Spinoza's Work Research Articles

Spinoza: The Way to Wisdom (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 469 Herman De Dijn. Spinoza: The Way to Wisdom. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 291. Cloth, $3o.oo. Paper, $16.95. This study, part of the Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy, centers upon a running commentary on Spinoza's early and unfinished Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (TdlE). It is preceded by two chapters devoted respectively to Spinoza's life and work, and to the text of the TdlE itself. Six chapters make up the body of the commentary, each preceded by the Latin text of Gebhardt with facing English translation of Edwin Curley, though De Dijn makes occasional corrections or changes in Curley's version. De Dijn, with a number of other commentators, believes that the TdlE was intended by Spinoza as a general introduction to his philosophy as presented in final form in the Ethics. Accordingly his commentary on the TdlE contains many references to developments in this later work, and the last three chapters of the study are devoted to sketches of the theory of God (Ch. 9: Ethics I), Man (Ch. lo: Ethics II), and Salvation (Ch. i l: Ethics IlI-V). Since the author intends his study to be a general introduction to the philosophy of Spinoza, he avoids the more technical details surrounding the interpretation and exegesis of the text--stating his own interpretation and noting in general where more detailed expositions or alternative interpretations may be found, notably in the extensive editions and commentaries of Rousset (Trait~ de la r~forme de l'entendement, ed. and trans, with commentary by Bernard Rousset [Paris: Vrin, ~999]), Bartuschat (Abhandlung iiber die Verbesserungdes Verstandes, translated with introduction and commentary by Wolfgang Bartuschat [Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1993]), Theo Zweerman (L~ntroduction g~la philosophie selon Spinoza [Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain , 1993]), and Pierre-Frangois Moreau (L'expkrienceet l'~ternit~[Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994]). He is largely successful in steering between the two extremes of linear commentary and generic introduction or overview. His success is particularly noteworthy for the Anglophone reader, since most of the literature dealing with the TdlE is in French, German, or Italian. Filippo Mignini (Italy) is currendy preparing a new critical edition of the TdlE with commentary, and De Dijn appears to have communicated with him on some details, as well as to have worked through the important studies of the history and evolution of the printed works of Spinoza by Piet Steenbakkers (Spinoza's Ethica from Manuscript to Print [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1995])I have a few minor quibbles. De Dijn tends to follow Curley's interpretation of Spinoza in its major elements, but he should have more carefully read Curley's Hempelian model for causal explanation in Spinoza: De Dijn's analysis of causal explanation as via formal rather than efficient causes (15a-52), with God as proximate cause, smacks rather of the now-defunct reading by Wolfson, and also appears to contradict some of the passages (e.g., 177-78) where he appears to be following Curley rather literally. He also occasionally refers to the Ethics as divided into five books;but the fact that, while Spinoza follows Euclid in the geometrical method, he divides the Ethics into parts rather than Euclidean books, may say something about his method. Finally, some further attention ought to have been given to typography and order in 47 ~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:3 JULY 1997 the (extensive and quite useful) bibliography, where for example Sprigge is indexed after Steenbakkers. The above points are truly minor, and De Dijn's study is both majestic and important . His style is clear and captivating throughout, and he succeeds in giving the student an introduction to Spinoza through the iatter's own text, and the researcher an important survey of the extensive literature in other languages devoted to this important work. LEE C. RICE Marquette University Stephen Darwall. The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought': x64o-x74o. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xvi + 352. Cloth, $59.95, Paper, $18.95. Stephen Darwall finds among the British Moralists a unique form of moral internalism , the thesis that a rnoraljudgment or moral obligation itself...

