sort (are projected by the
intellect onto substance, or are only manifestations to an intellect of what
substance is per se) may itself be misplaced, indeed may be a kind of
pseudo-question. He thinks so, not because Spinoza seems to him to say one
thing on this subject in one passage or set of passages and another in another,
but because he holds that Spinoza does not want to view this matter in terms
of an "either/or" and is thinking, instead, of a "both/and." Consider, e.g., the
following brief but very provocative passage from IP8S2 (Collins himself provides
no direct textual evidence in support of this part of his interpretation): "the truth
of substances is not outside the intellect unless it is in themselves, because they
are conceived through themselves" - or, in the variant provided by the Nagelate
Schriften, "the object of a true idea of substances can be nothing other than
the substances themselves...," etc. Spinoza does indeed seem to be saying here
that the only way in which anyone can form a true idea of a substance is to
conceive the substance or something about it just as the latter is in itself,
10 PAUL EISENBERG

objectively. But if, moreover, as D4 has already indicated, an intellect conceives

an/the essence of substance via some attribute(s), it should follow that the only
way by which a true idea of that essence under such-and-such an attribute can
be present in the intellect is for that same essence, under that same attribute,
to be present objectively in substance itself.
Unfortunately, however, while this inference is certainly plausible and while,
perhaps, it is even correct (who knows?), it is not indubitably correct. Certainly
we do not find Spinoza saying, here or elsewhere, that attributes exist in the
intellect as true ideas of substance only because they also exist extra intellec-
tum, in substance itself. In particular, let us notice the exact context of the
present passage: Spinoza's claim about "the truth [i.e., a true idea] of substances"
is meant to contrast with the immediately preceding claim about "true ideas
of modifications which do not exist." Concerning such non-existent modifications
Spinoza says that, though (by hypothesis) "they do not actually exist outside the
intellect" (they do not because if, per impossibile, they did exist "outside the
intellect" they would be objectively real, contrary to the present hypothesis),
"nevertheless their essences are comprehended in another [sc: real thing] in such
a way that they can be conceived through it." This very passage, obscure as it
is, is sufficient to allow us to see already that Spinoza's developed theory of truth
cannot be a (simple) correspondence theory, à la that allegedly held by Meinong.
That is, the agreement between a true idea and its object (what Spinoza calls
its 'ideatum'), the agreement spoken of in IA6, cannot be construed as a relation
or "tie" which can obtain only between existing things - or, more particularly,
between something, the idea vera or true idea which exists in the intellect, and
its object or ideatum which exists extra intellectum. Now, to be sure, Spinoza
does proceed immediately to contrast what he has just said about the true ideas
of certain modes with what he wants to say about substance, and that might lead
us (as, perhaps, it led Collins) to conclude that, in the case of substance, Spinoza
does want to say that our true ideas via attributes concerning it must capture
wholly objective features of substance itself. Unfortunately, one does not know
exactly how to take the contrast. One does know that Spinoza is here committed
to the view that there may be a true idea in some intellect the ideatum of which
is not, per se, any objectively existing real thing. Perhaps, then, what Spinoza
does mean to say about true ideas of substance is that, while the true idea must
indeed "correspond" to something objective which is, roughly speaking, part of
the essence of substance, nonetheless that essence, or (what comes to the same
thing for Spinoza) the true idea of it, existing in intellectu may have, so to speak,
an intellectual coloration which does not match an objective feature of substance
itself. In short, while Spinoza does think that we can and, indeed, must have
true ideas about substance and while he does think that fundamentally any such
ideas must be the mental equivalents of the essence of substance, no one of those
ideas need itself be the idea of (an) attribute. Rather, the attribute may simply
be the way in which that essence of substance presents itself in or to the mind
itself: no objective attribute need correspond to the attribute which is in the
mind.
 On the Attributes 11

References

1. Bennett, J. MA Note on Descartes and Spinoza," Philosophical Review 74 (1965), 379-

380.
2. Collins, A. W. Thought and Nature: Studies in Rationalist Philosophy (Notre Dame (In.):
Notre Dame Press, 1985).
3. Curley, E. "Recent Work on 17th Century Continental Philosophy," American
Philosophical Quarterly, 11 (1974), 235-255.
4. Donagan, A "A Note on Spinoza, Ethics, I, 10," Philosophical Review 75 (1966),
380-382.
5. Gram, M. "Spinoza, Substance, and Predication," Theona 34 (1968), 222-244.
6. Haserot, E S. "Spinoza and the Status of Universals," Philosophical Review 59 (1950).
Reprinted in S. P. Kashap, (1972), 43-67.
7. Leibniz, G. W. Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. L. E. Loemker, 2d ed. (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel, 1969).

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this paper from Spinoza are those of
Curley (1985).
2. Unlike Curley (1985), e.g., I do not understand the subjectivist thesis to be the view
"according to which the differences between the attributes are illusory" (p. 409). l b claim,
as I would wish to do, that (a) the attributes "have no real existence in the essence of God"
([3], 240) need not imply that (b) they have no real existence at all (except as inventions
of the mind or illusions generated by it). I take subjectivism to be a thesis about the locus
of the attributes rather than about their status as "real." Nonetheless, it has to be admitted
that the strong form of subjectivism advocated by Wolfson runs together, or, at least,
involves commitment to, both (a) and (b).
The (core of the) view which I personally favor amounts to the following, which I offer
here, in this note, merely in the form of a sketch and without supporting argumentation:
I take Spinoza (in IP 16 and elsewhere) to mean, à la Plotinus, that from the necessity of
the divine nature there follows or emanates an infinite Intellect, which in some sense serves
as an "intermediary" between God as substance (Natura naturans) and all other modes, be
they finite or infinite, so that without this mode no other mode could be. Moreover, it is
this Intellect which, by its activity, brings it about that everything, including that mode which
it itself is, can be seen to follow from God "in infinite ways" - i.e., it is it which "first" views
all things sub specie attributorum so that without this mode no other mode (nor, it seems,
the essence of substance itself) could be conceived. But according to Spinoza - and here
he makes a radical break with both pagan and Judaeo-Christian Neo-Platonism - this mode,
which I have been describing as the infinite Intellect of God, is also what Spinoza terms
Motion and Rest, i.e., the immediate infinite mode under the attribute of Extension. In
other words, this mode, which, qua Intellect, is the "source" of the attributes, is perceived
by itself "in infinite ways" and is perceived (i.e., conceived) by us who have, or are, finite
intellects in two ways or under two attributes, namely, Thought and Extension. "In itself'
the mode in question is no more an Intellect, a mode of Thought, than it is a mode of
Extension or indeed of any other attribute. I hasten to add, however, that the view which
I have been sketching here is not explicitly formulated anywhere by Spinoza himself, and
that it has proceeded on the principle, which may not have been held unambiguously by
Spinoza, that the attributes are intellect-dependent and, hence, dependent primarily upon
that very mode which, conceiving itself under the attribute of Thought, appears to itself
as the infinite intellect of God.
12 PAUL EISENBERG

In this paper I am not much concerned with the direct defense of subjectivism of the
second subtype which I have distinguished above, a defense which would certainly require
close and detailed examination of (many of) the passages, both in the Ethics and in others
of Spinoza's works, including especially various of his epistles, in which Spinoza talks about
the attributes. I am concerned - inter alia - merely with the or an indirect defense for such
subjectivism, a defense which consists in my attempting to prove that that interpretation
does not lead to manifest contradiction and, in particular, to the contradictory conclusion
that Spinoza's so-called attributes turn out to be mere modes. Admittedly, I do not feel
entirety comfortable with my own favored interpretation; but then, I think, one cannot be
entirely comfortable with any one interpretation of the attributes, given the apparently
conflicting texts on that subject which Spinoza himself offers to us his readers.
3. Granted, in this very passage Spinoza also says that he "understand^] the same" by
'attribute' as he understands by the term 'substance'; and he goes on immediately to add,
"this definition explains clearly enough what I wish to understand by substance, or [sive]
attribute." All this seems to suggest, indeed, that on Spinoza's view there can be no
ontologica! difference whatsoever between substance and attribute (although at the same
time there is some difference in sense or connotation between the one term and the other).
Leaving aside the possibility, on which one should not lay much emphasis, that what we
now have as EID4 (along with other passages in EI concerning the attributes and their
status) represents a somewhat different doctrine from that advanced by Spinoza in his letter
of 1663 (a letter which antedates the final form of EI by at least two years), one might
suggest that Spinoza means to be saying that the only (clear) concept of substance which
we can form (indeed, which can be formed) is due to intellect, so that there is no point
in making much of the distinction between substance per se, the very notion of which is
"intellectual," and attribute; for any conception of substance which intellect forms is a
conception of substance as possessing such and such attributes.
4. If the (moderate) subjectivist interpretation of the status of the attributes is indeed
correct, then others of Spinoza's phrases in the Ethics must also be read as elliptical,
including his occasional declaration (e.g., in the very statement of D6) that substance does
consist of its attributes, or that that substance which is God consists of infinitely many
attributes. (PerDeum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est, substantiam constantem infiniHs
attributis...). On that interpretation such an assertion should be taken as short for the longer
and far more cumbersome claim that substance is constituted for intellect or manifests
itself to intellect via its attributes, so that the attributes are not "in" the substance, strictly
speaking. On that interpretation there can be no problem of how substance's indivisible
unity (cf. Ρ12) is to be reconciled with its consisting of so-and-so many attributes.
5. Wolfson's assertion - or is it an argument? - to the contrary has simply to be dismissed.
I refer to his remarks in I, p. 153, fn. 2:
By the term "intellect" in this definition [D4] Spinoza means the finite human intellect.
When he says in...[IIP7S], that "we have already demonstrated, that everything which
can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance
pertains entirely to one substance, and consequently that substance thinking and
substance extended are one and the same substance...," it is not to be inferred that
an attribute of substance is that which can be conceived only by the "infinite intellect."
What the passage means to say is that "everything which can be conceived of by the
infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance" - and the infinite intellect
can conceive of an infinite number of things as constituting the essence of substance
- is only an attribute of substance... and consequently extension and thought, which
alone can be conceived by the finite human intellect as constituting the essence of
substance, are only attributes of substance and not substances themselves.
 On the Attributes 13

But this very explanation of Wolfson's does nothing to support his claim that in the original
definition of attribute the intellect referred to is only the finite human intellect. Indeed,
Wolfson himself seems to imply that what the infinite intellect perceives or conceives "as
constituting the essence of substance" is only (infinitely many) attributes; hence, he seems
to imply that intellect as such, finite or infinite, perceives God or substance only through
attributes. If so, there is obviously much less warrant than Wolfson supposes for holding
that (the finite human) intellect fails to apprehend the divine essence, for it knows in the
same basic way as does the infinite intellect itself, namely, via attributes. Could it be
maintained that the divine intellect, like the human, is inadequate to the task of knowing
the divine essence? One tends to think not. Yet the divine intellect, like any intellect, is
only a mode of substance, and it might be claimed that Spinoza wants to say, as some of
his predecessors (I mean Neo-Platonists) did say, that no mode or emanation of substance
can understand substance itself. It is doubtful, however, that that arch-rationalist Spinoza
held such a doctrine.
6. As is well-known to Spinoza scholars, the Latin tanquam may be translated either 'as'
or 'as if.' The suggestion, emphasized elsewhere in this paper, that even God's own infinite
intellect apprehends the divine substance sub specie attributorum makes it plausible to
suppose that tanquam here and in similar contexts in the Ethics is to be translated merely
by 'as.' On the other hand, problems about the translation of constituens and other forms
of the verb consdtuere or, at least, about the proper interpretation of forms of that verb
as they figure in the Ethics may lead one to think that Spinoza is employing the verb in
a somewhat unusual sense which he wishes to signal here, the first occurrence of a form
of that verb in the Latin text of the Ethics, by explicitly introducing constituens with tanquam,
meaning indeed 'as if.' Nothing in my interpretation of EIP10 hangs on a decision as to
which translation of tanquam in D4 is preferable.
7. This matter is more complicated than I have indicated so far, nor do I have space to
explore it adequately in this paper. On the one hand, close examination of the Ethics reveals
that Spinoza there uses (in the relevant contexts) expnmere as synonymous with explicare
and, hence, as yet another synonym for constituere. Taking expnmere as 'express/ as Curley
himself does, at the least does not rule out, if it does not actually suggest, a relation to
intellect: the attributes express the essence of substance to or for something, namely,
intellect. On the other hand, one should not entirely ignore the root meanings of explicare
and expnmere - namely, 'to unfold' and 'to press out/ both of which suggest that Spinoza
has in mind a process or quasi-process which occurs or may occur quite independently of
the operations of intellect. Yet one must be wary of any such interpretation, lest explicare
and expnmere be amalgamated to or construed in terms of the relation of flowing or
following, i.e., the relation or tie by which Spinoza designates the dependence of all modes
upon the intellect. Whatever the relation between attributes and substance, it cannot be
the same as that obtaining between the modes and substance.
8. In fact, however, Spinoza does not say that substance is identical to, e.g., Extension and
to Thought despite the fact that neither of these is identical to the other. Rather, he says
that substance is identical in each of its attributes, which is to say that the extended thing
(res extenso) is identical to the thinking thing (res cogitans) - i.e., that it is one and the same
substance which is to be conceived both as extended and as thinking. The failure to draw
precisely that distinction between 'identical with (or, to)' and 'identical in' is largely
responsible for the puzzles which Gram claimed to find in Spinoza's doctrine of substance
and its attributes. As it seems to me, however, objectivism is committed to the view that
the "constitutive" relationship between an attribute and (the essence of) substance is or is
tantamount to any attribute's being in fact identical to the essence of substance.
14 PAUL EISENBERG

9. The preceding claim is deliberately polemical. More guardedly, I should want to say
merely that, even if the prima facie contradiction(s) of the objectivist interpretation can be
satisfactorily removed, so can the prima facie contradiction(s) involved in modified
subjectivism and that, moreover, there is at least as much textual support for the latter
interpretation of Spinoza as there is for the former.
10. One way is to construe Spinoza's definition (ID5) of mode, "that which is in another
[sc.: 'thing'] through which it is also conceived," as meaning by 'another,' not just any other,
but in fact that other which is substance itself. In other words, Spinoza would be defining
mode as that which is ontologically and conceptually dependent upon substance. Leaving
aside other considerations in favor of that construal, one may note that the phrase "that
which is in another through which it is also conceived" is explicitly offered by Spinoza in
D5 as a paraphrase for "the affections of a substance," a point which indeed suggests that
the "another" of the second phrase should be taken to refer merely to substance. But if
so, then even the admission that the attributes are doubly dependent - i.e., both ontologically
and conceptually dependent - upon intellect is not tantamount to the discovery that the
so-called attributes are themselves merely modes. On further reflection, however, this
alternative may seem not to offer a genuine way out of the present difficulty. For given
that Spinoza is explicit that for him any intellect, be it finite or infinite, is merely a mode,
an attribute's double dependence upon intellect, although directly only a dependence upon
another which is not itself substance, is indirectly a dependence upon substance itself (since
any mode is, by the present construal of D5, dependent upon substance).
11. The proof text, if one is needed for the claim that Spinoza construes intellect as being
only a mode of Thought, is IP31D. P31 itself indicates explicitly that this modal nature
of intellect, its falling within Natura naturata rather than Natura naturans, holds whether
the actual intellect be finite or infinite.
12. (A) The upshot of my protracted investigation of EP10D leaves me in agreement with
Bennett, who, however, goes through no such elaborate investigation himself. His all too
brief comment on that demonstration ((1984), 61) can now be seen to be essentially
correct. He says simply, "I am suspicious of the argument he [Spinoza] gives for this and
prefer to see it [i.e., the thesis enunciated in Ρ10] as following directly from his intention
to use the term 'attribute' to mean something like 'basic and irreducible way of being'...or
the like." Of course, it needs to be added that Spinoza does not actually define attribute
as "a basic and irreducible way of being" or as "that which the intellect construes as a basic
and irreducible way of being"; and that if he did, he would, presumably, not need to prove
or seek to prove that "each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself."
(B) Curley ((1969), 15-16) has argued that existence in se implies logical (conceptual)
independence of other things and conversely. From that, of course, it follows that what
is ontologically dependent (as, I wish to claim, the attributes are for Spinoza) is also
conceptually dependent. It is only by interpreting the attributes objectively that Curley
himself avoids the conclusion that the so-called attributes, being thus doubly dependent,
have in fact the status of modes in Spinoza's ontology. (Incidentally, it might be mentioned,
quite as Curley himself does, that Leibniz took these two notions not to imply one another
and insisted that "the contrary seems rather to be true, that there are some things which
are in themselves though they are not conceived through themselves" ([7],p. 196).)
I shall not claim in response either that Spinoza himself, on whose behalf Curley constructs
his argument, would not have accepted it, or that through acceptance of it Spinoza's doctrine
of attributes versus modes becomes inherently self-contradictory. Rather, what needs to
be pointed out is that Curley's argument, although (I think) valid, is not completely general.
That is, it works with, and only with, the notions in terms of which Spinoza defines or
characterizes substance and its modes; thus it has nothing to say directly about the attributes.
More specifically, it employs the ideas of (i) "external cause" (vs. "cause of itself') and of
 On the Attributes 15

(ii) the knowledge (including the very concept) of what has an external cause as dependent
upon the knowledge (hence, the concept) of that external cause. Admittedly, for Spinoza
what has an external cause (and so is, in that way, ontologically dependent) is also
conceptually and epistemologically dependent upon that external cause. I do not take
Spinoza to have meant, however, that intellect is the external cause of the attributes'
existence. Curley himself wishes to say, in response to Leibniz's objection - namely, that
"an attribute is perceived by the understanding as belonging to substance and as constituting
its essence [and that therefore the concept of the attribute is necessary to form the concept
of the substance" ([7], ibid.) - that for Spinoza an attribute is not another thing than is
substance itself (since, says Curley, Spinoza identifies substance with the totality of its
attributes). Similarly, I wish to suggest, in response to the present difficulty, that for Spinoza
an attribute is not another thing than its modes, i.e., I take it that Spinoza wishes to identify
an attribute with the totality of its modes or, more exactly, with the totality of all the modes
insofar as they are conceived in terms of that attribute. Thus on my reading of Spinoza
Extension, e.g., is the totality of all bodies and Thought the totality of all ideas.
This interpretation is, of course, not itself uncontroversial. In particular, it seems not to
reckon with the fact that, e.g., in IP21 Spinoza distinguishes between the "absolute nature
of any of God's attributes" and all "the things which follow" from that absolute nature -
i.e., all ofthat attribute's modes. (More exactly, he distinguishes there between the "absolute
nature" of some attribute and the eternal and infinite mode(s) which follow immediately
from it; he then goes on to distinguish an immediate infinite mode from the further modes
which follow, directly or indirectly, from it.) It is by no means clear, however, that the
distinction is more than verbal or formal. Rather, it is by no means clear that Spinoza's
story of the emanation of the modes from some absolute attribute of God is not best taken
as a tale which, although employing a Neo-Platonic schema, is in fact designed to show that
the notion of such an attribute, like the corresponding notion of absolute substance, is only
a philosophical construction or abstraction, and that in reality substance (or what from the
point of view of intellect comes to the same thing - viz., an attribute) cannot exist except
in and through the totality of "its" modes. Clearly, however, I do not have the space in
this paper, much less in this note, to develop this response adequately. The foregoing has
to be construed, therefore, as the mere sketch of a response to Curley on the point in
question.
13. Wolf in his comment on this part of the letter notes (p. 393): "The idea that a plane...
which reflects all the rays of light incident upon it is white...appears to have been put
forward by Democritus... The idea prevailed more or less up to the time of Spinoza. It
is to be found in Boyle's Experiments and Considerations touching Colours (1664)..."
 THE INFINITE IN SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY

ROGER ARIEW
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University

I wish to develop and offer evidence for an interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine

of the infinite. Tb accomplish this, I attempt, in part 1, to establish that Spinoza
knew well and rejected Descartes' doctrine of the infinite, except for a
nonsystematic element Spinoza made his own. I then argue that Spinoza's
own doctrine is a synthesis of medieval theories and the above Cartesian
element. In part 2, I accept Wolfson's thesis that Spinoza was familiar with
theories of 12th- to 14th-century Jewish (and Arabic) thinkers, but I suggest that
the medieval theories with which Spinoza constructed his synthesis included those
of 14th-century Christian Scholastics. With this as background, I attempt to
evaluate, in part 3, the various contemporary solutions to the problem of God's
infinite attributes. I conclude that a thinker familiar with 14th-century Scholastic
theories of infinity could not have accepted unconditionally an equivalence be-
tween "absolutely infinite attributes" and "all attributes, without exception" - the
basis of the Wolf-Kline solution to the problem of God's infinite attributes.
So, I further conclude that one should accept the solutions of Gueroult and
Curley, that unknown attributes are indeed a part of Spinoza's later philosophy,
and that these unknown attributes do not entail that God is incomprehensible.

L Descartes and Spinoza on Infinity

In Meditation III, Descartes considers the idea of God and whether there is
something in it that cannot have originated from himself. The answer he gives
is that since the idea of the infinite cannot originate from something finite,1
it has to have been placed in him by something truly infinite. As part of the
argument Descartes considers whether he might be something greater than he
himself understands. He investigates whether he might have potentially all the
perfections he attributes to God, that is, whether it is possible that his faculties
might be perfectible indefinitely (AT VII, 46; IX, 37). But he argues that even
if he were able to perfect himself indefinitely he could not become infinite (or
perfect). Thie infinity implies absolutely no potentiality; therefore, nothing
increasing indefinitely will ever be actually infinite (AT VII, 47; IX, 37). For
Descartes, God is the only being in whose perfections we notice no limits
(Principles I, 27, AT VIII, 37); he is the only being we positively "intellect" as
infinite (To More, 5 February 1649, AT V, 274). But we can see that he is
greater than the world (To More, 15 April 1649, AT V, 345), so that the world
cannot be called infinite (To Chanut, 6 June 1647, AT V, 52). However, it
conflicts with our conception, or it involves a contradiction, that the world
should be finite or bounded (To More, April 1649, AT V, 345). Hence we call
 On the Infinite 17

it indefinite, we can say a thing is indefinitely large, provided we have no

arguments to prove that it has bounds (To Chanut, 6 June 1647, AT V, 51 and
Principles I, 27). But that is not the same as knowing that it has no bounds:
"I cannot deny that there may be some reasons [for the finiteness of the world]
which are known to God though incomprehensible to me."3
Descartes' indefinite is therefore to be understood as an epistemic notion,
stemming from a limitation of our understanding, and not as a metaphysical
notion, arising from the nature of things; our intellectual relations to the finite,
indefinite, and infinite reflect this. For Descartes, the infinite is "incomprehe-
nsible."4 Since God is infinite, God is also incomprehensible: "As I have insisted
in several places, when God or infinity is in question, we must consider not what
we can comprehend - we know that they are beyond comprehension."5 And
since the infinite is incomprehensible, Descartes rejects all disputes about it: "I
have never written about the infinite except to submit myself to it and not to
determine what it is or what it is not."6 But we must be able to receive the
idea of God in some way, so that we must be able to stand in some intellectual
relation to God. Although we cannot comprehend God's infinity and he is
properly inconceivable (To Mersenne, 27 May 1630, AT I, 152), we can know
and perceive that God is infinite (To Mersenne, 27 May 1630, AT I, 152; AT
IX, 210) and we can have an idea of him (To Mersenne, July 1641, AT III, 393;
To Regius, 24 May 1640, AT III, 64).
Spinoza knows Descartes' doctrine well and expounds it fully. Initially he
seems to accept many of its elements; ultimately he rejects the doctrine. The
doctrine he finally formulates echoes the discussions of the medievals on
infinity,7 but it is inserted into a framework Spinoza might have considered as
genuinely Cartesian. In his exposition of Descartes' PHnciples of Philosophy,
Spinoza refers to the traditional puzzles against actual infinity: "if an infinite
is not greater than another, quantity A will be equal to its double, which is
absurd," and "whether half an infinite number is also infinite, whether it is even
or odd, and the like."8 He also refers to the traditional argument against
potential infinity, that because of God's omnipotence, the impossibility of actual
infinity entails the impossibility of potential infinity: "If two quantities, A and
its double, are divisible to infinity, they will also be able to be actually divided
into infinitely many parts by the power of God."9 In this exposition, Spinoza
answers such problems as would Descartes, namely, that there are things which
"exceed our intellect, or grasp, and that we therefore perceive only quite
inadequately" (G 1/191). This is the case with respect to the infinite and its
properties. "For this reason Descartes considers those things in which we do
not perceive any limits - like the extension of the world or the divisibility of
matter - as indefinite."10 That is to understand Descartes' doctrine very well.
In the previously written Short Treatise, Spinoza had endorsed for himself
various portions of Descartes' doctrine, including "that a finite intellect cannot
comprehend the infinite" (G 1/16) and that man, being imperfect, cannot produce
the idea of God (G 1/18). But there is a movement in Spinoza's philosophy
that draws him away from Descartes' doctrine, toward the complete com-
prehensibility of God and infinity.11 Even in the exposition of Descartes'
18 ROGER ARIEW

Principles, where Spinoza attempts to develop Descartes' doctrines (and not

necessarily his own), he demonstrates an inclination to discuss what Descartes
had excommunicated as incomprehensible.12 Spinoza makes sure that Meyer,
in his editorial preface to Spinoza's exposition of Descartes' Principles, warns
his readers that "what is found in some places - viz. that this or that surpasses
the human understanding... is said only on behalf of Descartes. For it must not
be thought that our author offers this as his own opinion" (G 1/132).
What Spinoza does offer as his own opinion is revealed in the Letter on
the Infinite of 20 April 1663 (written to Meyer in the same year as Spinoza's
exposition of Descartes' Principles). Spinoza already hints at this opinion in his
exposition of the Principles; given Descartes' persistent finitism it would be
difficult to overlook Spinoza's reference in the Principles to Descartes' having
refuted one of Zeno's paradoxes,13 a refutation Spinoza seems to accept as his
own. In fact, it is clear that the doctrine Spinoza has in mind is consistent with
his treatment of Zeno's paradoxes in his exposition of the Principles (and his
treatment of the puzzles about infinity in the Letter on the Infinite and in E
IP15S). What is not clear is whether Descartes' treatment of Zeno's para-
doxes is fully consistent with other Cartesian doctrines (at least when it is given
Spinoza's interpretation).
There is nothing terribly uncharacteristic of Descartes in his Letter to
Clerselier about Zeno's paradoxes. Essentially Descartes does little more than
to demonstrate his consistent finitism about the world. He treats the series 1/10
+ 1/102 + 1/10 3 +. . .+ 1/1011 as equal to, instead of as tending toward 1/9.14
But he asserts that the cause of the paradox is that people imagine that this 1/9
is an infinite quantity, because it is divided by the imagination into infinite parts
(To Clerselier, June or July 1646, AT IV, 447). Now, that cannot be taken too
literally as a Cartesian doctrine. After all, the same faculty of imagination, at
the beginning of Meditation VI, is said to be incapable of representing a
chiliagon (AT VII, 72-73); we are presently insisting that it allows us to imagine
the infinite parts of 1/9 of a league. Descartes must be using "imagination"
untechnically here, as roughly equivalent to false understanding.15 And, of
course, it is this nonsystematic Cartesian element that Spinoza makes his own.
It is likely that Spinoza adopts it because itfitswell with his consistent infinitism
and the other aspects of the doctrine he is formulating, a synthesis of the above
"Cartesian" element and medieval infinitism.
In the Letter to Meyer, Spinoza distinguishes between three kinds of infinites.
(i) What is infinite because of its nature and cannot in any way be conceived
as finite;16 it cannot be equated with any number - it exceeds every number
that can be given (G IV/59); it cannot be divided into parts without contradiction
(G IV/61); it is the infinite as substance (and eternity), understood by the
intellect alone (G IV/54, 56-57). (ii) What is infinite, in the sense that it has
no bounds, because of its cause (G IV/53); it can be conceived abstractly (or
superficially) as finite (G IV/61), that is, it can be divided into parts and
therefore numbered by the imagination with the aid of the senses (G IV/56, 61);
it is infinite as the affections of substance or as mode (and duration) (G IV/54,
 On the Infinite 19

57). And (iii) what is infinite, in the sense that it cannot be expressed by any
particular number, though it is determined - it has a maximum and minimum
(G IV/53, 59-60, 61); it can be called indefinite.17
Spinoza's distinctions allow him to solve such traditional puzzles as what
kind of infinite can or cannot be divided into parts and what kind of infinite
can or cannot be conceived to be greater than another. The infinite as
comprehended by the understanding cannot be divided into parts or conceived
to be greater than another. The infinites attended to in the imagination can
be so divided or so conceived (G IV/56-61). This strategy of dealing with the
puzzles of infinity is clearly reminiscent of Descartes*. Spinoza agrees with
Descartes that we only imagine infinite quantities in 1/9 of a league and would
even agree with Descartes that there is no absurdity in an infinity being greater
than another. 18 What he rejects is Descartes* insistence that the infinite is
incomprehensible. Spinoza's critique of Descartes is that Descartes makes the
infinite incomprehensible by making number into an idea of the understanding.19
Spinoza asserts that numben time, and measure are beings of reason, or
creatures of the imagination; 20 hence he is able to conclude that the infinite
is not imagined or numbered, but comprehended by the understanding.
The negative Cartesian strategy of dissolving puzzles by referring them to
the imagination must therefore be supplemented by a positive Spinozistic strategy
of resolving paradoxes by showing that they rest on a false conception of
infinity. That is what Spinoza tries to accomplish when he discusses Zeno's
paradoxes. Instead of accepting the paradox as evidence of the incomprehen-
sibility of the subject matter, he attempts to reject it by showing that it rests
on such contradictory concepts as greatest speed (or slowest speed). And, of
course, that greatest speed is contradictory does not entail that the infinite is
contradictory. So Zeno's paradox, that the greatest speed does not differ from
rest, relies on a false conception of infinity, infinite as greatest, or "that bodies
can be conceived to move so quickly that they cannot move more quickly" (G
1/193). But "we can never conceive a motion so fast that we do not at the same
time conceive a faster one" (Ibid.). Infinity cannot be numbered or an infinite
is greater than any number no matter how great:

Hence it is clear why many who confused [number, measure, and time] with the things
themselves, because they were ignorant of the true nature of things, denied an actual
infinite. But let the mathematicians judge how wretchedly these people have
reasoned - such arguments have never deterred the mathematicians from the things
they perceived clearly and distinctly. For not only have they discovered many things
which cannot be explained by any number - which makes plain the inability of
numbers to determine all things - they also know many things which cannot be equated
with any number, but exceed any number that can be given. Still they do not infer
that such things exceed every number because of the multiplicity of their parts, but
because the nature of the thing cannot admit a number without manifest contradic-
tion.21

Spinoza's two-fold strategy also agrees well with some medieval treatments of
infinity.
20 ROGER ARIEW

2 The Medievals and Spinoza on Infinity

H. A. Wolfson and others have already established numerous connections

between the doctrines of Spinoza and medieval Jewish thinkers; the links between
the doctrines of Hasdai Crescas and Spinoza on infinity seem particularly
strong. 22 Spinoza even refers to Crescas by name when he paraphrases Crescas'
revised form of the cosmological argument (To Meyer, 20 April 1663, G IV/62),
and some of Spinoza's puzzles of infinity and their solutions (in E IP15S and
in the Letter to Meyer) reflect those of Crescas. But there is no need to retrace
Wolfson's steps. I will discuss below just one of these puzzles and its solution,
in the light of medieval discussions; these puzzles (and the discussion of Zeno's
paradoxes in Spinoza's exposition of Descartes' Principles) seem also to reflect
knowledge of medieval doctrines not contained in the Jewish and Arabic
doctrines Wolfson discusses, Crescas in particular.23 For example, Spinoza's
reference to mathematicians who "know many things [among these being actual
infinity] which cannot be equated with any number, but exceed any number that
can be given" (G IV/59), cannot have been received from Crescas. Crescas
does not think of actual infinity as that which exceeds any number, no matter
how great. Similarly, the concepts of minimum and maximum, which Spinoza
discusses in the Letter to Meyer, 24 cannot have been derived from Crescas, who
does not seem to have developed those concepts.
However, the above conception of the actual infinite (or the categorematic
infinite) and the concepts of maximum and minimum are standard elements of
14th-century Scholastic discussions of infinity - Gregory of Rimini, John Buridan,
and Albert of Saxony, for example.25 In his Commentary on the Sentences,
Gregory of Rimini criticizes what he takes to be the standard definition of the
categorematic infinite, as given in Peter of Spain's Logic: "A quantity so large
that there is, and can be, no larger; referring to distinct objects, one defines it
as, a multitude so considerable that there can be no greater."26 He insists that
the categorematic infinite should be defined as larger than any finite quantity,
however large, and greater than any finite multitude, however numerous:

Hence others give a better definition of the [categorematic] infinite by stating, with
reference to continuous quantities, that it is larger than one foot, two feet, three feet,
and any given magnitude - with reference to a collection of distinct objects that it is
more numerous than two, three, four, and any finite multitude. One can state that
the infinite, taken in this sense, with respect to continuous magnitudes, can be defined
by the following phrase, it is larger than any given finite quantity, however large. With
respect to a multitude of distinct objects, it can be characterized by the phrase, it is
greater than any finite multitude, however numerous.2^

In the same commentary one can find exemplary discussions of maxima and
minima, and the same doctrine can be read in the works of John Buridan and
Albert of Saxony. The discussions of maximum and minimum normally begin
with Zeno's paradox, "Achilles and the Tortoise" (discussed by Descartes and
Spinoza). The process of a division which is forever pursued without end -
 On the Infinite 21

dividing a continuum into two equal parts, dividing one of the halves into two
other parts, the fourth thus obtained into eighths, etc. - is called dividing a
continuum into proportional parts. Gregory of Rimini, John Buridan, and Albert
of Saxony all recognize that the series of parts thus produced is potentially
infinite (or syncategorematically infinite) but that it has an upper limit, a
maximum, which is not part of the series. 28 Gregory of Rimini uses division
into proportional parts to explain how a quantity being divisible to infinity
entails that it can be actually divided to infinity by the power of God. (We
should recall that this puzzle is referred to by Spinoza, though without a
resolution.) The example is particularly interesting because it transforms a
puzzle about endless continuation (like the endless continuation of a line) into
one concerning an endless, yet bounded series (like the division of a line into
proportional parts):

God could have created a stone measuring a cubic foot each day and united it with
a previously created stone; it is not doubtful that this infinite multitude of stones each
measuring a cubic foot would form an infinite magnitude... If it is certain that God
could have created a stone and acted as above, it is also certain that he could have
created a stone in each of the proportional parts forming an hour and continued as
above; since the multitude of these proportional parts is infinite, by the end of the
hour there will result an infinite stone.

The above examples provide some evidence that, directly or indirectly, Spinoza
was acquainted with the doctrines of 14th-century Scholastics on infinity. The
puzzles Spinoza discusses and his solutions of them, while supporting Wolfson's
thesis that Spinoza was influenced by Crescas' work, also provide evidence that
Spinoza was acquainted with the doctrines of other medievals.
The puzzle I wish to discuss, as formulated by Spinoza, is "if corporeal
substance is infinite, they say, let us conceive it to be divided into two parts.
Each part will be either finite or infinite. If the former, then an infinite is
composed of two finite parts, which is absurd. If the latter [NS: i.e., if each part
is infinite], then there is one infinite twice as large as another, which is also
absurd" (E IP15S, G Π/57). Spinoza's formulation echoes some of the elements
of Crescas' formulation of the puzzle about the impossibility of the infinite as
incorporeal substance (though Spinoza's puzzle concerns corporeal substance):

Again, that incorporeal substance would inevitably have to be either divisible or

indivisible. If it be divisible, since it is also incorporeal, simple and homoeomerous,
it would follow that the definition of any of its parts would be identical with that of
the whole, and since the whole is assumed to be infinite, any part thereof would
likewise have to be infinite. But it is of the utmost absurdity that the whole and a
part of the whole should be alike [in infinity].·^

And Crescas' formulation, as these things generally are, is merely a restatement

of the problem as written by Averroes, commenting upon a proposition of
Aristotle. Again, there are some similarities between the formulations of
Spinoza and those of Aristotle and Averroes, but again they are with respect
22 ROGER ARIEW

to different puzzles.31 On the other hand, Spinoza's formulation is almost

identical to, and used for the same purpose as, the standard formulas of
14th-century Scholastics, like John of Bassols':

From an actual infinite magnitude, it is possible, at least by means of God's power,

to detach a first part of one foot, for example, or of two feet; I ask then, if the
remaining part is finite or infinite. One cannot say that it is infinite, for, since the
whole is greater than its parts, and since an actual infinity is thus given, another thing
of the same kind could be greater - which is false and absurd. One cannot say that
it is finite either, for with two finite magnitudes, one cannot form an infinite
[magnitude].

Moreover, Bassols' solution, which immediately follows the puzzle, is:

When you say, an infinite would therefore be greater than another infinite of the same
kind, I reply that there is no difficulty with that unless it concerns infinity considered
as absolute, which is infinite in all ways and respects; it is thus that a line having no
eastward or westward termination would be greater than a line unbounded on its
eastward side, but having a termination on its westward side (Ibid., fol. 213, col. c).

Crescas uses a similar example of a comparison between two lines which are
infinite in only one direction as the solution to the puzzle about the alleged
impossibility of an infinite being greater than another. Crescas' solution does
not immediately follow the puzzle about the relation holding between the part
and the whole of an infinite magnitude; it is formulated in response to another
argument, which he calls Altabrizi's argument of application.

... one infinite [being] greater than another is true only with respect to measurability,
that is to say, when we use the term greater in the sense of being greater by a certain
measure, and that is indeed impossible because an infinite is immeasurable. In this
sense, to be sure, the first one-side infinite line cannot be greater than the second
one-side infinite line, inasmuch as neither of them is measurable in its totality. Thus
indeed the former line is not greater than the latter, even though it extends beyond
the latter on the side which is finite... The case of time... must be conceived in the
same way, that is to say, it must be conceived as capable of increase on the side on
which it is limited, even though it is infinite on the other side (Crescas, p. 191. See
also Wolfson's note on p. 423).

We have recaptured Spinoza's solution to the puzzle of how an infinite can be

greater than another. As Crescas says, it is only in our conception, only with
respect to measurability, when we use the term greater by a certain measure,
that one infinite is greater than another; and Spinoza echoes: it is only in our
imagination, only with respect to number and measure that one infinite is greater
than another.34 But the example Spinoza gives with respect to an infinite being
greater than another is not Altabrizi's lines which are infinite in only one direc-
tion; it is the example of the two circles and all the inequalities of the space
between them, all the variations exceeding every number, though they are
contained within a minimum and maximum. The example reflects the
 On the Infinite 23

transformation of such problems into problems of maxima and minima, which

the 14th-century Scholastics accomplished.35
Perhaps a skeptical audience will not be convinced about the claim that
Spinoza was acquainted with the 14th-century doctrines about infinity. But there
is little more one can do, except to repeat Wolfson's historiographical
pronouncement about such matters:

the views [from the various sources] under discussion are a common philosophical
heritage. Before quoting a passage from a certain book we do not stop to ask
ourselves whether that book was known to Spinoza. In several instances we rather
suspect that the book in question was unknown to him. But that makes no difference
to us. Provided the idea expressed in the passage under consideration is not
uncommon, we assume that it was known to Spinoza, even though for the time
being we do not know the immediate literary source of his knowledge. In such
instances, only one who would arrogate to himself divine omniscience could assert with
certainty that the idea could not be found in any source available to Spinoza. The
burden of proof is always upon the negative. (Wolfson (1969) I, 14-15)

In this case, I must agree with Wolfson's strategy (given that Descartes cannot
be the literary source of the complete doctrine). I would like to apply the
strategy to the problem of the infinity of God's attributes, giving a reading of
the problem which assumes the 14th-century discussions of infinity as part of
the context of the discussion.

3. The Problem of the Infinity of God's Attributes

There seems to an opposition between late Spinozistic metaphysics and

epistemology. Spinoza's assertion, in Ethics I, that God is "a substance consisting
of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite
essence" (E ID6), causes a conflict with such propositions of Ethics II as the
proposition "that the human mind has an adequate knowledge of God's eter-
nal and infinite essence" (E IIP47). If so, and if we know only 36 the attributes
of extension and thought, then there seems to be something about God's eternal
and infinite essence which is inaccessible to our minds. Spinoza was well aware
of the problem. Tfcchirnhaus posed it to him, though in another fashion, by
emphasizing E IIP7S (G 11/89-90): if the order, and connection of causes is the
same under the attribute of extension, or under the attribute of thought, or
under any other attribute, then we should be able to perceive not only the
modifications expressed through extension, but also the modifications expressed
through the other attributes.37 Spinoza's answer to Tfcchirnhaus is brief and
unsatisfactory.38 The likely answer is that the problem of God's infinite
attributes is an unresolvable puzzle in Spinoza's philosophy. That is, as Spinoza
moves away from Cartesian epistemology, from Descartes' doctrine of the
incomprehensibility of God, he would also have to move away from residual
elements of Cartesian metaphysics, from the various Cartesian notions of infinite
being and substance and the traditional concepts of God as having infinite
attributes.39 And that movement might not have reached its terminus.
24 ROGER ARIEW

A number of contemporary interpreters have given readings of Spinoza that

attempt to resolve the problem. They divide into two camps, with Martial
Gueroult and Edwin Curley on the one side, limiting the epistemology in favor
of the metaphysics, and A. Wolf and George Kline on the other, limiting the
metaphysics. Gueroult, relying on the evidence of the early Short Treatise (G
1/16-18 and 45-47) maintains that Spinoza's doctrine is: through the intermediary
of the idea of God, we know that there are unknown attributes, but we do not
know what these unknown attributes are (Gueroult I, 54; see also Gueroult I,
11-12 and 50-4, and II, 44-5 and 91-2). Gueroult denies that this introduces
any incomprehensibility into God's nature: "we know a priori that everything
happens in the same way, according to the same necessity, and according to the
same laws, in the unknown attributes and the modes they produce, as in the
known attributes."40 Even if one accepts that answer, one also has to rid oneself
of the traditional view of the attributes and accept that the attribute of mind
somehow extends more widely than the rest of the attributes.41
All this would appear baroque to Wolf and Kline,42 since neither of them
thinks that Spinoza intends "infinite," in infinite attributes to mean "countless
or indefinitely many" attributes, but simply "all" the attributes.43 Given that
thought and extension may be all the attributes, they conclude that Spinoza does
not have to worry about any unknown attributes, if he does not want to.
The Wolf-Kline thesis might look paradoxical (i.e., infinite, therefore two),
but Kline's argument is as convincing as his evidence is thorough. He
distinguishes many senses of infinite in Spinoza, some systematic, some
nonsystematic, and he argues that there is no simple way of distinguishing
them: "We are left to distinguish between systematic and nonsystematic senses
of the key terms infinitum and absolutum either from the philosophical context,
by philosophical intuition, or through some combination of the two." 4 5 Of
these systematic and nonsystematic senses, the only one that interests us is
infinita II, which Kline says is an emphatic form of all: "all conceivable," as well
as, "all without exception." Kline's evidence for this view are passages in which
Spinoza conjoins infinita and omnia***
I am willing to accept almost everything Kline asserts about the infinite
in Spinoza's philosophy, but still I wish to reject his conclusion. The difficulty
is that the conjunction of one of the senses of "infinite" with "all" is not original
with Spinoza, but traditional in the history of philosophy. Therefore, our
philosophical intuitions about what Spinoza might have meant by "infinite"
should be guided by the appropriate historical background. Wolf, Kline, et al>
avoid the anachronism of attributing a post-Cantorian theory of infinity to
Spinoza, but they do not ask whether there are appropriate pre-Cantorian
theories that Spinoza might be drawing upon.
For example, Aristotle in Physics III (iv-viii, 202b-208a) frequently associates
the infinite with the All. But he recognizes that there may be a problem with
that association. He argues that, since infinite is such that we can always take
a part outside what has already been taken, and since that from which something
is absent is not all, then Parmenides must be thought to have spoken better than
Melissus. "For to connect the infinite with the all and the whole is not like
 On the Infinite 25

joining two pieces of string" (Physics III, vi, 207a). Hence, Aristotle agrees with
Parmenides that the All is not infinite. These passages were commented upon
extensively.
The medieval distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic
infinites is partly motivated by the problem of "infinite" entailing "all" and "all"
entailing "infinite." The syncategorematic infinite is defined as Aristotle defined
"infinite" - as incomplete or "a quantity such that there is always some part left
to be taken" - so that "syncategorematic infinite" does not entail "all."47
However, the categorematic infinite is not incomplete, and can be all. A
consensus seems to have been reached, in the 14th century, that "categorematic
infinite magnitude or multitude," in the appropriate sense of "greater than any
magnitude no matter how great," or "greater than any multitude, no matter how
numerous," entails "all without exception." For example, John Buridan argues
that since all the proportional parts of a line are not all the parts of the line,
the proportional parts of a line are not a categorematic infinity - i.e., "if not
all, then not categorematic infinite"; or "if categorematic infinite, then all."48
But we can also see Gregory of Rimini reject "infinite" in the sense of "so great
that there can be no greater," because "if all, then categorematic infinite" would
then be false: "The manner of expositing the notion of categorematic infinite
does not seem suitable. According to the Philosopher, the ultimate heaven, or
at least the universe, is a body so great that there is no, and can be no greater.
However, it is not an infinite body."49 For Aristotle, the universe is all and all
that can be, but it is not infinite; the eight, nine, orfifty-fivespheres are all and
all that can be, but they are not an infinite multitude/
Similarly, for Spinoza, "absolutely infinite" can entail "all without
exception." That would explain Kline's conjunctions of "infinite" and "all."
Spinoza would agree that if not all without exception, then not absolutely
infinite, but he would add that that all or infinite is greater than any number,
no matter how great; "all" would not entail "absolutely infinite" if the all were
simply "greatest number" or "a quantity so great that there is no greater."
Assuming that Spinoza thought that "infinite" and "all" are interchangeable, under
the proviso that infinite is "greater than any number, no matter how great,"
what can be concluded? Surely, not that two attributes might be all the
attributes there are and all there can be, but that the multitude of attributes
is greater than two, greater than three, and so on for all the rest. Interestingly,
a common medieval sophism was "infinitely many, therefore two."51 Its
resolution was that the "inference does not hold good, just as 'more than two
therefore two'" does not hold good, since infinitely many means "more than two,
[more than three], and so on with respect to the others" (Ibid.).
Therefore, the problem of the unknown attributes remains. One can decide
that it is a genuine problem that must remain unsolved in Spinoza or one can
adopt Gueroult's and Curley's partial solutions.

1. AT VII, 45; IX, 36. Infinite is, in some sense, prior to finite: To Regius, 24 May 1640,
AT III, 64; To Hyperaspistes, August 1641, AT III, 426-7; To Clerselier, 23 April 1649,
AT V, 356.
26 ROGER ARIEW

2. Ibid.; cf. also Principles II, 21, AT VIII, 74 and AT XI, 656. For the extension of
matter called indefinite, see: To More, 5 February 1649, AT V, 274-75 and AT VII,
112-114 (AT IX, 89-90).
3. To Chanut, 6 June 1647, AT V, 52. Cf. also To More, 5 February 1649, AT V, 274-75
and the French version of Principles I, 27.
4. To Mersenne, 15 April 1630, AT I, 146; 11 October 1638, AT II, 383; 11 November
1640, AT III, 233-34; 31 December 1640, AT III, 273-74; 28 January 1641, AT III, 293-94;
Meditations AT VII, 134 (AT IX, 85); Principles I, 26, AT VIII, 37; AT XI, 656.
5. To Hyperaspistes, August 1641, AT III, 430; cf. also To Mersenne, 6 May 1630, AT
I, 150; 21 January 1641, AT III, 283; Meditations AT VII, 141 (AT IX, 87-8); PHnciples
I, 19, AT VIII, 33.
6. To Mersenne, 28 January 1641, AT III, 293. See also "avoiding disputes about the
infinite" in 27 May 1638, AT II, 138; To Mesland, 2 May 1644, AT IV, 112-13; Principles
I, 26, 27; AT VIII, 14-15; the prudential language of "necessary caution" in To More, 5
February 1649, AT V, 274-5; and "not daring to call the world "infinite" in To More, 15
April 1649, AT V, 345. See also "reserving the name 'infinite' to God alone" in Principles
I, 27; AT VIII, 15, and "honoring God by representing his works as very great," To Chanut,
6 June 1647, AT V, 51.
7. The medievals I have in mind include 12th- to 14th-century Jewish thinkers like
Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson, and Hasdai Crescas, Arabic thinkers like Avicenna and
Averroes, and Christian Scholastics, like Thomas Aquinas, but also such great 14th-century
thinkers as Gregory of Rimini, John Buridan, and Albert of Saxony. Although Descartes
probably knew the doctrines of the Christian thinkers well - at least indirectly, through the
commentaries of the University of Coimbra or Collegio Romano Jesuits - his doctrine
does not seem to be much influenced by them. Descartes' doctrine does have philosophical
antecedents, however, since it is practically identical with Nicholas of Cusa's doctrine from
On Learned Ignorance. On the other hand, there is little evidence that Descartes knew
Cusa's doctrine well. On this issue and Descartes' doctrine about infinity generally, see
Roger Ariew, "The Infinite in Descartes' Conversation with Burman," Archiv für Geschichte
der Philosophie, 69 (1987), 140-63.
8. Gebhardt I, 190; unless otherwise indicated, all translations of Spinoza are from Curley
(1985). See also Spinoza's discussions of Zeno's paradoxes, in the same work, G1/192-196.
For the claim that these are traditional arguments, see Hasdai Crescas' Or Adonai, in H.
A. Wolfson's Crescas' Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1929), p. 149, for "an infinite cannot be greater than another," and pp. 151, 219-223, for
"whether an infinite is odd or even."
9. G 1/190. For the claim that this is a traditional argument, see Pierre Duhem, Medieval
Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and The Plurality of Worlds, ed. and trans.
Roger Ariew (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985), ch. 1-3, especially p. 99.
10. Ibid. Spinoza refers his reader to Descartes' discussion of the matter in Principles
1,26.
11. Cf., for example, the later works: "An actual intellect, whether finite or infinite, must
comprehend God's attributes and God's affections, and nothing else" (E IP30); "The human
mind has an adequate knowledge of God's eternal and infinite essence" (E IIP47); and
Letter LVI To Boxel, G IV/261 "To your question whether I have as clear an idea of God
as I have of a triangle, I answer in the affirmative." The change seems to occur between
the Metaphysical Thoughts, in which Spinoza asserts that "God's knowledge agrees no more
with human knowledge than the dog that is a heavenly constellation agrees with the dog
that is a barking animal" (G 1/274), and E IP17S (G II/62-3), in which Spinoza uses the
same image polemically: "If will and understanding pertain to the eternal essence of God
... the will and intellect which would constitute God's essence would have to differ entirely
 On the Infinite 27

from our intellect and will, and could not agree with them in anything except the name.
They would not agree with one another any more than do the dog that is a heavenly
constellation and the dog that is a barking animal." See also Martial Gueroult (1968), ch.
10, especially pp. 277-78n, and App 3.
12. Among other things, one can point to the proof in G 1/178 depending on the absurdity
of God's conceiving himself as not existing; it is likely that Descartes would have shied away
from giving such a proof. Similarly, Descartes would not have given extended discussions
of Zeno's paradoxes.
13. G 1/195: "In addition to these two, still another argument of Zeno's is commonly
mentioned. This can be read, together with its refutation in the next to the last of Descartes'
Letters, Volume one [that is, To Clerselier, June or July 1646, AT IV, 442-7].M Spinoza's
reference is to the only one of Descartes' letters in which there is an extended discussion
of Zeno's paradoxes, a topic which does not seem to have interested Descartes.
14. For a more extensive analysis of Descartes' finitism, see Y. Belaval, Leibniz critique
de Descartes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), ch. 4.
15. Belaval points out that Descartes is not always consistent in his usage of "imagination,"
that he sometimes uses it in places where we would expect "understanding." The example
he gives is from To Mersenne, 15 April 1630 (AT I, 146): "In general we can assert that
God can do everything that we can comprehend but not that he cannot do what we cannot
comprehend. It would be rash to think that our imagination reaches as far as his power."
16. To Meyer, 20 April 1663, G IV/53, 61. Gueroult's generally excellent analysis of this
topic (I, App 9, 500-28) seems overly complex; surely his six cases can be reduced to three
kinds of infinites.
17. Ibid., G IV, 61. This indefinite is similar to, but not the same as Descartes' indefinite
(see Gueroult I, 503-8).
18. To Mersenne, 15 April 1630, AT I, 146-7. Descartes asserts that there is no absurdity
in an infinity being greater than another because we have no reason to judge the matter
one way or another.
19. Number is said to belong to the class of simple and universal things in Meditation I,
AT VII, 20. See also Gueroult I, 521.
20. To Meyer, 20 April 1663, G IV/57-8. That is why Gueroult talks of a "chute
foudroyante du nombre," I, 518. It is also Ferdinand Alquié's conclusion in ch. 7 of Le
rationalisme de Spinoza (Paris: PUF, 1981).
21. To Meyer, 20 April 1663, G IV/59. The question arises, who are the "mathematicians"
referred to by Spinoza? The answer is not obvious. Those we would refer to as
mathematicians - Gregory of Saint-Vincent, Francois Viète, Simon Stevin, Pierre de Fermât,
Gilles de Roberval, et al. - form a separate, insular mathematical tradition; although these
mathematicians do use infinitesimals and discuss maxima and minima, with the exception
of Fermât they do so as finitists, and they do not discuss their questions in the terms
referred to by Spinoza, terms that seem to echo the discussions of Late Scholastics (that
is, of a different tradition, which these early modern mathematicians do not seem to know).
Oddly, that is true even for the mathematical work of Christopher Clavius, a mathematician
who is clearly familiar with the late-Scholastic doctrines.
22. See, for example, H. A. Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle, 36-37, 120, 393-4, 423,
and 466, or Wolfson (1969) I, 14-20 and 262-295 (see also Wolfson's references to the
prior work of M. Joel, M. Schreiner, I. Efros, and M. Waxman, on p. 264).
23. Crescas seems to be at the end of a progression, both temporally and in sophistication,
and his discussion of infinity is particularly thorough.
24. It is also discussed by Spinoza in the Letter to Tschirnhaus, 5 May 1676, G IV/332,
and, in another context, in G 1/198-200.
28 ROGER ARIEW

25. There is, of course, no direct evidence that Spinoza knew the works of any medievals.
We have little knowledge of his actual sources. Still, the works of the three 14th-century
thinkers were available in printed editions throughout the sixteenth century, in the same
editions still reproduced as facsimiles during this century: e.g., Gregorius de Arimino, Super
Primum et Secundum Sententiarum (Venice, 1522), Johannes Buridanus, Subtilissima
questiones super octo physicorum libros Aristotelis (Paris, 1509), and Albertus de Saxonia,
Quaestiones super libros de Physica auscultatione Aristotelis (Rome, 1516). I argue that
Spinoza is acquainted with some of the 14th-century doctrines of infinity. But it is not likely
that one could understand the 14th-century doctrines about infinity indirectly, that is, by
reading others who report them. The 17th-century textbook discussions of these doctrines
make little sense of them - see, e.g., Eustachius of Sancto Paulo's confused discussion of
categorematic and syncategorematic infinites in his Summa philosophica quadripartita
(Cambridge, 1648), pp. 149-54. (The same may be said for the reports of such late 14th-
and early 15th-century thinkers as Marsilius of Inghen and Paul of Venice; see Pierre
Duhem, Medieval Cosmology, ch. 1-3.) On the other hand, a reasonable source might
be Franciscus Toletus, a Collegio Romano professor Descartes refers to - cf. Toletus,
Commentana una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis De Physica Auscultatione
(Venice, 1589). Toletus ably treats such topics as the categorematic infinite, division into
proportional parts, and whether a body can be actually infinite, in lib. Ill, quaest. ν to vii
(fol. 100, col. a, to fol. 103, col. d); but he does so in order to affirm a generally
conservative 13th-century doctrine on infinity. On the other hand, Toletus does refer his
readers to Albert of Saxony's discussions of infinity: "Alber. Saxo. hoc lib.q.9." (p 103, col.a).
(Roughly the same may be said about the commentaries of the Jesuits of Coimbra, the
Conimbricences; see the Commentariorum Collegii conimbricensis societatis Iesu, in octo
libros physicorum Aristotelis Stagiritae (Coloniae, 15%) vol. I, col. 509-540, especially col.
524.) Another standard textbook, Abra de Raconis' Summa philosophica quadripartita, while
also maintaining a conservative Thomist line about the possibility of a categorematic infinite
in actuality, gives accurate citations to Gregory's doctrine: "Prior est Ochami in 2. qu. 8
& quodlibeto 2. q. 5. Greg. Ariminensis in 1. dist. 43. q. 4. & aliorum per divinam poten-
tiam infinitum actu categorematicum posse creari," (2nd ed., Paris, 1651) pars III, 194.
26. Gregory of Rimini, Commentary on the Sentences II, fol. 35, col. b.
27. Ibid. Buridan defines the categorematic infinite in a similar fashion; he also states that
"the word taken categorematically has numerous properties... the first is that it is opposed
to the finite as privation, in the same manner that the nonlimited is opposed to the limited
and having no termination is opposed to having a termination," (Questions on Aristotle's
Physics, fol. 61, col. d.
28. See Duhem, Medieval Cosmology, ch. 2. Unlike John Buridan and Albert of Saxony,
Gregory of Rimini thinks that a categorematic infinite can be produced in this way.
29. Gregory of Rimini, Commentary on the Sentences II, fol. 14, col. c and d. John Buridan
and Albert of Saxony discuss this and similar examples. See John Buridan, Questions on
Aristotle's Physics, lib. Ill, quaest. XVI, fol. 58, col. b, to fol. 61, col. b, and Albert of
Saxony, Questions on Aristotle's Physics, lib. Ill, quaest. XII, fol. 39, col. c, to fol. 40, col.
d.
30. Crescas, in Wolfson, 137. Crescas' first argument against infinite corporeal magnitude
resembles Spinoza's first puzzle even less: "If there existed an infinite tangible body, it would
have to be simple or composite. In either case, and however that simple or composite
body is conceived to be, one of its elements would have to be infinite in magnitude,
inasmuch as it has been demonstrated in the first book of the Physics that an infinite
number of elements is impossible. This element, infinite in magnitude, if it were so, and
being also tangible and endowed with qualities, would in the course of time bring change
and corruption to other elements..." Ibid., 151.
 On the Infinite 29

31. Aristotle, Physics 204a20-27: "It is plain, too, that the infinite cannot be an actual thing
and a substance, and principle. For any part of it that is taken will be infinite, if it has
parts... Hence it will be either indivisible, or divisible into infinites. But the same thing
cannot be many infinites." Averroes, Commentary on the Physics 204a20-27 (in Wolfson,
331): "If it [immaterial substance] be divisible, then the definition of the part and the whole
of it will be the same in this respect, as must necessarily be the case in homoeomerous
things. But if this be so, then part of the infinite will be infinite." As these examples make
clear, the gist of these arguments does not revolve about the nature of the infinite, whether
it can be greater than another, but about the relation of part to whole, whether they can
have different natures. Spinoza would not reject the argument if it is given this reading,
since he himself uses it in E IP13D: "if it [a substance which is absolutely infinite] were
divisible, the parts into which it would be divided will either retain the nature of an
absolutely infinite substance or they will not. If the first, then there will be a number of
substances of the same nature, which (by P5) is absurd..."
32. Joannes de Bassolis, In quattuor sententiamm libros I, fol. 213, col. b, of his Opera
(Paris, 1516). Bassols' formulation seems even neater than Spinoza's, since it does not need
an infinity to be divisible into two equal parts.
33. Crescas, p. 149: "Suppose we have a line infinite in only one direction. To this line
we apply an infinite line, having the finite end of the second line fall on some point near
the finite end of the first line. It would then follow that one infinite would be greater
than another. But this is impossible, for it is well known that an infinite cannot be greater
than another."
34. To Meyer, 20 April 1663, G IV/59. I should note that, in part 2 of this paper, I
argued that Spinoza could have derived part of this doctrine by reading Descartes' Letter
to Clerselier. My speculation is that he might have accepted Descartes' uncharacteristic
analysis because it fit so well with what he read in Crescas and other medievals.
35. Ibid., G IV/59-60 and elsewhere. Spinoza's example is an improvement over those
of the 14th-century Scholastics, because it concerns both a minimum and a maximum. Aside
from this nicety, the example is isomorphic with Gregory of Rimini's example of line
segments divided into proportional parts or John Buridan's linea gyrativa, a spiral line
winding tighter and tighter, in relation to the proportional parts of the cylinder on whose
surface it is inscribed.
36. Perhaps I should add "and can know only two attributes." But it should not make
any difference how many attributes we know and how many attributes we can know, since,
however many we do know and can know, there should still be infinitely many left to
know. (We can paraphrase Descartes: true infinity implies no potentiality.)
37. "... it seems to follow that the modification which constitutes my mind, and the
modification which expresses my body, although it is one and the same modification, is
nevertheless expressed in infinite ways - one way through thought, in another through
extension, in a third through an attribute of God unknown to me, so on to infinity. For
there are infinite attributes of God, and the order and connections of modifications seems
to be the same in all. Hence, there now arises the question, why the mind, which represents
a certain modification, the same modification being expressed not only in extension but in
infinite other ways, perceives only that modification expressed through extension, that is,
the human body, and no other expressions through other attributes," To Spinoza, 12 August
1675, G IV/279.
38. "I say that although each thing is expressed in infinite ways in the intellect of God,
nevertheless, those infinite ideas by which it is expressed cannot constitute one and the same
mind of a singular thing, but infinitely many minds. For each of the infinitely many ideas
has no connection with the other..." To Tschirnhaus, 18 August 1675, G IV/280.
30 ROGER ARIEW

39. Since the traditional doctrine concerns the infinity of attributes (not in Spinoza's sense,
but in Descartes' sense, what Spinoza calls Propria), it might seem that Spinoza can dispense
with that element.
40. Ibid., p. 11. See also Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza, (Paris: Francois Maspero,
1979), pp. 158-75.
41. That is Curley's position in Curley (1969), 144-53; see also Gueroult II, 91. The answer
takes the response to Tfcchirnhaus seriously, but it also relies on the suspect evidence of
the Short Treatise: "Therefore, the essence of the soul consists only in the being of an Idea,
or objective essence, in the thinking attribute, arising from the essence of an object which
in fact exists in Nature. Isay of an object that really exists, etc., without further particulars,
in order to include here not only the modes of extension, but also the modes of all the
infinite attributes, which have a soul just as those of extension do," G 1/119. A puzzle still
remains: how can this reading of a different soul connected with each attribute allow for
a creature with three attributes, a live possibility from the Letter to Schuller, IV/278;
Curley's option 2, from p. 146, seems to require pairs of attributes (actually, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8...)
This puzzle might force us to the less satisfactory option 1, which is also more consistent
with the response to Tschirnhaus. (Unless I am mistaken, that is Curley's latest position,
in Curley (1988).)
42. A. Wolf (ed.), The Correspondence of Spinoza, 462-3, and "Spinoza's Conception of
the Attributes of Substance," in Kashap (1972), 16-27; and George L. Kline, "On the Infinity
of Spinoza's Attributes," in Hessing (1977), 333-352. The Wolf-Kline thesis has been
accepted lately by such able interpreters of Spinoza's thought as Alan Donagan, in "Spinoza's
Dualism," in Kennington (1980), 93-4, and Jonathan Bennett, in Bennett (1984), 75-9. Kline
claims Joachimas a predecessor, calling the interpretation the Joachim-Wolf-Kline line. In
Joachim (1901), Joachim does assert that the true infinite cannot have its nature expressed
in number and that substance is infinite in the sense of complete, all-inclusive, and
self-contained. But the evidence for his being counted is not complete and unambiguous.
43. There are some minor differences among the four principal interpreters who have
adopted that line. Wolf: "Spinoza did not posit innumerable attributes at all... He posited
'infinite or all the attributes,'... There may be, but there need not be more than two
Attributes," p. 26 of "Spinoza's Conception of the Attributes of Substance." Kline: "the
appropriate systematic sense [of infinite, in infinite attributes, is] infinita II ('all without
exception'). Two attributes might perfectly well be 'all the attributes [there are] without
exception,'" p. 352. Donagan: "What Spinoza says about the number of the divine attributes
[is that] they all belong to the infinite substance, and not merely some finite sub-set of them.
Hence, depending on whether the number of attributes that express the essence of an
infinite substance is one... or, say, three or nineteen, or aleph-null, E IP 11 entails that the
number of divine attributes is one, or three, or nineteen, or aleph-null. How many attributes
did Spinoza think infinite substance to have? The only certain answer that may be deduced
from the Ethics is 'at least two,'" ρ 94. Bennett: "Spinoza used 'infinite' as a virtual synonym
for 'all [possible]'... When Spinoza says that God has infinite attributes, he means only that
God exists in every possible basic way. This does not entail that God exists other than as
extended and as thinking, i.e., that there are more than two attributes." p. 76.
44. I agree that there is a problem with nonsystematic uses of the infinite in the 17th
century. In fact, one can even find such informal phrases as "une infinité de passages de
la divine écriture," in the writings of normally careful writers (Leibniz, Gerhardt IV, 429).
Galileo got into trouble for talking about the infinite illumination of stars. He has an
amusing reply in the Assayer, pp. 242-3 of Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, ed. and trans.
S. Drake (New York: Anchor, 1957), including a Biblical quotation, "Stultorum infinitus
est numerus."
 On the Infinite 31

45. Kline, 337. Kline distinguishes among the systematic senses of infinite as (i) supremely
perfect and (ii) complete, without exception, and its nonsystematic sense of countless or
indefinitely many. I will discuss (ii) below. It seems to me that what I will say about (ii)
can also be said about (i), namely that the sense of supremely perfect would be more
accurately reflected by "more perfect than any, no matter how perfect." That is what
Spinoza implies in the following, from the Letter to Boxel, September 1674, G IV/354:
"Between the finite and the infinite there is no proportion: so that the difference between
the greatest and most excellent creature and God is the same as the difference which exists
between God and the least creature."
46. Kline, 343-45. The evidence includes a couple of passages from the Short Treatise in
which Spinoza conjoins infinite and all (G 1/19 and 19n); we should also mention Spinoza's
reference to "the All" (ibid.). The Short Treatise, of course, is the work in which Spinoza
gives the fullest treatment of infinite attributes as more than the two we know.
47. A similar point can be made about the earlier distinction between the infinite in acta
and the infinite in fieri.
48. "I would agree with this [syncategorematic] proposition: along all the parts, a spiral
line is drawn; and I would not agree with this [categorematic] proposition: a spiral line
is drawn along all the parts. Moreover, even though there is a spiral line circling a hundred
proportional parts, or a thousand, or any number of parts whatever, there is none drawn
along an infinity of parts, for there are no parts which are an infinity of parts, and there
are no parts which are all the parts, whether we take the word all in its collective sense
or in its distributive sense," Questions on the Physics, fol. 59, col. c. Gregory of Rimini
would agree that the proportional parts are not all the parts, "all" taken distributively, but
would disagree that they are not all the parts, "all" taken collectively (Commentary on the
Sentences, fol. 175, col. b).
49. Commentary on the Sentences, fol. 35, col. b. It is important to note that Gregory of
Rimini himself does not think the universe is all that it can be, since he thinks that God
can create more matter.
50. So, "categorematic infinite" cannot mean "so great that there can be no greater." For
Buridan and Gregory of Rimini, "categorematic infinite" means "greater than any number,
no matter how great"; with that as a proviso, it can be used as equivalent to "all."
51. William of Sherwood Treatise on Syncategorematic Words, trans, by N. Kretzmann
(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1968) p. 42. A similar sophism can be found in Peter
of Spain's Logic; cf. Tractatus, ed. by L. M. De Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), pp. 230-2.
 GUEROULT ON SPINOZA'S PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE

WILLIS DONEY
Dartmouth College

My discussion is more limited than the title suggests, for I am concerned, not
with Gueroult's accounts of all of Spinoza's arguments for God's existence,
but with his account of the first 'official' proof of IPll. 1 In my estimation his
account of that proof contains important insights. But there are also mistakes
that tend to obscure these insights. My aim is to salvage the insights and offer
an emended interpretation on the lines of Gueroult's.
IP11 is: "God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which
expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists." About the sentences
immediately following the statement of this Proposition - sentences in which
Spinoza's official demonstration is ostensibly stated - Gueroult makes two points
of great importance.
(a) Distinguishing two parts of the definition (D6) embedded in Pll,
namely, that God is a substance and that God is a being constituted by an
infinity of attributes, he points out two ways in which an apriori or ontological
argument might proceed from the definition: one from the notion of God as
substance, and the other from the notion of God as a being constituted by an
infinity of attributes (p. 182). An argument of the latter sort is located in the
Geometrical Appendix of the Short Treatise.2 But that, Gueroult maintains, is
not Spinoza's way in the Ethics (p.l83ff). The argument in the Ethics is based
on the notion of God as substance and is - to use Gueroult's expression - a
proof by way of substantiality. That this is so is evident from the citation of
IP7 in the sentences following Pil. P7 is: "It pertains to the nature of a
substance to exist," which is clearly not a proposition about an attribute or an
infinity of attributes, but about what, according to Spinoza, is an important and
relevant characteristic of a substance.
This first point, though it may seem obvious, is worth making. For one
thing, it calls attention to a distinctive (perhaps unique) feature of Spinoza's
ontological proof. Unlike Descartes's arguments from perfection and omni-
potence3 or Malebranche's from infinity4 or Leibniz's from the idea of a neces-
sary being (Gerhardt IV, 405-406), Spinoza's argument is based on the con-
ception of God as substance. Moreover, this point has not been universally
acknowledged. According to Wolfson (1969,1, 183), Spinoza's first proof in the
Ethics is based on "the idea of self-causality." This is not a minor or negligible
inaccuracy on Wolfson's part, for it is difficult to see how, on Spinoza's view,
an argument containing the premise "God is self-caused" could fail to be a
flagrantly question-begging argument.5 Finally, the point is important because
it makes explicit an implicit first premise of Spinoza's argument, namely, "God
is a substance."
(b) The second noteworthy feature of Gueroult's interpretation consists in
his treatment of the reductio in the sentences following Pll:
 The Ontological Argument 33

If you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist. Therefore, (by A7)
his essence does not involve existence. But this (by P7) is absurd. Therefore God
exists, q.e.d.

Gueroult maintains that the reductio is an ad hominem argument intended for

the less than clear-sighted reader who fails to grasp the evidence of Pll and
that it is not an argument that Spinoza used to demonstrate God's existence.
There is, however, an "unformulated positive" argument (p. 181) that can be
derived from the statement of the reductio, and it is this unformulated argument
that he takes to comprise Spinoza's first proof of God's existence.
The derivation of the positive argument proceeds as follows. In the reductio,
Spinoza attempts to show that a consequence of denying God's existence, namely,
the consequence that God's essence does not involve existence, is necessarily
false. The argument to show that is not stated. But IP7 is cited, and a premise
of the argument intended is, in terms that Spinoza indicates in the Demonstra-
tion of P7 can be used to formulate P7: the "essence [of a substance] necessarily
involves existence." Recasting this premise and making explicit an implicit
premise, Gueroult comes up with the following premises: "God is a substance"
and "Every substance exists necessarily through itself (p. 181). And these
premises are taken to yield the conclusion "God exists necessarily."
The argument attributed to Spinoza can, I believe, be simplified. Since it
is supposed to be a proof of God's existence and not, or not just, of the kind
of existence that God enjoys,7 "necessarily" and "through itself can be eliminated.
Moreover, though, it might be argued - and I believe Gueroult holds8 - that
P7 is intended to have existential import, at least part of what is asserted in P7
can be stated hypothetically: "Necessarily, if something is a substance, it exists."
Since this hypothetical proposition is sufficient to get from "God is a substance"
to "God exists," a pared down version of the argument ascribed to Spinoza is:
"God is a substance; Necessarily, if something is a substance, it exists; Therefore,
God exists." And it seems to me that, in imputing this argument to Spinoza,
Gueroult hits the nail on the head.
* * *

There are two objections to be considered, (a) The first concerns the initial
premise "God is a substance." It can be objected that, on Spinoza's view, it
follows immediately from D3 that, if something is a substance, it exists in itself
and a fortiori that, if something is a substance, it exists. But, if it follows
immediately from the definition of "substance" that, if something is a substance,
it exists, to say that God is a substance is to say or imply that God exists.
Hence, the question at issue would be begged with the first premise, and the
additional premise is idle. What appears, therefore, to be an argument is in
reality no argument at all.
This objection seems to me to be based on a mistake. Although it is true
that, on Spinoza's view, it follows immediately from D3 that, if something is a
substance, it exists in itself, it is false that, on his view, it follows immediately
34 WILLIS DONEY

from D3 that, if something is a substance, it exists. That is a proposition that,

on my interpretation, is proved in P7D, and P7D does not rely exclusively on
D3. Accordingly, to say that God or infinite substance exists in itself is to
specify the kind of existence that God or infinite substance would have to have,
namely, existence in itself and not in another - it is not to say or imply that
such a being has that kind of existence. The short answer I have given to this
objection can be questioned in light of what Spinoza says in IP8S2 and in Letter
12 to Meyer (1663),9 but an examination of these seemingly contrary passages
would take me too far afield from my main concern, which is a problem arising
from an objection that Gueroult raises against the second premise.10
(b) The second objection is that the Demonstration of IP7 proves only or
at most that it pertains to the nature of a substance constituted by a single
attribute to exist and not the general proposition that existence pertains to the
nature of any substance no matter the number of attributes (pp. 124, 182ff.).
It can be argued that, since P7 depends on P6 and P6 in turn depends on P5
and P5 is a thesis restricted to single-attribute substances, P7, too, is a thesis
restricted to single attribute substances.11 If this is correct, in PUD Spinoza
must be convicted of a rather obvious, indeed too obvious, blunder. If the
second premise is taken to be "A substance constituted by one attribute alone
necessarily exists," the premise cannot be used to prove that God, i.e., a
substance having infinite attributes, necessarily exists. But if the second premise
is, as is evidently required, the general, unrestricted proposition, the argument -
so the objection goes - contains a premise that has not been demonstrated to
be true.
Tb answer the objection, Gueroult qualifies his well-known thesis that PP1-
8 are about single-attribute substances and contends that P7 contains "two truths"
(p. 186). The first, in line with his unqualified thesis, is: "Every substance
constituted by a single attribute necessarily exists through itself." There is also -
and he thinks this has to be shown - a second "more general" truth: "Every
substance [without restriction] exists through itself (my emphasis). Tb show
that the general truth is also contained in P7, he refers to P6CD2 and to the
contention already cited in P8S2 (pp. 185-186). P6C is, to quote Gueroult, the
"pillar" of P7, and the second "easier" demonstration of P6C proceeds by way
of D3 and A4 and, unlike the demonstration proper of P6, does not cite P5.
From these facts it is concluded that Spinoza provides us with a way of proving
the general truth independently of P5, and so the general truth, as well as the
more particular truth about single-attribute substances, can be said to be implicit
in P7. The general truth, Gueroult adds, is made explicit in P8S2 when Spinoza
observes that "if men would attend to the nature of substance, they would have
no doubt at all of the truth of P7" and P7 "would be an axiom for everyone,
and would be numbered among the common notions." If P7 can be known
independently of any proof, it seems it is not - to use Gueroult's expression -
"conditioned" by P6 and in turn the suspect P5. Granting, then, that the more
general truth is implicit in P7, Gueroult can maintain that Spinoza's proof by
way of substantiality is not subject to the objection raised.
 The Ontological Argument 35

* * *

There is, I believe, a more obvious way of attacking the argument on which
the objection is based. Instead of trying to show that P7 is not dependent on
P6 and so on P5, the premise that P5 is restricted to single-attribute substances
can be questioned. Such a restriction is indeed not explicit in the formulation
of P5, which is, "In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same
nature or attribute," and not "In nature there cannot be two or more substances
19
having only one attribute of the same nature or attribute."li6 Nor is what I shall
call the single attribute thesis -that a substance has at most one attribute - stated
anywhere in the Ethics. But it can be argued that, at a crucial juncture in the
reductio in support of P5, the thesis is presupposed. One premise is that two
or more putative substances having the same attribute could not be distinguished
by a difference of attributes. No citation is given for this premise, yet it seems
to invite a very powerful objection - an objection that Gueroult ascribes to
Leibniz (p. 120). Why could there not be a universe consisting of two substances
SI and S2, SI having attributes ρ and q, S2 attributes ρ and r? In the envisaged
universe, SI and S2 would have the same attribute ρ but they would be
distinguishable by way of attributes q and r, which they do not share.
In view of this objection, an important and neglected question to which
Gueroult's interpretation gives rise is why, in P5D, Spinoza is content to leave
a controvertible premise undefended. I believe Gueroult - and also Curley (1985,
p. 410, n.8) - provides the wrong answer, namely, that Spinoza bases his
argument on the single-attribute thesis. There are some difficulties that attend
Gueroult's answer. It is, of course, somewhat paradoxical to say that Spinoza
presupposes here a thesis that he thinks is false. God, after all, has an infinity
of attributes. Moreover, if he makes this assumption here and P5 is restricted
in the way indicated, P14D ("Except God, no substance can be nor be
conceived") fails. One step in the argument is: "If there were any substance
except God, it would have to be explained through some attribute of God, and
so two substances of the same attribute would exist, which (by P5) is absurd."
If Gueroult's interpretation of P5 is correct, it has not been shown that there
cannot be an attribute in common in the case of a substance having infinite
attributes and some other substance. Finally, in view of the antecedent definition
of "God" as a "substance consisting of an infinity of attributes..." (D6), it seems
unlikely that, even for the sake of argument, Spinoza would presuppose here -
or would ask his reader to assume - a thesis that has already been questioned.
But Gueroult thinks he can take account of such objections to his interpretation.
* * •

Exposition - let alone criticism - of Gueroult's labyrinthine answer to these

questions is beyond the compass of my discussion. Instead, I want to propose
an alternative explanation of why, in P5D, Spinoza is content to leave a
controvertible premise without support. Part of the explanation is that he thinks
he has precluded the possibility envisaged in the objection in his proof of P2.
36 WILLIS DONEY

P2 is: nT\vo substances having different attributes have nothing in common with
each other." From this it follows that, if putative substances SI and S2 have
attributes q and r respectively, they cannot have ρ in common.13 But this is
only part of the explanation, for, though Spinoza says that P2 is evident from
the definition of substance, that is not in fact the case, and it can be argued
that the single-attribute thesis is assumed here (Curley, 1985, p. 410, n.8).
Tb show that it is not, I shall construct two arguments that do not depend
on that thesis and are consonant with Spinoza's citation of D3. The first seems
to be suggested by what he says, all too briefly, in P2D:

This is also evidentfromD3, for each [substance] must be in itself and be conceived
through itself, or the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other.

The clause "or the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other"
seems to suggest that P2 is supposed to follow from the second part of D3
(substance is "what...is conceived through itself..."). And an argument based on
that part of the definition would be that, if putative substances SI and S2 having
attributes q and r respectively are supposed to share a common attribute p, they
could not be conceived independently. Tb spell out the argument: the
conception of SI would involve the conception of p; but the conception of ρ
involves the conception of S2;14 hence, SI could not be conceived independently
of S2. Similarly, for S2. It would follow that the conception of one involves
the conception of the other and, according to the second part of D3, neither
could be a substance. There is, however, a strong reason for not attributing the
argument suggested to Spinoza, namely, that it is rather obviously fallacious: it
is clear that SI could be conceived by way of ρ or q, and so the conception of
SI does not involve or require the conception of ρ nor in turn the conception
of S2. Similarly, for S2.15
There is, fortunately, a less objectionable argument that can be based on
the first part of D3 (substance is "what is in itself) along with a proposition
that I believe follows from ID4 and IID2. That proposition is: if a substance
were per impossibile to cease to exist, an attribute or the attributes of the
substance would cease to exist, and, if an attribute or attributes of a substance
were to cease to exist, the substance having the attribute or those attributes
would also cease to exist. From this proposition, it follows that, if SI were to
cease to exist, S2 would cease to exist. Hence, S2 would be existentially
dependent on SI and, according to the first part of D3, it could not be a
substance. And, similarly, for SI. 16
* * *

Against this interpretation of P2D, it can be objected that the premises ascribed
to Spinoza would prove too much. From these premises, it would follow that
substances cannot have a common attribute. Yet that is precisely what is
asserted in P5, and the reductio following P5 does not contain these premises.
Why, if my interpretation is correct, does Spinoza offer a different argument?
 The Ontological Argument 37

And why is he not content to restate, or rather state a variant of, the argument
implicit in P2D? It is, I believe, appropriate to note that Spinoza has (among
others) Descartes in mind here. Though I believe he is not, as Curley suggests,
arguing within the confines of Descartes' view that a substance has only one
(principal) attribute, he is trying to preclude a possibility suggested by Descartes
that substances having a common attribute could nonetheless be distinguished
by modes. 17 That substances having a common attribute cannot be distinguished
by attributes has already been shown and a new argument is proposed in order
to take cognizance of, and explicitly reject, the Cartesian view that substances
with a common attribute can be distinguished by their modes.
What that enigmatic argument is has been variously conjectured. I shall
end by proposing another reductio that is at any rate consonant with the citations
in this part of the argument for P5. 18 Assume that putative substances SI and
S2 having common attribute ρ and different modes ml and m2 are distinguished
by the modes ml and m2. For SI and S2 to be distinguished, the conception
of SI must differ from the conception of S2 and conversely. Since the two
conceptions cannot differ with respect to attribute p, the only way they can differ
is by the inclusion of modes ml and m2 in the conceptions, the conception of
SI including the conception of ml and the conception of S2 involving the
conception of m2. But it is absurd to suppose that the conception of a
substance, i.e., of what is conceived through itself, includes the conception of
a mode; and so the assumption of the reductio - that two substances having a
common attribute can be distinguished by modes - must be false.

1. By "official proof' I mean the argument stated or implied in the sentences immediately
following the enunciation of a Proposition and headed Demonstratio. References to Martial
Gueroult are all to Gueroult (1968) and are given by page numbers in the text. I have
used Ε. M. Curley's admirable translation, Curley (1985).
2. In AppI P4 and C. (In Curley (1985), 151-152). I am inclined to question Gueroult's
suggestion (p. 178) that, in these passages, the necessary existence of Nature and, through
the identification of God and Nature, the necessary existence of God is based on the
necessary existence of attributes rather than the necessary existence of substance.
3. An argument from perfection can be found in Meditation V and the argument from
omnipotence in "Replies to the First Set of Objections," AT VII, 65ff. and 118-119.
4. As in Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion, II in Malebranche: Oeuvres
Complètes, éd. by A Robinet, (Paris: Vrin, 1965), Vol XI, pp. 49ff.
5. On my understanding of Spinoza's conception of self-causation or - its equivalent (Dl) -
- essence-involving-existence, the "minor premise" in Wolfson's formulation of the proof
("God's essence involves existence") asserts or implies God's existence and the "major
premise" is otiose.
6. This important point is made on pp. 179-181 (though it is somewhat obscured by
Gueroult's further contention that God's existence (an évidence première) is, strictly speaking,
indemonstrable): Pour les contraindre à ouvrir les yeux, il faut donc leur faire toucher du
doigt l'absurdité de la negotiation où les entraîne leur aveuglement." That Spinoza would
accept any reductio as a demonstration of an affirmative truth is highly doubtful in view
of Letter 64, G IV/278, and TdlE, GII/19ff.
38 WILLIS DONEY

7. This is contested by some commentators, for instance, by Henry E. Allison, Benedict

de Spinoza, (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1975), 65ff., but not by Gueroult (v. p. 179). It
is beyond the scope of my discussion to defend what I say here, but a line of defense is
indicated in my "Spinoza's Ontological Proof* in The Philosophy ofBaruch Spinoza, ed. by
Richard Kennington (Washington: Catholic U of America P, 1980), pp. 35-51.
8. The argument is, he says, une première version de la preuve ontologique; and the
existential proposition is, presumably, that there necessarily exists a substance or substances
constituées d'un seul attnbut (pp. 123-126).
9. In IP8S2: "But if men would attend to the nature of a substance, they would have no
doubt at all of the truth of P7. Indeed, this proposition would be an axiom for everyone,
and would be numbered among the common notions," and, in Letter 12 to Meyer (1663),
Spinoza says of substance "that existence pertains to its essence, i.e., that from its essence
alone and definition it follows that it exists...". (G IV/54).
10. Two brief remarks about the seemingly contrary passages. About P8S2: even if P7
is taken to be an axiom, it would nonetheless be an axiom and not a proposition that is
supposed to be deducible from D3. (It would, of course, be wrong to attribute to Spinoza
the view that axioms are "true by definition.") The second passage is more troublesome.
After claiming that existence follows from the essence alone or definition of substance,
Spinoza adds, "...if my memory does not deceive me, I have previously demonstrated this
to you in conversation without the aid of any other Propositions..." (my italics). This is
puzzling, for how could this claim about substance be true by virtue of a definition yet also
be "demonstrated"? In this early letter, Spinoza does not say what the "other Propositions"
are, and, according to an earlier letter from Oldenburg (3, G IV/11), what is later in the
Ethics a proposition, i.e., P2, is here an axiom. A reconciliation I suggest is that, though
the demonstration did not invoke those "other propositions," it did involve other truths,
perhaps axioms. How else could there have been a demonstration?
11. According to Gueroult, PP1-8 are about single-attribute substances. An examination
of all the reasons he gives to support his famous thesis exceeds the compass of my paper.
I shall consider only this one, which relates to P7 in particular.
12. It might be argued that the restriction is implicit in the expression natura sive attributum,
natura signifying any possible attribute of a substance and attributum - singular - indicating
that there is supposed to be but one. For reasons I go on to give, what seems to be the
strongest reason for this conclusion is not a good reason.
13. This might be questioned on the ground that P2 is to be read, "Two substances having
totally different attributes have nothing in common with one another."
14. There is an assumption here that the conception of an attribute involves the conception
of any substance of which it is an attribute, but there seems to me to be no reason to
suppose that Spinoza would not have made that assumption.
15. It has been suggested that, according to Spinoza, the attributes of putative substance
SI could not be conceived independently. But for Spinoza, as in P10S, there is a real
distinction between attributes and one attribute can be conceived apart from another.
16. These arguments undermine Spinoza's unsupported assumption at the beginning of
the Ethics that what can be conceived independently and what can exist independently must
be the same.
17. Descartes does not make this assertion with respect, say, to two minds, but it seems
that he is committed to the view.
18. PI, D3, and A6.
 ON BENNETTS SPINOZA: THE ISSUE OF TELEOLOGY

EDWIN CURLEY
University of Illinois
Chicago, Illinois

The dust jacket of Bennett's Study of Spinoza's Ethics bears a quotation from
G.H.R. Parkinson praising it as "the most exciting book on Spinoza that I have
read for a long time... written with great intelligence, lucidity and verve... a
stimulating book, which will make its readers think." Let me say right away that
I believe Parkinson's praise is amply justified. I would add that I think much
of what Bennett says in this exciting book is true. And even where I am
inclined to disagree, I think Bennett asks a lot of hard questions which needed
to be asked, questions which are hard not merely in the sense that they are
intellectually difficult to answer, but also in the sense that they force those of
us who sympathize with Spinoza's philosophy to examine our consciences, and
to ask ourselves whether the philosophy to whose study we have devoted so
much time was worth our pains.
Bennett's study of Spinoza will no doubt be characterized as a piece of
"analytic history of philosophy." Tb the extent that that (often deprecatory) label
is justified, what justifies it is not that Bennett's work is dominated by
commitment to some distinctively 20th Century philosophical program - to some
view, say, that the proper task of philosophy is the analysis of language, or that
metaphysics is impossible. What justifies it is that Bennett insists on asking
whether Spinoza gives us any rational grounds for accepting the conclusions he
reaches, that he asks over and over again: "Does this demonstration really
work?" And if the answer is "no," as it very frequently is, then "Are there any
suggestions in Spinoza of an alternative argument, from plausible and genuinely
Spinozistic assumptions, and reaching the same (or a very similar) conclusion
by valid means?" Some lovers of Spinoza may find this kind of inquiry, as
pursued by Bennett, offensive. He does not give Spinoza high marks for
deductive rigor. Sometimes, I think, he reaches a negative conclusion too
quickly. But we would do no honor to Spinoza's memory if we did not
recognize that Bennett is approaching Spinoza in the spirit in which he would
have wished to be approached. Spinoza would have had no patience with anyone
who rejected the propriety of the kind of logical questions Bennett raises.
I begin with these words of praise for Bennett's book, because most of what
I shall have to say will be critical. I do not want anyone to mistake my overall
evaluation of the book. I think it is an excellent piece of work. But I also
think it is wrong about many things, and my main task tonight will be to explore
a few of those things.1 It would not be very interesting to spend much time
on issues where Bennett and I agree. I shall concentrate on the topic of
teleology, which is central to Bennett's analysis of Parts IH-V of the Ethics.
One of Bennett's most striking conclusions is his claim that Spinoza denies
all teleology: not only does Bennett's Spinoza maintain that God never acts
for the sake of an end, he does not think that any being does, including man.
40 EDWIN CURLEY

According to Bennett, Spinoza rejects all final causes, and if we do not see this,
we "miss most of what is interesting in Part 3," the attempt to develop a
nonteleological theory of human motivation (§51.1). But Bennett thinks this
attempt is a failure and a persistent source of trouble for Spinoza in the latter
parts of the Ethics, since he cannot consistently adhere to his psychological
program, and cannot, within the confines of that program, give a satisfactory
account of what it is to act from the guidance of reason. So the problem which
first arises in his philosophical psychology spreads, striking at one of the
fundamental concepts of his moral philosophy. (§68.3)
Now I am not persuaded that it is Spinoza's intention to offer a non-
teleological theory of human motivation. So I don't agree that Spinoza is being
inconsistent, when, later in the Ethics, he interprets his conatus principle in a
teleological way. And I do not think there is any reason in principle why he
cannot give a satisfactory account of what it is to act from the guidance of
reason. But it's certainly not obvious that Bennett is wrong in these matters.
There are passages which tend to support his reading, even if they are not, in
my opinion, sufficient to show that he is right to read Spinoza as he does. So
the textual situation is at least confused.2
Let's begin by looking at a passage Bennett cites in support of his reading.
In the Appendix to Part I, the first of the two main texts in which Spinoza
discusses final causes, he writes:

Not many words will be required now to show thai Nature has no end set before
it, and that allfinalcauses are nothing but humanfictions.For I believe I have already
established this, both by the foundations and causes from which I have shown this
prejudice to have had its origin, and also by P16, P32C1 and C2, and all those
[arguments] by which I have shown that all things proceed by a certain eternal necessity
of nature, and with the greatest perfection (II/80/3-9).

The clause I have italicised for emphasis certainly does seem, taken in isolation,
to express an unqualified rejection of final causes.
But I think it is not intended to, and that read in context, it does not
involve such a rejection. The immediately preceding clause, after all, proclaims
that Spinoza's object is to show that Nature has no end set before it. So I
would read the italicised clause as saying that all final causes we are apt to ascribe
to (God or) Nature are nothing but human fictions. And I would note that the
propositions and corollaries Spinoza goes on to cite, as having already established
this, all have to do with divine causality.
Those are considerations about the immediate context. But the larger
context confirms this reading. The Appendix is an extended attack on one
prejudice which Spinoza says underlies all the prejudices he has undertaken to
expose in Part I of the Ethics:

men commonly suppose that all natural things act as they themselves do, on account
of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some
certain end; for they say that God has made all things on account of man, and has
 On Tfeleology 41

made man that he might worship him [i.e., has made man to worship God]. (II/78/2-
6, my emphasis)

The rest of the Appendix discusses, first, the reasons why men have this
prejudice (from 11/78/12 to 80/1), second, the reasons why it is false (from II/80/2
to 81/24), and finally, the other prejudices which have arisen from this one (from
11/81/25 to 83/32). Now I would have thought that the passage just quoted
makes it quite clear that Spinoza does not deny purposive action to man: the
prejudice Spinoza is exploring in this preface is precisely the attribution to
natural things of a form of activity characteristic ofmeny viz. action for the sake
of an end.
Moreover, Spinoza reiterates his assumption that men act purposively when
he undertakes to explain why men have this prejudice: men know that they
themselves do everything for the sake of an end, viz. their own advantage; they
know that explaining their own behavior involves ascribing to themselves desires,
i.e., conscious appetites; but although they arc conscious of the appetites by
which they explain their own behavior, they arc not conscious of the causes of
those appetites; and because those appetites arc internal to themselves, they
imagine that if their appetites did have a cause, they would know what that cause
was; so they come to think of their own purposes as providing them with a
model of an uncaused cause, something which can be invoked, satisfactorily, to
explain activity, without itself being susceptible to explanation; so when they
come to try to explain the activities of other things, they find purposive expla-
nations more satisfying than explanations in terms of efficient causes, which
always seem to admit, and hence to require, an explanation in terms of some
prior cause; explanations in terms of efficient causes generate an infinite regress
which will be terminated only by our ignorance, by our inability, as finite human
beings, to trace the causal chain any further back, not by our having discov-
ered a cause which does not admit, and hence does not require, any further
explanation.3
Now Bennett is well aware of the passages I have been citing against him.
He quotes one himself when he is trying to explain why people have interpreted
the Appendix to Part I as an attack only on divine teleology:

This more drastic attack is easy to overlook in 1 Appendix, because it is well buried
in a discussion of God's purposes and also because Spinoza there seems at times to
concede that men do have purposes which explain their behaviour (§51.1).

And he offers two explanations for these "seeming concessions of human tele-
ology":

We shall see in §52 that he offers a partial rescue of that sort of talk: his concept
of 'appetite,' which isfreeof the supposedly noxious elements in teleological concepts,
might have seemed to him to underpin such remarks as 'Men always act on account
of an end, namely on account of their advantage, which they want' (1 Appendix at
78/21). Or perhaps the seeming concessions of human teleology in 1 Appendix may
be due to Spinoza's having written most of his polemic against divine teleology before
42 EDWIN CURLEY

his case against all teleology occurred to him, and neglecting to revise the text when
that discovery was at last made. (§51.1)

Now I don't think we can do much with the second of these explanations. It
requires us to suppose one of two things: either that at some stage of his
development Spinoza discovered an argument against all teleology and incor-
porated it in his previous attack on divine teleology, without recognizing that it
required a rewriting of that attack; or that at some stage of his development
Spinoza discovered that an argument he had previously used against divine
teleology applied equally well to human teleology, but failed to see that this
required a rewriting of his previous attack on divine teleology.
But neither of these alternatives is at all plausible. The assumption that
men act for the sake of an end is too central to the argument of the Appendix
to Part I for Spinoza to have consciously made any such discoveries without at
the same time noticing that accepting such arguments would require extensive
revision of the Appendix. The "seeming concessions" are not, as Bennett
suggests, remarks made in passing, but either crucial and explicit assumptions
in his argument or else essential elements in his statement of his main
conclusion. Only if we fall back on the first explanation- i.e., only if we assume
that Spinoza thought his talk of human teleology could be understood in an
acceptable way- is his failure to make the revisions credible.
Before we can deal adequately with the first explanation, however, we need
to see why, according to Bennett's Spinoza, talk of human teleology is not all
right as it stands. We must ask: "what arc the noxious elements from which
teleological concepts need to be freed?" Tb ask this is to ask: "what are the
arguments against teleology which apply, with equal strength, both to human
and to divine teleology?" This is a vital question in any case. For Bennett
attributes a radical rejection of all teleology to Spinoza, not so much because
he has a text in which he sees Spinoza saying, explicitly, that all purposive
explanation is a fiction,4 as because he thinks that

mixed in with the attack on divine purpose there are two arguments which, if they
are any good at all, count against any kind of teleology- against "He raised his hand
so as to shade his eyes" as well as against "Elbows are formed like that so that men
can raise their hands". (§51.1)

What are those arguments?

The first, discussed in §51.2 and supported mainly by the passage from
II/80/3 cited above on p. 40, might be put as follows: Spinoza has shown in
Part I that (i) all things proceed by "a certain eternal necessity of Nature"; (ii)
but things which are to be explained by final causes cannot occur by a neces-
sity of Nature; (iii) for to explain something by a final cause is to explain it in
terms of the uncaused volitions of the person whose purposes are invoked; (iv)
what occurs because of an uncaused volition is ultimately contingent;6 since (v)
nothing is ultimately contingent, (vi) nothing is to be explained by final causes.
 On Teleology 43

In stating this argument I haven't put it in quite the way that Bennett does,
because I would like to avoid certain interpretive issues which I think it
inessential to resolve. But I don't think that matters. Bennett does not lay
much stress on the argument and I shall not either. Bennett objects to the
argument that the "link between teleology and radical freedom is a mistake."
I agree. And I think Spinoza would agree also. I think he really views the
argument as an ad hominem one, directed against an opponent who holds that
teleology and indeterminism are linked. I take it that he would reject both step
(ii) and step (iii), though (iii) would be all right if the word "uncaused" were
deleted. More of this anon.
In stating the second argument I propose to stick closely to Bennett's own
way of putting things, because more is at stake here. Let me quote, first, a
whole paragraph:

Spinoza also objects against teleological explanations that they purport to explain events
by reference to their effects. A stone is thrown at me, and I raise my hand in time
to deflect it: the event Raise causes the event Deflect. But if we purport to explain
Raise by saying that it was performed 'so as to deflect the stone/ we are using Deflect
to explain Raise. Spinoza protests: 'This doctrine concerning the end turns Nature
completely upside down. For what is really a cause, it considers an effect, and
conversely. What by nature comes before it puts after.' (1 Appendix at 80/10) He
thinks one cannot explain an item by reference to something which it causes. (§51.3)

Now clearly Spinoza does object to some ideological explanations on the

ground that they treat the effect as the cause of its cause, and so reverse the
order of nature. But the passage Bennett quotes from Spinoza is really quite
vague about what form of teleological explanation is at issue here. Spinoza
simply refers to "this doctrine concerning the end." By embedding the quotation
in the kind of example he does, Bennett suggests that the doctrine concerning
the end is a doctrine the contentious point of which is that human actions can
be explained by final causes. But someone who came upon this phrase immedi-
ately after reading the earlier parts of the Appendix might more naturally take
it to be the doctrine that everything which happens in Nature happens, as human
actions do, as the result of a final cause. That is, he would take it to be a
doctrine the contentious point of which is that things other than human actions
can be explained by final causes.
When we're in doubt about what Spinoza means by a phrase, it's a good
policy to look at the kinds of illustration he uses. So it's worth noting that
when he chooses, in this section (viz. II/80/2-81/24), to illustrate the kind of thing
he thinks it inappropriate to explain in terms of final causes, he never picks
anything like a human action. His examples are either of biological phenomena
("the structure of the human body") or of events involving objects we would
characterize as inanimate ("a stone has fallen from a roof onto someone's head
and killed him"). He never uses the kind of example Bennett does.
But, you might say, even if Spinoza doesn't illustrate the kind of explanation
he's opposed to by selecting examples of human actions, doesn't his objection
apply to them with as much force as it does to the examples he selects? When
44 EDWIN CURLEY

we say that I raised my hand to deflect the stone, aren't we explaining the cause
by its effect just as much as we would be doing if we said that the stone fell
from the roof so as to kill the man?
On the face of it, the answer to this is "no," for reasons Bennett explains
very cogently:

In a teleological explanation the event is usually explained by reference not directly

to an effect of it but rather to an antecedent thought about an effect of it. In saying
'He raised his hand so as to deflect the stone' we are saying that Raise happened
because he thought it would cause the stone's being deflected. What is there in that
for Spinoza to object to? Why can he not just accept it, saying that the subsequent
event enters the story only as something represented in an antecedent thought, so that
'the [thought] of the "final cause" functions as "efficient cause"'? (§51.4)

Now I think that's precisely what Spinoza does say. But before I come to the
passage in which I think he says it, I want to note a peculiarity of the first
sentence of the passage just quoted. Bennett speaks of the way events are
usually explained in teleological explanations. Perhaps he is right about the form
teleological explanations usually take now. But surely he is not right about the
form they usually took in the 17th Century. The passage just quoted betrays a
lack of historical perspective which becomes acute as the passage continues.
Bennett does not think Spinoza can, consistently with his deepest thoughts
about human action, accept the common sense analysis of the teleological
explanations we usually offer of such actions:

Spinoza does himself explain actions by reference to the agent's thought about the
future, as we shall see; which suggests that he has no case against such explanations.
I shall maintain, on the contrary, that he objects to them strenuously, and that he is
caught in an inconsistency- explaining actions in a manner he ought to condemn.
If his attack on teleology were intended only to condemn explaining Raise with help
from Deflect, and to allow the explanation of Raise in terms of a thought about a
deflection, then it is a noisy assault on a miniscule target. Spinoza is hunting bigger
game than that. (§51.4)

In a moment we'll come to the reasons why Bennett thinks Spinoza would object
strenuously to our explaining human actions, not in terms of their consequen-
ces, but in terms of our anticipation of those consequences. What I want to
do first is to call attention to the way we are being manoeuvred into regarding
alternative interpretations as unworthy of consideration.
I repeat, and isolate for special attention, the critical step in Bennett's
argument:

If his attack on teleology were intended only to condemn explaining Raise with help
from Deflect, and to allow the explanation of Raise in terms of a thought about a
deflection, then it is a noisy assault on a miniscule target.

Now, of course, there's a sense in which that's exactly right. No one who thinks
human actions can be explained in terms of their purposes really wants to
 On Teleology 45

explain my raising my arm by the simple fact that my doing so deflected a stone.
Anyone, if pressed, will say: O f course what I mean is that my anticipation
that raising my arm would deflect the stone is (part of) what explains my raising
my arm." If Spinoza were attacking only the former kind of explanation, it
would indeed be a noisy attack on a miniscule target.
But by posing the alternatives in this way Bennett is neglecting an
Aristotelian tradition of teleological explanation which in the 17th Century was
still very much alive, to judge from the examples of final causation Spinoza gives.
In calling this tradition "Aristotelian" I don't mean to suggest that Aristotle
originated it. His doctrine of the four causes is meant to be an account of the
various ways in which he has found the concept of cause to be used by his
predecessors, and the concept of a final cause is certainly anticipated in Plato.'
Nor do I mean to suggest that Aristotle himself held a doctrine of final
causation of the kind Spinoza attacks. For one thing, he evidently does not
think that everything which happens in nature has a final cause. The rain does
not fall in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity.8 More importantly,
for our purposes, Aristotle himself does not think that when things in nature
happen for the sake of some end, this is because a divine craftsman has so
ordered things. The God of Book Lambda of the Metaphysics is not one which
takes any thought for things other than itself.9 So if we say that the camel has
extra stomachs in order to cope with its thorny diet, we will not be true to
Aristotle himself if we elaborate on our explanation by adverting to God's plan
for his creation.
Nevertheless, that's essentially what certain medieval followers of Aristotle
did. Like some modern students of Aristotle,10 they could not make any sense
of the idea of an unconscious teleology in nature. But believing, as they did,
in a rather different kind of God, they felt that they could explain teleology
in nature better than the master had. Here's Maimonides:

What is the cause that has particularized one stretch [of the heavens] in such a way
that ten stars should be found in it and has particularized another stretch in such a
way that no star should be found in it?... Λ11 this... would be very unlikely, or rather
would come near to being impossible, if it should be believed that all this proceeded
obligatorily and of necessity from the deity, as is the opinion of Aristotle. If, however,
it is believed that all this came about in virtue of the purpose of one who purposed,
who made this thus, that opinion would not be accompanied by a feeling of
astonishment and would not be at all unlikely... All this has been produced for an
object that we do not know and is not an aimless and fortuitous act... You know
that the veins and nerves of any individual dog or ass have not happened fortuitously
... There is no doubt that all of these things are necessary according to the purposes
of one who purposes. *

This, I suggest, is the way phenomena were usually explained teleologically by

the 17th Century followers of Aristotle whom Spinoza mainly had in mind. They
found a great many phenomena in nature which, it seemed, could only be
adequately explained by calling attention to the ends they served. Not finding
authentic Aristotelian teleological explanation intelligible, they invoked a
46 EDWIN CURLEY

theological teleology which was not authentically Aristotelian. And Spinoza

undertook to show that that theological alternative was not, in the end, any more
satisfactory. In the 17th Century this was not a miniscule target, and I imagine
that even in the 20th Century there are some circles in which Spinoza's lessons
have not been learned.
Now I'm sure that Bennett knows all this, or enough of it so that the
difference doesn't matter. And I'm sure he will not be impressed by it, because
he thinks Spinoza does, on his own principles, have a strong case against
ideological explanations, even when they are understood in the way common
sense, as opposed to speculative theology, understands them. Why might Spinoza
object to our explaining my raising my arm by appeal to my thought that to do
so would deflect an impending stone?
Bennett does not give the obvious answer. That is, he does not think such
an explanation is flatly ruled out by the impossibility of any interaction between
modes of thought and modes of extension. It's true that if we said simply that
my thought causes my arm to move, we would violate IIP6. But the doctrine
of parallelism implies that corresponding to my thought there is a contempo-
raneous state of my brain which is the direct object of my thought. And that
state of my brain is certainly available to be a cause of the future state of my
arm which is the indirect object of my thought. There's nothing in IIP6 to rule
out that transaction.
The problem, according to Bennett, is that none of the causal powers of
that state of my brain

depend on its being the counterpart of a thought with such and such a content, i.e.,
the counterpart of something which is an idea indirectly of a so-and-so. The physical
theory inserted between 2pl3 and 14 firmly assumes that physical events are to be
explained purely in terms of the shapes, sizes, positions, velocities etc. of particles of
matter. There is no work to be done by representative features. (§51.5)

The fact that my brain state is the object of an idea with a certain content, viz.
the (direct) object of an idea which is (indirectly) an idea of my deflecting the
stone, is as irrelevant to its causal powers as the fact that the movement of my
arm resembles one Olivier made in a film is to the causal powers of that
movement.
Now I think there are a number of things we might say about this. But
I'll relegate most of them to the notes. 12 What I chiefly want to emphasize is
that Bennett offers virtually no direct textual evidence for this claim. In the
paragraphs in which he is setting out this argument (Wis 3-7 of §51.5) the only
textual reference is the one occurring in the passage I have just quoted, and all
that says is that the physical theory of Part II limits the causally relevant aspects
of physical objects to the kinds of features which were acknowledged as causally
relevant by 17th Century mechanists. This leaves out representative features,
i.e., the fact a certain state of my brain is the direct object of an idea which is
indirectly of some future physical event.
 On Teleology 47

But suppose my brain's being in a certain state (defined in terms of the

shapes, sizes, positions, velocities etc. of its component particles) just is its being
the object of an idea indirectly of a certain future state of my body. Tb conceive
it in the first way is to conceive it under the attribute of extension; to conceive
it in the second way is to conceive it under the attribute of thought. The mind-
body identity theory of IIP7S surely implies that anything occurring in the mental
realm, such as an idea of a possible future physical event, will be identical with
something occurring in the physical realm. If we take that identity seriously,
why should we say that the representative features are being given no work to
do? Bennett's idea seems to be that, so long as our explanation of the future
physical event is conducted in purely physical terms, i.e., so long as we conceive
the cause of the movement of my arm under the attribute of extension, we are
leaving out something essential to the explanation of that event, or at any rate,
something a genuine believer in human teleology would regard as essential.
But I take it that this is precisely the kind of dualistic claim Spinoza was
protesting against in IIIP2S:

They will say, of course, that it cannot happen that the causes of buildings, of paintings,
and of things of this kind, which are made only by human skill, should be able to be
deducedfromthe laws of nature alone, insofar as it is considered to be only corporeal;
nor would the human body be able to build a temple, if it were not determined and
guided by the mind. But I have already shown that they do not know what the body
can do, or what can be deduced from the consideration of its nature alone, and that
they knowfromexperience that a great many things happen from the laws of nature
alone which they never would have believed could happen without the direction of
the mind... (II/142/34-143/7)

One purpose which the theory of mind-body identity serves in Spinoza is to let
him have his cake (posit the possibility of a completely physicalistic explanation
of all physical events) and eat it too (allow for teleology at the level of human
action).
Earlier I promised to cite a passage in which Spinoza gave the common
sense answer to the question how an end can explain the things people do to
attain that end, a passage in which he says that

the subsequent event enters the story only as something represented in an antece-
dent thought, so that 'the [thought] of the "final cause" functions as "efficient cause.",

The passage occurs in Spinoza's second main treatment of the topic of final
causes, the Preface to Part IV:

As [God or Nature] exists for the sake of no end, he also acts for the sake of no end.
Rather, as he has no principle or end of existing, so he also has none of acting. What
is called a final cause is nothing but a human appetite insofar as it is considered as
a principle, or primary cause, of some thing. For example, when we say that habitation
was the final cause of this or that house, surely we understand nothing but that a man,
because he imagined the conveniences of domestic life, had an appetite to build a
house. So habitation, insofar as it is considered as afinalcause, is nothing more than
48 EDWIN CURLEY

this singular appetite. It is really an efficient cause, which is considered as afirstcause,

because men are commonly ignorant of the causes of their appetites. (11/206/27-
207/12)
Spinoza has a way of making talk of final causes acceptable, but it is precisely
the way Bennett says he would reject: when it appears that something is being
explained by a subsequent result, what is really happening, if the explanation
is legitimate at all, is that we are explaining a human action by appealing to
the person's anticipation of the consequences to be expected from that action,
his desire for those consequences, and his resultant desire to perform the
action.13
Now according to Bennett, it is legitimate for Spinoza to identify final
causes, properly understood, with antecedent appetites, but inconsistent of him
to bring an imagination of the future into the account of the appetite referred
to here.14 Bennett takes it that the concept of appetite introduced in IIIP9S
deliberately does not mention any thoughts about the future. That is what
makes it free of the noxious elements involved in ordinary teleological concepts,
and a suitable foundation for building a genuinely Spinozistic psychology.
I think there is enough truth in this to be interesting, but not enough to
support the conclusions Bennett seeks to draw from his account of Spinoza's
supposedly nonteleological theory of motivation. Let's begin, not with the
concept of appetite, but with the closely related concept of the striving for self-
preservation which Spinoza introduces in IIIP6:

Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.

"Tb strive ton is my favored term for conari; Bennett prefers "to try to"; but
whatever term we use, it is important to recognize that the conatus ad motum
was a central technical concept in Cartesian physics, where it referred to a
tendency of bodies to persist either in a state of rest or, if they were in motion,
in uniform motion in a straight line, unless acted on by external bodies. Both
Descartes and Spinoza use conatus in that context in spite of> rather than because
of, its psychological connotations. Descartes certainly doesn't think that the
bodies to which he ascribes this conatus have any awareness of where they're
going, or desire to reach that goal. This is part of his attack on Aristotelian
teleology. And in spite of his "panpsychism," I don't think Spinoza does either.
He thinks the conatus to persevere in one's being is an absolutely universal
principle, possessed even by the simplest bodies. And whatever the proper
interpretation of IIP13S, I'm sure he doesn't think that very simple moving
bodies have any idea where they're going, or any desire to get there. All this
is grist for Bennett's mill, though he curiously doesn't make any use of it.15
IIIP7 tells us that "the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in
its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing." And IIIP9S connects
the concept of striving with those of appetite and desire:
 On Teleology 49

When [this striving] is related to the mind and body together, it is called appetite.
This appetite, therefore, is nothing but the very essence of man, from whose nature
there necessarily follow those things which promote his preservation. And so man
is determined to do those things. Between appetite and desire there is no difference,
except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of their
appetite. (II/147/28-148/3)

When Spinoza reprises this passage at the end of Part III, he relies on this
identity to substitute the term "desire" for the term "appetite":

Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any

given affection of it, to do something.

I find these passages very puzzling, and would be grateful for any light Bennett
could shed on them. Here is what Bennett offers us as a gloss:

To have an appetite for χ is just to be so constituted that you will behave in ways
which increase the probability of your getting x; or, in a shorthand which I find
convenient, to be so constituted that you will 'move towards' x... The thesis, pretty
clearly, is that 'appetite for x' is to be analysed in terms of 'intrinsic state which causes
one to move toward x.' (§52.1)

So far this seems reasonable enough. I suppose I have appetites for many things
which I am nevertheless not disposed to move towards, all things considered.
But if that's a problem, it's as much a problem for Spinoza as for Bennett.
The specification that what causes the movement toward the thing desired
should be an intrinsic state of the person who has the desire also seems a
plausible guess as to what Spinoza might have in mind by saying that an appetite
or desire is an affection of the thing's essence. But I find that when Bennett
glosses his gloss I begin to have problems:

In this account, a desire or appetite is identified with some aspects of the essence or
nature of a person, something which could be fully described without mentioning any
subsequent state of affairs... The plain man thinks that an action can be caused or
explained by a desire which essentially involves the future... Spinoza replaces that
concept of desire by one which he thinks covers roughly the same territory without
implying that anything involving the future helps to explain the present. (§52.2)

Now it's true that Spinoza's official definition of appetite or desire does not
require that this affect should involve the future in any way. Neither does it
explicitly exclude the possibility that the affect should involve a representation
of the future. If the requirement that the state should be intrinsic excludes the
possibility of its involving the future by representation, and if the requirement
that the state should be intrinsic, so understood, is the right interpretation of
Spinoza's reference to an affection of the person's essence, then Bennett's gloss
must be right.
But that's enough "ifs" to leave room for a doubt or two. Perhaps Spinoza
doesn't mention any representation of the future in his analysis of appetite/desire
50 EDWIN CURLEY

because he wants to allow for a generalized concept of appetite/desire which will

apply both to humans and to less complex entities, all the way down to the
simplest bodies. Perhaps he thinks that at the very simplest level "appetite" does
not involve any conception of the future, but that at some point on the
continuum from corpora simplicissima to humans "appetite" does involve such
a conception. 16 That might make it easier to reconcile this definition with IIA3.
And it might make it easier to understand why Spinoza no sooner introduces
his nonteleological concept of appetite than he abandons it by giving the conatus
principle a teleological interpretation (Cf. Bennett, §57.4-5). According to
Bennett, from IIIP12 on Spinoza is regularly inconsistent with one of his most
interesting claims. Perhaps, rather than ascribe such massive inconsistency to
Spinoza, we should take a harder look at the evidence for interpreting his
definition of appetite as reflecting a deliberate decision to advance a nonteleolog-
ical theory of motivation.

1. Elsewhere I have discussed other aspects of Bennett's work: "On Bennett's Interpretation
of Spinoza's Monism," forthcoming in the proceedings of the Jerusalem Spinoza conference
of March 1987; "Le corps et l'esprit: Du Court traité à VEthique," Archives de philosophie,
51(1988): 5-14; and Curley (1988), passim.
2. We might note that Lee Rice is already in print with an interesting article in which he
accepts Bennett's central point. See "Spinoza, Bennett, and leleology," The Southern Journal
of Philosophy, 23 (1985): 241-253.
3. Here I paraphrase, very freely, the passage from 11/78/12 to 11/78/28. I take it that it
is this passage which Bennett is trying to explain in §50.2. In attempting to understand
what is going on there, both of us need to bring in a later passage in the Appendix, the
famous "sanctuary of ignorance" passage (11/80/35-81/11). But Bennett, if he is indeed
trying, in §50.2, to explain what is going on in my passage, does so without ever invoking
the doctrine that men act always for the sake of an end, or the doctrine that they are
conscious of their appetites without being conscious of the causes of those appetites.
Perhaps this is why he finds it so difficult to locate a satisfactory argument in Spinoza at
this point. (In §51.3 he remarks that he docs not fully understand this passage and
suspects it of a muddle.) He asks why anyone should be "embarrassed by having to say,
a short distance along the backwards explanatory chain, that he doesn't know what the
earlier items in the chain are?" The point, I think, is not that people are embarrassed by
their ignorance, but that they find efficient causal explanation unsatisfactory, because they
believe themselves to be familiar with a different kind of explanation in which the cause
is an explainer which needs no explanation, viz., the kind of explanation they give of their
own behavior.
Let me take this opportunity to correct a mistake in my translation of this passage
(Curley (1985), 440). For "so they necessarily judge the temperament of other men from
their own temperament," read: "so they necessarily judge the temperament of the other from
their own temperament."
4. Though I think he would count II/80/3-4 as such a text. That is the passage discussed
above on p. 40.
5. I don't think Bennett means to suggest that Spinoza has no good arguments against
divine teleology in particular which do not count equally against teleology in general. But
I do think he tends to undervalue the attack on divine teleology in particular. E.g., he writes
in §50.1 that it is "nothing like as important and instructive as" the attack on teleology in
general. I conjecture that part of the reason Bennett thinks it less important is that he
 On Tfeleology 51

does not think divine teleology is any longer a theory which non-Catholic philosophers need
to take seriously. But if this is so, it is because philosophers like Spinoza developed
arguments against divine teleology which led subsequent philosophers to feel that they could
disregard it. If the arguments aren't good, the disregard is inappropriate. If the arguments
are good, and Spinoza is one of the first people responsible for stating them persuasively,
he should be given full credit for doing so.
In §50.3 Bennett approves the argument against divine teleology in IP33S2 (11/76/24-
34), but devotes only two sentences to it. His emphasis is on an argument of which he
does not approve:
Less good is the argument in 1 Appendix that it is impious to attribute purposes to
God because 'If God acts for the sake of an end, he must want something which he
lacks.' (80/22) That reflects the widespread assumption that purposive activity is
unintelligible unless directed to a future which is preferred to the present: as Locke
said, in effect: 'Why should I act unless I am discontented with the status quoT There
are many answers to that. The crucial point is this: if someone acts, he prefers a
certain possible future- not to the present, but to other possible futures.
Tb this Spinoza might reply as follows: you assume that for God there might really be two
possible futures, one of which is preferable to the other; but that cannot be reconciled with
the assumption that God is a supremely perfect being; if God is supremely perfect, then
the only future really possible for him is the one which is most preferable; again, the
distinction between preferring a possible future to the present and preferring it to another
possible future cannot apply to God, who is supposed to be immutable; to say that he
prefers one possible future to another, but not to the present, is to say that there is a
possible future for him which is different from his present; this cannot be in a supremely
perfect being; it is not a question of piety here, but of remaining consistent with the only
conception of God which gives us any reason for believing in the existence of God.
6. By "ultimately contingent" I here mean "neither absolutely nor relatively necessary," in
the sense in which those terms are explained in ch. 3 of Curley (1969).
7. See, for example, Metaphysics, I, vii: "Of those who speak about about principle and
cause no one has mentioned any principle except those which have been distinguished in
our book on nature, but all evidently have some inkling of them, though only vaguely."
As regards the distinction between efficient and final causes, this seems a bit unfair to Plato.
Cf. Timaeus 46C-47C.
8. See Physics II, viii, 198bl7, and W. Wieland, "The Problem of Teleology," in Articles
on Aristotle, vol. I, Science, ed. by J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and Richard Sorabji, Duckworth,
1975. Note here the assumption (central to the argument summarized at the bottom of
p. 42) that what happens of necessity does not happen as a result of a final cause.
9. See Metaphysics XII, ix, and Ross, Aristotle, Meridian, 1959, pp. 181-2.
10. E.g., Ross, op. cit., p. 182: "The notion of unconscious teleology is ... unsatisfactory.
If we are to view action not merely as producing a result, but as being aimed at producing
it, we must view the agent either as imagining the result and aiming at reaching it, or as
the tool of some other intelligence which through it is realising its conscious purposes."
For a dissenting view, see R. Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, Cornell UP, 1980, p. 164.
11. The Guide for the Perplexed, II, 19, quoted from the translation by Shlomo Pines, U
of Chicago P, 1963, II, 310.
12. Bennett himself calls attention to a couple of problems. E.g., his argument depends
on treating events (concrete particulars, which may have a multitude of unstated features)
as causes, rather than facts (abstract entities, which have no unstated properties). He
acknowledges that Spinoza's causal rationalism is easier to make plausible when causality
is treated as a relation between facts rather than events. But though he thinks Spinoza
52 EDWIN CURLEY

did tend to prefer facts to events as causes, he thinks this was only a tendency, and that
Spinoza's thought about final causes exhibits contrary tendencies.
More seriously, perhaps, Bennett thinks Spinoza is required by the doctrine of
parallelism to hold that, just as the fact that a mode of extension is the correlate of an idea
having certain representative features has no effects at the physical level, so the represen-
tative features of the thoughts themselves are causally impotent even in the mental realm:
the fact that a thought has a certain content (is the idea of a certain possible future event,
for example) makes no contribution to its causal powers. (See, p.220, HI) He seems to
think that if he is right about Spinoza's reasons for rejecting teleology, Spinoza would be
forced to such a conclusion, and that he would not shrink from it. I suggest that the
unpalatability of this consequence should have provided Bennett with a sufficient reason
to give up the whole line of interpretation. How could Spinoza have reconciled any such
doctrine with his fundamental insight that affects like love and desire depend on our having
a conception of the object loved or desired. (IIA3) Bennett recognizes the importance of
cognitive elements in Spinoza's theory of the emotions in §62, and acknowledges Spinoza's
superiority to both Descartes and Hume in this regard in §63. But his account of the causal
impotence of representation in §51.5 undermines that whole aspect of Spinoza's philo-
sophical psychology.
13. This is why I said above (p.6, HI) that step (iii) of the argument under discussion there
would be all right if the word "uncaused" were deleted.
14. See his remarks on the passage just quoted in §52.3 (final 1). His attempts to explain
this passage away do not seem to me convincing. He treats it as if it were a casual remark,
and hence not carefully considered, whereas it seems to me a passage in which Spinoza
brings to a conclusion the attack on divine teleology begun in the Appendix to Part I, and
hence one to which Spinoza must have attached considerable theoretical importance.
15. What Bennett says is just this: "The verb 'try', in its ordinary meaning, is ideological
... Spinoza ought, in using this term, to see a need to detoxify it by showing that it does
not really involve explaining items in terms of their effects ... " (§57.3) This makes it sound
as though Spinoza wrote in English. What Bennett ought to have said is: "The English
terms Spinoza's translators use to render conatiis have inappropriately teleological connota-
tions. We need to remember, if we fall in with their usage, that Spinoza's own term had
a use in which it did not imply any anticipation of a state to be reached." Of course, if
Bennett did say that, he would have to take back part of §57.5.
For references supporting the lexicographical claims made in this H, see the Glossary-
Index in my Spinoza edition, under "striving."
16. It's worth noting that, whereas the striving referred to in IIIP6-7 had been one which
each thing was supposed to have, the striving which is identified with appetite/desire in P9S
is one which constitutes the essence of man.
 SPINOZA AND TELEOLOGY: A REPLY TO CURLEY

JONATHAN BENNETT
Syracuse University

A Retraction

Curley isright:Spinoza's opposition to cosmic teleology was at the time a large

matter, not a small one; when I brushed it aside as minor, I wasn't thinking
historically. But since I was taking a view about what Spinoza himself actually
thought about teleology, historical thinking would have been appropriate.
Curley is also persuasive in suggesting that the line between human and
cosmic teleology might plausibly be thought to correspond to the line between
teleology that does involve and teleology that does not involve causation by a
thought. When I was writing my book I don't think that this idea crossed my
mind. It should have.
Putting those two points together, and adding to them the fact that Spinoza
undoubtedly does - as I acknowledged in my book - sometimes openly attribute
thoughtful teleology to human beings, I ought to have considered patiently and
seriously the possibility that Curley puts before us and thinks to be actual:
namely that Spinoza really did want to attribute thoughtful teleology to humans,
and denied it only for items - such as the universe - that don't have thoughts
about the future. I have now considered it, and am inclined to accept that
Spinoza did in a way, and up to a point, and sometimes, think of teleology in
that way rather than in the comprehensively rejecting way that I attribute to him.

Spinoza's Difficulty With Thoughtful Teleology

I have reasons for those grudging qualifiers. The text does not clearly, explicitly
and consistently go Curley's way. Spinoza never says outright that in thoughtful
teleology the order of nature is not reversed because what causes the action is
an earlier thought about the future; and that is just one negative sign of
something that I still believe to be the case, namely that Spinoza's acceptance
of thoughtful teleology is, at its strongest, a notably half-hearted affair. And
so it ought to have been. Given the rest of Spinoza's views, the human teleology
that he did allow (in a way, up to a point, etc.) could not consistently contain
the feature that is ordinarily taken to lie at the core of teleology, namely that
what happens at one time is causally explained in a way that essentially,
operatively, non-idly mentions some future time. I shall now explain why.
The order and connexion of ideas is the same as the order and connexion
of things: Spinoza held that the physicalistic explanation of why my arm goes
up is paralleled by a mentalistic explanation of what happens in my mind when
my arm goes up. Now, the mentalistic antecedents may well include a thought
of my raised arm's deflecting a stone that I sec being thrown towards me; that
thought cannot of course help to explain the physical event, the raising of the
54 JONATHAN BENNETT

arm (Curley and I agree about that), but it helps to explain the mental
counterpart of that physical event, just as the physical counterpart of the thought
explains the arm's going up. Curley adds, in effect: "But according to Spinoza,
the mental antecedent just is the physical antecedent, so in Spinoza's scheme
of things the mental antecedent does after all have a role in the causation of
the physical movement of my arm."
Now, we all know that this sort of reasoning must be handled cautiously
where Spinoza is in question. He does assert an identity across the men­
tal/physical divide, but he also insists, firmly and clearly, that no causal
explanations can cross the divide, and he ties causation to explanation. So I
don't think that that move of Curley's can be right.
The main point I want to make, however, is entirely additional to that.
Granted that Spinoza thinks that mcntalistic causal chains have a structure that
mirrors the structure of physicalistic causal chains, so that causal explanations
under one attribute map onto causal explanations under the other, it is a further
question whether that isomorphism brings in any of the representative aspects
of mental states and events.
A strong current of thought in contemporary philosophy of mind says that
the representative features of mental states, though they figure in rough-and-
ready laymen's explanations of behavior, have no place in any disciplined,
scientific account of how the mind does its work; the reason being that very
same intrinsic state might count for one person as the thought that P, and for
another as the thought that Q, where Ρ and Q arc entirely different. Whether
a mental item with a certain intrinsic nature counts as having this or that content
or representative aspect depends upon when the animal got it, in what
circumstances, in association with what other mental items, and so on. One
(extreme) upshot of this is that the following could happen: animals χ and y are
now intrinsically exactly like one another and unlike z, whereas χ and ζ are
exactly alike in their mental contents and in that respect unlike y.
I think that this is probably correct, but I can't embark on a defence of
it here.1 Anyway, whether or not it is true, this thesis can be found in the pages
of Spinoza's Ethics.
There is more than a hint of it in IIP16 and its corollaries, where Spinoza
first introduces the notion of a mental item as representing something other than
a bodily state of its owner. What he says there clearly implies that what makes
an idea of mine count as being "of your body is not what the idea is intrinsically
like but rather how it is caused. This clearly makes room for the possibility that
your idea of χ and mine are intrinsically quite different, and that the very same
intrinsic mental state might be in you an idea of χ and in me an idea of y.
(Spinoza says that he has explained this through many examples in 1
Appendix; but he hasn't. The only way of making any significant link between
IIP16C2 and I App is by means of the position I am now expounding: namely
that Spinoza held that the representative features of ideas do not map onto their
intrinsic features and thus have no serious explanatory role, this being relevant
to his views on thoughtful teleology.)
 On Teleology 55

There is a further indication in IIP40S1, where Spinoza talks about

"imagination." This includes most mental content that represents particular
things outside oneself, and thus most of the thoughts that might come into a
teleological account of behavior. Explaining why it is such a limited cognitive
instrument, he says that our "imaginative" ideas are not formed by all men in
the same way, but vary according to what the body has more often been affected
by, and so on. This clearly implies that two mental states that are unalike in
their representative content may be alike in their intrinsic natures and thus in
what their physical counterparts are. There are other indications as well.
Summing up this part of my argument, I submit: (1) It is not credible that
intrinsic states of mind that are isomorphic with states of the brain should also
be systematically connected with the representative content of states of mind.
For the representative content of a person's state of mind - the "of x" and "that
P" aspect of his thought - depends upon relational features of that state, e.g. on
the person's past history of being in that state, what else was going on at the
time, and so on. (2) This truth can be derived from Spinoza's doctrines, and
is indicated in his pages clearly enough to make it ungenerous to deny him the
credit for having seen it himself. (3) Tb the extent that he did see it, he must
have thought that when my arm's going up has a physical cause whose mental
counterpart is a mental event that is (among other things) the thought of my
arm's deflecting a stone, that fact about the mental item has no part in the
serious causal explanation of the mental counterpart of the arm's going up. So
there was some place in Spinoza's mind for the view that even in thoughtful
teleology the notion of the future is causally idle: something is being caused by
a thought about the future, but its being about the future - and indeed its entire
content, its whole representative nature - is irrelevant to its causal powers.

Spinoza's Struggle to Exclude Thoughtful Teleology

That would explain two puzzling aspects of the text of the Essay.
(1) Spinoza repeatedly says that "desire is man's very essence, insofar as
it is conceived to be determined... to do something." Curley agrees that this is
puzzling, and that I have a prima facie possible explanation of it, namely:
Spinoza means that desire (or the underlying phenomenon of appetite) is to be
understood as causally potent only when construed in intrinsic rather than
representational terms, and that our notion of desire or appetite for χ in the
future is just the notion of an intrinsic state that does in fact tend to lead its
owner to achieve x. This fits in with my present theme, because it implies that
when I raise my arm "so as to deflect the stone," the notion of the stone's
subsequently being deflected is relevant to the effects of my arm's going up but
not to its causes; which is just to say that real teleology, final causation, is
excluded.
Curley says he has "a doubt or two" about my explanation; so do 1. But
I have tried in these remarks to go a bit further than I did in my book in
explaining why I think that Spinoza ought to have held - and probably at some
56 JONATHAN ΒΕΝΝΕΊΤ

level of his mind did hold - that the representative features of thoughts are
irrelevant to their causal powers. As long as that is right, I don't see much room
for doubt about my treatment of the "desire is the man's essence" passages.
(2) Up to IIIP12 Spinoza deploys his conatus doctrine in conditionals to
the effect that

If χ does A, it is helpful to χ to do A,

and from there on he quietly switches to the converse, that is, to conditionals
to the effect that

If it would help χ to do A, χ does A,

That this switch occurs is beyond dispute: it is minutely documented in my book.

Nor can there be any doubt that the two conditionals are quite different, and
that neither follows from the other.
The switch has an enormous effect on the work. The post-switch
conditional can be used to predict and explain someone's doing A, whereas the
pre-switch conditional, in which "x does A" occurs in the antecedent but not in
the consequent, can only explain or predict someone's not doing A. So Spinoza's
show of having a richly explanatory theory of behavior depends on his use of
the post-switch conditional. Yet his attempted proof of the conatus doctrine
is addressed exclusively to the pre-switch conditional, not to the one he
eventually wants and employs.
This could be made to look like mere blundering incompetence, but I see
it differently. I think it is Spinoza's attempt to deal with a terrific problem that
is created by his insight that there is a difficulty about teleological explanation,
even the thoughtful kind.
The crucial point is that the post-switch conditional lies at the core of
teleology, properly understood; or so it is alleged by the only plausible theory
of teleology that we have.2 I conjecture that Spinoza had some awareness of
that conceptual fact, and that this warned him off the post-switch conditional
when he was at the stage of consciously trying to keep teleology out. Tb do
that, he had to avoid implying that any causal explanation of behavior could
essentially involve anything that happens subsequently to the behavior, yet that
is just what the post-switch conditional does; so he couldn't have it, and had
to settle for its pre-switch converse. But later on he moved from abstract causal
theory down into the thick of the human condition, wanting to use his conatus
doctrine to explain various patterns of behavior. For this he needed behavior
not in the antecedent but in the consequent; he needed not the pre-switch but
the post-switch conditional; he needed not his official conatus doctrine but
outright teleology. Thoughtful teleology would have sufficed. If Spinoza had
had no problem about that, wouldn't he have devised some way of introducing
it at the outset and sparing himself any need for the IIIP12 switch from one
conditional to its converse?
 On Tfeleology 57

1. For defences, see Stephen Stich, "Autonomous Psychology and the Belief-Desire Thesis",
The Monist (1978), 573-591; Jerry A. Fodor, "Methodological Solipsism Considered as a
Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology", Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1980), 63-73.
2. I didn't invent it, but it is defended at length in the early chapters of my Linguistic
Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
 INDIVIDUALITÉ, CAUSALITÉ, SUBSTANCE:
RÉFLEXIONS SUR LONTOLOGIE DE SPINOZA

ETIENNE BALIBAR
Université de Paris - I

Lénigme de l'ontologie spinoziste, aujourd'hui encore, ce n'est pas seulement

son sens doctrinal (ce à quoi elle tend, en matière de théologie, de sagesse ou
de politique), mais l'objet dont elle nous parle, qu'elle se propose de saisir dans
le réseau de ses propositions, du moins si nous ne nous tenons pas pour
satisfaits d'une tautologie: l'objet d'une ontologie de la substance, c'est l'être
dénommé substance. D'ailleurs, sous prétexte que la substance spinoziste n'est
manifestement pas "sujet" (au sens psychologique, transcendantal ou dialectique),
peut-on dire qu'elle est un "objet"? C'est toute la question. Pourtant, quel que
soit le mot dont nous nous servons (nous pourrions parler de "référence") nous
ne pouvons éluder ce type d'interrogation. De l'ontologie classique, Spinoza
parle apparemment le langage, mais l'extrémisme de ses énoncés menace à
chaque instant d'en faire éclater les catégories. Faut-il alors considérer sa
philosophie comme la première grande entreprise de critique radicale de cette
ontologie, pratiquement contemporaine de sa constitution, au moment où se
forme également la nouvelle "conception du monde" liée à l'émergence de la
science classique? La difficulté surgit du fait que Spinoza, manifestement, ne
se propose pas seulement de critiquer, mais de connaître quelque chose, en
constituant une véritable analytique de la substance, sans aucune discontinuité
depuis l'identification initiale de son "essence" et de sa "puissance," jusqu'à la
description minutieuse du conatus individuel et à la dynamique des affects qui
en représente le déploiement complet. Peut-être la meilleure formulation serait-
elle alors celle-ci: l'objet de l'ontologie spinoziste est l'individuation, ou la
différence de Vactivité et de la passivité comme telle. Mais cette différence, qui
n'est que le mouvement de la propre production, est tout aussi bien une unité
originaire. Elle est immédiatement "pratique." Pourtant elle doit être pensée
comme intégralement "naturelle."
Spinoza pouvait-il (autrement que par métonymie) fixer dans les mots la
singularité de cet objet? pouvait-il la rattacher à l'idée d'une ontologie, sous
laquelle nous en sommes venus à la penser? La création même du terme
précède d'assez peu son oeuvre. Or, qu'il l'ait connu ou non, il devait être
inacceptable pour lui, dans la mesure où il impliquait à la fois l'établissement
d'une distance entre le général et le spécial (ou le régional), et le dualisme des
ontologies "spécialisées." Dans EIIP40S1, Spinoza caractérise "les termes appelés
Transcendantauxy tels que Etre, Chose, Quelque chose" comme des imaginations
confuses nées de l'incapacité du corps humain à distinguer une multiplicité
d'images. Il les range dans le même genre de connaissance (ou plutôt de
méconnaissance) que les notions générales (par exemple, la notion d'Homme)
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 59

et leur oppose les "notions communes" qui "sont également dans la partie et
dans le tout" (E IIP38). D'où vient alors que ses lecteurs n'aient cessé de se
représenter à nouveau la substance comme un genre suprême ou un fondement?
Il faut voir ici une divergence originaire, mais aussi une difficulté inhérente au
système. Peut-être Spinoza n'a-t-il disposé en fait d'aucun terme univoque pour
désigner "son" objet et le distinguer d'autres objets d'analyse ou de spéculation.
Cette difffîculté devient manifeste lorsque le texte spinoziste est contraint de
se confronter à d'autres discours qui, en apparence,figurentdans le même espace
historique ou théorique. Les conflits et les malentendus qui surgissent alors
en éclairent indirectement les enjeux.
Spinoza croit pouvoir affirmer que toute la philosophie avant lui (à
l'exception peut-être de celle de Démocrite, Epicure et Lucrèce) a, d'une façon
ou d'une autre, succombé à l'illusion du finalisme, à laquelle il se propose
d'opposer une causalité rigoureusement exclusive de toute teleologie. D'un bout
à l'autre de YEthique se déploie l'idée que toutes les philosophies, en dépit de
leurs différences et de leurs affrontements, relèvent d'une seule "doctrine des
causes finales." Qu'est-ce qui supporte cette affirmation brutale, historiquement
très surprenante? C'est avant tout l'identification de la métaphysique
aristotélicienne et de la métaphysique cartésienne. Autrement dit, c'est l'idée
paradoxale qu'on peut rattacher à une même problématique sous-jacente
l'ontologie naturaliste des "formes substantielles," ouvertement liée au primat
de la cause finale, et l'ontologie créationniste des "natures simples," commandée
par les dualismes théologiques et anthropologiques de la substance étendue et
de la substance pensante, de l'entendement et de la volonté, de la cause
eminente et de la cause formelle.
Discuter cette idée pour elle-même serait ici hors de portée. Je me propose
d'en tirer une hypothèse qui prendra d'abord une forme négative. Alors que
les ontologies d'Aristote et de Descartes sont d'emblée des métaphysiques de la
substance, ce qui veut dire qu'elles entretiennent un rapport permanent et
privilégié de fondation et d'imitation avec une représentation de la "phusis" (d'où
procèdent leurs conceptions antithétiques de l'individualité), l'ontologie spinoziste
n'est pas, elle, une métaphysique en ce sens. Autrement dit, ce qu'il y a
effectivement de "commun" à l'aristotélisme et au cartésianisme, par delà les
représentations totalement divergentes de la nature qu'ils construisent, est
précisément ce qui les oppose ensemble au spinozisme, dont la Natura, au bout
du compte, ne se laisse penser ni comme hiérarchie de formes sensibles, ni
comme extension de processus mécaniques quantifiables, c'est-à-dire comme
champ d'expérience physique en aucun des deux grands sens historiquement
constitués. On conçoit facilement qu'une telle différence (à vrai dire déjà
enregistrée sous la forme équivoque d'un nom, dans le titre général qui présente
l'ontologie comme une "Ethique") ne soit pas très simple, ni à imaginer, ni à
expliquer. D'autant qu'elle ne signifie nullement, à l'évidence, que la philosophie
spinoziste n'ait rien à énoncer sur la phusis et n'entretienne aucun rapport avec
elle. On ne peut faire abstraction du fait que toute la théorie des affects, qui
conduitfinalementà l'analytique de l'activité et de la passivité, se fonde sur une
théorie du mode de constitution des corps comme "affections" de la res extensa
60 ΕΉΕΝΝΕ BALIBAR

et de la puissance propre à "l'idée du corps." Et on ne peut s'en tirer avec l'idée

que la théorie des corps est une "physique imaginaire," ce qui ne résoud rien
puisque les physiques d'Aristote et de Descartes nous apparaissent également
comme des physiques imaginaires. Le fond de la question doit résider dans la
conception même du rapport entre "cause," "individu" et "substance." C'est ici
qu'il peut être instructif de découvrir chez Spinoza l'aveu d'une aporie qui
montre que le problème de la physique forme, d'une certaine façon, une frontière
épistémologique du système lui-même.

