Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism

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Stephen John Zylstra

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy University of Toronto

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 to undergo...... 200 Conclusion ...... 203 Abbreviations...... 211 Bibliography A. Primary Sources...... 213 B. Secondary Sources...... 222

vi LIST OF TABLES

1. Burgersdijk’s classification of causes in his Institutiones logicae...... 113 2. Relevant divisions of the efficient cause in Spinoza and Protestant scholastics ...... 147 3. Zabarella and the aforementioned Protestant scholastics on the relation between emanation and internal efficient causation ...... 149

vii INTRODUCTION

The first part of Spinoza’s Ethics is in many ways an assault on the ontology of traditional theism. For a traditional theist, there are fundamentally two kinds of entities in existence: there is God, and then there is everything else (‘creation’). The universe, being made up entirely of created things, depends absolutely on God for its existence, while God is completely self-sufficient and separate from the universe. God freely chose to create such a universe out of his infinite goodness and wisdom. God is a personal being, possessing, like us, an intellect and will, and the universe is providentially ordered, working according to the ends that God has set for it. Spinoza seems to dismantle this picture piece by piece. There are no purposes in nature at all, and everything that happens, happens out of necessity. The thought that the universe was created by an act of free choice is likewise false. The very notion of a personal being that is separate from the universe is a chimera. Most fundamentally, Spinoza seemingly abandons the basic ontological division between creator and creature, holding instead that all of reality is a single “substance.” All of this would appear to locate Spinoza’s position closer to that of metaphysical naturalism than to traditional theism—except that, unlike contemporary metaphysical naturalists, Spinoza continues to affirm that God, an absolutely infinite and perfect being, exists. It’s just that Spinoza in some sense identifies God with the universe itself—a view which is captured nicely by his famous phrase, Deus sive Natura. But Spinoza’s agreement with traditional theism apparently goes further than this. Not only does he hold that God exists, he also claims that everything depends absolutely on God in a sense that a traditional theist would recognize. As Spinoza puts it, echoing both Descartes and the medieval philosophical tradition, God is the cause of both the essence and the existence of all things (E Ip25, E IIp10cs). Spinoza’s particular combination of agreement and critique with respect to traditional theism gives rise to an interpretive problem: how is this absolute dependence of all things on God consistent with Spinoza’s monistic ontology? That is, how can God

1 Introduction 2

be the cause of all things while at the same time being in some sense identical with all things? We tend to think of causation as a relation that obtains between two separate things, as when one billiard ball strikes another billiard ball and causes it to move. For the traditional theist, of course, God’s creation of things is like that, since created things are understood to be themselves substances that are distinct from their creator. But on Spinoza’s model of divine causation, the distinction between cause and effect is not between two separate things, creator and creature, but between two aspects of a single reality, or substance. One and the same Natura is divided into what Spinoza calls Natura Naturans (Nature-as-cause) and Natura Naturata (Nature-as-caused). Hence, one can ask: what must divine causation be like in order for it to escape the requirement of the separateness of the cause and effect? And one might add, what does this kind of causation imply about the nature of the identity (and distinctness) of the cause and effect in the first place? In short, how does the relation between Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata in Spinoza’s ontology differ from the creator-creature relation of traditional theism? Spinoza’s own answer to these questions involves an appeal to a distinction between two kinds of causes. He writes, I favor an opinion concerning God and Nature far different from the one modern Christians usually defend. For I maintain that God is, as they say, the immanent, but not the transeunt,1 cause [causam immanentem, ut ajunt, non vero transeuntem] of all things. That all things are in God and move in God, I affirm, I say, with Paul, and perhaps also with all the ancient philosophers, though [expressed] in another way, and even, I dare say, with all the ancient Hebrews, as far as we can tell from certain traditions, corrupted as they have been in many ways. Nevertheless, it is a complete mistake to think, as some people do, that the Theological- Political Treatise rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as Nature (by which they understand a certain mass, or corporeal matter). (Ep. 73 G IV 307)

1 I prefer ‘transeunt’ to Curley’s ‘transitive’ (CW II.457). The latter term, being borrowed from grammar, seems to require ‘intransitive’ as its opposite, rather than ‘immanent’. In addition, it may give the false impression that a transitive verb always expresses a transiens causal relation. ‘Transeunt’ may be a term of art, but it is the one preferred in contexts such as this one by both metaphysicians (e.g., Armstrong 1997; Chisholm 1966; Stebbing 1933; Zimmerman 1997) and historians of philosophy (e.g., Bennett 2001 [with respect to Leibniz] Frost 2018 [with respect to Aquinas]; D. Garrett 2002 [with respect to Spinoza]; Stein 2014 [with respect to Aristotle]).

Introduction 3

In order to understand the relation between God and Nature on Spinoza’s ontology, then, we ought to investigate what it means for something to be an immanent cause, and what this says about the relation it has to its effect. It is clear that Spinoza intends immanent causation to be the sort of causal relation that obtains within a single substance, rather than across substances. That’s because his claim that God is the immanent and not the transeunt cause of all things (which, it should be noted, is repeated in part I of the Ethics) is directly connected to his claim that everything that is, is “in” God (E Ip15; cf. E Ip18d). This claim in turn entails that God is the only substance, and anything else that exists is merely what Spinoza calls a “mode” [modus] of that substance (E Ip15d; cf. E Ip25c). By contrast, the ‘modern Christians’ to which Spinoza refers presumably think that divine causation is transeunt because they think that ‘creatures’ are substances existing outside of God. Nevertheless, one can still wonder what all of this means for Spinoza. What lessons are we to draw from classifying individual things like you and me as modes of a substance? In what sense are all things “in” God? These concepts are basically at the explanatory ground floor provided in the Ethics (see E Ia3; E Ia5; and E Ia1), and (no doubt partially for this reason) their meanings are controversial among Spinoza scholars. Hence, explaining immanent causation merely in terms of the Ethics’ basic concepts does not appear to be particularly illuminating, and it is unclear how any attempts to say anything more about it ought to be evaluated.2 Fortunately, some much-needed traction can be gained by looking at the philosophical-historical background to Spinoza’s concept of an immanent cause. The distinction between immanent and transeunt causes emerges from the scholastic tradition, i.e., the sort of Aristotelian-inspired philosophy that was practiced in ‘the schools’ in

2 Important discussions of the immanent cause in Spinoza can be found in, inter alia: Carraud 2002; Deleuze 1990; Dunin-Borkowski 1933-36; Garrett 2002; Gueroult 1968; Hampshire 1951; Lærke 2009; Lærke 2013; Macherey 1991; Macherey 1992; Macherey 1998; Martin 2015; Melamed 2006; Melamed 2013; Morrison 2015; Nadler 2008; Norton 1839; Ripley 1839; Ripley 1840; Sangiacomo and Nachtomy 2018; Wolfson 1958; and Żuławski 1899.

Introduction 4

Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and well into the modern period.3 Based on a passage in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the scholastics commonly distinguish between two kinds of activities [actiones / operationes] that things can be engaged in, one which “remains” [immanens] and the other which “crosses over” [transiens]. The exact nature of these two kinds of activities is itself contested; and it is within this dialectical context that the distinction between immanent and transeunt causes [causae] eventually emerges. Connecting Spinoza’s use of this terminology to its scholastic pre-history can help to determine what it means for God to be the immanent cause of all things. In this manner, we can use the concept of an immanent cause to explain the fundamental features of Spinoza’s monistic ontology, such as what it means for something to be “in” God. In the present study, I conduct just such an investigation. Once upon a time, there was considerable scholarly interest in Spinoza’s relation to scholasticism. When Étienne Gilson wrote his ground-breaking study on Descartes, Index Scholastico-Cartésian, in 1913, he took inspiration from an earlier study by Jakob Freudenthal on “Spinoza und die Scholastik”.4 But since Gilson, historians of philosophy have created an enormous literature detailing Descartes’ many debts, great and small, to the scholastic tradition, while analogous interest in Spinoza largely petered out.5 No doubt this can be explained partly as a reaction to the way in which the earlier generation of Spinoza scholars exaggerated the explanatory power of the scholastic

3 In the way I use it, the term ‘scholasticism’ only partially overlaps with ‘medieval philosophy’. First of all, the scholastic tradition extends into the early modern period and includes many Protestant philosophers, several of whom we will encounter in chaps. 3 and 4 below. Second, I take the scholastic tradition to be distinct from the practice of philosophy in the Islamic world in the medieval period. This is not to deny the cross-pollination between these traditions. Still, to say that Maimonides, Avicenna, Averroes, and others (e.g.,) exerted a considerable influence on scholasticism is not to classify them as scholastics. 4 Gilson 1913: i; Freudenthal 1887. Other studies on Spinoza and scholasticism from roughly the same period as Gilson's study include: Dunin-Borkowski 1933-36; Lewkowitz 1902; Richter 1913; and Wolfson 1958 (originally published in 1934). 5 Consider that The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cottingham 1992) contains a whole essay (Ariew 1992) on “Descartes and Scholasticism”, while the word ‘scholasticism’ does not even appear in the index to The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (D. Garrett 1996) (as Krop 2011: 15 points out). A notable exception to this trend prior to 2000 is Piero di Vona’s work; see especially Di Vona 1960; Di Vona 1969; and Di Vona 1977.

Introduction 5

background and under-played the obvious and massive influence of Descartes.6 The result has been that we still lack a more sober and fine-tuned analysis of the nature and extent of Spinoza’s relation to scholasticism. Happily, some Spinoza scholars have returned to this task very recently,7 but research remains in its infancy. For instance, we still lack a good sense of which scholastic authors Spinoza is likely to have been familiar with. By measuring one particular dimension of the scholastic influence on Spinoza, I hope to contribute to this wider project. The present study falls into two parts. The first part examines in detail the conditions that led to the genesis of the concept of an immanent cause within scholasticism. Despite some acknowledgement that ‘immanence’ plays an important role in scholastic thought,8 there has been little research into how and why the scholastics distinguished immanent actions from transeunt ones. In chapters 1-3, I identify three questions regarding immanent action that were both crucial and controversial for the scholastics, and explain the philosophical motivations for the various answers to them. Chapter 1 considers the question of whether immanent actions ought to be conceived as a kind of producing or making (i.e., an activity that has a certain product as its end or goal), or whether, alternatively, some or all immanent actions are not productive. I argue that the development and critique of the production model of immanent actions is bound up with the reception of Thomas Aquinas’s theory of cognition, and that Francisco Suárez occupies a distinctive position in that history by developing a systematic and metaphysically grounded defence of the view that immanent actions are inherently productive. In Chapter 2, I turn to the question of how immanent action relates to the traditional Aristotelian scheme of four causes. The vast majority of scholastics thought

6 Wolfson notoriously boasted that he would be able to reconstruct the Ethics out of scraps of ancient and medieval philosophy (1958: I.3). Wolfson’s methodology was sharply criticized by Gueroult (1968: 442); for an account of their dispute, see Laerke 2011a. Later, Bennett (1984: 14) would point to Wolfson to justify his own “inattention to Spinoza's philosophical ancestry,” claiming of Wolfson's work, “the labour and learning are awesome, but the philosophical profit is almost nil.” 7 See Bac 2010; Coppens 2003; Coppens 2004; Krop 2011; Manzini 2011; Schnepf and Renz 2008; Van Bunge et al. 2011; Viljanen 2008; and Viljanen 2011. 8 Oeing-Hanhoff 1976; and Mojsisch 1977-99.

Introduction 6

that one is an efficient cause with respect to one’s immanent actions: they are the sort of thing one does. But this assumption is difficult to square with Aristotle’s account of an efficient cause, which seems to require that it acts on another, insofar as it is other. I examine two scholastics, Hervaeus Natalis and Paulus Soncinas, who are led to the conclusion that the relation between an immanent action and the subject in which it exists is not essentially efficient-causal; rather, it is a purely formal-causal relation. After evaluating their respective accounts of immanent action and the reactions to them in scholasticism, I end by considering what a purely formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause might look like, and how plausible it would be. One possible way to alleviate the tension involved in the claim that an efficient cause acts on itself is to claim that this is done (only) through an atypical form of efficient causality. Chapter 3 examines the question of whether immanent action should be understood as brought about through a form of efficient causality known as “emanation.” In is in the context of this question that the concept of an immanent cause (as opposed to action), is first introduced by the Dutch philosopher Franco Burgersdijk. I argue that Burgersdijk introduces the concept of an immanent cause in order to distinguish the form of efficient causality involved in immanent actions like thinking and willing from mere emanation. The second half of the present study brings the scholastic background to bear more directly on Spinoza’s conception of immanent causation. In chapter 4, I consider an interpretation of immanent causation in Spinoza as a kind of necessary entailment of a property of a thing from its essence. Recent scholars advocating this interpretation have classified this kind of relation as emanation and a type of formal causation. As a result, Spinoza is seen as breaking decisively from the core Burgerdijkian conception of an immanent cause as a kind of efficient cause. I argue that this interpretation is only partially correct. I present additional evidence that Spinoza does in fact think of an immanent cause as emanative in character, but I also argue that in Spinoza’s context, this sort of causation was understood to be a form of efficient, not formal, causality.

Introduction 7

In chapter 5, I resolve a significant tension between Spinoza’s conception of an immanent cause and his understanding of action. Like Burgersdijk, Spinoza sometimes describes an immanent cause as one that is acted on by itself, or undergoes what it does. Yet there is evidence that Spinoza thinks that God only acts and is incapable of undergoing. I argue in favour of a distinction between two senses of the term ‘undergoing’ [pati] 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 subject that is affected by an action. This solution confirms the interpretation of modes in Spinoza as existing ‘in’ God in the same manner that an accident ‘inheres’ in a substance in Aristotelian ontology. Chapters 4 and 5 effectively determine Spinoza’s answers to updated forms of the second and third scholastic questions, namely: ‘what relation does immanent causation have to the four Aristotelian causes?’ and, ‘is immanent causation a form of emanation?’ In the conclusion, I turn briefly to what Spinoza might answer to an updated the first question, i.e., ‘does an immanent cause produce something distinct from its own action?’ Based on the conclusion that Spinoza has an emanational model of immanent causation, and other evidence, I suggest that for Spinoza there is no distinction between the products of immanent causation and the actions by which they are produced. This means that modes in Spinoza’s ontology, i.e., things like you and me, are nothing other than God’s very actions.

CHAPTER 1. THE NATURE OF IMMANENT ACTION

Consider the sheer variety of activities there are. A snake slithers; a fly buzzes; a bird builds a nest; Jill rides her bicycle; George plans for his upcoming trip; kids imagine that they are in space. They have in common the fact that we (or other things) do them. That makes them different from the sorts of things that are done to us—things like being cut or being pushed. (Using traditional philosophical terms, we can call the activities ‘actions’ and distinguish them from these ‘passions’.) But one might wonder whether there are certain basic differences among actions themselves. Such differences might allow one to sort all actions into a number of irreducible, distinct, kinds. In the scholastic tradition, it was widely held that all actions belong to one of two kinds, typically called ‘transeunt’ and ‘immanent’. Transeunt actions are relatively easy to describe: they are the sort of activity whereby the ‘doer’ of the activity, or agent, does something to something else. Throwing a ball, burning a piece of wood, and building a nest are all examples. Through them, an agent brings about some kind of change in the patient (i.e., the thing the activity is being done to). E.g., when I throw a ball, I modify the ball’s location, trajectory, and so on. Many actions do not appear to have this basic structure. Some actions, that is, seem to involve an agent doing something, but not to something else. In some cases it may turn out that the action in question does in fact conform to the pattern of transeunt action. For instance, one might initially suppose that a fly’s buzzing is like this, since we don’t say that there is something that ‘is buzzed’ by the fly. On closer inspection, however, one realizes that buzzing is a kind of vibration, so there is in fact a patient, namely the air that is made to vibrate. Nevertheless, according to the scholastics, there are some actions that really do not involve any external patient. Certainly the clearest and least controversial examples (although not the only ones considered by the scholastics) are mental operations like sensing, willing, and thinking. For instance, when I understand some mathematical proof or see a tree in front of me, I am not doing

8 1. The Nature of Immanent Action 9

anything to the proof or the tree. The only being whose state has changed is me. To the extent that one can speak of a patient of these activities, then, the patient is just the agent. These were called immanent actions because they were said to ‘remain in’ [immanere] the agent. The scholastic concept of immanent action was anchored, in this fashion, by being defined negatively in terms of the absence of an external patient, and by the use of mental operations as paradigmatic cases. But of course it would be desirable to have a more precise, and positive, description of the structure of immanent action. What is going on when an agent is engaged in an immanent action? Since the action is said to “remain in” the agent, the question can be reformulated as: what is going on in the agent when the agent is engaged in an immanent action? In this chapter, I explore the various, contrary ways in which different scholastic authors answer this question. I begin, in the first section, with Thomas Aquinas, for whom the concept of immanent action figures prominently. His critique of Averroism (the theory that there is only a single intellect for all human beings),1 his defence of orthodox (i.e., Chalcedonian) Christology, and the organization of his Summa Contra Gentiles, for instance, all rely on it in significant ways.2 At the same time (and as I will show), Aquinas’ remarks on immanent action are ambiguous on the question of what is going on in the agent. The position he is most known for is found in his mature writings on the Trinity, where he argues that immanent action is a type of production, whose product is intrinsically united to the agent. So for example an act of thinking results in a concept or mental ‘word’ in the intellect, and, in similar fashion, the Son, or Word, proceeds from and remains one with the Father. Unfortunately, Aquinas never explictly applies this account to other immanent actions such as sensing and desiring. And in other writings, Aquinas adopts the opposite view that immanent actions do not have a product, and that this in fact is what fundamentally distinguishes them from transeunt actions. What is more, this opposing view seems to have the authority of Aristotle on its side.

1 Libera 2014: 245-56, 295-308, especially 301. See Aquinas, DUI §71-73; and ST I.76.1. 2 For a list of references to the concept of immanent action in Aquinas’s works, see Libera 2014: 316- 27; Lonergan 1967: 119-24; and Pini 2015: 87 n. 18.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 10

In sections 2 and 3, I show that Aquinas’s ambiguous legacy is taken up in different ways by, first, the later ‘orthodox’ Thomists like Capreolus and Cajetan, and second, Francisco Suárez. The Thomists are inspired primarily by Aquinas’s explanation of why the ‘mental word’ must be a product of thinking, distinct from the action of thinking itself. They read Aquinas as saying that because it is possible to think of things when they are not immediately present, the intellect must produce its immediate objects of thought. But since certain other kinds of immanent actions, like sensations, require the immediate presence of their object, they conclude that some but not all immanent actions are productive, thereby effectively splitting the difference between Aquinas’s two accounts. One has to wait until Francisco Suárez, himself no Thomist, to find a defence of the claim that all immanent actions are productive. Unlike the Thomists, Suárez begins unabashedly from an account of the metaphysics of action. He argues that action is nothing other than the process of bringing about something new in the world. Hence, once it is established that immanent actions truly are actions, we may conclude that any immanent action must have a product. In this fashion, Suárez goes the furthest towards treating immanent actions on the model of transeunt ones. Both Suárez and the Thomists offer proposals for how the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions can be preserved even though the property of being productive is found in both.

1. Thomas Aquinas and the ‘duplex actio’ Thomas Aquinas is one of the first philosophers to draw the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions, and to use this distinction to great effect in his writings. Of course, since the distinction was regarded by Aquinas and other scholastics as having been laid down by Aristotle, perhaps it might be more accurate to say that Aquinas is one of the first to draw forth the distinction, from the Metaphysics and a few other related texts in the Aristotelian corpus that we will discuss below. In any case, Aquinas’s account of the distinction has an enormous impact on scholastic debate over the nature of immanent action, as I will show in later sections. I suspect that even the very adoption of the labels ‘immanent’ [immanens] and ‘transeunt’ [transiens], terms which are not found

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 11

in the (Latin translations of the) relevant Aristotelian passages, is due to Aquinas’s influence. In this section, I give a sketch of Aquinas’s account. I begin with the basics of the account which Aquinas maintained throughout his career, basics that were also accepted by most scholastics.3 I then turn to the controversial and ambiguous aspect of Aquinas’s account: the question of whether immanent actions are productions, i.e., whether they are oriented to bringing about some kind of product distinct from themselves. Aquinas takes it as good Aristotelian doctrine that actions are divided fundamentally into two kinds. Often Aquinas articulates this division in terms of an action’s ‘location’ with respect to the agent doing it: one kind of action “remains in” [manere in] the agent, while the other kind “crosses over” [transit] into something outside the agent. In addition, Aquinas claims that there is a related way in which these two kinds of actions are distinguished: the ‘remaining’ kind of action perfects the agent that does it, while the ‘crossing over’ kind of action perfects the external patient that is being acted on. So for example, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he writes, According to the Philosopher in Metaphysics IX, there are two kinds of action [duplex est actio]: one, which remains [manet] in the agent and is a perfection of that agent, as, for example, seeing; the other, which passes [transit] into exterior things [exteriora], and is a perfection of the thing being made [to be something] [facti], as burning [comburere] in the case of fire.4

Aquinas’s way of drawing the distinction is meant to capture the basic difference between actions that fundamentally involve one thing doing something to another thing, and actions that fundamentally involve just a single thing doing something. (Aquinas’s examples make this clear: burning changes the thing that is burned, whereas seeing does not change the thing that is seen.) That Aquinas’s account does so depends on some principles of Aristotelian ontology that were fairly uncontroversial within scholasticism. Start from the assumption (based on Aristotle’s Categories) that actions are a category of

3 In chap. 2 below, we will examine two notable exceptions. 4 Aquinas, SCG II.23.5.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 12 accident.5 As such, it is their nature to exist in a substance “as in a subject,” as Aristotle says.6 (The scholastics referred to this relation, which they regarded as the unique form of ontological dependence that an accident bears to its substance, as inherence.) It might be thought that actions must inhere in their agents, since they are always predicated of their agents; for instance, when we say that fire burns wood, the action of burning is predicated of the fire. However, according to Aristotle in Physics III.3, when an agent acts on another thing, the action must exist in the patient. Fire’s action of burning exists in the wood being burned, for example. For an agent to act in such cases is nothing other than for the patient to be actualized or changed in a certain way by the agent.7 The agent’s action just is this actualization of the patient, conceived as originating, or being caused by, the agent.8 Given these Aristotelian assumptions, it makes sense to refer to actions that affect an external patient as ‘crossing over’ [transiens], because they originate (i.e., causally) in the agent, but inhere in the patient.9 Such actions can also be said to perfect the patient because it is the patient, and not the agent, that is being actualized or changed.10 By contrast, when an agent does something that affects itself alone, as when an animal sees, it is apparent that such an action would have to inhere in and actualize the agent itself. Such actions, then, could fairly be said to ‘remain in’ and perfect the agent.

5 See Aristotle, Cat. 4.1b25-27; and Cat. 9.11b1-8. 6 See Aristotle, Cat. 2.1a20-1b9. 7 See Aristotle, Phys. III.3.202a13-b29; and Aquinas’s commentary, In Phys. III lec. 5. 8 Aristotle holds that the so-called passion of the patient is just this same actualization, conceived as being undergone by the patient. See Aquinas, In Phys. III lec. 5 n. 320. I have here presented Aquinas as holding straightforwardly the Aristotelian view that a transeunt action exists in the patient and is identical to the actualization of the patient. While many of Aquinas’s texts support this view, there are others which suggest that transeunt actions exist in the agent and hence are distinct from the actualization of the patient. How to reconcile these texts is a matter of scholarly controversy (see Frost 2018; Kane 1959; Lonergan 2013: 254-67; McDermott 1960; and Miller 1946). However, we can ignore this controversy for our purposes, since the key point is that transeunt actions are productions and perfect an external patient, which is true on any interpretation of Aquinas. 9 Aquinas calls this type of predication extrinsic denomination, because the predication is true in virtue of something outside of the subject of predication. See Aquinas, In Phys. III lec. 5 n. 322. 10 To clarify, Aristotle does speak of the action as being the actualization of the agent. However, he also says that this actualization of the agent exists in the patient, and is identical to the actualization of the patient. Because the patient, not the agent, is the true ontological subject of this actuality or change, it is the patient and not the agent that can be said to be perfected by it.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 13

So much for Aquinas’s basic account of the division: one kind of action ‘crosses over’ [transiens] and perfects an external patient, while the other kind ‘remains in’ [immanens] and perfects the agent itself. Now to the controversial part of his account. Since immanent actions perfect the agent while transeunt actions perfect the patient, one can ask whether they also differ in terms of how they perfect their respective subjects. Since the model for transeunt action was fairly widely accepted, the controversial question was whether immanent actions follow the same model as transeunt actions. Consider another passage where Aquinas draws the distinction, this one from De Potentia: Now there are two kinds of operation [duplex operatio]. The one kind crosses over [transit] from the agent [operante] into something extrinsic, as heating [calefactio] crosses over from fire into wood. This kind of operation is a perfection of the one being acted on [operati], not the agent [operantis], since fire does not acquire something [aliquid] by heating; rather, the thing being heated [calefacti] acquires heat [calor]. The other kind, such as understanding, sensing, willing, and the like, does not cross over into something extrinsic, but remains [manens] in the agent itself [in ipso operante]. These operations are perfections of the agent [operantis], for the intellect is not perfected except by understanding actually, and similarly, the senses are not perfected except by sensing actually.11

How transeunt actions perfect an external patient is fairly clear from Aquinas’s explanation. An agent acts so as to actualize a certain latent potentiality in the patient, such as wood’s potential to be hot. Hence, as a result of the transeunt action, the patient acquires some new characteristic or feature, which Aquinas here refers to as a ‘something’ [aliquid]. Transeunt actions are thus essentially productions. Their purpose is to make something into something. So for example, fire’s characteristic transeunt action is identified as, quite literally, “making-hot” [calefacere], i.e., the production of heat [calor] in something, heat being a kind of accident falling under the category of quality.12 Similarly, one can say that throwing is the kind of transeunt action that results

11 Aquinas, QDP 10.1. 12 Typically the scholastics focus on so-called accidental change (when a substance acquires a new accident) when they discuss transeunt actions, but it is possible to extend the model to so-called substantial change (where a new substance comes into existence) as well. In such cases, prime matter could be considered the external patient that is perfected by the agent.

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in a new location (for the object thrown), ship-building is the kind of transeunt action that results in a ship, and so on. Every transeunt action has a certain product as its goal. All of this fits well with how Aristotle describes action in Physics III and the efficient or ‘moving’ cause in Physics II.13 With this model of transeunt actions in place, one can ask whether immanent actions operate in a similar way. Are immanent actions likewise to be understood as productions? If not, then obviously there is no additional ‘something’ in virtue of which the action perfects the agent; in that case, it must be the immanent action itself that perfects the agent. This model of immanent actions as disanalogous to how transeunt actions operate was the default view within scholasticism. The reason is that Aquinas and indeed all scholastics take the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions to have been laid down by Aristotle in a certain passage from book Θ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics14 (which Aquinas usually cites, as in the Summa Contra Gentiles passage quoted above). And in this passage, Aristotle seems to state categorically that actions that exist in the agent do not produce anything. Aristotle begins by distinguishing between those potencies whose actualization consists in the mere ‘use’ [usus] of the power, and those whose actualization results in a certain product over and above its use. The end-point [ultimum] of some [potencies] is the use [usus], as (for example) the act of seeing is the end-point of sight, and nothing else [nullum … alterum … opus] in addition to [praeter] this comes to be from sight. But from other [potencies], something else does come to be, as (for example) from the art of building, a house comes to be in addition to the act of building.

It is only after making this initial cut that Aristotle says things that are broadly reflected in Aquinas’s basic account of the division: Nevertheless, in neither case is there any less or any more of an end [finis] of the potency. For the act of building is in the thing being built, and it comes to be at the same time and exists with the house. Therefore whenever there is something else that comes to be in addition to the use,

13 By contrast, Aristotle does not seem to consider immanent action in these passages at all. 14 Aristotle, Met. Θ.8 1050a23-b2. Here I will rely on William of Moerbecke’s popular revision of the ‘translatio media’ of the Metaphysics (in AL 25), modernizing some of the spelling. For commentary on the original Greek, see Makin 2006: 200-04; and Stein 2014.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 15

the actualization [actus] of [the potency] is in the thing being made, as the act of building is in the thing being built, the act of weaving in the thing being woven, and the same goes for the rest; without exception, motion [motus] is in what is being moved. But in those cases where there is not anything else [non est aliud aliquod opus] in addition to the action [praeter actionem], the action exists in the thing, as the act of seeing is in the one seeing, and the act of theorizing in the one theorizing, and life in the soul, and hence happiness [felicitas] as well, for it is a kind of life.15

On a straightforward reading of this passage, it seems clear that Aristotle holds that the kinds of actions that exist in the agent are exclusively non-productive ones, i.e., the sort consisting in the mere ‘use’ [usus] of a power, and not resulting in anything over and above the use. It would seem, further, that in order for an action to result in such a product, there must be some kind of material external to the agent that the agent, through its action, is making into something. It is in this external material, which Aristotle calls the ‘thing being made’ [facti], that such an action exists. Likewise, it seems clear that whenever an action results in a product, the action is done for the sake of the product. All of this would seem to indicate in no uncertain terms that only an action that is not productive could both exist in the agent and perfect the agent. Thomas Aquinas endorses this standard Aristotelian account of immanent actions as inherently non-productive16 in several writings. For example, in his commentary on the Metaphysics, he says the following in his exposition of Aristotle’s passage. Now a difference among the aforesaid potencies must be considered, namely that when there is something produced in addition the

15 Quoniam uero est horum quidem ultimum usus [χρῆσις], ut uisus uisio, et praeter hanc nullum fit alterum a uisu opus [γίγνεται], a quibusdam uero fit aliquid [γίγνεταί], ut ab aedificatoria [οἰκοδομικῆς] domus preter aedificationem: tamen non minus hic quidem finis, hic autem magis finis potentiae [δυνάμεώς] est. Nam aedificatio [οἰκοδόμησις] in aedificato [οἰκοδομουμένῳ], et simul fit et est cum domo. Quorumcumque ergo aliquid alterum est quod fit praeter usum [τὴν χρῆσιν], horum actus [ἐνέργεια] in facto [τῷ ποιουμένῳ] est, ut aedificatio in aedificato et contextio in contexto; similiter autem et in aliis, et totaliter motus [κίνησις ]in eo quod mouetur [τῷ κινουμένῳ]. Quorum uero non est aliud aliquod opus [τι ἔργον] praeter actionem [τὴν ἐνέργειαν], in ipsis existit actio [ἐνέργεια], ut uisio in uidente et speculatio [θεωρία] in speculante et uita [ζωὴ ] in anima [ψυχῇ] (quare et felicitas [εὐδαιμονία]; uita namque qualis [ποιά] quedam est). Met. Θ.8 1050a23-b2 (AL 25, p. 189-90 ll. 298-309); my translation of the Latin text is based on that found in Aquinas, In Met. 16 Here and throughout this chapter I call this the ‘standard Aristotelian account’ because it is both the more straightforward interpretation of the passage we have just examined, and because it is essentially the ‘default’ interpretation that scholastics accept unless it conflicts with some philosophical position they are strongly committed to.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 16

actualization [actum] of these potencies, which is an action, the action of such potencies is in the thing being made and is the actualization of the thing being made…. And this is so, because when something produced [aliquod operatum] results from the action of a potency, that action perfects the thing being produced, not the producer [operantem]. For this reason [Unde] it is in the thing being produced as an action and its perfection, and not in the producer. But when there is not some product [aliquod opus] produced beyond the action of the potency, then the action exists in the agent and as its perfection, and it does not cross over into something external that needs to be perfected; for example, the act of seeing is in the one seeing as its perfection, and the act of theorizing is in the one theorizing, and life is in the soul (if we understand by life vital activity).17

This passage leaves no doubt that Aquinas read Aristotle as saying that transeunt actions are productions while immanent actions are not—which is of course the straightforward reading of the passage. What is more, Aquinas even presents the criteria that make up his own basic account of the distinction as though they are grounded in this difference. That is, he suggests that it is because a transeunt action is productive that it exists in, and perfects, something external to the agent, and likewise, it is because an immanent action is not productive that it exists in and perfects the agent. Hence, the way that an immanent action perfects the agent is fundamentally disanalogous to the way that a transeunt action perfects something external. For example, something being heated is perfected by the heat it acquires as a result of the action, whereas something that sees is perfected by the very act of seeing, not by something acquired by seeing. Notwithstanding comments of this sort and the Aristotelian background, however, Aquinas is not usually associated (either now, or in the Middle Ages) with the standard Aristotelian account of immanent actions. Instead, Aquinas is known for an alternative view that he develops in some of his later writings, such as the Summa Theologiae. On this new account, immanent actions are in fact understood as a kind of production. What distinguishes immanent actions from transeunt actions, on this view, is not that they lack any product, but rather that their products are not brought about in an external patient. In

17 Aquinas, In Met. lib. 9 lec. 8 nn. 9-10 (emphasis added).

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Aquinas’s terms, an immanent action is a processio ad intra, an action by which the agent brings about an entity within itself.18 The change in Aquinas’s account of immanent action reflects a shift in his theory of human cognition, the details of which are fairly well known.19 Aquinas follows Aristotle in thinking human cognition as a process that begins with sensation and ends with understanding, such that, e.g., understanding what it is to be an oak tree depends on first seeing (or otherwise sensing) oak trees. In his early works such as his Sentences commentary and the first draft of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas holds that there are two, and only two, elements generated in the intellect throughout this process. First, there is an intelligible species, which is a certain form that is abstracted from sense-data20 and impressed on the possible intellect by the agent intellect. Then there is the act of understanding that the possession of the intelligible species makes possible. The act of understanding proper is an action performed by the possible intellect.21 At this stage, then, Aquinas’s account of cognition conforms to the standard Aristotelian account of immanent actions, since (on this account) the act of understanding does not result in some further thing in the mind; the end of the process of cognition is just this action by the possible intellect. Later in his career,22 however, Aquinas adds to his account of the process of human cognition a third and final element, which he variously calls a concept [conceptus,

18 The reason that Aquinas prefers the term processio appears to be theological; his new account of immanent action is used to explain how it is that the Son “proceeds” from the Father (see below). As Aquinas uses it, the term is somewhat broader than productio inasmuch as the latter implies that the entity that is brought about is distinct from and dependent on the cause (cf. ST I.27.1 ad 2). It is only in the theological case that the entity which ‘proceeds’ internally is one in essence with the entity from which it proceeds (cf. ST I.27.2 ad 2). 19 Paissac 1951: 117-218; Panaccio 1999: 177-86; Panaccio 1992: 127-29; Pini 2012: 497-99; and Pini 2015: 87-93 (to which this paragraph and the next are particularly indebted). 20 More technically, information from the senses is processed into ’phantasms’ in the imagination, and intelligible species are abstracted from the phantasms.. 21 By distinguishing these two elements, Aquinas is able to maintain that the intellect's act of understanding is on the one hand causally dependent on sensation (and ultimately the objects sensed), and yet on the other is something the intellect does, not something done to the intellect. 22 The first glimpses of his new view are in De Veritate, which was disputed between 1256 and 1259. By 1265, Aquinas had completed part I of the Summa Theologiae, the fourth book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, De Potentia, and his Commentary on the Gospel of John, all of which express his new account. See Pini 2012: 507 n. 28 for specific references.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 18

conceptio], an intention [intentio], or (following Augustine23) a ‘mental word’ [verbum mentis], also known as the ‘word of the heart’ [verbum cordis]. According to Aquinas, the mental word is distinct from both the act of understanding and the intelligible species, because it is something produced by the act of understanding and can be considered its terminus (i.e., that at which the act of understanding is directed).24 Aquinas seems to have been led to posit the mental word in order to explain how we are able to think about particular things in terms of universals, such as when I understand what it is for something to be a tree.25 There may have been theological motivations as well,26 since it allows Aquinas to defend the orthodox (i.e.,) Chalcedonian doctrine of Christ by pressing the Augustinian analogy between our act of thinking and the procession of the Son from the Father: in both cases, an immanent action results in a product that is intrinsically united to the producer.27 Whatever the reasons, Aquinas’s new theory of the mental word is accompanied by a general account of immanent action as a processio ad intra. E.g., Aquinas writes, But since every procession is on account of an action, it follows that just as there is a procession ad extra on account of an action which is directed [tendit] into external matter, so too there is a certain procession ad intra on account of an action which remains [manet] within the agent. This is most clear in the case of the intellect, whose action, namely understanding, remains in the one understanding. For whenever someone understands, from the very fact that he understands, there proceeds something within [intra] himself. This is a conception [conceptio] of the thing understood, arising from the intellectual power and proceeding from the awareness [notitia] of the thing understood. This conception is signified by the spoken word, and is called the ‘word of the heart’ [verbum cordis] signified by the ‘word of the voice’ [verbum vocis].28

23 See Augustine, De Trinitate XV.12; cf. Friedman and Pelletier 2014. 24 Aquinas, SCG I.53; and QDP 8.1. 25 See the discussion of Aquinas, SCG I.53.2 in sec. 2 below; cf. Pasnau 1997: 259-71. 26 The change in Aquinas’s account of cognition corresponds to a shift in his position on the theological question of how the name ‘Word’ is predicated of God. See Pini 2015. 27 See Aquinas, ST I.27.1. Similarly, Aquinas also compares the ‘spiration’ of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son to the love that is produced in the human will by the immanent action of willing (see, e.g., QDP 10.1). 28 Aquinas, ST I.27.1.

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Aquinas’s revision of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions vis- à-vis the standard Aristotelian account is revolutionary, yet he fails to pursue it to its completion. As a result, there are a number of ways in which Aquinas’s position on immanent actions remains ambiguous. First, Aquinas continues to falls back on the standard Aristotelian view in a number of prominent late-period texts,29 such as the commentary on the Metaphysics, quoted above. (To refer to Aquinas as having an ‘early’ and a ‘late’ account of immanent action, as some scholars do, is thus already to over- simplify matters.30) Second, Aquinas rarely applies the processio ad intra account explicitly to specific kinds of immanent actions other than intellection. This casts doubt on whether Aquinas really thinks that every immanent action is necessarily a processio ad intra. For example, do volitions result in something akin to a mental ‘word’ but existing in the will rather than the intellect? As later scholastic authors were aware, Aquinas seems to affirm it in some places and deny it in others.31 As for the senses, there is little to no evidence that Aquinas thought that the act of sensing produces something through which it senses external things.32 The same (mutatis mutandis) can be said for the appetitive powers as well. Third, Aquinas continues to cite the locus classicus for the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions in the Metaphysics when he gives his

29 To give another example, in SCG III.2.2, Aquinas writes, “An action sometimes results in something made [terminatur ad aliquod factum], as building [aedificatio] results in a house, and healing [sanatatio] in health. Sometimes, however, it does not, as in the cases of understanding [intelligere] and sensing [sentire]…. It follows therefore that every agent intends an end while acting, that end sometimes being the action itself, and sometimes being something made by the action.” Thanks to Marleen Rozemond for drawing my attention to this passage. 30 I note that Aquinas’s shift in his understanding of the Trinity (to which his change in account of the immanent-transeunt distinction is linked) was known in the Middle Ages. It was included in the list of articles on which Aquinas had changed his mind between his Sentences commentary and his Summa Theologiae that the Dominican order compiled shortly after Aquinas’s death. See a. 8 in Gauthier 1952: 303; for comment, see Pini 2012: 492 and 497. Thus, the ways in which the later Thomists tried to explain Aquinas’s view should not be dismissed as a failure to consider a developmental hypothesis. 31 Suárez, CDA d. 10 q. 2 n. 12; cf. DA lib. 5 c. 4 n. 9 (Opera Omnia 3.760-61). In favour of the thesis that volition has a terminus, Suárez cites Aquinas, ST I.27.3 and I.37.1 (cf. also Aquinas, QDP 9.9 and 10.1); against this thesis, he cites Aquinas, QDV 4.2 ad 7. 32 In later medieval authors, Aquinas is sometimes thought to hold that there is something akin to a word produced by the interior sense, but nothing is produced by the actions of the external senses (a view which some Thomist authors take). See Conimbricenses, In De An III cap. 7 q. 3 a. 4 p. 489 (citing Aquinas, ST I.85.2 ad 3 and Quodl. 3 a. 9 ad 3, the latter of which seems to be a corruption of Francis Sylvestris’s citation, which is 5 art. 9.2—see Sylvestris, In SCG I.53 [Opera Omnia 12.83]); and Suárez, CDA d. 5 q. 5 n. 2 (cf. DA 3.5.2 [Opera Omnia 3.631]), citing Aquinas, ST I.34.1 ad 2; QDP 8.1 and 9.5; and QDV 4.1 ad 1.

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processio ad intra account. Given that Aristotle seems clearly to deny that immanent actions can have products, this raises obvious questions about compatibility. But Aquinas does not offer any explanation as to how Aristotle’s text can be reconciled with the processio ad intra account, nor (alternatively) does he suggest that Aristotle needs correction on this matter. In fact, Aquinas never even admits that his processio ad intra account actually differs from the standard reading of Aristotle! Finally, Aquinas’s processio ad intra account also leaves open the question of how an agent is perfected by an immanent action. For example: is the intellect perfect in virtue of its act of understanding, or in virtue of the mental word? If immanent action is truly analogous to transeunt action, as Aquinas suggests, it would seem that just as an external patient is perfected by a transeunt action in virtue of the thing produced by it, so too, the agent of an immanent action is perfected in virtue of the thing produced by it. At the same time, Aquinas sometimes makes it sound as though it is the immanent action itself that perfects the agent, such as above, when he says that “the intellect is not perfected except by understanding actually [nisi per hoc quod est intelligens actu], and similarly, the senses are not perfected except by sensing actually [nisi per hoc quod actu sentit].”33 In addition, there are good Aristotelian reasons for thinking, on the one hand, that the product is the end of a productive action, but on the hand, that immanent actions must be ends in themselves.

2. Immanent action and the ‘mental word’ in later Thomists The ambiguities surrounding Aquinas’s remarks on immanent and transeunt actions leave his account open to be developed in different ways. It may still come as a surprise that the position of the most well known card-carrying Thomists, like Francis Sylvestris, John Capreolus, and Thomas de Vio Cajetan, is that some but not all kinds of immanent actions result in a product.34 In this respect, they split the difference between the standard Aristotelian account of immanent action and Aquinas’s new processio ad

33 Aquinas, QDP 10.1 (emphasis added). Incidentally, the text quoted above is followed by a clear statement of the processio ad intra account of immanent action; he writes, “A certain processio is found in creatures on account of both kinds of operation [viz., immanent and transeunt]” (Ibid.). 34 See Suárez’s summary of the Thomists’ position in DM 48.2.5 (Opera Omnia 26.874-75).

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intra account. But their inspiration for doing so is taken from Aquinas’s own mature theory of the mental word. In a key passage of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas explains why a mental word, or “concept” [conceptus, intentio], must be produced by the intellect when it understands something. He writes, This is something necessary, because the intellect understands a present and an absent thing indifferently. In this the imagination agrees with the intellect. But the intellect has this characteristic in addition, that it understands a thing as separated from material conditions, without which the thing does not exist in nature. But this could not be the case unless the intellect forms the aforementioned concept for itself.35

Based on this remark, the Thomists hold that (Aquinas’s position is that) a product is produced by an immanent action only when the object of that action does not, or need not, exist outside of the mind in the manner in which it is cognized. For example, I can imagine a tree when there is none present, so it must be the case that that image was produced by my act of imagining. Similarly, when I understand what trees are, the object of my act of understanding is the universal form of tree-ness; but since only individual trees exist outside of the mind, that object must be produced by my act of understanding itself.36 The Thomists reason that any immanent action whose object already exists extramentally must be non-productive, since there is no need for a product. In this category are included the actions of the external senses and the appetitive powers, but also possibly certain intellectual acts known as ‘intuitive cognition’, such as the beatific vision of God or angelic self-knowledge.37 As Claude Panaccio and others have shown, Aquinas’s theory of the mental word was the subject of intense scrutiny in the generation or so after his death.38 To date, these scholars have focussed mainly on criticisms having to do with epistemology and the

35 Aquinas, SCG I.53.3. 36 My description of this view in terms of universals is owed to Pasnau 1997: 256-62. The Thomists tend to stick to speaking in terms of whether the object exists abstracted from matter in reality. 37 ‘Intuitive cognition’ is contrasted wth so-called ‘abstractive cognition,’ of which my understanding of the universal nature of trees is an example. See Suárez, CDA d. 5 q. 5 nn. 1-2; cf. DA III.5.2 (Opera Omnia 4.630-31); Suárez cites Cajetan, In ST I.27.1; Capreolus; and Sylvestris, In SCG I.53. 38 See Friedman 2010: 75-93; Friedman 2013: 41-42; Friedman and Pelletier 2014; Panaccio 1992; Panaccio 1999: chap. 6; and Pasnau 1997: chap. 8, esp. 271-89. Panaccio (1992: 129) even describes the history of cognitive theory during this period as a progressive “destruction” of Aquinas’s view.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 22 nature of cognition, e.g., the objection that positing the mental word as the object of understanding results in skepticism.39 But the theory was also criticized on metaphysical grounds having to do with the ontology of action.40 As we have seen, on the standard Aristotelian account of immanent action, it is impossible for an immanent action to result in a product distinct from the action itself. Production requires an external patient that is transformed by the action, so only transeunt actions are productive. Hence, the most basic metaphysical critique of Aquinas’s theory of the mental word simply applies this point to the act of understanding.41 In later scholasticism, this argument was associated

39 As Suárez describes the Thomist position, “according to this opinion, the [mental] word serves as a kind of mirror or likeness [imago] of the thing being cognized, in which that thing is cognized [secundum hanc opinionem verbum, sive idolum … deservit, ut sit velut speculum, vel ut imago rei cognitae, in qua ipsa cognoscatur],” (CDA d. 5 q. 5 n. 2; cf. DA III.5.2 [Opera Omnia 4.630]). According such a role to the mental word invites worries about how we can know whether reality is being ‘mirrored’ accurately. Note that this description undoubtedly is rooted in Aquinas’s remark in the Commentary on the Gospel of John that the mental word “is compared to the intellect, not as that by which the intellect understands, but as that in which it understands, because it is in what is thus expressed and formed that it sees the nature of the thing understood” (In Ion. I.1.25). 40 Although he passes over them to focus on epistemological criticisms, Panaccio (1992: 132) admits, ”Many of [the arguments for and against Aquinas's theory of the mental word] have to do with the analysis of the ideas of action, operation, and production, the central problem being whether specifically mental operations always require a distinct internal product or not.” 41 To be clear, these critics do not deny that there is such a thing as a mental word existing in the knower. Like Aquinas, they accept that the intellect possesses concepts that it understands. (Moreover, like Aquinas, they want to preserve at least the semblance of an analogy between human cognition and the procession of the divine persons.) But rather than positing the mental word as something in addition to the act of understanding, they identify it with the act of understanding itself. As scholars have noted, this means that their theories of cognition can be classified as ‘act-‘ or ‘adverbial’ theories, such that having the concept of (say) a tree is just to think tree-wise. (By contrast, Aquinas’s mature theory can be classified as an ‘act-object’ theory.)

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 23 especially with Durand of St.-Pourçain and John Duns Scotus.42 Here is Durand’s version:43 It cannot be true that through any act of one who understands—whether that act is understanding, or ‘saying’ [dicere], or is called something else—some form is produced in the intellect which is not the act of understanding itself. This is clear from the nature of immanent operation [operationis manentis intra]. For nothing is constituted or produced through an immanent operation; but understanding or intellectual saying are immanent operations; therefore, nothing is constituted or produced through them. The major premise is clear from Metaphysics IX, where the Philosopher posits this difference between immanent operations and those that pass outside [transeunt extra]: there is always something constituted through transeunt [transeuntes] operations, while nothing is constituted through immanent ones. The minor premise is self-evident. Hence, etc.44

For Durand, Scotus, and other critics, Aquinas is guilty of a kind of category error: by making the mental word into a “form” distinct from the act of understanding, he attributes the defining feature of transeunt action, namely productivity, to an immanent action.

42 Durand and Scotus were thought of as the two principal authorities who denied that the mental word is something distinct from the act of thinking itself; see, e.g., Cajetan, In ST I.27.1, n. 9 (p. 307); Fonseca, In Met. VII.8 q. 3 (p. 298), who lists “Scotus, Durand, Bonaventure, Ockham, Palud, Gabriel, and others”; and Toledo, In ST I.27.1 (pp. 308), who mentions “Durand and Scotus and others”. The difference (well- recognized in the period) between the two is that Scotus distinguishes between the act of thinking that is identified with the mental word, and the act that produces it, while Durand thinks they are one and the same thing—the ‘word’ is only the act of thinking understood in a certain way. For more on Scotus’s understanding of the mental word as the act of thinking, see Cross 2009; Cross 2014: chap. 5, esp. pp. 117- 21; Friedman 2013: 395-414; and Pini 2015: 93-103. For more on Durand’s theory, see Friedman 2013: 464-66; Friedman forthcoming; Hartman 2012; and Müller 1968: 97-107. 43 The direct target of Durand's argument is Hervaeus Natalis, an early defender of Aquinas’s theory of the mental word (see Friedman forthcoming; Koch 1927: 64-67; and Trottmann 1997). Hervaeus’s account of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions does not resemble that of the later ‘orthodox’ Thomists discussed in this chapter. A full analysis of his idiosyncratic account is given in chap 2, sec. 1 below. 44 Primum istorum non puto esse uerum, scilicet quod per quemcunque actum intelligentis, siue ille actus sit intelligere siue dicere siue aliter qualitercunque nominetur, producatur aliqua forma in intellectu que non sit actus intelligendi. Quod patet primo ex natura operationis manentis intra sic: per operationem intra manentem nichil constituitur uel producitur; set intelligere uel dicere intelligibile sunt operationes intra manentes; ergo per eas nichil constituitur uel producitur. Maior patet ex IX Methaphisice, ubi PHILOSOPHUS ponit hanc differentiam inter operationes intra manentes et illas que transeunt extra, quia per transeuntes extra semper aliquid constituitur, set per intra manentes nichil. Minor de se patet; quare etc. Durand, In I. Sent. d. 27 q. 2 n. 12 (Durandus Projekt p. 804 ll. 170-81). Cf. the report of Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, A§1.2, arg. 1 (p. 248); Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 6 (Opera Omnia 4.306); and Conimbricenses, In De An. III.8 q. 3 a. 1 arg. 2 (p. 483c).

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The discussion of the nature of immanent action in scholasticism after Aquinas is thus inextricably bound up with the reception of Aquinas’s theory of the mental word. Given the common opinion that the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions (a) carves nature at its joints and (b) was canonically and truthfully laid down by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, the defenders of Aquinas are thus put in the position of having to explain how the possibility of immanent actions having products (a) does not collapse the distinction and (b) can be reconciled with what Aristotle says. Because the Thomists hold that some immanent actions such as sensations are not productive, they are blocked from construing the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions as the difference between interior and exterior productions (i.e., just as Aquinas suggests with his processio ad intra account of immanent action). Nor can they simply fall back on the uncontroversial basics of Aquinas’s account and say that—regardless of whether an immanent action produces anything—the difference between immanent and transeunt actions is just that an immanent action exists in and perfects the agent, while a transeunt action does not. Since it is undeniable that Aristotle is making some kind of denial that immanent actions have products, their approach is to argue that Aristotle’s denial is qualified in some way. As we will see, the Thomists regularly appeal to the case of habits to buttress their argument. As they point out, it is an uncontroversial point that Aristotle thinks that a habit is produced in the soul as the result of repeated immanent actions, such as having the same thought many times; hence, Aristotle cannot possibly be saying that no immanent action ever produces a product. How then should his claim be understood? The Thomists came up with at least three interpretations.

