Newlands, Samuel - Reconceiving Spinoza-Oxford University Press (2018) PDF

Reconceiving Spinoza
Reconceiving
Spinoza
Samuel Newlands
1
3
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© Samuel Newlands 2018
Excerpt from Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. Copyright © 2014 by VanderMeer Creative, Inc.
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For Kristina Marie
Acknowledgments
When my colleague Karl Ameriks gets a new book, he usually reads the index and
bibliography first. (Seriously.) I often jump straight to the acknowledgements, as I like
to get a sense of the author’s conversation network. I also like to be reminded of how
our little inner lives are so richly sustained by colleagues, friends, and families. I’ve
been thinking, talking, and writing about Spinoza for more than a decade now, which
means that my own debts have piled higher than I can possibly recount here in detail.
So to all those with whom I’ve chatted about Spinoza over the years, thank you for lis-
tening and responding.
Several people played a more direct role in shaping this book. I was fortunate to have
a reading group work through early drafts of several chapters. Thanks to Karl Ameriks,
Katie Finley, Tobias Flattery, John Grey, Lynn Joy, Michael Rauschenbach, Jesse
Schupack, Aaron Wells, and especially Eric Watkins for sustained feedback and
encouragement. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jeff McDonough, who read through
the manuscript and offered enormously helpful and insightful feedback. Jeff is an ideal
reader and philosophical discussion partner, and I encourage everyone reading this to
send him your book manuscripts (unsolicited) for comment. Michael Rauschenbach
worked as my research assistant, and he was stunningly good at quickly sorting through
material, tracking down references and catching more mistakes than I thought a single
document could contain. I am also thankful to two anonymous referees for providing
both detailed and big-picture suggestions for improvements. Though I’m sure I won’t
have satisfied them fully, I am confident that the book improved greatly due to their
feedback. The remaining errors in what follows are, alas, all on me.
I was blessed with phenomenally good teachers in philosophy, two of whom I want
to mention here. My undergraduate advisor, Charles Lewis, recently retired from Wake
Forest after forty-eight years of teaching. He inspired in his students a love for higher
things, and I have still never seen his equal in a classroom setting. Michael Della Rocca
was the Platonic ideal of a graduate advisor, and his love for all things Spinoza was
infectious. Although I have followed the time-tested tradition in philosophy of
honoring my mentor by objecting repeatedly to his views, it will be obvious in what
follows how deeply indebted I am to Michael.
Early research was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities. I am thankful for their early support of my career and for their patience as
I brought this project to completion. I am also grateful to Peter Momtchiloff and the
philosophy team at Oxford University Press for their assistance and encouragement.
Parts of chapters three and nine appeared, respectively, in “Another Kind of Spinozistic
Monism,” Noûs (2010) and “Thinking, Conceiving, and Idealism in Spinoza,” Archiv
viii Acknowledgments
für Geschichte der Philosophie (2012). Thanks to Wiley and De Gruyter for permission
to use and expand on that material.
While working on this project, I received more unconditional love and support
from my family than I could possibly deserve. My parents and in-laws have given me
endless encouragement. My daughters, Sophia and Anna, are constant sources of
joy, pride, and much-needed perspective. Above all, I am deeply thankful to my wife,
Kristy, who listened in the dark to my doubts and fears and drew me back into the light.
It is to her that I dedicate this book.
Contents
Introduction 1
1. Spinoza Studies Today 2
2. A Quick Plunge 4
3. A Roadmap 10
1. The Desiderata of Perfection 14
1. Lust’s Challenge 14
2. Parsimony 16
3. Plenitude 18
3.1 The Nature of Attributes, Modes, and Expressing 19
3.2 Intra-Attribute Mode Plenitude 24
4. The Limits of the PSR 29
5. The Metaphysics of Perfection, Then and Now 33
2. Spinoza’s Conceptualist Strategy 42
1. Trouble in the Spinozistic Paradise 42
2. The Conceptual to the Rescue 44
3. A Pernicious Relativism? 55
3. Conceptual Dependence Monism 57
1. The Task of Metaphysics 59
2. The Case for CDM 64
2.1 Causation 65
2.2 In 70
2.3 Following-from 74
2.4 Conceptual Involvement 78
2.5 Eliminativism and the Nature of Grounding 79
2.6 Collapsing Causation and Inherence 81
3. Motivating CDM 85
4. Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Modality 90
1. Warm-up: Contingency, Necessity, and Conceptual Sensitivity 92
2. Spinoza’s Conceptualist Account of Modality 95
2.1 The Nature of God’s Necessity 96
2.2 The Nature of Modality for Modes 99
3. The Distribution of Modality 101
4. Spinoza’s Modal Pessimism 106
5. A Conceptualist Account of Essences 112
1. Essences as Explanatory Powers 113
2. Spinoza’s Either/Or 119
3. A “Hopeless” Problem and Spinoza’s Conceptualist Solution 122
x Contents
3.1 The Essences of Substance 123

3.2 The Essences of Modes Across Attributes 127
3.3 The Essences of Modes Within an Attribute 129
6. Elusive Individuals 136
1. Individuals, Parts, and Wholes 137
2. Spinoza’s Causal Answers 142
3. A Conceptual Condition 150
4. Too Much of a Good Thing? 160
7. Ethics, Motivation, and Egoism 169
1. Spinoza’s Psychological Ethics 170
1.1 Desires and Values 172
1.2 The Guidance of Reason 175
1.3 Models and Ethical Instruction 177
2. Moral Motivation 182
3. Egoism Reconceived 189
8. Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence 201
1. Spinoza’s Practical Privileging 202
2. Moral Transformation Reconceived 209
3. The New You! 217
9. The Nature of the Conceptual 233
1. The Threat of Idealism 234
2. Rejecting Mentalism 239
3. Attribute Neutrality 245
4. Spinoza’s Unfinished Task 249
Bibliography 257
Index of Subjects 269
Index of Ethics Citations 279
Introduction
But there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental.
You still see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost
in your thoughts in part from the panic of realizing the size of that imagined
leviathan.
–Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation, 93.
Before achieving literary fame, T.S. Eliot published an article in The Monist comparing
the philosophical systems of Leibniz and Bradley. He closed with a lovely prediction
about their respective legacies:
Mr. Bradley is a much more skillful, a much more finished philosopher than Leibniz . . . He has
expounded one type of philosophy with such consummate ability that it will probably not
survive him. In Leibniz there are possibilities. He has the permanence of the pre-Socratics, of
all imperfect things.1
Bradley is just too clear and polished to last, Eliot suggests—unlike the vague but
suggestive Leibniz, who keeps our puzzled attention. Eliot’s prediction turned out to
be correct, although excessive clarity was probably not the main cause of Bradley’s
eclipse. Even so, Eliot’s observation that a little indeterminacy ensures interest by
future generations of scholars applies at least as well, if not better, to Spinoza.
Spinoza’s philosophy is also “unfinished” in the sense that it leaves open large spaces
of interpretive possibility. It is both a blessing and a curse that Spinoza’s surviving
corpus can be held comfortably in one hand. For all the power and scope of his philo-
sophical vision, Spinoza is often frustratingly short on details and elucidations. Even
when friendly correspondents wrote for clarifications, Spinoza often simply repeated
himself and chastised the inquirer for asking. Just read what I said again and think harder!
So perhaps Spinoza himself is partly responsible for attracting a bewildering array
of interpretive labels over the past 350 years. He has been presented as a radicalized
Cartesian. No, another camp argues, he’s a Jewish mystic. A God-forsaken atheist. No,
a God-drunken pantheist. A proto-idealist. A proto-physicalist. Rationalist. Humanist.
Naturalist. Postmodernist. Liberal democrat. Communitarian. Libertarian. The list
1
Eliot, “Leibniz’s Monads and Bradley’s Finite Centers,” 576.
2 Reconceiving Spinoza
goes on. (My personal favorite: in a review of an off-Broadway play about Spinoza’s
excommunication, Spinoza is characterized as “perky and adorable,” which I like to
think of as the real Spinoza.2) Entire generations of Spinoza studies have swung between
some of these interpretive poles, shifts that probably reveal more about the dominant
ethos of the interpreters’ intellectual culture than about Spinoza’s views.
But if Eliot is correct, the fact that Spinoza’s writings leave open so many possibil-
ities is also an indication of the imperfection of the views themselves. Or perhaps, more
charitably, it points to the insufficiencies of these categories for exhaustively capturing
Spinoza’s rich and imaginative philosophical vision. Either way, I will not be offering a
new “Spinoza the ____” in this book. Whether the fault lies with Spinoza, his readers, or
the categories themselves, a new label would likely fall as short as so many others have.
Instead, I will provide a systematic reading of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysical and
ethical projects that tries to do justice to his innovative doctrines, while also treating him
as an illuminating conversation partner for contemporary philosophical discussions.
Spinoza was a bold philosopher, and bold philosophers deserve bold interpretations.
This book attempts to capture some of the bold, visionary nature of Spinoza’s system,
while also exploring the subtle and penetrating richness that distinguishes Spinoza’s
boldness from mere craziness.
Spinoza’s compressed writing style presents a steep interpretive challenge. Nevertheless,
Spinoza’s theories, properly understood, provide important and distinctive alterna-
tives to contemporary views. As such, the philosophically rich payout makes overcom-
ing these interpretive challenges well worth the effort. I hope the result of this study is
an interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy that, while drawing on the interpretive
advances of others, is ultimately as bold, innovative, and subtle as Spinoza himself
intended it to be.
1. Spinoza Studies Today

After centuries of derision and castigation, Spinoza has come to occupy a central
place in philosophical, historical, religious, and political narratives of the early
modern period. Ours is the golden age of Spinoza studies, and the great enthusiasm
for all-things-Spinoza shows little signs of waning. Once the exclusive province of
philosophers, Spinoza now attracts the attention of intellectual historians, political
theorists, religious scholars, playwrights, and even contemporary neuroscientists.
Within academic philosophy, articles, books, and volumes on Spinoza appear fre-
quently and regularly in top presses. Nor is philosophical interest in Spinoza limited
to early modern specialists. There has been an increasing awareness that Spinoza’s
views on, for instance, mind–body relations, representationalist theories of the mind,
the imagination, modality, teleology, political organizations, ontological dependence,
2
Isherwood, “So, Young Mr. Spinoza,” E1.
introduction 3
and philosophical naturalism can provide important contributions to contemporary

philosophical projects.
Although this boon of interest in Spinoza has been good for those of us laboring in
the field—one shudders at the career prospects of a Spinoza specialist seventy years
ago—it has not been cost-free. Attempts to offer grand re-readings of Spinoza’s Ethics
are increasingly rare. Compartmentalized into journal-length articles and driven by a
cadre of specialists and tenure demands, analytically driven Spinoza studies in par-
ticular are in danger of devolving into a technocratic affair in which bits of the Ethics
are simply rearranged in a dialect of Spinoza-ese that renders the whole affair dull to
outsiders and insiders alike.
Previous generations of interpreters resisted this insularity impulse by connecting
Spinoza’s views to their own contexts. Efforts to draw Spinoza into the orbit of British
idealism led to a revitalization of Spinoza studies at the turn of the twentieth century.
Similar renaissances in Spinoza studies occurred on both sides of the Channel in the
mid twentieth century, as Spinoza was read through the lens of then-current analytic
philosophy and French structuralism. Although it is obviously not the only contem-
porary context, speculative metaphysics has emerged as a leading research area in
Anglo-American philosophy over the past four decades, and this flourishing of ana-
lytic metaphysics provides another occasion to wrestle with Spinoza’s claims in fresh
and exciting ways.3
To pick on myself: it is fine and well to try to figure out Spinoza’s views on metaphys-
ical dependence relations through a close reading of dense texts, but unless that can be
integrated into contemporary philosophical interests as well as Spinoza’s own broader
project, those of us working on this topic will be in danger of both domesticating a
truly bold philosopher and closing ourselves off to vibrant parts of our own philo-
sophical communities. That would be a loss both for Spinoza studies and our fellow
philosophers. Although I undoubtedly fall short, I offer an integrated account of
Spinoza’s metaphysical and ethical projects that is relevant to my own context in ana-
lytic philosophy and that challenges fellow interpreters to wrestle anew with Spinoza’s
big, bold, hubristic, swing-for-the-fences ideas. If, in the end, we still miss the interpretive
mark, let us at least miss with gusto.
In this way, I will treat Spinoza like any fruitful philosophical conversation partner.4
As a good dialogue partner, Spinoza can challenge contemporary paradigms and pro-
vide rich alternatives. At the same time, his claims can be understood within present
frameworks; they are not wholly other. This enables us to both challenge and be chal-
lenged by Spinoza. We need not be passive before his texts, unwilling to philosophically
wrestle with his views on our own terms and acknowledge the presence of mistakes
or confusions. But neither are we so uncharitable that we approach his texts with
3
For good examples of engaging Spinoza within other contemporary contexts, see Vardoulakis, Spinoza
Now and Gatens, Feminist Interpretations of Spinoza.
4
Others have used this image as well. See Curley, “Dialogues with the Dead”; Adams, Leibniz: Determinist,
Theist, Idealist; Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead; Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics.
the assumption that his views are almost surely wrong, leaving us the glum task of
enumerating flaws. Like good conversationalists, we ought to employ a generous
hermeneutic of charity—though not as apologists. Rather, we work hard to read
Spinoza in the best possible light in order to learn the most we can from him.
This approach allows us to apply contemporary philosophical categories to Spinoza’s
texts in order to better engage his views. In doing so, we can see how Spinoza fits
into some contemporary frameworks and yet retains distinctive elements that those
categories do not fully capture. This is not the only fruitful approach one might take, of
course. One could try to situate Spinoza more fully in his own historical context
350 years ago, for example. But I have learned the most from Spinoza by approaching
him as an ongoing conversation partner, dancing between the familiar and the original,
and so it is here that I have found him to be the most philosophically engaging. More
than anything, I hope this monograph provides a fresh example of how philosophic-
ally exciting Spinoza can be when approached in this way.
2. A Quick Plunge
Catching a fresh glimpse of Spinoza is difficult in part because he was such a system-
atic thinker. His major work, the Ethics, is a tightly crafted book whose Euclidean
style highlights what he saw as the connections—sometimes surprising—among
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, psychology, philosophy of mind, action theory,
politics, the natural sciences, and even religious beliefs and practices. On Spinoza’s
approach to philosophy, untangling problems in moral philosophy requires attending
to issues in human psychology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind.
Similarly, adequately understanding one’s inner life of beliefs, desires, sensations,
imaginings, and emotions requires a scientifically rigorous exploration of the external
world, a religious examination of the nature of God, and metaphysical scrutiny about
the nature of intentionality. For Spinoza, philosophical investigations are all-or-nothing
affairs. Given what he takes to be the interconnections among these branches of
inquiry, Spinoza concludes that making progress on one philosophical question often
requires making simultaneous advances on many others.
More concretely, Spinoza believes that metaphysics and science together form the
foundation of ethics. In an echo of Descartes’ famed “tree of philosophy” image, Spinoza
writes to a correspondent that ethics “must be founded on metaphysics and physics,”
adding that “knowledge of [metaphysics] must always come first” (Ep27, G IV/161).
Spinoza tries to realize this ambition in the Ethics, in which the path to blessedness and
salvation winds through a carefully crafted metaphysics and, to a lesser extent, a frame-
work for science.5 Spinoza’s metaphysics is highly developed, and his views have been
5
Spinoza’s physics is programmatic at best, and near the end of his life he noted with an air of regret that
with respect to fundamental physics he “had not had the opportunity to arrange in due order anything on
this subject” (Ep 83, G IV/334).
introduction 5
the focus of several excellent studies in recent years. But the general connection between
Spinoza’s speculative metaphysics and his ethical theory has remained elusive.6 In
Reconceiving Spinoza, I return to Spinoza’s self-described foundational project and
provide an integrated interpretation of his metaphysical system and the way in which
his metaphysics shapes, and is shaped by, his moral program.
Spinoza’s systematic approach to philosophy is underwritten by his explanatory
naturalism. “Naturalism” has become a catch-all term in contemporary philosophy, so
widely and regularly applied that it appears, at best, to have several different meanings.
Without trying to disambiguate contemporary usage, I will call Spinoza’s explanatory
naturalism the position he sketches in the Preface to Part III of the Ethics:
Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same,
i.e., the laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one
form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature
of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, namely through the universal laws and
rules of Nature (G II/138).
In this passage, Spinoza makes two important claims about explanation. First, every-
thing can be understood or explained through “the laws and rules of Nature.” This
reminds us of Spinoza’s general commitment to the explicability of all things, a view
captured in his version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): “For each thing,
there must be assigned a cause or reason for its existence, if it exists, as well as for its
non-existence, if it does not exist” (Ip11d). That is already a steep requirement, but
Spinoza’s explanatory commitment is even more demanding. As we will see, Spinoza
demands more than the explanation of every thing; even more abstract matters, includ-
ing metaphysical explanations themselves, require explanation.
Although Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism is consistent with the explanatory
rationalism embodied in the PSR, it goes further than the PSR itself. Explanatory nat-
uralism, as Spinoza’s second point in the Preface passage makes clear, also informs the
scope of proper explanations. Spinoza claims that the explanantia—“the laws and rules
of Nature”—are changeless and universal in the sense that they always apply across all
domains of explananda. Proper explanatory principles, for Spinoza, do not admit of
exception clauses. Spinoza thinks making exceptions to the scope of explanatory
principles is indicative of the failure of those principles to adequately explain. Earlier
in the Preface, Spinoza criticized those who try to make human beings “a dominion
within a dominion.” Presumably he is targeting philosophers like Descartes, who
tried to explain the nature and activity of thinking things using a set of principles that
were not supposed to apply within the purely extended domain of physics. Spinoza
objects that proper explanatory principles are universally applicable. Everything
plays by the same rules.
6
The tendency to neglect or marginalize Spinoza’s ethical theory in analytic circles is waning, however.
See the recent monographs of LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom and Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom,
as well as the fine collection of essays in Kisner and Youpa, Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.
Putting these points together, Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism is the thesis that
each of the most basic explanatory principles applies universally and, taken together,
the basic explanatory principles suffice to explain everything, even God. If, for example,
possessing intentional mental states partly explains God’s activity, then so too will pos-
sessing intentional mental states partly explain the activities of humans, trees, and rocks.
There will, of course, be differences in complexity and degrees among the explananda,
but there are no differences in explanatory scope among the most fundamental expla-
natory principles, according to Spinoza.
Hence, in addition to affirming PSR-style demands for the explanation of everything,
Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism places a high demand on the explanations themselves.
Explanatory principles must be constant, without exception, and applicable across all
domains. This leads Spinoza to seek out principles that can do such work.
One such explanatory principle lies at the heart of this book, so I will highlight it
here. From beginning to end, Spinoza’s Ethics is full of appeals to conceptual relations.
The very opening and closing passages of the Ethics each invoke the conceptual. In
the opening definition of Part I, Spinoza claims that self-causation involves a concep-
tual connection between a thing’s nature and existence. In the book’s final paragraph,
Spinoza appeals to the wise man’s tranquility “insofar as he is considered as such
[quatenus ut talis consideratur]” (Vp42s, G II/308). In the first instance, the concep-
tual relation serves as part of the explanans. In the last, Spinoza qualifies his claim by
appealing to a conceptual relation. While this conceptual bookending of the Ethics
may be interesting in itself, Spinoza invokes the conceptual in similar ways through-
out the Ethics. He regularly appeals to conceptual relations in his explanations, and
he frequently qualifies his views in terms of how things are considered or conceived.
Indeed, once the ubiquity of the conceptual is pointed out, its pervasive presence
throughout the Ethics is striking.
Nevertheless, Spinoza’s frequent references to the conceptual are easily overlooked,
at least judging by the scant attention they have received from his interpreters. One
possible explanation of this neglect is that it is unclear what work these conceptual
appeals are doing in many passages. For example, they might just be innocuous
instances of bad writing. Perhaps when Spinoza refers to “the wise man insofar as he is
considered as such,” this is just a clunky way of referring to the wise man. More gener-
ally, perhaps Spinoza’s references to how things are conceived are just longwinded ways
of referring to how things are, at least when they are conceived truly. If so, readers
could be excused for breezing past such locutions, despite their frequency in the text.
That is one interpretive possibility, but it is not a very convincing one. As we will see,
there are too many passages, such as the opening propositions of Part II of the Ethics, in
which claims about how things are conceived are obviously central to Spinoza’s argu-
ments. There is no plausible way of reading those references to the conceptual as lam-
entable instances of overwriting. But if Spinoza’s appeals to the conceptual are at least
sometimes essential to the views he is defending—as most parties would agree—that
should give us at least a strong prima facie reason to avoid gliding quickly over other,
introduction 7
more innocuous-looking uses of expressions like “conceived as” or “insofar as it is

considered as.”
One of the overarching theses of this book is that conceptual relations form the
backbone of Spinoza’s explanatory project and perform a surprising amount of work in
his metaphysics and ethics. As I mentioned, Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism extends
not only to things but also to highly abstract metaphysical affairs, such as how things
depend on other things, and even to the nature of explanation itself. Nothing gets a free
explanatory pass for Spinoza, and he often relies on the conceptual to account for many
of the most general categories and principles in his system.
Conceptual relations also serve as Spinoza’s main philosophical tool for consistently
satisfying seemingly inconsistent desiderata. Conceptual relations are the philosophical
grease that keeps the Spinozistic machine running smoothly, allowing him to do every-
thing from reconciling monism with diversity to providing non-prudential grounds
for altruism within an ethical egoist framework. One of my main goals is to exhibit
how much work conceptual relations do for Spinoza and how much seeing this changes
our understanding of his philosophical outlook.
For example, Spinoza’s theory of minds and bodies is one of the better-known places
in which conceptual relations are clearly doing important work. He writes, “The modes
of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the
attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other
attribute” (IIp6). Setting aside the ontological details for now, Spinoza’s basic claim is
that whether or not a thing is caused by God depends in part on how God is considered
or conceived. Conceived one way—as thinking, say—God stands in a causal relation to
a mode; conceived a different way—as extended, say—God does not stand in that
causal relation. Causal facts, we might now put it, are sensitive to how the causal relata
are conceived.
If true, this would be a surprising feature of causation. We typically think that whether
x causes y does not depend on how x and y are conceived or considered. Causation
seems like a concept-independent manner of dependence. Granted, we might use
concepts to represent or describe objects, to make causal ascriptions, or to specify the
causally relevant features of objects, but those guises do not seem to be parts of the
world’s causal structure. Spinoza disagrees, I will argue. Causal relations are fine-grained
affairs, involving not only objects but also some of the ways in which those objects are
conceived. The world’s causal structure is, at least in part, conceptually structured.
Although this is a surprising claim about causation, it is but one example of Spinoza’s
tendency to connect ways of being with ways of being conceived. For another example,
we typically do not treat the modal status of a thing’s existence—whether a thing
exists necessarily or not—as dependent on how that thing is conceived.7 Nonetheless,
7
By “modal status” and similar locutions from here on, I am referring to the modality of a thing’s exist-
ence in contemporary parlance—e.g., whether it exists necessarily or contingently—and not to Spinoza’s
ontological category of modes or modifications.
Spinoza claims that modality too depends on how objects are conceived. Conceived in
certain ways, a thing exists necessarily; conceived in other ways, it exists contingently.
Modality is not a concept-independent matter for Spinoza, I will argue—a conclusion
that resonates with some contemporary anti-essentialist accounts of modality. Indeed,
it will turn out that the essences and even the individuation of things have important
conceptual conditions, according to Spinoza. More generally, the rich metaphysical
structure of the world—which and how things depend on other things—tracks a
rich structure of conceptual dependence for Spinoza. Getting clear on the motivations
and details of all this, as well as the interpretive case for attributing it to Spinoza, is the
focus of the first six chapters of this book.
Introducing all this conceptual sensitivity into metaphysics might seem worrisome
at the outset, independent of the details. Given that we typically do not think of, say,
causal and modal structures as concept sensitive, why does Spinoza think otherwise?
Spinoza’s general defense, I will argue repeatedly, is to explain conceptual sensitivity
with an even stronger thesis of conceptual identification. The causal structure of the
world is sensitive to different ways of conceiving the world because causal relations just
are conceptual relations. Modality is concept sensitive because necessary connections
just are conceptual connections. In other words, lurking behind Spinoza’s invocations
of the conceptual are even bolder identity theories that, if true, explain and justify all
the conceptual sensitivity.
Far from doubling down on the crazy, these identifications follow from Spinoza’s
broader explanatory naturalism, which the mere co-variation of conceptual and causal
or modal relations would violate. Conceptual sensitivity and conceptual variability
themselves cry out for explanation, and Spinoza repeatedly answers with an identity
thesis. (As for what justifies his identity theses . . . well, that turns on Spinoza’s claims
about God, metaphysical perfection, and explanation more generally, as we will see.)
Conceptual sensitivity might seem especially worrisome if it is paired with concep-
tual pluralism, the thesis that there are multiple true ways of conceiving one and the
same thing. This combination appears to generate pairs of predications, such as “x is F”
and “it is not the case that x is F,” which are both true, each under a different way of
conceiving x. (And if that doesn’t seem worrisome in the abstract, substitute “exists
necessarily” or “causes only extended effects” for “is F.”) Even if one tried to build con-
ceptual sensitivity into the semantics of the predicates to avoid outright contradic-
tions, we might still wonder how both predications could be true. Surely one of those
ways of conceiving corresponds better to how things “really are.” Even if modal facts
are concept sensitive, surely there is a unique, privileged way of conceiving the world
that settles the modal facts.
For better or worse, Spinoza is rarely moved by such “surely”s, and this is no excep-
tion. Spinoza endorses an especially strong form of conceptual pluralism, according to
which there are many—infinitely many!—true ways of conceiving the world. He has
important reasons for affirming a kind of expressive plenitude, according to which each
thing can be conceived truly in infinitely many ways along several axes. One axis tracks
introduction 9
different fundamental kinds (e.g., thinking vs. extended); another tracks completeness
(e.g., partial vs. complete causal history). I will argue that none of these myriad ways of
conceiving objects is intrinsically truer than the others, for Spinoza. None of them
better represents the ways things “really are” in themselves. None best describes the sole
privileged standpoint from which all these metaphysical matters are settled. Spinoza’s
expressive plenitude blocks such privileging. But if metaphysical facts about modality,
dependence, essences, power, and individuation vary depending on how things are
conceived, and if there are multiple ways of truly conceiving things—some of which
entail that things have distinct metaphysical features and none of which is intrinsically
privileged over the others—is Spinoza stuck in a quagmire of metaphysical relativism?
Spinoza does not seem to think so, and he repeatedly urges his readers to adopt some
of these ways of conceiving the world over others. For example, he urges us to adopt
especially broad ways of conceiving things, ways that include relations to infinitely
many other things. So conceived, things necessarily exist, and so Spinoza encourages
his readers to adopt necessitarian outlooks on the world. But, given his modal meta-
physics, such exhortations cannot be based on a greater correspondence between these
broader ways of conceiving and the modal status of things independently of how they
are conceived. So why does he privilege some ways over others, if not based on some-
thing like verisimilitude?
Here we begin to discern an important link between Spinoza’s conceptualist meta-
physics and his moral theory. Spinoza thinks we have practical motivations to pursue
broader conceptual vantage points. There is no intrinsic privileging mechanism, but
there are extrinsic ones. Some ways of conceiving the world are better for us to adopt
than others, even though that advantage is not based on better truth-tracking. Grasping
some ways of conceiving the world enables us to be more active and to more reliably
satisfy our fundamental desires. Spinoza identifies these practical advantages with our
individual, self-interested pursuits of greater power, which he thinks lie at the founda-
tions of morality. Hence, Spinoza thinks we will each be more powerful if we conceive
the world in certain ways, and on that basis he urges us to strive do so. (Alas, as we will
see, Spinoza is also fairly pessimistic about our chances of success in this endeavor.)
This practical privileging is one way in which Spinoza’s ethics fill out his metaphys-
ics, but the dependence runs in the other direction as well. For example, I argue in later
chapters that Spinoza’s project of moral transformation centers on improving our
intellects precisely because those improvements allow us to adopt broader ways of con-
ceiving the world. Furthermore, given Spinoza’s metaphysics of individuals, a moral
agent’s interests and even self-identity can vary, relative to some of these different ways
of being conceived. This will have the startling implication that Spinoza’s ethical ego-
ism, when combined with his concept-sensitive metaphysics, is ultimately a call to a
radical kind of self-transcendence. We will thus be challenged to reconceive not only
the world, but also Spinoza’s project, and perhaps even ourselves, along the way.
A final general worry is that all this concept-dependent metaphysics will turn
Spinoza’s system into some kind of idealist playground. I should admit upfront that
I find idealist readings of Spinoza more textually and philosophically defensible than
they are often taken to be these days.8 But in the end, I do not think the general idealist
interpretation of Spinoza, according to which God, attributes, and modes are essen-
tially mind- or thought-dependent, is sustainable.
But if I am correct about both the conceptual dependence and the mind independ-
ence of the bulk of Spinoza’s metaphysics, we seem to be left with an unhappy interpretive
question: which one should he have abandoned? For many years, I thought this grim
choice was unavoidable and that Spinoza himself was ultimately saddled with a deep
and unresolvable tension, even if a philosophically interesting one.
However, I have come to believe that this represents a false choice and that Spinoza
maintains conceptual dependence without mind dependence in a way that fits elegantly
with the rest of his ontology. This solution requires separating the realm of the mental—
ideas, minds, and the attribute of thought—from the realm of the conceptual—concepts,
conceiving, and conceptual dependence—in Spinoza, which is no easy feat. However,
there is good textual evidence for drawing such a distinction, independent of the issue of
conceptual dependence. That doing so also enables Spinoza to affirm both his concept-
laden metaphysics and his anti-idealism provides us with yet another reason to embrace
it as interpreters.
This concludes our quick plunge into the deep end of the Spinozistic pool. I will lay
out the book’s structure in more detail in the next section. I hope, however, that even
this brief overview of some of the promises and pitfalls of this study will encourage
puzzled readers to dig deeper into the details and wrestle with Spinoza’s texts and sys-
tem alongside me. Though deep, the Spinozistic waters are warm and inviting.
3. A Roadmap
Presenting a systematic interpretation poses a challenge similar to one that system
builders must also confront: where to begin? VanderMeer’s haunting warning above
applies here. The hefty bulk of Spinoza’s Ethics casts a hulking shadow across every
claim made about some piece of it. Panic—intellectually speaking—is a fair reaction.
Still, we have to start somewhere. It is tempting to follow Spinoza’s own lead into the
Ethics and begin with a discussion of his substance–mode ontology, but I have decided
against this approach, partly because it has been done so many times before. I have
chosen a different path into Spinoza’s thicket, one that he provides in an earlier work.
Fear not: there will eventually be discussions of Spinoza’s opening definitions, axioms,
and so forth. But I will approach Spinoza’s “imagined leviathan” from a new angle in
order to cast fresh light on the fundamental problems he faces and the solutions he
offers. This approach will also help us to see new resolutions to more familiar, long-
standing interpretive puzzles and debates. We will ultimately circle back around to
8
For further discussion, see Newlands, “More Recent Idealist Readings of Spinoza,” and Newlands,
“Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza.”
introduction 11
where Spinoza himself begins the Ethics, but in the meantime I beg the reader’s for-
bearance. Postpone final judgment on the interpretive parts until the whole has been
dragged into view.
The first chapter, “The Desiderata of Perfection,” opens with a challenge facing
any serious monist, one that Spinoza himself raised. How can a monist account for
the world’s apparent diversity? I argue that Spinoza faces an especially sharp version of
this long-standing question of the One and the Many, given his commitments to
both maximal ontological parsimony and plenitude. After discussing the details of
these ontological commitments, I suggest that they ultimately stem not from the PSR
but from Spinoza’s account of metaphysical perfection, one that is similar to views
held by the young Leibniz and, surprisingly enough, contemporary metaphysician
Jonathan Schaffer.
In chapter two, “Spinoza’s Conceptualist Strategy,” I lay out in general terms how
Spinoza uses the tools of conceptual sensitivity, conceptual variability, and conceptual
identification to satisfy these competing desiderata of perfection. At its core, Spinoza’s
strategy appeals to one of the most interesting features of concepts: one thing can be
truly conceived in a variety of ways, even when the different ways of being conceived
involve distinctive content. This will be the key to Spinoza’s reconciliation project. If
the world’s diversity is conceptually structured in the right ways, then Spinoza will be
able to show how diversity is consistent with the various identity theses he also defends.
We will now be primed to see how and why many of Spinoza’s central metaphysical
views utilize this conceptualist machinery. I focus in chapter two on the more familiar
cases of attribute and causal structure plenitude, but the rest of the book unpacks the
consequences of Spinoza’s conceptualist gambit for his theories of dependence
(chapter three), modality (chapter four), essences (chapter five), individuals (chapter
six), ethics (chapter seven), and moral transformation (chapter eight).
In chapter three, “Conceptual Dependence Monism,” I examine Spinoza’s views on
metaphysical dependence, in which the role of the conceptual is arguably the clearest.
Spinoza uses some twenty-two different terms for dependence in the opening pages of
the Ethics, and a fierce interpretive debate has erupted over how to understand the
relations among these seemingly different forms of dependence. I argue that Spinoza
holds an especially austere view, which I call conceptual dependence monism: there is
exactly one form of metaphysical dependence, and it is conceptual in kind. I defend
this interpretation on both textual and systematic grounds, and I point out some of its
implications for our understanding of other, more familiar Spinozistic doctrines.
Along the way, we will also gain a clearer understanding of Spinoza’s explanatory
requirements in metaphysics.
In fact, I argue in the next chapter, “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Modality,” that ignoring
a fundamental explanatory question has led previous interpreters to misunderstand
Spinoza’s views on necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility. Although
the scope of Spinoza’s necessitarianism has also been hotly debated, I argue that a
central question has gone largely unasked: just what is modality, according to Spinoza?
By focusing first on his analysis of necessity, we gain insight into more familiar ques-
tions of modal distribution: what exists necessarily, what exists contingently, and so
forth. I argue that Spinoza ultimately endorses a form of what might now be called
anti-essentialism, according to which the modal status of some things depends partly
on how those things are conceived. Hence, Spinoza affirms both the genuine contin-
gency and strict necessity of one and the same thing’s existence, depending on how it
is conceived. After considering Spinoza’s defense of this account of modality, I turn to
why Spinoza thinks we do not, in fact, adopt necessitarian perspectives on the world.
This failure will have important ramifications for Spinoza’s moral theory, considered
in later chapters.
My account of Spinoza’s views on modality naturally raises questions about his
theory of essences, which is the topic of chapter five, “A Conceptualist Account of
Essences.” I argue for two main interpretive theses about Spinoza’s account of essences:
(a) the essence of a thing is its degree of explanatory power and (b) the explanatory
power of a thing can vary, depending on how it is conceived, both across and within
attributes. Putting these two theses together, what constitutes the essence of a thing for
Spinoza is sensitive to the manner in which that thing is conceived, both within and
across attributes. Combined with the results of previous chapters, it follows that each
thing has infinitely many essences, both within and across attributes.
How can one thing have so many essences? Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy was
introduced to show how one and the same individual can be structured by a diversity
of attributes, causal structures, dependence relations, modal profiles, and essences.
But what are these individuals like, such that they can consistently support all this
diversity? The answer proves increasingly elusive, as I argue in chapter six, “Elusive
Individuals.” After looking at Spinoza’s more limited interest in the nature of individuals,
I argue that Spinoza introduces a conceptual condition on the composition and
persistence conditions for individuals. Even individuating bodies in Extension partly
depends on how regions of causal activity are conceived.9 This has widespread implica-
tions for Spinoza’s account of individual finite modes, and it re-raises an old worry
about whether Spinoza was an acosmicist (someone who denies that there are finite
individuals at all). Even worse, Spinoza’s account of finite individuals, when combined
with the results of the previous chapters, threatens to undermine the very conceptu-
alist gambit he introduced in order to secure them in the first place. I diagnose and
discuss this problem in the concluding section, “Too Much of a Good Thing?”
In order to see more clearly how all this metaphysical machinery intersects with
Spinoza’s ethics, I begin chapter seven, “Ethics, Motivation, and Egoism,” with an
overview of what I call Spinoza’s psychological ethics, a series of descriptive claims
about human desires that underwrites his metaethics. I argue that moral motivation
for Spinoza is, in turn, based on an agent’s intrinsic, appetite-based motivation for
9
In what follows, when I refer directly to an attribute without using the description “attribute of,” I will
mark it with a capital letter (“Thought” and “Extension”).
introduction 13
fundamental desire satisfaction. Most importantly, I claim that when this account of
moral motivation is combined with his conceptualist metaphysics, Spinoza has a
distinctive way of showing how moral agents can have self-interested, non-prudential
moral motives to pursue the interests of others. This proposed reconciliation of
Spinoza’s ethical egoism with other-regarding interests turns on his conceptualist
account of how moral agents are individuated, thereby revealing just how deeply his
ethics draws on his conceptualist metaphysics.
In chapter eight, “Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence,” I move in the other
direction to show how Spinoza’s ethics, in turn, completes his conceptualist metaphysics.
I argue that Spinoza privileges some of the plentiful ways of conceiving things over others
on broadly practical grounds: it is in the self-interest of agents to conceive other things, as
well as themselves, in the broadest, most inclusive ways. This gives Spinoza a kind of
practical argument for necessitarianism. At the same time, necessitarianism and other
metaphysical consequences of adopting broader concepts appear to cut against an agent’s
self-interest. We seem to have less power and agency, so conceived.
To understand Spinoza’s reply, I turn to his account of moral improvement, which
again relies on the conceptual. Spinoza thinks that the way to become a more virtuous
agent is to reconceive oneself, a process that results in fundamental changes in an agent’s
self-identity. Drawing on what I see as parallel contemporary work by Harry Frankfurt,
I argue that Spinoza’s call to moral transformation is ultimately a call to a new self-
identity, one that is more stable, more active, and more eternal. The good news from
Spinoza’s ontology is that these better, more powerful selves already exist, waiting to
be adopted as our own. The bad news from his moral psychology is that it is very
unlikely that any of us will get very far in this process of re-identification. Although
Spinoza holds out hope for our salvific transformation, he remains deeply pessimistic
that we will ever enjoy much of it.
In the final chapter, “The Nature of the Conceptual,” I step back from first-order
interpretive details to return to a fundamental question for my interpretation of
Spinoza: just what are these conceptual relations for Spinoza? I argue against a very
tempting answer, according to which conceptual relations are exclusively mental rela-
tions, ways of thinking about or mentally representing things. This answer would
transform Spinoza’s claims about conceptual dependence into claims about mind
dependence, which would commit him to a very robust form of metaphysical ideal-
ism. However, I show how and why Spinoza rejects both idealism and the underlying
mentalistic account of conceptual relations on independent grounds.
This re-raises the question of just what Spinoza thinks conceptual relations are. I high-
light those preciously few passages in which Spinoza hints at a positive, non-mentalistic
answer in terms of attribute neutrality. I show how this extra-mental, structural account
of the conceptual fits elegantly into the rest of Spinoza’s ontology while avoiding the
errors of the idealist interpretations. Given how little Spinoza offers us here, I conclude by
indicating ways future research—both historical and constructive—might try to shed
further light on Spinoza’s account of the conceptual.
1
The Desiderata of Perfection
1. Lust’s Challenge
Although Spinoza is known for his terse, dense writing style, he once tried his hand at
crafting philosophical dialogues. Mercifully, his effort was short-lived. But in spite of
its literary clumsiness, Spinoza’s first dialogue contains an important philosophical
exchange that nicely frames the discussion of this book.
The dialogue is found in Spinoza’s early and unfinished Short Treatise, although
there has been some disagreement about exactly when the dialogue itself was com-
posed. The characters are Lust (Begeerlijkheid, sometimes more chastely translated as
“Desire”), Love, Reason, and Understanding, and they are discussing the world’s per-
fection. Understanding proclaims that Nature alone is supremely perfect and calls on
Reason for support. Reason obliges and confidently explains, “infinite Nature, in which
everything is contained, is an eternal Unity” (KV I.2, G I/28). Spinoza agrees with
Reason, having argued in his own voice that one reason for thinking all the diverse
features of the world are found in “only one, single being” is “because of the unity
which we see everywhere in Nature” (KV I.2, G I/23).
Ever the troublemaker, Lust immediately objects to this line of reasoning, his tone
dripping with sarcasm: “It would be marvelous indeed if this should turn out to be
consistent: that Unity agrees with the Diversity I see everywhere in Nature. But how
could this be?” (KV I.2, G I/28). How indeed? Lust has put his finger on one of the most
significant challenges facing any serious substance monist: how can the world’s appar-
ent diversity be reconciled with its purported containment in a single substance? If
Spinoza has a compelling answer, it must not be an obvious one, since two centuries
later Harold Joachim essentially repeated Lust’s challenge: “There is no principle on
which this variety is intelligible as the variety of the one Substance.”1
As we will see, Spinoza repeatedly runs up against versions of this challenge as he
tries to pack an incredibly diverse and seemingly incompatible array of fundamental
attributes and non-fundamental things, individuals, essences, natures, powers, modi-
fications, and relations into a single substance. In fact, Spinoza affirms more extreme
forms of diversity than even non-monists typically accept. How, then, can a single
substance contain so much diversity without sacrificing its internal unity? Is the notion
of such a substance even coherent?
1
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 103.
the desiderata of perfection 15
The general worry behind Lust’s question can also be expressed in terms of
predications. Elsewhere in the Short Treatise, Spinoza confidently claims, “there must
be an infinite and perfect being, by which nothing else can be understood except
a being of which all in all must be predicated” (KV I.2, G I/21).2 But if everything is
predicated of one thing, how can Spinoza avoid massive and widespread inconsisten-
cies?3 More generally, Spinoza’s ontological packing generates seemingly incompatible
pairs of predications of the form God is F and it is not the case that God is F for many,
many values of F. My desk is brown, my cup is not. Prima facie, Spinoza thereby seems
committed to the claim that God is brown and it is not the case that God is brown. Or
consider a more Spinozistic example. Thinking things do not cause extended effects
and extended things cause only extended effects, according to Spinoza.4 But Spinoza’s
God is both thinking and extended. It seems to follow that God causes no extended
effects and also that God causes only extended effects. God both is and is not the cause
of extended effects. One last example: Spinoza claims that I have an essence or nature
that is distinct in kind from the essence or nature of a horse.5 But if my nature and the
horse’s nature are both in God, it seems to follow that God has the nature of a human
and it is not the case that God has the nature of a human. In sum, the diversity Spinoza
endorses seems incompatible with the monism he defends.
So problematic is Spinoza’s account of the “infinite Nature in which everything is
contained” that even sympathetic interpreters have tended to downplay either the
unity or the diversity of Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura in hopes of achieving greater
coherence. Rather than positing a single divine substance with infinitely many incom-
mensurate attributes, perhaps Spinoza really believed that each of God’s attributes is
sufficiently substance-like in itself, such that “God” names something more like a
collection of substances. On such interpretations, Spinoza’s One becomes an eternal
bundle of the Many.6 At the other extreme, perhaps Spinoza’s God is so internally
unified that the appearance of a multiplicity of attributes and modifications is merely
an appearance, some kind of gross illusion. On these readings, Spinoza’s Many collapses
into a Parmenidean One.7 Although these interpretations disagree on whether the One
or the Many should be sacrificed, together both sides underscore Lust’s objection:
Spinoza cannot reconcile his all-encompassing substance with the world’s diversity.
2
Here and in all of what follows, all underlining for emphasis in quotations is mine. Any italicized emphases
in quotations are original to the author.
3
This objection has a gilded history and has been voiced by the likes of Bayle, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and
various British idealists. For a more recent exchange, see Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 4–28 and Melamed,
“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought.”
4
IIp6–7. 5
See, for example, IVPref, G II/208 and IVp37s1, G II/237.
6
Prominent examples of versions of this include Gueroult, Spinoza I, 51–5, Curley, Behind the Geometrical
Method, 28–30, and Loeb, From Descartes to Hume, 161–6. More recent defenses include Marshall, “The
Mind and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza,” and Smith, “Spinoza, Gueroult, and Substance.”
7
Prominent examples include Hegel, Lectures 281; Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, Vol. 1, 142–56;
and, most recently, Della Rocca, “Rationalism, Idealism, Monism, and Beyond,” and his unpublished 2014
Whitehead Lectures at Harvard University.
However well intentioned, such interpretive solutions water down Spinoza’s bold,
perhaps reckless insistence that he can have it all—maximal unity and maximal
diversity. Although he was not yet able to articulate his solution in the Short Treatise,
Spinoza never backs down from Lust’s challenge. He continues to insist that his form
of monism is consistent with an ontological diversity more wide ranging than even
his pluralistic opponents would accept. But how could this be? we wonder along with
Lust. Is this, as another nineteenth-century interpreter concluded, “a question which
is hopeless of solution”?8
I do not think so, and in a sense unpacking Spinoza’s rejoinder and its wide-ranging
consequences is a primary goal of this study. The philosophical challenges and rewards
of this exploration rest in the details, but in this first chapter I will outline the challenge
Spinoza’s metaphysics faces, before laying out his mostly overlooked solution in the
next. I will begin by showing how Spinoza endorses especially strong versions of both
ontological parsimony and plenitude, the One and the Many. These competing com-
mitments emerge not, I argue, from his acceptance of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,
but instead from Spinoza’s notion of metaphysical perfection. The metaphysically perfect
world, for Spinoza, is a world that maximizes both unity and diversity, identity and
distinction. This will then set the stage for the rest of the book, in which we explore
how Spinoza proposes to consistently maximize both desiderata.
2. Parsimony
Spinoza’s commitment to a form of ontological parsimony is well known. After all, he’s
a substance monist. As he famously claims in his Ethics, “Except God, no substance can
be or be conceived” (Ip14). The next proposition spells out the implications of his
monism for all other existing things: “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be
conceived without God” (Ip15). That is, whatever exists, exists in substance and locates
in substance its causal origins and the grounds for its very intelligibility. I will have
more to say about those dependence relations in chapter three. For now, let us focus on
Spinoza’s insistence that everything that exists is contained, in some metaphysically
robust sense, in a single substance: God. (Given Spinoza’s insistence on reflexive
dependence, this even applies to God. God is self-contained.)
We should not pass too quickly over the fact that the container of all things is itself a
substance, according to Spinoza. He thinks the ontological and explanatory ground of
everything else is a highly unified, consistently structured, and intelligible entity.9
Hence, however rich in kinds, individuals, and properties the world turns out to be,
they all must somehow coexist in that single substance and, conversely, that single sub-
stance must be able to consistently support all that diversity within itself.
8
Martineau, A Study of Spinoza, 185.
9
See, for example, Id3, Id6, Ip11. For more on God’s essence(s), see chapter five.
If true, one obvious implication of Spinoza’s substance monism is that finite

substances do not exist, pace Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, and nearly everyone else in
the Western philosophical tradition prior to Hume. Spinoza sometimes states this
implication as an identity thesis of one and the same substance across a multiplicity of
fundamental attributes: “The thinking substance and the extended substance are one
and the same substance” (IIp7s). (In the same passage, Spinoza extends this identifi-
cation to any attribute–substance pairing.) That is, one and the same substance has very
different fundamental features or attributes. Indeed, for reasons we will see shortly,
Spinoza thinks substance has infinitely many such fundamental attributes.
However, Spinoza claims that this multiplicity of fundamental features does not by
itself entail that there exists a multiplicity of fundamental things. According to Spinoza,
the non-identity of substances fails to supervene on the non-identity of attributes,
no matter how strongly the distinction between attributes is made: “It is evident that
although two attributes may be conceived to be really distinct (i.e., one may be con-
ceived without the aid of the other), we still cannot infer from that that they constitute
two beings or two different substances” (Ip10, G II/52). In other words, Spinoza takes
substance monism to be consistent with tremendous attribute diversity.
Spinoza’s identification of one substance across a variety of attributes is but one
example of his fondness for surprising identity theories. Not only does the sole sub-
stance exist across multiple attributes, each mode of that substance also exists across
multiple attributes: “So too a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and
the same thing just expressed in two ways” (IIp7s, G II/90).10 Notice the pattern: one
substance, multiple attributes; one mode, multiple attributes. The thinking substance
is identical to the extended substance; a mental mode is identical to an extended mode.
Given that substances, modes, and attributes comprise Spinoza’s basic ontological cat-
egories, we can already discern Spinoza’s tendency to affirm both identity and diversity
in parallel ways across his ontology.
In addition to his substance and mode identity theories, Spinoza also explicitly
identifies items that previous philosophers had treated as distinct: minds and bodies;
ideas and ideas of those ideas; human ideas and God’s parallel ideas; volitions
and ideas; the will and the intellect; volitions and the faculty of willing; ideas and the
faculty of the intellect; power and virtue; power and active essence; power and perfec-
tion.11 One of Spinoza’s most controversial phrases also implies an identity thesis: Deus
sive Natura. I will argue in chapter three that Spinoza also identifies seemingly distinct
forms of metaphysical dependence. Causation, inherence, and conceptual depend-
ence are all one and the same form of dependence. Over and over in the Ethics, what
10
See also IIp21s and IIIp2s. For a full defense of the mode identification thesis, see Della Rocca,
Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza.
11
See, for example, IIp7s (minds and bodies); IIp20 (ideas and ideas of those ideas); IIp11c (human
ideas and God’s parallel ideas); IIp49 (volitions and ideas); IIp49c (the will and the intellect); IIp48s (voli-
tions and the faculty of willing); IIp48s (ideas and the faculty of the intellect); IVd8 (power and virtue); IIp7
(power and active essence); IVPref (power and perfection).
had seemed to others to be distinct kinds, things, and relations are, according to
Spinoza, metaphysically indistinct. As Rebecca Goldstein, a much better writer, puts it,
“Spinoza’s zest for unification is isotropic. He is everywhere intent on dissolving
disparities, reconciling polarities, denying dualities.”12
This is a consistent and widespread tendency in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Whenever
possible and appropriate, reduce seemingly distinct things or features to one and the
same thing or feature. Whenever possible and appropriate, reject bifurcations in
metaphysics. (The reason for the “possible and appropriate” qualification will become
clear later.)
But this preference for identity cannot be the whole story. As we have already
seen, Spinoza accepts at least one kind of rich diversity: each thing is characterized by
infinitely many distinct attributes. Eventually we will need to understand why Spinoza
thinks some forms of diversity are acceptable while others are not, but for now, let us
briefly survey Spinoza’s other appeals to metaphysical diversity that stand alongside
his parsimonious identity theories.
3. Plenitude
Immediately after concluding in Ip15 that everything is contained in God, Spinoza
embraces a stunningly plentiful ontology: “From the divine nature there must follow
infinitely many things in infinitely many ways [modis], (i.e., everything which can fall
under an infinite intellect)” (Ip16, G II/60). Before unpacking this rich proposition, we
need to take a quick look at its standard translation.
Spinoza invokes two dimensions of infinite diversity in this passage, as the Latin
emphasizes: “Ex necessitate divinae naturae, infinita infinitis modis . . . sequi debent.”
The use of “modis” might naturally suggest that “infinitis modis” is a claim about Spinoza’s
ontological category of modes, and that is how Edwin Curley translates the passage:
“From the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many
modes.” But as Curley dutifully points out in a footnote, “modis” might instead have
the less technical sense of “ways,” which I take to be the correct rendering.13 For, if
“modis” referred to Spinoza’s category of modes, it is very unclear what the referent of
“infinita” could be. Curley supplies “things,” and that is fine as a neutral description,
but in the demonstration of Ip16 the referent of infinita is “properties,” which is a clear
reference to Spinoza’s ontological category of modes. “Infinitely many things,” in
other words, refers to infinitely many modes, and it is hard to understand what “infin-
itely many modes in infinitely many modes” could even mean. Hence, I take it that
“infinita infinitis modis” refers to infinitely many modes in infinitely many ways.
What, then, is the referent of “modis,” the “ways,” in this passage? The demonstra-
tion of Ip16 makes this clear as well. Having argued that infinitely many properties
12
Newberger Goldstein, “Explanatory Completeness and Spinoza’s Monism,” 281.
13
C 424n43.
follow from God’s nature (which takes care of the “infinita”), Spinoza then tries to
prove the second dimension of infinite diversity (“infinitis modis”): “But since the
divine nature has absolutely infinite attributes, each of which also expresses an
essence infinite in its own kind . . . ” That is, “infinitely many ways” refers to God’s infinitely
many attributes.14
Putting this together, Ip16 claims that infinitely many modes in infinitely many
attributes follow from the nature of the sole substance. In other words, both mode and
attribute plenitude follow from the nature of God. In fact, although it is pure textual
postulation, I cannot help hearing a “nonetheless” between propositions 15 and 16.
Yes, Spinoza tells us in Ip15, at the ontological ground floor, extreme parsimony—
identity!—holds. There is only one fundamental thing. Nonetheless, he assures us
immediately afterwards, this singular substance actually contains a maximal—infinite!—
diversity of non-fundamental things, properties, kinds, and predicables. With that
assurance, as John Caird puts it, “the colorless blank becomes at a stroke filled up with
rich and varied content.”15 Taken together, Ip15 and Ip16 affirm Spinoza’s commitment
to versions of both maximal parsimony and maximal plenitude.
What sort of ontological diversity is Spinoza committed to? Although we could simply
list the various categories of plenitude in Spinoza (attributes, modes, degrees of power,
essences, and so forth), there is a unifying feature to his plentiful ontology, one hinted at
in Ip16d and quoted above. Spinoza endorses what I will call expressive plenitude about
God or substance: God is expressed in infinitely many ways along multiple axes.
3.1 The Nature of Attributes, Modes, and Expressing

The most familiar axis of expressive plenitude is attribute plenitude, the thesis that God’s
nature is expressed by infinitely many attributes. Spinoza even defines God partly in
terms of such expressive plenitude: “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite,
that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eter-
nal and infinite essence” (Id6).16 Although there has been some interpretive debate
about how many attributes Spinoza intends by “infinity,” it is clear that he means by
“infinity” more than the two attributes we are aware of, Thought and Extension.17
Spinoza is especially keen to maintain the maximal or “supreme” plenitude of divine
attributes. As he puts it negatively, “God is an absolutely infinite being, of whom no
attribute which expresses an essence of substance can be denied” (Ip14d). Positively,
14
See also IIp3s. 15
Caird, Spinoza, 144.
16
See also Ip10s, Ip11, Ip14d, Ip16d, IIp1, and IIp7s.
17
Even Jonathan Bennett, one of the main contemporary advocates of the “only” two interpretation of
Spinoza’s attributes, concedes that textually it is clear Spinoza thought there are more than two, even though,
Bennett argues, functionally there are only two attributes for Spinoza (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics,
75–81 and Bennett, Learning from Six Philosophers, Vol. I, 115–17). It has long been objected that Spinoza
has no good explanation for why we are aware only of two attributes; for a recent version, see Francesca di
Poppa’s claim that it must be a brute, inexplicable fact for Spinoza that our mind represents only our body
(Di Poppa, “Spinoza on Causation and Power,” 303). For a good rejoinder to all such accounts, see Melamed,
“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought.”
God has every possible attribute, each of which expresses a divine essence.18 That is the
primary sense of “plenitude” in attribute plenitude: God has as many attributes as there
can be. But in light of Spinoza’s frequent appeals to infinity in this context, it is also
clear that he thinks the range of possible attributes is quite large.
Attributes are not the only ways of expressing God’s nature, however. Modes also
express God, according to Spinoza: “Particular things are nothing but affections of
God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and
determinate way” (Ip25c). For example, Spinoza defines a body as “a mode that in a
certain and determinate way expresses God’s essence insofar as he is considered as
an extended thing” (IId1). As we have already seen, Spinoza affirms mode plenitude in
Ip16, parallel to attribute plenitude: “From the necessity of the divine nature there
must follow infinitely many [modes] . . . i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite
intellect.” That is, God has every possible modification, each of which expresses a
divine essence in a particular and determinate way and none of which exhaustively
expresses a given essence. If correct, it follows from Spinoza’s mode plenitude thesis
that substance can be consistently expressed in many, many incomplete or partial
ways—as many modes as there are. Putting the two dimensions together, Spinoza’s
expressive plenitude is the thesis that God is expressed by infinitely many attributes
and infinitely many modifications.
Given that modes and attributes play similar expressive roles, how do attributes and
modes differ? (Seeing this will also help us unpack what Spinoza means by “expresses.”)
One key difference between attributes and modes is the manner of their expressive
activity. In a rich letter to John Hudde, Spinoza describes an attribute as “something
that expresses God’s nature in some way” (Ep36, G IV/186).19 He describes this way of
expressing God’s nature as “perfect” and “involving no limitation.” Spinoza makes it
clear that by “perfect,” he means something like complete. Attributes, in other words,
express God in a complete and purely positive way.
However, since God is supposed to have infinitely many attributes, it cannot be that
any one attribute exhaustively expresses God. In fact, Spinoza thinks no attribute
expresses any other attribute, although he denies that attribute isolation is a limitation
or imperfection: “Although Extension, for instance, denies of itself Thought, this is not
an imperfection in it” (Ep36, G IV/185).20 Rather, each attribute is expressively com-
plete in the sense that it fully and positively characterizes an essence of substance.
This raises an important point about Spinoza’s theory of attributes that can easily be
lost in all the other interpretive debates: attributes characterize substances. I mean
18
Ip16d; in chapter five, I defend the claim that Spinoza’s substance has multiple essences.
19
This passage also contains another non-technical use of modus: “aliquid . . . quod aliquot modo Dei
naturam exprimit.”
20
Genevieve Lloyd illustrates this with the relationship between a proposition and its sentential expres-
sions in English and French. The English and French sentences can each completely express the proposition,
even though neither contains nor makes reference to the other (Lloyd, Spinoza and the Ethics, 39).
“characterize” literally: attributes provide substances with a character, a nature.21 Or, if

that sounds too reifying, an attribute just is the character of a substance. As such,
Spinoza’s attributes are best understood as ways of being a substance. Indeed, in light of
their completeness, attributes are fundamental ways of being a substance for Spinoza.
In IIp1d, Spinoza concludes his argument that thought is an attribute of God in this
way: “Therefore, thought is one of God’s infinite attributes, which expresses an eternal
and infinite essence of God, or [sive] God is a thinking thing.” Notice how Spinoza
seamlessly moves from the expressive role of a divine attribute to a claim about the
kind of thing that God is. It is in virtue of having the attribute of thought that a sub-
stance is a thinking thing, and it is precisely through their expressive role that attributes
so characterize or fill out the kinds of things that exist. Put the other way around, with-
out attributes substance would be a bare particular, a qualitative-less thing lacking
intrinsic characteristics.22 Hegel was thus quite correct in his description of what
attribute nihilism would imply for Spinoza’s substance (though wrong that Spinoza
was forced to accept it): a “dark, shapeless abyss, so to speak, in which all determinate
content is swallowed up as radically null and void.”23
By contrast to the perfect expressive capacity of attributes, modes express God in
only a “certain and determinate way.” As Hegel was also fond of pointing out, Spinoza
links determination and negation,24 which makes the contrast clear. Attributes are
complete expressions of a divine essence, whereas modes are merely partial expres-
sions. Each attribute exhaustively expresses one essence of substance, whereas each
mode only partially expresses an essence. But these two degrees of expressive activities
are importantly related, as seen in Spinoza’s claim that modes are “nothing but affec-
tions of God’s attributes” (Ip28d).25 Modes are more localized and determinate expres-
sions of more complete and fundamental expressions. For example, being exactly five
feet tall and being exactly six feet tall are two determinate ways of expressing Extension
or of being an extended substance, although neither exhausts the ways Extension
could be expressed.
Indeed, it is tempting to understand the expressive relation between an attribute and
a mode in Spinoza within a determinable/determinate framework. Modes are deter-
minates of fundamental determinable ways of being a substance; this is precisely the
sense in which modes are modifications of a thing. (Indeed, this is a fairly common way
of understanding the ontological category of modes in contemporary metaphysics.26)
21
In what I think is a similar vein, Deleuze claims that attributes “exprime une essence infinie, c’est-
a-dire une qualité illimitée” (Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de l’expression, 37).
22
This is counter-possible reasoning since Spinoza denies that a substance ever could exist without its
attributes (Ip10s, under the widespread but lamentable assumption—prior to Leibniz—that always p
entails necessarily p). But this sort of explanatory dependence is consistent with necessary coexistence.
23
Hegel, EL 227. 24
See Ep50 and a related claim in Ip8s1.
25
See also Ip25c and IIp2, cited in the main text above, in which Spinoza makes it clear that modes
express God’s attributes in a particular way.
26
See, for example, Heil, From an Ontological Point of View, 137–50 and Lowe, The Possibility of
Metaphysics, 180–3.
On this construal, attributes are the most general and fundamental determinables of a
substance. There could be a gradation of increasingly determinate features of that sub-
stance between the most general determinable (an attribute) and a fully determinate
mode (a “particular thing”). This fits Spinoza’s description of particular things as
“certain and determinate” expressions of an attribute (Ip25c).
One benefit of this interpretive framework is that it provides a promising account
of the difference between infinite and finite modes, which is a novel but obscure dis-
tinction in Spinoza’s ontology that some interpreters have found endlessly rich and
suggestive. Spinoza claims that infinite modes, unlike finite modes or “particular
things,” are “indeterminate” with respect to various features, such as duration and
particular patterns of motion and rest.27 On the determinable/determinate account,
this distinction makes good sense. Particular bodies have fully determinate features
of more general determinables. A particular pattern of motion and rest is a determinate
of a more general determinable, being in motion and at rest. (“Motion and rest” is
Spinoza’s example of the most “immediate” infinite mode.) Likewise, motion and rest
is the most general determinate of the determinable being extended. This also helps
explain Spinoza’s claim that infinite modes “vary in infinite ways, yet always remain
the same” (Ep64, G IV/278). That is, each infinite mode is a determinable that can
take infinitely many different determinates.28
Such are the promises of interpreting Spinoza’s attribute–mode expressive ontology
within a broadly determinable/determinate framework. There are also dangers, how-
ever. One worry is that by taking attributes to be the most general determinables of a
substance, it will be tempting to treat attributes as pure determinables, akin to the way
in which some scholastics thought prime matter was pure potentiality, a determinable
with no intrinsic qualities of its own.29 This is decidedly not Spinoza’s view of attributes;
they are not intrinsically indeterminate, although they are the most general determinable
ways of being a substance.
A second danger is that it will be tempting to treat the more determinate elements as
more real than or more fundamental than the less determinate.30 Modes would become
27
See Ip22d for indeterminate duration and IIp13sl7 for indeterminate particular patterns of motion
and rest.
28
This account of infinite modes is also rightly neutral about exactly how many degrees of generality there
are between attributes and particular things. Presumably, the number of intermediaries depends on how
physics (for Extension) and psychology (for Thought) turn out. That may be largely an empirical question,
and Spinoza’s recognition that his physics is merely programmatic (IIIp2s and Ep83) would explain why his
account of infinite modes is likewise merely programmatic. This also implies that some interpretive debates
concerning so-called “immediate” vs. “mediate” infinite modes are misguided. This is a prime example of an
interpretive disagreement that, from the outside at least, appears to have lost track of what the debate is about
in non-Spinoza-ese terms.
29
Not that this was the dominant Scholastic view of prime matter; for a helpful overview, see Pasnau,
Metaphysical Themes, 35–76.
30
One Spinozistic way to reach this conclusion is to think that all determinables are merely abstractions
from fully determinate individuals. Given Spinoza’s general disavowal of abstracta as not “real” or mind-
independent (see Newlands, “Spinoza’s Anti-Abstractionism”), it would be easy to then conclude that attributes
more real or more fundamental than attributes in virtue of being more determinate
expressions of them. But this would get the dependence direction backwards for
Spinoza. Substance, the most indeterminate of all, is also the most real or fundamental
(Ip1). Indeed, as we will see in the next section, Spinoza thinks it is a mark of sub-
stance’s maximal reality that it admits of so many different, more determinate expres-
sions of itself. So, for Spinoza at least, a determinate is less fundamental than the
determinable of which it is a determinate. Although I take the direction of dependence
to be independent from the general determinable/determinate framework, if one
insists that the order cannot be reversed without losing the contemporary sense of
determinable/determinate, then I think we are just seeing the limits of reading Spinoza’s
ontology entirely through a single contemporary schema.
This also gives us some general insight into what Spinoza means by “expresses.”
Expressing is a metaphysical relation that involves characterizing or particularizing,
akin to the determinable/determinate relation. Attributes express substance, thereby
characterizing its natures in more determinate ways: as thinking, as extended, etc.
Likewise, modes express attributes, thereby particularizing them in more determinate
ways: as taking up a determinate quantity of volume, etc. In both cases, where x expresses
y, y is more fundamental than x.
However, Spinoza also links expressing with conceptual containment relations,
sometimes moving between “expresses” and “conceives” interchangeably, as if the terms
describe one and the same relation. “The mind neither expresses the actual existence of
its body, nor conceives the body’s affections as actual” (Vp21d). In Ip10s, Spinoza treats
each attribute of a substance being “conceived through itself ” as equivalent to each
attribute “express[ing] the reality or being of a substance.” Similarly, in Ip29s, he
equates being “in itself [and] conceived through itself ” with being an attribute which
“express[es] an eternal and infinite essence” (Ip29s). Spinoza also treats a claim about
one and the same thing being “now comprehended under this attribute, now under
that” as equivalent to a claim about one and the same thing being “expressed in two
ways” (IIp7s).31 More generally, Spinoza writes in the TTP, “it is certain that all things
in nature involve and express the concept of God” (G II/60).
In these passages, whenever x expresses y, x is conceived through y and the feature
of y that x expresses is contained in the concept of y. Indeed, Spinoza seems to closely
associate expressive values with conceptual content. For example, he claims that
attributes, in virtue of being conceived through themselves, “express the reality or being”
as well as the “necessity, or eternity, and infinity” of substance (Ip10s). This moves
are mind-dependent abstractions for Spinoza. Although this conclusion has received some support from
interpreters, I do not think it is Spinoza’s settled view, for reasons I give in chapter nine. The best way to block
this chain of reasoning is right at the beginning: determinables are not abstracta for Spinoza.
31
For other examples, see also IIp1d, IId1, IIp5d, Vp21, Vp22, Ip20d, Ip14d, Ip23d, Ip10s, and Ep64. In
Ip28d, Spinoza even describes modes as “God considered as affected” which is supposed to be parallel to
the relations of Ip25c: “Particular things are nothing but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which
God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way.”
seamlessly between expression as metaphysical characterizing and expression as

containing conceptual content.32
In the final chapter, we will consider whether Spinoza has made a colossal blunder in
squeezing these two kinds of roles together: the metaphysical and the conceptual,
being a determinate of and being conceptually contained in. At this point, it is enough to
notice that Spinoza regularly slides between metaphysical and conceptual versions of
his theses without noting a difference. His own motivation for this slide will become
apparent by the end of the next two chapters. For now, I will let the metaphysical and
conceptual versions stand side-by-side. Hence, Spinoza’s expressive plenitude thesis
is the claim that God can be expressed or conceived in infinitely many more and less
determinate ways.
3.2 Intra-Attribute Mode Plenitude

While this overview of Spinoza’s expressive plenitude provides a nice organization of
his basic ontological categories of substance, attributes, and modes, it remains incom-
plete. In addition to attribute and mode plenitude, there is yet another dimension of
expressive plenitude in Spinoza’s ontology. Just as each mode expresses or is conceived
through each of infinitely many different attributes, so too each mode can be expressed
or conceived in infinitely many ways within each attribute.
This third dimension of plenitude, what I will call intra-attribute mode pleni-
tude, is easily overlooked, but it will be incredibly important for answering Lust’s
challenge. I will introduce the basics here, but the machinery will become both more
complex and more fleshed out in later chapters.
To begin, notice how Spinoza sometimes distinguishes between finite things
considered more narrowly, “conceiving their essence alone,” and those same objects
conceived more broadly, considered in relation to “the whole order of nature.” For
example, in CM Spinoza compares the modal status of a thing “if we consider only
[its] essence” with its modal status “if we were to conceive the whole order of nature”
(CM I.3, G I/240–2).33 Similarly, in the Appendix to Part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza
distinguishes desires that can be “understood through [our nature] alone, as through
their proximate cause” and those that can be understood only “insofar as we are a
part of Nature, which cannot be conceived adequately through itself without other
individuals” (IVApp1, G II/266).
Unlike the difference between a mode conceived under Thought and the same mode
conceived under Extension, the main difference between these two ways of conceiving
32
Deleuze makes a similar point in his account of expression in Spinoza (Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème
de l’expression, 11–13), noting that expression is both a thing’s explication into a more determinate multi-
plicity (which I describe here as metaphysical characterizing) and the involvement or implication of that
thing’s nature in that which expresses it (which I identify as conceptual containment).
33
See a similar distinction in IVd3–4. For a discussion of the actual content of these claims, see chapter
four. For a sampling of other places in which Spinoza makes this distinction, see IIId1–2, TIE 57, G I/21–2;
Ep12, G IV/55; Ep32, G IV/171–2.
one and the same mode lies in the extent to which relations to external causes within an
attribute are included. For example, Spinoza contrasts singular things “insofar as . . . we
attend only to their essence” and “the same singular things . . . insofar as . . . we attend
to the causes from which they must be produced” (IVd3–4). Since Spinoza thinks the
causal network of things extends infinitely in either direction,34 it follows that each mode
can be conceived in infinitely many distinct ways within each attribute, depending on
which, if any, of infinitely many external causal relations are included.
At one extreme, there will be a very narrow concept (NC) of a mode that includes
only a thing’s intrinsic properties. At the other extreme, there will be a very broad con-
cept (BC) that includes relations to infinitely many other things. To put it somewhat
simplistically for now, each existing finite mode can be conceived solely in terms of its
essence (NC), or in terms of its essence and its immediate efficient cause, or in terms of
its essence, its immediate cause, and the immediate cause of its immediate cause . . . and
so forth, ad infinitum. The broadest way of conceiving a finite thing (BC) will therefore
include relations to infinitely many other finite things.35
Spinoza also distinguishes between clear and distinct ways of conceiving things and
“confused and mutilated” ways of conceiving things.36 One might expect Spinoza to
treat every less than fully broad way of conceiving modes as confused or mutilated
solely in virtue of being incomplete. But—and this will become very important for later
chapters—Spinoza rejects this inference in at least some cases. He claims that at least
some narrower ways of conceiving things are not intrinsically confused or mutilated.
For example, he writes, “if we consider only [a thing’s] essence, we can conceive it
clearly and distinctly without existence” (CM I.3, G I/241).37
Similarly, it is not the case that every narrower concept, solely in virtue of its incom-
pleteness, is false for Spinoza. According to an early text, for example, conceptual fal-
sity “consists only in this: that something is affirmed of a thing that is not contained in
the concept we have formed of a thing” (TIE 72, G II/27). The root of conceptual fal-
sity here is not incompleteness per se, even though conceptual incompleteness may
be a necessary condition for making false conceptual judgments. Incompleteness is
not sufficient for falsity, however. To make a false conceptual judgment, I also must
affirm something of a thing that is not contained in its narrower concept (which pre-
sumably happens when I rely on mutilated and confused concepts). That may make
34
Ip28.
35
As we will see in later chapters, NC and BC also include relations to non-finite things (such as God
and certain infinite modes), but what primarily distinguishes them from each other involves relations to
other finite things. In chapter five, we will also see that what Spinoza calls a thing’s essence can include more
than just its intrinsic properties. Spinoza will sometimes use “essence” as shorthand for just the intrinsic
properties of a thing (as I have here), but when he is laying out his theory of essences more carefully, he
will distinguish essence from just the properties of a thing included in its NC. When it becomes significant,
I will characterize NC as ranging over a thing’s intrinsic properties rather than its essence.
36
See, for examples, Vp20, IVp59s, IIp35, IIp40s, IIp28, IIp29, IVp1s. Another contrast class is adequate
vs. inadequate, which I discuss in chapter four, as it involves complications that would take us too far afield
in this opening chapter.
37
We will see more examples of this in chapter four, where it becomes especially salient.
relying on less than BCs cognitively dangerous, and so we might be well advised to
use BCs whenever possible, but the more limited point here is that, at least in this
early text, making judgments based on less than BCs by itself does not entail making
false judgments, for Spinoza.
This should at least give us pause before interpreting Spinoza as always inferring
falsity from narrower ways of conceiving a thing solely in virtue of conceptual incom-
pleteness. But does Spinoza ever affirm the truth of at least some less than BCs? In an
interesting thought experiment in that same early text, Spinoza positively concludes
about some narrower ways of conceiving a burning candle, “Here there is no fiction, but
true and pure assertions.”38 Similarly, in the passage from the Appendix to Ethics Part IV
quoted above, Spinoza claims that some desires can be “understood” through an object
conceived more narrowly, a success term that presupposes that at least some narrower
ways of conceiving things are true. So even if Spinoza thinks that every confused and
mutilated way of conceiving a thing is partial, incomplete, and false, it is not the case
that every partial and incomplete way of conceiving is confused, mutilated, and false.
In the Ethics, Spinoza teases these biconditionals apart in his usual tortured writing
style, which makes them easy to misread. In IIp34, he affirms what amounts to a parallel
inference from BC to truth: “Every idea which in us is absolute, or adequate and perfect,
is true” (IIp34).39 In the next proposition, he explains falsity in terms of a feature that
some narrower ways of representing things have: “Falsity consists in the privation of
knowledge [cognitionis privatione], which inadequate or mutilated and confused, ideas
involve” (IIp35). I read this passage as claiming that mutilated and confused ideas involve
a kind of cognitive failure that constitutes falsity. This reinforces the tight association of
falsity and confusion, and it suggests that all false ideas will involve confused and
incomplete representations, but it does not license an inference from representational
incompleteness per se to falsity.40 Applying both passages to concepts more broadly, we
see that Spinoza’s inferences are unidirectional. BCs entail truth and falsity implies
incompleteness, but in these passages Spinoza does not state the converse directions
from truth to BC or incompleteness per se to falsity. While perfect expressive complete-
ness might entail clarity and truth, and confusion and falsity might entail expressive
incompleteness, Spinoza does not accept biconditional versions.41
38
TIE 57, G II/21–2. By “pure” (merae), Spinoza means unalloyed or unconfused, not “mere” as in “a mere
assertion.”
39
At the start of IIp43d, Spinoza does appear to move in the opposite direction, at least from truth to
adequacy, an inference that Curley chastises as an unmotivated “equivocation” on Spinoza’s part (Curley,
“Spinoza on Truth,” 5). In chapter four, I will say more about the relation between adequacy, BC, and truth,
so here I simply note the possibility of a textual counter-example.
40
See also IIp41, which restates IIp25. Although the details are more complicated, I would say some-
thing similar about passages like IIp29c, in which Spinoza infers that our ideas of ourselves, our bodies, and
external bodies are confused not because they are representationally incomplete per se but because they
conflate (i.e., con-fuse) what are in fact distinct representational objects, as per IIp16. (I am grateful to an
anonymous referee for pressing me to say something about some of these Ethics passages here.)
41
Here I disagree with, inter alia, Gueroult, Spinoza I, 95, though this difference stems from a larger
difference about how to read Ia4, which I take up shortly.
Given how much weight I will eventually place on this dimension of expressive
plenitude, this point is worth emphasizing. Not every less than fully broad way of con-
ceiving things is confused, mutilated, or false for Spinoza, even if many of them are.
A more general way of seeing this is to recall the expressive character of modes them-
selves. Modes, I claimed above, are incomplete expressions of an attribute. The features
of an attribute that they express are not the only such features that it has. In conceptual
terms, modes are partial ways of conceiving an essence of God. However, Spinoza had
better not think that such incomplete expressions of God’s attributes are mutilated or
false simply in virtue of their incomplete expressive capacity. That line of reasoning
leads to acosmicism, the view that modes are ultimately unreal or illusory for Spinoza.
Although Hegel famously claimed that acosmicism was indeed the logical conse-
quence of Spinoza’s theory, I will argue later that this is (mostly) incorrect.42 Spinoza
has principled reasons for affirming mode plenitude.
If so, then we should resist inferring falsity solely from conceptual or expressive
incompleteness, in which case we also should not infer that an intra-attribute way of
conceiving a mode is false or confused simply from the fact that it is partial or less than
maximal. Indeed, Spinoza’s mode plenitude doctrine is just a way of claiming that
God’s nature is so rich as to be conceived or expressed in infinitely many partial and
incomplete ways, “from the highest degree of perfection to the lowest” (IApp, G II/83),
a point that applies equally well to expressions of a mode within an attribute.
One might also worry that Spinoza’s causal theory precludes the possibility of NC, a
way of conceiving that includes only the essence of a thing. After all, Spinoza claims,
“the cognition of an effect depends on and involves the cognition of its cause” (Ia4).
But if a mode’s NC contains no reference to any causes, and cognition of a mode requires
grasping its cause, how can using NCs ever produce knowledge or understanding, by
Spinoza’s own lights? Answering this concern will also provide more details about this
dimension of plenitude.
First, I do not think Ia4 is meant to be iterative, such that the cognition of an object
requires not only cognizing its cause but also the cause of its cause, the cause of the
cause of its cause, and so forth ad infinitum.43 Spinoza does not apply the axiom in this
way, and he often makes what he takes to be true assertions about objects considered
independently of at least some of their causal histories.44 Those assertions would be
false if Ia4 entails the highly implausible thesis that cognition of one thing requires
cognition of every one of its infinitely many indirect causes. So even if Spinoza rejected
NCs on the basis of Ia4, there will still be infinitely many ways of conceiving a mode
within an attribute short of BC, and most of the interesting conceptual sensitivity we
42
For discussion of Hegel’s charge of acosmicism, see Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza”
and Melamed, “Acosmicism or Weak Individuals?”
43
For helpful discussions, see Wilson, “Spinoza’s Causal Axiom” and Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics,
127–31.
44
See Ip3; Ip25; IIp5–7; IIp16; IIp45; and Vp22. Given Spinoza’s pessimism about our chances of ever
grasping any BCs, we would likely be in a state of perpetual and complete ignorance if Ia4 were iterative.
will encounter turns on the differences between BC and anything narrower than BC,
not NC and something broader.
That sounds a bit defensive; here is a more proactive reply. Presumably, Ia4 applies to
cognition of substances as well as of modes. If so, the causal relations that must be
included in all genuine ways of conceiving things need not be external causal relations.
After all, Spinoza’s God has no external relations, even though God remains genuinely
conceivable for Spinoza. How is this consistent with Ia4? I think Spinoza’s answer is that
while God has no external causes through which God must be conceived, God does
have internal causes, what we might describe as “self-causal” relations. (In a letter to
Tschirnaus, Spinoza states, “I take it that an efficient cause can be both internal as well as
external” (Ep60, G IV/271).) That alone implies that we should not read the word “exter-
nal” into Ia4 if it is not there, especially given Spinoza’s fondness for internal relations.
Now consider the case of a finite mode. Which properties are included in its NC, the
narrowest way of conceiving that mode? Spinoza is somewhat vague here. The closest
description he gives of such intrinsic properties is just what we would expect: he
describes them as the “internal cause [causam internam]” of a mode (CM I.3, G I/241).
That is, modes are, to some non-zero degree, self-caused in the sense that they have
some internal explanatory structure, essence, or power that Spinoza describes in
terms of an internal causal relation.45 But just as substance can be conceived through
its internal relational properties and still satisfy Ia4, so too finite modes can be conceived
through their “internal causes,” their intrinsic structures, and satisfy Ia4.
So far, I have claimed that in addition to being genuinely conceivable under infinitely
many attributes, each mode can also be genuinely and truly conceivable within each
attribute in infinitely many ways—infinities within infinities. More interestingly, we
will see in later chapters that just as Spinoza believes that some metaphysical features
of modes vary depending on which attribute a mode is conceived through, he also
believes that other metaphysical features of a mode vary depending on how that mode
is conceived with respect to its external environment within an attribute.
We have now seen that Spinoza endorses an incredibly rich, multi-axis diversity
alongside his more parsimonious identity theories. One substance expressed by infinitely
many attributes. Each of infinitely many attributes is expressed by infinitely many
modes, and each mode also expresses each of those infinitely many attributes. Each of
the infinitely many modes of substance, in turn, is expressed in infinitely many ways
within each of those infinitely many attributes. Talk about plenitude!46 In the next section,
I will zoom back out to consider what might motivate Spinoza’s commitment to both
parsimony at the fundamental level of substance and plentiful expressive diversity at
the non-fundamental level.
45
See also IIp13L4 for a slightly richer account of this structure in extended terms, although it is still
fairly programmatic.
46
Deleuze identifies what he calls a “second level” of expression in Spinoza (Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème
de l’expression, 10). But if I am correct, there is something like a third level of expression here: the expressions
of expressions of expressions, which corresponds to broad and narrow concepts of modes of substance.
4. The Limits of the PSR

I claimed in the introduction that Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism requires principled
explanations for everything, including general metaphysical features of the world. We
have now encountered one such general feature: ontological parsimony at certain levels
(substance monism, mode identity theory) and ontological plenitude at others (both
within and across attributes). What, if anything, explains Spinoza’s acceptance of both
parsimony and plenitude in this particular configuration? Is there a more general prin-
ciple that explains both commitments? Or was Joachim right to conclude, “We are left
with no rational answer to the question ‘How—on what principle—can Substance, in
spite of its unity, reveal itself in an order of diverse states?’ ”47
One tempting interpretive answer these days is the Principle of Sufficient Reason
(PSR), roughly the thesis that there are no brute facts and that everything can, in prin-
ciple, be explained. More than anyone else, Michael Della Rocca has argued that the
PSR is the “key” to explaining many if not all of Spinoza’s most central views.48 So if
there is a general principle behind Spinoza’s commitment to both identity theories and
plenitude, then the PSR seems like a promising place to look first.
On the parsimony side, Della Rocca has argued that the PSR plays a central role
in Spinoza’s arguments for his identity theories, including substance monism and
mind–body identity. In particular, Della Rocca claims that Spinoza relies on the PSR to
establish what I will characterize as the rationalist reduction:
Rationalist reduction: Necessarily, for all x and y, the existence of some
explanatory grounds for the identity of x and y and the lack of any principled
explanatory grounds for the non-identity of x and y entails the identity of x and y.49
The basic idea of the rationalist reduction is that the PSR is inconsistent with brute or
inexplicable identity and non-identity. According to this very strong version of the
PSR, non-identity supervenes on explanatory differences and all appeals to primitive
non-identity should be rejected on grounds of inexplicability. (Typically the most
salient explanatory grounds for identity and non-identity in the rationalist reduction
will be facts about overall similarity.)
Della Rocca argues that Spinoza relies on the rationalist rejection to help establish
many of his identity theses. According to Della Rocca, Spinoza’s basic pattern of
reasoning is that in the relevant cases, non-identity would be brute or inexplicable;
hence, by the PSR, identity follows. For example, in the case of substance monism, if
there are no non-primitive grounds for distinguishing the thinking substance from the
extended substance, and there are some grounds for identifying them in terms of their
overall similarity (say, their isomorphic causal relations), then the PSR entails the
identity of the thinking and extended substance. Della Rocca thinks Spinoza makes a
47
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 108. 48
Della Rocca, Spinoza, ix.
49
In this formulation, x and y can range quite widely, including over types and tokens of objects, powers
of objects, and relations between objects.
similar move for every case in which Spinoza identifies things or features that others
had taken to be distinct.50
In a similar vein, I have argued previously that the PSR might be used to generate
at least a generic Principle of Ontological Plenitude (POP).51 A generic POP states that
the fullest, or maximal, range of compossible existents exists. Actuality, as it were, is as
filled up as it can be. By this principle of plenitude, if there were an internally consistent
object that did not exist, such nonexistence could be explained only by an incompati-
bility between it and the maximal compossible set of existents. On the other hand, a
positive reason for the existence of anything internally consistent will be the fact that
there is nothing in the maximal series of compossible objects that prevents or excludes
its existence. The fact that there is nothing in the maximally full series preventing its
existence is a positive reason for its existence. Thus, if there is ontological space to be
filled, it will be filled. Why? Because, by reductio, if there were unfilled ontological
space (pace POP), there would be something which had no reason for not existing, but
which nonetheless did not exist. As in the rationalist reduction case, this fact of nonex-
istence would be an unexplained brute fact, something ruled out by Spinoza’s PSR.
Thus, Spinoza’s conclusion would run, from the PSR we have some version of POP. As
Leibniz nicely puts the basic point:
But my principle is: whatever can exist and is compatible with others, exists. For the sole
reason for limiting existence, for all possibles, must be that they are not compatible. So the sole
reason for limitation is that those things should preferably exist which involve the greatest
amount of reality (DSR 105).
These twin drives of the PSR pull in opposite directions, but perhaps not incompatibly
so. Loosely combined, the PSR implies that there is identity when there are no prin-
cipled reasons for diversity, and diversity when there are no principled reasons for
identity. Of course, there would be an incompatibility if there were a case in which
there were no principled reasons for identity or for diversity, or a case with principled
reasons for both identity and diversity. But until an actual example of such a case is
provided, a stout-hearted advocate of the PSR will insist that neither of these scenarios
is possible precisely because of their incompatibility with the PSR.
However, although I agree that the PSR plays a role in Spinoza’s arguments for some
of his particular identity and plenitude theses, I do not think it can do all the explanatory
work Spinoza needs here.52 For one, an over-reliance on the PSR generates a worrisome
50
Although this interpretive strategy occurs repeatedly in Della Rocca’s papers, its most wide-ranging
application is found in Della Rocca, Spinoza.
51
Newlands, “The Harmony of Spinoza and Leibniz,” 70–1.
52
There has been a growing pushback against Della Rocca’s hyper PSR-driven account of Spinoza. In
addition to my own objections (see, for example, Newlands, “Another Kind of Spinozistic Monism”), see di
Poppa, “Spinoza on Causation and Power”; Melamed, “The Sirens of Elea”; and Garber, “Superheroes in the
History of Philosophy.” For Della Rocca’s reply to some of these worries, see Della Rocca, “Interpreting
Spinoza.” For an account of the genesis of some of these PSR-based interpretations of Spinoza, see Laerke,
“Spinoza et le Principe de raison Suffisante.”
epistemic gap. The PSR is not indexed to human intellectual capacity. It is not the
principle that reality is thoroughly intelligible to us, only that it is thoroughly intelli-
gible in principle. Hence, when applying the rationalist reduction to a given case, the
PSR generates only conditionals. If there are no principled reasons for non-identity,
then the thinking and extended substance are identical. But simply because we cannot
fathom any reasons for non-identity, it does not follow that there are no such reasons.53
Unless Spinoza can demonstrate that our rational capacities render intelligibility sim-
pliciter and intelligibility to us coextensive, he cannot rely on the rationalist reduction to
generate non-conditional conclusions. And in light of Spinoza’s pessimism about the
reach of human cognition,54 it is unlikely that Spinoza would accept such a coextensive
thesis. Yet, Spinoza reaches non-conditional conclusions about the identity of the think-
ing and extended substance.55 Therefore, it seems uncharitable to attribute the PSR-based
rationalist reduction argument to Spinoza, as it would fail by Spinoza’s own lights.
A second worry is that the rationalist reduction will too often beg the question
against pluralist opponents. We will see a concrete example of this in chapter three, in
which I argue that Spinoza’s case for the identification of causation, inherence, and
conceiving cannot, on pains of becoming question begging, rest on an assertion of the
rationalist reduction, pace Della Rocca’s account. However, we can already see this
worry by reflecting on the role that the “principled” qualification plays in the rational-
ist reduction.
According to the formula I offered above, some bifurcations are acceptable,
namely those that are principled. But it is hard to see, on neutral grounds, how to
distinguish principled from non-principled cases of bifurcation. For example,
dependence pluralists claim that there is a principled reason to distinguish causation
from inherence, namely in virtue of the fact that they are not coextensive relations.
Some things are causally dependent on others without inhering in them, dependence
pluralists like Leibniz believe. Although Spinoza arguably rejects the distinction
between causation and inherence, it would be unsatisfying for him to reply to Leibniz
that there can be no distinction between causation and inherence because, by the
PSR, that would represent an unprincipled bifurcation. Surely non-coextensiveness
is a very principled reason for distinguishing relations! More generally, according to
the PSR itself, there ought to be a principled explanation of the difference between
principled and non-principled bifurcations, but it is difficult to see what such a general
principled account could look like that does not first assume a verdict on particular
disputes between identity and non-identity theorists.
Even worse, Della Rocca acknowledges that Spinoza treats some cases of non-
identity as explained through themselves, such as the non-identity of the attributes
of thought and extension. That is, sometimes the principled basis for non-identity can
53
Elisabeth of Bohemia makes a similar objection to Descartes’ conceivability argument (E 72, AT 4.2).
54
For example, see IIp24–31.
55
See IIp7s and the next chapter for a fuller discussion of this particular identity thesis.
be self-explanatory.56 But if attribute diversity is sufficiently principled by virtue of

self-explanatory distinctions, we ought to wonder why other cases of non-identity, such
as the non-identity of causation and inherence, could not similarly be explained through
themselves. (And again, were Spinoza to insist without further explanation that some
distinctions are just acceptable while others are not, he would be violating the very
explanatory demands that he complains everyone else fails to respect.) So, as with the
first objection, the PSR-based rationalist reduction does not allow Spinoza to legitim-
ately reach some of his monistic conclusions; therefore, charitable readers should look
elsewhere than the PSR for ways to overcome pluralists’ positions.
A final and more significant concern about over-reliance on the PSR for interpreting
Spinoza is that the PSR fails to generate Spinoza’s particular ontological picture.
I argued in the previous two sections that Spinoza structures his ontology around a
single fundamental thing expressed in infinitely many different ways. Parsimony rules
at the fundamental ontological level, plenitude at the derivative level. One substance,
infinitely many attributes. However, the PSR alone is consistent with an even more
parsimonious alternative: one substance, one attribute. Perhaps even one substance,
one mode. But for Spinoza, attribute and mode plenitude cannot be so quickly sacrificed,
even at the altar of the mighty PSR.57
One might appeal to versions of POP to argue that, by the PSR, there are no
principled reasons for limiting attribute and mode diversity. There are two problems
with this appeal, however. First, the POP supported by the PSR establishes only that
every intrinsically possible element exists. In this context, it entails only that every
possible attribute and every possible mode exists. But why think that the range of pos-
sible attributes and modes is infinitely large, rather than zero, one, or two? To conclude
that Spinoza lacks a satisfying answer is, in effect, to echo the conclusions of Hegel and
other idealist interpreters: Spinoza asserts more attribute and mode diversity than he
can actually defend. As Joachim complains, again echoing Lust,
In his conception of Attributes, Spinoza has attempted to reconcile the absolute unity of Reality
with its absolute fullness of content . . . It will not do, therefore, to conceive [God’s] nature as
exhausted in any one or two or finite number of [attributes] . . . But to the question “How?” we
can find no answer in Spinoza: he merely asserts the fact.58
The infinite plenitude of attributes does appear to be a mere assertion for Spinoza if it is
based on the PSR. But as we will see in the next section, there may be another basis for
56
Admittedly, the distinction between an unprincipled lack of explanation and a principled case of self-
explanation is thin, but Spinoza repeatedly relies on cases of self-explanation to satisfy his explanatory
naturalism. Indeed, were self-explanations ruled out by Spinoza, his explanatory demands would face an
insurmountable regress problem.
57
For an argument, attributed to Samuel Clarke, that the PSR is outright inconsistent with any diversity
for Spinoza, given God’s absolutely necessary nature, see Yenter, “Clarke Against Spinoza on the Manifest
Diversity of the World.”
58
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 102–3. For more on this line of objection (including other
versions), see Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza” and “More Recent Idealist Readings of
Spinoza.”
Spinoza’s commitment to attribute plenitude that, if true, might make it more defensible.
Hence, once again on grounds of charity, we should look elsewhere than the PSR for an
account of Spinoza’s plentiful ontology.
A second reason Spinoza needs more than the PSR to generate attribute and mode
diversity is that the rationalist reduction generates attribute diversity only if it also gen-
erates substance diversity. After all, the PSR-based grounds for attribute diversity are
on par with the grounds a substance pluralist could invoke for substance diversity.
Spinoza’s attributes are formally and functionally similar to each other to the same
degree as substances are similar to each other on a substance pluralist’s account. As
I suggested previously, if Spinoza can invoke a self-explanatory basis for distinguishing
attributes it seems at least open to a substance pluralist to do the same with respect to
distinguishing substances. So if the rationalist reduction is consistent with attribute
diversity, it ought to be consistent with substance diversity as well.59
My general concern is that the PSR alone fails to ground the particular identity–
diversity package Spinoza accepts: parsimony at the fundamental level and plenitude
at the derivative level. Of course, the PSR might still be important in Spinoza’s reasoning.
If true, the PSR might even provide Spinoza with powerful resources to defend his
ontology against rivals, as Della Rocca has also argued. But I think we must look else-
where to discern the general grounds of Spinoza’s striking Many-in-the-One ontology.60
5. The Metaphysics of Perfection, Then and Now

