Spinoza Feat. Descartes Essay, Research Paper
Spinoza at first worked in the framework of the Cartesian philosophy, publishing in 1663 a book entitled Principles of the Philosophy of Ren? Descartes. Another early work, the posthumously published Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, contains themes that were central to Descartes? investigation of knowledge. It also contains hints of the metaphysics unfolded in the posthumously published Ethics, the capstone of Spinoza’s philosophical career.
In the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza (like Descartes) was concerned with the improvement of human knowledge, which requires that we be able to distinguish the true from the false in a reliable way. Rather than looking for some sort of further idea or property as the criterion of truth, he claimed that truth shines forth on its own: the criterion of the true idea is the true idea itself.
A method of seeking truths is most perfect when it begins with the idea of a most perfect being. The truth of the idea lies in the essence it expresses. The idea of a perfect being is a true idea, corresponding to something existing, because the essence of a perfect being implies its existence. Further, whatever follows from the idea of such a being is also true. Thus the best method will produce an order of ideas, flowing from the idea of a perfect being. To this ideational order corresponds an order of existing things.
Spinoza?s system can be understood in terms of its similarities and differences to the system of Descartes (Principles I, 51ff). Descartes? system will therefore be recapitulated. The particular object of comparison is his ontology (systematic enumeration of what exists).
The objects of Descartes? ontology are substances. The only substance properly so-called, that is, the only being that does not depend on anything else for its existence, is God. God’s existence is contained in his essence, so there is no need for anything but the essence to insure God’s existence. Substances in a relative sense are God’s creations, which depend only on God’s will to exist. In particular, substances improperly so-called do not depend on one another for their existence.
Each substance has a principal attribute, which makes it the kind of thing that it is. God has the attribute of thinking (which includes understanding and willing). Some created substances (humans and angels) also have the attribute of thinking, while others (physical objects and non-human animals) have the attribute of extension. Descartes believed that thinking and extension are mutually exclusive: no substance can have both attributes. Thus I myself am a thinking substance and my body is an extended substance. The composite of the two (the “rational animal”) is not a substance, on Descartes? view, though it was on the view of Aristotle.
Created substances, according to Descartes, of the same kind are differentiated from one another by their modes, or the ways in which they have their attributes. Thinking a series of particular thoughts, willing a series of particular acts, all go into making me a unique individual, though I am not a unique kind of thing. Similarly, extended things are differentiated by their modes: a certain size, shape, state of motion or rest.
Spinoza agreed with Descartes about substance proper; like Descartes, he believed that the essence of God includes God’s existence. But he broke with Descartes by asserting that there are no created substances. Rather, God is a being with infinitely many attributes, including thinking and extension. Each of these attributes is infinite in its own kind, so there is no limit to God’s thought and none to extension.
Difference comes in only at the level of modes. The individual thoughts that Descartes assigned to his own mind as a substance are on Spinoza?s view thoughts in the mind of God. Similarly, individual physical things are modes of God’s attribute of extension.
Spinoza?s system is supposed to follow from a few definitions and axioms. If one rejects the system (and if Spinoza?s inferences are valid), there must be a problem with the starting point. One of the interesting tasks for the student of Spinoza is to discover the sources of beliefs that are found to be objectionable.
Through Propositions 1 and 2, Descartes and Spinoza are in agreement. Substance is prior to its affections (or modes), and two substances with different attributes have nothing in common. It is with Proposition 3, that what has nothing in common cannot causally interact, that Spinoza breaks ranks with Descartes, at what was an admitted weak point in Descartes? metaphysics.
Spinoza argues for Prop. 3 on the basis of Axioms 4 and 5. The absence of a common element prevents us from understanding one kind of thing through the other. I think Descartes would have to concur with this claim. We do not understand bodies through minds or minds through bodies. Actually, we would only understand both through God’s mind, but we have no access to the mind of God.
If we do not know bodily events through minds, if we could never tell merely by consideration of an act of will which bodily motion would follow it, how can we know that the two are connected? Only by noticing that one does in fact follow the other, in a systematic way. But this is not enough to establish a causal connection, as Spinoza recognized in the Emendation of the Intellect. In order to know that a connection exists, one must discover that in the cause which brings about the effect. Where two things have nothing in common, this is impossible.
