STANLEY C. MARTENS
S P I N O Z A ON A T T R I B U T E S
In his discussion of Spinoza's views on attributes, Wolfson divides the commentators on Spinoza into two groups, those who believe that attributes for Spinoza are extra inteIlectum, exist outside the mind, and those who believe that attributes fol Spinoza are in intellectu, have no existence outside the m i n d ) I want to begin by considering an argument to the effect that attributes for Spinoza are in intelIectu. 1 think the argument is mistaken. As a preliminary to showing how it is mistaken, I will develop my own interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine on attributes, an extra intellectum interpretation. The argument for Spinoza's considering attributes to be in intellectu is the following: Spinoza says that the only things extra intelleetum are substances and modes. (See the demonstration of Prop. 4 and the demonstration of Prop. 15, Book I, Ethics.) For Spinoza, no attribute is a mode. Attributes are conceived through themselves (Prop. I0, Book I, Ethics), and modes are not conceived through themselves (Def. 5, Book I, Ethics). Spinoza believed that there is one and only one substance (God), but more than one attribute (there are infinitely many). These two positions taken together are clearly incompatible with 'every attribute is a substance'. So, Spinoza couldn't have held that every attribute is a substance. Neither would he have held the absurb position that some one attribute is a substance, and the rest are not. So, he must have held that no attribute is a substance. If Spinoza held that no attribute is a mode, and no attribute is a substance, and that the only things extra intellectum are substances and modes, he must have held that attributes are not extra intellectum. So, he must have held that attributes are in intellectu. This argument seems powerful, but the conclusion that Spinoza held that attributes are in intelleetu is hard to square with a number o f things Spinoza Synthese 37 (1978) 107-111. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
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said. Spinoza said that bodies are modification of the attribute Extension. Modes exist in what they are modes of. If bodies exist in something in intellectu, how can bodies be extra intellectum? Spinoza said that the attributes of God are eternal, and that eternity is existence (Def. 8 and Prop. 19, Book I, Ethics). It is clear that Spinoza has in mind here existence extra in tellec turn. I think the argument concluding that attributes for Spinoza are in intell, eetu is mistaken, but I have to develop some preliminaries before I show how it is mistaken. In the Ethics we meet with expressions of the following form: x insofar as it is F. Examples are the following: "God insofar as he constitutes the human mind" (demoristration of Prop. 13, Book II, Ethics), and "God insofar as he is infinite". These expressions are used as subject expressions and do not seem to be eliminable from all contexts in which they occur. For Spinoza, a logical feature of constructions of this kind is that it is not true in general that a statement of the form 'x insofar as it is F is G' is incompatible with a corresponding statement of the form 'x insofar as it is H is not G', where ' F ' and 'H' are replaced with different predicates. God insofar as he constitutes the divine intellect has no inadequate ideas; God insofar as he constitutes the human intellect has some inadequate ideas. I think Spinoza's use of thes constructions sheds ligl-/t on his views on attributes. I suggest that for Spinoza, an attribute of a substance is that substance insofar as it is in some essential respect. The attribute Extension is God insofar as he is extended, and the attribute Thought is God insofar as he is a thinking thing. This interpretation explains Spinoza's remark in the scholium after Prop. 15 o f Book I that "extended substance is one of the infinite attributes of God". 2 I think my interpretation explains several previously unexplained things in Spinoza's works. In the Short Treatise Spinoza sometimes uses 'attribute' as if it were a synonym for 'substance'. Also, the definition of 'attribute' which Spinoza offers to Oldenburg in Letter 2 is about the same as the definition of 'substance' presented in the Ethics. In Letter 9 Spinoza says to De Vries that by 'substance' and 'attribute' he means the same thing except that "it is called 'attribute' with respect to the intellect, which attributes such and such a nature to substance". 3
