Papers by Oliver Istvan Toth
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2025
Spinoza's philosophy is prima facie inimical to concerns of social epistemology. The central noti... more Spinoza's philosophy is prima facie inimical to concerns of social epistemology. The central notion of Spinoza's epistemology is epistemic adequacy, which is correlated with causal adequacy. As Spinoza explains in E2p11c, an idea is adequate in the human mind if God has it insofar as he "constitutes the essence of the human mind" (C1:456/G2:95,1) alone. 1 By contrast, an idea is inad-1 Spinoza's works are cited from Gebhardt's edition with the usual abbreviation of G followed by the number of the volume, page, and line. The translation is cited from Curley's edition with the usual abbreviation of C followed by the number of the volume and page. Following modern orthography, I have removed the traditional capitalization of some nouns. References to the Ethics follow the usual abbreviation, where E stands for the Ethics, followed by the number of the part, p-proposition, s-scholium, c-corollary, defaff-definition of affect, prae-preface, app-appendix, d-definition if it immediately follows the number of the part, in all other cases demonstration.
Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon, 2025
Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon, 2025
British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2024
In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchange with Boyle about... more In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchange with Boyle about Boyle’s experiment with nitre. Boyle claimed to have shown through experiments that nitre ceased to be nitre after heating. Spinoza disagreed and proposed the alternative hypothesis that nitre has changed its state and not its nature. Spinoza’s position was construed in the literature as rational scepticism denying that experiments can yield knowledge of essences because all sensory experience is underdetermined and open to multiple interpretations. I argue for an alternative reading of Spinoza’s position which focuses on Bacon’s notion of crucial instance. According to this reading, Spinoza did not deny the possibility of knowing by experimentation whether nitre has changed its nature, he asked for a crucial instance, i.e. an experiment that would refute the hypothesis that nitre has changed merely its state. Spinoza’s argumentative strategy shows that, contrary to the mainstream reading, the representational content of sensory ideas can be determined even if it does not represent the essence of the object: we can know with absolute, rather than merely moral, certainty whether nitre ceased to be nitre without knowing what nitre is.
Hungarian Review of Philosophy, 2022
The immediate occasion for this special issue was Christia Mercer’s influential paper “The Contex... more The immediate occasion for this special issue was Christia Mercer’s influential paper “The Contextualist Revolution in Early Modern Philosophy”. In her paper, Mercer clearly demarcates two methodologies of the history of early modern philosophy. She argues that there has been a silent contextualist revolution in the past decades, and the reconstructivist methodology has been abandoned. One can easily get the impression that ‘reconstructivist’ has become a pejorative label that everyone outright rejects. Mercer’s examples of reconstructivist historians of philosophy are deceased (P. F. Strawson, Margaret J. Osler, Richard Watson, and Bernard Williams), anonymous (the fans of philosopher* mentioned by Lisa Downing), or authors whose more recent work followed a contextualist methodology (Jonathan Bennett). The reconstructivist camp seems to have turned into a shadowy group, largely extinct by now, not unlike the Death Eaters in the fictional universe of Harry Potter. There are some figures who previously belonged to this group, but they have since reformed their ways – or so it seems. Sometimes it is rumoured that certain people may still have secret allegiance to it, but no one dares to fly its banner openly. We decided to create this special issue because we believe that reconstructivist methodology does not deserve this shadowy existence.
Hungarian Review of Philosophy, 2022
In this paper, I argue that there is a live and interesting methodological disagreement between c... more In this paper, I argue that there is a live and interesting methodological disagreement between contextualists and reconstructivists by proposing an alternative definition of contextualism and reconstructivsm relative to Mercer’s, according to which these methodologies have different presuppositions about the truth-maker of philosophical interpretations. Contextualism holds that the truth-maker is the concrete particular, the written utterance, of which meaning is determined by its actual causes. Reconstructivism holds that the truth-maker is the abstract particular, the proposition, which has inferential properties independently of the social and historical context. I argue that from these presuppositions different methodologies follow. Contextualism follows a historicist methodology, according to which philosophical concepts are meaningful in their historical context, the aim of the history of philosophy is to capture the actual meaning of philosophical utterances, and philosophical claims can only be true in their historical and social context. Reconstructivism follows a perennialist methodology, according to which philosophical concepts are timeless, the aim of the history of philosophy is to capture the possible meaning of philosophical utterances, and philosophical claims can be true independently of their historical and social context.
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 2021
Short overview of the different theories of individuality in Early Modern Philosophy.
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2021
In this paper, we reconstruct the development of Spinoza's theory of judgment against the backdro... more In this paper, we reconstruct the development of Spinoza's theory of judgment against the backdrop of the development of his political views. In this context we also look at the difference between Descartes' meta-act theory of judgment, which Spinoza criticises, and his own all-inclusive approach. By "meta-act theory" we understand the claim that content and judgment about the truth of the content are metaphysically really distinct mental items. By an "all-inclusive theory" we understand the claim that judgment and content constitute only one mental act. We show further how the core intuitions of this all-inclusive theory are developed by Spinoza in an increasingly radical manner and how the practical implications of his all-inclusive theory come to the fore in the Theological-Political Treatise: given that content and act are not really distinct, it is metaphysically impossible that human subjects can give up their ability to judge, which is why Spinoza can plausibly contend that everybody has an inalienable right to form their own judgment.
