North
American Spinoza Society
NASS
MONOGRAPH #8 (1999)
Extracts
from Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma Notes by G. W. Leibniz (1678)
Translated by
Samuel Shirley
Individuation
in Leibniz and Spinoza
Lee C. Rice
Marquette University
A
Note on De Mairan and Spinozism
Frederick Ablondi
Hendrix College
Copyright,
1999, North American Spinoza Society
Baltimore,
Maryland
Contents
NASS
Monograph #8
Extracts
from Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma
Notes
by G. W. Leibniz (1678)
Introduction by Lee
Rice..................................... ................................3
Translation by Samuel
Shirley............................. ................................7
Individuation
in Leibniz and Spinoza
Lee
C. Rice
Marquette University.......................................
..............................13
A
Note on De Mairan and Spinozism
Frederick
Ablondi
Hendrix College........................................................
..............................33
Extracts
from Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma Notes by G. W. Leibniz (1678)
Introduction
Lee C. Rice
In 1678, after receiving the Opera Posthuma of Spinoza, Leibniz wrote a set of notes on the Ethica. These notes first appeared in print in an edition by Grua,[1] and the Latin text was subsequently reprinted with French translation and commentary by Bouveresse.[2] Later in 1678 Leibniz was to write a detailed and more critical analysis of Ethica I, entitled De Deo, whose Latin text with French translation has been published by Foucher de Careil.[3] Later, during the period 1706-1710, Leibniz would also write his Animadversiones ad Wachteri librum recondita Hebraeorum philosophia.[4] These three works share the common feature that none were destined for publication by their author, which at least suggests a measure of sincerity in Leibniz’s comments which is not otherwise present in the works which he intended for publication.[5]
Although Leibniz wrote to Justel in 1678 that he found in Spinoza ‘‘a quantity of elegant thoughts conforming with my own, as is well known by several of my friends who have also read Spinoza,’’[6] beyond that single remark Leibniz was never to acknowledge in print an intellectual propinquity to Spinoza, though references to Spinoza’s thought abound throughout his printed works.[7] Friedmann argues[8] that, although Leibniz’s own dev elopment was not due to Spinoza’s thought, he ‘profited’ from a reading of Spinoza and in the continuous effort to incorporate those insights which he believed valid into his own systematic thought. Subsequent commentators have been less certain.[9] What is clear is that there are noteworthy similarities between the systematic thought of the two philosophers, and also that Leibniz was particularly concerned to disassociate himself from Spinoza’s monistic naturalism in the public eye. This latter preoccupation may go a long way toward explaining Leibniz’s own efforts to underline differences between his thought and that of Spinoza, differences which have often tended to eother dissolve or to diminish in significance under subsequent logical analysis and historical inquiry.
Leibniz’s notes on the Ethica constitute the least aggressive of the three commentaries by him, and thus reveal more than the others his admiration for certain themes in Spinoza. In dealing especially with E1 and E2, Leibniz often attempts to reformulate or interpret a definition, axiom or proposition; and the result is often a more concise statement than the one given by Spinoza. In his introduction to the Latin edition, Grua notes that Leibniz copied (or had others copy) all of the definitions, axioms, and propositions of the Ethica as it appeared in the Opera Posthuma of 1677. Grua’s edition, like the present translation, is an abridgement; since the editor did not reproduce those definitions, axioms, or propositions which are exact transcriptions from the Opera Posthuma. Internal references to the Ethica are also written out fully in Leibniz’s own notes, while the English translation follows Grua’s transparent abbreviations. Grua encloses
Leibniz’s own comments (as opposed to literal transcriptions or paraphrases) within plus-signs (+), where the English translation precedes each comment or criticism with a plus-sign and indents it to a new line in the interest of perspicuity. Leibniz’s opening comment, that the notes are partly by others and may need correcting, probably refers to the exact transcriptions, which he apparently had made by others and then copied himself into his manuscript, which is wholly in his own hand. Grua argues convincingly that the notes, interpretive recastings, and criticisms are all the work of Leibniz himself.
Often, in the course of reformulating one of Spinoza’s axioms or definitions, Leibniz attempts to bring it closer to his own conception; and I have tried to indicate in the footnotes the more obvious of such instances. Certain passages (also footnoted by the translator) are also rather oblique in their references or intent; and I have attempted to provide some possible resolutions of Leibniz’s thought for most of these. Footnotes have otherwise been kept to a minimum in order to allow the text and Leibniz’s own commentary and critique to speak for themselves.
Several general remarks should be made concerning the direction of Leibniz’s thought in the notes. His criticisms of Spinoza’s naturalistic determinism (E1P17Schol) indicate the general direction which he was to take in later works in the effort never completely successful in my opinion, to reconcile freedom and determinism. His remarks and qualifications dealing with the material on individuation following E2P13 indicate the subsequent directions which his own thought would take in the development of a theory of individuation based on vis viva, as opposed to Spinoza’s dev elopment of a theory of conatus. Bouveresse also argues that, in his comments on E3, Leibniz formulates the first known statement of his own account of parallelism, which is significantly different from the parallelism offered by Spinoza in E2P7 and developed throughout E3. Further, in his notes on E3 and E4, Leibniz appears to express the greatest admiration (and the fewest number of criticisms) of Spinoza’s account of the human affects. Perhaps Leibniz, like Spinoza, had already realized that the effort to establish a new theory of affectivity made by Descartes in the Passions de l’aˆme was largely a disaster. Finally, Leibniz’s notes on E5 are particularly brief. As Grua notes, the entire set of notes provides little more than a literal transcription. But this section is no less critical than brief. One of Leibniz’s primary negative reactions to Spinoza was the latter’s denial of the traditional christian doctrine of immortality,[10] and formulates a number of the themes which Leibniz was to later develop as central to his own systematic thought.
Leibniz’s 1678 notes reveal the philosopher in his most sympathetic reading of the Ethica, while the two later works indicate a thinker more concerned to develop alternative concepts and explanations as a means of avoiding what he conceives as the major pitfalls of the spinozistic world view. While the appearance of these later works in an English translation is no less to be desired, the present translation documents a seminal juncture in the development of Leibniz’s own thought, and a careful, if not always sympathetic, reading of Spinoza’s Ethica.
Extracts
from Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma Notes by G. W. Leibniz (1678)
Tr anslated by Samuel
Shirley
The following notes are partly my own, partly by others. Those written by others need to be corrected on many points.
Ethics Part I
Finite in its own kind is that apart from which another thing of the same nature can be conceived, or that which can be limited by another thing of the same nature. (Def. 2)
Substance is that which is in itself, or that which is not in another thing as its substratum.[11] (Def. 3)
Attribute is an essential predicate[12] or a necessary predicate. (Def. 4)
Mode is a predicate that is not necessary, i.e., it is subject to change. (Def. 5)[13]
God is an absolutely infinite being, that is, infinite in respect of his essence. While other things are infinite in respect of extension or duration, he is infinite in respect of all things that express some degree of reality. (Def. 6)[14]
That thing is said to be free which is determined only by virtue of its own nature to exist and to act in a definite way. (Def. 7)
To be constrained is to be determined by another thing to exist in a definite way and to produce an effect. (Def. 7)
Eternity is the necessity to exist. (Def. 8)
That which is conceived in itself and through itself is that the knowledge of which does not require the knowledge of another thing. (Def. 2)
There is nothing that is without cause. (Ax. 3)[15]
Knowledge of an effect depends on and involves knowledge of the cause. (Ax. 4)
Things which have nothing in common with each other cannot be understood through each other. (Ax. 5)
No definition involves a fixed number of individuals. Therefore Being, in an absolute sense is one, and only one. (Pr. 8, Sch. 2)
A reason must be able to be assigned not only for a thing’s existence but also for its non-existence. (Pr. 11, Second proof).
The greater the degree of reality there is in a thing, the more force it has to exist. (Pr. 11, Sch.)
An infinite quantity cannot be composed of finite parts. If corporeal substance could be so divided that all its parts would be really distinct, why could not one of its parts be annihilated while the other parts remained as before? Or in other words, why could there not be a vacuum? Matter is everywhere the same, and we distinguish parts in it only when we conceive it as affected in various ways. Hence it follows that its parts are distinct only modally, not really. Water, in so far as it is merely water, can be divided up and go out of existence, but not in so far as it is corporeal substance. (Prop. 15,
Sch.)
