The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...) readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...) readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 2 Seiten: 196-233.

The article explores the idea that according to Spinoza finite thought and substantial thought represent reality in different ways. It challenges “acosmic” readings of Spinoza's metaphysics, put forth by readers like Hegel, according to which only an infinite, undifferentiated substance genuinely exists, and all representations of finite things are illusory. Such representations essentially involve negation with respect to a more general kind. The article shows that several common responses to the charge of acosmism fail. It then argues that we must (...) distinguish the well-founded ideality of representations of finite things from mere illusoriness, insofar as for Spinoza we can have true knowledge of what is known only abstractly. Finite things can be seen as well-founded beings of reason. The article also proposes that within Spinoza's framework it is possible to represent a finite thing without drawing on representations of mind-dependent entities. (shrink)

The paper examines a relatively neglected element of Spinoza's theory of mind-body relations: the intentional relation between human minds and bodies, which for Spinoza constitutes their “union”. Prima facie textual evidence suggests, and many readers agree, that because for Spinoza human minds are essentially ideas of bodies, Spinoza is also committed to an ontological and explanatory dependence of certain properties of human minds on properties of bodies, and thus to a version of materialism. The paper argues that such dependence would (...) contradict Spinoza's key epistemological commitments, including the explanatory closure of mental and physical realms, and Spinoza’s claim that all knowledge is knowledge of a thing's causes. The paper argues that Spinoza's dual-reality theory of representation allows us to interpret the intentional relation between human minds and bodies in a way that does not commit Spinoza to a problematic dependence of minds on bodies. This is possible if we take Spinoza's references to properties of bodies in his account of the human mind as references to objectively real bodies, that is as references to the immanent representational content of human minds. (shrink)

The paper offers a new account of Spinoza's conception of “substance”, the fundamental building block of reality. It shows that it can be demonstrated apriori within Spinoza's metaphysical framework that (i) contrary to Idealist readings, for Spinoza there can be no substance that is not determined or modified by some other entity produced by substance; and that (ii) there can be no substance (and hence no being) that is not a thinking substance.

Spinoza claims both that a thing’s essence is identical to power, and that emotions are fundamentally variations in this power. The conjunction of these two theses creates difficulties for his metaphysics and ethics alike. The three main worries concern the coherence of Spinoza’s accounts of essence, diachronic identity, and emotional “bondage,” and put in question his ability to derive ethical and psychological doctrines from his metaphysical claims. In response to these difficulties, this paper offers a new interpretation of Spinoza’s account (...) of affects and his doctrine of the identity of power and essence. It shows that what is fundamental to his ontology of affects is the relation of modification or determination, a relation central to his ontology more generally. The paper argues that we cannot simply identify power and essence but should instead take affects to modify or determine essences as particular exercises of power (particular desires, appetites, and volitions). That is, Spinozistic essences should be viewed as intrinsically determinable, with affects supplying the determinations, and as consisting not in rigid sets of determinate properties, but in ranges of variable properties. (shrink)

The problem of universals is one of the oldest problems in philosophy. One of the oddities of Spinoza's view of universals is that he endorses both Realism and Nominalism. An analogous Realist account can be given for all thinking things: all ideas, really do have something in common, intrinsically, constitutively, and mind‐independently: namely, thought as a determinable, qualitative, essential substantial nature. Spinoza's accounts of the nature of the human mind and of human emotions both can be read as accounts of (...) such relative common properties. Spinoza's most detailed case study of a mind‐dependent universal whose idea is constructed through abstraction and comparison can be found in his account of the will. Spinoza also often implies that ideas of universals and abstractions have a lower epistemic value than thought that deals with particulars alone. (shrink)

Commentators standardly ascribe to Spinoza a belief in an exceptionless conceptual closure of mental and physical realms: no intention can allow us to understand a bodily movement, no bodily injury can make intelligible a sensation of pain. This counterintuitive doctrine, most often now referred to as Spinoza's 'attribute barrier', has weighty repercussions for his views on intelligibility, nature of the mind, identity, and causality. I argue against the standard reading of the doctrine, by showing that it produces an inconsistent epistemological (...) picture, contradicting Spinoza's theory of mind and his commitment to universal intelligibility. The alternative account I propose is also philosophically more compelling and plausible as an account of thought in its essential intentionality. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of parallelism. It argues Spinoza reinterprets the ancient doctrine of metaphysical sympathy among ostensibly disconnected and distant beings in terms of fully intelligible relations of 1) identity between formal and objective reality, and in terms of 2) "real identity," grounded in Spinoza's substance-monism. Finally, the paper argues against the standard reading of mind-body pairs as "numerically identical".

Recent literature on Spinoza has emphasized his commitment to universal intelligibility, understood as the claim that there are no brute facts. We draw attention to an important but overlooked element of Spinoza's commitment to intelligibility, and thereby question its most prominent interpretation, on which this commitment results in the priority of conceptual relations. We argue that such readings are both incomplete in their account of Spinozistic intelligibility and mistaken in their identification of the most fundamental relation. We argue that Spinoza (...) is one of the first moderns to address the problem of conditions of intelligibility, and show that, in his metaphysics, expressive relations are best understood as relations of dependence for intelligibility: what a thing ‘expresses’ is its condition of intelligibility, that which determines how, through what concepts, it can be conceived. (shrink)

Despite its generic title, Yakira’s Spinoza and the Case for Philosophy has a specific and idiosyncratic focus: Spinoza’s mind-body doctrine, in the context of both an ontology of thought and a search for what Spinoza calls “salvation.” The book will be of value to those interested in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind and epistemology, especially in the context of his moral theory.Yakira’s discussion of Spinoza’s mind-body doctrine is thought-provoking, confronting head-on not just well-known puzzles, but also those dark elements of Spinoza’s (...) philosophy of mind that are crucial to his view but rarely discussed. What does it mean to say that the mind is the idea of the body? How does.. (shrink)

Reconceiving Spinoza, by Samuel Newlands. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. x + 283.

Volume 98, Issue 2, June 2020, Page 413-416.