22. - Body

Summary

Though the term “body” (corpus) is commonly used in the early modern period to refer both to material substance as such and to particular material objects, such as tables or golf balls, Spinoza generally reserves the term to refer to modes of extended substance, that is, particular and determinate ways that extended substance can exist or particular and determinate forms extended substance can take. For example, in his definition of body in the Ethics, Spinoza writes: “by body I understand a mode that in a certain and determinate way expresses God’s essence insofar as he is considered an extended thing” (E2def1). Of course, not all modes of extended substance are bodies. For example, motion and rest, though modes of extended substance, are not themselves bodies. Bodies correspond roughly to particular material objects – both tables and golf balls, but also molecules and galaxies, and even the physical universe as a whole.