Les aveux de la Correspondance de Spinoza

et Vaporie de la Physique

J'emprunte cette indication à deux moments de la correspondance de Spinoza

qui se situent de part et d'autre de l'élaboration de YEthique, et dont on peut
suppposer - sans que cette supposition soit indispensable - qu'ils sont séparés
par une "refondation" du système.
En premier lieu, examinons la confrontation des années 1661-1665 entre
Spinoza et Boyle par l'intermédiaire d'Oldenburg. Les propositions avancées
par Spinoza face à la "doctine enfantine et ridicule des formes substantielles"
(lettres 11 et 13) et à l'atomisme de Boyle, à propos de la composition des
corps ou espèces chimiques, sont à première vue d'inspiration cartésienne:
insistance sur la distinction des qualités premières et des qualités secondes,
affirmation que les propriétés sensibles de la matière doivent s'expliquer à
partir des configurations et mouvements de l'étendue géométrique (lettre 6).
Pourtant, si jamais Spinoza a totalement adopté le cartésianisme en matière de
physique, on peut penser que cette discussion aura finalement contribué à l'en
éloigner, préparant la thèse de Ε IPP8-15 qui renvoie à l'imagination, en tant
qu'elle confond l'essence de la substance avec celle des modes, la distinction
numérique des individus et l'alternative de la divisibilité ou de l'indivisibilité à
l'infini de la matière. Léchange d'arguments ne cesse de buter sur l'équivoque
de la notion même û'individu, qui dans la tradition philosophique désigne tantôt
une "chose" absolument simple, irréductible en idée ou en pratique à des
éléments préalables (d'où le paradoxe des indiscernables), tantôt une "chose" qui
est un tout, irréductible à la juxtaposition de ses parties et susceptible de se
conserver par lui-même (d'où le dilemme des explications mécanistes et
finalistes de l'être vivant).
C'est précisément sur la question des "parties" de la matière et de leur
réunion en corps caractérisés par des propriétés spécifiques, que s'achève la
confrontation (lettres 30 à 33). Spinoza nous avertit qu'il "n'a pas cette
connaissance" qui permettrait de "savoir absolument en quelle manière les
choses se lient les unes aux autres (cohaerenf) et comment chaque partie de la
Nature s'accorde (conveniat) avec son "tout," étant donné qu'une telle
connaissance devrait envelopper "la Nature entière et toutes ses parties." Il
s'engage pourtant dans la tentative d'en formuler le principe, et il le fait dans
l'intention précise d'opposer l'idée adéquate du "tout" de la Nature à
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 61

l'imagination d'un ordre cosmique (me Naturae non tabuere pulchritudinem,

deformitatem, ordinem, neque confusionem).
Lexemple proposé par Spinoza (la composition du sang) illustre le
caractère essentiellement relatif des notions de "tout" et de "partie": non pas au
sens subjectif, mais au sens d'un ordre de grandeur objectif, qui correspond à
la distinction de "causes extérieures" et de "causes intérieures" soumises à un
même "rapport de mouvements." On peut évidemment se demander si cette
explication n'est pas tautologique, puisque l'ordre de grandeur d'une
combinaison donnée (les "parties" du sang, le sang lui-même, l'homme, le
"milieu" de l'homme, etc.), caractérisé par une intériorité (le contrôle des
variations de certaines causes: quae leges naturae sanguinis certo modo
moderantur) et une extériorité (l'indépendance de certaines autres) équivaut déjà
à la donnée d'une individualité. Spinoza ne s'y arrête pas, et il étend ce
modèle à l'Univers, c'est-à-dire à une "nature absolument infinie."
Ici, l'argumentation se divise, dans une juxtaposition troublante. D'un
côté, l'unité des parties de l'Univers peut être conçue comme une réciprocité
d'action entre toutes ces parties: omnia enim corpora ab aliis circumcinguuntur,
et ab invicem determinantur ad existendum et operandum certa ac determinata
ratione, La condition qui permet de penser une telle action réciproque, c'est
que "le mouvement et le repos conservent toujours dans l'Univers entier une
même proportion." Proposition presque littéralement empruntée à Descartes
(Principes II, 36) à ceci près que cette conservation n'est pas attribué à l'action
constante de la toute puissance de Dieu. De l'autre côté, Spinoza ajoute qu'il
conçoit, ratione substantiae (c'est-à-dire à cause de la substance, ou sous le
rapport de la substance) une union "encore plus étroite" (arctiorem) entre
chaque partie et son tout. Comment comprendre cette précision? Nous
pouvons y voir la contrepartie positive de l'omission du Dieu de la création
continuée. Mais elle pourrait être interprétée soit comme posant une "unité
de substance" qui serait plus (et autre chose) qu 'un tout, soit comme posant que
la totalité véritable (non relative, donc infinie) ne peut être conçue que comme
substance indivisible, c'est-à-dire sans "parties" au sens propre. Sans développer
ce point, Spinoza conclut qu'on peut sur ces bases comprendre en quoi le corps
humain et l'âme humaine sont l'un et l'autre des "parties de la nature" - plus
précisément de la "substance corporelle" (substantia corporea) et de la "puissance
infinie de penser" qu'elle contient l'un et l'autre.
La réponse d'Oldenburg est du plus grand intérêt: "je ne comprends pas
très bien comment nous pouvons [se. dans ces conditions] exclure de la Nature,
comme tu semblés [vouloir] le faire, l'ordre et la symétrie; ne reconnais-tu pas
toi-même que tous les corps qui la composent s'entourent les uns les autres et
se déterminent réciproquement tant à exister qu'à agir dans un rapport
déterminé et invariant (certa et constanti ratione), le même rapport du
mouvement au repos étant conservé à chaque instant entre eux tous (eadem
semper in omnibus simul motus ad quietem ratione servata)? Ce qui semble bien
constituer exactement la raison formelle de l'ordre véritable (ipsissima veri
ordinis ratio formalis esse videtur).n
62 ΕΉΕΝΝΕ BALIBAR

En d'autres termes Oldenburg, soit par naïveté soit par malice (il poursuit
immédiatement en redemandant à Spinoza de s'expliquer sur les règles du
mouvement que Descartes pensait pouvoir déduire de son principe) élève
l'objection la plus forte qui soit. Elle revient à dire que, même sans référence
à la création divine, un principe comme celui de la "conservation du
mouvement et du repos dans la nature" reste un principe téléologique. Et plus
généralement que tout énoncé portant sur la "raison du tout" est l'équivalent
d'un principe d'ordre et de symétrie.
Nous ne pouvons ignorer cette objection. Non seulement parce que
Spinoza, dans la "physique" qu'il incluera dans son système (ou dans ce qui, à
la Ilème partie de l'Ethique, peut se lire comme l'esquisse d'une physique),
continuera de se référer, il est vrai assez hypothétiquement, à ce principe à
propos du "tout de la nature conçu comme un seul Individu" (IIL7S, 11/102).1
Mais surtout parce que, dans YEthiquey après avoir disqualifié le concept d'ordre
comme typique de l'imagination finaliste, il ne cessera pourtant de l'utiliser lui-
même, à la fois dans la formule même qui développe sa définition de la cause
(ordo et connexio rerum), et dans sa référence constante à "l'ordre de la Nature,"
conformément auquel il s'agit de penser l'enchaînement des choses singulières
et de leurs idées, sans oublier "l'ordre géométrique" et l'ordre de l'intellect" (ou
l'ordre "conforme à l'intellect").2 Il y a donc au moins deux notions d'ordre,
homonymes et cependant antithétiques. On peut tout de suite remarquer -
différence en effet essentielle - que l'une exige la notion corrélative de désordre,
ce qui n'est à aucun degré le cas de l'autre, pas plus que la notion de
perfection entendue comme réalité n'appelle comme corrélat l'imperfection.
Mais il n'est nullement évident qu'elles n'impliquent pas l'une et l'autre une
finalité. Il ne suffit pas de le dire. D'ailleurs Spinoza, s'il pratique
constamment la différence de ces deux notions, ne s'en explique nulle part, ne
donnant pas ce qu'on pourrait appeler une définition adéquate de l'ordre.
Or l'objection d'Oldenburg touche un point central de la philosophie de
la Physique. Ce qui marque la "coupure" entre les physiques antiques (à
commencer par celle d'Aristote) et la physique moderne (telle qu'on la voit se
constituer avec Galilée justifiant la "simplicité" du copernicanisme et des lois
du mouvement, et se réfléchir pour la première fois avec la définition
cartésienne des "lois de la Nature") ce n'est pas le fait que les unes se
référeraient à la notion d'ordre ou de symétrie et pas l'autre. C'est le fait que
les premières appliquent des principes mécanistes ou finalistes à l'explication
du visible, des formes symétriques directement observables dans la Nature,
tandis que la seconde recherche la symétrie des lois mathématiques elles-mêmes
(ce qu'on définira plus tard comme leur invariance pour certains groupes de
transformations). La symétrie des lois n'exclut pas le désordre apparent, c'est-
à-dire la complexité irrégulière ou l'évolution divergente des phénomènes (qui
dépend des "conditions initiales").3 Lénoncé cartésien (d'où se déduisent les
"lois de la Nature" ou "lois du mouvement") est bien, malgré son imprécision,
le prototype des principes d'apparence téléologique qui assurent la cohérence
et la "simplicité" de la théorie physique, et qui prendront la forme de lois de
conservation ou de principes d'invariance. Sans symétrie en ce sens, la
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 63

possibilité même d'une explication causale resterait indéterminée. Ce n'est

donc pas solliciter abusivement la réplique d'Oldenburg que d'y lire
rétrospectivement l'alternative suivante: ou bien une science de la Nature doit
être guidée dans la recherche des causes et leur détermination (mathématique)
par des principes d'ordre; ou bien elle en dénie la nécessité et prétend s'en
passer radicalement pour n'avoir affaire qu'à la causalité "pure." Mais alors elle
ne sera jamais une science au sens de la théorie physique (ce qui en effet
semble bien être le cas de la théorie spinoziste des corps, à la différence cette
fois de la physique de Descartes lui-même, malgré toutes ses erreurs, pour ne
pas parler de celles de Leibniz ou de Newton).*
Mais inversement, il n'est pas interdit de rechercher chez Spinoza les
éléments d'une interrogation adressée à la physique (ou à la philosophie de la
physique). Quels critères distinguent a prion un concept scientifique d'ordre,
de "simplicité" ou de symétrie d'une notion théologique ou métaphysique du
même nom, suspendue à des postulats tels que "la nature ne fait rien pour
rien," à la croyance dans une création ou dans une harmonie préétablie? Et
dans quelle mesure la déduction des lois de la nature opérée par le physicien
à partir de tels principes (si bien vérifiés qu'ils soient expérimentalement)
correspond-elle en fait à une abstraction, ce qui revient à dire que le physicien
ne connnaît pas les choses elles-mêmes, mais seulement une "nature" théorique,
par hypothèse simplifiée de façon à coïncider avec le domaine des régularités
universelles, ou des situations d'expérience dans lesquelles ces régularités se
réalisent approximativement? Qu'est-ce qu'une "chose" si ce n'est pas l'objet
d'une expérience organisée d'après l'idée d'un ordre qui la rend possible? On
le voit, à l'horizon de cette discussion et de son inachèvement, ce n'est rien
moins que la question du "principe de raison" qui se profile.
Tburnons-nous maintenant vers les ultimes lettres échangées en 1674-
1676 entre Spinoza, le médecin Schuller et son ami Tfcchirnhaus (lui aussi
philosophe-savant, correspondant de la Royal Society et de Leibniz), qui avaient
entrepris ensemble de lire YEthique. En dépit de son apparent désordre, cette
discussion se concentre autour de trois points vraiment névralgiques, qui
s'avèrent étroitement liés:
1. Quelle est la nature de la définition d'une "chose réelle," exprimant
Yessence de la chose, ou la "cause efficiente" de toutes ses propriétés (par
opposition à l'énoncé d'une simple propriété caractéristique)? (Lettres 59, 60,
82, 83)
2. En quoi consiste la "correspondance" entre la Pensée et l'Etendue, et
plus généralement entre la Pensée et "tout autre" attribut, qu'énonce E IIP7?
TSchirnhaus relève à ce propos deux paradoxes au moins apparents: d'une part
la Pensée, comprenant toutes les idées adéquates de toutes les choses dont
l'essence suit de tous les attributs, semble ainsi dotée "d'une extension bien plus
grande que tous les autres attributs"; d'autre part les choses singulières, en tant
que modes de la substance, semblent devoir "être exprimées d'une infinité de
manières" (c'est-à-dire dériver simultanément d'une infinité d'attributs), alors
que la définition de l'individu humain centrée sur l'âme "idée du corps" semble,
elle, signifier que l'essence d'une chose singulière comprend seulement un mode
64 ETIENNE BALIBAR

de la pensée et un mode d'un autre attribut déterminé. (Lettres 63, 64, 65, 70,
72)
3. Enfin comment s'effectue à partir du (seul) attribut de l'étendue infinie
la déduction (et, corrélativement, la production) de l'existence des choses
singulières, conçues comme des "parties" de la matière ou des "corps," ayant une
figure et un mouvement déterminés? (Lettres 69, 70, 80 à 83)
Toutes ces questions ont en commun d'impliquer à nouveau les rapports
entre Vinfini (de la substance, de chaque attribut, des effets qui suivent d'une
cause ou d'une essence), la causalité (de la substance, de l'étendue infinie en
elle-même, des modes entre eux, voire - c'est le "contre-sens" de Tfcchirnhaus -
de l'objet d'une idée sur cette idée), enfin la singularité réelle (des essences et
des existences). Elles traduisent aussi l'embarras du lecteur de Spinoza devant
le renversement qu'il fait subir à la représentation traditionnelle du "possible"
et du "réel," inscrivant toute pensée d'un possible dans l'ordre du réel au lieu
d'en faire, soit l'anticipation de son actualisation, soit l'univers logique dont il
tirerait les conditions de son existence.
Or deux apories ne peuvent manquer de nous frapper dans cet échange
d'arguments (lui aussi interrompu, mais par la mort). Quand Spinoza est
sollicité de clarifier la façon dont, de la définition causale d'une chose réelle,
découlent une infinité de propriétés ou de conséquences, il donne comme
"exemple" la définition de Dieu, alors que le point de la difficulté réside
manifestement dans les choses singulières (lettre 83). Surtout, quand il est
sollicité par Tfcchirnhaus (qui a cru trouver dans la llème partie de YEthique
l'ébauche prometteuse d'une physique) d'expliquer comment l'existence des
modes étendus se déduit (ou se construit) à partir de l'essence de leur attribut,
Spinoza commence par déplacer la question en réitérant sa critique de la
conception cartésienne "géométrique" de retendue-matière, à la fois quantitative
et inerte. Mais il avoue finalement que sur cette question il n'a "pas réussi
jusqu'à présent à disposer quoi que ce soit avec ordre": bref il n'a rien réussi
à démontrer (lettres 81 et 83).
Devons-nous craindre de solliciter cet aveu? Dans l'alternative classique
d'un mécanisme géométrique à la Descartes et d'un dynamisme à la Leibniz
(auquel font penser les voies explorées par TSchirnhaus, tenté de retrouver dans
chaque mode ou individualité réelle une infinité expressive qui, implicitement,
l'identifie à nouveau à une substance), Spinoza semble à la recherche d'une
troisième voie ou d'un dépassement. Mais, dans ce contexte au moins, il ne
parvient pas à s'en expliquer autrement que de façon générale. On retrouve
ici l'aporie de la physique spinozistc (et de sa philosophie comme méta-
physique), telle que la faisaient pressentir les lettres à Boyle-Oldcnburg, avant
l'élaboration de YEthique, On retrouve la difficulté que représente la
multiplicité des choses existantes, susceptibles de se "composer" ou de se
"convenir" en formant des "touts" et des "parties" réels (dont la "configuration
de l'univers entier": faciès totius universi), bien que leurs essences n'expriment
que des modes de la substance unique. On découvre, de plus, qu'elle peut se
lire simultanément à deux niveaux. Elle porte sur l'individualité des choses
singulières, conçue à la fois comme une essence et comme un effet de la
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 65

"connexion" causale universelle. Et elle porte sur le sens et la fonction

épistémologique de la notion d'attribut, puisque celle-ci représente à la fois une
essence à partir de laquelle une infinité d'autres essences peuvent être déduites,
et une existence constituée par l'enchaînement infini de toutes les existences
données qui peuvent s'affecter réciproquement.
Le dilemme est ainsi reconduit: ou bien une ontologie cohérente en elle-
même, mais qui ne "convient" pas à la fondation d'une physique, ou bien une
juxtaposition énigmatique entre l'ontologie et la théorie des corps, qu'on
retrouve peut-être, en effet, à chaque grand tournant du système. Cette
interprétation est celle de Gueroult, qui considère que " YEthique doit se fonder
sur la physique autant que sur la métaphysique" (Gueroult (1974), 145), mais
qui conclut par ailleurs à la persistance d'un problème dans l'unification des
différents concepts de "cause" par l'immanence spinoziste (Gueroult (1968),
409-412). Ce qui le conduit à considérer qu'il y a chez Spinoza deux
"physiques": l'une serait "abstraite," "purement relationnelle," étudierait la
constitution des Individus comme modes de l'étendue, et serait en fait une
variante du mécanisme excluant toute finalité; l'autre serait "concrète,"
exprimant un "substratum métaphysique," et nous ferait passer "dans l'intérieur
des choses," où leur conatus communique directement avec l'unité de la
substance - la nécessité de ce passage étant signalée par l'impossibilité
d'appliquer à "l'Individu suprême, à savoir l'Univers entier" le scheme de la
presssion des ambiants (Gueroult (1974), 145-189). A l'inverse Negri
(L'anomalie sauvage, puissance et pouvoir chez Spinoza, tr. fr. Paris 1982, p. 95-
96) considère que l'être spinoziste, d'abord déterminé comme univoque sur le
terrain de l'ontologie, "se présente comme être équivoque sur le terrain de la
connaissance": c'est pourquoi "la tension qui se libère ici ne peut être résolue
que sur le terrain de la pratique." Il voit le système évoluer d'une utopie de
l'être comme plénitude vers une "ontologie de la constitution" pratique du réel,
dans laquelle "l'infini n'est pas organisé comme objet, mais comme sujet" (p.
263), c'est-à-dire comme puissance de la multitude et multiplicité des
puissances, des "forces productives" s'organisant collectivement en tendant vers
leur libération (p. 283 sv.). Dans YEthique, nous aurions le passage l'une méta-
physique à une autre, l'indice du passage étant constitué par "l'extinction"
progessive de la notion d'attribut, ultime trace des métaphysiques de l'émanation
(p. 110, 118-123, 291, 322, etc.).
Essayons de rouvrir cette question, sans admettre comme évidents les
termes de "physique" et de "métaphysique."

Les deux voies de production

des choses singulières et la pluralité des "Mondes"

La correspondance avec Tßchirnhaus, en dépit des incompréhensions de l'un des

interlocuteurs et du retrait de l'autre, manifeste la possibilité de comprendre
le rapport de la substance, des attributs et des modes selon deux schémas
antithétiques, dont chacun représente l'amorce d'une ontologie tout-à-fait
différente.
66 ETIENNE BALIBAR

Ou bien - c'est ce que j'appellerai la voie A - le concept de la substance

est "distribué" sur une infinité d'attributs distincts, qui en expriment l'essence
chacun à sa façon, c'est-à-dire que tous sont également substantiels. Et ce sont
ces attributs qui sont ensuite affectés de modifications finies ou infinies, d'où
résultent en dernière analyse les "choses singulières," à la fois quant à leur
esssence et quant à leur existence. Les choses singulières sont alors produites
à partir de la substance par la médiation des attributs, selon l'essence et la
causalité propre de chacun. On se représentera alors que les choses singulières
sont "dans" (ou "de") la substance par la médiation d'attributs qui sont eux-
mêmes déjà "dans" (ou "de") la substance, et que nous ne pouvons pas
contourner, car ils n'ont rien de "commun," si ce n'est la substance même qu'ils
expriment et que nous connaissons par eux. Les choses singulières ont alors
en quelque sorte une "double" singularité: en tant qu'elles se distinguent entre
elles "modalement" (ce qui ne veut pas dire abstraitement ou fictivement), et
en tant qu'elles se distinguent des modes de tous les autres attributs. Par
exemple une idée se distingue d'une autre idée et elle se distingue d'un corps.
Ou bien un rapport déterminé de mouvement et de repos, caractéristique d'un
individu corporel, se distingue d'un autre rapport également déterminé, et il se
distingue de n'importe quelle idée (y compris l'idée de ce corps qu'il forme,
autrement dit de son "âme").
Mais une médiation est aussi une séparation: la différence modale,
redoublée par la différence attributive (par l'assignation des choses dans le
"champ" d'un attribut déterminé: pensée, étendue ou autre), assure la différence
de tous les modes (y compris, bien entendu, les modes infinis) et de la
substance elle-même, elle sépare l'essence et de l'existence des modes de
l'essence et de l'existence de la substance, l'être causé de l'être causant.
Si nous renversons cette proposition, nous obtenons ce que j'appellerai la
voie B: les choses singulières doivent être pensées comme des modes de la
substance, sans aucun "intermédiaire," car il n'y a pas d'autre puissance
productive de modes que la substance elle-même, pas de différence ontologique
entre l'être des modes et l'être de la substance (qui est leur être). Ce qui
revient à dire que la tension entre l'un et le multiple, l'indivisible et le
divisible, l'immuable et le changeant, l'infini et le fini, est tout entière contenue
dans cette dérivation ou ce "passage" de la substance à ses modes tel qu'il
s'effectue "à l'intérieur" de la substance elle-même. Alors que, nous le verrons,
il est dans le logique de la voie A de privilégier les modes infinis pour en faire
une médiation supplémentaire entre la substance "spécifiée" par ses attributs et
les choses singulières ou les individus, il est dans la logique de la voie Β de
considérer que les modesfinissont les "véritables" modes, ceux dont l'inhérence
à la substance manifeste le mieux l'originalité du spinozisme, par opposition à
toute doctrine qui fait du fini une dégradation de l'infini, voire une réalité
"intermédiaire entre l'infini et le néant" (comme Descartes est amené à l'écrire).
C'est pourquoi la façon dont chaque mode fini "enveloppe" l'infini est ici le
problème décisif de l'ontologie.
Dans ces conditions, que signifie le concept d'attribut, ou plutôt à quoi
sert-il? Précisément à rendre ce passage immédiatement intelligible, tout en
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 67

posant qu'il peut être compris d'une infinité de façons. Chaque attribut
constitue une façon, elle-même singulière, d'appréhender l'inhérence des modes
à la substance. En d'autres termes il est une façon de penser la (dé)
multiplication de l'indivisible et, corrélativement, l'essence commune d'une
multiplicité d'essences absolument distinctes. Eattribut, en se "concevant par
soi" (E IP10), tout comme la substance elle-même, en "exprimant une essence
éternelle et infinie" (E IP11), nie donc pour nous, par là même, toute distance
entre les modes et la substance. Pour parler un autre langage, il ne s'apparente
pas à une médiation, mais à une unité de contraires immédiatement donnée.
Ainsi l'étendue infinie (ou l'infini d'étendue) permet de penser l'unité d'une
infinité de choses singulières en tant que "corps" convenant ou disconvenant
avec d'autres corps; la pensée infinie (ou l'infini de pensée) permet de penser
l'unité substantielle d'une infinité de choses singulières en tant qu'"idées"
enchaînées à d'autres idées qui les affirment ou les nient. Mais la différence
des attributs ne s'ajoute pas à la différence des modes: dire qu'une idée "diffère"
d'une autre idée et dire au même sens qu'elle "diffère" d'un corps - si
abstraitement ou transcendantalement qu'on l'entende - serait une absurdité.
Ce qui nous conduit effectivement à penser que les choses singulières, chacune
définie par son essence ou sa cause, doivent, exactement comme la substance
elle-même et parce qu'elles ne sont que ses effets, être pensées selon l'infinité
des attributs (l'infinité des "infinis").
Dans la compréhension que notre entendement peut en avoir, à toute
chose conçue comme un corps doit être unie une idée de la même chose,
autrement dit "son âme" (omnia sunt animata). Mais cette compréhension ne
saurait épuiser ni l'infinité de la substance ni celle des modes. Dans cette
perspective, la "finitude" de l'individu humain se marquerait d'abord par le fait
qu'il ne perçoit jamais qu'une partie des attributs de la substance, c'est-à-dire
qu'il ne perçoit les choses singulières que sous certains attributs (en fait deux).
On ne saurait toutefois en conclure que toute connaissance adéquate des choses
lui est interdite, ni même qu'il "manque" ainsi de quoi que ce soit, puisque la
connaissance des choses n'est rien d'autre que la connaissance des causes et que
celle-ci est adéquate dans n'importe quel attribut.
Réciproquement, il nous faut supposer que toute idée est essentiellement
l'âme de quelque chose, qui peut être conçu comme un corps, ou autrement.
C'est pourtant ce que, semble-t-il, Spinoza refuse explicitement dans la lettre
66 à Tfcchirnhaus, mais pour introduire l'idée difficile d'une infinité d'âmes,
"expressions" de chaque chose dans l'entendement infini de Dieu, qu'on ne
retrouve pas dans YEthique (du moins je ne l'y ai pas trouvée).5
Cette alternative a-t-elle un sens spinoziste? Rien n'est moins sûr. Il est
clair pourtant, que, sous cette forme ou d'autres voisines, elle est à l'oeuvre
dans les lectures divergentes de Spinoza, dont l'incompatibilité mutuelle ne
cesse nous étonner. La voie A semble se prêter particulièrement bien à une
lecture mécaniste, dans laquelle chaque attribut représente une multiplicité
infinie en son genre, suffisante pour expliciter un type d'enchaînement des
causes ou des raisons. Par exemple l'ordre et la connexion des choses en tant
qu'elles sont les modes de l'étendue ou des corps est entièrement intelligible
68 ΕΉΕΝΝΕ BALIBAR

comme une composition "extérieure" de mouvements, une "pression des

ambiants" (Gueroult), etc.6 Analogiquement, Tordre et la connexion des idées
en tant qu'elles sont des modes de la pensée serait intelligible comme un
"espace logique" de leurs relations de composition. A l'inverse, la voie Β
suggère inévitablement que la réalité des choses est encore au-delà de ce
qu'exprime chaque multiplicité numérique, donc qu'elle correspond à une
infinité "intérieure." Elle se prête tout naturellement à une lecture vitaliste ou
énergétiste. Qui prétendrait que l'interprétation du conatus des essences,
notamment, a jamais échappé à ces dilemmes?
Chacune des deux voies induit en effet sa propre lignée d'interprétation
des catégories fondamentales. Elle fait ressortir, par les obstacles auxquels elle
se heurte, la fonction statégique de certains énoncés de Spinoza, mais aussi la
difficulté de les concilier en première lecture.
Dans la voie A, la substance n'agit en fait que par ses attributs. D'où la
tentation de "substantialiser" ceux-ci. Spinoza n'emploie-t-il pas des expressions
comme "chaque être doit être conçu sous un certain attribut" (E IP10S1), "les
modes de tel attribut" (avant tout IP25C et IIP6; mais également IPP21-23;
IP28D; IIP5D; IIP7D), "la substance corporelle" (à vrai dire, uniquement dans
la partie introductive de l'Ethique1: IP13C; IP15S, et dans la correspondance)?
Dans la définition complète de Dieu, qui en fait la substance "consistant en une
infinité d'attributs dont chacun exprime une essence éternelle et infinie," ce qui
devient premier, essentiel, c'est alors l'infinité (comme puissance infinie) de
chaque attribut. Quant au fait que la substance (Dieu) "possède" une infinité
d'attributs, ou plutôt consiste en attributs infinis d'une infinité de manières
(pensons à la difficulté classique de traduction du mot constans: "constituée par"
ou "consistant en"), il est difficile de ne pas le percevoir comme secondaire,
surajouté à l'idée principale. Celle-ci serait déjà clairement exprimée avec la
distinction des deux attributs que nous pouvons nommer: c'est-à-dire justement
le minimum requis pour formuler une telle idée. A moins que nous soyons
tentés d'en faire la forme sous laquelle se perpétuerait chez Spinoza l'idée
théologique d'une eminente perfection divine, d'un être "infiniment plus réel"
que celui dont notre entendement fini peut avoir l'idée.
Ce n'est plus alors l'attribut dont la fonction peut sembler évanescente ou
formelle. C'est la substance elle-même. A quoi sert-elle? On croit le voir
cependant, en passant d'un point de vue épistémologique à un point de vue
ontologique. Uautonomie des attributs pose le problème de leur "corres-
pondance," sans laquelle aucune connaissance objectivement vraie ne serait
possible. IIP7 affirmera à son tour la réalité de cette correspondance, sous la
forme d'une stricte réciprocité. Et la substance sera alors le "fondement" de
cette correspondance, au sens d'une garantie toujours déjà acquise. Mais aussi,
il faut bien le dire, d'un mystère. Pour que la substance assure la
correspondance de deux attributs donnés, il faut en effet qu'elle les "comprenne"
dans une réalité supérieure, qui les "précède." C'est ici que l'infinité d'infinis
qui définit la substance (presque une contradiction dans les termes!) devient
opérante. Mais cette infinité d'infinis est pour nous un mystère: paradoxe,
puisque c'est elle qui fonde la possibilité de la connaissance. On imagine trop
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 69

bien quelque adversaire retournant alors contre Spinoza l'expression d'nasile de

l'ignorance." D'ailleurs cela n'a pas manqué.
On découvrirait ainsi chez Spinoza une surprenante analogie à la fois avec
Descartes et avec Kant. Avec Descartes, puisque la garantie de l'objectivité des
idées passerait de la véracité divine à la productivité de la substance, de la
"création des vérités éternelles" à l'unité substantielle des attributs, mais sans
se dégager, en fait, de son arbitraire: au contraire, celui-ci ne concernerait plus
seulement notre compréhension de la garantie divine, mais serait le propre du
Dieu-substance, toujours en retrait de ses expressions. Avec Kant également,
dans la mesure où le "schématisme de l'imagination transcendantale," fondement
de la correspondance entre les conditions de possibilité de l'expérience et celles
des objets de l'expérience eux-mêmes, demeure chez lui un "art caché." Mais
ce qui ne fait pas problème chez Kant (puisqu'il s'agit justement d'établir
l'impossibilité d'une connaissance des choses en soi et la limitation intrinsèque
de la raison pure) soulèverait une grave difficulté chez Spinoza, qui n'a cessé
(contre Descartes) de soutenir que faire de l'infini un inconnaissable rendrait
toute connaissance humaine impossible.
Tout ceci peut se dire autrement. Spinoza pense la "correspondance" entre
les attributs comme identité des connexions causales dans chacun des attributs.
Dans la perspective de la voie A, cette identité se construira de proche en
proche, par une descente toujours conforme à la nature des attributs. Le
premier moment, décisif, sera la "correspondance" entre les modes infinis des
différents attributs (E IPP21-23; lettre 64). D'abord entre les modes infinis
immédiats: universalité du mouvement d'une part, idée de Dieu dans son propre
entendement infini d'autre part, c'est-à-dire correspondance entre deux systèmes
de "vérités éternelles," qu'on peut interpréter l'un comme celui des "lois de la
nature" (étendue), l'autre comme celui des "lois de la pensée." Puis, franchis-
sant une nouvelle étape, correspondance entre les modes infinis médiats: la
faciès totius universi, et l'ensemble de toutes les idées, qui font l'un et l'autre
partie de la "nature naturée." Enfin, dernière étape, correspondance entre des
"parties" de l'univers étendu et des "parties" de l'ensemble des idées (ou des
complexes d'idées), jusqu'aux choses singulières. La structure complète de cette
correspondance exprimerait l'identité de l'ordre causal des choses et de l'ordre
rationnel des idées.
Mais à cet enchaînement il faut à son tour une cause. Si la substance est
cette cause, elle sera la "cause des causes." Ce qui est compatible avec l'idée
de Dieu "absolument cause première" (IP16C3). Mais peu compatible avec
l'idée de Dieu "cause immanente, non transitive, de toutes les choses ... qui sont
en lui-même" (IP 18). Et moins encore avec l'idée que "au même sens {eo
sensu) où Dieu est dit cause de soi, il doit être dit aussi cause de toutes
choses" (IP25&S) et que "Dieu ne peut pas être dit proprement cause éloignée
(remotà) des choses singulières" (IP28&S), autrement dit qu'il n'y a pas de
différence de réalité entre les effets de la causalité divine, qu'ils soient infinis
ou finis. Comme on pouvait s'y attendre, la représentation de la substance
comme cause des attributs, eux-mêmes cause des modes (ou des attributs
70 ΕΉΕΝΝΕ BALIBAR

comme des super-modes de la substance, eux-mêmes faisant l'objet d'une

modification "seconde") est l'impasse de la voie A. 8
Revenons alors à notre voie B. Ici les modes sont modes de la substance
elle-même, sans intermédiaires, et, à la différence de tout-à-1'heure, l'infinité des
attributs va révêtir une importance fondamentale, qui l'emporte d'abord sur le
fait que chaque attribut soit lui-même "infini en son genre," ou plutôt qui ne
peut en être dissociée. D'emblée cette infinité exclut, comme inadéquat à
l'essence de la substance, le dénombrement des attributs, et même leur
dénomination par des termes exclusifs qui ne peut représenter, au mieux, qu'un
"auxiliaire de l'imagination" (lettre 12). Mais qu'est ce, positivement, que
l'infinité des attributs, s'il ne s'agit pas d'un mystère mais d'un concept ou
d'une essence?
Relisons IPP16-18, qui parlent explicitement de l'infinité des attributs: "De
la nécessité de la nature divine doivent suivre en une infinité de modes une
infinité de choses (infinita infinitis modis)> c'est-à-dire tout ce qui peut tomber
sous un entendement infini." Donc "rien ne peut être hors de lui [= de Dieu],
par quoi il soit déterminé à agir ou contraint d'agir." Donc Dieu "est cause
immanente mais non transitive de toutes choses," c'est-à-dire qu'il est cause "par
les seules lois de sa nature" de "choses qui sont en lui-même," et
réciproquement, "en dehors de Dieu nulle chose qui soit en elle-mêmes, ne
peut être donnée." Propositions quasi axiomatiques (IP 16 "doit être évidente
pour chacun"), qui signifient que la puissance divine ne comporte aucune
limitation (pas même au sens d'une "auto-limitation," recours habituel des
théologies de l'émanation), donc aucune extériorité. Elle agit entièrement en
elle-même. Bref, l'idée de l'infinité des attributs enveloppe d'abord la thèse de
l'immanence, avec sa dissymétrie fondamentale: l'essence des modes est autre
que celle de la substance (puisqu'ils ne sont pas infiniment infinis), mais la
substance n'existe pas ailleurs que ses modes. Ni dans un "autre lieu" physique
ou intellectuel, ni, comme chez les mystiques, dans un retrait de l'Etre, un
néant primordial, "autre" absolu de tous les étants.
Pourtant, si la substance n'agit qu'en elle-même, sans jamais s'extérioriser,
elle agit nécessairement en elle-même. La difficulté est de penser effectivement,
d'une façon conceptuelle ou déterminée, cette action ou cette production
d'effets dont résultent les choses finies et toutes leurs actions mutuelles
("transitives"), en tant que réalisation de la puissance divine infinie. Tel est
précisément l'objet de la fameuse IIP7 (prdo et connexio idearum idem est ac
ordo et connnexio rerum), à condition de l'interpréter du point de vue de
l'infinité des attributs.
A nouveau, Spinoza lui-même le souligne, il s'agit d'un énoncé quasi-
axiomatique. La tradition le présente comme posant un "parallélisme" des
attributs (terme dont Spinoza ne s'est jamais servi). En réalité IIP7 ne vient
pas, après-coup, conférer une propriété épistémologiquement remarquable à des
attributs déjà donnés. Elle ne suit pas de leur distinction, mais elle en règle
l'usage. Si l'on croit y lire la désignation de deux attributs exemplaires, c'est
par une illusion rétrospective, prisonnière de dualismes métaphysiques et
épistémologiques que Spinoza, en ce point précis, se propose de supprimer une
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 71

fois pour toutes. On ne prête pas suffisamment attention au fait que, dans cet
énoncé, il n'est pas question d'étendue, ni d'attributs juxtaposés, mais de
"choses" qui peuvent être pensées sous n'importe quel attribut (y compris la
pensée infinie elle-même) et d'"idées," autrement dit de l'adéquation intrinsèque
des idées des choses, à condition que les unes et les autres soient pensées
comme des causes (ce qu'indique d'ailleurs la variante ordo et connexio causarum
IIP7S.)
Mais cette adéquation nous reconduit immédiatement à l'infinité de la
substance. Entre "l'ordre et la connexion des choses" et "l'ordre et la connexion
des idées," il ne saurait être question de correspondance; au sens où les
"éléments" de deux ensembles ("choses," "idées") se correspondraient terme à
terme et soutiendraient entre eux des relations homologues. Il ne s'agit pas en
effet d'appliquer un tableau des idées sur un tableau des choses, pour
représenter la causalité des unes par celle des autres. Ce que dit exactement
IIP7, c'est qu'il y a identité d'ordre-et-connexion, que "c'est le même" {idem) et
non pas autre chose (le différent voire le différant), autrement dit qu'il y a une
seule réalité à penser comme "ordre-et-connexion." Réciproquement le même,
l'identique, ne peut être pensé dans sa réalité que comme "ordre-et-connexion"
(et non pas comme événement isolé). Cette réalité ne peut donc être que la
substance elle-même, en tant qu'elle est identique à la cause, ^expression
pratiquement indécomposable nordo et connexion (qu'on peut ici suggérer de
traduire par "ordre de connexion," en exploitant une figure classique de la
grammaire latine), signifie l'essence de la substance. Non pas cependant,
comme le faisait la définition initiale (cause de soi, existant par soi et conçue
par soi), de façon encore nominale et abstraite. Mais synthétiquement, telle
que l'exposition de la 1ère partie parvenue à son terme permet maintenant de
la comprendre: comme l'identité de tous les sens du concept de "cause" dans
l'activité immanente à la puissance infinie, ou, ce qui zeisent au même, comme
la complexité interne de la cause. C'est pourquoi IIP7D peut être présentée
par Spinoza comme une autre formulation de IA4: "la connaissance de l'effet
dépend de la connaissance de la cause et l'enveloppe elle-même (eamdem
involvit)"
Cette autre formulation permet de lever l'équivoque de l'expression causa
suiy qui risquait toujours d'être comprise comme l'application "à elle-même"
d'une notion transitive de causalité (ou comme réflexivité d'une "relation" χ R
y, en posant χ = y), et d'aboutir à singulariser une cause première ou à
l'extraire du complexe des causes. Mais elle exclut tout aussi bien que les
choses singulières nous apparaissent comme le simple phénomène d'une chose
en soi. L'infinité des attributs exprime positivement cette double négation. Elle
pose l'identité à elle-même de la connexion nécessaire d'une infinité de
singularités ou de différences. La substance apparaît ainsi comme puissance
d'individuation, cause productrice de ses modes parce qu'elle se cause en les
causant d'une façon unique comme causes les uns des autres.
Or de cette puissance il existe une idée adéquate. "Les attributs expriment
l'essence de la substance"; chacun d'eux "exprime la réalité ou l'être (realitatem
72 ETIENNE BALIBAR

sive esse) de la substance" (IPIOSI): sans qu'il soit besoin de le comparer avec
d'autres, il réalise l'ordre de connexion de tous les modes de la substance.
Mais chacun d'eux exprime par là-même, dans sa propre infinité, l'infinité de
tous les autres. Aucune idée adéquate (se réalisant elle-même commme ordre
de connexion, c'est-à-dire produisant nécessairement la série de ses propres
effets) ne saurait donc introduire un écart dans la réalité, une coupure de
principe entre la connaissance et son objet. Si, par une hypothèse qui est une
fiction, les "choses" n'étaient pas des "causes" réalisant la causalité même de la
substance, elles ne seraient pas connaissables selon la causalité des idées.
Inversement, dans les choses il n'y a rien d'autre à connaître que les singularités
déterminées d'une puissance unique de causer et d'être causé.
Est-ce à dire que la voie B, telle que nous venons de l'esquisser, ne
comporte aucune difficulté? Evidemment pas. La première, c'est que dans
cette perspective, au lieu de substantialiser les attributs, nous pourrions être
tentés de les "irréaliser," en les considérant comme de simples "points de vue"
conceptuels sur la substance. A la limite - autre façon de lire Kant dans
Spinoza - les attributs seraient comme des formes transcendantales délimitant
les conditions a priori sous lesquelles l'essence causale de la substance et de ses
modes peut être conçue par un sujet. Cette tentation se heurte à l'affirmation
liminaire de Spinoza selon laquelle l'essence de la substance est d'être "conçue
par soi." Et surtout elle contredit ce que nous venons de poser: que l'infinité
de chaque attribut est indissociable de l'infinité collective des attributs et lui est
même en un sens identique. Elle ne saurait donc constituer un point de vue
ou une limitation.
Mais si l'identité d'une infinité d'attributs exprime le fait que la même
nécessité causale, comprise dans l'essence de la substance, produit les "choses"
et les "idées," une autre difficulté surgit. Dans l'ontologie spinoziste, les choses
et les idées (qui sont elles-mêmes des choses) doivent être conçues
immédiatement comme des causes. Pourtant Spinoza maintient une distinction
entre les essences et les existences (sauf précisément pour la substance elle-
même). Il semble alors que la scission entre les choses et les idées va se
trouver reportée au niveau de la différence entre les essences et les existences.
Nous savons en effet que les essences sont absolument positives, et ne peuvent
se nier entre elles. C'est pourquoi, notamment, le faux et le vrai ne se
détruisent pas réciproquement: "Rien de ce qu'une idée fausse a de positif n'est
ôté par la présence du vrai" en tant qu'elles expriment adéquatement quelque
essence, c'est-à-dire qu'elles sont l'idée d'une modification de la puissance
divine. Par contre certaines existences sont compatibles entre elles, tandis que
d'autres se détruisent mutuellement, ce qui fait qu'elles ne peuvent "être dans
un même sujet" (IIIPP4,5). C'est pourquoi Spinoza ignore toute problématique
des "compossibles" ou de la "compatibilité des essences," et transfère le principe
de contradiction du domaine des essences dans celui des existences.9
Pour rendre compte de cette différence, qui risque fort de se transformer
en un abîme, il semble que nous devions "dédoubler" à nouveau la nécessité
causale. La notion d'attribut peut-elle, sans équivocité, nous faire passer de la
causalité des essences, qui inscrit les choses singulières dans une série infinie
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 73

d'essences également positives, à Tordre des existences, dans lequel s'établissent

des "rapports de forces," entre des causes particulières à la puissance inégale,
agissant les unes sur les autres pour se conserver, se faire varier ou se détruire?
Ne serons-nous pas obligés d'invoquer ici l'irrationalité pure et simple d'un
fait? Tbl pourrait être le sens de l'axiome (unique) de la IVe partie (qui bien
entendu doit s'appliquer dans tous les attributs, y compris si la "chose" dont il
parle est une idée existante), axiome fondamental pour l'éthique, dans lequel
nous passons de la puissance comme cause à la puissance comme droit naturel:
"Il n'est donné dans la nature aucune chose singulière qu'il n'en soit donné une
autre plus puissante et plus forte. Mais si une chose quelconque est donnée,
une autre plus puissante, par laquelle la première peut être détruite, est
donnée."
Cependant la positivité des essences et la conflictualité des existences sont
l'une et l'autre requises pour penser la puissance propre aux choses singulières,
ou le conatus par lequel elles "s'efforcent" de persévérer dans leur être. Chaque
chose singulière, ou mieux chaque individu réel est donc conçu comme un point
(ou moment) d'identification de l'ordre des essences et de l'ordre des existences.
D'autre part, dans la totalité de chaque attribut infini, et même dans la totalité
des modes pensés sous cet attribut (par exemple la faciès totius universi, qui est
elle aussi un individu, éternellement identique à lui-même), les rapports de
puissance coïncident avec une intériorité essentielle, entendue "du point de vue
de l'éternité" (sub specie aeternï). A ces deux niveaux nous retrouvons quelque
chose comme la présence immédiate de la substance. Mais, comme le sentait
Tfcchirnhaus, nous resterons fort embarrassés pour expliquer ce qui rattache
chaque individu à cette totalité infinie comme une de ses "parties" propres.
En somme, l'indication des deux voies nous permet de mettre en évidence
un noeud de difficultés interdépendantes. Y a-t-il chez Spinoza un concept
totalement unifié de la causalité, englobant de façon intelligible la production
même des choses singulières et leurs interactions, susceptible d'être exprimé de
façon équivalente en termes de "lois de la nature" et de "lois de la pensée?"
Ou bien faut-il supposer que la causalité réelle n'est pensable que spécifique
selon les différents "genres d'existence" que représenteraient les attributs - leur
commune inhérence à la substance étant alors chargée à la fois de rendre
compte de la nécessité de tous les enchaînements causals et de l'égalité qui
existe entre eux (en sorte qu'aucune forme de nécessité causale ne peut être
considérée comme le "modèle" des autres)?
D'autre part, l'individualité des choses est-elle en quelque sorte le "sous-
produit" de leur existence modale, toujours déjà pensée sous des attributs
déterminés, la difficulté étant alors de comprendre ce qui confère une essence
singulière à chaque individu, et non pas simplement une forme naturelle,
relativement stable sous certaines conditions? Ou bien faut-il considérer la
singularité des modes comme une expression directe de la puissance divine (qui,
nous l'avons vu, peut être pensée au sens le plus fort comme puissance
d'individuation), la difficulté étant alors de ne pas conférer aux essences
individuelles le statut d'archétypes, et corrélativement aux existences celui d'une
74 ΕΉΕΝΝΕ BALIBAR

participation aux essences, dont les attributs fourniraient en quelque sorte la

"matière"?
Formellement, ces questions retrouvent des dilemmes classiques de la
philosophie. Elles obligent à se demander si ce sont les concepts spinozistes
de substance, d'attribut et de mode qui prêtent indéfiniment à équivoque, ou
si, au contraire, leur articulation étrange n'est pas la "solution" trouvée par
Spinoza aux antinomies de la métaphysique, une solution qui paradoxalement,
dans les mots mêmes de la métaphysique, exige que nous en sortions.
^impression d'une équivoque viendrait alors tout simplement de ce que,
désarticulant la démonstration spinoziste, nous ne cessons de projeter à
nouveau sur ses concepts les présupposés que Spinoza considère comme
imaginaires et qu'il veut dépasser: soit ceux d'une anthropologie (dont la trace
persistante apparaît dans le problème de la "correspondance" des attributs), soit
ceux d'une théologie (qui nous pousse toujours à renverser la positivité de la
substance en négativité d'un principe qui n'est rien de ce qu'il détermine).
Pour saisir ce que Spinoza veut dire, trois conditions au moins semblent
requises.
La première, c'est de ne pas rétablir subrepticement la distinction du
possible et du réel, et l'antécédence du premier sur le second. Les "deux voies,"
séparées l'une de l'autre, sont toutes deux des entreprises de ce genre, l'une à
partir de la distinction de l'infini et du fini, l'autre à patir de la distinction de
l'essence et de l'existence. Du moins on peut les tirer en ce sens.
La seconde, c'est, comme l'a souligné fortement Macherey dans un livre
récent, de prendre au sérieux la thèse de l'infinité des attributs eux-mêmes
infinis, c'est-à-dire d'éviter de la réinscrire dans l'espace d'une multiplicité
numérique, y compris en comprenant la thèse de Yunicité de la substance
comme un prédicat numérique, c'est-à-dire comme la négation d'une pluralité.
Comment ne pas penser ici à la proposition de Wittgenstein: "Die logische
Formen sind zahllos. Darum gibt es in der Logik keine ausgezeichneten Zahlen
und darum gibt es keinen philosophischen Monismus oder Dualismus" etc.
(Tractatus, 4.128)? Le "nombre" des attributs n'a pas de signification
essentielle; ou plutôt, "dépassant tout nombre," il signifie immédiatement que,
s'il nous faut à moins de contradiction poser que la substance est une, nous ne
saurions comprendre par là qu'elle n'est rien qu'une. Si difficilement applicable
qu'elle soit en pratique (comment inscrire l'un dans la discursivité d'une
démonstration, et tout simplement dans une logique, sans le réduire au rien
qu'un?) cette thèse doit constituer la butée incontournable de notre lecture.
La troisième condition, c'est d'appliquer une interprétation analogue à
l'individualité des choses singulières. Aux antipodes des idées de species infima,
d'atome ou de substance individuelle, qui font corps avec des classifications et
des hiérarchies cosmologiques, la singularité des individus spinozistes ne signifie
ni l'irréductibilité dans une comparaison avec d'autres choses, ni l'intériorité
par opposition à l'extériorité, mais l'adéquation d'une chose à sa propre
essence, la puissance d'agir ou d'être cause. C'est pourquoi elle ne peut
s'opposer à l'idée de "notions communes," bien qu'elle s'oppose à leur
 Individualité, Causalité, Substance 75

utilisation comme des abstractions. C'est le paradoxe d'un "nominalisme," celui

de Spinoza, qui affirme l'idée de connexion nécessaire au lieu de la dissoudre.
Ces conditions sont problématiques. Mais elles font ressortir les enjeux du
problème. Au fond les embarras de Tfcchirnhaus en étaient déjà un très bon
indice. Tantôt il supposait qu'il "existe autant de mondes que d'attributs de
Dieu" (lettre 63), autrement dit un monde de l'étendue, plus un monde de la
pensée, plus d'autre mondes encore à l'infini. Tantôt il supposait que "le
monde est unique" (lettre 65), d'où il concluait qu'il doit exister "une infinité
d'expressions différentes d'une seule et même modification qui sont comme
autant de points de vue sur la réalité de la chose. L'apparence des deux voies
(l'équivocité de la substance), on le voit bien ici, est liée à notre besoin de nous
représenter la nature comme un "monde" de choses (qui peuvent être aussi des
personnes, des Etats plus ou moins stables, etc.) et les choses comme des
choses pour un "monde," leur existence comme un "être au monde," qu'il
s'agisse d'un monde pour l'homme, ou d'un monde pour Dieu.
Réciproquement, si la pensée de Spinoza (aux prises avec ses propres
notions de "Nature entière formant un seul Individu," d'"ordre de la Nature,"
mais aussi de l'homme comme "partie de la Nature") ne correspond exactement
ni à l'une ni à l'autre de ces voies, n'est ce pas qu'elle représente une tentative
pour penser une Nature qui ne soit pas un Monde - même un Monde infini -
échappant ainsi à toute "conception du monde"? Il nous faudrait cette fois
donner tort à Wittgenstein ("Die Anschauung der Welt sub specie aeterni ist
ihre Anschauung als - begrenztes - Ganzes. Das Gefühl der Welt als
begrenztes Ganzes ist das Mystische," Tractatus, 6.45), et rejoindre plutôt
l'indication d'Althusser: l'effort pour penser "une causalité qui rendît compte
de l'efficace du Tout sur ses parties, et de l'action des parties dans le Tout" fait
de Spinoza le "premier et presque unique témoin" de la pensée "d'un Tout sans
clôture" (Eléments d'autocritique, Paris 1974, p. 81).

1. Dans ses propres Principes de la philosophie de Descartes (IIPP12,13,15, Spinoza

résume la position de Descartes, qui fait de Dieu la (seule) cause de la création et de la
conservation de la "quantité de mouvement et de repos." On peut toutefois remarquer:
A) qu'il omet de spécifier que cette quantité se conserve, comme dit Descartes, "en
l'univers"; B) que cette exposition (avec IA10, auquel elle renvoie, et donc aussi IP7)
donne lieu de sa part au maximum d'interrogation et d'objection "théologiques." Ce point
serait à examiner de près dans la perspective d'une lecture des Principes de la philosophie
de Descartes comme laboratoire d'une critique du cartésianisme. Gueroult discute l'attitude
de Spinoza par rapport au principe cartésien, et il conclut: "par là est posé le problème de
la cohérence interne de la physique spinoziste," et plus loin: "on doit admettre que Spinoza
a laissé voisiner dans sa physique des doctrines incompatibles." (Gueroult (1974), 179-
181, 563-569).
2. N'oublions pas, ce qui n'arrange rien, que cette formule est de Saint Thomas, chez qui
elle joue un rôle essentiel dans la définition de la vérité à partir de la "science de Dieu":
"Unde unaquaequae res dicitur vera absolute secundum ordinem ad intellectum a quo
depended (Summa Theologica, I, Quaest. XVI, art.1).
76 ETIENNE BALIBAR

3. Cf. par exemple Eugene P. Wigner, Symmetries and Reflections, Ox Bow Press,
Woodbridge 1979. Lorsque Newton doit rendre compte de la remarquable simplicité des
lois de Kepler, c'est-à-dire de l'harmonie visible du système solaire, il lui faut supposer des
conditions initiales spécialement créées par Dieu, logiquement indépendantes des lois
physiques elles-mêmes. Idée difficile à discerner de celle de miracle.
4. Il y aurait lieu, évidemment, de se demander dans quelle mesure ce dilemme se
reproduit lorsque Spinoza lui-même se propose de constituer (dans le Traité politique) une
"science" ou théorie des individus politiques, c'est-à-dire des causes de la fluctuation des
Etats et de leur mode de "régulation."
5. Eénigme est donc la suivante: Dieu pense chaque chose (ou il y a en Dieu une idée
de chaque chose) selon une infinité d'attributs alors que "nous" la pensons seulement selon
deux attributs. Mais ce faisant Dieu ne pense "rien de plus" que nous, dès lors que nous
avons une idée adéquate.
Il est surprenant que Gueroult n'examine pas la lettre 66 lorsqu'il discute "une objection
au premier abord insurmontable, contre l'affirmation selon laquelle il y a autant d'âmes
différentes que de modes corrélatifs du Corps (sic) dans l'infinité des autres attributs" (op.
cit., II, p. 255-256). De son côté, Negri (op. cit., p. 291 et note 24) écrit: "sans doute, au
fil de son débat avec Tschirnhaus ... Spinoza parvient-il à rendre claire sa critique de
l'attribut et de toute tentative de lire son système comme une philosophie de l'émanation
... Ces lettres contiennent toutefois encore de nombreuses ambiguïtés au sujet de la théorie
de l'attribut. Il y a comme une fidélité de Spinoza à la totalité de son système "écrit," à
la totalité de son oeuvre, qui persiste alors même qu'il s'achemine vers de tout autres
solutions."
6. Il me parait douteux qu'à cet égard la possibilité de découvrir chez Spinoza
l'anticipation d'une physique des "champs" de forces (cf. Bennett (1984), p. 88 sv.) change
quelque chose au problème, d'autant qu'elle s'accompagne de la thèse explicite selon
laquelle il n'y a que deux attributs de la substance qui comptent vraiment.
7. Cest-à dire dans le processus de construction de la substance indivisible, qui est en
même temps le processus de déconstruction de la dualité cartésienne des substances, dont
sa terminologie porte nécessairement la trace.
8. Notons que Descartes pose explicitement "modes" et "attributs" comme les espèces d'un
même genre logique, qui est, conformément à la tradition aristotélicienne, l'attribution de
propriétés à un sujet: le nom d'attributs est réservé aux propriétés premières, essentielles;
celui de modes (= modes de modes ou attributs d'attributs) aux propriétés secondes,
contingentes (Principes 1,56).
9. Cf. Deleuze (1968), p. 174 sv.; et Macherey (1979), p. 208 sv.
10. Ouvr. cit., p. 118 sv.
 SPINOZA'S WORLDS:
REFLECTIONS ON BALIBAR ON SPINOZA

DANIEL GARBER
University of Chicago

Etienne Balibar is concerned with one of the central (and most difficult)
questions in Spinoza's metaphysics: what is the object of Spinoza's metaphysics?
What is this substance, these attributes, these modes that Spinoza is trying to
snare in the dense network of words that constitutes the opening parts of the
Ethics?
Balibar approaches this question with caution, care and sophistication. He
begins by outlining two exchanges that Spinoza had with correspondents,
exchanges which, Balibar argues, reveal certain tensions in Spinoza's views.
The first exchange involves Spinoza, Boyle, and Oldenburg, and took place
between 1661 and 1665. For Balibar, the importance of this exchange is the
tension it shows between Spinoza's metaphysical views, and his conception of
the physical world. On the one hand, Spinoza wants to eliminate all final
causality from nature, and with it, all beauty and deformity, order and confusion.1
But at the same time, in discussing the individuation of bodies in the physical
world, Spinoza allows himself to appeal to something very like Descartes' law
of the conservation of quantity of motion, "the prototype of principles
teleological in appearance, which assure the coherence and 'simplicity' of physical
theory," as Balibar characterizes it. (Balibar, pp. 62-63). The tension, pointed
out by Oldenburg, is obvious, and continues into the Ethics itself, Balibar claims,
where despite the tirade against final causes in nature (E IApp), Spinoza
continues to appeal to the conservation law and, more generally, to the order
of nature. The second exchange involves Spinoza, Schuller, and Tfcchirnhaus,
and took place roughly a decade after the first, between 1674 and 1676. Of the
many issues in play in the correspondence, Balibar emphasizes the difficulties
Spinoza had articulating his conception of the (finite) individual, the way in
which its properties flow from its nature, and the way in which the existence
of individual modes of infinite extension follow from the attribute extension.
Here, as with the earlier exchange, Balibar sees a certain tension between
Spinoza's abstract metaphysical thought, and his conception of the physical world.
Paraphrasing Gueroult with apparent approval, he notes that for Spinoza, it
seems, we can have "either an ontology coherent in itself, but which does not
'cohere' with the foundations of a physics, or we can have an enigmatic
juxtaposition between the ontology and the theory of bodies..." (Ibid., p. 65).
Balibar sees in the tensions revealed in these two exchanges the reflection
of a deeper tension, two "schémas antithétiques" by which we can represent two
importantly different conceptions of the relations between substance, attribute,
78 DANIEL GARBER

and mode. According to conception A ("la voie A"), the concept of Spinoza's
unique substance is "distributed" among an infinity of distinct attributes, including
thought and extension. On this view, modes of substance are modifications not
of substance per se, but of each of its attributes. Individual things, modes, are
produced through the mediation of attributes, in accordance with the essence
and causality that pertains to the individual attributes. And so, on conception
A, there is no notion of causality or individuality that transcends attributes.
On conception Β ("la voie Β"), on the other hand, individual things are modes
of substance directly, and without the intermediation of attributes. On this view,
attributes are necessary only to make substance and its modes intelligible to us;
each attribute constitutes a way of apprehending the inherence of modes in
substance. But, strictly speaking, on conception B, the notion of an individual
and its (causal) connection to substance transcends the attributes.2
Conception A is, presumably, what underlies our intuitions about the
physical world; conception Β is, presumably, what corresponds to Spinoza's more
purely metaphysical thought. Balibar, though, hesitates to attribute these
divergent conceptions to Spinoza himself (Ibid., pp. 67-68). The fact that
Spinoza seems to lead us in these two divergent ways suggests to Balibar that
Spinoza is grasping at something else, something that stands outside the usual
list of metaphysical options. In connection with the Spinoza-Schuller-Tfcchirnhaus
exchange, Balibar characterizes the view as follows: "Tb the classical alternative
between a geometrical mechanism, as in Descartes, and a dynamism, as in
Leibniz... Spinoza seems to be seeking a third way or a way of going beyond"
(Ibid., p. 64). At the end of his paper, Balibar puts the point more generally
and more suggestively: "...if Spinoza's thought... does not correspond exactly to
either of these conceptions [i.e., conceptions A and B], is it not because it
represents an attempt to think of a nature which is not a world - even an
infinite world - thus escaping every 'conception of the world'" (Ibid., p. 75; cf.
p. 74)? It is this - the nature that is not a world - that, presumably, constitutes
the object of Spinoza's metaphysics.
We will, of course, have to return to this conclusion of Balibar's and
examine it with some care. But before doing this I would like briefly to examine
one detail in Balibar's picture. Balibar naturally enough associates the notion
of order in the physical world with teleology and final causality; in particular,
he sees in Descartes' conservation law "the prototype of principles teleological
in appearance" (Ibid., p. 62). But however teleological the law may appear, it
should be emphasized that Descartes did not see matters in that way.
Though he may not always have been consistent in this, Descartes professed
opposition to final causes much as Spinoza was later to do. In the Principia
Philosophiae, for example, Descartes argues that we should not seek to find
God's ends. Rather, he urges, "considering him [i.e. God] as the efficient cause
of everything, we should see what we must conclude by the light of reason he
gave us from those of his attributes which he wants us to have knowledge of,
concerning those effects which are apparent to the senses."3 And this is precisely
how Descartes derives his principles of order for the material world, his laws
 Comments on Balibar 79

of motion. In 11,36, of the Principia, where Descartes presents his conservation

law, he begins by introducing the "universal and primary [cause of motion], which
is the general cause of all motions in the world," God. God, Descartes tells us,
"is not only in himself immutable, but he also acts in as constant and immutable
a way as possible." And so, when he sustains the world, as he must for it to
continue to endure beyond its initial creation, he preserves the same amount
of motion as he originally created there, Descartes argues. Descartes thus derives
the conservation law from God's immutability, one of his attributes, and from
the claim that God must be the efficient cause of the world's continuing to exist;
final causes, God's ends, never enter in at all. However, it is not clear to me
that either Oldenburg or Spinoza recognized this point. Discussion of final
causality is curiously missing from Spinoza's 1663 exposition of Descartes'
Principles, and while Spinoza gives a reasonably faithful rendering of the
conservation law and Descartes' argument for it (G 1/200-1) he does not broach
the question of order and final causality in that connection.
With this aside I would like to turn back to the main thread of Balibar's
essay. Balibar's ultimate conclusion is that Spinoza was attempting to step
beyond traditional metaphysics, and present a nature that is not a world. What
does this mean? In the beginning of his essay, Balibar contrasts the metaphysics
of Descartes and Aristotle with that of Spinoza. For Descartes and Aristotle,
Balibar claims, metaphysics "maintains a permanent and privileged relation of
foundation and imitation with regard to a representation of 'phusis'" (Balibar,
p. 59). I take it that what Balibar means here is that for both Aristotle and
Descartes, the basic categories of their ontologies link more or less directly into
nature, that Aristotle's substances and Descartes' minds and bodies are intended
as recognizable components of our experience of nature. But, Balibar claims,
"the Spinozist ontology is not a metaphysics in this sense." For Spinoza, "nature,
in the end, does not allow itself to be thought of either as a hierarchy of
sensible forms, or as the extension of a quantifiable mechanical process, that
is, as a field of physical experience in either of these two great historically
constituted senses" (Ibid., p. 59). It is this, I think, Balibar has in mind when
he says that the object of Spinoza's ontology is a nature that is not a world;
it is a nature that is not a world in the sense in which Aristotle's and Descartes'
natures are worlds, attempts to make metaphysically orderly and precise the
objects of our experience, taken broadly. Spinoza's metaphysics, as Balibar
interprets it, attempts to go beyond the field of our experience, and attempts
to characterize an object - substance and its modes - that stands outside that
field. It is nature {Deus sive natura), but it is not a world in which we live,
unlike the worlds of Aristotle and Descartes.
This, I take it, is Balibar's main claim. But is it correct? In a sense. The
very abstract treatment of substance, attribute, and mode in part I of the Ethics
certainly fits Balibar's account. There Spinoza treats substance, its infinity of
infinite attributes, and the modes, infinite and finite that pertain to substance
in a way that is very distant from any of the "worlds" Balibar sees in Aristotle
or Descartes. But there is another way of viewing Spinoza's metaphysics.
Although we can prove general theorems about substance, its uniqueness, its
80 DANIEL GARBER

multiplicity of attributes, and so on, it is only through its attributes that we can
comprehend its essence: "by attribute I understand what the intellect perceives
of a substance, as constituting its essence" (E ID4). And, of course, the two
attributes we have access to, the two ways in which we can comprehend the
essence of the substance that is God or nature are thought and extension (cf.
IIP1, IIP2). And so, Spinoza concludes, since modes of substance must be
conceived through substance (LA4, Ρ15), the modes of substance, bodies and
any other singular things, must be conceived through one of God's attributes
(IIP45). God or nature is thus a thinking thing, an extended thing, and an
infinity of other things beyond our ken, as is each of its modes. In the often
quoted words of IIP7S: n...[T]he thinking substance and the extended substance
are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this
attribute, now under that. So also a mode of extension and the idea of that
mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways." Now, substance
conceived through the attribute extension and substance conceived through the
attribute thought would certainly seem to be 'worlds' in the sense in which
Balibar wants to use the term. And so it seems to me that while one can say
that Spinoza's nature is not a world, one can equally well say that it is at very
least two worlds, and perhaps an infinity of other worlds. Or, to put it another
way, Spinoza's nature is not a world, not because it is no world, but because
it is many worlds. Understood in this way, Spinoza's point is not that nature
stands outside of the worlds in which we live, but that the worlds in which we
live, the world of thoughts and the world of bodies are really two alternative
but equally definitive ways of comprehending nature, which is one.
Spinoza attempts to make a unity out of a multiplicity of worlds by
grounding the multiplicity, a multiplicity of attributes, in a unique God with a
unique essence. It is not surprising that such a project leads to some apparent
contradictions or, at least, to some real tensions. Emphasize the multiplicity
and mutual independence of the words unified, and one naturally falls into
Balibar's conception A; emphasize the unity of the worlds, and we are attracted
toward conception B. But, as Balibar acknowledges, these two divergent
conceptions represent more divergent interpretive strategies than they do genuine
contradictions in Spinoza's thought. Though his commentators may have
inclinations toward one or both of these conceptions, the Spinoza of the Ethics
seems to steer a middle course between the two. As conception A emphasizes,
modes are, in an important sense, radically distinct, and must be comprehended
through the appropriate attribute. But as in conception B, there is is only one
substance and one world of modes, and though in an important sense distinct,
the mode of thought that constitutes the idea of a given body is strictly speaking
identical with the body of which it is an idea. Though complex and difficult
to comprehend, it is not inconsistent, so far as I can see.
This is not to say that Spinoza is always clear about things. The difficulties
Balibar displayed in the Spinoza-Schuller-Tfcchirnhaus correspondence show that
Spinoza had some trouble going from the abstract metaphysical picture of
substance, attribute, and mode to the concrete worlds of bodies and thoughts.
I also don't mean to suggest that there is not something very paradoxical about
 Comments on Balibar 81

a single thing that is an element of both the world of thought and the. world
of extension. Though Spinoza's view may be formally consistent, his attempt
to forge a unity out of a diversity of attributes is an idea that continues to give
commentators monumental headaches, and may, indeed, border on the unthink-
able.
It may sometimes be useful to think of Spinoza's ontology as Balibar does,
a nature that is not a world, a metaphysics that stands outside of our experience
of the world. But it is wrong to see Spinoza as abandoning the world of the
mechanical philosophy for an unworldly metaphysics. Balibar is happy to admit
that Spinoza's metaphysics does bear some relation to the world of physics, and
has something to contribute to it (Ibid., p. 60). But I would put the point
more strongly. Spinoza's point is not that nature properly conceived is not the
world of bodies as we experience them; it is. But it is also something more,
it is a world of thought and an infinite number of other worlds, as many
potential worlds as there are attributes. His intention is not to deny or
subordinate the world of physics, but to show that that world is far richer than
any of us imagined. The world of bodies and the world of thoughts thus remain
firmly within Spinoza's ontology.

1. (G IV/170, quoted by Balibar, p. 61).

2. For Balibar's full account of these two conceptions, see Ibid., p. 66.
3. Principia Philosophiae I 28. (See also the discussion in hfeditatio IV, AT VII, 55.)
 BODY ESSENCE AND MIND ETERNITY IN SPINOZA

WALLACE MATSON
University of California,
Berkeley, California

Spinoza says at the end of VP20S: "So now it is time for me to proceed to those
things that pertain to the duration of the mind without relation to the body."
Obviously he intended the remainder of the Ethics to be a superlatively upbeat
ending. This is where at last we are to be told how to discover and attain what
will enable us to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness, which he
says (in TdlE) he sought. Literally continuous, literally supreme, literally
unending, literal happiness.
No one who reads these dozen pages can fail to perceive that they are,
in their author's eye, the joyous capstone to his chief work. Even if the mind
perished utterly with the body, the life of reason would still be the best life,
as has been shown; but how much more there is besides! (VP41 - exactly parallel
to Plato's Republic 621 to end.) The wise man "never ceases to be" (nunquam
esse desinit) "but always (semper) possesses true contentment of the soul (vera
animi acquiescentiäf (VP42S fifth sentence from end of the book).
Few of his commentators have shared Spinoza's euphoria. For what is said
here seems to stand in glaring contradiction to the sovran teaching of IIP7 that
the human mind and the human body are "one and the same thing" (though
"expressed in two ways"). Attempts to deal with this embarrassment take three
main forms, which, crudely put, are the contentions that Spinoza meant what
he said (and so contradicted himself); that he meant what he said, but didn't
say all that he meant; and that he didn't mean what he said.
The first of these, the simple and straightforward reading of Spinoza as
claiming that not the whole mind, but an important part of it, survives bodily
death intact - that for example part of Spinoza's mind was still around in 1678,
and is today - has been adopted in recent times, most notably by Jonathan
Bennett, who faces, indeed emphasizes, the consequence - as it appears to him
- that at the end of his chief work Spinoza, for unfathomable reasons, abandoned
his hitherto so carefully crafted philosophy and began to write "pretty certainly
worthless" "nonsense," "rubbish which causes others to write rubbish" (Bennett
(1984), 372 ff.). And many Spinozists must have felt that such shocking
strictures are not to be gainsaid if Spinoza indeed meant what he said, reading
Latin words such as semper, remanet, and ante in their usual senses; which is
why they have striven to interpret the passages in other ways.
I think, however, that if we attend carefully to what Spinoza said, a reading
will emerge that is consistent with what has gone before - perhaps is even
entailed by it - and that presents an intelligible and non-trivial doctrine, which
I shall attempt to expound. Whether it is true or plausible is another matter,
which I shall not ponder in this paper.
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 83

The Doctrine

The remainder of the Ethics, about six percent of the whole, consists of
twenty-two propositions, twelve scholia, and four corollaries. I venture to
summarize this doctrine concerning the duration of the mind without relation
to the body as follows:

1. Imagination (which includes sensation) and memory do not survive the body
(VP21).
2. But, since there is in God an idea expressing the essence of the body under form
of eternity (VP22), the mind is not absolutely destroyed when the body is; something
of it remains (remanet) that is eternal. This is the idea of the essence of the body;
it pertains to the essence of the mind (VP23).
3. We do not remember that we existed before the body. Nevertheless we "feel and
experience" (sentimus experimurque) that we are eternal (VP23S).
4. The formal cause of the third kind of knowledge (viz. scientia intuitiva) is the
mind "in so far as the mind is eternal" (VP31).
5. Intellectual love of God, arising from the third kind of knowledge, is eternal
(VP33), i.e., without beginning, as well as without end (VP33S).
6. Passive affects, on the other hand, exist only while the body endures (VP34).
Therefore intellectual love of God ("gladness accompanied by the idea of God as cause,
that is, the love of God not insofar as we imagine him as present but insofar as we
understand God to be eternal" - VP32C) is the only eternal love (VP34S).
7. This intellectual love is "part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself."
(VP36) It is our "salvation or blessedness or freedom, ... called glory in the Holy
Scriptures, and rightly so" (VP36S). It is indestructible (VP37).
8. "The greater the number of things the mind knows by the second and third kinds
of knowledge, the greater is the part of it that survives" (VP38).
9. "He whose body is capable of the greatest amount of activity has a mind whose
greatest part is eternal" (VP39).
10. We endeavor to arrange things in this life so that "everything relating to memory
or imagination should be of scarcely any importance in comparison with the intellect"
(VP39S).
11. The part of the mind that survives - viz. the intellect - is more perfect than the
rest (VP40S).
12. All the intellects together "constitute the eternal and infinite intellect of God"
(VP40S).
13. Salvation is a goal that is difficult but not impossible of attainment (VP42S).

In a nutshell, only while the body exists can we imagine (have sensations) and
remember. But both before birth and after death a part of the mind, viz. the
intellect, exists eternally. The contents of the intellect are rational and intuitive
knowledge and the intellectual love of God. The repertoire of the intellect can
be augmented while the body exists; thereby salvation, which involves eternal
joy, is attainable.
I shall now expound, in the same order, what I take to be Spinoza's
meaning.
84 WALLACE MATSON

Duration and Eternity

Spinoza says (VP29S) that things are conceived as actual (actuates) in two
ways: (1) as existing in relation to a certain time and place, (2) as contained
in God and following from the necessity of the divine nature. It is clear that
the part of the mind declared to "remain" is conceived as actual in the second
way; the other part, memory and "imagination" (including sense perception and
everything to do with words), is actual in the first way, and ceases to be at the
destruction of the body (VP21). The second way of being actual is necessary
being or aeternitasy defined (ID8) as "following solely from the definition of the
eternal thing." This, the Explicatio adds, "cannot be explicated through duration
or time (durationem aut tempus)? even if the duration has neither beginning nor
end. The question has been raised whether Spinoza held that what is actual
in the second way, i.e. eternal, is also actual - a fortiori as it were - at all times:
"sempiternal." I shall call the affirmative answer "Knealeism," after the
philosopher best known for its defense, and the negative "Hardinism" - which
holds, not that it is false, but that it is meaningless to assert of an eternal thing
that it is actual at time t> whatever t may be.
The title of my summary comes from the final sentence of VP20S. Spinoza
uses the word duratio there, and in VP23 says that after the destruction of the
body something of the mind "remains" (remanet). In VP23S his explanation of
why it is impossible for us to remember that we (se. part of our mind) existed
before (ante) the body implies that nevertheless we did so exist. In VP38D we
are again told of part of the mind that "remains" after bodily death, for which
reason (VP38S) death is less hurtful (noxia). The part that remains is again
mentioned in VP40C. Finally, VP42S, the wise man is declared never to cease
to be (nunquam esse desinit).
All this, read with words retaining their normal meanings, favors Knealeism.
But prima facie Hardinism can be found also. The principal texts are (1) the
declaration (ID8) that eternity cannot be "explicated" through duration or time,
which is repeated in VP23S and strengthened by the addition "nor can [eternity]
be in any way related to time", and (2) IP33S2, "...the eternal does not admit
of 'when' or 'before' or 'after'..."
For purposes of this paper it is not required to take sides in this
controversy. Nevertheless, not to appear cowardly, I plump for Knealeism. The
insistence that eternity "cannot be explicated by" duration is hardly an
embarrassment, for - despite Aristotle and etymology - necessity (whatever it
is) may be something more than sempiternity. Spinoza's stronger claim that
there cannot be any relation between eternity and duration is harder to dismiss.
But a Knealeist can view it as a harmless exaggeration, pointing to (e.g.) IIIP39S
as a parallel: "I have omitted ... tremor, pallor, sobbing, laughter, etc. because
they are referred to the Body without any relation to the Mind." (Of course
nothing in the Body has no relation to the Mind: IIP7, 12, etc.). As for the
IP33S2 passage, its context shows that it is limited to ruling out any order of
temporal priority within eternal things, and has no bearing on the Kneale vs.
Hardin issue. But the principal reason for being a Knealeist, as far as I can
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 85

see, is simply that there is no intelligible alternative. If the principle of inertia

is an eternal truth (as Spinoza believed, IIL3C), how can it be denied that it
holds (is in effect, is real, is actual) today? No one would want to say that it
does not hold, so Hardinists must claim that it is "meaningless" to say either
that it does or it doesn't. But evidently it is not meaningless: one uses it in
solving problems today, quite on a par with non-eternal truths, such as the
formulas for conversion from English to metric units.
Tb be sure, our question is not whether Knealeism is true, but whether
Spinoza was a Knealeist. However, if the alternative is incoherent, then it
should not be foisted onto Spinoza unless the textual evidence is incontrover­
tible, which it is not. Hardinists on their part are obliged to explain away such
things as Spinoza's announcement (VP20S ad fin) that he is going on to
consider "the things that pertain to the duration of the mind without relation
to the body." Even if durationem is a slip of the pen - and if it isn't, Kneale's
case is proved - it shows at any rate the cast of Spinoza's mind. If he really
was committed to the (alleged) meaninglessness of saying that eternal truths
are true now, it is hard to conceive how he could make such a slip. I shall
therefore take it as given - assume, if you prefer - that Spinozist eternity of
the intellect is a condition that obtains before, during, and after the bodily
career.

Essence

Spinoza's demonstration of the eternity of part of the mind hinges on the

notion of "essence of the human body." What is this?
What, indeed, is an essence? Bennett complains (61) that although Spinoza
uses the term freely from the first line of the Ethics on, he does not
"condescend to define it" until IID2. But that is not quite right: he never defines
it. The definiendum of IID2 is "to pertain to the essence of any thing," ad
essentiam alicujus reipertinere, and that is not the same thing. (Saffron pertains
to the essence of Spanish cookery, but saffron is not the essence of Spanish
cookery, tout court.) No other of Spinoza's fourscore formally explicit definitions
is framed in a similar way. Spinoza tells us, IIP10S, that his purpose in IIP2
was to avoid having to say that the nature of God pertains to the essence of
each singular thing - which would be the case if whatever is a necessary
condition for the being of χ pertains to the essence of JC. So he adds the proviso
that in order for y to qualify as pertaining to the essence of JC, it must also be
the case that y can neither be nor be conceived without or. He supposes that this
fills his bill, since, while singular things can neither be nor be conceived without
God, it is not the case that God can neither be nor be conceived without
singular things (cf. IP1, IIA1).
According to the first part of IID2, "there pertains to the essence of a
thing that which, when granted, the thing is necessarily posited, and by the
annulling of which the thing is necessarily annulled." Bennett (61) holds that
literally read this implies that the essence of χ is x, "so that 'the essence of'
means nothing." I do not see why this is necessarily so. Let "the thing" be a
86 WALLACE MATSON

circle, and let "that which" be having the minimum perimeter for given area.
Then if what you have before you is a figure such that no other figure of the
same perimeter has a larger area, what you have before you is a circle; and if
not, not. Perimetric minimality pertains to the essence of the circle, without
being conceptually identical to circularity; it is at least a distinct description.
It also pertains to the essence of the circle to be produced by a point moving
at a fixed distance from a given point (Spinoza's preferred definition of circle).
This property is trivially deduced from the definition; Spinoza seems to have
supposed that a property such as perimetric minimality was also deducible from
the definition, but Tfcchirnhaus corrected him (Letter 82) - you need further
geometric apparatus. Nevertheless, that property is entailed by "the nature of
the circle," as it is embedded in the whole structure of Euclidean geometry.
Ttaditionally the definition of a thing is supposed to state the essence or
nature of the thing; and Spinoza agrees (e.g. at IIIP4D). However, his preferred
form of definition is not Aristotelian, but "genetic" (see Matheron (1969), 11;
Wolfson (1969), II, 143). The definition should state the "proximate cause," it
should enable us to understand the process whereby the thing defined comes
into being. For to understand is to be able - at least in thought - to produce.
Now we can answer the question, Why did Spinoza define "pertaining to
essence" rather than just "essence"? - Because a proper definition of 'essence'
would present the essence of essence; it would provide a test that we could
apply to a candidate for essence of x, pass or fail, and conclude whether a given
string of words is or is not a statement of the whole essence of x. Spinoza
wisely refused to commit himself to the feasibility, or even possibility in
principle, of ever succeeding in such an endeavor, when the essence sought is
that of a natural object, not a mere entity of reason such as the circle. We
can know whether a formula states something that "pertains to" the essence of
x, or even "is perceived by the mind as constituting" the essence of χ (ID4 e.g.);
but we can never know that the account is complete. Statements of "proximate
cause" are (in our vocabulary) scientific theories; and Spinoza was aware that
interesting theories are open-ended. He was thus more optimistic about the
possibility of knowing real essences than were Locke and Hume, but far from
being the complete dogmatist some historians paint him as.
When Spinoza speaks of the essence of "the human body" in VP23D it is
clear he means the individual, not the species. So I have an essence, which is,
moreover, eternal. Could it be "all the non-relational facts" (Bennett (1984),
233) about me?
Indeed, could it be just all the facts about me, relational and nonre­
lational? That is to ask, Could Spinoza's essence of the body be an anticipation
of Leibniz's "complete concept?" No, for essence is created by God (IP25) -
directly, without (IP28) the cooperation of the common order of nature that
exists durationally - and it is what is known "under form of eternity" (VP29S;
cf. IIP45D,S). It is not known under form of eternity that my body has ten toes
and mass of 76kg. These are accidental consequences of my strange eventful
history. All that is known about me under form of eternity is that this creature
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 87

is the sort of thing that, given a certain placement in the order of nature is
capable of manifesting these traits.
Tb know the essence of a thing is to know how that thing fits into the
divine plan, that is to say, how it follows from the infinite modes. Only possible
things have essences, and what is possible - in itself - is just what accords with
the divine nature.
IIP8C,S are the key to Spinoza's doctrine of essence. (What I shall have
to say here owes much to Gueroult's masterful exegesis: (1974), II, 93ff). The
Corollary has to do with the somewhat perplexing notion of "individual things
that do not exist except insofar as they are comprehended in the attributes of
God," and the Scholium tries to clarify the Corollary by the example of the equal
rectangles, drawn or not, contained in a circle.
Now, Extension is an attribute of God. How can anything be "compre-
hended in Extension" without actually being extended, i.e., existing as an extended
thing? The answer becomes apparent when wc remind ourselves that strictly
speaking there is no such thing as Extension (a universal, a mere aid to
imagination), there is only Extended Substance = God = Natura naturans,
from which follows the immediate infinite mode Motion-and-Rest = all the
laws of Physics, which are eternal. That is to say, from the nature (essence)
of Extended Substance, as expressed in Motion-and-Rest, all the essences of all
individual extended things (modes) follow. So there are eternally "contained
in extension" an infinity of essences of individual things that will exist in duration
at one time or other, depending on when in the common order of nature their
causes turn up. By the parallelism, there are eternally, in the attribute of
Thought, ideas of these individual things; ideas, however, do not "affirm the
existence" of the things unless the things exist in duration. Spinoza illustrates
this in the Scholium by the near analogue of the infinity of (undrawn but
possible-to-draw) equal rectangles "contained in a circle" which itself exists (=
has been actually drawn), contrasting these undrawn rectangles with two which,
being actually drawn, are the objects of ideas "distinguished from the other ideas
of the other rectangles." From the nature of the circle it follows that the
rectangles formed by intersecting chords within it will all be equal in area; in
other words, the nature (the geometry) of the circle excludes the possibility of
unequal rectangles thus formed. Just so, the nature of Extension permits the
existence of some things and excludes others: there can be hydrogen sulfide, there
cannot be helium sulfide - because (to simplify somewhat, but not to lose the
essential point) chemical compounds are aggregates of molecules in which
dissimilar atoms are united by the sharing of valence electrons; each hydrogen
atom has a single valence electron, so that two atoms can supply the
two-electron deficiency of a sulfur atom to bring its orbitals to the stable
condition of the next noble gas (argon); while helium, being already a noble gas,
has no valence electron, thus cannot enter into compounds. These facts follow
- deductively - from the essences of hydrogen, helium, and sulfur, namely that
they are elements nos. 1, 2, and 16. The necessary and sufficient condition for
being sulfur is being Element No. 16; the idea that this designation symbolizes
is adequate, representing the (vertical, nomological) "proximate cause" of sulfur.
88 WALLACE MATSON

Being Element No. 16 "pertains to the essence" of sulfur, as being yellow and
smelly do not; although those properties too follow from the essence. One can
sense, "imagine" sulfur by its color or odor; but only by articulating it into the
Attribute, as the atomic number does, can one understand it. From the essence
follows (together with the essences of other things) the truth of such
hypothetical as that if there is hydrogen around, then sulfur will combine with
it; if chlorine, no; if there are fleas in contact, they will be discommoded; and
an infinity of others.
The Periodic Law was not foreseen by Spinoza; all the same, his conceptual
scheme has a place for it. One can hardly read Spinoza without feeling that
this man of the time of Newton and Huyghens enjoyed prescience of the
fundamental character of the world picture at which physics would eventually
arrive. Almost alone of the ghosts of departed metaphysicians, Spinoza's is
entitled to materialize at a 20th century congress of theoretical physicists and
intone "I told you so." But I do not wish to "afford material for the
superstitious;" this is neither supernatural nor yet a matter of lucky guessing,
but rather (in my view) a vindication of a priori method in science, even of what
Bennett (29f.) abhors as "causal rationalism": sit in the armchair and think hard
enough about what things must be like if the universe is a real unity, and you
are bound to come up with Spinozism or something close to it.
Spinoza held that bodies differ from one another in respect of "motion and
rest" (E IIP13L1-3), which vague phrase is his stand-in for a detailed physical
theory in his time not yet worked out (see Matson, 404, Bennett, 232). 'Element
No. 16,' together with the comprehensive theory in which this conception is
embedded, is a specification of "motion and rest," indicating, in fact, that
particular, unique "proportion of motion and rest" that is the necessary and
sufficient condition for being sulfur.
Sulfur is a stuff, and 'sulfur' is a mass term, whereas Spinozistic essences
are of individual things. But there is no Spinozistic identity of indiscernibles;
strictly speaking, 'being Element No. 16' is the essence of an individual sulfur
atom - but all the other sulfur atoms share the same essence. Composite
bodies, such as kitchen matches, then have different complex essences (Def. after
IIA2, 11/99-100).
Are essences possibilia? In a way, yes: relative to duration, they are in
Donagan's phrase (249) "intrinsically possible," that is, they will come upon the
durational stage when other finite modes, their causes in the common order of
nature, determine them to do so (IP28). (Let us dismiss the odd mention in
IP33S1 of a thing whose essentia seu definitio contradictionem involvit as a
momentary aberration). These conditions for existence are among the hypo-
thetical mentioned above. Sulfur came into existence relatively early; plutonium,
equally an intrinsic possibility, had to wait a long time for the presence of a
peculiar combination of bodies whose ideas comprised both a lot of knowledge
of the second kind (and possibly third) and hatred. It is of crucial importance
for the eternity of the mind, however, that for Spinoza the essences of
"non-existent things" are perfectly real, actual items (VP29S). Spinoza has no
truck with mere possibilities.
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 89

Let us now return to the essence of the human body. It differs only in
complication from that of sulfur.
Spinoza uses the word essentia synonymously with natura (IIIP57D, IVP19D,
e.g.) and forma (IV Pref, 11/208/26); definitio is what expresses all of them.
Now in IVP39S the form of the body (forma corporis) is declared to be the
body's particular proportion of motion and rest (Cf. IIP24D, first sentence).
This amounts to what we may call the dynamic physiognomy of the body
('dynamic' because in the passage cited Spinoza admits the possibility of the same
body's having now one form and later another on account of change in
"proportion of motion and rest"). People differ from one another according to
their different particular essences (forms, natures), each person having his or
her own proportion of motion and rest, a natural signature as it were. Usually
it is unique, but not necessarily; Spinoza allowed for twins and clones (IP17S,
11/63/18).
If it is right to think of atomic numbers as the specifications of proportions
of motion and rest for certain stuffs, in the case of the human being (or any
living creature) the obvious analogue is the genetic code, the formula for the
structure of the individual's (quasi-)unique DNA molecule. Viewed Spinozisti-
cally, as helped by Bennett's "field" interpretation of the substance-mode relation,
the nature of extension has from eternity contained the essence of my body, that
is, the laws of physics do not rule out the existence of a being of my particular
constitution. Eternally I have been intrinsically possible. Certain actual modes
having in due course cooperated to determine the actuality in duration of an
instantiation of this formula, here I am.
That is how from eternity the formal essence of the until recently non-exis-
tent W. M. body was (and, of course, still is) contained in the attribute
Extension. The body essence is the license (from the nature of Extension) for
there to come to be an organism of a certain sort. When it comes into
existence, there is no guarantee that it will develop into exactly the kind of
thing that the DNA blueprint specifies. For to come into existence is to become
subject to buffeting from the other modes, some of which will help, others hinder
development according to the plan in the essence. My DNA provides for ten
fingers, but there are chain saws and alligators lurking. One thing is certain,
though: I will at any rate try to develop in the manner specified. The form of
my body is not dumb symbols on a blackboard; it is the conatus to preserve
myself (IIIP7).
IIP8 tells us that it is obvious from the parallelism (IIP7) that
corresponding to the formal essence of the body an idea of that essence has also
been contained from eternity in the attribute Thought. Since the mind is
identical to the idea of the body, is "one and the same thing expressed in
another way" (IIP7S), the idea of this formula expresses the possibility of the
mind correlated with the (possible) body. It expresses the way of thinking that
goes with the way of being extended that the genetic code expresses. Now, that
way of being extended is, before my birth, only a possibility; and correspondingly
the idea of it is only the idea of a possible way of thinking. But, as Donagan
has pointed out (254f.), an idea of a merely possible thing is nevertheless an
90 WALLACE MATSON

actual idea. (This, I fear, is contrary to Bennett's dictum [360] that modal status,
like all logical relations, is preserved across the attributes.) According to IIP8
this idea is "comprehended in the infinite idea of God,n which is certainly an
actual thing. Hence there is actually, eternally, what I shall call my proto-mind.
It is a mind, for by definition a (human) mind is the idea of a (human) body.
From all eternity it has existed, as part of God's infinite mind, and of course
it will go on after my body ceases to be.
This, however, is far from the whole, or the most interesting part, of
Spinozistic mind eternity.

The Eternity Experience

The claim that "we feel and experience that we are eternal" (VP23S) is curious.
Commentators have had little to say about this passage.
"We" means people in general, with no restriction to Spinoza and his
coterie, nor even to those who have read the demonstrations in the Ethics and
been convinced by them. Spinoza never uses the first person plural in such
senses. Further, he states explicitly (VP34S) that people in general "are
conscious (conscios) of the eternity of the mind," although they "confuse it with
duration and assign it to imagination or to memory."
Sentio occurs forty times in the Ethics, and though 'think' is sometimes a
good translation, it is always in the sense 'feel,' 'judge,' 'sense,' 'estimate' - it
never designates or even includes the drawing of an inference by a formal
process of reasoning. The nearest it comes is at IVP18S, where Spinoza tells
us he is going to set out briefly "what I think (ea, quae sentio)" about the dictates
of reason. Experior, 15 occurrences, always means 'try,' 'learn,' or 'find by
experience.' So unless Spinoza in this passage is departing sharply from his usage
everywhere else, he is asserting that we know by experience, indeed by experience
common to everyone, that we are eternal. This is strange, for knowing by
experience is "thefirstkind of knowledge" and usually deprecated as unreliable.
A sort of argument is given for this proposition, but it is hardly more than
a metaphor (though one of the most famous in the Ethics). Spinoza says: "For
the mind senses (sentit) those things that it conceives by its understanding just
as much as those which it has in its memory. For the eyes of the mind, by
which it sees and observes things, are demonstrations themselves (ipsae
demonstrationes)."
I take this to be a reference to the 'click' or 'aha! experience' when we
(as we say) 'see' the cogency of a demonstration. This kind of apprehension
signals the onset of an item of knowledge of the second or third kind, which
thereupon becomes part of the intellect, as the bodily sighting of the cat on the
mat is stored in the memory, the repository for knowledge of the first kind.
The click is an experience, and common enough so that "we" can be said to be
familiar with it, just because we are human minds. Let us recall, too, that in
the seventeenth century people made a big fuss about this, e.g., Hobbes when
in the "gentleman's library" he happened upon the Pythagorean theorem (Aubrey
150).
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 91

But why can having this experience be said to be "feeling and experiencing"
that we are eternal? Well, this is our contact in experience with what eternity,
by Spinoza's definition, is: "existence itself insofar as it is conceived to follow
necessarily from the definition of the eternal thing." That is to say, this is our
contact with the kind of reality that "cannot be explicated by duration."
Tb say this is to change the subject (a modern objector will complain).
That the three angles of a triangle = two right angles, is an eternal truth, OK.
But what has that to do with the alleged eternity of the mind that becomes
aware of the truth?
The Spinozistic answer - in a tradition going all the way back to
Parmenides' pronouncement that "thought and being are the same" - is that the
mind is constituted by ideas; insofar, therefore, as these ideas are eternal, so is
the mind! (Plato held a weaker form of this thesis: for him the mind was not
to be identified with the Ideas, but in order to be able to grasp them it had
to be "like" them - another basic metaphysical notion that surfaces in Spinoza
as IA5 and IP3: Things with nothing in common cannot stand in either logical
or causal relations.)

The Proto-Mind's Knowledge

The proto-mind, being the idea corresponding to the eternal essence of the
body (the genetic code, or whatever is its eternal pattern), is (to speak in yet
another way of it) the core of the mind. It is not "affected by the idea of any
other body" and consequently is not passive nor subject to passion. Therefore
(IIIP3) the idea that constitutes it is adequate. Tb say this is to imply further
that whatever it conceives, it does so "under the form of eternity," that is,
rationally, and without reference to duration.

Intellectual Love of God

Intellectual, of course, since it has nothing to do with memory or imagination.

Love, because (so Spinoza maintains) it is "gladness with con-comitant idea of
God as cause." But what - if it is proper to ask - does it feel like? Bertrand
Russell equated it to the pleasure of scientific discovery; and why not? If it is
right to talk about the 'click' in this context, Russell's notion seems to express
the same thing.
However, VP33 presents a difficulty inasmuch as Spinoza claims that the
intellectual love of God is "eternal" - that is to say, without a beginning as
well as without an end. It can't be something that happens. No, but like any
eternal item in thought, say, the equality of the angles of a triangle to two
right angles, the intellectual love of God can (as we shall see) be something
that the individual mind connects up with, incorporates into its being, in the
course of its (durational) development. The proto-mind does not know (i.e.
does not have as a constituent of itself) the truth about the angles; nevertheless
it is essentially the sort of thing that can, of itself (actively, not passively) unite
that truth to itself. (I am putting this in tentative metaphors; I hope they are
92 WALLACE MATSON

right, but with limited confidence, as Spinoza never vouchsafes details about how
the mind acquires knowledge of the second and third kinds - or even what it
is to do so.)

How the Eternal Part of the Mind Grows

In E V passim, most clearly in VP39S and VP42S (the last sentences of the
Ethics), it is implied that we can do something, while existing in duration, to
increase the extent of that part of the mind that is eternal, and thus attain
blessedness. Many commentators take this teaching to imply that according to
Spinoza there is something that is both eternal and capable of increase, a
doctrine they find "completely unintelligiblen (Curley (1969), 143; cf. Bennett,
362). Gueroult in the last footnote of his monumental study (II 538) said that
the question would be "examined in Volume III of the present work." Alas.
I suggest that the difficulty vanishes once we give up the assumption that
the eternal part of the mind is identical with - neither more nor less than - the
idea of the essence of the human body, which idea has already existed from
eternity: what I have called the 'proto-mind'. Although it is only the proto-mind
that is explicitly proved to be eternal in VP23, we cannot infer that no more
remains. It is sufficient for Spinoza's purpose at the stage he has reached in
VP23 to prove simply this much. What else remains, he tells us in the sequel.
And note that in VP23, just as in IID2, he speaks not of the essence simpliciter
of the mind, but only of what "pertains to the essence."
The proto-mind, the idea of the genetic code or what you will, is the idea
of a body which can develop in various ways so as to have and exercise various
capacities. It is the idea, therefore, of a body with which is associated a mind
that can think various ideas. Some of the ideas, corresponding to interactions
of the body with other bodies, will be the first kind of knowledge, in which the
mind is (at least partly) passive: sense perception and memory, ceasing at death.
But other ideas will be the results of the mind's activity: from being able to form
them, the mind will advance to doing so in act (IIIP1). These are the adequate
ideas, knowledge of the second and third kinds, the understanding of things sub
specie aetemitatis. They are the making explicit of what is implicit in the
proto-mind, a fact that Spinoza expresses somewhat obscurely in VP29 as
"Whatever the Mind understands sub specie aetemitatis, it understands not from
conceiving the present actual existence of the Body, but from conceiving the
essence of the Body sub specie aetemitatis!"
The proto-mind, which is eternal and incapable of change, is constituted
of few or no developed ideas. It is, however, sufficient to establish individuality,
for it is an individual. The adequate ideas that in the course of life "we" so
assiduously cultivate (VP39S) are likewise eternal and changeless. But the
intellect, the part of the mind that is the repository of these ideas, grows by
accretion. The mind is "not simple, but composed of very many ideas" (IIP 15).
There is nothing contradictory in the notion of one eternal entity's serving as
a magnet, so to speak, capable of attracting other eternal entities into an
indissoluble unity. Once there - since they are there as the result of the mind's
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 93

activity exclusively - they constitute the intellect, and remain even after the
destruction of the body.
We now need not be astonished (as Curley was, loc, cit.) by the suggestion
of VP39 that improving the fitness of the body is a means to increase the
eternal part of the mind. The point is obvious, given the mind-body par-
allelism. The key word is activity,' which is, as always in Spinoza, to be
contrasted with being affected from outside. Bodily activity, especially of the
brain, is the correlate of mental activity, which is the acquisition of knowledge
of the second and third kinds, which is the augmentation of the eternal part of
the mind.

Summary of this Interpretation

1. The laws of physics (i.e. the infinite mode motion-and-rest) of themselves

imply the intrinsic possibility of certain human bodies - just as they imply the
intrinsic possibility of certain edifices (cf. TdlE) and rule out others. If a body
is possible, then it is eternally possible. The structural specification of one such
possibility is the essence of one human body. And it is eternally part of the
infinite idea of God.
2. By the mind-body parallelism, the idea of that essence is - not the mere
possibility but the actuality of - the correlated mind. So every possible human
body is correlated to an actual human mind! Such minds, however, if they go
no farther, are unendowed with memory and sensation, which can arise only from
interdiction with other minds - which is precluded by the fact that these entities
are not (yet) connected with the "common order of nature." That is why we
do not remember existing before birth: "there can be no traces of this in the
body nor can eternity be defined by time."
3. Of the intrinsically possible bodies some few become actual "as related
to a fixed time and place" (VP29S). The proto-mind of such a body, as I call
the idea of the essence of the body, which before birth expresses nothing but
this essence, can then begin to be augmented with other ideas. Some of them
are ideas of modifications of the body by impingement of other bodies: these
ideas are imaginations, memories, and passive emotions. But other ideas that
coalesce in the mind are expressions of the active nature of the mind. These
are adequate ideas, knowledge of the second and third kinds. They are eternal.
4. When the body is destroyed, then, all those ideas that (as Spinoza puts
it) "affirm the existence of the body" are destroyed with it. But as we have
seen, those are not all the ideas that constitute the mind. Indeed, if one has
been diligent, they may constitute only a vanishing small proportion of the
totality. The rest go on eternally, in liaison with the proto-mind. As the latter
is unique to the individual, the eternal part of the mind is in a certain sense
personal, even though its only reality is its being comprised in God's infinite
intellect (which = the totality of such eternal individual minds) (VP40S).
(However, it is not personal by Spinoza's Spanish-poet test (IVP39S), which
makes continuity of memory the criterion of personal identity.)
94 WALLACE MATSON

But Wherefore the Joy?

A problem for any interpretation of the last part of E V is this: How could
it be that Spinoza was so excited and enthusiastic about so highbrow and esoteric
a kind of immortality? How could it be a consolation, how could it quiet
putative fear of extinction? The difficulty is most acute for those accounts that
reduce the doctrine of the mind's eternity to the triviality that my essence or
definition, like any essence, is an eternal truth; or that find in it merely a
misleading way of saying that my having existed makes - eternally - a difference
to the universe. If I am right, Spinozistic mind survival is a little more full
bodied (you should pardon the expression) than that: if I have been diligent in
my stretch of duration, I shall eternally know, e.g., the Periodic Law (if that may
be taken as an example of an adequate idea), though I can nevermore smell
sulfur or be burned by kitchen matches or remember the chemistry lab with the
big oilcloth chart above the blackboard. This is beatitude?
Since, despite the reassurance of VP23S, I can form no conception of the
kind of being envisaged, I am at a loss to imagine(!) its attractions. But perhaps
an inkling of a more satisfactory response can be inferred from the fact that
Bertrand Russell, no less, got consolation from the "impersonal self-
enlargement" that is the consequence of (at any rate his conception of) "the
intellectual love of God." (See Blackwell (1985)). It was for him the escape
route from "the prison of the self." He took quite seriously the notion of
identifying oneself with the universe at large (or, at least, all humanity) until
in the end personal concerns virtually vanished, as Spinoza promised. Russell,
like Spinoza, held that it is only passive emotions that separate people, Reason
being the same for all.
In fact, being a dead Spinozist rationalist is very much like being a Rawlsian
behind the Veil of ignorance.' Spinoza would not like that label, but he would
probably approve of the concept of that status in which at last our "true self
is revealed. (For the Rawlsian Spinoza see IVPP35-7, 40, 62, 65-6).

A Concluding Speculation

Unless I am mistaken, the theory of intellectual eternity can be squared with

the rest of Spinoza's philosophy. (Whether it follows rigorously seems to turn
on epistemologico-pedagogical issues that the philosopher left unresolved.)
Yet to me there seems something strange and unnatural about the union.
We know that Spinoza changed his mind on this topic between the Short
Treatise (which teaches only an impersonal survival of the active intellect, à la
Aristotle and Averroes) and the personal immortality of the Ethics. And the
biographers tell us that Spinoza's rejection of personal immortality was a
principal reason for his excommunication.
Why did he change his mind?
Wolfson (H,323ff) says that Spinoza's theory of immortality was directed
 Body Essence and Mind Eternity 95

against the Averroism of Uriel Acosta. But as we have seen, Spinoza in his
twenties upheld that very theory!
Surely the Short Treatise view is more consonant with the general outlook
of the Ethics than are VPP21-40. More than that: personal immortality, for
an entity that is not capable of memory (VP21) blatantly contradicts the criterion
of personal identity laid down in the Spanish poet case (IVP39S). (Fortunately
for the logical soundness of the Ethicsy this criterion is an obiter dictum).
I have pointed out elsewhere (in "Death and Destruction in Spinoza's
Ethics9n) certain passages in the Ethics suggesting that Spinoza was obsessed by
the idea of suicide and was tempted to commit it - like Acosta. Thus one
motivation for his philosophy may well have been a desire to And a basis for
overcoming this temptation. Along these lines, one might suppose that his
acceptance of and 'proof of personal immortality was part of his exorcism of
the ghost of Acosta.1

References

Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, ed. Dick. London: Seeker & Warburg.
Donagan, Alan, "Spinoza's Proof of Immortality," in Grene (1973).
Hardin, C.L., "Spinoza on Immortality and Time," in Shahan & Biro (1978).
Kneale, Martha, "Eternity and Sempiternity," in Grene (1973).
Matson, Wallace, "Death and Destruction in Spinoza's Ethics" Inquiry 20, 403-17.

1. "How to Make Yourself More or Less Eternal," an earlier draft of this paper, was
presented to the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in March 1986.
If any transition to a greater perfection is here discernible, the proximate causes are the
acute comments of Jonathan Bennett and Charles Jarrett.
 THE ETERNITY OF MIND:
COMMENTS ON MATSON ON SPINOZA

HENRY E. ALLISON
University of California
San Diego, California

In "Body Essence and Mind Eternity in Spinoza," Wallace Matson has made an
insightful and suggestive but, in my judgment, unsuccessful attempt to defend
a literal reading of Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind. Spinoza,
according to Matson, means just what he says when he claims that "The human
Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains
which is eternal" (VP23). Indeed, if Matson is correct, Spinoza means even more
than he says in this famous proposition because we need not limit the eternal
part of the mind to the portion corresponding to the essence of the body. In
what follows, I shall first indicate what 1 take to be valuable in Matson's account
and then state where (and why) I think he goes wrong. Finally, I shall sketch
my own interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind, which
I call the "epistemological interpretation."
The most valuable aspect of Matson's account is his discussion of essence
in Spinoza. In brief, his view, with which I am in substantial agreement, is that
the essence of a particular thing is its intrinsic nature or structure considered
as a pure possibility, in abstraction from its concrete realization in the order
of nature. Thus, translating Spinoza's doctrine into contemporary terms, the
essence of a human body becomes its genetic code and the essence of the
corresponding mind becomes the way of thinking that is functionally correlated
with that code. Although I cannot pursue the topic here, I think that this
conception of essence provides the key to the answer to many of Bennett's
criticisms of Spinoza's use of that slippery notion, particularly insofar as they
concern the conatus doctrine.1 For present purposes, it must suffice to note
that, on this interpretation, both the essence of every finite mode (including a
human body) and the idea in God corresponding to this essence are clearly
eternal. Moreover, this follows whether one construes Spinozistic eternity in
"Knealeist" or "Hardinist" terms.
So far so good. But, as Bennett has pointed out, the real issue regarding
Spinoza's proof concerns the move from the idea in God to the human mind
(in Matson's terms the particular "way of thinking" or "proto-mind" correlated
with a particular genetic code). In the language of VP23, the crucial and
problematic step is the claim that the idea in God "pertains to the essence of
the human mind."2 Spinoza, of course, bases this move on his conception of
the mind as the idea of the body (IIP 13), and Matson seems to follow him at
this point. Given this conception, together with the eternality of the idea in
God, it certainly follows that something pertaining to the essence of the human
mind is eternal. And since whatever pertains to the essence of the mind
 Comments on Matson 97

obviously pertains to the mind itself, it likewise follows that part of the mind
is eternal.
Such an interpretation of Spinoza's proof is admittedly the most natural
one. Unfortunately, however, it trades on a notorious ambiguity in Spinoza's
conception of idea. Following Bennett, the ambiguity can be brought out by
distinguishing between the logical and psychological senses of idea? Construed
logically, ideas are propositions; construed psychologically, they are mental
episodes, believings or cognitions. It is generally recognized that Spinoza uses
idea in both senses, and it is frequently thought that at crucial points in the
Ethicsy e.g. IIP7 and IIP 13 and, of course, VP23, he slides from the logical to
the psychological sense.
How, then, does Matson stand with respect to the distinction? The
answer, I fear, is that he not only construes idea in both senses, but that, without
any explanation, he moves from one sense to the other, as if it were non-
problematic.
For example, he states that it follows from the parallelism that
"corresponding to the formal essence of the body an idea of that essence has
also been contained from eternity in the attribute of thought" (p.89). This is
good Spinozistic doctrine; but it requires a logical reading, that is, it requires
us to take Spinoza to be claiming that in the attribute of thought (or in God)
there is from eternity a true proposition or set thereof regarding the essence
of the body (indeed, of all possible modes in all the attributes). Appealing to
the same parallelism, however, he also claims that this idea "expresses the way
of thinking that goes with the way of being extended that the genetic code
expresses" (p.89). This way of characterizing the mind is likewise good
Spinozistic doctrine (perspicaciously expressed in twentieth century terms); but
it makes sense only if idea is taken in the psychological sense.
Put simply, a way of thinking that goes with a way of being extended is
one thing and a set of true propositions about this way of being extended (or
way of thinking) quite another. But the whole argument, on Matson's
interpretation, seems to turn on their conflation. Thus, rather than avoiding
the "howler" that Bennett and many others have attributed to Spinoza, Matson
merely repeats it in slightly different terms.
The same conflation is also operative in Matson's use of Donagan's claim
that "an idea of a merely possible thing is nevertheless an actual idea," since,
according to IIP8, "this idea is comprehended in the infinite idea of God, which
is certainly an actual thing" (p.90). Once again, this makes perfectly good sense
on the logical reading. So construed, the claim is that there are true
propositions in the infinite intellect of God regarding the essence of unrealized
possibilities in extension (and all of the other attributes, including thought).
It does not follow from this, however, that there are actual "ways of thinking"
or minds corresponding to these unrealized possibilities. Otherwise, to use
Delahunty's example, which is intended as a reductio of Donagan, Spinoza would
be committed to the eternal existence of the mind of the eldest son of the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, and of an infinite number of other unrealized
possibilities.4
98 HENRY E. ALLISON

Is Spinoza's argument itself then "rubbish," as Bennett suggests, and in

trying to make sense of it are we merely adding to the rubbish? I think not,
although the reading that I find plausible is rather bland compared to Matson's
and not strikingly original. Nevertheless, the doctrine that it attributes to
Spinoza is non-trivial and in accord with the basic tenets of the Ethics.
Moreover, the conception of eternity with which it operates is unabashedly
"Hardinist."
In order to appreciate the motivation for the epistemological inter-
pretation, it is important to realize that there is no problem with the soundness
of Spinoza's reasoning if one consistently construes idea in the logical sense.
The point is simply that if the idea that Spinoza identifies with the human mind
just is the complete set of true propositions about a corresponding body, then,
presumably, the essence of the mind must consist in the subset of true
propositions concerning the essence of the body. Since this essence is
unchangeable, the corresponding propositions will be eternally true, and since,
ex hypothesis the essence of the human mind is identical with these propositions,
it too will be eternal.
The obvious problem with this reading is that it saves Spinoza's reasoning
by trivializing his doctrine. Thus, it fails to explain why Spinoza should have
regarded it (as he certainly did) as the culmination of the Ethics. Since,
according to Spinoza, there must be in God a set of eternally true propositions
about the essence of everything in nature, it follows that human beings (one
can no longer speak of minds on this interpretation) have no greater share of
eternity than other finite modes. But, although this consequence is clearly
unacceptable, it does, together with the distinction between the logical and the
psychological senses of idea, serve to define the parameters of a successful
interpretation: namely, it must steer a course between the Scylla of trivialization
and the Charybdis of conflation. Matson, to my mind, certainly avoids the first
but falls victim to the second.
The heart of my proposed solution consists in the rejection of the
assumption that, in VP23, Spinoza is literally identifying the human mind (or
its essence) with the idea in God of the essence of the body. I claim instead
that the statement that this idea "pertains to the essence of the mind" should
be taken to mean merely that the human mind has the capacity to comprehend
it, that is, that it can form an adequate idea of the essence of its body and of
itself. Since to have an adequate idea of something is to conceive it under a
"species of eternity," this is equivalent to participating in the infinite intellect
of God. This is, however, a matter of epistemological accomplishment, not of
ontolpgical identification. But since it refers to an actual capacity in the mind
rather than to certain propositions about its object or ideatum> the eternality
claim is non-trivial. Nevertheless, it does not imply sempiternal existence, since
the mind cannot retain this capacity any longer than it itself endures, which is
no longer than the duration of the body of which it is an idea.
Clearly, if such a revisionary interpretation is to be at all convincing, it must
be possible to reconcile it with the passages, duly emphasized by Matson, in
which Spinoza appears to affirm an endless duaration for part of the human
 Comments on Matson 99

mind. Although I have nothing very original to say on this score, I do think
that reasonable alternatives to a literal reading of these passages are already
prevalent in the literature. My only real addition to this topic is to suggest that
these non-literal readings become more plausible if one keeps in mind the work
that needs to be done by the final propositions of the Ethics. Before turning
to that, however, it should be noted that there is considerable textual support
for the epistemological interpretation.
Tb begin with, there are the "Hardinist" passages in which Spinoza appears
to deny that the mind's eternity has anything to do with duration. These include
the claim that "we do not attribute duration to it except while the body endures"
(VP23D) which Matson ignores; the remark that the eternity of the mind "cannot
be defined by time or explained through duration" (VP23S) which Matson
implausibly dismisses as a "harmless exaggeration" (p. 84); and the reflection that,
although human beings are conscious of the mind's eternity, they neverthe-
less "confuse it with duration, and attribute it to the imagination or memory,
which they believe remains after death" (VP34CS), which Matson likewise
ignores.
More directly relevant to the epistemological interpretation of the mind's
eternity is VP31S. After maintaining in the proposition that "The third kind
of knowledge depends on the Mind itself... insofar as the mind is eternal," which
itself suggests a close connection between the mind's eternity and its intellectual
capacity, he states explicitly in the scholium that "the mind is eternal insofar
as it conceives things under a species of eternity."
Finally, it seems obvious that Spinoza's mysterious claims that minds differ
in the extent to which they are eternal (this difference being a function of their
adequate ideas) and that minds can increase their eternal portion in this life
through an increase in their stock of adequate ideas strongly suggest the
epistemological interpretation. Indeed, it is noteworthy that, in order to
reconcile these claims with his own interpretation of the mind's eternity, Matson
is forced to maintain that the eternal part of the mind can literally grow beyond
the original "proto-mind" through the aquisition of knowledge of the second and
third kinds. Now, it certainly makes sense to suggest that a mind can increase
its intellectual capacities beyond those contained in its initial "core" or essence.
What is difficult to understand, however, is how, as Matson assumes, the whole
complex (core plus acquired knowledge) can be eternal in the same sense,
particularly when eternity is construed as existence "without beginning, as well
as without end" (p. 83). Tb put the problem somewhat differently, perhaps,
as Kneale suggests, it does make sense to claim that eternal truths are true today
and will be true tomorrow; but does it make sense to suggest that more of me
is eternal today than was at birth and less than shall be tomorrow?
Admittedly, all is not clear sailing for the epistemological, or, indeed, any
interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of the mind's eternity. Thus, in apparent
conflict with such a non-literal reading of the text is Spinoza's enigmatic state-
ment that "With this I have completed everything which concerns the present
life... so it is now time to pass to those things which pertain to the Mind's
duration without relation to the body" (VP20S), which sets the agenda for the
100 HENRY E. ALLISON

last twenty-two propositions. In addition, there is the claim that something of

the mind "remains" (remanet) after the destruction of the body (VP23), as well
as the other references to part of the mind "remaining," noted by Matson.
Finally, there is the claim, also noted by Matson, that the wise man "never ceases
to be" (numquam esse desinit) (VP42S).
As I have already indicated, I believe that the first step in dealing with
these passages is to determine what work remains to be done in the final
propositions. The operative assumption here, and, indeed, in any interpretation
that does not dismiss these propositions as "rubbish," is that they must advance
the overall argument of the Ethics in a significant way. Now, after contrasting
the life of freedom, lived under the guidance of reason, with the life of bondage
to the passions in the fourth part, in the first twenty propositions of the fifth
part Spinoza provides some remedies against the passions, all of which involve
knowledge of the second and third kinds. Accordingly, knowledge, including the
intuitive knowledge of God, is considered in these propositions merely as a force
for controlling the passions. Clearly, however, Spinoza must demonstrate not
merely that knowledge provides the only means to escape from bondage, but
also, and primarily, that human perfection, or "blessedness," consists in
intellectual activity. In short, Spinoza must move from a consideration of reason
(construed in a broad sense to include both the second and third kinds of
knowledge) as a force for controlling the passions to a consideration of the life
of reason as an end in itself.
If this is correct, then it is not surprising that Spinoza uses traditional
religious language to indicate his shift of concern. Tb begin with, as Joachim
has noted, by "the present life," with the concern for which Spinoza claims to
be finished, we need understand nothing more than the life of conflict with the
passions.5 Moreover, since the conflict is between the mind's adequate ideas
and the inadequate ideas corresponding to the bodily appetites, it can certainly
be said to concern the mind as it is "in relation to the body." Thus, in moving
from a consideration of reason as a weapon in the struggle with the passions
to a consideration of rational activity as constitutive of intrinsic and ultimate
satisfaction (blessedness), Spinoza is, indeed, in a certain sense both turning
from all that "concerns the present life" and considering the mind as it is
"without relation to the body."
But what of the duration of the mind so considered? Following Joachim,
Matson acknowledges the possibility that it might be a slip of the pen, but
suggests that, if it is not, then "Kneale's case is proved" (p.4). My own view
is that there are other, more reasonable, alternatives. For example, one can take
the reference to the mind's "duration" ironically; the point of the irony being
that the result of considering the mind "without relation to the body" is the
realization that, so considered, it does not have any duration. As for the claim
that "the wise man never cease to be" (VP42S), to which Matson seems to attach
considerable significance, it must suffice to note that Spinoza carefully qualifies
this to concern the wise man "insofar as he is considered as such."
Finally, as many others have already noted, the Latin term remanet can
be taken as equivalent to 'remainder' in arithmetic or 'residue' in chemistry.6
 Comments on Matson 101

Thus, the troublesome claim that something of the mind "remains which is
eternal" can be taken merely to indicate that there is some "eternal" aspect to
the mind that has not yet been considered. Presumably the other appearances
of the term in the last propositions can be dealt with in a similar fashion.
I do not wish to insist on any of this here, however, and I certainly do
not intend to suggest that these are the only plausible alternatives to a literal
reading. My point is only that the literal interpretation of these passages raises
insuperable difficulties, and that there is plenty of room for a non-literal
interpretation of them that neither is inconsistent with the uncompromisingly
naturalistic program of the Ethic nor trivializes its last propositions.

1. Bennett (1984), esp. 231-237. I discuss this topic in Benedict de Spinoza: An

Introduction, (New Haven: Yale University Press, Rev. ed. 1987), 131-136.
2. Ibid., 359-363.
3. Ibid., 50-54, 128-131. Bennett actually emphasizes the contrast between the logical
and psychological conceptions of the attribute of thought, but the distinction applies to ideas,
the contents of that attribute, as well.
4. R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 299-300.
5. Joachim (1901), 296.
6. See E. Harris, "Spinoza's Theory of Human Immortality," in Mandelbaum & Freeman
(1975), 250; C. L. Hardin, "Spinoza on Immortality and Time", in Shahan and Biro (1978),
310; and Delahunty, Spinoza, 293.
 HOMO COGITAT:
SPINOZAS DOCTRINE AND SOME RECENT COMMENTATORS

ALAN DONAGAN
California Institute of Technology

L Cogitatio in Spinoza's Axioms and Definitions,

What can be learned from Spinoza's deflnitions and axioms about what he
took to be the activity he describes by the verb 'cogitare' and its cognate noun
'cogitatio9? The second axiom of Part II of the Ethics, "Homo cogitat" is
followed by another about the modes of cogitatio: it lays down (i) that there can
be no modus cogitandi (such as love, desire, or whatever is designated by the
word 'affectas animV)y unless in the individual who has it there is an idea of the
thing it is about, and (ii) that there can be an idea without any other modus
cogitandi (EILA3). This directs attention to the definition of "idea": namely,

Per ideam intelligo Mentis conceptum, quern Mens format, propterea quod res est
cogitans (EIID3).

An 'explicatio9 is attached to it:

Dico potius conceptum, quam perceptionem, quia perceptionis nomen indicare

videtur, Mentem ab objecto pati. At conceptus actionem mentis exprimere videtur.

And that prompts one to ask: What is the conceptus a mind forms, simply
because it is a res cogitans?
Still, we have learned something. We have not learned what 'ideas' are
(Spinoza's Latin word 'idea* cannot be better rendered into English than by
adoption) but we have learned something about their function in thinking. The
most elementary exercise of thinking is forming an idea; and forming an idea
is an action, not something caused ab objecto. This presupposes that ideas have
objects. And that should remind us of EIA6, that a true idea must agree with
its object. That does not strictly presuppose that all ideas are true or false, but
it strongly suggests it; and, as we shall see, Spinoza believes it (EIIP49D). So,
from the definitions and axioms of Ethics I and II, we are entitled to infer:
(1) that merely forming an idea is thinking, and all thinking involves forming
ideas; (2a) that ideas have objects, and (2b) are true or false; (3) that if they
are true they agree with their objects; and (4) that their objects do not cause
them to be formed.
Since forming an idea is sufficient and necessary for thinking, and since all
the definitions and axioms tell us about the internal character of ideas, as
distinct from what does or does not cause them, is contained in (2a), (2b), and
(3), we must begin with them. What is it for an idea to be true or false? What
is it for something to be the object of an idea - to have a relation to an idea
usually signified in Latin by putting the noun or noun phrase standing for the
 Homo Cogitât 103

object in the genitive case as qualifying the noun or noun phrase standing for
the idea? And what is it for an idea to 'agree* ('convenire') with its object?

2. Forming Ideas: the Propositional Interpretation.

Since philosophers today for the most part think 'true' and 'false' in their
fundamental senses refer to the truth and falsity of propositions expressed by
sentences, it is natural for them to assume that the truth or falsity of ideas
Spinoza speaks of is propositional truth or falsity, and hence that ideas are
propositions. Modi cogitandi such as love and desire will then be what Bertrand
Russell called 'propositional attitudes'; an idea's agreeing with its object will
be a proposition's being true of its object. Edwin Curley develops an inter-
pretation of 'idea' on these lines in his pioneering Spinoza's Metaphysics, where
ideas are regarded as propositions, and their objects, on the lines of Wittgen-
stein's Dractatus, as facts which they depict (Curley (1969), 53-55, 123-6).
There is direct textual evidence for such a propositional interpretation.
In some of Spinoza's examples, ideas are expressed by sentences: thus in E
IIP40S1 his specimens of the confused ideas of imagination usually called
'universal notions' are presented in the form of sentences: "that man is an animal
capable of laughter, or a featherless biped, or a rational animal." This has led
Jonathan Bennett, to declare that "[mjuch of the time Spinoza takes ideas to
be propositionally structured, i.e., to be of the form 'that p,' where 'p' stands
for a sentence" (Bennett (1984), 51).
Tb the evidence of the verbal form in which Spinoza expresses a number
of his examples, Curley has recently added an argument from the best
explanation (Curley (1975), 169-70, 173-74). Spinoza goes on to reject
Descartes's distinction between forming an idea and affirming something; and
Curley has suggested that the best explanation of his doing so is that he rejects
Descartes's doctrine that ideas are in us quasi imagines and he conceives them
instead as propositions. I shall examine this suggestion in its place; but, for the
moment, I shall confine myself to showing that the textual evidence for Curley's
contention that "[m]uch of the time, Spinoza takes ideas to be propositionally
structured" (Bennett (1984), 51) is weak. That evidence is that Spinoza
frequently expresses ideas in sentences. It is inconclusive, because, as nobody
disputes, he also expresses ideas by nouns and noun phrases. The variation in
the forms in which he expresses ideas linguistically would be natural if, like
Descartes, he did not think of any linguistic expression of ideas as prototypical.
That he does not is supported both by what what he says about the relation
of words to thought and what he does not say. First, he does not say that
ideas are propositionally structured and nobody is likely to embrace the doctrine
that they are in a fit of absence of mind. If Spinoza had embraced it, and
especially if he was led to differ from Descartes because he did, why did he
not explicitly say so? No answer to this question is plausible.
Secondly, he does say that it is dangerous to confuse ideas with their verbal
expressions. Propositional theorists characteristically find the relation of
language to the world to be relatively unproblematic, and that of Cartesian
104 ALAN DONAGAN

thought to the world relatively problematic, because the one is public and open
to scientific investigation, and the other is neither. They therefore conclude that
thought is not Cartesian, but propositional, and that the problem of its relation
to the world should be dissolved by identifying thinking with an activity
characteristically expressible in language. What Spinoza says in at least one
place about the relation of thought to language is the opposite of this.
In the scholium to E IIP49C, denouncing the "prejudice" of those who
"confuse words with the idea" as a fruitful source of error, he offers a remedy:
it is "easily... put aside by anyone who attends to the nature of thought, which
does not at all involve the concept of extension," because "the essence of words
... is constituted only by corporeal motions, which do not at all involve the
concept of thought" (G 11/132/13-21). This amounts to saying that the relation
of words (corporeal phenomena) to the world cannot elucidate the concept of
thought at all; and that so far as words express thoughts it must be because they
are associated with non-corporeal ideas. In other words, it is the exact reverse
of the truth to imagine that the relation of ideas to the world is problematic,
while that of linguistically expressible activities to the world is not.

3. Forming Ideas: Spinoza as a Post-Cartesian.

In describing thought as an activity involving ideas, Spinoza followed Descartes,

whose description of thinking about things as having ideas of them before his
mind had perplexed both Caterus and Hobbes in preparing their Objections to
the third Meditation (AT VII, 35; 92-94; 179-80). In replying to Hobbes,
Descartes protested that he had made it clear that he was "taking the word 'idea'
to refer to whatever is immediately perceived by the mind," and revealingly
added, as Curley has pointed out, (Curley (1985), 640) that he "used the word
'idea' because it was the standard philosophical term used to refer to the forms
of perception belonging to the divine mind" (AT VII, 181). It is presumably
not questioned that it is the nature of ideas in the divine mind both to be
immediate to God and to represent things in the world. And that being their
nature, no further explanation of either fact is called for. Of course, Descartes
did not think that ideas in human minds are more than analogous to ideas in
God's, but Spinoza developed his comparison as he did not, and ultimately
concluded that human ideas are God's.
Given this Cartesian setting, Spinoza's definitions and axioms about cogitatio
are readily interpreted non-propositionally as amounting to four theses:

(i) Ideas are Immediate Objects of Thinking.

In thinking of something, a thinker is not related to it directly, as his body is when
he touches it, but indirectly, through the mediation of an immediate object to which
he is related directly: all such immediate objects are of the same kind, and they are
what Descartes called ideas.

As Gueroult points out, Spinoza presupposes this in E IIP3D, when he offers "God
can think (cogitare) infinite things in infinite ways" and "[God] can form an idea
 Homo Cogitât 105

(ideam...formare) of his essence and of all that necessarily follows from it" as two ways
of saying the same thing (Gueroult (1974), 26, n.28). Assuming that this would be
a commonplace to his readers, Spinoza could assume that EIID3, would remind them
that, despite the heterogeneity of the things thinkers think of, the immediate objects
through which they do so are all of the same kind, and so would convey to them that
in using the word 'idea' he meant an object of that kind.

(ii) Ideas Represent What is Thought of.

Ideas are representations of the things a thinker thinks of through them, their ideata.
Neither Descartes nor Spinoza offers any account of how ideas represent; but both
presuppose that representation pertains to their essence.

(iii) Ideas have a Double Esse.

Descartes analysed the representativeness of ideas as the medieval Aristotelians did,
by ascribing two kinds of esse to them: esseformale,the being they have as individual
modes of substance under the attribute cogitatio (which corresponds to the medievals'
esse naturale), and esse objectiviim, the being they have as being of something - as
representing something (which corresponds to the medievals' esse intentionale) (cf.
AT VII, 41-47). As E IIP8C and P48S[NS] show, Spinoza accepted this Cartesian
distinction as sound, and was willing to make express use of it (cf. Gueroult (1974),
26-28).

(iv) Ideas Explain How Words Express Thoughts, and Not Vice Versa.
Human speech and writing express thoughts to the extent that they stand for ideas.
The thoughts they express are elucidated by reference to ideas, and not vice versa.
It does not follow, because sentences have certain structural features, that the ideas
they express must have parallel features.

These four theses are common to Descartes and Spinoza, and to most
seventeenth and early eighteenth century post-Cartesians.
As Ian Hacking has forcibly argued, in discussing recent interpretations of
what Locke called 'the new way of ideas,' Descartes and his immediate successors
regarded the immediacy and representativeness of ideas as something utterly
familiar and unproblematic. That is why the authors of the Port Royal Logic
dismissed the suggestion that 'idea' can be usefully defined. "Some words are
so clear," they write, "that they cannot be explained by others, for none are more
clear and more simple. 'Idea' is such a word."1 For them, as Hacking observes,
"Ideas ... form no artificial class of disparate entities. Idea is the most elemental
kind of entity imaginable, beyond possibility of definition" (Hacking, 28). And
so it was for Spinoza.
It is natural that those who interpret forming ideas as forming propositions
should complain, as Bennett does, that Spinoza treats ideas in two different and
incompatible ways: psychologically, as mental episodes, distinguished from
physical ones by the attribute through which they are conceived; and logically,
as something like Fregean Gedanke - that is, as objects or 'contents' of those
mental episodes, belonging neither to the physical nor to the psychological realm.
While for the most part Spinoza uses 'idea' psychologically, Bennett declares,
"from time to time he makes his psychology double as a logic as well, taking
106 ALAN DONAGAN

the term 'idea' to stand indifferently for a mental item and for a concept or
proposition" (Bennett (1984), 52).
Spinoza would have replied, I think, that such complaints arise from the
delusion that a Fregean third realm must be postulated. There is no need to
postulate logical entities linking linguistic utterances to the world, because the
ideas they are associated with do that. And ideas are necessarily spoken about
in two ways, because as 'mental items' they have a double esse: esse formale
as finite individual modes under the attribute of cogitatio, and esse objectivum
as representing ideata. As having esse formale they are neither true nor false,
nor have they any other logical properties; as having esse objectivum they are
true or false (Descartes would say 'materially true or false'), and stand in other
logical relations. But this does not imply that the word 'idea' stands now for
one thing and now for another. If ideas have a double essey there can be no
objection to describing them in two different ways: sometimes psychologically,
with respect to their esse formale; and sometimes logically, with respect to their
esse objectivum. It may be that the theory of a double esse is objectionable; but
if it is, let it be objected to. As it stands, it explains the double character of
the properties with which ideas are credited.

4. Ideas as Quasi Imagines: Spinoza's Departure from Descartes.

Descartes's theses that ideas, while non-propositional, are immediate to the

mind and representative, explains both why he describes them in the Meditations
as "quasi imagines" (AT VII, 42), and why he goes on in Resp. Obj. II to insist
that they are not counterparts in the imagination of physical drawings or
sculptures. Descartes recognizes that some ideas have such counterparts, namely,
images in the corporeal imagination; but he denies that such images are ideas
at all, except in so far as they give form to the mind itself, when it is directed
to the relevant part of the brain (AT VII, 160-61). The force of saying that
ideas are "quasi imagines" is that they represent the things they do, not by some
mental equivalent of saying how they are, but by depicting them, although they
do not depict them as material pictures depict what they are of.
In E IIP49S, Spinoza repeats Descartes's distinction between ideas and
images in the corporeal imagination, and insists that ideas are not like "mute
pictures on a panel." And at the same time he denounces the error of confusing
ideas with words, tracing both errors to the same source: mistaking ideas for
"corporeal motions, which do not at all involve the concept of cogitatio" It
has been suggested that here Spinoza is criticizing Descartes; but he does not
say so, and if he is, he is mistaken - Descartes denies that ideas are corporeal
imagines as unmistakably as Spinoza does.
Should not both Descartes and Spinoza have been embarrassed by their
inability to describe how ideas depict what they do? I think that they would
be surprised by the question. For, as Hacking has pointed out, what they
consider problematic is not how ideas depict, but how words and material
pictures do (cf. Hacking, ch. 3). Like twentieth century philosophers, they
explain the problematic by the unproblematic: words represent because they are
 Homo Cogitât 107

conventionally associated with ideas which naturally depict what they represent;
and material pictures artificially depict because seeing them in some ways
resembles seeing what they depict, and so prompts their viewers to form ideas
both of what they depict and of them as artificial depictions. The problematic
representativeness of words and pictures is explained by what is taken to be the
unproblematic representativeness of ideas.
I do not deny that the new way of ideas which Descartes introduced is open
to objection, or that the revolt against it in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries is justified. I agree that Cartesian ideas no more exist than the
luminiferous ether. But we cannot understand Spinoza's writings unless we
recognize that he accepted not only Descartes's doctrine that thinking is an
activity necessarily involving ideas, but also his chief theses about what ideas
are. Would it then be better to misunderstand Spinoza's writings: to ask
ourselves what they have to teach us on the assumption that in them human
thinking is treated as something explained by linguistic communication in human
societies? No: it would be as perverse as to propose that we treat the work
of Huygens and his successors as presupposing that there is no luminiferous
ether. Just as the work of Huygens can only be corrected and incorporated into
quantum electrodynamics by studying it as it is, so the work of Spinoza can only
be corrected and incorporated into philosophy today by studying it as it is. And
if it is objected that no philosophy that contains an error so gross as the theory
of ideas can be anything but a tissue of nonsense, one can only reply that that
remains to be seen. The scientific parallels suggest otherwise.
Although Spinoza implicitly accepts Descartes' doctrine that ideas are in
us quasi imagines, but non-corporeal ones, he utterly repudiates a subordinate
thesis on which his theory of knowledge depends. Descartes's position is as
follows. Ideas, quasi imagines, are 'materially' true or false in that what they
depict either exists as they depict it, or is a mere nonentity. Hence a materially
true idea is not a true belief, nor a materially false one a false belief. You have
neither a true belief nor a false one until you advance from having an idea to
making a 'judgement' about it: that is, to affirming or denying its material truth.
It is because judgements are acts of will, not of intellect, that the doctrine of
divine veracity which grounds human knowledge can be reconciled with the fact
of human error. God's veracity is not impugned by the fact that human beings
are caused, in the course of nature, to have numerous materially false ideas,
because their materially false ideas do not, as such, involve any judgements at
all. It would be impugned only if the ideas that cause them to make judgements
- their clear and distinct ideas, and their ideas of sensation as a class - were
materially false. But no clear and distinct idea is materially false; nor are ideas
of sensation materially false as a class, although they are individually.
Spinoza rejected any such distinction between idea and judgement. All ideas
are affirmations or Cartesian judgements. That is, they both represent and affirm
that they are, as representations, what Descartes called materially true. Not that
you affirm the material truth of every idea that you have, any more than every
sentence you utter purports to be true. Just as false sentences can enter into
true truth-functional compounds, so false ideas can combine with others into
108 ALAN DONAGAN

complexes that are true as wholes. A false judgement is simply an idea

representing something that does not in fact exist, unaccompanied nby an idea
that excludes the existence" of what it represents (cf. E IIP17CS - G/II/11-15).
This distinction between what an idea affirms by itself, and its contribution to
what a complex idea of which it forms a part affirms, is the foundation of
Spinoza's theory of error.

5.0. Why does Spinoza Maintain that All Ideas are Affirmations?

Before going into the implications of Spinoza's doctrine that all ideas are
affirmations, it is necessary to understand why he held it. He nowhere
demonstrates it. Rather, in the course of demonstrating Ε IIP49,

In mente nulla datur volitio, sive affirmatio et negatio, praeter illam, quam idea,
quatenus idea est, involvit,

he employs an arbitrary instance of it as a step:

Porro haec trianguli idea, hanc eandem affirmationem involvere debet, nempe, quod
tres eius anguli aequentur duobus rectis -

that is, "this idea of a triangle must involve the affirmation that its three angles
equal two right angles." Interpreted in the light of my analysis of Spinoza's
conception of an idea as non-propositional, this is equivalent to: the idea of a
plane figure bounded by straight lines with three interior angles must both
affirm its own material truth (that something existent corresponds to it), and
exclude the idea of such a figure without interior angles equalling two right
angles. This step, however, as Curley has pointed out, "is not justified by the
citation of anything that has gone before" (Curley (1975), 169). If he is entitled
to assert it, his proof of IIP49 is sound. But is he?

5.1. Curley's Answer: the Propositional Theory Reconsidered.

In simply asserting, in his demonstration of E IIP49, that an arbitrary idea

can neither be nor be conceived except as affirming its own (material) truth,
Spinoza unquestionably departs from the ordo geometricus he professes to follow,
which forbids the making of any assertion that does not immediately follow from
a definition, an axiom, or a proposition already demonstrated. But is his
departure venial? Could he have proved that every idea as such involves an
affirmation? Or is he entitled to assert it as an axiom?
One reason for treating it as venial has already been acknowledged. If ideas
are propositions, some would say that they must be affirmations too. So
Spinoza's failure to justify his assertion that they are affirmations can be made
part of an argument from the best explanation that, discarding Descartes's
conception of ideas as quasi imagines, he conceives them as propositions. In
the form Curley gives it, that argument is a powerful one.
 Homo Cogitât 109

In at least one important use of the term idea' [he writes], an idea is supposed to
be a representative entity which can be affirmed or denied. Now an image or a
picture can represent an object as having certain characteristics simply by being a
good likeness of the object. When we spiritualize our representative entity and
deprive it of all the characteristics of a material object, it is hard to know what to
make of this notion of a resemblance between the idea and its object. We can do
something with the notion if we regard the idea as the sort of thought which might
be expressed by a proposition. But if we do that, then we can no longer say that
the idea in itself involves neither an affirmation nor denial and is neither true nor
false.2

Yet although this is persuasive, two objections to it seem to me decisive.

First, it is implausible that Spinoza believed that Descartes confused ideas with
corporeal images. He could not have been ignorant that, although he said that
ideas are in us "quasiimagines" he was at pains to deny that they are corporeal.
It is significant that, in observing that those who confuse ideas with corporeal
images do not see that they are affirmations (E IIP49S - G/II/132/5-12), Spinoza
does not name Descartes as one who did so; for when a doctrine he criticizes
is, by common agreement, Descartes's, he usually says so. Secondly, while it may
be hard for twentieth century readers to make head or tail of the notion of a
spiritualized quasi-image depicting a physical object while having no physical
resemblance to it, there is ample evidence that many seventeenth century
philosophers thought that notion to be so simple and clear that no further
explanation of it was needed. Whatever was Spinoza's reason for asserting that
ideas are affirmations, it is most unlikely that it was that the representative
character of ideas would be unintelligible if they were not propositions.

5.2 Gueroult's Answer: the Presuppositions of Spinoza's Theology.

Without alluding to the formal flaw in Spinoza's demonstration, Gueroult offers

an alternative informal justification of the ungrounded step (Gueroult, 498).
However, for direct textual evidence that Spinoza would have endorsed it, he
goes, not to the Ethics, but to ch. 4 of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, where,
with respect to God's understanding of the nature of the triangle, Spinoza
asserts that

Dei voluntas et Dei intellectus in se rêvera unum et idem sunt, nee distinguuntur
nisi respectu nostrarum cogitationum quas de Dei intellectu formamus (G III/62/30-32).

God's intellect is an infinitely complex idea, comprising both the infinite modes
of God under the attribute cogitatio, and also the totality of finite modes under
that same attribute, but if the divine intellect is not really distinct from the
divine will, and if affirmation is a variety of willing, then, since the ideas in the
divine mind are true and the whole truth, and since God wills to affirm all
that is true, for God to have the ideas he has is the same thing as for him to
affirm them.
110 ALAN DONAGAN

This line of thought takes seriously Spinoza's departure from Descartes in

holding that the ideas constituting human minds are fragments of the complex
infinite idea constituting the divine mind. This is how Gueroult develops it.

To separate the necessity of the properties contained in the nature of things from
the act by which we necessarily affirm them returns to dissociating God's understanding
and will, in arbitrarily disjoining the necessity conceived by our notions from divine
necessity. And that leads to misunderstanding necessity as it is in itself; for, in itself,
it is nothing other than the productive power of God. It is because the eternal truths
are necessary by the nature of their notions that one places them in God's
understanding; and it is because they are necessary by God's nature that one makes
them depend on the decree of his will. But the divine decree and the nature of
things are but one thing in the same necessity of God. In God, will is nothing but
the power of the understanding, which is God himself produced necessarily by himself.
That is why the necessity of ideas is in me only as their necessary affirmation
(Gueroult, 498).

Although Gueroult's exposition makes complete sense of the text of Ethics II,
it indirectly implies that Spinoza's exposition of his thought is flawed. He has
not made clear to his readers that, in saying that thinking is forming ideas, he
means that cogitatio, as an attribute expressing the eternal infinite essence of
substance, is to be analysed without remainder in terms of the ideas formed
by God as natura naturans under that attribute. The Dei infinita idea cannot
be supposed merely to represent the infinite substance and its modes with
complete material truth, without also affirming that it does so. But in that case,
neither can any fragment of that idea (and there every idea other than it is a
fragment of it) merely represent: it must also affirm its own material truth.
How might Spinoza have corrected his exposition? One way (I do not say
that it would have been the best) would have been to enlarge the expositio of
E IID3 so that it would have read: "But concept seems to express an action of
the mind; and ideas not only are not caused by their ideata, but are affirmations
of the formal being of their ideata.n It would also have been well if, citing, for
demonstration, the enlarged expositio of IID3, he had added a second corollary
to IIP7, to the effect that God's actual power of thinking is not only the power
to represent all that is truly, but also to affirm the formal being of what it
represents. If he had done so, then in IIP49D, instead of asserting without
support that the idea of an arbitrary object (a triangle) cannot be conceived
except as affirming all that it involves, he could have cited the enlarged IID3
and the additional corollary of IIP7. That he remained committed to his
position in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is evident from EIIP49 itself.