Averroism between the 15th and 17th century, 2020
H-Soz-Kult, 2019
Im Rahmen der Forschungsplattform "Judgment" fand die interdisziplinäre Fachtagung statt. Die an ... more Im Rahmen der Forschungsplattform "Judgment" fand die interdisziplinäre Fachtagung statt. Die an internationalen Universitäten und Forschungseinrichtungen verankerten Wissenschaftler/innen beleuchteten den Begriff des Urteilens, Praktiken des Urteilens sowie deren Inszenierung in der Frühen Neuzeit unter historischer, philosophischer und literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive. Die Referent/innen aus dem Bereich der Geschichtswissenschaften näherten sich im ersten Panel der Rolle von Expert/innen im Umfeld frühneuzeitlicher Herrscher/innen an und bemühten dabei unterschiedliche Forschungsfelder, von der Diplomatie-über die Politik-und Geschlechtergeschichte bis hin zur Wissensgeschichte. Die Vorträge einte ein akteurszentrierter Ansatz sowie ein Fokus auf dem Wissen, das den untersuchten Akteuren eignete. KATHRIN KELLER (Wien) umriss in ihrem Vortrag den dynastisch-höfischen Erfahrungsraum von Fürstinnen und wie dieser deren Erwerb von Wissen und Kompetenzen bzw. deren durch diverse Wissensvermittlungen erworbene Expertise prägte. Im Zentrum der Analyse stand die Frage, inwieweit die erworbene Expertise der Fürstinnen Einfluss auf ihre Handlungsspielräume und Herrschaftspraxis hatte. Keller kam zu dem Befund, dass die frühneuzeitlichen Fürstinnen ihre Expertise nicht nach außen trugen, sondern diese stillschweigend im Hintergrund praktizieren mussten. Schlussfolgend bedeute dies, dass nicht spezifisches Wissen über den Expertenstatus entscheidet, sondern die Präsentation bzw. Anerkennung als solcher.
Elpis, 2019
Boros Gábor „Descartes és Kant” című cikkében a descartes-i önismeret újszerű értel- mezését adja... more Boros Gábor „Descartes és Kant” című cikkében a descartes-i önismeret újszerű értel- mezését adja, amely szerint az én ideája nem egy idea a sok közül, hanem egy olyan kitüntetett idea, amely minden más ideában benne foglaltatik. A dolgozat azt a – Boros által ki nem fejtett – problémát igyekszik felderíteni, hogy milyen ismeretelméleti erő- feszítésre van szükség ahhoz, hogy e kitüntetett ideát megismerjük. A cikk első részében Bourdin az Ellenvetések hetedik sorozatában megfogalmazott ellenvetése alapján amel- lett érvelek, hogy a magasabb rendű ideák – amelyek révén az elme önismeretre tesz szert – az idea vonatkoztatási módjai. A második részben az értelmi emlékezet bemuta- tásán keresztül amellett érvelek, hogy a képzeleti és értelmi tartalmak megkülönbözte- tése ismeretelméleti szempontból korántsem olyan problémamentes, mint metafizikai szempontból. Végül a cikk harmadik részében azt állítom, hogy az elme önismeretét önmaga cselekvésének tapasztalata konstituálja.
Society and Politics, 2018
This issue is dedicated to consciousness in medieval and early modern philosophy of mind. It aims... more This issue is dedicated to consciousness in medieval and early modern philosophy of mind. It aims to shed new light on the continuities and innovations during the transition from medieval to early modern philosophy of mind. The four papers, by Sonja Schierbaum, Daniel Schmal, Oliver Istvan Toth, and Philipp N. Müller, focus on consciousness and, more specifically, on one of its less frequently considered aspects: memory.
Consciousness and Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, Society and Politics, 2018 Vol. 12 no.2
Society and Politics, 2018
Spinoza's account of memory has not received enough attention, even though it is relevant for his... more Spinoza's account of memory has not received enough attention, even though it is relevant for his theory of consciousness. Recent literature has studied the "pancreas problem." This paper argues that there is an analogous problem for memories: if memories are in the mind, why is the mind not conscious of them? I argue that Spinoza's account of memory can be better reconstructed in the context of Descartes's account to show that Spinoza responded to these views. Descartes accounted for the preservation of memories by holding that they are brain states without corresponding mental states, and that the mind is able to interpret perception either as new experience or as memory. Spinoza has none of these conceptual resources because of his substance monism. Spinoza accounts for memories as the mind's ability to generate ideas according to the order of images. This ability consists in the connection of ideas, which is not an actual property, but only a dispositional one and thus not conscious. It is, however, grounded in the actual property of parts of the body, of which ideas are conscious.
Többlet, 2018
In this paper, I am aiming at answering the question about what can we be mistaken in Spinoza? Th... more In this paper, I am aiming at answering the question about what can we be mistaken in Spinoza? This question is problematic because, on the one hand, Spinoza’s physics and causal axiom might rule out that finite minds can have true beliefs, on the other hand, Spinoza states that every idea insofar as it is related to God is true. My claim is that comparing Spinoza’s distinction of imagination, intellection and judgment to Aristotle’s epistemology can solve the problem. It turns out that both imaginations and intellection are free from error, and only judgments generated by combining the two can be erroneous, which, however, not being modes of thinking are not in God.
Hungarian Review of Philosophy, 2017
In this paper, I link the problems of the eternity of the mind, of infinite modes and of form in ... more In this paper, I link the problems of the eternity of the mind, of infinite modes and of form in Spinoza’s Ethics. I argue that Spinoza uses four interrelated concepts consist- ently: form, formal essence, formal being and formal causation. I present a reading of Spinoza’s distinction of finite and infinite modes based on tim Crane’s philosophy of mind and I argue for an interpretation of finite modes as events and infinite modes as properties. I argue that formal essences are infinite modes and their instantiations are the formal beings of finite modes, whereas by form Spinoza refers to either of these cat- egories. I claim that this reading helps us to understand Spinoza’s doctrine of the eternal part of the mind, which has been either understood as a substantial claim about personal immortality (Stock 1990; Matson 2000), or as a trivial claim about eternal truths (Garrett 2009; Schmaltz 2015; Yovel 1989).
This paper focuses – in the framework of Hegel's philosophy of spirit – on the question how is it... more This paper focuses – in the framework of Hegel's philosophy of spirit – on the question how is it possible for individuals to make political decisions against freedom, how is it possible for the subjective spirit to judge against the objective spirit, when the concepts used by the subjective spirit are provided by the objective spirit. The claim of this paper is that when making these judgments the subjects do not use concepts, i.e. they do not think.