Rather than relying on the PSR, Spinoza settles on his particular ontology based on a
twofold view about perfection: (1) the metaphysically perfect world maximizes parsi-
mony at the fundamental level and plenitude at the derivative level and (2) ours is the
metaphysically perfect world. Some readers might wonder if that sentence contains a
typo: “Did he mean to say ‘Leibniz’ instead of ‘Spinoza’ there?” Spinoza is not usually
read as someone who reasons in metaphysics from principles of perfection in the way
Leibniz clearly does.
However, I believe that this interpretive tendency is incorrect. True, Spinoza does
not write about perfection in quite the explicit and ubiquitous ways Leibniz did (if he
had, this would hardly be a novel thesis worth defending!). But I believe that there is
sufficient textual evidence, assembled in the right light, to conclude that Spinoza
59
Somewhat ironically, in recent work Della Rocca appears to accept this conclusion and has begun to
argue that any kind of diversity is inconsistent with the PSR, leading to a form of Parmenidean existence
monism that Della Rocca acknowledges is not Spinoza’s. (This is a theme of his unpublished 2014 Whitehead
Lectures at Harvard University.) But if, by Della Rocca’s own light, Spinoza does not accept what Della Rocca
takes to be the ultimate conclusions of the PSR, that gives us a further reason to doubt that the PSR is playing
the role in Spinoza’s reasoning that Della Rocca once assigned it.
60
I am hardly alone in looking elsewhere. For two other recent searches for the grounds of diversity in
Spinoza, see Melamed, “Why Spinoza is not an Eleatic Monist,” and Hübner, “Spinoza’s Thinking Substance
and the Necessity of Modes.”
reasons in this way. He thinks one particular combination of ontological parsimony

and plenitude is maximally perfect. He then reasons from this optimal satisfaction
to robust conclusions about the ontological structure of the world. That is, Spinoza
treats metaphysical perfection as an explanatory principle. It is because perfection
involves one thing instantiating a multiplicity of states that God, the most perfect
being, exemplifies this structure to such an incredible degree: one thing with infinitely
many diverse states. That might sound overly teleological for Spinoza, but explanatory
claims need not import purpose or ends-directedness. God’s metaphysical perfection
explains the plenitude of divine states in the same non-purposive sense in which, for
example, God’s essence explains God’s existence for Spinoza.
Before unpacking and defending this interpretation further, it is worth noting
that Spinoza is not alone in treating what I am calling “metaphysical perfection” as a
structural measurement of the world’s diversity to its underlying unity.61 For a nearby
seventeenth-century example, this gloss on metaphysical perfection is very much
like what the young Leibniz describes as harmony: “Similarity in variety, that is,
diversity compensated by identity.”62 For Leibniz, this account was inspired in part
by developments in mathematics, especially algebraic geometry, in which highly—
even infinitely—complex figures could be generated by following relatively simple
formulas.63 Leibniz sometimes even describes the mathematical version in quasi-
aesthetic terms:
Harmony and discord consist in the ratio of identity to diversity, for harmony is unity in
multiplicity, and it is the greatest in the case where it is a unity of the greatest number of things
disordered in appearance and reduced, unexpectedly, by some wonderful ratio to the greatest
symmetry (CP 43–5).64
According to these passages, harmony is the ratio of identity to diversity. Leibniz

sometimes loosens the criteria for harmony, appealing to “unity” or “simplicity” or
“similarity” rather than identity as the relevant term. Even so, identity is the limit case
of unity and similarity, such that perfection or harmony would be highest if identity
was combined in the right way with maximal diversity.
61
The contrast with “metaphysical” perfection is some sort of axiological notion of perfection, an alter-
native that Spinoza does reject pace Leibniz.
62
Leibniz, CP 29. Leibniz uses “harmony” in many different ways and contexts. The sort of Leibnizian
harmony I will focus on is the one he uses in his early writings to describe the contours of metaphysical
perfection. For identical formulations made roughly around the same time, see also Ak VI.ii.283, L 150 and
several passages in Elements of Natural Law (esp. Ak VI.i.484). At Ak VI.i.477, he reverses the ordering of
identity and diversity; and at Ak VI.i.479, he refers to diversity that is “reduced to identity.” For an appeal to
similarity, see Ak II.i.164; for simplicity, see DSR 113.
63
Other prominent early modern advocates of such a formula include Malebranche (TNG I.38, I.17–18
and I.24) and Wolff (TN II.6). Indeed, one has to wait until the early Kant for a note of disagreement,
though he admits that this view is quite widespread: “The reason [for not referring to ‘perfection’] is not
that I thought all reality was the same as all perfection, or that perfection consisted in the highest degree of
harmony in one. I have weighty reasons for strongly disagreeing with this widely held opinion” (OPB 134).
64
For further discussions, see Rescher, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Nature; Rutherford, Leibniz and the
Rational Order of Nature; and Strickland, Leibniz Reinterpreted.
Leibniz applies this structural measure of perfection to both individuals and

collections of individuals. God, the ens perfectissimum, is the most harmonious
individual:
Perfection is the degree or quantity of reality. Hence the most perfect thing is that which has
the highest degree of reality. That is, the being that contains as much reality, qualities, and powers
as is possible to be together in one subject. Hence God is understood to have no limits of presence,
duration, power, knowledge, operations and to possess as much [of these qualities] as one thing
can possess. Harmony is unity in variety (Ak VI.iv.1358).65
As Leibniz explains, God is the most perfect in virtue of containing the most features
that can be exemplified “together in one subject.” Spinoza could not have said it better
himself, we will see.
Leibniz thinks finite individuals and systems of finite individuals are also more and
less metaphysically perfect depending on the extent to which they are structured in
harmonious ways. That is, things and systems of things are more or less perfect
depending on how well they combine unity and diversity. A harmonious world is a
plentiful world whose abundance is balanced by and generated from an underlying
unity. A maximally harmonious world would be a world that combined a fundamental
identity—one thing—with a maximal degree of non-fundamental diversity. (Frankly,
it is difficult to see why Spinoza’s world is not the maximally harmonious Leibnizian
world, but let us save that exchange for another day.66) Leibniz also claims that God
evaluates this structural feature of possible worlds when deciding which world to cre-
ate, though this choice-laden component of God’s activity is obviously not one Spinoza
would accept.67
But God is hardly alone in utilizing this measurement of metaphysical perfection,
according to Leibniz. Leibniz thinks we too value this kind of structured perfection, a
point he makes with everyday examples. Musicians, Leibniz claims, strive to strike an
optimal balance between theme and variation.68 In the Discourse on Metaphysics,
Leibniz gives numerous such examples:
We can say that someone who behaves perfectly is like an expert geometer who knows how to
find the best construction for a problem; or like a good architect who utilizes the location and
the ground for his building in the most advantageous way, leaving nothing discordant, or
which doesn’t have the beauty of which it is capable; or like a good head of a household, who
manages his property in such a way that there is no ground left uncultivated or barren; or like
65
The Akademie editors give this text an uncertain dating of 1677–8.
66
For more on this, see Newlands, “From Theism to Idealism to Monism: A Leibnizian Road Not Taken.”
67
For example, see Ak VI.iv.1362. In early writings, Leibniz also tries to integrate other forms of per-
fection, such as physical and moral perfection (i.e., the happiness and virtue of minds), into this more
structural account of perfection that God considers when deciding which world to create. He suggests, for
example, that physical perfection is just a measurement of “delighting in harmony,” i.e., the degree to
which a mind stands in a certain intellectual and affective relation to metaphysical perfection and that
moral perfection is just a measurement of “willing in favor of harmony,” i.e., the degree to which a mind
stands in a certain preferential or volitional relation to metaphysical perfection (see, e.g., CP 29–31).
68
Ak VI.i.484–5; Ak VI.iv.1359.
a clever stage-manager who produces his effect by the least awkward means that could be
found; or like a learned author, who gets the most reality into the least space he can (PE 38).
Leibniz’s point is that in general terms and in everyday ways, our preferences often
track how well diversity and unity are combined in this one-to-many way.
Spinoza appeals to a similar principle concerning metaphysical perfection to
explain God’s generation of diversity:
But to those who ask “why God did not create all men so that they would be governed [only]
by the command of reason?” I answer only “because he did not lack material to create all things,
from the highest degree of perfection to the lowest”; or, to speak more properly, “because the
laws of his nature have been so ample [amplae] that they sufficed for producing all things which
can be conceived by an infinite intellect” (as I have demonstrated in Ip16) (IApp, G II/83).
Spinoza here points to the richness, the fullness of God’s nature to explain mode pleni-
tude, from “the highest degree of perfection to the lowest.” In the Short Treatise, he is
even more explicit: “But God’s true perfection is that he gives all things their essence,
from the least to the greatest; or to put it better, he has everything perfect in himself ”
(KV I.6, G I/43).
Spinoza’s appeal to a plentiful cascade of things, from the least to the greatest, echoes
the sort of “Great Chain of Being” image found throughout Western philosophy.
Spinoza makes two more distinctive points, neither of which would have been accept-
able to someone like Leibniz. First, the plentiful range of finite things follows from
God’s metaphysically perfect nature and not from some extrinsic ideal, divine moral
nature, or contingent choice. As Spinoza claims a bit earlier in the Ethics, “From the
preceding it clearly follows that things have been produced by God with the highest
perfection, since they have followed necessarily from a given most perfect nature”
(Ip33s2, G II/74).69
Even more controversially, Spinoza also claims that the plentiful diversity that fol-
lows from God’s nature is wholly within God. God, the most perfect being, contains
“everything perfect in himself.” God’s own perfection, in other words, involves gen-
erating an internal, plentiful richness. Spinoza makes a similar claim in TTP: “All
perfections are contained in [God]” (TTP VI.19, G III/93).70 God’s perfection explains
not only the plentiful structure of the world, but also why God generates that richness
wholly internally, as it were. Put into the context of the rest of Spinoza’s ontology,
Spinoza thinks mode plenitude, as opposed to finite substance plenitude, follows
from God or Nature’s metaphysical perfection. It follows that a world of one sub-
stance containing infinite richness in itself is more perfect than a world of one divine
69
See also KV I.4; TTP IV.10, G III/65; and TTP VI.3, G III/82–3.
70
This could be read as the much less controversial thesis that God contains, in perfect form, every crea-
turely perfection. But in light of Spinoza’s mature ontology, it is clear that there is a suppressed “only” in this
passage: all perfections are contained only in God, since there is nothing that is not in God. Furthermore,
Spinoza rejects traditional appeals to “eminent” containment, so every perfection of finite things is formally
contained in God. (For more on this latter issue, see Newlands, “Backing into Spinozism.”)
substance that brings about equally diverse but more ontologically independent
things. Metaphysical perfection, in other words, is greatest just in case a single thing
contains infinite diversity.
This sort of reasoning from perfection can also be found in Spinoza’s better-
known defenses of attribute and mode plenitude. Spinoza writes, as though it were
self-evident, “The more reality or being each one thing [unumquodque] has, the more
attributes belong to it” (Ip9). Given Spinoza’s later claim that reality and perfection
are interchangeable,71 his principle is that the more perfect an individual thing is, the
more attributes it has. In light of what we have already seen about Spinoza’s theory of
attributes, an equivalent way of putting Ip9 is that the more perfect each individual
thing is, the more fundamental ways there are by which it can be expressed or conceived.
This is itself an instance of the twin desiderata of metaphysical perfection: the more
perfect a single thing is, the more diversity will be contained within it and expressed of it.
In his correspondence with Hudde, Spinoza makes a similar claim: “God’s nature
demands all that which perfectly expresses being, otherwise his nature would be deter-
minate and deficient” (Ep36, G IV/185).72 This helps us understand Spinoza’s claim in
Ip14 that “God is an absolutely infinite being, of whom no attribute which expresses an
essence of substance can be denied” (Ip14d, G II/56). Why can’t any attribute be denied
of God? Because to do that would be to ascribe to God imperfection, to conceive of
God as “deficient” (Ep36), which presumably would be to exhibit a misunderstanding
about the very concept of an ens perfectissmum. God’s perfection, in other words,
entails and explains attribute plenitude.73
Spinoza makes a similar appeal to defend mode plenitude: “The intellect . . . infers
more properties the more the definition of the thing expresses reality, that is, the
more reality the essence of the defined thing involves” (Ip16d). In other words, the more
perfection the essence of a thing involves, the more modifications it supports. That is,
the degree of a thing’s perfection also correlates with the number of its modes. Hence,
if a thing were infinitely perfect, it would have infinitely many attributes and modes.
Using the framework from the previous sections: God’s expressive plenitude follows
from God’s perfection. “I have shown that all things proceed by a certain eternal neces-
sity of nature, and with the greatest perfection” (IApp, G II/80).
Here we discover an illuminating source of Spinoza’s particular ontological com-
mitments. Supreme metaphysical perfection, Spinoza thinks, involves the existence of
a single thing somehow containing infinitely many things. I have sometimes put this in
terms of combining parsimony or identity at the fundamental level and vast diversity
or plenitude at the derivative level. And our world—call it “God” or call it “Nature”—is
71
IId6.
72
It is clear from the context of the letter that by “that which perfectly expresses being” Spinoza means
attributes. See also Ip11d.
73
Spinoza reasons in this vein in KV as well (see KV I.2, G I/23). For an interesting discussion of this
early text that is closely aligned with my interpretation here, see John Brandau, “Degrees of Essence and
Perfection in Spinoza.”
maximally perfect, Spinoza thinks, and thus it is so structured. The One and the Many
via the Many in the One.
Of course, it remains an open question whether Spinoza actually can provide an
account of God’s nature that satisfies these competing requirements of parsimony and
plenitude in a consistent manner. This is just to repeat Lust’s opening challenge. In the
next chapter, I will argue that Spinoza adopts expressive and hence conceptual forms
of plenitude precisely in order to maintain parsimony in the face of the demands for
plenitude. One thing expressed or conceived in infinitely many ways is how he thinks
these twin conditions of metaphysical perfection can be satisfied.
This pattern will be repeated throughout the Ethics, in which Spinoza affirms iden-
tity, “one and the same thing,” across a diversity of expressions of that thing, “now
conceived this way, now that.” It is repeated in his physics, which culminates in a stirring
description of “the whole of nature” as “one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies,
vary in infinite ways without the change of the whole individual” (IIp13sL7s). Identity
through diversity, one thing in an infinite multiplicity of ways. Given intra-attribute
plenitude, this pattern will also be repeated for modes within each attribute, one
mode conceived in infinitely many more and less complete ways.
Much of what follows in this book does not stand or fall with the correctness of my
perfection-based account of Spinoza’s ontological motivations, so unconvinced readers
need not abandon ship quite yet. Still, it is worth briefly addressing two sorts of con-
cerns about appealing to considerations of metaphysical perfection to help explain
Spinoza’s ontology. One kind of concern is internal to Spinoza’s corpus. It might seem
puzzling to organize any set of ideas in Spinoza around the notion of perfection. After
all, Spinoza famously has quite a few deflationary—if not outright disparaging—things
to say about the very idea of perfection.
In his book on Descartes, in the main body of the text in which he is supposed to be
expositing Descartes’ own views, Spinoza breaks into the discussion with a note of his
own, as if unable to contain himself: “Note 2: We are not speaking here about beauty
and the other ‘perfections’ which men have wished, in their superstition and ignorance,
to call perfection” (PP IL1n2, G I/165). In the Ethics, he adds that ascriptions of perfection
and imperfection to natural things usually stem “more from prejudice than from true
knowledge of those things” (IVPref, G II/206).
Such passages might leave room for Spinoza to offer a less superstitious and preju-
diced way to determine a thing’s perfection, but he goes on to suggest that perfection is
not a mind-independent property of things at all: “Perfection and imperfection, there-
fore, are only modes of thinking, i.e., notions we are accustomed to feign because we
compare individuals of the same species or genus to one another” (IVPref, G II/207).
It would be wrong, however, to dismiss a central role for perfection in Spinoza’s
metaphysics based on these critiques and deflationary claims.74 Spinoza’s corpus is
filled with appeals to perfection that cannot be plausibly read as appeals to what he
74
Here, as in the rest of this section, I draw heavily on Newlands, “Spinoza and the Metaphysics of
Perfection,” which also contains a much fuller discussion of Spinoza’s targets and his alternative.
takes to be confusions or mere modes of human thought. For example, Spinoza frames
the goal of his earliest writing project, “healing the intellect,” in terms of achieving
human perfection: “So now it will be evident to everyone that my purpose is to direct
all the sciences to one end and goal, to wit (as we have said), the achievement of
the highest human perfection” (TIE 16, G II/9).75 Perfection also lies at the heart of
Spinoza’s mature account of human emotions and psychology.76 He embeds it in his
discussion of virtue and the moral life.77 He links perfection to a thing’s power and
essence, two key concepts in his system.78
In addition to these more general connections, Spinoza asserts substantive and
unqualified metaphysical principles involving a thing’s perfection, such as: “An effect is
most perfect which is produced immediately by God, and the more something requires
several intermediate causes to produce it, the more imperfect it is” (IApp, G II/80); and
“the more perfection each thing has, the more it acts and the less it is acted on; and, con-
versely, the more it acts, the more perfect it is” (Vp40).79 Spinoza also appeals casually to
God’s perfection in his ontological argument, arguing that it would be “absurd” to
ascribe a contradictory nature to God, who is, after all, “a Being absolutely infinite and
supremely perfect” (Ip11d, G II/53). Spinoza likewise rejects alternative philosophical
views on the ground that they would “take away God’s perfection” (IApp, G II/80).
Spinoza even correlates the perfection of particular things with the extent to which
they “participate” in God’s own perfection (Ep19, G IV/94; IVp45s). In such passages,
Spinoza seems to think that perfection is at least sometimes a mind-independent notion
that can play legitimate explanatory roles in metaphysics, in spite of his critiques of
alternative accounts of perfection.
Spinoza even offers an acceptable way to determine a thing’s perfection, one that is
free of teleological and more traditional moral considerations: “For the perfection of
things is to be judged solely from their nature and power; things are not more or less
perfect because they please or offend men’s senses, or because they are of use to, or are
incompatible with, human nature” (IApp, G II/83). So in suggesting that Spinoza
orients his ontological commitments around what he takes to be the desiderata of
metaphysical perfection, I am not claiming that Spinoza thinks that there is some
independent Platonic model of perfection toward which God strives in acting, or that
metaphysical perfection involves some kind of telic, axiological, or traditional moral
dimension. Rather, Spinoza thinks perfection is a purely metaphysical feature of our
world’s structure in which a single substance exists and contains infinite diversity.
Although much more could be said about the contours and internal consistency of
Spinoza’s account of perfection,80 I want to briefly consider a different kind of worry.
75
See also TTP IV.4, G III/60. 76
See IIIp11.
77
See Vp40, TTP IV.12, and chapter seven. 78
See IIIGenDef, IVPref, and chapter five.
79
For other examples, see Ip11s, G II/54; IIp1s; IIp49s, G II/135.
80
Again, for a much fuller account and textual defense of what I call Spinoza’s “purely metaphysical”
account of perfection and his criticisms of alternative, value-laden accounts, see Newlands, “Spinoza and
the Metaphysics of Perfection.”
Even if interpretively accurate, positing ontological structures on the basis of a principle

about metaphysical perfection might seem wildly outmoded today. Why should
ontology be sensitive to anything like the requirement to maximize both parsimony
and plenitude? Happily, our seventeenth-century rationalists are not entirely alone in
this view. In recent work, Jonathan Schaffer has advocated what amounts to a similar
principle for reasons that are independent of many of Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s more
distinctive claims.
Schaffer describes this methodological preference in metaphysics in terms of a
“Bang for the Buck” principle: “What one ought to have is the strongest theory (gener-
ating the most derivative entities) on the simplest basis (from the fewest substances).”81
Notice how Schaffer explicitly applies the principle to ontology itself: we rationally
ought to prefer—perhaps ceteris paribus—theories whose ontologies combine a very
sparse number of substances with a very plentiful range of derivative entities. By this
criterion, it is hard to imagine getting a bigger “Bang for the Buck” than what we get
with Spinoza, assuming he can pull it off.
As Leibniz did, Schaffer motivates this principle in metaphysics by appealing to its
acceptability in other domains. In particular, Schaffer points out that we already accept
something like this preference in the conceptual realm. We prefer theories with few
but powerful conceptual primitives: primitives that enable the construction of new
and useful derivative concepts. Neither measure alone—the number of primitives or
the number of definable, useful concepts—is sufficient to capture the choice-worthiness
of a theory’s conceptual economy. Put positively, an ideal conceptual economy would
involve a single conceptual primitive, in terms of which maximally many useful concepts
could be defined. (Classical mereology is a paradigmatic example for Schaffer: many
useful concepts can be defined in terms of proper parthood.)
Schaffer thinks it is at least “defeasibly reasonable” to expect that the same measures for
conceptual economy apply in the ontological realm.82 Thus we should prefer—perhaps
ceteris paribus—ontological accounts that strike more favorable balances between the
numbers of fundamental and derivative entities they posit. Hence, an ideal ontological
economy would involve a single fundamental entity that generates maximally many
(useful) derivative entities. The Many in or through the One again.
Whereas Leibniz appealed to geometrical and craftsman metaphors to illustrate this
min–max principle, Schaffer offers a more eco-friendly image:
Ontological Bang for the Buck: Optimally balance minimization of fundamental entities with
maximization of derivative entities (especially useful ones). Derivative entities are part of what
81
Schaffer, “On What Grounds What,” 361; see also “Why the World Has Parts,” 88.
82
Schaffer, “What Not to Multiply Without Necessity,” 649. One might wonder about this crucial step in
Schaffer’s account, at least in the absence of a much grander backstory in the spirit of a Spinoza or Leibniz
about why our conceptual preferences are reliable guides for theory selection in ontology. However, my
limited aim here is just to draw attention to a fellow traveler; for more critical engagement, see Newlands,
“Spinoza and The Metaphysics of Perfection.”
makes a package of fundamental entities fruitful. They show that these fundamental entities
can be used to produce something.83
He continues the metaphor, tightly linking the conceptual and ontological versions:
Overall, bang-for-the-buck methodology across the ontological and conceptual sides of the
ledger recommends a sparse restrictivist view of the basis (both the primitive concepts and the
fundamental entities) coupled with an abundant permissivist view of the superstructure (both
the defined concepts and the derivative entities). In place of desert landscapes, I suggest that
one cultivates a taste for fruitful orchards, and seek theories whose slender trunks still have the
strength to support branching and blossoming canopies.84
At this point in the paper, Schaffer passes over into poetry and begins quoting Walt
Whitman. Some will see this as a telling nod to the aesthetic judgment underlying all
these accounts of perfection or harmony. Beauty, be it in theories or in the world itself,
involves an optimal few-to-great balance between the supports and the supported.85
Leibniz sometimes claims that the explanation runs in the other direction. Judgments
about perfection actually underlie aesthetic appreciations, not vice versa.86 Either way,
for those attracted to Schaffer’s orchards it is worth considering just how much bang
for the ontological buck Spinoza’s system offers. In the next chapter, I lay out the philo-
sophical machinery Spinoza uses for his metaphysical pruning.
83
Schaffer, “What Not to Multiply Without Necessity,” 652.
84
Schaffer, “What Not to Multiple Without Necessity,” 653.
85
Certainly Schaffer is happy to invoke aesthetic properties here: “Whether classical mereology is
ultimately to be accepted or not is a further question, but even its detractors ought to admit that it is a
beautiful bit of machinery” (Schaffer, “What not to Multiply Without Necessity,” 652). As we have seen,
Spinoza was suspicious of aesthetic appeals in metaphysics.
86
See the illuminating discussion of this point in Strickland, Leibniz Reinterpreted, 104–5.
2
Spinoza’s Conceptualist Strategy
1. Trouble in the Spinozistic Paradise

I claimed in the previous chapter that Spinoza thinks parsimony at the fundamental
level and plenitude at the derivative level optimally satisfy the twin desiderata of meta-
physical perfection. Because God or the world is maximally perfect, God exhibits this
many-in-one structure. However, it is not at all clear that this combination yields a
coherent account of God or the world. Spinoza’s commitments to various axes of pleni-
tude seem to cut against his identity theses in ways that make Lust’s opening challenge
all the more acute. How can one thing have such a multiplicity of fundamental and
non-fundamental features?
In that early dialogue, Lust argues in a Cartesian fashion that if thinking and being
extended are the comprehensive and irreducibly different ways of being that Spinoza
thought they were, then such attributes must characterize the natures of distinct things.1
In reply, Spinoza could not yet explain how the world could be consistently unified in
one substance if it admits of such a plurality of attributes and modes. The dialogue
concludes more aporetically than Spinoza ultimately wanted.
Spinoza continued to face similar kinds of objections, from the earliest readers of
drafts of the Ethics to his most acute correspondent near the end of his life.2 Following
his death, readers of the Ethics raised especially sharp criticisms of this form, often
relying on the assumption that whatever is in a thing can be truly predicated of it. If so,
it seemed to follow that “substance is round” and “substance is not round” are both true
in virtue of substance containing circular and non-circular things.3
That simple example might not spell immediate disaster for Spinoza, and subse-
quent developments in philosophy have probably inoculated us against worrying too
much about such cases. Perhaps those predications could be made consistent with spa-
tial and temporal indexing or a form of adverbialism.4 “Substance is round here and
not round there,” say. But Spinoza’s plenitude also requires the co-exemplification of
seemingly incompatible features for which no obvious relativizing or adverbializing
1
KV 74, G I/28. 2
See Ep 8 and Ep 82.
3
For an early example of this criticism, see Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, 306–7. Although
some have tried to defeat such criticisms on Spinoza’s behalf by denying that inherence entails true predication,
I will argue in the next chapter that Spinoza himself did not make this move.
4
The literature in contemporary metaphysics on the so-called “problem of temporary intrinsics” is full
of creative attempts to address a structurally similar problem.
spinoza’s conceptualist strategy 43
strategy seems promising. A contemporary analogue might be: how can being a prime
minister and being a prime number both be properties of a single thing? I doubt that
any amount of adverbializing will make that pairing more palatable. How could one
thing exhibit that kind of diversity? As Joachim nicely summarizes the overarching
worry, “In one sense, it is true, the whole problem of the Ethics is summed up in the
question, ‘How can we conceive the being of a multiplicity in God?’ ”5
To feel the force of this concern on Spinoza’s own terms, let us consider a concrete case
that he provides. Spinoza claims that parallel mental and extended modes—minds and
bodies—are numerically identical. “The Mind and the Body are one and the same thing,
which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of exten-
sion” (IIIp2s, G II/141).6 Spinoza also claims that although everything is causally active
(Ip36), minds and bodies are causally unrelated: “The body cannot determine the mind
to thinking, and the mind cannot determine the body to motion, to rest, or to anything
else (if there is anything else)” (IIIp2, G II/141). More generally, Spinoza claims that
modes are causally isolated within each attribute: “The modes of each attribute have God
for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of thought of which
they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other attribute” (IIp6,
G II/89). It seems that the following claims are all true, according to Spinoza:
1. My mind is identical to my body.
2. My mind causes only mental effects.
3. My body causes only extended effects.
But, on the seemingly innocent assumption that Leibniz’s Law is valid for causal con-
texts, simple substitutions generate (4):
4. My mind causes only mental effects and does not cause only mental effects.
Making matters worse, I will argue in later chapters that Spinoza’s intra-attribute
mode plenitude commits him to the truth of claims like one and the same thing exists
necessarily and exists contingently. But, we again wonder, along with Lust, how could
this be?
Spinoza was a good philosopher, and there are already indications in the above passages
that matters are not quite this straightforward. For example, Spinoza qualifies his causal
isolation thesis in IIp6 by adding that substance causes extended effects “only insofar as
[quatenus]” it is conceived to be extended. Clearly Spinoza wanted that quatenus qualifier
to do some heavy lifting, but readers continued to doubt Spinoza’s consistency. As Johann
Erdmann wryly notes in his late nineteenth-century History of Philosophy:
In order to conceal the contradiction into which [Spinoza] thus falls, he separates his panthe-
ism and individualism, monism and pluralism, by the word “quatenus,” which Herbert has
humorously called the charm that made everything possible with Spinoza.7
5
See also IIp7s and IIp21s.
7
Erdmann, A History of Philosophy, Vol II, 90.
There is something to Herbert’s quip, although Spinoza’s key move has nothing to do
with the magic of quatenus, despite its frequent appearance in the Ethics.8 Quatenus,
especially when paired with expressions like concipitur, is Spinoza’s mature way of
invoking his most valuable philosophical tools: conceptual sensitivity, conceptual
variability, and conceptual identification.
It is through this conceptual machinery, I will now begin to argue, that Spinoza
attempts to satisfy the twin desiderata of metaphysical perfection, consistently maxi-
mizing both fundamental parsimony and derivative diversity. If successful, Spinoza
will have provided a promising answer to Lust and made good on his account of
metaphysical perfection to a degree that even sympathetic interpreters have not
thought possible.
2. The Conceptual to the Rescue

Warning: By the end of this section, we will have ascended to a high level of abstraction
from Spinoza’s texts. Readers who prefer to avoid such generalized reconstructions
might wish to skip ahead to the next chapter, which begins with a very particular case.
But for those who would like to have a sense up front of the general shape of Spinoza’s
reasoning, this section will give a helpful bird’s eye view.
We have already encountered some of the pieces of Spinoza’s response to Lust. First,
we saw Spinoza claim that God’s perfection requires not simply the existence of a
plenitude of derivative things, but also the existence of a plenitude of derivative things
within God. He meets this demand by arguing that everything besides God is con-
tained in God, namely as ways of being God.
Second, we saw Spinoza claim that these ways of being God are ways of expressing or
conceiving God, differing from one another in the character they attribute to God and/
or in the degree of their expressive completeness. Spinoza’s doctrine of ontological
plenitude thereby became the view that God can be expressed or conceived in infinitely
many complete and incomplete ways.
Even so, worries about internal consistency still arise, as we have just seen with the
example of mental–physical causation. To handle such concerns, Spinoza relies on
philosophical tools involving conceptual relations to show how God can be expressed
consistently in this rich variety of ways. After easing our way into his general strategy,
I will return to the example from causation and show how Spinoza proposes to block
the worrisome entailment to (4), a move that generalizes to other cases. Later chapters
will examine his use of these tools in more concrete detail, an examination that will
ultimately reshape our understanding of Spinoza’s philosophical outlook.
8
How frequent? According to one study, quatenus appears a stunning 442 times in the Ethics. By com-
parison, substantia appears only 134 times, potentia 198, causa 402, and deus 579. Even when including simple
words like et, non, and sum in the count, quatenus is the twenty-seventh most common word in the Ethics.
(These numbers are from the impressively pre-digital Gueret et al., Spinoza Ethica: Concordances, Index,
Listes de frequencies, Tables comparatives, 1977.)
Spinoza’s key insight can be seen in early correspondence with Simon de Vries,
a young acolyte of Spinoza. De Vries relayed a series of questions to Spinoza that had
been kicked up in a reading group of an early version of the Ethics. While asking about
Spinoza’s definitions of substance and attributes, de Vries writes, “As an example,
I reported what you [Spinoza] said to me at the Hague, that a thing can be conceived in
two ways, either as it is in itself or as it has a relation to something else . . . But we do not
see clearly what this distinction would be” (Ep8, G IV/40).
As Spinoza’s early readers were puzzling over his accounts of substance and attributes,
de Vries apparently told them about Spinoza’s claim that one and the same thing can be
conceived in different ways. From what de Vries writes, it sounds like Spinoza had men-
tioned the difference between narrower and broader ways of conceiving a thing, an early
reference to Spinoza’s intra-attribute mode plenitude thesis that I presented in the
previous chapter. However, I will focus on Spinoza’s more general point about one thing
being conceived in multiple ways, as that is what de Vries asks about.
Spinoza replies to de Vries with his typical mixture of instruction and rebuke:
You want me to explain by example how one and the same thing can be designated by two
names (though this is not necessary at all). Not to seem niggardly, I offer two: (i) I say that by
Israel I understand the third patriarch; I understand the same by Jacob, the name which was
given to him because he had seized his brother’s heel; (ii) by flat I mean what reflects all rays of
light without any change; I understand the same by white, except that it is called white in
relation to a man looking at the flat [surface] (Ep 9, G IV/46).
This exchange is fascinating for a number of reasons. It is interesting that when asked for
examples of one thing conceived in different ways, Spinoza answers with examples of
co-designating names. This gives us an early hint that Spinoza might not treat conceiv-
ing as a purely mental phenomenon, a point that will become much more important by
chapter nine. Instead, Spinoza here treats conceiving as something more like a reference
device, though in chapter nine I will also question whether non-mental linguistic cat-
egories are the right framework for understanding Spinoza’s conceptual relations.
Nevertheless, I do not want to read too much into Spinoza’s association in this letter,
for I think Spinoza is less interested here in the nature of conceiving and naming per
se than in something they have in common. One thing or referent can be conceived or
referred to in many different ways. Having multiple ways of being conceived or referred
to does not, by itself, entail that there is a multiplicity of things conceived or referred to.
Concepts and names are more fine-grained than that. In other words, I think Spinoza
is less concerned with whether the relationship de Vries asked about should be under-
stood in conceptual, linguistic, or perhaps more mental categories, than he is in the
fact that some such relations can be many-to-one.
Spinoza’s examples are also illuminating. He does not simply invoke cases of
co-referring names. The co-referring names have distinct and (putatively) unique
descriptive content associated with them. “Israel” and “Jacob” co-refer, but the former
is tightly associated with descriptive content having to do with patriarchal descent,
and the latter with content having to do with the manner of birth. Similarly, Spinoza
points out that “flat” and “white” refer to the same surface feature, but in ways tightly
attached to different contents.
Obviously, Spinoza was not a modern day philosopher of language, and so we
should not read too much into his claims about names and descriptive content. (“Aha!
Decisive proof that Spinoza wasn’t a Millian!”) I think Spinoza is gesturing at the more
basic point that even when two terms are co-referring, they can have unique contents
tightly associated with them in ways that can prevent valid substitutions.
The most obvious case of such a substitution failure, borrowing from Quine, would
be a case in which the content associated with a name is explicitly invoked. Using
Spinoza’s examples, “Israel was so-called because he had seized his brother’s heel” is
false, whereas “Jacob was so-called because he had seized his brother’s heel” is true,
even though “Israel” and “Jacob” refer to the same individual. It may be that Spinoza
wanted to say something similar about the referential opacity of other contexts, but
he need not be read as making that sophisticated of a claim to de Vries.
More minimally, his examples raise a twofold warning. First, we should not infer
identity or non-identity of referents solely from differences in concepts or names. The
phenomenon of co-reference prevents such a simple inference. Second, we should not
infer sameness of conceptual or descriptive content solely from sameness of referent.
The phenomenon of associating distinct contents with different co-referring terms
prevents that simple inference as well.
This twofold warning contains the embryonic keys to Spinoza’s response to Lust. For
what if all this variety in God worked like names and concepts sometimes work?
That is, what if each of these various ways of being were like various ways of conceiving
one and the same thing, each tightly associated with distinct conceptual content? Then
just as the non-identity of referent does not follow solely from differences in concepts
or names, so too perhaps the non-identity of various things—such as minds and bodies,
a thinking and an extended substance—does not follow solely from differences among
the ways those things are expressed or conceived. And correspondingly, perhaps just as
sameness of referent does not entail sameness of descriptive content of co-referring
names, so too the identity of “one and the same” thing conceived in different ways does
not entail that there is complete or even any overlapping content among these various
ways of conceiving. Putting these two points together, if all diversity in God was just a
diversity of strategically isolated conceptual content about God, then perhaps God’s
uniqueness and the world’s plentiful diversity could be made consistent.
Spinoza employs this strategy to safeguard attribute plenitude in Ip10s: “From these
propositions it is evident that although two attributes may be conceived to be really dis-
tinct (i.e., one may be conceived without the aid of the other), we still cannot infer from
that that they constitute two beings or two different substances” (Ip10s, G II/52). That is,
the non-identity of substances fails to supervene on the non-identity of attributes.
At the outset, this failure of supervenience is far from obvious. As Spinoza
knew well, it was a fundamental point in Cartesian metaphysics that the existence
of distinct fundamental attributes entails the non-identity of their substantial bearers.

Indeed, Descartes had already raised a pre-emptive challenge against Spinoza’s
plentiful substance:
As for the attributes which so constitute the natures of things, it cannot be said that those which
are different, and such that the concept of the one is not contained in the concept of the other,
are present together in one and the same subject; for that would be equivalent to saying that
one and the same subject has two different natures—a statement that implies a contradiction,
at least when it is a question of a simple subject (as in the present case) rather than a composite
one (CSM I/298, AT VIIIB/349–50).
Lust couldn’t have said it better.

Spinoza replies in Ip10s in the spirit of what he had suggested to de Vries. Attributes
are like ways of conceiving a substance, in that just as one and the same thing can be
consistently conceived in a variety of ways, so too one and the same thing can have a
variety of attributes. Inferring a multiplicity of things from a multiplicity of attributes
would be like inferring that Jacob and Israel are different people because they have
different names.
Spinoza applies this point about substance and modes with different attributes
in IIp7s:
The thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is
now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. So also a mode of extension and the
idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways. Some of the Hebrews
seem to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God’s intellect,
and the things understood by him are one and the same (IIp7s, G II/90).
Notice how Spinoza moves freely from a claim about thinking and extended sub-
stances and modes to a claim about how one substance and one mode is expressed or
conceived in different ways.9 The thinking and the extended substance can be identical
precisely because all differences among the attributes of a thing are like differences in
the ways in which that thing is conceived or expressed. To use the terminology from
the first chapter, differences in the fundamental character of a thing are like differences
in the contents associated with different ways of conceiving that thing.
That reasoning moves us in the right direction, but it is not yet enough to get what
Spinoza wants. For one, Spinoza needs to show that these different ways of conceiving
a substance/mode are consistent with each other. It would hardly help the defender of
square circles to claim that having exactly three sides and having exactly four sides are
like two different ways of conceiving one and the same thing. Perhaps one thing, con-
ceived as thinking and conceived as extended, would suffer from a similar conceptual
incoherence.
Spinoza thinks he can block this first concern insofar as the natures or contents of
attributes are non-overlapping. Here Spinoza cleverly borrows an idea from Descartes
9
He uses “conceive” and “comprehend” interchangeably in this very scholium.
and applies it to his own conceptualist strategy to reach a deeply anti-Cartesian

conclusion. As the above passage from Descartes suggests, Descartes believed that
attributes like thinking and extension are wholly conceptually independent from each
other, “such that the concept of the one is not contained in the concept of the other.”10
Spinoza accepts this conceptual independence of attributes: “Each attribute of a sub-
stance must be conceived through itself ” (Ip10). But, Spinoza presses, if attributes are
like such thoroughly isolated concepts, exclusions cannot arise among them. How
could they? To stretch Spinoza’s example to its breaking point: if patriarchal descent
implied nothing whatsoever about grabbing a brother’s heel, then the fact that Esau’s
brother is named “Jacob” can tell us nothing about whether he is or is not also named
“Israel.” So too with attributes, Spinoza reasons. If attributes are like ways of conceiving
a thing with wholly distinct contents, then the fact that something has one attribute
does not entail that it does not have some other attribute.11
This response is convincing only if attributes work like Spinoza thinks concepts
and names with descriptive contents sometimes work. But this raises a second worry
about the sufficiency of Spinoza’s strategy so far. For if attributes are merely like ways
of conceiving a thing, it does not follow that they have all the features of ways of con-
ceiving. Indeed, for all we have seen so far, attributes and concepts might differ in that
the latter, but not the former, can be many-to-one. So mere similarity or analogy
between attributes and ways of conceiving will not be enough for Spinoza’s purposes.
Here we reach the boldest piece of Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy. In the end,
attributes are not merely like ways of conceiving a thing with distinct contents. They
just are ways of conceiving a thing with distinct contents. This is why Spinoza slides so
readily between “expresses,” “conceives,” and attributes in IIp7s. The differences among
the attributes of substance/modes are just differences in the unique conceptual con-
tents associated with distinct ways of conceiving or expressing that thing. This is also
why Spinoza’s examples to de Vries of co-referring names with (putatively) distinct
contents are such extremely well-suited illustrations.
This move is worth emphasizing, as it will have important and far-reaching ramifi-
cations. In order to show that multiple attributes can, like multiple concepts, apply
to one and the same thing, Spinoza invokes a kind of conceptual identification:
attributes just are ways of conceiving a thing. Moving in the opposite direction,
Spinoza reasons that if a group of features of things are just ways of conceiving those
things, then it is possible for one thing to have a multiplicity of such features (at
least insofar as the contents, taken together, are coherent). This insight will be at the
heart of Spinoza’s defense of his plenitude theses. He will identify various features
of things with ways of conceiving those things in order to make his monisms con-
sistent with his pluralisms.
10
See also Descartes, CSM II/54, AT VII/78, and Principles I.60 (CSM I/213, AT VIIIa/28–9).
11
Remember the context here. We are looking for a defense of the consistency of attribute plenitude. For
a defense of attribute plenitude itself, see the considerations from perfection in the previous chapter.
One upshot of this strategy will be that predications of such features to things will be
sensitive to how that thing is conceived. For example, whether or not God is extended
depends in part on how God is conceived. How could it be otherwise, if being extended
just is one among many distinct ways of conceiving God? Hence, from the conceptual
nature of attributes, Spinoza infers the conceptual sensitivity of attributes: whether or not
God is a certain fundamental kind of thing depends in part on how God is conceived.
The order of this reasoning—from conceptual identification to conceptual sensitivity—
is important. Without an underlying thesis of conceptual identification, Spinoza’s appeals
to the conceptual sensitivity of attributes will look deeply mysterious or misguided.
Although he is writing about interpretations of Kant, James Van Cleve makes this
point forcefully:
The double-aspect view has always seemed to me unfathomably mysterious. How is it possible
for the properties of a thing to vary according to how it is considered? As I sit typing these
words, I have shoes on my feet. But consider me apart from my shoes: so considered, am I
barefoot? I am inclined to say no; consider me how you will, I am not now barefoot.12
Van Cleve’s example seems so obviously correct because we also take it as obvious that
wearing shoes is not solely a conceptual feature of things. If attributes are also, at least
in part, non-conceptual features of the world, then the Spinozistic claim that being
extended is sensitive to how a thing is considered will indeed look either muddled or
outright false.
I submit, however, that such conceptual sensitivity is not “unfathomably mysterious”
if it is underwritten by conceptual identification. If the shoed state of things were some-
how just a feature of the ways things are conceived, then the sensitivity of predications
involving shoes would seem neither mysterious nor ad hoc. That conditional might be
hard to evaluate, as it is hard to grasp how wearing shoes could be just a feature of how a
thing is conceived. One might be inclined to conclude something similar about attributes,
but my goal so far has been to outline Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy, not yet to evaluate
the cogency of its steps. My limited conclusion here is that if Spinoza’s thesis about the
conceptual sensitivity of attributes is coupled with a thesis of conceptual identification,
then any lingering mystery will lie in that second thesis, and not the first.
From the conceptual nature and sensitivity of attributes, Spinoza thinks consistent
conceptual variability follows: one thing can have a multiplicity of attributes insofar as
one thing can be conceived in multiple, mutually consistent ways. From the consistent
conceptual variability of attributes and their conceptual nature, Spinoza concludes that
attribute plenitude can be reconciled with his parsimonious substance/mode identity
theories. And given that the overarching motive of this strategy is to satisfy the Many in
the One desiderata of metaphysical perfection, these conceptual tools—conceptual
identification, conceptual sensitivity, and conceptual variability—allow Spinoza to
show how the world’s unity is consistent with its vast diversity.
12
Van Cleve, Problems from Kant, 8.
Although I have been focusing on attribute plenitude, this is really just the beginning
of Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy. For example, as we saw from IIp6–7 and IIIp2,
Spinoza also claims that the causal structures of things depend in part on how those
things are conceived. That is, my mind does not enter any causal relations with bodies
and my body has no causal relations with minds, even though my mind and my body
are numerically identical. Spinoza appeals to the diversity in how things are conceived
to try to explain the diversity in kinds of causation (mental vs. physical) and relata
(minds vs. bodies): “The modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar
as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes and not insofar as he is
considered under any other attribute.”13 One thing, multiple attributes; one thing, mul-
tiple causal structures. This too sounds problematic—how can one thing have these
different causal structures?
Spinoza again replies with a thesis of conceptual sensitivity. The causal structures of
a thing are sensitive to some of the different ways that thing can be conceived:
For example, 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 . . . Hence so
long as things are considered as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the whole
of Nature, or the connection of causes, through the attribute of thought alone. And insofar
as they are considered as modes of extension, the order of the whole of Nature must be
explained through the attribute of extension alone. I understand the same concerning the
other attributes (IIp7s, G II/90).
From the conceptual sensitivity of causal structures and the fact that we already accept
one-to-many conceptual relations, Spinoza thinks we should also accept the consist-
ency of conceptual variability of causal structures: one and the same thing can have
multiple causal structures insofar as it can be conceived in multiple ways.
Spinoza offers a more applied version of this strategy in IIIp2s:
All these things, indeed, show clearly that both the decision of the mind and the appetite and the
determination of the body by nature exist together—or rather [vel potius] are one and the same
thing, which we call [appellamus] a decision when it is considered under and explained through
the attribute of thought, and which we call [vocamus] a determination when it is considered
under the attribute of extension and deduced from the laws of motion and rest (G II/144).
Spinoza applies his more general mental–physical identity thesis from IIp7s and
identifies a particular mental act (a “decision”) with a corresponding bodily act
(a “determination”) as one and the same thing considered under or explained through
different attribute-specific causal chains. Although Spinoza appeals to co-referring
names here, it is clear that he thinks the conceptual/explanatory differences among
attributes and causal chains is what allows such diverse predications to be true of one
and the same action.
13
Spinoza uses “conceive” and “consider” interchangeably between IIp6 and IIp6d.
Just as with the attribute case, however, this is not yet quite enough. First, Spinoza
needs to again ensure that there is no conflict among the relevant ways of conceiving a
thing. He does this in IIp6 by lining up the distinction among causal structures with
fundamental kind or attribute distinctions. For example, as he claims in IIp7s, insofar as
things are conceived or considered as thinking, “we must explain the order of the whole
of Nature or the connection of causes through the attribute of thought alone.” We have
already seen Spinoza reason that attribute contexts are mutually consistent because they
are conceptually isolated from each other, a point he repeats in the demonstration of
IIp6. He now adds, in effect, that since causal structures supervene on attribute con-
texts, there will also be no conflicts among these distinct causal structures.
Second, Spinoza also needs to show why causal structures can share the many-to-
one feature of conceptual relations in the first place. Mere resemblance or analogy is
again not enough. As he did with attributes, Spinoza responds with a bolder thesis of
conceptual identification: causal relations just are conceptual relations. I will defend
this interpretive point more fully in the next chapter, but we can see a hint of it in Ip3d:
“If things have nothing in common with one another, then (by Ia5) they cannot be
understood through one another, and so (by Ia4) one cannot be the cause of the other.”
In sum, one and the same thing can have multiple causal structures because causal
relations are sensitive to how things are conceived, and causal relations are sensitive to
how things are conceived because causal relations just are conceptual relations. So the
consistency of causal structure variability is preserved by relegating causal relations to
mutually consistent conceptual content, a relegation motivated by an identification of
the causal with the conceptual.
We can now see how Spinoza would reply to the charge of inconsistency raised in
the previous section. Recall that Spinoza is committed to the following triad:
1. My mind is identical to my body.
2. My mind causes only mental effects.
3. My body causes only extended effects.
The worry was that simple substitutions seemed to yield (4):
4. My mind causes only mental effects and does not cause only mental effects.
But for reasons we have just seen, Spinoza thinks that the inference to (4) from (1)–(3)
is invalid. All that can be inferred from (1)–(3) is (4*):
4*. My mind causes only mental effects insofar as it is conceived as a thinking
thing and it does not cause any mental effects insofar as it is conceived as an
extended thing.
That might still be bad if one could substitute contents about extension in for contents
about thinking, but that would be to make the mistake of inferring that sameness of
referent entails sameness of associated content of co-referring terms. In light of the
conceptual distinctness of the attributes, described above in terms of their unique

contents, (4*) does not entail (4**):
4**. My mind causes only mental effects insofar as it is conceived as an extended
thing and it does not cause any mental effects insofar as it is conceived as an
extended thing.
To infer (4**) from (4*) would be to make the same mistake of inferring “Israel was
so-called because he had seized his brother’s heel” from the fact that “Israel” and
“Jacob” co-refer.
More schematically, Spinoza reasons about the consistency of one thing having
distinct causal structures in the following way:
5. Causal conceptual identity: Causal relations are conceptual relations.

6. Causal conceptual identity → causal conceptual sensitivity: Whether
x causes y depends in part on how x and y are conceived.
7. Causal conceptual sensitivity → consistent causal variability: It is
possible that x conceived one way causes y and x conceived differently does not
cause y.
8. Consistent causal variability → (partial) reconciliation of parsimony
and plenitude: One and the same thing can have multiple, distinct causal
structures.
9. (Partial) reconciliation of parsimony and plenitude → (partial) satisfy-
ing the desiderata of metaphysical perfection: One thing can have infinitely
many diverse causal structures.
Though I believe this reconstruction is broadly correct, it requires refinement. For all
we have seen so far, the conceptual sensitivity of (6) might end up being trivial. For
instance, it might turn out that, necessarily, there is only one true way of conceiving a
thing. If so, neither possible nor actual conceptual variability would follow from
conceptual sensitivity. Of course, we already saw that Spinoza thinks that there are
infinitely many true and salient ways of conceiving a thing and that causal variability is
both possible and actual. But we would need to add in these additional claims if the
goal were to establish an actual multiplicity of causal structures, as opposed to demon-
strating mere consistency as I have focused on here.
This brings us to another important qualification. Spinoza links the conceptual
sensitivity of causal structures to differences in fundamental ways of conceiving things,
i.e., to attribute contexts (see again IIp6). His focus is on establishing what we might
think of as multiple fundamental causal structures, such as having both mental and
physical causal histories. That’s important in part because (8) follows from (7) only if
x can be consistently conceived in the relevant ways. (Recall the square circle example
from above.) Since the “relevant ways” here are attributes, (8) follows from (7) only
if x can have multiple attributes. Spinoza defended the coherence of one thing
having multiple attributes on grounds that the contents of attributes are wholly
distinct. In effect, Spinoza piggybacks the consistency of multiple fundamental causal

structures on the consistency of multiple attributes. But this means that, for all
Spinoza has shown so far, the range of diverse causal structures a thing can have in (8)
can be only as broad as the range of attributes it has.14 That range is at least supposed
to be infinitely large, which would get us from (8) to (9).
Lastly, the final step might misleadingly suggest that Spinoza would be satisfied if
only one thing, substance, exhibited infinitely many diverse causal structures. But as
we have seen, his fuller view is that each thing—substance as well as each one of its
infinitely many modes—exhibits such causal diversity. What he thinks perfection
involves, in other words, is a kind of nested one-to-many isomorphism. One substance
has infinitely diverse causal structures, and each of the infinitely many modes of that
one substance has infinitely diverse causal structures.
So far, we have looked at how Spinoza tries to preserve the identity of things across
different attributes. As we will see throughout the next several chapters, Spinoza uses
the same pattern of reasoning concerning modes within each attribute as well. This is
just what we should expect, in light of Spinoza’s intra-attribute mode plenitude
thesis.15 If there are multiple ways of expressing a mode within each attribute, and
those different expressions contain differing content (e.g., about their modal status),
Spinoza will need to reconcile that diversity with mode identity too. Once again, he
will invoke the conceptual to do so. The modal status of a thing, such as whether
it exists necessarily, is fixed by how that thing is conceived with respect to certain intra-
attribute features. Hence intra-attribute conceptual variability sometimes yields intra-
attribute conceptual sensitivity. And yet again, Spinoza will defend conceptual
variability and sensitivity on grounds of conceptual identification: modality just is a
conceptual feature of things. One mode, distinct causal structures across attributes;
one mode, distinct modal features within an attribute. The same philosophical machin-
ery for preserving consistency in the former case will be employed in the latter as well.
Taking the causal case as our guide, here is the more general pattern of Spinoza’s
conceptualist strategy, in which “F” names a relational or non-relational feature of
a thing, x:
10. Conceptual identity: F is a conceptual feature of things.
11. Conceptual identity → conceptual sensitivity: Whether x is F depends
in part on how x is conceived.
12. Conceptual sensitivity → consistent conceptual variability: It is
possible that x conceived one way is F and x conceived a different way is not F.
14
In light of other details of Spinoza’s theories of attributes and causation, Spinoza also thinks the range
of causal structures a thing has must be at least as broad as the range of attributes it has (see esp. Ip2–3).
Once those details are included, it also becomes clear that (7), as stated, is unnecessarily weak. The variability
in a thing’s fundamental causal structure is not merely possible; it is actual.
15
See chapter one, section 3.2. The elegant and uniform way Spinoza employs the conceptual across these
different contexts also aligns nicely with his explanatory naturalism, as discussed in the introduction.
13. Consistent conceptual variability → (partial) reconciliation of

parsimony and plenitude: If whether x is F actually varies depending on how it
is conceived, then it is possible for one and the same thing to be F and not be F.
14. (Partial) reconciliation of parsimony and plenitude → (partial) satis-
fying the demands of metaphysical perfection.
As with the causal case, refinements would be needed to tighten up this reasoning,
such as adding that x can be consistently conceived in the relevant ways and providing
more elucidation on what it means to be a “conceptual feature” of things. But rather
than pursuing these details further at this highly generalized level, I will use particular
cases over the next several chapters to fill the account out further.
The main purpose of this exercise in reconstruction was to indicate, in a very
general way, how Spinoza relies on the conceptual—conceptual identification,
conceptual sensitivity, and conceptual variability—to preserve the consist-
ency of his monisms and pluralisms. In the end, it is because all the “diversity we see
everywhere in nature” is conceptually structured in the right ways that Spinoza
thinks it can be consistently contained within a single substance, God. We could even
frame his reasoning in broadly transcendental terms: Spinoza reasons from what is
required for the very possibility of a truly perfect world—all this conceptual structuring
and machinery—to the world actually being so conceptually structured, should the
metaphysically perfect world actually exist.16
Clearly, however, none of this amounts to an argument for the metaphysical perfec-
tion of our world. It is an argument from such metaphysical perfection to some of the
perhaps surprising means for its realizability. Spinoza does offer various arguments for
the world’s perfection, mostly via a priori reflections on the very concept of an ens
perfectissimum.17 Those reflections often involve assumptions about the nature of God
that, I suggested in the previous chapter, are not idiosyncratic to Spinoza, but neither
are they universally accepted. I believe that it is here that we approach the bottom floor
of Spinoza’s project. That might sound disappointing to some, but everyone has to start
somewhere, and Spinoza builds an impressive metaphysical and ethical structure to
support his belief in an ens perfectissimum.
Some contemporary readers might well doubt Spinoza’s claim that our world is so
perfectly structured. “Leave it to those wild-eyed rationalists to think the world is
metaphysically perfect!” To the suspicious, Spinoza offers an intriguing conditional.
If such a metaphysically perfect world existed, here is how it could be consistently
structured. Seeing how Spinoza fills out that conditional may give some readers yet
more reason to modus tollens away. But perhaps not all readers. Perhaps some, on
16
This is not quite accurate, since for all I have said so far, Spinoza need not think this conceptual
machinery is the only possible way of reconciling his monism and diversity, even if he thinks it is a very
good way. But since there are still no alternatives on the philosophical horizon, then if successful, this
proposal remains the only game in town for the Spinozist.
17
See, for example, Ip8d, G II/53–4 and Ip33s2, G II/75.
seeing Spinoza’s account in fresh detail, will find themselves more inclined to modus
ponens in the way Spinoza himself ultimately did.
3. A Pernicious Relativism?
Even if Spinoza’s reply to Lust ultimately succeeds in preserving consistency, his con-
ceptualist strategy raises another general worry. Given all this conceptual variability, is
there any sort of privileging mechanism among all these different concepts? Are some
ways of conceiving things better than others, such that reading off their contents tells
us more about what the world is really like, in itself? Or is Spinoza stuck in some sort of
pernicious metaphysical relativism, according to which, for example, there are no facts
about causation independent of a variety of equally true but very different ways of con-
ceiving the world?
On the one hand, Spinoza must accept some kind of metaphysical relativism about,
say, causation, at least in the sense that the obtaining of causal facts will depend partly
on how the causal relata are conceived. On this construal, there are no causal facts
independently of how things are conceived. How could there be, for Spinoza? Causation
just is a conceptual relation, as I claimed above and will defend in the next chapter. So
if by “relativism” one just means what I have called conceptual sensitivity (the view
that some metaphysical features of things are sensitive to how those things are con-
ceived), then on my reading Spinoza endorses widespread metaphysical relativism for
reasons we have now seen.
However, does it follow from conceptual sensitivity that every way of conceiving the
world is as apt as every other? Not necessarily. We have seen that Spinoza distinguishes
several axes of expressive plenitude. Along the fundamental axis (the attributes), every
genuine way of conceiving substance does express an essence of God, according to
Spinoza. Nonetheless, Spinoza thinks that some putative fundamental ways of con-
ceiving God, such as a thing composed of and dependent on its parts, will be confused
and contain false content.18 From attribute plenitude alone, then, it does not follow that
every fundamental way of conceiving God is equally apt or contains equally true content.
Still, among all the true fundamental ways of conceiving God, Spinoza thinks there is a
kind of parity. Every attribute is equally fundamental and uniquely expresses a funda-
mental way that God is.19 There is no privileged conceptual vantage point with respect
to the infinitely many fundamental ways of conceiving God. For similar reasons, there
will also not be privileged ways of conceiving features of things that Spinoza relativizes
to attribute contexts, such as their fundamental causal structures.
Rather than an admission of a metaphysical lapse, however, Spinoza’s parity doc-
trine among fundamental ways of conceiving a thing is a function of his commitment to
18
Ip15s; for a discussion of other false attributes, see KV I.vii, G I/44.
19
Some interpreters have claimed that Spinoza unwittingly ends up privileging one attribute (Thought)
over all others, but we will see reasons for denying this interpretation in chapter nine.
plenitude. If there were a single fundamental way of conceiving God that exhaustively
and uniquely characterized God’s kind essence or causal structure, a kind of super-
attribute, then God would have a more parsimonious structure than a truly perfect
thing would have. In other words, behind Spinoza’s attribute relativism is, yet again,
what he takes to be the plenitudinous feature of metaphysical perfection.
I also claimed that conceptual variability occurs within an attribute context for
Spinoza. Each mode can be conceived in infinitely many ways, more or less broadly
with respect to its causal network, and some metaphysical features of a mode will
vary depending on how broadly or narrowly it is conceived. I claimed in the previous
chapter that Spinoza does not believe that all narrower ways of conceiving things are
intrinsically confused, mutilated, or false, even if many of them are. If so, then just as
in the cross-attribute case, one and the same mode can be conceived in a multiplicity
of genuine, truth-conveying ways within an attribute.
Such intra-attribute conceptual variability again invites the charge of an invidious
form of metaphysical relativism. Is it the case, we might wonder, that there is no con-
cept-independent fact of the matter about whether or not a thing exists necessarily?
Once again, I think Spinoza’s answer must be “no.” Just as genuine attributes are on
par with respect to the truth of what they ascribe to God, so too some narrower and
broader ways of conceiving things within an attribute will be on par with respect to
the truthfulness of the contents they ascribe to God.
There is a very important difference between the two kinds of cases, however. Whereas
Spinoza thinks there is no privileging mechanism for one genuine attribute over any
other, he does think there are reasons for privileging broader ways of conceiving things
within an attribute over narrower ways. However, this privileging is not due to an
intrinsic feature of broader ways of conceiving things that narrow ways lack. Rather,
Spinoza thinks there is an extrinsic privileging mechanism, one related to us. Spinoza
will argue on broadly practical grounds that it is more powerful for us to adopt broader
ways of conceiving things, and therefore it is in our self-interest to do so.
Here we catch a fleeting glimpse of Spinoza’s bridge between the metaphysical and
the moral. I will argue in later chapters that at the heart of Spinoza’s Ethics is his attempt
to convince readers that there are these broader ways of conceiving themselves and
things around them, and that his readers will more reliably satisfy their fundamental
desire by adopting them. Hence agents will have desire-based motivations to adopt
some ways of conceiving things over others, but those motivations will be broadly
practical in kind and have more to do with agents’ own interests than anything intrinsic
to the broader concepts themselves. But this is getting ahead of ourselves. The promissory
note so far is just this: Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy to satisfy the desiderata of meta-
physical perfection will also inform his project of pursuing moral perfection. Seeing
how these two projects unfold and intersect is the concern of the rest of this book.
3
Conceptual Dependence Monism
In the previous two chapters, I argued that Spinoza relies on features of conceptual
relations to help reconcile his identity theses with his commitments to ontological
plenitude. In this chapter, we will see a vivid example of Spinoza applying this concep-
tualist strategy to relations of metaphysical dependence.
If, at bottom, the world is a world of things,1 dependence relations are the ties that
connect those things to one another, giving the world its structure. Those ties appear
to come in a variety of forms. One thing might cause another, or inhere in another, or
exist in virtue of another, and so forth. In natural science, we might investigate
instances of this structure. What causes light to bend as it passes through glass? In
metaphysics, we might investigate the nature of these dependence relations. What,
in general, is it for one thing to cause another? We might also wonder more generally
about the relationships between these seemingly different kinds of structuring con-
nections. Do some instances of dependence entail others? Are some kinds of
dependence reducible to other kinds? As we will see, Spinoza thinks answering these
more general questions about dependence relations is one of the most important
tasks of metaphysics.
Spinoza’s own account of metaphysical dependence is especially striking. Although
he uses a wide range of terminology, most often he appeals to causation, inherence,
conceptual connectedness, following-from, and existential dependence in his accounts
of the world’s structure. How do these forms of dependence relate to one another,
according to Spinoza? I will argue that Spinoza thinks all such metaphysical dependence
relations are conceptual containment relations, which Spinoza sometimes describes
as “conceptual involvement.” I will name the thesis that every relation of metaphysical
dependence just is a relation of conceptual dependence conceptual dependence
monism (CDM).
Conceptual dependence monism represents an especially clear example of Spinoza’s
conceptualist strategy from the previous chapter. Which dependence relations
things enter into depends in part on how those things are conceived (conceptual
sensitivity), which allows for things to exhibit surprising structural variability
1
As opposed to a world of facts or states of affairs or propositions or other abstracta. For more on
Spinoza’s critique of ontologies containing fundamental abstract objects, see Newlands, “Spinoza’s Anti-
Abstractionism.”
(conceptual variability). This sensitivity and consistent variability follows from

Spinoza’s further view that those relations just are relations of conceptual dependence
(conceptual identification). Showing that the metaphysical ties that bind the
world together are all conceptual ties, in turn, helps Spinoza preserve the consistency
of his ontology.
Spinoza’s views on dependence have also become a flashpoint of recent interpretive
debate. Therefore, I will also defend my monistic interpretation against some of the
main alternatives that have emerged. However, this interpretive disagreement is not as
narrow as it might initially seem. Although it may have the air of hyper-specialized
historical arcana, investigating Spinoza’s views on dependence yields important insights
into many of his most striking and pervasive metaphysical conclusions, including the
nature of substance and modes, necessitarianism, and the content of his explanatory
rationalism. Furthermore, if my interpretation is correct, CDM provides a neglected
step in Spinoza’s proof for his more famed substance monism, one that prevents the
whole proof from otherwise begging the question against substance pluralists like
Leibniz. And whereas Spinoza’s substance monism may be seen as an interesting but
philosophically untenable project,2 Spinoza’s interest in the relationship between vari-
ous kinds of metaphysical dependence mirrors a vibrant research project in contem-
porary metaphysics.
Spinoza has an especially strong motivation for addressing this topic—or so I argue
in the first section, “The Task of Metaphysics.” According to Spinoza, understanding
metaphysical dependence is one of the first and most fundamental tasks of metaphys-
ical investigations. Seeing this will better illuminate both the content of his demands
for explanation and the source of his confidence that these explanatory demands can,
in principle, be satisfied. In section two, “The Case for CDM,” I argue on textual and
philosophical grounds that Spinoza endorses conceptual dependence monism. In the
third and final section, “Motivating CDM,” I return to the topic of the previous chap-
ters and argue that Spinoza’s defense of conceptual dependence monism ultimately
rests on an appeal to its metaphysical serviceability. Conceptual dependence monism
provides Spinoza with a powerful way of consistently satisfying what he takes to be the
requirements of our world’s metaphysical perfection.
2
I emphasize the “may,” since there has been a recent resurgence of interest in some forms of monism
in contemporary metaphysics. (For a representative sample of recent work, see Schaffer, “Monism: The
Priority of the Whole”; Horgan and Potrč, Austere Realism; Rea, “How to Be an Eleatic Monist”; Sider,
“Against Monism”; and papers in the edited volume, Goff, Spinoza on Monism). Interestingly, Spinoza’s
conceptual dependence monism concerns an issue that does not usually come up in these more recent
discussions, though it lurks in the background. Using Schaffer’s taxonomy, this form of monism is distinct
from both existence monism—the view that exactly one concrete object exists—and priority monism—the
view that exactly one object is ontologically fundamental. Instead, dependence monism claims that there
is exactly one type of metaphysical dependence, a view that neither entails nor is entailed by these other
kinds of monisms. For more on the contemporary comparison, see Newlands, “Spinoza’s Relevance to
Contemporary Metaphysics.”
conceptual dependence monism 59
1. The Task of Metaphysics

The sheer range of dependence relations that Spinoza mentions in the first few pages of
his Ethics alone is breathtaking. Before reaching the mid-point of Part I (Ip16), Spinoza
appeals to the following sundry list of anti-symmetrical dependence relations: causing,
inhering in, determining, producing, creating, generating, corrupting, following from,
depending on, explaining, acting on, constituting, being composed of, being concep-
tually involved in, being formed from the concept of, conceiving through, conceiving
by, contained in, belonging to, flowing from, existing on account of, being understood
through, and being prior in nature to. Whew! Equally striking is the fact that with one
possible exception, none of these relations are formally defined in the Ethics, despite the
metaphysical heavy lifting they do in Spinoza’s arguments and the supposedly rigorous
geometrical structure of the book. (The possible exception is causation, since Spinoza
defines self-causation in Id1 and one may be able to infer a generalized definition of
causation from it.) This has forced interpreters to cobble together scraps of unrelated
texts to determine how Spinoza thinks these different relations connect to one another.
This is an especially frustrating state of affairs since the most basic and important
pieces of Spinoza’s ontology are all defined in terms of some of these dependence rela-
tions. For example, Spinoza defines a substance as that which is “in itself and conceived
through itself ” (Id3). But without understanding what it means to be in or conceived
through oneself, it is hard to know exactly what to make of Spinoza’s grand conclusion
in Ip15 that there exists only one substance in which everything else is and through
which everything else is conceived. I believe Spinoza tries to provide such an account
of metaphysical dependence, though he does so in his usual economical, circuitous,
and easily missed manner.
Spinoza’s interest in dependence relations did not begin with his mature Ethics,
however. He began developing his thinking on the topic in his earliest work, the
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. In an important passage, Spinoza writes:
Our ultimate end requires (as we have already said) that a thing be conceived either through its
essence alone or through its proximate cause. If the thing is in itself, or as is commonly said
[ut vulgo dicitur], is the cause of itself, then it must be understood through its essence alone;
but if it is not in itself, but requires a cause to exist, then it must be understood through its
proximate cause (TIE 92, G II/34).
There is a wealth of theory packed into that short statement, much of which will be
carried over into the Ethics in more elaborate and careful form. The dependence char-
acterized by Spinoza as the requirement for existence is an instance of what is some-
times called “existential dependence.”3 What is it in virtue of which a thing exists? In
the background is Spinoza’s belief that everything requires something to exist, either
3
For discussion of existential dependence and its relation to other forms of dependence in contemporary
metaphysics, see Correia, Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions.
itself or another. Everything stands in relations of existential dependence, a point

Spinoza will later connect to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR).
What is most striking about this passage is how closely Spinoza associates existential
dependence with other types of dependence, especially causation, inherence, and being
conceived through.4 The inferences and substitutions he makes in this passage suggest
that, at minimum, Spinoza endorses what I will call the Coextensive Thesis (CET[1]):
Coextensive thesis [CET[1]]: Necessarily, for all x and y, x is conceived through
y iff y causes x iff x is in y iff x requires y to exist.5
In the next section, I will give a more detailed textual basis for attributing something
like CET to Spinoza. However, I will also argue that versions of CET are too weak to
capture Spinoza’s full view. Whereas CET[1] describes a coextensive relation, I will argue
for the stronger thesis of conceptual dependence monism (CDM):
Conceptual dependence monism [CDM]: Necessarily, for all x and y and for
every metaphysical dependence relation R such that xRy, R is a relation of con-
ceptual dependence.
As formulated, CDM entails CET[1], though not vice versa.6 However, this is potentially
misleading, since by endorsing CET[1] one could remain neutral on whether these rela-
tions of dependence are merely coextensive and not identical, i.e., whether or not
Spinoza was a dependence monist. To make the contrast clearer, I will add a clause to
CET[1] to keep it wholly distinct from CDM:
Coextensive thesis [CET[2]]: Necessarily, for all x and y, x is conceived through
y iff y causes x iff x is in y iff x requires y to exist, and these relations are not identical.
According to CET[2], whenever a causal relation obtains, two further dependence rela-
tions of distinct kinds also obtain: in and conceived through.7 If a thing stands in any
one of these dependence relations, it stands in the other two as well. These instances of
dependence always coincide, but they remain distinct.
By contrast, CDM claims that there is only one type of dependence relation, in
which case every relation of dependence is a conceptual dependence relation. Although
there might be advantages to referring to the single kind of dependence using different
4
In almost every case, Spinoza uses “in” rather than “inheres” (the only use of “inheres” I have found is in
Ep12, G IV/61). Still, in recent discussions most interpreters have used “inherence” rather than “in,” in part
because the most natural contemporary understanding of “in” is spatial, which is clearly not Spinoza’s meaning.
Also, it is clunky to write “the ‘in’ relation” repeatedly. I think the most important historical element that
Spinoza picks up with his “in” is the relationship between a thing and its properties (for Spinoza, a substance
and its modifications), which we now tend to shorthand as “inherence.” A more important question, which
I will address later in this chapter, is whether Spinoza also associates his “in” relation with predication.
5
In Spinoza’s mature thought, dependence comes in degrees, akin to partial causes.
6
That is, I am assuming that the sort of identity thesis of CDM is still consistent with the biconditionals
in CET[1], just as someone who identifies every tokened mental state with a tokened physical state can still
allow that the mental supervenes on the physical, even if that covariance is no longer terribly interesting.
7
From here on, whenever I refer to CET, I intend to invoke CET[2].
locutions in different contexts, there will not be a proliferation of kinds or instances

of dependence relations, according to CDM. This is an important contrast to keep in
mind. As we will see later, one recent interpreter, Yitzhak Melamed, has raised con-
cerns about positing a distinct inherence relation between every pair of causally
related things for Spinoza. But even if such a worry plagues CET, it fails to trouble
CDM, since CDM denies that there are any additional forms or instances of depend-
ence in the first place.
In what follows, I will treat CET and CDM as rival and mutually exclusive inter-
pretations of Spinoza’s views. They do not exhaust the interpretive options, of course.
Some interpreters reject both CDM and CET and argue that at least one of the bicondi-
tionals in CET is false (though they disagree among themselves which biconditional
should be rejected). Others seem to opt for an alternative form of dependence monism,
such as causal dependence monism.8 In later sections, I will defend CDM as the best
interpretation of what are, we must all admit, thin and often tangential texts.
Before leaving the TIE passage behind, we should also note how Spinoza connects
dependence relations with understanding. Things that are conceived through them-
selves, are in themselves, and are caused by themselves, are also understood through
themselves. They wear their intelligibility on their sleeves, as it were.
I think we should be cautious about reading too much into Spinoza’s association of
conceiving with mental acts of understanding here. As we will eventually see, Spinoza
does think that every conceptual relation can be represented and understood by a
mind, and so the mental language of “understanding” is not wholly false or unhelpful.
But Spinoza’s slide here and elsewhere from broadly conceptual talk to overtly mental
talk invites a tempting but inaccurate interpretation of Spinoza’s appeals to the concep-
tual that is worth flagging again. As I will argue in chapter nine, conceptual relations
are not exclusively mental relations for Spinoza. When he is being careful, Spinoza
makes clear that although his conceptual relations share some important features with
accounts of conceptual relations as mental relations, they are what I will eventually call
“attribute-neutral” relations. (To proleptically reinforce the extra-mental character of
Spinoza’s conceptual relations, I will sometimes follow him by substituting “explanation”
into these contexts.)
Setting that wrinkle aside for now, it is noteworthy that Spinoza infers explanatory
facts from parallel facts about conceiving, causation, inherence, and existential depend-
ence in this passage. In other words, the dependence relations an object stands in
8
Although it is not always entirely clear, Mogens Laerke appears to endorse the causal dependence
monism reading (Laerke, “Spinoza’s Cosmological Argument in the Ethics,” 449 and Laerke, “Spinoza and
the Cosmological Argument According to Letter 12,” 58). Di Poppa does not say much about inherence,
but she argues that causation is “more basic than” and “grounds” conceptual dependence, and ultimately
concludes that causation “is the most basic relation in Spinoza’s metaphysics” (Di Poppa, “Spinoza on
Causation and Power,” 306 and 317). With respect to the relation between causation and inherence, Curley
famously argues for causation being the right account of Spinoza’s “in” relation; but again, it is less clear
how he thinks causation and conceptual dependence relate, so it is not clear whether he counts as a full-
blown causal dependence monist (Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 19).
partly explain that object.9 Indeed, Spinoza goes further a few paragraphs later and
claims that the best and most adequate account of a thing, its definition, must provide
an account of the dependence relations in which it stands.10 Things are best explained,
in other words, through their dependencies. It will take us some time to unpack why
Spinoza thinks this is so.
But independently of the details, I want to highlight just how central these accounts
of dependence are to Spinoza’s own conception of a proper metaphysics. Spinoza claims
that not only should metaphysicians pursue explanation by articulating dependen-
cies, but philosophers in general ought to begin here. He even suggests in this passage
that human happiness and fulfillment rest on how well we do in sorting through these
explanations. Talk about pressure! In this chapter, I will focus on the more modest
though still quite controversial claim that progress in metaphysics primarily involves
explaining things through appeals to their dependence relations. The connection of
this project to human flourishing will be discussed in later chapters.
According to Spinoza’s vision, the overriding project of metaphysics is to explain the
world by discerning and articulating dependence.11 “For each thing,” he writes in a
version of the PSR in the Ethics, “there must be assigned a cause or reason for its
existence, if it exists, as well as for its nonexistence, if it does not exist” (Ip11d).12 Here
we catch a more informative account of Spinoza’s explanatory demands. To provide an
explanation is to articulate facts about dependence. In fact, explanations, in the objective
sense that Spinoza seeks, obtain in all and only cases of dependence: x explains y iff y
depends on x, according to Spinoza. Once we add in what I will later argue, namely
that all dependence is conceptual dependence, we will have penetrated deep into the
heart of Spinoza’s metaphysical ambitions. Metaphysics is ultimately the project of
grasping the explanations of things by discerning and articulating conceptual connections
among them.
Spinoza begins to realize this ambition in the very opening definitions of the Ethics,
in which he explains his basic substance–mode ontology in terms of the dependence
relations they enter into (Id3 and Id5). This is not enough, however. As ever, Spinoza
demands further explanation. The metaphysician must not only correctly discern and
9
The explanatory connection is also why Spinoza appeals to such dependence relations in formulating
the PSR in the Ethics (see Ip8d and Ip11d).
10
TIE 95–7, G II/35–6; see also Ep 60, G IV/270–1.
11
In advocating this, Spinoza identifies himself with a long-standing tradition in metaphysics that is at
odds with more recent, Quine-inspired approaches that seek progress in metaphysics through discerning
ontological commitment, as opposed to ontological priority. (For more on this general distinction, see
Schaffer, “On What Grounds What.”)
12
I have modified Curley’s translation and gone well beyond the Latin to avoid making Spinoza’s point
sound patently contradictory. The Latin reads, “Cuiscunque rei assignari debet causa, seu ratio, tam cur
existit, quam cur non existit.” In one version, Curley renders this as, “For each thing, there must be assigned
a cause or reason both for its existence and for its nonexistence,” which sounds incoherent. As his very next
sentence makes clear, Spinoza’s point could be restated as: if a thing exists, its existence must be explained
by causes or reasons, and if a thing does not exist, the fact of its nonexistence too must be explained by
causes or reasons; there are no brute facts about existence and nonexistence.
articulate how things depend on other things. She must also discover how the depend-
ence relations themselves relate to and perhaps even depend upon one another. That is,
Spinoza demands not only that metaphysicians try to explain everything and that
proper explanation proceeds by appeal to dependence relations, but also that the
explanantia of everything else—the dependence relations—become the explananda as
well.13 In fact, Spinoza warns, failing to adequately address this further issue leaves one
especially vulnerable to confusing the first-order dependencies of things.14
Once again, the opening of Spinoza’s Ethics is instructive. For not only does he define
his ontology in terms of dependence relations, he begins by defining the dependence
relations themselves. (I will say more about the content of these definitions in the next
section.) Thus it is no great mystery why Spinoza does not begin with a definition of a
thing, say, God or substance, but instead opens with an account of self-causation, an
instance of metaphysical dependence. Since metaphysical explanation proceeds by
articulating dependence and Spinoza tries to articulate how dependence relations
depend on each other, he in effect begins by explaining what it is to successfully explain.
That is, Spinoza begins his most systematic work of metaphysics by trying to prioritize
the prioritizing relations. Rationalist charm at its best.
Reflecting on how central this project is for Spinoza’s metaphysics also reminds us of
a second characteristic of his explanatory naturalism. For not only does Spinoza charge
us with the task of explaining through discovering and articulating dependence,
Spinoza remains confident that the structure of the world that needs discovering is in
principle at least discoverable by minds like ours. I claimed in the first chapter that, by
itself, the PSR creates a worrisome epistemic gap between its explanatory demands
and the human mind. Even if, according to the PSR, reality is intelligible, why think it
is intelligible to us? Spinoza is skeptical about how much we can come to know about
the workings of the natural world, so it is quite striking how in metaphysics he seems to
assume that the structure of reality is, at least in principle, transparent to the rational
inquirer. But if the PSR cannot guarantee that the explanatory relations between things
are even in principle knowable to us, why does Spinoza think we can make any progress
on this central task of metaphysics (as he clearly must think we can, given everything
he himself wrote on metaphysics in the Ethics)?
13
For this reason, while Spinoza would doubtlessly applaud the renewed interest in metaphysical monism,
I suspect he would be disappointed that the contemporary discussion so often treats the underlying notion
of grounding as either primitive or as so sufficiently transparent that it needs no further grounding except
by citing a few stock examples. For a rare (but felicitous) exception, see Skiles, “Against Grounding
Necessitarianism,” esp. section 5.3.
14
This point is arguably behind one of Spinoza’s complaints against divine teleologists and his rejection of
Cartesian interactionism. Without a proper explanation of causation, we are especially vulnerable to confus-
ing causes and effects (“For what is really a cause, [a divine teleologist] considers as an effect, and conversely.
What is by nature prior, [divine teleologists] make posterior” (IApp, GII/80)) or to positing impossible causal
relations (“If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot be the cause of the
other” (Ip3)). It is also connected to what Yitzhak Melamed calls the “priority of the infinite over the finite”
in Spinoza (Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, xv–xvii).
Spinoza’s belief in the possibility of metaphysical progress is not an instance of

seventeenth-century “pre-critical dogmatism” about the power of human reason that
would have been cured by reading some Kant. Rather, Spinoza thinks that something
about his explanatory naturalism provides the very grounds for confidence in its
success—at least in principle. That is, the priority that Spinoza thinks needs discovering
in the world is one that is especially well suited to being discovered by us.
Spinoza’s guiding belief here is his conviction, now controversial but once shared by
other seventeenth-century philosophers like Descartes and Locke, that conceptual
relations are, in principle, transparent to the intellect. Spinoza writes in a letter to
Tschirnhaus, “Next, in order that I may know which out of many ideas of a thing will
enable all the properties of an object to be deduced, I follow this one rule, that the idea
or definition of the thing should express its efficient cause” (Ep60). He even applies this
to proper definitions of God, which must “express the efficient cause (for I take it that
an efficient cause can be internal as well as external)” (Ep60).
Read against the backdrop of Spinoza’s claims about explanation and dependence,
these are very illuminating theses. Spinoza asserts that his epistemic confidence in
coming to understand the true natures of things, including God, is vouchsafed by the
explanatory practice of articulating dependencies (here, internal and external causes).
On my reading, Spinoza thinks this because he also believes that (a) the metaphysical
dependence relations between things are all instances of conceptual dependence and
(b) conceptual relations are in principle perspicuous to the rational inquirer. It is thus a
happy conclusion within Spinoza’s system that the explanatory discoveries of his
rationalist metaphysics also help establish the possibility of its in-principle success in
the first place.
2. The Case for CDM

