bell on spinoza

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Jeffrey Bell: Historical Ontology Spinoza Style

Posted on March 31, 2011l

In my post on historical ontology over at the new APPS blog (here), I anticipated the followingcriticism: how is the multiplicity related to actual beliefs and states of affairs? Are you notappealing to some mysterious aspect of reality, a pure becoming so to speak, that transcends

the actual, in order to account for how what we actually know becomes other? Is this notcontrary to the very spirit of Spinozism to take immanence seriously, and to take it all the way toits natural conclusions? This is a variation on a criticism that is often d irected at Deleuzestheory of the virtual (most notably by Badiou as I discusshere). Fortunately or not, I was sparedthis criticism to my post, but it still seems appropriate to address it for I think it clarifies a numberof points. This also gives me the opportunity to deliver on a long overdue promissory note Ioffered Steven Shaviro in my response to one of his posts (here) that was itself in response tomy post on eternity and duration in Spinoza (here). Some differences will likely remain, buthopefully whats at stake will be clearer, and with luck Shaviro will feel Ive made good on thepromise.

This post will be long, though its likely to be my last on Spinoza for some time. In fact, this will

probably be my final blog post at this blog for a while (many other obligations are piling up,though Ill likely post over at the New APPS blog on occasion). I may make one final postsummarizing some of my thoughts about how blogging has fit into (or not) my philosophicalwork, but most importantly the blog has become, for me at least, a vehicle that compels me towrite more, to come up with something to say. Now this might seem to be a good thing but it isnot, for I agree with what Deleuze says, in a Nietzschean vein,

What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there achance of framing the rare, or even rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.

With this caveat, therefore, and with utter irony, Ill now attemp t to do good on what I hadpromised Shaviro in my earlier post.

To recall what was said in my historical ontology post, I argued that for Hume we

do not begin with the distinction between a natural world and a subject who reacts to andengages with this world, but rather we begin with a propensity, a process, and the distinctionbetween subject and object, self and world, are themselves effects that are inseparable fromthese ongoing propensities and processes. The inseparability of whatis from the processes thatactualize whatis is what I call historical ontology.

On this reading of Hume, Hume is following what Spinoza identifies as the proper order ofphilosophizing, which for Spinoza entails beginning with the nature of God rather than withidentifiable, determinate objects (I discuss this at greater lengthhere). My use of historicalontology to express the inseparability of what is from the processes that actualize what is thusbecomes, in the context of Spinoza, the inseparability of God from determinate, singular things.But his is for many a damning problem for Spinozas thought, and one from which his

philosophy is unable to be extricated (Leibniz, Hegel, and Russell offer different versions of thiscriticism). So my initial problem, it appears, has simply been displaced.

To sketch a response, and thus to sketch an understanding of historical ontology la Spinoza,we can turn to this key passage from the Ethics:

The idea of a singular thing which actually exists has God for a cause not insofar as he isinfinite, but insofar as he is considered to be affected by another idea of a singular thing whichactually exists; and of this [idea] God is also the cause, insofar as he is affected by anotheridea, and so on, to infinity. 2P9
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Stated in its simplest terms, there is an infinite chain and web of singular things inseparablefrom the idea of a singular thing which actually exists. As a consequence, we can never know asingular thing completely. This is not because there is a mysterious, transcendent reality fromwhich we are barred access, but it is rather for the more pedestrian reason that we, as singularfinite modes ourselves, simply cant know everything. This is why, for Spinoza, if we do beginwith our ideas of singular things, with determinate objects, we are following the improper order

of philosophizing. For those who start with ideas of singular things then, according to Spinoza,when afterwards they directed their minds to contemplating the divine nature, the could think ofnothing less than of their first fictions. 2P10S. The crucial question, then, is how and why weare not simply condemned to our first fictions, or to our second, third, etc., fictions as weconstruct more elaborate and detailed accounts of singular things. The short answer to thisqestion is that Gods nature as the infinite enjoyment and power of existing is not to beidentified with the determinate ideas and singular things themselves but with their continuedpower to continue existing in relation o other singular things, singular things that may very wellundermine the fixed pattern of speeds and slownesses of bodies that constitute or composeone body or Individual 2P13Def., and hence these other singular things may bring about thedissolution and death of this individual. It is important to remember that for Spinoza Godspower is his essence itself 1P34. Similarly as we come to know more about nature it is not, for

Spinoza, the increase in fictions, wither in number or complexity of structural relations, thatmatters most (though it matters as we will see), but rather it is the power inseparable from thisincrease, the power that is Gods essence and which made this increase possible. This ishistorical ontology, Spinoza style, and it accounts in part for the importance of Spinozas claimthat The human Mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the more capable,the more its body can be disposed in a great many ways 2P14.

We must tread carefully here and avoid conflating two conceptions of power which reflect thetwo orders of philosophizing. At 4P5, for instance, Spinoza claims The force and growth of anypassion, and its perseverance in existing, are not defined by the power by which we strive topersevere in existing [which is the power we have in common with God's essence, and hencethe importance of common notions for Spinoza, as Deleuze notes in his reading, or with whatbodies have in common - namely the power of existing], but by the power of an external causecompared with our own. For the passions, therefore, it is a determinate, singular cause distinctfrom ourselves as a determinate, singular thing (or Individual) which accounts for the rise andperseverance of a given passion. In the transition from sadness to joy, for example, we begin tomove from relations between the actual and determinate to the poser inseparable from andcommon to the continued existence of each and every singular thing, to infinity. Deleuze coinsthe concept counter-articulation to highlight this very Spinozist move in his own work (seeespecially Logic of Sense).

