SOURCE: “Spinoza's Philosophy in Its Historical Context,” in Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, Yale University Press, 1987, pp. 24-43.

[In the following excerpt, Allison explores the historical context that shaped Spinoza's philosophical interests and method.]

Spinoza's Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Demonstrated in a Geometrical Manner) is an extremely difficult and forbidding book. Both its obscure, scholastic terminology and its stark, geometrical form provide formidable barriers to even the philosophically trained reader and undoubtedly help to explain the great diversity of ways in which the work has been interpreted. Thus, rather than plunging immediately into the argument of the work, with its strange format of definitions, axioms, and propositions and its bewildering talk of substance, attributes, and modes, it would seem far preferable to consider briefly the historical context in which Spinoza wrote and, in light of this, to introduce the central themes of his philosophy. This will be the task of the present chapter, and it is hoped that it will help to guide the reader through the more systematic and technical investigation that follows.

I THE ROOTS OF SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY IN THE NEW SCIENCE AND ITS CONCEPTION OF NATURE, AND THE RELEVANCE OF DESCARTES

We have already seen that, as a youth, Spinoza studied and was profoundly influenced by medieval Jewish philosophy. It is also generally assumed that, in the course of his development, he came under the influence of Renaissance philosophers of nature such as Bernardino Telesio and Giordano Bruno. A full-scale intellectual biography of Spinoza would thus have to deal with these and a wide variety of other influences—for example, the cabala—to which a Jewish intellectual living in seventeenth-century Holland would inevitably be exposed.¹ Nevertheless, for understanding the distinctive features of his metaphysical vision, the single most important factor is the development of the mathematical science of nature, which was occurring at a rapid rate during Spinoza's lifetime. Unlike Descartes, Spinoza was not a creative scientist, but, as his relationships with men like Huygens and Oldenburg clearly reveal, he was a keen student of contemporary developments in a number of sciences and of the fundamental problems of scientific methodology. This new science certainly inspired Spinoza's naturalistic approach to ethical questions, but, beyond this, it provided him with the basis, although not all the details, of his conception of nature. It is in the knowledge of the union between the mind and nature, so conceived, that Spinoza placed the highest good for man in his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and it is this same infinite and law-abiding nature that he identified with God in the Ethics.

The modern scientific conception of nature, like most philosophical conceptions, can best be understood by contrasting it with what it replaced.² This was the medieval view, in both its Jewish and Christian expressions, which was itself based on a precarious synthesis of Aristotelian physics and cosmology with biblical doctrines of God, man, and creation. According to this view, the world of nature was a cosmos in the original sense, that is, a finite ordered whole, in which everything had its determinate place and particular function. The earth stood at the center of this cosmos, and the allegedly incorruptible heavenly bodies, including the sun, revolved around it. The world was created by God, largely for the benefit of man, who was “made in His own image.” The doctrine of the creation of the world ran counter to the Aristotelian view of its eternity, and this gave rise to some of the most difficult problems for thinkers like Maimonides and Aquinas who endeavored to synthesize Aristotle and Scripture. Nevertheless, apart from affirming the divine creation of the world, they basically followed Aristotle in conceiving it as composed of distinct types of substances, falling into fixed genera, or “natural kinds,” each obeying its own set of laws.

The laws in accordance with which each substance behaved were dependent on its particular function, and this function, according to medieval thinkers, was assigned to it as part of God's providential scheme, which was directed essentially toward the salvation of man. Such a world was perfectly intelligible in principle, although not in fact, for naturally man was not privy to all the details of God's great plan. Nevertheless, the understanding available to man, which, thanks to Aristotle, was thought to be fairly extensive, was primarily in terms of the function or purpose of the substance under exmination. This function or purpose was characterized by Aristotle as the “final cause” in his famous analysis of the four causes, and such causes played a very significant role in scientific explanation. In more modern terms, the prime manner of explaining an event was teleological—that is, in terms of the end achieved. Consequently, the basic scientific question was “Why did X do something?” and the first place one looked for an answer was the peculiar nature or function of X. This would provide the final cause of the action in question. It was only if the action did not accord with X's function—that is, was “accidental” rather than “natural”—that one looked for an external cause. Thus, in accordance with this style of explanation, one might well think that one has understood why the rain falls when it is seen that this provides water for the crops, which, in turn, are necessary to support human life. This, of course, is a gross oversimplification of the way in which medieval thinkers viewed the problem of explanation. Not all scientific explanation was teleological and not all teleological explanation was, or need be, as crude as the example given above. Nevertheless, this characterizes the basic way in which the medieval mind, even the philosophic mind, viewed the world, and the world, so viewed, was certainly a place in which man felt at home.

