Not Wholly Finite: The Dual Aspect of Finite Modes in Spinoza

Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy, Ohad Nachtomy and Reed Winegar (Eds), 2018

There are many aspects of the Ethics that seem to suggest the possibility of deducing finite modes from the infinite substance. This way of proceeding would track the ontological order, going from cause to effect, and from what is in itself to what is in another. In spite of the inviting and elegant nature of this top-down trajectory, once we try to actually follow it, things become complicated very quickly. In this paper I argue that a demand for an abstracted top-down trajectory is unwarranted because a top-down trajectory presupposes a previous ascent from confusion to adequacy. Furthermore, I argue that the state of confusion itself, which is our undeniable starting point, is made metaphysically possible only in virtue of there being a real plurality of modes, and hence in that sense in no need of a deduction.

Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, 2017

This chapter provides an outline of the main philosophical and interpretative problems involved in Spinoza's key concepts: Substance, Attribute, and Modes. Spinoza's God has infinitely many qualities that constitute, or are adequately conceived as constituting, his essence, while the other qualities of Spinoza's God, though not constituting God's essence, follow necessarily from God's essence. Spinoza calls the former "Attributes [attributa]" and the latter "Modes [modi]." Following a clarification of Spinoza's understanding of Substance [substantia] in the first part of this essay, we will study in the second and third parts Spinoza's conception of attributes and modes, respectively.

2013

In this book, Yitzhak Y. Melamed offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza. Against Curley's influential reading, he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. Against the claim that it is a category mistake to consider things as properties, he argues that the distinction between things and properties has been thoroughly undermined both in the early modern period and in contemporary metaphysics (in bundle theories, and some versions of trope theory). He goes on to clarify Spinoza’s understanding of infinity, mereological relations, infinite modes, and the flow of finite things from God’s essence. In the second part of the book, Melamed relies on this interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in Spinoza's metaphysics. First, he shows that Spinoza had not one, but two independent doctrines of parallelism. The Ideas-Things Parallelism stipulates an isomorphism between the order of ideas in the attribute of Thought and the order of things in nature. The Inter-Attributes Parallelism establishes an isomorphism among the order of modes in each of the infinitely many attributes. He shows that these two doctrines are independent of each other and that each has different implications. Relying on this clarification of the doctrines of parallelism, Melamed develops his final main thesis. Here he argues that, for Spinoza, ideas have a multifaceted (in fact, infinitely faceted) structure that allows one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet, within Spinoza's metaphysics, Thought clearly has primacy over the other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is as elaborate, as complex, and, in some senses, as powerful as God.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2009

Spinoza's rejection of Aristotelian final causation seems to create a difficulty for his account of individuation. If causation is indeed blind, how do finite modes come to assume complex, differentiated forms? And why do we find in nature a great regularity of such forms? Several recent commentators have proposed that Spinoza maintains something of the Aristotelian conception of causation where the formal essences of individuals guide the process of individuation toward certain desirable outcomes. But this sort of approach introduces other difficulties that threaten to undermine Spinoza's naturalistic framework and his ontology of immanence. This paper outlines a mechanistic and probabilistic account of individuation whereby modes are individuated by entering into relations that increase their mutual power of enduring. Together with conatus as the principle of individuation, this mechanistic this mechanistic account suffices to explain the individuation of finite bodies without introducing additional kinds of causation into Spinoza's philosophy.

Idealistic Studies--forthcoming, 2018

Proposition 28 of Part One of Spinoza’s Ethics is considered to be one of the most central propositions of this magnum opus primarily because it is key to establishing the determinism pervading Spinoza’s universe. Commentators have taken for granted that what is being described here is an infinite regress of efficient causation among bodies or events. I propose an alternative reading of this fundamental feature of Spinoza’s philosophy, which, given its centrality, has far-reaching implications. I claim that the relation between finite things expressed in 1P28 must be understood as constitutive of the individuation of finite modes rather than describing the interaction between already established finite singular things.

Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 2022

This article examines the essence-existence distinction in Spinoza's theory of modes. This distinction is commonly made in two ways. First, essence and existence are separated by cause. Essences are understood to follow vertically from the essence of God, while existence follows horizontally from other modes. I present textual and systematic arguments against such a causal bifurcation. Second, essence and existence are distinguished by their temporal nature. Essence is eternal. Existence is durational. However, in several passages, Spinoza writes that eternity and duration constitute two ways of understanding nature rather than two really distinct aspects of nature.

Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 86 (2013), 2013