Spinoza – “Naturadeus”:
Metaphor of the Perfect Diamond
Bruno is sitting at the writing desk. He no longer has
a laptop in front of him; he is leaning over an old and almost decayed volume
of Spinoza’s Ethics, again putting down his notes.
Bruno writing. And now I’d like to explain to you the essence of Spinoza’s philosophy
by means of a metaphor. Imagine a wonderfully beautiful diamond with
innumerable finely cut facets glittering in rays of light in all rainbow
colors. The diamond is named NATURADEUS
and is truly an unusual diamond: the light comes not from without nor does it
pour from it; rather, the rays circle within, so that they are reflected from
its innumerable facets, refracting in its crystal prisms – the diamond is
perfect in its immensely complex structure. Can you imagine it?
John, from under Bruno’s pen. I’m trying to, master. Unfortunately diamonds are
not my cup of tea… Besides, I can’t understand how this perfect diamond of
yours is visible when all light remains within. It is more like a black hole
than a diamond!
Bruno smiles and writes on. Wait, I haven’t told you everything. NATURADEUS is namely perfect also in
the sense that there is nothing, really nothing outside it – including you,
watching it in your mind! Imagine yourself as one of the diamond’s facets, and
me as another facet; and between us, through the system (actually a little
system) of prisms formed by our facets combined with other, near and distant
facets, shoot the rays, refracting, dispersing in all directions, traveling to
other, distant and unknown facets, and others returning to my mirror or yours;
among them are also those which reflect only on your or my facet, and the ones
which unite (interfere), though only temporarily, since the interplay of light
and colors on every facet is temporary, transitory; it’s only NATURADEUS as a whole that is
invariable and eternal.
John.
What about facets themselves… do they also change in time or do they remain
always the same, on the same spot?
Bruno.
Everything changes, not only the interplay of rays on individual facets, but
also facets themselves, some more quickly, others more slowly – however, in
this change within the diamond universe there is a precisely determined and
unshakeable order, which remains always the same, since it is necessarily
determined by the laws of reflection, refraction and movement of light in
general, and by the laws of movement and transformation, as well as coming
about and perishing of facets. We could extend the metaphor by saying that the
facets might bend in every possible way, but let us stick to “Euclidean” facets
for the sake of clarity.
John. So
NATURADEUS is our world, our
universe… however, if we are two minute facets within its immenseness, how are
we to know what it is in its whole? And how are we to know at all it is in its
whole – a diamond?
Bruno.
Good question! Well, there is an answer to it, even two different answers,
since there are two ways for an individual facet to know the wholeness of the
diamond: first, when it gazes its infinite diamond sky, extending into great heights,
depths and distances, it can see that in its largest scale, still accessible to
the gaze, NATURADEUS is the same
in all directions (isotropic), despite its structural diversity on the smaller
(local) scales; thus it can infer according to the “diamond principle” that NATURADEUS is unified (homogenous) in
general, not only within its horizon where the unification is obvious –
although such inference has a weakness that isn’t logically necessary, but only
fairly probable, or in other words, it is based on the inductive principle of
experiential generalization, rather than on the deductive necessity of logic.
The second way of knowing, or rather seeing the wholeness is more reliable,
though dependent on the ability of mirroring of every individual facet: NATURADEUS is implicitly present in all
facets, even in yours and mine – but the mirrors are most often not clear
enough to reflect the pure image of the diamond as a whole.
John.
So NATURADEUS has a fractal
structure – each part, each facet has the same structure as the whole diamond?
And each underfacet in the manner of each superfacet…?
Bruno.
Yes, indeed, although only potentially, because actually only the form of the
whole is perfect, not the form of its parts… or at least not yet.
John.
So NATURADEUS develops in time?
Bruno.
It does seem it develops, at least within our horizon; but on some facets,
which are specially cut, NATURADEUS
is reflected in its whole as invariable, eternal.
John.
What is its shape like? The shape of the whole…
Bruno.
Spherical – since the sphere is the most perfect geometrical body. However, NATURADEUS is not an ordinary sphere, such
as we know from classical geometry; rather, it is a perfect sphere in its
infinity, sphaera cuius centrum est ubique,
circumferentia nullibi (the sphere whose centre is everywhere,
circumference nowhere).
John.
So there is no hierarchical order within the diamond sphere, no facet is higher
or lower than any other facet? None is closer to the centre, none to the circumference?
Bruno.