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An attribute of a substance is that substance; it is that substance insofar as it has a certain nature. Is my interpretation of what Spinoza thought an attribute is compatible with Spinoza's definition of what an attribute is in the Ethics? That definition (Def. 4, Book I) reads "that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance". The definition is unclear because it is not cleat- what is meant by "constituting the essence of". I suggest that what Spinoza had in mind when he wrote the above definition might better have been put in these words: that which is the object of the intellect's perception when the intellect perceives that a substance has some feature which is essential to it. The attribute Extension would then be the object of the intellect's perception when it perceives that God is extended. The attribute Thought would be the object of the intellect's perception when it perceives that God thinks. Compatibility with my interpretation is achieved if the object in the first case is taken to be God insofar as he is extended, and the object in the second case is taken to be God insofar as he thinks. Taking the objects in this way illuminates certain points of disagreement that Spinoza had with Cartesian philosophy. According to Cartesian philosophy, attributes are not substances, but are rather the properties that substances possess. On the Cartesian model of conception, to conceive a given substance is to conceive the properties which it possesses. We have no idea of what 'lies behind' the properties. Leibniz in the notes he made on the Ethics indicated this Cartesian model of conception: " . . . it seems rather that there are some things which are in themselves, though they are not conceived through themselves. And so men commonly conceive of substance. ''4 Spinoza certainly disagreed with this view. He did not approve of the use of abstract entities in explanations, and he did not think that our knowledge of substance was in any way mediated or indirect. My interpretation of Spinoza's views on attributes is an extra intellectum interpretation. Every attribute of a substance is that substance insofar as it is in some essential respect. So, every attribute of a substance is that substance. So, every attribute is a substance. Attributes are extra inteIlecturn because substance is extra intellectum. If I say that Spinoza held that every attribute is a substance, I must answer the objection that Spinoza held both that there is at most one substance and
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that there is more than one attribute, and that he would have seen the incompatibility of these positions with the view that every attribute is a substance. My answer is that I do not think that Spinoza would have held that "there is at most one substance", "there is more than one attribute", and "every attribute is a substance" are incompatible. In Reference and Generality Geach presents a non-standard notion o f identity. He maintains that "x is the same G as y " does not follow from "x is the same F as y " and "x is a G " and "y is a G".s I do not endorse this position of Geach's, but 1 think it was implicitly held by Spinoza. I think Spinoza would agree with the following. Extension is the same substance as Thought, but a different attribute from Thought. To say that there is at most one substance is to say that for any substance x and any substance y, x is the same substance as y. To say that there is more than one attribute is to say that there is an attribute x and an attribute y such that x is a different attribute from y. There is more than one attribute, but every attribute is the same substance as every other attribute. In Spinoza's discussion of mind-body identity in Book II of the Ethics there is support for my contention that Spinoza had a non-standard notion of identity. For Spinoza, no mode of one attribute is the same mode as a mode of some other attribute (see the demonstration of Prop. 5, Book II). A person's body is a mode of Extension, and a person's mind is a mode of Thought. So, the body of a person is not the same mode as the mind of that person. Spinoza claims in Prop. 13 of Book II that the mind o f a person is the idea of the body of that person. In the scholium after Prop. 7 of Book II Spinoza says that "a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing". So, the body of a person is the same thing as the mind of that person. Consider 'Spinoza's mind and Spifioza's body are the same thing, but different modes'. Spinoza would have accepted this proposition. Let us return to the argument given at the beginning with the conclusion that attributes for Spinoza are in intellectu. It should be clear where I think the mistake in the argument lies: in the assumption that Spinoza would have considered "every attribute is a substance" incompatible with "there is one and only one substance" and "there is more than one attribute",
University of Houston
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NOTES i H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy o f Spinoza, Schocken Books, New York, 1969, Vol. 1, p. 146. 2 I am and will be quoting from R. H. M. Elwes' translation of the Ethics: The Chief Works' of Benedict de Spinoza, Dover Publications, New York, 1955, Vol. 2. 3 I am following A. Wolf's numbering and translations in The Correspondence o f Spinoza, L. MacVeagh, New York, 1928. 4 Translated in E.M. Curley, Spinoza's Metaphysics, Harvard Univeristy Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, p. 15. s Reference and Generality, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, p. 157; also see 'Identity', Review of Metaphysics 21 (1967).
