Ellen Bliss Talbot (1867–1968) gaf vakkundige bespreking van “Die unendlichen Modi bei Spinoza” van Elisabeth Schmitt

Ellen Bliss Talbot was in 1906 gedoctoreerd op het proefschrift “The fundamental principle of Fichte's philosophy,” [cf. archive.org], had al vanaf 1898 een aanstelling in de filosofie aan het Mount Holyoke College, en was dus niet zomaar iemand die gevraagd was voor dit review in The Philosophical Review.

Om de recensente enigszins te introduceren, haal ik hier de laatste alinea aan van het door Dorothy Rogers geschreven lemma over haar in John R. Shook (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America: From 1600 to the Present [Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016], waarvan de laatste pagina bij books.google te lezen is.

Roughly one-third of Talbot's work consisted of original discussions of philosophical problems, particularly on questions of human freedom and moral value, as in "Humanism and Freedom," "Individuality and Freedom," and "The Time-Process and the Value of I luman Life." In these writings, she explores how values, experience, and human freedom intersect with and/or reinforce each other The most innovative of thew writings arc the "Time-Process and Value" articles, written when Talbot was a mid-career academic. Here she discusses values and moral goods not as fixed entities, but as dynamic processes which can have a greater or lesser impact, depending on the context, specifically in regard to time. The articles show us that Talbot had a great deal in common with the pragmatist, personalist, and process thought that was under development in her day. Her work as a whole demonstrates that she was a competent philosopher who was comfortable entertaining new ideas and interested in making abstract thought relevant to everyday human problems.

En nog dit uit “America’s First Academic Women Philosophers, 1880-1920”: Ellen Bliss Talbot (1867-1968) was one of five women to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell in the nineteenth century.  Interestingly, all of these women were successful academically  […]. Talbot was Cornell’s most accomplished philosophy doctoral student, publishing three books, over a dozen articles, and nearly thirty book reviews. [Cf. – cf. ook pagina over Ellen Bliss Talbot op wikisource].
Een van die boekbesprekingen, nadat ze al haar boeken en artikelen over Fichte al had gepubliceerd, was dus haar hierna volgende bespreking in 1911 van:

Die unendlichen Modi bei Spinoza. Von ELISABETH SCHMITT. Leipzig, J. A. Barth, i910.-pp. viii, I36.  [cf. vorige blog]

In this monograph we have an admirable study of one of the most obscure and difficult features of Spinoza's philosophy. The various interpretations which have been made of the doctrine of infinite modes may be reduced, Frl. Schmitt thinks, to three: that of Camerer; that of Rivaud and Wenzel; and the interpretation adopted by most of the earlier students of Spinoza, which conceives the infinite mode as the infinite totality of the particular modes. Each of these interpretations contains something of truth. But all fail in one important respect: they describe the more or less external properties of the infinite mode without determining its essential nature; and for this reason they fail to show how it can be the common element in the particular modes, or their cause, or their infinite totality. To remedy this defect is the chief purpose of Frl. Schmitt's penetrating and exhaustive study.

The doctrine of infinite modes appears in the earliest portions of the Short Treatise, and its development continues throughout the rest of Spinoza's life. It is worked out much more fully for the attribute of extension than for that of thought. This is due partly to the fact that Spinoza never quite frees him- self from the tendency to make thought dependent upon extension. To the last, the human mind is described as the idea of the essence of the body. And from this point of view it would seem that if you can show that the particular human body proceeds necessarily from the nature of the attribute of thought, you have accounted for the human mind as well. The essence of a particular body is a certain proportion of motion and rest. Spinoza declares, however, that not only the essence, but also the existence, of particular bodies is derived from motion and rest; and further, that if there were in extension nothing but motion or nothing but rest, there could be no particular things. " But how is it that the nature of . . . this pair of opposites gives the possibility of an infinite specialization? " (p. 50). Frl. Schmitt suggests the following explanation. Motion and rest are not absolute opposites, but pass over into each other through an infinite number of intermediate grades. They are the two poles of an intensive reality or force. The infinite mode is a real being, whose essence involves the possibility of an infinite number of quantitatively different modifications. But since whatever in God is possible is also actual, these possibilities must be realized. The infinite mode is thus the cause of the existence, as well as of the essence, of particular things. It is essentially an infinite activity, an infinite potentia suum esse conservandi et operandi. And by virtue of this nature it is the principle of specialization, the ground of all particular existence.

Now particular bodies, as proceeding from the infinite mode, would be eternal and unchangeable, as it is, but actual bodies are transitory and changeable. To meet this difficulty Spinoza introduces the distinction (in the De Intellectus Emendatione) between simple and compound bodies. Simple bodies combine to form compounds or 'individuals.' The individual is a whole of parts whose mutual relations of motion and rest are governed by a unitary law; and this law is the essence of the individual. The number of parts may increase or decrease, and if this change exceeds certain limits the individual perishes. Hence while the simple modes of motion and rest are changeless and eternal, compound modes (particular bodies) are changeable and transitory.

