instrumentum lexicographicum Spinozanum

Zeven jaren nadat Emilia Giancotti Boscherini’s tweedelige Lexicon Spinozanum was uitgekomen, verscheen een boekwerk, waarbij wél gebruik was gemaakt van de computer om allerlei statistiek van - niet alle werken van Spinoza, zoals Emilia Giancotti met de hand nog wel had gedaan, maar alleen - de Ethica op te stellen en aan te bieden. Dat gebeurde vanuit het CETEDOC, het Centre de Traitement Electronique des Documents de l'Université Catholique de Louvain.

Het CETEDOC bracht veel werk op de markt en wil zo ongeveer de hele Library of Christian Latin Texts statistisch lexicografisch onder de loep nemen [cf.]. Om een enkel voorbeeld te noemen:

In 1974 verzorgden Philippe Delhaye, Michel Gueret & Paul Tombeur: Concilium Vaticanum II: concordance, index, listes de fréquence, tables comparatives. Edited by Philippe Delhaye, Michel Gueret and Paul Tombeur. Pp. xx + 978. Louvain: CETEDOC, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1974.

In 1977 verzorgden Roger Aubert, Michel Gueret & Paul Tombeur: Concilium Vaticanum I: concordance, index, listes de fréquence, tables comparatives. Edited by Roger Aubert, Michel Gueret and Paul Tombeur. Pp. xxviii + 276. Louvain: CETEDOC, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1977. [Cf.]

Dezelfden hadden dezelfde kunstjes ook toegepast op de Ethica, aan welk werk dan ook precies dezelfde ondertitel werd gegeven:

Michel GUERET, André ROBINET et Paul TOMBEUR. Spinoza, Éthica, Concordances, Index, Liste des fréquences, Tables comparatives. Un vol. 28 x 22 de XXII et 538 pp. Louvain-la-Neuve, Université Catholique de Louvain, Publications CETEDOC (Centre de Traitement Electronique des Documents de l'Université Catholique de Louvain), 1977.

Naar Scribd is een slechte kopie geüpload, maar die kan wel een idee van het werk geven.

Om een indruk te geven breng ik hier het review van G. H. R. Parkinson over wie ik op 07-08-2015 het blog had: “G. H. R. Parkinson (1923-2015) Was een gerenommeerd Spinoza scholar.” *) Parkinson’s review vind ik nuttiger dan dat van Jean-Dominique ROBERT op. [in Laval théologique et philosophique, vol. 34, n° 2, 1978, p. 219-220.- hier te lezen: PDF], daar Parkinson ook een vergelijking geeft met het Lexicon Spinozanum. Parkinsons review verscheen in Studia Leibnitiana [Bd. 10, H. 2 (1978), pp. 277-280]:

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It is now a commonplace that computers can perform rapidly and efficiently tasks that, for the human being, would involve long periods of drudgery. Such tasks include the compilation of indexes and the listing of word-frequencies, and it is these tasks that are performed in the work reviewed, which is a publication of the Centre de Traitement Electronique des Documents, of the Universite Catholique of Louvain. The text on which the computer has been put to work is that of Spinoza's Ethics, as edited by Gebhardt in volume 2 of the Heidelberg edition of Spinoza's works.

