Abstract
Can one be an early modern rationalist and still have room for the subjective character of human experience? At least prima facie, rationalism and subjectivity seem to conflict. On the one hand, there is rationalism’s commitment to the complete intelligibility of being, clearly expressed in Spinoza’s adherence to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the other, there is our subjective experience of the world, which many view as unique and irreducible. But a rationalist metaphysical enquiry sub specie aeternitatis such as the one pursued by Spinoza appears to exclude such a seemingly arbitrary privileging of a particular finite perspective. In this paper, I argue that we may be too quick in reading Spinoza’s Ethics as simply attempting to develop such “a view from nowhere.” Instead, we should try to conceive of Spinoza’s project as a dynamic interplay between rationalist and empiricist elements, where subjective experience supplements conceptual analysis, rather than being excluded by it.
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Notes
- 1.
Bayle (1965), Entry on “Spinoza”, 288–338.
- 2.
Hegel (1990 [1825/1826]), 163. An important recent exception to this interpretive trend is the work of Ursula Renz, who has convincingly argued that for Spinoza, “subjective experience is explainable, and its successful explanation is of ethical relevance because it makes us wiser, freer, and happier” (Renz [2010], 11). For a more detailed discussion of Bayle’s and Hegel’s reception of Spinoza with a focus on the problem of individuality and selfhood, see Lloyd (1994), 5 ff.
- 3.
Ethics 1p15: G II, 56. Passages in the Ethics are referred to with the following abbreviations: app(-endix), ax(-iom), c(-orollary), d(-efinition), d(-emonstration – when it appears immediately after a proposition number), expl(-ication), le(-mma), pref(-ace), p(-roposition), s(-cholium). For example, E2p8s is the scholium of the eighth proposition of Part II of the Ethics. The translations used are Curley’s for the Ethics, and Shirley’s for all other works.
- 4.
See Renz (forthcoming).
- 5.
As I shall be using it here, the term “subjective experience” does not necessarily imply a first-personal point of view. Rather, as I see it, the contrast in Spinoza is mainly between an objective, divine view that grasps the world sub specie aeternitatis, and an experience of reality that is (a) finite (insofar as it is spatio-temporally determined) and (b) perspectival (insofar as, for Spinoza, any such finite experience is mediated by an experience of one’s own body and mind). Moreover, I take the term “experience” to encompass both external experience (experience of spatio-temporally situated particulars) as well as internal experience (our awareness and reflection of ourselves and our own ideas or mental states) and their phenomenology (insofar as first-personal experience is concerned).
- 6.
See especially Nagel (1986).
- 7.
Ibid., 6.
- 8.
Garrett (2003), 8. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Spinoza was by far not the only early modern philosopher to employ this mode of presentation in his works, even though his application of the geometrical method is certainly one of the most rigorous. Among the more well-known figures of early modern philosophy, Descartes, Hobbes and Pufendorf all advocated and made use of the geometric method to present certain sections of their works. For further discussion, see ibid., 6 ff.
- 9.
There is a long-standing debate about how much of a connection there is between the Ethics’ form and its content. On one end of the spectrum, Harry Wolfson claims that there is “no logical connection” between the substance of Spinoza’s philosophy and the form in which it is presented (Wolfson [1934], I, 55), while on the other end scholars such as Martial Gueroult and Alexandre Matheron take them to be tightly intertwined (see especially Gueroult (1968) and Matheron (1986)).
- 10.
- 11.
TdIE §49: G II, 19. Spinoza expresses the thought that the perfect method must be a reflection on the true idea of God in numerous passages of the TdIE, none of which, however, are without ambiguity. See esp. TdIE §§ 38, 39, 42.
- 12.
See TdIE §38, where Spinoza claims that the idea of God is “given” to us. See also 2p10s of the Ethics, where Spinoza equally claims that the proper order of philosophizing begins with the idea of God, since it is prior to our senses “both in knowledge and in nature”: “[Many] believe either that the nature of God pertains to the essence of created things, or that created things can be or be conceived without God – or what is more certain, they are not sufficiently consistent. The cause of this, I believe, was that they did not observe the proper order of philosophizing. For they believed that the divine nature, which they should have contemplated before all else (because it is prior both in knowledge and in nature) is last in the order of knowledge, and that the things which are called objects of the senses are prior to all” (G II, 93).
- 13.