2.1 The extrinsic qualification The first way to interpret Aristotle’s text as consistent with Aquinas’s theory of the mental word is to make what I call the extrinsic qualification of Aristotle’s denial that immanent actions are productive. On this interpretation, immanent actions differ from transeunt actions in that they (i.e., immanent actions) do not have products that exist outside of the agent. This difference allows, of course, that some immanent actions may

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 25 involve the sort of procession ad intra that Aquinas discusses. As Francis Sylvestris puts it, Through immanent action, as such, nothing is produced that is outside the operating power; nevertheless, something can be produced which remains in the power itself.45

As an interpretation of Aristotle, the extrinsic qualification is admittedly strained, but perhaps not intolerably so. Its plausibility trades on the ambiguity of the use of the word praeter in the locus classicus. Recall that there, (the Latin) Aristotle distinguishes between those powers that result in something praeter the ‘use’ [usus] or ‘action’ [actio], and those that do not. These powers are supposed to correspond to transeunt and immanent actions, respectively. On the standard Aristotelian interpretation, praeter is taken to mean ‘in addition to,’ so that the sense of the contested claim is that immanent actions can result in no product whatsoever (because any product would qualify as being ‘in addition to’ the action itself). But praeter can also mean ‘outside of’; taken in this fashion, one could argue that a product that “remains in the power itself” (as Sylvestris puts it) is not excluded by Aristotle, since it is intrinsically united to the action, and hence in that sense it is not ‘outside of’ the action that produces it. And of course this interpretation was also defended through the appeal to the reality of habits produced by (repeated) immanent actions. As Capreolous says, Aristotle does not mean to deny that through such [immanent] acts or operations something at some time would be constituted within the one operating, as is clear from habits of the affective parts [of the soul], which are caused by appetitive acts, and from habits of the intellective parts, caused by acts of the intellect.46

The extrinsic qualification makes the exception required for habits, since they are produced within the agent. But this same qualification also allows for the Thomists’

45 Ad secundum dicitur quod per actionem immanentem, ut sic, nihil producitur quod sit extra potentiam operantem: sed tamen produci potest aliquid quod in ipsa potentia maneat. Sylvestris, In SCG I.53 n. 9 (Opera Omnia 12.154). 46 Nec etiam intendit negare Aristoteles quin per hujusmodi actus vel operationes aliquid (α) quandoque constituatur intra operantem; sicut patet de habitibus partis affectivae, qui causantur per actus appetitivos, et de habitibus partis intellectivae, causatis per actus intellectus. Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, B§1.2 (ad 1) (p. 256).

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theory of the mental word as something distinct from and produced by certain intellectual acts. One potential problem that was identified with the extrinsic qualification interpretation is that it threatens to render Aristotle’s point banal. Here is how Capreolus formulates the objection, which he attributes to Durand of Saint-Pourçain and Peter of Palude: It might be suggested that the Philosopher does not intend simpliciter to say that nothing is constituted in any way by an immanent operation [operationem intra manentem], but just that nothing outside [extra] is constituted by it, so that within the agent [intra operantem] there is very well something that is constituted. But this reply does not succeed, because it would have been absurd for him to say something concerning which no one can doubt. And no one has ever doubted that nothing outside [the agent] is constituted by an immanent operation, for it is necessary that an operation reach [attingit] its product [operatum], but what remains within [intra manet] does not reach what is outside [extra]. Therefore, it was Aristotle’s intention to say, not merely that nothing outside is constituted by an immanent operation [operationem immanentem], but that nothing is constituted by it in any way, neither inside, nor outside.47

This objection rests on what could be regarded as a variant of the principle of charity: don’t interpret the Philosopher as labouring to make a trivial, uncontroversial point. In his response, Capreolus does not take issue with the principle; he argues instead that denying that immanent operations have extrinsic products is far from trivial. This argument does not succeed, because many have doubted whether an act of intellect or will produces something outside, as is clear from [the example of] Avicenna, who claimed that one intelligence causes another through its own intellection. Moreover, many claim that angels move the heavens through their willing and understanding.48

47 Si dicatur quod Philosophus non intendit simpliciter dicere quod per operationem intra manentem nihil omnino constituitur, sed quod solum per eam nihil extra constituitur, tamen intra operantem bene constituitur aliquid; --non valet. Quia absurdum fuisset dicere illud circa quod nullus potest dubitare; sed quod per operationem intra manentem nihil extra constituitur, nullus unquam dubitavit; oportet enim quod operatio attingat suum productum; quod autem intra manet, non attingit illud quod est extra; igitur non fuit intentio Aristotelis tantum dicere quod per operationem immanentem nihil extra constituitur, sed quod per eam nihil omnino constituitur, nec intra, nec extra. Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, A§1.2, primum (p. 248). 48 Nec valet prima improbatio. Quia multi dubitaverunt utrum actus intellectus, aut voluntatis, producat aliquid extra; sicut patet de Avicenna, qui posuit unam intelligentiam causare aliam per suam

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Capreolus’s examples here are distinct from the (uncontroversial) notion that rational agents act on the basis of their intellect and will. Normally in such cases, the immanent actions of understanding and willing are distinguished from the transeunt actions that they lead to, just as e.g., when an architect builds something, the conceiving of the building and the decision to build it are actions distinct from actually building it in reality. What Avicenna and some others hold, according to Capreolus, is that there are certain cases where an immanent action produces an external product immediately, without any additional, transeunt action. It is this kind of phenonemon that Aristotle is ruling out with his claim that there is no product ‘outside’ [praeter] an immanent action.

2.2. The modal qualification A second way of qualifying Aristotle’s denial that immanent actions have products is given by Cardinal Cajetan. I call it the modal qualification because on this interpretation, Aristotle’s distinction between immanent and transeunt actions in the Metaphysics concerns what necessarily holds for each. Cajetan himself calls it taking the distinction “with respect to necessity” [quoad necessitatem], and considers it to be one of two correct ways the distinction can be construed.49 He writes, Taken with respect to necessity, the sense of the distinction is: a transeunt operation necessarily has a product [operatum], while an immanent operation does not necessarily imply there is some product. And so all the objections cease, as is clear. And without doubt, this what the Philosopher meant; and it manifestly contains truth. For from the fact that a habit is generated from frequent immanent acts, it is clear that it is not contradictory [non repugnare] for an immanent action to have a product [opus] beyond [praeter] itself.50

intellectionem. Multi etiam ponunt angelos per suum velle et intelligere movere caelos. Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2 B§1.2 ad 1 (pp. 256-57). 49 “The difference between immanent and transeunt action is not as well understood as it is heard; but it must be understood either with respect to necessity [quoad necessitatem] or with respect to order [quoad ordinem].” (Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 11 [Opera Omnia 4.307]; the full Latin is given in the next note). We will discuss the second under what I call the teleological qualification below. 50 differentia illa inter actionem immanentem et transeuntem non est sic ample intelligenda ut sonat; sed vel quoad necessitatem, vel quoad ordinem. Et iuxta primam glossam, sensus est: operatio transiens habet necesssario operatum, immanens autem non necessario infert aliquod operatum. Et sic cessant obiectiones omnes, ut patet. Et absque dubio haec fuit mens Philosophi; et manifeste continet veritatem. Ex

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Cajetan’s modal qualification should be taken as concerning types of immanent actions at some sufficiently general level. His claim that immanent actions do not necessarily produce a product is equivalent to saying that not all of the tokens of a given general type of immanent action produce a product.51 His appeal to habits makes this clear, since a habit is produced only after repeated immanent actions of the same type, such that one action in the series is productive while the ones before it are not. So understood, the modal qualification allows for the production of mental ‘words,’ or concepts, in the intellect. That’s because on Cajetan’s view, only acts of abstractive cognition produce such concepts; acts of intuitive cognition do not. As Cajetan says, Aquinas’s claim that “whenever someone understands, from the very fact that he understands, there proceeds something within himself”52 refers just to humans in this life (who reason abstractively); it does not apply to God or to the “blessed” in the next life, or to angels insofar as they know themselves.53 Hence, at a more general level, Cajetan can say that “understanding does not necessarily produce a concept.”54 Someone might object that Cajetan’s modal qualification must be wrong because the same reasoning could be applied just as well to transeunt actions, since it seems that one could prevent a transeunt action from producing its product by (say) destroying the patient before the product comes into existence.55 Hence one could say that transeunt actions, too, do not always produce a product. The problem with this objection is its assumption that the product of a transeunt action only exists once the action is completed:

eo enim quod habitus ex frequentatis actibus immanentibus generantur, manifeste patet non repugnare actioni immanenti habere opus praeter se. Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 11 (Opera Omnia 4.307). 51 That is, his interpretation should not be taken as inconsistent with a kind of determinism at the level of tokens. Cajetan does not mean to say that it is contingent whether some individual immanent action token has a product or not, as though there could be an otherwise identical case that goes the other way. 52 ST I.27.1 (quoted in sec. 1 above). 53 Ad tertium dubium dicitur, quod ly quicumque distribuit tantum pro hominibus viatoribus…. Unde … concedenda est earum conslusion, scilicet quod non oportet omnem intellectum in actu proferre verbum. Et non solum in Deo et beatis, sed etiam in intelligentiis sui ipsius, hoc verum videtur. Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 15 (Opera Omnia 4.308). The blessed are those humans who are given the vision of God in the next life. Note that Cajetan himself does not use the language of inuitive and abstractive cognition, but this is usually how his view is described by later scholastics; see, e.g., Toledo, In ST I.27.1 (p. 307); and Suárez, CDA d. 5 q. 5 nn. 1-2; cf. Suárez, DA III.5.2 (Opera Omnia 3.630-31). 54 nec intelligere necessario producit conceptum…. Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 11 (Opera Omnia 4.307). 55 Thanks to Stephan Schmid for suggesting this objection.

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one has a house only when the building of it is finished, and so on. The scholastics hold to the contrary that when an agent is in the process of making something, the product already exists in a state of becoming [fieri]. Put another way: as soon as an agent acts on an external patient, there is some kind of change in the patient, since (on the Aristotelian account of action) the agent’s action is identical to this change. The change entails that something has been produced in the patient. It is thus impossible for there to be a transeunt action without something being produced by the action. An agent cannot be in the act of building [aedificatio] without there being something that is being built, even though that action can be stopped before the building is completed. Still, it is unlikely that Cajetan’s modal qualification of Aristotle’s denial that immanent actions do not produce anything would convince anyone who has not already accepted the Thomist theory of the mental word. One can agree that Aristotle in the locus classicus is discussing what is necessarily the case regarding both immanent and transeunt actions; yet it seems clear that Aristotle means precisely that immanent actions necessarily lack a product, not that they do not necessarily have one.56 A later critic of the Thomist theory of the mental word, Francisco Toledo, puts it nicely: Cajetan’s solution does not succeed, namely that in an immanent action something is not necessarily produced, but in a transeunt action something is necessarily and always produced. This is nothing, for while it is being produced, the action must be transeunt, as is clear from Aristotle. Whence surely if the authority of Aristotle means something, it is clearly established that there is no such word produced through an immanent act.57

Toledo is undoubtedly pointing to Aristotle’s remark that “where there is some other thing that comes to be in addition to the use, the actualization [actus] of [the potency] is in the thing being made.” The claim that immanent actions do not necessarily have a product is thus idle, according to Toledo, because if there were a product produced, the action would necessarily be transeunt.

56 I.e., □(¬p), not ¬(□p). 57 Nec valet solutio Caietani, scilicet quod in immanenti non necessario aliquid producatur; tamen in transeunti necessario et semper producitur. Hoc etiam nihil est; nam tunc quum producitur, deberet esse transiens, ut patet ex Aristotele. Unde profecto si aliquid valet auctoritas Aristotelis, manifeste convincitur, non esse tale verbum productum per actum immanentem. Toledo, In ST I.27.1 (p. 307).

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2.3. The teleological qualification Finally, the Thomists argue for a third way of qualifying Aristotle’s denial of products to immanent actions, which I call the teleological qualification. (Cajetan calls it taking the distinction with respect to order [quoad ordinem].58) This particular interpretation is probably best understood as a way of responding to another objection to Aquinas’s theory of the mental word, so let’s take a look at the objection first. The central ontological claim driving the objection is that immanent actions are ends in themselves, and as such they cannot produce anything. But much of the force of the objection derives from broadly ethical considerations having to do with the summum bonum for human beings. Here is Capreolus’s report of the objection, which he attributes to Gerard of Bologna59: Whenever there belongs to some operation some terminus beyond the operation that is produced by it [operatum per eam], that terminus is better and more perfect than that operation (Nicomachean Ethics I.1 and Metaphysics IX, text 16). But the best of those things which are in us is the operation of the intellect perfected on account of wisdom (Nicomachean Ethics X), because in this happiness [felicitas] consists [ponitur]. Therefore, a perfected intellection does not have some terminus produced [operatum] through it.—And this is confirmed, because vision of God is the goal [finis] of all our acts and desires; but if the mental word were a terminus produced [productus] through that vision, the vision would not be the ultimate end; rather, this terminus distinct from the vision would be.60

58 Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 11 (Opera Omnia 4.307). 59 It is Capreolus's version of the objection that exerted influence on the Thomists and later scholastics responding to them; cf. the report of Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 6 (Opera Omnia 4.306); and Conimbricenses, In De An. III.8 q. 3 a. 1, arg. 4 (not attributed) (p. 484c). The association of this objection with Gerard of Bologna is perhaps somewhat arbitrary, given that the association of Nicomachean Ethics I.1 with the immanent-transeunt distinction was commonplace. E.g., Duns Scotus makes a similar argument, noting “operationes tales [sc. immanentes] debent esse actus ultimi, ex I Ethicorum et IX Metaphysicae” (Ordinatio I d. 27 qq. 1-3 n. 56 [Vatican ed. 6.86]). 60 Tertio loco, contra eamdem conclusionem arguit Gerardus de Carmelo, 6o Quodlibeto, probando quod verbum non sit aliquid productum per actum intelligendi. Primo. Quia quandocumque alicujus operationis est praeter operationem aliquis terminus operatus per eam, ille est melior et perfectior tali operatione, 1. Ethicorum (cap. 1) et 9. Metaphysicae (t. c. 16). Sed optimum eorum quae in nobis sunt, est perfecta operatio intellectus secundum sapientiam, 10. Ethicorum; quia in eo ponitur felicitas. Igitur perfecta intellectio non habet aliquem terminum operatum per eam. –Confirmatur. Quia visio Dei est omnium actuum nostrorum ac desideriorum finis; sed si verbum esset terminus per visionem productus, visio non esset ultimus finis, immo talis terminus a visione distinctus. Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2, A§1.3, arg. 1 (p. 250).

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As the objection points out, it is central to both Aristotelian ethics and Christian eschatology that humans’ summum bonum consists in a certain act of understanding, which is, of course, an immanent action. If, however, the act of understanding terminates in a mental word distinct from it, as Aquinas suggests, then it would seem that the summum bonum would consist in having a certain mental word in the intellect, rather than in the intellect’s action per se. The reasoning here has to do with the teleological structure of actions. Gerard appeals to the following passage in the Nicomachean Ethics, which was widely seen as drawing the same distinction between immanent and transeunt actions found in Metaphysics Θ.8:61 Now a certain diversity of ends is apparent, for some are operations [operationes] while others are products [opera] beyond [praeter] them. If the ends are beyond the operations then the products are better than [meliora] the operations.62

Given Aristotle’s teleological conception of goodness as “what all things seek” [quod omnia appetunt],63 it would seem that the reason that a product (or “terminus beyond the action,” as the objection puts it) is superior to the action it is produced by is precisely because such an action is ordered to its product as a means to an end. What this suggests is that the value of a productive action consists in nothing other than its bringing about some valuable product; ship-building, for instance, is worth doing just to the extent that it brings about a ship, etc.64 It would thus be impossible for humans’ ultimate end, or summum bonum, to consist in the very performing of a productive action, because such an action by definition is never done for its own sake. Aristotle’s claim in the

61 E.g., Aquinas, In Eth. lib. 1 lec. 1 nn. 12-14. 62 This is my translation of the revised version of Robert Grossteste’s Latin translation (AL 26-4), which was very popular in the Middle Ages. Here’s the Latin, with some of the key Greek terms that were translated: Differencia vero quedam VIDETUR finium. Hii quidem enim sunt operaciones [ἐνέργειαι], hii vero preter has opera [ἔργα] quedam. Quorum autem sunt fines quidam preter operaciones [πράξεις], in hiis meliora existunt operacionibus [ἐνεργειῶν] opera [τὰ ἔργα]. Aristotle, Nic. Eth. I.1 1094a4-6 (AL 26-4, p. 375 ll. 7-9) Notice that both energeia and praxis are translated as ’operatio’. 63 Aristotle, Nic. Eth. I.1 1094a3 (AL 26-4, p. 375 l. 6). 64 As Aquinas says in his commentary on this passage, “For those things which are means to an end have the ratio of goodness from their being ordered as means to the end [Nam ea quae sunt in finem habent rationem boni ex ordine in finem].” Aquinas, In Eth. lib. 1 lec. 1 n. 14.

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Nicomachean Ethics thus reinforces the notion that immanent and transeunt actions are distinguished in terms of whether the action is productive. Because immanent actions are ends in themselves, or the “end-point” [ultimum] as Aristotle puts it in the Metaphysics, they cannot result in a mental word or any other analogous product. In their response to Gerard’s objection, the Thomists do not wish to deny that humans’ summum bonum consists in a certain immanent action. Generally speaking, their view is that the vision of God that perfects the human intellect does not, in fact, produce a ‘mental word’. In the vision of God, the object of understanding is immediately present to the intellect, so a concept is unnecessary. This view would seem to be sufficient to dissipate the ethical force of the objection. However, the Thomists also want to affirm the metaphysical claim that all immanent actions are ends in themselves, including those that (they say) result in a product. In order to defend their position, they deny the objection’s assumption that if an action results in a product, it is ordered to its product as a means to an end (and so is also inferior to its product). This is where the teleological qualification comes in. On this reading, the upshot of Aristotle’s distinction between immanent and transeunt actions is that it is only transeunt actions that are ordered to their products in this fashion. Capreolus, drawing on Averroes, gives a nice summary of the argument. According to the Commentator, in Metaphysics IX, text 16, when the Philosopher posits the distinction concerning operations, or actions, he means nothing other than that there are some things whose end is just to act [agere tantum], as for example the eye, while there are other things whose end is to effect some actuality [agere aliquod actum], as for example architecture; and the operations of the former exist in the agent [operante], but those of the latter do not. Hence, in short, Aristotle denies only that through immanent operations something is produced which would be their end.65

65 Nam Philosophus, 9. Metaphysicae, particula 16, ubi ponit illam distinctionem de operationibus aut actionibus, non aliud intendit, secundum Commentatorem, nisi quod aliquae res sunt quarum finis est agere tantum, ut oculus; aliae sunt quarum finis est agere aliquod actum, ut ars aedifiactoria; et primae operationes sunt in operante, non autem secundae. Unde breviter, solum negat per tales operationes aliquid produci, quod sit finis earum.Capreolus, Defensiones, In Sent. I d. 27 q. 2 a. 2 B§1.2 ad 1 (p. 257); cf. Averroes, Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, lib. IX text. 16, H (p. 242v).

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On the teleological qualification, then, Aristotle leaves room for the possibility of immanent actions being productive, provided that such a product is not the end of, and superior to, the action itself. The Thomists then claim that Aquinas’s theory of the mental word respects this restriction, such that the act of understanding remains an end in itself, even when it produces a word distinct from itself. And the same goes, mutatis mutandis, for all other immanent actions that are productive. At this point a good Aristotelian might balk at the Thomists’ thought of a product produced by an action done for its own sake. Doesn’t this possibility violate the principle that everything has a final cause? Why would such a product be produced, if it is not itself the goal of the action? The Thomists however have a reply ready. They argue that any product of an immanent action exists for the sake of (and hence is inferior to) the action itself.66 The teleological order between an immanent action and its product is thus the reverse of that between a transeunt action and its product. This claim falls out of the Thomists’ rationale for distinguishing the ‘mental word’ from the act of understanding in the first place, i.e., that the mental word is needed in order for the act of understanding to ‘attain’ its object. This rationale is then generalized, such that, e.g., Francis Sylvestris can say, “what is produced by an immanent action is ordered to the action itself as to an end, because it is produced for it, so that the operation can terminate [terminari] in its object.”67 Here again the Thomists are able to use the example of habits to make their case, since one does not perform an immanent action in order to acquire the habit that results from it; rather, the habit is acquired so as to facilitate performing precisely that kind of immanent action.68 In this manner, the Thomists are able to deny that mental words and the like are the goal of the immanent actions that produce them without relegating them to the status of merely accidental by-products.

66 I take it that the Thomists think that there must be some kind of teleological relation between an action and its product because they think there is a reason why the product is produced. At any rate, they do not seriously consider the possibility that there might be no teleological relation. 67 Sed productum per talem actionem [viz., immanentem] ordinatur in ipsam actionem tanquam in finem: cum ad hoc producatur ut operatio ad suum obiectum terminari possit. Sylvestris, In SCG I.53 n. 9 (Opera Omnia 12.154). 68 E.g., Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 11 (Opera Omnia 4.307).

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Still, a scholastic would have good reason to regard the teleological qualification with suspicion. Accepting that an action could be essentially productive and yet not be for the sake of that product has the potential to unravel the entire teleological—and for that reason, providential—framework for ethics and metaphysics that Aristotelianism offers. For instance, it seems that one would have to reconsider whether transeunt actions could be done for their own sake, not for the sake of their product. One could no longer conclude that the goal of shipbuilding is to produce a ship on the grounds that producing a ship is essential to the action of shipbuilding. And without this conclusion, it would seem that Aristotle’s argument that our highest end cannot consist in productive activities (poeisis) like shipbuilding seemingly falls apart. The Thomists can try to head off these skeptical worries by combining the teleological qualification with their other interpretations of the immanent-transeunt distinction. They can say that an action is necessarily for the sake of its product when (and only when) the product of an action is external to the agent, or when (and only when) it necessarily brings about a product. The Thomists probably take the fact that their various qualifications of Aristotle’s claim are mutually reinforcing in this way as a theoretical virtue. But to an unsympathetic outsider, this answer looks suspiciously ad hoc, because the kinds of exceptions the Thomists carve out for their theory of the mental word do not seem to have any other repercussions. Even if the teleological qualification carries potentially dramatic implications, it is clear that the Thomists’ intention in proposing it is actually to limit the impact of admitting that some immanent actions are productive. They want to preserve the disanalogy between immanent and transeunt actions encoded in the standard Aristotelian account as far as possible. In particular, the teleological qualification allows them to affirm that immanent actions perfect their agents differently from the way that transeunt actions perfect their external patients. Because any product of an immanent action exists for the sake of the action itself, every immanent action is an end in itself; and so the agent of an immanent action is is always perfected in virtue of the action itself, never in virtue of the product of the action.

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3. Immanent action and immanent act in Suárez Francisco Suárez did not think of himself as a Thomist, and his account of immanent action bears very little resemblance to that of the Thomists we have considered. As we have seen, the Thomists’ approach to the question of whether immanent actions are productive is driven in large part by concerns regarding the nature and objects of cognition. By contrast, for Suárez the question is a more general metaphysical one which should be answered in terms of the nature of action and efficient causality. Suárez also regards the Thomists’ interpretations of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions as mostly misguided, and offers his own, new, interpretation. Yet to the extent that Suárez diverges from the Thomists on the nature of immanent action, he can claim to be closer to Aquinas on this score than they are. That is, Suárez defends the thesis that all immanent actions, without exception, are inherently and necessarily productive, and so he can be considered the one to have ‘completed’ Aquinas’s revolution. In this section, I first explain Suárez’s argument for the claim that immanent actions are productive. Then I examine how he rejects the Thomists’ qualifications of Aristotle’s denial that immanent actions produce anything, and offers his own, which I call the permanence qualification.

3.1. Suárez’s metaphysical argument for the inherent productivity of immanent actions Suárez’s argument that all immanent actions are productive presupposes his general theory of action, which presupposes what could be considered his signature achievement in metaphysics, his distinction between modes and things [res].69 Let’s begin with a brief exposition of each, starting with the latter. Briefly, Suárez holds that there are two levels, as it were, of real beings existing in the (created) world. The higher level consists of “things [res]” or “entities [entitates],” which have being in their own

69 For assessments of the originality of Suárez's distinction, see Menn 1997: 242ff.; and Pasnau 2011: 253-54.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 36 right.70 At this level are substances and the so-called ‘real accidents,’ which are found in the categories of quantity, quality, and relation. The lower level consists of what Suárez calls modes [modi], of which Suárez stresses three features. First, they are genuine, mind-independent, features of the world, and so in that sense they can be said to “possess beingness” [habere entitatem], even though they are not themselves entities (in the sense of things).71 Second, the ‘entity’ they possess consists in “modifying” [modificere] or “affecting” [afficere] things; modes are literally ways in which a thing is determined.72 Because of this, and third, modes cannot exist independently of the things they modify; they are, Suárez says, “immediately united per se” with them.73 The division between thing and mode thus corresponds to two levels of distinctness “in reality” [ex natura rei]. A real distinction obtains between two things, while a modal distinction obtains between a mode and the thing it modifies.74 These contrast with the mere mental separation of two aspects of a single real being, which Suárez calls a “distinction of reason [distinctio rationis]”.75 Suárez’s general theory of action comes out of his understanding of efficient causation. For Suárez, an efficient cause, or agent, brings about the existence of some

70 As Suárez says, a thing “ex se et in se ita est aliquid” (DM 7.2.19 [Opera Omnia 25.257]). Suárez also refers to these beings as entia reales, but for the purposes of this work, I will use the term 'real being' more generally to include both things [res] and modes. I will italicize the word thing or entity when the technical sense of the term res or entitas is intended. 71 “Rursus, sicut modus est aliquid in rebus existens, ita dici potest habere entitatem aliquam, prout hac voce significatur quidquid non est nihil” (Suárez, DM 47.2.8 [Opera Omnia 26.788]). Suárez also says that they are “something positive [aliquid positivum]” (DM 7.1.17 Opera Omnia 25.255). 72 E.g., Suárez says that inherence is called a mode “because it is something that affects [the inhering thing] and, as it were, determines the state and the nature [rationem] of its existence, although it does not add any new proper being-ness to it, but only modifies [the proper being-ness] that already exists [quia est aliquid illam afficiens et quasi ultimo determinans statum et rationem existendi eius, non tamen addit illi propriam entitatem novam, sed solum modificat praeexistentem].” Suárez, DM 7.1.17 (Opera Omnia 25.256). 73 “modus non est proprie res seu entitas, et in hoc eius imperfectio optime declaratur, quod semper esse debet affixus alteri, cui per se immediate unitur sine medio alio modo.” Suárez, DM 7.1.19 (Opera Omnia 25.257). 74 Suárez also thinks that a modal distinction obtains between two modes of the same real being, as Pasnau (2011: 254) points out; see Suárez, DM 7.1.26. 75 See Suárez, DM 7.1.19.

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thing [res],76 and does so specifically by acting. And, as Suárez puts it, action is what “constitutes” or “denominates” an efficient cause as actually causing, as opposed to merely having the power to cause.77 For this reason he calls action the “causality” [causalitas] of the efficient cause. Next, Suárez argues that action is equivalent to “the very dependence [dependentia] of the effect being made on the cause making it [effectus facti a causa faciente].” This dependency should be understood not as mere counterfactual dependence but as that by which something is actually being brought into existence or being supported in existence by its cause. As Suárez puts it, action is the “channel” [via] between an efficient cause and its effect; it is simultaneously that in virtue of which the cause “attains” its effect and that in virtue of which the effect “proceeds from” the cause.78 Given this account of action, Suárez thinks it is clear that actions should be categorized as modes rather than as genuine things (which would make them “real accidents”). The dependency of a given thing on its efficient cause is an excellent example (or so Suárez thinks) of something that is (a) a genuine mind-independent feature of the world that (b) affects the state of some entity (c) from which it is modally, and not really, distinct. Suárez argues for the status of actions as modes from two directions.79 On the one hand, the very dependency of an effect on its cause cannot be a thing in its own right. If it were a thing, it could not immediately connect the cause to its effect as a “channel”; rather, it would require a cause itself, leading to an infinite regress

76 This part of Suárez’s account of efficient causation is widely shared in scholasticism and can be traced to Avicenna, who is responsible for the common practice of referring to the efficient cause as an agent. According to Avicenna’s ‘metaphysical’ definition, an agent or efficient cause is that which gives existence to something distinct in being from itself. The kind of efficient causation described by Aristotle in the Physics in terms of initiating motion was largely seen as the particular form of giving existence that can found in the domain of natural philosophy. See Avicenna, MH VI.1; cf. Gilson 1958; Gilson 1962; Marmura 1984; and Richardson 2013. 77 All quotations from this paragraph are taken from DM 18.10.6 (Opera Omnia 26.681 / OEC 252). For more on Suárez’s general account of efficient causation and action, see Burns 1964; Freddoso 2002: xliii-lix; Schmid 2015; and Tuttle 2016. 78 Suárez’s language here calls to mind Aquinas’s use of the term ‘processio’. 79 My summary of Suárez’s argument is based mainly on DM 7.1.18 (Opera Omnia 25.256 / VKD 29). See also DM 48.1.15.

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of causes (and actions) between any efficient cause and its effect.80 Hence, the dependency of a thing on its cause must be intrinsically united to that thing; it cannot be really distinct from it. On the other hand, this dependency is not merely distinct in reason from it. That’s because any created thing can exist without its dependency on its cause, as occurs whenever an effect continues to exist after its cause has finished bringing it into being. And even in the case of effects that continually depend on their causes, such as light’s dependence on the sun, Suárez points out that God could choose to produce the effect directly, without the concurrence of the secondary cause.81 This argument from separability is sufficient to establish that a thing and its dependency are distinct in reality, not just in reason, which entails that the dependency is a real being. Thus, since action is identical to the actual dependency of some thing on its efficient cause, and this dependency is a real being, but not a thing [res], it follows that action is a mode. The same line of argument that Suárez gives for the claim that actions are modes also entails that every action has a product distinct from itself. As the “channel” from a cause to its effect, every action necessarily has a terminus ad quem: the effect produced by the cause. But as we have just seen, this effect is distinct in reality from the action itself. Hence, every action has a terminus ad quem distinct from itself. But this is just to say that every action is essentially productive. The notion of there being an action

80 Suárez writes, “This dependence is, so to speak, the channel [viam] through which the cause flows into its effect or terminus, and so the dependence cannot be a thing [res] entirely distinct from the effect” (DM 7.1.18 [Opera Omnia 25.256 / VKD 29]). Suárez also argues that if dependency were a thing, it should be able to exist separately from the effect, but this is unintelligible. However, it should be noted that Suárez does not think that separability is necessary for distinctness in reality universally; for example, he holds that creatures are distinct from God even though they cannot exist separately from him (see DM VII.2.24-27). Thanks to Marleen Rozemond and Stephan Schmid for their correction on this point. 81 Suárez argues, “Thus light, for example, depends on the sun; and this dependence is something in addition to [praeter] the light and the sun. For we can conceive that light and the sun would remain, without the light depending on the sun, if God were to refuse to concur with the sun for the production or conservation of the light, and instead were to conserve both by his own power alone.” Suárez, DM 7.1.18 (Opera Omnia 25.256 / VKD 29).

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 39 without a product of the action is equivalent to the notion of there being some dependence without some thing that depends, which is metaphysically impossible.82 This general theory of action does not establish by itself that immanent actions must be productive. In effect, all Suárez has shown so far is that if immanent actions are truly actions, then they are productive. But (as a matter of fact) this conditional was accepted by the majority of scholastics who hold the standard Aristotelian account of immanent action.83 It’s just that they conclude by modus tollens that immanent actions are not truly actions.84 The most common view was that immanent actions are actually qualities and are called actions only because they in some ways resemble transeunt actions (which, on this view, exhaust the category of action).85 In late scholasticism, this view was associated especially with Duns Scotus, who argued that the distinction between immmanent and transeunt actions is not a division of a genus (i.e., the category ‘action’) into its species, but of what is equivocal into its equivocates, or of a word into its significations…. For if by ‘immanent action’ a certain operation is understood, then ‘immanent action’ is a quality and the ultimate perfection of an agent [operantis], while ‘action’ insofar as it is transeunt is an action in the category of action.86

82 As Suárez says, “An action, as an action, if it be a true or proper one, is nothing other than a producing or bringing-about, or the causality of an efficient cause. But it is impossible to conceive of either a true producing without there being something produced through it, or an actual causality without some thing that is caused. Therefore it is also impossible to conceive of an action without a terminus. [actio, ut actio, si sit vera ac propria, nihil aliud est quam productio aut effectio, aut causalitas efficientis causae; sed impossibile est vel mente concipere veram productionem, quin per eam aliquid sit productum, vel causalitatem actualem sine re aliqua causata; ergo impossibile est etiam intelligere actionem sine termino.]” Suárez, DM 48.2.18 (Opera Omnia 26.878). 83 Cf. Des Chene 1996: 42-43. 84 This position is often taken as the Thomist position in late scholasticism; see, e.g., Conimbricenses, In Phys. III.3 q. 1 a. 1 (p. 561); In De An. III.8 q. 3 a. 3 (p. 488); and Fonseca, In Met. VII.8 q. 3 sec. 3 (p. 300). Suárez however is more careful to distinguish between two kinds of positions that deny that immanent actions are productive. One view is that immanent actions are not productive and so do not belong in the category of action. This is the view of Duns Scotus and many others. But another view is that immanent actions do not (all) produce their terminus, but that they belong in the category of action all the same. According to Suárez this is what the Thomists we have considered hold. 85 On this view, immanent actions resemble ’true’ (that is, transeunt) actions primarily by being directed to a certain object. In that sense they can be said to have a terminus, just like transeunt actions do, even though they are not productive of their terminus. 86 haec divisio uno modo est aequivoci in aequivocata, vel vocis in suas significationes; alio modo superioris in sua inferiora, vel universalis in partes subiectivas. Nam si intelligatur per actionem immanentem operatio, sic actio immanens est qualitas et ultima perfectio operantis, et actio ut transiens est

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Within this dialectical context, then, Suárez must argue directly for the claim that immanent actions are productive. In his terms, this means having to establish that the terminus ad quem of the action is something distinct in reality from the action itself.87 The way in which Suárez argues for this position is striking. Rather than attempting to show that acts of thinking, willing, and the like necessarily result in some further product, he treats them as being themselves the products of actions. For this reason, although others call these entities ‘immanent actions [actiones]’, Suárez prefers to call them ‘immanent acts [actus]’, and to reserve the term ‘immanent action’ for the manner in which they are produced. He accepts the common opinion that, in and of themselves, immanent acts belong in the category of quality, because he thinks they are clearly the kind of thing that characterizes, and indeed perfects, its subject.88 On Suárez’s theory, this means that they count as genuine things and not modes as true actions are. However, insofar as such a quality must be continually produced by its requisite power in order to exist (as e.g., the act of thinking is produced by the intellect), it is modified by a mode of dependence. This entails that there exists an action in addition to the quality that inheres in and perfects the agent.89 Suárez’s initial argument simply points out that these immanent acts exist by being produced by their powers (for instance, an act of thinking is produced by the intellect and a volition is produced by the will), so that they are continually in a state of dependence. Since on Suárez’s theory, an action just is this dependence, it follows that an immanent action is present.90 The limitation of this argument, as Suárez recognizes, is that it only establishes that it is possible to distinguish in an immanent act between the quality itself and the dependence of that quality on its power. But unless it can be proved

actio de genere actionis. Duns Scotus, Rep. I-A d. 3 q. 6 n. 195 (Wolter/Bychkov, 243). See also Duns Scotus, Quodl. 13.81(27) (Vivès ed. 25.575 / God and Creatures, 307). Scotus gives another way in which the distinction can be understood, which can be ignored for our purposes. 87 From here it is a fairly short step to concluding that immanent actions are truly actions as well; see Suárez, DM 48.2.22-24 where, after having demonstrated that immanent actions are productive, Suárez addresses additional objections (cf. DM 48.2.3-4) to the effect that immanent actions cannot be categorical actions. 88 Suárez, DM 42.5.13 (Opera Omnia 26.626). Suárez puts immanent acts in the first species of quality, 'disposition', which he also regards as the common view (DM 42.5.14-15). 89 Cf. Burns 1964: 462-66; Lecón 2013: 117-20; and Suárez, OEC 115 n. 11. 90 Suárez, DM 48.2.9 (Opera Omnia 26.875-76).

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that the dependence is distinct in reality [ex natura rei] from the quality, one can doubt whether a true action is present. A true action is a real being that is modally distinct from the res it modifies. If the dependence of the quality is merely distinct in reason from the quality itself, then the quality is the only real being present. The need to establish that there is a distinction in reality between an immanent act and its dependence on its power is particularly pressing because, as Suárez notes, this seems to be exactly what Duns Scotus et al. want to deny when they assert that immanent ‘actions’ are just qualities. Suárez writes, Indeed, if these authors were saying something probable, then their opinion would seem to be nothing other than that these qualities through themselves emanate [egrediantur] immediately from their powers, without some mediating action that would be distinct in reality [ex natura rei] from them.91

On this rival view, the dependence of the immanent quality on its power is something “essential” to the quality, in the sense that it is part of the quality’s ‘form’, and (therefore) it cannot exist without depending on that power.92 Such a position has a certain plausibility to it, as Suárez himself admits.93 After all, one of the seemingly uncontroversial features of immanent ‘action’ is that it exists in the agent.94 The reason would seem to be that it is necessarily the case that an immanent action has this agent (i.e., the one in which it inheres), and not another. In this respect such qualities (if that is what they are) appear to be essentially different from qualities caused by means of transeunt actions. E.g., something can be said to be turning red regardless of what the cause of the redness might be, but it seems as though one could not truthfully, or even coherently, say that someone is thinking without assuming that that person’s intellect is

91 Et quidem si auctores primae opinionis in aliquo sensu probabili loqui potuerunt, nullus alius videtur esse nisi quod hae qualitates per seipsas immediate, absque actione media ex natura rei ab eis distincta, egrediantur a suis potentiis. Suárez, DM 48.2.11 (Opera Omnia 26.876). 92 Suárez writes, “For if they are such pure qualities, so that their being such qualities and their active dependence on their powers is inherent to their very forms, then it is impossible for these qualities to exist in reality without such dependence [nam si sunt ita purae qualitates, ut per seipsas formalissime tales qualitates sint et pendeant active a suis potentiis, impossibile est illas qualitates esse in rerum natura sine tali dependentia].” Suárez, DM 48.2.11 (Opera Omnia 26.876). 93 Suárez, DM 48.2.11 (Opera Omnia 26.871). 94 See chap. 2 below for a discussion of two philosophers who deny that this feature is essential to the notion of an immanent action.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 42 the cause.95 Moreover, this opinion seems to have the principle of parsimony in its favor. Where Suárez controversially posits an action in addition to a quality in every immanent act, this opinion posits only the quality.96 To defend his position that immanent acts are produced by means of true actions, then, Suárez offers three arguments against the view that the dependence of such acts on their respective powers is “essential” to them. His first argument is that this view entails that the exercise of immanent powers is fundamentally different from the exercise of other efficient causal powers, when in fact there is no good reason to posit this fundamental difference. This opinion posits something uniquely or new in these acts without a sufficient ground. . . . In no [other] instance is the proper efficiency of an active power found in an effect without an action mediating. Hence, it is attributed to these acts uniquely, when in fact there is nothing unique about them which demands such an assertion. It is no argument [to say] that such acts continually depend on the influx of a power, for light depends on its source [illuminante] in the same way, and so too, to an even greater degree, do all creatures depend on God, and nonetheless a true action intervenes in their being caused. And the essential dependency that is asserted of these qualities, such that they could not come to be in any other way, is asserted gratuitously [gratis et sine fundamento].97

95 As Suárez notes, it was controversial within scholasticism whether God can cause an immanent act to exist in its power without the concurrence of the power itself (DM 48.2.9 [Opera Omnia 26.876]). It’s possible that this controversy is connected to theories of intentionality in play in scholasticism. According to Pini 2012, Scotus criticizes causal theories of intentionality (held by Gregory of Fontaines, among others), according to which a thought is about x because it is caused in the right way by x. Scotus’s main criticism is that it entails that God could not miraculously cause a thought of x, since any thought he would cause would ipso facto be about him. Hence, it could be that some defenders of the causal theory after Scotus were willing to bite the bullet; and that Suárez was aware of this debate. (This position would give further credence to the notion that immanent acts depend essentially on their powers.) 96 Cf. Suárez, DM 48.2.6, where he invokes the principle of parsimony on behalf of the Thomist position. 97 Mihi tamen probari non potest haec sententia. Primo, quia dicit aliquid singulare vel novum in his actibus sine sufficienti fundamento…. Nunquam enim invenitur propria efficientia virtutis activae in effectum sine media actione; id ergo tribuere his actibus singulare est, cum tamen in eis nihil sit singulare ob quod id asseratur. Quia quod tales actus continue pendeant ab influxu potentiae, nullum argumentum est; nam etiam lumen pendet illo modo ab illuminante, et multo magis omnes creaturae a Deo, et nihilominus in his efficientiis intercedit vera actio. Illa vero essentialis dependentia, quae tanta sit ut hae qualitates nullo alio modo fieri possint, gratis et sine fundamento asseritur. Suárez, DM 48.2.11 (Opera Omnia 26.871).

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In this argument, Suárez is effectively turning the concern for ontological parsimony against this view. To be sure, it is more quantitatively parsimonious because on it there are half as many real beings involved in immanent acts as on Suárez’s view. However, this quantitative parsimony comes at the expense of qualitative parsimony, which is arguably what philosophers should be concerned with.98 Since (everyone agrees that) all other active powers are exercised by means of an action, the ‘pure quality’ theory of immanent action ends up positing that immanent powers are fundamentally different in kind from all other active powers. But this difference in kind is posited without reason; as Suárez argues, there is no other agreed-upon feature unique to immanent powers that could serve as the ground for distinguishing them from other active powers. Hence, by the qualitative version of the principle of ontological parsimony—‘kinds of things ought not to be posited without necessary’—Suárez’s view is preferable. Next, Suárez gives two arguments that attempt to show that an immanent act can exist without its particular dependence on its power. From this separability it follows that the dependence is not something “essential” to the quality itself but rather is distinct in reality from it and modifies it—in short, a ‘true’ action is normally present. For his first of the two separability arguments, Suárez again invokes the principle, “Whatever God can make with a secondary cause, he can make by himself alone.” Just as heat (a certain quality) can be produced in wood by God directly, without the causal contribution of fire, so too an act of thinking (another quality) can be produced in the intellect by God directly, without the causal contribution of the intellect itself.99 Hence, God’s omnipotence guarantees that no immanent act can depend essentially on its power, for indeed it is impossible for any created thing to depend essentially on another.100

98 E.g., David Lewis (1973: 87) writes, “I subscribe to the general view that qualitative parsimony is good in a philosophical or empirical hypothesis; but I recognize no presumption whatever in favor of quantitative parsimony.” 99 As we will see in chap. 2, sec. 2 below, Suárez is here drawing on a line of thought found in Paulus Soncinas. 100 Suárez writes, These [viz., immanent] acts do not have the aforementioned essential and unchangeable dependence on their powers, because no created thing that has proper being [propriam entitatem] and a proper esse really distinct from other things possesses the sort of dependence on another creature such that it cannot come to be because of God alone,

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The weakness of this argument is that it is based entirely certain claims about God’s nature. As such, it doesn’t really address the problem of whether it is even intelligible to attribute a thought (or a volition, etc.) to someone on the assumption that it is being caused solely by another being. Perhaps God can cause a certain thought to exist by himself, but in what sense would this thought be this person’s? Suárez tries to brush this worry aside, saying, “God can therefore bring about these acts insofar as they are certain qualities regardless of whether he causes them to inform those powers or not, for that is a separate question.”101 However, the question seems directly relevant. All agree that it is intelligible to think of other sorts of qualities as existing in a substance regardless of the efficient cause that produced it. For example we could imagine that God supernaturally causes wood to be hot without the concurrence of fire. We could even imagine that God creates wood to have the power of heating itself. But this is uncontroversial precisely because all already agree that these kinds of qualities are distinct in reality from the actions by which they are brought about. To argue that God’s omnipotence guarantees that he can do the same with thoughts and other immanent acts is thus to assume what needs to be proved. The second of Suárez’s separability arguments tries to avoid this worry by showing that even if an immanent act cannot exist without being caused by its requisite power, it still can be caused by that power in different ways. As Suárez puts it, while the dependence that characterizes an immanent act may be essential, it is not unchangeable.

without the instrument or partnership [sine adminiculo vel consortio] of a creature bringing it about with him. For this [ability] pertains to God's omnipotence, and on it is founded the principle, Whatever God can make with a secondary cause, he can make by himself alone. [hi actus non habeant dictam essentialem et immutabilem dependentiam a suis potentiis, quia nulla res creata habens propriam entitatem et proprium esse realiter distinctum ab aliis, habet tantam dependentiam ab alia creatura, ut non possit a solo Deo fieri sine adminiculo vel consortio creaturae cum ipso efficientis; hoc enim pertinet ad omnipotentiam Dei et in hoc fundatur illud principium: Quidquid potest facere cum causa secunda, potest facere se solo.] Suárez, DM 48.2.12 (Opera Omnia 26.877). 101 Potest ergo Deus efficere hos actus, quatenus sunt quaedam qualitates, sine concursu activo potentiarum, sive illos efficiat informantes potentias, sive non; hoc enim est alterius speculationis. Suárez, DM 42.2.12 (Opera Omnia 26.877).

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And this entails that even if it is part of the essence of an immanent act to depend on its power, the dependence itself is something distinct in reality from it. He writes, Even if it be granted that these qualities depend essentially on their powers, it still cannot be proved, nor is it true, that they would depend through their own very being [per suas entitates], by the same unchangeable dependence. One and the same immanent act can come to be from its power in different ways [diversis modis], as for example with or without the concurrence of a habit, or with this or that intelligible species mediating, or (especially in supernatural acts) with this or that help of God. And it is necessary that the action and dependence varies relative to these different ways of causing [iuxta diversos modos efficiendi], even if the quality itself does not vary. For an action varies to whatever degree the agent varies, even if the effect does not vary [quacumque ratione varietur agens, variatur actio, etiamsi non varietur effectus], as is clear from what was said about the efficient cause102. . . . But to whatever degree the dependence in the same quality can vary, it is a most certain indication that the dependence is distinct in reality [in re] from that quality and has the proper ratio of an action. Therefore in these [i.e., immanent] qualities too there must must be distinguished in reality [ex natura rei] a true action, which is the causality of the power that brings about such a quality.103

This argument is more compelling than the first two. For the scholastics, the immanent acts of one power are individuated by their content, such that, e.g., what makes it the case that I am having two thoughts and not one is that this thought is about the nature of horses, while the other one is not. It is therefore possible in principle to have the same immanent act caused by its requisite power in different ways, as long as the content of that act is the same. All of this seems more or less uncontroversial. Suárez then cites three ways in which the production of the same immanent act by its requisite power can

102 See Suárez, DM 18.10.8. 103 Praeterea, quamvis daretur has qualitates essentialiter pendere a suis potentiis, non tamen probari potest neque est verum quod pendeant per suasmet entitates, eadem immutabili dependentia, quia unusmet actus immanens potest fieri a sua potentia diversis modis, ut, verbi gratia, cum concursu habitus aut sine illo, vel media hac specie intelligibili aut alia, et cum hoc auxilio Dei vel cum alio, maxime in supernaturalibus actibus; et iuxta hos diversos modos efficiendi necesse est variari actionem et dependentiam, etiamsi non varietur qualitas ipsa, quia quacumque ratione varietur agens, variatur actio, etiamsi non varietur effectus, ut constat ex dictis de causa efficienti, et in sequenti sectione aliquid etiam attingemus. Quacumque autem ratione possit in re ipsa variari dependentia in eadem qualitate, est signum certissimum illam dependentiam esse in re distinctam a tali qualitate et habere veram et propriam rationem actionis. Igitur etiam in qualitatibus illis distinguenda est ex natura rei vera actio, quae sit causalitas potentiae efficientis talem qualitatem. Suárez, DM 48.2.13 (Opera Omnia 26.877).

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be varied: (a) by habits, (b) by intelligible species, and (c) by supernatural help. So for example even though it becomes easier for me to think of horse-ness after doing so repeatedly (because my intellect has acquired a habit that facilates my thoughts of horse- ness), I am still having the same thought as before when it was more difficult. But if there are different ways in which an immanent act can be caused by its power, then, as Suárez says, its dependence on its power is not “unchangeable.” Hence, even if it is impossible for an immanent act to exist without depending on its power, it is still true that, for any particular way in which it depends on its power, it can exist without that.104 From this separability, it follows that the dependence is not merely distinct in reason from the immanent act itself, but distinct in reality. And since an action just is the mode of dependence of some thing on its efficient cause, Suárez takes himself to have shown that immanent acts are produced by means of actions.

3.2. Suárez on the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions According to Suárez, then, it is universally true that where there is an agent in act, there is not only a product produced by the agent, but also an action by means of which the product is produced. The entity that others call an ‘immanent action’ (and then ask whether there is some further product) is itself the product of the soul’s immanent powers like the intellect and will. An ‘immanent action’ in the strict sense is just the action by means of which these powers produce it. Hence, Suárez takes himself to have established that immanent actions are inherently productive; in his terms, each necessarily has a terminus from which it is modally distinct. Suárez is thus faced with having to reconcile his account of immanent action with Aristotle’s apparent denial in Metaphysics IX that immanent actions result in anything beyond themselves. While it might seem that Suárez could simply help himself to one of the Thomists’ attempts to argue that the denial is qualified, he rejects each one and offers his own proposal, which I will call the permanence qualification. All of this can be found in an important passage from his

104 By comparison, let’s say that one cannot get married without any kind of ceremony whatsoever, but no one ceremony is necessary for marriage to someone; one could get married under this jurisdiction or that, in this religious tradition or not, etc.

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lengthy discussion of the ‘mental word’ [verbum mentis] in his De Anima commentary,105 where he analyses how authors have responded to Aristotle’s text by “by positing various distinctions between immanent and transeunt actions.”106 The first of such “distinctions” Suárez considers is the extrinsic qualification proposed by Francis Sylvestris and others. Suárez is sympathetic to this interpetation, since he agrees that it is a matter of truth that the products of immanent actions are within the agent only. Nevertheless, Suárez thinks that as an interpretation of Aristotle’s intention, it fails. He writes, The first [distinction] is that a transeunt action produces something externally [ad extra], while an immanent action [produces something] internally [ad intra]. And this distinction is correct; nevertheless, it is not posited by Aristotle here, because he clearly seems to exclude every product [from an immanent action], both inside and outside [omne operatum intra et extra]. For he says that the action comes to be for its own sake, and not for the sake of a product [operatum].107

Suárez’s explanation for the failure of the extrinsic qualification indicates that he thinks that it is a good principle of Aristotelian metaphysics that whenever an action results in a product, the action is for the sake of that product. It is on the basis of this principle that the claim, “the action comes to be for its own sake,” rules out the existence of any product. Clearly, then, Suárez also rejects the Thomists’ teleological qualification, since it requires that it be possible for an action to be productive and yet not be for the sake of its

105 For the purposes of this study, I give priority where possible to the recent critical edition of Suárez’s De Anima commentary, while also giving the reference to the corresponding passages of the work as it is found in Opera Omnia 3. It should be noted that there are substantial differences between these two versions and that the latter edition is closer to what was available in the seventeenth century. 106 Ad primum locum Aristotelis, ex 9o Metaphysicae, varie respondent auctores assignando plures differentias inter actionem immanentem et transeuntem. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.23 (Opera Omnia 3.636). For more on Suárez’s theory of the mental word, see Forlivesi 2008; Heider 2014: 67-70; and Müller 1968: 141-60. 107 Prima, quod actio transiens producit aliquod ad extra; immanens vero, licet producat, non tamen extra, sed intra. Quae differentia vera est, non tamen assignatur ab Aristotele ibi, nam aperte videtur excludere omne operatum intra et extra, nam inquit actionem propter se fieri et non propter operatum. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.23 (Opera Omnia 3.636). Cf. also Suárez, DM 48.2.20 (Opera Omnia 26.879), where Suárez allows that the extrinsic restriction may be the correct interpretation of Aristotle, but it is less likely than the one he prefers.