The conception of nature that finally emerged in the seventeenth century, after a long process of development, and that we associate primarily with such names as Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton differs in almost every respect from its predecessor. Whereas the older universe was finite, teleologically and hierarchically ordered, with each kind of substance obeying its own unique set of laws, the modern universe is infinite, mechanically ordered, and governed by a single set of universal laws that apply to all phenomena, celestial and terrestrial alike. The key to this new conception is the role given to mathematics in scientific explanation. In the famous and oft-quoted words of Galileo:

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.³

The universe of Galileo and the new science is thus fundamentally geometrical in character. Geometrical reasoning had already led Copernicus to abandon the geocentric hypothesis and Kepler to conclude that the orbits of the planets about the sun are elliptical rather than circular (the supposedly perfect motion). Similarly, the telescope had revealed spots on the sun and thus corruption in the allegedly incorruptible heavenly bodies. The privileged status of these heavenly bodies, as well as the central position of the earth, had therefore to be abandoned, and the closed cosmos of medieval thought gave way to the infinite, geometrically ordered universe of modern science. The denizens of this universe are not unique substances with their natural places, functions, and purposes, but rather, phenomena completely describable in mathematical terms. Moreover, it was the assumption that all salient relations between phenomena could be expressed in such terms that underlay the quest for universal laws of nature.

It is also important to realize, however, that for Galileo and the other great founders of modern physical science, the mathematical structure of reality was not merely a convenient hypothesis that proved useful for scientific description and prediction. This, after all, was what the dispute between Galileo and the Church was all about. Rather, this mathematical structure was viewed as the truth about the nature of things. The “real world” was quite simply the geometrical, quantitative world of the mathematical physicist. It consisted solely of bodies moving in space and interacting with each other according to precise, mathematically expressible laws. Not only was teleological explanation thus rejected as “unscientific,” but final causes were themselves banished from nature and placed in either the inscrutable will of God or the imagination of man.

As a direct result of this changed perspective, the whole world of ordinary human experience, with its colors, sounds, and odors and its striking, inexplicable happenings, was at best granted a kind of secondary status and at worst relegated to the realm of illusion. This “scientific” outlook is perfectly exemplified in the widely held distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities of a body, on this view, were such features as shape, size, mass, and motion, all of which can be measured and dealt with quantitatively. It was of these qualities that the body was really composed. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, which include the above-mentioned colors, sounds, and odors, were regarded as subjective, or in the mind. Galileo himself characterized these secondary qualities as “mere names” having no place in nature; for him, as for many others, perceptual experience of these qualities was understood to be the result of an interaction between the real physical object, composed solely of primary qualities, and the sentient organism.⁴

This changed conception of nature obviously brought with it a whole host of philosophical problems. What, for instance, is the relationship between this conception and the biblical view of God, man, and nature? Does the truth of science imply the falsity of divine revelation? Also, what is the place of human beings in nature so conceived? Are they completely subject to its mathematical laws, and, if so, what becomes of the freedom of the will, by virtue of which one earns either salvation or damnation? Finally, there is the problem of knowledge, which here arises in a distinctively modern form: how can the human mind, whose only access to reality is through sense experience, ever acquire knowledge of this nonsensible, abstract world of mathematical physics? The very truth that physicists claim about the world seems to entail a hopeless skepticism, since it renders the “real” world inaccessible to the human mind. Since Galileo himself was a physicist, not a philosopher, he did not attempt to deal in a systematic fashion with these crucial issues. This task was left to Spinoza's great predecessor Descartes, who for that very reason is generally regarded as the father of modern philosophy.

Descartes came to philosophy as both a scientist and a Christian, or, at least, a professed Christian. As a scientist, he was motivated by the dream of a “universal mathematics,” an all-embracing science of order and proportion through which all fields of knowledge could be integrated into a single whole and mastered by a single method, that of mathematics. The greatest fruit of this endeavor toward a unified science was analytic geometry, in which Descartes showed that one and the same set of relations or proportions could be expressed either algebraically or geometrically. The attempt to apply this method to nature resulted in a purely geometrical physics, which proved to be not nearly as successful. As a professed Christian, Descartes conceived of human beings as possessing a free will and an immortal soul. He also tended to resolve any conflicts between faith and science or philosophy by assigning them to different realms and claiming that the sacred truths of the former are beyond the capacity of human reason, or the “natural light.”

As a philosopher, Descartes developed the split between mind and nature that was implicit in Galileo into a full-fledged metaphysical dualism. The key to this dualism is the concept of substance, a concept that likewise plays a crucial role in Spinoza's philosophy. Substance is defined by Descartes in the Principles of Philosophy as “that which so exists that it needs no other thing in order to exist.”⁵ Strictly speaking, only God fits the definition: for only God is totally independent, and all created things depend on God for their creation and conservation. Nevertheless, since the realm of nature, or matter, and the realm of thought are independent of one another, in the sense that each can be conceived without the other, they are classified as created substances. The former is called corporeal, material, or extended substance (res extensa); the latter, mind, or thinking substance (res cogitans). Each kind of substance has one principal property, or attribute, that constitutes its essence. The essence of the former is extension in length, breadth, and depth. Thus, all its properties can be expressed geometrically, whence Descartes arrived at his idea of a geometrical physics. The essence of the latter is simply thought, and all other specifically mental functions—for example, imagining, willing, and feeling—are merely diverse forms of thinking. The perfect symmetry of this scheme is vitiated somewhat, however, by the fact that, whereas there is only one extended substance of which all physical bodies are merely modifications, each individual mind is conscious of itself and of its independence from all things save God (which is the basis for the belief in its immortality) and thus constitutes a distinct thinking substance.

