Jeffrey Bell: Historical Ontology Spinoza Style

Posted on March 31, 2011l In my post on historical ontology over at the new APPS blog (here), I anticipated the following criticism: how is the multiplicity related to actual beliefs and states of affairs? Are you not appealing to some mysterious aspect of reality, a pure becoming so to speak, that transcends the actual, in order to account for how what we actually know becomes other? Is this not contrary to the very spirit of Spinozism to take immanence seriously, and to take it all the way to its natural conclusions? This is a variation on a criticism that is often directed at Deleuzes theory of the virtual (most notably by Badiou as I discuss here). Fortunately or not, I was spared this criticism to my post, but it still seems appropriate to address it for I think it clarifies a number of points. This also gives me the opportunity to deliver on a long overdue promissory note I offered Steven Shaviro in my response to one of his posts (here) that was itself in response to my post on eternity and duration in Spinoza (here). Some differences will likely remain, but hopefully whats at stake will be clearer, and with luck Shaviro will feel Ive made good on the promise. This post will be long, though its likely to be my last on Spinoza for some time. In fact, this will probably be my final blog post at this blog for a while (many other obligations are piling up, though Ill likely post over at the New APPS blog on occasion). I may make one final post summarizing some of my thoughts about how blogging has fit into (or not) my philosophical work, but most importantly the blog has become, for me at least, a vehicle that compels me to write more, to come up with something to say. Now this might seem to be a good thing but it is not, for I agree with what Deleuze says, in a Nietzschean vein, What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or even rarer, the thing that might be worth saying. With this caveat, therefore, and with utter irony, Ill now attempt to do good on what I had promised Shaviro in my earlier post. To recall what was said in my historical ontology post, I argued that for Hume we do not begin with the distinction between a natural world and a subject who reacts to and engages with this world, but rather we begin with a propensity, a process, and the distinction between subject and object, self and world, are themselves effects that are inseparable from these ongoing propensities and processes. The inseparability of what is from the processes that actualize what is is what I call historical ontology. On this reading of Hume, Hume is following what Spinoza identifies as the proper order of philosophizing, which for Spinoza entails beginning with the nature of God rather than with identifiable, determinate objects (I discuss this at greater length here). My use of historical ontology to express the inseparability of what is from the processes that actualize what is thus becomes, in the context of Spinoza, the inseparability of God from determinate, singular things. But his is for many a damning problem for Spinozas thought, and one from which his philosophy is unable to be extricated (Leibniz, Hegel, and Russell offer different versions of this criticism). So my initial problem, it appears, has simply been displaced. To sketch a response, and thus to sketch an understanding of historical ontology la Spinoza, we can turn to this key passage from the Ethics: The idea of a singular thing which actually exists has God for a cause not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is considered to be affected by another idea of a singular thing which actually exists; and of this [idea] God is also the cause, insofar as he is affected by another idea, and so on, to infinity. 2P9

Stated in its simplest terms, there is an infinite chain and web of singular things inseparable from the idea of a singular thing which actually exists. As a consequence, we can never know a singular thing completely. This is not because there is a mysterious, transcendent reality from which we are barred access, but it is rather for the more pedestrian reason that we, as singular finite modes ourselves, simply cant know everything. This is why, for Spinoza, if we do begin with our ideas of singular things, with determinate objects, we are following the improper order of philosophizing. For those who start with ideas of singular things then, according to Spinoza, when afterwards they directed their minds to contemplating the divine nature, the could think of nothing less than of their first fictions. 2P10S. The crucial question, then, is how and why we are not simply condemned to our first fictions, or to our second, third, etc., fictions as we construct more elaborate and detailed accounts of singular things. The short answer to this qestion is that Gods nature as the infinite enjoyment and power of existing is not to be identified with the determinate ideas and singular things themselves but with their continued power to continue existing in relation o other singular things, singular things that may very well undermine the fixed pattern of speeds and slownesses of bodies that constitute or compose one body or Individual 2P13Def., and hence these other singular things may bring about the dissolution and death of this individual. It is important to remember that for Spinoza Gods power is his essence itself 1P34. Similarly as we come to know more about nature it is not, for Spinoza, the increase in fictions, wither in number or complexity of structural relations, that matters most (though it matters as we will see), but rather it is the power inseparable from this increase, the power that is Gods essence and which made this increase possible. This is historical ontology, Spinoza style, and it accounts in part for the importance of Spinozas claim that The human Mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the more capable, the more its body can be disposed in a great many ways 2P14. We must tread carefully here and avoid conflating two conceptions of power which reflect the two orders of philosophizing. At 4P5, for instance, Spinoza claims The force and growth of any passion, and its perseverance in existing, are not defined by the power by which we strive to persevere in existing [which is the power we have in common with God's essence, and hence the importance of common notions for Spinoza, as Deleuze notes in his reading, or with what bodies have in common - namely the power of existing], but by the power of an external cause compared with our own. For the passions, therefore, it is a determinate, singular cause distinct from ourselves as a determinate, singular thing (or Individual) which accounts for the rise and perseverance of a given passion. In the transition from sadness to joy, for example, we begin to move from relations between the actual and determinate to the poser inseparable from and common to the continued existence of each and every singular thing, to infinity. Deleuze coins the concept counter-articulation to highlight this very Spinozist move in his own work (see especially Logic of Sense). But the move to joy is only the first step in this process. Joy is, as Spinoza defines it, a passion by which the Mind passes to a greater perfection in contrast to Sadness whereby the Mind passes to a lesser perfection 3P11S. This scholium is in support of 3P11 which states that any thing that increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our Bodys power of acting, increases or diminishes, aies or restrains, our Minds power of thinking. And yet this move to Joy is a ferst and crucial step for while Joy is a passion it is nonetheless the passion that accompanies an increase in the Bodys/Minds perfection and powers; it is simply that these powers are again relative, as is the case with all passions, to an external cause compared with our own. The step beyond Joy is what Spinoza discusses most in the controversial part 5 of the Ethics. This becomes apparent early on when, in 5P2, Spinoza argues that, If we separate emotions, or affects, from the thought of an external cause, and join them to other thoughts, then the Love, or Hate, toward the external cause is destroyed. This includes Joy as well since it too, as