“Gespräch mit Tschirnhaus über Spinoza’s Ethik”, A VI.3, 385 (notes Leibniz made after Tschirnhaus had conversed with him about the contents of Spinoza’s Ethics). Quoted in Stein (1890).
- 14.
See Della Rocca (2003), esp. 86.
- 15.
4pref: G II, 206.
- 16.
1p25c: G II, 68.
- 17.
G II, 85 f. “NS” refers to the Dutch translation of the Ethics in De nagelate schriften.
- 18.
See Renz (forthcoming), 5. Renz also argues that the character of the axioms support a more dynamic picture of Spinoza’s rationalism. For an extended discussion of the status of the Ethics’ axioms and definitions, see Garrett (2003).
- 19.
For this point, see Renz (forthcoming), 5.
- 20.
1p14: G II, 56.
- 21.
This point is also made by Parkinson (1954), 68.
- 22.
1p16: G II, 60. Cf. Parkinson’s discussion of this objection and possible replies in Parkinson (1954), 69 ff.
- 23.
The objection concerning the notion of a definition was made by Tschirnhaus, who pointed out that Spinoza’s proof presupposes that many properties can be deduced from a single definition. However, Tschirnhaus argues, pointing to the mathematical case, this condition on definition is one that cannot be fulfilled: “In mathematics I have always observed that from anything considered in itself – that is, from the definition of anything – we are able to deduce at least one property; but if we wish to deduce more properties, we have to relate the thing defined to other things. It is only then, from the combination of the definitions of these things, that new properties emerge.” (Ep. 82: Shirley 957.) In Letter 83, Spinoza concedes Tschirnhaus’ point with respect to the mathematical case, but argues that it does not apply to the “real things” the Ethics is concerned with. Tschirnhaus’ objection, Spinoza argues, “may hold good in the case of the most simple things, or in the case of mental constructs (entia rationis) … but not in the case of real things. Simply from the fact that I define God as an Entity to whose essence existence belongs, I infer several properties of him.” (Ep. 83: Shirley 958.) Spinoza’s argument seems to be prone to the same kind of criticism that Leibniz raised against Descartes’ ontological argument, namely: How do we know that a being with an infinite number of properties is in fact possible? According to Leibniz, Descartes’s ontological argument is invalid unless it can be shown that the idea of a supremely perfect being is in fact coherent, and thus possible. The same worry seems to apply to Spinoza’s claim here. For Leibniz’s criticism, see his short essay That a Most Perfect Being Exists (1676): A VI.3, 578.
- 24.
“All the things which follow from the absolute nature of any of God’s attributes have always had to exist and be infinite, or are, through the same attribute, eternal and infinite” (1p21: G II, 65); “Whatever follows from some attribute of God insofar as it is modified by a modification which, through the same attribute, exists necessarily and is infinite, must also exist necessarily and be infinite” (G II, 66).
- 25.
“Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing. Dem.: Singular thoughts, or this or that thought, are modes which express God’s nature in a certain and determinate way” (2p1: G II, 86). “Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing. Dem.: The demonstration of this proceeds in the same way as that of the preceding proposition” (2p2: G II, 86 f). See also Parkinson (1954), who draws the more general conclusion that “[w]ith the introduction of the attributes, therefore, there is a clear break in the deductive development of the Ethics, which has to be repaired by an appeal to experience” (69). It might be objected here that neither 2p1 nor 2p2 appeal to A2 or A4 directly. However, despite this lack of explicit appeal, the progression of Spinoza’s argument further supports the idea that that Spinoza’s demonstration for his claim that thought and extension are attributes of God nonetheless crucially relies on the implicit premise that there are singular thoughts, i.e. “modes which express God’s nature in a certain and determinate way.” For it is precisely our experiencing the existence of such modes that enables Spinoza to further argue that, by 1p25c, these “particular things are nothing but affections of God’s attributes”, and thus that singular thoughts are affections or modifications of one of God’s infinite attributes, namely the attribute of thought. If he had not just stated by way of the axioms that there in fact are singular things of this nature, his argument would never get off the ground.
- 26.
2p8 itself states: “The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God’s infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s attributes” (G II, 91). 2p8 itself does not fulfill any further argumentative function; the only passages that refer to it are 2p8c and 2p8s. 2p8c, by contrast, is central to passages such as 2p9 (which deals with the causal dependence of ideas of particulars), 2p11 (which expounds Spinoza’s concept of the human mind) and 2p45 (which claims that finite minds can have intuitive knowledge). For further discussion of the argumentative function of 2p8c, see Renz (2010), 157 ff.
