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Comment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
The interesting and suggestive interpretation offered by A. J, Watt in this journal (pp. 171-89 above) of Spinoza’s account of God’s causality to some extent anticipates the discussion of the topic which I am undertaking in a forthcoming book on Spinoza’s philosophy. To a greater extent it is, of course, anticipated by Stuart Hampshire in his study of Spinoza. I agree with Mr. Watt’s objections to some of the traditional interpretations of Spinoza’s doctrine and I think it is in fact immune from the strictures of some critics who attempt to explain the succession of finite modes in Substance as a product of imaginal thinking, a view which must lead to a paralogism in Spinoza’s thought so gross that he could not have been unaware of it and could not have committed unless he had been. I shall not enter into this part of the discussion, as I have no wish to contest what Mr. Watt has written with respect to it, but shall confine my attention to his own (and incidentally Hampshire’s) interpretation.
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References
1 Spinoza (London, 1958), pp. 34ff.
2 Idit., IV, 21 and V, 27.
3 Cf. Ethics, I, xxix and xxxiii, 1.
4 TdIE., VI, 35: ‘Hinc: patet, quod certiludo nihil sit praeter ipsam essentiam objectivam; id est, modus, quo sentimus essentiam formatem, est ipsa certitudo.’ ‘Hence it is plain that certitude is nothing other than the objective essence itself; that is, the way in which we are aware of the formal essence is itself certitude.’
5 Ethics, 1, x, S.
6 Cog. Met, I, vi, and Ep. L.
7 Cf. Ep. xxxvi.
8 Cf. Ethics II, Def. III, Exp., xlii, S.
9 Cf. Ep. LXXXI.
10 Cf. Ethics II, Axioms I and II and Lemma i following Prop. xiii.
11 Cf. Ethics, loc. cit., Def., and Lemm. iv-vii.
12 Ethics II, Lem. vii, S.
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