All facets are at an equal distance from the centre and circumference – both
infinitely far and infinitely close. However, as I said before: the light is
not reflected by all the facets equally: NATURADEUS
is perfect as a whole, but individual facets are either closer or further from
its absolute perfection.
John.
Master, although it’s starting to dawn on me what your metaphor is all about, I
still have a question: how can NATURADEUS
serve as a metaphor for Spinoza’s system? Could you explain to me how the
features of this imagined perfect diamond relate to the theses of Spinoza’s Ethics… This is your primary intention,
isn’t it?
Bruno.
Of course, we can now proceed to the explanation, now that NATURADEUS is given to our mind’s eye…
It is best to start with Spinoza’s definitions of the substance, attributes and
modes from the beginning of the first book of Ethics:
“By
substance, I mean that which is in
itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a
conception can be formed independently of any other conception.” (Spinoza, Ethics, 1d3)[1]
“By
attribute, I mean that which the
intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.” ˙(Ibid., 1d4)
“By mode, I mean the modifications (‘affectiones’) substance, or that
which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.” (Ibid., 1d5)
A perfect diamond, called NATURADEUS, is a metaphor of the
substance, i.e. “that which is in
itself, and is conceived through itself”, since the metaphor excludes every
higher concept or representation, which would form the basis for the conception
or image of the perfect diamond; neither is it contained in anything else,
except in itself. Mind perceives on it, or better in it, two “attributes”,
which determine its essence: “the extended thing”, i.e. matter, which forms
facets, and “the thinking thing”, i.e.
light, which creates rays. The modes
or affections of the substance (its modes of existence or states of affairs,
which are countless in number) are illustrated by individual facets and rays,
as well as by complex structures of facets and rays, which do not exist in
themselves, but in “the Other”, that is to say in the perfect diamond, which
makes them “visible” to the mind’s eye. Analytical philosopher Jonathan Bennett,
one of the leading contemporary interpreters of Spinoza, in his treatise
“Spinoza’s Metaphysics”, included in the collection The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, calls the modes of the extended
substance “abstract particulars”, such as a blush on a face or a sparrow’s fall
– this is what he says:
“… in my Study
of Spinoza’s Ethics (Bennett 1984) I have presented a basically coherent
metaphysical story according to which finite bodies do indeed relate to the
extended world as blushes do to faces or as falls do to sparrows.”[2]
Bennett relates his
“metaphysical story” on Spinoza to the thought that “the extended thing” can be
understood as the absolute space,
which was arguably advocated by Spinoza together with Cartesius (and in
opposition to Leibniz) – in which the extended modes as individual segments or
“regions” of the absolute space are subject to change (they blush, fall,
“become pebbly” etc.), while the “extended substance as the absolute space
remains eternally identical (Bennett here refers to the extensive footnote or sholium
to the 15th proposition of the first part of Ethics (1p15s), where Spinoza discusses space and the non-existence
of emptyness). If we apply this Bennett’s thought to our metaphor of the
perfect diamond, we could say that its individual facets, i.e. “extended modes” change in the course of time by glittering
and fading, by turning from red to blue, and beside that, as we said, they can
change in shape, so that they can be at times triangles and at times squares
etc. – while the diamond matter, “the extended substance” remains always the
same (although you shouldn’t imagine the matter here too materially, because it
is extension itself, actually “emptiness”). Analogously, Bennett’s “story”
could also be applied to “the thinking substance”, since both of them, the
extended and thinking substance are one
and the same; Spinoza’s basic tenet is namely “substance monism”.[3] In
the context of our metaphor, John, we could say that individual rays or beams
of light, which travel among facets and are reflected in them, change in time
like our thoughts, which think at one time this idea and at another that one,
for instance now a triangle, now a square etc., while their “thinking
substance”, the light of the perfect diamond as a whole remains the same. Modes,
whether extended or thinking, exist only in the substance, which is one, and is
essentially determined by the attributes of extension and thinking. – Well, so
much of Bennett’s “story”; let us consider now by means of our metaphor some of
Spinoza’s propositions or theses. Let us start with the 11th proposition of the
first part of Ethics:
“God, or substance, consisting
of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality,
necessarily exists.” (Spinoza, Ethics,
1p9)
NATURADEUS exists necessarily, since Its (or His, or Her)
existence is the necessary condition for both logical and natural necessity of
events taking place in it. For how could laws of logic be necessary, if there
wasn’t for a necessary existence of Logos, which grounds them? And how could
laws of nature be necessary, if there wasn’t for a necessary existence of
Nature, which encompasses them all? Expressed in a metaphor: how could
individual rays and individual facets exist in their necessary “order and connection”,
if NATURADEUS had no necessary
existence? – And since laws of logic and nature are necessary, it follows that their “being or substance”
necessarily exists. In a metaphor: NATURADEUS
necessarily exists. Q. E. D.