6. How is Error Possible?

Spinoza's doctrine of what Gueroult calls extra-cogitative parallelism, the

paralleism between ideas and 'things,' makes the phenomenon of error
perplexing. For if the infinite complex idea that is the divine mind and the
finite complex idea that is God as constituting the essence of a given human
 Homo Cogitât 111

mind differ only as a whole differs from one of its parts, it appears to follow
that the latter can be no more than ignorant. And Spinoza himself acknowledges
that "to be ignorant and to err are different" (HP35D).
The problem is insoluble if ideas are conceived as propositions. If some-
body believes only one proposition about snow, and that proposition, say, 'Snow
is white,' is true, then there is much about snow of which he is ignorant; but
he is not in error about it. Propositional ignorance is not believing some true
proposition, and propositional error is believing some false one. If Spinoza thinks
of ideas as propositions, then Bennett would be right when he says:

Spinoza, although he can accommodate ignorance, has no room for error. He can
say that I am ignorant of an event in the outside world if it fails to cause any change
in my body, but what can he say about error. What he does say is that it is a kind
of ignorance. His arguments for this are amazingly stubborn and ingenious, but
they are complete failures, as they are bound to be since their conclusion is completely
false (Bennett (1983), 51; cf. Bennett (1984), 167-71).

Would this objection stand if Spinoza did not think of ideas as propositions?
I do not think it would. But in this paper I can do no more than show how
the nonpropositional conception of ideas I have ascribed to Spinoza allows
him to accommodate the fact of error while denying that there is anything
positive in ideas by virtue if which they are false.
If the propositions we believe are as it were shadows of our ideas, and if
ideas are non-propositional and non-corporeal representations, as it were
imagines, that affirm their own material truth, would somebody whose idea of
snow is simply an idea of white stuff be merely ignorant and not in error? The
analogy of corporeal images is valid here. A child is invited to make a picture
of snow in a space on a blackboard, and colours the space a uniform white.
WTien asked, 'Is that really what you picture snow as?' he replies that it is. If
he understands the question and speaks the truth, then his picture is materially
false; for it depicts snow as indistinguishable from any uniform white expanse.
And if he affirms that it is materially true, he is in error.
WTiy do both imagines and ideas, which are quasi imagines, differ from
propositions in this respect? I submit that it is because a set of propositions
that are each true of an object (that snow is white, that snow is cold, etc.)
each contribute to the whole truth about that object by being true of it in
their own right. But two fragments that would be a true imago of something
if put together in the right way are not each true imagines of it in their own
right. The proposition that snow is white does not purport to be as it were an
imago of snow: it says only what its colour is, and it says truly. But an idea
of snow as white, if that is the whole of of it, would represent snow as white
and nothing more, and so would represent it falsely. It would not agree with
its ideatum, though what is positive in it would be part of the true idea of snow.
Spinoza's theory of error rests on four theses: (i) that every idea is an
affirmation in the sense that it is a given mind's total representation at a given
time of what there is, or is a fragment of such a representation; (ii) that every
112 ALAN DONAGAN

idea is a representation of an ideatum, which may be either what there is, or

part of it; (iii) that an idea is a false representation of its ideatum if it does not
agree with it, that is, if there is anything essential to the ideatum that it fails
to represent; and (iv) that every idea affirms its own truth unless it is part of
a total complex idea which represents it as not agreeing with its ideatum. Given
these theses, he can consistently maintain that human beings can have false ideas
(ideas that do not agree with their ideata) that are not false affirmations
(because they are parts of total complex ideas that do not represent them as
false). This enables him to distinguish ignorance from error: ignorance is having
a false idea that is not itself an affirmation, because it forms part of a total
complex idea that represents it as false; error is having a false idea that is itself
an affirmation, either because it is a total complex idea, or because the total
complex idea of which it forms a part does not represent it as false. Spinoza's
examples of error in IIP17CDS and IIP49CDS can, I believe, be elucidated along
these lines.

References

(1) References to Spinoza's works are either to the Gebhardt edition or to Curley
(1985). I adopt Curley's renderings in quoting from Spinoza in English, with occasional
departures in the direction of literalness.
(2) Other works referred to (apart from those given in the list of frequently cited
sources at the beginning of this volume) are:
Bennett (1983). Bennett, Jonathan. 'Glimpses of Spinoza' The Syracuse Scholar 4 (1983),
pp. 42-56.
Curley (1975). Curley, Edwin M. 'Descartes, Spinoza, and the Ethics of Belief,' in
Mandelbaum and Freeman (1975).
Hacking, Ian. Why does Language Matter to Philosophy? (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975).

1. Hacking quotes this from James Dickoff's and Patricia James's translation, The Art of
Thinking: the Port Royal Logic (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p. 31.
2. Curley (1975), 173. In a note to this passage, Curley draws attention to Descartes's
distinction between the truth and falsity of judgments and the material truth and falsity of
ideas, but dismisses it as a desperate attempt to escape the difficulty. He should, I think,
also notice that speech act theorists distinguish between propositions and assertions, and
deny that entertaining a proposition is the same thing as affirming it.
SPINOZA ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN INTELLECT AND WILL

GENEVIEVE LLOYD
University of New South Wsdes

Spinoza's arguments, in Part Two of the Ethics, against the Cartesian account
of judgment and the distinction between will and understanding, are notoriously
inadequate for the conclusions he wishes to draw. He argues that ideas, in so
far as they are ideas, carry affirmation with them; that they cannot be in the
mind without being affirmed or negated; that the mind cannot, by an act of the
will, suspend judgment; and, more generally, that there is in the mind no
"absolute or free" will (IIP49QS).1 What is usually taken as at stake between
Spinoza and Descartes here is the possibility of what we now call an "ethics of
belief," concerned with the conditions under which it is right or reasonable to
give our assent in judgment. It is not surprising, against the background of post-
Kantian epistemological pre-occupations, that what is salient about these passages
should be how Spinoza's rejection of free will bears on the avoidance of error
and the gaining of certainty. And, in the context of those epistemological aspects
of skepticism, Spinoza's arguments against the Cartesian distinction between
intellect and will do seem to leave a lot to be desired.
Those concerns are certainly there. Spinoza is trying to undermine the
Cartesian program for attaining certainty through attending to criteria of truth
and withholding judgment where we lack clear and distinct perception. But there
is more at stake between Descartes and Spinoza than rival theories of knowledge.
The rejection of the will is supposed to tranquillize our spirits and show us our
highest happiness and virtue. The passages on the will's role in judgment point
forward in the text to Spinoza's version - a very different one from Descartes' -
of Reason's power over the passions. And they also point back to the
discussion, in Part One, of the contrasts between the human mind and the divine
will and intellect - on which, again, Spinoza's position is very different from
Descartes'. If we take into account how Spinoza's rejection of the will's role
in judgment is positioned in the text, we get a rather different picture of his
treatment of judgment from the one usually offered. Descartes and Spinoza
represent two different stances on the ethical significance of truth, as distinct
from the cluster of epistemological issues we now label the "ethics of belief."
Descartes was of course concerned to secure the foundations of scientific
knowledge against skeptical doubt. But in recommending that we suspend
judgment where we lack clear and distinct perception, he appropriates to the
search for certainty some more ancient concerns which skepticism had shared
with stoicism and epicureanism - concern with the right attitude to necessity,
with whether or not we can control our destiny, with how to attain tranquillity
and reconcile ourselves to mortality. Descartes' and Spinoza's discussions of
the suspending of judgment are framed by a shared concern with those issues.
In rejecting the will and insisting that the sole power of the mind resides in
understanding, Spinoza assigns judgment to the realm of necessity, over which
114 GENEVIEVE LLOYD

we have no control. For Descartes, in contrast, there was an element in

judgment which did lie under human control, and this was the mark of human
exemption from the realm of necessity. I want in this paper to put Spinoza's
discussion of the Cartesian "ethics of belief back into this wider context of
shared concerns with issues which have largely receded from contemporary theory
of knowledge. This will not of itself remedy all that is unconvincing in Spinoza's
attack on the distinction between will and intellect. But it may show the
differences between Descartes and Spinoza to be more complex and more
interesting than they do if we ignore their textual and historical context.
Descartes' linking of judgment and volition, as Jonathan Bennett remarks
with some puzzlement in A Study of Spinoza's Ethics ((1984), 159), cuts across
the traditional distinction between cognitive and conative states. Philosophers
traditionally distinguish cognition - knowing, believing, understanding - from
conation - disliking, wanting, intending, trying. Descartes, in contrast, as
Bennett points out, puts sensing, imagining and abstract thought into one
category; disliking, affirming and denying into another. In repudiating the role
of the will in judgment, Spinoza does not reaffirm the traditional dichotomy
between the cognitive and the conative. Rather, in identifying will and
understanding, he transforms the concept of understanding, so that it become
conative. And he does this, here as in other parts of the Ethics, by pushing
further points which Descartes had already stressed.
For Descartes the capacity to choose is the essence of the will; and this
capacity is manifested in the "liberty to abstain" from judgment, from giving or
withholding assent, which we discover in ourselves through enacting the method
of doubt. This capacity, he says in the Principles, is the greatest human
perfection (I, 37) and in the Passions of the Soul, he presents it as the feature
of the human mind wherein it most resembles God (III, 152). In the fourth
Meditation, he suggests that in fact the human will, considered in itself, is of
no less stature than the divine will, the superiority of which arises solely from
the greater knowledge and power conjoined with it. It is the combination of
the infinite, active faculty of the will with the finite, passive faculty of
understanding which is the source of our errors; and we avoid error by schooling
the will to assent only in the presence of ideas which are clear and distinct.
But there are for Descartes restraints on this power of autonomous choice;
and Spinoza exploits them to collapse the Cartesian distinction between will and
intellect into his own doctrine that the power of the mind resides in
understanding only - an understanding which is itself subject to the necessities
that govern the rest of nature. In the lack of accompanying will, however,
understanding does not remain a bare cognitive state. It becomes conative,
though not in a way that could be summed up in Descartes' idea of the will as
wishing or shunning, seeking or avoiding. The essence of Spinoza's conative
understanding becomes not a choice but acquiescence. And this is at the center
of his differences with Descartes.
For Descartes the freedom of the will is inconsistent with subjection to
external causes. It is manifested in the fact that, in affirming or denying, seeking
or avoiding what is placed before us by the understanding, we act without being
 Distinction Between Intellect and Will 115

conscious that any outside force constrains us. But clear and distinct ideas, as
well as God's grace, determine the will without interfering with its freedom as
"external" causes would, lb be free, he says in Meditation Four, and in Part
One of the Principles, it is not necessary to be indifferent as to the choice
between two contraries. The indifference we feel when we are not swayed to
one side by reason is in fact the lowest grade of liberty, showing a lack in
knowledge rather than a perfection of will. If we always recognized clearly what
was true or good we should have no trouble in deliberating as to what judgment
or choice we should make, but be entirely free without ever being indifferent.
The most striking illustration of this absence of indifference is of course
Descartes' certainty of his own existence. He cannot prevent himself from
believing that a thing so clearly conceived is true, not because he finds himself
compelled to do so by some external cause, but simply because from great
clearness in his mind there follows a great inclination of his will. He believes
in his own existence, he says, with so much greater freedom or spontaneity as
he possesses the less indifference towards it. In relation to other matters, and
especially in relation to matter, the will lacks a compelling reason to assent; and
the appropriate course is to withhold judgment. If he abstains from assenting
when he does not perceive with sufficient clearness and distinctness, he acts
rightly. But if he determines to deny or affirm, he no longer uses his free will
as he should.
On this picture, Spinoza performs a devastatingly simple conceptual
manoeuver. The belief in the will, grounded for Descartes in the lack of
knowledge of external causes, becomes for Spinoza just that lack - ignorance
of the external causes which govern our minds and their operations, along with
the rest of nature. In the mind there is, he says, no free will, but the mind is
determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by
another cause, and so on to infinity (IIP48). Even more ingenious, though to
us rather less accessible, is the way Spinoza exploits Descartes' other crucial
point - that the highest grade of freedom is the mind's "free" assent in the
presence of clear and distinct perception. And he exploits it by following
through the implications of what for Descartes was the antithesis of freedom
in the mind - the mind's inclusion in a totality of finite causes.
The thought that human minds and their ideas should be, along with
everything else, determined by external causes does not easily co-exist with our
sense of freedom - imbued as we are with the spirit of Descartes', and later
Kant's, commitment to the autonomous rational will. But for Spinoza the mind's
subjection to external causes follows from the claim, which Descartes would have
had difficulty rejecting, that strictly God is the only "free cause," able to act
safely by the laws of his own nature (IP17C2). And it is a further consequence
of God's being the only free cause that our minds and their ideas are included
in a totality of thought, in which truth is affirmed freely, though necessarily, in
a way that echoes and incorporates Descartes* "highest grade of liberty." The
mind's subjection to external causes is rendered harmless by being accommodated
into the "mind of God" which affirms the material universe. Spinoza's account
of human judgment is framed by his treatment of the human mind as part of
116 GENEVIEVE LLOYD

the infinite intellect of God. And that in turn is related to his discussion of
divine will and understanding in Part One. But before turning to that I want
to look briefly at what Descartes had to say about the will of God.
For Descartes our capacity to suspend judgment manifests the separation
of human will and intellect, whereas in God's case they are inseparable. Having
senses, he says in the Principles, involves passivity, which indicates dependence.
Hence it cannot be supposed that God has senses, but only that he understands
and wills. "And even his understanding and willing does not happen, as in our
case, by means of operations that are in a certain sense distinct from one
another; we must rather suppose that there is always a single identical and
perfectly simple act by means of which he simultaneously understands, wills
and accomplishes everything" (I, 37). The unity of divine intellect and will, as
Descartes himself saw, suggests that everything happens of necessity, that God
makes real everything of which he can form the idea, so that all things possible
must come to be. But, as Leibniz later complained, Descartes drew back from
the full consequences of that idea, which were made explicit by Spinoza.2 One
of the restraints for Descartes here was, of course, the freedom of the human
will, in which we resemble God. If our wills are free, their results must remain
indeterminate, although we cannot comprehend, he says in the Principles, how
God leaves them indeterminate. In a familiar Cartesian move in response to
the appearance of contradiction, he urges us not to try to think both free will
and God's pre-ordaining at the same time (I, 40).
Descartes hankers strongly after necessities, although that conflicts with his
other strong conviction - the freedom of the human will. His version of the
mind's tranquillity is poised uneasily between the acceptance of necessity and
the self-esteem that comes of our sense of control over our lives. In the
Passions of the Soul, he speaks of the folly of vain desires, of wanting to change
the things that cannot be changed. The remedy lies in schooling our desires
to accord with true judgments, the proper arms of the soul. Desire is always
good when it conforms to true knowledge, and cannot fail to be bad when it
is founded on error. When we err in relation to desire it is because we do not
sufficiently distinguish the things which depend entirely on us from those which
do not so depend. Things which depend on us alone, that is on our own free
will, cannot be too ardently desired, and we should always receive from them
all the satisfaction we expected (II, 144).
For Descartes, then, we avoid vain desire through self-reliance, by retreating
to what depends on us alone. All that lies beyond our control should be
assigned to the inscrutable wisdom of providence. In a passage which seems
to anticipate Spinoza, Descartes urges us to reflect that it is impossible that
anything should happen in any other way than as it has been determined by
providence from all eternity. The appearance that things happen by chance is
founded only on the fact that we do not know all the causes that contribute to
each effect (II, 145). The eternal decree of providence is so infallible and
immutable that, apart from the things it has willed to leave dependent on our
own free will, nothing happens to us which is not necessary and "as it were by
fate," so that we should not desire that it happen otherwise. But because most
 Distinction Between Intellect and Will 117

of our desires extend to things which do not depend entirely on us, nor entirely
on others, we ought to distinguish in them what does depend only on us, in
order to limit our desire to that alone (II, 146).
Descartes' concept of the will amounts to this idea of what depends only
on us. The will is the mind's principal activity, in which it exerts its freedom,
expresses its autonomous selfhood. Yet what happens, he also thinks, is
absolutely decreed by fate and immutable. We should nonetheless endeavour
to choose by reason, not because we can have any confidence that it will affect
the outcome, but because it strengthens and cultivates the "internal emotions"
which the soul excites in itself. Following after virtue does not ensure a good
outcome, as far as external events are concerned. The area of what depends
only on us, it emerges, is really an inward zone of contentment. None of the
troubles that come from elsewhere have any power to harm the soul. They serve
rather to increase its joy, for in seeing that it cannot be harmed by them, the
soul is more sensible of its perfection.

And in order that our soul should have the means of happiness, it needs only
to pursue virtue diligently. For if anyone lives in such a way that his conscience
cannot reproach him for ever failing to do something he judges to be the best
(which is what I here call 'pursuing virtue,' he will receive from this a satisfaction
which has such power to make him happy that the most violent assaults of the
passions will never have sufficient power to disturb the tranquillity of his soul.
(Passions of the Soul II, 148)

Tb follow after virtue is to exercise the will aright. We can then rest content
in our self-esteem, secure in the knowledge that the onslaught of external causes
has no power to harm our true selves. In recommending that we suspend
judgment in the lack of clear and distinct perception, Descartes accommodates
judgment into this general account of following after virtue. Such judgments
belong in the domain of what lies within our control. So human judgment
escapes the dreaded state of subjection to external causes. Either it is elicited
from us in a spontaneous and in the highest sense "free" response to clear and
distinct perception, or, where it is lacking, it remains under the control of a free
will, in the exercise of which we rightly esteem ourselves as superior to the rest
of nature. This, then, is the ethical dimension of Descartes' redrawing of the
boundaries between the cognitive and the conative. We avoid error through
a virtuous exercise of free will. The practice of Cartesian method becomes an
occasion for moral self-esteem, an expression of our superiority over the rest
of nature, bound as it is by necessity. The foundations of knowledge are thus
secured through an exercise of virtue.
That, then, is the ethical rationale of Descartes' account of judgment. The
Spinozistic picture is of course very different. For him there is no providence.
God acts solely by the laws of his own nature, without ends or purposes. He
acts, as he says at IIP3, by the same necessity as that by which he understands
himself. All that can be thought must be. It is a stronger version of the unity
of divine intellect and will than Descartes ambivalently affirmed. There is no
area of indeterminacy in which the human will might affect the course of events.
118 GENEVIEVE LLOYD

That God acts by necessity means too that any sense of intellect or will that
would apply to him can provide no model for a human will, no respect in which
we might find our minds to be god-like. The divine mind, precisely because it
does produce everything that is thinkable, must, Spinoza says, be as different
from ours, in respect of both intellect and will, as the dog in the heavens from
the dog that barks - a resemblance in name only (IP17S).
Those who have asserted that God's intellect, God's will and God's power
are one and the same, he suggests, have dimly grasped this truth. What it
means is that the concept of will is subsumed into the idea of an understanding
which is of it nature productive. Intellect, in any sense in which it could be
applied to God, could not be, as our intellect is generally thought to be,
"posterior to or simultaneous with" the things understood. God, by reason of
his status as "free cause," is prior to all things. Whereas our intellect follows
the truth, God's intellect precedes it. The truth is as it is because it exists
objectively in the intellect of God. The relations of priority and posteriority
here are of course not meant to be temporal ones. The point is that whereas
our intellects must match themselves to an independent truth, the truth depends
on God's intellect. And, given the kind of relationship that holds between
Spinozistic attributes -each expressing completely all that can be - whatever
material modes exist do not exist because God has had representations of them
in thought. Spinoza's God, unlike the God of Leibniz, does not make things
to accord with exemplars inhabiting his understanding, awaiting the exercise of
creative will. Whatever is thinkable exists, but not because it has first been
thought.

... the formal being of things which are not modes of thinking does not follow from
the divine nature because [God] hasfirstknown the things; rather the objects of ideas
follow and are inferred from their attributes in the same way and by the same
necessity as that with which we have shown ideas to follow from the attribute of
Thought (IIP6C).

God's power of thinking is equal to his realized power of action. So "whatever

follows formally from God's infinite nature follows objectively in God from his
idea in the same order and with the same connection" (IIP7C). All this is a
consequence of Spinoza's version of substance: "... the thinking substance and
the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now compre-
hended under this attribute, now under that," a truth which was seen "as if
through a cloud," by some of the Hebrews, when they maintained that "God,
God's intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same" (IIP7S).
So much for the divine intellect and will. What bearing does all that have
on Spinoza's distinction between human will and intellect in Part Ttoo? Our
intellect and will, as he has stressed in Part One, must be utterly different in
kind from any sense of intellect or will that could be applied to substance. We
cannot look to the divine intellect or will to provide a model for our own. But
our minds, though utterly different in kind from God, conceived as free cause,
as Natura Naturans> are nonetheless part of the mind of God which is the
 Distinction Between Intellect and Will 119

realization of the total power of Substance under the attribute of thought.

Wherever we are dealing with a mode of thought, it has to be referred not to
Natura Naturans but to Natura Naturata (IP31). The mind of God, of which
our minds are part, is the totality of all that follows, under the attribute of
thought, from the power of substance. We are not part of the "dog in the
heavens" intellect, but of the "dog that barks" version. But, with that proviso,
we are part of the infinite intellect of God. When we say that the human mind
perceives something, what that really means is that God has the idea, insofar
as he is manifested through the nature of the human mind, although, insofar
as the idea is adequately understood only in conjunction with other ideas outside
the mind, the human mind perceives it only inadequately (IIP11C). This
encompassing of the human mind and its subsidiary ideas in the infinite intellect
of God, as Spinoza himself acknowledges, can be expected to bring his readers
to a halt in comprehension - a mind-stopping suspension of judgment, as
Descartes would have it. But if we do, as he urges, persist a little with this
strange, but tantalizing suggestion, and try to see it in the context of his earlier
discussion of the concepts of intellect and will, we get some insight into what
is going on in his repudiation of Cartesian will.
Let us turn now to those notoriously inadequate considerations which
Spinoza advances to justify his rejection of the Cartesian distinction between
human will and intellect (IIP49C,S). There is in the mind, he says, no
affirmation and negation, save that which an idea, in as much as it is an idea,
involves. The mind's affirmation involves the idea which is affirmed; and, less
obviously, the idea involves the affirmation. Spinoza gets to this conclusion by
taking what seems an unreasonably favorable case: the affirmation that the three
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles can neither be nor be
conceived without the idea of a triangle; and conversely, he says, the idea can
neither be nor be conceived without the affirmation. Therefore the affirmation
belongs to the essence of the idea of a triangle, and is nothing besides. What
we have said of this volition, he continues, "inasmuch as we have selected it at
random," may be said of any other volition, namely that it is nothing but an
idea. The obvious rejoinder, of course, is that the example has not been taken
at random. The flow-on from idea to affirmation, which does hold here, does
not apply to what we would see as non-necessary truths.
It is certainly true that Spinoza has not chosen his example at random.
But he has not chosen it merely out of a desire to trade on the peculiar features
of a favorable case. It is an example which he used in Part One to illustrate
the point that all things flow of necessity from the power of God.

...fromGod's supreme power, or infinite nature, infinitely many things in infinitely

many modes, i.e., all things, have necessarilyflowed,or always follow, by the same
necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity
and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles. So God's
omnipotence has been actual from eternity and will remain in the same actuality to
eternity. And in this way, at least in my opinion, God's omnipotence is maintained
far more perfectly. (IP17S)
120 GENEVIEVE LLOYD

From the perspective of an individual human mind, there is of course a world

of difference between the idea of the triangle, in relation to the sum of its
angles, and contingent truths in relation to their subjects. Spinoza does not
deny that there is a distinction here. But for him it holds precisely because of
the limited position held by an individual mind as part of the totality of thought.
The necessity of the truth about the triangle rests on "common notions," which
are equally present in the part and in the whole, and hence not subject to the
error which results from our fragmentary awareness. About triangles, it is
possible to have adequate knowledge, even if for any one of us there is a great
deal about their properties we do not know. That is to say, in Spinoza's
terminology, the adequate idea of the triangle can occur in God in so far as he
constitutes an individual human mind. But there are other ideas which are not
adequate in our minds - ideas, that is which are in God only in so far as he
"has the idea of another thing together with the human Mind" (IIP11).
There is for us a very real distinction between the kind of knowledge we
can have of triangles and our knowledge of contingent truths. Spinoza does not
wish to deny that distinction. What he does want to say is that the distinction
drops out within the total context of all the ideas in the mind of God. In
relation to the totality of thought, there is for Spinoza no distinction of the kind
Leibniz invokes between those truths which depend only on God's understanding
and those that depend on his will. The belief in contingency in general, as in
the particular case of belief in human free will, just amounts to our ignorance
of causes. "In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been
determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect
in a certain way" (IP29).
The adequacy which is lacking within the limits of my mind is supplied in
wider contexts of which my mind is a part. Tb say that all things flow from
God's nature with the same necessity as the sum of its angles flows from the
nature of a triangle is to say that in the infinite intellect of God all truths are
necessary. But their affirmation is not always encompassed in our minds. Ideas
are always accompanied by affirmation, but the affirmation is not always "ours"
in Descartes' sense. But is not this to admit that what in the intellect of God
is affirmed is, in our mind, present without affirmation - that the idea which
is affirmed in the mind of God is in our mind merely entertained? And is not
that to admit that for the human mind, unlike the mind of God, we do need
a distinction after all between will and intellect? But we can make that
objection only if we detach the idea from the affirmation, which is precisely what
Spinoza will not allow us to do. Tb continue the spatial metaphors, wherever
an idea is, there the affirmation must be. Tb think that one and the same idea
could be present, unaffirmed, in a human mind and, affirmed, in the mind of
God, is to think, again, in terms of the Cartesian picture - of ideas as laid out
like passive pictures on a panel, as Spinoza puts it, with the affirmation added
from elsewhere.
Still, we may say, something must be able to be present, unaffirmed, in the
human mind, or the whole problem would not arise. Spinoza's discussion of
this in the illustration of the boy imagining a winged horse is not at first sight
 Distinction Between Intellect and Will 121

helpful in countering our Cartesian prejudices. Spinoza grants that the boy can
imagine the horse without being in error, but denies that in the act of
perception he does not make any affirmation. If the boy does have just the idea
of the winged horse, he insists, then it is affirmed. "For what is perceiving a
winged horse other than affirming wings of the horse" (IIP49S)? His mind
may be in error, but again, that is not because of a misuse of free will, but just
through the fragmentation involved in being part of a whole. We can explain
the error, Spinoza thinks, without having to suppose that an idea lies unaffirmed
in the mind. But what of the cases where the boy imagines the horse without
affirming its existence, either because he judges correctly that it does not exist
or because he does not judge one way or the other? Surely in those cases
Spinoza must admit that there is in the mind an idea which is not affirmed?
This is another of those points in the text where Spinoza's argumentation
seems all too swift. What we want to see as an unaffirmed idea, he transforms
into a different affirmed one - of the non-existence of the horse, or at any rate,
an affirmation of something inconsistent with its existence. And what we want
to see as the presence in the mind of an idea in the lack of any propositional
attitude, he transforms into a perception of inadequacy. Suspension of judgment,
he says, is strictly speaking a perception and not an exercise of free will. When
we say that someone suspends judgment we are saying only that he does not
perceive the matter in question adequately.
But surely we must be able to consider the original idea of the horse before
we arrive at any of these outcomes? Spinoza's treatment of these cases is all
too brief. But he means it to be taken in conjunction with a remark he makes
in the preamble to his replies to the Cartesian position, where he warns of the
need to have an accurate distinction between ideas, on the one hand, and words
and images on the other. An idea, being a mode of thinking, does not, he says,
consist in the image of anything, nor in words. Words and images are
constituted by bodily motions, which do not at all involve the conception of
thought (IIP49S). For Spinoza, images, which Descartes treated as confused
ideas, present in the mind through the causal influence of body, are not ideas
at all. The boy's "image" of the horse in so far as it does not involve
affirmation is not an idea either. That ideas are not images but modes of
thinking means that they do not mediate between judgment and an external
material reality. Judgment involves the affirmation of something real, not the
affirmation that something real corresponds to a mental representation. There
are layerings of ideas of ideas, superimposed endlessly on the most fundamental
level of knowledge. But Spinozistic ideas, to appropriate Wittgenstein's comment
on language in the Tractatus, "reach right out to reality," articulating it, affirming
it. What exactly is involved in this unmediated relationship between ideas and
reality is by no means clear. But it is clear that the removal of the passive
pictures involved in Cartesian judgment makes for a very different view of the
act of judging.
Bennett, in his Study of Spinoza's Ethics (Bennett, 162-7), criticizes Spinoza's
account of judgment as involving the implausible claim that all ideas come
before the mind as beliefs. But this interpretation rests, I think, on construing
122 GENEVIEVE LLOYD

the affirmation involved in a Spinozistic idea as if it were akin to the assent

component in a Cartesian judgment. Spinoza is not saying that we believe
compulsively whatever comes before the mind. That is mistaken in the same
way as Leibniz's account of the implications of Spinoza's rejection of the
distinction between divine will and intellect. Spinoza's God does not
compulsively make real all the possibilities that occur to him. Rather, in the
lack of a distinction between will and intellect, there is no array of possibles
waiting to be made real. Leibniz's own treatment of the divine will choosing
freely but without indifference the best, in the face of compelling reason, echoes
Descartes' treatment of human judgment, choosing the truth. For Spinoza, in
contrast, the human mind does not exert rational will in choosing the truth in
the presence of compelling reason. And it is also misleading to present it as
compulsively believing image-like ideas which come before it for judgment. The
array of passive ideas awaiting the mind's choice disappears. It is true that the
mind is aware of images. But they are bodily traces, affections of body - part
of the totality of material modes which correspond to the totality of thought.
Where does all this leave skepticism? If everything happens as a necessary
expression in thought or matter of the full power of substance, the supposed
problem of skepticism as an issue of which ideas our minds should affirm
disappears. What remains of skepticism is the tranquillity which the ancient
skeptics thought would ensue from the suspension of judgment. But there is
no suggestion that the existence of the world is open to doubt, or that the wise
mind should withdraw to contemplate its own contents. The infinite intellect
of God, the total expression in thought of the power of substance, affirms in
an intellectual love the corresponding order of material things, whose existence
is not at issue. And the human mind participates in that, however inadequate
and partial may be its understanding of its place in it.
Love, on Descartes' account of it in the Passions of the Soul (II, 79, 80)
is the mind's voluntary uniting of itself with the loved object, an act of the will.
For Spinoza the wish to unite with the loved object cannot be a free decision
of the mind. For he has, he thinks, shown that to be fictitious. It becomes
instead "a Satisfaction in the lover on account of the presence of the thing loved,
by which the lover's Joy is strengthened or at least encouraged" (III DefcAff. 6).
Applied to the love of wisdom, the point becomes this. We do not, as Descartes
thought, "choose the truth" as a free response to a compelling reason in the
form of clear and distinct perception. Nor do we follow virtue by training a
faculty of will to withhold judgment where that compelling reason is lacking.
Judgment is not a matter of wishing or avoiding. That is not to say it is
compulsive. Nor is it to say it is a bare cognitive act, devoid of conative force.
There is no choice here. But we do find a contentment in knowledge. In terms
of Descartes' distinction, that contentment comes not from self-satisfaction in
the right exercise of a god-like will, but from an affirmation of necessity. For
Descartes the key to all the virtues and the remedy for the disorder of the
passions is reflection on our free will (Passions of the Soul, III, 152, 153). For
Spinoza, in the lack of the will, that role shifts to intellect, now construed as
an intellectual love, a conative understanding. The mind rests content in
 Distinction Between Intellect and Will 123

affirmation of and acquiescence in body, the awareness of which defines its being,
although it knows its understanding of body is inevitably partial and confused.
All this amounts to a richer view of our intellectual lives than the
disagreeable picture of our minds as compulsive yea-sayers, to which Bennett
reduces Spinoza's account of judgment. But it involves, of course, a view of
mind and world which is in many ways alien to us, influenced, as we are, by
Cartesian theory of knowledge.

1. Descartes quotations are from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. by J.

Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
Spinoza quotations are from Curley (1985).
2. Leibniz, Letter to Philipp, end of January, 1680; Gerhardt, IV, 283-4; in L. E. Loemker,
Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1969), 273.
 ΑΝΉ-FALSIFICATIONISM: SPINOZA'S THEORY OF
EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIMENTS

WIM KLEVER
Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Spinoza has no place in books on history of chemistry, like his opponent in the
discussion on saltpetre, Robert Boyle. Neither is his name mentioned in books
on the history of physics and optics like the name of his contemporaries,
Christiaan Huygens, Descartes and Leibniz. He discussed in his correspondence
the hot items of mathematics and natural science and did experimental work
on various fields. He studied a lot of books on anatomy, astronomy and
mathematics. But his name as a natural scientist, mathematician or experimental
"philosopher" is virtually non-existent.
Still Spinoza loved experiments and tried to arrange them wherever possible.
This becomes clear not only from his research report Ep. 6 & 13, but also from
his endeavour to find out the structure of gold (Ep. 40 to J. Jelles), performed
in the presence of many other people,1 and from his effort to create an
experimental situation for the measuring of hydrostatic laws. 2 Again he did
work with other people: Eramus tres adeo, ac quidem possibile erat occupatio.
and came to a conclusion on the ground of his experimental work {Re ergo
hisque expenmentis perpensis cogor concludere..,) His work in optics was likewise
built on experimental discoveries: the discussions with Hudde (Ep. 36), Jelles
(Ep. 39, 40), Leibniz (Ep. 46) and Tfcchirnhaus (Ep. 83) reveal that optics was
for Spinoza not only a theoretical but also a practical business.
In general experience has a place of paramount importance in Spinoza's
scientific practice and in his theory of science. On the first page of his Tractatus
Politicus he rejects the speculative and mainly satirical writings of the
philosophers in favour of the theories of the practical politicians, because these
have learnt lessons from experience: Docuit nimirum eosdem experientia, vitia
fore, donee homines.,. Nam quoniam experientiam magistram habuerunt, nihil
docuerunt, quod ab usu remotum esset. Experience has to be our teacher.
The whole Ethics is a theoretical, but nevertheless also an empirical work,
comparable with modern psychological and sociological sciences which have an
empirical bias. It is without any doubt Spinoza's intention to present an exact
description of the visible relationships between things or passions and to discard
by those positivistic descriptions the usual fictions about reality. I cannot agree
with Bennett's assertion that the nEthics is noted for playing down experience
in favour of reasoning" (Bennett (1984), 23). It would be better to say, that the
Ethics is a strongly rationalistic work, in which the reasoning is not detrimental
to the experience but draws upon it. In Spinoza's view it is impossible that
there is an opposition between reason and experience. It is only fiction or
imagination which may be in conflict with experience.
Let us have a look at some passages in which experience is invoked. I
quote this time from Shirley's translation:
 Anti-falsificationism 125

And although daily experience cried out against this and showed by any number of
examples that blessings and disasters befall the godly and the ungodly alike without
discrimination, they did not on that account abandon their ingrained prejudice.

Prejudicia are refuted by the infinita exempla of the experientia in dies:

Yet I do not think that I am far from the truth, since all the postulates that I have
assumed contain scarcely anything inconsistent with experience; and after demonstrating
that the human body exists just as we sense it (IIP13C), we may not doubt experience
(IIP17S p. 78).

Spinoza claims that his six basic postulates (after IIP 13) are a general
formulation of what is established by experience {quod constat experientia); the
truth-value of experience (de qua nobis non licet dubitare) was already
demonstrated in IIP13C: "that human body exists according as we sense it."
Experience is certainty about or consciousness of what happens in our body.
Science has to respect and to integrate experiential knowledge, which is surely
not fully possible in the most comprehensive postulates. 4

Yet although the matter admits of no shadow of doubt, I can scarcely believe,
without the confirmation of experience, that men can be induced to examine this view
without prejudice, so strongly are they convinced that at the mere bidding of the mind
the body can now be set in motion, now be brought to rest, and can perform any
number of actions...
'But,' they will say, 'Whether or not we know by what means the mind moves
the body, experience tells us, that unless the mind is in a fit state to exercise thought,
the body remains inert...' Now as to the first point, I ask, does not experience also
tell them that if, on the other hand, the body is inert, the mind likewise is not capable
of thinking? (IIIP2S).

Rem experientia comprobavero - Experientia etiam docet. Experience is an

authority for Spinoza; and he tries to convince his readers by an appeal to this
authority.

What we have just demonstrated is also confirmed by daily experience with so many
convincing examples as to give rise to the common saying: 'Man is a God to man.'
Yet it is rarely the case that men live by the guidance of reason (IVP35S).

Experientia,,, testatur,,, testimoniis. Experience is the chief witness in the trial

in which we, reasoning and arguing, try to find out the laws of human individual
and social life.

I have no reason to hold that a body does not die unless it turns into a corpse; indeed,
experience seems to teach otherwise. (Aliud suadere videtur) (IVP39S).

Experience is our advisor,

126 WIM KLEVER

The more this knowledge (namely, that things are governed by necessity) is applied
to particular things which we imagine more distinctly and more vividly, the greater
is the power of the mind over the emotions, as is testified by experience. For we
see... (VP6S).

According to Spinoza experience testifies to his most paradoxical laws. It all

depends on one's understanding, as is most ingenuously explained in VP23S:

Nevertheless, we feel and experience that we are eternal. For the mind senses
those things that it conceives by its understanding just as much as those which it has
in its memory. Logical proofs are the eyes of the mind, whereby it sees and observes
things. (Mentis enim oculi, quibus res videt observatque, sunt ipsae demonstrationes).

There is no difference between this Spinozistic standpoint and that of Witt-

genstein: Während des Beweises wird unsere Anschauung geändert ... Unsere
Anschauung wird umgemodelt... Der Beweis leitet unsere Erfahrungen sozusagen
in bestimmte Kanäle? In einem andern Gedankenraum - möchte man sagen -
schaut das Ding anders aus.6 The way we understand things and their
relationships by means of a rational (re-)construction and concatenatio is decisive
for the way we look at them and the results of this observation.
Our promenade through the five parts of the Ethics has brought us to
the conviction that Spinoza not only laid high value on the evidence of
experience, but moreover that he realised that the language of experience is
different according to the level of intelligence. Whoever is drowned in fictions
and prejudice will find experiential confirmation of his irrational belief just as
the scientist or mathematician whose eyes are enlightened by reason sees around
him everywhere the confirmation of his paradoxical propositions about the
necessary structure of reality. That means that the evidence of experience can
never be considered an independent and unambiguous proof
Perhaps we are now prepared to give serious attention to some passages
in which Spinoza seems to row against the current of his time and of our age.
Spinoza, the experimenter, who devoured all literature of the new physical
science (cf. the list of his library), expresses in these texts an apparently anti-
empirical attitude.
Spinoza writes in Ep. 10 (to the very learned young man Simon de Vries)
the following disconcerting lines:

You ask me whether we need experience to know whether the Definition of any
thing is true. To this I reply, that we need experience only for those things which
cannot be inferred from the definition of the thing, as, for example, the existence
of Modes (for this cannot be inferred from the definition of the thing); but not for
those things whose existence is not distinguished from their essence, and therefore
is inferred from their definition. Indeed no experience will ever be able to teach us
this, for experience does not teach any essences of things. The most it can do is to
determine our mind to think only of certain essences of things. So since the existence
of the attributes does not differ from their essence, we will not be able to grasp it
by any experience (Curley (1985), 196).
 Anti-falsificationism 127

The hard and perhaps bitter kernel of this letter is the stiff thesis: experientia
nullas rerum essentiels docet. You cannot learn anything about the essence of
things, about their necessary and lawlike structure by experience. Nobody today
and in those days of the quickly developing empirical science does believe in
the truth of this rationalistic idiosyncracy. Again, as in so many other fields,
Spinoza is completely abnormal, anomalous. By his reading, his practical work,
his frequent contacts with many excellent scientists (besides the already
mentioned persons also: Kerckrinck, Bontekoe, Velthuysen, Stensen, Pufendorf,
Helvetius, etc.) he was an active and respected member of the scientific
community of his days; but, in his philosophical interpretation of the scientific
praxis, he stays alone.
But let us be careful before we indulge in our inclination to condemn such
a stranger in our Jerusalem. If Curley's definition of rationalism is correct,
Spinoza cannot be caught under this rubrique. "Experience, for the rationalist,
plays no fundamental role, either in the discovery or in the verification of
scientific truth."7 In Spinoza's just quoted statement a twofold role (instead
of none) is awarded to experience:

1. Experience is the only possible way to get some (if not scientific) knowledge about
the existence of modes. From our meteorological knowledge we cannot deduce that
we will have sunshine or rain tomorrow in Chicago; we will know that by experience;
the weather forecast is not safe enough.

2. Experience compels us (mentent nostram déterminai) to form thoughts about (ut

cogitet circa...) the essential structure of things. It induces the mind to conceive the
world of changing and seemingly incoherent things in a certain way, because we cannot
be content with complete casuality, inconsistency and impredictability.

I don't exaggerate, it seems to me, if I claim that this second function of

experience is very important in the eyes of Spinoza and that science could not
be generated without this necessitating pushing power from below, which forces
the mind to think. Experience is the way we are acquainted with the world as
far as it works on our body, without knowing how everything comes about. The
unrelated, confused and swerving ideas produced don't reveal the definition,
but do suggest something. Is it far fetched,then, to say - in the words of Curley
- that they play a "fundamental role... in the discovery... of scientific truth?" In
the second part of Ep. 10 Spinoza explains that not only attributes as such
but also finite "things and their affections" can become object of science (in his
terminology aeternae veritates). Well, their existence (that was the first role)
can only be known by experience, so that also for this reason experience cannot
be missed.
There is another disconcerting passage in Spinoza's work on our subject,
which is not notorious because nobody reads Descartes1 Principles of Philosophy,
pretending that only Descartes' philosophy can be found in it. In the second
part of this work, after the sixth proposition ("Matter is indefinitely extended
and the matter of the heavens is one and the same as that of the earth"), which
is demonstrated with the axiom that extension cannot be perceived by the
128 WIM KLEVER

human intellect under any limits, we find a very long scholium, in which Spinoza
himself (he is not expounding Descartes now) refutes the objections of Zeno
against the possiblility of local motion. In Cartesian physics - and Spinoza
agrees with this point 8 - local motion is the only possible motion, "since we
clearly and distinctly understand that extension is not capable of any motion
except local motion nor can we even imagine any other motion" (Curley (1985),
270). Therefore, Spinoza takes up not only Zeno, but also Diogenes, who
thought to refute Zeno experimentally.

Zeno, they say, denied local motion, because of various arguments, which were
refuted by Diogenes the Cynic in his fashion, i.e. by walking about the School in
which Zeno was teaching these doctrines and thus disturbing those who were listening
to Zeno... Someone who is deceived by Zeno's argument might think that the senses
show us something (viz. motion) which the intellect finds absolutely contradictory,
so that the mind would be deceived even about those things that it perceives clearly
and distinctly with the aid of the intellect. To prevent any such confusion, I shall
set out here Zeno's main arguments and show that they rest only on false prejudices,
because he did not have a true concept of matter (Curley (1985), 270).

From this introduction it is already clear that according to Spinoza the senses
are not able to demonstrate something (ostendere) against our rational
expectations. He does not accept the validity of Diogenes' empirical falsification
of Zeno's peculiar theories. This was his way of refuting Zeno (suo more),
not Spinoza's mos geometricus. Whoever "has learnt the elements of
mathematics" (qui elementa matheseos tantum didicit, PPA9 Exp) knows about
infinity and continuity of matter. After having pulvarized Zeno's sophisms
with the help of AA9,10, and PP3,5, Spinoza rounds off his scholium with a
personal remark about epistemology:

But here I should like my Readers to note, that I have opposed my reasonings to
Zeno's reasonings (rationibus... rationes), and therefore that I have refuted him by
reason (ratione redarguisse), not by the senses, as Diogenes did. For the senses
cannot provide (suggerere) anything else to one who is seeking the truth except the
phenomena of nature, by which he is determined to investigate their causes (quibus
determinatur ad illorum causas investigandas). They can never show him that something
is false (non autem umquam quid... falsum esse ostendere) that the intellect has clearly
and distinctly found to be true. For so we judge. And therefore, this is our Method:
to demonstrate the things we put forward by reasons perceived clearly and distinctly
by the intellect, and to regard as negligible whatever the senses say that seems
contrary to those reasons. As we have said, the senses can only determine the intellect
to inquire into this matter rather than that one. They cannot convict it offalsity (non
autem falsitatis... arguere), when it has perceived something clearly and distinctly
(Curley (1985), 273).

Not only does this interesting quote confirm the twofold function of experience
as we read it in Ep. 10, namely, 1. to suggest what is apparently the case, and
2. to put us on the way of discovery and research, it provides us also with an
 Anti-falsificationism 129

unambiguous rejection of its capacity to falsify our eventual clear understanding

of causal relationships.
In these texts Spinoza travels on the highest tops of the mountains, far
above the low grounds of Popperianism or positivism. Of course, observed facts
can falsify and refute other... opinions, conjectures, hypothetical semi-rational
constructions. Spinoza does not deny this sort of "elimination": imaginationes...
evanescunt... quia aliae occurrunt iL· fortiores quae rerum quas imaginamur,
prasesentem emtentiam sedudunt (IVP15). What he maintains, however - and
that is far more interesting - is that mathematical theorems (or "eternal truths"
or "adequate ideas") are unattainable and invulnerable for contrary experiential
evidence or data of the simple, unenlightened observation.
Above the clouds SpinozaL·not alone but in companionship with other
philosophers and scientists of different times. Es winken sich die Groszen aller
Zeiten über den Wolken (K. Jaspers). Protagoras was a forerunner with his
"Man is the measure" - proposition; Plato also, who states in his Phaedo (75d)
that with the concepts is sealed what there is. Most obvious is the agreement
between the mathematical natural science of Galileo and Spinoza's attitude in
these epistemological matters. In case of conflict, they both prefer the guidance
of mathematical reason above the suggestions of experience, which they,
therefore, don't allow to refute or falsify the insights of reason. I quote the
famous passage in the Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems where
Galileo exclaims:

Nor can I ever sufficiently admire the outstanding acumen of those who
have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true; they have through
sheer force of intellect done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what
reason told them over that which sensible experience plainly showed them to
the contrary... There is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that
Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason so conquer sense.
that, in defiance of the latter,the former became mistress of their belief.

Verification or falsification of ideas can only be performed by other ideas.

Cogitatio alia cogitatione terminatur. At corpus non terminatur cogitatione, nee
cogitatio corpore (E ID2Exp). Ideae non ipsa ideata sive res perceptas pro causa
efficiente agnoscunt (IIP5). Spinoza joins G Bachelard^ J. Cavaillès and L.
Wittgenstein in their common rejection of empirical falsification of theories. A
theory becomes stronger or weaker to the degree to which it can or cannot be
integrated in the totality of our beliefs, without the tribunal of sense experience
(against Quine). The adequate ideas are themselves the measure, the tribunal
of "reality" and truth. Proof and disproof in science is a purely conceptual
process.10
Coming back to Spinoza with less mistrust and conceit than before, we'll
now pay some attention to the discussion which he, through the mediator
Oldenburg, had with Robert Boyle. A Rupert and Marie Boas Hall have written
a fascinating paper on this discussion: "Philosophy and natural philosophy: Boyle
and Spinoza."11 They stress the historical and systematic relevance of this
130 WIM KLEVER

discussion: "In fact the central issue at stake beween rationalism and empiricism
emerges more clearly in Boyle's debate with Spinoza than it does in any of
Newton's controversies concerning scientific method" (Op. cit., p. 242). They
show that the fact that Boyle was roughly speaking right and Spinoza wrong in
precise chemical questions is only of minor significance against the background
of Spinoza's superior interpretation of chemical experiments and theory. "Tb
Spinoza empiricism as a philosophy of science was either useless or misleading.
The best guarantee of truth was offered by formal systems of reasoning" (Op.
cit.y p. 244). Experiments don't have the power of proving the necessary
structure of reality. What can they achieve, then? This aspect of the discussion
is neglected by the Halls. It is, again, very instructive, to have a close look on
the relevant texts. But I shall confine my selection and commentary to the
epistemological headline and leave other things out.

He (Boyle) infers from his experiment concerning the reconstitution of Niter that
Niter is something heterogeneous, consisting offixedand volatile parts, whose nature
(so far as the Phenomena are concerned, at least) is nonetheless very different from
the nature of the parts of which it is composed, though it arises solely from the
mixture of these parts. But I would say that for this conclusion to be regarded as
valid (bona), a further experiment seems to be required, which would show that
Spirit of Niter is not really Niter and cannot be solidified or crystallized without the
aid of the alkaline salt (Curley (1985), 173-174).

Videtur mihi adhuc requin aliquod experimentum. No contempt of experiments

on the side of Spinoza; on the contrary, he positively appreciates their role in
the discussion.
What is more, Spinoza has set up some experiments himself in the barn
of the Spinoza-house in Rijnsburg and is proud of the results:

Tb make this clear, I shall set out briefly what occurs to me as the simplest explanation
of this phenomenon of the reconstitution of Niter, and at the same time add two or
three quite easy experiments which to some extent confirm (confirmatur) this
explanation (Curley (1985), 174).

The message of these experiments is related in a consistent and very cautious

language:

- pergam iam ad expérimenta, quae hanc explicationem comprobare videntur ...

- secundum experimentum, et quod ostendere videtur partes fixas non nisi faeces
nitri esse...
- tertium experimentum quod indicare videtur...

Spinoza reproaches Boyle for his endeavour to prove something by artifcial

experiments which is evident by reason and can be seen much more clearly in
natural phenomena than by any experiment:

In par. 13-18 the Distinguished Gentleman tries to show that all the tangible qualities
depend only on motion, shape, and the remaining mechanical affections. Since he
 Anti-falsificationism 131

does not present these demonstrations as mathematical, it is not necessary to examine

whether they are completely convincing. But meanwhile, I don't know why the
Distinguished Gentleman strives so anxiously to infer thisfromhis experiment (colligere
ex suo experimento), since it has already been more than adequately demonstrated
by Bacon and later by Descartes. Nor do I see that this experiment offers us more
illuminating evidence12 than other experiments which are obvious enough. For as
far as heat is concerned, is the same (conclusion) not just as clear from the fact that
if two pieces of wood are rubbed together, though they are cold, they produce a flame
simply from that motion? Or that if lime is sprinkled with water, it becomes hot?
As for sound, I do not see that anything more remarkable is to be found in this
experiment, than in the boiling of ordinary water and in many other things. Regarding
the Color, to restrict myself to things which are probable, ^ I shall say only that we
see all green plants changing into so many and such different colors. Again, if bodies
that give off a foul smell are shaken, they give off a still more offensive smell
particularly if they become somewhat warm. Finally, sweet wine is changed into
vinegar, and similarly with many other things. (Curley (1985), 179).

Spinoza does not disagree with Boyle's assertion that natural phenomena have
to be explained mechanically. This is mathematically demonstrated by other
physicists and becomes apparent from daily experience which has, in his eyes,
no less worth than artificial experiments. He challenges, however, the pretention,
that experiments (or experience) can be employed to prove or demonstrate
something convincingly (an prorsus convincant). And he does not concede that
Boyle's specific point is made probable by his experiment and daily experience.
It is not up to me to decide on this last point, who is right or wrong. At stake
is the question whether Spinoza is right in stating his general thesis, that
experience does never definitely decide the truth or falsehood of an opinion.
On occasion of another remark of Boyle in that direction, Spinoza makes the
quite bold statement: Nunquam chymicis neque aliis experiments nisi
demonstratione et computatione aliquis id comprobare poterit. It seems that here
Curley's translation for this crucial sentence is slightly misleading: "No one will
ever be able to 'confirm' (WK: no, to 'prove') this by Chemical experiments, nor
by any others, but only by demonstration and computation." According to my
understanding of the English language, "confirmation" is weaker than "proof
or "verification," which excludes definitely the possibility of falsehood. Com-
probare is one of Spinoza's words for mathematical demonstration. Later on
in this discussion we will find a confirmation of the weak sense of confirmare}^
Why does Spinoza disagree with Boyle's opinion that experiments can
prove that something is the case? He without delay provides us with a statement
that must be considered as an argument:

For it is by reasoning and calculation that we divide bodies to infinity, and consequently
also the forces required to move them. But we can never prove this by experiments.

Innumerable and endless are the bodies and the forces, which together are
responsible for a phenomenon. A phenomenon cannot be looked upon as the
product of a finite number of causes. The mathematical concept of the infinite
extension of matter forbids us to accept an end point for the process of dividing
132 WIM KLEVER

matter. 10 Of course, this endless quantity of causes can never be grasped or

made visible by experiments, which would be, however, necessary to get an
adequate proof of the constitutive elements and sufficient causes of a
phenomenon. There cannot be any proportion between the infinity of forces
and the few factors which can be confirmed by artificial experiments. How would
it be possible to show infinite bodies and forces and in this way prove something
to be the effect of them?
Boyle's reaction is told by Oldenburg in Ep. 11. Boyle is not disconcerted
by Spinoza's objections against the content of his physiological essays. He is
polite, but stays with his theory. "He adds that he had shown that the thing
occurs thus (se ostendisse rem ita se habere), but has not discussed how it occurs,
which seems to be the subject of your conjecture." Further, he blames Spinoza
for having argued from a gratuitous hypothesis, which has no experiential basis
at all: "Nor does our Author see that the necessity of that very fine matter,
which you also allege is proved from any phenomena. Rather it is assumed
simply from the Hypothesis that a vacuum is impossible." Leaving aside this
interesting aspect of the physics of both learned natural scientists, I turn to an
interpretative remark of the mediator Boyle, which gives a new impulse to the
discussion by hitting the real issue:

Our Boyle is one of those whose trust in reason is not so great that they have no
need for the Phenomena to agree with their reason (cum ratione convenire
phaenomena) (Curley (1985), 199).

Although Spinoza complains in Ep. 13 that Boyle has only superficially answered
his objections (obiter et quasi aliud agendo), one can discover in this letter that
he is inspired by the remark about the scientists longing for the agreement
between phenonema and reason. He makes a clarifying distinction to explain
in what sense he accepts and rejects this position.

I pass now to the experiments I offered to confirm my explanation - not absolutely,

but as I expressly said, to some extent (expérimenta quae attuli, non ut absolute, sed...
aliquo modo meam explicationem confirmarem )...

After six lines already he repeats the same formula with a slight variation:

For as I expressly said, I did not offer these experiments that they might confirm
absolutely what I said (ut iis ea quae dbei, promis confirmarem). It was only that
these experiments, which I had said and showed to agree with reason, seemed to
confirm those thing to some extent (Curley (1985), 210).

Even the partial confirmation can at most be seeming or apparent. Experiments

can at best bring to light a certain aspect of the endless complicated network
of causal relationships. As an experimental philosopher Boyle cannot boast of
something which is extraordinary or new. Also Bacon and Descartes (and
Spinoza himself) have strived for the correspondence between the phenomena
and their reason (ipsos etiam voluisset ut cum eorum ratione convenirent
 Anti-falsificationism 133

phaenomena). And they all have (just like Boyle) tried to discover the
mechanical laws which produce the phenomena. They have failed sometimes.
How these mechanical laws exactly work, cannot be incontrovertibly proven (non
evincitur) by experiments. Neither in spontaneous experience nor in artificial
experiments do we know all the things which are in the game. In this aspect
the acceptance of a magnum discrimen (as Boyle wants) is unjustifiable to
Spinoza. In the one case as in the other our acquaintance remains very abstract:

Again, I do not know why the Distinguished Gentleman is bold enough to maintain
that he knows what Nature contributes (quae natura adferat) in the matter we are
speaking of. By what reasoning, I ask, will he be able to show us (ostendere) that
that heat has not arisen from some very fine matter? Was it perhaps because so
little of the original weight was lacking? But even if none was lacking, one could,
in my judgment at least, infer nothing. For we sec how easily a thing can be imbued
with a color from a very small quantity of matter and not on that account become
sensibly heavier or lighter. So it is not without reason that I can doubt whether
perhaps certain things have concurred, which could not have been observed by any
sense perception... (Curley (1985), 211).

As a mathematician Spinoza had a clear idea of the disproportion between

the infinity of causes, responsible for a phenomenon, and the finite number of
causes, which can be shown at work in it. This (and no anti-experimental
attitude) was the deeper reason of his maintaining the thesis, that experiments
and/or experience can never prove or disprove definitely that something is or
is not (necessarily) the case. It was his mathematical genius (the expression is
from the pen of Oldenburg) 17 that saved him, so to say, from the naive
empiricist standpoint. The experience which is not determined by the intellect
(quae non determinatur ab intellectu, TdlE, §19) can never reach certainty. It
always hits on "accidents" (TdlE 26-27) and must necessarily remain vagus, i.e.
"swerving" or "wandering."18
In a footnote to this place Spinoza remarks, that he is referring to
"empiricorum et recentium philosophorum procedendi methodum," which is a
clear hint that not only Bacon but also Boyle is included.
Coming to the end of my paper, I must confess that I don't find much
support for my defense of Spinoza's theory of science in the available literature.
"Spinoza's doctrine of reason - as it is expounded in the Tïeatise - is confused.
It does not seem to be consistently thought out," writes Edwin Curley.19 The
Halls speak about "a weakness in Spinoza to evade Boyle's empiricism by
hypotheses."20 In a recent article,21 E. Yakira, who considers the controversy
between Boyle and Spinoza as un épisode secondaire, tries to explain le refus
de Spinoza d'accorder un rôle essentiel à l'expérience dans la confirmation de la
philosophie mécanique, qui l'empêche de voir juste et qui l'amène à critiquer Boyle.
Spinoza would be très inattentif à la vraie nature de l'expérience scientifique - ce
qui est quand même remarquable après Galilée. In the appendix to his translaton
and edition of the spurious treatises Algebraic calculation of the Rainbow and
Calculation of Chances,22 Petry tells us that "the difficulties he (Spinoza) creates
for himself by modelling his basic philosophical position exclusively on pure
134 WIM KLEVER

mathematics and so excluding himself (! w.k.) from any easy dialogue with the
empirical sciences, are by no means typical of the period" (p. 141). The new
volume on Spinoza and the sciences (Reidei 1986) which is still in print could
not yet be explored for this paper. But... I remain hopefull that some day
some other people will see, with me, that Spinoza was right, after all.

1. Diversi quoque alii domini, turn temporis praesentes, hoc ita sese habere experti sunt.
See also Ep. 72 to Schulier, in fine.
2. ...curavi ut mihi fabricaretur tubus ligneus - Ep. 41.
3. E IApp. Spinoza: The Ethics and selected letters. (Hackett, 1982), p. 58.
4. Cf. PP III: "quamvis sic orta non fuisse probe sciaimus," 1/227/22.
5. Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik HI, 30-31, Suhrkamp Ed. VI, 240.
6. Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, Oxford, I (1980), 98.
7. E. M. Curley, "Experience in Spinoza's theory of knowledge," in Grene (1973), 25.
8. Cf. A. Lécrivain: "Spinoza et la physique cartésienne," Cahiers Spinoza (1977-78) 1,235-
236, II, 93-206; P. van der Hoeven, De cartesiaansefysicain het denken van Spinoza,
Leiden, 1973.
9. S. Drake, Berkeley, (1953), 328.
10. Cf. Bachelard, L'activité rationaliste de la physique contemporaine (PUF, 1951); J.
Cavaillès, Sur la théorie et logique du science, Paris, 1976; L. Wittgenstein, Über Gewissheit,
(Harper Torchbooks, 1969); G.G. Granger, "Jean Cavaillès: Ou la montée vers Spinoza,"
Etudes Philosophiques (1947), 271-279; H. Sinacoeur, "Eépistemologie de Jean Cavaillès,"
CHtique (1985), 975-988.
11. In Mélanges Alexandre Koyré. L'aventure de l'esprit. Tbme II (Paris: Hermann, 1964).
12. luculentiora nobis praebere indicia.
13. alia satis obvia expenmenta; Curley translates wrongly: 'which are readily enough
available'). [Editor's note: I took obvia to have the sense o( commonplace and I still think
that is right. (EMC)]
14. ut tantum probaibilia adferam; Curley is also wrong in translating 'provable' instead of
'probable'). [Editor's note: Provable is one classical meaning of probabilis and that
translation is confirmed by the NS (bewijsbar). Had Spinoza meant probable he probably
would have used verisimilis. It is suggestive that he should regard these ordinary experiences
as proofs. (EMC)]
15. [Editor's note: There's no real disagreement here. As my entry in the Glossary-
Index (p.630) was meant to convey, I think that in the quotation from Boyle (IV/29/12)
comprobare means confirm, whereas in Spinoza's comment on that passage (IV/29/14,17)
it means prove. That is why "confirm" appears in single quotes in Spinoza's comment.
(EMC)]
16. Cf. PP IIPP3,5; Ep. 32: et quoniam natura universi non est ... limitata sed absolute
universa, ideo ab hoc infinitae potentiae natura eius partes infinitis modis moderantur et
infinitas variationes pati coguntur, VP65: Mens res omnes necessarias esse intelligit et
infinito causarum nexu determinari ad existendum et operandum.
\1. Ep. 16: "mathematici tui ingenii acumine."
18. Cf. my "Remarques sur le Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (experientia vaga,
paradoxa, ideae fictae)." Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques 71 (1987) 101-
115.
19. "Experience in Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge," p. 49.
20. "Philosophy and Natural Philosophy: Boyle and Spinoza," p. 256.
21. "Boyle et Spinoza," Archives de Philosophie 51 (1988), 107-124.
 Anti-falsificationism 135

22. Dordrecht 1985. On the basis of a newly discovered document J. de Vet had already
made it sure that these anonymously published treatises cannot be from the hand of Spinoza.
See his "Was Spinoza de auteur van 'Stelkonstige Reeckening van den Regenboog' en van
'Reeckening van Kanssen'? Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 45 (1983), 602-639; W.N.Α. Klever,
"Nieuwe argumenten tegen de toeschrijving van het auteurschap van de SRR en RK aan
Spinoza," ibid. 47 (1983), 493-502. Petry's loose argumentation, in which, by means of a
series of "might-be's," he sticks to the traditional ascription to Spinoza against historical
and philological evidence, is analysed and refuted by De Vet in Studia Spinozana, 2 (1986),
267-309.
23. I have done it after the congress in my review of this book in Studia Spinozana, III
(1988).
 IN ORDER TO INTERPRET SPINOZA'S THEORY
OF THE THIRD KIND OF KNOWLEDGE:
SHOULD INTUITIVE SCIENCE BE CONSIDERED
PER CAUSAM PROXIMAM KNOWLEDGE?

FILIPPO MIGNINI
Université de Macerata

The third kind of knowledge, or intuitive science, is considered by Spinoza to

be the highest form of knowledge and the expression of the maximum perfection
which can be attained by man. It is surprising, therefore, that it has not been
studied with the same methodology and interest with which the doctrine of the
imagination was examined, for example, or to a lesser extent, that of reason.
I do not intend discussing the reasons behind the different treatment meted out
to the three kinds of knowledge by Spinoza scholars: I merely want to point out
that the following analysis can be regarded as a provisional chapter toward a
much broader study which will require further historical and philological research
and a more complex critical articulation.
I should also state that the logical order in which I will examine the works
pertaining to this study {Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, Korte Verhandeling,
Ethica) implies, in my opinion, a corresponding chronological order, as I have
tried to demonstrate elsewhere.1 The following analysis, therefore, with its
various assumptions and conclusions, constitutes a moment and a standard of
judgement in this new hypothesis concerning the chronological order of the early
writings of Spinoza.

1. The twofold form of adequate knowledge

in the Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (TdlE).

The concise definition of adequate knowledge is expounded in the fourth

formulation of the various modipercipiendi: Denique perceptio est, ubi res percipitur
per solam suam essentiam, vel per cognitionem suae proximae causae (G 11/10/20-
21). Note the difference in the formula used to indicate the two sources of
adequate knowledge: why is it that the author docs not say in the first phrase,
as in the second: per cognitionem suae solae essentiae? or in the second, as in
the first: per suam proximam causam!
In the first instance, the perceptio of the fourth kind would appear to be
constituted through the immediate relationship between the mind and the essence
of the thing perceived; in the second instance, the perceptio would not imply an
immediate relationship with the proximate cause of the thing, but with an idea,
or knowledge of the cause. Is there an actual difference here, or is it merely
an illusion? I think that the difference between the two formulae is both illusory
and real. Since the term perceptio {Denique perceptio est) indicates - just as in
the three preceding cases - a form of knowledge which presupposes a knowledge
in act, it is evident that in both cases the perceptio refers (as in the previous
modes) to actual knowledge of the thing's essence or of the proximate cause
 On Intuitive Science 137

of its existence. Therefore, if the percipere of the definition is assumed, as is

necessary, in the meaning of a state or mode of knowledge, the ubi percipitur
does not add an active or dynamic valency to denique perceptio est, since it, too,
refers to a knowledge which makes perception possible. Spinoza could have said,
therefore: Denique perceptio est, ubi res percipitur per cognitionem suae solae
essentiae, assimilating the second formula to the first one.
But if we consider the structural difference between the two types of
knowledge which would together constitute the fourth kind, the diversity of the
expository formula seems to be justified, somehow. The perception of the thing
through its essence coincides with the immediate perception of the thing itself,
since between thing and essence no distinction is made. If there was a difference,
then the perception of the essence of the thing would not necessarily imply
perception of the thing itself.
But since the proximate cause of the thing differs from the thing itself and
from its essence, its knowledge does not coincide with the knowledge of the
thing, neither in regard to its essence nor its existence. One could suppose that
perhaps the author differentiates the two formulae because, while perception
of the thing by means of its essence coincides perfectly with the perception of
such essences and both perceptions (of the thing and of its essence), it is one
single operation; in the second case, perception of the thing would not coincide
with the perception of its proximate cause, while necessarily seeking it.
However, even if this were not the reason for the different formulation of
the two kinds of knowledge comprising the fourth mode, there remains,
doubtless, their structural epistemological diversity, springing from the ontological
difference of their object. In this regard, toward the end of the treatise, the
author gives the following clarification:

si res sit in se, sive ut vulgo dicitur, causa suit turn per solam suam essentiam debebit
intelligi; si vero res non sit in se, sed requirat causam, ut existât, tum perproximam suam
causam debet intelligi: nam rêvera cognitio effectus nihil aliud est, quam perfectiorem
causae cognitionem acquirere (G 11/34/10-15).

The Identification of the prime object of knowledge (aside from all

considerations relating to its nature and the possibility of knowing it) does not
present particular difficulties; it is the most perfect Being, subsistent and
uncreated, primary cause of Nature and of all things which are found in it, that
is to say, of God. Since this being is one alone and infinite, and since outside
of it there is no other being, its idea will be, of necessity, clear and distinct (G
II/29/9-18). Besides, since the essence and the existence of this being have no
external cause, we can therefore state that the perceptio per solam essentiam is
a form of immediate knowledge.
We come across greater difficulty, however, regarding the interpretation of
the second kind of object, that is, objects whose existence is not derived from
their essence, but from an external cause. Spinoza states that clear and distinct
knowledge of a thing coincides with the definition of its own particular
affirmative essence (G 11/34/18-20); but he adds that in order to explain the
138 FILIPPO MIGNINI

intimate essence of something created, the definition must comprehendere

causam proximam. We will see what Spinoza means by causam proximam in
this work and the difficulties to which this notion gives rise: in the meantime,
it is sufficient to emphasize that such knowledge, formulated per aliam rem9 is
not immediate but mediate.
Spinoza couples the two forms of knowledge into one single kind now
described (per essentiam, per causam proximam), since he considers both of them
to be adequate: solus quartus modus comprehendit essentiam rei adaequatam, et
absque erroris penculo (G 11/13/11-12). The adequacy of the second kind of
knowledge derives, as has just been recalled, from the particular, affirmative
definition of the proximate cause of an object; this knowledge, however, still
consists in the deduction of the essence of one thing from another, just as occurs
with the third kind of knowledge. This, however, is inadequate since it proceeds
from the knowledge of the effect to that of the cause, or purports to deduce
the essence of a particular thing for a general notion (10/16-19). The knowledge
of that which does not exist by its essence must therefore imply or comprehendere
the knowledge of the cause - not vice versa - and precisely that of the proximate
cause. But what is the semantic meaning and value of this comprehendere? How
is it possible to deduce the essence of a particular thing from its proximate
cause, if this is such in relation to the existence, and not in relation to the
essence, of that particular thing? If the proximate cause of the existence of a
particular thing were to be identified with the essence of this thing, then the
existence of such a thing would derive from its essence and it would not be
regarded as created, but as uncreated.
Also, while Spinoza affirms that the definition of a thing must explain its
essence, he does not identify the proximate cause with the essence, but limits
himself to stating - with an ambiguous formula - that the definition of a thing
must comprehendere the proximate cause. What is meant by proximate cause
in the TdlE?
It is stated in the treatise that the essence of singular, changeable things
cannot be deduced from the essence of other changeable things, nor from a
sequence of their existences; so it is not there that we must look for their
proximate cause. This is to be found in fixed and external things from which
the changing things depend

adeo intime atque essentialiter (ut sic dicam)... ut sine iis nee esse, nee concipi possint
Unde haecfixa, et aeterno, quamvis sint singularia, tarnen ob eorum ubique praesentiam,
ac lanssimam potentiam erunt nobis, tanquam universalia sive genera definitionum
rerum singularium mutabilium, & causae proximae omnium rerum (G II/36/20-37/9).

Leaving aside, at this point, any analytical examination of this text, which I will
refer to in a broader discussion of it which has developed in Spinoza's
historiography and also to a writing of mine on this subject,3 I will limit myself
here to dealing with two considerations.
1) Note that Spinoza had to use the mediation of that definition to
understand singularfixedand eternal things as causae proximae of those singular
 On Intuitive Science 139

and changeable things. Since fixed and eternal things can be considered as
universal or forms of the definition of changeable things, they will also be (for
us) the proximate cause of their existence. In other words, since it is not
evident, per se> why each fixed and eternal thing would be the proximate cause
of a multiplicity of singular and changeable things, Spinoza, assuming the
existence of these things, presumes that they can be defined in relation to the
former, as being specific and individual, in respect of a genus; but if that is the
logical relationship presumed between these entities, he concludes that their
ontological relationship must also be identical. He used the mediation of a
logical relation to found an ontological one.
2) Note also that Spinoza gives us no indication in the TdlE which permits
us to determine the nature of the singular fixed and eternal things. The
fundamental articulations and terms of ontology, present in the KV and the E,
are missing in the TdlE, so that it is difficult to understand, in the sense just
determined, the strength and depth of the notion of proximate cause. Moreover,
the author himself recognizes this difficulty. Immediately following the above-
quoted text, he goes on to say sed, cum hoc ita sit, non parum dijjlcultatis videtur
subesse, ut ad horum singularium cognitionem pervenire possimus... (G 11/37/10-
11).
Our difficulty has increased and is perhaps insurmountable, due to the fact
that the series of conditions which Spinoza considers necessary for obtaining that
knowledge are not fulfilled, due to the interruption of the treatise. In order
to know the essence of the singular changeable things, it is necessary, first of
all, to know the fixed and eternal things; but since they are eternal, their
essences cannot explain per se the essences of changeable things; it is therefore
necessary, Spinoza goes on to say, to look for other means besides those used
for the knowledge of eternal things, and thus build up a science of sensibility.
Tb this, however, must be prefixed the study on eternal things which, in turn,
presupposes the study regarding nature and the property of the intellect (G
11/37/13-18/12). But the treatise comes to a halt when this last-mentioned
enquiry gets underway. I do not intend to discuss the reasons for the
interruption, but will merely observe that this fact, and the difficulties which
are intrinsic to it, directly influences this doctrine of the fourth kind of
knowledge, in particular in relation to its second form - that is to say, regarding
knowledge of something through its proximate cause. This doctrine cannot,
therefore, be considered to be founded in the TdlE; we will see what foundation
it receives in the other two works under examination.

2. The doctrine of the intellect, or immediate knowledge of God,

in the Korte Verhandeimg (KV).

The doctrine of the intellect, understood as knowledge of the third kind, is

notably clarified in the KV and from its definition the second source of the
TdlE is eliminated, at least formally speaking, i.e. the possibility of having
adequate knowledge by proximate cause.
140 FILIPPO MIGNINI

In the first two chapters of the second part, it is defined as a clear and
distinct knowledge (II, i; ii, 2) which derives from "a feeling and enjoying of the
thing itself and greatly outweighs the other two forms of knowledge. "Thie and
pure love with all its effects" is derived from it (II, ii, 3). The disappearance
of the formula "through the knowledge of the proximate cause" does not mean
that the KV renounces, generally speaking, the fundamental principle according
to which real knowledge is per causam. We clearly read, in the treatise, that
"it is necessary to know things in their causes" (11, v, 11). This principle, taken
in its entirety, can also be maintained with regard to the knowledge of God,
because now - unlike in the TdlE in which only a negative connotation of the
causa sui exists - God is conceived as causa sui in the positive sense. Since God
is his own cause, he can be conceived through himself (I, i, 10). But God also
must be known through himself because, being the cause of all other things,
he precedes all other things in being and in knowledge (II, v, 11). Therefore,
God is known immediately through himself (II, xxii, 3) and it can be said that
he is the cause of the knowledge that we have of him (II, xxiv, 12), or that the
intellect is an immediate and immanent effect of God. And since it is an
immediate and immanent effect, it is also immortal - that is, it lasts as long as
its cause, which is eternal (I, Dial. 2, 11; II, xxvi, 8, #2). The intellect is so
united to God that without God it cannot exist nor be conceived (II, xxiv, 11).
It would be an error to interpret these texts, as has often occurred in the
past, as being the expression of a mystical phase in Spinoza's thinking. These
texts, and especially the notion of God, must be read and interpreted in the light
of other pages which confer on them their real meaning, robbing them of all
mystical connotations which the formulae and traditional language used might
possibly suggest. A "démystification"4 plan is already present in the KV, in fact,
and, in certain aspects, in a more explicit manner than in Ethics.
If, then, we consider that the God in the KV - unlike that in the TdlE -
is already the unique Nature or Substance constituted by infinite attributes, each
one of which is infinite and perfect in its kind (I, ii, 1; ii, 12; App.1, P4C), the
doctrine of the immediate and immanent production of the intellect on the part
of God must be interpreted in the light of the particular and specific categories
of the new Spinozan philosophy. Now, if the intellect knows things in their
essence, in a clear and distinct manner, since God-Nature's own essence is
composed of its attributes, then the intellect will have immediate knowledge of
the attributes of God and because of the constant identity between God and
its attributes, it will have immediate knowledge of God. If the intellect is
conceived as infinite, it constitutes the immediate and infinite mode of the
attribute of thought, it is pure and eternal activity of understanding accompanied
by immutable joy and has for its object all the other attributes of God and all
its modes (I, ix, 3). If the intellect is considered as a finite mode, that is to
say, as the third kind of which we are speaking, it has for its object only two
of the infinite attributes of God, thought and extension, in other words, those
attributes of which man is a mode, a finite being.
In what sense, then, can one talk about the intellect as immediate knowledge
of the essence of things, as a "feeling and enjoying of the thing itself?" Besides,
 On Intuitive Science 141

what things does it mean: only those which are infinite, that is, attributes of a
God and/or their immediate modes, or else those which are finite, particular
and specific modes?
In reply to the first question, one can say that with regard to the attribute
of thought, since the activity of understanding is unique and infinite - that is,
the intellect considered as an immediate, eternal and infinite mode of that
attribute - all activity of understanding which is considered as determined and
finite (no matter what its reality or the legitimacy of its demonstration) appears
as a moment or a part, specific and finite, of that same infinite activity. And
since that activity has for its object the infinite attributes of God and all that
proceeds form it, infinite and finite modes, even the activity of understanding
of a finite intellect is referred to the same objects. But what is the difference
between finite and infinite intellect?
In the second dialogue, Theophilus states that to produce an idea of God
in us (that is to say, intellect) you merely need na body in Nature, the idea of
which is necessary in order to show God immediately" (I, Dial.2, 12). One can
argue whether that "body" of which the idea is considered necessary, is an
ordinary finite and specific body, or that "infinite body" constituting the attribute
of extension itself. At any rate, it is certain that since the human mind is an
idea of the human body and gets its first being from it (II, xxii, 3-5), the idea
of God - that is, of its infinite attributes - is not constituted apart from the idea
of the body, be it finite or infinite. The idea of God does not coincide with
the idea of the body (finite or infinite), but the existence in act of an idea of
the body is the condition which permits the idea of God to be constituted, like
the opening of a window allowing the light to illuminate the room. It is the
light of the sun which directly illuminates the room; but it is the opening of
the window which makes it possible for the light to immediately illuminate the
room (I, Dial.2, 12). Since the mind is a mode of infinite thought and of its
infinite activity of understanding, it is therefore capable of participating
immediately in such knowledge and knowing according to truth.
We have also answered the second question now, regarding the objects of
the intellect. The intellect is not only an idea of God and of his attributes, but
also of the body and other bodies, besides ideas of those bodies. In II, iii, 10,
it says that "this real knowledge varies according to the objects presented to it";
in II, xxvi, 8 it is implicitly assumed that the intellect may know external objects.
By the doctrine of union through Nature, between the idea of God and God
himself, expounded in II, xxiv, 5, one can state that the primary object of
intuitive knowledge is God, understood as the substantial unity of its attributes
and of the modifications of these; but since the idea of God is understood as
a substantial relationship of its modes, it necessarily implies the idea of these -
as the idea of the proportion of numbers implies the idea of the numbers
themselves - and the mind which knows God docs not cease to be the idea of
the body, so even the modes constitute an object of intuitive knowledge.
The essence of God is therefore the object of the intellect constituted by
the attributes - and the essence of the modes, that is, of the singular and
determined things.
142 FILIPPO MIGNINI

But how is it possible to know the essence of the finite modes? What is
the meaning of, or, in the words of the TdlE, what must be "comprehended"
by the definition of that essence? In the preface to the second part, Spinoza
criticizes the traditional definition of "what belongs to the nature of a thing,"
just as he had criticized, in the previous part, the doctrine of the definition by
means of the proximate genus and specific differences (I, vii, 6-9). The
traditional definition states that it "belongs to the nature of a thing, without
which the thing cannot exist nor be recognized." Spinoza maintains this
definition while adding a reciprocal condition, that is, that "the predicate cannot
even exist, nor be conceived, without the thing." The author explains the reason
for this addition: since things cannot exist or be conceived without God, if you
kept only the first part of the definition, you would arrive at the conclusion that
the essence of God and of his attributes belongs to the nature of things. And
that is impossible since the essence of God is infinite and that of things finite.
It follows thus: 1) that the essence of God or his attributes does not constitute
the essence of singular, finite things; 2) that the definition of this essence
implies the definition of the thing, in that it exists (see, later on, what difficulties
arise from this); 3) that the definition of the essence of things implies at all
events the idea of the attributes of God as their cause, since without them
those things do not exist (first condition of the definition of that which belongs
to the nature of a thing); 4) that the definition of the existence of the thing
also implies the definition of another thing regarded as the proximate cause of
that existence, since the essence could not be considered as such.
The final two consequences propose again the question of the cause and
in particular, that of the proximate cause. In the classification of the modes
of the efficient cause (I, iii, 2) Spinoza states that God is the "proximate cause*
of infinite and unchangeable things which we say to be immediately created by
him. He adds that God is the causa ultima or, more precisely, as you can read
in the second dialogue, that he is the causa remota, but only "in a certain sense"
of all particular things (I, Dial.2, 12). The specification of this sense is to be
found again in the second dialogue: God cannot be considered the remote cause
of particular things in the absolute sense, because the causes on which these
immediately depend - that is to say, the mediate causes - do not exist and
cannot act without God, as would happen if God were the remote cause.
Therefore God can be said to be the remote cause only "in a certain sense"
because in order to produce particular things, he does not make use of his
existence alone (§2) or of his attributes alone (§10), but he needs some other
modification or reality outside that of attributes (§12) which acts as a "subsidiary
instrumental cause" of divine action (I, iii, 2,5). That reality cannot be an
infinite mode; it, too, is a finite mode. However, in that case, the problem is
only displaced; how is the mediate finite cause produced, through which the
other finite things will be produced? How does one proceed from the infinite
to the finite?
In the light of the preceding considerations, neither God nor his attributes
can be considered a proximate cause of finite things; nor can finite modes be
 On Intuitive Science 143

so either, since they are the immediate cause only of existence, not of the
essence of things. On the other hand, neither can the notion of proximate
cause in suo genere - a denomination which Spinoza never uses, either in the
KV or in the E - resolve the problem of deducing the mediate cause which
God must use to produce particular things (I, iii, #5).
Let us come therefore to the final question: in what does the difference
between the infinite intellect and the finite intellect consist? Is it simply a
quantitative difference or is there also a difference in cognitive procedure?
This is what we will try to discover in the Ethics.

3. The doctrine of intuitive science in the Ethics (E)

The greater number of interpreters hold that the doctrine of the fourth kind
of knowledge expounded by Spinoza in the TdlE was set out in a substantially
similar way in E IIP40S2:

Praeter haec duo cognitionis genera datur, ut in sequentibus ostendam, aliud tertium,
quod sciendum intuidvam vocabimus. Atque h(K cognoscendi genus procedit ab
adaequata idea essentiae formalis quorundam Dei attnbutorum ad adaequatam
cognitionem essentiae rerum" (G 11/122/15-19).

Whether one accepts that opinion or refutes it, a decision must be based on
the interpretation of the given definition. In particular, we must know what
is the meaning of the words procedit ab,., ad... For M. Gueroult there is no
doubt whatever: intuitive science is defined as a deductive process which goes
from the idea of God to the knowledge of the essence of things (Gueroult
(1974), 447). Moreover, on this point, as also with regard to the notion of
essence, the E contrasts with the TdlE (Ibid., p. 449 and App. 16). Gueroult
(like other interpreters) presupposes two conditions: 1) that the essence of
some attributes of God are to be considered as the proximate cause of the
essence of things; 2) that the essence of things should not be conceived as a
singular essence of an existing thing in act, but as a specific, universal essence
of singular things. In fact, Gueroult maintains that le problème de savoir par
quel moyen de telles essences (that is to say, singular essences of singular things)
peuvent être adéquatement connues, parait insoluble (Ibid., App. 16, 607-608). Tb
understand, therefore, the meaning of procedit ab... ad., it is necessary, above
all, to know what is meant by essentiae rerum. The second definition is well-
known (in the second part) and substantially repeats what has been said in the
KV, indicating that which belongs to the essence of a thing:

Ad essentiam alicujus rei id pertinere dico, quo dato res necessario ponitur, & quo
sublato res necessario tollitur; vel id, sine quo res, & vice versa quod sine re nee esse
nee concipi potest.

1) This definition is simultaneously founded on the affirmation of the distinction

of essence from existence and on the negation of their ontological separation.
144 FILIPPO MIGNINI

In other words: the essence of the thing and the thing itself are seen as really
distinct in the sense that they are not identifiable one with the other because,
if this were the case, the essence of things would not be distinguished from the
things themselves and this definition would be absurd, as well as superfluous.
However, it is also stated that what belongs to the essence or simply the
essence, does not exist, per se, separately from the thing, but can exist and be
conceived only through the thing. In what way can this second condition be
understood without identifying the essence with the thing? Spinoza doesn't
explain this and omissions such as this certainly constitute one of the principal
problems of his philosophy, with particular regard to the interpretation of Part
V of the Ethics. However, in one sense, the text must certainly be accepted:
the actual existence of the thing is a necessary condition of the determinate
existence and intelligibility of the essence. The essence of things does not really
exist separately from the actual existence of the thing (KV, App.2, 11; E IIP8CS).
2) That this is so is demonstrated by Spinoza's reason for adding to the
traditional definition of the essence of a thing: to eliminate the possibility that
the essence of God or of its attributes should be considered to be the essence
of singular things which, without them, could neither exist, nor be conceived
(E IIP10S2). Since the essence of God and of its attributes exists and is
conceived per se, without the need for the existence of singular things, it cannot
constitute their essence. But if so, then in E I1D2 by essence of things, one
means the essence of the singular things, that is, of all those realities which
are "finite and have a determinate existence" (E IID7), which have their cause
in infinite things. In that sense, therefore, the formula essentiae rerum which
recurs in the definition of the third kind of knowledge, must be assumed. It
can thus be integrated: intuitive knowledge procedit ab adaequata idea essentiae
formalis quorundam Dei attributorum ad adaequatam cognitionem essentiae
(formalis) rerum (singularium). In what sense is procedit meant to be understood?
In the sense that it would be possible to deduce, analytically, the singular essence
of singular things from the essence of the attributes of God? Does one support
the possibility of an intuitive knowledge as a concrete deduction, founding it
on the assumption of the essence of an attribute of God as a proximate cause
in its kind of all bodies existing in act, so as to make possible deductive
knowledge of the specific essence of a single thing (Ibid., p. 447).
Leaving aside the discussion as to whether God can be considered as the
proximate cause in its kind of singular and finite things, I repeat that Spinoza
never uses such a denomination, either in E IP28S (where the nomenclature of
the scholastic tradition is referred to) or elsewhere, and I note that such a
denomination should be used only with some qualification, at least ("according
to a certain sense"), that is, to distinguish between the immediate cause of the
infinite modes and the mediate cause of finite modes.
There is a reason which has probably influenced Spinoza's decision to
renounce the terminology of "proximate cause in its kind" and which, while
leaving aside the problem of denomination, should be remembered. In I PP21-
23, Spinoza demonstrates that only infinite modifications can follow from the
absolute nature of God's attributes. In an analytical sense, only the infinite
 On Intuitive Science 145

can be deduced from the infinite. In P29 and in its demonstration, this theory
is clearly repeated: what is finite and has a determinate existence cannot have
been produced either from the absolute nature of an attribute of God or from
one of his attributes, insofar as that is affected by an eternal and infinite
modification; but it had to follow from some attribute insofar as it is modified
by a finite and determinate modification. However, Spinoza did not offer in
these definitions, nor does he do so later on, any demonstration as to why and
how an infinite attribute of God can be "modified" by an infinite series of finite
modes. This is equivalent to saying that the philosopher has not offered any
deductive reason for the passage or process of the infinite to the finite, since
he considered this to be impossible. He has simply limited himself to stating
the de facto existence of the finite without giving a specific deduction of the
finite and the determinate - since this was made impossible by the initial
suppositions.
But if this is really so, if Spinoza is lacking, de facto and de iure, a
deduction of the finite from the infinite, how is it possible that adequate
knowledge of things has a deductive nature or the form of real deduction? How
can we interpret the verb procedit ab..ad..? This definition recurs in the same
terms in E VP25D, while the verb procedere appears several other times in E;
six times in association with the noun demonstratio (Hujus proposition^
demonstratio procedit eodem modo ac demonstratio...) and in the sense of going
on, carrying out, it then appears in E IApp simultaneously in the sense of sequi
and operare (see Ρ16 and P32C1 and 2): ostendi omnia Naturae aeterna quadam
necessitate summaque perfectione procedere (80/5-9). As in this case, why could
the procedere in the definition of the third kind of knowledge not be understood
according to two simultaneous meanings, both different and complementary?
In conformity with the context and descriptions of the preceding modes of
knowledge, thefirstand partial sense in which procedit is understood, in the first
part of the definition, is that of deriving, coming forth, arising. In the same way,
notiones universales are formed ex singularibus, ex signis, ex eo, quod notiones
communes... habemus; thus the third kind of knowledge derives and is formed
ab adaequata idea essentiae formalis quorundam Dei attributum. However, this
sense is accompanied and integrated by another one which embraces both
aspects of the definition and which is extensively confirmed in the lexicons:6 hoc
genus procedit, that is, is extendedfrom... to..., taking its own particular origin
and source from the adequate idea of God.
In the third kind of knowledge, these two characteristics are fulfilled:
intuitive knowledge of the nature of God and also intuitive knowledge of the
essence of singular things. This two-fold intuition is not presented as something
which is separate and unrelated - it is both related and reciprocally implicative.
It is not possible to discover clearly and distinctly the nature of God without
discovering the necessity which infinite objects derive from him in infinite modes;
but neither is it possible to discover the essence of singular things without this
implying the idea of God as the cause. Therefore, in E VP24, Spinoza can state
as an immediate consequence to Ε IP25, that "the more we understand singular
146 FILIPPO MIGNINI

things, the more we understand God.w In E VP25D, he states: the more we

come to know things with the third kind of knowledge, the more we know God,
which would also be legitimate. We arrive at knowledge of God, therefore,
through knowledge of the body, as was pointed out in the KV; but since
knowledge of the body implies the attribute of which it is the mode, then
knowledge of the body is the essence of God to be known immediately, just as
the opening of the window permitted the light to illuminate the room, according
to the example quoted in the KV.
From what has been said, we can therefore conclude that the logical
situation stated in the processio in the third kind of knowledge can be considered
equal to that expressed in a formula which is rather diffused in E, that is,
concomitante idea. The third kind of knowledge immediately concerns the
essence of God concomitante idea rerum singularium as its determined and
necessary modes. But it is also, at the same time, an idea of the essence of
singular things concomitante idea Dei, tanquam causa. One sees that the notion
of cause is a being of reason which expresses a relation in general and does not
explain in a determinate manner, why and how the infinite causes a finite effect,
even through mediation. As has been seen, nothing finite is deduced from the
infinite. Besides, it must be observed that a finite intellect, unlike the infinite
one, is not capable of analytically deducing (or as others prefer to say,
synthetically) the essence of things in a determinate manner, aside from the
relation which they have with their actual existence. Therefore, it is necessary
that one has a somewhat immediate and intuitive idea of the actual existence
of finite things, in order to also have an idea of their determinate essence. In
intuitive knowledge, imagination and reason are both presupposed and
maintained in a form which surpasses, however, their particular and determinate
constitution. Analysis of such an implication constitutes a further fundamental
chapter in the interpretation of intuitive science. But it is a chapter which we
will have to postpone for another occasion.

1. "Per la datazione e 1'interpretazione del Tractatiis de intellectus emendatione di Spinoza,"

La Cultura, 17 (1979), 87-160; Introduzione a Spinoza, Bari, Laterza 1983, ch. 1-2.
2. There is no explicit mention in the TdlE of God as being identified with Nature, but
there are various passages in which He is formally considered the causa of Nature, Nature
being one of his effects: GII/17/3-7; 19/2-5; 28/32-29/18; 34/4-7; and above all 34/13-15 and
34-35.
3. "Nuovi contributi per la datazione e Pinterpretazione del Tractatus de intellectus emen-
datione? in Spinoza nel 350th anniversario delta nascita, ed. by E. Giancotti, (Naples:
Bibliopolis, 1985), 515-525.
4. For this matter, refer to my comment in B. de Spinoza, Korte Verhandeling van God,
de mensch en deszelvs welstand, intr., ed., tr. and comment by F. Mignini. (EAquilla-
Roma: Japadre Editore, 1986), 709-719, 751.
5. E IP22D; IIP2D; IIIP39D; IIIP44D; IIIP59S; VP40D.
6. See for example Lexicon totius latinitatis, s.v. procedo, ad 4; Oxford Latin Dictionary,
s.v., ad 1.
 WISDOM AND THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE IN SPINOZA

HERMAN DE DUN
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

1. Spinoza's philosophy can be interpreted as a peculiar reaction to the crisis

brought about by the advent of the new physical sciences (this advent itself being
related to broader cultural and economico-political changes).1 From then
onwards, and up to this day, the problem of the good and meaningful life, which
had always occupied people, took the form of a confrontation of morality and
religiosity with the new view of Nature and of man's place in it. This new view
on nature and man was disenchanting and meant in the eyes of many a serious
threat to morality and religion. Accordingly, the task of philosophy was (and
is) often seen as the elaboration of a new synthesis which aimed at containment
of the impact of the new view either by imposing certain limits on it, or by
playing down its disenchanting nature.
Even if one is only slightly familiar with Spinoza's thinking, it is obvious
that the problem of the good and meaningful life is at the core of his philosophy
(although not unrelated to other problems, as e.g. the problem of the good State
and how to bring it about). Spinoza, like all modern men, is confronted with
what Alquié calls le problème de la valeur morale du rationalisme (Alquié (1981),
240). According to E. Renan, Spinoza understood that a completely unedited
synthesis was necessary which negated neither the new scientific spirit nor the
religious spirit.2 Indeed, what is paradoxical in Spinoza is that he tries to deal
with the problem of the good and meaningful life not by attempting to contain
the new view, but through the very adoption of the rational view of nature and
man.3 For Spinoza the solution to the problem of the good and meaningful
life precisely requires the rejection of an anthropomorphic and anthropocentric
view of things, and the adoption of a neutral, purely objective view - at least
this is so for the philosophically minded person (as is well-known, Spinoza does
recognize the possibility of a kind of "salvation" for the ordinary man in a sort
of purified Judaeo-Christian religiosity).
Spinoza has not been the only thinker to come to such a paradoxical
solution for this problem of the clash between science and religiosity. In our
century, another Jewish thinker and scientist, Albert Einstein, expressed opinions
concerning the relationship between science and religion in many ways
comparable to those of Spinoza. According to Einstein, science can lead to the
decay of existing morality and religion in so far as it can bring about a
detachment from the level of the immediate experience of meaning (e.g. the
scientific attitude transcends the level of ordinary human concerns - even those
of good and evil).4 This detachment is produced by adopting the objectifying
attitude of science which seems to make the everyday experience of meaning
impossible.5 Yet the very scientific spirit which thus leads to disenchantment
vis-à-vis the old values can lead to a new, special form of enchantment, to a
purified religiosity bereft of all anthropomorphic notions about God.6 As a
human activity, science has for Einstein a moral-religious significance: it is an
148 HERMAN DE DIJN

activity capable of constituting the ultimate meaning and worth of the lives of
certain people, who in this very activity of the search for truth, are capable of
transcending themselves (Einstein, op. cit., 23).
In Spinoza there is a similar transcendence of ordinary concerns and views
through rational cognition. Reason leads to a repudiation of our usual
anthropomorphic views of Nature and man. It teaches us that our human
activities, including those thought to follow from free acts of the will, are to
be grasped in the same way as when we are dealing with lines, planes and bodies
(E IHPref.); that nothing is in se good or bad, orderly or confused, beautiful
or ugly... (E IApp.; E IVPref.); and so on. Nevertheless it is precisely through
this rational activity that we can arrive at true freedom and even wisdom.
Yet, both in Einstein and in Spinoza, it is not the scientific or rational
insight on its own which constitutes the new religiosity. Something more seems
to be needed: a "cosmic religious feeling," according to Einstein (op. cit., pp. 48,
50); some special kind of knowledge (intuition) combined with an "intellectual
love of God," according to Spinoza. This leads to the question of the exact
nature of the relationship between - in Spinoza's terms - rational knowledge and
intuitive knowledge, and how the one can lead to the other. Tb study this
relationship in Spinoza's case is not easy, because it is not absolutely clear from
Spinoza's definitions what these two kinds of knowledge are. Commentators
disagree, e.g., as to whether the knowledge of the second kind contains
knowledge of God, and therefore whether the Ethics itself belongs to the second
or the third kind of knowledge. In an attempt to understand the nature of
Spinozistic religiosity or wisdom, we willfirstrecapitulate some of Spinoza's most
fundamental theses concerning the relationship between reason and intuition.
2. Knowledge of the third kind or intuitive knowledge is in a crucial sense
knowledge of singular things,7 more precisely of singular essences grasped in
relation to (certain attributes of) God. An example of such a singular essence
is the essence of the idea that expresses the essence of this or that body (e.g.
the essence of my mind) (E VP22). These singular essences must be grasped
"under the species of eternity"; this means as contained in God with eternal
necessity (E VP22). The singularity of the eternal essences should not be
confused with the singularity of things as existing in time and space (E VP29S),
though this does not necessarily mean that eternity and time are in no way
related.8 Intuitive knowledge is not opposed to deduction: knowledge of the
third kind "proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain
attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the (formal) essence of things"
(E IIP40S2). But this definition seems compatible with the proposition that
the idea of a singular (eternal) essence necessarily involves knowledge of God
(E VP30).
Intuitive knowledge differs from reason or knowledge of the second kind
in so far as the latter is "universal" knowledge, i.e., knowledge of things based
on "common notions" and adequate ideas of the properties of things (E IIP40S2
and VP36S). As an example of such "universal" knowledge Spinoza gives the
proposition that all things, and consequently also the human mind, depend on
God both for their essence and their existence (E VP36S). Although this seems
 Wisdom and Theoretical Knowledge 149

as close as can be gotten to knowledge of a thing (the human mind) in relation

to God, still it is not really intuitive knowledge. In order to have intuitive
knowledge, what is needed is the grasping of the singular (eternal) essence of
the thing in its intimate dependence on God (ibid.).
This intuitive knowledge is said to give rise to the greatest possible
satisfaction (E VP27), and to lead to the intellectual love of God (E VP32C).
These propositions incidentally show that there are links between eternity and
time.
The "ontological" possibility-condition of intuitive knowledge is the human
mind insofar as it is itself eternal, and gifted with adequate knowledge of God
(E VP31). Yet Spinoza insists that man can desire to know things by the third
kind of knowledge, and while this desire cannot arise from the first kind of
knowledge (knowledge based on sense-perception combined with language), it
can indeed arise from the second kind (E VP28). P28 is established by means
of the following premisses: a desire is a particular striving, dependent on some
"affection" (ultimately an idea) of man's essence, and the desire to know
intuitively (= adequately) can only arise from an "affection," i.e., an idea which
is itself adequate (E VP28D). Unfortunately, this does not tell us how exactly
this desire depends on knowledge of the second kind or reason. Can the
origination of intuitive knowledge be understood simply on the basis of the
tendency of the rational knower to derive further conclusions from established
premisses? and what then are these premisses (are they propositions like those
contained in Ethics ƒ)? Or should we understand the relationship rather in this
way: that intuitive knowledge is obtained through the application of a general
truth (e.g. the dependence of all things, and therefore also of the human mind,
on God) on to a particular case (my mind)? But this would still only be the
application of a general truth, and does not seem to yield the grasping of a
singular essence (see E VP36S).9 Although Spinoza gives the impression that
the transition from reason to intuition is a transition from certain adequate
information to other adequate information, it is unlikely that we can understand
the origination of intuition in this way (through simple deduction, or through
application of a general truth).
Suppose we know everything about God and human nature as explained
in the Ethics I-IV. Would this constitute knowledge of the third kind? It is
doubtful. It is in any case significant that Spinoza's most explicit and extensive
treatment of intuitive knowledge is found in the second half of Ethics V (21-40),
which deals with the eternity of the human mind, which is the eternity of the
idea, expressing the essence of this or thai body immediately conceived through
the essence of God (as Extension) (E VP22). There can be no knowledge of
the third kind, except on the basis of an understanding of ourselves as involved
in God (E VP29 and VP39S). All knowledge of the third kind seems to imply
knowledge of one's own eternal essence as conceived through God. Do we get
this knowledge of our eternal essence in a logical deduction from God, or in
an application of knowledge about human nature (as understood through God)
upon ourselves? The first seems impossible; the second does not seem to yield
real intuitive knowledge: to get an idea of our eternal essence does not seem
150 HERMAN DE DUN

to be reducible to metaphysical and physical knowledge about humans in general,

as applied to ourselves. (Which is not to say that to get such an intuitive idea
does not presuppose such knowledge). What could it possibly mean to have
the idea of one's own singular eternal essence as contained in God? Spinoza
says at the same time that it is a question of experience (Sentimus, experimurque,
nos aeternos esse) and that it is a question of insight through demonstrations
(E VP22S). But how can the experience of eternity be the same as an insight
acquired through demonstration? *° Or should we rather say that demonstrative
insight should go together with a certain experience. I can only make sense of
the second possibility (which, I confess, requires some reconstruction of what
Spinoza says). The question then becomes: what sort of experience and which
demonstrations?
3. The rational pursuit of objective knowledge of things is an activity in
which we can experience ourselves as powerful (active, free, as Spinoza calls it)
(e.g., E IVP68D). This experience of power is not unrelated to an experience
of transcending the level of ordinary ideas and concerns:11 we now see things
as they really are, a world very different from the ordinary "anthropomorphic"
world we usually construct for ourselves. Physics on its own, as a body of truths
about the world, does not necessarily lead to a new life. The same is true even
of a metaphysics which has taken to heart the lessons of physics and conceives
of the relationship between whole and parts in a deterministic, naturalistic way:
is it not possible to understand it all, and yet have one's life not really be
changed? But is it not almost inevitable that there will be produced in people
who have made great progress in physical-metaphysical knowledge, the
experiences of self-transcendence and of power (to which Spinoza undoubtedly
refers at the beginning of the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione)? One might
even relate this to Spinoza's rationalistic conception of man as fundamentally
a knower, or an intellect: it would not be astonishing that a being, whose nature
is primarily to understand, feels a deep satisfaction when it can work out its
nature unhindered. It is tempting in this context to try and understand the
relationship between reason and intuition as a relationship not of a purely
epistemic nature, but rather as follows: the joyful experience of rational knowing
leads to a desire for new experiences of power and self-transcendence in the
intellectual pursuit. It is also tempting to stop one's interpretation here, and
to simply equate knowledge of the third kind with this experience of the growing
power of the self as intellect. Yet too much remains unaccounted for in this
way, especially the relationship between knowledge of the third kind and an
awareness of our eternal essence as involved in God (and leading to "intellectual
love" of God).
It is interesting to note that Russell at one point identified Spinoza's
intellectual love of God with the emotional state accompanying intellectual
discovery (See Blackwell (1985), 118). But Russell came to see that this could
not be the whole story: in order to understand Spinoza's intuitive knowledge
and intellectual love of God, we have to understand the relationship between
the joy of intellectual discovery and a certain metaphysical view of Nature
(Blackwell (1985), 149).
 Wisdom and Theoretical Knowledge 151

4. The insight into our own eternal essence (as being in God), which is an
essential element in intuitive knowledge, can hardly be a purely theoretical
insight acquired through demonstrations. It must be more a kind of experience,
not unrelated however to demonstrations of truths aboutfiniteessence applicable
to ourselves as instances of such essences (E VP23S). At the same time
knowledge of the third kind must originate in knowledge of the second kind.
All these elements can be pieced together to produce a picture of something
approaching a certain kind of "religious" experience.
In the very pursuit of our meta-physical knowledge we produce an experience
of ourselves as power, self-transcendence, in which we escape our ordinary
concerns: this is a "personal" experience of an activity which seems to belong
to our "purest" self. But, at the same time, within this activity we come to know
in an objective way that everything is radically determined by God: everything
is a necessary modification of the essence of the divine Substance or Nature,
which does not act with any end in view.
On their own, these insights are "simply" insights, which are the object of
rational discussion and argumentation, which can be transmitted to others,
without these insights necessarily "changing our lives." But in combination with
the self-experience of the rational knower, these insights can produce a sort of
"cosmic religious emotion."12 In the joy of adequate knowing, the rational
knower experiences himself as transcending his ordinary concerns in the pursuit
of a purely scientific, objectifying view of things. But he can also envisage
himself and his experience as part of the impersonal, non-goal-directed whole.
At this moment, in this "envisaging," something other than a purely intellectual
process takes place: the knower relates himself as a singular entity to the whole,
now envisaged as all-encompassing God or Nature of which the individual can
feel himself to be an eternal part. Something like this is probably also expressed
in Einstein's "cosmic religious feeling": the whole of nature which one is studying
in physics can become something to which one can also relate "personally,"
something which then appears as Mystery, as Beauty (or even as Rationality -
although as I will show this name is misleading); it appears like this in a
moment of contemplation which is different from purely theoretical insight,
rather of the kind of "knowledge oP than "knowledge that," although it is not
unrelated to the preceding "knowledge that."
Russell describes this kind of knowledge as "a form of union of Self and
non-Self."13 This characterization can be accepted as very appropriate if the
union is not meant to exclude contrast, which seems to be an essential element
in the contemplative experience. The experience of rapture in contact with
God-Nature, of transcendent contact with something infinitely surpassing us, is
probably due to the experience of the contrast between our self-awareness (as
powerful intellect) and the impersonal, infinite God-Nature of which we feel
ourselves to be a part: a form of union of Self and non-Self which, so to
speak, shocks us out of ourselves. Russell thought that even a materialistic
metaphysics can produce intellectual love of God (Blackwell (1985), 119).
According to Einstein the "cosmic religious feeling" is not just any religious
feeling: it is a religious feeling co-determined by the peculiar metaphysical
152 HERMAN DE DUN

insights which make it impossible to envisage God-Nature as something personal,

as something resembling the judaeo-christian God.
The same object which occupies our intellectual search and curiosity can
also affect us, if we relate to it in a non-purely cognitive way: it can become
something which makes us pause in wonderment. But here confusion is possible:
what is interesting from the point of view of the search for knowledge (reality
as what lies always ahead of us) should not be confused with what is interesting
from the point of view of individual meaningfulness (reality as something in the
light of which ordinary things lose their importance, in relation to which we
escape the bondage of our passions because it appears to us as what surpasses
us, as Mystery, as Glory). What appears as a perhaps extremely complicated
puzzle from the point of view of the knowledge-search, can also appear as
Mystery, but only from the point of view of the individual relationship with the
Whole. Implied in the notion of mystery is that it will never be solved (it can
only disappear: if we lose interest, if we are no longer affected), whereas a puzzle
is (at least in principle) solvable. (Tb call the Mystery Rationality - as Einstein
does - is confusing because it expresses a tendency to conflate puzzlement and
sensitivity to mystery).
If we were pure knowers, if we did not have other concerns and experiences
(e.g., experience of ourselves as singular selves; attitudes and feelings with respect
to ourselves as singular individuals affectively relating to other individual things
and wider contexts), we would never produce in ourselves "intuitive knowledge,"
i.e., the feeling that we are eternal parts of God-Nature. But that we experience
ourselves like this is co-determined by specific physical-metaphysical insights.
So, far from the insights into the eternity of our singular essence being deducible
from God, an experience of ourselves (as powerful in knowing) is required, and
it is this experience which, in combination with a general metaphysical truth,
leads to intuitive "knowledge" of the inherence of ourselves as an eternal essence
in God.
5. This peculiar combination of a certain experience of ourselves and certain
metaphysical ideas leading to a kind of "religious emotion" can even explain some
of the characteristics of Spinozistic religiosity. As has been suggested by some
commentators, Spinozistic religiosity seems to be characterized by a reverence
for "the terrifying side of nature" (See Sprigge, ox,, 158). In connection with
the "atmosphere" of Spinoza's wisdom, Renan spoke of l'air du glacier (Renan,
o.e., 13), which was peculiar to the Spinozistic mode of living. The specific
character of Spinozistic religiosity (or wisdom) is undoubtedly related to the sort
of metaphysical insights which "inform" this religiosity: they are anti-
anthropomorphic insights, which introduce us to a Nature to which we of course
belong, of which we are an expression (as power of autonomous intellectual
thinking), but which, though immanent in us, is not there for us, but infinitely
transcends all our concerns. Strange though it may sound, it seems possible that
in relating personally to such a "God," we are not overpowered by terror,14 but
come to feel joy in the awareness of our immersion in such a "God," and even
come to "love" "God or Nature," although it is so unlike a personal being. That
the affective relationship between the Spinozistic knower and the impersonal
 Wisdom and Theoretical Knowledge 153

God or Nature is one of joy and love, and not one of terror, is probably
explicable in terms of a kind of "feedback" of the "positive" self-experience of
the knower (as enjoying his knowing-activity), on the basis of which he situates
himself within the context of Nature.
Spinoza is not the only one to have spoken about personal feelings towards
something impersonal (Heidegger, e.g., talks about gratitude towards Being, which
is certainly not personal; Nietzsche speaks about amorfati, alluding perhaps to
Spinoza). Spinoza is also not the last representative of what I called the
Spinozistic religiosity. In a poem quoted by Russell (in translation) in The
Impact of Science on Society, the famous Italian poet Leopardi writes:

But as I sit and gaze, my thought conceives

Interminable vastnesses of space
Beyond it, and earthly silences,
And profoundest calm: whereat my heart almost
Becomes dismayed. And as I hear the wind
Blustering through these branches, I find myself
Comparing with this sound that infinite silence;
And then I call to mind eternity,
And the ages that are dead, and this that now
Is living, and the noise of it. And so
In this immensity my thought sinks drowned:
And sweet it seems to shipwreck in this sea.

In his Prisons, Russell himself describes Spinozistic contemplation as follows:

... the contemplative vision: partly sad, partly filled with a solemn joy, wholly
beautiful, wholly great: the vision of all the ages of the earth, the depths of
space, and the hierarchy of the eternal truths, met and mirrored in one mind
whose being ends almost as soon as its knowledge has come to exist" (Quoted
in Blackwell, 142).
The way in which I understand the coming about of Spinoza's intuitive
knowledge may seem far-fetched, but that a special effect (of experience) can
be produced by the combination of personal feelings or experiences and certain
pieces of information is undeniable. Information, even theoretical information,
can have other effects on us than addition to or completion of knowledge; it
can in appropriate circumstances produce "new experiences." There are plenty
of examples of this in ordinary life and literature. Our relationship with things
we love or admire can, when confronted with the truth that all things must
disappear, lead to a special experience which can enhance our love or
admiration, or better perhaps, give these feelings a special flavour (mixed now
with a greater tenderness for example).
Once we interpret Spinoza's knowledge of the third kind in this way, we
can also give a new interpretation to a couple of related ideas which have always
puzzled commentators. What is "eternity," what is it to conceive one's own
singular essence "under the species of eternity"? Eternity has nothing to do with
time, yet is it not unrelated to time? We can perhaps understand a little bit
better this strange relationship between time and eternity, if we relate it to the
154 HERMAN DE DUN

"cosmic religious emotion." In intuitive "knowledge" we are "shocked out of

ourselves" when we, while experiencing ourselves as powerful in thinking, at the
same time realize that we are part of a Nature which is just there, for no reason.
In this "religious experience," we have transcended ourselves: in time we
experience ourselves momentanfy as outside time, as having nothing to do any
more with any of the ordinary concerns; death is totally irrelevant (E VP38S),
we are simply a part of Nature's play, and we completely accept this. Why
shouldn't this be eternity?17
Spinoza also says that the more we understand singular things, the more
we understand God (E VP24). But how can this be: either we understand him
or we don't? Once we interpret intuitive knowledge not as some kind of
enlargement of the body of information, but as a form of "knowledge of," we
can more easily give meaning to this proposition. Each singular essence we
come to experience as "eternally in God," indeed "tells us more" about God, in
the sense that we come to have a new, unedited "cosmic religious emotion."
It is comparable to the experience of beauty: each new experience of beauty
leads in a way to a better "understanding of beauty," in the sense that each
experience is something unedited, a way of experiencing beauty which is unique,
as determined by this occasion (this peculiar combination of words in this poem
for example).
Intuitive knowledge is a "personal" relationship with God-Nature, requiring
a certain experience of ourselves and of other things (as "eternal essences").
This means that intuitive knowledge of God cannot exist, except as an experience
of the whole of Nature in our experience of ourselves and of other singular
things; and vice versa: there is no intuitive knowledge of singular essences, except
in so far as they are experienced as "situated" in "something surpassing," or as
"expressing" something which is "transcendent" and yet at the same time strangely
immanent in the particulars ("strangely" immanent, because the transcendent
is not there for the particular). Again, an important "truth" seems to be
expressed here, which many people have been aware of, and which is expressed
again in many forms, also in literature: that "religiosity" is not a direct
relationship with ultimate meaning, but a relationship which is necessarily
"mediated" by our experience of one or another particular thing, of something
or other which is mortal and yet an expression of the a-human Immortal. In
the relationship with the finite expression of the Infinite, with the mortal
expression of the Immortal, the mortal is not mistaken for the Immortal, but
mortality is made acceptable in a momentary reconciliation. As Vladimir
Nabokov puts it in his Speak, Memory:

the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random

- is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is
ecstacy, and behind the ecstacy is something else, which is hard to explain.
It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense
of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may
concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts
humoring a lucky mortal (Nabokov, ox., 109-110).
 Wisdom and Theoretical Knowledge 155

Why not understand in a similar way Spinoza's "intellectual love" for a God
without a face: as a love "to whom it may concern," even though we can expect
no love in return (E VP19); what happens to us in such moments of intuition
and love can even be experienced as if it were a gratuitous gift of Nature's
spontaneous and purposeless activity which in us takes the form of an
"intellectual love of God-Nature."18

1. See e.g., Walther (1971), Einleitung. For English translations of Spinoza's works, I use
Curley (1985).
2. Renan, Spinoza (Discours...), (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1877), p. 25: Malheur à qui prétend
que le temps des religions est passé! Malheur à qui s'imagine qu'on peut réussir à donner
aux vieux symboles la force qu'ils avaient quand ils s'appuyaient sur l'imperturbable
dogmatisme d'autrefois.
3. Delbos, Le Spinozisme (Paris: Vrin, 1983), p. 173: Ce que son système contient de plus
audacieux, et sans doute de plus discutable, c'est, en éliminant par principe tout ce qui porte
le manque de la subjectivité humaine, de prétendre contenter le désir le plus essentiel de
l'homme, qui est le désir de vivre, et de vivre heureux.
4. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Dell Publishing Co, fifth Laurel Print, 1983),
p. 48-49.
5. Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-
scientist, The Library of Living Philosophers, VII (La Salle (111.): Open Court-London:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 3-5.
6. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, pp. 47-48, 57.
7. See E. Leroux, "Qu'est vraiment la science intuitive de Spinoza," in Travaux du 2me
Congrès de Sociétés de Philosophie Française et de Ijingue Française, (Lyon: 1939), 39-42.
8. Concerning the relationship between eternity and necessity, and eternity and time, see
the interesting papers of Martha Kneale and Alan Donagan in Grene (1973).
9. See also what Spinoza says in The Emendation of the Intellect, p. 14 concerning the
requirements of grasping particular essences (which I suspect still hold in the Ethics).
10. See Alquié (1981), 230: // demeure malaisé de joindre et de confondre un sentiment
de jouissance et la compréhension intellectuele d'une démonstration, et de voir en tout cela
une intuition.
11. See the beginning of Spinoza's The Emendation of the Intellect, where the expenence
of rational, cool thinking about his own situation leads Spinoza to the realization that in
reason itself may be found the solution for his desperate search for "the real good."ll.
12. Blackwell (1985), 119: "If we are to make sense of Russell's later interpretation of
the 'intellectual love of God,' we may have to see in it an implicit recognition or a
continuous though subdued appreciation of the necessary order of the universe. Looking
at events in this light and in the light of the whole, or at least in a larger context, does,
according to Russell, 'enlarge the eternal part of you."'
13. This expression is applied to Spinoza by Sprigge, Theories of Existence (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1984), 158 (ch. on Spinoza).
14. As is not impossible in certain experiences of nature, see, Nabokov's short story entitled
"Terror" in Nabokov, Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1981).
15. See Würzer, Nietzsche und Spinoza (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1975), 80-86.
16. Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976, 1952), 91.
156 HERMAN D E DIJN

17. Borges begins his famous short story, The Aleph, with two quotes, the second of which
is from Hobbes's Leviathan IV, 46: "But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing
still of the Present Time, a Nunc-stans (as the Schools call it); which neither they, nor any
else understand, no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatnesse of Place."
Borges's story is precisely about such a Hic-stans. It is clear that Borges is not relating
a super-scientific report, he is evoking a possible human experience which has been
"understood" better by mystics and poets, than by philosophers. Cf. Nabokov, Speak,
Memory, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, reprint 1982) 169: "... to try to express one's
position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The
arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles,
not wings, are Apollo's natural members. Vivian Bloodmark (=V.N.), a philosophical friend
of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in
one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. Lost in
thought, he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same instant a car (New York
licence plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighbouring porch,
an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan orchard, a granule of cinder-gray sand is rolled by
the wind on Venus, a Docteur Jacques Hirsch in Grenoble puts on his reading glasses, and
trillions of other such trifles occur - all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism
of events, of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair, at Ithaca, N.Y.) is the nucleus."
18. We allude here to the difficult problem of the relationship between E VP19 and P35
which seem to contradict each other. On this point (and for a very interesting discussion
of intuitive knowledge in general, staying very close to Spinoza's texts), see the interesting
paper by W. Bartuschat, "Selbstsein und Absolutes," in Neue Hefte für Philosophie, Heft
12, Spinoza 1677-1977, 54.
 THE THIRD KIND OF KNOWLEDGE
AS ALTERNATIVE SALVATION

YIRMIYAHU YOVEL
The Hebrew University
Jerusalem

My aim in this paper is to put together the elements for a new interpretation
of Spinoza's mature notion of "knowledge of the third kind" as it stands in the
Ethics. I do not insist that Spinoza held this view explicitly (although I think
it probable) but that his texts suggest this reading as a plausible reconstruction.
And since my reconstruction depends in large measure on the way I interpret
other issues in Spinoza's system, I shall have to mention them, too, in brief.
As a by-product, I hope the paper will also illustrate the "Marrano of
reason" dimension in Spinoza and how it can provide a context for
understanding systematic problems as well. So prior to the reconstruction, let
me briefly introduce this context.

L Marranos and Alternative Salvation

Salvation does not lie in Jesus, but in the Law of Moses: this, as the files of
the Inquisition insistently tell us, was the invariable claim of Judaizing
Marranos, the common secret which made them an esoteric fraternity holding
in its possession no less than the greatest prize their culture treasures. Only
they, a persecuted minority, possess the key to salvation; they alone can attain
what others, the ruling Christian establishment, have always distorted and
misrepresented and therefore inevitably missed.
As Georg Simmel suggests, the sharing of such a hidden and exclusive
possession can foster a secret group's identity and reinforce the individual's
devotion to it even where other sociological indicators may show dispersion,
discord, or poor communication. Marranos, however, did not only share a
metaphysical secret but also a common "impure blood." This is what made
them a "nation" (as indeed they were called) rather than merely a secret sect.
But at least the Judaizers among this "nation" had also the traits of a secret
religious fraternity, neither Christian nor actually Jewish, and bound by a road
to salvation which rivals that of the ruling tradition around them.
Spinoza, too, retained an analogous Marrano feature, translated into
rational and secular terms. He, too, believed he held the key to true salvation
which only a select group can attain, and which rivals that of the established
tradition. But whereas Judaizing Marranos replaced Christ by Moses within
historical religion, Spinoza rejected all historical religion and cult as
superstitious. Salvation lies neither in Christ nor in the Law of Moses, but in
the laws of reason leading to the "third kind of knowledge." Reason thereby
yields the same elevated results which religion and mysticism have claimed to
attain but have always distorted because of their irrational ways. Spinoza thus
158 YIRMIYAHU YOVEL

offers a religion of reason over and above ordinary rationality, the one which
expresses itself in science and in practical ethics. Rationality has two forms,
discursive and intuitive, fragmentary and synoptic, emotionally dull and
emotionally explosive; and through the higher form of rationality - which, as
we shall see, presupposes the former and cannot be attained by a direct leap -
reason alone can lead in Spinoza to an immanent, this-worldly form of
salvation, in which eternity penetrates temporal life, finitude is redeemed, the
passions are turned into free, positive emotions and vigor, which transform
one's whole life to the point of a "new birthw and the individual realizes his or
her unity with God (= the deified universe) through knowledge and intellectual
love.
The vehicle of this kind of salvation, the "third kind of knowledge," is not
only one of the most difficult and controversial issues in Spinoza, but the Ethics
is notoriously parsimonious in speaking of it. Worse, part of what the Ethics
does say on the third kind of knowledge is confusing, if not downright wrong
from Spinoza's own mature standpoint. I refer particularly to a famous
example, carried over from Spinoza's earliest and less mature works (the essay
On the Emendation of the Intellect (TdlE) and the Short Treatise (KV), where
Spinoza explains intuitive knowledge by the manner in which a mathematician
may grasp the nature of proportion in a single flash (E IIP40S2, reiterating
TdlE and KV). If all there is to the third kind of knowledge is an ordinary
mathematical intuition which, as Spinoza adds, "no one" {nemo) would fail to
achieve, then we should not ponder much about il and may let the issue die
of sheer banality. No one would dream of using this commonplace as a lever
for mental emancipation - let alone salvation.2
The third kind of knowledge, however, is clearly a matter for the happy
few. It is the road Spinoza offers to secular salvation - a rival road, rational
and unmediated by any historical creed, to the same exalted goal which, as
Spinoza believes, traditional religion and mysticism have sought in vain to
achieve through irrational faith and acts. That Spinoza's philosophical effort
was ultimately aimed at this goal is made unmistakably clear from the first
known lines he wrote to the concluding phrase of the Ethics.
Spinoza starts to philosophize (in the TdlE) by setting up an ethical goal,
the "highest good" to which all human endeavor should be subordinated. He
seeks a radically new kind of life, in which his existence will attach to what is
permanent and eternal. The same perspective later dominates Spinoza's mature
thought; it also explains why he chose to entitle his major work the Ethics,
even though the book deals mainly with metaphysics, the theory of knowledge
and the psychology of the emotions. These branches of knowledge, along with
the physical sciences, are to serve an ethical goal, first on the lower level of
ratio (discursive rationality) and then, for the select few, leading to salvation
through the third kind of knowledge.
Some modern readers may find this pervasive goal annoying or its
elaboration incoherent; but as a recent example has proven again,3 one can
dismiss this dimension of Spinoza's thought only at the risk of losing much of
his philosophical meaning. Spinoza without the third kind of knowledge would
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 159

be as lame throughout as Plato would be without the Ideas. In both cases we

shall be unable to form an adequate notion of the rest of the system without
considering where it is meant (and construed) to lead.
The scant information which the Ethics supplies about the third kind of
knowledge revolves around the following definition, which occurs twice in the
book :

The third kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of [the formal essence
of] certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things
(IIP40S2; VP25D; in the latter the bracketed phrase is omitted).

Adding the idea of "one glance" or synopsis, we understand that the third kind
of knowledge grasps at a single glance what in itself is a multiple chain of
derivations, by which the essence of a particular thing follows from God through
one of his attributes. The latter part is crucial, since the third kind of
knowledge is defined not by its mode of cognition only but also by the kind of
object which is thereby formed and revealed. When the third kind of
knowledge takes place, a plurality of items of knowledge is synthesized in a new
way so as to form a new cognitive object, which is proper to this mode of
cognition. What is this object, and what further knowledge, or insight, do we
gain by it?
For the moment I set aside the moral and existential gains which the third
kind of knowledge is said to produce. My first question is whether it is
supposed to add anything new to our knowledge. Does it represent a net
cognitive advance over the second kind of knowledge? Is it meant to enrich
us cognitively even before it provokes its alleged salutary effects?
Let me from the outset indicate the answer I intend to give. It will be No
and Yes. No, there is no additional information gained through the third kind
of knowledge. All the information we need and can possess of the object of
our inquiry has already been supplied by ratio, the scientific investigation which
subjects the object to a network of mechanistic natural laws. But yes, there
is a distinct cognitive gain involved here, because what we already know of the
object by external causality is now interiorized* to produce a grasp of its
particular essence and, thereby, also of the immanent-logical way in which it
derives from the nature-God and inheres in it.
This is a change of perspective which, without addition or subtraction,
provides us with a deeper insight of the same thing through a new processing,
or synthesis, of the same informative ingredients. Formerly we had only
external causes and universal laws by which to understand the particular thing
- or rather, the way this thing instantiates a set of abstract common properties.
Now, however, all the former information coalesces to produce a singular item,
the particular essence of this thing as it follows immanently from one of God's
attributes according to a logical principle of particularization.
It is characteristic of Spinoza that he sees both approaches as expressing
the same fundamental information and as having a single ontological reference.
The higher form of rationality (scientia intuitiva) does not abolish its ordinary
160 YIRMIYAHU YOVKL

form (ratio) but is taken to express the same metaphysical truth in a com-
plementary, and also deeper way. Moreover, according to Spinoza's mature
position, the internal viewpoint depends upon the external as a necessary
condition. This is a crucial novelty introduced in the Ethics, There is no direct
access to immanent essences. First we must explicate the object externally, by
the intersection of mechanistic causal laws, and only when we have achieved
a point of saturation, when a network of law-like explanations has, so to speak,
closed in on the object from all relevant angles, can we expect the third kind
of knowledge to also take place, so that, by an intuitive flash, all the causal
information is re-processed in a new synthesis which lays bare the particular
essence of the thing and the inherent way in which it flows by logical necessity
from one of nature's attributes.5
This account of the third kind of knowledge is far less mystical than the
one given by the Short Treatise, In so far as a semi-mystical element does
remain here, it is reminiscent of the passage in Plato from dianoia to nous,
from the account of the world through discursive sciences to the vision of
eternal essences. And as in Plato, intuitive reason presupposes in Spinoza the
work of scientific knowledge as a necessary condition.
Needless to say, this interpretation of the third kind of knowledge
presupposes Spinoza's metaphysics, which views all things as immanently derived
from the divine substance according to a logical principle (IP 16, IP 18, IP25 &
C), and which, as I see it, admits particular essences in addition to natural laws
as two adequate ways of explaining the same entity.
There are further background issues which provide the context for my
reading of the third kind of knowledge. I refer specifically to what Spinoza
scholars (following Curley and others) call the "vertical" and the "horizontal"
types of causation; to the logic of complementarity which dominates Spinoza's
system; and to his view of natural laws and of particular essences. I shall
briefly discuss each of these matters before summarizing the cognitive import
of the third kind of knowledge. Then, in the last part of this paper, I shall
consider its role as secular salvation.

IL Vertical and Horizontal (Immanent and Transitive) Causality

Given a particular thing, there are two ways in Spinoza to account for it.
According to IP28, the thing is produced by other finite things in an endless
chain of external causation. This is the "horizontal" line, expressing the
universe from the viewpoint of mechanism and finitude. However far we may
regress or progress in the line of causes, we shall always remain in the realm
of finite modes and external determination.
On the other hand, according to IP 16 (and its extensions in IP 18 through
IP25), particular things are derived from God as their immanent cause,
following a logical principle of particularization. This is the "vertical" line of
causation. It goes from the substance through an attribute to a series of
infinite modes (direct and mediated), until it is said to reach and determine the
particular individual.
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 161

I interpret the infinite modes as the locus of natural laws in Spinoza.

Natural laws are individual entities transmitting the power and necessity of God
through one of the attributes. Thereby they serve as intermediary agents in
engendering particulars. Spinoza conceives of natural laws as real powers, the
actual causes of the particular things falling under them. Laws do not merely
describe how a finite thing will behave but make it behave in that way.
Spinoza evidently sees the horizontal and the vertical lines of causation as
expressing the same process - that of cosmic particularization. But how is their
relation to be construed?
The answer, I think, is that the horizontal causality realizes the vertical
one, by translating its inner logical character into external mechanistic terms.
This realization applies especially to the crucial last step in the vertical line,
when it passes from the narrowest law or infinite mode to the finite particular.
How does a law determine particular things? Not directly, Spinoza answers,
but in that it determines how other particular things will act and affect it. Sup-
pose that A is determined by B, C, and D as its mechanistic causes, and that
these causes operate in accordance with law L: we may say that L determines
A in that it determines how B, C, D, will act upon A. And if we are ready,
as Spinoza is, to view as equivalent the following two statements:

(1) A is determined by the logical necessity of the law L;

(2) A is determined by the mechanistic causes B, C, & D, whose action obeys and
instantiates the law L,

then we have acknowledged the equivalence, or complementarity, of the vertical

and horizontal views of causation.
This dual perspective implies that we must distinguish between what causes
a law to exist, and what causes a particular thing to exist under that law. The law
is generated in nature by immanent logical derivation. But the particular thing
is produced under that law by other particular things, transmitting external
causality to each other in endless chains.
Let us elaborate on the former example. When a car is moving on the
road, it is "vertically" determined by a system of mechanical laws anchored in
the supreme law of motion and rest. This law is the "infinite mode" in the
world of extension, which assigns a fixed proportion of motion and rest to the
universe at large; thereby (1) it determines the rule which binds all changes in
the universe and (2) it shapes the universe itself as a single individual. The
laws of nature are the permanent features of this global individual; their
network is, so to speak, inscribed upon the universe as its immutable "face,"
and is duly dubbed fades totius universi ("the face of the whole universe").6
These laws, or a cross-section of them, also determine the car moving on
the road. But how? In that they determine, both generally and with reference
to this particular instance, how gasoline burns, gears are shifted, power is
transmitted, metals resist pressure - that is, how the "horizontal" factors will
behave which actually engender the car and produce its movement.
162 YIRMIYAHU YOVEL

Thus the laws determine the particular thing vertically by the mediation
of other particulars which affect it horizontally. And this is also how Spinoza
supposes IP28 to translate and realize the logical principle implied in IP 16, and
why he thinks of the vertical and horizontal systems as equivalent.

Ill The Logic of Complementary Systems

This complementarity is not an ad hoc device, but Spinoza's characteristic way

of handling dualities which amounts to a philosophical logic of his own. In
order to maintain his radical monism while avoiding Parmenides' results or
Hegelian-like dialectics, Spinoza handled the fundamental dualities in the
universe by declaring them to be complementary aspects of the same. This
logic of equivalence is more prevalent in Spinoza than meets the eye. Officially
it is said to obtain between extension and thought, body and mind, the order
and connexion of things and the order and connexion of ideas; but it also
applies in the relation of natura naturans to natura naturata (that is, of the
infinite and finite aspects of nature, nature as totality and nature as a plurality
of finite things: this distinction replaces in Spinoza the traditional dualism of
the creator and the things he creates); of perceptions to their accompanying
affects; of God's "intellect" to his "will" - and also to the relation between
logical derivation and mechanistic causation. These are two parallel, or
equivalent, ways of construing the same universe and the same process of
particularization within it.
A similar logic had been admitted before Spinoza - but with reference to
the God only, not to nature and finite things. God was so different from the
world that he had an ontology of his own, and it has been frequently said, e.g.,
that knowledge, will and creation are in God one and the same. Spinoza
eliminates God's transcendence and transfers to nature the radical unity of God
- and the special ontology which comes along with it.
Ένο minor points should be added to avoid misunderstanding. Equiv­
alences in Spinoza are not necessarily dualities. They do not always work in
pairs, as we see in the case of the attributes, which are numerous. Even the
pair we discussed, logical derivation and mechanistic causation, may well have
a third member - cosmic love; but we cannot do justice here to this somewhat
obscure issue.
Also, I admit the analogy with the attributes is incomplete.7 But what
counts more than the differences in detail is the common methodological
thrust, the logic of complementarity which marks Spinoza's thinking throughout.
Finally - and at some greater length - let me point out that finite modes
in Spinoza are as eternal as the substance itself from which they derive. The
line of causality we called vertical should be understood not as a process of
"creation" or "emanation" but as ontological dependence or support. Seen
through their essences (or sub specie aeternitatis), finite things are just as
eternal and primordial as their sustaining substance. The difference is that the
essence of finite things does not imply existence, but requires the essence of the
substance in order to exist; but this dependence too is eternal; it is a logical,
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 163

timeless relation by which the modes, seen as particular essences, presuppose

God. They inhere in God as their ontological support, they are implications
of God's essence, but they are there eternally, like God himself.
Generation and destruction occur in Spinoza as particular essences become
translated into concrete things in the domain of duration and external causality.
Here horizontal causality takes over from the vertical one, and a time-
dimension is added to being. This is natura naturata, the world of dependent
things, seen (and existing) sub specie durationis. But the same system of
finitude exists and can be seen also sub specie aeternitatis, and in this case the
particular things in it are grasped as having neither beginning nor end.
Thus the eternity (and sempiternity: existence in all times) of the world
of particulars can be interpreted in two ways: (a) the sub-system of natura
naturata is eternal, although particular modes within it are generated and
destroyed; (b) particular things, too, are eternal when seen through their
essences, although their span within duratio is necessarily limited.
In conclusion, both natura naturans and natura naturata are simultaneously
eternal systems existing irrespective of beginning or end. The system
comprising the substance, the attributes, and the infinite modes, provides the
finite things with ontological support and with their nature and laws; it does
not so much engender them (in time) as it constitutes them (timelessly). For
such a thing, entering into time translates the vertical relation into a horizontal
one which is conceived as another facet of the same system. Thus eternity and
duration are also, eventually, a dual pair understood in terms of the logic of
equivalence.
This interpretation is made both possible and inevitable by the fact that
particular things have eternal essences which arc logically (and thus simul-
taneously) implied in God's essence.

IV Infinite Modes, Laws, and Particular Essences

Tb complete this picture we must consider a little more closely the status of
natural laws and essences in Spinoza. Earlier I have interpreted natural laws
as infinite modes and as the causes of the particulars which they govern. In
Spinoza's metaphoric language, the laws of nature embody God's immutable
"will" or "decrees1*8 - that is, they express his necessity to be and to operate in
certain modes. If by inner necessity God must particularize himself, then the
immutable patterns in which this particularization takes place mediate between
God as One and God as Many, between natura naturans and natura naturata.
They express the unity and infinity of God in a variety of hierarchically-ordered
patterns, and transmit his power and necessity "downward" to the world of finite
modes.
In calling laws "infinite," Spinoza means that, like the attribute, laws are
uniformly present in an infinite range of phenomena falling within their
domain. Just as the attribute of extension is present in all extended bodies, so
these bodies are all uniformly subject to the laws of motion, from the supre
164 YIRMIYAHU YOVEL

me law (the direct infinité mode) to the more specific laws which derive from
it.
Infinity has, however, also a second sense, in which laws are distinguished
from the attribute. Laws are permanent and immutable in the sense of
duration. They are sempiternal (= existing in all times) and belong to natura
naturata, the world seen as a plurality of modes. The attribute is eternal in the
sense of timelessness and belongs to natura namrans, the world seen from the
standpoint of totality.
The use of natural laws instead of genera and species is one of the
characteristics of the New Science of which Spinoza was a part. Scientific
explanation since ancient times has been understood as requiring the
subsumption of a particular item under some principle of universality. Plato
had spoken of independent universal essences, whereas Aristotelian science
placed these essences in the actual individuals as their inherent generic forms.
Explanation was by and large a matter of essential classification, the referring
of a particular thing to its genus and species, understood also as the thing's
ideal perfection. This gave science a teleological orientation and a marked
qualitative character.
The scientific revolution of the 17th century replaced species with natural
laws as the universal principle by which science proceeds. Laws are indifferent
to genus and species; they cut through qualitatively different domains and allow
only unilateral effective causes as valid. Hence they lend themselves to a
mechanistic and quantifiable explanation of nature, barring purposes, ideal
models, and universal essences.
Spinoza was a proponent of the New Science in that in him, too, the
causal, mechanistic laws of nature have replaced genera and species as the
universal principles by which science proceeds. This abolished universal
essences - but not the concept of essence altogether. Along with the modern
category of natural law Spinoza went on adhering to the older category of
essence as a valid, even as a deeper, scientific category - but he substituted
particular essences for the universal ones.
Universal essence is a fiction, an empty word. But essences do exist - as
particular essences. Each individual thing in the universe has its own essence,
by which its specificity is constituted. The essence of a particular thing is the
unique place it occupies in reality; it is, so to speak, the logical or metaphysical
"point" which belongs exclusively to it in the overall map of being. Of course,
this specific point is determined by the other items and coordinates of the map
- that is, by everything which determines the thing to exist and to act in the
way proper to it. And this establishes a logical link - to Spinoza, even an
equivalence - between what the thing is and the causal network which makes
it be what it is. In other words, a thing's particular essence is ontologically
equivalent to the process of its determination (an idea which Spinoza had
conceived and was groping for already in the TdlE).9
Particular essences exist actually (formaliter) in God and are presented as
ideas in the "infinite intellect." According to IP 16 and its corollaries (including
a distant but crucial corollary in VP29S), God particularizes himself into an in-
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 165

finitely diverse system of particular things, or existing ("formal," in 17th century

jargon) essences, each of which, when seen vertically, is as eternal and necessary
as God himself. In this sense, particular essences take on in Spinoza a status
which is partly similar to the Platonic ideas. They are pure and immutable,
even eternal in a supra-temporal sense, yet each refers to one particular thing
only. Existing as separate items in the attribute of thought (or in God's
"infinite intellect"), they are objective metaphysical definitions which assign to
each thing its specific place in being or, what amounts to the same, by which
the uniqueness of each thing is immanently constituted and engendered in God.
(This uniqueness may imply the career or biography peculiar to it: essences are
generic in nature and may involve complex stories and processes; but each of
these will amount to the necessarry and sufficient account of one single entity,
and all will be a apriori, contained timelessly in one of God's attributes (or in
God's infinite intellect) from which they derive.) A few quotations:

If God had created all men like Adam... then he would have created only Adam, and
not Peter and Paul. But God's true perfection is that he gives all [individual] things
their essence, from the last to the greatest... (KV 1/43, Curley (1985), 87).

Things must agree with their particular ideas, whose being must be a perfect es-
sence, and not with universal ones, because then they would not exist. (KV 1/49,
Curley (1985), 92).

Peter must agree with the idea of Peter... and not with the idea of Man. (ibid)

This selection from the Short Treatise (KV) may be complemented by quotes
from Metaphysical Thoughts (CM) 10 and the Ethics. In the latter work,
particular essence is defined (IID2) as what constitutes a thing's individuality,
and the definition lends itself to explication both in terms of logical essences
and of complete mechanistic determination.l !
Since essences lay bare the internal design of nature and its occupants,
they offer, on the basis of the same body of information, a deeper view into the
world. Herein lies the cognitive advantage of the third kind of knowledge. We
can also see from this that Spinoza, although a nominalist, is not a positivist,
since he attributes a metaphysical interior to things and makes it accessible
through the third kind of knowledge. Grasping this interior is not a direct
mystical revelation. It is based upon a discursive, mechanistic science which
it supplements not with new informative ingredients, but with a new synthesis
of the old ones.
A final remark concerning essences. Spinoza's adherence both to essences
and to mechanistic causality may indicate his position between antiquity and the
modern era as two scientific cultures, a position which his theory of wisdom
and intellectual salvation highlights even more. On the matter of essences,
however, Spinoza is not quite beyond the frontiers of his Zeitgeist. Other
philosophers made an attempt to reconcile a mechanistic science with entities
having an interior essence (Leibniz) or residing eternally in God (Maleb-
ranche), and they, too, described the eternal essences as unfolding themselves
166 YIRMIYAHU YOVEL

in their things' career (Leibniz again). Contrary to Leibniz, however, Spinoza

refuses to see these essences as substances; to him they are individual
crystallizations of the causal processes themselves. In that he comes closer, I
think, to the modern outlook. In addition, there may be a certain affinity
between Spinoza's way of thinking and some contemporary theories about how
things can be individuated by means of the causal processes that lead to (or
from) them. In Spinoza, however, this takes place in a single world - the idea
of many possible worlds being self-contradictory.
Given the background issues we discussed so far, we may now return to
the third kind of knowledge and summarize the way it is supposed to work.

