Comment

Abstract

The interesting and suggestive interpretation offered by A. J, Watt in this journal (pp. 171-89 above) of Spinoza’s account of God’s causality to some extent anticipates the discussion of the topic which I am undertaking in a forthcoming book on Spinoza’s philosophy. To a greater extent it is, of course, anticipated by Stuart Hampshire in his study of Spinoza. I agree with Mr. Watt’s objections to some of the traditional interpretations of Spinoza’s doctrine and I think it is in fact immune from the strictures of some critics who attempt to explain the succession of finite modes in Substance as a product of imaginal thinking, a view which must lead to a paralogism in Spinoza’s thought so gross that he could not have been unaware of it and could not have committed unless he had been. I shall not enter into this part of the discussion, as I have no wish to contest what Mr. Watt has written with respect to it, but shall confine my attention to his own (and incidentally Hampshire’s) interpretation.