4. Two perspectives
In this chapter I will show that the perspective that came to light in the previous chapters
– from which God is prior to the modes that follow from him – must be understood to
be combined with a perspective from which t h e p a r t s a r e p r i o r t o t h e
w h o l e t h e y c o n s t i t u t e . That is to say: the t o p - d o w n perspective in the
previous chapters must be understood to be accompanied by a b o t t o m - u p
perspective. This bottom-up perspective surfaces (inter alia) in Spinoza’s important
‘parallelism thesis’. As we shall see in the next chapter, recognition of the importance of
these two perspectives in turn makes it clear how we must understand the two kinds of
adequate knowledge that Spinoza discerns: r a t i o and s c i e n t i a i n t u i t i v a .
4.1 Introduction
Spinoza has been called ‘the last of the mediaevals’1 – a title that is understandable
given the priority that Spinoza allots the divine res. Even though Spinoza’s God is
evidently very different from the scholastic conception of God, there is a clear
traditional element recognizable his philosophy: the top-down direction of God’s
power. The top-down perspective surfaces perhaps most explicitly in the
proposition that starts off Spinoza’s creation narrative: EIp16. This Principle of
Plenitude – that was treated extensively in Chapter 2 – leaves little doubt as to the
direction proposed in it: in EIp16 Spinoza makes it clear that God qua God must
be understood to be prior to the infinite modes (and all the things that fall under
these infinite modes). Indeed, everything which can fall under an infinite intellect –
i.e. omnes res – is claimed to follow from the divine nature. The agreement with his
medieval predecessors concerning the causal priority2 of God is made explicit in the
third corollary of EIp16, where Spinoza states that ‘God is absolutely the first
Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza I, vii. The relevant passage reads thus: ‘Then there is […] the implicit
Spinoza, who lurks behind these definitions, axioms, and propositions, only occasionally revealing himself
in the scholia; his mind is crammed with traditional philosophic lore and his thought turns along the
beaten logical paths of mediaeval reasoning. Him we shall call Baruch. […] Baruch is the last of the
mediaevals’.
2
The asserted equivalence of the designations ‘follow from’ and ‘is caused by’ is argued for in Chapter 2.
1
295
cause’.3 This priority of the divine res is reiterated in various passages in part I of the
Ethics, among which the claim in EIp25 that ‘God is the efficient cause, not only of
the existence of things, but also of their essence’,4 as well as Spinoza’s description of
Natura naturans and Natura naturata in EIp29s. The assertions in this latter
scholium – that round off the creation narrative that starts with EIp16 – are
completely in line with the causal direction that surfaces in EIp16: it is from Natura
naturans that all things in nature must be understood to follow. Even though
Spinoza’s view differs considerably from the Thomistic conception of Natura
naturans,5 the causal direction he propagates is similar to the one his scholastic
predecessors foster: in Spinoza’s philosophy too, Natura naturans is staged as the
active principle from which Natura naturata follows.6 So in the Ethics (as well as in
Spinoza’s other philosophical works), God’s all-encompassing power is directed topdown. This can be rendered thus:
Natura naturans
---------------------Natura naturata
(a) God qua God
(c) God
(b) All the things that fall under an infinite intellect
(table 1)
Important as this top-down perspective may be for Spinoza’s philosophy, it is
not the only perspective that can be recognized in it. His highly original (and nonmedieval) claim that creator and creation are ontologically identical – and that the
relation from EIp16 can thus be understood to be a relation of inherence (see
EIp16c3, (I) 425 (Deum esse absolutè causam primam).
EIp25, (I) 431 (Deus non tantùm est causa efficiens rerum existentiæ, sed etiam essentiæ).
5
In the KV, Spinoza refers explicitly to the Thomists when using the term ‘Natura naturans’. KV I, Ch.
VIII, (I), 91. To be sure, Spinoza may very well have gathered this term (and the accompanying ‘Natura
naturata’) from another source. Steenbakkers, ‘Een vijandige overname’, 43-45.
6
According to Steenbakkers, there is reason to suspect that Spinoza made use of these scholastic terms
only during a relatively short span of time (1660-1663). Ibidem, 43. However, even though after EIp31
Spinoza does not employ the terms anymore in the Ethics (nor refers to the passages in which he does), the
structural characteristic that is denoted with it – i.e. the conceptual distinction between an active and an
ontologically identical passive aspect of nature – is clearly upheld in his mature philosophy.
3
4
296
Chapter 2)7 – accounts for yet another conceptual perspective in the Ethics.8 We
have seen in the previous chapters that God knows himself (also) by way of the
human mind, which is part of the infinite intellect of God. Combining these
claims, we cannot evade the conclusion that God (c) knows himself (also) by way of
the infinite intellect, that is: by way of (b). It seems that, whereas the causal
direction from the divine res to all the things that follow from it must be conceived
to be top-down, the conceptual direction can be understood to (also) be diametrically
opposed to this causal flow.9 This can be rendered tentatively in the following way:
Natura naturans
---------------------Natura naturata
(a) God qua God
(conceived cause)
(b) The infinite intellect
(conceiving effect)
(c) God
(table 2)
This table suggests that God (c) can be understood to know himself in two ways.
-
Firstly, God (c) can be understood to know himself top-down, or from the
knowledge of the cause to the knowledge of the effect, that is: from the absolute
7
The term ‘inherence’ itself does not surface often in Spinoza’s work. It can be found (in a relevant way)
only in Letter 12, where Spinoza makes it clear that ‘some things are infinite […] by the force of the cause
in which they inhere [emphasis added]’. Letter 12, (I) 205 (quaedam suâ naturâ esse infinita […]verò vi
causæ, cui inhærent). In Chapter 2 we have seen that this clause can be understood to be applicable to the
formal being of things (and by implication the objective being of things, as these are portrayed to be the very
same things, albeit ‘conceived abstractly’. Ibidem, (I) 205 (abstractè concipiuntur)). This observation in
turn is on a par with our claim in Chapter 2 that EIp16 must be understood to encompass intrinsic and
extrinsic causation.
8
And thus we need not be surprised that Harry Wolfson does not only call Spinoza ‘the last of the
mediaevals’, but also ‘the first of the moderns’. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza I, vii.
9
This is partly due to the mathematical model that Spinoza uses, a way of thinking that surfaces inter alia
in his claim in the demonstration of EIp16 that ‘this Proposition must be plain to anyone, provided he
attends to the fact that the intellect infers from the given definition of any thing a number of properties
that really do follow necessarily from it’ and the elucidation in EIp17s that ‘all things [...] always follow,
by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity to
eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles’. These claims make it clear that, even though
the causal direction – top-down – is distinctly medieval, the causal character is (early) modern. For an
interesting account of the way this early modern character of Spinoza’s thought is related to (and
radicalizes) Descartes’ mathematical perspective see: Valtteri Viljanen, Spinoza’s Geometry of Power
(Cambridge 2011), 16-20. To be sure, in the passages of EIp16 and EIp17s the bottom-up perspective is
not recognizable. The only claim I make here is that the mathematical character of the top-down cause
that surfaces in it is distinctly non-medieval, and can be understood to give way to yet another conception
of causal direction, which in turn surfaces in other propositions and scholiums (to be dealt with in
subsequent sections).
297
-
omnipotence of God qua God (a) – about whom it can be claimed that ‘the
laws of his nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all
things which can be conceived by an infinite intellect’10 – to all the things
which can be conceived by an infinite intellect (b).
Secondly, as ‘each idea […] of each singular thing that actually exists,
necessarily involves an eternal and infinite essence of God’,11 God (c) can also
be understood to know himself bottom-up, or from the knowledge of the effect
to the knowledge of the cause, that is: from the infinite intellect (b) to God qua
God (a).12
The implicit claim that the bottom-up perspective – i.e. the perspective that ‘starts
with the parts’ at level (b) – is nothing but an aspect of God’s self-knowledge sets
Spinoza apart from his medieval predecessors. It allows Spinoza to assert that an
investigation of the order of nature (b) can somehow lead to true and adequate
knowledge of (the ontologically identical) God qua God (a).13 Another way of
saying this is that, even though Spinoza claims in EIIp10s that ‘the divine nature
[…] is prior both in knowledge and in nature’,14 there nevertheless appears to be a
conceptual commitment with respect to the infinitely many individual things that
constitute (b). It is the aim of this chapter to show how Spinoza’s view of the
absolute causal and conceptual priority of God is combined with a conceptual
commitment to the whole of nature (i.e. as argued for in Chapter 2, to the object of
EI Appendix, (I) 446 (quia ipsius naturæ leges adeò amplæ fuerunt, ut sufficerent ad omnia, quæ ab aliquo
infinito intellectu concipi possunt, producenda).
11
EIIp45, (I) 481 (Unaquæque cujuscunque corporis, vel rei singularis, actu existentis, idea Dei æternam, &
infinitam essentiam necessariò involvit).
12
These are the two ways in which the (c)-variant of God can be understood to know himself. In Chapter
3 we have seen that the (a)-variant can be understood to know himself in an absolutely prior way, namely
(so to speak) from knowledge of the cause to knowledge of the cause. Indeed, it became clear that God (a) is
absolutely free from the duality that characterizes the intellect in the way we commonly understand it.
13
Indeed, however much Spinoza’s opponents (and, for that matter, many of his adherents) have claimed
that Spinoza is an atheist, the claim that God is illusory must nevertheless be understood to be absurd in
the context of Spinoza’s philosophy. To be sure, the claim that God is a person-like figure with a supreme
intellect is equally absurd in the context of Spinoza’s philosophy. So iff ‘atheism’ is defined as ‘the denial of
the realiter existence of a divine person-like figure who creates at will and who has a supreme intellect’,
then Spinoza is an atheist. For Spinoza makes it very clear that this particular conception of God is
illusory.
14
EIIp10S, (I) 455 (Nam naturam divinam […],quia tam cognitione, quàm naturâ prior est).
10
298
God’s idea), a commitment needed in the new mechanical worldview that ignited
the philosophy of thinkers such as Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza himself.
4.1.1 An idiosyncratic reading?
Consider table 2 once more:
Natura naturans
---------------------Natura naturata
(a) God qua God
(conceived cause)
(b) The infinite intellect
(conceiving effect)
(c) God
(table 2)
We have just asserted that this table expresses the way in which the bottom-up
perspective offers God a way to know himself. However, at this point it must be
noted that table 2 is not as complete as we could wish for. The rendering of table 2
accounts for the way the bottom-up perspective can be understood insofar as God
knows himself by way of the unspecified infinite intellect, that is: by way of the
infinite intellect insofar as the distinction between the formal and the objective
being of this infinite intellect is not yet made. However, in the previous chapters we
have seen that an understanding of the functioning of the intellect must incorporate
the conceptual distinction between the formal and the objective being of these
things. And hence, apparently, the bottom-up variant of God’s self-knowledge that
we are interested in must be rendered, not in the manner of table 2, but in the
following way:
Natura naturans
(a)
God qua God
(top-down)
--------------------------------------(b-i) The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
(bottom-up)
(b -ii) The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 3)
Indeed, in Chapter 2 it has become clear that by way of our intellect we conceive
singular things (i.e. modes that serve as the basis for the bottom-up perspective) in
two ways: either insofar as we conceive them as to their objective being (b-ii), or
insofar as we conceive them in to their formal being (b-i). It is this particular way of
conceiving things that we have shown to be the structural characteristic of God’s
self-knowledge insofar as he is expressed in the human mind (and indeed God’s
299
self-knowledge insofar as he is expressed in God’s idea). And hence this particular
variant of God’s self-knowledge – that entails a trichotomy of modes, their
objective being and it formal being15 – must somehow be integrated in our
rendering of the bottom-up perspective.
Table 3 evidently needs more elucidation. At least two things deserve
attention:
(I)
(II)
We are in need of closer insight into the exact relation between the formal
(b-i) and the objective (b-ii) being of singular things
We must illuminate how knowledge of the formal being of singular things
(b-i) enables our intellect to attain knowledge of God qua God (a) (i.e. how
God (c) is able to gather self-knowledge)
We will return to point (II) in a subsequent section (and in the next chapter). First,
it must be established how the levels (b-ii) and (b-i) are related. In order to provide
an answer to point (I), I will turn to a treatment of one of the central aspects of
Spinoza’s metaphysics: his so-called ‘parallelism thesis’ of EIIp7. In the next
sections it will become clear that this proposition deals precisely with the relation
between (b-ii) and (b-i) (and thus can be understood to shed further light on the
trichotomous structure of the intellect that was uncovered in Chapter 2). Indeed,
below I will argue for the claim that the famous assertion ‘the order and connection
of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things’ – on which Spinoza’s
claim that a man’s body and his mind can be conceived to be ‘one and the same
thing, but expressed in two ways’16 is based – must be understood to say the
following:
the order and connection of the objective being of things (b-ii) is the same as the order
and connection of the formal being of things (b-i).
Another way of saying this is that Spinoza’s parallelism thesis in EIIp7 can be
conceived to be yet another expression of the constructive function of the intellect that
can be discerned in the Ethics.
15
See section 2.5.3.
16
EIIp7s, (I) 451 (una, eademq́ue est res, sed duobus modis expressa).
300
Now, it must be admitted that prima facie this is a rather idiosyncratic
rendering of Spinoza’s assertion in EIIp7. Generally, Spinoza’s parallelism thesis in
EIIp7 is claimed to consist in an inter-attribute identity between modes of one
attribute (say: human minds), and modes of another attribute (in casu: human
bodies). That is to say: Spinoza’s parallelism is commonly understood to posit the
following:
Natura naturans
Thought
=
Extension
=
R
--------------------------------------------------------------(c) God
Natura naturata
idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(table 4)17
Indeed, there appears to be consensus among scholars that with EIIp7 Spinoza aims
to make it clear that for each extended thing – whether it be a stone, a tree, a man
or a toaster – there is an idea (i.e. a ‘mind’) that is numerically identical to it. Yet,
the rephrased version of EIIp7 provided above suggests that this ‘parallelism
proposition’ must actually be understood to posit an intra-attribute parallelism i.e.
a ‘vertical’ parallelism of things that are conceived within the realm of thought – in
the following way:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
is identical to
(b -ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
Claiming that in EIIp7 Spinoza forwards an intra-attribute identity of the objective
and the formal beings of things appears to deviate considerably from the communis
opinio among Spinoza scholars. It must be stressed immediately that this deviation
is partly illusory. I do not at all deny that Spinoza’s claim in EIIp7 entails an inter17
A few things must be noted with respect to this table. Firstly, it is important to make it clear the ‘R’
stand for ‘the remaining attributes’ and ‘r’ for ‘mode of the remaining attributes. Secondly, it must be
stressed that this table only aims to express the identity relation that is entailed by Spinoza parallelism; the
causal purport of his parallelism thesis will be addressed in the next chapter. Lastly, it must be added that
in positioning Thought, Extension and R at the level of Natura naturans we have tacitly switched from the
conceptual sense of the attributes (that surfaces in EID4) to the ontological (i.e. extra-intellectual) variant
of the attributes (that is argued for in section 3.6). See also note 19.
301
attribute identity of ideas and their extended objects. There is little doubt that
EIIp7 must be understood to imply that (as it is stated explicitly in the scholium of
this proposition) ‘a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the
same thing, but expressed in two ways’.18 So I do not want to oppose the rendering
of table 4. Rather, this chapter is aimed at showing that table 4 tells only part of the
story.19 It will become clear that the horizontal identity of modes from table 4 can
only be made intelligible on the basis of the specific vertical identity-relation that is
posited in table 5. Indeed, below we will see that inter-attribute parallelism is
merely an implication of Spinoza’s more comprehensive (what I have chosen to
call) transitive parallelism that surfaces, not only in EIIp7, but also in EIIp21s.20
Treatment of this subject in turn enables us to understand how the top-down and
the bottom-up perspective of God’s self-knowledge can be conceived. Or, to put
the same point differently: treatment of the parallelism claim of EIIp7 makes it
clear how Spinoza is able to reconcile a medieval perspective with a (very
particular)21 early modern scientific view.
4.2 Two parallelisms?
The ‘parallelism thesis’22 is one of the fundamental aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy.
In previous chapters we have referred to this thesis various times. Up till this point
EIIp7s, (I) 451 (Sic etiam modus extensionis, & idea illius modi una, eademq́ue est res, sed duobus modis
expressa). This very insight enabled us to investigate the realm of extension in order to gather a better
understanding of the way thought must be understood to be conceptually bifurcated. See section 1.3.
19
Attentive readers may have noticed that I have used the very same wording with respect to the
elucidation of the intellect-dependent definition of ‘attribute’ (EID4) (see section 3.6). This is no
coincidence. For in this chapter it will become clear that with respect to the intellectual grasping of
singular things we encounter the very same structure as the one we encountered with respect to the
attributes. Conceptually a man and the idea of that man are distinct in the same way the attributes are (this
agrees with the claims in EIA4 and EIIp7s). Yet ontologically the formal being of a man and the formal
being of the idea of the man are identical in the same way the attributes must be understood to express one
and the same divine essence. More on this in a subsequent section.
20
The exact purport of the terms ‘vertical’ and ‘transitive’, as well as the relation with the term ‘intraattribute’, will be elucidated in the subsequent sections.
21
For in certain respects, Spinoza of course deviates as much from his early modern contemporaries as he
does from his medieval predecessors.
22
I use quotation marks here because the term ‘parallelism’ is not actually used by Spinoza. The term
seems to originate in the work of Leibniz, who in Considerations on the Doctrine of a Universal Spirit uses
‘parallelism’ to refer to the relation between soul and body: ‘And as to the complete separation between
soul and body [...], I see no reason either in religion or in philosophy, which obliges me to give up the
18
302
we have more or less taken it for granted that according to Spinoza a body (or the
all-encompassing collection of bodies: the whole of nature) and the idea of that
body (or the all-encompassing collection of ideas of bodies: the whole of objective
nature) are one and the same thing. At this point it must be shown how this claim
is to be understood precisely, and how it functions within the structure of Spinoza’s
metaphysics.
4.2.1 Inter-attribute parallelism
Spinoza’s parallelism thesis is rooted in EIIp7, which famously states the following:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.23
(Ordo, & connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo, & connexio rerum)
As already noted, this proposition is generally taken to posit a numerical identity
between singular things that are understood to be operative under the attribute of
thought (‘ideas’), and singular things that are conceived under the attribute of
extension (‘bodies’).24 This reading of EIIp7 is underpinned by the following
passage in EIIp7s:
a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways.25
(modus extensionis, & idea illius modi una, eademq́ue est res, sed duobus modis expressa)
Spinoza’s explication in EIIp7s teaches us that the claim in EIIp7 must be
understood to entail an identity relation between things that are conceived under
different attributes that each express an essence of the very same substance. It is this
doctrine of the parallelism of the soul and the body, and to admit a perfect separation [emphasis added]’ (je
ne voy aucune raison ny de la religion ny de la philosophie, qui m’oblige de quitter la doctrine du parallelisme de
l’ame et du corps, et d’admettre une parfaite separation). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘Considerations on the
Doctrine of a Universal Spirit’ in: George Martin Duncan ed., The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz (New
Haven 1890), 143. However, despite the somewhat problematic implications of the term when using it in
the context of Spinoza’s philosophy, I will continue to use ‘parallelism’ anyway (while dropping the
quotation marks), as it has become the standard term for Spinoza’s claim in EIIp7.
23
EIIp7, (I) 451.
24
See for instance: Wallace Matson, ‘Spinoza’s theory of mind’ in: The Monist, Vol. 55, No. 4 (1971), 573;
Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 127; Della Rocca, Representation,19.
25
EIIp7s, (I) 451.
303
very inter-attribute relation that enables Spinoza to assert that a man and the idea of
that man are one and the same thing, yet conceived under another attribute (see
table 4). Furthermore, the claim concerning the identity of things conceived under
the attributes of thought and extension allows Spinoza to state that ‘the object of
the idea constituting the human mind is the human body [...] and nothing else’ in
EIIp13.26 The parallelism thesis enables him to posit that mind and body are one
and the same thing, expressed in two ways. In this way, Spinoza claims, ‘we
understand [...] what should be understood by the union of mind and body’. 27
Unlike René Descartes – who must allow causal interaction between the realms of
thought and extension – Spinoza posits that these realms are causally closed. In
Spinoza’s philosophy (say) the intended raising of an arm is not the result of an
occurrence in thought, causing an action in the extended realm. Rather, the
occurrence in thought causes some sort of process in the idea of the arm; and it is
the extended parallel of the occurrence in thought that must be understood to cause
the movement of the extended arm. This inter-attribute parallelism relation
between ideas and their extended counterparts – one of the few things that Spinoza
commentators agree upon completely – can be rendered in the way of table 4 (see
above).
4.2.2 Intra-attribute parallelism
To be sure, the Ethics appears to harbor yet another parallelism thesis. Apart from
the inter-attribute parallelism that is asserted explicitly in the claim of EIIp7s,
Spinoza also endorses a variant of parallelism that is operative within the attribute
of thought. This latter intra-attribute parallelism surfaces in EIIp20 and EIIp21. In
proposition 20 we read the following:
EIIp13, (I) 457 (Objectum ideæ, humanam Mentem constituentis, est Corpus, sive certus Extensionis modus
actu existens, & nihil aliud).
27
EIIp13s, (I) 457-458 (Ex his non tantùm intelligimus, Mentem humanam unitam esse Corpori, sed etiam,
quid per Mentis, & Corporis unionem intelligendum sit). At this point it must be stressed that Spinoza’s term
‘idea’ is rather different from the way in which we commonly understand this term. The idea of my body
in the sense in which Spinoza uses the term is not the idea that I have in my mind as ‘a picture on a tablet’
(EIIp43s) of my body. Rather, the idea of my body simply is my body, understood from the perspective of
thought. More on this in the next chapter.
26
304
There is also in God an idea, or knowledge, of the human mind, which follows in God in the same way
and is related to God in the same way as the idea, or knowledge, of the human body.28
(Mentis humanæ datur etiam in Deo idea, sive cognitio, quæ in Deo eodem modo sequitur, & ad Deum eodem
modo refertur, ac idea sive cognitio Corporis humani)
In the subsequent proposition Spinoza states:
This idea [in God] of the [human] mind is united to the mind in the same way as the mind is united to
the human body.29
(Hæc Mentis idea eodem modo unita est Menti, ac ipsa Mens unita est Corpori)
These claims uncover an alternative variant of parallelism. The explicit reference to
the union of the human mind and body teaches us that the identity relation that is
referred to in EIIp7s and EIIp13 (i.e. the identity of the mind and its extended
object) is applicable, not only to the conceiving of a thing under different attributes,
but also to things that are understood to resort under the same attribute. For as we
saw, the union of mind and body according to Spinoza consists in the fact that
both are the same thing, expressed under different attributes. As EIIp21 reads that
the idea of the human mind in God (that surfaces in EIIp20) is united to the
human mind ‘in the same way’ (eodem modo) as this mind is united to the body, we
are led to the conclusion that the idea of the human mind in God and the human
mind itself are one and the same thing, conceived under the same attribute:
thought. This puzzling relation between the idea of the mind and the mind itself is
affirmed in EIIp21s:
So the idea of the mind and the mind itself are one and the same thing, which is conceived under one and
the same attribute, namely, thought. The idea of the mind, I say, and the mind itself follow in God from
the same power of thinking and by the same necessity. For the idea of the mind, that is, the idea of the
idea, is nothing but the form of the idea insofar as this is considered as a mode of thinking without
relation to the object [emphasis added].30
(quare Mentis idea, & ipsa Mens una, eademq́ue est res, quæ sub uno, eodemq́ue attributo, nempe Cogitationis,
concipitur. Mentis, inquam, idea, & ipsa Mens in Deo eâdem necessitate ex eâdem cogitandi potentiâ sequuntur
dari. Nam reverâ idea Mentis, hoc est, idea ideæ nihil aliud est, quàm forma ideæ, quatenus hæc, ut modus
cogitandi, absque relatione ad objectum consideratur)
28
EIIp20, (I) 467.
EIIp21, (I) 467.
30
Ibidem, (I) 467.
29
305
Paraphrasing EIIp7s – which is validated by Spinoza’s remark that the present
parallelism relation must be understood ‘in the same way’ as the union of mind and
body – we can tentatively rephrase the claim of EIIp21s in the following way:
a mode of thinking and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed
in two ways.
Or in terms of EIIp13:
the object of the idea of the human mind is the human mind and nothing else.
Remarkable and counterintuitive as these claims may seem at first sight, they are
actually confirmed by Spinoza in the demonstration of EIIp21, which reads:
We have shown that the mind is united to the body from the fact that the body is the object of the mind
(see P12 and 13); and so by the same reasoning the idea of the mind must be united with its own object,
that is, with the mind itself, in the same way as the mind is united with the body.31
(Mentem unitam esse Corpori ex eo ostendimus, quòd scilicet Corpus Mentis sit objectum (vide Prop. 12. & 13.
hujus): adeòque per eandem illam rationem idea Mentis cum suo objecto, hoc est, cum ipsâ Mente eodem modo
unita esse debet, ac ipsa Mens unita est Corpori)
These claims posit an aspect of duality within the attribute of thought that is in
need of a closer scrutiny. For if the idea of the mind (viz. the idea of the idea, i.e.
the idea God has of the mind) is identical to its object (viz. the idea that is the
human mind, i.e. the idea God has of the body), and if both singular things32 are
subsumed under thought, the question arises how they still can be conceived to be
conceptually distinct. That is: how is it possible to distinguish between things if
these things are claimed to be the very same thing, conceived under the same
attribute? How must the intra–attribute relation between ideas and the ideas of
these ideas be understood?
31
EIIp21, (I) 467.
Spinoza defines ‘singular things’ as: ‘[…] things that are finite and have a determinate existence’. EIID7,
(I) 447 (Per r e s s i n g u l a r e s intelligo res, quae finitae sunt et determinatam habent existentiam). As
Spinoza in EIIp21s is arguing about the human mind insofar as it is united to the body (i.e. ‘insofar as it
expresses the actual existence of the body, which is explained by duration’, EVp23d, (I) 607 (quatenus
corporis actualem existentiam, quae per durationem explicatur)), in this context ‘idea’ and ‘idea of the idea’
both qualify as things that are finite and have a determinate existence, that is: they qualify as singular
things.
32
306
4.2.2.1 Formality and objectivity revisited
In order to show how an idea can be distinguished from the identical idea of that
idea, it may be instructive to recapitulate how an idea can be distinguished from its
extended object. As Spinoza claims in EIIp21 that the former relation must be
understood in the same way as the latter, a summary of the things we have said
concerning the status of ideas and their parallel bodies may provide us with a clue
as to the way in which the distinction between an idea and the idea of that idea
must be understood.