+ Body is a mode of extension.
God does everything he can do, and it is from God’s nature that all things flow always and necessarily, just as the affections of a triangle flow from its essence. (Pr. 17, Sch.)
+ These statements are based on a play upon words with regard to the word necessity. And the comparison with a triangle is ill-conceived, since in the case of a triangle there is no place for thought [cogitatio], as there is in the case of God. As a result, God produces only the things that he thinks best.[16] The only way in which, in a particular manner of speaking, the word impossible (sic) is applicable, is that it is impossible that God should not prefer those things (the best) to others.[17]
+ There is a contradiction between Pr. 17, Sch., towards the end, and Pr.3. In Pr.3 cause and effect have something in common, whereas in the Scholium the divine intellect agrees with ours only in name.[18]
+ The comparison between the affections of God and those of a triangle is unapt. There could be no affections of a triangle unless other things could be conceived independently of the triangle, even if the triangle could be conceived through itself.[19]
God is not the remote cause of things. (Pr. 28, Sch.)
Natura naturans is that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; Natura naturata is that which follows therefrom. (Pr. 29)[20]
A thing is impossible either because its definition involves a contradiction or because there is no external cause determined to produce such a thing. (Pr. 33, Sch.1)
Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. (Pr. 36)
Why did God not create men in such a way that they would be governed solely by reason? Because he did not lack material for creating all things from the highest to the lowest degree of perfection; or rather because the laws of his nature were so comprehensive as to suffice for the production of everything that can be conceived by infinite intellect. (Appendix to Part 1, near the end)
Ethics Part II
Perfection is degree of reality. (Def. 6)
In God there is the idea of his essence, and of those things that follow from that essence. (Pr. 3)
+ Therefore that idea is not in his essence itself; therefore there is in God something that does not pertain to his essence.[21]
Whatever happens in the object of the idea constituting the human mind is bound to be perceived by the human mind; i.e., the idea of that thing will necessarily be in the human mind. That is to say, if the object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, nothing can happen in that body without its being perceived by the mind. (Pr. 12, not noted)
In proportion as a body is more apt than other bodies to act and to be acted upon simultaneously in many ways, so is its mind more apt than other minds to perceive many things simultaneously; and in proportion as the actions of one body depend on itself alone and the less that other bodies concur with it in its actions, the more apt is its mind to understand distinctly. (Pr. 13, Sch.)
If the parts of an individual thing undergo change while yet preserving their shape and motion, or even if there is an increase in their motion, their magnitude and their matter while the former proportion is preserved, the individual thing will remain the same. (Pr. 13, lemma 5)
+ It is also necessary that the same relation to external things be preserved.[24]
Memory is the linking of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, a linking which occurs in the mind in parallel with the order and the linking of the affections of the human body. (Pr. 18, Sch.)
+ Therefore when we have sensed things together and the image of one of them recurs, we also imagine the other.
The mind has no knowledge of the body, nor does it know it to exist, except through ideas of the body’s affections. (Pr. 19)
The mind does not know itself except in so far as it perceives ideas of the affections of the body. (Pr. 23)
Knowledge of a conclusion[25] without premisses is confused. (Pr. 28, proof)
An idea is inadequate in us when God has that idea not only in so far as he constitutes the human mind but also in so far as he has the idea of another thing simultaneously with the human mind. (Pr. 11, Sch.)
Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge which inadequate ideas involve. For example, men are deceived in thinking that they act without cause, for they do not perceive the causes which determine their actions. In the same way we are wrong in thinking that the sun is about 200 feet distant from us, or that it is small. The error does not consist in our seeing the sun in this way, but in that we do not know its true distance and the cause of our seeing it so. (Pr. 35 and Sch.)
Propositions 37, 38, 38, 40. . .
Here are set forth the fundamental causes of the notions we call common, some being more useful than others. Secondary notions are axioms. (Pr. 40, Sch.)
An image is an affection of the human body, the idea of which sets forth an external body as present to us. (Pr. 17, Sch.)
+ Because of the similarity of the impressions or motions in us which are produced by its presence.
The human mind is capable of imagining as many bodies distinctly at the same time as there are images capable of being formed at the same time in its body. But when these images become confused, the mind will imagine the bodies in a confused way, and will comprehend them under one attribute, Entity or Thing. (Pr. 40, Sch. 1)
+ That which we cannot denominate by any other mark, we call Thing.[26]
When we are unable to make distinction between so many images deriving from different men, this gives rise to a confused image of human nature. (Pr. 40, Sch. 1)
+ It seems to me that the image of a species is given us even when we know only one individual.[27]
Three kinds of knowledge. There is knowledge of the first kind when the reason for it is not apparent. Knowledge of the second kind arises from our possessing common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. Knowledge of the third kind, which we call intuitive, proceeds from the adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes in God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things. Now here are the three kinds of knowledge illustrated by one example: we find the fourth proportional by multiplying the second by the third and dividing the product by the first. This procedure is known to tradesmen either from experience or from being taught it, while mathematicians know it by studying the proof, that is, from the common property of proportionality. But in the case of very simple numbers the becomes clear through intuition — as in the case of 1,
2, 3, the fourth proportional is 6. And this is clearer from intuition than from a proof of a general kind. (Pr. 40, Sch. 2)[28]
He who has an adequate idea knows that he has an adequate idea, and cannot doubt its truth. That is, there is no better basis for judgment than the clear and distinct idea itself. (Pr. 43)
It is of the nature of reason to regard things under the form of eternity, and not as related to a definite time; that is, it is of the nature of reason to consider things as necessary, not as contingent. (Pr. 44 and Cor. 2)
The idea of any particular thing involves the infinite and eternal essence of God, because things cannot be conceived apart from their cause, that is, apart from God. And God as cause must be conceived adequately, because he is at the same time in the whole and in the parts. (Prs. 45,
46)
+ It is the very idea of essence or reality.
Most errors consist only in the incorrect application of words to things.[29]Thus, when men make mistakes in arithmetic, they hav e figures in mind that are different from those on paper. (Pr. 47, Sch.)
By will I understand the faculty of affirming and denying; I do not mean desire. (Pr. 48, Sch.)
There is in the mind no volition, that is, affirmation and negation, except that which an idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves. (Pr. 49)
Ethics Part III
Adequate cause . . . inadequate cause . . . to be active . . . to be passive . . . emotions. (Definitions 1, 2, 3, Prop. 1, Prop. 2)
+ The series of ideas is distinct from the series of bodies, and there is only a reciprocal correspondence.[30]
We desire a thing moderately when our appetite can easily be kept in check by the remembrance of another thing. (Pr. 2, Sch.)
The endeavour [conatus] to preserve ourselves, when more closely related to mind, is called Will [voluntas]; when it is related to mind and body together, it is called Appetite [appetitus], and Desire [cupiditas] is appetite in so far as that is considered together with the consciousness of itself. (Pr. 9, Sch.)
Hence it follows that we do not strive for, will, seek a thing because we judge it to be good. On the contrary, we judge a thing to be good
because we strive . . . etc. (Pr. 9, Sch.)
+ But it seems to me that neither is the cause of the other; they accompany each other, as do thought and motion. (Pr. 2)[31]
Prop. 11 — Pleasure [laetitia], Pain [tristitia], Titillation [titillatio], anguish [dolor], Cheerfulness [hilaritas], Melancholy [melancholia]. (Pr. 11, Sch.)
Prop. 12. We endeavour to imagine only those things that posit our power. For the more distinctly we thus contemplate ourselves, the more we pass into a state of greater perfection. (Pleasure, Prop. 11, Sch.)
Love [amor], hatred [odium]. (Pr. 13, Sch.)
Timidity [timor]. (Pr. 39, Sch.)
+ There should be some emotion relating to Hope [spes] in the same way as Timidity relates to Fear [metus].
The pleasure that arises from regarding ourselves is called Self-love [philautia] or Contentment [acquiescentia]. Hence it follows that ev eryone is eager to tell of his exploits and to boast of himself. (Pr. 55, Cor. 1, Sch.)