But the move to joy is only the first step in this process. Joy is, as Spinoza defines it, a passionby which the Mind passes to a greater perfection in contrast to Sadness whereby the Mindpasses to a lesser perfection 3P11S. This scholium is in support of 3P11 which states that anything that increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our Bodys power of acting, increases or

diminishes, aies or restrains, our Minds power of thinking. And yet this move to Joy is a ferstand crucial step for while Joy is a passion it is nonetheless the passion that accompanies anincrease in the Bodys/Minds perfection and powers; it is simply that these powers are againrelative, as is the case with all passions, to an external cause compared with our own.

The step beyond Joy is what Spinoza discusses most in the controversial part 5 of the Ethics.This becomes apparent early on when, in 5P2, Spinoza argues that, If we separate emotions,or affects, from the thought of an external cause, and join them to other thoughts, then the Love,or Hate, toward the external cause is destroyed. This includes Joy as well since it too, as


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Spinoza adds in the Demonstration, is accompanied by the idea of an external cause. Theseother thoughts that free us from the passions are thoughts determined by reason and theintuitive love of God who, for Spinoza, is without passions and is not affected with any affect ofJoy or Sadness 5P17. It is this move to the power of reason that affirms, without compromise,the power we have in common with Gods infinite power and enjoyment of existing, and thusSpinoza will repeatedly make comments such as the following: every action to which we are

determined from an affect which is a passion, we can be determined by reason, without theaffect 3P59; I call him free who is led by reason alone 3P68Dem; and finally, A free manthings nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death.

Despite the move to reason and to thoughts beyond Joy or any passion, our reason isnonetheless ourreason, or it is a thought inseparable from a singular, finite Mind. This is thehistorical ontology, Spinoza style, I mentioned earlier, though perhaps it is more fully clarifiednow. The infinite enjoyment and power of existing that is common to the power of finite singularminds when these minds are determined by reason is nonetheless the power of singular thingsthemselves. It is not some mysterious, transcendent power that is in some sense external tosingular things. To think in these terms would be to succumb to the passions and to theimagination of fictions again rather than engaging in a meditation on life. This is why towardsthe very end of the Ethicsitself, at 5P39, Spinoza claims that He who has a Body capable of agreat many things has a Mind whose greatest part is eternal. This follows upon Spinozasearlier comments that we feel and know by experience that we are eternal 5P23S and 5P23itself: The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of itremains which is eternal. These comments have caused much consternation among Spinozascommentators, and its perhaps not clear that my historical ontology reading of Spinoza offersmuch relief. If Gods eternal and infinite power of existing is inseparable from singular things butis not to be confused with them in that eternity is to be differentiated from duration, then howcan a singular thing, in this case the Mind, be said to persist when the Mind itself is supposedto be nothing less than the idea of the Body? Moreover, it also seems that Spinoza isinappropriately exporting a durational term, persists, into his discussion of that which is eternal.It is perhaps no wonder then that these claims have caused many to throw up their hands andturn away from these late passages of the Ethics.

One way of possibly reading what is going on here is to note that for Spinoza the infinite powerand enjoyment of existing is neither one or multiple. That is, this power is not the power of anumerically One God. Spinoza is quite clear in arguing that anyone who thinks of God as Onemisunderstands Gods nature(in Letter 50, for example, Spinoza says that anyone who callsGod one or single has no true idea of God). It is also clear that Gods infinite power is not to beconfused with the determinate, singular things and modes themselves (substance, after all, isdifferentiated from modes in that it is conceived through itself while modes are not). Spinoza isthus not a pantheist in the traditional sense of the term. And yet Gods infinite power is fullydifferentiatedmore to the point, Gods infinite powerand enjoyment of existing affirms allpossible differences and is thus best understood in terms of what Deleuze will call multiplicity.Gods power is a multiplicity that is irreducible to the identity of the one or the multiple. There

are thus differences within Gods infinite power but as a multiplicity these differences are not tobe confused with the differences between determinate modes in duration, and yet thesedifferences are real. It is in this sense that I think one can understand Spinozas claim thatsomething of the Mind persists after the death of the Body. So heres the rub: inseparable fromeach individual, determinate thing is the eternal power of God as multiplicity of differences, amultiplicity of pre-individual singularities, as Deleuze puts it, and thus there is an eternaldifference that persists inseparable from the determinate and determinable individuals that areliable to many variations and which we can never fully possess 5P20S, as Spinoza put it in theEthics, following through on how he begins the TIE. Although Spinoza did not speak of


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multiplicities or of ontology in the way that Whitehead and then Deleuze later would, it seems tome such a reading is perfectly consistent with Spinozas intentions and that, moreover,Spinozas historical ontology, as I understand it, is integral to Spinozas ethical project.

Jeffrey Bell: Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata

Posted on July 24, 2010

In the next few posts Id like to develop a few arguments concerning Spinozas method, hencethe title of this post, then move on to Spinozas notion of substance as a radical aberrantmonism, and finally touch upon the third kind of knowledge as the solution to the problems withwhich Spinoza began his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. These will be sketches ofarguments, or trial runs so to speak, and I will not address the voluminous secondary literatureto the extent a published argument would need to do so. This blog is for me a working blog, inthe same vein asShaviro, and not a depository for finished work, so feel free to point out thedead ends Im venturing into, or point out secondary sources, etc., that should not be ignored, orthat have already said what Im saying here.