V The Third Kind of Knowledge Resumed

In principle the third kind of knowledge can apply to any particular thing; but
because he offers this kind of knowledge as an alternative kind of salvation,
Spinoza makes no secret that he has a privileged object for it: the philosopher
himself, his body, mind, and environment. The third kind of knowledge is
preferably, though not exclusively, a form of self-knowledge. But it is the
opposite of direct self-awareness. It is not a subjective mode of cogito, not an
immediate grasp of ourselves, but a most elaborate form of mediated self-
knowledge. The intuitive element is added at the end only, to crown an effort
of scientific objectification.
What in direct awareness I feel to be my "innermost self is but a distorted
idea of my body being affected by external causes. Therefore, to achieve
self-knowledge of the third kind I must not develop my direct self-awareness
(as in yoga and mystical experiences), but rather expel it as a form of
imaginatio. Ttue self-knowledge starts with overcoming the illusion of pure
subjectivity and objectifying the cogito, by referring it to the body and by
referring them both to the causal order of nature at large. Tb do this I have
to engage in an arduous scientific investigation (of my body, my mind, my
situation) in which I approach myself "from the outside," through the
mechanistic laws of nature and other natural entities which determine my own
being in the world.
This may seem to entail a form of sclf-alicnation, but only apparently so.
Objectification may often be painful and hard to perform, but it is not
necessarily alienation, because what I approach in this objectified way is my
true being rather than a feigned, illusory self. For in Spinoza's ontology I am,
in both body and mind, the product of an impersonal substance-God which has
no human-like features and may not be anthropomorphized; in other words, the
natural processes which produce me bear no resemblance to my own
subjectivity: they do not work by intention and purpose, have no privileged
affinity to human affairs and allow no room or special laws for history as
distinguished from the rest of nature. Recognizing this, I may well become
emancipated from religious and metaphysical illusions, but also lose their
soothing comforts.12 This hard element in liberation - what I call "dark
enlightenment" - is what attracted Nietzsche to Spinoza and invoked Hegel's
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 167

criticism.13 It is also part of the reason why true philosophy - even at the level
of ratio - is never for Spinoza a matter for the multitude.
Equally painful to accept, for many people, may be the idea that their dear
and most intimately felt self is but a confused idea. Yet as long as nothing
makes them objectify and externalize their view of themselves, they will not be
able to attain true self-knowledge, neither in the external mode of ratio nor in
the intuitive mode which recurs in the third kind of knowledge; for the latter
is based upon the former as a necessary prerequisite.
In the stage of ratio (the ordinary rational mode), the philosopher studies
himself through the general, mechanistic processes of nature. He understands
his bodily existence as determined by all the causal processes explained by
physics and its corrolaries - chemistry, biology, medicine (and, as we may add
today: genetics, neurophysiology, biochemistry etc.). Equally, he studies his
mind by the help of psychology and its various derivatives, including sociology,
linguistics, and politics (today we may add psychotherapy and the study of the
unconscious). Each of the two branches of study is independent and irreducible
to the others, yet both express one and the same ontological entity. Moreover,
investigations in both branches of knowledge are conducted in conformity with
the mechanistic paradigm of explanation which Spinoza believes applies to all
sciences. Everything occurs by external, transitive causes obeying the laws of
nature.
This scientific knowledge is supplemented, or rather supported, by a basic
metaphysical framework. The philosopher understands nature as a single
substance equivalent to God, in which we all inhere as a modes. This is,
roughly speaking, the contents of Book I of the Ethics, which is here grasped
in the second mode of knowledge. It already gives metaphysical (and even a
semi-theo-logical) interpretation to the body of scientific knowledge, but it fails
to turn this interpretation into a living experience.
However, as I gather more scientific knowledge of my body and of my
mind, as I close in, so to speak, on myself from all relevant causal angles, the
ground is set for the third kind of knowledge. The network of transitive causes
has placed and defined my body as it stands uniquely within nature at large.
Now, in a flash of intuition, all this causal information is synthesized in a new
way, which produces its epistemic counterpart: my particular essence. Nothing
new is added to the scientific information we already possess, yet all its
ingredients coalesce in the formation (or reproduction) of this essence as a new
synthesis, which lays bare the metaphysical "interior" of the thing I am and the
way in which I derive immediately (or "vertically") from God as my immanent
logical cause.
Therefore, the third kind of knowledge represents a net cognitive gain over
the second kind, since it allows me to gain a new and deeper perspective of
myself and the world, although it uses exactly the same materials as before.
The second kind of knowledge has given me only a partial account of reality.
It drew the law-like ways in which transitive causes produce their effects in an
endless chain. Thereby it served as an adequate explication of IP28, but not of
the crucial IP16. What it lacked, and the third kind of knowledge supplies, is
168 YIRMIYAHU YOVEL

the grasp of things according to their particular essences as they immanently

issue from God. This changes not only the mental quality of our perception
but the categories embedded in it. Things are understood by their particular
essences, not their universal laws merely, and the causes which determine them
are understood as logical and immanent, not as mechanical and transitive
causes; and this now allows the philosopher to penetrate into nature's interior
design where formerly he had its external facet only.
It is essential to see that the same occurs in the other direction as well. I
do not only grasp myself now as I exist in and through God; I also grasp God,
the totality, through some concrete particular (myself) and no longer as an
abstract concept or entity. This is a crucial change with respect to my former
metaphysical knowledge. I had an adequate idea of God, or the totality of
nature, before as well; but it was general and abstract. I knew that individuals
are, in principle, in God and that God, in principle, must be particularized and
expressed as particulars. But all this knowledge remained abstract for me, I
did not realize it as an actual awareness. Now, in scientia intuitiva, direct
awareness comes back to the fore, no longer a first and overall stage but the
last stage in a long rational and demonstrative process. It is only after I have
investigated how exactly my particular essence is determined by the universe at
large that I can also interiorize this knowledge and become aware in one grasp
that and how I exist in God just as God necessarily exists and expresses himself
in me. This is a powerful realization, redeeming, liberating, and engulfing all,
not in the diffuse manner of romantic pantheism but controlled by rational
comprehension - which is why the love for the universe which flows from here
is described as "intellectual love." And it is the content of this realization, not
only its intuitive manner, which gives it the powerful affective response it has.
We may also say that it is through Part V of the Ethics that the student
comes back again to Part I and understands it in its true and deeper light. Our
metaphysical comprehension, too, has passed into the phase of scientia intuitiva.
What we had known before as an external abstraction we now experience as a
full realization. Again, nothing has changed in the material ingredients of this
knowledge; if we were to verbalize them, they would yield exactly the same
statements. But it is not any more the same cognitive object and experience.14
This deeper insight into the totality (and the place of the actual particular
within it) cannot be attained in the merely discursive stage of ratio. This is
why Part I of the Ethics is grasped in full only when revisited from the
standpoint of Part V. Spinoza's book, no less than his system, has this tacit
circular (or spiral) form which overshadows its apparent linearity. The linear
progression is a necessary condition for attaining the third kind of knowledge
but is transformed and superseded in its new, holistic and intuitive grasp.

VI. The Third Kind of Knowledge as Secular Salvation

So far I have concentrated on the cognitive gain involved in the third kind of
knowledge. Let me now refer in brief to the ethical effects which make it count
as salvation.
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 169

These salvational effects are of two kinds, psychological and metaphysical:

(a) psychologically, the third kind of knowledge is supposed to produce vigor,
joy, love, and an intense sense of liberation capable of transforming the whole
personality to the point of "rebirth"; and (b) metaphysically it is said to
overcome the mind's finitude and endow it with immortality - or rather (to
express Spinoza's meaning more accurately), with eternity. Let me comment
briefly on these two aspects.

(a) Salvation as Mental Transformation

Cognitions are affective events in Spinoza. Every idea has a corresponding

affective response, and the two are not separate entities but the same thing
seen from different angles. (This is another of Spinoza's equivalences.) That
the third kind of knowledge is supposed to provoke, or come along with, the
most potent affect, which has power to overcome all the others, is made
plausible by Spinoza both by the mode of this experience and by its content
(though primarily, I think, by the latter.)
In mode, the third kind of knowledge is an intensive intuition, in which
a great many items of discursive knowledge are compressed into a single
cognitive object and grasped at one glance. Such concentration can plausibly
make the experience highly potent and intense, regardless of what it contains.
And yet, the content of the third kind of knowledge plays, relatively, a
much larger role than its mode in producing its beneficial effects. The
intuition only compounds what in itself already has immense psychological
power. For what the intuition compresses is no less than my detailed and
concrete realization that I exist in God and that God exists through me, a unity
which rivals (and in its way, usurps) the most exalted states envisaged by
mystics and great religious figures. It is a rational translation of the ideal of
unio mystica, in which the individual both actualizes his or her unity with God
and becomes powerfully aware of it.
At this point I should like to pause and consider how Spinoza's Marrano
background is here translated into his revolutionary new context, that of
immanent reason. Like the Marranos, Spinoza is looking for an alternative
road to salvation, in defiance of the one accepted in his established culture.
But whereas Marranos sought it in a substitute historical religion ("The Law of
Moses" replacing Christ's) Spinoza looked for it outside all historical religions.
It is by the third kind of knowledge, a rational-intuitive procedure bound by no
historical cult, Revelation, Election, Covenant etc., that philosophers are
eventually supposed to be able to attain what the great mystics and religious
aspirants have always been seeking misguidedly and inevitably failed to find,
because they relied on superstitious beliefs and practices. As in their
conceptions of God, they were aiming at something true and real but missing
the actual reference of their concepts.
I think this dimension is crucial when trying to interpret the moral and
metaphysical effects attributed to the third kind of knowledge. Spinoza was not
a mystic, but he recognized in mysticism a misguided form of yearning and
170 YIRMIYAHU YOVHL

endeavor which, correctly transformed by reason and the third kind of

knowledge and guided to its proper object, will become the rational
philosopher's way of salvation, a reward as rare and high in achievement as that
which mystics have been pretending to attain by irrational means. In other
words, it will be a secular (and truly universal, as distinguished from the Catho-
lic claim to universality) form of salvation.
But this secular salvation has also a metaphysical dimension, associated by
Spinoza with eternity and immortality - and giving him some of his most
notorious problems. Without removing them all, I think an adequate
interpretation should distinguish between the above two concepts and view
salvation, or the overcoming of finitude, as a state achieved within this life
rather than after it. Whatever else it is, it enriches the philosopher's
immanent, this-worldly existence and has no important meaning beyond it.

(b) Salvation and Immortality

Particular essences are eternal in the sense of supra-temporality. But in them

essence does not involve existence. This means that they can either exist in a
definite time and place, or not. In the latter case they exist logically as implied
in God's attributes (E IIP8) and their ideas arc contained in God's infinite
idea,15 but they do not have duratio. An essence will enter into the realm of
duration when there are specific mechanistic (external) causes that will produce
the thing of which it is the essence. The existence in duration of an essence
is expressed in all the attributes simultaneously, as is its ceasing to endure.
Hence the duration of the mind must end with that of the body. Minds cannot
endure as separate entities.16
How then is immortality possible? Tb answer in a word: it is not possible.
When the third kind of knowledge takes place, I know myself through my
particular essence as it inheres in God. This essence is eternal, as is the idea
by which I know it; and in the act of knowledge the eternal idea by which I
know myself becomes identical with part of the complex idea which is my mind,
so to this extent my mind gains eternity. But it gains this eternity within this
life and not beyond it. Eternity is not sempiternity; it is a metaphysical state
or quality, which does not signify indefinite existence, and which is here seen
as penetrating into duration and as being attained and realized within it. In
other words, the mind attains a form of eternity within this life and while the
body, too, endures.
Tb clarify, let us distinguish in Spinoza between (1) eternity, (2) salvation,
and (3) immortality. While every finite thing has an eternal side, nothing is
immortal and only a small group of humans can attain salvation. Every finite
thing has eternity by virtue of having an eternal essence and an idea reflecting
it in the infinite intellect of God. But no finite thing is immortal, if by this
we understand that it endures indefinitely in the realm of duration and external
causes. No finite thing which comes into existence in duration can sustain this
kind of existence indefinitely; at a certain point the external causes will
overcome its conatus and destroy it.17 The destruction will affect both its body
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 171

and its mind, since a mind (mens) is constituted by the ideas of its body (and
reflexively also of itself) as they, the body and the mind, exist in duration, not
as they are from the standpoint of eternity. Therefore minds die with their
bodies; what remains is the eternal essence which had been there all along.18
We may say that particular essences are eternal while minds are perishable.
Salvation consists in uniting the two, the perishable mind and the eternal
essence, so that they become identical over a significant range. According to
Spinoza, the mind does not "have" ideas but is the complex of "its" ideas. A
true idea, however, is timeless and unique and is the same in all its occur­
rences; therefore, the more true ideas I know, a larger part of my actual, or
existential mind is constituted of timeless ingredients. This is the cognitive
basis of salvation in Spinoza, on which all the rest hinges; and it is an
occurrence within this life and world, as eternity penetrates my actual existence
and transforms its quality and direction.
Upon a certain reading of Spinoza, my eternal essence is modified by the
knowledge I have gained during life - as if I enter life with one essence and
exit with another. But this reading is incoherent. Nothing, by definition, can
affect an eternal essence. What can be affected by the third kind of knowledge
is my actual, existential mind, when larger parts of it become identical with
eternal ideas; but this achievement is attained within life and cannot affect the
way Τ shall exist after death, since without my body there will be no Τ either
- no individual ego cogito and no conatus to sustain. There will only be an
eternal particular essence existing regardless of time (as it did even before my
birth).
Thus Spinoza keeps to his strict immanent philosophy even when offering
a theory of salvation. The transcendent-religious idea of an afterlife, in which
our existence will be modified in proportion to what we have done in this life,
is foreign to his mind and fundamentally un-Spinozistic. His famous statement,
that virtue is its own reward, also implies the same. A Marrano of reason,
Spinoza unites this-worldliness with a new way to salvation, which not only
relies upon reason and knowledge rather than on religious cult, but also makes
salvation an immanent affair, consummated within this world and life.
It is therefore not in immortality that metaphysical salvation consists, but
in the realization of eternity within time. The third kind of knowledge helps
me overcome my finitude, not my mortality. I am saved as long as I live. I
enjoy a state of timeless necessity in the midst of my duration, but when I die
all will be over, except for an impersonal essence, or idea, existing in God's
infinite intellect. The mere existence of this idea is no comfort to me and does
not signify my salvation; it is only a metaphysical prerequisite for it. All things
in the universe have such ideas, my dog, the Emperor Caligula, his horse, the
bomb in Hiroshima. What if I know that my idea, like that of Caligula's horse,
is timeless? Neither of us is thereby saved. Salvation means that a timeless
idea has become part of my actual, enduring mind. And this can happen only
while I endure.
Eternity in itself has no salvational significance. What makes eternity
count as salvation is its incursion into the individual's life as a mortal and
172 YIRMIYAHU YOVKI.

enduring thing. It is the eternal affecting the temporal or realized in its domain.
This alone, Spinoza believes, can make an existential difference and plausibly
count as a secular mode of salvation - that "rare and difficult" reward Spinoza
was seeking as philosopher and as the Marrano of Reason.

1. See my forthcoming book, Spinoza and Other Heretics, Vol 1, The Marranos of Reason
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), Ch. 2. (The present paper, with slight
revisions, is reprinted in Ch. 7 in that book).
2. The example of the proportion is at best a partial analogy which illustrates the intuitive
and synoptic qualities of the third kind of knowledge (its working uno intuito - at a single
glance) but misses some most essential ones. Above all, it is incompatible with the
definition of the third kind of knowledge as given twice in the Ethics (IIP40S2 and
VP25D), because knowledge in the example docs not "proceed from the essence of some
attribute of God" but is gained directly by a particular intuition. Moreover, intuitive
knowledge occurs here spontaneously, whereas according to Spinoza's mature position it
must arise from the second kind of knowledge (VP28 &D). And, as I mentioned in the
text, the rarity and extreme difficulty inherent in the third kind of knowledge are
incompatible with the commonplace kind of intuition to which the example refers.
The example illustrates a shortcut scientific cognition which, bypassing deduction,
provides a direct grasp analogous to that of axioms. Hut this in itself does not go beyond
the boundaries of ratio. A mathematical genius capable of compressing a great many
deductive steps into a single intuition will not thereby be in possession of the third kind
of knowledge or enjoy a higher moral and metaphysical standpoint than his less talented
colleagues, although he will certainly be a far superior scientist.
3. Bennett (1984), 357, 364-375. Bennett dismisses the last section of the Ethics in
fierce language (it is an "unmitigated... disaster," "nonsense," "rubbish which causes others
to write rubbish," and scholars like Pollock who take it seriously end up "babbling" and
producing "valueless" material). Unfortunately it is Bennett's book - which otherwise offers
many illuminating analyses - which comes out the loser; what it misses is not merely one
chapter in Spinoza but a significant perspective for understanding the whole. I believe
this shortcoming could have been avoided if Spinaza's aims about religion, the
transformation of religious language and religious emotions, and ultimately his search for
an alternative way to salvation, had been taken into account. (Bennett might then have
used the argument he elsewhere borrows from Kripkc (p. 366) and say that Spinoza - or
Christianity, or Judaism, or this and that mystic or theologian - are speaking about the
same thing, salvation, and participating in a meaningful (and to them, supremely important)
discussion, even if some or all of them hold wrong theories about it.) In any event, this
is a case in which the historical picture - Spinoza's Marrano background - could have
helped in recognizing the importance which the issue of salvation has taken in Spinoza's
systematic work throughout.
4. I mean objectively interiorized, that is, turned into a representation of what the thing's
internal essence is.
5. This picture represents a change from TdlE where external causality is delegated to a
much lower role. This change, raising the epistemic level of mechanical causation, parallels
another: abolishing the immediacy of the third kind of knowledge and making it depend
upon the products of ratio.
6. Incidentally, the idea that the universe has a "face," or human-like features, was
certainly known to Spinoza from Jewish Kabbalah, where the universe is mystically
structured on the lines of "Primordial Man" (adam kadmon). In accepting the metaphor
Spinoza rejects its anthropomorphic implications: the only "face" the universe has is the
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 173

network of logical and mechanistic laws, without the slightest shred of teleology or any
other human-like feature.
7. The attributes allow of no interaction, whereas the third kind of knowledge issues from
the second as a necessary prerequisite. Also, officially no attribute is superior to the other,
yet vertical knowledge through essence is supposed to give a deeper view than the
horizontal mechanistic one.
8. Viewing natural laws as God's "immutable decrees" allows us to further develop this
metaphor, even beyond Spinoza. Unlike the philosophers of his time, today we can
conceive of sound natural science as liable to change; so using the metaphor of God's
decrees one might say: the laws of nature are a fixed divine constitution which each
scientific era interprets in its own way, subject to the ruling scientific paradigm; just as in
religious tradition, the Bible is considered as God's immutable constitution which later
generations are authorized to interpret in their own manner. This is not precisely Spinoza's
position, but may be compatible with it.
9. When speaking of a "generative definition," Spinoza gives a technical or constructive
example, taken from geometry; but what he is groping for is metaphysical generation: the
authentic definition (essence) of a thing is equivalent to, and reached by, the network of
causes by which it is generated. I see this intuition accompanying Spinoza from early on
to the climax of the Ethics. Equally, when he says in TdlE that things are known either
by their essence or by their proximate causes, he lays down the two approaches of which
he will later stress the equivalence.
10. "Being of essence is nothing but that manner in which created things are
comprehended in the attributes of God" (CM 1/2, Curlcy (1985), 304). (Here the terms
are defined to suit both tradition and Spinoza's innovation). Essences have being "outside
the intellect" (ibid.). Every such "formal essence" has an idea by which it is "contained
objectively" (= represented) in God's idea (later Spinoza will say more accurately: in God's
"infinite intellect.") Formal essences exist even if the thing of which they are the essence
does not. (See E IIP8; this is because the essence of particulars does not involve
existence.) They neither exist of themselves nor arc created, but "depend on the divine
essence alone" (in which everything is contained, including the essences of non-existing
things - ibid.) " So in this sense," Spinoza adds, "we agree with those who say that the
essences of things are eternal."
11. That "which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited and which, being taken away,
the thing is necessarily taken away" can be construed both as a logical essence and as a
mechanistic process (or set of processes) which, conforming to the laws of nature, is a
necessary and sufficient condition for the generation of the specific thing in question.
12. It is interesting to figure out how Spinoza would handle the phenomenon of unsettling
philosophical truths. While his system abounds in them, it also states the principle that
truth is the source of joy, not of suffering. There must be a moment of suffering in
dispelling metaphysical illusion - which also explains the stubborn resistance it provokes.
Freud, in many ways a disciple of Spinoza, knew this and accounted for it; so did
Nietzsche. Spinoza lacks a theory explaining the mechanism of passage from comforting
illusion to (at first) disquieting truth. But his theory, I think, can accommodate one. (In
the opening of TdlE Spinoza himself describes a variety of such a passage).
13. See my Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 2, The Adventures of Immanence, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press: 1989) ch. 2, 5.
14. Given the same body of scientific knowledge, there are three ways of relating to it.
(1) A positivist, or a scientist uninterested in metaphysics, will try to avoid metaphysical
interpretation altogether (although Spinoza will still attribute some metaphysical framework
to him or her, possibly derived from the imagination). (2) A philosopher-scientist may
interpret the same body of knowledge according to Spinoza's metaphysics but remain on
174 YIRMIYAHU YOVKL

the level of ordinary rationality, or ratio, with its linear arguments and law-like explanations,
understanding the relation of substance, attribute, mode, law, etc., or mind and body,
emotion and cognition, in the same discursive way that governs his empirical science and
is expounded in the "geometrical" layout of the Ethics. Finally (3) in the third kind of
knowledge, the same things acquire a new, or higher interpretation when, through their
particular essences, they are grasped as they are in God and God too is now grasped only
in and through them. This adds new insight and a higher metaphysical interpretation to
our knowledge of empirical particulars - and it also makes us understand Spinoza's own
metaphysics differently, since the preceding books of the Ethics are now grasped from the
standpoint of book V. In other words, metaphysical truths, too, are liberated now from
their linear layout and grasped as the mutual system of ideas in which they actually exist.
This new organization, or synthesis, of the same ingredients of knowledge allows a deeper
peering into the texture of reality and the emotional response corresponding to it.
15. Or also: in the infinite intellect. Spinoza distinguishes here (IIP8) between ideas and
essences. Essences are immutable entities existing logically as contained in the attribute.
Ideas represent these essences objective, and depend upon their state. An essence which
has no duration is represented as such, and an essence which docs enter duration (or exists
in that mode) is also represented as such. It follows that, on the theory implied in IIP8,
essences are immutable but ideas are not.
Since ideas are the same as their objects, they must represent objective the fact that
their object exists in duration or is a merely logical essence. But essences do not represent
this difference within themselves. They are indifferent to existence: this is what
distinguishes them from ideas.
Yet this theory cannot really work. It breaks down, I think, because it cannot sustain
the parallelism between logical and mechanical particularization. If the sum total of
transitive causes by which a thing is determined to exist and operate defines its uniqueness
in being, and if this is supposed to be equivalent to its essence, then it cannot be that one
of the equivalents (the first) includes the parameters of duration and the second (the
essence) does not; for in this case they are not equivalents. Spinoza must either include
durational parameters in the essence, or omit them from the causal explication, or else
abandon the equivalence. He does not want to do the latter and he cannot, by definition,
do the second; so it remains for him to include durational parameters in the essence - and
do away with the distinction between essence and idea. And although this may raise
problems for him elsewhere, I think it would be his most coherent solution.
16. As Spinoza says explicitly in V23D ("We do not attribute duration to it [the mind]
except while the body endures." But then, his famous sentence, "it is time now to pass to
those things which pertain to the mind's duration without relation to the body" (VP20),
is clearly incoherent or intentionally misleading, because of the word "duration." On
Spinoza's doctrine, the mind has duration while the body endures, and when the mind
overcomes its finitude it gains a kind of eternity, not indefinite duration.
17. This is the difference between timelessness (eternity in Spinoza) and immortality.
Immortality means indefinite existence within time. Moreover, it means indefinite life, since
immortality can be attributed only to entities to which mortality, too, is logically
attributable. In Spinozistic terms, the semantics of mortality and immortality can only
apply to entities in the domain of duration and of external causes.
This also distinguishes immortality from sempiternity. The laws of nature (and the
infinite mode they depend upon) are sempiternal; belonging to natura naturata, they
determine its everlasting law-like structure. And like most intermediary stages they occupy
a problematic position, for they have duration (indefinite duration), but are not themselves
determined by external causes. Given the example of infinite modes, we may conclude that
eternal essences are also, in their way, sempiternal, for at any moment in time they can
 The Third Kind of Knowledge As Salvation 175

be said to exist - however timelessly. Whatever the solution of this paradox (if it is a
paradox), the sempiternal status applies to these essences regardless of whether their
objects have entered the actual world of duration and external causality. But once they
do, once an existing concrete thing expresses the essence in a definite time and place, it
cannot sustain this existence indefinitely but, engendered by external causes which translate
the essence "horizontally," and resisting, as conatus, as long as it can the assault of other
external causes, it must eventually, by its ontological mode of being, succumb at a certain
point and cease to exist in duration. At that point all that "remains'* - or rather, is - of
it is the eternal essence.
18. Of course, a particular essence, because it defines the individual's unique place in
being, can and must include its life-history or career; but it expresses this from the
standpoint of eternity, as a timeless implication of God (and one ontological "spot" in the
eternal map of being).
 DE EÉMOTION INTÉRIEURE CHEZ DESCARTES
À LAFFECT ACTIF SPINOZISTE

J.- M. BEYSSADE
Université de Paris IV

L Position du problème

Il existe dans YEthique (à quoi je me limiterai ici) une doctrine de l'affect actif.
Cela signifie que l'affectivité (je traduirai affectus par affects) se répartit en deux
genres. Il y a d'abord "les affects qui sont des passions" (IVP59, VP34), je dirai
par convention les affects passifs. Le lecteur hâtif pourrait s'imaginer qu'ils
couvrent tout le champ de la troisième partie, de l'origine et de la nature des
affects, et comprendre ainsi la "définition générale des affects" qui termine
l'appendice. Le début de cette définition dite générale exige pourtant un
commentaire: "l'affect qu'on appelle animi pathema, passivité de l'âme, est une
idée confuse" (11/203). La relative est ici determinative et non explicative: ceux
d'entre les affects qu'on appelle sentiments ou passions, animi pathema
(expression qui se trouve, par exemple, chez Descartes dans les Principes de la
philosophie IV, 190). Car il en existe aussi d'autres, "qui se rapportent à l'âme
en tant qu'elle est active" (IIIP59). Spinoza les appelle des "actions" (IIID3Exp,
IVApp§2) ou encore des "vertus" (IIIP55S, II/183/2-3, VP4S, H/283/26). Je les
appellerai par convention affects actifs. Leur place logique a été réservée dès
l'ouverture de la troisième partie, avec la définition générale des affects.
Lexplication précise en effet: "si par conséquent nous pouvons être cause
adéquate de quelqu'une de ces affections, j'entends alors par affect une action;
dans les autres cas, une passion."
La place n'est effectivement remplie qu'avec les deux dernières proposi-
tions de cette partie, 58 et 59. Le scolie de la proposition 57 souligne la
transition: "voilà pour ce qui concerne les affects qui se rapportent à lui en tant
qu'il est passif. Il me reste à ajouter quelques mots sur ceux qui se rapportent
à l'homme en tant qu'il est actif." La proposition suivante s'appuie sur un fait,
le fait de la raison ou de l'entendement ("l'âme conçoit certaines idées
adéquates, d'après IIP40S2") pour affirmer qu'il y a, dantur, d'autres affects de
joie et de désir, des affects autres, aliiy "en plus de la joie et du désir qui sont
des passions." Ces affects actifs (pour lesquels sont réservés les mots de force
d'âme, fortitudo, avec les deux espèces de Vanimositas et de la generositas -
IIIP59S, IVP73S, VP41) jouent un rôle décisif dans l'équilibre des deux parties
proprement morales. Dans la servitude, ils sont vaincus, subjugués ou éteints
par les passions: ils "cèdent souvent à tout genre d'appétit sensuel" (IVP17S).
Chez l'homme libre, ils prennent le dessus: en jouant entre les passions, ils
conviennent ou s'accordent avec les passions joyeuses, utiles ou bonnes, pour
juguler les passions tristes; et même, en jouant des passions, ils peuvent
convertir toute passion, joie et même tristesse, en action ou affect actif.
Nous essayerons d'éclairer ensemble deux questions concernant cette
doctrine des affects actifs: une question historique, une question systématique.
 L'émotion intérieure/l'affect actif 177

La question historique concerne son rapport à la théorie cartésienne des

émotions intérieures. Car Spinoza, dans toute YEthique, ne cite nommément
qu'un auteur, Descartes, et de cet auteur qu'un livre, les Passions de l'âme
(IlIPref, VPref). Or cet ouvrage, après la définition des passions (I, 27 à 29)
et l'analyse systématique des six passions primitives, ajoute à la fin de sa
seconde partie un excursus de deux paragraphes, 147 et 148, consacré à ces
"émotions intérieures qui ne sont excitées en l'àme que par l'âme même." A
côté des passions au sens propre, où l'émotion corporelle cause dans l'âme une
émotion passive ou passionnelle, "sensuelle ou sensitive" (à Chanut, 1 février
1647, AT IV, 602), à quoi il faut réserver le terme de sentiment, il y a aussi
des émotions spirituelles sans cause physiologique, purement "intellectuelles ou
raisonnables" (AT IV, 601). Devant la sévérité avec laquelle Spinoza critique
la définition cartésienne de la passion, "plus occulte que toute qualité occulte"
(VPref, H/279/24), nous nous demanderons si son silence sur la doctrine
cartésienne de l'émotion intérieure ne suggérerait pas qu'il en a repris une
bonne part dans sa doctrine de l'affect actif. Il faudrait alors revenir sur une
thèse de F. Alquié dans son dernier livre: "pour Spinoza, tout sentiment n'est
pas une passion. Descartes, au contraire,... appelle 'passions de l'âme' tous les
états que Spinoza nomme ici 'sentiments.'"1 Ou encore: "selon Descartes, tous
les sentiments sont des 'passions de l'âme.' Au contraire Spinoza distingue avec
soin les termes affectus et passio" (ibid., p. 304).
La question systématique concerne la nature de la différence entre les
passions et les affects actifs. En un mode fini comme l'homme, comment
dissocier réellement l'activité et la passivité? MEthique semble parfois
comporter un certain flottement. Tantôt les deux types d'affects sont distingués
réellement ou mieux modalement, comme deux modes effectivement différents
qui s'affrontent dans un champ de force soumis à des lois rigoureuses: "un
affect ne peut être réduit ni ôté sinon par un affect contraire et plus fort que
l'affect à réduire" (IVP7) et il s'agit de savoir si les "affects tirant leur origine
de la raison ou excités par elle" (VP7) parviendront à contraindre "les affects
qui leur sont contraires et qui ne sont point alimentés par leurs causes
extérieures" à "s'accommoder de plus en plus à [eux] jusqu'à ce qu'ils ne [leur]
soient plus contraires" (VP7D).
Mais parfois la différence s'estompe jusqu'à n'être plus qu'une différence
de degré (ainsi la joie passive, qui est bonne et s'accorde avec la raison, "n'est
pas une passion si ce n'est en tant que la puissance d'agir de l'homme n'est pas
accrue à ce point que, eo usque... ut, il se conçoive lui-même et ses propres
actions adéquatement" - IVP59D), voire une simple distinction de raison ("un
affect qui est une passion est une idée confuse. Si donc nous formons de cet
affect une idée claire et distincte, il n'y aura entre cette idée et l'affect lui-
même, en tant qu'il se rapporte à l'âme seule, qu'une distinction de raison, non
nisi ratione distinguetury et ainsi l'affect cessera d'être une passion" - VP3D).
Cette indécision entre passion et affect actif, qui est aussi transition ou
conversion éthique, se laisse saisir sur un exemple privilégié. Lamour, qui a
d'abord (IIIP11S) été défini à partir de la joie-passion (à laquelle il ajoute
l'imagination d'une cause extérieure - IIIP13S), peut se substituer à la haine:
178 J.- M. BEYSSADE

"la haine qui est entièrement vaincue par l'amour se change en amour, in
amorem transit" (ΙΠΡ44). Or, dans le passage de la servitude à la liberté,
Spinoza s'appuie sur cette conversion (d'un affect passif triste, la haine, en un
affect joyeux mais toujours passif, l'amour) comme si elle était identique à la
conversion des affects passifs en affects actifs: "Qui vit sous la conduite de la
raison" s'efforce de compenser les affects tristes par "l'amour ou la générosité"
(IVP46). La démonstration précise même: "l'amour, c'est-à-dire, hoc est, la
générosité."
Nous avons ici, non pas une contradiction (car il y a bien un amour actif
qui est justement générosité), mais une indifférenciation (entre le positif de
l'amour, même passif, et l'activité généreuse). Elle est d'autant plus remar-
quable qu'elle s'opère à l'occasion de la générosité, qui impose presque la
comparaison avec Descartes. Si différente dans les implications métaphysiques
de sa définition, la générosité cartésienne est elle aussi, anthropologiquement,
à double versant. C'est une passion dénombrée comme telle parmi les autres
(Passions de l'âme II, 54, et III, 153-161) et étudiée dans son rapport au corps
(III, 160); mais c'est aussi, comme passion de ce libre arbitre qui est en nous
toujours actif, le "remède contre tous les dérèglements des passions" (II, 145,
III, 156, 161). On retrouve la même indécision théorique: "on peut douter si
la générosité et l'humilité, qui sont des vertus, peuvent aussi être des passions"
(III, 160), mais, puisqu'on "peut exciter en soi la passion, et ensuite acquérir
la vertu de générosité," vertu et passion réussissent ici, d'un verbe rare et
curieux, à "symboliser" (III, 161).
Pour éclairer ces deux questions, historique et systématique, nous allons
brièvement présenter: (1) la doctrine cartésienne de l'émotion intérieure, puis
(2) la relation spinoziste entre raison et affect actif, et enfin (3) la transition
opérée à la fin de YEthique de la passion à l'amour de Dieu comme affect actif
prédominant.

IL La doctrine cartésienne de l'émotion intérieure

La doctrine cartésienne des deux affectivités s'est développée, depuis la

publication des Méditations métaphysiques (où elle ne figure pas explicitement)
jusqu'à son achèvement en 1649 dans les Passions de rame (dont la traduction
latine posthume, en 1651, nous semble avoir fourni son lexique au Court traité
d'abord directement, puis indirectement à YEthique). Dès les Principia
philosophiae de 1644, l'originalité d'une "joie spirituelle" est affirmée: "lorsqu'on
nous dit quelque nouvelle, l'âme juge premièrement si elle est bonne ou
mauvaise; et la trouvant bonne, elle s'en réjouit en elle-même, d'une joie qui
est purement intellectuelle, et tellement indépendante des émotions du corps,
que les Stoïques n'ont pu la dénier à leur sage, bien qu'ils aient voulu qu'il fût
exempt de toute passion" (Pnncipes de la philosophie IV, 190, AT IX-2, 311).
La traduction française des Méditations, en 1647, ajoutera "qui aime, qui hait"
entre l'entendement et la volonté (AT IX-1, 27), comme pensées pures de l'âme
seule, avant la frontière du aussi, "qui imagine aussi et qui sent," sentir auquel
il faut rattacher les sentiments ou passions. Et la longue lettre à Chanut du
 Demotion intérieure/l'affect actif 179

1 février 1647 approfondira, sur l'exemple des deux amours, ce que la

correspondance avec Elizabeth avait établi de l'union substantielle, la fonction
biologique des passions, et la satisfaction qu'elles procurent à l'âme une fois
qu'elle les a "apprivoisées" (à Elisabeth, 1 septembre 1645, AT IV, 287).
Ttois thèmes dominent cette doctrine cartésienne des deux affectivités.
D'abord, la différence modale, dans l'âme, entre les émotions intérieures
et les passions, s'appuie sur la distinction réelle ou de substance entre l'âme et
le corps. Des émotions "semblables" (Passions II, 147), amours haines, joies,
tristesses, désirs, etc., peuvent être excitées ou bien par la mécanique corporelle,
"l'agitation dont les esprits (animaux) meuvent la petite glande qui est au
milieu du cerveau" (Passions II, 51), ou bien par les jugements de l'âme.
Demotion intérieure ("que ces seuls jugements excitent en l'âme" - Passions II,
79), par exemple, l'amour de Dieu, n'est ni une représentation intellectuelle
(l'idée de Dieu) ni un jugement de valeur (juger que Dieu est souverainement
aimable); elle est affective, et c'est un pur mouvement de volonté ("se joindre
entièrement à lui de volonté" - à Chanut, 1 février 1647, AT IV, 609). "Et tous
ces mouvements de la volonté auxquels consistent l'amour, la joie et la tristesse,
et le désir, en tant que ce sont des pensées raisonnables, et non point des
passions, se pourraient trouver en notre âme, encore qu'elle n'eût point de
corps" (AT IV, 602). Pour l'âme cartésienne, réellement distincte du corps, la
connaissance précède l'émotion que cette connaissance excite; et parmi les
émotions intérieures, l'amour et la haine précèdent la joie et la tristesse (AT
IV, 601-602).
Mais la passion est par nature donnée à l'âme en tant qu'elle est substan-
tiellement unie au corps.2 La mécanique corporelle qui la produit est
ordonnée au bien de ce corps (Passions II, 137). Et l'âme qui l'éprouve en elle
est naturellement incitée par la passion "à consentir et contribuer aux actions
qui peuvent servir à conserver le corps ou à le rendre en quelque façon plus
parfait" (ibid.). Sous ce rapport, comme âme-du-composé ou forme substan-
tielle de l'homme (pour Regius, janvier 1642, AT III, 503), je considère ce
corps "comme une partie de moi-même, ou peut-être aussi comme le tout" (AT
VII, 74; IX-1, 59) et tout se passe comme "si nous n'avions en nous que le
corps ou qu'il fût notre meilleure partie" (Passions II, 139). On peut
reconstruire le mouvement passionnel sur le modèle d'une émotion intérieure,
car le plus passionnel des désirs est aussi à sa façon une volonté. "Il n'y a en
nous qu'une seule âme, et cette âme n'a en soi aucune diversité de parties: la
même qui est sensitive est raisonnable, et tous ses appétits sont des volontés."3
Isolons, par exemple, dans la passion d'amour le moment cardio-
vasculaire (je me joins de volonté au sang, comme aliment privilégié - Passions
II, 107), moment à quoi se réduit le premier amour du foetus (pour le sang
maternel - à Chanut, 1 février 1647, AT IV, 605) et qui accompagne ensuite
tous les amours passionnels (Passions II, 107). On proposera la reconstruction
suivante:
(A) Majeure (implicite): je suis mon corps, son bien est le bien suprême
unique.
180 J.- M. BEYSSADE

(Β) Mineure (expérience du foetus): or le sang (frais de la mère) convient

au corps.
C) Conclusion (émotion): donc je me joins de volonté à ce sang (amour).
On voit aussitôt que cette reconstruction a exigé deux prémisses. La majeure
définit l'union substantielle en décrivant la situation initiale de l'enfant,
parfaitement ignorant de la (seconde) vérité métaphysique essentielle pour la
morale.4 La mineure tient lieu ici de connaissance, et cette première
expérience du plaisir correspond à la joie archaïque du foetus {Passions II, 94).
Au regard du corps, la joie et la tristesse précèdent l'amour et la haine
{Passions II, 137), ce qui est l'inverse pour les émotions intérieures. Et elles
"tiennent le lieu de la connaissance": car l'âme n'est immédiatement avertie des
choses qui nuisent au corps que par le sentiment qu'elle a de la douleur, lequel
produit en elle premièrement la passion de la tristesse; et des choses utiles au
corps que par quelque sorte de chatouillement, qui excite en elle de la joie.
La genèse, l'ordre, les définitions même (de la haine pour "ce qui cause cette
douleur," de l'amour pour "ce qu'on croit être la cause" du chatouillement et
de la joie)6 s'inversent ainsi d'une forme d'affectivité â l'autre.
Et pourtant, en cette vie, ces deux affectivités s'accompagnent. Il n'est ni
possible ni souhaitable de faire disparaître les passions, et Descartes s'est
toujours vigoureusement défendu de ce projet qu'il prête aux stoïciens:
Yapatheia, l'insensibilité, n'est pas son objectif. Les passions sont toutes
bonnes, ou presque toutes.8 Elles sont "tellement utiles à cette vie, que notre
âme n'aurait pas sujet de vouloir demeurer jointe à son corps un seul moment,
si elle ne les pouvait ressentir" (AT IV, 538). Et, du point de vue moral, les
plus grandes âmes (magnanimité ou générosité, deux noms pour une même
chose - Passions II, 54) "ont des raisonnements si forts et si puissants que, bien
qu'elles aient aussi des passions, et même souvent de plus violentes que celles
du commun, leur raison demeure néanmoins toujours la maîtresse, et fait que
les afflictions même leur servent, et contribuent à la parfaite félicité dont elles
jouissent dès cette vie" (à Elisabeth, 18 mai 1645, AT IV, 202). Le problème
n'est donc pas de substituer une forme d'affectivité à l'autre, mais de tirer au
clair et de régler au mieux leur coexistence.
Le second thème concerne la solidarité naturelle entre les émotions
intérieures et les passions "qui leur sont semblables" (même nom, même
essence) et "dont elles diffèrent" pourtant (par leur causalité notamment -
Passions II, 147). "Pour l'ordinaire, les deux amours se trouvent ensemble" (à
Chanut, 1 février 1647, AT IV, 603). Le mouvement s'opère dans les deux
sens. D'une part, quand l'âme forme en elle-même une émotion intérieure, par
exemple, d'amour, "cet amour raisonnable est ordinairement accompagné de
l'autre, qu'on peut nommer sensuelle et sensitive" (AT IV, 602): même l'amour
de Dieu, intellectuel, peut "passer par l'imagination pour venir de l'entendement
dans les sens," se redoublant ainsi ou se transformant en "la plus ravissante et
la plus utile passion; et même... peut-être la plus forte" (AT IV, 607, 608).
Notre libre arbitre, aussi inimaginable merveille à sa façon que l'infinité divine,9
peut devenir dans la générosité objet d'une passion: la connaissance avec
l'émotion qu'elle suscite se redouble en sentiment ("ceux qui ont cette
 Eémotion intérieure/l'affect actif 181

connaissance et ce sentiment d'eux-mêmes" - Passions III, 154). Réciproqu-

ement, quand l'âme unie au corps éprouve quelque passion, cela "la dispose à
cette autre pensée plus claire" (AT IV, 603) en quoi consiste l'émotion
intérieure correspondante. Non seulement l'analyse d'une passion y décèle
(entre autres) l'équivalent d'une émotion intérieure; mais surtout, comme l'âme
est une et sans parties, elle tend à éprouver au regard d'elle-même ce qu'elle
éprouve d'abord comme bon ou mauvais au regard du corps, valeur suprême
du composé.
C'est bien pour cela que, même lorsque la connaissance métaphysique a
détruit la fausse majeure (A) pour établir la majeure explicite (non-Α): "le
corps n'est pas notre meilleure partie, il n'est que la moindre" {Passions II,
139), il reste que les passions positives (amour, joie, désir "accompagné d'amour
et ensuite d'espérance et de joie") sont, "considérées précisément en elles-
mêmes," "au regard de l'âme," comme "si nous n'avions point de corps,"
"incomparablement meilleures"10 que les passions négatives (haine, tristesse,
désir "accompagné de haine, de crainte et de tristesse" - Passions II, 87). "Et
même souvent une fausse joie vaut mieux qu'une tristesse dont la cause est
vraie."11 Ce n'est pas seulement le fait de la passion qui est inéliminable, c'est
l'inégalité des passions au regard de l'âme.
"Bien que ces émotions de l'âme soient souvent jointes avec les passions
qui leur sont semblables, elles peuvent souvent aussi se rencontrer avec
d'autres, et même naître de celles qui leur sont contraires" {Passions II, 147):
la possibilité de briser cette solidarité est le troisième thème cartésien. La
dualité des substances explique suffisamment la coexistence des émotions
opposées, illustrée de façon un peu curieuse par l'exemple du veuf joyeux.12
Plus importante pour la morale est la capacité de l'âme à faire servir toutes les
passions, même tristes, "à augmenter sa joie" {Passions II, 148): "la sagesse est
principalement utile en ce point, qu'elle enseigne à s'en rendre tellement maître
et à les ménager avec tant d'adresse, que les maux qu'elles causent sont fort
supportables, et même qu'on tire de la joie de tous" {Passions III, 212). Deux
analyses aboutissent à ce résultat, sans que Descartes se soucie de les unifier:
(a) L'amour de Dieu, à partir de la première vérité métaphysique (la toute
puissance d'un Dieu aux perfections infinies): "lorsque nous élevons notre esprit
à le considérer tel qu'il est, nous nous trouvons naturellement si enclins à
l'aimer, que nous tirons même de la joie de nos afflictions, en pensant que sa
volonté s'exécute en ce que nous les recevons" (à Elisabeth, 15 septembre 1645,
AT IV, 291-292). Cette méditation remplit l'âme "d'une joie si extrême" et elle
se joint si "entièrement" à Dieu de volonté (la joie précéderait-elle l'amour?)
qu'elle "ne désire plus rien au monde, sinon que la volonté de Dieu soit faite"
(à Chanut, 1 février 1647, AT IV, 609). Même lorsqu'on en attend la mort ou
quelque autre mal, si par impossible on pouvait changer ce décret divin, on
n'en aurait pas la volonté. Cet amour pour un Dieu juste va au-delà de la
résignation à la fatalité, mais il n'annule pas l'inégalité des passions: "s'il ne
refuse point les maux ou les afflictions, parce qu'elles lui viennent de la
Providence divine, il refuse encore moins les biens ou les plaisirs licites dont
il peut jouir en cette vie, parce qu'ils en viennent aussi" {ibid.).
182 J.- M. BEYSSADE

(b) Le contentement intérieur, rejoignant la considération du libre arbitre

et la générosité: "elle se plait à sentir émouvoir en soi des passions, de quelle
nature qu'elles soient, pourvu qu'elle en demeure maîtresse" (à Elisabeth, 6
octobre 1645, AT IV, 309). Parce que l'âme peut prendre ses distances d'avec
le corps et l'union substantielle, elle peut faire l'épreuve de sa force dans la
résistance aux passions. Tbut comme, au niveau du corps, le chatouillement
(excitation de fibres nerveuses qui ne sont pas brisées) produit d'abord la
passion de joie par l'épreuve de la force physique, de cette perfection du corps
qui fait le bien du composé,13 de même l'âme forte ou généreuse éprouve sa
perfection à être émue (à la surface) mais non troublée (en son intérieur) par
des passions qui, même tristes, cessent d'être amères. Elle en devient pour
ainsi dire spectatrice. "Nous avons du plaisir de les sentir exciter en nous, et
ce plaisir est une joie intellectuelle qui peut aussi bien naître de la tristesse que
toutes les autres passions."14 L'émotion est ici à la fois sensible et raison-
nable, indissociablement: sentir et se sentir, "se sentir émouvoir à toutes sortes
de passions, même à la tristesse et à la haine" (Passions II, 94), et se sentir
libre, "se sentir en soi-même une ferme et constante résolution de bien user de
son libre arbitre" (Passions III, 153).
Opposées dans leur origine, les deux affectivités cartésiennes ont fini par
se rejoindre et s'articuler dans la structure reflexive d'une conscience, sans que
les figures de cette réunification soient vraiment systématisées.

Ill Affect actif et raison

La doctrine des affects actifs rejette les bases métaphysiques du cartésianisme

(dualité des substances entre l'âme et le corps, libre arbitre, union sub-
stantielle). Elle repose sur la fonction active de la raison dans les notions
communes. Peut-elle éviter de réduire la différence entre les deux affectivités
à une simple distinction logique, ou de raison?
Dans la chose singulière qui pense (mens, âme ou esprit), dans ses
pensées (cogitationes), Spinoza distingue aussi soigneusement que Descartes
deux modalités: cognitive ou représentative, l'idée au sens strict; et affective,
Yaffectus ayant ici pour forme propre, comme essence et comme définition, une
variation en plus ou en moins de la puissance d'agir (E IIID3). Si l'affect
implique toujours une idée, la réciproque n'est pas vraie (IIA3): l'affect ne se
réduit pas à l'idée de son objet et si, logiquement, l'idée comme représentation
d'objet est première, l'expérience effective fournit toujours ensemble de façon
indivise une affection (l'idée) et son rapport à la puissance d'agir (dont la
variation peut à la limite s'annuler).
Les affects assurément "naissent" (E VP4S) et "dépendent" (IIIP3) des
idées, mais il ne faut pas isoler l'idée pour chercher comment l'affect s'y
ajouterait ensuite: car l'affection est moins une cause efficiente ou génétique
réelle qu'un moment abstraitement découpé dans l'affect, nommé avant elle dès
la mise en place de l'imagination (IIP 17). On peut appeler l'affect lui-même
dans ce qu'il a de spécifique une idée, confuse quand l'affect est une passion,
claire et distincte s'il est une action ou vertu. Mais c'est en un autre sens,
 Lémotion intérieure/l'affect actif 183

large, du mot idée, "L'idée qui constitue la forme d'un affect affirme du corps
quelque chose qui enveloppe effectivement plus ou moins de réalité qu'aupara-
vant" (E IIIGenDefAffExp, G H/204/16-17). Plus ou moins de force d'exister,
de puissance de penser et comprendre pour l'âme, d'aptitudes à agir, pâtir et
réagir pour le corps.
Les affects qui sont des passions relèvent de l'imagination en un triple
sens. Les idées auxquelles l'affect se rapporte sont inadéquates (par exemple,
opinion sur ce qu'on croit être la cause d'un amour passionné). L'affect en sa
forme constitutive est suscité de dehors par une cause extérieure: elle interfère
avec ma propre essence, avec la force unitaire de mon conatus, pour déterminer
un résultat mixte et confus, comme une conclusion où la part des deux facteurs
interne et externe, des deux prémisses, ne se distingue pas (IIP28D). Enfin
l'ordre de ces idées et de ces affects n'est pas l'ordre de l'entendement mais
l'ordre des affections du corps, l'ordre commun de la nature qui est, rapporté
à chaque mode fini, l'ordre des rencontres fortuites, du hasard et de la fortune
(IIP29S).
Quand on accède à la Raison, la même structure se répète même si tous
les termes changent. Il ne faut pas réduire la raison spinoziste à sa fonction
cognitive, à des idées ou à des jugements, en face d'une affectivité toute
passionnelle. On ne comprendrait plus "ce que peut la raison elle-même sur
les affects" (E VPref, 11/277/10): seule une force affective peut venir à bout d'un
affect (IVP7) et si la raison du sage parvient à gouverner ses pulsions passion-
nelles, c'est que dès le début, chez les hommes "plus émus (commoveantur) par
l'opinion que par la raison vraie," elle "excite des émotions, commotiones, dans
l'âme."15 Lordre de YEthique veut que la raison soit étudiée comme "genre de
connaissance" avant d'être explorée dans sa force affective. C'est pourquoi la
théorie des notions communes (qui montre comment on forme des idées
adéquates et comment on en déduit des conséquences nécessaires au contact
des rencontres imaginatives, jusqu'à ce que l'idée de Dieu, qui est comme la
plus haute et la plus universelle des notions communes, ouvre la voie à la
procédure inverse, à la science intuitive ou troisième genre de connaissance)
doit servir de modèle pour la théorie des affects actifs (où la raison comme
principe éthique capte dans le dynamisme passionnel la force active du conatus,
pour alimenter finalement l'amour de Dieu, comme "le plus constant de tous
les affects" (VP20S), qui ouvre la voie à une éthique du troisième genre). La
raison affirme donc, elle aussi, une triple spécificité. Un ensemble d'idées
claires et distinctes, qui nous représente "dans leur vérité les choses telles
qu'elles sont en elles-mêmes" (IIP44D - par exemple l'enchaînement nécessaire
des causes et des effets). Un ensemble d'affects tous actifs et positifs, "qui
tirent leur origine de la raison ou sont excités par elle" (VP7- des joies, des
amours, des désirs sans excès qui sont "excités ou engendrés par des idées
adéquates" - VP4S). Enfin un ordre entre ces idées (adéquates) et ces affects
(actifs) qui est, sinon l'ordre de l'entendement, ordo intellectus, du moins un
ordre valable pour l'entendement, ordo ad intellectum (VP10).
Une fois qu'on a restitué à la sphère isolée ou abstraite des connaissances
sa dimension affective, on aboutit à une dualité. L'âme a deux parties et deux
184 J.- M. BEYSSADE

parties seulement (même si, d'une part, il y a trois genres de connaissance et

si, d'autre part, le conatus, fondement des affects, est unique): l'entendement et
l'imagination (VP40C). ^imagination avec ses idées inadéquates mais aussi ses
passions. Lentendement avec les idées adéquates (où se regroupent second et
troisième genres de connaissance) et ses affects (puisque le conatus se distingue
selon cette division et devient "effort et désir de l'âme pour persévérer dans son
être en tant qu'elle a des idées claires et distinctes" - IIIP9). On pressent
comment les affects actifs pourront entretenir avec les passions le même
rapport que les notions communes avec les images des choses. Et l'on voit
pourquoi ils sont dits "se rapporter aussi à nous en tant que nous comprenons,
autrement dit en tant que nous sommes actifs" (IIIP58D). En éliminant la
dualité des substances, en ramenant la dualité affective à l'opposition entre
des niveaux d'activité, Spinoza impose divers infléchissements à la doctrine
cartésienne des émotions intérieures, dont nous signalerons deux.
(1) Il étend aux affects actifs ce que Descartes ne soutenait que des
passions, et en tant qu'on les rapportait au bien du corps: que la joie et la
tristesse précèdent l'amour et la haine, et qu'elles tiennent lieu de connaissance
(du bien et du mal). F. Alquié avait remarqué que cette thèse, qui "annonce
l'analyse Spinoziste,"16 n'épuise pas la dérivation cartésienne. Les jugements
fermes et déterminés de l'entendement, qui excitaient d'abord dans l'âme seule
les émotions intérieures d'amour et de haine, sont réduits par Spinoza à des
moments réflexifs seconds. Si la joie et la tristesse passionnelles sont, au sens
large, des idées confuses, la connaissance (inadéquate) du bien et du mal sera
seulement l'idée de l'idée. Le jugement de valeur ("ceci est bon ou utile") n'a
qu'une distinction de raison avec le mouvement affectif qu'il redouble ("nous
nous efforçons, voulons, appétons, désirons" - IIIP9S): ce qui revient identique-
ment à dire que "la fin n'est que l'appétit" (IVPref, 11/207, D7), ou que "la
connaissance du bon et du mauvais n'est que l'affect de la joie ou de la
tristesse en tant que nous en avons conscience." (IVP8) Cette idée ne se
distingue pas en réalité de l'affect lui-même, sinon par le seul concept, rêvera
non distinguitur, nisi solo conceptu (IVP8D). Thèse étendue maintenant à "la
connaissance vraie du bon et du mauvais" (IVP14), car "la fin ultime d'un
homme qui est dirigé par la raison" se confond avec "le désir suprême par
lequel il s'applique à gouverner tous les autres [désirs]" (IVApp§4). Dans la
joie active, l'appétit s'explicite lui-même clairement et distinctement, et il se
dédouble en désir conscient et en conscience vraie du bien suprême.
(2) Lame cartésienne, réalité substantielle, peut éprouver, à son égard et
pour son compte, toutes les émotions, positives et négatives: fondées sur des
jugements vrais, il y a des tristesses et des haines intellectuelles, au même titre
que des joies et des amours (à Chanut, 1 février 1647, AT IV, 601-602). Rien
de tel chez Spinoza. Lêtre ici se confond avec l'agir, et la forme supérieure
de l'affectivité se réduit au stade accompli de l'activité, lorsque l'individu s'élève
à la causalité adéquate ou formelle. Spinoza part du corps et des affects passifs
pour trouver le sens global de l'affect: certains seulement, qui sont déjà positifs
et préparent un ressaisissement de sa propre activité, peuvent avoir un
homologue actif. Pour Descartes les deux affectivités se répondent terme à
 Demotion intérieure/l'affect actif 185

terme: à chaque fois, sous le même nom, on trouve une émotion intérieure et
un sentiment ou passion. Pour Spinoza, seuls la joie, l'amour, le désir se
prêtent à ce dédoublement: les autres, tristesse, haine, etc., s'y refusent et
restent inéluctablement enfermés dans la sphère de l'imagination (IIIP59D).
Concluons sur ce premier point que, tout en rejetant la majeure
cartésienne (non A): "le corps n'est pas notre meilleure partie, il n'en est que
la moindre," en revenant à une majeure explicite (A): "l'âme et le corps ne sont
qu'un seul et même individu qui est conçu tantôt sous l'attribut de la pensée,
tantôt sous celui de l'étendue" (IIP21S), Spinoza n'a pas rejeté l'opposition
cartésienne des deux affectivités, qui semblait pourtant reposer sur cette base.
Il a dû l'infléchir sur plusieurs points, mais il a conservé la dualité. En un sens
il l'a même accentuée: car il accepte, ce que Descartes refuse expressément, de
parler de lutte, de combats entre les affects, et de reconduire ces combats à une
diversité ou dualité de parties en l'âme.1

IV L'amour de Dieu et la tristesse

Je n'essaierai pas, dans le dernier moment de cette communication, d'aborder

dans son ensemble le passage spinoziste de la passion à l'action. Je voudrais
seulement contribuer à l'éclairer sur l'exemple particulier de l'amour de Dieu,
tel qu'il entre en rapport (dans la première moitié de la cinquième partie) avec
les affects passifs, et, plus particulièrement, avec les passions de tristesse. Car
il me semble que, sur ce point précis, Spinoza a retrouvé et systématisé la
difficulté cartésienne: une fois soigneusement dissociées les deux affectivités,
comment penser leur réunification requise par l'éthique en certains passages
décisifs, quand la passion doit "symboliser" avec la vertu?
Uamour de Dieu, qui va se révéler ici le plus constant des "affects tirant
leur origine de la Raison ou excités par elle" [VP7] et "tenir dans l'âme la plus
grande place" (VP16, cf. VP20S) donne sa consistance définitive, parce qu'il ne
peut pas être détruit (VP20S), au système hiérarchisé que la raison ébauche
avant son exploitation, en "ordonnant et enchaînant les affections du corps
suivant un ordre valable pour l'entendement" (VP10). L'amour de Dieu
prolonge directement le rôle de la réflexion: il est la plus haute forme de ce
remède que constitue la connaissance des affects passifs, "le plus excellent qui
soit en notre pouvoir" (VP4S, 11/283-284). Car former d'une passion un
concept clair et distinct, ce n'est pas seulement lui surajouter une idée adéquate
et les affects actifs qui s'y rapportent, joie de comprendre, désirs sans excès, etc.
"Elle cesse d'être une passion." (VP3) Son double réflexif l'attire en quelque
sorte avec lui dans sa sphère d'activité. Lamour de Dieu généralise cette
procédure, puisqu'il est cause universelle et universellement connue de façon
adéquate et parfaite. En rattachant toutes choses à Dieu comme à leur cause,
on fait entrer dans la sphère de l'activité rationnelle, sans exception possible,
toutes les passions. Elles sont comme reprises dans l'amour de Dieu, qu'elles
contribuent à alimenter. La tristesse elle-même "cesse d'être une passion, c'est-
à-dire cesse d'être une tristesse; et ainsi, dans la mesure où nous connaissons
que Dieu est cause de la tristesse, nous sommes joyeux." (VP18S) Nous
186 J.- M. BEYSSADE

retrouvons le point (indécidable?) où un affect triste est à la fois là, comme

une tristesse et donc comme une passion, mais rattaché aussi à l'activité
cognitive et affective, à la pensée adéquate et à l'amour actif de la causalité
divine, et n'est donc plus une passion.
Conduite à fonctionner entre deux affectivités opposées, la distinction de
raison proclamée dès le début et toujours maintenue entre idée de l'idée
débouche sur un paradoxe logique. Si Von exclut tout changement réel, la
coexistence est impensable entre un affect passionnel (une idée confuse) et une
idée de l'idée claire et distincte (une réflexion rationnelle, cognitive ou affective,
sur cette passion). La majeure explicite (A): "l'idée de l'idée n'est rien d'autre
que la forme de l'idée" (IIP21S), la distinction n'est que de raison (VP3),
impose le choix entre deux consecutions opposées. Ou bien (B), mineure:
Tidée est inadéquate," c'est une opinion, une passion, une imagination. Et
alors (C), conclusion: "l'idée de l'idée est inadéquate elle aussi," telle la
conscience de ses sensations (IIP28), de soi-même (IIP29), telle la connaissance
du mal et corrélativement du bien (IVP64, P68), telle enfin la haine qu'évoque
l'objecteur pour un Dieu considéré comme cause de tristesse (VP18S). Ou bien
(non C) est donné comme mineure: "l'idée de l'idée est claire et distincte," nous
avons réflexivement une certitude rationnelle,18 un affect actif. Et alors (non
B) suit nécessairement comme conclusion: "l'idée n'est pas inadéquate," notre
point de départ n'est pas une imagination ou une passion, l'affect repris dans
un amour actif n'est pas une tristesse. Mais ici le changement est réel. Il y a
un transit de l'affect passif à l'amour de Dieu qui modifie, comme tous les
affects actifs rationnels nés de notions communes, son point d'application. Il
desserre la contrainte passionnelle, l'étroitesse délirante (VP44S), du champ
cognitif et sa prégnance affective. Pour parler comme Descartes, il "apprivoise"
(AT IV, 287) la passion. Pour parler comme Spinoza il la contraint à
"s'accommoder" (VP70) de plus en plus à lui, jusqu'à ce qu'elle ne lui soit plus
contraire. Linsensé cesse d'être dès qu'il cesse de pâtir (VP42S), mais chez
l'homme libre une passion triste, maîtrisée grâce au détour réflexif, ne cesse pas
d'être, elle cesse d'être (seulement) une passion (VP3 et 18S).
Pour que la transformation effective échappe au paradoxe logique, il faut
dégager une continuité entre imagination et entendement: entre idées générales,
notions communes et idée de Dieu; entre rencontres passionnelles, joies
rationnelles, et amour de Dieu. Si l'amour de Dieu doit finir par prédominer,
c'est en tant que toutes les idées de l'imagination alimentent la connaissance
adéquate de Dieu. Le Dieu de cet amour, qui n'est pas encore l'amour
intellectuel du troisième genre, est la plus universelle des notions communes,
et il est présenté comme tel: la force de l'affect renvoie "au grand nombre de
causes par lesquelles les affections se rapportant aux propriétés communes des
choses ou à Dieu sont alimentées" (VP20S). Mais penser à Dieu n'est pas
l'aimer. Comment sans illusion être activement joyeux en pensant le rapport
de Dieu à nos tristesses? Sans illusion des deux côtés: car le mal de la tristesse
n'est pas et n'était pas illusion, si une mauvaise rencontre diminue ma
puissance; et la joie qui nait de la rattacher à Dieu n'est pas et ne sera pas
mensongère. Pour résoudre le problème, il faut qu'il y ait un élément de joie
 L'émotion intérieure/l'affect actif 187

à produire ou à extraire de la tristesse, comme il y a une notion commune à

extraire ou à former à partir de l'imagination, là où elle s'égare en idées
générales et abstraites. On pourrait rappeler qu'aucune chose ne nous
rencontre, fût-ce pour nous diminuer, sans avoir quelque chose de commun
avec nous (IVP29), et que jamais ce quelque chose n'est un terrain ou un
théâtre inerte, mais toujours une affirmation commune, un bien et une joie.
Sans renvoyer à ces trois propositions (IVPP29-31), Spinoza ressaisit avec Dieu,
facteur universel de convenance, le principe d'une joie active opérant jusque
dans les mauvaises rencontres.
Mais le transit n'est pas une conversion magique, un évanouissement de
la tristesse. La dichotomie affective n'est pas oubliée, au moment où
l'affirmation d'une simple distinction de raison semble la gommer et permet en
fait de reculer des frontières. Le développement des idées adéquates et des
affects actifs ne peut évidemment créer un autre individu à côté du premier ou
à sa place: il déplace des équilibres. Il ne fait pas disparaître les passions:
"cette âme est active au plus haut point dont les idées adéquates constituent
la plus grande partie, de façon, que, tout en n'ayant pas moins d'idées in-
adéquates que la première, elle ait sa marque distinctive plutôt dans" les idées
adéquates. 9 autant d'imaginations et de passions - Descartes ajouterait: et
même souvent de plus violentes (à Elisabeth, 18 mai 1645, AT IV, 287). A
l'intérieur de l'imagination, un autre déplacement s'opère: même si les passions
tristes subsistent, celui qui fait travailler ensemble amour et générosité réduit
la haine, etc., à "occuper une très petite partie de l'imagination" (VP10S,
11/288/11).
Reste la dernière étape: il ne suffit pas de former des pensées vraies, des
affects actifs, de mobiliser les affects passifs de joie autour de la tristesse, affect
primitif qui resterait inentamée dans sa pure factivité. Il faut la mettre à
contribution pour alimenter les joies actives. Mais une fois posé avec la
distinction de raison le principe de sa métamorphose, le caractère partiel et
approché de cette conversion est établi (dès le corollaire - VP3C), et sans cesse
rappelé. Dans le second genre de connaissance, une notion commune ne
rejoint jamais la singularité d'une essence (IIP37), et pas davantage la
singularité d'un affect triste né d'une rencontre fortuite. Dieu, le Dieu du
second genre, n'y réussit pas davantage: il n'explique rien, sinon que tout est
explicable. On ne connaît donc jamais un affect en particulier, sinon sous un
certain aspect, et de mieux en mieux peut-être. Par là jamais une tristesse ne
sera absolument ôtés. "Chacun a le pouvoir de se connaître clairement et
distinctement, lui-même et ses affects, sinon absolument, du moins en partie, et
de faire en conséquence qu'il ait moins à en pâtir" (VP4S). "Si en effet les
affects, en tant qu'ils sont des passions, ne sont pas par là absolument ôtés, il
arrive du moins qu'elles constituent la moindre partie de l'âme" (VP20S,
II/294/9-11). On entend ainsi, à côté du langage des parties, un langage plus
unitaire pour dire le même changement. La passion triste subsiste, mais, si l'on
ose dire, moins triste et moins passive. L'âme en pâtit moins et elle n'en est
pas tant afffectée.
188 J.- M. BEYSSADH

Ainsi, sans paradoxe logique, l'amour de Dieu assure une rencontre entre
les opposés (passion triste et affect actif) dès le second genre de connaissance
et, si l'on peut dire, d'affectivité. Car on ne parle pas ici d'éternité, d'amour
intellectuel ni de science intuitive: tout cela viendra ensuite et n'est pas requis
pour ce premier niveau de la moralité et de la religion. Eamour (raisonnable
ou rationnel) de Dieu, comme idée de l'idée,20 relève assurément de l'âme
"considérée en elle-même" et, en ce sens, "de l'âme seule" (VP20S, II/293/3-5):
mais cette âme n'est que l'idée du corps existante en acte, prise dans la durée,
en relation avec le corps et son existence. C'est donc bien sous le règne de la
majeure: "l'âme et le corps sont une seule et même chose" que l'amour de Dieu
réussit à relier à l'activité la passivité même de la tristesse, jusqu'aux frontières
de la mort. "En tant qu'il se rapporte au corps, cet affect ne peut être détruit
qu'avec le corps lui-même" (VP20S, II/293/1-2). Extraordinaire fortitudo à
laquelle on donnerait volontiers pour emblème Judas dit le Fidèle, qui s'est mis
à chanter au milieu des flammes tandis qu'on le croyait mort, et est mort en
chantant l'hymne: "A toi, mon Dieu, j'offre mon âme" (lettre 76, à Burgh,
IV/322).

V Conclusions

Enonçons brièvement quelques conclusions sur les problèmes historiques et

systématiques que soulève la théorie de l'affcct actif.
1. Descartes, comme Spinoza, admet une dichotomie dans l'affectivité.
Il faut ici en appeler de E Alquié à F. Alquié lui-même. Car dans son
Rationalisme de Spinoza, soucieux d'opposer les deux auteurs, il a méconnu les
origines cartésiennes de l'affect actif, en prétendant que "selon Descartes tous
les sentiments sont des passions."21 Or, dans les notes de son Descartes,
Oeuvres philosophiques, il avait (en gardant le même mot, malheureux à notre
avis, de sentiment) fortement souligné que tout sentiment n'est pas une passion,
que l'affectivité cartésienne se divise en deux espèces, "des sentiments
intellectuels qui sont transparents à notre pensée: la réflexion nous les fait
connaître de telle sorte que rien d'obscur ne demeure en eux" et "des senti-
ments-passions, dont la cause est une action du corps" (III, 710, n. 2).
2. Mais surtout F. Alquié avait su saisir la filiation des deux doctrines sur
ce point crucial du transit: "toute passion peut donc donner naissance à la joie,
à une joie appartenant à l'esprit seul. Seulement ébauchée par Descartes, cette
idée sera reprise et développée par Spinoza" (III, 1064, n. 1). La différence
effective, réelle ou modale et non logique ou de point de vue, entre les deux
affectivités n'empêche pas leur rencontre, leur convenance jusqu'au point
(paradoxal!) où une joie active et reflexive se nourrit des tristesses passives.
3. Si Descartes appuie sur la distinction réelle des substances (âme,
corps) la spécificité des émotions intérieures, Spinoza, qui part de l'unité de
substance et pense d'abord les affects de l'âme sur le modèle des événements
corporels, ne sacrifie en rien l'originalité de l'affcct actif. Distinction de raison,
différence de degré finissent par se formuler dans le langage des parties de
l'âme et de leur affrontement. Ce mouvement va si loin que, dans la seconde
 Demotion intérieure/l'affect actif 189

moitié de YEthique V, on semble presque conclure, à l'inverse de la déduction

cartésienne, de la distinction des affectivités à l'équivalent d'une distinction
réelle ou de substance: elle oppose alors "ce qui concerne cette vie présente"
(VP20S) et "l'éternité de l'âme" - même si, évidemment, les exigences du
parallélisme interdisent d'écarter le corps, en son essence et l'idée éternelle qui
en est donnée en Dieu (VPP22, 29, et 39).
4. Pour en rester à "cette vie présente," l'amour de Dieu permet d'unifier
ce qui restait, chez Descartes, deux incarnations différentes de l'émotion
intérieure active et joyeuse dans l'affectivité passionnelle. Le rapport cartésien
est de volonté (divine) à volonté (humaine): ou contentement de soi dans la
générosité (par quoi ma volonté tend à s'assurer dans la suffisance de son libre
arbitre, en rejetant Dieu vers l'extérieur et la fatalité), ou consentement à la
volonté divine (par quoi ma volonté tend à s'abandonner à une autre). Spinoza
rejette le rapport de volonté à volonté, et substitue dans l'amour le contente-
ment au consentement. Dans la mise en relation de Dieu et des tristesses, le
cartésien consent: "que la volonté de Dieu soit faite" (à Chanut, 1 février 1647,
AT IV, 609); le spinoziste est content de comprendre que sa causalité est
exercée (VPP31 et 32).
5. Il faut attendre le troisième genre pour que soit tirée au clair l'identité
des deux causalités ("avec l'accompagnement comme cause de l'idée de soi-
même et conséquemment aussi de l'idée de Dieu" - VP32D), et que la
réciprocité se substitue à l'unilatéralité:22 au lieu que toutes les singularités
(passionnelles) aillent alimenter, comme en s'y noyant, l'amour d'un Dieu sans
affect, notion commune et la plus commune, le Dieu du troisième genre, "en
tant qu'il s'aime lui-même, aime les hommes" (VP36C). Alors seulement nous
procédons de Dieu vers "l'essence d'une même chose quelconque singulière"
(IIP37 et VP36S), et "notre âme n'est pas affectée de la même manière"
(VP36S). Mais ceci est sans doute obscur, peut-être douteux, et de toute façon,
c'est une autre histoire.

1. F. Alquié, Le rationalisme de Spinoza, Paris: PUF, 1981, ch. xvii, §2, pp. 282-283 et n.
3. Rappelons que contrairement à Appuhn, Alquié traduit par sentiments le terme
û'affectus.
2. A Elisabeth, 21 mai 1643, in Alquié, Oeuvres philosophiques de Descartes, III, 19, et
notes; Passions II, 52 (Alquié, Oeuvres, III, 998 et note); Entretien avec Burman, AT V,
163.
3. Passions I, 47. Cf. Alquié, Oeuxres III, 990, note 1, pour la position du problême.
4. "La seconde chose, qu'il faut connaître, est la nature de notre âme, en tant qu'elle
subsiste sans le corps, et est beaucoup plus noble que lui, et capable de jouir d'une infinité
de contentements qui ne se trouvent point en cette vie." A Elisabeth, 15 septembre 1645,
AT IV, 292. Cf. aussi Principes de la philosophie I, 71, Entretien avec Burman, AT V, 150.
5. Ibid. Cf. Alquié, Oeuvres III, 1052 et note 2.
6. Passions II, 137. Cf. Alquié, Oeuvres III, 1053, note 1.
7. A Elisabeth, 18 mai 1645, AT IV, 201-202. Cf. Alquié, Oeuvres III, 565, et note 2.
8. Cf. Passions III, 211; Alquié, Oeuvres, III, 1100, note 1; et à Chanut, 1 novembre
1646, AT IV, 538.
9. Cogitationes privatae AT X, 218, in Olympiques, Alquié, Oeuvres I, 63.
190 J.- M. BEYSSADE

10. Ibid. Cf. Passions 141, 143.

11. Passions II, 142. Cf. Alquié, Oeuvres III, 1058 et note 1.
12. Ibid. Nous empruntons cette expression pittoresque à D. Kambouchner.
13. Passions II, 147. Cf. Alquié, Oeuvres III, 1025 et note 1, A. Matheron, Dialectiques
6(1974): 79-88 (repris in Anthropologie et politique au xvii siècle, Vrin, 1986.
14. Passions II, 147. Cf. Alquié, Oeuvres III, 1064 et note 1.
15. IVP17S, 11/221/13-16. A la différence de Curley, nous croyons qu'il faut garder le
même mot pour commoveantur (1. 14) et commotiones (l. 15), qui ne désigne pas le
trouble, mais la motion émotive, cf. 279/7.
16. Descartes, Oeuvres philosophiques, éd. par E Alquié, Paris: Garnier, III, 1053, η. 1,
1054, η. 3.
17. On opposera Passions à Ε VP20S et VP40C.
18. IIP43, dont la démonstration renvoie à IIP20 et le scolie à IIP21S.
19. VP20S, G 11/293/31-35. Les idées qui relèvent de la vertu humaine sont les idées
adéquates, celles qui sont inadéquates montrent sa faiblesse, et le sage se diagnostique,
dignoscatur, à la prépondérance des premières.
20. Voir VP14 et Ρ15, et PP3-4 et P18S pour justifier une formule qui n'est pas attestée
dnas le texte.
21. Voir Alquié, Le rationalisme, p. 283 avec notes et p. 304.
22. VP17C versus VP36 et P36C.
 COMMENTS ON J.-M. BEYSSADE,
W
DE L'ÉMOTION INTÉRIEURE CHEZ DESCARTES
À L'AFFECT ACTIF SPINOZISTE"

MARGARET D. WILSON
Princeton University

It would be impossible to comment adequately on all the illuminating, deep,

and provocative points in Professor Beyssade's extremely rich and original
paper. Further, there's nothing in the paper that I'm inclined to dispute
vigorously. Therefore I will simply attempt to express a few thoughts, first
about Descartes's theory and then about Spinoza's, that relate more or less
directly to Beyssade's exposition. My purpose will be to suggest the possibility
of some qualifications of his viewpoint.

I. Descartes.

I basically accept Beyssade's account of Descartes's theory of the "interior

emotions." I think it's worth noting, though, that in certain respects the concept
is far from sharply delineated by Descartes.1 It is true that the fact that these
emotions are said to be caused by the soul, rather than the body, seems to
provide a perfectly definite mark or criterion. But when one seeks to grasp its
significance in application, the sense of definiteness tends to dissolve. Take
Descartes's featured example of an interior emotion: the widower's secret relief
or joy at the death of his wife. (Passions II, 147) One can easily understand
how this might be the man's more persistent, as well as his more secret
response: a response less tied than his grief to transient external physical
circumstances, such as the funeral ceremony. But what sustains the idea that
this emotional response - as opposed, for instance, to his limited compassion
and pity - is caused "only by the soul itseir? Are we supposed to believe that
his compassion is tied to the senses and imagination, while his relief is strictly
an intellectual matter (now that she's gone he will be able to devote himself
more fully to metaphysics and theology)? I suppose this is possible, but the
moral I'm more inclined to draw from Descartes's example is that he himself
had a rather weak grasp on the notion of an interior emotion - being able
easily to conflate it with that of a less transient or less public state that ought
nevertheless still to qualify as a passion, as depending partly on physical causes.
One of the few other theoretical clarifications Descartes provides of the
distinction between passions and internal emotions has to do with the notion
of representation. Thus he explains that in the passion of joy impressions in the
brain represent a good to the soul as its own; while in the corresponding
interior emotion - "purely intellectual joy" - the soul arouses the state in itself
"whenever it enjoys a good which its understanding represents to it as its own."
(Passions II, 91; emphasis added) This is really quite an obscure point of
contrast, however. For one thing, while we know it's Descartes's view that the
brain can in some sense "represent" corporeal things, and only corporeal things,
192 MARGARET D. WILSON

how on earth could the brain represent even a corporeal thing "as the soul's
own"?
The only further comment I want to make about the Cartesian theory has
to do with Professor Beyssade's suggestion (p. 180) that the passions of love
and hate are supposed to contrast with the corresponding interior emotions, in
that joy and sadness precede the passional forms of love and hate, "taking the
place of knowledge" (of good and evil). The reverse, he suggests, is true of
love and hate as interior emotions: here joy and sadness follow on love and
hate (which are presumed to "be founded on true judgments" (p. 184). It
would be nice if this tidy contrast did emerge from the text; but as far as I can
see it really does not. It seems to me that in Passions II, 139 Descartes allows
for cases where joy and sadness precede the passions of love and hate, but
treats as primary the situation where the passions of love and hate, "insofar as
they relate to the soul," result from knowledge and precede joy and sorrow.
Here again we find a blurring, rather than a precision, of the basis for
distinguishing the passions (as bodily in origin) from the interior emotions (as
having their source in the understanding). What this persistent blurring may
tell us is that there was all along something specious in Descartes's attempt to
found a meaningful distinction between types of affects on a simple metaphys-
ical duality.

IL Spinoza

Although I do regard Descartes's conception of the interior emotions as rather

poorly defined, I see no reason to dispute Beyssade's suggestion that it to some
considerable degree prefigures and inspires Spinoza's notion of the active
affects. And Ifindboth elegant and persuasive his account of how Descartes's
distinction between emotions caused by the body, and emotions caused by "the
soul itself," is transposed in Spinoza's monistic system to a distinction between
affects tied to imagination, and affects that pertain to man "insofar as he
understands."3 It does not seem to me that this transposition in itself at all
tends to undermine a genuine modal distinction between, say, the active and
passive affects of joy. (And I take this to be Beyssade's conclusion as well,
though one or two formulations in the earlier parts of his discussion may at
first suggest the contrary.) I also agree with Beyssade that Spinoza does not
very sharply and consistently distinguish - as it seems that he should - the
vanquishment of sad passions by joyful passions from an increase in the active
affects in relation to the passions in general.
I certainly agree further that VP3 and its Proof present the appearance
of "paradox." Beyssade provides a fairly detailed treatment of issues raised by
this Proposition, and I will concentrate my remaining comments upon them.
Perhaps it will be useful to have before us the actual Latin text of the
Proposition and its Proof:

Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio, simulatque ejus claram, <fc distinctam
formamus ideanu
 Beyssade: L'émotion intérieure/Faffect actif 193

DEMONSTRATIO: Affectus, qui passio est, idea est confusa (per gener. Affect.
Defin.). Si itaque ipsius affectûs claram, & distinctam formemus idea m, haec idea
ab ipso affectu, quatenus ad solam Mentem refertur, non nisi ratione distinguetur
(per Prop. 21, p. 2 cum ejusdem Schol.); adeóque (per Prop. 3, p. 3.) affectus desinet
esse passio. Q.E.D.

One problem presented by this Proposition - as Beyssade notes in passing - is

how it is to be reconciled with IVP7 and its Corollary. For the latter seems
to indicate that a given passion can only be overcome by a stronger and
contrary affect that is on the same level as the originally given passion - i.e. the
idea of a contrary bodily state. {Affectus, quatenus ad Mentem refertur, nee
coërceri, nee tolli potest, nisi per ideam Corporis affectionis contrariae, & fortioris
affectione, qua patimur. (IVP7C)) VP3, however, seems to be saying that a
mental state distinguished from the original passion only by a distinction of
reason - an idea of that passion itself - is sufficient to free the mind from the
passion.
Even more vexing, however, are the "paradoxes" internal to VP3D.
Spinoza's argument might perhaps be rephrased in this way: A passion is a
confused idea, whereas a mind is active insofar as it has distinct ideas. But the
idea of an idea differs from the original idea only by a distinction of reason.
Thus an idea of which we form a distinct idea "ceases to be a passion." It is
clearly an underlying assumption of the argument that two ideas cannot be,
respectively, distinct and confused, if they are distinguished from each other
only by reason. One way of stating the central problem posed by the
demonstration is, then, as follows: given all this, why should we not conclude
that if an idea is confused in a mind, it is impossible for that mind to form a
distinct idea of it? Spinoza's "paradoxical" position seems to be, though, that
on the one hand we can form a distinct idea of a passion or confused idea, and
this distinct idea will be distinguished only by reason from its object idea. On
the other hand, no distinct idea can differ from a confused idea only by a
distinction of reason. Therefore, we must suppose that the original confused
idea ceases to be a confused idea (yet the distinct idea we formed of it is still
an idea of it).
As I understand him, Beyssade in effect proposes that in order to make
sense of Spinoza's position we need to keep two things in mind. First, this
remedy for the passions is understood to pertain only to the "second kind of
knowledge." Second, just as any confused, abstract ideas of imagination embody
common natures that "can be conceived only adequately" (and that provide
direct knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God), so even a passive
state of sadness enfolds elements of the active affect of joy. Hence all affects,
even the most passive, are capable of contributing to our intellectual love of
God. Thus (I take it) the distinct understanding available to us with respect
to the passions is in effect an eliciting from the passions of those elements
which are in us just insofar as we are active (Cf. pp. 186-187). In their
concrete individuality the passions remain passions, sadness remains sadness: the
original affects are not actually removed. But what becomes (so to speak)
194 MARGARET D. WILSON

uppermost in our minds with respect to them are just those distinctly conceived
"elements" or "aspects" (p. 187) that nourish our active affect of intellectual
love. (So, we may say, the claims of IVP7 and its Corollary are not after all
undermined by VP3: a passion cannot be restrained nor removed (coerced nee
tolli) except by another affect; forming a distinct idea of a passion does not
remove it, but rather, in effect, sublimates it.)
Although Beyssade does not belabor the textual support for his interpre-
tation, I think he has in fact sensitively discerned and integrated a number of
textual clues from the early Propositions of Part V. The result is a reading
that does help to make pleasing sense of a substantial part of this text. I take
Beyssade to be suggesting, however, that this reading shows us how to avoid the
"logical paradox" originally presented by VP3. (Cf. p. 186: Pour que la
transformation effective échappe au paradoxe logique ... ; and p. 187: Ainsi, sans
paradoxe logique...) Satisfying as his reading is in other ways, I'm very doubtful
that it does succeed at this difficult (perhaps impossible) task.
In the first place, VP3 really does say that a passive affect of which we
form a distinct idea "ceases to be a passion"; not merely that its passional
aspect becomes less prominent in the mind. Beyssade himself stresses this
point on (p. 185), but it is not clear to me that his reading does in the end
preserve this strong claim. What worries me more, though, is that the logic of
VP3 seems to me as obstinately paradoxical as ever, even in the light of his
explication. For instance, if to form a distinct idea "of a passion" is really to
conceive the common nature(s) inherent in the passion, it does not seem at all
clear how the distinct idea of the passion can be "one and the same thing" as
the passion itself (cf. IIP21S), or how it can be the case that the two are
distinguished "only by reason." Yet this assumption must hold up in an
intelligible way if the proof is to work at all.
I do not deny, then, that an interpretation along the lines proposed by
Beyssade can help us make interesting sense of the general view that distinct
understanding can relate a passion of sadness to intellectual love. I only
suggest that this achievement may still leave us lacking a specific solution to
the riddles of VP3.

1. See Curley (1988), p. 162, n. 13, for a similar, though less emphatic, judgment with
respect to the treatment of this concept in the Passions. Curley indicates that Descartes
does better in the Feb. 1, 1647 letter to Chanut (cited by Beyssade, and in n. 3, below).
2. At any rate, the two concepts are related sufficiently closely to support interesting
detailed comparisons between them, as Beyssade's paper shows. I cannot go so far as to
agree with his indication (p. 177) that Spinoza's failure to mention the interior emotions
explicitly when he denounces Descartes's theory of the passions suggests that Spinoza agreed
with a good part of the Cartesian concept of interior emotion. This omission might reflect
nothing more than the fact that both Descartes and Spinoza deal so much more extensively
with the passive affects. In any case, although the Cartesian "hypothesis more occult than
any occult quality" that Spinoza castigates at the beginning of Part V is concerned
specifically with the passions (and has to do with the pineal gland), his brief negative
remarks on the Cartesian treatment of the affects at the beginning of Part III appear more
general.
 Beyssade: L'émotion intérieure/Taffect actif 195

E. M. Curley, in the work alluded to in η. 1, proposes that Descartes's conception

of the role of free will in judgment would render his account of interior emotions - which
all rest on judgments of good and evil - a clear case of explanation by occult qualities in
Spinoza's eyes.
3. It's perhaps worth quoting in full a sentence from Descartes's letter to Chanut,
February 1, 1647, which Beyssade partially quotes on (p. 180): "Mais pendant que nostre
âme est jointe au corps, cette amour raisonnable est ordinairement accompagnée de
l'autre, qu'on peut nommer sensuelle ou sensitive, & qui, comme i'ay sommairement dit
de toutes les passions, appétits & sentimens, en la page 461 de mes Principes francois, n'est
autre chose qu'une pensée confuse excitée en Pâme par quelque mouvement des nerfs,
laquelle la dispose à cette autre pensée plus claire en qui consiste l'amour raisonnable." (AT
IV, 602-3, emphasis added.)
 THE TWO FACES OF SPINOZA

AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

Radcliffe College and Mt. Holyoke College

"Nothing," says Spinoza, "can be destroyed except by an external cause" (IIIP4).

And he adds: "An idea that excludes the existence of our body cannot be in our
mind... The mind endeavors to think of those things that increase or assist the
body's power of activity... and to think only of those things that affirm its power
of activity" (HIPP 10, 12, 54). These upbeat passages are mystifying, and
sometimes downright disturbing to us dark obsessive minds, prone to think of
things that diminish our powers, prone to diminishing our powers precisely by
thinking about what diminishes us, easily capable of thinking of a world that
would, could and does exclude us. I want to try to make sense of the motifs
expressed in these passages, reading them in such a way that they are not
offensive to our sensibility, automatic grounds for distrusting the Spinozistic
enterprise. Difficulties remain; but they are the ironies of all Stoics who speak
with forked tongue. The optimism of the Stoic-enlightenment program of self
improvement is Janus-faced with an equally familiar Stoic resignation in the face
of necessity. The dynamic energy of conatus as the essence of individuals is
revealed as mere partiality: conatus and the individual mind, the contrast between
activity and passivity, the contrast between external and internal causes - all these
are temporary and temporizing notions which the fully enlightened mind will
recognize to be inadequate ideas. Necessary as they are, they are nevertheless
merely perspectival. Individuals bent on self-improvement, perceiving themselves
bounded by and opposed to the forces of similar individuals, mistake the
ontological importance of their individuality and their activities. The Hobbesian
strand that is woven through Spinozistic doctrine is visible only within middle-
range opinion: it is not ontologically or epistemologically fundamental. Yet
though it is partial and misleading, it remains among the phenomena to be
explained. The enlightened will not eliminate but rather explain and understand
the (necessitated) middle range talk of conatus, activity and passivity, external and
internal, individuals and relations. Nevertheless, having questioned and even
undermined the starting point of individuation, Spinoza returns the repressed:
in Book V, (the ideas of) particular finite individuals are represented within
eternity.
Tb understand the downbeat, ironic interpretation of Spinoza's two faced
views, we need to take a detour, to contrast his views on the connection between
knowledge and freedom with those of Descartes, to examine how his critique
of Descartes' theory of the will sets the basis for his account of conatus.
Against this background, Spinoza's irony emerges as sharply poised against his
apparently remorseless and relentless optimism.
 The TVvo Faces of Spinoza 197

"You shall know the truth and it shall make you free" is the central - but
ambiguous - motto of the Enlightenment. It is over the significance of this
motto - on what is required to defend it - that Spinoza parts company with
Descartes. The two sides of the Enlightenment - its attitudes towards the
freedom and activity of the individual, and the role of knowledge in self-
determination - are represented in the differences between Spinoza and
Descartes. Their different conceptions of freedom carry correspondingly different
views on the nature of knowledge, and radically different views on the identity
and character of the individual mind.
Crudely, Descartes* represents that side of the Enlightenment that makes
the will - its freedom from causal determination - the precondition for knowledge
of the truth, while Spinoza represents that side of the Enlightenment which
makes knowledge the precondition for the gradual progress towards active self-
determination. Freedom is active self-determination through the rational
realization of determinateness. An individual acts freely, from its own nature,
only when determination is appropriated as self-determination, that is, when the
mind acknowledges and absorbs as constitutive of its nature the determinative
causal line that had seemed "external" to it. Because the appropriation of
determining causes moves inadequate ideas towards greater adequacy, it
transforms passivity into activity (1IID2; ΙΠΡ1). The movement towards
knowledge - as the gradual process of articulating the determinants of an idea,
its aetiology and preconditions - is the movement towards active self-
determination.
For Descartes, the central example of knowledge is mathematics; the central
mode of proof is the application of the law of noncontradiction in reductio
arguments that require the unconditioned activity of the will to affirm, deny or
doubt an idea. (Ironically, those writings which we take as centrally Cartesian
are narrative, historical expositions.) For Spinoza, the model of knowledge is
simultaneously genetic and analytic: the aetiology of an idea provides its history
and its constitutive logical explanation. (Ironically, the geometrical mode of The
Ethics would have been more appropriate for Descartes than for Spinoza.)
Tb understand the irony of Spinoza's optimism, let's examine Spinoza's
disagreements with Descartes in a little more detail. Despite his insistence on
the unity of the mind, Descartes presents (at least) an analytic distinction
between the function of the mind in willing and understanding or entertaining
an idea. Even though the will always operates on some particular content, it
must be capable of entertaining an idea, and to affirm, deny or suspend judgment
on that same idea. If every shift of propositional attitude were to reflect a shift
of idea (or vice versa), there would be no continuity of thought or inquiry. The
success of the method of doubt as a method of proof, particularly in reductio
arguments, presupposes the identity of an idea through the vicissitudes of
affirmation, negation and suspension of judgment. And that presupposes the
separation of the functions of the understanding and the will, or as we might
say, the independence of propositional attitudes from propositional contents.
198 AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

The claim is strong: however variously congnitions or judgments may be formed,

volitions are not causally determined at all. Of course the will can be inexorably
inclined, and rationality can significantly coincide with inclination. But the will
can only criticize its inclinations, if it is radically free. If this is an illusion, if
all such critiques are merely higher level inclinations, then knowledge is an
illusion.
Spinoza's attack on this view depends on his extreme particularism: there
are no general powers or faculties of any kind. Volition, desire, understanding
are not forces or capacities, but rather (particular) aspects of every individual
act of thought (IIP48). Ontologically there are only particular acts of thinking,
every detail of which is necessitated, causally determined. Adequate and
inadequate ideas, truth and error alike are necessary, caused in all their details
(IIP36). Before attacking Descartes' account of judgment, Spinoza issues a
general warning, a warning that reveals his diagnosis of Descartes' fundamental
error. He warns readers - he of course really means Cartesians - that they
should not confuse ideas with images or words (IIP49S). It might seem otiose,
even downright ridiculous to charge Descartes - of all people - with neglecting
the distinction between images and ideas, still less between ideas and words.
But Spinoza is not charging Descartes with reducing ideas to perceptions or
images, as if Descartes had anachronistically made the mistake of accepting what
we would call a picture theory of meaning. His charge is rather that Cartesians
accept an inspection theory of thought and verification, that requires the will
to scan the contents of the understanding, to determine whether they are well-
formed, whether ideas are clearly and distinctly perceived.
From Spinoza's point of view, Descartes did not follow his best insights:
in presenting thoughts as contents to be affirmed or denied, he failed to see the
full significance of his view that the essence of mind is the activity of thinking.
For all his recognition of the mind's essence as an activity, Descartes still
thought of the mind as a substance which has thoughts. While he accepted a
functionalist theory of passions in general and perceptions in particular,
identifying them by their causal roles, Descartes held a representational theory
of ideas, formally identifying them by their referential content.1 Spinoza sees
this as an unstable view: a functional-causal theory of perception cannot be
integrated with a formal-referential theory of representation. On the best
construal of a Cartesian theory, the content of any idea - adequate as well as
inadequate ideas, clear and distinct ideas as well as confused perceptions - is
given by its function in determining and being determined by other ideas.2
But for Spinoza, an individual mind is a finite mode which is the activity
of its thinking. In having an idea, the mind docs not have a possession which
it is capable of examining. Tb think an idea is to act; to think of this or that
idea is to act in this or that way. But if thinking is an activity, all thoughts, and
not merely perceptions, are identified by their functional roles, by the ways they
determine and are determined by other ideas. For Spinoza, every difference in
conception makes a difference in attitude. Indeed the two are not distinct; to
consider is to conceive; to conceive is to take an attitude, an attitude which must
have been caused by previous thought. The causal history of the content of a
 The Ttoo Faces of Spinoza 199

thought - even of an erroneous thought - is identical with the causal history of

the attitude towards it: they are co-determined (IIP49). The truth function of
an idea - its being true or false - is a function of the way in which the mind
conceives and connects it, rather than of its separable propositional content.
An erroneous idea is an idea that is conceived in a mis-taking way, treated as
isolated, fragmented incomplete. In thinking it, the mind is, in the several senses
of the term, partial; it is fixed in a merely perspectival position. Images are not
necessarily mental pictures: they are distinguished from ideas by their degree
of partiality and abstraction, by their roles in the activity of thought. In thinking
(of) them as incomplete fragments, abstractly and perspectivally, the mind focuses
rather than expands: it over-estimates the separability and isolation of such
ideas, almost as if it were engaged in idolatry on an idolon. (Sometimes indeed
such images are so skimpy in expressing their determination - for instance, the
idea of an unspecified winged horse - that we can't locate them within the system
of ideas. That, I take it, is what Spinoza means by saying that such images are
not even ideas: there is not enough of them there, for us to think with; they
are not even proper images but empty phrases.)
Both parties have a great deal at stake. For Descartes, the possibility of
a truthful science rests on the possibility of a rational mind forming an
unconditioned independent, reflexive evaluation of its thoughts and desires.
The two issues which are fundamentally at stake for Descartes - the possibility
of a mathematically demonstrable science and that kind of intellectual reflection
which can in principle assure every individual mind freedom from error - are
interwoven. The latter is a condition for the former. Spinoza sees the Cartesian
conditions as empty and arbitrary: rational evaluation is an activity with a
particular content and context, with a particular aetiology in the chain of
determination. It re-presents the structure of the real in just the same way as
does every other act of thought. The will is not more rational because it is self-
caused; it is only more rational if its affirmations are fixed by, and reflect the
system of the world. The issue which is fundamentally at stake for Spinoza is
the systematic rationality of the whole of nature, with human rationality assured
by its being part of nature, explained by the very same laws that explain all other
phenomena. All active logical determination is psychological determination: an
agent's reasons are the causal determinants of his beliefs and actions. All
psychological determination, properly understood, is logical determination: the
causes of a belief are, when fully articulated in adequate ideas, its reasons.

II

What does all this have to do with the mysteriously affirmative passages with
which we began?
Let's examine several stark cases, cases which on the face of it seem to
present serious difficulties for Spinoza. First, as is natural, a physical case. An
individual is, as we loosely say, dying of cancer. Superficially, this seems to
present no problem for Spinozistic doctrine. The individual is overcome by a
set of external forces more powerful than the force of her own conatus. Of
200 AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

course her conatus - her essence - combats the invasion. Indeed, that conatus
is nothing more or less than the ways in which her body acts and reacts, the
active organization of all the details of its activities, which, as things have it,
are so constituted by their causal history and their place in the system of
interactive individuals that they preserve the individual's ratio of motion and
rest, in response to external forces as well as to its own internal dynamics.
(IIP 12) If the cancer wins, the individual is destroyed by forces more powerful
than all those active in her self-preservation.
At a deeper level, however, there is a problem. The distinction between
internal and external causes of determination is misleading and inadequate,
narrowly perspectival. The details of an individual's nature are determined by
its causal history and by its interaction with other individuals. Since an adequate
cause contains all that is necessary to explain what follows from it, the necessary
causes of an individual's determination are also constitutive of its determination.
(IIIDD1,2) So regarded, the victory of the cancer is not a victory over the
individual, but part of the life that constitutes its history. Because the individual
is as much individuated, determined by her cancer as she is (as we would now
say) by the genetic material she received from her parents, she is not destroyed
by something external to her.
This might make it seem as if she had been destroyed by something within
her. But properly described, she is not destroyed at all. Tb the extent that she
has internalized her cancer - to the extent that it is also a determinant of her
individuality - it expresses rather than destroys her. The cancer has reorganized
the ratio of her body's motion and rest. If anything is destroyed, it is the
physical object that was the object of the original inadequate idea of a body
bounded to exclude a cancer that also determines it. (IIP36) But not even that
is destroyed: for the inadequate idea of the individual, so bounded and defined,
is explained and preserved in all its details, as necessary within the system of
interactive ideas.
As is not surprising, we have drifted from the putatively purely physical
case, to a physical case as intentionally identified. Everything that can be
understood about physical conditions must be understood through their
intentional descriptions. Inevitably we move from the problem of an individual
body destroyed by cancer, to the problem of the diminution or destruction of
a body intentionally identified by a description of its activities and their limits.
eases of psychological invasion seem more perspicuous for revealing the
force, and the irony of Spinoza's apparently remorseless optimism. Let's consider
the case of an individual who is obsessed with, and crippled by a set of ideas
that diminish her. She is suffering from an unrequited love of Spinoza,
overcome by despair of understanding this labyrinthine mind, this system of ideas.
This obsession jeopardizes her health: sleepless, she has lost her appetite, her
inclination for her usual healthful pleasurable activities.
How can Spinoza's upbeat motto deal with this all too familiar case?
Again, superficially, there is no problem. Tb the extent that her thoughts are
invasive, she is, in a sense, suffering her thoughts without actively thinking them.
The conatus of her individual mind will of course necessarily resist this invasion:
 The Ένο Faces of Spinoza 201

it will do - it consists in doing - whatever it can to preserve itself. (IHPP6-9)

Weaker minds may attempt evasive imaginative distraction; stronger ones become
active and self-determined. Ironically, they will do this by accepting and
absorbing the invasion, and in so doing transform the invasive ideas... and
themselves as well. Tb the extent, and only to the extent, that the individual
can come to think of herself as defined, rather than intruded upon, by her
despairing attempts to understand Spinoza, does she become who she is. In
actively thinking about Spinoza, she doesn't suffer, but is herself, thinking these
thoughts. That she is likely to have perspectival and inadequate ideas about
Spinoza does not affect the point. That she may continue to despair does not
affect the point. As in the physical case, the destruction or diminution is
transformed and redescribed, by a more adequate idea of her individuality, as
in part constituted by her thinking these thoughts in this way. At best, her
despair turns into joyful activity; at worst, she may only have the joy of being
active in her despair, rather than suffering it passively. But in both cases, she
no longer suffers an obsession because she has identified with the necessary and
natural laws of the mind that are at work in her.
As in the case of truth and error, the difference between a positive and
negative affect is not a difference in the affect itself, but in the functional role
it plays, in the way a particular mind acts and reacts in expressing it. The
sensation of physical pain is of course the hardest case: how can the suffering
of such a sensation be transformed into an adequate idea, into an activity? In
what could liberation from pain as a passive affect consist? The fortunate are
sometimes - by virtue of their constitutions and the character of a particular
pain - capable of taking a reflective attitude towards their condition. They can
form an idea of their affect-idea, coming to see and to understand the patterned
function of the salience of pain as focusing, rather than as expanding the mind.
Pain just is the manifestation of a diminished conatus; it is the kind of affect
whose perspectival, partial, and incomplete character resists expansion, absorbing
its connections to other ideas. It is cold comfort, but perhaps comfort
nevertheless, to recognize that in actively thinking the idea of the pain-affect,
rather suffering the pain-affect, one realizes that it is just the sort of idea which
standardly expresses the narrowing, rather than expansion, of an attentive
understanding. Ίο the extent that an individual mind can, in the middle of its
pain, form an idea of its affect-idea - to the extent it can recognize the pattern
immanent in pain-affects - it has moved to greater adequacy, by marking the
interconnection between a particular pain-affect and other related ideas. Indeed
the two are different ways of describing the same movement of the mind: to form
an idea of an affect-idea just is to locate it within a nexus of related ideas,
moving it towards (what might loosely be called) a common notion. When (with
luck) the mind recognizes the necessary focalizing salience of pain, it sees its
constitution expressed in a necessary pattern, one of the natural laws of the
mind. It will still feel the pain as painful, but in recognizing the necessity of
that feeling, its functional role in expressing the system of ideas, it becomes as
active as is possible under the circumstances.
202 AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

It sounds like an easy and cheap magic trick. Just wave your hand: all that
is required for an individual to assure indestructibility is to brazen it out, and
assert or claim as Her own, whatever it might be that could diminish or destroy
her. It sounds for all the world like a child fighting off sleep by the power of
a positive announcement that it has commanded sleep, indeed that it is sleep.
Things may be bad; but they are not quite so outrageously bad. In the first
place, every movement towards a more adequate idea is also a movement towards
a more active, more self-sustaining body. Whatever changes occur intellectually
are registered physically; indeed only those increases in self-determination and
power that occur physically have really occurred intellectually.
In the second place, the individual does not identify with the general laws
of nature because those laws are nothing more than summaries of the immanent
and particular relations obtaining among the individuals that constitute the
system that is nature. Even common notions are universally exemplified
particulars, their interconnections and structures rationally articulated (IIP3L2,
37-40). Since there is nothing there, In General, for her to become, in becoming
herself, the individual doesn't become Mind in General, or Extension in General.
The expansion of her identity is, so to say, outwards to include other particular
individuals, rather than upwards to a single general abstraction. She cannot
acquire a more adequate idea of her individuality by a formulaic phrase defining
individuality as an affection or mode of substance. Particularity is preserved:
coming to have more adequate ideas consists in absorbing as constitutive, the
details of the individual ideas that determine an individual's system of ideas.
With this move - this absorption of determining ideas - the old distinctions
between what is internal and what is external to a person's nature, between what
is essential and what is accidental, between what is necessary and what is
contingent, are shown to be inadequate. What had been seen as merely external
and accidental - that there happened to be a copy of Spinoza's Ethics in her
parents' library the long hard winter when they were snow-bound on the farm -
turns out to be as essential to her individuation as anything else. Despite her
despair, indeed including her despair and her inadequate understanding, Spinoza's
writings have formed her outlook on the world. She is nothing if not a
Spinozist. Her more adequate self-concept is not an abstract realization: it
consists of and is expressed in the details of her psychological and intellectual
functioning, as for instance, her becoming active in thinking of Spinoza rather
than suffering thoughts of loving him.

Ill

Are we in the clear? Have we succeeded in defending Spinoza's upbeat

optimism in such a way that it is no longer downright offensive? Not quite.
There are still some problems. Tb see them more clearly, we need to give a
summary account of how active conatus itself seems to undermine the very idea
of individuality on which it rests.
An unreflective individual mind is a set of ideas of bodily modifications;
a reflective individual mind is an increasingly adequate idea of a set of ideas
 The Ttoo Faces of Spinoza 203

of bodily modifications, so related that together, as a system, they have their

own conatus, that is, they (happen to have necessarily) form(ed) a particular
self-sustaining system of ideas. The conatus of an individual mind is its ideas,
seen as actively endeavoring to become adequate, self-explanatory, self-
determined. Whatever her conatus can do, what her essential nature can do,
that it must do. It can do no other. The conatus of the individual mind,
defined as desire along with the consciousness thereof, is not a single force or
power, but is rather the set of ideas of the mind seen as active in their self-
preservation and self-determination (IHPP7-9). Desire as the essence of the
mind is not a power over and above the mind's particular ideas: it just is the
set of ideas actively endeavoring to move to greater adequacy, as self-explanatory
(IHDefAffl). That preservation takes place in a very straightforward and simple
way: each inadequate idea is, as we might say, explanation-hungry for its
determinants, to articulate their systematic inter-relation.
But there are difficulties. First, the complications of the physical picture.
On the one hand, an individual body is identified by its maintaining a constant
ratio of motion and rest. On the other hand, an individual must endeavor to
increase its power to resist the force of opposing individuals who are, in their
attempts at self-preservation, encroaching upon it. The interactive (»deter-
mination of individuals each bent on self-determination appears to require that
each attempt to increase its relative power in order to have the necessary
margin of power required to maintain itself. In a system of mutually determining
individuals, each organized to preserve itself, simple self-preservation must move
to expansive self-determination.
And so, too, the conatus of an individual mind appears to be necessarily
unstable. Because the interaction of an individual with others modifies it in a
way that can affect its functioning, self-preservation requires self-determination;
and self-determination in turn requires self-expansion. On this middle range
level, at any rate, Spinoza shares Hobbes' view that for the individual to retain
its power, it must attempt to enlarge its sphere: even in cooperative situations,
it needs a margin of power over other equally expansive individuals who are
attempting to increase their self-determination in order to resist its encroach-
ments on them. The power of an individual conatus is expressed in its attempt
to appropriate and integrate an invading oppositional force. In cases of
cooperation, the individual wants to secure, and set the terms and conditions
for, the continuity of beneficial cooperation. Epistemologically, the mind
endeavors to understand, and ontologically to absorb, the interconnected details
of its determination. In moving to a more adequate idea, and to a more active
realization of its nature, it expands its powers to overcome the limitations and
partiality of its initial inadequate idea of itself. Ironically, a powerful conatus
so transforms itself that the original limited individual technically expands/dies.
(Shades of Nietzsche within Spinoza.)
It might be argued that an over-emphasis on the potential conflict between
individuals neglects their cooperation, and sometimes even the identity of their
directions.3 Certainly individuals can stand in complementary, mutually
supportive or enhancing relations; and sometimes indeed the direction of their
204 AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

forces, their interests, coincide. But each of these also present problems for
individuation. As Hegel traces the cooperation that is hidden within opposition,
so Rousseau traces the natural development from cooperation, to specialization
and mutual need, to dependency, to the attempt at domination. Cooperative
individuals are, when fully understood, mutually ingredient; as they become
mutually dependent on their cooperation, they become mutually adaptive, each
increasingly internally modified by its interaction with the other. Hegel's account
of the absorption of conflict into inter-dependence, and Rousseau's account of
the development of opposition from mutual dependence, tell the same story:
the initial distinctness of individuals is overcome by the ways their interactions -
whether cooperative, combative or (finally) identical - move to the mutual
ingredience of what had been taken as distinct.
What is the criterion for the identity of an individual mind? In what sense
is there a more adequate idea of the same individual, when every change in the
set of ideas marks a change in the identity of the individual mind? The
predecessor mind remains identical only in being fully contained, further
empowered and realized within the successor mind, with more details of its ideas
adequately explained. In actively thinking, the individual mind so transforms
herself that it is no longer the same individual, there, to be preserved.
What is the relation between an individual mind (de re) and any given
reflexive idea of that mind (de dicto)? An inadequate idea of the mind
expands/dies outward: does the individual mind, which is the idea of a set of
ideas thereby expand/die outward? The individual mind isfinite;as an adequate
idea in the mind of God - that is, as a necessary idea in the system of ideas -
it is eternal. So it seems an individual mind cannot after all be an idea of a
set of ideas, since it cannot be both finite (de re) and infinite (de dicto). This
problem is, of course, an instance of the familiar vexed question about the
relation between the idea of a bodily modification (i) and the idea of the idea
of that modification (i.o.i). On the one hand, the two are extensionally identical
because the idea of a set of ideas of a bodily modification cannot be of anything
else than the idea of the original modification (or it could not be a more
adequate idea of that modification). On the other hand, the two are
distinguishable if not distinct (or it could be the case that one is adequate, the
other not; and that they played different functional roles in the activity of
thinking). Etienne Balibar has proposed that the distinction is a distinction of
reason, between an idea as formally considered, and an idea as objectively
considered.4 Formally, ontologically, the idea of an idea (i.o.i) can only refer
to that bodily modification to which the idea (i) itself refers. Objectively,
psycho-logically however, an idea of an idea (i.o.i) might have a character and
functions that are distinguishable, and different from its idea (i). Something
like that must be right, if an idea of an idea (i.o.i) can play a distinctive
intellectual function that is not reducible to, or identical with the intellectual
function played by its idea (i). But this suggestion relocates our problem on
another level: what are the criteria for determining the identity of an idea under
its formal and its objective aspects? If, as Balibar argues, Spinoza is not
committed to an indefinite regress of ideas of ideas of ideas..., then the problem
 The TWo Faces of Spinoza 205

about individuating ideas recurs as a problem of distinguishing the formal and

objective aspect of any given set of ideas.
The problem about the individuation of ideas is replicated as a problem
about the individuation of individuals. On the physical side, individuals are
distinguished by all the particular details of the constitution of their bodies, their
weight, height, eye color, gender, metabolism. But those differentiating details
are themselves products of the interaction among individuals. Each has left
traces of itself on the others; each is the tracery of all the others. On the
intellectual or psychological side, individuals are distinguished by the particular
set of partial, perspectival or inadequate ideas which happen to constitute a finite
mind at any given time. But as these ideas become increasingly adequate,
individuation is correspondingly diminished (IVP35). Tb the extent that two
individuals have increasingly adequate ideas, they are decreasingly differentiated.
This is not because they have identical general ideas, but because they come to
have the same nexus of particular co-determining ideas.
But this is more of a notional or theoretical problem than it is a practical
or immediate one. Since we find ourselves a long way from adequate ideas, a
long way from having absorbed all the relevant determinants of individual minds,
we have more than enough to distinguish them. As the movement to adequate
ideas takes place gradually, incrementally, each individual expands from a
different starting point. With the exception of the realization of common
notions, the natural movement of expansion of different individuals moves in
different directions, even when it involves mutual absorption. The details of
the movement of two inter-active, mutually expansive minds to increased
adequacy of their ideas will differ as the details of their history and location
differ. Tb be sure, at the indefinite end, they will no longer be distinguishable,
each having all absorbed all other individuals. But the trajectory of the
movements towards adequacy will be as distinguishable as their histories and
locations.
Put this way, it becomes clear why some individuals have greater difficulty
in moving towards adequate ideas than others. By contrast to individuals whose
causal histories and locations involve relatively simple, homogeneous, linear
causal lines, individuals whose determination involves the coincidence of
distinctive, heterogeneous and distant causal lines would naturally have greater
difficulty integrating and systematically inter-connecting their determinants. As
is evident for individual nation-states, the more complex and plural the
determination, the more powerful - but also the more difficult - the active
integration of mutually interactive particulars, each gradually realizing their
immanent co-ingredience. But in diminishing their individuation, individuals
do not diminish their individuality. Indeed individuality - that is, the power of
an individual to preserve and determine itself - increases in direct proportion
to the decrease of individuation, as the inadequate ideas that individuate are
absorbed into the co-determinative system of adequate ideas.
206 AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

IV

We have come full circle, to the differences between Descartes' and Spinoza's
understanding of the connection between individual minds, knowledge and
freedom. For Spinoza, as for Descartes, an individual's freedom is assured by
its power to identify itself with its necessary and adequate ideas. And for
Spinoza, as for Descartes, there are two stories of individuation. On the one
hand, every detail of inadequate ideas differentiates individuals; and on the other
hand, insofar as a mind has - or rather, is - a set of adequate ideas, it is not
distinguished from any other adequately conceived mind. But although Descartes
and Spinoza agree on these general formulae, they wholly disagree on their
interpretation and significance. Descartes distinguishes individual minds in two
quite dififerent ways. On the one hand, since only contingent perceptions, bodily
sensations and passions - all of them ideas caused in the mind by the action of
the body - differentiate individual minds, and since these ideas are not essential
to the identity or the existence of the mind, minds are not individuated by
anything that is necessary or essential to thcm.^ On the other hand, God
created individual minds as distinct. And indeed, it is central to Descartes'
version of the Enlightenment that individual minds arc capable of autonomous
acts of the will, capable of reflecting, doubling, knowing, independently of the
actions of other individuals, or indeed in principle, of the conditions of the
bodies to which they are attached. It is just in this that the freedom of the
individual mind consists, that it can act independently of any causal
determination, including the influence of contingent ideas that individuate it.
While Spinoza agrees with Descartes that individual minds are distinguished
by their inadequate ideas, he holds that an individual mind's inadequate ideas
are as essential and necessary to it as its adequate ideas: indeed they enter into
the composition of its adequate ideas. Active self-determination is assured by
identifying with, rather than detaching oneself from, the system of determining
ideas.

We are now prepared to give a somewhat more adequate reading of our

original, troubling quotations.
1. "Nothing can be destroyed except by an external cause." Thie enough:
it is only insofar as an individual is defined as bounded, as excluding other
individuals that it can be destroyed by them. But since the full explication of
the details of every individual includes every other, there is nothing that is
necessarily external to an individual. Although an individual is a finite mode
of a substance, it follows from and is necessarily interactively defined by the
system of individuals. Even the idea of finite modes, adequately conceived, is
necessary and eternal in the mind of God.
BUT: The fuller explication of the quotation undermines its presuppositions.
The idea of merely external causes is an inadequate idea: the expansive self-
 The Ttoo Faces of Spinoza 207

determination of individuals in a system of co-determination obliterates the

distinction between internal and external causes.
2. "An idea that excludes the existence of our body cannot be in our mind."
Thie enough: Trivially, no idea can exclude the existence of our body because
ideas and bodies cannot exclude, or for that matter, include one another. More
significantly, since every body is implicated in the full determination of every
other, every adequate idea of every body is included in the full articulation of
every other.
BUT The fuller explication of the quotation undermines its presuppositions.
For individual bodies naturally attempt and sometimes succeed in overcoming
one another, in an opposition of forces. Since that very opposition acts to
determine the nature of each body, an adequate idea of a body includes the idea
of those bodies actively opposed to its own.
3. "The mind endeavors to think of those things which increase or assist
the body's power of activity, and to think only of those things." Ttue enough.
The body's conatus is its activity in endeavoring self-preservation. There is an
intellectual equivalent of all its endeavors. So it straightway - perhaps all too
straightway - follows that the mind endeavors to think what conduces to the
body's power of activity.
BUT The fuller explication of the quotation undermines its presuppositions.
For the mind can be forced to think what attempts to overcome the body, just
exactly as the body can exist in an opposition of forces with other bodies.
Indeed as the body can be overcome, so too the mind, inadequately conceived,
can think of what overcomes the body or itself, even though it endeavors to
think of those things, and only those things which enhance it. If it fails - and
it might very well fail - it does so because it necessarily continued to have an
inadequate idea of its own nature. But if it succeeds, it appropriated those
things which it had thought of as destructive.
Of course, more adequately considered, there was never any serious problem
in our passages. The upbeat passages only speak of the endeavor of individuals:
they say nothing about the success of that endeavor. Whether the endeavor is
successful depends upon the relative position of the individual and its history
in relation to individuals around it. Some individual minds are so constituted
that they are necessarily caused to think of themselves as capable of becoming
self-determined, or at any rate increasingly self-determining. Others have no
such idea. Some individuals are so constituted that they succeed in making some
of their ideas more adequate. Others are so constituted that their modes of
attempting to become more self-determining take other forms: they escape in
fantasy, or remain conflicted. But in truth, the idea of the success or failure
of individuals in their endeavors of self-preservation - indeed the idea of
individuals as preserving themselves - is itself an inadequate idea. The original
limited point with which we begin - Hobbcsian individuals endeavoring to
preserve themselves - is meant both to be undermined and to be affirmed. On
the one hand, strictly speaking individuals as affections or modes of substance
cannot be self-determining. Since only Substance can be self-determining, the
idea of individuals as necessarily becoming self-determining is a (necessary)
208 AMELIE OKSENBERG RORTY

illusion. And yet, substance is wholly expressed in the totality of its modes
under each attribute. Finite as they may be, individuals - taken together in their
particularity, illusions of grandeur and all - are all the reality we've got. 6

1. Cf. Calvin Normore, "Meaning and Objective Being: Descartes and his Sources," Essays
on Descartes' Meditations, éd. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. University of California Press, 1986.
2. Cf. Amélie Rorty, "Formal Traces in Cartesian Functional Explanations," Canadian
Journal of Philosophy, Dec. (1984).
3. Yirmiyahu Yovel suggested this, at the Chicago Spinoza Conference, September, 1986.
4. Etienne Balibar made this suggestion at the Chicago Spinoza Conference, September,
1986.
5. Cf. "Cartesian Passions and the Union of Mind and Body," Essays on Descartes'
Meditations, loc. cit.
6. I am grateful to David Lachterman, Genevieve Lloyd, Etienne Balibar, Yirmiyahu Yovel,
Diane Steinberg and other participants at the Chicago Spinoza Conference, September
1986 for their searching questions and helpful suggestions.
 THERAPEUTICS AND HERMENEUTICS

JOSÉ A BENARDETE
Syracuse University

Although the protracted course of treatment prescribed by classical psychoanalysis

has been less and less seen in recent decades, other more abbreviated forms of
psychotherapy, notably, the behavior modification associated with B.E Skinner
have not been lacking to fill the gap. I myself have been undergoing Spinoza
therapy, and while any such regimen fetched from the 17th century might be
supposed to be about as relevant as the use of the horse-and-buggy on the
modern highway, I have come to believe that it may yet prove serviceable in
enabling us to cope with the psychopathology of everyday life. Scarcely more
than anecdotal, the evidence for my belief is admittedly very exiguous, being
confined to the use of myself as a corpus vile by way of informally testing the
various "remedies for the affects" that are urged upon us by Spinoza. If I am
thus to be seen as daring to practice medicine without a license, I am sufficiently
encouraged by my results to anticipate the day when a Spinoza institute will be
established to train and certify professionals and para-professionals in the
accredited exercise of Spinoza therapy.
Verifying the efficacy of any such non-standard course of treatment must
not be supposed to be any easier than comparable efforts to evaluate the
performance of mainline psychoanalysis itself. Tb Spinoza, moreover, a special
difficulty attaches from which Freud is altogether exempt. How precisely the
therapist is to proceed along Freudian lines, we have a clear understanding today
based by no means entirely on written records, seeing that the uninterrupted
practice of psychoanalysis can always appeal in a pinch to an 'apostolic
succession' that reaches back to its founder. In the case of Spinoza, there is
presumably only the written record to go on, and that can hardly be said to
provide us with anything like an effective manual of clinical practice. Generous
enough at one point to allow that "Spinoza's psychology of the affects might
be secure as a set of general theses," Jonathan Bennett wonders whether "the
same might be true of the therapies" as well, confessing, however, that "I cannot
work that line of thought out in detail, because the therapies are not well
enough worked out by Spinoza to admit of such treatment." The operative word
here is 'detail,' and it is just such an "absence of details" that Bennett deplores
when he looks in vain to Stuart Hampshire's account of Spinoza therapy for
what "specific things about his internal struggle" the patient is called upon to
raise to consciousness. (Bennett (1984), 332, 348-49)
Therapeutics aside, there is indeed a more general tendency in Spinoza that
Bennett shrewdly notices much earlier in his Study when he remarks on his
"pleasure in starting at a dizzingly abstract level and moving in about two short
steps down into the thick of everyday life" (Ibid., p. 41), and it was thus perhaps
to be expected that when it came to implementing his theoretical psychology
210 JOSÉ BENARDETE

in therapeutic terms, Spinoza would be found to be peculiarly unforthcoming.

Negotiating the gap that separates theory from practice, vividly expressed above
all in Gilbert Ryle's distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, raises
difficulties in any case. If Spinoza therapy is to be credited as a viable
undertaking, it must transact the passage from mere theoretical psychology to
practical know-how. More through the spoken than the written word one
expects such know-how to be informally transmitted from master to apprentice
in a clinical setting, and one would dearly wish to find in Spinoza's correspon-
dence some indication that he was actively engaged in that sort of praxis in the
absence of which one might readily fear, with Bennett, that he was merely
"arguing wildly that the acquisition...of some of his own principal character traits"
can serve as "a sure route to freedom and happiness." {Ibid., p. 347) It is not
so much that Bennett doubts that freedom and happiness would in fact accrue
to us as a result of our being so fortunate as to acquire the specific character
traits of animositas and generositas - summed up Ά$ fortitudo - that are explicitly
prescribed at E IIIP59S. Still less, I take it, is he querying Spinoza's character
on a personal level. Tb the contrary, one has every right to suspect that if his
so-called remedies for the affects have any efficacy at all, it is limited to the
happy few who are like Spinoza himself in being least in need of them.
Precisely because I am one of those who are definitely excluded from that
select society, at any rate for the foreseeable future, my own auto-therapeutic
efforts to acquire fortitudo through the express use of those remedies can hardly
fail to be instructive. It must be admitted, however, that my primary motivation
in this undertaking has been less the desire to acquire fortitudo, let alone
beatitudOy than to relieve myself of various forms of emotional distress. And
even that is not quite right. More fundamental still, speaking in an
autobiographical vein, has been the purely scholarly effort to understand Spinoza
on his own terms. In a word, hermeneutics, not therapeutics, always bearing
in mind that fortitudo and beatitudo might - just possibly - come my way thereby
as a welcome by-product of my textual studies. Put quite so nakedly, the order
of my priorities can only be seen as objectionably risible, and if I derive comfort
from the fact that most other Spinoza scholars are in the same embarrassing
position, the exculpatory sentiment in which I am here indulging is almost
certainly one that is to be frowned upon as unworthy, not least of all when it
is viewed in Spinozistic terms.
A difficulty is raised, however, by my use of so moralistic an expression as
'unworthy' when it is above all characteristic of the Spinozistic conduct of life
that it seeks to understand itself in therapeutic as opposed to moralistic terms.
In fact we need not hesitate to register (1) as itself a cardinal maxim of Spinoza
therapy:

(1) Replace moralistic by therapeutic considerations in the conduct of life.

If it should be objected that (1) is really only a meta-therapeutic injunction, a

simplified version of (1) that meets the objection can be found in (2):
 Therapeutics and Hermeneutics 211

(2) In the conduct of life eschew moralistic considerations.

Notice that in Victorian times (2) might well have been felt to be much too
vague to have any ready applicability while today, after Freud, in sharp contrast,
it is almost second nature with us on the level of practical know-how. So much
so that confronted with a Victorian puzzled by (2) we should know precisely
how to proceed in explaining its uses to him on a case-by-case basis with the
kind of richness of detail that we are entitled to demand of Spinoza therapy
across the board. It goes almost without saying that anything like the clarity
we enjoy in respect to (2) fails to be available to us in regard to the other, more
positive tenets of Spinoza therapy, e.g., 'separating and joining' as Bennett
designates the maxim implicit in VP2 that launches the therapeutic program of
Part V. Here we are at last very much on our own with scarcely any further
opportunity of falling back on Freud by way of eking out the meagerness of the
text.
At the very outset a modal puzzle arises in connection with VP2 where we
are assured that "if we separate emotions or affects from the thought of an
external cause, and join them to other thoughts, then the Love or Hate toward
the external cause is destroyed, as are the vacillations of mind arising from the
affects." Why so? Well, as we learn from the demonstration, "what constitutes
the form of Love, or Hate, is Joy, or Sadness, accompanied by the idea of an
external cause (by Def Aff 6, 7). So if this is taken away, the form of Love or
Hate is taken away at the same time. Hence these affects, and those arising
from them, are destroyed." Quite apart from the general drift of the discussion,
the last sentence here and above all the word 'hence' or 'therefore' (adeoque)
explicitly commits Spinoza to the following principle involving de re modality.

(3) (x) if χ is an instance of hate, then necessarily χ is an instance of hate.

If querying (3) should seem altogether captious, one can only be surprised that
(4), which is very much on a par with (3), appears to be denied immediately
afterwards at VP3D, where again the role of 'adeoque' should be noticed.

(4) (x) if χ is an instance of passion, e.g., hate, then necessarily χ is an instance of

passion.

Because VP3 features the therapeutic technique of'turning passions into actions,'
it appears to allow for a case of hate, which is a passion, that ceases to be a
case of hate even while continuing to exist only now as an action. Thus while
being an instance of hate is seen to be an essential feature of any such instance
according to VP2D, it proves to be only an accidental attribute of it according
to VP3D.
Taken simply at face value, the trouble with VP2D is that, having insisted
that every case of hate involves two components, namely (a) sadness and (b)
the thought of an external cause, it fails to realize (as Bennett observes) that
subtracting (b) from the total complex may still leave us with (a), and it is (a)
212 JOSÉ BENARDETE

even more than the total complex from which we are eager to be released.
There is a further difficulty. Altogether absent from the demonstration, the
notion of 'joining'figuresonly in the proposition itself where it guarantees that
the distressful element, namely (a), does persist even after (b) has been separated
from the complex. For it is precisely (a) that is to be joined to some new
thought on being separated from the old one. This is not to say, however, that
at this later stage (a) need remain distressful, assuming, of course, that being
distressful may be only an accidental feature of (a). In the previous paragraph
an inconsistency having been found to obtain as between VP3D and VP2D, that
same inconsistency is now seen to infect VP2 on its own where (a) undergoes
the following three events simultaneously: (1) being separated from the old
thought, (2) being joined to a new one, and (3) being destroyed.

II

Although it is 'separating' not 'joining' that preponderates when VP2 and

VP2D are taken together as a unit, the element of 'joining' acquires a new
interest for us when we learn in VP4S that "the affect" is to be "separated from
the thought of an external cause and joined to true thoughts." What sort of
true thoughts does Spinoza have in mind here? Well, there may be various sorts
but there is one in particular on which I propose to concentrate in my effort
to implement 'separating and joining' as an effective piece of therapeutic
know-how. This 'true thought' - whether it really is true will not be my concern
- turns out to be pretty much the one that Spinoza expresses twice over at the
end of Part III, first and succinctly in his "general definition of the affects" and
again, but at some length, in the extended explanation that he appends to it.
In brief, then, an affect which is called a passion (passio animi) is a confused
idea by which the mind affirms of its body a greater or less power of acting than
before. Not that the mind actually compares its body's present with its previous
power of acting, for in that case the idea would presumably not be a confused
one. Rather I take it that the passion itself somehow expresses in a confused
way the fact that the body's power of acting is increased or diminished, aided
or restrained. In its most uncompromising formulation, being in the psycho-
logical state of sadness just is identical with being confusedly aware that one's
power of acting (= one's body's power of acting = one's mind's power of think-
ing = one's force of existing = one's conatus) suffers restraint precisely by being
diminished.
Splendid rhetoric certainly, where the very essence of Spinoza shines at its
brightest, though I should be embarrassed to be challenged to explain much less
defend his thesis in plain terms. It will be enough, however, for us to enjoy
the music here of high theory without looking too closely into it, seeing that
my immediate purpose has to do not with theory but with practice, and our
sophistication today prepares us to allow that a putative course of therapy, e.g.,
Freud's, might well prove effective even though the psychological theory
sponsoring it should be independently found to be false or even worse than
false, namely so confused as to lack a proper truth-value. Ultimately, of course,
 Therapeutics and Hermeneutics 213

one would wish to achieve an integrated understanding of Spinoza on the level

of theory as well as practice, Spinoza from above meeting Spinoza from below,
and I am in fact undertaking to do just that in these pages, specifically by
juxtaposing his general definition of the affects in their ontological import with
the know-how presumed to be encapsulated in 'separating and joining.'
Recently characterized by Curley as a metaphysical moralist, in an effort
to sum up his entire program in just two words, in that same vein Spinoza might
still more radically be termed a metaphysical therapist, seeing that metaphysics
and psychotherapy are quite properly felt to be even further removed from one
another than metaphysics and morals. In either case, the two poles of Spinoza's
enterprise are reflected in Pascal's distinction between the esprit de géométrie
and the esprit de finesse where the former is to be understood broadly enough
as to comprise all scientific, and the latter all humanistic, thinking. Although
the esprit de géométrie of the Ethics is almost loo literally advertised on its title
page by the promise that ethics itself will be found therein to be ordine
geometrico demonstrata> the esprit de finesse of the work is only fully displayed
in the informal discussions of Parts III and IV, which can almost be read like
a novel and where Spinoza is drawing on a rich humanistic tradition featuring
such names as Ovid and Tference. Precisely how these two sorts of esprit are
to be exercised more or less in conjunction, I am evidently committed to show-
ing in this paper.
Suppose, then, that we address ourselves in something like novelistic fashion
to a particular episode of suffering that touches us almost too closely as scholars.
One has written a book and, reading a professional journal, one is now stung
by the unjust criticism of a harsh review. In Spinoza's jargon one 'hates' the
review, not to mention the reviewer, for hate just is distress or sadness
accompanied by the thought of an external cause, in the present case the review
itself. An affect will be said to be bad in our new therapeutic idiom only to
the extent that it impedes the flow of clear thinking, and thus particularly to
be noticed here is the extent to which one is obsessed by one's grievance and
in consequence fixated on a single object to the exclusion of all others. The
Freudian term is cathexis which his English translator, James Strachey, coined
by way of conveying the notion of a military occupation that is implicit in the
German Besetzung, as well as the Greek katexein. Rather like the incubus or
succubus of medieval legend, one's passions involve a kind of military take-over
of one's psyche by the enemy that is reminiscent of 'possession' by demons; and
it is thus a happy accident scarcely supported by the Latin when Curley has
Spinoza say that the affects are generally "excessive and occupy the mind in the
consideration of only one object so much that it cannot think of others."
(IVP44S) As a point of hermeneutics, this clement of cathexis can probably
be seen to be formally recognized in the general definition of the affects where
a passion is said to be "a confused idea... which, when it is given, determines
the Mind to think of this rather than that."
Cathected then to our grievance, how are we to cope with it? How break
the cathexis? In the present instance it is to be assumed that we are to this
extent already free of it, that we are to be found casting about, however blindly,
214 JOSÉ BENARDETE

for a remedy. In the extreme case, of course, where the fixation is complete,
no such free play of the mind is available, and in IVP44S a person so cathected
is, in effect, said to be clinically insane. Even in the more usual sort of case,
however, merely resolving well in advance to apply the generic remedy, as I shall
style it, for it is designed to supplement not replace any specific remedy for a
specific passion, fails to provide any assurance that when the time comes and
the remedy is called for one will be found in the pinch to have sufficient
presence of mind to recall one's intention, let alone to execute it. In fact,
achieving recall here in the very throes of passion turns out to be almost half
the battle, and there were times when I positively despaired of ever being
quick-witted enough or self-possessed enough - the failure could be seen to be
one of either intelligence or character (a Spinozistic point) - to confront my
ongoing passions with the generic remedy that I had been at such pains to
formulate. For only after they had largely relaxed their hold on me, did I tardily
recognize the opportunity that was no longer mine to seize, almost kicking myself
in the process.
Doubtless itself a passion that is to be deplored when considered in
isolation, this impulse of mine to punish myself for my amnesia I take to be
on the whole a fairly salutary one, and indeed it is to be noticed that at IVP43
provision is in effect made for a kind of pain therapy which, on being viewed
in the light of IVP54S, indicates how biblical, hairshirt morality can prove
therapeutically valid when it comes at any rate to the vulgar, liiere is thus
low-grade as well as high-grade therapy, and it was inevitably a source of some
humiliation for me to realize that it might well be only the low-grade, biblical
sort, which Spinoza characteristically dismisses with Nietzschean scorn, that might
be applicable in my own case. Actually, it was a proper mix of the two, the
cognitive sort as well as the hairshirt variety, to which I am indebted. For if
my generic remedy will be seen to be designed in keeping with the former kind
of therapy, the reiterated lashings of self-reproach that helped me to overcome
my amnesia can only be subsumed under the latter.

Ill

Presupposing a kind of internal monitor that serves in effect as an early warning

system, the generic remedy itself might now almost seem to be anti-climactic.
At the outset one is called upon to abstract from the specific character of one's
ongoing passion, e.g., a bout of envy, identifying it only as a case of sadness
accompanied by the thought of an external cause. Then separating out the
element of sadness from the total complex, one is instructed to join it to this
line of reasoning. "Here is a case of sadness that afflicts me. But sadness is a
confused idea by which the Mind affirms of its Body a lesser force of existing
than before, indicating that the Body's power of acting (= the Mind's power
of thinking) is at once diminished and subject to restraint. Therefore my power
of acting is currently impeded." Conjuring with this syllogism like a charm, I
was surprised by the frequent occasions when not only was the cathexis broken
but the distress itself was dissolved even before I had quite completed the major
 Therapeutics and Hermeneutics 215

premise, thereby rendering the projected conclusion of the argument false as

well as otiose. More often perhaps, the distress persisted through to the end
of the syllogism, and indeed well beyond it, only now very much (or at any rate
somewhat) diminished in force.
On other occasions, alas, the incubus stubbornly refused to be exorcised,
and reciting my ineffectual charm can only be likened, phenomenologically, to
what happens when one drains a word of all meaning by mindlessly repeating
it. Tb a greater or less extent I felt in these instances that the words of the
syllogism simply ceased to serve me as a vehicle of actual reasoning, and merely
going through the motions of reciting them in parrot fashion could prove too
wearisome to endure.
It is the successful episodes, however, that I prefer to commemorate, though
I am under no illusion that they provide anything but the most meager evidence
in support of the hypothesis that the generic remedy is therapeutically effective.
The present opportunity to collect further evidence pro or con the hypothesis
I could hardly be expected to forego in this distinguished synod of Spinozists,
and I am thus expressly inviting your participation in the conference-wide effort
to test the hypothesis informally in the privacy of your closets. Indulging the
hope that the results will be encouraging, I look forward to the day when the
professional psychologist, and here I am thinking rather of those engaged in
experimental than in clinical psychology, will undertake in 'double-blind' fashion
with 'controls* etc., to measure the precise degree of effectiveness, or lack
thereof, that may be assigned to the generic remedy vis-à-vis this or that form
of emotional disorder. Any such vindication of Spinoza in empirical terms
would, I fear, strike some of you as involving a radical betrayal of him on his
own terms as a paradigmatic rationalist.
For my own part, before conceding the point I would need to understand
much more clearly than I do what exactly is the role of scientific experiment
in Spinoza's theory of knowledge, addressing especially Letter 6 in all its
chemical detail. Almost equally obscure has been widely felt to be the purely
rational component in his epistemology as featured on the highest level, in the
intuitive knowledge of concrete particulars. As to what such knowledge might
actually come to, the generic remedy is found to be highly suggestive at any rate
in its abbreviated version when we proceed direct from the minor premise to
the conclusion without engaging in a detour that involves the major premise.
Merely omitting the major premise on a verbal or even sub-vocal level will not,
of course, suffice, seeing that one may yet be tacitly relying on the universal
premise in the fashion of any enthymeme. One is required rather to intuit
directly that this instance of sadness just is - essentially - a case where my power
of acting or my body's power of acting is diminished. Although there is plenty
of room here for scepticism, one can readily appreciate perhaps for the first time
the pull of rational intuition.
The issue comes down to this. Let it be granted that the major premise
expresses a necessary, a priori truth. Rationality is only being exercised here,
however, on the level of universals, though the term 'intuition,* recalling
Aristotle's use of noesis in the last chapter of Posterior Analytics, can be
216 JOSÉ BENARDETE

employed with propriety to designate it. However problematical this universal

sort of intuition may be, and the empiricist is eager to reject it along with the
synthetic a priori, much more so is the particular or singular variety to which
Spinoza appeals. A moderate version of it would allow us to dispense with the
major premise of the generic syllogism only insofar as it is called upon to play
an occurrent role in the cognitive episode. A dispositional role for the premise
in the background will, however, be insisted on by this moderate version of
singular intuition. While it is arguable that Spinoza would be content with the
moderate version, the uncompromising version that dispenses altogether with
the major premise is doubtless to be preferred when it comes to envisaging a
form of ultra-rationalism with real teeth to it.
At the end of the preface to Part III, we learn that the affects of hate,
anger, envy, etc., "follow from the same necessity and force (virtus) of nature
as the other singular things." Any doubts one might have that an instance of
sadness could count as a particular or singular thing ought thus to be allayed,
and it is at any rate much harder to credit ourselves with a faculty of singular
intuition into the essences of thick things like stones than in those of thin ones
like sadness, which have the further advantage of satisfying Bennett's demand
that "my body" should have "contained the thing in question." (Ibid., p. 367)
There is also a metaphysical point to be made here. The essence of each
thing is identified with its conatus, which in its turn is identified with its power
to do anything whatever, either alone or with others (see IIIP7D). No wonder,
then, that in intuiting the essence of an instance of sadness, the reality we are
confronting should have to do expressly with a certain power of acting. If my
formulation is felt to be self-servingly vague, the reason is not far to seek. I
am merely gesturing toward ultimate issues in Spinoza in regard to which I am
very unclear, and I am accordingly impatient to return to the relatively firm
ground of therapeutic know-how. Even here, however, it is very much a
metaphysical therapist with whom we have to deal. One has a distinct sense
that in proceeding from the minor premise to the conclusion of the generic
remedy, lingering along the way perhaps with the major premise, one is replacing
the merely phenomenal (i.e., sadness as a confused idea) by the noumenal, seeing
that the therapy proves to be accomplished precisely by plugging us into reality
itself.
By no means gratuitous, my use here of the Kantian idiom is intended to
enforce the suggestion that if Spinoza in effect identifies noumenal reality, in
the small as well as in the large, with a power to act, which is neutral as
between the attributes of thought and extension, the whole notion of power and
causality assumes a peculiar urgency after David Hume. How Kant in particular
can be seen to bear on this issue of a rational yet post-Humean intuition into
power and causality, one can readily gather from my paper "The Deduction of
Causality,"1 where a framework is provided that allows for the recognition of
the generic syllogism as being all of a piece with a whole battery of
transcendental arguments.
 Therapeutics and Hermeneutics 217

IV

According to IVP53, "humility is not a virtue," which is pretty much to say

that it "does not arise from reason." This anti-biblical sentiment is pursued at
some length in the demonstration, where we are urged to recall that the affect
of humility is

a sadness which arisesfromthe fact that a man considers his own lack of power.
Moreover, insofar as a man knows himself by true reason, it is supposed that he
understands his own essence, i.e., his own power. So if a man, in considering himself,
perceives some lack of power of his, this is not because he understands himself, but
because his power of acting is restrained.

