Spinoza
on Substance
Anna Swartz
Annotated
Bibliography
Bennett, Jonathan. “A Note on Descartes and Spinoza.” The Philosophical Review. 74.3
(1965):
379-380.
Bennett attempts to undermine the typical contrast between Descartes as a ‘dualist’ and Spinoza as a ‘monist.’ He undercuts this common distinction with a unique translation of Ethics Book 1 proposition 10. He argues that Spinoza never distinctly says ‘one’ while Descartes says ‘two.’ In order to make this argument he has to reinterpret Spinoza’s distinction of the attributes of extension and thinking. He offers a simple argument with an interesting, but no so plausible, claim.
Charlton, William. “Spinoza’s Monism.” The Philosophical Review. 90.4 (1981): 503-529.
Charlton states that his purpose is “to reconstruct and evaluate.” He is very critical of Spinoza’s arguments (especially Ethics Book 1 proposition 14). He only manages to reconstruct what he considers to be a logical argument through liberal interpretations (particularly with the second Scholium to Book 1 proposition 8). Charlton concludes that it is easy to “deny that there are more substances than one” (528), but difficult to prove that there is even one substance (in other words, any substance at all).
Delahunty, R.J. “Substance and Attribute.” Spinoza. Boston: Routledge,
1985. 89-124.
Delahunty is very concerned with whether Spinoza’s definitions are nominal (only a name to be used in the context of the Ethics) or truth-valued (actual principles that exist and can lead to the derivation of truth). He decides that they are nominal, in other words, stipulative, and used as propositions that are later proved within the internal logic of the Ethics. At this point they become reasonable displays of ‘acquired knowledge’ of truth. The rest of his article focuses on the implications of substantival monism and attributival pluralism – a juxtaposition he thinks Spinoza never solves.
Hallett, H.F. “Substance and Its Modes.” Modern Studies in Philosophy: Spinoza. Ed.
Marjorie
Grene. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1973. 131-163.
Hallett offers a clear definition of substance, which attempts to avoid the exclusive categories of ‘matter’ or ‘abstraction.’ Instead, he defines it as ‘agency’ itself. By clarifying the uses of Natura naturans and Natura naturata (136), Hallett defends the uniqueness and monism of Spinoza’s substance and the way in which modes and attributes are related to it.
Harris, Errol E. “The Concept of Substance in Spinoza and
Hegel.” The Substance of
Spinoza. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1995. 200-214.
Harris places Spinoza in the context of his contemporaries, as well as ancient influential philosophers. He offers a nice account of Hegel’s criticisms of Spinoza’s conception of substance with a point-by-point defense in favor of Spinoza. The focus then shifts onto the clues that evidence how the unity of substance becomes diversified into finite modes.
Loptson, Peter. “Spinozist Monism.” Philosophia. 18 (1988): 19-38.
A confused ‘reconstruction of Spinozist monism’ (the purpose stated by the author) is all this article manages to convey. Loptson attempts to make a contrasting distinction between the framework principles and the details of Spinoza’s monistic argument in part one of the Ethics. He employs a “type theory” in order to distinguish individuals from properties. Identifying substance as ‘individual,’ he derives many possible implications, none of which are directly based on textual evidence.
Ritchie, E. “Notes on Spinoza’s Conception of God.” The Philosophical Review. 11.1
(1902): 1-15.
Richie equates substance with God and then examines the implications of their synonymity. The main implication is that all else is not substance, but simply manifestations of the one substance. Substance is carefully distinguished from an individual/material existence (not “God the individual” is, but “being itself” is). In other words substance is pervasive reality and not ‘a substance.’ This is a very early article, but it is helpful because it is so old. It is concerned with fundamental, overarching problems that must always be kept in mind before attempting a detailed analysis.
Woolhouse, R.S. “Spinoza and Substance.” Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The concept
of
substance in
seventeenth-century metaphysics.
New York: Routledge, 1993. 28-53.
Woolhouse uses the context of Descartes’ and Leibniz’s conceptions of substance in order to contrast and evaluate Spinoza’s claims. He points out differences in the arguments and uses them as criticisms of Spinoza’s. He then explains Spinoza’s defense, not necessarily in response to the claims of the other rationalists, but in light of them.