Now, with respect to the inter-attribute relation between ideas and their
parallel bodies (such as an idea of a raising arm and its parallel extended
counterpart, or indeed the whole of objective nature – God’s idea – and its object:
the whole of nature), Spinoza makes use of an internal characteristic of substance
on the basis of which it is possible to conceive of substance in (at least) two ways:
the very notion of ‘attribute’. It is by way of the attributes that our intellect has
cognitive access to two ways – and two ways only33 – of understanding the essence
of the one undividable substance: we grasp the essence of substance through
thought, and we grasp it through extension. A singular thing can be understood to
be mind and body, because a thing can be conceived to resort under two distinct
attributes. In terms of Spinoza’s Principle of Plenitude (EIp16): ideas and bodies
can both be understood to ‘fall under the infinite intellect’ (b) because a thing that
follows from God qua God (a) can be understood (i) as an idea (that falls under the
infinite intellect as it is part of this infinite mode of thought), and (ii) as a body
(that falls under the infinite intellect because the whole it is conceived to be a part
of – i.e. the infinite mode of extension – is perceived by the infinite intellect).34
We gathered Spinoza’s parallelism thesis in EIIp21 – the one I referred to
using the term ‘intra-attribute parallelism’ – from the assertion that ‘the idea of the
33
This is stated explicitly for in Letter 64. ‘So I conclude that the human Mind cannot achieve knowledge
of any other attribute of God beyond [Extension and Thought]’ (Atque adeò concludo Mentem humanam
nullum Dei attributum præter hæc posse cognitione assequi, ut fuit propositum). Letter 64, (II) 438. An
analysis of the arguments that Spinoza provides for this claim would take us too far afield. See also note
158.
34
This latter formulation is inspired by the version of the definition of attribute that Spinoza provides in
EIIp7s. The definition of attribute (in both EID4 and EIIp7s) entails a claim about the representational
nature of the intellect, which will be treated comprehensively in the next chapter.
307
mind and the mind itself are one and the same thing, which is conceived under one
and the same attribute’. In this case too, some sort of internal characteristic must be
supposed on the basis of which these two distinct descriptions are intelligible.35 So
what could this internal characteristic be?
At this point we must recall that in the previous chapters we have already
uncovered an internal distinction that can be understood to be operative within the
attributes, and that moreover is closely related to the distinction between ideas and
their objects. We have seen that modes can be grasped in two ways. They can be
considered:
(1)
insofar as we conceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and
place, that is: in their objective being, representing their objects36
And the very same things can be grasped
(2)
insofar as we conceive them under a species of eternity, that is: in their
formal being37
Indeed, in the previous chapters we have seen that any operation of the intellect (in
the way we commonly understand it) must be understood to be characterized by a
conceptual bifurcation between the objective and the formal being of the thing
under scrutiny. Stated in terms of EVp29s:
we conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar as we conceive them in their
o b j e c t i v e being, or insofar as we conceive them in their f o r m a l being.
35
Yitzhak Melamed made the same observation: ‘If the order of ideas is supposed to perfectly reflect the
order of things, there must be an internal barrier within thought […] which reflects the barrier among the
attributes’. Yitzhak Melamed, ‘Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought: Parallelisms and the Multifaceted
Structure of Ideas’ in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86:3 (May 2013), 674.
36
The next chapter will be dedicated to a scrutiny of the representational character of this relation.
37
Attentive readers may notice that I have changed the order of (1) and (2). In the previous chapters
point (1) harbored the formal being of things, and point (2) the objective being of the same things. The
present way of staging things is induced by the main subject of this chapter; the elucidation of the bottomup perspective. More on this in the subsequent sections.
308
Looking for an internal feature within the attributes that makes the intra-attribute
parallelism of EIIp21s intelligible, the distinction between the formal and the
objective being of things is very promising.
The first thing that must be noted in this respect is that this very distinction
plays a crucial role with respect to the perception of the multiple attributes (and
thus with respect to inter-attribute parallelism). Indeed, in EID4 ‘attribute’ is
defined as ‘what the intellect perceives of a substance [emphasis added]’. In the
previous chapter it became clear that, insofar as the level of modes (b) is taken into
account, the attributes must be taken in this intellect-dependent fashion. This in
turn teaches us that the inter-attribute parallelism of EIIp7s must also be
understood to be intellect-dependent. That is to say: we can only posit that the idea
of a man (or of a raising arm) and the body of that man (or of the raising arm) are
the very same thing if the intellectual distinction between the formal and the
objective being of things is presupposed. For the attributes – the very internal
feature of substance that allows us to distinguish between ideas and bodies – can
only be grasped insofar as the divine res is conceived both as to its formal being (as
God qua God (a)), and as to its objective being (as the (perceiving) infinite intellect
(b)). In short: the recognition of inter-attribute parallelism is intellect-dependent. Now,
as Spinoza’s claim in EIIp21 makes it clear that intra-attribute parallelism is to be
understood in the same way as inter-attribute parallelism, we can draw the
provisional conclusion that intra-attribute parallelism must be considered to be
intellect-dependent as well (or to say it in a slightly different way: that both interand intra-attribute parallelism fall within the scope of the constructive function of the
intellect that was uncovered in section 2.5). And hence, we have found an
important indication that the internal feature that we are looking for is precisely the
distinction between formality and objectivity that was treated in Chapter 2.
The tentative suggestion that the distinction between the formal and
objective being of things is precisely the feature that accounts for the intra-attribute
parallelism of EIIp21 and its scholium is underpinned by the fact that the notion
‘form of the idea’ is used explicitly by Spinoza in EIIp21s. Consider the following
claim from this scholium once again:
309
the idea of the Mind, that is, the idea of the idea, is nothing but the form of the idea insofar as this is
considered a mode of thinking without relation to the object [emphasis added]’.38
(Nam reverâ idea Mentis, hoc est, idea ideæ nihil aliud est, quàm forma ideæ, quatenus hæc, ut modus
cogitandi, absque relatione ad objectum consideratur)
This formulation clearly corroborates our supposition that the bifurcation that
surfaces in EIIp21s (i.e. the distinction between ideas and the ideas of these ideas)
can be understood in terms of the very conceptual bifurcation that was treated in
the previous chapters: the distinction between a finite idea that is conceived to exist
in relation to a certain time and place (1), and that very same thing insofar as it is
conceived in its eternal formal being (2). The assertion concerning forma ideae in
this scholium reiterates that according to Spinoza an idea can be grasped in at least
two ways: with and without relation to the object it is the idea of. It is hard to miss
the similarity between these claims in EIIp21s and the things we have said in
Chapter 2 with regard to the formal and objective being of ideas:
-
An idea that is claimed to be grasped insofar as it is considered with relation
to its object is on a par with the objective being that surfaces in EIIp8c (and
EIIp9).
-
The ‘form of the idea’ in EIIp21s is on a par with the formal being of EIIp5,
that is: the being of the idea under scrutiny as it is in itself, viz. without
relation to its object.39
So Spinoza’s formulation in the scholium of EIIp21 corroborates our tentative
claim that the internal feature that enables him to distinguish between an idea and
an identical mode under the very same attribute is grounded on the distinction
between the objective and the formal status of that idea, i.e. the distinction between
an idea insofar as it represents its object and that same idea as it is in itself. In terms of
EIIp21s the distinction can be rendered thus:
38
EIIp21s, (I) 467-468.
Here we take a tacit turn. Up till this point we were treating the question how the parallel relation
between an idea and the idea of that idea can be understood. Henceforth we will be focusing on the
parallel relation between the idea and the form of that idea. The important question how the form of an
idea can in turn be understood to be the idea of an idea will be elucidated in a subsequent section.
39
310
A singular mind can be grasped in two ways:
as the objective being of a body (i.e. as the idea with relation to its
object)
(1′)
and
(2′)
as the formal being of the idea of a body (i.e. as the idea without
relation to its object)40
These claims are very important when trying to understand Spinoza’s parallelism
(and indeed pars melior nostri), as they suggest that the intra-attribute parallelism
that surfaces in EIIp21 is an expression of the fact that ideas insofar as they are
considered w i t h r e s p e c t t o t h e i r e x t e n d e d o b j e c t s must be understood to
be paralleled by the very same ideas insofar as they are considered i n t h e m s e l v e s .
And hence the claims in EIIp21 and its scholium can also be formulated thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being of these ideas.
Or, as we have rendered it in table 5:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
is identical to
Natura naturata
(b -ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
This particular way of staging the intra-attribute parallelism claim of EIIp21 and its
scholium becomes even more important once it is acknowledged that according to
Spinoza this intra-attribute parallelism must be understood in the very same way as
inter-attribute parallelism. In order to test whether – and how – this claim can be
upheld, we must return to EIIp7. In the next section I will show that this latter
parallelism proposition can indeed be understood to make the very same claim that
40
It is precisely this particular dual structure that enables Spinoza to claim (in the demonstration of
EIVp8) that it is clear from EIIp21s, that an idea is ‘not really distinguished’ but ‘only conceptually
distinguished’ from its object. EIVp8d, (I) 551 (ab ideâ Corporis affectionis reverâ non distinguitur, nisi solo
conceptu).
311
was uncovered with respect to EIIp21s (and hence that EIIp7 can also be rendered
in the way of table 5). Below it will become clear that EIIp7 must be read thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being of these ideas
Furthermore, I will argue that the assertions in EIIp7s concerning the identity of a
body and the idea of that body are merely implied by proposition 7 (and in a
subsequent section it will be shown that the identity of an idea and the idea of that
idea can be understood to follow from the comprehensive parallelism claim of
EIIp7 as well). Another way of saying this is that the present interpretation entails
that, unlike some commentators have claimed,41 the variants of parallelism that we
have treated in this section must be understood to be conceptual variants of one
overriding parallelism claim. It will become clear that EIIp7 and EIIp21s posit the
very same identity (and representation) relation, a relation that can be understood
to be an expression of the very trichotomous structure of the intellect that was
uncovered in Chapter 2.
4.2.3 One parallelism
Recall that EIIp7 reads thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.42
(Ordo, & connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo, & connexio rerum)
We have just asserted tentatively that this proposition can also be formulated thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being of these ideas.
41
Yitzhak Melamed claimed the following:‘E2p7 and its scholium assert two separate and distinct
doctrines of parallelism. The former asserts a parallelism between the causal order of ideas and things, the
latter a parallelism among the causal order of modes in each of the infinitely many attributes.’ Yitzhak
Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics. Substance and Thought, 142. I fully agree with his latter claim. However, I
disagree with his claim that these two variants are ‘separate and distinct’, as will become clear below.
42
EIIp7, (I) 451.
312
This formulation of course needs further elucidation. For the claim that the term
‘things’ in EIIp7 can be understood to refer to the formal being of ideas is
controversial. Various commentators have suggested that the term ‘things’ must be
understood to refer to bodies. Jonathan Bennett is a case in point. He stated that the
res in proposition 7 are to be seen as modes of extension.43 Michael Della Rocca ‘for
convenience’ assumes the same.44 In other words: some leading Spinoza scholars
have considered the term ‘things’ in the important EIIp7 to refer to something else
than the formal being of ideas. This need not surprise us, as Spinoza himself
appears to do the same. Consider the following assertions:
If the human body is not affected by an external body in any way, then (by P7) the idea of the human
body […] is also not affected in any way by the idea of the existence of that body45
(Si à corpore aliquo externo Corpus humanum nullo modo affectum est, ergo (per Prop. 7. hujus) nec idea
Corporis humani, […] ideâ existentiæ illius corporis ullo etiam modo affecta est)
P 11: The idea of any thing that increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our body's power of acting,
increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our mind's power of thinking.
Dem.: This proposition is evident from IIP7 […]46
(PROPOSITIO XI. Quicquid Corporis nostri agendi potentiam auget, vel minuit, juvat, vel coërcet, ejusdem
rei idea Mentis nostræ cogitandi potentiam auget, vel minuit, juvat, vel coërcet.
DEMONSTRATIO. Hæc Propositio patet ex Propositione 7. Partis 2)
These two passages suggest that Spinoza himself chooses the same convenient route
that Della Rocca has taken. Indeed, Spinoza’s position appears to be rendered
correctly in table 4:
Natura naturans
Thought
=
Extension
=
R
--------------------------------------------------------------(c) God
Natura naturata
idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(table 4)
43
According to Bennett, Spinoza ‘advocates a doctrine of parallelism between the mental and physical
realm’, and in this respect he refers to EIIp7. This appears to imply that according to Bennett, the
distinction between thought and extension surfaces explicitly in the mentioned proposition. See: Bennett,
A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 127.
44
Della Rocca, Representation, 18.
45
EIIp26d, (I) 469.
46
EIIIp11, (I) 500.
313
Table 4 makes it clear that things (and their causal connection) that are operative
under the attribute of thought are numerically identical to the parallel things (and
their causal connection) under the attribute of extension (or any of the remaining
attributes). As already noted, this appears to be a fair description of Spinoza’s
parallelism. That is to say: table 4 is fully corroborated by Spinoza’s explicit
assertions in the scholium of EIIp7. However, if table 4 renders the purport of
proposition 7 itself correctly – as is suggested by the passages adduced above – then
how can we still uphold the supposition that Spinoza refers to the formal being of
ideas – and not to modes of extension – when he uses the term ‘things’ in EIIp7?
Our seemingly idiosyncratic reading of EIIp7 suggests that Spinoza in this
proposition does not primarily forward an inter-attribute parallelism between ideas,
bodies and r’s, but an intra-attribute parallelism between the objective and the
formal being of a thing. How can this latter position (and hence table 5) be brought
in line with table 4?
Actually, there is considerable evidence for the claim that in EIIp7 Spinoza
does indeed assert that the order and connection of ideas (b-i) is the same as the
order and connection of the formal being of these ideas (b-ii). Below I will provide
additional arguments for this controversial contention. Apart from our observation
that both types of parallelism must be understood to be intellect-dependent – and
must thus be conceived to be characterized by the distinction between the formal
and the objective being of things – there are at least four more arguments that
underpin our seemingly idiosyncratic assertion concerning the purport of EIIp7.
After having provided these arguments, it will become clear how the present claim
about the intra-attribute identity of ideas and their formal beings can be brought in
line with the inter-attribute identity of ideas and their bodies (and, in a subsequent
section, how this can be understood to be related to the bottom-up perspective in
Spinoza’s philosophy).
Argument 1: the context of EIIp7
EIIp7 is embedded in a series of propositions that deal explicitly with the formal
(EIIp5 and EIIp6c) and the objective being of things (EIIp8 and EIIp9). In the
claims preceding EIIp7 it is made clear how we must conceive the causal generation
of the formal being of things. And the two subsequent propositions deal
314
respectively with the interrelation between the formal and the objective status of
things (EIIp8, its corollary and its scholium), and the way in which the objective
being of things must be conceived to be caused (EIIp9). This provides us with a
first contextual indication that EIIp7 refers to the relation, not between objective
beings (i.e. ideas) and their objects under extension (i.e. bodies), but between ideas
and their formal being.
Argument 2: the corollary of EIIp7
Consider the following claim in EIIp7c:
From this it follows that God's power of thinking is equal to his actual power of acting. That is, whatever
follows formally from God's infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea in the same order and
with the same connection.47
(Hinc sequitur, quòd Dei cogitandi potentia æqualis est ipsius actuali agendi potentiæ. Hoc est, quicquid ex
infinitâ Dei naturâ sequitur formaliter, id omne ex Dei ideâ eodem ordine, eâdemq́ue connexione sequitur in
Deo objectivè)
It is hard to miss the fact that the very terms that I claim to be applicable to the
assertion in EIIp7 – the formal and the objective being of things – are used
explicitly in the very corollary of this parallelism proposition. Indeed: whatever
follows formally from God’s infinite nature, is claimed to follow objectively in God
insofar as the thing under scrutiny is considered under the attribute of thought.
This underpins the assertion that the formal-objective distinction plays an
important role in EIIp7, and that this proposition (and EIIp8)48 can in a certain
sense be considered to be the crossroads of Spinoza’s claims about the formal being
of ideas (in EIIp5 and EIIp6c) and the objective being of these same things (in
EIIp8c and EIIp9) (see the previous argument).
But this is not all. There is a further way in which Spinoza’s claims in EIIp7c
can be understood to corroborate our present claim. For on the basis of EIIp7c it
can be shown that – unlike what is commonly supposed (see above) – the term
‘things’ in EIIp7 does not refer to extended objects. The following reductio argument
may be elucidative in this respect:
47
48
EIIp7c, (I) 451.
More on this seemingly hermetic proposition shortly.
315
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
(v)
(vi)
(vii)
(viii)
Suppose that the term ‘things’ in EIIp7 does refer to bodies
The order and connection of ideas is identical to the order and
connection of bodies (by EIIp7 and (i))
From this (ii) it follows that ‘whatever follows formally from God's
infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea’ (EIIp7c)
The things that follow objectively in God from his idea must be the
ideas from (ii) (by the causal barrier of EIIp6)49
So the things that follow formally from God’s infinite nature must be
understood to be the bodies from (ii) (by (ii), (iii) and (iv).
Bodies must be understood to be the formal being of ideas (by (iii),
(iv) and (v))
It is absurd to claim (as (vi) does) that bodies are the formal being of
ideas (by EIIp5)
So the term ‘things’ does not refer to bodies
The crucial steps in this argument can be elucidated in the following way:
Ad. (i)-(iii). These claims are rather straightforward; (i) is the supposition that we
are testing, (ii) is EIIp7 rendered in terms of the supposition in (i), and (iii) is the
restatement of the part of EIIp7c in which the terms ‘formal’ and ‘objective’ are
staged.
Ad (iv). The claim that the things that follow objectively in God from his idea must
be the ideas from (ii) perhaps needs some more elucidation. As noted under (iv),
this assertion is corroborated by the causal barrier that is posited EIIp6, from which
it can be inferred that if things follow in God from his idea, they must be modes of
thought (and not modes of extension). That the things that follow ‘objectively’
from God’s idea indeed are modes of thought (i.e. ideas) is further underpinned by
the fact that in the Ethics Spinoza uses the term ‘objective’ only with respect to the
49
EIIp6 reads thus: ‘The modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered
under the attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other attribute’.
EIIp6, (I) 450 (Cujuscunque attributi modi Deum, quatenus tantùm sub illo attributo, cujus modi sunt, &
non, quatenus sub ullo alio consideratur, pro causâ habent). To be sure, we have already referred to this
‘causal barrier’ various times in the preceding chapters.
316
representational nature of thought.50 So it appears to be rather uncontroversial that
the claim about the things that follow objectively in God from his idea must be
understood to refer to the order and connection of ideas.
Ad. (v)-(vi). In EIIp7, Spinoza makes a distinction between two classes of things.
On the present supposition these two classes consist of respectively ideas and
bodies. Now, if things that ‘follow objectively in God from his idea’ must be
understood to be ideas (as was established in (iv)), there appears to be only one
candidate left for the things that according to EIIp7c ‘follow formally from God’s
infinite nature’: bodies. Indeed, if it is granted that in EIIp7c Spinoza employs the
terms ‘formal’ and ‘objective’ in order to refer to a duality of the objective being of
things and their formal being,51 then the formal being of the things that follow
‘objectively in God from his idea’ must be understood to be bodies. Hence: bodies
must be understood to be the formal being of ideas.
Ad. (vii) and (viii). Point (vi) states that bodies must be understood to be the
formal being of ideas. Yet, as we have seen in Chapter 2, EIIp5 reads that ‘the
formal being of ideas admits God as a cause only insofar as he is a thinking thing
[…]’. And in the demonstration of this proposition Spinoza adds that ‘the formal
being of ideas is a mode of thinking’ which ‘involves the concept of no other
attribute of God’. This makes it abundantly clear that point (vi) is wrong: in the
context of Spinoza’s mature thought it is absurd that bodies should be the formal
being of ideas. And hence the initial supposition (i) must be rejected: the term
‘things’ does not refer to bodies (viii).
This argument teaches us that EIIp7 cannot be understood to make a claim about
ideas and bodies (nor about ideas and finite modes of any of the remaining
50
See EIp17s, EIp30, EIIp8c. Or as Della Rocca claims: the traditional term ‘objective’ clearly indicates
that Spinoza posits a representational aspect in EIIp7c. Della Rocca, Representation, 19. As I will show in a
the next chapter, this representational aspect is a characteristic aspect of modes insofar as they are
conceived under the attribute of thought (just as (say) motion is a characteristic aspect of modes insofar as
they are conceived under the attribute of extension).
51
A duality that, as we saw in Chapter 2, entails a trichotomy of formal being, objective being and object.
More on the import of this structure for Spinoza’s parallelism claims will follow shortly.
317
attributes).
Argument 3: The formulation of EIIp8
As already noted in Chapter 2, EIIp8 is generally considered to be a rather hermetic
proposition. Consider this proposition and its demonstration once more:
P8: The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God’s infinite
idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s
attributes.
Dem.: This proposition is evident from the preceding one, but is understood more clearly from
the preceding scholium.52
(PROPOSITIO VIII. Ideæ rerum singularium, sive modorum non existentium ità debent comprehendi in Dei
infinitâ ideâ, ac rerum singularium, sive modorum essentiæ formales in Dei attributis continentur.
DEMONSTRATIO. Hæc Propositio patet ex præcedenti, sed intelligitur clariùs ex præcedenti Scholio)
One of the problems that needs solving is why Spinoza would say something here
about modes that do not exist. In the propositions that precede EIIp8, Spinoza
speaks about modes that do exist. And then all of a sudden he switches to nonexisting singular things. Why? This puzzle is solved once it is acknowledged that
EIIp7 deals with the very distinction that was uncovered in section 2.5: the
distinction between durational ideas (b-ii) and the eternal formal status of these
ideas (b-i). It is crucial to recognize that the question how we must understand the
metaphysical status of modes that do not exist arises precisely because in the
preceding proposition it is claimed that ideas (that exist under duration) have the
same order and connection as these very same things considered in their eternal
formal state. For it is this remarkable assertion that leads to the problem how things
that do not exist now (such as (say) king Louis XIV of France), can be conceived to
have the same order and connection as something that must be understood to exist
eternally. If EIIp7 would deal with bodies and ideas only, the reference to EIIp7 in
the demonstration of EIIp8 would be incomprehensible. On our present reading,
however, it is clear why Spinoza would treat the ideas of modes that do not exist,
and why he would refer to the preceding proposition. Indeed, Spinoza’s claim that
the ideas of non-existing modes must be comprehended in God’s infinite idea in
52
EIIp8, (I) 452.
318
the same way the formal essences of these modes are contained in God’s attributes
can only be understood to follow from the preceding proposition and its scholium
if it is acknowledged that in these passages the very same distinction between an
eternal realm of formality and a durational realm of objective beings is posited.53
And hence, the seemingly hermetic formulation of EIIp8 fully underpins our
suggestion that EIIp7 must be understood to deal with the isomorphic causal
chains of durational ideas (b-ii) and their eternal formal beings (b-i).
Argument 4: The attribute-neutral aspect of the formal being of things
EIIp7 deals with the order and connection of things (res). Above we have argued
that the term must be understood to refer, not to bodies, but to the formal being of
things. In order to establish whether we are right in claiming that EIIp7 deals with
things in their formal being we can take yet another route.
Consider the following claim from the demonstration of EVp1:
The order and connections of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things (by IIP7), and vice
versa, the order and connection of things is the same as the order and connection of ideas (by IIP6C and
P7).54
(Ordo, & connexio idearum idem est (per Prop. 7. p. 2.), ac ordo, & connexio rerum, & vice versâ, ordo, &
connexio rerum idem est (per Coroll. Prop. 6. & 7. p. 2.), ac ordo, & connexio idearum)
This passage makes it clear that the term ‘things’ in EIIp7 must be understood to
refer to the ‘things’ that are treated in EIIp6c. This latter corollary reads thus:
From this it follows that the formal being of things which are not modes of thinking does not follow from
the divine nature because [God] has first known the things; rather the objects of ideas follow and are
I use the epithet ‘formality’ here because the eternal status is applicable to both the formal essence and
the formal being of things.
54
EVp1d, (I) 597. The ‘vice versa’ deserves some attention: this term seems to imply that ‘ideas’ and
‘things’ operate at the same conceptual level, whereas my contention is that this is not the case (as I will
claim that the relation is vertical). This problem disappears once we realise that Spinoza is reasoning
specifically about the causal characteristics of these items. The claim that ‘Dutchmen are Europeans, and
vice versa’ is untrue. However, it is completely sound to say that ‘the cause by way of which Dutchmen
come into being is the same as the cause by way of which Europeans come into being, and vice versa’. The
same applies to the present subject: the causation is applicable to both classes of things in the same way,
even though there is a conceptual priority of one class over the other.
53
319
inferred from their attributes in the same way as that with which we have shown ideas to follow from the
attribute of thought.55
(Hinc sequitur, quòd esse formale rerum, quæ modi non sunt cogitandi, non sequitur ideò ex divinâ naturâ,
quia res priùs cognovit, sed eodém modo, eâdemq́ue necessitate res ideatæ ex suis attributis consequuntur, &
concluduntur, ac ideas ex attributo Cogitationis consequi ostendimus)
Now, it must be admitted that prima facie this reference suggests that the term
‘things’ does refer to bodies (or finite modes of any of the remaining attributes). For
Spinoza clearly equates ‘things’ with ‘the objects of ideas’,56 which appears to imply
that he is reasoning here about bodies (and modes of the remaining attributes).
However, this leads to a problem. For above we have seen that the term ‘things’ in
EIIp7 cannot be understood to refer to modes of any of the other attributes. Above
it became clear that it is absurd that a body (or a finite mode from any of the
remaining attributes) should be the formal being of an idea, as Spinoza claims in
EIIp5d that the formal being of ideas is a mode of thinking.
Is there a way out of this? I think there is. Knowing (i) that Spinoza states in
EIIp6c that ‘the objects of ideas follow and are inferred from their attributes in the
same way as that with which we have shown ideas to follow from the attribute of
thought’, and (ii) that the only causal thread that is treated explicitly at this point in
part II of the Ethics is the intrinsic causal thread of EIIp5,57 we seem to have gained
enough ground to suppose that ‘the objects of ideas’ that ‘follow and are inferred
from their attributes in the same way as’ the formal being of ideas can be
understood to refer, not to the extrinsically caused finite modes of extension and
the remaining attributes, but to the intrinsically caused formal being of these
things. And hence we can proceed our investigation with the tentative claim that
EIIp7 can be reformulated thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the
f o r m a l b e i n g of things which are not modes of thinking (i.e. the e s s e f o r m a l e
rerum)
55
EIIp6c, (I) 450-451.
In order to refer to the ‘object of ideas’, Spinoza uses the term ‘ideatum’ – instead of ‘objectum’. In
Chapter 5 it will become clear why he would choose this term in this specific context.
57
As we have seen that the extrinsic causal thread of finite objective beings surfaces explicitly only in EIIp9;
see section 2.5.
56
320
To be sure, with this reformulation we have not yet found a decisive answer
to the question we aim to treat in this section. For one thing, the claim that the
term ‘things’ refers to the esse formale rerum of EIIp6c needs more underpinning.