Having split the worlds of mind and matter (which includes the human body) in so uncompromising a fashion, Descartes was obviously faced with the problem of explaining their relationship. This problem is itself complex, however, and arises in at least two distinct forms. The first, the epistemological form, requires an explanation of how a thinking substance, which has immediate access only to its own thoughts, can ever attain to a certain knowledge of matter, or extended substance. This is equivalent to asking how the science of physics is possible. The second, the metaphysical form, concerns the interaction between two distinct substances. How can events in nature affect the mind, and how can thoughts and free volitions have any effect in the corporeal world—for example, how can my decision to raise my arm lead to the physical act? This issue has come to be known as the “mind-body problem.”

Descartes's solution to the epistemological problem, as presented in his Meditations on First Philosophy, is certainly the best-known aspect of his philosophy. Its most characteristic and controversial feature is the attempt to overcome skepticism from within by doubting everything until one arrives at something that simply cannot be doubted. This indubitable truth would then be able to stand firm against any skeptical attack and serve as the “Archimedean point” on which Descartes can confidently proceed to erect the edifice of scientific knowledge. The first beliefs to be sacrificed to this procedure of methodical doubt are those based on sensory evidence, including the belief in the existence of one's own body and the external physical world. After all, it is at least conceivable that all life is a consistent dream, and, in any event, the senses themselves do not furnish any sure criterion for distinguishing between waking and dreaming. But far-reaching as it already is, this doubt does not stop here. By means of the ingenious hypothesis of a deceiving God, Descartes finds it possible even to cast doubts (albeit feeble ones) on the basic truths of mathematics. However, just when it appears that the victory of skepticism is going to be complete, Descartes arrives at his indubitable truth. This concerns one's own existence while thinking. Even if one is being systematically deceived, one must still exist in order to be deceived. Thus: “I am, I exist is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.”⁶

This does not take us very far, however, and in order to progress to other truths, which have been temporarily abandoned by the process of methodical doubt, we must see just what it is about this truth that exempts it from doubt. Descartes's more or less technical answer is that we “clearly and distinctly perceive” it to be true. Now to clearly and distinctly perceive a proposition to be true really amounts in the end, for Descartes, to either grasping it immediately through intuition as self-evident or seeing that it can be deduced from self-evident truths (intuition and deduction thus being the two sources of rational knowledge). The crucial problem of Cartesian epistemology is, then, whether everything we perceive in this manner can be safely regarded as true. Descartes tries to answer this affirmatively by demonstrating that God exists, and that he is no deceiver, which suffices to remove all grounds for doubting such propositions. God, in other words, functions for Descartes as the guarantor of our clear and distinct perceptions. This does not guarantee the truth of all our propositions or beliefs, of course, but it does guarantee those that deal with our geometrical conceptions of extension. We can, therefore, be sure that extended substance (the external world) exists and has the characteristics assigned to it by the science of physics.

Descartes's attempt at a solution to the mind-body problem is much less systematic. It basically amounts to an admission that the problem is insoluble, at least in terms of the appeal to clear and distinct perceptions, which is the standard of scientific evidence. Since it was this appeal that led Descartes to the separation of mind and body in the first place, it can hardly enable him to explain the union between the two radically disparate substances. Instead, Descartes simply appeals to experience, a procedure he likewise follows in his defense of the freedom of the will: “Everyone feels that he is a single person with both body and thought so related by nature that the thought can move the body and feel the things which happen to it.”⁷ The relationship must, therefore, be accepted as a brute fact, even though it cannot be explained adequately. Yet Descartes did not abandon all efforts to explain how mind and body interact, and he even tried to provide a physiological account of their interaction. This account is based on the hypothesis, later ridiculed by Spinoza, that the pineal gland in the brain is the “seat of the soul,” and that it serves as the point of union between the immaterial thoughts, passions, and volitions of the mind and the “animal spirits,” which are the small particles of matter by which messages are allegedly relayed from the brain to the rest of the body, and vice versa.⁸ Through this rather fanciful explanation, Descartes evidently hoped to unite his completely mechanistic physiology (the conception of the human body as a machine) with his conception of an immaterial, independent, and immortal soul, or thinking substance.