Spinoza adds in the Demonstration, is accompanied by the idea of an external cause. These other thoughts that free us from the passions are thoughts determined by reason and the intuitive love of God who, for Spinoza, is without passions and is not affected with any affect of Joy or Sadness 5P17. It is this move to the power of reason that affirms, without compromise, the power we have in common with Gods infinite power and enjoyment of existing, and thus Spinoza will repeatedly make comments such as the following: every action to which we are determined from an affect which is a passion, we can be determined by reason, without the affect 3P59; I call him free who is led by reason alone 3P68Dem; and finally, A free man things nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. Despite the move to reason and to thoughts beyond Joy or any passion, our reason is nonetheless our reason, or it is a thought inseparable from a singular, finite Mind. This is the historical ontology, Spinoza style, I mentioned earlier, though perhaps it is more fully clarified now. The infinite enjoyment and power of existing that is common to the power of finite singular minds when these minds are determined by reason is nonetheless the power of singular things themselves. It is not some mysterious, transcendent power that is in some sense external to singular things. To think in these terms would be to succumb to the passions and to the imagination of fictions again rather than engaging in a meditation on life. This is why towards the very end of the Ethics itself, at 5P39, Spinoza claims that He who has a Body capable of a great many things has a Mind whose greatest part is eternal. This follows upon Spinozas earlier comments that we feel and know by experience that we are eternal 5P23S and 5P23 itself: The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal. These comments have caused much consternation among Spinozas commentators, and its perhaps not clear that my historical ontology reading of Spinoza offers much relief. If Gods eternal and infinite power of existing is inseparable from singular things but is not to be confused with them in that eternity is to be differentiated from duration, then how can a singular thing, in this case the Mind, be said to persist when the Mind itself is supposed to be nothing less than the idea of the Body? Moreover, it also seems that Spinoza is inappropriately exporting a durational term, persists, into his discussion of that which is eternal. It is perhaps no wonder then that these claims have caused many to throw up their hands and turn away from these late passages of the Ethics. One way of possibly reading what is going on here is to note that for Spinoza the infinite power and enjoyment of existing is neither one or multiple. That is, this power is not the power of a numerically One God. Spinoza is quite clear in arguing that anyone who thinks of God as One misunderstands Gods nature (in Letter 50, for example, Spinoza says that anyone who calls God one or single has no true idea of God). It is also clear that Gods infinite power is not to be confused with the determinate, singular things and modes themselves (substance, after all, is differentiated from modes in that it is conceived through itself while modes are not). Spinoza is thus not a pantheist in the traditional sense of the term. And yet Gods infinite power is fully differentiated more to the point, Gods infinite power and enjoyment of existing affirms all possible differences and is thus best understood in terms of what Deleuze will call multiplicity. Gods power is a multiplicity that is irreducible to the identity of the one or the multiple. There are thus differences within Gods infinite power but as a multiplicity these differences are not to be confused with the differences between determinate modes in duration, and yet these differences are real. It is in this sense that I think one can understand Spinozas claim that something of the Mind persists after the death of the Body. So heres the rub: inseparable from each individual, determinate thing is the eternal power of God as multiplicity of differences, a multiplicity of pre-individual singularities, as Deleuze puts it, and thus there is an eternal difference that persists inseparable from the determinate and determinable individuals that are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess 5P20S, as Spinoza put it in the Ethics, following through on how he begins the TIE. Although Spinoza did not speak of

multiplicities or of ontology in the way that Whitehead and then Deleuze later would, it seems to me such a reading is perfectly consistent with Spinozas intentions and that, moreover, Spinozas historical ontology, as I understand it, is integral to Spinozas ethical project.