Moreover, it was not our aim to establish that the order and connection of ideas is
the same as the order and connection of the formal being of things which are not
modes of thinking. Rather, we intended to show that EIIp7 can be understood thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being o f t h e s e i d e a s
So one of the questions we face now is whether there is a way to get from the claim
concerning the formal being of things which are not modes of thinking to a claim that
deals with the formal being of ideas. Now, I think there is such a way. In order to
show this, I must adduce the reductio ad absurdum that was provided above once
more, and substitute the term ‘bodies’ with ‘esse formale rerum’. If it is assumed that
term ‘things’ in EIIp7 can be understood to refer to the esse formale rerum of
EIIp6c, then the argument can be restated in the following way:
(i′)
(ii′)
(iii′)
(iv′)
(v′)
(vi′)
The term ‘things’ in EIIp7 refers to the esse formale rerum of EIIp6c
The order and connection of ideas is identical to the order and
connection of the esse formale rerum (by EIIp7 and (i′))
From this (ii’) it follows that ‘whatever follows formally from God's
infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea’ (EIIp7c)
The things that follow objectively from God’s idea must be the ideas
from (ii′) (by the causal barrier of EIIp6)
So the things that follow formally from God’s infinite nature must be
understood to be the esse formale rerum from (ii′) (by (ii′), (iii′) and
(iv′).
The esse formale rerum must be understood to be the formal being of
ideas (by (iii′), (iv′) and (v′))
Point (vi′) can count as a step forward in comparison with the reductio argument
(i)-(viii) that was provided above. It neutralizes part of the incongruence that
surfaced in the reductio ad absurdum from Argument 2. Whereas in the reductio
321
argument the (durational) extended body was staged as the (eternal) formal being of
the idea under scrutiny, point (vi′) suggests that it is not the extended object of the
idea (i.e. its body) that can be understood to serve as the formal being of the idea
under scrutiny, but the formal being of this extended object. Indeed, whereas in the
reductio variant of the argument the eternal and infinite formal being of an idea
appeared to be a durational and finite thing (in casu: a body), point (vi′) safeguards
that the eternal and infinite formal being of an idea is an eternal and infinite formal
being.
To be sure, this observation still does not fully corroborate the present
supposition. For above we have seen that the formal being of an idea must be
understood to be a mode of thinking (by EIIp5d). And hence we can only consider
our claim to be validated (and argument (i′)-(viii′) not to be an incomplete
rendering of yet another reductio argument) once we have shown that the horizontal
conceptual distinction between the eternal formal being of ideas and the identical
(by (vi′)) eternal formal being of non-mental modes (at level (b-i)) is less
impermeable than the distinction between finite ideas and their identical finite
bodies (at level b-ii)). Now, is it? Can the referential opacity58 that is applicable to
modes insofar as they are considered objectively (i.e. the distinction between ideas
and their extended objects) be understood to be neutralized if these singular things
are considered in their formal being? I think it can be conjectured that this indeed
is the case. That is to say: in a certain sense – and as opposed to modes insofar as
they are conceived in their durational state – the formal being of modes can be
understood to have an aspect of attribute-neutrality. Whereas durational things
(such as ideas and bodies at level (b-ii)) can only be considered insofar as they are
subsumed under a certain attribute, their eternal being at level (b-i) can (also) be
understood insofar as it follows in an attribute-neutral way from God qua God.
Prima facie, this solution may appear to rest on mere speculation. Indeed, it
must be admitted that the concept of ‘attribute-neutrality’ does not surface
explicitly in the Ethics. The existence of ‘attribute-neutral’ modes or features may
have been forwarded by several scholars,59 but this sheer fact of course cannot serve
58
In this context, this term is inspired by Michael Della Rocca. See section 4.3.1 and note 95.
Yitzhak Melamed calls these attribute-neutral modes ‘modes of God’. See: Melamed, Spinoza’s
Metaphysics. Substance and Thought, 82-86. The same term is used by Gueroult. Gueroult, Spinoza. Dieu,
339. Jonathan Bennett calls them ‘attribute-neutral differentiae’. Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 144145. Della Rocca stresses that the concept of ‘mode […] of no attribute whatsoever […] is Spinozistically
59
322
as an underpinning for our present claim; we are in need of additional textual
evidence. That is to say: as I do not want to take refuge in an argumentum ad
verecundiam, we must test whether there are indications in the Ethics that
corroborate our claim (i) that Spinoza makes implicit use of the concept of
attribute-neutrality, and (ii) that this attribute-neutrality can be understood to be
applicable to the formal being of things.
So is there any textual support for the assertion that the Ethics harbors the
concept of attribute-neutrality? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think there is. The first
passage that must be adduced in this respect is EIIp7c. The already quoted claim
that ‘whatever follows formally from God's infinite nature follows objectively in
God from his idea’ provides us with an important indication that attributeneutrality is an implicit feature of Spinoza’s parallelism. For it is hard to see how
the term ‘God’s infinite nature’ can be understood to be attribute-dependent; as
God is defined in EID6 as ‘a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes’, the
term ‘God’s infinite nature’ appears to denote the divine being, irrespective of the
way its essence is perceived by the intellect, that is: God in his absolute, attributeneutral being.
So far so good. It appears to be rather clear that the concept ‘God’ is prior to
the concept ‘attribute’ and hence that attribute-neutrality is an implicit feature of
Spinoza’s metaphysics. But this is of course not to say that modes can be conceived
to be attribute-neutral as well. The question we must answer is not whether God is
attribute-neutral, but whether the formal being of singular things can be understood
as such; can the implicit attribute-neutrality of God qua God be understood to
‘contaminate’ the things that follow formally from the necessity of the divine
nature? Indeed, we must answer the question whether the attribute-dependent
modes that follow ‘objectively in God from his idea’ can be allotted an attributeneutral aspect insofar as they follow ‘formally from God’s infinite nature’. Now,
with respect to this important question it is crucial to acknowledge that in fact we
have already distinguished the ingredients on the basis of which the attributeneutral feature of modes in their formal state can be understood. For in the
unacceptable’. Della Rocca, Representation, 121. However, at the same time he writes that ‘there is […] a
small, but important class of extensional properties’. Ibidem 129. These are ‘properties […] that [do] not
presuppose that the item with that property is of a particular attribute’. Ibidem 132. Samuel Newlands
argued that the conceptual dependence relations in Spinoza’s philosophy must be understood to be
attribute-neutral. Newlands, ‘Another Kind of Spinozistic Monism’, 472.
323
previous chapters it was shown that there is a close relation between extraintellectual formal essences in Natura Naturans and intra-intellectual formal beings
in Natura naturata. It became clear that the absolute non-distinctiveness and
ubiquity of the extra-intellectual formal essences of things at the level of God qua
God (a) must be understood to be prolonged in the intra-intellectual formal being
of these same things insofar as they are conceived to function as pervasive partswith-a-vista at the level of the immediate infinite modes (b-i). It is precisely here
where we must locate the ‘contamination’ that we are looking for. I claim that the
attribute-neutral aspect of things in their formal being must be understood to find its
root in the attribute-neutrality of the formal essences of things at the level of God q u a
God. That is to say: just as the formal beings of things can be attributed a certain
species of eternity insofar as they are conceived to follow from the absolutely eternal
formal essences, so also these formal beings can be ascribed a certain species of
attribute-neutrality insofar as they are conceived to follow from the absolutely
attribute-neutral formal essences. This can be rendered thus:
(a)
(b-i)
Formal essences are attribute-neutral eo ipso, as they must be
understood to be operative at the level of absolute identity (i.e. Natura
naturans (a)).60
Formal beings can be conceived in two ways. Insofar as these partswith-a-vista are conceived in their part character, they can be
subsumed under an attribute (namely the attribute of which the
immediate infinite mode is the whole they are conceived to be a part
of); and insofar as these parts-with-a-vista are conceived in their vistacharacter, they can be understood to express the absolute ubiquity of
the formal essences they follow from, and hence transfer the attributeneutrality of their formal essences to the level of Natura naturata (b-i).
This way of understanding the attribute-neutrality of the formal being of
things finds corroboration in the already adduced claim of EIIp7c. Recall that this
corollary reads thus:
60
More on the absolute identity and attribute-neutrality of the divine nature (a) in section 4.3.3.1.
324
From this it follows that God's power of thinking is equal to his actual power of acting. That is, whatever
follows formally from God's infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea in the same order and
with the same connection.61
(Hinc sequitur, quòd Dei cogitandi potentia æqualis est ipsius actuali agendi potentiæ. Hoc est, quicquid ex
infinitâ Dei naturâ sequitur formaliter, id omne ex Dei ideâ eodem ordine, eâdemq́ue connexione sequitur in
Deo objectivè)
With respect to this claim it is informative to recall what was said in section 3.6.
There it was shown that God’s power of acting can be understood to encompass his
power of thinking, his power of moving (and being at rest) and his power of r-ing.
Indeed, as ‘God’s power is God’s essence itself’,62 there appears to be no ground at
all to suppose that ‘God’s power of acting’ must be assigned to a specific attribute
(and hence that EIIp7c and (by implication) EIIp7 deal with ideas and bodies).
Rather, the adduced clause appears to state that everything that follows formally
from God’s attribute-neutral infinite nature must be understood to fall within the
scope of God’s all-encompassing power, and hence can (also) be understood
irrespective of the attribute under which it is considered.
This prolonged63 absolute identity of the extended and the mental being of a
thing can be gathered from EIIp6c too. Recall that we have shown in Chapter 2
that the formal being of ideas must be understood to be caused intrinsically.
Furthermore, as we saw above, in EIIp6c this variant of causation is deemed
applicable to modes of any of the other attributes as well. If it is acknowledged that
the clause ‘God’s infinite nature’ in EIIp7c indeed is attribute-neutral in the sense
that it must be understood to encompass all the ways in which the essence of this
nature can be perceived by an intellect (i.e. all the intellect-dependent attributes,
including thought), then the claim in EIIp7c that ‘whatever follows formally from
God's infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea in the same order
and with the same connection’ can be understood to say that whatever is caused
intrinsically from God’s infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea in
61
EIIp7c, (I) 451.
EIp34, (I) 439 (Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia).
63
This absolute identity is claimed to be ‘prolonged’ as in the present reading it is understood to cross the
boundary between Natura naturans and Natura naturata. Recall that we used the same term with respect
to the eternity and infinity of the formal being of things (see section 2.4.3). This is no coincidence. The
present claim implies that the attribute-neutral character of God can be understood to follow from the
divine res in the very same intrinsic way the eternity and infinity of the formal being of things can be
conceived to proceed from the necessity of the divine nature (see section 2.7.2).
62
325
the same order and with the same connection. That is to say: as EIIp6c is aimed at
stressing that as to the intrinsic causation of things there is no distinction
whatsoever between the formal being of ideas and the formal being of modes of the
other attributes,64 we are able to conclude once more that the things that follow
intrinsically from God’s attribute-neutral infinite nature can be understood to have
an attribute-neutral aspect (as well).
As this point is crucial, I will provide yet another argument for it. Consider
the following claim in EIIp9d, where Spinoza provides a paraphrase of EIIp7:
But the order and connection of ideas (by P7) is the same as the order and connection of causes.65
(Atqui ordo, & connexio idearum (per Prop. 7. hujus) idem est, ac ordo, & connexio causarum)
This assertion is important in the present context, as it makes it clear that the term
‘things’ in EIIp7 can be understood to be equivalent (or can at least be used salva
veritate) to the attribute-neutral term ‘causarum’. Now, it appears to be fairly clear
that this latter term must be considered to be attribute-neutral. For it is precisely
because of this that the example of the raising arm (see above) can function at all.
Spinoza can only foster a numerical identity of the order and connection of modes
that resort under different attributes (which, as we saw, he forwards explicitly in
EIIp7s) if the causal laws that are operative in these attributes are exactly the same.
In order to prevent the possibility of a ‘representational mismatch’66 between (say) a
raising arm and the idea of that raising arm, the causal power that can be
recognized in nature must be understood to be attribute-neutral.
The next thing that must be noted is that this attribute-neutrality of causes is
not only applicable to the extrinsic causal thread of durational finite modes, but
also the intrinsic causal thread of eternal infinite modes. As argued for in Chapter
2, EIIp5 posits an intrinsic top-down causal thread in the realm of thought. EIIp6c
64
It is because of this that Spinoza adds in EIIp6c that ‘the formal being of things which are not modes of
thinking does not follow from the divine nature because God has first known the things [emphasis added]’.
EIIp6c, (I) 450-451 (esse formale rerum, quæ modi non sunt cogitandi, non sequitur ideò ex divinâ naturâ,
quia res priùs cognovit). The duality between knowing (in thought) and the thing that is known (in another
attribute) is not applicable to God’s infinite nature. And hence the distinction between the attributes is
not applicable to God qua God (a).
65
EIIp9d, (I) 453.
66
The term is Della Rocca’s. Della Rocca, Representation, 44-45. To be sure, Della Rocca understands the
representational nature of Spinoza’s parallelism in a way that is different from mine, as will become clear
in the next chapter.
326
makes it clear that the top-down causal thread that is staged in EIIp5 is not only
applicable to the mental realm, but to the modes of the other attributes as well (see
above). Just as the formal being of ideas follows ‘from the absolute nature of some
attribute of God’ (EIp23d), so also the formal being of the modes of any other of
the infinite attributes must be understood to ‘follow from the absolute nature of
some attribute of God’, without God first knowing these things.67 Now, if it is
acknowledged that the intrinsically caused formal beings of things are all subject to
God’s causal power – that is (by EIp34): God’s attribute-neutral essence68 – in the
very same way, it becomes clear once more that descriptions such as ‘the formal
being of ideas’, ‘the formal being of bodies’ and ‘the formal being of r’s’ can all be
considered to be members of the same class of attribute-neutral formal beings.69 As the
‘res’ are treated as to an aspect that is absolutely identical in each case (i.e. the fact
that they follow immediately from God qua God), the ‘res’ in this context can be
considered to be attribute-neutral in a certain respect. It is the very attributeneutrality of the causal claims in EIIp5 and EIIp6c that safeguards that the term
‘things’ in EIIp7 can be understood to fall without the scope of the referential
opacity that is applicable to modes if they are considered to resort unconditionally
under a certain attribute. Insofar as the formal beings of things are considered as to
their causal order and connection, there is a perspective from which the fact that
they must be understood to fall under one particular attribute can be ignored.
Stated in terms of EIIp7c this is to say that the modes that are conceived to follow
objectively as ideas in God from his idea, have an attribute-neutral aspect insofar as they
are conceived to follow formally from God’s infinite nature.70
67
See note 64. It is precisely because of this that ‘God’s intellect insofar as it is understood to constitute his
essence’ (EIp17s) must be understood to differ fundamentally from our intellect: God’s thinking essence is
absolutely identical to his all-encompassing essence and hence, as opposed to noster intellectus, is not
characterized by any duality. See the chapters 1 and 3.
68
‘God’s power is his essence itself’ (Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia). EIp34, (I) 439.
69
This can also be deduced from the demonstration of EVp1, which reads: ‘the order and connections of
ideas is the same as the order and connection of things (by EIIp7), and vice versa, the order and
connection of things is the same as the order and connection of ideas (by IIP6C and P7)’. EVp1d, (I) 597.
See note 54.
70
Two things must be added. Firstly, one may object here that the extrinsic causal thread (that surfaces
both in EIp28 and EIIp9) is attribute-neutral too (as it can be understood to be operative in any of the
infinite attributes) and hence that the durational being of things can also be understood to have an aspect
of attribute-neutrality (namely, insofar as they are conceived to be caused). Now, it is true that the
extrinsic causal thread is attribute-neutral – this was actually stated above. But the crucial thing to note is
that this attribute-neutrality cannot be understood to nullify the ‘referential opacity of causal contexts’
327
With this we have made considerable progress in elucidating and
corroborating our claim that the term ‘things’ can be understood to refer to the esse
formale of EIIp5 and EIIp6c. The conceptual distinction between the formal being
of ideas and the formal being of things that surfaced in point (vi′) indeed appears to
be less impermeable than the conceptual distinction between ideas and their
extended objects. For whereas in this latter case the absolute attribute-dependent
context accounts for referential opacity, the identity of the formal beings from
point (vi′) is not threatened by attribute-dependent referential opacity, as these
formal beings can be understood insofar as they follow from the attribute-neutral
necessity of the divine nature. To be sure, there still appears to be a problem with
(Della Rocca, Representation, 166) as the things that are operative in the extrinsic causal thread do not
follow from God in its absolute being. It is precisely the absolute being of the intrinsically causing prima
causa that accounts for the specific attribute-neutral aspect of the formal being of things; insofar as things
are conceived to be operative in an extrinsic causal thread only, there is no p r i m a c a u s a (and hence
no prima cause that can be conceived in its absolute being, ‘contaminating’ the being of things with an
aspect of attribute-neutrality).
The second thing that can be noted here is that the close relation between EIIp7 and EIIp6c
becomes evident also when considering the stunning brevity of Spinoza’s proof for EIIp7. The
demonstration of this proposition reads thus: ‘This is clear from IA4. For the idea of each thing caused
depends on the knowledge of the cause of which it is the effect.’ (Patet ex Ax. 4. p. 1. Nam cujuscunque
causati idea à cognitione causæ, cujus est effectus, dependet), EIIp7d, (I) 451. EIA4 only states that ‘[t]he
knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause’, EIA4, (I) 410.
Understandably, various commentators have hinted at the meagerness of the demonstration of EIIp7.
Jonathan Bennett rightfully states that ‘1a4 does not rule out mental items which do not match any
physical items’ in: Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 130. And Michael Della Rocca makes the same
point when he says that ‘1ax4 does not by itself guarantee the thoroughgoing parallelism that Spinoza has
in mind in 2p7.’ in: Della Rocca, Representation, 22. However, if it is acknowledged that the reference to
EIA4 in EIIp7 is in fact connected closely to the reference to the same axiom in the preceding proposition
EIIp6, things may become a bit clearer. Recall that EIIp6 reads that the modes of each attribute have God
for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes (see note 49).
Now, it is crucial to recognize that Spinoza proves EIIp6 with the help of the very axiom EIA4 that is cited in
EIIp7 (the very axiom, it can be added, by which – in the words of Della Rocca – ‘causation is […] made
intelligible in terms of intelligibility itself’ – see Introduction, note 39). Spinoza posits in EIIp6 that the
characteristic that is forwarded in it is applicable to the modes of any of the infinite attributes. In this sense
the causal claim of EIIp6 (and EIA4) can be understood to be attribute-neutral. Furthermore, from EIIp6c
it becomes clear that this attribute-neutrality is applicable to things that follow from God’s absolute nature
as well. So on this account, EIA4 can be understood to imply that the knowledge of an effect, whether
conceived to be caused intrinsically or extrinsically, depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its (intrinsic
or extrinsic) cause. In this sense Spinoza is able to claim in EIIp7 that the order and connection of things
that are considered insofar as they are caused extrinsically as objective beings, must be understood to be the
same as the order and connection of these very same things insofar as they are conceived to be caused
intrinsically as formal beings. And apparently he thinks that his treatment of the esse formale in EIIp5 and
EIIp6c (as well as the purport of causal axiom EIA4) is so clear, that he does not even bother to mention it
in the demonstration of EIIp7.
328
the present interpretation. For does Spinoza not state explicitly (in the
demonstration of EIIp5) that the formal being of an idea must be understood, not
to be attribute-neutral, but to be a mode of thinking? Indeed, we have used this
very argument ourselves in our rejection of the horizontal reading of EIIp7 (see the
reductio ad absurdum (i)-(viii), point (vii)). So how can we nevertheless uphold the
claim that the formal being of an idea can be understood to have an attributeneutral aspect? Precisely here the importance of the distinction that was mentioned
in the introduction to this chapter – i.e. the distinction between the top-down and
the bottom-up perspectives – and its relation with Spinoza’s parallelism comes to
light. Although this subject will be treated comprehensively only in a subsequent
section, it must be noted here that the formal being of an idea, which can be conceived
as to an a t t r i b u t e - n e u t r a l a s p e c t if it is conceived to follow t o p - d o w n
f r o m God’s infinite (and attribute-neutral) nature, must be understood to be an
attribute-d e p e n d e n t mode of thinking if it is conceived from the b o t t o m - u p
perspective of thought.71
This claim – that actually is a restatement of our assertion that the formal
being of a thing can be conceived both in its part- and in its vista-character (see
above) – may sound all too hermetic. Therefore I will provide a preliminary
example that may elucidate things a bit (even though it is hard to provide an
example which adequately explains what we speak of here).72 Suppose we have two
glasses. One is filled with water and the other is filled with milk. So now we have a
glass of water and a glass of milk. Two children enter the room, they both take a
glass and drink it until virtually no liquid is left. Thus we are left with two almost
empty glasses: an almost empty glass of water and an almost empty glass of milk. As
This same distinction surfaces in Martial Gueroult’s claim that there can be considered to be three
parallelisms in Spinoza’s philosophy. Apart from the inter-attribute parallelism between ideas and bodies,
Gueroult discerns two intra-attribute parallelisms: in one case the idea is taken in its ‘formal essence, as
mode of thinking, a cause in the infinite chain of causes in Thought’ (L’idée considérée comme e s s e n c e
f o r m e l l e (ou être formelle), mode de la Pensée, cause comprise dans la chaîne infinie des causes dans la
pensée), and in the other case the idea is taken ‘in its form or nature as idea of idea’ (L’idée considérée dans
sa f o r m e ou n a t u r e , comme idée de l’idée). Gueroult, Spinoza. L’Ame, 70. These two variants
correspond with the two ways of understanding the formal being of ideas that will be presented in this
section. To be sure, I claim that these two variants – as well as the inter-attribute parallelism of EIIp7s –
must be considered to be variants of the one overriding variant of parallelism that is posited in EIIp7.
72
Attentive readers will have noticed that this formulation is inspired by a remark from Spinoza himself in
EIIp8c. This is no coincidence, as the present example treats the same subject: the distinct conceptual
states of the very same thing.
71
329
the father of the two children is thirsty himself, he decides to really empty the
glasses. He does so, and empties both glasses till the last molecule; not a single trace
of milk or water can be found in the two glasses. Reasoning from the perspective of
the father and the children we are left with a totally empty glass of milk and a
totally empty glass of water. Of course the glasses can also be described differently:
they are just two empty glasses. When the mother enters the room after a day’s
work and notices that the father did not tidy up the room as promised, she may get
angry about the two empty glasses that are still standing on the table. However, it is
nonsensical for her to say to her husband that he should have cleared away the
‘empty glass of milk and the empty glass of water’. She will refer to the objects
simply as ‘the empty glasses’. As the milk-water information is not available to her,
she only considers the glasses qua glasses.73 Now, a similar thing seems to happen
with respect to the formal being of things. From a top-down perspective, the formal
being of an idea must be considered to be an esse formale that does not belong to a
certain ‘preferred attribute’; in this sense this formal being can be understood to
proceed from an adequate idea of the formal essence of God’s attributes74 (i.e. topdown), and can be called a ‘mode of God’ (to use a phrase from Yitzhak
73
One may object that considered in this way, God’s position (which is represented by the mother) is less
powerful then our position (which is represented by the father) as the father has knowledge (i.e. the milkwater information) that is not available to the mother. And hence the example appears to state that we
have knowledge that is not available to God. However, once we realize that the milk-water information is a
representation of the intellect-dependent attributes, the claim that the father is more powerful than the
mother boils down to the claim that something with an intellect (such as the human animal) is more
powerful than God, who according to Spinoza does not have an intellect. Now, this is evidently absurd in
the context of Spinoza’s philosophy. Another way of saying this is that it must be granted that we have
knowledge that is not available to God insofar as God is considered in his (a)-variant that (as opposed to
God (c)) is absolutely free from an intellect in the way we commonly understand it. Claiming that God
qua God has an intellect in the way we commonly understand it (i.e. claiming that the milk-water
information is available to God qua God) implies a diminution of his power. The suggestion that God qua
God must also be understood to have access to the milk-water-information is on a par with the claim that
God qua God must have three angles, just because the triangle that is in him has three angles. As must be
clear from these remarks – and from the things that were said in the previous chapter – these claims can
only be made with respect to the coalescent concept of God (i.e. God (c)). In terms of the milk-water
information: this information can only be understood to be available to the mother insofar as the mother
is considered to be a coalescent aspect of the family she forms with her husband and children. See also
Chapter 3, note 153.
74
Attentive readers will doubtlessly have noticed that I use a part the very formulation with which Spinoza
elucidates his ‘third kind of knowledge’. Evidently, this is no coincidence. The ratio behind the use of this
formulation will become clear in the next chapter.
330
Melamed).75 Yet, if the formal being of this idea is grasped on the basis of an idea
(i.e. bottom-up), this very same formal being somehow ‘belongs to’ the attribute it
is comprehended in, in pretty much the same way the glasses from the perspective
of the father and the children ‘belong to’ the fluids that were in them.
We will return to the distinction between the top-down and the bottom-up
perspective in a subsequent section (and will provide textual support for (i) this
distinction, and (ii) the close relation with Spinoza’s parallelism claims as well as his
view on the structure of the intellect). The thing to note here is that the distinction
between these two perspectives makes it clear that Spinoza’s claim in EIIp5d that
the formal being of an idea is a mode of thinking, does not counteract our claim
that the formal being of an idea can be grasped as to an attribute-neutral aspect as
well. And hence we are in a position to draw an important conclusion with respect
to the way in which we must understand the term ‘things’ in EIIp7. In the context
of the present argument it was already established tentatively that EIIp7 can be
rendered thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being of things which are not modes of thinking (i.e. the e s s e f o r m a l e r e r u m )
As we have seen that considered top-down the esse formale rerum in EIIp6c can be
understood from an attribute-neutral perspective, and that ‘the formal being of
ideas’ can be conceived to be a subcategory of the esse formale, we are able to
conclude that EIIp7 can also be rendered in the following way:
the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being of ideas (and modes of the other attributes)
*
75
See note 59. One more thing must be added. At this point it may appear that we are actually speaking
here about the very formal essences that were referred to in Chapter 2. However, it must be stressed that
this is not the case. The crucial thing to note in this respect is that we are dealing here with things that are
claimed to follow from God, which makes it clear that the attribute-neutrality that is treated here is the
attribute-neutrality of the formal beings at Natura naturata, and not of the (ontologically identical) formal
essences at Natura naturans. To be sure, the attribute-neutrality of pervasive formal beings is evidently
closely connected with the absolute attribute-neutrality of the ubiquitous formal essences they must be
conceived to follow from.
