Spinoza: Third Lecture on Book I of the Ethics

0. Spinoza distinguishes three sorts of infinity:

· Something being infinite by its own nature and that can in no way be considered as finite. 

· Something being infinite by virtue of their cause, and when we think of it in abstraction from its cause, we can think of it as finite and divided into parts. 

· There is then a third kind of infinity defined as that which cannot be expressed by number.  Spinoza says this is like indefiniteness. 

1. When Spinoza says that there are infinite attributes, each expressing infinite essence, he can’t be talking of the second kind of infinity.  This leaves open the first and third kinds. 

· Interestingly, some interpreters think that Spinoza means that the number of attributes is just unlimited, not limited by anything else.  God has all possible attributes—a completeness of possession of attributes not limited by anything.  At least one such interpreter thinks that this infinity of attributes actually comes down to two attributes—we’ll meet these two attributes later and see why someone might think this.  For now, let’s just see if this makes sense.  Could there be just two infinite attributes?

· At first this seems absurd.  Two is not infinite!  But do we actually know this?  Consider the first definition of infinity.  By that definition two is infinite if and only if it is bounded by something bigger.  It seems it is—by three.  But we’re not talking here of an abstract two.  We’re talking of a very concrete two: of two attributes.  For two attributes to be bounded, i.e., finite, there would have to be three attributes that bound them.  But in fact on the theory that there are only two infinite attributes, there are only two.  There is no third attribute that can be brought in to bound the two.  Hence, two could qualify as infinite in the first sense.

· But actually Spinoza would deny us the use of the word “two” in this context.  Number is only understood when we consider things in abstraction from their absolutely infinite root causes.  But the attributes are not thus abstracted.  Thus, we cannot apply the concept of number to them.  So perhaps all we can say is: There is this attribute, and that attribute.  Can we add: And that’s all?  I am not sure Spinoza’s philosophy allows this.  When we say “that’s all” we would be attempting to bound the attributes by an “all”.  Moreover, we would be saying: “There are no others.”  But that’s a purely negative statement, and as such on Parmenidean grounds to be rejected.

· So probably Spinoza would not say there are only two attributes.  Within his system, it may be impossible to say such a thing…  But that does not mean that it is true within his system that there are more than two attributes.  If the category of number cannot be applied to God’s ultimate reality, then we can neither say there are two attributes nor that there are more than two attributes.  All we can do is say that the attributes aren’t limited by anything, either intensively or extensively.  So, on this view, we have both the first and the third meanings.

2. Spinoza distinguishes eternity, duration and time.  Saying that something is eternal is more than just saying it exists at all times.  It also says it is necessary on Spinoza’s view.  Duration is passage through, as we might say, time.  Time is the measure of duration—we talk of time whenever we have cut up duration into bits.  So when I say that the Bush presidency or the Battle of Waterloo are realities lasting through time, speaking timelessly and without distinguishing when they are realities, I am speaking of duration, since the Bush presidency and the Battle of Waterloo are something that endures through time.  But when I am more specific and say that the Battle of Waterloo happened or that the Bush presidency started in 2001, I am dealing with time. 

• How we cut time up is up to us.  In this sense, time is a concept of the imagination.  Time is our way of dividing up duration for the convenience of our measurement.  This is how Spinoza resolves the Zeno paradoxes.  There would be a problem, he thinks, if there actually was an infinite number of moments of time in reality.  It’s just that we can divide up duration in an infinite number of ways, and in fact we do when we think of time as a continuum of infinitely many points.

3. In the proof of proposition 30, we are told that a true idea must agree with its ideate.  The ideate or ideatum of an idea is that which the idea is of.  The ideate of my idea of a horse is just a horse. 

4. Proposition 33 says that God could not have done anything otherwise than in fact he had done them.  The proof depends on the fact that the things that God does are determined by his nature.  Suppose, then, God had a different nature.  Then that other nature, Spinoza insists, would also exist, since that nature would also be a nature consisting of infinite attributes, etc., and the same ontological argument that would apply for the nature God has would apply for that nature.  But then there would be another God, and hence there would be more than one substance.