Johannes Braun (1628-1708), Cartesiaan in Groningen

AbstractJohannes Braun (1628-1708) was professor of theology and Hebrew at the university of Groningen. A disciple of Coccejus in theology, he adhered to Cartesianism in philosophical matters. He published scholarly, didactic and polemic writings. Among his correspondents was Leibniz. He knew at least some of Spinoza's works, and rejected the latter's alleged atheism. Descartes's influence is pervasive, though as a philosopher Braun was rather superficial. For him, Cartesian ism was a tool in a rationalist approach to cheology and (particularly) in demarcating theology from philosophy. In this respect, his position is exemplary for the adaptations taking place in institutional philosophy around 1700.

Spinoza: The Enduring Questions (review)

460 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 Graeme Hunter, editor. Spinoza: The Enduring Questions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 182. Cloth, $70.00. This volume of eight essays is dedicated to the memory of the late David Savan, and originated from a conference held in his honor prior to his untimely death. The lead essay is by Savan himself, and most of the other essays acknowledge the influence of his work. The first three essays address not only an "enduring question," but a question about enduring: namely, the nature of eternality and immortality in Spinoza's metaphysics. In a dense and detailed essay that amply rewards close analysis, Savan aims to clarify Spinoza's conception of eternity. That conception, Savan argues, cannot be identified with any of the three main conceptions dominant in previous philosophizing: (1) eternity as sempiternity; (2) eternity as Platonic timelessness; and (3) eternity as necessary existence, following from a thing's own essence. Chief among his reasons is that Spinoza characterizes eternity not as one superlative kind of existence, but rather as "existence itself," conceived in a certain way (i.e., conceived as "following from the definition itself of the eternal thing"). On Savan's interpretation, Spinoza has a strict or absolute sense of "eternity" in which only God can be said to be eternal, and another, qualified sense in which all singular things are eternal (as well as being contingent and durational). Thus, on Savan's interpretation, each individual human mind is itself eternal. His attribution of this latter doctrine to Spinoza is greatly facilitated by three other aspects of his interpretive procedure: (1) his unwillingness to draw a distinction between "eternal" and "conceived under a form of eternity"; his treatment of a thing's formal and actual essences as two "aspects" (eternal and durational, respectively) of what is in reality the same essence; and (3) his nominalizing tendency to read Spinoza as identifying (or nearly identifying) singular things with their essences. The result is that Spinoza's various remarks about the conceivability of the human mind "under a form of eternity" and about the eternality of the formal essence of the human mind can all be recruited as evidence that Spinoza regarded human minds themselves as eternal. Savan goes on to attribute to Spinoza the seemingly un-Spinozistic doctrine that "each distinctive existent is eternally free." In the essay immediately following Savan's, James C. Morrison outlines and reaffirms the strong textual evidence that, for Spinoza, it is only a part of each individual mind, and not the individual human mind itself, that is eternal. Leslie Armour offers a wildly speculative interpretation of Spinoza according to which human minds survive death because they will be re-expressed--complete with sets of distinctive personal memories--at some future time (or perhaps even "in some different world"), so that God and his eternal idea of each human being's essence may be expressed with maximal reality. Armour recommends interpreting Spinoza as holding this doctrine of the "afterlife as a continuing adventure" partly because of the doctrine's alleged capacity to provide emotional comfort--evidently without noticing that Spinoza's psychology involves a claim to demonstrate that the emotions attending adequate understanding are themselves capable of overcoming fear of death, quite without the need for quasiresurrections or quasi-reincarnations. BOOK REVIEWS 461 Edwin Curley's "Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece: Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics" takes as its starting point Savan's claim that Spinoza is the "founder of scientific hermeneutics." Rejccting the most extreme interpretation of this claim--i.e., that Spinoza created scientific hermeneutics ex nihilo--Curlcy carefully compares Spinoza 's contributions to Biblical criticism with those of Hobbes and Isaac La Peyr~re, and concludes that Spinoza's work possesses, in addition to a generally higher level of hermeneutical rigor, something quite specific that they do not--namely, "a well worked-out theory of what is required for the interpretation of a text." This theory demands that we begin by applying to textual interpretation the Cartesian strategy of "removing all prejudices" and preconceptions; doing so allows us to interpret a text such as the Bible in...

