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Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy pp 97–114Cite as

The Road to Finite Modes in Spinoza’s Ethics

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Part of the book series: The New Synthese Historical Library ((SYNL,volume 76))

Abstract

There are many aspects of the Ethics that seem to suggest, or perhaps even require the possibility of deducing finite modes from the infinite substance. Nonetheless, as many have noted even during Spinoza’s own time, it is far from clear that such a deduction can be successfully performed. In this chapter I argue that the expectation of a top-down deduction (i.e., one that begins with an attribute and terminates with a finite mode) is unwarranted, and that interestingly enough, it is not only unwarranted with regard to Spinoza but with regard to Descartes as well. I show this by pointing to the crucial role confusion plays for both, noting that our epistemic journey to clear and distinct or adequate knowledge begins with confusion, and that this trajectory is one of emending initially confused ideas. This shows that epistemically a bottom-up trajectory necessarily precedes a top-down one. My claim, however, goes beyond this point regarding the order of discovery. I argue that the state of confusion presupposes a plurality of finite modes, in Spinoza’s case, and substances and modes in Descartes’s. Confusion, I claim, amounts to an inadequate perception of an amalgam of ideas of a real plurality of things. Recognizing the metaphysical ground of confusion along with its central epistemic role brings to light the artificiality, and indeed ultimately the impossibility of a top-down deduction which is divorced from a preceding bottom-up analysis.

I would like to thank Alan Nelson , Julie Klein and Michael Della Rocca for their helpful comments as well as the participants of the “Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy” workshop, held in Jerusalem in 2016, for their discussion. The research for this paper was made possible by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1199/13).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All references to the Ethics are from Benedictus de Spinoza , The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. E. M. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). References to Spinoza’s letters are from Benedictus de Spinoza et al., The Letters (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1995). I have used the following abbreviations to refer to Spinoza’s writings: Ep. = letter followed by the standard numeration. When referring to the Ethics, I note the part of Ethics followed by A= axiom, cor.= corollary, dem.= demonstration, P= proposition, or Schol.= scholium, with their respective numeration, e.g. “2P47” refers to Part Two of the Ethics, Proposition 47.

  2. 2.

    See for example Stephen Nadler, “Spinoza’s Monism and the Reality of the Finite,” in Spinoza on Monism , ed. Goff Philip, Philosophers in Depth (UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Yitzhak Melamed , “Why Is Spinoza Not an Eleatic Monist (or Why Diversity Exists),” ibid., ed. Philip Goff (London: Palgrave). Karolina Hübner, “Spinoza on Negation, Mind -Dependence and the Reality of the Finite,” in The Young Spinoza: a Metaphysician in the Making, edited by Yitzhak Melamed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 221–22. Samuel Newlands, “Another Kind of Spinozistic Monism ,” Noûs 44, no. 3 (2010). Martin Lin, “Substance, Attribute , and Mode in Spinoza,” Philosophy Compass 1, no. 2 (2006). E. M. Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 38–39.

  3. 3.

    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and George Di Giovanni, The Science of Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 328. E. M. Curley and Gregory Walski, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered,” in New Essays on the Rationalists, ed. Rocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Michael Della Rocca , “Striving, Oomph, and Intelligibility in Spinoza,” in Judgement and the Epistemic Foundation of Logic, ed. Maria Van der Schaar (Springer Science & Business Media, 2013). “Steps toward Eleaticism in Spinoza’s Philosophy of Action,” in Freedom and the Passions in Spinoza’s Ethics, ed. Noa Naaman Zauderer and Tom Vinci (Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming). For an analysis of Hegel’s criticism see Samuel Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza,” Philosophy Compass 6, no. 2 (2011), Yitzhak Melamed , “Acosmism or Weak Individuals? Hegel , Spinoza, and the Reality of the Finite,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 48, no. 1 (2010) and José María Sánchez de Leon and Noa Shein, “The Coincidence of the Finite and the Infinite in Spinoza and Hegel ,” Idealistic Studies (forthcoming).

  4. 4.

    This is a claim that is pervasive in and central to Della Rocca’s interpretation of Spinoza. See for example Michael Della Rocca , “Spinoza and the Metaphysics of Scepticism,” Mind 116, no. 464 (2007): 852–54. and Spinoza, Routledge Philosophers (London: Routledge, 2008), 6–8.

  5. 5.

    Curley and Walski, “Necessitarianism Reconsidered,” 251.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 257.

  7. 7.

    Note that, for Newton , space is homogenous, infinite etc., and this is precisely everything bodies are not, which in turn he takes to be an argument against Descartes’s identification of matter and space. Isaac Newton , Philosophical Writings, trans. Andrew Janiak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 33.

  8. 8.

    On the effect and involvement of Leibniz in this exchange see Mark Kulstad, “Leibniz, Spinoza and Tschirnhaus : Metaphysics à trois, 1675–1676,” in Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, ed. Olli Koistinen and J. I. Biro (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 221–40.

  9. 9.

    I return to discuss Spinoza’s actual response at the end of the paper.

  10. 10.

    Nelson has emphasized the nature of confusion for rationalism more generally in Alan Nelson , “The Rationalist Impulse,” in A Companion to Rationalism, ed. Alan Nelson (Maldens: Blackwell Pub., 2005), 4–6, 8–9.