Such was the first great attempt to construct a philosophy based on the mathematical conception of nature and to resolve the problems concerning man and his place in nature that inevitably arose as a result of this conception. It can be seen as an effort, to use Spinoza's significant phrase, to understand “the union that the mind has with the whole of nature,” where “nature” is construed as the infinite, extended realm of mathematical physics. As such, it clearly failed, however, and the dream of a unified science, which would include a science of man in one universally applicable system of explanation, which was already at least suggested by Descartes's idea of a universal mathematics, remained unfulfilled. In part because of Descartes's basically Christian starting point and in part because of some of his metaphysical assumptions—for example, the concept of substance—Cartesian man was never really integrated into nature. With his free will and immaterial and immortal soul, he remained an alien being, whose very knowledge of nature could be assured only by a question-begging appeal to divine veracity, and whose actual interaction with it was an inexplicable fact and a manifest exception to universal lawfulness.

II SOME CENTRAL THEMES IN SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY

In his editorial preface to Descartes' “Principles of Philosophy,” Meyer, speaking for Spinoza, notes several areas in which his philosophy differs from that of Descartes. These include the conception of the will and its alleged freedom and the notion that the human mind constitutes a distinct thinking substance. Special attention is given, however, to the Cartesian notion “that this or that surpasses the human understanding.” As Meyer points out in reference to Spinoza: “He judges that all those things, and even many others more sublime and subtle, can not only be conceived clearly and distinctly, but also explained very satisfactorily—provided only that the human Intellect is guided in the search for truth and knowledge of things along a different path from that which Descartes opened up and made smooth.”⁹ Thus, in opposition to the Cartesian appeal to the limits of knowledge, an appeal that was undoubtedly motivated by theological considerations, Spinoza affirms an absolute rationalism. Given the proper method, reality as a whole is intelligible to the human mind, and Spinoza claims in his Ethics to have done nothing less than demonstrate this truth.¹⁰

Above and beyond this, however, the greatest single difference between the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza and the root of most of the others lies in the fact that the main thrust of Spinoza's philosophy is ethical. He is before everything else a moralist, concerned, like the great Greek thinkers, with determining the true good for humanity. This is not at all to suggest that Descartes was unconcerned with ethical issues, only to point out that they were never central to his thought as they were to Spinoza's. Thus, although questions about the nature and limits of human knowledge, the nature and existence of God, and the relationship between the human mind and body are given considerable attention in the Ethics and will hence occupy us to a large extent in our analysis of Spinoza's philosophy, it must never be forgotten that Spinoza's treatment of these issues is based on, and often colored by, his ethical concerns.

Speaking in general terms, Spinoza's moral philosophy can be placed within the intellectualistic tradition, which goes back to the classical Greek moralists, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Common to all these thinkers is the identification of virtue, or in the case of Aristotle the highest virtue, with knowledge. Otherwise expressed, the highest virtues are intellectual, whereas the so-called “moral virtues,” or virtues of character, such as self-control, courage, and benevolence, are seen as either effects of intellectual virtue or preparatory stages necessary for its realization. Spinoza accepts this doctrine in an unqualified form and contends that it is only through knowledge that one can overcome the bondage to the passions that constitutes the essence of human misery. He is therefore willing to affirm the hard doctrine that only the wise can be truly happy and truly free.

In at least verbal agreement with Maimonides and other representatives of medieval Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious traditions, Spinoza regards God as the prime object of knowledge. The attainment of a genuine knowledge of God is therefore viewed as the ultimate goal of human life and the key to the achievement of blessedness. Moreover, not only does Spinoza see human existence as culminating in a knowledge of God, but he also claims, again in agreement with the religious tradition, that this knowledge necessarily leads to love. Thus, the entire argument of the Ethics culminates in the “intellectual love of God” (amor intellectualis Dei) through which the human mind is allegedly able to transcend its finitude and be united with the eternal. This conception constitutes Spinoza's purely philosophical alternative to the beatific vision and provides much of the religious, perhaps even mystical, tone some have found in his philosophy.

The ground of this conception lies, however, in Spinoza's uncompromising rationalism rather than his religious sensitivity. Although much of his language is reminiscent of the religious tradition, his overall point of view is diametrically opposed to that of this tradition. The God who functions as the first principle of knowledge and who is the object of a purely intellectual love, has very little in common with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The latter is a personal being who created humanity in his own image and manifests a providential concern for each individual, as well as for the race as a whole. By contrast, Spinoza's God is defined as “a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence” (ID6). As we shall see in the next chapter, there can only be one such substance; so this conception leads to the replacement of Cartesian pluralism by a monistic metaphysic in which thought and extension, the two created substances of Cartesian thought, are conceived as attributes of God, the unique, infinite substance.

