Metaphysical Rationalism

Oxford Handbook of Spinoza

This chapter investigates Spinoza's commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) and its role in his system. What sorts of things does Spinoza think require a cause or explanation? What counts, for him, as a cause or explanation? The PSR is often associated with doctrines such as necessitarianism, the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, the Principle of Plenitude, and the existence of God. Some commentators have alleged that Spinoza's commitment to the PSR leads him to accept all of these doctrines. This paper examines each of these doctrines as they pertain to Spinoza's commitment to the PSR and his metaphysics more generally.

It is argued first, that Spinoza's Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is best seen as an auxiliary premise and not as an axiom of the Ethics; second, that Spinoza held the PSR to be a self-evident truth that indicates a necessary condition for clearly and distinctly representing the existence or non-existence of a thing; and third, that this interpretation of Spinoza's PSR explains the near absence of the PSR within the demonstrations of the Ethics as well as the importance of the principle in Spinoza's thought.

The Cambridge Critical Guide to Spinoza's Ethics, Yitzhak Melamed, ed. Cambridge, 2017

In this paper, I will argue that the Principle of Sufficient Reason should be rejected such that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is rejected except in the cases where a weak form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is adopted, where and only where, (i) God is understood to be exempt of the constraints of the Principle of Sufficient Reason as He is the uncaused first cause and (ii) any seemingly unexplainable or seemingly brute facts can be understood as indeed having reasonable cause, which is beyond the limited intellect of humankind but explainable by God due to his omniscience.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2004

One of the fundamental characteristics of Spinoza's theory of knowledge, and one of the most intriguing, is the quasi-automatic character of the progress of knowledge, which Spinoza puts forward in paragraph  of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect 1 and illustrates by the image of the intellect forging its own tools of perfection in paragraphs - 2 . Lia Levy's recent study of Spinoza's notion of consciousness shows the complexity and richness of this problematic, which should be considered crucial for the understanding of Spinoza's theory of knowledge. 3 One can immediately grasp the importance of the automatic or 'quasi'automatic character of the cognitive perfection of the mind in the framework of a metaphysics of necessity:it is a matter of showing that even the liberation which results from knowledge operates according to the laws This work was elaborated with the support of an FQRSC postdoctoral fellowship at the Université de Montréal. A shorter version of this text was presented to the Association des Amis de Spinoza and the Groupe de Recherches Spinozistes,  Dec. , at the Université de Sorbonne-Paris I. I would like to thank those in charge of these two organizations for their kind invitation, and especially Pierre-François Moreau. I would also like to extend my warmest thanks to Bruce Baugh for translating this text into English, and to James Crooks for revising the whole. 1 G ii,.The numbering of paragraphs is done according to Bruder (C.H.Bruder,Benedicti de Spinoza Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia,  vols. (Leipzig:Tauchnitz, -). See C i, :'They never conceived the soul (as we do here) as acting according to certain laws, like a spiritual automaton.'For an elucidation of this formula in the TIE,see Wim N.A.Klever,'Quasi aliquod automa spirituale', in E. Giancotti (ed.),

"Spinoza is the rationalist philosopher par excellence, making every conceivable emancipatory claim for reason in delineating the connection of reason to freedom and power. Spinoza develops a philosophy which affirms the emancipatory function of reason. This kind of philosophy has been challenged in recent times by postmodernist modes of thought. Whereas Spinoza affirms knowledge as power in a positive sense, the likes of Michel Foucault argue a knowledge/power nexus that savours more of an Hobbesian ceaseless conflict. Foucault’s equation of all forms of knowledge with the endless exercise of a power, the effects of which may be discursively placed but whose authority cannot be subject to rational criticism, explicitly denies the emancipatory function that Spinoza assigned to reason. Free of such rational critique, discourse inspired by Foucault lacks political and ethical import. Not surprisingly, Foucault’s work has proved itself to be compatible with a wide range of political platforms, spanning the spectrum from New Left to New Right. This political ambivalence directly follows from the loss of an ethical position owing to the denial of rational critique. The distinguishing characteristic of ‘the Left’ in both politics and ethics has been the commitment not just to challenge existing power structures in favour of the poor, the marginalized and the suppressed but to associate this challenge with a commitment to distinguish truth from ideological mystification and obfuscation. In connecting his rational philosophy with democratic politics, Spinoza is a ‘Left’ thinker in this grand tradition. This thesis highlights the ‘radical’ aspects of Spinoza’s rationalist philosophy, finding inspiration in his God-Nature relation, his democratic politics and his commitment to free rational thinking as subversive of all forms of coercive or state-sanctioned religious doctrine. The book argues that Spinoza makes it possible to resist the postmodernist drift by affirming the possibility of separating truth from illusion, reason from rhetoric. In this manner, philosophy can retain its emancipatory function and engage the political, social and economic issues of the day in a critical and emancipatory sense. In delineating the terms of freedom, knowledge and power and in showing their connection to each other, Spinoza offers a means of resisting the relativising tendencies of contemporary theory and, indeed, the way that this relativism in ethics serves existing power and entrenches the forces of political conservatism. The truth, for Spinoza, is the product not of consensus-belief but of rational critique which subjects existing norms and values to question. Not the least of Spinoza’s achievements is to have shown how such rational critique – the very stuff of philosophy – is no longer an elitist concern leading to the philosopher-ruler but has the potential to emancipate all humankind, since knowledge is key to an active relation to the world." This book has now been published and is available for purchase.