Jeffrey Bell: Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata

Posted on July 24, 2010 In the next few posts Id like to develop a few arguments concerning Spinozas method, hence the title of this post, then move on to Spinozas notion of substance as a radical aberrant monism, and finally touch upon the third kind of knowledge as the solution to the problems with which Spinoza began his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. These will be sketches of arguments, or trial runs so to speak, and I will not address the voluminous secondary literature to the extent a published argument would need to do so. This blog is for me a working blog, in the same vein as Shaviro, and not a depository for finished work, so feel free to point out the dead ends Im venturing into, or point out secondary sources, etc., that should not be ignored, or that have already said what Im saying here. As I pointed out in Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos, Spinoza begins his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (hereafter TIE) and the latter half of part 5 of the Ethics with the same concern: namely, to show how we can overcome suffering and misery and live a good life. The first paragraph of the TIE reads as follows: After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life, and I realized that all things which were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves in so far as the mind was influenced by them, I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone effect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity. As Spinoza moves into the latter half of part 5 of the Ethics, at 5P20S, a similar concern is expressed: it should be noted that sickness of mind and misfortunes take their origin especially from too much love toward a thing which is liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess. There are two points to make right off the bat. First, in both cases what concerns Spinoza is how the mind is influenced by things, its attachment to things, especially things which are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess. Secondly, Spinoza begins the TIE with a classical ethical concern how to live a good life which then becomes the very title of his masterpiece. This fact should not be overlooked and as a result as we come to an understanding of Spinozas metaphysics we should remember to situate it into Spinozas broader ethical concerns. The ethical claims at the end of the Ethics are not to be understood as an addendum to Spinozas metaphysical project, and an addendum Spinoza would have been better to have left out of the work entirely (as Jonathan Bennett has argued); to the contrary, if the Ethics is to be interpreted as an effort to realize the efforts with which Spinoza began the TIE, then the ethical claims ought instead to be placed at the center of Spinozas project in the Ethics. But is Spinoza continuing in the Ethics with an effort to realize the task he set for himself in beginning the TIE? I have argued that this is indeed what Spinoza is doing in the Ethics. The

subsequent question then is why Spinoza abandoned the TIE and started over with the Ethics, developing the arguments this time by way of an axiomatic, geometric method (Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata)? To begin to answer this question involves understanding how the mind itself is related to things, and in particular to the eternal truths that will eventually emerge as the way to move beyond the sickness of mind that results when we become overly attached to that which we can never fully possess. In the TIE Spinozas effort was to demonstrate how a finite, discrete mind could come to fully know and possess an eternal, timeless truth. When Spinoza comes to an understanding of truth itself he claims that it is nothing but the objective essence itself, i.e., the mode by which we are aware of the formal essence is certainty itself. And from this, again, it is clear that, for the certainty of the truth, no other sign is needed than having a true idea (35, II/15). In other words, and to avoid the skeptical argument of criterion, Spinoza argues that the truth of an idea does not depend upon some independent criterion or method which will verify and justify this truth, which would lead to the skeptical argument of what justifies this independent criterion, and so on; instead, the very mode in which a true idea is grasped is the truth and certainty of this idea. But how are we to know whether the very mode in which a true idea is grasped is the truth and certainty of this idea? Key here for Spinoza is to begin with true definitions. As Spinoza puts it, that Method will be good which shows how the mind is to be directed according to the standard of a given true idea (38, II/15), and these are to be the true and legitimate definitions. Thus, late in the TIE Spinoza returns to the knowledge of eternal things and claims that When the mind attends to a thoughtto weigh it, and deduce from it, in good order, the things legitimately to be deduced from it if it is false, the mind will uncover the falsity; but if it is true, the mind will continue successfully, without any interruption, to deduce true things from it. (104, II/37-8). It is therefore the activity of the mind itself, whether unimpeded or impeded from true, legitimate definitions, that is the only foundation for Spinoza upon which the truth of our thoughts is to be determined. But this is precisely where problems begin. If the axiomatic method is to succeed on the basis of true and legitimate definitions, it will be because of the power of the mind to proceed, without any interruption, to deduce true things from these definitions; and yet Spinoza admits to lacking a clear understanding of the powers of the mind, and hence the proper place for the mind to begin upon its axiomatic path: But so far we have had no rules for discovering definitions. And because we cannot give them unless the nature, or definition, of the intellect, and its power are known, it follows that either the definition of the intellect must be clear through itself, or else we can understand nothing. It is not, however, absolutely clear through itself (107, II/38). In the final paragraphs of the TIE Spinoza attempts to work through this problem, to provide a way for understanding the powers of the mind. He begins first with an effort to understand the mind by way of the properties of the mind. Early in the TIE, however, Spinoza ruled out this approach. When Spinoza contrasts knowing something through itself or through its proximate cause such as its properties, Spinoza favors the former and criticizes Descartes for understanding the mind in terms of its proximate, transcendent cause (i.e., God), and thus one can see he would resist reverting to that solution himself. As Spinoza would claim later in the Short Treatise, properties, or Propria, do indeed belong to a thing, but never explain what it is. (ST 1.vi.6). What Spinoza needs, therefore, and what was lacking for him in the TIE, is a way of understanding how the knowledge of the eternal and infinite could be founded upon the essence of a our singular, finite mind rather than upon something that transcends this mind (Propria, for example). Because of the dissatisfaction with the alternatives he had before himself in the TIE he would abandon this work and then, in the Ethics, approach them from a different perspective.