As I pointed out in Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos, Spinoza begins his Treatise on theEmendation of the Intellect(hereafter TIE) and the latter half of part 5 of the Ethics with thesame concern: namely, to show how we can overcome suffering and misery and live a good life.The first paragraph of the TIE reads as follows:

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarilyencountered in daily life, and I realized that all things which were the source and object of myanxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves in so far as the mind was influenced by them,I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable ofcommunicating itself and could alone effect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, infact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous andsupreme joy to all eternity.

As Spinoza moves into the latter half of part 5 of the Ethics, at 5P20S, a similar concern isexpressed:

it should be noted that sickness of mind and misfortunes take their origin especially from toomuch love toward a thing which is liable to many variations and which we can never fully

possess.

There are two points to make right off the bat. First, in both cases what concerns Spinoza ishow the mind is influenced by things, its attachment to things, especially things which are liableto many variations and which we can never fully possess. Secondly, Spinoza begins the TIEwith a classical ethical concern how to live a good life which then becomes the very title ofhis masterpiece. This fact should not be overlooked and as a result as we come to anunderstanding of Spinozas metaphysics we should remember to situate it into Spinozas

broader ethical concerns. The ethical claims at the end of the Ethics are not to be understood asan addendum to Spinozas metaphysical project, and an addendum Spinoza would have beenbetter to have left out of the work entirely (as Jonathan Bennett has argued); to the contrary, ifthe Ethics is to be interpreted as an effort to realize the efforts with which Spinoza began theTIE, then the ethical claims ought instead to be placed at the center of Spinozas project in theEthics.

But is Spinoza continuing in the Ethics with an effort to realize the task he set for himself inbeginning the TIE? I have argued that this is indeed what Spinoza is doing in the Ethics. The
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subsequent question then is why Spinoza abandoned the TIE and started over with the Ethics,developing the arguments this time by way of an axiomatic, geometric method (OrdineGeometrico Demonstrata)? To begin to answer this question involves understanding how themind itself is related to things, and in particular to the eternal truths that will eventually emergeas the way to move beyond the sickness of mind that results when we become overly attachedto that which we can never fully possess. In the TIE Spinozas effort was to demonstrate how a

finite, discrete mind could come to fully know and possess an eternal, timeless truth. WhenSpinoza comes to an understanding of truth itself he claims that it is nothing but the objectiveessence itself, i.e., the mode by which we are aware of the formal essence is certainty itself.

And from this, again, it is clear that, for the certainty of the truth, no other sign is needed thanhaving a true idea (35, II/15). In other words, and to avoid the skeptical argument of criterion,Spinoza argues that the truth of an idea does not depend upon some independent criterion ormethod which will verify and justify this truth, which would lead to the skeptical argument of what

justifies this independent criterion, and so on; instead, the very mode in which a true idea isgrasped is the truth and certainty of this idea. But how are we to know whether the very modein which a true idea is grasped is the truth and certainty of this idea? Key here for Spinoza is tobegin with true definitions. As Spinoza puts it, that Method will be good which shows how themind is to be directed according to the standard of a given true idea (38, II/15), and these are

to be the true and legitimate definitions. Thus, late in the TIE Spinoza returns to the knowledgeof eternal things and claims that

When the mind attends to a thoughtto weigh it, and deduce from it, in good order, the thingslegitimately to be deduced from it if it is false, the mind will uncover the falsity; but if it is true,the mind will continue successfully, without any interruption, to deduce true things from it. (104,II/37-8).

It is therefore the activity of the mind itself, whether unimpeded or impeded from true, legitimatedefinitions, that is the only foundation for Spinoza upon which the truth of our thoughts is to bedetermined. But this is precisely where problems begin. If the axiomatic method is to succeedon the basis of true and legitimate definitions, it will be because of the power of the mind toproceed, without any interruption, to deduce true things from these definitions; and yet Spinoza

admits to lacking a clear understanding of the powers of the mind, and hence the proper placefor the mind to begin upon its axiomatic path:

But so far we have had no rules for discovering definitions. And because we cannot give themunless the nature, or definition, of the intellect, and its power are known, it follows that either thedefinition of the intellect must be clear through itself, or else we can understand nothing. It isnot, however, absolutely clear through itself (107, II/38).

In the final paragraphs of the TIE Spinoza attempts to work through this problem, to provide away for understanding the powers of the mind. He begins first with an effort to understand themind by way of the properties of the mind. Early in the TIE, however, Spinoza ruled out thisapproach. When Spinoza contrasts knowing something through itself or through its proximatecause such as its properties, Spinoza favors the former and criticizes Descartes for

understanding the mind in terms of its proximate, transcendent cause (i.e., God), and thus onecan see he would resist reverting to that solution himself. As Spinoza would claim later in theShort Treatise, properties, or Propria, do indeed belong to a thing, but never explain what it is.(ST 1.vi.6). What Spinoza needs, therefore, and what was lacking for him in the TIE, is a way ofunderstanding how the knowledge of the eternal and infinite could be founded upon the essenceof a our singular, finite mind rather than upon something that transcends this mind (Propria, forexample). Because of the dissatisfaction with the alternatives he had before himself in the TIEhe would abandon this work and then, in the Ethics, approach them from a different perspective.


