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The Disappearance of Analogy in Descartes, Spinoza, and Regis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Tad M. Schmaltz
Tad M. Schmaltz*
Affiliation:
Duke University, Durham, NC27708, USA
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Extract

In the course of a lengthy interview, Descartes is reported to have claimed that ‘the axiom is common and true: the effect is similar to the cause’(AT 5:156). There has been much discussion in the recent secondary literature about whether Descartes’ various causal principles require a sort of resemblance between cause and effect that rules out the interaction of substances as distinct in nature as mind and body. However, it is clear from the record of the Descartes interview that the axiomatic principle that effects are similar to their causes- call this the ‘Similarity Principle'- applies primarily to the case of God's production of created substances, and of created minds in particular. This record thus provides one reason for the focus here on that particular case. Another is that a consideration of this case broaches difficulties for the Similarity Principle that have an interesting though somewhat neglected role in the history of Cartesianism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 2000 , pp. 85 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2000

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References

1 AT: Œuvres de Descartes, Adam, C. and Tannery, P. eds. (Paris: J. Vrin 1964-78), 11 vols.Google Scholar, cited by volume (-part) and page. For standard English translations of the passages from Descartes, see The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, volumes I-II, Cottingham, J. Stoothoff, R. and Murdoch, D. trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984-85)Google Scholar, and The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, volume III, The Correspondence, Cottingham, J. Stoothoff, R. Murdoch, D. and Kenny, A. trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991)Google Scholar. The latter contains the passages from the record of Descartes’ interview. Translations in these three volumes are keyed to the pagination in AT. Translations in the text and notes of passages from Latin and French primary texts and the French secondary literature are my own.

2 See, for instance, the following exchange in the Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (1985): Dasie Radner, ‘Is There a Problem of Cartesian Interaction?’ 35-49; Robert Richardson and Louis Loeb, ‘Replies to Dasie Radner's “Is There a Problem of Cartesian Interaction?'” 221-31; and Radner, ‘Rejoinder to Professors Richardson and Loeb,’ 232-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Marion, Jean-Luc Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. Analogie, création des vérités éternelles et fondement, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1991), 23Google Scholar. This thesis is anticipated in the discussion of Descartes’ ‘inversion métaphysique’ of the scholastic doctrine of analogy in Gouhler, Henri La pensée métaphysique de Descartes (Paris: J. Vrin 1962), 221-32Google Scholar.

4 E Ip3, G 2:47. Spinoza endorsed the Dissimilarity Principle in E Ip17s, G 2:62f. E: Ethics (Ethica), using ‘p’ for proposition, ‘ax’ for axiom, ‘def’ for definition, ‘d’ for demonstration, ‘s’ for scholium, and ‘c’ for corollary. G: Spinoza Opera, ed. Gebhardt, G. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters 1925), 4 vols.Google Scholar, cited by volume and page. For standard English translations of the passages I cite from the Ethics, see The Collected Works of Spinoza, volume I, Curley, E.M. ed. and trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985)Google Scholar. Translations in this text are keyed to the pagination in G.

5 Regis, Pierre-Sylvain Usage de la raison et de la Joy (Paris: J. Cusson 1704), I-2, xxxv, 203fGoogle Scholar. I cite this text by book-part, chapter, and page. I use ‘Ref.’ as an abbreviation for the ‘Refutation of the opinion of Spinoza,’ an appendix to the Use of Reason.

6 From the editor's introduction to Descartes’ Conversation with Burman, Cottingham, J. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1976)Google Scholar, xviii. Cf. the editorial comments in L'entretien avec Burman, ed. Beyssade, J.-M. (Paris: J. Vrin 1981), 158Google Scholar.

7 Alquié, Ferdinand has urged that the views of Descartes recorded by Burman and Clauberg are ‘imprecise and not exempt from contradictions’ (Œuvres philosophiques de Descartes, Alquie, F. ed. [Paris: J. Vrin 1973], 3:765f)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the problems that Alquie cites which adds others besides, see Ariew, Roger ‘The Infinite in Descartes’ Conversation with Burman,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 69 (1987) 140-63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Also at issue is Descartes’ claim in the ‘Fifth Replies’ that ‘divine [creation] is closer to natural production than to artificial [production]’ (AT 7:373).

9 To Mersenne, 31 Dec. 1640, AT 3:274; cf. the remarks in the ‘Third Meditation’ at AT 7:40.

10 See for instance Descartes’ claim that God alone is a universal cause that serves also as a total cause insofar as everything depends on His will (To Elisabeth, 6 Oct. 1645, AT 4:314).