That the whole discussion is immensely relevant to the generic remedy ought
to be clear at once, though I confess to having been very slow to realize it, and
even now I remain largely in a state of wonder over the irony of the situation.
Having assumed that the generic syllogism takes us from a confused idea to one
that is clear and distinct, the former being objectionably psychologistic, the latter
admirably behavioristic in character, it now appears to be the case that one bad
affect has merely been superseded by another; and the generic remedy comes
to sight as a dubious piece of humility therapy.
If this result is unexpected, it is not as if there were no warning signals.
Accompanied by the thought of an external cause, one's initial sadness
presumably has that external item as its intentional object, helping ourselves to
Brentano's idiom. Ostensibly saddened by (the thought of) that object, one is
somehow invited by Spinoza to entertain the following suggestion. Surely what
one really ought to be sad about is not so much the external object but rather
the internal diminishment in one's power of acting that has, admittedly, been
brought on by one's being cathected to the external object. Accordingly, a new
intentional object for one's sadness emerges, and one thus comes to undergo
the affect of humility from which in its turn one presumably wishes to be
liberated. Although on the level of theory very little appears to have been
gained, when it comes to actual praxis my clinical experience strongly suggests
that in trading the one affect for the other one does in fact profit by the
transaction.
There is even some reason to believe that the interplay of theory and
practice, specifically in the form of hermeneutics and therapeutics respectively,
can serve to advance us alternately now on the one front, now on the other;
and indeed a more extended look at IVP53D, guided by the distinction between
perceiving and conceiving - understood as involving the contrast between passivity
and activity - that is drawn in IID3Exp is found to undermine my precipitate
conclusion that the generic remedy is to be regarded as an exercise in humility.
While it is true enough that "if a man in considering himself perceives some lack
of power of his," he will undergo humility, "suppose that the man conceives his
lack of power." What then? A mere distinction without a difference? Maybe
so, but Spinoza expressly denies it, and it is here above all that we are
218 JOSÉ BENARDETE

challenged to translate a doctrine, in itself dizzingly abstract, into the thick of

everyday life.
Arguably too generic in my approach, I am now prompted to engage a
specific affect at close quarters in all its vivid specificity. An irresistible text
is provided by IIIP32 which positively invites the following film script regarding
an occasion of (what one would ordinarily suppose to be) gratuitous envy.
Seated opposite one in a railway carriage, a man or woman is ostentatiously
doting over (let us say) a rare Siamese cat, nuzzling it, etc. Spinoza's psychology
now predicts that the more the person resembles oneself and the more
idiosyncratic the object in which the person is taking delight, so much the more
will one undergo distress, assuming of course - a sinister proviso - that no ready
opportunity is afforded one to deprive the person of the object. As one of our
moral heroes, Spinoza is standardly supposed to have risen above such unworthy
sentiments, and yet here he appears to regard them as endemic to the human
condition as much.
It must be admitted, however, that IIIP32, as well as other propositions in
the vicinity, has inevitably a ceteris paribus clause tacitly attached it, which
renders its application in any particular case less than perfectly straightforward.
There is, correspondingly, an evident difficulty as to experimental design when
it comes to verifying or falsifying IIIP32, though my own gloss on it will be seen
to facilitate the undertaking by identifying two independent variables that can
be controlled for fairly readily. Even so, there doubtless remain sufficient
methodological difficulties to suggest Quinean misgivings as to the feasibility
of testing whole theories on a sentence-by-scntcnce basis. One such sentence
that does lend itself to being empirically confirmed or disconfirmed in fairly
isolated fashion I take to be IIIP32, Quinean misgivings to the contrary
notwithstanding.
Assuming now the truth of II1P32, if only for the nonce, we want to know
how we are to cope therapeutically with the episode in the railway carriage, in
specific as well as generic terms. No mere example chosen at random, IIIP32
expresses a non-trivial, even shocking thesis of Spinoza's psychology, which
convicts us post-Freudians of being much more moralistic than we suppose.
It may be suggested that expressly conducting one's life under its auspices might
well have practical consequences almost as far-reaching as those that devolve
on the acceptance of the family romance as postulated by Freud in terms of a
ménage à trois. The latter one might even undertake to explain as a special case
of the former, on the ground that "if we imagine that someone," i.e., the father,
"enjoys something," i.e., the mother, "that only one can possess, we," i.e., the son,
"shall strive to bring it about that he does not possess it." The "motiveless
malignity" of Iago (as Coleridge characterized it) might also be explained in
terms of Desdemona's being an enjoyable object that only one, namely Othello
(or is it Cassio?) can really possess.
At this point, fascinated by the implications of IIIP32, one may come even
to welcome the kind of opportunity that is represented by the episode in the
railway carriage, for "the Mind, as far as it can, strives to imagine those things
that increase or aid the Body's power of acting" (II1P12) and, though the episode
 Therapeutics and Hermeneutics 219

itself appears to feature an occasion of distress, why should it not serve to

activate so much rationality, in the course of one's achieving a clear and distinct
idea of one's sadness, that on balance the occasion proves to be one of joy? The
trick here is to exploit a qualifying phrase in the General Definition of the
Affects where a passion is said to be "a confused idea by which the Mind affirms
of its Body, or some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing," i.e., power
of acting, "than before."
In the case at hand, then, the sadness I undergo in the railway carriage may
be presumed to involve only a part of my body, for otherwise the passion might
be expected to be indeed disabling, and being rather very much on the qui vive
in regard to all such challenges - the film script is being written by me - I
proceed almost at once to address it with the following specific version of the
generic remedy. "Here am I undergoing sadness of the IIIP32 or Iago variety.
But sadness is a passion indicating that the body or a part of the body's power
of acting is diminished. Therefore, the power of acting of my body or a part
of my body is diminished." A new syllogism or immediate inference will now
take me from the minor premise, "But I am actively aware that my power of
acting in respect to at least part of my body is currently impeded," for the initial
distress or sadness is presumed to remain largely undispelled by the exorcism,
to the inevitable conclusion, "It is only in respect to part of my body that my
power of acting is impeded." Combining now the conclusion of this second
syllogism with its minor premise in order to construct a new minor premise of
the form 'p & q' for a third argument, I am led to the further conclusion, "My
power of acting while diminished in one respect is currently enhanced in
another"; and in the most favored case, taken on balance, my power of acting
will have increased, though the experience will be felt to have a bitter-sweet
character. By no means an occasion of humility, this case will doubtless count
as one where a "man conceives his lack of power" (in a certain respect).
Suppose, however, that overall my power of acting has decreased, which is as
much as to say that my sadness preponderates. Then Spinoza appears to be
committed to the view that the minor premise of my second syllogism must be
false, and I cannot be actively but only passively aware of my lack of power.
Merely perceiving my lack of power, having failed in my effort to conceive it,
I will doubtless abort the second syllogism in mid-career as well as undergo the
affect of humility.
In the favored case, I am presumably to be understood as having succeeded
in turning a passion into an action in accordance with VP3, and my undergoing
a Iagoesque sentiment in these optimum circumstances even counts as a definite
plus for me, on which I am entitled to congratulate myself. So at any rate, I
am prepared to argue on the basis of IIP17S, IIP35S and IVP1S. A defect or
limitation of my optical apparatus taken by itself in isolation, my visual
representation of the sun as being only 200 ft. distant from me when I look up
at it, is properly to be understood as the exercise of one of my powers or virtues
when it is subsumed within the larger cognitive enterprise. All such perceptual
illusions are in themselves to be classified as passions along with envy, hatred,
etc., and the latter will thus be redeemed like the former by serving as mere
220 JOSÉ BENARDETE

components of larger cognitive activities. Far from being confined to a life of

cloistered virtue, Spinoza's free man can be found on occasion to leap into the
rough-and-tumble of the world, prepared even to undergo bad affects if overall
they can be made to promote cognitivity into their own occurrence.
That, then, is what fortitudo and animositas finally come to, and though
there are times in reading Part V when "it is hard not to see Spinoza as
committed to offering sensory deprivation as an ideal" (Bennett (1984), 325),
the effort probably ought to be made, bearing in mind that "our intellect would
of course be more imperfect if our Mind were alone and did not understand
anything except itselF (IVP18S, cf. also IIP29S).

1. In The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, ed. by Richard Kennington, (Washington: 1985).

 "A FREE MAN ALWAYS ACTS HONESTLY, NOT DECEPTIVELY":
FREEDOM AND THE GOOD IN SPINOZAS ETHICS

DON GARRETT
University of Utah

Spinoza devotes the last seven propositions of Part IV (PP67-73) of the Ethics
to "the free man's temperament and manner of living."1 Perhaps the most
surprising and puzzling of these is IVP72, which asserts that:

(1) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively.

The proposition is surprising because by this point in the Ethics Spinoza seems
already committed to three other claims which are jointly incompatible with it:

(2) It is always good to act so as to best preserve one's own being.

(3) One can sometimes best preserve one's own being by acting deceptively, not
honestly.
(4) It is never good to act contrary to the way in which the free man acts.

This paradox is so striking and fundamental that we can hardly claim to

understand, much less evaluate, Spinoza's ethical views unless we know how -
or whether - it can be resolved. In this paper, I will be concerned with three
questions. First, which if any of (l)-(4) would he reject? Secondly, which of
these propositions ought he reject, given the fundamental character of his system?
Thirdly, to what extent can the resulting ethical theory be an adequate one?
I will proceed by considering each of (l)-(4) in turn, describing and evaluating
both the grounds for ascribing the claim to Spinoza and the ways in which its
ascription to him might be denied. I will argue that Spinoza accepts (l)-(3),
and that he would and should reject (4). I will conclude by considering the
consistency and practical acceptability of the resulting ethical theory.

{I) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively. The evidence for claiming
that Spinoza accepts (1) appears at first sight to be incontrovertible: he explicitly
asserts it as IVP72. But the simple fact that Spinoza asserts (1) does not by
itself entail that he actually accepts it. To reach that conclusion, we require two
additional suppositions: first, that he aims to act honestly, not deceptively, at
IVP72; and secondly, that he accurately formulates - without, for example,
inadvertent overstatement - the proposition that he intends. Either of these
suppositions may be questioned.
With respect to the first supposition, the depth of Spinoza's commitment
to honesty is precisely what is in question in the interpretation of IVP72; and
to cite the proposition itself as evidence of that commitment would simply beg
the question in this context. For suppose that Spinoza believes both of the
222 DON GARRETT

following: (A) that he would always do best to preserve his own being, or
maximize his own advantage; and (B) that he can best preserve his own being
or maximize his own advantage by insincerely claiming that the free man always
acts honestly. Under those circumstances, consistency would not only permit
him to make such an insincere claim, it would positively require it of him.
Indeed, in thus asserting (1) insincerely, Spinoza might not even intend to
deceive the truly wise or free among his readers. He might be aiming mere-
ly to obtain the honesty of the credulous or to mollify the ignorant, perhaps
secure in the knowledge that those who had fully understood the preceding
propositions would recognize both the ironic falsehood of (1) and the
self-interested grounds that compelled him, from consistency with his own
principles, to assert it.
The possibility that Spinoza asserts (1) insincerely cannot, therefore, be
dismissed without a hearing. Nevertheless, it is not ultimately convincing, for
two main reasons. First, when we seriously consider the proposition's context
in the Ethics as a whole, it soon becomes implausible that Spinoza should
suppose an insincere assertion of (1) actually to serve any useful purpose. Its
mere inclusion in the Ethics would be unlikely to increase the honesty of others
with whom he might have dealings. Nor could it be supposed to play any
significant role in warding off persecution from persons otherwise likely to be
scandalized by the Ethics. For reassuring as (1) is, it is hardly enough to remove
the sting from Spinoza's thoroughgoing determinism, his denial of a personal
God, his mind-body identity theory, or his rejection of such Christian virtues
as pity, humility, and repentance. At the same time, the Ethics9 straightforward-
ness about these other doctrines would undermine any attempt to use (1) ironi-
cally.
The second main reason is perhaps even more fundamental. If Spinoza
did not accept (1), then not only the proposition itself but also the
demonstration of it must be insincere. Tb be sure, Spinoza wrote demonstrations
in Descartes' Principles of Philosophy that he himself thought unsound - he must
have thought them so, since he rejects some of their conclusions. But there
is no internal or external evidence that he fails to take his own demonstration
of (1) seriously. The demonstration contains nine explicit steps, the first of
which is:

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

This is stated at IVP66S, and is a consequence of his definition of freedom as

adequate self-determination [ID7] and his identification of human self-determina-
tion with acting from reason [IIIP1]. It directly entails:

(ii) If a free man did anything by deception, he would do it from the dictate of
reason.

He then cites IVP24, which is a central claim of Part IV:

 "The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 223

(iii) Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving
our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the
foundation of seeking one's own advantage.

And from (ii) and (iii), he infers:

(iv) If a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by deception, it would be a

virtue to act deceptively.

This, I take it, means that if a free man, insofar as he is free, did anything by
deception, then at least some kinds of deceptive actions would be virtues. So
construed, it is a reasonable inference from (ii) and (iii), since (iii) identifies
acting from virtue with acting by the guidance of reason. Also from (iii) he
concludes:

(v) If it could be a virtue to act deceptively, then everyone would "be better advised"
(consilium esset) to act deceptively to preserve his being.

This follows, given the additional but Spinozistic-sounding assumption that if

one does something to preserve one's being nby the guidance of reason from
the foundation of seeking one's own advantage," then one is "better advised" to
do it. Next, he states:

(vi) If everyone would be better advised to act deceptively to preserve his being,
then men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be contrary to one
another in fact.

This claim depends only on the assumption that if one acts deceptively to
preserve one's being, then one is agreeing with others only in words, and not
in fact - a reasonable assumption, since whoever acts deceptively brings it about
that others believe something that he himself does not believe or vice versa.
Following this claim, he cites IVP31C, which states:

(vii) The more a thing agrees with our nature, the more useful, or better, it is for
us, and conversely, the more a thing is useful to us, the more it agrees with our
nature.

IVP31C is ultimately derived from two Spinozistic principles: that whatever

pertains to a thing's nature tends to the preservation of its being, and that the
same cause always produces the same effect. From (vii), in turn, he derives:

(viii) It is absurd that men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be
contrary to one another in fact.

This inference requires only the plausible assumptions that (a) men are never
"better advised" to pursue that which is not maximally useful to them, and that
(b) "agreeing only in words while being contrary in fact" is a kind of "disagree-
224 DON GARRETT

ment in nature" between two parties. Finally, then, from (iv), (v), (vi), and (viii),
it follows that:

(ix) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively.

This is, of course, IVP72 - and (1) - itself. Complex as this demonstration may
be, it appears to consist of premises and inferences that Spinoza would be likely
to accept; it does not look like an attempt at a fraudulent proof. Thus, the first
supposition - that Spinoza aims to act honestly at IVP72 - seems warranted.
What of the other supposition, namely that he accurately formulates the
proposition he intends? It might be argued that (1) - though not intentionally
dishonest - is something of an overstatement, describing as universal what is true
of the free man only generally speaking, or in most cases. But Spinoza seems
specifically to block this suggestion, while reinforcing the serious intent of his
original Demonstration, in the Scholium to IVP72:

Suppose someone now asks: what if a man could save himself from the present
danger of death by treachery? Would not the principle of preserving his own being
recommend, without qualification, that he be treacherous?

The reply to this is the same. If reason should recommend that, it would recommend
it to all men. And so reason would recommend, without qualification, that men should
make agreements to join forces, and to have common laws only by deception - i.e.,
that they have no common laws. This is absurd.

Given the apparent sincerity of IVP72, the intent of this Scholium can only
be to defend it from even the most plausible of the potential exceptions to it.
Thus, I conclude that Spinoza means what he says when he claims that the free
man always acts honestly, not deceptively, and that he means the claim to admit
of no exceptions.
(2) It is always good to act so as to best preserve one's own being, IVD1
and IVD2 present the formal definitions of 'good' and 'evil*:

Definition 1: By good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us.

Definition 2: By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents

us from being masters of some good.

Since Spinoza identifies "one's own advantage" with "preserving one's being"
(IVP20,S), however, he can also characterize good and evil in terms of
self-preservation; and this is just what he docs, citing IVD1 and IVD2 as
support, at the outset of IVP8D: "We call good, or evil, what is useful to, or
harmful to, preserving our being." (2) follows immediately.
Spinoza's commitment to (2) is thus both evident and fundamental. Since
the good is the advantageous for Spinoza, and the advantageous is the
preservation of one's own being, nothing can be better for oneself than
self-preservation. Tb be sure, he also asserts that, "We know nothing to be
 "The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 225

certainly good or evil, except what really leads to understanding or what can
prevent us from understanding" (IVP27). But the preservation of one's being
is a logical prerequisite for having understanding; and this fact in itself prevents
the preservation or increase of one's understanding from being a good that could
override the preservation of one's being. Moreover, whatever leads to under-
standing, in Spinoza's view, by that very fact aids in the preservation of one's
being, for two reasons. First, any maintenance or increase in understanding is
a maintenance or increase in one's present power of action and the full
realization of one's own nature, so that understanding literally is a preservation
or amplification of one's own being. Secondly, precisely because it is the central
element in one's active power and resources, maintaining or increasing one's
present understanding also promotes the future preservation of one's being.
Spinoza also makes it clear that one's own good cannot be overridden by
the good or advantage of any other being. For example, he offers a prospectus
of his theory of the relation among different persons' interests at IVP18S:

There are... many things outside us which are useful to us, and on that account to
be sought. Of these, we can think of none more excellent than those that agree
entirely with our nature. For if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same
nature are joined to one another, they compose an individual twice as powerful as
each one. To man, then, there is nothing more useful than man. Man, I say, can
wish for nothing more helpful to the presentation of his being than that all should so
agree in all things that the Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as it were, one
Mind and one Body; that all should strive together, as far as they can, to preserve
their being; and that all, together, should seek for themselves the common advantage
of all. [emphasis added]

Here Spinoza characteristically emphasizes the extent to which the advantage

of different individual persons can coincide. Nevertheless, he states that the
interests of other individuals enter into one's own considerations only through
their usefulness to oneself. This is just what one should expect, given his claim
at IIIP20S that nno one, therefore, unless he is defeated by causes external, and
contrary, to his nature, neglects to seek his own advantage, or preserve his
being," and his claim at IVApp8 that "it is permissible for everyone to do, by
the highest right of nature, what he judges will contribute to his advantage."2
Nor can the good or advantage of eternal things - such as "the idea that
expresses the essence of this or that human Body, under a species of eternity"
(VPP22-23), "the part of the Mind that is eternal" (VPP38-39), or even God
himself - override one's own preservation as a good. For nothing can hinder
or aid the preservation of an eternal being, nor can such beings have any
potential objects of desire for themselves. Hence there is nothing for their
"advantage" or "good" to consist in. Tb be sure, an individual person has an
advantage in bringing it about that his present stock of eternal (and hence
always-existing) ideas should remain as part of his mind, and also that it should
come to be supplemented by other equally eternal and adequate ideas. But this
is simply for that individual to increase his own knowledge, and not for him to
benefit these eternal ideas. As we have seen, such an increase is not, for
226 DON GARRETT

Spinoza, incompatible with one's own advantage or preservation, but is instead

precisely that in which one's own highest advantage and preservation consist.
Thus, the good, for Spinoza, is the advantageous; that which is most
advantageous to oneself is one's own preservation; and the advantage of others
cannot be ranked ahead of one's own as a good, even in the case of those beings
that do have an "advantage." I conclude, therefore, that he is fully committed
to (2), without exception.
3. One can sometimes best preserve one's own being by acting deceptively,
not honestly. Although Spinoza maintains that the greatest good - understanding
- can be enjoyed equally by all (IVP36), he also holds that for the mind to be
"equally capable of understanding many things," the body must be "equally
capable of all the things which can follow from its nature" (IVP45S), so that
the pursuit of understanding also requires intermediate goods to keep the body
functioning properly. Thus he states at IVP39:

Those things are good which bring about the preservation of the proportion of
motion and rest the human Body's parts have to one another [i.e., continued life];
on the other hand, those things are evil which bring it about that the parts of the
human Body have a different proportion of motion and rest to one another [i.e.,
death, as IVP39S indicates].

And again, at E IVApp27:

The principal advantage which we derive from things outside us... lies in the
preservation of our body. That is why those things are most useful to us which can
feed and maintain it, so that all its parts can perform their function properly.

It seems an unmistakable fact, however, that circumstances can arise in which

one's physical life can be preserved only by actions that would ordinarily be
regarded as deceptive. Certainly there are cases in which successful competition
for a limited supply of physical necessities will demand such actions. Moreover,
there are also cases in which such actions are necessary to ward off an external
danger - for example, when escape from immediate execution requires fraud-
ulently offering one's guards a sum of money that one cannot actually command.
Were it not for the Scholium to IVP72, it might be suggested that the abstract-
ness of Spinoza's argument prevents him from noticing such cases. But the
Scholium makes it clear that he has indeed noticed the possibility of such cases,
and takes them seriously.
Given that he recognizes cases in which death can be avoided only by
actions ordinarily deemed deceptive, then, Spinoza could deny (3) only by
holding either (a) that preserving one's physical life in such cases does not
constitute "best preserving one's being," or (b) that preserving one's physical
life in such cases does not constitute "deception," Let us consider the first of
these alternatives.
Spinoza makes several mitigating claims about physical death. He asserts
that "a free man thinks of nothing less than of death" (IVP67); that "the more
 The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 227

the Mind understands things... the less it fears death" (VP38; see also VP39-
S); and that "death is less harmful to us, the greater the Mind's clear and distinct
knowledge, and hence, the more the Mind loves God... [T]he human Mind can
be of such a nature that the part of the Mind which we have shown perishes
with the body... is of no moment in relation to what remains" (VP38S).
Upon examination, however, none of these remarks implies that one can
ever best preserve one's being by actually choosing death over an alternative that
involves continued life. The free man does not think of death, according to
Spinoza, simply because he directly pursues the good rather than avoiding evil;
hence the free man directly pursues the good of life, rather than being consumed
with thoughts of death (IVP67D). The person with understanding has less fear
of death because he is less subject to negative affects in general (VP38D). He
is also less harmed by death, since, to the extent that a person gains knowle-
dge, he brings it about that a greater and more important part of his mind
consists of knowledge that is eternal. This means that a relatively smaller and
far less significant portion of his mind is something that is absolutely destroyed
by death (VP38D). As one gains in understanding, one begins to approximate,
as a limit, a state in which one would be totally unaffected by death, or any
other potential harm. But this limit could actually be reached only by an infinite
being whose mind contained all knowledge and was not at all bound by im-
agination. Hence, Spinoza's doctrine does not entail that death could ever cease
to be of any harm at all for any finite human being, who must remain a part of
nature (IIIP4). On the contrary, death does constitute for us the end of at least
some portion of the mind, even if the least important part, and hence constitutes
a failure to preserve one's being completely. Moreover, death is the end of any
prospect of further increasing one's understanding or that portion of one's mind
that is eternal; indeed, it is the end of any prospect of additional gain at all.
Thus, Spinoza writes at IVP21:

No one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to live well, unless at the same
time he desires to be, to act, and to live, i.e., to actually exist.

Hence, despite the declining importance of death to the wise man, any actual
human being who acts, even deceptively, so as to save his physical life will always
preserve his being better to at least some extent than one who does not.
The second approach to denying (3) would be to argue that no action
can properly be regarded as deceptive if it is required to preserve one's being.
Spinoza maintains, following Hobbes, that it is impossible completely to promise
or contract away one's right of self-preservation, regardless of what one may say
or do (TTP XVII; see also TP II-III). As a consequence, he holds that all
compacts and promises should be understood to be operative only so long as
they do not conflict with the preservation of one's being, since no compact or
promise could possibly prevent one from pursuing the preservation of one's
being. Because compacts and promises have this implicit limitation, it might
be suggested, "violating" them for the sake of self-preservation is not, in
Spinoza's view, really deception.
228 DON GARRETT

This suggestion is unsatisfactory, however, for several reasons. First,

although Spinoza states explicitly (TTP XVI) that everyone has the right to break
a promise when he judges that doing so will be advantageous (a minimal claim
that follows from his assertion that 'right' and 'power' are co-extensive), he
nevertheless characterizes such actions as practices of deceit (see also TP III,
17). And he does not give any indication that he is using the term 'deception'in
any more restricted way in the Ethics. On the contrary, IVP72 and its Scholium
strongly imply that he is speaking of deceit in the ordinary sense. For the
reason why deception cannot be a virtue is said to be that it produces a
circumstance in which persons do not agree in nature. And every case of
deception in the ordinary sense - whether for self-preservation or not - is a case
in which persons disagree in nature, since deception of any kind entails
producing in others beliefs different from one's own.
Thus, although he does not assert (3) explicitly, Spinoza's position clearly
commits him to it, and does so in such a way that he could hardly have been
unaware of that commitment.
(4) It is never good to act contrary to the way in which the free man acts.
In Part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza characterizes actions in four different ways,
each prima facie relevant to ethics: he speaks (a) of "good" actions, or of those
that achieve "a good"; (b) of actions performed "under the guidance of reason,"
or "from the dictate of reason"; (c) of actions performed "from virtue," or whose
performance is "a virtue"; and (d) of actions that "a free man" would perform.
Commentators generally treat the four characterizations as co-extensive. And
this procedure appears to have some basis in the text. For according to IVP18S,
"reason demands... that everyone... seek his own advantage... (and) preserve his
own being as far as he can," i.e., do that which is good for him; (IVD1, IVP8D)
while IVP66S states that "one who is led by reason... I call... a free man." These
statements seem to imply that "good actions" and "actions of a free man" are
both co-extensive with "actions performed from the dictate of reason," and hence
that they are also co-extensive with each other - which entails (4). Virtue, in
turn, enters in through IVP24 (cited in the demonstration of IVP72) which
asserts that "acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living,
and preserving our being... by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of
seeking one's own advantage."
But does Spinoza really intend all of these terms to be co-extensive? He
devotes the Preface of Part IV to just two evaluative distinctions: "perfection
and imperfection, good and evil." He begins by explaining the use of the term
'perfect' (perfectus, from perficere) in terms of its etymological sense of
"completed" or "finished." Originally, he maintains, the term referred only to
artifacts known or believed to be completed in the way intended by their authors.
Under the influence of the false supposition that nature creates everything for
a purpose, however, the term gradually came to refer more generally to the
extent to which a thing, even a natural object, matches the generic "model" of
its kind that each person forms on the basis of his own common experience.4
Thus the term generally reflects only a "mode of thinking" rather than a real
feature of the objects themselves, and is applied differently by different persons
 "The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 229

depending on the character of the "universal ideas" or models that they happen
to have formed. 'Good,' in contrast, primarily expresses our desire for
something; as he has already claimed at IIIP9S, we do not "desire anything
because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good
because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it." Thus, it too reflects only
a mode of thinking, and indicates "nothing positive in things, considered in
themselves," since "Music is good for one who is Melancholy, bad for one who
is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf." It too is highly
variable in its application, since what is judged to be good will depend on the
judger's particular desires, which are often passions.
Spinoza's intent is to adapt these previously subjective predicates to desig-
nate objective practical relations. Thus he concludes near the end of the
Preface:

But though this is so, still we must retain these words. For because we desire to
form an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to, it will be
useful to us to retain these same words with the meaning I have indicated. In what
follows, therefore, I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by
which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we
set before ourselves. By evil, what we certainly know prevents us from becoming like
that model. Next, we shall say that men are more perfect or imperfect, insofar as
they approach more or less near to this model. (See also TdlE, 13, which is simil-
ar.)

Although the definitions of both pairs of terms employ the notion of a "model
of human nature," they are by no means identical. The perfect/imperfect distinc-
tion, as defined here, applies only to persons, whereas the good/evil distinction
applies to things of all kinds, including actions. Once we have the concept of
perfection, of course, we can also speak of the actions that the perfect man
would perform. But, although the point has apparently not been noted, even
this latter concept need not be co-extensive with the concept of good actions.
Someone is perfect to the extent that he presently approximates to the model
or ideal; whereas something is good to the extent that it aids us in becoming like
this model or ideal. Prima facie, there is no reason why an action that would
be good for someone to perform, in this sense, should also be the action that
the perfect man would perform - unless, perhaps, the agent in question were
already perfect.
Consider an analogy. Suppose that our model or ideal were that of a
person leading the characteristic life of the idle rich. Now, for someone who
is already one of the idle rich, idle behavior would be "good" in the sense that
it would help him to remain or become even more like the chosen model. For
the poor man, however - who aspires to the model without having yet achieved
it - idle behavior would be an "evil," likely to prevent him from obtaining the
wealth needed to live the life of the idle rich; for him, in contrast, hard work
would be a "good." The point is a simple one: when one has not yet achieved
a certain kind of existence, the actions that one must perform in order to achieve
230 DON GARRETT

it are not necessarily the actions that one will characteristically perform once
one has achieved it.
After concluding his discussion of perfection and goodness in the Preface,
Spinoza begins Part IV itself by offering formal, numbered definitions of 'good'
and 'evil' (IVDD1-2), and goes on to use them frequently. Strikingly, howe-
ver, despite the fact that by far the largest part of Part IV's Preface is devoted
to a discussion of them, 'perfect' and its cognates do not occur at all in the
Definitions, Axioms, Propositions or Demonstrations of Part IV, and they occur
only four times, all in passing, in the Scholia (twice in IV 18S, once each in
IVP45S and IVP58S). This omission is explicable, however. For the Preface
defines "perfection" in terms of approximation to "the model that we set before
ourselves," without actually specifying what that model is. The model itself is
developed gradually throughout the course of Part IV, culminating in the portrait
of the free man at IVP 67-72. (Presumably this initial lack of specificity about
the model is also what accounts for the variation in the definition of "good,"
which is defined at IVDl simply in terms of what is useful "to us," rather than
in terms of what is useful for "approaching nearer to our model of human
nature," as in the Preface.) Hence, we are to understand what human perfection
is, and how the perfect man acts, in large measure at least, by understanding
what the free man is, and how the free man acts. Freedom provides a
specification of what human perfection actually consists in.
But for the same reason that the class of "good actions" need not be
co-extensive with "actions of a perfect man," in Spinoza's sense, they also need
not be co-extensive with "actions of a free man." Thus, I propose that we
interpret Spinoza as holding both that the ideal or model free man would never
act deceptively, and that deception may under some circumstances neverthe-
less be good for actual human beings who have not fully achieved this ideal.
These circumstances will be the (generally rare) ones under which deception is
genuinely necessary to preserve one's life or otherwise aid in the preservation
of one's being.5

II

This proposed interpretation resolves the original paradox by rejecting (4).

Before it can be accepted, however, it must be examined in greater detail. In
particular, we must consider whether it is compatible with (a) IVP72 itself; (b)
the Demonstration of IVP72; (c) the Scholium to IVP72; and (d) the remainder
of Part IV.
IVP72 requires that the ideal free man would never act deceptively; but
in discussing (3), we concluded that - for Spinoza - any actual human being
would always best preserve his being by choosing an act of deception over
death, if those were the only alternatives. Since the free man always does
what is best to preserve his own being, we may appear to be involved in a
contradiction that the mere rejection of (4) cannot resolve. In fact, however,
what this shows is only that no actual human being is the ideal free man. But
this consequence is just what we should expect, since the concept of a completely
 "The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 231

free man involves a contradiction. From a thing's being completely free, it

follows that it is completely self-determined and utterly independent of external
causes; on the other hand, from a thing's being a man, it follows that it is
necessarily a part of nature and subject to external causes. Like the concept
of the complete "agreement in nature" among persons that would result in a
complete coinciding of interests and advantage (see note 2), or like the complete
understanding that would make the whole of one's mind eternal so that death
mattered not at all, the concept of the free man is the concept of a limit that
can be approached but not completely attained by finite human beings.6
The final unattainability of these ideals does not completely undermine
their cognitive value for Spinoza, however. For they can be used to convey
at least two important things: first, that the presence of one characteristic can
be fully explained through the presence of another characteristic; and second,
that the former characteristic will - other things being equal - vary with the
increase or decrease of the latter. Thus, the beneficiality of human beings to
one another can be fully explained through their agreement in nature, and will
tend to increase as that agreement increases. Lack of concern with death can
be fully explained through the eternal part of the mind, and the mind will tend
to have less fear of death as this part of the mind becomes a larger part of the
whole. Similarly, a person's honesty (when it is a consequence of the endeavor
to agree in nature with others) can be fully explained through his freedom, and
his honesty will tend to increase along with his freedom, in Spinoza's view. For
as a person becomes more free, he will lose the characteristic motives for
dishonesty: he will forego the pursuit of temporary, competitive goods such as
wealth, fame, and sensual pleasure; he will come to understand more clearly the
value of society, friendship, and human aid, and the importance of honesty in
procuring those goods; he will become more able to achieve goods by cooperative
rather than deceptive means; and he will become less and less susceptible to
harm. On the other hand, whenever deception is still required, it must be
explained at least partly through the person's lack of freedom, including his
dependence on external goods and his inability to achieve his ends by the more
permanently beneficial means of producing agreement in nature between himself
and others. Hence, those who are most free will also be most honest. Insofar
as they are free, they will never deceive; though it will nevertheless remain true
that, insofar as they are living, finite, human beings, they cannot be assured that
they will never find it necessary to do so.
The proposed interpretation is thus compatible with IVP72; and it is also,
I believe, compatible with its Demonstration. As we have seen, the demon-
stration seeks in effect to provide a reductio ad absurdum of the supposition
that a free man could act deceptively "insofar as he is free" Insofar as he is free,
Spinoza argues, the free man acts from the dictate of reason, hence virtuously,
and hence does what he is "better advised" to do. But deception is an instance
of persons failing to agree in nature, whereas what is best, or maximally useful,
is that persons should agree in nature. Hence, he concludes, a free man cannot
act deceptively insofar as he is free. The only difficulty here is with the meaning
of the phrase 'be better advised' (consultius esset). The demonstration entails
232 DON GARRETT

(via the simple conjunction of steps (vi) and (viii)) that one can never be "better
advised" to act deceptively to preserve one's being. Hence, if we interpret "one
is better advised to do x" as simply equivalent to "it would be good for one to
do x," then it will follow that it can never be good to act deceptively, contrary
to the proposed interpretation.
I see no reason to interpret the two expressions as equivalent, however.
Indeed, if we do so, we threaten to invalidate Spinoza's inference from (vii)
to (viii) (i.e., from the claim that things are best for us as they most agree
with our nature, to the claim that it is absurd that men would be "better
advised" to agree only in words and not in fact). For it is notalways good to
refrain from an action that will produce a less-than-optimal state of affairs - not
unless the alternative of producing the optimal state instead is actually within
one's power. More specifically, it need not be good for one to refrain from
deception, even though it involves a lack of agreement in nature between
persons, if all of one's actually-feasible alternatives also involve a lack of
agreement in nature - such as competition for scarce life-saving goods - plus
greater harms as well. (Compare, for example, IVP58S, which asserts that
Shame, "though not a virtue," is still "a good" if the only alternative is conceived
as that of being shameless through lack of desire to live honestly.) Hence, if
the Demonstration is to be valid, we must understand "better advised to do x"
as meaning something more like "ideally advised to do x." With that
understanding, there is no conflict between the Demonstration and the proposed
interpretation.
Before leaving IVP72, we must also consider its Scholium. There, as we
have seen, Spinoza asks whether, if one faced a choice between death and
treachery, the principle of preserving one's own being would not "recommend
without qualification" that one be treacherous. His response is that "if reason
should recommend that, it would recommend it to all men. And so reason
would recommend, without qualification, that men should make agreements to
join forces, and to have common laws only by deception," which he says is
absurd. On the proposed interpretation, the principle of preserving one's own
being does sometimes recommend treachery or deception - but it does not do
so "without qualification." Specifically, it does not ever do so for the (ideal)
free man, whose character is directly under discussion. Tb the perfectly free
man, even death would be no harm whatever; rather, he would seek only to
maximize the agreement in nature between himself and others. Similar
considerations apply to the question of whether "reason" can recommend
deception "without qualification." Insofar as one is guided by reason, one
maximizes one's agreement in nature with others and cannot be harmed even
by death, since the part of the mind involved in reason is eternal. In fact, since
the free man'sfreedomconsists in his having and acting on adequate ideas, the
ideal of a life completely guided by reason is simply another way of formulating
the ideal of the completely free man. Moreover, reason itself, because it can
be common to everyone, must give the same counsel to all, as the Scholium
implies. It therefore cannot dictate the preservation of one being over another.
The fact that our necessary preference for our own being is not at the same time
 "The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 233

equally a preference for preserving the being of others, arises not from our
common reason but rather (inevitably) from our passivity, finiteness, and hence
lack of agreement in nature with others. If we were perfectly guided by reason,
our good and the good of others would indeed perfectly coincide.
Finally, the proposed interpretation must be reconciled with the passages
cited at the beginning of the present section [viz., IV 18S, IVD1, IVD8, IV 66S]
which seemed jointly to suggest a commitment on Spinoza's part to (4). The
key passage is the one at IVP18S, which reads in full:

Since reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it demands that everyone love
himself, seek his own advantage, what is really useful to him, want what will really
lead man to a greater perfection, and absolutely, that everyone should strive to
preserve his own being as far as he can. [emphasis added]

This seems to entail that, if deception is advantageous and hence good under
some circumstances - as the proposed interpretation requires - then reason will
demand deception; and since (by IVP66S and IVP72D) the free man does what
reason dictates, it seems to follow that the free man will, after all, engage in
deception. First, however, it must be noted why reason is said to demand that
everyone seek his own advantage: because reason demands nothing contrary to
nature. But for Spinoza, nothing occurs "contrary to nature," so that in this
sense, everything whatever occurs by the "demand of reason." It is one thing
to say that certain behavior is "demanded by reason" in this sense, and another
to say that the behavior can be attributed entirely to one's own exercise of
reason, or to reason as it is manifested in the agent himself. Secondly, it is
quite compatible with the present interpretation that reason in each person
should demand the preservation of that person's being, in the sense that
whatever one does from the dictate of reason is, to that extent, conducive to
one's own being. The present interpretation requires only that for those who
are not governed entirely by reason - everyone at some time or another - some
of the acts conducive to the preservation of one's being may not be entirely due
to reason, or freedom. For both of these reasons, the passages cited need not
entail a commitment to (4); hence the passages are compatible with the present
interpretation.
The interpretation I have proposed and defended is thus compatible with
everything Spinoza claims in the Ethics. It not only resolves the original
paradox, it also provides the only resolution of that paradox that does not
violate fundamental Spinozistic doctrines. Finally, it is strongly suggested by
his account of perfection and the good in the Preface to Part IV. I therefore
conclude that he both should and would have rejected (4) for the reasons
suggested by that interpretation.

Ill

Consistency and Practical Acceptability. Of the various tests to which ethical

theories can be submitted, two of the most fundamental are those of consistency
234 DON GARRETT

and practical acceptability. An adequate ethical theory must be internally

consistent; and it must also be such that we can, upon critical reflection,
eventually bring ourselves to accept the judgments of approval and disapproval
that the theory makes of various actions and features of character. Spinoza's
ethical theory is, I believe, often thought to fail one or both of these tests -
particularly with respect to IVP72.
I have already argued that Spinoza is guilty of no direct inconsistency in
the case of the paradox considered, since he rejects the last of the four jointly
inconsistent propositions. Nor is his theory rendered inconsistent through its
employment of such literally contradictory models as that of the "free man."
For Spinoza intends his assertions about such models to be understood only as
describing certain relationships between two or more variable characteristics -
in the present case, freedom and honesty - of real individuals. (See TdlE, 57
for a discussion of the way in which formulations that verbally resemble dis-
cussions of "fictions" can be used to state truths.) And although the completely
free, reasonable, and virtuous man is a necessarily unreachable ideal, it is by no
means unusual for an ethical theory to put forward an ideal that cannot, by the
theory's own lights, be fully achieved by any actual person. It is also not
inconsistent to characterize as "good" some actions that are not regarded as
completely "free," "reasonable," or "virtuous." Spinoza aims, of course, to
minimize the divergence between the "good" and the "perfect." Nevertheless,
some residual divergence is inevitable in his theory, as is evident most clearly
in the case of choosing between death and deception. But some such divergence
is a potential feature of any ethical theory that places, as Spinoza's does, primary
emphasis or value on features of character: in any such theory, the possibility
exists, unless blocked by special features of the theory, that actions necessary
to achieve the valued character should be different from those manifested by
the valued character. Although this is certainly a complication in an ethical
theory, it is not a contradiction.
This complication does, however, pose some initial difficulty when we try
to subject Spinoza's ethical theory to the test of practical acceptability. For we
cannot determine whether we can accept a theory's judgments of approval and
disapproval until we can determine what those judgments are; and it is not
initially clear what actions and features of character Spinoza's theory does
approve. The Ethics avoids mere exhortation, aiming instead to state and
demonstrate facts that will themselves be inherently motivating. But whose
motivation provides the test of "approval"? On the one hand, we can speak of
what the perfectly free man would be motivated to do by his knowledge (i.e.,
what actual persons would do insofar as they were motivated only by reason and
not by features of their finiteness); or we can speak, on the other hand, of what
even the most free and most knowledgeable of finite human beings would
actually be motivated to do, given their finite knowledge and their finite
situation. The perfectly free man would never be motivated to deceive others
or harm their interests; an actual, relatively-free individual, however, can at any
time find himself in circumstances in which he would be necessarily motivated
to deceive or otherwise harm others for his own advantage. Should we think
 The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 235

of Spinoza's ethical theory as "approving" the self-preserving deceptions of

relatively free individuals, on the grounds that the theory pronounces those
actions "good" for those individuals? Or should we rather think of such actions
as outside the approval of the theory, on the grounds that they are - though
predictable and even inevitable - due at least in part to our personal limitations
and differences, and thus foreign to the very highest ethical ideals we can hold
in common?
One way to resolve this interpretive dilemma is to ask what kinds of
actions and features of character Spinoza or the Spinozist himselfv/oulû approve.
The affects that come closest to capturing ethical approval and disapproval are
"favor" (favor, translated by Elwes as "approval," and by Shirley as "appro-
bation") and "indignation" (indignatio)? The former is defined as "Love toward
someone who has benefited another," while the latter is defined as "Hate toward
someone who has done evil to another" (HIDefAffl9, 20). Given these terms,
we can now ask what the Spinozistic attitude would be toward someone who,
for example, employs deceptive means to preserve his own life at the expense
of the lives of several innocent persons; or toward someone who, in the same
circumstances, chooses to sacrifice his own life to save the others.
Let us consider first the person who chooses deception and self-preserva-
tion. It follows from IVP51S that the Spinozist's attitude toward him will not
be one of indignation, for Spinoza there asserts that "Indignation, as we define
it... is necessarily evil." (Certainly many critics will hold that the Spinozist's lack
of indignation - in this case, and in general - by itself demonstrates that the
theory cannot pass the test of practical acceptability. I am inclined to think,
on the contrary, that the doctrine that indignation is always an evil is one of
the theory's most attractive features.) But if the Spinozist will not respond with
indignation, neither will he respond with favor. For favor is a species of love,
which, in turn, is defined as "Joy with the accompanying idea of an external
cause" (IIIP13S). Although the deceiver has benefited himself, he has also
harmed others directly and harmed the institution of honesty as well. He will
therefore not have produced much joy in the Spinozist. Nor will he himself
have been the free or adequate cause of his own action, since to the extent that
a person is free, he acts honestly and not deceptively. For each of these two
reasons, he will not be the object of love or favor for his action. Rather, the
Spinozistic attitude toward such a person will be that his action was a predic-
table phenomenon of nature, due in part to inevitable human weakness and
deserving to be understood, but calling for neither indignation nor favor.
What, then, of the person who makes the opposite choice, sacrificing
through honesty his own life for the sake of benefiting others? Once again
the Spinozist will not respond with indignation, since it is an evil. Favor, on
the other hand, "is not contrary to reason, but can agree with it and arise from
it" (IVP51). Yet in the case of any actual self-sacrificing person, self-sacrifice
cannot be due to the person's being so completely free that his own death does
not matter to him at all. Any actual person who sacrifices his own life must
therefore be failing to achieve his own advantage and the preservation of his
own being. Hence the sacrifice must be the result of his being overcome by
236 DON GARRETT

passions, such as pity, passionate love, fear of regret or punishment, or a

misguided desire for fame or praise. For this reason, even though the action is
beneficial to others, the person himself cannot be regarded as the free or
adequate cause of the benefit. The Spinozist would therefore respond with little
favor towards the agent, once again regarding his action instead only as an
operation of nature - this time, perhaps, a more fortunate one - that results in
innocent lives being saved. Thus on neither alternative would any actual person
facing a choice between deception and death win Spinozistic favor. This is an
example of a situation - that in which one can benefit others only by deceiving
them is another - in which there simply can be no completely virtuous action
to perform, because the situation itself involves a conflict that manifests ultimate
lack of power.
The conclusion which seems to follow, namely that Spinoza would never
approve of a person who sacrificed his own life to save the lives of innocent
persons, may be taken by many to show that his ethics cannot, after all, pass
the test of practical acceptability. However, it is somewhat misleading to con-
clude that Spinoza would not approve of such a person. For just as we must
distinguish the actions of the ideal free man from those of even the most free
of actual persons, so we must distinguish the ethical reactions of the ideal free
man from those of even the most free actual persons. Insofar as Spinoza
himself is governed by reason, he will neither approve nor disapprove of
self-sacrifice. But insofar as he himself is a part of nature, and as such is
subject to affects not entirely rational, it is quite possible that, through his
imaginative fellow-feeling with others and the natural tendency to ascribe
freedom to human actions whose causes we do not know in detail, Spinoza
himself might feel some considerable favor or approval for a self-sacrificing
individual - and perhaps even some indignation towards the person who
preserves himself through deception.
Thus, if we find that we cannot fully bring ourselves to adopt the ethical
attitudes that Spinoza claims one must adopt insofar as one is guided by reason
alone, Spinoza might well agree that we cannot permanently and completely
attain those attitudes. Any actual human being will be influenced in his ethical
judgments not only by pure reason, but by his passions as well. Spinoza would
add only that, as we come to gain understanding, we must then at least begin
to approximate those reasonable attitudes more closely. This claim, if not
obviously right, is at least not obviously wrong. Spinoza's own ethics at least,
even if not also those of the Spinozistic perfectly free man, are arguably capable
of passing the test of practical acceptability.
Conclusion, In this paper, I have argued that Spinoza does not contradict
other doctrines in the Ethics when he claims that the free man always acts
honestly, not deceptively. I believe that, in coming to understand the reasons
why he can make this claim without contradiction, we gain a better appreciation
of the character of his ethical theory in general, and of the considerations that
are involved in assessing its practical acceptability. I have not shown that his
ethical theory is consistent in all of its parts, nor that it is practically acceptable
in all of its consequences, nor that it passes the other important tests to which
 "The Free Man Always Acts Honestly" 237

an ethical theory might be subjected. A fortiori, I have not shown that it is

true. I do hope at least to have suggested, however, that Spinoza's ethical
theory has greater resources, and is of greater plausibility and philosophical
interest, than is sometimes supposed.

1. All quotations are from Curley (1985), sometimes modified to incorporate corrections
made in the second printing.
2. It may be noted that the passage cited from IVP18S mentions another kind of being
in addition to individual persons: the "one Mind and one Body" that all persons who strive
together can compose. Certainly the advantage of this composite being will be the overriding
good for that composite being, just as the advantage of an individual human being overrides
the advantage of any individual bodily organ for that human being. But this does not entail
that the advantage of the composite being as a whole could, in a case of conflict, override
the advantage of an individual part or member for that part or member. Spinoza clearly
implies the contrary when discussing the advantage of parts of the human body at IVP60,D.
Steinberg, "Spinoza's Ethical Doctrine," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 22 (1984),
303-324, argues that the relations of organs to the whole body and to each other provide
a model of how human beings can be so related that the true advantage of each must
always completely coincide with the advantage of mankind as a whole, and hence also with
that of every other human being. Unfortunately, however, these relations cannot provide
the required model. The well-being of an organ, though intimately related to that of the
body of which it is a part, does not completely coincide with it. The preservation of a
particular body may require, for example, the non-preservation of one of its organs (as in
cases of surgical removal); correlatively, the preservation of a particular organ may be a
long-term harm to the body as a whole. The well-being of an organ also does not coincide
completely with the well-being of any other individual organ - for example, when medical
treatment needed to save one organ causes the death of another. Steinberg's conception
does not explain why the advantage of an individual human being cannot similarly diverge
from the advantage of another human being or from that of mankind as a whole -
particularly in such crucial cases as a forced choice between dishonesty and death.
Tb be sure, Spinoza does hold that when human beings gain in understanding, they agree
more closely in nature with one another (IVP35). And if human beings ever became exactly
alike in nature, their advantages would then necessarily coincide completely (IVP31). But
this ideal is only an approachable limit, not a completely attainable possibility. For as long
as human beings remain finite parts of nature, they will always differ in at least some
respects. Most importantly, perhaps, the specific "actual essence" of human being X will
always be an endeavor to preserve the being of X, whereas the actual essence of human
being Y will always be an endeavor to preserve the being of Y (IIIP7). One's own being,
though greatly aided by other human beings of similar nature, does not literally entail and
is not literally entailed by the being of any or all others. Hence, one's own good or
preservation cannot be identified with the good or preservation of other persons or of
mankind as a whole.
3. For a way of denying (2) based on a reading of IVDD1-2 that I reject, however, see
note 5 below.
4. Even the term's most general and objective philosophical sense, in which it refers to
a thing's degree of reality or being, is originally due to this same false supposition, combined
with the tendency to think of all individuals in Nature as members of a single kind or genus.
This is a sense that Spinoza has already employed at IP US and IID6, and he regards his
account of the "perfect man," described below, as a special case of this philosophically useful
- though etymologically unfortunate - meaning of the term. (See also KV II, 4.) For
238 DON GARRETT

good discussions of Spinoza on moral language, see Edwin Curley, "Spinoza's Moral
Philosophy," in Grene (1973), 354-376; and Bennett (1984), 289-299. However, Curley
suggests taking "perfection" to be an absolute notion and "goodness" to be a matter of
approximation; he otherwise draws no distinction between them (see especially p. 359).
Bennett suggests that the notion of a "model of human nature" in the Preface to Part IV
is a "relic" of an earlier period of composition, and plays no role in the body of Part IV.
5. Two paradoxes similar to the original one can be generated by replacing the term 'good'
in (l)-(4) with 'a dictate of reason' and 'a virtue/ respectively. Since Spinoza equates "the
free man's actions" with "actions done from the dictate of reason," (IVP66S and IVP72D)
and further equates the latter with "actions done from virtue," (IVP24 and IVP72D) he
cannot deny the resulting correlates of (4). Precisely because of their equivalence to the
actions of the ideal free man, however, the requirements of virtue and reason cannot, in
his view, exhaust the good or the self-preserving for finite human beings. Thus, he would
reject the resulting correlates of (2). So, for example, where preserving one's own being
requires deception, doing so will be neither a dictate of reason nor a virtue - though it is
a personal good. (For what may be a weaker use of 'reason,' according to which reason
"teaches" whatever is advantageous under the circumstances, see TP II, 17.)
It should also be noted that one might insist on treating the first person plural as essential
to Spinoza's definitions of 'good' and 'evil.' On this interpretation, the "good" would be
only that which we know to be useful to all of us. If a case should then arise in which the
preservation of one's own being would conflict with the welfare of others, there would simply
be no "good" thing to do. Although the text does not completely rule out this reading of
his definitions, I do not believe that he intends it. However, if we do read the definitions
in this way, then Spinoza must accept (4) but deny (2). For the "good" would then be
restricted to that which reason could counsel all men jointly, so that good would become
co-extensive with the perfect - at the expense of losing some of its connection to the
preservation of one's own being.
6. Bennett (1984), 317, rightly suggests that we "might see the concept of the 'free man'
as a theoretically convenient limiting case, like the concept of an 'ideal gas.'"
7. Although Spinoza also writes of "praise" (laus) and "blame" (vituperium), these are
defined (IIIP29S) as "the Joy with which we imagine the action of another by which he has
striven to please us," and as "the Sadness with which we are averse to his action,"
respectively. Favor and indignation are thus both more general in their scope and less tied
to the imagination.
 THÉORIE ET PRATIQUE DE LA LIBERTÉ
AU JOUR DE L'ONTOLOGIE SPINOZISTE:
NOTES POUR UNE DISCUSSION.

EMILIA GIANCOTTI
Université d'Urbino

J'ai déjà eu plusieurs fois l'occasion par le passé de m'interesser au thème de

la liberté chez Spinoza,1 et de tenter d'en proposer une lecture objective qui,
sans pour autant ignorer les difficultés internes du système, s'appliquait de
préférence à les résoudre en les rattachant à l'unité présumée de la théorie.
Mon intention, dans la circonstance présente, est de procéder à une approche
différente, en ce qu'il s'agira plutôt de vérifier, au cours de ce qui va suivre, si
les difficultés internes peuvent aller jusqu'à compromettre tout fondement d'une
théorie de la liberté en tant que principe régulateur d'une pratique réelle. Pour
ce faire, il va d'abord falloir prendre comme point de départ la définition du
concept de liberté, lequel pourra ensuite être confronté aux modalités d'exercise
pratique de la liberté, de la part d'un sujet dont le statut ontologique est donné.
La première définition de la liberté, est celle que l'on trouve dans le
Court Traité:

La vraie liberté consiste uniquement en ce que la cause première, sans être contrainte
ni nécessitée par aucune autre chose, par sa perfection seulement produit toute
perfection; que si, par suite, Dieu pouvait omettre de le faire, il ne serait pas parfait,
car pouvoir s'abstenir de bien faire ou de mettre de la perfection dans ce qu'il
produit, cela ne peut avoir place en lui que par un défaut. Que Dieu seul donc
est l'unique cause libre, cela n'est pas seulement évident par ce que nous avons dit,
mais aussi parce qu'en dehors de lui n'existe aucune cause extérieure qui le
contraigne ou le nécessite; ce qui n'a pas lieu dans les choses créées. 2

Le pivot de cette définition est constitué par le binôme conceptuel indépen-

dance/autonomie d'une part, et nécessité de l'autre: "sans être contrainte ni
nécessitée par aucune autre chose... si... Dieu pouvait omettre de le faire, il ne
serait pas parfait." Pivot sur lequel s'articule également la définition de la res
libera dans YEthique, où une veritable définition du concept de liberté n'apparait
que dans la définition des modalités d'existence et d'action de la 'chose libre':
"Cette chose est dite libre qui existe par la seule nécessité de sa nature et est
déterminée par soi seule à agir."3 C'est au reste la définition employée par
Spinoza dans sa lettre à Schuller datée 1674 (Ep. 58), pour contester
l'interprétation que E. W. de l&chirnhaus et lui-même avaient faite de son
concept de liberté:
240 EMILIA GlANCOrn

Je passe maintenant à cette définition de la liberté que votre ami dit être la mienne.
Je ne sais d'où il l'a tirée. J'appelle libre, quant'à moi, une chose qui est et agit
par la seule nécessité de sa nature... Dieu, par exemple, existe librement bien que
nécessairement parce qu'il existe par la seule nécessité de sa nature... Vous le voyez
bien, je ne fais pas consister la liberté dans un libre décret mais dans une libre
nécessité.4

La raison principale de ce désaccord, raison qui motive également l'incompréhen-

sion du concept spinoziste de la parte de ceux qui appartiennent encore au cadre
théorique de la tradition cartésienne, réside dans le refus du libre-arbitre, refus
que Spinoza - faisant preuve d'une rigueur et d'une cohérence extrêmes -
applique également à la cause première, à Dieu. Cause première qui n'est libre
que dans la mesure où tout y est contenu, rien ne pouvant se trouver hors d'elle
pour en déterminer l'être ou l'agir. Sauf qu'elle n'est nullement libre d'être ni
d'agir autrement que conformément aux lois de sa nature. L'exclusion de tout
intellect et de toute volonté de l'essence de Dieu, et le changement de statut
réductif de ceux-ci, passant d'attributs de Dieu à ses modes (infinis ou finis, peu
import), relève d'un effort de transcription laïque, de depersonnalisation de
l'absolu énergiquement accompli par Spinoza, encore qu'il n'ait pu éliminer toute
trace résiduaire, héritage de la tradition judéo-chrétienne (mais la question n'est
pas là).
Pour en revenir aux définitions initiales, on s'aperçoit - si l'on excepte,
comme il se doit, les Principia philosophiae cartesianae et les Cogitata
metaphysical - que, d'un bout à l'autre de sa production philosophique, l'attitude
de Spinoza face à cette question demeure inchangée.
Si indépendance/autonomie ontologique et nécessité intrinsèque de
l'essence sont donc les conditions de la révélation de la liberté, seul est libre
l'être dont semblabes conditions font partie de l'essence. Il n'y a par conséquent
qu'une seule res/causa libera (E IP17C2): la substance absolument infinie,
autrement dit: Dieu. Car seule la substance contient toutes le choses qui
nécessairement découlent de son essence (E IPP15-16), et que rien ne saurait
donc en déterminer l'existence ni l'action. Puissance infinie, elle se produit
d'elle-même, tirant de l'unité de son être l'infinie multiplicité de ses modes qui
- en tant que modes à elle propres - sont tous inhérents à son essence, qui est
aussi son existence, de sort qu'ils n'ont sur elle aucun pouvoir coercitif.
Mais on sait que dans ses écrits, Spinoza traite abondamment de la
liberté par rapport à l'homme, à l'essence duquel cependant n'appartient pas
l'être de la substance (E IIP 10), l'essence de l'homme étant quant à elle
constituée de certaines modifications des attributs de Dieu (E IIP10C). Et,
puisque les modes sont dans la substance, et sont conçus au moyen de la
substance (E IDV), il est impossible que de l'essence de l'homme puissent faire
partie les propriétés d'indipendance/autonomie ontologique et de nécessité
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 241

intrinsèque de l'essence, que nous avons indiquées comme conditions de la

manifestation de la liberté. S'il n'était que le fait de parler de la liberté humaine
permet de s'attendre à une définition ou tout au moins en suppose une.
A ce propos, il me semble que le dernier chapitre de la II partie du
Court Traité (II, xxvi, De la liberté vraie), offre une définition théorique de la
liberté humaine très nette et qui ne se retrouve nulle part ailleurs sous une
forme aussi complète:

Par tout ce qui a été dit on peut bien aisément concevoir ce qu'est la liberté
humaine (n.1: l'esclavage d'une chose consiste en ce qu'elle est soumise à des
causes extérieures; la liberté, par contre, consiste à n'y ôtre pas soumis mais à en
être affranchi.); je la définis en disant qu'elle est une solide réalité qu'obtient notre
entendement par son union immédiate avec Dieu pour produire en lui-même des
idées et tirer de lui même des effets qui s'accordent avec sa nature, sans que ces
effets soient soumis à aucunes causes extérieures par lesquelles ils puissent être
altérés ou transformés. E on voit aussi clairement par ce qui a été dit ce que sont
les choses qui sont en notre pouvoir et ne sont soumises à aucune cause extérieure;
en même temps que nous avons démontré la durée éternelle et constante de notre
entendement, déjà établie d'une autre façon; et enfin quelle sorte d'effets nous
devons estimer plus haut que tous les autres.6

La liberté, dans cette définition, coïncide encore une fois avec une situation
d'indépendance face aux causes extérieures, indépendance à laquelle peut
parvenir notre intellect grâce à son 4union immédiate avec Dieu.' Cette union
produit un double effet, l'un théorique cl l'autre pratique. En effet, l'intellect
acquiert - en vertue de cette union - le pouvoir de produire autant d'idées en
soi que d'effets ou actions en dehors de soi, les unes et les autres en accord avec
sa propre nature, et dans des conditions de sécurité, autrement dit sans devoir
courir le risque d'exposer ses productions (théoriques et pratiques) au
conditionnement des causes extérieures qui pourraient les transformer ou les
modifier. Dans l'ensemble, donc, la liberté humaine, rendue possible par l'union
privilégiée de l'intellect avec Dieu, intellect, dont les effets est-il dit un peu plus
haut (p. 193) "sont les plus excellents de tous et doivent aussi être estimés plus
haut que tous les autres,"7 consiste dans le fait de se rendre indépendante de
toute cause extérieure.
Uintellect est le troisième genre de connaissance, "la connaissance claire...
qui s'acquiert, non par une conviction née de raisonnements, mais par sentiment
et jouissance de la chose elle-même et elle l'emporte de beaucoup sur les
autres";8 considérée supérieure à toute autre forme de connaissance, supérieure
même à la raison, dont elle diffère par son caractère d'immédiateté, cette même
connaissance prendra, dans l'Ethique, le nom de Science intuitive.' Quoiqu'elle
prenne part au processus d'acquisition de notre liberté, la raison, quant'à elle,.
ne revêt cependant pas la même importance, étant celle-ci - si l'on en croit le
242 EMILIA GIANCOTTI

texte - insuffisante. Parlant des passions et de la fonction que la raison assume

dans le processus de libération de celles-ci, Spinoza note:

je crois ainsi avoir suffisamment montré et prouvé qu'il n'appartient qu'a la Croyance
Droite ou à la Raison de nous conduire à la connaissance du bien et du mal. Et
aussi quand nous montrerons que la première et principale cause de toutes ces
affections est la Connaissance, il apparaîtra clairement que, si nous usons bien de
notre entendement et de notre Raison, nous ne tomberons jamais dans une de ces
passions qui doivent être rejetées par nous. Je dis: notre entendement parce que
je pense que la Raison seule n'a pas le pouvoir de nous délivrer de toutes.

Et, plus clairement encore: "la Raison n'a pas le pouvoir de nous conduire à
la santé de l'âme."10 Ce salut, mieux: la libération des passions, consiste dans
l'union immédiate avec Dieu et est du ressort de l'intellect.
Mais laissons momentanément de côté cet aspect de la question, sur
lequel nous aurons l'occasion de revenir plus avant. Quant à nos définitions,
YEthique confirme celle ayant trait à la liberté humaine relevée dans le Court
Traité, dans la mesure où la liberté y est identifiée au salut et à la béatitude
et consiste "dans un Amour constant et éternel envers Dieu, ou dans l'Amour
de Dieu envers les hommes."11 D'autre part, plus l'esprit aimera Dieu, savoir:
plus il jouira de la béatitude, plus grande en sera sa capacité d'entendement,
autrement dit plus grande sera sa puissance sur les affects (E VP40D), et plus
grande donc sa liberté. Dans cette définition, c'est encore dans l'indépendance
par rapport à quelque chose d'autre que nous, et des effets que ce quelque chose
d'autre peut produire sur nous, que se situe la véritable essence de la liberté.
Cette indépendance est un produit de l'intelligence, et notre liberté sera d'autant
plus grande que s'élèvera notre degré de connaissance, le plus haut degré étant
la connaissance de Dieu, de ses attributs et des actions conséquentes à la
nécessité de sa nature. Dans cette intelligence - intelligence des diverses
articulations de la réalité, mais à partir de Dieu, à partir donc de la totalité -
réside notre bonheur, notre béatitude et notre liberté (E IVApp§4), car seule
cette connaissance nous rachète de la dépendance des causes extérieures.
Avant de clarifier autant la signification que la portée de cette
indépendance, revenons à l'individualisation de l'organe de production de cette
même indépendance ou liberté. Confrontée au Court Traité, la position adoptée
dans YEthique est moins nette. En effet, malgré une distinction des trois genres
de connaissance et donc une différenciation de la raison et de l'intellect, la IV
et la V partie de YEthique assimilent fréquemment ou équiparent ces deux
genres lorsq'il est question du thème de la liberté. Le passage auquel je viens
de faire allusion (E IVApp§4) est un exemple précis de ce manque de
distinction:
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 243

Il est donc utile avant tout dans la vie de perfectionner l'Entendement ou la Raison
autant que nous pouvons; et en cela seul consiste la félicité suprême ou béatitude
de l'homme; car la béatitude de l'homme n'est rien d'autre que le contentement
intérieur lui-même, lequel naît de la connaissance intuitive de Dieu; et perfection-
ner l'Entendement n'est rien d'autre aussi que connaître Dieu et les attributs de
Dieu et les actions qui suivent de la nécessité de sa nature. C'est pourquoi la fin
ultime d'un homme qui est dirigé par la Raison, c'est-à-dire le Désir suprême par
lequel il s'applique à gouverner tous les autres, est celui qui le porte à se concevoir
adéquatement et à concevoir adéquatement toutes les choses pouvant être pour lui
objects de connaissance claire.12

Dans ce passage, les deux niveaux de connaissance sont manifestement équiparés,

car si c'est d'une part de la connaissance vraie que naissent aussi bien la liberté
que l'indépendance qui en est l'essence, la raison tout comme l'intellect (ou
science intuitive), sont également formes de connaissance vraie. D'autre part,
dans un passage de E IVP68D, il y a cette nette affirmation: "J'ai dit que celui-là
est libre qui est conduit par la seule Raison."1* Au reste, les formules du genre
homo liber est qui ratione ducitur, sont très fréquentes. Est-il licite de supposer
à première vue qu'à l'un et à l'autre de ces genres correspondent des degrés ou
formes de liberté différentes, et partant des formes différentes de vie?
D'un point de vue théorique, on peut concevoir sans peine deux formes
différentes de liberté et de vie correspondant aux deux différentes modalités de
la connaissance. Tbut au plus s'agira-t-il d'établir en quoi consiste la différence.
Sauf qu'auparavant il convient de se demander si - au jour de ce même point
de vue théorique - la liberté humaine ainsi qu'elle a été définie est compatible
avec la définition du statut ontologique du sujet de cette liberté. Une longue
analyse n'est nullement nécessaire pour fournir une réponse négative à cette
question. Alors que la définition de res libera évoquée plus haut s'applique à
la substance, à l'homme par contre revient la seconde partie de cette même
définition: "cette chose est dite nécessaire ou plutôt contrainte qui est déterminée
par une autre à exister et à produire quelque effet dans une condition certaine
et déterminée."14 Or, comme "l'essence de l'homme n'enveloppe pas l'existence
nécessaire, c'est-à-dire il peut aussi bien se faire, suivant l'ordre de la Nature,
que cet homme-ci ou celui-là existe, qu'il peut se faire qu'il n'existe pas,"15 pour
qu'un homme quelconque puisse exister il faut qu'une cause en détermine
l'existence. Son essence est - on l'a vu - constituée de certaines modifications
des attributs de Dieu, si bien que comme tous les modes il "est dans une autre
chose, par le moyen de laquelle il est aussi conçu."16 Et comme "toute chose
qui est finie et a une existence déterminée, ne peut exister et être déterminée
à produire cet effet par une autre cause qui est elle-même finie et a une
existence déterminée..."17 La dépendance ontologique formulée dans cette
proposition contredit nettement l'indépendance des causes extérieures qui nous
avait semblé fournir l'essence de la liberté humaine. Le fait de la dépendance
244 EMILIA GlANCOm

ontologique de l'homme n'est pas modifiable; étant lui même l'un des infinis
modes, tous nécessairement dérivés de la substance (E IP16), et dont l'essence
comme l'existence sont - en vertue d'un acte de causalité immanente tout aussi
nécessaire - production de la substance infinie, Dieu, l'essence de l'homme - dont
fait partie la dépendance ontologique - n'est pas modifiable. Tbute forme de
liberté doit par conséquent se greffer sur ce fondement de la contrainte.
Eimpossibilité de supprimer ce fondement apparaît de façon par-
ticulièrement nette dans les premieres propositions de la IV partie:

Nous pâtissons en tant que nous sommes une partie de la Nature qui ne peut se
concevoir par soi sans les autres parties;
La force avec laquelle l'homme persévère dans Pexistence est limitée et surpassée
infiniment par la puissance des causes extérieures;

Il est impossible que l'homme ne soit pas une partie de la Nature et ne puisse
éprouver d'autres changements que ceux qui se peuvent connaître par sa seule nature
et dont il est cause adéquate;
Il suit de là que l'homme est nécessairement toujours soumis aux passions, suit
l'ordre commun de la Nature et lui obéit, et s'y adapte autant que la nature des
choses l'exige. 1**

Or c'est justement dans cette dépendance des causes extérieurs que consiste
comme on le sait la servitude alors que, au contraire, la liberté, elle, consiste
dans l'indépendance acquise par rapport à ces mômes causes extérieures ainsi
que par rapport aux effects que produit sur nous leur action.
La théorie de la liberté contredit donc le statut ontologique de l'homme,
en vertue duquel celui-ci est déterminée par autre chose et soumis à l'action
de causes extérieures, dont ne dépend pas seulement sa venue au monde, mais
dont sont également tributaires les modalités de celle-ci ainsi que sa propre
conservation. C'est en fait de la nature, des agents de sa génération que dépend,
tout au moins en partie, la nature propre de l'homme: sa constitution. La
structure composite du corps humains, en outre, le porte à avoir besoin de
nombreux autres corps dont "il est continuellement comme régénéré."19 La
dépendance des causes extérieures est à la fois structurale et inéluctable.
D'autre part, l'union essentielle du corps et de l'esprit - dont le fondement
métaphisyque réside dans l'unité de la substance et dans l'identité de l'ordre
d'explication de ses attributs - est tel que l'esprit lui-même ne saurait se passer
de tout rapport avec les causes extérieures. A partir des derniers postulats du
petit traité de physique, la II partie de YEthique décrit la phénoménologie de
cette dépendance, la genèse des affects au demuerant, ainsi que la sujétion à
ceux-ci, supposant cette même dépendance. Polémiquant contre Descartes et
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 245

les stoïciens (E IlIPref, E VPref), Spinoza ne reconnaît pas à l'esprit une

absolue faculté de domination sur les affects. Il y a dans le chapitre conclusif
de l'Appendice à la IV partie, la déclaration suivante:

Mais la puissance de l'homme est extrêmement limitée et infiniment surpassée par

celle des causes extérieures; nous n'avons donc pas un pouvoir absolu d'adapter à
notre usage les choses extérieures (souligné par nous).

Malgré cette déclaration d'impuissance, le texte continue préparant ainsi le

développement de la V partie:

Nous supporterons, toutefois, d'une âme égale les événements contraires à ce

qu'exige la considération de notre intérêt, si nous avons conscience de nous être
acquittés de notre office, savons que notre puissance n'allait pas jusq'à nous
permettre de les éviter, et avons présente cette idée que nous sommes une partie
de la Nature entière dont nous suivons l'ordre. Si nous connaissons cela clairement
et distinctement, cette partie de nous que se définit par la connaissance claire,
c'est-à-dire la partie la meilleure de nous, trouvera là un plein contentement et
s'efforcera de persévérer dans ce contentement... °

La prise de conscience de notre condition de dépendance, ainsi que le côté

inéluctable de cette même condition, si elle ne nous fournit aucun moyen pour
l'abolir, produit néanmoins un changement dans notre état d'âme qui, partant
de l'inquiétude propre à qui méconnaît l'ordre nécessaire de la Nature, passe
à une forme de satisfaction plénière qui augmente au fur et à mesure des
progrés de l'intelligence.
Or c'est ici que réside, sinon la solution de la contradiction - qui apparaît
irréductible - du moins la réponse à la question concernant la signification de
cette indépendance, à l'intérieur de laquelle on a vu résider l'essence de la
liberté. Il ne s'agit évidemment pas d'une indépendance réelle. Au reste,
comment une partie pourrait-elle se soustraire au conditionnement du réseau
de relations dont est formée et au moyen duquel s'exprime la totalité? Comment
un corps pourrait-il se passer du rapport avec les autres corps et, conséquem-
ment, comment un esprit pourrait-il se passer du système d'échanges sans lequel
aucune science ne peut être produite? D'autre part, ce rapport structural est
à l'origine de toutes les formes de dépendance, dépendances affectives, sociales
et politiques comprises. Dans la mesure où la production des biens nécessaires
à notre subsistance recquiert la coopération des autres hommes (concept
clairement énoncé dans le chapitre V du Traité théologico-politique, G 111/
73/13-24), le rapport avec ceux-ci fait naître les affects qui, eux, naissent des idées
des affections ou modifications auxquelles est sujet notre corps dans son rapport
avec les autres corps; le système social lié à la coopération est un système de
relations où chacun a une place donnée et dont la variation n'est pas
246 EMILIA GIANCOTTI

indépendante du système, la sphère politique formalisant l'ensemble du système

des dépendances. Et donc, si la réelle dépendance des causes extérieures ne peut
être supprimée, l'indépendance dont il est question se doit d'être absolument
autre, si bien que l'homme vit nécessairement une contradiction déchirante,
partagé entre une condition de dépendance structurale et la tendance à rompre
les limites de cette dépendance. La conviction, largement répandue parmi les
hommes, se croyant dégagés de cette dépendance, autrement dit sujets d'une
volonté libre, bref, cette idée courante que les hommes ont de la liberté est
illusoire, dans la mesure où elle est le résultat d'une combinaison de
connaissance et d'ignorance: connaissance des finalités de nos actions et
ignorance des causes qui les déterminent. Cette idée de liberté produit toute
la série des préjugés dénoncés par Spinoza dans l'Appendice à la I partie de
l'Ethique.
Mais si maintenant l'indépendance avec laquelle s'identifie la liberté
n'est pas réelle, quelle est la signification, la portée de cette liberté? Peut
elle, malgré sa totale et exclusive appartenance à la sphère de la théorie, en
d'autres termes au domaine de la connaissance et de l'intelligence du réel, avoir
quelque efficacité pratique? Les deux réponses son liées l'une à l'autre, comme
le sont pareillement les deux questions.
On sait qu'après avoir placé l'essence de l'esprit dans l'idée ou
connaissance du corps, et après avoir décrit les modalités du rapport esprit/corps
et les conséquences de cette union, Spinoza expose sa propre théorie de la
connaissance, où il énonce les différents modes de connaissance accessibles à
l'esprit en sa qualité d'idée du corps, étant lié à celle-ci par le même genre de
rapport unissant une idée à son objet, en même temps qu'il clarine la genèse
de ces modes, leur nature et leurs contenus. C'est sur cette base que se fonde
la déduction de notre condition 'd'agissant* ou 'd'agis,* d'hommes libres ou
d'esclaves, selon que nous sommes ou ne sommes pas cause adéquate de quelque
chose qui a lieu en nous ou en dehors de nous (E IIID2) et selon que nous
avons ou n'avons pas connaissance adéquate de ce quelque chose (E IIIP1), et
que se fonde également la déduction des affects, répartis à leur tour en actions
ou passions inhérentes à notre double condition. La description de la formation
de ces affects, analytique et convaincante, permet d'en donner une définition.
Et il appert clairement de cette description que, parmi les affects, les passions
se produisant en nous du fait que nous ne sommes que cause partielle des
affections de notre corps, dont nous n'avons qu'une connaissance confuse, sont
contraires à l'affirmation et à l'exercise de notre puissance individuelle, de notre
conatus, dépendants que nous sommes des causes extérieures. Il s'agit d'un
enchevêtrement complexe de dépendance: si, d'une part, les affects-passions se
produisent en nous parce que nous ne sommes que cause partielle des affections
de notre corps, desquelles nous n'avons qu'une idée confuse, dans la mesure où
notre puissance individuelle (d'agir et de penser) résulte entravée par les causes
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 247

extérieures, de l'autre, ces mêmes affects-passions limitent l'affirmation de notre

puissance individuelle.
Inversement, les affects-actions, se produisant en nous du fait que nous
sommes cause adéquate des affections de notre corps et que nous en avons
une connaissance adéquate, outre à être expression de notre puissance
individuelle, en favorisent également l'expansion.
Dès lors, il est évident que puissance d'agir, puissance de penser et
affectivité sont étroitement liées et que, par conséquent, la détermination d'un
degré quelconque ou d'une quelque forme d'indépendance ne saurait avoir lieu
dans l'une seulement des sphères où s'exerce notre puissance individuelle.
Conformément à la théorie de l'identité de l'ordre des idées et de l'ordre des
choses (parallélisme), sur laquelle se fonde la théorie de l'esprit et de son union
avec les corps, on ne peut que déduire que l'indépendance - qui constitue
l'essence de notre liberté - concerne toutes les modalités de notre existence.
E VP1 applique directement la théorie du parallelisme au rapport existant entre
les idées des choses dans l'esprit et les affections du corps ou images dans le
corps:

Suivant que les pensées et les idées des choses sont ordonnées et enchaînées dans
l'âme, les affections du Corps, c'est-à-dire les images des choses, sont corrélative-
ment ordonnées et enchaînées dans le Corps.

A ce point, et à vouloir répondre à la question de la signification et de la portée

de la liberté humaine, il semble qu'il faille rectifier la formulation de cette même
question, et s'interroger moins sur le sens et la portée d'une liberté qui ne
fonctionne qu'a l'intérieur de la théorie, s'attachant plutôt à la signification de
l'indépendance telle quelle, et donc de la liberté, en conservant cependant les
deux conditions théoriques fondamentales: la dépendance ontologique de l'être
humain d'une part, et l'unité indivisible de la substance de l'autre, fondement
métaphysique de l'unité-organicité des modes constitutifs de l'essence de
l'homme, dont la puissance s'exprime indissolublement comme corps et comme
esprit.
Qu'on me permette une citation personnelle; j'ai dit autre part ("La
teoria dell'assolutismo in Hobbes e Spinoza," op. cit., pp. 250-251) que
l'anthropologie spinoziste peut être qualifiée de 'réelle et positive' en ce qu'elle
identifie (et bien qu'elle considère la sujétion aux passions, autrement dit la
servitude, comme l'inévitable conséquence de la condition ontologique de
l'homme, de son être fini, et de sa structure composite formée de modes
d'extension et de modes de pensée, et qu'elle décrive les modalités de cette
sujétion avec l'objectivité appliquée d'ordinaire à la description des phénomènes
naturels) l'essence de la singularité à sa puissance individuelle (le conatus) qui
248 EMILIA GlANCOTn

est un principe dynamique, indiquant par là même une possibilité d'évolution

vers la rationalité et tant que connaissance et pratique de vie.
Je suis encore de l'avis que la clef pouvant fournir une réponse à la
question initiale se trouve dans le concept de puissance individuelle, ce qui ne
signifie pas pour autant qu'on en obtienne nécessairement la solution du
problème.
Après avoir envisagé dans la IV partie les conditions de notre impuissance,
de notre dépendance et de notre servitude - non sans avoir également fourni
en cette occasion plusieurs indications lumineuses sur la possibilité d'échapper
aux limites de cette même impuissance - la V partie s'attache à rendre compte
de la "puissance de l'entendement ou de la liberté de l'homme." ^identification
est nette, qu'il s'agisse d'intellect ou qu'il s'agisse de raison, dès qu'on aborde
la question de la liberté humaine, le texte l'identifie à ces deux genres en tant
que producteurs de connaissance vraie et adéquate de la réalité. Si l'on veut
saisir correctement le sens de cette identification, il faut d'une part faire appel
à ce qui a été dit précédemment sur le rapport esprit/corps, et relever d'autre
part le contenu de cette connaissance vraie et adéquate. Pour ce qui est du
premier point, on a déjà pu remarquer qu'il existe un lien constitutif entre la
puissance d'agir du corps et la puissance d'agir de l'esprit, de sorte que les
limites de l'une sont en même temps les limites de l'autre et, réciproquement,
l'expansion de l'une implique l'expansion de l'autre. Spinoza ne semble pas
craindre le paradoxe lorsqu'il déclare (alors qu'il avait précédemment annoncé
qu'il allait passer à la question de la durée de l'esprit sans rapport avec le corps
E VP20S):

Qui a un corps possédant un très grand nombre d'aptitudes, la plus grande partie
de son Ame est éternelle.22

Proposition qui se trouve être démontrée de la façon suivante:

Qui a un Corgs apte à faire un très grand nombre de choses, il est très peu dominé
par les affects23 qui sont mauvais (IVP38), c'est-à-dire par les affects (IVP30) qui
sont contraires à notre nature; et ainsi (P10) il a le pouvoir d'ordonner et d'enchaîner
les affections du Corps suivant un ordre valable pour l'entendement, et
conséquemment de faire (P14) que toutes les affections du Corps se rapportent
a l'idée de Dieu; par où il arrivera (PI5) qu'il soit affecté envers Dieu de l'Amour
qui (P16) doit occuper ou constituer la plus grande partie de l'Ame, et par suite
il a une Ame (P33) dont la plus grande partie est éternelle.2*

Ces deux passages confirment ce fait que si l'esprit parvient à une connaissance
adéquate, le corps dont l'esprit est l'idée, est également cause adéquate des
propres actions. Ce qui, appliqué à la liberté, signifie que si la liberté (de
l'esprit) s'identifie à la connaissance adéquate de la réalité, cette connaissance
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 249

implique que le corps de ce même esprit connaissant de façon adéquate, est

cause adéquate des propres actions, et, par consequent, indépendant de toute
cause extérieure, donc libre. Comment cette affirmation s'accomode-t-elle du
statut ontologique de l'homme? Il se peut que la seconde partie de la
démonstration (quoique ce passage ne soi pas le seul à permettre ce genre
d'extrapolation) nous fournisse le fil d'Ariane qui nous permettra de trouver
l'issue de cet apparent labyrinthe, comme cette même seconde partie pourrait
bien également nous permettre de toucher au second but que nous nous étions
fixé.
Que signifie, en effet, ordonner et enchaîner les affections du corps selon
l'ordre de l'intellect en les rapportant à l'idée de Dieu, sinon prendre conscience
de l'ordre nécessaire de la réalité dont nous sommes part intégrante et à laquelle
nous ne pouvons nous soustraire? Comme il résulte du passage E IVApp§32
cité plus haut, le concept spinoziste de liberté s'explique donc, ce que l'on sait,
dans la prise de conscience de la nécessité. Tfel est le contenu des deux genres
producteurs de connaissance vraie et adéquate. Mais - et il faut le souligner
- cette conscience n'est que l'un des deux aspects d'un certain degré de
développement de la puissance individuelle (conatus), laquelle, pour ce qui est
de son côté physique et pratique, se manifeste dans la capacité d'être active par
rapport au monde extérieur et, partant, de s'ériger au besoin contre le jeu des
conditionnements exercés sur nous du fait de notre rapport avec les corps
extérieurs.
Toutefois, la conscience à laquelle parviennent les deux genres de
connaissance vraie et adéquate, en tant que conscience précisément de la
nécessité, nous renvoie comme dans un miroir l'image de notre dépendance.
De la même manière que la liberté divine n'abolit en rien la nécessité de la
nature de Dieu et, par conséquent, de tout ce qui est dérivé de sa nature, la
liberté humaine n'abolit pas le déterminisme; au contraire, elle naît de lui,
s'accomplissant comme forme propre et conscience du déterminisme, mais se
développant également à l'intérieur comme tendance antagoniste, parce que
tentative et effort de l'homme à se rendre indépendant des causes extérieures.
Ceci est manifeste dans le procès qui conduit à la liberation des affects-passions:

Si nous séparons une émotion ou un affect de FAme de la pensée d'une cause

extérieure et la joignons à d'autres pensées, l'Amour et la Haine à l'égard de la
cause extérieure sont détruits, de même que les fluctuations de l'Ame naissant de
ces affects/*

Cette séparation d'une émotion ou affect de la pensée de la cause extérieure

est une opération que l'esprit accomplit en union intrinsèque avec les corps,
contre l'action des causes extérieures, tendant ainsi à en annulier les effets
négatifs sur notre sensibilité. En ce sens, il me semble pouvoir dire que tout
250 EMILIA GIANCOTTI

en étant conscience de la nécessité (et non possession illusoire d'une volonté

libre), d'une nécessité qui s'affiche comme condition métaphysique donnée, par
rapport a cette nécessité qu'elle reconnaît rationellement, la liberté ne se
présente pas moins comme contradiction, comme tendance rationelle antagoniste
au processus dont elle est elle-même issue. Reconnaissons toutefois que Spinoza
n'accepterait pas notre conclusion et y répondrait comme il répondit jadis (dans
l'épître 58 déjà citée) à l'objection de E.W. de TSchirnhaus:

Pour ce qu'il dit encore 'que si nous étions contraints par des causes extérieures,
nul ne pourrait acquérir l'état de vertu,' je ne sais de qui il tient que nous puissons
avoir de la fermeté et de la constance non par une nécessité de notre destinée, mais
seulement par un libre décret.26

En d'autres termes, Spinoza ne voyait aucune contradiction entre liberté

individuelle et determinisme.
Je voudrais attirer encore l'attention sur deux points: le rapport
raison/intellect dans le processus d'acquisition et de jouissance de la liberté,
et les effets pratiques de la liberté en tant qu'affirmation du plus haut degré
de la puissance individuelle (conatus) dans son ensemble organique formé de
potentia intelligendi et potentia agendi.
Je vais être obligée de rappeler certains concepts assez connus, ce qui
ne signifie pas pour autant qu'ils sont toujours très clairs. La raison équivaut,
par définition, à la possession des notions communes et à l'idée adéquate des
propriétés des choses (E IIP40S2), elle connaît les choses selon vérité pour ce
qu'elles sont en elles-mêmes et les considère donc comme nécessaires (E IIP41,
42). La science intuitive, dont l'organe est l'intellect, parvient au même résultat,
encore que la procédure soit différente: l'intellect part de la connaissance
adéquate de l'essence formelle des attributs de Dieu qu'il nous est donné de
connaître (extension et pensée), pour parvenir à une connaissance adéquate de
l'essence des choses (E IIP40S2). La science intuitive est une connaissance
deductive de l'ensemble du réel et, en tant que telle, elle est connaissance de
l'ordre nécessaire selon lequel tout ce qui est dérive de la substance. Les deux
genres, donc, parviennent à la conscience de la nécessité, bien qu'ils saisissent
cette même nécessité selon des points de vue différents. Néanmoins - et ceci
pourrait être le critère distinctif de chacun de ces genres par rapport au thème
de la liberté - alors que la raison joue quant à elle un rôle eminent dans le
processus d'acquisition de la liberté et d'élaboration des normes pratiques d'une
vie libre, autrement dit guidée par la raison, l'intellect, lui, s'identifie plutôt à
la jouissance de cette même liberté: il est plus expression d'une possession
permanente qu'acquisition sujette au risque, comme l'est fondamentalement la
raison. Un passage de la V partie de YEthique me semble pouvoir autoriser
cette hypothèse. En voici un extrait:
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 251

Par ce pouvoir (se. rationis) d'ordonner et d'enchaîner correctement les affections

du Corps nous pouvons faire en sorte de n'être pas aisément affectés d'affects
mauvais. Car (P7) une plus grande force est requise pour réduire des affects
ordonnés et enchaînés suivant un ordre valable pour l'entendement que si ils sont
incertains et vagues.

Le mieux donc que nous puissions faire, tant que nous n'avons pas une connaissance
parfaite de nos affects, est de concevoir une conduite droite de la vie, autrement
dit des principes assurés de conduite, de les imprimer en notre mémoire et de les
appliquer sans cesse aux choses particulières qui se rencontrent fréquemment dans
la vie... si de plus nous ne perdions pas de vue qu'un contentement intérieur
souverain naît de la conduite droite de la vie (IVP52) et que les hommes comme
les autres êtres agissent par une nécessité de nature... Qui donc travaille à gouverner
ses affects et ses appétits par le seul amour de la Liberté, il s'efforcera autant qu'il
peut de connaître les vertues et leurs causes et de se donner la plénitude
d'épanouissement qui naît de leur connaissance vraie... Et qui observera cette régie
diligemment (cela n'est pas difficile) et s'exercera à la suivre, certes il pourra en un
court espace de temps diriger ses actions suivant le commandement de la Raison.

D'autre part, le troisième genre de connaissance engendre la plus haute

satisfaction de l'esprit: "Le suprême effort de l'Ame et sa suprême vertu est de
connaître les choses par le troisième genre de connaissance."* "De ce troisième
genre de connaissance naît le contentement de l'Ame le plus élevé qu'il puisse
y avoir."29 Il est l'expression de la distance maximale d'avec la connaissance
imaginative, et partant, de la plus grande distance qui soit des causes extérieures,
ou, mieux encore, du plus haut niveau de contrôle des causes extérieures:
l'aspiration à y accéder ne peut naître que du second genre (E VP28; Appuhn
11/ 213/25-27).
Sans qu'il faille recourir à d'autres citations, la procédure - qui n'est
autre qu'une technique de refoulement des affects-passions - à travers laquelle
la raison (de ce qui en résulte du scolie cité et de la liste des remèdes contre
les affects dans E VP20S) parvient non pas tant à une domination absolue qu'à
une forme de maîtrise des affects-passions, cette procédure suggère que l'exercise
de la liberté de la part de la raison s'applique essentiellement sur les choses qui
existent actuellement dans la durée, sujets et sources des passions, et l'effort que
fournit cette dernière à travers la connaissance vraie et adéquate avec laquelle
elle se confond est double: d'un côté (théorie) elle ramène l'individualité et la
singularité des choses existant dans la durée à leurs propriétés communes
(amoindrissant les effets passionels de leur individualité spécifique) et, d'autre
part (pratique), elle élabore des normes communes de comportement qui, si
suivies, permettent d'éviter les conséquences négatives d'un mode de vie
individualiste, llhomo liber, hoc est qui ratione ducitur, agit dans la civitas (E
252 EMILIA GlANCOm

IVP73), au sein de laquelle il constate jour après jour l'immutabilité de sa

condition ontologique, l'impossibilité de parvenir à une pleine indépendance des
causes extérieures, faisant en sorte cependant de n'être dépendant de ces mêmes
causes que dans ce qu'il ne peut éviter d'être en relations avec elles - et ce
faisant les gouverne sans en être gouverné, grâce à l'élaboration de règles de
vie directement issues de lui-même.
Cependant, Spinoza attribue au troisième genre de connaissance un
pouvoir supérieur à celui de la raison sur les passions:

La puissance de l'Ame se définit par la connaissance seule, son impuissance ou sa

passion par la seule privation de connaissance, c'est-à-dire s'estime par ce que fait
que les idées sont dites inadéquates. D'où suit que cette Ame est passive au plus
haut point, dont les idées inadéquates constituent la plus grande partie, de façon
que sa marque distinctive soit plutôt la passivité que l'activité qui est en elle; et au
contraire cette Ame est active au plus haut point dont des idées adéquates
constituent la plus grande partie, de façon que, tout en n'ayant pas moins d'idées
adéquates que la première, elle ait sa marque distinctive plutôt dans des idées
adéquates attestant son impuissance... Nous concevons facilement par la ce que peut
sur les affects la connaissance claire et distincte, et principalement ce troisième genre
de connaissance (voir a son sujet le Scolie de la IIP47) dont le principe est la
connaissance même de Dieu; si en effet les affects, en tant qu'ils sont des passions,
ne sont point par la absolument ôtés (voir P3 avec le Scolie de la P4), il arrive du
moins qu'ils constituent la moindre partie de l'Ame (P14)...

A partir de ce passage que, vu sa valeur récapitulative, j'ai préféré citer

largement, le troisième genre de connaissance résulte posséder un pouvoir
supérieur sur les passions (ce qui confirme ce qui avait été énoncé dans le Court
Traité), mais non cependant au point de les éliminer complètement (à la
difference du Court Traité, où l'indépendance des causes extérieures était au
contraire affirmée). Ce qui confirme le fait que notre indépendance des causes
extérieures peut être réduite et contrôlée mais ne peut être éliminée. La liberté
n'élimine pas le déterminisme, même si elle s'affirme dans une tendance
antagoniste à son égard. Le troisième genre de connaissance fournit l'instru-
ments théorique le plus élevé pour pouvoir jouir de la liberté, mais l'élaboration
des régies régissant la pratique de cette liberté est par contre du ressort de la
raison.
Si l'on tient compte de l'extrême difficulté qu'il y a à parvenir à ce
troisième genre de connaissance ainsi qu'à la satisfation (acquiescentia) qui
l'accompagne, l'objectif de la raison semble être un peu moins éloigné et moins
difficilement réalisable, comme plus grande est également son efficacité pratique.
Cette efficacité - on le sait assez, j'ai déjà eu l'occasion de le dire et je n'ai
guère l'intention de le répeter ici - se relève dans le domaine politique outre
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 253

que dans le domaine éthique. Mais les termes réels de sa manifestation sont
ceux rendus possibles par la nécessité universelle.
Il me semble que Ton peut en tirer les conclusions suivantes:

1. pour ce qui est de sa définition générale, l'essence de la liberté réside

dans l'indépendance ontologique qui implique l'absence de détermination
provenant de l'extérieur, dans le respect de la nécessité intrinsèque à la nature
de la res libera;
2. sous cette forme absolue, la liberté n'appartient qu'à la substance
absolument infinie, Dieu;
3. l'identification de la liberté à l'indépendance restant acquise -
identification ayant valeur générale - la liberté de l'homme - être ontologique-
ment dépendant en ce qu'il est par essence déterminé à l'existence et à l'action
- s'accomplit dans la conscience de cette dépendance qui fait partie de l'ordre
nécessaire en vertu duquel toutes les choses finies sont produites et dérivent
de la substance infinie, comme elle s'accomplit également dans l'effort pratique
visant à réduire l'ampleur de sa dépendance qui ne peut cependant pas être
supprimée;
4. l'idée de la liberté humaine, dans le cadre d'un tel système qui fait de
la nécessité le principe d'existence de la réalité, se pose en tant qu'idée
régulatrice d'une pratique qui s'effectue dans la contradiction avec la dépendance
naturelle;
5. le seul fondement théorique de cette liberté est une théorie de cette
contradiction.

1. "Necessity and freedom - reflections on texts by Spinoza," Messing (1977), pp. 90-107;
"Liberté, démocratie et révolution chez Spinoza," Tijdschrift voor de studie van de Verlichting,
6de Jaargang (1978), 82-95; "Réalisme et utopie: limites des libertés politiques et perspective
de libération dans la philosophie politique de Spinoza," C. De Deugd (1984), pp. 37-43;
"La teoria delPassolutismo in Hobbes e Spinoza," Studia Spinozana 1 (1985), 231-258.
2. (KV I,iv,5; Oeuvres de Spinoza, trad. et ann. par Ch. Appuhn, Paris, n. éd., 1928-29,
1/75/31 - 76/11, souligné par nous) "Maar de ware vryheid is alleen of niet anders als de eerste
oorzaak, de welke geenzins van iets anders geprangt of genoodzaakt word, en alleen door
zyne volmaaktheid oorzaak is van alle volmaaktheid. Hn dat dien volgende, zo God dit
konde laten te doen, hy niet volmaakt zoude wezen: want het goct doen of volmaaktheid
te können laten in het geene hy uytwerkt, en kan in hem geen plaats hebben, als door
gebrek. Dat dan God alleen de enigste vryc mr/aiak is, is niet alleen, uyt het geene nu
gezeid is, klaar, maar ook hier dcx>r, namcntiyk, dat er buyten hem geene uytwendige
oorzak is, die hem soude dwingen of mxxlzaakcn; al het welk in de geschape dingen geen
plaats heeft." {Korte Verhandeling, in Spino/ii, Korte geschriften, bezorgd dœr F. Akkerman,
H.G. Hubbeling, F. Mignini, MJ. Pctry, N. en G. van Suchtelen, (Amster-
dam:Wereldbibliotheek, 1982), 275-34/276-11).
254 EMILIA GIANCOTTI

3. E ID7; Appuhn, 1983r, 1/ 21/8-10; souligné par nous. Ea res libera dicitur, quae ex
sola suae naturae necessitate existit, et à se sola ad agendum determinatur (G Π/46/8-9).
4. Appuhn, ΠΙ/314/23 - 315/2. Transeo igitur ad Ulam libertatis definitionem, quam meam
esse ait; sed nescio, unde Ulam sumpserit. Ego earn rem liberum esse dico, quae ex sola
suae naturae necessitate existit, et agit... Ex gr. Deus, tametsi necessarid, liberè tomen existit,
quia ex sola suae naturae necessitate existit... Vides igitur me libertatem non in libero decrea-
sed in libera necessitate ponere (G IV/265/21-30).
5. A justification de cette affirmation, il peut suffire - je crois - de rappeler le passage
suivant de la Prefatio aux Principia philosophiae cartesianae: Animadverti tomen vel imprimis
in his omnibus, nempe tarn in 1. et 1 Princip. partibus, ac fragmento teniae, quam in
Cogitatis suis Metaphysicis Authorem nostrum meras Cartesii sententias, illarumque
demonstrationes, prout in illius scriptis reperiuntur, out quales ex Jundamentis ab Ulo jactis
per legitimam consequentiam deduci debebant, proposuisse. Cùm enim discipulum suam
Cartesii Philosophiam docere promisisset, religio ipsi fuit, ab ejus sententiae latum unguem
discedere, aut quid, quod ejus dogmatibus aut non responderet, out contrarium esse, dictare.
(2uamobrem judicet nemo, ilium hie, aut sua, aut tantum ea, quae probat, docere. Quamvis
enim quaedam vera judicet, quaedam de suis addita fateatur, multa tomen occurrunt, quae
tamquam falsa rejicit, et à quibus longé diversam fovet sententiam. Cujus notae inter alia, ut
ex multis unum tantùm in medium afferam, sunt, quae de voluntate habentur PP IP15S &
CM 11,12, quamvis satis magno molimine atque apparatu probata videantur: Neque enim earn
distinctam ab Intellectu, multd minus tali praeditam esse libertate exhtimat (G 1/131/23 -
132/5).
6. Appuhn, 1/194/1-15. "Uyt al dit geseyde kan nu zeer licht begreepen worden, welke
daar zy de menscheiyke *vryheid (*De slaverny van een zaake bestaat in onderworpen aan
uytteriyke oorzaaken; de vryheid daar en tegen, aan de zelve niet onderworpen, maar daar
van bevryd te zyn.), die ik dan aldus beschryf te zyn: dat het nemeiyk is een vaste
wezentlykheid, de welke ons verstand door de onmiddetyke vereeniginge met God verhygt,
om en in zich zelve \ te können voort brengen denkbeelden, en buiten zig zelve gevroghten
met syn natuur wel overeen komende; zonder nochtans, dat noch s$ne gevroghten aan eenige
uytteriyke oorzaaken onderworpen zyn, om door de zelve te können of veranderd of verwisseld
worden. Soo biykt met eenen ook uyt het geene gezeyd is, welke daar zyn de dingen die
in onse magt en aan geen uyterlyke oorzaaken onderworpen zyn; geiyk wy hier ook mede,
en dat op een andere wyze als te vooren, hebben bewezen de eeuwige en bestandige
duuring van ons verstand; en dan eyndeiyk, welke gevrochten het zyn, die wy boven alle
andere hebben te waarderen" (op.cit.f 382/7-26).
7. "Alle de gevrochte van het verstand, die met hem vereenigt zyn, zyn de aldervoortref-
feiykste, en moeten gewaardeert worden boven alle de andere" (pp.cit., 381/10-13).
8. II,ii,2 Appuhn, 1/103/18-21. "Maar klaare hennisse noemen wy dat, 't welk niet en is
door overtuyging van reden, maar door een gevoelen en genieten van de zaake zelve, en
gaat de andere verre te boven" (op.cit., 298/27-299/2).
9. Court Traité, Π, XIV, 1; Appuhn, 1/139/18 - 140/3. "So meen ik dan nu genoegzaam
aangewezen, en betoogt te hebben, dat alleeniyk het Waare Geloov of de Reeden dat
geene is, het welk ons tot de kennisse van't goede en kwaade brengt. En zo wanneer wy
zullen betoonen, dat de eerste en voornaamste oorzaak aller deser tochten is de Kennissey,
zo zal klariyk blyken, dat wy, ons verstand en reeden wel gebruykende, nooyt in een van
deze die van ons te verwerpen zyn, zullen können komen te vallen. Ik zeg ons Verstand,
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 255

want ik niet en mejtae, dat de Reeden alleen maghtig is, ons van alle deze te bevryden:
geiyk wy dan zulks hier na op spn plaatze ook zullen bewjteen" (ppxit., 330/23 - 331/6).
10. op. cit., Π, ΧΧΙΙ,Ι; Appuhn, I, 175/4-5. "de reeden geen magt heeft om ons tot onze
welstand te brengen" (op. cit., 364/3-5).
11. E VP36S; Appuhn 11/ 225/29-30. ... Ex his clore inîelligimus, qua in re nostra solus,
seu beatitudo, seu Liberias consistit, nempe in constanti, et aeterno erga Deum Amore, sive
in Amore Dei erga homines (G II/303/2-4).
12. Appuhn 11/147; souligné par nous. In vitâ itaque opprimé utile est, intellectum, seu
rationem, quantum possumus, perficere, et in hoc uno summa hominis félicitas, seu beatitudo
consistit; quippe beatitudo nihil aliud est, quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, quae ex Dei intuitivâ
cognitione oritur: at intellectum perficere nihil etiam aliud est, quam Deum, Deique attributa,
et actiones, quae ex ipsius naturae necessitate consequuntur, intelligere. Quare hominis, qui
ratione ducitur, finis ultimus, hoc est, summa Cupiditas, qua reliquas omnes moderari studet,
est ilia, quâferturadse, resque omnes, quae sub ipsius intelligentiam cadere possunt, adaequatè
concipiendum (G II/267/2-13).
13. Appuhn 11/ 133/29-30. Ilium liberum esse dixi, qui sola ducitur ratione (G 11/261/15).
14. Appuhn 1/21/10-12. Necessaria autem, vel potius coacta [ea res dicitur], quae ab alio
determinatur ad existendum, et operandum certâ, oc determinatâ ratione (G 11/46/10-12).
15. E IIA1; Appuhn 1/117/27-30. Hominis essentia non involvit necessariam existentiam,
hoc est, ex naturae ordine, tarn fieri potest, ut hic, et ilk homo existât, quam ut non existât
(G 11/85/22-24).
16. E IDV; Appuhn 1/19/20-21. Per modum intelligo substantiae affectiones, sive id, quod
in alio est, per quod etiam concipitur (G 11/45/20-21).
17. E IP28; Appuhn 1/77/4-9. Quodcunque singidare, sive quaevis res, quae finita est, et
determinatam habet existentiam, non potest existere, nee ad operandum determinari, nisi ad
existendum, et operandum determinetur ab aliâ causa, quae etiam finita est, et determinatam
habet existentiam... (G II/69/2-6).
18. E IVPP2, 3, 4 et C; Appuhn 11/17-21. Nos eatenus patimur, quatenus Naturae sumus
pars, quae per se absque aliis non potest concipL; Vis, qua homo in exhtendo persévérât,
limitata est et à potentiâ causarum externarum infinite superatur; Fieri non potest, ut homo
non sit Naturae pars, et ut nullas possit pad mutationes, nisi, quae per solam suam naturam
possint intelligi, quarumque adaequata sit causa; Hinc sequitur, hominem necessariô
passionibus esse semper obnoxvum, communemque Naturae ordinem sequi, et eidem parère,
seseque eidem, quantum rerum natura exigit, accomodare (G 11/212/10-11, 19-20, 28-30;
213/31-33).
19. E IIPost.4; Appuhn 1/157/25-26. Corpus humanum indiget, ut conservetur, plurimis
aliis corporibus, à quitus continua quasi regeneratur (G 11/102/29-31).
20. E rVApp§32; Appuhn 11/165/15-26. Sed humana potentia admodwn limitata est, et
à potentiâ causarum externarum infinite superatur; atque odea potestatem absolutam non
habemus, res, quae extra nos sunt, ad nostrum usum aptandi Attamen ea, quae nobis eveniunt
contra id, quod nostrae utilitatis ratio postulat, aequo animo feremus, si conscii simus nos
functos nostro ufficio fuisse, etpotentiam, quam habemus, non potuisse se eô usque extendere,
ut eadem vitare possemus, nosque partem totius naturae esse, cujus ordinem sequimur. Quod
si clarè, et distincte intelligamus, pars ilia nostri, quae intelligentiâ definitur, hoc est, pars melior
nostri in eo plane acqukscet, et in eâ acqukscentiâ perseverare conabitur... (G II/276/5-17).
256 EMILIA GIANCOTTI

21. Appuhn II/175/2-5. Prout cogitationes, rerumque ideae ordinantur, et concatenantur in

Mente, ità corporis affectiones, seu rerum imagines ad amussim ordinantur, et concatenantur
in Corpore (G Π/281/10-12).
22. Ε VP39; Appuhn Π/231/9-10. Qui Corpus ad plurima aptum habet, is Mentem habet,
cujus maxima pars est aeterna (G 11/304/32-33).
23. Le terme affection employé par Ch. Appuhn dans sa traduction de VEthique a été
remplacé par affect, plus à même de rendre compte de Vaffectus latin.
24. Ε VP39D; Appuhn, ibid.f23l/\2-2A. Qui Corpus ad plurima agendum aptum habet,
is minime affectibus, qui mali sunt, conflictatur (per Prop.38 p.4.), hoc est (per Prop.30
p.4.), affectibus, qui naturae nostrae sunt contrarii, atque adeô (per Prop.lO hujus) potestatem
habet ordinandi, et concatenandi Corporis affectiones secundum ordinem ad intellectum, et
consequenter efficiendi (per Prop. 14 hujus), ut omnes Corporis affectiones ad Dei ideam
referantur, ex quôfiet (per Prop. 15 hujus), ut erga Deum afficiatur Amore, qui (per Prop. 16
hujus) Mentis mψmam partem occupare, sive constituere debet, ac proinde (per Prop. 33
hujus) Mentem habet, cujus maxima pars est aeterna (G 11/305/2-12).
25. E VP2; Appuhn 11/175/19-23. Si animi commotionem, seu affectum à causae externae
cogitatione amoveamus, et aliis jungamus cogitationibus, tum Amor, seu Odium erga causam
externam, ut et animi fluctuationes, quae ex his affectibus oriuntur, destruentur (G
11/281/23-26).
26. Appuhn III/317/19-24. Quôd porrô statuit: quad si à cousis externis cogeremur, virtutis
habitum acquirere possit nemo; Nescio, quis ipsi dixent, non posse ex fatali necessitate; sed
tantummodô ex libero Mentis decreto, fieri, ut firmato, et constanti simus animo (G
IV/267/32-35).
27. E VP10S; Appuhn 11/189/11 - 193/24. Hoc potestate rectè ordinandi, et concatenandi
Corporis affectiones efficere possumus, ut non facile mails affectibus afficiamur. Nam (per
Prop.7 hujus) major vis requiritur ad Affectûs, secundum ordinem ad intellectum ordinatos,
et concatenatos coërcendum, quam incertos, et vagos. Optimum igitur, quod efficere possumus,
quamdiu nostrorum affectuum perfectam cognitionem non habemus, est rectam vivendi
rationem, seu certa vitae dogmata concipere, eaque memoriae mandare, et rebus particularibus,
in vitâ frequenter obviis, continuo applicare... et propterea [si etiam in promptu habuenmus]
quad ex rectâ vivendi ratione summa animi acquiescentia oriatur (per Prop. 52, p. 4), et quad
hommes, ut reliqua, ex naturae necessitate agant... Qui itaque suos affectûs, et appetitûs ex
solo Libertaus amore moderari studet, is, quantum potest, nitetur, virtutes earumque causas
noscere, et animum gaudio, quod ex earum vera cognitione oritur, implere... Atque haec qui
diligenter observabit (neque enim difficilia sunt), et exercebit, nae ille brevi temporis spatio
actiones suas ex rationis imperio plerumque dirigere poterir (G 11/287/20-289/13).
28. E VP25; Appuhn 11/211/14-15. Summum Mentis conatus, summaque virtus est res
intelligere tertio cognitionis genere (G 11/296/22-23).
29. E VP27; Appuhn II/213/9-10. Ex hôc tertio cognitionis genere summa, quae dan
potest, Mentis acquiescentia oritur (G 11/297/12-13).
30. E VP20S; Appuhn 11/203/26-205/18. Mentis potentia sola cognitione definitur; impotentia
autem, seu passio à sola cognitionis privatione, hoc est, ab eo, per quod ideae dicuntur
inadaequatae, aestimatur; ex quo sequitur, Mentem Ulam maxime pad, cujus mψmam partem
ideae inadaequatae constituant, ità ut magis per id, quod patitur, quam per id, quod agit,
dignoscatur; et Ulam contra maxime agere, cujus maximum partem ideae adaequatae
constituunt, ità ut, quamvis huic tot inadaequate ideae, quam Uli insint, magis tarnen per Was,
 Théorie et pratique de la liberté 257

quae humanae virtuti tribuuntur, quam per has, quae humanam impotentiam arguunt,
dignoscatur... Ex his itaque facile concipimus, quid clora, et distincta cognitio, et praecipuè
tertium illud cognitionis genus (de quo vide Schol.Prop.47 p.1), cujus fundamentum est ipsa
Dei cognitio, in affectas potest, quos nempe quatenus passiones sunt, si non absolute tollit (vide
Prop. 3 cum ScholProp. 4 hujus), saltern efficit, ut minimam Mentis partem constituant (vide
Prop. 14 hujus)... (G 11/293/25 - 294/11).
 LE PROBLÈME DE CÉVOLUTION DE SPINOZA
DU TRAITÉ THÉOLOGICO-POLITIQUE AU TRAITÉ POLITIQUE

ALEXANDRE MATHERON
Ecole Normale Supérieure
de Saint-Cloud

Je voudrais simplement ici apporter quelques compléments à l'interprétation

que j'avais donnée jadis, dans Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Matheron
(1969), pp. 307-330) d'un fait qui, en un sens, n'est contesté par personne:
Spinoza, dans le TTP, rend compte de la genèse de l'Etat en termes
œntractualistes, alors que, dans le Traité politique, il cesse de recourir au langage
du contrat social. Cette évolution est-elle réelle ou apparente? A mon avis,
elle est réelle: j'ai soutenu jadis, et je pense encore, que le langage du TTP doit
être pris au sérieux et que sa disparition dans le TP correspond vraiment à
l'émergence d'une doctrine nouvelle; j'ai caractérisé, et je caractérise encore, cette
doctrine nouvelle comme consistant en une explication non-contractualiste de
la genèse de l'Etat par le seul jeu, anarchique et aveugle, des rapports de forces
tels qu'ils fonctionneraient spontanément à l'état de nature selon le mécanisme
de l'imitation des sentiments. Mais l'on m'a fail des objections, et je voudrais
y répondre.
Il faut tout d'abord éliminer les faux problèmes. Spinoza a toujours pensé
que l'existence et la légitimité de la société politique découlent, en définitive,
du consentement des sujets; si l'on veut appeler cela "contrat," il a donc toujours
été contractualiste; mais il s'agit de savoir comment ce consentement est donné.
De même, Spinoza a toujours pensé que le droit était identique à la puissance;
si l'on veut appeler "contractualisme" la doctrine selon laquelle la conclusion
d'une convention engendrerait par elle-même, à elle seule, indépendamment de
toute fluctuation ultérieure des rapports de forces, une obligation irréversible,
il n'a donc jamais été contractualiste; mais il s'agit de savoir comment se crée
la puissance collective unifiée qui définit le droit du souverain. Ce que l'on peut
appeler le contractualisme au moins apparent du TTP concerne donc, non pas
le fondement de la légitimité de l'Etat, mais son mode de production: l'Etat,
dans cet ouvrage, semble bien naître d'une décision collective, délibérée et
concertée, qui romprait , comme chez Hobbcs, avec la dynamique de l'état de
nature pour créer de toutes pièces un rapport de forces nouveau. Le non-
contractualisme que j'ai cru pouvoir attribuer au TP consiste au contraire à
affirmer que la dynamique même de l'état de nature, grâce à l'imitation des
sentiments, engendrerait d'elle-même, sans concertation aucune, la société
politique. Et le problème est de savoir si Spinoza a réellement évolué de la
première de ces deux positions à la seconde.
On peut donc contester la thèse de l'évolution de Spinoza de deux façons:
ou bien en montrant qu'il s'en est tenu jusqu'à la fin à la première position,
ou bien en montrant qu'il avait adhéré dès le début à la seconde.
 L'évolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP 259

La première façon de réfuter la thèse de l'évolution de Spinoza œnsiste à essayer

de montrer que, dans le Traité politique lui-même, Spinoza, malgré les
apparences, s'en tient encore au point de vue contractualiste du TTP. On
recourt pour cela, soit à une argumentation positive, soit, en dernier ressort,
à une argumentation négative. Mais ni l'une ni l'autre, à mon avis, n'est
satisfaisante.
L'argumentation positive revient à dire que, si l'on examine attentivement
les textes, on trouve à plusieurs reprises dans le TP l'affirmation explicite,
quoique très discrète, d'une origine contractuelle de l'Etat. On ne s'interroge
d'ailleurs pas sur les raisons d'une telle discrétion. Mais en réalité, les textes
que l'on allègue, et qui sont de trois sortes, ne prouvent pas du tout ce que l'on
veut leur faire prouver.
1 - On invoque le plus souvent le paragraphe 6 du chapitre IV, qui est
le seul paragraphe de tout le TP où soit employé le mot contractus: "Le contrat,
c'est-à-dire les lois par lesquelles la multitude transfère son droit à une
assemblée ou à un homme, etc.." Mais si la multitude transfère son droit, au
singulier (suumjus), c'est qu'il y a déjà un droit de la multitude en tant qu'entité
collective, et non pas simplement une juxtaposition de droits naturels individuels.
Et puisque le droit est identique à la puissance, ce droit de la multitude n'est
pas autre chose que la puissance de cette même multitude. Or, nous le savons
par le paragraphe 17 du chapitre II, le droit défini par la puissance de la
multitude, c'est, très exactement, la souveraineté, ou l'Etat (imperium). Donc,
manifestement, le contrat dont il est ici question n'est pas celui par lequel des
individus vivant à l'état de nature conviendraient ensemble de sortir de cet état
pour se constituer en société politique en se donnant un souverain: il y a déjà,
par hypothèse, un souverain, à savoir la multitude elle-même, et par conséquent
aussi un Etat démocratique. En fait, dans ce passage, Spinoza discute tout
simplement un cas très classique et bien connu, que Grotius (à tort, selon lui)
avait allégué pour justifier sa théorie d'un partage possible de la souveraineté:
celui où un peuple souverain transfère à une assemblée aristocratique ou à un
roi la souveraineté qu'il exerçait collectivement sur chacun de ses propres
membres, mais après avoir établi au préalable un certain nombre de lois
fondamentales que ce roi ou ce conseil s'engage pour sa part à respecter (d'où
l'expression "contractus, seu leges.."). Le mot contractus renvoie donc ici, non
pas à la genèse de la société politique en tant que telle, mais à l'un des modes
de transformation possibles d'un Etat démocratique en un Etat non-
démocratique. Et il ne figure nulle part ailleurs dans le TP. Quant au verbe
contrahere, il y figure six fois (deux fois dans III, 14; deux fois dans III, 15; III,
6; VI, 33) mais il s'y applique uniquement à la conclusion des traités de paix
entre Etats.
2 - On peut faire exactement la même remarque à propos de l'expression
"transfert de droit," qui, elle aussi, est assez souvent invoquée en faveur de
l'interprétation contractualiste. Remarquons d'ailleurs que, même si Spinoza
l'appliquait vraiment à la genèse de la société politique en tant que telle, cela
260 ALEXANDRA MATIH-RON

ne prouverait encore rien: "transfert de droit" signifie "transfert de puissance,"

c'est-à-dire instauration d'un rapport de forces nouveau et relativement
irréversible, et il n'est nullement nécessaire (bien que ce ne soit pas non plus
impossible) qu'une telle instauration se fasse par contrat. Mais en fait, dans
le TP, Spinoza n'applique jamais cette expression à la genèse de la société
politique en tant que telle: sans doute pour éviter toute équivoque, il ne dit
jamais (alors qu'il aurait très bien pu le dire, compte tenu de son langage) que
les individus instituent l'Etat en transférant leurs droits naturels à un souverain.
Le verbe transférer, qui figure 22 fois dans le TP, y désigne un transfert de
souveraineté qui s'effectue d'un peuple (déjà constitué comme peuple) à une
assemblée aristocratique ou à un roi (IV, 6, VII, 5, VIII, 3), d'un peuple à un
roi (VII, 5), d'un peuple à un chef militaire qu'il autorise à recruter des
mercenaires (VII, 17), d'un peuple à une assemblée aristocratique (deux fois dans
VIII, 3), d'un peuple ou d'une assemblée aristocratique à un roi (VI, 8, VI, 14,
VII, 2, VII, 5, VII, 23), d'une assemblée aristocratique à quelqu'un d'autre qu'elle
(VIII, 17), d'une assemblée aristocratique à un monarque (VII, 9), ou enfin d'un
monarque à un autre (cinq fois dans VII, 14; VII, 23); par ailleurs, il désigne
une fois un transfert de droit effectué par FEtat au profit d'un particulier (III,
3), et il apparaît une autre fois pour indiquer que le droit d'honorer Dieu est
intransférable (VII, 26). Il n'est donc jamais possible de l'interpréter comme
renvoyant à un éventuel "contrat social."
3 - Le dernier refuge de rinterprétaiion contractualistc du TP, c'est l'emploi
du verbe convenire dans le paragraphe 13 du chapiire II: "si duo simul conveniant,
et vires jungant, etc.." Ce passage, cette fois, concerne bien la genèse de la
société politique. Et convenire entre autre sens, peut avoir celui de "conclure
une convention." Dans ces conditions, au lieu de traduire ce début de phrase,
comme on le fait habituellement, par "si deux individus s'accordent ensemble
et joignent leurs forces" (en donnant un sens général et non-spécifiquement
juridique au verbe "s'accorder"), on pourrait être tenté de le traduire par: "si
deux individus conviennent ensemble de joindre leurs forces," au sens juridique
strict qu'a le verbe convenir en français du 17ème siècle. Mais, s'il est vrai
que convenir peut avoir ce dernier sens, encore faudrait-il savoir s'il l'a
effectivement dans le langage de Spinoza-, sinon, on commettrait une pétition de
principe en prouvant le contractualisme du TP à partir d'une traduction qui ne
s'imposerait qu'à la condition de l'avoir préalablement admis. Or, d'une part,
lorsque Spinoza parle expressément du contrat social en termes juridiques, c'est-
à-dire au chapitre XVI du TTP, il n'emploie pas convenire, mais pacisci (G
III/191/28): mot qui ne figure nulle part dans le TP, pas plus d'ailleurs que le
mot pactum. De autre part, dans le TP lui-môme (où "contracter", on l'a vu,
se dit habituellement contrahere)f aucune des 19 autres occurrences de convenire
n'a de sens spécifiquement juridique. Ce verbe, en dehors du passage litigieux
(II, 13), signifie "se réunir en un même lieu" (IX, 3), "être conforme à..." (I, 4,
VI, 2, VIII, 5, VIII, 7; deux fois dans VIII, 37; X, 1, X, 9), voter de la môme
façon (VIII, 25, IX, 6), s'entendre pour voter de la môme façon (VI, 25),
s'entendre entre sujets sur les conditions à imposer au roi que Ton projette
d'élire (VII, 30), s'entendre entre alliés sur rinterprétation des clauses d'un
 dévolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP 261

traité déjà conclu (III, 15), s'entendre pour commettre un crime (VII, 14, X,
2), vivre dans la concorde dans une société politique déjà constituée (II, 15,
VII, 5). Enfin, dans le seul autre passage (en dehors de II, 13) où convenire
soit utilisé pour rendre compte de la genèse de l'Etat, c'est-à-dire au paragraphe
1 du chapitre VI (multitudinem... naturaliter convenire, et una veluti mente duci
velle), l'interprétation contractualiste de ce verbe est formellement exclue par
l'adjonction de l'adverbe naturaliter: si les hommes "s'accordent naturellement"
pour vivre en société politique, cela veut dire que, contrairement à ce que
pensait Hobbes, ils n'ont pas besoin de l'artifice d'une convention pour parvenir
à ce résultat.
L argumentation positive ne tient donc pas: Spinoza, dans le TP, ne dit
nulle part que la société politique est d'origine contractuelle; et le passage que
je viens de citer tend déjà à suggérer le contraire. Cimpression se renforce si
l'on confronte ce passage avec la fin du même paragraphe 1 du chapitre VI, où
Spinoza nous dit que "les hommes, par nature (natura), aspirent à la société
civile." Elle se renforce davantage encore si l'on tient compte de deux des trois
autres occurences de naturaliter dans le TP. "La société civile, déclare Spinoza,
s'institue naturellement" (naturaliter instituitur) (III, 6). Et le paragraphe 25 du
chapitre VII est encore plus précis: après avoir dit qu'à la mort d'un roi, si le
peuple n'a établi aucune règle de succession au moment où il s'est donné une
Monarchie, on retourne à l'état de nature, Spinoza ajoute: "et en conséquence,
la souveraineté retourne naturellement à la multitude" (et consequenter summa
potestas ad multitudinem naturaliter redit). Spinoza ne veut évidemment pas dire
que l'état de nature, où il n'y a pas de summa potestas, est identique à une
souveraineté populaire: ce qu'il veut dire, c'est que, lorsqu'un groupe d'hommes
est retourné à l'état de nature, il en sort naturellement, spontanément, quasi-
automatiquement, pour instaurer aussitôt (toutes choses égales d'ailleurs) une
souveraineté démocratique, même si cette instauration reste informelle.
Cependant, objectera-t-on, cela ne prouve rien: pour Spinoza, tout est
naturel, et par conséquent aussi les contrats; ne pourrait-on pas alors penser
que naturaliter convenire signifie "conclure une convention qui, comme toutes
choses dans la nature, est comprise dans le déterminisme universel"? Même
si cela semble un peu bizarre, Spinoza, en tout cas, ne dit pas expressément
le contraire. Et c'est ici qu'intervient l'argumentation négative en faveur du
contractualisme du TP.

II

Cette argumentation négative revient à dire qu'il n'existe, dans le TP, aucun texte
où soit indiqué sans ambiguïté le mode de production exact de la société
politique en tant que telle, et que par conséquent l'explication par l'imitation
des sentiments ne repose sur rien. D'où l'on conclut que, puisque Spinoza s'est
déjà exprimé sur ce sujet et n'a entre-temps rien démenti, rien ne permet de
supposer qu'il ait modifié ou dépassé, au moment où il écrit le TP, l'explication
contractualiste proposée au chapitre XVI du TTP.
262 ALHXANDKI·: ΜΛΊΊ H-KON

Je doit reconnaître avoir moi-même donné prise à cette objection dans

Individu et communauté chez Spinoza, où je ne m'étais guère soucié de confirmer
mon interprétation par des textes du TP: j'avais constaté dans ce TVaité
l'existence d'une lacune, et le recours au livre III de YEthique me semblait à
la fois nécessaire et suffisant pour la combler (ce qui, du reste, est vrai en soi).
Mais en réalité, il y a bien, dans le TP, des textes qui, pris ensemble, confirment
mon interprétation tout en la simplifiant quelque peu. Ce qui est vrai, c'est
qu'ils ne figurent pas dans le chapitre II, où ils auraient dû normalement trouver
leur place: cela pose un problème que j'évoquerai en conclusion. Mais on les
trouve avant et après le chapitre II. Et de leur confrontation, ainsi que de leur
mise en rapport avec YEthique, on peut dégager trois sortes de considérations.
1 - Le passage déjà cité du paragraphe 1 du chapitre VI n'a pas seulement,
en réalité, la signification négative à laquelle j'ai déjà fait allusion (non-nécessité
d'un contrat). Cexpression naturaliter convenire, si nous considérons l'usage qui
en est fait par ailleurs dans YEthique, nous donne déjà, par elle-même, une
indication positive sur la manière dont peut effectivement s'opérer une genèse
non-contractuelle de l'Etat. Et, du même coup, l'on peut en dire autant des
autres occurences déjà citées de naturaliter (III, 6, VII, 25) et de l'ablatif natura
(VI,1). Dans le livre IV de YEthique, en effet, les propositions 32-34 nous
apprennent que, dans la mesure où les hommes sont soumis aux passions, ils
ne s'accordent pas nécessairement par nature et peuvent même s'opposer les
uns aux autres; et l'un des exemples donnés dans la démonstration de la
proposition 34 est celui de l'envie, à propos duquel Spinoza renvoie à Ε IIIP32:
Pierre et Paul entreront en conflit, nous dit-il, si Pierre jouit d'une chose qu'un
seul peut posséder et si Paul, par imitation de ses sentiments, aime à son tour
cette chose et désire s'en emparer. Mais, dans le scolie qui suit, Spinoza précise:
si Pierre et Paul se font du mal l'un à l'autre, ce n'est pas "en tant qu'ils
s'accordent par nature (quatenus natura conveniunt), c'est-à-dire en tant qu'ils
aiment les mêmes choses"; car, dans cette mesure, leurs amours respectifs, c'est-
à-dire leurs joies respectives, se renforcent mutuellement par le mécanisme de
l'imitation. S'ils se nuisent l'un à l'autre, ajoute Spinoza, c'est parce qu'ils sont
en même temps supposés "diverger par nature" (natura discrepare): parce que
le caractère monopolistique de la chose aimée, qui fait obstacle au sentiment
de joie imité par Paul, transforme finalement l'imitation affective en son
contraire en amenant Paul à s'attrister d'être privé de ce que Pierre se réjouit
d'avoir. Donc, "l'accord naturel" dont il est ici question, c'est limitation des
sentiments dans tous les cas, et dans les seuls cas, où rien n'empêche les
sentiments imités de produire jusqu'au bout et sans contradiction tous leurs effets
dans l'esprit de ceux qui les imitent. Et si l'on admet que le naturaliter convenire
du TP a le même sens que le natura convenire de YEthique (ce qui est probable,
puisque, dans le même paragraphe 1 du chapitre VI, Spinoza emploie aussi
l'ablatif natura comme synonyme de naturaliter), il faut bien en conclure que,
sous une forme ou sous une autre, le même mécanisme doit jouer dans la
formation de l'Etat. Mais sous quelle forme? D'autres textes du TP permettent
de le préciser.
 Uévolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP 263

2 - Nous trouvons en effet, au paragraphe 5 du chapitre I, un résumé très

exact et très complet de toute la seconde moitié du livre III de YEthique, c'est-
à-dire de la théorie des passions interhumaines\ qui se déduit elle-même tout
entière de la proposition 27, consacrée, précisément, à l'imitation des sentiments.
Non seulement Spinoza s'y réfère expressément à YEthique, mais il en reprend
telles quelles un certain nombre de formulations. Il indique d'abord, en
reprenant les termes mêmes du scolie de la proposition 32, que c'est le même
mécanisme d'imitation qui est à l'origine de la pitié (E IIIP27S) et de Vernie
(E IIIP32). Il explique par ailleurs, à peu près dans les mêmes termes que dans
YEthique (E IIIP31C&S), ce qu'est l'ambition de domination, qui est en son fond
intolérance: vouloir dominer autrui, c'est essentiellement vouloir le contraindre
à adopter nos propres valeurs, à aimer ce que nous aimons et à haïr ce que nous
haïssons; mais l'emploi du verbe glorietur rappelle en même temps que cette
intolérance a son origine dans Vambition de gloire (E IIIPP29,30): si nous
voulons convenir autrui à nos valeurs, c'est pour pouvoir faire son bonheur et
nous réjouir de le réjouir (c'est-à-dire nous glorifier) sans être obligés pour cela
de lui sacrifier nos propres désirs; ce que nous recherchons dans la lutte pour
le pouvoir (et Spinoza, ici, reprend les termes mêmes d'E IV58S), c'est donc
moins un véritable avantage personnel que la joie d'avoir mérité les éloges de
nos semblables en éliminant l'adversaire qui, selon nous, tentait de les fourdoyer
en leur imposant de fausses valeurs. Enfin, entre ces deux explications, l'allusion
au conflit entre miséricorde et vengeance (avec prédominance de cette dernière)
évoque brièvement les conséquences de ces quatre sentiments fondamentaux (E
IIIPP33-44): alternance perpétuelle entre des cycles de réciprocité négative, où
la haine appelle la haine, et des cycles de réciprocité positive qui s'amorcent
toutefois plus difficilement. Donc, on le voit, tout est bien là.
Or, après ce résumé magistral, Spinoza nous dit, au paragraphe 7 de ce
même chapitre I, que les causes et les fondements naturels de l'Etat doivent
se déduire, non des enseignements de la raison, mais de la nature ou condition
humaine commune - c'est-à-dire, très évidemment, de la nature ou condition des
hommes soumis aux passions. Mais de quelles passions peut-il s'agir, sinon, très
précisément, de celles dont il vient d'être question au paragraphe S? Et de fait,
ce paragraphe S permet déjà d'entrevoir la façon dont les choses se passent.
De la pitié à l'envie, de l'ambition de gloire à l'ambition de domination, et
inversement, le passage, dans les deux sens, est à la fois nécessaire et incessant.
La pitié et l'ambition de gloire sont à l'origine de la sociabilité, l'ambition de
domination et l'envie sont à l'origine de l'insociabilité, et ces deux groupes de
passions sont inséparables. On comprend donc que les passions interhumaines,
en raison même de la contradiction qui les traverse, puissent à la fois nous
rendre l'état de nature insupportable et nous faire sortir spontanément de cet
état. Comment cela exactement? Je l'avais expliqué autrefois par une inter-
action de calculs individuels: si chacun forme le projet global d'utiliser à son
profit la sociabilité naturelle de tous les autres pour se défendre contre
l'insociabilité naturelle de chacun d'eux, la résultante de tous ces projets finira,
après quelques tâtonnements, par engendrer, sans contrat aucun, un pouvoir
collectif unifié. C'est là, je le pense encore, un processus possible. Mais il y
264 ALEXANDRE MATHERON

a, dans le TP, un autre texte qui permet de tout expliquer plus simplement
encore, sans faire appel au calcul, en recourant uniquement à l'imitation des
sentiments. Mais il faut pour cela faire intervenir un sentiment supplémentaire
qui n'est pas mentionné au chapitre I.
3 - Revenons en effet au paragraphe 1 du chapitre VI. Spinoza y déclare
que, si les hommes s'accordent naturellement pour vivre en société politique,
ce n'est pas sous la conduite de la raison, mais sous l'influence d'une passion
commune: un espoir commun, une crainte commune, le désir de venger un
dommage subi en commun; et tous les hommes, ajoute-t-il, craignent
effectivement la solitude, qui leur ôte les moyens de se défendre et de se
procurer les choses nécessaires à la vie. Or, pour justifier cette affirmation,
Spinoza renvoie au paragraphe 9 du chapitre III, qui concerne, non pas la genèse
de l'Etat, mais les causes de sa dissolution: l'Etat, est-il dit dans ce paragraphe
9, a d'autant moins de droit sur ses sujets qu'un plus grand nombre d'entre eux
s'indignent de ses procédés et se coalisent par là-mémc contre lui. Et à la fin
du paragraphe 4 du chapitre IV, le lien entre crainte commune et indignation
est précisé: le souverain, nous dit Spinoza, perd sa souveraineté lorsque, par
suite de ses exactions répétées (assassinats, spoliations, viols, etc.), la crainte qu'il
inspirait à tous ses sujets se change en indignation, transformant ainsi l'état civil
en état de guerre. E indignation, nous le savons, est encore une autre forme
d'imitation affective: c'est la haine que nous éprouvons pour celui qui fait du mal
à un être semblable à nous (E IIIP27C1); et nous l'éprouvons par imitation des
sentiments de la victime, avec une intensité d'autant plus grande que cette
victime nous ressemble davantage. On comprend alors comment son intervention
est nécessaire pour rendre possible une révolution. S'il y avait simplement
crainte commune, c'est-à-dire si chacun, pour son compte personnel, craignait
solitairement le tyran sans penser aux maux d'autrui (cf. la solitude sous le
régime turc évoquée par Spinoza en VI, 4), rien ne se passerait: la haine envers
le tyran resterait épisodique, car il ne tyrannise pas à chaque instant chacun de
ses sujets; et, de toute façon, personne ne verrait le moyen de mettre fin à cette
situation. Mais l'apparition de l'indignation vient tout changer: comme le tyran
tyrannise toujours quelqu 'un à n'importe quel instant, l'indignation que nous en
éprouvons nous fait ressentir en permanence le caractère intolérable de son
gouvernement; et l'indignation qu'éprouvent nos semblables contre le mal que
nous fait le tyran, s'ils la manifestent quelque peu, nous apprend que nous ne
sommes pas seuls en face de lui et qu'il est possible de nous unir pour le
renverser. Or, si nous prenons au sérieux la référence à III, 9 donnée par
Spinoza en VI, 1, il faut admettre que l'indignation engendre VEtat de la même
façon, exactement, qu'elle cause les révolutions. Et pour le comprendre, il suffit
de remplacer, dans ce que nous venons de dire, la solitude initiale de chacun
face au tyran par la solitude de l'état de nature, le tyran par l'ensemble de tous
les individus en tant qu'agresseurs, et les sujets par l'ensemble de tous les
individus considérés en tant que victimes.
Supposons en effet qu'un certain nombre d'individus juxtaposés, sans
aucune expérience de la société politique, vivent à l'état de nature dans une
région déterminée. Si l'un d'entre eux éprouve des difficultés à trouver sa
 dévolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP 265

subsistance, un ou plusieurs autres, par pitié ou ambition de gloire, lui viendront

en aide; puis, si leur aide est efficace, leur pitié et leur ambition de gloire se
changeront en ambition de domination et en envie, et ils commenceront à
l'agresser; mais un certain nombre d'autres, jusque là témoins passifs,
s'indigneront du mal qui lui est fait et seront disposé à le défendre. Et cela
se produira plusieurs fois. Mais lui-même, pour les mêmes raisons, se trouvera
à plusieurs reprises en position d'agresseur et suscitera à chaque fois l'indignation
de plusieurs autres. Et lui-même, pour la même raison, s'indignera contre
chaque agression dont il aura été témoin. Si bien qu'au bout d'un temps peut-
être assez court, comme chacun est dans le même cas, chacun aura successive-
ment provoqué l'indignation de chacun et considérera donc chacun comme un
agresseur potentiel, chacun aura successivement bénéficié de l'indignation de
chacun et considérera donc chacun comme un allié potentiel, et chacun, se
trouvant sans cesse en état d'indignation contre quelqu'un, jugera cette situation
intolérable et sera disposé en permanence à aider quiconque se fera agresser.
Dès lors, chaque fois que deux individus entreront en conflit, chacun d'eux
appellera à l'aide tous les autres; et chacun des autres, répondant à l'appel et
imitant les sentiments de celui des deux adversaires qui sera le plus semblable
à lui, s'indignera et entrera en lutte contre celui qui lui ressemblera le moins:
contre celui dont les valeurs divergeront le plus d'avec les siennes, ou qui
possédera (de facto) le plus de choses dont lui-même sera privé. Celui qui
s'écartera le plus de la norme majoritaire sera donc écrasé et dissuadé de
recommencer; ou, s'il ne l'est pas tout de suite, il le sera au terme du prochain
conflit, car s'il récidive, ceux qui l'auront vaincu une première fois verront
certainement grossir leurs rangs. Dans ces conditions, après un certain nombre
de répétitions, un consensus finira par se dégager pour imposer des normes
communes, pour réprimer massivement ceux qui les violeront et protéger
massivement ceux qui les respecteront: il existera une puissance collective de la
multitude qui assurera la sécurité des non-déviants; et par conséquent, par
définition (Cf. II, 17), nous aurons, ne serait-ce que de façon informelle, une
souveraineté et un Etat (un imperium). Après quoi, si des problèmes nouveaux
surgissent, la situation pourra s'institutionnaliser sous une forme ou sous une
autre.
On voit donc que, si nous nous en tenons strictement aux textes du TP,
en admettant simplement que les mots qui y désignent des passions ont le
même sens que dans YEthique, nous y trouvons tout ce qu'il nous faut pour
rendre compte d'une genèse non-contractuelle de l'Etat: si la pitié et l'ambition
de gloire sont à la racine de la sociabilité, si l'ambition de domination et l'envie
sont à la racine de l'insociabilité, l'indignation (à défaut d'autre chose) suffit,
à elle seule, à faire apparaître une force commune qui réprime l'insociabilité
et protège la sociabilité. Mais alors, dira-t-on, si tout cela se déduit aussi
directement du livre III de YEthique, comment se fait-il que Spinoza n'y ait pas
immédiatement pensé? Est-il même vraisemblable qu'il n'y ait pas immédiate-
ment pensé? Ne faudrait-il pas plutôt admettre que, même s'il avait de bonnes
raisons de n'en rien dire, il avait déjà cette explication présente à l'esprit au
moment où il écrivait le TP?
266 ALEXANDRIA ΜΛΊΊΙΙ·ΚΟΝ

III

Nous arrivons alors à la seconde manière de contester la thèse de l'évolution

de Spinoza. Elle consiste à dire que, dès l'époque du TTP, Spinoza était en
possession de la doctrine du TP. L'argumentation, ici, ne peut pas être positive:
les textes qui justifient l'explication par l'imitation des sentiments, déjà peu
nombreux dans le TP, sont totalement absents du TTP. Mais il y a une
argumentation négative, et elle est même très solide. Elle revient à affirmer
que, dans la mesure où il n'y a pas de contradiction entre le TTP et le TP, rien
ne prouve que le contractualismc du premier de ces deux ouvrages n'est pas
simplement une version exotérique, ou encore une application particulière, du
non-contractualisme du second.
Or, il est vrai qu'il n'y a pas de contradiction entre le TTP et le TP; je
l'ai d'ailleurs toujours pensé, et même écrit (Ibid.. pp. 328-29). Il est vrai que
la doctrine du TTP peut être considérée, d'une certaine façon, comme une
version exotérique de celle du TP: lorsqu'on s'adresse, comme le fait Spinoza,
à des lecteurs formés à l'école de Grotius et de Hobbes, on peut fort bien, pour
s'adapter à leur langage, appeler "contrat" le consensus par lequel s'engendre
et se réengendre l'Etat. Il est vrai aussi que, d'une autre façon, le contrac-
tualisme du TTP peut être considéré comme un cas particulier du non-
contractualisme du TP. L'explication du TP, telle que j'ai cru pouvoir la
restituer ici, vaut pour le cas le plus général, pour celui qui exige le minimum
d'hypothèses: les individus qu'elle met en présence sont considérés abstraction
faite de tout usage (même instrumental) de leur raison, abstraction faite de toute
expérience antérieure de la vie en société politique, abstraction faite, à la limite,
de tout souvenir; et elle revient à montrer que, même dans ce cas extrême, la
société politique naîtra de toute façon du seul jeu de leurs passions. Mais il est
évident que, si l'on réintroduit ce que l'on avait négligé par abstraction, les
choses iront plus vite: plus les individus en présence seront capables, au début
du processus, d'en anticiper les résultats, plus les étapes seront brûlées et les
tâtonnements évités. A la limite, s'ils en anticipent avec précision le résultat
final, c'est-à-dire la société politique elle-même, ils s'entendront sans doute, par
quelque chose de plus ou moins analogue à un contrat, pour la créer ou la
recréer immédiatement; et ce sera le cas, comme ce l'est dans la réalité, s'ils ont
eux-mêmes déjà vécu en société politique et s'en souviennent - le processus se
rapprochant d'autant plus du pur modèle contractuel qu'ils auront davantage
appris à se servir de leur raison pour mieux satisfaire leurs passions (les mêmes,
bien entendu). Je suis donc entièrement d'accord avec la démonstration de non-
contradiction donnée par Douglas Den Uyl dans Power, State and Freedom (Den
Uyl (1983), ch. III): mon interprétation fondée sur le TP convient pour un état
de nature "absolu," qui n'aurait été précédé par rien, et elle explique
ontologiquement pourquoi, d'une façon générale, il y a société politique;
l'interprétation contractualiste (plus ou moins pure) convient pour un état de
nature "intermédiaire," résultant de la décomposition d'une société politique
 Lévolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP 267

donnée, et elle explique (plus ou moins approximativement) comment,

historiquement, l'on passe d'une forme d'Etat à une autre.
Mais que prouve exactement cette démonstration? Ce qu'elle établit en
toute rigueur, c'est que Spinoza, à l'époque de la rédaction du TP, interprétait
rétrospectivement l'exposé du chapitre XVI du TTP comme une application
particulière, formulée d'ailleurs en un langage un peu ad hominem, de la théorie
plus générale dont il était alors en possession. Mais peut-on en conclure qu'il
l'interprétait déjà de cette façon au moment même où il rédigeait le TTP? Aucun
texte ne le suggère. Spinoza déclare bien, en ce chapitre XVI, que le transfert
de puissance par lequel se constitue l'Etat peut s'opérer de deux façons; mais
la différence qu'il indique (vel vi, vel sponte, G III/193/ll) ne va pas au delà de
celle qui existe entre le Commonwealth d'acquisition de Hobbes et son
Commonwealth d'institution, tous deux contractuels. N'est-il donc pas
vraisemblable de supposer, en l'absence d'indication contraire, que Spinoza, à
cette époque, n'était pas encore parvenu à dépasser l'horizon du contractualisme
en général?
Il faudrait, dira-t-on, définir un test qui puisse permettre d'en décider
positivement. Or, ce test a été trouvé, et il me semble efficace. Il a été trouvé
par un jeune chercheur français, Christian Lazzeri, qui l'a exposé dans une
conférence encore inédite prononcée en décembre 1985 à Paris.1 Lhypo thèse
de Lazzeri est la suivante: Spinoza, à l'époque du TTP, ne pouvait pas encore
dépasser le point de vue contractualiste parce qu'il n'en avait pas encore les
moyens théoriques; et il ne les avait pas parce que, au stade où il en était alors
de la rédaction de VEthique, il η 'avait pas encore élaboré sa théorie de l'imitation
des sentiments telle qu'elle devait être finalement exposé au livre III à partir de
la proposition 27. Ce qui le prouve, déclare Lazzeri, c'est que, dans un cas au
moins, le texte même du TTP témoigne assez précisément de cette non-
élaboration. L'exemple invoqué me paraît assez convaincant, et je crois même
que l'on peut en donner encore un autre.
1 - Le texte sur lequel s'appuie Lazzeri se trouve dans le troisième alinéa
du chapitre XVII du TTP (G III/203/21-26). Ce passage, en un sens, est
l'homologue du paragraphe 5 du chapitre I du TP: on y trouve aussi une sorte
de résumé des principales passions interhumaincs. Mais, précisément, il est très
différent de celui du TP, et il n'évoque enrienle livre III de l'Ethique. L'ambition
de domination y est mentionnée, mais elle n'y est pas caractérisée comme étant
essentiellement intolérance (ce qui est assez surprenant dans un ouvrage dont
l'un des objectifs principaux est justement la lulle contre l'intolérance); son lien
avec l'ambition de gloire n'est pas non plus indiqué, ni par conséquent son
caractère non-utilitaire; elle n'est même pas présentée comme consistant
particulièrement en un désir de dominer les autres hommes: Spinoza dit
simplement que chacun veut toujours tout diriger à son gré (omnia ex suo ingenio
moderari vult), choses et événements aussi bien qu'êtres humains; et l'allusion
qui suit à suum lucrum semble bien suggérer que, pour le Spinoza du TTP
comme pour Hobbes, l'ambitieux aspire à dominer ses semblables, non pour faire
ce qu'il considère comme leur bonheur, mais pour les utiliser, au même titre
que les autres choses, comme de simples moyens au service de ses intérêts. La
268 ALEXANDRA MAI IIIIRON

gloire, il est vrai, est également mentionnée; mais Spinoza déclare que, sous son
influence, chacun "méprise ses égaux" (aequales contemnit), alors que la gloire
au sens du livre III de YEthique nous amène au contraire à attacher une
importante exagérée à Popinion d'autrui; on peut donc penser que le mot "gloire"
a ici, non pas son sens spinoziste (joie de réjouir autrui), mais le sens de Hobbes
(joie de contempler notre propre puissance, celle-ci étant elle-même conçue de
façon purement instrumentale): si nous nous croyons beaucoup plus puissant
que les autres, alors, en effet, nous les mépriserons. Enfin, l'envie est
mentionnée, mais sans que soit évoqué son lien nécessaire avec la pitié,
sentiment dont il n'est même pas question ici. Il semble donc bien que Spinoza,
à cette époque, expliquait encore les passions interhumaincs à la manière de
Hobbes. Et dans ces conditions, effectivement, l'état de nature devait se
caractériser, non par une insociable sociabilité, mais par une insociabilité pure
et simple; il ne pouvait donc se dépasser de lui-même par le seul jeu de sa
propre dynamique: il fallait bien, pour en sortir, une rupture radicale obtenue
par une décision commune réfléchie et concertée, c'est-à-dire quelque chose
d'analogue à un contrat.
2 - Peut-être pourrait-on aller plus loin encore. Si la doctrine de l'imitation
des sentiments n'est pas encore élaborée à l'époque du TTP, cela ne vient-il pas
de ce que le fondement même de toute la théorie des passions, c'est-à-dire la
théorie du conatus, n'est elle-même pas encore au point?
On sait, à coup sûr, que cette théorie a évolué. Dans le Court Traité
(KVJ, v,l), Spinoza parle de l'effort que fait chaque chose pour "persévérer dans
son état" et "s'élever à un état meilleur" (G Ι/40ΛΜ0): une formulation statique
et une formulation dynamique sont juxtaposées sans que leur lien soit élucidé.
Dans les Cogitata Metaphysica (CM 1,6), il emploie indifféremment "conserver
son être" (G 1/248/5) et "persévérer dans son état" (G 1/248/10-11), semblant ainsi
donner à la première de ces deux formules une signification statique. Dans
YEthique, au contraire, non seulement Spinoza a définitivement abandonné
"persévérer dans son état" (qu'il maintient pour le principe d'inertie, mais non
plus pour le conatus) au profil de "persévérer dans son être" (E IIIP6), mais
il explique ensuite ce que cela veut dire exactement: notre conatus n'étant rien
en dehors de notre essence actuelle (E II1P7), "persévérer dans notre être"
signifie non pas simplement "ne pas mourir," mais produire les effets qui se
déduisent de notre nature; conatus, essence actualisée, productivité de l'être,
puissance d'agir, tout cela devient identique (Cf. E IIIP7D). On pourrait
d'ailleurs peut être penser que, dans YEthique elle-même, la mise au point de
la doctrine ne s'est pas faite du premier coup: je développerai ce point ailleurs.
Mais ce qui est certain, c'est que l'évolution va dans le sens d'une assimilation
progressive des deux notions d'auto-conservation et de dynamisme causal, l'une
et l'autre s'identifiant finalement à celle d'actualisation des conséquences de notre
essence.
Or, au chapitre XVI du TTP, Spino/n nous donne une formulation du
conatus qui se situe à un stade très archaïque de cette évolution. Au cours de
sa déduction du droit naturel, il déclare (G 111/189/26-27) que chaque chose,
autant qu'elle le peut, s'efforce de persévérer dans son état (in suo statu): c'est
 Dévolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP 269

l'énoncé statique du Court Traité et celui des Cogitata. S'agit-il d'une

inadvertance de langage? Non, sans doute, car ce qu'il dit aussitôt après va
dans le même sens. S'agit-il d'un simple énoncé du principe d'inertie? Peut-
être, mais alors le conatus humain en relève entièrement, car tout ce passage
est précisément destiné à s'appliquer à l'homme; et ce qui suit fait intervenir
la conscience et le calcul. Spinoza ajoute en effet: "et cela sans tenir aucun
compte d'autrui, mais seulement de soi" (G III/189/27-28). C'est incompatible,
à coup sûr, avec la doctrine de l'imitation des sentiments, qui nous apprendra
au contraire que nous sommes affectés directement, immédiatement,
antérieurement à tout calcul utilitaire, par ce qui affecte autrui. Mais c'est une
conséquence assez logique de la conception statique du conatus: si l'effort pour
nous conserver se réduit, comme chez Hobbes, au simple désir de ne pas mourir,
et si tout le reste n'est que moyen en vue de cette fin, ce qu'éprouve autrui ne
sera jamais rien pour nous, puisque sa vie n'est pas la nôtre; l'imitation des
sentiments sera donc impossible.
On peut donc bien penser, avec Lazzeri, que le contractualisme du TTP
a été pour Spinoza une sorte de pis-aller, dans la mesure où il n'avait pas
encore les moyens de comprendre comment l'on pouvait sortir autrement de
l'état de nature. Et s'il a pu ensuite acquérir ces moyens, peut être cela vient-
il, comme le veut Negri, de ce que lui a appris entre temps l'écriture même du
TTP: l'intolérance, la productivité de l'imagination dans le phénomène religieux,
tout ce à quoi il s'était trouvé confronté au cours de la rédaction de cet ouvrage,
il lui fallait tenter d'en élaborer le concept. D'où la rédaction finale du livre
III de YEthique, qui à son tour a rendu possible le non-contractualisme plus
global et plus radical du TP.
• * *

Reste une dernière question: pourquoi Spinoza, au terme de cette évolution,

n'a-t-il pas exposé en clair la conception à laquelle il était finalement arrivé?
Pourquoi n'en a-t-il rien dit au chapitre II du TP, où la question de la genèse
de l'Etat aurait dû trouver sa place? Pourquoi n'y fait-il que des allusions qui
ne nous permettent de la dégager qu'en procédant à des reoupements? Cela
vient, je crois, de ce que Spinoza était gêné. En effet, nous l'avons vu,
l'explication de la genèse de l'Etat est d'autant plus simple et d'autant plus
générale, elle requiert d'autant moins d'hypothèses, elle fait d'autant moins
intervenir le calcul, que l'on fait jouer un plus grand rôle à l'indignation. Or,
selon Spinoza, l'indignation est nécessairement mauvaise (E IVP51S). Elle n'est
même pas indirectement bonne, comme la honte et le repentir: même chez les
hommes passionnés, la pitié et l'ambition de gloire, jointes à un peu de calcul,
pourraient, à elles seules, produire exactement les mêmes effets socialement utiles.
Mais, en fait, la pitié et l'ambition de gloire se prolongent nécessairement en
haine pour celui qui fait du mal à ceux auxquels nous nous identifions, et leurs
effets en sont décuplés avec un prix très lourd payer. Il n'y aura jamais d'Etat,
si parfait soit-il, sans répression, si réduite soit-cllc, ni de répression sans une
indignation collective au moins abstraite contre les non-conformistes en général.
270 ALEXANDRE ΜΛΊΊΙΙΛΚΟΝ

Il faut donc bien admettre, bon gré mal gré, qu'il y a quelque chose de
foncièrement mauvais à la racine môme de l'Etat, corollaire nécessaire de ses
effets bénéfiques: le même mal, en définitive, qu'à la racine des révolutions.
Et sans doute Spinoza l'a-t-il admis de mauvais gré. Ce n'était pas là une aporie
théorique, mais la constatation d'une réalité désagréable à laquelle il a sans
doute préféré ne pas trop penser.