331
In this section I have treated four arguments for the claim that EIIp7 must be
understood to posit a parallelism relation, not between ideas and bodies, but
between ideas and the formal being of these ideas. We have seen (i) that EIIp7 is
embedded in a series of propositions that deal with the formal and the objective
being of things, (ii) that EIIp7c implies that ‘things’ in EIIp7 cannot be understood
to refer to finite modes of extension, (iii) that the hermetic EIIp8 makes it clear that
EIIp7 must be understood to deal with the eternal and the durational being of
things, and (iv) that considered top-down the esse formale that surface in EIIp5 and
EIIp6c can be conceived as to an attribute-neutral aspect that nullifies the
‘referential opacity of causal contexts’ and hence that the formal being of ideas and
the formal being of modes of the other attributes can be understood to be
absolutely identical. Thus, we are in a position to state that EIIp7 claims that the
order and connection of the objective being of things is the same as the order and
connection of the formal being of things. Idiosyncratic as this reading of EIIp7 may
have seemed at first sight, I have provided considerable evidence for the claim that
Spinoza’s ‘parallelism proposition’ must be read in this particular way. To be sure,
not all the problems that this reading gives rise to are solved yet. One of the
pressing questions that is in need of an answer is how this ‘vertical’76 reading of
EIIp7 can be brought in line with the inter-attribute reading that – as we saw –
surfaces explicitly in various passages from the Ethics. For the present interpretation
can only be considered to do justice to Spinoza’s claims if it also provides a way to
understand the ‘horizontal’ inter-attribute relation between ideas and their parallel
bodies. This is the subject to which we will turn now.
76
I use the term ‘vertical’ here because on the present reading there is posited a relation between the levels
(b-i) and (b-ii), that stand in some sort of hierarchical relation (as in Spinoza’s philosophy the eternity of
(b-i) appears to have a more ‘real’ status than the duration of b-ii)). To be sure, it is important to stress
that this ‘vertical’ relation is not on a par with intra-attribute parallelism. Firstly it must be noted that the
vertical relation is between modes of a certain attribute (at (b-ii)) and their identity with modes that are
attribute-neutral (at (b-i)) – which of course implies that the vertical relation does not stay within the
boundaries of a certain attribute. Secondly, it is important to stress that a horizontal relation (i.e. an identity
relation between two modes that both are operative at level (b-ii)) does not necessarily cross the boundaries
between the attributes. Indeed, the very relation between an idea and the idea of that idea must be
understood to be a horizontal relation that nevertheless stays within the boundaries of the attribute of
thought. A subsequent section will be dedicated to the question how this idea of the idea (at (b-ii)), that is
related horizontally to its idea (at (b-ii)), is related vertically to the formal being of its idea (at (b-i)).
332
4.2.3.1 Two parallelisms reconciled
So far we have been focusing mainly on the vertical ontological identity and
conceptual distinction of things. For we concluded that EIIp7, with its reference to
‘the order and connection of ideas’ and ‘the order and connection of things’,
actually establishes an identity relation, not between finite things, but between (b-i)
the eternal and infinite formal being of a thing and (b-ii) its durational and finite
objective being. The horizontal relation between durational finite things that are
conceived under different attributes – i.e. ideas and bodies – (and indeed the
relation between ideas and ideas of these ideas),77 remained (mostly) out of sight.
However, Spinoza explicitly posits such a horizontal relation (i.e. an identityrelation between things that both are operative at the level of duration (b-ii)) in
EIIp7s, where it is stated that ‘a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are
one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways’.78 This claim clearly posits the
identity of singular modes of different attributes. As we have seen that in other
propositions not EIIp7s but EIIp7 itself is staged as the foundation for the
parallelism between ideas and bodies, we face the question in what way this interattribute parallelism can be understood to be grounded in the intrinsic distinction
between the formality and objectivity of things that was uncovered in the previous
section. Indeed: how can our tables 4 and 5 can be reconciled?
Recall that these two tables provided the following – apparently opposing –
renderings of Spinoza’s parallelism thesis:
Natura naturans
Thought
=
Extension
=
R
--------------------------------------------------------------(c) God
Natura naturata
idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(table 4)
And:
77
78
This identity relation between ideas and the ideas of these ideas will be treated in section 4.3.2.
EIIp7s, (I) 451.
333
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
---------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
is identical to
Natura naturata
(b-ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
At first glance, these tables appear to state something different. Yet, given what we
have seen above, we are in a position to see how table 4 and 5 can be brought in
line.
The first thing to stress in this respect is that the attributes in table 4 are
staged in their ontological variant (see section 3.6). In this particular state, the
attributes must be understood to be ontologically and conceptually identical to the
very infinite nature of God (i.e. God qua God (a)).79 Another way of saying this is
that God’s essence is absolutely attribute-neutral, that is: his essence must be
understood to exist irrespective of the way it is perceived via an intellect.80 Indeed,
as (by EIIp7c) ‘God's power of thinking is equal to his actual power of acting’ –
and as there is no reason to attach the designation ‘power of acting’ to a ‘preferred
attribute’ – the designations ‘Thought’, ‘Extension’ and ‘R’ from table 4 can all be
captured under the one designation ‘God qua God (a)’ that surfaces in table 5.
Hence table 4 can also be rendered thus:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
--------------------------------------------------------------(c) God
Natura naturata
idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(table 4′)
Secondly, we have seen in Chapter 2 that modes of the infinite attributes can
be understood in two ways: objectively as finite durational modes, and formally as
infinite eternal modes. This can be rendered thus:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
--------------------------------------------------------------(b-i) form x
form x
form x
Natura naturata - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii) idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(c) God
(table 4″)
79
80
For a further elucidation of this claim, see section 4.3.3.1.
The extra-intellectual ‘existence’ of God’s essence was treated in Chapter 3.
334
Thirdly, it became clear that the absolute identity of the attributes at the
level of Natura naturans can be understood to be mirrored in the formal beings of
things insofar as these are conceived to follow top-down from God’s absolutely
infinite nature. That is to say: these formal beings can be considered to be attributeneutral in the very same way God qua God (and indeed the formal essences that are
contained ubiquitously in God qua God) is. Insofar as the formal being of things is
considered to follow top-down from God qua God, the absolute divine attributeneutrality is transferred to the level of Natura naturata (or, as we have formulated it
somewhat awkwardly above: the formal being of things can be understood to be
‘contaminated’ by the absolute attribute-neutrality of God’s infinite nature). This
observation allows us to adjust table 4″ in the following way:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
--------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
the formal being of singular things
Natura naturata - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii) idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(c) God
(table 4‴)
In the previous section we have asserted that considered top-down – that is: insofar
as the formal being of a thing is conceived to follow intrinsically from God’s
infinite nature – the distinction between the attributes is not applicable to level (bi) (indeed in the same way the designations ‘milk’ and ‘water’ were not applicable to
the perspective of the mother). And so from this top-down perspective the
schematic distinction between the attributes is only operative at level (b-ii), in the
way rendered in table 4‴.
The next thing that must be incorporated in the schematic rendering of
Spinoza’s parallelism is the representational nature of thought,81 that also surfaces in
our claim concerning the trichotomy that is entailed by the formal-objective
distinction (see section 2.5.3). As thought was shown to be characterized by the fact
that modes of this attribute have objects that resort under other attributes, table 4‴
can also be rendered thus:
81
This representational nature of thought will be elucidated further in the next chapter.
335
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
--------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
the formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii)
the objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 4*)
Now, it cannot escape our notice that table 4* is virtually identical to table 5 (see
above). There is only one difference: in table 4* the distinction between the
attributes (i.e. between the objective being in thought and its object in another
attribute) is still recognizable at level (b-ii) (namely in the grey vertical lines). This
is informative, as it makes it clear that things insofar as they are grasped objectively
in thought (and which as such surface as a durational idea), must be understood to
be durational in their own attributes as well. Indeed, the parallel extended object of a
durational idea must be understood to be a durational body (which is of course
precisely what we have claimed in section 2.5.3, when we introduced the concept of
trichotomy). If this is kept in mind, table 4* can also be rendered thus:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
--------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
the formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii)
the objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
The upshot of the arguments in this section is that it is possible to reconcile
both renderings of Spinoza’s parallelism thesis. The present reading of EIIp7
provides us with a way to understand how Spinoza’s vertical parallelism claim of
EIIp7 (and EIp21s) can be conceived to encompass the inter-attribute parallelism
of EIIp7s. For our findings allow us to make the following claim:
A singular idea and its parallel mode (or object) under extension b o t h a r e f i n i t e
and durational expressions in their own attribute of the
v e r y s a m e a t t r i b u t e - n e u t r a l a n d e t e r n a l f o r m a l b e i n g .82
82
I use the term ‘singular idea’ instead of ‘idea’ because there is one important exception (which we could
call a ‘borderline case’): the whole of objective nature (i.e. the all-encompassing totality of singular ideas,
336
And hence we can draw the important conclusion that the inter-attribute parallelism
of EIIp7s can be understood to be an i m p l i c a t i o n of the vertical parallelism of
EIIp7. Indeed, because of the fact that the attribute-neutral and infinite esse formale
are expressed within each of the infinite attributes, there also is an inter-attribute
parallel relation between the finite modes that are conceived under different
attributes. Table 5 implies that idea x, body x and rx are identical, precisely because
they are finite expressions under their own intellect-dependent attribute of the very
same attribute-neutral formal being. In this sense, inter-attribute parallelism can be
understood to be an implication of vertical parallelism. According to Spinoza, a
man and the idea of that man can be considered to be one and the same thing
because the order and connection of things is expressed in the same way in any of
God’s attributes (thus including extension and thought). Every extended mode is
identical to the parallel mental one because an idea and its object both are finite
expressions (w i t h i n their respective attributes) o f t h e v e r y s a m e t h i n g : the
attribute-neutral esse formale that follows from God’s infinite nature (and that,
unlike the formal essences, must be positioned at the level of Natura naturata).
This transitive structure of Spinoza’s parallelism – that we recognize as yet
another expression of the trichotomous structure of pars melior nostri – can be
elucidated with the following example. The German poet Heinrich Heine once
wrote that ‘thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder’.83 Whatever
Heine’s poetic or political purpose may have been with this remark,84 in a certain
sense the claim is imprecise. For as is well known, lightning and thunder are
distinct manifestations of one and the same phenomenon: the discharge of huge
amounts of electricity in the sky. Insofar as this discharge is considered in itself,
lighting does not precede thunder. The respective manifestations of this single
phenomenon can only be perceived to be distinct because the discharge is expressed
in two separate ways: in light waves (in which case it is called ‘lightning’), and in
which due to its infinity is not a singular idea). It is an exception because it is must be understood to be an
infinite expression of an eternal formal being. Indeed, the whole of objective nature and its parallel modes
under the remaining attributes can be understood to be the only modes that combine infinity with duration.
The durational nature of the whole of objective nature was treated in section 3.3.
83
In: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (1835). In: Heinrich Heine, Heines Werke
in fünf Bänden 5 (Berlin 1964), 141 (Der Gedanke geht der Tat voraus wie der Blitz dem Donner [my
translation JHH.)).
84
Heine uses this metaphor in order to make it clear that according to him revolution is due in nineteenth
century Germany, as at that point there is a rich corpus of revolutionary philosophy in Germany.
337
sound waves (in which case it is called ‘thunder’). Even though this distinction
between lightning and thunder is real enough – especially when the electrical
discharge is considered from a certain distance – the perceived preceding of the
manifestation insofar as it is expressed in light waves should not lead one to the
conclusion that lightning and thunder refer to separate events. The difference
between the speed of light and the speed with which sound waves travel through air
makes these two separate manifestations only seem to indicate separate events. But
in fact they have one and the same reference: the ‘light-and-sound-neutral’
discharge of electricity. Indeed:
(3)
(4)
(5)
Lightning is a manifestation of an electrical discharge
Thunder is a manifestation of the same electrical discharge
Hence:
The phenomenon ‘lightning’ refers to = the phenomenon ‘thunder’
refers to
Or, to state it in yet another way: lightning and thunder have the same reference but
a different meaning. Now, the very same applies to the way in which according to
Spinoza a mind and a body must be understood to be related. Even though their
distinction is real enough, the mind and body of (say) the present president of
France must be understood to refer to the very same thing: their attribute-neutral
formal being. Indeed:
(6)
(7)
(8)
The mind of the present president of France is an expression of the
attribute-neutral formal being of the present president of France
The body of the present president of France is an expression of the
attribute-neutral formal being of the present president of France
Hence:
The thing ‘the mind of the present president of France’ refers to = the
thing ‘the body of the present president of France’ refers to
It is due to the intrinsic identity of a finite mode and its infinite attribute-neutral
being that a mode of thinking and its parallel extended object can be understood to
338
be the very same thing, even though the manifestation of the thing – as a body or as
an idea – is quite different.85
On the basis of the things we have seen above, we can conclude that God
qua God (a) can be conceived to create infinitely many attribute-neutral and eternal
formal beings (top-down) that in turn can be understood to be expressed in
infinitely many attribute-dependent durational modes. It appears to be precisely
because of this that Spinoza is able to state in EIp16 that ‘infinitely many things’
follow from the divine nature ‘in infinitely many modes’: the infinitely many
formal beings of things that follow from the divine nature can in turn be conceived
to be expressed as modes of the infinitely many attributes.86 Or, as Spinoza repeats in
the concluding remark of EIIp7s: ‘So of things as they are in themselves, God is
really the cause insofar as he consists of infinitely many attributes’87 – a further clear
indication that things in their formal being can be conceived irrespective of their
attribute (as well). Yet another way of saying this is that the parallelism of modes
mirrors the absolute identity of the ontological attributes that was treated in section
3.6, and that surfaces explicitly in the claim in EIIp7s that ‘the thinking substance
and the extended substance are one and the same’. As the attributes must be
understood to be absolutely identical in their ontological status, so also the eternally
existing formal beings of the modes (that follow immediately from the attributeneutral essence of God), and the finite expressions of these forms in objective beings
and their objects (under duration) must be understood to have the very same
85
Furthermore, from EIIp8 we can gather that this relation is not only applicable to things that exist at
this moment under duration (such as the present president of France), but also to things that do not exist
at this moment under duration, but that do have an ‘external cause which has been determined to produce
such a thing’ (EIp33s1, (I) 436 (causa externa datur, ad talem rem producendam determinata)) at a certain
moment under duration (such as (say) king Louis XIV). Indeed:
(9)
The mind of Louis XIV is an expression of the attribute-neutral formal being of Louis XIV
(10)
The body of Louis XIV is an expression of the attribute-neutral formal being of Louis XIV
Hence:
(11)
The thing ‘mind of Louis XIV’ refers to = the thing ‘the body of Louis XIV’ refers to.
86
Yitzhak Melamed made more or less the same observation. He states with respect to EIp16 that ‘the
things that follow from God’s nature are the infinitely faceted units that I call ‘modes of God’ (i.e. modes
under the infinitely many attributes), and the infinitely many ways by which each mode of God follows
from God’s nature are the infinitely many modes of the attributes that are aspects of the same mode of
God.’ Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 150. However, there is one crucial difference between Melamed’s
interpretation and the present one: Melamed does not equate the ‘things’ that surface in EIp16 with the
‘things’ from EIIp7 (and EIIp6c).
87
EIIp7s, (I) 452 (Quare rerum, ut in se sunt, Deus reverâ est causa, quatenus infinitis constat attributis).
339
reference. Hence they can be conceived to parallel each other insofar as they are
grasped as to their meaning. In this sense, the claim in EIIp7 posits a transitive
parallelism relation:88 mode of thought xt can be understood to be identical to
mode of extension xe because mode of thought xt is identical to attribute-neutral
mode xf, and attribute-neutral mode xf in turn is identical to mode of extension xe.
With this we encounter the very same trichotomy relation that was treated in
section 2.5.3. Our claim in that section that the constructive function of the intellect
entails a trichotomy of eternal formal beings, durational objective beings and their
durational objects is fully corroborated by the present way of understanding
Spinoza’s parallelism. It has become clear that transitive parallelism is nothing but
an expression of the very trichotomy that characterizes the intellect in the way we
commonly understand it: an idea is numerically identical to its object because idea
and parallel object both are durational expressions of the very same formal being. 89
*
In sum: EIIp7 does n o t primarily posit a parallelism relation between ideas and
bodies. This important parallelism proposition must be understood to assert that t h e
order and connections of things insofar as they are
considered with respect to their objects is the same as the
order and connection of things insofar as they are
c o n s i d e r e d i n t h e m s e l v e s . As due to the absolute identity of the attributes at
the level of N a t u r a n a t u r a n s the formal being of ideas and the formal being of
88
There is some controversy concerning the use of the term ‘parallelism’ with respect to the aspect of
Spinoza’s metaphysics that was treated in this section. Chantal Jacquet argued that ‘equality’ is a better
term than the Leibnizian term ‘parallelism’ (see note 22). Yet, given the indicated importance of the esse
formale for Spinoza’s parallelism thesis, the term ‘conformity’ (which can also be found in Leibniz’ work,
namely in the following claim: ‘C'est qu'il faut donc dire que Dieu a créé d'abord l'âme, ou toute autre unité
réelle de telle sorte, que tout lui doit naître de son propre fonds, par une parfaite spontanéité à l'égard d'ellemême, et pour tant avec une parfaite c o n f o r m i t é aux choses de dehors [emphasis added]’ in: G.W.
Leibniz, Neues System der Natur in: Fünf Schriften zur Logik und Metaphysik (Stuttgart 1966), 30 (note))
actually seems more appropriate. Indeed, this term accounts both for the transitive identity (‘con’) and the
referential aspect (‘form’) of this relation. However, not to disorient the reader too much, I will stick to the
term ‘parallelism’ in this study, as this term is firmly rooted in mainstream Spinoza-scholarship.
89
The question in what way transitive parallelism is related to the truth and adequacy of ideas will be
treated in the next chapter.
340
bodies must be understood to be absolutely identical as well, this ‘vertical’ parallelism of
the formal and the objective being of things entails the ‘horizontal’ inter-attribute
parallelism between ideas and bodies. A singular idea is identical to the body it is the
idea of because both can be considered to be f i n i t e a n d d u r a t i o n a l
expressions of the very same infinite and eternal formal
b e i n g . In this sense Spinoza’s parallelism thesis can be understood to be an expression
of the trichotomy that characterizes the intellect in the way we commonly understand it.
4.3 The bottom-up perspective
In the previous section we have seen that (and how) EIIp7, its corollary and its
scholium can be understood via EIIp5 and EIIp6c, which both are rooted in the
top-down causal thread put forward in the Principle of Plenitude of EIp16.90 It was
shown that Spinoza’s parallelism entails a vertical identity of the top-down
generated infinite and eternal formal being of things and the finite and durational
expressions of these same things in each of the infinitely many attributes. This was
rendered thus:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
- - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
In this section I will argue for the claim that the formal being of things can also be
grasped bottom-up in the way of the following table:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
- - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5′)
90
As will become clear below, EIIp5d shelters an aspect of the bottom-up perspective as well.
341
An important reason for taking this turn is the fact that we have not treated
Spinoza’s parallelism exhaustively yet. In the previous section we may have
established that EIIp7 can be understood thus:
the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of the formal
being of things
which was shown to imply that
the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of bodies
However, as of yet it is not clear at all how this parallelism can account for the
identity relation that surfaces in EIIp21s, namely the relation between ideas and
ideas of ideas, a variant of parallelism that in turn can be rendered thus:
the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of ideas of these
ideas
Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that up till this point we have been arguing
mainly about the way in which ideas can be understood to be identical to their
formal being and their extended objects; the question how these forma ideae can in
turn be understood to be idea ideae was not addressed yet. This is the subject that
we will turn to now. In this section I will argue that (and how) ideas of ideas are
related horizontally to their ideas in the same way ideas are related to their body.
The bottom-up perspective will be shown to play an important role in this
horizontal intra-attribute parallelism; it will become clear that this particular
perspective accounts for the way in which this variant of parallelism can be fitted in
the encompassing transitive parallelism that was elucidated above. Moreover, a
treatment of the bottom-up perspective will also provide us with an answer to the
question that induced our investigation of Spinoza’s parallelism claims in EIIp7 and
EIIp21: the way in which we must understand God’s self-knowledge (and hence
the knowledge of pars melior nostri).
342
4.3.1 Similar passages
We already caught a first glimpse of the bottom-up perspective in the example of
the glass of water and the glass of milk. It was argued in the previous section that in
the context of Spinoza’s philosophy the formal being of things can be conceived in
two ways: top-down these things can be conceived to have an attribute-neutral
aspect, and considered bottom-up they must be understood to ‘belong’ to a specific
attribute. In order to provide a more comprehensive argument for the claim that
the Ethics harbors two perspectives – and that the formal being of things can also be
grasped bottom-up in the way suggested in table 5′ – we must turn to the passage
that spurred our interest in intra-attribute parallelism (i.e. EIIp21 and its scholium)
once more. For, as will become clear below, Spinoza’s claim in EIIp21s that ‘as
soon as someone knows something, he thereby knows that he knows it, and at the
same time knows that he knows that he knows, and so on to infinity’91 can count as
an important manifestation of the bottom-up perspective in the Ethics, a
manifestation that is on a par with (inter alia) a remarkable claim in EIIp7s that was
not treated yet.
Elucidating the way in which the bottom-up perspective can be understood,
we must start by pointing out once more that in EIIp21s ideas are asserted to be
conceivable in two ways: an idea can be grasped with and without respect to its
object. Furthermore we have learned that when an idea is understood in this latter
way, Spinoza uses the term ‘form of the idea’. At this point it is important to note
that in order to underpin this important claim, Spinoza does not refer to EIIp5 (nor
to EIIp7 or EIIp7c) – as we might expect on the basis of the things we have
ascertained above – but to EIIp7s. The scholium of EIIp21 starts with the remark
that ‘this proposition is understood far more clearly from what is said in P7S’.92 So
if we want to gain a full understanding of the claims that are made in EIIp21 and
its scholium, we must turn to a closer scrutiny of EIIp7s.
As was shown above, EIIp7s appears to be dedicated first and foremost to the
horizontal inter-attribute variant of parallelism (i.e. to the parallel relation between
finite ideas and their extended finite objects at level (b-ii)). Hence it is not
EIIp21s, (I) 467-468 (simulac enim quis aliquid scit, eo ipso scit, se id scire, & simul scit, se scire, quòd scit,
& sic in infinitum).
92
EIIp21s, (I) 467 (Hæc Propositio longè clariùs intelligitur ex dictis in Schol. Prop. 7. hujus).
91
343
immediately evident how EIIp7s can be understood to underpin Spinoza’s claims in
EIIp21 and its scholium, which assert an intra-attribute variant of parallelism.
Consider the following remark in EIIp21s:
[in EIIp7s] we have shown that the idea of the body and the body […] are one and the same individual,
which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. So the idea
of the mind and the mind itself are one and the same thing, which is conceived under one and the same
attribute, namely, thought’93
(ibi enim ostendimus Corporis ideam, & Corpus, hoc est (per Prop. 13. hujus) Mentem, & Corpus unum, &
idem esse Individuum, quod jam sub Cogitationis, jam sub Extensionis attributo concipitur; quare Mentis idea,
& ipsa Mens una, eademq́ue est res, quæ sub uno, eodemq́ue attributo, nempe Cogitationis, concipitur)
True, from this assertion it becomes clear that, according to Spinoza, the parallelism
between ideas and ideas of ideas put forward EIIp21 must be understood in the
same way as the variant of parallelism that is staged in EIIp7s. But at the same the
adduced claim is hardly illuminating as to how EIIp7s can be understood to provide
a basis for the parallelism of EIIp21s (or for the bottom-up perspective that I aim to
elucidate in this section). In order to understand this, we must turn to a closer
scrutiny of the things that are claimed in EIIp7s. Consider the following important
passage from this scholium:
When I said that God is the cause of the idea, say of a circle, only insofar as he is a thinking thing, and the
cause of the circle, only insofar as he is an extended thing, this was for no other reason than because the
formal being of the idea of the circle can be perceived only through another mode of thinking, as its
proximate cause, and that mode again through another, and so on, to infinity.94
(Nec ullâ aliâ de causâ [te voren] dixi, quòd Deus sit causa ideæ ex. gr. circuli, quatenus tantùm est res cogitans,
& circuli, quatenus tantùm est res extensa, nisi quia esse formale ideæ circuli non, nisi per alium cogitandi
modum, tanquam causam proximam, & ille iterùm per alium, & sic in infinitum, potest percipi)
These remarks may indeed shelter the key for understanding the parallelism – and
the bottom-up perspective – of EIIp21 and its scholium. In this respect, the
following two aspects are promising. Firstly, the assertion in EIIp7s clearly deals
with the relation between modes insofar as they are operative under the same
attribute. Secondly, in this passage the very term that can be understood to ground
Spinoza’s transitive parallelism – ‘esse formale’ – is used explicitly.
93
94
Ibidem, (I) 467.
EIIp7s, (I) 451-452.
344
Michael Della Rocca claimed that EIIp7s uncovers the ‘referential opacity of
causal contexts’95 as the quoted assertion from this scholium makes it clear that ‘the
truth of causal claims is description-dependent’:96 due to the conceptual distinction
between the attributes, the formal being of an idea can be understood to be causally
related to another mental thing only, and not to a mode of another attribute. This
appears to be correct (just as it is correct to state that lightning cannot be described
in terms of sound-waves). As a matter of fact, I have used more or less the same
argument in the reductio ad absurdum above. There I have claimed that the term
‘things’ that is used in EIIp7 cannot be understood to be bodies due to the causal
barrier between the attributes. So in this respect Della Rocca’s remark provides a
reading of EIIp7s that is in line with the present interpretation. Yet, at the same
time it must be noted that the ‘referential opacity of causal contexts’ does not
account for the parallelism relation that is suggested by the reference to EIIp7s in
EIp21s. The fact that a mental thing can only be conceived to be connected
causally to another mental thing (and not to an extended or an r-ed thing) – and
hence that the causal thread that is mentioned in EIIp7s has an intra-attribute
character – does not at all imply that (mental) cause and (mental) effect must be
understood to be the very same thing. Yet, precisely this identity claim between
ideas and their formal being is made in the very passage from EIIp21s that is
claimed to find its ground in EIIp7s. As we saw above, Spinoza states explicitly in
EIIp21s that the form of the idea and the idea itself (and indeed the idea and the
idea of that idea) ‘are one and the same thing’. And thus the reference to EIIp7s in
EIIp21s firmly suggests that the quoted passage from EIIp7s actually entails
something more than merely the referential opacity of causal contexts; it seems that
it must also harbor information with which the identity of ideas and their formal
being can be understood.
This supposition is underpinned by the things we have seen in Chapter 2.
Recall that we have established there that Spinoza’s assertions in EIIp5 – the very
proposition that treats the causal generation of the formal being of ideas – have
more to it than merely the causal barrier Della Rocca refers to. We have seen that
ideas in their formal being (EIIp5) must be understood to follow intrinsically from
God as a ‘thinking thing absolutely’, whereas things in their objective being (i.e. the
95
96
Della Rocca, Representation, 166.
Ibidem, 166.