Istenfogalmak és istenérvek a világ filozófiai hagyományaiban, 2018
Concept of God, Arguments for the Existence of God and Experience of God in Spinoza’s Ethics
Thi... more Concept of God, Arguments for the Existence of God and Experience of God in Spinoza’s Ethics
This is an introductory paper on Spinoza’s metaphysical concept of God as presented in his Ethics. In the first part I develop a reading of his definition of God by presenting first his definition of substance and then his definition of infinity. Concerning the definition of substance, following Della Rocca’s reading, I problematize the connection between the relationships of ‘being in,’ ‘conceived through’ and ‘caused by.’ After that, I link these relations to the notion of freedom. Concerning the definition of infinity, following Haserot and Shein, I problematize the ontological status of attributes and their relations. After that, I revisit the question of causation in the context of the different attributes. In the second part, following Lin and Garrett, I present Spinoza’s four arguments for the existence of God and show how the metaphysical foundations of his system allow Spinoza to develop a valid, but not necessarily sound argument. In the third part, I discuss the role of the experience of God in the latter parts of Spinoza’s system, first, by explaining the relationship between his substance monism expressed in the dictum Deus sive natura and his alleged pantheism, and second, by presenting the way in which his metaphysical views on causation and his substance monism allow him to de- velop what Melamed calls anti-humanist ethics. Finally, I discuss the relation of the finite human mind and the infinite divine intellect, and link Spinoza’s anti- humanist understanding of ethics to his metaphysical understanding of causation.
Hungarian Philosophical Review / Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, 2017
In this paper, through a close reading of Spinoza's use of common notions I argue for the role of... more In this paper, through a close reading of Spinoza's use of common notions I argue for the role of experiential and experimental knowledge in Spinoza's epistemology.
Dixit insipiens* -A Filozófiai morzsák viszonya a hegeli filozófiához a racionális istenbizonyítá... more Dixit insipiens* -A Filozófiai morzsák viszonya a hegeli filozófiához a racionális istenbizonyítás tükrében egy filológiai sejtés alapján Kierkegaard szövegeivel találkozva az olvasóban jogosan alakulhat ki az a kép, hogy itt a szerző Hegel filozófiájával, az "általános" uralmával szemben intézett kérlelhetetlen támadásával van dolga, amely az egyént az őt megillető helyre igyekszik visszahelyezni. Ugyanakkor Jon Stewart -a Koppenhágai Egyetem Søren Kierkegaard Kutatóközpontjának professzora, a Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources című monumentális, 21 kötetes sorozat szerkesztője -az elmúlt bő egy évtizedben bemutatott, Kierkegaard dán kontextusára és a művek keletkezéstörténetére fókuszáló, kikezdhetetlen filológiai pontosságú kutatásai teljesen új megvilágításba helyezték Kierkegaard és Hegel viszonyát. Ma a Kierkegaard-kutatás alapvetésének tekinthető az a nézet, hogy egyfelől a dán aranykor intellektuális és teológiai vitái gazdagabbak és sokszínűbbek voltak annál, hogysem a hegeliánus és anti-hegeliánus ellentéttel le lehetne írni őket; másfelől pedig hogy Kierkegaard művei jelentésüket csakis e vitákon keresztül szemlélve nyerik el, hiszen a szerző erősen
In this paper I examine the question whether Spinoza can account for the necessity of death. I ar... more In this paper I examine the question whether Spinoza can account for the necessity of death. I argue that he cannot because within his ethical intellectualist system the subject cannot understand the cause of her death, since by understanding it renders it harmless. Then, I argue that Spinoza could not solve this difficulties because of deeper commitments of his system. At the end I draw a historical parallel to the problem from medieval philosophy.
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Papers by Oliver Istvan Toth
Consciousness and Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, Society and Politics, 2018 Vol. 12 no.2
This is an introductory paper on Spinoza’s metaphysical concept of God as presented in his Ethics. In the first part I develop a reading of his definition of God by presenting first his definition of substance and then his definition of infinity. Concerning the definition of substance, following Della Rocca’s reading, I problematize the connection between the relationships of ‘being in,’ ‘conceived through’ and ‘caused by.’ After that, I link these relations to the notion of freedom. Concerning the definition of infinity, following Haserot and Shein, I problematize the ontological status of attributes and their relations. After that, I revisit the question of causation in the context of the different attributes. In the second part, following Lin and Garrett, I present Spinoza’s four arguments for the existence of God and show how the metaphysical foundations of his system allow Spinoza to develop a valid, but not necessarily sound argument. In the third part, I discuss the role of the experience of God in the latter parts of Spinoza’s system, first, by explaining the relationship between his substance monism expressed in the dictum Deus sive natura and his alleged pantheism, and second, by presenting the way in which his metaphysical views on causation and his substance monism allow him to de- velop what Melamed calls anti-humanist ethics. Finally, I discuss the relation of the finite human mind and the infinite divine intellect, and link Spinoza’s anti- humanist understanding of ethics to his metaphysical understanding of causation.
Consciousness and Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, Society and Politics, 2018 Vol. 12 no.2
This is an introductory paper on Spinoza’s metaphysical concept of God as presented in his Ethics. In the first part I develop a reading of his definition of God by presenting first his definition of substance and then his definition of infinity. Concerning the definition of substance, following Della Rocca’s reading, I problematize the connection between the relationships of ‘being in,’ ‘conceived through’ and ‘caused by.’ After that, I link these relations to the notion of freedom. Concerning the definition of infinity, following Haserot and Shein, I problematize the ontological status of attributes and their relations. After that, I revisit the question of causation in the context of the different attributes. In the second part, following Lin and Garrett, I present Spinoza’s four arguments for the existence of God and show how the metaphysical foundations of his system allow Spinoza to develop a valid, but not necessarily sound argument. In the third part, I discuss the role of the experience of God in the latter parts of Spinoza’s system, first, by explaining the relationship between his substance monism expressed in the dictum Deus sive natura and his alleged pantheism, and second, by presenting the way in which his metaphysical views on causation and his substance monism allow him to de- velop what Melamed calls anti-humanist ethics. Finally, I discuss the relation of the finite human mind and the infinite divine intellect, and link Spinoza’s anti- humanist understanding of ethics to his metaphysical understanding of causation.
In order to provide a historical and not ideological understanding of the question of Spinoza’s relationship to Averroism, we have to clarify the term Averroism and the possible Averroist sources of Spinoza. Concerning Averroism it is important to distinguish two largely independent histories of reception. From 12th to 15th centuries for Hebrew speaking authors only Averroes’s Short and Middle Commentaries were available and therefore they had a markedly different view on what constitutes Averroism as Latin speaking authors, who had access only to the Long Commentary (Davidson 1992).