The
11th thesis of the first book of Ethics
cited above also says that substance, God-or-nature (Deus sive natura) consists of an infinite number of attributes. This claim is not demonstrated by
Spinoza, but is introduced as a definition, in the 6th definition, where he
determines the notion of God:
“By GOD, I mean a being absolutely infinite
– that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each
expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.” (Ibid. 1d6)
NATURADEUS is revealed to the human mind as consisting in two
“attributes”, that of matter and light. (Since NATURADEUS is a metaphor, the diamond matter depicts extension
and light depicts thinking.) The essence of the imagined perfect diamond is
well defined for us with these two
attributes, it suits our mind, where both matter and light are necessary determinations of this
essence. However, it doesn’t follow from this that matter and light are the only determinations of the diamond
from the viewpoint of Its own eternity and perfection, which no doubt exceeds
the abilities of our conception (it may well consist also of “dark matter” or
“dark light”, which are inaccessible to our senses and our mind, because we are
simply not made from such matter and thought for this “dark matter” and “dark
light” to be accessible). On the other hand, the thought of the diamond’s
perfection in our mind, which loves perfection, begs the assumption that NATURADEUS consists of infinitely many attributes, and (alas)
the only two accessible attributes are: diamond matter and visible light (i.e. electromagnetic radiation of
visible wavelengths, whereas, for example, neutrino radiation in diamond
remains invisible, because we aren’t “neutrino beings”); and NATURADEUS consists of infinite and not
only many attributes because (as demonstrated by Spinoza in the 9th proposition
of the first book of Ethics) –
“The more reality or being a
thing has the greater the number of its attributes.” (1p9)
–
and since God’s being is by the definition of the concept of God perfect in its
reality or being, it consists of infinitely many attributes. The diamond NATURADEUS is a metaphor of
God-or-nature, God’s being, and therefore itself consists of infinitely many
“attributes”. Q. E. D. Well, let us continue:
“Whatsoever is, is in God, and
without God nothing can be, or be conceived.” (1p15)
The
metaphor is clear in this point: NATURADEUS
encompasses all facets and rays, i.e. all its “modes”, because we said
earlier that there is nothing outside the perfect diamond, which is “like a
sphere whose centre is everywhere, circumference nowhere”, there is nothing
else – whatsoever is, is in the One, and without the One nothing can exist or
be conceived. For if there was anything outside the One, it would no longer be
perfect as it would lack that other, and it would no longer be infinite as it
would be limited by the other. However, NATURADEUS
is in its conception infinite (cf. 1d6)
and in its infinity a perfect diamond, so there can be nothing (no facet or
ray) outside it, nor without it. Q.E.D.
“Things could not
have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different
from that which has in fact obtained.” (1p33)
This
is Spinoza’s famous thesis of determinism, which many scholars are revolted by
– but they should better ask themselves, what and how much can we, beings both
finite and limited in reason, know at all as to why God brought things into
being in the “order” they were (or are) created and not “in any order different
from that”? How could they be brought into being in any other manner – without
evil? without sin? without oblivion? without death…? Such a “different” world
could well have been better, but it is not up to us to judge that, since we
know too little. (Let us rather reconsider what Spinoza tried to say when he
claimed that only two attributes are attainable to us among the infinitely
many.) And the quest for the cosmic “alternative” is as futile as the opposite
belief that we live in “the best possible world”, as claimed by Leibniz; most
probably, Spinoza wouldn’t have agreed with such “cheap” optimism, despite the
depth of insight of Leibniz’s philosophy, which, as we well know, was scoffed
at by the witty Voltaire. In his metaphysical claims, Spinoza was critical and
wisely modest, which can after all be attested by his attitude towards the
issue of contingency:
“A thing can in no respect be
called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge.” (Ibid. 1p33s1)
Truly
enough, how are we to know that not all things are necessary? And if you reply
with the question: how are we to know that all things are necessary (as claimed by Spinoza), I can reply to you, dear John,
that these two questions or their respective answers aren’t quite symmetrical;
Spinoza namely claimed that things are necessary sub specie aeternitatis (under the form of eternity); their
necessity is therefore claimed by the “God’s intellect”, and not that they are
necessary simpliciter, the way the
succession of collisions of billiard balls on the plushy table is necessary,
after the cue hits the first ball. However, the thought that, “from the perspective
of eternity”, things are necessary is intuitively closer to us than the
opposite thought, namely that things are contingent from the viewpoint of both
God and ourselves – for if we accept Spinoza’s basic idea, the unity of God and nature, then the
contingency of nature, on the level of eternity, would also affect God himself;