The Great Arnauld and Some of His Philosophical Correspondents (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 461 Edwin Curley's "Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece: Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics" takes as its starting point Savan's claim that Spinoza is the "founder of scientific hermeneutics." Rejccting the most extreme interpretation of this claim--i.e., that Spinoza created scientific hermeneutics ex nihilo--Curlcy carefully compares Spinoza 's contributions to Biblical criticism with those of Hobbes and Isaac La Peyr~re, and concludes that Spinoza's work possesses, in addition to a generally higher level of hermeneutical rigor, something quite specific that they do not--namely, "a well worked-out theory of what is required for the interpretation of a text." This theory demands that we begin by applying to textual interpretation the Cartesian strategy of "removing all prejudices" and preconceptions; doing so allows us to interpret a text such as the Bible in the light of a "natural history," drawn from the resources of the text itself. Curley's essay is essential reading for anyone interested in hermencutics, Biblical criticism, Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,or Spinoza's general philosophy of science. Manfred Walthcr's related essay focuses more narrowly on a case in which the Tractatus Theologico-Politicusappears to violate its own requirement that scripture be interpreted through scripture itself. That case is the treatment of miracles, the Biblical reports of which Spinoza seems to discount on external and rationalistic, rather than internal and hermeneutical, grounds. Walther argues convincingly that Spinoza recognized this potential problem, and that the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus provides a sophisticated defcnse against the charge of methodological inconsistency. It does so by arguing that a distinction between the intended messagc of scripture and the world-view through which it is reported is implicit in scripture itself. Curley's and Walther's essays taken alone arc more than enough to justify the volume. Curley and Savan have both, in different ways and to different extents, emphasized Spinoza's relative empiricism. Laura Byrne's essay opposes Winnifred Tomm's feminist reading of Spinoza's ethics as an ethics of receptivity, a reading that both Byrne and Savan see as related to Savan's empiricist interpretation of Spinoza's epistemology. Douglas Odegard rightly construes Spinoza as an "internalist" in epistemology--i.e., as holding that a true idea provides its own internal reason for accepting it, without any need to satisfy an external criterion of truth--and argues that Spinoza's internalist response to Cartesian scepticism ultimately fails nevertheless. Dan Nesher provides an elaborate "reconstruction" of Spinoza's theory of truth with the aim of showing that it is akin to Peirce's "pragmatist" theory of cognition and truth. The essays in this volume, taken together, constitute an enduring contribution to the interpretation of Spinoza and a fitting tribute to the enduring memory of David Savan. DON GARRETT Universityof Utah Elmar J. Kremer, editor. The GreatArnauld and Some of His PhilosophicalCorrespondents. University of Toronto Press, 1994. Pp. viii + ~49. Cloth, $65.oo. This collection of essays will be useful to those wishing an introduction to the philosophical thought of Antoine Arnauld, and it will be of considerable interest to experts 46~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 in Cartesian philosophy. It is based on a conference held in 199o, but does not suffer from this circumstance since it is well produced and edited, and is for the most part still up to date. Arnauld is perhaps best known to philosophers as an incisive critic. Descartes especially valued his "fourth set" of objections to the Meditations, and the extensive correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld is very important for understanding the former's thought during the years 1686-90. Arnauld also gets some notice for the Port-Royal Logic, which had considerable influence on the development of logic and the philosophy of language. These more familiar aspects of Arnauld's philosophy are covered in essays by Jill Vance Buroker ("Judgment and Prediction in the Port-Royal Logic"), Fred Wilson ("The Rationalist Response to Aristotle in Descartes and Arnauld"), Graeme Hunter ("The Phantom of Jansenism in the Arnauld-Leibniz Correspondence"), and JeanClaude Pariente ("The Problem of Pain: A Misunderstanding between Arnauld and Leibniz"). Arnauld's important contributions to the theory...