Although the evidence for direct Averroist influence is rather slim, they all point to authors from the Hebrew speaking tradition (Gersonides, Maimonides, Joseph ben Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov) with the one exception of the bilingual Elijah Del Medigo (Klein 2003; Fraenkel 2011; Harvey 2012; Licata 2013). Since most of the cited Hebrew authors accepted some form of Alexandrian position on the intellect some authors argue rather for an Alexandrian influence on Spinoza (Nadler 2001; Adler 2014). Finally, an often-overlooked source is Descartes, whose philosophy relies heavily on intellectual emotions and intellectual content which might have been influenced by medieval sources.
In my presentation I introduce the basic problem of Averroism, namely the metaphysical status of material intellect in the Aristotelian philosophy of mind. I present the four major possible solutions to the problem: the Alexandrian solution according to which the material intellect is embodied, while the active intellect is God; the Averroist solution of the Middle Commentary according to which the active intellect is a unitary incorporeal eternal being, while the material intellect is the conjunction of the embodied and the incorporeal; the Averroist solution of the Long Commentary according to which both the material and the active intellect are unitary incorporeal eternal beings; and the Themistian solution of Aquinas according to which both the material and the active intellect are plural incorporeal eternal beings constituting the form of the human mind. I argue that Descartes’s theory of intellect can be places in this matrix, and then show how the substance monist Spinoza develops the Cartesian theory into an account which might be classified as Averroist.
In my paper I argue for two claims. First, that Spinoza’s theory of intellect can be interpreted as one of the broadly Alexandrian variety. This interpretation fits in the Hebrew understanding of Averroism and more or less accords with the position of Maimonides and Gersonides. On this view, the intellect in Spinoza is the form of imagination. Second, that Spinoza’s theory of intellect is liable to a criticism that the late Averroes presented against his earlier position. According to this objection if the material intellect is the disposition of the imagination, it is not able to intellect all possible forms since itself has its own nature. Similarly, in Spinoza it is not clear how the human mind is able to understand something of contrary to its nature, since understanding implies becoming similar, however, on the conatus doctrine nothing can contain contrary elements.
In the first part of my presentation I argue that Spinoza could not accept the theoretical problems of Descartes’s solution, nor the practical consequences of Hobbes’s and he tried to present his own account based on the conceptual resources available in his medieval Jewish sources (Nadler 2001; Adler 2014; Klein 2014). On his account the intellect is the form of the individual mental life which is instantiated by the imagination and determines the affirmation or negation involved in the given idea. The imagination is the representational content determined by its external causes. On the one hand, this solves the theoretical difficulties of Descartes, since the intellect is causally efficacious, but only through the imaginations instantiating it. On the other hand, this solves the practical difficulties of Hobbes, since the intellect’s set of eternal truths which the imagination can instantiate provide the source of epistemic and moral norms that Spinoza was looking for.
In the second part of my presentation I argue that by adopting this conceptual framework Spinoza invited similar difficulties to the ones that troubled his medieval predecessors. These difficulties were present in the medieval context as the question concerning the metaphysical status of material intellect. On the one hand, if the material intellect is a distinct substance, how is it supposed to interact with the body, on the other hand, if it is a disposition of the body, how can it assume every possible form. A similar problem arises concerning Spinoza’s commitment to the conatus doctrine, ethical intellectualism and universal intelligibility. If everything can be understood and what is understood cannot be harmful, then the idea of everything can follow from the essence of our mind and therefore there are no actually contrary natures. This is, however, both very implausible and contrary to the doctrine of the necessarily finite power of the conatus.
In my paper I argue that the role of the infinite intellect in Spinoza can be better understood if read against the background of Averroes’s philosophy. If we read Spinoza’s claims about the subject as being about imaginations, a new systematic role of the infinite intellect emerges as a general principle of intelligibility. It is not something which can be more or less identical with the subject, rather something to which the subject can be more or less conjunct (Black 1999). This reading introduces a new understanding of the infinite and finite in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind. Contrary to the existing interpretations of the eternal part of the mind (Garrett 2009; Matson 1990; Allison 1990; Della Rocca 2008) the mind of the subject is not constituted by both finite and infinite ideas where the infinites ones are at the same time ideas of the infinite intellect. Rather, that the ideas of the mind of the subject are all finite and they can be ordered more or less according to the infinite intellect.
There are three groups of claims concerning conscientia in the Ethics: (1) consciousness about causes of our actions: these propositions concern which ideas are conscious (ideas of our actions) and which are not (ideas of the causes of our actions); (2) role of consciousness in moral judgments: these propositions claim that knowledge of good and evil is joy or sadness as far as we are conscious of it (traditional meaning? It refers back to E2p22); (3) consciousness following from the eternal part of the mind: these propositions claim that the greater the eternal part of our mind, the more conscious we are. There is a clear incongruity between these claims (LeBuffe 2010; Miller 2007).
In my paper I argue that there are two possible methodological approaches to this inconsistency. Either one can take for granted that one technical term has to have one meaning over every use and conclude that Spinoza did not have either a unified notion, or a theory of consciousness and conscientia cannot be considered a technical term. Or one can individuate claims based on the problems which the given solution intends to address and then look for inconsistencies between these claims. I argue on textual grounds that using this second method we can differentiate a group of problems concerning epistemology and philosophy of mind addressed by claims in groups (1) and (2) and a group of problems concerning ethics addressed by claim in group (3). On my interpretation, even though conscientia has two different meanings in these two contexts, the claims are consistent and therefore even though Spinoza has no unified meaning of consciousness, he has a theory of consciousness and conscientia is a technical term, albeit one that has to be interpreted contextually.
In my presentation I argue that while the working of the pancreas does not pose a problem for Spinoza, the pancreas problem is actually not about the pancreas and therefore it should not be considered to be solved. I claim that it is about the content of conscious experience. Therefore, the claim that conscious ideas are those that change the conatus only explain anything if first the question what modifies the conatus is addressed.