but how can God, if he is God, be “contingent”? Spinoza says:
“If things had
been brought into being by God in a different way from that which has obtained,
God’s intellect and, will, that is (as is admitted) his essence would perforce
have been different, which is absurd.” (Ibid.,
1p33s2)
Those
who understand the meaning of the concept of God in metaphysics will probably
admit the absurdity of the claim that the “essence of God” could have been
different from what it is – for if it had been different, it would no longer be
God, but rather a lower being, some kind of demiurge who in creation depends on
external “patterns” and who would, if he were presented with different
patterns, create a different universe; in this case, however, there immediately
arises the question: where do the
patterns come from, who thinks them and determines them in
eternity… is it perhaps someone
higher than the demiurge? And this would again lead us to “the highest God”,
who cannot be different from what he is. And if God as the most perfect being
encompasses the highest “reality”, let’s call it God’s logos, then it is quite clear that –
“by reality and perfection I
mean the same thing.” (2d6)
–
of course this is neither clear nor evident, if we understand “reality” simpliciter, for instance the movement
of those three balls on the billiard table… Individual “things”, i.e. finite extended and thinking modes,
such as billiard balls or figments of imagination, are entangled in infinite
chains of causes and effects (cf. 1p28), which, however, have no primary cause
in the temporal sense (like in Thomas Aquinas), because reality has no
beginning in time, since –
“… that which is
finite and has a conditioned existence, cannot be produced by the absolute
nature of any attribute of God; for whatsoever follows from the absolute nature
of any attribute of God is infinite and eternal.” (Ibid., 1p28d)
– the first cause of creation, God-or-nature, is
therefore conceived of by Spinoza as the substantial
first cause, which in its perfection doesn’t create immediately individual modes,
finite things, which are imperfect and temporal, but rather extratemporally
grounds (and encompasses) general laws, according to which things come about
and pass, move and change, especially the law
of causality.
John. Master, have you forgotten about
the metaphor of the perfect diamond?
Bruno. I haven’t forgotten it; I
simply went astray a little… years ago I did a lot of research on the problem
of determinism, on the relationship between determinism and logic…
John. What does then NATURADEUS tell us about Spinoza’s
determinism?
Bruno. NATURADEUS as a whole is necessary, since, as the metaphor
has it, there is nothing outside it that would relativize its necessity; also
“the order and connection” of its “modes”, i.e.
facets and rays, are necessary, and are expressed in the laws of geometry and
optics; for example that, on the Euclidean plane, the sum of inner angles of
every triangular facet equals two right angles, or that the reflection angle of
a ray equals the angle of incidence etc. – however, the necessity of laws
regulating the “order and connection” of facets on the one hand and rays on the
other does not imply the necessity of existence and form of every individual
facet or color of every individual ray, if “modes” are seen from their point of
view, i.e. not from the viewpoint of
eternity and infinity, but rather from the viewpoint of their transience and
finitude. In this sense, God’s necessity and human free will are compatible,
and sub specie aeterni, in God, the
necessity is identical with freedom, since the necessity of natural laws is
God’s free will itself. Spinoza warns us:
“No one will be able
to follow my meaning, unless he is scrupulously careful not to confound the
power of God with the human power and right of kings.” (Ethics, 2p3s)
So
let us now consider, John, with the help of our metaphor, the most famous
thesis of the second part of Ethics
titled “On the Nature and Origin of the Mind”. It is the question of the
accordance of logical and causal chains (“order and connection”, ordo et connexio) between the two
attributes of the substance, between thinking and extension; Spinoza’s answer
to this question, which has stirred the imagination of many a great minds in
the history of philosophy, and is still trying to be solved by the analytical
“philosophy of mind”, for now without much success, is an astonishing thesis:
“The order and
connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” (Ibid., 2p7)
What
does this mean? In the “corollary”, the annex immediately following the short
demonstration of the thesis – the demonstration says that this thesis should be
immediately “evident from the fourth axiom of the first part”, i.e. from traditional metaphysical
formula “For the idea of everything that is caused depends on a knowledge of
the cause, whereof it is an effect” (1a4), where it isn’t perfectly clear, at
least not to me, which in this connection is the cause and which the effect –
well, in the corollary following the thesis Spinoza says:
“Hence God’s power
of thinking is equal to his realized power of action - that is, whatsoever
follows from the infinite nature of God in the world of extension (formaliter),
follows without exception in the same order and connection from the idea of God
in the world of thought (objective).” (2p7c)
And
further on in a longer note (sholium) that follows the corollary, he goes on to