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product. Not surprisingly, Suárez immediately goes on to make his rejection of the teleological qualification explicit . The second distinction is that through a transeunt action there is produced a terminus to which the action is ordered, while through an immanent action something may be produced, but the action is not ordered to it. But this is a false distinction, for where there is a coming-into-being [fieri] and a being-that-is-completed [factum esse], the coming-into-being is ordered to the being-that-is-completed, which is nobler, by the testimony of Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics I.1 and Metaphysics IX.9.108

Suárez’s own account of immanent action respects this principle of teleology. For him, unlike for the Thomists, it is not the immanent action per se that perfects the agent, but rather the immanent quality produced by means of such an action. (Indeed, it is precisely because immanent ‘acts’ are so clearly perfections that Suárez thinks they must be categorized as qualities, and hence as the products of actions, not actions themselves.) Suárez can therefore conclude that in immanent acts, the fieri (i.e., the immanent action) is for the sake of the factum esse (the immanent quality).109 But this conclusion of course only exacerbates the apparent conflict with Aristotle’s passage, since (as Suárez notes earlier) Aristotle seems to exclude any product from immanent actions precisely because they are supposed to be ends in themselves. (We will see shortly how Suárez tries to resolve this apparent conflict with his permanence restriction.)

108 Secunda differentia, quod per actionem transeuntem producitur terminus ad quem ipsa ordinatur; per immanentem vero, licet producat aliquid, non tamen ad id ordinatur. Sed haec differentia falsa est, nam ubi est fieri, et factum esse; fieri ordinatur ad factum esse, quod est nobilius, teste Aristotele, 1 Ethicorum, cap 1, 9 Metaphysicae, cap 9. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.23 (Opera Omnia 3.636). 109 Suárez makes this point in his disputation on habit (DM 44), where he also rejects the Thomists’ appeal to habits as something produced by, and yet for the sake of, an immanent action. He writes, Action qua action is ordered per se first to its own terminus. An immanent act is not ordered per se first to a habit; rather, it is per se for the sake of its own formal effect, which is cognizing, or loving, or something similar, while the habit is an effect that results from that—not universally, but relative to the poverty or capacity of the power. [actio, ut actio per se primo ordinatur ad suum terminum; actus vero immanens non ordinatur per se primo ad habitum, sed per se est propter suum effectum formalem, qui est cognoscere, vel amare, vel aliquid simile; habitus vero est effectus inde resultans, non in universum, sed iuxta potentiæ indigentiam vel capacitatem.] Suárez, DM 44.8.12 (Opera Omnia 26.636).

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Thirdly, Suárez goes on to consider Cajetan’s modal qualification. Rather than simply repeating the rather flat-footed claim that immanent actions do not necessarily result in a product, Suárez focusses on what he takes to be its ground. Cajetan posits the third distinction, which is that transeunt action is productive from itself, while immanent action is not productive from itself, but some have this from the absence of the object.110

For Cajetan, recall, certain kinds of immanent actions are productive so that the object of the action can be present to the power through the product. Those immanent actions that already possess their objects immediately in reality, such as sensation, are not productive, while those that do not, such as imagination and so-called abstractive cognition, bring about their object.111 For Suárez, Cajetan’s view entails that any production by an immanent action is grounded in the lack of a present object rather than in the nature of an immanent action per se. Suárez’s own view, of course, is that the productivity of an immanent action is in fact grounded in its very nature as a true action, i.e., as the “channel” [via] through which an efficient cause “pours into” [influit] its effect. Suárez therefore rejects Cajetan’s interpretation as both “founded on a false foundation” and “not in accordance with the mind of Aristotle.”112 Suárez levels a number of arguments against Cajetan here and earlier in his discussion of the nature of the ‘mental word’. Perhaps the most dialectically effective is Suárez’s argument that he has Aquinas on his side. Wherever Thomas Aquinas speaks rightly of the [mental] word, he does not posit it from the lack of an object [ex indigentia objecti], but from the intrinsic nature [ex intrinseca ratione] of intellection, and so he posits a

110 Tertiam differentiam assignat Caietanus, quod actio transiens ex se est productiva, immanens vero non est ex se productiva, sed aliqua hoc habet ex absentia obiecti. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.23 (Opera Omnia 3.636). 111 Cf. Cajetan, In ST I.27.1 n. 16 (Opera Omnia IV.308). 112 Quae differentia fundatur in falso fundamento, supra improbato, et non est ad mentem Aristotelis. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.23 (Opera Omnia 3.636). The reason he gives for its failure as an interpretation of Aristotle is that “[Aristotle] speaks of the contemplation of God, and says that nothing is produced through such a cognition; yet according to Aristotle such a cognition is abstractive, because he does not recognize another mode of cognition in our intellect, nor does he judge that it is possible for us to have a clear vision of God [qui loquitur de contemplatione Dei, quae apud Aristotelem est cognitio abstractiva, quia ipse non cognovit in intellectu nostro alium modum cognitionis neque arbitratus est visionem Dei claram nobis esse possibilem. Et tamen per talem cognitionem, ait, nihil produci.]” Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.23 (Opera Omnia 3.636).

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[mental] word in every intelligence…. This is clear from Summa Theologiae I.27.1, where he says, “For whenever someone understands, from the very fact that he understands, there proceeds something within himself, which is a conception of the thing understood, arising from the intellectual power [ex vi intellectiva proveniens].”113 But Cajetan restricts the scope of these words and interprets them contrary to both the mind and the words of the author.114

Suárez, of course, goes beyond what Aquinas says here in holding that every immanent action produces something just as every intellection produces a ‘word’, because productivity belongs to the nature of immanent actions. But again he could claim with some credibility that this is also what Aquinas intends with his account of immanent action as a processio ad intra. Having rejected the Thomists’ proposals for how to interpret Aristotle’s denial that immanent actions have a product as qualified, Suárez has seemingly painted himself into a corner. He concedes that Aristotle does not discriminate between internal and external products, and that Aristotle says that immanent actions come to be for their own sakes. How then can the text be understood in a way that is consistent with Suárez’s own account of immanent actions, according to which it belongs to the very nature of immanent actions to be productive and to be ordered to their products as means to ends? Suárez attempts to answer this question with his permanence qualification interpretation. Suárez argues that in the passage in question, Aristotle is referring only to products that that continue to exist [permanens115] after the actions by which they were brought about

113 Emphasis added; in the Latin text (see the following footnote), the entire quote is in italics. 114 Jam D. Thomas ubicumque de verbo disserit, non illud astruit ex indigentia objecti, sed ex intrinseca ratione intellectionis, indeque in omni intelligente verbum admittit, ex intrinseca autem ratione intellectionis, nihil aliud producitur in intellectu quam qualitas illa, quae est intelligendi actus: ergo illa ipsa verbum est. Major patet ex prima parte, quaest. vigesima septima, artic. primo, ubi inquit: Quicumque autem intelligit, ex hoc ipso, quod intelligit, procedit aliquid intra ipsum , quod est conceptio rei intellectae ex vi intellectiva proveniens, quae verba Cajetanus limitat, et exponit contra mentem, et verba auctoris. Suárez, CDA 5.5.10; cf. DA III.5.7 (Opera Omnia 3.632). 115 E.g., Suárez, DM 44.8.13 (Opera Omnia 26.684); and DM 48.2.21 (Opera Omnia 26.879). Sometimes Suárez will use the term ‘manens’ instead, as, e.g., in DA III.5.23 below.

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have ceased. So understood, Aristotle’s point is just that transeunt actions result in such ‘permanent’ products, while immanent actions do not. He writes, The fourth distinction is that though a transeunt action there comes to be something that remains [manens] after the action has been completed, as for example, through the act of building [there comes to be] a house which remains, through heating, heat, etc. Whereas although through an immanent action, there comes to be a quality, the quality does not remain except while the power is actually being exercised [actu operatur]. And because the quality has such a dependence on an actual operation [ab actuali operatione] that it does not last except while the actual operation exists, it seems to have a kind of being in becoming [esse in fieri]. Moreover, it always retains the name of action, and typically it is not distinguished from action. And it seems that Aristotle intends this distinction in this passage, which is why Perionius adds the phrase ‘which is left behind’ [quod relinquitur] [in his translation]—something he does more as an interpreter than as a translator, because it is not found in the Greek text. The same interpretation is given by [Pseudo-]Alexander of Aphrodisias,116 in his commentary on the 9th book of Metaphysics, chapter 9. And it seems to be consistent with the Philosopher, for although a power is exercised for the sake of its terminus, nevertheless, when the terminus does not last longer than the action, then it is well said that the power is for the sake of the operation itself.117

Suárez’s permanence qualification also allows him to preserve the truth of Aristotle’s contrast between immanent and transeunt actions in terms of their respective ends, even though, strictly speaking, both types of action are for the sake of their products. Suárez argues that because immanent qualities depend continually on their requisite powers, they take on some of the character of the actions by which they are sustained. Even though, as the termini of actions, they have “completed being” [factum esse], it is as if they have a

116 See Mihae 2010. 117 Quarta diffferentia est, quod per actionem transeuntem fit aliquid manens, transacta actione, ut per aedificationem fit domus quae manet, per calefactionem calor. At vero, licet per actionem immanentem fiat qualitas, tamen illa non manet, nisi quamdiu potentia actu operatur. Et quia illa qualitas tantam dependentiam habet ab actuali operatione, quod non durat, nisi quamdiu est actualis operatio, ideo videtur habere quoddam esse in fieri, et semper retinet nomen actionis, et communiter ab actione non distinguitur. Et hanc differentiam videtur intendere Aristoteles illo loco. Et ideo Perionius addidit particulam “quod relinquitur”, quod fecit ut expositor, non ut translator, quoniam in graeco non habetur illa particula.Et eamdem expositionem tribuit Alexandro Aphrodisio, 9[o] Metaphysicae, cap 9, et videtur consona Philosopho, nam licet potentia operetur propter terminum, tamen quando terminus non durat plus quam actio, tunc optime dicitur potentiam esse propter operationem ipsam. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.24 (Opera Omnia 3.636-37).

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kind of “being in becoming” [esse in fieri]. For this reason, Suárez suggests, the metaphysician or philosopher of mind can be forgiven for treating the action and the quality as one entity, even though they are in fact modally distinct. As Suárez says, the quality “always retains the name of action” (metonymically, as it were). It is in this sense that one can say that immanent ‘actions’ are ends in themselves. By contrast, no one can fail to distinguish between an action and its product if that product is permanent, as in transeunt actions, and so in such cases one must say that the action is for the sake of the product. The main objection to Suárez’s permanence qualification—of which Suárez is well aware118—is that it is susceptible to counterexamples on both sides, i.e., of immanent actions that have permanent products and of transeunt actions that lack them. In the first case, habits are supposed to provide the counter-example, since they are produced by immanent acts and yet continue to exist in the soul after those acts have ceased. Suárez however replies that “this problem is easily solved, for a habit does not come to be by means of the [immanent] act, as by means of a productive action.”119 In other words, habits are produced by thinking, willing, and so on, not insofar as those acts are actions, but only insofar as those acts are themselves efficient-causal principles [principiae agendi] of some further action that produces the habit. (Insofar as these immanent acts are actions, they produce only their own intrinsic termini, which are just the actual qualities of thinking, willing, etc.) Hence, habits do not represent genuine examples of permanent termini of immanent actions.120 In the second case, Suárez grants that there are genuine examples of transeunt actions whose products cease to exist as soon as the action ceases, such as the sound produced by singing, or the light produced by the sun’s illumination. He writes, Nevertheless it can be responded that the distinction is not: every transeunt action, and no immanent action, produces something that remains. Rather,

118 Suárez, CDA 5.5.30; cf. DA III.5.24 (Opera Omnia 3.636-37). See also Suárez, DM 48.2.21 (Opera Omnia 26.879). 119 Sed hoc facile solvitur, nam habitus non fit per actum, tamquam per actionem productivam. Suárez, CDA d. 5 q. 5 n. 31. 120 Suárez, DM 48.2.21 (Opera Omnia 26.879); see also Suárez, DM 44.8.13; and CDA 5.5.24. Cf. Suárez, DA III.5.18 (Opera Omnia 3.635).

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the distinction is: an immanent action does not have a terminus that remains, while a transeunt action can have one, and indeed should have one from its genus.121

According to Suárez, then, the permanence qualification should be understood as describing what is normally the case, not what is universally the case.122 (In that respect, his interpretation resembles Cajetan’s modal qualification.123) Suárez goes on to explain that what is ‘normal’ for immanent and transeunt actions is grounded in their natures. The ground [ratio] of this distinction is posited and explained by Aristotle as follows. Immanent actions are vital actions, and thus intrinsically they require the concurrence of the first principle of life [i.e., the soul]. But transeunt actions, which are common to the inanimate [and to the living], are oriented by their very nature [de se] to the production of a permanent terminus; and if sometimes the terminus is not permanent, this is not because of the nature and mode of the action, but for some other reason.124

In the Metaphysical Disputations, Suárez adds that the reason that some products of transeunt actions are impermanent is due to the product’s own imperfection [ob imperfectionem suam]. E.g., because of the imperfection of sound and light, they are unable to exist in the air without the continual support of their causes. By contrast, the impermanence of the products of immanent actions pertains to their very perfection as ‘vital acts’ (i.e., qualities that perfect a living thing qua living).125 One might question whether Suárez is entitled to this explanation. Recall that Suárez criticizes Cajetan for grounding the difference between productive and non- productive immanent actions in whether something is lacking, namely a present object of cognition. But now here he explains the difference between transeunt actions that

121 Respondetur tamen differentiam non esse, quod omnis actio transiens producit aliquid manens, non vero immanens, sed differentia est, quod actio inmanens non habet terminum manentem, transiens vero potest illum habere, immo ex suo genere debet illum habere. Suárez, CDA 5.5.31. 122 Cf. Suárez, DA III.5.24 (Opera Omnia 3.636-37); and DM 48.2.20 (Opera Omnia 26.880). 123 I.e., where Cajetan holds that immanent actions do not necessarily produce anything, while transeunt actions necessarily produce something, Suárez thinks that immanent actions necessarily produce something impermanent, while transeunt actions do not necessarily produce something impermanent. 124 Et ratio huius differentiae assignatae ab Aristotele, et sic expositae, est, quia actiones immanentes sunt vitales, et ideo ab intrinseco postulant actualem concursum primi principii vitae; at vero actiones transeuntes inanimatis communes, de se tendunt ad productioem termini permanentis; quod si aliquando non permanet non est ex natura et modo actionis, sed aliunde, ut dictum est. Suárez, CDA 5.5.30. 125 DM 48.2.21 (Opera Omnia 26.880). On the relationship between immanent actions and life, see Des Chene 2000: 57-63; and Lecón 2013.

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produce a permanent terminus and those that do not on the imperfection of the termini, which is likewise a kind of lack. But this objection can be answered. What Suárez finds problematic in Cajetan’s account is the fact that the production of the mental word is grounded in a lack rather than in the positive nature of cognition or immanent action. Since the word is something real and indeed something that perfects the act of thinking, this is an insufficient ground. Whereas on Suárez’s explanation, the possibility that needs explaining is the impermanence of a terminus, which is not something positive. Hence, it can be grounded in a lack or imperfection, as it is in the case of transeunt actions. Meanwhile, the production of a permanent terminus is grounded in the positive nature of transeunt action, even if this is not achieved by all transeunt actions. Still, Suárez’s attempt to blame the impermanence of some products of transeunt actions on the nature of the products themselves seems to be an insufficient explanation. Why is this particular product imperfect in this way? It seems to me that Suárez ought to say that the impermanence of such products is due at least partly to the imperfection of the medium in which they are received. So, e.g., sound and light depend continually on their causes because the air lacks the ability to sustain them.126 One of the essential features of transeunt action, as we have seen, is that a transeunt action involves an agent acting upon a patient distinct from itself, as exemplified when (e.g.,) one substance brings about accidental change in another substance. It seems reasonable, and consistent with Suárez’s theory, therefore, to think that this feature of transeunt action is what grounds the possibility of its product being permanent. Because the action is received in an external patient, that patient may be able to support the existence of the product after the agent has ceased to act. In the case of someone who builds a house, for instance, the materials used are of such a nature that they can remain in a certain conformation after they have been so arranged. If it should happen that the product of a transeunt action is not permanent, this is because the patient of the action itself lacks the ability to sustain that particular kind of thing on its own.

126 Of course, the scholastics hold that air is capable of sustaining some permanent termini of actions, such as heat. So it would seem that both the kind of product and the kind of patient are important factors in explaining the impermanence of the product of a transeunt action.

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4. Conclusion In a lengthy footnote to his Analytical Philosophy of Action (1973), Arthur Danto provides a quick historical survey of philosophers from Leibniz to C.D. Broad to Maurice Blondel using the concept of an immanent cause in radically different ways; Danto ends his survey by saying, “my concern in this note is merely to underscore the extreme chaos of the distinction”127 between immanent and transeunt causes. What this chapter has shown is that a lack of agreement over the meaning of the distinction extends all the way back to its scholastic roots, when philosophers referred to actions or operations, not causes, as being either immanent or transeunt. Although the majority of scholastics hold that immanent actions exist in and perfect their agent, while transeunt actions cross over into and perfect an external patient, they disagree over whether immanent actions are capable of producing anything.128 This disagreement generates a number of different suggestions for how the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions should be construed. I have argued that this particular ‘chaos’ of the distinction in the scholastic tradition is part of the legacy of Thomas Aquinas, who himself offers two rival accounts of immanent action. On the first, the standard Aristotelian account, immanent actions differ from transeunt actions precisely in that they do not produce anything. But on the second account, immanent actions resemble transeunt actions in being productive, and differ from them insofar as their production, or processio, is directed inwards [ad intra], rather than outwards [ad extra]. This second account of immanent action is connected to Aquinas’s new theory of the ‘mental word’ as the product of intellection, which he develops later in his career. Because Aquinas never fully explores his new account in all

127 Danto 1973: 206 n. 5. 128 Danto perhaps unwittingly reproduces this disagreement in his note. Danto (1973: 206 n. 5)’s initial remark is, “in the tradition, which is somewhat confused, the distinction between immanent and transeunt causation appears largely to do with whether the cause and effect are somehow both internal to the subject – in which case we have immanency – or either the cause or the effect is external to the agent – in which case we have transeuncy.” By referring to there being a cause and an effect (and a subject), Danto’s description seems to correspond to the view that immanent actions are productive. But then as an example of this view he quotes Maurice Blondel as saying that immanent causation is ”l'expression de ce qu'il porte essentiellement en lui,” (ibid.), which seems closer to the view that immanent actions are not productive.

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necessary detail, and indeed continues to revert back to the standard Aristotelian account in places, his position even in his later writings is ambiguous in a number of ways. He never explains how or whether his processio ad intra account can be made to square with Aristotle’s apparent denial of products to immanent actions. Nor does he discuss how an immanent action can be said to come to be for its own sake if it produces a product. These ambiguities leave his theory of the mental word susceptible to criticisms on the basis of its incompatibility with standard Aristotelian account of immanent action. At the same time they also make it possible for his processio ad intra account to be developed in radically different ways. This is shown by the case of the later orthodox Thomists on the one hand and Francisco Suárez on the other. The Thomists attempt to limit the scope of Aquinas’s processio ad intra account, holding that some but not all immanent actions are productive. In this they are driven by concerns having to do with the philosophy of mind, particularly the different ways in which mental operations ‘attain’ their objects. Above all, they support Aquinas’s theory of the ‘mental word,’ and since the rationale for positing the mental word can be extended analogically to some other mental operations, but not all, they do not think it necessary to defend the stronger claim that all immanent actions are productive. The Thomists then come up with various suggestions of how Aristotle’s claim that immanent actions do not produce anything should be understood as qualified. Aristotle is speaking about external products only (the extrinsic qualification); or about products that are the ends of the actions that produce them (the teleological qualification); or about what is not necessarily the case (the modal qualification). Because of the teleological qualification, the Thomists also hold that immanent actions are ends in themselves, even if they produce a product, which is to say that immanent actions perfect their agents in virtue of themselves, and not in virtue of any product produced by them. Suárez’s account of immanent action is not motivated by any desire to save Aquinas’s theory of the mental word. His answer to the question of whether immanent actions are productive is determined entirely by his metaphysics of action. Given his account of action as the causality of an efficient cause, which is a mode of the effect, it is

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unintelligible that there could be a genuine action in the category of action that exists without a product. When Suárez wants to analyze how a particular actualized immanent power perfects its agent, his approach is first to identify that perfection with a real being of some kind (a quality, to be precise), and only second to infer that there is a real dependence of that quality on the immanent power, distinct from the quality itself. Suárez can thus apply this approach to any immanent act, without any further consideration of whether it is an act of sense or intellect, or appetition or cognition. Thus, for example, here is his reply to the question of “what is produced by an appetitive act.”129 Concerning the terminus of an appetite, the doctores disagree. Scotus and likewise Gregory of Rimini and Durand deny that a terminus is produced through an act of will, and Aquinas also seems to feel the same in De Veritate q. 4 a. 2 ad 7. But Capreolus, Cajetan, and Francis Sylvestris say that something is produced through an act of appetite, and they suggest that it is really distinct from the act itself. However, according to us, the resolution is easy from what was said above; for I judge it certain that in an act of appetite something in the mode of a product [per modum operati], or a terminus, can be found, as well as a channel [viam] to such an act, which is only modally distinct from it. This is Aquinas’ opinion in Summa Theologiae I q. 27 a. 3, and (more clearly) in q. 37 a. 1. The reasoning is universal, because where a newly produced quality is given, there must also be a production of that [quality]. And an act of appetite is a certain quality. But again, adding that the quality in appetite is really distinct from the action it is produced by is to me not proved, because it is added without any necessity or reason. Therefore, what is produced in the appetite is the act by which one loves, and which is a certain weight [carrying the lover] into the thing loved, according to that well-known phrase of Augustine, “My love, my weight; by it I am carried wherever I am carried.”130

129 Suárez, DA lib. 5 cap. 3 [Opera Omnia 3.757]; cf. CDA d. 10 q. 2. 130 De termino vero appetitus, quod erat secundum punctum, doctores dissentiunt, Scotus enim in 1, distinct. 6 et 10, et ibidem Gregorius et Durandus negant per actum voluntatis terminum produci, quod videtur sentire D. Thomas, de Veritate, quaest. 4, art. 2, ad 7; Capreolus tamen in 1, distinct. 10, quaest. 1, Caietanus, 1 part., quaest. 27, art. 3, Ferrarius, 4, contra, cap 19, ajunt per actum appetitus produci nonnihil, insinuantque esse realiter distinctum ab actu ipso. Resolutio tamen apud nos facilis est ex supra dictis lib. 3, cap. 5, certum enim judico in actu appetitus reperiri aliquid per modum operati, atque terminum, et viam in tali actu modaliter solum distingui. Quae est opinio D. Thomae, 1 part., quaest. 27, art. 3; et clarius quaest. 37, art. 1. Ratio communis est, quia ubi qualitas datur nove producta, productio illius debet existere, actus autem appetitus qualitas quaedam est: porro autem astruere in appetitu qualitatem productam per actionem ab illa realiter distinctam, mihi non probatur, quia ulla necessitate et ratione astruitur: quod ergo appetitu

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From Suárez’s point of view, the rival views fail to diagnose correctly the distinctness, and yet tight connection, between an immanent quality and the immanent action that produces it. Most of the doctores simply overlook the intermediary between the immanent power and its act. On the other hand, the problem with the Thomists’ manner of treating the mental word and its analogates is that it makes the connection too loose. At best, it posits an unnecessary real distinction between the action and the act; at worst—if their repeated appeal to habits is taken seriously—it seems to add another entity beyond the quality-action composite. Only Aquinas gets it right prior to Suárez himself.131 For Suárez, the source of the close connection between immanent quality and immanent action is the continual dependence of immanent qualities on their respective powers. Because of this, the qualities take on some of the character of actions; as Suárez says, they have a certain “being in becoming [esse in fieri].” This explains why someone like Aristotle does (according to Suárez’s permanence qualification interpretation) can use the action as the synechdote for the whole immanent act. Suárez’s theory goes about as far as possible towards assimilating immanent actions to the model of transeunt actions. Suárez’s claim that all immanent actions are productive leads him to treat them as fundamentally having the character of makings [factiones], just like transeunt actions. In both cases, the action is oriented towards producing a certain terminus and is completed by that terminus. And so, in both cases, the subject of the action is perfected by receiving a certain product, not by acting per se. The only difference is that in the case of immanent action, the ‘patient’ receiving the product is none other than the agent itself. This account of immanent action is a far cry from the standard Aristotelian one, where an immanent action is the ‘ultimate end’, not productive of anything, and perfects its agent insofar as it acts, not receives. But by the same token, Suárez can be regarded as having pursued Aquinas’s processio ad intra

producitur, ipse est actus, quo amat, quique pondus quoddam est in rem amatam, juxta illud ex Augustino vulgatum, Amor meus pondus meum, illo feror, quocumque feror. Suárez, DA lib. 5 cap. 3 n. 9 (Opera Omnia 3.760-61); cf. CDA d. 10 q. 2 n. 12. 131 We can see this criticism as rooted in Suárez’s aforementioned signature achievement in ontology: his theory of modes and its concept of a modal distinction. Without the ontological category of a mode, his opponents are forced into a a false dichotomy: either the immanent action and the quality are two really distinct things, or they are identical. I owe this point to Marleen Rozemond.

1. The Nature of Immanent Action 59 account of immanent action to its logical endpoint, where the Thomists largely try to limit its implications instead.

CHAPTER 2. FORMAL-CAUSAL INTERPRETATIONS OF IMMANENT ACTION

On the scholastic-Aristotelian ontology, the universe consists of substances and their accidents, which come in various types like quality, relation, action, and passion. Our claims about the universe reflect this ontological scheme. For example, when we say that ‘fire is hot,’ what makes this claim true is the fact that fire, a substance, possesses heat, a certain accidental quality, or (in other words) that heat inheres in the fire. Likewise, it seems that for someone to be the subject of what the scholastics call an ‘immanent action,’ such as thinking or willing, is for that person, i.e., a certain substance, to possess a certain accident.1 Now, for the scholastics, the relation between an accident and the substance in which it inheres is at least a formal-causal relation: the accident in- forms the substance and thereby gives it a certain, determined character. (This is why accidents were dubbed ‘accidental forms.’) Hence, it would seem that being the subject of an immanent action is a matter of being in-formed in a particular way. This does not appear to be the whole story, however. After all, other accidents like shape and colour also stand in this same formal-causal relation to their substances. What seems to be missing is the notion that these mental operations characterize their substances as doing something, as agents, in other words. (This is why they are called actions [actiones] or operations [operationes], while accidents like shape and colour are not.) Hence it seems essential to the notion of an immanent action that there be an efficient-causal relation between the substance and its accident as well: the subject of the immanent action is not just the possessor of a certain form, but also the efficient cause of that form. One does not simply ‘have’ a thought, for example; one must actively think it. In this sense, the concept of an immanent action is not purely formal-causal in nature, but contains a necessary efficient-causal component as well.2

1 Indeed, as we saw in the last chapter, the scholastics disagree about whether the relevant accident belongs in the category of quality or action, but they do not dispute that it belongs in some category of accident. 2 This condition is not necessarily sufficient to differentiate immanent actions from all other accidents, even if it does capture something essential about them. For instance, the ‘Thomistic’ view is that the

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This way of thinking is encapsulated in the popular claim that an immanent action “remains” or “exists” in the agent [in agente]. This claim implies that the efficient cause of an immanent action must also be its subject; conversely, it rules out the possibility that something could be the subject of an immanent action without efficiently causing it. In the scholastic tradition, this claim was almost universally accepted; indeed, its commonplace status explains why these actions were known precisely as ‘immanent’, i.e., the kind that remains in the agent. (We saw in the last chapter that Aquinas’s basic account of immanent action contains this claim, for example.3) I will therefore refer to it as the common conception of immanent action. In this chapter, however, I want to consider two figures known to at least some of their fellow scholastics for having rejected the common conception of immanent action: Hervaeus Natalis and Paulus Soncinas. Although Hervaeus and Soncinas disagree with each other about how to define immanent action, they both hold that the status of mental operations as immanent actions is conferred exclusively on the basis of their formal- causal character. Their relation to their efficient cause is irrelevant. Being the subject of such immanent actions is just a matter of possessing the relevant forms. In that sense, each offers a purely formal-causal interpretation of immanent action. In a way, it should not come as a surprise that both of these dissenting voices are Thomists. As we saw in the previous chapter, Thomas Aquinas’s mature theory of the mental word [verbum mentis] was the flashpoint for debates over the nature of immanent action in the scholastic tradition. Opponents of the theory argued that because the act of understanding is an immanent action, it cannot result in a distinct ‘word’ in the manner envisioned by Aquinas. In response to this metaphysical critique, Thomists come up with new ways of construing the conditions of immanent action that render them compatible with Aquinas’s theory.4 Hence, it can be said that for Thomists especially, what it is for something to be an immanent action was treated as to some extent an open question.

powers of the soul such as the intellect and the will are accidents which are efficiently caused by the soul itself. 3 E.g.,Aquinas refers to immanent actions as remaining or existing in the agent in In Met. lib. 9 lec. 8 nn. 1864-65; QDP 10.1; SCG II.23; and ST I.27.1, all of which are quoted in chap. 1 sec. 1 above. 4 This context was discussed in chap. 1, sec. 2 above.

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Hervaeus Natalis’s and Paulus Soncinas’s reasons for rejecting the common conception of immanent action differ. Hervaeus is motivated in part by his commitment to a particularly strict understanding of the nature of efficient causality,5 as well as a desire to attribute immanent actions like understanding and willing to God and creatures unequivocally. Meanwhile, Paulus Soncinas can be seen as taking the popular view that immanent actions actually belong in the category of quality to its logical extreme. He employs a clever thought experiment involving God’s power to show that who causes the quality is not essential to its status as an immanent action. It is sometimes suggested that immanent causation in Spinoza’s metaphysics is akin to Aristotelian formal causation. An examination of Hervaeus and Soncinas will provide some basis for evaluating this suggestion insofar as it will allow us to determine what a genuinely ‘formal-causal’ interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause might look like, and to judge its historical plausibility.6 What the present chapter will show is that very few scholastics even entertained the possibility that the subject of an immanent action could be construed as anything other than an efficient cause. The few figures who discuss Hervaeus’s or Soncinas’s views do so only to condemn them as utterly wrong- headed. Their place in the scholastic tradition is essentially as the exceptions that prove the rule about the pervasiveness of the common conception of immanent action. In this chapter, I examine, in turn, Hervaeus Natalis’s and Paulus Soncinas’s revisionary accounts of immanent action, as well as their critical evaluation by other scholastics, including Hervaeus’s contemporary (and nemesis), Durand of Saint-Pourçain, and Soncinas’s near-contemporaries, Chrysostomus Javellus and Francisco Suárez. After summing up, I will draw some conclusions regarding the interpretation of Spinoza, which will help to set the stage for the second part of the present study.

5 As we will see below, Hervaeus’s strict conception of efficient causality puts strong limits on the possibility of self-change. This was a contentious issue in the period; his contemporary Duns Scotus famously argued for a much more permissive account of self-change (on which see King 1994). 6 Recall that Spinoza speaks of immanent causes rather than of immanent actions. We will examine the historical context for this terminological shift in chap. 3 below.

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1. Hervaeus Natalis Hervaeus Natalis’s account of immanent action is developed quite explicitly within the dialectical context of the reception of Thomas Aquinas’s theory of the mental word [verbum mentis]. An early and vigorous defender of Aquinas (he was instrumental in the Angelic Doctor’s canonization), Hervaeus Natalis’s views on the mental word and the nature of immanent action prefigure those of later Thomists like Capreolus, Sylvestris, and Cajetan in many ways.7 Like them, Hervaeus follows Aquinas in holding that the mental word is an entity that is distinct from, and produced by means of, the intellect’s act of understanding [actus intelligendi]. And like them, he defends this theory against the objection (based on what Aristotle says in the Metaphysics) that no immanent action is capable of producing anything.8 Finally, just as Capreolus, Sylvestris and Cajetan will do, Hervaeus basically ignores Thomas Aquinas’s suggestion that every immanent action is productive, and denies that certain classes of immanent actions, such as sensations, produce anything. Hervaeus is thus faced with the need to explain how it is that being productive is compatible with, but not essential to, the very nature of understanding as an immanent action. This means that he must provide, in the first instance, a satisfactory account of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions (or, as Hervaeus prefers to call them, immanent and transeunt operations) that is compatible with this idea. It is here that Hervaeus Natalis strikes out on a path that is not followed by later Thomists. In a radical move, Hervaeus rejects the common conception of an immanent operation as an action that ‘remains in’ the agent that ‘does’ it. For him, the subject of an immanent operation is not an agent at all, because immanent operations are not, fundamentally, acts of producing, even if there is a sense in which a product may sometimes result from them. In what follows in this section, I first discuss how Hervaeus comes up with a new classification of kinds of operations and applies the immanent- transeunt distinction to it. Then, I explain how Hervaeus thinks mental operations,

7 Again, see chap. 1, sec. 2 above. 8 In fact, the well-known version of this objection that was made by Durand of Saint-Pourçain (quoted in chap. 1, sec. 2 above) was levelled specifically against Hervaeus.

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particularly understanding, fit into this classification scheme. Finally, I consider how other scholastics reacted to Hervaeus’s account.

1.1. Hervaeus’s classification of kinds of operations Hervaeus Natalis thinks that in order to understand what it is for something to be an immanent operation, one should first identify the most basic kinds of operations; then one will be in a position to determine which of these operations should be classified as ‘immanent’, and why. For this initial step, Hervaeus turns to the four Aristotelian causes. Considering which causal principles can be said to operate (or to have an operation), and what sort of operation is proper to each of these, Hervaeus writes the following. It should be known that while there are four [causal] principles, final, efficient, material and formal, an operation is attributed to three of these principles, namely, (a) the material principle, whose operation is to receive actuality and perfection; (b) the formal principle, whose operation is to make [something] such- and-such formally [facere formaliter tale], just as we say that whiteness ‘makes’ [something] white formally, and, likewise, through this way of speaking, an intellection ‘makes’ [the thinker] understand formally, and a relation [’makes’ something] related [formally], and so on in other cases; and (c) the efficient-causal principle, whose operation is to bring about [efficere] something; for example, heating [brings about heat]. But it is not appropriate to attribute to the final principle any operation distinct from the operation of an efficient cause, for the causality of a final principle consists in this, that an agent acts out of love for it or for the sake of it.9

According to Hervaeus, then, there are three basic kinds of operations. Matter operates by receiving something. Form operates by characterizing something as such-and-such,

9 Ad cuius evidentiam sciendum est: quod cum quatuor sint principia. scilicet finale et efficiens, materiale et formale. tribus istorum principiorum attribuitur operatio. scilicet principio materiali: cuius operatio est recipere actum et perfectionem. et principio formali cuius operatio est facere formaliter tale. prout dicimus quod albedo facit formaliter album: per quem etiam modum facit intellectio formaliter intelligentem: et relatio relatum. et sic de aliis. Et principio effectivo cuius operatio est aliquid efficere sicut calefacere. principio finali non conuenit attribui operatio distincta ab operatione causae efficientis: quia eius causalitas in hoc consistit: quod eius amore vel gratia agens agit. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (fol. 48va).

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which Hervaeus calls ‘making’ in the formal-causal sense. And an efficient cause operates by bringing about [efficere] something, which Hervaeus elsewhere calls ‘making’ in the efficient-causal sense, which is to say, producing. Hervaeus also uses the term ‘action’ [actio] exclusively to refer to this third kind of operation.10 Any operation that is attributed to a thing will fall into one (and only one) of these three basic kinds, depending on which Aristotelian causal principle is operative. And if (and only if) an efficient cause is operative, i.e., if (and only if) the operation is an ‘action’, there must be a product of that operation. Next, Hervaeus addresses which of these basic kinds of operations should be classified as ‘immanent’ and which as ‘transeunt’. Since matter and form are metaphysical constituents of the very thing they affect (which is why they are called ‘internal causes’), Hervaeus can conclude that their respective operations are ‘immanent’. That is, any operation that is, in essence, a material-causal receiving, or a formal-causal characterizing, inherently takes place in the being to which it is attributed.11 For example, when wood is heated by fire, heat is received in the wood; and consequently, the accident of heat existing in the wood characterizes the wood itself as hot. In contrast to matter and form, an agent or efficient cause is distinct from, and external to, the thing it affects. Hervaeus here takes his cue from Aristotle’s definition of an active power as that which changes another “insofar as it is other.”12 According to

10 See the passage quoted below, n. 20. 11 Hervaeus’s own argument is slightly different from what I have given above, since he focusses on whether the operation “remains in” its respective causal principle, not to the subject of the operation per se (see Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 [fol. 48rb-va]). This is not particularly significant, however, since Hervaeus thinks that the operation can not only be attributed to the causal principle directly, but can also be attributed to the being that possesses that causal principle. So, for example, one can say, that the accident of heat makes fire hot formally, but one can also say that said fire is hot. And of course, if an operation 'remains in' its causal principle, then ipso facto it ‘remains in’ the being that possesses this causal principle. 12 Aristotle, Met. IX.1 1046a12; and Phys. II.1 192b23-28. Of course, Hervaeus’s use of the term ‘agent’ and his conception of the efficient cause as distinct in being from its effect also indicate the influence of the Avicenna’s metaphysical conception of efficient causality, as found in MH VI.1.

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Hervaeus, this entails that “the operation of an active principle is a transeunt operation, speaking per se, and not immanent, speaking per se.”13 Here is Hervaeus’s argument. That operation is called transeunt which is related to the operator, qua operator of this sort of operation, as to that from which [a quo] it is and not as to that in which [in quo] it is. But the operation of an active, or efficient-causal, principle is related to the operator, qua operator of such an operation, as to that from which it is. It is not related to it as to that in which it is, except accidentally, [i.e.,] insofar as the active principle and the passive principle were to concur in the same [subject]. (But I believe that this is impossible, if one is referring to [a subject that is] the same in essence.) Therefore, etc. And this reasoning is confirmed through Aristotle’s saying in the fifth book of the Metaphysics: an active potency is the principle of changing another insofar as it is other. Hence, the action of an active potency crosses over [transit] into another absolutely, or at least it does so insofar as it differs in some way from the active principle.14

Because an efficient cause is external to the thing it affects, the operation of an efficient cause cannot take place within the cause itself unless that cause relates to itself “as other,” to use Aristotle’s phrase.15 As Hervaeus puts it, the producer would have to possess a passive principle in addition to an active one.16 This entails that such an operation would remain in the thing, not qua producer, but only qua receiver. This is why Hervaeus maintains that it can be immanent only accidentally. If a given operation is a type of producing, then it is attributed to something insofar as that thing is a producer, not insofar as it is a receiver. Take for example the case of a doctor who heals

13 operatio principium activi sit operatio transiens per se loquendo: et non manens per se loquendo. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (fol. 48va). The passage continues in the next note. 14 probatur quia operatio transiens dicitur illa quae respicit illud cuius est talis operatio in eo quod huismodi: ut a quo est: et non ut in quo est. sed operatio activi principii sicut [lege scilicet] effectivi respicit illud cuius est operatio ut principium effectivum ut a quo est. et non ut in quo est nisi per accidens. Ut si concurrerent in idem principium activum et passivum: quod credo impossibile esse scilicet saltem inquantum ad idem per essentiam, ergo etc. Et confirmatur ratione per dictum Arist. 5o. Metaphy. qui dicit. quod potentia activa est principium transeundi aliud in eo quod aliud. Unde talis actio transit vel in aliud simpliciter: vel saltem inquantum differt aliquo modo a principio activo. et sic patet de primo. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (fol. 48va). 15 Aristotle, Met. Δ.12.1019a15-16. 16 On Hervaeus’s view (which he alludes to in the passage above), the active and passive principles must be genuinely distinct from each other. Nothing can be active and passive in exactly the same respect. Hervaeus's full treatment of the possibility of self-change is found in TdV, q. 2 (d. 1) a. 1. Cf. Trottmann 1997.

2. Formal-Causal Interpretations of Immanent Action 67 herself. Healing is fundamentally a kind of producing (viz. of health). It is therefore attributed to the doctor only insofar as she is the efficient cause of health, and not insofar as she receives health she produces. It is attributed to her, in other words, no differently from when she heals somebody else. Hence, Hervaeus can conclude that healing is essentially (and always) a transeunt operation, even if it can be ‘accidentally’ immanent. The same holds for any operation which is a kind of producing. Hervaeus thus rejects the common conception of an immanent operation as the kind of action that remains in its agent. For Hervaeus, this conception makes the mistaken assumption that immanent operations are operations of an efficient cause, and hence are essentially a matter of producing something.17 He offers a number of arguments against this assumption. Of these, perhaps the most illuminating (which is not to say, most convincing18) is his argument from divine understanding. He writes, If immanent operations were producings, understanding [intelligere] would be [equivalent to] producing an act of understanding [actum intelligendi]. The consequence is clear, because all hold that understanding is an immanent operation of an intellect. But the falsity of the consequence is easily seen, for this claim is true and proper: God understands. But this claim is false: God produces an act of

17 Hervaeus distinguishes between two versions of this assumption. On the first version, immanent actions are those actions by which something is produced in the agent, rather than in an external patient. On the second version, immanent actions are those actions by which nothing is produced. The first version of the claim can be found in Thomas Aquinas’s processio ad intra account of immanent action (cf. chap. 1, sec. 1 above), although it is unclear whether Hervaeus recognizes this. It will later be defended by Francisco Suárez (cf. chap. 1, sec. 3 above). As for the second version of the claim, Hervaeus’s primary target is Durand of Saint-Pourçain (See Koch 1927: 65). Strangely, Hervaeus does not countenance the possibility that one might hold that (a) immanent actions do not produce anything, so (b) they are not genuine ‘actions’, yet (c) they exist in their efficient cause. Perhaps Herveaus thinks that such a view collapses into one or the other of the versions of the claim he has mentioned. I.e., he could argue that since the adherent of such a view holds that (c) is a necessary feature of immanent action, that person must answer, is an immanent action the product of the efficient cause's operation, or is it the very operation of that efficient cause? If the former, then the ‘true’ immanent action is really that operation by which something is produced in the agent (i.e., the first version of the claim). If the latter, then immanent actions are true ‘actions’ which do not produce anything (i.e., the second version). Hervaeus escapes this dilemma because he denies (c) is necessary. Another way out of the dilemma would be to claim that when an agent brings about an immanent action, it does so without operating, i.e., “by means of emanation.” This possibility will be discussed in chap. 3 below. 18 See the end of sec. 1.3 for an explanation of why most scholastics would be unlikely to be swayed by this argument. Briefly, because God is simple and unique, most would deny that we can draw any conclusions about understanding and immanent action generally from the nature of God’s understanding.

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understanding by which he understands. For nothing non-relational [nullum absolutum] is produced in God. Therefore, etc.19

From Hervaeus’s argument, it follows that even if it is true (as many scholastics believe) that a created intellect that understands produces a particular accident within itself, its operation of understanding cannot be identified with this very producing. That’s because the same operation is also attributed to God, an uncreated intellect. The doctrine of divine simplicity entails that God does not possess any accidents. This means that God’s understanding is identical with God’s very essence, which does not have an efficient cause. Hence, understanding cannot be understood as an efficient-causal producing of something. And since if anything is an immanent operation, understanding is, it follows that immanent operations as such cannot be understand in this fashion. On Hervaeus’s account, therefore, the distinction between immanent and transeunt operations does not subdivide the basic operation of producing into a sort of producing that ‘remains’ within the agent, and a sort of producing that ‘crosses over’ into an external patient. For him, every producing is essentially transeunt. Any operation that is essentially (and not merely accidentally) immanent must be a material-causal receiving or a formal-causal characterizing. This explains why he prefers to refer to the distinction as between operations instead of between actions20: to the extent that the term ‘action’ connotes the operation of an efficient cause, immanent operations are not ‘actions’, and the term ‘transeunt action’ is a pleonasm.

19 si operatio manens esset producere, intelligere esset producere actum intelligendi. consequentia patet. quia omnes ponunt intelligere operationem intellectus permanentem [lege immanentem]. falsitas consequentis faciliter patet. quia ista est vera et propria. deus intelligit. sed ista est falsa. deus producit actum intelligendi quo intelligit. quia nullum absolutum in divinis est productum. ergo etc. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (fol. 48ra). 20 Hervaeus writes, “It should be noted that ‘immanent operation’ is an appropriate term, as is ‘transeunt operation’, because ‘operation’ is something common to receiving, producing, and formally making [something] such-and-such. However, if one comes upon [the term] ‘immanent action’ as well as ‘transeunt action’, then one must take ‘action’ equivocally, just as ‘making’ is taken equivocally when it is said that a painter ‘makes’ a wall white efficient-causally, while whiteness ‘makes’ a wall white formally.[Notandum tamen: quod bene dicitur operatio manens: et operatio transiens. quia operatio est quoddam commune ad recipere et ad efficere. et ad facere formaliter tale. Si autem inveniatur actio manens et actio transiens: oportet accipere actionem equivoce sicut accipitur facere equivoce: quando dicitur quod pictor facit parietem album effective: et albedo facit parietem album formaliter.]” Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48va).

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1.2. Hervaeus’s classification of understanding and other mental operations As his argument from divine understanding makes clear, Hervaeus does not dispute that understanding and other such mental operations are properly classified as immanent operations. (To be more precise, he does not want to classify them as ‘essentially transeunt but accidentally immanent’ operations, the way that he would classify a doctor’s action of healing herself. Rather, they are essentially immanent.) It is just that his explanation of what their classification as immanent operations amounts to differs radically from that of other scholastics. On Hervaeus’s account, immanent operations come in two basic kinds: the material-causal receiving of something and the formal-causal characterizing of something as such-and-such. Hence, if mental operations are immanent operations, they must be one or the other. Hervaeus’s position is that they are fundamentally a type of formal-causal characterizing. That is, a mental operation is attributed to a given being in virtue of its possession of the relevant form that characterizes it as understanding, willing, etc. In creatures, this form is an accidental quality that inheres in the soul.21 In God, the form is identical to God’s very essence; in other words, God’s essence is the formal principle by which God understands and wills. Hervaeus gives an argument for why understanding in particular must be classified as “an immanent operation that pertains to a formal principle,” not one that pertains to a material principle.22 His reasoning has to do with the way in which these two basic kinds of operations relate to efficient causality. As Hervaeus says, [The two kinds of immanent operations] differ because the operation of a passive principle always implies there is an active principle in addition to the passive principle. For the operation of a passive principle is to receive act from another as from an efficient cause that reduces it from potency to act. But the operation of form, in and of itself [absolute accipiendo], which is to be such-and-such formally, does not imply being from another as from an efficient cause. Hence, although light has an efficient cause, to be bright [lucere] does not imply such causality [in and of itself].23

21 See Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48vb). 22 Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48vb). 23 Secundo differunt: quia operatio principii [adde: passivi] semper praeter principium passivum habet principium activum. nam operatio principiui passivi est recipere actum ab alio: sicut a causa efficente reducente ipsum de potentia in actum: operatio vero formae absolute accipiendo: quod est esse formaliter

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As Hervaeus goes on to note, this difference implies that only immanent operations of the formal-causal sort “are applicable to God, who does not have an efficient cause.”24 Hence, Hervaeus is able to appeal again to the fact that understanding is attributed to God, this time in order to conclude that it must be a formal-causal operation.25 In other words, understanding is attributed to God and creatures solely in virtue of their possessing a certain formal principle, viz. an act of understanding [actus intelligendi].26 Hervaeus is certainly not alone in associating mental operations like understanding with the possession of a certain formal principle. Many other scholastics share his view that (in creatures) such ‘immanent actions’ are to be identified as accidental qualities inhering in the soul (and not as true actions in the category of action).27 However, these others would explain that the reason why these qualities are called ‘immanent actions’ is that they ‘remain in the agent’, i.e., their subject is also necessarily their efficient cause. By contrast, Herveaus thinks that the relation of such qualities to their efficient cause is irrelevant to their status as immanent actions (or rather,

tale: non importat esse ab alio: sicut a causa efficiente. Unde lux licet habeat causam efficientem: tamen lucere non importat talem causalitatem. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48va) 24 propter quod etiam ea [sc. operationes immanentes] quae pertinent ad principium formale conveniunt deo qui non habet causam efficientem. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48va). The “only” is implied by saying that God “does not have an efficient cause.” 25 As Hervaeus writes, Every immanent operation pertains either to a material principle or a formal principle; but understanding as such does not refer to something formally pertaining to a material principle, therefore etc. The major premise is clear from what was said. The proof of the minor premise is that, as was said, the operation of a material principle implies the existence of an efficient cause from which the material principle recieves what it receives. But understanding is applicable when there is no efficient cause of the act of understanding, as is clear in God. Therefore, etc. [omnis operatio manens vel pertinet ad principium materiale vel formale. sed intelligere ut sic non dicit aliquid formaliter pertinens ad principium materiale. ergo etc. Maior patet ex dictis. probatio minoris. quia ut dicendum est: operatio principium materialis importat habere causam effectivam: a qua principium materiale recipiat illud quod recipit. sed intelligere convenit non habenti causam effictivam actus intelligendi: sicut patet in Deo. ergo etc.] Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48vb). 26 As Hervaeus continues (from the quote in the previous note), “Hence, properly speaking, understanding implies the possession of an act of understanding, without including any passive or effective cause” [Unde intelligere proprie loquendo importat habere actum intelligendi. non includendo causam passivam vel effectivam]. Hervaeus Natalis, Quod. 2 q. 8 (p. 48vb). Stated otherwise, the act of understanding characterizes one as understanding, i.e., it ‘makes’ one understand in the formal-causal sense. Similarly, the accident of heat characterizes something as hot. 27 See chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above.