Summary
of the Major Debates by Topic
The Nature of Substance: Material or Abstract
There seems to be a general desire to categorize the nature of Spinoza’s substance into either an actual material or complete abstraction. The first object was from Hegel and is then elaborated on. According to Ritchie, “Hegel uttered the protest that Spinoza made God to be substance, but failed to recognize him as subject or person” (11). Hegel is not trying to say that God should be an actual, physical body, but that he should have some concrete existence. Hegel “complains that the conception of substance…remains abstract and never attains to self-consciousness or the concrete activity of living and thinking” (Harris 202). One problem that Hegel and others may have is that Spinoza uses the term ‘substance,’ a term usually applied to material objects (Charlton 504).
Woolhouse attempts to rectify this problem by conceiving of substance as an abstraction which allows for the extended existence of the modes. He says, “The reality of Spinoza’s single substance is…in no way that of an existent instantiation. It is, rather, a reality of a kind which makes it possible for there to be actual instantiations of extension, actual extended modes” (45). However, Charlton has already ruled out the possibility of this conception. He explains, “Spinoza is not claiming that all things are in God in the way in which all my sisters might be in the group under the tree: the one substance is not a mere aggregate” (504).
Ritchie finally develops an alternate conciliation of the two. He describes all the actual material things in the world (as well as all the psychical phenomena) as “manifestation[s] of existence” (3). All else is not substantive, but manifestive of the one substance. The substance then is “simply completeness of existence…to say that ‘God is,’ is but to assert that ‘being is’” (Ritchie 3). It is not physical reality or psychical reality, but “it is the real itself” (5).
Substance as Independent and
Self-Caused
Spinoza’s definition of substance is that it is “what is both in itself and conceived through itself; his definition of mode characterizes it as in another, through which also it is conceived” (Delahunty 101). In other words, “properties depend upon substances…but the converse is not true” (Loptson 20). Charlton objects, saying, “That in which a property exists stands in no need of anything in which to exist itself. It therefore enjoys a certain kind of independence…But the step from this special kind of independence to independence” in general is quite a stretch (507). He never, solves this problem, but is able to understand independence in the sense that “If some things have to be defined in terms of others, then (unless we allow a disastrous regress) there must be other things which are not definable in terms of anything further” (Charlton 510). Delahunty aggress that it is “necessary to account for modal existence by referring outside the mode, to the substance on which it depends” (103). The substance on which it depends, in turn depends on nothing. Therefore, it is independent.
Although this appears to be a sufficient defense of substance’s independence, Charlton next takes issue with the argument that substance causes itself (included in definition 1 of Book 1). Again, to avoid infinite regress, the chain of causes must arrive back at one thing which is not caused by any other external. However, “why say that it causes itself…rather than that its existence is a brute fact?” (Charlton 515). There is no answer as to why Spinoza used auto-causation instead of simple, eternal existence without any ‘beginning’. Finally, Charlton asserts one more critique: “Spinoza produces this monstrous concept in E.I.7 [:] He thinks that if it is provable from the logical character of substance-concepts that substances are not cause by anything else, it follows that the essence of a substance involves existence” (Charlton 516). This argument appears to jump ahead without any intermediary steps. Surely a substantiating argument could be constructed, but none is offered here.
-Derivation of Attributes and
Modes
Attributes and modes depend on substance for existence, but what exactly is their relationship? Attributes and modes “depend causally on the one substance” (Charlton 509). However, Spinoza allegedly suggests no principles to explain the method of this causation. Harris writes, “Spinoza is said to provide no principle of differentiation to diversify the unity of Substance on which he insists. He declares that infinite things follow necessarily in infinite ways from the nature of Substance, but he does not explain how” (202). The solution which Harris eventually proposes is that “this ‘following from’ is being actively produced, for God is actus purus, and his essence must be conceived dynamically, not statically” (206). A dynamic nature can actually produce. It is a process of self-actualization. Harris describes it as “transition from Natura naturans, the dynamic activity of God, to Natura naturata, the effects or products of that activity” (208). Hallett agrees that God or substance “exists or is actual as Natura naturata exhaustively and determinately realizing the infinite, indeterminate potency-in-act that is Natura naturans” (144). In other words, attributes and modes are the realizations of substance.