+ If a man does not make some display of his actions, this is for one of the following reasons: either he is a humble person, or he is dull or his mind is engaged on other matters, or he is a despiser of present reality.
Definition of Emotions 38. Cruelty [crudelitas] or Savageness [saevitia] is the desire whereby someone is urged to inflict injury on one whom we love or whom we pity.
+ One whom we feel we ought to love or to pity.
Consternation [consternatio] is the term applied to one whose desire to avoid some evil is checked by a feeling of of wonder evoked by the
evil which he fears. (Def. 42)
+ I disagree, and the definitions do not accord with this.
General Definition of the Emotions.
+ I am surprised that he has not made clear what is common to pleasure, pain and desire, as he should have done.[32]
Ethics Part IV
. . . an imagining is stronger when we are thinking of nothing that excludes the present existence of the external thing. (Pr. 9, Proof) + For it is by that alone that we distinguish between imagining and sense-perception.
If two similar individuals are combined, they compose an individual twice as powerful. (Pr. 18, Sch.)
+ Indeed, more than twice as powerful.
Prop. 29.
+ This is not a valid proof.
Confidence [securitas] and Joy [gaudium] are emotions of pleasure, but they imply a preceding pain. (Pr. 47, Sch.)
+ Indeed, and the pleasure is greater when preceded by pain.
If we exercised reason, we would not prefer present things to future things.
(Pr. 62, Sch.)
+ But what about future things?[33]
Prop. 66.
+ I would say that we should take more account of future things than of present things.
Prop. 69.
+ I doubt this.[34]
Prop. 72, Schol.
+ What if a man, using deception, could free himself from imminent danger of death? His answer is obscure.[35]
Ethics Part V
Prop. 9. The proof is supplemented by reference to Pr. 5.
Prop. 23, Proof and Sch.
+ Since the body is always changing, it is difficult to see how its idea or mind can remain the same.[36]
Prop. 38.
+ An objection can be raised: if that love is eternal, what need is there to attain it? Moreover, it must be said that, whereas it is indeed eternal, unless it is actually aroused by me in my body, it does not pertain to this my body.37
Death is the less hurtful in proportion as the mind’s clear and distinct knowledge is greater. (Pr. 38, Sch.) + But what if we have forgotten?38
Individuation in Leibniz and Spinoza Lee C. Rice Marquette University
1. Introduction: The Problem in Leibniz
Although the majority of his commentators see the concept of individuation as one of the fundamental building blocks of Leibniz’s system, the position of this concept within his thought has varied in time. Tw o early works are devoted wholly to it: the Disputatio de principio individui of 1663[37] and the Dissertatio de principio individui of 1675.[38] The problem in both these works was that of determining the nature of an individuating principle in a world of ‘things’ taken as a given. The principle is taken as a given in 1686 when Leibniz completes the Discours de me´taphysique. The phrase ‘individual substance’, however, disappears after 1686, and is replaced by ‘simple substance’ or ‘monad’ in the Monadology (1714). Bitbol-Hespe´rie`s (1991, 79) argues that, beginning with the Syste`me nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances (1695), the term ‘individual’ (individuum) is reserved for one particular class of such substances: the human soul.
In the Disputatio of 1663, Leibniz writes that ‘‘The individual is. . . either something logical in the order of predication or something metaphysical in the series of things.’’ Russell (1900) and Couturat (1901) both see Leibniz’s thoughts on individuation as stemming from his reflexions on the ‘predicate-in-notion’ claim: the subject term of primary true propositions includes or implies the totality of predicates possessed by the item denoted by the subject (see also Hacking 1976, 137-139). On this supposition the entirety of Leibniz’s metaphysics is derived from a logical theory about the structure of propositions.
The Russell-Couturat account has been most influential among anglophone authors; and, while there is certainly some truth to it, it fails to account for the multi-faceted structure of Leibniz’s dev elopment. Gueroult (1967) is representative of a tradition which sees Leibniz’s metaphysics as a derivative of his reflexions on physics, particularly the leibnizean developments of the notion of force (vis viva and conatus) which are omnipresent in Leibniz’s later works. A more sustained (in terms of physics) argument for Gueroult’s position is given by Buchdahl (1969, 405-438), who successfully derives Leibniz’s mechanistic models from his conservation principles in physics, and his teleological principles from an analogue in optics. It would be an error, I believe, to view GueroultBuchdahl as a competitive alternative to Russell-Couturat. Rather, each of the two accounts captures an important and often (but not always) dominant aspect of Leibniz’s dev elopment.
But there is also a third source for this development. In 1857 Foucher de Careil published, with translation and commentary, a set of notes which Leibniz had written on a book by Wachter on Spinoza.[39] In these Animadversiones, Leibniz juxtaposes his own interpretation of Paul’s phrase, ‘‘Everything exists and moves in God,’’ with that of Spinoza; though his juxtaposition makes it clear that his own interpretation is quite similar to that of Spinoza at E2P43Schol (Friedmann 1962, 161-162). The few critical points which Leibniz raises against Spinoza seem misplaced (Bouveresse 1992, 190-191), especially his claim that Spinoza’s view of the human soul leads to the concept of world soul. These same critical points are recapitulated later (1702) by Leibniz in his Conside´rations sur la doctrine d’un esprit universel[40] and still later at many points in the Theodicy. These texts give rise to yet a third source for the development of Leibniz’s thought on individuation: the desire to avoid the monistic naturalism of Spinoza. While this preoccupation is a negative one, it certainly acts as a controlling factor in the extension of both the ‘predicatein-subject’ and the physical models to the metaphysical domain.
In what follows, I wish to isolate the logical and physical strands in the development of Leibniz’s thought, while at the same time paying attention to the anti-spinozism latent in both. My perspective here will be largely reconstructive and conceptual, rather than historical or chronological. I wish to consider the two lines separately, and then speculate as to the reasons why Leibniz should want to unify them within a single principle of individuation. I then wish to show that the same two lines of thought are present in Spinoza’s system, and to suggest arguments which Spinoza would have proffered (against Leibniz) for maintaining two distinct principles of individuation. One of these, the logical, as we shall see, gives rise to Spinoza’s doctrine of the attributes; whereas the other gives rise to the physico-ontological account of individuation delivered following E2P13.
2.
The Logical Model
In the Discours de me ´taphysique 8, Leibniz argues that the concept of an individual substance must contain all of the predicates of the subject to which it is attributed. He adds (Discours 14, 46) that ‘‘. . . it is very evident that created substances depend upon God, who preserves them and who even produces them continually by a kind of emanation, just as we produce our thoughts.’’ This establishes a tight parallelism between the manner in which created substances are produced by God and our manner of conceiving them via subject and predicates. Although Leibniz freely utilizes the scotistic term haecceitas in the Discours, he relies strongly upon a refutation (whose origins date from the Disputatio of 1663) of scotistic realism: Leibniz and Spinoza are both agreed in denying the existence of genera and species outside the human mind (see E2P40Schol1 for Spinoza).[41] The parallelism between predication and the nature of things is derived from the fact that God continuously produces individual substances by a manner of emanation analogous to that by which we produce our thoughts (Discours 8, 40-41).
The transition from a theory of predication to a nominalistic and metaphysical account of the concept of substance requires in fact the identification of a certain proprium quid which is unique to each individual and which constitutes it independently of any reference to its predicates. Leibniz concedes that the actual specification of such a principle is impossible: ‘‘. . . it is impossible for us to have knowledge of individuals and to find the means for exactly determining the individuality of anything whatever.’’[42] This is an important concession, and one which, as Leibniz himself acknowledges in the Disputatio of 1663, threatens scepticism. Having agreed with the nominalists that genera and species cannot exist outside the mind, and with Suarez’s critique of Scotus, Leibniz concludes that the principle of individuation lies in both form and matter; but then goes on to concede that such a principle cannot be known by finite minds. The reason for this is easily seen. A cluster of monadic predicates (some of which are collapsed forms of polyadic predicates referencing other individuals)[43] will be actually infinite in number. Indeed, if the number of individuals in the universe at any specific time t(n) is infinite, then a subset of those predicates, the number of detensed predicates referencing t(n), will itself be infinite. This result lies at the base of Leibniz’s later claim that each individual, inasmuch as it constitutes a complete reflexion of the entire universe, is infinite and infinitely complex (see Discours 9, 41-42). The notion of an individual as infinite, as we shall shortly see, quickly comes into conflict with the second model of individuation.