explain:
“Before going any
further, I wish to recall to mind what has been pointed out above – namely,
that whatsoever can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the
essence of substance, belongs altogether only to one substance: consequently,
substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance,
comprehended now through one attribute, now through the other. So, also, a mode
of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, though
expressed in two ways.” (2p7)
Of
key importance for the understanding of the identity of the order &
connection of ideas and things are namely the first and second thesis of the
second part of Ethics, taken
together:
“Thought
is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing.” (2p1)
“Extension is an attribute of
God, or God is an extended thing.” (2p2)
Spinoza’s
God is namely both in one: “the thinking
thing” and “the extended thing” – from where it follows that “order and
connection” of thinking and extensive things are in Him the same order and
connection. In other words, mental (or logical) chains in the intellect of God
are the same as the causal chains in
nature, and are manifested as different solely due to our perspective from two
different attributes of one and the same substance.
John. This is in principle
understandable, or at least I think it is. But more to the point: how can a
specific mode of thinking be the same as the corresponding mode of extension;
how can for example the idea of this table be the same as the table itself? Since
only if individual elements of mental and causal chains are the same, then it
is possible to identify chains as wholes. Am I right?
Bruno. Yes, but this is exactly
surprising in Spinoza: the corresponding modes of thinking and extension are the same modes, seen from the point
of the substance. Spinoza gives an example of the circle:
“For instance, a
circle existing in nature, and the idea of a circle existing, which is also in
God, are one and the same thing displayed through different attributes.” (Ibid., in the scholium.)
John. What does Spinoza’s “circle
existing in nature” mean?
Bruno. Well, let us say that he has
in mind a circle drawn on a piece of paper… or a circle as a geometrical object
in general.
John. What then is “the idea of a
circle existing”, if the circle is already “in nature” a geometrical object?
Bruno. The idea of a circle is a
mode of thinking.
John. And the idea of a circle is
not extensive?
Bruno. The idea of a circle itself is
indeed not extensive; however, among its various determinants, it includes the concept
of extension.
John. So, does it mean that the
idea itself is not extensional, but intensional?
Bruno. Well, extension is not among
the formal determinants of the idea itself… and so the idea of a circle not
necessarily implies the concept of extension; in analytical geometry the idea
of a circle can be expressed by the function 
, and this function as such, in contrast to the geometrical
idea of a circle, doesn’t include the concept of extension.
John. But those who don’t know
that this function means the circle, namely
the geometrical figure, in which all points are equally distanced from some
chosen point on the plane, they cannot relate this function to the idea of a
circle!
Bruno. True… however, my intention
in drawing your attention to analytical geometry was primarily to illustrate
how a certain mode, in this case the mode of the circle, can be selfsame under different “attributes”,
the extensive (geometrical) and thinking (analytical). I believe that this is
what Spinoza had in mind with the example of the circle.
John. All right, so be it. But the
idea of a circle is after all the simplest of all ideas and it is in this case
easy to understand that the idea of a circle is the same as the circle existing
“in nature”. What about other, far more complex modes, such as a table… or the
human body? Does Spinoza think that the human body existing in nature, for
instance mine, and the idea of my body are also “one and the same thing…”?
Bruno. This is indeed surprising:
Spinoza’s answer to your question, considered of course sub specie aeternitatis, is affirmative! In God’s mind, John’s body
and the idea of John’s body are the same
mode considered under two different attributes. This is why Spinoza can articulate
one of the following theses:
“The object of the
idea constituting the human mind is the body, in other words a certain mode of
extension which actually exists, and nothing else.” (2p13)
…
and then adds:
“We thus
comprehend, not only that the human mind is united to the body, but also the
nature of the union between mind and body. […] Wherefore, in order to
determine, wherein the human mind differs from other things, and wherein it
surpasses them, it is necessary for us to know the nature of its object, that
is, of the human body.” (2p13s)
Later,
in the third part of Ethics, under
the title “On the Nature and Origin of the Emotions”, Spinoza relates the human
mind even more closely to the human body:
“Mind and body are
one and the same thing, conceived first under the attribute of thought,
secondly, under the attribute of extension.” (3p2s)
And
the answer to the questions of skeptics, whether mind is actually only an “idea
of body”, is that we are far from knowing what lies hidden in the formation of the
human body, and that this is perhaps why we are under impression that we could
impoverish mind by reducing it to the idea of body.
