Dossier “interpreteren van 1/17s” - 2. Pierre-Sylvain Régis (1632–1707) bestrijder én imitator van Spinoza

Ik breng in herinnering dat ik op zoek ben naar informatie die een licht kan werpen op het notoir moeilijke scholium bij 1/17. Met name ben ik op zoek naar het “axioma” dat Spinoza daar inzet (en het is opmerkelijk genoeg de enige plaats in de Ethica) dat het veroorzaakte verschilt van zijn oorzaak precies in wat het van die oorzaak ontving: “Nam causatum differt a sua causa praecise in eo quod a causa habet.”
Dit wijkt af van wat Spinoza ‘normaal’ vindt, n.l. dat je dingen uit hun oorzaken kunt kennen. [cf. vorige blog]

Pierre-Sylvain Régis kreeg zijn opleiding  aan het Jezuïetencollege van Cahors en in theologie aan de Franse Universiteit. Hij gaf les in Toulouse en Montpellier tot hij in 1680 Jacques Rohault in Parijs opvolgde. In 1699 werd hij genomineerd voor de Franse Academie van Wetenschappen. [wiki en cf.]. Hij was een Franse Cartesiaanse filosoof, wiens Système de philosophie, contenant la logique, metaphysique, physique & morale (1690) grote invloed had. Hij was criticus van Spinoza en schreef onder meer:

Pierre-Sylvain Régis, L'Usage de la raison et de la foy [Paris 1704] dat een Appendix bevatte "Réfutation De L'Opinion De Spinosa, Touchant L'Existence, Et La Nature De Dieu” [cf. Gallica – Hathitrust – books.google]

In zijn boek

Tad M. Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes. Cambridge University Press, 2002, behandelt hij in Par. “2.7 Quasi-Spinozistic causal dissimilarity” vanaf p. 113 [cf. books.google] precies dit axioma dat  Spinoza in 1/17s inzette: “Nam causatum differt a sua causa praecise in eo quod a causa habet.”

Het is een lange analyse, waaruit ik het eerste gedeelte overneem (voetnoten werden hier eindnoten).

Ging Regis aanvankelijk nog mee met Descartes’ visie dat God de efficiënte oorzaak is van alle eeuwige waarheden en van alle dingen, “In Regis's mature view, however, efficient causality is constrained by the principle that requires that an effect differ from its cause in what it receives from that cause. His conclusion was that in all cases of creation, God produces an essence that differs entirely from His own. Though he claimed to borrow the principle backing this conclusion from scholastic philosophers, his own use of the principle is closer to the use of it in Spinoza. In particular, Regis followed Spinoza in taking such a principle to reveal that God differs from the beings that depend on Him with respect to both essence and existence. The result stands in marked contrast to the suggestion in Descartes of the traditional scholastic doctrine that creatures stand in an "analogical" relation to God.

2.7 QUASI-SPINOZISTIC CAUSAL DISSIMILARITY

In the Usage, Regis introduced the principle that "effects differ from their causes only in what [the former] receive from [the latter]." He argued in his text that such a principle — call it the dissimilarity principle — requires that "effects that receive only existence from their cause differ also from their cause only in existence, and that those that receive essence and existence differ totally." His conclusion there is that, given this principle, the fact that God is the cause of both the essence and the existence of creatures reveals that "God and creatures have nothing in common but the name" (Usage 407).

The dissimilarity principle is rather unfamiliar in a Cartesian context. Indeed, it appears to conflict with a principle that is familiar from Descartes's Meditations, namely, that "the efficient and total cause" must contain "formally or eminently" everything that is found in its effect (AT 7:41). Regis also accepted a version of this principle. In particular, he consistently held as axiomatic that "the exemplary cause of ideas must formally contain all the perfections that the ideas represent."[85] However, this version differs from Descartes's own principle insofar as it does not include the possibility of "eminent" containment. Another difference is that Descartes's principle concerns efficient causality, whereas Regis's principle is restricted to exemplary causes. For Regis, an efficient cause is that which produces its effects either by its own power, as in the case of the primary cause, God, or by the help of the primary cause, as in the case of created secondary causes (Usage403)[86] In contrast, an exemplary cause is not that which produces the effect but rather that which serves as the model for its production. Thus, the building that serves as the model for the work of the architect is an exemplary cause of that work. So also, "all objects on which are formed the ideas of the soul" are exemplary causes of those ideas (406).[87]