Just as simple bodies combine to form individuals, so individuals may combine, under a unitary law, to form a larger individual. Larger individuals unite to form still larger ones, till at length, as Spinoza says, we have "the whole of nature as one individual." This supreme individual is infinite. Also, unlike the lesser ones, it is eternal and essentially unchangeable: for since it is the whole of nature, the only changes of which it admits are rearrangements of the simple and compound bodies within it; and these changes, being subject to the law of the whole, do not affect its essence. In this 'whole of nature 'we have a new kind of infinite mode. In Epistle 64 and in the Ethics, I, 23, Spinoza explicitly recognizes two grades of infinite mode, one proceeding directly from the attribute, and the other from an infinite modification. For extension the infinite mode of the first rank is motion and rest; the 'whole of nature' is the infinite mode of the second rank. But it is necessary to show that the second, both in its essence and in its existence, follows from the first. Spinoza does not actually furnish the proof, but Frl. Schmitt supplies the lack by an admirable bit of interpretation (pp. 92 f.). The infinite mode of motion and rest (the first infinite mode) must, from its very nature, manifest itself eternally in all the many different degrees of intensity which can be distinguished between its opposite poles. Now in this form of its existence (i. e., as totality of all possible proportions of motion and rest) it is still infinite quantity of motion and rest, governed by a single law; and it is still a unity, "since its parts are distinguished from it only modally. But these characteristics . . . are preserved in a form so changed that the mode in this Daseinsweise can and must be regarded as a distinct total-modification of itself, i. e., as a second infinite eternal mode, following from the first. In the first, quantity and its law were an indistinguishable unity; in the second, total quantity and total law form a systematic whole of an infinite multiplicity of simple bodies and special laws, which act upon one another according to the law of the whole," but in everchanging ways.

Thus we can see how the second infinite mode is related to the first. But the more important problem, how the first proceeds from the attribute, is left unsolved. From the nature of the attribute of extension it follows that the mode must be infinite and eternal, but that it is motion and rest we learn " not from the nature of its assigned cause, but only from experience" (p. 97). Nor is the gap between attribute and infinite mode filled in the case of thought. Here the infinite mode of the first rank is infinite intellect. It is not deduced from the nature of thought, though Spinoza's doctrine of God's omniscience serves somewhat to hide the gap. In general the doctrine of infinite modes is less fully worked out for thought than for extension. In the Short Treatise infinite intellect is conceived chiefly as the systematic connection of all the finite modes of thought. In the Ethics, however, it seems sometimes to be regarded as having causal efficacy. If the parallelism between thought and extension were carried out perfectly, infinite intellect would have to be con- ceived as the opposition of conscious and unconscious (or sub-conscious), as an infinite intensive potency, which manifests itself in all the different degrees between consciousness and unconsciousness and which thus by its very nature contains the necessity of infinite specialization. Occasionally Spinoza seems about to say something of this sort; but it is only vaguely suggested. Ideas are never explicitly described as definite proportions of consciousness and subconsciousness, but always as ideas of the essences of bodies.

The distinction between two kinds of infinite mode is not clearly indicated in the case of thought. In the Ethics the idea Dei comes nearest to being what we should expect for the second infinite mode, but ordinarily Spinoza seems to identify it with infinite intellect. Frl. Schmitt is inclined, however, to interpret the facies totius universi of Epistle 64 as including the second infinite mode both for thought and for extension. Spinoza is justified in employing the term thus, because "all modes of the different attributes (if we abstract from the attributive coloring) are really the same metaphysical being," one and the same Urmodus. In the phrase facies totius universi "the moment of order, of conformity to law, is emphasized, and this must actually be identical in all the attributes" (p. 116).

Frl. Schmitt's exhaustive study makes it clear that the conception of infinite modes is an integral part of Spinoza's philosophy from the beginning to the end, and that he was continually at work upon it. But why is it, she asks, that a doctrine which the philosopher himself evidently regarded as highly important should be given to us only in hints and fragments? The answer must be found in the fact that contradictory tendencies are struggling together in the system. E. g., the metaphysical parallelism demands that infinite intellect should be an opposition of conscious and sub-conscious. But Spinoza, regarding consciousness or understanding " as the better part of the mind . . . and sub-consciousness or imagination as defect," could not bring himself to posit sub-consciousness in the infinite intellect (p. I28).

The limitations of this review have prevented me from following in any detail Frl. Schmitt's study of the development of the doctrine and from giving many of the arguments offered in defence of the interpretation. For these the reader must turn to the book itself. I can only add that upon nearly all points the argument seems to me convincing and the interpretation exceedingly suggestive. The book is an admirable piece of work and one which will be of real value to all students of Spinoza. The chief lack which I have felt is the omission of any consideration of the meaning of eternity in Spinoza's doctrine. In view of the teaching that the eternal, infinite mode is the ground of temporal things, it seems desirable that there should be some discussion of the way in which Spinoza conceived the relation of time and eternity.

ELLEN BLISS TALBOT.
MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE.

Review door Ellen Bliss Talbot in: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 20 [1911], No. 6 [nov], pp. 666-668