  11. 11.

    Although this is the standard way among interpreters to think of Descartes’s res extensa , it is not entirely clear that it is the most favorable way to think about it. A case can be made that extension is regarded as lacking dynamism only when one is considering it while actively excluding the fact that it exists, as the meditator does in Meditation Five. However, when conceiving res extensa as an existing substance, it is dynamic. That is, the lack of dynamism is a result not of the essence of extension , but rather of a particular way of regarding it—which involves actively excluding something crucial about it, namely, its existence. This line of interpretation is currently being developed by Alan Nelson and myself. It is clear, however, that Tschirnhaus and Spinoza took Descartes to be committed to an “inert mass”.

  12. 12.

    Thomas Lennon , “The Eleatic Descartes,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 45, no. 1 (2007).

  13. 13.

    A case can be made though that sensations provide us with modes of the union.

  14. 14.

    Alan Nelson , “Conceptual Distinctions and the Concept of Substance in Descartes,” Protosociology: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research 30 (2013): 197.

  15. 15.

    For a full elaboration of this point see Alan Nelson, “Descartes’s Ontology of Thought,” Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy 16, no. 2 (1997).

  16. 16.

    There is of course a wealth of literature on how to understand clarity and distinctness in Descartes. My intention here isn’t to provide such an account. For my purposes it suffices to note that distinctness has to do with a separating of ideas, while confusion entails an agglomeration of them. For literature on clarity and distinctness, see for example, Noa Naaman-Zauderer, Descartes’ Deontological Turn (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 12–17; Kurt Smith, Matter Matters: Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 83–112 and “A General Theory of Cartesian Clarity and Distinctness Based on the Theory of Enumeration in the Rules,” Dialogue 40, no. 2 (2001); E. M. Curley, “Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas ,” in Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, ed. A. O. Rorty (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986); Lilli Alanen, “Sensory Ideas,Objective Reality, and Material Falsity,” in Reason, Will, and Sensation: Studies in Descartes’ Metaphysics, ed. John Cottingham (Oxford University Press, 1994).

  17. 17.

    There might be a case to be made here that the ordo cognoscendi for Descartes is what he characterizes as “analysis”. Nelson and Rogers have recently argued that for Descartes a synthesis is an inverted analysis, and that it requires a previous analysis; see Brian Rogers and Alan Nelson , “Descartes’ Logic and the Paradox of Deduction,” The Battle of the Gods and Giants Redux: Papers Presented to Thomas M. Lennon , ed. Patricia Easton and Kurt Smith (Brill, 2015) 106–136 .While I agree with their interpretation, I don’t think what I say regarding the central role of confusion in what follows hinges upon this. There is, of course, a wealth of views regarding what analysis is exactly for Descartes, but I don’t think anything hinges on the identification of analysis and the ordro cognoscendi as I’ve characterized it for the point I want to make. For literature on synthesis and analysis see e.g. Smith, Matter Matters: Metaphysics and Methodology in the Early Modern Period; Stephen Gaukroger, Cartesian Logic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Curley, “Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas .”

  18. 18.

    There is a debate in the literature as to the number of corporeal substances to which Descartes is committed. In some places he seems to hold that there is a multiplicity of finite extended substances, e.g., a stone (AT, VII, 44), and other places he seems to hold that there is only one extended substance (Synopsis to the Meditation CSM II, 10, AT VII, 14). For different views on the issue see Paul Hoffman, “The Unity of Descartes’s Man,” The Philosophical Review 95, no. 3 (1986); Eric Palmer, “Descartes on Nothing in Particular,” in New Essays on the Rationalists, ed. Rocco J. Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 26–29; Alice Sowaal, “Cartesian Bodies,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2004); Thomas Lennon , “The Eleatic Descartes.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 45, no. 1 (2007); and Alan Nelson and Kurt Smith, “The Divisibility of Cartesian Extension,” in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber and Steven Nadler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  19. 19.

    Taking confusion to be a concatenation of clear and distinct ideas is articulated very clearly in Nelson , “Descartes’s Ontology of Thought.”

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    That we are highly confused is established in 2P17-2P31, the rest of Part Two is dedicated to showing how we are to overcome this initial confused state.

  22. 22.

    Shein, Noa. “Causation and Determinate Existence of Finite Modes in Spinoza .” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 97, no. 3 (2015), 334–57, and “Not Wholly Finite: The Dual Aspect of Finite Modes in Spinoza.” Philosophia 46 (2018).

  23. 23.

    In this respect I take Spinoza to by and large be adopting Hobbes ’s position as to how images are formed. Cf., Thomas Hobbes , Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, edited by Edwin M. Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), 6.

  24. 24.

    I thank Noa Naaman-Zauderer for prodding me on this issue.

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  1. Philosophy Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Noa Shein

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  1. Philosophy Department, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Ohad Nachtomy

  2. Philosophy Department, Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA

    Reed Winegar

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Shein, N. (2018). The Road to Finite Modes in Spinoza’s Ethics. In: Nachtomy, O., Winegar, R. (eds) Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 76. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94556-9_7

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