Spinoza and the Netherlanders: An Inquiry into the Early Reception of His Philosophy of Religion (review)

308 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:2 APRIL 1991 in Locke. Lastly, despite the gloomy title, Spellman's treatment is not without occasional humor, especially in the later chapters dealing with Locke's critics. GERARD REEDy, S.J. Fordham University H.J. Siebrand. Spinoza and the Netherlanders: An Inquiry into the Early Reception of His Philosophy of Religion. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1988. Pp. x + 239. DFL 69.50. This is an ambitious book. In many ways, it is a strange book, owing to Siebrand's goal of appealing to a mixed audience of philosophers, historians of philosophy, and church historians. Such an interdisciplinary enterprise can be fruitful, but it also has many difficulties and dangers. Because of his previous studies in the field, H.J. Siebrand is well-known among modern-day Spinoza scholars. In this book, he focuses primarily upon the reception of Spinoza's views among those Dutch ("Netherlanders" sounds just a bit odd) who became interested in his thought in the later decades of the seventeenth century. The primary study of Dutch Spinozism is the older work by K. O. Meinsma, Spinoza en zijn kring (t896), which was translated into French as Spinoza et son cerclein 1985, with an introduction by Richard H. Popkin. Meinsma's work is entirely historical in its approach and does not pay much attention to the philosophical details of the reception of Spinoza's thought. Siebrand wishes to treat simultaneously contextual, historical issues and systematically philosophical issues in Dutch Spinozism. The book is accordingly divided into two parts. In Part t, by far the larger (3-173), Siebrand examines Spinoza's work within the historical context of his seventeenth-century readers. In Part 2, Siebrand systematically examines the theoretical and philosophical aspects of such "reception." The main problem with this structure is that Siebrand does not adhere to it, which makes it difficult for the reader to follow either the historical exposition or the philosophical inquiry. Thus, although in Part 1 Siebrand does in fact trace the historical context of Spinoza's Dutch readers, who they were, why they were interested, what precisely interested them about Spinoza's philosophy, etc., the thread of this narrative is often broken by expositions of a purely systematic nature. However interesting these excursions may sometimes be, they make it difficult to follow the development of the historical context. In Part 2, on the other hand, where Siebrand intends specifically to examine in a systematic fashion the theoretical aspects of "reception," the reader is immediately confronted with a long historical discussion of Dutch Cartesianism and Spinozism. Siebrand here repeats rather elaborately several parts of the historical treatment of Part l, while what he presents as the dominant systematic theme of Part 2 is given rather short shrift (x92-~ 1o). Besides the unclearness of Siebrand's structuring of the book,-the reader is often annoyed by the didactic tone which Siebrand adopts--as if he were lecturing to young pupils. In spite of these caveats, Siebrand raises many interesting and important issues. BOOK REVIEWS 309 This is especially true in Part i where, for the first time, a valuable survey is given of the views of both pro- and anti-Spinozists within the historical context in which they read Spinoza. Those who became interested in Spinoza's thought took from their master what they liked and left out what they disagreed with. It therefore becomes clear why it is so difficult to label any particular Dutch thinker as a "Spinozist," a point clearly made in Siebrand's analysis of the thought of Adriaan Koerbagh, usually classified as a "Spinozist" but who differs from Spinoza on some fundamental issues. There are other cases of "Spinozists" about whom one wonders whether the differences are not greater than the similarities. Probably there were many more "Spinozists" than the better-known figures such as Pieter Bailing, Jarig Jelles, and Abraham Cuffeler, but, because they had to conceal their views for fear of being labelled atheists, we will never know about them. Indeed "Spinozism," regarded as a religionless system, soon came to to be identified with atheism and, within a short time, anything that smacked of heterodoxy was labelled "Spinozism...