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operations). All that matters is the formal-causal relation between the accidental quality and the subject of that quality. But of course, the same formal-causal relation obtains between any accidental quality and the subject of inherence of that quality, and indeed between any formal cause and the thing it is in-formed by. That is why Hervaeus, unlike other scholastics, is willing to call, e.g., wood’s ‘being hot’ an ‘immanent operation’ just as much as someone’s understanding, willing, and other mental operations. It is in this sense that Hervaeus can be said to offer a purely formal-causal account of immanent action, notwithstanding the fact that he considers any exercise of material causality to qualify as an ‘immanent operation’ as well. The careful reader may be wondering how Hervaeus’s purely formal-causal account of immanent action squares with his aforementioned commitment to Aquinas’s (mature) theory of the mental word [verbum mentis]. Recall that Aquinas posits this ‘word’ as something inhering in the soul that is distinct from, and produced by, the act of understanding. Using Hervaeus’s threefold typology of the basic kinds of operations, then, it would seem that if Aquinas is correct, then understanding should in fact be classified as a type of producing, and that it should be attributed to the one who understands precisely qua agent, or efficient cause, contrary to what Hervaeus says. Conversely, if Hervaeus is correct that no immanent operation is a producing, it would seem that understanding cannot have a ‘word’ as its product. (Someone might ask: isn’t the upshot of Hervaeus’s argument from divine understanding precisely that understanding cannot be equivalent to producing something?) Certainly, most scholastics who deny that an immanent action should be understood as a kind of interior production take this denial to impugn Aquinas’s theory.28 Hervaeus’s solution is to distinguish the operation by which a mental word is produced from the operation by which an intellect is characterized as understanding. In the former operation, the act of understanding serves as an active principle; in the latter, it serves as a formal principle. Hence, on his typology, the production of the mental word is a transeunt operation (at least per se) that is attributed to the intellect qua agent, while

28 See chap. 1, sec. 2 above.

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the characterization of the intellect as understanding is an immanent operation that is attributed to the intellect qua the subject of a certain formal quality. Properly understood, Hervaeus’s argument from divine understanding just underlines that the two operations are not identical (and that only the formal-causal operation can be attributed to God29). At the same time, Hervaeus insists that the operations are linked, such that there is one sense in which one can say that (creaturely) understanding is productive. According to Hervaeus, it is true universally that transeunt, efficient-causal operations are grounded in immanent, formal-causal ones, because an efficient cause can act only on the basis of what it possesses formally. For example, fire is able to heat wood only because it is hot itself. The accidental quality of heat in the fire serves as both the formal principle of the immanent operation of ‘being hot’, and as the active principle of the transeunt operation of heating. It is in this sense that a formal-causal operation can be considered productive—not because it is a kind of producing itself, but because it grounds some further operation which is a producing. On the Thomistic theory of the mental word (as Hervaeus understands it), the two operations associated with the act of understanding are related in the exact same way. Because of this, Hervaeus concludes that Aquinas’s theory of the mental word can hardly be considered incompatible with the nature of immanent operation.

1.3. Evaluations of Hervaeus’s account The reaction to Hervaeus Natalis’s attempt to reconceptualize the distinction between immanent and transeunt operations seems to have been entirely negative. Given that Hervaeus’s account is meant to defend the Thomistic theory of the mental word as something distinct from, and produced by, understanding, it is striking that his position is explicitly rejected by figures occupying the full range of positions on this controversial topic:30 Durand of Saint-Pourçain, Hervaeus’s first and most persistent critic, adheres to the standard Aristotelian account of immanent actions as inherently non-productive;

29 Of course Hervaeus thinks there is something analogous to the production of the mental word in God, namely the procession of the Son, but procession is something different from true production, since the Son is not distinct in essence from the Father. 30 See chap. 1 above.

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Chysostomus Javellus, takes the view, typical of later Thomists, that being productive is compatible with, but not essential to, the nature of immanent action; while Francisco Suárez holds that that immanent actions are necessarily productive. These three figures at least agree that an immanent action “remains in the agent” by definition, which of course implies that Hervaeus’s purely formal-causal account is mistaken because it requires that the subject of an immanent action is its efficient cause. But Hervaeus’s account was opposed even by Paulus Soncinas, who (as we will see in sec. 2 below) is possibly the sole other philosopher besides Hervaeus to reject the common conception of immanent action. The main reason why Hervaeus’s revisionary account of immanent operation was rejected by these scholastics was because it massively extends the scope of the concept. For the vast majority of scholastics, the concept of an immanent action is more or less co- extensive with ‘mental operations’, or, if one is being more inclusive, with so-called ‘vital acts’. But on Hervaeus’s view, any exercise of formal or material causality whatsoever qualifies as an immanent operation. Far from being limited to a special set of operations attributable to the soul and to God, immanent operations are ubiquitous in the created world. E.g., being a tree, having a certain shape, and being chopped all qualify as immanent operations, since the first two are operations pertaining to a formal principle (i.e., a substantial form and an accidental form, respectively), while the third is an operation pertaining to a passive principle. Understanding, willing, and other mental operations just happen to be what philosophers commonly call ‘immanent operations.'’ Because of this, Hervaeus’s critics found his use of the term nearly unrecognizable. Their criticism is not just that Hervaeus’s explanation of what it is for something to be an immanent operation is wrong, but more radically that he has redefined the term so that it refers to something else entirely. For example, Durand, focussing just on the formal- causal half of Hervaeus’s account, says, It is true that everything that is produced is produced by means of some form belonging to the agent. Nevertheless, calling every form that belongs to an agent, or any being [esse] that ‘gives form’ to its subject, an ‘immanent operation’ is neither suitable, nor consonant with reason, nor in

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accordance with the Philosopher’s intention, nor how the term is used communally.31

Likewise, Suárez emphasizes, with a sharpness that stands out from his usual equanimity when discussing rival views, that Hervaeus’s theory commits an ‘abuse of terms,’ saying, If abusing terms in this fashion were permitted, we could scarcely understand the authors [being read] and the philosophers. All philosophers and theologians, when they speak of immanent action, never understand [by it] the causalities of matter and form, but rather the acts of vital potencies, which come to be from themselves efficient-causally.32

Implied in this criticism of Hervaeus is the assumption that the common consensus of what counts as an ‘immanent action’, and what does not, has the authority of Aristotle behind it. This is why part of the charge against Hervaeus’s account is that it fails to capture Aristotle’s intention. Javellus drives home this criticism by pointing out just how untethered Hervaeus’s account is from Aristotle’s canonical description of immanent and transeunt actions. If you pay attention, all interpreters of Aristotle maintain that this way of drawing the distinction is both unsuitable and not in accordance with the mind of the Philosopher. And the sign of this [error] is the fact that Hervaeus never mentions Metaphysics, book 9, text 16 in his entire discussion. For it is obvious from the words of the text and from the Commentator that the difference between immanent and transeunt actions does not lie in this, that only the latter are from an efficient cause. For the Philosopher uses examples for immanent action such as vision in the one seeing, and speculating in the one speculating, and it is clear that if the one seeing and the one speculating are contained in a genus of cause, they are in the genus of the efficient cause.33

31 quamuis omne quod producitur producatur per aliquam formam agentis, tamen uocare omnem formam agentis uel tale esse dat quod suo forma subiecto 'operationem immanentem' non est congruum nec rationi consonum nec secundum mentem PHILOSOPHI nec communiter loquentium. Durand of Saint- Pourçain, In I. Sent. d. 27 q. 2 n. 14 [Durandus Projekt p. 807.242-46]. 32 alioqui, si ita licet abuti terminis, vix possumus auctores et philosophos intelligere. Philosophi autem et theologi omnes, cum loquuntur de actione immanenti, nunquam intelligunt causalitatem materiae et formae, sed actus potentiarum vitalium, qui ab ipsis effective fiunt. Suárez, DM 48.2.8 (Opera Omnia 26.875). 33 Sed si advertis, haec differentia apud omnes expositores philosophi est impropria, nec est ad mentem philosophi, cuius signum est, quod Hervaeus in tota sua determinatione, non facit mentionem de textu philosophi in 9. Metaph. qui est tex. 16. Manifestum est enim ex dicto tex. et ex Comment. quod non differt actio immanens a transiens, quia illa non est ab efficiente, haec autem est ab efficiente, imo exemplificat philosophus pro actione immanente, de visione in vidente, et speculatione in speculante, patet autem quod

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Of course, Hervaeus’s revisions would be more palatable if his case against the common conception of immanent action were compelling. But none of his arguments would be likely to convince someone to abandon the assumption that an operation must remain in the agent in order to be ‘immanent’. For instance, Hervaeus argues that the very nature of efficient causality entails that the operation of an agent as such is necessarily transeunt, and not immanent. But this exclusion seems to be made only by means of a kind of excessive fastidiousness. As Suárez writes, [Hervaeus] falsely denies that any properly efficient causation [aliquam propriam effectionem] is truly immanent, when everyone teaches that this occurs in vital acts, nor is it impossible for some potency to act in itself, whether it be the partial, or total proximate, or virtual, principle of acting, as I discussed extensively earlier.34

Although Hervaeus is more strict about the sense in which something is capable of acting ‘in itself’ [in se] than someone like Suárez, he too holds with the majority that the efficient cause of the soul’s ‘vital acts’ (i.e., mental operations and the like) is in some respect the soul itself. And to any other scholastic, this admission is sufficient grounds for classifying such acts as immanent actions, in the sense of ‘remaining in the agent’. Hervaeus’s demand that in order to meet this description, an efficient cause would have to act on itself in the strictest possible sense—a sense which he regards as metaphysically impossible—was simply not shared by other scholastics.35 Something similar can be said about Hervaeus’s claim that an operation is related to an agent qua agent as to that “from which” [a quo] it comes, and not as that “in which” [in quo] it remains. The whole point of the common conception of immanent action is that the agent of such an action is also the subject in which it inheres, so there are two

videns, et speculans si in genere causae continentur, hoc erit in genere causae efficientis. Cum igitur haec opinio fit impropria, ideo relinquenda est. Hic nam intendimus loqui ad mentem philosophi. Javellus, In Met. lib. 9 q. 16 (pp. 269r-v). 34 Secundum est, quod falso negat aliquam propriam effectionem esse vere immanentem, cum id omnes doceant de actibus vitalibus, et non repugnet aliquam potentiam agere in seipsam, sive illa sit partiale principium agendi, sive totale proximum, aut virtuale, de quo in superioribus late disputatum est. Suárez, DM 48.2.8 (Opera Omnia 26.875). 35 For example, Suárez thinks that of the powers of the soul, only the will acts on itself in the strictest possible sense; but that does not stop him from calling (e.g.,) acts of the intellect and the sense-powers ‘immanent actions’ as well (cf. Suárez, DM 18.6.45-51 [Opera Omnia 25.645-47]).

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ways in which an immanent action is related to the being to which it is attributed. Simply pointing out that the two relations are different does not establish that they cannot be combined. Hervaeus seems to be motivated by the expectation that the immanent- transeunt distinction must mark a deep carving of nature, such that the suggestion that immanent actions combine distinct causal principles (efficient and passive) is out of bounds. But again, a proponent of the common conception of immanent action would simply not feel the force of this expectation. Hervaeus also tries to argue that the common conception of immanent action is incompatible with the claim that God understands. But proponents of that conception could respond that his argument only really establishes its incompatibility with the claim that an immanent action is attributed to God. They certainly accept the doctrine of divine simplicity and the implication that God’s act of understanding cannot be an accident that inheres in and is efficiently caused by God. From this, however, they can merely conclude that God’s understanding is not an ‘immanent action’ in the strict sense. For example, Suárez, who (needless to say) accepts that God wills and understands, argues that “there is no immanent action, properly speaking, that does not belong to a created agent.”36 In order to allow for his argument to go through the rest of the way, Hervaeus appeals to the universal claim that “understanding is an immanent operation.” But given that the ontology involved in God’s understanding is unique (as all parties agree), his opponents have good grounds for qualifying this universal claim to handle the divine case. Once again, Hervaeus seems to attack his opponents for failing to achieve a desideratum that they themselves do not recognize as such—in this case, that the concept of an immanent operation be applied to God in exactly the same manner that it applies to creatures.

36 Inter immanentes nulla est actio propria, quae non sit actio agentis creati. Suárez, DM 48.4.12 (Opera Omnia 26.891). Admittedly, this claim means something a bit different for Suárez than it would for other scholastics, given Suárez’s distinction between immanent act and immanent action (see chap. 1, sec. 3 above).

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2. Paulus Soncinas As a matter of record, then, Hervaeus Natalis was largely unsuccessful in his attempt to replace the common conception of an immanent action with his own account. The overwhelming majority of scholastics assume that immanent and transeunt actions are distinguished by the respective ways in which they relate to their agent, or efficient cause, i.e., an immanent action ‘remains in’ its agent, while a transeunt action does not. The case against this view was taken up again in the Renaissance by the Thomist Paulus Barbus of Soncino, aka. Paulus Soncinas. Soncinas was well known in later scholasticism for his defence of the view that immanent actions like acts of thinking and willing should not be categorized as true actions but rather as a species of quality. But in contrast with most who hold this view, Soncinas, like Herveaus, denies that what makes such qualities ‘immanent actions’ and hence distinct from ‘transeunt actions’ has anything to do with their existence in their efficient cause.. In that sense, he too offers a purely formal-causal account of immanent action, since for him an immanent action is attributed to something solely in virtue of its possessing a certain kind of form, and not in virtue of being the efficient cause of that form. In this section, I first examine Soncinas’ case against the common conception of immanent action. Next, I explain why Soncinas rejects Hervaeus’s rival view. Having set these aside, I then articulate Soncinas’s own positive account of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions. Briefly, Soncinas argues that the two ‘actions’ are distinguished not by their relation to their agents, but by their relation to their objects. I close by assessing the reaction to Soncinas’s position by his near-contemporaries, Javellus and Suárez. Soncinas’s evaluation of the common conception of immanent action is framed in terms of the question, “whether an immanent operation is distinguished from a transeunt operation through this: the former exists subjectively in that from which it originates efficient-causally, while the latter does not [prima est subiective in eo a quo est effective, secunda autem non]”.37 Siding with Hervaeus against the majority of scholastics, Soncinas argues for the negative answer. He accepts Hervaeus’s argument that this

37 Utrum operatio immanens, distinguatur ab actione transeunte per hoc quod prima est subiective in eo a quo est effective, secunda autem non. Paulus Soncinas, In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 (p. 225).

2. Formal-Causal Interpretations of Immanent Action 78 answer is entailed by the fact that God’s immanent actions, such as understanding, do not have an efficient cause.38 But Soncinas goes further than Hervaeus by trying to show that there could also be an immanent operation in a creature which does not remain in its agent. Soncinas writes, God could—on his own, without any other active principle concurring— cause there to be a thought [intellectio] of a stone in the intellect of Socrates, since this does not imply any contradiction. But part of the essence [ratione] of understanding [intelligere] is that it is an immanent action. Yet in this case the thought would not come from the intellect efficient-causally; therefore, there can be an immanent action in us as well which will not be caused efficient-causally by its subject.39

Soncinas does not deny that in the created world, immanent operations do ‘remain in the agent’ as a matter of course. He holds, e.g., that in the absence of supernatural intervention, creatures’ thoughts are caused by their own intellect.40 What Soncinas’s thought experiment is intended to show is just that it is possible for an immanent action to

38 The argument is cited as one of the initial arguments in favor of the negative answer given at the beginning of the question, in the following form: “Understanding is found in God under its formal essence [rationem formalis] insofar as it is an immanent action. But understanding in God does not originate from anything efficient-causally; therefore it is not part of the essence of an immanent action that it comes to be efficient-causally from that in which it exists. [Intelligere salvatur in Deo secundum suam rationem formalem inquantum est actio immmanens. Sed intelligere in Deo a nullo est effective, ergo non est de ratione actionis immanentis quod fit effective ab eo in quo est.]” (Paulus Soncinas, In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]). (Although the argument is not attributed to Herveaus directly, he is the likely source, since Soncinas was very familiar with his discussion, as will be clear shortly.) Later, Soncinas shows his approval of this argument, saying, in his own voice, “Immanent actions are not distinguished from transeunt ones by being efficient-causally from that in which they exist. Otherwise, no divine operation would be immanent. [id quo formaliter distinguuntur actiones immanentes a transeuntibus non est esse effective ab eo in quo est: alioquin nulla operatio divina esset immanens]” (In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]). 39 Ad quartum dicitur quod non est de ratione actionis immanentis esse effective ab eo in quo est: et hoc conceditur: ac etiam probatur. Nam Deus posset solus, non concurrente alio principio activo causare in intellectu Sortis intellectionem lapidis, cum hoc nullam implicet contradictionem: sed de ratione intelligere est quod sit actio immanens: et tamen tunc in hoc casu non esset effective ab intellectu: ergo potest esse aliqua actio immanens etiam in nobis quae non causabitur effective a suo subiecto. Paulus Soncinas, In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 (p. 226). It should be noted that the point that “God could cause a thought in someone’s intellect [Deus potest in intellectu alicuius causare intellectionem]” is already given in the initial arguments cited in favor of the negative answer (Paulus Soncinas, In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]), so Soncinas may have borrowed the thought experiment from someone else. In any case, later scholastic authors like Javellus and Suárez associate the thought experiment with Soncinas. 40 Soncinas writes, “It is not the case that the object causes the thought. For a thought is caused by the possible and agent intellect with the [intelligible] species of its object concurring. [Ad id vero quod dicitur quod obiectum causat intellectionem, falsum est. Causatur enim intellectio ab intellectu possibili et agente concurrente specie ipsius obiecti.]” (In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]).

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exist in a creature (“subjectively,” as Soncinas says) and yet not be efficiently caused by that creature. Given this possibility, the fact that some operation ‘remains in’ the agent cannot be what makes it an immanent action, nor can this feature be what distinguishes immanent actions from transeunt ones. Although Soncinas agrees with Hervaeus in rejecting the common conception of immanent action, he does not accept Hervaeus’s own positive account. As noted earlier,41 he (like the other critics of Hervaeus) faults Hervaeus for expanding the concept of an immanent action far beyond its intended use (i.e., as set down by Aristotle). Soncinas argues that the concept of an ‘operation’ cannot be used to refer to just any exercise of formal, material, and efficient causality as Hervaeus suggests. In order to specify which sorts of things can be called operations, he appeals to the distinction between so-called ‘first’ and ‘second’ actualities. As Aristotle presents it in De Anima, first actuality corresponds to the mere possession of a certain capacity, while second actuality corresponds to the exercise of a certain capacity. (So, for example, knowing how to ride a bicycle would be a first actuality, while actually riding a bicycle would be a second actuality. A physically capable person who hasn’t learned to ride a bicycle is in potentiality to the first actuality, while someone who possesses the first actuality but who isn’t now riding a bicycle is in potentiality to the second actuality.42) In Latin translation, Aristotle refers to first actuality as “possessing but not exercising [habere sed non operari],”43 so Soncinas concludes, with some credibility, that only second actualities should be called ‘operations’.44 Next, Soncinas argues that the formal-causal ‘characterizings’ to which Hervaeus wants to extend the term ‘immanent operation,’ such

41 See sec. 1.3 above. 42 There is thus a sense in which first actuality is itself the actualization of a more fundamental capacity that one possesses (in this case, the capacity to acquire a certain know-how). But this is not usually how we speak of capacities, which are usually reserved for what Aristotle calls first actualities, e.g., if I ask you whether you are capable of riding a bicycle, I don’t want to know whether you could learn to do so! 43 Aristotle, De An. II.1 412a26-27. I quote from the popular translatio nova of William of Moerbeke as found in Aquinas, In De An. 44 Soncinas writes, “[the term] ‘operation’ only ever refers to a second actuality, never a first actuality; otherwise knowledge [scientia] and other habits would be operations, which Aristotle denies in 2 De an. text. com. 5. [operatio non dicitur nisi de actu secundo, et nullo modo de actu primo: alioquin scientia et reliqui habitus essent actus primi (lege operationes): quod tamen negat Philosophus 2. de anima. text. com. 5]” (In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]). Soncinas is probably following Aquinas, who makes the same point at ST I-II q. 49 a. 3 ad 1.

2. Formal-Causal Interpretations of Immanent Action 80 as ‘being white’, are in reality first actualities; as such they are not ‘operations’ at all, so the immanent-transeunt distinction does not apply to them.45 Soncinas also supplies arguments against the applicability of the term ‘operation’ to the exercise of material causality.46 By contrast, Soncinas thinks that mental operations, such as thinking and willing, that are universally accepted as ‘immanent actions’, clearly are second actualities, since they are nothing other than the actual exercise of certain mental capacities.47 The upshot of his argument against Hervaeus is that the concept of an immanent action extends only as far as the majority of scholastics think it does, even if their analysis of the concept (in terms of ‘remaining in the agent’) is false. Soncinas then offers his own account of how immanent actions are distinguished from transeunt ones. He begins by identifying what they have in common as actions. He writes, It must be known that every action is about [circa] some object as its proper material [propriam materiam]. For example, cutting is about hard matter which is divided, and heating is about what is heated. And this must be conceded universally with regard to all actions, because there cannot be an action without there being a terminus of the action.48

45 It might seem a bit strange to think of ‘being white’ as a capacity, so why would Soncinas think that it is clearly a first actuality? The reasoning that Soncinas gives is that “if being-white [albescere] were a second actuality, knowing [scire] would be a second actuality by the same reasoning, as is clear [Si albescere est actus secundus: eadem ratione etiam scire est actus secundus: ut patet]” (In Met. lib. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]). Since Aristotle holds that knowing (i.e., the mere possession of knowledge) is only a first actuality, Soncinas concludes that so is being white (i.e., the mere possession of whiteness). Unfortunately this argument begs the question, since it is fairly obvious how the possession of knowledge is a type of capacity that can be exercised, and not so obvious how the possession of whiteness is. Perhaps Soncinas is thinking that the second actuality corresponding to the possession whiteness is the actual perception of that whiteness by something through its power of sight. This would fit nicely with the common view in scholasticism that whiteness is a ‘secondary quality’; secondary qualities were understood to be those qualities whose causal power was limited to producing the sensible species by means of which sense perception occurs (see Maier 1968: 19; and Rozemond 1998: 70). 46 Soncinas gives two arguments, both of which emphasize that the receiving of form (i.e., the exercise of material causality) is a matter of undergoing [pati], not acting or operating, and so cannot be called an immanent action or operation. See Paulus Soncinas, In Met. 9 q. 20 (p. 226). 47 Of course, Soncinas also thinks that transeunt actions are second actualities, but this point is not at issue. 48 Et propter hoc declaro aliter distinctionem actionum immanentium et transeuntium. Ad cuius evidentiam est sciendum quod omnis actio est circa aliquod obiectum: sicut circa propriam materiam: sicut secare est circa materiam duram qua dividitur: et calefacere est circa id quod calefit: et sic universaliter de omnibus actionibus oportet istud concedere: quia non potest esse aliqua actio sine termino actionis. Paulus Soncinas, In Met. 9 q. 20 (p. 226).

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For Soncinas, immanent and transeunt actions alike have what might be called an intentional structure, insofar as they are about, or are directed at, some object as its terminus.49 What distinguishes the two kinds of actions is how they relate to their respective intentional objects; Soncinas continues, Some actions are such that the object of the action is changed through them. These are called transeunt actions for two reasons: because (as I said) their object is changed through them; and because they are received subjectively in something passive. But other actions are such that nothing passive is changed through them, and these are called immanent actions, since they remain subjectively in the agent. The operations of the cognitive and appetitive powers alone are of this sort. For from the fact that I have a cognition of something, whether by sense-perception or by intellect, or from the mere fact that I want and love a thing, it does not follow that the thing is changed. For whoever sees a stone does not change the stone just by seeing it, nor is the stone denominated as ‘seen’ in virtue of some form existing in it. Rather, it is so denominated merely by an extrinsic denomination, i.e., in virtue of the act of seeing which exists in the other.50

What distinguishes immanent from transeunt actions is that while the object of a transeunt action is changed by that action, the object of an immanent action is not. For instance, the object of the action of heating (i.e., “that which is heated”) undergoes an accidental change by being heated, since it acquires the quality of heat. By contrast, the object of (say) a thought or a volition is not changed just by being understood or by being

49 Later in the question, Soncinas explicitly equates the object an action is ‘about’ with the terminus of that action, when he writes, “the object, that is, the terminus of the action [objectum, sive terminus actionis]” (In Met. 9 q. 20 [p. 226]). 50 sunt autem quaedam actiones per quas transmutatur obiectum actionis: et istae appellantur actiones transeuntes dupliciter. Tum quia ut dictum est obiectum per eas transmutatur, tum quia recipiuntur subiective in passo. Sunt vero aliae actiones per quas passum non transmutatur: et istae appelantur actiones immanentes. manet, enim, subiective in agente: tales autem sunt tantum operationes potentiarum cognoscitivarum et appetitivarum. Nam ex hoc quod cognosco quodcumque sensu aut intellectu: neque ex hoc praecise quod appeto et amo aliquam rem: non sequitur quod ipsa transmutetur. Qui enim videt lapidem, non transmutat lapidem ex hoc praecise, quod eum videt, nec lapis denominatur visus per aliquam formam in eo existentem: sed tantum denominatione extrinseca, scilicet, per visionem quae est in alio. Paulus Soncinas, In Met. 9 q. 20 (p. 226).

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loved. ‘Being understood’ and ‘being loved’ are “extrinsic denominations,” or as we would say today, merely Cambridge properties.51 Soncinas is aware that there are a class of immanent actions which appear to violate this rule he has set down. It would seem that the object of an immanent action is changed by the action in those circumstances where the object is none other than the agent itself. For example, if a created intellect thinks of itself, it thereby undergoes an accidental change, since (on Soncinas’s professed view) a thought is an accidental quality inhering in the intellect. Soncinas replies that in such examples, the object of the immanent action is changed only accidentally—namely, not insofar as it is the object of the action, but only insofar as it is the agent. For example, the intellect that thinks of itself is changed insofar as it is thinking, not insofar as it is thought of.52 Soncinas therefore is able to render such apparent counter-examples moot by specifying that the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions hinges on whether the object is changed by the action “insofar as it is such” [inquantum tale].53 To sum up, we can say that Soncinas’s re-interpretation of the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions contains a negative element and a positive element. On the one hand, he argues that immanent actions should not be distinguished from transeunt actions in terms of their relation to their efficient cause. On the other hand, he argues that they should be distinguished in terms of their relation to their object. As he puts it, “An immanent action is not distinguished formally from a transeunt action by originating efficient-causally from that in which it exists … but rather by being the sort of action whose object is not changed through it.”54 The combined effect of these two elements is

51 Soncinas recognizes that the object of love may be changed if the person who loves it acts on their love; but this is just to say that the change will be in virtue of some further, and transeunt, action, not the original act of loving taken by itself. 52 As Soncinas writes, “When the intellect thinks of itself, it changes the object, i.e., itself, by causing a thought in itself; but this is accidental, for it does not cause a thought in itself insofar as it is an object in the intellect, but insofar as it is the one thinking [dum intellectus intelligit se, transmutat obiectum, id est, seipsum causando in se intellectionem: sed hoc est per accidens: non enim causat in se intellectionem: inquantum ipse est obiectum in intellectu: sed inquantum est intelligens]” (In Met. 9 q. 20 [p. 229]). 53 Paulus Soncinas, In Met. 9 q. 20 (p. 226). 54 formaliter distinguuuntur actiones immanentes a transeuntibus non est esse effective ab eo in quo est…. sed est esse talem quod per eam non transmutetur obiectum. Paulus Soncinas, In Met. 9 q. 20 (p. 226).

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an account of immanent action that is purely formal-causal in nature. That is, for Soncinas, to be the subject of an immanent action is not equivalent to doing something but is rather just to possess a certain kind of formal quality (i.e., one with a certain intentional structure55). Whether the subject of the quality is also its efficient cause is irrelevant. In this respect, immanent actions are no different from other accidental qualities like heat and colour. Just as to be hot is just to possess the quality of heat (regardless of what caused that quality), to understand [intelligere] is just a matter of having a certain thought [intellectio]. As Soncinas’s thought experiment is supposed to show, the fact that one happens to produce this thought oneself is not an essential part of what it is to understand. Although Soncinas’s goal is to replace the commonly accepted criterion for distinguishing immanent and transeunt actions with his own criterion, the two criteria are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to think that Soncinas is correct to point out that immanent actions do not produce any change in their object (while transeunt actions do), but that he is wrong to deny that immanent actions by definition remain in their agent (while transeunt actions by definition do not). In other words, one could accept the positive element of Soncinas’s view while rejecting the negative element. This, in effect, was the approach of both Javellus and Suárez,56 the two sixteenth-century scholastics on whom Soncinas arguably had the largest impact.57 (Incidentally, the fact that these two figures take the time to refute Hervaeus’s account is very likely due to the fact that Soncinas discusses it in detail.) It is a testament to the durability of the common

55 Although Soncinas holds that immanent actions belong in the category of quality, he explains that they are called ‘actions’ because they resembles transeunt actions (i.e., the only accidents in the category of action) in two ways. First, they have an intentional structure, although of course they do not change their objects as transeunt actions do. Second, although they are not successive entities as transeunt actions are, they resemble them insofar as they depend continually on their cause while they exist. Note that Soncinas is only speaking of immanent actions in creatures here, since in God, immanent actions are neither qualities nor actions in the strict sense, being identical with God’s essence. See Paulus Soncinas, In Met. 9 q. 21 (p. 227). 56 Javellus holds that there are three ways in which immanent actions differ from transeunt ones. The first corresponds to the common conception of immanent action, while the second corresponds to Soncinas's criterion (see Javellus, In Met. lib. 9 q. 16 [p. 270r-v]). Suárez also agrees that the object of an immanent is not changed by the action; however, he thinks that Soncinas is wrong to identify the object of an action with the terminus of that action (cf. Suárez, DM 48.2.17 [Opera Omnia 26.878]). 57 Cf. Jindráček 2008: 139, 141.

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conception of immanent action within scholasticism that both Javellus and Suárez try to save it even though neither wants to deny Soncinas’s claim that God could implant the thought of a stone in Socrates’s intellect supernaturally. Let’s take a look at each author in turn. Javellus’s discussion of immanent and transeunt actions is found in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and it is specifically in his role as an interpreter of Aristotle that he thinks Soncinas’s thought experiment can be set aside. According to Javellus, it “is clear from [est manifesta]” Aristotle’s text, as well as Averroes’s commentary on it, that immanent actions are distinguished from transeunt ones insofar as the former exist in their agent, while the latter do not.58 He adds the following remark about Soncinas’s thought experiment: The possibility which Paulus Soncinas brings forward is not relevant, i.e., that God could cause a thought of a stone, which is an immanent action, [to exist] in the intellect of Socrates, and so in this instance, an immanent action would not exist subjectively in its agent. For although a theologian would concede this, Aristotle would deny it. He would say that God cannot cause such a thought without Socrates’ intellect concurring as the proximate cause.59

Javellus’s avowed goal is to explain things “purely metaphysically and according to the mind of the Philosopher, in order to stay away from a theological approach.”60 Within these confines, he thinks that there is no reason to admit that someone could be the subject of an immanent action without being its efficient cause. Presumably, this is because Soncinas’s thought experiment is underwritten by a certain theological

58 Javellus writes, “The first way of distinguishing between immanent and transeunt actions is this: an immanent action exists subjectively in the agent that produces it … while a transeunt action exists subjectively in the thing being made or the patient. This distinction is clear from text 16 of book IX [of the Metaphysics] and the Commentator’s comment on the same text. [Prima igitur differentia est, quod actio immanens est subiectivae in agente a quo producitur…. Actio vero transiens est subiectivae in facto vel passo, et haec differentia est manifesta in tex. 16 huius lib. et in commento Comment. eiusdem textus.]” (In Met. lib. 9 q. 16 [p. 270r-v]). 59 Nec valet instantia, quam adducit Paulus Sonc. quod Deus posset causare in intellectu Socratis intellectionem de lapide, quae est actio immanens, et in illo casu constat, quod non esset subjectivae in agente, name licet Theologus id concederet, tamen Arist. negaret. Diceret enim Deum non posse causare huiusmodi intellectionem, nisi concurrente intellectu Socr. ut causa prima. Javellus, In Met. lib. 9 q. 16 (p. 270v). 60 Loquendo pure metaph. et secundum doctrinam philosophi, ut praeservem me a via Theologi, quam videtur amplecti Paulus Soncinas in lib. 9 metaph. q. 20. Javellus, In Met. lib. 9q. 16 (p. 270r).

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commitment to God’s omnipotence which (Javellus thinks) Aristotle does not accept. And so, according to Javellus, the common conception of immanent action still stands. Needless to say, Javellus’s response is not particularly satisfying. One is left wondering whether Javellus thinks the truth of the matter lies with Aristotle or with Soncinas, or perhaps even adopts some kind of ‘double truth’ theory where there is no adjudicating between them. Surely the most likely hypothesis is that Javellus thinks that the theological approach is the final arbiter of truth; but if that’s so, then it would seem that he should accept Soncinas’s conclusion that the common conception of immanent action is false. Even if the sort of possibility that Soncinas envisions could happen only miraculously, that is enough to undercut the metaphysical claim that it is necessary for an immanent action to remain in its agent. To salvage the common conception, a more sophisticated response is required. Perhaps Javellus could have found inspiration from responses to an analogous question concerning the essence of accidents. As the scholastics were aware, Aristotle seems to present it as essential for accidents to inhere in a substance, while the doctrine of transsubstantiation implies that God can cause an accident to exist on its own. The sophisticated way of reconciling these two ‘approaches’ was to say that while accidents do not necessarily inhere in a substance, it is part of their essence to possess a “natural aptitude” for doing so, such that, barring supernatural intervention, they cannot exist on their own. In exactly the same fashion, here, a more satisfactory reply to Soncinas would be to say that although immanent actions do not necessarily remain in their agent, it is part of their essence to have a ‘natural aptitude’ for doing so. This would allow one to preserve the common conception of immanent action under a modified form that allows for the sort of exceptions Soncinas has identified—and no more. Alternatively, perhaps Javellus could have rejected Soncinas’s thought experiment as not supported by the ‘theological approach’. This way, the common conception of immanent action could be seen as true, period, rather than just as true-for- Aristotle, as Javellus presents it. One might well suppose that the burden of proof is on Soncinas to explain how it is metaphysically possible for God to produce the thought of a

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stone in Socrates’ intellect supernaturally. Soncinas only says that doing so would not imply a contradiction, but it would seem that this begs the question. On Soncinas’s thought experiment, Socrates’ intellect only receives the thought of a stone, without playing any role in producing it. But one might reasonably ask whether the act of thinking can really be split into these two functions. Doesn’t the fact that thinking is an immanent action rather than a transeunt one mean precisely that it does not involve the actualization of two powers (one active, the other passive), but just one? In that case, however, to ‘have’ the thought of a stone is just to ‘think’ of a stone; and any attempt to posit one without the other does in fact imply a contradiction. This line of thinking would allow someone to defend the common conception of immanent actions without violating the ‘theological’ principle that Soncinas seems to have in mind: that God can do anything that does not imply a contradiction.61 A very different way of saving the common conception of immanent action is offered by Francisco Suárez, who enlists Soncinas’s thought experiment in support of his own idiosyncratic theory of immanent action. Recall62 that on Suárez’s view, acts of thinking, willing, and other such “immanent acts [actus],” as he calls them, can be analysed into two components: a certain formal quality which inheres in, and perfects, the subject of the act, and the true action [actio] by which that same subject brings about said quality. For Suárez, Soncinas’s thought experiment establishes precisely that these two components are not just conceptually distinct but distinct in reality. The thought of a stone is a formal quality inhering in and perfecting Socrates’s intellect. But because (ex hypothesi) Socrates’s intellect does not produce this thought, there is no immanent action present. There is only the transeunt action by which God supernaturally produces the thought in Socrates’s intellect. Since the formal quality can exist without the immanent action by which it is normally brought about, Suárez reasons, that action must be

61 However, if one argues instead that Soncinas's thought experiment is supported by the theological principle that “God can do by himself anything that he does with the concurrence of secondary causes,” then this response is not adequate. (Such a strategy is taken by Suárez, as we saw in chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above.) 62 See chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above.

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something over and above the quality itself; on his ontology, it is a mode [modus] while the formal quality is a thing [res]. For Suárez, then, Soncinas’s rejection of the common conception of immanent action is the mistaken result of his failure to think through the implications of his own thought experiment. Although Soncinas sees that the efficient-causal dependence of an ‘immanent act [actus]’ on its subject can be removed in the miraculous case, he neglects to give an adequate account of its presence in the normal case. As a result, Soncinas continues to think that ‘immanent actions’ just are what we call the formal qualities of thinking, willing and the like. Suárez writes, For this reason it seems to me to be clear that Soncinas does not speak correctly [on this matter]. In one question, he proves, competently, that it does not belong to the very nature [ratione] of an immanent act to originate efficient-causally from the potency in which it exists, because God can produce a thought in an intellect by himself, without the concurrence of some other active principle. But then immediately, in the next question, Soncinas denies that immanent actions are true actions. But Soncinas cannot deny that these qualities, which he says are immanent acts, do come to be de facto from their respective powers. Therefore, if they do come to be [in this way], and it does not belong to their nature to do so, then there is something in between them and the powers from which they come to be, which cannot be anything but the dependence and action.63

For Suárez, Soncinas’s rejection of the common conception of immanent action rests on a confusion. What his thought experiment shows is that the qualities (of thinking, willing, sensing, etc.) do not necessarily and essentially remain in their efficient cause. They can

63 Potest ergo Deus efficere hos actus, quatenus sunt quaedam qualitates, sine concursu activo potentiarum…; ergo dependentia harum qualitatum a potentiis non est de essentia et entitate harum qualitatum; ergo est aliquis modus ex natura rei distinctus ab ipsis. Unde mihi sane non videtur consequenter loqui Soncin., V Metaph., q. 20, ad 4, dum ex professo probat non esse de ratione actus immanentis effective esse a potentia in qua est, quia potest Deus se solo, non concurrente alio principio activo, causare in intellectu intellectionem, et statim, q. 21, negat actiones immanentes esse veras actiones; quia negare non potest has qualitates, quas dicit esse actus immanentes, de facto fieri a suis potentiis; ergo si fiunt et hoc non est de ratione earum, est aliquid medians inter ipsas et potentias a quibus fiunt, quod non potest esse nisi dependentia et actio. Suárez, DM 48.2.12 (Opera Omnia 26.877).

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be analysed in purely formal-causal terms, just as Soncinas suggests.64 But then Soncinas concludes from this that it is not part of the very notion of an immanent action for it to remain in its efficient cause. This follows if immanent actions just are the qualities in question, as many scholastics in fact hold. But if the two are (modally) distinct in the manner that Suárez holds, then surely what makes the action ‘immanent’ and not transient is precisely that the sort of action by which the agent produces formal qualities within itself.65 Hence, under the Aristotelian assumption that the action exists in the same subject as the product of that action, the common conception of immanent action is correct; immanent actions remain in their agent by definition.

3. Conclusion Hervaeus Natalis and Paulus Soncinas each deny the widespread assumption that an immanent action, by definition, ‘remains in’ its agent, or efficient cause. Consequently, they construe the distinction between immanent and transeunt actions in ways that are revisionary. Of the two, Hervaeus’s proposal is the more radical. Where the distinction was typically understood as a way of subdividing ways that efficient causality is exercised (i.e., into acting on oneself and acting on another), Hervaeus effectively repurposes it as a way of distinguishing the way efficient causality is exercised as such from the ways that other kinds of Aristotelian causes are exercised. He regards the exercise of efficient causality as an inherently transeunt operation. Cases where an agent acts on itself (whose possibility Hervaeus even questions) are merely “accidentally” immanent, because it is not qua agent that something is affected by its own action. Extending the concept of an operation considerably beyond its normal use in the scholastic tradition, Hervaeus decides that formal and material causes can be said to

64 Suárez thus agrees with Soncinas that thinking, taken in and of itself, as a kind of perfection, is strictly a matter of possessing a certain form, not a matter of doing something. In that respect it is like being hot or white. Recall (chap. 1, sec. 3.2 above) however that Suárez holds that unlike heat and whiteness, the act of thinking takes on some of the character of an action since it depends continually on an action to exist. 65 Cf. Suárez’s definition: “By immanent action I understand the true or proper bringing-about of those acts [i.e., formal qualities] which remain in the powers from which they come to be, and inform those powers. [per actionem immanentem intelligimus veram ac propriam efficientiam quorumdam actuum qui manent in ipsis potentiis a quibus fiunt easque informant.]” Suárez, DM 48.2.8 (Opera Omnia 26.875).

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‘operate’ as well. And since formal and material causes, unlike efficient causes, are inherently internal to a thing, Hervaeus reasons that the truly ‘immanent operations’ are those that are attributed to a thing in virtue of a formal or material principle, not an efficient one. For example, while heating something is a transeunt operation, being heated by something, and the resulting state of being hot, are both immanent operations, for Hervaeus. The former is a type of receiving of form, which Hervaeus considers to be the sort of operation associated with having matter, while the latter is a type of characterizing (or what Hervaeus calls ‘making [something] such-and-such formally [facere tale formaliter],” which is the sort of operation associated with having a certain form (in this case, the accidental quality of heat). Soncinas’s rival account of the distinction is closer to the mainstream insofar as it retains the assumption that the concept of an immanent operation picks out something unique about mental operations (or some closely related set, such as so-called ‘vital acts’) in particular. Inasmuch as Soncinas stresses that the only things that can be operations are “second actualities” (i.e., roughly, the exercise of an acquired capacity), he can agree, in a sense, with the majority of scholastics who think that immanent and transeunt operations are just the two different ways that something can be ‘active’. What sets Soncinas’s view apart is that he holds that only one of these two ways necessarily involves being an agent. Because he thinks that it is possible for something to be the subject of an immanent operation without being the efficient cause of that operation, his account of how the two kinds of operations differ is also revisionary. He construes the distinction in terms of the relation between an operation and its intentional object, rather than its efficient cause: the object of a transeunt operation is changed by the operation, while the object of an immanent operation is not (at least not qua object). For example, a stone undergoes a change in its metaphysical constitution by being heated—it acquires the quality of heat—but (as Soncinas likes to say) it undergoes no such change by being seen. When it comes to the phenomena that are indisputably classified as immanent actions within the scholastic tradition, i.e., mental operations like understanding and

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willing, then, Hervaeus and Soncinas share the view that such ‘immanent actions’ are attributed to beings just in virtue of their possession of a certain form. In creatures, the relevant form is a type of accidental quality, but in God this ‘form’ is just God’s very essence. In this way, Hervaeus and Soncinas can be said to offer purely formal-causal interpretations of immanent action. Of course, the view that immanent actions are actually qualities and not actions in the true, categorical, sense was in fact very popular in scholasticism. One of the reasons for this was the widespread understanding of mental operations as a kind of perfection of their subject, such that, e.g., the intellect is perfected by thinking, the will by willing, etc. (This view seems irresistible if one recalls that the term perfectio has the connotation of completeness.) This, when combined with the (slightly more controversial, but still popular) assumption that perfections are qualities of a thing, so that being perfected is a matter of acquiring some new quality, yields the conclusion that immanent actions are qualities.66 At the same time, the other scholastics think that the concept of an immanent action is not purely formal-causal in nature but has an efficient-causal element as well. Mental operations, they think, are not only perfections but also fundamentally things that one does—that is precisely why they are called actions, even if they are actually qualities. In effect, what Hervaeus and Soncinas try to do is show that this efficient-causal element is not essential. If mental operations are perfections, it doesn’t matter what caused them. What matters is just that they are possessed. Hervaeus’s argument from divine understanding, and Soncinas’s thought experiment in which God causes Socrates to have the thought of a stone, are both meant to establish this point. Even if Hervaeus and Soncinas can perhaps be credited with identifying and exploiting a certain tension in how mental operations were understood in scholasticism, their own purely formal-causal accounts were simply not regarded as plausible alternatives by their fellow scholastics. As we have seen, Hervaeus was dismissed as

66 The other line of reasoning to this conclusion starts from the standard Aristotelian view that immanent actions are not productive and the assumption that 'true' actions (i.e., those belonging in the category of action) are productive. Many scholastics seem to have been prepared to accept that if immanent actions do not belong in the category of action, they must be qualities instead. See chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above.

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committing an ‘abuse of terms’ because of the way it expands the scope of the concept of an ‘immanent operation’ and (thereby) fails to capture what is unique about mental operations. And while Soncinas may have been regarded more positively, inasmuch as it was thought that his account of immanent action contains some truth, whatever truth it was thought to contain was understood (contrary to Soncinas’s intention) as being compatible with the common conception of immanent action. Guided by the authority of Aristotle (as they understood him), the default view of scholastics was that the subject of an immanent action is precisely a type of agent, even if this seems difficult to square with the nature of efficient causality or with theological concerns. Hervaeus and Soncinas are of significance mainly as exceptions that prove this rule. Given their lack of followers, and the considerable disagreement between the two figures, it would be a mistake to think of there being a ‘school’ or ‘tradition’ of formal-causal interpretations of immanent action within scholasticism.

4. Postscript: A formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause? One of the advantages of examining the views of Hervaeus Natalis and Paulus Soncinas for our present study is that it affords us the opportunity to consider what a genuinely formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause could look like, and how plausible such an interpretation would be. While Spinoza does not use the language of immanent actions or operations,67 we can suppose for the purposes of this exercise that his immanent cause is just the cause of an immanent operation, and similarly, what he calls a transeunt cause is just the cause of a transeunt operation, as Hervaeus or Soncinas understand these terms. Hervaeus’s account in particular lays out clearly how this translation effort would go. ‘Transeunt causes’ must be nothing other than efficient causes, since on this view only producing (i.e., the characteristic operation of an efficient cause) is an essentially transeunt operation. And if material causation can be set aside for our purposes, then ‘immanent causes’ must be nothing other than formal causes, whose

67 In the next chapter, we will discuss the occasion for this terminological shift, which predates Spinoza in the seventeenth century.

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characteristic operation is to characterize something as such-and-such.68 So, for example, fire can be called a ‘transeunt cause’ insofar as it heats another thing (a transeunt operation), while fire’s own heat can be called an ‘immanent cause’ insofar as it characterizes fire as hot. On this interpretation, then, Spinoza’s claim that “God is the immanent, and not the transeunt cause of all things” (E Ip18) entails that God is not an efficient cause that produces everything that exists. Instead, it God must be a, or perhaps the, formal principle that characterizes all things in some way. In other words, as an ‘immanent cause’, God relates to all things as a formal cause relates to what it in-forms. This by itself does not tell us what God characterizes things as. But given that Spinoza defines God as a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, and holds that all things, as modes, are conceived through these attributes, the most plausible version of this interpretation would seem to be that God’s immanent causation consists in nothing other than characterizing the modes under the various attributes as being extended, thinking, and so on for every other attribute. Although this interpretation makes sense of Spinoza’s claim as a rejection of traditional theism (according to which God is the efficient cause of all things), it is confronted immediately with a number of difficulties. Systematically, in terms of Spinoza’s ontology, it seems to get the relationship between God and ‘all things’ backwards. In the first place, for Spinoza, the claim that God is the immanent cause of all things is closely connected to his claim that all things are “in” God.69 However, if Spinoza’s immanent cause is a formal cause, then one would expect the relevant related claim to be rather that God is in all things, since for Aristotelians, forms exist in the things they in-form. That is precisely why Hervaeus argues that the operation of such principles should be classified as ‘immanent’, for instance. Next, Spinoza infamously considers God to be the only substance, while everything else that exists is merely a “mode” [modus], or “affection” [affectio], or even “modification” [modificatio], of that

68 Recall that for Hervaeus, the operation of a material cause, which is to receive form from another, is also classified as immanent. 69 Cf. E Ip18d; and Ep. 73 G IV 307.

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substance. This terminology strongly suggests the ‘characterizing’ relationship runs from all things to God, not the other way around.70 Moreover, if this kind of interpretation were correct, it would seem that the things that are immanently caused by God should be considered substances in their own right, and if anything, Spinoza should have denied that God is a substance. After all, on the scholastic-Aristotelian model, substances are fundamentally the subjects of characterization. They are what forms in-form. For example, both the substantial form of humanity and the accidental form of whiteness characterize Socrates, who (on this view) is a substance. Why then would Spinoza deny that individual things like Socrates are substances if he holds that they are all characterized by God? But the main difficulty that speaks against a purely formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause of this sort is its historical implausibility. Simply put, Hervaeus Natalis and Paulus Soncinas are outliers in the scholastic approach to immanent action. While a few dedicated late-scholastic figures like Javellus and Suárez take the time to refute their views, it would seem that they were mostly ignored, while the common conception of immanent action was preserved. This makes it improbable that they would have had any influence on Spinoza’s thought. In order to encounter these figures in this capacity, Spinoza would have had to possess a keen interest in the vagaries of the scholastic tradition. Needless to say, of such an interest (which is exhibited on every page of Suárez’s writings, for example), there is little evidence in Spinoza. Conversely, given that the overwhelming majority of scholastics conceived of immanent actions as the sort of action that an agent does within itself, we can suppose, without having to assume any deep acquaintance with the scholastic tradition on Spinoza’s part, that the concept of an immanent cause that was available to him would have been precisely that of an agent, or efficient cause, that acts within itself. (This conception would of course explain why Spinoza would connect the claim that God is the immanent cause of all things to the claim that all things are in God.) The next chapter will confirm

70 This is not to say that modes do not get their most fundamental character from God’s nature—clearly they do insofar as they are modes of a particular attribute. That is why Spinoza defines a mode in part as what is conceived through another. On this point, see Carriero 1995: 248-53.

2. Formal-Causal Interpretations of Immanent Action 94 that this is precisely how immanent causation was understood by Spinoza’s sources for the concept, and subsequent chapters will defend Spinoza’s fidelity to this core conception of an immanent cause.71

71 In chap. 4 below, we will examine another kind of formal-causal interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause according to which formal causation is a relation of entailment that the essence of a thing bears to its properties. Since this is not the same as the relation of characterizing that a form bears to the thing it in-forms, one should ask whether its categorization as formal causation is correct. I will argue that it should be categorized as a form of efficient causality instead.

CHAPTER 3. IMMANENT ACTION AND EMANATION

For the scholastics, the terms ‘immanent’ and ‘transeunt’ are predominantly used to describe two different kinds of actions [actiones] or operations [operationes]. But if we look ahead to Spinoza we find that he speaks instead of causes [causae] as being immanent or transeunt.1 Spinoza is not the first to use the distinction in this way. That honor seems to go to the seventeenth-century Dutch scholastic Franco Burgersdijk.2 In Burgersdijk’s day, it was fairly common for scholastic authors, especially in Protestant circles, to analyse the concept of an efficient cause into pairs of mutually exclusive ‘modes of causing’ [modi causandi]. As far as I have been able to determine, Burgersdijk’s popular logic textbook (first published in 16263), is the first work to include a division of the efficient cause into an “immanent cause [causa immanens]” and a “transeunt cause [causa transiens].” It was from Burgersdijk, or from his “disciple,”4 Adriaan Heereboord,5 that Spinoza borrowed the distinction.6 As the preparatory step to examining Spinoza’s own account of the immanent cause, then, in this chapter, we will consider what reasons Burgersdijk had for coining the term, and what relation the immanent cause has to the more traditional scholastic concept of an immanent action. I will argue that Burgersdijk introduces the concept of an immanent cause in order to take a certain position on the relationship between immanent actions like thinking and willing, and a particular modus causandi known as emanation [emanatio] or ‘natural resulting’ [resultantia naturalis].

1 See esp. E Ip18; Ep. 73 G IV 307; KV I.Dial.1§12; and KV I.3§2. 2 Although Burgersdijk is relatively unknown today, he was the author has been called “the most influential Dutch philosopher of the first half of the seventeenth century” (Krop 2003: 182). For Burgersdijk’s biography, see Dibon 1954: 90-119; Krop 2003; Krop 2011a; and Wundt 1939: 87-89. See also Bos and Krop 1993. 3 For the circumstances of the publication of this work, see Dibon 1954: 100-05; and Van Rijen 1993. 4 Dibon 1954: 117. 5 For Heereboord’s biography, see Dibon 1954: 109-19; Krop 2011b; Verbeek 1992: chap. 1; Verbeek 2003; Verbeek 2016; and Wundt 1939: 90. 6 See chap. 4, sec. 1 below for more details.

