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57. - Essence

from E

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Mogens Lærke
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Spinoza’s doctrine of essence (essentia) remains one of the most fraught issues among commentators. The most persistent controversy concerns whether Spinoza’s theory of essences is Platonist or not. Those who understand Spinoza as a kind of Platonist claim that essences in Spinoza have a non-actual existence – sometimes understood modally as a “possible” existence – distinct from the actual or real existence of the things of which they are the essences. To that effect, they point to various occurrences throughout the Ethics of the notions “formal essence” (E2p8, E2p40s2) and “actual essence” (E3p7, E4p4d), arguing on that basis that Spinoza operates with a distinction between essences of things that actually exist and essences of things that exist only formally. Giving the Platonist screw an additional turn, some commentators moreover argue that Spinoza is a kind of realist who allows for “species essences” or essences not only of singular things, but also of species or classes of things.

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Chapter
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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 143 - 147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Garrett, D. (2009). Spinoza on the essence of the human body and the part of the mind that is eternal. In Koistinen, O. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (pp. 284–302). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hübner, K. (2015). Spinoza on essences, universals, and beings of reason. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96(2), 58–88.Google Scholar
Hübner, K. (2017). The trouble with feelings, or Spinoza on the identity of power and essence. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 55(1), 35–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarrett, C. (2001). Spinoza’s distinction between essence and existence. Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly, 50, 245–52.Google Scholar
Lærke, M. (2017). Aspects of Spinoza’s theory of essence: Formal essence, non-existence and two types of actuality. In Sinclair, M. (ed.), The Actual and the Possible: Modality and Metaphysics in Modern Philosophy (pp. 11–44). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lærke, M. (2024). Prejudices, common notions, intuitions: Knowledge of God between the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. In Garber, D. et al. (eds.), Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics. The Relation between the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (pp. 59–80). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, C. P. (2008). The framework of essences in Spinoza’s Ethics. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 16(3), 489–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmaltz, T. (2015). Spinoza on eternity and duration: The 1663 connection. In Melamed, Y. (ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making (pp. 205–20). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Viljanen, V. (2011). Spinoza’s Geometry of Power. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, T. M. (2011). Spinoza on the essences of modes. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 19(1), 19–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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