Aside from its nominalistic roots, however, Leibniz’s logical conception of an individual falls back upon an arithmetic model — even pythagorean according to Belaval (1983). The third corollary of the Disputation of 1663 claims that ‘‘the essences of things are like numbers.’’ The analogy of individual essences to particular numbers remains unexplained, in perhaps much the same manner as Spinoza’s notion of a unique ratio of motion-and-rest which individuates bodies remains without analytic detail in the short treatment of physics following E2P13: Spinoza provides a placeholder for the subsequent development of physics, whereas Leibniz provides an undeveloped analogy at the root of his metaphysics (see Buchdahl 1969, 449-454). While in Descartes the nature of thinking substances is wholly different from that of bodies, and thus relies on an entirely different principle of individuation than that of extended substances, all individual substances for Leibniz (as for Spinoza) must fall under the same principle of particular individuation. In E3P6 and following, Spinoza transfers the physical model into the psychological domain by extending conatus from a physical doctrine to a theory of appetition, whereas Leibniz attempts to block the physical (and ultimately mechanistic) model from psychology by removing it from physics. This lies at the basis of his claim that the essence of individual bodies cannot be extension (see Discours 12, 44).
The above move, of course, implies that the principle of individuation for bodies is no less unknowable than that for minds, and threatens scepticism in physics in the absence of a working out of the arithmetic analogy. As long as he considers space and time as realities of the same order as that of individuals themselves, Leibniz can offer an alternative (and knowable) mode of individuation for bodies through their extrinsic properties of place and temporal coordinates: this he offers in the Confessio philosophi of 1673 (see Bitbol-Hespe´ries 1991, 82-83). But sixteen years later, beginning with On Copernicanism and the Relativity of Motion (1689), he has adopted a relational account of space and time which can no longer form the basis for the definitions of individuals placed in space and time. This compels him to argue that, ‘‘beyond the difference of time and of place, there must always be an internal principle of distinction’’ (Nouveaux essais II, 27#2, 196).
C. D. Broad has argued[44] that the logical account of individuation in the mature thought of Leibniz involves two distinct principles for characterizing the internal principle of individuation. The first asserts that to every individual there corresponds a set of non-dispositional facts of tenseless characterization which refer to each moment of its history. This principle, I suggest, arises from Leibniz’s suarezian form-matter account of haecceity, combined with the (mature) relational account of time. The second principle, not implied by the first, says that every dispositional fact about an individual is also contained in its internal structure. Everything which happens or could happen to an individual is the emergence of one of these facts from quiescence, or its consequent reversion into quiescence. The tenselessness of these facts, or the corresponding predicates which denote them, is reflected in Leibniz’s analogy of ‘windowlessness’ (see Monadology 7, 214), since causality is inherently a temporal process. Broad goes on to argue that such an account of the ‘predicate-in-notion’ is consistent with Leibniz’s claim that contingency exists in the universe. I shall return to this question later.
There are in fact two problems connected with this version of individuation. The one which we have already seen is that, while it asserts the existence of a unique principle for each individual, it also implies that such a principle is unknowable by any finite intelligence.[45] A second, but equally serious, problem is that, while every individual can be construed in a certain sense as a bundle of predicates (a` la Russell in the theory of descriptions), not every bundle of predicates should be thereby construed as an individual. The logical account of individuation is, accordingly, seriously incomplete at best, and requires supplementation from another model. It is to this model, the physical, that I now turn.
3.
The Physical Model
Beginning about 1680 Leibniz is in possession of his new account of dynamics: the main details of his new concept of force and the critique of cartesian mechanism are both present in the Animadversiones of 1676. We saw in the preceding section that the logical analysis of individuation had at least suggested to Leibniz that individual bodies cannot be defined in terms of cartesian extension alone. As Bitpol-Hespe´ries (1991, 84) notes, ‘‘De la pre´sence des pre´dicats dans le sujet, on en arrive ainsi a` la succession des e´ve´nements pour une substance.’’ A further extension, once again by analogy rather than by argument, is the claim that all of nature is ‘full of life’.[46] Whereas in the earlier works of Leibniz life (and conatus) are conceived as a spiritual unity, the new conception of force is that of a physical reality, not a feature of extension per se, which lies outside the range of imaginational cognition and geometrical representation. As Bouveresse (1992, 90, translation mine) notes, ‘‘Force is the sum of the impetus, elementary drives or impulses (F=Smvdt); corporeal substance is defined as acting in its own right, and there is no longer a need for the premature intervention of spiritualistic metaphysics.’’
Hacking (1972, 138) is wrong, however, in claiming that ‘‘Active principle seems to have been Leibniz’s first deep thought about substance.’’ It is certainly true, as Gueroult (1967, 138-140) argues, that Leibniz’s dynamics contained the germ of the notion of ‘pre-established harmony’, since dynamical particles cannot interact in the sense of passing some property from one to the other. But the implications of this fact, and the characterization of a physical individual as a unity of force is a development certainly posterior to 1676; for even at that date, as BitbolHespe´ries (1991, 85-86) has shown, Leibniz was still distinguishing corporeal substances, moved directly by their union with divine substance, from substances endowed with reason and which contained an internal source of spontaneity. By 1680, in part through his reading of Huyghens’ mechanical experiments and in part through his critique of the cartesian principle of the conservation of momentum,[47] Leibniz is able to claim that an individual sensu proprio is a source of action through its possession of an internal force or conatus.
In A New System of Nature (1695), Leibniz describes the evolution of his notion of a life-force animating every individual in terms of a partial restoration of aristotelian substantial forms (139-140). It is at this stage of his development that he has arrived at a point close to Spinoza’s claim that ‘omnia animata sunt’. The scholastic underpinnings of ‘life-force’ as soul (anima) in a living thing, however, present a problem for him which is not present for Spinoza (whose concept has no such underpinnings). For, ‘‘. . . what becomes of these souls or forms at the death of the animal or at the destruction of the individual organized substance?’’ (New System, 140). Leibniz’s answer to this question is ambiguous at best, but reveals the uncomfortable position of the notion of conatus in his physical system:
This made me judge that there is only one reasonable view to take — namely, the conservation not only of the soul, but also of the animal itself and its organic machine, even though the destruction of its larger parts reduces it to a smallness which escapes our senses. . . (New System, 141).
Though the life-force of a corporeal individual is in a certain sense conserved, Leibniz goes on to argue that rational souls follow higher laws, in that their continuous existence makes them members of the ‘‘society of minds.’’ And, so despite the transplantation of the notion of a life-force or conatus into his dynamics, Leibniz retains the vestiges of a cartesian mindbody dualism:
In addition, by means of the soul or form there is a true unity corresponding to what is called the self [moy] in us. Such a unity could not occur in the machines made by a craftsman or in a simple mass of matter, howev er organized it may be; such a mass can only be considered as an army or a herd, or a pond full of fish, or like a watch composed of springs and wheels. Yet if there were no true substantial unities, there would be nothing substantial or real in the collection. (New System, 142).
Force has here been physicalized, but its role in the explanation of corporeal individuals remains vague.
In a letter to Huyghens dated 29 December 1691, Leibniz characterizes the cartesian quantity of matter (mv) as an inert or passive force, and argues that his own vis viva, an active power, is required for the explanation of physical processes. While this new force can be determined mathematically,[48] it fails to be a scientific object in any originative sense; for, like the continuum itself, it is not a substance, and thus requires a metaphysical foundation — primitive force, the formal and determinative element of an individual substance. The transition from kinematics to dynamics is thus, in a certain sense, also a transition from physics (as a geometry of space and time) to metaphysics; since the concept of force, while it may play a role in the former, is dependent upon the latter.