Goethe's ‘Wilhelm Meister’ and Spinoza

AbstractA strong case is made in this review that Spinoza greatly influenced Goethe in his much-studied Wilhelm Meister novels, a fact not hitherto recognized, although Goethe himself acknowledged the inspiration he derived from Spinoza's work. Goethe's Werther, and his Faust, are the mythical figures of modern times with the two Wilhelm Meister novels the critical countertheme in which the voice of Spinoza is here considered the cantus firmus of outstanding significance.

Metacriticism (review)

Reviews121 philosophical concerns, Newton more correctly attributes die problem to Romola's historical design (p. 14). Eliot failed to portray fifteenth-century Florence with sufficient vividness and vigor, no doubt because her preoccupations were, as Newton demonstrates, so thoroughly post-Romantic. Romola is the novel most friendly to Newton's argument, and his reading of it is compelling. Tito is the "egotistic" Romantic, the nihilist; Savonarola is the believer in an outmoded religious metaphysics, the fanatic; whereas Romola is the "organistic" Romantic, struggling to wed Savonarola's humanity to Tito's accurate first premise: the world is without God. All the same, Eliot and Romola contend , human beings must forge a workable morality — an acknowledgment oftheir shared circumstances, shared traditions, and common plight. There are two disappointments in Newton's book. The first and most serious is the total omission of any discussion of Spinoza among philosophical influences on Eliot. Given, first, Eliot's arduous labor to complete unpublished translations of Spinoza's main works and, second, the significant impact of Spinoza on the Romantic movement, most especially upon Goedie (who was in turn die subject of a famous biography by G. H. Lewes, Eliot's husband), this omission is surprising indeed. The other disappointment is that Newton plays it too close to die vest in discussing other influences on Eliot. Though in many respects a conservative approach is warranted, it leads Newton to neglect forerunners such as the eighteenth-century philosophers of moral sentiment, most especially Hume and Hutcheson. These reservations aside, Newton's book will appeal both to philosophers and literary scholars. Eliot uses the novel in the way other philosophers use the essay: as a medium of expression integral to her thought; as a means ofdeveloping ideas rather than, as has too often been alleged, of putting them tediously into cold storage. This dimension of her art and thought should be more widely known, and Newton is both an able publicist and a reliable expositor. University of IdahoM. C. Henberg Metacriticism, by Suresh Raval; xiv & 289 pp. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1981, $18.00. The aim of this work is to furnish a metacritical analysis of the concept of criticism by examining "critical concepts and positions in their own terms" and by probing them "for internal weaknesses and difficulties" (p. xii). In this way die author hopes to furnish readers with a conceptual analysis of what is said (in the wake of W. B. Gallie) to be "an essentially contested concept." The work, we are told, will avoid "the intellectual skepticism " ofthose who write as iftheir own position is the only correct one (p. xii). It will also avoid the "weak-kneed pluralism" of those who construe their task in "less rigid terms," and who appeal to other disciplines in order to illuminate their endeavor. All of this is required because literary criticism is in crisis: a crisis which is said to defy methodological certitude (pp. 2-3). 122Philosophy and Literature The result is a detailed and comprehensive study of a considerable range of critical theories. Raval begins with an exposition and discussion of Kant's aesthetic dieory, and proceeds to discuss creativity theories, the New Criticism, theories of affective response, Phenomenological, Historicist, and Deconstructionist theories. All of this, based on a wealth of research, is often insightful, and there can be no doubt but that the attentive reader will benefit greatly from Raval's erudition. But the reader will need to be attentive. Raval's expositions are not always easy to follow — partly, I think, because he tends to borrow the sometimes opaque terminology of those that he seeks to expound. More problematic is the fact that he nowhere acknowledges the controversies which surround his various interpretations — especially of Kant, Gadamer, and Derrida. In a volume of this sort, greater effort should have been made to relate and compare the strands of scholarship which inform our understanding of these thinkers. In addition to its expository component, die book contains a wealth ofdieoretical argument on a variety of topics. At times die argument is sophisticated and sustained, but diere are disappointments. This is particularly true of Chapter Two, where the arguments are not well developed and...