Of the few commentators to attempt to nail down precisely why Spinoza abandoned the TIE and moved on to the Ethics, Deleuze, in his Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, offers a simple explanation: when he discovers and invents the common notions, Spinoza realizes that the positions of the Treatise on the Intellect are inadequate in several respects, and that the whole work would have to be revised and rewritten. (pp. 120-1). We can understand the implications of this discovery, and the resultant axiomatic method that emerges in the Ethics, if we recall the previous post on Deleuzian supervenience (a now slightly modified and corrected post). In his effort to understand the powers of the mind and its ability to move through an axiomatic process from true and legitimate definitions to further truths, and hence to escape the minds attachment to things which are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess, Spinoza encountered a similar problem to Lewis as Lewis sought to use the tools of modal logic and semantics to move beyond the correlationist trap (though of course Lewis would not have used this terminology). In short, the common notions are neither to be understood as the clearly defined truths and definitions with which the axiomatic method begins, nor are they the truths one arrives at after successfully moving through the processes of deduction. They are, instead, to use again the terminology of the previous post, a zone of objective indetermination (the problematic) upon which the axiomatic method supervenes and which it is nonetheless irreducible to. This accounts for another aspect of Spinozas method that Deleuze also stresses; namely, the role the scholia play in the midst of the axiomatic deductions. For Deleuze the use of the geometric method involves no problems at all (DR 323, n.21) and it is for this reason that Spinoza, on Deleuzes reading, interspersed the scholia into the axiomatic deductions of the Ethics in order to fuel the necessity and inventiveness of the geometric method by supervening upon problems of the scholia. And it is for this reason as well that Spinoza begins his Ethics not with a stated ethical concern as he did in the TIE, but with six definitions that lead to the definition of God as substance: By God I mean an absolutely infinite being; that is, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. (D6). Substance, in other words, is to be understood not as an axiomatic given from which the remaining deductions follow, but rather as the problematic upon which the axiomatic deductions supervene. And it is with this approach in hand that Spinoza will attempt to address the ethical concerns with which he began the TIE. The next post will begin to sketch how this works.

Jeffrey Bell: Questions of Substance

Posted on July 28, 2010 To treat Spinozas understanding of substance and how substance in turn relates to the attributes, God, and the modes, is far beyond the scope of a single post perhaps even an entire manuscript but a few suggestions will be offered that follow through on arguments made in previous posts (here and here). As usual, feel free to jump in with a comment (or email me if you prefer), no matter how far after the post date it might be. Ill no doubt still be dealing with questions of substance and can use all the help I can get! Before addressing Spinozas unique and truly radical understanding of substance it will be helpful to turn to Aristotles. Aristotle, like Spinoza, understands substance as that which individuates something and determines what it is to be that thing; that is, the essence of the thing. Substance is also not to be confused with matter, for Aristotle, since as pure potentiality matter can assume contrary forms (see Metaphysics 1050b28, the same thing [as matter] can be potentially both contraries at the same time), whereas substance determines what it is to be a particular thing and it cannot be other than that thing. Spinoza argues along very similar lines. Substance, as attributive substance, cannot be conceived in any other way than through

themselves. This latter point is crucial since the attributes, on Spinozas reading, are radically distinct from one another and can be understood solely through themselves and not in their relations, whether relations of compatibility or incompatibility, with any other attributes. The attributes are thus not to be understood in the manner of conceptual determinations, whereby what it is to be this determinate attribute involves a relationship to what it is not. It is indeed true that Spinoza famously claimed that all determination is negation, but this form of determination is what characterizes, as an earlier post sketched (here), the actuality of modes rather than the reality of the attributes as substance. Aristotle, by contrast, did understand substance as a conceptual determination, and hence in understanding this determination one can subsequently affirm, for example, that a dog, as dog and unlike a human being, cannot be happy since a dog is not rational. Spinozas ontology of substance is therefore a truly affirmative ontology of immanence since substance cannot be conceived by way of anything other than itself (hence by anything transcendent) nor does it entail any negation. It is no wonder then that Deleuze frequently referred to himself as a Spinozist. But what then is the relationship between substance and the attributes if it is not one of conceptual determination? Ill make two passes, two arguments, to attempt to answer this question. The first will be Deleuzes largely Gueroult-inspired answer. The second Ill attempt to tease out of Spinozas texts alone. In Deleuzes review essay of Gueroults first volume on Spinozas Ethics, Deleuze argues that what is important about Gueroults approach is that it doesnt begin with the idea of God (God enters the scene with the sixth definition and the ninth, tenth and eleventh propostions). Does this mean that the first six definitions and eight propositions are inessential to Spinozas project mere preliminary work Spinoza simply had to get out of the way before the real work began? For Gueroult and for Deleuze the answer is a definitive no. When the answer is yes, Deleuze argues, we get two misreadings of the attribute: 1) the Kantian illusion that makes attributes forms or concepts of the understanding, and 2) the neo-Platonic vertigo that makes attributes already degraded emanations or manifestations. It is at this point where the nature of the attributes as conceived through themselves, or the logic of real distinction in contrast to the logic of numerical distinction, comes into play. The attributes are indeed really distinct from one another but they are not numerically distinct. We have difference without negation, or with the attributes we have what Deleuze will call a substantive multiplicity: The logic of real distinction is a logic of purely affirmative difference and without negation. Attributes indeed constitute an irreducible multiplicity, but the whole question is what type of multiplicity. The problem is erased if the substantive multiplicity is transformed into two opposed adjectives (multiple attributes and one substance). We are back with the problematic, with a substantive multiplicity, and thus to understand God as absolutely infinite substance we need also to understand how God is related to the problematic, to substantive multiplicity. We gain a sense of how Deleuze and Guattari understand this relationship when they claim, in A Thousand Plateaus, that God is a lobster, a double articulation. It is all too easy to underestimate the philosophical importance of this claim. We see it at work in the context of Deleuzes essay on Gueroult, for example, where the first eight propositions correspond to the first articulation; or, as Deleuze puts it, the first eight propositions represent a first series through which we ascend to the differential constitutive elements the attributes. As Deleuze had stressed earlier in the essay, there is no ascension from attributes to substanceto absolutely infinite substance; rather, there is an ascension through a regressive analytic process to the differential constitutive elements themselves, to the substantive multiplicity. Then there is the second articulation, the second series found in the