The notion of an individual as an active principle of unity is also central to the Monadology of 1714, but the same difficulties occur there as earlier. Arnauld had urged Leibniz for a clearer explanation of this notion of active principle. In reply to Arnauld (8 December 1686), Leibniz explains that not every object governed by physical laws counts as an individual.[49] If one places two parts of a dogul onto a brooch, the result is a rigid and throwable object, but it remains only an aggregate. Even a solid slab of marble is only an aggregate; since, says Leibniz, the mason can snap it in half, which proves that it is not a substance. One might object, of course, that a human being, or virtually any physical object, can likewise be snapped in half. Leibniz has developed the notion of a principle of active unity, but his model is bereft of any information as to how it can be applied to real objects in the physical domain. The transition from kinematics to dynamics remains hopelessly incomplete despite the ability of the integral calculus to calculate the values of the forces which are claimed to account for the individuation of bodies conceived as dynamic individuals.
Each of the two models of individuation which Leibniz proposes is logically independent from the other; and each, as we have seen, implies certain problems. Why, then, should Leibniz have employed the two models as coextensive — or as describing coextensive individuals? This question may be ultimately unanswerable, insofar as Leibniz most frequently deploys the two models in different situations and in different works. We hav e seen that he himself appreciated the difficulties implicit in each model: perhaps an underlying thought was that a combinatorial approach would weaken the difficulties taken separately. There is also Gueroult’s suggestion, mentioned above, that the concept of force which Leibniz develops out of Huyghens’ work suggests the ideality of relations (or the reduction of all polyadic predicates to monadic), which in turn is in some sense at the basis of the ‘predicate-in-notion’ model for individuation. But the basis for any union of the two models is at best a weak analogy in the absence of argumentation.[50] But, as we shall shortly see, combining the two models, rather than reducing the distinctive difficulties of each, contributes to a new problem of which Leibniz seems totally unaware.
4.
Spinozistic Rejoinders
Gueroult’s analysis of Huyghens’ concept of force, and its obvious consequence that individuals conceived as unitary loci of forces cannot literally transfer properties from one to the other can be interpreted in two manners. From one perspective, exemplified partially by Hacking (1976, 145), it can be seen as an anticipation of Hume’s ‘constant-conjunction’ interpretation of causal nexus, one antecedent of which is Leibniz’s ‘predicate in notion’ model.[51] But there is yet another way of approaching the dynamic concept of an individual. A force in the modern sense (of which Leibniz and Spinoza are clearly both prophets) does not exist in isolation from an environment or field in which it operates. In the modern field theory model, what we call a force is simply a spatio-temporal equilibrium within a larger field. So that the notion of force is itself relative to, and parasitic upon, the field of which that force is a constitutive element. In short, in order to exist or operate, a force must function as part of a larger whole. But that in itself constitutes an inherent obstacle to combining the dynamic model with the logical one; for, in the physical sense, force itself is finitary, operating within the determined boundaries of the field of which it is constitutive.[52] We hav e already seen, however, that the logical model of individuation is inherently infinitary, via the leibnizean requirement that an individual in this sense must contain a complete and exhaustive set of its own state-descriptions in the absence of any external relationships.
It is now time to play the spinozistic card, and to argue that it resolves some of the difficulties which Leibniz faces. Seen as a locus of force within a larger field or environment, the correlates of leibnizean individuals are spinozistic modes. Disregarding the problem of the infinite modes and their status, we can see that for Spinoza a mode is a finite determination of a larger whole. Modes exist and operate in interaction with other modes, by which they are determined to exist and to act and which they in turn determine to exist and to act.[53] Modes by their very nature (whether they are modes of thought or of extension) operate in a temporal order which is interactive.[54] This is the basis of Bennett’s talk of a spinozistic ‘field metaphysics’.[55][56] Such a metaphysics makes particular extended individuals adjectival on regions of space, and reduces talk about regions of space to talk about the features of space (extended substance) without having to quantify directly over the regions themselves. Each individual is, of course, constituted by and constitutive of a particular region of space, which in turn is an individual of a still higher order (still finite), which in turn is an individual of a yet higher (but still finite) order. Note that this model makes all (finite) modes temporal, but only extended modes corporeal (tri-dimensional).
Leibniz’s claim that individuation cannot depend on external relations can now be relativized to Spinoza’s modal model. An external relation between any two or more finite modes at any giv en lev el of individuation becomes an internal relation holding for some individual at some higher level of org anization. So Leibniz’s claim that external relations do not exist becomes the claim that they are always reducible to higher-order properties of some individual. Spinoza makes the claim in this manner:
If we now conceive another individual thing composed of several individual things of different natures, we shall find that this can be affected in many other ways while still preserving its nature. . . Now if we go on to conceive a third kind of thing of individual things composed of this second kind, we shall find that it can be affected in many other ways without any change in its structure (forma). If we thus continue to infinity, we shall readily conceive the whole of nature as one individual whose parts — that is, all the constituent bodies — vary in infinite ways (modis) without any change in the individual as a whole. (E2P13Lemma7Schol: italics mine)
Of course neither the human nor any other mind can actually continue the part-whole composition to infinity, and the entire conceptual process remains a finitary one. The infinite individual here described must be conceived or constructed by other logical means, and is what Spinoza calls an ‘attribute’.
A spinozistic attribute is an individual in Leibniz’s ‘predicate-innotion’ sense of individual. Everything which is true of it refers to an internal state: it is, in Leibniz’s language, windowless. It can in principle be described adequately using two infinite sets of propositions: the first a set of descriptions of the individual modes (and hierarchies thereof) which constitute it, the second a set of nomological statements which describe the relations within it. The first set will contain existential claims which are tenseless with respect to the infinite individual but tensed with respect to its constitutive modes. The second set will contain wholly tenseless statements (Spinoza’s ‘laws of nature’). Readers may recognize in this an anticipation of the Hempel-Oppenheim cover-model for scientific explanation: to explain an event is to provide a deductive argument whose premises contain a statement of initial states plus a set of laws, and whose conclusion is the event itself.[57]
We can now also resolve Leibniz’s query about a ‘genuine’ individual and a lump of marble, which can be split into parts. This difficulty, as we hav e seem, forces Leibniz to claim that corporeal individuals are at best what I would call ‘quasi-individuals’ insofar as they do not display the unitary notion of individuation upon which he insists. This in turn reintroduces a species of cartesian dualism, which sees thinking things as ‘genuine’ individuals and corporeal objects as quasiindividuals. The distinction between individuals sensu proprio and quasiindividuals can be made within spinozism as well (though Spinoza employs no such terminology), but it is not attribute-specific as it is in Leibniz. The key, I believe, is to be found in Spinoza’s insistence above (E2P13Lemma7Schol) that individuals of any giv en order are composed of lower-order individuals diversis naturis: in short, the hierarchy of individuation is one of complexification and not simple combination. A human organism (which is corporeal) can be broken into parts, but these parts are individuals of different natures, whereas Leibniz’s marble, being a quasi-individual, can be broken into parts eaˆdem naturaˆ.[58] For the attribute-individuals, causality is a wholly internal story: causal chains occur within a given attribute, but never move from one attribute to another. So the internalization of relations holds for infinite individuals of the ‘predicate-in-notion’ sort (attributes), but never for finite individuals of the dynamic sort (modes).
Note that nothing which I have dev eloped above depends in any way upon attribute paralellism or the (in)famous E2P7. That the predicate-innotion model applies to substance conceived as an infinite whole is all that was needed. Spinoza’s further claim that there are an actually infinite number of ways in which it may be adequately applied[59] is a further claim, and one which, I believe, is not relevant to the general problem of individuation in either Leibniz or Spinoza.