To present a more detailed view on the power of conatus I elaborate on its relation to memories. Memory is in the temporal part of the mind because it depends on the body (E5p39s). We should distinguish between the content of memory and the habituation of memory: the first is an image of x which persists even after x ceases to affect us, the second the association between idea of x and y. By habituation we recollect and what we recollect is the content of memory (E2p17-18). Because of the parallelism doctrine every memory is at the same time a mode of extension and a mode of thought therefore the ‘pancreas problem’ is present here as well: what constitutes the conscious character of the content of specific memories? On the Marshall-Renz account, memories are conscious if they modify the conatus. But if I have a memory excluding the existence of a very dangerous event (e.g. the memory that I have switched off the flatiron which excludes the existence of the event of my apartment burning down) is the content of this memory modifying my conatus? I argue that it indeed increases my conatus even when it is not actually recollected and thus conscious because it makes my body more apt to respond external influences (Sangiacomo 2013). Therefore, a differentiated account is needed on what constitutes the consciousness of the content of our memories.
E4p59 states that “[t]o every action to which we are determined from an affect which is a passion, we can be determined by reason, without that affect.” This statement implies that, theoretically at least, we can be the adequate cause of all of our actions and we can form adequate ideas of them (E3p1, E3p3), and we can turn any individual passion into action (E5p3). If this way we were be able to have adequate ideas of all our affects, we were to become a free man (Hübner 2014) who never suffers. Since death is an extreme form of suffering (E4p39d), as long as the free man is free, he cannot die. Thus, I claim that Spinoza’s commitment to universal intelligibility (Renz 2010; Della Rocca 2008) forces him to embrace at least the theoretical possibility of an indefinitely long human life.
However, in E4p68s Spinoza denies that we could born free. This claim relies on E4p4 according to which it is impossible for humans to only act and never suffer and thus to become immortal. The demonstration of E4p4 does not establish the necessary death of humans: it only proves, on the one hand, that existence does not pertain to the essence of humans and, on the other hand, that there can be no human being without absolutely any passion. A scenario is consistent with this claim and its use in E4p68s when the human individual in its infancy – or even throughout its life – suffers from a number of milder passions, but never succumbs to such a violent passion that would bring about its death. Thus, Spinoza is able to prove that no human can become immortal, but he cannot prove that all humans necessarily die: an indefinitely long life seems to be available.
I argue that the failure on Spinoza’s part to provide a theoretical treatment of the necessity of death sheds light on an inner tension in his system. It is evident that because of the conatus doctrine there can be no claim about some inner factor necessitating the death of the individual (Marshall 2014; Della Rocca 1995; Viljanen 2011; Garrett 2002). However, in order to claim that it is necessary that external causes do bring about the destruction of the human body it is not enough to claim that there are necessarily external causes more powerful than our body (E4a1). The additional claim that these causes are necessarily and irreversibly contrary to our nature is needed, since otherwise they would, or at least potentially could, just empower our body. This claim, however, Spinoza cannot make, since on his official view contrary natures are produced by lack of knowledge (E2p11c) since two actually contrary natures cannot exist in the same subject, not even in God or Nature (Bayle 1965; Carriero 1995; Renz 2010). But the wolf’s nature is not contrary to the sheep’s nature because there is some kind of misunderstanding or lack of knowledge, but because of very real contradiction in their natures (E4p37s1, E3p5) (Sangiacomo 2013). But if there is real contradiction in the nature of objects, even if just considered in separation, it is not clear how the ideas of these objects could be in the same infinite intellect, which is required for the doctrine of the eternal part of the mind and salvation through the intellectual love of God. Thus, I argue that Spinoza’s inability to account for the necessity of death shows a deeper tension between the conatus doctrine – the genuine and autonomous activity of finite modes (cf. Renz 2015) – and the doctrine of the infinite intellect – the claim that every fact is at least potentially intelligible to the actual subject –.
In my presentation I argue by examining the role of imagination in constituting consciousness and subjectivity that understanding the body in Spinoza needs to take into account this broader perspective. Imagination is usually understood in the existing scholarship as a purely mental activity involving ideas affirming or negating their object (in contrast to the Cartesian mute picture view) (Garrett 2008; James 2010; Wilson 1996). I argue that for both theoretical (identity doctrine) and textual (treatment of images) reasons imagination is much closer to the historical category of corporeal mentality, or what we would call today embodied cognition. Because of the parallel but strictly separate working of imagination in the two attributes, this is not a purely mechanistic understanding of some seemingly cognitive functions, as habituation in Descartes, but also not a simple materialism, as in Hobbes. While in the Cartesian and Hobbesian account, as well as in the historical view subjectivity was associated with the intellect I argue by elaborating on the positions of (Sangiacomo 2013), (Renz 2010) and (Zourabichvili 2010) that Spinoza presented a new view where the emphasis was put on imagination. And thereby the distinction between the symmetrical phenomena of mind and body became less important compared to the asymmetric distinction between body (a finite mode) and essence of the body (an infinite mode).
We should note that the whole Avveroist controversy rested on a fundamental misinterpretation of the position of Averroes. Averroes’s claim was about the unicity of the intellect and not about the unicity of the subject (Black, 1993). The Latin readers, however, assumed that the subject must be identified with the intellect and not with the sensus communis: and this assumption together with Averroes’s claim about the unicity of the intellect gave rise to the Averroist position in the controversy. Spinoza, however, had access to the works of Elijah Delmedigo who did not share the assumption of the Latin reader and therefore understood that Averroes identified the subject with sensus communis (Bland, 1995; Fraenkel, 2013; Geffen, 1974).
In my paper I argue that the difficulties with understanding Spinoza’s theory of consciousness (Garrett, 2008; LeBuffe, 2010; Marshall, 2014; Nadler, 2008; Rice, 1990; Sangiacomo, 2011), as well as with his principle of individuation (Garrett, 1994; Melamed, 2010, 2011, 2013) which was sometimes approached from the notion of inherence and causation (Della Rocca, 2008) stem from the lack of appreciation for the difference between the two kinds of subjectivity already present in Aristotle (Kaukua & Kukkonen, 2007), the intellectual and imaginative ones, and applied by Spinoza.
In my presentation, I approach the problem of the second kind of knowledge in the general framework presented by Renz (Renz, 2010) where common notions referring to geometrical-mechanical features underlying physical ones allow us to build a scientific understanding of properties of objects (Renz forthcoming). However satisfying is this description in the theoretical level, it is still not clear how knowledge of these basic geometrical features is supposed to provide practical scientific knowledge, as well as serve as the basis of the ethical character of the wise man. Therefore, I would like to present a phenomenological approach based on Spinoza’s treatment of agreement in nature (cf. Sangiacomo, 2015) and argue that what are common to the perceiver and the perceived change dynamically based on the conscious mental life of the perceiver.