-Infinite Attributes from a
Single Substance
The problem arises when attribute is understood as essence or nature, which is done because attributes could never be understood to be mere qualities. One substance with infinite attributes is in direct opposition to the Cartesian doctrine which stated, “that at most one attribute could belong to a given substance” (Delahunty 118). It appears that there is something contradictory about subscribing to ‘substantival monism and attributival pluralism’ (Delahunty 107). It is also said that stipulating infinite attributes “is equivalent to saying that one and the same subject has two different natures, and this involves a contradiction” (qtd in Delahunty 119). Woolhouse furnishes a solution to these objections, saying, “a substance’s possession of one [attribute] can hardly rule out its possession of another. Moreover, Spinoza’s thought seems to be not just that this does not stand in the way of different attributes belonging to the same substance but, more strongly, that it ultimately necessitates their doing so” (41). Ritchie clarifies that the infinite attributes “are thus merely implications of the illimitable reality of being. This is [Spinoza’s] manner of asserting the inexhaustibility of the universe of existence” (9). Because substance is dynamic reality, as discussed above, it necessarily actualizes itself in attributes. A substance conceived of a ‘being itself’ cannot be limited in its expression so there are infinite attributes. Woolhouse maintains that “the difference between there being many substances each with one attribute and there being one with many is that the former situation lacks a ‘unity’ to be found in the latter; for the only way there could be any ‘union’ between two attributes is for them to belong to the same substance” (44). Thus, Spinoza remains a unified monist.
-Thought and Extension: of God
or human conception
The problem arises because Spinoza’s definition of attribute as “the way in which the intellect perceives the essence of Substance, but the intellect is a mode, belonging to Natura naturata” (Harris 202). If attributes are a result of modal perception, how can they be said to constitute the one substance? The reality of attributes “does not arise from God…but from the different effects which our intellect variously knows and refers to God” (qtd in Delahunty 117). The real problem is not the argument, but the phrasing. Attributes are perceived, but they do not originate from that perception. Humans experience the perception first, but the origination is from substance – and only known about through perception. Perception is how knowledge of the attributes is gained, but it cannot “be the source of existence of the attributes in general” (Harris 207).
Perhaps the strongest objection leveled against Spinoza is that, while proves that there can be no more than one substance, he does not prove that there must be any such thing as substance at all. Charlton explains the problem: “It is not, in fact, too difficult for Spinoza to deny that there are more substances that one; what is important for him is, while denying this, to maintain that there are as many substances as one” (528). The jump in logic occurs when Spinoza declares that one substance could not be cause by another, “therefore that a substance is casua sui, i.e., has necessary existence essentially. But why can’t we…suppose that in fact there are no substances, hence reject the conclusion?” (Loptson 28). Delahunty proceeds in a long and complicated examination of propositions 5 and 7 primarily as well as the rest of book one. In the end, he determines that the argument cannot be made strongly enough (mainly because of problems with the propositions above). Delahunty’s argument is much too complicated to go into here, but his conclusion is that “Spinoza’s proof of substantival monism seems to fail, not because there are too many substances…but because he does not succeed in showing that there is even one” (115). The closest thing to a solution is Loptson’s comparison to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” He resorts to ‘we have perceptions of attributes that must be “an expression of something” (Loptson 31). This solution seems a bit weak, so the topic is still very much up for debate.
This is not really a topic of debate, since it appears in only one article, however the topic is much too unique and interesting not to mention briefly. Bennett breaks down the monist/dualist contrast into a series of questions. He claims that because Spinoza answers that there are two essences (or attributes), he cannot be a strict monist. He translates the note to Book 1 proposition 10 as: “…though two attributes are conceived as distinct – that is, one without the help of the other – yet we cannot conclude from this that they characterize ([apply to, are instantiated by]) two entities or two different substances” (Bennett 380). The important word is ‘characterize,’ but Bennett does not make very clear why this is so different from the usual translation: ‘constitute.’ His conclusion is that if there is a monist/dualist contrast between Spinoza and Descartes, “there ought to be a question to which Descartes’ answer was ‘two’ and Spionza’s ‘one’” (Bennett 379). Bennett examines the question “How many basic kinds of substance are there?” (379). And gives the answers: “Descartes: ‘Two.’ Spinoza: ‘Two; though there is only one substance, and it is of both kinds.” (379). Bennett’s argument is interesting, but very weak – because it appears that Spinoza does distinctly answer ‘one’ and then goes on to differentiate the kinds of expression (attributes) that one substance has.