11 See Descartes’ remarks at AT 7:111.

12 Conversation with Burman, 85

13 ‘Substantia itaque increata est per se ipsa substantialiter atque essentialiter subsistens, atque ita ex vi suæ habet completam rationem substantiæ; substantia vero creata … [si] vero sit completa substantia, quamvis subsistat actu, non tamen vi suæ essentiæ formaliter ac præcise, sed per aliquem modum et actum suæ essentiæ, et ideo substantialis natura creata, ut infra dictam, non est essentialiter actus subsistens, sed aptitudine’ (Metaphysical Disputations, XXXII, i, 7, in Suárez, Francisco Opera Omnia, Berton, C. ed. [Paris: Vives 1866], 26:314)Google Scholar. I cite Suárez's text by disputation, section, and paragraph.

14 See Descartes’ reference to his discovery of the notion of material falsity in Suárez's Disputations, at AT 7:235.

15 Cf. Beyssade, Jean-Marie ‘La théorie cartésienne de la substance: Equivocité ou analogie,’ Revue Internationale de Philosophie 195 (1996), 59f, 66Google Scholar.

16 However, Descartes did claim that the positive cause of God's existence ‘can be referred by analogy to efficient causes [per analogiam ad efficientem],’ and that talk of God causing perfections in himself is ‘derived by analogy [analogia] with the notion of efficient causation’ (AT 7:240, 242). But cf. the reading of these passages in Marion, Sur la théologie, 428-44, which emphasizes their deviation from the views of Aquinas. I consider below Marion's interpretation of Descartes’ views on analogy.

17 ‘[A]liquo modo conveniat in ratione substantiæ cum aliquibus entibus creatis, non tamen univoce, sed analogice’ (Met. Disp., XXXII, i, 7, in Opera, 26:314).

18 Met. Disp., XXVIII, ii, 9 and 11, in Opera, 26:10 and 11. Cf. the claim that while uncreated substance is substantial ‘per se ipsa,’ created substance has a substantiality that is ‘imperfect’ since it ‘inherently includes a negation’ (Met. Disp., XXXI, i, 7, in Opera, 26:314).

19 Sur la théologie, chs 5-6. See especially his conclusion that Suárez's account of analogy ‘allows at the same time a verbal escape from univocity and an admission of its conceptual presuppositions’ (ibid., 82).

20 See the claim that ‘if Descartes does not mention [in Principles 1.51] the mediating solution affirming analogy, it is … because the analogy that governs the relation between created and uncreated substance must be understood … as an analogy of intrinsic attribution, resting on a common and objective concept’ (ibid., 116). Cf. the argument in Marion, ‘A propos de Suarez et Descartes,’ Revue internationale de Philosophie 195 (1996), 113-19Google Scholar.

21 I do wonder, however, whether the ‘common concept’ of being that Marion finds in Suárez is in the end distinct from a Thomistic concept that applies primarily to God and only derivatively to creatures.

22 Roger Ariew has pointed out to me that Descartes read Eustachius’ scholastic text, the Summa philosophica quadripartita (1609), which explicitly endorses univocal predication. There is thus some reason to think that Descartes was aware of the Scotist alternative to Thomistic analogy. My point against Marion is simply that it is highly doubtful that Descartes would have been able to discern this alternative in Suárez, if indeed the alternative is there to be discerned.

23 I do not follow Marion's claim that the dependence of creatures on God is for Descartes merely ‘extrinsic’ to the essence of created substance(’ A propos,’ 117f; cf. Sur la théologie, 110-13). The Principles seems to me to make clear that this dependence is part of the very notion of created substance, and thus that this notion is distinct from the strict or proper notion of substance.

24 But there is one letter in which Descartes did speak of the human will as ‘infinite’ (To Mersenne, 25 Dec. 1639, AT 2:628). This claim may simply be careless, and is in any case not to be found in his discussion in the ‘Fourth Meditation.'

25 Cf. the claim in the first of the 1630 letters to Mersenne that we esteem God's greatness all the more since we cannot grasp it (AT 1:145) and the emphasis in a 1649 letter to More, which contains his last word on the subject, on the fact that a finite mind cannot set limits to an infinite power (AT 5:272). As is clear from Marion's useful chart in Sur la théologie, 270f, the appeal to the incomprehensibility of God's power is found in nearly every discussion in which Descartes broached the created truths doctrine.

