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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Errol E. Harris
Errol E. Harris*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

The interesting and suggestive interpretation offered by A. J, Watt in this journal (pp. 171-89 above) of Spinoza’s account of God’s causality to some extent anticipates the discussion of the topic which I am undertaking in a forthcoming book on Spinoza’s philosophy. To a greater extent it is, of course, anticipated by Stuart Hampshire in his study of Spinoza. I agree with Mr. Watt’s objections to some of the traditional interpretations of Spinoza’s doctrine and I think it is in fact immune from the strictures of some critics who attempt to explain the succession of finite modes in Substance as a product of imaginal thinking, a view which must lead to a paralogism in Spinoza’s thought so gross that he could not have been unaware of it and could not have committed unless he had been. I shall not enter into this part of the discussion, as I have no wish to contest what Mr. Watt has written with respect to it, but shall confine my attention to his own (and incidentally Hampshire’s) interpretation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , December 1972 , pp. 191 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 Spinoza (London, 1958), pp. 34ff.

2 Idit., IV, 21 and V, 27.

3 Cf. Ethics, I, xxix and xxxiii, 1.

4 TdIE., VI, 35: ‘Hinc: patet, quod certiludo nihil sit praeter ipsam essentiam objectivam; id est, modus, quo sentimus essentiam formatem, est ipsa certitudo.’ ‘Hence it is plain that certitude is nothing other than the objective essence itself; that is, the way in which we are aware of the formal essence is itself certitude.’

5 Ethics, 1, x, S.

6 Cog. Met, I, vi, and Ep. L.

7 Cf. Ep. xxxvi.

8 Cf. Ethics II, Def. III, Exp., xlii, S.

9 Cf. Ep. LXXXI.

10 Cf. Ethics II, Axioms I and II and Lemma i following Prop. xiii.

11 Cf. Ethics, loc. cit., Def., and Lemm. iv-vii.

12 Ethics II, Lem. vii, S.