The work has nine sections. The first (pp. 1-13) is a general list of the vocabulary of the Ethics, with a record of the frequency of the use of each word in each part of the book. The second (and much the longest) part of the work is termed a 'concordance', and extends from p. 14 to p. 362. This is a list of all the passages in which each word that occurs in the Ethics (with a few omissions, noted below) is used. The verbal forms encountered in the Ethics are arranged in relation to what are called 'lemmas'. These correspond to the 'roots' of traditional grammar; in the case of nouns, the lemma is the nominative singular, and in the case of verbs, the first person singular of the present indicative. In arranging verbal forms in this way, the compilers have of course had to use their judgement; it was necessary, for example (p. viii) to instruct the computer to distinguish between the verbal form `affectus' as a noun and as the passive participle of the verb ‘afficio'. The various verbal forms in which each lemma appears are listed separately; for example, under the heading of the lemma `experior' we find listed successively ‘experiatur’, ‘experiemur’, ‘experientur’, ‘experimur’, ‘experiri’ and ‘experti’. Each verbal form is given its reference by part and proposition, etc., as well as by the page number in Gebhardt. Besides this, the immediate verbal context of each verbal form is given; this consists of a line of text, which does not as a rule form a meaningful whole. Obviously, to try to do this for every word in the Ethics — e. g. for the 1852 uses of the word 'et' — would be prohibitively expensive, and for this reason (p. xvi) the compilers list certain words in what they call an ‘index verborum’, which constitutes the third section of the work (pp. 363-455). This gives references without context to words that are used as titles (e. g. ‘propositio’), demonstrative pronouns, numerals, prepositions, interjections, some adverbs (e. g. ‘hic' and ‘ibi’), conjunctions, the auxiliary ‘sum’, together with the expressions ‘a priori’, ‘a posteriori’, ‘exempli gratia’ and ‘Q.E.D.’. There follows next a short section (pp. 456-7) which lists those words occurring in the Ethics that belong to medieval or modern, as opposed to classical Latin. This section is more for the benefit of the linguist than for that of the philosopher; as Andre Robinet explains in his Postface' (p. 532), it helps to show how Latin underwent a kind of renaissance in Spinoza's epoch, so as to become a vehicle of scientific and philosophical communication. The next section (pp. 458-82) is a list of the vocabulary of the Ethics, showing how many uses of each word occur in the definitions, how many in the axioms, how many in the scholia, and so on. This enables one to separate those uses of a term that occur in what may be called the formal, geometrical framework of the Ethics from those that occur in the informal context of introductions, appendices and scholia. There follows a list (pp. 483-8) of the words of the text, arranged in a descending order of frequency, beginning with ‘sum’ (which is used 2,325 times). The next section (pp. 489-504) is called a 'concordance of phrases'. Here, a few words which have already been cited in the concordance proper are cited again, but now in a context that forms a meaningful whole. The words chosen for this treatment are ‘attributum', ‘conatus', ‘conor', `exprimo', ‘substantia' and ‘tribuo'. There follows (pp. 505-513) a list of the uses (with the immediate verbal context) of the word 'non'. The point of this is (p. xvii) that it would be statistically misleading to ignore those uses of a term that are negative in character; it is, for example, relevant that of the 752 uses of the word 'possum' in the Ethics, 112 are negative. Finally, there is an appendix (pp. 514-23) which consists of a concordance of those Dutch expressions which Gebhardt introduced into his text from the Dutch translation of the Ethics.

As the compilers insist (p. vii), this is an index verborum, not an index rerum. For example, whereas a standard dictionary will list various senses of the word 'end', distinguishing between (e. g.) 'end' as an extreme limit and 'end' as an object for which a thing exists, the concordance does not make corresponding distinctions in its treatment of the word `finis'. Nor does it contain any cross-references, displaying the relations between Spinoza's technical terms. So the reader who wants to use the concordance as a guide (say) to the study of the concept of necessity in the Ethics, must already know the various synonyms of `necessitas' (p. viii). In listing a word together with its immediate verbal context, the concordance helps to show the rules that govern the use of the word. One may regret the fact that it seldom quotes words in a context that forms a meaningful whole; however, this can easily be remedied by consulting the entries for some of the other words in the passage that is quoted. The use of the statistical information that is contained in the book may be less immediately obvious. Perhaps the answer is that although a statistical approach to a text may not solve philosophical problems, it sometimes raises them. For example, Robinet (p. 526) notes that a problem is posed by the fact that the word `substantia' does not appear in the Ethics after Part IL Incidentally, Ferdinand Alquie made a similar observation in his lectures Servitude et liberté selon Spinoza (Paris, Centre de Documentation Universitaire, 1971) and offered his own solution. Alquie argued (pp. 119, 132), without giving detailed evidence, that at the beginning of the Ethics the main issue is that of substance or nature, whereas at the end of the work the term 'God' is dominant. This, Alquie said, supports the view that the term 'Deus' in Spinoza has genuinely religious connotations; that the being that is the basis of eternal life deserves the name 'God' rather than the name 'nature'.