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Of the few commentators to attempt to nail down precisely why Spinoza abandoned the TIE andmoved on to the Ethics, Deleuze, in his Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, offers a simpleexplanation: when he discovers and invents the common notions, Spinoza realizes that thepositions of the Treatise on the Intellectare inadequate in several respects, and that the wholework would have to be revised and rewritten. (pp. 120-1). We can understand the implicationsof this discovery, and the resultant axiomatic method that emerges in the Ethics, if we recall the

previous post on Deleuzian supervenience (a now slightly modified and correctedpost). In hiseffort to understand the powers of the mind and its ability to move through an axiomatic processfrom true and legitimate definitions to further truths, and hence to escape the minds attachmentto things which are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess, Spinozaencountered a similar problem to Lewis as Lewis sought to use the tools of modal logic andsemantics to move beyond the correlationist trap (though of course Lewis would not have usedthis terminology). In short, the common notions are neither to be understood as the clearlydefined truths and definitions with which the axiomatic method begins, nor are they the truthsone arrives at after successfully moving through the processes of deduction. They are, instead,to use again the terminology of the previous post, a zone of objective indetermination (theproblematic) upon which the axiomatic method supervenes and which it is nonethelessirreducible to. This accounts for another aspect of Spinozas method that Deleuze also stresses;

namely, the role the scholia play in the midst of the axiomatic deductions. For Deleuze the useof the geometric method involves no problems at all (DR 323, n.21) and it is for this reason thatSpinoza, on Deleuzes reading, interspersed the scholia into the axiomatic deductions of theEthics in order to fuel the necessity and inventiveness of the geometric method by superveningupon problems of the scholia. And it is for this reason as well that Spinoza begins his Ethics notwith a stated ethical concern as he did in the TIE, but with six definitions that lead to thedefinition of God as substance: By God I mean an absolutely infinite being; that is, substanceconsisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. (D6).Substance, in other words, is to be understood not as an axiomatic given from which theremaining deductions follow, but rather as the problematic upon which the axiomatic deductionssupervene. And it is with this approach in hand that Spinoza will attempt to address the ethicalconcerns with which he began the TIE. The next post will begin to sketch how this works.

Jeffrey Bell: Questions of Substance

Posted on July 28, 2010

To treat Spinozas understanding of substance and how substance in turn relates to theattributes, God, and the modes, is far beyond the scope of a single post perhaps even anentire manuscript but a few suggestions will be offered that follow through on arguments madein previous posts (hereandhere). As usual, feel free to jump in with a comment (or email me ifyou prefer), no matter how far after the post date it might be. Ill no doubt still be dealing withquestions of substance and can use all the help I can get!

Before addressing Spinozas unique and truly radical understanding of substance it will behelpful to turn to Aristotles. Aristotle, like Spinoza, understands substance as that whichindividuates something and determines what it is to be that thing; that is, the essence of thething. Substance is also not to be confused with matter, for Aristotle, since as pure potentialitymatter can assume contrary forms (see Metaphysics 1050b28, the same thing [as matter] canbe potentially both contraries at the same time), whereas substance determines what it is to bea particular thing and it cannot be other than that thing. Spinoza argues along very similar lines.Substance, as attributive substance, cannot be conceived in any other way than through
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themselves. This latter point is crucial since the attributes, on Spinozas reading, are radicallydistinct from one another and can be understood solely through themselves and not in theirrelations, whether relations of compatibility or incompatibility, with any other attributes. Theattributes are thus not to be understood in the manner of conceptual determinations, wherebywhat it is to be this determinate attribute involves a relationship to what it is not. It is indeed truethat Spinoza famously claimed that all determination is negation, but this form of determination

is what characterizes, as an earlier post sketched (here), the actuality of modes rather than thereality of the attributes as substance. Aristotle, by contrast, did understand substance as aconceptual determination, and hence in understanding this determination one can subsequentlyaffirm, for example, that a dog, as dog and unlike a human being, cannot be happy since a dogis not rational. Spinozas ontology of substance is therefore a truly affirmative ontology ofimmanence since substance cannot be conceived by way of anything other than itself (hence byanything transcendent) nor does it entail any negation. It is no wonder then that Deleuzefrequently referred to himself as a Spinozist.

But what then is the relationship between substance and the attributes if it is not one ofconceptual determination? Ill make two passes, two arguments, to attempt to answer thisquestion. The first will be Deleuzes largely Gueroult-inspired answer. The second Ill attempt totease out of Spinozas texts alone. In Deleuzes review essay of Gueroults first volume onSpinozas Ethics, Deleuze argues that what is important about Gueroults approach is that itdoesnt begin with the idea of God (God enters the scene with the sixth definition and the ninth,tenth and eleventh propostions). Does this mean that the first six definitions and eightpropositions are inessential to Spinozas project mere preliminary work Spinoza simply had toget out of the way before the real work began? For Gueroult and for Deleuze the answer is adefinitive no. When the answer is yes, Deleuze argues, we get

two misreadings of the attribute: 1) the Kantian illusion that makes attributes forms orconcepts of the understanding, and 2) the neo-Platonic vertigo that makes attributes alreadydegraded emanations or manifestations.

It is at this point where the nature of the attributes as conceived through themselves, or thelogic of real distinction in contrast to the logic of numerical distinction, comes into play. Theattributes are indeed really distinct from one another but they are not numerically distinct. Wehave difference without negation, or with the attributes we have what Deleuze will call asubstantive multiplicity:

The logic of real distinction is a logic of purely affirmative difference and without negation.Attributes indeed constitute an irreducible multiplicity, but the whole question is what type ofmultiplicity. The problem is erased if the substantive multiplicity is transformed into twoopposed adjectives (multiple attributes and one substance).