Having shown that Spinoza cares deeply about the nature of metaphysical dependence,
I will now make the case for interpreting Spinoza as a conceptual dependence monist.
A second statement of the PSR in the Ethics makes another claim about metaphysical
dependence: “There must be, for each existing thing, a certain cause on account of
which it exists [dari necessario uniuscujusqua rei existentis certam aliquam causam,
propter quam existit]” (Ip8s2). This propter relation, which Spinoza described in TIE
as a requirement for existence, is an instance of existential dependence.
What is it for one thing to exist on account of another thing, according to Spinoza?
As he did in the previously quoted version of the PSR (Ip11d) and the early TIE pas-
sage, Spinoza associates his answer with a natural companion: causation. Being caused
to exist is at least one way in which one thing exists in virtue of another thing.15
15
Laerke reaches a similar, but ultimately stronger conclusion: “Once again, the existential dependence
relation between God and finite things . . . is grounded in, and reducible to, the causal dependence relation”
(Laerke, “Spinoza’s Cosmological Argument in the Ethics,” 461).
A related form of dependence is ontological priority, which Spinoza describes as

being “prior in nature” to another.16 Spinoza takes existential dependence to entail
ontological priority: if x exists on account of y, then y is prior in nature to x. This is
clearest in Ip1: “A substance is prior in nature to its affections.” In the demonstration,
Spinoza cites the definitions of substances and modes, which define substances and
modes in terms of other dependence relations (inherence and conceptual depend-
ence). Spinoza claims that modes exist on account of substance,17 a dependence that
explains why Ip1 is true: substances are prior in nature to their modes.
The textual basis for thinking Spinoza moves in the other direction (if y is prior in
nature to x, then x exists on account of y) appeals to particular details of Spinoza’s
ontology. Substances do not exist on account of anything distinct from themselves,
according to Spinoza.18 So if everything that exists is either a substance or a mode19 and
if substances are always prior in nature to their modes,20 then the only case in which a
mode (m) could be posterior in nature to a substance (s1) but fail to exist on account
of s1 would be if m were modifying a different substance (s2). But if there could be no
such distinct substance s2, as Spinoza claims in Ip14, then the biconditional will be true:
x exists on account of y iff y is prior in nature to x.21
Whereas Spinoza’s claim about existential dependence in Ip8s2 appealed to caus-
ation, his claim about ontological priority in Ip1 appeals to inherence and concep-
tual dependence. In other words, Spinoza uses facts about causation, inherence, and
conceptual connectedness to account for facts about existential dependence and
ontological priority.
We have already encountered Spinoza’s willingness to tightly associate existential
dependence and ontological priority with causation, inherence, and conceptual
dependence. And despite the wide variety of terminology in that laundry list I provided
from the beginning of the Ethics, there is a general consensus among interpreters that
Spinoza treats all other appeals to metaphysical dependence as synonymous with, or
reducible to, instances of causation, inherence, and/or conceptual dependence. Thus,
by examining these three relations in more detail, we will discover Spinoza’s remark-
able monistic conclusion: all relations of dependence are just conceptual dependence
relations.
2.1 Causation
Spinoza appeals in Ip8 to causation as one way in which a thing depends on, or exists
on account of, another. Thus, if x causes y, then y exists on account of x. More strikingly,
16
For a somewhat dated, but still insightful discussion of this expression by Spinoza and its Aristotelian
heritage, see Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 77–8.
17
Ip15d. 18
Ip6. 19
Ip4d. 20
Ip1.
21
A possible exception would be a case in which one mode (m1) existed on account of another mode
(m2), but failed to be prior in nature to m2. Spinoza does not address this case directly in these terms. For
one, this would not be an instance of one thing existing wholly on account of another, since modes always
exist to some extent on account of their substances. But even so, to the extent to which m1 exists on account
of another m2, I think Spinoza would accept the conclusion that, to that extent, m2 is prior in nature to m1.
Spinoza also moves from right to left: if y exists on account of x, then x causes y.22
Furthermore, Spinoza thinks these are non-contingent biconditionals. Causation and
existential dependence are necessarily coextensive. (The deeper reason for the modal
strength of this will become clear in the next chapter on modality.) But why couldn’t
one thing exist in virtue of another without being caused by it? Why think that the
relata necessarily line up so cleanly?
For example, one might think that causation fails to generate any metaphysically
necessary connections, whereas ontological dependence relations must generate such
strong modal connections.23 However, that worry presupposes a view of causation
rejected by Spinoza (Ia3), although it may be that Spinoza is entitled to this rejection
only in virtue of his efforts to identify causation with conceptual dependence. Hence, if
someone did not antecedently agree with Spinoza’s view on the modal strength of
causal relations, why not reason from the contingency of causal connections to their
non-identity with ontological dependence?24 In other words, Spinoza needs an inde-
pendent motivation for his conceptual dependence monism; in the final section, I will
suggest such a reason that again draws on the role of metaphysical perfection.
More positively, Spinoza appeals to a necessary coextension of existential and
causal dependence because he believes he can provide a further analysis of both rela-
tions in terms of a single form of dependence. If so, there is nothing mysterious about
his appeals to the necessary covariation of causation and existential dependence;
both locutions track the same relations of conceptual dependence. Of course, that
reply only introduces more covariation that demands an explanation (namely the
covariation of causal/existential dependence with conceptual dependence). This is
one reason that I will ultimately conclude that causation and existential dependence
do not simply co-vary with conceptual dependence; they are, in some yet unexplained
sense, reducible to this kind of dependence.
To see this more explicitly in the case of causation, notice first that Spinoza
believes causal relations are explanatory relations. We can quickly see this now-familiar
point in Spinoza scholarship by reviewing an expanded version of Spinoza’s PSR,
quoted previously:
For each thing there must be assigned a cause or reason [causa seu ratio] for its existence, if it
exists, as well as for its nonexistence, if it does not exist, as much for its existence as for its non-
existence. For example, if a triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why it exists; but if
it does not exist, there must also be a reason or cause which prevents it from existing, or which
takes its existence away (Ip11d).
22
Spinoza writes as though the relata of ordinary causal relations are things, not events. (See, for example,
KV I.vi, G I/43.)
23
This concern is raised in Lowe, Locke, 66.
24
Similarly, based on what Spinoza says in Ip25, I think he would deny Jonathan Schaffer’s suggestion
that causation, unlike ontological dependence, does not require minimal elements (Schaffer, “On What
Grounds What,” 376), though that disagreement is also tied up with other Spinozistic conclusions that,
arguably, Spinoza is entitled to only if he is also entitled to CDM.
Causes for Spinoza are not merely one way of providing reasons; causes are reasons.
Spinoza shifts regularly between productive and explanatory language and he never
suggests that there is a distinction between causation and explanation. For instance, he
treats providing reasons and citing causes as equivalent in Ip8s2 (G II/51).
Recall that Spinoza also thinks that the most adequate explanation of a thing, its real
definition, is provided by citing its causes. To give an explanation of an object is to cite
its causes; appeals to causes provide adequate explanations of objects. Spinoza also
makes inferences relying on such an equivalence (or a direct consequence of it). For
example, Spinoza writes in Ip3d that “If [things] have nothing in common with one
another, then (by Ia5) they cannot be understood through one another, and so (by Ia4)
one cannot be the cause of the other.” Here Spinoza infers facts about causation from
facts about understanding or, more generally, explanation. For all these reasons, I con-
clude that for Spinoza, necessarily, x causes y iff x explains y.
Spinoza also appears to associate causation and conceptual connection through a
biconditional: x is conceived through y iff y causes x. The textual locus for the left-to-
right version is largely based on Ia4, “The cognition of an effect depends on, and
involves, the cognition of its cause,” though the uses to which Spinoza puts Ia4 suggest
he endorses the right-to-left direction as well.25 For example, in Ip25d Spinoza cites Ia4
in order to infer contrapositively that if God were not the cause of a thing’s essence,
then its essence would not be conceptually dependent on God. Similarly, in Ip18d
Spinoza reasons from conceptual containment (and inherence) of things in God to the
fact that God is their cause: “Everything that is, is in God and must be conceived
through God (by Ip15), and so (by Ip16C1) God is the cause of [all] things” (Ip18d).
Since appeals to conceptual connections are generally paradigms of explanation for
Spinoza,26 the biconditionals among causation, explanation, and conceptual connec-
tion are readily forthcoming.
However, now entering much more controversial interpretive territory, does
Spinoza think that causation, explanation, and conceptual connectedness do more
than merely co-vary? I believe Spinoza’s answer is “yes,” a point he brings out in the
opening definition of the Ethics: “By causa sui, I understand that whose essence
involves existence, or [sive] that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing”
(Id1). Here Spinoza defines causal dependence (or at least a reflexive version of it)
in terms of another kind of dependence, first expressed as “involvement,” then put in
more explicitly conceptual terms.
Between these two parts of the definiens of causation lies “sive,” usually translated “or.”
But Spinoza often uses “sive” not to assert a genuine disjunction or even an equivalence,
but to state a further elaboration of what precedes sive by what follows it (closer to our
25
For further discussion, see Garrett, “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” 136; Della Rocca, Representation,
11; Wilson, “Spinoza’s Causal Axiom,” 128n57; Jarrett, “The Logical Structure of Spinoza’s Ethics, Part I,” 29;
Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 89–90. For a rare dissenting voice on this point, see Morrison, “The
Relation Between Conception and Causation in Spinoza’s Metaphysics.”
26
See, for example, IIp7s.
English expression, “or better yet”). If so, then in Id1 the involvement relation that
explains causation is better expressed by an appeal to a conceptual relation. An object is
the cause of its own existence in virtue of a conceptual involvement relation between its
essence and existence. Hence, Id1 would be saying something stronger than merely
that causation co-varies with conceptual connectedness. Rather, causation is, in some
sense, explained by conceptual connections.27 That might mean that there is some
explanatory redundancy in the definiens of Id1,28 but I take that redundancy to be part
of Spinoza’s point. What others have treated as in some way distinct, he believes to be
one and the same.
This analysis of causation continues into the early parts of the Ethics. In Ip3d,
Spinoza infers facts about causation from facts about intelligibility in order to reject
Cartesian interactionism. In order to justify this inference, Spinoza appeals to Ia5:
“Things that have nothing in common with one another also cannot be understood
through one another, or [sive] the concept of the one does not involve the concept of
the other.” Once again linked by sive, Spinoza’s idea seems to be that facts about causation
(in Id3) are due to facts about conceptual involvement (in Ia5). A similar point was also
implied in the TIE passage quoted above. Spinoza began with a claim about the way
things can be conceived, from which he inferred facts about the causal (and inherence)
relations in which they stand. He concluded that therefore things must be understood
or explained in virtue of how they are conceived. Spinoza makes a similar inference
from facts about conceptual containment and inherence to causation in Vp32d.
He appeals to the claim that a mind knows it is “in God and is conceived through God”
(Vp30) in order to prove that the mind also knows that God is “its cause.”
Although all these inferences are consistent with the weaker conclusion that causal
relations are merely coextensive with conceptual relations, Spinoza’s reasoning uni-
formly appears more lopsided than the biconditional in CET captures. Spinoza con-
sistently reasons from and appeals to conceptual dependence in order to infer and
explain causal dependence. He also reasons contrapositively from the lack of concep-
tual connection to the lack of causal connection. As far as I have found, Spinoza never
moves in the other direction, as one might expect from a mere biconditional relation.
This implies that conceptual connections are at least explanatorily prior to causal con-
nections for Spinoza, a priority that mere covariation, as in CET, fails to capture.
This priority also helps us understand a puzzling feature of Spinoza’s account of
causation that was raised in the previous chapter. In IIp7s, Spinoza claims that things
exhibit irreducibly different kinds of causal structures:
Hence, so long as things are considered as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the
whole of Nature, or the connection of causes, through the attribute of thought alone. And insofar
27
For further passages in support of reducing causation to conceptual connections in Spinoza, see Della
Rocca, “A Rationalist Manifesto.”
28
This is a point Laerke makes in criticism of the CDM account (Laerke, “Spinoza’s Cosmological
Argument in the Ethics,” 454).
as they are considered as modes of extension, the order of the whole of Nature must be explained
through the attribute of extension alone. I understand the same concerning the other attributes.29
Yet, Spinoza also thinks the multiplicity of kinds of causal structures is consistent with
the identity of things across these different causal contexts:
For example, a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God,
is one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Therefore, whether
we conceive Nature under the attribute of extension or under the attribute of thought, or under
any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of
causes, that is, that the same things follow one another (IIp7s).
I claimed in the previous chapter that Spinoza defends the consistency of this account
by appealing to conceptual sensitivity and conceptual variability. The causal structure
of things depends in part on how those things are conceived, and the possibility of
many-to-one conceptual relations helps preserve the consistency of many-to-one
causal structures.
But even so, to a contemporary reader, this results in a highly counterintuitive
account of causation. As we might now put it, why think claims about causation admit
of substitution failures?30 Why should facts about causal relations be sensitive to how
the causal relata are conceived? I believe Spinoza’s justification turns on an attempt to
ground causal facts in conceptual facts. Because causal facts obtain in virtue of concep-
tual relations, if the relevant conceptual content is uniquely associated with an attribute,
then cross-attribute causal ascriptions can generate substitution failures. Likewise, causal
relations are sensitive to ways things are conceived because causal relations are grounded
in those very ways of conceiving objects. In other words, Spinoza defends his account of
causation by appealing to features of the underlying conceptual relations.
In particular, Spinoza appeals to the conceptual barrier between attributes (Ip10) to
explain why the conceptual content tracked by causal ascriptions is sufficiently unique
to avoid inconsistency. This is exactly how Spinoza’s demonstration of Iip6 runs.
He appeals to the unique conceptual content of attributes (Ip10) to explain and justify
how modes have different causal structures across different attributes:
For each attribute is conceived through itself without any other (by Ip10). So the modes of each
attribute involve the concept of their own attribute, but not of another one; and so (by Ia4) they
have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which they are
modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other, q.e.d. (IIp6).
This is another clear instance of Spinoza explaining causation through features of con-
ceptual relations.
Here’s the bite. If instead there were merely biconditional entailments between caus-
ation and conceptual facts (as per CET), IIp6 would be vulnerable to a very tempting
29
Spinoza makes the same claim about God in IIp6.
30
Colin R. Marshall presses a version of this in his objection to mode identity theory; see Marshall, “The
Mind and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza,” 907.
modus tollens. Why shouldn’t we reason from the fact that causal ascriptions are refer-
entially transparent to the conclusion that there can be no conceptual barrier between
the attributes? Why start with facts about conceptual isolation and infer facts about
causation, rather than moving from seemingly intuitive facts about causation to a lack
of conceptual isolation of attributes? A mere biconditional is consistent with both
forms of reasoning, and it would be heavy-handed for Spinoza to insist we move in one
direction rather than another.
However, if, as I have claimed in this section, causal relations depend, in some sense,
on more fundamental conceptual relations, then Spinoza will be justified in rejecting
the modus tollens on the plausible grounds that we should explain the nature of the less
fundamental by appeal to features of the more fundamental, and not vice versa. Hence,
the plausibility of Spinoza’s claims about variable causal structure in IIp6 and IIp7 seem
to presuppose that causal relations are not a fundamental form of dependence, a pre-
supposition his demonstration of IIp6 tacitly acknowledges.
2.2 In
Spinoza’s remarks on inherence follow a similar pattern. Although at first he appears
to be making claims about mere coextensiveness, Spinoza is actually grounding and
explaining claims about inherence in terms of conceptual relations. But whereas
causation (or a reflexive instance of it) is defined independently in Id1, Spinoza packs
his theory of inherence right into his definitions of substances and modes in the Ethics.
So it is unsurprising that interpretations of the status and nature of inherence in
Spinoza are far more controversial and wide-ranging.31 Although I will take up objections
to my account in later sections, I want to first lay out the textual case that Spinoza is
making the same dependence monism move again. It requires taking a pretty nitty-
gritty look at a few key texts.
Spinoza’s third definition reads:
By substance I understand what is [a] in itself and [b] is conceived through itself: [c] that is,
that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing from which it must be
31
For example, Curley, Louis Loeb, and Martial Gueroult favor a kind of eliminativist reading of inherence
(Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, 18–19; Loeb, From Descartes to Hume, 166–7;
and Gueroult, Spinoza I, 63–5). John Carriero, Don Garrett, and Martin Lin endorse the coextensive reading;
Garrett and Lin are silent on whether the mutual entailments are based on a further reduction, whereas
Carriero explicitly rejects any reduction (Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in Historical Perspective,”
74; Carriero, “On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” 255–61; Garrett,
“Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” 136–7; Lin “The Power of Reason in Spinoza,” 262). Della Rocca favors a
reductionist reading that reaches some similar conclusions to the ones I offer here, though he argues for it
in ways that I will later claim are insufficient (Michael Della Rocca, “Rationalism Run Amok.”). Melamed
argues that inherence is not coextensive with conceptual dependence, although he accepts that inherence
implies causation and conceptual dependence (Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 87–112). Laerke claims
that all three relations are coextensive, but that causation is, in some unspecified sense, more fundamental
than both inherence and conceptual dependence (Laerke, “Spinoza’s Cosmological Argument in the Ethics.”).
formed [Per substantiam intelligo id, quod in se est et, & per se concipitur: hoc est id, cuius
conceptus non ndigent conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat] (G II/45; the division into
[a], [b], and [c] is mine).
It is tempting to read [c] as an elaboration of [b] alone, in which case Spinoza glosses
only the locution “conceived through itself ” as conceptual independence. But I do not
think this is Spinoza’s whole point. Rather, as I will now try to show, Spinoza intended
[c] as a gloss on both [a] and [b]. In other words, the conceptual independence of [c] is
what explains and accounts for substance’s being in itself. Once again, mere bidirec-
tional entailments between inherence and conceptual dependence will be insufficient
to capture this point.
Before continuing, I should point out that despite the simplicity of Spinoza’s Latin
in Id3, there is surprisingly wide variation across English translations when it comes
to the punctuation and connective in [c]—even by the same translator! The original
Latin (in both the Opera posthuma and Gebhardt) uses a colon, which to modern eyes
makes what follows in [c] more obviously apply to everything that precedes it, namely
[a] and [b]. But seventeenth-century punctuation was not nearly as stable as this sug-
gests, and throughout his industry-standard translations, Edwin Curley rightly
adjusts Spinoza’s clunky punctuation to aid readability. But whereas Curley’s Collected
Works renders “per se concipitur: hoc est id . . . ” as “conceived through itself, i.e.,
that . . . ,” his Spinoza Reader renders it “conceived through itself, that is, that . . . ” The
use of a comma makes [c] most naturally read as a modification of [b] alone, and so
Curley’s translation subtly emphasizes that interpretation. Shirley opts for a semi-
colon and literal rendering of hoc est: “conceived through itself; that is, that . . . . ” White
also uses the more ambiguous semicolon and “in other words,” leaving it unclear how
much of the preceding is being explained by [c]. Elwes also uses a semicolon in most
editions I have seen, but in at least one modern edition of Elwes’ translation, a colon is
used instead.32 Thankfully, the cogence of my interpretation will not turn on exactly
how we punctuate Spinoza’s sentence in Id3. The point is that we should not put much
stock in how English translators have rendered the connective and punctuation.
In Ip2d, Spinoza restates the definition of substance, only this time he explicitly appeals
to a conceptual involvement relation and links it to inherence through sive: “This also is
evident from Id3. For each [substance] must be in itself and must be conceived through
itself, or [sive] the concept of the one does not involve the concept of the other.” Although,
as noted above, Spinoza sometimes uses what follows sive as a further explanation of what
precedes it, we might again wonder exactly how much of the preceding clause the elabor-
ation is intended to explain. A clearer answer can be found by looking outside of the Ethics.
Spinoza’s appeals to conceptual relations in his definitions of substance extend
back to some of his earliest surviving correspondence. In a letter to Henry Oldenburg
in 1661, Spinoza defines attributes in almost the same way that he will later define
32
This is the edition listed in the bibliography.
substances in the Ethics. But more important than the shift in the definiendum is the
slight variation of the definition itself: “By attribute I understand whatever [b] is con-
ceived through itself and [a] in itself, [c] so that its concept does not involve the concept
of another thing [concipitur per se, & in se; adeo ut ipsius conceptus non involvat conceptum
alterius rei]” (Ep 2, G IV/7). In this variant, Spinoza inverts the ordering of [a] and [b]
from the Ethics formulation, uses a slightly different connective to [c], and drops the
more emphatic esse from the in se phrase.33
The first of these variations is the most important for our purposes, even though
adeo ut also makes it quite natural to read [c] as applying to both [a] and [b]. If we are to
read the [c] clause in 1d3 of the Ethics as applying to only the [b] conjunct, what are we
to make of Spinoza’s inversion here? It seems a stretch to read [c] as applying only to the
second conjunct in the Ethics and then only to the first conjunct in Ep2, when the con-
struction is otherwise so similar. I think a more natural reading is that the ordering of
[a] and [b] is not essential to the definition in Spinoza’s mind, and this is precisely
because both [a] and [b] are supposed to be glossed in terms of [c] conceptual involve-
ment in both definitions.
A month later, Spinoza offered the following revised definitions to Oldenburg, in
which he makes it clear that he has substances, and not attributes, in mind, even though
the definiens is nearly the same:
For by substance I understand what is conceived through itself and in itself, i.e., [per se, & in se
concipitur, hoc est] that whose concept does not involve the concept of another thing; but by
modification or accident, what is in another and is conceived through what it is in [in alio est,
& per id, in quo est, concipitur] (Ep4, G IV/13).
Spinoza again inverts the ordering of the Ethics passage in his definition of substance,
and he glosses the entire conjunction in terms of conceptual involvement, this time by
the stronger hoc est, which he also uses in the Ethics. In the definition of a mode, which
is clearly intended to be a contrast to the definition of substance, Spinoza uses the more
emphatic expression of “in another” (in alio est), making it clear that he also has in, and
not some further relation of “conceived in itself ” in view. Substance is in itself, which
means that substance is conceptually independent and that its concept involves only
itself; modes are in another, which means that modes are not self-conceived and that
their concepts asymmetrically depend on the concepts of other things.
Spinoza continues to shift comfortably between conceptual and in language, as seen
in his early version of Ia1: “for whatever there is, is conceived either through itself or
through another, and its concept does or does not involve the concept of another
thing” (Ep4, G IV/14). By the time Spinoza wrote the first part of the Ethics, perhaps
three or four years later, he put the same axiom in terms of being in: “Whatever is, is
33
Shirley’s translation of this letter inexplicably and misleadingly reverses the order of the Latin and
simply repeats the order of the Ethics: “By attribute I mean everything that is conceived in itself and through
itself.” Of course, according to my interpretation, the order turns out to be insignificant. But as a matter of
translation, it is important to be able to see how Spinoza himself is comfortable inverting the phrases.
either in itself or in another” (Ia1). On my interpretation, this represents no great shift

or development, and I am aware of no evidence that Spinoza took it to be one. Rather,
Spinoza freely moves back and forth between inherence and conceptual involvement
because he thinks these different expressions point to the same relation of metaphysical
dependence. And just as with causation, whereas Spinoza glosses and explains inher-
ence in conceptual terms, he never reasons in the reverse direction.34 In all these cases,
what it is for something to be in another just is for the concept of the former to depend
on, or be “involved in,” the concept of the latter. Inherence, like causation, is just a matter
of conceptual connection.
Spinoza’s in relation is often taken to imply predication, such that if x inheres in y,
then x can be truly predicated of y.35 Although there are some historical and philo-
sophical reasons for thinking Spinoza might have resisted this assumption, these
concerns have been adequately addressed by others.36 Admittedly, Spinoza rarely
invokes predication language directly, and when he does it is mostly in early texts.
Spinoza claims in KV, “there must be an infinite and perfect being, by which nothing
else can be understood except a being of which all in all must be predicated” (KV I.ii,
G I/21). Although he makes a general claim here, elsewhere in this text Spinoza
applies predication explicitly to attributes, claiming that attributes are predicated
of God: “[God] is, we say, a being of which all, or infinite, attributes are predicated”
(KV I.ii, G I/19).37 In the Ethics, Spinoza also moves seamlessly from x is an attribute
of S to the predication of x to S: “Thought is an attribute of God, or [sive] God is a
thinking thing” (IIp1).38
This is not an overwhelming amount of evidence that Spinoza thinks inherence
implies predication, but once we take CDM into account, the association between
inherence and predication is more natural. If being in another just is being conceived
through another, then for inherence to imply predication is just for grasping concep-
tual content to involve predication, which Spinoza appears to accept when he glosses
conceptual containment as involving the “connection of subject and predicate” (TIE 62,
G II/24). Spinoza also adds in this passage that if a mind had a clear and distinct con-
cept of an event, “the mind would see together the means and causes, how and why
34
For example, in Ip15d Spinoza clearly argues from the fact that modes are conceptually dependent on
substance to the fact that they inhere in substance.
35
For example, see Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 18.
36
The basic historical concern is that (a) Aristotle claims in the Categories that some entities are in but
not said-of another (a point that was later further developed by scholastics) and (b) Spinoza’s modes are pre-
cisely the kind of thing, now associated with tropes, that are in but not predicated of another. (See Carriero,
“On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza’s Metaphysics” for more on this point.) The
philosophical worries stem from the concerns about (a) predicating “ordinary objects” of something else
(“God is Sam” appears to make little sense if it uses the “is” of predication) and (b) inconsistent predications,
given Spinoza’s monism (as discussed in chapter two). These are not decisive concerns, in my opinion, and
they have been addressed adequately elsewhere (e.g., Melamed, “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought”).
37
He repeats this formulation several times in KV I.ii and in KV I.iii (G I/35).
38
For early (and somewhat obscure) passages in which Spinoza appears to predicate modes of God, see
KV I.7, G I/44 and KV II.Pref, G I/53.
such a thing was done,” thereby drawing predication, causation, explanation, and
conceptual containment together in a single sentence.
2.3 Following-from
I claimed that, aside from conceptual dependence, Spinoza appeals most often to
causation and inherence to explain how things depend on other things. However,
Spinoza also writes about things “following from” other things, by which he clearly
intends to invoke some kind of dependence. Is following-from a different kind of
dependence, something more like logical entailment? Some of the liveliest debates in
Spinoza scholarship turn on how one interprets these “following from” claims. It
impacts how one understands the relation between modes and substance (did Spinoza
think everyday things like buses and bees inhere in God?), the general relation between
logic and metaphysics (was Spinoza some kind of logicist, assimilating causation
to logical consequence?), and the strength of Spinoza’s modal commitments (was
Spinoza a necessitarian?). I will argue that Spinoza understands following to be a
relation of conceptual dependence, and then indicate briefly how this sheds light on
the above, deeply entrenched interpretive disagreements.
A short, indirect argument for my monistic interpretation is that Spinoza thinks
(a) the following relation is a causal relation and (b) every causal relation is a conceptual
relation. I have already defended (b) above (section 2.1). As for (a), Spinoza regularly
inter-substitutes universal following-from claims with universal causal claims.39 In
other words, adding another clause to CET, x follows from y iff y causes x. But I think
Spinoza goes further than this and makes it clear that following-from is a causal rela-
tion, not merely coextensive with one.40
For example, Spinoza writes in Ip28d, “[A finite mode] had, therefore, to follow
from, or be determined to exist and produce an effect by God or an attribute of God.”
In this passage, Spinoza explains following from a thing in terms of being determined
to exist and produce an effect by another. (Spinoza equates causation and production
in Ip6d). Similarly, in Ip17s, Spinoza writes, “the things which we have said follow from
[God’s] nature, (that is [hoc est], which are in his power), do not happen or are not pro-
duced by him.” To follow from a thing’s nature is to be within that thing’s expression of
power, by which Spinoza means causal power.41
Additional evidence for the causal nature of Spinoza’s following relation lies in the
most scrutinized of all of Spinoza’s “following” claims: “From the necessity of the
divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many ways, i.e.,
everything which can fall under an infinite intellect” (Ip16). In the demonstration,
Spinoza appeals to the range of properties that can be inferred from the definition of
39
For examples, see Ia3, Ip16c1 (alongside Ip16); Ip28d, Ip32c2, and Ip36 (alongside Ip36d).
40
This point has been made in different ways by others: see Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in
Historical Perspective,” 61ff.; Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 4–11;
Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” 193–4; Mason, The God of Spinoza, 55ff.
41
See Ip35–6.
God, which has led some to think that things are supposed to follow from God in a
broadly logical or deductive manner, the ontological counterpart to entailment rela-
tions between propositions.42 Nevertheless, the three corollaries of Ip16 make it clear
that Spinoza’s goal in Ip16 is to make a causal claim about the range of things that God’s
nature generates.43
Taking all these passages together, we should conclude that what it is to follow from
something, for Spinoza, is to be caused by it. Hence, assuming the results of section 2.1,
what it is to follow from something is to be conceptually dependent on it.
There is also a more direct route to the conceptual nature of Spinoza’s following rela-
tion. The scholium to Ip17 contains the following elaboration of Ip16:
from God’s supreme power or infinite nature, infinitely many things must follow in infinitely
many ways, that is, all things have necessarily flowed or always follow by the same necessity and
in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity to eternity, that its
three angles are equal to two right angles.
Things follow from God in the same manner in which geometrical properties follow
from the natures or definitions of figures in Euclidean space. What, according to
Spinoza, is the relation between the nature of a triangle and the sum of its interior
angles? I think Spinoza’s primary answer is conceptual containment.44
To see this, consider first IIp8s, in which Spinoza makes another appeal to contain-
ment. Spinoza uses geometrical figures to illustrate how the ideas of nonexisting things
are “comprehended in God’s infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of
singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s attributes” (IIp8). This emphasizes
the link in Spinoza’s mind between geometrical truths and the more general contain-
ment of all things in God. In Ip35, Spinoza eschews geometrical illustrations altogether
and claims that “whatever is in God’s power must (by Ip34) be so comprehended by his
essence that it necessarily follows from it.” That is, necessarily following from God’s
essence—the subject of Ip16 and cited in Ip34—is a matter of being comprehended in
God’s nature, a relation Spinoza equates with containment in Iip8 and illustrates with
examples from geometry.
What, then, is the manner in which all things are comprehended in God’s nature,
the kind of following-from that the geometrical illustrations of Ip17s and IIp8s are
42
For discussion, see Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 45–7 and 75–6. For acute criticisms of attempts to
assimilate causation to logical consequence in Spinoza, see Mason, The God of Spinoza, 55–60. However,
I take the real error in such readings to be the incorrect assimilation of conceptual dependence to logical
consequence, not the claim that Spinoza assimilates causation to conceptual relations.
43
See Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” 194 and Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in Historical
Perspective,” 61–3.
44
For an alternative reading, see Viljanen, Spinoza’s Geometry of Power, esp. 41–5, although in the end,
what Viljanen champions as the “formal character” of things might be very similar to what I am describing
in conceptual terms (see esp. Viljanen’s fn 33). I am not entirely sure about this, however, in light of
Viljanen’s contrast of “formal” with “real effects, states, or properties” (45), as if conceptual/formal features
are not among the real features of things for Spinoza. For reasons to resist drawing such a contrast in
Spinoza, see chapter 9.4.
supposed to elucidate?45 Spinoza is clear in Ip8s2: the “essences [of nonexisting things]
are comprehended in another in such a way that they can be conceived through it.”46
I think Spinoza intends his point to generalize. Everything follows from God (Ip16), or
equivalently, is comprehended in the nature of God (Ip35), in just the sense that every-
thing is conceived through God.47
I claimed that how one interprets the following relation in Spinoza has implications
for several other interpretive disputes. For instance, what is the relationship between
substance and modes—God and all other things—according to Spinoza? Curley
famously argued that for Spinoza, all things follow from, or depend on God in just the
sense that all things are caused by God. According to Curley, when Spinoza writes that
all things are modes that are in and conceived through God (Ip15), he is actually mak-
ing the relatively unremarkable claim that all things causally depend on God.48 Critics
have pointed out that such a reading fails to adequately capture the closeness between
God and everything else for Spinoza, resulting in a “flattened” interpretation that
doesn’t do justice to the striking heterodoxy of Spinoza’s ontology.49
Does my conceptual monistic reading fare any better on this front than Curley’s
causal reading? If I am right, Spinoza claims everything follows from God, is caused by
God, and is in God—all of which amount to the fact that everything is conceptually
dependent on God. But I think that, unlike Curley’s causal reading, conceptual
dependence monism adequately captures the unorthodox closeness in Spinoza’s sys-
tem between God and everything else. According to CDM, that closeness is as tight as
they come: all things follow from God in the sense that all things are conceptually
dependent on, or conceptually contained in the nature of God, a relation as intimate as
that between a triangle and the sum of its interior angles in Euclidean space.
A second application of CDM here concerns the place and nature of logical entail-
ment in Spinoza’s system. Several interpreters have argued that Spinoza’s following-
from relation cannot be assimilated to our modern logical entailment relation, despite
45
In his interesting discussion of geometrical containment in Spinoza, Charles Huenemann concludes
that “when X geometrically contains Y, it means that X has sufficient features for producing Y, in accordance
with sanctioned means of construction” (Huenemann, “The Necessity of Finite Modes and Geometrical
Containment in Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” 233). While I do not disagree that geometrical containment has a
causal upshot for Spinoza, I do not think that causation is only or even primarily what Spinoza intends by
geometrical containment. Productive ability alone is, to put it metaphorically, too distant a connection for
the kind of containment Spinoza has in mind. (We’ll see a similar worry about Curley’s pure causal reading
of following-from below.)
46
See also IIp7s, where Spinoza glosses “comprehends” with “expresses,” “explains,” “considers,” and
“conceives”—all expressions in Spinoza that more directly invoke conceptual containment than pure causation.
Another synonym in this context that suggests more than a purely causal reading is “pertains” in Ip11d
and Ip19d.
47
Another equivalence, introduced in chapter one, is that everything expresses God, a relation that dove-
tails nicely with the conceptualist account I am offering here and will be discussed again in chapter nine.
48
Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 37–42; 74–6.
49
See Carriero, “On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” 254–7;
Bennett, “Spinoza’s Monism: A Reply to Curley,” 53–5; Nadler, “Whatever Is, Is in God,” 61–4. Similar worries
will apply to Laerke’s more recent causal account (Laerke, “Spinoza’s Cosmological Argument in the Ethics”).
the affinity the two may seem to have.50 Their arguments often use counterexamples
which suggest that the truth value of x follows from y is sensitive to more than just the
values of x and y, unlike (on most accounts) y entails x. In this spirit, Don Garrett has
suggested that a modern relevance logic would come closer to capturing the entail-
ments between Spinoza’s following-from facts, and he adds that the order of causal
priority will be the appropriate relevance condition.51
Once again, CDM better explains what is going on here. Following-from fails to
correspond to modern logical entailment because entailment, on most systems, is
insensitive to the ways in which objects are conceived. Thus Garrett’s suggestion that
causal priority is the appropriate relevance condition is not quite correct. The relevance
condition needs to be sensitive to the ways in which the objects involved are conceived,
even though, according to CDM, taking that into account will ipso facto take into
account the order of causal priority. This again reminds us why Spinoza thinks cross-
attribute following-from claims can also generate substitution failures (IIp6 and IIp6c).
Substitutions of co-referring designators in predications of following-from can fail to
preserve truth values because following-from, like causation, is the relation of con-
ceptual dependence. Hence the ways objects are conceived will contribute to the truth
values of following-from claims in ways that strict entailment can fail to pick up on.
This last point is also extremely important when considering Spinoza’s views on
modality. Garrett notes in passing, “Spinoza also holds that, in some cases, a y can ‘follow
from’ some x ‘insofar as’ x is ‘considered in’ one way, but not ‘insofar as’ x is ‘considered
in’ another way.”52 This variability should come as no great surprise if following-from is
a conceptual relation; of course differences in ways of conceiving can correspond to
differences in following-from facts. To invoke the terminology from the previous
chapter, this is just another instance of conceptual identification entailing consistent
conceptual variability.
This conceptual variability will have an important implication for Spinoza’s views on
modality. As we will see in the next chapter, according to Spinoza, whether or not a
finite object is necessary depends on whether it “follows from the absolute nature of an
attribute of God” (Ip28d). And whether a finite mode follows from the absolute nature
of an attribute of God depends in part on whether or not it is conceived in relation to
the whole series of finite modes.53 That is, the modal status of finite things partly
depends on how they are conceived within an attribute. Exploring this will open up
new space for understanding Spinoza’s modal commitments that move us beyond
the standard necessitarian/non-necessitarian debate. More generally, since Spinoza’s
50
Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in Historical Perspective,” 61–3 and 76; Garrett, “Spinoza’s
Necessitarianism,” 193–4; Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 4; Mason,
The God of Spinoza, 55–60.
51
Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” 194 and 215n6. This also prevents trivial entailments from
establishing following-from facts. The true proposition snow is white entails that snow is white, but there is
no corresponding following-from relation.
52
Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” 215n6.
53
Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” 198–9. See chapter four for a fuller discussion of Garrett’s claims.
modal commitments turn, in part, on following-from facts, CDM entails and explains
why understanding Spinoza’s modal views depends, like so much else, on understand-
ing his views on conceptual relations.
2.4 Conceptual Involvement

Given how Spinoza appeals to conceptual relations in so many different contexts, it is
disappointing how underdeveloped his theory of conceptual dependence itself turns
out to be. Spinoza sometimes speaks of conceptual dependence in terms of conceptual
“involvement.” He also uses “conceiving through” to describe conceptual dependence,
and it is clear that if x is conceived through y then the concept of y is involved or con-
tained in the concept of x. Spinoza also appeals to modal facts about concept formation
to elucidate conceptual dependence, describing it as “that whose concept does not
require the concept of another thing from which it must be formed” (Id3). Similarly, he
claims, “For to say that A must involve the concept of B is the same as to say that A can-
not be conceived without B” (IIp49d). But these elucidations cannot be genuine, non-
circular analyses if, as I will argue in the next chapter, modal relations are themselves to
be analyzed in terms of conceptual dependence for Spinoza.
The closest Spinoza comes to offering what, in hindsight, looks like a more illumin-
ating account of conceptual dependence is buried deep in his commentary on Descartes:
“For the concept which we have of our thought does not involve, or contain [non
involvit, sive non continet] the necessary existence of the thought” (C 245; G I/157).
Spinoza here glosses conceptual independence as the failure of conceptual containment,
an account he also embraces in the Ethics.54 Relatedly, in his early TIE, Spinoza
describes conceptual relations in terms of a “connection of subject and predicate”
(TIE 62, G II/24). Spinoza also claims here that if a mind clearly and distinctly grasps
the concept of an event, “the mind would see together the means and causes, how and
why such a thing was done.” This suggests that singular concepts can contain quite a
bit of information about other things, too.
It is tempting to speculate in what directions these gestures might have led Spinoza,
such as toward a theory of structured conceptual containment relations similar to
those found in Arnauld, Leibniz, and Wolff, to name the most prominent examples on
Spinoza’s historical horizon.55 If Spinoza was in the vanguard of this trend, he never
developed anything like a theory of conceptual containment, even as it was becoming
increasingly central to early modern accounts of logic and judgment.
What, then, should we make of his terminological gesturing? Surely not as much as
we would like. It is clear that Spinoza thinks there is a univocal kind of conceptual
dependence relation in which partial concepts are intimately and asymmetrically
“involved in,” contained within, and posterior to other, more complete concepts,
54
See also TIE 72 (G II/27), Ip8s2, and related passages discussed in section 2.3.
55
For a very nice overview of theories of conceptual containment from Leibniz to Wolff (and into Kant’s
critique of the whole enterprise), see Anderson, The Poverty of Conceptual Truth, esp. chapters 1–4.
giving conceptual dependence a kind of discernible structure.56 If so, Spinoza’s CDM,

when combined with other pieces of his metaphysics, is the thesis that all forms of
metaphysical dependence are structured containment relations between more and less
complete ways of conceiving God. Of course, it would be unfair to insist that Spinoza
provide a further analysis of conceptual dependence in terms of something yet more
fundamental. Conceptual dependence monism denies that this is possible. And while
Spinoza does not offer a further analysis of this containment relation, I suspect he
thinks part–whole conceptual relations are as explanatorily transparent as any
ground floor could be. If explanations have to end somewhere, structured conceptual
truths are a promising terminus. Trying to raise further in-virtue-of questions may
betray a failure to grasp adequately the concepts involved.
Even if Spinoza says very little directly about the nature of conceptual dependence
itself, we might be able to glean more about his understanding of conceptual relations
from how he actually employs them. Throughout the rest of this book, we will continue
to see Spinoza using conceptual relations in different ways and contexts. In the final
chapter, I return to the general nature of conceptual relations in Spinoza to assess what
he has and has not explained adequately, and how contemporary readers might begin
to remedy his gaps.
2.5 Eliminativism and the Nature of Grounding

We have seen Spinoza account for claims and facts about some putative forms of meta-
physical dependence, such as causation and inherence, in terms of conceptual depend-
ence, without ever moving in the reverse direction. I suggested that this unidirectional
explanatory priority follows from Spinoza’s more general privileging of conceptual
dependence over all other putative forms of dependence. Causation, inherence, fol-
lowing-from, and existential dependence obtain in virtue of conceptual connections
between relata. But what is this further in-virtue-of, if not itself a kind of dependence?
In contemporary parlance, how are causal facts dependent on or grounded in concep-
tual facts, according to Spinoza? By Spinoza’s own explanatory demands, we need an
explanation of that form of dependence too.
I am not sure how aware Spinoza was of this question.57 But there are not many
options left on the table. If all metaphysical dependence is to be explained in terms of
conceptual connections, then almost all familiar middle-ground options will be
56
For more on the interplay between “involves” and “expresses” in Spinoza, see again Deleuze, Spinoza
et le problème de l’expression, 11–13.
57
Other interpreters, even those sympathetic to dependence monism, have also failed to notice it.
Laerke, for example, invokes notions like grounding and fundamentality in articulating his view without
trying to give a Spinozistic account of what those forms of dependence are (e.g., Laerke, “Spinoza’s Cosmological
Argument in the Ethics,” 458). A similar concern faces di Poppa’s claims that causation “grounds” conceptual
dependence and is the most “basic” relation in Spinoza, although at points it sounds like she thinks the
grounding or fundamentality relation is itself causal (see especially di Poppa, “Spinoza on Causation and
Power,” 312).
unavailable. Appeals at this juncture to, say, common causes or non-reductive super-
venience would introduce yet further dependence explananda.
One possibility open to Spinoza is to let structured containment relations also play
the grounding role. On this account, causation is grounded in conceptual containment
in the sense that the concept of causation is contained in the concept of conceptual
involvement. That is, x causes y in virtue of the conceptual containment of y in x. And
that in-virtue-of is itself a conceptual containment relation. That x causes y is con-
tained in the complex concept of y being conceptually contained in x.58 In other words,
in-virtue-of relations are conceptual containment relations all the way down.
On the positive side, this account would give Spinoza a non-empty, asymmetrical
sense in which causation and the rest depends on conceptual connection without
introducing a new explanandum. It would also immediately explain why the bicondi-
tionals in CET are necessary, given that Spinoza also analyzes necessity as conceptual
involvement. Furthermore, if conceptual relations are paradigmatic explanantia, as
Spinoza believes they are, containment-all-the-way-down will also yield explanations-
all-the-way-down—a happy upshot, given Spinoza started the whole grounding pro-
ject with a search for explanation.
But whatever may be the promises of such an account, the dependence pluralist
would likely cry, “Foul!” if Spinoza embraced it. The pluralist will object that Spinoza
provides merely the appearance of dependence monism, all the while sneaking back in
the content of dependence pluralism. Instead of having the pluralist’s distinct relations
of causation, inherence, existential dependence, and conceptual dependence, we
would now have the “monist’s” distinct relations of causal-cum-conceptual depend-
ence, inherence-cum-conceptual dependence, etc. But unless more can be said about
how adding a reference to part–whole conceptual structure converts the original
plurality into a genuine unity, Spinoza’s dependence monism would begin to sound
like just a renamed version of dependence pluralism.59
Of course, there might still be important differences between the pluralist’s account
of causation and the quasi-monist’s account of causation-cum-conceptual depend-
ence. The latter might admit of substitution failures in co-referring expressions,
whereas the former might not, for example. But the fact that, on the quasi-monist’s
view, all forms of dependence share striking features with conceptual dependence is
not enough to convert them all into a single form of dependence. To do that, a more
drastic elimination is needed, or else more needs to be done to fill out the different
containment structures of causal-cum-conceptual, inherence-cum-conceptual, and
other such relations.
58
Given Spinoza’s holism, the more complex concept will be the container of (and hence more funda-
mental than) the simpler conceptual constituents. He usually thinks the arrow of dependence runs from
the complex wholes to their parts, hardly a surprising direction for a committed monist to endorse.
59
I am deeply indebted to Alan Nelson for pressing this concern and for several insightful exchanges on
an earlier form of this chapter, which was much improved as a result.
In the end, I am inclined to think Spinoza embraces the starker eliminative

option. There are no distinctions between causation, inherence, following-from,
and the rest of his non-conceptual laundry list. All forms and instances of meta-
physical dependence just are conceptual in the stronger sense that there are neither
extensional nor intensional differences among the conceptual relations that are the
truth-makers for ascriptions of causation, inherence, and the rest. Or, if the appeal
to truth-making seems worrisome here (what is making, if not yet more dependence?),
we could say that for Spinoza, all and only features of conceptual dependence rela-
tions are the features of every form and instance of metaphysical dependence. That is,
in addition to affirming conceptual sensitivity of causation and the rest, Spinoza
affirms conceptual identification as well. This would also explain why Spinoza treats
conceptual dependence as explanatorily prior to (what others take to be) other
forms of dependence.60
2.6 Collapsing Causation and Inherence

This last reply answers the pluralist’s charge of cheating, but perhaps at the cost of
interpretive plausibility. After all, doesn’t Spinoza make use of at least an intensional
distinction between some of these forms of dependence, even if he embraces necessary
coextension? The short answer is, “no.” A bit more expansively, I think there are good
textual grounds for attributing to Spinoza precisely the collapse to CDM that, philo-
sophically, his dependence monism pressures him to embrace.
I have presented passages above in which Spinoza treats conceptual dependence
and some other putative forms of dependence as the same relation. I claimed, for
example, that causes just are reasons or conceptual relations for Spinoza. However,
what about relations among the other forms of dependence? Clearly some candidates,
such as following-from and produced by, are also just causal relations for Spinoza, in
which case the starker identity thesis goes through readily.
A more difficult interpretive question is whether Spinoza tries to keep causation and
inherence meaningfully distinct, even if both are grounded in conceptual dependence
relations. In other words, does Spinoza maintain some kind of intensional distinction
between causation and inherence (or, if one prefers, between the fundamental concep-
tual relations that are the truth-makers for predications of causation and inherence)?
Some interpreters seem to think so. John Carriero, for example, claims that the dis-
tinction between causation and inherence is “deeply etched” in Spinoza’s texts and that
Spinoza “never refers to Ip15 [inherence] and Ip16 [causation] in a way that suggests
60
As always, it is hard to know exactly how to treat identity theses of this sort. Does CDM imply that
there is no such thing as causation or inherence? Surely not, any more than Berkeleyan idealism implies
that there are no bodies. Does it then follow from the identity thesis of CDM that causal dependence mon-
ism is also true, since (by CDM) causation just is conceptual dependence? In an uninteresting sense, the
answer is “yes,” but “causal” there would just mean that single kind of dependence that has all and only the
features of conceptual dependence.
that they are interchangeable.”61 However, I think there is compelling textual evidence
against attributing any deep causal–inherence divide to Spinoza.
First, Spinoza clearly does blur the divide between Ip15 and Ip16. In Ip28s, Spinoza
appeals to Ip15—not Ip16—to prove a point about causation.62 More strikingly,
Spinoza blurs the inherence–causation divide within Ip15 and Ip16 themselves. In
Ip15, Spinoza infers that things are “in the divine nature alone” from the fact that those
things existentially and conceptually depend on God. And as Michael Della Rocca has
pointed out, Spinoza appeals to property dependence, a clear reference to inherence, in
Ip16d in order to prove the range of God’s causal activity in Ip16.63
Furthermore, there are other passages in which Spinoza slides casually between
causation and inherence in ways that make them sound quite interchangeable. For
example, IIIDefAff22 states, “Overestimation, therefore, is an effect, or property [effectus
sive proprietas], of love.”64 Outside the Ethics, Spinoza writes: “Knowledge of an effect
through its cause is nothing other than knowledge of a property of that cause” (TTP
IV.xi, G III/60). And in a letter to Lodewijk Meyer, Spinoza refers to things that are
infinite “by the force of the cause in which they inhere” (Ep 12, G IV/61). More indirect
evidence is found in Spinoza’s occasional use of the language of emanative causation
(Ip17s, Ep 43), which traditionally blurs the inherence–causal divide.65 Hence, I think
there are sufficient textual reasons for denying Carriero’s “deeply etched” claim.
A more forceful challenge to the causation–inherence collapse comes from Yitzhak
Melamed. Melamed raises two kinds of objections to the view that causation implies
inherence for Spinoza. The first is that such an account cannot do justice to Spinoza’s
distinction between transitive and immanent causation. The second is that the collapse
would have odd philosophical consequences that Spinoza does not and perhaps could
not accept.
In making his first objection, Melamed points to passages like Ip18: “God is the
immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things.” In the demonstration, Spinoza dis-
tinguishes two kinds of causes in ways that suggest inherence tracks one kind (imma-
nent) but not the other (transitive). However, the objection runs, unless Spinoza also
61
Carriero, “On the Relationship between Mode and Substance in Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” 255.
62
Admittedly, the portion of Ip15 that Spinoza needs in Ip28s is the portion about conceptual
dependence, but I have already presented my case for why there is no “deep etching” between conceiving
and inherence (a point I take Ip15d itself to reinforce). In any case, Spinoza could have proved the point in
Ip28s through Ip16, which would have more clearly maintained a “deep etching” between Ip15 and Ip16.
The fact that he chose not to gives at least a small prima facie reason for thinking that the divide is not as
deep as Carriero suggests.
63
Della Rocca, Spinoza, 67–8.
64
I am grateful to Melamed for bringing this passage to my attention in correspondence.
65
For more on seventeenth-century Dutch discussions of emanation, see Gueroult, Spinoza I, 244–52.
Gueroult is certainly correct that Spinoza would have found a formal, immanent, and emanative (to use the
traditional terminology) account of causation more attractive than, say, purely efficient models (see espe-
cially Gueroult, Spinoza I, 296–9; see also Carraud, Causa sive ratio, 302–11 and Viljanen, Spinoza’s Power
of Geometry, 37–53). Conceptual dependence monism explains why this is so, without endorsing the
stronger claim that Spinoza would have fully embraced a more traditional category of formal causation.
has two kinds of inherence relations, this distinction in kinds of causes entails that
causation and inherence are non-overlapping instances of dependence in at least
some cases.
In response, I think it is first worth noting that in the demonstration of Ip18, Spinoza
appeals yet again to conceptual dependence: “Everything that is, is in God and must be
conceived through God (by Ip15), and so (by Ip16C1) God is the cause of [all] things”
(Ip18d). Here Spinoza infers a causal fact from a fact about inherence and conceptual
dependence.66 This does not yet overcome Melamed’s concern, since he too accepts
that inherence implies causation. However, it reminds us that even when Spinoza is
discussing immanent causation, he continues to appeal to conceptual dependence.
A second reply is that although Spinoza invokes an immanent–transitive cause dis-
tinction, he never claims that there are transitive causes, as traditionally understood.
His point is simply to deny that God is a transitive cause. It follows from CDM that
God is an immanent cause in the sense that all things are conceptually contained in
and conceptually dependent on God (a containment that is unique to God). Hence, to
generate a worry for CDM, we would need a text in which Spinoza claims that some-
thing is a transitive cause, and I do not know of anywhere that Spinoza says this.67
Third, Spinoza is already committed to a nonstandard account of the immanent–
transitive cause distinction, independently of the truth of CDM. For on at least one
stable account that was available to Spinoza, only really distinct entities can be tran-
sitive causes.68 However, Spinoza’s substance monism entails that nothing is really
distinct (in the technical sense of real distinction) from anything else. So if Spinoza
thinks there are transitive causes, despite never saying so, he is already bending the
terminology.
These are not decisive replies, but I think they point us to a better interpretation of
passages like Ip18. As is his wont, Spinoza invokes traditional language and then maps it
onto his own metaphysical conclusions. In this case, his point is that God is not external
to things in the way that previous philosophers thought transitive causes are external to
their effects. So far as I can tell, making that point does not entail that Spinoza also
thinks that inherence and causation can come apart in the way Melamed suggests.
Melamed also raises a series of worries that take the following general form: if there
is a parallel in relation alongside every instance of a causal or conceptual relation, then
66
This strikes me as a fairly decisive text against Laerke’s and di Poppa’s previously mentioned views that
causation is the fundamental form of dependence in Spinoza.
67
Melamed does not cite any such texts, but he suggests that Spinoza’s distinction between external and
internal causes maps onto the transitive–immanent cause distinction, and then cites passages in which
Spinoza distinguishes between internal and external causes and effects of a thing (Melamed, Spinoza’s
Metaphysics, 96n27). But as we will see in chapter five, Spinoza has the resources to distinguish between
essential and nonessential elements of a thing, and that is all the advocate of CDM needs to distinguish
between internal and external (and hence, according to Melamed himself, immanent and transitive) causes.
68
This point is made by both Franco Burgersdijk and his successor at Leiden, Adriaan Heereboord. (For
references, as well as a nice discussion of this distinction in its seventeenth-century Dutch context, see
Zylstra, “Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism.” See also Carraud, Causa sive ratio, 308n2.)
disaster results.69 But while he often describes his target as an identity theorist about
causation and inherence, Melamed’s reductio ad disasters actually target CET, not
CDM. In other words, Melamed’s second objection misses the intended target.
Here are a few examples from Melamed in which the content of the objection is not
as important as the form it takes:
Causing an increase in the power of acting of someone else does not necessarily increase your
own power of acting; but if we accept the identity of inherence and causation, it would seem
that the increase in the power of acting must also belong to (i.e., be in) the cause of the increase
as well (Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 97).
Despite setting this up as a problem for the dependence monist, notice that Melamed
states the bad consequence in terms of an “also,” as though there was a further relation
instantiated here—an in relation in addition to the causal relation. But while this might
be a worry for CET, this “also” is denied by CDM; so whence the problem for CDM?
Repeating the pattern, Melamed objects, “It seems that insofar as future things are
caused by past things, future things must also inhere in the past (i.e., in past things)”
(Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 98). But this inference simply does not follow accord-
ing to CDM; the past is pregnant with the future neither causally nor in-ly, when those
relations are taken to be distinct from conceptual relations. Rather, according to CDM,
the future is conceptually contained in the past, full stop. And while that might be a
striking thesis, it is not as historically outlandish as Melamed suggests.70 Hence, as
they are formulated, Melamed’s reductios against CDM appear question-begging at
best, off target at worst.
A more compelling narrative is that Spinoza inherits from previous philosophers
a range of terms for dependence relations, including “causation” and “inherence.”
Sometimes he is content to make his points using those traditional categories, even
though, in the hands of many of his predecessors, those terms named distinct rela-
tions. Indeed, allowing for such terminological flexibility is one of the great advantages
of CDM. It might be, for instance, that appeals to traditional language of “in” are more
apt when it is a matter of complete containment.71 Hence the traditional language of
inherence is often more apt when Spinoza characterizes the relation between a mode
and substance than when he describes the relation between two modes. But since,
traditionally, causation admits of partial causes, describing mode–mode relations in
causal language might be apt, since readers are less likely to think that such a descrip-
tion implies that one is completely contained in the other.
69
The “disasters” are not philosophical disasters per se; Melamed shares with me a pretty high tolerance
for metaphysical wildness in Spinoza, and he sometimes chastises other interpreters for being unwilling to
follow Spinoza’s thought wherever it may lead. Melamed has more textual, specifically Spinozistic disasters
in mind.
70
Leibniz endorses it too, for example (Leibniz, PE, 44–5). Similar replies could be made to the rest of
Melamed’s staccato-style objections, though it would be overly repetitive to do so.
71
I am thankful to Jeff McDonough for this suggestion.
But like so much else in Spinoza, behind his choices of enticingly familiar terminology
is a more radical revisionist project. As with other surprising collapses to identity in
Spinoza’s system, the apparent plurality of the dependence relations that his predecessors
endorsed is, for Spinoza, merely apparent. Not only for his views on substance is
Spinoza rightly judged a monist.
3. Motivating CDM
Supposing that Spinoza accepted conceptual dependence monism, we might well
wonder why he was attracted to such a striking thesis about dependence in the first
place.72 We would not be alone in wondering about this. Upon reading the Ethics,
Leibniz objected to Spinoza’s definition of substance in Id3 as that which is in and con-
ceived through itself. Leibniz responded, “The contrary seems rather to be true, that
there are some things which are in themselves though they are not conceived through
themselves. And this is how men commonly conceive of substances” (L196).73
Leibniz keenly saw that if Spinoza’s claims about causation, inherence, and concep-
tual dependence were granted, Spinoza would have a strong rationale for rejecting the
possibility of finite substances; at least of the sort Leibniz accepted. For while Leibniz
accepts that everything causally and conceptually depends on God, he firmly denies
that all things inhere in God. This allows room for created things that are both in them-
selves and still dependent in other ways on God. But there is no such space if Spinoza’s
conceptual dependence monism is correct. So, Leibniz presses, why think inherence
and conceptual dependence can’t come apart? As he puts it, “It would be necessary for
[Spinoza] to prove that whatever has one property also has the other” (L 196), some-
thing Leibniz doesn’t think Spinoza has done, except by definitional fiat.
Before giving what I take to be Spinoza’s reply, it will be instructive to consider an
alternative attempt to motivate Spinoza’s position. This route, defended by Della
Rocca, appeals directly to the PSR as the basis for dependence monism, an appeal
that Leibniz, at least, would find congenial. However, this approach fails to avoid the
charge of question-begging, though seeing why will shed new light on Spinoza’s
argument for substance monism and pave the way for an alternative reconstruction
of Spinoza’s reasoning.
As we saw in the first chapter, Della Rocca argues that Spinoza’s identity claims are
often underwritten by appeals to the PSR. According to this very strong version of the
PSR, non-identity supervenes on explanatory differences and all appeals to primitive
72
In contemporary metaphysics, there has been pushback against advocates of grounding for trying to
unify various forms of dependence under a central notion (see, for example, Wilson, “No Work for a
Theory of Grounding”)—and I’m not aware of any advocate for a grounding relation who makes the yet
stronger claim that grounding is the only form of dependence.
73
For other passages in which Leibniz makes roughly the same objection, see Laerke, Leibniz lecteur de
Spinoza, 628–32.
non-identity should be rejected on grounds of inexplicability. I described this move

as the rationalist reduction:
Rationalist reduction: Necessarily, for all x and y, the existence of some
explanatory grounds for the identity of x and y and the lack of any principled explana-
tory grounds for the non-identity of x and y entails the identity of x and y.
Perhaps something like the rationalist reduction stands behind Spinoza’s depend-
ence monism.
Initially, the case seems strong. In general, the most salient explanatory grounds for
identity in the rationalist reduction will be facts about overall similarity. In the case of
dependence monism, the relevant grounds would be the similarity of formal proper-
ties and facts about the extensions of the terms.
Independent of CDM, Spinoza seems to accept several important formal similarities
between, say, inherence and conceptual dependence. Both are forms of metaphysical
dependence, both are anti-symmetric and transitive, both obtain with metaphysical
necessity, and both play wholly overlapping roles in defining and explaining his basic
ontological categories. Most importantly, both relations appear to be necessarily coex-
tensive. These similarities could provide sufficient explanatory grounds for identifying
inherence and conceptual dependence via the rationalist reduction, unless any
non-primitive dissimilarities could be found. Hence, barring the discovery of any such
non-primitive grounds for distinction, Spinoza could apply the rationalist reduction
and reject the Leibnizian distinction between inherence and conceptual dependence
on grounds that it introduces a primitive distinction, pace the PSR.74
Thus, the rationalist reduction refrain runs, given the PSR, it follows that inherence
and conceptual dependence cannot be distinct dependence relations. Notice that on
this reconstruction, Spinoza reasons from the PSR to dependence monism. The bicon-
ditionals in CET cry out for explanation, and Spinoza, never shy about addressing an
in-virtue-of-what question, answers with an identity thesis. Although this story would
not yet explain why Spinoza takes conceptual dependence (as opposed to, say, causal)
to be the most adequate way of characterizing the sole form of metaphysical depend-
ence, it would at least explain why Spinoza was attracted to dependence monism in
the first place.
However, while I agree that the PSR plays important roles in Spinoza’s metaphysics,
I do not think the rationalist reduction is or should be part of Spinoza’s reasoning
here. A crucial step in the rationalist reduction is rejecting non-primitive grounds for
nonidentity. And the necessary biconditionals in CET, I suggested, seem to provide
Spinoza with sufficient grounds to make the key rationalist move. In effect, Spinoza
would be saying, “It would be a brute fact to have necessarily coextensive relations that
nonetheless remain distinct in kind.” But although I agree that Spinoza might affirm
the necessary coextension of inherence, causation, and conceptual dependence in a
74
Della Rocca argues in precisely this vein in Spinoza, 65–8.
rather trivial sense, I do not think he can or does reason from coextension to identity
in this case.
For one, to repeat the concern from chapter one, this would leave Spinoza vulnerable
to Leibniz’s charge that Spinoza simply begs the question against substance pluralists.
In questioning the definitions, Leibniz wondered why Spinoza was entitled to coexten-
sion in the first place. Indeed, here is a good, non-primitive reason for not identifying
inherence and conceptual dependence: it is the nature of some kinds of objects, namely
finite substances, to be conceptually dependent on something else (God) without
inhering in anything else (including God). Spinoza thinks that there can be no such
things as finite substances, but he can hardly assume this without argument in his very
definitions of substances and modes.75
Furthermore, Spinoza’s proof for substance monism explicitly presupposes that
inherence and conceiving through are necessarily coextensive relations, even if that
turns out to be somewhat trivial (given CDM). That is, dependence monism, or at
least a consequence of it, is actually prior in the order of Spinoza’s proof to his famed
substance monism. Spinoza concludes in Ip14 that only one substance can exist as
fully self-conceived. Although this is often presented as his grand conclusion, Ip14
cannot be the final step in Spinoza’s argument for substance monism. To reject the
possibility of finite substances, Spinoza also needs to show that all and only self-
conceived things are self-inhering. This is just what the easily overlooked Ip15 adds to
the proof of substance monism: “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be
conceived without God.”
However, Spinoza’s demonstration of this final step relies explicitly on the necessary
coextension of inherence and conceiving through: “Except for God, there neither is,
nor can be conceived, any substance (by Ip14), that is, (by Id3), a thing that is in itself
and is conceived through itself ” (Ip15d). Notice that Spinoza infers facts about inher-
ence from facts about conceptual dependence, an inference that he then justifies by
appealing to the biconditionals in Id3. In other words, the necessary covariation of
inherence and conceptual dependence provides the justification for Ip15. But, as
Leibniz pressed, that is hardly a convincing inference to substance pluralists not ante-
cedently committed to such covariation in the first place. So while the PSR may help
Spinoza reach Ip14, I do not see how it can directly justify his conclusion in Ip15 on the
basis of a rationalist reduction without simply begging the question.
Leibniz’s complaint and Della Rocca’s rationalist reconstruction both misconstrue
the order of Spinoza’s reasoning. Spinoza does not reason to dependence monism
from a belief in necessary covariation. As we saw in the previous chapter and again in
section 2.1 above, the pattern of Spinoza’s reasoning moves in the opposite direction.
Covariation of causal and in ascriptions with conceptual dependence is an upshot of
dependence monism, not a premise for it. In this way, Leibniz and Della Rocca both
75
The same point would apply, mutatis mutandis, to substance pluralists who simply assume the falsity
of the biconditionals without argument.
end up focusing on the wrong, and surely the least controversial, step in Spinoza’s
reasoning.76
This also reminds us of how well crafted Spinoza’s opening definitions in the Ethics
turn out to be. He first states his dependence monism and then uses it to derive signifi-
cant ontological conclusions. Then, in the first half of Part I, Spinoza moves from CDM
to the biconditionals mentioned in CET, and then from those biconditionals to the
rejection of finite substances.
What, then, does motivate Spinoza to adopt conceptual dependence monism in the
first place? Although we are again quickly approaching the bottom floor of his system,
I believe that Spinoza was attracted to conceptual dependence monism at least partly
because of its metaphysical and epistemological serviceability. Conceptual depend-
ence monism provides him a key for handling several problems facing some of his
other basic systematic commitments.
We have already seen examples of CDM at work in this chapter. The (alleged)
explanatory transparency of conceptual content underwrites Spinoza’s belief that his
rationalist demands for explanation could, in principle, be met (section 1). Similarly,
Spinoza identifies causal relations with conceptual relations via CDM to preserve the
identity of substance and each of its modes across attributes, even though each thing
exhibits infinitely many, seemingly incompatible causal structures (section 2.1).
More generally, Spinoza’s conceptualist account of dependence helps show how a
multiplicity of attributes does not entail a multiplicity of things. Turning all instances
of metaphysical dependence into more fine-grained, identity-preserving, concept-
sensitive relations via CDM allows Spinoza to retain the rich structural multiplicity
required by plenitude without a corresponding ontological expansion. Less fancifully,
CDM helps Spinoza satisfy what I described in chapter one as the twin desiderata of
metaphysical perfection. It shows, in effect, how the One can have the metaphysical
structure of the Many.
Over forty years ago, Margaret Wilson noted, “Any success in understanding Spinoza
is going to require whacking one’s way through a thicket of intensionality of which
only the bare outlines have so far been discerned.”77 Great, whacking advances in dis-
cernment have since been made.78 But if I’m right, Spinoza’s conceptual dependence
monism also explains why that thicket is so pervasive in the first place—intensionality
will be exactly as pervasive in the world’s structure as it is in the relevant conceptual
relations. Hence, the way to fully expose that Spinozistic thicket will be to correctly
explicate those structured conceptual relations in Spinoza, something I pursue over
the next several chapters.
76
An analogous sort of misplaced focus would be someone who accepts the token–token identity of men-
tal states with brain states, but then worries a lot about whether the mental supervenes on the physical.
77
Margaret D. Wilson, “Review of Thomas Carson Mark’s Spinoza’s Theory of Truth,” 24–5.
78
An important leader here has been Della Rocca himself, who also cites this wonderful quote from
Wilson in Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 118. In the final chapter, I will qualify this
framework slightly, suggesting the thicket is hyperintensional rather than merely intensional, and is not
primarily a linguistic phenomenon.
Admittedly, some readers will not find this a terribly promising justification for
CDM, at least those who do not share Spinoza’s antecedent commitments to explana-
tory demands and perfection. I presented some historical and contemporary support
for those commitments in chapter one, but they remain quite controversial, to say the
least. Still, seeing the work CDM can do to help consistently preserve the One and the
many ways of being the One helps us understand why Spinoza found CDM so attractive
and how he employs it to shape many of his most prized metaphysical conclusions.
It is also here that we see a promising Spinozistic reply to Leibniz’s own charge of
question-begging. After all, Spinoza can point out, he is not alone in endorsing this
structural model of the world’s perfection. As we saw in chapter one, Leibniz also
endorses such a model under the description of “harmony.” So at least from Leibniz’s
perspective, Spinoza should not be charged with reasoning from an arbitrary and
unmotivated definitional stipulation to substance monism. Rather, Spinoza reasons
from a shared belief about the metaphysically perfect structure of the world to the util-
ity of conceptual dependence monism for its realizability.
On this reconstruction, Spinoza’s proof of substance monism shows how conceptual
dependence monism plus the demands of perfection and the PSR entails the denial of
finite substances. Leibniz is free to modus tollens away, of course. But, Spinoza cau-
tions, there will be a steep price. No longer will Leibniz be able to provide as satisfying
an account of how the requirements of metaphysical perfection are to be met. He will
have to settle for less plurality and/or less unity in his universe. (And I suspect that to
Spinoza, this is exactly what we get in Leibniz: only one fundamental attribute, Thought,
and a huge ontological bifurcation between God and everything else.)
So, the Spinozistic challenge runs, Leibniz can reject CDM at the cost of abandoning
the possibility of a truly metaphysically perfect world. Or he can accept the require-
ments of perfection at the cost of abandoning the possibility of finite substances. But
he can’t have it all.79 So to the extent to which Leibniz was attracted to an account of
perfection that truly maximized both identity and diversity, perhaps he too should
have admitted just how much Spinoza’s conceptual dependence monism has going for
it, after all.
79
I explore this monistic pressure on Leibniz from perfection more fully in Newlands, “From Theism to
Idealism to Monism: A Leibnizian Path Not Taken.”
4
Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Modality
Spinoza’s views on necessity and contingency, which he claimed were the “principal
basis” of his Ethics (Ep 75), have not been well received by his readers, to put it mildly.
From Spinoza’s contemporaries to our own, readers of the Ethics have denounced
Spinoza’s views on modality as metaphysically confused at best, ethically nihilistic at
worst.1 This may suggest that there is a consensus about Spinoza’s metaphysics of
modality and that interpreters differ only to the extent to which they distance them-
selves from his outrageous position.
Admittedly, a cursory reading of certain passages suggests that if Spinoza is clear
anywhere, it is surely in his views of necessity and contingency, which he claims to have
shown “more clearly than the noon light” (Ip33s1). Spinoza writes, “In nature there is
nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the
divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way” (Ip29) and “things could
have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been
produced” (Ip33). Passages like these suggest that Spinoza embraced necessitarianism,
according to which falsity and impossibility are coextensive. The actual world, we
might now say, is the only possible world. Events could not, in the strongest sense of
that expression, have gone any differently than they in fact have gone.
However, such a picture of the interpretive landscape would be misleading. As with
Spinoza’s views on metaphysical dependence, there has been a renaissance of interest
in Spinoza’s views on modality, spawning numerous articles and chapters on Spinoza’s
modal commitments in the past several decades.2 From this boon of research and
interest (relative to Spinoza studies), considerable disagreement about Spinoza’s
modal views has arisen.
1
See Oldenburg: “If this [necessitarianism] is conceded and affirmed, they say, the sinews of all law, all
virtue and religion are severed” (Ep 74) and Jonathan Bennett: “This implies that every particular propos-
ition is itself necessary, that being the dangerously false thesis towards which his explanatory rationalism
is pushing him” (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 121).
2
For examples, see Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in Historical Perspective”; Curley and Gregory
Walski, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered”; Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism”; Huenemann,
“The Necessity of Finite Modes and Geometrical Containment in Spinoza’s Metaphysics”; Koistinen, “On
the Consistency of Spinoza’s Modal Theory”; Koistinen, “Spinoza’s Proof of Necessitarianism”; Mason,
“Spinoza on Modality”; and Miller, “Spinoza’s Possibilities.” For books with chapter-length treatments, see
Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics; Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics; Delahunty, Spinoza; Donagan, Spinoza;
and Mason, The God of Spinoza.
Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Modality 91
The bulk of the discussion has focused on the distribution of modal properties:
which things exist necessarily, according to Spinoza? It is widely agreed that Spinoza
thinks God, God’s attributes, and God’s infinite modes exist necessarily,3 but some
interpreters have argued that finite modes exist only contingently.4 Others have
defended a full-blown necessitarian interpretation,5 and some have suggested that
Spinoza was just plain modally confused in one way or another.6
Although the debate has been lively, I will argue in this chapter that it has been
largely misguided. Interpreters have jumped straight into the question of modal distri-
bution without attending sufficiently to a more fundamental explanatory question
about the nature of modality for Spinoza. In doing so, they have tacitly assumed that
Spinoza thinks the modal status of things is insensitive to the manner in which those
things are conceived. However independently plausible this assumption may be, I will
argue that Spinoza does not accept it. Spinoza believes that the modal status of things
depends, in part, on how those things are conceived. We will see Spinoza employ his
conceptualist strategy to reach this conclusion, which opens the door to a happy inter-
pretive reconciliation: Spinoza affirms both necessitarianism and its denial, relative to
different ways of conceiving things.
If correct, my account will also explain why there have been so many different
interpretations of Spinoza’s modal views. Full-blown necessitarianism is true from a
certain expansive way of conceiving existing finite modes, according to Spinoza. But
from narrower ways of conceiving those modes, something like mere determinism
will follow.7 And conceived in the very narrowest ways, their existence will be purely
contingent. Previous interpreters who disagree over the distribution of necessity in
Spinoza simply fail to appreciate how the scope of their readings must be curtailed.
They are each correct, but only partially so.
Similarly, I will argue that those who interpret Spinoza’s claims about contingency
along purely epistemic lines are right to highlight the important role that conceptual
3
The textual basis for this agreement is fairly strong: Ip11 for God, Ip10s, Ip11, and Ip19 for attributes,
and Ip21–2 for infinite modes.
4
See Curley and Walski, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered,” Martin, “A New Challenge to the
Necessitarian Reading of Spinoza,” and Renz, “Explicable Explainers.”
5
This is the position of Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in Historical Perspective,” Garrett,
“Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” Koistinen, “Spinoza’s Proof of Necessitarianism,” and Della Rocca,
Spinoza, 69–78.
6
See especially Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 124. Others have attributed views on modality to
Spinoza that, so far as I can tell, would entail that Spinoza was modally confused, were the interpretations
correct (see Mason, “Spinoza on Modality” and Miller, “Spinoza’s Possibilities.”)
7
Curley distinguishes what I am calling “mere determinism” from the position he ascribes to Spinoza,
which he calls “moderate necessitarianism” (Curley and Walski, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Recon-
sidered,” 241). However, for reasons we will see, the difference between, say, Leibnizian causal determinism
and what Curley ascribes to Spinoza has no impact on the modal strength of Spinoza’s modal conclusions
(whatever “strength” might even mean here). Hence, the label of “moderate necessitarianism” is misleading
and unhelpful for my purposes, even if it correctly signals that determinism can come in a variety of forms.
relations play in Spinoza’s modal conclusions.8 However, they are mistaken when
they take the mediating role of concepts to generate a purely epistemic modal space.
Spinoza is primarily concerned with metaphysical, not epistemic, modalities, but he
thinks modal status is sensitive to how things are conceived.
I will defend my interpretation using the framework I introduced in chapter two.9
I conclude by discussing an element of pessimism in Spinoza’s modal views. Given
our cognitive limitations, we almost invariably fail to conceive particular finite things
as existing necessarily. In light of Spinoza’s later arguments that we have very strong,
self-interested motivations to adopt necessitarianism, this turns out to be a rather
gloomy conclusion. It would be better for us to do something that we almost certainly
will not do. In addition to setting up later chapters on Spinoza’s moral theory, this
underappreciated modal pessimism also provides further indirect support for my
overall conceptualist interpretation of Spinoza’s modal theory.
1. Warm-up: Contingency, Necessity,

and Conceptual Sensitivity
Although Spinoza thought he had explained his modal views clearly, his claims about
the modal status of finite things appear to conflict. On the one hand, Spinoza asserts,
“All things have necessarily flowed, or always follow, by the same necessity and in the
same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity to eternity, that
its three angles are equal to two right angles” (Ip17s). This suggests that finite things
exist necessarily in the same sense in which geometrical truths are necessary and that
existing finite things could not have failed to exist.
On the other hand, Spinoza claims, “The essence of man does not involve necessary
existence, that is, from the order of nature it can happen equally that this or that
man does exist or that he does not exist” (IIa1). Although the first part of this axiom is
quite traditional, Spinoza appears to claim in the second half that the existence of
particular people is contingent in that any existing person could well (“equally”!) have
failed to exist. Textual pairings like these prompted Jonathan Bennett to remark, “In
certain ways, Spinoza commits himself to the remarkable conclusion that there are no
contingent truths . . . in other ways he commits himself to the opposite.”10
This textual variability is not limited to the Ethics. In Spinoza’s Cogitata Metaphysica,
he writes,
Things, e.g. material things, are said to be either impossible or necessary with respect to their
cause. For if we consider only their essence [tantum ad earum essentiam respicimus], we can
conceive it clearly and distinctly without existence (CM I.3, G I/240).
See especially Mason, “Spinoza on Modality” and Miller, “Spinoza’s Possibilities.”

8
For other ways of presenting and defending this reading, see Newlands, “Spinoza’s Relevance to
9
Contemporary Metaphysics,” “Spinoza’s Modal Metaphysics,” and “The Harmony of Leibniz and Spinoza.”
10
Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 111.
This again suggests that, in some sense, existing finite things could have failed to exist.
And yet, just a few paragraphs later, Spinoza appears to reach nearly the opposite
conclusion: “If [someone] attends [attendat] to nature and the way it depends on God,
he will find nothing contingent in things” (CM I.3, G I/242).
But as usual with Spinoza, matters are not quite so straightforward. These passages
from CM involve appeals to how things are considered, suggesting something
subtler than straightforward contradiction. In the first CM passage, Spinoza assumes
that there is a clear and distinct way of considering or conceiving an object very
narrowly, that is, “considering only its essence.”11 In chapter one, I described such ways
of conceiving a thing as “narrow” (NCs). I argued that Spinoza’s plentiful ontology
requires that things can be expressed in such narrow ways and that not all NCs are false
or confused. Spinoza reinforces this here by describing the relevant NC as having “clear
and distinct” content.
By design, such a narrow way of conceiving a thing does not include any relation
to external causes; a fortiori it does not include the external cause of a finite thing’s
existence. Spinoza’s point in this passage is that insofar as we conceive a finite thing
narrowly, we can clearly and distinctly conceive that object’s nonexistence. So con-
ceived, it might not have existed. It is noteworthy that Spinoza does not appeal simply
to what is true about a finite thing in virtue of its essence alone. He does not simply
say that a finite thing’s essence does not involve existence. He explicitly invokes a con-
ceiving or considering relation to reach his conclusion. A thing conceived in a certain
manner does not exist necessarily—at least, so conceived.
Spinoza affirms the possible nonexistence of existing finite objects, considered
narrowly, in a number of other places. For example, in his so-called “Letter on the
Infinite” he claims with respect to existing finite modes,
even though they [now] exist, we can conceive [concipere] them as not existing. From this it
follows that when we attend [attendimus] only to the essence of modes, and not to the order of
the whole of nature, it cannot be concluded from their existing now that they will or will not
exist later, or that they have or have not existed earlier (Ep 12, G IV/54).
Although it is a little ambiguous, Spinoza seems to be claiming that existing finite

things, conceived narrowly, could have failed to exist. He uses epistemic language here
(necessary existence “cannot be concluded”), but we will see later that this is elliptical
and potentially misleading. Necessary existence cannot be inferred because the con-
cept of a finite thing, conceived independently of “the order of the whole of nature,”
lacks the required content for necessary existence to be true of that thing. While it
follows that we cannot conclude that such an object exists necessarily, the modal con-
clusion follows most immediately from the conceptual point, not its epistemic upshot.
11
Spinoza uses considerare, concipere, attendere, and respicere interchangeably in this passage (see also
Ip15s, IIp6, IVd3–4).
In the Ethics, Spinoza claims that conceivable nonexistence entails the lack of an
“involvement” relation: “If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not
involve existence” (Ia7). In the next section, we will see evidence that this involvement
relation is conceptual in kind. If a thing can be conceived as nonexisting, the concept of
existence is not involved or contained in the concept of its essence. Put another
way, if a thing can be conceived as nonexisting, then existence is not involved in its NC.
Spinoza affirms the consequent of this for all modes in Ip24: “The essence of things
produced by God does not involve existence.” In the demonstration, he argues
(by reductio) that if a thing’s nature, “considered in itself,” involves existence, then it
must be self-caused. But no mode is self-caused, according to Spinoza. This is just
another way of saying that the NC of existing modes does not contain the concept of
existence. Their existence depends on and follows only from the activity of other
things, the content of which is not contained in their NC.
We are beginning to see that Spinoza associates contingency with certain narrower
ways of being conceived. In the Ethics, Spinoza outright defines contingency in terms
of how things are conceived: “I call singular things contingent insofar as we find
[invenimus] nothing, while attending [attendimus] only to their essence, which neces-
sarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it” (IVd3). It is clear from this
definition that Spinoza understands contingent existence to entail neither necessary
nor impossible existence, just as we commonly treat contingency today. But Spinoza
adds what many contemporary metaphysicians might see as an odd conceptual com-
ponent to the definition. If the NC of an object involves neither necessary existence
nor impossibility, then that object exists contingently. Indeed, it seems to be in virtue
of the lack of a certain conceptual containment in NCs that finite things exist contin-
gently, so narrowly conceived. We just saw that Spinoza thinks this is true of the NCs
of all modes. Hence, by this definition, existing finite things, conceived narrowly, exist
contingently, according to Spinoza.
By itself, Spinoza’s association of contingency with a certain way of conceiving
things does not establish very much. For it could be that NCs incorrectly capture objects’
true modal status. However, once we add in what I will argue in the next section,
namely that an object’s true modal status depends in part on how it is conceived,
Spinoza’s conclusion about the contingency of finite things, so conceived, becomes
quite significant. Existing finite modes, conceived in a certain way, truly are contin-
gent, for Spinoza.
A few paragraphs after that first CM passage, Spinoza draws a contrast: “It follows
from this that if we were to conceive [conciperemus] the whole order of nature, we
should discover that many things, whose nature we perceive clearly and distinctly . . .
cannot in any way [nullo modo] exist” (CM I.3, G I/241). Spinoza here points to a
different, much broader way of conceiving things, in relation to “the whole order of
nature,” which includes causal relations to infinitely many other finite things.
Under such a maximally broad way (BC) of conceiving a finite mode, Spinoza claims
that different modal features of the objects follow (in the example of this passage,
necessary nonexistence). Recall that Spinoza makes a similar appeal in the second,
necessitarian-sounding CM passage: “If [someone] attends [attendat] to nature and
the way it depends on God, he will find nothing contingent in things” (CM I.3, G I/242).
Things conceived in relation to all of nature and, ultimately, to God, exist necessarily,
according to Spinoza.
Before worrying about whether this is consistent with his claims about contingency,
notice again how Spinoza associates a thing’s modal status—necessary or impossible
existence—with a way of being conceived. In these CM passages, Spinoza contrasts a
thing, conceived narrowly and existing contingently, with that same thing, conceived
broadly and existing necessarily. Spinoza seems to think that the modal status of a
thing is sensitive to how it is conceived.
Spinoza vividly expresses the conceptual sensitivity of modality in Ip35: “Whatever
we conceive to be in God’s power, necessarily exists.” Although it would be easy to
elide the conceptual qualifier in this text, I see no good reason to do so. Spinoza does
not say simply that whatever is in God’s power necessarily exists. He claims instead
that insofar as things are conceived to be in God’s power, they necessarily exist. The
necessity of things is somehow tied to conceptual content, a point he emphasizes in
the demonstration of Ip35 with “comprehend”: “For whatever is in God’s power must
be so comprehended by his essence that it necessarily follows from it, and therefore
necessarily exists” (Ip35d). In the next section, we will see why Spinoza thinks neces-
sity and contingency exhibit such conceptual sensitivity.
2. Spinoza’s Conceptualist Account of Modality

I will now argue that the aforementioned conceptual sensitivity of modality follows
from Spinoza’s identification of necessity with certain conceptual connections and
contingency with the lack of those conceptual connections. This, in turn, allows Spinoza
to affirm a kind of modal variability, insofar as one thing can be conceived in multiple,
modally relevant ways. In short, we will see another instance of Spinoza’s conceptualist
strategy at work.
Just what is modality, according to Spinoza? Although his account is not as fully
developed as what we would expect from contemporary metaphysicians, Spinoza
operates with a theory of modality that informs his other modal commitments. But as
usual with Spinoza, it requires some careful textual unpacking to see it.
Let us begin with a basic assumption that Spinoza makes about the nature of
modality. He writes, “A thing is called necessary either by reason of its essence or by
reason of its cause” (Ip33s1). A thing that exists necessarily does so in virtue of other
features of that thing, namely in virtue of its essence or its causal relations. I will unpack
this specific claim later, but notice the more general assumption: a thing’s modal
features are due to other features of that thing. A thing’s modal profile is not an
ungrounded feature of that thing; modal features are explicable in terms of some
other features. In more contemporary terms, if objects have modal properties, their
instantiation is explained by other properties those objects have. Likewise, if modal

ascriptions about things are true, then they are true in virtue of other features of those
things. In slogan form: modality is not primitive, according to Spinoza.
This is not a terribly surprising conclusion for Spinoza to have reached. Given
Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism, Spinoza had better treat the modal features of a thing
as explicable. Spinoza claims that a thing’s modal features are at least partly explicable
by that thing’s essence or its actual causes. According to Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism,
this account must generalize if it is to be a proper explanation. Hence all the modal
features of a thing will be explicable in terms of its essence or its causes.
It is tempting to move quickly from Spinoza’s conceptualist account of causation
and essences to the conclusion that modality is likewise a conceptual feature of
things for Spinoza.12 Applying those accounts to Ip33s1, it would follow that a thing
exists necessarily for reasons involving conceptual relations, such as the contain-
ment of existence in the concept of that thing’s essence. But this quicker route rests
on contentious claims about Spinoza’s theories of causation and essences, and while
I think such systematic overlap is a significant virtue of my overall interpretation,
I will not rest the weight of this chapter solely on the conclusions of other chapters.
We can see that Spinoza endorses a conceptualist account of modality using more
neutral textual grounds.
2.1 The Nature of God’s Necessity

God is often a good starting point for Spinoza. Spinoza claims that God exists necessar-
ily.13 In light of what we have just seen in Ip33s1, Spinoza should not treat this feature
of God as primitive. The necessity of God’s existence should be explicable. At first, this
might seem like an odd expectation. Once explanations reach a necessarily existing
object, are there any further in virtue of questions to be asked about why that object
exists? Once we reach necessity, haven’t we reached the end of explanations?14 Not
always. Arguably, mathematics is full of asymmetrical dependence and explanatory
relations among necessarily true propositions. Similarly, Spinoza thinks that substance
both necessarily exists and asymmetrically explains other necessarily existing things.
Hence Spinoza should think dependence and explanation are more fine-grained than
our modern logical entailment allows, since according to the latter, every necessary
proposition entails and is entailed by every other necessary proposition.15
12
See chapters three and five for the conceptualist accounts of causation and essences.
13
Ip11.
14
Not everyone has even this initial reaction. Ted Sider, for example, takes it as obvious that necessary
existents present an explanatory demand: “Whether something is a certain way seems unproblematic, but
that things might be otherwise, or must be as they are, seems to call out for explanation” (Sider, “Reductive
Theories of Modality,” 184).
15
The case of necessary covariation is one of the stock examples in contemporary discussions used to
show why we need an account of dependence (like grounding) that involves a more fine-grained form of
dependence than entailment or any kind of mere modal covariation.
What could explain the necessity of God’s existence, according to Spinoza? There
are not very many candidates available, since appealing to anything distinct from God
would violate what Spinoza takes to be God’s explanatory self-sufficiency. Spinoza’s
answer must be that something about God’s own nature explains the necessity of God’s
existence. And since Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism requires the explanans to apply
universally, whatever explains the modal status of God’s existence ought to also be the
explanans for the modal status of everything else.
Spinoza is not alone in looking to God for a general explanation of modality. During
the seventeenth century, there was a vibrant debate about how God might provide the
grounds of modal truths and modal truth-makers.16 However, Spinoza could not
accept many of the usual options.
Spinoza could not, for example, appeal to God’s arbitrary volitions to provide the
ontological grounds for modal truths, as Descartes and Arnauld had suggested.
According to Spinoza, God’s will is just a mode of one of God’s attributes,17 and as a
mere mode, God’s will is posterior to a range of divine modal facts, including God’s
necessary existence. So at least some modal features obtain independently of God’s
volitions, according to Spinoza. However, Spinoza would violate his explanatory
naturalism if he tried to explain some of God’s modal features in one way (without
appeal to God’s will) and other modal features another way (by appeal to God’s will).
Hence, if the grounds of some modal truths are independent of God’s will, then the
grounds of all modal truths are independent of God’s will for Spinoza.
Spinoza also could not join Malebranche and Leibniz in grounding modal truths
entirely in the divine intellect. For one, Spinoza denies that an intellect is, strictly
speaking, among the most ontologically basic features of God.18 Furthermore, the
ontological grounds of all modal truths cannot lie in intellectual relations among
divine ideas because, according to Spinoza, there are modal truths about extension
that must be explained without any appeal to the attribute of thought.19 Once again,
given Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism, if elements of Thought cannot explain modal
features of Extension, then elements of Thought cannot explain modal facts at all.20
More generally, any attribute-specific features of God will be unsuited for explaining
and grounding modality for Spinoza.21
Rather than appealing to God’s will or ideas, Spinoza’s alternative account of modal-
ity runs through—what else?—conceptual relations. Consider again the case of God’s
16
For more on various early modern accounts of the divine ground of modality, see Newlands, “Leibniz
and the Ground of Possibility.”
17
Ip17s. 18
Ip17s; IIp1.
19
The explanatory barrier between attributes (Ip10) prevents the modal status of extended things to be
explained by appeal to items of Thought, including God’s ideas.
20
This provides us with yet another reason to distinguish ideas from concepts, the mental from the
conceptual, in Spinoza.
21
Elsewhere, I have argued that Spinoza raises an independent concern about alternative theistic
accounts of the grounds of modality, one that puts pressure on their advocates into accepting a form of
Spinozism. For more on this modal pressure toward Spinozism, see Newlands, “Backing into Spinozism.”
own necessary existence: “God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each

of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists” (Ip11). In his
demonstration, Spinoza appeals back to Ip7: “It pertains to the nature of a substance
to exist.” The demonstration of Ip7, in turn, appeals to a causal feature of substances,
namely that they are self-caused: “A substance cannot be produced by anything
else (by Ip6c); therefore it will be the cause of itself, that is (by Id1), its essence neces-
sarily involves existence or it pertains to its nature to exist” (Ip7d). Here Spinoza
explains the necessity of a substance’s existence in terms of an “involvement” relation,
namely the involvement of existence in a substance’s essence. In 1d1, cited in Ip7d,
Spinoza glosses this involvement relation in conceptual terms: “By cause of itself,
I understand that whose essence involves existence, or [sive] that whose nature
cannot be conceived except as existing” (Id1).22 Put together, the necessity of God’s
existence is explained at least in part by the fact that existence is part of the concept
of God’s essence.
More generally, Spinoza thinks God’s modal status is explained by what is contained
in the concept of God’s essence. Spinoza reinforces the conceptual connection between
God’s essence and existence by associating necessary existence with a thing’s real
definition: “Now since it pertains to the nature of a substance to exist (by what we have
already shown in this scholium), its definition must involve necessary existence, and
consequently its existence must be inferred from its definition alone” (Ip8s2). God’s
existence is necessary because the concept of existence is contained in God’s definition,
i.e., in the concept of God’s essence.23
Spinoza outright defines the necessity of God’s existence in these terms in Ip19d:
“For God is a substance, which necessarily exists, that is [hoc est] to whose nature it
pertains to exist or (what is the same), from whose definition it follows that he exists.”
He again affirms that the necessity of God’s existence is explained by a conceptual
connection in Ip24d: “For that whose nature (considered in itself) involves existence
is its own cause and exists only from the necessity of its nature.”24 Things that exist
by reason of their own nature exist necessarily, and this is because the thing’s nature,
considered or conceived in a certain way, contains existence.25
In his commentary on Descartes, Spinoza appeals explicitly to the conceptual
grounds of God’s necessary existence. Although Spinoza may be repeating Descartes’
22
For other conceptual glosses on “involves” and “pertains to the nature of,” see IIp1d, IIp49d, and
Vp29d.
23
In this passage, Spinoza is clear that necessary existence is established by the involvement relation
itself. His epistemic point about inference is presented as a consequence of this, not as constitutive of it. In
other words, his epistemic point about modality follows from, and is not constituted by, his metaphysical
point about modality.
24
In his translation, Curley places the parenthetical remark after “existence,” but the Latin is clear that it
modifies “nature”: “Id enim, cujus natura (in se scilicet considerate) involvit existentiam, causa est sui & ex
sola suae naturae necessitate existit” (G II/67).
25
For the converse claim, also made in conceptual terms, see the sixth annotation to Spinoza’s TTP
(TTP 262, G III/252–3).
ontological argument from the Fifth Meditation, he presents it in his own preferred
terms of “blessedness” and “love,” which suggests an endorsement as well:
Indeed, almost all that knowledge of God’s attributes through which we are led to love of him,
or the highest blessedness, depends on this alone: that existence pertains to the nature of God,
or [sive] that the concept of God involves necessary existence just as the concept of a triangle
involves that its three angles are equal to two right angles, or that his existence, no less than his
essence, is an eternal truth” (PCP Ip5s, G I/158).26
Here Spinoza invokes geometrical containment as the clearest example of conceptual

containment. The necessity of God’s existence is explained by a conceptual contain-
ment relation that is similar in kind to the containment of content about interior angles
in the concept of a triangle in Euclidean geometry.
2.2 The Nature of Modality for Modes

We have seen Spinoza explain God’s necessity in conceptual terms. In Ip17s, Spinoza
claims that the necessity of a mode’s existence is “the same necessity and [follows] in
the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity to eternity, that its
three angles are equal to two right angles.”27 As in the case of God, Spinoza uses these
geometric illustrations to point to the conceptual relations that determine and explain
the modal status of modes’ existence.28 Similarly, in Ip16d, Spinoza describes the
necessity of modes in terms of the way in which “a number of properties” follow from a
“thing’s definition,” where again the relation of following from a thing’s definition is
a relation of conceptual containment.29 In other words, as with God, the modal status
of finite things depends at least in part on conceptual relations.
Recall that Spinoza distinguishes between two possible sources of necessity in
Ip33s1: a thing’s essence or its causes. That is a bit misleading, since, as we saw, Spinoza
also appeals to causation—God’s self-causation—to explain God’s necessary existence.
A more apt paraphrase of Ip33s1 would be: everything that exists necessarily does
so in virtue of conceptual connections with either internal or external cause(s).30 But
in light of the previous chapter, according to which causal relations are themselves
conceptual relations, a yet fuller unpacking of this passage is that everything that exists
necessarily does so in virtue of certain conceptual relations.
26
For Descartes’ version, see CSM II/46–7, AT VII.67; for a similar version in the Ethics, see Ip17s,
G II/62. I am grateful to a referee for correcting an earlier version of this claim.
27
Spinoza fails to fully separate temporal locutions from modal locutions, standing near the tail end of
the long-standing Aristotelian legacy that claimed necessarily p iff always p or eternally p. (Spinoza stood
near the very end of that disastrous tradition, as it was one of Leibniz’s crowning modal achievements to
decisively pull apart temporal and modal notions.) The mostly harmless association in Spinoza of necessity
and eternality, vividly displayed in notions like “eternal truths” (i.e., necessary truths), crops up here and
elsewhere (e.g., Ip10s, Ip19d, Ip19s, Ip20c1, Ip21–2). For a passage in which this association does some
work and so becomes more worrisome, see Ip20c2.
28
See also IIp49d. 29
See chapter three for a more thorough defense of this claim.
30
See also Ep 60, where Spinoza invokes an internal–external cause distinction and applies it to God.
Unlike substance, however, the essences of modes do not conceptually involve

existence, according to Spinoza: “The essence of things produced by God does not
involve existence” (Ip24). Hence, if modes necessarily exist, that necessity is not due
solely to the concept of their essence. As Spinoza’s reductio in the demonstration
runs, “For that whose nature (considered in itself) involves existence is its own cause
and exists only from the necessity of its nature” (Ip24d). So, if modes nonetheless exist
necessarily, their modal states must be due to a conceptual connection to something
besides their own essence.
What is this alternative source of necessity? Spinoza reasons that if an object
necessarily follows from something that itself necessarily exists, then that object
also necessarily exists (Ip21–3). Spinoza treats the reasons for necessity in Ip33s to
be exhaustive, in which case his claim about the necessity of modes is even stronger.
If modes exist necessarily, they do so only in virtue of necessarily following from
something that itself necessarily exists. This reasoning is based on what I have else-
where called Spinoza’s modal transfer principle, one that is closely connected to the
Distribution Axiom in contemporary modal logic: ◽(p → q) → (◽p→◽q).31 Of course,
as we saw in the previous chapter, Spinoza’s following-from relation is not the strict
logical entailment of contemporary modal logic. Following-from, for Spinoza, is a
causal relation (which, I argued, is itself a conceptual relation).
Spinoza’s point is that necessity transfers down following-from chains. If x necessarily
exists and if y necessarily follows from x, then y necessarily exists too. Spinoza also
appeals to an event version of this principle in the Preface to Part IV: “Whatever follows
from the necessity of the nature of an efficient cause happens necessarily” (G II/208).
Hence, a necessarily existing thing can derive its necessity from an external source.
If God’s existence is absolutely necessary and the existence of Bruce Springsteen
necessarily follows from God’s existence, then Springsteen’s existence will also be
necessary. Whatever differences there may be between a thing that exists necessarily
in virtue of its own nature and one that exists necessarily in virtue of following from
the necessity of another, that distinction is wholly internal to necessity. That is, differ-
ences between an external and internal source of necessity does not entail differences
in type of necessity or strength of necessity (whatever that may mean), and Spinoza
nowhere says that it does.32
In the previous chapter, I showed how conceptual dependence monism explains
Spinoza’s reasoning about substitution failures in some causal ascriptions. In a similar
vein, Spinoza’s conceptualist account of modality neatly explains why Spinoza
endorsed his modal transfer principle in the first place. I argued in chapter three that
31
See also Newlands, “Spinoza’s Modal Metaphysics” and “The Harmony of Leibniz and Spinoza,”
76fn25. Spinoza’s modal transfer principle is stronger than the distribution axiom in that it states a jointly
sufficient and necessary condition for necessary existence, whereas the distribution axiom states only a
sufficient condition for de re necessity. For an early modern discussion of the distribution axiom, see
Leibniz, CP 55–7.
32
Kant makes this point forcefully (NE 22).
following-from is a conceptual relation for Spinoza. Here, I have claimed that

necessary connections are likewise certain conceptual connections for Spinoza.
Together, these conceptual identifications explain why Spinoza thinks necessity
tracks following-from relations. They track each other because both are tracking the
same relations of conceptual involvement. In other words, the covariation of following-
from and necessity in the modal transfer principle is explained by Spinoza’s further
identification of both instances of dependence with the same conceptual involvement
relations. Indeed, the deepest reason why the necessity of a mode depends on its
causes is that the causal relation is itself conceptual, and modality is a function of
those conceptual relations.
Although I have been focusing on Spinoza’s account of the nature of necessity, his
claims about the nature of contingency also invoke the conceptual. In general terms,
contingency obtains when certain conceptual connections are lacking. In the case
of contingent existence, an object exists contingently just in case its concept neither
involves existence nor is involved in the concept of something else whose concept con-
tains existence. Hence, if a mode is conceived in such a way that it is not conceived in
relation to something whose concept involves existence, that mode exists contingently
and not necessarily. This is just how Spinoza defines contingency: “I call singular things
contingent insofar as we find nothing, while we attend only to their essence, which
necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it” (IVd3).
Independently of how a mode is conceived, necessitarianism and its denial correspond
equally to the modal status of modes—namely, not at all. Spinoza’s famous remark in
Ip33s1 can be read, somewhat elliptically, in this light: “By these propositions I have
shown more clearly than the noon light that there is absolutely nothing in things
[in rebus] on account of which they can be called contingent.” This is quite true on my
reading, if “in things” is read as “in things, independently of how they are conceived.”
There is no contingency “in things” in this sense, for things lack a modal status entirely,
independently of how they are conceived. Although he does not say it here, the same
will be true for necessity. There is also no necessity “in things,” if that refers to a
concept-independent modal status.33
3. The Distribution of Modality