Pulayana Press, 2016

Spinoza's insistence that a deductive metaphysics built from a single Principle or 'Deus sive Natura' and from there proceeding to deduce in descending order all of the 'common properties' or 'Infinite Modalities', is far superior to the inductive method which begins with observation and measurement of particulars and then proceeds to the general. In fact Spinoza recognized in a universe of an infinite number of particulars no metaphysical assertions could be conjectured with any certainty from any investigation of the 'modes' or what is commonly referred to as the world of the 'sensible'.. This is because 'causality' is not a function of any particular object within the finite modes. In other words, any 'thing' which is not the cause of itself cannot render any measurable 'certainty' or 'truth value'. In this Pamphlet we examine Substantia sive Deus sive Natura by moving inclusively from Proposition to Proposition with explanations and interpolated commentary which provide the linkages which make clear the Essence and Nature of true Divinity. Spinoza's insight affords us a completely new and 'contemporary' understanding of what it means to truly grasp 'God'. Charles M Saunders

Carlos Fraenkel, Dario Perinetti et Justin Smith, dir., The Rationalists : Between Tradition and Revolution (New York: Springer, 2010, pp. 199-231)., 2010

This paper undertakes to clarify the ontological status of inadequate ideas and passive affects in Spinoza by questioning the identity of the subjects of which Spinoza speaks when referring to the subjective and objective realities of a mode. Against the surprisingly widespread view which holds that for Spinoza, inadequate ideas and passive affects are “nothing,” she argues that they must have a share in Deus sive Natura and shows how our subjective, psychological mind is intrinsically related to the logical, abstract one in God’s intellect, of which it is a “part.” Traduction en flamand par Karel D’Huyvetters publiée en septembre 2014 sur le site Spinoza in Vlaanderen (http://blog.seniorennet.be/spinoza_in_vlaanderen/).

Spinoza's idea of God was formulated through his theory of substance monism in his Ethics. After many objections even during his lifetime, it may be argued that Spinoza tightened his definition of monism to a form of hyper-monism to avoid the mistaken idea of the "One" as a sort of "Being" as stated in the letter 50 to Jarig Jellis and also in "Metaphysical thoughts" the appendix to "Principles of Cartesian Philosophy". The main thesis of this paper states a view that Spinoza's idea on God is not proving the existence of Being, in any case he is disproving it. But in his letters and metaphysical thoughts-he is actually implying the opposite of his proposition that "all things are One." That is to say "There is no One." The implications of this will call us to question the conception of Spinoza's God as a form of pantheism.

Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory, Matthew J. Kisner and Andrew Youpa, Oxford University Press, 2014

This essay focuses on Spinoza’s claim that ideas of reason are necessary. While Spinoza understands necessity to imply that something cannot be otherwise, the author shows that Spinoza employs a narrower notion of necessity that applies only to some things, what LeBuffe describes as omnipresence: existing at all times and in all places. This account of the sense in which the ideas of reason are necessary makes evident that such ideas have especially strong motivational power. Our affects are more powerful when they represent a thing present, which entails that our ideas representing things as always present and, thus, our ideas of reason are more powerful. On this basis, the author concludes that ideas of reason have a special motivating force, which explains how they serve as commands or dictates.