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Spinoza and the Cosmological Argument According to Letter 12

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09608788.2012.696052

1469-3526

Mogens Lærke,

Historical Philosophy and Science

Abstract In this paper, I discuss Spinoza's conception of the cosmological argument for the existence of God (hereafter CA), as it can be reconstructed taking departure from Letter 12. By a CA, I understand, quite broadly, an argument which infers a posteriori the existence of a necessary being, usually identified as God, from the experience that there exists some other being, often oneself, the existence of which is contingent upon the existence of this necessary being. The difference between various versions of the CA stems from differences in the way in which the relation of existential dependence is understood. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct a version of the CA which would be valid on Spinoza's principles. I argue that such a version must be understood in the context of Spinoza's causal rationalism. By such causal rationalism, I mean a doctrine committed to the idea that everything is rational and thus explicable and that causal explanations are somehow fundamental. Moreover, I hold that, in Spinoza's causal rationalism, there is one form of causation through which all other types of causation are ultimately understood. This ‘archetype’ of causation is self-causation. Keywords: Spinozacausal rationalismcosmological argument Notes 1I use the following abbreviations: SPINOZA: E=Ethics (D = Definition; Ax = Axiom; P = Proposition; D = Demonstration (when following a proposition); C = Corollary; S = Scholium; Exp = Explication); KV = Short Treatise; TIE = Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Editions: G = Opera (Heidelberg, 1925); C = The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited by E. Curley (Princeton, 1985); S = Spinoza. Complete Works, edited by S. Shirley (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 2002). DESCARTES: AT = Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by Ch. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, 1964–76); CSM = The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge, 1984). LEIBNIZ: A = Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (Berlin, 1923). Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own. I am grateful to Yitzhak Melamed, Warren Zev Harvey, Eric Schliesser and the anonymous referees of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy for their comments on this paper. This is one of the two places where Spinoza discusses the CA. A version also appears in EIP11D3. I have dedicated another article to this argument: ‘Spinoza's Cosmological Argument in the Ethics’, forthcoming in Journal of the History of Philosophy 49 (2011) No. 4: 439–62. 2Cf. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics (Indianapolis, 1984) 29–30. 3This is clear from the fact that Spinoza refers Tschirnhaus to Letter 12 for further information in his letter from May 1676 (cf. Letters 80 and 81, G IV 331–2: S 955–6) 4In July 1675, Spinoza travelled to Amsterdam to have the book printed but refrained from doing so out of prudence (cf. Letter 68, G IV 299: S 935). 5Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, II, 2, 994a, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by J. Barnes (Princeton, 1984) Vol. II, p. 1570. 6For Avicenna's texts, I have consulted R. N. Bosley and M. M. Tweedale (eds), Basic Issues in Medieval Philosophy (Peterborough, 1997) 14–18. See also Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA, 1962) Vol. I, pp. 194–5. For Maimonides, see Guide of the Perplexed, translated by S. Pines (Chicago and London, 1963) II, 1, 243, to be read in conjunction with the Introduction to the Second Part, 235. 7Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (New York, 1920) Ia, q. 2, a. 3. 8Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles (Rome, 1934) lib. 1, cap. XIII, 14. See also Summa theologica, Ia, q. 2, a. 3. For Aristotle, see Metaphysics, II, 2, 994a, in The Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 150. 9Cf. Crescas, The Light of the Lord, I, 2, 3, translated in Harry A. Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, 1971) 224–9. See also Warren Zev Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (Amsterdam, 1998) 82–3. 10Crescas, The Light of the Lord, I, 3, 2, translated in Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics, 97. 11Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics, 89. 12G IV 61–2: C 205. 13Cf. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, I, 197. 14On this question, see Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics, 89–90, and Frédéric Manzini, Spinoza: Une lecture d'Aristote (Paris, 2009) 157. 15A VI, iii, 282–3. 16Cf. Wim Klever, ‘Actual infinity: On the Crescas-passus in Spinoza's Letter (12) to Lodewijk Meyer’, Studia Spinozana, 10 (1994): 111–9. 17On creation, see EIP8S2, EP15S1, EIP33S2, etc. On the infinity of nature (naturans and naturata), see EIP8, EIP15S and EIP28D. 18Cf. A VI, iii, 283, translated in G. W. Leibniz, The Labyrinth of the Continuum, edited by R. Arthur (New Haven, 2001) 117. 19The restriction to finite things should be noted. There are infinite things (or rather modes) that Spinoza considers to be immediately or mediately related to God (cf. EIP21–3). He explains in EIP28S that only in relation to these infinite modes can God be called a ‘remote’ cause of finite things. Exactly how we are to understand the mediation/remoteness Spinoza has in mind is a problem of its own. For a recent study, see T. Schmaltz, ‘Spinoza's Mediate Infinite Mode’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 35 (1997) No. 2: 199–235. 20On this point, see also KV, Second Dialogue, G I 31: C 76. Spinoza hints at something similar when, in Letter 54, he maintains that ‘the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no other than that between God and the least created thing’ (G IV 253: S 899). 