This raises a worrisome question. If the modal status of a thing depends partly on how
it is conceived, what happens if a thing is conceived in different, modally salient ways?
For example, if my desk, conceived in one way, exists contingently, but that very same
desk, conceived in another way, exists necessarily, would this entail that my desk has an
33
Admittedly, Spinoza does not make this parallel claim about necessity. Another reading of this
passage that is consistent with my interpretation would emphasize that this proposition is stated from a
particularly broad vantage point, as evidenced by the first sentence of the demonstration: “For all things
have necessarily followed from God’s given nature (by Ip16), and have been determined from the necessity
of God’s nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way.”
inconsistent modal profile? Not necessarily (!). For if the modal profile of my desk is
sensitive to these different ways of being conceived, then whether my desk exists
contingently or necessarily could vary consistently across different ways of being
conceived. In other words, it could turn out that my desk exists contingently and
necessarily, relative to different ways of being conceived. So long as the ascriptions of
modal features were correctly tied to the relevant ways of conceiving the object, such
seemingly inconsistent pairs of predications could both be true.
Recall Bennett’s bleak observation: “In certain ways, Spinoza commits himself to
the remarkable conclusion that there are no contingent truths . . . in other ways he com-
mits himself to the opposite.” From this, Bennett drew a scathing conclusion: “Spinoza
was no logician; his modal thinking seems to have been neither skillful nor
knowledgeable.”34 However, this dour indictment is unwarranted as long as Spinoza
carefully ties the modal status of things to the ways in which they are conceived.35
That is, Spinoza’s varying claims about the contingency and the necessity of finite
things would be consistent if he also affirms:
(1) One and the same finite thing can be genuinely conceived in broader and
narrower ways.
(2) The modality of a finite thing varies relative to some of those broader and
narrower ways of being conceived.
In chapter one, I argued that Spinoza accepts (1) in virtue of his expressive plenitude
doctrine. In the previous two sections, we have seen Spinoza employ the distinctions
between broader and narrower ways of conceiving one and the same finite thing in
the context of modal ascriptions. I argued that Spinoza thinks that the modal status
of things depends on how they are conceived because necessity and contingency just
are features of how things are conceptually structured. This allows us to understand
Spinoza’s endorsement of (2). If the modal status of things partly depends on how
broadly or narrowly they are conceived, and if one thing can be conceived in these
broader and narrower ways, then the modal status of things can consistently vary in
just the way (2) suggests.
We have already seen some evidence of Spinoza’s acceptance of (2). Although it
tends to be overlooked, Spinoza’s claims about the modal status of finite things are
frequently indexed to various conceptual qualifiers: modes are contingent or neces-
sary “insofar as” (quatenus) they are “attended to,” “considered as,” or “conceived as.”
Read straightforwardly, Spinoza’s idea is that the modality of finite objects can vary
across broader and narrower ways of being conceived.
If finite modes can be conceived in these different ways, what accounts for the
variation in their modal status? Why does a finite mode need to be conceived broadly
in order to exist necessarily? Relying on the modal transfer principle, Spinoza reasons
34
Bennett, A Study in Spinoza’s Ethics, 124.
35
Bennett focuses on modal truths, but Spinoza mostly focuses on the modal status of things.
that a finite mode exists necessarily only if it is conceived through something that
itself exists necessarily. The obvious candidate of such a necessary existent would
be God, the sole and necessarily existing substance, but Spinoza is hesitant to claim
straightforwardly that a finite mode follows from God. In a wordy passage that is worth
quoting at length,36 Spinoza writes:
Whatever has been determined to exist and produce an effect has been so determined by God
(by Ip26 and Ip24c). But what is finite and has a determinate existence could not have been
produced by the absolute nature of an attribute of God; for whatever follows from the absolute
nature of an attribute of God is eternal and infinite (Ip21). It had, therefore, to follow either
from God or from an attribute of God insofar as it is considered to be affected by some mode
[quatenus aliquo modo affectum consideratur] . . . But it also could not follow from God, or from
an attribute of God, insofar as it is affected by a mode which is eternal and infinite (by Ip22).
It had, therefore, to follow from or be determined to exist and produce an effect by God insofar
as it is modified by a mode which is finite and has a determinate existence . . . and in turn, this
cause or mode . . . had also to be determined by another which is also finite and has a determinate
existence; and again . . . and so always (by the same reasoning) to infinity (Ip28d).
This passage contains some fancy tap dancing. Spinoza first acknowledges that every-
thing, including particular finite modes, follow in some way or other from God. But
he claims that particular finite modes do not follow from “the absolute nature of an
attribute of God,” nor from “a mode which is eternal and infinite.” Instead, a finite
mode follows from God “insofar as [God] is considered to be affected” in a certain
way, namely insofar as God is considered as “a mode which is finite and has a deter-
minate existence.”
What is the difference between these two different ways of following from God? Don
Garrett argues convincingly that to follow from the absolute nature of an attribute
for Spinoza is to follow in an unqualified, pervasive, and permanent manner, as only
infinite modes do (Ip21–3). However, Garrett adds, even though particular finite
modes do not follow from an absolute nature of an attribute, Spinoza might still hold
that the entire series of finite modes follows from an absolute nature of an attribute.37
In other words, Spinoza denies only that each particular finite mode follows from
God’s absolute nature considered independently of its relations to other finite modes.
Garrett’s account lets us understand why a finite mode’s modal status depends
partly on how broadly or narrowly it is considered or conceived. An existing finite
mode, considered independently of its relation to the whole series of other finite modes,
36
It is worth quoting in part because it is often thought to be the key passage for the debate over the
scope of Spinoza’s necessitarianism. For reasons why the interpretive disagreement has centered here, see
Newlands, “Spinoza’s Modal Metaphysics.”
37
Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,” 197–8; Garrett suggests that this could be the case if the series
of finite things was itself an infinite mode, of which particular finite things were more like parts. I do not
think a mereological relation is quite the right way to put this, but I agree with Garrett’s more general
thought that his proposal is strengthened if particular modes have determinate features, including modally
salient ones, in virtue of the determinate features of all other finite modes, a kind of holism that will
become important in chapter six.
does not follow from something that necessarily exists. The conceptual nature of the
following-from relation guarantees this. Hence, there is no reason or ground for an
existing finite thing’s necessity, so considered. So considered, its existence is contingent.
By contrast, an existing finite mode, considered in a way that includes its relations to
all other finite modes, exists necessarily. Such an inclusive way of conceiving that mode
involves conceptual connections that invoke Spinoza’s modal transfer principle.
Spinoza obliquely hints at this in Ip17s: “All things have necessarily flowed or always
follow by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle.”
Since, just a few propositions later, Spinoza denies that any particular finite thing
follows immediately from the necessity of God’s nature (Ip28), the plural in Ip17s is
noteworthy. Rather than making a claim about each particular thing, Spinoza seems to
be claiming here that all things, taken together as a whole series, follow from some-
thing that necessarily exists. Hence, a particular mode, conceived in relation to that
totality, will be conceptually connected to something whose concept involves exist-
ence. Hence, conceived so broadly (BC), that mode exists necessarily—that’s just what
necessary existence amounts to, according to Spinoza.
In short, the modal status of a finite mode varies, relative to these broader and
narrower ways of being conceived. Whether or not a mode is considered in relation
to the rest of the series is relevant to its modal status because, on Spinoza’s account,
modal facts are sensitive to the conceptual relations that the considering relation
tracks, as his conceptualist account of modality claims. What had seemed like an
intractable interpretive dispute is thereby neatly dissolved: both necessitarianism and
its denial are consistently true for Spinoza, relative to different ways of conceiving the
objects of the world.38
Spinoza’s appeals to ignorance in his discussion of modality are now easier to
understand as well (e.g., Ip33s1 and IVd4). Ignorance is a leading cause of adopting
less than fully broad ways of conceiving objects, and hence a leading explanation for
predications of contingency. Spinoza’s remarks about ignorance do not, on this read-
ing, shift Spinoza’s claims about the link between ignorance and contingency into a
purely epistemic modal space, as some have suggested.39 It is true that the reason why
we conceive objects more narrowly than BC is often due to our ignorance. But ignor-
ance does not generate the contingency; it explains our adopting narrower ways of
conceiving particular things, which is the real source of contingency.
This ecumenical conclusion also provides an answer to Curley’s otherwise worri-
some objection to the necessitarian interpretation: “If each particular feature of the
universe, considered in itself, is contingent, then their totality is also contingent.”40 The
38
For a more thorough presentation of this debate, with all of its back-and-forths (which I do not
rehearse here), see Newlands, “Spinoza’s Modal Metaphysics.”
39
See, for example, Mason, “Spinoza on Modality” and Miller, “Spinoza’s Possibilities.”
40
Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method, 49; it also allows us to answer Bennett’s parallel complaint
(Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 123).
expansion of contingency from the part to the whole would be true only if the shift
in the ways modes are conceived did not sometimes entail a shift in the mode’s modal
status. However natural this essentialist assumption may appear to some readers today,
it is false according to Spinoza. Just as necessitarianism at the most expansive concep-
tual level does not jeopardize contingency at the narrower level, so too contingency
at the narrower level does not entail an explosion of contingency into the broadest
conception of modes.
In contemporary metaphysics, the thesis that a thing’s modal status depends partly
on how it is conceived would be characterized as a broadly anti-essentialist thesis about
modality. Although its grip may be again loosening, the orthodox view over the past
forty years in contemporary metaphysics has been thoroughly essentialist, resting on
the thesis that the de re modal properties of objects are insensitive to ways of conceiving,
referring to, or designating objects.41 Perhaps the dominance of such essentialism during
the era in which contemporary interpreters became most interested in Spinoza’s modal
views helps explain why they frequently assumed Spinoza accepted it as well.42
I do not want to overstate the resemblance between Spinoza’s conceptualist modal
theory and contemporary forms of anti-essentialism.43 As we have seen, Spinoza
focuses almost exclusively on the modal status of existing things, whether they exist
necessarily or contingently. He says much less about the modality of events, most
other features of things, and more general metaphysical theses. (In the next two
chapters, we will encounter Spinoza’s views on some other modally laden features of
things, such as their natural-kind membership and persistence conditions.) I think
Spinoza’s focus stems from his broader interest in dependence—how the world
actually hangs together.44 In light of Spinoza’s account of modality itself, investigat-
ing whether things exist necessarily or contingently just is investigating how things
depend on other things, which, as we saw in the last chapter, Spinoza takes to be a
central task of metaphysics.45
41
For a purely contemporary discussion of this issue, see Sullivan, “Are There Essential Properties?”
forthcoming.
42
An important exception is Della Rocca, who advocates anti-essentialism on other grounds in
contemporary metaphysics. It is one of my great interpretive disappointments in life that I have not yet
convinced him of Spinoza’s own anti-essentialism, despite Della Rocca’s embrace of both Spinozism and
anti-essentialism itself. Rest assured, my failure is not from lack of effort.
43
For a further discussion of Spinoza’s relation to contemporary versions of anti-essentialism, see
Newlands “Spinoza’s Relevance to Contemporary Metaphysics.”
44
This is another reason why Spinoza takes causal relations to be the relevant conceptual content for
determining a thing’s modal status. Spinoza does not treat just any way of conceiving a thing as relevant for
its modal status, as some contemporary anti-essentialists might. The ways of conceiving things that are
relevant for a finite thing’s modal status always involve its dependence (or lack thereof) on other things,
according to Spinoza.
45
Renz argues to the contrary that “even if necessitarianism is true, it does not help us in explaining
either the existence or the action of any particulars” (Renz, “Explicable Explainers,” 84.) I agree that grasp-
ing the modal status of things per se is insufficient for explaining them, but, if I am right here, grasping the
underlying conceptual content is how we explain particulars for Spinoza, even though those concepts
express more than just their modal status.
4. Spinoza’s Modal Pessimism

Spinoza claims that finite things, conceived in the very broadest way, exist necessarily.
But can finite minds like ours adopt such necessitarian perspectives on the world?
Do we ever conceive particular finite things in such maximally broad ways? Perhaps
surprisingly, Spinoza answers, “not really.” Although the metaphysician can know in a
general way what follows from such broad ways of conceiving finite things, she does
not adopt such an expansive conceptual standpoint for any particular thing, according
to Spinoza. In this section we will see why Spinoza is so pessimistic about our modal
abilities, a point that will become important in later chapters on Spinoza’s moral theory.
Along the way, we will also encounter more indirect evidence for—and a bit of possible
evidence against—my overall conceptualist interpretation of his modal theory.
The difficulty with adopting a necessitarian outlook has nothing to do with a
sterilizing worry about a conflict between necessitarianism and our supposed everyday
modal intuitions.46 Spinoza is happy to embrace a very robust error theory about folk
intuitions in metaphysics, and I do not see why he would treat the modal case any
differently. Furthermore, the conceptualist character of Spinoza’s modal theory actu-
ally does accommodate non-necessitarian modal intuitions, at least insofar as those
intuitions track any of the infinitely many narrower concepts of finite objects. Surely
our everyday folk intuitions are not so fine-grained as to reliably track only BC. Indeed,
if the interpretation of this section is correct, we will almost certainly fail to grasp
the broadest ways of conceiving particular things according to Spinoza, so our folk
intuitions about the contingency of particular finite things are actually quite correct
by the lights of Spinoza’s modal theory.
Instead, Spinoza’s modal pessimism follows from what he takes to be our cognitive
limitations, which he discusses in Part II of the Ethics. There is a pretty dramatic shift
between the soaring metaphysical heights of Part I and the rather glum analysis in Part
II of what our minds are capable of clearly and adequately representing about that
metaphysical reality. This shift applies to Spinoza’s claims about modality as well.
Near the end of Part I, Spinoza confidently proclaims, “There is absolutely nothing
in things on account of which they can be called contingent” (Ip33s1). But by IIp31c,
Spinoza concludes:
From this it follows that all particular things are contingent and corruptible. For we can have
no adequate knowledge of their duration (by IIp31), and that is what we must understand by
the contingency of things and the possibility of their corruption (see Ip33s1).
The corollary refers back to IIp31: “We can have only an entirely inadequate knowledge
of the duration of singular things which are outside of us.” This, in turn, is partly
derived from IIp30, which claims that we can have only inadequate knowledge of the
46
Such worries are voiced in Koistinen, “Spinoza’s Proof of Necessitarianism,” 305ff.; Curley and Walski,
“Spinoza’s Necessitarianism Reconsidered,” 242; and Donagan, Spinoza, 73–5.
duration of our own bodies. Our inadequate knowledge of our own bodies limits our
abilities to know about external bodies, which in turn imposes limits on our modal
perspectives. Unpacking these connections requires a brief foray into Spinoza’s
philosophy of mind, in which we will see why the necessitarian perspective is so
difficult to adopt.
According to Spinoza, the human mind is a complex idea that represents an iso-
morphically complex human body.47 The simpler ideas that constitute this complex idea
represent the structurally parallel, simpler bodies that constitute the complex human
body. Spinoza also thinks that our mind immediately represents only this parallel body
and its affections.48 While Spinoza sensibly thinks that we can come to represent other
bodies and bodily events, he claims that we can do this only indirectly by representing
the changes that other bodies produce in our body.49
Despite the close representational connection between a human mind and its body,
Spinoza thinks that we do not have adequate knowledge of our own body. We do not
have adequate knowledge of the parts of our body, its affections, or even its duration.50
Spinoza sometimes emphasizes this by claiming that our knowledge is entirely [admo-
dum] inadequate.51 What does Spinoza mean by “inadequacy” in this context and why
is our knowledge so thoroughly limited?
Although Spinoza formally defines an adequate idea in IId4 as “an idea which, inso-
far as it is considered in itself, has all the properties or intrinsic denominations of a
true idea,” this is not his only formulation.52 The corollary from IIp11 provides an
account that is more relevant to the present discussion:
When we say that God has this or that idea, not only insofar as [quatenus] he constitutes the
nature of the human mind, but insofar as he also has the idea of another thing together with the
human mind, then we say that the human mind perceives the thing only partially or [sive]
inadequately.
Spinoza explains inadequate representation here as involving partial or incomplete

representation.53
By contrast with our inadequate representations, God’s ideas are perfectly adequate,
according to Spinoza.54 In IIp9 and IIp9c, Spinoza claims that God causes a particular
47
See IIp13, IIp15, and IIp13sPost1, G II/102.
48
IIp13. (For discussion of the correct translation of IIp13, see Della Rocca, Representation and the
Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 25–9.)
49
IIp16, IIp16c1, IIp16c2. 50
IIp24, IIp28, IIp30. 51
IIp30 and IIp31.
52
It is noteworthy, however, that in the formal definition of adequate ideas, Spinoza appeals explicitly to
the NC of ideas. So defined, adequacy is tied to particular ways of conceiving things.
53
See also III3p1d (G II/140). Bennett correctly notes that the official definition of adequacy in IId4 is not
the primary understanding of adequacy used here and throughout the rest of the Ethics (Bennett, A Study
of Spinoza’s Ethics, 176).
54
Matters are trickier than this, since it turns out that our inadequate ideas are identical to adequate
ideas in God’s mind (sans the inadequacy), but the mind relativity of representational content and charac-
ter need not concern us here and I will set it aside for ease of exposition. For discussion, see Della Rocca,
Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 44–67.
idea in virtue of having ideas of the causes of that particular idea. Spinoza treats this
as entailing that God has ideas of a particular thing in virtue of having ideas of the
infinite causal history of that singular thing.55 Spinoza ties this representational com-
pleteness to the adequacy of God’s ideas.56 God’s idea of a particular thing is adequate
in virtue of God representing the infinite causal network in which that thing stands.
By contrast, our inadequate ideas represent particulars in a much narrower, more
limited fashion. This is just what Spinoza’s account of inadequacy emphasizes in IIp11c.
The inadequacy of our ideas stem from their incompleteness, from perceiving particu-
lar things “only partially, or inadequately” [ex parte sive inadequate].
Spinoza’s completeness requirement for adequate representations of particular
things is extraordinarily high. Unless we represent a particular thing and its infinite
causal history, we will be stuck with only partial ideas of particular things. But no
matter how clearly I think about my desk or my own body, I never represent them in
relation to an infinitely long and complex history, about which I am almost entirely
ignorant. Frankly, by this standard, it is hard to imagine anyone with minds like ours
ever representing any particular body adequately.57 For similar reasons, if adequately
representing certain features of bodies, such as their duration, requires representing
them in relation to infinitely many other bodies, then our representations of those
features will be not just inadequate, but thoroughly inadequate.58
Returning to Spinoza’s modal pessimism, another feature of particular bodies that
finite minds do not adequately represent is their necessity. Recall his conclusion
in IIp31c:
From this it follows that all particular things are contingent and corruptible. For we can have
no adequate knowledge of their duration (by IIp31), and that is what we must understand by
the contingency of things and the possibility of their corruption (see Ip33s1).
Spinoza seems to be claiming that we do not represent particular things except as

existing contingently for the same reason that we do not adequately represent their
duration. Both representations require a completeness that is captured only in BCs
of things. But, Spinoza thinks, finite minds will almost inevitably fail to represent
particular things so completely.
In short, our nearly inevitable ignorance of the complete causal history of particular
things condemns us to representing them in less than fully broad ways, which in turn
55
Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 55; Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s
Ethics, 176–9.
56
See esp. IIp36d.
57
Perhaps this is why the only adequate ideas that Spinoza unflinchingly attributes to human minds
are those whose content does not depend on relations to other particular things, such as ideas of God’s
essence (IIp45–7) and some non-particular, general features of bodies (IIp38). For a defense of even more
thoroughgoing pessimism about human capacity for adequate ideas, see Kisner, Spinoza on Human
Freedom, 35–44. For a less pessimistic reply, see Marshall, “Man is a God to Man.”
58
Spinoza is clear that our representation of the duration of particular bodies is inadequate because its
duration “depends on the common order of nature and the constitution of [infinitely many other] things,”
almost all of which we fail to grasp (IIp30d).
entails that we invariably represent existing particular things as existing contingently.

In light of Spinoza’s conceptualist theory of modality, this entails the stronger thesis
that the existence particular bodies, so conceived, is contingent. This is just what Spinoza
concludes in IIp31c: “all particular things are contingent.” That sounds like a colossally
bad conclusion for Spinoza to have reached, since he also affirms the necessary exist-
ence of finite things, considered differently—unless he thinks modal facts are sensitive
to these different ways of conceiving things, as I have argued he does.
By the end of Part II of the Ethics, the clouds of pessimism begin to dissipate, and
Spinoza offers us a glimmer of hope despite our cognitive limitations. He connects this
more hopeful prospect with reasoning in a way that bears directly on modality: “It is
the nature of reason to regard [contemplari] things as necessary, not as contingent”
(IIp44). Both Curley and Shirley translate contemplari as “to regard,” which is not a
terrible choice in this context. But in other passages, both translators opt for “consider,”
which is closer to the cognate I think Spinoza is after here. At bottom, I take consider-
ing, regarding, attending to, and conceiving to be synonymous expressions in Spinoza’s
lexicon for grasping a particular way of conceiving a thing.59 So it is at least consistent
with Spinoza’s choice of terminology in IIp44 that reasoning involves conceiving
existing things as necessary by doing just what my conceptualist interpretation pre-
dicts, namely by adopting particularly broad ways of conceiving those things.
However, Spinoza’s demonstration of IIp44 constitutes what I take to be the strong-
est textual threat to my overall conceptualist interpretation of his modal theory. The
demonstration states, “It is the nature of reason to perceive [percipere] things truly
(by IIp41), namely (by Ia6) as they are in themselves [ut in se sunt], that is (by Ip29),
not as contingent but as necessary, q.e.d.” What sounds especially worrisome for
my account is Spinoza’s claim that to perceive things “as they are in themselves” is to
perceive them “as necessary.” The language of “in se” might suggest that there is some
concept-independent bedrock of modal facts that reason somehow grasps.60 Considered
in isolation from everything else Spinoza says regarding modality, I concede that this
is a plausible reading of IIp44d.
However, we now have the resources to understand this passage in another and,
I think, better way. It is important to Spinoza’s claim in IIp44d that it is the nature of
reason to perceive things in this way. The demonstration to IIp44c2 explains more
about the nature of reason and returns to more concept-laden language:
It is the nature of reason to regard [contemplari] things as necessary and not as contingent
(by IIp44). And it perceives this necessity of things truly (by IIp41), that is (by Ia6), as it is in itself
59
The most obvious examples of this synonymy between contemplari and something like concipi are
in IIIp52d, IIIp53d, IIIp55s, where both translators opt for “consider.” Also, in IIp17c and IIIp44d, where
contemplari is translated as “to regard,” the same “conceiving” or “considering” meaning is present.
60
Spinoza does not use the language of things “in themselves” very often, but for another passage in
which he uses it to say something that, at first glance, looks inconsistent with other things he has said, see
the very end of IIp7s, G II/90 (the potential conflict comes with his claim in Ip10s that “each being must be
conceived under some attribute”). For more on how to understand such passages, see chapter nine.
[in se est]. But (by Ip16) this necessity of things is the very [ipsa] necessity of God’s eternal
nature. Therefore, it is the nature of reason to regard [contemplari] things under this species of
eternity. Add to this that the foundations of reason are notions (by IIp38) which explain those
things which are common to all, and which (by IIp37) do not explain the essence of any singu-
lar thing. On that account, they must be conceived [concipi] without any relation to time, but
under a certain species of eternity [sub quadam aeternitatis specie], q.e.d.61
Spinoza focuses on how reason conceives things “sub specie aeternitatis,” better
translated as “under the guise of eternity.” He claims that reason conceives things in
this way by using common notions, which can “only be conceived adequately” (IIp38).
But we have just seen that adequate ways of conceiving things require BC, in which
case Spinoza’s point here is that there is a way of conceiving particular things—via
reason—which involves conceiving them in the broadest, most complete way.
Although tempting, we should not add an “only” into Spinoza’s text where there is
not one. He does not say that reasoning represents the only true way of conceiving
things.62 Conceiving things broadly is certainly one way of conceiving things truly, and
insofar as it is constitutive of “the nature of reason” to regard things so broadly, this is a
way of conceiving them truly, adequately, and, hence, as existing necessarily.63 But that
is consistent with there being other ways of conceiving things, also truly but more nar-
rowly, and therefore, for reasons we have now seen, as existing contingently. I defended
such intra-attribute expressive plenitude in chapter one, and Spinoza cannot be faulted
for not rehearsing it all again in IIp44 itself. He’s on the move here, guiding readers
away from the doldrums of IIp31 to brighter cognitive prospects of reasoning, which
involves adopting very broad ways of conceiving things.
Of course, given what would be involved in grasping a particular thing by reasoning—
namely, conceiving it in relation to infinitely many other things—Spinoza’s hopeful-
ness does not last long. The impersonal nature of his wording in IIp44 is telling.
It may well be part of “the nature of reason” to conceive things as necessary. But, alas,
it may also be part of the nature of humans to never regard particular finite things from
the vantage point of reason.
One important lesson is that when Spinoza tells his readers to adopt the perspective
of reason, he is encouraging us to adopt broader ways of conceiving things. On my
reading, that encouragement cannot be reduced to a demand to perceive things truly,
full stop. In virtue of expressive plenitude, the maximally broad ways of conceiving
things that reasoning adopts are not the only true concepts. Nor, according to the
interpretation of this chapter, does necessitarianism corner the market on modal
61
This is another passage in which Spinoza uses contemplari, concipi, and percipi indiscriminately.
62
For example, Spinoza claimed earlier that “the imaginations of the mind, considered in themselves,
contain no error, or that the mind does not err from the fact that it imagines” (IIp17s), which is important
to keep in mind when reading IIp44c1: “From this it follows that it depends only on the imagination that
we regard things as contingent.”
63
Spinoza rejects reifying psychological faculties like the will and intellect (IIp49), so I think we should
avoid speaking about “reason” and “the imagination” in Spinoza in a reifying manner, as if they were dif-
ferent kinds or sources of mental activity.
truth, for Spinoza. So if Spinoza thinks, as he surely does, that his readers will be
motivated to pursue the vantage point of reason and to try to conceive of existing
particular things as necessary, what sorts of motives might we have for doing so?
As we will see in later chapters, Spinoza offers a broadly practical account. Adopting
broad ways of conceiving things is in our self-interest. In Part V of the Ethics, he applies
this motivation to modality: “Insofar as the mind understands all things as necessary,
it has a greater power over the affects, or is less acted on by them” (Vp6). That is, Spinoza
thinks there are practical, broadly ethical advantages to conceiving existing singular
things as necessary. If so, this puts us in a bind. In light of our cognitive limitations, we
will have practical motivations to do something that we almost surely will never do.
Whether that counts as a cost of Spinoza’s account, or my interpretation of it, must
await further discussion of his moral theory. Before turning there, we need to delve yet
deeper into Spinoza’s account of the natures of particular things. In the next chapter,
we will discover that their very essences also contain an element of conceptual sensitivity.
5
A Conceptualist Account
of Essences
Our investigation has been moving steadily inward, from the ways things depend on
other things to the modal profiles of particular things. We will now reach down into
the essences of things, what Spinoza describes as “the inmost” elements of a thing (TIE
95, G II/34). In both historical and contemporary metaphysics, the nature and role of
essences has been hotly debated, and virtually no consensus has been reached. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, interpretive discussions of Spinoza’s views on essences have been simi-
larly wide-ranging and contentious. Still, one widespread point of agreement in both
metaphysics and Spinoza scholarship is that things have, at most, a single essence or
nature.1 Whatever be the merits of this consensus, I will argue that Spinoza rejects it.
Spinoza instead thinks that essences are quite plentiful: each thing has infinitely many
essences, both across and within attributes.
By this point in the book, this one-to-many pattern is becoming predictable, but
we might yet again wonder how Spinoza thinks he can pull it off. Spinoza’s defense
will also be increasingly familiar. As with his accounts of dependence and modality,
Spinoza’s account of essences is shot through with appeals to the conceptual. In
fact, the same conceptualist defense emerges that we have seen previously. Spinoza
endorses the conceptual sensitivity of essences, which he explains by identifying
essences with features of how things are conceived. This conceptual identifica-
tion, in turn, allows Spinoza to accept a multiplicity of essences for one and the
same thing, both across and within attributes, thereby allowing for consistent
essence variability.
Before examining Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy for essences, we need to under-
stand his basic account of essences. This interpretive task is especially daunting because
Spinoza links essences with so many other central parts of his system: conatus, power,
1
Possible exceptions to this view on the historical side might be scholastics who tied essences very
closely to substantial forms and believed that substances can have multiple substantial forms (see Pasnau,
Metaphysical Themes, 574–96). On the contemporary side, there are anti-essentialists who think, with Quine,
that the essence of a thing can vary depending on how it is described, but who also think, against Quine, that
essences and de re modal ascriptions are nonetheless genuine (see Della Rocca, “Essentialism vs. Essentialism.”)
We will see that a few Spinoza interpreters have claimed that God is supposed to have multiple essences,
though they do not apply this to finite things.
A Conceptualist Account of Essences 113
perfection, desire, virtue, true definition, and natural rights, to name a few.2 Rather
than attempting an exhaustive (and exhausting) account of every aspect of Spinoza’s
theory of essences, I will focus on a few key passages that contain what I take to
be the most central and relevant components of his account.3 I will show that Spinoza
thinks of essences as what I call the explanatory powers of things. Seeing this will
help us understand how and why Spinoza concludes that each thing has infinitely
many essences.
1. Essences as Explanatory Powers

A natural place to begin examining Spinoza’s account of essences is his official definition
of essence in IId2 of the Ethics:
I say that to the essence of any thing belongs [pertinere] that which, being given [dato], the
thing is necessarily posited [positur] and which, being taken away [sublato], the thing is neces-
sarily taken away [tollitur]; or that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived,
and, vice versa, which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing.
Though natural, starting here is not entirely free from controversy. After all, this definition
appears in Part II, whereas Spinoza has already appealed to essences throughout
Part I. This placement looks especially problematic to those who take the Euclidean
structure of Spinoza’s presentation seriously, and some have suggested that Spinoza
intends IId2 to be a definition only of “pertinere”, pertaining to or concerning, and not
really of essence itself.4
I am not persuaded by this restricted reading of IId2, largely because of how Spinoza
uses the definition later. For example, he restates the second half in IIp10s: “Essence is
what the thing can neither be nor be conceived without, and vice versa, what can nei-
ther be nor be conceived without the thing.” Spinoza outright drops the reference to
what “pertains to” an essence without any indication that this elision matters.
Spinoza also appeals to IId2 in IIp37:
If you deny this, conceive (if possible) that is does not constitute [constituere] the essence of
some singular thing, say the essence of B. Then (by IId2) it can neither be nor be conceived
2
See, respectively, IIIp7; IIIp7d; IIIGenDef, G II/204; IIIDefAff1, G II/190; IVd8; TIE 95, G II/34–35;
TTP 16.2, G III/189. Spinoza also uses “essence” and “nature” interchangeably at times (see, for examples,
Id1, IIIp57d, IVp19d, and IVd8), thereby widening the possible connections even further.
3
For a nice overview of other, mostly ontological questions surrounding Spinoza’s theory of essences,
see Martin, “The Framework of Essences in Spinoza’s Ethics.” For an interesting application of these onto-
logical issues to Spinoza’s psychology, see Hübner, “Essence as Power, or Spinoza on Heartbreak.” I return
to some of these connections in later chapters.
4
See especially Donagan, Spinoza, 59–60. The restricted scope reading is also endorsed by Della Rocca,
Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 186n1 and Garrett, Meaning in Spinoza’s Method,
26–7. For other reasons to deny that IId2 is supposed to define “essence,” see Matson, “Body Essence and
Mind Eternity in Spinoza,” and Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 61. For a purely structural defense of
the placement of IId2, see Gueroult, Spinoza I, 26–7.
without B . . . Therefore, it does not pertain [pertinet] to the essence of B, nor does it constitute
[constituit] the essence of any other singular thing, q.e.d.
Here Spinoza uses pertaining to and constituting interchangeably, which suggests that
IId2 also defines what constitutes the essence of a thing. Similarly, in IIp10c, Spinoza
appeals to what pertains to the essence of a thing to infer what constitutes its essence. If
someone still wants to restrict IId2 to defining only what constitutes a thing’s essence,
I suppose I have no deep objection, but I also no longer see the force of the restriction.
This might sound like a nerdy dispute reserved for hardcore Spinoza fans, but
Spinoza’s language of pertaining to and constituting highlights an important ontological
feature of essences. Essences can be complex, admitting of multiple constituents. Such
complexity is implied, for instance, in the plural “modifications” of IIp10c: “From this
it follows that the essence of man is constituted by certain modifications [modifica-
tionibus] of God’s attributes.”5 Hence, in order to understand the essences of particular
things, we will need to consider the constituents of those essences.
By thinking about which features of a thing constitute its essence, we return to
one goal of IId2. Spinoza is trying to provide an extensionally adequate account of
essences. He complains on several occasions that alternative accounts of essences fail
to correctly carve up the essential vs. nonessential features of a thing.6 For example,
one might think that a thing’s essence includes everything that is necessarily required
in order for the thing to exist. Spinoza objects with a nifty counter-example of neces-
sary but nonessential dependence: “Singular things can neither be nor be conceived
without God, and nevertheless, God does not pertain to their essence” (IIp10s).
In a similar vein, Spinoza warns against confusing essential features with propria,
which are necessary but nonessential features of a thing: “To be called perfect, a def-
inition will have to explain the inmost essence of a thing, and to take care not to use
certain propria in its place” (TIE 95, G II/34).7 To use a stock example: although
rationality and risibility are necessarily coextensive properties of humans, the former is
5
See also IIIDefAff1, G II/190. Spinoza is even happy to use parthood language here too, including to
describe the relation between human and divine essences (though presumably in this case the parts depend
on the whole): “Man’s power, therefore, insofar as it is explained by his actual essence, is part of God or
Nature’s infinite power, that is, of its essence” (IVp4d; see also TTP 16.2, G III/189).
6
Spinoza directs this complaint against Descartes; see PP IIa2, G I/183; KV II.Pref, G I/53; and Ip10s,
although I do not think Descartes says quite what Spinoza attributes to him. The closest Descartes comes
is in Principles I.53: “A substance may indeed be known through any attribute at all; but each substance has
one principal property which constitutes its nature and essence, and to which all its other properties are
referred” (CSM 210, AT VIIIa.25). To get Spinoza’s worry going from this, however, we would need to add
that some substances share the same essence. Although Descartes can be read as endorsing that thesis,
I think essences and the corresponding principal attributes are not genuinely shared among Cartesian
distinct substances, so it is not clear that Spinoza’s complaint should have worried Descartes.
7
Other interpreters have noticed this as well; see, for examples, Garrett, “Spinoza’s Necessitarianism,”
201 and Lin, “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Desire: The Demonstration of IIIp6,” 27. For historical background
on this distinction, see Carriero, “Spinoza’s Views on Necessity in Historical Perspective,” 50–4. Recognizing
the distinction between essential and necessary properties in Spinoza also undercuts Bennett’s complaint
that necessitarianism, if true, renders Spinoza’s application of essence trivial or downright false (Bennett,
A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 114).
supposed to be essential, whereas the latter is supposed to be a merely necessary, but

nonessential property of humans. We might now say that a thing’s essential properties
form a proper subset of its necessary properties.8
At first glance, however, it is hard to see how Spinoza’s own definition of essence
does a better job at preserving this distinction. The first clause of IId2 asserts a sym-
metrical condition. The essence of a thing is constituted by only those features of it
that are necessarily coextensive with its existence. But this runs afoul of the essential–
propria distinction, since propria are, by definition, necessary but nonessential features
of existing things.
The second clause of IId2 does a better job.9 It claims that a thing’s essence is consti-
tuted by only features that render it intelligible, features that at least partly explain the
thing. Although propria are necessary features of a thing, they fail to contribute in the
right way to its explanation, and hence, by Spinoza’s second clause, they are not part
of its essence.10 In an earlier text, Spinoza uses this point to criticize previous philo-
sophers who, while seeking “to know what the thing is,” supply only “propria, which
indeed belong to a thing, but never explain what it is” (KV I.7, G I/45). Later in that
same text, Spinoza repeats the explanatory contribution of essences: “That belongs to
the nature of a thing without which the thing can neither exist nor be understood:
but this is not sufficient; it must be in such a way that the proposition is always convert-
ible, such that what is said also can neither be nor be understood without the thing”
(KV II.Pref, G I/53).
In short, the essence of a thing explains that thing, a conclusion about essences that
puts Spinoza on fairly traditional ground. However, as this last passage indicates,
Spinoza emphasizes the symmetry of his explanatory account as well. Just as a thing’s
essence explains that thing, so too a thing explains its essence. That sounds rather odd.
Although Spinoza accepts reflexive dependence when it comes to God, I do not think
he intends to assert widespread explanatory circles here. I take it that Spinoza means to
separate the symmetry out a bit: (a) certain features of a thing constitute its essence and
(b) those features explain certain other features of that thing. The first clause captures
the sense in which a thing explains its essence (namely, in virtue of having features
that constitute its essence), and the second captures the sense in which the essence
explains the thing (namely, in virtue of its essence-constituting features explaining
8
For an example of a purely modal account of essences, consider Terence Parson’s claim: “An essence,
then, is just a predicate which is necessarily true of an object” (Parsons, “Grades of Essentialism in
Quantified Modal Logic,” 183). Kit Fine objected to such purely modal accounts in a series of influential
papers (see, for example, Fine, “Essence and Modality”), and the distinction between the essential and the
merely necessary is now a common starting point for motivating other accounts of essences and dependence,
such as grounding and ontological dependence.
9
Spinoza invokes only the first clause of IId2 in IIp10d, and only the second in IIp10s, G II/93; IIp37d;
and IIp49d.
10
This is where the late twentieth-century fascination with covariant accounts of essences and
dependence (as captured in various forms of supervenience) runs into trouble. However respectable such
accounts may appear to those with Humean scruples, they fail to adequately distinguish priority from mere
coextension.
some of its other features). To use the stock example again, a thing’s rationality [a] partly
constitutes its essence and [b] explains its risibility.
This is still exceedingly abstract, as is IId2 itself, although it provides a general
framework for essences that Spinoza will apply in different contexts. In general, a
thing’s essence can be defined functionally in terms of this explanatory connection
between two groups of its features. The explanantia are those features that constitute a
thing’s essence [a], which I will refer to as its essential base. A thing’s essential base
asymmetrically explains certain other features that it has [b], which I will refer to as its
essential effects. I will say more about what falls under [a] and [b] in a moment, but the
basic functional account is that what makes the particular features in a thing’s essential
base essential to it—what makes it the case that they constitute its essence—is that
they appropriately explain its essential effects, most notably its causal outputs. To use
a more Spinozistic example: (a) the persisting pattern of motion and rest among a
body’s parts asymmetrically explains (b) its tendency to affect the motion of neighbor-
ing bodies, and this pattern pertains to or constitutes a body’s essence in virtue of
explaining that tendency.11
Although I have been emphasizing the explanatory nature of essences for Spinoza,
he also uses dynamic language to characterize the relation between [a] and [b]. For
example, in IId2 itself, Spinoza refers to what essences posit and take away. Spinoza
also claims that infinitely many modes follow from God’s essence or nature (Ip16) and
flow from God’s “supreme power or infinite nature” (Ip17s). He outright equates God’s
essence and power in Ip34 (“God’s power is his essence itself ”), and he applies this
more broadly to the natures or essences of everything: “Nothing exists from whose
nature some effect does not follow” (Ip36).12 In short, everything does something, and
some—if not all—of what a thing does follows from its essential base. This dynamic
element of all essences explains why Nature itself is thoroughly dynamic, for Spinoza.
Thomas M. Ward nicely summarizes the general causal aspect of Spinozistic essences:
“The essences of things are structural features [essential base] which cause there to be
other features of a thing [essential effects].”13
Spinoza highlights two sorts of essential effects, though the distinction between
them does not run very deep.14 One minimal effect that is supposed to follow from every
existing thing’s essential base is its effort to continue existing. “The striving [conatus]
by which each thing strives [conatur] to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual
essence of the thing” (IIIp7).15 Behind this is Spinoza’s famed conatus doctrine, the
11
See especially IIp13sL4–L7, IIp13sPost6, and IVp60d; for the mental correlate, see IIp14–15. These
attribute-specific essences will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter.
12
Spinoza offers a fuller version of this identification in IIIp7, which I discuss shortly. For other import-
ant places where Spinoza identifies essences and power, see IVPref, G II/209; IVp60d; Vp9d; and Vp25d.
13
Thomas M. Ward, “Spinoza on the Essences of Modes,” 20 (the bracketed correlations to my termin-
ology are obviously not in the original).
14
Spinoza pulls them together in a single sentence in Ip34d: “Therefore, God’s power, by which he and
all things are and act is his essence itself.” See also IIp3s.
15
For other places in which Spinoza connects a thing’s essence with its power to exist, see Ip11s, Ip34d,
IIIp8d, and IVp4d. Spinoza claims that the power to remain in existence is the same in degree and kind as
thesis that things remain in existence by virtue of their own essence or power unless
“destroyed” by something external to them (IIIp4–6). The important point here is that
the source of such existential inertia is contained in a thing’s own essence.
Insofar as continuing to exist is one causal output of each thing’s essence, it follows
that everything, simply by continuing to exist, exerts some causal influence on the
world. Indeed, to the extent to which the continued existence of something also
prevents the existence of something else, existing things might be making many, many
causal contributions to the world simply by persisting. After all, something in the causal
order is preventing hobbits from existing. (I hope it’s not just me!)
The range of effects that follow from a thing’s essence is usually wider than mere
attempts at self-preservation. We already saw Spinoza claim this in Ip36. From the
essence of each thing some effects follow, and a later application of Ip36 suggests
that he has in mind more than merely striving to persist. In IIIp7d, for example,
Spinoza cites Ip36 to argue that “from the given essence of every thing, some things
necessarily follow.”16 In that same demonstration, Spinoza identifies a thing’s essence
with its “striv[ing] to do anything,” and he claims that “things are able [to produce]
nothing but what follows necessarily from their determinate nature (by Ip29).” Together,
this implies that all of a thing’s activities are among its essential effects and follow
from its essential base.
Although it is tempting to emphasize one of these functions of essences over the
other—the explanatory vs. the dynamic—Spinoza slides between them seamlessly, as
we have now come to expect. After all, causes are reasons for Spinoza, and so we should
expect him to move between explanatory and productive language without noting a
difference. An example of this slide is Va2: “The power of an effect is defined by the
power of a cause, insofar as its essence is explained or defined by the essence of its
cause.” Indeed, many of the locutions Spinoza uses to describe the relation between
[a] and [b] sound at once both explanatory and productive, such as “positing” and
“following from.” I will pull these functions together into the thesis that essences are
the explanatory powers of things.
According to the conclusions of chapter three, this explanatory–dynamic equiva-
lence is due to a further equivalence between all kinds and instances of dependence
with a conceptual involvement or containment relation. If so, we should also expect
Spinoza to characterize the relation between essential bases and essential effects in
involvement or containment terms, and this is just what he does. For example, he
variously discusses whether a thing’s essence “involves” existence (Ip24), “contains” its
causes (Ip11d and Ip8s2), “expresses” its causes (Ip25s and Ip36d), and to what extent
it “involves” or “expresses” reality (Ip16d), all of which I take to refer to the conceptual
the power required to exist in the first place (although for finite things, the sources will be different):
“Anything whatsoever . . . will be able to persevere in existing by the same force by which it begins to exist”
(IV.Pref, G II/209).
16
See also Va2. For other passages in which Spinoza connects a thing’s essence with its power to bring
about other effects, see Ip17s, Ip34d, and Ip35d.
involvement relation mentioned earlier in passages like Ia5 and Ip2d. Spinoza also
describes the relation between [a] and [b] in inferential terms in Ip16d and Ip25c, and
he equates an essence’s power, explanation, and definition in Va2. Thus, speaking in
metaphysical rigor, the features in a thing’s essential base, [a], conceptually contain
its essential effects, [b], and it is in virtue of this containment that those features
constitute its essence.
Outside the Ethics, Spinoza also describes the relation between God and the essences
of finite things in terms of conceptual containment. For instance, Spinoza writes in
TTP, “It is certain that all things in nature involve and express the concept of God in
proportion to their essence and perfection” (G III/60). In CM, he unpacks the scholastic
notion of “the being of essences” [esse essentiae] as “nothing but that manner in which
created things are comprehended in the attributes of God” (CM I.2, G I/238). And with
respect to the essences of nonexisting things, they too “depend on the divine essence
alone, in which all things are contained” (CM I.2, G I/239).17
In even earlier writings, Spinoza claims that for each thing there is a “concept or
definition” from which “all the thing’s properties can be deduced” or “inferred” (TIE
95–6, G II/35).18 In other words, essences have the sort of structure that would allow
someone, at least in principle, to read off all of its nonessential features from its
essential base.19 In KV, he claims that the essential properties of a thing are likewise
contained in its concept:
Understand the definite nature, by which the thing is what it is, and which cannot in any way
be taken from it without destroying it, as it belongs to the essence of a mountain to have a
valley, or the essence of a mountain is that it has a valley. This is truly eternal and immutable,
and must always be in the concept of a mountain, even if it does not exist and never did (KV I,
note a, G I/15).
For ease of expression, I have phrased everything in non-scalar terms, but Spinoza
sometimes claims that essences come in degrees and can be specified quantitatively.20
17
See also IIp8. I take the relevant contrast between the essences of existing and nonexisting things here
to be in the “alone,” not in the “containment.” The essences of existing finite things also depend on and are
contained in God’s essence (as per Ip24–5), but they also depend on the essences of other existing finite
things too, namely their finite causes. Here and elsewhere, Spinoza calls the essences of nonexisting things
“formal” essences, which he sometimes contrasts with the “actual” or “given” essences of existing things.
There has been a good amount of recent discussion of the ontological status and role of formal essences
(see, for example, Ward, “Spinoza on the Essences of Modes,” Garrett, “Spinoza on the Essence of the Human
Body and the Part of the Mind that is Eternal,” and Martin, “The Framework of Essences in Spinoza’s Ethics.”
Although it is not especially relevant here, I briefly discuss a more deflationary reading of formal essences
in Newlands, “Spinoza’s Theory of Universals.”)
18
Here Spinoza anticipates at least a crude version of Leibniz’s complete concept theory.
19
This becomes slightly more complicated in the Ethics, in which Spinoza claims that the total length of
time for which a finite thing exists does not follow from its essence (IIIp8), since otherwise, when that time
was up, its destruction would follow from its own essence, pace IIIp4. The complication concerns whether
the temporal extent of a thing’s existence is a property that it has; if it is, then there are nonessential prop-
erties of things that cannot be deduced from their essence, contrary to this early passage.
20
See, for example, KV II/26, G I/110.
Strange as it sounds to the contemporary ear, some things have more essence than
others, according to Spinoza. This claim makes perfect sense on the present account,
however. To the extent to which a thing’s essential base conceptually contains more
states of the world, to that extent it has more essence. Put in explanatory terms, the
more effects that a thing’s essential base explains, the greater its essence. Expressed in
what I take to be equivalent dynamic terms, the more states that follow from a thing’s
essential base, the greater its essence. For example, infinitely many states are contained
in or follow from God’s essence, and so God’s essence is infinite for Spinoza. This is
why Spinoza objects that if God could have produced more than God has actually
produced, God would (per impossibile) have less than supreme or infinite essence and
power.21 Likewise, to the extent to which more effects follow from or are contained
in my essential base than in the essential base of a turtle, to that extent I have more
or greater essence than the turtle.
I have presented Spinoza’s account of essences in structural terms involving rela-
tions between different features of a thing (namely what I called its essential base and
its essential effects). This isn’t just because I have a soft spot for structural metaphysics;
Spinoza himself discusses essences in this way, as we have seen. Even when he offers
more specifics about the nature of, say, bodies, his characterization remains thin and
structural: a persisting pattern of motion and rest among a body’s parts.
This structural account of essences fits elegantly with Spinoza’s claim, considered
in chapter three, that the best explanations or “true definitions” of things are genetic.
Spinoza claimed there that things are best explained through their dependence struc-
tures, through accounts of what they depend on and what in turn depends on them.
Here we have seen that essences trace the dependence structures of things, mapping a
thing’s essential base to its effects.22 This explains why Spinoza thinks giving an account
of a thing’s essence via its “true definition” just is to articulate its causal structure, and
why doing so is part of what he takes to be the central task of metaphysics.
2. Spinoza’s Either/Or
In presenting Spinoza’s account of essences, I defined the categories of essential base
and essential effects functionally. What constitutes a thing’s essence (its essential base)
is whatever bears the right sort of relation to the right sort of relata (its essential effects).
We now have a working grasp of that relation and the second set of relata. A thing’s
21
See Ip33s2; this will become slightly more complicated later, as I argue that God actually has infinitely
many essences, each of which is “infinite in its own kind” (Id6).
22
This might sound more reifying than I intend, as if, in addition to the containing of [b] in [a], there is
another element, the essence, that is somehow doing the containing. Such on-ramps to a Bradleyian regress
are not part of the Spinozistic account, any more than talking about the way one concept contains another
implies that there is an additional element, a “way,” that somehow relates contents to a containment rela-
tion, whatever that might even mean.
activities, such as its striving to exist and produce effects, are what a thing’s essential
base is supposed to explain, produce, and/or contain.
But we now face a trickier question, one that first arose when we looked at Spinoza’s
use of “pertaining” and “constituting” in IId2 and IIp10. Just what are the essence-
constituting features of a thing that do this explanatory work? What in a thing explains
its effects? Spinoza’s general answer is surprising, and it opens up the possibility that
things can have more than one essential base, which in turn allows them to have
multiple essences.
A natural first answer is that something like the intrinsic features of a thing constitute
its essence and explain its effects, features that Spinoza once described as the “internal
cause” of a thing: “The power of [a thing’s] own essence (which is what I understand
by an internal cause)” (CM I.3, G I/241). Whatever they are, such internal causes
involve nothing extrinsic or “external” to the thing.
But even though a thing’s essence can be constituted entirely by intrinsic properties,
it turns out that essences can also include non-intrinsic constituents as well. For
example, Spinoza claims that the essences of human minds are partly constituted by
inadequate ideas, which are mental states that involve and are caused by external
ideas.23 In the demonstration to IIIp7, Spinoza gives a more general structural account
of this possibility. He is trying to prove that each thing’s conatic effort to continue
existing is “nothing but the actual essence of the thing” (IIIp7):24
From the given essence of each thing some things necessarily follow (by Ip36), and things are
able [to produce] nothing except what follows necessarily from their determinate nature (by
Ip29). So the power of each thing, or the striving by which it (either alone or with others) does
anything [quo ipsa vel sola vel cum aliis quidquam agit], or strives to do anything—that is, (by
IIIp6), the power or striving by which it strives to persevere in its being—is nothing but the
given, or actual, essence of the thing itself.
I have already unpacked most of what Spinoza asserts here about essences, but the
underlined portion adds something new. Spinoza claims that the essence of a thing is
the power by which “either it alone or with others” acts. I think this either/or is Spinoza’s
subtle way of noting that the essential base of a thing can, though it need not, include
more than just intrinsic properties. What determines the constituents of an object’s
essence or power can include only what “it alone” tries to bring about. Or it can also
include the contributions of unnamed “others.”
23
See IIIp3d and IIIp9; I am grateful to a referee for drawing these passages to my attention in this
context.
24
As we saw already, this striving is really but one essential effect of existing things’ essences. The import
of Spinoza’s “actual” and “given” qualification on essences is not very relevant here. Basically, since “striving
to persevere” in existence presupposes actually existing in the first place, Spinoza is simply indicating that
because the essences of modes do not contain existence (Ip24), they must be “given” or caused by some-
thing else before they can strive to persevere. In the present context, this implies that both the existence and
essential base of modes depends on the activity of other things (Ip23 and Ip28). By contrast, God’s essence
is, as it were, self-given, in that existence follows from God’s essence (Ip7 and Ip11).
As the denizens of Lost taught us to wonder, just who are these mysterious “others?”
One natural reading is that Spinoza is referring to other co-contributing causes of some
joint effect.25 Suppose Jeff and I lift a heavy coffee table together. Even though the lifting
does not follow from my intrinsic properties alone (alas), nonetheless, that effect can
still be counted as following from my essence. This implies that my essential effects
can include effects that follow from a broader essential base than just what follows
from my own intrinsic properties. If so, the essential base of my essence would include
not only my intrinsic properties, but also some of Jeff ’s properties.
Although this is a natural way to read Spinoza’s parenthetical remark, it is a bit odd
to think that my own essence can be even partly constituted directly by the features
of others. In Va2, Spinoza does cite IIIp7 to show that the essence of a thing can be
“explained or defined by” the essence of its cause, but that need not be because the
essence of a thing’s cause is directly included as a constituent of its own essence. When
we turn to Spinoza’s account of individuals in the next chapter, we will see that there
is definitely something true in the neighborhood, namely that Jeff and I are not always
as distinctly individuated as one might have thought, at least insofar as we act together.
Much later, this possibility will also have practical implications, insofar as Spinoza
claims that we are motivated to try to expand our essential bases to include what had
been conceived as the features of distinct other things. But Spinoza sometimes treats
the essences of particular things as isolated enough that they do not directly include
the features of others.
Alternatively, “with others” could refer to the contributions that other things have
made on me that are causally and explanatorily relevant to what I bring about. Suppose
that I do manage to lift the coffee table all by myself, but that before I could do this,
I had to go to the gym earlier in the week. In this case, what accounts for my lifting
the table includes my having lifted some weights previously. Insofar as my lifting the
table follows from my essence, the extrinsic relation I bear to the weights could partly
constitute my essence. On this account, the contribution of an “other” to my essence is
the contribution the weights made to my own increased power.
This alternative reading allows for a thing’s causal ancestors to be included indir-
ectly in its essence, insofar as relations to other things partly explain the effects it
produces. But a thing’s relational properties are all still directly properties of it, which
avoids having to include external things directly in one’s own essence. One very minor
but suggestive piece of textual evidence for this relies on the early Dutch edition of the
Ethics and is buried deep in IIIDefAff1: “For by an affection of the human essence we
understand any constitution of that essence, whether it is innate [NS: or has come from
outside]” (G II/190). The distinction among the possible constituents of an essence—
whether innate or from outside—lines up nicely with the “alone or with others”
distinction in IIIp7d. Notice, however, that what can be included in a thing’s essence
25
See Vp8d for further support of this reading of IIIp7d.
here is “what comes from outside,” not the external cause itself. We can include the
contributions, not the contributors.
Regardless of which way one understands Spinoza’s appeals to “others” in IIIp7d
(and they are not mutually exclusive), Spinoza’s either/or has important consequences.
The essence of a thing is either the power it has by itself to bring about effects or the
power it has along with others to bring about effects. This either/or seems to imply that
essences have a kind of flexibility or indeterminacy, as if a thing’s essence can include
the contributions of other things, though it need not be so broad and inclusive. We will
see shortly that the appearance of flexibility or indeterminacy is illusory. Things do not
have a single flexible or indeterminate essence, but rather each thing has a multiplicity
of fully determinate essences insofar as it is conceived in different ways.
For now, it is enough to note that Spinoza’s account of essence in IIIp7 leaves
unsettled exactly which features are included in a thing’s essential base. Since the
notions are defined functionally, this in turn leaves unsettled exactly which effects
should be included in a thing’s essential effects. Should we include only those effects
that follow from its intrinsic properties? Or should we include effects that follow from
its intrinsic properties plus some of its relations to other things? In every case except
God’s, the answer will affect the degree or extent of a thing’s essence. My essence
might include my having gone to the gym and, by extension, explain my lifting the
table—or it might not. We naturally wonder: well, which is it? So far, Spinoza’s account
does not tell us.26 But we now have the resources to discover his ultimate and surprising
answer: both, relative to different ways of conceiving me.
3. A “Hopeless” Problem and Spinoza’s

Conceptualist Solution
In the opening chapter, I raised what I take to be the central challenge facing Spinoza’s
metaphysics: can his all-encompassing monism be made consistent with his commit-
ment to maximal diversity? Unsurprisingly, this challenge arises again within Spinoza’s
account of essences. The worry begins, but does not end, with God. On the one hand,
the unified nature of Spinoza’s sole substance appears to require a single, unified essence.
At the same time, Spinoza’s attribute plenitude seems to imply that substance actually
has infinitely many essences, each corresponding to a distinct attribute. The One versus
the Many again, now concerning God’s essence(s).
The interpretive trenches have been dug in the now familiar pattern. Those who
generally emphasize the unity of Spinoza’s substance also argue for a single divine
26
Spinoza does sometimes refer more casually to essences in a way that seems to restrict their essential
base to only intrinsic properties, such as in IVd3. But he tends to state his full view more carefully in those
places, like IIIp7, in which he is explicating his account of essences rather than just appealing to it. And
even when he is speaking more loosely, Spinoza will often indicate that he is invoking a particularly narrow
way of conceiving things, according to which the narrower essential base is the appropriate boundary of a
thing’s essence.
essence.27 Those emphasizing the many attributes argue for a plurality of divine
essences.28 Even to nineteenth-century interpreters, matters appeared stuck in an
endless quagmire: “How that essence [of substance] can be one and self-identical,
while its constituents are many, heterogeneous and unrelated, is a question which is
hopeless of solution.”29
Despair need not win the day, however. For we now have the interpretive tools in
place to see how Spinoza consistently reconciles a multiplicity of essences with a single
essence bearer. The key, as ever, lies in his appeals to the conceptual, as we will see
momentarily (3.1). This one-to-many pattern of essence bearer to essences applies not
only to God, however. Just as one and the same substance has a multiplicity of essences,
so too one and the same mode has a multiplicity of essences both across (3.2) and
within (3.3) attributes. This follows elegantly when Spinoza’s account of essences as
explanatory powers is combined with his broader conceptualist strategy. Yet again,
Spinoza’s appeals to the conceptual represent his concerted effort to reconcile unity
with diversity.
3.1 The Essences of Substance

Spinoza scholarship often focuses on very small words. In, from, same, as—or is it
as if ?!—these are the Seussian dividing points among entire schools of Spinoza inter-
pretation. Surely Spinoza bears the brunt of the blame for this state of affairs. Often
his formulations of very large philosophical ideas hinge on the exact meaning of such
connectives, and Spinoza rarely deigns to unpack them.
Concerning essences, another small word has proven a stumbling block, although
Spinoza bears less blame than the Latin language itself. Latin lacks definite and
indefinite articles. Obviously this does not mean that Latin speakers lacked a distinc-
tion between “the apple” and “an apple.” A variety of other linguistic and contextual
markers were used to make the distinction. This works fine when we have sentences
that are embedded in larger groups of sentences. But it can make interpretive life
hellish when a sentence is presented in complete isolation from any other, as in, say, a
formal definition.
This is just what happens in Spinoza’s Id6: “Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum,
hoc est, substantiam constantem infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque aeternam,
& infinitam essentiam exprimit.” It is unclear whether “essentiam” takes a definite
or indefinite article. Does each attribute express an essence or the essence of God?30
27
For example, see Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 118–21, 133–4, and 154–7.
28
For example, see Gueroult, Spinoza I, 51–2 and C 412n12.
29
Martineau, A Study of Spinoza, 185.
30
In his translation, Curley opts for the indefinite article. Shirley and White supply neither, sacrificing
grammar for neutrality, though in parallel passages like IIp45 they opt for the definite article. For defense
of the indefinite article, see Gueroult, Spinoza I, 67 and Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 62. For consid-
erations favoring the definite article, see Donagan, “Essence and the Distinction of Attributes in Spinoza’s
Metaphysics,” 176–7 and Smith, “Spinoza, Gueroult, and Substance,” 675–80.
A small bit of evidence favoring the indefinite article is that the indefinite is used in the
posthumous Dutch version of Spinoza’s Opera posthuma from 1677. A bit of evidence
favoring the definite article is found in Ip36, in which it becomes more difficult
(though not impossible) to maintain an indefinite rendering of “nature,” “essence,”
“power,” and “cause,” even though they seem to be parallel.
As much as I like a nitty-gritty textual fight, I think the broader considerations of
this chapter favor the reading that Spinoza ascribes a plurality of essences to God.
Recall that according to IIIp7, essences are the powers of things. More expansively,
I argued that a thing’s essence is constituted by whatever it is that explains, produces,
and contains (these all naming the same relation, according to chapter three) its
essential effects. According to Id6, each attribute of God expresses an/the essence of
substance, in which case each attribute expresses an/the explanatory power of God,
which ranges over God’s essential effects.
Now consider a particular attribute, such as Thought. Does Thought express, con-
tain, or explain all of God’s effects? It would seem not, according to Ip10, IIp6, IIIp2,
and the explanatory barrier between attributes. The attribute of thought explains only
God’s thinking effects; only thinking modes follow from God’s attribute of thought.
Likewise, the attribute of extension explains only God’s extended effects and only
modes of Extension follow from God’s attribute of extension. This is true even if every
particular thinking effect of God is numerically identical with some particular
extended effect (as I think is the case for Spinoza). Like causes, essences are tracking
more fine-grained structures such as explanation and conceptual containment, and
we saw in chapter two that Spinoza thinks even necessarily co-referring concepts can
contain wholly distinct content.
Given the functional account of essences presented in section one, if one explana-
tory base (e.g., Thought) explains one group of essential effects (e.g., every thinking
mode), and a different explanatory base (e.g., Extension) explains other essential effects
(e.g., every extended mode), that suffices for the non-identity of essences, regardless
of numerical identities among those groups of essential effects. Put another way,
explanatory structures exhaust Spinoza’s essences, so a multiplicity of explanatory
structures entails a multiplicity of essences, even if they are distinct explanatory struc-
tures of one and the same thing ranging over one and the same collection of modes.
Hence, the thinking substance has a different essence than the extended substance, even
if the thinking substance is numerically identical with the extended substance and
even if every mode of thought is numerically identical with a mode of extension. Thus,
insofar as God is both a thinking and an extended substance, it follows that God has
multiple essences.
Indeed, God’s essences will be equinumerous with God’s attributes. Spinoza implies
this link in IIp45d:
But singular things . . . because (by IIp6) they have God for a cause insofar as he is considered
under the attribute of which the things are modes, their ideas must involve the concept of their
attribute (by Ia4), that is, (by Id6), must involve an eternal and infinite essence of God.
Spinoza treats conceptually involving a particular attribute as equivalent to involving a

divine essence. I think the most natural parallel to involving one particular attribute,
among others, is involving one particular divine essence, among others.
This conclusion also fits nicely with what we have seen about the nature of attributes
themselves. In chapter one, I considered the thesis that attributes are the fundamental
characters of a substance, the fundamental ways of being a thing. If so, then a thing
with multiple attributes is a thing with more than one fundamental character or way of
being, and it is not hard to see why Spinoza would conclude that having more than one
fundamental character entails having more than one essence.31
One obvious worry about this conclusion is that it seems to entail that God is not,
after all, a truly unified, single thing. For consider another tempting entailment: the
non-identity of essences entails the non-identity of essence bearers. That is, if essences
are distinct, they must have distinct bearers. Interestingly, even those favoring the
multiple divine essence interpretation seem to agree with this consequence. They are
simply willing to accept the conclusion that “God” names an organized collection of
distinct single-attribute/single-essence things, whereas the other interpretive camp
invokes modus tollens. But both sides implicitly agree on the entailment itself: a
multiplicity of essences entails a multiplicity of things.
Whatever be the attractions of such reasoning, I do not think Spinoza accepts it.
For Spinoza, one thing can have multiple essences. (This is clearest in the case of God,
though, as we will see in later sections, this one-to-many structure is true for modes
too.) Although this initially sounds problematic, it is worth keeping in mind that
nearly everyone agrees that Spinoza’s ontology goes one-to-many somewhere. The
question is just where.
Is it one substance and one essence to many attributes? This makes it easier to main-
tain a serious substance monism, but at the cost of turning the plurality of attributes
into a central mystery.32 Or is it one substance to many essences and many attributes?
This makes the multiplicity of attributes less mysterious, but at the cost of casting doubt
on the substance monism.33 I think Spinoza’s account of essences and attributes favors
the “one substance to many essences” version, but either way, we are confronted again
with Lust’s opening challenge. It would be nice indeed if the apparent diversity in
fundamental ways of being could be reconciled with genuine substance monism—but
how can this be?
31
Indeed, as we saw in chapter two, Descartes reasons in the very same way, inferring a multiplicity of
natures or essences from a multiplicity of principal attributes. The difference is just that Descartes takes this
to show that things cannot have multiple principal attributes, but Descartes and Spinoza both accept the
conditional.
32
Unsurprisingly, those reasoning in this direction will find some sort of attribute subjectivism espe-
cially attractive, as Wolfson did. But for those who insist on an objective plurality of attributes, the hard
question will be how this can be, given the singular essence of God.
33
Unsurprisingly again, those reasoning in this direction will find some sort of eternal bundle theory of
substance especially attractive, as Gueroult and Curley did. But for those who insist on a more ontologic-
ally basic unity for God, the hard question will be how this can be, given the multiplicity of divine essences
(as Curley himself notes in C 412n12).
Rather than pushing the bump in the carpet around further, we need to squash
it entirely. Once again, the Spinozistic hope lies with the conceptual. One thing can
have a multiplicity of essences because of the conceptual nature of essences themselves.
I claimed that we should think of Spinoza’s essences as structural maps, linking a
thing’s essential base(s) to what it does. To have multiple essences, on this account, is
just to have multiple explanatory structures.
How can one thing have multiple explanatory structures? In chapter two, we looked
at Spinoza’s defense of one thing having multiple causal structures. I claimed that
consistent causal variability rested on the conceptual sensitivity of causal
structures, which itself results from Spinoza’s identification of causal and concep-
tual dependence. Because causal structures were just conceptual structures, if a thing
could be consistently conceived in a variety of salient ways, it could have a variety of
distinct causal structures. We saw Spinoza make a similar move to defend attribute
plenitude. The conceptual nature of attributes and the conceptual barrier between
them enabled Spinoza to argue that one and the same thing could have a variety of
distinct attributes.
The same conceptualist machinery works for essences too. After all, essences just
map a thing’s causal or explanatory structures. Explanatory or causal structures, I argued
in chapter three, are ultimately just conceptual structures of a thing, relations of con-
tainment. Hence, if a thing can have a variety of causal structures, it can have a variety
of essences too. In this way, Spinoza can rely on the conceptual identification
and conceptual sensitivity of essences to defend the consistent variability of
essences of one and the same thing, which is just another application of the conceptu-
alist gambit outlined in chapter two.
As he did with attributes and causal structures, Spinoza can rely on the isolation
of the conceptual content involved in essences to vouchsafe consistency. How could
God’s having one essence rule out God’s having another, if essences are mapping
completely isolated conceptual structures? Hence, once again, God can consistently
have at least as many essences as there are appropriately isolated and fundamental
ways of conceiving God, which is just to say that God can have as many essences as
God has attributes.
Does it follow from all this that there is no definite, singular essence of God, only a
conglomerate of distinct essences? Perhaps not. One might try to say something
about the nature of God, which would amount to referring to God independent of
all attributes. One way to do this would be to ascribe a single, definite higher-order
essence to God. Perhaps it is the (higher-order) essence of God to have every (lower-
order) essence. This might be a version of what Spinoza does in Id6 when he defines
God as “a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an
eternal and infinite essence.” Insofar as definitions are essence-specifying, this
might be a way of saying that the essence of God consists in God’s having infinitely
many attribute-specific essences. We will see in later chapters that there is again
truth in the neighborhood here, namely in terms of attribute-neutral things and
properties. Still, for those preferring to retain a definite, singular essence of God in
Spinoza, it is worth keeping in mind just how little determinate content there is to
such a higher-order essence. It is as characterless and bare as would be a substance
without any attributes.
Alternatively, one might try to avoid directly referring to or conceiving the essence
of God, except when speaking loosely. After all, this amounts to referring to or con-
ceiving God independently of any attributes, something Spinoza appears to reject in
Ip10s: “Indeed, nothing in Nature is clearer than that each being must be conceived
under some attribute.” We could try, of course, to conceive God as that which can be
conceived in all these different attribute-specific ways, just as we could attribute every
possible attribute to God. The trick is to avoid turning that attribution into the sole,
super attribute of God, pace Spinoza’s attribute plenitude. Contemporary philosophers
might wish to distinguish a metalanguage from an object language at this point and
interpret claims like Id6 as written in the metalanguage of the Ethics. But Spinoza himself
tends to sidestep all of this by making a series of attribute-specific identity statements
and leaving it there: the thinking substance is identical to the extended substance.
Likewise, I think he would want to say without further commitment that the bearer of
the thinking essence is identical to the bearer of the extended essence.
What I think is relatively clear is that Spinoza thinks God has infinitely many causal,
explanatory, or conceptual structures in virtue of having infinitely many attributes. If
I am right in this chapter, it follows that God has infinitely many essences as well. This
implies that God has an incredible amount of inner complexity and rich diversity. As
with other forms of diversity, however, the diversity of divine essences is consistent
with a single essence bearer. Or at least one thing having a multiplicity of essences is
as consistent as any of these one-to-many structures are under Spinoza’s general con-
ceptualist strategy.
3.2 The Essences of Modes Across Attributes

Just as the sole substance has as many essences as it has attributes, so too each mode
has at least as many essences as there are attributes. And just as Spinoza thinks a multi-
plicity of essences is compatible with a single essence bearer in the case of substance,
so too one and the same mode can consistently have multiple essences, according to
Spinoza. In particular, parallel modes across attributes can still be identical, despite
having distinct, attribute-specific essences.34
To begin, consider an extended mode, em1, and the thinking mode parallel to it,
tm1. Do they have the same essence? For both textual and systematic reasons, I think
Spinoza’s answer is “no.” One quick proof text is Vp9d: “Because the mind’s essence,
34
I do not defend the mode identity theory itself here, but focus instead on the consistency of mode
identity across attributes, with one mode having multiple essences across those attributes. For a defense of
the mode identity reading itself, see Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza.
For those who reject the numerical identity reading of parallel modes, the non-identity of cross-attribute
essences poses no distinctive problem at all.
that is, its power (by IIIp7), consists only in thought,” which implies that the mind’s
essence does not consist in extension, even if the mind is identical to a body.
Another quick textual argument for the distinction between the essences of em1
and tm1 is based on Id2: “That thing is said to be finite in its own kind that can be
limited by another of the same nature.” The definition goes on to claim, by way of
application, that a thought and a body cannot be limited by one another. From this
and the quoted portion of the definition, we should infer that thinking and extended
modes do not and cannot share “the same nature.” If “nature” in Id2 is equivalent to
“essence” (as it often is for Spinoza35), then it follows from Id2 that modes falling under
different attributes cannot share the same essence.
In light of the previous section, this is just what one would expect. I argued that
Spinoza thinks that God having different attributes entails that God has different
essences. Here we see a parallel point for modes. Falling under different attributes entails
having different essences. Whatever the relation of parallel modes across attributes
ultimately is, attribute distinctions for modes generate parallel essence distinctions.
This result also follows from the preceding account of essences as the explanatory
powers of things. Suppose, for reductio, that the essence of a body was identical to the
essence of a mind. According to the explanatory powers account of essences, it follows
that a body’s essence contains and explains certain effects, such as bringing about a
change in another body. If the essence of a body were identical to the essence of a mind,
then the essence of that mind would also contain and explain its bringing about a
change in another body. But that would be about as straightforward a violation of
Spinoza’s causal and explanatory barrier between attributes, minds, and bodies as
one could imagine.
However, just as with substance, differences among mode essences do not entail the
non-identity of essence bearers, for Spinoza. Although the essence of em1 is distinct
from the essence of tm1, it does not follow that em1 is numerically distinct from tm1.
Numerically one and the same mode can have distinct essences, just as one and the
same mode can fall under distinct attributes. Indeed, one and the same mode can
have distinct essences on the very same basis for which it can have distinct causal
and explanatory structures—which is the same basis for which one and the same
substance can have distinct attributes, essences, causal and explanatory structures.
The same conceptualist strategy Spinoza employs to preserve the identity of substance
across all these divergent structures works equally well for preserving the identity of
modes across similarly divergent structures.
One might again wonder whether modes still retain a single, core essence that
somehow underlies all these different, attribute-specific essences. This is parallel to the
question of whether God has a single, definite essence over and above the various
distinct, attribute-specific essences (such as a higher-order essence). The exact parallel
might involve positing a distinct mode essence that contains various attribute-specific
35
Most tellingly, Spinoza equates “essence” and “nature” in the previous definition, Id1.
mode essences. The essence of m1 is constituted by the extended essence of em1 and
thinking essence of tm1 and so on. What would this amount to?
One possibility is that some aspects of a mode’s explanatory structure are invariant
across different attributes, and this is what such an attribute-independent essence
tracks. For example, if it is part of em1’s essence to bring about exactly two extended
effects, and it is a part of the parallel mode tm1’s essence to bring about exactly two
thinking effects, perhaps there would be grounds to conclude that it is part of the
attribute-independent essence of m1 to bring about exactly two effects.36 In other
words, perhaps there are attribute-neutral, structural features of finite things that fol-
low from their parallel, attribute-specific causal and explanatory structures. If so, it
might be that each mode has a unique, attribute-neutral essence that is insensitive to
ways in which it is conceived, in which case Spinoza would not endorse the full-blown
conceptual sensitivity and variability of mode essences as I suggested in the opening
that he does. However, I will now argue for the even more controversial thesis that
the essences of a mode also vary within an attribute, depending on how that mode
is conceived, thereby positing a thoroughgoing conceptual sensitivity and variability
of mode essences.
3.3 The Essences of Modes Within an Attribute

Let us set aside attribute differences and focus on modes within a single attribute.
Does one and the same mode also have a multiplicity of essences within an attribute?
Using the framework of chapter one, I will argue that Spinoza answers “yes.” Using the
machinery of chapter two, I will then show why he thinks there can be such variation.
To get there, we need to look at an important metaphysical distinction that Spinoza
draws between a thing’s adequate and inadequate causal powers that closely tracks his
account of essences. Spinoza defines these notions in IIId1–2:
D1: I call that cause adequate whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived
through it. But I call it partial, or inadequate, if its effect cannot be understood
through it alone.
D2: I say that we act when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are
the adequate cause, that is (by D1), when something in us or outside us follows from
our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone. On the
other hand, I say that we are acted on when something happens in us, or something
follows from our nature, of which we are only a partial cause.
According to these definitions, a thing c is an adequate cause of some effect e iff c,
considered in itself, suffices to explain e. Mapping this onto the terminology from
chapter one, whatever follows from only the narrowest way of conceiving (NC) a thing
is the result of its adequate causal powers. In conceptual terms, whatever effects are
36
For a version of this, see Della Rocca, Representation, 143–4. If one wishes, a similar, purely structural
account presumably could be given of God’s “higher order” essence as well.
contained in just the NC of a thing are the expressions of its adequate causal power.
Moving in the opposite direction, the adequate causal power of a thing is a measure of
what is contained in and, hence, explained by its NC alone.
Spinoza contrasts adequate causes with inadequate causes. An inadequate cause
still produces a particular effect, but it does so in virtue of more than just its intrinsic
properties. In this case, the effect does not follow from the thing “alone.” Inadequate
causation involves the contributions of unnamed others. This definition foreshadows
Spinoza’s later claim in IIIp7d that a thing’s essence is either what “it alone” or “with
others” brings about.
In what way do others contribute to a thing’s inadequate causal activity? When
we considered this question for IIIp7d above, I suggested two possibilities, neither of
which strictly excludes the other. One natural reading of IIId1 is contemporaneous.
Inadequate causes are partial causes, simultaneous joint causes of a single effect. When
I lift the coffee table together with Jeff, I am thereby an inadequate cause of the table
lifting. This is suggested in IIId2, in which passivity is defined in terms of something
happening in or by us “of which we are only the partial cause.”
Alternatively, Spinoza could be referring to cases in which others directly influence
me, and thereby indirectly contribute to my bringing about an effect. In this sense,
I might be an inadequate cause of lifting the table even when I do it by myself, since it
is only in virtue of having gone to the gym that I can lift the table. We can see Spinoza
embrace this option obliquely in IVp23, in which it is relations to a thing’s prior causes
that determine its inadequate causal power: “Insofar as a man is determined to act
from the fact that he has inadequate ideas, he is acted on (by IIIp1), that is, (by IIId1–2)
he does something which cannot be perceived through his essence alone.”
Although Spinoza focuses on particular adequate and inadequate causes, we can
generalize a bit. His basic idea is that things have what we might call general causal
powers. Under this category, Spinoza uses explanatory differences to distinguish two
classes of causes.37 On the one hand, some of a thing’s effects are caused or explained by
“it alone,” by what I have called its intrinsic properties. These are the result of a thing’s
adequate causal power. On the other hand, some effects a thing brings about are caused
or explained by more than just its intrinsic properties. Their production depends on
either the concurrent contributions of others or the prior influence of others. Either
way, those effects are the result of a thing’s inadequate causal power.
Although this distinction sounds all-or-nothing, Spinoza suggests that the difference
between adequate and inadequate causation comes in degrees. Things are more of an
adequate cause insofar as the explanation of the effect requires fewer references to
extrinsic relations. This will be true on either way of understanding the contributions
of others. Keeping the models simple: when I lift the heavy end of the table, I am a
37
I take this to be the upshot of Spinoza’s appeal in IVd1 to what is “perceived” or “understood,”
though I think we should take such mind-dependent talk with a grain of salt, for reasons we will see in
chapter nine.
more adequate cause of lifting it than Jeff (true story). Alternatively, when I lift it
by myself after hitting the gym earlier in the week, I am a more adequate cause of, say,
my heart pumping than I am of lifting the table. On either account, it is frankly hard
to see how any finite thing could ever be a purely adequate cause of anything, and
Spinoza is mostly interested in the comparatives. Everything is causally active, and, with
the exception of God, that activity is always to some extent inadequate.38 Such is the
price of finitude.
Nonetheless, the adequate and inadequate causal powers of a thing can vary across
time. According to IIId2, a thing acts whenever it is an adequate cause, and Spinoza
implies in IIIp1d that things can increase or decrease their degrees of activity and
passivity. So although I am always to some extent an inadequate cause of all of my
effects, I can become more or less inadequate. This will have important implications
for Spinoza’s account of moral transformation in later chapters, as he ties moral
improvement to increases in adequate causal power.
But for now, we’ve got more metaphysical fish to fry. Can a thing’s adequate and
inadequate causal powers vary at a time as well, relative to how that thing is conceived?
Harkening back to our earlier terminology, the adequate causal power of a mode will
be invariant across narrower and broader ways of conceiving it (NC through BC).
There is nothing deep here, since by definition adequate casual power is a function of
just those properties in common among every intra-attribute way of conceiving a thing.
However, a thing’s inadequate causal powers can vary, depending on how broadly it
is conceived. At one extreme, a thing considered narrowly will have no inadequate
causal powers—that just falls out of how the notions are constructed. But as a thing is
conceived in broader and broader ways, it can have more inadequate causal power to
the extent that more effects become contained in, and hence explicable through, it.
Exactly how many more effects will be explained depends on just how causally
interconnected the world turns out to be. For instance, it might be that if one were able
to trace back every detail of my causal history—where that includes the complete
causal history of each of my causes and each of the causes of each of those causes, and
so forth (ad infinitum, Spinoza insists)—one would have pretty much mapped out the
complete causal history of the universe as a rich, thoroughly interconnected web, with
little ole’ me standing at one node in the causal nexus. If so, how many future effects
could be explained by conceiving me in relation to the entire history of the universe?
I have no idea, but it will be a lot more than if only my intrinsic properties and the
contributions of last night’s dinner are taken into account. Presumably, empirical
investigation would help us figure out the causal details. But Spinoza’s metaphysical
rule of thumb is that the more broadly a thing is conceived, the more explanatory
power and inadequate causal power it will have. Therefore, a thing’s inadequate causal
power, and hence its general causal power, will vary, depending on how narrowly or
broadly it is conceived.
38
See, for example, IIIp3d and IIIp9d.
This raises an interesting question for Spinoza’s theory of essences. Does the essence
of a thing, its explanatory power, track only its adequate causal powers? If so, a thing’s
essence will be invariant across broader and narrower ways of conceiving the thing
within an attribute. I admit the intuitive pull of this answer, especially in light of pas-
sages like IIId2 and IVp23, in which Spinoza appears to equate following-from a
thing’s nature or essence with its adequate causal activity.
Still, I think Spinoza’s fuller answer is that the essence of a thing is not fixed solely
by its adequate causal powers. As mentioned above, Spinoza claims in IIIp9 that the
essence of human minds is constituted by both adequate and inadequate ideas,
which broadens its essential base to include at least some of a thing’s inadequate causal
powers.39 Swinging back in the other direction, then, must the essence of a thing
include all of its inadequate causal powers? I think not, and I would cite (somewhat
perversely) those aforementioned passages in which Spinoza sometimes links essences
to just NCs. So essences track . . . neither? Both?
Rather than a series of slips by Spinoza, I think we are seeing the momentous upshot
of the “either/or” from IIIp7d: “So the power of each thing, or the striving by which it
(either alone or with others) does anything, or strives to do anything . . . is nothing
but the given, or actual, essence of the thing itself.” As I read this passage, Spinoza is
indicating that the essence of a thing can be a function of just its adequate causal
power, only what is in its NC. Or it can include the contributions of others, namely
its inadequate causal powers, which are contained in broader ways of conceiving
the thing.40
Conceived narrowly, the essential base of a thing includes only its intrinsic properties,
and so this essence tracks just its adequate causal powers. So conceived, I sadly have a
vanishingly small essence, as most of my powers come from my relations (concurrently
and in the past) to external things. But conceived more broadly, my essential base
expands to include the contributions of “others,” and so that essence also tracks some
of my inadequate causal powers. So conceived, my essence is greater because it contains
more effects. Crucially, a thing’s essences and its general causal-cum-explanatory
powers co-vary in this way because they both are tracking the same differences in
conceptual content between NCs and BCs.
Returning to the example of the coffee table: if I am conceived narrowly, the lifting
of the table is not one of my essential effects, insofar as this effect does not follow
solely from my intrinsic properties. (To the degree to which that’s true, then by
39
Again, I am thankful to a referee for a helpful pushback here.
40
One might wonder why we should take the wording of IIIp7d over the claim about “nature” in IIId1–2.
The main reason for taking IIIp7d as canonical and IIId1 as speaking more loosely is that Spinoza’s atten-
tion in the former is on defining the notion of essence as it relates to power, and hence he is being very
careful to state his full theory. The main focus of IIId1–2 is more on the distinction between activity and
passivity, a distinction that would have appeared needlessly complicated if he had been more precise. On
this reading, Spinoza loosely refers to “nature” IIId1–2 as a placeholder for a much richer distinction devel-
oped in IIIp7d and deployed in IIIDefAff1, G II/190.
Spinoza’s account, strictly speaking I’m not even acting when the table goes up.) But
perhaps the table’s movement is contained in a broader concept of me that includes
my having gone to the gym last week or my working with Jeff. In that case, insofar as
I am conceived more broadly so as to include this relation, my essence does contain
and hence explain the table lifting, even though, conceived narrowly, there is no
such containment.
Earlier, I claimed that Spinoza’s either/or in IIIp7d appeared to leave essences under-
determined. The essential base of a thing’s explanatory power appears to have flexible
boundaries, which the table example seems to reinforce. But now we can understand
what is really going on here. If the essence of a thing is its explanatory power, and if the
explanatory power of a thing varies depending on how narrowly or broadly it is con-
ceived, then the essence of a thing will likewise vary, depending on how it is conceived.
Hence, insofar as a thing’s essential effects vary depending on how it is conceived (as in
the table example), fully specifying its essential base requires grasping a particular way
of conceiving that thing within an attribute. Independent of being tied to particular
narrower or broader ways of being conceiving, essences would be underdetermined
in just the way IIIp7d suggests.
A rough analogy might help.41 Suppose I have shunned popular culture to an incred-
ible degree, and I only recently learned that Anakin Skywalker is identical to Darth
Vader. Imagine we are now discussing the beliefs I held before I learned this shocking
truth. You ask, “Wow, did you believe that guy was Luke’s father?” We can make sense
of the following Frege-inspired response: “Well, I can’t answer that with a simple ‘yes’
or ‘no.’ It depends—under which guise are you referring to him? Considering him as
the evil guy who fancies a black cape, I definitely didn’t believe it. But considering him
under the guise of a once noble Jedi, I did believe it.”
The analogy illustrates how the apparent flexibility or indeterminacy in IIIp7d does
not entail that there is no way to fully settle what the essences of a thing are. Each
essence is fully determinate. In fact, we can now see the apparent underdetermination
for what it really is: multiplicity. It is not that I have one indeterminate essence that
somehow varies, depending on how broadly or narrowly I am conceived. Rather, I have
more than one fully determinate essence. The apparent indeterminacy is simply the
result of underspecification. Since I, like Darth Vader, can be conceived in multiple
(salient) ways, specifying an essence requires specifying how broadly a thing is con-
ceived. Absent that specification, there will seem to be indeterminacy or flexibility,
which is exactly what Spinoza aptly captures with his either/or in IIIp7d. That either/or
is serious and straightforward, and now we see why it is there.
Here we reach what we set out to prove in this section. Even within a single attribute,
the essences of one and the same thing can vary, depending on how narrowly or
41
The reason there are no easy and clear analogies is that there are few, if any, everyday examples of
concept-dependent properties. (A positive spin: hey, look how original Spinoza was!) Frege puzzles come
closest, but those are already very theory-laden and controversial.
broadly that thing is conceived. When combined with the results of the previous
sections, this conclusion shows just how thoroughly conceptualist Spinoza’s theory
of essence turns out to be. In all cases, Spinoza can appeal to the explanatory nature of
essences to show how such essence variability is consistent. It is as consistent as is the
variability of one thing conceived in these multiple ways, both across and within
attributes.42 This is yet another instance of Spinoza’s many-and-one strategy: a multi-
plication of essences does not entail a multiplication of essence bearers. Once again,
the plenitude of the former need not undermine the parsimony of the latter.
Given all this concept sensitivity, it is natural to wonder whether there is some
privileging mechanism, such that one way of conceiving things captures the “real”
essence of a thing. In the case of cross-attribute essences, devotees of Spinoza will
already have the right instinct: no. Substance has a thinking essence and an extended
essence, and neither is more fundamental or real than the other. Although it is far
more controversial, I think the same holds for intra-attribute mode essences. Neither
broader nor narrower ways of conceiving a thing are more apt for fixing the “real”
essence of a thing within an attribute. I argued in chapter one that Spinoza’s commit-
ment to plenitude runs both across and within attributes in elegantly parallel ways.
Nevertheless, as I hinted at in the previous chapter, Spinoza does ultimately provide
an extrinsic privileging mechanism. It is better for us to adopt broader ways of con-
ceiving things, in which case it will be better for us to represent ourselves and others
as having greater essences, more expansive essential bases, and greater explanatory
power. Indeed, our moral improvement depends on our making essence-shifting
expansions in how we conceive ourselves and the world around us.
Before turning to Spinoza’s moral theory, however, we need to put one last meta-
physical piece in place. As I noted in passing, it is natural to connect the essences of
things with their individuation.43 If things are individuated by their essences, then
rather than showing that one thing has many essences for Spinoza, I will have instead
shown that there are many more (nearly identical) individuals than we might have
thought, each with its own essence. I do not think this result is correct, but showing
why the underlying assumption about individuation via essences is wrong will require
looking closer at Spinoza’s account of individuals in the next chapter.
We will also encounter bigger questions about Spinoza’s overall conceptualist strat-
egy. What is it to be an individual thing at all, if each thing has multiple essences? What
42
Unlike in the cross-attribute cases, the explanatory barrier cannot guarantee consistency here, since
we are operating within a single attribute. However, the consistency of NC through BC of a thing, which is
just more and less containment of actual causal history, guarantees the consistency of intra-attribute
essence variation.
43
For a reading of Spinoza’s theory of individuation along this very line, see Manning, “Spinoza’s
Physical Theory,” section 5.3. It is this assumption that also leads Karolina Hübner to worry that identifying
a thing’s fluctuating power with its essence “seems to undermine the possibility of any kind of robust dia-
chronic identity for finite things within Spinoza’s framework” (Hübner, “Essence as Power, or Spinoza on
Heartbreak,” 16 (preprint).
must individuals be like such that they can somehow stand behind all this variability?
My answer will come as no surprise by now: Spinoza thinks there is a conceptualist
component to being an individual thing as well. However, whereas I have argued in
this chapter that Spinoza’s conceptualist account of essences can be integrated elegantly
into his broader metaphysical system, the prospects for his conceptualist account of
individuals are less sanguine.
6
Elusive Individuals
I have framed Spinoza’s metaphysical project as one that tries to consistently maximize
both parsimony and plenitude. Spinoza’s strategy rests on his appeal to the concep-
tual. One and the same thing, conceived in different ways, exhibits a variety of different
ontological and explanatory structures. But consider that locution again: “depending
on how it is conceived.” The referent of that anaphor is becoming more and more
elusive. What is the it, the “one and the same” thing that remains constant amid all this
multiplicity and variability?
Various plausible candidates have already been ruled out in previous chapters, as
each putative marker of identity turns out to admit of a plurality. Is an individual thing
singled out by its causal structure? No. As we saw in chapter two, one and the same
thing can have a variety of discrete causal structures. Is it singled out by a unique set of
other, non-causal dependence relations? No again, given the conclusion of chapter three
that all dependence is conceptual in kind. Perhaps a thing’s modal profile serves as a
stable marker of its identity? This option is blocked by the considerations of chapter
four. Spinoza thinks each thing’s modal profile also admits of variation, depending on
how it is conceived. Perhaps the essence of a thing comprises its unique core? No again,
according to chapter five. Each thing has infinitely many essences, both across and
within attributes.
What’s left, we might wonder? What makes something an individual, a single thing
that supports all this multifaceted variability? We see here the re-emergence of Lust’s
opening challenge. In pursuing Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy to safeguard diversity,
we are beginning to lose our grip on the underlying identity theses. Just what is an
individual, a singular thing, such that it can support such incredible diversity of funda-
mental natures, dependence structures, modal profiles, and essences?
Spinoza tackles this question most directly in the case of individual bodies, i.e.,
extended modes. He focuses mostly on conditions of composition: under what condi-
tions do multiple things compose a single additional thing? Spinoza answers with a
broadly causal account, though, as we will see, he thinks the way that this activity is
conceived also plays a role in the composition of individuals. Unfortunately, this
conceptualist condition comes at a high cost, one that threatens to cripple his whole
metaphysical project. In the end, the goal of rebutting Lust’s challenge that motivated
Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy in the first place is threatened by that very strategy.
elusive individuals 137
I will suggest possible ways to fix this problem, but before we head down that dark
road, we need a clearer sense of what Spinoza himself is most interested in when he
discusses individuals.
1. Individuals, Parts, and Wholes