“No one hitherto
has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can
explain all its functions;” (ibid.)
This
is the topic of Jonathan Bennett, who in his treatise on Spinoza’s metaphysics
claims that the key to clarify or ground Spinoza’s “psychophysical parallelism”
(i.e. parallel processes of two
inter-reflective causal chains of modes, psychical and physical) lies exactly
in the identity on the level of modes,
which he names “transattribute mode identity”. This is what he says:
“The clue to that
[parallelism] is mode identity, that
is, the thesis that if M is correlated with B under the parallelism, then M is
B. This startling statement is first made in 2p7s, and we cannot get any
further without finding out what Spinoza means by it. […] To understand
Spinoza’s doctrine that a mode of extension and the idea of it ‘are one and the
same thing’, that is, that my body and my mind are one and the same thing, we
have to take the term ‘mode’ seriously.”[4]
This,
however, does not lead us to materialism, as many critics believed in Spinoza’s
time and later, even less to idealism – but to monism. Bennett says that the connection between Substantialist
monism and the “thesis of mode identity” produces the famous Spinoza’s
“psychophysical parallelism”, since
“Just as there is only one substance that
is comprehended under this or that attribute, so also any thought–extension complex is only one mode, which can
be explained through this or that attribute.”[5]
The
critical question as to why Spinoza insists on the claim that there are no causal relations among thinking
(mental) and extensive (physical) modes, if we consider that both are the same
“thought–extension complex”, the claim which Spinoza stresses on several
occasions, quite straightforwardly for instance in the following thesis:
“Body cannot
determine mind to think, neither can mind determine body to motion or rest or
any state different from these, if such there be.” (Spinoza, Ethics, 3p2)
– this question is answered by Bennett (in my
opinion not plausibly) in that this is because we (still) don’t know the whole
truth of either body or mind. Does this imply that the causal relation between
body and mind is simply not (yet) comprehended, i.e. that body and mind are distinguished only on the
epistemological and not on the ontological level? Perhaps so; however, such an
explanation is hardly compatible with the above thesis and other similar propositions,
in which Spinoza, as it seems, advocates ontological determinism. Bennett tries
to solve the problem by introducing an additional hypothesis (which is truly
more acceptable, although unfortunately weaker), namely that attributes are
only ways of “perception” of the substance, referring here to Spinoza’s
definition of the attribute (1d4, see above), i.e. that they are solely various manners of our “perceptions” of reality (modes), whereas in “reality itself”
(?) there exists only the substance
in the countless multitude of modes as internally unified “thought–extension
complexes”. In “transattribute mode identity”, Bennett believes that the role
of attributes is solely epistemological, but not ontologically real, which he articulates
by means of an illustration:
“It is as though
the modes were words written in a script to which intellect is blind, and the
attributes make the message of the modes accessible to intellect by reading
them aloud, expressing them.”[6]
John. And how could we illustrate
Spinoza’s thesis on the identity of “order and connection” of ideas and things,
and Bennett’s explanation of this thesis by “transattribute mode identity” in
our metaphor of the perfect diamond?
Bruno. O, nice indeed! NATURADEUS is “ordered” and “connected”
in two ways: through the structure of facets and the structure of rays. It
appears to us in two “attributes”: in diamond matter (“extension”) and light
(“thinking”). The structure of facets, formed in diamond matter, is determined
by the laws of geometry, and the structure of rays, formed in visible light, by
the laws of optics. The former are “parallel” to the latter: the geometrical
structure reflects itself in the optical structure, and vice versa; for
instance, rays refract differently on the facets connected in octahedron as
they do on the facets connected in icosahedron – and vice versa: just the
optics of rays with their set of laws reveals to the view the structure of
facets. In mathematical terms, we could say that between structures of facets
and rays (and between laws governing them respectively) there is an
isomorphism, a bidirectional projection between two sets, in which their internal
structure is perfectly retained.