The Seventh Sense: A Study of Francis Hutcheson's Aesthetics And Its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain (review)

90 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the authors grapple with important issues in an attempt to understand Spinoza, and their papers will, it is to be hoped, stimulate further interest in Spinoza's works. CHARLESJARRETT Rutgers University Peter Kivy. The Seventh Sense: A Study of Francis Hutcheson's Aesthetics And Its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New York: Burt Franklin and Co., 1976. Pp. ii + 268. Kivy's admirable book is a great deal more than just an account of Hutcheson's theory of taste; it is an account that, using Hutcheson's view as foundational, describes the development of the theory of taste in Britain from Shaftesbury at the beginning of the eighteenth century to Dugald Stewart at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The book is divided into two parts of almost equal length. Part 1 describes the background out of which Hutcheson's view arose, and then proceeds to a careful and detailed analysis of Hutcheson's theory. Part 2 traces the course that theorizing about taste followed after Hutcheson to its demise at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Kivy outlines the views of a number of pre-Hutcheson thinkers--from Lord Herbert of Cherbury to Shaftesbury--who claimed that there is an internal sense of beauty. Kivy notes that on the title page of the first edition of Hutcheson's Inquiry one finds the following: "In which the principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are explained and defended against the author of the Fable of the Bees.... " But as Kivy carefully explains, it is the empiricism of John Locke that forms the philosophical background of Hutcheson's theory, not Shaftesbury's Neoplatonism; so the title page is somewhat misleading. Kivy might have noted that the mention of Shaftesbury was dropped from the title page of the second edition. Kivy's f'LrStanalytic task is to examine what "sense" means for Hutcheson. He here shows Hutcheson's debt to Joseph Addison and discusses whether Hutcheson thought there was one or several aesthetic senses. Whether one or many, Hutcheson thought that our power to appreciate beauty, grandeur, and the like, is a sense because it displays the characteristics that mark sense perception: independence of the will, innateness, independence of knowledge, and immediacy. Kivy argues forcefully that these four do not distinguish sense perception from reason. The next question is what Hutcheson takes to be the referent of the term "beauty." Kivy quotes the well-known passage, "the word Beauty is taken for the Idea rais'd in us.... " But an idea for Hutcheson might be a sensation of pleasure, a sensation of a secondary quality, or a sensation of a primary quality. And the idea might be either a simple idea or a complex idea. Kivy infers that the idea must be a simple one because Hutcheson posits a specific sense that receives it. After examining and discussing passages that suggest that beauty is "something like a secondary quality" and passages that suggest that beauty is a pleasure, Kivy concludes that just as Berkeley identifies intense heat and pain, Hutcheson really thought the secondary-quality description and the pleasure description were two descriptions of the same simple idea. But this conclusion really gives the nod to the pleasure interpretation because on the "something like a secondary quality" interpretation there are two things to be accounted for: a simple idea of beauty, and a pleasure that accompanies it. Kivy also notes that Hutcheson sometimes "speaks with the vulgar" and calls unity in variety "beauty," although, strictly speaking, beauty is a simple idea caused by unity in variety. Kivy rejects the view of Frankena that Hutcheson holds a noncognitivistview of the analysis of "x is beautiful"; that is, the view that "x is beautiful" expresses rather than describes a feeling of approval. Kivy thinks that what clinches the argument is that Locke's philosophy of language, which Hutcheson can be presumed to adhere to, does not make provision for an expressive use of words. But Hutcheson might have developed a theory that is inconsistent with his own higherorder view of language. Such occurrences are often the prelude to philosophical change. Kivy BOOK REVIEWS 91 might have noted that in An...