Although Spinoza makes claims about the metaphysics of individual bodies and minds,
he does not provide what we would now think of as a full “theory of individuation.”1
To the extent to which he even engages questions of individuation, Spinoza’s focus
is mostly on conditions of composition: under what conditions do discrete things
compose a single individual? So put, the question actually presupposes the indi-
viduation of some things in order to explain when and how those things compose
another thing.
For example, in his proto-physics in the so-called “Physical Digression” (PD) of
Part II of the Ethics, Spinoza moves quickly from discussing “the simplest bodies” to
“composite bodies” (IIp13sA2''), and he outlines conditions under which “a number of
bodies . . . all together compose one body or individual” (IIp13sDef). Spinoza naturally
describes the bodies that compose an individual as that individual’s parts.2 Spinoza
also considers more complex cases of composition, in which individuals are composed
out of more and more complex bodies (IIp13sL7s). He suggests that the main goal of
his quick dip into physics is to establish postulates about the composition of human
bodies, such as, “The human body is composed of a great many individuals of different
natures, each of which is highly composite” (IIp13sPost1). And although he focuses
mostly on bodies, Spinoza extends his account of composition to minds as well: “The
idea that constitutes the formal being of the human mind is not simple, but is composed
of a great many ideas” (IIp15).
In these passages, Spinoza is most interested in answering the following sort
of question:
Composition: Under what conditions do the xs compose an individual y?
This formulation intentionally echoes Peter van Inwagen’s famed “Special Composition
Question,” and I think it is a fair approximation of one of Spinoza’s main metaphysical
interests concerning individuals. As van Inwagen puts it more informally, “In what
circumstances do things add up to or compose something? When does unity arise out
of plurality?”3
1
This is in contrast to, say, Leibniz’s early interest in individuation and the scholastic focus. (For a dis-
cussion of Leibniz in relation to scholastics, see Lawrence McCullough, Leibniz on Individuals and
Individuation; for essays on scholastic theories themselves, see Gracia, Individuation in Scholasticism.) For
an account that takes Spinoza to be offering a fuller theory of individuation, see Garrett, “Spinoza’s Theory
of Metaphysical Individuation.”
2
IIp13sL5, L6, L7, and L7s. 3
Van Inwagen, Material Beings, 30–1.
By stating Spinoza’s interest in this way, I am sidestepping the thornier question

of exactly what composition consists in, according to Spinoza.4 Perhaps that is fair,
since even settling the conditions under which composition occurs has proven diffi-
cult enough. But there are a few suggestive hints in Spinoza of possible accounts of
composition itself. For instance, in another postulate of the PD, Spinoza claims, “The
individuals composing the human body, and consequently, the human body itself, are
affected by external bodies in very many ways” (IIp13sPost3). Here Spinoza explicitly
identifies what composes the human body with “the human body itself,” suggesting
that, in slogan form, composition is identity. A composite individual is strictly identical
with that which composes it.5 If a whole is composed of its (proper) parts, then accord-
ing to this account of composition, a whole is identical to its (proper) parts.
In an early text, Spinoza hints at an even more radical answer, something like
compositional nihilism: there are neither wholes nor parts: “Part and whole are not
true or actual beings, but only beings of reason; consequently in Nature there are
neither whole nor parts” (KV I.ii, G I/24).6 If either of these were Spinoza’s settled view
on composition itself, he might have a more general account of individuation than
answers to Composition provide. But given the paucity of texts on this point, I am not
convinced that Spinoza had a very developed theory of composition itself in mind, or
that he was especially interested in presenting one if he had it.
Other important questions left open by Composition have to do with mereology
and ontological priority. In contemporary philosophy, composition is often treated as
entailing mereological relations, relations between parts and wholes. If the xs compose
an individual y, then the xs are parts of a whole, y. Does Spinoza employ a mereological
framework for composition?
He clearly does, at least in some sense. Spinoza certainly thinks composite objects
have parts. I have already quoted from passages in the PD in which Spinoza describes
complex bodies as having parts. He describes human minds both as composed of parts
(IIp15) and as parts of God’s infinite intellect (IIp11c). So Spinoza is comfortable tying
composition to parthood.
4
Van Inwagen marks this by distinguishing the “Special Composition Question” (under what conditions
does composition occur?) from the “General Composition Question” (what is the nature of composition?)
(Van Inwagen, Material Beings, 39). Answering the former question correctly will give us only an exten-
sionally adequate account of composition. For those who think we should also strive for an intensionally
adequate account of composition, Van Inwagen’s sobering conclusion (and the subsequent three decades of
literature on the topic in metaphysics) is worth keeping in mind: “What I am sure of is that I know of no
way to answer, or even to approach, the General Composition Question” (Van Inwagen, Material Beings, 51).
5
This requires that identity can be many-to-one, but if there’s any thesis in this ballpark that Spinoza
would readily accept, it is surely that one. Still, to avoid formal problems, defenders of this view typically
employ plural reference, plural quantification, and other formal niceties of which it would be far-fetched to
believe Spinoza had even an inkling.
6
There are a number of reasons for thinking unrestricted compositional nihilism is not Spinoza’s settled
view, not the least of which are all the passages just cited in which Spinoza claims that bodies have parts.
Spinoza also adds a note to this KV text, explaining that by “in Nature” here, he means only “in substantial
extension.” That is, extended substance is not a composite whole with parts. But Spinoza is clear in the rest
of the KV passage that extended modes, i.e., bodies, have parts. For a more extended discussion of this early
passage, see Guigon, “Spinoza on Composition and Priority,” 195–8.
What is striking to the contemporary eye is how infrequently Spinoza appeals to

wholes in this context. He uses “composites” and “individuals” frequently, but rarely
“wholes.” The closest use of “whole” in the PD comes near the very end: “We shall easily
conceive the whole of nature [totam natura] is one individual, whose parts, that is, all
bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change of the whole individual [totius
Individui]” (IIp13sL7s). But while Spinoza is willing to assert that nature itself is a
single complex individual, his appeals here and elsewhere to “the whole of nature”
often look more deflationary. They mean something more like “all of nature,” without
making the stronger, more reifying claim that nature is a whole.7 One possible excep-
tion to this trend occurs at the end of Part IV: “We are a part of the whole of Nature,
whose order we follow” (IVApp32, G II/276). But a few lines later, Spinoza returns to
the less ontologically loaded version: “Hence, insofar as we understand these things
rightly, the striving of the better part of us agrees with the order of the whole of Nature.”
Spinoza’s other appeals to wholes read more like formulaic rehearsals, such as,
“What is common to all things, and is equally in the part and in the whole, does not
constitute the essence of any singular thing” (IIp36).8 The mereological element in this
proposition plays no role in the demonstration nor in Spinoza’s subsequent use of
common natures.
Most often, Spinoza appeals to wholes in the Ethics when he is trying to reject a widely
held seventeenth-century mereological thesis, namely that extended substances are
divisible (Ip12–13 and Ip15s). In these passages, Spinoza invokes various part–whole
conditionals, such as, “the parts would have nothing in common with their whole, and
the whole could both be and be conceived without its parts, which is absurd, as no one
will be able to doubt” (Ip12d). However, it is important to bear in mind that Spinoza is
arguing on other people’s terms in these passages.
Spinoza clearly believes:
(1) God is an extended thing.
Since (1) is a strikingly heterodox thesis rejected by many in the seventeenth century,
Spinoza is on the defensive whenever it crops up in his writings.9 He is mostly
concerned to block what seem like problematic consequences of (1), as captured in
reasoning like this:
(2) Being an extended thing entails having (proper) parts.
(3) Things with (proper) parts ontologically depend on their (proper) parts.
7
Similar appeals to “the whole of nature” occur in Ip11s, G II/54; IApp, G II/79; IIp7s, G II/90; IVp4d,
G II/213; IVApp6, G II/267; “whole universe” in VPref, G II/280; and “whole body” in IVp45s, G II/244;
IVp60; IVApp27, G II/274.
8
See also IIp37, IIp38, and IIp39. Spinoza appeals to another stock formula involving wholes and parts
in IVp18s, G II/222: “This, indeed, is as necessarily true as that the whole is greater than its parts.”
9
Another strategy Spinoza employs is silence. It is quite striking that the demonstration of IIp2, which
states that “God is an extended thing,” is left to the reader to figure out: “The demonstration of this proceeds
in the same way as that of the preceding proposition.” Gee, thanks.
(4) Being ontologically dependent on one’s (proper) parts entails being imperfect.
(5) Hence, God is imperfect.10
But rather than surgically attacking any one of these steps, Spinoza sounds the alarm
on the philosophical battleship. Scramble the jets and launch all missiles! He replies in
the Ethics with a bewildering array of objections and reductios, culminating in a ram-
bling scholium that tries the patience of readers and forces stout-hearted editors to
impose structure on this presentational disaster.11
One consequence of Spinoza’s tactic is that it is extremely difficult to figure out
which mereological premise(s) he actually accepts and which he only assumes for the
sake of rejecting other inferences. Consider, for example, Spinoza’s claim, “First, they
think that corporeal substance, insofar as it is substance, consists of parts.” He goes on
to argue that extended substance does not, in fact, consist of parts, but that could be a
reason to reject (2) or (3), depending on what “consisting of ” involves.12 I tend to read
Spinoza’s claim as a conditional: if one thinks that wholes are dependent on their
proper parts (as per (3)), then extended substance does not have parts in the sense of
parts that are ontologically more basic than the whole they compose.
But suppose one rejects (3) for independent reasons. Would Spinoza allow that
extended substance has parts, if it is a whole that is more ontologically fundamental
than its proper parts? Sometimes he seems inclined to accept this, such as when he
writes to Henry Oldenberg, “From this it follows that every body, insofar as it exists
modified in a certain way, should be considered as a part of the whole universe [and]
must agree with the whole to which it belongs” (Ep 32, G IV/173). Lest we think
Spinoza is somehow referring to something besides extended substance here, he adds,
“But in relation to substance I conceive each part to have a closer union with its whole.”
He then asserts the priority of this whole over its parts: “Since it is of the nature of
substance to be infinite, it follows that each part pertains to the nature of corporeal
substance and can neither be nor be conceived without it.” So at least when Spinoza
is forced by correspondents to use part–whole terminology, he allows that extended
substance has parts, so long as (3) is rejected.
This makes it difficult to know whether Spinoza’s resistance in the Ethics and
elsewhere to charactering extended substance in part–whole terms stems from his
own belief that parts are always prior in nature to the wholes they compose or from
his belief that his opponents accept the priority of parts to wholes. In other words,
does Spinoza himself accept or reject (3)? I am not entirely sure. I think more than
anything, Spinoza wanted to play it safe here, and he thought part–whole talk easily
10
Spinoza also considers alternative ways of deriving (5) from (1), such as that divisible things can be
acted on (G II/58) and that things with parts are finite (G II/55).
11
See Ip15s. Curley does an admirable job here, but even he is forced to admit things do not perfectly
line up (C 421n38). In his other footnotes to Ip15s, Curley suggests an unusually high number of suppressed
premises and speculative reconstructions of Spinoza’s arguments.
12
See also Ep 12, G IV/55.
invited confusion about his views of God. Better whenever possible to speak of
substance, modes, and “closer unions,” than of wholes having parts.
What is relatively clear in all this is that Spinoza thinks finite bodies and minds can
both have parts and be parts of other things that they compose.13 It is also clear that
Spinoza is more interested in presenting answers to Composition in terms of com-
posite individuals than in terms of mereological wholes. A contemporary reader might
well insist that referring to composition and parts requires appealing to wholes, and
I am sympathetic to that point, regardless of Spinoza’s own terminological cautiousness.
Contemporary metaphysics is now full of accounts that distinguish questions of com-
position from questions of priority, which Spinoza should surely welcome.14 Still, in
what follows, I will try as much as possible to stick to Spinoza’s preferred terminology
of parts, composition, and composite individuals and leave aside talk of wholes.
In addition to Composition, Spinoza is interested in another related metaphysical
question surrounding individuals, namely:
Persistence: Under what conditions does an individual persist through change?
This question is Spinoza’s second main focus in the PD. He rejects various candidates,
arguing that “a [composite] individual will retain its nature, as before, without any
change of form” even if it loses and gains parts (IIp13sL4) or if any of its parts change
size (L5) or relative speed (L6). In other words, retaining the identity or the motions of
the parts of a complex body is neither necessary nor sufficient for retaining the identity
or “form” of the individual body through change.
Spinoza’s positive answers to Composition and Persistence come together nicely,
as we will see in subsequent sections. But it will follow that finite individuals are far
more unstable and impermanent than we normally take them to be. If the world is a
world of individuals, there is much more coming and going, much more fluxing than
we might have expected.
This brings us to a final warm-up point. The central ontological categories in Part I
of the Ethics are substances and modes. In Part II, Spinoza’s central categories are
individuals, bodies, and minds. The two realms are, of course, tightly related. A body,
Spinoza claims in the opening definition of Part II, is “a mode that in a certain and
determinate way expresses God’s essence insofar as God is considered an extended thing.”
13
What about infinite modes, one might wonder? On the one hand, Spinoza seems to say that infinite
modes have parts. The infinite intellect of God, for example, has finite minds as parts (IIp11c and Vp40s)
and Spinoza identifies the individual of PD L7s, which has “all bodies” as its parts, as an infinite mode of
extension (Ep 64, G IV/278). Some of his claims about those infinite individuals make it look like they are
composed out of and dependent on their parts for some of their features, such as their ability to persist
through change. On the other hand, Spinoza’s own work on infinity should make him suspicious about
trying to construct infinities out of finite sequences (Ep 12, G IV/55), and Spinoza sometimes claims that
infinite modes are ontologically prior to finite modes (Ip21–2 and Ip28). So these infinite individuals might
be good examples of things with parts in which the whole is prior to its parts, which again makes it look
like (3) is the root of the problem for deriving imperfection from a non-simple substance. (Something
similar may be behind many traditional doctrines of divine simplicity.)
14
See, for example, Schaffer, “Monism: The Priority of the Whole.”
A similar bridge is found in Part I: “Particular things are nothing but affections of
God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and
determinate way” (Ip25c). And yet, I submit, it is very difficult to keep this identification
in mind at all times. The more Spinoza writes about particular things and individual
bodies and minds, the easier it is to forget that they are merely states of a thing and to
begin treating them as more ontologically robust entities than they in fact are.
Spinoza’s conclusion about the ultimate thinness of finite individuals will serve
as a counter-weight to this tendency, reminding us of their highly derivative status
as mere modifications. They—and we—are far more like what we pre-theoretically
take to be the shape of my desk than the desk itself. In fact, it would be odd if finite
individuals did not turn out to be thinner than we took them to be when we thought
of them as more substantial. Similarly, Spinoza immediately sets aside the persistence
of a substance as a possible basis for the persistence of individual things (IIp13sL1),
as he must in light of his substance monism and thing pluralism. So it would be
surprising if Spinoza still ascribed to ordinary objects the same stability and per-
sistence conditions that we took them to have when we were thinking of them as
more substance-like.
In short, to expect Spinoza to offer answers to Persistence and Composition
that yield a picture of relatively stable, medium-sized individuals, of desks, chairs, and
people, is to neglect the deflationary conclusions of Part I. Spinoza’s terminological
shift in Part II of the Ethics encourages this forgetfulness, but his answers to
Composition and Persistence will serve as fitting reminders.
2. Spinoza’s Causal Answers

Spinoza answers Composition and Persistence in a unified way by invoking a causal
condition. His answers are, roughly, that composition occurs whenever things act
together to bring about a single effect and that composite individuals persist so long as
that effect continues to be brought about.
Let us begin with composition. In the broadest terms, Spinoza claims that whenever
things together bring about an effect, they compose a single individual thing. He does
not, so far as I know, ever argue for this condition on composition. Indeed, his clearest
statements of it are found in definitions. Consider first the account in IId7:
By singular things I understand things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And if
a number of individuals so concur [concurrant] in one action that together they are all the
cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent [eatenus], as one singular thing.
In the second half of this definition, Spinoza offers a sufficient condition for when an
individual arises out of discrete individuals.15 As a merely sufficient condition, this
15
Although he does not use the word “compose” here, as he will a bit later in the PD definition, I take it
that Spinoza has cases of composition in mind. I will also treat “individual” and “singular thing” as
definition is consistent with composition also occurring under different conditions.

But since Spinoza never offers alternative sufficient conditions, he probably intends it
as a necessary condition as well.
Before considering the condition itself, notice how Spinoza seems to appeal to
something like degrees (eatenus) of being an individual in IId7. There are several ways
one might interpret this appeal, some more radical than others. A more radical option
is that “eatenus” signals that composition itself admits of degrees. This is a difficult
view to even state, at least insofar as we hold fixed certain views about quantification
and prediction. It is supposed to be something like: a thing can be more or less of an
individual. But that requires distinguishing things and individuals in a way that is hard
to follow.16 If one also wants to claim that there are non-full things, we would need the
quantifier to admit of degrees as well, a conclusion that would have far-reaching impli-
cations. Degrees of being or reality is one thing; degrees of existence is a whole differ-
ent beast.17 Alternatively, someone could try to state the view in terms of properties,
something like: the property of being a singular thing comes in degrees. But I immedi-
ately wonder what—if not a singular thing—could instantiate such a property, in
which case we are right back to the original puzzles.
Putting aside these more philosophical worries, this reading of eatenus shows that
Spinoza endorses a condition on composition that itself readily admits of degrees.
I can act more or less cooperatively with others, and groups of individuals can be
more or less responsible for bringing about an effect. Suppose my family cooks breakfast
together. My daughter Anna and I might cook part of the meal together, in which case
it seems that we are partially responsible for making breakfast. And even with respect
to our jointly produced effect, it might be that we cooperate only to a certain extent in
bringing it about. She whips the eggs by herself, but we pour them into the pan together.
So Spinoza at least has the resources to embrace the more radical option, insofar as
composition tracks cooperative action.
Alternatively, Spinoza might have something weaker in mind. Perhaps “eatenus”
just means that composition occurs only when completely joint action occurs. If a pair
synonymous in these contexts (see, for example, his treating “body” and “individual” as equivalent in
IIp13sDef.) For a defense of a very broad extension of the term “individual,” see Garrett, “Spinoza’s Theory
of Metaphysical Individuation,” 87–94. For an account that tries to keep terms like “individual” and
“singular thing” somehow distinct, see Barbone, “What Counts as an Individual for Spinoza,” 99. The
latter’s motivation seems to be to avoid admitting odd fusions into Spinoza’s ontology, but as we will see,
I think Spinoza is open to that consequence.
16
I am grateful to Jeff McDonough for pushing the point in conversation that one could, in principle,
hold that while all individuals are things, not all things are individuals. (Presumably, the domain of the
unrestricted quantifier would range over things rather than just individuals.) On such a view, being a thing
would not admit of degrees, but being an individual would. Some things are individuals to lesser degrees
than other things, but being a thing, like existing, is all-or-nothing. However, as mentioned in the previous
footnote, I am not convinced that Spinoza treats things and individuals as different in this way (see, for
example, what would become invalid inferences for Spinoza to make from being a thing to being an indi-
vidual in passages like Ip8s2, G I/50 and IIp24d).
17
Still, for the brave, see Della Rocca, “Rationalism, Idealism, Monism, and Beyond.” For critical discus-
sion, see McDonough, “Leibniz, Spinoza, and an Alleged Dilemma for Rationalists.”
of individuals only partly brings about a single effect, they do not compose a singular
thing at all. This is to read “eatenus” as having the force of “in precisely and just that
case.” Although cooperation is a matter of degree, composition is not.
I admit that there are systematic reasons for expecting Spinoza to favor a scalar
option everywhere he can.18 Still, I favor the non-degreed account here. The wording of
IId7 suggests that he is singling out a very specific case: one effect brought about by one
action of a collection of individuals all working together. I’m also not aware of any text
in which Spinoza directly appeals to a partial thing (whatever that might even be), and
given the philosophical worries I have about the intelligibility of such a notion, I am
inclined to think, on balance, composition itself does not admit of degrees for Spinoza.
But nothing I will say in what follows requires this tamer reading, so those who can
make sense of degrees of existence or non-individual things are welcome to extrapo-
late from what follows.
A second and far more important question about IId7 is whether Spinoza thinks
composition adds a further individual into the world or replaces a collection of
individuals with a different composite individual. When a collection of individuals
brings about an effect jointly, Spinoza says he considers “them all . . . as one singular
thing.” A very natural reading of this is that, in acting jointly, what had been a collec-
tion of individuals becomes a single individual. In other words, the newly composed
individual has parts, but its parts are not the individuals that existed prior to compos-
ition. If we can refer to the parts of the new composite, we should say that its parts are
not identical to any individual.
This is composition on the model of eating. The apple I eat, at a certain point,
becomes so integrated into my body that it no longer exists, even though there are
parts of my body for which the apple is causally responsible. As we will see, there are
several important texts in which Spinoza endorses this model of composition. Parts of
individuals are not themselves individual things (a statement that makes one wonder
how singular reference to these non-individual, non-thing parts is even possible).
On this model, composition both adds a new entity and removes entities.
An alternative model of composition is a house built out of bricks. In becoming
parts of a wall, an individual brick does not cease to exist as an individual brick. It exists
as an individual, as does the individual house that it partly composes. On this picture,
the individuals of IId7 compose a single thing as its parts, but in doing so, they still
retain their status as distinct individuals. This might not be the most natural way to
read IId7, but when Spinoza writes about the composite human body in IIp13s, he
seems to favor the house model of composition. The human body is a composite
individual “of a great many individuals” (IIp13sPost1), individuals which are them-
selves composites of other individuals, and so on. On this account, composition adds
entities and eliminates none.
18
This is what Don Garrett has called “Spinoza’s incremental naturalism” (see Garrett, “Representation
and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of Imagination.”).
Spinoza’s texts vacillate on this point, but it turns out to be a highly significant choice
point that we need to keep track of as the discussion unfolds. As we will see, Spinoza
sometimes suggests that parts of composite individuals are not themselves individuals.
But if so, the existence of a composite individual of which we are all parts would imply
that none of us are individuals. This quickly leads to an acosmicist conclusion about
finite things that, it turns out, is not as indefensible as an interpretation as it might
initially seem. But this option will also wreak havoc on Spinoza’s broader conceptualist
strategy, and so I do not think he should have endorsed it. Still, I admit that IId7 prima
facie suggests that what had been a many becomes just a one.
The main focus of IId7 itself is on cooperative action.19 If things together bring about
an effect, then they compose a distinct thing of which they are parts. Stated in the other
direction, a composite thing exists whenever things act together so as to bring about an
effect. Although this is a somewhat unusual answer to Composition,20 there is some-
thing recognizable about it in everyday life.
Sports provide vivid examples. There comes a point in watching Roger Federer play
a tennis match that I begin to think, “That racquet is just an extension of his arm.” That is,
the racquet becomes a part of him—or better, he and the racquet together compose a
third thing—at least insofar as his body and the racquet are perfectly coordinated in
moving and striking the ball. Coaches sometimes exhort their teams to “play as one,”
where again the idea is for each member to become so unified in bringing about the
team’s goal that together they form a single individual agent. Similarly, when political
movements become so tightly unified that their members work together to achieve a
single effect, we can recognize a sense in which they compose a single entity in so striv-
ing. Of course, metaphors tend to run wild in sports and politics, so we should not put
too much stock in this. Another quasi-everyday example is an organism, a composite
that seems to exist in virtue of the cooperative, life-sustaining activities of its parts.
Spinoza’s causal account also suggests that decomposition occurs just when such
joint activity ceases. As individuals cease to have the sort of causal unity described in
IId7, they cease to be, even if what had been their parts go on to function as discrete
individuals. Here too there is something intuitive to the view. Federer puts the racquet
away, and the two individuals begin to move in different directions. Similarly, insofar
as the parts and systems of my body work together to bring about an effect—my
continued life as an organism, say—they compose a single individual. But suppose
19
Aaron Garrett describes IId7 as advancing a “causal theory of individuation” (Garrett, Meaning in
Spinoza’s Method, 36), which I think is a little too strong, but mostly right.
20
I say only “somewhat” unusual, since Van Inwagen’s own proposed answer can be seen as a more
limited case of Spinoza’s general causal condition in IId7. But Van Inwagen notes that his own answer to
Composition—that “the activities of the xs constitutes a life”—is “radically different from what most
philosophers have presupposed” (Van Inwagen, Material Beings, 81–2). He admits that his own answer also
commits him to the view that “parthood essentially involves causation,” but he complains that mere caus-
ation is “too abstract to be of much interest.” I do not see why it is abstract at all, though it does have the
consequence, rightly in Spinoza’s view, that composition would be far more ubiquitous in our world than
Van Inwagen’s answer would have it.
I begin to develop a cancerous tumor, and the activities of those cancer cells, although
spatially enclosed within my body, begin to bring about very different effects from the
life that the rest of my body works together to bring about. We can understand the
sense in saying, “Even though the tumor is inside my body, it is not a part of me.” It
is not a part of me despite close spatial proximity because, Spinoza’s account claims,
it is not jointly bringing about the same effect (a healthy life) that the parts of my
body are working to bring about.
If joint causation is the main condition on composition, how often is it satisfied? In
contemporary metaphysics, the two extreme answers are the most discussed and also
the least believable: never (nihilism) and always (universalism). The former answer
entails that, strictly speaking, there are no composite objects like tables and human
bodies and baseball stadiums; the latter entails that, in addition to the table, my body,
and the stadium, there also exists table–Sam and table–Sam–Citifield. Spinoza would
not agree with either position, as they are usually formulated. He thinks composition
does occur (pace nihilism), but not every mere collection or sum of things composes
an individual (pace universalism). The collected things must stand in the right causal
relation to each other.21
Whether Spinoza’s causal account puts him closer to the universalist or the nihilist
depends on empirical matters. Since composition is determined by the causal activ-
ities of things, the scope and scale of when composition actually occurs will be settled
by the causal structure of our world. When do bodies jointly bring about an effect?
Check with physics. If physical changes occur only through spatial contact, as many
early modern mechanists (and perhaps Spinoza) believed, then only spatially contigu-
ous bodies will be candidates for composition.22 Suppose instead it turns out (as it has)
that bodies can jointly act at a spatial distance from one another. Then spatially sep-
arated bodies would be candidates for composition on Spinoza’s account. These differ-
ences do not stem from alternatives to Composition, but from differences in accounts
of bodily causation and the discoveries of physics. Composition tells us to look for
causation; what we find when we go looking is a separate matter. More generally,
exactly which collection of bodies is involved in bringing about particular changes in
the world? Physics, chemistry, biology, and the social sciences attempt to answer these
sorts of questions about a huge range of effects, and they are not the sorts of questions
best settled from the proverbial armchair.
This does not imply Spinoza’s answers will be any tamer or friendlier to common
sense than what the wild-eyed metaphysicians have dreamt up. If there’s one clear
21
Here we find the resources to satisfy Barbone and others about odd fusions without having to postu-
late an unwieldy distinction between individuals and singular things. It is true, as Alexandre Matheron
emphasizes, that Spinoza thinks individuals need to have a kind of internal structure or unity that a mere
collection or aggregate cannot have (Matheron, Individu et communaute chez Spinoza, 39). But I think IId7
already provides a more discriminating condition; the rest is up to the world.
22
Passages like IIp13sDef could be read as endorsing this restraint on bodily causation (thanks to a ref-
eree for implicitly suggesting this), though I do not know of any instance where Spinoza outright states a
contact condition.
lesson from the last three centuries of science, it is that our manifest images of how
the physical world works are deeply misguided. So it might well turn out that my body
and a pebble on the far side of Saturn jointly exert some incredibly small amount of
gravitational force on the moon, in which case, according to Spinoza’s account of
composition, we do thereby compose an individual: pebble-Sam. A strange individual,
perhaps, but no stranger than the thesis of joint action by things hundreds of millions
of miles apart.
Although Spinoza’s causal condition in IId7 is quite general, in the PD he focuses
on the cases of bodily composition that are relevant to his own physics. Speaking
about individual composite bodies, he claims, “What constitutes the form of the
individual consists [only] in the union of the bodies [that compose the individual]”
(IIp13sL4). The nature of this “union” is causal. Composite bodies exist whenever
bodies form the right sort of union, an activity that Spinoza characterizes in terms of
a “communication” of motion and rest in a certain fixed quantity:
When a number of bodies, whether of the same or of different size, are so constrained by other
bodies that they lie upon one another, or if they move, whether with the same degree or differ-
ent degrees of speed, that they communicate their motions to each other in a certain fixed
pattern [ratione], we shall say that those bodies are united with one another and that they all
together compose one body or individual, which is distinguished from the others by this union
of bodies (IIp13sDef).
Although Spinoza offers additional details about bodily composition here, he makes
the same basic appeal to joint activity as he did in IId7. Spinoza specifies more precisely
what the activity is that bodies jointly engage in when they form more complex bodies.
Bodies jointly produce a particular quantity of motion and rest, thereby composing a
further individual as its bodily parts.23
In an earlier work, Spinoza went further and identified composite bodies with this
emergent pattern of motion and rest: “Each particular corporeal thing is nothing but
a certain proportion of motion and rest” (KV IIApp, G I/120). But this goes too far,
collapsing conditions of composition into those of a thing’s nature. From the fact that a
composite body exists in virtue of having parts that produce a stable pattern of motion
and rest, it does not follow that the composite body just is that pattern. Elsewhere in
this early text, Spinoza offers a more moderate version: “The differences between [one
body and another] arise only from the different proportions of motion and rest” (KV
IIPref, G I/52). And in the Ethics, Spinoza does not make the stronger identification of
composite bodies with the stable pattern of motion and rest that their parts bring
23
I agree with those who treat notions like the “ratio of motion to rest” as placeholders by Spinoza for a
more worked-out physical theory that never materialized. (See especially Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s
Ethics, 232 and Garrett, “Spinoza’s Metaphysical Theory of Individuation,” 82–7. For a more literal reading,
see Lachterman, “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics.”) It is worth noting that I am setting aside a fair bit of the
secondary discussion of PD, including debates on the precise nature of the “simplest” bodies, whether the
quantity of motion and rest should be understood as force, energy, or something else, whether Spinoza
thinks there are particular composite entities like “the state,” and so forth.
about, so I am inclined to set aside the stronger passage as a product of youthful

exuberance.24 In the last chapter, we saw Spinoza distinguish a thing’s essential base
from its activities, and if this pattern exhausts anything, it exhausts the essential base of
a body, not the body simpliciter.
Spinoza does, however, claim that the persistence of composite bodies depends
on this ratio of motion and rest being maintained over time. In other words, bodily
composition occurs whenever bodies unite at a time to generate a fixed proportion of
motion and rest. This new individual persists so long as that proportion is maintained.
This is Spinoza’s elegant way of answering Persistence in terms of Composition
over time.
The second half of the PD outlines the various changes a composite thing can
survive, including the gain and loss of its parts. This implies that Spinoza’s account of
composition in IId7 is potentially misleading. It naturally invites a de re reading: com-
position occurs when the xs [de re] jointly act. But really, what is essential for composition
is the joint activity itself, not the things doing the joint activity. (Obviously there could
not be joint activity without some individuals or others doing it, but the joint activity
is what is essential for composition, not that which does it.) After all, composition at
a time requires only that a collection of bodies jointly produce a particular quantity
of motion and rest. If a composite persists whenever the conditions for composition
across time are satisfied, then the persistence of a composite body requires only that a
collection of bodies jointly produces that quantity at different times, not that the very
same collection of bodies does so.25
I claimed that how often synchronic bodily composition occurs is ultimately a
matter for physics to settle, but I take it that Spinoza thinks bodily composition
happens quite often. If we could see down to the microphysical level, Spinoza thinks
we would find many, many nestings, layers upon layers upon layers of composites.
Of course, given Spinoza’s ontological commitment to plenitude discussed in chapter
one, this is hardly a surprising conclusion. The ubiquity of composite bodies is just a
physical correlate of what Spinoza takes to be the general plenitudinous nature of our
world. The world is as full of bodies as it can be, and given how Spinoza’s conditions for
bodily composition are easily satisfied, the world has room for a lot of bodies at many,
many different layers of compositionality. Indeed, I take such multi-layered fullness to
be a desirable upshot of Spinoza’s account of composition.
How stable bodily composition is over time—i.e., persistence—is similarly a ques-
tion for empirical investigation. Spinoza claims that more complex bodies will be more
24
The context of the stronger claim in KV II.App suggests that Spinoza may actually be arguing for the
weaker claim that particular bodies cannot exist without motion and rest, which could be true even if
bodies are not identical to a portion of motion and rest.
25
Spinoza probably should have added a more stringent requirement that there be at least some relation
of continuity between the collections of a thing’s parts over time. Given how very thin the notion of
“quantity of motion and rest” seems to be, it is likely that wholly discrete collections of microphysical
bodies will, at times, coincidentally bring about the same quantity of motion and rest. This would entail
that they compose the same body at different (or even the same!) times, despite there being no prior
relations at all among the collections.
stable than simpler bodies, in the sense that more complex bodies will be able to persist
through a wider array of possible changes:
So far, we have conceived an individual . . . which is composed of the simplest bodies. But if we
should now conceive of another, composed of a number of individuals of a different nature, we
shall find that it can be affected in a great many other ways, and still preserve its nature
[i.e., persist] (IIp13sL7s).
Human bodies, for example, are more stable insofar as they are composed of many
parts that are themselves very complex composites (IIp13sPost1). His inferences
suggest that this is supposed to generalize, so that anything that is composed of
human bodies (say, an army) will always be more stable than its parts. This does not
mean, of course, that more complex composites always persist for longer. Many a
soldier has outlived a disbanded army of which he was once a part. But it implies that
an army will always be more able to persist through a wider array of changes than
any of its members. There is again something intuitively recognizable here, as more
complex organizations like armies do seem able to undergo far more dramatic
changes (such as the loss of ninety percent of its parts) than my own body could
plausibly endure.
Spinoza thinks this pattern of higher-level composition and greater stability con-
tinues ad infinitum: “And if we proceed this way to infinity, we shall easily conceive
that the whole of nature is one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite
ways, without any change of the whole individual” (IIp13sL7s). Spinoza should not
have said that this infinite individual does not change, unless he meant that it does
not change due to the influence of anything outside of it. But that would be a rather
uninteresting claim to make of an individual that, by definition, has no individual
external to it. Rather, I think he means that this individual persists through infinitely
many internal changes. The conditions of its composition are always satisfied. (In a
letter, Spinoza indicates that this infinite composite individual, the “face of the whole
universe,” is a mediate infinite mode of extension.)26
Nevertheless, it is hard to see why more complex bodies are always guaranteed to be
more stable than their parts. Human bodies, for example, are supposed to be fairly
stable composites, even if not ultimately so. But, as Spinoza notes, the persistence of a
human body requires a near constant replenishment of its parts (IIp13sPost 4), parts
that are themselves relatively less able to persist through changes. These parts in turn
are composed of even less stable parts, and so on until down through my microphys-
ical parts, which are highly unstable and fragile individuals. Why think greater stabil-
ity always arises from a thing’s ever more unstable parts?
At the limit of the “whole of nature,” Spinoza’s answer is understandable. All that
is required for a composite body to exist is for some bodies to jointly act, which
26
Ep 64, G IV/278. Spinoza identifies the so-called immediate infinite extended mode as motion and
rest, which is more fundamental than the infinite individual, since motion and rest is presupposed by the
composition of the mediate infinite mode.
happens whenever they jointly produce a particular quantity of motion and rest.
To persist, composites require only the continual production of this pattern by some
collection of bodies or other. The infinite extended individual exists only when all
bodies produce a single quantity of motion and rest, and it persists so long as this quan-
tity remains fixed. So if the total quantity of motion and rest were conserved in the
world, then the stable persistence of such an individual would be guaranteed. That
works if something like total quantity of force in the universe is conserved. It is far less
clear, however, that there is anything like a series of conservation principles that hold
for subsystems of bodies in a way that would similarly guarantee that greater bodily
compositionality always entails greater stability.
In a sense, composition for Spinoza is so easily achieved that decomposition seems
likely to occur just as readily. And although the infinite individual will be incredible
stable, disintegration and destruction are potentially right around the corner for every
other composite. Perhaps it will turn out that some composites are slightly more stable
than others, but from a wider vantage point, Spinoza’s finite individuals are all easy
come, easy go. What Nature gives, it quickly takes away.
I have followed Spinoza in focusing on bodily persistence and composition, but he
suggests in passing that his account will be exactly parallel for minds. He reasons
that the mind is just a complex idea that represents its body, and so the relations
between the representations of the parallel bodily properties will likewise satisfy the
causal condition.27
3. A Conceptual Condition
Spinoza invokes his causal condition to settle when the composition and persistence of
things, especially bodies, occurs. In chapter three, I argued that causal relations are
conceptual containment relations for Spinoza, in which case it would immediately
follow that the composition and persistence conditions of bodies are also functions of
conceptual containment. But since my conceptual dependence monism interpretation
is highly controversial, I do not want to lean entirely on it here, and so I have been
presenting Spinoza’s account in the causal terms he usually uses.
Nevertheless, there are other indications that Spinoza does not accept a purely causal
condition on composition and persistence. Consider, for example, Spinoza’s claim
in IIp24d:
The parts composing the human body pertain to the essence of the body only insofar as they
communicate their motions to one another in a certain fixed manner (see the definition after
IIp13sL3c), and not insofar as [quatenus] they can be considered as individuals without relation
to the human body.
27
See IIp13 itself and IIp14–15. This implies, among other things, that Spinoza would not think of
ideas as static propositions in the Fregean heavens; whatever they are, they are causally efficacious,
combinatorial entities.
The first part of this sentence is a straightforward summary of the bodily version of the
causal condition on composition. The parts of a composite body are parts of it only
when they act together in a particular way.
But the second clause of the passage is much less straightforward. Rather than
saying that bodies are not parts of the human body when they do not so act together,
Spinoza says that they are not parts insofar as they are considered in a certain way,
namely, insofar as they are considered independently of their relation to the body.
But what does the way bodies are considered or conceived have to do with anything?
It seems like Spinoza should have said that whether a body is a part of the human
body depends only on whether it contributes to realizing the requisite pattern of
motion and rest.
It would be tempting to excuse this as a bit of overwriting by Spinoza, were it not
for a letter he penned on the topic of individuals. In light of the growing hostilities
between the Dutch and the English, Spinoza had written to Oldenberg, “For I do not
think it right to laugh at nature, and far less to grieve over it, reflecting that men, like
all else, are only a part [partem] of nature, and that I do not know how each part of
nature agrees with the whole and how it coheres [cohaereat] with other parts” (Ep 30,
G IV/166). In reply, Oldenberg pressed Spinoza to explain “how each part of Nature
agrees [conveniat] with its whole and the way it coheres [cohaereat] with the other
parts” (Ep 31, G IV/167).
Spinoza replies at length in Ep 32, parts of which are worth looking at closely.28
He first admits that he does not have a very detailed answer to give, as this would
require knowing “the whole of Nature and all its parts.” Hence, his account will be
general, which is what we are interested in too. Like a good philosopher, Spinoza
next defines his terms:
By the coherence [cohaerentiam] of parts, then, I understand nothing but that the laws, or
nature [leges, sive natura] of one part adapt themselves to the laws or nature of the other part so
that they are opposed to each other as little as possible. Concerning whole and parts, I consider
things as parts of some whole insofar as [eatenus] the nature of the one adapts itself to the
nature of the other so that, so far as possible, they are all in harmony with one another. But
insofar as they are in discord with one another, to that extent each forms an idea distinct from
the others in our mind, and therefore it is considered as a whole and not as a part.
At first blush, this looks like a very confused series of claims. Spinoza seems to conflate
metaphysical and epistemological distinctions, shifting between metaphysical claims
about natures and adaptation on the one hand, and psychological claims about the
distinctness of our ideas on the other. Perhaps this is a vivid instance of what Jorge
J.E. Gracia laments as “the blurring of the distinction between the [metaphysical] prob-
lem of individuation and the [epistemological] problem of discernibility [that] returns
28
For uniformity, I cite passages from Ep 32 from Curley’s translation in A Spinoza Reader, with small
adjustments. Joachim just quotes the letter in its entirety without further explanation or commentary
(Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 89–93).
to philosophy in the modern period with the renewed emphasis on epistemology.”29

Perhaps. But I think something else is happening here, something besides a confusion
of domains.
In the next sentence, Spinoza gives an example:
when the motions of the particles of lymph, chyle, and the like so adapt themselves to one
another in relation to their size and shape that they are completely in harmony with each other
and they all constitute one fluid together, to that extent only are the chyle, lymph, etc. considered
[considerantur] as parts of the blood. But insofar as we conceive [concipimus] the particles of
lymph, by reason of their shape and motion, to differ from the particles of chyle, to that extent
we consider them as a whole and not as a part.
The language of considering things as parts vs. wholes reminds us of Spinoza’s claim in
IIp24d, quoted above, that in order to be a part of a human body, things must not be
“considered as individuals without relation to the human body.” In both passages,
Spinoza begins with a purely metaphysical claim about what makes something a part
of something else, and then, within the same sentence, shifts to talking about how those
things are considered or conceived in relation to other things. (Notice too that both
passages assume that whatever is a part is not also an individual or a whole.)
Although it is always possible to set such appeals to the conceptual aside, I think we
have encountered enough examples of Spinoza putting conceptual machinery to work
that we should at least try to read him straightforwardly here too. The straightforward
reading is that whether a body is part of another body somehow depends on how the
bodies are conceived. In particular, to the extent to which things are conceived as
working together, as mutually accommodating each other “in harmony,” to that extent
they form parts of a whole. Correspondingly, to the extent to which they are conceived
as operating distinctly from or even against one another, to that extent they are distinct
individuals, “a whole and not as a part.”
Spinoza’s appeal to how things are conceived in relation to their surroundings is
reminiscent of Frege’s well-known remark on the alleged “unity” of objects:
The more the internal contrasts within a thing fade into insignificance by comparison with the
contrasts between it and its environment, and the more the internal connections among its
elements overshadow its connections with its environment, the more natural it becomes for us
to regard it as a distinct object. For a thing to be “united” means that it has a property which
causes us, when we think of it, to sever it from its environment and consider it on its own.30
But whereas Frege explicitly puts his point in psychological terms, Spinoza’s concep-
tual relations are not so obviously purely mental. (There is something delicious about
accusing Frege of being just a bit too psychologistic.) The general parallel is that the
way things are considered in relation to their surroundings partly determines the
extent to which they are—not just are considered—integrated parts vs. discrete indi-
vidual wholes.
29
Gracia, “Christian Wolff on Individuation,” 220. 30
Frege, Foundations, 42.
This raises the following interpretive possibility, which will receive support in later
parts of the letter. Conceived in one way, a region of extension contains an individual
body composed of parts that are pursuing a certain cooperative endeavor. Conceived
in another way, that very same region contains a mere collection of independent
wholes, none of which are parts of any greater individual whole. As a loose analogy,
consider a daycare room full of toddlers at the beginning of the day, intently building a
tower of blocks together vs. what one often observes in that same room at the end of the
day, every girl, boy, and worker fending desperately for themselves.
For now, let us think of these “regions” as collections of bodily activities. (I intend
the term “region” to be neutral on the question of how many individuals, if any, are
performing the activities.) Spinoza’s intriguing idea is that facts about composition,
parts, and wholes in a given region are sensitive to some of the ways in which that
region is conceived.31 Obviously, this will require some fleshing out. But if this general
line of interpretation can be sustained, Spinoza will have offered an account of compos-
ition that is both metaphysical and conceptual in nature. This interpretation will also
explain why Spinoza explicitly appeals to how things are conceived when he discusses
various layers of composite individuals (such as IIp13sL7s) without attributing to him
a confusion of metaphysical and epistemic questions.
The concept sensitivity of composition is reinforced by Spinoza’s next example of a
worm living in a bloodstream. He invites Oldenberg to imagine a parasite worm—let’s
call it “Willy”—that is capable of discerning and representing patterns of cooperative
and competitive activity in its surroundings. As Willy looks around its little world of
the bloodstream, it conceives the various activities there as produced by discrete
wholes. That is, Willy conceives the bloodstream as populated by a host of individual
things, each metaphysically distinct from the others, none of which compose any
greater whole. To keep it easy, let us assume that the individuals Willy conceives are all
simple. There’s a lymph cell, doing its thing. A bit of fatty tissue, slowing down the rate
of blood flow over there, and so forth. Spinoza writes that Willy would “live in this blood
as we do in this part of the universe, and would consider each particle of the blood as
a whole, not as a part” (Ep 32, G IV/171). (Notice again the dichotomy Spinoza con-
tinues to assume between being a part and being a whole.)
Spinoza’s example suggests that the worm is actually correct in its assessment.
Considering only the narrower set of relations available to it, composition does not
occur. That is, absent the inclusion of anything that unifies the activities in the blood-
stream into a unified activity, the worm’s world is conceived truly as a world of atomis-
tic individuals or wholes. “Nor could [Willy] know how all the parts of the blood are
restrained by the universal nature of the blood, and compelled to adapt themselves to
one another, as the universal nature of blood requires, so that they harmonize with one
31
William Sacksteder picks up on this as well, though unfortunately he describes the relativity as relative
to “the manner in which we take this or that object of reference” (Sacksteder, “Spinoza on Part and Whole,”
143). Later, he glosses it as “relative to the knower.” This too is close, but it is not quite right. The feature
doing the work is not so much the knower as the concepts, though obviously these are closely connected.
another in a certain way” (Ep 32, G IV/171). Willy’s world is a world of competing
activity, each individual agent doing its own thing.
Spinoza contrasts Willy’s perspective with two successively broader ways of
conceiving the activities in the bloodstream. First, suppose that the activities in the
bloodstream follow a law-governed pattern, even though nothing outside the blood-
stream is influencing it. That is, imagine that there was only the bloodstream and
whatever regulates its internal activities. In such a case, Spinoza says, the bloodstream
would be conceived as a whole itself that is not a part of any greater whole. “Thus
the blood would always have to be considered as a whole and not as a part” (Ep 32,
G IV/172). This represents an important difference from Willy’s conception, since the
activities within the blood are now conceived as the activities of the parts of a single
individual whole, rather than as activities of independently operating individuals.
The bloodstream is conceived as something like an isolated organism. Most relevantly,
Spinoza says that when the bloodstream is so conceived, composition occurs.
One could take an even broader perspective on the bloodstream. This broader way
of conceiving the blood includes causal relations to other external bodies. So conceived,
the bloodstream is engaged in coordinated ways with many other bodies and systems
of bodies, which all together jointly produce various effects, such as sustaining an
organism’s life. What follows insofar as the bloodstream is conceived more broadly in
this way? Spinoza answers, “In this way [of being conceived], the blood has the nature
of a part, and not of a whole.” Notice the indicative language. It is not merely that the
blood is conceived to be a part. Rather, Spinoza concludes that insofar as it is conceived
this way, it has the nature of a part. Compositional facts appear to be sensitive to differ-
ences in how things are conceived.
Spinoza’s tripartite division of ways of conceiving the activities in the bloodstream
can be applied more generally to varying levels of composition. Conceiving a region of
activities very narrowly, as Willy does the blood, it may contain a mere collection of
individuals. Conceived more broadly, the causal condition for composition may be sat-
isfied and, if it is, the same region would contain a single complex individual. Conceived
yet more broadly, such that the activities in that region are conceived in relation to other
regions of activity which all together produce an effect, it would contain a mere part.
A salient difference among these ways of conceiving is whether or not the activities
are conceived as sufficiently united to produce a single effect, which is what Spinoza’s
causal condition on composition in the Ethics requires. Spinoza appeals to this require-
ment in the next sentence of the letter:
Now all bodies in Nature can and should be conceived in this manner, as we have here conceived
of the blood [in the third and broadest way], for all bodies are surrounded by others, and are
determined by one another to exist and act in a certain and determinate way, the same ratio of
motion to rest being always preserved in all of them together, that is, in the whole universe
(G IV/172–3).32
32
Curley translates the opening as “Now all bodies in Nature can and must [debeant] be conceived in
this manner,” but with Shirley and Elwes I take the force of debeant to be something more like “should.”
I will say more about the force of this injunction below.
To quote from the PD again:

And if we should further conceive a third kind of individual, composed of this second
kind . . . and proceed in this way to infinity, we shall easily conceive that the whole of nature is
one individual whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite ways, without any change of the
whole individual (IIp13sL7s).
The conceptual language in the PD passage now appears more momentous, as satisfy-
ing the causal condition on composition depends partly on how those activities are
conceived. Conceiving a region of activity in a very narrow way, it contains no over-
arching effect, and so no composition occurs. Conceived more broadly, it might
contain such an effect, in which case composition would occur. If so, then whether
or not composition occurs partly depends on how narrowly or broadly a region of
activity is conceived.
Let me summarize this account in more general Spinozistic terms. On my reading,
Spinoza’s attribute of extension is internally structured by a varying distribution of
something like forces, quantities of “motion and rest.” Individuals and parts are
constructed out of that distribution of motion and rest insofar as those forces form
stable patterns of activity.33 But whether there are such stable patterns of motion and
rest depends partly on how narrowly or broadly the distribution is conceived. On one
way of conceiving the distribution of motion and rest, a single overarching quantity of
motion and rest is conserved through all local variations. So conceived, the global
distribution of motion and rest composes a whole individual, and any more localized
patterns of motion and rest are mere abstractions of that overarching pattern. This
all-encompassing body is the extended infinite individual of IIp13sL7s. But there are
also narrower ways of conceiving the distribution of motion and rest, according to
which discrete, stable, and more localized patterns of activity persist and compose
discrete individuals, or composite bodies.
To unpack this a little more concretely, let us contrast two ways of conceiving what
we would pre-theoretically call “my body.” In one case, I conceive my body in relation
to a few other nearby bodies—the desk, the table, and my older daughter Sophia.
Suppose we’re all just sitting here. So conceived, there is no discernible joint activity
that we all engage in, no stable pattern of motion and rest that we continue to bring
about together. So conceived, the four of us form a mere collection. There are, of
course, other collections of bodies in this vicinity that do clearly maintain such stable
patterns of activity, namely that which composes my body, that which composes the
parts of the table, and so on. But, so conceived, the four of us do not jointly compose a
further individual.
By contrast, according to the broadest way of conceiving the physical world,
there exists a single individual that all bodies compose as its interconnected parts:
what Spinoza calls “the universe” in this letter. When my body is conceived so
broadly in relation to the rest of the physical universe, what compositional status
33
This has obvious affinities with Bennett’s “field metaphysic” reading (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s
Ethics, 88–92).
does it have? Given Spinoza’s repeated dichotomy between being a part and being
an individual thing, one might worry about even raising this question using a sin-
gular term anymore, which is symptomatic of a larger worry that we will face in the
next section.
But suppose we can quantify over regions of activity, that is, over particular local-
ized patterns of motion and rest. What is the compositional status of that region of
motion and rest which, a moment ago, we referred to as “my body”? Spinoza’s answer
seems to be that it is a mere part of this larger whole. It is not an individual. It “has the
manner of a part,” something it did not have when the region was conceived more
narrowly. (Again, the anaphor is very slippery, but I think what he is trying to say is
intelligible enough for now.)
How can this be? Nothing has changed between the two cases, except that in the
second, the same activities were conceived in relation to a much broader range of
activities. My bodily parts are not doing anything differently; and yet, in the first case
they compose an individual, whereas in the second they do not compose that individ-
ual (although they, along with other bodies, compose a different individual: the whole
universe). So why does compositionality differ between the two scenarios, according
to Spinoza? Since we stipulated that the region of activity is the same region across
these two ways of being conceived, the differences in composition can only be the
result of differences in how broadly those regions were conceived. That is, whether
some region of activity, some pattern of motion and rest, contains an individual is
partly a function of how broadly that region is conceived.
A natural reply is that while the two scenarios do differ conceptually, this difference
is not what explains the difference in composition. What explains the difference in
composition is the presence or absence of the requisite causal pattern itself. It just so
happens that narrower ways of conceiving bodies do not include the relevant pattern.
But the relations and the broader causal pattern are still there nevertheless, even if they
aren’t included in a narrower concept. And that’s what is doing the real compositional
work, the objection runs.
It is tempting to respond by violating my earlier prohibition against invoking
Spinoza’s conceptual dependence monism from chapter three. For the objection
assumes a distinction between conceptual containment and causal structure that
CDM denies. But I would prefer not to play that card here, as I do not think it addresses
the heart of the worry. At bottom, the objection is that the causal pattern that is con-
tained in the broadest way of conceiving things is the only salient causal pattern for
composition. So even if CDM were true for Spinoza, my account would still face the
analogous worry that only what is included in the broadest way of conceiving things is
relevant for determining compositional status.
In fact, Spinoza might be read as affirming exactly this to Oldenberg:
All bodies are surrounded by others and are mutually determined to exist and to act in a fixed
and determinate way . . . Hence it follows that every body, insofar as it exists as modified in a
definite way, should be considered as a part of the whole universe, and as agreeing with the
whole and cohering with the other parts (G IV/172–3).
That is, the only true compositional status is the one that follows when the blood and
my body are conceived in relation to the rest of the world. Poor Willy is just plain
wrong. We are all but parts, and our conception of ourselves as individual wholes is an
illusion born of incomplete information about the world’s broader causal structure.
Although this is a plausible reading, I do not think it is how Spinoza is reasoning
here. Notice that even here, Spinoza first states what is true from a maximally inclusive
way of conceiving the world, and then claims that, given this pattern of mutual inter-
activity, various compositional facts follow. That is at least consistent with his also
thinking that there are other, narrower ways of conceiving some of these regions and
that, so conceived, they produce different compositional results that are true nonethe-
less. Willy is not wrong, so long as the compositional claims are appropriately indexed
to narrower ways of conceiving the bloodstream.
Spinoza could think that, but does he? We have seen in previous chapters that
Spinoza takes various metaphysical features of the world to be partly determined
by the presence or absence of relations in how things are conceived. Hence it would be
not only consistent but also systematic for him to treat facts about parts and wholes
as also sensitive to the causal breadth under which things or regions are conceived.
This is the same conceptualist strategy we saw him adopt for the modal profiles and
essences of things in previous chapters. Both of those metaphysical features, Spinoza
argued, were sensitive to how things were conceived with respect to their causes
(“more or less broadly,” in my terminology). I believe that Spinoza is employing the
same machinery here. The individuation of nature into parts and individual wholes is
sensitive to the manner in which regions are conceived with respect to the causal
activities of other regions.
However, to reassert the objection, why think that there is not one privileged
vantage point on the distribution of motion and rest, the broadest vantage point?
After all, the conceptual work is not directly responsible for creating the various
patterns of activity. It is only responsible for grouping those activities into more
and less complete patterns. So why isn’t one of those groupings the objectively (i.e.
concept-independently) correct one, namely the most complete and inclusive? Why
not conclude that, conceived however one wishes, my body just is a mere part for
Spinoza, and those more limited conceptual vantage points according to which it is
an individual whole are sadly mistaken?
To see Spinoza’s answer, let us look at why he thinks we are inclined to conceive
things more narrowly in the first place. In his earlier letter to Oldenberg, Spinoza
confesses that it was due to a limitation, a cognitionis defectus that “certain features of
nature—which I thus perceived only partly and in a fragmentary way, and which are
not in keeping with our philosophical frame of mind once seemed to me vain, dis-
ordered, and absurd” (Ep 30, G IV/166). Cognitive defects are the same source Spinoza
names in the Ethics for predications of contingency: “A thing is called contingent only
because of defectus nostrae cognitionis” (Ip33s1, G II/74). What is the nature of the
cognitive defect that prompted Spinoza to perceive the world as disjointed and discon-
nected, full of contingent, discrete, even warring individuals?
Spinoza claims that it is because he considered things in a partial and fragmentary
way, a limited way that is at odds with the “philosophical frame of mind.” That is, he
tended to adopt narrower ways of conceiving what was happening to and around him,
excluding any larger causal structure in which they might also be embedded. Like the
cognitionis defectus in the Ethics that yields predications of contingency, the narrow-
ness of Spinoza’s conceptual outlook is why he had conceived the world as a mere
collection of atomistic individuals, each trying antagonistically to overpower and
out-survive the others.
Why is this narrower way of conceiving things defective? In my terminology, why
is it a defect to adopt narrower ways of conceiving over broader? Is it because the
narrower ways of conceiving do not correspond to the way things really are, independ-
ently of those conceptions? I have argued in previous chapters that this is not the case
for other concept-sensitive features of the world, according to Spinoza. Not all limited
or partial expressions are false or confused; the plenitude in Spinoza’s ontology creates
space for incomplete as well as complete ways of expressing God.
Here too I suggest that the defect is not primarily due to a failure of correspondence.
Spinoza never says, for instance, that Willy the worm is outright wrong in concluding
that the universe is an atomistic collection of discrete wholes. His point is rather that
Willy’s conclusion about mereological relations in the blood is true only insofar as the
region of the blood is conceived narrowly. Similarly, Spinoza never claims that those
middle perspectives, which do not conceive a region as causally contributing to any
broader pattern of activity, are outright false. We instead saw him conclude that, so
conceived, the region does contain a mere collection of individuals.
The nature of the defect does not, fundamentally at least, involve a confusion
between appearance and reality, or concepts and concept-independent facts. In this
respect, William Sacksteder is exactly right about Spinoza’s view on composition:
Reflections [on parts and wholes] thus limited are misleading, rather than false . . . this progres-
sion of ideas [from narrower to broader perspectives] is more subtle than replacing falsities
with truths. Neither is our former idea an “appearance” and the enlarged one “reality,” as some
commentators would have it. Rather, we make a discrete switch, attending now to a more
adequate idea whereby we assess our identity.34
In chapter three, I claimed that the adequacy of ideas for Spinoza, at least on one
of his accounts of adequacy, is a function of their completeness, their representing
BCs. Sacksteder is thus quite correct when he characterizes the move from Willy’s
34
Sacksteder, “Spinoza on Part and Whole,” 149; see also Armstrong, “Autonomy and the Relational
Individual,” 51–2.
perspective to the broadest as a move from the limited to the more adequate, not the
false to the true.
This provides a hint about the real nature of the cognitionis defectus. It is a kind of
deficiency, understood most fundamentally as a kind of weakness and limitation on
the part of the cognizer. There is something bad about conceiving the world in a
limited way, according to which I am an individual engaged in a struggle for survival
against a host of other antagonistic individuals. As Spinoza admits to Oldenburg (Ep 30),
he is tempted to either laugh or cry when he conceives things in this way. But what
is bad about this tendency is that it leads me to live a less powerful, and hence less vir-
tuous life. What’s bad about adopting more limited perspectives, in other words, is not
due to anything intrinsically deficient about at least some of them. Rather, it is bad for
me to adopt them; it cuts against my own interests to do so. As we will see over the next
two chapters, this extrinsic consideration, based on a broadly practical concern, forms
the backbone of Spinoza’s case to his readers to conceive the world more broadly. Here
his metaphysics begins to yield to his ethics.
We can draw out this connection a bit more by considering Spinoza’s choice of
vocabulary in the letter. In the previous chapter, I highlighted Spinoza’s very dynamic
language in his account of essences. Essences are related to a thing’s power and to its
striving to exist and to bring about other effects. Later in the Ethics, Spinoza reminds
readers that for finite things this striving is ultimately frustrated as we are all eventually
overcome by stronger, hostile forces (IVa1). Over time, the collective activities of parts
that currently preserve my body will cease, resulting in my bodily death. (Spinoza ups
the ante and calls this the “destruction” of my body in IVp39, but “death” sounds bad
enough.) So conceived, the Spinozistic world is a battlefield of powers competing for
survival and dominance, one that extends deep down to even metaphysical relations of
explanation, causation, and essences.
In this letter, prompted by the real threat of an international war, Spinoza uses a
similarly dynamic vocabulary to explain his thinking about parts, wholes, and compos-
ition. But the terms here have a much rosier hue. Spinoza speaks about things agreeing,
cohering, and adapting to one another, minimizing opposition and establishing mutual
harmony. This choice of terminology brings political and moral overtones to what had
appeared to be a straightforward metaphysical tangle about composition.
This reminds us that questions about individuals and composition are not sterile
metaphysical issues for Spinoza. They are not wholly independent of power, virtue,
and moral excellence. For instance, Spinoza uses his theory of individuals to outline an
account of states and rights.35 Spinoza’s language in Ep 32 likewise points to a broadly
moral dimension to his views on individuals. I have claimed that for Spinoza, facts
about parts, individuals, and composition depend partly on how broadly or narrowly
things are conceived. That there are so many different ways of genuinely conceiving
35
See, for examples, TTP 16, TP 2, and IVp37.
things follows from Spinoza’s principle of expressive plenitude. But which of these
plentiful ways of conceiving the world is better for us to adopt?
Would it be better for us to conceive the world as composed of atomistic, independ-
ent, autonomous wholes, some collections of which just happen to work together more
closely than others? Or would it behoove us instead to try to conceive of the world as a
single, interconnected whole that is composed of infinitely many parts that necessarily
work together to instantiate a harmonious pattern of motion and rest? We have already
seen Spinoza’s own answer to Oldenberg: “All bodies in nature can and should be
conceived as we have here conceived of the blood,” namely in the broadest way possible.
In the next two chapters, we will unpack why Spinoza thinks adopting these broader
ways of conceiving is advantageous for us.
But we can see in germ form what that broader outlook will yield: regions of activity
once conceived as the product of discrete, autonomous, sovereign, and inviolable indi-
viduals will be reconceived as mere parts working cooperatively and collectively for
the perpetuation and empowerment of a single, overarching individual, “the universe.”
Sacksteder also picks up on the broadly moral goal of Spinoza’s metaphysical musings
in Ep 32: “This redisposition of our self-consideration—so that we refer ourselves as
parts to a common whole—shapes the normative thrust in the final books of the
Ethics.”36 Just as Spinoza believes that we have compelling moral motives for thinking
about our place in the world as more necessary and more powerful than we naturally
tend to do, so too we have compelling moral motives to conceive of ourselves more as
part-like and less as discrete individuals. Indeed, we will see by the end of chapter eight
that Spinoza thinks our very salvation depends on our doing so.
4. Too Much of a Good Thing?

Before ascending to the lofty heights of morality and salvation, we need to muck
around in metaphysics just a bit more to reach a final dénouement. I opened this chap-
ter with a worry about Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy. The worry was that the indi-
viduals needed for the machinery to work are proving to be increasingly elusive.
Spinoza was supposed to be showing how his ontological plenitude was consistent
with identity theses, and his basic idea was to relativize the world’s diversity to a diver-
sity in conceptual content, the sort of diversity that is consistent with the underlying
identity of the thing that is diversely conceived. But at a minimum, to make the con-
ceptual gambit work, individual things must underlie all this conceptual diversity. One
and the same substance, conceived this way and that. One and the same finite individ-
ual, conceived this way and that.
But our search for underlying finite individuals, the pegs on which to hang a fair bit
of this diversity, has instead yielded yet more conceptual variability. For it turns out
that whether or not a given region of activity contains an individual depends in part on
36
Sacksteder, “Spinoza on Part and Whole,” 149.
how broadly it is conceived with respect to other regions. Even worse, the very same
conceptual shifts that generate modal and essence differences also generate differences
in composition. The conceptual variations are beginning to sway together danger-
ously. In this section, I will unpack this worry and consider Spinoza’s prospects for
addressing it.
One way to bring out the worry is to consider some of the implications of the
preceding sections for composite finite modes. I claimed that finite modes or singular
things are individuals, for Spinoza.37 As such, their parts minimally work together to
produce a “pattern of motion and rest” that persists unless disrupted by external
causes. But I also claimed that whether or not composition occurs—whether or not a
region of activity contains a composite individual—depends in part on how those
activities are conceived in relation to activities in other regions. It seems to follow from
this that whether or not there exists a composite finite mode depends in part on how
broadly or narrowly the activities of a region are conceived.
Conceived narrowly, a region of motion and rest may contain hundreds of individ-
ual finite modes, each with a tendency to maintain distinctive, localized patterns of
motion and rest. Conceived more broadly, the region might instead contain just a
single composite individual with a tendency to perpetuate its existence. But this
implies that there are hundreds of finite modes in a region conceived one way, and that,
conceived another way, there is only one finite mode in that region. According to the
broader standpoint, what happened to what, from the narrower standpoint, were a
bunch of individual finite things? Although there is a narrower vantage point accord-
ing to which they exist, according to a broader vantage point it seems as though those
individuals, qua individual finite things, do not exist. By this reasoning, conceiving the
distribution of motion and rest in the broadest way, there exists but one individual
mode, the mediate infinite mode of IIp13sL7s. Finite things seem to have been swal-
lowed up by the infinite individual.
Putting things so dramatically calls to mind a once-dominant interpretation of
Spinoza associated with idealism.38 We have already encountered versions of this
interpretation in chapter one, when we sought the grounds for Spinoza’s denial of
acosmicism, the thesis that there are no finite things. Here we again brush up against a
version of that thesis: according to the broadest way of conceiving the extended world,
there are no individual finite bodies.
I actually think there is something right about this conclusion, at least on the
assumption that no finite individual is a part of anything composite, which we have
37
If one thinks that Spinoza’s “simplest bodies” are instead mereological simples, then what I say here
will apply to all the other finite modes that are composites. Based on very thin texts and despite his appeal
to “simplest bodies” in IIp13sA2'', I am inclined to think that Spinoza’s infinite extended individual is
gunky: every proper part of it has proper parts, each of which also have proper parts, ad infinitum. But if
there are genuine physical atoms for Spinoza, then the worry about acosmicism will be the worry that there
exists only the infinite individual and the simples, which may not sound as threatening—until one realizes
that everything we actually care about is essentially composite.
38
For discussion, see Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading” and “More Recent Idealist Readings.”
seen Spinoza sometimes assumes. For example, recall how Spinoza concluded in his
letter to Oldenberg that the bloodstream, more broadly conceived, is a part and not a
whole. He did not claim, as one might have expected, that it is both a part and also still
a composite whole. To be a part, he seems to think there, is to no longer be a whole.
As I noted above, Spinoza assumes a similar dichotomy in IIp24d between being a
part and being an individual. In commenting on that passage, Steven Barbone notes
in passing (perhaps without taking in the full import of his appeals to how things
are considered): “The parts that form a human body . . . are individuals considered
in themselves, but they are not individuals if considered as parts of the body they
compose.”39 In such passages, Spinoza employs what I called the eating model of com-
position, in which individuals or wholes are consumed once they become parts.
But even so, there is also something fundamentally wrong with the acosmicist
conclusion. Seeing what is right and wrong will reveal what I take to be the deeper
problem facing Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy.
For the sake of space, I will take Harold Joachim to be an apt spokesperson for the
acosmicist interpretive camp. Joachim does not flatfootedly claim that finite things
are unreal or do not exist for Spinoza. He comes close, such as when he writes that
“this [finite] world of isolated and perishable things, with its apparently arbitrary
sequences—arbitrary as regards the natures of the connected events—this world of
the unscientific experience is largely illusory.”40 But Joachim’s view is a bit subtler than
this suggests—there’s a big qualifier in that “largely.”
What Joachim thinks is illusory for Spinoza is the individuation of the world into
discrete finite individuals:
But the particularity of the particular things, when they are so regarded, seems to vanish in the
system. Completely real and eternal they may be, but individually distinct they are not. In
the timeless actuality of the modal system, in the completeness of “natura naturata” there is no
individual “essentia” or “existentia” except that of the whole system.41
Joachim is not claiming that the extended world has no reality for Spinoza or that it
does not exist. What is an illusion is the individuation of that reality into distinct finite
individuals. There is motion and rest, but there are no individual finite bodies.
“Individuality of essence and existence belongs in any real sense to God, and to God
alone.”42 Put better: in addition to God and immediate infinite modes like motion and
rest, there is only the One infinite extended individual. The Many qua many finite
individuals do not exist.43
39
Barbone, “What Counts as an individual for Spinoza,” 93. For the (reasonable) insistence that individuals
remain individuals even when they become parts of a greater whole for Spinoza, see Rice, “Spinoza on
Individuation,” 204. I think Spinoza’s texts are genuinely inconsistent on this point.
40
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 79–80.
41
Ibid.
43
In the passage Joachim identifies the sole bearer of essence and existence as God or substance, but
I do not think that is quite right by his own lights. What he should have said is what I say here, that there
But Joachim qualifies even this conclusion. He thinks this denial is true only from a
particularly broad vantage point:
On the other hand, if you take the particular things out of the system and regard them as
particular, their completeness vanishes and their eternality disappears . . . and though every-
thing in its context—in its dependence on its modal system—is complete, yet everything by
itself is but a part which is incomplete in essence and power, or finite in nature and transitory
in existence.44
What Joachim refers to here as regarding things within “the system” is what I have been
calling the broadest way of conceiving the world, one that conceives the world as
“expressing God’s nature in a coherent and inseparable modal system.”45 Joachim
claims that from such a broad vantage point, there are no individual finite things. From
this perspective, there is only one single composite individual under each attribute.
But he concedes that, more narrowly conceived, some of those same regions contain
particular individuals. So far, so good on my interpretation.
Joachim’s mistake—and it is so very tempting—is to conclude that only what fol-
lows from the broadest vantage point is true, for Spinoza. His misstep, in other words,
is to reject all partial perspectives as inherently false.46 For example, he begins, “If,
then, we regard the particular things as forming ‘natura naturata’—i.e., as they in
their reality are, as expressing God’s nature in a coherent and inseparable modal
system . . . ”47 Two pages later, he adds, “If we treat the parts of ‘natura naturata’ as
independent of the whole, as having a distinctive character of their own, we are neces-
sarily negating some of their real being: and that means that they have become to us
finite or incomplete realities.”48
We have seen this temptation crop up repeatedly, including in the previous section.
From the concept sensitivity of features of the world, it is tempting to privilege
what follows from the broadest as containing the only correct or “real” fact of the
matter. In chapter four, it tempted us to interpret Spinoza as an unqualified necessitar-
ian. In chapter five, it tempted us to ascribe to things but a single essence within an
attribute. Here it tempts us, with Joachim, to deny the existence of a plurality of finite
individuals. I have claimed that the cost of this denial would be too high for Spinoza,
is only one individual: the mediate infinite mode. (It is infinite because, ex hypothesi, there is no other
individual to limit it, which Spinoza thinks is required for being finite (Id2).)
44
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 78–9.
45
46
Another misstep lies in his unnecessary emphasis on the subjective character of all this. (We saw a
similar error in epistemic interpretations of Spinoza’s modal theory in chapter four.) For instance, he
writes, “The ‘real world’ as we thus apprehend it, is a world of separate things . . . ” (Joachim, A Study of the
Ethics of Spinoza, 79). But which agent is doing the apprehending is beside the point. It is not that the world
contains separate things to us and not to God—at least, not primarily. Rather, the conceptual relations and
their content determines whether the world is full of separate things or not—though it may very well be
that we often adopt rather narrow ways of conceiving things.
47
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 77. On the next page, Joachim explicitly infers “being
unreal” from being a “partial expression.”
48
and I have argued that it is not one that he was willing to pay. His commitment to
expressive plenitude resists such a winnowing away of limited but true ways of con-
ceiving things, and his various theses of conceptual identification ensure that this
expressive plenitude generates real variability among the features of the world.
However, Joachim might worry, what is the alternative? How can Spinoza maintain a
plurality of finite modes and maintain that, according to the broadest way of conceiving
things, there is but a single individual mode, the “face of the whole universe”? We have
now come full circle in Spinoza’s metaphysics, for we are once again wondering how
Spinoza can have both the Many and the One. Yet again the coherence of Spinoza’s
metaphysics turns on making sense of his insistence on both plenitude and parsimony.
Spinoza’s strategy is now also familiar to us, and so it is unsurprising to see him once
again appealing to the conceptual to try to show how the vast diversity of finite individ-
uals can be made consistent with the composition of all into a single individual.
In broad strokes, that strategy for bodies is to:
(A) Tie the composition of bodies to how the ontologically prior forces of motion
and rest are conceived.
(B) Let there be differences salient to composition among broader and narrower
ways of conceiving those forces.
(C) Deny that the parts of a composite are individuals.
In other words, Spinoza uses conceptual identification in (A) and concep-

tual sensitivity in (B) to generate consistent variability, now the variability of
finite individuals themselves. By continuing to insist, as in (C), that composition
eliminates component individuals, Spinoza can have both the solitary One infinite
individual that Joachim affirms and the many finite individuals that Joachim thinks
Spinoza must reject, so long as Spinoza maintains that less complete ways of conceiv-
ing motion and rest are not inherently false. On the acosmicist’s own terms, then,
Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy allows him to preserve the existence of plentifully
many discrete finite individuals.
__________
And yet . . . do you not, dear reader, have the sense that something slippery is happening
here? For example, if whether a finite thing exists contingently or necessarily varies
depending on how it is conceived with respect to causal relations to other things, and if
whether or not that individual thing exists in the first place also varies depending on
how a region of activity is conceived with respect to those same causal relations to
other regions, then we have a very serious problem. In this case, we wanted to hold the
individual finite mode fixed across narrower and broader ways of being conceived,
such that its modal status sometimes changes from contingent to necessary. But at the
very point at which its modal status would change from contingent to necessary
(namely being conceived in the very broadest way), that individual no longer exists.
At most, there remains a mere undifferentiated part or aspect. But there is no individual
finite thing that exists across the broadest and any narrower ways of being conceived.
To put it more generally, Spinoza’s conceptual condition on composition implies

that insofar as individuals are conceived in broader ways, they eventually lose their
status as individuals. That’s a metaphorical way of saying that no part of a thing is
identical to any existing individual thing, and that looks like shorthand for saying that
parts do not exist. At the very least, regions that contain an individual on some ways of
being conceived contain no individual on broader ways of being conceived.
Furthermore, while I have continually helped myself to quantifying over regions,
this too presupposes identity conditions that Spinoza’s own account calls into ques-
tion. It is hard to see how, in the case in which we are conceiving the world in the most
complete way possible, singular reference to its parts is even possible on Spinoza’s view.
There is no individual thing there, and so to call “it” a “mere part” is to help ourselves to
the goods of singular reference that we have not earned.
Sticking to the modal example, here is a more careful formulation of the worry.
I argued in chapter four that Spinoza is committed to the following seemingly incom-
patible claims concerning finite modes (M):
(1) M1 necessarily exists.
(2) M2 contingently exists.
(3) M1 is identical to M2.
Suppose that Spinoza’s conceptual account of modality can explain the consistency of
those three propositions. According to that theory, (4) follows from (1):
(4) M1 is conceived in the broadest way, which includes relations among all other
finite modes.
However, we have now seen that Spinoza’s account of individuals seems to commit
him to (5):
(5) No individual finite mode is such that it can be conceived in the broadest way.
For according to any expansive way of conceiving that includes the world’s entire
causal structure, there are no discrete finite individuals. So conceived, everything
finite (notice how badly we still want to quantify over things!) “has the manner of a
part not a whole,” which entails that there are no individual finite things. So either
(1) is false (in which case (3) is false as well), or else (5) is false. That is, Spinoza’s
conceptualist account of modality is inconsistent with his conceptual account of
individuals.
Nor is this conflict limited to these two domains. By wedding his account of individ-
uals to the same conceptual machinery he employs elsewhere, Spinoza has double-
dipped in a way that is self-undermining. He tries to use the same set of relations to
distinguish NC through BC in the modal/essence variability cases and in composition
cases. Spinoza’s exclusive reliance on this sole group of relations is both his blessing
and his curse.
As we saw in chapter three, Spinoza tries to explain both a plentiful world of
things and all the relations among those things by appealing to just a single, internally
structured substance, a single kind of dependence relation connecting the states of that
substance, and more and less complete ways of conceiving that substance. That’s quite
an ambitious undertaking using pretty meager ontological resources.
But Spinoza’s attempt to reduce all the conceptually relevant features of things to a
single and uniform kind of structured dependence also greatly constrains him later.
His explanatory naturalism blocks him from employing a divide-and-conquer explana-
tory strategy. For example, Spinoza could not appeal to sortal concepts to account for
individuals and composition, while then appealing to analyticity relations to account
for modality. But in order to effectively embrace all this conceptual machinery, Spinoza
seems to need different classes of conceptual relations for different metaphysical
domains. Driven by his explanatory naturalism, Spinoza’s appeal to only a single kind
and single set of dependence relations throughout his conceptual strategy stumbles on
the very restriction that makes the effort so fascinating and bold in the first place.
That, at any rate, is a worry I have about Spinoza’s overall conceptualist strategy, as
I have unpacked it over the past five chapters. Can the concern be addressed? As I have
set it up here, Spinoza needs to reject either (3) or (5). Rejecting (5) would be the
easiest solution. To do that, Spinoza needs to reject his dichotomy between being an
individual and being a part, which, as I noted above, he already seems willing to reject
at times. In other words, Spinoza should allow some individuals to be proper parts of
other individuals.
It is traditionally thought that substances cannot be proper parts of anything else,
but Spinoza’s finite individuals are modes, not substances. So perhaps Spinoza’s onto-
logical demotion of everything finite to a mere mode can help militate against this
worry. My body is already a mere state of something else, namely God. As a mere
mode, might my body also be a proper part of (many) greater composite individuals?
Not a proper part of a substance, but a proper part of infinitely many composite modes,
including the infinite individual?
At least this much seems clear: if a mode could be both an individual thing and also
a proper part of some composite thing, Spinoza would not need to conclude that
according to the broadest way of conceiving the world there is only one mode, as the
acosmicist suggests. Rather, according to the broadest way of conceiving the world,
there is one additional mode that all the other modes compose. On this account, the
infinite whole does not swallow up finite things; it adds to them. This is, in effect, to
substitute the house model of composition for the eating model. On this solution, we
are like mere bricks in a giant house, but perhaps that’s better than being like an apple
that the giant ate.
One worry about this fix is that it threatens to stretch the identity conditions of parts
and individuals past the breaking point of intelligibility. What accounts for the identity
of my body as a whole individual and my body as a part of an infinite individual? It is
tempting to appeal to the sameness of the particular localized pattern of motion and
rest, but it is not clear that a localized pattern of motion and rest persists as such once
the total distribution of motion and rest is given. This is precisely the line of thought
that led Joachim to conclude that once the whole has been taken into account, the
conditions for individuating the parts cannot be satisfied. Still, I do not think Spinoza’s
physics gives us enough to go on here, so I take this solution to contain an interesting
promissory note. If the identity conditions for an individual body can also be satisfied
by a proper part of a composite body, then Spinoza will have the resources to deny (5).
Metaphysically speaking, these individuals/parts will be exceedingly thin in them-
selves, but that’s what we should expect, given all the diversity they must be able to
consistently shoulder. Not only will each finite thing need to have infinitely many
essences across and within infinitely many fundamental attributes, now each one
will also need to be a proper part of infinitely many different composite individuals in
each of infinitely many attributes. For a finite thing to be able to retain its identity
across all these different structures, it will need to have a very thin or else a very plastic
intrinsic structure.
That’s one possible adjustment, the one that I would prefer Spinoza to make.
Alternatively, Spinoza could hold his views on composition fixed and adjust his
conceptualist account of modality and essences. To do this, he would need to reject (3).
That is, he would need to deny that one and the same finite thing can be conceived in
both the broadest and narrowest ways, and therefore deny that they have more than
one modal profile.49 Individual finite modes will then have their modal properties
invariantly, but only because the variation in ways of conceiving them that would result
in a shift in their modal properties would also result in a shift in identity (i.e., a failure
of persistence). So modified, Spinoza’s position would retain the spirit and structure of
what might be called his anti-essentialism, though the actual truth values of modal
ascriptions involving the existence of individual modes will be invariant for uninter-
esting reasons. A similar move could be applied to essences. Each finite thing would
have a single essence within an attribute; it just turns out that there are many more
near-duplicate finite things and essences than his initial theory had posited.
Although this option requires Spinoza to reject the strict identity of finite things
across BC and less than BC, there will still be a very close relationship between that
which is broadly conceived and that which is more narrowly conceived, assuming we can
fix our reference on “it.” The relationship is almost identity.50 It is the relation between
an individual and a non-individual proper part of a greater individual that share all of
their intrinsic properties and possibly even many of their extrinsic, relational ones
(depending on just how great the breadth difference is between the broader and
narrower concepts in question). That which is more broadly conceived (a mere part)
49
Strictly speaking, Spinoza could still allow them to have multiple modal profiles, so long as the profiles
varied between any two ways of conceiving short of BC. But as we have seen, Spinoza thinks the most
interesting and dramatic shifts happen when we move to BC from anything narrower, and that is what he
would need to deny.
50
There are obvious affinities to this strategy and David Lewis’ work on Tibbles the cat. (See Lewis,
“Many, but Almost One.” For a recent application of this strategy to modality (though with some differ-
ences from the discussion here), see Paul, “The Context of Essence.”
will share almost all the same properties as that which is more narrowly conceived
(an individual mode). There will not be identity, however, since identity holds only
between a thing and itself. That is the cost of accepting (5) and rejecting (3).
The worry with this fix is that keeping (2) and denying (3) entails that there will be
many more things in Spinoza’s universe than he seems to want to admit, including an
infinitely vast range of contingently existing individuals. The brilliance of Spinoza’s
modal theory was that he was able to subsume this network of contingency within a
broader necessitarian framework. Yes, there are contingently existing things, but those
very same things, suitably conceived, exist necessarily. The consequences of denying
the identity theories is, therefore, a considerable loss of unity.
But this too is the result we should expect if we give up on the other half of Spinoza’s
conceptualist strategy. Spinoza had been trying to maximize both identity and diver-
sity, achieving the diversity by having one set of things that could be conceived in lots
of different ways (both within and across attributes). On this proposed modification,
Spinoza will have the same diversity in features, but at the cost of adding lots more
individual finite things into the mix, each instantiating a single set of these metaphys-
ical features. Since Spinoza endorsed an account of metaphysical perfection that tried
to maximize both plenitude and parsimony, I worry that this proposed modification
would generate a much less metaphysically perfect world, by Spinoza’s measure.51
At this juncture, we are quickly moving beyond Spinoza himself and beginning to
explore ways Spinoza might have tried to relieve some of the internal pressures facing
his conceptualist strategy. Although I have indicated some of the directions these
explorations might go in, a full consideration of their merits is a task for another day. In
the final chapter, we will see a different pressure point emerge, once again while trying
to fend off various idealist-friendly threats to Spinoza’s system. Before facing that bat-
tle, however, we should tack back to Spinoza himself for a little while longer, so that we
can see how everything we have explored so far has laid the metaphysical foundations
for Spinoza’s equally ambitious ethical project.
51
Of course, the deepest sense of parsimony—substance monism—remains untouched. But Spinoza
had sought to extend to finite modes the same isomorphic structure of substance that allowed variations in
ways of being conceived (and corresponding variations in metaphysical features) without upsetting the
underlying identity of those modes.
7
Ethics, Motivation, and Egoism
Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy, though steeped in metaphysics, is not purely

metaphysical. It contains an important moral component, one that unites Spinoza’s
metaphysical and ethical ambitions. Moral considerations complete Spinoza’s meta-
physical program by providing an extrinsic basis for privileging some of the plentiful
ways of conceiving things over others. He uses his conceptualist metaphysics, in turn,
to defend some of his most controversial ethical conclusions. This chapter and the next
pursue this metaphysical–ethical interplay, culminating in Spinoza’s call to a form of
self-transcendence through reconceiving the world and one’s place in it.
Despite the title of the book, it is not very clear what the first several parts of Spinoza’s
Ethics have to do with ethics. In Parts I–II, Spinoza presents the ontological structure
of the world in seemingly non-moral and value-free terms. When Spinoza does men-
tion familiar moral notions like good, evil, praise, and blame in the early goings, it is to
criticize them as nothing but byproducts of the human imagination, mere “prejudices”
that “do not explain the nature of anything,” except perhaps our own frail and confused
psychologies (IApp, G II/83).1
That is a fairly standard observation about the structure of the Ethics, which front-
loads metaphysics and psychology and seems to turn to ethics proper starting only
around Part IV.2 In the Preface to Part IV, Spinoza concedes that “we must retain” some
moral vocabulary (IVPref, G II/208), at least once the terms have been properly divorced
from more conventional and problematic meanings. For example, Spinoza claims in
Part IV that there is a fundamental virtue and that people can become more and less
virtuous, depending on how they act.3 However, Spinoza also makes it clear that by
“virtue” he understands a descriptive, natural property of things, their adequate causal
power: “By virtue and power I understand the same thing, that is, virtue insofar as it is
related to man is the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of
bringing about certain things which can be understood through the laws of his nature
1
Spinoza includes aesthetic and secondary qualities like perceived beauty, felt heat, tasted sweetness,
and harmonious sounds among the list of imagination-dependent properties (IApp, G II/82), which rein-
forces the deflated status of these conventional moral notions.
2
Spinoza mentions goodness in Part III, only to advance the psychological thesis that moral judgments
about goodness are determined by one’s desires: “we desire nothing because we judge it to be good, but on
the contrary, we call it good because we desire it” (IIIp39s).
3
See esp. IVp22 and IVp20.
alone” (IVd8). Hence, the contrast to virtue for Spinoza is not vice or sin, but impotence
or weakness.4
Even after Spinoza defines his own moral vocabulary to reflect what he takes to be the
correct psychology-based content of these terms, he concludes that some central ethical
notions like justice, sin, and merit are not even apt psychological categories: “From
this it is clear that just and unjust, sin and merit, are extrinsic notions, not attributes
which explain the nature of the mind” (IVp37s2, G II/239).5 After redefining axiological
notions like “good” and “evil” within a descriptive and agent-relative framework of
expected utility and desire satisfaction/frustration,6 Spinoza concludes that all actions
are intrinsically amoral: “No action, considered in itself, is good or evil” (IVp59d).7
As this is not a book on Spinoza’s metaethics, I will focus on those aspects of his
ethical project that intersect most directly with his conceptualist strategy. I begin
with what Spinoza takes to be the true psychological framework of ethics and moral
motivation. I then turn to what Spinoza claims is the purely self-interested, desire-based
foundation of virtue. That foundation seems like a recipe for moral disaster, but Spinoza
insists that appropriately reflective, self-interested agents will be motivated to pursue
the interests of others and to develop other-regarding attitudes like honesty and fairness.
I argue that one underexplored path in Spinoza from self-interest to other-regarding
pursuits runs through his conceptualist account of individuals, discussed in the previ-
ous chapter. Here we will see a concrete way in which Spinoza’s conceptualist meta-
physics informs his ethics. This influence, in turn, will raise a difficult and pressing
concern for Spinoza’s overall conceptualist strategy, one that will drive us deeper into
his account of moral transformation in the next chapter.
1. Spinoza’s Psychological Ethics

Despite his harsh and repeated attacks on conventional morality, Spinoza does make
positive claims about goodness, virtue, moral transformation, and human flourishing.
These days, Spinoza’s positive ethical theory is more often presented as a form of
reductive ethical naturalism or moral constructivism, rather than as a thoroughgoing
moral anti-realism or even amoralism, as it was once more commonly interpreted.8
4
See IVp20, IVp30d, IVp37s1, and IVp54. Spinoza also provides descriptive, psychology-based defin-
itions of praise and blame (IIIp29s) and good and evil (IVd1–2).
5
Spinoza does note that some of these notions can play a salutary role within a positivistic legal frame-
work (see especially IVp37s2).
6
IVp1–2 and IIIp39s.
7
For an early and very stark version of this, see KV I.10: “All things which exist in Nature are either
things or actions. Now good and evil are neither things nor actions. Therefore, good and evil do not exist
in Nature” (G I/49, although see Curley’s judicious footnote about the authenticity of this passage (C 93n1)).
8
For good book-length instances of this trend, see LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom and Kisner,
Spinoza on Human Freedom. For an older (and very different) attempt to derive prescriptive moral norms
from Spinoza’s descriptive claims, see Curley, “Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy.” For a recent account of Spinoza
as a moral constructivist, see Jarrett, “Spinozistic Constructivism.” For an overview of these developments,
see the introduction of Kisner and Youpa, Essays on Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.
Ethics, Motivation, and Egoism 171
Although I remain mostly unconvinced by these reappraisals, I hope little to nothing

in what follows will turn on this broader disagreement. My focus will be on the
descriptive psychology that Spinoza offers in his ethics, as that will be the element
that directly intersects with his conceptualist strategy. Those who think Spinoza also
derives, constructs, or non-eliminatively identifies prescriptive moral norms or prop-
erties from or with descriptive psychological properties may want to add to what I say
here, but I hope they will not want to subtract from anything I claim about Spinoza’s
psychological account.9
At the heart of Spinoza’s ethical theory are three related, descriptive claims about
human psychology: (1) people are naturally striving or appetitive; (2) people most
fundamentally strive to increase their individual power of acting; and (3) people are
often confused about their true appetites, the relations among their appetites, and
what reliably leads to the satisfaction of their appetites. In broadest outline, Spinoza’s
ethical project involves changing (3) by revealing the true structure of our appetites
and what reliably leads to their satisfaction, most especially what will reliably satisfy
our most fundamental appetite. That is, Spinoza’s positive ethical writings try to
explain the true nature and order of our strivings and the causal links between those
strivings and what reliably leads to their satisfaction.
Spinoza presents these three theses in both metaphysical and psychological terms.
The more metaphysical version of (1) is that humans, like all things in nature, are striv-
ing things. As discussed in chapter five, Spinoza thinks that an intrinsic endeavor to act
is built into the very essences of each thing. Spinoza offers an a priori argument in
support of this universal thesis in IIIp4–6 that has generated a lot of interpretive hand-
wringing, but which need not detain us here.10 In IIIp12, Spinoza expands the scope of
(2) to include efforts to increase one’s individual power of acting, not merely sustain
it.11 What makes this expanded striving fundamental is that we strive for more power
for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. What makes it most fundamental
is that increased power is the only thing that we pursue for its own sake, rendering all
distinct strivings as merely instrumental pursuits.12 Spinoza claims that other appar-
ently distinct fundamental strivings, such as the “desire to live blessedly, or well, to act,
and so on” are really only this sole “striving by which each one strives to preserve his
own being” (IVp21d). The metaphysical version of (3) is that people are often confused
about the contents and ordering of their fundamental and non-fundamental strivings
and of what reliably leads to the success of their endeavors. In light of (3), it will be
9
For those who remain unconvinced by even my minimal claims, all reason to keep reading is not lost.
The most important conclusions of the third section—important relative to the overall argument of this
book—could still be accepted, so long as one has an alternative account of the moral interests of Spinozistic
agents that can be plugged into the metaphysical strategy I lay out there.
10
For a relentless series of criticisms of Spinoza’s argument, see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics,
231–46. For examples of clever attempts to salvage the argument from all manner of apparent problems,
see Martin Lin, “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Desire,” Garrett, “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument,” and Della Rocca,
“Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology.”
11
See KV I.5 for an early version of this expansion. 12
See IVp19–22.
helpful in what follows to sometimes distinguish between our merely apparent strivings
and our genuine strivings.
The psycho-physiological version of (1) is that humans are, by nature, appetitive.
“When this striving is related only to the mind, it is called will; but when it is related
to the mind and body together, it is called appetite. This appetite, therefore, is nothing
but the very essence of man” (IIIp9s). Spinoza claims that the human mind experi-
ences increases in its power as joy and decreases as sadness.13 Hence the expanded
psychological version of (2) is that the most fundamental human appetite, that which
alone is pursued for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else, is an appetite for
joy. The psychological version of (3) is that people are often deeply confused about the
contents and structures of their genuine fundamental and non-fundamental appetites,
and they do not know what reliably leads to joy. This frustrating combination of desire
and ignorance provides the starting point for Spinoza’s positive, corrective project.
“It will be sufficient here if I take as a foundation what everyone must acknowledge:
that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, and that they all want to seek
their own advantage and are conscious of this appetite” (IApp, G II/78). In the next few
subsections, we will look more closely at Spinoza’s diagnosis and remedy.
1.1 Desires and Values