More precisely, I argue that the term “equally in the part and in the whole” means that the given property is the essence of a mode which takes part in the relation constituting the essence of the individual. The ideas of these modes constitute the conscious experience of the given mind and they allow it to form adequate ideas about external objects. Based on the treatment of the conscious experience of infants (Nadler, 2008), I argue that phenomenally speaking the modes involved in the relation defining the essence of the individual constitute the scope of attention of the human mind. Thus, a shift in the attention is the same thing as the reordering of the parts of the human body, which rearranges the list of those natures which the human mind can actually understand in the given moment. However, this does not have to mean that those natures with which the body in the moment cannot accord in nature are forever out of reach for the human mind, since given the right nutrition (E4p45c2s, E4app27) it can accord in nature with all those natures that are required. The main constrain on the capacity of understanding of the mind is the number of natures with which it can accord at the same time (E2p13c, E2p14, E2p39c, E2p40s1, E4p38, E5p39), which fits well with Cartesian discourse on the possibility or impossibility to keep in mind all elements of a whole chain of inference. Also, it helps to accommodate both descriptions of the second kind of knowledge and provide further insights on the role of knowledge of God in the Ethics as presented in E2p11c.
It is usually assumed that adequate and inadequate ideas differ in their object: inadequate ideas are about external bodies while adequate ideas are about our own body (adequate ideas inhere in the body: Della Rocca 2008, adequate ideas constrain the interpretation of the ideatum to the bodily modification: Garrett 2014). This is further supported by Spinoza’s use of the example of the two ideas of the sun, where the same idea is inadequate when taken to be an idea about the celestial body and adequate when taken to be an idea about the neural image in the human body. If this were the case, then aesthetic experience could not have a positive role in Spinoza’s philosophy, since ideas generated during observing a work of art are clearly ideas about external objects and therefore seem to be inadequate ideas of imagination.
This position might be taken to be confirmed in Spinoza’s famous argumentation against anthropocentrism in E1App, where he states that “if the motion the nerves receive from objects presented through the eyes is conducive to health, the objects by which it is caused are called beautiful”. According to this description, the property of being beautiful does not belong to the external object, but rather is emergent on the relationship of the external object and the observer: the external object causes the subject to have the idea of beauty about the external object. Since in this case the external cause plays a key role in generating the idea, this seems to be a prime example of an idea of imagination which has more to do with the constitution of our body than with the nature of the external body. Accordingly, it was usually assumed that Spinoza takes a hostile attitude towards aesthetic experience: even though it may be useful, as for example music is for one who is in melancholy (E4Prae), but it certainly depends on causes independent of us and therefore cannot be part of the life of wise men. As James C. Morrison put it: “[t]hough art may be more than a diversion from the cares of life, it is far from being a necessary constituent of a healthy and happy life” (Morrison 1989, 363).
However, if we look at E4p45c2s, there Spinoza makes the following statement: “It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.” The wise man is juxtaposed at emphatic places (E5Prae, E5p42s) with the ignorant, who is “troubled in many ways by external causes”. Thus, it seems that either the wise man is lucky to always have the right sort of inadequate ideas, or somehow he is able to generate adequate ideas of his aesthetic experience. If the latter is the case, then the wise man has ideas about external objects that are not caused by the external objects.
In the first part of my presentation I argue for the claim that in Spinoza a positive role of aesthetic experience is possible, since one can have adequate idea of an external object without that idea being generated by an external cause. I base my interpretation on the reading of E2p39 which states that if an external object has causal impact on the human body with respect to a property that is common to the external object and the human body, then the human mind has adequate idea of that property. If we read this proposition from the point of view of the beginning of Part 3, then it implies that the human mind is the adequate cause of this adequate idea. Thus, one does not have to be the numerically only cause for being an adequate cause, which means that one can have adequate idea of an external object as long as the causal effect of the external object could equally result from the causal power of the human body.
In the second part of my presentation I hint at the possible outlines of a Spinozistic aesthetics. Although as indicated in E4Prae and E1App aesthetic experience depends on the constitution of the particular human body, since the human nature is either shared among people, or is relevantly similar in everyone, and – as E2p39 shows – having adequate idea of the aesthetic experience depends on what is caused by the nature of the human body, there is a universal and natural basis for aesthetic judgments. Also, since having adequate idea of the aesthetic experience implies reproducing the same causal relation in the body that operates in the external object, a Spinozist aesthetics would involve sympathy as a key term.
In my presentation I introduce an interpretation of consciousness by arguing that consciousness in Spinoza ultimately depends on knowledge in two ways. First, I argue that even though Spinoza does not distinguish between phenomenal and access consciousness, we should do so. Access conscious are those mental states which can rationally coordinate the subject’s speech, action and inferences (Kim, 2010, pp. 310–311). These are in Spinoza mostly adequate ideas of the intellect, by which the agent can act and reason. Phenomenal conscious are mental events that have a special ‘what is it like’ character (Kim, 2010, pp. 304–306). By definition, only temporal mental events can have this character (Crane, 2001, pp. 105–108), therefore adequate ideas of the intellect, which constitute the eternal part of the mind, cannot be phenomenally conscious. Thus, my inadequate ideas of imagination constitute the phenomenally conscious experience.
In Spinoza every finite mode is constituted by other finite modes, which are its constituents, like in the case of a red ball among others the redness, roundness, plastic matter etc. I claim that the adequacy of our ideas should be understood as the degree of how fine grained we conceptualize the content of our phenomenally conscious experience, more specifically, the adequate ideas of the mind are the concepts with which we pin down and make accessible the conceptual character of the experience.
This picture presents a threefold distinction: the Spinozistic subject has adequate ideas, which form its access conscious but not phenomenally conscious concepts and beliefs with which it can handle its phenomenally conscious experience. The ideas of imagination present the phenomenally conscious experience of which those elements that can be conceptualized distinctly by the mind using its adequate ideas form the both access and phenomenally conscious conceptual content of its experience, while those elements that are present confusedly, constitute the phenomenally but not access conscious non-conceptual richness of experience. I claim that through this interpretation I am able to reduce all cases which LeBuff called extensional uses to cases of knowledge use, which may not solve the question regarding the consciousness of toasters, but at least can show that Spinoza had a consistent theory of consciousness.