The next move against Descartes? scheme is the claim in Proposition 5 that no two substances can share an attribute. This means that if there is a mental substance, it is unique, and the same for extended substances (and in general any other kind of substance). Descartes held that there can be a real difference between substances due to the fact that we can conceive one clearly and distinctly without the other (Principles I, 60). This might be thought to work for different kinds of substance (though Spinoza will deny this too), but how can it work for the same kind of substance? I can conceive of another mind, for example, by conceiving of its principal attribute, thinking. But this is not enough to distinguish it from any other thinking thing. So it must be the modes of thinking which distinguish them.
Here Spinoza plays his trump card. To consider a substance as a substance we must conceive it through itself (Definition 3). But then we do not conceive it through its modes, for by Definition 5, a mode is something other than the substance itself. So (to use Descartes? language against him) no modal distinction can amount to a real distinction. (One must ask, however, whether Definition 5 has stacked the deck against Descartes!)
There remains the possibility of more than one substance, and this is the next target. In Proposition 6, Spinoza claims that production of one substance by another (creation) is not possible. The reason is the created substance would have to be conceived through the creating substance, which is contrary to the meaning of ’substance.’
Proposition 7 establishes the relation between substance and existence: the nature of substance includes its existence. This is the germ of the ontological argument, though it differs in form from both Anselm?s and Descartes? versions. The claim here is that because nothing else can produce substance, substance is self-produced, and hence that it exists from its very nature. But this is a questionable argument, for it does not consider the question why substance has to be produced at all.
We have reached the point where Spinoza claims to have shown that substance exists necessarily, but it is still an open question how many substances there are. Spinoza’s answer will be that there is only one, but to arrive at this conclusion, he had to make some further claims about attributes.
The first claim is that substances are infinite, in the sense that they are not limited by anything of their own kind. A thinking substance is the only thinking substance, and hence it is not limited by any other thinking substance. The same holds for extended substance. There is nothing greater than the cosmos (whole extended universe), since there is only one extended thing: the cosmos itself.
After showing the unlimited character of each attribute singly, Spinoza introduces the notion of degrees of reality, corresponding to number of attributes. A substance may have more than one attribute, since each attribute is conceived through itself. A maximal substance (identified with God) would have infinitely many attributes, each one of which is infinite. It has already been argued that substance exists, but does God, maximal substance, exist?
Spinoza has several proofs that a maximal substance exists, but perhaps the most important one is from the mere possibility of a maximal substance. Its nature does not involve a contradiction, so its existence is possible. And if some other thing were able to prevent its existence, that thing would limit the maximal substance. But by definition each attribute is unlimited, so no thing of the same attribute can prevent the existence of maximal substance. Further, there can be no conflict among the different attributes, since they have nothing in common. So from the mere possibility of a maximal substance, the conclusion is drawn that it must exist.
Moreover, there is only one maximal substance. This is not surprising, given the argument for its existence. A maximal substance has all the attributes that can be had, so that if there were another one, it would have to share in these attributes, which would be a limitation and contrary to the nature of the maximal substance.
Maximal substance is also indivisible. This claim is very important to Spinoza, given his identification of maximal substance with God. The attributes are not parts of substance, and so there is no division of substance in that which constitutes its essence. It is true that the attributes themselves may exist in a way that allows division. If thinking is an attribute of substance, there may be individual thoughts which are distinct from one another. And if extension is an attribute of substance, there may be extended things (e.g. the blocks making up the wall of a tower) which are distinct and indeed are themselves divisible.
But the divisibility of the modes of substance do not mean that substance itself is divisible. For substance is conceived through itself, not through its modes or affectations. This distinction is absolutely critical to Spinoza?s thought: it is what prevents him from falling into the view that reality is homogenous. Spinoza was a monist, in that he held that only one thing (maximal substance or God) is ultimately real, but he wanted to hold at the same time that the appearance of plurality is not an illusion. To do so, he gave a place to plurality at the level of modes.
At this point we need to consider the specific question of whether God can be extended. Spinoza counted as his opponents those philosophers who argued that God is incorporeal. He granted that it would be wrong to think of God as having a body like a human being, as do the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This would be to make God finite. But this does not rule out the possibility that the infinite expanse of extended nature is the “body” of God. But perhaps the very nature of extended things precludes God from being extended.
The argument is that nothing extended can be infinite, and so extension is not suited to be an attribute of God. If there were infinite extension, it is claimed, paradoxes would arise (Galileo, for one, was aware of such paradoxes). For example, take any unit of measurement of a finite length, say an inch. Then an infinite length would consist of infinitely many inches. On the other hand, it would also have infinitely many feet, and hence be twelve times larger! Modern philosophers (following the nineteenth-century mathematician Cantor) would deny that the conclusion follows from the premises. They maintain that since there is a one-to-one correspondence between feet and inches, the number of feet and the number of inches is the same.