John. Interesting… but it seems to
me that the relationship between facets and rays is not entirely symmetrical:
facets cause the refraction of rays,
whereas rays cannot bring about the structure of facets, they only offer the view
on them…
Bruno. Indeed, nothing escapes your
insight! I admit, this is the biggest flaw of our metaphor, however, this
asymmetry is not quite inappropriate for describing Spinoza’s system, since he
says that “the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, in
other words a certain mode of extension which actually exists, and nothing else”
(2p13, see above), whereas he could hardly claim the opposite, namely that “the
idea of the object constituting the body in the human mind, in other words a
certain mode of thinking which actually exists, and nothing else”, since experience after all gives evidence of
our not being “just minds”… Of course, the possibility of perfect symmetry
between mind and body depends on what mind
means for us.
John. True, but even if we
acknowledge that the relationship among facets and rays in the metaphor is
entirely symmetrical, namely that the inference between them is bidirectional, i. e., not only from facets to rays (for
instance in reflection, when a facet changes the direction of a ray), but also
from rays to facets (for instance that facets are reshaped under the influence
of rays) – there still remains a deeper problem of the metaphor in that facets
are here supposed to have a causal
effect on rays (and perhaps also the other way round), but Spinoza thought that
there is no causal connection between modes of both attributes, but solely a
parallelism, or, as we just said, a formal isomorphism – whereas in our perfect
diamond facets redirect rays and thereby have a causal effect.
Bruno. I agree, but let us not
forget that our NATURADEUS is
just a mental and/or representational model
of the “true” Spinoza’s substance, God-or-nature; we should not forget that it
is only a metaphor, which can be
corrected and brought in closer accordance with the “original”.
John. How?
Bruno. Let us first consider what
facets “do” to rays in our given model called NATURADEUS:
if we consider the posited limitation that all facets are “Euclidean” (i.e. that they change their form and
position but not their curve), we can say that facets, or prisms and other structures
consisting of facets, refract rays and thus redirect them (though rays remain
within the sphere of the perfect diamond); further, that they disperse them in
various wave lengths, which offers the spectacle of rainbow colors and the
like. To put it in a nutshell, facets refract
rays. Now let us supplement our metaphor with the idea that refraction of
rays – it is best to imagine one ray traveling in a zigzag line within the
diamond – is not caused by the matter
of facets, but that its own
(“optical”) laws completely determine its path, for instance that some law
says: when a ray reaches this-and-this coordinate point within absolute space,
determined by the whole NATURADEUS,
the ray turns for a number of degrees towards this-and-this quadrant, sector or
region of the perfect diamond. The function that would determine directions of
a multitude of rays in such a way, would of course be very complex in
comparison to simple optical laws of the refraction of rays on facets; however,
such a description is of all goings-on of light, namely the description without referring to the facet structure,
is possible in principle – it is
actually no less extraordinary than Spinoza’s idea that the “order and
connection” of all mental processes is possible without taking into account correlative physical causal chains, i.e. solely on the basis of parallelism
between “order and connection” of ideas and things.
John. What about the other way
round, if we set aside the rays and try to describe only the “order and
connection” of facets?
Bruno. I believe that in this case
the answer is quite simple: we cannot see facets without rays, and thus their
structure cannot be described, since in this case NATURADEUS would appear as mere darkness!
John. Of course! … But master, in
what way can mind become aware of itself
– how can it reach the cogito ergo sum,
when in Spinoza it is always linked with body, since the human mind is the
“idea of the human body”?
Bruno. You cannot find a clear
answer to this Cartesian question in Spinoza… maybe because this isn’t the
right question for him at all. It is interesting though that Spinoza lists
among the axioms of the second part of The
Ethics the following sentence:
“Man thinks.” (2a2)
–
which, however, is by far less important within his system than is cogito ergo sum within the Cartesian system. For Spinoza, the ground of
every cognition is the thought that “God, or substance, … necessarily exists” (1p2,
see above), that is as a “thinking thing” (2p1, see above); it is not difficult
to infer from this the necessity that man as one of God’s modes exists and eo ipso thinks. Nevertheless we
shouldn’t overlook Spinoza’s theses in the second book of The Ethics (“On the Nature and Origin of Mind”), where he speaks
about the idea of the mind as the “idea of the idea”, which is in equal
relation to the idea as the idea is to body; the idea of the mind is present in
God and, insofar as man is His limited mode, it is also present in the human
mind.
“The idea or
knowledge of the human mind is also in God, following in God in the same
manner, and being referred to God in the same manner, as the idea knowledge of
the human body.” (2p20)
“This idea of the
mind is united to the mind in the same way as the mind is united to the body.”