- 27.
2p8c: G II, 91. According to 2d7, “singular” or particular things are things that are finite and have a determinate existence. If a number of individuals so concur in an action that together they are all the cause of one effect, they are to that extent one singular thing.
- 28.
2p8s: G II, 91.
- 29.
Spinoza draws out the consequences of 1p24 here, where he had argued that while God is a necessary being, for whom no distinction between existence and essence can be made (by 1p20) because God is His own cause, the same does not hold true of the particular things God produces.
- 30.
This is argued at greater length in Renz (2010). The distinction introduced in 2p8 is often read as evidence that a necessitarian interpretation of Spinoza (as advocated by Garrett [1991] and Della Rocca [2003], amongst others) should be rejected. However, such a reading seems to presuppose too narrow a notion of necessity. 2p8 merely makes (or rather, repeats) the claim that the actual existence of finite particulars is not entailed by their essence. Thus, their existence does not involve any essential necessity. Rather, they exist in virtue of their individual causal history. But they still have to exist in virtue of the causal chain leading up to them. Their existence is thus causally necessary all the same. For an extended discussion of the distinction at work here, see Perler (2006).
- 31.
- 32.
For a forceful defense of this point, see Renz (2010), 161.
- 33.
See Della Rocca (2003), 83.
- 34.
Cf. 1p20: G II, 64: “God’s existence and his essence are one and the same.” For a canonical statement of the claim that God is the only being whose existence is identical to His essence, see Thomas Aquinas’ De Ente et Essentia, Chap. 4. An extended discussion and defense of the doctrine can be found in Brower (2009).
- 35.
See 2ax5 for a version of this claim with respect to man in particular.
- 36.
The best evidence for this reading comes from 1p11d, where Spinoza argues that “for each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason, both for its existence and for its nonexistence” (G II, 52).
- 37.
See Spinoza’s argument in 1p20d.
- 38.
See also 2p45s, where Spinoza explicitly distinguishes two ways of regarding the existence of a thing, one in terms of duration, and one in terms of necessary connection. At this point, one might begin to worry that the reading proposed here implies that knowledge of finite particulars, considered under their spatio-temporal aspect, becomes inaccessible to God, and that this in turn conflicts with divine omniscience. I will address this point in the final part of my paper.
- 39.
Moreover, Sprigge (2008) has argued for the related claim that we can apply our knowledge of the essences of things and their causal connections only if we also have some indexical knowledge of these things.
- 40.
2p13: G II, 96.
- 41.
There is an ambiguity in the Latin here which is not present in the English translation: Since Latin has no articles, the Latin term for “body” (corpus) in 2p13 is ambiguous between (a) the indefinite article (“a body”), i.e., some particular body, and (b) the definite article (“the body”), i.e., the human body. On the latter reading, Spinoza would be concerned with the human body in particular, while on the former, he would only be trying to show that the object of the mind is any finite mode of extension. While there is no conclusive evidence to support one reading over the other, there do seem to be a number of considerations that speak in favor of option (b). For instance, both 2p13 and 2ax4, which the demonstration of 2p13 refers to, speaks of “a certain (certus, quoddam) body”. Moreover, many later uses of 2p13 (for example in 2p19d) indicate that 2p13 is about the human body. These are, I think, convincing reasons to prefer the definite article translation. Notice, however, that this translation commits Spinoza 2p13 to a significantly stronger claim: If we choose the indefinite article option (“the object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, or a certain mode of extension which actually exists, and nothing else”), then the proposition merely specifies the attribute that some finite mode (which has been shown in 2p11 to be the object of the human mind) belongs to. In this case, the proof merely needs to supply a criterion by which to identify the attribute. If we assume that the definite article translation (“the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body”) is the correct one, as I will do for the remainder of this paper, then the object in question is a particular body (namely the human body), and not just any finite mode of extension. On this reading, the proof not only needs to supply a criterion by which to identify the attribute, but also a criterion that allows us to distinguish the perception of the particular body that is the object of the mind from the perceptions of other bodies. For a discussion of some evidence for the indefinite article reading, see Levy (2000), 100ff and Della Rocca (1996), 28. However, Della Rocca in the end also opts for the definite article option.
- 42.
G II, 94.
- 43.