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Generally speaking, the scholastics distinguish emanation from other modes of efficient causality by appealing to its immediacy. For example, many would describe an effect as having come about “by means of emanation [per emanationem]” when it follows spontaneously from its cause, i.e., seemingly without the cause needing to ‘do’ anything or exert any effort. Regardless of how this immediacy of emanation is construed, it was thought to be exemplified particularly in the production of the so-called ‘proper accidents’ of a substance. In the scholastic tradition, ‘proper accidents’ (sometimes called propria or proprietates7) are necessary properties of a thing that do not constitute part of its essence. One of the stock examples is fire’s ‘proper heat’, which is an accident falling under the category of quality, but which fire necessarily possesses. The powers of the soul, including will and intellect in the rational soul, can also be counted as proper accidents.8 Because these proper accidents must be produced in the same instant that the substance itself comes into existence, the thought is that they ‘emanate’ from the substance’s very essence, or more precisely, its substantial form (the formal part of its essence).9 Another set of phenomena typically taken as an example of emanation is the return of an element to its natural or “pristine” state, as when water cools after no longer being heated.10 Controversially, certain scholastics want to say that emanation is also the modus causandi involved in immanent actions. On this view, thoughts and volitions, for example, are said to ‘emanate’ from the intellect and the will. Someone could arrive at this view via a few different routes. One route starts from the common opinion that immanent actions are accidents belonging in the category of quality, not ‘true’ actions. This opinion is usually held as a consequence of the popular position that immanent

7 Some scholastic authors distinguish between these terms to draw finer distinctions among various kinds of accidents that a substance can possess necessarily. For our purposes, these finer distinctions can be ignored, and the terms can be used interchangeably. 8 To be more precise, the powers of the soul are propria if and only if they are taken to be distinct in reality from the soul's essence. In the Middle Ages, this position was associated with Thomism, but Suárez also accepts it. The alternatives are the nominalist position, according to which the powers of the soul are identical to the soul’s essence; and the Scotist position, according to which they are only modally distinct from it. See King 2008; Pasnau 2011: 157 n. 23; Rozemond 2012; and Shields 2014. 9 Not all scholastics agree that this is the case. Some hold that proper accidents are produced solely by the ‘generator’, i.e., the same thing that produces the substance itself. See Des Chene 1996: 159-61. 10 See e.g., Suárez, DM 18.3.7 (Opera Omnia 25.617 / OEC 95); cf. Pasnau 2004.

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 97 actions do not result in some sort of product.11 The question can thus be asked: how are these qualities caused by their agents? To say that the agent must perform an action would be tantamount to conceding immanent actions really are ‘true’ actions that result in products (namely, certain qualities).12 Hence, some prefer to say that immanent actions are caused by their agent simply by means of emanation. Another route to the same conclusion is through the question of how it is metaphysically possible for an immanent action to ‘remain in’ its agent. This conception of immanent action, which nearly all scholastics accept,13 implies that we are the efficient causes of our thoughts, volitions, and the like. The problem is that this sort of self- modification is difficult to square with the standard Aristotelian model of efficient causality, which seems to assume that an agent necessarily produces some kind of change in “another insofar as it is other,” as Aristotle’s definition of an active power has it.14 In order to resolve this tension, some argue that the agent of an immanent action is engaged in a mode of efficient causality that is relevantly different from that represented by the standard Aristotelian model. Emanation seems to be the modus causandi that is particularly applicable to internal efficient causation, because in such cases there is no external patient and so the effect seems to be brought about immediately or spontaneously. Notably, all the paradigmatic examples of emanation are instances of internal efficient causation. One plausible way to preserve the claim that we are the efficient causes of our immanent actions, therefore, is by holding that immanent actions are produced by means of emanation. As we will see below, a particularly clear example of this line of thinking is found in the Paduan philosopher Giacomo Zabarella. Burgersdijk’s understanding of what he calls the ‘emanative cause’ [causa emanativa] (i.e., an efficient cause that produces its effect by means of emanation) owes a great deal to Zabarella, who was considered a leading authority on Aristotelian thought

11 See chap. 1 above. 12 This is exactly how Suárez argues for this position (see chap. 1, sec. 3). 13 See chap. 2 above. 14 Aristotle, Met. IX.1 1046a11-12. As we saw in chap. 2, sec. 1.1 above, this problem was raised by Hervaeus Natalis, one of the few critics of the common conception of an immanent action.

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well into the seventeenth century, especially among Protestant scholastics.15 However, as I will argue in this chapter, Burgersdijk rejects Zabarella’s claim that thinking, willing, and the like are instances of emanative causality. He comes up with the notion of an ‘immanent cause’ precisely in order to distinguish the modus causandi involved in these mental operations from emanation.16 As I will show, Burgersdijk’s view of the ontology and production of immanent actions draws heavily on the work of Francisco Suarez, another massive late scholastic influence on Protestant scholasticism.17 By combining aspects of Zabarella’s and Suarez’s views and playing them off each other, Burgersdijk forges his own, unique position on the nature of efficient causality and the distinction between emanation and immanent action. This chapter proceeds as follows. In the first two sections, I offer a sketch of the differing accounts of emanation and immanent action found in Zabarella and Suarez, respectively. In §3, I present the evidence that Burgersdijk introduces the concept of an immanent cause into his analysis of the modes of efficient causality because he denies that immanent actions are produced by means of emanation. In the last section, I offer a defence of Burgersdijk’s position, arguing that he manages to forge a coherent and even attractive position that overcomes the shortcomings of his influences. I conclude by explaining how Burgersdijk’s concept of an immanent cause embodies a definite position on all of the central debates about the ontology of immanent action that we have examined. Subsequent chapters will determine the extent to which Spinoza adopts the same position as Burgersdijk, and what consequences this has for his ontology.

15 On Zabarella’s influence on Protestant scholasticism, see e.g., Leinsle 1985: 41-42. 16 The opposition between the immanent cause and the emanative cause has been noted by Gueroult (1968: 297-98) and Carraud (2002: 309-10), who focus on Heereboord’s writings. Unfortunately, they miss the dialectical context of Heereboord’s (and Burgersdijk’s) position, and treat it as representative of ‘the’ scholastic view of the matter. I discuss Gueroult’s and Carraud’s claims more in chap. 4 below, where I will show that the ‘Zabarellian’ position was actually more common among Protestant scholastic authors. 17 Suarez’s position on these questions was examined in chap. 1, sec. 3 above.

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1. Giacomo Zabarella on the distinction between emanation and ‘proper’ efficient causation Giacomo Zabarella draws a sharp distinction between emanation and what he thinks of as the standard mode of efficient causality, the latter of which he identifies with the sort of efficient causation that Aristotle describes in the Physics and elsewhere as the initiation of change or motion. In opposing emanation to this Aristotelian mode of efficient causation, Zabarella undoubtedly takes inspiration from Thomas Aquinas’s claim that “the emanation of proper accidents from their subject does not occur by means of some kind of change [per aliquam transmutationem], but by means of a kind of natural resulting [per aliquam naturalem resultationem].”18 But Zabarella develops this distinction in a particularly systematic way by stipulating that every instance of efficient causation belongs to one or the other of these two modes. Because he thinks that so- called immanent actions like sensations and volitions do not really involve a patient that is brought from potency to act by an agent—they rather involve the perfection of the agent itself—he maintains that they occur ‘by means of emanation [per emanationem]’ (his preferred locution for Aquinas’s ‘natural resulting’), just like the soul’s proper accidents are. In this section, I give a more detailed explanation of the opposition between the two modi causandi and why Zabarella thinks that immanent actions are caused by means of emanation. First, Zabarella describes the standard or “proper” mode of efficient causality as follows The efficient cause is twofold. The first brings about its effect with change [cum transmutatione], and constitutes the fourth genus of cause, which Aristotle often calls “the principle from which there is motion [principium unde motu]”, because it always brings about its effect with motion. To this cause that is properly called efficient applies Aristotle’s definition of an active power as the power of changing [potentia transmutandi] another insofar as it is other (Metaphysics book 9). For this kind of efficient cause necessarily requires a patient distinct from itself, because nothing can change itself or bring itself from potency to act. This [kind of] efficient [cause] encounters a certain resistance from the patient,

18 Aquinas, ST I.77.6 ad 3.

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which results in successive change [successio in motu]; and that is why it is rightly called “the cause from which there is motion” by Aristotle.19

As Zabarella indicates, efficient causality in the proper sense of the term is the sort that involves change [transmutatio]. All of the Aristotelian principles governing change apply to it, including, most importantly, the principle that nothing can change itself. This allows Zabarella to hold that any ‘true’ efficient cause satisfies Aristotle’s definition of an active power as that which changes another insofar as it is other.20 As Zabarella says above, “this kind of efficient cause necessarily requires a patient distinct from itself.”21 Zabarella goes on to describe the second kind of efficient causality as follows. The other [kind] is an efficient cause which does not bring about its effect by means of change [per transmutationem], but only by means of the emanation of the effect from it, so that the effect seems to follow from it spontaneously and as if it doesn’t operate at all. In natural bodies, the [substantial] form is such an efficient cause with respect to the accidents and properties following from it in the same thing…. And regardless of whether it is called efficient only improperly, it is still subsumed under the effective cause more fittingly than under any other genus of cause.22

19 Efficiens duplex est; unum, quod cum transmutatione efficit, et quartum causae genus constituit, quod ab Aristotele vocari solet principium unde motus, quia semper cum motu efficit; huic proprie dicto efficienti competit definitio potentiae activae ab Aristot. tradita in nono Metaphysicorum, potentia activa est potentia transmutandi aliud prout est aliud, tale namque efficiens requirit necessario patiens diversum, quia nihil potest mutare seipsum, et ducere de potestate ad actum: hoc efficiens habet a patiente aliquam resistentiam, a qua successio in motu provenit, quocirca iure vocatur ab Aristotele causa unde motus. Zabarella, De motu gravium et levium, lib. I, cap. 11 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 224). 20 Aristotle, Met. IX.1 1046a12; and Phys. II.1 192b23-28. 21 See n. 19 above. Following Aristotle, Zabarella would probably allow that such a ‘true’ efficient cause can act on itself accidentally, i.e., insofar as it relates to itself as other, as for example when a doctor heals herself. In such cases, it is possible to distinguish the part of the being which is the agent from the part of the being which is the patient, which would preserve the aforementioned principle that such an efficient cause requires a patient distinct from itself. Suffice it to say that ’immanent actions’ like thinking and willing are not of this type (cf. chap. 2, sec. 1.2 above.) 22 Alterum est efficiens, quod non per transmutationem efficit, sed per solam emanationem effectus ab eo, quasi ipso non operante effectus sponte sua illud insequi videatur; tale efficiens est in corporibus naturalibus forma respectu accidentium, et proprietatum consequentium in eadem re: idcirco dicere logici solent rationalitatem esse causam effectricem risibilitatis in homine, non quidem transmutantem, quia non agit rationalitas in hominem faciendo ex non risibili risibilem; sed sine ullo motu, sine ulla transmutatione, quum primum est rationale, statim consequitur ut sit risibile, ita ut risibilitas a rationalitate absque ulla mutatione emanare videatur; ob id hoc improprie dicitur efficiens, reducitur tamen ad causam effectricem convenientius, quam ad aliud causae genus. Zabarella, De motu gravium et levium, lib. I, cap. 11 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 224).

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Zabarella conceives of this mode of efficient causality as being both ‘less than’, and the opposite of, genuine efficient causality (i.e., the kind involving transmutatio). As he says above, emanation takes place without any change taking place and apparently without the ‘agent’ having to ‘do’ anything or exert any effort. Most importantly, as it turns out, Zabarella also maintains that emanation necessarily takes place within the agent itself, rather than within a patient distinct from the agent. As he says in a different text, The agent [that produces its effect] by means of emanation does not act in another, but necessarily in itself, for its operation emanates from it and remains in itself, and so the action of such an agent is never transeunt, but always immanent. But the action of a true agent is always transeunt, because nothing can act in itself by such an action, but just in another outside of itself. (In this immanent action is distinguished from transeunt action).23

Since, on Zabarella’s theory, an efficient cause, or agent, must operate in one of these two modes, emanatio or transmutatio, it follows that anything produced internally must be achieved by means of emanation, while anything produced externally must be achieved by means of transmutation. Call this Zabarella’s Doppelsatz: every efficient cause that acts by means of emanation acts internally, and every efficient cause that acts internally acts by means of emanation. Emanation just is the mode of internal efficient causation, for Zabarella.24 One of the consequences of Zabarella’s theory, then, is that mental operations and any other paradigmatic ‘immanent actions’ must be instances of the emanative mode of

23 agens per emanationem non agit in aliud, sed necessario in seipsum, emanat enim ab illo operatio, et in ipsomet remanet, ideo talis agentis actio nonquam est transiens, sed semper immanens; veri autem agentis actio est semper transiens, quoniam tali actione nihil potest agere in seipsum, sed solum in aliud extra se, et in hoc distinguitur actio immanens a transeunte. Zabarella, De sensu agente, cap. 10 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 598). 24 Likewise, efficient causation by means of transmutation just is the mode of external efficient causation. As Zabarella writes, “The cause that is properly called efficient produces not an immanent effect, but rather one placed outside, because nothing properly speaking acts in itself, but always in another. On account of this, we say that this [sort of efficient cause] is called external, while the other, which brings about its effect by means of emanation, is called internal. [Efficiens autem proprie dictum non producit effectum immanentem, sed extra positum: quia nihil proprie agit in seipsum, sed semper in aliud, propterea diximus hoc appellari externum: illud vero, quod per emanationem efficit, internum.]” Zabarella, De propositionibus necessariis, lib. 1, cap. 10 (in Opera Logica, p. 366A); cf. Zabarella, De medio Demonstrationis, lib. 2, cap. 8 (in Opera Logica, p. 588E-F).

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 102 efficient causality, since with them the agent acts internally. Zabarella takes this consequence to be salutary. As he says when discussing sensation in particular, The soul is the effective cause of [sensation], but not by means of a true action by which a patient is changed by an agent, but by means of emanation alone. And through this every difficulty is solved which cannot otherwise be solved. For every true agent requires a patient in which it acts, nor can it undergo the same thing [it does], or receive something from itself. Again, those who do not distinguish these two kinds of agents cannot show how the same sense both acts and undergoes, while we remove every doubt by saying that a sense-power brings about sensation through emanation alone.25

If one conceives of the soul as producing a sensation as though it were a “true” efficient cause, one will wonder, e.g., how it is possible for it to act on itself, why there is no patient of the action, how it can occur instantaneously, and so on.26 These difficulties disappear once one realizes that sensations (or, for that matter, any other mental operation dubbed an ‘immanent action’) are not ‘true’ actions (i.e., the actions of a ‘true’ efficient cause). Rather, in sensing, the soul operates by means of emanation, i.e., the mode of efficient causality whose conditions are exactly the opposite of those necessary for ‘true’

25 Anima est eius causa effectrix, non tamen per veram actionem, qua mutatur patiens ab agente, sed per solam emanationem et per hoc solvitur omnis difficultas, quae aliter solvi non potest, nam omne vere agens eget patiente, in quod agat, neque potest idem pati, ac recipere aliquid a semetipso. Propterea illi, qui haec duo agentia non distinguunt, ostendere non possunt, quomodo idem sensus patiatur, et agat, nos vero dicentes sensum per solam emanationem efficere sensionem, omne dubium tollimus. Zabarella, De sensu agente, cap. 10 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 597-98). The passage continues in n. 23 above. 26 In this passage, Zabarella is undoubtedly echoing the following passage from Cajetan, which explicitly identifies the “difficulties” in question: From [what I have said] many difficulties are solved, namely, how substance is immediately an effective cause; how an effective cause cannot be impeded; how something acts in itself; and others of this sort, which we have solved in their places by using this distinction concerning an active cause by means of a mediating action, and [that] by means of natural resulting alone without some action mediating; for many things hold for this active mode which are impossible to apply to others. [Responsionem ad tertium diligentissime notato, quoniam ex ea solvuntur multae difficultates: scilicet et quomodo substantia est immediate causa effectiva; et quomodo causa effectiva non potest impediri; et quomodo aliquid agit in seipsum; et alia huiusmodi, quae in suis locis solvimus, utendo hac distinctione de causa activa per actionem mediam, et sine aliqua media actione per solam naturalem resultationem; hoc enim modo activa, multa habent quae aliis impossibile est convenire.] Cajetan, In ST I.77.6, n. 8 (Opera Omnia V.247). Cajetan’s position on the nature of emanation is virtually identical to Zabarella's, minus Zabarella’s explicit identification of emanation with immanent action and change [transmutatio] with transeunt action.

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efficient causality. We should rather expect, for example, that the soul operating in this mode affects only itself, and not an external patient.

2. Francisco Suárez on the ‘causality’ of the efficient cause Suárez’s approach to emanation and its relation to efficient causality differs considerably from Zabarella’s. As we have seen, Zabarella considers emanation to be in every way the opposite of ‘true’ efficient causality. Having divided all efficient causality into these two fundamentally opposed modes, he thinks it is clear that immanent actions must be produced by means of emanation. By contrast, Suárez regards emanation (or, as he prefers to call it, ‘natural resulting’ [resultantia naturalis]27) as unqualifiedly a species of ‘true’ efficient causality.28 Such an approach cuts both ways: any characteristic that emanation lacks cannot be essential to efficient causality as such, and conversely, any essential feature of efficient causality must be attributed to it.29 As we will see, Suárez on the one hand denies that an efficient cause by definition acts on another, and on the other hand argues that emanation must take place by means of a ‘true’ action, i.e., one that is productive and belongs in the category of action. Suárez’s analysis of the paradigmatic examples of emanation, such as water’s return to its state of ‘pristine coldness’, is in this respect very similar to his analysis of the paradigmatic examples of immanent actions, such as thinking and willing.30 In both cases, he posits two modally distinct entities that occur within the agent where common consensus recognizes only

27 This phrase echoes Aquinas’s influential claim (quoted above) that “the emanation of proper accidents from their subject occurs … by means of a kind of natural resulting [naturalem resultationem]” (ST I.77.6 ad 3). Suárez prefers to use the term emanatio more broadly to refer to the influence any efficient cause has (qua efficient cause) over its effect. 28 It is perhaps for this reason that Suárez does not discuss ‘natural resulting’ in his list of the principal divisions of the efficient cause in DM 17.2. (For the record, the divisions in that list are: (1) per se and per accidens; (2) physica and moralis; (3) principalis and instrumentalis; (4) prima and secunda; (5) univoca and aequivoca; and (6) instrumentum conjunctum and instrumentum separatum.) Instead, natural resulting comes up under a few special questions concerning the operation of efficient causes, namely how created substances produce accidents (DM 18.3) and whether there must be a real distinction between agent and patient (DM 18.7.9-10). 29 Discussions of Suárez’s account of emanation can be found in Des Chene 1996: 158-61; Shields 2014: 209-11; Viljanen 2008: 416-19; and Viljanen 2011: 37-41. For more detailed general studies of Suárez’s account of efficient causality, see Freddoso 2002: xliii-lix, Hattab 2003, Schmid 2015, Tuttle 2013, and Tuttle 2016. 30 See chap. 1, sec. 3 above.

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one. Notwithstanding this similarity, Suarez does not go on to subsume the production of immanent actions under the mode of emanation, as Zabarella does. Instead, by putting forward a different account of the immediacy of ‘natural resulting’ that does not turn on the absence of a ‘true’ action, he is able to distinguish it from other forms of efficient causality, including that involved in thinking, willing, and the like. On Suárez’s view, there must be a specific kind of operation associated with something’s being an efficient cause, which he calls its “causality [causalitas].”31 This ‘causality’ distinguishes an efficient cause from the other three Aristotelian causes, which have their own respective ‘causalities’, as well as from non-causal explanatory principles, which lack any ‘causality’.32 Its presence means that an efficient cause is in a state of actually causing something.33 According to Suárez, this ‘causality’ of an efficient cause “can consist in nothing other than an action.”34 That is, efficient causes, unlike the other kinds of Aristotelian causes, operate by acting [agere], and so when an efficient cause is in operation, there must be something that is identifiable as its action.35 For this reason, Suárez thinks the efficient cause can be defined simply as “that first principle whence an action exists [unde est actio].”36 Of course, Suárez, like other scholastics, still conceives of efficient causation as the production of something. What Suárez calls an ‘action’ is

31 I follow Freddoso in translating causalitas in Suárez as simply ‘causality’ (see Suárez, OEC). “Operation” is perhaps a better translation, except that, as we saw in chap. 2§1.3, most scholastics regard the term operatio as having a more circumscribed application. (It could be said that Suárez's use of the term causalitas does correspond roughly to Hervaeus's idiosyncratic use of the term operatio, however.) The problem with the English term ‘causality’ is that it sounds like something abstract, whereas causalitas for Suárez is a concrete, individual feature of reality that can exist at some times and not at others. 32 See Schmid 2015: 92. 33 In Suárez’s words, it is “that by virtue of which an efficient cause is formally constituted as actually causing” (DM 18.10.1 [Opera Omnia 25.680 / OEC 249]). 34 Suárez, DM 18.10.5 (Opera Omnia 25.681 / OEC 252). 35 Ibid. 36 Suárez, DM 17.1.6 (Opera Omnia 25.583 / OEC 10). See Suárez’s explanation for his modification of the Aristotelian definition (which is in terms of “change [mutatio] or rest,” not action) at DM 17.1.4.

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 105 therefore nothing other than the way [modus] that an efficient cause produces an effect.37 As he writes, For to say that the efficient cause is that first principle whence an action exists [unde est actio] is the same as saying that it is that whence an effect exists by means of an action [unde est effectus, media actione], that is, that principle from which an effect flows forth, or on which it depends, through an action [a quo effectus profluit seu pendet per actionem].38

On Suárez’s theory, therefore, it is impossible for an efficient cause to produce an effect without there being an action by means of which that effect is produced.39 Suárez explicitly rejects the attempt to carve out an exception for efficient causes that are said to produce their effects by means of emanation, i.e., those instances of so- called “natural resulting.” On such a position (which Suárez associates with Cajetan,40 but of course is later taken by Zabarella41), when an effect is produced by means of emanation, there is no ‘true’ action present, precisely because (on this view) emanation is somehow less than ‘true’ efficient causality. So, for example, the emanation of the necessary accidents, or propria, of a substance from its substantial form, such as the emanation of the will and intellect from the rational soul, is supposed to occur without the

37 This entails that every true action is inherently productive, or in scholastic terms, every true action has a terminus ad quem. Cf. Suárez, DM 48.2.16. For more on Suárez's ontology of action, see chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above. 38 Suárez, DM 17.1.6 (Opera Omnia 25.583 / OEC 10). 39 In scholastic terms: every effect of an efficient cause is the terminus ad quem of an action. Note that although Suárez says that the effect is produced “by means of an action” [media actione], this should not be taken to mean that the action is somehow an instrument used by the efficient cause. Rather it is what Suárez calls the “channel [via]” through which the efficient cause pours being [esse] into the effect (see Suárez, DM 17.1.6 and DM 18.10.1). Recall (chap. 1, sec. 3.1) also that Suárez holds that an action is a mode [modus] of the effect in which it terminates, which (i.e., the effect) is always a kind of thing [res]. This means that even though the action and the effect constitute two distinct entities on Suárez’s ontology, they are only modally, not really, distinct from each other. For these reasons, Suárez thinks it is somewhat misleading to say that an action is ‘caused by’, or ‘the effect of’, an efficient cause; properly speaking, actions are not effects themselves, but the very 'causality' through which efficient causes produce effects, which is distinct from them. This conception of action insures that Suárez can claim that every effect of an efficient cause is the terminus ad quem of an action, without falling into an infinite regress; such a claim does not entail that any action is the terminus ad quem of an action. See Suárez, DM 18.10.8. (Note that the infinite regress problem that I raise for Suárez's view in §4 below requires additional premises.) 40 Suárez, DM 18.3.5 (Opera Omnia 25.616 / OEC 94). 41 On the relation between Cajetan and Zabarella, see n. 26 above.

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substantial form performing a true action. Suárez tries to show that this position is untenable by presenting the following dilemma. For if [natural resulting] is true efficient causality, then a proper accidental action will occur here, since efficient causality consists in action, as we will see below. And so in that case the substantial form will be the immediate and unique principle of some categorical action, and actions will be multiplied in the production of the form and its properties, and there will be a per se action with respect to each of the entities co- produced or co-created with the others—all of which seems contrary to the common teaching of philosophers. On the other hand, if it is not true efficient causality, then it cannot be called efficient causality, since what is not true gold is not gold at all and cannot be called such except by virtue of some similarity or analogy. But no such similarity or analogy is evident in the present case; indeed, it is impossible to imagine what this ‘resulting’ might be if it is not efficient causality.42

Suárez himself embraces the first horn of the dilemma, despite the fact that philosophers have not typically posited an action connecting a substantial form to each of its propria. Because he thinks that the notion of something being merely analogous to true efficient causality is vacuous, he concludes that natural resulting must be a form of true efficient causality, and so a true action must obtain when it occurs. As Suárez writes, Therefore, if we are to speak precisely, I take it to be closer to the truth that this resulting does not occur without a real action, even though it is not always counted either as a distinct action per se or as a proper change. As I see it, this claim is sufficiently proved by the argument given above. For either this resulting is true efficient causality or it is not, since there can be nothing in between. Thus, if it is true efficient causality, then an action occurs. If it is not efficient causality, then neither is it a resulting or a natural causal consequence.43

This means that, e.g., the intellect is produced by the rational soul by means of an action, and likewise, water reduces itself to its natural coolness by means of an action. Suárez’s ability to take emanation as a species of genuine efficient causality is dependent on his treating as merely optional many of the characteristics that Zabarella considers necessary. In particular, Suárez denies that an efficient cause necessarily acts

42 Suárez, DM 18.3.5 (Opera Omnia 25.616 / OEC 94). 43 Suárez, DM 18.3.5 (Opera Omnia 25.616-17 / OEC 94-95).

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on another insofar as it is other. In cases of emanation, just as in mental operations, the efficient cause genuinely, and non-accidentally, acts on itself.44 This leads to what is probably the most idiosyncratic feature of his general account of efficient causality. Although he equates efficient causality with acting, he de-couples the notion of acting from Aristotle’s definition of an active power as that which changes another, insofar as it is other. Suárez suggests that this definition applies only to what he calls ‘purely’ active powers. Not all acting or efficient causality originates in these powers, according to Suárez. There are also powers that are ‘mixed’ in the sense of being both active and passive at the same time.45 The will and intellect, and all other powers of the soul that are responsible for immanent operations, are of this sort. Because Suárez holds that a true efficient cause can act on itself, and that every efficient cause produces its effect by means of an action, he also denies that all “true” actions are transeunt actions. As we saw in chap. 1, Suárez maintains that immanent actions are also true, or categorical, actions (i.e., they belong in the category of action) because they too necessarily terminate in effects. In mental operations like sensing, willing, and thinking, which Suárez calls immanent acts (in the sense of actualities [actus]), Suárez posits a distinction between the formal quality that is produced by and received in one and the same power (e.g., the intellect’s act of understanding), and the immanent action [actio] properly speaking, which is the true action by means of which the power produces the quality. The formal quality has the ontological status of a thing [res], while the immanent action, properly speaking, is a mode [modus] of the quality itself.46 As we have just seen, a similar distinction also obtains in emanation or ‘natural resulting,’ since on Suárez’s view, an effect that emanates from a given subject must be produced by means of a true action as well.47 This all falls out of his insistence that an efficient cause cannot be actually operative without there being an action present. Any

44 See Suárez, DM 18.7. Following Scotus, Suárez claims that it is no argument to say nothing can be both in act and in potency with respect to the same thing, since “it is possible to be both in virtual or eminent act and also in formal potency—that is, to have both the eminent power to effect a given form and also the capacity to receive the form formally” (DM 18.7.4 [Opera Omnia 25.632 / OEC 133]). 45 DM 18.7.56 (Opera Omnia 25.650 / OEC 176). 46 This distinction is discussed at length above in chap. 1, sec. 3.1 and chap. 2, sec. 2. 47 Suárez appears to hold that all natural resulting is internal to the agent. See n. 49 below.

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internal efficient causation involves a true action just as much as external efficient causation does.48 By claiming that emanation occurs by means of an action, Suárez seemingly eliminates the sort of immediacy which typically was thought to distinguish it from other modes of efficient causality. In its place, Suarez offers two related explanations of how ‘natural resulting’ is unique. First, Suárez claims that it is “wholly intrinsic” and “tends solely toward constituting the thing in the connatural state which is per se owed to it by dint of its generation.”49 By contrast, what philosophers normally think of as an action is “extrinsic” and “presupposes that the thing has already been constituted in its complete and natural state.”50 Suarez is here drawing on a distinction between what we can call the ‘bare substance’ of a thing, which is the hylomorphic compound consisting of its substantial form and matter, and the ‘entire substance’ of a thing, which consists of the hylomorphic compound together with its proper accidents. Natural resulting is special because it is the kind of causal relation binding together the elements of the ‘entire substance’. Other kinds of actions presuppose the ‘entire substance’ of thing, not just the ‘bare substance,’ insofar as the proper accidents furnish it with the causal powers by which it operates. For example, fire is able to heat things through its own ‘proper heat’. Picking up on this point, the second explanation Suárez offers for the uniqueness of natural resulting turns on the identity of the “proximate cause” of the effect.51 He argues that in cases where philosophers normally concede an action is involved, such as when fire causes something to become hot, the effect is produced most directly by an

48 Note that Suárez would not refer to the action involved in ’natural resulting’ as an “immanent” action, even though it 'remains in' the agent. On his definition, an immanent action must be attributed to a particular power, such as the intellect or the will; he writes, “by immanent action we understand that true or proper bringing-about of any acts which remain in the powers from which they come to be and inform them [per actionem immanentem intelligimus veram ac propriam efficientam quorumdam actuum, qui manent in ipsis potentiis a quibus fiunt, easque informant]” (DM 48.2.8 [Opera Omnia 26.626]). As we’ll see momentarily, Suárez thinks that in natural resulting, the ‘agent’ is not some power but rather the very essence of a thing (which is distinct from its powers). 49 Suárez, DM 18.3.14 (Opera Omnia 25.619 / OEC 101). This description seems to imply that all natural resulting occurs internally, which is consistent with all the examples Suárez gives of natural resulting. Note that he does not consider illumination (e.g., of the air by the sun) to be an instance of natural resulting (see DM 18.3.2 and DM 18.3.14). 50 Suárez, DM 18.3.14 (Opera Omnia 25.619 / OEC 101). 51 See Suárez, DM 18.3.3 (OEC 92).

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accident belonging to the cause (in this case, fire’s ‘proper heat’). But in the standard cases of natural resulting, the effect is produced by the thing’s very essence, not mediately by one of its accidents. For example, the proximate cause of fire’s ‘proper heat’ is just the substantial form of fire.52 Suárez is thus able to preserve a sense in which emanation is a mode of efficient causality distinguished by its immediacy. Although he insists that emanation does not occur without the existence of an action serving as the ‘channel’ from the cause to the effect, he points out that the action is attributable directly to the very essence of the cause, rather than to one of its accidents, and that, in addition, the cause and effect enjoy a special sort of unity.53 And given these distinguishing features, it is clear why Suarez does not think that thinking, willing, and other paradigmatic ‘immanent actions’ are examples of ‘natural resulting’. According to Suarez, the soul is able to perform such actions in virtue of certain powers that are distinct from the soul itself: the intellect, the will, etc. Hence, these ‘immanent actions’ presuppose the ‘completed substance’ and have accidents as their proximate cause.54

3. Franco Burgersdijk on the distinction between emanative and immanent causes Having compared Burgersdijk’s two late scholastic sources, we can now turn to Burgersdijk’s own position. In this section I provide a sketch of the genre and historical setting for Burgersdijk’s debut of the concept of an immanent cause in his Institutiones logicae. I then argue that Burgersdijk introduces the concept in order to distinguish the modus causandi involved in immanent actions like thinking and willing from emanative causality (i.e., the modus causandi involved in the production of a substance’s proper

52 Recall that Suárez holds that actions are not accidents in the proper sense of the term, but modes, and so there is no contradiction in his holding that natural resulting occurs through an action but not by means of an accident. 53 Suárez admits that some things that are produced by natural resulting have an accident as their proximate cause; “a shape or a ‘where’, for example, results by the mediation of the quantity, and whiteness results from a given mixture of the primary qualities” (DM 18.3.3 [Opera Omnia 25.616 / OEC 92]). 54 Suárez's definition (see n. 48 above) stipulates that an immanent action originates from a power, which excludes the possibility of emanation being designated as such (since powers are accidents). In this fashion, Suárez restricts the scope of the term to mental operations and other so-called 'vital acts'. See Suárez, DM 48.6.10.

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accidents). I show how Burgersdijk’s distinction between immanent causality and emanative causality is based on his critical reception of both Zabarella and Suárez. Roughly, Burgersdijk combines Zabarella’s view of emanation as taking place without any true action with Suárez’s position that immanent actions are true actions.55 In Burgersdijk’s terminology, this means that the will and intellect and the like are ‘active’ causes, rather than emanative ones. Burgersdijk belongs to a group of Protestant scholastics who share the goal of distilling Aristotelian philosophy and presenting it in an accessible, and, above all, systematic way, such that a student would be able to master it easily.56 Their genre of choice was typically the textbook, not the commentary.57 Heereboord later describes these so-called “systematicians” [systematicii] as those “who have passed on the Peripatetic philosophy adapted to the needs of our time, having arranged its teachings, style and order clearly and completely, for the use of human life”58—a description which nicely highlights the humanist impulse behind their ‘systematizing’ ambitions. The general view among these Protestant scholastics was that the Aristotelian heritage had been corrupted by the useless speculations of medieval philosophers, but that it had been placed on a surer footing by the more recent scholarship coming out of places like Padua, Coimbra and Salamanca. The works of Zabarella and Suárez in particular exerted an enormous influence on these figures.59 In the logic and metaphysics textbooks of these Protestant ‘systematicians’, it was standard to include an analysis of efficient causality in which they try to give a universally applicable definition of an efficient cause, while at the same time identifying

55 For the purposes of this section, then, I will bring up Heereboord only when he says something that serves to clarify the nature of the ‘Burgersdijkian’ position. 56 The use of the term ‘systema’ in this context was pioneered by Keckermann; see Freedman 1997: 313-14. Keckermann will be discussed in chap. 4, sec. 4 below. 57 For the development of the textbook genre, see Schmitt 1988. 58 Systematicos appello, qui philosophiam Peripateticam, praeceptis, stylo, et ordine, nostri aevi ingeniis, accommodata, plene perfectque dispositis, ad usum vitae humanae tradiderunt. MP, Consilium de ratione studendi philosophi, (p. 27). 59 For a description of the humanistic project of the ‘systematicians’, particularly as it affected the young Leibniz, see Antognazza 2009: 39-41. Synoptic studies of 17th-century Protestant scholasticism which discuss the influence of late scholastic thought include: Dibon 1954; Eschweiler 1928; Freedman 1984; Goudriaan 1999; Leinsle 1985; Leinsle 1988; Lewalter 1935; Muller 2003; Petersen 1921; Robbers 1956; Weber 1907; and Wundt 1939.

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 111 all the possible ways of distinguishing efficient causes. So for example, Burgersdijk writes, “[The term] ‘efficient cause’ extends very broadly and has many subspecies which differ according to their modes of causing.”60 In keeping with their systematic ambitions, the authors organize these various ‘modes of causing’ into mutually exclusive pairs.61 For example, some of the most popular are causa per se et per accidens, causa prima et secunda, and causa principalis et instrumentalis.62 The exact number and arrangement of these pairs varies widely by author,63 although they tend to agree that the same thing can be designated more than one species of efficient cause at the same time, with respect to the same effect. Take a contemporary example: a slapshot. Most Protestant scholastics would consider the hockey player to be the causa principalis, and the hockey stick the causa instrumentalis, of the puck’s motion, because the player uses the stick to move the puck (and nothing is using the player). But the hockey player can also be designated a causa libera and the stick a causa necessaria, because only the player acts on the basis of reasons, and has the power to do otherwise.64 Moreover, both

60 Causa efficiens latissime patet, habetque plurimas sub se species, causandi modo differentes, quas omnes ad octo distinctiones referemus. Burgersdijk, IM I.16 th. 2 (p. 166-67). This claim is a clear echo of Suarez’s remark at DM 17.2.1 (Opera Omnia 25.583 / OEC 11). Note that although Suárez does not refer to the efficient cause as being divided into “species” in this passage, he does so earlier, at DM 17.1.1 (Opera Omnia 25.580 / OEC 4). 61 Notable Protestant scholastic works published prior to Burgersdijk’s Institutiones logicae that include such an analysis, and with which Burgersdijk is likely to have been familiar, include: Johann Heinrich Alsted, Compendium logicae harmonicum (1615) and Logicae systema harmonicum (1614); Marc Duncan, Institutionis logicae libri quinque (1612); Rudolph Goclenius, Sr., Institutionum logicarum de inventione, liber unus (1598); Gilbert Jacchaeus, Primae philosophiae institutiones (1616); Bartholomäus Keckermann, Systema logica maius (1600); Jacob Martini, Disputationes metaphysicae viginti octo (1611); Christoph Scheibler, Opus logicum (1620) and Opus metaphysicum (1617); and Clemens Timpler, Logicae systema methodicum (1612) and Metaphysicae systema methodicum (1604). The scheme that Suárez gives in DM 17.2 is undoubtedly a model for these Protestant scholastic authors. Another is Petrus Ramus’s Dialectica. In general the arrangement of topics (like the efficient cause) into dichotomous types was associated with the Ramist method in logic. For example, in his preface to Institutiones logicae, Burgersdijk describes the goal of producing a system of logic in terms of using the Ramists’ method while restoring the content of Aristotelian logic (IL, Praefatio ad lectorem [unpaginated]). For this reason, he and other ‘systematicians’ in logic are often called 'semi-Ramists' in the secondary literature. 62 Sometimes the division is between causa principalis et minus principalis, with causa instrumentalis subsumed under the causa minus principalis. See, e.g., Burgersdijk, IL I.17 th. 22 (p. 74). 63 E.g., Burgersdijk subsumes Suárez’s division into causa univoca et aequivoca under the causa principalis (IL I.17 th. 21 comm. 1 [p. 74]), while others do not. But generally speaking Burgersdijk’s scheme is relatively ‘flat’—a lot of others, such as Keckermann's, are highly stratified. 64 Burgersdijk, IL I.17 th. 10-11 (p. 71). Note that although Burgersdijk does not define the causa libera in terms of a power to do otherwise, he still ascribes such a power to it (IL I.17 th. 12 [p. 71]).

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 112 the hockey player and the hockey stick count as per se causes of the puck’s motion.65 This example should make it clear that while Burgersdijk and others refer to these as “subspecies” of efficient cause,66 their distinctions are not, in the first instance, a way of differentiating individual things in the universe, but rather a way of identifying all the senses in which a thing can be said to contribute to the production of an effect, some of which exclude each other, others of which do not. Franco Burgersdijk’s own account of the various modes of efficient causality is presented in his highly popular logic textbook, Institutiones logicae. He also gives a somewhat updated version of his scheme in Institutiones metaphysicae, which was published posthumously. Like many others, Burgersdijk’s classification of the efficient cause is itself subordinated under a broader account of causes; he begins with the concept of ‘cause’, and divides it into the common division into internal and external causes. Internal causes are the divided into formal and material, while external causes are subdivided into final and efficient. The other three Aristotelian causes are subdivided in a similar fashion to the efficient cause. With the exception of the general division of cause into internal and external, the full picture of the scheme of causes is pictorially represented in a table at the back of certain editions of the Institutiones logicae. The table from the 1660 edition is given in Table 1 below.

65 Of course, if two modes of efficient causality, and hence species of efficient cause, constitute a mutually exclusive pair (or fall under one), then one and the same thing cannot be both at once and with respect to the same effect. If the hockey stick is a causa per se of the puck's motion, then ipso facto it is not a causa per accidens of that very same effect. 66 See n. 60 above.

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Table 1. Burgersdijk’s classification of causes in his Institutiones logicae67

67 Reproduction of the Tabula secunda printed at the end of the 1660 ed. of IL (no pagination). Digitized by Google.

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Two features above all distinguish Burgersdijk’s analysis of the efficient cause from those found in the textbooks of his contemporaries. First, Burgersdijk introduces a new category of efficient cause to which the emanative cause is opposed: instead of the transmutative cause, Burgersdijk has the active cause [causa activa]. Second, Burgersdijk introduces an entirely new division of the efficient cause into immanent and transeunt [causa immanens et transiens].68 Here is his account of the distinction between active and emanative causes. The efficient cause is divided first of all into the active [cause], which causes an effect with an action mediating, and into that from which a thing immediately emanates, or proceeds without any action. . . . For example, fire is the emanative cause of its proper heat, but it is the active cause of heat in another. For from the existence of the fire, its proper heat follows necessarily and immediately; but fire brings about heat in another, not by its existence, but by its operation. . . . To the emanative cause pertains every substantial form with respect to its proper accidents, which follow it in the same thing.69

And here is the account of the distinction between immanent and transeunt causes which follows. The efficient cause is divided in the second place into immanent and transeunt. The immanent cause is that which produces an effect in itself. The transeunt [cause] is that which produces an effect outside itself. For example, when a worker builds a house, or when someone throws a stone, either one is called a transeunt cause; but when our soul understands or desires something, it is called the immanent cause of its concepts or affects, which it forms by understanding or desiring.70

68 See chap. 4, sec. 4 below for a comparison with related divisions made by other Protestant scholastics. 69 Primo dividitur causa efficiens in activam, quae effectum causat mediante actione; et in eam, a qua res immediate emanat, ac sine ulla actione profiscitur…. Ex. gr. ignis est causa emanativa proprii caloris; at est causa activa caloris in alio. Nam calor proprius, ignis existentiam necessario, atque immediate sequitur: at ignis in alio non efficit calorem sua existentia, sed sua operatione…. Ad causam emanativam pertinet omnis forma substantialis, respectu proprietatum, quae illam in eadem re consequuntur. Burgersdijk, IL lib. I cap. 17, th. 3-4 et comm. 1 (p. 69-70). 70 Secundo dividitur causa efficiens in immanentem et transeuntem. Causa immanens est, quae producit effectum in seipsa. Transiens, quae producit effectum extra se. Ex. gr. cum faber domum aedificat, aut cum quis lapidem projicit, uterque dicitur causa transiens: at cum anima nostra intelligit, aut appetit aliquid, dicitur causa immanens suorum conceptuum, aut affectuum, quos intelligendo & appetendo format. Burgersdijk, IL, lib. 1, cap. 17, th. 5-7 comm. 1; p. 70. Cf. Heereboord, HL, lib. 1. qq. 7-8 (p. 95); MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23 (p. 229, 1659 ed.); and MP, Collegium Logicum, Positionum logicarum disp. 10, nn. 9-10.

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As far as I have been able to determine, these two divisions cannot be found in any textbook prior to Burgersdijk, and afterwards are found only in other works directly indebted to him, like Heereboord’s Hermenia logica and (later) Spinoza’s Short Treatise.71 Clearly, Burgersdijk’s positing of these two divisions signals some sort of rejection of the Zabarellian Doppelsatz. If he held that every emanative cause is internal (or, in his terms, ‘immanent’) and every internal efficient cause is emanative, as Zabarella does, then his two divisions would be exactly equivalent to each other.72 It might be supposed that the reason why Burgersdijk thinks two divisions are necessary is that he holds that emanative causation can be external (or, in his terms, ‘transeunt’), such as when air is illuminated by the sun.73 However, Burgersdijk never draws attention to this possibility, even though it is likely that he accepts it.74 Instead, Burgersdijk’s configuration is intended to carve out the conceptual space for a mode of efficient causality that is internal and yet is not emanative, as I will now show. Let’s begin by examining Burgersdijk’s distinction between emanative and active causality. First of all, Burgersdijk clearly sides with Zabarella and against Suárez in thinking that there is no true action involved in emanation. Adapting a claim of Zabarella’s, he even says that this entails that “the emanative cause is less properly called

71 In chap. 4, sec. 4 below I compare these two divisions to some other related divisions found in other Protestant scholastic authors. See especially Table 2. 72 That is, according to the Zabarellian Doppelsatz, there is a strict identity between Burgersdijk’s ‘immanent’ and ‘emanative’ causes and between his ‘transeunt’ and ‘active’ causes. 73 As we will see in chap. 4, sec. 4 below, there are other Protestant scholastic authors who think that not all emanative causation is internal. But these other authors do not find it necessary to abandon Zabarella’s distinction between emanative and transmutative causes. See especially Table 2. 74 Burgersdijk never explicitly discusses whether some emanative causes are external, and all of his examples of emanative causes appear to be internal ones. (By contrast, his stock examples of immanent causes, i.e., the intellect and will, are active causes, as I explain below.) However, there is some evidence that he would allow for external emanative causes. First, nothing in his definition of an emanative cause rules them out. Second, in Institutiones metaphysicae, Burgersdijk discusses whether God could be the emanative cause of the world (see IM I.26 n. 3 [pp. 167-68]), and, although he argues against this possibility, his argument does not turn on the world’s being external to God. It would seem then that he does think that the ‘location’ of an effect vis-à-vis its cause does not have any impact on whether the cause is emanative. Finally, the claim that emanative causes can be either external or internal is made explicitly by Heereboord in Hermenia Logica, as a clarificatory remark on Burgersdijk’s definition of an emanative cause (HL I.17 q. 5 comm.3 [pp. 100-01]; cf. MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23 th. 2 [p. 229], quoted below, n. 90).

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efficient than the active cause is,” adding, “nevertheless, it is more fittingly subsumed under the efficient cause than under another genus of cause.”75 His account of the emanative case thus contradicts Suárez’s claim that action is the very “causality” [causalitas] of the efficient cause, since this claim implies that every kind of efficient cause necessarily produces its effect by means of an action. At the same time, by opposing the emanative cause to what he calls the active cause, Burgersdijk grants that action is the “causality” of every efficient cause that is not emanative. As Burgersdijk expains in the Institutiones metaphysicae, That which causes by its own existence, or that from which the caused immediately flows, is called the emanative cause. That which causes the caused by means of an action is called the active cause. This action is the causality of the active cause, while in the emanative cause, causality is not distinguished from existence, for in it, existing and causing are one. [emphasis added]76

As this passage indicates, whether something is an emanative or an active cause depends on whether an action exists in addition to the cause and effect. Heereboord later makes this point clearly, saying, No intermediate causality intercedes between the emanative cause and its effect, so here there are just two [things], cause and effect; whereas in the active cause, there are three [things], cause, causality, and effect, and they are distinct from each other.77

Since the “causality” of an active cause just is its action, this means that the effect of an active cause is the terminus ad quem of an action, while the effect of an emanative cause is produced without any action.

75 Ex quibus liquet, causam emanativam, minus quidem proprie efficientem dici, quam activam: convenientius tamen ad causam efficientem reducitur, quam ad aliud causae genus. Burgersdijk, IL, lib. I, cap. 17, th. 3-4, n. 1 (p. 70). Cf. Zabarella, De motu gravium et levium, lib. I, cap. 11 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 224), quoted in n. 22 above. 76 Causa emanativa dicitur, quae sua existentia causat; sive, a qua causatum fluit immediate. Causa activa dicitur, quae causatum causat mediante actione. Haec actio est causae activae causalitas; et in causa emanativa causalitas ab existentia non distinguitur; existere enim et causare in illa unum sunt. Burgersdijk, IM lib. I cap. 26 th. 3 (p. 167). Cf. IL lib. I cap. 17 th. 4 n. 1 (p. 69-70). 77 Inter causam emanativam et effectum nulla intercedit media causalitas; ita ut hic tantum duo sint, causa, causatum: in activa tria sunt, causa, causalitas, causatum, et haec inter sese distincta. Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 22, th. 3 (p. 226).

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Burgersdijk thus seems to think that once an exception is made for emanation, Suárez has more or less the right idea about how efficient causes operate. His understanding of ‘active’ causality borrows heavily from Suárez’s account of the ontology of action. Like Suárez, Burgersdijk holds that actions are “not so much things [res], as ways to things [via ad res], or modes by which things come to be, or the flow [fluxus] of that which is said to come to be.”78 It follows that actions are inherently productive; there cannot be an action without something that is being brought about through the action. As Burgersdijk says, “In every action a terminus ad quem is required necessarily.”79 The terminus ad quem is the actual thing [res] produced by the agent through its action. For instance, when fire warms something, the terminus ad quem of its action of warming [calefactio] is the quality of heat [calor] it produces in the thing being warmed.80 On Burgersdijk’s account, therefore, the terminus ad quem of an action is nothing other than the effect of an active cause. Notably, Burgersdijk follows Suárez in holding that this analysis applies to immanent actions as much as to transeunt actions. Recall that Suárez rejects the standard view that immanent actions, unlike transeunt actions, are not necessarily productive, and so do not necessarily have a terminus ad quem. (Many scholastics holding this view conclude that immanent actions, unlike transeunt action, are not ‘true’ actions and belong in some other category of accident.) Suárez holds to the contrary that immanent actions are necessarily productive and belong in the category of action, just like transeunt actions. What makes an immanent action distinct from a transeunt action is just that the effect the agent produces by means of it (i.e., its terminus ad quem) is located within,

78 Actio et passio non tam sunt res, quam via ad res, aut modus, quo res fiunt, ac fluxus ejus, quod fieri dicitur. Burgersdijk, IL lib. 1 cap. 8 th. 1-3 n. 1 (p. 34). 79 In omni actione necessario requiritur … terminus ad quem. Burgersdijk, IL liv. 1 cap. 8 th. 6 (p. 34). 80 “For example, in warming, fire is the agent …[and] heat is the terminus ad quem…. The terminus ad quem is always some true thing [Ex. gr. in calefactione, agens est ignis … terminus ad quem, calor…. Terminus ad quem est semper vera aliqua res]” (Burgersdijk, IL lib. 1 cap. 8 th. 5 n. 1 [p. 34]).