9th-11th propositions through which, Deleuze argues, the idea of God integrates these elements and makes clear it can be constituted only by all these elements together. The attributes, as a multiplicity of incommensurable and really distinct entities, come to be integrated by the power of causa sui whereby essence is the cause of the existence of substance and the cause of the other things that derive from it. To clarify (I hope), the regressive analytic process arrives at the attributes as constitutive elements by deriving them from the affirmation of infinite substance as conceived only through itself, showing that any determinate modification or affection of substance is not conceived through itself but through another, and hence the really distinct multiplicity of attributes; and then the integration of these attributive substances constitutes the existence of an absolutely infinite substance God. Understood in this way, God as the power of causa sui is both the condition that enables the regressive analytic process that leads to a multiplicity of really distinct attributes first articulation and the conditioned that is the integration of this multiplicity second articulation. God is self-caused, as Spinoza argues, or God is a lobster, a double articulation, as Deleuze and Guattari argue. I now want to make the second pass, the second articulation so to speak, and in doing so hopefully clarify my take on Deleuzes reading of Spinoza. First, I must admit a fondness for H.F. Halletts interpretation of substance as absolutely indeterminate, or we might say objectively indetermined to refer to an earlier post. Halletts reading is by no means the consensus reading, but there are two important things going for it. First, since God is defined as absolutely infinite (1D6), God can in no way be limited or be in any way determinate, for reasons mentioned above. This is also why God is absolutely infinite rather than infinite in its own kind, as the attributes are, since this would require being a determinate form of infinite and hence a form that could (when understood conceptually by way of the understanding namely the infinite mode of understanding) be related to what it is not, what is other than it. Our second reason follows from a claim Spinoza makes in a letter to Jelles (letter 50) that anyone who calls God one or single has no true idea of God because, as weve already noted, all determination is negation. With this in place lets turn to the scholium to 2P7 the proposition that sets forth the famous parallelism of ideas and things. In the scholium to this proposition Spinoza says that the thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. To clarify by way of an example, Spinoza claims that a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Despite the two ways of conceiving a circle, as an extended circle actually existing in nature or the idea of this circle, they each reflect one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes. Spinoza then reminds the reader that the idea we have of the circle is only as a mode of thought, a mode caused by another mode, and so on to infinity, and the circle as extension is caused by another mode, the drawing hand, and so on. He concludes this scholium by stating that God is really the cause [of the parallel order of causes] insofar as he consists of infinite attributes. For the present, I cannot explain these matters more clearly. Gueroult will argue that this missing explanation is to be found in 2P21S and in 3P2S, but what one finds there is simply a reference to 2P7S and not an explanation of the manner in which God is really the cause of the parallel order of mental and physical causes. Needless to say, there has been a large body of literature devoted to trying to make sense of 2P7 and provide the explanation Spinoza doesnt offer. It is at this point where Deleuzes emphasis upon Gods essence being Gods power as selfcause, as double articulation, or what I would call the power of self-ordering becoming, comes in as a possible explanation. As absolutely indeterminate substance, God as the power to exist is, in the first articulation, the power to exist in infinitely many ways, and hence the absolutely indeterminate is drawn into an infinite number of ways of actualizing the absolutely indeterminate that is, the multiplicity of attributes that are neither one nor multiple. In the

second articulation these ways are actualized as a series of infinite causation, whereby determinate existents require the existence of an other determinant existent, and so on for example, the series of the modes of thought and the series of the modes of extension. To bring this already long post to an end I want briefly to tie some of the points to what was said in earlier posts by addressing a few questions (Im not being exhaustive here of course):

Is God a being, or can we read Heideggers ontological difference into Spinoza whereby God is the Being that is not to be confused with any beings?

Put bluntly, no, God is a being. However, as the double articulation makes clear, coupled with Halletts reading of Spinoza, God is a being whose essence is the power to exist (see 1P11S), and this power is absolutely indeterminate. This is in sharp contrast to Aristotle for whom essence is not an absolutely indeterminate power to exist but rather a determinate form of existence. There is no place for causa sui in Aristotles thought. Therefore, while God is the singular and unique being whose essence entails an absolutely infinite power of existing, this power of existing, as Deleuze notes, is neither predetermined by ideas or models in the understanding nor is it a power separate and distinct from ways of existing, from attributive substances. Gods being contains no other reality than the attributes, and yet Gods being exceeds our everyday understanding of beings insofar as it consists of an infinite number of attributes while we are only aware of two (thought and extension). This brings me to the second question.