• There are two assumptions in this argument.  The first assumption is that a thing has the very same nature in every possible world in which it exists.  If this assumption wasn’t so, then one could say that God has one nature in our world, but he could have had a different nature—in another possible world, he has a different nature.  This assumption is unproblematic: it merely explains a part of what Spinoza means by the “nature” of something.
• The second assumption is that things that exist follow necessarily from God’s nature, just as the theorems of geometry follow from the axioms of geometry.  This is because Spinoza’s paradigm of explanation is deductive: we explain B by A through proving that B follows from A.
• A variant argument: If God willed otherwise, he would have a different will, and hence would be a different being. This assumes two things: (a) That God’s will comes necessarily from his essence; (b) That there is no distinction possible between the will and its content.
• Spinoza does insist that God is a free cause.  This is because his view of freedom is a compatibilistic one like Leibniz’s.  Something is free if it acts from its own nature without any external interference.
• There is more to be said for this view of freedom in the case of God than in the case of human beings.  According to the medieval philosophical tradition, which Spinoza seems to agree with to some extent, there is no difference between God and God’s essence or nature.  God is his own nature.  In this, God differs from us.  I am not my own nature.  Perhaps my nature could even exist (e.g., in someone’s mind) without me existing, though this is not so clear.  After all, one can describe my nature and say there is such a nature and still ask but does something exist that has that nature (cf. the distinction between being and essence).  So if my actions are determined by my nature, they are not determined by me, because I am not my nature.  I receive my nature from my causes (my parents, God, etc.), so anything due to my nature is determinatively due to someone else.   However, it is not so for God.  God is his very own nature.  Thus, when God does something out of the necessity of his own nature, this is not a case of one entity—God’s nature—compelling another entity—God—to act.  Rather, whatever God does out of the necessity of his own nature, that God does and God is the ultimate source of.
• This is for instance why some theists have two different analyses of freedom: One for creatures and one for God.  For human beings to count as free when we do the right thing, we must have also had been capable of doing the wrong thing.  This is because if human beings were such as to be unable to do the wrong thing, then their doing the right thing would be attributable to their nature rather than to the human beings.  On the other hand, God counts as free even though according to traditional Western theism, God cannot do anything wrong.
• Spinoza simply takes this view one step further.  Not only God cannot do anything wrong and yet is free, but in fact God cannot do anything otherwise than he does—and yet he is free, in that his actions comes directly from him.
• Spinoza views will as a necessary cause.  When I choose to raise my arm, the cause of my raising my arm is my will.  Now, if I had chosen not to raise my arm, my will would have been different.  So there are two wills here.  The will-to-raise-my-arm and the will-not-to-raise-my-arm.  Both of these wills produce their effects necessarily: the will-to-raise-my-arm causes my arm to rise, &c.  Now, where does the will-to-raise-my-arm come from?  Well, it comes from some previous cause, which determines that this will should arise.
• What is behind this view is the idea that if A causes B, then A cannot cause not-B instead without A having been in some way different.  Thus if I were not to have raised my arm, I would have had to have been somehow different before the time of the decision.  How could two different states (arm raised and arm not raised) come out of the same initial state before the decision?  The Libertarian who thinks that free will involves the ability to do more than one thing will say that this is precisely what happens—a person in the very same state can do one or another thing, just as Thomas Aquinas thought that God without himself having been any different could have created a different world, but this wouldn’t have put God in a different state.

4. Finally, we get Spinoza’ critique of theism.

• According to Spinoza, human beings seek nothing but their advantage.  Therefore, they think they are free and always act for a goal.  From this human beings get the idea that Nature or God acts for the sake of human beings, too, and they form all kinds of concepts such as “Good”, “Bad”, “Order”, “Confusion”, “Beauty”, “Ugliness”, “Hot” and “Cold.”  Then they project these concepts on to a reality that does not instantiate any such concepts, not realizing that when they say that something is beautiful, they only mean that it is to their advantage.  But in fact, God doesn’t act for the benefit of human beings—indeed, God does not act for purposes at all, because God acts out of necessity.  (It is not obvious why out of necessity implies not for a purpose.)
• I respond: It is questionable whether in fact human values have such a link with the benefit of humans.  Imagine a person steps on your toe unintentionally.  This hurts, but you do not resent it as much as when it is done intentionally, even though the amount of harm is the same (this example is based on things C. S. Lewis says).  We care, it seems, about more than just harm and benefit to ourselves. 
• Why do we admire altruism not directed towards ourselves?  Is it merely because it could have been directed towards ourselves?
• While we do experience and enjoy beauty, we experience and enjoy it as something more than just something merely enjoyable.  If I were to view a beautiful painting as merely something that gives me pleasure, I would no longer get as much pleasure out of it.  Part of the pleasure of viewing a beautiful painting is due to the fact that the painting’s beauty is objective.  If I saw it as a mere pleasure, then it would decrease as a pleasure.  Pleasure alerts us to something good over and beyond the pleasure.  The pleasure of looking at a beautiful painting alerts us to the fact that there is such a thing as the objective beauty of this painting.
• Spinoza is telling us here that a whole realm of human experience is merely illusory.  But he does not give us an argument for this claim here.  He only says so, though he gives us a story about how this illusion could have come about.  But the story is not the only one.  One could give the alternate story that the fact that some things benefit us alerts us to the fact that some things are good, and so by learning that some things are good-for-us we learn that some things are good, and thus we learn that there in fact is goodness.  Spinoza does not yet give us an argument that proves that our values are illusory.  We shall have to see if he’ll give us such an argument later.