1. Christian Lazzeri est l'auteur d'une thèse encore inédite, soutenue en 1985, sur
Anthropologie, pouvoir et droit naturel à l'âge classique: Essai sur Hobbes et Spinoza. Il a
publié plusieurs articles sur la philosophie politique à Page classique, dont deux sur Spinoza:
"Les lois de l'obéissance: sur la théorie spinozistc des transferts de droit," Les études
philosophiques, (1987), n°4; "Eéconomique et le politique chez Hobbes et Spinoza," Studia
Spinozana, 3 (1988).
 INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY IN
SPINOZA'S SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

LEE C. RICE
Marquette University

This study does not aim to provide a general outline of Spinoza's social
psychology, but rather to focus upon the concept of an 'individual' as this
concept is developed in his physics and psychology and extended into his
treatment of political community. One particular view of Spinoza's method
and psychology (typified by Matheron, Zac, and Sacksteder) sees the claim that
the state is an individual as a univocal consequence of Spinoza's methodology.
This extension of Spinoza's ontologico-physical model of individuation from the
Ethica to his political theory is rife with political and sociological consequen-
ces. I shall argue that such an extension is wholly erroneous: it is based upon
a misreading of critical passages in the Ethica, and ignores the fact that many
of its consequences are explicitly rejected by Spinoza in his own political theory.
In the first part I examine what I call the 'literalist' interpretation of societal
individuation. In the second part, I propose what I call a 'metaphorical'
interpretation, based in part upon suggestions by McShea and Den Uyl, and try
to provide an extended defense of it by an examination of relevant passages from
the Ethica. Finally, in the third part I examine consequences of the two
interpretations; and argue that Spinoza explicitly accepts the consequences of
the metaphorical view.

L The Literalist View of Political Order

Following E IIP13 Spinoza introduces a series of lemmas and definitions

intended to clarify his notion of individuation. The first two pairs of axioms,
together with the intervening first three lemmas, running from G 11/97/20 to
99/22, are concerned with the simplest bodies {corpora simplicissima). Contrary
to Matheron's suggestion,1 these 'simplest bodies* are not marked by their
number of parts, but rather by homogeneity of force or matter.2 The section
running from G 11/99/23 to 101/24, comprising a definition, yet another axiom,
and lemmas 5-7, deals with bodies composed of parts which are similar but in
relative motion one to another. In L7S (G H/101/25-102/18) and through the
six postulates following it, Spinoza deals with composite bodies whose parts are
dissimilar (heterogeneous and in relative motion). We may follow Hampshire
(1962, 71-72) in translating 'motion and rest' as 'energy.' Then parts of an
individual are homogeneous if and only if the quantum of energy predicated
of them is constant; otherwise heterogeneous, in which case they are inter-
changing energy within an individual which itself may maintain a uniform and
constant quantum. This is the basic model which underlies what Bennett
happily calls Spinoza's "field metaphysic."3
Using Spinoza's method of composition for individuals, we can construct
higher and higher orders of individuals, each individuated by fixed and internal
272 LEE RICE

relations among the individuals which are its components. The higher we ascend
the more determinate are the internal relations among the proper parts: the
higher the composite, the more it is immune to loss of identity ("disindividu-
ation") through external forces. If we carry this transformation through an
actual infinity of embedded hierarchies of individuals, we arrive at the fades
totius universi, which changes an infinite number of ways without loss of identity.
Matheron summarizes these lemmas by noting that (physical) individuals are for
Spinoza relatively closed systems,5 related to the hierarchy of individuals by their
respective degrees of integration.6 There is, however, no reason to follow
Matheron (1969, 53-54) in suggesting that the notion of infinity here is only that
of a limit concept. I would suggest that, when Spinoza intimates that we must
proceed ad infinitum, he means no less than what he says.
Spinoza's account of individuation is hardly the model of clarity for
extensions beyond physics. Indeed, I suspect that he introduces it in Ethica
II, which deals with the flip side of his psychophysical parallelism, precisely
because he is without a model to explain its workings in the area of mental
events.7 To extend the account to sociology or political theory is even chancier.
While Spinoza tells us that it is the relatedness of components which constitute
an individual (which 'individuate' it), his physical model provides no obvious
means for extending the notion of individuation to cognitive or social models
in general.
One approach, that of Matheron, is to regard one of the next levels up
in the hierarchy of individuation mentioned in E II as that of political society
itself. I shall hereafter refer to this as a literalist interpretation of the state as
individual. Seen in this light, the passage to civil society is of a piece with the
passage from substance to human individuation.8 This interpretation has the
advantage of removing any notion of historicity from the talk of social contract
in the first political tractate, and of explaining the more ingrained naturalism
which emerges in the second. Matheron's suggestion that Spinoza would have
been better off renouncing all talk of a social contract from the start suggests
that he (Matheron) seeks a literal ontology of civil society, a uniform extension
of the Ethica, within the political writings.9 This literal interpretation is
implemented by interpreting the relation of corpora simplicissima to more
complex individuals ("organisms") as exactly parallel to the relation of individuals
to civil society as to a larger hierarchical individual (1969, 301-302).
The general model of civil society which emerges from such an
interpretation is summarized by Matheron as follows:

La conception spinoziste de la structure de l'Etat apparaît ainsi en toute clarté.

LEtat est un système de mouvements qui, fonctionnant en cycle fermé, se produit
et se reproduit lui-même en permanence. Les individus repartis sur le territoire,
armés ou désarmés, éprouvent des désirs dont l'orientation et les limites sont
déterminées par le régime de la propriété. (1969, 346)

The transition which is made from physical to political individual occurs via a
univocal interpretation of law ("physical" and "civil"), and the relations which
 Individual and Community 273

unite lower-order individuals within the unity of the state are here conceived
of a piece with the physico-chemical relations outlined by Spinoza in E IIP 13:

Nous pouvons même préciser d'avantage. La définition spinonste de l'indivi-

dualité, en effet, comporte deux termes: d'une part, le nombre et la nature des
éléments composants; d'autre part, la loi selon laquelle ils se communiquent
mutuellement leurs mouvements. Le premier terme, ce sont les institutions
territoriales qui le recouvrent: tel est la societas, ou ensemble des groupes humains
qui habitent le pays et lui donnent son aspect extérieur; societas qui existerait tout
aussi bien à létat de nature, même si son fonctionnement rede-venait alors
anarchique, car il y aurait toujours une population et un sol. (1969, 347).

Under such an interpretation, there is in fact no difference between positive and

physical law. 10
Although Matheron does not lean explicitly toward a panpsychist inter-
pretation of Spinoza, his interpretation of the state as individual accords well
with any interpretation which sees a mysterious living force permeating all
levels of individuation. Under such an interpretation, which is that of Sylvain
Zac, conatus itself is literally extended to the level of the state as individual:

La société est une association de conatus, dans ce qu 'il y a en eux de positif et

non en tant qu'Us sont contrariés les uns par les autres. Or, ce qu 'il y a de positif
dans les conatus malgré la diversité des natures individuelles, c'est la vie de Dieu
qui reste toujours la même. (19, 225-226).

History here emerges as a science on a footing with physics, for the laws by
which individuals, all individuals including the state itself, are formed and
develop are the laws of nature themselves. Indeed, like Marx, Spinoza can be
interpreted as viewing history as a higher science, insofar as it deals with
hierarchically higher levels of individuation in nature.11
What Zac above describes as a "living force" can be characterized less
mystically, but with equal literalness of extension from physics to political
philosophy, as "communal order"; and it is so described by Sacksteder:

Whatever its limitations with respect to some more complex natural order, any
political order is a simple whole formed from parts which are complex so far as
they depend on that whole. By the contractual device, dependence on wayward
individuals' rights is relinquished to a rule determined by the unified power of the
multitude. This unity in turn defines wrong-doing and justice. Enforcement of
these may be transferred to a highest political authority, though that body yet remains
limited by the public power and by possible indignation among the citizens. (15, 209).

Note that Sacksteder, unlike Matheron and most other commentators, makes
room for the possibility of a literal interpretation of the social contract within
the literalist model itself. This is accomplished by inverting the dependence
relationships among the models. Whereas both Matheron and Zac, correctly,
as I shall shortly argue, try to establish the primacy of the physical model, and
derive political consequences by its literal extension to the communal level of
274 LEE RICE

social life, Sacksteder sees the communal order of political life as Spinoza's
primary paradigm.12
Speaking of the state as a unit whole (Sacksteder), a quasi-living organism
(Zac), or a higher-order individual (Matheron) places Spinoza's political thought
at the beginning of a tradition leading to Hegel and eventually to Marx's com-
munalism. This is not to say that all of the consequences of such communalism
for the nonautonomy of the individual will follow from the adoption of such
a model in Spinoza; for, as we shall see, Matheron explicitly tries to sidestep
some of them. In what follows, I will examine, and partially defend, an inter-
pretation which sees Spinoza's political philosophy as radically individualistic
and more exactly as a precursor of contemporary libertarianism.

2 The Metaphorical Interpretation

What I call the metaphorical interpretation insists that the state has no
ontological status as an individual, but functions only as an historical aggregate
in the loosest sense of that term. This interpretation is aptly summarized by
McShea:

Spinoza holds the individualist view of man on several counts besides that of his
involvement in the thought of his time. His metaphysics is nominalist, at least in
intent, so that "society" or "mankind," for instance, cannot for him be anything but
collective nouns that point to numerous concrete individual relations. (10, 67)

Spinoza's nominalism is a central metaphysical component of the radical indi-

vidualism which he espouses in moral theory - an individualism which can be
easily, but mistakenly, identified with egoism.13 Spinoza argues that men who
are naturally enemies, cannot lead a solitary life/ 4 since it is not possible to
sustain life without mutual assistance.15
The communal unities, however, are the products of perceived utilities, 16
and based upon a limited principle of self-defense:

Quia homines, uti dbdmus, magis affectu quant ratione ducuntur, sequitur multitudinem
non ex rationis ductu, sed ex communi aliquo affectu naturaliter convenire et una veluti
mente duci velle... Cum autem solitudinis metus omnibus hominibus insit, quia nemo
in solitudine vires habet ut sese defendere et quae ad vitam necessaria sunt comparare
possit, sequitur statum civilem homines natura appetere, nee fieri posse ut homines
eundem unquam penitus dissolvant. (TP VI, 1).

Clearly the emergence of political or other community follows from the passional
nature of human existence. There is an ambiguity, however, in paraphrasing
this as the claim that "the state is a product of nature."17 What is a product
of (human) nature is the proposition (idea) that there exist political commu-
nities; but there is no political community (or aggregate thereof) of which it can
be said that it (they) is (are) a product of human nature. Note the phrase una
veluti mente in Spinoza's argument: what is produced is not an individual mind
(or the corporeal correlate thereof), but an aggregate whose members may, on
 Individual and Community 275

occasion and depending upon environing conditions, operate in a more or less

unified manner/ 8
This interpretation of Spinoza's political philosophy is characterized by
Den Uyl as "methodological individualism."19 The emergence of political
communities within the framework of methodological individualism is explained
by appeal to the laws of individual psychology (specifically, those explicitated
by Spinoza in E III and E IV). Indeed,as human beings aggregate their forces,
driven by individual passional causes, generalizations on these laws of individual
behavior can be constructed. Matheron refers to these as relations interhumaines
directes, but fails to notice that they are at the order of statistical, rather than
nomological, generalizations.20
Den Uyl in fact has two arguments to support his claim that states are
not ontological individuals for Spinoza. The first of these rests upon his
analysis of the state of nature itself:

Nonetheless, institutions are not emergent individuals - that is, super-individuals

which have arisen out of the larger mass of individuals in society. To claim that
there are such super-individuals is to advocate something which contradicts the thesis
of the omnipresence of the state of nature, since such individuals would also have
to be found, at least theoretically, in the state of nature. (1983, 70)

While this argument is based on Spinoza's political theory, the second looks
to his ontology:

The fact that one person rules does not imply that the effects of his ruling are
singular. The proper way to view either the civitas or its government is not as an
individual, but rather as an organized set of relations. Unity in Spinoza's political
thought is a matter of harmony, not of individuation. (1983, 80)

Both Den Uyl and Matheron are in agreement in seeing Spinoza's notions of
individuation and order as paradigmatically ontological and derivatively political
or sociological (against Sacksteder's claim that they are primarily sociopolitical).
The second argument, accordingly, must bear the heat of the battle between Den
Uyl and Matheron; since, if it failed, the first argument would imply only that
Den Uyl's reading of the state of nature was similarly defective.
The key issue, then, is that of barring the move from "an organized set
of relations" to individuation in the ontological sense.

...the author in Chapter IV believes that he is able to conclude that the state is not
"an individual, but rather... an organized set of relations" (p.80). But what is an
individual, according to the definition given after Proposition 13 of Book II of the
Ethics, if not precisely "an organized set of relations"? What the author has proven...
is that the state is not an individual in the "substantialist" sense given this word by
non-spinozists, nor is it an individual in the anthropomorphic sense. That indeed
suffices on the whole to make impossible the "totalitarian" interpretation of Spinoza's
political theory.21

What must be shown is that not every organized set of relations is constitutive
276 LEE RICE

of an individual from the ontological perspective.

There are two characterizations of individuation in the Ethica, the first of
which we have already examined in the lemmas and definitions following E
IIP 13. Yet another is given by Spinoza in E IIDef7:

By singular things I understand those things which are finite and have a determinate
existence. If several individuals come together in a single action in such a manner
that they are all simultaneously the cause of a single effect, I consider all of them to
that extent as one singular thing.22

Mugnier-Pollet argues that these two conceptions of individuation are quite

different,23 and tries to show that both conceptions are present, in different
functions, at the level of political community.24 Spinoza is not, however,
offering two concepts of individuation here, but rather clarifying a single concept.
Real external relations for Spinoza are uniquely reducible to causal interac-
tions, 25 and any real set of organized relations must by nature be causal.
Den UyPs approach to separating nonindividuating from individuating
causal relations is by way of a distinction between per se and ad aliud powers,
using the analogy of a group of men pushing a boulder:

...the power exerted by the men upon the boulder may be regarded as a single power
relative to the task at hand and to the nature of the boulder. The power is thus not
a per se power, but rather a power ad aliud. Individuals are, strictly speaking, per
se powers. They have a specific conatus urging them toward their own self-preserva-
tion. (1983, 71-72)

This is more the description of a possible answer than an argument, since the
distinction between the two types of power is not based directly on any text
in Spinoza; and both Mugnier-Pollet and Matheron regard the state itself as
having a conatus, contrary to Den Uyl's claim that it does not. 26 We need, not
a description, but a set of criteria for distinguishing the conditions under which
individuals constitute only an aggregate from those under which they are causally
constitutive of an individual in the proper (non-metaphorical) sense of that term.
Conatus is clearly a key here, but we cannot speak of the conatus of an
individual without first identifying the individual; and the criteria for
identification in the Ethica are provided only in the context of Spinoza's
emergent physics.27
Spinoza provides an example, from which a criterion may be extracted,
in Ep32. Oldenburg has requested an explanation of the relations which hold
among the various parts of nature, and Spinoza asks him to consider a small
worm (we would say "microbe") living in the blood, in much the same way as
each man inhabits the universe. It would regard each particle as a whole rather
than as a part, and its knowledge of the laws governing these particulate
interactions would not enable it to see in what manner these laws are
consequences of still more general laws governing the nature of blood. 28
Spinoza here is not denying that the worm is an individual, but he is
affirming that it is also (and quite consistently) constitutive of a higher order
 Individual and Community 277

individual (the bloodstream itself), which in turn is constitutive of yet an higher

individual (the organism). The criterion for identifying levels of individuation
here is not, as Sacksteder suggests (cf. (16), 34-37, and (15), 207-208), simplicity
or complexity (however these are characterized), but rather the extent to which
activity at lower levels is deducible (Spinoza says "follows from") laws at higher
levels. The key which makes individual chemical compounds components of yet
higher individual compounds is the as-yet-unborn (in Spinoza's time) molecu­
lar bonding theory, 29 and the key to the individuation of the worm or microbe
within the bloodstream, as that of the bloodstream within the individual
organism, is molecular chemistry itself, which provides the necessary reduction
schemata by which laws of higher-order individuals imply those for individuals
of lower orders. The converse of the claim that higher-order laws imply
lower-order ones is that lower-order predicates (or "modes") are the definienda
of higher-order modes or predicates.
The key concept here is that of a scientific law, or rather a hierarchy of
laws which are related deductively so as to produce reduction schemata for the
objects which fall under these laws. This might provide some meaning for the
ill-defined notion of "organicism" which seems to linger in the thought of both
Matheron and Sacksteder. A complex may be said to be "more than the sum
of its parts," and thus an individual from an ontological perspective, if and only
if the laws governing those parts are a subset of the implication class of the laws
governing the complex whole. If this subset relation does not hold, then the
complex is a logical individual.30
To claim that one or more individuals ("subjects" or citizens) figure as
real parts of another complex individual (the state), we need laws (historical
or political: not generalizations, but nomologically universal claims) which imply
the laws of passional activity operative at the atomistic or individualistic human
level. There are no such laws to be found in Spinoza's political writings, for
the very good reason that he did not believe that they exist; and there are no
such laws even today, for the very good reason that he was correct:

But that men should surrender, or be forced to surrender,the right which they hold
from nature, and should bind themselves to pursue a definite rule of life, is dependent
upon human volition. Although I fully concede that all things are determined to exist
and to act in a fixed and definite way by universal laws of nature, I still add that laws
of the second type depend upon the will of men (ΤΓΡ IV, 2-3).

The phrase explacito hominum here refers to an aggregate, what Den Uyl would
call causal relations ad aliud. Generalizations about political communities and
the relations of individuals which enter into these are based upon certain
psychological laws of human interaction. Even if there were "laws of politics"
(and I doubt that there are, and am sure that Spinoza doubted their existence
as well), the laws of human psychology would not be reducible to them, or
deducible from them. In the following section, I shall examine some of the
general consequences of this situation for Spinoza's view of the place of the
social sciences in human knowledge.
278 LEE RICE

3. Models, Consequences, and (Questions

It is important not to overstate the differences between the rejected literalist

model and the metaphorical model which I have defended and some-what
expanded. In both models the status of individuals, or even of subindi-viduals,
which exist within a larger hierarchical whole is real and not illusory: the
individual is not somehow "swallowed up in the whole" in either model. Return
to Spinoza's example of the worm/microbe in the bloodstream. The reality of
that microbe as an individual is in no way compromised by Spinoza's insistence
that it is part of a larger individual. The distinction which Spinoza makes is
not between illusion and reality, but rather between levels of necessary inter-
dependence which are deducible from causal laws. The microbe is "meta-
physically correct" in describing itself as an individual, and in the expression
of its own conatus for its own self-preservation. It would be "metaphysically
incorrect" in trying to provide causal explanations for all events at its own level
in terms of laws for that level. This is the import of Spinoza's claim that "it
would not see in what manner these laws were consequences of still more
general laws governing the nature of blood" (Ep32).
Even if the literalist interpretation were correct, a human being in civil
society would be no less an individual for its being part of a hierarchically
superior whole. A micro-explanation of the interactions of the microbe with
its environment would appeal to basic laws of cellular interaction, and would
also be correct as far as it went. The cellular interactions which occur at the
microbe's level, however, are consequences of still more general laws for the
whole (Spinoza says the "bloodstream") of which the microbe is a part. That
bloodstream is itself a part of a larger individual, the human being, and its laws
are deducible from those higher laws of physiology.
If we look at the human being, however, in relation to civil society, no
such deductive hierarchy of laws obtains. If we wish to explain the social
interactions of one person or group with another, we must appeal to the laws
of human passional interaction (this is Ethica III and IV), but these laws are
not deducible from some higher set of "socio-political laws." Spinoza's
discussions in the two political tractates follow exactly the reverse order from
the one which would be expected from the literalist model. In explaining (really
"describing," since we are dealing here with statistical generalizations only) social
or political trends, Spinoza appeals to basic laws of human psychological
interaction; but he never attempts to explain the psychological interactions by
appeal to higher politico-social frameworks.
How decisive is this argument? Could not a proponent of the literalist
interpretation simply claim that Spinoza deferred from making any such
explanations because the actual laws were not at hand? This suggestion is hardly
a convincing one. The laws of physical interaction were not at hand when
Spinoza wrote Part II of the Ethica, but he still felt it a methodological
requirement to provide a general outline of the types of laws required following
E IIP13. In short, Spinoza's method did not require him to be omniscient regar-
 Individual and Community 279

ding the future growth of the inventory of scientific laws, but he clearly realized
that it did require him to provide structural descriptions as place holders for
the laws not yet explicitated.
There is a second consideration which also weighs heavily in favor of the
metaphorical interpretation, and that is the method of composition for
individuals made explicit following E IIP 13. Spinoza suggests that a hier­
archically higher individual will have as its subindividuals entities which are
diverse in nature and operation?* I suspect that this is also the key to the
stratification of levels which underlies Spinoza's model. If we have laws which
explain interactions among individuals of type A, and other laws which explain
interactions among individuals of type B, laws which explain A(-)B interac­
tions will be stratified at an higher level than Α-laws or B-laws.
Return to the pseudo-individual which the state is, an individual which
Spinoza cautiously characterizes as sometimes acting una veluti mente. Of what
subindividuals is such an individual composed? Quite clearly, its component
parts are human beings: individuals of one and only one type. Given the fact
that we are not dealing with stratified laws which bind individuals of different
types, the resultant collection of human beings has all the unity of a heap of
stones; and the laws which correctly describe the interactions among them are
of one level only. There is no diversity here, and consequently no integration,
and no higher order integrating laws.
The interpretation which sees man in civil society like the microbe in the
blood is a metaphor, certainly a useful one in formulating political or social
generalizations, but a dangerously misleading one if charged with any ontological
weight. Paradoxically, the literalist interpretation can have explanatory power
only insofar as it is rooted in passional nature itself.32 To the extent that
citizens view themselves as parts of an higher social individual, to that same
extent their self-perception becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; but it is rooted,
as Spinoza says (TTP IV), in the will and not in the nature of the state as
individual. To say that it is rooted in the will is not to claim that it is less
necessitated, for Spinoza is a determinist at all levels of explanation. It is,
however, to claim that the laws which explain the efficacy of the state as
individual are laws of individual human volition (one is almost tempted to say
"imaginational illusion"), rather than the laws of politics or sociology.
One easy consequence of the metaphorical interpretation here defended
is that history, politics, and sociology are not sciences at all in the spinozistic
sense (i.e., deductive systems of necessary laws). Psychology (or some spinozistic
version of an as-yet-undiscovered "Utopian psychology") is a science because it
deals with the necessary connections among the human passions. The student
of psychology is on the track of necessary laws of human action and interaction.
The student of history, or politics, or sociology utilizes the laws of psychology
in the applied context of empirical data formulated as historical and social
trends. The descriptions and recommendations which Spinoza provides of and
for political orders do not operate at the level of necessary laws of nature, but
rather at the level of empirical generalizations based upon limited knowledge
of the laws of human psychology and even more limited knowledge of the histor-
280 LEE RICE

icocultural facts related to the evolution of particular societies. There is no

paradox in the claim that the arch-rationalist in science should argue for a
modest empiricism in social studies, for such a modest empiricism is itself the
necessary consequence of Spinoza's metaphysical rationalism. The best state
for Spinoza is the minimal state precisely because the extent to which we, as
human individuals, can control the state and use it to our best collective utility,
is severely limited both by our knowledge and by our power. Seen in this
perspective, Spinoza is not a precursor of either Marx or Hegel. There is no
intelligibility to history itself, and no underlying structure of nomological
connections by which such an intelligibility could arise. The "iron laws" of
history are neither iron (since they describe at best trends) nor laws in the
fundamental sense of that term (since their operation depends upon the consent
of the governed).
Two problems emerge from my analysis of literalist and metaphorical
models and defense of the latter. I cannot resolve them here,35 they should
be addressed and articulated. My suggestions for their resolution are tentative
and provisional only.
First, if the state itself is not a super-individual whose members are
individual persons, what in fact is the next individual upward in the hierarchy
of individuation described by Spinoza following E IIP13? He clearly insists that
the levels of individuation proceed upward to infinity. We know that the series
comes to a halt at the fades totius universi, and that one intermediate stage is
that of human individuals; but what comes after this intermediate stage? The
structural requirements are two. First, the new super-individual must be heter-
ogeneous: it must be composed of individuals of diverse natures. Secondly, the
laws describing the new type of super-individual must be necessary laws (not
merely empirical generalizations) among whose deductive consequences would
be the laws of human psychology themselves.
I would hesitatingly suggest that the above two requirements can be met
by the contemporary concept of an "ecosystem." Such ecosystems, as described
by population biology and environmental physics, are partially closed systems.
While ecology as a science is hardly a fully developed system as of this writing,
the laws which are being articulated appear also to meet the spinozistic
requirement of full generality (= necessity) and rigor. The requirement of
heterogeneity of subindividuals is quite clearly and elegantly met by the diversity
of ecological substrata (some organic, many purely inorganic) within an
ecosystem. The need for further super-individuals in the hierarchy is also met.
The collection of ecosystems themselves form a larger system which we could
call the "planetary system," and which is again relatively independent for the
purpose of establishing causal laws. Independence here requires what the
physicist or population biologist would describe as relative closedness from a
theoretical perspective. The planetary system itself figures as one type of
component in a larger super-individual of diverse components; so the general
spinozistic requirement of diversity and integration is also met. A full defense
of this suggestion would require greater articulation of the developing discipline
of ecology, and extensive analysis of the text of Spinoza.
 Individual and Community 281

The second problem is not so easily handled. In developing Spinoza's

concept of "individual" (and withholding literal application of the term to the
state), I have taken a Goodmanian turn: the individuals are just those which
a theory characterizes as such among its own primitives.36 Spinozism is saved
from the pure formalism of Goodman's analysis37 by the requirements which
it places on theory status: a theory must contain necessary laws which are
universal, and which can in principle be connected deductively to higher-order
and lower-order theories. So Spinoza, like Goodman, "ontologizes" individuals
by appeal to theories; but, unlike Goodman, he legitimizes theories by appeal
to their integration within larger families of theories. For each sortal type of
individual, there is a theory (containing necessary laws) which describes its
activities; and for each theory there exists a super-theory which has as one subset
of its consequence class the set of postulates or primitive laws of the sub-theory.
Quite clearly the "ultimate super-theory" for Spinoza is that which describes
nomologically the fades tonus universi: we would perhaps not be too much
off the mark by calling it "cosmology." To describe laws as 'necessary' is to mark
their place within a theory: they describe certain invariant relations among the
primitives or individuals of the theory itself. The problem is this - is the
hierarchy of theories itself necessary?
This problem can be further articulated as follows. Within each theory
(or at each hierarchical level of individuation) the laws are necessary because
of the invariant relations which they describe among individuals. In addition
to the hierarchy of theories, however, we could talk about a set of metatheo-
retical statements (again arranged hierarchically) which describes the relations
of particular theories to sub-theories and super-theories. Does Spinoza believe
that such a hierarchy of metatheories is also necessary? Do the statements
which it contains describing subordination and integration of theories hold
necessarily?
Spinoza himself never addressed this problem, and perhaps it is good that
he did not do so; for even its analysis lies beyond any techniques which were
available to him. The problem is in fact equivalent to the question of ground-
ing iterated modalities within a system of monomodal statements or laws.
Granted that a scientific law is necessary, is it necessarily necessary? A negative
answer to this question entails the position that, while each level of the hierar-
chy of theories or individuals is wholly necessary and deterministic, the hierarchy
itself is a contingent one. Laws are necessary because they are subsumed as
deductive consequences of still higher orders of laws, but propositions claiming
this subsumability are themselves not necessary.
I doubt that Spinoza would be sympathetic to the notion of 'contingent
necessity,' but I know of nothing in his system which is logically opposed to it.
It should be noted that, although the problem becomes more visible in my own
articulation of the metaphorical interpretation, it is no less present for the
literalist interpretation. One way out of the problem would be to deny the
meaning of iterated modalities. For Spinoza this would amount to the claim
that modalities have meaning only intra-systcmatically, and cannot be iterated
among distinct systems. I am uncertain both about the consequences of such
282 LEE RICE

a proposal for Spinoza's system generally, and about the means by which such
a claim could be supported within the text of Spinoza. The most I can here
conclude is that it deserves some further attention by students of Spinoza.
Robert McShea argues that Spinoza can be credited with three distinct
achievements:

...the conversion of a great metaphysical tradition into a philosophy of science, the

creation of a naturalistic ethics, and the reconciliation of the claims of individual
freedom and social peace through an analysis of the nature of political power. (10,
197)

If my analysis and defense of the metaphorical model are correct, then the
third of these achievements is a derivative of the second; and Spinoza's analysis
of power and conatus pervades all three. In one limited sense, a genuine
spinozistic individual is greater than the sum of its parts (has more conatus
than the sum of its conative elements). The state, however, is not a genuine
spinozistic individual, and exemplifies the situation where an individual is far
less than the sum of its parts. It is on the basis of this insight that Spinoza
preserves the natural right or power of human persons within civil society, 38
and evades the twin difficulties of totalitarianism and the metaphysical reification
of social aggregates.

References

Quotations from Spinoza are from the Van Vloten and Land edition, which was
checked against the Gebhardt edition. English translations are my own. I have profited
from the translations of Samuel Shirley (Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics and Selected Letters.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982), Charles Appuhn {Benoit de Spinoza, L'Ethique (Paris: Vrin,
1977), and Curley (1985).
(1) Bidney, David. The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza (NY: Russell & Russell,
1962).
(2) Commers, Ronald. "Marx's Concept of Justice and the Two Traditions in European
Political Thought," Philosophica 33 (1984), 107-130.
(3) De Deugd, C, ed. Spinoza's Political and Iheological Thought (Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1984).
(4) Frankena, William K. "Spinoza's New Morality: Notes on Book IV," in
Mandelbaum and Freeman (1975), 85-100.
(5) Giancotti, E. "Man as a Part of Nature," in (18), 85-%.
(6) Harris, E. E. "Spinoza's Treatment of Natural Law," in (3), 63-72.
(7) Jarrett, Charles E. "Materialism," Philosophy Research Archives, No. 1459 (1982).
(8) Klever, W. N. A. "Power: Conditional and Unconditional," in (3), 95-106.
(9) McShea, Robert J. "Spinoza, Human Nature, and History," in Mandelbaum and
Freeman (1975), 101-116.
(10) McShea, Robert J. "Spinoza on Power," Inquiry I#12 (Spring, 1969), 133-143.
(11) Mugnier-Pollet, Lucien. La philosophie politique de Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1976)
(12) Rice, Lee C. "Emotion, Appetition, and Conatus in Spinoza," Revue Interna-
tionale de Philosophie, (1977), 101-116.
(13) Rice, Lee C. "Spinoza on Individuation," in Mandelbaum and Freeman (1975),
195-214.
 Individual and Community 283

(14) Rousset, Bernard. "Eléments et hypothèses pour une analyse des rédactions
successives de Ethique IV," Cahiers Spinoza 5 (1984-85), 129-146.
(15) Sacksteder, W. "Communal Orders in Spinoza," in (3), 206-213.
(16) Sacksteder, W. "Spinoza on Part and Whole: The Worm's Eye View," Southwest
Journal of Philosophy 11 (1980), 25-40.
(17) Wartofeky, M. W. "Nature, Number, and Individuals: Motive and Method in
Spinoza's Philosophy," Inquiry 20 (1977), 457-479.
(18) Wetlesen, Jon, ed. Spinoza's Philosophy of Man (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1978).
(19) Zac, Sylvain. L'idée de vie dans la philosophie de Spinoza (Paris: PUF, 1963).

1. Matheron (1969), 51: Le corpus sùnpucissimum, en un sens, vérifie déjà la définition de

l'individualité. Le nombre de ses parties est égal à L
2. Works not on the list of frequently cited secondary sources in the prefatory material
will be cited by their number on the list of references at the end of this article. Cf. (13)
for a general discussion of these lemmas. McKeon (1928, 16-24) provides a discussion of
the methodological importance of the distinction between homogeneous and heterogeneous
individuals. Finally, Spinoza's Letter 13 to Oldenburg (1663) provides a summary of his
disagreements with Boyle on the question of individuating the components of a chemical
compound.
3. Bennett (1984), 93: "If I am right that Spinoza espoused the field metaphysic... then
he could say that the relation of particular extended things to the one extended substance
is enormously like the relation of a subject to its predicate, or (to move out of Curley's
linguistic idiom) the relation of a property to its possessor)."
4. E IIL7S: Et si sic porro in infinitum pergamus, facile concipiemus, totam naturam unum
esse Individuum, cujus partes, hoc est omnia corpora, infinitis modis variant, absque ulla totius
individui mutatione.
5. Matheron (1969), 43: Tout individu physique est un système de mouvements et de repos
qui, abstraction faite des perturbations d'origine externe, fonctionne en cycle fermé.
6. Ibid., 57: Mais elle dépend aussi, en second lieu, de son degré d'intégration.
7. An interpretation also suggested by Bennett's discussion, (1984), 49-51.
8. (1969), 289: Passage de l'état de nature à la société politique, celle-ci découlant de celui-là
comme l'individualité humaine découlait de la substance.
9. (1969), 313: Ne vaudrait-il pas mieux, dans ces conditions, renoncer au mythe d'origine
et, dans la reconstruction de la société politique à partir de l'état de nature, ne faire intervenir
que les motivations passionnelles de la vie interhumaine telle qu 'elle se déroule tous les jours
et sous nos yeux?
10. Ibid., 348: Aucune différence, par conséquent, entre lois juridiques et lois physiques: les
unes comme les autres sont les règles uniformes par lesquelles s'exprime la vie d'une essence
individuelle.
11. (19), 227: La vraie thèse de Spinoza est que la société politique, coalition de forces
matérielles et spirituelles, unifié par les lois générales, comporte des attributs analogues à ceux
d'une personne.
12. (15), 208: "The political order must be taken as a kind of prototype of communal
orders more generally. Perhaps more than any other, unless nature itself or biological
organisms, a political order is easily identified a by a prevailing unity, according to Spinoza's
principles. The state or the commonwealth is a single power which constitutes the corporate
body of any political order. By that criterion, it is a unit whole."
13. Cf. Bennett (1984), 299-307, which is based upon a misunderstanding of Spinoza's
nominalism. My critique of this position, and defense of this nominalism, may be found
in Rice (1985), 244-245). A discussion of this nominalism as it relates to Spinoza's
284 LEE RICE

epistemology will be found in G. H. R. Parkinson, Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge, (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1954), 129-134.
14. Cf. TP VIII, 12: Sunt enim homines, ut dbamus, natura hostes; ita ut, quamvis legibus
copulentur adstringanturque, retineant tarnen naturam
15. E IVP58S: Sed omnes rêvera, quatenus ex affectibus, qui passiones sunt, in nobis
ingenerantur..., nee ullius usus essent, si homines facile duci possent, ut ex sola rationis
dictamine viverent, ut jam paucis ostendam.
16. Cf. E IVAppl2: Hominibus opprime utile est, consuetudines jüngere, seseque iis vinculis
astringere...
17. On this point see Jean Préposiet, Spinoza et la liberté des hommes, (Paris: Gallimard,
1967), 220-222.
18. Den Uyl (1983), 71: "Spinoza does not think of social unity as something organic, but
simply as the effective organization of individual powers."
19. (1983), 67: "More precisely, methodological individualism would hold that, in principle,
explanations of social events are reducible to explanations of the relationships between
individual agents, and that any 'social laws' arc reducible to laws of human psychology."
The position is further defined by May Brodbcck, "Methodological Individualism,"
Philosophical Analysis and History, William Dray, ed., NY, (1966), 319-332. (Cited by Den
Uyl (1983), 138)).
20. (1969), 151: Le problême que doit résoudre ici Spinoza, c'est celui-là même qui se posait
à Hobbes: comment faire dériver des passions simples les passions proprement humaines?
Note, however, that much of this problem is already resolved by Spinoza in E IV, rather
than in the political tractates proper.
21. From my translation of Matheron's review of Den Uyl (1983), which appears in Studia
Spinozana I (1985), 422-426.
22. E IID7: Per res singulares intelligo res, quae finitae sunt, et determinatam habent
existentiam, Quod si plura individua in una actione ita concurrunt, ut omnia simul unius
effectus sint causa, eadem omnia eatenus ut unam rem singu/arem considero.
23. (11), 145: L 'union est ici définie formellement comme une relation fixe entre des éléments
composants et elle fonde l'existence d'un individu. Mais un autre texte du même livre
présentait une détermination cette fois dynamique de l'union.
24. (11), 145: Or, ces deux conceptions de l'union se retrouvent, à peine estompées, dans
la description de la vie politique.
25. E IP36: Nihil existit ex cujus natura aliquis affectus non sequatur.
26. Cf. Matheron (1969), 348-349, and (11), 143-144.
27. Indeed the concept of conatus is not introduced definitionally in the Ethica because
it is already available from other (non-spinozist) sources: for bodies it is equivalent to the
newtonian vis inertiae. Confer (17, 245-247). For a more detailed examination of the
transfer of the physical model to psychosociology; cf. (12), 110-113.
28. nee scire posset, quomodo partes omnes ab universali natura sanguinis moderantur, et
invicem, prout universalis natura sanguinis exigit se accomodare...
29. Spinoza does anticipate the requirements which such a theory would have to meet to
provide a reduction of chemistry to physics. Cf. his Epl 1 to Oldenburg, which deals with
experiments which he and Robert Boyle were both undertaking with salts of nitre.
30. In Goodman's sense. The square root of 2, the Eiffel Tower, and an old shoe
constitute a logical individual. Indeed, there are relations which hold between them (even
which hold uniquely between them). Cf. Nelson Goodman, "Seven Strictures on Similarity,"
in Problems and Projects (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982), 437-446.
 Individual and Community 285

31. EIIP13L7S: His itaque videmus, qua ratione Individuum compositum possit multis modis
afficiy ejus nihilominus natura servata... Quod si jam aliud concipiamus, expluribus diversae
naturae individuis compositum, idem pluribus aliis modis posse affwi reperiemus, ipsius
nihilominus natura servata.
32. Cf. (10), 136: "Most men live completely within a social microcosm whose conventions
are for them laws of nature. Conventions are often functional and not necessarily irrational;
they often prescribe precisely what would be suggested by an informed intellect, but they
are not rationally understood by those subject to them and so society is almost always out
of human control. If the social microcosm fails to adapt to its environment, or if some
inner dynamic of change erodes or renders inappropriate the customary routine, there will
be social disorder and weakness and individual psychic disorientation."
33. Cf. TP 1,4: Cum igitur animum adpoliticam applicuerin% nihil quod novum vel inauditum
est, sed tantum ea quae cum praxi optime conveniunt, certa et indubitata ratione demon-
strare, et ex ipsa humanae naturae conditione deducere intendi; et ut ea quae ad hanc
scientiam spectant eadem animi libertate, qua res mathematicas solemus, inquirerem, sedulo
curavi humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere...
34. Cf. Jacques de Visscher, "Y a-t-il du volontarisme dans la pensée politique de Spinoza?"
in (3), 228: Spinoza, illuminé par la vraie connaissance, ne fait que constater ce qui est
raisonnable ou pas. Ces descriptions de l'Etat libre ne sont que des descriptions condition-
nelles; c'est-a-dire que les conditions de cet Etat raisonnable doivent être comprises dans le
sens de la métaphysique spéculative qu'il nous fournit dans l'Ethique, son oeuvre majeure.

35. In fact their lack of resolution here is not so much due to lack of space as to want
of ideas. Both these problems deserve more serious attention than they have hitherto been
given in the literature.
36. Cf. Nelson Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984),
66-71.
37. A charge partially answered also by Catherine Z. Elgin, With Reference to Reference
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 97-103.
38. Cf. Ep50: Quantum ad politicam spectat, discrimen inter me et Hobbesium, de quo
interrogas, in hoc consistit, quod ego naturale jus semper sartum tectum conservo, quodque
supremo magistraat in qualibet urbe non plus in subditos juris, quam juxta mensuram
potestatis, qua subditum superat, competere statuo, quod in statu naturali semper locum habet.
 NEGRI ON SPINOZAS POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY

MANFRED WALTHER
University of Hanover

1. Introductory Remarks

Antonio Negri, former professor of public law at the University of Padua, while
imprisoned and accused of being one of the spiritual leaders of the autonomous
left in Italy and their terrorism, wrote a book on Spinoza in 1979 entitled: The
Wild Anomaly: Baruch Spinoza's Outline of a Free Society} Published in 1981,
the book was immediately translated into French2 and into German3 only one
year later. The French translation is prefaced by comments on Negri by three
of the leading figures in French Spinoza scholarship, to whom Negri had
referred, both positively and critically: Gilles Dcleuze (Deleuze (1968)), Pierre
Macherey (Macherey (1979)) and Alexandre Matheron (Matheron (1969)).
Immediately, a keen discussion arose in most of the west European countries;
in the Netherlands, for example, a review of the book by Wim Klever in a
weekly newspaper provoked a long debate by the readers, many of the
participants not being philosophers at all; all of them were passionately engaged
in the debate. One can trace the influence of Negri's book in many of the
papers presented at the various Spinoza congresses in 1982, the 350th anniversary
of his birthday. What are the peculiarities of this Spinoza interpretation that
evoked such an echo, unparalleled in recent Spinoza research? The only
historical parallel which comes to my mind is the echo evoked by Jacobi in 1787
when he stated that Lessing had confessed to him that he was a spinozist,
causing an uproar in the spiritual world in Germany for decades.

2. Outlines of Negri's Interpretation

What Spinoza shows, according to Negri, is that "the history of metaphysics

includes radical alternatives."4 Given the fact that even modern times can only
be properly understood through the complex way of metaphysics {ibid.), the
dominant form of modern philosophy from the very beginning takes a completely
different course. With the breakthrough of the productive forces of man that
organize and acquire the world for the first time in history, this main stream
philosophy immediately occupies itself with justifying the domestication of those
newly arisen productive forces through definite mechanisms of domination
erected on private acquisition instead of collective liberation. This dominating
line of modern thought, which in the field of political philosophy is represented
by the line Hobbes-Rousseau-Hegel, like the empiricism that forms its
complement, is in fact fundamentally dualistic. In political philosophy that
means dualism of society and the state, in precisely the form that these thinkers
postulate the state as something higher and more substantial vis à vis society,
a state which is the only possible institution - in form of the supreme power -
 Negri on Spinoza 287

to synthesize the supposedly self-exploding bourgeois society: in Hobbes in the

form of a sovereign power that has been made juridically independent of the
citizens-subjects; in Rousseau in the form of the volonté générale being played
off against the volonté de tous and in Hegel in the form of the reality of the
moral idea vis à vis a society that explodes itself.
If, according to Negri, the dominant line of modern philosophy is thus
organized as an expression of the unleashing of the productive forces - and as
its recantation at the same time - Spinoza's philosophy is sharply contrasted with
this line that is victorious in the first instance: "Spinoza is an anomaly" (p. 9).
He doesn't belong to this line of thought although he "was too often cooked
in that sticky 'democratic* soup of normative Hobbesian transcendentalism,
Rousseauist general will and Hegelian Aufhebung?'* He is the founder of a "non-
mystified form of democracy." His philosophy is modern beyond any doubt, in
so far as it is a philosophy of the productive forces, too. But it insists on the
one-dimensionality of the productive world constitution of man as a process in
which the productivity of being expresses itself - without any dualism, without
any teleology. Teleology is, according to Negri, constitutive of ideological
bourgeois thought in all of its parts. Spinoza's criticism of all teleology, of all
transcendence of being vis à vis the real world, this negativity of his philosophy,
is nothing but the necessary complement of its pure positivity, i.e. of conceiving
the productivity of being in all its forms, from physics via psychology to politics
and finally, to ethics. Here this means: the more complex the composition of
being becomes, the more its productivity increases: with man as the subject
(Subjekt)9 a factor appears that completely produces and acquires the world itself,
i.e. man conceived as erste Natur (first nature) creates himself as zweite Natur
(secondary nature), without any reference to transcendence and teleology. Here
it comes out clearly why Negri says that his book would not have been possible
without the Spinoza monograph written by Deleuze (Note 3 to Ch. 9).
If the second nature is entirely the result of the productivity of the human
subject (subjectivity) - or, to be more precise, as the result of the productivity
of being itself on the complexity level of subjectivity - then one understands why
Negri comprehends, on the one hand, Spinoza's political theory, which is a
theory of collective emancipation, as a strict continuation of his ontology, and
on the other hand why he states, that "The true politics of Spinoza are his
metaphysics."6 For Spinoza's political philosophy is not designed as a
voluntaristic and normativistic theory of legitimation, but as the strict application
of the conditions that are exposed in his general ontology and, especially, in his
doctrine of the conatus in Ethics III. The process of the productivity of being
is continued in the collective practice of the political: political theory is thus
nothing but an analysis. And so, political knowledge is, like all knowledge,
"nothing else than the continuous analysis of this forward movement, of this
weaving, of this continuous accumulation of being."7
Thus, the fundamental relevance of Spinoza consists in his being "the
founder of modern materialism in its highest form, and in doing so, he
determines the actual surroundings of modern and contemporary philosophical
speculation - a philosophy of the worldly and determined being and of an
288 MANFRED WALTHER

atheism as the negation of every preestablished order for human action and for
the constitution of being."8
At the very end of his book he himself raises an important objection:
after such a long period when the capitalist fettering of the productive forces
was dominant - is it really possible then to form links once again to a period
of development and to a philosophy that originated in the period when
everything seemed to be historically open?
Negri puts this question by quoting Walter Benjamin, and in his answer
he also goes along with Benjamin: Negri's thesis of Spinoza's actuality for the
present rests on a hypothesis: "namely on the knowledge (sic!) that the
development of the bourgeois culture has not completely distorted the history
of its origins.119 Spinoza's actuality that really becomes recognizable only after
the crisis of the dominant answer given at the starting point of modern times -
it was, so to speak, not contemporary with its own presence - Spinoza's actuality
consists of his representing, as nobody else docs, the alternative philosophy of
the early bourgeois development - although not without any forerunner and not
without any successor. The line Hobbes-Rousseau-Hegel is juxtaposed by the
other line from Machiavelli via Spinoza to Marx.

3. The Three Main Theses of the Book

I will take a second step and try to elaborate the main theses Negri develops
in his interpretation of Spinoza - as far as I sec them. There are three of them.
Let me say, beforehand, that there are two peculiarities that characterize Negri's
book which make an exact report on the content of his book a really difficult
task:
First, there is an overwhelming richness of allusions to the historical
context and development of European thought before and after Spinoza; and
Negri knows a great deal about the political, economic and religious
configurations in the Netherlands in the 17th Century; his book is also rich
in interpretative findings in all of Spinoza's texts - and Negri treats them all
extensively, including the correspondence.
Second, the way he expresses himself and his views has caused me
extraordinary difficulties. Some passages read more like a hymn on being than
like an analytical philosophical text - but a hymn whose material consists of
highly speculative terms. So I am not sure that I have genuinely understood
his argument everywhere.10
{3.1} With a materialist thinker, and with an historian of philosophical
thought, it appears rather strange that he postulates that the spirit of a
philosophy does not belong to its own time. Negri explains in what sense he
means this by expounding his first thesis:

Spinoza's thought has a necessary but not sufficient condition of possibility in

the two-fold anomaly of the economic, political and spiritual situation of the
Netherlands in 17th Century Europe on the one hand, and in the anomaly of
the Marrano mentality {mentalité) of his ethnic group, on the other hand. So
 Negri on Spinoza 289

there is a determinate fundamentum in re for this philosophy, although Spinoza

rises above this given context in so far as his thought is anomalous even in
relation to this anomalous context.

{3.1.1} The Republic of the United Netherlands, in the early prime of its
commercial capitalism and in its political structure, which shows many early
modern features, is - notwithstanding the social structure that was still
completely corporate, guild-dominated - nevertheless an exceptional phenomenon
in its own time, as many contemporaries, among them the English Ambassador
in the Netherlands, Sir William Temple, have observed. In the Netherlands the
process of modernization does not follow one of the later dominant patterns
of parliamentarism (as in England) or of bureaucratic and military centralization
of the state (as in France, and later, in other parts of the Continent), but it is
the result of a kind of direct path from the Netherlands' medieval political
structure to modernity - this structure, in many respects not being typical for
the other countries in the Middle Ages.
{3.1.2} With regard to the history of mentalities, Spinoza as a Marrano,11
i.e., a member of the Jewish group that had been forced to become Catholics
in Spain, but clandestinely continued to practice their old faith, and thus
continually accused of crypto-judaism, a group that had migrated from Spain
via Portugal and France to the Netherlands at the end of the 16th Century -
Spinoza as a Marrano represents a quite extraordinary type of Europeans who,
on the basis of their experience with the competing and mutually destructive
claims to absoluteness of the positive religions (Judaism, Catholicism and
Protestantism) had developed something like a Weltanschauung beyond all
positive religions. Tb this extent they, especially some members of the
Amsterdam Jewish community, represent a kind of proto-enlightenment in early
modern Europe.
This twofold anomaly, the "wildness" {Wildheit) of the social structure and
the political constitution of the Netherlands and of the mentality history of the
Marranos in the Netherlands, are not sufficient reasons for explaining Spinoza's
anomalous thought, but they are the general conditions of possibility for a
philosophy that overcomes the traditional medieval world view, as well as for
its finding itself at a distance from the philosophy of poetic subjectivity of
modern times with state absolutism as its political complement.
In radicalising current tendencies of his own society and spiritual heritage,
Spinoza goes far beyond this context. But he is, nevertheless, indebted to this
same context.
{3.2} For Negri, Spinoza's philosophy in its mature shape {Gestalt) is a
materialistic theory of the world. It is at the same time opposed to the
dominant tendencies in contemporary philosophy, insofar as it insists on the
possibility of the radical self-liberation and emancipation of mankind. This
constellation - the opposition to his own time of Spinoza's central concept of
philosophy as a metaphysics and politics of collective emancipation - has made
its mark on nearly all the subsequent expositions of his philosophy. Hence
Negri's second thesis:
290 MANFRED WALTHER

"There are two Spinozas" who fight with each other nearly continuously, and that
pattern of his philosophy that is more closely related to the philosophical and
ideological inheritance of the past has left its traces even in the mature form of his
philosophy. Spinoza'sfirstphilosophy (Spinoza I, so to speak), which dominates the
early expositions of his thought, is that philosophy of the crisis of his time that links
up with the Renaissance and the millenarian features of those who formed the
"Spinoza circle." Although the concept of the infinitely active and dynamic substance
is present from the very beginning, Spinoza's philosophy is still neo-platonic; especially
the speculations on the attributes and the doctrine of the parallelism of extension and
thought reveal the emanationist features of this early elaboration of Spinoza's
metaphysics. There is a permanent struggle in Spinoza which gives his philosophy that
ultimate tension which is the genuine sign of his trying to escape inherited
transcendentalism and to expound and unfold the metaphysics of the self-producing
being in and through all stages of reality.

The breakthrough of his mature materialistic philosophy (Spinoza II) occurred

in the period after 1672 when he turned to improving the first version of the
Ethics. It is especially in the third and fourth books of the Ethics that Spinoza
is mostly on his own, when he elaborates the concept of conatus and its specific
concrétisation (Konkretisierung) in men. Although there is a certain reversal in
the fifth book of the Ethicsy where many passages of the first draft have survived
and Spinoza tends to give an ascetic ethical doctrine of liberation, the Tractatus
Politicus picks up just those doctrines of the third and fourth books that are
the closest metaphysical exposition of his mature philosophy. Although in the
parts of that Tractatus devoted to the analysis of the various forms of
government Spinoza falls back into what Negri calls the standard form of
political theory of his time, even there one can see the subversive power of his
general political ontology at work.
{3.3} Negri stresses, as others have done before,12 the inner relation,
even the linking of Spinoza's metaphysics with his political theory. It is with
respect to the theory of State and law that the continuing importance of Spinoza
exists. This is Negri's third thesis:

that Spinoza is the first to criticize the state-absolutist juridical paradigm in

Hobbes, not from the traditional teleological natural-law-position, but from a
radical democratic and ontological position which stresses the dynamic and
spontaneous power of the multitude as the very agent of politics. He thus
outlines the fundamental alternative political theory over against the juridical
ideology of the higher dignity of the state.

This twofold opposition to traditional thought as well as to the ideological

version of early modern thought explains why Spinoza was a lone thinker not
only in his own century but in the 18th Century as well. The motto at the
beginning of Negri's book is a sentence from Voltaire: Je ne connais que Spinoza
qui ait bien raisonné; mais personne ne peut le lire. I know none but Spinoza who
has argued well, but nobody can read him.
It is mainly because of this ontologico-political structure of Spinoza's
 Negri on Spinoza 291

thought that Negri holds Spinoza to be relevant for contemporary philosophical

reflection and systematic theory: "Spinoza lives as the alternative: today this
alternative is real and topical. Spinoza's analytics of the filled space and of the
open time is on the way to becoming the ethics of liberation, in all dimensions
which this examination creates and prepares.1*13

4 Critical Remarks

In all three topics Negri has inspired or at least pushed forward scholarly
research. I would like to comment on the first and the second thesis only
very briefly because the first doesn't concern the philosophical problems,
meaning here the systematic problems, of his doctrine, and because the second
is dealt with explicitly by Matheron with reference to Spinoza's political
philosophy.
{4.1} Some remarks on the anomaly of the "context of discovery" for
Spinoza's philosophy. Here I will only comment on the first aspect, i.e. Dutch
society in relation to early modern Europe. As far as I can see, Negri is correct
in stating that the situation was anomalous.
In the economy, not only did the Netherlands develop an immense
commercial capitalism, as is widely known, but we can unambiguously identify
the beginning of an industrial capitalism, indicated by its "ability to modernize
the agricultural sector and to develop an efficient and productive manufactur-
ing sector centered around textiles and shipbuilding."14 Thus, the Dutch
provinces, and especially Holland, could be classified among the most
'industrialized' countries of the Seventeenth Century.15 Nevertheless - and this
may be called the anomaly of the Netherlands in the economic sector - it was
not here but in England that industrial capitalism asserted itself: quite a lot of
conditions16 were lacking, and thus the Netherlands, that seemed to be at the
top of the economic modernization process, fell back in the following century.
The political situation was, at any rate, at least as complicated as the
economic one.17 Whereas the nation building process, which is one of the
indicators of political modernization, in other countries was mainly the result
of the activity of a more or less centralized, more or less bureaucratic and more
or less militant state, in the Netherlands the main forces to create a
homogeneous nation were located in society itself, especially in the upper classes
of the big towns. And although the formal constitutional structure in the
Netherlands was still mainly medieval - there was no direct participation of the
citizens either on the local or on the provincial or on the federal levels of the
Dutch "Republic" - and the class assemblies were theoretically subordinate to
a governor of the king of Spain, a governor that did not exist of a king who
was no longer acknowledged - there were strong and effective tendencies
inherent in Dutch society towards transforming the corporate libertief into
general political liberty. Thus in the Netherlands one can see in the Seventeenth
Century a process of social and political integration not inaugurated by the State
but by the social forces themselves, and the trend was to democracy in an
292 MANFRED WALTHER

egalitarian sense. The outstanding degree to which religious and ideological

toleration were real in the Netherlands may be taken as a clear sign of this
tendency indicated by a great number of newspapers and a flood of pamphlets
on nearly all political topics. So, although political power was in the hands
of some patrician families of the big towns (because the clergy as the first rank
no longer existed and the aristocracy was weak or culturally and economically
integrated in the bourgeoisie) there was no country where democratic principles
were as deeply rooted as in the Netherlands.
So I think Negri is right again in perceiving Spinoza's political theory as
rooted in the economic and political anomaly of the Netherlands as compared
with the way in which the modernization process developed in other countries.
But it is a matter of fact that this anomalous path to modernity declined in the
Eighteenth Century, economically as well as politically, and was taken up again
only in the Nineteenth Century as a kind of "import" from those countries that
had followed different lines of development.
{4.2} Although Negri is correct in his observation that the dynamism of
substance, its world constituting power (potentia), is most clearly developed in
the third and fourth books of the Ethics and in the basic reflections of the
Tractatus Politicus, his statement that there is not only an inner tension, but an
inner division into two different philosophies in Spinoza, doesn't deserve much
confidence. Negri himself gives evidence of the arbitrariness of his hypothesis
in showing that Spinoza, when elaborating his "materialist" philosophy (Spinoza
II), often refers to those parts of his earlier work that belong, according to
Negri, to the pre-mature phase (Spinoza I).18 But the hypothesis is necessary
for Negri to make Spinoza appear a materialist: It is only in separating the
religious and intellectual features from the exposition of Spinoza's philosophy
that Negri can "demonstrate" that Spinoza was a materialist philosopher.19 So
it is the interpreter's preconception, his Vorverständnis, that is at work when
Negri produces Spinoza's inner biography as a drama. Negri's immense
knowledge of all the relevant late medieval and early modern traditions and
trends of thought give this drama a colorful background so that one often
forgets that one is just at a performance.
{4.3} The most exciting thesis in Negri's work is the strict confrontation
of Spinoza's theory of state and law based on the ontological productivity of
the multitude as the very agent of politics, with the main line of political
theory from Hobbes via Rousseau and Kant to Hegel who contrast the state
with society and thus give it a specific dignity and legitimacy. I will restrict
myself in this context to discussing the stated opposition of Spinoza's theory
of State and law to Hobbes'.
{4.3.1} Before starting to discuss Negri on Spinoza's political and legal
philosophy, I would like, in passing, to draw your attention to an aspect of the
influence of Spinoza's political philosophy which has not yet found the interest
it deserves: the influence he had during the founding period of the Constitution
of the United States. As Guiseppa Saccaro Battistr0 has shown, there were
three books of Spinoza's in Thomas Jefferson's library - the Opera Posthuma,
the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, which Jefferson himself "ordered from Paris
 Negri on Spinoza 293

in 1792" (Saccaro Battisti, p. 1), and the English translation of that same work
dating from 1789. 21 Besides the reflections on the different forms of
government or constitution in the Dractatus Politicus, especially on a federalist
form of the state, which Signora Saccaro Battisti mentions, special attention has
to be given to Spinoza's theory of civil religion (religio civilis) as the secular
complement of positive religion. While positive religion, because of its inherent
particularism, divides people, civil religion is, according to Spinoza in the TTP,
the necessary medium of political integration on the level of imagination -
imagination being the level on which collective political thought is effective.
The religious pluralism of the founding period of the United States demanded
such a unifying religiously founded common belief, and as far as I can see, it
is Spinoza's theory of civil religion that inspired the Founding Fathers, especially
Jefferson, to push forward this concept. As far as I can see, nobody has, up
to now, tried to trace Spinoza's influence on this debate around the Federalist
Papers.
{4.3.2} It is, of course, true that the ontological foundation of political
theory in Spinoza is the most outstanding feature that distinguishes his political
philosophy from the nominalism, constructivism, and thus, the arbitrariness of
Hobbes' political thought, even if one considers that Hobbes' voluntarism is a
kind of rational voluntarism. But at the very moment when one articulates such
a thesis, one hesitates, because of the fact that in Hobbes we can identify
another line of reasoning that runs in a kind of parallelism through nearly all
of his political theory:
(a) We start with the observation that political theory in Hobbes is just
the application of his general concept of "matter in motion" to the field of
collective, i.e., political action. From this it follows that political theory has to
be elaborated as a kind of physics of collective action in building "that great
Leviathan."
(b) We then go to the passage at the end of Leviathan xiii, where Hobbes
resumes his analysis of the antagonism of the state of nature:

And thus much for the ill condition, which man by mere nature is actually placed
in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions
[affectus, in Spinoza's language], partly in his reason. (English Works, ed. Molesorth,
III, 115-116).

(c) We end with the unfolding of the competing efforts of the sovereign, on
the one hand, and of the subjects, on the other hand, to unfold their respective
requirements and plans of life - with the unambiguous establishment of a right
of resistance on the part of the subjects in case the sovereign fails to fulfill the
aims of the state.
So there is a kind of physics of political power in Hobbes which enabled
Spinoza consequently to develop his political philosophy as a "geometry of the
intersubjective affective conatus of the masses."
{4.3.3} But, on the other hand, there is this entry of right reason as a
kind of Deus ex machina, which directs people to renounce the exercise of their
294 MANFRED WALTHER

unlimited right to everything, resulting in their irreversibly transferring their

rights to the sovereign (with the exception, it is true, of the ultimate right of
resistance if "life and liberty" are endangered). What takes place in Hobbes here
is the abstraction of an autonomous juridical sphere - an abstraction from the
struggles immanent in society, an abstraction meant to calm down or to suppress
this antagonism from above, from a region of fundamentally legitimated power
and force on behalf of the state.
And Spinoza puts his finger on precisely these features of Hobbes' theory
as an arbitrary vanishingfromsociety itself, presupposing a faculty of reasonable
self-conduct and self-discipline which is completely fictitious, given the real
constitution of the political agents as it is presupposed in Hobbes himself. What
follows from this, according to Spinoza, is that one has to demonstrate the
possibility of the emergence of political reason inside this struggle and without
abstraction from the general rules of human behavior. From this it follows that
there is no transfer of power on behalf of the individuals at all. The emergence
of the state has to be explained from the natural condition of mankind alone,
as a kind of Lernprozess in the light of the experience everybody acquires when
trying to live according to his own right, without taking the power and forces
of the others into account. But at no time in this process did any individual
ever renounce the expression and exercise of his own power. It is only by a
power superior to his that he is restricted - and thus restricts himself. That
means that the state is not located vis à vis society and its members, but is an
institution that develops solely in society itself and remains indissolubly
connected to society. This is because it is only by consent of the citizens that
peace can be obtained which is not a mere absence of war but the true
mediation between the interests of the masses and their power and the interest
and power of those who govern. If consent to, or at least acceptance of, the
imperatives of those who govern is what constitutes the power and strength of
government, any separation of a juridically, and thus legitimately, autonomous
sphere of the state from society is simply ontologically impossible, given that
"the right of government of the supreme power is nothing else but the right of
nature itself, which is not determined by the power of a single person but by
the multitude guided as by one mind" (TP III, 2, beginning). So finally, it is
true that Spinoza's political theory is an alternative to the mainstream of modern
political thought, conceptually separating state and society and legitimating
oppression from above as being the will of the subjects themselves.
{4.3.4} As is widely known, Hobbes is viewed as the founder of modern
legal positivism. Although there are elements in his theory of state and law that
show his indebtedness to the natural law tradition, it is beyond doubt that
natural laws have a completely different status in Hobbes when compared with
the natural law tradition: they are no longer ontologically or de-ontologically
preexisting obligations, but they are the very product of the constructive human
reason; and their validity inside the state rests on the presupposition that they
form a part of the sovereign's will - although this is clearly presented as a legal
fiction in Hobbes. But it is true, again, that all the laws of the state are said
to be valid only because they are related to the will of the sovereign. And in
 Negri on Spinoza 295

this respect Hobbes can be said to be the founder of legal positivism in the
special form of validity positivism.
I use this term "validity positivism" {Geltungspositivismus) to compare
Hobbes' political philosophy with that of Spinoza once more - now in the field
of legal theory. Spinoza insists on effectiveness as a decisive defining element
of the concept of law, and from this he infers that what is true with the laws
of nature in general has to be true with the laws of the state as well: every law
that really is a law is effective - in general. Now, as the effectiveness of a law
in the state is dependent not only on the will and power of the sovereign, but
on the will and power of the multitude as well, which surpasses every group of
ruling men by far, it is the interaction of these two powers that constitutes and
defines a law. From this it follows that law is never identical with the
imperatives given by the government or with the law in the books, but that law
is always "law in life," i.e. the vector of the diverse acting forces in society. That
is wlhat I call the "sociological positivism" of law. In the light of this fully
developed concept of law, the "validity positivism" which is commonly identified
with legal positivism, is only half the truth: it is a juridically bisected positivism -
and that is why it is ideological, and the ruling legal positivism can correctly
be identified as the juridical version of the bourgeois political ideology, as
Negri states.
Let me add the remark that the radically modern features of Spinoza's
philosophy of society, state and law, are nowhere more apparent than where
he gives a theory of the genesis of normativity: as norms have no ontological
or de-ontological pre-existence, they have to be understood as the very product
of human interaction. In the light of this reasoning one can clearly see the
originally normative features even in Hobbes, who has not completely conquered
the normativist - that is: the idealist - tradition in political philosophy.
{4.4} Some final remarks on Spinoza as a materialist:
Negri tends to interpret Spinoza as being more voluntaristic and - if this
equation holds true - more idealistic than Spinoza really is, even in the part
where Negri sees him at the climax of the materialistic thought. Negri writes:
Das existente Politische ist absolut kontradiktorisch zur konstitutiven Notwendigkeit
Weil es nämlich zufällig ist Es ist die Negation des Seins (234). Translated: "The
existing political is absolutely contradictory to constitutive necessity. Because
it is contingent. It is the negation of (the) being." What he means is that the
existing political structure Spinoza has in mind in the Netherlands and elsewhere
is, for him, not the ultimate development and expression of that struggle for
liberty that is, as an expression of the infinite power of being, immanent in the
multitude as a political subject, or as the political subject itself. But in what
sense can something really existing be called contingent without denying
Spinoza's doctrine of universal necessity? Here I find in Negri something that
reminds me of Hegel's talk of faule Wirklichkeit, and that means opening a gap
between what is and what ought to be. This is possible only when one takes
men indeed to be an imperium in imperio, i.e., when one exclusively regards the
place of the human subject vis à vis nature as a whole. And this is, as far as
I can see, the way Negri can make Spinoza a philosopher of the revolution and
296 MANFRED WALTHKR

of the future - not only in the sense that the historical time for Spinoza's
philosophy is one that is still to œme, but in the sense that he ontologically
opens the space for further human emancipation vis à vis nature and its
necessity. So, notwithstanding Negri's continuous affirmation that Spinoza is
a - or the - materialist thinker of early modern times, in the end his Spinoza
looks very much like an idealist thinker in this respect.

1. Negri, L'anomalia selvaggia: Saggio su potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza. Milano:

Feltrinelli, 1981.
2. Idem: L'anomalie sauvage: Puissance et pouvoir chez Spinoza. Traduit de l'italien par
François Matheron. Préfaces de Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Macherey et Alexandre Matheron.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982. (Pratiques théoriques.)
3. Idem: Die wilde Anomalie: Baruch Spinozas Entwurf einer freien Gesellschaft. Translated
from the Italian by Werner Raith. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1982.
4. daß die Geschichte der Metaphysik radikale Alternativen einschließt (p.10). All page
references are to the German translation (note 3).
5. Dennoch wurde Spinoza viel zu oft in der klebrigen 'demokratischen' Suppe aus
normativem Transzendentalismus, Rousseauschem Gemein willen und Hegelscher Aufhebung
gekocht (p. 10).
6. Die wahre Politik Spinoza ist seine Metaphysik (p. 243).
7. ...nichts anderes als fortwährende Analytik dieses Fortschreitens, dieses Webens, dieser
fortwährenden Anhäufung des Seins (p. 256).
8. Spinoza begründet den modernen Matenalismus in seiner höchsten Form und bestimmt
damit dem eigentlichen Umkreis der modernen und zeitgenössischen philosophischen
Spekulation - einer Philosophie des weltlichen und bestimmten Seins und eines Atheismus als
Verneinung jeglicher vorgegebenen Ordnung für das menschliche Handeln und für die
Konstitution des Seins (p. 9).
9. nämlich der Erkenntnis, daß die Entwicklung der bürgerlichen Kultur die Geschichte
ihrer Ursprünge nicht völlig entstellt hat (p. 256).
10. The difficulties increase if one has to refer to a translation and is not able to read
the original Italian text. As far as the German translation is concerned, these difficulties
are multiplied by the fact that this translation is full of mistakes - some of them severely
darkening Negri's arguments. So, for instance, the Italian term giusnaturalismo is rendered
as Rechtsnaturalismus instead of Naturrechtsdenken which is, in German, quite the opposite
of Rechtsnaturalismus (naturalistic realism). In many cases I was able to solve the problem
by consulting the French translation, which is to be preferred to the German edition. But
sometimes the darkness seems to be inherent in Negri's text itself.
11. The "detection" of the specific Marrano mentality as the most important biographical
context for Spinoza's philosophy still owes much to the works of Carl Gebhardt. Cf. above
all, his "Das Marranenproblem," Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa, mit Einl., Übertr. u.
Regesten hg. von Carl Gebhardt, Amsterdam... : Carl Winter..., 1922 (Biblioteca Spinozana,
2), pp. V-XL. As one of the most recent and most penetrating studies on this subject, cf.
Yirmiahu Yovel, "Marrano patterns in Spinoza," in Giancotti (1985), 461-85.
12. Especially Matheron and Konrad Hecker with his voluminous study Gesellschaftliche
Wirklichkeit und Vernunft in der Philosophie Spinozas: Untersuchungen über die immanente
Systematik der Gesellschaftsphilosophie Spinozas im Zusammenhang seines philosophischen
GesamtwerL· und zum Problem ihres ideologischen Sinngehalts. Regensburg: Kommis-
sionsverlag Buchh. Pustet, 1975. Hecker's book is immensely rich in comments on earlier
Spinoza literature.
 Negri on Spinoza 297

13. Spinoza lebt als Alternative: Heute ist diese Alternative real und aktuell. Spinoza's
Analytik des erfüllten Raumes und der offenen Zeit ist im Begriff zur Ethik der Befreiung
zu werden, in allen Dimensionen, die diese Untersuchung schafft und vorbereitet (p. 243).
14. Stefan Breuer, in his review of G. Sucher van Bath, Dutch Capitalism and World
Capitalism: Capitalisme hollandais et capitalisme mondial (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press; Paris: Editions de la maison des sciences de Phomme, 1982). The review was
published in Stadia Spinozana 1 (1985), 430-432.
15. G. Slicher van Bath, in Dutch Capitalism, p. 26.
16. See the studies of van Bath, Boyer and de Vries in Dutch Capitalism and the account
given by Breuer (see note 14).
17. In the following remarks I mainly rely on the interpretation recently given by Heinz
Schilling, especially in his "Die Geschichte der nördlichen Niederlande und die
Modernisierungstheorie," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 8 (1982), 475-517, as well as in his
"Der libertär-radikale Republikanismus in der frühen Neuzeit," Geschichte und Gesellschaft
10 (1984), 498-533.
For the development of political theories before and after the Dutch Revolution,
cf. Richard Saage, Herrschaft, Toleranz, Widerstand: Studien zur politischen Theone der
Niederländischen und der Englischen Revolution, Vorw. v. Walter Euchner (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1982).
18. Alexandre Matheron, in his introduction to the French translation of Negri's book
(13-17), was the first to draw attention to the fact that Spinoza, when demonstrating
propositions in the "mature" books 3 and 4 of the Ethics, often refers to propositions
which, according to Negri belong to Spinoza I. Mathcron's methodological reflections
concerning the validity of Negri's approach are convincing. Cf. the elaborated version of
the same text: Alexandre Matheron, "'Canomalic sauvage' d'Antonio Negri," Cahiers
Spinoza 4 (1982-83), 39-60.
19. For the refutation of the hermeneutical premises underlying the idealist and the
materialist interpretations of Spinoza, cf. Manfred Walthcr, Metaphysik als Antitheologie:
Die Philosophie Spinozas im Zusammenhang der religionsphilosophischen Problematik
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1971), pp. 97-101.
20. Guiseppa Saccaro Battisti, "Some Spinozan Political ideas in the Mazzei-Mably dispute."
Unpubl. paper, Spinoza conference Wolfenbüttel, Sept. 1982.
21. See the preface to this translation, with an editorial note by Wim Klever, in Studia
Spinozana 2 (1986), 351-353.
 FORTUNE ET THÉORIE DE L'HISTOIRE

PIERRE-FRANÇOIS MOREAU
Université de Paris IV

"Si les hommes pouvaient régler toutes leurs affaires suivant un dessein arrêté,
ou encore si la fortune leur était toujours favorable, ils ne seraient jamais
prisonniers de la superstition."1 La première phrase du Tractatus theologico-
politicus nous jette d'emblée dans Vexpérience de la condition humaine, et la
première condition de cette expérience, condition à la fois constitutive de ses
structures et première ou presque dans sa perception, c'est sa variabilité
temporelle. Spinoza précisera un peu plus loin la trame de cette variabilité:
épisodes de prospérité, épisodes d'adversité, retours de fortune. Si on peut
parler de pessimisme, en un certain sens, ou de constatations désabusées, il faut
se hâter d'ajouter que ce pessimisme ou celle absence d'illusion ne concerne
que la forme (la stabilité d'une situation donnée) et non le contenu des
situations (le malheur n'est pas plus sûr que le bonheur). La dimension de
l'expérience désignée par ce terme de fortune comporte trois caractères,
effectivement formels:

- elle est variable dans le temps;

- elle est répétitive (dans la vie d'un individu, et d'un individu à l'autre - comme
tout ce qui est enregistré sous la rubrique "expérience")
- elle est indépendante de nous: chacun des moments s'impose à nous sans que
nous l'ayons choisi; la fortune, c'est l'expression du fait que nous ne pouvons pas
régler nos affaires suivant un dessein une fois arrêté: autrement dit que nos affaires
ne sont pas nos affaires. Autant dire que la première figure de l'histoire, c'est le
hasard historique, en tant qu'il pèse sur nous et nous empêche d'accorder
complètement nos desseins et notre action.

Une seconde condition de l'expérience apparaît dans le même texte: cette

variabilité historique, loin d'être insignifiante, produit au contraire l'essentiel
des conduites humaines; si la fortune n'existait pas, il n'y aurait pas de
superstition; il n'y en aurait pas non plus si cette fortune était toujours favorable.
Mais il est de l'essence de la fortune de n'être pas toujours quelque chose.
Cependant cette subordonnée initiale introduit une lueur d'espérance, une ultime
possibilité, non réalisée à ce jour, de changement: si un jour se constituent -
peu importe comment pour l'instant - des conditions de vie qui font reculer
les effets de la variabilité de la fortune, alors la superstition reculera aussi. On
peut dire que tout un pan du TTP et, plus tard, du TP, est un développement
de cette subordonnée.
Enfin troisième condition de l'expérience: une des preuves les plus fortes
de l'irrationalité des hommes, c'est qu'ils cherchent la raison là où elle n'est
pas. Ils cherchent l'intention dans le hasard et, puisqu'ils savent bien que ce
n'est pas leur intention, ils supposent que c'est celle d'un autre. Ils souhaitent
trouver un contenu sous sa forme et, ainsi, la méconnaissent. Autrement dit,
un des aspects de leur domination par la fortune, c'est qu'ils refusent, lorsqu'ils
 Fortune et théorie de l'histoire 299

en font l'expérience, de s'en tenir à la stricte fortune. Ils essaient d'expliquer

les choses qui leur échappent (qui échappent et à leur maîtrise et à leur
compréhension) en y cherchant une intention historique? ils ont donc une
tendance spontanée à anthropomorphiser l'histoire, comme ils anthropomor-
phisent la nature. A bien lire cette préface du TTP, on se rendra compte qu'elle
est parfaitement parallèle aux textes comme l'appendice de la Première Partie
de YEthique, qui expliquent l'illusion finaliste à l'égard des choses naturelles.
Pour la même raison qu'il y a un finalisme "dans l'espace," il y a un finalisme
"dans le temps"; il est non moins nécessaire, puisqu'il s'enracine à la fois dans
l'expérience et dans l'interprétation spontanée de l'expérience. Il prend la forme
élémentaire de la croyance aux signes et aux présages (équivalents pour l'histoire
de ce que sont les miracles pour la nature), mais ces formes et ces matériaux
imaginaires simples peuvent se combiner jusqu'à constituer une théorie de
l'Election ou de la Providence.
Cette théorie de la fortune joue un rôle-clef dans le système spinoziste
et notamment dans les secteurs de ce système qui reprennent et repensent la
tradition classique de la lecture de la vie humaine. On en retiendra ici trois
aspects: l'héritage critique de la rhétorique classique; la description des structures
de l'expérience; les matériaux pour une théorie de l'histoire.3

Le TTP ne présuppose pas, pour le lecteur, la connaissance du système.

Pourtant, Spinoza y procède bien par démonstrations rationnelles; mais ces
démonstrations s'appuient sur un espace de rationalité commun, qu'il peut
légitimement supposer acquis chez le lecteur cultivé de son temps. Cet espace
est double: il est constitué d'une part de réflexions sur la vie et la société, que
tout un chacun peut faire lui-même ou bien hériter d'une tradition anonyme
à force d'être répétée; d'autre part d'une culture moyenne assez aisément
identifiable, plutôt latine que grecque, fondée sur des exemples historiques et
littéraires plutôt que sur la connaissance des grands systèmes philosophiques,
mais où une sorte de sagesse commune fournit les moyens de théoriser les leçons
du livre du monde. Une culture rhétorique non pas parce qu'elle ne
comprendrait que des orateurs, mais parce que poètes et historiens, par exemple,
y sont assez volontiers enrôlés dans un schéma rhétorique.4 Dans le cas de
Spinoza: Terence, Tacite, Quinte-Curce particulièrement.
Or la Préface du TTP s'appuie précisément sur l'un de ces auteurs pour
confirmer ce qu'elle avance concernant les rapports entre revers de fortune
/crainte et espoir/ superstition. Deux références explicites à Quinte-Curce
permettent d'établir qu'Alexandre ne tomba dans la superstition que lorsqu'il
conçut des craintes sur la fortune (une page plus loin, une troisième citation
du même auteur marquera les liens entre superstition et gouvernement de la
multitude).5 On peut donc s'attendre à trouver cette théorie commune de la
fortune dans YHistoire d'Alexandre le Grand. Il n'est pas inutile de rappeler qu'au
XVIIe siècle, Quinte-Curce jouit, chez les auteurs qui se rattachent à une
tradition critique ou sceptique, d'une réputation d'ennemi de la superstition, et
300 PIERRE-FRANÇOIS MOREAU

ce d'autant plus qu'il traite une matière qui s'y prêtait largement. On ne peut
donc s'étonner que Spinoza l'ait choisi comme médiateur entre son lecteur et
lui pour introduire préphilosophiquement ses thèses: il était sûr de rencontrer
un accord au moins vague comme base de la discusssion; reste à savoir ce que
recouvre cet argumentaire et ce lexique et les choix que le traitement
philosophique proprement dit va y opérer.
Limitons-nous au livre V, le premier cité ici. Il raconte les événements
qui suivent la bataille d'Arbèles; la reddition de Babylone, la prise de Suse,
et, du côté perse, la fuite de Darius, la trahison des chefs Bactriens, enfin la
série d'intrigues qui mènent à l'arrestation et à la mort du Grand Roi (les
derniers chapitres, qui racontent l'assassinat lui-même, manquent). Ce qui est
remarquable, c'est que le terme de fortune, s'il apparaît souvent dans le texte,
indique beaucoup plus souvent ce qui arrive aux Perses qu'aux Grecs, quand il
n'est pas directement placé dans la bouche de Darius. Dans le §4, que cite
Spinoza, il n'est pas dit explicitement qu'Alexandre doute de la fortune, mais
les lignes qui précèdent (fin du §3) soulignent nettement l'opposition entre deux
séquences historiques: l'une (au passé) où tout semblait permis à Alexandre
(invictus ante earn diemfiierat, nihilfrustraausus), l'autre, au présent, où il semble
se heurter à des obstacles, où son bonheur jusqu'ici constant semble pris au
piège {tune haesitabat deprehensa félicitas). Et c'est alors qu'ayant dû reculer
de trente stades, avant de trouver un guide qui lui permettra de contourner et
d'encercler les troupes ennemies, il se met à consulter les devins par esprit de
superstition. Donc, s'il n'y a pas le mot, il y a bien les caractères que Ton
associe avec l'idée de fortune; il ne manque même pas l'idée courante que l'excès
du revers met en rage qui en est victime: car l'armée d'Alexandre n'est pas
simplement tenue en échec, elle a été coincée dans un défilé où ses soldats ont
dû mourir sans même pouvoir rendre les coups, situation la plus misérable pour
des hommes courageux.7 A l'insolence du bonheur passé répond donc le
supplément de malheur qui rend impuissant au moment du revers. Cette idée
des excès opposés se lie au thème des ludibria fortunae, les ironies ou les
moqueries par lesquelles est frappée l'imagination humaine.8
Passons maintenant du côté de Darius. Vaincu, il est normal qu'il médite
plus sur la fortune que le vainqueur, et effectivement on le voit au début et à
la fin du livre opposer sa grandeur passée, et celle de ses ancêtres, à ses épreuves
présentes. Mais une autre façon de parler apparaît: il parle de sa fortune et
dit à ses compagnons: "vous avez préféré vous attacher à ma fortune plutôt qu'à
celle du vainqueur" (V, 8). La fortune n'est plus alors la répartition abstraite
des biens et des maux, elle désigne la série de biens et de maux attachés à
chacun, et même la série prévisible - à tel point qu'on pourrait traduire par le
sort ou le destin, et non plus par le hasard.9 Ici, ce n'est plus la variabilité,
mais au contraire la constance individuelle qui est mise en relief. L'extrême
de cette constance, c'est l'intention qui destine un homme à une fin: à ce stade
la Fortune n'a plus qu'à recevoir un nom pour être considérée comme une
personne, qu'il faut ménager de peur de l'irriter. Ainsi, au livre précédent, la
mère du Grand Roi, recevant la nouvelle, d'ailleurs fausse, de la victoire, "garda
la même attitude: Pas une parole ne lui échappa; elle ne changea pas de couleur,
 Fortune et théorie de l'histoire 301

sa physionomie resta la même, sans doute pour ne pas irriter la fortune par une
joie prématurée."10
La notion commune de fortuna livrée au lecteur par Quinte-Curce a donc
trois niveaux:

- la variabilité des affaires humaines; la crainte et la superstition où, on doit le

constater, les revers jettent les hommes; leur oubli relatif lors du retour de la
prospérité;
- la série de ce qui arrive à un individu; l'idée que cette série lui constitue un destin;
- enfin la personnalisation de l'intention qui est sous ces hauts et ces bas -
personnalisation au moins rhétorique sous la plume de l'historien, mais qu'il n'hésite
pas à attribuer à ses personnages comme croyance réelle.

Peut-on affirmer qu'on a là le champ sémantique total de ce que le terme

évoque à un lecteur du XVIIe siècle? Il faudrait sans doute ajouter encore
un quatrième sens, qu'on peut lire chez Machiavel, et qui n'est pas très éloigné
de ce qu'on désigne maintenant par conjoncture: la fortune comme occasio et
non plus seulement casus. Plutôt une possibilité d'être actif à l'égard de
l'histoire que le fait constaté qu'on la subit. C'est en tout cas sur ce cercle de
significations que Spinoza va commencer son analyse de l'expérience.

II

Lorsque Spinoza analyse des données de l'expérience humaine, il fait référence,

indissociablement, à ce que chacun peut voir en lui-même, à ce qu'il peut
observer chez les autres, à ce qu'il hérite de déjà constitué dans une culture
classique, aussi bien comme maximes que comme exempta. C'est un type
d'écriture auquel il a recours en fait assez souvent (début du Traité de la réforme
de l'entendement, lettres, scolies et appendices de YEthique, etc.), qui a d'autres
contraintes que la déduction géométrique, et joue un rôle différent, tout aussi
nécessaire, mais qui prend le lecteur sous un autre regard.
Que dit-il, à ce niveau, dans ce regard, concernant la fortune? Deux
choses épistémologiquement essentielles:

- "cela, j'estime que nul ne l'ignore" (thèse Λ);

- "tout en croyant que la plupart s'ignorent cux-mômes" (thèse B). 11

On peut dire que ces deux thèses encadrent tout l'usage spinoziste de
l'expérience. A la différence de la géométrie, c'est du toujours déjà su; quand
on commence à discuter avec quelqu'un, il n'a peut-être jamais entendu parler
des lois mathématiques (ou construites sur le modèle des mathématiques) qu'on
va lui démontrer; ce n'est pas gênant s'il connaît et accepte la règle du jeu; en
revanche, il a forcément entendu parler de, et réfléchi lui-même à, ce qu'enseigne
l'expérience (ici: les lois de la fortune; mais ce pourrait être aussi: que
l'amoureux revient vers la coquette malgré ses serments, que l'ivrogne ou la
bavarde parlent malgré leur volonté, que nul n'est si vigilant qu'il ne sommeille
parfois, que les jeunes gens si l'on n'y prend garde sont attirés par la mode et
302 PIERRE-FRANÇOIS MOREAU

les prestiges de l'étranger, que la loyauté mène souvent les conseillers à leur
perte ...) Et ce savoir n'est pas une illusion; pour Spinoza l'expérience ne
trompe pas. Pourtant les gens sont trompés (Quamvis centies fallait ibid.);
pourquoi? d'une part parce qu'ils greffent sur l'expérience toutes sortes
d'idéologies ou de mythologies qui en sont l'interprétation, la prolongation
artificieuses; d'autre part parce qu'ils n'en tirent pas les leçons et, notamment
qu'ils n'appliquent pas à leur propre cas ce qu'ils voient chez autrui, ou bien
qu'ils n'appliquent pas dans l'adversité les maximes qu'ils élaborent dans le
calme; les conditions de l'expérience font qu'elle est opaque à ses propres leçons.
D'où ce paradoxe: de ces leçons chacun n'ignore rien, sauf qu'il s'ignore lui-
même. Lorsque Spinoza dit qu'aux jours de prospérité chacun est plein de
sagesse, il est à peine ironique: les propositions où se formule cette sagesse
(celles du néo-stoïcisme, pour fixer les idées) sont peut-être exactes, mais elles
ne tiennent pas compte de Yenracinement des situations humaines et sont donc
de simples dictamina qu'on aura du mal à appliquer dans des situations,
nullement impossibles à prévoir, où la raison est submergée.
Dès lors, comment traiter les leçons de l'expérience dans ce double contexte
de savoir ignorant? En triant ce qui est leçon proprement dite (experientia
docet... ) et mythologie: on observera donc que l'usage spinozien du terme
fortune le réduit au maximum à ses aspects formels, énumérés tout à l'heure;
pas de référence à la fortune individuelle et moins encore à sa personnalisation.
Egalement en modifiant la théorie commune pour lui faire intégrer ouvertement
les aspects qu'elle rend opaques: donc la Préface insiste sur le caractère universel
des réactions de peur et d'espoir, et sur les apparentes exceptions que constituent
les périodes stables. On pourrait dire que la théorie commune de la fortune
dégage deux types de périodes et, dans ses formes les plus cultivées, les
caractérise par la présence ou l'absence d'une idéologie (la superstition) et de
son enracinement affectif (la peur et l'espoir); et que Spinoza greffe sur elle une
théorie critique de la fortune qui repère deux idéologies et non pas une seule:
la superstition dans les périodes troublées, l'illusion d'en demeurer à l'abri, dans
les moments d'assurance. Le savoir inaugural du TTP, le minimum nécessaire
pour discuter rationnellement mais non géométriquement avec le lecteur, réside
dans l'application de la seconde de ces théories sur la première.
Est-ce là tout? Non, si l'on se tourne vers le système dans l'ordre de ses
raisons. Car on trouvera là une troisième théorie, où la fortune est cette fois
au bout du raisonnement et non au départ: on peut démontrer, à partir des livres
I et II de YEthique que nécessairement notre propre vie nous échappe, que nous
sommes soumis à des lois, physiques et psychologiques, que nous ne maîtrisons
pas, que nous sommes affrontés, par notre corps, à un ordre de rencontres
extérieures dont certaines nous nuisent et certaines nous sont utiles. Mais cette
théorie-là n'est pas présente dans le TTP, encore qu'elle n'y soit nullement
contredite: ce qu'ailleurs Spinoza démontre à partir des prémisses du système,
ici il le montre à partir du noyau vrai du toujours-déjà-su ou le rappelle à partir
de la culture rhétorique qui l'a enregistré, mis en forme et condensé depuis
longtemps.
 Fortune et théorie de l'histoire 303

III

Si maintenant on applique la troisième théorie à la deuxième, il faudra dire qu'il

n'y a pas de contingence historique en dernière instance. Le système démontre
la pleine nécessité de ce qui survient dans chaque vie humaine. Mais il y a une
contingence pour nous: il y a de l'inattendu, et précisément là où nous le
désirons le moins. La fortune désigne les conséquences hasardeuses de cette
absence de hasard. Les lois nécessaires qui régissent les choses naturelles, y
compris les actions humaines, ne marquent pas une intention; mais notre
ignorance de ces lois, et notre incapacité à en déduire les événements singuliers
fait que d'une part nous les vivons sous la forme d'un hasard temporel et
répétitif, d'autre part que nous sommes tentés de les assigner à une Volonté
ou à une Ironie qui nous dépasse - afin de croire saisir ce qu'en fait nous ne
saisissons pas. C'est en ce point que s'enracine la tendance naturelle à sacraliser
l'Histoire.12
En construisant sa théorie critique de la fortune, Spinoza extrait de la
théorie courante ce qu'elle a de positif (et qui est une négation: celle de la
certitude quant aux événements singuliers); il en retranche ce qui pourrait
donner prise à une élaboration théologique. Faut-il alors penser que le dernier
mot de sa philosophie de l'histoire est négatif? Qu'il se contente de séculariser
l'histoire sainte et de refuser ou de dissoudre les diverses philosophies de la
Providence? La méditation sur la fortune aboutirait alors a réaffirmer
simplement la vanité et l'absence de sens des conduites humaines: tous les
empires périssent, la nature humaine, étant éternelle, engendre éternellement
les mêmes effets, on ne sort donc jamais d'une histoire cyclique faite de barbarie,
civilisation, décadence.13
Ce n'est peut-être pas si simple: la théorie affirme l'existence d'une base
anthropologique éternelle de l'histoire, mais peut-être n'en connaissons-nous pas
encore tous les effets possibles. On peut tirer de la nature humaine un petit
nombre de traits fixes qui expliquent suffisamment l'espace de variations dans
lequel surviennent succès et catastrophes des individus et des sociétés. Il existe
donc, malgré la variété des individus, et le caractère irréductible de Yingenium
de chacun, une description possible de l'espèce humaine et de ses comporte-
ments, qui correspond à des motifs constants.
Mais ces motifs, nous les connaissons toujours sous une forme déjà
socialisée: il n'existe pas d'individus vivant réellement à l'état de nature et,
d'un autre côté, la nature ne crée pas de peuples, ce sont les lois et les moeurs
qui le font. Donc même si la psychologie individuelle est à la base supposée de
l'histoire, celle-ci se déroule ensuite dans une trame où les effets de cette
psychologie sont toujours imbriqués à l'acquis des moeurs et des lois, qui
forment les hommes dès leur plus tendre enfance.
Qu'en est-il dès lors des effets de la fortune? Sont-ils immuables? Ils
le sont dans la mesure où la fortune est immuablement variable; ils le sont
même si cette variabilité inclut, par un hasard qui n'est pas impossible, une
longue période de stabilité individuelle; car, on l'a vu, l'individu sera peut-être
alors éloigné provisoirement de la superstition, mais il n'en arrachera pas les
304 PIERRE-FRANÇOIS MOREAU

racines, perpétuellement reproduites par les appareils idéologiques mis en place

pendant les périodes de peur et d'insécurité. Mais que se passera-t-il si, par
une suite de circonstances initialement dues au hasard, une société tout entière
vient à jouir de la sécurité? Alors non seulement la superstition reculera, mais
on verra, à long terme, s'installer des institutions aptes à la faire reculer encore
plus, ou à développer la civilisation et le commerce qui la feront reculer. On
échappera ainsi, en partie du moins, au jeu inéluctable de la peur, de l'espoir
et de leurs conséquences, tout cela non pas sur la base d'une mystérieuse
disparition de la nature humaine, ou d'un rachat de la corruption, mais au
contraire par le même jeu des mêmes lois nécessaires dans d'autres conditions.
La production de ces conditions est bien originairement l'oeuvre de la même
contingence-pour-nous; elles sont ensuite reproduites par les effets qu'elles ont
engendrés, la civilisation, la raison, et même le regard philosophique sur la
société qui conduit, dans la Hollande du XVI le siècle, à la lutte pour la liberté
de conscience.
En ce point on peut conclure: la théorie critique de la fortune élaborée
dans le TTP est aussi un moyen d'échapper collectivement aux aléas de la
fortune. Elle fait partie de la stratégie qui permettra, sans ignorer les cycles
de l'histoire, de sortir de l'histoire cyclique.

1. G III/5. Traduction Appuhn (Garnier-Flammarion) II, 20.

2. "Si en effet, pendant qu'ils sont dans l'état de crainte, il se produit un incident qui
leur rappelle un bien ou un mal passé, ils pensent que c'est l'annonce d'une issue heureuse
ou malheureuse ..." ibid.
3. Sur d'autres aspects de ce problème de la fortune, qui ne seront pas abordés ici, on
doit se reporter au remarquable article de F. Mignini: Theology as the work and instrument
of Fortune" dans les Actes du colloque d'Amsterdam de 1982, Spinoza's political and
theological thought, Amsterdam (1984) 127-136.
4. Sur ces questions on ne peut que renvoyer aux travaux d'Akkerman et Zweerman.
5. Quinte-Curce: livre V §4; livre VII §7; livre IV §10; les citations seront empruntées
à la traduction Crépin (Garnier) parfois modifiées.
6. Bayle note, à l'article Quinte-Curce: "l'auteur a eu môme la sagesse d'aller au-devant
du reproche de crédulité qu'il avait à craindre" et il cite La Mothe Le Vayer (Jugement des
principaux historiens): "Pour faire voir bien clairement avec quelle circonspection cet historien
a toujours traité les choses dont on se pouvait défier, je mettrai ici les termes dont il
accompagne la narration de ce chien qui se laissa couper les membres pièce à pièce au
royaume du Sophite, plutôt que de démordre et lâcher la prise du lion: equidem, dit-il, plura
transcribo quam credo. Nam nee affirmare sustineo quibus dubito, nee subducere quae
accept."
7. Nee id miserrimum fortibus vins erat, sed quod inulti, quod ferarum ritu, velut in fovea
deprehensi caederentur. Ira igitur in rabiem versa... (V,3).
8. Exemples IV, 16; V, 12 ( Darius enchaîné avec des chaînes d'or).
9. Il faudrait tenir compte aussi de fortune au sens de "mauvaise fortune, infortune," par
exemple dans le cas des Grecs torturés par les Perses (V,5).
10. Praecoci gaudio venta irritare fortunam (IV, 15).
11. Atque haec neminem ignorare existimo, quamvis plerosque se ipsos ignorare eredam,
G III/5.
 Fortune et théorie de l'histoire 305

12. C'est à limiter cette tendance que sont en fait consacrées les équivalences énoncées
au chapitre III du TTP, et notamment celle qui définit la fortune comme le "gouverne-
ment de Dieu en tant qu'il gouverne les choses humaines par des causes extérieures et
inattendues" et ce gouvernement lui-même par Tordre fixe et immuable de la nature,
autrement dit l'enchaînement des choses naturelles" (G III/45-6; Appuhn p. 71).
13. Sur ces questions, et en particulier sur l'importance accordée par Spinoza à l'époque
même où il écrit, voir les ouvrages récents d'A. Tosel et E. Balibar; sur la théorie de
l'histoire, Matheron (1971).
 Y-A-T-IL UNE PHILOSOPHIE
DU PROGRÈS HISTORIQUE CHEZ SPINOZA?

ANDRE TOSEL
Université de Nice

1. Pour tous les commentateurs qui jadis abordaient la philosophie de Spinoza

par la seule Ethique une telle question paraîtrait absurde et sans objet, tant pour
eux YEthique se réduisait à une théorie de la connaissance atemporelle et à une
théorie de la modération des passions débouchant sur une mystique laïque de
la libération intellectuelle et sur une conquête de l'éternité, exclusive d'une prise
en compte positive de la durée.1 ^orientation récente de la recherche française
centrée davantage sur les rapports du procès éthique de libération et de la
politique ont proposé l'idée d'une théorie spinozienne de l'histoire; mais en ce
cas, la démarche partait du livre qui a été pensé par Spinoza comme
l'introduction à sa philosophie, le Traité théologico-politique?
Ce faisant, la recherche spécialisée retrouvait à sa manière une thématique
qui lui était antérieure, et qui en quelque sorte lui donnait ses fondements et
justifications. Il s'agit de la thématique du procès historique comme passage
d'une forme de vie et de pensée inférieure à une forme de vie et de pensée
supérieure. Thématique qui bien avant les philosophies de l'histoire de la fin
du XVIIIème siècle avait été celle d'un puissant mouvement d'idées qui avait
vu converger les spéculations et recherches sur l'histoire de la terre, de la vie
sur la terre, sur la chronologie de l'histoire humaine, sur l'histoire des nations,
celle de leurs moeurs, religions, formes d'organisations politiques, sur le passage
de la nature à l'humanité, sur la transition ou progrès de l'humanité barbare
à l'humanité civilisée, sur le progrès de la connaissance depuis les mythes, fables,
langages symboliques jusqu'aux à la pensée scientifique, aux langages conceptuels,
et cela dans le cadre de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.3 Spinoza
surtout dans le TTP, se présente comme un protagoniste, un de ces héros des
temps modernes, qui aux côté de F. Bacon et de T. Hobbes ont pris parti pour
affirmer la possibilité de {'advancement of learning, pour soutenir la nécessité
de sortir des premiers temps de l'humanité où la "vie de l'homme est alors
solitaire, besogneuse, pénible, quasi-animale et brève."4
2. Le TTP en effet rend possible un accès à l'histoire: par la destruction
de l'histoire sacrée, par la critique de la Bible et de la religion révélée, par la
démystification des oeuvres, sans validité théorique, de la théologie juive et
chrétienne, Spinoza fait apparaître la théocratie hébraïque comme produit d'un
mode d'organisation de la vie et de la pensée rude et barbare. La théocratie
représente comme un passé qui ne peut être un modèle pour le présent, et qui
doit être définitivement remplacé par un Etat libéral-démocratique, défenseur
des sciences et des arts, promoteur des puissances délivrées des conatus humains,
eux-mêmes capables de multiplier les échanges et d'approprier de manière élargie
tous les corps naturels dont ils ont besoins.5
Tbut en développant une théorie de la puissance de la Nature-Dieu qui
exclut l'origine créée de l'univers, tout en rendant possible une explication
causale des processus de formation des corps naturels au sein de l'étendue, le
 Du progrès historique 307

TTP, par sa théorie des lois, rend possible une explication causale de l'histoire
des hommes en terme de passions, et il introduit la perspective d'une transition
d'une forme de vie dominée par les passions tristes, les guerres de religion, la
faible expansivité des forces humaines au sein d'un bloc théologico-politique,
à une autre forme de vie généralisant les passions joyeuses, assurant la
participation du plus grand nombre possible, permettant par la liberté de penser
une promotion de Yintellectus et par la démocratie celle des conatus. Si rien
n'est dit sur l'origine et la formation de l'univers, sur celle de la terre et de
la vie, le cadre épistémologique d'une explication causale, immanente et laïque,
est construit, et il permet une théorie de l'histoire des sociétés organisées autour
de l'idée d'une conquête des degrés de puissance physique et logique. La
théocratie hébraïque figure comme emblème d'une origine où se rejoignent faible
capacité intellectuelle, faible développement des puissances des corps humains,
domination de la superstition. Du même coup l'histoire sacrée perd sa sacralité:
nulle valeur originaire n'est attribuée à cet Ancien Peuple et à cette ancienne
Loi, pas plus qu'aux anciens peuples en général. Moïse perd son statut de
législateur modèle. Le TTP conquiert simultanément la dimension des longues
durées historiques puisqu'il critique l'attribution des livres de la Bible à un seul
auteur et élargit la chronologie biblique, cadre de l'histoire alors reconnue. Ainsi
se trouve confortée l'idée d'une primitivité des moeurs, des mythes, des langues
des Anciens Peuples qui cessent d'être des modèles à imiter et deviennent les
antagonistes des Modernes. Les Hébreux relèvent des premiers Tfemps où
l'entendement avait forgé peu d'instruments, où la vie passionnelle avec ses cycles
répétitifs dominait, prise dans une impuissance fondamentale, non encore à
même de promouvoir l'industrie, la navigation, les arts, les machines, la
médecine.
Dans le TTP la durée cesse d'être le phénomène de l'éternel, elle cesse
d'être orientée par des Idées atemporelles auxquelles les phénomènes devraient
plus ou moins participer, elle cesse de se référer à des Normes auxquelles il
faudrait revenir comme à une origine bienfaisante mais perdue, pour annuler
par cet effort de retour le pouvoir de dispersion temporelle. La durée obtient
une consistance spécifique. C'est en elle que l'on accède aux vérités et que se
détermine ce qui pour l'espèce représente son bien propre, son utile spécifique.
Le temps des Prophètes, des Législateurs sacrés est fini, et avec lui celui de la
superstition, de l'étroitesse de formes sociales vouées à la reproduction difficile
d'individus faiblement développés. L'usage de la raison par l'intervention des
sciences, l'usage du langage appelé à devenir conceptuel et à perdre sa dimension
mythique ou fabuleuse, témoignent de ce que peut une série de tentatives,
d'accumulation d'expériences, de mises au point de méthodes. Raison et langage
sont de ce point de vue des acquis, produits de transformations. La société
elle-même est susceptible de se transformer: elle ne tient plus sa signification
d'une incarnation du sens de l'histoire universelle dans une histoire particulière,
celle du peuple hébreu. Elle la tient d'elle-même, de son organisation interne,
de sa capacité à aménager les rapports des individus passionnés qui la composent
de manière à ce que ces rapports permettent le meilleur essor de leurs forces
et aptitudes, l'essor des sciences et de la philosophie, au sein d'une libre opinion
308 ANDRE TOSEL

publique. De ce point de vue, manifeste d'une philosophie de la libération de

Vintellectus et du conatus, le TTP s'inscrit délibérément comme acteur dans ce
procès du transition de la barbarie à la civilisation, d'une vie sociale étroite
et dominée par la superstition à une vie sociale plus riche, ouverte à la pratique
élargie de la connaissance. Le TTP se pense comme instrument de progrès dans
l'aménagement de la vie passionnelle et dans l'émergence d'une possibilité, la
vie de la raison.6
3. Peut-on dire que cela suffit pour autoriser l'attribution à Spinoza d'une
philosophie du progrès historique? Une telle philosophie, lorsqu'elle se
systématise à la fin du XVIIIème siècle, avec par exemple Condorcet, unit dans
une structure conceptuelle forte des thèses (avec des variantes contradictoires
certes) que l'on peut formuler de la manière suivante:

Thèse 1 - Le réel est intelligible et rationnel comme processus orienté vers une fin.
Non seulement on a la possibilité d'une explication rationnelle des éléments irrationnels
en leur efficace et nécessité - passions, intérêts, conflits, contradictions - mais on a
la capacité de montrer que par ces mécanismes se produit l'avènement d'une raison
substantielle unissant intérêt général, reconnaissance réciproque, universel concret et
maîtrise de la nature.

Thèse 2 - Cette fin qui est la vie de la raison, la raison comme fin, s'inscrit dans une
structure téléologique: elle s'anticipe dans une origine et s'atteint au sein d'un procès
qui est à la fois caractérisé par des moments critiques, et par des étapes où capacités,
connaissances, habiletés s'accumulent. Périodes, âges, s'enchaînent dans une nécessité
qui est garantie par la dynamique même du procès. Mis en mouvement, ce procès
est irréversible, linéaire.

Thèse 3 - Cette raison a pour noyau la connaissance scientifique et technique. C'est

le progrès de cette dernière qui conditionne la possibilité de réaliser des valeurs
éthiques, politiques ou juridiques, c'est-à-dire les autres progrès.

Nulle part Spinoza ne représente comme Condorcet un "tableau historique des

progrès de l'esprit humain." Nulle part il ne formule une question comme celle
qui tourmente Kant et à laquelle ce dernier répond, positivement sur le plan
pratique (le progrès comme devoir moral), et négativement sur le plan théorique
"déterminant" (il n'y a pas de savoir démontré du progrès, car la civilisation, le
progrès des sciences, des arts sert la recherche de l'utile mais dans l'élément du
conflit d'intérêts égoïstes et il ne se confond pas avec la moralisation). Spinoza
ne pose même pas la question "Le genre humain est-il en progrès constant"?
(Cf. "Conflit des facultés"). Mais la problématique du TTP - une théorie de
l'histoire pensant la possibilité d'une promotion des entendements et des forces
des conatus selon la transition barbarie-civilisation, superstition-raison-demeure
présente dans les autres textes majeurs, YEthique, et le Traité politique. Selon
quelles modalités? Sous quelles formes Spinoza pense-t-il alors le devenir de
l'entendement, celui de la force productive des hommes, celui des formes
d'association et d'organisation politique?
4. On ne peut en effet méconnaître que la dimension du processus
accumulatif et linéairement orienté caractérise le procès de la connaissance, celui
 Du progrès historique 309

des modes de vie - éthique - et celui du procès de la vie politique. On ne peut

méconnaître que ces progrès constituent une durée organisée par la tension entre
deux pôles, entre lesquels s'opère bien une transition qui n'est pas simplement
logique, mais effective en sa durée même.
Commençons par la première de ces progressions, celle de la connaissance.
YEthique ne renie pas le Traité de la réforme de l'entendement. Comme ce
dernier elle affirme à la fois la logicité ou éternité de l'idée vraie ou adéquate
et la temporalisation spécifique du procès de la connaissance. La vis nativa
de l'entendement affirme la positivité de ses premières idées vraies au sein même
de la prison de la perceptio ex auditu aut ex aliquo signoy dans celle de la
perceptio ab experientia vaga. Ces premières formes de connaissance ne sont
pas simplement "l'autre" de la vraie connaissance, elles sont premières dans la
durée et il y a bien progrès de la connaissance lorsque émerge, se stabilise, se
reproduit de manière élargie la perceptio ubi essentia rei ex alio re concluditur.
Si les forces de connaissance peuvent être considérées comme autant de manières
de se rapporter au même objet et si elles se hiérarchisent dans un espace
logique, il y a genèse de la raison, développement de la vis nativa de Yintellectus.
Il faut prendre au sérieux l'analogie avec le progrès de l'instrumentation
technique: la connaissance vraie forme ses idées qui pour elles sont autant
d'idées nouvelles permettant d'approprier peu à peu ce qui jusqu'ici était
inconnu. Une technique empirique, mise en échec, laisse place à une technique
rationnelle, vérifiée, et il faut alors abandonner les anciennes certitudes de la
tradition, des mythes et représentations symboliques, de la simple empirie. Il
faut pouvoir multiplier en quantité, dans une durée intensive, les nouvelles
certitudes de la perceptio per solam essentiam, qui sont jusqu'ici peu nombreuses.7
"De même que les hommes, au début à l'aide d'instruments innés et bien qu'avec
peine et d'une manière imparfaite, ont pu faire certaines choses très faciles, et
après avoir fait celles-ci, en ont fait d'autres plus difficiles avec moins de peine
et plus de perfection et ainsi s'élèvant par degrés des travaux les plus simples
aux instruments et des instruments revenant à d'autres oeuvres et instruments,
en arrivèrent à pouvoir accomplir beaucoup de choses, et de très difficiles, de
même l'entendement par sa puissance innée se forme des instruments
intellectuels à l'aide desquels il acquiert d'autres forces pour d'autres oeuvres
intellectuelles, et grâce à ces oeuvres, il se forme d'autres instruments, c'est-
à-dire le pouvoir de pousser l'investigation plus avant; ainsi il avance par degré
jusqu'à ce qu'il ait atteint le comble de la sagesse" (1ï 32, p. 37).
Earrachement à la simple expérience et aux préjugés de la tradition
théologique et politique est bien un nouveau départ pour une "science" qui se
constitue ainsi un avenir indéfini dans la connaissance des essentiae. S'ouvre
l'histoire au sens plein du savoir, le savoir comme histoire, comme accumulation
d'idées vraies, comme progression effective. UEthique, lorsqu'elle analyse la
transitio de Yimaginatio, ou connaissance du premier genre, à la ratio ou
connaissance du second genre, prolonge la même thèse. Il ne s'agit pas du
passage de la nature à la culture, mais celui d'une culture grossière de notre
mens à une culture promouvant par les notions communes les idées adéquates.
On pourrait ici montrer que cette transition rend possible une histoire du
310 ANDRE TOSEL

langage commun qui de métaphorique peut devenir réellement conceptuel. Le

langage commun, de même que les imaginations, dépendent de la puissance
conditionnante des autres corps sur le nôtre, en ce que cette action est l'objet
privilégié de l'imagination. Voilà pourquoi avant que l'entendement puisse
produire de manière plus continue et élargie ses idées à partir d'autres idées,
se produit la masse confuse et inconstante des images, et des idées de ces images
ou imaginations qui reflètent les changements intervenus dans notre corps sous
l'action des autres corps. C'est dans cette occurrence de la "fortune" que se
forment les termes transcendantaux (être, chose, quelque chose) et les notions
universelles (homme, cheval, chien) qui n'ont rien à voir avec les concepts
adéquats. Les mots sont bien une partie de l'imagination, et nous commençons
par construire beaucoup de nos concepts en rapport à la manière dont ces mots
se composent vaguement dans la mémoire selon une disposition donnée du corps.
La naissance du langage scientifique exige une critique de ces "verba":
beaucoup de concepts reçoivent des nomina negativa (infini, incorporel) en
raison des confusions du langage commun.8 Il faut pouvoir distinguer de
manière dynamique entre les images des choses et d'autre part les idées et
concepts de l'esprit, et contrôler le processus par lequel le sens "vulgaire" de
quelques termes philosophiques se transforme en sens "savant." Il faut de même
"distinguer entre les idées et les mots par lesquels nous désignons les choses."
Or, la nature de la pensée implique que "l'idée ne consiste ni dans l'image de
quelque chose ni dans les mots. Lessence des mots et des images est constituée
par les seuls mouvements corporels qui n'enveloppent en aucune façon le
concept de la pensée" (E IIP49S). La pensée progresse donc à partir de la
connaissance du sens commun, des notions avec lesquels le vulgus entend
expliquer la nature, pour dépasser la simple indication des états du corps et pour
fixer la nature des choses.
De ce point de vue la redéfinition des concepts comme ceux de substance,
attributs, mode - "qui ne peuvent pas s'acquérir par l'imagination, mais par
l'entendement seul" - représente de droit une étape décisive dans le
développement de la raison. Qu'il y ait un développement progressif, on en a
la preuve a contrario en ce que l'imagination désigne un mode de connaissance
où domine la fluctuation permanente, où il est impossible de s'orienter, de
former des projets à long terme, où les cycles d'idées confuses empêchent la
détermination des connaissances de notre propre corps, des autres corps, et celle
de l'âme même. Connaître réellement c'est cesser d'être la proie d'un ordre
commun de la nature et approprier l'ordre et la connexion des choses par celui
des idées. L'imagination n'a pas d'histoire interne, la raison en a une; elle est
un commencement de la vie intellectuelle où l'esprit demeure affecté par l'idée
qui représente l'affection des corps étrangers sur le nôtre. En son procès au
contraire la raison signifie sortie de cette confusion, réorganisation de notre
rapport aux corps extérieurs et au nôtre propre, elle est "ordre" et ordre de
marche, accumulation d'idées par lesquelles se produit l'appropriation théorique
de la nature, de notre nature propre, avec progrès simultané dans la compré-
hension de l'universel et du singulier, avec conquête de la complexité.9
 Du progrès historique 311

On peut souligner cette historicité interne qui est celle d'un commencement
surmonté, d'un piétinement sur place interrompu, d'un chaos stochastique
modifié en ordre de marche, en la précisant par recours à la théorie des "notions
communes." Si la raison progresse en déterminant "ce qui est commun à toutes
choses et se trouve pareillement dans la partie et le tout", elle est appropriation
des relations de convenance entre tous les corps, entre les corps et le corps
humain (E IIPP38,39). Elle est un système ouvert découvrant les appartenances,
elle est instance de communication orientée sur un élargissement dont la limite
est reculée à l'infini. Eéternité des relations découvertes connote leur teneur
épistémique, mais n'annule en rien leur découverte progressive. Par la raison
la durée est constitution de systèmes relationnels de communication toujours
plus intensément activés. Cette histoire est ainsi celle d'une appropriation des
choses et d'une constitution de notre puissance logique, dans la complexité
dynamique de ses relations constitutives.
Il y a plus encore. La science intuitive radicalise cette histoire de la
connaissance, elle dynamise la connaissance comme histoire. La déduction des
notions communes a certes son historicité intrinsèque; elle construit par les
notions communes l'essence nécessaire ouverte de l'être en tant qu'il est régi
par des enchaînements causaux infinis et éternels. Mais la science intuitive est
elle aussi procès, déduction métaphysique en ce qu'elle va de la connaissance
de l'essence nécessaire de l'être (les attributs) à l'essence des choses singulières,
laquelle inclut l'existence sub specie aeternitatis. Malgré l'éternité de son objet,
elle a bien lieu dans la durée. Comme telle, elle élargit indéfiniment le savoir
général des choses, et procède à la conquête de la complexité propre aux res
singulares. Elle est progrès intensif et extensif dans la connaissance indéfiniment
ouverte de ces res. "Plus nous comprenons les choses singulières, plus nous
connaissons Dieu" (E VP24).
Loin d'être détachement ascétique du monde et de ses éléments, tous pris
dans leur procès propre, la Scientia intuitiva est approche progressive de la
totalité en ses éléments, et elle s'enrichit de l'infinité ouverte de ces res singulares
saisie elle-même au sein de la richesse la plus ample possible des rapports avec
le monde. La science intuitive, loin d'être une intuition unique de la totalité
donnée una simul est appropriation des res singulares sur la base de leur position
dans le système des relations d'appartenance. Elle a donc une carrière, un avenir.
Elle est sa reproductibilité élargie propre.
5. La connaissance-progrès se révèle être l'autre face du procès éthique lui-
même, du procès d'éthicisation de l'individualité humaine elle-même. La théorie
des genres de connaissance est la face intellectuelle de la théorie des modes
d'effectuation du désir et de la vie des affects. A la polarité Imaginatio-Ratio
correspond, en raison du parallélisme des attributs de la pensée et de l'étendue,
la polarité Passio/Actio. Ce qui restait abstraction logique se concrétise avec
la prise en compte du corps, du conatus, de ses affections passives et de ses
actions! S'il y a progrès de la connaissance dans la transition de la connaissance
du premier genre à celles de second et troisième genres, il y a progrès éthique
depuis la vie dominée par les passions (et les passions tristes) jusqu'à la vie sous
la conduite de la raison où nous agissons comme cause adéquate. Les états que
312 ANDRE TOSEL

l'homme franchit pour parvenir à la production d'idées vraies se réciproquent

avec les états qu'il franchit dans la détermination de son utile propre, de ce qui
est pour lui le bien. Action et idée, causation et conception sont données
comme une seule et même chose. La transition éthique est le chemin de la
servitude à la liberté, et l'on peut parler de transition de mode de vie à un autre
qui est réellement un progrès.
La vie du premier genre - la servitude - est dominée - en ce qui concerne
le mode humain fini - par la dépendance des causes extérieures. Le conatus
s'y exprime à un bas degré de puissance, dans une oscillation qui est en fait un
chaos stationnaire; la causalité in alio domine quasi absolument, à la différence
infinitésimale près de ce minimum de positivité qu'est toute essence singulière.
Avec la vie du second genre, dans la condition de dépendance, s'esquisse une
genèse du "conatus", de sa capacité de causalité adéquate d'action. Dans Yin
alio se développe une sphère de relations pratiques dont est responsable la
causalité in se. Par un progrès qui est une technique de gradualisation, l'essence
humaine s'approprie la nature extérieure, la sienne propre. S'opère un procès
d'éthicisation qui est procès de substantialisation relative pour le mode, dans
les limites modales. L'homme libre est celui qui peut à la fois guider le procès
de reproduction de son individualité corporelle, se subjectiviser, tout en
s'appropriant de manière élargie les corps extérieurs dont son propre corps a
besoin pour son expansion. La vie selon la raison est à la fois expansivité
positive du corps, appropriation (et non domination idéaliste ou prométhéenne)
de la nature en ses éléments, constitution de réseaux de reconnaissance et de
communauté avec tous ceux qui obéissent aux mêmes lois internes rationnelles
et raisonnables. Elle se définit comme possibilité d'une histoire individuelle en
communauté avec les autres, nos semblables, et ce au sortir des cycles répétitifs
de l'impuissance propre à la vie passionnelle, et à sa fluctuation propre. De
ce point de vue la vie dans la servitude définit un passé par lequel le conatus
a commencé et qui dure comme un passif dont il faut se libérer. La vie de
liberté définit un présent qui peut se construire un avenir, en ce que l'alternance
des cycles des passions fixant notre conatus peut céder la place à un chemin
vers notre perfection. De ce même point de vue YEthique serait la codification
de cette transition, et elle assumerait sa fonction de partage historique entre
la préhistoire encore présente de notre effort pour nous conserver et son histoire
possible. Cette conscience d'une historicité est revendiquée discrètement par
Spinoza qui s'attribue le mérite d'être le premier à avoir compris la dynamique
et la morphologie de notre conatus et d'avoir rendu ainsi possible la conquête
d'une individualité libre, développant une raison capable de gouverner nos
passions pour en faire le matériau d'une expansion.
Dans l'inversion graduelle des polarités de la causa in alio et la causa in
se, se produit comme un exemplar naturae humanae, le procès-progrès de la
constitution de la libre individualité. Le déplacement du régime constitutif de
la modalité de l'homme va tendanciellement de l'être dans l'autre et par l'autre
vers l'être par soi. La transition éthique humaine de la servitude à la liberté,
ce progrès qui s'opère dans la durée et ouvre une histoire de la modalité
humaine, est expression de la pulsation ontologique qui détermine le procès du
 Du progrès historique 313

réel à se reproduire pour soi, éternellement, en un enchaînement d'êtres plus

ou moins causés par un autre, plus ou moins capables de se substantialiser, de
s'éthiciser.
ILEthique présente ainsi une histoire abstraite des formes de l'individualité
humaine. Mais il ne s'agit pas d'une typologie méta-historique valable en tous
temps et tous lieux. Il s'agit d'une axiomatique de la libération dont la méta-
historicité se réciproque avec l'historicité. Le progrès du procès d'éthicisation
détermine une durée humaine où le procès ontologique s'exprime comme procès
de la liberté, histoire de la libération. La typologie des formes d'individualité -
l'ignorant, l'homme libre-sage - est une grammaire méta-historique du traitement
de la durée humaine, comme histoire-transition de la servitude à la liberté.11
Ainsi au sein d'une ontologie causale, rigoureusement critique du finalisme
transcendant de la pensée antique et médiévale (E IApp), par le biais de la
destruction de tout anthropomorphisme, lequel transpose les fins de l'homme
superstitieux au plan de la nature, YEthique présente une théorie du progrès
d'éthicisation, laissant place à une finalité interne, et immanente au
développement du conatus humain. Sans que soit oubliée la critique de l'illusion
axiologique - il ne saurait y avoir de Bien et de Perfection en soi - YEthique
thématise la validité objective du point de vue de la modalité humaine. Sur la
base du jeu des mécanismes causaux de la servitude, il est possible de former
le "modèle d'une nature humaine supérieure," exemplar naturae humanae}2
HEthique est transition une transitio qu'il faut stabiliser, que l'on peut stabiliser
dans le sens de l'action et de l'actif, de la conception toujours plus adéquate,
de la causation interne toujours plus puissante. Pour nous, les hommes, la
productivité anonyme de la puissance se projette comme transition pour ce
"nous," ce nos, comme possibilité d'une réalisation. Nos, posse a minore ad
perfectionem transire.
La vie de la raison est donc progrès dans la constitution d'un nos qui
s'approprie les corps de la nature, sans mythe de domination, et qui tend à
s'élargir. Les notions communes, en particulier, se déterminent, sur le plan
pratique, comme schémas d'appropriation des corps dont nous avons besoin pour
nous conserver et simultanément comme schémas de communication, producteurs
de relations communautaires. Tèndanciellemcnt la vie selon la raison est une
vie qui multiplie les relations de convenance avec les autres choses, les
communications avec ces autres choses qui nous sont les plus communes et qui
sont les autres hommes. La nature humaine supérieure est construction
progressive d'un nos élargi, d'une communauté ouverte. Cette vie n'est pas
idéal transcendant - pur devoir - elle exprime un accord nécessaire, issu de la
puissance en expansion de notre nature en ce qu'elle recherche l'utile propre
et se perfectionne en sortant des cycles statiques et répétitifs de la servitude.
Le progrès est celui de la communauté avec les choses et les hommes, de la
communication. On peut ici parler d'une histoire de la vie de la raison et
d'elle seule comme mécanisme d'accumulation de rationalité, d'appropriation
non possessive des choses naturelles, de constitution de réseaux de communica-
tion impliquant tendanciellement la rationalité du plus grand nombre û'alter ego
possibles.15
314 ANDRE TOSEL

6. Cependant, le processus éthique ne concerne que l'histoire pure des

formes de l'individualité humaine, l'histoire-modèle. Le même texte qui énonce
que l'homme qui vit de la vie de la raison est un dieu pour l'homme corrige:
"Il est rare que les hommes vivent sous la conduite de la raison" (E IVP35S).
Dans le présent, "l'homme est nécessairement toujours soumis aux passions, suit
l'ordre commun de la nature et lui obéit, et s'y adapte autant que la nature des
choses l'exige."14 Le processus éthique émerge sur le terrain de l'organisation
passionnelle des hommes, qui est servitude, et qui soit être désormais considéré
comme ordre social et politique. Celui-ci semble alors annuler ou limiter comme
une histoire possible ou pure - exemplar - le processus d'éthicisation. Si la
politique est une organisation immanente des hommes passionnels, elle reste
dans la servitude; et celle-ci ne peut plus être dite étape, période initiale d'une
progrès-procès de libération. Elle devient condition générale dont ne peut sortir
qu'une minorité. Si le concret de la vie humaine est celui de la servitude des
passions, ce concret se détermine comme politique, puisque les hommes
passionnels "ne peuvent passer la vie dans la solitude et à la plupart agrée fort
cette définition que l'homme est un animal sociable, et en effet les choses se
sont disposées de telle sorte que de la société commune naissent beaucoup plus
d'avantages que d'inconvénients" (E 1VP35S).
Et pourtant tout se passe comme si la pulsation ontologique entre "l'être
causé dans un autre" et "l'être cause en soi" se réfléchissait, certes affaiblie, mais
réelle, dans l'ordre politique. La grande transition pure ou axiologique des
formes de vie, la transition éthique qui est rare et difficile, qui est un posse,
s'anticipe ou s'esquisse sans nulle prédétermination dans une quasi-transition
intérieure à la politique même, définie d'abord comme ordre de coexistence dans
la servitude d'hommes passionnels, pourtant condamnés à la perpétuelle
fluctuation stationnaire des cycles passionnels répétitifs, voués à la constance
de l'inconstance. Dans l'ordre politique, effet et forme d'aménagement de la
servitude de la multitudo passionnelle {multitudo qui est alors vulgus), se produit,
dans ce qui semble intransitif, une transition intra-passionnelle qui n'exclut pas
les rechutes dans les cycles (puissance supérieure - puissance inférieure), mais
qui les neutralise. Le Traité politique ne renie pas ce que semblait énoncer le
Traité théologico-politique lorsque celui-ci présentait la séquence théocratie-
Etat libéral-démocratique comme le schéma d'évolution tendancielle des passions
du corps politique au sein de l'opposition Barbarie/ Civilisation. Le Nos qui
est alors celui de la multitudo ignorante, lorsqu'il recherche son utile propre,
au milieu des oppositions mutuelles et de leurs surdéterminations imaginaires,
ne peut pas ne pas exprimer sa puissance. Cette multitude est conduite à faire
de la paix et de la sécurité un objectif majeur; elle laisse se produire dans son
système relationnel des conduites un système d'institutions qui doivent produire
paix et sécurité, mais en tenant constamment son autorité du consensus de la
multitudo. L'individuation propre de l'Etat est un problème permanent,
problème dynamique puisque il s'agit d'obtenir de la part de l'appareil d'Etat
des décisions qui puissent être consenties par la multitudo, en ce qu'elles ne
lèsent pas directement la représentation plus ou moins imaginaire que cette
multitudo en ses membres se fait de son intérêt. Dans ces conditions, la
 Du progrès historique 315

multitudo obéit, et l'obéissance produit la paix et la sécurité. Sécurité des

individus donnant leur consensus et obéissant, stabilité d'institutions qui
garantissent cette sécurité et ne prenant jamais de décisions qui soulèvent la
désobéissance, telle est la mécanique qui aménage concrètement la servitude
des hommes passionnels en cité.

Ce qui est le meilleur régime (status) pour tout Etat, on le connaît facilement en
considérant la fin de la société civile: cette fin n'est rien d'autre que la paix et la
sécurité de la vie. Par la suite, le meilleur Etat est celui dont les hommes passent
leur vie dans la concorde et dont les lois ne sont jamais transgressées. En effet, il
est certain que les séditions, les guerres et le mépris ou la transgression de la légalité
doivent être imputés non pas tant à la méchanceté des sujets qu'au mauvais régime
de l'Etat. Les hommes en effet ne naissent pas aptes à la vie en société, ils le
deviennent.