Spinoza’s approach was quite different. He maintained that all the argument establishes is that “infinite quantity is not measurable and cannot be made up of finite parts” (Ethics, Part I, Proposition 15, Scholium). But in that case, what about the parts we perceived extended objects to have? Spinoza again draws a distinction between how we view extension abstractly through the imagination (whence they have parts) and through the intellect (as unitary substance). This recalls the distinction made earlier, that “matter is everywhere the same, and there are no distinct parts in it except in so far as we conceive matter as modified in various ways. Then its parts are distinct, not really but only modally” ((Ethics, Part I, Proposition 15, Scholium).
Spinoza considered a number of other arguments on this topic, but we will pass over them in the interests of time. The next topic is Spinoza’s claim that everything that is or can be conceived, is in God. This is really only an elaboration of his position that God is maximal substance. Whatever exists either is God or a mode of one of God’s attributes. As mentioned above, Spinoza denies that there is a creation of other things. The notion that God has an intellect which allows the conception of an uncreated world, and a will which creates the world is denounced by Spinoza as anthropomorphic. God as rational creator is as much a myth as Jupiter or Zeus.
At the same time, Spinoza held that God is the cause of all things. Obviously this is possible only on a very specific understanding of the notion of a cause. In the primary sense, something is a cause when its nature is responsible from the existence of something. Thus because everything follows from the nature of God, God is the cause of all things (including God, for substance is self-caused). Moreover, God causes all things that are in the scope of the divine intellect, since an infinite number of things flow from an infinite substance. Later, at Proposition 35, Spinoza claims that whatever is in God’s power necessarily exists.
Since God is a cause in the sense that what exists follows from God’s essence, God can be said to be a free cause. Freedom here is understood in the sense of a lack of external constraint. God is free because there is nothing to interfere with the unfolding of the Divine essence.
This notion of freedom does not involve any notion of will or choice; indeed, Spinoza denies that God has a “will” or makes choices. To attribute will and choice to God is anthropomorphic, a projection of (alleged) human characteristics onto the divine being. In fact, will is only a mode, not an attribute of substance. In Part II, Spinoza maintains that there is nothing more to will than individual acts of volition. Thus will is not a “faculty” of God (and this holds for “intellect” as well).
It might be objected that without choice, God is not free. Because they follow necessarily from God’s essence, things cannot be otherwise than what they are, and this is a limitation of God’s power. Spinoza turns the tables on this objection, stating that if things were otherwise than what they are, they would have to be the product of a God with a different nature, in which case two Gods would be possible, and God would not be the maximal substance.
In the succeeding propositions, Spinoza discusses a number of aspects of the causality of God. What is most important is a distinction between two ways in which God is a cause. From the essence of God, some things are said by Spinoza to follow directly. In this sense, God is a “proximate” cause. But with finite existing things, essences are not sufficient for existence. The essence of an individual human being, Peter, is not such that Peter’s existence follows from it necessarily. Rather, the existence of finite things has as its cause the existence of other finite things. Nevertheless, since all things are in God, God must be considered their cause.
In general, there are two ways of thinking of God, as a being conceived through itself and as a being conceived through its affections. Considered in the first sense, God is free (in the sense noted above). But in the realm of finite things, which are only affections of God, there is only necessity. Each thing exists as it does solely by virtue of some cause which necessitates it. Nothing can determine itself to action.
Finite existence and action is determined by prior causes, to infinity. There is no first cause of finite things. If it is supposed that there is a first cause, then it would have to be of the same kind as what it causes. Then it would be limited by that thing and hence finite. But every finite thing has a cause.
Things must be as they are, so there is no contingency in the world. A contingent existence or action would be one that neither must occur of necessity nor cannot occur of necessity. But everything is either necessary or impossible. What we think is contingent (e.g. that I was born at the exact minute that I was) really depends on our ignorance of the chain of causes (Corollary to Prop. 23, Pt. II).
Part I of the Ethics concludes with a remarkable discussion of the origin of the common way in which God is conceived. Belief in God is the result of a combination of an ignorance of causes and a desire to get one’s way. When we do not know the cause of the occurrence of a favourable event, we deem it a sign of God’s favouring of us. In general, events are understood as dependent on God’s ends, and systems of worship are built up, designed to gain God’s favour. The universe is understood in terms of final causes (for example, as in Aristotle’s philosophy). Moreover, since disaster sometimes befalls the pious and fortune sometimes favours the impious, God’s real plan for the universe is deemed mysterious.