We are back with the problematic, with a substantive multiplicity, and thus to understand God asabsolutely infinite substance we need also to understand how God is related to the problematic,to substantive multiplicity. We gain a sense of how Deleuze and Guattari understand thisrelationship when they claim, inA Thousand Plateaus, that God is a lobster, a double

articulation. It is all too easy to underestimate the philosophical importance of this claim. We seeit at work in the context of Deleuzes essay on Gueroult, for example, where the first eightpropositions correspond to the first articulation; or, as Deleuze puts it, the first eightpropositions represent a first series through which we ascend to the differential constitutiveelements the attributes. As Deleuze had stressed earlier in the essay, there is no ascensionfrom attributes to substanceto absolutely infinite substance; rather, there is an ascensionthrough a regressive analytic process to the differential constitutive elements themselves, tothe substantive multiplicity. Then there is the second articulation, the second series found in the
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9th-11thpropositions through which, Deleuze argues, the idea of God integrates theseelements and makes clear it can be constituted only by all these elements together. Theattributes, as a multiplicity of incommensurable and really distinct entities, come to be integratedby the power of causa sui whereby essence is the cause of the existence of substance and thecause of the other things that derive from it. To clarify (I hope), the regressive analytic processarrives at the attributes as constitutive elements by deriving them from the affirmation of infinite

substance as conceived only through itself, showing that any determinate modification oraffection of substance is not conceived through itself but through another, and hence the reallydistinct multiplicity of attributes; and then the integration of these attributive substancesconstitutes the existence of an absolutely infinite substance God. Understood in this way, Godas the power of causa sui is both the condition that enables the regressive analytic process thatleads to a multiplicity of really distinct attributes first articulation and the conditioned that isthe integration of this multiplicity second articulation. God is self-caused, as Spinoza argues,or God is a lobster, a double articulation, as Deleuze and Guattari argue.

I now want to make the second pass, the second articulation so to speak, and in doing sohopefully clarify my take on Deleuzes reading of Spinoza. First, I must admit a fondness forH.F. Halletts interpretation of substance as absolutely indeterminate, or we might sayobjectively indetermined to refer to an earlier post. Halletts reading is by no means theconsensus reading, but there are two important things going for it. First, since God is defined asabsolutely infinite (1D6), God can in no way be limited or be in any way determinate, for reasonsmentioned above. This is also why God is absolutely infinite rather than infinite in its own kind,as the attributes are, since this would require being a determinate form of infinite and hence aform that could(when understood conceptually by way of the understanding namely theinfinite mode of understanding) be related to what it is not, what is other than it. Our secondreason follows from a claim Spinoza makes in a letter to Jelles (letter 50) that anyone who callsGod one or single has no true idea of God because, as weve alread y noted, all determinationis negation. With this in place lets turn to the scholium to 2P7 the proposition that sets forththe famous parallelism of ideas and things. In the scholium to this proposition Spinoza says thatthe thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which isnow comprehended under this attribute, now under that. To clarify by way of an example,Spinoza claims that a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also inGod, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Despite thetwo ways of conceiving a circle, as an extended circle actually existing in nature or the idea ofthis circle, they each reflect one and the same order, or one and the same connection ofcauses. Spinoza then reminds the reader that the idea we have of the circle is only as a modeof thought, a mode caused by another mode, and so on to infinity, and the circle as extension iscaused by another mode, the drawing hand, and so on. He concludes this scholium by statingthat God is really the cause [of the parallel order of causes] insofar as he consists of infiniteattributes. For the present, I cannot explain these matters more clearly. Gueroult will argue thatthis missing explanation is to be found in 2P21S and in 3P2S, but what one finds there is simplya reference to 2P7S and not an explanation of the manner in which God is really the cause ofthe parallel order of mental and physical causes. Needless to say, there has been a large bodyof literature devoted to trying to make sense of 2P7 and provide the explanation Spinozadoesnt offer.

It is at this point where Deleuzes emphasis upon Gods essence being Gods power as self-cause, as double articulation, or what I would call the power of self-ordering becoming, comes inas a possible explanation. As absolutely indeterminate substance, God as the power to exist is,in the first articulation, the power to exist in infinitely many ways, and hence the absolutelyindeterminate is drawn into an infinite number of ways of actualizing the absolutelyindeterminate that is, the multiplicity of attributes that are neither one nor multiple. In the


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second articulation these ways are actualized as a series of infinite causation, wherebydeterminate existents require the existence of an other determinant existent, and so on forexample, the series of the modes of thought and the series of the modes of extension.

To bring this already long post to an end I want briefly to tie some of the points to what was saidin earlier posts by addressing a few questions (Im not being exhaustive here of course):

Is God a being, or can we read Heideggers ontological difference into Spinoza wherebyGod is the Being that is not to be confused with any beings?

Put bluntly, no, God is a being. However, as the double articulation makes clear, coupled withHalletts reading of Spinoza, God is a being whose essence is the power to exist (see 1P11S),and this power is absolutely indeterminate. This is in sharp contrast to Aristotle for whomessence is not an absolutely indeterminate power to exist but rather a determinate form ofexistence. There is no place for causa sui in Aristotles thought. Therefore, while God is thesingular and unique being whose essence entails an absolutely infinite power of existing, thispower of existing, as Deleuze notes, is neither predetermined by ideas or models in theunderstanding nor is it a power separate and distinct from ways of existing, from attributivesubstances. Gods being contains no other reality than the attributes, and yet Gods beingexceeds our everyday understanding of beings insofar as it consists of an infinite number ofattributes while we are only aware of two (thought and extension). This brings me to the secondquestion.