Le mécanisme politique décisif est celui par lequel la multitude accorde - en

le laissant se constituer - la puissance à un appareil d'Etat, et cela à chaque
instant. Ce mécanisme repose à son tour, en retour, sur la capacité de cette
institution à inspirer à chaque individu assez de crainte et d'espoir (donc assez
de possibilités de vivre selon son désir de l'utile tel qu'il se le représente) pour
que tous raccordent majoritairement à l'appareil d'Etat l'usage de leur puissance
associée à l'instant suivant.
Il semblerait que ce mécanisme ait pour effet de stabiliser les menaces de
guerre civile permanente liées aux "abus" de l'appareil d'Etat et aux
"désobéissances" des citoyens. On serait loin de toute transition si ce mécanisme
n'était que celui d'une régulation continue. Or, tel n'est pas le cas. Ce
mécanisme se reproduit, s'autorègle, si de fait les régimes organisent la tendance
immanente de la démocratisation par un élargissement maximal du corps des
citoyens et par le maintien d'une sphère de libre communication. Le Traité
politique, en analysant les mécanismes causaux de la reproduction de l'équilibre
entre institutions et multitude forme des modèles de réalisation de cet équilibre.
Exemples analogues à ceux du progrès éthique.
Ces modèles sont inégalement puissants, selon leur teneur plus ou moins
grande en démocratie. La démocratie est dite de toutes les formes d'imperium,
omnino absolutum, totalement absolue (Traité politique, XI, 1, p.80). Absolu en
ce que le pouvoir en entier est dans les mains de tous les citoyens et que la
multitudo devenue peuple,populus, est libre, puisqu'elle obéit à elle-même, source
de la loi et sujet de cette même loi. Labsoluité ici se fonde sur la communauté
du vouloir, librement formée de tous. Cette communauté n'est pas rationnelle
au sens strict, mais elle produit des effets qui sont ceux de la raison: elle rend
possible une obéissance à la loi comme telle; et en tant que sphère d'une libre
opinion publique, elle rend possible l'apparition des sciences et de la philosophie.
Dans les processus de la démocratisation, et de la libre communication des
jugements, il devient possible d'indiquer à l'appareil d'Etat les possibilités de
changement devenues nécessaires (lois, institutions). La tendance à la
démocratisation comme forme immanente optimale de résolution du problème
316 ANDRE TOSEL

politique tient lieu de transition et de progrès historique. Cette démocratisation

progressive peut conduire à ordonner les régimes (monarchie, aristocratie,
démocratie), tout comme elle peut transformer de l'intérieur chacun de ces
modèles pour que fonctionne le meilleur des régimes. Celui-ci produit alors
des effets que la raison valide et universalise, car il s'agit de l'aptitude à
respecter la loi à laquelle on participe comme fin en soi. La quasi transition
ou le quasi progrès démocratique est une tendance objective de la politique qui
rend possible la vie de la raison et que celle-ci interprète comme une transition
intérieure à la servitude passionnelle lui permettant de produire comme
l'antichambre de la transition proprement éthique. Il n'y a pas de loi de passage
nécessaire à la démocratie par la monarchie et l'aristocratie; il y a une loi
tendancielle de démocratisation comme exemplar naturae politicae. Si tel n'était
pas le cas, on ne comprendrait pas que Spinoza ajoute en fait à la paix et à la
sécurité comme oeuvre de l'Etat le meilleur, la garantie de la vraie vie humaine.
"Quand nous disons que l'Etat le meilleur est celui où les hommes vivent dans
la concorde, j'entends qu'ils vivent d'une vie proprement humaine, d'une vie qui
ne se définit point par la circulation du sang et l'accomplissement des autres
fonctions communes à tous les animaux, mais principalement par la raison qui
est la vraie vie de l'Ame."16
Il n'y a pas de philosophie du progrès historique en politique comme ordre
de succession d'étapes ou d'âges, selon une loi nécessaire. Il y a une théorie
du progrès politique comme démocratisation, et cette théorie est énoncé d'un
problème et d'une ligne tendancielle de résolution. Le progrès en politique,
sur la base acquise de la sécularisation (Dieu est sorti de l'horizon du TP; la
fonction de l'autorité ecclésiastique s'est réduite), consiste dans la perte de
transcendance de l'appareil d'Etat, dans une circulation de plus en plus organique
entre appareil d'Etat et base constituée par la Multitude, en élargissement de
la base de masse de l'Etat, en pénétration du populus dans les institutions, en
progression de l'automatisme législatif, en extension des procédures conscientes
de discussion des intérêts. Tbus ces mécanismes de la transition démocratique
obtiennent de la Multitudo ce que la raison vise, paix, sécurité, vie de libre
discussion, possibilité de la vie de la raison elle-même. Dans la servitude, la
tendance à la démocratisation réalise une quasi action par laquelle l'Etat, le
Peuple, conquièrent une quasi causalité adéquate.
Les passions du corps politique peuvent ainsi produire une quasi action
adéquate de l'Etat. Lanalyse causale du Traité politique est un programme de
transformation visant à produire un système complexe de décisions collectives
où les citoyens passionnels s'auto-déterminent, devenant un peu mieux cause
adéquate de la gestion de leur force collective. Le système autorégulé des
passions se transforme par son mécanisme même en système de la liberté
politique, lequel prépare l'expansion de la libération éthique: dès lors celle-ci
peut interpréter celle-là sans céder à l'imaginaire finaliste, comme son
antichambre, son milieu. Les modèles du Traité Politique sont des opérateurs
de transition démocratique, elle-même condition de la transition éthique.17
7. Que conclure de cet examen? Quelle réponse donner à notre question
initiale? Nous dirons qu'il n'y a pas chez Spinoza de philosophie du progrès
 Du progrès historique 317

historique au sens fort défini en 3, mais une théorie d'un progrès-problème qui
est un possible objectif causalement produit.
Point 1. Lontologie spinozienne de la production, développe un
rationalisme du mouvement qui interdit de projeter la catégorie de progrès,
comme celle de bon et de mauvais, et comme toutes les notions axiologiques,
au plan de la substance. Si ces notions ont un sens relationnel et relatif, quoi-
qu'objectif, c'est au niveau des modes et particulièrement au niveau du nos
humain. La substance comme puissance infinie qui se cause par soi en causant
l'infinité de ses modes, nous y compris, n'est pas Histoire, Progrès, puisqu'elle
s'exprime tout aussi bien dans des processus non irréversibles, non cumulatifs
selon une infinité de modes. L'attribution du maximum de puissance causale à
la substance et à elle seule, exclut que celle-ci soit interprétée selon des
catégories qui n'ont de sens qu'au niveau des modes. La substance n'est pas
histoire, elle n'a pas d'histoire, puisqu'elle est ce en quoi et par qui il y a
progrès historique et régression, cycles, processus divers. Ehistoire alors est
locale et modale. Mais précisément, parce que le mode est mode de la
substance, la puissance de la substance s'exprime plus ou moins en ses modes.
La possibilité de la transition éthique ne peut pas ne pas nous apparaître à nous,
le "nos" humain, lorsque nous sommes munis de la connaissance de notre nature
au sein de la nature, comme expression eminente de la substance, comme procès
de substantialisation possible. Si la substance n'est pas seulement histoire,
l'histoire elle est de la substance, elle est en elle et par elle. Le progrès comme
nécessité éthique est conquête de substantialilé. L'histoire qui ne peut être que
locale et modale apparaît néanmoins comme un cas particulier et eminent de
la puissance de certains modes, de leur transformabilité et de leur productivité.
La substance comme Individu total, où se produit et se joue la modalité
universelle y compris la modalité historique, ne change pas. Elle continue à
demeurer une et la même, selon une modalité difficile à préciser d'ailleurs, dans
et par la transformation incessante de ses formes (y compris la forme-progrès).
"Toute la nature est un seul individu dont les parties, c'est-à-dire tous les corps
varient d'une infinité de modes, sans aucun changement de l'Individu total" (E
IIL7S). La catégorie de progrès cumulatif indéfini réglé par une fin est
inutilisable comme celle de durée pour expliquer la causalité de la substance.
De ce point de vue, il serait spinozien d'inclure comme un chapitre de
l'appendice du livre I de YEthique l'idée de Progrès comme être de raison, fiction
issue de la projection de notre désir, c'est-à-dire hypostase d'une modalité de
l'expérience humaine.
Lefficacité du procès d'éthicisation ne doit pas être transposée et projetée
en tant que loi de la substance, comme si celle-ci visait et avait pour but le
progrès historique, et se limitait à cette seule fin.
Mais la réalité - qui est aussi posse où se réalise le nos humain - du progrès
éthique a pour nous sa validité objective: le processus d'éthicisation a plus de
substantialité pour nous que n'importe quel autre processus, parce qu'il exprime
notre nature en sa puissance propre, supérieure à d'autres natures. Le processus-
progrès éthique doté de son historicité propre - dépend du degré de complexité
élevé du corps humain et des modalités sous lesquelles celui-ci est nécessité à
318 ANDRE TOSEL

se conserver en augmentant sa capacité d'appropriation. Il dépend simultané-

ment de la haute complexité de l'âme de l'homme qui peut penser par concepts
adéquats et devenir cause adéquate. Le progrès éthique est donc inscrit dans
la nature d'une chose singulière complexe, relativement puissante, comme
l'homme, union d'un corps composé de nombreux autres corps complexes et
d'une âme correspondante. Si les autres choses ont leur perfection, cette
perfection implique pour beaucoup d'entre elles leur appropriation par le corps
humain, leur insertion dans le nos humain, dont la perfection propre inclut sous
beaucoup d'aspects une puissance supérieure. "Il vaut beaucoup mieux considérer
les actions des hommes que celles des bêtes," car "ce qui est humain est plus
digne de notre connaissance."18 Mais cela ne saurait faire oublier l'égalitarisme
ontologique: on ne saurait classer dans une hiérarchie univoque les êtres et
développer "l'illusion progressiste" qui ferail du progrès humain la fin de la
nature, et des être de la nature des matériaux définis par leur appropriation
humaine, ^objectivité relationnelle du progrès pour le nos humain doit
s'affirmer en simultané avec la critique de cette illusion progressiste. (Tbut serait
fait pour notre domination indéfinie, tous les êtres seraient préordonnés à notre
"usus" illimité comme pouvoir d'user et d'abuser, et seraient les moyens de notre
domination sur la nature).
8. Point 2 Le progrès éthique doit être désolidarisé de "l'illusion
progressiste" qui est un fantasme de maîtrise solidaire d'une interprétation
imaginaire de ce qu'est la vraie puissance. L'histoire-modèle du procès (progrès)
d'éthicisation doit être comprise sans être mystifiée par la thèse des pouvoirs
illimités du seul progrès scientifique et technique. Le fantasme progressiste de
maîtrise doit être dissocié de la conception adéquate du progrès éthique. Sur
le plan théorique, le progrès n'est pas domination, conception idéaliste de son
objet. Il est appropriation théorique du réel découvert, respecté et utilisé selon
ses rapports de convenance et de communauté. Le maître est toujours celui
qui a besoin d'un esclave, or la liberté est fin de la servitude. Wntellectus n'est
pas despote. Il est ami de ses objets, même de ceux qu'il doit approprier.
Autant dire que Spinoza ne développe pas une idée faustienne du progrès de
la connaissance qui en ferait une expression démiurgique. A ce propos il
convient de revenir sur les modalités et les formes de ce progrès.
Il ne saurait signifier une prise de congé définitive de l'imagination, un
passage sans reste à un âge de la raison qui serait accessible directement.
Limagination est à la fois une condition originaire à laquelle toute mens est
soumise et un état dans lequel l'esprit peut s'enfermer à tout jamais. Il faut
donc distinguer ce qui dans la connaissance du premier genre représente un
commencement, un recommencement obligé, et ce qui peut faire d'elle l'horizon
indépassable de la confusion. L'âme ne peut pas ne pas avoir des idées confuses
parce qu'elle est âme d'un corps qui ne peut pas ne pas être affecté par les corps
extérieurs, et parce qu'elle reflète ces relations de dépendance. La servitude est
forme radicale d'une situation de dépendance, l'homme n'est pas empire dans
un empire, mais partie de quelque chose d'autre, son esprit ne peut être conçu
par soi mais par un autre. Ce serait pure imagination que de se représenter
un esprit qui n'aurait plus à refléter les images des affections des corps sur le
 Du progrès historique 319

sien. De ce point de vue l'imagination désigne la relation originaire qui nous

lie aux corps, au corps qui est le nôtre, et par laquelle nous sommes donnés
à nous-mêmes comme un autre dans une altérité fondamentale. Vivre dans
l'imagination, par contre c'est ne jamais délivrer la force innée de l'entendement
par laquelle nous concevons adéquatement notre relation de dépendance et
sommes cause d'idées adéquates. On ne sort pas stricto sensu de l'imagination,
on rectifie les imaginations en limitant la limitation qu'elles constituent, en
inversant tendanciellement la proportion entre idées confuses et mutiliés et
idées adéquates, en transformant le rapport immédiat, subi, causé, aux corps
extérieurs, à notre corps, à notre esprit, en formant une idée adéquate de notre
esprit, de notre corps, des corps de la nature, en découvrant leurs relations de
convenance et en pensant leur singularité. Tbut se joue dans la transition
comme graduation en acte, comme élargissement des idées adéquates. Mais si
l'on développe ces idées on ne supprime pas l'imagination en tant que rapport
théorique passif par lequel nous sommes donnés à nous mêmes, et donnés au
monde dans l'altérité. Ce monde, on peut seulement l'aménager, y construire
une sphère d'idées adéquates. Si le progrès signifiait abandon complet d'un âge
de l'imagination, il serait un mythe. La raison est liée dialectiquement à une
imagination qu'elle doit critiquer, limiter, recouvrir d'une zone expansive de
connaissances, mais non éliminer. Une idée rationnelle de la raison fait du
progrès théorique une tension dialectique permanente assignant à l'imagination
une condition de donné; elle permet une appropriation de cette nature d'abord
subie en nous comme notre relation à notre corps en tant qu'il est causé et
affecté par les autres corps. (Cf. E III).
Le progrès de l'imagination à la raison doit être pensée sans illusion
progressiste. Il ne signifie donc pas disparition du premier terme pour autant
que celui-ci désigne une condition originaire de commencement qui peut être
modifiée, non supprimée. Un rationalisme raisonnable connaît ses conditions
de possibilité, d'exercice, et ses limites. Voilà pourquoi on ne doit pas imaginer
l'entrée définitive et totale dans un âge de raison auquel nous accéderions
spontanément. Chaque esprit doit toujours développer ses idées vraies, accroître
leur capital sur la base de cette condition originaire qui est liée à la nature de
l'âme comme idée d'un corps existant en acte. La raison doit se souvenir de
la difficulté et de la modestie de ses débuts - une idée vraie - elle doit lutter
en permanence pour se reproduire: les chaînes causales dont elle forme le
modèle se forgent dans la conjoncture mouvante desfluctuationsde l'imagination
réfléchissant les affections du corps.19 Elles sont menacées d'interruption, de
destruction; car notre corps en dépit de sa puissance peut toujours rencontrer
un corps plus fort, et notre âme malgré sa supériorité peut être contrainte à
interrompre son effort de conception provisoirement ομ définitivement. Le
progrès n'est pas garanti, sinon par illusion rétrospective lorsque nous appuyant
sur les chaînes causales reconstruites nous les projetons comme devant se
prolonger indéfiniment, en oubliant que l'âme est idée du corps et qu'il n'est
donné dans la Nature aucune chose singulière qu'il n'en soit donnée une autre
plus puissante et plus forte. "Mais si une chose quelconque est donnée, une
autre plus puissante par laquelle le première peut être détruite est donnée."20
320 ANDRE TOSEL

Il importe donc de démystifier la raison dans son exercice, et de ne pas oublier

que la transition est tâche à reproduire en chaque occurrence, à chaque instant
de notre existence.
Il y a davantage. Pour des raisons naturelles - liées à la fois à des
conditions internes et externes difficiles à préciser - l'égalité ontologique des
âmes comme modes finis de la même substance, et comme citoyens de la même
nature supérieure,21 se réciproque d'une inégalité dans la capacité de concevoir
et de progresser. La nature humaine ne doit pas être confondue avec l'idée
générale d'homme: elle existe concrètement dans la multiplicité d'individus, de
corps et d'âmes individuelles qui actualisent des degrés inégaux de puissance
physique et intellectuelle. Le progrès est donc affecté d'une loi d'inégal
développement. Il est précaire, fragile, reproductible dans une tension qui réduit
ce qu'il y a d'erreur dans les idées inadéquates sans pouvoir supprimer la
dépendance de l'altérité. Ce progrès n'est pas le fait de tous. Lespèce humaine
est affectée d'une division, certes transformable, mais réelle, entre la multitude
et la petite élite des hommes libres-sages. Ni universel, ni irrésistible, davantage
caractérisé par une transition-tension dans la gradualisation des pouvoirs de
Yintellectus que par une transition-arrachement définitif à la dépendance de
l'imagination, le progrès se révèle comme non universel de fait. Il se produit
sans intention ni garantie. Il apparaît alors comme une possibilité liée à la
conjoncture et à la dépendance de la conjoncture. La fortune est le visage de
l'histoire comme possible.
On pourrait faire la même analyse pour le versant physique-affectif du
progrès éthique. Ce qui a été dit de l'imagination vaut pour la servitude
passionnelle. La transition éthique comme vie de la raison est bien une
possibilité ontologique et une réalité. Mais il est significatif que Spinoza
consacre le meilleur des son effort non pas à exalter la transition éthique, à la
fétichiser, mais à analyser les mécanismes de sa réalisation, les formes de sa
consolidation, les limites qui l'affectent. "Il est impossible que l'homme ne soit
pas une partie de la nature et ne puisse éprouver d'autres changements que ceux
qui se peuvent connaître par sa seule nature et dont il est cause adéquate." Il
suit de là que "l'homme est nécessairement toujours soumis aux passions
(passionnibus esse semper obnoxium), suit l'ordre commun de la Nature, et lui
obéit, et s'y accomode autant que la nature des choses l'exige." (E IVP4&C)
Tbut le problème est de déterminer le mécanisme par lequel, dans la servitude
passionnelle, la liberté, comme cause interne, se forme.
La domination sur les passions, la stratégie d'utilisation des passions
joyeuses pour les transformer en vraies actions implique une très délicate
opération de filtrage et de déconstruction de l'apport des causes extérieures.
Le processus éthique est maîtrise des affects par leur connaissance adéquate et
par replication de la connaissance en capacité d'agir. Il peut s'aider de la
représentation d'un progrès (comme accumulation des relations de convenance),
mais il doit se réeffectuer au coup par coup. Il n'est que tendanciellement
cumulatif; il est privé de la garantie de sa poursuite, puisque cette accumulation
est liée à une effectuation conjoncturale (l'ordre commun de la nature). Le
progrès éthique n'est ni régulier, ni assuré: il est heurté, stochastique, menacé
 Du progrès historique 321

d'interruption, de régression. Notre conatus lorsqu'il devient davantage cause

adéquate, demeure dans un équilibre instable, exposé aux défis et démentis de
la conjoncture, c'est-à-dire de son appartenance au monde des corps extérieurs.
Passions tristes et passions joyeuses, Passio et Actio, sont en concurrence
permanente, et se renversent les unes dans les autres: le progrès éthique est
tendanciellement orienté, mais il n'existe que dans la dialectique de transitions
contraires, de transitions qui inversent la grande transition passivité-activité.
Il y a une menace permanente d'effacement de la grande transition dans les
fluctuations. En ce sens la "fluctuation de l'âme" n'est pas une passion parmi
les autres, elle est la marque de la servitude passionnelle.22
Cela explique pourquoi la loi de l'inégal développement des esprits est
immédiatement loi de l'inégal développement des conatus. Cet inégal dével-
oppement fait du progrès éthique une tendance objective mais suspendue à des
formes aléatoires, décalées, non universelles, de réalisation. Parcequ'il y a
concurrence dans la transition éthique entre actif et passif, la vie de la raison
comme recherche de relations d'appartenance dans l'utile propre et de réseaux
de communication est concurrencée dynamiquement par la socialisation
passionnelle, laquelle est intrinsèquement insociable. La transition éthique-
progrès se réalise comme compétition, conflit incessant entre ce que les hommes
découvrent de leur être commun et ce qu'ils perçoivent comme les faisant
différer. De l'intérieur, la transition éthique est menacée par son autre; et le
progrès éthique est de manière immanente menacé d'être réabsorbé dans ce qui
est la forme concrète de la vie passionnelle de la multitude, la vie politique.

Les hommes peuvent différer en nature en tant qu'ils sont dominés par des affects
qui sont des passions, et dans la même mesure le même homme est changeant et
inconstant (E IIIP33).
En tant que les hommes sont dominés par des affects qui sont des passions, ils
peuvent être contraires les uns aux autres (E IIIP34).

Oui, décidément l'espèce est de manière permanente contraire à elle-même, elle

est menacée de brisure entre masse et élite de la sagesse. L'inégalité
intellectuelle est simultanément inégalité éthique au sein de la même condition
d'égalité modale (le nos humain avec sa supériorité relative). De par sa
dynamique même le procès d'éthicisation révèle non pas tant son étrangeté au
procès de socialisation et de politisation que sa complémentarité dialectique.
Lîinégal développement éthique comme forme concrète d'existence rappelle
l'appastenance de ce progrés à la dynamique à la dynamique de la vie
passionnelle de la multitude, à la vie politique.
9. Point 3. Il n'est donc pas question de rêver à un inévitable progrès
théorique ou scientifique qui se renverserait en inévitable progrès éthique, à
fortiori juridico-politique. Le processus d'éthicisation est inévitablement inséré
dans la politique, il est en décalage permanent avec la vie politique qui est
fondamentalement passionnelle, même si les passions sont aménagées dans des
formes de socialisation conflictuelle. 11 est menacé par les oscillations, les
322 ANDRE TOSEL

transitions négatives ou inverses qui caractérisent les passions du corps politique

(désobéissance des citoyens, arbitraire de l'appareil d'Etat avec son autonomisa-
tion, incapacité à reproduire la paix et la sécurité minimales). Lordre commun
de la nature pour le nos humain s'identifie à la politique, considérée dans sa
relation différentielle avec l'éthique. La vie de la raison n'est pas un Etat dans
l'Etat, tout comme la vie passionnelle politique n'est pas non plus un Etat dans
l'Etat, même si en elle, contre elle, agit la raison en tant que découverte et
pratique de relations communautaires.
Cela signifie que le procès-progrès éthique, ce possible objectif, conjonctural,
aléatoire, tendanciellement cumulatif, continue à agir au sein de la vie politique.
La situation n'est pas désespérée, car l'ordre politique demeure parcouru par
la tendance à la démocratisation, même s'il est massivement dominé par la
recherche objective des mécanismes de stabilisation desfluctuationsdes passions
du corps politique. Si un progrès historique de la barbarie à la civilisation ne
peut revêtir l'aspect d'une loi nécessaire, si la séquence monarchie-aristocratie-
démocratie n'est qu'un modèle hypothétique, il reste bien place pour un quasi
progrès politique. Les rapports du progrès d'éthicisation et du progrès politique
sont donc en définitive l'objet essentiel de la philosophie. En effet ils sont de
fait un objet privilégié de la Scientia intuitiva. Si celle-ci consiste à déduire
les essences singulières des attributs, si elle est accumulation de la connaissance
de choses singulières, il faut bien voir que pour le nos humain les choses
singulières les plus importantes sont les autres hommes saisis dans leur tension
éthique.
Il faut ici mettre en rapport le Livre V et le Livre IV. "Plus nous
connaissons les choses singulières, plus nous connaissons Dieu" (VP24). "Il n'est
pas donné dans la nature aucune chose singulière qui soit plus utile à l'homme
qu'un homme vivant sous la conduite de la raison" (IVP35C1). Mais comme
ces res singulares sont rares, et quelles vivent avec cet autre res singulares qui
est la masse des hommes qui ne peuvent se passer de la société (IVP35S), il
suit que le vrai problème éthique est éthico-politique, puisqu'il n'est pas donné
de processus d'éthicisation achevé pour la totalité du genre humain, mais que
la vie éthique se construit au sein de la singularité de la vie politique, en débat
avec elle. Tbut le problème est de savoir ce que peut le procès politique et
comment il s'articule au procès éthique. Le politique est-il susceptible d'un
progrès interne qui ne le rende pas incompatible avec le procès éthique? Si
le politique produit de lui-même sans l'avoir voulu, ni visé, des effets éthiques
que la raison valide, si la raison n'a pas à se penser comme fin de la politique,
de son point de vue à elle est décisive la compréhension de la politique, dans
le sens de sa compatibilité, de son usage pour le procès éthique. Le Traité
politique, oeuvre de la science intuitive, ne se résout pas dans une séparation
radicale entre éthique et politique. Il ne faut pas confondre éthique et
moralisme. Mais la raison, la vie éthique se doit de comprendre la politique
en son autonomie pour déterminer ce qui dans cette autonomie crée des
conditions d'une poursuite de la vie éthique. Elle se doit de former les modèles
qui permettent de consolider la paix et sécurité. Le progrès démocratique, la
démocratisation comme problème permanent et toujours ouvert, sont compris
 Du progrès historique 323

par la raison à la fois comme tendance interne de la mécanique politique

passionnelle et comme élément qui en elle rend possible le procès d'éthicisation.
Si le politique ignore l'éthique, celle-ci ignore pas celui-là, et comprend la
tension interne qui anime la politique pour objectivement la faire progresser -
sans qu'elle le veuille - dans le sens du progrès éthique. Le Traité politique se
veut assimilable par les Politiciens réalistes lesquels peuvent produire leur
ouvrage - paix et sécurité - sans se soucier de la vie éthique ni de son progrès.
Mais le philosophe sait que l'intelligence autonome de la vie politique fait
apparaître en quoi celle-ci produit de fait des conditions pour le progrès éthique
(coopération, paix, sécurité, liberté de penser, expansion des réseaux de
communication).
Le progrès politique est tendance interne à l'ordre politique et cette
tendance est prise en charge par le procès éthique comme une condition de sa
réalisation. Il n'est pas indifférent que la Civitas s'ouvre à la plus grande masse
possible, unifie administration et consensus, sécurité et obéissance. Il n'est pas
indifférent que la Civitas se développe en libre république ou qu'elle se
corrompe. Il n'est pas indifférent de déterminer d'abord, de promouvoir ensuite,
les mécanismes qui permettent à tout régime de favoriser dans l'élément du
consensus les conditions de la vraie vie. La science intuitive pense la radicale
autonomie de la politique pour y déceler les formes d'un progrès immanent dans
les stratégies d'échange, de communication. Le progrès éthique, cette tendance
immanente à la réalisation de soi, prend en charge la tendance à la démocratie
immanente à la stabilisation de l'ordre politique pour déterminer cet ordre et
le construire comme progrès politique. Si le progrès politique s'identifie de
manière réaliste à la tendance à la démocratisation (passionnelle, elle aussi), si
sa configuration est fragile et tend à disparaître dans les cycles des passions du
corps politique, il n'est pas rien. Il est lui aussi une tendance à consolider sur
la base même de ses prémisses causales.
Spinoza, ainsi, reste fidèle à ce qu'il affirmait depuis le Traité de la réforme
de Ventendement. Mais ce qui était objectif du philosophe se révèle désormais
tendance effective du nos humain en débat avec la tendance contraire. "Telle
est la fin vers laquelle je tends, acquérir une telle nature supérieure et travailler
à ce que beaucoup d'autres l'acquièrent avec moi. En effet, cela aussi appartient
à mon bonheur de m'appliquer à ce que beaucoup d'autres comprennent ce que
je comprends, afin que leur entendement et leurs désirs s'accordent parfaitement
avec mon entendement et mes désirs. Afin que cela se fasse, il est nécessaire
d'avoir de la Nature une connaissance suffisante pour l'acquisition de cette
nature humaine supérieure; puis il est nécessaire de former une société telle
qu'elle doit être, afin que le plus grand nombre d'homme arrivent aussi
facilement et sûrement qu'il se peut à ce but."23

1. On peut songer au célèbre livre de L. Brunschvicg, Spinoza et ses contemporains,

(Paris: P.U.F., 1932).
2. Le tournant décisif a été constitué par le livre devenu classique de A. Matheron,
Individu et communauté selon Spinoza (Paris: Minuit, 1961) Depuis ont paru, dans la
324 ANDRE TOSEL

même orientation, les ouvrages de A Negri, Vanomalia selvaggia (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981),
et E. Balibar, Spinoza et la politique (Paris: RU.E, 1985).
3. Au sein d'une vaste littérature, on peut citer E. Cassirer, La philosophie des Lumières;
F. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, Mass: 1959); C. G.
Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass: 1951); F. C. Haber, The Age of the
World: Moses to Darwin (Baltimore: 1966); R. V Sampson, Progress in the Age of Reason,
(London: 1956). Et plus récemment P. Rossi, Immagini dellascienza (Roma: Riuniti, 1977),
et du même I Segni del Tempo. Storia della terra e Storia delle nazioni da Hooke a Vico
(Milano: Feltrinelli, 1979).
4. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, trad, de F. Tricaud (Paris: Sirey, 1971), ch. xiii, p.125.
5. Spinoza, Traité théologica-politique. Sur les Hébreux qui, ennemis des sciences et de
la philosophie, n'ont pas excellé sur les autres nations par la science et la piété, voir ch.
III (Van Vloten II, p. 122). Sur leur organisation politique: elle a permis d'assurer sécurité
et paix, mais dans des conditions de faible développement des forces productives des
conatus; elle ne saurait être imitée car elle ne convient pas à une nation civilisée qui
encourage les sciences, le commerce, l'économie; voir ch. XVIII (Van Vloten II, p.288):
Deinde talis imperii forma iis forsan tanquam utilis esse posset qui sibi solis adsque externo
commercio vivere, seseque intra suos limites claudere, et a reliquo orbe segregari velint, ut
minime iis, quibus necesse est cum aliis commercium habere; quapropter talis imperii forma
paucissimi tantum ex usu esse potest.
6. Sur la dimension "progressiste" du TTP, voir les travaux décisifs de Leo Strauss, en
particulier Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1965) (la première édition
allemande date de 1930). Je me permets de renvoyer à A. Tosel, Spinoza ou le crépuscule
de la servitude (Paris: Aubier, 1984). Voir aussi, bien entendu, le livre de Matheron cité
qui est le premier à avoir pensé ensemble théorie de l'histoire et théorie de la politique
chez Spinoza.
7. Spinoza, Traité de la réforme de l'entendement, éd. A Koyré, (Paris: Vrin, 1951) f 19,
p. 17 et 1Ï22, p. 21 (perpauca fuerunt).
8. E IIP40S1. Les notions communes sont formées par rupture avec le procès par lequel
se forment les transcendantaux et les notions générales. Voir les remarques pertinentes de
P. Rossi, ƒ segni del Tempo, pp. 240-246.
9. E IIP16&C2. Voir aussi IIP29C. "Lâmc humaine toutes les fois qu'elle perçoit les
choses selon l'ordre commun de la nature n'a ni d'elle-même, ni de son propre corps, ni
des corps extérieurs une connaissance adéquate, mais seulement une connaissance confuse
et mutilée." Thème décisif que celui de la constance de l'inconstance de l'imagination qui
constitue comme une impossibilité à sortir de l'immédiateté et d'inaugurer le savoir comme
histoire. N'est-ce-pas là la manière dont à la fin même de VEthique Spinoza (E V42S)
définit l'ignorant par opposition au Sage? "Eignorant outre qu'il est de beaucoup de
manières agité (agitatur) par les causes extérieures et ne possède jamais le vrai contentement
intérieur, vit dans une quasi inconscience de lui-même, de Dieu, des choses, et sitôt qu'il
cesse de pâtir, il cesse aussitôt d'être." La raison est intrinsèquement son histoire.
10. E III. Il s'agit de l'introduction de III "certes n'ont pas manqué les hommes éminents
(au labeur et à l'industrie desquels nous devons beaucoup) pour écrire sur la conduite droite
de la vie beaucoup de belles choses, et donner aux mortels des conseils pleins de prudence;
mais quant à déterminer la nature et les forces des affects, et ce que peut l'âme de son
côté pour gouverner, nul que je sache ne l'a fait." Nemo quod sciam determinavit. La
même conscience de singularité épocale transparaît dans la Préface du Livre V. Nul n'a
pu avant Spinoza traiter de "la puissance de la raison," montrer "ce que peut la Ratio sur
les affects, et ensuite ce qu'est la liberté de l'âme ou Béatitude; par où nous verrons
combien le sage a plus de puissance que l'ignorant."
 Du progrès historique 325

11. Nous nous permettons de renvoyer à A. Tbsel, "Quelques remarques pour une
interprétation de "l'Ethique" in Giancotti (1985), pp. 143-171. Dans une perspective voisine
voir Paolo Cristofolini, "Esse sui juris e scienza politica," in Studia Spinozana 1(1985), 53-
71; Emilia Giancotti, "Necessity and Freedom in the philosophy of Spinoza" in Hessing
(1977).
12. Dès le livre II, la détermination éthique du On ontologique de la substance en nous
humaine se précise, avec la détermination de la transition. Le court texte qui ouvre ce livre
précise que au sein de "l'explication des choses qui ont dû suivre nécessairement de l'essence
de Dieu, et qui sont une infinité, il ne sera expliqué seulement que ce qui peut nous
conduire comme par la main à la connaissance de l'âme humaine et de sa béatitude
supérieure." Transeo ad... ea quae nos ad Mentis humanae, ejusque summae beatitudinis
cognitionem quasi manu ducere possunt. A rapprocher du célèbre texte de la Préface du
Livre IV: bien que les termes de bon et de mauvais n'expliquent rien de positif dans les
choses considérées en elles-mêmes, chacune étant en elle-même parfaite, "cependant il nous
faut conserver ces vocables. Désirant en effet former une idée de l'homme qui soit comme
un modèle de la nature humaine placé devant nos yeux il nous sera utile de conserver ces
vocables dans le sens que j'ai dit."
13. E rVP35Cl,2&S "Dans la mesure où les hommes vivent sous la direction de la raison,
ils s'accordent toujours nécessairement par nature." "Il n'est donné dans la nature aucune
chose singulière qui soit plus utile à l'homme qu'un homme vivant sous la conduite de la
raison." "Ehomme est un dieu pour l'homme." Voir aussi E IVApp25,26.
14. EIIIP4C. La servitude radicalise comme forme de vie un des éléments de la condition
ontologique de base, qu'énoncent les propositions 2, 3, 4 du Livre III. "Nous pâtissons en
tant que nous sommes une partie de la Nature qui ne peut se concevoir par soi sans les
autres parties." "La force avec laquelle l'homme persévère dans l'existence est surpassée
infiniment par la puissance des causes extérieures." "Il est impossible que l'homme ne soit
pas une partie de la Nature et ne puisse éprouver d'autres changements que ceux qui
peuvent se connaître par sa seule nature et dont il est cause adéquate." Eappendice du
Livre IV, §32, rappelle cette structure de base.
15. Traité politique, V, 2, Van Vloten II, 23. Voir H. Balibar, Spinoza et la politique, 3,
pp. 72-90.
16. sed quae maxime Ratione, vera Mentis vita definitur. Traité politique, V, 5, p. 23. C'est
là ce que conteste aujourd'hui A. Matheron dans son article "Etat et Mortalité selon
Spinoza," in Giancotti (1985). Pour Matheron, qui modifie l'interprétation donnée dans
son ouvrage de 1961, il y a radicale séparation entre politique et éthique. Que la politique
ait des effets que l'éthique valide n'autorise pas à finaliser la politique comme service de
l'éthique. La lecture que donne Matheron tend à exclure l'idée même d'un progrès intra-
passionnel (dans la servitude), qui soit possible pour la majorité des hommes, obnoxi
passionnibus. Nous estimons au contraire que le Matheron 1969 est plus près de Spinoza
que le Matheron 1985.
17. Traité politique III, 7. Ce texte évoque une hypothèse que l'on jugerait impossible
dans le TP, qui part de la "commune nature humaine." C'est l'hypothèse d'une Cité fondée
sur la raison et dirigée par elle. "17.Cette Cité est la plus puissante et relève le plus d'elle-
même (sui Juris). Le droit de la cité en effet est défini par la puissance de la masse qui
est conduite en quelque sorte par une même pensée, et cette union des âmes ne peut se
concevoir en aucune façon si la Cité ne tend éminemment au but que la saine raison
enseigne à tous les hommes leur être utile d'atteindre." La cité de la servitude peut
produire ce que la raison enseigne.
326 ANDRE TOSEL

18. E IIP17S. "Les imaginations de l'âme considérées en elles-mêmes ne contiennent

aucune erreur. Eâme n'est pas dans l'erreur parce qu'elle imagine mais elle est dans
l'erreur, en tant qu'elle est considérée comme privée d'une idée qui exclut l'existence de
ces choses qu'elle imagine comme lui étant présentes."
19. Fragilité du début de la raison: elle a commencé son progrès effectivement lorsqu'il
a été possible d'enchaîner quelques idées vraies. C'est la mathématique qui a permis cette
délivrance. Le genre humain serait demeuré dans l'illusion finaliste et la superstition
théologico-politique "si la mathématique, occupée non des fins mais seulement des essences
et des propriétés des figures n'avaient fait luire devant les hommes une autre mesure de
vérité" (E IApp.).
20. E IVA, ouverture auquel correspond le chapitre de fermeture du même livre.
21. E IIP13S. "Plus un corps est apte comparativement aux autres à agir et à pâtir de
plusieurs façons à la fois, plus l'âme de ce corps est apte comparativement aux autres à
percevoir plusieurs choses à la fois; et plus les actions d'un corps dépendent de lui seul et
moins il y a d'autres corps qu concourent avec lui dans Taction, plus l'âme de ce corps est
apte à connaître distinctement. Par là nous pouvons connaître la supériorité d'une âme
sur les autres." Si l'âme humaine diffère des autres et Tcmporte sur les autres, les âmes
humaines diffèrent entre elles d'une moindre différence certes, mais d'une différence réelle.
22. E IIIP17&S ("Cet état de Tâme qui naît de deux affections s'appelle fluctuation de
Tâme; il est à l'égard des affects ce que le doute est à l'égard de l'imagination").
23. Traité de la réforme de l'entendement, H13, p. 13. Pour tout ceci voir l'article de P.
Cristofolini, cité à la note 11. On retrouve le même thème en E VP20&D: l'amour envers
Dieu - Amor erga deum - contient un principe interne d'universalisation. Cet amour est
"d'autant plus alimenté que nous imaginons plus d'hommes joints à Dieu par le même lien
d'amour." Il est commun à tous les hommes et nous désirons que tous en jouissent.
Omnibus hominibus commune est et omnes ut eadem gaudeant cupimus.
 SPINOZA, LA FIN DE L'HISTOIRE ET LA RUSE DE LA RAISON

P. MACHEREY
Université de Paris I

Le titre de ce travail le suggère assez clairement: il y sera encore question,

sous un aspect singulier, du rapport de Spinoza à Hegel. Disons rapidement
pour commencer ce qu'on peut attendre d'un tel rapprochement: on ne cherchera
pas, lisant Spinoza dans Hegel, ou Hegel dans Spinoza, à poursuivre la chimère
d'un Hegel spinoziste ou d'un Spinoza hégélien; mais il s'agira seulement de lire
Spinoza et Hegel ensemble, c'est-à-dire l'un avec l'autre mais aussi l'un contre
l'autre, de manière à dégager les éléments éventuels de divergence tels qu'ils
apparaissent à travers leur convergence même. De façon extrêmement sommaire,
le caractère de cette relation pourrait être exprimé de la façon suivante: sans
doute Spinoza et Hegel parlent-ils de la même chose - et c'est pourquoi s'établit
entre eux une réelle communauté - mais ils en parlent différemment, et peut-
être même de manière opposée - et c'est pourquoi, s'il n'est pas permis
d'assimiler purement et simplement leurs positions philosophiques, il n'est pas
possible non plus de les séparer absolument.
Cette hypothèse très générale sera mise en ici à l'épreuve de la
confrontation entre deux textes bien connus, dont la signification est
certainement cruciale pour leur auteurs: le début du Traité politique et la Préface
des Principes de la philosophie du droit. En effet, si l'on procède à une lecture
parallèle de ces deux textes, en les considérant selon une perspective sans doute
assez cavalière, on y trouve trois thèmes, solidaires entre eux, à propos desquels
on peut se demander si vraiment Spinoza cl Hegel leur appliquent un traitement
comparable: l'appel au réalisme politique, la fin de l'histoire, et la ruse de la
raison.
D'abord le réalisme politique. Entamant une réflexion philosophique sur
le droit, Spinoza et Hegel subordonnent la rationalité de leur démarche à un
présupposé critique qui est le suivant: il faut que soit écartée de cette réflexion
toute spéculation concernant ce qui doit être, c'est-à-dire le possible, et que
l'essence du droit soit ramenée à sa réalité effective. Tbute la question est alors
de savoir si, à travers cet appel au réel, Spinoza et Hegel visent un même
concept de réalité: prendre l'Etat tel qu'il est, ou les Etats tels qu'ils sont, pour
en découvrir la raison spécifique, est-ce adopter les préceptes d'un positivisme
avant la lettre, ou bien est-ce admettre le présupposé d'une rationalité
immanente, qui maintient l'idéalité de son objet? En d'autres termes: connaître
la réalité du politique, est-ce la réduire à ses phénomènes, ou bien est-ce dégager
la finalité qui est en elle et qui permet de la comprendre telle qu'elle est en
soi?
Cet appel au réalisme débouche sur l'affirmation d'une fin de l'histoire,
qui en constitue en fait le présupposé. Chez Hegel, ce thème est énoncé,
proclamé, de manière éclatante: on ne philosophe que sur ce qui est, c'est-à-
dire aussi sur ce qui a été, c'est-à-dire sur l'accompli; c'est pourquoi la rationalité
328 PIERRE MACHEREY

effective est celle qui, s'astreignant à ne peindre son gris que sur du gris, se situe
elle-même au terme des processus réels qu'elle récupère dans la pensée en en
dégageant rétrospectivement la logique interne. Il est surprenant de retrouver
cette suggestion, sous une forme atténuée il est vrai, dans le texte de Spinoza:
en effet, lorsque celui-ci se déclare

tout à fait persuadé que l'expérience a fait voir tous les genres d'organisation sociale
qui peuvent être conçus en vue d'organiser la concorde entre les hommes, en même
temps que les moyens par lesquels la multitude doit être dirigée, c'est-à-dire être
contenue dans des limites déterminées (TP I, 3),

il développe apparemment la même hypothèse, d'après laquelle l'expérience,

qu'on peut ici assimiler à l'histoire réelle des hommes, ayant donné tout ce qu'on
peut attendre d'elle, il ne reste plus qu'à prendre en compte ses résultats pour
en extraire les principaux enseignements en les totalisant. Le problème est ici
le suivant: les concepts d'histoire à l'oeuvre chez Spinoza et chez Hegel sont-
ils comparables? Entre la représentation de celle-ci comme un processus orienté,
conduisant à la révélation finale d'une rationalité qu'il porte en lui depuis le
début, et sa réduction à une succession d'expériences ou n'interviennent
apparemment que l'occasion et le hasard, la différence est manifeste.
Remarquons que la question posée ici s'apparente à la précédente: la réalité
est-elle ou non soumise à des fins qui en conditionnent la compréhension? Dans
quel sens est-il alors permis de parler d'une fin de l'histoire?
Enfin, Spinoza appuie son exigence de mesurer le droit par le fait, selon
les enseignements de l'expérience, sur la nécessité de prendre les hommes tels
qu'ils sont (ut sunt), au lieu de substituer une nature humaine fictive (humana
natura quae nullibi est) à celle qui existe en fait nécessairement (ea quae rêvera
est) (TP I, 1). Ici le réalisme politique se double apparemment d'un réalisme
anthropologique; les sociétés sont telles que l'expérience nous les présente, et
il est vain de chercher à les imaginer autrement, parce que les individus qu'elles
rassemblent sont dirigés dans leur conduite, non par un idéal dictamen rationis
qui résoudrait tous les problèmes du pouvoir politique en évacuant la nécessité
de ce pouvoir même, selon la logique de l'utopie, mais par la puissance de leurs
affects, en tant que celle-ci coïncide spontanément, donc avant toute réflexion,
avec leur conatus, c'est-à-dire leur tendance native à persévérer dans leur être.
En ce sens la rationalité politique, si elle existe, doit passer par le mécanisme
de penchants naturels instinctifs, qui constitue le contenu de sa réflexion, et
délimite le terrain de son intervention. Or, ce thème recoupe une idée qui, si
elle n'est pas explicitement formulée dans la Préface des Principes de la
philosophie de droit, est sous-jacente à toute la pensée politique de Hegel; celle
de la ruse de la raison, d'après laquelle la raison ne se manifeste dans l'histoire
que par l'intermédiaire des passions humaines qui sont l'instrument de son
opération; ainsi, ce que Hegel appelle dans la Préface de la Phénoménologie
"le monstrueux travail de l'histoire mondiale" (das ungeheure Arbeit der Weltge-
schichte) n'est-il rien d'autre que l'explication de la reconnaissance qui s'effectue
primitivement au niveau des expériences de la conscience. Tbute la difficulté
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 329

de la théorie hégélienne tient à la métaphore de la "ruse" (die List der Vernunft),

qui semble surimposer le schéma de la finalité externe, la raison s'ajustant aux
éléments spontanés qu'elle détourne à son profit, sur celui de la finalité interne,
d'après laquelle les affects humains ne sont pas seulement les instruments dont
se sert la raison mais les formes actuelles de son effectuation. On peut alors
se demander duquel de ces deux modèles de référence - le premier maintenant
une discontinuité entre la raison et les passions humaines, dont elle réfléchit
le rapport comme un rapport extérieur, et le second supposant au contraire une
identité essentielle, au niveau au moins de leur contenu, entre ce qui est
immédiatement donné aux consciences et l'ordre immanent qui aimante leurs
mouvements - se rapproche le plus Yemendatio que Spinoza fait subir à la
raison juridique: jusqu'à quel point, selon cette emendatio, la raison peut elle
s'incarner dans la société, et identifier en elle ses propres fins?
Mais est-il possible, suivant Spinoza, de parler de fins de la raison?
Soumettre la rectitude d'une pensée adéquate, parvenant à une complète
compréhension de son objet, au préalable d'une théodicée rationnelle, celle-
ci donnant sa base à une philosophie de l'histoire, n'est-ce pas réintroduire
dans la science un préjugé téléologique qui en dément la rigueur démonstrative,
strictement génétique et causale? Ce qui est ici en question, c'est le rapport
entre la philosophie et la politique, en tant que celui-ci est lié au statut même
de la connaissance vraie: si comprendre l'existence sociale des hommes c'est
ramener celle-ci à ses conditions nécessaires, cela ne signifie-t-il pas que la
réflexion sur le droit n'est possible qu'à la condition d'être renfermée dans
d'étroites limites, en dehors desquelles, sinon contre lesquelles, le projet de
libération propre au philosophe doit être maintenu? Or Hegel n'affirme-t-il pas
lui-même la nécessité pour la pure pensée, une fois qu'elle a traversé tous les
stades de son effectuation de se replier "dans lafigured'un royaume intellectuel"
(in Gestalt eines intellektuellen Reichs)?
On le voit, la relation qui passe entre la pensée de Spinoza et celle de
Hegel est autrement complexe que celle d'une identité abstraite ou que celle
d'une irréductible différence: elle ne peut être appréhendée que comme un
échange, à travers lequel les positions de l'un et de l'autre se correspondent
et se répondent, sans pourtant jamais se confondre. C'est pourquoi une lecture
simultanée de leurs discours peut être féconde.
Maintenant il faut revenir plus précisément sur les trois thèmes qui
viennent d'être superficiellement répertoriés, pour tenter d'appréhender le
contenu de cet échange, c'est-à-dire pour en mesurer les enjeux philosophi-
ques.

Le Réalisme Politique

Sur ce point, on partira de Hegel, pour pouvoir ensuite, à la lumière de sa

réflexion sur ce qui est effectivement réel (wirklich), relire le texte de Spinoza.
D'après Hegel, la réalité (Wirklichleit) est intrinsèquement rationnelle dans la
mesure où elle est l'oeuvre (Werk) de la raison, c'est-à-dire le produit de son
travail: ainsi peut-on dire que la raison s'effectue dans le monde, dans des formes
330 PIERRE MACHEREY

qui sont d'ailleurs très diverses, allant de {'Erscheinung empirique à YOffen-

barung idéale, c'est-à-dire de la réalisation au sens strict à l'incarnation. Dans
quelle mesure l'histoire peut-elle être considérée comme une telle oeuvre
rationnelle? Dans la mesure où, considérée dans son ensemble, comme histoire
universelle, et dépouillée de l'enveloppe factuelle relevant de la pure contingence
de l'événement qui définit la Realität au sens strict, c'est-à-dire le détail de ce
qui est arrivé, elle révèle son noyau mystique, contenu substantiel éternellement
présent {das Ewige, das gegenwärtig ist) qui constitue sa loi immanente. En ce
sens, le refus de transgresser les limites du monde tel qu'il est, au nom d'une
transcendance illusoire parce que nécessairement subjective, coïncide pour
Hegel avec la reconnaissance du fait que la raison est effectivement présente
dans ce monde ci (diesseits et non jenseits, selon une alternative qui se
transmettra dans la pensée philosophique allemande jusqu'au jeune Marx), parce
que le monde est le produit du travail qu'accomplit l'Esprit, en tant qu'Esprit
du monde (Weltgeist), pour s'effectuer lui-même nécessairement.
En ce sens, l'Etat, qui est la forme historique la plus accomplie du droit,
représente aussi par excellence pour Hegel l'Esprit objectif (der objektive Geist),
l'Esprit tel qu'il s'est lui-même objectivé dans le monde sous sa figure la plus
parfaite, telle qu'aucune autre ne soit rationnellement pensable qui puisse
idéalement, au sens où l'idéal s'opposerait au réel au lieu de s'effectuer en lui,
lui être substituée. C'est pourquoi, faire sa paix avec la réalité, ce n'est rien
d'autre que se réconcilier avec le présent, "reconnaître la raison comme la rose
dans la croix du présent," "réconciliation que procure la philosophie à ceux à
qui est apparue un jour l'exigence intérieure d'obtenir et de maintenir la liberté
subjective au sein de ce qui est substantiel et de placer cette liberté non dans
ce qui est particulier et contingent, mais dans ce qui est en et pour soi."1 En
d'autres termes, - Hegel utilise cette expression dans la Préface à ses Leçons sur
la philosophie de l'histoire - la raison est "l'Hermès qui guide effectivement les
peuples," au long de cette procession qui les conduit à assumer tour à tour,
chacun selon son rang et selon son temps, leur destination spirituelle, celle-
ci étant de représenter adéquatement, dans les limites imparties à leurs situations
respectives, une seule et même réalité qui confère à leur existence sa substance
spirituelle. Tbute la question est alors de savoir si l'histoire, ramenée à sa
norme rationnelle, est Vorstellung ou Darstellung, représentation du présent à
travers des intermédiaires qui l'en maintiennent dans une certaine mesure
séparée, ou présentation effective, qui intègre absolument la raison dans les
limites de l'histoire universelle, au point d'identifier complètement ses fins avec
celles de cette dernière.
Le réalisme politique revendiqué par Spinoza s'inscrit dans un contexte
théorique apparemment très différent, puisqu'il se présente dès le départ comme
un réalisme de l'expérience, qui cherche ses premières références dans la
pratique. Dans la perspective ainsi ouverte, il est vain de chercher hors de
l'expérience un modèle politique, à propos duquel il faudrait se demander ensuite
comment le mettre en pratique: le droit, quelle que soit sa forme, a toujours
été élaboré dans l'usage, de manière complètement empirique, par l'intervention
des Politici; ce sont ceux-ci qui ont mis au point les procédures les mieux
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 331

adaptées aux affects des hommes, procédures dont l'efficacité permet de mesurer
le degré de cette adaptation: c'est pourquoi, s'ils ne connaissent pas à
proprement parler la nature de l'Etat, ils sont ceux qui s'y connaissent le mieux
en fait de droit, car "du fait qu'ils ont disposé de plus d'expérience, ils n'ont
rien enseigné qui s'écartât de l'usage" (TP I, 2). Or, il n'y a pas d'autre voie
en politique que celle qui est ainsi montrée dans les fait, et qui conduit, pour
comprendre la réalité du droit, à prendre en compte l'expérience qui en est
donnée: toute l'expérience, mais rien que l'expérience. Dans quelle mesure est-
il possible de parler ici d'empirisme? Spinoza invalide la démarche qui consiste
à évaluer l'expérience au nom de principes extérieurs qui en disqualifieraient
les phénomènes en les ramenant au rang de simples apparences: les principes
d'une connaissance adéquate doivent au contraire être inhérents à l'expérience,
en ce sens qu'ils sont donnés en elle, ou qu'ils s'accordent avec elle. Mais cela
ne signifie pas que ces principes, qui sont donnés dans l'expérience, soient
données par l'expérience, car si celle-ci, dans ses limites, révèle tous les effets
dont est susceptible la nature politique de l'homme, elle ne montre pas
directement les causes de ces effets, et on peut môme considérer qu'elle est
organisée de manière à dissimuler ces causes, ou à en différer la manifestation.
Connaître dans les limites de l'expérience, c'est donc raisonner sur les objets
de l'expérience, de manière à en comprendre la véritable nature: or, cette
explication relève de la même exigence démonstrative que toutes les autres
formes de connaissance rationnelle, que l'object de celles-ci soit ou non
immédiatement donné dans l'expérience. Même si, dans le Traité politique, ses
arguments ne sont pas formellement rangés selon le modèle déductif strict mis
en oeuvre dans YEthique, l'objectif de Spinoza reste celui d'une Politica more
geometrico demonstrata, c'est-à-dire, d'une politique nécessaire.
Qu'est-ce qui constitue le point de départ de cette démonstration? C'est
l'homme réel, c'est-à-dire la pratique effective des rapports humains: ces
expressions peuvent paraître anachroniques, et pourtant l'idée qu'elles véhiculent
est bien comprise sous le concept de nature humaine tel qu'il est formulé par
Spinoza. A partir d'une prise en compte des affects et de leur libre jeu
spontané, indépendamment de la prise de conscience et du jugement rationnel
dont ils peuvent faire ultérieurement l'objet, il s'agit donc de dégager la logique
des actions humaines, en tant que celles-ci dérivent d'une "nature" qui est la
source réelle de tout droit. Un lien nécessaire est ainsi posé entre l'anthro-
pologie et la politique: il s'agit à la fois de conclure à partir des expériences
de vie en société les lois communes qui s'en dégagent, et de démontrer la
validité de ces expériences à partir des lois nécessaires qui les dirigent. Ainsi,
les hommes, qui font de la politique sans le savoir, par là-même font du droit,
en ce sens qu'ils font le droit, et, par leur actes, confèrent à celui-ci le seul type
de légitimité dont il soit susceptible. Mais, le principe essentiel du naturalisme
politique de Spinoza étant que la nature fonde le droit, cela ne signifie pas que
celui-ci découle de celle-là comme d'une base qui lui préexisterait de manière
indépendante et cela ne signifie donc pas non plus que l'anthropologie
conditionnerait l'étude de la politique comme une forme de connaissance
indépendante: Spinoza veut dire au contraire que la nature est imprégnée de
332 PIERRE MACHEREY

droit, qu'elle est déjà le droit lui-même selon sa constitution essentielle qui, tout
en maintenant les caractères spécifiques du droit social, ancre ceux-ci au plus
profond du droit de la nature, et en circonscrit strictement le champ d'exercice.
Pas plus que l'homme lui-même, la société n'est tanquam imperium in imperio,
mais elle est soumise aussi, en tant que pars naturae, aux lois communes qui
commandent la réalité toute entière. Plutôt que de dire que le droit dérive de
la nature, il faut donc dire qu'il est complètement immergé en elle, et c'est
pourquoi il ne constitue ses propres figures (species) que dans les limites qui
lui sont imposées par l'expérience.
La position de Spinoza ne se ramène donc pas à un simple pragmatisme.
Elle n'est pas non plus assimilable à une sorte de positivisme avant la lettre.
Pourtant ce dernier rapprochement s'impose comme de lui-même à la lecture
des première pages du Traité politique, et si le concept de science auquel est lié
la politique spinoziste semble évoquer prémonitoirement des schémas de pensée
qui seront explicitement au centre de la spéculation philosophique dans la
première moitié du XIXème siècle, plutôt que chez Hegel, avec sa tentative
d'une déduction complètement rationnelle du droit comme effectuation
médiatisée de l'Esprit, c'est chez Comte, en tant que celui-ci pose aussi la
réduction du droit au fait et fait de cette réduction la condition d'une rigueur
théorique authentique, qu'il faudrait chercher les indices d'une telle communauté.
Comte écrit par exemple, dans le premier texte où il a défini les concepts
fondamentaux de la politique positive:

Iladministration et l'improbation des phénomènes doivent être bannies avec une égale
sévérité de toute science positive, parce que chaque préoccupation de ce genre a pour
effet direct et inévitable d'empêcher ou d'altérer l'examen; les astronomes, les
physiciens, les chimistes et les physiologistes n'admirent ni ne blâment leurs phénomè-
nes respectifs, ils les observent, quoique ces phénomènes puissent donner une ample
matière aux considérations de l'un et l'autre genre, comme il y a beaucoup d'exemples;
les savants laissent avec raison de tels effets aux artistes, dans le domaine desquels
ils tombent réellement; il doit en être sous ce rapport dans la politique comme dans
les autres sciences. Seulement cette réserve y est beaucoup plus nécessaire,
précisément parce qu'elle y est plus difficile, et qu'elle altère l'examen plus
profondément, attendu que dans cette science les phénomènes touchent aux passions
de bien plus près que dans toute autre.

A première lecture, on pourrait croire que ce texte a été directement inspiré

par la lecture de Spinoza. Pourtant, il est évident que Comte, s'il avait eu
connaissance de la référence spinozienne, l'aurait énergiquement récusée, au nom
de son refus radical de la démarche métaphysique. C'est précisément alors
que la confrontation de Comte et de Spinoza prend son sens, au moment ou
elle met en évidence l'irréductible divergence qui les oppose. Pour Comte, la
politique est une science comme les autres, dans la mesure où, ayant préalable-
ment circonscrit le niveau d'études où elle se situe, celui des phénomènes
proprement humains, elle parvient à formuler les lois nécessaires auxquelles ceux-
ci obéissent spécifiquement, les lois naturelles de l'histoire, soumises à un
principe de progression rationnelle dont le développement semble dépendre
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 333

davantage d'un "dessein de la nature," au sens de Kant, que d'une "ruse de la

raison," au sens de Hegel. Or, pour Comte, une telle étude suppose qu'on ait
complètement renoncé à chercher les causes de ces enchaînements, pour s'en
tenir aux relations nécessaires qui s'établissement au niveau de leurs effets.
Spinoza au contraire affirme avec insistance que la science politique
véritable, comme toute connaissance adéquate, s'appuie sur une compréhension
complète de ses phénomènes, qui les fait connaître tels qu'ils sont en eux-
mêmes, c'est-à-dire tels qu'ils sont produits réellement par leurs causes. C'est
pourquoi cette connaissance prend la forme d'une "déduction":

j'ai seulement cherché à démontrer rigoureusement (certa et indubitata ratione

demonstrare) les choses qui s'accordent le mieux avec la pratique, et à les déduire
de la condition de l'humaine nature telle qu'elle est en elle-même (ex ipsa humanae
conditione deducere) (TP I, 4).

On retrouve ici l'idée d'un fondement anthropologique du droit: si les sociétés

sont ce qu'elles sont, c'est-à-dire régies par des lois qui décident du juste et de
l'injuste, c'est parce que passe en elles quelque chose qui appartient d'abord à
la nature des hommes; cette chose est la puissance. La puissance, c'est ce qui
détermine toutes les choses de la nature à exister et à agir: la société, qui est
aussi une chose naturelle, n'a de puissance que pour autant que celle-ci lui a
été communiquée par les individus qui la composent, en lesquels elle a sa source.
Ceci ne signifie pas que, selon, une perspective mécanique, Spinoza cherche à
constituer la réalité sociale complexe par une construction abstraite, en agençant
ces éléments simples qui seraient les hommes dans cette totalité organisée que
serait l'ordre politique: en effet, les sociétés, tout comme les êtres qu'elles
rassemblent, sont des individus; réciproquement, les agents sociaux, ou si l'on
veut les sujets politiques, ne sont des individus que pour autant qu'ils sont eux
mêmes organisés comme des systèmes complexes, rassemblant encore d'autres
éléments, en des sortes de communautés corporelles et mentales, qu'on peut se
représenter à leur tour comme étant déjà des espèces de sociétés.
Tout ceci découle de la notion très particulière d'individualité développée
par la philosophie spinoziste: cette notion n'est jamais assimilable à celle
d'entités élémentaires, atomes physiques ou psychiques, qui donneraient son
terme absolu à une analyse de la réalité. C'est ce point qui oppose parti-
culièrement cette philosophie au mécanisme des anciens. Spinoza pense toujours
l'individu synthétiquement, comme le résultat d'un mouvement de totalisation
qui a commencé bien avant lui et se poursuit au delà de ses propres limites.
C'est précisément ce que signifie la définition de l'individu comme pars naturae,
définition qui, remarquons le, s'applique aussi bien à l'être humain singulier
qu'au corps social considéré dans sa spécificité: pars, non au sens d'une partie
en soi indécomposable, suivant la logique d'une démarche strictement analytique,
mais au sens d'une détermination qui trouve elle-même son principe dans
l'existence du tout auquel elle appartient solidairement, et dont elle ne peut être
que provisoirement et relativement détachée. C'est pourquoi la forme par
excellence de réalisation de la puissance individuelle est le conatus, effort pour
334 PIERRE MACHEREY

persévérer dans son être, qui, loin d'isoler les unes des autres les choses finies,
tanquam imperia in imperio, les rattache au contraire nécessairement, par
l'intermédiaire de leurs rapports mutuels, à la nature dont elles ne sont que les
"parties." Car ce qui définit les choses finies, c'est qu'elles ne sont pas en elles
et par elles-mêmes, et c'est pourquoi le conatus qui délimite la puissance de ces
choses ne trouve pas son principe dans leur seule essence, puisqu'il ne se conclut
pas de leur définition: "d'où il suit que la puissance des choses naturelles, qui
les fait agir et opérer, ne peut être une autre puissance que celle même de Dieu
qui est éternelle" (TP II, 2). C'est la puissance de la nature considéré dans son
ensemble qui se poursuit dans l'existence des choses individuelles et se
communique à tout ce qu'elles font; et c'est la raison pour laquelle elles peuvent
aussi transmettre cette puissance à d'autres configurations dans lesquelles elles
entrent elles-mêmes comme des éléments constituants, qui persistent à affirmer
leur puissance jusque dans la dynamique de leur fusion.
En ce sens, on peut dire que le réalisme politique de Spinoza est d'abord
un naturalisme, à condition d'épurer ce terme de toute référence pragmatiste
ou empiriste. Naturalisme doit évidemment s'entendre ici au sens de la nature
absolue, ou de la substance divine, qui, parce qu'elle produit tous ses effets en
elle-même, constitue aussi le principe de toute existence et de toute puissance.
S'il y a des sociétés, et si les hommes peuvent réaliser dans l'ordre qu'elles
définissent la part d'éternité qui leur revient, c'est-à-dire parviennent à être
libres, c'est parce qu'elles incorporent ou informent, c'est-à-dire, il n'y a pas de
meilleur mot, individualisent, à leur manière, la puissance globale qui appartient
à la nature tout entière: c'est cette puissance qui constitue leur cause ultime,
à partir de laquelle elles peuvent être expliquées adéquatement. Arrivé à ce
point, on peut se demander si la divergence qui oppose Spinoza à Hegel ne
s'estompe pas quelque peu: que les sociétés et les hommes qu'elles font vivre
ensemble soient les produits d'une nature absolument première, ou les
réalisations d'un Esprit qui est à la recherche de lui-même à travers l'ensemble
de ses déterminations, il reste que le droit est justiciable d'une logique dont le
développement coïncide exactement avec celui d'une ontologie, et de ce point
de vue, les "réalismes" de Spinoza et de Hegel, qu'il s'agisse d'un réalisme de
l'expérience ou d'un réalisme de l'effectivité, peuvent sembler très proches. Sans
doute, le fait que Spinoza pense la nature comme substance, alors que Hegel
définit au contraire l'Esprit comme sujet, maintient entre eux une irréductible
différence, celle qui sépare un ordre rigoureux des causes d'un ordre absolu des
fins. Eétude du thème de la fin de l'histoire devrait permettre de mettre au
jour les présupposés qui sont en jeu dans cette dernière alternative.

La Fin de L'Histoire

Pour commencer, essayons cette fois de caractériser la position de Spinoza.

De quelle manière le thème de la fin de l'histoire s'inscrit-il dans son texte?
Préalablement à la déduction du droit, Spinoza affirme: toutes ses formes sont
effectivement réalisées dans la pratique, et
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 335

il est difficilement croyable que nous puissions concevoir quelque chose qui soit d'usage
dans la société commune, et que l'occasion ou le hasard n'ait fourni, ou que les
hommes, dans la mesure où ils sont attentifs aux affaires communes, et prennent soin
de leur sécurité, n'aient point vu" (TP I, 3).

On peut donc considérer que l'expérience a déjà montré - Spinoza écrit bien:
ostendisse, et non: ostendere - tout ce qu'il est possible d'attendre du droit en
matière d'organisation sociale: il ne reste donc plus qu'à récapituler les éléments
présentés dans cette expérience sous une forme dispersée, comme s'ils relevaient
de l'occasion et du hasard, cest-à-dire qu'il ne reste plus qu'à les totaliser en
en effectuant la synthèse rationnelle. Démarche, on peut le dire très classique,
consistant à soustraire l'objet qu'elle considère aux conditions contingentes de
la durée, pour ne prendre en compte que l'ordre immuable, et donc
intransformable, qui constitue sa vérité. De façon comparable, dans le chapitre
du traité Théologico-politique consacré aux miracles, Spinoza confirme, en
s'appuyant sur le texte même de la Bible, cette position rationnelle en vertu
de laquelle l'ordre des choses ne peut être fondamentalement modifié, parce qu'il
ne peut entrer en contradiction avec lui-même:

A propos de la nature en général, l'Ecriture affirme en plusieurs endroits qu'elle

conserve un ordre fixe et immuable (Ps. 148:6, Jcr. 31:35-36). En outre, le philosophe
en son Ecclésiaste (1:10) enseigne de la manière la plus claire que rien de nouveau
n'arrive dans la nature; et (1:11-12), développant cette même idée, il dit que, bien
qu'arrive parfois quelque chose qui semble nouveau, cela pourtant n'est pas quelque
chose de vraiment nouveau, mais est arrivé dans des siècles fort antérieurs bien qu'il
n'en demeure aucune mémoire: car, comme il le dit lui-même, il n'est aucune mémoire
des choses anciennes chez ceux qui vivent aujourd'hui, et de même aussi la mémoire
des choses d'aujourd'hui n'existera plus pour ceux qui viendront plus tard. Puis (3:11)
il dit que Dieu a ordonné toutes choses comme il convient en leur temps, et (3:14)
il dit qu'il sait que, quoi que Dieu fasse, c'est pour l'éternité, sans que quelque chose
puisse y être ajouté ou retranché, lout cela enseigne de la manière la plus claire
que la nature conserve un ordrefixeet immuable, que Dieu a été le même pour tous
les temps, que nous les connaissions ou non, et enfin que les miracles n'apparaissent
comme quelque chose de nouveau qu'à raison de l'ignorance des hommes," (TTP vi,
§§67-68, G III/95).

De la même manière, prétendre que l'ordre politique puisse être radicalement

changé, n'est-ce pas engager sa créance en d'impossibles miracles, tout, dans ce
domaine comme dans les autres, étant déjà arrivé?
Si Spinoza s'installe au point de vue d'une histoire qui est finie -
remarquons d'ailleurs que, si nous en restons à ce qui vient d'être dit, elle
était finie dès le départ, et en fait n'a jamais eu lieu, .l'ordre véritable étant
par définition sans histoire - c'est donc pour des motifs apparemment opposés
à ceux qui inspirent Hegel: le raisonnement de Spinoza ne prend nullement en
compte une dialectique de l'innovation, appuyée sur le travail du négatif, mais
développe au contraire toutes les conséquences de ce que nous avons déjà appelé
son réalisme politique. Rien de nouveau sous le soleil: les formes sociales, si
elle ont été réellement inventées, l'ont été dans une époque tellement reculée
336 PIERRE MACHEREY

que la mémoire s'en est dissipée, et c'est pourquoi il ne reste plus qu'à les
admettre telles qu'elles se présentent aujourd'hui, sans prétendre y ajouter ni
retrancher quoi que ce soit, comme si elles valaient pour l'éternité. Toutefois,
il apparaît aussitôt que ces formulations ne doivent pas non plus être prises à
la lettre, car il n'est pas davantage possible de ramener la théorie politique à
un simple enregistrement de l'état de fait: l'expérience ne délivre de véritables
enseignements que si elle est considérée sub specie aeternitatis, donc dégagée
des circonstances accidentelles qui lui confèrent sa situation temporelle singulière.
Aussi bien, pour Spinoza, il s'agit, en analysant les différentes sortes de
structures sociales, c'est-à-dire les régimes politiques, de replacer ceux-ci dans
le cadre de cette déduction générale qui les fait dériver d'une nature commune.
Or, cette démarche n'est elle-même possible qu'à travers la prise en considération
des formes optimales dans lesquelles s'effectue l'organisation essentielle du
pouvoir politique: "Maintenant que nous avons traité du droit de chaque forme
d'organisation sociale en général, il est temps que nous traitions du meilleur
régime adapté à chaque Etat" (TP V, 1). Il csi clair que l'ordre politique, dans
les conditions auxquelles il est ainsi présenté, correspond à quelque chose de
parfaitement inédit en regard de l'existence actuelle de la société, et Spinoza
remarque lui-même:

Bien que, à ce que je sache, aucun Etat n'ait été institué d'après toutes les conditions
que nous avons énoncées, nous pourrions cependant faire voir aussi, en nous appuyant
sur l'expérience elle-même, que cette forme-ci d'Etat monarchique est le meilleur, si
nous voulions prendre en considération les causes de la conservation de chaque Etat,
tant qu'il n'est pas retourné à la barbarie, et de son renversement." (TP VII, 30)

Il suffit, semble-t-il que la démarche théorique ne contredise pas l'expérience

pour se trouver du même coup en parfait accord avec elle: mais cela signifie
aussi que, pour comprendre la raison substantielle des phénomènes, dans le
domaine politique comme dans tous les autres, on s'écarte de leur réalité
factuelle, en leur appliquant des principes, qui, sans être nécessairement d'une
autre ordre, restent pourtant inaperçus à leur niveau.
On peut donc dire que Spinoza ne se résigne pas passivement à un état
de fait, ne serait-ce que parce que l'actualité dans laquelle celui-ci s'incarne
est par définition précaire et condamnée tôt ou tard à se défaire: les événements
qui ont agité la Hollande en 1672 viennent d'ailleurs d'en donner un témoignage
éclatant, et sans aucun doute ce sont eux qui ont donné à la réflexion du Traité
politique son incitation initiale, voire son premier objet. Il n'est donc pas
question de nier que l'histoire soit le lieu de constants changements, et qu'elle
soit hantée par une dynamique qui tend de manière quasiment permanente à
en déstabiliser lesfiguresapparentes. L'objectif d'une pensée théorique, appuyée
sur des démonstrations, est en quelque sorte de remonter ce mouvement en sens
inverse, en ramenant la société, toute société, à son principe, qui n'a d'ailleurs
rien à voir avec une origine historique. Mais il serait parfaitement inconséquent
de supposer que cette déduction, qui s'effectue d'une certaine manière a priori,
puisse renoncer à voir ses objets réalisés dans la pratique, et qu'elle se satisfasse
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 337

d'en donner la présentation scientifique, pour le simple plaisir de comprendre

(bien que Spinoza fasse explicitement référence à ce dernier argument: TP I,
4). Spinoza s'est évertué dès le début de son traité à établir l'identité nécessaire
de la théorie et de la pratique, et on ne saurait admettre que cette identité soit
elle-même seulement "théorique": le fait que la théorie et la pratique ne se
contredisent pas est le signe, mais non le fondement de leur accord. Sans doute
n'est-il pas permis de lire le Traité politique comme un discours adressé au
Prince, ou comme un manuel du militant, ni même comme un traité d'instruction
civique à l'usage des bons citoyens: car il n'est rien d'autre au fond qu'une
réflexion philosophique sur le meilleur, ou le moins mauvais, usage que peut
faire le sage de l'état social, dont de toutes façons il ne peut se déprendre, dans
la perspective de libération qui le définit. Mais cette réflexion, pour théorique
et philosophique qu'elle soit, ne saurait évidemment se couper de toute
perspective de réalisation pratique, étant entendu que celle-ci ne dépend en
dernière instance des décisions et des bonnes intentions de qui que ce soit:
admettre que la forme optimale convenant à chaque sorte de régime politique
pourrait n'exister qu'en idée, ce serait illogiquement cantonner la pensée
théorique dans la considération d'un pur possible, complètement coupé des
conditions de son effectuation. Au contraire, envisager comme réalisable, pour
autant que les circonstances extérieures s'y prêtent, la structure sociale qui
garantirait autant que possible la paix civile, et assurerait du même coup les
condition les plus favorables à la liberté de penser, c'est retirer à cette structure
le caractère irrationnel d'un possible idéal, réservé aux rêveries subjectives qui
constituent spécifiquement l'univers de la fable (TP I, 5).
Rien de nouveau sous le soleil: cette considération vaut donc pour les
causes qui déterminent le droit des sociétés, dont la nécessité est éteruelle,
mais en aucun cas pour leur effets, qui sont au contraire en transformation
incessante. Sans doute les hommes sont ils toujours les mêmes, en ce sens
que, en tous lieux et en tous temps, ils sont nécessairement conduits par leurs
affects: mais ceux-ci les entraînent dans des formes d'associations toujours
nouvelles, qui ne relèvent jamais de configurations exactement identiques. Et
c'est pourquoi, si tout sans doute n'est pas possible dans l'histoire, où il est de
toutes façons exclu que se produise quelque chose d'en soi contradictoire, car
on ne fera jamais manger d'herbe à des tables, il reste que tout ce qui peut se
conclure des principes fondamentaux, c'est-à-dire des causes réelles du droit, doit
un jour ou l'autre arriver: au moins cette éventualité ne peut-elle être défi-
nitivement écartée. L'histoire n'est donc jamais finie, mais elle poursuit toujours
au delà de ses formes actuelles, un mouvement de production qui, s'il n'altère
en rien ses conditions essentielles, varie indéfiniment les formes dans lesquelles
elles se réalisent. Le "réalisme" se Spinoza le conduit à la considération d'une
histoire ouverte, pour laquelle le moment présent, quel qu'il soit, n'a jamais que
le caractère relatif d'une manifestation occasionnelle, et non celui d'une
expression absolue. L'histoire est sans fin, et sans fins, parce qu'elle dépend
nécessairement de causes qui agissent toujours en elle, quelles que soient les
conjonctures quifixentle contexte de leur intervention: c'est pourquoi d'ailleurs,
dans les pires moments de cette histoire, ceux dans lesquels la puissance civile
338 PIERRE MACHEREY

dégénère en une œntrainte arbitraire qui dénie le droit lui-même, il reste

néanmoins possible, pourvu qu'on revienne aux causes réelles du droit, de penser
à être libre, de penser la liberté, sur un mode qui n'est pas seulement celui d'une
idée sans contenu. Eternel optimisme du sage.
Penser le droit, si ce n'est donc penser l'histoire en tant que telle, n'est
pas non plus penser sans elle ou contre elle: mais c'est nécessairement penser
dans l'histoire, dans l'horizon où ses successives expériences se poursuivent, ad
infinitum. Pourtant, si l'histoire n'est pas absente de la réflexion théorique de
Spinoza, c'est dans la mesure où elle est envisagée dans son rapport avec la
puissance illimitée de la nature, en l'absence donc de tout présupposé
téléologique. Ici encore, entre la pensée de Spinoza et celle de Hegel, se
découvre un motif de divergence apparemment radical. Du point de vue de
Spinoza, la déduction rationnelle du droit ne peut en aucune manière coïncider
avec la révélation d'une progression rationnelle, qui disposerait les formes
historiques de sa réalisation au long d'une ligne continue, orientée par sa propre
dynamique interne dans un sens unique et uniformément ascendant. Certes, il
est possible de sérier les formes de l'Etat, mais cet ordre prend, dans le Traité
politique la forme d'une typologie, d'un répertoire de structures à l'intérieur
duquel il semble n'y avoir qu'à choisir, à chaque moment, celle qui est la mieux
adaptée à ses exigences spécifiques, étant entendu que ce choix ne relève pas
de décisions individuelles qui au contraire le présupposent toujours. Dans la
mesure ou Spinoza s'est engagé dans une réflexion sur la logique de l'histoire,
celle-ci s'est limitée a la constatation de la dérive monarchique qui obsède toutes
les formes de sociétés, et qui, restreignant peu à peu les assisses de leur pouvoir,
rend plus en plus précaires les conditions de leur perpétuation (TP VIII, 12).
S'il est possible de réfléchir l'histoire universelle, c'est dans la perspective d'un
cycle revenant indéfiniment sur lui-même, et non dans celle d'une tendance
progressive qui se dirigerait vers l'idéal d'une société de droit intrinsèquement
rationnelle, qu'elle incarnerait au terme de son mouvement.
Ici encore, on peut voir une occurrence du réalisme politique de Spinoza:
le philosophe ramène toutes les sortes de sociétés à des principes communs,
qui sont ceux de la nature, mais il renonce à privilégier absolument telle ou telle
structure de pouvoir, et à constituer celle-ci en paradigme universel, qui
constituerait la forme unique vers laquelle tendrait chaque Etat, quelles que
soient les conjonctures qui président à leur formation. S'il y a une essence du
social, dont l'explication complète relève de la connaissance adéquate du déter-
minisme universel, il n'y a pas une essence de la société qui préexisterait à
l'ensemble de ses manifestations, s'incarnerait en elles, de manière à parvenir,
traversant toute l'histoire, à sa plus parfaite réalisation. La véritable sagesse
est de ne jamais se laisser surprendre par les modifications auxquelles la société
est exposée en permanence, et de parvenir à identifier, à chaque moment, le type
spécifique de régime social auquel on a affaire, de manière à comprendre en
quoi il s'accorde avec les fondements naturels du droit, et à déduire en
conséquence tout ce qu'on peut en attendre dans la pratique, en envisageant
les améliorations éventuelles qui pourraient lui être apportées pour lui assurer
un maximum de stabilité, et garantir ainsi, autant que faire se peut, la paix civile.
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 339

Cette évaluation comparée procède de ce qu'on peut appeler un scepticisme

historique, dans la mesure où elle limite étroitement les espérances, mais du
même coup aussi les craintes, qu'on peut attacher à telle ou telle situation: si
elles se valent toutes, c'est parce que, malgré leur hétérogénéité, elles expriment
de manière toujours différente ce même fond commun dont elles dépendent,
et qui n'est pas même le droit, en tant que, dans une perspective artificialiste
ou formaliste, sa spécificité serait irréductible, mais la nature et ses lois
universelles. Car l'horizon ultime du droit, pour Spinoza, n'est pas l'histoire
mais la nature: et ce point évidemment l'oppose à Hegel, puisque celui-ci ramène
au contraire l'organisation de toutes les sociétés à un principe essentiellement
spirituel qui, s'il s'effectue dans des figures historiquement diverses, obéit
néanmoins à une logique de développement interne; et c'est cette logique qui
engendre les figures du droit comme les moments successifs d'une unique série
qui trouve son commencement véritable dans sa fin: l'Etat rationnel.
Pourtant, ici encore, reconnaître l'opposition radicale qui s'élève entre les
points de vue de Spinoza et de Hegel, ce ne peut être seulement les renvoyer
dos-à-dos, en prenant simplement acte de leur désaccord: car celui-ci n'a de sens
que sur la base d'une entente implicite; et c'est celle-ci qui permet d'identifier
dans leurs discours respectifs l'existence de certains enjeux, voire de certains
objets, communs. Si on reconsidère la philosophie hégélienne de l'histoire a
la lumière du raisonnement de Spinoza, tel que les grandes lignes viennent d'en
être reconstituées, on s'aperçoit que ses enseignements sont moins simples, et
surtout moins simplistes, que ceux auxquels on la ramène d'ordinaire. Si Hegel
avait réellement formé l'idée que la rationalité de l'histoire ne peut être dégagée
que sous la condition que celle-ci ait effectivement atteint son terme absolu,
celui-ci coïncidant avec le moment où se situe la réflexion de Hegel, et
s'instituant dans la forme supposée indépassable de l'Etat prussien, il est clair
que sa doctrine dépendrait d'une présupposé injustifiable, démentant la rigueur
de son organisation interne et, à la limite, mettant le système en contradiction
avec lui-même. Aussi bien Hegel n'a-t-il jamais dit cela: c'est en vain qu'on
chercherait dans toute son oeuvre, à l'exception de quelques formules
métaphoriques, une spéculation sur le moment terminal de l'histoire. Ceci se
comprend si on réfléchit attentivement à ce que signifie pour lui la notion de
"présent." Hegel rapporte celle-ci à l'éternité (das Ewige das gegenwärtig ist) du
concept et à l'identité à soi de l'esprit qui demeure toujours auprès de lui-
même, et non à l'actualité empirique de tel ou tel moment temporel (die
Gegenwart als Jetzt), qui n'en est que la forme extérieure finie. Si l'histoire est
le lieu d'une Aufhebung qui la dirige vers un maximum de rationalité, c'est parce
que la vérité infinie du concept qui la hante continûment ne passe pas en elle,
mais persiste à travers toutes ses transformations. C'est pourquoi la philosophie
ne considère jamais que le présent: c'est celui-ci qui donne son sens au passé,
en en faisant l'objet d'une Erinnerung qui littéralement l'intègre à la réalité
effective de l'Esprit tel qu'il est maintenant, du point de vue de laquelle la
perspective d'un avenir possible relève d'un devoir-être (sollen) irrationnel.
Revenant, dans ses Leçons sur la philosophie de la religion, sur la nécessaire
réconciliation de l'esprit et de la réalité, en reprenant la fameuse formule de
340 PIERRE MACHEREY

la Préface des Principes de la Philosophie du Droit, "reconnaître la raison comme

la rose dans la croix du présent," Hegel réfute les conceptions mystiques du
droit qui en replacent l'idéal dans une origine perdue ou dans un avenir espéré,
Paradis passé ou futur, de toutes les façons absent (alors que la pensée authen-
tique ne s'applique qu'à ce qui est présent):

Cette théorie détermine son idéal comme passé ou futur. Il est nécessaire qu'elle
se pose et elle exprime ainsi le vrai en et pour soi, mais le défaut est précisément cette
détermination de passé ou de futur. Elle en fait quelque chose qui n'est pas présent
et lui donne ainsi immédiatement une détermination finie. Ce qui est en et pour soi
est l'infini: toutefois, ainsi réfléchi, il se trouve pour nous en état de finite. La
réflexion sépare avec raison ces deux choses; elle a toutefois le défaut de s'en tenir
à l'abstraction et exige cependant que ce qui est en et pour soi doive apparaître aussi
dans le monde de la contingence extérieure. \jà raison assigne sa sphère au hasard,
au libre arbitre, mais en sachant que dans ce monde extrêmement confus en apparence
la vérité se trouve cependant. Létat idéal est une chose sacrée, mais cet état n'est
pas réalisé; si l'on se représente par sa réalisation les complications du droit et de la
politique, les circonstances qui se présentent ainsi que la multiplication des besoins
humains doivent être conformes tous à l'Idée; il se trouve ici un terrain qui ne saurait
être adéquat à l'idéal mais qui doit exister cependant et où l'Idée substantielle est
partout réelle et présente. Ce que l'existence a d'absurde et de trouble ne constitue
pas à lui seul le présent. Cette existence présente n'est qu'un côté, et ne comprend
pas la totalité qui appartient au présent. Ce qui détermine l'idéal peut exister, mais
on n'a pas encore reconnu que l'Idée est réellement présente parce qu'on ne l'observe
qu'avec la conscience finie. Il est difficile de reconnaître la réalité à travers l'écorce
du substantiel, et parce qu'on trouve difficilement l'idéal dans la réalité on le place
dans le passé ou dans l'avenir. C'est un labeur possible de reconnaître à travers cette
écorce le noyau de la réalité - pour cueillir la rose dans la croix du présent, il faut
se charger soi-même de la croix.

S'il y a une philosophie de l'histoire, c'est, pour Hegel parce que la raison se
trouve partout "présente" dans l'histoire, et non seulement dans tel ou tel de
ses moments finis, abusivement privilégié par rapport à tous les autres, et
arbitrairement identifié avec son terme absolu. En ce sens, c'est toujours, pour
la philosophie, la fin de l'histoire, dans la mesure où celle-ci, en chacun de ses
moments, doit être réfléchie de manière récurrente à partir de son état actuel,
de manière à révéler les conditions rationnelles qui rendent celui-ci nécessaire.
Et si Hegel représente l'Etat comme la forme accomplie de l'Esprit objectif, il
faut justement comprendre que, du môme coup, celle-ci ne coïncide jamais tout
à fait avec la réalisation de l'Esprit absolu, qui relève de tout autres conditions.
EEtat est éternel, précisément parce que l'idée qui est en lui ne s'identifie
jamais complètement avec ses réalisations circonstancielles, mais se trouve
irrésistiblement amenée à "dépasser" ces réalisations, la vérité qui la hante la
poussant à chercher sans cesse, au delà des limites d'une actualité historique,
les conditions de son accomplissement. Ainsi, pour Hegel comme pour Spinoza,
si la raison rencontre l'histoire, c'est dans la mesure où elle n'est pas tout à fait
du même ordre qu'elle, et se maintient, par rapport à ses manifestations
singulières, dans une constante réserve. C'est précisément ce qui permet de dire
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 341

que la raison "ruse" avec l'histoire, car celle-ci n'est pour elle qu'un instrument
occasionnel.

La Ruse de la Raison

Eétude de ce dernier thème va nous permettre de revenir encore une fois sur
le rapport entre nature et raison tel qu'il est instauré par le droit. On peut
dire que la démarche de Hegel est dialectique dans la mesure où elle parvient
à réconcilier ces deux termes en maintenant jusqu'au bout leur contradiction:
la raison s'effectue dans le droit contre la nature, mais en même temps elle
exploite les éléments qui lui sont fournis par la nature pour les détourner à ses
propres fins. "Les passions se réalisent suivant leur détermination naturelle, mais
elles produisent l'édifice de la société humaine, dans laquelle elle ont conféré
au droit et à l'ordre le pouvoir contre elles-mêmes."4 Spinoza veut-il dire autre
chose lorsqu'il reprend à son compte la définition de l'homme comme "animal
social" (TP II, 15)? Incontestablement, cette dernière formule signifie pour lui
que le droit, fondé en nature, est, sinon du même ordre, du moins en rapport
de continuité avec la nature: la société n'étant après tout que la continuation
de la nature par d'autres moyens. Or, pour Hegel, si le droit s'appuie sur la
nature, c'est dans la mesure où il est aussi en rupture avec elle, et c'est bien
ce que signifie la métaphore de la ruse, qui fait implicitement référence à une
négativité dont on chercherait en vain la trace dans le texte de Spinoza.
Pour Hegel, la genèse du droit s'appuie sur le développement d'une
contradiction qui, en dernière instance, se ramène à celle du singulier et de
l'universel: dans leur conduite empirique, les hommes sont conduits par la
recherche de leurs intérêts particuliers, et il faut en même temps que leurs actes
s'inscrivent dans le cadre défini par la loi, qui pose au contraire la prééminence
du bien général commun. Pour que la raison s'effectue objectivement dans le
monde du droit, il faut qu'elle reprenne à son compte cette contradiction, et
qu'elle la développe jusqu'à son terme: c'est-à-dire s'intègre au rapport naturel
qui s'instaure spontanément entre les hommes, à travers le libre jeu de ce qu'ils
croient être leurs intérêts, de manière à contrôler ce rapport et à le diriger; tout
se passe alors comme si elle manipulait les passions humaines comme un
matériau, de manière à les soumettre à ses propres fins. Or ce retournement
n'est possible que parce que la raison introduit, ou fait apparaître, entre les
termes extrêmes qu'elle réconcilie, des médiations. Dans le contexte de l'histoire
universelle, ces médiations sont les peuples qui participent à la fois du singulier,
par les caractères spécifiques qui les différencient entre eux, et de l'universel,
par l'esprit commun qu'ils élaborent, et qui les autorise à revendiquer, quand
le moment en est venu pour eux, la fonction de représenter l'Esprit universel
sur la scène de l'histoire: en effet, pour Hegel, l'histoire est comme un théâtre
sur lequel la raison s'incarne dans des personnages, les peuples, qui entrent et
sortent de scène suivant les exigences de leur rôle. Si les peuples sont les
"acteurs" de l'histoire, c'est précisément en raison de cette situation intermédiaire
qu'ils occupent entre la nature et la raison: la vie d'un peuple n'est rien d'autre
que le développement de cette contradiction, développement fécond, puisqu'il
342 PIERRE MACHEREY

porte en lui la promesse d'un dépassement, jusqu'au moment où un autre peuple

prend la relève dans l'accomplissement de la même mission, qui est la réalisation
de l'état de droit, et la rationalisation des rapports humains.
Ceci signifie que, pour Hegel, la matière effective de l'histoire est donnée
dans l'existence des peuples, et non dans celle des individus: ou plutôt: l'existence
des individus n'y est impliquée que dans la mesure où elle est déjà informée
par la configuration culturelle collective à l'intérieur de laquelle elle s'inscrit
et qui lui préexiste nécessairement. C'est pourquoi Hegel ne donne pas au droit
un fondement anthropologique, pas davantage qu'il ne développe une vision
humaniste de l'histoire. En effet, il pense que l'histoire, considérée dans son
mouvement objectif, n'entretient pas un rapport direct avec l'existence des
individus, et ne peut donc être expliquée à partir d'elle. Si l'histoire est possible,
c'est parce qu'elle travaille non sur les hommes eux mêmes, mais sur des
rapports humains déjà constitués, qu'elle transforme progressivement, en jouant
sur leurs conflits internes, de manière à leur conférer la structure rationnelle
de l'Etat. Ce point est essentiel, car il permet de comprendre pourquoi Hegel
s'oppose radicalement à Rousseau, à qui il impute la conception inverse, qui
tend à déduire l'esprit du droit, défini, à tort selon lui, comme "volonté
générale," à partir des décisions arbitraires des individus. Car le reproche fonda-
mental que fait Hegel aux théories du contrat social, c'est qu'elle substituent
au fondement juridique rationnel de l'Etat un fondement psychologique
irrationnel.
On peut légitimement se demander où Spinoza se situe lui-même dans
cette discussion, lorsqu'il entreprend de déduire les formes de l'organisation
sociale à partir de la nature humaine: tend-il à réduire le juridique à
l'anthropologique, ou bien s'appuie-t-il sur une conception de la nature dont
les réquisits rationnels invalident au contraire une telle réduction? On a
commencé à répondre à cette question, au début de cet exposé, en dégageant
les caractères originaux du concept d'individualité tel qu'il est exploité par
Spinoza. Dans la mesure où l'individu est pars naturae, il n'y a pas d'existence
individuelle en soi, dont les limites seraient fixées et définies une fois pour
toutes, mais il n'y a que des ensembles individualisés, qui se forment et se
diluent à l'intérieur de totalités plus vastes qui les déterminent. Or, ce raisonne-
ment, qui s'applique d'abord aux êtres humains singuliers, vaut aussi pour les
peuples: la conception spinoziste de l'histoire ne reconnaît pas l'existence
privilégiée aux peuples - à l'exception peut-être des Hébreux: mais ceux-ci ne
sont-ils pas plutôt, à travers leur rêve d'élection, un "anti-peuple"? - et en tout
cas ne leur reconnaît pas une fonction nécessaire de médiation entre le singulier
et l'universel, puisqu'elle prétend au contraire expliquer directement les formes
relatives d'organisation instaurées par le droit à partir de la nature humaine telle
qu'elle s'incarne immédiatement dans les affects individuels. Si l'on peut parler
d'une ruse de la raison chez Spinoza, c'est à propos précisément de cette
démarche, qui consiste à retrouver, derrière toutes les motivations et les
conduites collectives, la détermination nécessaire, parce que strictement causale,
des passions, celles-ci exprimant la puissance de la nature en l'homme, en tout
homme, quelle que soit sa situation historique. Mais la nature qui agit en
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 343

l'homme n'est pas non plus sa nature, en ce sens qu'elle lui appartiendrait
exclusivement, et le détacherait artificiellement de tous les autres êtres, humains
ou non, auxquels il est au contraire objectivement lié par le fait qu'il appartient
à la même nature qu'eux.
Lorsque Spinoza parle de l'homme comme d'un animal social, il ne tend
donc nullement à affirmer un primat de l'anthropologique sur le politique,
parce qu'il s'appuie sur un concept de la nature humaine qui interdit de penser
un tel primat. En effet, qu'est-ce qui est naturel dans les hommes? Spinoza
le répète inlassablement: ce sont leurs affects, en tant que ceux-ci jouent
spontanément, et les conduisent, sans même qu'ils en aient conscience. Ces
affects sont les mêmes, et sont soumis aux mêmes lois, qu'ils soient rapportés
aux individus, d'après le jus naturae, ou aux relations collectives qu'ils nouent
à l'intérieur de l'organisation sociale, selon le jus civile: c'est précisément
l'identité de ces affects qui fonde la nécessité du droit, selon un ordre objectif
naturel qui n'est réductible à aucune convention artificielle. Mais sur quoi est
fondée cette communauté des affects qui conditionne la vie sociale des hommes?
Sur la nature même de ces affects, qui se présente d'emblée comme une nature
commune, et, on peut le dire, communautaire. Sur ce point, il n'est pas indis-
pensable de se reporter au détail des démonstrations qu'enchaîne le livre III de
YEthique; il suffît de se reporter au bref résumé que Spinoza en présente lui-
même au début du Traité politique, car, malgré son caractère schématique, il en
dégage très bien l'esprit essentiel. Le propre des désirs humains, c'est qu'ils
ne se développent pas à partir du rapport singulier à soi de l'individu considéré
comme une entité autonome, comme un "sujet," pour la bonne raison que ce
rapport est illusoire et n'a aucune réalité du point de vue de la nature; mais
ils se constituent immédiatement à travers le rapport à autrui qui donne à la
nature humaine le contexte objectif de son développement. Non seulement les
hommes sont en proie à un certain nombre de passions élémentaires, qui leur
font envisager pour eux-mêmes un mode de vie adapté à leurs aspiration, à la
mesure de leurs craintes et de leurs espérances, mais ils sont poussés en même
temps à désirer (appetere) que les autres hommes vivent aussi selon leur propre
idée: d'où l'esprit de compétition et les conflits qui coïncident nécessairement
pour les hommes avec la libre réalisation de leurs désirs, c'est-à-dire avec la
manifestation, l'expression de la puissance qui est en eux, en tant que partes
naturae.
En ce sens, on peut parler, d'après Spinoza, d'une socialisation spontanée
des affects humains, qui fait que les individus n'existent et ne prennent con-
science d'eux-mêmes que sur le fond des relations réciproques qui s'éstabliment
entre eux et les autres, et qui d'emblée les fait communiquer. Que ces relations
soient imaginaires n'altère en rien leur caractère de nécessité, qui est au
contraire renforcé par le fait qu'elles sont subies plutôt qu'elle ne sont voulues
en vertu d'une décision rationnelle. Cette théorie relationnelle des affects
présente le désir (appetitus), en tant qu'il dérive directement de la tendance
naturelle de l'individu à persévérer dans son être (conatus), comme ayant
naturellement la force du désir de l'autre, aux deux sens que peut prendre
cette expression: il n'y a pas d'abord mon désir, et d'un autre côté le désir
344 PIERRE MACHEREY

d'autrui, d'où résulterait ensuite leur confrontation; mais autrui se trouve

immédiatement impliqué dans mon propre désir, qui est aussi à la fois mien et
sien, parce qu'il n'est pas la propriété d'un sujet particulier, enfermé dans les
limites de sa singularité. C'est pourquoi la doctrine de Spinoza ne rentre pas
du tout dans le cadre de ce qu'on a appelé les théories de l'individualisme
possessif: car, selon lui, l'individu ne peut vouloir pour soi-même sans du même
coup vouloir aussi pour les autres, et c'est pourquoi ses actes s'inscrivent à
l'intérieur d'un réseau de rapports préétablis qui le lient nécessairement aux
autres hommes; ce sont pas ces rapports qui constituent l'horizon de son
enviroinment, à l'intérieur duquel il faudra bien qu'il trouve les conditions de
sa libération. Ainsi, agir à son idée (ex suo ingenio), en suivant les indications
qui sont complètement commandées par ce système de relations imaginaires, d'où
résultent les conflits des hommes, ce n'est pas être libre, mais c'est au contraire
s'exposer à assumer tout le poids de contrainte qui résulte de l'enchaînement
causal des affects et transforme le fait de vivre selon son propre droit (esse sui
juris) en celui d'être soumis, on dirait aussi bien d'être aliéné, au droit d'autrui
(esse alterius juris). Tbut ceci fait irrésistiblement penser à la dialectique de
l'Anerkennung que Hegel a mise à la base du rapport entre les consciences dans
sa Phénoménologie de l'esprit
Cette analyse est cruciale, parce que c'est elle qui établit la continuité
fondamentale de la nature et du droit. Non seulement les hommes, du fait qu'ils
se soumettent à un droit qui n'est plus seulement celui de la nature mais celui
de la société, ne quittent pas la nature humaine pour en prendre une autre toute
différente (TP IV, 4), mais on peut dire que les formes immédiates de leur
existence, dans la mesure où elles sont complètement déterminées par les lois
de la nature, sont déjà marquées par le droit, ou si l'on peut dire en puissance
de droit, dans la mesure où, comme on vient de le voir, elles prennent place
dans le système des relations imaginaires qui créent d'emblée entre les individus
une sorte de société naturelle, même si celle-ci prend la forme déréglée d'une
société sauvage. C'est pourquoi entrer en société, ce n'est jamais abandonner
définitivement l'état de nature, parce que c'est dans celui-ci que en dernière
instance sont donnés les éléments ou les matériaux à partir desquels se constitue
la vie sociale des hommes. Sur ce point, Spinoza est aussi éloigné des positions
de Rousseau que de celles de Hobbes. Rousseau critique Hobbes pour avoir,
sans même s'en rendre compte, projeté à l'intérieur de sa description de l'état
de nature les conditions de la société sous la forme de la compétition
permanente entre les individus; et c'est pourquoi, de son côté, il définit l'homme
à l'état de nature comme étant totalement seul et oisif. Mais, cette critique
étant faite, il est parfaitement d'accord avec Hobbes pour établir une discon-
tinuité entre l'état de nature et l'état de société, et il reproche seulement à
Hobbes d'avoir atténué le caractère radical de cette discontinuité: lui-même
interprète cette rupture comme le passage d'un mode de vie solitaire à un mode
de vie collectif, alors que Hobbes la représente à travers la conversion d'une
sociabilité instinctuelle et conflictuelle, pratiquement invivable, en un état
rationnel, fondé sur le calcul des intérêts, et supposant un strict contrôle, voire
la mise entre parenthèses, des passions naturelles. Ainsi, malgré les divergences
 La fin de l'histoire, la ruse de raison 345

très considérables qui les opposent, Hobbes et Rousseau sont néanmoins

d'accord pour admettre que l'homme social n'est pas le même que l'homme
naturel. Or, c'est sur ce point que précisément Spinoza adopte une position
différente: selon lui, non seulement, du fait qu'il vit en société, l'homme ne
change pas de nature, mais ce sont fondamentalement des mêmes causes qui
dirigent sa conduite dans l'état de nature et dans l'état de société, qu'il est de
toutes façons impossible de séparer radicalement.
Arrivés à ce point, nous voyons la formule: "l'homme est un animal social"
s'enrichir de nouveaux sens: elle signifie que les hommes sont naturellement
plongés dans le droit, qui n'est donc pas le résultat d'une construction artificielle
résultat d'un calcul rationnel ou d'un engagement volontaire, comme le repré-
sentent toutes les doctrines contractualistes; et on comprend alors que, dans le
Traité politique, Spinoza ait complètement renoncé à faire référence à un pacte
social. Lorsque Spinoza écrit: Homines... civiles non nascuntur, sed fiant (TP V,
2), c'est précisément pour faire comprendre que les hommes sont façonnés par
le droit qui leur est imposé, exactement comme Hegel montre que toutes les
représentations de la conscience individuelle sont d'emblée informées par un
conditionnement culturel, objectivement incarné dans l'esprit d'un temps, et
qui détermine leur existence historique. Ainsi, pourrait-on dire, nul ne peut
sauter par dessus le droit de son temps. Pour Spinoza, cela signifie que la
tentation de sortir de l'état de société et de vivre dans la solitude est vaine,
parce qu'aucun homme, qu'il soit libre ou asservi, ne peut aimer ni rechercher
la solitude:

Du fait que la crainte de la solitude obsède tous les hommes, parce que nul n'a les
forces, dans la solitude, d'assurer sa protection et de se procurer les choses nécessaires
à la vie, il s'ensuit que les hommes désirent par nature l'état de société (statum civilem
homines natura appetere) et qu'il est impossible que les hommes suppriment jamais
tout à fait cet état. (TP VI, 1)

On l'a dit, on ne sort pas vraiment de la nature pour vivre en société:

réciproquement, on ne peut jamais quitter tout à fait la société pour retourner
à la nature, parce que c'est la nature même des hommes, telle qu'elle joue à
travers le libre enchaînement de leurs affects, qui les incline spontanément les
uns vers les autres, ou si l'on peut dire, qui les incline les uns aux autres, sans
qu'ils puissent jamais se défaire de ce penchant qui ne se ramène pas à une
simple représentation de leur conscience mais s'inscrit dans le système de la
nature. S'il est possible, à propos de Spinoza, de parler d'un naturalisme
politique, c'est donc, plutôt qu'au sens d'un effort pour rapporter le politique
au naturel, comme une superstructure à une infrastructure, à celui au contraire
d'une tentative pour penser l'un et l'autre au même niveau, comme deux
déterminations simultanées et solidaires, qui nouent inextricablement leurs effets
à l'intérieur du réseau de relations collectives qui rassemble tendanciellement
tous les individus à l'intérieur de la nature considérée dans son ensemble. Si
l'ordre politique dépend des conditions d'une nature, c'est donc aussi parce que
l'ordre de la nature est, au sens le plus général, politique.
346 PIERRE MACHEREY

Ici encore, on voit les positions de Spinoza et de Hegel se rapprocher à

travers la divergence même qui les oppose. Sans doute, l'un rapporte le droit
à la nature et l'autre à l'esprit: mais, dans les deux cas, c'est pour conférer au
droit le maximum d'objectivité et de nécessité, sans pour autant lui accorder un
caractère absolu, détaché de ses conditions de possibilité historiques. Qu'est-
ce que cela signifie que le droit soit un système objectif et nécessaire? Cela
signifie qu'il ne se ramène pas aux décisions subjectives des individus, qui ne
se forment au contraire que sur fond de droit et dans le cadre préétabli que
celui-ci leur impose. Cela signifie aussi que sa rationalité ne se ramène pas au
fait que les hommes subordonnent leur conduite aux enseignements de la raison,
ce qui, ou bien dépend de l'existence du droit lui-même, puisqu'on pense plus
librement dans une société mieux ordonnée, ou bien relève de tout autres
conditions, puisqu'il ne faut pas confondre les problèmes de l'Esprit absolu avec
ceux de l'Esprit objectif. Sur ce point, à partir de prémisses qui paraissent
fondamentalement différentes, Spinoza et Hegel parviennent à des conclusions
très voisines, ce qui est confirmé par le fait qu'ils s'opposent identiquement aux
théories contractualistes du droit. Pour l'un comme pour l'autre, il faut bien
que la raison ruse avec le droit, c'est-à-dire à la fois qu'elle se serve du droit
comme d'un instrument dans sa lutte pour conquérir les conditions d'une vie
authentiquement libre, et aussi qu'elle prenne le droit comme il est déjà pour
en réajuster le fonctionnement, de manière à ce que leurs intérêts respectifs
soient accordés, et que l'existence humaine devienne tout simplement vivable.
Or, ceci ne dépend ni des intentions ni même des actes d'aucun individu, ou
d'aucun groupe d'individus, qui, par lui-même et pour lui-même, déciderait ce
qui est bon pour tous les autres, et du même coup, sans même parvenir à
supprimer le droit, ne ferait que ramener celui-ci aux conditions de son
irrationalité native. Spinoza et Hegel s'accordent donc sur ce point fonda-
mental: le droit est un procès sans sujet.

1. Préface des Principes de la philosophie du droit, trad. Derathé, (Paris: Vrin, 1975),
p. 58.
2. Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires en vue de réorganiser la société, 1ère Ed. 1822.
3. Glockner XV, p. 293, cité d'après la traduction française de Gibelin, Vrin éd., t. II, p.
32).
4. La raison dans l'histoire, Préface aux Leçons sur la philosophie de l'histoire, trad.
Papaioannou, Paris (1965), 107.
 Spinoza and the Three Imposters
RICHARD POPKIN
>\fcshington University

Much has been written about the fact that Spinozistic ideas were spread in the
early 18th century through the underground work, Les trois imposteurs, ou l'Esprit
de M, Spinosa, which was first printed in 1719. * There is a good deal of
research going on presently in Europe and the United States on the origins
and dissemination of this work, and its possible relation to Spinoza's circle.2
What I wish to deal with today is where Spinoza himself fitted in the historical
development of the work. I shall try to show that an early formulation of at
least chapter three of Les trois imposteurs, Ce que signifie le mot religion. Comment
& pourquoi il s'en est introduit un si grand nombre dans le monde. Toutes les
religions sont l'ouvrage de la politique,,,, existed in some form by 1656. This
formulation was known to Henry Oldenburg, later Spinoza's friend and
correspondent, and probably to Queen Christina who had just abdicated as
ruler of Sweden. Oldenburg communicated what he knew to Adam Boreel, the
leader of the Dutch Collegiants, the non-sectarian creedless group which took
Spinoza in after his excommunication. Oldenburg begged Boreel, a renowned
theologian of the time, to refute the terrible thesis that Moses, Jesus and
Mohammed were imposters who created religions for political reasons. Boreel
worked for five years writings an immense answer, which exists in manuscript
form. Spinoza, I shall try to show, was also writing an answer of a different
kind at the same time, while he was living with the Collegiants in Amsterdam
and Rijnsburg, an answer that appears in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus,
Next I will suggest that the Trois imposteurs grew from an advanced form
of Hobbes' political evaluation of religion, to a more psychological, sociological
and philosophical analysis of the three main Western revealed religions by
incorporating parts of the French translations of the Tractatus, and portions of
the Ethics into the text. The text we now have is thus properly entitled L'Esprit
de M, Spinosa in that it develops a part of Spinoza's view. Spinoza's own role
in this transformation is still unknown.
Before beginning on this excursion into the underside of late seventeenth
century intellectual history, let me clarify some confusion concerning the topic.
First, there are two works which circulated in manuscript from 1680--95 to the
late Enlightenment, De Tribus Impostoribus and Les trois imposteurs. They are
quite different. The first is shorter and deals with some details of Biblical
criticism. It claims to have been written by the secretary of Frederick II in the
Middle Ages.3 The second has two titles, Les trois imposteurs, and L'Esprit de
M, Spinosa, and sometimes both. It is often bound with La vie de M, Spinosa,
attributed to one Jean-Maximilien Lucas, the so-called "oldest biography of
Spinoza."4 There are dozens, hundreds of manuscripts of the French text,
varying in content. There is a basic content that is approximately the same
in all of the manuscripts I have seen. Then there are additional parts, including
348 RICHARD POPKIN

chapters drawn from the writings of Pierre Charron and Gabriel Naudé, that
appear in some of the manuscripts. The manuscripts can be found all over
Western and Central Europe, and in the United States and Canada.5 The
French text was printed and suppressed in 1719,6 and later reprinted several times
in the eighteenth century. I will deal only with the French text. The text always
contains a criticism of Descartes, and some lines from Hobbes' Leviathan of
1651, which sets a lower limit on when it could have been written in the present
form.
Second, there are several manuscript traditions.7 The list given by Ira Wade
misleadingly suggests the manuscripts must all be eighteenth century ones, and
the text also. Wade's list is mostly taken from eighteenth century collections in
France. There are a large number of manuscripts in Holland which do not fit
with Wade's classifications. The list given by Dunin-Borkowski of manuscripts
of L'Esprit de M. Spinosa contains mainly ones in German and Austrian libraries.
The manuscripts can be grouped by title, by whether they include the five
chapters from Charron and Naudé, by whether they include various front matter
giving a bogus history of the work, by whether they include a letter of 1695, and
other features. Some younger scholars are working on this, and hopefully will
sort out all of the manuscripts presently available, and give us a plausible history
of their origins and dissemination. As of the moment I would adjudge one of
the six manuscripts in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuttel as the best
text, though it must be a copy of another text. My reasons for saying this will
be discussed elsewhere.
Now on to our story. Henry Oldenburg, who at the time was a tutor to
a young nobleman at Oxford, wrote a letter in April 1656 to his friend, Adam
Boreel who was then in London. Oldenburg told Boreel the sad news that
"religion falls into contempt, the raillery of the profane grows sharper, and the
hearts of those who fear God are crucified." He then added,

What I shall say next is of great concern to you. Two problems were mentioned lately,
in the solution of which I seek your assistance. 'Ilie first is that the whole story of
the Creation seems to have been composed in order to introduce the Sabbath, and
that from motives of merely political prudence. For to what purpose (says the
objector) is the fatiguing labor of so many days assigned to Almighty God, when all
things submit to his bidding in a single instant? It seems that that very prudent
legislator and ruler, Moses, concocted the whole story on purpose, so that (when he
had gained acceptance of it in the minds of his people) one certain day should be
set aside on which they should solemnly and publicly worship that invisible Deity; and
so that whatever Moses himself should say proceeded from that same Deity they would
observe with great humility and reverence. The other problem is that Moses certainly
encouraged and excited his people to obey him and to be brave in war by hopes
and promises of acquiring rich booty, and ample possessions, and that the man Christ,
being more prudent than Moses, enticed his people by the hope of eternal life and
happiness though aware that the soul seriously contemplating eternity would scarcely
savor what is vile and low. But, Mohammed, cunning in all things, enlisted all men
with the good things of this world as well as of the next, and so became their master,
and extended the limits of his empire much more widely than did any legislator
before or after him. You see what licence this critic adopts out of love of reasoning.
 Spinoza and the Three Imposters 349

I earnestly beseech you to stop his mouth and to stretch out a helping hand to me,
struggling here.

Oldenburg then urged that they correspond about these views and "that these
letters should not be made public." But the answer must depend

upon the solid establishment of that first pillar of all true religion, that is to say the
existence of God and his care for human concerns, and upon the certainty of divine
revelation. Surely all religion totters and falls when that is undermined or overthrown.
You, my dear friend, will easily perceive my purpose and because of your love of God
and of religion will not hesitate to fight on their behalf.

The two problems Oldenburg stated appear in chapter three of Les trois
imposteurs (though, of course, Oldenburg's letter was written in Latin and Les
trois imposteurs in French.)9
Boreel, at the time was the leader of what Kolawkowski has labelled
Chrétiens sans église}0 He was an Oxford graduate, and a or the leading Dutch
Hebraist. He had worked with two of Spinoza's teachers, Rabbis Jacob Judah
Leon and Menasseh ben Israel, on the Hebrew vocalized edition of the Mishna
of 1646. He was a central figure among the Millenarian non-confessional
thinkers in Holland and England, involved with Mennonites, Quakers, Jews and
such chiliasts as John Dury, Samuel Hartlib, Jan Amos Comenius and Peter
Serrarius. In 1655-56, when Menasseh ben Israel was negotiating with Cromwell
for the readmission of the Jews to England, Boreel was in London, and
entertained Menasseh along with Robert Boyle and Oldenburg. Boreel raised
problems that may have led to the disintegration of the negotiations. He left
London shortly after receiving Oldenburg's letter, and set to work in Amsterdam
on answering the challenge to revealed religion. Boreel was in Amsterdam when
Spinoza was excommunicated, and no doubt knew of his reception into the small
Collegiant group on the outskirts of the city. The Collegiants were often called
the "Borellists" after their leader.11
By the beginning of 1657 Boreel had completed part of his answer.
Oldenburg was very pleased that Boreel was arguing "that the origin of religion
is truly divine and that God appoints no one but himself to be the legislator
for the whole human race."12 The correspondence of Oldenburg and of Samuel
Hartlib indicates Boreel's progress in writing his tome entitled Jesus Christ
Universi humani Generis Legislator.^ Oldenburg had added more to Boreel's
task by telling him about, and maybe sending him a copy of, Bodin's Colloquium
Heptaplomares, which Oldenburg had learned about in Paris.14 Boreel finished
his work in 1661, and was in failing health. A copy was made by Spinoza's
patron, Peter Serrarius, at the behest of Robert Boyle. 15 I found this copy in
the Royal Society's collection of Boyle papers. It had apparently gotten out
of order, and is bound haphazardly in three volumes. 16 Francis Mercurius Van
Helmont also had a copy, which was copied by Henry More, who used it in his
theological works, and considered it one of the most important works of the
century.17
No study has yet been made of Boreel's opus. A quick review of it indicates
350 RICHARD POPKIN

that at least one of its aspects is that it is a refutation of the three imposters
thesis mentioned by Oldenburg. Boreel insisted true religion is of divine origin
and that Jesus was and is the Divine Legislator of the human race. The work
is an enormous philosophical and theological attack on atheism, religious
scepticism, deism, paganism, Judaism and Mohammedanism.
In the period 1656-61, Boreel was in close contact with several people who
we know knew and talked to Spinoza - the Millenarian Peter Serrarius, who
apparently introduced Spinoza to the Quaker leader, William Ames, and to the
Quaker missionaries in Amsterdam. Boreel was also in close contact with
Spinoza's friend, Peter Balling. In addition, Boreel had learned Portuguese and
Spanish in order to work with various Amsterdam rabbis on the Hebrew edition
and Spanish translation of the Mishna}* Perhaps evidence of a close link with
Spinoza is that in 1661, Balling, who spoke Spanish, went to see Spinoza at
Rijnsburg on behalf of the Amsterdam philosophical group that was interested
in his ideas. Spinoza had just completed the treatise on the improvement of the
understanding, which he showed Balling. Then, or immediately thereafter,
Balling wrote Light on the Candlestick, a statement of the rational basis of
religious mysticism. The short work uses many of Spinoza's terms and ideas.
Balling wrote this in Dutch. Boreel did the Latin translation of the work, and
the Quaker, Benjamin Furly did the English. The work became a widely
disseminated statement of rational mysticism, based on Spinoza's epistemology.
So, Boreel presumably knew what Spinoza was doing. Boreel was a close
friend of Henry Oldenburg, who visited Spinoza in Rijnsburg in 1661, and
formed a life-long intellectual relationship with him. Presumably, since
Oldenburg was au courant about Boreel's work refuting the three imposters
theory, and was so anxious to receive and use Boreel's answer, he would have
discussed the matter with Spinoza when they met. Boreel must have known
Spinoza through the Collegiants. He may have known him earlier through his
associations with at least two of Spinoza's teachers, Menasseh ben Israel and
Jacob Judah Leon. Boreel continued working with the Amsterdam rabbis on
editing and translating ancient Jewish texts until his death.
And, presumably, Spinoza should have heard of what Boreel was working
on, either from Boreel himself, or from the various Collegiant and non-
conformist figures he was in contact with. Spinoza's discussions in the Tractatus
indicate that he, too, was considering the three imposters theory and offering
a quite different resolution to it.
Besides what is in Oldenburg's letter to Boreel in April 1656, other items
indicate that the theory was circulating that religion was a political institution
created by political leaders in order to control societies. Machiavelli, Charron,
Naudé, Hobbes, and others offered this analysis of the origin of pagan religion
and false Judeo-Christian movements.20 Most European writers, including
Spinoza, thought it was obvious to every intelligent European that Mohammed
was an imposter, who had created the Islamic religion for personal and political
ends.21 Queen Christina is reported to have said around 1656 that Moses was
just an imposter, who used the crossing of the Red Sea, to take political control
of the Jews.22 She was also desperate to obtain a copy of the supposedly existing
 Spinoza and the Three Imposters 351

manuscript of Les trois imposteurs/3 Perhaps her offer of $1,000,000 for the
manuscript led someone to write it. J.P. Marana, in the oft-printed Letters writ
by a Thrkish Spy in Paris, covering events from 1637-82, indicates that the three
imposters theory began circulating in Paris around 1656. 24 Hobbes, in
Leviathan, analyzed how non-revealed religions of Greece, Rome and elsewhere,
developed as ways of running political societies. Although Hobbes specifically
exempted Judaism and Christianity from his analysis, since they got their
authority from God, 25 it is possible to see how someone could, (and in chapter
three of Les trois imposteurs did) extend his analysis to the roles of Moses and
Jesus. Uriel da Costa, in the text of his that we have, which may have been
written before his death in 1640 or 1647, asserted that all religions are man-
made for human purposes, and proclaimed, "Don't be a Jew or a Christian!
Be a Man!"26
So I think we can say that the three imposters theory was in the air. It
is, of course, a basic ground for rejecting Judaism and Christianity, and for
accounting for the power of these religions.
Spinoza, in his examination of how Judaism began, and what Jesus added
to it, discussed various elements of the three imposters theory, and then offered
a solution which makes Moses a benign or even beneficent imposter, and Jesus
no imposter at all, since he was not a lawgiver, a view that was pretty far
removed from Boreel's.
Spinoza's picture of Judaism beginning as the result of the ancient Hebrews
escaping from the Egyptian political world, and finding themselves with no laws,
in a state of nature in the desert, led to seeing Moses' role as very helpful and
constructive. He organized the escaping Hebrews into a political society by
asserting that the laws he imposed on them came from God.
In the fifth chapter of the Tractatus Spinoza developed this interpretation
clearly and forcefully. Having distinguished divine law that governs all of nature
from ceremonial law that regulates human behavior in special circumstances,
Spinoza showed how Jewish ceremonial law began. The laws enunciated by
Moses, covering moral, sanitary and ceremonial behavior

appear not as doctrines universal to all men, but as commands especially adapted to
the understanding and character of the Hebrew people, and as having reference only
to the welfare of the kingdom.27

The Mosaic commandments are not given as prophecies. They are given solely
in Moses' capacity as a lawgiver and judge. Moses did this because of the need
of the Hebrews, in their circumstances, to have a legal system imposed on them.
This is said in contrast to Jesus' role, which Spinoza described as follows:

Christ, as I have said, was sent into the world, not to preserve the state, nor to lay
down laws, but solely to teach the universal moral law, so we can easily understand
that He wished in nowise to do away with the law of Moses inasmuch as He
introduced no new laws of his own. His sole care was to teach moral doctrines, and
distinguish them from the laws of the state (Hlwcs, 70-71; G III/70-71).
352 RICHARD POPKJN

(Here Spinoza sided with the Christian Judaizcrs like John Dury, Henry Jessey
and Anna Maria von Schurmann, who insisted that the Mosiac law, especially
the Fourth Commandment, was not abrogated by Christianity.)28
Moses' and Jesus' roles are carefully distinguished. Moses instituted or
made laws for the Hebrews in their circumstances and within the compass of
their understanding. Jesus made no laws, and just taught morality to everyone,
without affecting the laws of the state. Moses' case is then examined in the light
of what the Jews were like when they escaped from Egypt: "they were entirely
unfit to frame a wise code of laws and to keep the sovereign power vested in
the community; they were all uncultivated and sunk in a wretched slavery"
(Elwes, 75; G ΠΙ/75). They were no longer bound by any national laws, and
desperately needed a lawgiver and a ruler. They were in a state of nature,
unable to reason their way out of it by holding a constitutional convention.
Spinoza then explained that because of Jewish incompetence and Moses'
virtues, the latter

made laws and ordained them for the people, taking the greatest care that they should
be obeyed willingly and not through fear, being specially induced to adopt this course
by the obstinate nature of the Jews, who would not have submitted to be ruled solely
by contract... Moses therefore, by his virtue and the Divine command, introduced a
religion, so that people might do their duty from devotion rather than fear (Elwes,
75; G ΠΙ/75).

So religion was made the basis for the Mosaic legal system which covered
practically all possible human behavior because the Jewish people were in no
position to govern themselves. What they ate, how they worked, how they
clothed themselves, how they shaved, and so on, were made part of ceremonial
law, whose force was that it was supposed to have been told to Moses by God.
Spinoza concluded the section about this by pointing out that Jewish
ceremonial laws have nothing to do with blessedness, but have "reference merely
to the government of the Jews, and merely temporal advantages" (Elwes, 76; G
ΠΙ/76). Spinoza next expressed his doubts that Christian ceremonial activities
had any more status. They did not lead to blessedness, probably were not
instituted by Jesus and his Apostles, and functioned only to preserve Christian
societies.
In this analysis Spinoza did not make Moses or Jesus villains, as Les trois
imposteurs does, imposing laws for their own benefit and aggrandizement.
Rather, Moses did what was necessary to constitute a Hebrew state, when the
Jews had fallen back into the state of nature.

After their liberation from the intolerable bondage of the Egyptians, they were bound
by rio covenant to any man; and therefore, every man entered into his natural right
and was free to retain it or give it up, and transfer it to another. Being then in the
state of nature, they followed the advice of Moses, in whom they chiefly trusted, and
decided to transfer their right to no human being, but only to God... This promise,
or transference of right to God, was effected in the same manner as we have conceived
it to have been in ordinary societies, when men agree to divest themselves of their
 Spinoza and the Three Imposters 353

natural rights (Elwes, 218-219; G HI/205).

Moses was given the complete right to consult God and interpret His commands.
He established the Hebrew theocracy which served to keep the community
functioning for centuries. (Spinoza claimed that this sort of theocratic
commonwealth can no longer be set up, because "God, however, has revealed
through his Apostles that the covenant of God is no longer written in ink, or
on tables of stone, but with the Spirit of God in the fleshy tables of the heart"
(Elwes, 237; G ΠΙ/221). Hence, Spinoza's lengthy examination of the Hebrew
theocracy and commonwealth was not just to show that Moses was a benign,
beneficent imposter, but also to warn that the Hebrew commonwealth could not
be reconstituted again, as various seventeenth century Millenarians were trying
to do.)
Spinoza took up the specific case mentioned in Oldenburg's letter to Boreel
of 1656, the role of the ordinance of the Sabbath. The point at which the
ancient Hebrews had transferred all their rights to Moses, and given him absolute
authority was when they had so yielded up their natural rights, that "the
ordinance of the Sabbath had received the force of law" (Elwes, 71; G HI/71).
Spinoza, unlike Boreel, had answered the problems raised in the Oldenburg
letter, the basic themes of Les trois imposteurs, by showing how and why Moses
saved the Jews in their then existing anarchic condition, and by insisting that
Jesus was not a law-giver, but was a moral teacher. Boreel could argue for the
divine authority of the Bible, and of Moses' role, and that Jesus was the lawgiver
of the human race. Both Spinoza and Boreel had offered divergent answers to
Oldenburg's problems. Spinoza's, by putting the development of religious
ceremonial law into human contexts, and into human causal sequences, made
the process natural rather than supernatural. The next step of the irreligious
thinkers was to make the process malign rather than benign, as occurs in Les
trois imposteurs.
And so, what does Spinoza have to do with the work that emerges in the
underground world of the late eighteenth century, Les trois imposteurs ou L'Esprit
de M. Spinosa? The work circulated widely in manuscripts and was published
several times. If Spinoza had lived in the world of the literary agent, he or his
heirs could have collected much money in the form of royalties. A sizeable part
of the text of Les trois imposteurs is either word for word, or obvious paraphrase,
from the French translation of the Tractatus, which appeared in 1678. 9 Dr.
Silvia Berti of Milan has found that a large part of chapter two of Les trois
imposteurs is a translation of the Appendix of Book I of Spinoza's Ethics into
French. (Berti, pp. 31-32. This would be the first known appearance of any
part of the Ethics in French.) If Spinoza was not a participant in the
composition of Les trois imposteurs, then its authors had to have access to the
Ethics, either after it was published in 1677, or in the manuscript form that was
in existence by 1675. If the text was taken from the published version, Spinoza
by then had passed from the scene and could not have been involved. If this
was the case, then the portions of the Ethics translated into French were done
independently of Spinoza.
354 RICHARD POPKIN

The little we know of the preparation of the French translation of Tractates

allows for two possibilities, one that Spinoza was involved with the translator
and maybe with his more seditious efforts at disseminating Spinoza's views about
organized religion, or the other, that the French translation, both as an
undertaking, and as a publication, postdates Spinoza, and that he knew nothing
about it. If the second is the case, then Spinoza would have had nothing to
do with the way his writings were used in the final composition of Les trois
imposteurs.
The first possibility is intriguing and deserves some investigations. The
French translation is attributed to a M. Saint-Glain, a Huguenot refugee.30 La
vie de M Spinosa, often published with, or copied with, Les trois imposteurs ou
L'Esprit de M. Spinosa, is attributed to Jcan-Maximilicn Lucas, also a Huguenot
refugee. The information naming Saint-Glain comes from Charles Saint-
Evremond and Pierre Desmaizeaux, both of whom learned this, they say, from
one Doctor Henri Morelli, a friend of Spinoza's.31 Morelli, according to Saint-
Evremond's biographical note on him, was an Egyptian Jew, Henriquez Morales,
who received his medical training in Italy and Holland.32 He became a good
friend of Spinoza's, and became Saint-Evremond's doctor. He later became the
doctor of the great Parisian courtesan, Ninon de l'Enclos, and then the doctor
of the Countess of Sandwich in England, the daughter of the notorious Earl of
Rochester. Bayle's editor, Desmaizeaux, knew Morelli in England, and around
1710-12 asked him for information about Spinoza's meeting with the Prince of
Condé in 1673. Morelli's data, as presented by Desmaizeaux, in notes in his
edition of Bayle's letters in the Oeuvres diverses, involved Spinoza's having met
the Prince, having spent some time with him, and having been offered 1,000 ecus
to become Condé's house philosopher at Chantilly. Morelli claimed Spinoza
was seriously tempted, and that he discussed the matter several times with
Morelli. Spinoza, we are told,finallydecided that Condé, with all of his power,
could not guarantee Spinoza's safety amongst the Catholic bigots in France.
So Spinoza stayed in Holland (ibid. 7).
Morelli gave the impression that he was close to Spinoza in the latter's last
years. Only Morelli knew who the French translator was. Other data indicate
that from 1670, when Spinoza met Saint-Evrcmond, and 1672, when he met the
French military commander, Col. J. B. Stouppc, the former French Protestant
pastor in London, Spinoza seems to have entered into the circle of the libertin
Protestant entourage around the Prince of Condé, many of whom stayed in
Holland after the French invasion. Saint-Glain was apparently one of these
people. So Spinoza may have known him, and been a party to planning a
French edition of the Tractatus, with all three of its catchy false titles, La clef
du sanctuaire, Traité des cérémonies superstitieuses des Juifs tant anciens que
modernes, and Réflexions curieuse d'un esprit désintéressé sur les matières les plus
importantes au salut tant public que particulier?* The French translation became
of great importance in the dispersion of Spinoza's ideas, and was still being read
over a century later. Tbm Paine cited it in his Age of Reason which he wrote
in 1793 in Paris.35 Hegel referred to it in a comment to the 1802 editor of
Spinoza's Opera. Saint-Glain might have been involved in extending the
 Spinoza and the Three Imposters 355

influence and impact of Spinoza's most irreligious ideas, perhaps even as an

author or co-author of Les trois imposteurs with Spinoza's knowledge and
acquiescence.
At the present time we know very little about Spinoza's relations with the
Condé circle, and little about when and why the French translation of the
Tractatus was made. A speculative possibility is that, as Spinoza realized that
the bigots would scream if he published the Ethics, he arranged, while alive and
of sound mind, for the Opera Posthuma and the French translation of the
Tractatus, and the Dutch edition of his works, plus the most provocative use
of his ideas in Les trois imposteurs. If there is anything to this speculation,
which future research may confirm, modify or reject, then Les trois imposteurs
might deserve its other title, L'Esprit de M Spinosa.
On the other hand, as far as we presently know, Spinoza played no part
in arranging for the posthumous dissemination of his work beyond having some
role in planning the Opera Posthuma, and its Dutch edition. Then, what should
we say of Spinoza's role in the history of the development of the text of Les
trois imposteurs? I hope that the material presented here has shown (a) that
Spinoza was aware of the core statement of the three imposters theory, as
reported by Oldenburg to Boreel in 1656, (b) that the Tractatus is in part an
attempt to offer a benign solution, to wit, that Moses instituted the Hebrew
religion to rescue the escapees from Egypt from the anarchy of the state of
nature, and he made it acceptable by contending that the religion he was
instituting was of divine origin. Jesus was not an imposter, since contrary to
Boreel, he was not a law-giver and he instituted no new laws or ceremonies.
He only stated clearly the moral law that all rational men would accept on the
basis of reason. Mohammed, on the other hand, as Spinoza told Jacob Ostens,
was not a true Prophet:

it clearly follows from my principles that he was an imposter, seeing that he entirely
took away that freedom which Universal Religion, revealed by the natural and
prophetic light, allows, and which I have shown ought to be fully allowed, '

(c) that Spinoza, in developing his theory of how religions arise and why they
persist and are accepted, presented what was taken over, in Spinoza's own words,
as the principal theory of Les trois imposteurs. Spinoza, willingly or unknowingly,
supplied the theoretical side of the work.
Still, in emphasizing only the critique of religion, Les trois imposteurs pretty
much ignored Spinoza's positive theology, though Spinoza's definition of God
appears, and ignored Spinoza's positive theory of the role of religion in a human
world. The thesis of Les trois imposteurs is the irreligious side of Spinoza. The
more spiritual and more practical sides arc ignored. Spinoza is not mentioned
in the text, only in one of the main versions of the title. Perhaps the author
or authors thought that in so distilling Spinoza's ideas, they were presenting the
true esprit de M Spinosa. One way or another, the three imposter theme plays
a significant role in Spinoza's own presentation of his theory, and willingly or
not, he provided the basis for the finished product. And the finished product
356 RICHARD POPKIN

circulated so widely through the Republic of Letters in so many clandestine

copies that it is still to be reckoned with in evaluating Spinoza's influence on
the Age of Reason. Perhaps in a decade or two we may be able to trace the
whole history of the work from the 1656 version to the finished product, its
dispersion and its influence. For it spread through the Old and New Worlds
and was being issued as atheist propaganda even at the middle of the 19th
century.38 The view expressed in it counters the acceptance in some historical
sense of the Judaeo-Christian tradition; L'esprit de M. Spinosa helped to develop
the secular mentality of the late 18th century, while the actual metaphysics of
Spinoza helped underwrite a new naturalistic view of the world.

1. See for example, Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons
and Republicans (London: Allan & Unwin, 1981) and Paul Vernière, Spinoza et la pensée
française avant la Revolution (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982).
2. This is being looked into by Margaret Jacob and myself in the United States, by a
project directed by Olivier Bloch in France, and now by an international group involving
Jeroom Vercruysse, Bloch, Canzanini, Paganini, myself and others, who are planning a
bibliography of clandestine literature of the period.
3. Cf. the text of Traité des trois imposteurs, edited by Pierre Rétat, (Saint-Etienne;
Universités de la Région Rhone-Alpes, 1973), 147. At the present time this is the most
available text, a reprint of the 1777 one. Dr. Silvia Berti is bringing out an edition of the
first printed text, that of 1719.
4. See Abraham Wolf, The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (New York: Dial Press, 1928).
5. I have examined copies in Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, France and England,
as well as copies at Harvard, Cornell and the University of British Columbia. No complete
inventory exists, and it is hoped that the new project being organized by Bloch, Canzanini,
Paganini, Vercruysse and others will accomplish this.
6. The only known copy of the 1719 printing is at the University of California, Los Angeles.
It was discovered by Silvia Berti in 1985 in the Abraham Wolf collection there, and is now
being republished in Italy and the Netherlands.
7. Ira O. Wade, The Clandestine Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France
from 1710-1750 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938) esp. ch. 2; and S. von Dunin
Borkowski, "Zur Textgeschichte und Textkritik der altestenen Lebensbeschreibung Benedikt
Despinosas," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 18(1904), 1-34.
8. Henry Oldenburg, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. and tr. by Α. Rupert
Hall & Marie Boas Hall, (Madison and Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press 1965),
I, 89-92.
9. Les trois imposteurs, Rétat edition, ch. 3, esp. pp. 38-78.
10. Leszek Kolakowski, Chrétiens sans église (Paris: NRF Gallimard, 1969). Boreel is
discussed on pp. 197-199 and 243.
11. Cf. Richard H. Popkin, "Some Aspects of Jewish Christian Relations in Holland and
England in the 17th Century," in Jan van den Berg and Ernestine van der Wall, Jewish
Christian Relations in the 17th Century (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, forthcoming); and
"The Lost Tftbes and the Caraites," Journal of Jewish Studies 37 (1986), 213-227.
12. Oldenburg, Correspondence, Jan. 24, 1656-57, I, 115-116.
13. For the révélant references, see R. H. Popkin, "Could Spinoza have known Bodin's
Colloquium HeptplomaresT, Philosophia 16 (1986) 309, and notes 19-22.
14. Ibid., 309-310.
 Spinoza and the Three imposters 357

15. Ibid.y 313n22. The details about the making of the copy, and its large cost, appear in
Oldenburg's letters to Robert Boyle from 16-18 June 1665 to 16 January 1665-66 in
Correspondence, Vols. II and III.
16. It is in volumes 12,13 and 15 of Boyle's papers, located at the Royal Society. It seems
to be several presentations of Boreel's case, in various forms. It is to be hoped that a study
will be made of it soon.
17. Cf. Henry More, The Theological Works of the Most Pious and Learned Henry More,
(London 1708), "Preface to the Reader," iv-v. More said he saw Van Helmont's copy at
Ragley Hall, the home of Lady Anne Conway, and copied some of it.
18. Cf. Popkin, "Some Aspects of Jewish Christian Relations," and The Earliest Publication
of Spinoza?, The Hebrew Translation of Margaret Fell's Loving Salutation to the Seed of
Abraham (Assen, Van Gorcum, 1987), Intro.
19. On this see R. H. Popkin, "Spinoza's Relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam,"
Quaker History 70 (1984), 27; and Michael J. Petry, "Behmenism and Spinozism in the
Religious Culture of the Netherlands, 1600-1730," in Karlfried Grinder and Wilhelm
Schmidt-Biggemann, Spinoza in der Frühzeit seiner Religiösen Wirkung Wolfenbüttler Studien
zur Aufklarung, 12:112.
20. This theory is discussed in Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, in Pierre Charron's
Les Trois Veniez, Gabriel Naudé's Considérations sur des Coups d'Etat, and Thomas Hobbes'
Leviathan.
21. Spinoza said this in his letter to Jacob Ostens, February 1671, Ep. 43, Gebhardt, IV,
225-226.
22. Cf. Urbain Chevereaux, La Génie de la Reine Christine, Paris (1655), 36.
23. Cf. Gilles Menage, Menagiana, Paris (1754), IV, 397-98.
24. J.P. Marana, Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in Paris, (London: 1723), letter of the 30th
of the 7th Moon of the Year 1656, V, iii, 130. This volume first appeared in English in
1692, and is probably not by Marana, who wrote the initial volumes in Italian, and published
them in French.
25. Thomas Hobbes, De Homine, XIV.
26. Uriel da Costa, A Specimen of a Human Life, New York, Bergman Publishers, 1967,
where the translation of this passage is given as "He who pretends to be neither of these
[Jew or Christian] and only calls himself a man, is far preferable," p. 43.
27. Benedictus de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Elwes ed., (New York: Dover,
1955), V, 70; G IIIy70.
28. David Katz is publishing a study of the Sabbath observers in England, the Traskites,
and those around Henry Jessey. John Dury, Anna Maria von Schurman and others argued
that the Fourth Commandment had not been abrogated by Jesus. Dury, in an unpublished
essay in the Hartlib Papers argued that one could be a true and believing Christian and
a fully observant Jew, which would mean that no Jewish laws had been abrogated by Jesus,
which seems to be implied in Spinoza's discussion of Jesus as a non-lawgiver.
29. Cf. Silvia Berti, "'La Vie et l'Esprit de Spinosa'(1719) e la prima traduzione francese
dell' Ethica," Rivista Storica Italiana, 98 (1986) 3Iff.
30. On what is known about M. Saint-Glain, see the new edition of K.O. Meinsma, Spinoza
et son cercle (Paris: Vrin, 1983), 6-7 and notes on this section.
31. See Pierre Bayle, Lettres, ed. by Pierre Dcsmaizcux, Amsterdam (1729), I, 143.
32. What we know about Morelli appears in Charles Saint-Hvrcmond, Oeuvres de Monsieur
de St. Evremond, ed. by Pierre Desmaizeaux (Amsterdam: 1726), V, 274-275, and the notes
by Desmaizeaux in Pierre Bayle's Oeuvres diverses, IV, Amsterdam (1729), IV, 872.
358 RICHARD POPKIN

33. Desmaizeaux, Lettres de Bayle, notes to a letter from 1706. The "letter" is actually
just a portion of the review of Colerus' Vie de M. Spinosa in the Memoires de Trévoux.
On Desmaizeaux's attempt to unravel the story about Spinoza and the Prince of Condé,
see R. H. Popkin, "Serendipity at the Clark: Spinoza and the Prince of Condé," The Clark
Newsletter 10 (1986), 4-7.
34. The three French titles sometime appear in the same volume. Various places of
publication are given - Leiden for La Clef du Sanctuaire, Amsterdam for Cérémonies
supersntieuses, and Cologne for Réflexions curieuses. All are dated 1678.
35. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, in The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. by Moncure
Daniel Conway, New York and London, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1891, 273.
36. See the introductory material of the 1802 edition of Spinoza's Opera, ed. by Paulus,
the first publication of the works since 1677. It was in the French translation of the
Tractatus that the footnotes to the text first appeared. They were added in Latin, from
a handwritten copy at the University of Leiden in the 1802 Jena edition.
37. Spinoza's letter to Jacob Ostens, G IV/226; Wolf, 226.
38. The Three Imposters, tr. (with notes and illustrations) from the French edition of this
work, published at Amsterdam 1776, published by J. Mylcs, Dundee, 1844, and republished
by G. Vale, New York, 1846. Myles said he was reissuing it at a very cheap price so that
working class people could obtain it.
 SCHELLING AND SPINOZA:
SPINOZISM AND DIALECTIC

ERROL E. HARRIS
Northwestern University

The transition from the Critical Philosophy of Kant to the Absolute (or
Objective) Idealism of Hegel proceeded through the work of Fichte and
Schelling, and is liable to be misconceived, if indeed it can be made intelligible
at all, without their intervention. In the hands of the British Idealists of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this transition was obscured by their
aversion to the Philosophy of Nature, their consequent neglect of what Hegel
had written on that subject, and their almost total disregard of the early
Schelling. Influenced by Hegel's criticism of Kant, they eschewed subjective
idealism, but they took Hegel to be advocating a doctrine that simply objectified
the subjective content of individual experience in a way which, if adopted,
generated insuperable difficulties concerning the finite nature of the self and
its relation to the transcendental ego. This is a problem latent in Fichte's
Wissenshaftslehre, but one which Schelling was at least well on the way to over-
coming, and which no longer existed for Hegel. But because of their neglect
of the Philosophy of Nature, it reemergcd in the metaphysics of T.H. Green and
EH. Bradley, and later in the Phenomenology of Husserl.1 Yet even when
notice was taken of the intervening stages of development (e.g., by Josiah Royce),
the part played in the conversion of Schelling from his early close adherence
to Fichtean Transcendental Idealism by the influence of Spinoza remained largely
unnoticed. Tb draw attention to the intrinsic Spinozism of the early Schelling
is, therefore, what I propose to do in this paper.
Kant's critical Idealism left the real world, as the realm of things in
themselves, beyond the reach of human theoretical knowledge. We could, in
his view, perceive only appearances (phenomena)', and our natural science was
the result of bringing the manifold of sense a priori under the schematized
categories of the understanding, which were themselves specific forms of the
synthetic unity of apperception, the focus of which was the transcendental ego.
Fichte saw that the postulation of things in themselves beyond the sphere of
possible knowledge was itself as much an act of the Ego as any organization
under the categories of empirically given data, so that for him the phenomenal
world was simply the dialectical result of the Ego's own activity, positing itself
in opposition to a non-Ego, as it necessarily must in order to have an object
on which to exercise its subjective activity. Any metaphysical or ontological
theory of the natural world, as an existent, or collection of existents, prior to,
or independent of the transcendental Ego, he therefore castigated as dogmatism,
the paradigm case of which was, he maintained, the system of Spinoza. That,
he held, was the only consistent alternative to his own.
360 ERROL E. HARRIS

The epistemological grounds for this position seemed unchallengeable and

the difficulties confronting its alternative insuperable. Tb maintain, as Locke
had done, the existence of a world external to our consciousness, external bodies,
that, through their physical and physiological effects upon our sense organs could
give rise to 'ideas' (Vorstellungen for Kant and his successors), had proved
self-defeating. Locke himself was forced to confess that we could know only
our own ideas, so that any external world, and any process of causation, should
inevitably have been inaccessible to our knowledge. Consequently, Locke's
successors, Berkeley and Hume, seeking to make his theory consistent, became
committed to a subjectivism, from which not only was escape precluded but all
possibility of objective scientific knowledge seemed to have been banished. Kant
professed to restore this possibility by giving the word Objectivity* a new sense
(through his 'Copernican revolution'), subjectively founded upon the a priori
synthesis of the understanding, by means of the categories. Spinoza, on the
other hand, had asserted the unity of the subjective and the objective, apparently
at the cost of reducing human self-consciouness (and thus any transcendental
ego) to a finite idea within the divine intellect - much as Alice, through the
looking glass, was relegated by the Red King to the status of something in
somebody else's dream.
This, at least, was Fichte's view of Spinoza's position.2 He conceded that
Spinoza admitted an empirical ego, which was Τ for itself, but which related
to the absolute Ego (that is, Spinoza's God) as one idea to a series of ideas.
Pure consciousness, Fichte says, was always denied by Spinoza. Then later, in
the same paragraph, he alleges that Spinoza separated pure from empirical
consciousness, assigning the first to God and the second to a modification of
Substance. But Spinoza's God, according to Fichte, never becomes aware of
Himself, because (he says) pure consciousness never attains to consciousness.
This cryptic statement is left unexplained. But Fichte's main accusation against
Spinoza is that he oversteps the limits of his own awareness and enters a realm
inaccessible to reason by postulating a part-whole relation between the human
mind and the divine intellect, so that his system, though entirely consistent and
irrefutable, is so only because, by exceeding the limits of human knowledge, it
is also incapable of proof. The postulation of the existence of God, and man's
relation to the Deus-sive-Substantia-sive-Natura, is simply the consequence of the
necessary urge to achieve the highest possible unity in human knowledge.
Fichte thus follows Kant faithfully in attributing the belief in God's existence
(Spinoza's along with all other) under whatever conception of divinity, to a
practical requirement rather than to theoretical cogency.
Kant considered direct knowledge of the nature of the transcendental subject
to be unattainable, because it would involve bringing the ego under the very
categories to which it was necessarily prior, both logically and ontologically.
This was, for him, the paralogism of pure reason, committed by traditional
metaphysics in its attempts to characterize the self (or soul) as a simple
substance. The empirical self, as a stream of concious states (Vorstellungen),
experienced in inner sense, on the other hand, was knowable, but only as
phenomenal object, never as subject. The empirical self is a natural product,
 Schelling's Spinozism 361

subject to the laws of Nature, and (for Kant) our knowledge of Nature, objective
science, is constituted by the transcendental synthesis spontaneously effected by
the synthetic unity of apperception, through subsumption of phenomena under
the schematized categories. But this knowledge is only of appearances, the
reality of which is attributed to things in themselves, that are unknowable. But
for Fichte there are no things in themselves. The fundamental reality is the Ego;
and the whole world of Nature is subordinated to the constitutive theoretical
activity and the practical demands of the transcendental subject. Accordingly,
the Ego becomes absolute, and the embrace of transcendental subjectivity infinite,
replacing what for Spinoza was Substance-or-God-or-Nature. In fact, in his later
work (written in 1810), Die Wissenschaftslehre im Allgemeinen Umriss, Fichte
himself equates the Ego with God, although earlier he had admitted that it is
the same ego to which Descartes had referred in cogito ergo sum; i.e., the finite
self. Precisely how are these two conceptions of the Ego, finite and absolute,
to be distinguished and related? The unanswerable question for the dogmatic
realist had always been: How can ideas of an external world get into the mind?
Consciousness is a self-illuminating self-awareness; physical and physiological
effects are not. What process of transition could ever convert the latter into
the former? The only acceptable course seemed to be to abandon realism
altogether and to submit, with Fichte, to an inescapable subjective idealism, har-
boring its own unrecognized, yet insoluble problem of the relation between
the natural (or empirical) self and the transcendental ego.
When we turn from Fichte to Hegel, however, we find realism and idealism
reconciled, the existence of Nature, in its own right, as 'the Idea in the form
of other-being,' affirmed, and the question how knowledge of the world can get
into the mind answered in the declaration that 'the mind is the truth of Nature'
- or Nature come to consciousness of itself as the human mind. For Hegel,
Nature is the self-manifestation of the Idea as the real external world. 'The
external world is in itself (an sich) the truth,' he writes, 'for the truth is actual
and must exist.' (Enzyklopädie, 38, Zusatz). Through Nature, the Idea develops
in a series of dialectical forms, physical, chemical and organic, which, in the
highest stage of organism, bring it to consciousness of itself in the minds of
human beings. They, on the one hand, are products of Nature, and on the other
hand, constitute the level at which the Idea, immanent throughout the dialectical
process, rises to self-consciousness.
It is only natural to ask how Hegel succeeded in arriving at this position
from the apparently inescapable circle of the pure activity of Fichte's
transcendental ego. The answer, of course, is to be found in Schelling's Ideen
zu eine Philosophie der Natur and the works immediately succeeding. Schelling
was quite clearly aware of the problems set by Locke's realism, as his discussion
in the Introduction to the Ideen plainly shows. But he is equally aware that
Nature - organic Nature, especially - could not properly be disposed of simply
as a creation of the activity, theoretical and practical, of the self-conscious Ego,
however free and independent that activity might bc. Tb work out a solution
to his problem he sought fresh inspiration from Spinoza. But before we
362 ERROL E. HARRIS

investigate this Spinozistic element in his thought, we must return briefly to Kant
to trace the germ of Schelling's ideas in the Critique of Judgement
Kant had already drawn attention, in the Critique of Teleological Judgement,
to the problematical character of organization as a natural phenomenon. With
unerring insight he saw that purposivencss and wholeness were inseparably
connected. 'It is requisite,' he writes,

to a thing as natural end [or purpose] first that the parts (as regards their existence
and their form) are possible through their relation to the whole. For, consequently,
the thing itself is an end conceived under a concept or an idea which must determine
a priori everything that is contained in it (Kritik der Urteilskraft, §63).

