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Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism

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Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism by Stephen John Zylstra A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto © Copyright by Stephen John Zylstra 2018 ABSTRACT Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism Stephen John Zylstra Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto 2018 Spinoza is well-known for his claim that God is the only substance that exists, and that everything else is a mere “mode” of that substance. At the same time, Spinoza maintains that all things depend causally on God for their being. But if all of reality is in some sense identical with God, in what manner can God be its cause? Spinoza’s answer is found in his claim that “God is the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things.” In this thesis, I investigate the scholastic roots of this distinction and its implications for understanding the fundamental features of Spinoza’s monistic ontology. The scholastics commonly distinguish between two kinds of activities, one which “remains” in the subject doing it and the other which “passes” outside. Those classified as immanent were primarily mental operations like thinking and willing. The first part of this thesis examines how the scholastics disagree over whether this kind of activity ought to be construed as a kind of production; the nature of its relation to its subject; and ii whether it is produced by means of ‘emanation’. The concept of an immanent cause emerges within this context. In the second part of this thesis, I bring this research to bear on our understanding of Spinoza’s metaphysics. First, I support the interpretation that Spinoza’s immanent cause emanates its effects within itself, in the manner that the properties of a thing follow from its essence. Contrary to what some scholars have suggested, however, this entails neither that it is a form of formal causation, nor that Spinoza’s conception of immanent causation is fundamentally discontinuous with the scholastic tradition. Second, I look at how Spinoza’s claim that an immanent cause undergoes what it does can be reconciled with the apparent impossibility of God undergoing anything on Spinoza’s system. I argue that we should distinguish between two senses of undergoing in Spinoza: God cannot undergo in the sense of being determined by external causes. But as the immanent cause of all things, God undergoes in the sense of being the thing that is affected by his own action. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I feel extremely privileged to have written this thesis under the supervision of a committee comprised of people I admire and from whom I have learned an enormous amount. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my co-advisors, Martin Pickavé and Marleen Rozemond, and to my internal readers, Deborah Black and Karolina Hübner, for the careful attention they have given to this thesis and for the countless other ways in which they have supported me over the years. Thanks as well to my two external readers, Peter King and Tad Schmaltz, for their helpful feedback. I have also benefited from incisive comments on individual chapters in one form or another by several others, including John Carriero, Brian Embry, Jorge Gracia, Martin Lenz, Stephan Schmid, and Andreas Schmitt; as well as by audiences in Berlin, East Lansing, Flagstaff, Groningen, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, St. Louis, Toronto, and Utrecht. Let me also give a special thanks to Richard Burnweit at the Voskuyl Library of Westmont College, for tracking down a great many sources I needed for my research, and to Marco Lamanna for his kind offer to make copies of a bit of Goclenius’s Logic for me when he visited the library in Wolfenbüttel. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the financial support for my doctoral work from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Throughout my dissertation work, I was sustained by the love and support of my family: Amanda, Henry, and now Benjamin, too. This thesis is dedicated to them. An updated version of chapter five will appear in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie as Stephen Zylstra, “Action and Immanent Causation in Spinoza.” iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. The Nature of Immanent Action ........................................................................8 §1. Thomas Aquinas and the ‘duplex actio’ ................................................................10 §2. Immanent action and the ‘mental word’ in later Thomists....................................20 §2.1. The extrinsic qualification ............................................................................24 §2.2. The modal qualification ................................................................................27 §2.3. The teleological qualification .......................................................................30 §3. Immanent action and immanent act in Suárez .......................................................35 §3.1. Suárez’s metaphysical argument for the inherent productivity of immanent actions...........................................................................................................35 §3.2. Suárez on the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions.............46 §4. Conclusion.............................................................................................................55 Chapter 2. Formal-Causal Interpretations of Immanent Action ........................................60 §1. Hervaeus Natalis ....................................................................................................63 §1.1. Hervaeus’s classification of kinds of operations ..........................................64 §1.2. Hervaeus’s classification of understanding and other mental operations.....69 §1.3. Evaluations of Hervaeus’s account...............................................................72 §2. Paulus Soncinas .....................................................................................................77 §3. Conclusion.............................................................................................................88 §4. Postscript: A formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause? ...........91 Chapter 3. Immanent Action and Emanation.....................................................................95 §1. Giacomo Zabarella on the distinction between emanation and ‘proper’ efficient causation ................................................................................................................99 §2. Francisco Suárez on the ‘causality’ of the efficient cause...................................103 §3. Franco Burgersdijk on the distinction between emanative and immanent causes ...................................................................................................................109 §4. A defence of the Burgersdijkian account.............................................................121 v §5. Conclusion...........................................................................................................125 Chapter 4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation...........................................127 §1. Spinoza’s dependence on Burgersdijk and Heereboord ......................................131 §2. Spinoza and emanative causality .........................................................................133 §3. Spinoza’s remarks on the immanent cause in the Short Treatise ........................137 §3.1. Equivalence with the internal cause............................................................138 §3.2. Simultaneity requirement............................................................................139 §3.3. Superlative freedom requirement................................................................141 §3.4. Mereological requirement...........................................................................142 §4. The causa emanativa in Protestant scholasticism................................................144 §5. The opposition of emanative and formal causality in Protestant scholasticism ..152 §6. Spinoza and mathematics.....................................................................................157 §7. Spinoza, Descartes, and the causa sui .................................................................163 §8. Causa adæquata, sive formalis............................................................................171 §9. Conclusion...........................................................................................................173 Chapter 5. Spinoza on Action and Immanent Causation .................................................176 §1. Immanent causation implies acting and undergoing............................................178 §2. Acting excludes undergoing ................................................................................181 §3. God is the adequate cause of all things................................................................182 §4. Immanent causation and divine undergoing ........................................................185 §5. Undergoing in the generic sense..........................................................................190 §6. Are two senses of acting and undergoing necessary?..........................................196 §7. Conclusion: Spinoza versus the scholastics on essence, perfection, and the capacity
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