26 Spinoza appealed explicitly to the result in E Ip16 that there derive from the divine essence ‘infinitely many things in infinitely many modes (that is, everything that can fall under infinite intellect)’ (G 2:60), but in E Ip25s he used this proposition to demonstrate that ‘God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of [their] essence’ (G 2:67f).

27 This is my gloss on Spinoza's argument, which provides no justification for the conclusion that ‘if the essence of one could be destroyed, and become false, the essence of the other would be destroyed’ (G 2:63). I base this gloss both on the official definition of essence as ‘that which being given the thing is necessarily posited, and which being taken away the thing is necessarily taken away’ (E IIdef2, G 2:84), and on the discussion in E Ip8s2 of the ‘human nature in general’ that several individuals share (G 2:50f). In E IIp40s1, however, Spinoza used the example of the word ‘man’ as an example of something that stands for a confused universal (G 2:121).

28 On this passage, see Koyré, Alexandre ‘Le chien constellation céleste et le chien animal aboyant,’ in Etudes d'histoire de /a pensée philosophique, Koyré, A. ed. (Paris: A. Colin 1961), 85–94Google Scholar, and especially Gueroult, Martial Spinoza I, Dieu (Ethique, I) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1968), 272-95.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Spinoza's remarks in a letter to Oldenburg written around 1661, in Letter 4, G 4:14. For English translations of the passages from Spinoza's correspondence that I cite, see Spinoza: The Letters, Shirley, S. trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett 1995)Google Scholar.

30 Spinoza's friend G.H. Schuller transmitted Tschimhaus’ objection in a 1675 letter to Spinoza.

31 Bennett, Jonathan A Study of Spinoza's Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett 1984), 32Google Scholar. Such a view goes back at least to the article on Spinoza in the second edition of Pierre Baye's Historical and Critical Dictionary, which was published in 1702.

32 Spinoza himself noted in the scholium that ‘I will show later, without the aid of this Proposition, that neither intellect nor will pertain to God's nature’ (G 2:62). The demonstration, which occurs in E Ip31, appeals to the fact that both intellect and will are modes, and thus distinct from the divine substance and its attributes (G 2:71f).

33 Marion notes this source for Spinoza's remarks in ‘De la création des vérités étemelles su principe de raison. Remarques sur l'anti-cartésianisme de Spinoza, Malebranche et Leibniz,’ XVIIe siècle 147 (1985), 145. It is interesting, however, that Descartes later compared the essences and eternal truths created by God to Fates that were established by Jupiter but that subsequently bound him (see AT 7:380).

34 See Curley's introductory comments in Collected Works of Spinoza, 1:xiii.

35 Spinoza: Dieu, 291-95. Cf. Koyré, ‘Le Chien.'

36 Spinoza: Dieu, 291

37 For more on Regis’ life, see Bouillier, Francisque Histoire de la philosophie cartésienne, 3rd ed. (Paris: Delagrave 1868), 1: 517-27Google Scholar. Cf. the official éloge for Regis by the secretary of the Académie des sciences, Fontenelle, in Fontenelle, Œuvres complètes, Depping, G.-B. ed. (Genève: Slatkine Reprints 1989), 1: 89–95Google Scholar.

38 From the unpaginated preface to Huet's anonymously published Nouveaux mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du cartésianisme (Paris: n.p. 1692). Regis was Huet's main Cartesian opponent in the debate that ensued following the publication of his Censura philosophi:e cartesiance (Paris: J. Anisson 1689). For more on this debate, see chapter 6 of my forthcoming book, Radical French Cartesian ism: Desgabets, Regis, and Constructions of Descartes (1663-1720).

39 In the mid-1690s Regis was involved in particular in a dispute with the malebranchiste members of the Académie des sciences, L'Hospital, Sauveur, Varignon, and Catelan, over the proper explanation of why the sun and moon appear larger on the horizon than at the meridian. On this dispute, see the materials in Œuvres complètes de Malebranche, Robinet, A. ed. (Paris: J. Vrin 1958-78), 17-1 :238-55, 263-78, 347-55Google Scholar. Regis also engaged in an exchange with Malebranche on the doctrine in the latter that ‘we see all things in God'; cf. Regis’ System of Philosophy, Metaphysics, II-1, xiv, in the retitled second edition, Cours entier de philosophie, Watson, R. ed. (1691; New York: Johnson Reprints 1970), 1:184-88Google Scholar; and the second chapter of Malebranche's Réponse à Regis, in Malebranche, Œuvres completes, 17-1:280-310. Citations from the System are by book-part and chapter.