Is God the anhypothetical absolute that serves as the foundation for Spinozas deductive method (his Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata)?

Yes, but here too the axiomatic method that begins with God as an anhypothetical absolute supervenes upon the regressive analytic that resulted in a multiplicity of attributes that are neither one nor multiple. To restate this in earlier terms, the second articulation that gives us God as an integration of the multiplicity of attributes does indeed give us a foundation for the axiomatic method, but since it is a foundation that supervenes upon the problematic and objectively indeterminate multiplicity of attributes, this axiomatic method that follows will be both necessary for and insufficient to the task of determining the objectively indetermined (or the absolutely indeterminate). To restate this point we could take the title of this post, questions of substance. A question of substance is not exhausted by the answers it receives these answers supervene upon the question, and hence they are not arbitrary answers, but they do so without eliminating the question, the problematic, itself. And finally,

<!--[if !supportLists]-->What is the role of the common notions?

A full answer to this question would entail addressing Spinozas three kinds of knowledge (and Deleuzes essay Spinoza and the three Ethics if we are to continue to track his reading of Spinoza), but it is brought up at a crucial point early on in the Ethics, in the long scholia of 1P8 (Every substance is necessarily infinite). Spinoza argues in reference to 1P7 (It pertains to the nature of substance to exist) that if men would attend to the nature of substance, they would have no doubt at all of the truth of P7. Indeed, this proposition would be an axiom for everyone, and would be numbered among the common notions. If we would only attend to the nature of substance, but we dont! Instead, we attend to the random encounters of our everyday lives, to the casual relations between modes and the haphazard patterns of our experiences. In short, we are too focused upon the singular and determinate aspects of our particular lives to attend to the nature of substance itself. It was for a very similar reason that Spinoza abandoned the TIE, as the previous post argued, when Spinoza discovers and invents the common notions. Recalling that the ethical project of TIE was to acquire an eternal knowledge by way of the knowledge of our determinate minds and any singular, determinate truth, we can now see why

this failed and why the common notions was seen as key to a solution. Any effort to attain knowledge of the eternal based upon the axiomatic and determinate alone will fail precisely because it supervenes upon the problematic multiplicity of attributes. One cannot axiomatically deduce an answer to a question of substance! With the common notions in hand, however, the first kind of knowledge, the determinate and singular knowledge of our bodily lives in the world (the knowledge that keeps us from seeing that it pertains to the nature of substance to exist) is drawn into a problematic common knowledge (second kind of knowledge) that then comes to be actualized as the third kind of knowledge, the knowledge that finally releases us from things which are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess. Much more is needed here, I realize, but hopefully the general idea of how this would go is clear enough.

Jeffrey Bell: Eternity and Duration in Spinoza

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Jeffrey Bell In the context of Spinozas famous letter to Lodewijk Meyer (Letter 12) where Spinoza lays forth the differences, as he sees it, between the infinite and the finite, substance and modes, Spinoza makes an important distinction between eternity and duration: The difference between Eternity and Duration arises from this. For it is only of Modes that we can explain the existence by Duration. But [we can explain the existence] of Substance by Eternity, i.e., the infinite enjoyment of existing, or (in bad Latin) of being. This letter is important for many reasons, but it helps to make sense of Spinozas ethical concerns that were covered in an earlier post (here). As we saw, Spinozas concern was to overcome misery and suffering, and to do so, as he ended the first paragraph of TIE, by determining whether there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity. Now we find Spinoza equating substance both with eternity and the infinite enjoyment of existing, or being [I resist here the temptation to argue for Spinoza as a precursor to Heideggers understanding of the disclosedness of being as the temporalization of the temporal]. For this reason, among many others, this letter serves as an important bridge between the TIE and the Ethics. In particular, what has caused so many commentators fits in their attempts to understand the final half of Part 5 of the Ethics is that our singular mind itself seems to be understood to be both eternal and unchanging and becomes increasingly eternal as it knows more of God. Among the many propositions of Part 5 that cause problems is P23: The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal. To resolve this difficulty it is important to differentiate between the something of the mind that remains and the mind that Spinoza defines as being nothing but the idea of the body, and hence the mind that would be destroyed with the body. With this differentiation we bring into play the eternity/duration distinction. Thus the Demonstration to P23 reads: In God there is necessarily a concept, or idea, which expresses the essence of the human Body (by P22), an idea, therefore, which is necessarily something that pertains to the essence of the human mind (by 2P13). But we do not attribute to the human Mind any duration that can be defined by time, except insofar as it expresses the actual existence of the Body, which is explained by duration, and can be defined by time, i.e. (by 2P8C), we do not attribute duration to it except while the Body endures. However, since what is conceived, with a certain eternal necessity, through Gods essence itself (by P22) is nevertheless something, this something that pertains to the essence of the Mind will necessarily be eternal, q.e.d.