See Levy (2000), 95. This raises the question how, according to Spinoza, we can know that our mind exists. Is this something that we only know from experience? Or does Spinoza take it to follow from his proof for the existence of God? One might simply reason as follows: The mind is a mode of God (and thus depends on God for its existence). God exists. Therefore, the mind exists. 2p11 appears to make some gestures into this direction. But note that 2p11 itself crucially relies on our subjective experience in the form of 2ax1 and 2ax3. Moreover, as we have seen in the previous section, Spinoza needs to appeal to our subjective experience in order to argue for the existence of particular kinds of modes.
- 44.
This reconstruction is based on Levy’s (much more detailed) reconstruction and discussion of 2p13d. See Levy (2000), 97–103.
- 45.
Spinoza’s use of the the Latin contingere (“to happen to”; also “to touch”) in 2p9c may be intended to highlight this fact.
- 46.
TdIE, §21: G II, 11. On this point, see also Levy (2000), 103.
- 47.
AT VII, 81: CSM II, 56.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
See Levy (2000), 104 ff., for further discussion of the possible meanings of the term sentire in this context.
- 50.
However, as I will discuss in more detail below, it is not clear whether there is actually room for such a distinction in Spinoza, since the only category of mental states he seems to allow for are ideas (i.e., modes of thought).
- 51.
The scope of this claim is not clear, but it seems most plausible to assume that Spinoza here intends to exclude both ideas of other physical bodies as well as ideas of things that do not fall under the attribute of extension.
- 52.
For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see note 41 above.
- 53.
2p19: G II, 107; see also 2p19 and its corollaries.
- 54.
Spinoza famously holds that while God consists of an infinite number of attributes (see 1d6), the only attributes accessible to human minds (via their modes) are thought and extension (see esp. 2p13 and Ep. 64). Spinoza is thus committed to holding that all mental states are modes of thought, and therefore seems to lack the resources to draw more fine-grained distinctions between such modes (for example, between thoughts proper and feelings).
- 55.
Della Rocca (2014) has suggested that Spinoza could argue that a particular body is mine because the mind “is fundamentally” a representation of my body, and that body provides the point of view in virtue of which my representations of other bodies are mine. Della Rocca’s solution for distinguishing the special feeling we have of our body is thus purely representational: to feel a body is to represent all other things through their effect on this body. But while this might help to ground our experience of a qualitative difference, the argument of 2p13 still needs to rely on our perception that there is such a difference (that can then be further accounted for).
- 56.
See also 1p10s, 1p14d, and 2p5. For further discussion, see Della Rocca (1996), 3 f.
- 57.
See 1p16; 2p3; 2p47.
- 58.
This is also the general line defended by Renz (forthcoming). However, as I discuss in more detail below, it seems to me that our interpretations are ultimately incompatible.
- 59.
- 60.
According to Bartuschat, Spinoza “excludes that what man knows is part of what the infinite intellect knows” since man’s knowledge is that of a “temporally existing being” (Bartuschat [1994], 196). Renz goes further than Bartuschat and denies that God is an epistemic subject that has ideas or knowledge (Renz [2010], 97, 119). She also denies that finite individuals are modes that inhere in God (ibid., 49, 58, 306).
- 61.
On this point see also Nadler (2002), 237 f.
- 62.
Spinoza explicitly states this consequence of his monistic metaphysics in 2p11c: “From this [i.e. from the fact that the mind is nothing but the idea of an actually existing thing] it follows that the human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God. Therefore, when we say that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is explained through the nature of the human mind, or insofar as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, has this or that idea” (G II, 94).
- 63.
Della Rocca calls this the “mind-relativity of content.” According to Spinoza’s famous parallelism thesis in 2p7, each idea, insofar as it is in God’s mind, represents its causal counterpart in the realm of extension, and only this counterpart. However, representation in the human mind differs from representation in God’s mind in that many ideas, insofar as they are in the human mind, are confused or inadequate, insofar as the human mind does not include all the ideas that are the causal antecedents of its ideas (see 2p24d; 2p29s). Conversely, all ideas are necessarily adequate insofar as they are in God’s mind, because God’s mind does contain all ideas (and thus also all causal antecedents to any given idea): “All ideas are in God (by 1p15); and insofar as they are related to God, are true (by [2]p32), and (by [2]p7c) adequate.” For further discussion, see Della Rocca (1996), 44–67.
- 64.