Is God the anhypothetical absolute that serves as the foundation for Spinozas deductivemethod (his Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata)?

Yes, but here too the axiomatic method that begins with God as an anhypothetical absolutesupervenes upon the regressive analytic that resulted in a multiplicity of attributes that areneither one nor multiple. To restate this in earlier terms, the second articulation that gives usGod as an integration of the multiplicity of attributes does indeed give us a foundation for theaxiomatic method, but since it is a foundation that supervenes upon the problematic andobjectively indeterminate multiplicity of attributes, this axiomatic method that follows will be bothnecessary for and insufficient to the task of determining the objectively indetermined (or theabsolutely indeterminate). To restate this point we could take the title of this post, questions ofsubstance. A question of substance is not exhausted by the answers it receives theseanswers supervene upon the question, and hence they are not arbitrary answers, but they do sowithout eliminating the question, the problematic, itself. And finally,

What is the role of the common notions?

A full answer to this question would entail addressing Spinozas three kinds of knowledge (andDeleuzes essay Spinoza and the three Ethics if we are to continue to track his reading ofSpinoza), but it is brought up at a crucial point early on in the Ethics, in the long scholia of 1P8(Every substance is necessarily infinite). Spinoza argues in reference to 1P7 (It pertains to thenature of substance to exist) that if men would attend to the nature of substance, they wouldhave no doubt at all of the truth of P7. Indeed, this proposition would be an axiom for everyone,

and would be numbered among the common notions. If we would only attend to the nature ofsubstance, but we dont! Instead, we attend to the random encounters of our everyday lives, tothe casual relations between modes and the haphazard patterns of our experiences. In short,we are too focused upon the singular and determinate aspects of our particular lives to attendto the nature of substance itself. It was for a very similar reason that Spinoza abandoned theTIE, as the previous post argued, when Spinoza discovers and invents the common notions.Recalling that the ethical project of TIE was to acquire an eternal knowledge by way of theknowledge of our determinate minds and any singular, determinate truth, we can now see why


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this failed and why the common notions was seen as key to a solution. Any effort to attainknowledge of the eternal based upon the axiomatic and determinate alone will fail preciselybecause it supervenes upon the problematic multiplicity of attributes. One cannot axiomaticallydeduce an answer to a question of substance! With the common notions in hand, however, thefirst kind of knowledge, the determinate and singular knowledge of our bodily lives in the world(the knowledge that keeps us from seeing that it pertains to the nature of substance to exist) is

drawn into a problematic common knowledge (second kind of knowledge) that then comes to beactualized as the third kind of knowledge, the knowledge that finally releases us from thingswhich are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess. Much more isneeded here, I realize, but hopefully the general idea of how this would go is clear enough.

Jeffrey Bell: Eternity and Duration in Spinoza

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Jeffrey Bell

In the context of Spinozas famous letter to Lodewijk Meyer (Letter 12) where Spinoza lays forththe differences, as he sees it, between the infinite and the finite, substance and modes, Spinoza

makes an important distinction between eternity and duration:

The difference between Eternity and Duration arises from this. For it is only of Modes that wecan explain the existence by Duration. But [we can explain the existence] of Substance byEternity, i.e., the infinite enjoyment of existing, or (in bad Latin) of being.

This letter is important for many reasons, but it helps to make sense of Spinozas ethicalconcerns that were covered in an earlier post (here). As we saw, Spinozas concern was toovercome misery and suffering, and to do so, as he ended the first paragraph of TIE, bydetermining whether there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me acontinuous and supreme joy to all eternity. Now we find Spinoza equating substance both witheternity and the infinite enjoyment of existing, or being [I resist here the temptation to argue forSpinoza as a precursor to Heideggers understanding of the disclosedness of being as the

temporalization of the temporal]. For this reason, among many others, this letter serves as animportant bridge between the TIE and the Ethics. In particular, what has caused so manycommentators fits in their attempts to understand the final half of Part 5 of the Ethics is that oursingular mind itself seems to be understood to be both eternal and unchanging and becomesincreasingly eternal as it knows more of God. Among the many propositions of Part 5 that causeproblems is P23: The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, butsomething of it remains which is eternal. To resolve this difficulty it is important to differentiatebetween the something of the mind that remains and the mind that Spinoza defines as beingnothing but the idea of the body, and hence the mind that would be destroyed with the body.With this differentiation we bring into play the eternity/duration distinction. Thus theDemonstration to P23 reads:

In God there is necessarily a concept, or idea, which expresses the essence of the human Body