This view that there is a similarity between exemplary causes and their effects did not prevent Regis from asserting in the Usage that the dissimilarity principle governs all efficient causality. He held that such a principle also is endorsed in the writings of "the Philosophers," that is to say, the scholastics (Usage 407). And indeed, there is a scholastic discussion in Suarez's Disputations of the axiom, which is said to "pertain to the very condition [rationeml of acting," that there is a dissimilarity (dissimilitude) between an efficient cause and its effect.[88] However, Suarez himself did not fully embrace the "truth," which Regis took "the Philosophers" to accept, that "effects differ from their causes only in what they receive from" those causes (407). His position is simply that the object that receives an effect initially must lack the effect it is to receive, while the agent must initially possess in some manner the effect that it is to cause in another.[89]

More importantly, Suarez could not have been comfortable with the conclusion in Regis that since God causes both the essence and existence of creatures, God and creatures have nothing in common but the name" (Usage 407). This conclusion indicates that Regis conceived of terms as applying to God and creatures in what the scholastics called an "equivocal" manner. In his Dispidationes, however, Suarez followed Thomas in explicitly rejecting the position that the terms apply only in this way?[90] His own official position in this work, again in line with Thomas, is that God bears an "analogical" relation to created substances by virtue of the fact that the former "subsists substantially and essentially per se" and thus "has the complete ratio of substance" while the latter are "not subsisting by an essential act but only by aptitude [per aptitudinel."[91] The analogical relation is said to be similar to the relation between substance and accidents. Just as being pertains primarily to substances and secondarily to the accidents that depend on substances for their existence, so subsistence pertains primarily to God, who subsists essentially, and secondarily to created substances, which have a mere aptitude to subsist and so depend on God for their existence.[92] For Suarez, then, the implication in Regis that God bears a merely equivocal relation to creatures is unacceptable.

In contrast, the emphasis in the Usage on equivocity is reinforced by the argument in Spinoza's Ethics for the conclusion that even if God has an intellect "it must disagree with our intellect both as to its essence and as to its existence, and cannot agree with it in anything but name" (G 2:63). This argument is contained in a scholium where Spinoza cited as axiomatic the principle that "what is caused differs from its cause precisely in what it has from the cause" (causatum differt a sua causa precise in eo, quod a causa habet). To illustrate this principle, Spinoza noted that a man can cause only the existence of another man, not his essence, which is "an eternal truth." Although the two agree in essence, apparently as shown by the fact that neither can exist without that which is essential to human beings,[93] they nonetheless disagree in existence, as shown by the fact that each can continue to exist without the other. Thus, the effect differs from the cause in what it receives from its cause, namely, its existence. By appealing to the implication in the Ethics that God is the cause both of the existence and the essence of our intellect, Spinoza was able to infer that God's intellect differs totally from our own and "cannot agree with it in anything but name" (C. 2:63).[94]

There are several parallels in this passage to the discussion in the Usage beyond the obvious resemblance of Spinoza's causal axiom to Regis's dissimilarity principle. For instance, Spinoza's remarks concerning the two men are reminiscent of the claim in Regis's text that "the quality of being a rational animal that is the essence of a man belongs equally to [convient également au] father and son, because if it would perish in one, it would be destroyed in the other, whereas the existence is proper to one independently of the other" (Usage 407). Even more importantly, Spinoza's argument for the conclusion that God's intellect agrees with our own only in name is structurally equivalent to the argument in Regis that since "it is certain that our will receives its essence and its existence from the will of God," it must be the case that "the will of God differs totally from ours, that is to say, it has nothing in common with [our will] but the name" (167f).

Spinoza once complained to a correspondent that in order to distance themselves from him, "the stupid Cartesians" (stolidi Cartesiani) never ceased "to denounce my writings everywhere, and still continue to do so" (G 4:299).[95] in light of this complaint, it is no surprise that instead of noting the anticipations in Spinoza of his views on causation, Regis emphasized instead his differences with this bête noire of the Cartesians. Thus, he drew attention in his own "Refutation de l'opinion de Spinosa" — a work appended to the Usage— to the fact that the result in his work that "God is the cause of all creatures, by this reason alone, that there is nothing in common between them" conflicts with the requirement in Spinoza that causes have something in common with their effects ("Ref." 919).

In the Ethics, Spinoza did, in fact, take such a requirement to follow from the axiom that things with nothing in common with each other cannot be understood through each other, when this is taken together with the further axiom that knowledge of an effect "depends on or involves" knowledge of its cause (G 2:47). Though Regis did not emphasize the point, there is the obvious problem of how such a requirement. can be reconciled with the conclusion in the Ethics that God's intellect differs from our own in both essence and existence .[96] But Spinoza required only that God as cause must be conceived through the same attribute of thought in terms of which our own intellect must be conceived. Even so conceived, God must be distinguished from our intellect insofar as this attribute constitutes his essence. Indeed, the mere fact that the essence of our intellect is an effect conceived through a divine attribute serves to distinguish it from that attribute, which cannot be the effect of anything. The result here, in accord with Spinoza's version of the dissimilarity principle, is that our intellect differs from its cause by virtue of the essence that it receives from that cause.[97]

Regis did allow, in a partial concession to Descartes, that most efficient causes "eminently" contain their effect.[98] – Tot zover de overname van Schmaltz’s tekst.  