If the thing is simply thought of as possible under these conditions, it is only

an artifact. But if it is to be related to a purpose in itself as a natural product,
without the intervention of an extraneous rational cause (e.g., human or divine
intention), the second condition must be fulfilled that parts and whole are
mutually ends and means, for only so is it possible that the idea of the whole
should determine, and be determined by, the form and connection of all the
parts. Each, then, is mutually cause and effect of the other(s), and only then
is the thing an organized and self-organizing being such as may be called a
natural end.
There is considerable affinity between this characterization of teleology and
what Spinoza writes about whole and part in the 32nd Letter (to Oldenburg),
where he insists upon the adaptation of the parts to one another in determining
the nature and identity of the whole, which, again, by its overall configuration
determines the interrelation and reciprocal changes among the parts; so that it
would not be inappropriate to describe them as mutually means and ends. There
is no evidence that Kant had this letter in mind, but it is not improbable that
Schelling (who, as we shall presently sec, builds on Kant's position) was
influenced by it. Now, according to Kant, observation of Nature, as brought
under the categories of the understanding, yields only mechanical laws, by which
this mutual teleology cannot be explained. There are no a priori grounds in the
idea of Nature, as a complex of observed objects, for the belief that they serve
one another as means and ends. Nor can we discover this from experience.
Tb conceive natural things as teleological organisms (a notion as indispensable
to biology as mechanism is to physics), we must impose upon our experience
of them, not just categories of the understanding, but an idea of reason, which
is not constitutively valid, but only regulative. Tl) be constitutive, the idea must
be the necessary condition, not only of our representation of the thing as
organized (on the analogy of our own purposive action), but of its very existence.
The effect, however, of Fichte's replacement of things in themselves by the
Ego, as the original source of our sense experience, was to make Kant's
distinction between phenomena and noumena, and so between constitutive and
regulative ideas, purely relative to the dialectical level at which the subject was
operating. Ideas of reason could thus be conditions of objective knowledge just
as well as, or even better than, concepts of the understanding. Schelling
 Schelling's Spinozism 363

concluded, in consequence, that objectivity and subjectivity were merely two

aspects of the same reality, which was itself neither, or both; just as the Attri-
butes of Extension and Thought for Spinoza were two alternative aspects of
Substance, which was itself neither or both. Organization thus becomes, for
Schelling, clear evidence of the coordinate reality of Nature, equal and opposite,
to that of the conscious experience of the knowing subject, because organiza-
tion, and the organic (teleological) activity of living natural things could not be
the mere projection of the self-consciousness of the ego upon its self-posited
object. This realization seems to have sent him back to Spinoza, who, he says,
(in the Introduction to Ideen) was the first to recognize the identity of subject
and object.
Organism implies, and is in itself, a whole, determined in structure and
function by a holistic principle (which Schelling calls Begriff, concept), and this
holism cannot be regarded merely as imposed upon the object by our minds,
because our minds are compelled, by the very nature and possibility of the
object, to recognize the immanence in it of the concept (or principle of organ-
ization) as the condition of its being. The phenomena of physical nature,
obeying the laws of mechanics, might well be no more than the subjection of
phenomena to the ordering categories of the understanding (although this is not
Schelling's final view), but an organism is self-subsistent and self-maintaining,
through its own life and activity, and its organs can be what they are, and
function as they do, only because they arc subject to the organizing principle
(der Begriff) of the whole, in a way that the categories do not and cannot
require. It must therefore be an independent manifestation of the concept or
idea. This, in effect, is Spinoza's doctrine as set out in the epistle to which
reference has already been made, and in the Scholium to EIIP13, and L7.
Although Schelling here makes no comparison with Spinoza, he comes to the
conclusion that the Idea manifests itself indifferently in two coordinate ways,
as organic Nature (for he subsequently finds, like Spinoza, that all Nature is
ultimately organic - cf. Spinoza's account of facies totius universi and his assertion
that all bodies are animata), and as subjective experience. This corresponds
to Spinoza's Substance expressing its essence under the two attributes of
Extension and Thought.
On the one hand, then, Fichte is vindicated, so far as his Wissenschaftslehre
goes; but this needs, in Schelling's view, to be supplemented, on the other hand,
by a Naturlehre, to do justice to the objective aspect of the real. The Ego is
the original act of cognition, in itself indifferently subjective and objective (for
Schelling), from which the ideal world is subjectively generated (as in Fichte's
philosophy), but which equally manifests itself in a world of Nature, rising
(through a series of 'potencies') to the level of organism where it gives rise to
consciousness and reason in mankind.
The metaphysical background of Schelling's Naturphilosophie is set out, not
always in quite the same terms, in a number of works subsequent to the Ideen.
The general outline of the system seems to have been taking shape in his mind
when he wrote that book, but he seems not to have felt sure about it until later,
when he came to write Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, although it
364 ERROL E. HARRIS

also appears, with certain minor differences, in Von der Weltseele and in Bruno.
He never seems to have been able to make it quite unambiguous or clear-cut,
never as systematic or coherent as Spinoza's, but with very definite parallels to
Spinoza's ideas.

II

In Schilling's system, as in Hegel's, the ultimately real is the Absolute,

corresponding to Spinoza's Substance. Schelling gives different descriptions
of it and gives it different names in different contexts. Sometimes it is the
Indifference-point, sometimes pure Identity; at other times it is the Infinite,
or 'sheer Absoluteness'; then again he calls it Absolute Knowing, or the absolute
Act of Cognition, and likewise the unity of the Absolute-real and the
Absolute-ideal. Sometimes Schelling seems to idcntitfy this with the Idea, but
sometimes the Idea appears to be put on a slightly lower level in the hierarchy
of the real, and it is never quite clear whether it is the same as 'the Essence'
or alternatively what he calls 'the Form.' Essence and Form are, however, the
two opposites into which absolute Identity differentiates itself, and he seems to
have had Spinoza's attributes of Thought and Extension in mind and their
identity in Substance, although the exact correspondences remain vague. Essence
suggests the category of universality, and Form that of particularity, but both
are still held to present ideal and real aspects, both are at once objective and
subjective. The latter (Form) is the projection of the former in the realm of
appearance to constitute what Schelling calls relative objectivity, as opposed to
relative subjectivity, both uniting in the indifference of absolute Identity.
Form is the realm of embodiment (Einbildung), or objectification, of the
infinite in the finite, and is primarily differentiated into relative identity, relative
difference (or opposition), and the unity of these - the identity of identity and
non-identity. There is, presumably, a similar differentiation of Essence, but we
are told little about it, though it ostensibly constitutes the ideal sphere set out
in detail in Schelling's System des Transcendentolen Idealismus. Thus there are
three major unities: 'that in which the essence is embodied absolutely in the
form, that in which the form is absolutely in the essence, and that in which both
these absolutenesses are again one absoluteness.'3
So the three potencies are generated, exemplified at various levels (but
never systematically expounded by Schelling) as thing, concept and idea, or
intuition, concept and idea, or real, ideal and the identity of the two, or finite,
infinite and eternal, or Nature, Mind and the Absolute (indifferent or neutral
Identity). Schelling flits from one to another of these diverse methods of
expressing the triadic structure of his Absolute in a rather confusing manner,
so that it is difficult to say just how they arc all to be included in one system.
Nor is it clear whether the absolute act of cognition (also called absolute
knowing) is the Absolute itself, or only the second of the three major unities.
At times he refers to it as if it were the latter, but at other times he seems to
be insisting that this is the original and primordial unity from which the other
two emerge.
 Schelling's Spino/ism 365

It was left to Hegel to weld all these representations of the Absolute and
its dialectical self-differentiation into a single coherent whole by means of one
consistent principle. But it was Schelling who first came to see that Fichte's
transcendental Ego was really the Absolute (for Hegel, absolute Idea) which
objectifies or differentiates itself, on the one hand, as the system of Nature,
through which its dialectical development brings it to consciousness in the human
mind, and, on the other hand, as mind (or spirit, Geist), in a parallel system
identical with the first in ideal content.

Ill

Spinoza anticipated all this when, at an early stage in the Tractatus de Intellectus
Emendatione, he realized that adequate knowledge can only be generated (or
deduced) from the idea of the most perfect being, that this is the most perfect
method; and that the perfect being, God, expresses its essence in the attributes
of extension and thought, which are identical in Substance. This Substance-
or-Nature-or-God, he saw, was immanent in all the modes into which, under
each attribute, it differentiates itself (or, as he puts it in E IP 16: infinite things
proceed from it in infinite ways). Of these modes, the human body and its mind
are each one, under corresponding attributes, identical with each other as idea
and ideatum.
When Schelling tells us that the Philosophy of Nature is one essential
aspect of the whole of Philosophy, he may well be using the word 'Nature' in
Spinoza's sense of Substantia-sive-Deus. In fact, Schelling's thinking is so closely
molded on Spinoza's that Spinozistic terminology is frequently appropriate, and
is often used by Schelling himself, to give it expression, as when he refers to
the absolute act of cognition as natura naturans, and to the natural world, 'the
mere body or symbol thereof,' as natura naturata.
It must be borne in mind that Schelling never really expounds his
metaphysics in systematic fashion, so that one can hardly demonstrate any clear
and systematic parallel between his theory and Spinoza's; but I shall give
examples of the echoes of Spinoza's thoughts as they occur from time to time
in Schelling's writings, and shall point out latent applications of Spinoza's ideas
in Schelling's more poetic and often somewhat fantastic speculations.
Throughout Von der Weltseele, in which he insists on the organic character
of Nature, Schelling stresses the immanence of the whole in every part, both
in general and in detail, saying at one point that the highest aim of science is
to reveal the ubiquitous presence of God in all things. God, he says, is the One
in the totality, in whom all things live and have their being. Although one
cannot point specifically to Spinoza as the source of this sentiment, the whole
passage is Spinozistic in tone and Spinozism is its most likely inspiration. A
little further on, Schelling quotes Spinoza directly as saying 'the more we know
of things, the more we know of God,' supporting his own conviction that those
who seek 'the science of the eternal' should do so by way of physics.4
When we turn to Darstellung meines Systems, where the exposition is as
systematic as Schelling ever succeeds in making it, the evidence of Spinoza's
366 ERROL E. HARRIS

influence is more copious. He begins by declaring Reason to be absolute and

indifferent to all subjectivity or objectivity. He asserts that all philosophy
proceeds from the standpoint of reason, and treats things, therefore, as they are
in themselves, and not otherwise. As such, he says, they are essentially infinite,
and the fundamental law of reason being A = A, it posits absolute Identity,
which is the absolutely infinite. This is clearly, Spinoza's God, defined precisely
in these terms in E ID6.
Schelling proceeds immediately to give a Spinozistic proof of this absolute
Infinity, to the effect that there can be nothing to limit it either internal or
external to itself, because it is all-inclusive and self-identical. The absolute
Identity, he asserts, does not emerge or proceed out of itself, and true philosophy
consists in proving this - namely, that all things in themselves are infinite and
are the absolute Identity itself (in short, it is all-inclusive). Only Spinoza, he
says, among previous philosophers, had recognized this truth, although even he
(Schelling contends) did not carry through the proof completely, nor state it with
sufficient clarity to prevent misunderstanding.
Schelling proceeds to tell us that there is a primordial knowledge of the
absolute Identity, posited with the proposition, A = A; and, because there is
nothing external to the absolute Identity, this knowledge is in the absolute
Identity itself. But it does not follow immediately from its essence, from which
only its being follows. The knowledge, therefore, belongs to the form of its
being, and that is as original as the being itself. Thus there is an original
knowledge of the absolute Identity belonging to the form of its being - that is,
Schelling avers, an attribute of the absolute Identity itself (ibid., §17).
It is fairly obvious that what he has in mind here again is Spinoza's
Substance with its attribute of Thought, the infinite modes of which are the
infinite intellect and the idea of God. Also, he is remembering Spinoza's
doctrine that, because Substance is causa sui, its essence immediately involves
existence. Spinoza says that an attribute is what the intellect perceives as the
essence of Substance, and Schelling seems to be trying to convey something of
the sort by saying that the original knowledge of the absolute Identity belongs
to the form of its being and is posited with it as following immediately from
it, just as the infinite modes follow immediately from the attributes of Spinoza's
Substance. For Schelling, essence is the dialectical opposite of form, but just
what he means by form is far from clear. It does, however, seem in some
contexts to be akin to what Spinoza calls Extension.
In §31 Schelling says that the absolute Identity is [exists] only under the
form of indifference of the subjective and the objective (and thus also of
Knowing and Being). He speaks of this indifference as 'qualitative' maintaining
that there is no qualitative difference between the subjective and the objective,
and that they can be differentiated only quantitatively. This is probably a
reflection of Fichte's assertion that contradictory opposites can be reconciled
when treated as mutual complements.6
Further, when Schelling uses the word 'Differenz,' as he does here in the
negative, what he means is complementarity rather than (or as well as)
difference. So if absolute Identity exists only under the form of 'indifference'
 Schelling*s Spinozism 367

of Knowing and Being, the indication is that these two complementary opposites
are united in it much as Thought and Extension are united in Substance for
Spinoza.
Schelling goes on to explain that the absolute Identity is the universe, and
vice versa, because it is only as universe, and can be treated in accordance with
essence and form only under limitation (Erschrankung) - again reminiscent of
Fichte (not to say Spinoza, for whom Substance, considered under its attributes,
is perceived under limitation, as modified, or affected by finite modes). It
follows that it is the same in essence in every part, and so is indivisible (§§
33-34). Spinoza, it will be remembered, insists that the essence of Substance,
as expressed in each attribute, is indivisible, for much the same reason.
Then, Schelling continues, no limited individual has the ground of its
being in itself, for all are equal in essence (the absolute Identity is the same
in each) and the being of every limited individual derives from the Absolute.
Here again we have pure Spinoza. Next we are told, almost in Spinoza's own
words, that every individual thing is determined by another individual thing, and
that by another, ad infinitum, the reason being that the existence of none is
determined by itself, and the absolute Identity encompasses the ground of the
totality (§§ 35-36). In other words, only Substance is in itself and is conceived
through itself, while its finite modes are all in it and are conceived through one
or other of its attributes, each being an effect of a finite cause, itself similarly
the effect of another finite cause, and so on ad infinitum.
So Spinozan is §38 that one is tempted to quote it in toto:

Every individual being is, as such, a determinate form of the being of the absolute
Identity, but not its being itself which is only in the totality.
For every individual and finite being is posited through a quantitative difference
of subjectivity and objectivity, which again is determined by another individual being,
that is, through another determinate quantitative difference of subjectivity and
objectivity. Now, however, subjectivity and objectivity as such is form of the being
of the absolute Identity, the determinate quantitative difference of both, therefore,
is a determinate form of the being of the absolute Identity, but for just that reason
not its being itself, which is only in the quantitative indifference of subjectivity and
objectivity, i.e., only in the totality. So the siatcmcnt can also be expressed thus:
Every individual being is determined by the absolute Identity not insofar as it is
absolutely, but insofar as it is under the form of a determinate quantitative difference
of A and Β [subjectivity and objectivity], which difference, again, is determined in the
like manner, and so on in infinitum.

With the substitution of a few Spinozan terms for Schelling's (e.g., Thought
and Extension for subjective and objective, finite mode for individual thing,
Substance for absolute Identity), this passage could almost have come straight
out of the Ethics. Spinoza, when he discusses space, time and number (or
quantity), as he does in the twelfth letter (on the Infinite), as well as in the
Korte Verhandling and the Ethics, insists that quantitative division is conceivable
only in terms of finite modes. And here Schelling is echoing very closely the
Spinozan doctrine. In the remark appended to §44, Schelling expressly states
368 ERROL E. HARRIS

that his Λ and Β' (subjectivity and objectivity) are precisely Spinoza's attributes,
Thought and Extension, except that, so he says, *we never think of them as
merely idealiter (as one generally at least understands Spinoza), but realiter'
Whether one generally understands Spinoza as identifying the attributes only
ideally (which is questionable), Spinoza himself is quite clear that they are really,
substantially, one and the same.
In §53, Schelling tells us that, through the absolute Identity, subjectivity
and objectivity are immediately posited as being, or as real; just as Spinoza
tells us that, from eternal things (i.e., from Substance and its attributes), eternal
and infinite modes follow immediately (E IPP21-23). And just as Spinoza asserts
that, from the necessity of the divine nature, infinite things follow in infinite
ways (E IP16), Schelling proceeds to 'deduce' from his absolute Identity and his
two 'attributes,' A and B, the two fundamental attractive and repulsive forces
which for him together constitute matter, and thence the entire physical world
(as he deduces the ideal world from the absolute identity of the Ego in the
System of Transcendental Idealism). Similarly, for Spinoza, the infinite mode,
Motion-and-Rest, follows immediately from the attribute of Extension, and from
that again the fades totius universi. Schelling also speaks in Spinozan language
of gravity striving to maintain physical bodies in being, indicating the identity
of A and B. According to him, light is the ideal or inner aspect, while gravity
is the real, or outer aspect, of matter as such; thus to say that gravity strives
to maintain bodies in being, is much the same as what Spinoza maintains when
he says that everything, so far as it is in itself, strives to preserve itself in its
own being, and that this conatus is its own essence (E IIIPP6/7).
From what Spinoza writes in the 32nd Letter, it is clear that he conceived
fades totius universi as a universal organic whole, made up (at different levels
of 'perfection') of subordinate organisms; and that is exactly how Schelling
conceives Nature, both in Von der Weltseele and in System der transcendentalen
Idealismus (Teil III, ii, D 4). He could as well have gotten the idea from
Leibniz, but the source in Leibniz is surely Spinoza. In the System of
Transcendental Idealism, Schelling defines freedom exactly as Spinoza does: the
absolute act of the will is free, simply because it is determined by the necessity
of its own nature. However, Schelling's argument here is as much Kantian as
Spinozan, although there can be little doubt that the influence of Spinoza
persists.
In Bruno, in an extraordinary amalgam of Plato's Timaeus and Spinoza's
Ethics, an account is given of the relation of soul and body, which is in all
essentials Spinozan. The universe is said to be a vast immortal animal, so well
ordered that it can never die. Organisms, we have already seen from Ideen and
Weltseele, are unified and organized in accordance with a principle identified by
Schelling as the Concept. So the universe unites a vast multiplicity in the same
way as, in a living animal, each individual organ is both distinguished from and
united with every other, each having, as it were, its own soul, yet all bound
together in the unity of the whole. The soul is the concept, and that of which
it is the concept is the body. Thus all things arc, each in its own degree,
animate, and the soul (or mind) of each, being the idea of its body, contains
 Schelling's Spinozism 369

only what is expressed in the particular thing of which it is the idea. Schelling's
reasoning, demonstrating how the body can contain within its concept the
possibility of and relation to innumerable other things is much vaguer and
looser than Spinoza's, but the general doctrine is the same.7

IV

It is hardly necessary to give further instances to show that Schelling's

speculation is saturated with the thought of Spinoza. But what, you may now
ask, is the historical and philosophical significance of this fact?
As was observed earlier, the problem set for Western philosophy in the
seventeenth century, by Descartes and Locke, each in his own peculiar way,
was: How do ideas of the external world get into the human mind? Reflection
on this question led all their immediate successors, except Spinoza, into an
incurable subjectivism, liable to the most serious objections.
Spinoza was the one philosopher of the era who recognized that ideas of
an external world did not, and did not need to, get into the mind, that the mind
and physical things were not entities of the same order, related in space and
by causation, but were two different aspects of the same thing. Ideas, for him,
were simply the self-awareness of the bodies whose minds they constituted, and
the more complex and organically self-complete those bodies were, the more
adequate and comprehensive were their ideas. Both bodies and the minds were
ranged in an ascending scale of 'perfection' culminating in an all-encompassing
whole, or infinite mode, that was the direct outcome of the necessary nature
of an absolutely infinite Substance.
Thus, by relating everything to the whole, to what he appropriately called
'the most perfect being,' Spinoza avoided a causal-representative theory of
perception and knowledge, which leads either to a realism, and a theory of
knowledge, that, if it can be framed by the human mind, must be false, and if
it were true could not be humanly known; or to an idealism, which has (by
implication) to equate the human mind, or make it privy, to the divine, and is
prone to a solipsism that contradicts itself and fails to resolve the problem
originally posed of how a finite member in an environing world can become
aware of that world and of its own relation to it.
It was only when Schelling, who was very well aware of the original
problem, recognized that Spinoza, in unifying Thought and Extension in
Substance, had pointed the way to a solution, that he and then Hegel were
able to develop a dialectical conception of the universe, which was at once
both realistic and idealistic, and could account satisfactorily for human perception
and knowledge. The key influence in all this was Spinoza's. Little wonder that
Hegel called him the philosopher's philosopher and declared that the first
essential step in philosophizing was to be a Spinozist.8
Schelling's position is, in a way, nearer to Spinoza than Hegel's, although
it is less clear and more ambivalent, for he envisages Nature as the coordinate
objective counterpart of knowledge, differentiated from it within an Absolute
which is, as he calls it (among other epithets), 'the indifference point' neutral
370 ERROL E. HARRIS

between objectivity and subjectivity. He never satisfactorily makes clear the

dialectical relation between nature and mind. Nevertheless, in Schelling's
speculative system, there is an implicit dialectic, vaguely following Fichte's
dialectic of antitheses, and proceeding by way of the three potencies (again never
very clearly explained) of infinite, finite, and eternal, etc. Through these
potencies, represented at successive levels (of which Schelling's various accounts
are rather confused and his deduction often far-fetched) Nature, on the one
hand, and cognition, on the other, develop towards absolute Identity; yet this
takes us back to the original act of cognition, of self-consciousness in the Ego,
whose position in the general scheme, as related to its own self-objectification
as Nature and human experience, remains ambiguous.
It was left to Hegel to weld all this into a coherent and dialectically con-
sequent system. His Absolute is no mere indifference point, nor a blank unity,
but is a definite, absolute whole, which would not (and could not) be a whole
if it were not the unification of an infinity of differences (as Spinoza's Substance
depends for its absolute infinity on the possession of infinite attributes). And
just as the attributes, for Spinoza, are 'powers' and his Substance dynamically
active, so Hegel's absolute Idea is an 'infinite restlessness' perpetually
differentiating itself as the organizing principle (or Concept) of the universal
whole, specifying itself in avatars of dialectical forms constituting Nature and
Mind. These range from space and time (united as motion) up to organism,
in which the Concept, immanent throughout the process, comes to consciousness
of itself in human experience. That develops through its own appropriate scale
of forms to absolute knowing, or philosophical knowledge (Wissenschaft),
culminating in the absolute Idea. Thus an objective realism is intelligibly
reconciled with an absolute idealism, and the problem set by the reflective
understanding, from which Schelling begins in the Ideen zu einer Philosophie der
Natur, is solved.
It is no wild conjecture to suggest that in ail this Hegel followed the lead
of Spinoza, with his account of the gamut of increasingly complex and
individualized bodies up to the fades totius universi, under Extension, mirrored
under Thought by their increasingly intelligent minds, in the order and con-
nection of ideas. Schelling, with whom I have been primarily concerned in this
paper, thought constantly in Spinozan terms, and Fichte, whom he closely
followed, was hardly less influenced by Spinoza, recognizing Spinoza's system
as the only consistent alternative to his own, and constructing the Wissen-
schaftslehre always with one eye on Spinoza, while he kept the other steadily
on Kant.
There can be no dispute about the dialectical character of the thought of
these three thinkers. Overlooking what Plato and the ancients had to say about
Dialectic, and regarding Kant as providing, as it were, negative suggestions about
the place and function of dialectic in philosophy, one could say that Fichte was
the initiator of the dialectical method, Schelling its somewhat confused, if also
inspired developer, and Hegel its consummate master. But Kant's contribution
is greater than this ordering implies; for he it was who, in the Critique of
Judgement, recognized the importance of holism and its implication of teleology;
 Schelling*s Spinozism 371

and, as I have argued repeatedly elsewhere, the specification of every genuine

whole, and the structure of every genuine system, is dialectical.9
Equally, there should be no dispute about the holistic character of Spinoza's
system, and I have persistently contended that he is a dialectical thinker,
although the dialectical structure of his thought is obscured by the geometrical
cast of his exposition. This contention, when it has not been simply disregarded,
has been hotly disputed and denied. Yet it seems clear that all the major
dialectical thinkers of German Idealism have, in one way or another, formed
their thought on a Spinozistic model, while strenously resisting the kind of
empirical naturalism so often attributed to Spinoza.
It would hardly be proper for me to repeat here what I have written in
SalvationfromDespair and have argued at length elsewhere. The kernel of the
argument has been that a dialectical system (and every genuine system, as I say,
is dialectical) is determined throughout by an organizing principle, which specifies
itself in a scale of forms, related as distinct and complementary instantiations
of the holistic principle in progressive degrees of adequacy.
Spinoza gives repeated evidence that he conceived God-or-Substance-or-
Nature in just this way, although he tends to set out the system from the top
down rather than from the bottom up (as Hegel mainly prefers to do). The
scale, in Spinoza's presentation, runs from Substance to attribute, from attribute
to infinite modes, thence to finite modes, and so through the entire range of
body-minds from the most complex down to the very simplest. He maintains
that all things are determined by the necessity of the divine nature; but it is clear
that not all forms of necessity are the same. There is mathematical necessity,
physical (causal) necessity, psychological necessity (determined by passion), and
rational necessity (determination solely by the nature of the agent). Each of
these is an exemplification of the divine nature, but as we proceed through the
series each form is a more adequate manifestation of that nature, until finally
we reach the free creative action of God (exemplified in a lesser degree by the
free action of the reasonable man).
In partial association with this scale of forms, there is that displayed in
human knowledge. In the TdlE there are four: hearsay, vague experience,
inference from the essence of one thing to the essence of another, and finally
that wherein a thing is perceived through its essence alone, or through its
proximate cause. In the Ethics there are three: imaginatio, ratio, and scientia
intuitiva. Here, again, the scale satisfies the conditions I have required for a
dialectical series. The continuous range of individual bodies with their
correspondingly competent minds, increasing progressively in wholeness and
self-dependence, and so increasingly manifesting the self-sufficiency, each under
its appropriate attribute, of the infinite mode, and so of Substance itself, has
already been noticed. Thus it is entirely fitting for Spinoza to declare, toward
the end of the first Part of the Ethics:

Non defiiit materia ad omnia, ex summo nimirum ad infimum perfectionis gradum,

creanda...
372 ERROL E. HARRIS

in effect, there was no lack of material for the creation of a complete system
of forms in every grade of perfection - what I have claimed to be a dialectical
system.

1. Cf. my article, 'The Problem of Self-constitution in Idealism and Phenomenology',

Idealistic Studies 7 (1977), 1- 27.
2. Cf. J.G. Fichte, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794) (Hamburg: (1956)),
pp. 20-21.
3. Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, Introd., Zusatz., Sammtliche Werke, II (Stuttgart:
(1857)), p. 64.
4. Von der Weltseele, Sammtliche Werke, TV, 378.
5. Cf. op cit., §§1-14, Sammtliche Werke, IV, 114-120.
6. Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, Erste Teil, # 3 .
7. Cf. op. cit., Sammtliche Werke, IV 278ff. The parallel with Spinoza is recognized by
Michael Vater in his translation of Bruno in footnote 68.
8. Cf. Lectures on the History of Philosophy, London, 1896, reprinted, 1955, 1963,1968;
tr. E.S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, III, 257.
9. Cf. The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science, (Ix)ndon: G.Allen and Unwin, 1965,
reprinted by The University Press of America, I^anham, MD., 1983). Part IV; Formal,
Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987). Pt. Ill; The
Reality of Time (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1988), 102ff., 133-145.
 PIERRE MACHEREY'S HEGEL OU SPINOZA

GEORGE L. KLINE
Bryn Mawr College

In this rich and stimulating book1 Pierre Macherey displays an impressive

mastery of the difficult philosophical systems of both Spinoza and Hegel.
However, his sympathies appear to lie one-sidedly with the former, and this
results in certain controversial claims and (to me at least) unconvincing
interpretations. Most of Macherey's criticisms of Hegel's own Spinoza-Deutung
are well taken. Yet Errol Harris, whose sympathy for Spinoza is at least as deep
as Macherey's and whose sympathy for Hegel is deeper than Macherey's, has
recently formulated many of the same objections to Hegel's misinterpretations
of Spinoza's position.2

Hegel is indeed wrong in regarding Spinoza's Substance as "dead and rigid"

(tot und starr)? And Macherey is right - as is Harris - to respond to this charge
by emphasizing the "life," activity, and dynamism of that Substance (110, 113,
119). But responsibility for Hegel's misinterpretation must be laid at least partly
at Spinoza's own terminological door: when he characterizes God or Substance
as res extensa (E IIP2; quoted at 129) - an expression which Hegel renders
accurately as ausgedehnte Sache (e.g., Vorlesungen, XIX, 387) - Spinoza's use
of the past passive participle misleadingly suggests passivity and inertness.
Spinoza seemed unable to break with Cartesian terminology and continued to
clothe a radical doctrine in traditional language. He might better have called
God or Substance a res extendens on the model of the present active participles
res cogitans and natura naturans. Spinoza's Substance, in its activity of
self-determination, its self-determin/'/zg activity, is not only a xhinldng but also
an extending entity: self-thinkmg and self-extend/>ig.
Spinoza's position stands in sharpest contrast to the dualism of the
Cartesian ontology, which is not only a dualism of mind and matter but also
a dualism of the active and the passive. For Descartes only minds (the Divine
Mind absolutely, and human minds relatively) arc active. Matter, extension,
is wholly passive. It is not only created and preserved, it is also made to be
extended - created and sustained as a multitude of res extensae - by God, the
uniquely active Res Cogitans. If Spinoza's God or Substance were to assume
a Cartesian voice, it surely would not say Sum Res Cogitans Resque Extensa
but rather, Naturo, cogito, et extendo, id est, sum Res Naturans, Cogitans, et
Extendens.
II

Tb translate Spinoza's term intellectus by Verstand, as Hegel standardly does, is

highly misleading (cf. Vorlesungen, XIX, 377, 380, 381, 384-86, 388, 389, 391,
374 GEORGE KLINE

395). Only occasionally does he translate it as Intellekt (cf. ibid., 382), though
he usually translates intellectualis as intellektuell (cf. ibid., 405). Naturally, he
renders Spinoza's ratio as Vernunft, e.g., at E IIP44 (ibid., 404). But this
introduces the invidious distinction between a superior Vernunft and an inferior
Verstand, which has no counterpart whatever in Spinoza, for whom intellectus
and ratio stand at the same (high) epistemological and ontological level, often
being equated, as in the expression intellectum sive rationem (IVApp§4).
It would, I think, have been useful if Macherey had paused to criticize this
usage, since it tends to support his interesting claim that Hegel assimilates
Spinoza to Kant on many crucial points (cf. 105, 226-47). Macherey might also
have noted that in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy Hegel places his
discussion of Spinoza under the general heading Verstandes-Metaphysik, which
is often a code-word for Kant's philosophy.4 It is unfortunate that Macherey
and the French translators of Spinoza's works whom he quotes have been
content to render intellectus as entendement (cf. 57, 59, 60, 82, 99, 105, 106,
108, 109, 162, 183, 193, etc.), although they render intellectualis as intellectuel
(e.g., 197, 247). Surely the noun intellect is also available to French translators!
Since ratio is rendered as raison, Macherey, perhaps malgré lui, introduces what
I take to be a quasi-Hegelian ranking of raison above entendement (108) which
has no counterpart in Spinoza. There is no term or concept in Spinoza's
philosophy that stands to intellectus/ratio as Verstand/entendement stands to
Vernunft/raison. In epistemological discussions Spinoza tends to use intellectus
(sometimes intellectio) and to contrast it with imaginatio. Typically, he makes
an invidious distinction between what is (adequately) present in intellectu and
what is (inadequately) present in imagination (e.g., TdlE, §89; for the contrast
of intellectio and imaginatio see ibid., §§87, 90). In ethical and political
discussions he tends to use ratio and to contrast it with affectus, cupiditas, etc.
A conspicuous exception to this general rule is the phrase humana potentia ad
coërcendos affectus in solo intellectu consistit ( VP42D, emphasis added). He could
equally well have said in sola ratione consistit. Perhaps the use of intellectus
was influenced by the repeated use of the expression Amor Dei intellectualis in
E V More typical is Spinoza's contrast between acting ex solo ductu rationis
and acting sola cupiditate ductus and his claim that the [multitudo] non ratione,
sed sotis affectibus gubernatur (TTP, XVII; G 111/203/19, emphasis added).5
In sum, Hegel's contrast of Vernunft and Verstand, like Macherey's contrast
of raison and entendement (e.g., 108), as applied to Spinoza, is unfortunate and
misleading.

Ill

Macherey's discussion of the vexed question of the inftnita attributa is, in the
end, mostly on the right track. But along the way he permits himself a number
of what appear to be distracting, even misleading, formulations. Though
Spinoza himself was scrupulously careful never to use the expression infinitas
[n.] attributorum, Macherey repeatedly uses the expression infinité d'attributs,
 Macherey's Hegel on Spinoza 375

both in quoting French translations of Spinoza's works and when speaking in

propria persona. (For the former cases, see 113, 155; for the latter, 104-106,
119,120,122,123,132,134-36,157.) Similar expressions, similarly objectionable,
include multiplicité, pluralité, and diversité infinie as applied to the attributes (35,
122, 206).6 Machery also quotes without critical comment Hegel's reference to
the unendliche Vielheit (accurately translated as multiplicité infinie) of the
attributes (WdL, II, 165; quoted at 133).
Surely a Vielheit, pluralité, or diversité of attributes would be countable,
subject to numerical expression. Yet in several passages Macherey takes a much
more reasonable position, citing with approval Gueroult's claim that the infinité
d'attributs involves no numération (cf. 120, 126, 130, 132, 222-23).7 Macherey's
clearest and most welcome statement on this matter is that Vinfini n'est pas un
nombre (123). Yet the inconsistency of both Macherey and Gueroult on this
key question remains troubling. Gueroult rightly declares that Vinfini et le
nombre s'excluent (Gueroult (1968), I, 517). But he dilutes this admirable
assertion with the problematic claim that les expressions numériques peuvent,
malgré leur impropriété, être utilisées pour signifier la pluralité concrète des attributs
telle que l'entendement la conçoit (Gueroult (1968) I, 1959).8
There is a roughly parallel inconsistency in Hegel's treatment of the infinita
attributa. Alongside his talk about the unendliche Vielheit, there is an occasional
recognition (not noticed by Macherey) that the term unendlich as applied to
the attributes is to be taken in the sense of inclusive' or 'exhaustive' like the
"present, completed infinity" of the circle. In Hegel's words: positiv, wie ein
Kreis vollendete gegenwärtige Unendlichkeit in sich ist (Vorlesungen, XIX, 387).9
Macherey's expression tous les attributs is decidedly preferable to his infinité
d'attributs (cf. 122, 124, 131). My own view is that the term infinitum as applied
to Substance means 'perfect without limitation' - what I have elsewhere called
infinitum I - and that the term infinita [neuter pi.] as applied to the attributa
means 'all without exception' - what I have called infinita II - and has nothing
to do with multiplicity, number, or counting.10
My own interpretation of ID6 - an interpretation with which, I suspect,
Macherey might have a certain sympathy - could be formulated as follows: "By
God I understand a being absolutely perfect without limitation, that is, a
Substance consisting of all the attributes without exception, each of which
expresses an essence eternal and perfect without limitation" (Per Deum intelligo
ens absolute infinitum [I], hoc est, substantiam constantem infinitis [II] attributis,
quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam [1/ essentiam exprimit).

IV

Much of what Macherey has to say about negativity, positivity, and the
(reconciling) "negation of the negation" is both informative and helpful. But
it strikes me as misleading to introduce the expression omnis determinatio est
negatio simply as la thèse bien connue (102) and to repeat it several times (137,
141, and passim), failing to inform the reader until almost sixty pages later (at
376 GEORGE KLINE

158) that Spinoza himself in fact never used the expression in this universalizing
form.12 Even when the qualification is finally entered, it seems to me to be
rather half-hearted: Revenons maintenant, Macherey writes, à la formule omnis
determmatio est negatio et voyons quelle est sa signification pour Spinoza lui-même,
Elle [sic] apparaît dans la lettre 50 à J, Jellis,,, (158).
But of course the omnis formulation does not appear in that letter, or
in any other text from Spinoza's hand. Macherey is aware of this fact, but he
puts the point with curious indecisiveness: Littéralement, elle [sic] s'y écnt:
determmatio negatio est,, (loc. cit.). Fair enough! But then why not say flatly,
and at the first mention of the omnis formulation (102), that this formula is
Hegel's, not Spinoza's? What Macherey eventually informs the reader is
accurate enough, but comes very late in his account:
d'une incidente qui renvoie à un contexte bien particulier.,. [Hegel] a fait une proposition
générale, qui prend une signification universelle, par l'adjonction d'un petit mot qui
change tout et qui confond beaucoup de choses: omnis. (158)
It would also have been helpful to point out that the omnis formulation, which
Hegel included in only one of the works which he himself prepared for publi-
cation, namely, the second, extensively revised edition of the first part of the
Wissenschaft der Logik (completed in 1831, published posthumously in 1833),
did not occur in the first edition of that same work (published in 1812).13 A
possible partial explanation for this curious fact is that when he was preparing
the first edition of the Logic Hegel was more familiar than he was later with
the details of Spinoza's texts, having recently collaborated with Paulus in the
preparation of the Opera quae supersunt omnia (Jena, 1802, 1803).14
According to notes taken by Hegel's student, H. G. Hotho, editor of the
Lectures on Aesthetics (vol. X) in the first edition of Hegel's Werke, Hegel had
used the omnis formulation in his Berlin lectures on the history of philosophy
as early as 1823-1824.15
The omnis formulation is linked to the broader question of the role of
negativity in Spinoza's philosophy. As Harris has pointed out, for Spinoza it
is only determination ab extra that is a kind of negation.16 In other words,
although the other-determination of the modes does indeed involve negation,
the ^//-determination of Substance is wholly positive.
Macherey quotes the well-known passage in which Spinoza complains that
such entirely positive properties of Substance as its being increatum, independens,
infinitum have to be expressed by negative terms, because their contraries (viz.,
creatum, dependens, finitum) arose first in the development of human language
and nomina positiva usurparunt (TdlE, §89; quoted at 177-78). But Macherey
fails to make clear that Substance for Spinoza is something wholly positive or
affirmative, that negation or privation is only a partial and provisional aspect
of reality. In other words, as Hegel shrewdly observed, Spinoza conceives das
Negative as only a verschwindendes Moment, i.e., a "vanishing phase or aspect"
of the positive (Vorlesungen, XIX, 410).
 Macherey's Hegel on Spinoza 377

Macherey seems to me to draw too sharp a distinction between Hegel's

teleological system and Spinoza's anti-teleological one, and to assimilate Hegel's
teleology too intimately to the principle of the "[reconciling] negation of the
negation." (See esp. the final section of his book, entitled La teleologie, 248-60.)
Macherey's impatience with what he calls variously Villusion finaliste (70, 83,
190), le préjugé de finalité (196), and Villusion d'un ordre finalisé (221) is evident.
(Parallel strictures are to be found at 21, 23, 93, 182, 190, 209, 215-19, 222, 252,
and 256-59.)
According to Macherey, Spinoza élimine la conception d'un sujet
intentionnel (257). But is this "elimination" complete and unqualified? What
about Spinoza's references to ordinary human intentions in such passages as
homo ex eo, quod vitae domesticae commoda imaginatus est, appetitum habuit
aedificandi domum and ut ad exemplar humanae naturae, quod nobis proponimus,
magis magisque accedamus (IVPref, G 11/207, 208; emphasis added). And what
about the celebrated conatus... in suo esse perseverare (IIIP7), which is said to
characterize all finite things? Macherey quotes both IIIP6 and IIIP7 (210),
noting that it is eternally of the essence of les choses singulières to have a
tendance immanente à persévérer dans leur être (212). But he appears not to
notice the tension between this claim and his denial of purpose or intentionality
in Spinoza's philosophy. On this point I would agree with one of Macherey's
recent critics, who writes:
Persévérer, c'est aussi bien augmenter sa puissance d'agir, s'accroître dans son être.
Cette opération... semble bien indiquer un minimum de "réflexivité, " disons-le brutalement:
un agar de soi, en soi, par soi, pour soi.. Le principe de finalité n'est que la figure
imaginative du principe de raison interne.
Such a "principle of internal [cause or] reason" (causa sive ratio) is what (in the
case of Substance) I would call a principle of total self-determination and
self-necessitation, and (in the case of the modes) a principle of partial
self-determination and partial self-necessitation, hence of partial other-determina-
tion and other-necessitation. More simply put, this is a principle of freedom
- absolute and relative freedom, respectively.18 Such a principle seems much
closer to Hegel's principle or concept of purpose and purposive activity than
Macherey would allow (cf. the discussion of Zweck, das Zweckmässige,
Zweckmässigkeit, and Selbstzweck in WdL II, 391-93, 396-405, 411-412, and
478-83).

VI

I am unable to take seriously Macherey's apparently quite serious claim that,

because Spinoza refused, and Hegel accepted, a professorship at Heidelberg
(and later, in Hegel's case, at Berlin), the Hegelian system s'enseigne à des élèves,
de haut en bas, whereas the Spinozistic system se transmet à des disciples, à égalité
(9). The words élève and disciple strike me as inappropriate in both cases.
Why not 'students' or even 'junior colleagues'? I call Macherey's attention to
378 GEORGE KLINE

the words with which Hegel closed his series of lectures on the history of
philosophy, expressing his appreciation for the intellectual and spiritual support
and companionship of his students and his hope that their intellectual and
spiritual bond would continue into the future. Here are Hegel's words, the Latin
equivalents of which, it seems to me, Spinoza might well have spoken to the
small circle of friends and sympathizers who had been working through a draft
of the Ethics under his gidance:
Für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit, die Sie mir bei diesem Versuch [viz., the attempt, referred
to earlier in this passage, to place before the students' minds the series of intellectual
and cultural shapes which philosophy has taken in the course of its development, and
the connection of these shapes with one another] bewiesen haben, habe ich Ihnen
meinen Dank abzustatten; er [viz., this attempt] ist mir ebenso durch Sie zur höheren
Befriedigung geworden. Und vergnüglich ist es mir gewesen, in diesem geistigen
Zusammenleben mit Ihnen gestanden zu haben: und nicht gestanden zu haben, sondern,
wie ich hoffe, ein geistiges Band mit einander geknüpft zu haben, das zwischen uns
bleiben möge! Ich wünsche Ihnen, recht wohl zu leben. (Vorlesungen, XIX, 691-92;
emphasis modified).
On a related point, I take Macherey quite seriously, although I am unclear as
to the shape of the alternative he would propose to the Hegelian conception
évolutive of the history of philosophy (258). Macherey claims that, once the
Hegelian conception has been discarded, le rapport réel des philosophies n'est
plus seulement mesurable par leur degré d'intégration hiérarchique; il n'est plus non
plus réductible à une lignée chronologique qui les dispose l'une par rapport à l'autre
dans un ordre de succession irréversible (258-59). The proposed non-Hegelian
history of philosophy will be marked by a lutte de tendances qui ne porte pas
en elle-même la promesse de sa résolution. Ou encore: unité de contraires, mais
sans la négation de la négation (259). In such a timeless or trans-historical
philosophical agon it will turn out that Spinoza, whose philosophy constitutes
la véritable alternative à la philosophie hégélienne (13), and who avait très bien
compris Hegel* [!] (259), réfute Hegel, objectivement (13) - on such points as the
role of negativity, the (reconciling) negation of the negation, hierarchy, and
teleology.
Taken together with Macherey's rather cryptic comments which appear to
favor not only a dialectique sans teleologie (13) but also a dialectique matérialiste
and an histoire... matérielle (of philosophic thought) (259), all of this leaves one
reader with many more questions than answers. Tb begin with: 'materialist' or
'material' in just what sense(s) of these notoriously equivocal terms? Elsewhere
I have distinguished seven distinct senses of the term materiell as used by Marx.
Only two of them would appear to be relevant in the present context-what I
have called 'material la' (= 'technological') and what 1 have called 'material 4'
(= 'economic'). 19 But a historical dialectic grounded in, or focussed on, either
technological or economic factors would surely be "developmental," cumulative,
and - in some sense - irreversible. It would also be reductionist in a sense that
Hegel's dialectic is not; but that is a story for another occasion.
Macherey appears to want to purge away all three of the essential
characteristics of Hegel's dialectical presentation of the history of philosophy:
 Macherey's Hegel on Spinoza 379

(diachronic) development, accumulation (of adequacy, of truth), and

irreversibility. Just what, if anything, would be left of either the history or the
philosophy after such a purging is difficult for me to imagine.

1. Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza, Paris: Francois Maspero, 1979, 261 pp.
2. See Errol E. Harris, "The Concept of Substance in Spinoza and Hegel," in Giancotti
(1985), 51-70.
3. Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Georg Lasson, Hamburg: Meiner, 1934, 1967,1, 250, 337;
Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie in Sämtliche Werke, ed Hermann Glockner,
Stuttgart: Frommann, 1928, XIX, 377, 379 (quoted by Macherey at 152 and 154), 382.
Cf. also Macherey 99, 113. Hereafter references to the works of Hegel and Spinoza, as
well as to Macherey's book, will be inserted in parentheses in the text, the first two with
standard sigla, the latter with page number only.
4. The Table of Contents, under the general heading Neuere Philosophie, includes a
Zweiter Abschnitt with the heading Periode des denkenden Verstandes, Ch. 1 of which is
entitled Verstandes-Metaphysik Curiously, in the text of this volume the title of Ch. 1
appears in the blander form Periode der Metapliysik
5. Cf. my essay, "Absolute and Relative Senses of liberum and libertas in Spinoza" in
Giancotti (1985), esp. Sec. Ill (266-73).
6. There is a serious slip (either in the French translation which Macherey quotes or in
his quoting of that translation) in the rendering of ID6Exp. The expression in suo genere
tantum infinitum is mistranslated as indéfinis seulement en leur genre (98, my emphasis)
The shift from singular to plural is perhaps justified; the substitution of indéfini for infini
surely is not. Charles Appuhn renders the expression accurately as infini seulement dans
son genre (Spinoza, Oeuvres, Paris: Flammarion, 1965, III, 21).
7. H. H. Joachim was, so far as I know, the first to make this point with full clarity and
consistency. "The true infinite," he wrote in 1901, "cannot have its nature expressed in
number... at all. - If we will endeavor to enumerate God's Attributes, we shall find that
no number can exhaust them: but this indicates no indefiniteness in God, but simply the
absurdity of conceiving him under 'modes of imagination'" (Joachim [1901], 41). Cf. my
paper, "On the Infinity of Spinoza's Attributes" in Hessing (1977), esp. 345-46.
8. The French translators quoted by Macherey (113) misleadingly render constantem infinitis
attribuas (ID6) as consistant en une infinité d'attributs.
9. Interesting variants of these expressions occur in the second edition (1844) of Hegel's
Werke (which, like the first edition of the early 1830s upon which Glockner's Jubiläumsaus-
gabe of 1928 is based, draws primarily from student notes and only in part from Hegel's
own lecture notes): unbestimmten Vielen rather than unendlich viele and die vollkommene
Unendlichkeit rather than vollendete gegenwärtige Unendlichkeit (cf. XV, 343).
10. See "On the Infinity of Spinoza's Attributes," csp. pp. 342-45.
11. Cf. ibid., 344 for an alternative interpretation of absolute. Hegel, despite his tendentious
talk about the unendliche Vielheit of the attributes, translates ID6 quite untendentiously:
Gott ist das absolut unendliche Wesen oder die Substanz, die aus unendlichen Attributen
besteht, deren jedes eine ewige und unendliche Wesenheit... ausdrückt (Vorlesungen, XIX, 383).
12. In Macherey's book both the title page of Pt. IV and the running heads of that entire
part (143-259) carry the omnis formulation.
13. In the Vorlesungen the Latin version is given without any reference to its source, except
for Spinoza's name. Hegel introduces it quite matter-of-factly: In Rücksicht des Bestimmten
hat Spinoza so den Satz aufgestellt: Omnis determinatie est negatio. (Vorlesungen, XIX,
380 GEORGE KLINE

376) Similarly in the Logic: Die Bestimmtheit ist die Negation als affirmativ gesetzt, ist der
Satz des Spinoza: Omnis determinaüo est negatia (WdL, I, 100)
Engels is even more cavalier than Hegel in attributing the omnis formulation to
Spinoza and no less cavalier than the Hegel of the Wissenschaft der Logik, 2nd ed., in
offering no source for his "quotation." He writes: Schon Spinoza sagt: Omnis determinaüo
est negado, jede. . .Bestimmung ist zugleich eine Negation (Friedrich Engels, Herrn Eugen
Diihrings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft [1878] in Marx-Engels-Werke, [East] Berlin: Dietz,
1968, XX, 132).
Marx, in an earlier text, had been more careful, putting simply determinatio est
negado, but also failing to give any source (cf. Grundrisse [1857-1858], [East] Berlin: Dietz,
1953, 12).
14. See Hans-Christian Lucas, "Hegel et l'édition de Spinoza par Paulus" (tr. by Pierre
Garniron), Cahiers Spinoza 4 (1983): 127-38. Hegel himself declared: ich habe auch Anteil
an dieser Ausgabe durch Vergleichung vonfranzösischenUebersetzungen (Vorlesungen, XIX,
371).
15. See Pierre Garniron, "Hegel: deux leçons sur Spinoza," Cahiers Spinoza 4 (1983): 96.
16. Harris, "The Concept of Substance in Spinoza and Hegel," 64.
17. Stanislas Breton, "Hegel ou Spinoza. Réflexions sur l'enjeu d'une alternative," Cahiers
Spinoza 4 (1983): 73, emphasis added.
18. Cf. my "Absolute and Relative Senses of liberum and libertas in Spinoza," esp. 266-75
and 279.
19. See my paper, "The Myth of Marx's Materialism" in Philosophical Sovietology, ed.
Helmut Dahm, Thomas J. Blakeley, and George L. Kline, Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel,
1988, esp. Sec. II (159-69). What I call 'material Γ (= 'physical', 'spatio-temporal') does
not seem relevant here, although, puzzlingly, Machcrcy refers at one point to a dialectique
de la substance as a dialectique matérielle (209, emphasis added). This suggests that he
may have tacitly accepted the highly controversial Plckhanov-Deborin interpretation of
Spinoza's metaphysics of substance as a materialist ontology.
 SPINOZISM AND SPINOZISTIC STUDIES
IN THE NETHERLANDS SINCE WORLD WAR II

H. G. HUBBELING
Groningen University

In this paper I shall try to give a survey of Spinozism and Spinozistic studies
in the Netherlands since World War II. I shall also try to give more than only
a bibliographie raisonnée. This would certainly occur if I tried to give a complete
enumeration of all the works published on Spinoza during this period. I do not
have to do this, for we have excellent bibliographies that cover the period.1
Especially I want to mention the bibliography wrilicn by Van der Werf, Siebrand
and Westerveen.2 Siebrand had the brilliant idea of giving an alphabetical list
of works written on Spinoza and then to give a survey in a systematic order.
The study is published in the well-known series of Mededelingen vanwege het
Spinozahuis. It is unavoidable that a paper like this looks a little bit like a
bibliographie raisonnée^ but I have tried to give more background information,
so that the reader will receive an impression of the main trends of Spinozism
and of the main topics of Spinozistic studies in the Netherlands.
As one of the few Dutch philosophers who has attracted international
attention, Spinoza has always been studied and discussed on a relatively large
scale in the Netherlands. Dutch Hegelians have very often incorporated Spinoza
in their philosophy. He was also studied extensively in Marxist circles and
among freethinkers, etc. There were even two Spinoza societies in the
Netherlands before World War II. The oldest one was situated in Rijnsburg,
where Spinoza lived for part of his life and where the house where he lived still
exists. This house was bought by the society, which was and is open to everyone
who is interested in Spinoza. Officially it did not favor any interpretation of
Spinoza, but perhaps it must be said that it still had a rationalistic flavor because
its dominant members, W. Meyer and W. G. van der Tik, both secretaries, gave
a rationalistic interpretation of Spinoza. But it must be explicitly stated that
other interpretations of Spinoza were also heard in the papers read at the
Society.3 Further the organization of the society was democratic. The meeting
of the members took the final decisions.
The other society owned the house in the Hague, where Spinoza died in
1677. This was not a society in the ordinary sense, but a foundation. It did
not have a democratic structure, for a board of directors took the decisions with
no responsibility to its members. Nobody could even become a member of this
society; one could only support it by a yearly gift. In this society the mystical
interpretation of Spinoza was dominant. During the war, however, this society
received a dubious reputation, because its chairman, J. H. Carp, became a
National Socialist. After the war he was accused by van der Tak, the secretary
of the other Spinoza society, of "giving away the house into the hands of the
Germans." After the war the foundation was dissolved and its properties were
administered by a committee of three men. In the beginning of the 70s the
house and other properties were given to the Rijnsburg society that in turn
382 H. G. HUBBFJJNG

gave it to Monumentenzorg Den Haag which in cooperation with the Rijnsburg

society restored the building. One room is devoted to Spinoza study. Now the
situation is that in the Rijnsburg house Spinoza's original library can be seen
and can be consulted, whereas in The Hague house modern literature on Spinoza
is collected and a study room for consulting it is available. It goes without
saying that the society keeps its neutral and open attitude in that one need not
be an adherent of Spinoza's philosophy in order to become a member and that
all possible interpretations of Spinoza may be heard in the society.
In 1977, G. van Suchtclen, the präsent secretary, in cooperation with C.
Roelofsz, corrected the accusation against Carp. Although he was a National
Socialist and as such is to be blamed for having cooperated with the Germans,
he took pains to keep the house out of the hands of the occupier. In the
beginning the Germans did not take measures against the two Spinoza societies,
although Spinoza was a Jew. He had had a positive influence on German
Idealism and this the Germans evaluated positively. But they did forbid
freemasonry and in its archives they discovered that freemasonry had given
donations to one of the Spinoza societies. So they took over the two houses
and sent the two libraries to Germany, where they were rediscovered after the
war and sent back to the Netherlands. Carp, however, managed to keep the
house in The Hague out of the hands of the Germans. The building was given
to a foundation that would educate the higher officials of the Dutch National
Socialist movement. But this foundation was only a fake and served as a cover.
It did not fulfill its supposed function. In this way the building could be
prevented from being ruined by the German army. The house in Rijnsburg
remained inhabited by the custodian and his family. Ένο Jews hid themselved
there during the occupation.4
Perhaps I may insert a little anecdote with respect to the house in The
Hague. In the beginning of the 70's the administrative board of the dissolved
foundation decided that they would give away the house and the properties that
belonged to it. They thought that the best way to do this was to give it to
the Rijnsburg society. The board of this society agreed with one exception, viz.
its chairman, J. J. von Schmid. He even resigned as a chairman, when the other
members of the board tried to force him to the decision to accept the gift which
was only to the advantage of the society and the study of Spinoza. And what
was the reason for this stubborn refusal? Its recent history and geographic
situation! For it had been used as a brothel until the foundation bought it and
it still lies in an area where many brothels flourish. As is so often the case,
in The Hague the older parts of the city have declined in their social status.
In contradiction to Von Schmid, the rest of the board evidently saw the house
in a Spinozistic way, i.e. in itself, not in its relations to the other houses, and
they saw it in the present not in the past!
The Rijnsburg society has always been, and still is to the present day, a
center of Spinoza studies. I hardly know of any other philosophical or
intellectual society that covers such a broad spectrum in its membership. You
may meet ultra-religious orthodox people, Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, but
also vehement atheists. In politics, too, all kinds of trends are represented and
 Spinozism in the Netherlands 383

Spinozism itself is present in all shades of interpretation. It has become a club

of friends, where people of all kinds of profession meet each other. The
philosophers form only a minority among the members, although the papers read
are on a high level, as a look in the well-known scries mentioned above may
reveal, for this series consists mainly of papers read during the meetings of the
society. The advantage of the study of Spinoza is that not only professional
philosophers can find something to their liking. Also historians, jurists and
medical doctors can study Spinoza fruitfully. Even non-intellectual people are
represented and some of them did contribute considerably to the study of
Spinoza. So some of our members played a role in discovering that a certain
house in Voorburg was a house where Spinoza may have lived; others collected
material for Spinoza's biography, again others for the history of Spinoza's tomb,
etc. You do not have to be a professional philosopher in order to do this. Now
the society is flourishing after the meagre years shortly after the war.5
We also changed the style of our meetings. Formerly there was a fashion-
able dinner at the end of the meeting. The participants bought a stately new
suit for it, etc. It was always very impressive, but the number of participants
was only small, of course. Now we have an informal lunch between the two
papers and the number of participants has increased four times! And, of course,
such an informal lunch is good for promoting lively personal and intellectual
contacts.
Besides the society there are two centers for the study of Spinoza, viz. at
the universities of Groningen and Rotterdam. In the study of Spinoza after the
war we can distinguish three periods. Shortly after the war there was not much
interest in Spinoza in the world. The dominant philosophies were existentialism
and phenomenology on the continent, and analytical philosophy in England and
the USA The dominant philosophy in the Netherlands during that time was
certainly existentialism, although there was more interest in logical empiricism
and similar movements in the Netherlands than, e.g., in France and Germany.
This is typical for the history of Dutch philosophy. Dutch philosophers have
very often mediated between the various cultures. There was also a relatively
great interest in Spinoza, but Spinozism was by no means dominant. This is
also the case for the later periods, when there has been more interest in Spinoza.
Still Spinozism has never been the dominant philosophy in the Netherlands.
As was also the case elsewhere in the world, there was a revival of interest in
the 60's and this revival still continues. But perhaps we may say that there is
a shift of interest. In the 60s and early 70s the interest in Spinoza was pre-
dominantly systematic, in contradistinction to the great German works before
1933, which were more historical. But perhaps we might say that by the end
of the 70s, a great wave of new, purely historical works appeared, and at least
it is the policy of our society to promote the study of Spinoza's philosophy in
relation to its Dutch and Jewish background. Another characteristic of our
policy is to give younger scholars a chance! I think that it is necessary for
understanding an author that one studies his direct environment. He always
discusses something with people around him, so it is necessary to study this
environment. Ironically, I myself started with a dissertation on Spinoza6 that was
384 H. G. HUBBWJNG

predominantly systematic, because I thought that it could be fruitful to study

Spinoza's argumentation, the role some key concepts played in his system, the
tension between Spinoza's deductive method and his nominalism, etc. But even
then I could not avoid making at least some historical remarks! Another facet
characteristic of the Spinoza revival after the war is an interest in Spinoza's ideas
on law, the state, tolerance, etc. In the following I mention some of the main
topics that have been studied in the last forty years without explicitly stating
in what period a certain work was written. That can, of course, easily be
inferred by looking at the year of publication.
In the first place, I think, the preparing of a new Dutch translation of the
complete works of Spinoza is important. The society took the initiative for this
translation and supports it. Three volumes have appeared and another three
will follow. We even intend to give a translation of the Hebrew Grammar, a
work that has not yet been translated into Dutch. Also an illuminating
commentary is added to the translations. The following works have appeared:
the Correspondence, the Ethics, the work on Descartes together with the
Metaphysical Thoughts, the Short Treatise, the works On the Rainbow and The
Calculus of Chances, and the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding.
The work is not only a translation. By its commentary it is also a contribution
to Spinoza scholarship. Besides, the works that have been written in Dutch
(some letters, the Short Treatise and the works on the rainbow and the calculus
of chances) are a new edition. Akkerman has shown that the Gebhardt edition,
despite all its merits, is insufficient and unreliable from a modern philologist's
point of view.8 Therefore the Dutch parts in the new translation are a step
forward. But also in the Latin part some improvements of the text are given.
Of course, there has always been much criticism of Spinoza. The main
objection was put forward by Bicrens de Haan, who belonged to a former gen-
eration, but was schooled in Dutch philosophy. He saw himself as a man who
synthesized Spinoza and Hegel, but he considered himself more a Spinozist than
a Hegelian. But Spinoza's philosophy was too static in his eyes. History did
not play a decisive role in it. Spinoza thinks too much in fixed patterns. J.
van der Bend showed in some studies that Bicrens de Haan came to his
Spinozistic viewpoint only gradually. Originally he belonged more to the school
of the English empiricists, viz. Shaftesbury. He also introduced esthetical
elements into Spinoza's philosophy.9
Van Os had the same criticism; he added the concept of life as a dominant
concept into Spinoza's philosophy. He has the great merit of introducing
Whitehead into the Netherlands at a relativclv early stage and he combined
elements of process philosophy with Spinoza.1 This is, in my view, a promis-
ing enterprise in view of the fact that Whiichead had a great admiration for
Spinoza. There is a great structural similarity between Whitehead's and
Spinoza's doctrines of God, immortality, etc. The differences lie in the organic
character of Whitehead's philosophy (which is also stressed by Van Os) and the
esthetical elements in Whitehead's philosophy, which arc apparently lacking in
Spinoza. Still some esthetical principles that play a great role in Whitehead
 Spinozism in the Netherlands 385

(e.g. unity in variety) can also be found in Spinoza, without his having indicated
these principles as esthetical.11
Brunt showed that Spinoza's theory of physics is completely dated. He was
too little of an empiricist to be able to be fruitful in the progress of science.12
By the way, there is, as is well-known, a defence and réévaluation of Spinoza
from the side of systems theory. Van der Hoeven has shown that Spinoza was
heavily dependent on Descartes in his theories of physics. He was even less
empirical than Descartes, but he improved on him in some of the demonstra-
tions.13
There was also criticism of the way Spinoza presented his ideas in the TTP.
Here Den Tfex followed Strauss' theories of the double meaning in the 7TP.14
This was vehemently contradicted by Harris and others.15 Spinoza received a
critical defence from an unexpected side. Mön η ich came from another direction,
because he is more interested in claiming the independence of theology and in
his view the relevance of philosophy for spiritual matters is only marginal.16
But it remains remarkable that Spinoza's philosophy is able to arouse so much
interest even among orthodox Christians in the Netherlands, despite the
vehement criticism he meets there. Wc will come back to this point later on.
In the doctrine of the state and in political philosophy the relation with
Hobbes and Machiavelli has been much discussed. On the whole the Dutch
scholars tend to emphasize the differences between Spinoza on the one hand
and Hobbes and Machiavelli on the other. They emphasize that Spinoza has
a Hobbesian and Machiavellian starting point, but that despite this framework
Spinoza tries to defend a democratic and liberal state wtith all the liberties
granted to the subjects. This wc do not find in the two other authors.17 A
different position has been taken by Klever. He introduced the new thoughts
of Antonio Negri into the Netherlands and roused thus a vehement discussion.18
On the whole there were only a few studies of Spinoza's anthropology, fewer
than could be expected in a time in which anthropology took so central a place.
Van Peursen, a man internationally well-known for his anthropological studies
and who, by the way, had personal contacts with Sartre and Wittgenstein !),
gave a study on the place of finitude in Spinoza. He discusses the problem of
the possible and the real. Is everything that is possible to be realized one day?
Or is a kind of selection to be made? According to Van Peursen we get into
troubles here, because we introduce the Lcibnizian idea of possible worlds into
Spinoza's philosophy and the latter is incompatible with that idea.19
J. J. Groen is of the opinion that Spinoza was a great forerunner of the
new psycho-physical approaches in medicine. The exact parallelism between the
world of thinking and the world of matter (extension) leads to many conclusions
that anticipate modern discovcrings, viz. that physical troubles immediately have
their phychical counterparts and vice versa. There are, of course, differences.
Modern medicine has not yet fully discovered what kind of link there is between
the two worlds (that of thinking and that of the body), whereas Spinoza Solves'
this problem with his doctrine of parallelism and denying any direct influence
of one world on the other. The contact is established by the substance! Groen
also points out that Spinoza is a forerunner of Freud. Of course, we do not
386 H. G. HUBBRL1NG

find Freud's theory of the unconscious fully developed by Spinoza. But he also
points out that once we are better conscious of our passions and know what
really troubles us, we are no longer driven by our passions.20
Spinoza as a mystical thinker was also a theme in Dutch studies after the
war, but less than before the war when we had the flourishing 'mystical' society
in The Hague. Boasson was the scholar who defended this approach,21 but there
were others who stood close to this view point, as e.g., Frenkel.22 The latter
was a clear representative of rationalistic mysticism with a strong emphasis on
the concept of Necessity. He emphasizes that there is a double kind of necessity
in Spinoza, a necessity in the series of events in time and a necessity of the
eternal world of God. Despite the fact that the third way of knowledge plays
its role in Frenkel's interpretation, he is much more rationalistic than Boasson.
By the way, Frenkel was also a philosopher of The Hague society. I myself
defended the thesis that Spinoza's philosophy had definitely a mystical structure,
but on his whole system based on the theory of parallelism of thinking and
matter and on his whole axiomatic method. This thesis aroused some
discussion.23
There has been much discussion on Spinoza's method. De Dijn introduced
the theories of Gueroult into the Netherlands. According to him, Spinoza was
strongly influenced by Hobbes and through him by Euclid. Spinoza's theory of
definitions and axioms is constructivistic and genetic, i.e., if we want to know
what a thing is we must study the way it emerges in the world or, if we have
to do with mathematical objects, the way it is to be constructed. If we study
an eternal object, e.g., God, then it is necessary to find the most fundamental
elements and with the help of these one can construct the concept of God. As
a consequence of this approach, Spinoza's axiomatic method is more than only
an instrument. It is the way in which Spinoza's system has been necessarily built
up. It could not be done otherwise. Against De Dijn I defended the thesis
that Spinoza uses the axiomatic method in a relatively modern way and at least
he is modern in this point, that we can build up our system as we like it.
Spinoza himself built up his system in various ways! What is a proposition in
one system can become an axiom in another system and vice versa.
This discussion is revealing also in another point. De Dijn is strongly
influenced by French structuralism and I myself by logical empiricism and
modern logic. Now we see Spinoza with different eyes and a different Spinoza
emerges in our interpretations! De Dijn's Spinoza looks more like a structuralist
and mine more like a modern logical empiricist, of course, a logical empiricist
that permits metaphysics!25 Also, Klever is preparing a more extended paper
on Spinoza's logical approach in which it will be shown that Spinoza is very
modern in the handling of the axioms.26 By the way, in the Netherlands there
has always been a strong division between the southern part and the Dutch
speaking part of Belgium on the one hand and the northern part of the
Netherlands on the other hand. The first is always strongly influenced by France,
the latter by Germany and England. De Dijn and I also discussed the question
as to whether we may ascribe consciousness and self consciousness to God (the
substance).27
 Spinozism in the Netherlands 387

De Deugd emphasizes the value of the first way of knowledge in Spinoza.

Of course, he does not claim that Spinoza is an empiricist. But the system that
arises from the second way of knowledge is a general system that is valid for
everything whatsoever. It needs a concrete filling in. And for this filling in the
first way of knowledge is much more important than the third way. Zweerman
emphasizes the rhetorical elements in Spinoza's approach. Also Akkerman had
already called attention to this fact.29 Zweerman analysed Spinoza's introduction
to the Treatise on the Improvement of the Human Understanding. In this he made
also use of the methods of modern reception theory. Siebrand did this already
before him.30 Until now reception theory has been used much more in literary
criticism and literary theories than in the study of the history of philosophy.
Now Zweerman shows that the introduction to the Treatise has an inclusion
structure in that the first part corresponds to the sixth, the second to the fifth
and the third to the fourth. He also indicates the importance of the so called
focalisators (i.e., here the narrating persons, who introduce themselves with T)
and of the famous open gaps of the reception theory. Between the third and
the fourth part there is a breach in Spinoza's tone. First he speaks rather
autobiographically, but then he speaks in a more sophisticated tone, in which
the final goal of the philosophical way of living is shown. But now, certain
stages are left out in this philosophical way and they must be filled in by the
reader. 1 Meerloo introduced certain aspects of the theory of rhetoric already
in the earlier stage. His view is that Spinoza wrote in order to communicate
with people and that therefore his ways of reasoning differ from book to book
and even from passage to passage. The presuppositions that were taken for
granted by the people with whom Spinoza wanted to communicate were always
taken into account by him.32 Further, Spinoza can certainly be considered a
forerunner of modern methods of interpretation. Spinoza showed something
of this in his book on Descartes, where he tries to give a genuine interpretation
of Cartesian philosophy but at the same time improves the proofs and the way
of reasoning of Descartes himself.33
Several studies appeared on Spinoza's contemporaries in their relation to
our philosopher. L. Thijssen-Schoute discussed several details of Lodewyk
Meyer's life and his important work in the field of theater and language. As
a philosopher he is disappointing, according to Thijssen-Schoute. He remains
a Cartesian and his influence on Spinoza can be neglected. On the other hand
we do not discover much influence of Spinoza on him. But they were good
friends.34 Jarig Jelles, the author of the introduction to Spinoza's Opera
Posthuma, an introduction which was translated into Latin by Meyer, gave a
synthesis of Meyer and Spinoza. He gave a Christian interpretation of Spinoza,
but Jelles' Christian belief had stong moralistic overtones. His Christology
resembles that of Spinoza, but there arc reasons to believe that Spinoza took
this over from Jelles rather than the other way round, for in Jelles' system they
form much more a genuine part than in that of Spinoza.3*5
The first man to publish in a more or less Spinozistic way was Spinoza's
friend Koerbagh, but there were also some differences between the two.
Koerbagh is less of a scholar. His main purpose was to enlighten the ordinary
388 H. G. HUBBI*:iJN(i

people so that they no longer are the slaves of the Calvinistic ministry.30
Another disciple of Spinoza was Pieter Balling. He was less a theologian than
Jarig Jelles. According to Balling all knowledge of God rests on a direct
intuitive knowledge, whereas Jelles developed a cosmological argument for God's
existence. Balling was a man of the inner light/ a doctrine of the Collegiants.37
Another book that has appeared in Spinozistic circles was The Life of Philopater.
It consisted of two volumes. In this book different materialistic interpretations
of Spinoza are given.38
A very interesting discussion has been held between the Spinozist Van
Leenhof and the Cartesian Wittich. They both indicated correctly where the
differences in the starting point are. Descartes uses the via eminentiae in the
developing of God's properties. Therefore we need not ascribe extension to
God. We may say that God possesses the properties of extension in an eminent
way. According to Van Leenhof, who follows Spinoza, God cannot produce
something outside himself, for God rejoices in his own perfection. As nothing
can be produced from nothing (nihil ex nihilo), there is no creation in the
ordinary Christian sense. Because God is perfect, everything occurs necessar-
ily and it is impossible that there would be no world. Contradicting Van
Leenhof, Wittich defends the possibility of a creation from nothing. This is
unintelligible, but not everything that is unintelligible is false. Finite beings
cannot create from nothing but God can. This discussion is interesting and has
been overlooked by the schoolarly world until now.39
There is also interest in Bredcnburg, a man who opposed Spinoza, but
challenged him with his own weapons. At last he constructed an ontological
argument by himself which gave his thinking a strong Spinozistic flavour. As
he was also a biblical believer, he tried to defend the possibility of a double
truth: for theology and not for philosophy something can be true and vice
versa*® Of course, Bredcnburg was accused of hypocrisy during his lifetime,
but he was defended by Bayle. The latter was also studied in this period. He
was certainly a faithful Christian. His scepticism referred only to his philsophy
and not to his belief. His interpretation of Spinoza, however, was very bad and
was not congenial to the spirit of the great philosopher.41
New studies on the great Dutch physico-thcologian Nieuwentijt show that
it was through the empirical method that he showed the weak points in Spinoza's
philosophy. He already had a very modern concept of mathematics, carefully
distinguishing between pure and applied mathematics. Spinoza's geometrical
method is only valid within pure mathematics, but thus it says nothing about
the real world. Here we need empirical knowledge besides mathematics. New
studies showed that there was much interest in Spinoza's philosophy in the
Netherlands up to the time of Nieuwentijt. It was not the Calvinist ministers
who drove Spinoza's philosophy from the Dutch scene, but Nieuwentijt.42
There are also new studies on Van den Enden, Spinoza's teacher in Latin.
It has been shown that he remained a faithful Catholic despite his modernistic
tendencies, that he was a great inventor in technical matters and that probably
Spinoza played the role of a slave in one of his performances of Tfcrentius!43
New studies in archives demonstrate that Spinoza was a less obscure figure than
 Spinozism in the Netherlands 389

was thought before. His name appeared as a witness in many legal acts and
these witnesses were always well-known, reliable persons. There are also studies
on Coornhert, a great defender of religious tolerance,44 on Christian sects that
are influenced by Spinoza45 on Colerus,46 Spinoza's biographer, on the relation
of Spinoza and Leibniz, on the relation of Spinoza and De la Court,48 the
discovery of Spinoza by Nieuhoff,49 on Spinoza's doctrine of immortality.50 But
we cannot go into all the details here.
Spinoza's relevance for literature has also been discussed. There appeared
works on Spinoza and the movement of the 1880s,51 on Spinoza's influence on
Goethe,52 on Wordsworth,53 and others. Also the traditional studies on Spinoza
and Hegel appeared.54 It is interesting that Klever, who started as a Hegelian
and defended the superiority of Hegel's dialectics over Spinoza's axiomatic
method, became more and more impressed not only by Spinoza's axiomatic
method but also by the content of Spinoza's philosophy, especially his political
philosophy. He was not the only one who was 'converted' in the direction of
Spinoza's thinking without becoming, however, an 'orthodox' Spinozist.
In the movement of freethinking and atheism Spinoza was seen as an
important forerunner who has contributed to the development of a modern
atheistic world view. Also in the circles of the labor movement and Marxism
Spinoza was widely read.55 T. de Vries wrote an important work on Spinoza
based on historical materialism. He placed Spinoza as a man between the
classes. Spinoza's sympathy was with the working class, but in his day the
laborers were still under the influence of the orthodox Calvinistic ministry.
So his ideas were more to the taste of the progressive, liberal bourgeoisie.56
Steenbakkers got his interest in Spinoza from the study of Althusser. Later he
became strongly critical of Althusser, but his sympathy for Spinoza remained.
Being a good philologist, he is now preparing, together with Akkerman, a new
critical edition of Spinoza's EthicaP There were also Marxists who were of
the opinion that a kind of Spinozistic belief should be added to the doctrines
of historical and dialectical materialism.
There were also liberal protestants who were strongly influenced by Spinoza.
As a matter of fact the revival of Spinozistic studies in the Netherlands in the
19th century came from a Calvinistic Spinozist, J. H. Scholten.58 He had a great
influence on Van Vloten59 and Meyer/*0 who were both originally students in
theology with Scholten. They continued their scholarship, however, by leaving
theology completely and by defending a naturalistic kind of Spinozism. Scholten
himself thought that the main concepts of Spinozism were compatible with the
Calvinistic variant of Christianity. At least they both teach a strong determinism.
Scholten did not teach an orthodox form of Christianity, but he managed to
keep as close to the biblical doctrines as they are compatible with modern
science and critical exegesis.61
As we said before, Orthodox Christianity always had an interest in Spinoza
too. New studies appeared on Gunning, a great admirer of Spinoza, although
he was an orthodox Christian. He especially admired Spinoza's attitude in life,
his unity of thinking and moral behaviour. He criticized Spinoza because the
concept of a person was lacking in Spinoza. Spinoza's thinking is only
390 H. G. HUBBI-MNG

rationalistic. But besides rational thinking a man needs direct intuition. One
sees that Gunning challenges Spinoza using Spinoza's methods! By intuition
we see the relevance of being a person. In other Christians the dominant place
of God is positively evaluated.62
Akkerman stimulated the study of the Latin of Spinoza. He also showed
that Gebhardt did not follow the right editorial principles. He showed that the
Opera Posthuma and the Dutch translation were independent sources, a fact that
was recognized by Gebhardt too. Contrary to Gebhardt, however, Akkerman
showed that the Dutch translation did not go back to an earlier stage. Gebhardt
also did not evaluate the Dutch translation correctly. Further Akkerman made
it plausible that Balling was the first translator of the first two parts of Spinoza's
Ethics.63
There was also a study on Spinoza's Hebrew Grammar in which the Jewish
sources for this grammar were indicated. Spinoza is less original than it was
believed before, but therefore also less extravagant.64
Our society has further good connections with the International Constantin
Brunner Society (die Internationale Constantin Brunncr Gesellschaft), which is
devoted to the study and promotion of the thoughts of Constantin Brunner, a
Neo-Spinozist, who died in The Hague, having left Germany because of the
Nazis.
This paper tries to give a survey of Spinoza study in the Netherlands. For
many scholars Spinoza is only an interesting object of study. For many others
Spinoza means more, however. I do not believe that anyone of us is an
Orthodox' Spinozist, but his person and philosophy give more than purely
intellectual enjoyment. He also gives us something for our view of life. Above
we have seen already the 'conversion' of Klever. But he was not the only one.
I myself have developed in a Spinozistic direction loo. A few years ago I studied
the relation of God to the eternal logical laws. Are they created by God as
Descartes thought? Or are they true independently of God and is God thus
submitted to them, as Leibniz thought? Both solutions arc unsatisfactory. I
thought the best solution is that they are in some way an emanation from God
and after some reflection I discovered that this is Spinoza's solution.65 Also
my logical reconstructivism is Spinozistic as this is the way Spinoza writes about
Descartes: giving his viewpoint, but improving the argumentation.
But there are more: Mrs. Gokkcl, a dentist, has found much support in
Spinoza's philosophy for her personal life, but she also designed some lines for
the relation of body and thinking which are strongly inspired by Spinoza.66 Also
Groen is of the opinion that Spinoza's philosophy is relevant to modern life.
Modern man cannot live without some spiritual background and as the
importance of the churches is waning - Grocn and I say this with deep regret -
Spinoza's philosophy can often fill the gap.
Of course, nobody can follow Spinoza blindly. His philosophy has its merits
and insufficiencies. But he is a philosopher worth studying. In the Netherlands
this is done with a feeling of some congeniality.
 Spinozism in the Netherlands 391

1. J. Préposiet, Bibliographie spinoziste. Répertoire alphabétique- Registre systématique-

Textes et documents: Biographies de Lucas et de Colerus, article 'Spinoza* du Dictionnaire
de Baylet inventaire de la bibliothèque de Spinoza, etc., Paris, 1973; J. Wetlesen, A Spinoza
Bibliography. Particularly on the Period 1940-1967, Oslo, 1968 (Reprint: Oslo, 1971).
2. Th. van der Werf, H. Siebrand and C. Westerveen, A Spinoza Bibliography 1971-1983
(Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis XLV1), Leiden, 1984. In the following the series
will be abbreviated by M followed by the number of the series. The credit for continuing
the work and looking after the final draft goes of Van der Werf.
3. G. van Suchtelen, "Waarheid en verdichtsels omtrent het Spinozahuis. Een causerie,"
Bzzlletin 13 (1984), 36-42.
4. G. van Suchtelen (ed.), Spinoza's sterfhuis aan de Paviljoensgracht. Levensbericht van
een Haags monument 1646-1977, Den Haag, 1977; idem, "The Spinoza houses at Rijnsburg
and The Hague," in Hessing (1978), 475-478; C. Roclofsz, "Met Spinnnozahuis te 's-
Gravenhage \646Α9ΊΊ ? Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift vwr Wijsbegeerte 69 (1977), 26-32.
5. G. van Suchtelen, "Découverte d'une maison Spinoza à Vcx>rburg?" Bulletin d'Association
des Amis de Spinoza 13 (1984), 1-2.
6. H. G. Hubbeling, Spinoza's Methodology, Assen, 1964, 2nd ed. 1967.
7. Werken van B. de Spinoza. Uitgave onder auspiciën van de Vereniging Het Spinozahuis.
Amsterdam:
Vol 1: Briefwisseling. Vertaald uit het I .at ij η en uitgegeven naar de bronnen alsmede
van een inleiding en van verklarende en tekstkritische aantekeningen voorzien door F.
Akkerman, H. G. Hubbeling en A G. Westerbrink, 1977;
Vol 2: Ethica. Uit het Latijn vertaald en van verklarende aantekeningen voorzien
door Nico van Suchtelen. Nieuwe uitgave, hcr/icn en ingeleid dcx>r G. van Suchtelen, 1979;
Vol 3: Korte Geschriften. Bezorgd door Κ Akkerman, H. G. Hubbeling, F. Mignini,
M. J. Petry, en N. en G. van Suchtelen, 1982.
8. F. Akkerman, "Eédition de Gebhardt de l'Ethique de Spinoza et ses sources" {Raison
présente, 43 (1977): 37-51; idem, "Vers une meilleure édition de la correspondance de
Spinoza?" Revue internationale de philosophie 31 (1977), 4-26; idem, Studies in the
Posthumous Works of Spinoza. On Style, Earliest Translation and Reception, Earliest and
Modem Editions of Some Texts, Diss. Groningen, 1980.
9. J. G. van der Bend, Dr. J. D. Bierens de Haan en Spinoza (M 24), Leiden, 1968; idem,
Het spinozisme van dr. J. D. Bierens de Haan, Diss. Groningen, 1970; idem, "Dr. J. D.
Bierens de Haan," Amerfoortse Stemmen 57 (1976), 83-88.
10. C. H. van Os, Tijd, maat en getal naar aanleiding van Spinoza's brief over het oneindige
(M 7), Leiden 1946; idem, "Over de philosophic van Λ. N. Whitehead" (Synthèse, 1939).
11. H. G. Hubbeling, "Whitehead and Spinoza/* in H. Holz and E. Wolf-Gazo, ed.,
Whitehead und der ProzessbegriffIWliitehead and The Idea of frocess, Proceedings of the
First International Whitehead-Symposium 1981, Freiburg, 1984, 375-385.
12. N. A Brunt, De wiskundige denkwijze in Spinoza's pliilosophie en de moderne
natuurkunde (M 12), Leiden, 1955.
13. P. van der Hoeven, De cartesiaanse fysica in het denken van Spinoza (M 30), Leiden,
1973; idem, "Over Spinoza's interpretatie van de cartesiaanse fysica, en de betekenis daarvan
voor het systeem der Ethica," Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 35 (1973), 27-86; idem, "The
Significance of Cartesian Physics for Spinoza's Ilieory of Knowledge," in J. G. van der Bend,
ed., Spinoza on Knowing Being and Freedom, Proceedings of the Spinoza symposium at
the International School of Philosophy in the Netherlands, I .eusden, September 1973, Assen,
1974, 114-125. Cf. H. G. Hubbeling, "Van der Hoeven als interpreet van Descartes en
Spinoza," L'esprit de géométrie, l'esprit de finesse, Groningen, 1977, 20-27.
14. J. den Tex, Spinoza over de tolerantie (M 23), Leiden, 1967.
392 H. G. HUBBELING

15. E. E. Harris, Is there an esoteric doctrine in the LTP? (M 38), Leiden 1978. Cf. also
the discussion at the end of Den Tbx' work (see note 14).
16. C. W. Mönnich, De verhouding van theologie en wijsbegeerte in het Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus (M 15), Leiden, 1958.
17. J. J. Boasson, De rechtsidee en de vrijheidsidee bij Spinoza (M 8), Leiden, 1949; Β. Η.
Kazemier, De staat bij Spinoza en Hobbes (M 10), loeiden, 1951; Th. de Vries, Spinoza
als staatkundig denker (M 20), Leiden, 1963; G. Α. van der Wal, Politieke vrijheid en
demokratie bij Spinoza (M 41),Leiden, 1980.
18. Benedictus de Spinoza, Hoofdstukken uit De politieke verhandeling, ingeleid, vertaald
en van commentaar voorzien door W N. A. Klever, Meppel, 1985; W. N. A. Klever,
"Spinoza's filosofie als radicale inspiratiebron voor Italiaans kamerlid en terrorist Negri"
(NRC Handelsblad 24 -12 -1983).
19. C. A. van Peursen, Eindigheid bij Spinoza (M 37), Leiden, 1977. Van Peursen wrote
also on the problem of truth in Spinoza: "Spinoza: Veritas norma sui et falsi," Wijsgerig
Perspectief op Maatschappij en Wetenschap, 18 ( 1977/78), 69-72; idem, "La critère de la vérité
chez Spinoza/Ttevue de métaphysique et de morale 83 (1978), 518-525.
20. J. J. Groen, Ethica en ethologie. Spinoza's leer der affecten en de moderne
psychobiologie (M 29), Leiden, 1972; idem, "Spinoza: Philosopher and Prophet" (J. G. van
der Bend, ed., Spinoza on Knowing, Being & Freedom 69-81); idem, Spinoza als voorloper
der moderne psychobiologie en psychosomatische geneeskunde" {Wijsgerig perspectief op
Maatschappij en Wetenschap 18 (1977-78), 114-132); idem, "Spinoza's theory of affects and
modern psychobiology" (J. Wetlesen, ed., Spinoza's Philosophy of Man. Proceedings of the
Scandinavian Spinoza Symposium 1977, Oslo, 1978, 97-118).
21. J. J. Boasson, Ratio en Beatitudo in Spinoza's wijsbegeerte (M 19), Leiden, 1963.
22. H. S. Frenkel, De noodwendigheid van het Spinozisme (M 22), Leiden, 1965.
23. H. G. Hubbeling, Logica en ervaring in Spinoza 's en Ruusbroecs mystiek (M 31), Leiden,
1973; idem, "Logic and experience in Spinoza's mysticism," in J. G. van den Bend, Spinoza
on Knowing Being and Freedom 126-143); idem, "ΊΊκ· logical and experiential roots of
Spinoza's mysticism - an answer to Jon Wetlesen," in I lessing ( 1978), 323-329; J. Wetlesen,
"Body awareness as a gateway to eternity: a note on the mysticism of Spinoza and its
affinity to Buddhist meditation," in Hessing (1978), 479-494.
24. H. de Dijn, De epistemologie van Spinoza, Diss., Leuven, 1971; idem, "Spinoza's
geometrische methode van denken," Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 35 (1973), 707-765; idem,
"Historical Remarks on Spinoza's Theory of Definition," Spinoza on Knowing Being and
Freedom, 41-50; Methode en waarheid bij Spinoza (M 35), loeiden, 1975; idem, "Opnieuw
over de geometrische methode bij Spinoza," Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor
Wijsbegeerte 70 (1978), 18-28.
25. H. G. Hubbeling, "La méthode axiomatique de Spinoza et la définition du concept de
Dieu," Raison présente 43 (1977), 25-36; idem, "llic development of Spinoza's axiomatic
(geometrie) method. The reconstructed geometric proof of the second letter of Spinoza's
correspondence and its relation to earlier and later versions," Revue internationale de
philosophie 31 (1977), 53-68; idem, "Spinoza's axiomatische methode en zijn definitie van
God," Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 70 (1978), 18-28.
26. "Axioms in Spinoza's Science and Philosophy of Science," Studia Spinozana 2 (1986),
171-195. Cf. further: W. N. A. Klever, "Spinoza's methodebegrip" Algemeen Nederlands
Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 74 (1982), 28-49); idem, De methodologische functie van de
Godsidee (M 48), Leiden, 1985.
27. H. de Dijn, "De God van Spinoza is geen persoonlijke God," Algemeen Nederlands
Tijdschrist voor Wijsbegeerte. 70 (1978), 47-51; II. G. Hubbeling, "Heeft de God van
Spinoza (zelf) bewustzijn?" ibid., 70 (1978), 38-46.
 Spinozism in the Netherlands 393

28. C. de Deugd, The Significance of Spinoza's First Kind of Knowledge, Diss., Assen, 1966.
29. F. Akkerman, Spinoza's tekort aan woorden. Humanistische aspecten van zijn
schrijverschap (M 36), Leiden, 1977; idem, "Le caractère rhétorique du Traité théologico
politique" in Spinoza entre Lumière et Romantisme, Les Cahiers de Fontenay, 36-38, (1985),
381-190.
30. H. J. Siebrand, Logica, rationaliteit en intuïtie. Methodologische perspektieven op de
Ethica Spinozae, M. A. Thesis, Groningen, 1980; idem, O n the early Reception of Spinoza's
Tractatus theologico-politicus in the Context of Cartésianisme in C. de Deugd, ed., Spinoza's
Political and Theological Thought. International Symposium under the Auspices of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Commemorating the 350th Anniversary
of the Birth of Spinoza, Amsterdam 24-27 November 1982, Amsterdam, 1984, 214-225.
Siebrand is writing a dissertation on the early reception of Spinoza's philosophy in the
Netherlands.
31. T. F. Zweerman, Spinoza's inleiding tot de filosofie. Fen vertaling en structuuranalyse
van de inleiding der Tractatus de inteüectus emendaiione; benevens een commentaar bij deze
tekst, Diss. Leuven, 1983; idem, "Op de drempel. Aantekeningen bij de aanhef van
Spinoza's Vertoog over de zuivering van het verstand," Wijsgerig Perspectief op Maatschappij
en Wetenschap 17 (1976/778), 133-150). Zweerman also discussed French structuralism
in its relation to Spinoza: Spinoza en de hedendaagse kritiek op het humanisme als ideologie,
(M 34), Leiden, 1975.
32. J. Α. M. Meerloo, spinoza en het probleem der communicatie (M 28), Leiden 1972.
33. H. G. Hubbeling, "Spinoza comme précurseur du reconstructivisme logique dans son
livre sur Descartes," Studia Leibnitiana 12( 1980), 88-95. See also the works mentioned in
note 13.
34. C. L. Thijssen-Schoute, Lodewijk Meyer en diens verhouding tot Descartes en Spinoza
(M 11), Leiden, 1954; idem, Nederlands cartésianisme, Amsterdam 1954, 380-398, 419-426.
35. F. Akkerman and H. G. Hubbeling, "Iïic Preface to Spinoza's Posthumous Works,
1677, and its author Jarig Jelles. (c. 1619/20-1683);" I Jas 6 (1979), 103-173. H. G.
Hubbeling, "Zur frühen Spinozarezeption in den Niederlanden," in K. Gründer and W.
Schmidt-Biggemann, Spinoza in der Frühzeit seiner religiösen Wirkung. Wolfenbütteler Studien
zur Aufklarung, XII, 149-180 (on Jelles: 158-162).
36. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 152-155; H. Vandenbosschc, Spinozisme en kritiek bij Koerbagh,
Brussels, 1974; idem, Adnaan Koerbagh en Spinoza (M 39), Leiden 1978; idem, "Le
spinozisme d'Adriaan Koerbagh:une premiere analyse" Bulletin de l'Association des Amis
de Spinoza 1 (1979), 15-36.
37. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 155-158.
38. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 162-165; idem, "Philopater. A Dutch Materialistic Interpretation
of Spinoza in the Seventeenth Century," in Giancotti (1985), 489-514.
39. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 167-168; cf. also II. Vandebossche, Frederik van Leenhof,
Brussels, 1974.
40. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 169-171.
41. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 171-173. J. Goosscns, Bayle en Spinoza (M 17), Leiden, 1960.
42. H. G. Hubbeling, o.e., 173-175. M. J. Pctry, Nieuwentijt's criticism of Spinoza (M 40),
Leiden, 1979.
43. J. V. Meininger and G. van Suchtclcn, Liever met wercken, als met woorden. De
levensreis van doctor Francisais Van den Enden. Leermeester van Spinoza, complotteur tegen
Lodewijk de Veertiende, Weesp, 1980; 1'. Akkerman, Spinoza's tekort aan woorden.
Humanistische apecten van zijn schrijverschap (M 36), leiden, 1977, 9.
44. J. J. von Schmid, Coornhert en Spinoza (M 14), Leiden, 1956.
45. G. C. van Niftrik, Spinoza en de sectariers van zijn tijd (M 18), Leiden, 1962.
394 H. G. HUBBKLING

46. H. G. Hubbeling, "Johannes Colerus, Verteidiger der christlichen ^fohrheit und

ehrlicher Bekämpfer Spinozas," G. Kurtz, ed., Düsseldorf in der deutschen Geistesgeschichte
(1750-1850), Dusseldorf, 1984, 67-78.
47. H. G. Hubbeling, "The Understanding of Nature in Renaissance Philosophy, Leibniz
and Spinoza," in A. Heinekamp, ed., Leibniz et la Renaissance. Colloque à Domaine de
Seillac (France), 17-21 juin 1981, Wiesbaden, 1983, 210-220.
48. H. W. Blom, Spinoza en De la Court (M42), leiden, 1981.
49. H. J. Siebrand, "Nieuhoff et la réforme romantique du spinozisme, in Spinoza entre
Lumière et Romantisme, 327-338; idem, "Tussen stelkunst en levenskunst. Bernard Nieuhoff
over het Spinozisme," Bulletin 13 (1984), 11-15.
50. K. Hammacher, Spinoza und die Frage nach der Unsterblichkeit (M 43), Leiden, 1981.
51. R. van Brakell Buys, De wijsheid van Spinoza en de schoonheid der Tachtigers (M 16),
Leiden, 1959; R. Henrard, De spinozistische achtergrond van de Beweging van tachtig (M
32), Leiden, 1974 idem, Wijsheidsgestalten in dichterwixwd. Onderzoek naar de invloed van
Spinoza op de Nederlandse literatuur, Assen, 1977.
52. W. G. van der Tak, Spinozistische gedachten in Goethes Faust (M 9), Leiden, 1950;
Th.C. van Stockum, Goethe en Spinoza (M 13), Leiden, 1956.
53. C. de Deugd, Wordsworth en Spinoza (M 25), Leiden, 1969.
54. M. Gysens-Gosselin, Hegel en Spinoza (M 27), Leiden 1971; W. Ν. A. Klever,
Dialektiek contra axiomatiek. Een confrontatie tussen Spinoza en Hegel onder methodologisch
opzicht (M 33), Leiden, 1974; IL C. Lucas, Spinoza in Hegels Logik (M 45), Leiden, 1982.
55. For Marx's own reception of Spinoza, sec Γ. K. Schnidcr, Substanz und Begriff. Zur
Spinoza-Rezeption Marxens (M 47), Leiden, 1985.
56. T. de Vries, Baruch de Spinoza in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Reinbek bei
Hamburg, 1970 (reprints in 1981 and 1983); idem, Spinoza, beeldenstormer en wereldbouwer,
Amsterdam 1972 (reprint 1976).
57. P. Steenbakkers, Over kennis en ideologie bij Louis Althusser. Een materialistische
kritiek, Groningen, 1982.
58. H. G. Hubbeling, "Calvinistisch Spiinozismc: J. II. Scholten," Bzzlletin 13 (1984), 16-
19,23; idem, "Synthetisch modernisme: J. II. Schollen als wijsgeer en theoloog," Nederlands
Theologisch Tijdschrift 16 (1961), 107-142.
59. G. van Suchtelen, "Le spinozisme de Jan van Vloten ou le romantisme d'un penseur
naturaliste" Spinoza entre Lumière et Romantisme, 339-348; idem, Τ let Spinozisme van Jan
van Vloten. De romantische aard van een naturalist," Bulletin 13 (1984), 20-23.
60. W. G. van der Tak, "Willem Meijer, de vrijdenkcr-spinozist," Bzzlletin 13 (1984), 33-35.
61. See also C. Bouman, Het zondebergip bij Spinoza en Scholten. Een vergelijking, Thesis,
Utrecht, 1982.
62. A. de Lange, /. H. Gunning jr. en het Spinoza-standbeeld (M 44), Leiden, 1982.
63. F. Akkerman, Studies in the Posthumous Works of Spinoza, Groningen, 1980; idem,
"J. H. Glazemaker, an early translator of Spinoza," Spinoza's political and theological thought,
23-29.
64. A. J. Klijnsmit, Spinoza and Grammatical Tradition (M 49), Leiden, 1986; idem,
"Spinoza over taal," Studia Rosenthalaiana 19 (1985), 1-38.
65. H. G. Hubbeling, Spinoza, Freiburg/Munchcn, 1978, 61.
66. In a paper that is not yet published.
67. J. J. Groen, "Spinoza: Philosopher and Prophet," Spinoza on Knowing Geing and
Freedom, 69-81.
 Proper Name Index

References to philosophical or religious movements bearing the name of

an individual, e.g., Cartesianism, Christianity, etc., are listed with those to the
individual after whom they are named.

Akkerman, F., 257, 304, 384, 387, Descartes, Cartesianism, 2, 8, 11, 16-20,
389-394 23, 26-29, 32, 37, 38, 48, 52, 59-64,
Alexandre le Grand, 299 66, 69, 75, 76, 77-79, 104-111,113,
Alquié, F., 27, 147, 155, 177, 184, 113-117, 119-123, 124, 127, 128,
188-190 131, 132, 134, 176-182, 184-190,
Aristotle, Aristotelianism, 21, 24-28, 45, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196-199, 206,
46, 48, 51, 59, 60, 62, 76, 79, 84, 208, 222, 240, 246, 348, 361, 369,
86, 94, 164, 215 373, 384, 385, 387, 388, 390, 391,
Averroes, 21, 26, 29, 94 393

Bacon, E, 131-133, 307 Einstein, Α., 147, 148, 151, 152, 155
Balibar, R, 58, 77-81, 204, 208, 305, Epicure 59
325,326 Euclid 386
Bennett, J., 1, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 30, 39-52,
53, 76, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92, 95, Fichte, J. G., 359-363, 365-367, 370,
96-98, 101, 104, 106, 107, 112, 372
113, 114, 121, 123, 124, 172, Freud, S., 173, 209, 211-213, 218, 385,
209-211, 216, 220, 237, 238, 216, 386
271, 285, 286
Bodin, J., 349, 356 Galileo 30, 62, 129, 133
Boreel, Α., 347-351, 353, 355-357 Gebhardt, C, 26, 113, 285, 299, 357,
Boyle, R., 15, 60, 64, 77, 124, 129-134, 384, 390, 391
285, 287, 349, 356, 357 Goodman, N., 283, 287, 288
Gregory of Rimini, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28,
Carp, J., 381, 382 29,31
Charron, P., 348, 350, 357 Gueroult, M., 3, 4, 16, 24, 25, 27, 30,
Christ (Jesus), Christianity, 157, 169, 32-35, 37, 38, 65, 68, 75, 76, 77,
240, 307, 347-353, 355, 357, 382, 87, 92, 106, 110, 111, 143, 375,
385,390 386
Christina, Queen, 347, 350
Condé, Prince de, 354, 355, 357 Hampshire, S., 209, 271
Crescas, H., 20-22, 26-29 Harris, Ε., 101, 285, 359, 373, 376, 379,
Curley, E., 3, 9, 11, 13-16, 24-26, 30, 380, 385, 391
35-37, 50, 53-55, 92, 93, 104, 108, Hegel, G. W E, Hegelian, 29, 162, 166,
112, 127, 131, 133-134, 160, 190, 204, 274, 282, 286-288, 294, 298,
194, 195, 213, 237 327-330, 332-335, 338-342,
344-346, 354, 359, 361, 364, 365,
Da Costa (Acosta), U., 94, 95, 299, 351, 369-371, 373-381, 384, 389, 394
357 Heidegger, M., 153
De Dijn, H., 147, 386, 392 Hobbes, T., Hobbesian, 90, 105, 155,
Deleuze, G., 76, 286, 287, 298 196, 203, 207, 227, 249, 256, 258,
Démocrite, 59 261, 266-270, 286-288, 291,
Den Uyl, D., 266, 271, 275-278, 286, 294-298, 307, 325, 344, 345, 347,
287 348, 350, 351, 357, 385, 386, 392
396 Proper Name Index

Hume, D., 52, 86, 216, 360 Oldenburg, Η., 38, 60-64, 77, 79, 129,
Jaspers, K., 129 132, 133, 277, 285, 287, 347-350,
Jefferson, T., 294, 295 353, 355, 356, 362
Jelles, J., 124, 387, 388, 393
John of Bassols, 22 Paine, T., 354, 358
Parkinson, G. H. R., 39, 286
Kant, L, Kantian, 2, 69, 72, 113, 115, Parmenides, 24, 25, 91, 162
216, 220, 294, 309, 333, 359-362, Pascal, B., 213
368, 370, 374 Plato, Platonism, 11, 15, 45, 51, 82, 91,
Kline, G., 16, 24, 25, 30, 31, 373, 380 129, 159, 160, 164, 165, 291, 368,
Kolakowski , L., 356 370

Lazzeri, C, 267, 269, 270 Renan, E., 147, 152, 155

Leibniz, G. W. E, 11, 14, 15, 27, 30, 32, Rousseau, J.-J., 204, 286-288, 294, 342,
35, 63, 64, 78, 86, 116, 118, 120, 344, 345
122, 123, 124, 165, 166, 368, 389, Russell, Β., 91, 94, 104, 150, 151, 153,
390, 393 155, 285
Locke, J., 8, 51, 86, 106, 360, 361, 369
Lucas, J.-M., 347, 354, 380, 390, 394 Sacksteder, W, 271, 273, 274, 276-278,
Lucrèce, 59 285
Schelling, E W. J., 359, 361-370
Macherey, P., 29, 74, 76, 286, 298, 327, Serrarius, Ρ, 349, 350
373-380 Strauss, L., 325, 385
Machiavelli, N., 288, 301, 350, 357, 385
Maimonides, 26, 45 Thomas (Aquinas), Thomism, 26, 75,
Malebranche, Ν., 32, 37, 165 294, 357, 358, 380
Marx, Κ., Marxist, 273, 274, 282, 285, Tfcchimhaus, W E., 23, 27, 29, 30,
288, 330, 378, 380, 381, 394 63-65, 67, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80,
Matheron, Α., 86, 190, 258, 271-278, 86, 124, 240, 252
285-287, 292, 298-300, 305,
324-326 Van den Enden, Ε, 388, 393
McShea, R., 271, 274, 284, 285 Van Suchtelen, G., 257, 382, 391, 393,
Menasseh ben Israel, 349, 350 394
Meyer, L., 18, 20, 27, 29, 34, 38, 381, Whitehead, A Ν., 384, 391
387, 389, 393 Wittgenstein, L., 74, 75, 121, 129, 134,
Mohammed, Mohammedan, 347, 348, 385
350, 355, 382
Moses, 157, 169, 325, 347, 348, 350-353, Wolf, Α., 15, 16, 24, 30, 356, 358, 391
355 Wolfson, Η. Α., 1, 2, 11-13, 16, 20-23,
26-29, 32, 37, 86, 94
Naudé, G., 348, 350, 357
Negri, Α., 65, 76, 269, 286-294, 297-300, Zac, S., 271, 273, 274, 285
325, 385, 392 Zeno 18-20, 26, 27, 127, 128
Nietzsche, F., 153, 155, 166, 173, 203
 Subject Index

English and French terms are indexed together (along with the occasional
Latin or Greek term), with the English term given priority and the French
equivalent given in parentheses, in cases where both an English term and a
French equivalent rate an index entry.

(the) Absolute, 360, 364-368, 370 body (corps), 1, 15, 19, 25, 28, 29, 43,
action (activité), 2, 9, 11, 41, 43, 44, 47-50, 54, 55, 58-61, 63-67, 74, 76,
47-49, 51, 53, 58, 59, 61, 70, 71, 77, 79-81, 82-86, 88-93, 96-100,
75, 83, 92, 93, 94, 100, 102, 104, 104, 111, 121-123, 125, 127, 131,
107, 110, 114, 117, 118, 125, 127, 132, 141, 144, 146, 148-150, 154,
134, 137, 140-142, 147, 148, 150, 162, 163, 165-167, 170, 171, 173,
151, 153, 155, 161, 176-179, 174, 178-185, 188, 189, 191, 192,
182-184, 186-189, 192-194, 196- 195, 196, 200, 202, 203, 206-208,
207, 211, 217, 219, 223, 225-230, 212, 214-216, 218, 219, 222,
232, 234-236, 238, 239-244, 246, 225-227, 237, 238, 244-251, 271,
247, 249-253, 263, 276, 277, 279, 273, 284, 285, 302, 306, 307,
288, 290, 291, 293, 298, 302, 303, 310-324, 326, 334, 360, 363, 365,
310-313, 316, 318, 320, 326, 332, 368-371, 385, 390, 392
359, 361-363, 370, 371, 373, 377
affect, 49, 52, 58, 59, 66, 83, 102, 117, cause, 6, 14, 15, 18, 23, 32, 40-56, 58-
152, 161, 162, 169-171, 176-178, 67, 69-76, 77-79, 82, 86, 87, 88,
182-189, 191-194, 201, 203, 209- 91, 95, 102, 107, 111, 114-118,
213, 216-220, 227, 235, 236, 242, 120, 121, 128, 131-133, 136-140,
245-252, 256, 257, 269, 284, 310, 142-146, 159-168, 170, 172-175,
311, 318-321, 324, 326, 329, 330, 176, 177, 180-183, 185, 186, 188,
332, 338, 343-346, 374, 392 189, 191, 196-200, 205-207,
affect actif, affects-actions, 176-178, 211-214, 216, 217, 223, 225, 235-
182, 186, 188, 191, 247 237, 239-244, 246, 247, 249-252,
affects-passions, 247, 249, 251 263, 264, 268, 276-278, 280, 304,
anthropomorphiser, 299, 313 311, 312, 314, 316-321, 324, 325,
apatheia, 180 335, 332, 334, 335, 337-339, 346,
appetite, appetitus, 41, 47-50, 52, 55, 345, 353, 362, 367, 369, 371
100, 200, 343 causa sui, 71, 137, 140, 366
atomisme, 60 cause adéquate, 176,244,246,247,
attribute (attribut), 1-16, 23-26, 29-31, 249, 311, 316, 318, 320, 321,
32, 34-38, 42, 47, 51, 53, 54, 63, 325
65-76, 77-81, 87-90, 97-99, 101, causes intérieures, 61, 196
105, 106, 109, 110, 118, 119, 126, external cause (cause extérieure),
127, 140-146, 148, 159-165, 170, 14, 15, 115, 137, 177, 183,
172-174, 185, 208, 211, 216, 196, 206, 211-214, 217, 235,
240-243, 245, 250, 283, 290, 310, 239, 241, 242, 244-247
311, 322, 363-368, 370, 371, 375, final cause (cause finale), 40-45,
379 47, 48, 51, 59, 62, 65, 77-79,
autonomie, 68, 239, 240, 322, 323 246, 313, 328, 330, 377
immanent cause (cause
béatitude, 242, 243, 324, 325 immanente), 69, 70, 160, 244
blame, 51, 238 proximate cause, 86, 87, 136-140,
142-144, 371
398 Subject Index

changeable things, 138, 139 dialectic, 359, 370, 378

chose singulière, 62-67, 69, 71-74, 182, domination, 204, 245, 251, 263, 265,
311, 318, 319, 322, 325, 377 267, 286, 298, 307, 312, 313, 318,
clear and distinct perception, 113, 115, 320
117, 122 droit, see law
community (communauté), 127, 258, dualisme, 58, 59, 70
262, 271, 273, 274, 276, 283, 284, duration, 18, 82-85, 87-92, 94, 98-100,
289, 312, 313, 315, 318, 323, 328, 163, 164, 170, 171, 174, 175
333, 344, 352, 353
conatus, 40, 48, 50, 52, 56, 58, 65, 68, ego, 171, 254, 274, 286, 313, 359-363,
73, 89, 96, 170, 171, 175, 183, 184, 365, 368, 370
196, 200-203, 207, 212, 216, emotion, 52, 93, 117, 126, 150-152, 154,
247-250, 256, 268, 269, 273, 276, 158, 172, 174, 191, 192, 194, 195,
278, 282, 284, 287, 290, 294, 210, 211, 215, 282
306-308, 311-313, 321, 324, 329, émotion intérieure, 176-179, 180,
335, 345, 368, 377 181, 184, 188, 189, 191
contingency, 42, 51, 120, 202, 206, 281, empirical self, 360
295, 296, 330, 335 end, 20, 21, 27, 29, 37, 39-43, 45-47,
contract (contrat), 227, 258-263, 266- 49-51, 78, 79, 82-84, 91, 94, 99,
269, 272, 273, 343, 352 100, 117, 123, 131, 133, 137, 151,
convenire, 103, 132, 260-262, 274 153, 163, 166, 170, 172, 194, 205,
crainte, 181, 264, 299, 301, 304, 315, 212, 215, 216, 227, 229, 231, 283,
346 288, 289, 293, 2%, 350, 362, 371,
creation, 45, 58, 61-63, 69, 75, 79, 162, 374, 383, 391
282, 348, 361, 372, 388 envie, 262, 263, 265, 268
error, 104, 106-108, 110-112, 113, 114,
death, 82-84, 92, 95, 99, 154, 171, 191, 116, 117, 120, 121, 140, 198, 199,
224, 226, 227, 230-232, 234-237, 201
350, 351 espoir, 264, 299, 302, 304, 315
deception, 221-224, 226-228, 230-236, esse, 72, 82, 84, 100, 105, 106, 377
238 essence, 1-6, 10-13, 15, 23, 26, 30, 32,
definition, 3-5, 7, 12, 14, 20, 21, 29, 32, 33, 37, 38, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 58,
33, 35, 36, 38, 49, 50, 62-64, 68, 60, 63-68, 70-74, 78, 80, 82, 83,
71, 75, 84-86, 90, 91, 94, 102, 104, 85-89, 91-94, 96-99, 104, 105, 110,
105, 108, 126, 127, 136-139, 142- 114, 119, 126, 136-146, 148-155,
145, 148, 159, 165, 171-174, 176- 159, 160, 162-168, 170-175, 180,
178, 180, 182, 212, 213, 219, 222, 182, 183, 187, 189, 193, 196, 198,
224, 229, 230, 238-243, 246, 250, 200, 203, 212, 216, 217, 216, 225,
253, 265, 271, 273, 275, 276, 283, 237, 240-250, 253, 268, 283, 298,
314, 334-337, 342, 355, 386, 392 310-312, 322, 325, 326, 328, 335,
démocratisation, 315, 316, 322, 323 339, 363-368, 371, 375, 377
dépendance, 242, 244-249, 253, 312, étendue, see extension
318-320 eternity (éternité), 3, 15, 18, 23, 26, 32,
desire (désir), 41, 48-50, 52, 55-57, 95, 40, 42, 73, 82-99, 101, 110, 116,
102, 103, 116, 117, 119, 149, 150, 119, 126, 129, 138-141, 145,
155, 176, 179, 181, 183-185, 198, 148-155, 158, 160, 162-165,
199, 203, 210, 225, 227, 229, 232, 169-175, 189, 193, 196, 204, 206,
236, 243, 263, 264, 267, 269, 272, 225, 227, 231, 232, 306, 311, 336,
323,344 337, 340, 348, 364, 365, 368, 370,
determinism (déterminisme), 222, 150, 375, 386, 390, 392
249, 252, 261, 281, 339, 389 éternité de l'âme, 189
 Subject Index 399

see also: truth, eternal 368, 371, 377, 391, 392, 394
evil, 147, 192, 195, 224-230, 235, 238 homo liber, 220-224,226-228, 230-
excommunication, 94, 347 234, 236, 243, 252
exemplar, 312-314, 316, 377
existence of God, 37, 51, 349, 360 générosité, 178, 180, 182, 187, 189
existence, 3, 9, 11, 14, 15, 32-34, 37, 38, geometry, 86, 87, 173, 213, 294, 301
51, 64-66, 72-75, 77, 87-89, 91-93, gloire, 263-265, 267-269
97-99, 108, 115, 121, 122, 126, God (Dieu), 2-4, 6, 9, 11-13, 15, 16, 17,
127, 133, 137-139, 141-146, 148, 21-24, 26, 27, 29-31, 32-35, 37,
155, 158, 162, 163, 167, 170, 171, 39-41, 45, 51, 61, 64, 67-70, 75,
173-175, 182, 188, 196, 206, 207, 76, 78-80, 83-87, 90, 91, 93, 94,
229, 239, 240, 243, 244, 247, 253, 96-98, 100, 104, 107, 109, 110,
258, 262, 274, 276, 277, 284, 295, 114-120, 122, 125, 137, 139-146,
303, 311, 320, 321, 325, 330, 331, 147-155, 158-175, 178-181, 183,
334, 335, 337, 340, 341, 343, 185-189, 193, 204, 206, 222, 225,
345-347, 349, 353, 360-362, 366, 227, 239-244, 248-250, 252-254,
367,388 260, 273, 304, 306, 311, 314, 316,
experience (expérience), 47, 69, 79, 81, 322, 324-326, 335, 336,348, 349,
83, 90, 91, 124-129, 131, 133, 134, 351-353, 355, 360, 361, 365, 366,
147, 150-156, 167-169, 217, 219, 371, 373, 375, 379, 384, 386, 388,
228, 289, 294, 298, 299, 301, 302, 390,392
317, 329, 331-333, 335-337, 359, good (bien), 25, 38, 51, 115-117, 147,
362, 363, 370, 371, 392 148, 155, 158, 178, 179, 182, 191,
experiment, 15, 124, 130-133, 215, 285 192, 194, 195, 221, 224-230,
extension (étendue), 2, 4-8, 11-13, 15, 232-235, 237-253, 277, 281, 284,
17, 23-25, 29, 30, 46, 47, 52, 59, 304, 312, 347, 383, 387, 389
60, 63-67, 71, 75, 77-81, 87, 89,
97, 104, 127, 128, 131, 140, 141, hate (haine), 177-182,184-187,192,211,
149, 161-163, 184, 185, 202, 216, 213, 216, 235, 249, 263, 264, 269
248, 250, 271-273, 290, 306, 311, history (histoire), 24, 39, 55, 86, 124,
316, 363-370, 373, 385, 388 166, 175, 197-200, 205, 207, 237,
273, 279, 280, 282, 284, 286, 288,
fades totius universi, 64, 69, 73, 161, 289, 298, 299, 301, 303-305,
272, 280, 281, 363, 368, 370 306-309, 314, 317, 318, 320, 324,
falsity, 18, 19, 25, 33, 35, 37, 41, 84, 328-331, 334, 335, 337-343, 347,
102, 103, 106-109, 111, 112, 128, 348, 355-357, 372, 374, 376, 378,
199, 212, 215, 219, 228, 237, 388 379, 382-384, 387
favor, 235, 236, 238 honest, 221, 222, 224, 226, 231, 232,
fin de l'histoire, 328, 329, 335, 341 234-236
finite mode, 88, 96, 98, 109, 140-142, humility (humilité), 178, 217, 219, 222,
144, 145, 160, 162, 163, 198, 206, 348
367, 371
formes substantielles, 59, 60 idea (idée), 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 23,
fortune, 183, 298-304, 310, 320 24, 26, 29, 30, 32, 45-48, 52, SS-
freedom (liberté), 4, 41, 43, 48, 50, 83, SS, 58-60, 62-64, 66-76, 80, 81, 83,
85, 100, 113-118, 120-122, 148, 87-112, 113-122, 127, 129, 133,
150, 158, 193, 195-199, 206, 210, 136, 137, 141-146, 148-150, 152,
213, 214, 220, 221-224, 226-228, 153, 155, 159, 162-174, 176, 177,
230-236, 238, 253, 266, 282, 286, 179, 182-191, 193, 194, 196-207,
307, 312, 313, 316, 318, 320, 323, 211-214, 216, 217, 219, 225, 229,
324, 331, 338, 339, 352, 355, 361, 232, 235, 245-250, 253, 274, 283,
400 Subject Index

285, 287, 297, 300-302, 306, 307, infinite mode, 11, 15, 87, 93, 109,
309, 310, 312, 317-320, 325, 329, 140, 142, 144, 145, 160, 161,
332, 334, 336, 338-341, 344, 345, 163, 164, 174, 366, 368, 369,
347, 350, 354-356, 360-366, 371
368-370, 381, 384, 385, 389, 391, intellect, 1-7, 9-15, 16-18, 26, 29, 62, 80,
adequate ideas (idée adéquate), 83, 85, 90, 92-94, 97, 98, 107, 109,
60, 63, 71, 72, 76, 92, 93, 99, 100, 113, 114, 116-120, 122, 127-129,
129, 148, 176, 183-185, 187, 190, 133, 134, 136, 139-141, 143, 146,
199, 202, 205, 206, 225, 232, 241, 150, 151, 155, 158, 162, 164, 165,
246, 247, 250, 252, 309, 319 170, 171, 173, 174, 183, 220,
inadequate idea, 100,196-198,200, 240-243, 248-251, 285, 307-309,
201, 203, 204, 206, 207 318, 320, 360, 365, 366, 373, 374,
idealism, 5, 359, 361, 368-372, 382 393
ignorance, 26, 50, 69, 111, 112, 115, infinite intellect, 2, 3,11-13,83,93,
120, 246, 303, 336 97, 98, 116, 119, 120, 122,
image, 18, 19, 22, 26, 27, 48, 55, 58, 141, 143, 164, 165, 170, 171,
60-62, 69, 70, 83, 84, 87, 90, 91, 173, 174, 366
99, 103, 106, 109, 111, 121, 122, intolérance, 263, 267, 269
124, 136, 146, 169, 173, 177, 180, intuitive knowledge, intuitive science
182-187, 191-193, 198, 199, 227, (science intuitive), 83, 100, 136, 141,
238, 269, 247, 249, 293, 300, 309- 143-146, 148-156, 158, 159, 168,
311, 318-320, 324, 326, 371, 374, 172, 183, 188, 215, 242, 243, 250,
379 311, 322, 323, 371, 388
immanent, 140, 152, 154, 158-161, irrationalité, 73, 298
167-171, 201, 202, 205, 294, 295,
323, 330, 361, 365, 370 Jews, Judaism, 157, 172, 289, 307, 342,
imitation des sentiments, 258, 261-264, 349, 350, 352, 353, 382
266-269 joy (joie), 83, 94, 117, 122, 140,
immortality, 94, 95, 101, 140, 154, 150-153, 169, 173, 176-182,
169-171, 174, 368, 384, 389 184-188, 191-193, 201, 211, 219,
imperium, 259, 265, 296, 315, 333 235, 238, 262, 263, 268, 301
indépendance, 61, 239-247, 252, 253 judgement, 107, 108, 136, 362, 370
26flgä§öon, 235, 236, 238, 264, 265, jus, 259, 286, 344
individuality (individualité), 45, 58, 59,
64, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 86-89, knowledge (connaissance), 3, 14, 20, 23,
91-93, 102, 105, 106, 120, 125, 26, 27, 58, 60, 65, 67-69, 71, 72,
139, 151, 152, 157, 158, 160, 161, 78, 83, 88, 90-93, 99, 100, 107,
164-166, 168, 169, 171, 175, 193, 113-117, 120-123, 125, 127, 134,
196-208, 225, 234, 235-237, 252, 136-141, 143-146, 147-154, 156,
271-285, 294, 311, 313, 314, 359, 157-160, 162, 165-174, 179-181,
367, 368, 371 183-188, 192, 193, 196-198, 206,
infinite (infini), 1-4, 6, 9, 11-15, 16-31, 215, 222, 225, 227, 234, 241-243,
32, 34, 35, 41, 60, 64-67, 69, 74, 245-253, 276, 278, 280, 284, 285,
75, 77-81, 83, 87, 88, 90, 93, 97, 287, 288, 292, 299, 306, 308-311,
98, 104, 109, 110, 114-116, 317, 318, 320, 322-325, 330,
118-120, 122, 128, 131-134, 137, 332-334, 339, 355, 359-362, 365,
140-146, 151, 153, 154, 156, 160- 366, 369-371, 386-388, 391, 392
165, 170, 171, 173, 174, 193, 204, adequate knowledge (connaissance
227, 272, 280, 295, 311, 341, 361, adéquate), 23, 26, 67, 120, 136,
364-371, 374, 375, 379 139, 145, 148, 149, 159, 186,
infini en son genre, 70 246-250, 331, 333, 338, 365
 Subject Index 401

kind of knowledge (genre de matter, 5-6, 13, 17, 30, 31, 34, 36, 115,
connaissance), 58, 83, 90, 92, 99, 121, 122, 125, 127, 128, 131-133,
120, 136, 138, 139, 143-146, 141, 146, 271, 275, 292, 368, 373,
148, 149, 151, 157-160, 385, 386
165-174, 183, 184, 187, 188, mechanists, 46, 59, 133, 159-162,
193, 241, 242, 251-253, 392 164-167, 170, 172, 173, 179, 315,
323, 334
law (droit, loi), 73, 77-79, 88, 94, 157, metaphysics (métaphysiques), 5, 9, 17,
160, 161, 164, 167, 169, 173, 174, 23, 24, 26, 37, 39, 45, 51, 59, 63,
197, 258-260, 264, 268, 270, 272, 65, 70, 74, 77-81, 91, 103, 150-
273, 277, 281, 282, 286, 290, 292, 152, 157, 158, 160, 164-174, 178,
294, 295, 310, 325, 328-347, 180-182, 191, 192, 213, 216, 247,
351-353, 355, 366, 384 250, 274, 280, 282, 285-287, 289,
lois de la Nature, 62, 63, 69, 73, 290, 311, 333, 356, 359, 360, 363,
345 365, 372, 380, 384, 386, 392
lois de la pensée, 69, 73 Millenarians, 353
life (vie), 47, 82, 83, 92, 99, 100, 125, mind (esprit), 1, 2, 10, 11, 13, 23, 24,
147, 150, 153, 158, 170, 171, 174, 26, 29, 37, 38, 47, 49, 50, 53-56,
175, 200, 209-211, 218, 220, 226, 82-86, 88-94, 96-101, 102-104, 106,
227, 229, 230, 232, 235, 236, 243, 109-111, 113-123, 125-128, 134,
250-252, 266, 269, 274, 277, 136, 141, 148, 149, 153, 162, 166,
293-295, 298, 299, 302, 303, 306- 167, 169-171, 174, 181, 182, 188,
316, 320-323, 331, 342-344, 346, 193, 194, 196-208, 212, 213,
348, 350, 357, 363, 373, 381, 384, 218-220, 222, 225-227, 231, 232,
387-390 237, 242, 245-251, 262, 265, 274,
love (amour), 52, 83, 91, 94, 102, 103, 285, 294, 295, 300, 308, 310, 318,
122, 140, 148-155, 158, 162, 168, 319, 331, 333, 335, 340-348,
169, 177-181, 183-186, 188, 189, 353-357, 355, 391, 360-366,
192-195, 200, 211, 233, 235, 236, 368-371, 373, 391
242, 248, 249, 326, 348, 349 miséricorde, 263
love of God (amour de Dieu), 83, mode, 2-7, 10-15, 18, 24, 30, 37, 46, 52,
91,94,148-151,155,178-181, 59, 60, 63-74, 76, 77-80, 87-89, 93,
183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 193, 96-98, 102, 105, 106, 109, 110,
242, 349 118, 119, 121, 122, 126, 127, 136,
137, 140-142, 144-146, 152, 159-
man (homme), 39-44, 47-49, 53, 61, 75, 164, 166, 167, 169, 172, 174, 175,
82, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 177, 183, 197, 198, 202, 206-208,
98, 99, 100, 103-105, 107, 110, 228, 229, 240, 241, 244, 246-248,
112, 147-149, 155, 158, 166, 199, 252, 258, 259, 261, 277, 301, 306,
176, 177, 179, 186, 218, 227, 229, 309-312, 317, 320, 339, 344, 345,
230, 234-236, 240, 241, 243-249, 365-369, 371, 376, 377, 379
253, 269, 272, 274, 276-280, 282, model, 41, 118, 197, 228-230, 237, 238,
286, 287, 293, 294, 295, 297, 306, 271-274, 278, 279, 282, 285, 371,
312-314, 318, 320, 322, 325, 332, 373
333, 342, 344-346 morality, 147, 214, 282, 352
Marrano, 157, 169, 171, 172, 289, 296, motion and rest (mouvement et repos),
297 11, 61, 66, 75, 87-89, 93, 161, 200,
materialism, 5, 282, 287, 288, 292, 203, 226, 271, 368
295-297, 378, 380, 389, multitude, 20, 21, 25, 51, 65, 167, 259,
mathematics, 62, 63, 124, 128, 133, 197, 261, 265, 273, 290, 292, 294, 295,
301, 325, 326, 388 299, 314-316, 320, 321, 329, 373
402 Subject Index

mystic, 140, 157, 158, 160, 165, 166, 380,388

169, 172, 350, 381, 386, 392 order (ordre) 6, 7, 23, 28-30, 37, 43, 45,
53, 61-64, 67-69, 71-73, 75, 77-79,
natura naturans, 11, 14, 87, 110, 118, 83-88, 91, 93, 96, 98, 99, 117, 118,
119, 162-164, 365, 373 122, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142, 146,
natura naturata, 119, 162-164, 174, 365 149, 150, 155, 162, 166, 180, 183,
natural right, 282, 352 185, 193, 203, 210, 219, 229,
natural law, 164, 282, 294, 295 243-245, 247-251, 253, 271,
naturalisme, 332, 335, 346 273-275, 277-279, 281, 283, 284,
nature, 2, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17-19, 24, 29, 288, 302, 305, 310, 311, 314, 316,
30, 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 320, 322-324, 330, 334-337, 339,
45, 47, 49, 51, 53-55, 59-63, 69, 342, 344, 347, 348-350, 359, 369,
70, 73, 75, 77-81, 84-89, 93, 96, 370, 377, 378, 381-383, 387
98, 104, 107, 109, 110, 114, 115, ordo et connexio, 62, 70, 71
117-120, 128, 130, 133, 137, organism, 89, 156, 274, 277, 361, 363,
139-142, 144-155, 158-168, 173, 370
174, 176, 177, 179, 182, 183, 189,
194, 197, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, paix, 259, 314-316, 322-324, 331, 338,
211, 216, 223-233, 235-238, 340
239-246, 248, 249, 251, 253, 258, pantheism, 168
259, 261-264, 266, 268, 269, parallélisme, 70, 189, 247, 311
273-280, 282-285, 287, 293-296, parties de l'Univers, 61
299, 303-305, 306, 308-310, passion, 91, 100, 113, 114, 116, 117,
312-314, 317-325, 329, 332-337, 122, 124, 152, 158, 176-190,
339, 340, 342-347, 351, 352, 355, 191-195, 198, 201, 206, 208,
359-365, 368-371, 379, 393 211-214, 219, 229, 236, 242, 244,
necessity (nécessité), 5, 8, 11, 15, 24, 26, 246-249, 251, 252, 262-268, 279,
37, 40, 42, 45, 51, 63, 65, 70, 72, 284, 293, 321, 306-308, 311, 312,
73, 78, 84, 85, 87, 88, 102, 108, 314, 316, 320-323, 329, 330, 333,
110, 113-120, 122, 125-127, 130, 342, 344, 346, 371, 386
132, 137, 139-141, 143, 144-148, passions interhumaines, 263, 267,
151, 155, 160, 161, 163, 165, 167, 268
168, 171, 173, 196, 198, 200-204, passive, 58, 59, 83, 91-94, 114, 120-122,
206, 207, 215, 216, 226, 230-232, 252, 321, 373
234, 239-243, 249-251, 253, 262, pensée, see thought
277-281, 287, 288, 292, 293, 295, perfect, 6, 8, 16, 30, 32, 37, 40, 51, 62,
296, 303, 306, 308, 317, 324, 329, 68, 83, 95, 100, 114, 115, 117, 136,
330, 338, 344, 347, 352, 360, 362, 137, 140, 164, 165, 182, 228-230,
368, 369, 371, 383, 386 233, 234, 237, 238, 239, 309, 312,
nominalism, 274, 284, 293 313, 318, 365, 368, 369, 372, 375,
notions communes, 59, 74,182-184,186, 388
250, 309, 311, 313, 324 personal identity, 93, 95
peuple, 259-261, 303, 307, 315, 316,
objectivist interpretation, 2, 13 331, 342, 343
omnipotence, 17, 37, 119 peur, 300, 302, 304
ontology (ontologie), 1, 3, 4, 7, 12, 14, phenomena, 43, 45, 104, 128, 130-133,
32, 38, 58, 59, 65, 66, 72, 77, 79, 163, 196, 199, 359, 361-363
81, 98, 137, 139, 143, 149, 159, phusis, 59, 79
162, 163, 166, 167, 175, 196, 213, physique, 59, 60, 62-65, 70, 75, 76, 134,
239, 272, 274-277, 279, 287, 290, 182, 245, 249, 283, 307, 320
292, 293, 295, 317, 359, 373, 374, pity, 191, 222, 236, 263-265, 268, 269
 Subject Index 403

politics, 58, 76, 167, 190, 246, 253, religion, 37, 147, 157, 158, 169, 172,
258-261, 264, 266, 270, 277, 279, 188, 293, 306, 307, 324, 341,
282-285, 287, 289, 290, 292, 306- 347-350, 352, 354, 355
309, 314-316, 321-326, 328-339, repentance, 222
341, 344, 346, 347, 347, 382, 392 res cogitans, 13, 102, 373
positivism, 129, 294, 295 res extensa, 13, 59, 373
power, 17, 21, 22, 27, 48, 110, 113, 114, revelation, 165, 169, 349
117-119, 122, 126, 127, 130, ruse de la raison, 328, 329, 334, 342,
150-152, 161, 163, 169, 196, 202, 343
203, 205-207, 212, 214-219, 225,
228, 232, 236, 266, 273, 276, 279, sadness (tristesse), 176, 179-182, 184-
280, 282, 284, 287, 290, 292, 294, 189, 192-194, 211-217, 219, 238
295, 351, 352, 354 salvation, 83, 147, 157, 158, 160, 165,
potentia intelligendi, 250 166, 168-172, 371
puissance d'agir (potentia agendi), sécularisation, 316
74, 177, 182, 247, 248, 250, sécurité, 241, 265, 304, 314-316,
268,377 322-324, 336
puissance divine, 70, 72, 73 self-determination, 197, 202, 203, 206,
praise, 39, 236, 238 207, 222, 373, 376, 377
preservation, 48, 49, 200, 203, 207, self-preservation, 48, 200, 203, 207, 224,
223-228, 230, 232, 233, 235, 237, 227, 228, 235, 276, 278
238, 276, 278 servitude, 176, 178, 244, 248, 312-316,
progrès historique, 308, 316, 317, 322 318, 320, 321, 324, 325
psychology, 40, 48, 52, 57, 105,158, 167, shame, 232
209, 210, 215, 218, 271, 275, 277, skepticism, 113, 122
279, 280, 282, 284, 287 sociabilité, 263, 265, 268, 346
society (société), 63, 125, 153, 155, 210,
rationalism, 88, 124, 127, 129, 147, 150, 231, 258-261, 264, 266, 271-275,
151, 152, 188-190, 216, 280, 317, 278-280, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287,
319, 381, 386, 390 289, 291, 292, 294, 295, 314, 333,
rationality, 158, 159, 173, 198, 199, 215, 334, 338, 339, 342-344, 346, 349,
219 351, 357, 381-384, 386, 390
realism, 296, 361, 369, 370 société civile, 261, 315
réalisme politique, 328-331, 335, société politique, 258-261,264,266,
337, 339 283
reason (raison, ratio), 6, 17, 19, 27, 36, soul (âme), 30, 61, 63, 67, 69, 82, 114,
38, 40, 50-52, 54, 61-63, 69, 78, 116, 117, 122, 176-185, 187-189,
82, 84, 86, 90, 94, 100, 108, 109, 191, 192, 242, 247, 310, 315, 318,
113, 115, 117, 118, 122, 124-130, 319, 321, 324-326, 348, 360, 368
132, 133, 136, 137, 142, 144-146, state (état), 46-49, 52, 54, 55, 114, 117,
148-150, 154, 155, 157, 158-160, 125, 147, 150, 170, 171, 174, 191,
167-173, 176-178, 180, 182-188, 193, 250, 258, 259, 261, 263, 264,
192-194, 200, 203, 204, 216, 217, 266, 268, 269, 271-277, 279-284,
222-224, 228-236, 238, 240, 242, 286, 289-295, 303, 304, 327, 330,
243, 248, 250-253, 255, 263-266, 331, 336-342, 351, 352, 384, 385
272, 277, 293-295, 298, 299, 302, state of nature (état de nature), 258,
304, 307-325, 328-331, 333-337, 261, 264, 266, 268, 269, 275, 293,
341-344, 347, 352, 354-356, 358, 303, 344, 345, 351, 352, 355
360, 362, 363, 366, 367, 371, 374, stoicism, 113, 178, 180, 196, 245
377, 382, 391, 392 subjectivist interpretation, 2, 4, 12
404 Subject Index

substance, 1-15, 18, 21, 23,28-30, 32-38, understanding, 2, 9, 15, 17-19, 26, 27,
58-61, 63-76, 77-80, 87, 89, 105, 37, 90, 92, 109, 110, 113, 114, 116,
110, 118, 119, 122, 140, 151, 160, 118, 120, 122, 123, 126, 128, 131,
162, 163, 166, 167, 174, 179, 188, 140, 141, 149, 154, 157, 172, 174,
189, 198, 202, 206-208, 240, 241, 191-194, 197, 198, 200-202, 206,
243-245, 247, 250, 253, 272, 283, 209, 213, 225-227, 230-232, 236,
290, 292, 310, 317, 320, 325, 331, 237, 350-352, 359, 360, 362, 363,
335, 360, 361, 363-371, 373, 370, 383, 384, 387, 393
375-377, 379, 380, 385, 386
supernatural, 88, 353 vengeance, 263
superstition, 298-304, 307, 308, 325 virtue, 38, 45, 111, 113, 117, 122, 170,
171, 178, 182, 185, 190, 201, 217,
teleology (teleologie), 39, 41-48, 50-52, 219, 220, 222, 223, 228, 232, 234,
53-56, 59, 62, 78, 172, 287, 308, 236, 238, 250, 251, 253, 336, 338,
330, 339, 362, 370, 377, 378 344, 352
théocratie, 306, 307, 314
therapy, 209-212, 214, 216, 217 will, 2-4, 7, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 26, 28-30,
thought (pensée), 2-8, 11-15, 23-26, 29, 39-41, 45-47, 49, 50, 78, 82, 87-92,
30, 44-47, 51, 52, 53-56, 58, 63, 98, 99, 103, 107, 109, 110,
64, 66-69, 71, 73, 75, 77-81, 86, 113-122, 125-127, 131, 133, 134,
87, 89, 91, 97, 101, 103-105, 109, 136-140, 142, 143, 146, 148,
110, 114, 115, 117-121, 125, 127, 150-152, 155, 157-159, 161-163,
140, 141, 151, 153, 156, 158, 162, 165, 167, 170-173, 191-193, 195,
165, 181, 185, 186, 188, 195, 196-199, 201, 205, 206, 209,
197-202, 207, 209, 211-214, 216, 212-219, 221, 225-238, 274, 277,
217, 234, 248-250, 274, 275, 277, 279, 283-285, 287, 288, 291, 292,
282, 286-295, 304, 306, 310, 311, 294, 295, 347-349, 356, 357, 367,
313, 319, 325, 329-331, 333, 368, 378, 379, 381, 384-386, 391
337-339, 341, 356, 362-371, 378 wisdom, 116, 122, 147, 148, 152, 165
cogitatio, 102, 104-106, 109, 110,
129
transcendental ego, 359-361, 365
transcendental subject, 360, 361
truth (vérité), 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 19, 22,
27, 29, 33, 34, 37, 38, 82, 85, 88, 91, 94,
97-99, 102-104, 106-120, 122, 125-131,
140, 141, 148, 149, 150, 152-154, 157,
160, 165-169, 171, 173, 180, 181, 183,
192, 197-199, 201, 209, 212, 215, 217,
218, 224, 231, 253, 287, 293-295, 307,
335, 340, 349, 350, 355, 357, 361, 379,
388, 390, 392
eternal truth (vérité éternelle), 69,
85, 91, 94, 99, 110, 129, 153