40 In his éloges for Regis and Malebranche, Fontenelle suggested that the fact that four members of the Académie sided with Malebranche on the technical matter of the appearance of the sun (see previous note) served to tip the balance against Regis (see Fontenelle, Œuvres complètes, 1:92f, 209)Google Scholar. In the éloge for Regis, Fontenelle also mentioned as a reason for Regis’ lack of influence in the Académie the various illnesses that prevented him from being a presence in this institution (ibid., 1:94).

41 Citations from the Use are by book-part, chapter, and page.

42 Cf. the discussion in System, Met., 1-1, vii, in Cours, 1:86f.

43 Regis was educated at a Jesuit college in Cahors prior to going to the Sorbonne to study theology in the 1650s.

44 Met. Disp., XVII, ii, 21, in Opera, 25:591f.

45 On the distinction between first and secondary causes, see Met. Disp., XVII, ii, 20, in Opera, 25:591. Suárez also limited his discussion to principal as opposed to instrumental causes; for this distinction see Met. Disp., XVII, ii, 7-19, in Opera, 25:585-91. His restriction to principal secondary causes is explicit in Met. Disp., XVII, ii, 21, in Opera, 25:591f. For a full English translation of the sections from disputations 17 and 18 that I cite in this paper, see Francisco Suarez, S.J.: On Efficient Causality (Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18,and 19), A.J. Freddoso, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press 1994)Google Scholar.

46 Suárez would have had reason to be concerned with this disappearance even if Marion is correct in thinking that his own remarks in the Disputations undermine the distinction between analogy and univocity (see note 19).

47 For instance, Suárez held that univocal and equivocal causes contain not the genus or difference of their effects, as Regis would have it, but rather the substantial or accidental forms these causes produce (Met. Disp., XVII, ii, 21, in Opera, 25:592).

48 Met. Disp., XVIII, vii, 1, in Opera, 25:631. The particular section in which this condition is considered is Met. Disp., XVIII, ix, in Opera, 25:668-80.

49 Met. Disp., XVIII, ix, 9, in Opera, 25:670f.

50 The phrase ‘mediately or immediately’ is explained by Regis’ view that the existence of substance follows immediately from the divine will while the existence of modes follows immediately from other modes but only mediately from the divine will; see Use, I-2, xxxi, 130-32.

51 Regis distinguished between ‘absolute attributes’ (attributs absolus) such as eternity, immutability, simplicity, and infinite, that ‘pertain to God considered in Himself,’ and ‘respective attributes’ (attributs respectives), such as goodness, power, justice, and mercy, that ‘are related to creatures’ (Use, 1-1, xxix, 92f; but cf. the somewhat different account of this distinction in System, Met., 1-1, vii, in Cours, 1:88). Since the respective attributes relate God to creatures, they presuppose something common between the two. However, the implication in Regis is that nothing in God's absolute attributes is found in the nature of creatures.

52 See Malebranche, Œuvres complètes, 3:136Google Scholar. In this same text, Malebranche contrasted this position with the view in Descartes that ‘God as sovereign Legislator has established these [eternal] truths’ (ibid.).

53 E.g., in Malebranche, Œuvres complètes, 6:118f. For a discussion of this point, see my ‘Malebranche on Ideas and the Vision in God,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, Nadler, S. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 See Malebranche, Œuvres complètes, 3:129-31Google Scholar.

55 System, Met., Il-l, xiv, in Cours, 1:187

56 See, for instance, his response to the objection of his former student, Jean Jacques Dortous de Mairan, that his view that God contains a necessary and infinite ‘intelligible extension’ in Himself seems to support to the Spinozistic conclusion that all beings are modifications of God. For this correspondence, see Malebranche, Œuvres completes, 19: 852-65, 870-79, 882-89, 890-912Google Scholar. There is an English translation of the correspondence in Malebranche's First and Last Critics, Watson, R.A. and Grene, M. trans. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1995).Google Scholar

57 However, Malebranche did insist to Mairan that he differs from Spinoza insofar as he holds that God is not determined to create the material world; see Malebranche, Œuvres completes, 19:910Google Scholar.

58 System, Met., 1-1, vii, in Cours, 1:85. In this text Regis also asserted as an axiom that ‘all that exists is a substance or a mode’ (Met., 1-1, ii, in Cours, 1:73).

59 System, Met., 1-1, vii, in Cours, 1:86

60 Cf. his remark that God ‘is a mind, or a thing that thinks’ and that ‘our soul's nature resembles His sufficiently for us to believe that it is an emanation of his supreme intelligence, a “breath of divine spirit'” (To Chanut, 1 February 1647, AT 4:608).