It has been argued by many that adequacy and inherence are interrelated, but it has been a topic of controversy whether partial inherence is possible. According to Della Rocca inadequate ideas are partially inhering in all of the partial causes of their extended counterparts which causes them to have inadequate ideas (Della Rocca, 2008), while Melamed argued that inherence is an all or nothing relationship, which forces him to deny the necessary connection between inherence and adequacy (Melamed, 2013).
In my presentation I will argue that the debate is really about the controversial consequences of Spinoza’s two principles of individuation, and therefore in order to be able to clarify Spinoza’s position on the epistemic and ontological status of inadequate ideas we have to first clarify his principles of individuations.
According to the first principle of individuation an individual is a finite mode having a fixed ratio with which its parts communicate their motion and rest. This way even if the parts of individual change, it will be identical over time. According to the second principle of individuation a singular thing consists of a number of individuals which together cause one effect. The first consequence of this definition is that although there might not always be an individual in which a cause fully inheres, there must always be a singular thing in which it does, since the singular thing is defined as the bundle of causes. This seems to solve the controversy, since it seems to indicate that the causes of inadequate ideas are singular things in which their effects fully inhere, but which only partially overlap with individuals.
To uphold this view, however, we would need a clear distinction between singular things and individuals. In the second half of my presentation I will show that this is in reality impossible, since all individuals are singular things and vica versa. Which singular things we consider to be individuals and which ones not only depends on us. This, however, leads to the conclusion that adequacy and inherence depends less on numerical distinction between the causes, and more on the ability of our body to accord with the external object in as many aspects as it can.
I propose a new approach to the problem, which is a development of Della Rocca’s position. I claim that in Spinoza there are only adequate causations and when the mind perceives a mode as inadequate cause of an effect, the phenomenal perception is the product of its inadequate ideas with which it conceives the world. I support my claim by utilizing the definition of singular thing which is defined as the bundle of causes that bring about the effect in such a way that none of them would suffice alone.
In my presentation I introduce an interpretation of consciousness by first arguing that consciousness in Spinoza ultimately depends on knowledge. It is stated by Spinoza that the more a body is capable of having in common with many bodies, the more the mind of that body will be conscious. In E2p14 and in the fifth part of the Ethics it is also stated that this capability is linked with the mind’s epistemic capacities: the more a body is capable of, the more its mind will be able to form adequate ideas. Thus, I claim that, contrary to LeBuffe’s interpretation, all uses of consciousness are knowledge uses.
I support this claim by presenting an interpretation of adequacy and inadequacy in Spinoza according to which an adequate idea is one which is constituted by distinct but not necessarily adequate ideas. This interpretation allows that some adequate ideas are constituted by inadequate yet distinct ideas (e.g. the adequate idea of the visual perception of the sun by the distinct and inadequate ideas of the external cause and the perceiver). I show that this interpretation can accommodate better the claim of E2p33 than LeBuffe’s interpretation.
With this interpretation I am able to argue for a developed version of Nadler’s interpretation and claim that the consciousness of a mind depends on the degree to which it is constituted by adequate ideas; and the consciousness of an idea depends on whether it is present distinctly or confusedly in the mind. When the mind has an inadequate idea its constituents are confused and therefore the mind perceives them as if they were one: the mind is not aware of them nor of the changes in them. This means in Spinoza that the ideas of these objects are present in the mind but are not present consciously: I can have a conscious idea of my body without having a conscious idea of my pancreas, but certainly the idea of my pancreas constitutes the idea of my body just as my body is constituted by my pancreas. Also, the mind that has more conscious ideas is aware of more things and more changes in its environment. This means in Spinoza that this mind will have more adequate ideas and therefore it will be more active and conscious. This interpretation can also preserve the benefits of Garrett’s and Nadler’s interpretations without being liable to the objections raised against them by LeBuffe.
Spinoza’s statements about the eternal part of the mind are very hard to interpret, since they seem to plainly contradict his earlier statements about the mind being identical with the body. He also claimed that both the mind and the body are composites and therefore can be destroyed. In addition, his identity thesis would imply that if there is an eternal part of the mind that remains after death, there must be an eternal part of the body that remains after death too.
Many scholars have tried to interpret these statements (Curley, 2001; Della Rocca, 2008; Garrett, 2009; Matson, 1990) but none of them was able to come up with an interpretation that neither trivializes the doctrine by identifying the eternal part of the mind with the idea of the formal essence of the body – which is an omnipresent dispositional property – nor loses its capacity to provide consolation – which it certainly did at least for Spinoza and Russell (Matson, 1990, p. 94). In my presentation I will briefly show that Garrett’s interpretation is liable to a regress argument and Della Rocca’s interpretation presupposes the unsustainable claim that the universal individual is an infinite mode. I will then approach the question from Spinoza’s theory of knowledge and argue that if we concentrate on the distinction of adequate and inadequate knowledge, we can make sense of the claim but I will argue that because of Spinoza’s extremely weak principle of individuation the picture that emerges is less about personal survival than about an Averroist active intellect.
Spinoza defines an adequate idea as one that accords with its object. However the identity thesis implies that the idea is identical with its object, and therefore it seems that all ideas are adequate. To solve this puzzle, many scholars of the mainstream literature interpreted Spinoza following Descartes’ account of error and took the source of error to be a wrong judgment: the mind errs when considers an idea to be true, to represent its object adequately, although its source is not a clear and distinct conception but a confused one (See e.g. Curley, 1973; Garrett, 2008, 2013; Wilson, 1996). This interpretation is very hard to reconcile with Spinoza’s denial of the distinction between will and intellect (E2p49s), as well as with his assertion that all ideas are true in themselves (E2p41).
I argue that epistemic truth and falsity in Spinoza should be approached from the distinction of adequate and inadequate causation: adequate causation takes place when one cause brings about one effect, and inadequate or partial causation happens when multiple causes bring about one effect in such a way that neither partial cause would individually suffice for bringing about the effect. According to one of Spinoza’s principles of individuation, a singular thing is defined by causation: multiple objects, properties or events that together cause an effect, as far as they cause it, are considered to be one singular thing. This means that every instance of inadequate causation is the result of inadequate perspective: when I see an apple, my body and the apple form a singular thing as far as they cause my sensory experience. Therefore, my idea formed by a sensory experience, which is an idea of imagination and therefore necessarily false, will be an adequate idea of something, namely of the activity in my neural system. At the same time my idea will be inadequate idea of both the external object and my body, since from this idea alone the mind cannot trace back these constituent parts.