(by P22), an idea, therefore, which is necessarily something that pertains to the essence of thehuman mind (by 2P13). But we do not attribute to the human Mind any duration that can bedefined by time, except insofar as it expresses the actual existence of the Body, which isexplained by duration, and can be defined by time, i.e. (by 2P8C), we do not attribute duration toit except while the Body endures. However, since what is conceived, with a certain eternalnecessity, through Gods essence itself (by P22) is nevertheless something, this something that

pertains to the essence of the Mind will necessarily be eternal, q.e.d.
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To restate this drawing from earlierposts, the human Mind that is eternal is not the determinate,identifiable mind, but rather the immanent condition for the possibility of such a determinateidentification; it is, in short, the infinite power of self-ordering becoming (the infinite enjoyment ofexisting) that allows for the possibility of determinate, singular bodies, and for the determinatesingular minds that are the ideas of these bodies. We can also clarify another of Spinozas latepropositions: He who has a Body capable of a great many things has a Mind whose greatest

part is eternal. Following from Spinozas claim, discussed in an earlier post, that Gods poweris his essence (1P34), namely the infinite power and enjoyment of existing, we can see that themore one is capable of a great many things with ones body, and hence the less one needs toselect against differences, then the more one expresses Gods power and can embrace andaffirm the coming into being of other, determinate identities. Much as a political State inSpinozas mind is strengthened by allowing for the freedom to philosophize since this freedombetter facilitates the possibility of allowing for the immanent order of nature (or God) to becomedeterminate and known, similarly for Spinoza the more one is able to do with ones body, themore one allows for the possibility that the order immanent to self-ordering becoming canbecome known and determinate. So when Deleuze asks the question, what can a body do? hetoo is tapping into the heart of Spinozas ethical concerns.

But how does all this help us in overcoming our attachment to things that are liable to manyvariations and which we can never fully possess? If I were to add biking and swimming to myregular runs and become, like some of my good friends, a triathlete, would I become moreeternal? The short answer to this question is no. A full answer would entail returning to Letter 12and to the discussion of the difference between substance and modes. But to end this post witha few suggestions, and to recall the notion of Deleuzian supervenience sketched in an earlierpost, it would be a mistake for Spinoza if we were to equate the eternity with the precise,determinate activities of the body. This would be to confuse modes with substance, and hencenot rightly understand substance; or it would be to confuse the axiomatic with the problematicupon which the axiomatic supervenes, and likewise fail to grasp the inseparability of problemsfrom their solutions. As Deleuze argued, the problematic, or minor science, would be nothing if itwere not for major science and the axiomatic, just as major science would be nothing withoutthe problematic. Similarly for Spinoza, the question what can a body do? is to be understoodas the problematic that requires the modifications and affections of determinate bodies andminds to be anything just as our determinate bodies and minds require the problematic as theinfinite enjoyment of existing.To overcome our attachment to things that are liable to manyvariations and which we can never fully possess thus entails a move from the actual anddeterminate, to what this body is actually doing or has done, to the problematic and the virtual,the body as an eternity that is not to be confused with the determinate and which is indeedsubject to many variations and which we can never fully possess. Much more needs to be saidto clear up a host of problems that still persist. Most notably, what is the epistemological statusof the third kind of knowledge? And can this knowledge be understood in a way that doesntreintroduce transcendence and consequently undermine Deleuze and Guattaris claim in Whatis Philosophy? that Spinoza is perhaps the only philosopher never to have compromised withtranscendence and to have hunted it down everywhere.

Steven Shaviro: Whitehead vs Spinoza & Deleuze on the Virtual

Posted on August 1, 2010

Jeffrey Bell, in another one of his superb readings of Spinoza (or, more precisely, perhaps, ofDeleuzes Spinoza), discussesEternity and Duration, by which he also means the difference
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between the virtual/problematic (which he associates with Spinozas substance) and theactual/determinate (which he associates with Spinozas modes). Bell says that, in Spinoza,

the human Mind that is eternal is not the determinate, identifiable mind, but rather the immanentcondition for the possibility of such a determinate identification; it is, in short, the infinite powerof self-ordering becoming (the infinite enjoyment of existing) that allows for the possibility of

determinate, singular bodies, and for the determinate singular minds that are the ideas of thesebodies.

This means to give a crude reduction of Bells argument that Spinozasmind/substance/God is equivalent to Deleuzes virtual; it is an immanent potentiality. Any actualmind/body is a particular finite determination or actualization of that potentiality (a solution tothat problematic). There is a continual movement from the problematic what can a body do?to particular actualizations, or to modifications and affections of determinate bodies andminds, that in effect instantiate or realize this problematic. And conversely, there is a counter-movement from the actual back to the virtual, due to the fact that our determinate bodies andminds require the problematic as the infinite enjoyment of existing. The ethical movement inSpinoza, and implicitly in Deleuze as well, is this countervailing movement from the actual anddeterminate, from what this body is actually doing or has done, to the problematic and the

virtual, the body as an eternity that is not to be confused with the determinate and which isindeed subject to many variations and which we can never fully possess. This is how we attainSpinozas third kind of knowledge, or more generally the freedom that is the subject of Book 5 ofThe Ethics. Bells reformulation clarifies for me both how this works in Spinoza (against theinitial impression that Book 5 is merely a retreat to conventional morality after the boldmetaphysics and psychology of Books 1-4), and how central this all is to Deleuzes own visionof the virtual, and indeed of liberation.

But I want to add an important point to this, by adding Whitehead to the discussion. ForWhitehead never offers us such a movement back to the virtual as we find in Spinoza and inDeleuze. Indeed, Whitehead specifically declares himself to be inverting Spinoza in this crucialregard. In Whiteheads own philosophy, Spinozas modes now become the sheer actualities;so that, though analysis of them increases our understanding, it does not lead us to thediscovery of any higher grade of reality In such monistic schemes [as Spinoza's], the ultimateis illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents(PR 7). In Whiteheads resolutely pluralistic ontology, on the other hand, there are only modesor affections, the actual occasions. There is no substance, nothing behind the modes oraffections, for them to be modes or affections of. This is because of Whiteheads effort to get usaway from subject-predicate forms of thought.