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rather than outside, the agent.81 This Suárezian view is encapsulated by Burgersdijk, who writes, Some actions are immanent, others are transeunt. An action is immanent whose effect is in the agent, such as understanding and willing. An action is transeunt whose effect is in another, such as burning and striking.82

Recall, in addition, that it falls out of this Suárezian view that in mental operations like understanding and willing, which Suárez calls immanent acts [actus], it is possible to distinguish between the formal quality that is both produced by and inheres in the soul, and the immanent action [actio], properly speaking, which is the mode by which the soul produces that quality. Burgersdijk’s example of an immanent cause given earlier implicitly draws this distinction; as he says, “when our soul understands or desires something, it is called the immanent cause of its concepts or desires [i.e., formal qualities], which it forms by understanding or desiring [i.e., immanent actions].”83 Burgersdijk’s break from Zabarella, then, consists in this. Mental operations and other immanent acts are not instances of emanative causality; because one can distinguish between the effect and the action by which it is brought about, they are rather instances of active causality. Burgersdijk thus holds, against Zabarella and with Suárez, that it is possible for an efficient cause to be genuinely active and yet act on itself. Given that this possibility seems at odds with Aristotelian definition of an active power as something

81 See sec. 1.2 above and for more detail, chap. 1, sec. 3.1. 82 Actio alia est immanens, alia transiens. Actio immanens est, cujus effectum est in agente: ut intelligere, velle. Actio transiens est, cujus effectum est in alio: ut, urere, verberare. Burgersdijk, IL lib. 1 cap. 8 th. 11-13 (p. 35). 83 cum anima nostra intelligit, aut appetit aliquid, dicitur causa immanens suorum conceptuum, aut affectuum, quos intelligendo & appetendo format. Burgersdijk, IL, lib. 1, cap. 17, th. 5-7 comm. 1 (p. 70). Similarly, Heereboord explains, “Intellection and volition are both actions and qualities: insofar as they produced by the intellect or will, they are actions; and insofar as they are undergone in those [powers], they are qualities. [Intellectio et volitio sunt et actiones et qualitates: in quantum producuntur ab intellectu ac voluntate, sunt actiones: in quantum in iisdem subjectantur, sunt qualitates.]” (MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23 th. 2 [p. 229]). I take Heereboord to be espousing the same Suárezian view as Burgersdijk in this passage; I read him as using “insofar as” [in quantum] to pick out aspects of the same immanent act which are (only) modally distinct from each other (i.e., the quality and the action which brings it about).

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that necessarily acts on another insofar as it is other, Burgersdijk (not surprisingly) adopts Suárez’s interpolation. He writes, Aristotle in book 4 of the Metaphysics, chapter 12, divides natural power into active and passive. . . . To these can be added a certain mixed power, which, because it is the principle of change in itself, is active and passive at the same time, such as the intellect, will, etc. From this kind of power immanent actions, such as understanding and willing, are brought forth; while from an active power, transeunt actions are brought forth.84

Burgersdijk’s introduction of the concepts of the active cause, the immanent cause, and the transeunt cause can be seen as a transposition of the Suárezian distinction between ‘purely active’ and ‘mixed’ powers into the systematic division of modes of efficient causality. The modus causandi of both powers is active, since each produces something by means of an action. Burgersdijk’s active cause thus subdivides into transeunt and immanent. A ‘purely active’ power produces something outside of itself, so its action and its modus causandi are transeunt, while a ‘mixed’ power produces something within itself, so its action and its modus causandi are immanent. It is no wonder, then, why Burgersdijk chooses to press the terms ‘immanent’ and ‘transeunt’ into use in order to distinguish these two kinds of efficient causes, rather than relying on the more common terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’.85 He conceives of these causes first and foremost as subspecies of active causes. In fact, Burgersdijk’s later Institutiones metaphysicae, makes this assumption explicit by subsuming the distinction between immanent and transeunt causes under the active cause.86 On this conception, an immanent cause is nothing other than an efficient cause whose effect is the terminus ad

84 Potentia naturalis dividitur ab Aristotele lib. 4. Metaph. cap. 12. in activam et passivam. Utraque definitur hoc modo…. Hoc est, potentia quaedam dicitur principium motionis aut mutationis in alio, quatenus est aliud; quaedam ab alio, quatenus est aliud. Illa est potentia activa, haec passiva. His addi potest potentia quaedam mixta, quae, quia principium mutationis in se ipsa est, simul activa est, et passiva: ut, intellectus, voluntas, etc. ab hac potentia fluunt actiones immanentes: ut, intelligere, velle: a potentia activa actiones transeuntes. Burgersdijk, IL lib. 1. cap. 6 th. 5-6 com. 2-3 (pp. 25-26). Cf. Heereboord, HL lib. 1 cap. 6 qq. 4-6 n. 9 (p. 40). 85 The terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’ are used for this purpose, e.g., by Zabarella, as we saw above, n. 24. In chap. 4, sec. 4 below, we will see that they are used by other Protestant scholastics as well; see especially Table 2. 86 “The active cause is subdivided into the immanent [cause] and the transeunt [cause] [Causa activa subdividitur in immanentem et transeuntem]” (Burgersdijk, IM lib. I cap. 26 th. 4 [p. 168]).

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 120 quem of an immanent action, while a transeunt cause is one whose effect is the terminus ad quem of a transeunt action.87 From Burgersdijk’s perspective, then, Zabarella’s error lies in conflating immanent causality with emanative causality. As Heereboord says, A common error of many philosophers is to confuse the immanent and the emanative cause, even though the two are distinguished from each other in many ways, for the immanent cause is an active cause, and possesses its causality distinct from its own existence, while the emanative cause does not possess its causality distinct from existence.88

To the extent that the ‘immanent cause’ is conceived as a subspecies of active cause, it represents a mode of internal efficient causation that is distinct from, and incompatible with, emanation.89 As Heereboord goes on to say, “The immanent cause does have something in common with the emanative cause—but not every one, just a certain kind, namely the internal emanative cause—which is that the agent and the patient are the

87 Note that this move builds the Suárezian account of immanent action right into the account of an immanent cause insofar as it implies that immanent actions have a terminus ad quem. 88 Vulgaris multorum Philosophorum error est, causam immanentem et emanativam confundere, cum tamen inter sese multum distinguanture: nam immanens est causa activa, et distinctam habet ab existentia sua causalitatem: causa emanativa distinctam ab existantia sua causalitatem non habet. Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23, th. 2 (p. 229). 89 On the other hand, if the term ‘immanent cause’ is being used more generically for any efficient cause whose effect is within itself—which seems to be permitted in Burgersdijk’s Institutiones Logicae but not his Institutiones Metaphysicae—then one should say rather that the ‘immanent cause’ subdivides into two distinct, and incompatible, modes of immanent causation, i.e., active and emanative. I opt for the stricter use of the term above because it is clear that even in the Institutiones Logicae, Burgersdijk conceives of the immanent cause first and foremost as a species of active cause. Hence, I think that the stricter use of the term found in Institutiones Metaphysicae clarifies, and does not fundamentally change, Burgersdijk’s view. Incidentally, the disagreement between Carraud and Gueroult over whether there is any overlap between immanent and emanative causality on Heereboord’s view (Carraud 2002: 310 n. 3) is cleared up by this distinction between stricter and more generic uses of the term ‘immanent cause’. In Meletemata Philosophica (used by Carraud), Heereboord opts for the stricter use of the term found in Burgersdijk’s Institutiones Metaphysicae, according to which only active causes with internal effects can be called immanent causes. But in Hermenia Logica (used by Gueroult), Heereboord follows Burgersdijk’s Institutiones Logicae, which allows that any efficient cause whose effect is within itself counts as an ‘immanent cause’. Compare the quote above from Meletemata Philosophica with the following remark from Hermeia Logica: “The immanent cause should not be confused with the emanative cause, for while every internal emanative cause is immanent, not every immanent cause is emanative. [Non est confundenda causa immanens cum emanativa; nam omnisquidem causa emanativa interna est immanens, sed non omnis immanens, est emanativa.]” (HL I.17 qq. 7-8 comm. 2 [p. 103]).

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same, that is, the one producing and the one receiving the effect are identical.”90 On the Burgersdijkian view, then, the Zabarellian distinction between emanative and transmutative causes represents a false dichotomy: either emanation or change in an external subject. These two options are each fairly close to what Burgersdijk understands as emanative and transeunt causes, respectively. In between them lies a third, neglected option: a cause whose effect is produced internally, but by means of a ‘true’ action. Mental operations like willing and understanding are examples of this kind of causality, not emanative causality.

4. A defence of the Burgersdijkian account Someone might worry that Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s particular way of playing Suárez and Zabarella off each other is somehow unstable. If one accepts Suárez’s account of immanent acts according to which there is a distinction in reality between the effect that is produced by the agent and the immanent action by which the agent produces it, what reason would one have to deny that a similar distinction can be made in emanative causality? Conversely, if one denies Suárez’s thesis that action is the “causality” of the efficient cause because one regards emanative causality as an exception, what would motivate the claim that all immanent acts are produced by means of a genuine action? In this section I offer a defence of the Burgersdijkian theory. I argue that Burgersdijk’s unique combination of Suárez and Zabarella overcomes shortcomings in their respective views. Then I further defend how this combination is both consistent and plausible. First, Burgersdijk eliminates a certain ambiguity in Zabarella’s account. Zabarella says that an emanative cause produces its effect with an immanent action, but also that the effect comes about ‘as if spontaneously’ and without any “true” action involved.91 As a result, the ontological status of this ‘immanent action’ is unclear.

90 caeterum hoc habet causa immanens commune cum causa emanativa, non quidem omni, sed aliqua, nempe interna, ut simul fit agens et patiens, id est, producens effectum et recipiens idem in se ipsa. Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23 th. 2 (p. 229). 91 Zabarella, De sensu agente, cap. 10 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 597-98), quoted in sec. 1 above; see also Zabarella, De medio Demonstrationis, lib 2, cap. 8 (in Opera Logica, p. 588E-F).

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Presumably it does not belong in the category of action. Is it an accident belonging in a different category, then? Or is it merely conceptually distinct from the emanated effect? Burgersdijk’s position is much clearer since he holds unequivocally that immanent actions are true actions, and that emanative causes bring about their effect without any action whatsoever, whether immanent or transeunt. All this points to another advantage Burgersdijk’s theory has over Zabarella’s. Burgersdijk offers a sharp distinction between emanative causality and the mode of causality involved in immanent actions. For Zabarella, by contrast, every internal effect is the product of fundamentally the same mode of efficient causality. But compare, e.g., a rational soul producing its power of thinking (i.e., the intellect), and that intellect producing a thought. These seem to be very different causal phenomena. For one thing, the rational soul always possesses an intellect, whereas the intellect has different thoughts at different times. The intellect thus does seem capable of producing a change within itself in some sense, despite what Zabarella says.92 By combining Suárez’s theory of immanent action with Zabarella’s account of emanation (minus the equation with immanent action, of course) Burgersdijk is able to give a clear explanation of why these phenomena differ. The intellect is produced by the very existence of the rational soul. This explains why the intellect exists at the first moment the rational soul exists, and every moment thereafter. Meanwhile, any thought is produced by the intellect by means of an immanent action, and so it exists only when the intellect acts in a certain way. Burgersdijk’s theory also manages to capture the distinctive characteristics of emanation in a way that Suárez’s theory fails to do. Suárez holds that ‘natural resulting’ must involve a true action simply because it is a mode of efficient causality. This leads

92 This is not to say that no explanation of the difference between these two kinds of causal phenomena is open to Zabarella. For instance, he might be able to say that they differ in terms of the necessary conditions that must obtain in order for the cause to emanate its effect, and that an act of understanding, for example, emanates from the intellect only when the intellect is informed by an intelligible species. (Thanks to Martin Pickavé for this point.) However, the burden is on Zabarella to show that such an explanation is consistent with his bolder, universal claims about emanation, such as that the agent seemingly does not need to operate, that the effect occurs spontaneously and without any change, etc. By contrast, for Burgersdijk the explanation for the difference between these two kinds of causal phenomena is neat and simple: they involve different modes of efficient causality.

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 123 him further to admit that God could cause (e.g.,) a soul to exist without its powers,93 since the effectiveness of any action depends on God’s concurrence. The problem is that necessitation and immediacy were normally understood to be necessary conditions of emanative causality. Suárez’s reasoning could thus easily be flipped into a reductio of his core thesis that efficient causality consists in action.94 By contrast, Burgersdijk’s theory saves these criteria and even explains their connection. Because the causality of an emanative cause consists in its very existence (rather than in an action), it is impossible for it to exist without its effect.95 Not even God could separate the two.96 True, Suárez does attribute some sense of immediacy to emanation insofar as he still holds (with others) that (e.g.) the propria of a substance are caused directly by the substance itself, rather than by an accident of that substance. For Suárez, however, this means that the substance itself is directly responsible for an action. And such a claim

93 Suárez, DM 18.3.8 (Opera Omnia 25.617 / OEC 96). 94 For an example of just such a reductio, see Timpler, Metaphysicae systema methodicum, lib. 3, cap. 2, prob. 46 (p. 251). 95 “In the emanative cause, causality is not distinguished from existence, for in it, existing and causing are one. And so it cannot happen that when an emanative cause is posited, its effect would not also be posited. [in causa emanativa causalitas ab existentia non distinguitur; existere enim et causare in illa unum sunt. Itaque fieri nequit, ut causa emanativa posita, non ponatur effectum.]” Burgersdijk, IM I.26 th. 3 (p. 167). 96 Heereboord makes this point explicitly: And so God cannot concur with the conservation of the existence of an emanative cause without conserving its causality at the same time, since its causality is not something different from its existence…. And so when some allege that propria can be separated from their subjects while the subject is preserved, there is contradiction in terms, for propria emanate from their subject and are caused by its existence. Indeed, it is impossible for God himself to do this, as now we demonstrate. For inasmuch as its existence is conserved, its causality is also conserved, and inasmuch as its causality is conserved, its effect is also conserved. And so it is a contradiction for iron not to be heavy or for fire not to be hot. For the heat and the weight cannot be taken away unless iron and fire are also taken away, because the existence of [the iron and the fire] is the existence of those properties that emanate from them [ideoque Deus non potest concurrere ad conservandam existentiam causae emanativae, quin simul conservet ejus causalitatem, siquidem causalitas ejus diversa non est ab ejus existentia…. itaque contradictio est in adjecto, cum nonnulli afferunt, proprietates posse separari a subjectis, salvo manente subjecto, cum proprietates emanent a subjecto, ejusque existentia causentur: imo, Deo ipsi hoc impossibile, ut statim demonstravimus: quamdiu enim conservatur existentia, conservatur causalitas, quamdiu conservatur causalitas, conservatur effectum: atque hinc contradictio est, ut ferrum non sit grave, ignis non sit calidus; calor enim et gravitas tolli non possunt, nisi ferrum et ignis tollantur, cum existentia horum sit existentia proprietatum, quae ab iis emanant.] Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 22, th. 3 (p. 226).

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spells trouble for his whole account. In an Aristotelian framework, the principle that any action is made possible by having a certain power is fairly intuitive; even Suárez seems to take it for granted when he distinguishes between purely active and mixed powers. But in that case, Suárez’s claim that the soul emanates its powers by means of an action would seem to require that the soul must already possess a certain antecedent power that makes it possible for it to act in that way. And then surely that antecedent power would have to be (on Suárez’s view) produced by means of an action of the soul as well, so the soul would have to possess a power antecedent to that power, and so on to infinity. In order to avoid an infinite regress, then, it seems that one must deny that the soul’s powers are produced by the soul by means of an action, which leaves one with two options. One could deny that the soul’s powers are produced by the soul,97 or one could hold that although the soul does produce its powers, it does not do so by means of an action. Hence, to the extent that one wants to grant (as Suárez does) that there is a causal relation between the soul and its powers (and more generally, between a substance’s essence and its proper accidents), then, it seems that Burgersdijk’s account of emanation is preferable. Still, one might wonder how Burgersdijk can consistently and plausibly accept Suárez’s account of immanent actions while rejecting his account of emanation. I suggest that once one gives up on any arguments based on a preconceived understanding of efficient causality as such, it is possible to consider each on its own terms. Consider that for Suárez, one way to establish the existence of a real action is by means of a separability argument. If a certain effect can exist without depending on its efficient cause in a particular way, then the action of the efficient cause by means of which the effect depends on it must be an entity distinct from the effect itself.98 Now compare the case of immanent ‘actions’ (that is, mental operations and possibly certain other ‘vital’ acts) with that of natural resulting. The attribution of separability (in the sense of a

97 Here again there seem to be two options. One could hold that the powers of the soul are not really distinct from the soul itself. (This is the position held by Scotists and nominalists.) Or one could hold that the powers of the soul are distinct from the soul itself, but that they are produced by the generator of the soul alone. See Antonio Rubio, In De An. II cap. 3 qq. 1 and 3. 98 Recall that Suárez holds that the actual dependence of an effect on its efficient cause is identical to the action of that efficient cause (see chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above, where Suárez’s use of this argument with respect to immanent actions is discussed).

3. Immanent Action and Emanation 125 particular type of independence) is much more plausible in the former case than it is in latter. Suárez himself argues that the same mental operation can depend on its power in different ways because the power can become habituated to that operation. E.g., when the intellect forms a certain concept for the first time, it does so by itself, but when it does so for hundredth time, it does so by means of a habit.99 But emanation seems to be precisely the sort of case where the mode of dependence cannot be varied in any way. E.g., the intellect depends on the rational soul in exactly the same way at all times. Now perhaps someone might argue that one can still run a separability argument by appealing to God’s ability to produce any effect entirely by himself, without the concurrence of any creaturely cause. However, this argument begs the question, since as we have seen, it is controversial whether creaturely emanative causes constitute an exception to this rule. It is therefore neither inconsistent nor unreasonable to think, as Burgersdijk does, that Suárez is right to posit a true action in immanent actions, but wrong to do so in natural resulting.

5. Conclusion I want to conclude by returning to the question of the relation of Burgersdijk’s concept of an immanent cause to the more traditional scholastic concept of an immanent action. The answer to this question is at first blush quite simple. For Burgersdijk, an immanent cause is just the cause of an immanent action, and likewise, an immanent action is just the action of an immanent cause. Adapting Suárez’s definition of an efficient cause, one could say that Burgersdijk’s immanent cause is ‘that principle whence an immanent action exists.’ But with this equivalency posited, Burgersdijk actually takes a particular stance on each of the scholastic debates concerning the ontology of immanent action that we have encountered in the last three chapters, namely: 1. Are immanent actions productive? In scholastic terms, do they result in a terminus distinct from themselves? 2. Must the subject of an immanent action be its efficient cause? 3. Are immanent actions caused by means of emanation?

99 Again, see chap. 1, sec. 3.1 above.

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With regard to the first question, Burgersdijk accepts the distinctively Suárezian position that every immanent action has a product distinct from itself as its terminus. Because immanent causes are active causes, one can distinguish between their effects and the actions by which they produce those effects. With regard to the second question, because Burgersdijk categorizes the immanent cause as an efficient cause, he, like the vast majority of scholastics, holds that the subject of an immanent action is an efficient cause by definition. Finally, with regard to the third question, Burgersdijk denies the Zabarellian view that immanent actions are caused by means of emanation by distinguishing the immanent cause from the emanative cause. Indeed, I have argued that the Burgersdijk’s primary goal in positing the immanent cause is to make this last point. In the following chapters, we will turn our attention to the most famous heir to the concept of an immanent cause, Benedict Spinoza. This will give us the opportunity to consider whether Spinoza takes the same stance as Burgersdijk on these three issues, and if not, whether his divergence from Burgersdijk might indicate the influence of other scholastic sources. The next chapter will address the second and third of these issues by returning to the question of whether Spinoza’s immanent cause has anything to do with formal causality or with emanation. In the conclusion, I will briefly address the first issue by considering whether God’s actions for Spinoza are distinct from God’s modes.

CHAPTER 4. SPINOZA ON EMANATION AND IMMANENT CAUSATION

Spinoza’s claim that “God is the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things” (E Ip18; cf. KV I.3§2; and Ep. 73 G IV 307) employs a distinction given by Franco Burgersdijk and his successor, Adriaan Heereboord. As we learned in the previous chapter, they understand the immanent cause to be (a) a species of efficient cause (b) whose effect exists within itself (c) by means of a ‘true’ action rather than by mere emanation. Given the connection Spinoza draws between God’s immanent causation and his claim that all things are “in God,”1 it is clear enough that he accepts the second criterion of the Burgersdijkian conception of immanent causation. But according to the interpretation given by Vincent Carraud (which resurrects a line of thought found in Martial Gueroult), Spinoza departs from the first and third criteria. Carraud argues that Spinoza’s immanent cause is none other than what Burgersdijk and Heereboord would consider an internal emanative cause. That is, its ‘effects’ are just whatever properties it possesses necessarily in virtue of its essence. And because Spinoza’s immanent cause is emanative in character, according to Carraud, “elle assume le sens aristotélien de la cause formelle.”2 Carraud sees this reconceptualization of the immanent cause as a constitutive part of a larger “coup de force théorique” by which Spinoza treats all purportedly efficient causation as merely the expression of formal-causal relations.3 Carraud’s interpretation of the immanent cause is lent support by arguments purporting to show that Spinoza’s general understanding of causality as such was influenced by the Aristotelian conception of formal causation through some particular conduit. One such conduit emphasized by Carraud himself, and defended more recently by Karolina Hübner,4 is Descartes’s notion of a causa sui, which Descartes explicitly

1 E Ip18d cites E Ip15, which states that “whatever is, is in God.” Cf. Ep. 73 G IV 307. 2 Carraud 2002: 311 (emphasis added). Cf. Gueroult 1968: 297. 3 Carraud 2002: 311. Cf. Gueroult 1968: 299. That Spinoza refers to God as the efficient cause of all things (E Ip16c1, cited in E Ip18d) thus does not count as a strike against this view, since efficient causation has been ‘assimilated’ to formal causation. 4 Hübner 2015.

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identifies as a formal cause. Insofar as Spinoza takes God’s self-causation as paradigmatic for all causation, it would seem that we can say that all causation, including immanent causation, is formal for Spinoza. Another possibility proposed by Hübner, as well as Valterri Viljanen,5 is the Aristotelian conception of mathematics as a science of formal causes, which was still prevalent in the seventeenth century. Since Spinoza explicitly compares God’s production of all things to the manner in which the property of a mathematical figure is entailed by its essence (E Ip17s), again, it would seem that an immanent cause for Spinoza is a formal cause. Carraud’s interpretation, if correct, would have significant consequences for how we understand Spinoza. Historiographically, it requires that Spinoza’s reconceptualization of the immanent cause marks a definitive break from the scholastic tradition and its ways of categorizing and differentiating causes, of which Burgersdijk and Heereboord can be taken as representative.6 Systematically, it raises the question of whether any of the force or ‘oomph’ typically associated with efficient causality can be found in Spinoza’s system. Carraud himself embraces the conclusion that Spinoza’s coup de force reduces all relations between things to merely conceptual ones.7 Because Spinoza’s immanent cause is just an Aristotelian formal cause, there is no more genuine power involved in the relation between God (substance) and all things (modes), for example, than there is in the relation between the fact that a triangle is a three-sided plane figure and the fact that its interior angles add up to two right angles. Or so Carraud maintains. Some proponents of formal causality in Spinoza (such as Hübner8) have resisted this implication, while some critics have regarded it as effectively a reductio of

5 Viljanen 2008; and Viljanen 2011: chap. 2. 6 As Gueroult (1968: 297) says, “Spinoza conçoit que toute cause immanente ne peut être … qu’une cause émanative interne, — étant par là en désaccord avec la logique traditionelle” (emphasis added). Citing this remark, Carraud (2002: 310 n. 3) comments, “Gueroult décrit bien ce que nous appelons ici le coupe de force de Spinoza.” 7 Carraud 2002: 323-41. If Carraud is correct, the formal-causal interpretation of the immanent cause supports the sort of reductionist-idealist reading of Spinoza that has been defended recently and on other grounds by Michael Della Rocca (see Della Rocca 2003a; and Della Rocca 2008: 44ff; cf. Lærke 2011b: 457; and Hübner 2015: 202-05 and 221). 8 Hübner 2015: 197 and 212.

4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation 129 the interpretation.9 A careful evaluation of the support for Carraud’s interpretation of Spinoza’s immanent cause thus has two potential benefits: it offers us a starting-point for assessing the influence of scholasticism on Spinoza’s thought along one particular axis; and it will allow us to determine more precisely the ontological implications of Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent cause of all things. In this chapter, I argue that Carraud’s interpretation is only partially correct. I agree that Spinoza treats the immanent cause as an internal emanative cause, thereby obliterating a distinction that is crucial to Burgersdijk and Heereboord. I offer additional support for this claim based on an analysis of Spinoza’s references to the immanent cause in the Short Treatise, which have been largely overlooked by Spinoza scholars.10 However, I disagree, in the first place, with Carraud’s contention that Spinoza’s position constitutes a dramatic break from the scholastic tradition. I show that within Protestant scholastic discussions of ‘emanative’ causality, the dominant view was that any efficient cause whose effect is within itself is ipso facto an emanative cause. Hence, with respect to the philosophical atmosphere in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s conception of immanent causation should be considered the outlier, while Spinoza’s re-conception should be considered a kind of ‘reversion to the mean’. I argue that this suggests that Spinoza was acquainted with more Protestant scholastic views than just those of Burgersdijk and Heereboord. Second, I reject Carraud’s claim that the immanent cause is essentially an Aristotelian formal cause. I argue that within the period there is a clear and well-founded distinction between efficient and formal causation and that emanative causality was understood to fall on the side of efficient causation. Hence, on my view, Spinoza’s immanent cause departs from the Burgersdikian one in only one respect, namely insofar as he ignores the distinction between an immanent cause and an internal emanative cause. He retains the core conception of the immanent cause as an efficient cause whose effect is within itself.

9 E.g., Sangiacomo and Nachtomy 2018. 10 Exceptions include: Morrison 2015: 48; and Wolfson 1958: I.319-28.

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In general, then, my argument supports the suggestion that Spinoza’s understanding of causality is indebted to the scholastic notion of emanation,11 but not the (often, but not always) related suggestion that it should be identified with Aristotelian formal causality.12 I do not dispute that for Spinoza causation occurs in virtue of the essences of things, which necessitate their effects. Such a model allows causal relations to be entirely perspicacious to an intellect, which is an important requirement for a rationalist like Spinoza.13 But I take the categorization of this model as formal-causal to be a historiographical error that misrepresents the philosophical pedigree of Spinoza’s conception of causality and, as a result, gives rise to false impressions about its metaphysical character. As I will argue, the notion that there is no genuine causal power in Spinoza’s system is just such an example. It is only by understanding Spinoza’s claims as fitting within the history of the efficient cause that we will be able to diagnose correctly where Spinoza’s understanding of the causal relation between God and ‘all things’ is similar to that of traditional theism, and where it differs from it.14 The chapter is thus divided as follows. In the first section, I review the textual evidence for Spinoza’s awareness of and dependence on Burgersdijk and Heereboord for his concept of an immanent cause. Next, I explain Carraud’s argument that Spinoza’s “assimilates” immanent and emanative causality. The third section brings forward the

11 For more on the scholastic notion of emanation, see chap. 3 above. I note that some scholastic authors such as Aquinas and Suárez refer to this mode of causation as ‘natural resulting’ [resultantia naturalis] and they use ‘emanation’ [emanatio] in a broader sense that is applicable to, e.g., God’s ex nihilo creation of all things. However, in Protestant scholasticism (thanks to the influence of Zabarella), as well as in recent scholarship on Spinoza, ‘emanation’ is used in the stricter sense, and that is how I will use the term as well. 12 In that respect, this chapter builds on, and refines, Viljanen’s and Hübner’s work. My position on Spinoza is similar to that of Melamed 2005; and especially Schmid 2013. My argument that in Spinoza’s context, internal emanation was understood as an efficient-causal phenomenon is also in line with Pasnau 2004’s study of the causality of substantial forms in late scholasticism. 13 Hübner 2015 has shown (quite decisively, in my opinion) how this model correctly tracks Spinoza’s necessitarianism and has many additional advantages over the other models of causation that have been proposed for Spinoza. 14 Perhaps it would be helpful here to borrow the distinction between a concept and a conception of something (cf. Rawls 1999: 4-5). I think that we should be able to say that Spinoza’s conception of divine efficient causation differs from, e.g., Descartes’s, even if there is a core notion that is shared between the two philosophers. But if we speak of Spinoza’s God as being the formal cause of all things, then it seems as if he is working with a different concept altogether, and hence that he and Descartes are actually not in disagreement so much as talking past one another.

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evidence from the Short Treatise that I believe supports this part of Carraud’s interpretation. In §4, I argue that it is likely Spinoza was influenced by other Protestant scholastic authors in forming this view. In §5, I show that in the period, emanative causality was distinguished clearly from formal causality, so the classification of Spinoza’s immanent cause as emanative actually speaks against identifying it as a formal cause. In the remaining sections, I consider and reject the more general arguments that imply that Spinoza’s immanent cause should be considered a formal cause. §6 concerns the analogy Spinoza draws between divine causation and mathematical-geometrical entailment. §7 concerns the influence of Descartes’s notion of the causa sui on Spinoza’s conception of causality. And §8 briefly examines Spinoza’s own isolated use of the term causa formalis. These last three sections offer the occasion to see how Spinoza’s concept of the immanent cause and his debt to Protestant scholasticism is incorporated into a general theory of causation which draws on modern authors as well.

1. Spinoza’s dependence on Burgersdijk and Heereboord Spinoza clearly indicates that he is relying on an established distinction when he writes in Ep. 73, “I maintain that God is, as they say [ut ajunt], the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things” (G IV 307). Spinoza regularly uses the phrase ut ajunt to signal that the terms he is using terms with an accepted meaning. His use of technical scholastic vocabulary is almost always flagged in this or a similar fashion.15 In this section, I review the textual case that establishes that Spinoza’s sources for the terms causa immanens and causa transiens (or, as these terms were translated in the Short Treatise, inblyvende oorzaak and overgaande oorzaak) were Burgersdijk and Heereboord. The main piece of evidence is found in Spinoza's discussion of “how God is a cause of all things” (KV I.3§1) in the Short Treatise. Spinoza writes, “Since it is customary to divide the efficient cause into eight parts, let us now investigate how, and in

15 See, e.g., E Ip28s (G II 70) (absolute vs. in suo genere); E IIp10cs (G II 93) (causa secundum fieri vs. secundum esse); TTP VI.15 (G III 90) (absolutum Dei mandatum); Ep. 75 (G IV 313) (reductio ad impossibile); cf. E IApp (G II 80) (finis indigentiae vs. finis assimilationis). See Krop 2011c.

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what way God is a cause?” (KV I.3§2). He then proceeds to describe God’s production of all things as follows. 1. “We say that God is an emanative or productive cause … and … an active or efficient cause…. 2. “He is an immanent and not a transient cause…. 3. “God is a free cause, not a natural one…. 4. “God is a cause per se, and not a cause per accidens…. 5. “God is the principal cause of the effects he has created immediately … where there can be no place for the subsidiary cause, which is confined to [God's causation over] particular things…. 6. “God alone is the first, or initiating, cause…. 7. “God is also a universal cause16…. 8. “God is the proximate cause of those things that are infinite and immutable … [and,] in a sense, the remote cause of all particular things.” (KV I.3 §2)

It was Adolph Trendelenburg who first discovered in the mid-nineteenth century that this so-called ‘customary’ eightfold division of efficient causes can be traced to Burgersdijk and Heereboord.17 In Burgersdijk's popular logic manual, Institutiones logicae, first published in 1625, the efficient cause is divided into: 1. active and emanative (activa et emanativa); 2. immanent and transitive (immanens et transiens); 3. free and necessary (libera et necessaria); 4. per se and per accidens; 5. principal and subsidiary (principalis et minus principalis); 6. primary and secondary (prima et secunda); 7. universal and particular (universalis et particularis); and 8. proximate and remote (promima et remota).18

The same scheme is given in the Synopsis of Burgersdijk's logic, and hence also Adriaan Heereboord's Hermeneia Logica, in which the Synopsis is interspersed with Heereboord's

16 Here I follow the translation in Wolf 1910 instead of CW’s ‘general cause’. The Dutch is algemeene oorzaak, which could be translated either way, but the parallel with Burgersdijk’s scheme (see below) strongly suggests that it is a translation of causa universalis. See also Trendelenburg 1867: 322. 17 Trendelenburg 1867; see also Wolf 1910: cii ff. Further discussion of KV I.3§2 and its relation to the Burgersdijkian eightfold division of efficient causes can be found in Carraud 2002: 307-11; Gueroult 1968: 244-56; Krop 2011c: 29-30; Melamed 2006: 50 n. 10 / Melemand 2013: 63 n. 8; L. Robinson 1928: 176-77; Viljanen 2011: 47; Wolf 1910: 190-95; and Wolfson 1958: I, chap. 9, esp. 303-04. For general information on Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s influence on Spinoza, see CW I:223; Krop 2011c; and Van Bunge et al. 2011: 60-62 and 72-74. 18 Burgersdijk, IL I.17 (pp. 69-78).

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comments.19 Given that Spinoza uses the exact same divisions, and in the exact same order, as these logic manuals, Trendelenburg determined that Spinoza must have consulted one of them, most likely Hermeneia Logica, when he wrote the passage above. And since the scheme includes the division into causa immanens et transiens, it can be concluded that Spinoza adopted these terms from Burgersdijk and Heereboord as well. My own research presented in this work lends considerable support to Trendelenburg’s conclusion. Although the practice of analysing the efficient cause into dichotomous modi causandi was very common within Protestant scholasticism in particular, the exact number and ordering of these divisions varies widely. What Spinoza calls a ‘customary’ division is in fact highly peculiar to Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s logic manuals. Most importantly, Burgersdijk and Heereboord are the only ones to divide the efficient cause into causa immanens et transiens.20 Simply put, these terms were not part of the standard scholastic vocabulary. As we have seen in previous chapters, prior to Burgersdijk, scholastics exclusively referred to actions [actiones] (or sometimes operations [operationes] or acts [actus]) as being ‘immanent’ or ‘transeunt’. The typical place for this distinction to appear was within an analysis of Aristotle’s categories, not of efficient causality. Hence, as far as I have been able to determine, there is simply no other source from which Spinoza could have taken the idea that an efficient cause can be divided into ‘immanent’ and ‘transeunt’ causes.

2. Spinoza and emanative causality It is Carraud’s contention that with respect to the Burgersdijkian scheme, “Spinoza assimilât cause émanative et cause immanente.”21 By this I understand Carraud to be saying that for Spinoza, immanent causation is the sort of causal relation that obtains between a thing’s essence and its necessary properties.22 Recall23 that in the

19 Heereboord, HL I.17 qq. 3-34 (pp. 99-119). 20 Cf. Table 2 below. 21 Carraud 2002: 311. 22 In understanding Carraud’s ‘assimilation’ claim in this way, I am taking it as a claim about Spinoza’s conception of the ‘immanent cause’ in particular. Sometimes he gives the impression that this ‘assimilation’ consists in Spinoza reducing the immanent cause to the emanative cause. The problem with this stronger reading is that Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent cause of all things seems to add an

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scholastic tradition, emanation was considered to be a particular kind of ‘modus causandi’ whereby an effect ‘pours forth’ from its cause immediately, necessarily, and as it were spontaneously. Such ‘emanative’ causality was attributed “to every substantial form with respect to those proper accidents which follow upon it in the same thing,” as Burgersdijk says.24 The idea is that substances possess certain accidents, variously called ‘proper accidents,’ ‘propria,’ or ‘properties’ [proprietates],25 necessarily, just in virtue of having the nature they do, and not because of anything done to them or anything they do over and above simply existing. For example, the scholastics think that fire is hot because it is fire, which for them is equivalent to saying that the substantial form of fire is the emanative cause of the necessary accident of heat in the fire. On Carraud’s interpretation, then, this kind of causal relation is what Spinoza has in mind when he calls God the immanent cause of all things. In this section, I briefly motivate Carraud’s thesis in a manner that is reflective of existing scholarship,26 and then review why such a conception of immanent causation conflicts with the Burgersdijkian one. In my view, the most important piece of evidence for Carraud’s interpretation is found in the following passage of the Ethics: I think I have shown clearly enough (see P16) that from God's supreme power, or infinite nature, infinitely many things in infinitely many ways, that is, all things, have necessarily flowed [effluxisse], or always follow by the same necessity, and in the same way, as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles. (E Ip17s G II 62)

additional element to the notion of emanation, namely the specification that all the things that are caused by God exist within himself. Note that E Ip18d cites not only E Ip16, which establishes that all things necessarily follow from God’s nature (see below), but also E Ip15, which establishes that everything is in God. Spinoza thus seems to think that the very notion of emanative causality does not, in itself, rule out the possibility of external effects. (This is consistent with Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s understanding of the emanative cause, as well as that some other Protestant scholastics; see Table 3 below.) 23 See chap. 3 above. 24 Ad causam emanativam pertinet omnis forma substantialis, respectu proprietatum, quae illam in eadem re consequuntur. Burgersdijk, IL lib. I cap. 17, th. 3-4 comm. 1 (p. 70). 25 Some scholastics distinguish between these terms. For our purposes, I will treat them as interchangeable and referring to any accidents that a substance necessarily possesses. 26 For more detailed arguments, see the works by Gueroult, Carraud, Viljanen, and Hübner cited throughout this chapter. In the next section, I will provide supporting evidence for Carraud’s thesis which has not been discussed in the literature.

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As many have noted,27 Spinoza employs language clearly associated with emanative causality in this passage when he speaks of things as ‘flowing’ [effluere] from God’s nature. Moreover, the causal relation he refers to in this fashion is cashed out in emanationist terms as a necessary following from the essence, or “nature”, of a thing (in this case, God). Hence, this passage strongly suggests that Spinoza thinks that the ‘mode’ in which “God is the efficient cause of all things” (E Ip16c1) is necessarily emanative. Since God’s status as immanent cause concerns the same relation, and is established partially on the basis of E Ip16c1, it would thus seem that Spinoza’s immanent cause cannot be anything but an emanative cause. It just specifies that the ‘effects’ that ‘flow’ from the cause must exist within the cause. 28 As Gueroult puts it, “Spinoza conçoit que toute cause immanente ne peut être, pour employer une terminologie qui n’est pas la sienne, qu’une cause émanative interne.”29 This internal ‘flowing’ is of course precisely the ‘mode’ by the proper accidents of a substance are caused by its substantial form, according to Burgersdijk (and many other scholastics).30 As both Gueroult and Carraud point out,31 treating the immanent cause as an internal emanative cause requires doing a certain violence to the Burgersdijkian scheme. Recall that for Burgersdijk and Heereboord, the emanative cause is opposed to what they call the “active cause” [causa activa], which “produces its effect by acting.”32 Nothing can be an emanative and an active cause with respect to the same effect, because either

27 Viljanen 2008: 420; Viljanen 2011: 42; cf. Gueroult 1968: 251-52, 293-95; Carraud 2002: 310; Carriero 1991: 61, 65; Hübner 2015: 225-28. There is one other location where Spinoza employs emanationist language, viz. in Ep. 43. He curtly dismisses one of Van Velthuysen’s criticisms of the TTP by saying, “I do not ask here and now why it is the same thing to maintain that all things emanate [emanare] necessarily from God’s nature and that the universe itself is God. But I should like you to note what he quickly adds, no less offensively [odiose], namely that [etc.].” (Ep. 43 G IV 223; cf. Ep. 42 G IV 208). As Curley notes (CW II.388 n. 24), the implication of this remark seems to be that Spinoza accepts the former claim, but finds Van Velthuysen’s suggestion that it implies the latter claim “offensive”. Similarly, Spinoza also writes earlier in the letter, “Whether we receive the good which follows from virtue and divine love from God as a Judge, or because it emanates [emanet] from the necessity of the divine nature, it is not for that reason either more or less desirable” (Ep. 43 G IV 222; cf. Ep. 42 G IV 208-09). Again, the implication seems to be that Spinoza thinks the ‘emanationist’ option is true. 28 This is reflected in the demonstration, which cites E Ip16c1 and E Ip15. 29 Gueroult 1968: 297; cited in Carraud 2002: 310 n. 3. 30 It might be objected here that all this shows is that Spinoza holds that if the effect of an emanative cause exists within itself, then it is an immanent cause. 31 Gueroult 1968: 297-98; Carraud 2002: 308-11. Cf. also Deleuze 1990: 376 n. 4. 32 Heereboord, HL I.17 q. 6 (p. 101).

4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation 136 there is an action involved in the production of that effect, or there is not.33 Crucially, Burgersdijk and Heereboord conceive of the immanent cause first and foremost as an active cause,34 and hence as a mode of causality that is distinct from the sort of internal, emanative causality exercised by substantial forms within their substances. They associate it instead with the mode by which mental faculties like the intellect and will bring about their effects within the soul. As Heereboord says, A common error of many philosophers is to confuse the immanent and the emanative cause, even though the two are distinguished from each other in many ways, for the immanent cause is an active cause, and possesses its causality distinct from its own existence, while the emanative cause does not possess its causality distinct from existence. The immanent cause does have something in common with the emanative cause—but not every one, just a certain a kind, the internal emanative cause—which is that the agent and the patient are the same, that is, the one producing and the one receiving the effect are identical. For example, the intellect forms a concept and receives the formed concept in itself.35

Hence, by conceiving of the immanent cause as an emanative cause, Spinoza commits precisely the ‘confusion’ of causal categories which Heereboord warns against in this passage. Carraud and Gueroult suggest that Spinoza seems to have rejected the Burgersdijkian opposition between emanative and active causality on which it is based.36 As Spinoza says in the Short Treatise, We say that God is an emanative or productive cause [uytvloejende ofte daarstellende oorzaak] of his effects [werken],37 and, with respect to the action’s occurring, an active or efficient cause [doende ofte werkende

33 Burgersdijk, IL I.13 th. 4 (p. 69); Heereboord, HL I.13 q. 4 comm. 3 (p. 102); cf. Burgersdijk, IM I.26 th. 3 (p. 167); Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 22, th. 3 (p. 226). 34 As Burgersdijk says, "when our soul understands or desires something, it is called the immanent cause of its concepts or desires, which it forms by understanding or desiring." 35 Vulgaris multorum Philosophorum error est, causam immanentem et emanativam confundere, cum tamen inter sese multum distinguanture: nam immanens est causa activa, et distinctam habet ab existentia sua causalitatem: causa emanativa distinctam ab existantia sua causalitatem non habet. caeterum hoc habet causa immanens commune cum causa emanativa, non quidem omni, sed aliqua, nempe interna, ut simul fit agens et patiens, id est, producens effectum et recipiens idem in se ipsa. Ex. gr. Intellectus conceptus format et formatos conceptus recipit in se. Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23, th. 1 (p. 229 1659 ed.) 36 As Carraud (2002: 310) puts it, Spinoza “devra traiter comme indifférent le critère de l'immédiateté ou de la médiation de la causalité.” Cf. Gueroult 1968: 248 and 269-70. 37 Note that Curley (CW I.80) translates werken as ‘actions’ instead of ‘effects’, which obscures the sense of the passage.

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oorzaak].38 We treat this as one thing, because they involve each other. (KV I.3§2, emphasis added)

Similarly, in the Ethics, Spinoza holds that God can be said to act precisely insofar as all things follow necessarily from God’s nature (E Ip17d).

3. Spinoza’s remarks on the immanent cause in the Short Treatise Spinoza never gives us anything like a sustained, systematic explanation of the nature of immanent causality, nor even an explicit definition of the term ‘immanent cause.’ Instead what we have are several remarks involving the concept of an immanent cause which are distributed across his writings. The Short Treatise contains the lion’s share of these.39 Most of them can be understood as directly referencing the Burgersdijkian definition of an immanent cause as that cause whose effect is in itself, in opposition to the transeunt cause whose effect is outside itself. For example, in the passage above where Spinoza uses the Burgersdikian eightfold division of efficient causality to explain “how and in what way God is a cause,” he says that “[God] is an immanent and not a transeunt cause, since he does everything in himself, and not outside himself (because outside him there is nothing)” (KV I.3§2, emphasis added). In a few places Spinoza even invokes Burgersdijk and Heereboord favoured example of an immanent cause, the intellect.40 But while Burgersdijk and Heereboord choose this example precisely in order to drive home the distinction between immanent and emanative causation, Spinoza gives no indication that he agrees that the intellect cannot be classified as an emanative cause. In what follows in this section, I want to draw attention to some additional remarks concerning the immanent cause found in the Short

38 Because this passage gives ‘efficient cause’ as a synonym for ‘active cause’, Carriero and Gueroult take it as evidence that emanative causality is not a species of efficient causation. But the simpler explanation is surely that doende ofte werkende oorzaak is nothing more than an unfortunate double translation of what would have been just causa activa in the Latin original. Similarly, uytvloejende ofte daarstellende oorzaak is most likely a double translation of what would have been causa emanativa. 39 The Dutch equivalent of ‘immanent cause,’ inblyvende oorzaak, is used nine times in the body of the Short Treatise (I.2§23; I.2§24; I.Dial.1§12 [twice]; I.Dial.2§1; I.Dial.2§3; I.3§2; II.26§7 [twice]), as well as twice in the outline that precedes it (G I 9). By contrast, the term causa immanens is used just four times in the rest of Spinoza's writings, namely at E Ip18, E Ip18d, Ep. 73 (G IV 307), and CGH 12 (G I 342). 40 KV I.Dial.1§12; KV I.2§24; cf. Heereboord, HL I.17 q. 8 (p. 103).

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Treatise. These remarks support the contention that Spinoza departs from the Burgersdijkian conception of the immanent cause insofar as he treats it as nothing other than an internal emanative cause. These remarks are found in two passages which are thought to be late additions to the Short Treatise41: (1) the so-called "Second Dialogue" (KV I.Dial.2), in which the character Theophilius, who represents Spinoza's views, responds to objections put to him by the character Erasmus; and (2) the final chapter of the Short Treatise, which contains a detailed argument that the intellect is eternal and that human freedom consists in the intellect's union with God (KV II.26§§7-9).

3.1. Equivalence with the internal cause First, Spinoza treats the term ‘immanent cause’ [inblyvende oorzaak] as interchangeable with ‘internal cause’ [innerlyke oorzaak], saying “immanent or internal cause (which is all one, according to me)” (KV II.26§10).42 By contrast, there is no conceptual overlap between these terms (or, to be precise, their Latin equivalents) as Burgersdijk and Heereboord use them. For them, the term ‘internal cause’ [causa interna] principally refers to one half of a standard superdivision of the four Aristotelian causes. In this sense, a thing has ‘internal’ causes insofar as it is made up of form and matter, while its efficient and final causes are its ‘external’ causes.43 Since the immanent cause is a species of efficient cause, it follows that no immanent cause is an ‘internal cause’ in this sense. It is true that Heereboord strays from this conventional usage briefly when he refers to the emanative cause, which is likewise a species of efficient cause, as being internal or external. In this instance, he does seem to use the term ‘internal’ as

41 Curley 1977: 333-34. The fact that many of these claims are found in both passages (and nowhere else in the Short Treatise) would seem to confirm that they belong to the same stratum. 42 Likewise, in the Second Dialogue, Erasmus says to Theophilus, “I note that you said that the effect of an internal cause remains united with its cause in such a way that it makes a whole with it. If that is so, then I think God cannot be an immanent cause.” The interchangeability of the terms is also driven home by the fact that all the claims Spinoza makes using the term ‘internal cause’ are also explicitly made using the term ‘immanent cause’, namely the mereological requirement, the simultaneity requirement, and the claim that God is an internal cause (KV II.26§8; cf. KV I.Dial.2§10). 43 Burgersdijk, IL I.16 th. 1-2 and I.17 th. 1. For the origins of this division (about which there is some dispute), see Jolivet 1991; Wisnovsky 2003; and Wolfson 1958: I.319-20. Note that Wisnovsky uses the terms ‘immanent’ and ‘transcendent’ instead of ‘internal’ and ‘external’, which has been the source of some confusion in the Spinoza literature about the origins of the concept of a causa immanens, which is different (see, e.g., Melamed 2006: 40 n. 10 / Melamed 2013: 63 n. 8).

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having the same meaning as ‘immanent’, i.e., referring to the fact that the cause produces its effect within itself. However, as we have seen, the reason Heereboord speaks of an ‘internal’ emanative cause in this fashion is precisely so as to avoid any conceptual confusion between it and the immanent cause, which he conceives as a species of active cause. That is, Heereboord does not want to speak of the emanative cause as ‘immanent’, so he helps himself to the term ‘internal’ instead. Hence, Spinoza’s decision to treat ‘internal cause’ and ‘immanent cause’ as equivalent marks a terminological departure from Burgersdijk and Heereboord, and may even suggest that Spinoza collapses the distinction between an immanent cause and an emanative cause.

3.2. Simultaneity requirement Second, Spinoza also claims that “no effect of an immanent, or internal, cause … can perish or change so long as its cause remains” (KV II.26§7; cf. KV I.Dial.2§10). In the Second Dialogue, no justification is given for this requirement, but in the argument concerning human freedom in KV II.26, Spinoza deduces it from two claims, which can be stated as (a) all change proceeds from external causes, and (b) whatever is not produced by external causes cannot be changed by them.44 Call this the simultaneity requirement because it implies that the effect of an immanent cause must exist at every moment that the cause itself exists. If one applies this requirement to divine immanent causation, it apparently follows that all things are eternal, because God is eternal. In the Second Dialogue, Erasmus presents this implication as a reductio and suggests that Theophilus will respond by restricting the scope of God’s immanent causation such that only those things that God produces immediately are immanently caused by him (since those things are eternal). Theophilus however never explicitly endorses this suggestion, so Spinoza's position is left somewhat ambiguous. Another possibility would be to place a restriction on the simultaneity requirement itself so that it says only that something produced immediately by an immanent cause cannot perish or change while its cause endures. This response would appear to be more consistent with the position Spinoza

44 These correspond to the third and second propositions of Spinoza's argument, respectively (KV II.26§7).

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adopts in the Ethics, since he continues to call God the immanent cause of all things. He also claims that any mode that has only a limited existence cannot be caused by the “absolute” nature of God, but must be caused by God insofar as God is modified by another mode of limited existence.45 On the Burgersdijkian scheme, by contrast, it is the emanative cause that would seem to fulfil Spinoza’s simultaneity requirement. As Heereboord says, In the emanative cause, there is no causality distinct from its existence. Rather, when its essence is posited, right away it is posited that the effect exists as well. Hence, this cause, and its effect, stand or fall together. So for example, when the rational soul is posited, its power of understanding is posited, and vice versa; and with the vegetative soul posited, the nutritive power is posited, and vice versa.46

In short, it is impossible for the emanative cause to exist without its effect. As Heereboord says elsewhere, nothing—not even God—can prevent the emanative cause from producing its effect once it exists.47 By contrast, because on their view the immanent cause must act in order to bring about its effect, it is possible in principle for it to be impeded and to exist without its effect.48 For example, perhaps they think that the intellect is ‘impeded’ from producing thoughts about certain things if it doesn’t receive the requisite input from the senses first.49

45 E Ip18; E Ip28d. 46 In causa emanativa non est causalitas distincta ab ejus existentia; sed ejus essentia posita, statim ponitur et causatum existere: unde, haec causa, & causatum suum, se mutuo ponunt & tollunt: sic, posita anima rationali, ponitur ejus potentia intelligendi, & vice versa: &, posita anima vegetante, ponitur potentia nutriendi, et vice versa. Heereboord, HL I.17 q. 5 comm. 1 (p. 100); cf. Burgersdijk, IM I.26 th. 3 (p. 167). 47 Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 12, th. 3 (p. 226), quoted above, chap. 3, n. 95. 48 That is, an immanent cause is an active cause, and as Burgersdijk says, “when an active cause is posited, it is not absolutely necessary for the effect to be posited as well, because the cause’s action can be impeded while its existence is preserved [causa activa posita, non est absolute necesse causatum poni; quia causae existentia salva, potest impediri actio]” (IM I.26 th. 3 [p. 167]). 49 The matter of the intellect is of course more complicated in Spinoza's case, since (a) Spinoza does not think cognition begins in the senses; and (b) there is some evidence in the Short Treatise for the view that the intellect—and ultimately there seems to be only one intellect for Spinoza, of which our minds are a part—is never without its concepts.