We hav e seen that Spinoza’s implicit use of the two models of individuation resolves some of the difficulties which Leibniz faced. A further consequence of Spinoza’s use of the two models, however, embodies just the sort of result which Leibniz, in his desire to avoid spinozistic naturalism, would have sought to avoid. If the dynamic model for individuation applies to individuals per se, and not merely to corporeal or to mental individuals (to the exclusion of the other), then a notion of unitary force must be developed for the latter independently of the notion developed for the former. The physical model is outlined in the series of schematic lemmata introduced following E2P13, and the balance of E2 develops a geometry (or kinematics) for mental individuals (spinozistic minds). The account of conatus beginning at E3P6 provides the dynamic model for mental individuals. Spinoza is a committed physicalist here: though the psychological account of conatus is independent of the physical model adumbrated early in E2, he is not above ‘bootstrapping’ from the physical laws (i.e., inertia) to corresponding psychological laws. Perhaps the bootstrapping potential of E2P7 is what made it so attractive to Spinoza.[60]
A full-fledged conatus model, however, applied to minds means that the part-whole relationship applies between mental individuals of lower and higher orders. This may have been what Leibniz had in time when he claimed that Spinoza’s model leads to a ‘world-soul’ concept.[61] It also leads to the complete naturalizing of the human mind which Leibniz had been at such pains to avoid. And, with that naturalizing, conjoined with spinozistic parallelism, comes the psychological determinism to which Leibniz poses his own (and, in my opinion, ultimately incoherent) account of human freedom as an alternative. For, if the dynamic model is applied directly to the human mind as Spinoza does via his account of conatus, then the explanation of human behavior is no less a tale of causal explanation than is the physical model of interacting bodies. While Spinoza’s twofold account of individuation (modes and attributes) may resolve the logical problems in Leibniz’s efforts to provide a single and unified account, Leibniz’s own oft-declared intent of avoiding spinozism would certainly have sufficed to make it inherently attractive. This negative feature of Leibniz’s motivation may perhaps account in some considerable part for his failure to develop a unified model of individuation, or to provide a resolution of the difficulties which he himself found in the two models.
In this paper I have suggested that the logical analysis of problems within both Spinoza and Leibniz, and their contrasting attempted resolutions of these, can provide a fruitful means to coming to better understand the systematic thought of each thinker. Individuation is only one such area where Leibniz and Spinoza are both grappling with a set of important problems; but it is, I suggest, an area where we have much to learn from each and also from both.
A
Selective Leibniz-Spinoza Bibliography
Translations from the text of Spinoza,
where given, are my own. I prefer the edition of J. Van Vloten and J. P. N.
Land [Benedicti de Spinoza opera quotquot
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Carl Gebhardt [Opera, im Auftrag der
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Verlag, 1925]. A new and critical edition of the Opera Postuma is under preparation in the Netherlands, and will
probably resemble closely the Van Vloten and Land edition. References to the Ethica are internal. E2P13Cor is the
corollary to Prop. 13 of Part 2. E3DefAff6 is Definition 6 from the Definitions
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Schol(-ium), App(-endix), and Def(-inition).
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Disputatio de principio individui is
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Georg Olms, 1960), 17-26. A French translation of this early work by Jeannine
Quillet, with notes and introduction, appears in Les Etudes Philosophiques 1979#1, 79-105. The Dissertatio de principio individui was written thirteen years later
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Schirmacher, W. (1981).
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Sleigh, R. C., Jr. (1990). ‘‘Leibniz and Malebranche on
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‘‘Gespra¨ch aud der Grenzlinie: Leibniz bei Spinoza,’’ Studia Spinozana 6, 219-230.
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A
Note on De Mairan and Spinozism Frederick
Ablondi Hendrix College
Several years ago, I
presented a paper to the North American Spinoza Society on Malebranche and
Spinozism. The paper looked specifically at Malebranche’s correspondence with
Dortous de Mairan.[62]For a brief review of the
argument which I presented, the following is from the published version of that
paper:
In 1713, just two years
before his death, Malebranche received the first of four letters from Dortous
de Mairan. The much younger de Mairan had recently read Spinoza’s Ethics, and was so impressed by its
arguments that he wrote to Malebranche, begging the French priest to point out
Spinoza’s errors, lest he (de Mairan) be forced to accept what he considered to
be its unpleasant implications. Malebranche, who responded to each of the four
letters, writes in his brief reply to de Mairan’s first letter that Spinoza’s
error was that ‘‘he takes the ideas of creatures for the creatures
themselves.’’[63] In his second
letter, de Mairan switches course and takes up a defense of Spinoza, claiming
in particular that Malebranche seems as much, if not more, guilty of the charge
he had leveled against Spinoza, namely, failing to adequately distinguish
between the idea of extension and extended bodies themselves. In his reply to
this letter, as well as in his replies to the next two of de Mairan’s letters,
Malebranche, in varying detail, does little more than repeat the objection
expressed in the first response: Spinoza mistakes the ideas of material bodies
for the bodies themselves, and in doing so, mistakenly claims that material
extension is eternal, necessary, and infinite.[64]
I went on to discuss Malebranche’s criticisms
of Spinoza, but rather than pursuing the force of these criticisms, I examined
specifically Mairan’s claim in his second letter that it was Malebranche
himself who fails to distinguish between objects and the ideas of those
objects. I concluded that given (what I argued to be) the proper understanding
of the nature and role of intelligible extension in Malebranche’s philosophy,
he was able to successfully escape Mairan’s charge of Spinozism.[65]
In the discussion which
followed my presentation, I was asked about the fate of M. de Mairan: did he
‘convert’ to Spinozism, or did Malebranche’s arguments persuade him of his
‘folly’? In the present note, I would like to respond (belatedly) to that
question.
***
It will be helpful to start
by looking at Mairan’s situation when he first writes to Malebranche in
September of 1713. He begins by saying that he has been spending much of the
last year concentrating on physics, studying works by Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche
himself. Then he confides that he recently came into possession of some of the
works of Spinoza, though only The Ethics is
mentioned by name. He describes what followed:
I read him attentively, and he impressed me. I have since
reread
him, and I have meditated [about him] in solitude, and in what you call the
silence of the passions; but the more I read him, the more I find him sound and
full of good sense. In a word, I don’t know where to break the chain of his
demonstrations. However, the agitation that his overthrow of my first and
dearest ideas produces in me has sometimes made me resolve to abandon him. I
want to forget him. But when one is deeply moved by the desire to know the
truth, can one forget what has seemed so evident? On the one hand, I cannot
envisage without compassion for humanity, and without sorrow, the consequences
that follow from his principles; on the other hand, I cannot resist his
demonstrations. [OC XIX,
852; G 68]
As
noted, Mairan did not accept the charge Malebranche made against Spinoza in his
first response, and the correspondence ends with him still unconvinced of
Spinoza’s ‘error’. The question, then, is whether this can be taken as an
indication that Mairan ‘converted’ to Spinozism.
Genevie`ve Rodis-Lewis has
written on this question, concluding of Mairan that ‘‘en histoire il n’est
gue`re spinoziste.’’ [66] She claims that
the very fact the Mairan asks Malebranche to show him how to ‘‘break the chain
of [Spinoza’s] demonstrations’’ is an indication that he suspects these
demonstrations to be invalid, despite initial appearances. Further, she notes
Mairan’s belief that the history of China must be subordinated to that of Egypt
so as to reconcile certain chronological points in scripture — a decidedly un-Spinozistic
stance, given its adherence to such a literal reading of the Pentateuch.[67]
Marjorie Grene, while not
arguing that Mairan became a full-fledged Spinozist,[68]
suggests the case is not so clear cut. In response to RodisLewis, she
rightly points out that conversions, by their very nature, are often
accompanied by doubt and apprehension in their initial stages. She also notes
that Mairan’s interest in Spinoza sprung from his reading of The Ethics, not the Tr actatus theologico-politicus,[69]
so Mairan’s adherence to a literal reading of Hebrew scripture is
irrelevant to the question of his Spinozism. Further, there are notes made by
Mairan in 1730 on his copy of the letters which indicate that he was still
dissatisfied with Malebranche’s arguments against Spinoza. In the end, however,
Grene feels that ‘‘the debate on the question of whether or not Dortous De
Mairan is a
Spinozist. . . seems inconclusive.’’[70]
Other than the notes of 1730 mentioned
above, there is nothing in
Mairan’s later writings which explicitly
answers the question of his Spinozism. There is something, however, which is
partially indicative of Mairan’s influences and of his character in general.