In the meantime, it is important to realize that Spinoza identifies God not only with substance, but also with nature. This identification is not with nature considered as the sum total of particular things, however; it is rather with nature considered as an infinite (in the sense of all-inclusive) and necessary system of universal laws, in which all things have their determinate and necessary place and with reference to which they must be understood. The “divinity” of nature, so conceived, thus consists in its infinity and necessity. As truly infinite, or, in Spinoza's technical language, “absolutely infinite,” there is nothing beyond it on which it depends—that is, no “creator” God, nor any purpose that it embodies. As a necessary system of universal laws, nothing in it is contingent, and nothing could possibly be other than it is. Moreover, knowledge of such a God is obviously equivalent to knowledge of the infinite and necessary order, in which human beings, like everything else in nature, have their determinate place, and the intellectual love that supposedly springs from this knowledge is the joyful acceptance and affirmation of the very same order.

This complex activity of knowledge, acceptance, and affirmation, constitutes, for Spinoza, our highest destiny and chief good. It is not a means to happiness, but happiness itself, in its most authentic and lasting form. Similarly, virtue, so conceived, is its own reward and not, as the religious tradition so often affirms, merely a means for acquiring future rewards or avoiding future punishments. Finally, Spinoza tells us that this very same activity is the source of human freedom. But freedom is not to be conceived, as Descartes and others have conceived it, as some mysterious power that in some inexplicable way exempts man from the laws and power of nature. Rather, it consists entirely in the apprehension of the necessity of these very laws. Spinoza's point is essentially the claim that was later brought home so forcefully by Freud. We gain control of our emotions and achieve freedom only by acquiring knowledge of these emotions and their causes.¹¹

This view, which we have attempted to sketch in only its broadest outlines, can be seen as the most fully developed defense of the ideal of scientific objectivity as a life task that is to be found in the history of Western thought. The maxim “Know thyself,” which for Socrates expressed the sum and substance of human wisdom, but which led to the ironic conclusion that the only thing one can know about oneself is that one knows nothing, became for Spinoza the demand to become aware of one's place in the infinite and necessary scheme of things. This demand is grounded in the conviction that things are, indeed, necessary and determined; that through the proper use of intellect, one is capable of comprehending this necessity; that the course of infinite nature is completely indifferent to human purposes; and, consequently, that moral and religious categories such as good and evil or sin and grace have no basis in reality but are merely products of human thought and desire. It is also based on Spinoza's firm conviction, however, that the recognition of these facts is the source of peace and satisfaction; not the “peace that passeth understanding” of religious ecstasy, but the true and lasting peace that does not so much derive from, as actually consist in, understanding.

Spinoza provided the clearest statement of his basic standpoint in the critique of final causes that he appended to the first part of the Ethics. Final causes there stand for almost everything that Spinoza opposes. Not only does he reject any appeal to them on the grounds that it would constitute an inadequate, unscientific mode of explanation, an attitude he shares with all proponents of the new science, but he treats this conception as an important expression of the theistic, pluralistic world view that stands in the way of achieving the desired understanding of ourselves and our place in nature.

According to Spinoza's analysis: “All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end” (I, Appendix). When combined, as it has been since the Middle Ages, with the Judeo-Christian conception of God, this notion leads to the familiar belief that God created all things for the benefit of man. But such a belief is the result of viewing things through the imagination, rather than the intellect, which alone grasps things through their true causes. Given human nature, however, such a procedure is inevitable; for everyone ought to be willing to admit “that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, and that they all want to seek their own advantage, and are conscious of this appetite.” From this it follows that all human beings think themselves free and act with an end in view (what they take to be useful). Moreover, being ignorant of true causes, they tend to judge other natures by their own, and when they find many things in nature that prove useful to them, for example, “eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish, etc. … they consider all natural things as means for their own advantage.” Now being aware that they did not create all these great conveniences themselves, they were naturally led by their imagination to the belief that “there was a ruler, or number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care of all things for them and made all things for their use.” Thus arises the belief in the gods, and with it, as we can clearly see—although Spinoza does not here make it explicit—the superstitious idea that human virtue consists in doing what is pleasing to these gods, so that they will continue to confer their benefits on us. Yet one soon realizes that these benefits are not distributed equitably, that “conveniences and inconveniences happen indiscriminately to the pious and the impious alike.” This gives rise to what has come to be known as the “problem of evil”—namely, the problem of reconciling the apparent evil in the world with the goodness of God. This problem, in turn, is generally resolved by an appeal to ignorance in the form of the pious claim that “the judgments of the Gods far surpass man's grasp.” As Spinoza knew well from personal experience, this appeal can lead to the grossest superstition and the most irrational acts, for it serves as the great justification for religious oppression in all its forms. Furthermore, he reflects: “This alone … would have caused the truth to be hidden from the human race to eternity, if Mathematics, which is concerned not with ends, but only with the essences and properties of figures, had not shown men another standard of truth.”

