71. - Form

Summary

Spinoza typically uses “form” (forma) as a synonym for “nature” or “essence.” He writes in E2p10 for instance that “The being of substance does not pertain to the essence of man, or [sive] substance does not constitute the form of man.” In the TIE, the “form” of a true idea has the extrinsic feature of agreeing with its object and the intrinsic feature of being known to itself; both, it appears, characterizing different features of the nature or essence of truth (TIE[69, 71, 105]). Spinoza also writes in several lemmata in his Physical Digression that “the individual will retain its nature, without any change of its form” (E2L4). It seems we could reverse “essence” and “form” in E2p10, and “nature” and “form” in the lemmata, without any substantive change in how we read or understand each claim. If so, why the extra term? When Spinoza writes in E2p24d that a human body “completely preserves its nature and form,” is the latter wholly redundant, or might “form” refer to a particular way of understanding an object’s nature or essence?