Edwin Curley’s #Spinoza’s Metaphysics. An Essay in Interpretation - vijftig jaar! [2]

Zoals ik in het vorige blog over het feit dat vijftig jaar geleden verscheen

Edwin M. Curley, Spinoza's Metaphysics. An Essay in Interpretation [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969] al aankondigde, breng ik hier enige teksten van

Michael della Rocca die in zijn Spinoza (2008), met name in het tweede hoofdstuk, “The Metaphysics of Substance,” uitgebreid ingaat op de benadering van Curley, die hij enerzijds gebruikt, maar er anderzijds zijn eigen – meer idealistische - interpretatie aan toevoegt.

Nadat hij in §1 uitgebreid Descartes’ opvatting over substantie heeft behandeld, in §2 Spinoza’s andere opvatting heeft behandeld en in §3 Spinoza’s argument voor substantie monisme, bespreekt hij in § de modi, eerst weer zoals Descartes die zag en vervolgens de benadering van Spinoza, waarbij hij Curley’s interpretatie betrekt:

Spinoza was, of course, deeply influenced by the Cartesian account of modes, and the main controversy in this area of Spinoza’s [61] thought is the extent to which he transformed this account. On the interpretation I will be offering, Spinoza does agree with Descartes that modal dependence involves both inherence and conceptual dependence, but he differs from Descartes because Spinoza sees inherence as nothing but conceptual dependence. For Spinoza, there is only one relation of dependence here, and not two as in Descartes.

To begin to see the outlines of this account, the most important point is that, for Spinoza, there is only one substance, God. Because all that exists, for Spinoza, is either a substance or a mode (1p4d), it follows that ordinary objects such as finite minds and bodies are modes of God. If Spinoza is adopting the Cartesian account of modes with all of its deep roots in medieval and ancient philosophy, then it would seem that the table, for example, is a state of God, that the relation between God and the table is much like the way that Descartes conceives the relation between the table and its roundness.  

But how is this possible? How can a thing such as a table or your mind be a state or a feature of another thing such as God? Such objects are not, it would seem, ways in which God or anything else exists, rather they have an existence of their own. Curley often puts this worry by saying that modes, as Descartes conceives them, are properties or universals, while tables and minds are particulars, and no particular can be a universal. As Curley says,

Spinoza's modes are, prima facie, of the wrong logical type to be related to substance in the same way Descartes' modes are related to substance, for they are particular things (1p25c), not qualities.
                                                                                                          (Curley 1969:18)

However, as we have seen, modes as Descartes and the tradition conceive them are not necessarily universals; rather, they may be, as it were, particularized properties, such as the table’s roundness [62] or this roundness instead of mere roundness in general. On this understanding, modes would be particulars and thus, perhaps, of the right logical type.

But to make this important point (as Carriero does so well) is not to eradicate the intuitive unease that Curley rightly feels at the thought that ordinary objects are modes in the Cartesian sense. This is because it may seem extremely implausible to regard the table, your mind, and your body as simply particularized states of something else. It seems almost as (if not equally) absurd to regard my body as a universal, as a property that God has, as it is to regard my body as a particular, namely God’s having that property. Such a view would seem scarcely intelligible; it does not do justice to our sense of the robustness that we and other ordinary objects seem to enjoy. This, I think, is the root objection that Curley and others have to treating Spinozistic modes as modes in the Cartesian sense.

I believe that this concern is a powerful one, and it leads Curley to develop a radically different interpretation of Spinozistic modes according to which Spinoza's understanding of modes is radically different from that of Descartes. For Curley, Spinozistic modes do not inhere in substance at all; they are not states of substance. Rather. they are simply causally dependent on [p. 68] substance. Curley, of course, recognizes that Spinoza does say that modes are in substance (1def5), but by 'in' Curley takes Spinoza to mean not that modes inhere in the substance, but only that they are caused by it. And Curley has good evidence to bolster his case that the in-relation is a causal relation. Not only does Spinoza seem to equate the two in TdIE §92, but also, as Curley emphasizes, Spinoza frequently says that God causes, determines or produces modes (e.g. 1p15d, 1p24, 1p26).

Curley's reading is elegant and, as we will see, there is more than a grain of truth in it. Nonetheless, there is strong evidence that Spinoza does indeed see modes as states of substance. To demonstrate this, I will focus first on the evidence for thinking that Spinoza sees bodies in particular as states of substance, and then I will [63] turn to what I take to be compelling considerations in favor of seeing Spinozistic modes of thought as also states of substance. Finally, I will show how this reading of modes as states emerges from and is required by Spinoza's naturalism. […]

[65] Finaly, I would like to point out that there is a deeper point here that transcends anything Spinoza might say about extension or thought in particular. This deeper point is a reflection of Spinoza’s naturalism and shows that, in the end, Curley is importantly right in one respect. Return to Curley’s interpretation. For him, modes are merely causally dependent on God, they do not inhere in God, they are not states of God. And, while Spinoza does say that modes are in God, by this, for Curley, Spinoza [71] means only that they are caused by God. So, for Curley, there are two different kinds of dependence: inherence and what might be called mere causation or dependence that is not inherence. These are both kinds of conceptual dependence. The states of a thing would be conceived through the thing on which they depend, and Curley-esque modes as mere effects would be conceived through substance.

[… 66] There is mere causal dependence and, what might be called, dependence of the inherence variety. But what makes them distinct kinds of dependence? If they are each a kind of dependence and if there is nothing that makes them distinct, then they are the same after all, Spinoza would argue. If there is something that makes them distinct kinds of dependence, then what is it? For Spinoza, the Cartesian has to say that there are these different kinds of dependence relations, but that, just as with the different kinds of substance, such a difference is a brute fact and a violation of the naturalist ideal of a single uniform set of requirements. Thus in [67] arguing for the non-Cartesian interpretation of Spinozistic modes as not states, Curley is making what is in the end a very Cartesian move: he is allowing for an unexplained duality in kinds of dependence.

By contrast, the interpretation of Spinoza according to which bodies and minds are modes of God in the sense that they are caused by God and inhere in God preserves the PSR and Spinoza's naturalism. Yes, both inherence and mere causation are kinds  of dependence, but, for Spinoza, by virtue of his rationalism, they are ultimately the same kind of dependence, and that is conceptual dependence tout court.

Here we can see that in an important way Curley is right after all. He denies that Spinoza's in-relation (the relation of being in itself or in another) is an inherence relation. In doing so, Curley affirms that the in-relation just is the relation of causation. While I disagree with Curley about inherence, he is, I believe, absolutely right that the in-relation just is causation or, more generally, conception. And here I depart from Carriero's interpretation in a significant way. Although Carriero holds that Spinozistic modes do inhere in substance—and I agree—he also holds that the in-relation is a completely separate relation from the relation of causation. I find such a distinction inimical to Spinoza's rationalism for reasons I have already given. When Carriero says that the relations are different his claim is based partly on the further claim that Spinoza keeps his talk of causation and his talk of inherence on largely separate tracks. But this is not true. [etc.]

Met dit blog heb ik willen laten zien hoe het boek van Edwin Curley dat vijftig jaar geleden verscheen, met name in de Angelsaksishe wereld tot een soort norm was geworden.