With this total repudiation of final causes, Spinoza is, in effect, advocating the universalization of the method of mathematics—that is, the method whereby things are understood in terms of their logical, lawful relationships to each other, not in terms of their imaginative, contingent relationships to our needs and desires. In the preface to part 3 of the Ethics he insists that, just as the laws of nature are everywhere the same, “so the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, viz. through the universal laws and rules of nature.” The central point here is that the mental and emotional life of human beings is no exception to this principle. Spinoza emphasizes this by proclaiming that he will “consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies.” Not only is such a mode of explanation alone scientific, but even more important for Spinoza, it is the way in which we have to regard our own actions and desires, as well as those of others, if we are ever to achieve virtue, happiness, and freedom.

III THE GEOMETRICAL METHOD

We cannot complete our brief overview of Spinoza's philosophy without taking at least some note of the geometrical form in which he cast it. The geometrical order, or method of demonstration, is modeled on that of Euclid's Elements. It normally begins with the presentation of a set of definitions, axioms, and postulates and proceeds, on the basis of these, to demonstrate a number of theorems or propositions. This is equivalent to what Descartes called the “synthetic method of demonstration,” which he contrasted to the analytic method of discovery. Descartes made use of this method, at the request of some of his critics, for the presentation of some of the basic principles of his philosophy.¹² Moreover, such an endeavor was not unique to Descartes but was rather very much in the spirit of the seventeenth century, with its emphasis on mathematics as the standard of intelligibility and scientific explanation.¹³ But, although Spinoza was neither the first nor the last to employ this method, he was the first to do so on such a large scale, and it must have cost him a great deal of effort. Each of the five parts of the Ethics begins with a set of definitions and axioms, and the argument is presented as in Euclid, in a series of propositions, each with its own demonstration. These propositions, in turn, are interspersed with frequent scholia, in which Spinoza abandons the formal manner of presentation and adds significant illustrative material and occasional criticism of opposing views. Finally, a number of the parts have prefaces and appendixes which introduce and supplement the argument in important ways.

Like much else in Spinoza, the significance of the geometrical method of demonstration has been the subject of considerable dispute. The basic issue is quite simply whether this method of demonstration is really required by the content, or whether the connection between the two is more external, with the choice of a geometrical form being motivated purely by extrinsic factors, such as its pedagogical value. Moreover, as is unfortunately so often the case with Spinoza, he has left us with no real evidence regarding his own views on the matter, so that the question must be resolved by more indirect means.

Although one can point to a number of distinguished scholars on either side of the argument,¹⁴ it would seem that, if we are to take Spinoza seriously as a philosopher, we must also take his method seriously. Perhaps the best way to begin is through a consideration of the way in which Spinoza viewed his definitions and the role he gave to them in his argument. This information is not provided by the Ethics, which does not attempt to justify or even explain its own mode of procedure, but is to be found in Spinoza's correspondence and in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.

The modern reader, especially the philosophically trained reader, has a good deal of trouble with Spinoza's definitions, of which the already cited definition of God can serve as an example. Such a reader is often left with the impression that Spinoza simply and arbitrarily defines his key terms in such a way as to arrive at his desired conclusions. The argument of the Ethics is thus viewed as an impressive and intricate chain of reasoning that nowhere touches reality. Now, regardless of how we may ultimately come to view this judgment, we must at least realize that Spinoza himself was keenly aware of the problem. In a letter to his young friend Simon De Vries, he distinguishes between two kinds of definitions in a way that parallels the traditional distinction between nominal and real definitions. The former kind stipulates what is meant by a word, or what is thought in a given concept. Such a definition can be conceivable or inconceivable, clear or obscure, helpful or unhelpful, but since it is arbitrarily concocted by the human mind, it cannot, strictly speaking, be called either true or false. The latter kind of definition (real definition), which in Spinoza's terms “explains a thing as it exists outside of the understanding,” defines a thing, rather than a name. It therefore can be either true or false; it is, in fact, a proposition, differing from an axiom only in its specificity.¹⁵

At first glance the definitions we find in the Ethics seem to be of the former variety. They are introduced by expressions such as “by … I mean that,” or “a thing is called …,” which suggest that we are merely being told how the term in question is being used, and it is just this feature of Spinoza's definitions that gives rise to the above-mentioned objections. The actual course of the argument makes it clear, however, that Spinoza intends his definitions to be considerably more than that; for merely nominal definitions cannot provide us with any information about reality.¹⁶ Like the definitions of geometrical figures found in Euclid, Spinoza's definitions are designed to describe not only the names used, but also the objects named. They, therefore, are presented as true propositions describing the essence of things. Thus, just as the mathematician can deduce the properties of a figure from his real definition, so Spinoza, the metaphysician, proposes to deduce the basic properties of reality, or nature, from his fundamental real definitions.¹⁷