The data compiled by the computer do not enable us to pronounce on the correctness of Alquies solution, but they do enable us to verify that his starting point is correct. It is easily seen from the first section (General List of Vocabulary) that in Part I of the Ethics, the ratio of the uses of the term `Deus' to those of the terms ‘natura' and ‘substantia', taken together, is very nearly 1 to 1, whereas in Part V it is over 3 to 1.

Spinoza scholars will know that this is not the first lexicon of Spinoza's vocabulary. In 1970 a Lexicon Spinozanum, compiled by Emilia Giancotti Boscherini, was published by Nijhoff at The Hague. (Cf. the review of this work in Studia Leibnitiana V/2 (1973) pp. 292-4). Comparisons are proverbially odious, but in the present case a comparison of the two books may help to bring out the virtues of each. The Lexicon Spinozanum covers not only the Ethics, but all Spinoza's works; however, it does not claim to list all the terms used by Spinoza, but concentrates on those terms that have a theoretical importance, as well as on terms that have a historical interest —names of persons, titles of works, and opinions on important events. Taking these as its field, the Lexicon aims at clarifying the meaning of Spinoza's terms, by stating their connections and pointing out the ambiguity of some words and the synonymity of others. It does this by a method of genetic reconstruction, beginning with the first uses of a term and proceeding to its final uses. These aims are fulfilled admirably; however, the lexicon has its limits. It was not compiled with statistics in view, and it is a somewhat laborious matter to work out just how many uses of a given term occur in any one of the works quoted. More important, the lexicon does not aim at listing every term used by Spinoza, and because of this a reader may not find in it a term that interests him. For example, in cap. 32 of the Appendix to Part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza uses the term `officium', which, in the context, it is natural to render as 'duty'. Translated, the passage runs: 'We shall bear calmly those things that happen to us that are the opposite of what a consideration of our advantage demands, provided that we are conscious of having done our duty'. At first sight, the concept of duty seems foreign to Spinoza's ethical system, and one naturally looks for other passages in which the term `officium' is used. The term, however, is not listed in the Lexicon. Consulting the computer-compiled concordance, we see that there are five uses of the term in the Ethics; all, except the one just quoted, refer to the function (officium) of the body and its parts. Indeed, there is in all five cases a link with the word 'fungi', which is again not to be found in the Lexicon. This of course does not solve the problem, but it provides some of the materials for a solution.

To sum up: the virtues of the Giancotti Boscherini Lexicon Spinozanum are well known, and the new computer-compiled work is an admirable complement to it. Spinoza scholars are fortunate in having at their disposal two such valuable tools of research; let us hope that these tools will often be used.

G. H. R. PARKINSON (Reading)

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Zolang de Dictionaires waaraan Yithak Melamed werkt (Spinoza Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell,) en Piet Steenbakkers, Pierre-Francois Moreau en Mogens Laerke zouden werken (Historical Dictionary of Spinoza and Spinozism) vormen beide hierboven genoemde werken (als we afzien van het Continuum Companion to Spinoza) het instrumentum lexicographicum Spinozanum.

 

Zie ook:

Carmen García Trevijano, La 'Ética' de Spinoza "more informatico ordinata." In: Teorema 9, 1 (1979), 95-98 [PDF]
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*) In dat blog over Parkinson vemeldde ik zijn artikel

• Parkinson, G. H. R., "Hegel, Pantheism, and Spinoza," in: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 38 (July—September 1977), pp. 449-459.
Reprint in: Lloyd, Genevieve (Ed.): Spinoza. Critical assessments, Vol. 4, 2001: The reception and influence of Spinoza's philosophy, pp. 229-239
Ik had toen nog niet ontdekt dat Gary Zabel het PDF van het artikel in het Journal op zijn website had gezet. Bij deze.