345
ideas in the way they are staged in EIIp9) follow extrinsically from God as a res
cogitans.97 That is to say: we have established that a thing in its objective being (i.e.
its idea) and in its formal being must be understood to diverge in the conceptual
nature of the intra-attribute causal thread it is conceived to follow from; the formal
being of ideas from EIIp5 follow vertically (i.e. from (a) to (b-i)) from God as a
‘thinking thing absolutely’, and the ideas from EIIp9 follow horizontally (i.e. from
(b-ii) to (b-ii)) from God as a res cogitans insofar as he is conceived to be expressed
in another finite mode of thinking, and that mode again in another finite mode of
thinking, and so on to infinity. Now, it does not seem to be an outrageous claim to
suppose that this very distinction between ideas and their formal being may apply
to the assertion in EIIp7s as well. Indeed, on the basis of the things we have said in
section 2.5 and the reference to EIIp7s in the scholium of EIIp21 we can conclude
tentatively that the quoted passage of EIIp7s must be understood posit, not only
the referential opacity of causal contexts, but also the conceptual distinction
between the formal and the objective being of things.
To be sure, even though this observation provides us with a firm indication
that the claim concerning the formal being of a circle in EIIp7s has more to it than
merely the reiteration of the causal barrier between the attributes, our remarks in
section 2.5 are not particularly illuminating with respect to the subject that we are
treating presently: the identity relation that is posited in EIIp21 (and the way this
relation is connected with a bottom-up perspective). In order to clarify these aspects
of Spinoza’s philosophy, we must turn to a scrutiny of a passage that can be found
in §33 of the TdIE. For this section contains elements that are remarkably similar
to some of the assertions that surface in EIIp7s and EIIp21s. This similarity may
provide us with an alternative angle with which the assertions concerning ideas and
their formal beings in EIIp7s and EIIp21s – and hence the relation between ideas
and ideas of ideas (and the bottom-up perspective) – can be understood.
Consider the following claims from §33 of the TdIE:
A true idea (for we have a true idea) is something different from its object. For a circle is one thing and an
idea of the circle another – the idea of the circle is not something which has a circumference and a centre,
as the circle does. Nor is an idea of the body the body itself. And since it is something different from its
object, it will also be something intelligible through itself; that is, the idea, as far as its formal essence is
97
See section 2.5.
346
concerned, can be the object of another objective essence, and this objective essence in turn will also be,
considered in itself, something real and intelligible, and so on, indefinitely.98
(Idea vera (habemus enim ideam veram) est diversum quid à suo ideato: Nam aliud est circulus, aliud idea
circuli. Idea enim circuli non est aliquid, habens peripheriam, & centrum, uti circulus, nec idea corporis est
ipsum corpus: & cùm sit quid diversum à suo ideato, erit etiam per se aliquid intelligibile; hoc est, idea, quoad
suam essentiam formalem, potest esse objectum alterius essentiæ objectivæ, & rursus hæc altera essentia objectiva
erit etiam in se spectata quid reale, & intelligibile, & sic indefinitè)
And then Spinoza gives the following example:
Peter, for example, is something real; but a true idea of Peter is an objective essence of Peter, and
something real in itself, and altogether different from Peter himself. So since an idea of Peter is something
real, having its own particular essence, it will also be something intelligible, i.e., the object of second idea,
which will have in itself, objectively, whatever the idea of Peter has formally; and in turn, the idea which is
the idea of the idea of Peter has again its essence, which can also be the object of another idea, and so on
indefinitely. Everyone can experience this, when he sees that he knows what Peter is, and also knows that
he knows, and again, knows that he knows that he knows, etc.99
(Petrus ex. gr. est quid reale; vera autem idea Petri est essentia Petri objectiva, & in se quid reale, & omninò
diversum ab ipso Petro. Cùm itaque idea Petri sit quid reale, habens suam essentiam peculiarem, erit etiam
quid intelligibile, id est, objectum alterius ideæ, quæ idea habebit in se objectivè omne id, quod idea Petri habet
formaliter, & rursus idea, quæ est ideæ Petri, habet iterum suam essentiam, quæ etiam potest esse objectum
alterius ideæ, & sic indefinitè. Quod quisque potest experiri, dum videt se scire, quid sit Petrus, & etiam scire se
scire, & rursùs scit se scire, quòd scit, &c)
There is a clear similarity between these passages and the things that are being said
in both EIIp7s and EIIp21s. In this respect we must notice, firstly, that in these
passages Spinoza treats precisely the subject that is hinted at in EIIp21s: the idea
without relation to the object. A true idea is described as ‘something different from its
object’ and the true idea of Peter is called ‘altogether different from Peter’. An idea
considered apart from its object is called the formal essence of the idea, which in
turn firmly underpins our supposition that the adduced passage treats the very same
subject as EIIp21s: the difference between the objective and the formal status of a
thing. Secondly, it must be noted that the quoted passages from the TdIE and
EIIp7s both deal with the formal status of a circle, and hence appear to be the result
98
TdIE §33-35, (I) 17. To be sure, the status of the term ‘formal essence’ in this early work of Spinoza
must be understood differently than the status that is attributed to the term in the present interpretation
(i.e. as affection that must be understood to be located extra-intellectum (EIp4d)). A detailed philological
scrutiny of the genealogy of this particular term in Spinoza’s work would take us too far afield.
99
Ibidem, (I) 17-18.
347
of a copy-paste operation. To be sure, the remarkable analogy between the passages
in the TdIE and EIIp7s does not end with the observation (i) that both deal with
the formal and objective status of things and (ii) that both passages are formulated
in more or less the same way. Yet another striking similarity surfaces when
considering the line in EIIp7s that ‘the formal being of the idea of the circle can be
perceived only through another mode of thinking, […] and that mode again through
another, and so on, to infinity [emphasis added]’. This claim is strongly reminiscent
of Spinoza’s assertion in the TdIE that ‘the idea, as far as its formal essence is
concerned, can be the object of another objective essence, and this objective essence
in turn will also be, considered in itself, something real and intelligible, and so on,
indefinitely [emphasis added]’. In both passages there seems to be posited an
infinite chain of objective expressions of formal beings that surface as ideas, as ideas
of ideas, and so on. This very infinite chain is recognizable in EIIp21s too, namely
in Spinoza’s assertion that ‘as soon as someone knows something, he thereby knows
that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows, and so
on, to infinity’. Indeed, the latter claim from EIIp21s is virtually identical to
something that is asserted in the passage from the TdIE (as an example for the very
infinite chain referred to above): ‘the idea of the idea of Peter has again its essence,
which can also be the object of another idea, and so on indefinitely. Everyone can
experience this, when he sees that he knows what Peter is, and also knows that he knows,
and again, knows that he knows that he knows, etc. [emphasis added]’.
The similarity of the claims in the TdIE, EIIp7s and EIIp21s suggests that
the assertions in the two latter passages can both be considered to be a concise
reformulation of Spinoza’s rendering of the working of the intellect in the
important passage from the TdIE.100 For in all three passages we encounter the
following key features:
100
This similarity of course has been noted by other scholars too. Alexandre Matheron is a case in point.
He identified a series of apparent differences between the quoted passages from the TdIE and EIIp21s.
However, Matheron concludes that these differences do not forestall the important similarity concerning
the status of the ideas of ideas in both works: ‘Donc, finalement, il n’y a pas de contradiction entre le TIE
at l’Éthique’. Alexandre Matheron, Études sur Spinoza et les philosophies de l’age classique (Lyon 2011), 540.
To be sure, even though I agree with Matheron insofar as the structure of the argument is concerned, I do
not think there is no relevant difference at all. Perhaps the most important difference concerns the use of
the terms ‘formal’’ and ‘objective essence’ in the TdIE. In the Ethics, Spinoza switches to ‘formal’ and ‘active’
essence. The reason for this change of terms will be elucidated in the next chapter.
348
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
A situating of the formal status of things and the objective expression of these
things within the attribute of thought101
An infinite chain of perceptions
A conceptual exclusivity of formality and objectivity
Ad (i). The situating of the formal status of things and the objective expression of
these things within the attribute of thought surfaces in the remark in EIIp7s that
‘the formal being of the idea of the circle can be perceived only through another
mode of thinking [emphasis added]’ (which as we saw mirrors the assertion in the
TdIE that ‘the idea can be the object of another objective essence [emphasis added]’).
With this remark Spinoza makes it clear that the interplay between formality and
the objective modus in which this formality is expressed must be positioned within
the mental realm. The interplay between formal and objective being of things can
be understood to be operative entirely in the attribute of thought.
Ad (ii). As we saw, the formal being of the idea can be perceived only through
another mode of thinking (i). This other mode of thinking in turn can only be
perceived only per alium cogitandi modum (EIIp7s). And the resulting mode of
thinking again can only be perceived through another mode of thinking. And so on
indefinitely. Now, this very same structure of infinite perceptions is recognizable in
the claim in the TdIE that ‘the idea, as far as its formal essence is concerned, can be
the object of another objective essence, and this objective essence in turn will also
be, considered in itself, something real and intelligible, and so on, indefinitely’,
which as we saw is explicated by Spinoza – both in the TdIE and in EIIp21s – with
a reference to ideas of ideas, and to knowledge of knowledge (of knowledge of
knowledge, and so on).
101
One important thing must be added: the ‘real Peter’ that gives rise to the first objective essence (‘the
true idea of Peter’) may be understood to be the extended Peter in the quoted example. However, in a note
Spinoza remarks that ‘we are not asking how the first objective essence is inborn in us’. TdIE §34, note n,
(I) 18. That is to say: Spinoza at this point neither confirms nor denies that the original thing is an
extended thing. In this sense, Bennett’s remark that ‘for Spinoza the body calls the tune’ is misguided. See:
Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 81 and 186. In the next chapter we will say something more about the
way in which Spinoza conceives the ‘first adequate idea’.
349
Ad (iii). The conceptual exclusivity of ‘the formal being of the idea of the circle’
and ‘the [objective] idea of the circle’ can be explicated thus: as according to EIIp7s
this formal being can be perceived only through another mode of thinking (non nisi
per alium cogitandi modum), the idea (or objective being (EIIp8c)) of the circle thus
is asserted to differ necessarily (in a certain respect) from the formal being of that
same idea. This implies that (from the present perspective) the formality and
objectivity of a thing are conceptually exclusive. When ideas are grasped in the way
staged in the passages quoted above, they fall apart in an objective aspect (i.e. the
idea insofar as it represents its object), and a formal aspect (i.e. the same idea insofar
as it is considered without relation to its object). This need not surprise us, as this
fully corroborates our claim that with respect to Spinoza’s parallelism we encounter
the very constructive function of the intellect that was elucidated in section 2.5. And
as we have seen in Chapter 1 and 2 that (firstly) pars melior nostri is characterized by
a necessary duality as by EVp29s ‘we conceive things as actual in two ways
[emphasis added]’, that (secondly) this duality must be understood to be the very
duality between the (eternal) formal and the (durational) objective being of things,
and that (thirdly) Spinoza states in EVp29d that ‘eternity cannot be explained by
duration’,102 it is clear why the formal and objective being of things are staged as
conceptually exclusive.
These similarities, combined with Spinoza’s explicit claim that EIIp21 must be
understood to find corroboration in EIIp7s, underpin our supposition that the
assertions in this latter scholium refer, not only to the causal isolation of the
attributes, but also to the very vertical relation between (durational) ideas and their
ontologically identical but conceptually distinct (eternal) formal beings that
surfaced in our treatment of EIIp5 and EIIp9. That is to say: the quoted claims
from EIIp7s can only be understood to provide an elucidation of EIIp21 – which as
we saw is explicitly claimed to be the case by Spinoza – when the assertions in
EIIp7s are considered to posit a v e r t i c a l relation between the eternal forms and
their expression in durational modes within the same attribute. Spinoza’s claim in
EIIp21s that his intra-attribute variant of parallelism is corroborated by EIIp7s only
makes sense if it is granted that both scholiums deal with the two ways in which we
102
EVp29d, (I) 609 (At æternitas per durationem explicari nequit).
350
conceive singular things: objectively (i.e. as durational finite modes) and formally
(i.e. as eternal infinite modes). Yet another way of saying this is that, even though
Della Rocca is right in his claim that in the passage from EIIp7s Spinoza forwards
the causal isolation of the attributes, this assertion is not complete. This passage
must be understood to say still something more: it also posits the vertical relation
between the objective and the formal being of things. This is of course precisely what
we would expect on the basis of the things we encountered in the previous sections
(and in section 2.5). For above we have seen that Spinoza’s claim from the corollary
of EIIp7 (namely that ‘whatever follows formally from God's infinite nature follows
objectively in God from his idea in the same order and with the same connection’)
establishes a vertical identity relation between eternal formal beings and durational
ideas. It would go vehemently against the geometrical rigour with which Spinoza
aimed to devise his philosophy to suppose that in the scholium of the very same
proposition and corollary in which the vertical identity relation of formal beings (at
(b-i)) and their objective expressions (at (b-ii)) is posited, he would forget about this
important characteristic and claim that the relation between (say) the formal being
of the idea of a circle and the durational mode of thinking that expresses this formal
being (i.e. the idea of the circle) is to be understood as a horizontal causal relation
in which the identity claim (as well as the constructive importance of the intellect)
has mysteriously disappeared from view (only to rear its ugly head again in
EIIp21s).
4.3.1.1 Horizontal intra-attribute parallelism
Our elaborations so far teach us that the relation between ideas and their formal
beings must be understood to disclose an intra-attribute variant of parallelism (in
the sense that these things can be conceived to be operative under the same
attribute), and a vertical variant of parallelism (in the sense that they must be
understood to express the distinction between items under duration (b-ii) and the
very same items in their eternal being (b-i)). To be sure, as of yet it is unclear (i)
how we must understand the intricate relation between the formal being of an idea
(‘forma ideae’) and the idea of that idea (‘idea ideae’) – and the way in which this
latter notion must be understood to be parallel to its idea, and (ii) how the
perspective that is forwarded in the claims from EIIp7s and EIIp21s can be
351
understood to be bottom-up. In this section we will treat point (i); the bottom-up
character of this perspective will be the subject of the subsequent section.
In order to elucidate the way in which an idea can be understood to be
parallel to the idea of that idea, it is instructive to adduce the schematic rendering of
the conceptual duality that is forwarded in (inter alia) EVp29s once more. We have
seen that a singular thing can be conceived as to:
the objective being of a thing (i.e. the idea with relation to its object, in
which case the object is the parallel body)
and as to
(2″)
the formal being of that idea (i.e. the idea without relation to its object)
(1″)
This dual structure was recognizable in the passages from the TdIE, EIIp7s and
EIIp21s as well: in all three passages we encountered the vertical distinction
between durational ideas and their eternal formal beings. To be sure, it is important
to note that the mentioned passages tell us still something more. The close
similarity between the quoted passages from the TdIE, EIIp7s and EIIp21s teaches
us that the formal being of an idea (2″) can in turn be the object of another idea.
That is: the formal being of an idea in itself (i.e. the formal being qua formal being)
can be conceived as actual in two ways, and can thus be conceived as:
the objective being of (the formal being of the idea), i.e. (by EIIp21s)
the idea of the idea103 considered with relation to its object (in which
case the object is the idea (1″))
(2″i)
and as
103
Both Edwin Curley and Jonathan Bennett remarked that this structure of ideas of ideas’ may very well
be called a propositional structure. Curley says the following: “Since I am identifying the possession of an
idea of an idea with consciousness, it seems natural to say that an idea of an idea is a special kind of
proposition about a proposition, namely, one expressing what is sometimes called a propositional attitude
[…].’ Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 129. Bennett writes: ‘We translate [Spinoza’s Latin word idea]
by ‘idea’, and think of it as mental […]. But there is a way of taking ‘idea’ in which ideas are not mental at
all. […] Much of the time Spinoza takes ideas to be propositionally structured […]. [O]n the
psychological reading an ‘idea’ is a state or episode of believing that P or the like, while on the logical
reading it is just the proposition that P’. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge 1984)
50-51.
352
(2″ii)
the formal being of (the idea of the idea),104 i.e. the idea of the idea
considered without relation to its object
And (2″ii) itself can in turn be conceived as actual in two ways (or, in the wording
of EIIp7s, ‘be perceived only through another mode of thinking’), resulting in:
(2″ii-i)
the objective being of (the formal being of (the idea of the idea)), i.e.
the idea of (the idea of the idea) considered with relation to its object
(in which case the object is the idea of the idea) (2″i))
and
(2″ii-ii)
the formal being of (the idea of (the idea of the idea))
and so on to infinity.105
It is precisely this important addition to the structure of EVp29s that provides the
basis for Spinoza’s statement in EIIp21s that ‘as soon as someone knows something,
he thereby knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that
he knows, and so on to infinity’. Indeed: it is the objective being of something (i.e.
the idea) that accounts for the knowledge of the thing under scrutiny106 (say: a
circle), it is the objective being of the idea of the circle (i.e. the idea of the idea) that
accounts for the knowledge of the knowledge of the circle, it is the objective being
of the idea of the idea (i.e. the idea of the idea of the idea) that accounts for the
knowledge of the knowledge of the knowledge of the circle, and so on, to infinity.
104
These parentheses are ‘mathematical’ in the sense that they aim to make it clear that the terms between
the parentheses function as a (in linguistic terms) unit of meaning.
105
That this intricate structure – in fact expressing the infinite applicability of the constructive function of the
intellect – is a recurring theme in Spinoza’s philosophy became clear already in our treatment of the
distinction between the absolute infinite intellect and the whole of (objective) nature (see Chapter 2).
Indeed, it was precisely the recognition of the constructive function of the intellect that made it clear how
the absolutely infinite intellect and the whole of objective nature can be understood to be conceptually
distinct. They can be grasped in this way because the unspecified infinite intellect can be grasped as to (1‴)
the objective being of the infinite mode of extension (i.e. as the infinite idea with relation to its object, that
is: as the whole of objective nature having the whole of extended nature as its perceived object), and as to
(2″) the formal being of the infinite intellect (i.e. the infinite idea without relation to its object, that is: as
the absolutely infinite intellect).
106
Or, as Spinoza says in the TdIE: ‘From this it is clear that certainty is nothing but the objective essence
itself, i.e., the mode by which we are aware of the formal essence is certainty itself’ (Hinc patet, quòd
certitudo nihil sit præter ipsam essentiam objectivam; id est, modus, quo sentimus essentiam formalem, est ipsa
certitudo). TdIE §35, (I) 18.
353
This way of understanding the functioning of pars melior nostri provides us
with an answer to the question we aimed to answer in this section. For the
enumeration above gives us additional insight with respect to the exact nature of
the parallelism relation between ideas and the ideas of these ideas. Consider table 5
once more:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
-----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
- - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
Above we have stated with respect to this table that an idea (say: of a circle) and its
body (the circle) are numerically identical because they can both be conceived to be
objective expressions at level (b-ii) of the same res: the formal being of the circle at
level (b-i). Given what we have seen in this section, it becomes clear that according
to Spinoza the representational nature of thought is so thoroughgoing, that the
formal being of an idea is not only expressed in an idea (see point (1″)) that can be
understood to be a representation of its parallel extended object, but that this idea
can also be understood to be grasped objectively itself (see point (2″i)), in which
case it appears as the idea of the idea, that is: as a representation of itself. As soon as
the eternal forma ideae is perceived by another mode of thinking, this eternal form
– due to the conceptual exclusivity of the formal and objective being of things –
turns into the durational objective being of the idea it is the form of, and hence
surfaces as the idea ideae at level (b-ii). In Chapter 5 we will see how the selfrepresentation that is expressed in the notion idea ideae can be understood to
account for the consciousness that must be attributed to ideas. The thing to note in
the context of the present section is that it is precisely the possibility to form an
idea of the formal being of a thing qua formal being that accounts for the claim that
the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of i d e a s o f
i d e a s . For on the basis of the things we have seen in this section we can conclude
that transitive parallelism is applicable to ideas and their mental objects in the same
way it is applicable to ideas and their extended objects. Indeed:
354
the order and connection of the objective being of bodies is the same as the order and
connection of the objective being of the ideas of these bodies
This in turn makes it clear that the horizontal relation at level (b-ii) can be
understood to be of the intra-attribute variant as well: a mode of thinking cannot
only be understood to be numerically identical to its finite object in extension (in
which case the horizontal parallelism is of the inter-attribute variant), but also to its
finite object in thought (in which case the horizontal parallelism is of the intraattribute variant)).
Before turning to the second important subject that was announced above –
an elucidation of the bottom-up perspective – it may be informative to provide yet
another argument for the horizontal intra-attribute parallelism that was uncovered
just now. This additional argument takes off from the acknowledgement that
Spinoza’s Principle of Plenitude implies that ideas and bodies can both be
understood to ‘fall under the infinite intellect’. They fall under the unspecified
infinite mode of thought in the following way: a thing that follows from the
necessity of the divine nature can be understood (i) as an idea that is part of the
infinite intellect, and (ii) as a body that is a part of the whole that is perceived by
the infinite intellect. Considered in this way there appears to be a difference
between an idea and a body. For the idea – i.e. the objective being (or the idea with
respect to its object) – that represents its body, appears to fall under the infinite
intellect, not insofar as it is represented in thought (as is the case with its body), but
insofar as it is an unrepresented part of the infinite intellect. This of course leads to
the question whether this idea cannot be understood to have a representational
feature as well, not insofar as it is related to its extended object, but insofar as it is
considered in itself. Now, on the basis of EIIp20 and EIIp21 (and the passages from
the TdIE and EIIp7s quoted earlier), this question can be answered affirmatively.
That is to say: it is precisely here where the notion ‘idea ideae’ comes into play.
Insofar as the intellect directs its representational powers at itself, its formal being is
not expressed in an extended thing, but in a finite mental thing: the idea of the idea.
Another way of saying this is that in the context of Spinoza’s philosophy the
inherent representational nature of thought107 is so thoroughgoing that this
This inherent representational nature of ideas is also recognizable in Descartes’ philosophy. With respect
to this latter subject, Richard Fields has stated the following: ‘An idea, then, has objective being, and is the
107
355
particular attribute offers a window on all the other attributes including itself (which
of course is corroborated by the definition of attribute in EID4).108 Once God,
insofar as he is expressed in the human mind, has an idea of an idea that is in him,
that idea must be understood to fall apart in (i) the finite idea of the idea, and (ii)
the parallel finite object that is represented (or perceived) by this idea ideae: the idea
it is numerically identical to.
4.3.2 The objective being as ground floor
Having established how the parallel relation between an idea and the idea of that
idea must be conceived, we can turn to the second subject that was announced
above: the bottom-up perspective. Now, it is important to note that the way in
which a forma ideae is shown to turn into an identical idea ideae (namely by way of
the infinite grasping operation that surfaces inter alia in EIIp7s and EIIp21s) also
tells us something about the way in which the ‘bottom-up’ perspective must be
understood. In order to see this, we must adduce structure (1″)-(2″ii-ii) once more.
We have seen that a singular idea can be conceived as to:
the objective being of a thing (i.e. the idea with relation to its object, in
which case the object is the parallel body)
and as to
(2″)
the formal being of that idea (i.e. the idea without relation to its object)
(1″)
representation of something, quite apart from any relation, whether actual or hypothetical, it might have
to a thing. In other words, the idea is in itself, or essentially, representative. [...] Ideas, considered apart
from the actual existence of their objects, represent the natures or essences of things having determinate
character independently of the act of thought itself. [...] If the possible existent that is represented in this
manner by an idea actually does exist, then the idea can be said to represent something in a second way by
virtue of the conformity of the objective being of the idea to the actualized nature, or what Descartes calls
the "formal being" of an existing object. [...] Unlike the previous manner of representation, which is
nonrelational and essential to the character of ideas, representation in this second manner does require a
relation between an idea and an existing object.’ Richard W. Field, ‘Descartes on the Material Falsity of
Ideas’ in: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (1993), 310-312. More on the way in which Spinoza
underpins this representational nature of thought in Chapter 5.
108
As already noted in section 3.6, the definition of attribute (EID4) reads thus: ‘By attribute I understand
what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence’. As this definition must also be
understood to be applicable to the attribute of thought, and as the intellect that does the ‘perceiving of
substance’ must be understood to fall under this very attribute, EID4 implies that in the case of the
attribute of thought the perceiving operation is to be seen as self-representational.
356
And then we saw that the formal being of an idea in itself (i.e. the formal being qua
formal being) can be conceived as actual in two ways, and can thus be conceived as:
the objective being of (the formal being of the idea), i.e. (by EIIp21s)
the idea of the idea considered with relation to its object (in which case
the object is the idea (1″))
(2″i)
and as
(2″ii)
the formal being of (the idea of the idea), i.e. the idea of the idea
considered without relation to its object
Furthermore it became clear that (2″ii) itself can in turn be conceived as actual in
two ways (or, in the wording of EIIp7s, ‘be perceived only through another mode
of thinking’), resulting in:
(2″ii-i)
the objective being of (the formal being of (the idea of the idea)), i.e.
the idea of (the idea of the idea) considered with relation to its object
(in which case the object is the idea of the idea) (2″i))
and
(2″ii-ii)
the formal being of (the idea of (the idea of the idea))
and so on to infinity.
At this point it is crucial to acknowledge that this structure not only makes it
clear how formal beings of ideas can be understood to be expressed in durational
ideas of ideas, but also that at each successive step of this intellectual structure the
objective being of a thing serves as the ground floor for the inference.109 At every stage,
the formal being is conceptually dependent on its objective being (in more or less
the same way the time between thunder and lightning – or the designation ‘glass of
milk’ and ‘glass of water’ – is depending on the position of the knowing agent).
The enumeration that was provided above is based on the concept of a singular idea
that is captured in (1″). Point (1″) must be understood to serve as the foundation
for (2″); and as soon as (2″) is grasped objectively in (2″i), the resulting ‘idea of the
idea’ serves as the foundation for (2″ii); and again, as soon as (2″ii) is grasped
109
See note 101.
357
objectively in (2″ii-i), the resulting ‘idea of (the idea of the idea)’ grounds (2″ii-ii),
and so on indefinitely. In other words, in this particular intellectual operation the
conceptual direction must be understood thus: (1″) ⟶ (2″) ⟶ (2″i) ⟶ (2″ii) ⟶
(2″ii-i) ⟶ (2″ii-ii) ⟶ ad infinitum.
It is hard to overestimate the importance of this observation. For it teaches us
(or rather: it underpins our assertion) that in the context of Spinoza’s metaphysics
the knowledge of a formal being qua formal being – even though it must be
understood to follow top-down from God (by EIp16, EIIp5 and EIIp6c) – can be
considered from yet another perspective: it can also be conceived to be the result of
an act of inferring: from the objective being of a thing (i.e. from an idea with
respect to its durational object) an eternal formal being qua formal being is inferred
on the basis of a conceptually prior objective being.110 That is to say: the formal
being of an idea, although shown to follow immediately from God as a ‘thinking
thing absolutely’ – and as such to be logically prior to its objective expression – can
be considered to be psychologically posterior to the objective being that serves as the
basis for the inference of this formal being. It is precisely this conceptual priority of
an objective being that grounds the rhetorical question ‘who can know that he
understands something unless he first understands it?’ in EIIp43s.111 According to
Spinoza a true idea must be understood to serve as the basis of the idea of that idea
(which by EIIp21s of course is nothing but the forma ideae).