But then the obvious question arises: How does Spinoza know that he has arrived at a true definition, one that, in his own terms, provides us with an adequate, or clear and distinct, idea of the object in question? Here, perhaps more than in any other area, we can discern the influence of the geometrical way of thinking on Spinoza, and especially the approach of the analytic geometry developed by Descartes. What Spinoza does, in effect, is to ask how the mathematician knows that he has arrived at a real definition of a figure. This is found to be the case when he is able to construct it. His definition is thus a rule for the construction of a figure—what is often called a “genetic definition”—and from such a definition alone, all the properties of the figure can be deduced. To cite Spinoza's own example, the nominal definition of a circle as “a figure in which the lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal” is rejected in favor of the genetic definition as “the figure that is described by any line of which one end is fixed and the other movable.”¹⁸ This definition tells us how such a figure can be constructed, and from the rule for construction, we can deduce all its properties.

Spinoza's central point is that the same principles apply to our knowledge of nature, or reality, as to our knowledge of abstract entities such as mathematical objects. Thus, we have a real definition, an adequate, true, or clear and distinct idea of a thing (all these terms, as we shall see later, being more or less interchangeable) insofar as we know its “proximate cause” and can see how its properties necessarily follow from this cause. “For really,” Spinoza writes, “knowledge of the effect is nothing but acquiring a more perfect knowledge of its course.”¹⁹ Moreover, in such instances there is no room for doubt of the kind envisaged by Descartes. When the mind has a true idea, it immediately knows it to be true, since it grasps the logical necessity with which the properties of the object follow from the idea. The metaphysician, as well as the mathematician, can therefore arrive at genetic definitions of things, and it is through such definitions that one acquires rationally grounded knowledge.²⁰

If, however, knowledge of a thing is equivalent to knowledge of its cause, which Spinoza identifies with its logical ground, or the principle in terms of which it is understood, then either we find ourselves involved in an infinite regress, which, in turn, would lead to a hopeless skepticism, or the whole cognitive enterprise must be grounded in a single first principle. Furthermore, this first principle in terms of which everything is to be explained obviously cannot itself be explained in terms of anything else. It must, therefore, have the reason or ground of its existence in itself, or, in the language of the schools, which Spinoza adopts, be causa sui (self-caused). The first principle, of course, is the concept of God,²¹ and we can thus see how Spinoza's method leads necessarily to his concept of God. As Spinoza himself clearly tells us: “As for order, to unite and order all our perceptions, it is required, and reason demands, that we ask, as soon as possible, whether there is a certain being, and at the same time, what sort of being it is, which is the cause of all things, so that its objective essence may also be the cause of all our ideas, and then our mind will … reproduce Nature as much as possible. For it will have Nature's essence, order, and unity objectively.”²²

How then do we know that our thoughts are arranged in the proper logical order, that they “have Nature's essence, order, and unity objectively”? Spinoza's answer is that we know this in precisely the same way in which the mathematician knows that he has arrived at the correct idea of a circle. In both instances, the properties follow with strict logical necessity from the cause, and the mind is able to see that nothing is undetermined, nothing left unexplained. The argument of the Ethics is intended to lead us to understand reality as a whole in just this way. We must come to see “that from God's supreme power, or infinite nature, infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, i.e., all things, have necessarily flowed, or always follow, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles” (IP17S). The necessity with which the truth about the interior angles of a triangle follows from the nature of the triangle is strictly logical, and it is based on the real definition of the triangle. But if, as Spinoza claims, things follow from God with precisely the same necessity and in precisely the same manner, then it would seem to be highly appropriate, to say the least, for the method of demonstration to be the same in the one case as in the other.

We can, therefore, conclude that the geometrical form of Spinoza's philosophy is intimately related to, if not actually inseparable from, its content; and we shall have to keep this constantly in mind throughout our investigation of the argument of the Ethics. This is not to suggest that the geometrical form of presentation is “demanded” or “required” by the philosophy in the strong sense that its basic conclusions cannot even be accurately expressed apart from it. No philosopher, with the possible exceptions of Plato, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, has ever achieved such an interpenetration of form and content. Furthermore, as has already been noted, the geometrical method is a method of demonstration, not of discovery, so that it would be nonsensical to try to argue that Spinoza actually arrived at his philosophy by beginning with certain definitions and axioms and proceeding from these to deduce his conclusions. As he affirms explicitly, method presupposes a certain body of knowledge and serves only to put it into the best possible logical order.²³ Nevertheless, given the assumptions about the nature of knowledge that we have just touched on and shall examine in more detail later, the geometrical method is the most adequate vehicle for presenting this philosophy. Not only does it allow Spinoza to deduce, or at least attempt to deduce, all his conclusions from a single first principle—namely, the concept of God—and to illustrate the absolute necessity governing all things, but, for these very reasons, it presents his view of the universe in the form in which, according to his theory of knowledge, it can be adequately grasped by the intellect. Such a form is therefore, from Spinoza's point of view, necessary for the realization of his practical goal.