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Ik breng deze tekst, daar de grote Descartes scholar Schmalz informatie aandraagt over het gebruik van het axioma dat het verschil tussen gevolg en oorzaak benadrukt. Ik vind het frappant en wel interessant dat Régis al aangeeft dat dit axioma in strijd is met de andere axioma’s waarin Spinoza juist de overeenkomst tussen effect en oorzaak benadrukt. Daar lijkt toch minstens een strijdigheid tussen beide. Zijn die twee tegenstrijdige “axioma’s” op een of andere manier met elkaar te verzoenen?

Ik heb twijfel of Schmalz Spinoza’s positie in het scholium bij 1/17 wel helemaal correct weergeeft, waar hij schrijft “that even if God has an intellect "it must disagree with our intellect both as to its essence and as to its existence, and cannot agree with it in anything but name." M.i. schrijft Spinoza dat niet. “Zelfs als…” zou betekenen dat ook als het intellect niet tot Gods essentie behoort (wat Spinoza’s visie is), dat hij dan nog steeds zou vinden (en dat het dus zijn visie zou zijn) dat ons intellect alleen maar de naam gemeen zou hebben met Gods intellect (dus ook als dit tot de natura naturata behoort). Dat is niet zoals ik Spinoza daar lees. Spinoza benadrukt juist de univociteit: ons intellect en Gods intellect zijn van dezelfde aard (alleen de omvang verschilt).

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[85] Compare Systeme 1:77, and Usage 235.

[86] Compare Systeme 1:125

[87] Compare ibid., 1: 181 f.

[88] I do not mean to suggest here that Suarez was Regis's source, but I think that we can take his discussion to reveal the sort of scholastic causal principle that Regis had in mind. For a more comprehensive comparison of the views of Suarez and Regis on these matters, see Schmaltz 2000b.

[89] Opera 25:670f. Notice that on Suarez's understanding, the principle complements Descartes's causal principle

[90] Opera 26:13r Compare S.Th. la, 23, 5. Suarez's argument, which he borrowed from Thomas, is that equivocity precludes any sort of knowledge of God.

[91] Opera 26:314r. Marion claims that lurking beneath the surface of Suarez's text is the view of Thomas's opponent, Duns Scotus, that we can conceive of God and creatures in terms of a common or “neutral" concept of being (Marion 1991, chs. 5-6). Though I cannot consider here Marion's intricate argument for this claim, I simply mention my suspicion that the common concept of being that he finds in Suarez does not differ fundamentally from a Thomistic concept that applies primarily to God and only derivatively to creatures.

[92] Opera 26:322v. The analogy is found in Thomas; see Aquinas 1975,1:147f.

[93] I take this to he the implication both of the official definition of essenceas 'that which being given the thing is necessarily posited. and which being taken away the thing is necessarily taken away" (G 2:84) and of the suggestion that there is a 'human nature in general" that several individuals share (C. 2:50f).

[94] For a discussion of this argument, that emphasizes the strength of Spinoza's commitment to a version of the dissimilarity principle, see Schmaltz, 2000b.

[95] Spinoza had in mind Cartesian sympathizers in the. Dutch universities. On French Cartesian critiques of Spinoza, principally in the work of Regis and dom Francois Lamy, see Verniere 1954 1: 240-59.

[96] One of Spinoza's correspondents, the German count Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, noted the problem in comments transmitted to Spinoza through the mediation of Georg Herman Schuller (G 4:275). Compare Spinoza's response in G 4:278.

[97] Compare the similar reading of Spinoza in Koyre 1961 and Gueroult 1968, 291-93.

[98] Regis granted in particular that "equivocal" causes eminently contain their effects by containing their genus, and that "univocal' causes eminently contain their effects by containing their genus and difference (Usage 407). He does not explain here why this sort of containment counts only as eminent and not as formal, but presumably the fact that the cause does not contain everything it produces in its effect precludes formal containment. Earlier in this text, Regis dismissed as "absurd" the claim that a watch that is an efficient cause of an idea that represents it as containing several wheels itself formally contains several wheels (238), though the reasons for the dismissal are not entirely clear to me.