As already noted, this bottom-up perspective emerges clearly in the assertion
in EIIp21s concerning the knowledge of knowledge of knowledge of things. The
close connection between EIIp21s and EIIp7s (see above) suggests that this
perspective is also recognizable in this latter scholium. Indeed, our claims
concerning the similarity between the claims from EIIp21s and EIIp7s can only be
upheld if the very same bottom-up perspective is recognizable in EIIp7s as well.
Now, is it? Can this scholium be understood to encompass the perspective that has
ideas with respect to their objects as its ground floor? On closer scrutiny this indeed
appears to be the case. In order to see this, it is crucial to focus on the remarkable
causal relation that is posited in EIIp7s. Consider the following claim once more:
For as soon as the formal being is grasped objectively (or as EIIp7s states, per alium cogitandi modum), it
loses the precise characteristic that warrants the use of the predicate ‘formal’. When turning into an
objective being, the grasped thing can only be described as a (by TdIE §33-35) modus, quo sentimus
essentiam formalem. However, the formal being can be inferred to exist in itself.
111
EIIp43a, (I) 479.
110
358
the formal being of the idea of the circle can be perceived only through another mode of thinking, as its
proximate cause, and that mode again through another, and so on, to infinity.112
(esse formale ideæ circuli non, nisi per alium cogitandi modum, tanquam causam proximam, & ille iterùm per
alium, & sic in infinitum, potest percipi)
With regard to the causal claim that is being made in this passage, we cannot fail to
notice that there is something funny with Spinoza’s assertion. For the quoted claim
appears to state that the formal being of an idea is caused by the mode of thinking it is
perceived through. When it is acknowledged that in this assertion from EIIp7s the
intra-attribute distinction between the formal and the objective being of the circle is
posited, the clause ‘as its proximate cause’ suggests that the formal being of an idea is
claimed to be caused proximately by the objective being it is the form of. That is to say:
the quoted passage suggests that the logically prior formal being of an idea is merely
the proximate result of the objective being of that same thing. Prima facie, this
appears to go against the causal thread posited in EIIp5 (see section 2.5). For with
respect to this important proposition we have established that the formal being of
ideas follows immediately from God as a ‘thinking thing absolutely’. However,
given what we have seen, the assertion that the formal being of ideas can be
understood to be caused proximately by their objective expressions is not too
surprising. For in the causal claim of EIIp7s that was cited just now we encounter
the very bottom-up structure that was elucidated above. Indeed, this formulation in
EIIp7s makes it clear that this scholium corroborates our claims concerning the
alternative perspective that can be recognized in the Ethics. In the quoted passage
from EIIp7s, the idea of a circle is staged insofar as it has a certain conceptual
priority over its identical formal being. The objective being of the circle (i.e. idea of
the circle with respect to its object) is portrayed as the proximate cause of the formal
being of the idea of the circle (i.e. of the idea of the circle without respect to its
object). This is completely in line with the assertion in EIIp21s that ‘as soon as
someone knows something, he thereby knows that he knows, and at the same time
knows that he knows that he knows, and so on, to infinity’. In other words: the
intra-attribute bottom-up perspective is clearly recognizable in EIIp7s too. Just as
the passages from the TdIE and EIIp21s, EIIp7s fosters a perspective from which
the objective being of things is conceptually prior to their formal beings. This
112
EIIp7s, (I) 451-452.
359
firmly underpins our claims that (i) the these passages all express a vertical relation
between ideas and their formal beings, and that (ii) apart from the vertical topdown perspective that is advanced in the Principle of Plenitude of EIp16, Spinoza
also puts forward a vertical bottom-up perspective. The vertical top-down
perspective runs from Natura naturans (a) to Natura naturata (b); the vertical
bottom-up perspective that was uncovered in this section must be located within
Natura naturata and runs from the objective and durational (b-ii) to the formal and
eternal (b-i) being of things.
4.3.2.1 Some more examples
The elucidations so far have shown us that Spinoza’s philosophy must be
understood to shelter a bottom-up perspective that expresses the ability of pars
melior nostri to infer the formal being of things on the basis of the objective being
of things. This bottom-up perspective can be rendered thus:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
- - - - - - - - - - - - - is identical to - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5′)
Indeed, we have seen that in (inter alia) EIIp7s and EIIp21s the objective being of a
thing (b-ii) is presented as the foundation for the grasping of the formal being of
the same thing (b-i). To be sure, in order to erase all doubt as to whether the Ethics
harbors this bottom-up perspective, I will provide five more examples of passages
that underpin this important claim.
Example 1: EIIp5d
A first additional indication that the bottom-up perspective that was elucidated
above must be understood to be endorsed fully by Spinoza can be found in the
demonstration of EIIp5. In Chapter 2 we have argued that this proposition posits
an intrinsic top-down causal thread, as it is based – via EIIp3 – on the ‘medieval’
Principle of Plenitude of EIp16. However, at this point it must be added that in the
360
demonstration of EIIp5 Spinoza proposes yet ‘another way of demonstrating
this’.113 In this second demonstration he forwards the claim that the formal being of
an idea is a mode of thinking. Now, if the formal being of an idea is staged as the
formal being of an idea, it is quite evident – or as Spinoza formulates it: ‘ut per se
notum’ – that the recognition of the formal status of the thing under scrutiny is
based on its objective being (i.e. on the idea of the thing) and not on the absolute
attribute neutral divine essence it follows from. Hence it is clear that EIIp5d can be
understood to shelter two perspectives from which the very same formal being of
ideas can be grasped. Whereas the first part of the demonstration is based on the
top-down perspective that is put forward in EIp16, the second part of the
demonstration fosters the bottom-up perspective.
Example 2: EIIp6c
A closely related indication can be found in EIIp6c. Consider the following passage:
the objects of ideas follow and are inferred from their attributes in the same way as that with which we have
shown ideas to follow from the attribute of thought [emphasis added].114
(eodém modo, eâdemq́ue necessitate res ideatæ ex suis attributis consequuntur, & concluduntur, ac ideas ex
attributo Cogitationis consequi ostendimus)
The thing to note here is that Spinoza uses two different terms to explicate the way
in which things can be understood to resort under their attributes. Things are
asserted to follow (consequuntur) from their attributes, and they are claimed to be
inferred (concluduntur) from their attributes. Given what we have seen above, we
can conjecture that with the term ‘consequuntur’ Spinoza refers to the top-down
perspective from which the formal being of a thing is prior to its objective being (as
this formal being must be understood (by EIIp6c) to follow immediately from God
(a)), whereas the term ‘concluduntur’ expresses the bottom-up perspective from
which the objective being of a thing is perceived to be prior to the formal being of
the same thing (as the formal being is understood (by EIIp7s) to be caused
proximately by its objective being, and hence to be a mode of thinking (by EIIp5d)).
On the present interpretation it becomes clear why Spinoza in EIIp6c would use
113
114
EIIp5d, (I) 450 (aliter hoc modo demonstratur).
EIIp6c, (I) 450-451.
361
the two terms in order to refer to the very same operation: the formal being of
things can be understood to be grasped in two conceptually distinct ways: topdown and bottom-up.
Example 3: The ‘physical excursion’
The same bottom-up perspective is also recognizable in the ‘physical excursion’ that
can be found after EIIp13s. In this respect an already quoted claim from EIIL7s –
part of this ‘physical excursion’ – is very informative. Spinoza states the following in
this scholium:
So far we have conceived an individual which is composed only of bodies which […] are composed of the
simplest bodies. But if we should now conceive of another, composed of a number of individuals of a
different nature, we shall find that it can be affected in a great many other ways, and still preserve its
nature. […] [E]ach part of it is composed of a number of bodies […]. But if we should further conceive a
third kind of individual, composed of this second kind, we shall find that it can be affected in many other
ways, without any change of its form. And if we proceed in this way to infinity, we shall easily conceive
that the whole of nature is one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without
any change of the whole individual.115
(Atque hucusque Individuum concepimus, quod non, nisi […] ex corporibus simplicissimis componitur. Quòd si
jam aliud concipiamus, ex pluribus diversæ naturæ Individuis compositum, idem pluribus aliis modis posse
affici, reperiemus, ipsius nihilominùs naturâ servatâ. Nam quandoquidem ejus unaquæque pars ex pluribus
corporibus est composita […].Quòd si præterea tertium Individuorum genus, ex his secundis compositum,
concipiamus, idem multis aliis modis affici posse, reperiemus, absque ullâ ejus formæ mutatione. Et si sic porrò
in infinitum pergamus, facilè concipiemus, totam naturam unum esse Individuum, cujus partes, hoc est, omnia
corpora infinitis modis variant, absque ullâ totius Individui mutatione)
From this passage we learn that Spinoza offers a perspective that (so to speak) starts
with the parts. In EIIL7 the whole of nature is clearly claimed to be an aggregate
whole constituted by infinitely many bodies. And insofar as the whole of nature is
conceived objectively as the whole of objective nature (i.e. as God’s idea), it can be
understood to be constituted by infinitely many ideas. Indeed, there is a perspective
– i.e. the bottom-up perspective – from which a body (and its idea) is a prior and
constituting part of the whole of (objective) nature, even though these parts cannot
in any way be understood to be prior to, or constitutive of, the whole they are in
insofar as this whole is considered as to its reference.
115
EIIL7s, (I) 461-462.
362
The next thing that must be noted is that in section 2.6 we have established
that this whole of nature (EIIL7s) can be understood to be related to its formal
being in the same way a part of the whole of nature can be understood to be related
to the formal being of that part. Indeed:
The whole of nature can be conceived as actual in two ways. It can be conceived as
to
the objective being of the whole of nature, i.e. as God’s idea with
relation to the (extended) whole of nature, (viz. (b-ii) the whole of
objective nature that exists sempiternally)
and as to
(2*)
the formal being of God’s idea, i.e. God’s idea without relation to the
(extended) whole of nature, (viz. (b-i) the absolutely infinite intellect
that exists eternally)
(1*)
The thing to note with respect to these assertions is (i) that in the intellectual
structure that surfaces in this particular enumeration, the objective being of a thing
must once again be understood to serve as the ground floor for the formal being of
that same thing, and (ii) that the relation between the whole of objective nature
(1*) and the absolutely infinite intellect (2*) is completely on a par with our
mereological contentions from Chapter 2. Recall that we have asserted there that if
the unspecified infinite intellect is considered in itself, the whole of objective nature
(1*) can be understood to be an exhaustive part of the absolutely infinite intellect
(2*). It must be noted now that the claim that (from the bottom-up perspective)
the part is prior to its whole is just another way of formulating the claim that the
objective being of a thing serves as the foundation for the inference of its formal
being: in both cases the whole of objective nature is staged as conceptually prior to
the absolutely infinite intellect. And hence from this perspective the (exhaustive)
part is staged as prior to its whole. Or stated in terms of the present chapter: from a
certain perspective, an objective being (b-ii) can be considered to be prior to its
formal being (b-i). If it is acknowledged furthermore that according to Spinoza
both the whole of objective nature and the absolutely infinite intellect have God
qua God as their reference, it becomes clear that the priority of the parts that
363
surfaces in this example can actually be understood to be a manifestation of the
early modern conceptual commitment to the whole of nature that Spinoza fosters.
For on his account, investigating the durational parts of nature means nothing less
than investigating God.116
Example 4: EIIp43s
The claim in the TdIE that ‘there is no idea of an idea unless there is first an
idea’,117 is reiterated in the Ethics, not only in the claim in EIIp21s about
knowledge of knowledge, but also in EIIp43s. In this scholium, in which Spinoza
refers explicitly to the notion ‘idea of an idea’ in EIIp21s, he asks the following:
who can know that he understands some thing unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that
he is certain about something unless he is first certain about it? What can there be which is clearer and
more certain than a true idea, to serve as standard of truth?118
(quis scire potest, se rem aliquam intelligere, nisi priùs rem intelligat? hoc est, quis potest scire, se de aliquâ re
certum esse, nisi priùs de eâ re certus sit? Deinde quid ideâ verâ clarius, & certius dari Potest, quod norma sit
veritatis?)
This passages corroborates our claim that the bottom-up perspective – i.e. the
proximate causal relation between the objective being and the resulting formal
being of ideas – is endorsed by Spinoza. In this passage the idea is portrayed to be
conceptually prior to the form of the idea (see EIIp21s). And thus, on the basis of
this claim as well, we can posit a priority of (b-ii) over (b-i).
Example 5: EVp29s and EVp30
In EVp29s – the very scholium that also served as a basis for our claim concerning
the vertical duality of our intellect – Spinoza asserts explicitly that modes are ‘real’
insofar as they are conceived ‘under a species of eternity’ and their ideas thus
To be sure, the way in which the knowledge can be understood to ‘cross the boundary’ between Natura
naturata and Natura naturans will only be elucidated in the next section.
117
TdIE §38, (I) 19.
118
EIIp43s, (I) 479.
116
364
‘involve the eternal and infinite essence of God’.119 Indeed, as he stresses once more
in the demonstration of EVp30:
To conceive things under a species of eternity, therefore, is to conceive things insofar as they are conceived
through God's essence, as real beings, or insofar as through God's essence they involve existence.120
(Res igitur sub specie æternitatis concipere, est res concipere, quatenus per Dei essentiam, ut entia realia,
concipiuntur, sive quatenus per Dei essentiam involvunt existentiam)
Now, it crucial to recognize that the very conception of ‘things under a species of
eternity’ can only to take place when these things q u a things are conceived as given.
One can only conceive a thing under a species of eternity (i.e. in its formal being at
(b-i)), if that very same thing surfaces under duration (i.e. in its objective being at
(b-ii)) first.121 And hence, taken in this way, the objective being serves as the basis
for the inference of the formal being of that same thing; the objective being of ideas
can indeed be perceived as the proximate cause of their formal beings.
*
These examples make it clear that from a certain perspective the ‘direction of fit’122
between the being of things insofar as these are conceived to represent their objects,
and the same things insofar as they are considered in themselves, must be
understood to be bottom-up in the way of table 5′. We have seen, firstly, that
Spinoza’s philosophy also harbors a bottom-up perspective from which the objective
being of things serves as ground floor, and, secondly, that considered from this
bottom-up perspective the formal being of an idea ‘belongs’ to the attribute of
thought (in the same way the glasses in our example in a previous section were
claimed to ‘belong’ to the liquids that were in it). Consequently, table 5′ can be
understood to provide an accurate rendering of an important aspect of Spinoza’s
119
EVp29s, (I) 610.
EVp30d, (I) 610.
121
As we shall see in the next chapter, this must be understood to be a qualified remark. In the case of
knowledge of the third kind one is actually able to grasp the eternal essence of things, not bottom-up
(starting from the durational being of a thing), but top-down (proceeding from the formal essence of the
attributes).
122
This term is not entirely adequate, as it appears to suppose an extrinsic fit (i.e. between the mind and
something that is external to the mind), whereas in the present case the fit must be understood to be
intrinsic (i.e. a bottom-up conception within the mind vs. a top-down conception within the mind).
120
365
metaphysics. On closer scrutiny, this is not too surprising. Actually, the bottom-up
perspective appears to express a rather commonsensical view on the way human
minds attain knowledge. For human mental behavior in the way we commonly
understand it indeed appears to deal primarily with the external ‘parts of nature’
that are somehow represented in a human mind. The way in which this
representation of external things can be understood to be related to the intellectual
structure that we have uncovered will only be elucidated in the next chapter. First
we will have to treat yet another important aspect of the bottom-up perspective: the
way in which knowledge of the formal being of things can be understood to entail
divine self-knowledge.
4.3.3 God’s bottom-up self-knowledge
There is ample evidence for the claim that Spinoza fosters a bottom-up perspective
between the objective (b-ii) and the formal being of things (b-i). Yet, at the same
time it must be acknowledged that an understanding of this particular bottom-up
perspective does not suffice for an understanding of the way in which God (c) can
be conceived to know himself. For the bottom-up perspective that accounts for a
full-blown version of God’s self-knowledge by way of our intellect needs to cross
the conceptual boundary between Natura naturata and Natura naturans (i.e.
between (b) and (a)). God can only be understood to know himself by way of a
human mind if this perspective offers the divine r e s cognitive access to his own essence.
It is precisely because of this that the variant of the bottom-up perspective provided
in the introduction of this chapter did not halt at level (b), but was claimed to
progress to level (a). This was rendered schematically in the following way:
Natura naturans
(a)
God qua God
(top-down)
--------------------------------------(b-i) The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
(bottom-up)
(b-ii) The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 3)
With respect to this table, we formulated the following questions:
366
(I)
(II)
We are in need of closer insight into the exact relation between the formal
(b-i) and the objective (b-ii) being of singular things
We must illuminate how knowledge of the formal being of singular things
(b-i) enables our intellect to attain knowledge of God qua God (a) (i.e. how
God (c) is able to gather self-knowledge)
In the previous sections I have provided an answer to point (I). A scrutiny of
Spinoza’s parallelism-claims in EIIp7 and EIIp21 has made it clear that the order
and connection of the objective being of singular things (at (b-ii)) can be
understood to be the same as the order and connection of the formal being of
things (at (b-i)). This identity is rooted in the fact that the formal and objective
being of things, although conceptually exclusive, must be understood to have the
very same reference. Just as the whole of objective nature is ontologically identical
to (yet conceptually distinct from) the absolutely infinite intellect (see Chapter 2),
so also the finite parts that constitute the whole of objective nature must be
understood to be ontologically identical to, yet conceptually distinct from the
infinite parts-with-a-vista that constitute the absolutely infinite intellect. This is all
but surprising, as we have seen that the formal and objective being of things –
whether it be of the whole of nature or of singular things that merely constitute the
whole of nature – must be understood to be the two ways in which pars melior
nostri is asserted (in EVp29s) to conceive the very same things (namely: insofar as
the thing under scrutiny is conceived (i) under a species of eternity, and (ii) in
relation to a certain time and place).
Having given an answer to the question that was captured under point (I)
(and having shown that Spinoza’s parallelism can be understood to be yet another
expression of the constructive function of the intellect, harboring the trichotomy of
objects, their horizontally parallel objective beings, and their vertically parallel
formal beings), we can turn to point (II). Below I will provide an123 answer to the
question how God can be understood to know himself bottom-up (i.e. from effect
to cause). However, before elucidating how this variant of divine self-knowledge can
be understood, it may be instructive to first adduce a few passages that make it clear
that Spinoza indeed fosters a bottom-up perspective that crosses the boundary
123
I claim that I will provide ‘an’ answer because a more comprehensive answer will be given in the next
chapter, which deals with Spinoza’s claims concerning adequate knowledge
367
between Natura naturata and Natura naturans. I will provide five examples of
statements from the Ethics that underpin this supposition.
Example 1: The definition of attribute
A first example of a passage that corroborates our claim that Spinoza puts forward a
perspective that runs from (b) to (a) can be found in the notorious definition of
‘attribute’, which must be adduced once more:
By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence. 124
(Per attributum intelligo id, quod intellectus de substantiâ percipit, tanquam ejusdem essentiam constituens)
A lot has already been said concerning this important definition. The thing that
must be stressed once more is that in EID4 Spinoza posits a conceptual operation
with which the intellect (which is claimed (in EIp31) to be operative on the level of
Natura naturata) attains knowledge of substance (which is claimed (in EIp29s) to
be operative on the level of Natura naturans). So the conceptual operation that is
forwarded in one of the most seminal definitions of the Ethics entails a conceptual
operation that runs from (b) to (a).
Example 2: EIp11d
In the demonstration of EIp11, Spinoza gives various proofs for the existence of
God. In the previous chapter we have seen that the first proof can be understood to
underpin our claim concerning the conceptual distinction between the (a)- and the
(c)-variant of the divine res.125 That EIp11d also provides evidence for the
observation that the Ethics harbors a bottom-up perspective that runs from level (b)
to level (a) becomes clear in the third proof that is provided in this demonstration:
either nothing exists or an absolutely infinite Being also exists. But we exist [...]. Therefore an absolutely
infinite Being – that is [...], God – necessarily exists, q.e.d.
124
125
EID4, (I) 408.
See section 3.7.
368
Schol.: In this last demonstration I wanted to show God’s existence a posteriori, so that the
demonstration would be perceived more easily – but not because God’s existence does not follow a priori
from the same foundation.126
(ergo vel nihil existit, vel Ens absolutè infinitum necessariò etiam existit. Atqui nos [...] existimus [...]. Ergo ens
absolutè infinitum, hoc est […] Deus necessariò existit. Q. E. D.
SCHOLIUM. In hâc ultimâ demonstratione Dei existentiam à posteriori ostendere volui, ut demonstratio
faciliùs perciperetur; non autem propterea, quòd ex hoc eodem fundamento Dei existentia à priori non sequatur)
In this passage, Spinoza evidently makes use of an argument in which the boundary
between the levels (b) and (a) is crossed. For he infers from the durational existence
of modes (i.e. singular parts of the infinite modes of the attributes) – which clearly
must be positioned at level (b) (see table 2 and 3) – that there is an absolutely
infinite being (i.e. an absolutely indivisible substance) – at level (a). And although
Spinoza’s remark in EIp11s indicates that he agrees with Descartes that such a
bottom-up argument is ‘not so satisfactory as the other’,127 he evidently does make
use of bottom-up reasoning in the adduced passage.
Example 3: EIIp1
This way of reasoning surfaces in EIIp1 and its demonstration too:
P1: Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing
Dem: Singular thoughts [...] are modes which express God’s nature in a certain and determinate
way (by IP25C). Therefore (by ID5) there belongs to God an attribute whose concept all singular
thoughts involve, and through which they are also conceived. Therefore, thought is one of God’s infinite
attributes, which expresses an eternal and infinite essence of God (see ID6), or God is a thinking thing,
q.e.d.128
(PROPOSITIO I. Cogitatio attributum Dei est, sive Deus est res cogitans.
DEMONSTRATIO. Singulares cogitationes, sive hæc, & illa cogitatio modi sunt, qui Dei naturam certo, &
determinato modo exprimunt (per Coroll. Prop. 25. p. 1.). Competit ergo Deo (per Defin. 5. p. 1.) attributum,
cujus conceptum singulares omnes cogitationes involvunt, per quod etiam concipiuntur. Est igitur Cogitatio
unum ex infinitis Dei attributis, quod Dei æternam, & infinitam essentiam exprimit (vid. Defin. 6. p. 1.), sive
Deus est res cogitans. Q. E. D.)
126
EIp11-EIp11s, (I) 418.
Descartes, Reply to Objections II, 49.
128
EIIp1, (I) 448.
127
369
It cannot fail to escape our notice that in this demonstration, Spinoza again starts
with singular thoughts. Although singular thoughts – i.e. ‘those things that flow
from external causes’ as opposed to ‘substances that [...] can be produced by no
external cause’129 – must be considered to be caused by God, they nevertheless
‘come first’ in a certain respect. That is to say: it may be obvious that Spinoza takes
God to be prior in nature, but the priority in knowledge (that is asserted in
EIIp10s)130 is somewhat less obvious in the quoted passage from EIIp1. Apparently,
in this latter proposition Spinoza cannot do without the bottom-up perspective that
starts with singular things (at level (b)) in order to reach the conclusion that there
can be conceived to be a res cogitans. And as we have seen in section 3.6 that the
intellect-dependent attributes of EID4 must be understood to have an ontological
counterpart at Natura naturans, this implies that EIIp1 posits a conceptual
operation that runs from (b) to (a). EIIp1 provides us with yet another indication
that Spinoza fosters a conceptual commitment with respect to Natura naturata, a
commitment that enables the intellect to achieve knowledge of God’s eternal and
infinite essence.
Example 4: EIIp47
Consider EIIp47 and its demonstration:
P47: The human mind has an adequate knowledge of God's eternal and infinite essence.
Dem.: The human Mind has ideas (by P22) from which it perceives (byP23) itself, (by P19) its
own Body, and (by P16Cl and P17) external bodies as actually existing. And so (by P45 and P46) it has an
adequate knowledge of God's eternal and infinite essence, q.e.d.131
(PROPOSITIO XLVII. Mens humana adæquatam habet cognitionem æternæ, & infinitæ essentiæ Dei.
DEMONSTRATIO. Mens humana ideas habet (per Prop. 22. hujus), ex quibus (per Prop. 23. hujus) se,
suumq́ue Corpus (per Prop. 19. hujus), & (per Coroll. 1. Prop. 16. & per Prop. 17. hujus) corpora externa, ut
actu existentia, percipit; adeóque (per Prop. 45. & 46. hujus) cognitionem æternæ, & infinitæ essentiæ Dei habet
adæquatam. Q. E. D.)
This claim clearly posits the very same conceptual commitment with respect to
singular ideas, a commitment that in turn is asserted to provide a way to adequate
129
EIp11s, (I) 418.
See the reference to this scholium in the introduction of this chapter.
131
EIIp47, (I) 482.
130
370
knowledge of God. According to Spinoza, the human mind has adequate
knowledge of God’s essence because it has ideas; in this demonstration singular ideas
serve as the ground floor for knowledge of God’s essence. Hence the perspective
that is championed in the quoted passage can be understood (i) to be directed
bottom-up, and (ii) to cross the boundary between Natura naturata and Natura
naturans. In other words: this passage makes it abundantly clear that God, insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, does have cognitive access to his own essence.
Example 5: The dictates of reason
In part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza provides a series of propositions that are aimed at
an elucidation of what he calls ‘the dictates of reasons’.132 In these propositions
(EIVp18s-EIVp37s) Spinoza clearly heralds a bottom-up perspective, which
surfaces (inter alia) in the following claim in EIVp18s:
if we consider our Mind, our intellect would of course be more imperfect if the Mind were alone and did
not understand anything except itself. There are, therefore, many things outside us which are useful to us,
and on that account to be sought [emphasis added].133
(&, si præterea nostram Mentem spectemus, sanè noster intellectus imperfectior esset, si Mens sola esset, nec
quicquam præter se ipsam intelligeret. Multa igitur extra nos dantur, quæ nobis utilia, quæq́ue propterea
appetenda sunt)
From this passage – and from various other passages from Spinoza’s elucidation of
the dictates of reason – it becomes clear once more that the perspective from which
there must be conceived to be multiple finite things outside our mind provides a
way to knowledge of God. Indeed:
The absolute virtue of the Mind, then, is understanding. But the greatest thing the Mind can understand
is God.134
(Est igitur Mentis absoluta virtus intelligere. At summum, quod Mens intelligere potest, Deus est)
Again, the conceptual commitment with respect to the whole of nature (at level (b))
can be understood to provide a way to knowledge of God (at level (a)).
132
EIVp18s, (I) 556.
Ibidem, (I) 556.
134
EIVp28d, (I) 560.