Notes

1. The classic study of the influences on Spinoza is Stanislaus von Dunin-Borkowski, Der junge De Spinoza.

2. Two important discussions of this theme are by E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, and Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe.

3. Trans. and cited by Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations, p. 75.

4. Ibid., pp. 83-90.

5. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, pt. 1, principle 51, in Philosophical Works, vol. 1, p. 239.

6. Ibid., p. 150.

7. Letter to Princess Elizabeth, 28 June 1643, in Descartes' Philosophical Letters, p. 142.

8. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, pt. 1, articles 34-38, in Philosophical Works, vol. 1, pp. 345-49.

9. Descartes' “Principles of Philosophy,” in Gebhardt, vol. 1, pp. 32-33, and Curley, p. 230.

10. See Martial Gueroult, Spinoza I, pp. 11ff.

11. For an interesting comparison of Spinoza and Freud on this point, see Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza, pp. 106-09.

12. Reply to the Second Set of Objections, Philosophical Works, vol. 2, pp. 52-59.

13. One of the best examples of this was provided by Thomas Hobbes, who exerted a tremendous influence on Spinoza, not only in the area of political philosophy, but also in epistemology and psychology. In the Dedicatory Epistle to the Earl of Devonshire attached to his De Cive, Hobbes advocates the application of the geometrical method to the understanding of human actions and moral problems. See Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, or The Citizen, trans. and ed. Sterling P. Lamprecht, pp. 3ff.

14. In favor of the intrinsic connection, we can cite as examples, without attempting to be exhaustive, J. Freudenthal, Spinoza Leben und Lehre, pt. 2, pp. 110-11; H. H. Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, pp. 12-13; Geuroult, Spinoza I, pp. 15ff. Against such a connection, we can cite Leon Roth, Spinoza, pp. 37-39; Hampshire, Spinoza, p. 21; and especially H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, vol. 1, pp. 32-60.

15. Letter 9, in Gebhardt, vol. 4, p. 43, and Wolf, p. 106.

16. For an interesting defense of the opposite view, see R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza, pp. 91-96.

17. This interpretation is most forcefully presented by Gueroult, Spinoza I, pp. 21ff.

18. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, in Gebhardt, vol. 2, p. 35, and Curley, pp. 39-40.

19. Ibid., in Gebhardt, vol. 2, p. 34, and Curley, p. 39.

20. The significance of genetic definitions for Spinoza is emphasized by Gueroult, Spinoza I, pp. 33ff., and by Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, vol. 2, pp. 90ff.

21. See H. Höffding, Spinozas Ethica: Analyse und Charakteristik, p. 6.

22. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, in Gebhardt, vol. 2, p. 36, and Curley, p. 41. The expression “objective essence” is used by both Descartes and Spinoza. It means the essence of a thing as grasped by thought, which is equivalent to the adequate idea of the thing. The topic will be discussed in chapter 4 in connection with Spinoza's account of ideas.

23. Ibid., in Gebhardt, vol. 2, pp. 115-16, and Curley, p. 19.

Bibliography

I. Primary Sources (editions and translations of the works of Spinoza and other major philosophers cited in the text)

Descartes, René. Philosophical Works of Descartes. Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. 2 vols. New York: Dover, 1955.

Hobbes, Thomas. De Cive or The Citizen. Translated by Sterling P. Lamprecht. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1949.

Spinoza Opera. Edited by Carl Gebhardt. 4 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925.

The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1. Edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

The Correspondence of Spinoza. Translated by A. Wolf. London: Frank Cass, 1966.

II. Secondary Sources (works cited in the notes, as well as a few that were cited in the first edition that have significantly influenced my views on specific aspects of Spinoza's thought)

Burtt, E. A. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. Rev. ed. New York: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1954.

Cassirer, Ernst. Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, vol. 2. Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1911.

Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Delahunty, R. J. Spinoza. The Arguments of the Philosophers. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.

Dunin-Borkowski, Stanislaus von. Der junge De Spinoza. 2d ed. Münster: Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1933.

Freudenthal, J. Spinoza Leben und Lehre. 2d ed. Edited by C. Gebhardt. Bibliotheca Spinoza curis Societatis Spinozanae, vol. 5. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1927.

Spinoza I, Dieu (Ethique, I). Paris: Aubier, 1968.

Hampshire, Stuart. Spinoza. London: Faber, 1951.

Höffding, Harald. Spinozas Ethica: Analyse und Charakteristik. Heidelberg: Curis Societatis Spinozanae, 1924.

Joachim, H. H. A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza. London, 1901. Reprint. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964.

Koyré, Alexandre. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. New York: Harper, 1957.

Roth, Leon. Spinoza. London: Allen and Unwin, 1954.

Wolfson, H. A. The Philosophy of Spinoza. 2 vols. New York: Meridian Books, 1958.