Journal of the History of Philosophy

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 83 Spinoza. This material is thought to have been left by the editors of the OperaPosthuma. If Monnikhoff had used this copy he would probably also have copied the other letters that accompanied it. Furthermore, Monnikhoff's version is not complete. It breaks off with the words "Deeze zaak schinjt hier mee niet afgedaan le worden.... " (this corresponds to "rein conficere non videtur," Opera IV, 329, line 27), and there is a note in the margin: "Het overige deezere Brief ontbreekt." Thus it appears that Monnikhoff had only an incomplete copy to work from. All this goes to confirm that copies of Spinoza's unpublished writings circulated in the eighteenth century among people interested in his philosophy. One final point of interest. Monnikhoff's manuscript of the Short Treatise is bound together with the notes to the TractatusTheologico-Politicusin a volume that is now in the Hague. On the spine of the volume, the title is given as follows: Benedictus Nagelate That is obviously incomplete, and it has long been supposed that a second volume must exist which, when placed side by side with this one, would complete the rifle. Mounikhoff is known to have possessed other sets of books in which the title was distributed among the volumes. On the spine of the volume I have found, the title reads: De Spinoza Schriften Thus if we put the two together we have: Benedictus De Spinoza Nagelate Schrfften We have here the missing companion volume. Its binding is exactly like the other; both books are bound in vellum with the same design stamped on the outside. The existence of a missing volume was asserted by Wolf in 1910, and perhaps by others before him.s It turns out, however, that Wolf was mistaken in his conjecture about the contents of the missing volume. THOMAS CARSON MARK University o] Cali]ornia,San Diego HUME ON Is AND OUGHT A few years ago, much philosophical ingenuity was unparsimoniously devoted to alleged difficulties in Hume's "is-ought passage" (Treatise, 3,1,1, p. 469).1There is one minor cause for reasonable pnxzlement, it may be conceded; but that was noted long ago by Reid and Selby-Bigge and did not lead them to misunderstand the passage as a whole 8 Spinoza, Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-being, ed. and trans. A. Wolf (London, 1910; reprint, New York, 1963), p. cix. 1 All citations of the Treatise, hereafter T, and of the Enquiries, hereafter EU and EM, will refer to Selby-Bigge's editions. 84 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in the ways in which it became fashionable to misunderstand it a generation ago. Why then say more on an essentially unproblematical passage? Because there is still a belief in some respected centers of ph//osophy that the passage rea//y does give rise to the k/rid of problems which most of the contributors to yesterday's debate took to be both applicable to the passage and serious for the understanding of it. To dispel that false belief, or at least to show that it is false and unfounded, this present study will demonstrate that the following four presuppositions---some or all of which were made by most of yesterday's debaters depend in turn on claims which were either false or unintelligible within Hume's system. 1* Hume in the is-ought passage is airing a worry about the logical derivation of moral judgments. 2* Hume believed that such judgments took the form of strict moral oughts which, though themselves intelligible, could not be derived logically from statements of fact, i.e., from statements involving one or other of the philosophical relations which exhaustively spell out "is," as this can be used in philosophically intelligible discourse. 3" Hume was interested in the nature of such strict moral oughts, which he thought both genuine and important. 4a* Hume thought that such oughts expressed relations of a peculiar kind, and was fight to do so, OF 4b* Hume thought that such oughts expressed relations of a peculiar kind, whereas they are to be understood as statements involving attributes of a peculiar kind. All five assertions have been numbered with...