One of these passages is 2p1, where Spinoza claims that “God is a thinking thing” (G II 86). On Renz’s view, these and other passages merely express the claim that all things are intelligible. See Renz (2010), 122.
- 65.
Ibid., 165. Crucially for Renz, Spinoza claims in 2p9c that “[w]hatever happens in the singular object of any idea, there is knowledge [cognitio] of it in God, only insofar as he has the idea of the same object.” The demonstration of 2p9c then further explains that “[w]hatever happens in the object of any idea, there is an idea of it in God (by [2]p3), not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is considered to be affected by another idea of [NS: an existing] singular thing (by [2]p9).” On the interpretation offered by Renz, these passages are meant to restrict what is intelligible from the perspective of an infinite intellect: There is only an idea of something that occurs within a particular object of an idea in God insofar as God has the idea of this particular object (qua particular), not insofar as he is infinite. According to Renz, 2p9c thus expresses an epistemic privilege for our finite perspective: Events taking place in a particular thing, she takes Spinoza to be claiming, are only accessible from the perspective of a “locally situated epistemic subject” (Renz [2010], 165). However, 2p9c in fact seems to me to point to a conclusion very different from –and ultimately contrary to – the one that Renz suggests. In 2p9d, Spinoza operates with a distinction between God “insofar as he is infinite” or “a thinking thing” (i.e., God insofar as he has the attribute of thought and thus constitutes the essence of the human mind as a thinking thing), and God insofar as he is affected by determinate modes of thinking (individual minds and their ideas). He then goes on to argue that when we look at how an idea or mode of thought (such as our mind) is causally affected by other ideas or modes of thought, we should understand these modes as being part of God in the latter way, rather than in the former. In other words: A certain idea can be said to be caused by (and ultimately be contained in) God, insofar as any idea that it stands in a causal relation with is necessarily (by 2p3) also a mode of God. 2p9c then merely claims that Spinoza’s parallelism doctrine adds an additional condition for this containment claim to hold true: Not only need God be viewed as being affected by a determinate idea, but also as being affected by that idea that parallels this very same bodily mode in question (quatenus tantum eiusdem obiecti ideam habet).
- 66.
The passage continues: “For the mind does not know itself except insofar as it perceives ideas of the affections of the body (by [2]p23). But it does not perceive its own body (by [2]p19) except through the very ideas themselves of the affections [of the body], and it is also through them alone that it perceives external bodies ([2]p26). And so, insofar as it has these [ideas], then neither of itself (by [2]p29), nor of its own body (by [2]p27) nor of external bodies (by [2]p25) does it have an adequate knowledge, but only (by [2]p28 and [2]p28s) a mutilated and confused knowledge” (2p29c: G II, 114). This “knowledge from random experience” (experientia vaga) is a subset of “imagination” or “opinion” (opinio, vel imaginatio), the first kind of the three kinds of knowledge (cognitio) which Spinoza distinguishes in 2p40s2 of the Ethics. For an in-depth discussion of experientia vaga, see Gabbey (1996).
- 67.
See esp. 2p16: “The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same time the nature of the external body” (G II, 103).
- 68.
2p25: G II, 111. And, as 2p19 makes clear, neither can such experience provide us with adequate ideas of our own bodies.
- 69.
See esp. 2p41–2p45.
- 70.
2p43s: G II, 125.
- 71.
The Latin term cognitio in Spinoza is usually translated as “knowledge”. However, as noted by Bennett (1984) and Garrett (2010), “cognition” might be a more apt translation, since cognitio for Spinoza includes ideas that he characterizes as “false” or “inadequate”. Renz seems to agree with this point (see Renz [2010], 268 ff.), but nonetheless appears to run the two together in her discussion of 2p9c. (In German, the Latin distinction between cognitio and scientia can be mirrored by distinguishing between Erkenntnis and Wissen. In her discussion of 2p9c, however, Renz does not make any use of that distinction.)
- 72.
“The third kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things (see its def. in 2p40s2), and the more we understand things in this way, the more we understand God (by [5]p24)” (5p25d: G II, 296).
- 73.
2p3: G II, 87. See also 1p16 and 3p1d.
- 74.
See Renz (forthcoming), 8, even though her defense of this claim, is different from (and I think ultimately incompatible with) the view proposed here, especially given her commitment to the complete irreducibility of the subjective perspective.
- 75.
See also 5p29s, where Spinoza explicitly distinguishes the two perspectives.
- 76.