Thus all ideas are adequate in the sense that they will accord with their object, but perhaps the finite mind won’t be able to trace back the represented content and will consider the idea to be false. This claim helps us to interpret the doctrine of the eternal part of the mind: truth only pertains to God’s ideas; all other ideas can only be true to a degree (I rely in establishing this claim on Della Rocca, 2008). When I see an apple, I can form an adequate idea of it when I can conceive its actual essence, but that does not mean that I know its causal history and the constitution of all its parts. Nevertheless it is a true idea if its cause is coextensive with the apple, that is the apple caused the idea adequately. I will argue that the bifurcation of the eternal and the temporal parts of the mind depends on their ontological status: ideas of imagination are ideas as far as they constitute the finite mind; however, ideas of the second and third kind of knowledge are both ideas of the finite mind and ideas of God. Thus all our memories – which grounds personal identity according to Spinoza (E4p39s) – and ideas that are unique in us are strictly speaking false and temporal, while all our ideas that are adequate are common to everyone and are eternal (E2p18s). Therefore, inadequate ideas are only ideas of God insofar as he constitutes the finite mind, while adequate ideas are part of God’s infinite intellect. There are really ideas constituting the mind that are eternal, but I claim that these ideas are not more ‘mine’ than the color of my eye can be said to be ‘mine’.
The definition of imagination (E2p16-17) states that imagination happens when an external body affects the human body in a way that the body’s affection was caused together by the external body and the human body. For example when I have the visual experience of an apple, the visual experience created in my neural system is caused together by the apple and by the constitution of my body in a way that cannot be traced back: the mind cannot decide what elements of my sensory experience are caused by my body (what we see because we have the sensory apparatus of humans) and of the external body (what we see because we see that particular external object).
I argue that epistemic truth and falsity in Spinoza should be approached from the distinction of adequate and inadequate causation: adequate causation takes place when one cause brings about one effect, and inadequate or partial causation happens when multiple causes bring about one effect in such a way that neither partial cause would individually suffice for bringing about the effect. According to one of Spinoza’s principles of individuation, singular thing is defined by causation: multiple objects, properties or events that together cause an effect, as far as they cause it, are considered to be one singular thing. This means that every instance of inadequate causation is the result of inadequate perspective: when I see an apple, my body and the apple form a singular thing as far as they cause my sensory experience. Therefore, my idea formed by a sensory experience, which is an idea of imagination and therefore necessarily false, will be an adequate idea of something, namely of the activity in my neural system. Though this idea will contain the adequate idea of both the external object and my body, from this idea alone the mind cannot trace back these constituent parts.
In order to show what the problem is with the mainstream view, I would like to draw the example of the sun (E2p35s, E3p1s): when we first see the sun, we perceive it to be small and close. When, however, we learn from astronomy that the sun is in fact huge and very far away, we still see it to be close and small. This shows according to Spinoza that imagination is not a mistake that is removed by true knowledge. Note that in Descartes’s use of the example we form two different ideas of the sun, and the intellect errs if accepts one instead of the other. However, in Spinoza’s account we have only one idea that will retain several of its erroneous features even when we know from a different source what the adequate properties of the sun are. I shall argue that the source of error is the obscurity of the idea that does not allow the distinct conception of its constituent parts.
The notion of adequate and inadequate causation is helpful in this context: truth only pertains to God’s ideas; all other ideas can only be true to a degree. When I see an apple, I can form an adequate idea of the apple when I can conceive its actual essence, but that does not mean that I know its causal history and the constitution of all its parts. Nevertheless it is a true idea if its cause is coextensive with the apple, that is the apple caused the idea adequately. I will argue that the bifurcation of eternal and temporal part of the mind depends on their ontological status: ideas of imagination are ideas as far as they constitute the finite mind; however, ideas of the second and third kind of knowledge are both ideas of the finite mind and ideas of God. Therefore, inadequate ideas are only ideas of God insofar as he constitutes the finite mind, while adequate ideas are part of God’s infinite intellect. I claim that the three kinds of knowledge are not differentiated based on their source, but rather based on their output: ideas that are part of both the finite mind and the infinite intellect are products of the intellect, while ideas that are only part of the finite mind are products of imagination.
While Zizek finds a model for this acceptance-in-order-to-criticize in Hegel’s treatment of infinite judgment, he does not believe that a similar approach would be possible in art. There is a line in Hegel-scholarship that approaches Hegel’s Phenomenology from the concept of body and the embodiment of Spirit, e.g. John Russon’s work, though they tended to neglect the ‘Phrenology’ chapter that has central importance to Zizek.
I will present an example of contemporary art, the video installation series Hysterical Literature, which shows women reading aloud from a book while being stimulated by a vibrator under the table. The choice of word ‘hysterical’ and also the setting of the video invoking medical experiments blurs the link between voyeurism and critique of traditional medicalization of feminine pleasure. On the web page of the project each participant reflects on her experiences and everyone highlights the empowerment felt mostly because of choosing the book to read out and at the same time exercising their sexuality publicly, as a ‘revolutionary act’, in a society that otherwise would require to keep it in private.
I claim that this artistic expression presents the same dialectic as Zizek’s interpretation of the ‘Phrenology’ chapter, and I argue that first, in order to make sense of Hegel’s treatment of the relationship of nature and spirit in the Phenomenology we need to address this important and much neglected chapter, and second, that by interpreting this work of art as a Zizekian ghost of modern society we can gain new insights into the phenomena of over-sexualization of new areas of culture and self-branding via social media on the one hand, and the into aesthetic quality of depicting pleasure in contemporary art.
Our volume consists of papers based on the contributions to the First Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, held on 14-15 October 2016 at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. When composing this volume, our aim was not to present a systematic survey of affectivity in early modern philosophy. Rather, our more modest goal was to foster collaboration among researchers working in different countries and different traditions. Many of the papers published here are already in implicit or explicit dialogue with others. We hope that they will generate more of an exchange of ideas in the broader field of early modern scholarship.