Freedom, Emotion, and Self-subsistence: The Structure of a Central part of Spinoza's "Ethics" (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 345 Arne Naess. Freedom, Emotion, and Self-subsistence: The Structure of a Central part of Spinoza's "'Ethics. '" Filosofiske Problemer, no. 42. Oslo-Bergen-Tromsr Universitetsforlaget , 1976. Distributed in the U.S. by Humanities Press. Pp. 122. $7.50. As the subtitle of this work indicates, Professor Naess here attempts to elucidate the structure of a portion of Spinoza's Ethics. Each major section of the book contains an informal statement of theorems, along with explanatory comments and discussion, followed by a symbolic representation of the theorems. The book does not attempt to provide a complete characterization of the structure of the Ethics (which would be an enormous undertaking), but it is concerned with almost all of the key notions employed in that work. (Among these are the notions of being in and being conceived through, causation, cognition, action, joy, sadness, good and evil, self-preservation, self-satisfaction, and virtue.) Although Naess frequently cites and discusses the Ethics, his main concern is not with historical or textual questions. This is partly because, in light of the many divergent (and, he holds, well-documented) interpretations of the text, he is inclined to be skeptical that one can pin down Spinoza's views "on anything at all" (p. 85). The aim of the book is thus to provide not a description but a reconstruction of Spinoza's main work (p. 85)--a reconstruction that, it seems, will help to bring out what in Spinoza is of use to us. (See the preface and the introduction , p. 11.) I will not here undertake an evaluation of the degree to which the reconstruction offered achieves this latter goal, nor does Naess devote much attention to this. But I will concentrate on some of the issues of interpretation with which he deals, and on the reconstruction itself. The most interesting, but quite problematic, feature of the reconstruction is that (after an initial treatment to the contrary) it is maintained that there are degrees of being in and being conceived through something. Everything, it is held (SD2, p. 73), is in itself to some degree, and nothing is completely in another (SD3, p. 73). And as one would expect, given this thesis, there is exactly one thing that is completely in itself (SDII and SDIIa, p. 74). The question of representation is handled by introducing a one-place predicate "d," to be read as "is a "ES . . . . . . . . degree," and defining predicates such as • >0tx) and ES 0 & ES, (x)" and "(3y).'d0') & d 0 & ES, (x)); use a two-sorted predicated calculus to the same effect. (Quantification over entia rationis would presumably be accepted by Spinoza, but only quantenus sunt modi cogitandi. Neither Naess's formalization, nor any other of which I am aware, attempts to provide a systematic representation of Spinoza's use of quatenus, which appears to be a non-truth-functionaloperator.) At least as important as this technical problem of bringing the representation in line with Spinoza's ontology is the question whether Spinoza did maintain, even implicitly, that things are in themselves or in others in different degrees. The main direct textual support cited (p. 59) for the grading of "is in itself" is E. 111,vi,' where Spinoza writes, "Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur" (literally: "Each thing, insofar as it is in itself, endeavors to persevere in its own being" [G. I1, ' "E. I11,vi" denotes prop. vi, pt. I11 of the Ethics. I use "d" for "demonstration" and "s" for "scholium." When "E" is omitted, reference to the Ethics is assumed. 346 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 146, 7-8].~ But an examination of the demonstration of this proposition shows that Spinoza is not here using the locution in se in its technical sense (i.e., the sense employed in I, def. iii). For the qualifying phrase "quantum in se est" is found in this proposition because of the use ofE. III, iv in E. Ill, vi, d. The relevant part of the proof of III, vi is as follows: "Nor does any thing have something in itself [neque ulla res aliquid in se habet] by which it can be destroyed, or which may take away its...