Shortly after the end of the correspondence with Malebranche, Mairan began to
make something of a name for himself in the French physics community. In 1715
(the year of Malebranche’s death), Mairan captured the Acade´mie de Bordeaux’s
award for best memoir in physics; he would win the prize again in 1716 and
1717.[71][72]
1716 also saw the publication of what would be Mairan’s most recognized
scientific treatise, his Dissertation sur
la glace, and in 1718 he entered the Royal Academy of Sciences. The telling
point is with regard to the Dissertation:
Henry Guerlac notes that in the original edition, Mairan makes approving
reference to Newton’s Optiks,
something of a rarity at a time in the Academy when the Cartesian theory of
optics was generally preferred to Newton’s. Based on the Mairan-Malebranche
correspondence, Guerlac argues that ‘‘it is not difficult to infer that it was
Malebranche who first called young Dortous de Mairan’s attention to the
importance of Newton’s achievements.’’11
So
was Mairan a Spinozist? A Cartesian? A Newtonian? Guerlac offers his judgement:
Mairan ‘‘could far more correctly be called
Malbranchiste,
for [he] was profoundly influenced by that most openminded and scienti[73]fically curious of
seventeenth-century philosophers.’’[74]And
if by ‘Malebranchiste’ one means ‘open-minded and scientifically curious’, this
seems to be for the most part (i.e., excepting the Egypt-China matter) an
accurate description of Mairan’s philosophical spirit. In the end, however, I
think that it seems misguided to try to pigeon-hole Mairan at all. We can say
with Marjorie Grene that, at least with regard to science, he exhibited an
‘‘independent intellectual attitude.’’[75]
And we may further add that he comes across both in his correspondence
with Malebranche and his work in physics as a man more concerned with
discovering truth than one devoted to the dogma of a particular school.
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[1] . G. W. Leibniz, Te xtes ine´dits d’apr e`s les manuscrits de
la Bibliothe`que provinciale de Hanovre, publie´s et annote´s par Gaston
Grua (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948). The notes on the Ethica are on 277-284.
[2] . Rene´e Bouveresse, Spinoza et Leibniz: L’ide´e d’animisme
universel (Paris: J. Vrin, 1992). For the Latin text, cf. 289-294; the
French translation (with Grua’s notes an abbreviations), 281-289; the
commentary, 217-276.
[3] . A. Foucher de Careil, Leibniz, Descartes et Spinoza (Paris:
Ladrange, 1862), 223-248. A new translation into French (without Latin text) by
V. Carraud appears in Philosophie #2
(April, 1984).
[4] . Published under the
title Re´futation ine´dite de Spinoza par
Leibniz, with notes and French translation by A. Foucher de Careil (Paris;
E. Brie`re, 1854).
[5] . See Bouveresse 217-230
for a summary of the rather contradictory published statements which Leibniz
made concerning Spinoza, a species of public duplicity which certainly justifies
the mistrust of the philosopher which Spinoza expresses in Ep72 (to G. H.
Schuller, 18 November 1675).
Reimer, 1890), 307.
[7] . Bouveresse (217-276) provides many references in his
commentary on the general relation between the thinkers.
[9] . See Lee C. Rice,
‘‘Paradoxes of Parallelism in Spinoza,’’ Iyyun
#48 (1999); and also Lee C. Rice, ‘‘Individuation in Leibniz and Spinoza,’’
following, for bibliographical information.
[10] . See Bouveresse 224-230
for a summary of Leibniz’s published remarks on Spinoza’s theory of eternity.
[12] . I.e., pertaining to the
essence of the thing. (Tr.) This is one of many examples where Leibniz has
attempted to clarify or reinterpret the text. E1Def4 states: ‘‘By attribute I
mean that which the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its
essence.’’
[13] . E1Def5: ‘‘By mode I
mean the affections of substance; that is, that which is in something else and
is conceived through something else.’’
[14] . Note the absence in
Leibniz’s summary of the spinozistic doctrine of an infinity of attributes.
E1Def3: ‘‘By God I mean an absolutely infinite being; that is, substance
consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite
essence.’’
[15]
. E1Ax3: ‘‘From a given determinate cause there necessarily follows an effect;
on the other hand, if there be no determinate cause it is impossible that an
effect should follow.’’
[16] . This attempt to
introduce Leibniz’s own principle of sufficient reason appears to be based upon
a putative contradiction between E1P31 (which says that intellect is related to
natura naturata) and E1P33Schol2
(which provides a critique of the sort of teleology required by the principle
of sufficient reason).
[17] . The last sentence of
this note is difficult, and the Latin careless. I take it to mean that the word
‘impossible’ is not to be used of God except in the very restricted way
illustrated by the example. (Tr.)
[18] . See Bouveresse 239-241
for a brief discussion of Leibniz’s criticism and the putative contradiction.
Leibniz either misses or ignores the fact that for Spinoza the human intellect
is a part of the divine intellect,
and not properly speaking an effect of
it. So this criticism, as Bouveresse notes, is directed at Spinoza’s monism
rather than at any logical contradiction between E1P17Schol and E1P3.
[19] . Leibniz appears here to
be arguing against Spinoza’s frequent use of mathematical entities to
illustrate relations between real objects, whereas on Spinoza’s own count these
entities are only entia imaginationis.
[21] . The last phrase (here
following the semicolon) is underlined in the manuscript. Once again Leibniz’s
criticism is directed at Spinoza’s monism rather than at the coherence of E2P3.
Under Spinoza’s definition of it, what follows from the essence of substance is
part of substance itself.
[23]
. This entire sentence is underlined
in the manuscript. For the similarities and differences between spinozistic and
leibnizean ‘animism’ see Bouveresse 185-216.
[24] . This remark appears to
be an adumbration of Leibniz’s own efforts to reduce external relations to
properties (the doctrine that the monads are ‘windowless’), an effort which was
nev er entirely successful. In Spinoza a relation which is external to one individual
will be internal to higher-order individuals of which the first individual is a
part. Gueroult regards Leibniz’s doctrine of windowlessness as an attempt to
avoid problems which Leibniz finds in Spinoza’s own account of individuation
following E2P13. See Martial Gueroult, Dynamique
et me´taphysique leibnizienne (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1934), 180-194.
Bouveresse 236-239 also provides a summary.
[26] . Leibniz is correct as
far as he goes. Spinoza appears to have two senses of ‘thing’, of which
Leibniz’s remark denotes the most general. Often, however, the sense of res is in contradistinction to that of idea.
[27]
. This appears to be a legitimate critique of Spinoza’s remark that universal
knowledge arises from blurred sensory images (plural); since, as Leibniz notes,
we can formulate a species-characterization whose extension is a unit set.
[28] . It is interesting to
note that Leibniz summarizes Spinoza’s account of the three kinds of knowledge
in E2P40Schol2 without any criticism. Does he perhaps view the distinction
between the three kinds of knowledge as being less important and less
problematic to Spinoza’s methodology than many subsequent commentators?
[30]
. Bouveresse notes (287) that this statement represents the first formulation by Leibniz of what he
will later call his own parallelism in contrast to his interpretation of
Spinoza’s parallelism (first stated at E2P7). The thinkers are of one mind in
their opposition to occasionalism. See Bouveresse 244-247 for a detailed
analysis.
[31]
. Skinner makes a similar point in Beyond
Freedom and Dignity about the James-Lang theory of emotion, of which
Spinoza’s account is generally presumed to be the predecessor. Skinner notes
that the running away and the fear are not causally related because they are
simultaneous. If we take Spinoza’s ‘‘striving’’ as a mental event rather than
as a physical one, however, Spinoza’s claim can be interpreted as a causal one.
[32] . What is common, of
course, is that they are all and only the primitive affects. Leibniz may be
suggesting here that, since desire is itself identified with conatus, its status as a primitive
affect is questionable. A similar objection is lodged by Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1984), 258-261.
[33]
. Bouveresse (288) sees this remark as part of a more extended critique (which
Leibniz will give in his comments De Deo of
Spinoza’s notion of eternity), but the connexion appears difficult to see.
Perhaps Leibniz is here attempting to introduce the notion of contingency as a
component of our knowledge of future events, and thus avoid spinozistic
determinism. His later attempts to avoid rigid determinism in his own ontology
have been severely challenged by even Leibniz’s most sympathetic commentators.
[34] . E4P69: ‘‘The virtue of
a free man is seen to be as great in avoiding dangers as in overcoming them.’’
In a certain sense this proposition illustrates Spinoza’s own lifestyle. He
prevented the translation of the TTP into Dutch to avoid its accessibility to
the vulgus, and was probably not
entirely open when he met and spoke with Leibniz. The motto on his family coat
of arms was ‘‘Caute’’ (‘‘Be Careful’’).