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3.3. Superlative freedom requirement Next, Spinoza claims that “the freest cause of all, and the one most suited to God, is the immanent” (KV II.26§7). As we saw earlier, Spinoza already identifies God as a “free cause” when running through Burgersdijk’s eightfold division of efficient causes in KV I.3§2. But while Burgersdijk and Heereboord understand a free cause as a rational power possessing the capacity to do otherwise (and so the only immanent cause which they would consider ‘free’ would be the will),50 Spinoza rejects this as a “misconception,” saying, “True freedom is nothing but [being] the first cause, which is not in any way constrained or necessitated by anything else, and which through its perfection alone is the cause of all perfection” (KV I.4§5). What Spinoza means by his superlative freedom requirement is therefore not that an immanent cause could have chosen not to produce whatever effects it has in fact produced, but rather that its effects necessarily follow from, and reflect, its own intrinsic nature, and nothing else.51 As Spinoza explains, “For the effect depends on [the immanent cause] in such a way that without it, [the effect] can neither exist nor be understood; nor is [the effect] subjected to any other cause” (KV II.26§7). By contrast, transeunt causes for Spinoza are inherently less ‘free’ in this sense because they depend on the existence of an external subject in which to bring about their effects; their effects, as a result, will reflect the nature of the patient in addition to that of the transeunt cause itself. So understood, the superlative freedom requirement (which is also never mentioned in any form by Burgersdijk or Heereboord) would likewise seem to apply to their emanative cause rather than to their immanent cause. They consider emanative causality to be exemplified most clearly by the production of a substance’s propria by its substantial form, as when the substantial form of fire emanates its own ‘proper heat.’ Such propria thus are not only necessary to the substance they characterize, they also reflect and are caused by its essential nature.

50 Burgersdijk, IL I.17 th. 12 (p. 67); Heereboord, HL I.17 q. 12 com. 4 (p. 108). Cf. Wolf 1910: 195. 51 To use terminology found in the Ethics, every immanent cause is necessarily an adequate cause [causa adæquata]. For a defence of this claim, see chap. 5, sec. 5 below.

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3.4. Mereological requirement Finally, Spinoza claims that “the effect of an internal cause remains united with its cause in such a way that it makes a whole with it” (KV I Dial.2§3). He makes the same claim using the term ‘immanent cause’ as well (KV II.26§7). Applying this mereological requirement to divine immanent causation yields the claim that “[God] and what he has produced make together a whole” (KV I.Dial.2§3). Like many others in scholasticism and early modern philosophy, Spinoza holds that a whole is not an additional thing over and above the existence of its parts. It is a “being of reason” (KV I.Dial.2§9) or “second notion”52 (KV I.Dial.1§10), i.e., a mind- dependent entity.53 At the same time, Spinoza holds that it is grounded in some mind- independent features of the world. He mentions that the parts must be disparate things, genuinely united in some way, to some sufficient degree, in order to form a whole.54

52 Cf. E. IIp40s1 G II 120. The term ‘second notion’ is used by Burgersdijk and Heereboord; see Burgersdijk, IL I.2 th. 1 comm. 1 (pp. 6-7); and Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 50, th. 4 (p. 186). See Verbeek 2005: 107-08 for more on the historical background to the term, which is more or less equivalent to the more common scholastic term ‘second intention’. 53 Cf. KV I.2§19, where Spinoza refers to both the whole and the parts as beings of reason and concludes that “consequently in Nature there are neither whole nor parts.” This passage is somewhat difficult to square with the mereological requirement, since it is clear that Spinoza takes God and God’s effects to be real beings. This discrepancy seems to confirm that the passages of the Short Treatise where Spinoza discusses the requirements of immanent causation are later additions to the work. That said, it is worth noting that the main point Spinoza is making in KV I.2§19 is merely that extended substance itself (i.e., qua substance; cf. E Ip15s G II 60) is indivisible (see note ‘G’ at G I 25); and this point is compatible with the claim that substance itself (i.e., God) forms a whole with its modes, which are its effects. Thanks to Tad Schmaltz for flagging this issue for me. 54 KV I.Dial.2§9; KV II.26§5; cf. KV II.19§11. It is sometimes thought that Spinoza is being inconsistent in affirming both that God and his effects form a whole and that a whole is only a being of reason (see CW I:78 n. 6). However, I take it that there is no tension here, since for Spinoza beings of reason can be grounded in mind-independent features of reality (Hübner 2016a). That said, there are other difficulties involved in reconciling all of Spinoza’s claims about mereological relations and/or divine causation in the Short Treatise, namely: -must all the parts of a whole be conceivable independent of each other? Spinoza says so in KV I.2§19 but his example in KV I.Dial.2§6 suggests otherwise; and if this is the case, then it would seem that God and all things cannot be parts of the same whole, since nothing can be conceived without God (KV II.26§7). -are God and all things proper parts of some greater whole (KV I.Dial.2§3), or is God the whole whose proper parts are all things (KV I.Dial.1§12)? The latter option does present problems when combined with the claim that wholes are beings of reason, since then it would imply that God is a mind- dependent entity. My view is that the mereological claims in the First Dialogue are badly put and that Spinoza’s considered opinion is (a) for two things to be parts of the same whole, it is sufficient that one of them can

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The mereological requirement is never stated by Burgersdijk and Heereboord. Their discussion of part-whole relations exists separately from that of causal ones.55 In principle, however, they should agree that an immanent cause and its effects do make a whole, since they belong to the same substance. For example, the intellect and its concepts belong to the same rational soul. Of course, this same type of unity obtains between an internal emanative cause and its effects as well; the substantial form of fire and the ‘proper heat’ it emanates also belong to the same substance.56 What is more, to the extent that unity is a matter of degree—as Spinoza himself suggests—the internal emanative cause is more united to its effects than an active cause like the intellect, for at least two reasons. First, according to Burgersdijk and Heereboord, an emanative cause cannot be impeded, so an emanative cause and its effects exist together necessarily. Second, the propria that emanate within a substance were understood to “complete” that substance, a sign of which being that they make it possible for the substance to operate (or be an active cause, in Burgersdijkian terms). Immanent causation (as active causation) is thus a degree less united with its effects than internal emanation because it presuppose the complete substance: the rational soul thinks by means of its intellect, and so on.57 It could therefore be said that the internal emanative cause fulfils the mereological requirement to a greater degree. Given that Spinoza gives other indications that he regards the immanent cause as being superlative among causes, it seems unlikely that he would be willing to acknowledge that there is a species of cause that is more united with its effect than the immanent cause. Hence, the mereological requirement also seems to suggest that Spinoza’s immanent cause just is the Burgersdijkian internal emanative cause.

be conceived without the other; and (b) God and all things are proper parts of a greater whole, which is the accidental unity of a substance and its modes (cf. Pasnau 2011: 100-02). 55 For their mereology, see Burgersdijk, IL I.14; and Heereboord, HL I.14. 56 Note that when Spinoza gives examples of parts that form wholes, he mentions the essence and propria of a triangle (KV I.Dial.2§§5-8), but not the intellect and its concepts (assuming KV I.Dial.2§7 is an interpolation, as most editors believe [CW I.77 n. 4]). 57 See e.g., DM 18.3.14 (OEC 101 / Opera Omnia 25.619).

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4. The causa emanativa in Protestant scholasticism The remarks on the immanent cause in the Short Treatise which we have just examined lend strong support to Carraud’s contention that Spinoza’s conception of the immanent cause is not reducible to the Burgersdijkian one, and that in particular he treats the immanent cause as an emanative cause, in contrast to Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s efforts to distinguish the two. But whether this departure should be celebrated as a bold, original move depends on the wider context within which Spinoza made it. Both Carraud and Gueroult before him seem to assume, without argument, that the Burgersdijk’s eightfold division of efficient causality was uncontroversial and representative of ‘the scholastic view’, and so can be used as a benchmark from which to judge Spinoza’s originality.58 However, our analysis of Burgersdijk’s position in the previous chapter should already cast doubt on this assumption. As we saw, the manner in which Burgersdijk distinguishes the immanent cause from the emanative cause represents an original contribution to scholastic thought. Moreover, we have discovered that the very view which Carraud and Gueroult attribute to Spinoza, viz. that all internal efficient causation is by means of emanation, was held within the scholastic tradition, by the prominent Renaissance-era philosopher, Giacomo Zabarella. In this section, I argue that because of Zabarella’s influence, this view was actually prevalent within Protestant scholasticism, the strand of scholasticism that existed in Spinoza’s time and place. Hence, contrary to what Carraud and Gueroult suppose, Spinoza’s departure from the Burgersdijkian scheme should be taken as evidence of Spinoza’s continuity with (a wider swath of) the scholastic tradition. As we saw in the previous chapter, Zabarella repeatedly contrasts emanation with what he considers ‘proper’ efficient causation, which he identifies with the kind discussed by Aristotle in the Physics and elsewhere. A ‘proper’ efficient cause produces an effect “by means of a change” [per transmutationem] in an external patient, which it acts on. All efficient causation involving two distinct things, agent and patient, is of this type, according to Zabarella. Similarly, he reasons, any efficient causation that takes

58 See n. 6 above.

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place solely within the agent must produce its effect “by means of emanation” [per emanationem], whether it be the production of a substance’s propria by its substantial form, or the mental operations of a rational soul. Hence, Zabarella claims that ‘proper’ efficient causation, which is per transmutationem, can be called ‘external’, while ‘improper’ efficient causation, which is per emanationem, can be called ‘internal’. The cause that is properly called efficient produces not an immanent effect, but rather one placed outside, because nothing properly speaking acts in itself, but always in another. On account of this, we say that this [sort of efficient cause] is called external, while the other, which brings about its effect by means of emanation, is called internal.59

This strict identification of internal efficient causation with emanation can be analyzed in terms of the conjunction of two claims, which I’ve called Zabarella’s Doppelsatz: all internal efficient causation is emanative, and all emanative causation is internal. Many of the best-known Protestant scholastics of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Calvinists like Johann Alsted (whose 7-volume Encylopedia was highly regarded) and Lutherans like Christoph Scheibler (‘the Protestant Suarez’) pick up on Zabarella’s language and include a division between so-called ‘emanative’ and ‘transmutative’ causes or between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ causes in their analyses of the modes of efficient causality.60 By contrast, Burgersdijk’s opposition of the emanative cause to the active cause, and his introduction of a division between

59 Efficiens autem proprie dictum non producit effectum immanentem, sed extra positum: quia nihil proprie agit in seipsum, sed semper in aliud, propterea diximus hoc appellari externum: illud vero, quod per emanationem efficit, internum. Zabarella, De propositionibus necessariis, lib. I cap. 10 (in Opera Logica, p. 366A-B). 60 As far as I have been able to tell, Zabarella’s emphasis on the notion that efficient causality can be broken down into these two fundamental modes, and his use of the terms ‘emanatio’ and ‘transmutatio’ (as well as ‘causa interna’ and ‘causa externa’) to refer to them, are quite idiosyncratic. Even Zabarella’s main influences for this distinction, Aquinas and Cajetan, do not use these terms in this fashion. Instead of the phrase ‘per emanationem’, Aquinas and Cajetan use something like, ‘per naturalem resultationem’. And while Aquinas does use the phrase 'per transmutationem', Cajetan speaks instead of ‘per operationem [sive actionem] mediam’.) See Aquinas, ST I.77.6 ad 3; and Cajetan, In ST I.54.3, n. 16 (Opera Omnia 5.49) and I.77.6, n. 8 (Opera Omnia 5.247). Of course, it would be difficult to rule out the possibility that there are other scholastic authors who do mark the distinction using the same terminology as Zabarella. Nevertheless, Zabarella’s widely acknowledged influence on these Protestant scholastic authors still makes it extremely likely that he is their source. This is reinforced by the fact that in their discussions of efficient causality they frequently repeat claims that Zabarella makes, often with attribution. Examples of this follow below.

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‘immanent’ and ‘transeunt’ causes, should be seen as a departure from this more common Zabarellian one, which is followed only by Heereboord and Spinoza in KV I.3. (See Table 2 below.) Among these authors, some accept the identity of emanative causality and internal efficient causality. For example, Jacob Martini’s definition of an emanative cause runs together aspects of internal causation and emanation: An efficient cause per emanationem is that where the agent is not distinct from the patient; rather, the effect follows upon an essence, and the action is always immanent. So, for example, the power of thinking or willing follows upon the essence of a rational soul.61

Others maintain, contra Zabarella, that there is a distinction between internal causation and emanation. However, they do so on the grounds that it is possible for an emanative cause to be external.62 They typically consider the illumination of the air by the sun to be just such an example, since it takes place instantaneously, immediately, and necessarily, without any resistance from the air or effort by the sun.63 Hence, although the sun is clearly an external cause in this case (since the ‘patient’ of illumination was considered to be the air), they regard it as emanative, not transmutative.

61 Per emanationem Efficiens est, in qua agens a patiente non est distinctum: sed effectus ad essentiam consequitur, semperque est actio immanens. Ita ad essentiam animae rationalis consequitur potentia intelligendi et volendi. J. Martini, Disputationes Metaphysicae viginti octo, disp. 9, n. 60 (no pagination). 62 Note that this position is seemingly contra Suárez as well (see chap. 3, n. 49 above). 63 Scheibler explicitly criticizes Zabarella on this score (see Opus metaphysicum, lib. 1 cap. 27 t. 10 a. 1 [p. 292]) and distinguishes the division between emanative and transmutative causes from the division between internal and external efficient causes. Keckermann and Scharff also apparently hold the same view as Scheibler, since they too appeal to the sun’s illumination of air as an example of emanative causality. See Keckermann, Systema logicae maius I.1.15 (in Systema systematum, p. 124); and Scharff, Metaphysica Exemplaris II.8 th. 13 (p. 124). Unfortunately, there is some controversy surrounding the nature of illumination which introduces some doubt. Goclenius (e.g.,) grants that the sun is an emanative cause but not that the air is the patient; he gives an argument from Julius Scaliger to the effect that the sun remains the subject of inherence of all light (Goclenius, Institutiones logicarum de inventione, liber unus, I.4 [p. 55]; cf. Scaliger, Exercitationes VI §2 [p. 10v]). However, Scaliger’s argument is idiosyncratic enough that, since Keckermann and Scharff do not mention it, it is more likely that they hold the more conventional position that light inheres in the air.

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immanens, interna, emanativa, emanativa, transiens externa activa transmutativa64 Spinoza (KV I.3§2) 9 9 Burgersdijk65 9 9 Heereboord66 9 9 Goclenius67 9 Stahl68 9 Scheibler69 9 9 Keckermann70 9 Scharff71 9 Alsted72 9 J. Martini73 9

Table 2. Relevant divisions of the efficient cause in Spinoza and Protestant scholastics74

64 Or: per emanationem, per transmutationem. 65 Burgersdijk, IL I.17 th. 4-8 (pp. 70-71); IM I.26 th. 3-5 (pp. 167-69) 66 Heereboord, HL I.17 qq. 4-9 (pp. 99-104); MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 12-13 (pp. 225-32). 67 Rudolph Goclenius, Sr., Institutiones logicarum de inventione, liber unus, cap. 4 (pp. 50-56). 68 Daniel Stahl, Metaphysica, pars I, cap. XII (pp. 126-27); and Compendium Metaphysicae, F. Tab. VI (p. 10). I have not had the opportunity to consult Stahl’s Institutiones logicae. 69 Christoph Scheibler, Opus metaphysicum, lib. 1 cap. 22 th. 22, 29 (p. 270) and ts. 10 and 12 (pp. 191-94); and Opus logicum, lib. 2 cap. 3 th. 11 and 13 (pp. 236-37, 243-44). 70 Bartholomäus Keckermann, Systema logicae maius I.1.15 (in Systema systematum, p. 124). 71 Johann Scharff, Metaphysica exemplaris lib. II cap. 8 th. 13-14 (pp. 124-25). 72 Johann Heinrich Alsted, Logicae systema harmonicum, lib. 2, cap. 2 (pp. 105-07); Encyclopaedia, vol. 3, lib. 11, cap. 26 (p. 612-13). 73 Jacob Martini, Disputationes Metaphysicae viginti octo, disp. 9, nn. 59-61 (no pagination). 74 These Protestant scholastic authors are the only scholastics from the mid-sixteenth to the mid- seventeenth century that I have found who adopt these divisions in their analysis of efficient causality in their logic and metaphysics textbooks. Other authors I checked who were important in the period or known to Burgersdijk include: Johannes Combach; Fortunatus Crell; Conrad Dieterich; Marc Duncan; Pedro da Fonseca; Augustin Huens; Gilbert Jaccheaus; Johannes Maccovius; Cornelis Martini; Pierre du Moulin; Peter of Spain; Armandus Polanus; Petrus Ramus; Robert Sanderson; Johannes Stier; Francisco Suárez; Clemens Timpler; and Francisco de Toledo. Cf. chap. 3, n. 61 above for a list of titles that include an analysis of efficient causality into its modes.

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Burgersdijk and Heereboord are thus alone in denying both halves of Zabarella’s Doppelsatz. All those (I have been able to find) who appeal to the division between emanative and transmutative causes accept, either tacitly or explicitly, that all internal efficient causes are emanative. (See Table 3 below.) That’s because they all understand the transmutative cause in the same manner that Zabarella does, i.e., in terms of the standard Aristotelian model of efficient causality as that which causes change in another “insofar as it is other”. As a result, they think that transmutative causes are necessarily external. Consider (e.g.,) Bartholomäus Keckermann's description, which has the virtue of making the debt to Zabarella explicit. The transmutative cause is that [efficient cause] which acts with a discernable changing or motion. Aristotle was thinking primarily of this one when he defined an efficient cause in the Physics and elsewhere. For this reason Zabarella says in De medio demonstrationis II.5 and De propositionibus necessariis I.10 that the efficient cause by means of transmutation is the one properly called efficient; and he adds this rule, that the cause properly called efficient, i.e., the transmutative cause, always produces an effect placed outside itself, because it cannot act on itself.75

Versions of the same ‘rule’ governing transmutative causality cited by Keckermann can be found in the analyses of the others (i.e., Alsted, Goclenius, Martini, Scheibler, and Scharff) as well. And since the transmutative and emanative causes form a dichotomous pair, the rule that no transmutative cause can be internal entails that all internal causes are emanative.76

75 Transmutativa est, quae cum notabili transmutatione seu motu agit. Hanc praecipue respexit Aristot. quando causam efficientem definivit in Physicis et alibi; idcirco Zabarel. libr. 2 De med. dem. c. 5 et libr. 1. De prop. necess. c. 10. ait, causam efficientem per transmutationem esse proprie dictum efficiens; et addit hunc Canonem, quod efficiens proprie dictum seu transmutativum semper producat effectum extra positum, quia idem non agat in seipsum. Keckermann, Systema logicae maius I.1.15 (in Systema systematum, p. 124). 76 An exception would be allowed for those cases where an agent acts on itself accidentally, i.e., when it relates to itself 'as other,' as for example in the case of the self-healing doctor. But this would not be considered true or ‘essential’ internal causation.

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All emanative causes are internal All internal causes are emanative Zabarella yes yes Burgersdijk no no Heereboord no no Goclenius yes yes Stahl77 - - Scheibler no yes Keckermann no yes Scharff no yes Alsted yes yes J. Martini yes yes

Table 3. Zabarella and the aforementioned Protestant scholastics on the relation between emanation and internal efficient causation

77 Although he cites Zabarella when discussing the division between internal and external efficient causes, Stahl never mentions emanation and transmutation. As a result, one cannot infer anything about the relation between emanation and internal efficient causation from his account of the distinction.

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Carraud and Gueroult thus miss the dialectical context of Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s analysis of the efficient cause. The dominant view within Protestant scholasticism, thanks to Zabarella’s influence, was that all internal efficient causation is fundamentally the same and is emanative in character. The Burgersdijkian conception of the immanent cause as a mode of internal efficient causation that is not emanative is an attempt to correct this dominant view. Heereboord undoubtedly has his peers in mind, not just Zabarella, when he says (as we saw above), “It is a common error of many philosophers to confuse the immanent and the emanative cause.”78 It might seem as though this dialectical context is removed from Spinoza’s own, especially if one is inclined to see him as mainly interacting engaging with the ‘new philosophy’ of Descartes, Hobbes, and others. However, although most of these Protestant scholastics belong to an earlier generation, their ideas continued to form an essential part of the intellectual atmosphere in the Netherlands in the mid-seventeenth century, especially at Leiden.79 Even those who supported Descartes’ philosophy at this time tended to integrate it into a more scholastic framework. Heereboord, after all, was one of these early supporters; but the same can be said, e.g., of Johannes Clauberg or Johannes de Raey, the latter of whom Spinoza may have interacted with at Leiden.80 Spinoza himself is an erstwhile member of this group, insofar as his Metaphysical Thoughts adopts the form and subject-matter of a Protestant scholastic metaphysics textbook in order to lay out the foundations of Cartesian physics.81 It is therefore entirely plausible that Spinoza could have been acquainted with the views of Protestant scholastic

78 Vulgaris multorum Philosophorum error est, causam immanentem et emanativam confundere. MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23, th. 2 (p. 229). I find it telling that neither Carraud nor Gueroult refer to this passage, even though both are familiar with the disputation in which it is found. Carraud even quotes Heereboord’s explanation of the distinction between immanent and emanative causality that is immediately preceded by this quote (Carraud 2002: 310 n. 2)! 79 Heereboord published a treatise entitled Consilium de ratione studendi philosophiae (reprinted in MP, pp. 27-28) in which he recommends which authors should be read in which areas of philosophy. Other than Goclenius, all the Protestant authors mentioned above are listed for the study of either logic or metaphysics, or both. 80 Cf. Verbeek 1992: 8. 81 Appuhn 1964: 436; Ariew 2014: 166-67; Coppens 2004; and Freudenthal 1887.

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authors besides Burgersdijk and Heereboord, whether by reading some of their works directly, or second-hand, from someone else with whom he interacted personally.82 Seen against this background, Spinoza’s departures from Burgersdijjk and Heereboord on the nature of immanent causation cannot be regarded as a revolutionary, original step beyond the scholastic tradition. To the contrary, the kinds of remarks that Spinoza makes about the immanent cause in the Short Treatise constitute good evidence for a stronger continuity between Spinoza’s view and the scholastic tradition. The equivalence with the internal cause, for example, suggests that Spinoza was familiar with the practice of using this term to refer to an efficient cause whose effect exists within itself (cf. Figure 1 above), as opposed to Burgersdijk’s ‘immanent cause’. And the simultaneity requirement, the superlative freedom requirement, and the mereological requirement all suggest that Spinoza was influenced by the dominant view that all internal, or immanent, causation is emanative in character.83 Why would Spinoza have found this simpler, Zabarellian view more attractive than the Burgersdijkian one? I believe the answer is that it fits better with Spinoza’s rejection of scholastic faculty psychology and his identification of a thing’s power with its very essence. As he says elsewhere in the Short Treatise, “The more essence a thing has, the more it also has of action and the less of passion. For it is certain that the agent acts through what it has, and that the one who is acted on is acted on through what it does not have” (KV II.26§7).” Without the distinction between a thing’s powers and its essence, there is no reason to uphold the Burgersdijkian distinction between emanative and immanent causality. Burgersdijk and Heereboord use it so as to be able to say that the intellect and will, which are faculties, or powers, produce internal effects actively,

82 Spinoza had first-hand knowledge of at least one text: Keckermann's Systema logica majus, of which he owned a copy. Cf. Wolf (1910: 194) who suggests Keckermann's influence may be detected in KV I.3§2. 83 This hypothesis also helps to provide some context to Spinoza’s apparent rejection of the Burgersdijkian opposition between active and emanative causality. Other Protestant scholastic authors, following Zabarella (see chap. 3, sec. 1.1), are willing to attribute an ‘action’ to the emanative cause, even if they might think that it has a lesser ontological status than the ‘true’ action of a transmutative cause. Hence, if Spinoza is saying that every emanative cause is active, and every active cause is emanative, I think it is only the second half of this position that should be seen as radical. This is the same as saying that Spinoza goes beyond the scholastics by regarding all efficient causality as emanative in character.

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while substantial forms, which are part of a thing’s essence, on their own cannot. Hence, by attributing all actions directly to the essences of things, Spinoza would seemingly need to embrace the Zabarellian view that all internal efficient causation is necessarily emanative.

5. The opposition of emanative and formal causality in Protestant scholasticism Carraud, like Gueroult before him, not only supposes that Spinoza’s reduction of the immanent cause to an internal emanative cause marks a radical break from the scholastic tradition. He also regards it as an essential part of a more general reduction of efficient causation to Aristotelian formal causation. As Carraud puts it, “Spinoza assimilât cause émanative et cause immanente, pour pouvoir faire coïncider cause formelle et cause efficiente (non transitive). Ce coup de force théoretique constituait la thèse même du Court Traité, il est amplifié et systématisé dans l'Ethique.”84 As I understand it, his argument is something like the following. Because Spinoza conceives of immanent causation as emanative, it is a necessitating relation that obtains between the essence of a thing and its properties. But in the Aristotelian tradition, the essence of a thing is identified with its form.85 Hence, “reprenant la causalité émanative, [la cause immanente] assume le sens aristotélien de la cause formelle.”86 And since ultimately all efficient causation in Spinoza is grounded in God’s immanent causation (since God is the cause of all things), he thereby succeeds in reducing all efficient causation to merely formal-causal relations. In this section, I argue that it is a mistake to infer that Spinoza’s immanent cause is a formal cause on the grounds that it is an emanative cause. My argument starts out from a kind of historiographical prescription. Spinoza himself makes no effort to

84 Carraud 2002: 311. Gueroult similarly speaks of “la fusion de la cause efficiente et de la cause formelle, du dynamique et du mathématique” in Spinoza (Gueroult 1968: 299). 85 On Aristotle’s well-known definition, the form is “the statement of the essence” (Phys. II.3 194b27; cf. Met. Δ.2 1013a26). In his commentary on this passage, Aquinas for example says that the form “is that through which we know, of any given thing, what it is [quid est]” (In Phys. lib. 2 lec. 5 n. 179). 86 Carraud 2002: 311. Similarly, Gueroult claims, quoting Heereboord, that God’s immanent causation “résulte donc directement de l'absorption de la cause efficiente dans la cause formelle, <> et <>” (Gueroult 1968: 297).

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(re)define the term ‘formal cause’, and in fact seems to have had little use for it (there is only a single instance of him using the term, which we will discuss below). At the same time, the term had a particular meaning in his time and place. We should therefore make every attempt to use the term in a way that would have been recognizable in his own context.87 Given the fundamental continuity between Spinoza’s conception of the immanent cause and the mainstream view found in the Protestant scholastic tradition, it is there, I suggest, that we should look first for guidance in this task. How did they think of the relation between emanation and formal causation? Does the fact that emanation is a kind of necessary following from the essence of thing, which includes its form, mean that it should be called formal causation? Only then could we say that Spinoza’s treatment of all causation as emanative in nature qualifies as a reduction of efficient causation to formal causation.88 Among the Protestant scholastics, emanation is regarded as a mode of causality that is entirely distinct from formal causality. On this score, their understanding of emanation follows Zabarella quite closely (and this goes even for Burgersdijk and Heereboord). Zabarella states explicitly that although the emanative cause lacks some of the features of ‘proper’ efficient causality, it still falls more properly under the genus of efficient causality than under any of the other three Aristotelian causes.89 In keeping with this sentiment, the Protestant scholastics unambiguously place the distinction between emanative and transmutative causes (or in Burgersdijk and Heereboord’s case, the distinction between emanative and active causes) as a subdivision of the efficient cause in their analyses of causation. Carraud and Gueroult seem to assume that because emanation is the sort of causality exercised by substantial forms, it should be categorized as Aristotelian formal causality. But Zabarella and the Protestant scholastics reject this assumption

87 I take it that the proponents of the formal cause interpretation accept this historiographical prescription, because their arguments typically consist in attempting to trace out Spinoza’s philosophical influences, as we will see below. 88 In subsequent sections I will discuss other possible contemporary influences that might support identifying Spinoza’s immanent cause as a formal cause. 89 Zabarella, De motu gravium et levium, lib. I, cap. 11 (in De rebus naturalis libri XXX, p. 224). Burgersdijk repeats this claim at IL I.17, th. 3-4, n. 1 (p. 70). See chap. 3, nn. 22 and 75 above.

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unequivocally. As Zabarella puts it, the only reason one would think that the substantial form is exclusively a formal cause is because one is unaware of the concept of an emanative cause, which is, after all, a mode of efficient (or as he often calls it, “effective”) causality. Some say that the [substantial] form is not an effective cause of the sort we are speaking about at present [viz. per emanationem] but rather is [only] a formal cause. But this is false. The [substantial] form is a certain formal cause of a natural body, yet it is not the formal cause of accidents, but an effective one, just as Aristotle claims about the soul in De Anima II, text 36 [415b20-28]. Nor do I see how anyone of sound mind could say that the form of the composite is also the form of accidents. But the cause of their confusion was that they did not recognize that an efficient cause per emanationem is distinct from a formal cause, at least in reason.90

According to Zabarella, the substantial form exercises two distinct modes of causality. It is the formal cause of the substance itself, but it is the efficient cause of accidents of that substance.91 This same position is taken up by the Protestant scholastics we have examined. As Heereboord, for instance, says, “It is not absurd for the same thing to be both an external cause, namely an efficient cause, and an internal cause, namely a form, with respect to different termini; in this manner, the rational soul is the form of a human being, and the efficient cause of its own operations.”92 The reasoning behind their denial that the substantial form can be the formal cause of accidents is fairly straightforward. It begins from the uncontroversial premise

90 Quod vero aliqui ad se tuendos dicunt formam non esse causam effectricem, de qua in praesentia loquimur, sed potius esse causam formalem, falsum est; quia forma est quidem causa formalis corporis naturalis, at accidntium non est causa formalis, sed effectrix, ut etiam de anima asserit Aristoteles in contex. 36 secundi libri de anima; nec video quomodo aliuqis sanae mentis dicere possit formam compositi esse formam etiam accidentium. Sed his causa deceptionis fuit, quod non cognoverunt efficiens per emanationem ratione saltem distinctum a causa formali. Zabarella, De motu gravium et levium, cap. 12 (in De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, p. 226). 91 In claiming that the substantial form functions as a kind of internal efficient cause, Zabarella belongs to a larger trend in late scholasticism of thinking of substantial forms in these terms, as Pasnau 2004 has shown. I focus on Zabarella here because the Protestant scholastics are clearly indebted to him directly on this question. 92 Non est absurdum, ut eadem res, fit, et causa externa, efficiens, et causa interna, forma, respectu diversorum terminorum; sic anima rationalis est forma hominis, et causa efficiens suarum operationum.]" Heereboord, MP, Philosophia Naturalis, cap. 2 th. 17, com. (p. 20). Cf. Zabarella, De medio Demonstrationis, lib. 2 cap. 5 (in Opera Logica, p. 589B-C).

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(implied by Heereboord’s comment above) that the formal cause is an internal cause. As good Aristotelians, the scholastics reject the Platonic view of form as something transcendent and hold, to the contrary, that it is an essential part of the very thing it in- forms. For example, a material substance such as a tree is fundamentally constituted by the metaphysical union of a certain kind of soul with matter (matter being of course the other kind of internal cause). The soul is a substantial form insofar as it functions as the tree’s intrinsic formal constituent, or formal cause. But precisely because the substantial form is part of the essence of a substance, it cannot be part of the essence of the accidents of the substance.93 The accidents of a substance, after all, are distinct from the essence of a substance by definition. If a substantial form is causally responsible for the substance possessing certain accidents, therefore, it must be as an external cause, not an internal one. From here it is but a short step to the conclusion that the emanative cause is a mode of efficient causality rather than formal causality. As Zabarella says, “Because [the emanative cause] is outside the very essence of its effect, it belongs under the effective cause more than under the formal cause.”94 It might seem odd that this line of reasoning, which is meant to establish that emanation is a mode of efficient causality, hinges on emanation being classified as external rather than internal. If formal causality is supposed to be internal while efficient causality is not, does not the postulation of an ‘internal’ efficient cause (such as a substantial form with respect to the substance’s propria) involve a kind of blurring of the categories of formal and efficient causality, in the manner Carraud suggests? Zabarella however draws a clear distinction between the sense in which a formal cause is an internal cause and the sense in which an emanative cause is an internal cause. He writes, We say that ‘internal’ and ‘external’ are taken in two ways: either with respect to essence, or with respect to place and subject. For if rationality

93 That is why Zabarella says above that “I don’t see how anyone of sound mind could say that the form of the composite is also the form of accidents” (De motu gravium et levium, cap. 12 [in De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, p. 226]). 94 hoc vero non simpliciter dicitur efficiens, sed efficiens per emanationem, et efficiens improprie dictum, et solet appellari forma: simile namque est formae: quia ab effectu nunquam separatur, quum eum in eodem subiecto efficiat, non extra: sed quoniam est extra ipsam effectus essentiam, ideo ad effectricem potius causam redigitur, quam ad formalem, licet formae quoque simile sit, quemadmodum diximus. Zabarella, De propositionibus necessariis, lib. 1 cap. 10 (In Opera Logica, pp. 365F-366A).

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is the effective cause of risibility, it is called internal by reason of place and subject, because it exists in the same [subject] as risibility, but it is called external by reason of essence, since it is outside the essence of the accident. . . . Therefore, every effective cause, whatever it may be, is called external by reason of the essence being considered; but not every one is called external by reason of place and subject, since an internal one could be given, i.e., one existing in the very subject in which the effect exists.95

Among Protestant scholastic authors, the definition of an internal or ‘immanent’ efficient cause as that whose effect is ‘in’ itself matches the sense of being internal ‘by reason of place and subject’. They are all agreed that such a cause remains external ‘by reason of essence’, precisely because it is a species of efficient cause.96 Hence, their postulation of this mode of causality does not blur the boundary between formal and efficient causality, even when it is exercised by a substantial form, because all agree that such a cause remains outside the essence of its effect. Given that Spinoza’s conception of the immanent cause is in line with what the scholastics of his time and place would regard as an internal emanative cause, it does not make sense to draw the conclusion that Spinoza has somehow reduced efficient causality to Aristotelian formal causality. The only way in which Spinoza could be seen by his contemporaries to be genuinely ‘assimilating’ efficient and formal causality with his conception of immanent causation would be if he held that an immanent cause does in fact constitute part of the essence of its effect. Only then could it be an internal cause in

95 dicimus igitur internum , et externum sumi duobus modis: aut secundum essentiam, aut secundum loci, et subiectum: nam si rationale risibiliatatis effectrix causa sit, interna dicitur ratione loci, et subiecti: quia in eodem inest, in quo est risibilitas: at ratione essentiae dicitur externa, quum sit extra accidentis essentiam: iugulator vero respectu iugulati est causa effectrix externa non modo ratione essentiae, sed etiam ratione loci, et subiecti: sic obiectio terrae respectu eclipsis. omnis igiutr causa effectrix, quaecunque illa sit, extrnha dicitur habita ratione essentiae effectus: at loco, et suiecto non omnis dicitur externa, quum detur aliqua interna, id est in eo ipso suiecto existens, in quo inest effectus. Zabarella, De propositionibus necessariis, lib. 1 cap. 10 (In Opera Logica, p. 365C-D). 96 All the Protestant authors that include a division of the efficient cause into ‘internal’ and ‘external’ noted in Fig. 1 above explicitly make Zabarella’s distinction between the two senses of these terms. See Goclenius, Institutiones ogicarum de inventione, liber unus, cap. 4 (pp. 50-51); Scheibler, Opus Metaphysicum I.22 t. 3 a. 2 (pp. 279-80); and Stahl, Metaphysica I.12 (p. 127). Burgersdijk and Heereboord, of course, largely avoid this terminological ambiguity altogether by restricting (with a few exceptions) the terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to the ‘by reason of essence’ sense, and using the terms ‘immanent’ and ‘transeunt’ in place of the ‘by reason of subject’ sense.

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the sense that a formal cause is an internal cause. But Spinoza clearly denies this. Despite the fact that he holds that God is the immanent cause of all things, he insists that God is entirely distinct from the essence of everything that follows from it. This claim, e.g., forms the implicit assumption in the following reductio directed against an alternative conception of essence (or ‘nature’).97 We deny what they make a fundamental principle: that that belongs to the nature of a thing without which the thing can neither exist nor be understood. For we have already proven that without God no thing can either exist or be understood. (KV IIPref§5).

Against this alternative, Spinoza maintains that, as he puts it in the Ethics, “singular things can neither be nor be conceived without God, and nevertheless, God does not pertain to their essence” (E IIp10s G II 94).98 From this claim a seventeenth-century reader would conclude that Spinoza’s God cannot be the formal cause of all things. Likewise, he or she would also regard this as entailed by the claim that God is the immanent cause of all things, or by the claim that all things are caused by God per emanationem, since immanent and emanative causes were understood to be efficient causes, and hence as external ‘by reason of essence’.

6. Spinoza and mathematics We have seen that within Protestant scholasticism, emanation was regarded unequivocally as a species of efficient causality, not formal causality. For them, formal causality is a relation between the essence of a thing and the thing whose essence it is, not a relation between the essence of a thing and its properties. Hence, to the extent that Spinoza’s immanent cause owes something to their notion of an internal emanative cause—as Carraud and Gueroult hold—it is a mistake to refer to it as a formal cause. And more generally, to the extent that Spinoza conceives of all causality as a kind of

97 Spinoza seems to associate this alternative conception with Descartes (cf. DPP Ia2). 98 And neither could it be supposed that immanent causality for Spinoza means that all things are 'in' God in the sense that they constitute part of God's essence (as opposed to God being part of their essence). As he has Theophilus say in the Second Dialogue (apropos of the mereological requirement), “because created things do not have the power to form an attribute, they do not increase God's essence, no matter how closely they are united to him” (KV I.Dial.2§8).

4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation 158 necessary following from an essence, it seems we should regard this as a certain kind of efficient causality, not as ‘formal’ causality. However, there may be others in the period for whom the necessary following of a property of a thing from its essence was in fact regarded as formal causation, not as efficient causation. (Presumably these thinkers would not recognize the emanative cause as something distinct from the formal cause.) In this section and the next I discuss two sources that have been suggested as having an influence on Spinoza’s conception of causality: the scholastic conception of mathematics as a science of formal causes, not efficient causes; and Descartes’s conception of the causa sui. In the first case, I deny the influence, and bring forward an alternative source according to whom mathematics is a science of efficient causes: Thomas Hobbes. In the second case, I accept the influence, but argue that it does not constitute good grounds for referring to Spinoza’s conception of causality as formal-causal. It is clear that Spinoza regarded ‘mathematics’—by which primarily means geometry—as offering a kind of paradigm for scientific knowledge. In the appendix to part I of the Ethics, Spinoza famously claims that humanity’s preoccupation with final causes “would have caused the truth to be hidden from the human race to eternity, if Mathematics, which is concerned not with ends, but only with the essences and properties of figures, had not shown men another standard of truth (G II 79, emphasis added).” There is ample evidence that Spinoza intends to treat the topics of the Ethics (i.e., God, the Mind, etc.) in a manner analogous to the way in which triangles, circles and other figures are treated in geometry. In the Preface to part III (“On the Affects”), Spinoza says, “I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies” (G II 138). And of course the Ethics itself is written in the same ‘geometrical style’ [mos geometricus] as Euclid’s Elements. Within this context, we can see why Spinoza would find the concept of emanative causality attractive. He seems to have regarded the entailment of a property from an essence as precisely the sort of ‘causality’ that is found, and found most clearly, in geometry. As Spinoza says in the passage quoted above: I think I have shown clearly enough that from God's supreme power, or infinite nature, infinitely many things in infinitely many ways, that is, all

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things, have necessarily flowed, or always follow, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles. (E Ip17s)

Some recent commentators have claimed that because Spinoza’s conception of causation takes geometrical entailment as its model, it should be considered ‘formal-causal’.99 Drawing especially on Paolo Mancosu’s work,100 they argue that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, mathematics was still largely conceived in Aristotelian terms as a science based on the knowledge of causes of things; but it was thought (following Aristotle’s suggestion in Posterior Analytics101) that the entities it studies do not have final or efficient causes, but rather only formal and material ones.102 Hence, the argument is that among mathematicians of Spinoza’s day, the kind of necessitation of properties exhibited (e.g.,) in the case of the triangle was regarded as formal causality; and so given that Spinoza models causation in the actual world after this sort of necessitation, we can identify Spinoza’s conception of causality as being ‘formal-causal’ in nature. I am happy to concede that Spinoza thought mathematics exhibited, in a particularly clarifying way, the same sort of emanative causality that he thought obtains in the world and in particularly between God and ‘all things’. The question however is: which (or whose) conception of mathematics was Spinoza operating with? Mancosu’s work reveals that there was in fact considerable debate in the period over the scientific status of mathematics and the sense in which its proofs are causal. Mathematicians and philosophers were well aware that the kind of demonstrations exhibited in Euclid’s Elements were difficult to square with Aristotelian standards of causal proofs, with some going as far as to conclude that mathematics was not a science in the Aristotelian sense at all. And although Viljanen says that “it is simply improbable that Spinoza was not aware of the most significant mathematical debate of his time or the prevalent ways of thinking

99 Hübner 2015: 207-08; and Viljanen 2011: 42-45; cf. Carriero 1991: 63. 100 Mancosu 1992; and Mancosu 1996: chap. 1. 101 See Aristotle, Post. Anal. II.11 94a28-36. 102 Cf. Mancosu 1996: 14.

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about formal causality when he decided to include the triangle analogy in 1p17s,”103 surely the opposite is more likely the case. The way in which Spinoza uncritically holds up mathematics as the standard of certain, causal, knowledge, without any indication that anyone would disagree, strongly suggests, to the contrary that Spinoza was not acquainted with this debate, or, at least, he was not invested in it. It is more likely that Spinoza was at least one degree removed from the debate, being influenced by one particular view of mathematics which took it to be a science in the same way he does. If we are going to compare Spinoza’s conception of causality to views of mathematical entailment in the period, therefore, we cannot simply refer to what may have been the traditional or even the dominant view of the time; we should rather attempt to determine which particular view is closest to Spinoza’s, and see what follows from that in terms of how causality as such can be described. Viljanen and Hübner both point to the English mathematician Isaac Barrow as a contemporary of Spinoza who held that mathematics is a science of formal causes.104 But Barrow makes a poor model for Spinoza. It is highly unlikely that Spinoza would have been acquainted with Barrow’s view on the formal-causal nature of mathematics, since the lecture in which he defends it was not published until after Spinoza’s death.105 In any case, Spinoza would have had little sympathy for Barrow’s position. First of all, Barrow holds, rather idiosyncratically, that any property of a geometrical figure from which other properties of the thing can be deduced can be used as its definition and be considered a formal cause, for the purposes of that particular demonstration.106 This relativistic account of formal causality is surely inimical to Spinoza, who maintains a strict distinction between a thing’s essence (which its definition should express) and its propria, which can be deduced from it. Next, Barrow’s argument that these relations are formal-causal in nature “depends on a form of theological voluntarism,” as Mancosu

103 Viljanen 2011: 44. 104 Hübner 2015: 208 n. 43, 217 n. 68; and Viljanen 2011: 43; cf. Mancosu 1996: 21-22. 105 Barrow’s Lectiones mathematicae were first published in 1683. The seventh lecture, in which Barrow develops his position on causes in mathematics, was originally given in Cambridge in the fall of 1664. See Feingold 1990: 68, 79. 106 Dunlop 2012: 74; and Mancosu 1996: 21-22.

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notes.107 That is, according to Barrow there is no necessary connection between an efficient cause and its effect, because “every Action of an efficient Cause, as well as its consequent Effect, depends upon the Free-Will and Power of Almighty God, who can hinder the Influx and Efficacy of any Cause at his Please.”108 Because mathematics is a science of necessary truths, Barrow reasons that the causal relations it studies must be formal, not efficient. Needless to say, Spinoza would hold this argument by elimination to be specious, since he rejects theological voluntarism as pernicious and maintains that there is as much necessity in the natural world as in mathematics. Moreover, the concept of an emanative cause would have given Spinoza a way of thinking about efficient causality as involving necessitation. A much better model for Spinoza’s conception of mathematics is found in Barrow’s compatriot, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes regards mathematics as embodying the highest standard of science, and endorses the Aristotelian principle that “to know is to know through causes [scire est per causam scire]”109 But Hobbes radically re-conceives mathematics as a dynamical science of efficient causes by combining the Euclidean view that mathematical demonstration is ultimately grounded in definitions with the unprecedented demand that the definitions of geometrical figures must be genetic, i.e., they must express the motions by which the figure is constructed.110 So, for example, he criticizes Euclid’s way of defining a circle in terms of the equality of its radii and defines it instead as that figure which is created, or “described,” by the rotation of a line whose one end is fixed. From a properly genetic definition such as this, Hobbes claims, all the

107 Mancosu 1992: 261; and Mancosu 1996: 22. 108 Barrow, LM, p. 88 / UML, p. 94; quoted in Mancosu 1992: 261; and Mancosu 1996: 22. 109 Examinatio et emendatio mathematicae hodiernae, dialogue 1 (OP IV.42). In this passage Hobbes is dismissive of worries about the conformity of mathematics to Aristotelian standards of demonstration. Cf. Mancosu 1992: 257. 110 As Hobbes writes, “These definitions therefore must contain the efficient cause of his construction. . . . But the cause of his construction . . . consists in motion, or in the concourse of motions. . . . To collect therefore what has been said into a few words; ANALYSIS is ratiocination from the supposed construction or generation of a thing to the efficient cause or coefficient causes of that which is constructed or generated. And SYNTHESIS is ratiocination from the first causes of the construction, continued through all the middle causes till we come to the thing itself which is constructed or generated.” De Corpore III.20.6 (OP I.253-54 / EW I.311-12).

4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation 162 properties of the figure can be deduced.111 Hence, for Hobbes, the way in which the properties of a thing follow from its definition is regarded precisely as a kind of efficient causality. Notably, Hobbes thinks formal causality (which he derides as not really causality at all) does not include this relation, but rather is just the relation between the essence of a thing and the thing itself.112 Spinoza’s conception of mathematics bears a striking resemblance to Hobbes’s, as several commentators have observed.113 In particular, he holds that definitions must be genetic, just as Hobbes proposes. As already noted, Spinoza claims that the definition of a thing should express its essence, not one of its propria. In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, he criticizes Euclid’s definition of a circle on these grounds and gives the exact same genetic definition of a circle that Hobbes offers. He then explicitly identifies the essence with the “proximate cause” of a thing and claims that all the properties of a thing can be deduced from it.114 It seems clear, then, that Spinoza conceives of mathematical entailment as a form of efficient causality, just as Hobbes does. That is, he holds that the dynamical construction of the figure also produces all the properties of that figure. To describe Spinoza’s conception of causality as formal-causal

111 See Examinatio et emendatio mathematicae hodiernae, dialogue 2 (OP IV.64); and De Corpore I.1.5 (OP I.5-6 / EW I.6). On this point I am indebted to Jesseph (2000: 204), who is worth quoting at length: One point to stress here is that the causality of mathematical demonstrations was generally regarded as formal causality, in which the form or essence of a geometrical object (as expressed in its definition) is causally responsible for and explanatory of the properties demonstrated of it. In this respect, Hobbes’s program for mathematics departs from the classical pattern. Hobbes regarded talk of formal causality as part of the empty verbiage of the schools, and his materialistic program for mathematics requires that the definitions of mathematical objects exhibit the kinds of motions by which such objects are produced. Thus, although Hobbes accepts the traditional dictum that ‘all knowledge is knowledge of causes,’ he restricts the concept of causality to that of efficient causality, and even this is understood mechanistically, so that it is only by the motion and impact of material bodies that anything can be caused. It is therefore evident that Hobbes’s concerns with the causality of mathematical demonstration are anchored in Scholastic and early modern debates over the status of the mathematical sciences, but his solution to the problem departs significantly from the tradition. 112 De Corpore II.10.7 (OP I.117 / EW I.131-32). 113 De Dijn 1996: 154-56; A. Garrett 2003: 151ff; A. Garrett 2017; Gueroult 1974: 484-85; Mancosu 1996: 99; and Medina 1985. Based on these similarities, Spinoza must have read Hobbes’s De Corpore (1655) and Examinatio et emendatio mathematicae hodiernae (1660) prior to writing the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect in 1661. 114 TIE 95-96.

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just because he models it after mathematical entailment is therefore to ignore the proper, Hobbesian understanding of mathematics which Spinoza was working with. Indeed, once the influence of Hobbes on Spinoza’s conception of mathematics is taken into account, it is clear why Spinoza would have found the scholastic conception of emanative causality useful. It allows him to make the claim that the same sort of causality that is present in mathematics is also present in God’s production of the universe. Hobbes’s approach to mathematics is motivated by his materialism, according to which bodies are the only things that are real, and motion is the only form of efficient causality. By conceiving of mathematics dynamically, Hobbes can say that it studies real beings, and real causation, albeit in an idealized way. Spinoza can agree with this judgment so far as it goes, but of course his ontology encompasses far more than just bodies, which he considers to be finite modes of just one of God’s infinitely many attributes (viz, extension). Given that he also denies that anything under one attribute can causally affect anything under another attribute, Spinoza’s conception of efficient causality must be more general and (one might say) metaphysical so that it may be applicable not only how bodies are moved but also to, e.g., how the mind (a mode of thought) acquires certain affects, and how God causes the existence of all modes of all attributes. Emanative causality is precisely this more general, metaphysical conception of efficient causality of which geometrical entailment (dynamically construed, in Hobbesian fashion) embodies within a particular ontological domain. I take it that Spinoza finds geometrical examples to be especially illuminating because they make clear the in-principle intelligibility of the causal relation, i.e., that any intellect that understands the essence should be able to deduce the existence of the effects from it. This feature is not emphasized in Protestant scholastics discussions of emanative causality, even if some authors do emphasize that the effect is necessitated by the cause.

7. Spinoza, Descartes, and the causa sui Another likely influence on Spinoza’s understanding of causality is Descartes’s account of the causa sui, the mode of causality by which God’s nature entails his

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existence. As is well-known, Descartes’s claim that God is the cause of himself was met with a great deal of resistance because it went against the conventional view that self- causation (here understood as efficient causation) is metaphysically impossible and that God’s existence, unlike the existence of other actual things, is uncaused. In response, Descartes concedes that God’s existence does not have an efficient cause “in the strict sense”, but he argues that it has a formal cause, since it is explained by God’s own essence (as one perceives in the ontological argument), and not nothing. As Descartes writes, “What derives its existence ‘from itself’ will be taken to derive its existence from itself as a formal cause” (AT VII 238 CSM II 166), adding later, “In taking the whole essence of a thing to be its formal cause in this context, I am simply following the footsteps of Aristotle” (AT VII 242 CSM II 169).115 Now, unlike Descartes’s critics, Spinoza seems to have been impressed with the concept of a causa sui; not only does he rely on it in his main proof for God’s existence (E Ip11d), he also chooses to open the Ethics with its definition (E Ia1). It has been argued by Carraud, and more recently by Karolina Hübner that Spinoza regards the causa sui as paradigmatic for all causal relations, such that causality as such is nothing other than the necessary entailment of a property or effect from an essence.116 Here one might cite Spinoza’s claim that “God must be called the cause of all things in the same sense in which he is called the cause of himself” (E Ip25s). And since Descartes explicitly classifies the causa sui as a formal cause because it is identified with an essence, and even appeals to Aristotle’s discussion in the Posterior Analytics,117 Carraud and Hübner conclude that Spinoza can be said to be operating with a ‘formal-causal’ conception of causality. Without disputing the influence of Descartes’s remarks on the causa sui had on Spinoza, I do not think it warrants applying the label of ‘formal-causal’ to his conception of causality. At most, it warrants categorizing the causa sui in Spinoza as a formal cause.