An overview of Spinoza'sEhics

It is generally acknowledged that the Ethics is Spinoza's greatest work. He is supposed to have completed it in 1675, less than two years before his death in 1677, although early drafts of various parts had been circulating among friends and intellectual peers as early as 1665.1 Spinoza even showed Leibniz the manuscript of his Ethics in 1676 when Leibniz visited him at the Hague.2 Indeed, Leibniz owed a great debt to Spinoza, since in the Ethics we find so many characteristic Leibnizian doctrines, either explicitly or implicitly. For example, one finds an explicit version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, a special version of the Identity of Indiscernibles (P4, El), a version of the Principle of Plenitude (correspond ing to Leibniz' Principle of Perfection), a distinction between logical and causal necessity, an implicit distinction between finitary versus infinitary analysis, hints of reflection principles, an implicit doctrine of unconscious perception, and hints of a relational view of space and time. All these doctrines were developed to a very great degree by Leibniz, but they can already be found in Spinoza's Ethics, in some form or other. One of the distinctive features of the Ethics is that it is written in the deductive style of Euclidean Geometry. Indeed, Spinoza was quite right to hold that the formal deductive apparatus of Euclidean Geometry could just as well be applied to substances, modes, and attributes as to planes, points, and lines. Thus, Spinoza starts out with axioms, definitions, and postulates, which contain his philosophical terms, and proceeds to deduce propositions, as well as give explanations, all in the manner of Euclid. However, the subject matter of the Ethics has very little to do with Geometry. While Spinoza's deductions are not that rigorous, I have shown in other papers ('A Formalization of Spinoza's Ethics, Part I' and 'Spinoza's Denial of Free Will in Man and God') that they can be formalized according to the standards of mathematical logic, provided that one is willing to supply quite a number of suppressed premises.3 These premises, however, are in no way

Hegel, Pantheism, and Spinoza

Hegel's acquaintance with the philosophy of Spinoza was of long standing.' Soon after he went to Jena, the first collected edition of Spinoza's works was published there 1802-03. The editor was Paulus, the professor of theology, and Hegel informs us (GP 3, 371) that he collaborated with Paulus the preparation of the edition. This means that, relatively early his philosophical career, Hegel was brought into close contact with Spinoza's doctrines. They evidently made a considerable impression on him, and are discussed at length the Wissenschaft der Logik, Part I of the Encyclopaedia, and the lectures on the philosophy of religion and on the history of philosophy. This is not to say that Hegel had a deep and scholarly knowledge of Spinoza. Paulus' edition was not a good one-indeed, it failed to meet the most elementary critical standards2-and it appears that Hegel's part the work was only a modest one.3 Yet it remains true that he valued highly what he understood, or thought he understood, of Spinozism, which he declared (GP 3, 376) to be in essence, the beginning of all philosophizing. A study of Hegel's criticisms of Spinoza can therefore be helpful to the student of Hegel, that Hegel's own doctrines, which themselves may seem formidably abstract, are given a concrete manifestation these criticisms. Such a study is also valuable to the student of Spinoza. Hegel may not always provide the Spinoza scholar with satisfactory answers to problems of interpretation, but his objections to Spinoza are shrewd, and it is important to see if they are fair. When Hegel discusses Spinoza, the issue of his supposed pantheism

Great Thinkers: (VIII) Spinoza

The student of Spinoza is faced by a peculiar difficulty. On opening the Ethics—Spinoza's chief work, completed for publication shortly before his death in 1674—he finds a system of metaphysics set forth in geometrical form, starting from definitions, axioms, and postulates, and advancing synthetically from first principles to a detailed interpretation of the universe. The difficulty lies not in the language— Spinoza's Latin is easy to construe, and there are translations—nor in the lack of literary graces; his style indeed is singularly impressive in its austere dignity. It lies rather in this, that the method of exposition conveys a misleading suggestion of dogmatism and finality, and conceals almost all traces of the patient inquiries that issued in the finished structure. If once the principles of the system are admitted, the rest appears to follow by logical necessity. But by what processes of thought was Spinoza led to those principles? This is the problem that besets the reader: in order to understand the Ethics, he must penetrate behind the text of the propositions to their significance as answers to the questions that were stirring in Spinoza's mind.