[35] . Leibniz appears quite
correct in finding some obscurity in E4P72Schol, which deals with the modern
highway robber paradox. For commentary and an effort at clarification of the
scholium, see Lee C. Rice, ‘‘Spinoza and Highway Robbery,’’ Archiv fu¨r Geschichte der Philosophie,
1998.
[36]
. Leibniz has already dealt approvingly with Spinoza’s account of (bodily)
individuation in the opening comments on E2. His objection here is probably to
the parallelistic argument for the individuation of the mind. Leibniz’s later
development of the concept of mind as a ‘dominant monad’ was perhaps a reaction
to the mind-body unity claim underlying Spinoza’s parallelism.
[37] . See C. G. Gebhardt, Die philosophischen Schriften von Gotfried
Wilhelm von Leibniz (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1960), Vol. 4, 17-26.
[38] . This work was written thirteen years later, after Leibniz’s
visit to Paris (1672-1676) and one year after his discovery of the infinitesimal
calculus. For the early development and subsequent chronology, see
Bitbol-Hespe´rie`s (1991), 79-81.
[39] . Animadversiones ad Wachteri librum. See Foucher de Careil (1857). A
brief commentary and critique of Foucher de Careil is provided in Bouveresse
(1992, 188-191). Wachter’s book, together with a complete account of Leibniz’s
critique of it, is summarized in Friedmann (1962, 155-178).
Janet, 2 volumes
(Paris: Ladrange, 1866); II, 570-572.
[41]
. For details on Spinoza’s nominalism, see Lee Rice, ‘‘Le nominalisme de
Spinoza,’’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy
24 (1994), 19-32.
[42] . Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (Paris:
Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), III, 3#6, 248-249.
[43] . See Discours 14, 47-48; and Hide´ Ishiguro,
‘‘Leibniz’s Theory of the Ideality of Relations,’’ in Frankfurt (1976,
191-214).
[44] . ‘‘Leibniz’s
Predicate-in-Notion Principle,’’ in Frankfurt 1972, 1-18. Lycan (1972) and
Ishiguro (1972) offer similar arguments.
[45] . Buchdahl (1969,
454-455) sees in this consequence an anticipation of Kant’s notion of noumenal
reality.
[47]
. For details of Leibniz’s theory of the conservation of mv**2, see Bouveresse
(1988), Bouveresse (1992, 91-93), Buchdahl (1969, 415-424), Chazerans (1991),
Friedmann (1962, 120-124), and Lycan (1972). It is also interesting to note
that the development of a conservation principle for corporeal reality itself
immediately postdated Leibniz’s first contacts with spinozism (1669-1679): see
Friedmann (1962, 59-76).
[48] . It is in fact the
integral of the inert forces. See Bouveresse (1992, 97-100) and Buchdahl (1969,
406-408).
[50] . The use of analogies in
Leibniz’s extrapolation from physics to metaphysics is emphasized by Buchdahl
(1969, 434-438), particularly for Leibniz’s principle of continuity, where
Buchdahl claims that there is a ‘‘gap between the technical case which originally
led to the idea of continuity becoming established,
and its generalisation by extrapolation to a much wider field’’ (ibid., 435). I suspect that this is the
case for the principles of individuation as well.
[52] . This is why Spinoza
predicates conatus only of finite modes. While substance itself is
an infinite force, its source of auto-determination is entirely intrinsic.
[54] . The temporality of
ideas in Spinoza’s model has been denied by some interpreters. I think that
Michael Della Rocca’s arguments here are quite decisive. See his Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in
Spinoza (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), esp. 44-67.
[56] -110.
[57]
. I owe this insight to Edwin Curley. See his Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge (MA):
Harvard University Press, 1969), 50-55.
[58] . This is also why the
civil community or state for Spinoza is not an individual, but only a
pseudo-individual; but that is another story.
[59]
. I follow Bennett here in claiming that Spinoza meant what he wrote when he
deals with ‘an infinity of attributes’, rather than those interpreters who
claim that ‘infinity’ = ‘all there are’ = ‘2’.
[60] . I am here implicitly
agreeing with Bennett’s claim that parallelism is a correlation between
psychological and physical models, not between logical and physical ones, as
Curley argues. I am also in at least partial agreement with Bennett that
Spinoza’s argument for E2P7 is awful. Michael Della Rocca [Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996), 18-43] does succeed, however, in supplying an
alternative argument which is more logically plausible than the alternative
offered by Bennett (127-135).
[61]
. See his ‘‘Comments on Spinoza’s
Philosophy (1707?)’’ in Ariew and Garber (272-281), and also Friedmann (1962,
225-230).
[62] . The paper was given December 27, 1995 at the NASS meeting held
in conjunction with the Eastern Division meeting of the APA in New York City.
[63] . OC XIX, 855; G 70.
References to Malebranche’s works are to the Oeuvres comple`tes, 20 vols., Andre´ Robinet, dir. (Paris,
1959-66), referred to hereafter as ‘OC’, followed by volume number, page
number. Passages of the Malebranche-de Mairan correspondence are from Marjorie
Grene’s translation, contained in Malebranche’s
First and Last Ctitics (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1995), and
referred hereafter as ‘G’.
[64] . ‘‘Le Spinoziste Malgr e´ Lui?: Malebranche, De Mairan, and
Intelligible Extension,’’ History of
Philosophy Quarterly (April 1998), 191.
[65] . For those interested in
more information on the correspondence, see Daisie Radner, ‘‘Malebranche’s
Refutation of Spinoza,’’ in Spinoza: New
Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1978), 113-128; and George S. Getchev, ‘‘Some of Malebranche’s
reactions to Spinoza revealed in his correspondence with Dortous de Mairan,’’ Philosophical Review 41 (1932), 385-394.
Joseph Moreau’s introduction to the Vrin edition of the correspondence (1947)
provides some useful insights into Malebranche and Spinozism. Richard Watson’s
‘‘Foucher’s and de Mairan’s Critiques of Malebranche’s Beings of the Third
Kind,’’ The Southern Journal of
Philosophy XXXIV (1996), 125-134, argues against my conclusion in the HPQ
article (op. cit.), claiming that
‘‘de Mairan does get Malebranche, and
gets him good’’ (130).
[66] . Genevie`ve Rodis-Lewis,
‘‘Dortous De Mairan fut-il spinoziste?’’ Revue
de me´taphysique et de morale 93 (1988): 165.
[67] . According to
Rodis-Lewis, Mairan’s writings on this matter ‘‘montrent qu’il n’a pas e´te´
convaincu que la subordination de la Chine a` la civilisation e´gyptienne, qui
avait instruit Moi¨se, est une fable. Quelle que soit sa since´rite´ dans son
apparent retour a` une tradition chre´tienne, il n’est suˆrement pas spinoziste
en histoire’’ (ibid., 171-72).
[68] . As has Paul Vernie`re.
His conclusion on the matter is that ‘‘l’objectivite´ de Dortous de Mairan
l’entreine jusqu’a` la conversion au spinozisme’’[Spinoza et la pense´e franc¸aise avant la r e´volution (Paris:
Presse Universitaires de France, 1954), 279; quoted in Rodis-Lewis (ibid.), 166].
[69] . It is not entirely
clear that this is true; all Mairan says is that ‘‘the works of S., especially his Ethics or his philosophy, came into my possession’’ (G 68, my
emphasis). On the other hand, Mairan does specifically praise the ‘‘geometrical
form of his work’’ (ibid.),
suggesting that Mairan has only The
Ethics in mind.
[71] . I am indebted for this
and for much of the historical information which follows to Henry Guerlac
[‘‘The Newtonianism Of Dortous De Mairan,’’ in Essays and Papers in the History of Modern Science (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977):
[72] -90].
[73] . Guerlac, 485. It should
not be surprising to see Malebranche breaking ranks with the Cartesians;
despite being firmly grounded in the Cartesian tradition, in physics — as in
other areas — Malebranche went his own way, and was gracious enough to concede
to a rival (as Newton was, with regard to their respective theories of color)
if he became convinced of the other’s truth. This is in fact just what
happened, as can be seen in the 16th E´claircissement
in the 6th (1712) edition of Recherche
de la v e´rite´. On this point, see Paul Mouy, ‘‘Malebranche et Newton,’’ Revue de me´taphysique et de morale 45
(1938): 411-435.