21Crescas, The Light of the Lord, I, 2, 3, translated in Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics, 83–4. 22G IV 179: S 854. See also EIP8S2 (including Curley's note). 23The interpretation of EIA4 outlined above requires that ‘knowing’ (cognoscere) is considered equivalent to ‘conceiving’ (concipere) and having a ‘concept’ (conceptus). This does not hold generally. Knowledge (cognitio) is not necessarily adequate (cf. EIIP40S2; EIIIP30). ‘Concepts of the mind’, on the contrary, express ‘actions of the mind’ (EIID3Exp) and such ‘actions of the mind’ always stem from adequate ideas (EIIIP3). Consequently, the notion of ‘conception’ seems narrower than the notion of ‘knowledge’. I, however, think it is reasonable to assume that, in the specific context of EIA4, Spinoza has only adequate knowledge in mind. This is clear from the way in which he employs the axiom in, for example, EIP6D2. 24See, for example, Harold A. Joachim, A Study of the Ethics (Oxford, 1901) 54, note; Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, I, pp. 127–8; II, p. 142; Ferdinand Alquié, Le Rationalisme de Spinoza (Paris, 1981) 127. 25See Vincent Carraud, Causa sive Ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à Leibniz (Paris, 2002) 329. In order to explain why Spinoza then appeals to causation at all in that context, Carraud suggests that we should take Spinoza's causa sui to be a kind of formal cause. In that case, Carraud argues, there is no substantial difference between the Spinozistic and the orthodox Aristotelian conception of the necessary existence of God, since such formal self-causation involves that God does not have an efficient cause (ibid., 319, 324–6). The reading is problematic partly, but not only, because it conflicts with Spinoza's use of the notion of a causa formalis. It appears only once in Ethics, namely in EVP31: ‘[T]he third kind of knowledge depends on the Mind, as on a formal cause [tanquam a formali causa], insofar as the Mind is itself eternal’. It is unclear just how much this occurrence of the notion commits Spinoza to, on account of the conjunction tanquam, which can be given both a strong literal interpretation (it is indeed a formal cause) or a weaker analogical interpretation (it is not a formal cause, but something like a formal cause). Regardless of how we interpret EVP31&D, it is, however, clear from this that (i) nominally, the causa formalis does not figure prominently in Spinoza's theory of causation; (ii) Spinoza nonetheless does have a notion of causa formalis and (iii) this notion has nothing to do with the causa sui. Consequently, assimilating the causa sui to a sort of causa formalis creates a direct conflict with Spinoza's own philosophical vocabulary. From a methodological viewpoint, I simply do not see how the meaning of some philosopher can be clarified by introducing equivocations rather than removing them. 26Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, Ia, q. 2, a. 3; Summa contra gentiles, I, xviii, 17; I, xxii, 24; Francisco Suarez, Disputationes metaphysicae (Hildesheim, 1998) Disp. I, sect. 9, art. 7, Disp. XXXVIII, sect. 1, n. 7, and Disp. I, sect. 1, n. 29. 27For Descartes, see, for example, the first replies, AT VII 108–11: CSM II 78–80. I will here put to one side the complications arising from the fact that Descartes himself will go back on his own conception of God as a causa efficiens sui. 28‘Immanent causation’ also figures as the second subcategory in Spinoza's eight-part classification of efficient causes in KV I, iii, §2. 29Bennett, A Study, 74. For a detailed discussion, see my ‘Spinoza's Cosmological Argument in the Ethics’. 30Cf. Donagan, Spinoza, 61. 31Letter 34, G IV 179: S 854. 32Letter 60, G IV 270–1: S 913. See also Gueroult, Spinoza I: Dieu, 172–3. 33In Thomas Aquinas, the causa essendi, contrary to the causa fiendi, is a cause which is required to subsist in order for the effect to subsist (cf. Summa theologica, I, q. 104, art. 1, resp.). Cf. Steven Nadler, ‘’Whatever is, is in God’: substance and things in Spinoza's metaphysics', in Interpreting Spinoza, edited by C. Huenemann (Cambridge, 2008) 62–4. 34David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, sect. 1.3.14, edited by D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton (Oxford, 2000) sect. 1.3.15, p. 115. 35Cf. Yitzhak Melamed, ‘Spinoza's Metaphysics of Substance: The Substance-Mode Relation as a Relation of Inherence and Predication’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 78 (2009) No. 1: 31–4. 36As already mentioned above, Spinoza uses the adjective coniuncta in this sense in EIP28D, when explaining that God is not a ‘remote cause’, since ‘by a remote cause we understand one which is not conjoined [coniuncta] in any way with its effect’. 37Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologica, I, q. 8, a. 1, resp.: ‘God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works'. 38Spinoza himself stresses the originality of his theory (cf. Letter 6, G IV 36: C, 188: ‘I do not separate God from nature as everyone known to me has done’; see also Letter 73, G IV 307: S 942). I will not in this context address the perennial question whether this ‘separation’ is not eventually too fragile, and Spinoza consequently vulnerable either to the charge of ‘materialism’ and ‘atheism’ levelled by a host of early readers, or, on the contrary, to the Hegelian accusation of ‘acosmism’. For a recent discussion of the latter possibility, see Yitzhak Melamed, ‘Acosmism or Weak Individuals? Hegel, Spinoza, and the Reality of the Finite’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 48 (2010) No.1: 77–92. 39It is a point often stressed by francophone commentators. See Alquié, Le Rationalisme de Spinoza, 128; Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza. Philosophie pratique (Paris, 1981) 77; Carraud, Causa sive ratio, 313. 40See M. Lærke, ‘Immanence et extériorité absolue. Sur la théorie de la causalité et l'ontologie de la puissance de Spinoza’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger, 2 (2009): 169–90.