According to that last quotation, everyone is conscious of his or her fundamental
striving or appetite. We know what we most fundamentally want, even if not how to
get it. Spinoza appears to affirm this later, writing that the mind is “conscious of this
[fundamental] striving that it has” (IIIp9). Spinoza also defines “desire” as a conscious
appetite (IIIp9s), in which case it would follow that the fundamental desire of humans
is, in metaphysical terms, a conscious desire to increase in power and, in psychological
terms, a conscious desire for joy.
Still, Spinoza acknowledges that we have many competing appetites of which we
are only, at best, dimly aware, and he suggests that we are not always aware of even
our genuine fundamental desire as such.14 We are prone to making many mistakes
about our own nature, including taking our merely instrumental appetites to be
fundamental. More generally, Spinoza thinks that the multifaceted structure of our
13
In IIIp11s, Spinoza identifies the psycho-physiological correlates of these affects as localized pleasure
or general cheerfulness and localized pain or general melancholy.
14
See especially IIp23 and following, which Spinoza cites in defining desire as “conscious” in IIIp9d. For
a characteristically careful discussion of this issue, see LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom, 116–32. I agree
with LeBuffe that Spinoza here avoids psychological egoism—at least as LeBuffe defines it, which includes
the thesis that all human agents are always conscious (in what he later calls an “intensional sense” of con-
scious) of what I have called our fundamental desire (LeBuffe, 106). But I also think that this is a rather
flat-footed construal of psychological egoism, and so it is not surprising that LeBuffe thinks an ethics built
on it would likewise be “flat” (LeBuffe, 108 and 114–15). I do think Spinoza endorses a nearby thesis, call
it what you will: all human agents do, as a matter of fact, essentially strive to satisfy a single fundamental
psychological appetite for self-advancement (IVp20s), even though, as LeBuffe rightly points out, Spinoza
does not think we are always fully and clearly aware that we are doing so. See also Kisner, “Perfection and
Desire,” 108–12.
motivational psychology is often very opaque to us, leading us to feel helplessly pulled
in different directions:
By the word “desire” I understand any of a man’s strivings, impulses, appetites and volitions,
which vary as the man’s constitution varies, and which are not infrequently so opposed to
one another that the man is pulled in different directions and knows not where to turn
(IIIDefAff1, G II/190).
To a twenty-first-century reader, it will not come as news that we are often driven by
competing impulses that we only confusedly grasp and relate to one another. But in the
context of the seventeenth century, this represents a rather perceptive psychological
insight. In what follows, I will use Spinoza’s broader sense of “desire,” one that does
not always involve complete awareness and self-transparency. In Spinoza’s words, this
broader sense “comprehends together all the strivings of human nature that we signify
by the name of appetite, will, desire, or impulse” (IIIDefAff1, G II/190).
Spinoza notes that our desires are as diverse as both the objects of desire can be
and as the desirers themselves can be.15 Nevertheless, the desires of each individual
exhibit an ordered structure, even if people are often mistaken or confused about
that structure. Someone might, for instance, think she desires certain things non-
instrumentally when, in fact, she desires them only instrumentally. For this reason,
Spinoza sometimes appeals to “what is really [revera] to our own advantage” and to
desires for “what will really lead a man to greater perfection” (IVp18s, G II/222),
which implies that we can be mistaken on both counts. Spinoza emphasizes that it
takes quite a bit of work to understand our real motives in pursuing certain ends.
Illumining our actual motivational structure is, in fact, one of the main tasks of
Spinoza’s ethical project.16
Although it makes for clunky writing, I have avoided referring to what is desirable,
according to Spinoza, as opposed to what is desired. This is to hew to what Spinoza says
about the relationship between desires and value judgments in IIIp9:
From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want nor desire any-
thing because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because
we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it.17
In this way, all our value judgments are parasitic on our actual desires. Presumably
Spinoza does not mean that everyone is aware of this dependence. Value theorists who
reject this priority relation would immediately falsify that stronger thesis. Rather,
Spinoza’s claim is that even though we might think we are pursuing something because
we judge it to be independently valuable, in fact our psychological appetites fully
determine the content of our value judgments.
15
See also IIIp56–7.
16
For an early version of this, see TIE 1–13, which distinguishes between what people “think to be” in
their best interest (G II/5), as opposed to what actually “preserves our being” (G II/7).
17
See also IIIp39s.
The dependence of value judgments on human desires, plus the sheer variety of
those desires, entails that our value judgments will likewise vary widely:
So each person, from his own affect, judges or evaluates what is good and what is bad, what is
better and what is worse, and finally, what is best and what is worst . . . and so, each one, from
his own affect, judges a thing good or bad, useful or useless (IIIp39s).
Nevertheless, because everyone has a genuine fundamental desire for self-preservation,

there are grounds for at least some true, stable, and invariant value judgments.
Spinoza uses traditional moral language to mark a stable and more factive set of
beliefs about how to satisfy our fundamental desire: “By good I shall understand what
we certainly know to be useful to us” (IVd1). That is, Spinoza thereafter uses “good” to
name what we know certainly to be a means of satisfying our genuine fundamental
desire, where knowing certainly that p entails p. A few propositions later, Spinoza
drops the epistemic language altogether and defines his moral vocabulary in terms
of the actual means for fundamental desire satisfaction: “We call good or evil what is
useful to, or harmful to, preserving our being (by IVd1 and IVd2), that is (by IIIp7) what
increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our power of acting” (IVp8d). This more
factive account of good and evil does not imply that this group of value judgments is
any less desire-dependent, however.18 Spinoza is simply co-opting traditional moral
terminology to denote a particular class of means-end desire-satisfaction relations.
Spinoza uses this moral vocabulary to describe how we can learn about our funda-
mental desire and optimal strategies for satisfying it. He explains, “The desire to do
good generated [ingeneratur] in us by our living according to the guidance of reason,
I call morality [pietas]” (IVp37s1). By “the desire to do good,” Spinoza means our desire
to do what will reliably increase our power of acting and bring us joy. Spinoza equates
this moral character—pietas—with pursuing desire satisfaction in a particular way,
namely, according to the guidance of reason.19 Spinoza does not mean that living in
this way actually generates our fundamental desire. We each strive for perseverance
18
Earlier in Part III, Spinoza offered a looser definition of “good” in terms of “every kind of joy and
whatever leads to it, and especially what satisfies any kind of longing, whatever that may be” (IIIp39s).
There may be a more factive presupposition here too: the content of value judgments is determined by
whatever in fact satisfies any of our genuine desires, fundamental or otherwise. (This looser account is con-
sistent with the stricter account in Part IV if satisfying any instrumental desire contributes in some way to
satisfying our fundamental desire.) Still, Spinoza cites the value judgments of a greedy man as an example
in IIIp29s without indicating that the greedy man’s value judgment concerning the overriding good of
money is false—as Spinoza presumably thinks it is, since he thinks pursuing endless financial gain will not,
in fact, satisfy one’s fundamental desire (TIE 3–5, G II/5–6).
19
A referee pointed out that what Curley translates as “morality” here is pietas, which Spinoza thinks is
a property of individuals, not something like a system of moral norms. That is quite true and I appreciate
the correction, although I do not envy translators here, since transliterating pietas as “piety” would give it
a purely religious connotation, which is probably why Curley avoided doing so (although Spinoza does
speak of “religion and piety,” such as G II/270–2). I take Spinoza’s general sense of pietas to be closely asso-
ciated with a broader kind of virtue (for examples, see G II/136; IVp18s, G II/223; and Vp4s, G II/283), and
so something like “moral character” might be apt. Thankfully, my main point here depends very little on
the pietas element of this passage and more on the desire–reason connection.
even when we fail to live according to the guidance of reason. His point is that insofar
as we live according to the guidance of reason, we will be aware of our fundamental
desire as such and we will understand what reliably leads to its satisfaction. More
generally, reasoning is the practice that enables us to understand both our genuine
desires and the means for reliably satisfying them.
1.2 The Guidance of Reason

Spinoza devotes the bulk of Part IV to describing what it is like to live “according to the
guidance of reason.” Occasionally, he appears to assign a more prescriptive role to
reason: “Now it remains for me to show what reason prescribes [praescribit] to us,
which affects agree with the rules [regulis] of human reason, and which, on the other
hand, are contrary to those rules” (IVp18s, G II/222). However, I think the rest of the
passage, and indeed the rest of Part IV, makes it clear that the force of “praescribit”
here is more like “leads” or “teaches” than “prescribes” or “demands.”20
Spinoza refers to living “ex rationis praescripto” only two times in Part IV, both bur-
ied deep in pretty obscure places.21 Far more often (forty-two times in Part IV), Spinoza
describes the practical reasoner as one who lives “ex ductu rationis.”22 This is best
translated as living “by the guidance of reason” or “according to the direction of
reason.” A similar variant, used thirteen times, is “ex dictamine rationis,” usually also
translated as “guidance” or sometimes “dictates.”23 Spinoza’s point is that one way of
living is living in line with the teachings or discoveries of reason.
This more descriptive reading is supported by the way Spinoza presents living
according to the guidance of reason. He repeatedly describes what living in this way is
like without commending it. For example, Spinoza claims, “The more we strive to live
according to the guidance of reason, the more we strive to depend less on hope, to
free ourselves from fear, to conquer fortune as much as we can, and to direct our
actions by the certain counsel of reason” (IVp47s). But Spinoza never says we ought not
fear and hope. He says instead that if we live by the “counsel of reason,” then we will not
20
In addition to IV18s, LeBuffe cites two other passages in the Ethics that use more explicitly prescrip-
tive-sounding language: Vp4s and Vp10s (LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom, 42–3, 99, 177, 180). I argue
later in this section that these other passages are also not as straightforwardly prescriptive as they may first
appear. Don Garrett offers a more general reason for Spinoza’s lack of prescriptive injunctions that turns on
what Garrett thinks is Spinoza’s identification of motivational and rational aspects of ideas (Garrett,
“Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” 296–7); I will challenge Garrett’s general reason in the next section.
21
See IVApp13 and IVApp25.
22
See Part IV: 18s, 24, 24d, 35, 35d, 35c1, 35c2, 35c2s, 36d, 36s, 37d, 37s1, 37s2, 40, 46, 46d, 47s, 50, 50d,
50s, 51d, 54, 56d, 63d, 65, 65d, 65c, 66, and 66c. As Don Rutherford points out, this expression has a history
in medieval and early modern natural law theory (Rutherford, “Spinoza and the Dictates of Reason,” 485–6).
I agree with Rutherford that despite the familiar phrasing, Spinoza co-opts these traditional terms for a
different kind of content. As we have seen in previous chapters, this is a familiar Spinozistic move. But for
reasons we will see in the next section, I am not convinced by Rutherford’s further claim that Spinoza
diverges from Hobbes’ purely prudential account of the “dictamina rationis,” which Hobbes describes as
solely “conclusions or theorums concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defense of [oneself]”
(Hobbes, Leviathan, I.15).
23
See Part IV: 18s, 35, 37d, 50, 50c, 54s, 58s, 62, 62d, 67d, 72d, and 73d.
do these things. The conditional descriptions continue: to the person who lives by reason,
pity is useless (IVp50). Negatively, “he who is guided [ducitur] by fear is not guided by
reason” (IVp63), a parallel passage that brings out what I take to be the correct force of
being “guided by.” Notably, Spinoza does not add that we ought not be guided by fear.
A bit more indirectly, Spinoza suggests that the role of reasoning is to teach us some-
thing, to make something known:
And so whatever there is in Nature apart from men, the principle of seeking our own advantage
does not demand [postulat] that we preserve it. Instead, it teaches [docet] us to preserve or
destroy it according to its use, or to adapt it to our use in any way whatever (IVApp26).24
This conforms nicely to Spinoza’s description of the nature of reason in IVp26d:

“But the essence of reason is nothing but our mind, insofar as it understands clearly
and distinctly.”25 Later, Spinoza explains that “acting from reason is nothing but doing
those things which follow from the necessity of our nature, considered in itself
alone,” in contrast with acting on the basis of passions, things that follow partly from
external causes (IVp59d). To act from reason, then, is to act as an adequate cause with
understanding.
What does reasoning enable us to understand more clearly and distinctly? I have
suggested that Spinoza’s basic answer in the moral domain is twofold. We more clearly
and distinctly understand (1) that our fundamental striving or appetite is for an increase
in power or joy and (2) what will reliably satisfy that striving. Spinoza describes this
second function in a number of different ways, including showing “what reason dic-
tates to be useful [quae ratio utilia esse dictat]” (Vp41d, G II/306).26
In addition to helping us shed false beliefs about our genuine motivational structure,
Spinoza claims that acting rationally will help us moderate the strength of competing
but less advantageous instrumental desires: “One who is eager to moderate his affects
and appetites . . . will strive as far as he can to come to know the virtues and their causes
and to fill his mind with the gladness which arises from the true knowledge of them”
(Vp10). Spinoza has argued throughout Part IV that moderating some of our affects
and appetites is part of the most reliable strategy for satisfying our genuine fundamen-
tal desire. Hence, his claim in Vp10 is that acting rationally—seeking to understand
our motivational structure—is part of the most reliable means for satisfying our
fundamental desire.27
24
This is especially interesting given that Spinoza also refers to what reason demands [postulat] in
IVp18s. The contrast between “postulat” and “docet” in IVApp26 gives some reason to interpret the former
more loosely, something more along the lines of the instruction or teaching of reason, rather than the more
literal demand of reason. For further support of this reading of postulet, see Rutherford, “Spinoza and the
Dictates of Reason,” 495–6 and Rousset, “Recta Ratio,” 2–3. For disagreement, see Kisner, Spinoza on
Human Freedom, 118–20.
25
This demonstration also cites IIp40s2, which describes reason in the “second kind of knowledge” as a
calculating function that subsumes particulars under more general principles; see also TIE 23, G II/12.
26
See also TTP XVI.5, G III/191.
27
I take this to be the force of Spinoza’s more prescriptive-sounding claim in Vp4s that “we must, there-
fore, take special care to know each affect clearly and distinctly” (G II/283). That is, insofar as we desire to
Spinoza describes this instrumental role of reason in IVApp4: “So the ultimate end
of man who is led by reason, that is, his highest desire by which he strives to moderate
all the others, is that by which he is led to conceive adequately both himself and all
things which can fall under his understanding.” Outside the Ethics, Spinoza explicitly
denies that we are obliged to live according to reason, since “nature has given [irrational
people] nothing else, and has denied them the power of living on the basis of sound
reason, and consequently they are no more obliged [tenentur] to live by the laws of a
sound mind than a cat is by the laws of a lion’s nature” (TTP XVI.3, G III/190).28
In short, throughout his writings on living “according to the guidance of reason”
Spinoza offers a series of means-end relationships rather than prescriptive moral
injunctions. His basic conviction is that the most reliable strategy for satisfying our
fundamental desire involves acting rationally, which includes acting with a clear
understanding of our motivational structure and working to curb the strength of those
instrumental desires whose pursuits would inhibit or “restrain” us from increasing our
overall power of acting.
Spinoza also links acting rationally with his (purified) central ethical category:
virtue. He first indicates what we most fundamentally desire, as discovered through
reasoning: “Desire is the very essence of man, that is, a striving by which a man strives
to persevere in his being” (IVp18d). Spinoza then identifies the foundation of virtue
with pursuing that fundamental desire. “The striving to persevere oneself is the first
and only foundation of virtue. For no other principle can be conceived prior to this
one and no virtue can be conceived without it” (IVp22c).
In other words, acting virtuously and acting rationally are two ways of characteriz-
ing the same activity: pursuing the satisfaction of our genuine fundamental desire with
self-awareness. We already looked at Spinoza’s claim that true judgments of goodness
involve correctly identifying actions that reliably increase our power of acting. Here
we have circled back to what I take to be the core of Spinoza’s positive ethical goal
in writing the Ethics: equipping his readers to better understand what their genuine
fundamental desire is and to calculate more accurately what are the most reliable
means for satisfying it.
1.3 Models and Ethical Instruction

Although Spinoza sometimes simply states some of the means-end connections
between our desires and the ways to reliably satisfy them, other times he uses a differ-
ent pedagogical strategy. He deploys various character tropes or models and writes
persevere, working to understand our psychology will be part of the most reliable technique for satisfying
that desire. This merely prudential reading of the “must” in Vp4 is reinforced later in the scholium, where
Spinoza writes, “And—to return to the point [just quoted] from which I have digressed—we can devise
[excogitari] no other remedy for the affects which depends on our power and is better [praestantius] than
this” (G II/283–4).
28
See also TTP XVI.2, G III/189–90 and IVp37s2 for a similar deflation of “natural rights” talk to what
in fact follows from a given thing’s nature.
about how they act. The slave, the free man, the wise man, the ignorant man, the healthy
man, the sick man, the greedy man, the ambitious man, the envious man, the right-
eous man, the judge, and the scoundrel are pedagogical characters populating Spinoza’s
moral universe that he draws on to illuminate various desire–satisfaction/effort pairings,
some more likely to succeed than others.29
Spinoza explains why he uses these exemplars just after he notes that he will con-
tinue using traditional moral language, once it has been gutted of any inappropriate
content. “For because we desire to form an idea of man as a model of human nature
which we may look to, it will be useful to retain these same words [of “good” and “evil”]
with the meaning I have indicated” (IVPref, G II/208). Spinoza acknowledges what he
takes to be a widespread psychological fact about all of us. We all tend to form abstract
models or exemplars and then judge particular cases by how closely they conform to
these constructs.
In fact, Spinoza thinks we construct models of human nature just like we construct
other universals.30 We notice similarities among particulars, mentally abstract away
these similarities to form a “general idea,” and then compare this general idea back to
other particulars.31 Usually we are not aware of this cognitive process, and so we often
mistakenly reify the abstracta, treating them as real things even though they are little
more than reflections of our individual psychological constitutions. Spinoza does not
think our abstractive abilities are intrinsically bad or defective. He thinks they confer
important cognitive benefits, such as aiding our memory.32 Some abstract constructs
will even be better mnemonic devices than others, though this will vary across persons.
But, Spinoza claims, strictly speaking these constructs are not even truth-apt.33
However, there is a great danger—and Spinoza has in mind genuine danger—that in
treating these constructs as real things instead of as mere entia imaginationis,34 we
will begin to disagree over them, sometimes in ways that lead to actual conflict and
violence. According to Spinoza, that is about as idiotic as coming to blows over
whether thinking of cherries or apples is the best way to remember that red is the top
color in a rainbow.
And similarly concerning the other [universals and abstractions]—each will form universal
images of things according to the disposition of his body. Hence it is not surprising that so
many controversies have arisen among the philosophers, who have wished to explain natural
things by mere images of things (IIp40s1, G II/121).
29
For examples, see IVp66s–IVp73; Vp42s; IVp63s; IIIp39s; and Ep 23.
30
This parallel alone gives us enough reason to reject Bennett’s speculation that Spinoza’s appeal to a
model in IVPref is purely an isolated holdover from an earlier draft of the Ethics (Bennett, A Study of
Spinoza’s Ethics, 296).
31
For more on this process, see IIp40s1; Hübner, “Spinoza on Essences, Universals, and Beings of
Reason” and Newlands, “Spinoza on Universals” and “Spinoza’s Early Anti-Abstractionism.”
32
See CM I.1, G I/234–5 and IApp, G II/82. 33
See CM I.1, G I/235.
34
He downgrades their status from entia rationis to entia imaginationis in IApp, G II/83 and Ep 12,
G IV/57.
A bit later, Spinoza generalizes further about the moral and political consequences of
this confusion:
And most controversies have arisen from this, that men do not rightly explain their own mind,
or interpret the mind of the other man badly. For really, when they contradict one another
most vehemently, they either have the same thought or they are thinking of different things, so
that what they think of as errors and absurdities in the other person are not (IIp47, G II/129).
The bulk of the Preface of Part IV outlines a series of philosophical and theological
mistakes that Spinoza thinks people are liable to make when they construct abstract
models and then evaluate real things in comparison to them. Spinoza claims elsewhere
that this activity has led to “the greatest deception,” “great error,” “the most absurd
fantasies,” “the most absurd absurdities,” and “nonsense, not to say madness.”35
This makes it all the more surprising that Spinoza concludes the Preface to Part IV
by noting that he too will employ models and make comparisons of particulars to
them. Given all the mistakes and dangers that confusing appetites and abstractions
with “real things” have generated, why does Spinoza not instead say that we should
avoid such abstractive practices altogether?
Spinoza’s strategy represents a concession to what he takes to be the power of our
appetites. Rather than encouraging readers to suppress their desire to form abstract
models—a hopeless task, given the way our minds work—Spinoza tries to redirect that
tendency, risky though this strategy will be. So he sprinkles in references to various
human models, stable tropes, and exemplars that he thinks his readers will immedi-
ately recognize, even though we will each imaginatively fill in the details in somewhat
different ways. He then describes how such abstracta would act in various situations.
Here is how a slave would behave, this is how a free man would live, and so forth.36
In particular, Spinoza describes how such characters go about trying to satisfy their
apparent desires, letting the reader observe whether their actions lead to the reliable
35
In order of citation: TIE 74, G II/28; CM I.1, G I/236; CM II.7, G I/263; Ep 12, G IV/57; and Ep 12,
G IV/55.
36
A widespread view is that Spinoza’s model of the free man at the end of Part IV is the true “model of
human nature” that he obliquely refers to in IVPref, but I think this profoundly misrepresents Spinoza’s
intent. He does not think that there is a single, most true model of human nature, any more than he thinks
there is a single, most true universal humanity. Spinoza thinks these models differ as much as our individ-
ual physiological constitutions differ, and that each individual will construct a huge range of models,
depending on which similarities of particular humans strike her as salient at different times. Rather than
appealing to a single, most universally apt model, Spinoza is simply claiming in the Preface that we are, by
nature, model makers. He promises that as he goes on, he will use what he hopes will be easily recognizable
examples of such models. Hence, the later “free man” model is but one of many possibilities, and is no more
intrinsically privileged qua model than any other. For a small sampling of attempts to identify Spinoza’s
“free man” model with “the model of human nature” in Part IV, along with efforts to defuse a huge range of
problems that this identification generates, see Garrett, “A Free Man Always Acts Honestly”; Garber,
“Dr Fischelson’s Dilemma: Spinoza on Freedom and Sociability”; Youpa, “Spinoza’s Model of Human Nature.”
For a rare but welcome note of dissent to this identification (based on a different series of objections),
see Kisner, “Spinoza’s Model of Human Nature: Rethinking the Free Man.” See also Justin Steinberg’s
“Concluding Note” for a sketch of the role of the free man model that is closer to what I claim here more
generally about Spinoza’s appeal to models (Steinberg, “Following a Recta Ratio Vivendi,” 195–6).
satisfaction of their true fundamental desire. As I am not interested here in the details
of Spinoza’s first-order ethical claims, one example will suffice:
The ignorant man lives . . . as if he were unconscious of himself, God, and things, and as soon as
he ceases to be acted on, he ceases to be. On the other hand, the wise man . . . is hardly troubled
in spirit, and being, by a certain eternal necessity, conscious of himself and of God and of
things, he never ceases to be but always possesses true peace of mind (Vp42s).
These are more like proverbs for wise living than rule-based moral oughts. Spinoza’s
purpose in working with such models is not to introduce a genuine “ideal of human
nature,” some kind of real exemplar of human perfection, such as “the wise man.” If he
tried to do that, he would be committing exactly the sort of confused reification of
abstracta that he has been urging his readers to avoid since his earliest writings. Nor
does he use these models to norm our comparative judgments. Spinoza does not say,
for instance, that we ought to act like the wise man or that we ought not act like the
ignorant man.37
Instead, the models are supposed to help us in our own means-end reasoning about
desire satisfaction by harnessing the power of our imagination and memory. We more
readily imagine and remember characters like the greedy man and the ignorant man,
and this allows us to more readily recall how we imagine they would go about trying
to satisfy their apparent desires. Likewise, we can more readily imagine and retain
how noble and free people would go about satisfying what they would take to be
their desires. And insofar as we take ourselves to share the desires of some of the
imaginary people in these different models, we can gain insight into how successful
their strategies are likely to be if we follow them.
Spinoza’s strategy here will be familiar to parents. After a while, it is exhausting
and despair-inducing to try to get a child to see that her behavior will not lead her
to get what she really wants. What is a parent to do when a child can’t—or just won’t,
dammit!—see this? Well, sometimes parents appeal to fictitious models. “How does
the Tasmanian devil react when he does not get what he wants? Does that reaction
seem to help him?” These appeals need not involve picking out or generating a moral
37
For a quick inference from an “ideal” of “the perfect man” to a normative conclusion in Spinoza, see
Jarrett, “Spinozistic Constructivism,” 70. Kisner also contends that Spinoza’s appeal to models is “a norma-
tive as well as a descriptive claim, for Spinoza holds that we should judge our good and perfection with
respect to a particular model of human nature” (Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom, 97). I do not see that
Spinoza makes this further normative claim in his discussion of models. A referee pointed out that Spinoza
does claim here that he is going to define goodness and perfection in terms of actions that more closely
approach a model of human nature that “we set out,” which might imply that Spinoza thinks his model is
better than other possible models for this task—and so in that sense it is the model we “should” use for
norming our own moral judgments. However, Spinoza’s explicit justification for tying his definition of
goodness and perfection to a model in the first place is more pragmatic: “It will be useful to us” to do so
(G II/208). More importantly, nothing in the text suggests that Spinoza thinks the model that “we set out”
is the one Spinoza himself happens to construct (and does not provide here). If he did believe that, he
would be ignoring what he himself takes to be the variability in our psychologies and model-making
tendencies that prevents anyone’s model from being “the” true or most apt model of human nature, for the
same reason that he thinks there cannot be “the” true universal humanity against which other accounts of
humanity are judged (see again n36 above).
norm of the form you ought not behave like the Tasmanian devil. They can nevertheless
help children see, evaluate, and later recall strategies for satisfying our own desires.
Asking “Are you acting like Taz again? Does that ever work?” can circumvent a lot of
fruitless discussion. Insofar as we correctly see that the strategies of some characters
are more likely to succeed, these models can thereby assist us with our own means-end
reasoning.
Spinoza suggests that this technique is even more affecting and memorable if we
attach traditional moral language to the judgments we make about the imagined activ-
ity of the models. But let us not forget that judging something as good or bad in light of
whether it satisfies a model is to just evaluate that object or action in light of our desires
and how effective the proposed means are for satisfying them.
To draw this all together, we can now see that what I outlined at the beginning of this
section as Spinoza’s positive ethical project is also a response to what he takes to be a
pervasive human weakness. We are mostly confused about the structure of our genu-
ine desires and the means for reliably satisfying them. Spinoza tries to remedy this by
demonstrating what our most fundamental desire actually is and the kinds of actions
that are likely to lead to its satisfaction. It is a project in a kind of depth psychology and
means-end reasoning. Spinoza’s shorthand for a successful strategy in this endeavor
is “living from the guidance of reason,” and he uses imaginary models to memorably
instill in his readers some of the relevant psychological and causal connections.
Although I have focused on Part IV, it might seem like Spinoza uses language that
sounds more morally prescriptive in Part V, specifically in his summary advice in Vp10s.
But I think there are good reasons to read Spinoza here in light of the more conditional,
means-end reasoning of Part IV. He begins his summary on a pragmatic note:
The best [optimum] thing, then, that we can do, so long as we do not have perfect knowledge of
our affects, is to conceive a correct [rectam] principle of living or sure [dogmata] maxims of life,
to commit them to memory, and to apply them constantly to the particular cases frequently
encountered in life. In this way our imagination will be extensively affected by them, and we
shall always have them ready (Vp10s, G II/287).
Just as with Spinoza’s use of models, he presents a workaround strategy in light of our
confusion about our own psychology. In this suboptimal cognitive situation, the opti-
mal thing to do—i.e., the action most likely to lead to desire satisfaction despite our
confusion—is to generate a list of thumbnail generalizations that we can memorize
and readily apply in new situations. This is not guaranteed to succeed, of course, but
perhaps it is the best strategy we can use, insofar as we lack full knowledge of ourselves
and the rest of the world. Spinoza presents this as an accommodation to our ignorance
and as a way to better engage our imaginations in practical deliberation.
In further unpacking this purely pragmatic strategy, Spinoza does use a series of
gerundives to argue that we need to think about and meditate on certain things.38 But
38
Examples (without the corresponding sums) include cogitandae, meditandae, enumeranda, imagi-
nanda, attendendum (G II/288), which all appear within a few lines.
his justification remains descriptive: “For those who are most ambitious are most upset
by such thoughts . . . ” (II/288); “for the poor man . . . only distresses himself ” (II/288);
“so too, one who has been badly received by a lover thinks of nothing but . . . ” (II/288).
The final paragraph reiterates this means-end framework:
Therefore, one who is anxious to moderate his affects and appetites from the love of freedom
alone will strive, as far as he can, to come to know the virtues and their causes, and to fill his
mind with the gladness that arises from the true knowledge of them . . . And he who will observe
these [maxims] carefully—for they are not difficult—and practice them will soon be able to
direct most of his actions according to the dictates of reason (G II/289).
In the TTP, Spinoza aptly summarizes the psychological, means-ends reasoning

framework of his ethical theory that, I have argued, he offers in the Ethics as well: “It is
for universal ethics to inquire what the means are [for what is “required by this end
of all human action”] and what is the rule of life which this goal requires, and how
the foundations of the best state and the rules of living among men follow from it”
(TTP IV.4, G III/60).
2. Moral Motivation
Children eventually raise a deceptively simple question about morality. “Why should
I be good?” Of course, they usually do this when having a deep moral discussion is the
last thing a parent wants to do, as everyone is being hustled out the door. (On Spinoza’s
behalf: I confess that in the heat of the moment, I frequently give the purely prudential
answer that being good will get them what they genuinely want, namely a calm and
happy daddy.) We saw in the previous section that Spinoza thinks ethical and value
judgments are fully determined by our appetites, and that Spinoza’s positive ethical
project aims to help readers understand their true desires and how to reliably satisfy
them. I will argue in this section that Spinoza tries to account for moral motivation
similarly in terms of intrinsic psychological motivations for desire satisfaction.
We also saw in the last section that Spinoza thinks reasoning can reveal both our
genuine desires and the means for reliably satisfying them. Perhaps he thinks reason-
ing also provides distinct motivations to act virtuously, as if reasoning per se had
its own motivational force in practical deliberations. This might still be consistent
with what I take to be the broader psychological framework in which Spinoza
embeds all sources of motivation, even though it appeals to a non-appetitive, though
still broadly mental source of motivation. Alternatively, perhaps Spinoza pushes
representational and affective aspects of mental states so closely together that there
is no room to even distinguish rational and appetitive motivational sources, in which
case we could equally well explain moral motivation for Spinoza in terms of what
agents have reason to do.
Whatever be the merits of such rationalistic approaches to moral motivation, I
do not think Spinoza accepts them, at least not directly. Instead, Spinoza accounts for
moral motivation most directly in terms of appetites or desires.39 This is part of Spinoza’s
broader effort to account for all sources and forms of motivation in terms of desire
satisfaction. As he puts it bluntly, “The decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites
themselves . . . for each one governs everything from his affect” (IIIp2s, G II/143). The
affective element of desires, Spinoza thinks, is our only intrinsic source of motivation.
We can see Spinoza making these points in several different places. Defining desire
at the end of Part III, he writes, “Desire is man’s very essence, insofar as it is conceived
to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something” (IIIDefAff1, G II/190).
Conscious desires have a built-in orientation toward action, which minimally includes
the action of trying to satisfy them. More generally, Spinoza defines pursuing ends in
purely appetitive terms: “By the end for the sake of which we do something I understand
appetite” (IVd7; see also IVPref, G II/207). Ends-oriented motivational states are all, by
definition, appetites.
Spinoza does not add that reasoning is also an ends-setting activity. That role is
reserved for appetites, even though reasoning has an important instrumental role to
play in our pursuits of desire-based ends.40 Even when Spinoza later refers to desires
that “arise from reason,” he thoroughly waters down what this amounts to:
Desire, considered absolutely, is the very essence of man (by IIIDefAff1), insofar as it is con-
ceived to be determined in any way to do something. And so a desire which arises from reason,
that is (by IIIp3), that which is generated in us insofar as we act, is the very essence or nature of
man insofar as it is conceived to be determined to doing those things which are conceived
adequately through man’s essence alone (IVp61d).
In other words, rational desires are not states whose content or motivational force
derives from rational deliberation or reasoning per se. Rather, reason-based desires
are a subset of our intrinsically action-oriented states, namely those appetites that are
generated wholly internally. The distinction between internal and external sources of
desire, which Spinoza connects in this passage to how those desires are conceived, will
be important in the next chapter on moral transformation. The relevant point here is
that the difference between desires that “arise from reason” and those that do not is not
a distinction in source of content or motivational impetus. Reasoning may help us
better understand what our genuine desires are, but the motivating power “to do
something” always lies in the revealed desire itself.
Spinoza also claims that we pursue our general fundamental desire solely for its own
sake. “No one strives to preserve his being for the sake of anything else” (IVp25). In the
39
For at least partial defenses of such a broadly Hobbesian account of motivation in Spinoza, see
Rutherford, “Spinoza and the Dictates of Reason”; Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 307; Curley,
“Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy.” For dissent, see Youpa, “Spinoza’s Theory of Motivation.” For replies to
Youpa, see Kisner, “Perfection and Desire: Spinoza on the Good” and Steinberg, “Affect, Desire, and
Judgement in Spinoza’s Account of Motivation.”
40
Rutherford suggests to the contrary that reason does sometimes set ends for Spinoza (Rutherford,
“Spinoza and the Dictates of Reason,” 488 and 505), but in the end, Rutherford describes this end as
“grounded in” a particular desire (505), which makes me wonder if the disagreement here is all that deep.
demonstration Spinoza argues that, since this drive is essential to each thing, “if this
[essence of a thing] alone is given, then it follows necessarily that each one strives to
preserve his being.” This inference would be questionable if motivation were some-
times extrinsic to our fundamental desire.
One might worry that I am posing a false dilemma for Spinoza by sharply distin-
guishing reason and appetites as competing possible sources of motivation. Spinoza
famously denies (pace Descartes) that ideas are passive representational states and that
someone could have an idea without also affirming or willing that idea.41 If Spinoza also
identifies the mental correlate of appetites with affirming/willing a representation, and
if reasoning is just representing certain states of affairs with understanding, then perhaps
Spinoza also thinks reasoning itself has motivational force in virtue of being identical
with a mental desire and, vice versa, some mental desires have their motivational force
in virtue of being identical with reasoning. Don Garrett makes this conciliatory point
nicely: “Spinoza construes the affective and the representational as two aspects of the
same mental events or entities. This ensures that, when reason produces the right kind
of representation, it ipso facto produces a motivating affect.”42
Although Spinoza never explicitly identifies the rational and affective aspects of
mental states and events in quite this way, he is clearly opposed to bifurcating mental
states and activities in the way that Descartes did, and so it is easy to see why he might
likewise be opposed to later Humean bifurcations of affective and representational
states and processes, as Garrett suggests. However, as we have seen repeatedly in this
book, explanation is often more fine-grained than identification for Spinoza. Even if
the mental state of reasoning that p is identical with the mental state of desiring p, it
does not follow that everything explained by reasoning that p is ipso facto explained by
desiring p and vice versa.43
Spinoza makes this point indirectly in a passage in which he first explicitly identifies
a volitional state with an appetitive state, but then concludes that the appetitive element
plays the relevant explanatory role:
The decisions of the mind are nothing but the appetites themselves, which therefore vary as the
disposition of the body varies. For each one governs everything from his affect; those torn by
contrary affects do not know what they want, and those who are not moved by any affect are
very easily driven here and there (IIIp2s, G II/143–4).
Although a volition is “nothing but” an appetite, the appetitive, affective element is what
explains internally generated action. We should not read Spinoza’s “nothing but” as a
neutral identification of two kinds of mental states that can then be inter-substituted
indiscriminately in psychological explanations. Rather, his point in this section is
that volitions play no genuine explanatory role in internally generated actions, and
41
IIp48–9. 42
Garrett, “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” 296.
43
For yet another example of more fine-grained explanations that is more germane here, see Spinoza’s
claim in IVp14 that the representational content of an affect, rather than its truth value, explains its capacity
to restrain other affects, even though these are both aspects or features of one and the same mental state.
hence they ought to be excised from psychological accounts of motivation in favor of

purely non-volitional, appetitive accounts.44 That may be a more speculative reading,
but insofar as Spinoza identifies the representational role of reasoning with this
volitional, “affirming” role in IIp48–9, it would follow that the appetitive element also
does all the motivating work in rational action as well, even if rational representations
too are “nothing but” mental appetites.
Spinoza makes a similar move in his “General Definition of the Affects.” He begins
with a definition: “An affect which is called a passion of the mind is a confused idea,
by which the mind affirms of its body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force
of existing than before, which, when it is given, determines the mind to think of this
rather than that” (IIIGenDefAff, G II/203). Although Spinoza is defining a single men-
tal state, his definition involves both a representational/volitional element (“a confused
idea by which the mind affirms of its body”) and something that motivates and explains
mental change (“which, when [the idea] is given, determines the mind to think of this
rather than that”). By itself this does not settle anything, since the representational/
volitional element could be what causes and explains the mental change.
However, when he unpacks the definition, Spinoza indicates that he added the
causal component in order to include an appetitive element in the definition. “Finally,
I added which determines the mind to think of this rather than that in order to express
also, in addition to the nature of joy and sadness . . . the nature of desire” (IIIGenDefAff,
G II/204). In other words, Spinoza cashes out what explains the movement from one
representation to another in appetitive terms, which he claims he needed to add to
the purely representational/volitional terms of the first part of the definition.45 This
obliquely supports the conclusion that Spinoza ascribes motivational force to the
appetitive aspects of ideas rather than to representational/volitional aspects, even if
these are both aspects of one and the same mental state.
That’s not to say that reasoning does not play an important, albeit subservient role in
explaining some mental actions. Spinoza thinks that desires also motivate us to pursue
what we take to be the means for satisfying them and to avoid what we take to be the
means for frustrating them, and this indicates an important instrumental role for
reasoning.46 In desiring coffee, I am thereby motivated not only to pursue coffee, but
also to perform all the various intermediate actions that I think are needed for getting
coffee (e.g., standing up) and to avoid doing what I think will prevent me from getting
coffee (e.g., staying seated). Spinoza implies something like this in IVp21, when he
argues that it is “evident through itself, and also from the definition of desire” that
desiring to live well entails desiring actual existence, since the latter is a self-evident
requirement for the former. We could, of course, simply redescribe the coffee case in
terms of my having a reason to stand up in virtue of my desire for coffee and my belief
44
Confirmation of this reading can be found in IIIDefAff6, G II/192–3.
45
It is easy to see a rough similarity here with Leibniz’s mature account of the interplay between repre-
sentations and appetites in monadic determination (for an example at this general level, see PE 214–15).
46
For an early version of this, see TIE 13.
about the means to satisfy it. But on Spinoza’s account, what provides the motivational
impetus, what makes it a reason for me to act, is the appetitive character of my desire
for coffee.
Most importantly, Spinoza argues that our sole fundamental desire motivates us
to pursue what we take to be the means of its satisfaction. “We strive to further the
occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to joy, and to avert or destroy what
we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to sadness” (IIIp28). This implies that our
fundamental desire, plus our beliefs about the means for satisfying it, provide the
motivational structure for virtually all our mental pursuits. As we saw in the previous
section, Spinoza argues throughout Part IV that accurately and clearly representing
those means through reasoning, as opposed to the mere imagining of IIIp28, is the
optimal way to form beliefs about which actions will reliably lead to the satisfaction of
our fundamental desire.
Being motivated to pursue something does not entail actually pursuing it, of course.
However, Spinoza claims that with respect to our fundamental desire, we do essentially
pursue its satisfaction, even if we sometimes do so without understanding our efforts
as so oriented. “No one, therefore, unless he is defeated by causes that are external and
contrary to his nature, neglects to seek his own advantage or to preserve his being”
(IVp20s). This follows from Spinoza’s identification in IIIp7 of a thing’s essence with
its striving to satisfy this fundamental desire for self-advancement.
What then explains the fact that we sometimes fail to perform actions that would
satisfy our desires or perform actions that in fact frustrate our desires? One obvious
possibility is that we fail to correctly understand the correct means for satisfying them.
Another possibility for non-fundamental desires is that, although we desire something
and are thereby motivated to pursue it, we also have a stronger, competing desire for
something else, the pursuit of which prevents our acting to satisfy the weaker desire.
I desire coffee and am thereby motivated to stand up, but I have a stronger desire to
relax, so I stay reclined on the couch. Spinoza sometimes presents the internal world
of non-fundamental desires as a struggle for dominance, where the strongest desire
“wins out” by causing an agent to actually pursue its satisfaction.47
Spinoza applies this general desire-satisfaction theory of motivation to moral
motivation. He claims that moral motivation, like all motivation, is intrinsic and
desire-based. “From the laws of his own nature, everyone necessarily wants or is
repelled by what he judges to be good or evil” (IVp19).48 These value terms should be
47
See especially IIIp17s and IVp7–18 for this competitive analysis. In IVp17, Spinoza obliquely suggests
that the presence of stronger, competing desires explains apparent cases of akrasia. To me, Spinoza’s ana-
lysis amounts to an outright denial of genuinely akratic cases; for alternative reconstructions, see Della Rocca,
“Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology,” 237–42; Lin, “Spinoza’s Account of Akrasia,” and Marshall, “Spinoza
on the Problem of Akrasia.”
48
For an alternative reading of this passage, see Youpa, “Spinoza’s Theory of Motivation”; for a reply, see
Steinberg, “Affect, Desire, and Judgment.”
understood in the way that Spinoza has earlier defined them. The good is what we take
to be useful for satisfying our desires, as per IVd1. Judging something to be good
consists in judging it to be a reliable means for satisfying one’s desires, according to
Spinoza. Hence, we are intrinsically motivated to pursue what we judge to be good.
(This is in keeping with the priority of desires over value judgments in IIIp9s and
IIIp39s, as discussed above.)
This makes the child’s question of moral motivation easily answered in terms of
desires, for Spinoza. Given the way Spinoza understands moral vocabulary, pursuing
moral virtue is a matter of pursuing what we judge to be a reliable means for satisfying
our desires, which we are intrinsically motivated to do. Asked within Spinoza’s framework,
the question “why be good?” becomes the question “why try to satisfy my desires?” To
ask that second question seems to betray a failure to grasp what “desire” means. Desire
satisfaction just is something we are intrinsically motivated to pursue, which is why
Spinoza offers the ends–appetite connection as definitional in IVd7.49
In fact, explaining moral motivation in terms of the relationship between what an
agent takes to be her desires and her beliefs about their reliable satisfaction condi-
tions makes moral motivation so easy to understand that we may begin to wonder
anew why anyone ever fails to pursue what accurate introspection on our appetites
reveals. In one sense, the fact that moral motivation is so immediate and easy is part
of Spinoza’s overall point. Once we define moral terms like “good” and “virtue” appro-
priately, it is supposed to be easy to see why we are all motivated to act ethically. Built
into our very natures are all the necessary motivations for pursuing virtue, Spinoza
assures us. Even though our efforts might fail to achieve their aim, the fact that we are
each essentially driven to pursue virtue and the good (in Spinoza’s senses of those
terms) follows from our psychologies.
Still, Spinoza is well aware that people often fail to achieve what they strive for,
and this is true in the moral domain as well. As with his general action theory,
Spinoza has ready explanations for such failures: ignorance and weakness. Because we
are often ignorant of both our actual appetites and the means for reliably satisfying
them, we engage in all manner of what turn out to be self-frustrating activities. We
sometimes have competing instrumental desires, the stronger of which leads us to
what are, by Spinoza’s lights, immoral (i.e., imprudent) actions. Hence, Spinoza’s
49
If someone thinks there is a nearby question with a distinctive prescriptive force that cannot be
answered in purely descriptive terms—not why do I in fact pursue what I desire, but why ought I pursue
what I desire?—then Spinoza’s answer might seem unsatisfying. I myself think Spinoza would respond by
challenging the thesis that there are any such prescriptive moral oughts in nature, as he begins to do in IApp.
However, as I mentioned at the start of this chapter, some interpreters think Spinoza goes on to derive or
construct prescriptive moral oughts from his descriptive psychological claims, in which case Spinoza may
have a more constructive reply to make to this nearby question. I leave it to those interpreters to defend the
relevant derivation or grounding. My main claim is that the appetite–ends connection is the relevant descrip-
tive ground for Spinoza. If he does derive the claim that we ought to pursue what we desire from the fact
that by nature and definition we do pursue what we desire, that would be consistent with my main claim above.
positive ethical project offers readers a kind of illumination. As we have seen, he

tries to show (a) what our fundamental desire consists in; (b) how that desire relates
to other, merely instrumental desires; and (c) the actions that will reliably lead to
genuine desire satisfaction. This is no easy feat, but, to the extent to which Spinoza
succeeds, he concludes that his readers will thereby be equipped to pursue goodness
and virtue with much greater success.
A nice example of this strategy in the Ethics occurs in IVp35c2: “When each man
most seeks his own advantage for himself, then men are most useful to one another.”
For now, let us set aside the details of this claim and consider its structure. Spinoza
argues that our fundamental desire for self-advantage is most reliably satisfied when
we relate to other people in certain ways. Morality traditionally focuses on how people
treat each other, and Spinoza here tries to motivate one way of treating others by
pointing out how doing so will help us satisfy our own fundamental desire. In fact,
Spinoza thinks, our fundamental desire, properly understood, motivates us to help
others better understand their own desire structure and the means for satisfying it.
“Hence (by IVp19), according to the guidance of reason, we necessarily strive to bring
it about that [other] men live according to the guidance of reason” (IVp37d). In other
words, our own desire, properly understood, will in fact lead us to try to study and
pursue ethics with others.
This is similar to how Spinoza accounts for moral motivation at the tail end of his
degenerating correspondence with William Blyenbergh, a young Calvinist. Blyenbergh
had been hammering Spinoza on the question of moral motivation in light of Spinoza’s
metaphysical and theological views, especially his belief that God does not punish
wrongdoing. Spinoza replies with an air of mounting frustration:
If, however, you still ask what can move you to perform the act I call virtuous rather than the
other, I reply that I cannot know what way, of the infinitely many there are, God uses to
determine you to such works. It may be that God has imprinted the idea of himself clearly in
you, and through the love of him, makes you forget the world and love all men as yourself
(Ep 23, G IV/151).
This particular motivational pathway might sound more metaphysical than psycho-
logical, but in the preceding paragraph, Spinoza connects this path to virtue with
desire satisfaction:
For by a just man I understand one who constantly desires that each one should possess
[possideat] his own. In my Ethics, (which I have not yet published) I show that this desire
necessarily arises in the morally virtuous [piis] from a clear knowledge which they have of
themselves and of God (G IV/150–1).50
50
Two details in this claim diverge from what is in the Ethics that we now have. First, Spinoza suggests
that the desire for each to “possess his own,” which I take to be a rough reference to what becomes the
fundamental desire for self-preservation, is not universal. He claims a thief “has no such desire” (G IV/151),
which runs counter to the universal claim in IVp18s (G II/222), unless we read it elliptically for the claim
that a thief is not aware that he has such a fundamental desire. Second, Spinoza suggests that this desire
Spinoza’s account of motivation in these passages implies that being morally motivated
is contingent on the content of an agent’s desires. To some, that makes morality too
precarious. On Spinoza’s account, if someone lacked the fundamental desire for joy
and increasing one’s own power, then she might well not be motivated to pursue, say,
the interests of others. Positing such contingency in our deepest moral identities raises
a familiar Kantian concern about Humean accounts of moral motivation.
However, Spinoza argues in the Ethics that this fundamental desire is necessarily
built into the motivational structure of every human agent. It is “as necessarily true [of
each person] as that the whole is greater than its part” (IVp18s, G II/222). Although
our moral interests do asymmetrically depend on our desires, the most morally salient
components of those desires are universal and necessary according to Spinoza, even if
we do not always realize it. This allows Spinoza to offer a universalized account of what
we are all in fact morally motivated to do, a motivation that we can become aware of
through rational reflection as we discover our genuine desires. Thus, even though
moral motivation is contingent on our desires for Spinoza, he thinks enough of our
psychological structure is necessarily fixed and universal to ground universal and
invariant moral considerations, something Humeans typically struggle to do.51 In the
next section, we will look at the most important piece of Spinoza’s universal account,
which requires us to shift back again from ethics to metaphysics.
3. Egoism Reconceived
As I have presented it, Spinozistic morality consists primarily in agents pursuing reliable
means for satisfying their genuine fundamental desire. Since Spinoza thinks that
every agent essentially has the same fundamental desire, his psychological framework
provides invariant and universal grounds for moral considerations (so understood).
Because he explains all motivations, including moral and rational motivations, in
terms of an agent’s intrinsic psychological interest in having her appetites satisfied,
Spinoza concludes that every agent is genuinely motivated to act in light of moral
considerations, even if she is sometimes confused about this. Spinoza thinks that
the true content of moral considerations will be most clearly revealed by rational
reflection on the structure of one’s appetites and the most reliable ways for satisfying
them, a project in psychological self-examination and instrumental reasoning for
which his Ethics is supposed to be an aid.
While I noted at the outset that Spinoza is clearly critical of some conventional
moral claims, this positive ethical framework would allow him to accept, at least in
principle, traditional moral maxims like “Love thy neighbor” as guidelines or mnemonic
arises from something else, whereas I take it that in the Ethics, even if the awareness of our fundamental
desire can arise from deep self-knowledge, it is not generated by self-reflection (IVp61d).
51
For a helpful contemporary discussion, see Street, “Coming to Terms with Contingency: Humean
Constructivism about Practical Reason.”
rules of thumb for connecting some of our intrinsically motivating states with reliable
ways to satisfy them. However, given what Spinoza takes to be the content of our fun-
damental desire, it is difficult to see how his ethics can fully and appropriately capture
other-regarding commitments that seem to lie at the heart of morality.
After all, Spinoza thinks the sole fundamental desire of each individual is the desire
for self-preservation or self-enhancement. Hence, acting morally for Spinoza essentially
and fundamentally involves pursuing one’s self-interest, a form of ethical egoism that
is difficult to square with the apparent other-regarding foundation of many moral
claims and practices.52 In fact, pursuing first and foremost my own fundamental desire
for self-advancement often seems like a paradigmatic instance of immorality rather
than the foundation of virtue. Yet, Spinoza confidently claims, “The more each one
strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, that is, to preserve his being, the more he
is endowed with virtue; conversely, insofar as each one neglects his own advantage,
that is, neglects to preserve his being, he lacks power” (IVp20).
Spinoza is well aware that self-interest looks like a perilous foundation for morality.
Before demonstrating what sound moral reasoning reveals in a “more cumbersome
order,” he summarizes his ethical views in order to “win, if possible, the attention
of those who believe that this principle—that everyone is bound to seek his own
advantage—is the foundation not of morality but of immorality” (IVp18s, G II/223). In
particular, Spinoza tries to show that from a fundamentally self-interested standpoint,
moral agents have sufficient intrinsic motivation to be “just, honest, and honorable.”
In other words, Spinoza thinks that ethical egoists have sufficiently strong moral-
cum-desire-based motivations to pursue the interests of others. But how can this be?
Pursuing the interests of others by acting justly and honestly will surely at least some-
times impinge on doing what is genuinely in my own self-interest.
In response, Spinoza offers a variety of arguments to show that his self-interested
desire-satisfaction framework is consistent with and even supports moral agents being
motivated to pursue the interests of others.53 Few have been convinced by his efforts.
With characteristic bluster, Jonathan Bennett summarizes, “Spinoza fails at every step
in his journey towards his collaborative morality.”54
Far from helping, some of Spinoza’s strategies seem to only reinforce the underlying
concern. For example, Spinoza suggests in IIIp27c3 that an agent has a motivation to
help someone who is injured insofar as doing so will lessen the sadness that she feels
when she sees them suffer.55 In such a case, the agent’s motivation for assisting others
is based entirely on advancing her own self-interest in lessening her sadness. More
52
As we have seen, Spinoza thinks our motivational structure is often very opaque to us, so he can read-
ily accept that we sometimes believe ourselves to be acting in fundamentally non-self-interested ways. For
a litany of standard objections to ethical egoism, see Rachels, “Two Arguments against Ethical Egoism.”
53
In contemporary metaethics, there have been many rich discussions of such consistency arguments
within egoism, including those found in Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism; Korsgaard, The Sources of
Normativity; and Markovits, Moral Reason.
54
Bennett, A Study in Spinoza’s Ethics, 306.
55
See Della Rocca, “Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology,” 232.
generally, Spinoza claims in a Hobbesian spirit, “Men still find from experience that by
helping one another they can provide themselves much more easily with the things
they require, and that only by joining forces can they avoid the dangers which threaten
on all sides” (IVp35c2s, G II/234).56
One indirect worry about these prudential strategies is that they do not readily gen-
eralize. Helping others insofar as it helps me is well and good for the ethical egoist, but
often helping others involves sacrificing what is in my own self-interest. For example, it
may be better for my own mental and physical health to rest after work, but it is usually
better for my daughters’ well-being if I come home and play with them.
One could, of course, respond that it actually is in my own self-interest to play with
my daughters instead of resting, either by denying that resting is really better for
me (think of all the anxiety of failed parenting I will experience!) or by denying that
playing with me is really better for them (think of how exhausted and short-tempered
I will be after dinner!). In other words, an egoist might offer a carefully regimented
account of what is really in the overall interests of agents, in the hope that it turns out to
be in the self-interest of every agent to pursue the interests of others.
All too often, however, this will seem like an ad hoc workaround designed to save
the theory at the cost of an implausible account of our actual interests. But it might help
this line of defense if the egoist could show that the genuine, fundamental interests of
agents are limited to non-scarce, shareable, basic goods that can be acquired in non-
competing ways. Spinoza offers a version of this response, arguing that the fundamental
good for each person consists in knowing God, in which case “the greatest good of
those who seek virtue is common to all and can be enjoyed by all equally” (IVp36). In
other words, what is fundamentally in my own self-interest is also in the fundamental
self-interest of everyone else and can be had equally by all.57
To generate something that even vaguely resembles everyday moral practices,
Spinoza also needs it to be in everyone’s self-interest (a) for everyone else to know
God (which he defends in IVp35) and (b) for each of us to help everyone else achieve
this knowledge (which he defends in IVp37). Continuing to account for the moral
motivations and interests of agents solely in terms of their desires, Spinoza concludes
from this that “the good that everyone who seeks virtue wants for himself, he also
desires for other men” (IVp37). This is certainly one strategy that Spinoza pursues, even
though there are long-standing worries about the adequacy of his actual arguments
that it is in everyone’s self-interest to promote the understanding of everyone else.58
A more direct worry about these bluntly prudentialist accounts is that they turn
morality into a fundamentally self-interested project. It would be wonderful indeed if
56
See also TTP V.7, G III/73.
57
For further discussion of this strategy in Spinoza, see Nadler, “The Lives of Others.” In their introduc-
tion to this volume, the editors helpfully offer language as an example of such a shareable and inexhaustible
good, as opposed to something like fresh water (Kisner and Youpa, Essays on Spinoza’s Ethical Theory, 5).
58
For replies to some of the many objections that have been raised, see Kisner, Spinoza on Human
Freedom, 139–42.
it turned out that it was always in my own genuine self-interest to care for and help
others (and vice versa!), but even so, this seems to misconstrue the other-oriented
nature of many moral concerns. Sometimes, the objection runs, the morally appropri-
ate thing to do involves making self-sacrifices for the sake of others directly, not only
insofar as doing so ultimately benefits me. This worry comes close to simply rejecting
ethical egoism outright. To demand an account of moral considerations that makes
them directly other-oriented may be to require something that Spinoza’s ethical
framework rules out, for better or worse.
Fortunately, Spinoza offers another way to derive something like other-regarding
concerns from his egoist starting point. Rather than tinkering with the interests of
moral agents, Spinoza sometimes challenges the individuation of moral agents. That is,
rather than arguing that it is really in my own self-interest to help others, Spinoza
sometimes tries to show that what had seemed like others are not, in fact, relevantly
distinct from me. If so, then perhaps what had seemed like a morally salient choice
between pursuing my own self-interest and the interest of others is a false dichotomy.
On this line, to pursue the interest of others is eo ipso to pursue one’s own self-interest
not because of overlapping interests but because of overlapping agents. To defend
this strategy, Spinoza deploys some of the heavy metaphysical machinery involving
composition and individuals that we explored in the previous chapter.
As usual, Spinoza packs the main idea into a single, dense paragraph that is worth
carefully pulling apart. The main passage occurs near the end of IVp18s, the scholium
in which Spinoza summarizes why he thinks his brand of egoism is not morally perni-
cious. He begins by noting that, among external goods, “we can think of none more
excellent than those which agree entirely [prorsus conveniunt] with our nature” (G II/223).
The English word “agree” may have a more contractarian flavor than is warranted here.
Shirley’s translation better captures the metaphysical weightiness of Spinoza’s claim:
“harmonize.” It is the same verb that Spinoza used in his correspondence with Oldenburg
to describe the relations between a part and its composite whole, as discussed in the
previous chapter. In other words, to defend his egoist framework here, Spinoza first
appeals to issues pertaining to parts, composites, and individuals. The most excellent
or beneficial goods for an agent, Spinoza asserts, are those that completely harmonize
with that agent’s nature, those goods that are most capable of becoming a fully inte-
grated part of a greater whole.
The next two sentences make it clear that Spinoza has metaphysical issues of com-
position and individuation in mind. He begins, “For if, for example, two individuals of
entirely the same nature are joined [junguntur] to one another, they compose an indi-
vidual twice as powerful as each one.” An alternative translation of “junguntur” would
be “attached,” which is how Curley renders it in IIIp48. I take Spinoza to be gesturing
at his causal condition on composition, outlined in IId7: individuals engaged in joint
activity compose a single individual. Spinoza’s math in IVp18s is overly simplistic,
but his basic idea is that a composite individual will be more stable and more power-
ful than each of its individual parts would be on their own. This again harkens back
to details of Spinoza’s claims about composition and persistence, discussed in the

previous chapter. In the present context, Spinoza adds the latent ethical dimension
to this account. Such composites are thereby more virtuous than each part would be
if it had acted alone.
Spinoza then applies this point to interpersonal relationships: “To man, then, there
is nothing more useful than man” (G II/223). Interpreters often get hung up at this
point, worrying about the individuation of “natures” that Spinoza seems to rely on
here and in similar passages.59 But I think this worry misses what Spinoza is really up
to. He is not primarily making a claim about the identity or distinctness of human
nature(s). He is primarily making a claim about the individuation and relative power of
agents. His point so far is that agents may become related to each other (“harmonized”
and “attached”) in such ways that they come to compose a single, more active, more
powerful, and more virtuous individual.60
Spinoza’s next sentence contains the kicker:
Man, I say, can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all
should so harmonize [conveniant] in every way that the minds and bodies of all would com-
pose, as it were [quasi] one mind and one body and that all should strive together, as far as they
can, to preserve their being and that all together should seek for themselves the common
advantage of all (G II/223).
Spinoza then concludes that such agents will also desire what is in the interest of others
and that they will therefore be just, honest, and so forth. In addition to reinforcing the
tight connection between desires and moral motivation, Spinoza’s conclusion makes
it clear that the path from enlightened self-interest to other-regarding considerations
and actions runs straight through his metaphysical claim about individuals.
What exactly is the relevant claim? In metaphysical terms, Spinoza suggests that
what had been distinct moral agents can become related in such a way that they
compose a single, more powerful agent. In such a case, the referent of the “self ” that is
pursuing self-interest may shift. Independent of being a part of such a greater individ-
ual, my being driven by self-interest involves seeking to advance the interests of a
more narrowly circumscribed individual agent, this particular hunk of extension and
its parallel collection of ideas that I normally think of as my body and my mind. But
59
See also IIIp57s, IVp35, and IVp37s. (Nevertheless, in at least one passage, Spinoza sets the bar for
having similar natures extremely low; in IVp29–30, sharing an attribute suffices for having a similar nature
at least to a non-zero degree.) For a sampling of concerns about the underlying metaphysics of natures or
essences as it relates to Spinoza’s egoism, see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 299–307 and Della Rocca,
“Egoism and the Imitation of the Affects.” For a good response to some of these worries, see Hübner, “Being
Human and Human Perfection.”
60
Reading this passage in light of Spinoza’s account of composition also blunts Bennett’s charge that
there is a “deep incoherence” in Spinoza’s account of collective morality because it equivocates between
two senses of “harmony” (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 306–7). Bennett takes Spinoza’s talk of
agreement to require the homogeneity of agents rather than their collective efforts (with only the latter
getting us collective morality), but I think “agreement” just names Spinoza’s collective effort condition on
composition, which does not require homogeneity of agents or parts.
insofar as that body and mind become parts of a greater body and mind, the “self ” of
that composite’s self-interest will also take what had been other, distinct bodies and
minds into account.
To use a simple example: it is in the interest of my body that my liver and kidneys
work closely together as interdependent parts. But there may be times when it is in
the overall interest of my body’s preservation for the needs of my liver to go unmet so
that the needs of my kidneys can be met. For instance, it might be beneficial for my
body if my liver transferred some or, in extreme cases, all of its energy to my kidneys.
(Clearly, I have never studied anatomy.) Although this might fancifully be described
as my liver sacrificing for the sake of my kidneys, it is really a case of some parts of
my body being disadvantaged relative to others for the sake of the overall greater
advantage of my body as a whole.61
Now consider a case in which what had been my distinct individual body and the
distinct individual body of my neighbor come to compose a greater composite indi-
vidual body. This is at least possible, insofar as the two bodies meet Spinoza’s causal
and conceptual conditions on composition. Spinoza’s idea seems to be that in such a
case, it may sometimes be in the self-interest of the composite for what had been my
distinct individual body to sacrifice some of its resources to assist what had been
the distinct individual body of my neighbor. This seems no different in kind from
when an uneven distribution of energy to its parts is in the interest of my own body.
(One obvious difference between the cases is that we do not normally think of indi-
vidual human agents coming to compose a greater moral agent, except perhaps in
cases of collective organizations.62)
We also saw in the previous chapter that according to Spinoza’s persistence condi-
tion, no particular part of any whole is essential to the persistence of that whole. The
relations are essential, not the relata. If so, it could be in the interest of a whole for some
of its parts to be outright destroyed, if doing so would allow it to retain the requisite
structural relations to stay in existence. Becoming a part of a self-interested agent is a
risky undertaking! It might involve getting so caught up in the composite’s own striv-
ing to persevere that what had been taken to be in one’s more narrowly circumscribed
interest gets trumped.
Eventually, we will need an account from Spinoza of why it is an individual agent’s
self-interest to become a part of such a composite in the first place. But insofar as it is,
61
At one point, Spinoza appears to argue that the parts of the human body never sacrifice themselves
for the sake of other parts “so that the other parts of the body may fulfill their function” (IVp60d), citing
his conatus doctrine for proof. Although his reasoning is not entirely clear in this passage, I would hope he
is not denying a pretty obvious feature of biological systems. Instead, I think he is claiming that sacrificing
the energy of my liver for the sake of my kidney is in the interest of my body as whole, even though it is not
in the interest of my liver as such. As we will see, this puts pressure on Spinoza to show why it is neverthe-
less in the interest of my liver (and moral agents) to become parts of such composites.
62
Indeed, some interpreters have argued that the closest analogue in Spinoza to such a multi-human
composite is something like the state or civil society. For a survey and critical discussion, see Rice,
“Individual and Community in Spinoza’s Social Psychology.”
getting caught in the self-interested jet wash of a composite agent would allow what
had been a distinct agent to be morally motivated, within egoism, to sacrificially aid
what had been another distinct agent. The key is that the “ego” can sometimes be
more expansive than what we ordinarily take it to be. Rather than trying to curtail
the interests of agents, with this more metaphysical strategy Spinoza tries to expand
the scope of the “self ” in self-interest.63
In more psychological terms, we may be accustomed to thinking of ourselves as
autonomous individuals with a limited degree of power, competing in a zero-sum
game against the powers and interests of other agents. Spinoza points out that in such
a world of competing forces, our fundamental desire to maximize our own power is
unlikely to be satisfied for long, since “there is no singular thing in Nature than which
there is not another more powerful and stronger. Whatever one is given, there is
another more powerful by which the first can be destroyed” (IVa1). In fact, insofar as
we conceive of the world as a mere collection of disorganized or even mutually hostile
agents, it is difficult to see how anyone’s fundamental desire will ever be satisfied for
very long. From the perspective of Willy the worm in the previous chapter, the funda-
mental desire of every individual agent is eventually and inevitably frustrated.
However, we also saw that Willy’s perspective is not the only available perspective,
according to Spinoza. There are broader ways of conceiving the world, according to
which what had been narrowly circumscribed agents become mere parts of a more
complex, powerful, stable, and harmonious individual. In more ethical cases, Spinoza
thinks that by shifting the way we conceive our neighbors from distinct individuals to
fellow parts, we can be morally motivated to perform sacrificial actions toward what
had been perceived as an other—at least insofar as doing so is in the interest of the
greater composite individual.
In practical terms, Spinoza implies that engaging in collective activity with what we
ordinarily take to be other agents can provide us with moral motivation to act in ways
that benefit them. This again follows from Spinoza’s causal condition on composition.
As we saw previously, composition occurs when individuals jointly bring about an
effect. To the extent to which we are also motivated out of self-interest to work closely
with other agents on collective projects, we might then be consistently motivated to
pursue their interests, even over what we would have taken to be our own narrowly
conceived interests. For this reason, Spinoza recommends, “It is especially useful
to men to form associations, to bind themselves by those bonds most apt to make
one people of them, and absolutely, to do those things which serve to strengthen
friendships” (IVApp12).
63
Hübner reaches a somewhat similar conclusion, though she ties it more to sharing a mind-dependent
species than to the metaphysical composition of a greater individual: “To call Spinoza an egoist in these
senses is misleading because, from the standpoint of a rational conception of human nature, there is no
longer any distinction between me and other members of my species, or between what is good for me and
for anyone else of the same nature” (Hübner, “Being Human and Human Perfection,” 142). See also Rorty,
“The Two Faces of Spinoza.”
As we all know, other people can be damn hard to work with sometimes. As Spinoza
puts it more delicately, “skill and alertness are required for this . . . so it requires a singu-
lar power of mind to bear with each other according to his understanding and to
restrain oneself from imitating their [harmful] affects” (IVApp13). In addition to
encouraging readers to develop their people skills, Spinoza also emphasizes that it is
much easier to work collectively with others whom we take to be similar to us in out-
look and interests. Hence, agents better able to recognize and foster in others such
similarities and to minimize differences will be better positioned to act collectively
with a wider range of other agents (IVp35). There are practical limits to this, as
anyone who has ever tried to lead an organization will know. For example, Spinoza
suggests we may be too dissimilar to non-human animals to act collectively with them
in a coordinated way (IVApp9). But such practical limitations do not undercut the
broad theoretical scope of his account.
For agents to “bind themselves” together and act collectively, Spinoza also points out
that they will need to mutually adapt and accommodate themselves to each other.64
Parts adapting themselves to one another for the sake of the greater whole in the
practical realm may involve moral agents setting aside some of their parochial or
non-fundamental desires for competitive or scarce goods in order to more wholeheart-
edly pursue projects whose success could be shared by others. Spinoza gives examples
of agents seeking to overcome divisive passions and using their imaginations and
reason to foster a shared love for God.65 In this way, we can read what I earlier described
as Spinoza’s prudentialist, desire-regimenting strategy as an outgrowth of, rather than
an alternative to, his more metaphysical, agent-expanding strategy in IVp18s.
In fact, behind many of Spinoza’s practical strategies in the Appendix to Part IV for
wise social living is his belief that insofar as agents come to share goals and projects,
they will foster interpersonal harmony and pursue joint undertakings in ways that are
more likely to satisfy the causal condition on composition, which in turn can motivate
yet more interpersonal reciprocity. In this way, Spinoza urges agents to become more
engaged and embedded in each other’s pursuits, rather than more isolated and inde-
pendent from one another.66
In an early text, Spinoza appeals to this metaphysically loaded possibility to demon-
strate why individuals are morally motivated to pursue the interests of others. As he
did in the IVp18s passage, Spinoza begins by ranking external goods based on their fit
with a thing’s nature. “All the effects which we produce outside ourselves are the more
perfect the more they are capable of being united with us to make one and the same
64
For examples, see IVp35s, IVp4c, and Ep 32.
65
For examples, see IVp34, IIIp31c, IVp35, and IVp37d.
66
For this reason, I find what Garber colorfully describes as “Dr. Fischelson’s dilemma” to be mistaken
in ascribing an impulse toward isolation and narrowly construed “self ”-reliance in Spinoza’s ethics. This
mistake rests ultimately on misreading the role of Spinoza’s “free man” model (as discussed in section one
above) and on failing to treat Spinoza’s appeals to metaphysical shifts in agent individuation robustly
enough (see especially Garber, “Dr. Fischelson’s Dilemma,” 184 and 189–90, respectively).
nature, for in this way they are nearest to internal effects” (KV II.26, G I/111). Spinoza
then claims that insofar as I promote the love of esteem or greed in others, my own
self-interest will be thwarted. (He puts it more dramatically: “I am hacked or beaten.”)
He then presents an alternative, a non-scarce and non-competitive good that can be
“shared equally” by all, which harkens back to the first strategy of carefully regiment-
ing the genuine interests of agents.
However, Spinoza also points to a more dramatic possibility:
For we can all share equally in this salvation, as happens when this produces in [others] the
same desire that is in me, thereby making their will and my will to be one and the same
[een en de zelve] and forming one and the same nature, agreeing always in all things (KV II.26,
G I/111–12).67
If we have learned anything in this study, it is that locutions like “one and the same”
point to a core impulse in Spinoza’s thinking, one that is metaphysically rigorous
and non-metaphorical.68 Here he claims that persons might become so related that
they come to form “one and the same” will and nature, with the result that they all
together begin to pursue the same thing. I take it that what they jointly pursue, or
“always agree in all things” about, is the self-interest or desire of the greater whole
that they come to compose.
In this early passage, transformation and even salvation involves coming to share
with others a greater desire for union with God and true ideas. As we have seen in the
previous chapter and will see in more detail in the next, Spinoza came to think that
the mechanism for moral transformation is more complicated than simply cultivating
overlapping desires with other agents. It also involves adopting a different perspective
on the world, conceiving oneself and others more broadly, using reason to understand
how the “vain, disordered, and absurd” structures of isolated parts of the world
form a single, harmonious whole, whose parts “accommodate themselves in harmony
together.”69 With such a conceptual shift, what had been conceived of as a mere col-
lection of antagonistic, self-seeking agents is reconceived as an integrated, mutually
accommodating part of a greater composite. But what remains constant between
67
See also KV II.18, G I/87–8.
68
I am similarly inclined to read the “quasi” in IVp18s not as Spinoza’s way of indicating that forming a
single mind or body is somehow fictitious or merely metaphorical, as some have suggested. Rather, I think
he is marking the fact that there is not, in fact, a single mind and body composed of all and only human
minds and bodies. There is no such joint action by all human agents that satisfies the conditions on com-
position in just this way, even though there are greater individuals, such as the infinite individual of IIp13sL7s,
which include as parts all human minds and bodies. For examples of less metaphysically robust readings
of IVp18s, see Barbone, “What Counts as an Individual for Spinoza,” 101; Butler, “The Desire to Live:
Spinoza's Ethics under Pressure,” 125; and Garber, “Dr Fischelson’s Dilemma,” 190. For more stout-hearted
readings of IVp18s that are closer to my own, see Steinberg, “Spinoza's Ethical Doctrine and the Unity of
Human Nature”; Rorty, “The Two Faces of Spinoza”; Armstrong, “Autonomy and the Relational Individual:
Spinoza and Feminism”; and di Poppa, “Spinoza and Process Ontology” (although di Poppa thinks such
macro-individuals are not unified things “in the traditional sense of a ‘thing’” (290)).
69
Ep 30 and Ep 32, respectively. Spinoza later criticizes the shared desire account as both insufficient
and practically unworkable (TTP XVI.5, G III/192).
IVp18s and the early KV passage is that the path from a narrowly circumscribed
self-interest to acting on behalf of others involves genuine metaphysical composition
and a corresponding expansion of the “self ” that governs self-interest.
In fact, what may sound like a metaphysically extravagant solution to a problem
facing ethical egoism is really just a case of Spinoza systematically applying his claims
about composition and individuals to moral agents. In ethics, it is usually assumed that
moral agents are individuated in a pretty traditional way, carved up by some sort of
familiar biological or psychological configuration.70 Spinoza does not deny that there
is such a way of carving up the world into agents; he simply observes that, so individu-
ated, those agents are doomed to fail in what he takes to be their most fundamental
pursuit. However, Spinoza’s conceptualist account of individuals implies that such a
traditional carving up of the world into moral agents is not the only true carving—or
even the best, in terms of their own practical interests—available.
Here Spinoza blends his defense of ethical egoism with his metaphysics of individuals.
In the end, the deepest reason why he thinks we are each morally motivated to pursue
the interests of others is that it is in each of our own individual interests to conceive
others in relation to ourselves in such a way that our own activities and ends are not as
distinct from the activities and ends of our neighbors, in virtue of which we ourselves
are not as distinct from other moral agents. This, in turn, opens up the possibility that
what had been conceived as a collection of competing individual, self-interested agents
can be reconceived as mutually accommodating parts working together for the sake of
a greater composite individual.
Does this strategy succeed? The first thing to note is that it does not preserve altru-
ism per se. Rather than one agent pursuing the interest of another agent directly for
the sake of that other agent, we instead have a trumping of a composite agent’s self-
interest over the interest of one of its parts. As noted, Spinoza believes that agents have
self-interested motivations to act in ways that might bring about such trumping, such
as conceiving the world more broadly and engaging in collective activities. If so, then
it may be in my indirect self-interest to pursue the interests of others if (a) it is in my
self-interest to become fellow parts of a greater individual with other agents and (b) it
is in the interest of that composite agent for me to aid my fellow parts.
On this account, instead of having a moral motive to sacrificially aid others, full
stop, I have a motive to do something else (act collectively to form a composite), a
consequence of which may be that I am motivated to sacrificially aid others. Like the
more bluntly prudential strategy we first considered, this strategy still treats morality
as a fundamentally self-interested project. Ethical egoism cannot avoid this conclusion
entirely. Nevertheless, the “self ” of this self-interest can contain more than just my
70
For an alternative to this tendency that is surprisingly congenial to what I am ascribing to Spinoza, see
Carol Rovane, “Personal Identity and Choice.” Of particular interest here is her account of “group persons”
that are brought about when distinct agents work together to “achieve rational unity” in ways that expand
the boundaries of agency beyond the biological or phenomenological boundaries of the original individual
agents (see esp. 101–13).
own, narrowly conceived individual interests, which marks an important difference

with the bluntly prudential strategy.
Regardless of whether one thinks this provides enough direct regard for others to
salvage morality within ethical egoism, Spinoza’s strategy faces a much bigger internal
concern. To put it bluntly, is it actually in my own self-interest to become part of such a
greater whole? Spinoza assures his readers that it is: “Man, I say, can wish for nothing
more helpful to preservation of his being than that all should so harmonize in every
way . . . ” (IVp18s). In a similar vein, he writes, “The more a thing agrees with our nature,
the more useful or better it is for us” (IVp35c). However, I noted that it will sometimes
be in the self-interest of a greater composite for some of its parts to aid fellow parts in
ways that sacrifice the resources of the assisting parts. If so, why think it will always or
in the long run be better for me to become such a part?
Suppose I am a purely self-interested agent considering whether to join the army.
The recruiter tells me that once I join, it may be in the interest of the army as a whole
for me to sacrifice myself to save my fellow soldiers. If I question whether that would
be good for me, it hardly seems to help if the recruiter replies that my sacrifice would
undoubtedly be good for the army.
Similarly, we might concede to Spinoza that it is in the interest of some greater com-
posite individual for me to function as a nonessential, expendable part of it. The harder
question is whether it is always or in the long run in my own interests to so function.
Certainly the initial answer seems to be that it is not, given what it may involve. In
more Spinozistic terms, while it might be wonderful for the infinite individual to have
me as a part, it is hard to see how being a part of that infinite individual is always or in
the long run in my own self-interest.
Some of this worry turns on the tension in Spinoza’s thought between being an
individual and being a part of an individual, as discussed at the end of the previous
chapter. We saw that Spinoza vacillated, sometimes suggesting that to become a part is
to no longer be an individual at all. If so, then it is very hard to see how it could be in
an individual’s self-interest to become a part of any greater composite, since doing
so would entail that the individual no longer exists as such. Those are some steep
membership dues!
However, we also saw that Spinoza sometimes claimed that parts of individuals
remain individuals in their own right, which leaves open the possibility that it could
be in an individual’s self-interest to be a part of at least certain composite individuals.
We are now bumping up against the moral counterpart to the problem of elusive
individuals. What is the relationship between an individual’s self-interest and “its”
interests insofar as it is a part of a composite individual?71
71
For rich discussions of other epistemic, ethical, and especially political versions of this metaphysical
tension, see Ravven, “Spinoza’s Individualism Reconsidered”; Armstrong, “Autonomy and the Relational
Individual: Spinoza and Feminism”; and Balibar, “Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality.”
This worry is not limited to cases of moral action. I have suggested at various points
that Spinoza thinks we each have self-interested motivations for adopting broader,
more complete ways of conceiving the world. Given Spinoza’s framework, it is important
that pursuing such broader conceptual outlooks is better for me, more advantageous
for me, a reliable means for satisfying my fundamental desire. But given Spinoza’s
ontology and theory of individuation, is it really beneficial for me to conceive of the
world so broadly?
In the next chapter, I will begin with Spinoza’s main line of reply. He offers a prac-
tical case for adopting broader ways of conceiving things, one that he thinks leads
not to the frustration of our fundamental desires for self-preservation but to the
re-identification of ourselves with something far more powerful and stable, and
perhaps even eternal. Once again, his conceptualist metaphysics underwrites this
program of self-transformation. Hence, it will turn out that Spinoza is not issuing
a problematic call to egoistical self-denial, but is instead offering a path to a kind of
self-transcendence—one that promises nothing less than blessedness and salvation.
It is to this final Spinozistic ascent that we now turn.
8
Moral Transformation and
Self-Transcendence
One of the core interpretive theses of this book is that Spinoza thinks each thing can
be conceived in plentifully many different ways, including more and less broadly
within each attribute. In chapter one, I labeled this Spinoza’s intra-attribute mode
plenitude thesis. I have repeatedly asked whether Spinoza also thinks some of these
different ways of conceiving things are better or truer or in some other way privileged
over others.
The question of privileging is metaphysically pressing in light of how many central
metaphysical features of the world vary depending on how things are conceived,
according to Spinoza. Is Spinoza’s metaphysics infected with a pernicious form of
relativism, as I worried in chapter two? The issue becomes morally pressing for Spinoza
in light of how he ties an agent’s moral motivations to facts about agent individuation
and composition, which, I claimed in chapter six, partly depend on how things and
activities are conceived. Privileging is also textually important, given that Spinoza
sometimes encourages his readers to adopt broader ways of conceiving things over
narrower ones. Why would he do that if he thought more and less inclusive ways of
conceiving things were all on par with each other?
These considerations suggest that Spinoza should want to privilege some of these
ways of conceiving things over others. However, we have seen that he must reject
the most natural bases for such privileging. For example, Spinoza could not claim that
broader ways of conceiving things more faithfully correspond to the “real,” concept-
independent modal status of things. Spinoza’s conceptual identification thesis
prevents this. Neither necessitarianism nor its denial more accurately corresponds to
the modal status of things independently of how they are conceived, since Spinoza
thinks the modal status of things partly depends on how things are conceived. Similarly,
Spinoza could not consistently maintain that only the broadest way of conceiving a
thing is true. Spinoza’s intra-attribute plenitude thesis denies this. Although
some narrower ways of conceiving things are confused and false, not every less than
fully broad way of conceiving a thing is confused or false. God’s plentiful nature
guarantees that there is an abundance of narrower but nevertheless true expressions
within each attribute.
Spinoza’s ethical theory points to another possibility. It might be better for individuals
to adopt broader ways of conceiving things because it is more in their practical interest
to do so. In the previous chapter, I unpacked Spinoza’s account of practical interest

in terms of fundamental desire satisfaction. By urging his readers to conceive things
more broadly, Spinoza could be claiming that reliably satisfying our fundamental
desire for increased power involves adopting broader ways of conceiving ourselves
and other things. I will abbreviate this as the thesis that certain intra-attribute ways of
conceiving things are practically privileged over others, and I will argue that this is the
form of privileging that Spinoza adopts. Relative to the broader concepts themselves,
this is an extrinsic privileging mechanism. It is better for the one doing the conceiving
to conceive things more broadly.
We will first look at Spinoza’s case for practically privileging some intra-attribute
ways of conceiving things over others. Whereas in the previous chapter we saw how
Spinoza’s conceptualist metaphysics shapes his ethics of self-interest, here we will see
how his ethical theory informs and completes his metaphysical project. However, that
very interdependence raises a serious problem for Spinoza, versions of which we have
already encountered. In light of Spinoza’s metaphysics of individuals, conceiving things
broadly actually seems to cut against my own self-interest. To resolve this, we will need
to look more closely at Spinoza’s account of agency and moral transformation. This will
point to a final role for the conceptual in Spinoza’s system. By reconceiving themselves,
agents will be able transcend their narrowly conceived self-interests and self-identities,
a process that Spinoza links to blessedness, salvation, and even eternality. Seeing what
this reconceptualization involves will illuminate both Spinoza’s final hope for his readers
and also his abiding pessimism that any of us will actually enjoy these benefits.
1. Spinoza’s Practical Privileging

To understand Spinoza’s practical privileging, it will help to work with a (very mild)
real-world example. My neighbor—to protect the guilty, I will call him “Peter”—lets his
dog out without supervision or training. Peter’s dog finds our yard irresistibly inviting,
and she regularly leaves behind evidence of her delight in places where my kids like to
play. I have repeatedly asked Peter to correct this habit, to no avail. This has led to a bit
of neighborly tension, at least in one direction.
For Spinoza to privilege broader ways of conceiving things over narrower ones on
practical grounds, it should be in my overall self-interest to conceive Peter and his
actions in the broadest, most causally complete way possible. To see why that might be,
let us begin with the modal aspect of the case. According to Spinoza’s modal theory, as
discussed in chapter four, the modal status of Peter’s letting out his dog unsupervised
depends partly on the way in which Peter is conceived. Conceived in the very broadest
way, individuals exist and act necessarily. Conceived more narrowly, those same
individuals exist and act contingently. In the face of the concept-sensitive nature of
modality, why does Spinoza think I have decisive practical motives to try to conceive
my neighbor’s actions in broader, ultimately necessitarian ways?
Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence 203
Spinoza’s striking answer is found in Vp6: “Insofar as [quatenus] the mind understands
all things as necessary, to that extent [eatenus] it has more power over affects, or is
less acted on by them.” This remarkable passage captures Spinoza’s strongest and
deepest argument for why it is in the self-interest of individuals to adopt a necessitarian
perspective on the world, which amounts to a kind of practical argument for necessi-
tarianism. His basic claim is that an agent will be more active to the extent to which
she conceives of the world from a necessitarian perspective. Being more active, in
turn, entails having a greater power over one’s affects, which entails having greater
psychological and physiological well-being. In Spinoza’s psychological framework,
conceiving things as necessary will help reliably satisfy an agent’s fundamental,
intrinsically motivating desire for acquiring greater power of acting.
Spinoza offers one reason why necessitarianism has such salutary benefits for those
who adopt it in IIIp48: “Love or hate—say, of Peter—is destroyed if the sadness the
hate involves, or the joy the love involves, is attached to the idea of another cause, and
each is diminished to the extent that we imagine that Peter was not its only cause.” This
reasoning relies on a distribution principle, according to which the strength of one’s
passion toward another individual is diminished to the extent to which that passion is
spread over more and more of the causes of that individual. The spreading out happens
by including more and more of the target’s causal ancestors in one’s representation of
the target, i.e., by adopting broader concepts of the target.1
Returning to our example, suppose that when I think of Peter knowingly letting
his dog foul up my yard where my kids play, I become filled with anger. According to
Spinoza’s distribution principle, my anger toward Peter will lessen the more I think
about the various causes of Peter’s actions. Hey, he’s a busy guy with lots of demands
on his time from his own family and work, and he cannot always monitor his dog’s
whereabouts. (But why can’t his family help monitor the dog?! Ok, deep breath . . .)
Furthermore, the former owner of our house also had a dog, and apparently they settled
on some kind of neighborly laissez-faire attitude toward pet deposits in yards. (But Peter’s
kids are now too old to roll around in the grass with dog droppings, whereas mine aren’t!
Hm, maybe this was a bad example.)
According to Spinoza’s distribution principle, my anger toward Peter will be
diminished to the extent to which I include representations of these causes in my idea
of Peter’s action. Note that this does not imply that the overall strength or force of my
now white-hot anger will be diminished. Instead, it will be spread out, resulting in
my having a low-grade annoyance toward Peter, his family, his job, our former house
owners, the original builders of our neighborhood, and so forth. If Spinoza is right,
then if I were able to represent the infinitely long causal history of Peter’s action, the
1
Spinoza appeals to a similar distribution principle in Vp9. For further discussion of such principles,
see Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics, 132–5 and Bennett, A Study of
Spinoza’s Ethics, 337–42.
force of my distributed passion toward each individual involved, including Peter,

would become infinitesimally small.
There is undoubtedly something recognizable here, as we sometimes urge each other
to calm down and think about the causes and contexts of various troubling actions. But
it is hard to accept Spinoza’s distribution principle in the unqualified form in which he
presents it. Is it the case that when I include reference to Peter’s great-great-great-
grandmother in my representation of him, I thereby become less upset with his letting
the dog out in my yard? Not really, at least without adding in some cooked-up details
about her dog-related behavior. At a minimum, Spinoza’s distribution principle needs
some kind of salience condition beyond simply “being a causal ancestor.”
Whatever one concludes about such principles, Spinoza indicates that there is
a more direct practical benefit of adopting necessitarianism: “For we see that the
sadness concerning a good thing which has been lost is mitigated as soon as the man
who lost it considers [considerat] that the good thing could not have been saved in
any way” (Vp6s). Spinoza claims that a harmful affect like sadness will have less
purchase on an agent if she considers that the event generating her sadness was
necessary. Unlike in IIIp48, Spinoza’s focus here is more directly on the modal feature
of the case. Conceiving an event as necessary is supposed to mitigate the strength of
the harmful affect directly, whereas the distribution principle in IIIp48 merely spreads
it out over other causes. Why would considering a loss as necessary mitigate one’s
sadness over that loss?
As discussed in the previous chapter, Spinoza thinks sadness is what an agent
experiences when she loses power.2 The cessation of sorrow is therefore what an
agent experiences when she stops losing her power. Hence, Spinoza’s thesis in Vp6 is
that by conceiving individuals and events that would otherwise negatively affect her as
necessary, a person is better able to maintain and even, relative to the potential loss
involved in sadness, increase her power of acting. Since the maintenance and enhance-
ment of one’s power is the foundation of virtue for Spinoza, it will be more virtuous and
hence practically advantageous for agents to conceive things and events as necessary.
That captures Spinoza’s reasoning, but, to simply restate the question, why should my
conceiving Peter’s actions as necessary result in a greater power for me? One round-
about route to this conclusion runs through Spinoza’s philosophy of mind, as discussed
in chapter five. Spinoza claims that all ideas in the human mind are ideas of one’s own
body and its affections. Thus, for an individual to represent an external body, she must
do so by representing the changes it causes in her own body. I can represent only those
things that are causally related to me. So in order to represent Peter, I need to represent
my body as affected by Peter. To represent both Peter and some of Peter’s causes, I must
represent my own body as affected by those additional influences too. That is, to
broaden out my representation of others, I must broaden the range of causes included
in the representation of my own body as well. Hence, to expand my representation of
2
IIIp11s and IIIDefAff 3.
Peter in order to include more of his causes, I must also expand my idea of myself to
include more of my own causal influences.
Expanding one’s ideas in these ways involves adopting broader ways of conceiving
things, moving steadily from NCs toward BCs. We saw in previous chapters that things
often have more explanatory power insofar as they are conceived more broadly. More
historically inclusive concepts of things usually explain or contain more effects. As we
saw in chapter three, causal relations just are such conceptual containment relations
for Spinoza. Hence, expanding a thing’s explanatory power in this way is eo ipso to
expand its causal power. I also concluded in chapter five that Spinoza thinks that
essences are the explanatory powers of things and that often the more broadly a thing
is conceived, the more essence it has. Hence, representing myself in a broader way
often entails that I have more causal and explanatory power and a greater essence.
According to the previous chapter, Spinoza thinks individuals are intrinsically
motivated to pursue the satisfaction of their fundamental desire for increased power,
at least insofar as they are aware of it as such. Since representing myself in a broader
way often entails that I have more power, I will be intrinsically motivated to try to
do so, if I am suitably informed (by reading the Ethics, say). By that same theory of
motivation, I am also motivated to pursue what I take to be reliable means for satis-
fying my fundamental desire. We have just seen that conceiving Peter in a broader
way is a guaranteed means for conceiving myself in a broader way as well. Hence, if
I am suitably enlightened, I will also be motivated to try to conceive my neighbor in
a broader way as well. According to chapter four, adopting such broadening concepts at
the limit also entails representing my neighbor and his actions in a necessitarian
framework. This complex chain represents one reason why Spinoza thinks it is in my
practical interest to conceive Peter’s actions as necessary. Doing so results in my having
more power and virtue.
Despite the elegant interconnection of these claims within Spinoza’s system, the con-
clusion of Vp6s remains rather counterintuitive. It suggests that I am more powerful
the more I consider my own actions and the actions of others as happening necessarily.
But wouldn’t such necessity actually constrain my power? Conceiving of my own actions
as the inevitable result of an infinite chain of events stretching long before my birth
appears to diminish my sense of agency, not enhance it. And if, in order to conceive
Peter’s actions as necessary, I must conceive my own actions as similarly spinning out
from a fatalistic web of necessitating causes, it seems that conceiving things and events
as necessary leads me to have less power and be the source of fewer actions.
This is another instance of the worry raised at the end of the last chapter. Is it really in
my own interest to be a part of the Spinozistic universe, at least under the broadest ways
of conceiving that universe? There we worried that I might be practically motivated to
act in ways that undercut my own self-interest. Here we worry that according to broader
ways of being conceived, I might have less power as an agent.
In the modal case, Spinoza responds by rejecting the thesis that necessity always
constrains and diminishes agency. He argues, for example, that God necessarily exists
and acts and that such necessity is actually a perfect-making feature of God.3 So in at
least one case, necessity enhances a thing’s power, virtue, and agency, according to
Spinoza. Why is that?
Spinoza points out that we need to distinguish among the sources of necessity. In
God’s case, the necessity of God’s actions is not imposed on God by external causes.
God does not exist or act necessarily as a result of anything external to God. As Spinoza
puts it, God is not “subject to fate,” which would be the most “absurd [view that] can be
maintained about God” (Ip33s2, G II/76). He concludes that God is free precisely in
virtue of the fact that God is a thing that “exists from the necessity of its nature alone,
and is determined to act by itself alone” (Id7). So when an action follows from a thing’s
nature alone and is entirely a product of that thing’s own internal causal power, its
action is free and unconstrained, even if still necessary. (Indeed, God’s actions are
necessary precisely because they are contained in the concept of God’s nature, according
to Ip35 and Spinoza’s modal and causal theories.)
By contrast, when the source of necessity is external to a thing, Spinoza claims that
its power and agency is constrained and diminished. “But a thing is called necessary,
or rather compelled [vel potius coacta], which is determined by another to exist and to
produce an effect in a certain and determinate manner” (Id7). Compulsion, in other
words, is a function of the source of an action, not its modal strength, according
to Spinoza.
The difference between an enabling, empowering necessity and a constraining,
limiting necessity turns on whether the action follows entirely from a thing’s own
nature or whether its source is at least partly external. In Spinoza’s conceptual terms,
the difference turns on whether an action is contained entirely in the concept of a thing
or whether the action is also partly contained in the concept of another thing. In the
terminology Spinoza uses in Part III, adequate causes are causes for which necessity is
not constraining (IIId1). Indeed, Spinoza defines the very core of agency—activity—in
terms of an internal source. Strictly speaking, actions are what follow from our nature
“alone” (IIId2), whereas passions follow at least partly from external sources (IIId3).
One might wonder how any of this helps Spinoza. If true, perhaps the distinction in
the source of necessity saves God from being subject to fate and passivity. But what
about the rest of us? After all, Spinoza writes, “It is impossible that a man should not be
a part of Nature and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which
can be understood through his nature alone and of which he is the adequate cause”
(IVp4). Insofar as we are a “part of Nature,” that is, insofar as we are limited individuals
embedded in a network of external, competitive, and deterministic causes, we will
inevitably be steeped in inadequacy, passion, and compulsion. Thus, insofar as con-
ceiving our actions as necessary entails conceiving our activities as the effects of more
3
See especially Ip33s2. This is not an uncontroversial theological claim by any means, but I think
Spinoza is right that those who deny it will need to work quite hard to provide an intelligible account of
God’s contingent activity, as Leibniz’s corpus magnificently illustrates.
and more external forces, necessitarianism still seems to diminish our agency and
power of acting, by Spinoza’s own principles.
The final step in Spinoza’s practical case—and it is a doozy—lies in that little qualifier:
insofar as we are limited individuals. Compulsion, inadequacy, and passivity are features
of agents whose source of activity is partly external to them. As we learned from Willy
the worm in chapter six, insofar as the world is carved up into a series of discrete, com-
petitive agents, the threat from external forces to each of those agents is ever-present
and, eventually, insurmountable. By itself, adding history to the backstory does not seem
to help much. If I represent Peter’s actions and my reactions as the products of millions
of years of external influences, then maybe I will be more inclined to take it a bit easy on
the poor bloke when he acts against my interests. What else could he have done, I remind
myself. But if mere détente were all that Spinoza could provide, then his bolder practical
case for necessitarianism and, more generally, for broader ways of conceiving things
would fail by his own lights.
However, I also argued in chapter six that Willy’s perspective, while true, is not the
only true carving up of individuals, interests, and activities, according to Spinoza.
There is an another way of conceiving regions of activity, according to which what
had been conceived as resulting from distinct, competing individuals instead follows
internally from a more complex composite agent, one with correspondingly greater
internal resources and adequate power. In other terms, what had been conceived as
a passion for some individual agents can be reconceived as the action of a greater
composite. Correspondingly, what had been more narrowly conceived as an external
source can be a co-internal part when more broadly conceived. Spinoza sometimes
even concluded that, so broadly conceived, such internal parts or aspects were no
longer distinct individuals.4 We saw in the last chapter how Spinoza’s defense of ethical
egoism relied on shifting the boundaries of individuals and “their” corresponding
interests in just this way.
This is the key to Spinoza’s defense of agency and self-interest against the threat
of necessitarianism and broader ways of conceiving more generally. Remember that
Spinoza thinks necessity undermines agency only in cases of external compulsion,
when something external to a thing partly causes or explains its activity. According to
Spinoza’s account of individuals and the interconnected causal structure of the world,
as things are more broadly conceived, at some point what had been conceived as
stemming from a distinct, external individual will be reconceived as following from
within a greater composite agent. Correspondingly, as I conceive my causal history
and the history of others in a more inclusive way, I will begin to conceive myself and
my neighbor as less distinct from each other. More broadly conceived, Peter and I aren’t
so different, after all.5
4
I also worried in chapter six about the intelligibility of this move on Spinoza’s own terms, but I will set
this aside and present how I think his account is supposed to go, if it could somehow be made to work.
5
See also Rorty, “Two Faces of Spinoza,” 312.
This consideration lies behind Spinoza’s striking biconditional in IVp33 and 34: “Men
can disagree in nature insofar as they are torn by affects which are passions . . . insofar
as men are torn by affects which are passions, they can be contrary to one another.”
According to a blander reading of this biconditional, Spinoza observes merely that
individuals who are driven by passions, by external compulsions, are subject to affects
like jealousy and arrogance that can lead to interpersonal conflict. But we now have the
resources for a bolder interpretation.
The deepest cause of interpersonal conflict, according to Spinoza, is externality, of
which being “torn by passions” is an unhappy consequence. I am susceptible to conflict
with Peter if and only if Peter is an “other” to me, a distinct individual agent with inter-
ests opposed to my own. Spinoza’s remedy for interpersonal conflict is to overcome
such externality, such differentiation. Insofar as Peter and I jointly compose a single
individual through cooperative activity, the threat of conflict between us disappears,
according to Spinoza. And although it might initially seem that Peter’s being a distinct,
external individual from me is a fixed and unchangeable fact about our relation, we
have seen that Spinoza does not think individual boundaries are so invariant. There are
broader ways of conceiving our activities according to which what had been conceived
as the result of distinct and competitive agents is reconceived as following internally
from a more adequate composite individual.
This metaphysical shift prevents Spinoza’s practical case for conceiving things
more broadly from collapsing under its own weight. It is precisely because all these
metaphysical features—essence, power, necessity, and externality—sway together under
broader and narrower concepts that the threat to agency and self-interest from adopt-
ing broader concepts can be answered. Yes, if conceiving myself and Peter in a broader
way entailed that we are more compelled and more determined from without to do
what we do, then maybe it would cut against my self-interest to adopt these broader
concepts. Yes, if the referent of “self ” in my own self-interest were wholly tethered to
a particularly limited mind–body configuration, then shifts in composition and indi-
viduation could cut against my own self-interest. Yes, if the only self with which I can
identify was a limited source of mostly inadequate causal power and passivity, then
I would be doomed to a fate of instability and, ultimately, destruction.
But, Spinoza pushes back, the antecedents of those conditionals are all false. God’s
perfection and the corresponding conceptualist metaphysics steadfastly resists nar-
rowing truth to but a single salient way of individuating things. This opens up the
exciting (and somewhat terrifying) possibility that externality can be lessened or even
overcome, insofar as agents can re-identify themselves with a reconceived, greater source
of internal activity, one far less precarious and strife-filled than with what they had been
identifying. This is the broadly practical basis of Spinoza’s privileging mechanism:
insofar as adopting BCs over NCs transforms me into a more adequate, active, and
internally sufficient individual, I will be motivated by my fundamental desire to try to
do so (if I am suitably enlightened about these facts). Over the next two sections, we
will look more closely at this process of transformation and re-identification.
2. Moral Transformation Reconceived

