Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-mzp66 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-15T00:22:49.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

126. - Modality

from M

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Alan Nelson
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

The necessity (necessitas) of all things is one of the most distinctive features of Spinoza’s philosophy. For those opposed to Spinoza it is, along with the treatment of God, its most notorious feature. In the Ethics, it is proclaimed and explained in various places. One main point is that God, the only substance, exists necessarily (E1p7d, E1p11). A second main point is that nothing exists apart from God and what is is conceived through God (E1p14–15), but what is conceived through God “follows [sequi]” from God: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect)” (E1p16). In this passage, the scope of the “everything” characterizing what falls under the infinite intellect seems to be everything without qualification, leaving no room for anything to not follow from God. Moreover, God is the cause of everything (E1p16c1), and E1a3 tells us, “From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily; and conversely, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow” (emphasis added).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 363 - 368
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Recommended Reading

Bennett, J. (1984). A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Hackett.Google Scholar
Curley, E. M. (1969). Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curley, E. M., and Walski, G. (1999). “Spinoza’s necessitarianism revisited.” In Gennaro, R. and Huenemann, C. (eds.), New Essays on the Rationalists, 241–62. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garrett, D. (2018). Spinoza’s necessitarianism (with Postscript). In Garrett, , Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy (pp. 98–148). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hübner, K. (2015a). Spinoza on essences, universals, and beings of reason. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96(2), 58–88.Google Scholar
Hübner, K. (2015b). On the significance of formal causes in Spinoza’s philosophy. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 97(2), 196–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1989). Philosophical Essays, ed. and trans. Ariew, R. and Garber, D.. Hackett.Google Scholar
Nelson, A. (2017). Logic and knowledge. In Kaufman, D. (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth Century Philosophy (pp. 224–49). Routledge.Google Scholar
Schliesser, E. (2018). Spinoza and the philosophy of science. In Della Rocca, M. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza (pp. 155–89). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shein, N. (2020). Spinning strands into aspects: Realism, idealism, and finite modes in Spinoza. European Journal of Philosophy, 28, 323–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×