133
371
*
Having established that Spinoza can be understood to foster a bottom-up
perspective that crosses the boundary between the conceptual levels (b) and (a), we
can turn to the question how this proceeding functions precisely. With respect to
the question how pars melior nostri is able to grasp the divine res adequately135 (or,
what is the same, how God is able to attain genuine self-knowledge by way of a
human mind), it is crucial to acknowledge that we have actually already isolated the
ingredients with which an answer can be provided. That is to say: the things we
have uncovered concerning the structure of Spinoza’s intellect provide us with a
way to understand the variant of the bottom-up perspective that is the subject of
the present section. Recall that with respect to pars melior nostri we have established
the following:
-
we conceive things as actual in two ways
things can be conceived in their objective and in their formal being
the formal being of things can be understood to be equally in the part and in
the whole as these are parts-with-a-vista of its immediate infinite mode
these parts-with-a-vista must in turn be understood to be contained
ubiquitously as a formal essence in their attributes
these parts-with-a-vista thus involve an eternal and infinite essence of God
These observations enable us to see how God can be understood to have cognitive
access to his own essence via a human mind. Consider the following enumeration,
in which it is shown how knowledge of a singular thing (in casu: a circle) enables
God, (only)136 insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, to gather knowledge of
his own essence:
In the next chapter we will see that grasping something adequately means grasping something in its
formal being. So this makes it very clear that the adequate grasping of the divine res entails the having of
knowledge of the (a)-variant of the divine being: God considered in itself, or God qua God.
136
The term ‘only’ is added here because of a claim in EIIp11c that makes it clear that this ‘only’ is an
important condition for the adequacy of an idea. In the enumeration (I)-(V) (see below) this ‘only’ is
dropped because here the truth and adequacy of the idea that is staged in it (i.e. the idea of a circle) is
already accounted for in the claim in EVp29s that ‘we conceive things as actual in two ways’. More on the
way in which EVp29s is related to EIIp11c, and hence on the way in which the ‘adequacy’ of ideas must
be understood precisely, in the next chapter.
135
372
(I)
God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, conceives a circle in two
ways.
(II) God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, conceives a circle in its
objective being (i.e. the idea of the circle) and in its formal being (i.e. the
formal being of the idea of the circle).137
(III) This formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, is a part-with-a-vista of the absolutely
infinite intellect.
(IV) This formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, must in turn be understood to be the
counterpart at Natura naturata of the formal essence of that circle that is
contained ubiquitously in God as a res cogitans at Natura naturans
(V) The formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar as
he is expressed in a human mind, thus involves an eternal and infinite
essence of God
From this we learn that (God, insofar as he is expressed in) a human mind indeed is
able to grasp God’s eternal and infinite essence by way of the bottom-up
perspective. On the basis of the things we have seen in this and the previous
chapters, we can conclude that according to Spinoza knowledge that starts with a
part (i.e. with the objective being of a thing) provides a way to knowledge of an
eternal and infinite essence of God. Or, as Spinoza states it himself in EIIp45:
‘Each idea of each body, or of each singular thing which actually exists, necessarily
involves an eternal and infinite essence of God.138 As already noted above, it is
precisely this conceptual commitment to the parts of nature that accounts for the
early-modern character of Spinoza’s philosophy.
137
As we are investigating the bottom-up perspective, this formal being surfaces here as the formal being of
an idea (viz. as a mode of thinking), and not in its attribute-neutral guise. The same argument is applicable
to the subsequent points.
138
EIIp45, (I) 481 (Unaquæque cujuscunque corporis, vel rei singularis, actu existentis, idea Dei æternam, &
infinitam essentiam necessariò involvit).
373
4.3.3.1 An essence or the essence?
Enumeration (I)-(IV) is not complete yet. One problem with it, is that it does not
make it clear how the human mind is able to gather true and adequate knowledge
of (say) a circle that actually exists under duration (i.e. how the horizontal
representation of external things in the human mind functions precisely). As already
noted, this important subject will be treated in the next chapter. First we have to
address yet another problem. It is this: enumeration (I)-(IV) only shows how the
human mind can be understood to have cognitive access to an eternal essence of
God (in casu: God’s thinking essence); we must still answer the question whether
cognitive access to an eternal essence of God implies knowledge of the eternal
essence of God. Now, our claims so far certainly suggest that this is the case. In
section 4.2.3.1 it was asserted that ‘the attributes must be understood to be
ontologically and conceptually identical to the very infinite nature of […] God qua
God’. However, we must not proceed too quickly here. For with respect to this
subject it is crucial to note that some eminent scholars have claimed that knowledge
by way of singular ideas does not offer a way to knowledge of the eternal divine
essence. Edwin Curley is a case in point. He stated that ‘the idea [...] involves God’s
essence only insofar as that essence is expressed through the attribute under which
the idea’s object is conceived, not insofar as God’s essence is expressed in infinitely
many attributes’.139 This claim is based on the following assertion by Martial
Gueroult:140
it is clear as daylight that each attribute does not through itself provide knowledge of the essence of the
infinitely infinite substance, but only [of the essence] of a certain substance, that is to say: of one of the
perfections by which God is constituted141
So Gueroult and Curley both hold that knowledge that takes off from a singular
idea (say: of a circle) only involves partial knowledge of God’s all-encompassing
essence. Even though the thinking substance and the extended substance are
139
EIIp45 note 68, (I) 481.
Curley refers explicitly to the claim of Gueroult that will be treated shortly. Ibidem, (I) 481.
141
Gueroult, Spinoza. Dieu, 54 (il résulte, clair comme le jour, que chaque attribut ne fait pas connaitre par
lui seul l’essence de la substance infiniment infinie, mais seulement celle d’une certain substance, c'est-à-dire
d’une des perfections dont Dieu est constitué) [my translation JHH].
140
374
asserted by Spinoza to be ‘one and the same substance’ (in EIIp7s), these scholars
suggest that the referential opacity that is applicable to modal contexts must be
understood to be transferred to God’s absolute essence. On their reading Spinoza’s
horizontal conceptual dualism142 (that is expressed in his claim in Letter 64 that the
human animal has cognitive access to God’s essence via two attributes, and two
attributes only)143 must be understood to reach all the way up to substance itself.
Can these claims be upheld? Is it correct to state that knowledge of an idea
only provides cognitive access to God’s thinking essence (and knowledge of a body
only to God’s extended essence), and not to God’s essence sui generis? I think it is
not. It can be shown that Gueroult cum suis ‘did not observe the proper order of
Philosophizing’ as ‘they believe that the divine nature, which they should have
contemplated before all else (because it is prior both in knowledge and in nature) is
last in the order of knowledge, and that the things which are called objects of the
senses are prior to all’.144 The crucial point in this respect is that – as argued for in
section 3.6 – in Spinoza’s philosophy the attributes can be understood in two ways:
in their intellect-dependent and in their intellect-independent variant. Recognition of
this important conceptual duality with respect to the term ‘attribute’ provides a way
to understand the ‘conceived real distinction’145 between the attributes, and the fact
that from this conceived distinction ‘we still cannot infer that they constitute two
beings, or two different substances’.146 Below I will provide three arguments for the
claim that according to Spinoza the conceptual distinction between the intellect-
This dualism of two attributes is called ‘horizontal’ as there is also a vertical conceptual dualism at work
in Spinoza’s philosophy, namely between the (ontological) attributes and their (unspecified) infinite
modes (and indeed between the formal and the objective being of singular things).
143
Letter 64, (II) 438.
144
EIIp10s, (I) 455 (Cujus rei causam fuisse credo, quòd ordinem Philosophandi non tenuerint. Nam naturam
divinam, quam ante omnia contemplari debebant, quia tam cognitione, quàm naturâ prior est, ordine
cognitionis ultimam, & res, quæ sensuum objecta vocantur, omnibus priores esse crediderunt).
145
In EIp10s Spinoza claims that ‘two attributes may be conceived to be really distinct’. EIp10s, (I) 416
(duo attributa realiter distincta concipiantur).
146
Ibidem, (I) 416 (non possumus tamen inde concludere, ipsa duo entia, sive duas diversas substantias
constituere). Here we encounter the very same contradiction Alan Donagan refers to when he claims that
‘we are now in a deadlock. On the one hand, it has been established that Wolfson was mistaken in
denying that the divine attributes are really distinct […]; on the other, Gueroult’s proposal has also been
found wanting, that the divine attributes each constitute the essence of a distinct substance of one
attribute, so that the essence of the divine substance is constituted by an infinity of essences of substances
each infinite in its kind. Spinoza’s position is both that the divine attributes are really distinct, and that
they each express the same essence’. Alan Donagan, ‘Essence and the Distinction of Attributes’, 62.
142
375
dependent attributes – that accounts for their causal and explanatory isolation at the
level of Natura naturata – must be understood to dissolve into an absolute
conceptual and ontological unity of the intellect-independent attributes at the level
of Natura naturans. It will become clear that, as soon as the intellect-dependent
attributes (which, as we saw in the previous chapter, must be located at the level of
God (c)) are grasped as to their referential features, knowledge of the allencompassing essence of God qua God (a) is attained.
Argument 1: God’s true and adequate ideas
In EIIp32, Spinoza claims the following:
All ideas, insofar as they are related to God, are true.147
(Omnes ideæ, quatenus ad Deum referuntur, veræ sunt)
And in the demonstration of EIIp36 he states this:
All ideas are in God (by IP15); and, insofar as they are related to God, are true (by P32), and (by P7C)
adequate148
(Ideæ omnes in Deo sunt (per Prop. 15. p. 1.); &, quatenus ad Deum referuntur, sunt veræ (per Prop. 32.
hujus), & (per Coroll. Prop. 7. hujus) adæquatæ)
As all ideas in God are true and adequate, so also the idea of the circle that is had by
God, only149 insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, can be understood to be
true and adequate. It can be understood as such as soon as the objective being of
the circle is grasped under a species of eternity, i.e. if the idea of the circle is grasped
in its formal being.150 Now, the claims by Gueroult and Curley imply that the
147
EIIp32, (I) 472.
EIIp36d, (I), 474.
149
See note 136.
150
At this point it may be elucidative to remark that the close connection between the adequacy of an idea
and its formal being surfaces clearly in the claim in EIIp36d. For indeed, it cannot escape our notice that
in the corollary Spinoza refers to – EIIp7c – the very distinction is made (as we already saw above)
between ‘whatever follows formally from God’s infinite nature’ and the same things that follow ‘objectively
in God from his idea’ [emphasis added]. The exact way in which the adequacy of an idea must be
understood, and the way in which the formal being of a circle can be understood to be adequate in the
human mind will be elucidated in the next chapter.
148
376
adequate idea of the circle that is had by God, insofar as he is expressed in a human
mind, only accounts for partial divine self-knowledge. On their reading, in the case
of the example of the idea of the circle, God can be understood to have cognitive
access only to his own thinking (insofar as the idea is considered in itself) and
extended essence (insofar as the idea is considered as to its extended object). The
access to his r-ed essence and to his essence sui generis is claimed to be barred. This
is a surprising limit to ‘a Being absolutely infinite and supremely perfect’,151 the
more so as several assertions in the Ethics claim the exact opposite. Consider the
following clause in EVp30:
Insofar as our mind knows itself and its body under a species of eternity, it necessarily has knowledge of
God’152
(Mens nostra, quatenus se, & Corpus sub æternitatis specie cognoscit, eatenus Dei cognitionem necessariò habet)
In the demonstration of this proposition the following is added:
to conceive things under a species of eternity [...] is to conceive things insofar as they are conceived
through God’s essence […]’.153
(Res igitur sub specie æternitatis concipere, est res concipere, quatenus per Dei essentiam […] concipiuntur)
Spinoza’s claim in EIIp46 is perhaps even clearer in this respect:
The knowledge of God’s eternal and infinite essence which each idea involves is adequate and perfect. 154
(Cognitio æternæ, & infinitæ essentiæ Dei, quam unaquæque idea involvit, est adæquata, & perfecta)
In these claims there is no indication at all that knowledge of mind and body by
way of pars melior nostri (and hence God’s self-knowledge insofar as he is expressed
in a human mind) leads to partial knowledge of God only. Knowledge of things
under a species of eternity – i.e. knowledge of things in their formal being155 – is
EIp11, (I), 417 (Ente absolutè infinito, & summè perfecto).
EVp30, (I) 610.
153
EVp30d, (I) 610.
154
EIIp46, (I) 482.
155
In the next chapter we will see that the adequacy of ideas consists precisely in grasping the formal being
of ideas. Another way of saying this is that in Spinoza’s philosophy there must be understood to be two
variants of adequate knowledge: a bottom-up and a top-down variant (as we have shown that the formal
being of ideas can be grasped in two ways). In Chapter 5 we will see (i) that Spinoza indeed distinguishes
151
152
377
claimed to entail ‘perfect’ knowledge of God’s essence. Surely, if it was Spinoza’s
intention to assert that knowledge of mind and body leads to knowledge of God’s
essence insofar as he is expressed in thought and extension only, he would have
added this important restriction (and would have abstained from using the word
‘perfecta’).
We cannot fail to notice that the assertions in EIIp46 and EVp30, that must
be understood to be strangely incomplete on the reading of Gueroult and Curley,
say exactly what they are supposed to say on the present interpretation: knowledge
of an eternal essence of God implies knowledge of the eternal essence of God.
According to Spinoza, God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind (i.e. God
(c)), has cognitive access to his own all-encompassing essence (i.e. God qua God
(a)). And really: what else can we expect from a being that is claimed to be
absolutely perfect and supreme, and that is asserted to have adequate and true ideas
only?
Argument 2: Two attributes only?
Gueroult’s remarks concerning the (in my terms) merely partial self-knowledge of
God are motivated by a problem that is real enough. It is the problem of the
(apparent) infinity of the number of attributes, and the fact that the human mind is
explicitly claimed (in Letter 64) to have access to only two of them: thought and
extension.156 This leads to the following question: if the adequate ideas in our
intellect are nothing but adequate ideas of God himself, then how is it possible that
we have cognitive access to two attributes only? Does not the fact that we are
capable of ‘logging in’ to God’s adequate self-knowledge imply that we must be
able to attain knowledge of each of the infinite attributes? And does not the fact
that human knowledge of the remaining attributes is explicitly denied by Spinoza
in Letter 64 imply that God’s self-knowledge by way of the human mind must thus
be understood to be partial after all? As already noted, the problem that is addressed
two variants of adequate knowledge, and (ii) that these can be mapped on the two perspectives that were
discerned in this chapter.
156
I use the term ‘apparent’ because it is absolutely unclear how these remaining attributes must be
understood. At the same time, Spinoza’s formulations in (inter alia) Letter 64 make it clear that there must
be understood to be more attributes than thought and extension, even though the human mind is claimed
to ‘involve’ and ‘express’ the latter two only. Letter 64, (II) 438.
378
by Gueroult is real enough. Moreover, it must be admitted that Spinoza’s answers
in Letters 64 and 66 to G.H. Schuller’s and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus’s
questions157 about the very same subject are unconvincing, or hermetic at best.158
Still, even though it is hard to find support for the present interpretation (nor, it
must be added, for Gueroult’s view) in the only passages in Spinoza’s work in
which the present problem is addressed explicitly, the remaining ‘circumstantial’
textual support is clearly in favour of an interpretation that upholds the claim that
knowledge of a certain essence of substance implies knowledge of the essence of
substance. In this respect it is crucial to note that any suggestion that God should
be constituted by referentially opaque multiple essences defies the explicit claim in
EIp13 that ‘a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible’.159 It is hard to see
how this assertion can be upheld while at the same time advancing a conception of
substance that is constituted by multiple essences. True, Spinoza’s definition of
attribute (EID4) makes a suggestion in this latter direction; it is hard to deny that
according to Spinoza the essence of substance can be perceived in (to put it
conservatively) more than one way. But this does not imply that the perceived
aspects of the essence of substance must be understood to have a constituting
function at the level of God qua God. EID4 provides two clear indications that the
implicit distinction between ‘constituting’ essences is intellect-dependent (and
applicable to God (c)) and hence cannot be understood to be operative at the level
of Natura naturans (God qua God (a)) insofar as this level can be inferred to exist
157
Actually, they are all Tschirnhaus’s questions, For as Schuller remarks in Letter 63, just before
mentioning the problem concerning the knowledge of only two attributes: ‘[Mr. von Tschirnhaus] asked
me repeatedly to propose a solution to the following doubts’ ([Tschirnhausen] me iterato rogans, ut
sequentium dubiorum solutionem tibi proponerem). Letter 63, (II) 426.
158
In Letter 64 Spinoza says that ‘the human Mind can achieve knowledge only of the things which the
idea of an actually existing body involves’ (Mentem humanam illa tantummodò posse cognitione assequi, quæ
idea corporis actu existentis involvit). Letter 64, (II), 438. And in Letter 66, replying to Tschirnhaus’s
question in Letter 65, he claims: ‘I say that although each thing is expressed in infinite ways in the infinite
intellect of God, nevertheless those infinite ideas by which it is expressed cannot constitute one and the
same Mind of a singular thing, but infinity many minds, since each of the infinite ideas has no connection
with any other, as I’ve explained in the Scholium to E II P7, and as is evident from I P10.’. Letter 66, (II)
440-441 (quòd quàmvis unaquæque res infinitis modis expressa sit in infinito Dei intellectu, illæ tamen infinitæ
ideæ, quibus exprimitur, unam eandemque rei singularis Mentem constituere nequeunt; sed infinitas:
quandoquidem unaquæque harum infinitarum idearum nullam connexionem cum invicem habent, ut in
eodem Scholio Propositionis 7. Part. 2. Ethic. explicui, & ex Prop. 10. Part. 1. patet). This answer is claimed
to be ‘hermetic’ as it is not easy to see how EIp10 and EIIp7 provide the answer to Tschirnhaus’s question.
See also note 163.
159
EIp13, (I) 420 (Substantia absolutè infinita est indivisibilis).
379
absolutely outside the intellect. For in his notorious definition of ‘attribute’ Spinoza
not only claims that an attribute is what the intellect perceives (instead of
‘conceives’), but moreover he adds that an attribute is what the intellect perceives as
(tamquam) constituting an essence of substance. If it is acknowledged (i) that the
verb ‘perceives’ indicates that this particular way of grasping substance is inferior to
another (un-indicated) way of grasping the same thing (i.e. ‘conceiving’),160 (ii) that
the term ‘tamquam’ can also be read as ‘as if’, and (iii) that this very ‘as if’ refers to
the verb ‘constituting’ (and not to the noun ‘essence’), we encounter an alternative
way of understanding EID4, a reading that is completely in line with Spinoza’s
other claims about God’s essence. For now we can provide the following
comprehensive definition of ‘attribute’, a definition in which both the ontological
and the conceptual variants of ‘attribute’ are captured:
An attribute is (i) what expresses a c e r t a i n e s s e n c e o f s u b s t a n c e , and (ii)
what the (infinite) intellect g r a s p s b o t t o m - u p of a substance a s i f this certain
essence is constituting the all-encompassing essence of substance
Indeed, even though each attribute expresses a certain essence of substance (by
EIp10s) that must be understood to have an ontological status at Natura naturans
(by EIp29s), and even though the perceiving of this essence by way of our intellect
– i.e. bottom-up from Natura naturata – suggests that substance is thus constituted
by the infinite attributes, the relation between substance and its attributes can in no
way be understood to be a relation of parts and wholes. Rather, it is clear that
according to Spinoza the very horizontal conceptual duality between the intellectdependent attributes that is recognizable at the level of Natura naturata must be
understood to be grounded in an absolute extra-intellectual unity of the intellectindependent attributes at the level of Natura naturans, somewhat in the same way
the distinct manifestations ‘thunder’ and ‘lightning’ can be understood to be
expressions of one phenomenon (or ‘milk’ and ‘water’ can both be understood to be
contained in a fluid-neutral glass).
160
In the Explication of EIID3, Spinoza says that ‘the word perception seems to indicate that the Mind is
acted on by the object. But concept seems to express an action of the Mind’. EIID3, (I) 447 (quia
perceptionis nomen indicare videtur, Mentem ab objecto pati. At conceptus actionem Mentis exprimere videtur).
380
This point can be elucidated further adducing an argument that was used in
section 3.6. Consider the following table once more:
Natura naturans
---------------------Natura naturata
(a) Substance qua substance
intrinsically causing
(bt) The infinite intellect
(ct) Thinking substance
(table 6)
The thing to recall with respect to this table is that (ct) can only be called thinking
substance when the infinite intellect is produced by (a). The very thinking essence
that is expressed objectively in (bt) (by the Principle of Plenitude EIp16), and that
comes to light conceptually (or intellect-dependently) in (ct) (by EID4), must be
understood to be rooted ontologically in (a). As already noted in section 3.6, this is
completely in line with Spinoza’s claim that ‘God’s power is God’s essence itself’:161
Spinoza’s God is absolutely omnipotent because ‘everything which can fall under an
infinite intellect’ (bt) follows from the necessity of God’s essence (a). It is also
precisely because of this that Spinoza is able to state in EIIp7c that ‘God’s power of
thinking is equal to his actual power of acting’:162 the divine essence that can be
grasped intellectually via an attribute (in casu: thought) must be understood to be
absolutely identical to the extra-intellectual divine essence sui generis.
There is yet another way of showing this. Consider the following tables:
(a) Electrical discharge
expressed in
(b) Light waves
(c) Lightning
(table 7)
Or:
(a) Glass
containing
(c) Glass of milk
(b) Milk
(table 8)
Or:
161
162
EIp34, (I) 439 (Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia).
EIIp7c, (I) 451 (Dei cogitandi potentia aequalis est ipsius actuali agendi potentiae).
381
(a) The third patriarch
In his capacity of
(b) The person who was so-called because he seized his brother’s heel
(c) Jacob
(table 9)
Now, with respect to these tables the following is noteworthy:
-
as soon as someone acquires knowledge of a violent electrical discharge
insofar as it is an electrical discharge by way of a study of the lightning that is
an expression of it, one has acquired knowledge of the underlying
phenomenon (a) sui generis (and not only of this discharge insofar as it is
expressed in lightning (c))
-
as soon as one has acquired knowledge about a glass insofar as it is a glass by
way of an investigation of a glass that contained milk, one has acquired
knowledge of a glass (a) sui generis (and not only of a glass insofar as it
contains milk (c)).
-
as soon as one establishes that (say) Jacob was buried in the cave of
Machpelah, one has also acquired knowledge about the burial place of the
third patriarch insofar as he is referred to by any other name (and not only of
the burial place of the third patriarch insofar as he is called ‘Jacob’).
Furthermore it must be noted that knowledge of an electrical discharge, a glass or
the third patriarch via the proposed bottom-up route does imply nor require that
the knowing agent has acquired knowledge of respectively all (c)-manifestations of
the electrical discharge, all the infinitely many fluids that can be understood to be
contained in the glass, and all the names that can be used in order to designate the
third patriarch. Now, the very same appears to apply to Spinoza’s view on the
relation between substance and its attributes: as soon as adequate knowledge is
acquired by way of the intellect-dependent attribute of thought (ct), one has also
acquired knowledge concerning God’s essence sui generis (a), without the necessary
implication that knowledge of this all-encompassing essence at level (a) entails
knowledge of all the aspects of this essence that must be understood to be somehow
382
conceivable with an intellect. Admittedly, this solution is not as strong as one may
wish for.163 But at the same time it seems to be the only way in which Spinoza’s
statements in Letter 64 and 66 can be squared with his explicit claim in EIp12 and
EIp13 that a substance is indivisible, whilst at the same time upholding the
assertion in EIIp47 that ‘the human mind has an adequate knowledge of God’s
eternal and infinite essence’. With respect to this latter contention it must be added
that, if Spinoza would have intended to make it clear that the human mind must be
understood to have knowledge of certain constitutive aspects of God’s eternal and
infinite essence only, then surely he would have added this important restriction
here. But again, this addition lacks. On the basis of the comprehensive rendering of
EID4 it is clear why: Spinoza does not need to add the restriction as in the context
of his philosophy the knowledge of an eternal essence of God (c) implies knowledge
of the eternal essence of God qua God (a).
163
It seems that the problem is rooted in the notorious EID4. Spinoza’s choice to render the definition of
attributes in conceptual terms (i.e. in terms of ‘what the intellect perceives) – a choice that appears to be
inspired by his need to combine a medieval top-down perspective with the very bottom-up perspective
that is the subject of this chapter, and of which (as we saw above) EID4 can be understood to be an
important expression – provides him with the problem that the remaining attributes (i.e. the attributes
apart from though and extension) seem to fall without the scope of EID4. For even though these
remaining attributes must be understood to be ontological aspects of substance, it seems that they cannot
be perceived by an intellect. Spinoza’s hermetic solution to this problem in Letter 66 to Tschirnhaus is
hardly illuminating. He states here that ‘although each thing is expressed in infinite ways in the infinite
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, since each of the infinite ideas has no
connection with any other, as I’ve explained in the Scholium to EIIP7, and as is evident from IP10’. Letter
66, (II) 440-441 (quòd quàmvis unaquæque res infinitis modis expressa sit in infinito Dei intellectu, illæ tamen
infinitæ ideæ, quibus exprimitur, unam eandemque rei singularis Mentem constituere nequeunt; sed infinitas:
quandoquidem unaquæque harum infinitarum idearum nullam connexionem cum invicem habent, ut in
eodem Scholio Propositionis 7. Part. 2. Ethic. explicui, & ex Prop. 10. Part. 1. patet). It is hard to see how the
mentioned passages can be understood to corroborate the claim that in nature there must (apparently) be
infinitely many parallel minds that (apparently) each have access to one of the remaining attributes. For
the only thing that Spinoza asserts in EIp10 and EIIp7s is that (i) attributes must be conceived through
themselves, (ii) that we must suppose one and the same connection of causes in any of the attributes.
However, in these passages little is said concerning the representational nature of thought and the way it
provides cognitive access to the other attributes. And it is precisely this that Tschirnhaus’s (and indeed
our) question demands.