Spinoza often presents the practical advantages of conceiving things more broadly in
terms of increasing one’s power of acting, as he did in Vp6. But Spinoza is nothing if not
ambitious, and as the Ethics nears its conclusion, Spinoza promises readers not only a
path to increased power, virtue, and wisdom, but also to blessedness and salvation.
Spinoza suggests that even the sting of death can be muted: “Death is less harmful to
us, the greater the mind’s clear and distinct knowledge, and hence, the more the mind
loves God” (Vp38s).
What is the path to such ethical improvement, blessedness, and even a kind of
salvation? Spinoza refers to “understanding” in Vp6 and “the mind’s clear and distinct
knowledge” in Vp38, which allude to his most frequent answer: we need to improve
our intellects. Spinoza dedicated his earliest writing project to this very task: Tractatus
de Intellectus Emendatione. This focus is aptly summarized in the Appendix to Part IV
of the Ethics: “In life, therefore, it is especially useful to perfect, as far as we can, our
intellect or reason. In this one thing consists man’s highest happiness or blessedness”
(IVApp4).6 Although this emphasis places Spinoza in the intellectualist tradition
of moral philosophy, his moral program is far richer than that label might suggest.
Spinoza’s account of ethical improvement and moral transformation draws deeply on
his distinctive conceptualist metaphysics.
Just after claiming that the path to human fulfilment is based on intellectual
improvement, Spinoza injects a surprising theological note: “Indeed, blessedness is
nothing but that satisfaction of mind [animi acquiescentia] which stems from the
intuitive knowledge of God. But perfecting the intellect is nothing but understanding
God, his attributes, and his actions, which follow from the necessity of his nature”
(G II/267). At a minimum, this insertion reminds us that the dense opening of the
Ethics, and indeed all the metaphysical machinery we have been discussing in this book,
have a practical significance for Spinoza. For example, recall Spinoza’s suggestion that
human fulfilment requires correctly understanding how things depend on other
things.7 Doing theology and metaphysics—especially thinking through the structure of
divine perfection discussed in chapter one—is part of the path to a satisfied life, Spinoza
thinks. To some, that may come as a startling thesis. How can something like meta-
physical theorizing be part of how everyone becomes happy, blessed, and satisfied?
Spinoza links this theological-cum-metaphysical pursuit with a slightly more
mundane intellectual project, one that might seem more tractable for everyone to
attempt. “He who understands himself and his affects clearly and distinctly loves
God and does so the more he understands himself and his affects” (Vp15). In other
words, pursuing the satisfying knowledge of God involves developing a clearer
6
See also Vp42d. For the bodily counterpart to intellectual improvement, see IVp38–9, IVApp27,
Vp10, and, ultimately, Vp39s. For a lucid discussion of the latter, see James, “Spinoza, the Body, and the
Good Life.”
7
See TIE 92, G II/34, as quoted and discussed in chapter three.
self-understanding.8 In our own therapeutic culture, the benefits associated with

increased self-awareness will be more familiar than those associated with pursuing
speculative metaphysics and theology. How does Spinoza think we achieve such
greater self-understanding?
By now, Spinoza’s primary answer will come as no surprise: “So the ultimate end of
the man who is led by reason, that is, his highest desire, by which he strives to moderate
all the others, is that by which he is led to conceive adequately both himself and all
things which can fall under his understanding” (IVApp4, G II/267). The way to improve
one’s self-understanding, and hence to nurture a satisfying love of God, is to conceive
oneself more adequately.9 Conceptual shifts again pave the path to moral and salvific
transformation, according to Spinoza.
In Spinoza’s preferred terminology, we improve ourselves intellectually by making
our occurrent ideas more adequate. In doing so, a mind increases its power of acting,
“for the mind has no other power than that of thinking and forming adequate ideas”
(Vp4s). In fact, making one’s ideas more adequate is just the mental correlate of
increasing one’s adequate causal power: “The mind . . . rejoices insofar as it conceives
adequate ideas, that is (by IIIp1), insofar as it acts” (IIIp58d).10
To see how the mind becomes more active in this way, recall from the previous
section that a thing is active for Spinoza to the extent to which its own internal properties
are the source of its effects. In intellectual terms, a mind is active to the extent to which
its effects can be explained solely through its own representations, which Spinoza
equates with acting with understanding and with having adequate ideas. “A man cannot
be said absolutely to act from virtue insofar as he is determined to do something because
he has inadequate ideas, but only insofar as he is determined because he understands”
(IVp23). Spinoza clarifies this alternative source of determination further in the dem-
onstration: “That is, he does something which is perceived through his essence alone or
(by IVd8) which follows adequately from his virtue.” Hence, in order to become more
virtuous, to increase the adequacy of one’s ideas, to act with understanding, and to have
more adequate causal power, a mind needs to expand its own explanatory power.
Spinoza thinks one way to do this is to understand particular things more clearly
through metaphysically laden science, the sort of formal, mathematically based
physics that was blossoming all around him.11 In the introduction, I cited Spinoza’s
8
See also IVp59s, Vp3c, and Vp18s. In Vp24, Spinoza broadens this project out to include under-
standing other things, but I will follow him in focusing primarily on self-understanding for reasons that
will become clear.
9
See also IVp73s. 10
See also Vp20s, G II/293.
11
I take this to be the main upshot of Spinoza’s unfinished TIE, which culminates in the exhortation
to (1) establish the existence and nature of “the cause of all things,” and then (2) “deduce all our
ideas . . . from real beings, proceeding, as far as possible, according to the series of causes, from one real
being to another real being” (TIE 99, G II/36). This second step requires understanding “the inmost
essences of things,” which can only be derived from “fixed and eternal things and at the same time from the
laws inscribed in these things, as in their true codes, according to which all singular things come to be and
are ordered” (TIE 101, G II/36–7).
claim that ethics rests on metaphysics and physics,12 and here we see one way to
understand that hierarchy. Given that the desire to increase one’s own power of acting
is the foundation of Spinoza’s ethics, enhancing one’s understanding of the world
through physics and metaphysics is an important path for intellectual, and hence
ethical, improvement.
But there is something deeper at work here too. Pitching intellectual improvement
as a series of scientific and philosophical advances makes it sound like the primary way
to improve oneself is to acquire better explanations of other things. But that misplaces
Spinoza’s focus. For reasons we have just seen, in order for me to become more active
and have more adequate ideas, more needs to be explained through me, not merely
for me. To improve, I need to become more active and increase my own explanatory
power. Although that may involve my relations with other things, the primary locus
for my improvement is expanding my own essential base, not that of others. That is, in
order to become more intellectually virtuous and perfect, my own concept needs to
more fully include more effects. Understanding external things better may help with
that, but only as a means to this more self-centered end.
Another tempting way to try to expand one’s own power is to try doing more things:
begin to study calculus, lift weights, or write poetry. But undertaking new actions is
not Spinoza’s main focus, either. Intellectual improvement for Spinoza is less about
acquiring new ideas than about increasing the adequacy of one’s occurrent ideas.
Similarly, expanding one’s own power of acting involves not so much causing new or
additional effects as transforming the source of one’s actions, so that those same actions
follow from, or are more wholly contained in, one’s own concept than they had been.
Spinoza applies this point in Vp4, pointing out that one and the same desire can be
active or passive, virtuous or not, depending on its source:
All the appetites or desires are passions only insofar as they arise from inadequate ideas, and
are counted as virtues when they are aroused or generated by adequate ideas. For all the desires
by which we are determined to do something can arise as much from adequate ideas as from
inadequate ones (by IVp59).13
As with necessity and agency, the source of a desire partly determines its moral valance
for Spinoza. Insofar as I have a desire that cannot be understood through me alone—
i.e., insofar as it is a state not wholly contained in the concept of me—pursuing the
satisfaction of that desire is not virtuous. But that very same pursuit is virtuous insofar
as the motivating desire is understood through me alone—i.e., is wholly contained in
the concept of me. So in order to act fully virtuously, my concept must wholly include
the motivating basis for my action. (Although complete containment is required for
completely virtuous action, moral progress comes in degrees for Spinoza, and mostly
he focuses on the comparatives: how to become more virtuous.14)
12
Ep 27, G IV/161. 13
See also IVp59s, G II/255.
14
Spinoza promises that “each of us has, in part at least if not absolutely, the power to understand himself
and his affects and consequently the power to bring it about that he is less acted on by them” (Vp4s).
Complete desire containment is just an applied instance of an effect following entirely

from or being wholly contained in its cause. In this case, the moral improvement stems
not from an agent performing a different act, but from that same act following more
fully from the agent’s own motivational structure. My action is more virtuous because
the desire by which I am “determined to do something” arises more from within
me and less from without. Hence, expanding my own power of acting is a process in
which I somehow internalize and take more ownership of my desires, such that my
actions follow more from my own internal states alone. More generally, it is a process
of taking ownership of the external, incorporating within ourselves what had come
from without, with the result that what had been thrust upon us from the external
comes to be more internally generated, more of a “free” expression of our own power
and agency (Id7).
In sum, ethical improvement for Spinoza requires an agent to become a more adequate
cause of her actions. To become a more adequate cause, an agent needs more explana-
tory power, which requires her actions to be more wholly contained in her own concept.
To accomplish this greater containment, there is a sense in which she really does not
need to do anything, according to Spinoza. For according to his plentiful ontology,
there already are broader and more expansive ways of being conceived, according to
which an agent has a more expansive essential base, more explanatory power, and
greater essence. Hence ethical progress does not even require an agent to generate a
new way of conceiving herself and her actions.
Instead, the main ethical task for Spinoza’s readers is to adopt these broader concepts
of themselves. I think this is why Spinoza emphasizes intellectual improvement in
his ethical project. The task of moral improvement involves conceiving oneself more
broadly, which requires improving one’s intellectual ability to grasp such broader
concepts. Spinoza hopes that his readers, by coming to see how their own moral
improvement is within the grasp of their conceptual understanding, will thereby see
how the metaphysically perfect world with all its concept sensitivity is, in fact, ideally
suited for a life devoted to moral self-improvement.
Spinoza points to this conceptual path for ethical improvement in IVp59d:
Finally, insofar as joy is good, it agrees with reason . . . and is not a passion except insofar as the
man’s power of acting is not increased to the point where he conceives himself and his actions
adequately. So if a man affected with joy were led to such a great perfection that he conceived
himself and his actions adequately, he would be capable—indeed, more capable—of the same
actions to which he is now determined by affects which are passions.15
The imagined agent in this passage acquires more power and perfection, but his actions
do not change. He still performs “the same actions” as he did when he was less powerful.
That’s the sense in which moral progress for Spinoza does not directly involve acting
15
See also IIIp3s, in which the way the mind “is considered” is relevant for distinguishing its passions
from its actions.
differently. What brings greater perfection in this case is that the agent “conceived
himself and his actions [more] adequately,” such that his actions were more completely
contained in this broader self-concept. In other words, by adopting broader concepts
of himself, he can explain more of what he does through his own expanded internal
properties, and thereby he becomes more virtuous (in Spinoza’s sense).
Spinoza eloquently touts the psychological benefits of reconceiving oneself, which
again highlights his practical privileging of broader ways of conceiving over narrower.
He claims that much of what psychologically ails us, such as anxiety, fear, disappoint-
ment, hatred, and sadness, comes from our dependence on outside influences, from
what he describes as our bondage to fate:
Man’s lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects I call Bondage. For the man who is at
the mercy of his affects is not under the control of himself, but of fortune, in whose power
he so lies that often, though he sees the better for himself, he is still forced to follow the
worse (IVPref, G II/205).
Affects are increases or decreases in a thing’s power.16 The cause of such changes can
come from without or from within, but, given Spinoza’s conatus doctrine,17 any
changes to a thing’s power that are wholly internally generated will be positive. Hence,
the guaranteed way to improve oneself, to reliably satisfy one’s fundamental desire for
increased power, is to become more of the source of one’s affects.
By contrast, someone whose changes are externally determined will not reliably
satisfy his fundamental desire. He might get lucky sometimes, if the universe happens
to inject a ray of joyful sunshine into his life. But externally generated changes in one’s
power are not guaranteed to be positive, and so even the lucky person is subject to the
possibility of misfortune, the vicissitudes of fate, and the attendant fear that winter is
surely coming: “We are driven about in many ways by external causes, and that, like waves
on the sea, we toss about, driven by contrary winds, not knowing our outcome and fate”
(IIIp59s, G II/189). Agents whose changes are externally determined are like Spinoza’s
model of the “ignorant man,” someone who is “troubled in many ways by external causes,
and unable to ever possess true peace of mind [animi acquiescentia]” (Vp42s).
Throughout Part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza offers provisional strategies for mitigating
some of the harmful effects of our susceptibility to external determination, but what
might an effort at complete escape from bondage look like? One possibility would
be to try to become immune to outside influence by becoming wholly detached and
disengaged from the world around us. If I am not invested at all in my neighbors, per-
haps I will not be affected by events outside my control that befall them. However, as
I mentioned in the previous chapter, isolation and detachment from others is not
Spinoza’s preferred strategy. Instead, as we will see more fully in the next section, the
process of adopting a broader self-conception actually enmeshes an agent deeper into
the world and includes having more relations and interconnectedness. But if so, how
16
See IIId3. 17
See chapter five and IIIp6.
will deeper embedding make someone less susceptible to fate, external dependence,
and bondage?
The key again lies in Spinoza’s conceptualism about individuals. As we saw in the
previous two chapters, shifts in the relevant intra-attribute ways of conceiving a thing
also involve shifts in individuation. Spinoza’s defense of ethical egoism relied on the
thesis that what had been conceived as two distinct, competitive individuals can be
reconceived as—and become, according to the account in chapter six—co-internal,
non-individual aspects of a greater composite individual. Reconceiving in this way
transforms what had been an external individual into something co-internal to a
greater composite. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty nicely describes this transition from the
perspective of the reconceived agent: “What had been seen as merely external and
accidental . . . turns out to be as essential to her individuation as anything else.”18
Spinoza’s account of ethical improvement relies on this same shift, once again inter-
weaving his ethics and metaphysics.
Therefore, to become free from bondage and to become more virtuous, I need to
incorporate the external sources of my actions into my own internal states. This
transforms an inadequate effect into an adequate one. This absorption is supposed to
happen through adopting a broader concept of myself, one that includes more of my
own history and my relations to others. But according to Spinoza’s conceptualist
account of individuals, that same broadening of my concept also transforms the rela-
tionship between me and those others, such that what had been conceived as distinct
individuals, I and Thou, become less distinct from one another.
According to the account in chapter six, this shift in individuation happens in part
because what had been narrowly conceived as the competitive activities of distinct
agents are more broadly conceived as cooperative efforts that compose a greater com-
posite individual. (It also depends on there being such a broader, more interconnected
structure of a given region’s activities in the first place, of course.) In shifting from
something like Willy the worm’s narrow self-concept to a relevantly broader way of
conceiving myself, I can thereby represent what had been conceived as the distinct, com-
petitive activities of my neighbor and I as cooperative ventures, ones that partly compose
and sustain greater composite individuals: our neighborhood, people groups, shared
institutions, and, at the very limit, the universe itself, that single infinite individual
“whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite ways without any change of the whole
individual” (IIp13sL7s).19
18
Rorty, “Two Faces of Spinoza,” 308.
19
The nesting of individuals that Spinoza gives in IIp13sL7 makes me reasonably confident that the
relevant cooperative structure is supposed to hold at every level of decomposition too, but if it doesn’t,
then I would need to continue broadening my conception until I reach a point at which Peter and I (and
a bunch of others) do act cooperatively to bring about an effect (hey, we are in a neighborhood together).
Hopefully we aren’t so different and competitive that this happens only at the very broadest possible level
according to which we are both parts of the infinite individual. (Thanks to a referee for raising a question
about this.)
In this way, according to the relevantly broader ways of being conceived, what
had been conceived as an external source of determination—Peter making me mad
by callously letting his dog roam my yard—becomes an internal source of coordinated
activity of a greater composite individual. Thus, reconceiving myself can overcome
the externality of Peter’s actions that, more narrowly conceived, had produced
passivity, bondage, and the frustration of my fundamental desire. This is the same
movement that Spinoza described more generally in IVp59, in which a thing’s
externally determined action becomes internally generated insofar as that thing is
conceived more broadly.
Transforming an external, inadequate cause of change into an internal, adequate cause
also changes the valence of the affect, according to Spinoza. When an external cause of
my anger and sadness becomes internalized, my anger and sadness becomes something
positive, as it now represents an internal gain in power for the greater composite indi-
vidual. “Insofar as we understand the causes of sadness [to be God, i.e., an immanent,
internal cause], it ceases (by Vp3) to be a passion, that is (by IIIp59), to that extent it
ceases to be sadness. And so, insofar as we understand God to be the cause of sadness,
we rejoice” (Vp18s). Admittedly, Spinoza’s focus in this passage is on what happens to
someone’s sadness when she considers God to be its cause, but I think Spinoza’s point
is supposed to generalize: whenever a negative affect that had been conceived to come
from without is reconceived as coming from within, it is thereby transformed into a
positive affect (i.e., sadness becomes joy).20
At its limit, this transformation even promises freedom from death and destruction:
“If it were possible that a man could undergo no changes except those which can be
understood through the man’s nature alone, it would follow [by IIIp4 and IIIp66] that
he could not perish, but that necessarily he would always exist” (IVp4d; G II/213).
Spinoza deems this impossible for an individual finite mode that is “a part of Nature”
(IVp2), i.e., an individual that is surrounded by competing, external individuals. But,
setting aside Spinoza’s pessimism for now, his conditional is still intriguing. Death and
destruction do not come to an individual that is purely active, one with no inadequate
causal power.
Spinoza confirms this in Vp34: “Only while the body endures is the mind subject to
affects which are related to passions.” The contrast to “enduring” here is being eternal.21
20
See Vp3 and a similar move in IVp59s.
21
Although it would take us too far afield here to pursue in detail, note how Spinoza claims, yet
again, that whether a thing endures or is eternal depends in part on how it is conceived. Things that are
“conceive[d] in relation to a certain time and place” endure (Vp29s), whereas those same things, “insofar
as they are conceived through God’s essence as real beings, or insofar as through God’s essence they
involve existence” are eternal (Vp30d). That is, there is not an ontological difference between temporal
and eternal things for Spinoza. He does not posit some kind of Platonic realm of distinct eternal things
(perhaps “formal essences” or “eternal modes”) that somehow get instantiated or copied in the durational,
spatio-temporal world. The difference is, yet again, conceptual: which relations are included in a given
concept of a thing partly determine whether it endures or is eternal. Spinoza’s encouragement to conceive
things sub specie aeternitatis (Vp29d) is thus another instance of his privileging some of these ways of
conceiving things over others.
Hence, a fully eternal thing is not subject to passions. That is, insofar as a thing is wholly
eternal, it is wholly active and not subject to external determination, bondage, and
destruction.22
Becoming more active. Having a greater essence. Reliably fulfilling our most funda-
mental desire. Turning sadness into joy. Experiencing freedom from bondage and
destruction. It all sounds pretty nice—so how do we get it? To fully achieve all this, we
would need to become a fully adequate cause of all our actions, which would be to have
all of our effects wholly contained in our concept. That sounds like a daunting, perhaps
even impossible task for the likes of us to pull off.
Yet, Spinoza’s good news was supposed to be that eternality and freedom are
available to each of us, here and now. Lust, our old nemesis from chapter one, rears
up again: “It would be marvelous indeed if this should turn out consistent . . . but
how could this be?” Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy shines brightest here in reply. For
according to Spinoza’s metaphysics of divine perfection and conceptual plenitude,
there already are much broader and more adequate ways of conceiving ourselves,
according to which we already are more active, have more essence, more reliably fulfill
our fundamental desire, are less subject to negative affects, and have a greater share in
the stability of eternal things. Spinoza’s truly good news is that there already exists a
new and better you!
At the same time, this good news points to a significant gap in Spinoza’s account of
transformation so far. The fact that there are broader ways of conceiving oneself may
be reassuring, but simply knowing this does not by itself bring about the relevant sorts
of changes. Acquiring the general metaphysical belief that such broader concepts exist
is not enough. As I have been putting it, we also need to adopt these broader self-
concepts. Recall Spinoza’s reflexive description of the agent who “conceived himself
and his actions adequately” (IVp59d). In other terms, we need to acquire a de se
belief that links these broader concepts with our own self-identity, so that we come
to identify ourselves with more adequate, more stable individuals that Spinoza’s
plentiful ontology posits.
This task is all the more pressing given how the individuation of agents is also
sensitive to how regions of activities are conceived. Reconceiving one’s effects in a
broader way does not only increase their adequacy. As we have seen over the past three
chapters, reconceiving effects can also change the borders of the very agents causing
them, according to Spinoza. In this way, Spinoza’s account of transformation raises an
existential threat for the very person it was intended to save, a threat that echoes the
22
Spinoza seems to affirm this in Vp40c, although he focuses there on the parts of a thing that are eternal,
whereas I have focused on the eternality of the whole thing. (As usual, he also tends to focus on the com-
parative: becoming more eternal, becoming more active.) However, just a few lines later, Spinoza claims
that even eternal modes are “determined by another eternal mode” (Vp40s). This is initially puzzling, but
the resolution may rest in Spinoza’s further claim that “altogether, [this series of eternal modes] constitute
God’s eternal and infinite intellect [i.e., an infinite mode of Thought],” perhaps pointing to the idea that insofar
as this eternal series consists in co-internal, non-individual parts of a greater composite, the members
(if we can even refer to them in this way) are not truly external to each other.
worry of undermined self-interest that we saw at the end of the previous chapter. For,
insofar as I am identical to a more narrowly conceived individual, I might not exist
under broader ways of conceiving what had been more narrowly conceived of as my
effects. Conceived more broadly, perhaps my anger at Peter disappears—but so do I!
As a path for self-improvement, that sounds about as promising as weeding a garden
with dynamite.
Happily, Spinoza provides an account of how we can adopt these broader self-
conceptions that addresses this existential threat. His account loosens the tie between
an agent’s self-identity and a more narrowly conceived individual. Yes, insofar as
I identify myself with a very limited and fragile collection of physical and mental states,
I might no longer exist according to broader ways of conceiving those states. But
Spinoza thinks reconceiving oneself can also involve re-identifying one’s interests and
psychological sense of self with a more powerful, more active, more eternal individual.
I turn now to Spinoza’s account of how agents re-identify themselves with such
individuals, thereby becoming their better selves.
3. The New You!

On my telling, moral transformation for Spinoza requires agents to conceive them-
selves more broadly. This is how agents internalize the sources of their actions and
make them more adequate. What had been conceived as partly the result of forces
outside me is reconceived as coming more fully from within. Agents thereby take
greater ownership of their effects. But in light of Spinoza’s metaphysics of individuals,
it is important for agents to identify themselves with this more adequate source of
activity. It is not enough to reconceive one’s activities as wholly internal to some
greater individual or other. Good for that thing, we might say, but what about me?
Agents also need to identify themselves as the more adequate cause. They need to
adopt broader self-concepts. In this section, we will look at Spinoza’s account of
such re-identification.
Fortunately, Spinoza is not alone here. In a series of influential papers, Harry
Frankfurt sketches an account of persons, identity, and agency that has a lot of affinity
with what I take to be Spinoza’s own account.23 There are also significant points of
disagreement between Frankfurt and Spinoza, and seeing those differences will throw
the contours of Spinoza’s views into greater relief.
At the heart of his account, Frankfurt distinguishes a person’s states from their
mental and physical states. He readily admits that people have minds and bodies, and
that a person’s mind and body have mental and physical states. But he denies that the set
23
Although the comparison would take us too far afield here, a more recent development in this vein
(in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience) that overlaps with some of what I ascribe to Spinoza are
so-called “narrative” accounts of the self. For an excellent philosophical introduction, see Schechtman, The
Constitution of Selves.
of a person’s states is identical to the set of their mental and bodily states. “A person is
no more to be identified with everything that goes on in his mind, in other words, than
he is to be identified with everything that goes on in his body.”24
In support of this distinction, Frankfurt argues that we readily recognize cases in
which bodily events happen, such as a muscle spasm, that we do not ascribe to any
person. Although a muscle spasm is a state of someone’s body, it is not thereby a state
of a person. A person could even intelligibly disavow the actions of their body: “My
arm hit yours when the driver suddenly hit the brakes, but I didn’t do that.” Frankfurt
extends this point to the mental domain as well:
We acknowledge that in this strict sense, there is no person to whom [a particular involuntary
bodily movement] can be attributed—no person of whom it is “just as much part of him” as his
actions and activities are. Now why may a desire not, in a similar way, be an event in the history
of a person’s mind without being that person’s desire? Why may not certain mental movements,
like certain movements of human bodies, in this sense belong to no one [i.e., no person]?25
In distinguishing a person’s states [hereafter: personal states] from their mental/physical

states [hereafter: human states], Frankfurt does not take himself to be positing an
additional class of equally fundamental properties.26 Extensionally, personal states are
a proper subset of human states. In particular, personal states are human states that
have been appropriated and structured in the right ways through acts of agency.
As I have presented it, Spinoza’s account of transformation requires a similar wedge
between persons and physical/mental modes that also avoids positing a wholly distinct
ontological class. As discussed in chapters five and six, Spinoza’s ontology includes
human minds and bodies, which are organized collections of mental and physical
states. But his account of transformation also needs something like a category of
persons or agents to serve as the referent for the reflexive pronoun, for that which
identifies itself as the adequate cause of certain effects. This distinction will also
make personal re-identification at least intelligible, as may happen when a person
changes her self-identity by appropriating additional effects as states for which she
is causally responsible.
As with Frankfurt, this distinction need not involve adding a distinct, equally fun-
damental kind of metaphysical entity into Spinoza’s austere ontological framework.
Spinoza could describe these transformations with more metaphysical rigor using
his claims about persistence: preserving sufficient continuity of structure (Frankfurt’s
persons, Spinoza’s composite individuals) that can survive the replacement of any and
all particular parts (Frankfurt’s human states, Spinoza’s extended/mental modes).27
But it will be much more lucid to describe these changes in agent-centric ways, as
24
Frankfurt, “Identification and Externality,” 61.
25
26
See, for example, Frankfurt, Taking Ourselves Seriously, 20, although I admit that individuating classes
of properties is not as easy as I am making it sound here.
27
See chapter six for discussion of Spinoza on persistence.
changes in the mental/physical states with which a person identifies herself. For once,
even I concede that the purely metaphysical version would be less interesting.
What converts a human state into a personal state, according to Frankfurt? In broad
outline, a person must take ownership of his human states in a way that incorporates
them into his sense of self-identity and makes them “fully his own.”28 Through such
appropriation and integration, what had been external to a person becomes an internal
personal state. For Frankfurt, this happens when a person decisively integrates a merely
human state into his other personal states, such as when he decides to incorporate a
particular desire into a broader set of personal goals, thereby making it a basis for him
to act as an agent.
This process of internalization converts what Spinoza called passivity and inadequacy
into action and adequacy:
A person is active with respect to his own desires when he identifies himself with them, and he
is active with respect to what he does when what he does is the outcome of his identification of
himself with the desire that moves him in doing it. Without such identification the person is a
passive bystander to his desires and to what he does.29
Spinoza marked a similar distinction in explanatory source between someone who

“is determined to do something because he has inadequate ideas” and someone who “is
determined because he understands” (IVp23).
Correspondingly for Frankfurt, persons can actively reject some of their human
states, refusing to integrate them into their self-identity and to act on their basis. Acts
of integration and exclusion are the essential activities of persons. “It is these acts of
ordering and of rejection—integration and separation—that create a self out of the
raw materials of inner life.”30 Indeed, the acts of owning and disowning human states
constitute persons: “To this extent, the person, in making a decision by which he
identifies with a desire, constitutes himself.”31 When this process yields a coherent
set of personal states, persons achieve a kind of self-integrity that Frankfurt calls
wholeheartedness.32
For example, suppose that I woke up this morning with a fresh desire to write a book
about butterflies. This desire is a human mental state, one among many other compet-
ing desires in my mind at the time. Frankfurt thinks the origin of this human desire is
unimportant, at least as far as persons and agency are concerned. Perhaps this desire
arose as a byproduct of my longstanding desire to make my butterfly-loving parents
proud, or maybe it sprung into my mind ab initio when the alarm went off; perhaps it
28
Frankfurt, “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” 170.
29
Frankfurt, “Three Concepts of Free Action,” 54. Frankfurt also thinks this integration process also
generates a normative component, something akin to self-legislation: “endorsing or identifying with
certain elements [human states] which are then authoritative for the self ” (Frankfurt, “Identification and
Wholeheartedness,” 175.)
30
31
32
Frankfurt, “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” 165, 175–6.
was produced through a deterministic sequence that stretches back billions of years,
or maybe God implanted it in my mind on a whim. The psychological, causal and/or
metaphysical sources of my desire to write a book might be interesting for other reasons,
but Frankfurt thinks it has no bearing on its status as a personal state. As he describes
it, the conditions for being a personal state are purely structural.33 We have already
seen one reason why: what is essential to a person’s states is the stance the agent takes
toward her human states, not how she happens to acquire those human states in the
first place.34
According to Frankfurt, in order to make the desire to write a butterfly book one of
my personal states, I must incorporate it into my other personal motivations in the
right way. This happens when a person “joins himself to what moves him [i.e., a desire]
by a commitment through which he takes responsibility for it.”35 Hence, in order to act
as a personal agent, it is not enough that I write a book about butterflies because I want
to, even if that desire is my most compelling mental state. It is not even enough that
I bear other pro-attitudes toward this desire, such as having an overriding desire to
always pursue my strongest first-order desires. Higher-order desires are not always
personal desires, since they can be distinct from personal states for the same reason
that a first-order desire can fail to be a personal state.36 Although Frankfurt’s account of
persons is structural, the relevant structure is not solely a hierarchy of desires (though
it is sometimes construed that way).
What else is needed, according to Frankfurt, is a decisive act of will, a firm commit-
ment to accept and identify with this desire as a motivation for me. This decision to
own a human state and integrate it into the rest of one’s personal states converts the
desire into a personal state and makes acting for its sake the action of a personal agent.
In this way, “the pertinent desire is no longer in any way external to him. It is not a
desire that he ‘has’ merely as a subject in whose history it happens to occur . . . it comes
to be a desire that is incorporated into him by virtue of the fact that he has it by his own
will.”37 Frankfurt sometimes describes this as “taking responsibility” for one’s states, a
decisive act through which a person “by his own will incorporates [his states] into
himself as constitutive of what he is.”38
Frankfurt’s appeal to such volitional bootstrapping undoubtedly raises difficult
questions about the metaphysics of agency and willing that the account was supposed
to sidestep. It sounds like it involves a kind of ex nihilo self-creation, at least when an
agent initially lacks enough personal structure to offer guidance about which mental
33
We will see shortly why Spinoza might push back against this purely ahistorical version; for contem-
porary critical discussion of Frankfurt’s ahistorical approach (from an otherwise friendly perspective), see
Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control, 194–201.
34
This reasoning is also the root of Frankfurt’s famed compatibilism (e.g., Taking Ourselves Seriously,
16 and “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” 171–2).
35
36
37
38
Frankfurt, “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” 170–1.
states are to be owned. Perhaps I decided to own the desire to write a butterfly book
in light of other desires I had already identified myself with, but at some point in the
process of constituting a self, some human desires were owned—by what or whom?—
without an intelligible backdrop.39 Then again, to anyone with a child in middle school,
this phenomenon will be familiar, even if no less mysterious. Kids at that stage often
“try on” different personalities and self-identities—sometimes within the space of a
single day!—and it is very hard to understand why some seem to “stick” better than
others (especially when well-reasoned suggestions by parents are summarily dismissed
as somehow missing the point).
While Spinoza would not be worried about the sheer intelligibility of self-
determination, I think he would reject the volitional element of Frankfurt’s account.
“I do not understand by ‘will’ a consent, or a deliberation of the mind, or a free decision
(for we have demonstrated that this is a fiction in IIp48)” (IIIDefAff6, G II/192). For
Spinoza, the process of appropriating desires and other human states as one’s own
does not involve free and decisive volitions. Instead, self-identity is a function of
representational ownership. Persons appropriate human states and effects by repre-
senting them as their own.40
Spinoza’s representational account of ownership and self-identification centers
around what he calls “acquiescentiam in se ipso.” This is not an easy phrase to translate
succinctly, though a straight transliteration is not a terrible start: self-acquiescence. It
is an attitude that an agent bears toward herself as she reflects on her own power of
acting, one that includes representing and affirming various capacities and abilities as
her own. However, “acquiescence” in English also suggests a kind of passive resignation,
a yielding or giving in.41 But Spinoza intends something more active and self-affirming
here, something closer to “self-acceptance,” which is how I will translate it.42 As a form
of joy and self-love, it is a kind of active embrace and even a celebration of oneself.
Spinoza formally defines “acquiescentiam in se ipso” as “joy accompanied by the
idea of an internal cause” (IIIp30s), which emphasizes both its affective and represen-
tational elements. As a species of joy, it is an affect that accompanies an agent’s increase
in power (IIIDef2). That is, when an agent expands her power, this change can be
39
Frankfurt concedes that “this notion of identification is admittedly a bit mystifying,” even though “it
grasps something quite fundamental in our inner lives” (Frankfurt, “Three Concepts of Free Action,” 54).
40
The link to contemporary narrative conceptions of the self becomes especially tight here.
41
There are passages in which Spinoza encourages his readers to resign themselves to their fates as weak,
limited individuals (e.g., IVApp32). But I think this glum conclusion does not stem from self-acquiescence
per se. Rather, it comes from Spinoza’s pessimism that we can ever fully achieve self-acquiescence.
42
Curley usually opts for “self-esteem,” which also has a lot of contemporary psychological overtones.
(In his glossary, Curley cites Descartes’ French “satisfaction de soi-même” (Passions III.190, AT XI/472),
which CSM translate as “self-satisfaction” (CSM I/396).) Shirley uses “self-contentment,” which, like
“self-satisfaction,” can suggest a kind of staid repose or tranquility that would miss the affective element
that Spinoza also wants to emphasize. Elwes sometimes translates it as “self-complacency,” which sug-
gests a bored resignation that is almost diametrically opposed to what Spinoza intends. In other places,
he renders it “self-approval,” which comes much closer. (Thanks to Matthew Kisner for helpful corres-
pondence on this.)
characterized by self-acceptance. Self-acceptance also involves representing oneself as

the cause that is responsible for this increase in power. This is the reflexive, agent-centric
element in the stance in which an agent takes ownership of her increased power by rep-
resenting herself as its source. This greater power is mine because I represent myself
as responsible for it, an intellectualist version of Frankfurt’s model of self-appropriation.
We can understand Spinoza’s account of self-acceptance better by contrasting it with
two other self-regarding stances that he discusses. In each alternative, an agent repre-
sents herself as partly constituted by external relations, which make them unstable
forms of self-identity, a criticism that echoes familiar Stoic themes. Spinoza warns that
people who try to establish their self-identity in one of these other ways are ultimately
doomed to frustration and failure.43 Self-acceptance is Spinoza’s preferred, wholly
internal alternative.
First, Spinoza contrasts self-acceptance with love. Love is also a species of joy,
but unlike self-acceptance, love represents the source of increases in one’s power as
external to the agent.44 Like all joy, love is good for a person, but Spinoza points out that
it can be excessive and is often risky.45 As we saw in his account of bondage, Spinoza
thinks that relying on external causes for positive changes will not reliably lead to
fundamental desire satisfaction. If the deepest source of my self-identity comes from
the external things that I love, my personhood will be vulnerable to disappointment,
even disillusionment and destruction. For example, I love the Mets, and I represent
that investment to be a (small) part of who I am. But if my love for the Mets constituted
the deepest sense of who I was, then if the Mets ceased to be, in a very real sense I would
lose my own identity—that person would also cease to be. I would be like Spinoza’s
ignorant man, who “as soon as he ceases to be acted on, ceases to be” (Vp42s).
Self-acceptance is more stable than love because it represents the cause of one’s joy
as internal. It represents an agent’s increases in power as coming wholly from herself,
something for which she alone is responsible. This insulates her self-identity against the
fragility of external things. Spinoza even describes this more internal stance as a kind of
self-love.46 In loving myself in this way, I take ownership of increases in my capabilities,
converting such changes from something that merely happened to me into something
for which I am responsible. I own my own joy, as it were. In this way, self-acceptance
involves representing oneself as having greater adequate causal power.
A second unstable basis for self-identity is what Spinoza calls “gloriam,” which occurs
when “joy arises from the fact that the man believes that he is praised” (IIIp30s).47
43
Spinoza points out other ways this process can misfire, such as when our imagination outstrips our
understanding of our power (IIIp50s) or when we overestimate our power (IIIDefAff28).
44
See IIIp13s and IIIp30s.
45
See IVp4, IIIp33–5, and IIIp38 for some veiled warnings about the dangers of love.
46
He describes it as both philautia (IIIp55s, G II/183) and amor sui (IIIDefAff28, G II/183).
47
Curley sometimes translates gloriam as “love of esteem” and sometimes as just “esteem,” which con-
nects it to his choice of “self-esteem” for acquiescentiam in se ipso, even though “glory” has much stronger
and richer overtones than mere “esteem,” and is more naturally related to the traditional vice of vainglory,
which is what Spinoza describes. (This series of admittedly difficult translation choices becomes especially
Whereas in love the source of someone’s joy is found in external things, in glory the
source of his self-representation is externally determined. In particular, glory relies on
the opinions of others to settle how an agent represents his power. Relying on glory,
someone might represent himself as intellectually capable because his colleagues praise
him and as a deficient teacher because his students scorn him. In this way, the opinions
of others constitute this person’s self-identity by determining how he represents
himself, the range of power with which he identifies. I am who they say I am.
But as with love, Spinoza warns that this external dependence makes glory fragile and
unreliable, “for the multitude is fickle and inconstant” (IVp58s). Self-acceptance is more
reliable than glory, because in self-acceptance the beliefs of others do not determine
how an agent represents herself. Instead, she represents her powers adequately, which
is to say that her self-representation is wholly internally generated and independent of
outside opinions.
In both cases, the distinguishing mark of self-acceptance is its independence from
external sources. Unlike love, self-acceptance does not rely on external objects to
give joy. Unlike glory, it does not rely on external influences for the content of self-
representations. We have seen repeatedly that Spinoza thinks gaining independence
from external sources is the key to reliably satisfying one’s fundamental desire.
Hence, successful agents will avoid defining themselves by love and glory and will
instead pursue self-acceptance.
Indeed, this replacement lies at the very heart of Spinoza’s account of positive
transformation and re-identification: taking greater ownership of effects by repre-
senting them as increasingly self-determined. Shifting the content and source of
one’s self-representation is how an agent internalizes her actions, making them more
adequate. In adopting a broader self-concept, I represent more of my activities as
following from my own adequate causal power and as more essential to who I am.
This is the way Spinoza thinks we become less dependent on external things and less
subject to fate and bondage, and we acquire greater power and essence. By changing
how we represent ourselves, we can take ourselves to be more powerful, joyful,
and stable individuals. In Frankfurt’s language, this is how agents wholeheartedly
constitute a self.
Spinoza reserves his strongest language in the Ethics to describe just how important
this process of self-acceptance is. It is “really the highest thing that we can hope for”
(IVp52s), our “highest good [summum bonum]” (IVp58s, G II/253), our “highest
happiness and blessedness [summa felicitas sive beatitudo],” our “ultimate end . . . that
is, [our] highest desire” (IVApp4, G II/266–7), and it brings about “the greatest joy”
(Vp27d). He connects to his loftiest prizes: salvation, wisdom, intuitive knowledge,
awkward in Vp36s, when Spinoza appeals to accounts of God’s “glory [gloriam] in the Sacred Scriptures,”
which Curley could hardly translate as “God’s esteem,” and so sometimes he does opt for simple transliter-
ation.) Shirley and Elwes generally prefer “honor,” but then face the same awkwardness in Vp36s. I will
stick with “glory” throughout.
intellectual love of God, and eternality.48 In short, cultivating self-acceptance in readers

is one of the main thrusts of the entire Ethics.
Given all the benefits that are supposed to flow from self-acceptance—happiness, joy,
power, salvation, blessedness, eternality—Spinoza’s sketch of what it involves sounds
pretty implausible. How can changes in the way an agent represents herself really bring
about all these improvements? This sounds like positive thinking on steroids.
Once again, Spinoza’s metaphysics comes to the rescue and prevents self-acceptance
from becoming a comforting delusion. Transformative changes in self-representation
do not create more powerful individuals, nor do they increase the powers of existing
individuals. Self-acceptance should not be confused with self-creation or intellectual
bootstrapping, for Spinoza. Spinoza’s plentiful ontology, stemming from his meta-
physics of perfection, already posits the existence of infinitely many individuals, each
of which already have infinitely many essences and degrees of explanatory power
across infinitely many different attributes. Better, more powerful “versions” of each
individual already exist, where “versions” are individuated by their concept-dependent
essence or explanatory power. This is a striking upshot from chapter five and Spinoza’s
intra-attribute plenitude. For each thing, there are infinitely many essences and
degrees of explanatory power within each attribute.
Hence, the primary goal of transformation and self-acceptance is for agents to
cease identifying themselves as relatively weak and externally determined individuals
and to re-identify themselves with more powerful and more adequate versions of
individuals that already exist. Ours is the task of “accepting” this greater power as
our own by re-identifying ourselves, by re-presenting ourselves as such a greater
individual, by owning and internalizing more of our actions as our own, by adopting a
broader self-concept. Crucially, the “self ” that we are motivated to accept is not the
limited and weak self with which we began. In this way, self-acceptance for Spinoza is
really a kind of self-overcoming or self-transcendence. Although the details differ,
Rorty characterizes the Spinozistic transformation in a similar way:
In moving to a more adequate idea and to a more active realization of its nature, [a mind]
expands its powers to overcome the limitations and partiality of its initial inadequate idea of
itself. Ironically, a powerful conatus so expands the mind that the original limited individual
has transformed its identity.49
48
In order of citation: TTP VII.17, G III/111, Vp42s, Vp27, Vp32c, Vp38.
49
Rorty, “Two Faces of Spinoza,” 309–10. Lilli Alanen worries that this transformation requires a “loss”
of one’s former self: “But the self so conceived is hard to keep in view. Whose self is it that perceives its own
activity and rejoices?” (Alanen, “Spinoza on Passions and Self-Knowledge,” 252.) Although I understand
the concern—in a way, it is yet another applied worry about Spinoza’s elusive individual—I think Spinoza’s
solution lies in his intra-attribute plenitude thesis. The difference between weaker and more inadequate
individuals and their more adequate and eternal counterparts is merely conceptual. Since truth and reality
are not limited to the broadest conception on my reading, it is also not the case that what is contained
in narrower self-conceptions is “one more illusion to rid oneself of ” (253), as Alanen suggests it must be
for Spinoza.
It is thus no surprise that Spinoza ties self-acceptance to adopting a broader way of

conceiving oneself. “Self-acceptance can arise from reason, and only that self-acceptance
which does arise from reason is the greatest there can be” (IVp52).50 As we have seen in
previous chapters, “reasoning” for Spinoza involves conceiving things broadly. Hence,
self-acceptance involves conceiving oneself in an especially broad way, as Spinoza
highlights in the demonstration:
While a man considers himself, he perceives nothing clearly and distinctly, or adequately,
except those things that follow from his power of acting (by IIId2), that is (by IIIp3), which
follow from his power of understanding. And so the greatest self-acceptance there can be arises
only from this reflection (IVp52d).
So far, I have focused mostly on how agents represent their own powers and activities
in self-acceptance. But Spinoza points out that full self-acceptance also involves
coming to understand one’s relation to God. Indeed, Spinoza explicitly links the mind’s
acceptance, blessedness, and adequate self-conception with its knowledge of God:
In life, therefore, it is especially useful to perfect as far as we can our intellect or reason. In
this one thing consists man’s highest happiness [summa felicitas] or blessedness. Indeed,
blessedness is nothing but that acquiescence of the mind [animi acquiescentia] which stems
from the intuitive knowledge of God. But perfecting the intellect is nothing but understand-
ing God, his attributes, and his actions, which follow from the necessity of his nature. So the
ultimate end of the man who is led by reason, that is, his highest desire, is that by which
he is led to conceive adequately both himself and all things which can fall under his
understanding (IVapp4).
In particular, full self-acceptance includes understanding one’s own power as it relates

to God’s power. When I represent myself as an adequate cause of my own joy and my
effects, I also represent God as the cause: “This joy [of self-acceptance] is accompanied
by the idea of oneself, and consequently (by Vp30) it is also accompanied by the idea of
God as its cause” (Vp32d). In particular, self-understanding and self-acceptance
includes being aware that one “is in God and is conceived through God” (Vp30).
This does not mean that an agent needs to represent her power and actions as
externally determined by God, and therefore not wholly her own. After all, “God is
an immanent, not a transitive cause of all things” (Ip18). So by including God in
one’s self-representation, an agent does not include something genuinely external,
according to Spinoza. “For whether this love is related to God or to [our] mind, it
can rightly be called acquiescence of the mind [animi acquiescence]” (Vp36s).
Spinoza even points out that an agent’s self-love, God’s love of that agent, and God’s
own self-love are “one and the same” action (Vp36c). To fully accept and celebrate
oneself is thereby to fully accept and celebrate God and to be accepted and cele-
brated in turn by God, which Spinoza describes in Vp36c as a kind of reciprocating
intellectual love.
50
See also TTP VII.17, G III/111.
Spinoza also links self-acceptance with the mind’s eternality:

Because (by Vp27) the greatest acceptance [summa acquiescentia] there can be arises from the
third kind of knowledge, it follows from this that the human mind can be of such a nature that
the part of the mind which we have shown perishes with the body is of no importance [nullius
momenti] in relation to what remains (Vp38, G II/304).
Although the mind’s eternality is one of Spinoza’s most notoriously obscure doctrines,
I think his main point here is that insofar as we identify with a weak individual that is
surrounded by competitive, destructive forces, we too will be subject to death and
destruction.51 However, to the extent to which we achieve self-acceptance, we will be
less subject to death and destruction from without for we will have internalized more of
what had, narrowly conceived, threatened us.
This reading is reinforced in Vp38d:
The more the mind knows things by the second and third kind of knowledge [i.e., the more
broadly one conceives oneself], the greater the part of it that remains and consequently,
the greater the part of it that is not touched by affects which are contrary to our nature, that is,
which are evil.
That is, we are less subject to contrary affects, death, and destruction because we have
internalized the sources of our affects to a greater degree. As we saw in the previous
section, what had been the result of outside forces—destructive, contrary affects—can
be reconceived as internally generated, as actions rather than passions.52 And insofar
as an agent identifies herself with that internal source through self-acceptance, she
thereby becomes a more stable, permanent, and—dare I say it—eternal individual.
Notice, however, that what changes is not the extent to which an individual is eternal,
whatever that might even mean. What changes, and what Spinoza is pushing for in
these final passages of the Ethics, is the degree to which agents identify themselves with
individuals that are already eternal.
In the stirring final scholium of the Ethics, Spinoza draws all this together by
comparing the wise to the ignorant:
For not only is the ignorant troubled in many ways by external causes, and unable to ever
possess true satisfaction of mind [animi acquiescentia], he also lives as if he were ignorant of
himself, and of God, and of things; and as soon as he ceases to be acted on, he ceases to be.
By contrast, the wise, insofar as he is considered as such [quatenus ut talis consideratur], is
hardly troubled in spirit, but being conscious, by a certain eternal necessity, of himself, and
51
See especially IVp2 and IVp39s.
52
Spinoza also connects eternality and perfection with being more active in Vp40, which reinforces the
present point. It remains unclear to me why Spinoza resorts to mereological language in Vp38–Vp40. I tend
to read his reference to an eternal “part” of a mind somewhat non-literally, as Spinoza’s way of referring to
the very same individual that is subject to destruction, only insofar as it is conceived more broadly (and
hence, as more active, less subject to destruction, etc.) See fn 22 above for some further textual support for
this reading.
of God, and of things, he never ceases to be, but always possesses true satisfaction of mind
[animi acquiescentia] (Vp42s, G II/308).
It should be clear by now that Spinoza’s appeal to how the wise one is considered is not
an idle qualification. Spinoza presents two models, but they need not be models of
two entirely different individuals. One and the same individual, conceived in different
ways, can have the characteristics of the ignorant and the wise: ignorance, passivity,
dependence on the external, and impermanence, more narrowly conceived; under-
standing, activity, independence, and permanence, conceived more broadly.
This is yet another application of Spinoza’s general conceptualist strategy. Thus, by
inviting readers to reflect on how they conceive themselves, Spinoza is also reminding
them that their answers partly determine which concept-sensitive properties they
actually have. Within a conceptualist metaphysics like Spinoza’s, the stakes for one’s
self-conception are quite high. In effect, he asks his readers, will you identify with the
wiser version of you, “insofar as you are considered as such”—namely, insofar as you
conceive yourself broadly? Or will you settle for a narrower self-conception, and
thereby forgo the practical advantages of greater power, greater independence,
and eternality?
__________
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby53
By the time we follow Spinoza into the heady realm of salvation, God, and eternality,
we have sped well past our original companion for this section’s journey. However, it
is worth a final return to Frankfurt to draw out a few more distinctives of Spinoza’s
account of self-acceptance, which will set up Spinoza’s grand conclusion.
Recall that Frankfurt’s account of constituting a self is purely structural and ahistorical.
It concerns the stances a person takes toward her human states, regardless of how those
states came about. Spinoza’s account of self-acceptance is also structural in the sense
that it involves an agent taking a representational stance toward her affects and their
source. But according to Spinoza, this process is thoroughly historical.
After all, to conceive a thing more broadly is, by definition, to include more causes in
a thing’s concept. Hence, for an agent to adopt a broader self-conception is for her
to include more of her causes in her own self-identity. Internalization is a process of
absorption, not exclusion, for Spinoza. By embracing the historical sources of her states
and incorporating those sources into her own self-identity, Spinoza thinks an agent
takes greater ownership of those states. Hence, a successful Spinozistic agent will
embrace her past as an essential part of who she is and what she does. She will represent
her causes as parts of her, and she will see her present and future as flowing from her
reclaimed past. In this way, Spinoza makes coming to terms with one’s origins and
development an essential component of self-acceptance.
53
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 154.
This leads to another important contrast. Frankfurt is especially interested in cases

in which people have conflicting mental states, such as mutually exclusive desires. On
Frankfurt’s account, persons decisively settle such inner conflicts by identifying with
some of those human states and rejecting others. For this reason, an agent must actively
prevent some of her mental states from becoming personal states. She must abdicate
responsibility for some of what she finds within herself. No, that isn’t me! Frankfurt
describes this as a “radical separation of the competing desires, one of which is not
merely assigned a relatively less favored position but is excluded entirely as an outlaw.”54
Through these “acts of rejection,” a person “dissociates himself ” from conflicting
desires, without thereby removing or weakening them.55
We saw in the previous chapter that Spinoza handles cases of apparent desire con-
flict differently by distinguishing between genuine and confused desires. But, more
importantly for the present discussion, Spinoza’s process of self-acceptance is not even
partially one of exclusion and disavowal. Recall that Spinoza thinks externality is the
fundamental source of conflict and danger. Insofar as I exclude something from myself
and represent it as alien to my self-identity, I become vulnerable to it in ways that cut
against my self-interest.
Hence, self-acceptance does not unfold even partially through exclusions for Spinoza.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Self-acceptance involves saying to more and more: Yes,
that’s part of me too! It is a process of expanding what had been represented as the
more limited boundaries of oneself; it is not a process of more firmly establishing one’s
internal limits. As agents come to represent and celebrate having more power through
self-acceptance, what had been conceived as an externally imposed limitation becomes
something more like a self-owned strength.
To illustrate the difference, let us return one last time to my neighbor. I confess that
in my conflict with Peter over his damn dog, I sometimes have the desire to speak out
in anger and bitterness toward him. Suppose, however, that I decide to not identify
myself with such a mean-spirited human desire. (That’s not always the case, but let’s
pretend I’m a better person.) On Frankfurt’s account, I can “outlaw” this inconsistent
desire from my personal states. Although my angry desire will remain a part of my
human psychology, I can decisively refuse to endorse it as authoritative for me. I refuse
to be the angry person that, in a sense, my mind has the desire to become.
Spinoza’s alternative tells me to try to better understand the sources of Peter’s actions
and my reactions. I do this through reconceiving myself and Peter in broader ways.
When done correctly, I begin to represent our actions differently. In a sense, I identify
more with Peter and his own history. We’re not so different, he and I, I begin to think.
In fact, I begin to see that his desire to give his dog freedom and to spend more time
indoors with his family is not so dissimilar from my own desire to live in a flourishing,
interconnected neighborhood. Instead of treating his actions as cutting against my
54
55
Frankfurt, “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” 174–5.
own self-interest, I begin to reassess those interests and untether them from what is
good for a more narrowly conceived, but ultimately weaker individual. I start to relate
to him not as a threat but as a fellow part of a neighborhood whose overall value we
are collectively seeking to enhance. Unlike on Frankfurt’s account, my angry desire is
not supposed to linger on, hovering within my mind but kept at bay outside the self-
imposed boundaries of my identity through steady willpower. Rather, as we saw in
section one above, Spinoza thinks that my anger is actually transformed into joy insofar
as I adopt such broader concepts.
This leads to the boldest and most speculative point of contrast. I began this section
with Frankfurt’s distinction between personal and human states. That framework
implicitly limits which states a person can take ownership of and identify with. She can
identify with only a subset of her human states. From there, the boundaries of the self
can only narrow: for which of my human states shall I take ownership?
That is a very natural restriction, especially if one thinks that the bearers of human
states are something like finite substances. I might acquire new mental or physical states,
but when it comes to self-identification I am stuck accepting or rejecting the states I have.
Indeed, it is hard to see how someone could legitimately appropriate another sub-
stance’s states as their own. I might acquire the desire to get a dog, but until I do,
I surely cannot legitimately identify myself (in Frankfurt’s sense) with someone else’s
desire to get a dog.
But suppose, with Spinoza, that there are no finite substances. Suppose human
minds and bodies are nothing but organized collections of mental and physical states
of the one sole substance. In that case, we might wonder whether Frankfurt’s implicit
restriction still holds. Might I include in my self-identity an idea in someone else’s
mind? Might I represent myself as expansive enough to include parts of what had been
other bodies as parts of me? Ursula Renz also raises this speculative possibility for
Spinoza in a different context, and she rightly distinguishes it from an even wilder
alternative that I am not suggesting either:
It becomes fundamentally conceivable that several variations are possible, not in answer to
the question “with which body do we identify ourselves?” (no one in his right mind would
identify himself with the body of his postman), but as regards the perception of the individual
boundaries between our body and others. The concept of one’s own body is thus something
that can vary.56
This possibility is especially relevant here because, as we saw in chapter six, there is a
kernel of truth to the acosmicist reading of Spinoza’s account of individuals. The truth
was that what had been conceived as the competitive activities of infinitely many
discrete finite individuals can be genuinely reconceived as the cooperative, internal
effects of a single infinite individual.57 I also noted that Spinoza sometimes inferred
56
Renz, “The Definition of the Human Mind,” 112–13.
57
The great falsity in acosmicism was its further claim that this maximally comprehensive way of con-
ceiving the world’s activities is the only true one, for Spinoza.
from this that what have been (truly) conceived as discrete finite individuals do not
exist as individuals, so reconceived. They became, as it were, non-individuated parts,
mere aspects of this greater composite in ways that make even continued reference
to them as such difficult. And although Spinoza did not always reach this startling
conclusion, it fit well with some of his other claims about the composition and persistence
conditions of individuals.
If this were Spinoza’s settled view, it would raise an alarming possibility, one that we
have run up against repeatedly now and can express here in terms of self-identity. With
which individual am I to identify, insofar as the world’s activities are conceived in a
maximally encompassing way? If Frankfurt’s restriction holds, then at the limit case of
BC, the finite individual with which I had identified no longer exists as an individual.
In that case, I would need either to re-identify myself with a “non-individual aspect”
(which, in light of simple reference worries, looks like an unpromising basis for personal
identity) or no longer have a self-identity at all (which seems tantamount to no longer
existing as an agent.)
This existential threat is clearest in the maximal case, but it crops up at earlier stages
of transformation too. I typically conceive myself and my actions in relation to a few
proximate causes. But if I am to enjoy the practical benefits of self-acceptance, I need to
be able to include a much wider range of states in my self-conception. For instance, if
I am to overcome my anger with Peter by identifying with and internalizing some of
what I had represented as his own desires and causes, then I must be able to re-identify
with a broader range of states than Frankfurt’s account allows.
However, I suspect that Spinoza would not find Frankfurt’s implicit restriction very
compelling on its own.58 I argued in chapter six that Spinoza’s individuals are already
incredibly thin. If so, it is hard to see why an agent could not, in principle at least,
coherently identify herself with a broader range of states than the narrow set of states
she once represented as the boundary of her body and mind. At the very least, Spinoza
should accept such a possibility if he thinks agents can actually achieve the transform-
ation and self-acceptance that he has been touting.
Sadly, this speculative possibility doesn’t really matter for us in the end. Long before
we confront the challenge of re-identifying ourselves with wider-ranging states and
more encompassing individuals, Spinoza thinks we will all almost surely fail in our
efforts at transformation and self-acceptance. I have been focusing on what Spinoza
calls our “highest hope.” But however wondrous the benefits of self-acceptance may be,
Spinoza also thinks they will be mostly unreachable by agents like us.
This tragic undercurrent to the Ethics flows steadily alongside Spinoza’s more hopeful
promises of blessedness and eternality. “It is necessary to know both our nature’s power
and its lack of power, so that we can determine what reason can do in moderating the
58
This is only speculation, since when Spinoza raises the topic of personal identity, he quickly curtails
his discussion for pragmatic reasons: “But rather than provide the superstitious with material for raising
new questions, I prefer to leave this discussion unfinished” (IVp39s).
affects, and what it cannot do” (IVp17s). Spinoza quotes the writer of Ecclesiastes while
discussing akrasia, but the warning applies to readers of the Ethics more generally: “He
who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (IVp17s). Immediately after indicating
how we might experience “a greater joy,” “pass to a greater perfection,” and even “par-
ticipate more in the divine nature” (IVApp31), Spinoza offers a pessimistic rejoinder:
“But human power is very limited and infinitely surpassed by the power of external
causes” (IVApp32). Even though we might make marginal self-improvements, our
fundamental desire will, in all likelihood, go mostly unsatisfied.
We have already encountered the primary source of Spinoza’s pessimism. At the end
of chapter four, I noted his gloomy conclusion about our chronic failures to adopt very
broad ways of conceiving things. We are mostly saddled with mostly incomplete repre-
sentations, even representations of those things we are most intimately acquainted
with: our bodies and minds. This meant that while we could understand what is needed
to conceive the world from a necessitarian perspective, we ourselves do not adopt the
relevant BCs. Necessitarianism is true, but it does not follow from any of the narrower
ways of conceiving particular things that limited agents like us adopt in practice.
Spinoza describes in general terms what follows from maximal BCs, but, insofar as we
fail to represent infinitely complex histories of particular things, we do not grasp them
for ourselves.
The cost of our conceptual limitations ramifies throughout Spinoza’s ethical project.
In the opening section of this chapter, we saw how Spinoza linked practical advantages
with conceiving things in especially broad ways. His concurrent pessimism about our
ability to grasp very much of the causal structure of any particular thing means that
those practical advantages remain mostly beyond our enjoyment. In the previous
chapter, we saw how Spinoza connected the end of interpersonal conflict with adopt-
ing especially broad ways of conceiving one’s neighbors. But since we are mostly stuck
with mostly partial and limited ways of conceiving each other, the chances that we will
experience lasting interpersonal peace is vanishingly small. In this section, we explored
Spinoza’s claim that our highest happiness, blessedness, and even eternality are tied
to how broadly we reconceive ourselves. Our very limited ability to broaden our self-
conceptions (just try!) prevents us from experiencing the fruits of full self-acceptance.
Although the wise exist, we do not and, in all likelihood, will not ever wholeheartedly
identify with them.
In more practical terms, Spinoza is pessimistic that we will ever come to terms with
very much of our pasts. We will continue to fail to wholly incorporate our histories into
our self-identities. We will continue to represent ourselves as mostly passive and as
producing mostly externally determined effects. Our pasts and other things outside us
will thus continue to determine to a large degree who we take ourselves to be, leaving
us in bondage. Like Gatsby, our best efforts to overtake our pasts will, in the end,
prove futile.
If Spinoza is right in his pessimism, our fundamental desire will mostly go unsatisfied.
What shall we say to this? Although our virtually inevitable failure to accomplish our
most important task might make the universe seem cold and indifferent to us, Spinoza
never claimed that our world was overseen by a benevolent caretaker with a special
concern that our fundamental desire be met. Indeed, by the end of only Part I of the
Ethics, Spinoza had already dispatched beliefs in human-centric providence as mere
ignorance and superstition. Did we really expect a happy ending?
This pessimistic conclusion is just the darker side to Spinoza’s explanatory natural-
ism, his general framework that I began with in the introduction. Although Spinoza
repeatedly affirms God’s perfection, our roles in the plentiful divine nature are far too
partial and incomplete to be of much consequence. Even if we should have seen this
coming from Spinoza, once he lays the promise of blessedness and eternality before us,
his earlier dismissal of worries about our unmet desires has more bite:
But to those who ask “why did God not create all men so that they would be governed by the
command of reason?” I answer only “because he did not lack material to create all things, from
the highest degree of perfection to the lowest”; or, to speak more properly, “because the laws
of his nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all things which can be
conceived by an infinite intellect” (IApp, G II/83).
And yet, in the face of his pessimism, Spinoza also retains a measure of hope for his
readers. For even though most of us will never achieve self-acceptance, the path to
improvement and transformation remains open to fresh attempts at reconceiving
ourselves, our neighbors, our world. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock still
beckons. In the final, haunting lines of the Ethics, Spinoza beautifully blends his
pessimism with this lingering hope:
If the way I have shown to lead to these things now seems very hard, still, it can be found. And
of course, what is found so rarely must be hard. For if salvation were at hand, and could be
found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it? But all things excellent are
as difficult as they are rare (Vp42s).
9
The Nature of the Conceptual
And still less does the brain secrete thoughts, as the liver does gall. The metaphors
that underline the expressions we use when we speak of grasping a thought, of
conceiving, laying hold of, seizing, understanding, of capere, percipere, compre-
hendere, intelligere, put the matter in essentially the right perspective. What is
grasped, taken hold of, is already there and all we do is take possession of it.
–Frege, Logic
The Crawler and the lighthouse keeper’s face, burning through the layered myths
of its construction, made disbelief shine through Control as if he were a translu-
cent deep-sea fish. Among all the impossible things he had already witnessed,
what were a few more?
–Jeff VanderMeer, Acceptance1
We have covered quite a bit of terrain in our journey through Spinoza’s metaphysics and
ethics, from dependence and modality to egoism and self-transcendence. At virtually
every step, Spinoza appealed to the conceptual. These appeals are part of what I described
as Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy, which tries to show how his commitments to
ontological plenitude are consistent with his commitments to ontological parsimony,
thereby answering the challenge posed by his early character Lust. We have seen
that Spinoza’s execution of this strategy has not been free of internal problems, nor
interpretive challenges. However, in this final chapter, I want to move away from these
first-order issues and pose a hard question, one that has cropped up at various points
already: just what are concepts and conceptual relations for Spinoza?
A tempting answer is that Spinoza thinks concepts and conceptual relations are
mental entities and relations, such as ideas and relations among ideas. Though natural,
this answer would be disastrous for Spinoza. It would commit him to idealist-friendly
theses that would be at odds with the very plenitudinous ontology that he introduced
his conceptualist strategy to defend in the first place. Fortunately, Spinoza denies that
the nature of the conceptual is broadly or exclusively mental, which I will describe as
his rejection of mentalism.
1
Frege, Philosophy of Logic, 237 and VanderMeer, Acceptance, 36.
Pulling the conceptual and the mental apart might save Spinoza from internal
inconsistency, but it leaves unanswered the hard question about the nature of the con-
ceptual. Although Spinoza does not give us much to go on, in the third section I try to
situate Spinoza’s views of conceptual relations within his own ontological framework
and the larger interpretive framework of this book. In closing, I consider what Spinoza
leaves unfinished and how we might begin to remedy this incompleteness.
1. The Threat of Idealism

Although some interpreters have debated the extent of Spinoza’s use of conceptual
relations, there has been virtually no discussion of what Spinoza takes conceptual rela-
tions to be in the first place. I suspect this is because the answer has seemed so obvious.
Of course when Spinoza appeals to the conceptual, he is appealing to some kind of
mental element, like structured representations, ideas, or other psychological states.
However obvious that answer may appear, I believe it leads to conclusions that Spinoza
could not and does not accept. Assimilating the conceptual to the mental would com-
mit Spinoza to broadly idealist theses, according to which the attribute of thought is
privileged in various ways. While there is nothing philosophically threatening about
idealist conclusions per se, Spinoza could not accept them in light of some of his
other metaphysical commitments. After outlining this threat from idealism, I will
show how Spinoza avoids it by rejecting the “obvious” account of conceptual relations
as exclusively mental relations.
Although I describe idealism as a “threat” to Spinoza, there is an illustrious history
of interpreting Spinoza as some kind of idealist, one that I do find attractive in various
respects.2 Some of these interpretations see Spinoza gladly embracing various theses
about the fundamentality of the mental; others see him forced to accept them on pain
of inconsistency. Whether he wanted it or not, Spinoza is read by these interpreters as
assigning a metaphysical and explanatory priority to the attribute of thought that makes
mental entities and mental relations more basic than their non-mental counterparts.3
Nevertheless, idealist interpretations of Spinoza remain the minority view, in large
part because they run counter to a more balanced picture of attributes that Spinoza
seems to want. According to this more balanced account, Extension is explanatorily
independent of and as metaphysically fundamental as Thought.4 If so, Spinoza would
2
For an overview, see Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza” and Newlands, “More Recent
Idealist Readings.”
3
Another sense in which the attribute of thought may be unbalanced or lopsided is insofar as it contains
representations of both its own modes as well as the modes of other attributes, a kind of double reflection
that extended bodies lack. Idealist interpreters at the turn of the twentieth century often complained about
this kind of privileging as well, but I will not address it here. (For more on their complaints, see Newlands,
“More Recent Idealist Readings”; for a response, see Melamed, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 153–74.).
4
Spinoza even rejected then-popular accounts of a non-reductive dependence of the physical on the
mental, such as the thesis that being extended is “eminently contained” in God’s thinking. For more on this
particular rejection, see Newlands, “Backing into Spinozism.”
The Nature of the Conceptual 235
actually hold a thoroughly anti-idealist view: (a) the realm of bodies and physics is
thoroughly explicable without reference to minds and ideas, and (b) being extended
is a fundamental way of being a thing.5
Although many interpreters agree that Spinoza intended to offer such a balanced
account, there are important passages in which he seems to violate it. Jonathan Bennett,
for example, complains about “a lopsidedness in Spinoza’s system which he does not
mention, could not explain, and should not have tolerated.”6 Bennett was concerned,
to put it mildly, about Spinoza’s apparent privileging of the attribute of thought in his
definition of an attribute in Id4: “By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives
of a substance, as constituting its essence.” This appears to make thinking “special” in a
way that would undermine a more balanced picture of the attributes. But the scope of
Bennett’s concern can be expanded well beyond Spinoza’s appeal to the intellect in Id4.7
For as we have now seen, Spinoza uses conceptual relations throughout his metaphys-
ics and ethics, making him repeatedly vulnerable to Bennett’s charge of lopsidedness—at
least on the seemingly innocuous assumption that conceptual relations are exclusively
mental relations. Here is a quick refresher on just how thoroughgoing this lopsided-
ness would be, if the interpretation of the previous chapters is correct. Spinoza defines
his basic ontological categories of substance and modes in terms of conceptual relations,
and he thinks conceptual dependence is the only form of metaphysical dependence.8
Spinoza defines the relation among attributes in terms of their conceptual independence
from one another,9 and he then uses this conceptual independence in his arguments
for substance monism, God’s attribute plenitude, causal structure plenitude and par-
allelism, and a mind–body identity theory.10 Spinoza offers conceptualist accounts of
modality, essences, and the composition and persistence of individuals.11 He defends
his egoism by claiming that the individuation of moral agents and interests is concept
sensitive, and he links moral transformation, intellectual improvement, blessedness,
salvation, and even eternality to how agents conceive and reconceive themselves.12
Nor are these ubiquitous appeals to the conceptual an accidental feature of Spinoza’s
system. I argued that Spinoza makes a sophisticated set of inferences in endorsing
conceptual sensitivity, conceptual variability, and conceptual identity to
reconcile parsimony with plenitude, thereby showing how metaphysical perfection
could be consistently realized in our world.13 This conceptualist strategy forms the
very backbone of Spinoza’s philosophical system, and it provides the bridge between
the metaphysics of the early parts of the Ethics and the explicitly ethical later parts
of the book.
5
It would also be a thoroughly anti-physicalist view, since Thought is likewise explanatorily independ-
ent of and as metaphysically fundamental as Extension.
6
Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 62.
7
For more on Bennett’s concern about Id4 itself, which I will not pursue here, see section four of
Newlands, “Thinking, Conceiving, and Idealism in Spinoza.”
8
See chapter three.
9
See Ip10 and IIp1–7. 10
In order: Ip14, Ip11, IIp6, IIp7. 11
See chapters four to six.
12
See chapters seven and eight. 13
See chapters one and two.
However, to expand Bennett’s concern, on the assumption that all conceptual relations
fall under Spinoza’s attribute of thought, then Spinoza’s pervasive appeals to the
conceptual will give pride of place to Thought in ways that Spinoza “does not mention,
could not explain, and should not have tolerated.” Hence, if all conceptual relations are
mental relations (as many in the early modern period believed and some still believe
today), then in addition to conflating metaphysics and psychology and paving the way
for idealism, Spinoza will be guilty of a very pervasive error that cripples his entire
project by rendering the bulk of his philosophical system internally inconsistent.14
For a while, I thought Bennett’s expanded complaint was basically right, and that
Spinoza’s conceptualist-heavy metaphysics pushed him toward idealism in ways that
he could neither avoid nor accept. I now think I was wrong in that glum assessment.
I hope to show why Spinoza’s repeated reliance on conceptual relations does not prod-
uce some kind of Thought-heavy, idealist-friendly lopsidedness. In fact, it is precisely
because Spinoza so sharply distinguishes the conceptual from the mental that he is
able to achieve the balanced, plentiful ontology he wanted in the first place.
It will be helpful to distinguish two main steps in Bennett’s expanded complaint:
(1) Spinoza’s privileging of the conceptual entails that mental entities and relations
are more explanatorily and metaphysically fundamental than non-mental
entities and relations.
(2) Spinoza cannot accept that mental entities and relations are more explanatorily
and metaphysically fundamental than non-mental entities and relations without
violating several central theses that he explicitly affirms.
Most of my energy in the next section will be devoted to rejecting (1), but let me quickly
motivate (2), as it expresses what I take to be the strongest threat from idealism to
Spinoza’s system.
The clearest way to see how such idealism would threaten Spinoza’s system is to
focus on several of his core commitments concerning attributes. Some of those views
are embroiled in deep, century-spanning interpretive controversies. Thankfully, we
can generate enough trouble by sticking to four minimal theses about attributes that are
almost universally attributed to Spinoza. I will label these pluralism, independence,
parallelism, and parity. I will present a hyper-minimalist version of each to ensure
that most interpreters could accept it.
Pluralism is the thesis that there exists more than one attribute. In light of the
discussion of Spinoza’s commitment to attribute plenitude in chapter one, “more than
one” might sound a bit too minimal to characterize Spinoza’s view. But to generate a
14
Bennett also charged Spinoza with confusing metaphysics and psychology, arguing that Spinoza
“ignore[s] the difference between mental items and third-realm [i.e., logical or metaphysical] ones”
(Bennett, A Study in Spinoza’s Ethics, 52). On the contrary, I will show in this chapter that Spinoza distinguishes
metaphysics from psychology (to use Bennett’s categories) precisely by distinguishing the conceptual from
the mental.
worry, all he would need to affirm is that there is more than one, which he explicitly
does in IIp1–2.
Independence is the thesis that each attribute is conceptually self-contained.
As Spinoza puts this point, “Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through
itself ” (Ip10). That is, no attribute can be conceived through another attribute; each
attribute is conceptually isolated from every other attribute. For now, we need only
the very minimal claim that no attribute conceptually depends on any other attribute.
Parallelism is the wordier thesis that the attribute of thought is causally isomorphic
to every other attribute, such that for every mode m1, there exists a mode of Thought
tm1 that stands in a causal chain parallel to the causal chain in which m1 stands (IIp7).
Again, I think Spinoza’s full parallelism doctrine is much richer than this. He also iden-
tifies m1 and tm1; he thinks causal parallelism holds between every pair of attributes;
parallelism also involves and even provides an account of mental representation. But
all we need is the minimal inter-attribute claim that the causal structure of Thought
is isomorphic to the causal structure of at least one other attribute. Spinoza affirms this
in IIp7s: “Therefore, whether we conceive Nature under the attribute of extension, or
under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the
same order, or one and the same connection of causes.”
Parity is the thesis that no attribute is more fundamental than any other attribute;
all attributes are on ontologically even footing, as it were. This is neither identical to,
nor entailed by, parallelism. Parallelism points to the fact that there is a kind of
structural isomorphism between a pair of attributes, but it is silent on whether that
isomorphism is due to some deeper common ground, some kind of “super-attribute.”
Parity denies that there is any such super-attribute. Although I think Spinoza accepts
attribute parity, I am not aware of a passage in which Spinoza directly asserts it.
Certainly Spinoza’s claim that “all the attributes [that substance] has have always been
in it together, and one could not be produced by another” (Ip10s) rules out any kind of
temporal or causal priority among the attributes.
One indirect argument for attribute parity in Spinoza relies on the results of chapter
three. According to chapter three, Spinoza thinks all metaphysical dependence is
conceptual dependence. According to independence, no attribute conceptually
depends on any other. It follows that no attribute metaphysically depends in any
way on any other attribute.15 Hence, if parity were false, one attribute would be more
fundamental than another, even though they were wholly independent of each other.
15
For those who disagree with the results of chapter three, it is worth noting that all the argument needs
is the weaker premise: x does not depend on y unless the concept of y is contained in the concept of x. This
weaker premise is consistent with a mere coextension of conceptual dependence with all other instances of
metaphysical dependence. An even weaker, but more roundabout premise would also work: no attribute
is in or caused by any other attribute. This is weaker because it presupposes no general claim about the
relations among kinds of dependence (other than the assumption that causation, in, and conceiving
through exhaust the kinds of dependence Spinoza accepts). But it is also more ad hoc and comes close to
simply asserting parity directly.
In what would such fundamentality consist? In light of parallelism, the

fundamentality cannot involve any kind of structural difference. In light of CDM and
independence, the fundamentality also does not involve any kind of dependence of
the one on the other. What’s left? The closest analogue Spinoza offers to fundamentality is
being prior in nature to (Ip1), but I argued in chapter three that Spinoza thinks x is prior
in nature to y only if x exists on account of y, in which case ontological fundamentality
entails dependence for Spinoza. Thus, Spinoza should accept parity. Notice how this
indirect case for parity relies on Spinoza’s appeals to conceptual relations. Far from
contributing to a lopsided picture of the attributes, Spinoza’s claims about conceptual
dependence actually support his acceptance of a balanced picture of the attributes.16
With these four attribute theses in hand, we can now appreciate the concern in (2).
Suppose Spinoza believed that the attribute of thought was the most fundamental
attribute. That would straightaway violate parity. Suppose further that the way in
which Spinoza privileged Thought was by making mental relations constitute the form
of all intra-attribute relations, including relations among non-thinking things. That
would violate independence, since features of one attribute, such as Extension, would
be partly explained and constituted by features of another attribute, Thought, rendering
Extension dependent on Thought for its complete characterization. This would also
violate parallelism, since the structure of mental entities in Thought would no longer
be isomorphic to the structure of non-mental entities in other attributes.
More indirectly, this sort of privileging of Thought would also violate pluralism
by creating a kind of super-attribute that would alone adequately or completely
express an essence of substance. Extension would no longer satisfy Spinoza’s condition
of expressive completeness for attributes, since it would need to borrow content from
Thought in order to fully express God’s essence as an extended thing.17 Hence Thought
would be God’s sole attribute, pace pluralism.
Those worries might sound far-fetched. Sure, if Spinoza believed that mental
features somehow undergirded all the other attributes and constituted the form of all
inter-attribute mode relations, he would violate some of his most central claims about
attributes. That is just to accept the entailment behind (2). But why think Spinoza does
anything like that? After all, the point of presenting the case for these four attribute
theses is to show that Spinoza does not privilege Thought in this way.
This brings us back to (1). Throughout this book, I have argued that Spinoza does
privilege conceptual relations in important ways, such as ascribing conceptual features
16
Strictly speaking, parity is consistent with a scenario in which there existed more than one funda-
mental attribute and several less fundamental attributes, so long as the fundamental attributes were all
equally fundamental. Based on the strategy that Spinoza uses in KV I.7, G I/44–7, I think he would identify
those fundamental attributes as the only genuine attributes, in which case this would not really represent a
distinct possibility from what minimal plenitude already entails. But once again, we could make do with an
even weaker form of parity: there does not exist a single, most fundamental attribute. Since the scenario we
will be concerned with is one in which Thought alone is such a fundamental attribute, this hyper-minimalist
version of parity would still suffice.
17
For more on this expressive requirement of attributes, see chapter one.
to non-mental attributes and modes and claiming that conceptual relations obtain
between any thing and that on which it depends. In the next section, we will see that
Spinoza also characterizes the relations between different attributes and between each
attribute and substance/modifications in conceptual terms.
But if every conceptual relation is just a mental relation, then Spinoza will have
smuggled all manner of contradictions into the heart of his system under the thin veneer
of synonym substitutions. Even worse, he will have made these blunders in some of
the very passages in which he is trying to carefully articulate the above-mentioned
attribute doctrines! That is, his “lopsidedness” would emerge in the very place where
he is trying the hardest to avoid it. So, the worry goes, we should either find a way of
downplaying Spinoza’s ubiquitous appeals to the conceptual, most especially in his
account of substance, modes, attributes, and cross-attribute relations, or else we will be
forced to concede to Bennett-minded objectors that Spinoza’s system is plagued with
stunningly wide-ranging inconsistencies that he really should have noticed.
Fortunately, there is a way out of this mess that avoids both of these dismal inter-
pretive options: reject (1). Happily enough, Spinoza rejects (1) in the very passages in
which he argues for these four attribute theses, at the beginning of Part II of the Ethics.
It is to this rejection that I now turn.
2. Rejecting Mentalism
We have been confronted with a pair of unpalatable options: deny the pervasiveness of
the conceptual in Spinoza’s system in order to preserve the parity between the mental
and the non-mental, or else admit that Spinoza’s system inconsistently prioritizes the
mental. However, this dilemma arises on the assumption of a particular view about
the relation between the conceptual and the mental, a view that generates (1). I will
call the view that conceptual relations are exclusively mental relations mentalism.
Although there are many ways of fleshing out what counts as being mental, I will con-
tinue using “mental” to refer to anything that falls under or is explained by Spinoza’s
attribute of thought. Applied to Spinoza’s framework, mentalism is the claim that all
conceptual relations are relations of Thought, a view that has a rich historical legacy
since at least the influential views of Locke and Hume.
I will now argue on neutral grounds that Spinoza rejects mentalism, thereby dis-
charging the worry that his conceptualist strategy entails some kind of idealist-friendly,
Thought-heavy lopsidedness in his metaphysics.18 In fact, it will be Spinoza’s most
anti-idealist doctrines outlined above—pluralism, independence, parallelism, and
parity—that prove inconsistent with mentalism. In other words, mentalism itself
18
Frege also saw that what I am calling “mentalism” about logic leads to a form of idealism: “Psychological
treatments of logic arise from the mistaken belief that a thought (a judgment as it is usually called) is some-
thing psychological like an idea. This view leads necessarily to an idealist theory of knowledge” (Frege,
Philosophy of Logic, 244).
conflicts with Spinoza’s core attribute theses. Hence it should come as no surprise that
Spinoza rejects mentalism.
Let us begin by asking whether Spinoza believes with mentalism that conceptual
relations are exclusively mental relations. There are certainly passages in which Spinoza
casually identifies concepts with token mental states (“ideas”), such as Vp23: “In God
there is necessarily a concept or idea [conceptus seu idea] which expresses the essence
of the human body.”19 However, Spinoza is making very different points in these
passages, and so it may be that he is speaking a bit loosely.
More worrisome are those passages in which Spinoza appears to carefully associate
concepts and ideas, such as his definition of an idea in IId3: “By idea, I understand a
concept of the mind [mentis conceptum] which the mind forms because it is a thinking
thing.”20 Similarly, in the explication of IId3, Spinoza distinguishes between perceptions
and concepts on the basis that “the word . . . ‘concept’ seems to express an action of the
mind.” However, in these passages, Spinoza is focusing solely on mental states, and
I will argue below that the non-mentalist reading should accept a very tight relationship
between ideas and concepts within Thought. So although there is a mentalist-friendly
reading of such passages, there is also a consistent non-mentalist interpretation:
Spinoza is explicitly discussing mental entities or relations, and so of course he is using
“concept” there to refer to an aspect of the mental. (In fact, on the non-mentalist read-
ing, Spinoza’s “mentis conceptum” becomes a non-redundant expression. Just as there
are mental concepts, there are also non-mental concepts, strange as that may sound to
the mentalist’s ear.)
Moreover, Spinoza’s close association of the conceptual and the mental within
Thought would support mentalism only if he did not invoke similar ties to the concep-
tual within non-thinking attributes. But that is exactly what Spinoza does, and not just
casually in passages devoted to making other points. In the places where Spinoza needs
to be the clearest about the relationship between conceptual relations and the attribute
of thought, he rejects mentalism.21
These passages occur in the early stages of Part II, in which Spinoza discusses the
relationship between modes of different attributes. As expected, these passages are full
of appeals to the conceptual, but it quickly becomes clear that Spinoza does not intend
such appeals to be exclusively claims about or “from within” the attribute of thought,
lest he violate some of the very attribute doctrines he is defending.
Consider first the demonstration of IIp1, the claim that thought is an attribute of
God. It begins:
19
See also IIp49d.
20
See similar expressions in IIp49s, G II/131 and TIE 62, G II/24. In his translation, Curley punctuates
the same phrase in IIp49s in a potentially misleading way (“an idea, or concept, of the mind”), although the
Latin is unambiguous: “distinguant inter ideam, sive Mentis conceptum, & inter imagines rerum, quas
imaginamur.”
21
In earlier chapters, I also offered indirect reasons for distinguishing mental and conceptual relations
in Spinoza; see especially sections 2.2, 3.1, 4.2.1, and 6.3.
Singular thoughts, or this or that thought, are modes that express God’s nature in a certain
and determinate way (by Ip25c). Therefore (by Id5) there belongs to God an attribute whose
concept all singular thoughts involve, and through which they are also conceived.
So far, this passage is compatible with mentalism. The concept of the attribute of
thought—God conceived as thinking—involves or contains all particular and partial
thoughts. That is, there is a complete way of conceiving God that conceptually contains
all partial ideas.22 Since this is a claim about the attribute of thought, Spinoza’s appeals
to conceptual containment are consistent with mentalism.
However, in the very next proposition, Spinoza claims that extension is also an
attribute of God. As I mentioned in chapter six, this was a terribly controversial claim
in the seventeenth century. Spinoza offers a mere wave of his hand in demonstration:
“The demonstration of this proceeds in the same way as that of the preceding prop-
osition.” If we were to fill in this disappointing ellipsis literally, the demonstration of
IIp2 would contain the following sub-conclusion, modeled on IIp1d: Therefore (by Id5)
there belongs to God an attribute whose concept all singular bodies involve, and through
which they are also conceived.23
On the mentalist reading, this would be a very troubling sub-conclusion for Spinoza
to reach. Spinoza would be appealing to conceptual, i.e., mental, relations between
bodies and extension in his proof that extension is an attribute. Can mental rela-
tions, even relations among ideas that represent bodies, demonstrate that God is
extended? Spinoza’s application of independence in Ip10s suggests no.24 If the
attribute of thought cannot explain why a substance lacks the attribute of extension,
surely the attribute of thought cannot explain why a substance has the attribute of
extension. Yet if conceptual relations just are relations of Thought, then by appealing
to conceptual relations between bodies to prove that God is extended Spinoza will
have thereby appealed to Thought to prove that God is extended, in violation of at
least the spirit of Ip10s.
Even worse, on mentalism, the reconstructed IIp2 would assert that bodies
themselves—not simply the representations of them—are mentally involved in the
attribute of thought, since bodies are conceptually involved in and conceived through
Extension. But such conceptual involvement, understood under mentalism as a form
of mental containment, would again be at odds with independence. If conceiving
x through y just is for x to bear a relation of mental dependence on y, as mentalism
would have it, then by independence bodies cannot be conceived through Extension.
But Spinoza thinks that bodies are conceived through Extension. So, using only a
very weak principle of interpretive charity, we should conclude that Spinoza believes
conceiving through is not an exclusively mental relation.
22
See also IIp11c.
23
Gueroult offers the same reconstruction (Gueroult, Spinoza I, 40). For a very different reply to worries
about idealism stemming from IIp2, see Gueroult, Spinoza I, 41–3.
24
For more on Spinoza’s use of Ip10s, see chapter two.
Put differently, although Spinoza’s independence thesis rules out any bleeding
of the mental into Extension, he thinks independence tolerates a bleeding of the
conceptual into Extension. My weakly charitable conclusion: Spinoza must want to
distinguish the conceptual relations that obtain between bodies and Extension from
mental relations, in which case Spinoza is no mentalist. This also invites a far less
problematic way of reading IIp1–2: Spinoza invokes a non-attribute-specific relation,
conceptual involvement, which he first applies to the attribute of thought and its ideas,
and then to the attribute of extension and its bodies.
Spinoza makes this point in IIp6c:
From this it follows that the formal being of things which are not modes of thinking does not
follow from the divine nature because God has first known the things; rather, the objects of
ideas follow from and are inferred from their attributes in the same way and by the same neces-
sity as that which we have shown ideas to follow from the attribute of thought.
Although some of the details of this corollary may be obscure, the relevant point is
clear: mental dependence—relations among God’s ideas—is not the way in which
non-mental things follow from God. Rather, modes of different attributes depend on
their attributes “in the same way,” a reference that explicitly cuts across the various
attribute contexts. Bodies follow from Extension in the same way that ideas follow from
Thought. What is this cross-attribute way in which all attribute-specific modes depend
on their attributes? Given Spinoza’s account of causation from chapter three and the
context of IIp6 itself, his answer is that being conceived through is the non-attribute
specific “way” in which modes follow from attributes. This form of dependence cannot,
then, be an exclusively mental relation, pace mentalism.25
In IIp6d, Spinoza reinforces what I will label the “attribute neutrality of the concep-
tual.” After explicitly invoking his attribute independence thesis, Spinoza concludes,
“So the modes of each attribute involve the concept of their own attribute, but not of
another one.”26 Once again, on the mentalist reading of conceptual relations, this
becomes a scandalous claim: modes are conceptually involved in their own attributes.
How can that be? If all conceptual involvement relations are mental relations, it would
follow that non-mental modes bear a mental relation to a non-mental attribute. Even
worse, Spinoza would be affirming this in the very passage in which he leans on the
independence of the attributes!
Spinoza also applies conceptual involvement language directly to bodies in
IIp13sL2: “For all bodies agree in that they involve the concept of one and the same
attribute.” But while bodies can be and are represented by ideas, bodies themselves
are supposed to be non-mental entities for Spinoza. However, bodies cannot remain
25
Although showing it would become too repetitive, the same point can be made about IId1, IIp5,
and IIp7, in which the conceptual relations Spinoza invokes cannot consistently be taken as purely mental
relations. I will emphasize a different point about these passages below.
26
Spinoza gives a more general version in the TTP: “It is certain that all things which are in nature
involve and express the concept of God” (TTP IV.4, G III/60).
free from the mental if they enter into mental dependence relations, as this lemma
suggests. So if conceptual relations are just mental relations, then Spinoza’s claims in
IIp6d and IIp13sL2 represent a clear and blatant violation of independence.
In this way, I agree with the worry behind Francesca di Poppa’s claim that for
Spinoza, “bodies act on bodies; their ideas are conceptually connected, but bodies are
not [conceptually connected]—they are simply not the right kind of things to stand in
such connections.”27 But in light of the aforementioned passages, I think the conclusion
we should draw is not that bodies are not conceptually connected to other bodies for
Spinoza, but rather that the conceptual connections in these cases are not relations of
mental dependence. Once again, a far less problematic reading of these passages is that
bodies and ideas bear the same kind of relation to their own attributes, one that Spinoza
calls “conceptual involvement.” If so, then conceptual relations cut across attribute
contexts. Conceptual relations outstrip mental relations, pace mentalism.
At best, the mentalist reading of passages like IIp6d requires Spinoza’s conceptual
involvement claim to be elliptical for something like “the mental representations of the
modes of each attribute are conceptually contained in the mental representations of
their own attributes, but not the mental representations of another one.” While such
textual massaging would make IIp6d consistent with the independence and parity of
the attributes, it comes at a very high price: it misses Spinoza’s actual point in IIp6.
According to IIp6, “the modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar
as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is
considered under any other attribute.” In other words, the way a mode is conceived
partly determines its causal structure.28 On mentalism, however, IIp6 would make a
claim only about how causal chains are represented or thought about. Yet, Spinoza is
clearly trying to say that bodies qua bodies do not have mental causes, not simply that
bodies are represented as having no mental causes.29 Hence, on mentalism, Spinoza’s
important and intriguing metaphysical assertion about the causal isolation of modes
within attributes is flattened into a purely mental thesis about how the world is repre-
sented, a claim about only Thought.
Mentalism would also flatten and violate Spinoza’s parallelism thesis. Spinoza
summarizes this thesis in IIp7s as “whether we conceive Nature under the attribute of
extension or under the attribute of thought or under any other attribute, we shall find
one and the same order or one and the same connection of causes, that is [hoc est], the
same things follow one another.” What follows “hoc est” is an assertion about the causal
parallelism between modes of different attributes. On the assumption of mentalism,
however, the highlighted conceptual claims that frame this passage imply that Spinoza’s
conclusion is merely a point about Thought, namely that ideas of bodies are parallel to
27
Di Poppa, “Spinoza on Causation and Power,” 319.
28
Spinoza uses “conceiving” and “considering” interchangeably between IIp6 and IIp6d; more on this
below. For more on Spinoza’s claim about causal structures, see chapter two.
29
See especially IIIp2d, which cites IIp6 to argue that “the body cannot determine the mind in thinking
and the mind cannot determine the body to motion, to rest, or to anything else (if there is anything else).”
ideas of ideas. This excessively weak reading of parallelism simply will not suffice.
Parallelism, I claimed in the previous section, is minimally an inter-attribute thesis.30
Mentalism would force us to read it as only an intra-attribute thesis. So much the worse
for reading Spinoza as a mentalist, I conclude.
Happily, Spinoza’s more robust doctrine of parallelism also provides the non-mentalist
interpreter with a positive account of those passages in which Spinoza off-handedly
associates conceptual and mental relations. For although conceptual relations are not
exclusively or fundamentally mental for Spinoza, the grasping and representing of
conceptual relations is a mental activity. Given Spinoza’s inter-attribute parallelism, it
will be true that for every conceptual relation, there exists a corresponding mental
relation between ideas, as well as a more complex idea representing those two ideas
and their relation. As we might now put it, there will be non-trivial, mutual entailments
between conceptual and mental facts. However, Spinoza does not here assimilate mutual
entailments to identity, an assimilation the mentalist reading unfortunately makes.
That might seem like too easy a diagnosis, for it is hard to shake the sense that
Spinoza sometimes tightly associates the mental and the conceptual without relying
on an upshot of his parallelism. For instance, Spinoza sometimes uses synonyms for
“conceiving” that have even stronger mental overtones, such as “considering.”31 But
when he is being careful, Spinoza uses even those synonyms in non-exclusively mental
ways, purely mental connotations be damned. This is clear in IId1, IIp5, and IIp7s:
(A) “By a body I understand a mode that in a certain and determinate way
expresses God’s essence insofar as he is considered as an extended thing”
(IId1).
(B) “The formal being of ideas admits God as a cause only insofar as he is considered
as a thinking thing, and not insofar as he is explained by any other attribute”
(IIp5).
(C) “Hence so long as things are considered as modes of thinking, we must explain
the order of the whole of nature, or the connection of causes, through the
attribute of thought alone. And insofar as they are considered as modes of
extension, the order of the whole of Nature must be explained through the
attribute of extension alone” (IIp7s).
“Considered as” in these passages, twice related to explanatory contexts, is not an
exclusively mental activity, or else the explanatory barrier between the attributes would
be violated in some of the passages in which Spinoza puts it to its greatest use. This
would be especially shocking in passage (A), in which Spinoza defines a non-thinking
entity. His point in the definition is that bodies are modifications of God’s attribute
of extension. Spinoza is not making a claim about how bodies are thought about or
represented in the mind. Hence, “God considered as Extended” is not equivalent to
30
See also IIp21.
31
Spinoza uses additional synonyms, including “attending to” (in IIp1s) and “comprehended” (in IIp7s).
“God thought about as Extended.” It means something closer to the attribute-neutral