Nearly all the Spinozists and Deleuzians I know would reject Whiteheads account as amisreading of Spinoza, a claim that Spinozian substance, or God (Deus sive Natura) issomehow transcendent, when in fact it is entirely immanent. (Bell promises to explain in asubsequent post how Spinozas third kind of knowledge, or his ascent from the actual back tothe virtual, can be understood in a way that doesnt reintroduce transcendence). However, I

want to suggest that Whitehead is right. Even if it escapes transcendence, Spinozian substanceis still a subject for all the predicates, a monism behind the pluralism. Whitehead, by his ownadmission, offers a philosophy that is closely allied to Spinozas scheme of thought. But ifWhitehead does not quite set Spinoza on his feet (as Marx claimed to set Hegel on his feet, andas Deleuze claimed that Nietzsche had set Kant on his feet), he does unhinge Spinoza (in theway that, according again to Deleuze, Kant unhinges the classical notion of time, or casts it, inShakespearean parlance, out of joint). He does this by dethroning substance, or to put thematter back into Bells formulations with which I started this posting by in a certain sense


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deprivileging the virtual, or at least rejecting the ethical priority of the virtual in Spinoza (and inDeleuze as well).

One can see this most clearly, I believe, by contrasting Whiteheads God with Spinozas God.Whitehead secularizes God (PR 207) more radically and extensively than Spinoza does;Whiteheads God, like Spinozas and also like Deleuze/Guattaris body without organs, as I

argued in my book is indeed associated with the virtual rather than the actual; but for thisreason, God in Whitehead is curiously marginalized (as Substance in Spinoza is not). Godoperates for Whitehead as a sort of repository of the virtual, in that he envisages all eternalobjects or potentialities indiscriminately (this is the primordial nature of God). God alsofunctions as a sort of Bergsonian memory, in which all the past is preserved (this is theconsequent nature of God). But by decentering God, and by splitting him up in this manner,Whitehead disallows anything like a return (a re-ascent?) back to the virtual from the actual. Inthis way, Spinozas third kind of knowledge is for Whitehead a kind of idealist illusion that needsto be rejected: the point being that it is still idealist, even ifit is entirely immanent and doesntimply any recourse to transcendence. (A similar criticism is implied of Bergson, or at least of thatside of Bergson that Deleuze also draws upon in his account of returning from the actual to thevirtual. The primordial nature of God is Whiteheads revision of Spinoza, and the consequentnature of God is Whiteheads revision of Bergson; in both cases, Whitehead brings us furtherthan Deleuze ever dares to).

If we speak ofthe virtual, instead of God, then the point is that Whiteheads often-rejected (evenby his admirers) theory of potentialities as eternal objects should be seen as a secularizationof theories of the virtual such as we find in Deleuze (with its roots in both Spinoza and Bergson).To put the matter very quickly (there is a more extended discussion in my book; but doubtlessthis is also something that I will need to work out more fully and carefully): Every actual entityconstitutes itself by a decision that accepts certain eternal objects, while rejecting others. Theeternal objects that ingress into any actual entity are something like its predicates or qualities;except that no entity can be defined as just the sum of its predicates or qualities, because it isnot just a collocation of characteristics (which would be to return to subject -predicate forms ofthought). Rather, no list of an actual entitys qualities can give us the entity, because such a list

excludes a crucial dimension: the entity as process, or the way in which it selects, and thenorganizes or harmonizes, those qualities. This added dimension is a process or an action,rather than anything substantial (this is where I diverge somewhat from Graham Harmansadmirable notion of allure, as the dimension of an object that is withdrawn from, and in excessof, all its qualities).

For Whitehead, therefore, in consonance with Deleuze and Spinoza, something like the virtualor the potential needs to be determined or actualized. This actualization is the process of anactual entity (or, as Whitehead also calls it, an actual occasion) terminating in somethingabsolutely determinate. But there is no movement back from the determinate to the virtual.Rather, once something is determinate, it perishes; and what has perished subsists as adatum for new determinations, which themselves, in taking up the data that precede them,must once again actualize potentiality.. and so on, ad infinitum. The movement from the virtual(potentiality, eternal objects) to the actual is involved with and necessary to, but it is alsosomewhat lateral or oblique to, the most crucial movement in Whiteheads cosmology, whichgoes from perished entities (data) to new entities, which perish in their own term and thusprovide data to new entities, etc.

In this way, I think, Whitehead avoids the Deleuzian suggestion (which one also finds inBergson, and in Bells reading already in Spinoza, and currently in the wonderful neo-Schellingism of Iain Hamilton Grant) that the actual must always (with this must beingsomething of an ethical imperative) return to the flux of virtuality whence it came. In this way,


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Whitehead is in accordance with Graham Harman (who rejects the association of Whiteheadwith Deleuze and Bergson precisely on these grounds). But, to the extent that Whitehead doesnonetheless retain the importance of the virtual, he also stands apart from Harmans actualism.My biggest objection to Harman has long been that he doesnt give a sufficiently satisfyingaccount of the genesis and perishing of objects, precisely because he rejects the very notion ofthe virtual, seeing it as something that undermines the existence of objects. Whitehead to my

mind splits the difference between Deleuze and Harman, in a way that is preferable to either.(Note: I cannot end this discussion without an apology to Levi Bryant, who offers a version ofobject-oriented ontology that includes the virtual. I think that Whitehead represents apreferable alternative to Bryants position as well, in the sense that he obviates the need to seeobjects as somehow being withdrawn. But I do not have the space or the energy to pursue thisargument here).

bell on spinoza

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