According to Spinoza, intuitive knowledge proceeds from an adequate cognition of God’s essence (his necessarily existing attributes) to an adequate cognition of the effects of this essence (God’s properties), which include the formal and actual essences of finite modes, i.e. of all finite, actually existing things caused by the divine attributes: “In addition to these two kinds of cognition, there is (as I shall show in what follows) another, third kind, which we shall call scientia intuitiva. And this kind of knowing proceeds from an adequate idea of the [NS: formal] essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate cognition of the essence of things.” (2p40s2, G II, 122.) The third kind of knowledge thus views the causal connections between things not in their temporal dimension, but as a conceptual and causal relationship to their essences (God’s attributes of thought and extension) and to the eternal laws of nature.
- 77.
This is also brought out in the shift in perspective in Part V of the Ethics brings about. In certain respects, this last part begins the argument of the Ethics anew, but it no longer presents the first principles from a strictly logical, objective point of view. Instead, it now approaches them from the perspective of the human mind, and is now concerned with the “ethics of the Ethics”, i.e. with the question how our human understanding can lead us to God and freedom. 5p24 (which is derived from 1p25c), for example, could be considered as 1p25c from an individual perspective – the particular thing not insofar as it arises abstractly from first principles, but insofar as it is a particular mode of which we have determinate knowledge, and which leads to our happiness and freedom.
- 78.
In particular, while it seems very clear that Spinoza regards intuitive knowledge as the highest and best kind of cognition, its precise nature is far from transparent. What exactly do the essences of the divine attributes and of finite things amount to, and how precisely does our cognition proceed from the former to the latter? What exactly is its scope? Does it range over everything that is knowable, or are there truths that cannot be known in this way? And what justifies its exalted status over knowledge by reason, which Spinoza regards as equally adequate? For an insightful recent discussion of these and several other issues, see Garrett (2010) and Soyarslan (2011).
- 79.
As Soyarslan (2014) has convincingly argued, it is worth noting that there is also an experiential dimension to this highest kind of knowledge (albeit one that is no longer tied to the spatio-temporal perspectives which constrain the first kind of knowledge), insofar as intuitive knowledge is non-inferential and extends to the essences of things. According to Spinoza, intuitive knowledge lets us “see” or “experience” ourselves as modal expressions of God in a direct and immediate manner. Moreover, it is adequate knowledge of the essence of things, and thus descends to a level of particularity that reason cannot reach. This experiential character of intuitive knowledge comes out clearly in 5p23s, where Spinoza explains that “though it is impossible that we should recollect that we existed before the body – since there cannot be any traces of this in the body, and eternity can neither be defined by time nor have any relation to time – still, we feel and know by experience that we are eternal. For the mind feels those things that it conceives in understanding no less than those it has in the memory. For the eyes of the mind, by which it sees and observes things, are the demonstrations themselves” (G II, 296 [my italics]).
- 80.
Discourse on Metaphysics, §14: AG 46 f.
- 81.
See especially 5p40s, where Spinoza claims that “our mind, insofar as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking, which is determined by another eternal mode of thinking, and this again by another, and so on, to infinity; so that together, they all constitute God’s eternal and infinite intellect” (G II, 306).
- 82.
According to the interpretation presented here, we should thus ascribe to Spinoza the claim that (i) subjective experience is a necessary part of our progress towards the discovery of some of the truths of the Ethics; and also, given our epistemic limitations, the claim that (ii) the continued acceptance of certain truths of experience is necessary for us to be justified in accepting some of the truths of the Ethics; but not the claim that (iii) such experience is necessary for any epistemic subject, such as God, to know the truths of the Ethics.
- 83.
In writing this paper, I have greatly benefitted from the enlightening and extensive feedback I received on its various versions. I am especially grateful to Lilli Alanen, Martin Lenz, Peter Myrdal, Michael Della Rocca, Stephan Schmid, Sanem Soyarslan, Kenneth Winkler, and the audiences at the University of Groningen and Uppsala University, where I had the opportunity to present earlier drafts of this paper.
Bibliography
The following abbreviations have been used in the text:
A. G.W. Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe
AG. G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays
AT. Oeuvres de Descartes
CSM. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
Ep. Spinoza’s Letters
G. Spinoza Opera
TdIE. Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione
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Borcherding, J. (2016). A View from Nowhere? The Place of Subjectivity in Spinoza’s Rationalism. In: Kaukua, J., Ekenberg, T. (eds) Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26914-6_15
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