61 System, Met., 1-1, ix, in Cours, 1:92

62 System, Met., 1-1, vii, in Cours, 1:88

63 See Descartes’ remarks in Principles 1.60, AT 8-1:28f.

64 For a discussion of this argument, see my ‘Spinoza on the Vacuum,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 81 (1999) 174-205.

65 Regis did introduce as an axiom in the System of Philosophy that ‘the essences of things are indivisible’ (System, Met., I-1, ii, in Cours, 1:74), but later in this text he failed to mention the indivisible essence of extension when discussing the divisibility of quantile (System, Phy., I-1, i, in Cours, 1:279-83).

66 On Descartes’ position, see Woolhouse, Roger ‘Descartes and the Nature of Body (Principles of Philosophy, 2.14-19),’ British Journal of the History of Philosophy 2 (1994) 19–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chene, Dennis Des Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1996), 371-74Google Scholar.

67 The Use of Reason itself distinguishes the eviternité, or created eternity, of substances from the uncreated éternité of God; see Use, I-2, xxv, 171. Cf. the discussion of the distinction among modal temporality, substantial perpetuité and divine éternité in System, Met., I-1, xiv-xv, in Cours, 1:105-109, which explicitly brackets the case of ‘body considered in itself’ (Cours, 1:107).

68 The basic elements of this framework are evident in Desgabets’ unpublished manuscript, the ‘Traité de l'indéfectibilité des creatures,’ which he had started by 1654 (as indicated in the chronological biography in Dam Robert Desgabets: Œuvres philosophiques inédites, Beaude, J. ed. [Amsterdam: Quadratures 1983-85], 1:xvi)Google Scholar. Desgabets died in 1678, one year after the publication of the Opera Posthuma containing the Ethics. There is to my knowledge no evidence that Desgabets read this work, or indeed even knew of its existence.

69 The implication concerning particular bodies is apparent from the remarks on ‘the duration of our Body’ in E IIp30,d (D 2:114f), which draws on E Ip28,d (G 2:69), while the implication concerning corporeal substance is apparent from the argument for the eternality of substance in E Ip19 (D 2:64) and the official definition of eternity in E Idef8 (G 2:46), which I have quoted. The claim that Spinoza took substance to have a non-durational existence is controversial, but I think that it is supported by Spinoza’ sown claim in his famous ‘Letter on the Infinite’ that divisible duration is grounded in an absolutely indivisible eternity (Ep. 12, G 4:54f). For a discussion of this view, see again my ‘Spinoza on the Vacuum.'

70 See the discussion in Lennon, Thomas ‘The Problem of Individuation among the Cartesians,’ in Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, Barber, K.F. and Gracia, J.E. eds. (Albany: State University of New York Press 1994), 13–39Google Scholar, esp. 19-30 (but cf. my reservations in note 73). I provide a systematic treatment of the metaphysical system of Desgabets and Regis in the second part of the forthcoming Radical French Cartesianism.

71 System, Met., III, i, in Cours, 1:266f.

72 This point is especially clear in his response to Spinoza's claim in Ethics Ip5 (G 2:48) that distinct substances cannot share the same attribute; see Use, ‘Ref.,’ 492. The point is not expressed so clearly in the section of the Système on the immortality of the soul, which stresses that reason can say very little about the state of the mind apart from the body (System, Met., III, in Cours, 1:265-72). However, there is the insistence in this text that the self is a thinking substance (System, Met., I-1, xi, in Cours, 1:96).

73 I think that a development of this point would provide a response to Lennon's claim that the passage from the System cited at note 71 indicates that ‘the substantial soul turns out to be, as it must be [for Regis], a universal soul’ ('The Problem of Individuation,’ 28).

74 See the discussion toward the end of §11 of the remarks from the ‘Sixth Replies.'

75 See Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève ‘Polémiques sur la création des possibles et sur l'impossible dans I'école cartésienne,’ Studia Cartesiana 2 (1981) 105-23Google Scholar. Cf. Lennon, ‘The Cartesian Dialectic of Creation,’ in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Garber, D. and Ayers, M. eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), 1: 350-56.Google Scholar

76 There is a break here not only from Thomistic analogy, but also from the sort of Scotist univocity found in the work of Descartes’ scholastic contemporaries (see note 22).

77 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the fall 1998 meeting of the Southeastern Seminar in Early Modem Philosophy. My thanks to the audience there, as well as to the two referees for this journal, for helpful comments and suggestions.