expression God “falling under,” “structured by,” or “characterized by” the attribute of
extension. This implies that even Spinoza’s claims about “considering” should not
always be read as claims about thinking.
In light of all these passages in Part II of the Ethics, I conclude that Spinoza rejects
mentalism, which provides him a way of denying (1). Spinoza could then privilege
conceptual relations in the ways I have argued he does without thereby privileging
mental entities and relations. In fact, once the mentalist lens is shed, we can see again
just how thoroughly anti-idealist Spinoza’s system really is. Thought is but one attribute
among many equals for Spinoza. In the end, Spinoza avoids idealism precisely
by insisting that the realm of the extended, and the non-mental more generally, is as
conceptually structured, metaphysically basic, and explanatorily transparent as the
realm of the ideal. Spinoza’s conceptualism not only fails to entail idealism; it is the very
blocking mechanism he uses to avoid idealism.
3. Attribute Neutrality
The discussion so far has been largely negative: why Spinoza is not an idealist, how
he avoids widespread inconsistency by rejecting mentalism, why his conceptualism
should not be understood solely as theses about how things are thought about. Although
this ground clearing is important, it leaves unanswered the difficult question with which
we began. Just what are conceptual relations, for Spinoza?
When this question cropped up in chapter three, I warned that Spinoza’s answer is
disappointingly underdeveloped. He obliquely glosses conceptual relations at various
points as relations of conceptual containment, subject–predicate connections, and dis-
cernible explanations. Of course, his conceptual dependence monism denies that there
can be anything like a reductive analysis of conceptual dependence in non-conceptual
terms. Even so, subsequent work on concepts in the history of philosophy indicates
that there is quite a bit more that one could say about conceptual relations than
Spinoza even gestures at. So it is disappointing that Spinoza treats conceptual relations
as a transparent foundation for his system without saying more in general about them.
However, even though we lack an independent analysis in Spinoza’s own words, we can
try to situate Spinoza’s views of the conceptual within his own ontological framework
and the larger interpretive framework of this book.
In fact, we have just seen an important clue about Spinoza’s understanding of concep-
tual relations. In distinguishing conceptual relations from mental relations, I claimed
that conceptual relations are not attribute-specific for Spinoza. They are “neutral” with
respect to any particular attribute. This is clearest in IIp6c: “The objects of ideas follow
from and are inferred from their attributes in the same way and by the same necessity
as that which we have shown ideas to follow from the attribute of thought.” By “objects
of ideas,” Spinoza means modes of different attributes. His point is that ideas follow
from Thought “in the same way” that, say, bodies follow from Extension. This “way” of
following is, therefore, not specific to any attribute. Spinoza identifies the basic,
attribute-neutral way as conceptual containment in the demonstration of IIp6 itself:
“So the modes of each attribute involve the concept of their own attribute, but not
of another one” (IIp6d).
In characterizing Spinoza’s conceptual relations as attribute-neutral, I do not
intend to impose a new category on Spinoza’s ontology. Rather, my appeal to attribute
neutrality is meant to utilize a formal category that is already present in Spinoza’s
system. Spinoza sometimes describes things and relations in non-attribute-specific
ways. My proposal in this section is that conceptual relations are one such category
of attribute-neutral relations in Spinoza’s ontology. To explicate this, I will continue
focusing on the relations between an attribute on the one hand, and God and God’s
modes on the other.
Spinoza defines God as “a being [ens] absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consist-
ing of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite
essence” (Id6). In previous chapters, I have unpacked the main pieces of this definition:
substance, attributes, expression, essence. What is noteworthy for present purposes is
that Id6 is a kind of meta-attribute claim about God. It is a claim about all of God’s
attributes that is not made from “within” any particular attribute (i.e., by invoking any
attribute-specific character or relation). By contrast, at the start of Part II, Spinoza
describes God in attribute-specific ways (“God is a thinking thing,” “God is an extended
thing”) and then builds up to the inter-attribute identity thesis that God conceived as
thinking is “one and the same” as God conceived as extended (IIp7s). But in Id6,
Spinoza steps outside all attribute contexts and claims directly that God is a substance
that bears a relation to an infinity of distinct attributes.
Spinoza names this relation in Ip10s: “Indeed, nothing in Nature is clearer than
that each being (ens) must be conceived under some attribute.” Each ens—which is
itself an attribute-neutral category—must be conceived under at least one particular
attribute.32 So each ens or substance bears the relation conceived under to at least one
attribute, a relation that is therefore not itself attribute-specific.33 Spinoza again steps
outside all attribute contexts and claims, about those contexts, that each substance
falls under at least one of them (and, in God’s case, each of them).34 This again implies
32
Spinoza does not use the term “ens” very often in the Ethics, but when he does, it is almost always
to refer to God or substance (see Id6, Ip10s, Ip11s, Ip14d, IVp28). I do not see how Spinoza’s own use
of “ens” in these early passages is consistent with his later dismissal of “ens” as a universal term that
“signif[ies] ideas that are confused in the highest degree” (IIp40s, II/120–1), but it is not easy to be a con-
sistent nominalist.
33
This also answers Noa Shein’s objection that the entire category of “attribute-neutrality” is inconsist-
ent with the conceiving requirement of Ip10s (Shein, “The False Dichotomy between Objective and
Subjective Interpretations of Spinoza’s Theory of Attributes,” 512.) As I read it, Spinoza’s claim in Ip10s is
itself an attribute-neutral claim in the sense that it describes something about the conceptual relation
between attributes and things in a non-attribute-specific way.
34
One possible updating of this that I hinted at in chapter five would be to interpret “conceived under”
as naming in the metalanguage of the Ethics the relation that every substance bears to at least one attribute,
but I will suggest in the next section that we should refrain from recasting Spinoza’s appeals to the conceptual
that conceived under is not itself an attribute-specific relation, such as thought about as.
Instead, it describes how a substance relates to each of its attributes.
In chapter two, I argued that Spinoza identifies conceiving and expressing. This
identity is nicely displayed in the interplay between Id6 and Ip10s. Each attribute
expresses an essence of substance, which is the same attribute-neutral relation between
attributes and substance that Spinoza calls “conceiving under” in Ip10s: “Each being must
be conceived under some attribute, and the more reality or being it has, the more it has
attributes which express necessity, or eternity, or infinity.”35
One of the key elements of Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy, which is again highlighted
in Ip10s, is that these different ways of conceiving or expressing substance contain
something like structured contents. In Ip10s, Spinoza points to the similar expressive
content of different attributes. Each attribute expresses “necessity, or eternality, or
infinity” by expressing “a certain eternal and infinite essence.”36 In Ip10, Spinoza empha-
sizes the distinctive expressive or conceptual content of different attributes. Each
attribute is conceived through itself, which means that at least some of the conceptual
content associated with one attribute is not contained in the content of any other
attribute. In chapter one, I went so far as to claim that Spinoza’s basic ontology can be
boiled down to the thesis that God exists and can be conceived or expressed in infin-
itely many more and less complete ways. Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy argues that
diversity is consistent with substance monism because God’s conceptual or expressive
content is structured in the right, consistency-preserving ways.
But once again, lest mentalism and idealism rear their ugly heads, such structured
content cannot be purely representational content (where that is understood as mental
content). Differences in ways of expressing or conceiving God are not primarily differ-
ences in ways of thinking about or mentally representing God, even though differences
in conceptual content can be represented or grasped by mental acts. Hence the nature
of the structured content associated with different ways of conceiving or expressing a
substance must also be understood in an attribute-neutral way, perhaps something
more like structured elements.
Spinoza employs this attribute-neutral framework for expressive/conceptual con-
tent in his description of finite modes: “Particular things [res particulares] are nothing
but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a
certain and determinate way” (Ip25c).37 Spinoza later names those attribute-neutral
things insofar as they express specific attributes. Bodies are particular things that
primarily in linguistic (and metalinguistic) terms. For an early version of a meta-attribute claim, see
KV I.vii note a, G I/44.
35
Spinoza also equates being “considered under” an attribute with being “explained through” that
attribute in IIIp2s, G II/144.
36
See chapter five for the dovetailing account of essences in terms of explanatory connections and con-
ceptual containment relations.
37
Unlike with “ens,” Spinoza uses “res” to refer to both substances and modes (e.g., IIp1 and Ip27),
although I will focus on the mode references here. (Res is another transcendental universal that Spinoza
explicitly rejects in IIp40s.) Another clear example of an attribute-neutral reference occurs in the conclusion
determinately express Extension, and ideas are particular things that determinately
express Thought. But notice that the determinate “way” by which a mode expresses an
attribute—what I have been calling its structured content—is itself a non-attribute-
specific category. With some labels: bodies [attribute-specific] are particular things
[attribute-neutral] that express [attribute-neutral] God’s essence in a certain and deter-
minate way [attribute-neutral], insofar as God is conceived under [attribute-neutral]
Extension [attribute-specific].
Spinoza elegantly employs these attribute-neutral categories in his mind–body identity
theory.38 According to this theory, mental modes are identical to parallel extended
modes in the same sense in which God under the attribute of Thought is identical to
God under the attribute of Extension. A mental mode and a parallel extended mode
is one and the same res, just as the thinking substance and the extended substance is
one and the same ens. Spinoza draws out the parallel between God under different
attributes and a finite thing under different attributes:
[T]he thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is
now comprehended under this attribute, now under that. So also a mode of extension and the
idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways (IIp7s).
He then offers the following elaboration, in which a “circle existing in Nature” is an

example of a concrete, circular body:
For example, 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. Therefore, whether
we conceive Nature under the attribute of extension, or under the attribute of thought, or under
any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of
causes, that is, that the same things follow one another (IIp7s).
Spinoza uses his attribute-neutral category (“thing”) and terminological substitutions

to make the same point about parallel modes that he had made about God. Parallel
modes are “one and the same thing” that fall under, are explained by, are expressions of,
or are conceived through, different attributes.39 A body is the same thing as its parallel
idea: one thing conceived under two different attributes. God qua thinking is the same
ens as God qua extended: one ens conceived under two different attributes. In both
cases, “conceiving under” names the identity-preserving, attribute-neutral way that
beings and particular things, substances and finite modes, relate to specific attributes.
In chapter one, I argued that Spinoza’s ontology represents a novel and sophisticated
attempt to maximize both parsimony and plenitude in a way befitting the structure of a
metaphysically perfect world. Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy tries to show how “one
to IIp7s, where Spinoza refers to “things as they are in themselves,” by which he means things independent
of any particular attribute.
38
For a defense of this interpretation of Spinoza, see Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body
Problem in Spinoza.
39
See also Ip29s, G II/71 and IIIp2s, G II/144.
and the same thing” could exhibit plentiful structural variety by (a) showing how it
exhibits conceptual or expressive variety and (b) tying divergent features of “one and
the same thing” to the distinct contents of such conceptual structures. We have now
seen that this variety of structured conceptual content is not fundamentally a variety of
mental content, though in virtue of Spinoza’s parallelism it can be mentally represented
and expressed.
Therefore, returning to Spinoza’s attributes, “x conceived under [Extension/Thought],”
where “x” names an attribute-neutral ens or thing, does not mean “x as represented by a
mind as” or “x as thought about as,” for Spinoza. The closest rewording of “x conceived
as” is the one I alluded to at the end of the previous section: “x insofar as it is structured
thusly,” or perhaps “x insofar as it is characterized thusly,” where “thusly” names attribute-
specific conceptual content. And at bottom, I believe this is what Spinoza intends by
his conceptual language when referring to attributes: God and finite things are conceived
as—i.e., structured by—a multiplicity of highly general, pervasive, non-overlapping, and
fundamental features such as Extension and Thought. Spinoza’s preferred designation
for the attribute-neutral, fundamental manner by which things are metaphysically
structured is conceptual in kind.
4. Spinoza’s Unfinished Task

That, at any rate, is the best I can do to situate Spinoza’s conceptual relations within his
own ontological framework. But even if I am correct about the attribute-neutral nature
of Spinoza’s structured conceptual relations, questions remain. It has proven far easier
to explicate Spinoza’s account of the conceptual by describing what concepts lack
or what familiar categories they should not be identified with than it has been to
explain it in more positive and familiar ways.
For example, I claimed that Spinoza’s ways of conceiving things are not solely
ways of representing things, though they can be represented by a mind. Hence, not all
conceptual content is mental content, but all conceptual content is supposed to be as
fine-grained as mental content is often thought to be. To the contemporary reader, this
makes Spinoza’s concepts sound like structured propositions, and Spinoza certainly
writes as though at least some concepts are truth-apt, structured bearers of representa-
tional content. But unlike propositions, Spinoza’s ways of conceiving are also supposed
to be non-abstract ways of being, namely more and less complete ways of being God.
This makes them sound more like properties, but they are also supposed to be more
fine-grained than properties. That is, Spinoza’s ways of conceiving seem to share the fine-
grained, structured features of propositions but also the non-abstract, ways of being
aspects of properties.
It might sound like we have just circled back around to an updated version of
Herbert’s complaint from chapter two: Spinoza’s conceptual relations are the ill-fitted
rug under which all manner of contradictions have been swept. Perhaps his conceptual
strategy works only because it conflates distinct ontological categories and tries to
retain some, but not all, features of mental representations, propositions, and properties,
respectively—namely just those features needed to achieve the consistency goal of
his conceptualist strategy. Were one to conclude that there is no extant metaphysical
category that has all and only the features that Spinoza ascribes to conceptual relations,
his conceptualist gambit would fail to get off the ground from our contemporary
vantage point. Alternatively, someone might see in Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy a
roundabout case for rethinking contemporary divisions and classifications.
I find neither of these options especially satisfying. The range of contemporary
theories of propositions and properties is so bewilderingly broad that we should
be open to welcoming a new classification scheme to the metaphysical table. At the
same time, it would be naïve to think that Spinoza himself provides enough details to
offer a truly competitive, alternative account to those that have been put forward
over the last century of analytic philosophy. (It has taken the length of this entire book
just to tease out some of the roles that Spinoza’s appeals to the conceptual play in his
system!) So while I do not think Spinoza should be set aside as someone who simply
conflated basic metaphysical categories, I also do not think he should be celebrated for
cogently challenging contemporary orthodoxy.
Instead, we should adopt the posture that T.S. Eliot suggests in his comparison of
Leibniz and Bradley with which I began this book. Eliot acknowledges that the gaps
in Leibniz’s philosophical system are genuine imperfections of his thought. I concede
this as well for Spinoza. His account of the nature of the conceptual is incomplete,
unfinished, and hence imperfect.
But rather than seeing this flaw as a motivation for setting Leibniz aside, Eliot
suggests that Leibniz’s incompleteness actually generates more interest in studying
Leibniz. Leibniz becomes more exciting, and hence longer-lasting, partly because
of his need for and openness to supplementation by later readers. In a similar vein,
I think Spinoza’s incompleteness here, at the very ground floor of his system, marks
an exciting opportunity for future Spinoza studies. What is an unfinished task for
Spinoza becomes an invitation to us, his readers. I will conclude with brief sketches
of two ways one might pursue this task afresh, though these are neither exclusive nor
exhaustive options.
(1) A more historically oriented approach might consider Spinoza’s conceptualism
in light of later developments, some of which were just on the horizon as Spinoza was
writing the Ethics.40 Each of these trajectories turned out to be very rich, often spurring
40
Alternatively, one might look backwards from Spinoza for helpful resources. For example, scholastics
debated about classes of relations that had mental connotations while still being fundamentum in re. For
instance, Suarez offers (and then criticizes) an account of a distinctio rationis ratiocinatae that is “pre-
existing in reality, prior to the discriminating operation of the mind . . . [which] require[s] the intellect
only to recognize it, but not constitute it” (Suarez, DM VII.i.4). This might help us better understand
Spinoza’s appeal to a mere conceptual distinction among attributes in IVp8, for example. (For further
discussion of Spinoza’s views in relation to some of these scholastic accounts, see Newlands, “Spinoza’s
Early Anti-Abstractionism.”)
research projects that occupied generations of philosophers. (That alone might mitigate
one’s disappointment that Spinoza didn’t anticipate all the complexities he needed
to address.)
Here are a few hand-wavy examples of trajectories that might be fruitfully explored in
relation to Spinoza’s views. Spinoza’s emphasis on conceptual involvement and con-
ceptual containment points toward an account of logical and metaphysical relations
in terms of part–whole conceptual containment. Leibniz and his followers pursued
far more refined and rigorous accounts of conceptual containment, and it could be
illuminating to consider whether Spinoza could have or should have adopted some-
thing like, say, Arnauld’s intensional logic or Wolfe’s containment theory of truth.41
Later reflections on the mind’s relation to conceptual content led to more developed
accounts of judgment and rule-governed cognition among eighteenth-century British
philosophers and, most prominently, in the work of Kant and Kant’s successors.42 Does
Spinoza have space for something like a rule-governed approach to grasping concepts
that would secure for them greater objectivity? Given his rejection of mentalism, does he
need it?
On the ontological side, Spinoza’s commitment to the fixed, eternal, and mind-
independent nature of conceptual structures points forward to something like Frege’s
Gedanken, but Spinoza’s anti-abstractionism would not sit well with any kind of “third-
realm” entities in Frege’s Platonic heavens. Could Spinoza consistently embrace Frege’s
anti-psychologicism without recourse to abstracta?
By contrast with this eternalist approach, Hegel and his followers argued that cul-
ture and history play essential and ineliminable roles in shaping even our most basic
concepts.43 Spinoza himself says precious little about such developments (at least with
respect to more basic concepts), but could or should Spinoza have incorporated a
process of historical unfolding into his account of God’s self-expression?
To be clear, my own interests here have nothing to do with whether or how Spinoza
“influenced” any of these later developments, whatever that might even mean. Rather,
seeing the shared theoretical space between Spinoza and later developments can raise
interesting philosophical questions about Spinoza’s own system. We might wonder
how well Spinoza could have incorporated these various developments into the rest of his
systematic commitments. What would happen to, say, Spinoza’s claims about the persist-
ence conditions of moral agents, if he acknowledged that the historical developments
of concepts of agency partly determined the contents of those concept-sensitive
persistence conditions?
In general, work on the nature of concepts by subsequent philosophers provides
ample ways to push and prod Spinoza’s less worked-out views. Tugging at various
threads in philosophical systems in this way can be very rewarding and can shed new
41
See Arnauld and Nicole, Logic, 39–40 and Wolff, PRL, 392–7. (Both citations are from Anderson, The
Poverty of Conceptual Truth.)
42
See, for example, the rich account in Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge.
43
See, for example, the historically sensitive recent account in Burbidge, Ideas, Concepts, and Reality.
light on the system itself. What moves and what stays fixed if we add, amend, or
subtract this or that thesis to Spinoza’s metaphysics and ethics?44 Far from closing off
inquiry, exploring Spinoza’s potential openness or resistance to later developments
encourages us to think harder about Spinoza’s more settled views.
(2) A different way forward would be to engage Spinoza constructively in light of
work in contemporary philosophy. For example, interpreters shed new light on some
of Spinoza’s claims when they began reading them in light of analytic philosophy of
language.45 In chapter three, I cited Margaret Wilson’s prescient observation that “any
success in understanding Spinoza is going to require whacking one’s way through a
thicket of intensionality of which only the bare outlines have so far been discerned.”46
By framing some of Spinoza’s views in terms of intensionality, referential opacity,
and substitution failures, interpreters gained new tools for understanding Spinoza’s
mind–body identity theory, argument for substance monism, and accounts of causation
and mental representation.47
For example, it can be elucidating to state Spinoza’s thesis in IIp6 about the causal
isolation of modes within each attribute as a thesis about co-referring terms that
cannot be substituted salva veritate. Certainly many of the sentences that interpreters
must use to formulate Spinoza’s core One-and-Many theses will have intensional posi-
tions in them, and the corresponding predications will involve referentially opaque
contexts. When I mentioned Spinoza’s “thicket of intensionality” in chapter three, I also
offered an explanation for it. The underlying fine-grained structure of conceptual rela-
tions predicts and explains why causal ascriptions can generate substitution failures of
co-referring names. As we saw in chapter two, Spinoza’s early appeal to his conceptual
strategy in his letter to De Vries turns on this fine-grained, many-to-one feature of
conceptual relations.
Nevertheless, I have mostly eschewed appealing to intensionality in this book.
Although this framework has been fruitful in the past, it is also incomplete and
potentially misleading. Correcting these deficiencies in light of more recent work in
philosophy of language and metaphysics will also point us to new ways of construct-
ively engaging Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy.
On the incompleteness worry, it is worth noting that many of Spinoza’s claims
exhibit not merely intensionality, but what has been dubbed “hyperintensionality.”
That is, in order to state Spinoza’s views accurately, we need something even more
fine-grained than merely intensional expressions. One could, of course, define a
44
For an account of this kind of interpretive approach, see Adams, “A Philosophical Autobiography,”
24–5.
45
Developments in other philosophical fields, such as continental thought and feminism, have also
been fruitfully applied to Spinoza, as exemplified in collections such as Montag, The New Spinoza and
Gatens, Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza.
46
Margaret D. Wilson, “Review of Spinoza’s Theory of Truth,” 24–5.
47
As I also mentioned in chapter three, Della Rocca has been the real trailblazer here.
linguistic context to be intensional just in case it is governed by sentences in which the

substitution of co-referring expressions is not necessarily truth-preserving. Familiar
(though controversial) examples of intensional contexts involve propositional atti-
tudes, like believing that. Although “Clark Kent” and “Superman” co-refer, “I believe
Clark Kent flies” could be false even if “I believe Superman flies” is true. In defining an
intensional context in this way, the only relevant alternative class is extensional contexts.
But consider two cases of mathematical belief: “I believe that two plus two equals
four” and “I do not believe that the square root of 111,556 is 334.” (The second was true
until about thirty seconds ago when I pulled out a calculator.) On the assumption
that all mathematical truths are necessary truths, there is no possible world in which
“2 + 2 = 4” and “the square root of 111,556 is 334” differ in truth values. Hence, at
least on some accounts of reference in terms of possible worlds, these expressions
necessarily co-refer. Even so, the example of my mathematical beliefs suggests that
substituting even necessarily co-referring expressions can fail to preserve truth
when embedded in a belief ascription. Call those contexts “hyperintensional.”
Hyperintensional contexts are governed by sentences in which the substitution of
necessarily co-referring expressions is not necessarily truth-preserving. So defined, all
hyperintensional contexts are intensional contexts, but not vice versa. To keep this
straight, we can think of “merely intensional contexts” as contexts that are intensional
but not hyperintensional. On many contemporary accounts, modal contexts are
examples of merely intensional contexts.
The incompleteness concern is that some of Spinoza’s views involve hyperinten-
sional contexts and not merely intensional contexts. For example, Spinoza claims that
“all the attributes [of a substance] have always been in it together” (Ip10d), by which
I take him to be claiming that a substance and its attributes necessarily coexist. Hence,
when Spinoza later asserts in IIp5d that the thinking substance causes only ideas and
the extended substances causes no ideas, he is committed to the thesis that causal
ascriptions invoke hyperintensional contexts.
Those who think Spinoza is a necessitarian in our contemporary sense of the term
should welcome this emendation as especially good news. If Spinoza’s necessitarianism
is understood in a standard possible worlds framework (which, by design, generates
merely intensional contexts), his expressive abilities will be extraordinarily limited.
There is one and only one possible world: the actual world. What should Spinoza say
about statements involving counterfactuals, probabilities, beliefs, metaphysical depend-
ence, and so forth? Over the past several decades, the possible worlds framework has
proven very fruitful for unpacking the semantics of these kinds of claims. On the
merely intensionalist approach, Spinoza would either need to provide an alternative
semantic framework altogether, or else he would spuriously evaluate as trivially false
many, many expressions in science, ethics, and metaphysics (not to mention everyday
life) that are non-trivially true, even by his own necessitarian lights. Happily, Spinoza
could recapture much of the expressive richness that non-necessitarians enjoy without
abandoning necessitarianism by shifting from intensional structures like possible

worlds to hyperintensional structures, such as finer-grained impossible worlds.48
This points to the second, deeper worry facing intensionalist interpretations of
Spinoza. I have described intensionality in terms of features of language, such as sen-
tential positions and substitution failures. But even if stating Spinoza’s views about,
say, causation in IIp6 requires the use of intensional expressions, Spinoza is not pri-
marily making claims about our causal language in IIp6. He is primarily making claims
about the causal relations that things stand in, not about the expressions we use to
characterize those relations. Interpreting Spinoza’s causal views primarily in terms of a
commitment to the intensionality of causal contexts misleadingly shifts the target of
Spinoza’s claims from the world to language about the world, and it merely pushes the
explanatory bump in the carpet back a step. Why think expressing the world’s causal
structure requires hyperintensional contexts? Surely Spinoza’s answer has to do with
the fine-grained structure of the world itself.49
In a way, focusing too much on Spinoza’s “thicket of intensionality” threatens to
commit the same kind of error that befell the mentalist interpretation. Mentalism
tried to interpret Spinoza’s claims about concepts in terms of psychological states:
ways of conceiving things are just ways of representing things. As a result, what was
supposed to be the multifaceted structure of substance became solely the structure of
representations of substance. In reply, I argued that although conceptual content can
be represented for Spinoza, it is not exclusively mental content. Similarly, reading
Spinoza’s conceptual apparatus primarily through the lens of intensionality treats his
conceptualism in terms of linguistic features. As a result, the rich structure of substance
becomes solely the structure of ways of referring to substance. But again, even if Spinoza’s
conceptual machinery can be adequately stated only using hyperintensional contexts,
the machinery itself is not supposed to be linguistic.
It is understandable why interpreters have been tempted toward these assimilations,50
since Spinoza offers both mental and linguistic examples to illustrate some of his con-
ceptualist claims. But in the end, Spinoza is no more assimilating concepts to linguistic
devices than he is assimilating them to mental representations. In answering Lust’s
challenge, Spinoza is not trying to preserve only the diversity of predications. He wants
to preserve the world’s diversity. He is not interested primarily in maintaining the iden-
tity of one substance across ascriptions of fundamentally different attribute contexts.
He wants to maintain the identity of substance across fundamentally different ways of
being a substance. While stating Spinoza’s views accurately may require hyperintensional
contexts, that will be because Spinoza thinks the world itself exhibits such a variable,
multifaceted structure.
48
For a brief survey of recent work on impossible worlds, see Nolan, “Impossible Worlds.”
49
Della Rocca himself gestures at something like this with his appeal to “intensional properties” in Della
Rocca, Representation, 128–9. For critical discussion of this move in Della Rocca, see Marshall, “The Mind
and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza,” 906–8.
50
For a self-indicting example, see Newlands, “Another Kind of Spinozistic Monism.”
Happily again, even more recent work in analytic metaphysics offers Spinoza’s
readers another promising path forward. Work on essences and grounding has been
moving steadily away from accounts of mere necessary covariation to more fine-
grained accounts of ontological dependence.51 In philosophy of mind, accounts of
mental–physical relations in terms of supervenience have been supplanted by accounts
using more fine-grained metaphysical dependence relations like grounding.52
These developments point toward what Daniel Nolan calls “hyperintensional
phenomena,” which require hyperintensional “concepts that can be applied to phe-
nomena and entities and not just parts of language.”53 That is, hyperintensional
phenomena are features of the world that require hyperintensional constructs to be
adequately characterized, even though they are not themselves features of language
or representations. Nolan even offers a nice litmus test that Spinoza’s conceptualism
passes with flying colors:
If we find ourselves only needing to bring hyperintensionality in when we want to explain
something about representation, that would suggest hyperintensional phenomena are all rep-
resentational phenomena. But if we find ourselves appealing to hyperintensional distinctions
in our theory of non-representational matters, that would be good evidence that hyperinten-
sional phenomena are not just representational.54
Our investigation of Spinoza’s rejection of idealism in this chapter provides ample

evidence that Spinoza’s conceptualist metaphysics is supposed to account for all man-
ner of “non-representational matters,” just as his plenitude theses and explanatory
naturalism predict.
Of course, as with any new development in contemporary philosophy, there is
plenty of suspicion about admitting such fine-grained structures of the world into
one’s ontology, and this is not the place to settle that dispute. But I think this grow-
ing shift indicates one promising direction for unpacking Spinoza’s claims about
conceptual sensitivity and conceptual identification. They are theses about the
hyperintensional phenomena that a metaphysically perfect world exhibits.
Although somewhat new, this investigation would still be continuous with the
intensionalist interpretive trend that Wilson helped inaugurate. Wilson’s suggestion
was that interpreting Spinoza’s ontology within a purely extensionalist framework
dooms him to inconsistency. She made this observation back in 1975, when the exten-
sionalist programs of contemporary philosophers like Quine and Davidson were being
seriously challenged by a new generation of philosophers who tried to express virtually
every philosophical issue using the intensionalist framework of possible worlds. Though
51
Fine’s “Essence and Modality” paper is usually cited as an important origin of this movement, though
as we saw in chapter five, Spinoza had warned long ago to avoid assimilating essential dependence to neces-
sary covariation. (To be fair, Fine approvingly cites Aristotle as the original source of this warning, and
Aristotle does predate Spinoza by a bit.)
52
For overviews, see Rosen, “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction” and Audi,
“Grounding: Toward A Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation.”
53
Nolan, “Hyperintensional Metaphysics,” 151. 54
Nolan, “Hyperintensional Metaphysics,” 156.
salutary, that correction to extensionalism does not seem to have gone far enough,
and over the past twenty years philosophers have been developing ever finer-grained
notions and the corresponding semantic and metaphysical machinery to better expli-
cate the world’s structure.
Those interested in pursuing Spinoza’s unfinished task in light of contemporary
work might want to engage these new developments in analytic metaphysics, as clearer
accounts of something like hyperintensional phenomena may shed even more light on
Spinoza’s own conceptualist strategy. Spinoza might, in turn, have resources to offer
those laboring in contemporary philosophy,55 and his relevance to this topic need not
be limited to pure metaphysics. Spinoza was a systematic thinker, and we have seen
how he applies his fine-grained metaphysical structures to accounts of moral agency
and self-identity as well. This points toward fresh, interconnected ways in which
future Spinoza studies in the analytic tradition might engage other branches of
contemporary philosophy.
Coming full circle now, Eliot’s prediction about the abiding interest of Leibniz over
Bradley turned out to be true, though probably not for the reasons Eliot gave. Still,
evaluating predictions long after the results are in is a safe endeavor. In the introduc-
tion, I urged boldness to shake some quarters of Spinoza studies out of its increasingly
staid repose. So I will close by endorsing a less safe prediction, again from Nolan:
I predict that the consensus in metaphysics in 2050 and 2060 will look back at the intensional-
ists who resist taking hyperintensional language at face value rather as most of us look back at
the extensionalists, furiously trying to paraphrase modal and other intensional vocabulary into
procrustean extensionalist terms. Furthermore, the idea that hyperintensional description of
the world is somehow about representations or somehow reflects facts about representation
will look as odd as the view that modal descriptions of the world are somehow about represen-
tations, or reflect representations, rather than features of the objects themselves.
I think Nolan’s prediction will turn out to be correct for contemporary metaphysics,
and sooner than he suggests. If so, Spinoza’s conceptualist project may lie at the van-
guard of this shift, and the future of Spinoza studies, and Spinozism itself, will be very
bright indeed.
55
I suggest a few examples of this in Newlands, “Spinoza’s Relevance to Contemporary Metaphysics.”
Bibliography
NB: All underlining for emphasis in quotations is mine. Any italicized emphases in quotations
are original to the author.
Primary Texts
Spinoza
C The Collected Works of Spinoza Vol 1. Translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985.
G Opera. Edited by Carl Gebhardt. 4 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925 (cited by
volume and page).
S Spinoza: The Complete Works. Edited by Michael Morgan. Translated by Samuel
Shirley. New York: Hackett, 2002.
E The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza. Translated by R.H.M. Elwes. London: George
Bell and Sons, 1891.
TTP Theological–Political Treatise. Translated by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
All otherwise unlabeled references to Spinoza’s text refer to the internal references of the Ethics
by PartTypeNumber (e.g., Ip33). All abbreviations of Spinoza’s works refer to the actual name
of the text and standard internal part/section/paragraph references (CM = Cogitata Metaphysica;
Ep = Epistolae; KV = Korte Verhandeling; PP = Descartes Principiorum Philosophæ; TIE =
Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione; TP = Tractatus Politicus; TTP = Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus). I have mostly used Curley’s translations from C throughout, sometimes with slight
modification. The main exceptions are letters after Ep 28 (for which I use Shirley, sometimes
with modification) and passages from TTP (for which I use Silverthorne and Israel).
Although it appeared too late in the publishing process for me to use here, I would like to
acknowledge and celebrate the publication of volume 2 of Curley’s Collected Works of Spinoza,
which is a landmark scholarly achievement that sets yet another high bar of excellence in both
translation and editorial work. Like many others, I owe a deep debt to Curley for his tireless
and fruitful work on Spinoza’s texts. Without his labors and accomplishments as translator,
editor, and interpreter of Spinoza, the field of Spinoza’s studies would not be nearly as vibrant
as it is today.
Arnauld and Nicole

Logic Logic or the Art of Thinking. Edited by Jill Vance Buroker. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
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Index of Subjects
acosmicism 12, 27, 27n42, 145, 161, 161n37, and individuals 75, 108, 114, 124, 142, 163
162, 164, 166, 229–30 mind-dependence 10, 23n30
Adams, Robert Merrihew 3n4, 252n44 and modes 23, 43, 69
affect theory of essences 127–35
definition of 213 and Nature 246
and desires 182–3 nature of 19–24, 125
and egoism 193n59 neutrality of 13, 245–9
harmful 196, 204 parallelism see parallelism as main heading
and individuality 226 parity of 55, 237–8
and mind-body 215–16 plenitude 49, 52–3, 55, 126 (see also plenitude
moderation of 176, 182, 184n43, 213 as main heading)
transforming of 215 as predications 73
see also joy; sadness relations among 20, 42, 77, 193, 238
affections see modes and singular things 75, 108, 114, 124, 142
Alanen, Lilli 224n49 and substance 14, 15, 17, 20–1, 22, 23, 247
Anderson, R. Lanier 78n55, 251n41 see also extension; independence; pluralism;
appetites see desires thought
Aristotle 17, 73n36, 99n27, 255n51 Audi, Paul 255n52
Armstrong, Aurelia 158n34, 197n68, 199n71
Arnauld, Antoine 78, 97, 251 Balibar, Etienne 199n71
attributes Barbone, Steven 143n15, 146n21, 162, 197n68
absolute nature 77, 103 Bayle, Pierre 15n3, 42n3
and causation 50, 53n14, 69 Bennett, Jonathan 3n4, 19n17, 27n43, 76n49
as characters of substance 20–2 90n1, 90n2, 91n6, 92, 102, 104n40,
compared to modes 20–1 107n53, 108n55, 113n4, 114n7, 123n30,
and conception 12, 201 147n23, 155n33, 171n10, 178n30,
and conceptual dependence monism 88 183n39, 190, 193n59, 193n60, 203n1,
conceptual independence 48, 69–70, 235, 235–6, 236n14, 239
237–43 blessedness 99, 200, 202, 209, 223–4, 225,
conceptual sensitivity 49, 214 230–2, 235
definition of 45, 71–2 bodies
Deleuze on 21n21 composition of 138–41
Descartes on 47–8 definition of 20, 141–2
and essences 125n32 determination 50
distinctions between 17 duration of 106–7
diversity in substance monism 14, 17, 168 essences 116, 150
and essences 12, 112, 122–3, 123–4, 126, and God 21, 166, 240–1
127–35, 136, 163, 235 and identity 218, 229
eternity of 247 and individuals 137–8, 144–50, 162, 194, 204
explanatory power 224 and individuation 119, 141, 150–60, 166–7
and God 97 and motion and rest 116, 119, 141, 166–7
infinitely many of 17, 19–20, 21, 98 and parts 139–42
necessity of 91 see also composition; extension; individuation;
and identity 167–8 mind-body; mode; parallelism
non-identity of 46–7 Bradley, F.H. 1, 119n22, 250, 256
independence 237, 238, 241 Brandau, John 37n73
definition of attribute 237 Brandom, Robert 3n4
and extension 241–2 Burbidge, John W. 251n43
and mentalism 241–3 Burgersdijk, Franco 83n68
and substance attributes 48 Butler, Judith 197n68
270 index of subjects
Caird, John 19 and composition 150–67

Carraud, Vincent 82n65, 83n68 of essences 8, 9, 24, 25, 27, 112–35
Carriero, John 70n31, 73n36, 74n40, 75n43, and existence 7, 12
76n49, 77n50, 81–2, 82n62, 90n2, 91n5, of God 43, 44, 49, 55–6, 79
114n7 of human nature 195n63
causation 7–8, 50–3, 65–70 and ideas 10, 97, 240
and attributes 50, 53n14, 69 and the individual 157
and conceiving 65–70, 81–5 and modality 95–102, 201
and definition 64, 67, 131 of modes 56, 73n34, 105, 235, 238–9, 243
and desire 220 of the self 213, 217, 221, 224n49, 225,
essences 15, 27, 93, 117, 129–31 227, 230
existence 5, 62 and self-acceptance 231
external 213, 222, 226–7 vs. thought 239–45
and God 7, 225, 244 see also Conceptual Dependence Monism
and individuals 142–50, 157 (CDM); conceptual identification;
and individuation 145–7, 157, 192, 196 conceptual sensitivity; conceptual
and inherence 31, 81–5 variability
internal 221–2 Conceptual Dependence Monism
mind-body 43, 50, 128 (CDM) 57–89
and models 181 and causation 65–70, 81–5
and modes 252 and goal of metaphysics 59–64
and power 128–31, 132, 206, 210, 215 and God 76
and Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) 62 and inherence 81–5
priority 77, 237 Leibniz’s rejection of 89
properties 131 and motivation 66, 85–9
self-causation 6, 68 rationalist reduction 29–32, 86–7
of God 99, 120n24 see also causation; concept; inherence;
and self-identity 218, 222–3, 227 monism
structures of 7–8, 11–12, 50–6, 68–70, 88, conceptual identification 8, 11, 44, 164
126, 136, 146, 207, 231, 235, 254 of attributes 48
and conception 156, 165, 243 and causation 51–2, 81
and definition 119 and essences 112, 126
of thought 237 and modes 53–4
and time 131 necessity 101, 201
Clarke, Samuel 32n57 and perfection 235, 255
cognition and sensitivity 49
cause and effect 27–8, 67 conceptual sensitivity 8, 11, 27–8, 44, 55, 57–8,
human limitations 31, 157–8, 159 92–5, 235
rule-governed 251 of attributes 49, 53, 214
see also ideas; knowledge; thought and causation 50, 52, 69, 81, 126
composition 136, 137–42 of essences 112, 129
and causation 146–7, 192, 194, 195–6 and identity 164, 255
and conception 150–67 of modes 95–101, 102
and individuals 142–7, 214n19, 230, 235 and variability 52
infinite 149, 197n68 conceptual variability 8, 11, 44, 55, 235
self-interest 197–8 of attributes 49, 53–4, 56
and individuation 201, 208 and causation 50, 69
mind-body 197n68 and identity 77
and persistence 148–9, 230, 235 and individuals 160–1
see also bodies; individuals and sensitivity 52
conatus 112–13, 116–17, 194n61, 213, 224–5 contingency 104
concept 42–56 and identity 189
and attributes 12, 201 and knowledge 106, 108, 157–8
barrier 69–70, 97n19, 124, 126, 128, 134n42, and modal theory 101, 168
244–5 and necessitarianism 12, 90, 92–5, 101–2,
of body 150–60 104–5
broad vs. narrow (BC vs NC) 25–8, 25n35, see also necessitarianism
93–5, 106–10, 129–33, 165–8, 230 Correia, Fabrice 59n3
index of subjects 271
Curley, Edwin 3n4, 15n3, 18, 26n39, 61n8, satisfaction 11–12, 170, 171, 174–5, 177–8,
62n12, 70n31, 71, 73n35, 75n42, 76, 179–80, 181, 182–3, 186–8, 190, 202,
90n2, 91n4, 91n7, 98n24, 104–5, 106n46, 205, 211, 222, 231–2
109, 123n30, 125n33, 140n11, 151n28, sources of 211, 220
154n32, 170n7, 174n19, 183n39, 192–3, structure of 173, 181
203n1, 221n42, 222–3n47, 240n20 and value judgments 173–4, 187
see also joy; sadness
Davidson, Donald 255 determinism 91, 91n7
de Vries, Simon 45–8 di Poppa, Francesca 19n17, 30n52, 61, 79,
definition 83n66, 197n68, 243
and causation 64, 67, 131 Donagan, Alan 90n2, 106n46, 113n4,
and essences 112–13, 114, 118, 119, 126 123n30
and modes 99 duration
see also identity of the body 106–7
Delahunty, R.J. 90n2 and God 35
Deleuze, Gilles 21n21, 24n32, 28n46, 79n56 inadequate knowledge of 22n27, 106–7,
Della Rocca, Michael 15n7, 17n10, 29–30, 108n58, 215n21
30n50, 30n52, 31–2, 33, 33n59, 67n25, and modes 22, 106, 107–8
68n27, 70n31, 74n40, 77n50, 82, 85–6, see also eternity; infinity; time
87–8, 88n78, 91n5, 105n42, 107n48,
107n54, 108n55, 112n1, 113n4, 127n34, egoism 189–200, 193n59
129n36, 143n17, 171n10, 186n47, see also morality; self interest
190n55, 193n59, 248n38, 252n47, Eliot, T.S. 1, 2, 250, 256
254n49 emanation 82n65
Descartes, René 4 Erdmann, Johann 43–4
conceivability argument 31n53 essences 112–35
on conceptual dependence 78 and attributes 12, 21, 112, 122–3, 123–4, 126,
conceptual relations 64 136, 163, 235
and essence 125n31 body 20, 116, 150, 240
and mentalism 184 and causal structure 56, 67
and naturalism 5 and causation 15, 27, 56, 93, 117, 129–31
self-esteem 221n42 singular things 25, 109–10
Spinoza on 38, 47–8, 78, 98–9, 114n6 conceptual nature of 8, 9, 24, 25, 27, 75–6,
on substance 47 112–35
attributes 48, 114n6 and definition 12, 112–13, 114, 118, 119,
and substance monism 17 126, 136
desire Descartes on 125n31, 125n32
active vs. passive 211 and desire 112–13, 169–70, 172, 183–4, 186
conflict among 228 and existence 25, 68, 92–4
containment of 212 as explanatory powers 34, 96, 113–19,
diversity of 173 132, 205
empowerment 195, 213 and expression 238
and essence 112–13, 169–70, 172, 183–4, 186 finite minds 108n57, 120, 132
and ethics 12–13, 172–5 of God 112n1 see under God
Frankfurt on 218, 219, 220 individuation of 123–4, 126–7, 162
fundamental 9, 56, 172, 174, 190 infinite number of 19, 21, 119n21, 127
and God 197 of modes 12, 21, 100, 120n24, 123, 127–35
hierarchy of 220–1 and God 116, 141
and individuality 205 and perfection 39, 112–13, 118
and models 177–8, 179–80 and power 112–13, 116n12, 116n15, 117n16,
and morality 169n2, 170 119, 120, 122, 124, 132n40, 159
and motivation 56, 173, 183, 185, 186, 188, and properties 120–1, 122
205, 208 and reason 176
nature of 172, 173, 183, 184 and self-improvement 215–16, 223, 224
non-fundamental 186, 196 and substance 100, 122, 123–7, 247
and power 171–2, 174, 179, 180, 183, 189, expression of 124
195, 201–2, 203, 205, 211 and time 118n19
and reason 176–7, 182, 183, 210 and virtue 112–13
eternity 92, 99, 110, 215n21 Garrett, Don 67n25, 70n31, 74n40, 75n43, 77,
of attributes 247 90n2, 91n5, 103, 103n37, 114n7, 118n17,
of God 75 137n1, 142–3n15, 144n18, 147n23,
of the mind 226 171n10, 175n20, 179n36, 184
of modes 99 Gatens, Moira 3n3, 252n45
and the nature of reason 110 God 23, 23n31, 34, 36, 38, 47, 87, 96, 188
and perfection 226n52 and affections 20, 21, 247
of substance 23 attributes 15, 19, 50, 73, 97, 241
see also duration; infinity; time extension as 124, 139, 241
ethics 170–200 infinite number 17, 19–20, 21, 98
and egoism 13, 189–200, 190 necessity of 91
and metaphysics 5, 12–13, 110–11, 159–60, thought as 19, 21, 31–2, 50, 73, 124,
189–200 216n22, 241
and naturalism 170–1 and causation 7, 64n15, 74–5, 82–3, 90,
see also desire; morality; virtue 225, 244
evil 169, 170, 170n7, 174, 178, 186, 226 of joy 215
existence of modes 43, 50, 74
and causation 5, 62 of self 99, 120
and conception 7, 12 conception of 43, 44, 49, 55–6, 79
contingent 94, 101 and extension 49
degrees of 143–4 and Conceptual Dependence Monism
and essence 25, 68, 92–4 (CDM) 76
and explanation 29, 30 definition of 19, 64
and mind-body 23 dependence 82, 115
and self-causation 6, 68, 99 Descartes on 97
of substance 98 and desire 197
explanatory naturalism 6–8, 29, 31–2n56, diversity in 46
53n15, 63–4, 96–7, 166, 232, 255 essence(s) 98, 112n1, 124–5
expression 19–24, 24n32, 28n46 as aspect of infinite power 116n14, 119
and essences 124, 238 causal structure 56, 67
and extension 21 finite minds 108n57
and ideas 248 and finite things 118
incomplete 27 infinite number of 119n21, 127
and substance 124 and modes 116
extension 22n28, 238 one vs. many 123–4, 126–7
as attribute of God 20, 47, 97, 124, 241, explanatory power of 124
244–5, 249 and harmony 35
and bodies 12, 43, 127–8, 241–2, 245, 248 human mind as state of 107, 138
as explanation of Nature 50, 69, 124 ideas 107–8
expression of 21 and inherence 82, 83
and independence 48, 97, 234, 241–2 and intellect 138, 209
and mind-body relations 43, 127–8 knowledge of 99, 180, 209–10, 225, 227
and Nature 138n6, 237, 243 Leibniz on 35–7, 40, 85
and thought 20, 234–5, 235n5, 238, 241, 247–8 love of 188, 196, 209, 223–4, 225
see also attributes; bodies; God; thought and modes 20, 73n38, 74, 95, 97, 103
nature of 19, 35, 75, 216n22
Fine, Kit 115n8, 255n51 necessity of 96–9, 100, 101n33, 104, 205–6
Fischer, John Martin 220n33 perfection of 34, 35, 36–8, 36n70, 39, 42, 140,
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 227 208–9, 216, 232
following-from 57, 74–8, 79, 81, 100–1, 104, 132 power of 75, 116
Frankfurt, Harry 13, 217–30 as essence 116n14, 119
freedom 182, 216 and reason 36, 232
Frege, Gottlob 133, 150n27, 152, 233, 239n18, Seternity of 75, 109–10
251 as substance 16, 54, 75, 96, 98, 103, 162n43
see also nature; substance
Garber, Daniel 30n52, 179n36, 196n66, 197n68 Goff, Philip 58n2
Garrett, Aaron 113n4, 145n19 Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger 18
goodness 169–70, 170n7, 173–4, 180–1, and extension 31

182–9, 191 and harmony 34–5
see also values; virtue and individuation 230
Gracia, Jorge 137n1, 151–2 and the mind 218
Gueret, M. 44n8 mind-body, theory of 17, 29, 77, 127n34, 235,
Gueroult, Martial 15n6, 26n41, 70n31, 82n65, 248, 252, 254n49
113n4, 123n28, 123n30, 125n33, 241n23 self-identity 218, 222–3, 227
Guigon, Ghislain 138n6 substance 46
see also definition
harmony 89, 151–2, 159, 193n60 imagination 2, 110n62, 110n63
and God 35 and moral notions 169
interpersonal 196, 197 power of 180, 222n43
Leibniz 34–6 individuals 105n45, 108, 136–68, 176n25,
see also perfection 178–9
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 15n3, 15n7, and bodies 137–8, 144–50, 162, 194, 204
21, 27, 32, 251 competition between 215, 229
Heil, John 21n26 conception of 8, 135, 150–60, 157,
Herbert 43–4, 249 201–2, 214
Horgan, Terrence 58n2 and contingency 94, 101
Hübner, Karolina 33n60, 113n3, 134n43, definition of 142
178n31, 193n59, 195n63 and diversity 136
Hudde, John 20, 37 essence and causation 25, 109–10
Huenemann, Charles 76n45, 90n2 finite 141
human nature 179n36 variability of 164
ideal of 180, 180n37 and God’s attributes 75, 108, 114, 124
and reason 195n63 groups as 143–4
Hume, David 17, 239 infinite 139, 141n13, 149, 155, 226
and necessity 111
idealism 9–10, 13, 32, 161, 234–49, see also bodies; composition; ideas;
British 3, 15n3, 32 individuation; minds
and Conceptual Dependence Monism individuation 121, 136–68, 199, 214
81n60, 234–6 and affects 226
ideas 17 ascosmicism 229
adequate 107n52, 108, 210–11 and attributes 12, 163
and affections 204 of bodies 119, 136–7, 141, 150–60, 166–7
and attributes 245 causal theory of 145n19
and bodies 242–3 and causation 136, 142–50
causation of 253 and change 141
and concepts 10, 97, 240–1, 242–3, 245 of collections of individuals 142–3, 144,
definition of 240 145–50, 192–3, 194
and desire 184 and self-interest 194–5, 198–9, 207
and expression 248 composition 137–42
and falsity 26 definition 195
and God 97, 107–8, 242 and desire 173, 205
and human mind 107, 120, 130, 132, 137 essences 134, 162
inadequate 120, 130, 132, 210–11, 219 and ethics 174n19, 192, 193, 194–7, 235
mind-body 204 of finite modes 161, 164–8
parallelism 243–4 fundamental desire 190, 195, 208
and self-improvement 205, 210–11 of God 162
see also cognition; knowledge; parallelism; and infinity 141n13, 150, 155, 161n37, 164,
thought 197, 199, 214
identity Leibniz on 137n1
and attributes 167–8 and moral agents 190–1, 192–3, 196n66, 198
non-identity of 46–7 and necessitarianism 202–4
and the body 218, 229 and self-acceptance 224
and motion and rest 116, 119, 141, 166–7 and self-understanding 216–17
and essence 136 see also persistence
infinity reason as 176n25

and essences 12, 112, 136 of the self 176, 181, 188n50
of God see under God and self-acceptance 226
and individuation 141n13, 150, 155, 161n37, see also cognition; ideas; thought
164, 197, 199, 214 Koistinen, Olli 90n2, 91n5, 106n46
modes 18, 22, 22n28, 25, 53, 91, 141n13 Korsgaard, Christine 190n53
Nature 14, 15, 38, 114n5
necessity of 247 Lachterman, David 147n23
and perfection 37 Laerke, Mogans 30n52, 61n8, 64n15, 68n28,
priority over the finite 63n14 70n31, 76n49, 79n57, 83n66, 85n73
properties 18–19 LeBuffe, Michael 5n6, 170n8, 172n14, 175n20
substance 87 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 78
attributes of 17 complete concept theory 118n18
causal structures of 53, 88 and Conceptual Dependence
see also duration; eternity; time Monism 84n70, 85–9
inherence 31, 60n4 Eliot’s comparison with Bradley 1, 250, 256
and causation 31, 81–5 on existence 30
and conceiving 57, 70–4, 81–5, 87 on modality 21n22, 97, 99n27
as dependence 17, 60 on perfection 35–41
and God 82, 83 on the Principle of Sufficient Reason
Leibniz on 85 (PSR) 30
and ontological priority 65 on Spinoza 11, 33, 36, 85, 87, 89, 97, 137n1,
and predication 42n3, 73–4 185n45
and substance 70–1 and substance monism 17
intellect and substance pluralism 31, 58
as faculty 110n63 Lewis, David 167n50
God’s infinite 18, 20, 36, 47, 97, 138, 209 Lin, Martin 70n31, 114n7, 171n10, 186n47
human minds as part of 138, 141n13 Lloyd, Genevieve 20n20
perfection of 225 Locke, John 64, 239
and the Principle of Sufficient Reason 31 Loeb, Louis E. 15n6, 70n31
and self-improvement 9, 209–11, 212, 235 Longuenesse, Beatrice 251n42
and understanding of God 209 love 82, 99
see also minds; reason dangers of 222n45
Isherwood, Charles 2n2 of God 188, 196, 209, 223–4, 225
and necessitarianism 203
James, Susan 209n6 of self 221–2, 225
Jarrett, Charles 67n25, 170n8, 180n37 vs. self-acceptance 222–3
Joachim, Harold 14, 29, 32, 43, 151n28, 162, and self-understanding 210
163, 164, 166–7 as species of joy 222
joy 172, 174, 176, 186, 189, 221, see also affect; joy
see also affects, desire, sadness Lowe, E.J. 21n26, 66n23
internal vs. external causes 222, 223
and reason 212 Malebranche, Nicolas 34n63, 97
species of 221–3 Manning, Richard 134n43
see also love; power Markovits, Julia 190n53
Marshall, Colin 15n6, 69n30, 254n49
Kant, Immanuel 15n3, 34n63, 49, 64, 100n32 Marshall, Eugene 108n57, 186n47
Kisner, Matthew J. 5n6, 108n57, 170n8, 172n14, Martin, Christopher 91n4, 113n3, 118n17
176n24, 179n36, 180n37, 183n39, Martineau, James 16n8, 123n29
191n57, 221n42 Mason, Richard 74n40, 75n42, 77n50, 90n2,
knowledge 91n6, 92n8, 104n39
desire for 191 Matheron, Alexandre 146n21
of God 209–10, 225 Matson, Wallace 113n4
idealist theory of 239n18 McCullough, Lawrence 137n1
intuitive 223–4, 225 McDonough, Jeff 84n71, 143n16, 143n17
and joy 231 Melamed, Yitzhak 15n3, 19n17, 27n42, 30n52,
of own body 106–7 33n60, 61, 63n14, 67n25, 70n31, 73n36,
privation of 26 82–4, 83n67, 234n3
Mentalism 233, 239–45, 247 definition of 65, 70, 72, 87, 99

definition of 239 and duration 22, 106, 107–8
mereology 40, 41n85, 138–41 essences of 100, 120n24, 123, 127–35
metaphysics 59–63 and God 116
and conceptual dependence monism eternity of 99, 215n21, 216n22
59–64 explanatory structure 129
and dependence 17 and expression 21–2, 27, 248
and ethics 5, 12–13, 110–11, 159–60, and extension 124
189–200 finite 22, 28, 74, 77, 91, 93, 94–5, 102–4,
and perfection 33–41 164–5, 247
Meyer, Lodewijk 82 as individuals 161, 164–7
mind-body 2, 7, 17, 46, 229, 243 God 20, 21, 73n38, 74, 103, 247
and affections 107 and causation of 43, 50, 74
and affects 215–16 and ideas 204
appetite 172, 184 identity theory 17, 29, 77, 127n34, 235, 248,
causation 43, 50, 128 252, 254
composition 197n68 infinite 18, 22, 22n28, 25, 53, 91, 141n13
and existence 23 mind-body 107
and extension 43 and necessity see necessitarianism
Frankfurt on 217–18 plenitude 18–20, 24, 27, 32, 36–8, 42, 45,
and ideas 204 53, 201
identity theory 17, 29, 77, 127n34, 235, 248, and properties 25, 28, 91, 99, 105, 167
252, 254 and substance 65, 74, 76, 84
intra-attribute plenitude 43 and thought 24–5, 124, 241, 242
modes 107 see also bodies; individuals; minds;
and the self 193–4, 208 parallelism; singular things
and self-acceptance 226 monism
and thought 43 and diversity 7, 11–12, 14–16, 17, 28, 32n57,
see also bodies; minds 33, 35–6, 37, 43, 46, 48, 49, 54, 122,
minds 125, 247
as collection of ideas 107, 137 Parmenidean 33n59
composition 137, 141, 150 priority 58
eternality of 226 substance 14–15, 58, 59, 83, 85, 87, 89,
finite 63, 106 235, 252
essence of 120, 132 see also conceptual dependence monism;
and God’s essence 108n57 substance
limitations of 108 Montag, Warren 252n45
as part of God 107, 138 morality
and identity 219 and desire 169n2, 170, 211
individual 137–42 and individuation 235
and the self 193–4, 197n68 motivation for 182–9, 193
virtue of 35n67 and self interest 13, 177, 187–9, 190–1,
see also cognition; conception; ideas; 197, 203
mind-body; thought see also egoism; ethics; virtue
modality see necessitarianism Morrison, John 67n25
models 177–82 motion and rest 22, 147, 148, 150, 154, 155–6,
modes 8, 58, 99–101 160–1
acosmicism 12, 27, 27n42, 145, 161, 161n37, and bodies 116, 119, 141, 166–7
162, 164, 166, 229–30 and harmony 152, 160
and attributes 23, 43, 69, 234n3, 242 laws of 50, 210n11
comparison 20, 21 and persistence 141
expression of 248 motivation
broad vs. narrow concepts 25–7, 25n35 and desire 56, 173, 183, 189, 205, 208
and causation 69, 252 Frankfurt on 220
of self 94 and morality 12–13, 170, 182–9, 193, 195, 201
conception of 56, 238–9, 243 and reason 176, 184, 189
dependence on substance 73n34, 235 and self-improvement 212
sensitivity 95–101, 102 and self-interest 92, 111, 190–1, 198, 200
motivation (cont.) of God 34, 36, 36n70, 39, 42, 140, 208–9,
and self-understanding 172–3, 190n52 216, 232
and virtue 184 and God’s essence 118
and human nature 180, 180n37
Nadler, Steven 76n49, 191n57 Leibniz on 35n67
Nagel, Thomas 190n53 metaphysical 8, 11, 33–41, 44, 49, 54,
Nature 5, 90, 127, 138, 195, 237 168, 224
and attributes 246 and conceptual dependence monism
as complex individual 139, 149–50 58, 66, 88–9
explanation of 51, 68–9 and power 17, 39, 169–70
and extension 50, 69, 237, 243 and self-improvement 213
good and evil in 170n7 and theory of essences 39, 112–13
individuals as part of 24, 139, 206 see also harmony; parsimony
infinite 14, 15, 114n5 persistence 141, 142, 148, 235
modes as part of 215 see also individuation
perfection of 14, 36–7, 37–8 physics 4, 4n5, 22n28, 38, 136, 146–8, 167,
and reason 14 210–11, 235
see also God; human nature plenitude 18–28, 238n16
necessitarianism 11–12, 13, 58, 90, 90n1, 91, of attributes 49–50, 122
103n36, 104–5, 110–11, 203–4, 231, defense of 52–3, 126
253–4 expressive 19–24
and agency 205–8 intra-attribute 24–8, 38, 45, 110, 201–2, 224
and contingency 12, 90, 92–5, 101–2 see also perfection; Principle of Ontological
and essence 95 Plenitude (POP)
moderate 91n7, 92 pluralism 8, 43, 48, 54, 80, 142, 236–7, 238, 239
and modes 101, 201 power
nature of necessity 96–101 causal 128–31, 132, 206, 210
sources of necessity 99 desire for 172–3, 174, 177, 211
Newlands, Anna 143 and essences 112–13, 116n12, 116n15,
Newlands, Samuel 10n8, 22n30, 27n42, 30n51, 117n16, 120, 122, 124, 132n40, 159
32n58, 35n66, 36n70, 38n74, 39n80, explanatory 12, 113–19, 124, 132, 133, 205,
40n82, 57n1, 58n2, 89n79, 92n9, 97n16, 210, 212
97n21, 100n31, 103n36, 104n38, 105n43, as fundamental desire 202, 205
118n17, 161n38, 178n31, 234n2, 234n3, God’s 75, 116, 119
235n7, 250n40, 254n50, 256n55 and goodness 174
Newlands, Sophia 155 and imagination 180, 222n43
nihilism 21, 138, 146 and individuals 159, 160, 171, 193, 195
Nolan, Daniel 254n48, 255, 256 as joy 172
loss of 204
Oldenburg, Henry 71–2, 90n1, 140, 159, 192 man’s 114n5, 213, 231
of the mind 127–8, 210
pantheism 1, 43 and necessity 206–7
parallelism 237, 238, 249 and perfection 17, 39
definition 237 and reason 64, 177
and mentalism 243–4 and self-acceptance 222, 224, 225, 228,
see also attributes; mind-body 230–1
parsimony 11, 16–18, 28, 29, 168n51, 233 and self-improvement 13, 224
and identity 19, 37 and self-interest 9
and plenitude 32, 33, 34, 38, 40, 42, 52, 54, and virtue 159, 169, 204, 206, 209
134, 164, 168, 248 see also causation; joy; sadness
see also harmony; perfection Principle of Ontological Plenitude (POP) 30, 32
Parsons, Terence 115n8 Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) 5, 16,
Pasnau, Robert 22n29, 112n1 60, 87
Paul, L.A. 167n50 and causation 62
perfection 14–41 and conceptual dependence monism 64, 85, 86
degrees of 27 limitations of 29–33, 63
and diversity 16 and rationalist reduction 29–33, 85–7
and eternity 226n52 and substance monism 89
properties Schaffer, Jonathan 11, 40–1, 40n82, 41n85,

and causal power 131 58n2, 62n12, 66n24, 141n14
and conception 133, 227 Schechtman, Marya 217n23
and essences 120–1, 122 self-acceptance 221–32
essential 118 vs. glory 222–3
vs. nonessential 114–15 vs. love 221–2
and expression 37 and power 222, 224, 225, 228, 230–1
Frankfurt on 218 and reason 225
intensional 254n49 self-improvement 201–32
intrinsic 25, 25n35, 28, 42n4, 56, 107, 120–2, and essences 215–16, 223
122n26, 130, 131, 132–3 and ideas 205, 210–11
and moral motivation 167, 170, 171, 178, and intellect 9, 209–11, 212, 235
179n36, 186–7, 189–90, 203, 205 and motivation 212
and modes 25, 28, 91, 99, 105, 167 and perfection 213
propria 114–15 and power 13, 224
and reason 209
Quine, Willard Van Orman 46, 62n11, 112n1, 255 Shein, Noa 246n33
Sider, Theodore 58n2, 96n14
Rachels, James 190n52 singular things 75, 108, 114, 124, 142
rationalist reduction 29–33, 85–7 and causation 25, 109–10
Ravven, Heidi 199n71 Skiles, Alexander 63n13
Rea, Michael 58n2 Smith, A.D. 15n6, 123n30
reality 158 Springsteen, Bruce 100
degrees of 32, 35, 37, 143, 247 Steinberg, Diana 197n68
and perfection 34n63 Steinberg, Justin 179n36, 183n39, 186n48
and the Principle of Sufficient Reason Street, Sharon 189n51
(PSR) 63 Strickland, Lloyd 34n64, 41n86
reason 109–10, 138, 197, 198 substance
and desire 174n19, 176–7, 182–4, and affections 65
183–4, 210 and attributes 15, 17, 20–1, 22, 23, 48,
and eternity 110 114n6, 247
and ethics 175–8, 188 and independence 48
and God 36, 232 causation 53
and joy 212, 225 and causation 253
and motivation 184 definition of 45, 59, 70–1, 71–2, 87
and nature 14 Descartes on 47, 48, 114n6
and obligation 177 essences 100, 122, 123–7
power of 64 existence of 98
and self-acceptance 225 God as 16, 54, 75, 96, 98, 103, 162n43
and self-improvement 209 infinite causal structures 53
and self-understanding 231–2 and inherence 70–1
and virtue 177 Leibniz on 85
see also intellect and modes 65, 73n34, 74, 76, 84
referential opacity 46, 69–70, 252–5 monism 14–15, 58, 59, 83, 85, 87, 89,
Renz, Ursula 91n4, 105n45, 229 235, 252
Rescher, Nicholas 34n64 pluralism 87
Rice, Lee C. 162n39, 194n62 see also God; modes; Nature
Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg 195n63, 197, 207, Sullivan, Meghan 105n41
214, 224
Rosen, Gideon 255n52 teleology 2–3, 34, 39, 63n14
Rouset, Bernard 176n24 thought
Rovane, Carol 198n70 as attribute 19, 21, 31–2, 50, 73, 124,
Rutherford, Donald 34, 175n22, 176n26, 216n22, 241
183n39, 183n40 and causation 60n5
vs. conception 239–45
Sacksteder, William 153n31, 158–60 Descartes on 78
sadness 172, 204 and extension 97, 234–5, 235n5
see also affect and modes 24–5
thought (cont.) and desire 170, 187–9

priority of 55n19, 89, 234–9 and essences 112–13
see also attributes; cognition; idealism; ideas; and motivation 184
knowledge and necessity 206
time and perfection 39
and causation 131 and power 159, 169, 204, 206, 209
and composition 148, 148n25 and reason 177
and essence 118n19 see also ethics; goodness; morality
and God 35
and modality 162 Ward, Thomas M. 116, 118n17
see also duration; eternity; infinity wholes 114n5, 137–41, 149, 151–63, 192, 196–9
Tschirnhaus, Ehrenfried Walter von 28, 64 will 220
Wilson, Jessica 85n72
universals 178, 179n36, 180n37 Wilson, Margaret 27n42, 67n25, 88, 88n78,
252, 255
Vader, Darth 133 Wolff, Christian 78, 251
values 172–5 Wolfson, Harry Austryn 15n7, 65n16, 123n27,
and desire 120, 173–4 125n32
see also ethics; goodness
Van Cleve, James 49 Yenter, Timothy 32n57
Van Inwagen, Peter 137, 138n4, 145n20 Youpa, Andrew 5n6, 170n8, 179n36, 183n39,
VanderMeer, Jeff 1, 10, 233 186n48, 191n57
Vardoulakis, Dimitris 3n3
Viljanen, Valtteri 75, 82
virtue 17, 90n1, 169–70, 174n19, 177, 187, 190 Zylstra, Stephen 83n68
Index of Ethics Citations
Ia1: 72, 73 Ip18: 82, 225

Ia3: 74n39 D: 67, 83
Ia4: 27, 67 Ip19: 91n3
Ia5: 68, 118 D: 76n46, 99n27
Ia7: 94 S: 99n27
Id1: 59, 67, 70, 98, 113n2, 128n35 Ip20:
Id2: 128, 163n43 D: 23n31
Id3: 16n9, 59, 62, 70, 71, 78, 87 C1: 99n27
Id4: 235 C2: 99n27
Id5: 62 Ip21: 91n3, 99n27, 100, 103, 141n13
Id6: 16n9, 19, 119n21, 123, 124, 246, 246n32, 247 Ip22: 91n3, 99n27, 100, 103, 141n13
Id7: 206, 212 D: 22n27
Ip1: 23, 65, 65n20 Ip23: 100, 103, 120n24
Ip2: 53n14 D: 23n31
D: 71, 118 Ip24: 94, 100, 117, 118n17, 120n24
Ip3: 27n44, 53n14, 63n14 D: 98, 100
D: 67, 68 Ip25: 27n44, 118n17
Ip4: D: 67
D: 65n19 S: 117
Ip6: 65n18 C: 20, 21n25, 22, 23n31, 118,
Ip7: 120n24 142, 247
D: 98 Ip27: 247n37
Ip8: 65 Ip28: 25n34, 104, 120n24, 141n13
D: 54n17, 62n9 D: 21, 74, 74n39, 77, 103, 23n31
S1: 21n24 S: 82n62
S2: 64, 65, 67, 76, 78n54, 98, 117, 143n16 Ip29: 90
Ip9: 37 S: 23, 248n39
Ip10: 17, 48, 69, 97n19, 124, 235n9, 237, 247 Ip32
S: 19n16, 21n22, 23, 23n31, 39n79, 46, 91n3, C2: 74n39
99n27, 109n60, 114n6, 127, 237, 241, Ip33: 90
241n24, 246, 246n32, 246n33, 247 S1: 90, 95, 96, 99, 101, 101n33, 104,
D: 253 106, 158
Ip11: 16n9, 19n16, 91n3, 96n13, 98, S2: 36, 54n17, 119n21, 206, 206n3
120n24, 235n10 Ip34: 75, 116
D: 5, 37n72, 39, 62, 62n9, 64, 66, 76n46, 117 D: 116n14, 116n15, 117n16
S: 116n15, 139n7, 246n32 Ip35: 74n41, 75, 76, 95
Ip12: 139 D: 95, 117n16
D: 139 Ip36: 43, 74n39, 74n41, 116, 117, 124
Ip13: 139 D: 74n39, 117
Ip14: 16, 87, 235n10 IApp: 27, 36, 37, 39, 63n14, 139n7,
D: 19, 19n16, 23n31, 37, 246n32 169, 169n1, 172, 178n32, 178n34,
Ip15: 16, 18, 19, 59, 76, 82, 82n62, 87 187n49, 232
D: 65n17, 73n34, 87 IId1: 20, 23n31, 141, 242n25, 244
S: 55n18, 93n11, 139, 140, 140n10, 140n11 IId2: 113, 113n4, 114, 115, 115n9, 116, 120
Ip16: 18, 20, 74, 74n39, 75, 76, 82, 82n62 IId3: 240
D: 19n16, 20n18, 37, 99, 117, 118 IId4: 107, 107n53
C1: 74n39 IId6: 37n71
Ip17: IId7: 142, 143, 144, 145, 145n19, 145n20,
S: 74, 75, 82, 92, 97n17, 97n18, 99, 99n26, 146n21, 147, 148, 192
104, 116, 117n16 IIa1: 92
280 Index of Ethics Citations
IIp1: 19n16, 73, 97n18, 235n9, 237, 240, 242, IIp23: 172n14
247n37 IIp24: 31n54, 107n50
D: 21, 23n31, 98n22, 241 D: 143n16, 150, 152, 162
S: 39n79, 244n31 IIp25: 25n36, 26n40, 31n54
IIp2: 21n25, 139n9, 235n9, 237, 241, 242 IIp26: 31n54
D: 241 IIp28: 25n36, 31n54, 107n50
IIp3: 235n9 IIp29: 25n36, 31n54
S: 19n14, 116n14 C: 26n40
IIp4: 235n9 IIp30: 31n54, 106, 107n50, 107n51
IIp5: 27n44, 235n9, 242n25, 244 D: 108n58
D: 23n31 IIp31: 31n54, 106, 107n51, 110
IIp6: 7, 15n4, 27n44, 43, 50, 50n13, 51, 52, 69, C: 106, 108, 109
70, 93n11, 124, 235n9, 235n10, 242, 243, IIp34: 26
243n28, 243n29, 252, 254 IIp35: 26
D: 50n13, 242, 243, 243n28, 246 IIp36: 139
C: 242, 245 D: 108n56
IIp7: 15n4, 17n11, 27n44, 70, 235n9, 235n10, IIp37: 113, 139n8
237, 242n25 D: 115n9
S: 17, 17n11, 19n16, 23, 31n55, 43n6, 47, 48, IIp38: 108n57, 110, 139n8
50, 51, 67n26, 68, 69, 76n46, 109n60, 139n7, IIp39: 139n8
237, 243, 244, 244n31, 246, 248, 248n37 IIp40
IIp8: 75 S1: 25n36, 178, 178n31, 246n32, 247n37
S: 75 S2: 176n25
IIp9: 107 IIp41: 26n40
C: 107 IIp43
IIp10: 120 D: 26n39
D: 115n9 IIp44: 109, 110
S: 114, 115n9 D: 109
C: 114 C1: 110n62
IIp11: 107 C2: 109
C: 17n11, 108, 138, 141n13, 241n22 IIp45: 27n44, 108n57, 123n30
IIp13: 107n47, 107n48, 150n27 D: 124
Def: 137, 143n15, 146n22, 147 IIp46: 108n57
A2'': 137, 161n37 IIp47: 108n57, 179
L1: 142 IIp48: 184n41, 185
L2: 242, 243 S: 17n11
L4: 28n45, 116n11, 141, 147 IIp49: 17n11, 110n63, 184n41, 185
L5: 116n11, 137n2, 141 D: 78, 98n22, 99n28, 115n9, 240n19
L6: 116n11, 137n2, 141 S: 39n79, 240n20
L7: 22n27, 116n11, 137n2, 214n19 C: 17n11
L7s: 38, 137, 137n2, 139, 141n13, 149, 153, IIIPref: 5
155, 161, 197n68, 214 IIId1: 24n33, 129, 130, 132n40, 206
Post 1: 107n47, 137, 144, 149 IIId2: 24n33, 129, 130, 131, 132, 132n40,
Post 3: 138 206, 221
Post 4: 149 IIId3: 206, 213n16
Post 6: 116n11 IIIp1
IIp14: 116n11, 150n27 D: 107n53
IIp15: 107n47, 116n11, 137, 138, 150n27 IIIp2: 43, 50, 124
IIp16: 26n40, 27n44, 107n49 D: 243n29
C1: 107n49 S: 17n10, 22n28, 43, 50, 183, 184,
C2: 107n49 247n35, 248n39
IIp17: IIIp3
S: 110n62 D: 120n23, 131n38
C: 109n59 S: 212n15
IIp20: 17n11 IIIp4: 117, 118n19, 171
IIp21: 244n30 IIIp5: 117, 171
S: 17n10, 43n6 IIIp6: 117, 171, 213n17
index of ethics citations 281
IIIp7: 113n2, 116, 116n12, 120, 121, 122, IIIGenDef: 39n78, 113n2, 185
122n26, 124, 186 IVPref: 15n5, 17n11, 38, 39n78, 100,
D: 113n2, 117, 121, 121n25, 122, 130, 132, 116n12, 117n15, 169, 178, 179n36,
132n40, 133 183, 213
IIIp8: 118n19 IVd1: 130n37, 170n4, 174, 187
D: 116n15 IVd2: 170n4
IIIp9: 120n23, 132, 172, 173 IVd3: 24n33, 25, 93n11, 94, 101, 122n26
D: 131n38, 172n14 IVd4: 24n33, 25, 93n11, 104
S: 172, 187 IVd7: 183, 187
IIIp11: 39n76 IVd8: 17n11, 113n2, 170
S: 172n13, 204n2 IVa1: 159, 195
IIIp12: 171 IVp1: 170n6
IIIp13 S: 25n36
S: 222n44 IVp2: 170n6, 215, 226n51
IIIp17: IVp4: 206, 222n45
S: 186n47 D: 114n5, 116n15, 139n7, 215
IIIp27 C: 196n64
C3: 186n47 IVp7: 186n47
IIIp28: 186 IVp8: 186n47, 250n40
IIIp29 D: 174
S: 170n4, 174n18 IVp9: 186n47
IIIp30 IVp10: 186n47
S: 221, 222, 222n44 IVp11: 186n47
IIIp31: IVp12: 186n47
C: 196n65 IVp13: 186n47
IIIp33: 222n45 IVp14: 184n43, 186n47
IIIp34: 222n45 IVp15: 186n47
IIIp35: 222n45 IVp16: 186n47
IIIp38: 222n45 IVp17: 186n47, 186n47
IIIp39 S: 231
S: 169n2, 170n6, 173n17, 174, 174n18, IVp18: 139n8, 186n47
178n29, 187 S: 173, 174n19, 175, 175n20, 175n22, 175n23,
IIIp44 176n24, 188n50, 189, 190, 192, 193, 196,
D: 109n59 197n68, 198, 199
IIIp48: 192, 203, 204 D: 177
IIIp50 IVp19: 171n12, 186
S: 222n43 D: 113n2
IIIp52 IVp20: 169n3, 170n4, 171n12, 190
D: 109n59 S: 172n14, 186
IIIp53 IVp21: 171n12, 185
D: 109n59 D: 171
IIIp55 IVp22: 169n3, 171n12
S: 109n59, 222n46 C: 177
IIIp56: 173n15 IVp23: 130, 132, 210, 219
IIIp57: 173n15 D: 210
D: 113n2 IVp24: 175n22
S: 193n59 D: 175n22
IIIp58 IVp25: 183
D: 210 D: 184
IIIp59 IVp26:
S: 213 D: 176
IIIDefAff IVp28: 246n32
1: 113n2, 114n5, 127, 132n40, 173, 183 IVp29: 193n59
3: 204n2 IVp30: 193n59
6: 185n44, 221 D: 170n4
22: 82 IVp33: 208
28: 222n43, 222n46 IVp34: 196n65, 208
282 Index of Ethics Citations
IVp35: 175n22, 175n23, 191, 193n59, 196, IVp67: 178n29

196n65 D: 175n23
D: 175n22 IVp68: 178n29
S: 196n64 IVp69: 178n29
C1: 175n22, 199 IVp70: 178n29
C2: 175n22, 188, 191 IVp71: 178n29
IVp36 IVp72: 178n29
D: 175n22 D: 175n23
S: 175n22 IVp73: 178n29
IVp37: 159n35, 191 D: 175n23
D: 175n22, 175n23, 188, 196n65 S: 210n9
S1: 15n5, 170n4, 174, 175n22, 193n59 IVApp:
S2: 170, 170n5, 175n22, 177n28 1: 24
IVp38: 209n6 4: 177, 209, 210, 223, 225
IVp39: 159, 209n6 6: 139n7
S: 226n51, 230n58 9: 196
IVp40: 175n22 12: 195
IVp45 13: 175n21, 196
S: 139n7 24: 139
IVp46: 175n22 25: 175n21
D: 175n22 26: 176, 176n24
IVp47 27: 139n7, 209n6
S: 175, 175n22 31: 231
IVp50: 175n22, 175n23, 176 32: 221n41, 231
D: 175n22 VPref: 139n7
S: 175n22 Va2: 117, 117n16, 118, 121
C: 175n23 Vp3: 215n20
IVp51 C: 210n8
D: 175n22 Vp4: 177n27, 211
IVp52: 225 S: 174n19, 175n20, 176n27, 210, 211n14
D: 225 Vp6: 111, 203, 204, 209
S: 223 S: 204
IVp54: 170n4, 175n22 Vp8:
S: 175n23 D: 121n25
IVp56 Vp9: 203n1
D: 175n22 D: 116n12, 127
IVp58 Vp10: 176, 209n6
S: 175n23, 223 S: 175n20, 181, 182
IVp59: 215 Vp15: 209
D: 170, 176, 212, 216 Vp18:
S: 25n36, 210n8, 211n13, 215n20 S: 210n8, 215
IVp60: 139n7 Vp20: 25n36
D: 116n11, 116n12, 194n61 S: 210n10
IVp61: Vp21: 23n31
D: 183, 189n50 Vp22: 23n31, 27n44
IVp62: 175n23 Vp23: 240
D: 175n23 Vp24: 210n8
IVp63: 176 Vp25:
D: 175n22 D: 116n12
S: 178n29 Vp27: 224n48
IVp65: 175n22 D: 223
D: 175n22 Vp29:
C: 175n22 D: 23, 98n22, 215n21
IVp66: 175n22 S: 215n21
S: 178n29 Vp30: 68, 225
C: 175n22 D: 215n21
index of ethics citations 283
Vp32: Vp39: 226n52

D: 68, 225 S: 209n6
C: 224n48 Vp40: 39, 39n77, 226n52
Vp34: 215 S: 141n13, 216n22
Vp36: C: 216n22
S: 223n47, 225 Vp41:
C: 225 D: 176
Vp38: 224n48, 226, 226n52 Vp42:
D: 226 D: 209n6
S: 209 S: 6, 178n29, 180, 213, 222, 224n48, 227, 232

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Reconceiving Spinoza

3.1 The Essences of Substance 123

1. Spinoza Studies Today

and philosophical naturalism can provide important contributions to contemporary

more innocuous-looking uses of expressions like “conceived as” or “insofar as it is

If true, one obvious implication of Spinoza’s substance monism is that finite

3.1 The Nature of Attributes, Modes, and Expressing

“characterize” literally: attributes provide substances with a character, a nature.21 Or, if

seamlessly between expression as metaphysical characterizing and expression as

3.2 Intra-Attribute Mode Plenitude

4. The Limits of the PSR

be self-explanatory.56 But if attribute diversity is sufficiently principled by virtue of

5. The Metaphysics of Perfection, Then and Now

reasons in this way. He thinks one particular combination of ontological parsimony

According to these passages, harmony is the ratio of identity to diversity. Leibniz

Leibniz applies this structural measure of perfection to both individuals and

Even if interpretively accurate, positing ontological structures on the basis of a principle

1. Trouble in the Spinozistic Paradise

2. The Conceptual to the Rescue

of distinct fundamental attributes entails the non-identity of their substantial bearers.

Lust couldn’t have said it better.

and applies it to his own conceptualist strategy to reach a deeply anti-Cartesian

conceptual distinctness of the attributes, described above in terms of their unique

5. Causal conceptual identity: Causal relations are conceptual relations.

distinct. In effect, Spinoza piggybacks the consistency of multiple fundamental causal

13. Consistent conceptual variability → (partial) reconciliation of

(conceptual variability). This sensitivity and consistent variability follows from

1. The Task of Metaphysics

itself or another. Everything stands in relations of existential dependence, a point

locutions in different contexts, there will not be a proliferation of kinds or instances

Spinoza’s belief in the possibility of metaphysical progress is not an instance of

2. The Case for CDM

A related form of dependence is ontological priority, which Spinoza describes as

either in itself or in another” (Ia1). On my interpretation, this represents no great shift

2.4 Conceptual Involvement

giving conceptual dependence a kind of discernible structure.56 If so, Spinoza’s CDM,

2.5 Eliminativism and the Nature of Grounding

In the end, I am inclined to think Spinoza embraces the starker eliminative

2.6 Collapsing Causation and Inherence

non-identity should be rejected on grounds of inexplicability. I described this move

1. Warm-up: Contingency, Necessity,

See especially Mason, “Spinoza on Modality” and Miller, “Spinoza’s Possibilities.”

Although it is a little ambiguous, Spinoza seems to be claiming that existing finite

2. Spinoza’s Conceptualist Account of Modality

instantiation is explained by other properties those objects have. Likewise, if modal

2.1 The Nature of God’s Necessity

own necessary existence: “God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each

Here Spinoza invokes geometrical containment as the clearest example of conceptual

2.2 The Nature of Modality for Modes

Unlike substance, however, the essences of modes do not conceptually involve

following-from is a conceptual relation for Spinoza. Here, I have claimed that

3. The Distribution of Modality

4. Spinoza’s Modal Pessimism

Spinoza explains inadequate representation here as involving partial or incomplete

Spinoza seems to be claiming that we do not represent particular things except as

entails that we invariably represent existing particular things as existing contingently.

1. Essences as Explanatory Powers

supposed to be essential, whereas the latter is supposed to be a merely necessary, but

3. A “Hopeless” Problem and Spinoza’s

3.1 The Essences of Substance

Spinoza treats conceptually involving a particular attribute as equivalent to involving a

3.2 The Essences of Modes Across Attributes

3.3 The Essences of Modes Within an Attribute