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112. - Law (Metaphysical)

from L

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Edwin Curley
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

The laws (leges, singular: lex) of nature play a central, if not always adequately appreciated, role in Spinoza’s system (for a detailed account, see Curley forthcoming; cf. Curley 2016b, 2019). Some things are obvious enough to be undeniable: in the Preface to Part 3 of the Ethics Spinoza writes that nature has a power of acting which is everywhere and always the same, a power of acting which he identifies with the laws of nature, “according to which all things happen and change from one form to another” (ii/138). He infers that to understand the occurrence of anything that happens, we must understand the laws of nature according to which it happens. This is clear and widely recognized.

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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 318 - 323
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Curley, E. M. (2016). Law of nature. In Nolan, L. (ed.), The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon (pp. 440–46). Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Curley, E. M. (2019). Spinoza’s Metaphysics Revisited. In Stetter, J. and Ramond, C. (eds.), Spinoza in Twenty-first-Century American and French Philosophy: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Moral and Political Philosophy (pp. 3–51). Bloomsbury.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curley, E. M. (forthcoming). Laws of nature in Spinoza. In Garber, D. et al. (eds.), Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics. The Relation between the Ethica and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gabbey, A. (2022). Spinoza’s natural science and Methodology. In Garrett, D. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (pp. 142–91). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Garrett, D. (2018). Postscript: Necessitarianism revisited. In Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grene, M. (1984). Introduction. In Grene, M. and Nails, D. (eds.), Spinoza and the Sciences (pp. xi–xix). D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Miller, J. (2003). Spinoza and the concept of a law of nature. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 20, 257–76.Google Scholar
Rutherford, D. (2010). Spinoza’s conception of law: Metaphysics and ethics. In Melamed, Y. and Rosenthal, M. A. (eds.), Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide (pp. 143–67). Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar

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