383
Argument 3: Absolute unity
Gueroult and Curly hold that Spinoza’s horizontal conceptual dualism between
thought and extension must be understood to reach all the way up to the essence of
substance itself. Just as an idea (at Natura naturata) must be conceived to be
conceptually distinct from (even though ontologically identical to) its body, so also
(Gueroult and Curley claim) thinking substance (which they both locate at Natura
naturans)164 is conceptually distinct from (even though ontologically identical to)
extended and r-ed substance. We have already provided two arguments that suggest
that this is not a correct way of understanding the structure of Spinoza’s
metaphysics. But there is yet another way of showing that the suggested variant of
referential opacity cannot be understood to be operative at the level of Natura
naturans (a). In this respect it is important to note that we have shown above that
the horizontal distinction between an idea and its body is an implication of the
vertical distinction between the objective and the formal being of the thing under
scrutiny. Indeed, concerning Spinoza’s important parallelism claim in EIIp7 we
have established that the idea of (say) a circle and the extended circle itself can be
understood to be the very same thing because they must both be conceived to be
finite expressions in their own attribute of their attribute-neutral formal being (see
section 4.2.3.1). Now, with respect to the claim of Gueroult cum suis it is crucial to
note that the horizontal conceptual distinction between thinking, extended and red substance can only be made if there is also asserted a vertical conceptual
distinction between these infinitely many certain essences and the all-encompassing
essence of God. That is to say: the horizontal distinction can only be made when
apart from the formal being of an attribute (say: of thought), a prior layer of the
divine res is posited. If two concepts are claimed to be ontologically identical, then
the absolute ontological identity of the thing these concepts refer to – and hence a
conceptual layer that is prior to the conceptual duality under scrutiny– is posited eo
ipso. To be sure, Gueroult made the same observation; he makes the distinction
between ‘a certain substance’ and a prior ‘infinitely infinite substance’.165 In this
sense his interpretation runs parallel with the present one, as we have also made a
conceptual distinction between God and God qua God. However, as Gueroult does
164
165
More on this shortly.
See note 141.
384
not distinguish between the two concepts of God that were uncovered in Chapter
3, his position must be understood to entail that the horizontal and vertical duality
are operative at the level of God’s absolute essence, i.e. at the level of God qua God
(a). Yet, it has become clear in the previous chapter that a prior – or eminent –
layer of the divine res at level (a) goes against anything Spinoza is willing to admit.
In section 3.5 we have seen that God’s essence (a) must be understood to be an
absolute unity that is self-causing as a one place predicate. Anyone who would
claim on the basis of the multiplicity in nature that God’s essence is constituted by
multiple essences166 turns nature upside down. From what we have seen in the
previous chapters, it is clear that God’s infinite power of thinking at level (a) must
be understood to differ from our intellect precisely in the fact that there is no
duality whatsoever (i.e. neither vertical nor horizontal) that can be attributed to it;
whereas the intellect, whether finite or infinite, is at most simultaneous with the
things understood, in God qua God (a) thought, extension and r must be
understood to be absolutely identical.
*
On the present interpretation the horizontal distinction between the attributes is
safeguarded without the unwelcome implication that God must be understood to
be constituted by infinitely many essences. That is to say: as we have shown that
Spinoza distinguishes between two concepts of God, we can see how he is able to
state that God’s essence admits of no duality or multiplicity whatsoever, while at
the same time upholding that God can be perceived to be constituted by his
attributes. The distinction between God qua God (a) and God (c) safeguards that
the intellect-dependent variant of God (c) can be conceived to express the vertical
coalescence of God’s absolute essence (a) and the infinite modes that follow from
this essence (b). Another way of saying this is that the very conceptual distinction
166
As must be clear from the present context, the ‘multiple essences’ that we speak of here are the essences
that are intellectually expressed in the infinite attributes, i.e. God’s absolute thinking, extended and r-ed
essence. To be sure, our interpretation implies that there is yet another category of essences that must be
understood to be operative at the level of Natura naturans: the formal essences of the infinitely many
things that follow from the necessity of the divine nature. As these formal essences of things were shown to
be contained pervasively in the attributes, the absolute unity of substance is also not threatened by this
particular multiplicity of essences.
385
between God qua God (a) and God (c) accounts for the fact that our intellect can
at the same time be understood to be a part of a divine intellect (namely of the
infinite intellect of God (c) that surfaces in (inter alia) EIIp11c), and to be
fundamentally different from a divine ‘intellect’ (namely from the absolute thinking
essence of God qua God (a) that surfaces in EIp17s). With respect to this important
observation it may be informative to add that both Gueroult and Curley team up
with Alexandre Koyré (see Chapter 1) and claim that ‘God’s intellect’ (EIp17s) and
our intellect do not stand to each other like a constellation of stars and a barking
animal. As already noted before, this assertion is understandable. For prima facie it
is hard to see how Spinoza is able to claim that ‘God’s intellect’ and our intellect
have nothing in common with each other, whilst at the same time holding that our
intellect is part of the infinite intellect of God. However, this apparent
contradiction is solved once it is acknowledged that, whereas the term ‘God’s
intellect’ insofar as it is conceived to refer to the coalescent thinking substance (c)
certainly has a close connection with our intellect (as our intellect is a part of the
infinite intellect that must be understood to be a coalescent aspect of God (c)),
‘God’s intellect’ insofar as it refers to God’s absolute thinking essence (a) – as is
conditionally proposed in EIp17s – is fundamentally different from our intellect. The
problem that Gueroult encounters finds its root in the fact that he does not
distinguish between the two concepts of ‘God’ (and hence between the intellectdependent and the intellect-independent variants of God’s attributes) that can be
detected in the Ethics. Gueroult cum suis erroneously transfer the intellectdependent duality between thought and extension (or in terms of EIp10s: the real
distinction of the attributes that finds its ground in the fact that one can ‘be
conceived without the aid of the other’)167 from God (c) to God qua God (a).168
Yet, this operation finds no warrant in Spinoza’s work. For Spinoza makes it very
clear that anyone who would claim that, because our intellect is characterized by a
duality, so also God’s infinite power of thinking must be understood to be
characterized by a prior – or eminent – duality (that can account for a horizontal or
167
EIp10s, (I) 416. Remark that the ‘real distinction’ is staged in terms of ‘conception’, which indeed
suggests that the real distinction takes place (and takes place only) insofar as substance appears in it
coalescent variant.
168
Or as Alan Donagan stated it: ‘[Gueroult] has overlooked that if there is only one causal act by which
all the attributes of God exist, then there is only one essence which involves their existence’. Donagan,
‘Essence and the Distinction of Attributes’, 61.
386
vertical duality at level (a)), reasons in exactly the same way a triangle would reason
when it would claim that God must be understood to be characterized by a prior –
or eminent – layer of triangularity. Anyone who transfers the conceptual
commitment with respect to the infinite intellect at level (b) to God’s absolute
thinking essence (a), ‘did not observe the proper order of Philosophizing’. 169 For
whereas the ‘objects of the senses’170 are grasped at most ‘simultaneous with the
things understood’, God’s essence – encompassing absolute thought – must be
understood as an absolute unity. To Spinoza, this is as clear as the fact that stars do
not bark.
4.3.3.2 Extra-intellectual?
Above I aimed to show that God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, has
cognitive access to his own essence sui generis. I have provided various arguments
for the claim that this bottom-up perspective that crosses the boundary between
Natura naturata and Natura naturans must indeed be understood to play an
important role in Spinoza’s mature philosophy. To be sure, we are not there yet.
There still appears to be one important lacuna with respect to the present
interpretation. It is the tension between the absolute extra-intellectual status of
God’s essence (a) that was argued for in the previous chapter, and the present claim
that the human mind has cognitive access to the eternal and infinite essence of God.
Indeed: how can our claim from Chapter 3 that God qua God (a) is outside the
reach of the intellect be squared with the assertions in the present section? Does not
the claim that the human mind has cognitive access to God qua God (a) imply that
God qua God is not absolutely extra-intellectual?
The first way to corroborate our claim that God qua God, even though this
variant of the divine being must be understood to exist and be self-conceiving
absolutely outside the intellect, can still be understood to come within the scope of
the intellect in the way we commonly understand it, is by stressing that it is (i) the
conceptual direction and (ii) the conceptual structure that dictates whether knowledge
can be understood to be knowledge of an intellect or not. With respect to the
169
170
EIIp10s, (I) 455 (ordinem Philosophandi non tenuerint).
Ibidem, (I) 455 (sensuum objecta).
387
absolute self-conception of God qua God (a) that was elucidated in Chapter 3, we
can establish the following:
(i)
the absolute self-knowledge of God qua God (a) was shown to take place
entirely at level (a) and hence to (somehow) proceed from level (a) to level (a)
(i.e. to cause a cause q u a cause). This makes it clear that the conceptual
(and causal) direction is different from the variant of the divine selfknowledge that was elucidated above. For this bottom-up variant of God’s
self-knowledge was shown to proceed from level (b) to level (a);
(ii)
it was shown that the self-knowledge of God qua God (a) cannot in any way
be understood to be bifurcated in the way the knowledge of an intellect (in
the way we commonly understand it) is. This makes it clear that the
conceptual structure of the absolute extra-intellectual self-knowledge differs
from our bottom-up knowledge of God in the same way a constellation of
stars differs from a barking dog.
These two points make it clear that God qua God can be understood to come
within the reach of the intellect, without the implication that the bottom-up
perspective entails absolute extra-intellectual self-knowledge of the divine res. For it
is clear now that, even though the bottom-up perspective entails cognitive access to
the eternal essence of God qua God, it has (i) the wrong conceptual direction and
(ii) the wrong conceptual structure to count as God’s absolute self-knowledge (or
‘absolute thought’). Another way of saying this that the bottom-up perspective
accounts for self-knowledge of God (c), not for self-knowledge of God qua God (a).
There is a second way of corroborating the claim that the extra-intellectual
character of the absolute self-knowledge of the divine res can be squared with the
claim that it is possible to gather knowledge of this variant of God. In this respect it
is crucial to note that insofar as God’s essence is grasped with an intellect – and
hence insofar as the divine thing that is contained objectively in the intellect is
understood to be necessarily in nature (to paraphrase a claim from EIp30d) – the
divine essence is known insofar as it is mediated by the intellect that grasps it. Now of
course, this very divine essence must also be understood to exist apart from any
intellectual operation; if this would not be the case, the objective knowledge of this
388
essence would have to count as ‘a conclusion without a premise’,171 which is absurd
on the basis of the claim from EIp30d. A substance can only be grasped with an
intellect – and hence fall apart conceptually in a formal and an objective aspect – if
this substance also exists absolutely outside the intellect, i.e. in a realm where the
distinction between its formal and objective being is absolutely senseless. In short: God’s
essence as it is absolutely in itself must be understood to ‘escape’ the intellect; it is
essentially impossible to use the intellect to grasp something in its absolute extraintellectual status. Indeed, God’s essence, which surfaces objectively as the infinite
intellect, and formally as the (ontological variant of the) attribute of thought, must
be understood to ‘exist’ in itself absolutely extra-intellectually. This of course is
precisely the point that was already made in Chapter 3.
Having elucidated this last important subject, we can conclude that when God
(insofar as he is expressed in a human mind) has objective knowledge of a thing, he
has cognitive access to his own essence; knowledge of an eternal and infinite essence
of God (c) (starting from an idea (b-ii), via the formal being of that idea (b-i),
reaching knowledge of the formal essence of that idea (a)) implies knowledge of the
eternal and infinite essence of God (a). Given what we have seen above, we can
enhance points (IV) and (V) in the following way:
(IV′) This formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God, insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, must in turn be understood to be the
counterpart at Natura naturata of the formal essence of that circle, which is
contained ubiquitously in God sui generis at Natura naturans
(V′) The formal being of the idea of a circle, which is in God (c) insofar as he is
expressed in a human mind, thus expresses the eternal and infinite essence of
God qua God (a)
God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, has bottom-up cognitive access to
his own essence.
171
This clause is inspired by Spinoza’s claim in EIIp28d that ‘ideas of the affections, insofar as they are
related only to the human mind, are like conclusions without premises’. EIIp28d, (I) 470 (Sunt ergo hæ
affectionum ideæ, quatenus ad solam humanam Mentem referuntur, veluti consequentiæ absque præmissis).
389
Now that it has become clear that Spinoza not only fosters a variant of
bottom-up knowledge that halts at Natura naturata, but that the conceptual
operation in table 3 can genuinely be called (bottom up) self-knowledge of God (c)
(as God (c) encompasses the knowledge with which (b) conceives (a)),172 we can
provide the following comprehensive rendering of the structure of the selfknowledge of God (c):173
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
-------------------------------------------------(b-i) The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (b -ii) The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 10)
This table expresses the very way in which Spinoza can be understood to depart
from the medieval philosophical tradition, whilst at the same time upholding the
medieval view of the absolute priority of God. With the perspective that surfaces in
(inter alia) EIIp7s and EIIp21, Spinoza provides a way for attaining true selfknowledge of God – and hence of nature – via the level of modes. The bottom-up
perspective in the way uncovered in this chapter must be understood to be a highly
idiosyncratic expression of the (early) modern scientific character of Spinoza’s
philosophy. Spinoza’s claim that God and nature refer to the very same thing,
combined with his assertion – elucidated in this chapter – that is it possible to
acquire true knowledge of Deus sive Natura by investigating the objective being of
singular things, differs considerably from the claims of his medieval predecessors
(and contemporary opponents), and provides a philosophical basis for a scientific
view of nature. To be sure, this is not to say that Spinoza’s philosophy is devoid of
medieval aspects. Quite the opposite. Table 10 clearly shows that Spinoza also
upholds a certain ‘medieval perspective’ from which God is prior to the things that
follow from him. It is important to note that these two perspectives correspond
Remark that this claim concerning God (c)’s bottom-up self-conception mirrors the claim from section
3.4.1 concerning his top-down self-causation as a two-place predicate. There we have said that (c) is the
cause of itself as (a) causes (b). In this section we claim that (c) conceives itself as (b) conceives (a).
173
The extra-intellectual self-knowledge of God (a) that must be understood to proceed from (a) to (a), is
not captured in this table, not only because it is very hard to find a proper way to render this particular
variant of God’s self-knowledge, but also because in this study we are primarily interested in the
knowledge of the intellect.
172
390
with the two kinds of adequate knowledge that Spinoza discerns. Indeed, perhaps
the best argument for the claim that he distinguishes two variants of God’s selfknowledge has not been provided yet. It is the fact that in the important second
scholium of EIIp40 Spinoza forwards two kinds of adequate knowledge that can be
had by our intellect (and hence by God insofar as he is expressed in a human
mind): reason (ratio) and intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva). In the next
chapter it will become clear that the two perspectives referred to in this chapter
must be understood to express these two variants of knowing things adequately.
4.4 Conclusion
Spinoza occupies on intriguing position in the history of philosophy. For on the
one hand this ‘God-intoxicated man’ champions a medieval way of understanding
the causal generation of nature: according to Spinoza the whole of nature can be
understood to be created by God; considered realiter, God is prior to everything that
follows from him. Yet on the other hand the ‘righteous atheist’ fosters a perspective
from which the all-encompassing totality of modes that constitute God’s creation
are (i) identical with God, (ii) conceptually prior to God, and (iii) offer a way to
gather knowledge of God’s essence. This chapter was aimed at elucidating this latter
early modern perspective as well as the way in which it is related to the medieval
thread that can be discerned in Spinoza’s philosophy. Whereas the previous
chapters dealt mainly with the way omnes res must be understood to follow from
(and to inhere in) God, in the present chapter we have seen how the top-down causal
(and conceptual) perspective can be understood to be teamed up with a bottom-up
conceptual (and causal) stance.
The scrutiny of this bottom-up perspective was invoked by way of an analysis
of one of the central tenets of Spinoza’s metaphysics: his so called ‘parallelism
thesis, which surfaces in EIIp7. This proposition reads thus:
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.174
(Ordo, & connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo, & connexio rerum)
174
EIIp7, (I) 451.
391
This claim is generally understood to posit an identity relation between things
conceived under the attribute of thought, and things conceived under the attribute
of extension. In Spinoza’s own words: ‘a mode of extension and the idea of that
mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways’.175 This can be
rendered schematically in the following way:
Natura naturans
Thought
=
Extension
=
R
--------------------------------------------------------------(c) God
Natura naturata
idea x
=
body x
=
rx
(table 4)
In this chapter it has become clear that this rendering of the horizontal numerical
identity of ideas and bodies (and r’s) does justice to Spinoza’s claims in the Ethics.
Various passages underpin the claim that horizontal inter-attribute parallelism is
endorsed by Spinoza. Yet, we have seen that EIIp7 entails something more. A
scrutiny of EIIp7 and its connection with an alternative parallelism claim in EIIp21
and its scholium taught us that the horizontal parallelism of table 4 is to be seen as
a mere implication of the comprehensive vertical parallelism claim that surfaces in
the following rendering:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
----------------------------------------------------------------(b-i)
The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata
is identical to
(b-ii)
The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 5)
The assertion in EIIp21 that the ‘idea [in God] of the [human] mind is united to
the mind in the same way as the mind is united to the human body’,176 and the
explication in EIIp21s that ‘the idea of the mind and the mind itself are one and the
same thing, which is conceived under one and the same attribute, namely, thought’177
led us to the observation that the horizontal inter-attribute and vertical parallelism
must be understood to be manifestations of the very same transitive parallelism.
EIIp7s, (I) 451 (modus extensionis, & idea illius modi una, eademq́ue est res, sed duobus modis expressa).
EIIp21, (I) 467 (Hæc Mentis idea eodem modo unita est Menti, ac ipsa Mens unita est Corpori).
177
EIIp21s, (I) 467 (quare Mentis idea, & ipsa Mens una, eademq́ue est res, quæ sub uno, eodemq́ue attributo,
nempe Cogitationis, concipitur).
175
176
392
Indeed, a scrutiny of some key passages in the Ethics led us to the following
comprehensive formulation of the parallelism claim of EIIp7:
the order and connection of the objective being of things (b-ii) is the same as the order
and connection of the formal being of things (b-i).
The relation between the ‘horizontal’ (i.e. operating at the same conceptual level)
and the ‘vertical’ (i.e. operating at different conceptual levels) aspects of Spinoza’s
parallelism claim can be formulated succinctly in the following way:
A singular idea and its parallel mode (or object) under extension both are finite and
durational expressions (b-ii) in their own attribute of the very same eternal formal being
(b-i).
Just as a bolt of lightning and the accompanying thunder are one and the same
thing insofar as they both are manifestations of one and the same phenomenon, so
also a man and the idea of that man are the same thing insofar as they both are
finite expressions of the very same formal being. In other words: because the formal
and objective being of a thing is (vertically) identical under the same attribute (table
5), the objective expression of that same thing is (horizontally) identical under
different attributes (table 4). Vertical parallelism encompasses horizontal parallelism.
To be sure, it became clear that this horizontal parallelism is not only
recognizable in an inter-attribute variant, but also in an intra-attribute variant. For
the following claim can be made as well:
an idea and its parallel mode (or object) under the same attribute (i.e. the i d e a
i d e a e ) both are finite and durational expressions (b-ii) in their own attribute of the
very same eternal formal being (b-i).
And hence it became clear that Spinoza’s transitive parallelism manifests itself in
three conceptually distinct ways:
-
as vertical parallelism, that is: as the identity of the infinite and eternal formal
and the finite and durational objective being of things
393
-
as horizontal inter-attribute parallelism, that is: as the identity of finite and
durational ideas and their finite and durational objects in other attributes
as horizontal intra-attribute parallelism, that is: as the identity of finite and
durational ideas and their finite and durational objects in the same attribute
This latter variant of intra-attribute parallelism is based on the bottom-up
perspective that was discerned in Spinoza’s philosophy. The thing to note in this
respect is that we turned to an investigation of Spinoza’s parallelism claim because
we were interested in the precise relation between the formal (b-i) and the objective
(b-ii) being of things. Now, a scrutiny of this relation has not only given us insight
in the way Spinoza’s parallelism thesis must be understood, but has also taught us
more about the relation between the formal (b-i) and the objective (b-ii) being of
things. In this respect a claim in EIIp7s can hardly be overestimated. In this
important scholium, Spinoza asserts that (b-ii) serves as the proximate cause for (b-i).
In EIIp7s – in which we can also find the most explicit formulation of Spinoza’s
horizontal inter-attribute parallelism – we encounter the remarkable claim that ‘the
formal being of the idea of the circle can be perceived only through another mode
of thinking, as its proximate cause’. And this in turn makes it clear that a bottomup perspective, that is: a perspective from which the objective being of things serves as
the ground floor, must be understood to form an integral part of Spinoza’s
metaphysics. That the surprising assertion in EIIp7s cannot be understood to be ‘a
slip of the pen’ becomes clear once it is acknowledged that the bottom-up
perspective is recognizable in various other passages in the Ethics also, including the
very scholium in which the most evident manifestation of Spinoza’s vertical and
horizontal intra-attribute parallelism can be found: EIIp21s. The claim that ‘as
soon as someone knows something, he thereby knows that he knows it, and at the
same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and so on, to infinity’ is one of
the most evident claims in the Ethics in which a thing that is grasped objectively is
portrayed to serve as the ground floor for the idea of that idea (which by EIIp21s is
nothing but the form of that idea), which in turn serves as the basis for the idea of
the idea of that idea (which is nothing but the form of the idea of the idea), and so
on, to infinity.
Yet another way of saying this is that the perspective that came to light in the
previous chapters – from which the whole is in a certain sense prior to the parts –
394
must be understood to be combined with a perspective from which the parts are
conceptually prior to the whole they constitute. That is to say: the top-down
perspective treated the previous chapters is accompanied by a bottom-up
perspective. Recognition of this bottom-up perspective in the Ethics in turn enables
us to solve a problem that was brought up in the concluding section of the previous
chapter. Recall that in section 3.8 we have stated that the fact that we are able to
attain knowledge of God’s essence (i.e. the eternal and infinite power of acting that
must be positioned at Natura naturans) – by way of our intellect (i.e. an expression
of this power which must be positioned at Natura naturata), implies that God’s
self-knowledge insofar as God is expressed in a human mind (i.e. in the objective
being of a human body) must be understood to be directed bottom-up. In this
chapter we have seen that this way of understanding the causal and conceptual flow
can be validated. Apart from the reasoning from cause to effect (i.e. from (a) to (b)),
Spinoza also discerns a conceptual direction from effect to cause (i.e. from (b) to (a)).
This cognitive access of (God, insofar as he is expressed in) a human mind to the
essence of the divine res can be rendered thus:
Natura naturans
(a) God qua God
-------------------------------------------------(b-i) The formal being of singular things
Natura naturata - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (b-ii) The objective being of singular things
(c) God
(table 10)
This table makes it clear that Spinoza can be called ‘‘the last of the mediaevals’ –
namely insofar as he propagates a top-down perspective – whilst at the same time
forwarding an early modern conception – namely insofar as the identification of
God and nature is claimed to offer the human mind bottom-up cognitive access to
God’s essence by way of a study of the whole of nature. In this way, Spinoza’s
‘righteous atheism’ can indeed be understood to be ‘God-intoxicated’.
4.4.1 Pars melior nostri
In the previous chapters we have made considerable progress in determining how
pars melior nostri must be understood in the context of Spinoza’s philosophy. So far
395
we were able to make the following claims with respect to the intellect (in the way
we commonly understand it):
-
-
-
-
-
The intellect is a mode
The intellect can be conceived to be a part of the infinite mode of thought
The intellect is by nature either posterior to or simultaneous with the things
understood, which in turn implies that the intellect is characterized by a
conceptual duality
The intellect is characterized by a conceptual distinction in the following
way: our intellect grasps things either insofar as it conceives them to exist as
extrinsically caused finite modes (i.e. in their objective being under duration,
representing their durational objects), or insofar it conceives them as
intrinsically caused infinite modes (i.e. considered in themselves, in their eternal
formal being).
This distinction entails yet another distinction, which accounts for a certain
trichotomy: the distinction between the durational object of an idea, the
objective being of this object (i.e. the idea of the object), and the formal being
of this idea.
The things that function in this structure must in turn be understood to have
an ubiquitous counterpart that must be located absolutely outside the intellect:
the formal essences of things.
The intellect is a coalescent feature of God (c)
In the present chapter we have focused some more on the precise relation between
the two aspects that must be understood to be characteristic for the ideas that
constitute the intellect (whether finite or infinite): the formal and the objective
being of things. In this respect it has become clear that Spinoza’s transitive
parallelism can be understood to fall within the scope of the constructive function of
the intellect: Spinoza’s three conceptual variants of this parallelism can all be
understood to be grounded in the fact that we conceive things as actual in two
ways: in their formal eternal being and in their objective durational being (this
latter being in turn falling apart in the representing (durational) objective being and
the represented (durational) object). Furthermore the following has become clear:
396
-
The eternal and infinite formal being of things can be conceived in two ways:
top-down (i.e. proceeding from God’s essence (a)) and bottom-up (i.e.
inferring it on the basis the objective being of things)
Whereas the previous chapters were (mainly) concerned with the top-down
perspective that surfaces most explicitly in Spinoza’s Principle of Plenitude (EIp16),
in the present chapter it was claimed that God’s self-knowledge cannot only be
understood to be (i) absolutely outside the intellect (i.e. proceeding from (a) to (a)),
and (ii) proceeding from God’s essence to the infinitely many things that follow
from this essence (i.e. proceeding from (a) to (b)), but also from the (infinite)
intellect to God’s essence (i.e. proceeding from (b) to (a)). This latter perspective
was rendered schematically in the following way:
(I)
God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, conceives (say) a circle in
two ways.
(II) God, insofar as he is expressed in a human mind, conceives a circle in its
objective being (i.e. the idea of the circle) and in its formal being (i.e. the
formal being of the idea of the circle).
(III) This formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, is a part-with-a-vista of the absolutely
infinite intellect.
(IV) This formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, must in turn be understood to be the
counterpart at Natura naturata of the formal essence of that circle which is
contained ubiquitously in God as a res cogitans at Natura naturans
(V) The formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar as
he is expressed in a human mind, thus involves an eternal and infinite essence
of God
And as God qua God (a) must be understood to be an absolute identity, this
implies that:
(IV′) This formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar
as he is expressed in a human mind, must in turn be understood to be the
397
counterpart at Natura naturata of the formal essence of that circle which is
contained ubiquitously in God s u i g e n e r i s at Natura naturans
(V′) The formal being of the idea of a circle, which is conceived by God insofar as
he is expressed in a human mind, thus involves t h e eternal and infinite
essence of God
In the next chapter we will argue for the claim that the bifurcation in topdown and bottom-up perspective marks the distinction between the two types of
adequate knowledge that Spinoza discerns: ratio and scientia intuitive. Moreover, we
will treat an important aspect of the intellect that was not addressed yet: the way in
which the human mind is able to gather knowledge of external things in nature by
way of horizontal representation. In Chapter 5 we will see how the top-down and
bottom-up perspectives must be understood to be related to the specific
phenomena that we would commonly associate with human mentality.
398
4 Two perspectives. Pars melior nostri. The Structure of Spinoza's Intellect. Chapter 4
In this chapter I will show that the perspective that came to light in the previous chapters – from which God is prior to the modes that follow from him – must be understood to be combined with a perspective from which t h e p a r t s a r e p r i o r t o t h e w h o l e t h e y c o n s t i t u t e. That is to say: the t o p-d o w n perspective in the previous chapters must be understood to be accompanied by a b o t t o m-u p perspective. This bottom-up perspective surfaces (inter alia) in Spinoza's important 'parallelism thesis'. As we shall see in the next chapter, recognition of the importance of these two perspectives in turn makes it clear how we must understand the two kinds of adequate knowledge that Spinoza discerns: r a t i o and s c i e n t i a i n t u i t i v a ....Read more