(2p21)
In
the adjoining sholium, as usually, Spinoza provides an additional explanation
of his thought of the “idea of the mind”.
“The idea of the
mind, I repeat, and the mind itself are in God by the same necessity and follow
from him from the same power of thinking. Strictly speaking, the idea of the
mind, that is, the idea of an idea, is nothing but the distinctive quality
(forma) of the idea in so far as it is conceived as a mode of thought without
reference to the object; if a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows
that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and
so on to infinity. (2p21s)
…
and not only God but also man as His (or Her, or Its) mode, although he is
limited in his comprehension, as soon as “a man knows anything, he, by that very
fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he
knows it…”, he therefore has an awareness of his knowledge and eo ipso of himself as the thinking
consciousness, since –
“… the human mind
is part of the infinite intellect of God; thus when we say, that the human mind
perceives this or that, we make the assertion, that God has this or that idea,
not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is displayed through the
nature of the human mind” (2p2c).
John. Could we also include in our
metaphor Spinoza’s “idea of the mind” as the idea of the idea?
Bruno. This has been on my mind for
some time… It crossed my mind that, in the perfect diamond NATURADEUS, the idea of the idea could
be illustrated by the interference (combining,
crossing) of rays: where rays cross one another (not necessarily on a facet but
also in “empty” space between), there arise stronger spots of light, like some
sort of “suns” amid mostly empty diamond universe – and it is exactly within
these suns that light, metaphorically representing thinking, “becomes aware” of
itself, i.e. acknowledges its
independence from corporeal matter of facets.
John, still from under Bruno’s
pen. Master,
before you stop putting down our conversation and close the notebook, I have
yet another question to ask you: does Spinoza’s thought that there exists in
God “the idea of the human body”, such as yours or mine, have anything to do
with the belief in immortality and resurrection?
Bruno. Yes, but this relatedness is
a puzzle. In the fifth and last book of The
Ethics, under the title “Of the Power of the Understanding or of Human
Freedom”, Spinoza says that the time has come to raise the question as to
whether the human mind persists regardless of body, that is to say after the death
of body. And he writes down a thesis that is expected and can be implied from
his philosophical system:
“The mind can only
imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.” (5p21)
But, in the next
proposition he adds:
“Nevertheless in
God there is necessarily an idea, which expresses the essence of this or that
human body under the form of eternity.” (5p22)
This
claim refers to Spinoza’s already mentioned belief that “the idea or knowledge
of the human mind is also is God” (2p20), and the human mind is, as we also
know, “the idea of the human body”. It can be inferred from this – though
Spinoza doesn’t infer this explicitly – that just as the idea of a triangle
cannot vanish from God’s intellect, even though all triangles “in nature” would
disappear, likewise the idea of the human body, for instance yours or mine or
Mary’s, cannot be destroyed after your death, or mine or Mary’s.
“The human mind
cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something
which is eternal.” (5p23)
However,
what is “that something” that is eternal? Our images and recollections of
things past are not eternal, since they only last until our body lasts (cf. above, 5p21). It is mind that is eternal sub specie aeternitatis, where the human
mind is united with the intellect of God:
“Our mind, in so
far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that
extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is
conceived through God.” (5p30)
…
and this is the famous Spinoza’s “intellectual love of God” (amor Dei intellectualis, 5p32), which
redeems man in his mind from finitude, although he does not cherish the hope of
a payment in the otherworldly infinity. Redemption namely takes place within
mind all the time, here-and-now, not
after corporeal death. It is interesting and specific for Spinoza’s “pantheism”
that it is just the idea of the human body
that provides the starting point for the immortality of mind:
“This idea, which
expresses the essence of the body under the form of eternity, is, as we have
said, a certain mode of thinking, which belongs to the essence of the mind, and
is necessarily eternal.” (5p23)
This
is where the wondrous calmness breaths from, permeating the whole of Spinoza’s
philosophy. Since, although he knows that –
“He, who loves
God, cannot endeavour that God should love him in return.” (5p19)
–
he is filled with that mature and unshakeable braveness of a sage, which can be
felt also in the following words:
“A free man thinks
of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but
of life.” (4p67)
When master Bruno finishes writing,
he looks through the window, resting his mind on the garden’s greenery.
Meanwhile it has stopped raining and now the evening light illuminates the
world with that gracefulness, which promises to embrace the soul with God’s
light. It is in these moments that the whole world in its unreal transience is
eternal.
Bruno murmurs. I am most real when I write.
(Translated by