To restate this drawing from earlier posts, the human Mind that is eternal is not the determinate, identifiable mind, but rather the immanent condition for the possibility of such a determinate identification; it is, in short, the infinite power of self-ordering becoming (the infinite enjoyment of existing) that allows for the possibility of determinate, singular bodies, and for the determinate singular minds that are the ideas of these bodies. We can also clarify another of Spinozas late propositions: He who has a Body capable of a great many things has a Mind whose greatest part is eternal. Following from Spinozas claim, discussed in an earlier post, that Gods power is his essence (1P34), namely the infinite power and enjoyment of existing, we can see that the more one is capable of a great many things with ones body, and hence the less one needs to select against differences, then the more one expresses Gods power and can embrace and affirm the coming into being of other, determinate identities. Much as a political State in Spinozas mind is strengthened by allowing for the freedom to philosophize since this freedom better facilitates the possibility of allowing for the immanent order of nature (or God) to become determinate and known, similarly for Spinoza the more one is able to do with ones body, the more one allows for the possibility that the order immanent to self-ordering becoming can become known and determinate. So when Deleuze asks the question, what can a body do? he too is tapping into the heart of Spinozas ethical concerns. But how does all this help us in overcoming our attachment to things that are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess? If I were to add biking and swimming to my regular runs and become, like some of my good friends, a triathlete, would I become more eternal? The short answer to this question is no. A full answer would entail returning to Letter 12 and to the discussion of the difference between substance and modes. But to end this post with a few suggestions, and to recall the notion of Deleuzian supervenience sketched in an earlier post, it would be a mistake for Spinoza if we were to equate the eternity with the precise, determinate activities of the body. This would be to confuse modes with substance, and hence not rightly understand substance; or it would be to confuse the axiomatic with the problematic upon which the axiomatic supervenes, and likewise fail to grasp the inseparability of problems from their solutions. As Deleuze argued, the problematic, or minor science, would be nothing if it were not for major science and the axiomatic, just as major science would be nothing without the problematic. Similarly for Spinoza, the question what can a body do? is to be understood as the problematic that requires the modifications and affections of determinate bodies and minds to be anything just as our determinate bodies and minds require the problematic as the infinite enjoyment of existing. To overcome our attachment to things that are liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess thus entails a move from the actual and determinate, to what this body is actually doing or has done, to the problematic and the virtual, the body as an eternity that is not to be confused with the determinate and which is indeed subject to many variations and which we can never fully possess. Much more needs to be said to clear up a host of problems that still persist. Most notably, what is the epistemological status of the third kind of knowledge? And can this knowledge be understood in a way that doesnt reintroduce transcendence and consequently undermine Deleuze and Guattaris claim in What is Philosophy? that Spinoza is perhaps the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere.

Steven Shaviro: Whitehead vs Spinoza & Deleuze on the Virtual

Posted on August 1, 2010 Jeffrey Bell, in another one of his superb readings of Spinoza (or, more precisely, perhaps, of Deleuzes Spinoza), discusses Eternity and Duration, by which he also means the difference

between the virtual/problematic (which he associates with Spinozas substance) and the actual/determinate (which he associates with Spinozas modes). Bell says that, in Spinoza, the human Mind that is eternal is not the determinate, identifiable mind, but rather the immanent condition for the possibility of such a determinate identification; it is, in short, the infinite power of self-ordering becoming (the infinite enjoyment of existing) that allows for the possibility of determinate, singular bodies, and for the determinate singular minds that are the ideas of these bodies. This means to give a crude reduction of Bells argument that Spinozas mind/substance/God is equivalent to Deleuzes virtual; it is an immanent potentiality. Any actual mind/body is a particular finite determination or actualization of that potentiality (a solution to that problematic). There is a continual movement from the problematic what can a body do? to particular actualizations, or to modifications and affections of determinate bodies and minds, that in effect instantiate or realize this problematic. And conversely, there is a countermovement from the actual back to the virtual, due to the fact that our determinate bodies and minds require the problematic as the infinite enjoyment of existing. The ethical movement in Spinoza, and implicitly in Deleuze as well, is this countervailing movement from the actual and determinate, from what this body is actually doing or has done, to the problematic and the virtual, the body as an eternity that is not to be confused with the determinate and which is indeed subject to many variations and which we can never fully possess. This is how we attain Spinozas third kind of knowledge, or more generally the freedom that is the subject of Book 5 of The Ethics. Bells reformulation clarifies for me both how this works in Spinoza (against the initial impression that Book 5 is merely a retreat to conventional morality after the bold metaphysics and psychology of Books 1-4), and how central this all is to Deleuzes own vision of the virtual, and indeed of liberation. But I want to add an important point to this, by adding Whitehead to the discussion. For Whitehead never offers us such a movement back to the virtual as we find in Spinoza and in Deleuze. Indeed, Whitehead specifically declares himself to be inverting Spinoza in this crucial regard. In Whiteheads own philosophy, Spinozas modes now become the sheer actualities; so that, though analysis of them increases our understanding, it does not lead us to the discovery of any higher grade of reality In such monistic schemes [as Spinoza's], the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents (PR 7). In Whiteheads resolutely pluralistic ontology, on the other hand, there are only modes or affections, the actual occasions. There is no substance, nothing behind the modes or affections, for them to be modes or affections of. This is because of Whiteheads effort to get us away from subject-predicate forms of thought. Nearly all the Spinozists and Deleuzians I know would reject Whiteheads account as a misreading of Spinoza, a claim that Spinozian substance, or God (Deus sive Natura) is somehow transcendent, when in fact it is entirely immanent. (Bell promises to explain in a subsequent post how Spinozas third kind of knowledge, or his ascent from the actual back to the virtual, can be understood in a way that doesnt reintroduce transcendence). However, I want to suggest that Whitehead is right. Even if it escapes transcendence, Spinozian substance is still a subject for all the predicates, a monism behind the pluralism. Whitehead, by his own admission, offers a philosophy that is closely allied to Spinozas scheme of thought. But if Whitehead does not quite set Spinoza on his feet (as Marx claimed to set Hegel on his feet, and as Deleuze claimed that Nietzsche had set Kant on his feet), he does unhinge Spinoza (in the way that, according again to Deleuze, Kant unhinges the classical notion of time, or casts it, in Shakespearean parlance, out of joint). He does this by dethroning substance, or to put the matter back into Bells formulations with which I started this posting by in a certain sense

deprivileging the virtual, or at least rejecting the ethical priority of the virtual in Spinoza (and in Deleuze as well). One can see this most clearly, I believe, by contrasting Whiteheads God with Spinozas God. Whitehead secularizes God (PR 207) more radically and extensively than Spinoza does; Whiteheads God, like Spinozas and also like Deleuze/Guattaris body without organs, as I argued in my book is indeed associated with the virtual rather than the actual; but for this reason, God in Whitehead is curiously marginalized (as Substance in Spinoza is not). God operates for Whitehead as a sort of repository of the virtual, in that he envisages all eternal objects or potentialities indiscriminately (this is the primordial nature of God). God also functions as a sort of Bergsonian memory, in which all the past is preserved (this is the consequent nature of God). But by decentering God, and by splitting him up in this manner, Whitehead disallows anything like a return (a re-ascent?) back to the virtual from the actual. In this way, Spinozas third kind of knowledge is for Whitehead a kind of idealist illusion that needs to be rejected: the point being that it is still idealist, even if it is entirely immanent and doesnt imply any recourse to transcendence. (A similar criticism is implied of Bergson, or at least of that side of Bergson that Deleuze also draws upon in his account of returning from the actual to the virtual. The primordial nature of God is Whiteheads revision of Spinoza, and the consequent nature of God is Whiteheads revision of Bergson; in both cases, Whitehead brings us further than Deleuze ever dares to). If we speak of the virtual, instead of God, then the point is that Whiteheads often-rejected (even by his admirers) theory of potentialities as eternal objects should be seen as a secularization of theories of the virtual such as we find in Deleuze (with its roots in both Spinoza and Bergson). To put the matter very quickly (there is a more extended discussion in my book; but doubtless this is also something that I will need to work out more fully and carefully): Every actual entity constitutes itself by a decision that accepts certain eternal objects, while rejecting others. The eternal objects that ingress into any actual entity are something like its predicates or qualities; except that no entity can be defined as just the sum of its predicates or qualities, because it is not just a collocation of characteristics (which would be to return to subject-predicate forms of thought). Rather, no list of an actual entitys qualities can give us the entity, because such a list excludes a crucial dimension: the entity as process, or the way in which it selects, and then organizes or harmonizes, those qualities. This added dimension is a process or an action, rather than anything substantial (this is where I diverge somewhat from Graham Harmans admirable notion of allure, as the dimension of an object that is withdrawn from, and in excess of, all its qualities). For Whitehead, therefore, in consonance with Deleuze and Spinoza, something like the virtual or the potential needs to be determined or actualized. This actualization is the process of an actual entity (or, as Whitehead also calls it, an actual occasion) terminating in something absolutely determinate. But there is no movement back from the determinate to the virtual. Rather, once something is determinate, it perishes; and what has perished subsists as a datum for new determinations, which themselves, in taking up the data that precede them, must once again actualize potentiality.. and so on, ad infinitum. The movement from the virtual (potentiality, eternal objects) to the actual is involved with and necessary to, but it is also somewhat lateral or oblique to, the most crucial movement in Whiteheads cosmology, which goes from perished entities (data) to new entities, which perish in their own term and thus provide data to new entities, etc. In this way, I think, Whitehead avoids the Deleuzian suggestion (which one also finds in Bergson, and in Bells reading already in Spinoza, and currently in the wonderful neoSchellingism of Iain Hamilton Grant) that the actual must always (with this must being something of an ethical imperative) return to the flux of virtuality whence it came. In this way,

Whitehead is in accordance with Graham Harman (who rejects the association of Whitehead with Deleuze and Bergson precisely on these grounds). But, to the extent that Whitehead does nonetheless retain the importance of the virtual, he also stands apart from Harmans actualism. My biggest objection to Harman has long been that he doesnt give a sufficiently satisfying account of the genesis and perishing of objects, precisely because he rejects the very notion of the virtual, seeing it as something that undermines the existence of objects. Whitehead to my mind splits the difference between Deleuze and Harman, in a way that is preferable to either. (Note: I cannot end this discussion without an apology to Levi Bryant, who offers a version of object-oriented ontology that includes the virtual. I think that Whitehead represents a preferable alternative to Bryants position as well, in the sense that he obviates the need to see objects as somehow being withdrawn. But I do not have the space or the energy to pursue this argument here).