115 See also Descartes’s remark that “in between ‘efficient cause’ in the strict sense and ‘no cause at all’, there is a third possibility, namely ‘the positive essence of a thing’” (AT VII 239 CSM II 167). 116 Carraud 2002: 312ff; and Hübner 2015: 206-16. Other authors who emphasize the paradigmatic status of the causa sui, but draw different implications from it, include Alquié 1981: 128; Deleuze 1988: 53-54; Deleuze 1990: 164-65; Hegel 2010: 123 (§76); Lærke 2011b: 447; Lærke 2013: 74; and Ong-Van- Cung 2001: 53. 117 AT VII 242 CSM II 169.

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So, Spinoza’s causa immanens (among other things) should still be categorized solely and unequivocally as an efficient cause, even if it is emanative in nature, as Carraud (rightly, as we have seen) supposes. While Descartes may categorize the causa sui as a formal cause, his emphasis throughout his discussion of the concept is on its similarity to an efficient cause. His entire exchange with Arnauld centers around his claim that “we are entitled to think that in a sense God stands in the same relation to himself as an efficient cause to its effect” (AT VII 110, 208, 235 CSM II 80, 146, 164). The explanation for this comparison is simple. Descartes operates with an Avicennian, metaphysical conception of efficient causality as the bestowing of existence on another thing.118 He only denies that the causa sui is an efficient cause “in the strict sense” (e.g., at AT VII 239 CSM II 167; AT VII 243 CSM II 170) because of the assumption that an efficient cause must be distinct from, and ontologically prior to, its effect.119 The causa sui is thus unique among formal causes, and resembles an efficient cause, precisely because it is existence-bestowing.120 Descartes’s reasons for conceding that the causa sui is not an efficient cause ‘in the strict sense’ actually speaks against categorizing God as anything other than the

118 See Avicenna, MH VI.1. This conception of efficient causality was of course shared by Arnauld as well as the majority of scholastics; see Gilson 1958; Gilson 1962; and Richardson 2013. Note that ‘bestowing existence’ here should be understood in a sufficiently broad sense that it can include causing something to begin to exist, conserving it in existence, or causing it to change in any way (as Avicenna says, “as for the natural efficient cause, it does not bestow any existence other than motion in one of the forms of motion” [MH VI.1 (p. 195)]). In Descartes’s case, it includes even causing the existence of possible essences or eternal truths. 119 As Descartes writes, “The same natural light that enables me to perceive that I would have given myself all the perfections of which I have an idea, if I had given myself existence, also enables me to perceive that nothing can give itself existence in the restricted sense usually implied by the proper meaning of the term ‘efficient cause’. For in this sense, what gives itself existence would have to be different from itself in so far as it receives existence; yet to be both the same thing and not the same thing - that is, something different- is a contradiction” (AT VII 240 CSM II 167). Later, he adds, “in admitting that God can in a sense be called ‘the cause of himself’, I have nowhere implied that he can in the same way be called ‘the effect of himself’. For an effect is normally referred principally to its efficient cause and is regarded as being inferior to it, although it is often superior to other causes” (AT VII 242 CSM II 168). 120 This is clear from Descartes’ claim that “the concept of an efficient cause can be extended [to ‘the positive essence of a thing’] in the same way in geometry the concept of the arc of an indefinitely large circle is customarily extended to the concept of a straight line; or the concept of a rectilinear polygon with an indefinite number of sides is extended to that of a circle” (AT VII 239 CSM II 167). The upshot seems to be that only when ‘the positive essence of a thing’ is infinite does formal causality acquire characteristics of efficient causality. Note that Descartes emphasizes the “inexhaustible power of immensity of the divine essence” when explaining how God is the cause of himself (AT VII 235 CSM II 164).

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efficient cause of all things. On Descartes’s scheme, there is no doubt that God’s production of ‘all things’ qualifies as efficient causation in the strict sense, since (a) it is an existence-bestowing relation (b) in which the ‘effects’ are distinct from and ontologically posterior to the cause. These conditions obtain regardless of whether God produces all things by his will, as Descartes himself believes, or by his essence alone, as Spinoza holds. Moreover, they obtain regardless of whether the things produced by God are substances outside of God, or modes in God, since (as Spinoza himself admits) God, as a substance, is “prior in nature” to his modes (E Ip1). Hence, it seems that at most, causa sui should be described as a formal cause in Spinoza (even though he never describes it as such), in which case, we should distinguish between the manner in which God is the cause of his own existence and the manner in which God is the cause of all things, even though for Spinoza, the same thing, God’s essence, is the cause of each. As Descartes puts it, “what derives its existence ‘from another’ will be taken to derive its existence from that thing as an efficient cause, while what derives its existence ‘from itself’ will be taken to derive its existence from itself as a formal cause” (AT VII 238 CSM II 166). Spinoza himself seems to endorse this distinction when he writes that “a thing’s existence follows necessarily either [vel] from its essence or [vel] from a given efficient cause” (E Ip33s1). As for Spinoza’s comment that “God must be called the cause of all things in the same sense in which he is called the cause of himself” (E Ip25s), this passage should be interpreted holistically along with other passages where Spinoza implies there is a relevant distinction between the two. The quotation just given is one such passage. Also relevant are those passages where Spinoza distinguishes between God’s existence and his actions, even though both are necessitated by his essence, e.g., “God alone exists from the necessity of his nature alone … and acts from the necessity of his nature alone” (E Ip17c2; cf. E IVApp[IV] G II 267). Such a distinction is grounded ontologically, since there is an asymmetrical relation between God’s existence and his actions which parallels, and probably even grounds, the asymmetrical relation between substance and

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modes.121 I take it then that Spinoza means that God is the cause of himself and of all things ‘in the same sense’ just insofar as in both cases the ‘effect’ is necessitated by his essence. I suggest that if we are looking for a source of inspiration for this view in Descartes’s remarks on the causa sui, perhaps it can be found, not in his account of formal causality itself, but rather in his claim that “those who follow the sole guidance of the natural light will in this context spontaneously form a concept of cause that is common to both an efficient and a formal cause” (AT VII 238 CSM II 166).122 With that being said, I think a case could be made that even the categorization of the causa sui as a formal cause in Spinoza is suspect, insofar as Spinoza’s Hobbesian, dynamical geometrical conception of essence and definition allows him to press the analogy with the efficient cause even further than Descartes.123 The principal evidence for this view comes from Ep. 60, where Spinoza rejects the Cartesian definition of God on the grounds that “it doesn’t express the efficient cause (for I understand the efficient cause to be both internal and external), [and so] I won’t be able to derive all God’s properties [proprietates] from it” (G IV 271). He then claims that the definition of God given in the Ethics (E Id6) fulfils these conditions. Spinoza seems to be suggesting, in other words, that because God’s essence as an absolutely infinite being not only entails God’s own existence but also the existence of all things (as shown in E Ip16), the definition of God which expresses this essence qualifies as a genetic definition124; and by

121 To be precise: something’s actions presuppose its existence, not the other way around. Or as Spinoza would say: substance can be conceived without its actions, but not vice versa. 122 Cf. Carraud 2002: 282. 123 Cf. Di Poppa 2013: 314-17; and Lærke 2013: 67-70. 124 The scholar most associated with this interpretive claim is Gueroult, who incorporates it into his interpretation of Spinoza’s God as ‘constructed’ out of an infinite number of distinct, single-attribute substances (see, e.g., Gueroult 1968: 133ff.; and Gueroult 1974: 168; for a recent defence of Gueroult’s interpretation, see Smith 2012). However, one need not hold that the attributes are the efficient causes of God, as Gueroult does, in order to maintain that Spinoza’s definition of God is genetic. I prefer Alan Garrett (2003: 175-80)’s interpretation which says that it is God’s absolute infinity as such (not the attributes per se) that is the ‘cause’ expressed in Spinoza’s definition.

4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation 168 the same token, the causa sui should be categorized as an efficient cause.125 In this case, the sense in which God is the cause of himself and the sense in which God is the cause of all things can in both cases be understood as a certain kind of efficient cause. Setting this point aside, it might be objected that the type of divine causation that Spinoza clearly categorizes as ‘efficient’, i.e., God’s production of all things, is nevertheless ‘assimilated’ to the Cartesian conception of formal causation in the following way.126 Descartes regards the essence of a thing as the formal cause of any feature of the thing that is explained by it. That is, Descartes holds the same view of the formal-causal relation that supposedly was used by Aristotelian-influenced mathematicians, and that (we have seen) was rejected by Protestant scholastic metaphysicians. He even cites the canonical passage in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics traditionally used to support this view. And of course, what makes Spinoza’s view of God’s ‘efficient’ causation distinctive is that the things that are ‘efficiently’ caused by God (including you and me) are in fact merely features or “modes” of God himself which God possesses as a necessary consequence of his absolutely infinite nature. Because of

125 Admittedly, the implication that God can be called an internal efficient cause with respect to his own existence is somewhat terminologically idiosyncratic. First, because the ‘effect’ (God’s existence) is identical to the cause (God’s essence), the term ‘internal cause’ must here be taken in a broader sense than just ‘by reason of subject’, and so it cannot be considered equivalent to the Burgersdijkian ‘immanent cause,’ contrary to Spinoza’s remark in KV II.26§10. Second, in E Ip33s1, Spinoza says that “a thing’s existence follows necessarily either [vel] from its essence and definition or [vel] from a given efficient cause, which suggests that self-causation is not efficient causation” (cf. Hübner 2015: 229). Without denying this terminological shift, I think that a satisfactory solution can be given by appealing to Descartes’s conception of efficient causation ‘in the strict sense’, which requires that the effect be distinct from and ontologically posterior to the cause, and hence that any ‘efficient cause’ can be internal only ‘by reason of subject’. When Spinoza apparently excludes efficient causation from the causa sui in E Ip33s1, he has the strict sense in mind, but when he refers to it as an ‘internal efficient cause’ in Ep. 60, he is using the term in a looser sense that drops the condition of alterity. I believe the same thing can be said about whether Spinoza’s God can be called the emanative cause of himself. For the Protestant scholastics, such a concept would be unthinkable because they conceive of efficient causality in the strict sense, of which emanative causality is a species. Moreover, the very notion of ‘emanation’ seems to contain the connotation that the cause ‘pours forth’ its effect, such that the effect is both distinct from and inferior to it. But if we follow Spinoza in Ep. 60 and extend the concept of an efficient cause such that God can be considered causa efficiens sui, then we could certainly consider God to be causa emanativa sui insofar as God’s existence necessarily follows from God’s nature. That said, when Spinoza uses emanative language in E Ip17s, it is clear that he is referring exclusively to the production of modes, not to God’s self-causation. 126 Here I draw on Hübner 2015: 206-08.

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this, God’s efficient causation can in fact be categorized in Cartesian (or perhaps ‘Cartesio-Aristotelian’) terms as formal causation. I find it unlikely, however, that Spinoza was influenced directly by Descartes’s particular opinion on the nature and scope of formal causality; and in the absence of such an influence, I think it is misleading to try to fit Spinoza’s understanding of efficient causality under it. Descartes’s views on formal causality are not expressed especially clearly in his remarks on the causa sui. Someone who read the Fourth Replies and held that the essence of a thing is the formal cause of the thing itself alone (and not of its propria) might not even pick up that Descartes was claiming otherwise.127 Crucially, nothing in his argument for categorizing the causa sui as a formal cause hangs on it. That’s because Descartes maintains the traditional scholastic view of divine simplicity according to which God’s existence is identical with his very essence. Hence, Descartes’s claim that God’s essence is the cause of his own existence does not establish a causal relation between something’s essence and one of its propria (which is distinct from that essence), but rather between the essence and the thing ‘in-formed’ by it.128 By contrast, the conception of the emanative cause in Protestant scholasticism depends crucially on categorizing the relation between the essence of a thing and the propria of that thing as an efficient causal and not formal causal relation. (They would not posit the emanative cause otherwise, only the formal cause.) Given that both the causa emanativa and the causa sui are taken up by Spinoza (the former in how he conceives of the causa

127 There are two passages which seem to suggest that Descartes thinks that the essence of a thing is a formal cause with respect to anything it ‘affects’, both of which are cited by Hübner (2015: 206-07). First, Descartes glosses the term ‘formal cause’ (referring to the causa sui) as “reason derived [petitam] from God's essence” (AT VII 238 CSM II 166, emphasis added); second, Descartes claims, “In taking the whole essence of a thing to be its formal cause in this context, I am simply following the footsteps of Aristotle” (AT VII 242 CSM II 169, emphasis added). Note however that both of these passages can be given a more restricted interpretation. In the first passage, the full gloss actually reads, “formal cause (or reason derived from God's essence, in virtue of which he needs no cause in order to exist or to be preserved).” The added qualification makes clear that he is talking specifically about the causa sui, which is something identical with God’s essence. It does not necessarily support the notion that any reason derived from any essence qualifies as a formal cause. In the second passage, Descartes only says that the ‘whole essence of a thing’ is ‘its formal cause’, which could be read as merely saying that it is the formal cause with respect to the thing itself, not respect to properties of the thing distinct from its essence. 128 In that respect, it is similar to saying that a human being’s essence is the cause of her rationality, and not like saying that fire’s essence is the cause of its proper heat, in scholasticism.

4. Spinoza on Emanation and Immanent Causation 170 immanens), it seems then that the Protestant scholastic view of formal causality is the one that influenced Spinoza, not the one apparently held by Descartes. Furthermore, Spinoza’s ontology can be seen as differing from Descartes’s in a way that blocks the assimilation of all divine causation in Spinoza to formal causation in Descartes. This is particularly clear if we focus on the account of substance, mode, and attribute given in the Principles of Philosophy, which represents Descartes’s best efforts to use the terms in a technical way.129 There Descartes suggests that whether some feature of a substance should be taken to be a mode or an attribute depends on whether it can be gained or lost by the substance. This is why Descartes says that God possesses only attributes, not modes—“since in the case of God, any variation is unintelligible.”130 On Descartes’s ontology, therefore, it is impossible for a substance to possess a mode necessarily.131 Any necessary feature of a substance must therefore be one of its attributes132 or some abstraction therefrom.133 But according to Descartes, there is only a distinction of reason between any two attributes of a substance, or between any attribute and the substance itself.134 Descartes is thus blocked from conceiving of there being a

129 In other passages, Descartes will sometimes use the terms attribute and mode interchangeably. But it is standard practice in Descartes scholarship to give the technical definitions of these terms in the Principles of Philosophy the greatest weight. See Sowaal 2015: 38. 130 He continues, “And even in the case of created things, that which always remains unmodified – for example existence or duration in a thing which exists and endures – should be called not a quality or a mode but an attribute” (AT VIIIa 26 CSM I 211). Cf. Descartes’s famous wax example in Med. II AT VII 30-33 CSM II 20-21. I ignore here Descartes’s definition of a quality, which is under-theorized in Descartes’s writings and is not taken up by Spinoza. 131 This explains why Descartes seems to think that only finite substances endowed with free will (i.e., thinking substances) are capable of self-modification. By contrast, the modes of an extended substance must have external causes. It might be objected that innate ideas in us, such as our idea of God, do not admit of variation and yet are modes of thought on Descartes’s ontology; therefore, Descartes does allow for necessary modes. Given Descartes’s voluntarism about essences, however, I would hesitate to ascribe to Descartes the view that God could not have created, e.g., a human being without the idea of God. But even if this is granted, I think it only shows that Descartes is inconsistent on these matters (cf. Melamed 2017: 91-94). 132 Although Descartes famously holds that a substance must have only one ‘principal’ attribute (i.e., extension or thought), he allows that it may have many other attributes in addition to its principal attribute. He gives the example of “existence or duration in a thing which exists or endures” as one such non- principal attribute. See PP I.53&56 AT VIIIa 25-26 CSM I 210-11. 133 Note that Descartes includes propria in his list of ‘common universals’ (PP I.59) which he considers mere ‘modes of thinking,’ i.e., abstractions. 134 PP I.62 AT VIIIa 30 CSM I 214.

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genuine efficient causal relation between them.135 Given all this, I think it is indeed the case that assimilating Spinoza’s understanding of God’s causation of ‘all things’ to the Cartesian model of formal causality would deprive this relation of any efficient-causal ‘oomph’, reducing it to a merely conceptual relation.136 On Spinoza’s ontology, however, it is possible for a necessary feature of substance to possess its own essence and existence distinct from that of the substance itself. This is precisely how he conceives of modes, in contrast to Descartes.137 In order to capture the causal relation between the essence and modes of the one divine substance, Spinoza thus needs to go beyond the Cartesian model of formal causality. The Protestant scholastics’ notion of an (internal) emanative cause offers him the conceptual resources to conceive of the entailment of a property or effect from an essence as a properly efficient-causal or existence-bestowing relation, i.e., such that the distinctness of the effect from the cause is preserved.

8. Causa adæquata, sive formalis As a final source of evidence in favour of connecting Spinoza’s general conception of causality to the notion of a formal cause, there is Spinoza’s own, isolated, use of the phrase in E Vp31.138 Spinoza writes, “The third kind of knowledge depends on the Mind, as on a formal cause [tanquam a formali causa], insofar as the Mind is eternal.” In the demonstration, Spinoza phrases the claim slightly differently, as “the

135 Modes are the only features of a substance which possess the ontological posteriority and distinctness from substance required for an efficient causal relation (PP I.61 AT VIIIa 30 CSM I 214); see also AT VII 185 CSM II 130; and AT VII 434 CSM II 293), but again, modes according to Descartes cannot be necessary to a substance. 136 See nn. 7 and 8 above. 137 As we saw above, Spinoza insists that the essence of modes is distinct from God’s essence (E IIp10cs). Spinoza also maintains that modes are ontologically inferior to substance (E Ip1). Modes are thus suitable candidates for efficient causation ‘in the strict sense’ by substance, even though they exist in it. 138 Giving a historically informed, systematic account of all of Spinoza’s various uses of the term ‘form’ and its derivatives [forma, formalis, formalitas, formaliter] would be an interesting project in its own right, but it beyond the scope of this chapter. (A good start in this direction is given by Moreau 1994.) As we have seen in the example of the Protestant scholastics, the fact that something is a ‘form’ does not entail that it exercises ‘formal causality’ alone. Hence, even if, e.g., Spinoza seems to associate the term ‘form’ with a thing’s essence in some passages, this in itself does not support the conclusion that essences for Spinoza should be categorized as formal causes, as some (e.g., Viljanen 2011: 42) have supposed.

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Mind, insofar as it is eternal, is the adequate, or formal, cause [causa … adæquata seu formalis] of the third kind of knowledge.”139 It is clear that for Spinoza, an adequate cause produces its effect as something that is entailed by its essence.140 Hence, the phrase “adequate, or formal, cause” seems to suggest that Spinoza himself regards this sort of causal relation as belonging to the domain of Aristotelian formal causality.141 However, Spinoza’s suggestion that adequate causation and formal causation are identical need not be seen as his disclosure of the true pedigree of his conception of causality, as the formal-causal interpretation requires. Rather, based on what we have learned so far, we can see this as Spinoza’s (isolated) attempt to co-opt and explain away some traditional terminology. Spinoza famously does something along these lines with the notion of a final cause in the Preface to part IV of the Ethics, claiming that it is “nothing but a human appetite,” which “is really an efficient cause.” (G II 207). Notably, for Spinoza, as well as for others in the period, an adequate cause (also known as a ‘total’ or an ‘entire’ cause [causa totalis, causa integra]) is understood to be a kind of efficient cause, i.e., one which needs no other causes to bring about its effect.142 Hence, Spinoza’s

139 These two passages contain the only two references to a formal cause in Spinoza’s corpus. 140 According to Spinoza, something is the adequate cause when an effect follows from its nature alone (E IIId2), such that the effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it alone (E IIId1). And of course Spinoza holds as a general axiom that “From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily” (E Ia3). 141 Hübner 2015: 220. 142 In my estimation, the most relevant sources for Spinoza’s concept of an adequate cause are Descartes and Hobbes. That Descartes thinks of the ‘adequate’ or ‘total’ cause as a kind of efficient cause can be seen by comparing the version of his ‘containment principle’ in Med. II (AT VII 40 CSM II 28) with that in the Fifth Replies (AT VII 164 CSM II 116). The fact that he replaces the phrase, ‘efficient and total cause’ with ‘first and adequate cause’ suggests that the term ‘efficient’ is redundant. Also, Descartes refers to God as a total cause with respect to created things, and of course creation is an efficient-causal activity; see AT I 151-52 CSMK 25; and AT IV 314 CSMK 272. Hobbes is slightly different insofar as he thinks that the ‘entire cause’ of an effect is comprised of all its efficient and material causes (De Corpore II.9.3 [EW I.121-22]). Note however that (a) formal causes are excluded from his analysis, and (b) Hobbes gives a mechanistic, non-hylomorphic account of material causes which effectively renders them into a kind of efficient cause, since they are defined in terms of their contribution to the production of the effect. (Hobbes’s reinterpretation of ‘material’ causality prefigures Spinoza’s definition of ‘undergoing’ [pati] as partial or inadequate causation at E IIId2.) As for Spinoza, his claim that anything that is an adequate cause of an effect can be said to act (E IIId2) shows that he thinks of adequate causation as efficient. Acting [agere] is associated with the exercise of efficient causality, both traditionally (where the term ‘agent’ is often used interchangeably with ‘efficient cause’—cf. chaps. 2 and 3 above), and in Spinoza as well, who first claims that God acts (E Ip17) immediately after having established that God is the efficient cause of all things (E Ip16c1). See chap. 5

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phrase ‘adequate, or formal, cause’ could be read as Spinoza similarly reducing the notion of a formal cause to a type of efficient cause.143 It is as if Spinoza is saying that once one does away with substantial forms and the Aristotelian hylomorphism, the only sense one can give to the term ‘formal cause’ is that of an efficient cause which is able to produce its effect by its own nature alone (i.e., an adequate cause). This fits well with the inspiration Spinoza takes from the Hobbesian reconceptualization of geometry as a science of exclusively efficient causes. Hobbes in fact explicitly claims that both the final and formal causes are nothing other than efficient causes.144 This interpretation of what Spinoza is up to in this passage gives us another reason for resisting the categorization of Spinoza’s account of causality under formal causality. If Spinoza wants to explain away one concept by reducing it to some other concept, then it cannot be used to explain that other concept. For example, we would not want to say that Spinoza has a ‘final-causal’ account of appetite on the grounds that Spinoza claims that final causes are ‘nothing but’ appetites.145 Similarly, we shouldn’t say that Spinoza has a ‘formal-causal’ account of causation when it seems that for him, formal causes are ‘nothing but’ adequate efficient causes.

9. Conclusion Spinoza’s account of causality draws on a number of distinct sources. Hobbes’s reconceptualization of geometry as a dynamical science offers him a model for understanding how effects are derived from their efficient causes in a manner that is both necessary and intellectually perspicacious. The Protestant scholastics’ notion of an emanative cause provides him with a fully metaphysical, general version of the mode of

below for a more extended treatment of the relation between acting, adequate causation, and efficient causation in Spinoza, as well as an analysis of Spinoza’s definition of acting and undergoing in E IIId2. 143 Cf. Melamed (2013: 65 n. 22), who suggests something like this strategy, but without discussing Spinoza’s use of the term ‘causa formalis’ specifically. 144 Hobbes writes, “The writers of metaphysics reckon up two other causes besides the efficient and material, namely, the ESSENCE, which some call the formal cause, and the END, or final cause; both which are nevertheless efficient causes” (De Corpore III.20.6 [EW I.311-12]). 145 I am aware that some Spinoza scholars think that there is some form of final causation in Spinoza’s system. All I am saying here is that Spinoza’s claim that final causes are “nothing but” a certain efficient cause cannot possibly be treated as evidence in favour of this view.

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efficient causation present in Hobbesian geometry, so that it can be applied not just to bodies in motion but to God’s causation of all things under all the attributes. And Descartes’s notion of the causa sui allows him to extend this model of causation even to the explanation of God’s own existence. All of these elements are synthesized into Spinoza’s view that all causal relations involve the entailment of the effect from an essence. This general approach to causality results in a conception of immanent causation which differs from that of Burgersdijk and Heereboord in one important respect. Burgersdijk and Heereboord distinguish between immanent causation and the sort of internal emanation by which the substantial form of a thing produces its propria. The kinds of things that they see as true immanent causes, namely the intellect and will, are powers which are distinct from the substantial form of a thing and which are capable of genuine action, not just emanation. Spinoza however rejects the opposition between emanation and ‘true’ action, and that between a thing’s powers and its essence. For him, the essence of a thing is the immediate source of its activity. Hence, for Spinoza there is no distinction between an immanent cause and an internal emanative cause. The action of an immanent cause consists in its production of an internal effect as a necessary consequence of its essence. From this non-Burgersdijkian conception of the immanent cause follows the kinds of properties identified by Spinoza in the Short Treatise—i.e., that it forms a union with its effect; that its effect cannot be separated from it; and that it is the freest cause of all. I have argued that neither Spinoza’s conception of the immanent cause nor his view of causality as such should be identified with Aristotelian formal causality. In my estimation, this label does not accurately represent the lines of influence we have discussed on Spinoza’s thought here, and, by the same token, it gives the false impression that for Spinoza efficient-causal relations are reducible to merely conceptual ones.146 In particular, we must reject Carraud’s suggestion that Spinoza’s immanent cause takes on

146 I thus agree with Hübner 2015 that the choice between interpreting Spinoza’s theory of causation as either a formal-causal ‘conceptualism’ or an efficient-causal ‘mechanism’ is a false dichotomy. I just think that the alternative she convincingly lays out should be categorized as a form of efficient, not formal, causality.

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the Aristotelian sense of a formal cause because it is emanative in character. As we have seen, it was in fact common for Protestant scholastic authors read in Spinoza’s day to present all immanent, or ‘internal’, efficient causation as emanative in nature. They posit this mode of causality precisely in opposition to formal causality. Zabarella provides the rationale for them: because accidents have their own form and existence, their causation by the substantial form must constitute a mode of efficient causality. Since Spinoza’s ontology of modes is similar in that respect to accidents, the fact that they necessarily follow from God’s nature likewise renders God an efficient cause, just as Spinoza himself says (E Ip16c1). More generally, insofar as for Spinoza the relation of entailment from an essence is an existence-bestowing relation, it would have been regarded by others in the period as expressing specifically efficient causality. As I understand him, then, Spinoza does not have any place for formal causality in his ontology, except perhaps in the form of the quasi-efficient causa sui. This is despite the fact that we can acknowledge that essences play a central role in causation for Spinoza, and that there is a kind of historical connection between essences and forms. I take it that the reason for this absence is that his sources in the period understood formal causality in terms of Aristotelian hylomorphism. The Protestant scholastics’ distinction between the emanative cause and the formal cause makes it clear, for example, that a given substance has a ‘formal cause’ only insofar as can be analysed into a substantial form united with matter. Spinoza of course rejects hylomorphism, along with the notion of substantial forms that goes with it, holding instead that substance and modes are metaphysically basic.147 As a result, the only causal relations Spinoza acknowledges in his ontology are efficient-causal ones. The immanent cause is precisely the kind of efficient causality that obtains between a substance and its modes. In this regard, Spinoza is in agreement with Burgersdijk, even if they disagree about whether it is emanative.

147 See Ep. 13 G IV 64; and Ep. 56 G IV 261.

CHAPTER 5. SPINOZA ON ACTION AND IMMANENT CAUSATION

The concepts of action and immanent causation are central to Spinoza’s project in the Ethics. His claim that “God is the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things” (E Ip18) is supposed to articulate how his account of the relation between God and nature differs fundamentally from that of his contemporaries (cf. Ep. 73 G IV 307). Meanwhile, the distinction between acting (or doing) [agere] and undergoing (or being acted on) [pati]1 presented in Ethics IIId2 provides the conceptual foundation for Spinoza’s account of the difference between human bondage and freedom presented in the last two parts of the Ethics. Unfortunately, these two core concepts seem to conflict with each other, thereby threatening the coherence of Spinoza’s project. As I show below, Spinoza seems to be committed to the view that an immanent cause is the sort of cause that undergoes whatever it does. Yet according to the definition of E IIId2, we are said to act when we are the adequate cause [causa adaequata] of something, i.e., when that thing follows from our nature alone and can be understood through our nature alone. But we are said to undergo when we are the partial cause [causa partialis] of something, i.e., when it cannot be understood through our nature alone. Given this definition, it is impossible to do and undergo one and the same thing. The conflict that is generated from these two concepts crystallizes around the question: does God undergo, according to Spinoza? On the one hand, since God is the immanent cause of all things, it would seem that the answer is a resounding yes: in fact, God undergoes everything. On the other hand, since Spinoza holds that everything follows from God’s nature, and God’s nature

1 Throughout this chapter, I use forms of ‘to do’ or ‘to act’ (in the active voice) exclusively as equivalent to the Latin ‘agere’ (and its Dutch equivalents), and forms of ‘to undergo’ or ‘to be acted on’ exclusively as equivalent to the Latin ‘pati’ (and its Dutch equivalents). Unfortunately, in both cases we have to make do with two options rather than one. To translate agere, English requires ‘to do’ when a direct object is involved (‘I do something’) and ‘to act’ when there is no direct object. Likewise, to translate pati, I have opted to use ‘to undergo’ when there is a direct object, and ‘to be acted on [by x]’ whenever an agent ablative is involved; when neither is present, my preference is for ‘to undergo’. Finally, I use the archaic ‘passibility’ to refer to the capacity to undergo [posse pati].

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alone,2 it seems that God must be the adequate cause of all things, and so the answer must be an equally resounding no: God undergoes nothing, because God is not the partial cause of anything. The tension between action and immanent causation has not, to my knowledge, elicited any discussion among Spinoza scholars. I suspect this is because Spinoza’s commitment to the principle that immanent causation implies undergoing has not been sufficiently appreciated.3 There are a few reasons for this. First, the textual evidence for it lies in some out-of-the-way places. I will be drawing mainly on Spinoza’s sources for the concept, Franco Burgersdijk and Adriaan Heereboord,4 as well as Spinoza's own Hebrew Grammar,5 a work mostly ignored by scholars of Spinoza's metaphysics,6 but which is peppered with his metaphysical vocabulary. Second, there seems to be evidence to the contrary in a much more well-known passage in the Ethics: in Spinoza’s famous defence of the claim that God is an extended substance (E Ip15s), Spinoza seems to deny categorically that God is capable of undergoing. One might want to save Spinoza from incoherence by simply rejecting one side of the purported conflict. The most obvious choice would be to deny that immanent causation implies undergoing; then one could hold that God does not undergo anything, even though he is an immanent cause. The other option would be to deny that God is an adequate cause7; in that case, it would be possible to say that God undergoes whatever he is the immanent cause of. However, neither of these exit routes is particularly promising, since (as I show below) there are good textual and philosophical grounds for both theses. I will argue instead that the proper way out of the conflict is by recognizing a distinction

2 E Ip16, E Ip17d. 3 Scholars have instead focussed on the principle that immanent causation implies inherence (or ‘if x is the immanent cause of y, y inheres in x’). See D. Garrett 2002: 157 n. 31; Melamed 2006 / Melamed 2013: 61-66; and Morrison 2015; cf. Peterman 2015: 13. I will argue that this principle is part of the same account of immanent causation that includes immanent causation implies undergoing. 4 See chap. 4, §1 above. 5 Translations of the Hebrew Grammar in this chapter are my own. The English translation by Bloom, which is also found in Shirley, is not reliable for the passages I will be quoting. I can recommend the modern language translations by Askénazi/Askénazi-Gerson and Totaro, both of which come with extensive notes. 6 Exceptions include Gabbey 2008; Melamed 2009: 45-47 / Melamed 2013: 30-32; and Zev Harvey 2002. 7 Thanks to the audience in East Lansing for pressing this point. Cf. Curley 1969: 73.

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in Spinoza between two kinds of undergoing A parallel can be drawn with the term agere (to do/act), which, as some scholars have observed, is used in a technical and a more generic sense in the Ethics.8 Similarly, I argue that in addition to the technical sense of undergoing as being a partial cause of something, there is a more generic sense of undergoing as being the metaphysical subject of an effect. To undergo in this sense is to be the thing that is affected by the action of some cause. The two senses of ‘undergoing’ come together when the subject is acted on by something else. But in immanent causation, the subject is acted on by itself, so it is the adequate cause of what it ‘undergoes’. Thus it can be said that God undergoes all things in one sense (because God is an immanent cause), and, in another sense, that God undergoes nothing (because God is an adequate cause). My argument proceeds as follows. The first three sections set up the conflict by providing evidence that for Spinoza, (1) immanent causation implies acting and undergoing, (2) acting in the technical sense of adequate causation excludes undergoing, and (3) God is the adequate cause of all things, including finite things. I then turn, in §4, to the relevant passage in E Ip15s. I argue that, properly understood, Spinoza does not deny categorically that God undergoes; rather, he denies only that God is acted on by another, and allows that he can be acted on by himself. This establishes that Spinoza is committed to a sense of undergoing that does not imply partial causation. In §5, I then identify this sense of undergoing as being the metaphysical subject of an effect. In §6, I defend the plausibility and necessity of having to posit two senses of the term undergoing in Spinoza. I conclude in §7 by discussing some of the metaphysical implications of Spinoza’s claim that God is capable of undergoing in this sense.

1. Immanent causation implies acting and undergoing We can find two different ways of construing immanent causation in Spinoza’s writings, as well as in his sources for the concept, Burgersdijk and Heereboord. The more prominent one is in terms of the ‘location’ of the effect: an immanent cause is an

8 CW I: 624; Della Rocca 2003b: 205-06; and Schrijvers 1999: 64; cf. Parkinson 1981: 2-3.

5. Spinoza on Action and Immanent Causation 179 efficient cause whose effect is “in” itself.9 This is how Burgersdijk and Heereboord define an immanent cause, for instance;10 likewise, Spinoza relies on this conception for his proof that God is the immanent cause of all things in the Ethics.11 But the other way of construing immanent causation is in terms of the relation between the ‘agent’ (or cause) and the ‘patient’ [patiens] of an action. Here an immanent cause is understood as the sort of cause where the patient undergoing the action is identical to the agent doing it.12 Stated otherwise: the agent does something to itself. Since this sort of relation is typically expressed by using verbs reflexively, as in the sentence, ‘a man guards himself’

9 See n. 3 above. What Spinoza means by the ‘in’-relation is the matter of considerable controversy. The dominant view is that it is akin to inherence, i.e., the relation that an accident has to its substance in Aristotelian-scholastic ontology. Defenders of this view include: Bennett 1991; Carriero 1995; Jarrett 1977; Melamed 2009; Melamed 2012; Melamed 2013; and Viljanen 2009. The most prominent critic of this interpretation is Edwin Curley, who treats the ‘in’-relation as a causal relation (see Curley 1969, chap. 1; Curley 1988: chap. 1; and Curley 1991); others sympathetic to Curley’s critique include Allison 1987; Lærke 2009; Mason 1997; and Renz 2009; and, in a different vein, Schmaltz 1999; Woolhouse 1990; and Woolhouse 1993. See also Della Rocca 2008a; Della Rocca 2008b; and Newlands 2010, who think the ‘in’-relation is reducible to the relation of ‘being conceived through’. This controversy can be set aside for now, but in §5 below I will offer a new argument for the inherence interpretation. 10 The corresponding definition of a transeunt cause is an efficient cause whose effect is outside [extra] itself. See, e.g., Burgersdijk, IL I.17 comm. 6-7 (p. 65) and Heereboord, HL I.17 qq. 7-9 (pp. 102-03). 11 The relevant part of E Ip18d cites E Ip15 (“Whatever is, is in God”), and E Ip16c1 (“God is the efficient cause of all things”). Similarly, in Ep. 73, Spinoza writes, “I maintain that God is, as they say, the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things. That all things are in God and move in God, I affirm, I say, with Paul . . .” (G IV 307). 12 E.g., Heereboord writes, “The immanent cause shares [the following characteristic] with the internal emanative cause, that the agent and the patient are the same [simul], that is, the one producing the effect and the one receiving it are identical [idem in se ipsa]; for example, the intellect forms a concept and receives the formed concept in itself. [… hoc habet causa immanens commune cum causa emanativa interna, non quidem omni, sed aliqua, nempe interna, ut simul fit agens et patiens, id est, producens effectum et recipiens idem in se ipsa. Ex. gr. Intellectus conceptus format et formatos conceptus recipit in se]” (MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23, th. 2&4 [p. 229]). (As we saw in chap. 4, the difference between an immanent cause and an internal emanative cause is that the former produces its effect by means of an action, while the latter does not. Spinoza does not acknowledge this distinction.) The corresponding conception of a transeunt cause would be one where the patient is distinct from the agent. See, e.g., MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23, th. 4 (p. 230).

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(homo se cavet [cf. CGH 20 G I 361]), perhaps we should not find it surprising that this conception of immanent causation appears in Spinoza’s Hebrew Grammar.13 He writes, Infinitive nouns,14 or actions, express an action either as it is related to the agent or as it is related to the patient. For ‘someone’s visiting’ [vistare alicujus] is referred to the agent, and ‘someone’s being visited’ [visitari alicujus] is referred to the patient. […] But because it frequently happens that the agent and the patient [of an action] are one and the same person, […] it was necessary to devise another form of infinitive which would express an action as it is related to the agent, or the immanent cause [ad agentem, sive causam immanentem]. (CGH 12 G I 341-42, emphasis added).

Later, in the chapter dedicated to this particular kind of infinitive, Spinoza writes, We called this the Reflexive Verb, because, as I already said, by it we express that the agent is acted on by itself [agens a se ipso patitur]. (CGH 20 G I 361, emphasis added)

Given then that both ways of construing immanent causation can be found in writings from the same, mature, period of Spinoza’s career,15 they should be taken as parts of the same unified theory, not as genuine alternatives.16 Presumably, the location of a cause’s effect is a function of the identity of the patient it is acting on, and hence that it is because an immanent cause “is acted on by itself” that its effect is “in itself.”17 We can therefore conclude that Spinoza accepts that immanent causation implies acting and undergoing, even though he does not claim this explicitly in the Ethics.

13 The only discussion of this claim in the CGH I am aware of is found in Dunin-Borkowski 1933-36: IV.369. None of the modern language editions of CGH connects the passages I am about to quote to Spinoza’s comments on the immanent cause in his other writings. In addition, these passages are not cited under the entry for causa immanens in Giancotti Boscherini 1970, nor in the entry for causa in Van Bunge et al. 2011 (admittedly, the latter does not aim at being exhaustive). 14 Spinoza holds that all the parts of the Hebrew language, including its verbs, are noun-based (CGH 5), a view which is usually regarded as rather idiosyncratic (see Nadler 1999: 325). 15 Nadler 1999: 322-31. 16 Likewise, the passage from the Short Treatise we will discuss in §3 below (which also uses the agent/patient analysis) cannot be dismissed as an early position he later abandoned. 17 Likewise, because a transeunt cause does not act on itself, its effect lies outside itself.

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2. Acting excludes undergoing In immanent causation, acting and undergoing are correlative: because an immanent cause does and undergoes one and the same thing, it acts just to the extent that it undergoes, and undergoes just to the extent that it acts. However, in the later parts of the Ethics, Spinoza seems to say that acting and undergoing are always inversely proportional, i.e., something undergoes to the extent that it does not act and acts to the extent that it does not undergo. I say that we act [agere] when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate cause, i.e., when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it alone. On the other hand, I say that we undergo [pati] when something happens in us, or something follows from our nature, of which we are but a partial cause. (E IIId2)

This passage is given as a definition at the beginning of part III of the Ethics, and as such it appears to be offering the necessary and sufficient conditions for ‘acting’ and ‘undergoing’. Given these conditions, it would seem impossible for God (or anything) to do and undergo one and the same thing, in the same respect and at the same time. For in such a case, according to the definition, God would be both the adequate and the partial cause of the same thing. And as the preceding definition in the Ethics makes clear, to be the partial cause of something is nothing other than to fail to be the adequate cause of it. I call that cause adequate whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it [potest clare, & distincte per eandem percipi]. But I call it inadequate, or partial, if its effect cannot be understood through it alone [per ipsam solam intelligi nequit]. (E IIId1)

Assuming that ‘to be clearly and distinctly perceived through x’ and ‘to be understood through x alone’ should be taken as equivalent, a contradiction follows from the supposition that God both does and undergoes all things. For then all things both can and cannot be understood through God alone.

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3. God is the adequate cause of all things Perhaps someone might want to find a way out of the contradiction by appealing to the two senses of ‘acting’ that (as mentioned in the introduction) some Spinoza scholars have detected in the Ethics.18 That is, ‘acting’ is sometimes used in the technical sense of adequate causation, as stipulated in E IIId2; but other times the term is used more generically to cover any efficient causation, as for instance when Spinoza refers to a situation where someone “does [agit] something, which cannot be perceived through his essence alone” (E IVp23d). In this latter sense, even a partial cause can be said to act. So, a claim such as ‘God does and undergoes all things’ is not necessarily contradictory because it could be the case that the sense of acting involved in immanent causation is just the more generic sense of efficient causation. The problem with this solution is that it still grants that no adequate cause is capable of undergoing—and this assumption is sufficient to generate a conflict within Spinoza’s system. Since God is the immanent cause of all things, it would follow that God is only a partial cause. But the Ethics gives strong support to the claim that God is the adequate cause of all things. Spinoza’s celebrated rationalism commits him to the absolute intelligibility of all things.19 Hence, if God were only the partial cause of some effect, then there would have to be some other cause of that effect beyond God in order for it to be fully intelligible. But of course Spinoza’s substance monism dictates that there is nothing outside of God. Thus, absolutely everything must be understood through God’s nature alone.20 Here someone might raise the following objection: in order for it to be possible for God to be the partial cause of something, there would not have to be something outside of God; God’s modes (which are in God) could contribute to the understanding of the thing. On this imagined scenario, Spinoza holds what is in effect a version of the

18 See n. 8 above. 19 The demand that everything be fully intelligible can be regarded as an application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. For works that discuss Spinoza's commitment to this principle, see Della Rocca 2003a; Della Rocca 2008b; Lin 2007; Lin 2012; and Lin 2017. 20 See E Ip17d, where Spinoza claims that all things follow “from the necessity of the divine nature alone”. Spinoza also alludes to God’s adequate causation at E IIIp1d.

5. Spinoza on Action and Immanent Causation 183 traditional doctrine of divine concurrence. In opposition to the occasionalist, who believes that God alone is responsible for all causation, the concurrentist holds that created things are themselves causally efficacious and that God only supports, or concurs with, their actions.21 Hence, if we adapt the concurrentist model to Spinoza’s substance monism, perhaps God could be considered a partial cause insofar as modes are themselves causally efficacious.22 I reply that, properly understood, Spinoza’s version of substance monism excludes the possibility that God concurs with modes in this fashion. Such a theory would require distinguishing the causal power of modes from God’s own power, and apportioning actions, or bits of those actions, to these respective powers.23 Yet Spinoza’s substance monism runs in the opposite direction of identifying the power of modes with God’s power, so that any action a mode performs is ipso facto God’s action.24 As Spinoza says in an instructive passage in the TTP: For all things are made through the power of God. Indeed, because the power of Nature is nothing other than God’s power itself [Naturæ potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia], it is certain that we fail to understand God’s power to the extent that we are ignorant of natural causes. So it is foolish to fall back on God’s power whenever it is the natural cause of some thing, i.e., God’s power itself, that we are ignorant of. (TTP I.23/44 G III 28)

21 For more on concurrentism and occasionalism, see Freddoso 1988; Freddoso 1991; and Freddoso 1994. For our purposes, it is not necessary to distinguish between what Freddoso calls ‘mere conservationism’ and ‘concurrentism’ since they both accept the causal efficacy of created things. 22 Curley (1969: 73) seems to have something like this in mind when he writes, “God is the principal (or in the terminology of the Ethics, the adequate) cause of the infinite modes. But of the finite modes, he is a subsidiary (or partial) cause—at least, in so far as he is infinite. In the realm of the finite, other finite modes are also required as subsidiary causes.” See also Clatterbaugh 1999: 136-39; and T. Robinson 2007: chap. 5. 23 Notice that the occasionalist is in the same business; it’s just that the occasionalist apportions all actions to God, leaving created things with nothing (save perhaps their acts of will). For this reason, I think we can reject that Spinoza is an occasionalist as well. For some further reasons to dissociate Spinoza from occasionalism, see Della Rocca 2012; and Melamed 2013: 130-32. 24 This identification of all power as God's power (and all actions as God's actions) should not be seen as contrary to the distinction between substance and modes in Spinoza's system. Because the distinction is only a modal one, there is also a real identity between them. It is this real identity that guarantees that the causal power of any mode is attributable to the substance itself. (This is roughly comparable to a pluralistic substance metaphysics where, e.g., Socrates is a substance and Socrates’s weight is a mode. If Socrates’s weight causes the floorboard to bend, then Socrates causes the floorboard to bend.) Conversely, in order for the concurrentist solution to work, modes and God would have to be really distinct, not just modally distinct.

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Spinoza also seems to indicate in this passage that God does not contribute anything to the production of some natural phenomenon over and above what its natural causes contribute. Take away the natural causes, and you take away God’s causal efficacy. The same point seems to be implied in the Ethics as well. Spinoza gives the following explanation of God’s causal efficacy over finite things: Whatever has been determined to exist and produce an effect has been so determined by God. But what is finite and has a determinate existence could not have been produced by the absolute nature of an attribute of God; for whatever follows from the absolute nature of an attribute of God is eternal and infinite…. It had, therefore, to follow from, or to be determined to exist and produce an effect by God or an attribute of God insofar as it is modified by a modification that is finite and has a determinate existence. (E Ip28d G II 69)

Although this passage is sometimes taken as evidence of concurrentism,25 what Spinoza says is rather that God is the efficient cause of a finite thing a insofar as, and only insofar as, some finite thing b determines a to exist and produce an effect. God’s action in producing some finite mode is thus not supplemented by the action of some other finite mode; rather, it is identical to the action of some other finite mode.26 Spinoza thus rejects the concurrentist’s distinction between a primary cause (i.e., God) and so-called secondary causes (i.e., finite natural things). Without such a distinction, it is impossible for God’s power and the power of a mode to ‘add up’ to causal adequacy on the assumption that each is the partial cause of one and the same effect. Since Spinoza identifies the “power of nature” as God’s own power, which he attributes to God’s essence (E Ip36), it follows that God’s essence, by itself, must be the adequate cause of all things in order for Spinoza’s rationalism to hold. Given Spinoza’s account of acting and undergoing in E IIId2, then, it is impossible for God to undergo anything. But the claim that God is the immanent cause of all things implies that God undergoes everything. So the conflict between the concepts of action and immanent causation remains.

25 E.g., Clatterbaugh 1999: 137. 26 Cf. Marshall 2014: 177.

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4. Immanent causation and divine undergoing It seems clear enough, then, that for Spinoza, God is both the adequate and the immanent cause of all things. That leaves us with only two ways to understand Spinoza’s project as coherent. On the one hand, one could decide that because God is not the partial cause of anything, it is impossible that immanent causation implies undergoing. The evidence adduced earlier from Burgersdijk and Heereboord and the Hebrew Grammar will simply have to be dismissed, and another account of immanent causation will have to be supplied. On the other hand, one could posit a distinction between the sort of undergoing excluded by adequate causation and the sort of undergoing implied by immanent causation. That way, God can be said to undergo all things even though he is not the partial cause of anything. The first option seems to derive support from an argument that Spinoza gives in the scholium to E Ip15, in which he appears to deny categorically that God is capable of undergoing. However, in this section, I argue that, properly understood, Spinoza’s argument actually relies on the very distinction between two ways of undergoing that the second option demands. According to Spinoza in E Ip15s, philosophers have withheld the attribute of (in their words) ‘corporeality’ or (in Spinoza’s words) extension from God on the basis of two arguments, which I will call the Divisibility Objection and the Passibility Objection. The Divisibility Objection is based on the incompatibility between being infinite (which God is) and being divisible into parts (which they suppose corporeal substance is).27 The

27 As Spinoza says, “they think that corporeal substance, insofar as it is substance, consists of parts. And therefore they deny that it can be infinite, and consequently, that it can pertain to God” (E Ip15s G II 57). Throughout E Ip15s, Spinoza treats being divisible as equivalent to consisting of parts. He does not give an argument for this position.

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Passibility Objection concerns the incompatiblity between God’s nature as the supremely perfect being, and the purported imperfection of corporeal substance.28 Spinoza writes, Their second argument is also drawn from God’s supreme perfection. For God, they say, since he is a supremely perfect being, cannot be acted on [pati non potest]. But corporeal substance, since it is divisible, can be acted on [pati potest]. It follows, therefore, that it does not pertain to God’s essence. (E Ip15s G II 58)

Crucially, it is passibility, the capacity to undergo, that is identified as the imperfection that corporeal substance possesses, while the divisibility of corporeal substance is given as the reason why corporeal substance must possess it. The bulk of Spinoza’s lengthy response to these objections in E Ip15s (G II 58- 60) is dedicated to disabusing his readers of the assumption that corporeal substance is divisible. At the very end of his response, however, he tacks on an additional argument directed at just the Passibility Objection. And with this I think I have replied to the second argument also, since it too is based on the supposition that [id in eo etiam fundatur, quod] matter, insofar as it is substance, is divisible and composed of parts. And even though this is not [the case] [quamvis hoc non esset],29 I do not know why [extended substance] would be unworthy of the divine nature, since (by Ip14) outside God no substance can be given by which it would be acted on [a qua ipsa pateretur]. All things, I say, are in God, and all things that happen, happen only through the laws of God’s infinite nature and follow (as I will now show [Ip16]) from the necessity of his essence. So it cannot be said in any way that God is acted on by another [ab alio pati], or that extended substance is unworthy of the divine nature, even if it is supposed to be divisible, so long as it is granted to be eternal and infinite. (E Ip15s G II 60)

28 The Passibility Objection is usually thought to be taken from Descartes, specifically PP I.23 AT VIIIa 13-14 CSM II 200; see, e.g., CW I.422 n. 40; Joachim 1901: 67-68; L. Robinson 1928: 130; and T. Robinson 2009: 65-66. Certainly, it is characteristically Cartesian to conceive of God as a supremely perfect being. While Spinoza agrees that God is a supremely perfect being (see, e.g., E Ip33s2), he denies that God should be defined as such (see Ep. 60 G IV 271). 29 The meaning of the phrase quamvis hoc non esset is ambiguous because quamvis can mean either ‘even though’ (or although), or as ‘even if’. Among English translators, Curley, Eliot, and White take quamvis as ‘even if,’ while Elwes, Shirley, and Willis take it as ‘although’. (Unfortunately the latter group all translate the entire phrase as “although this were not,” which by now is archaic and confusing.) I believe the ‘although’ interpretation is preferable, because then the hoc clearly refers back to the supposition mentioned in the previous sentence (and introduced in a similar fashion with eo) that matter qua substance is divisible. By contrast, if quamvis is taken as ‘even if,’ then it is unclear what the hoc refers back to, i.e., what factual state of affairs Spinoza would be setting aside for the sake of argument.

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In this passage, Spinoza is evidently engaged in per impossibile reasoning: he grants for the sake of argument that corporeal substance is divisible and argues that it is not “unworthy” of God’s nature nonetheless. But what part of the Passibility Objection does he take issue with? A very natural way to read Spinoza’s reply to the Passibility Objection is as if he were resisting the inference from the presumed divisibility of corporeal substance to its passibility. Since Spinoza’s doctrine of substance monism (E Ip14) provides the grounds for his reply, his argument on such an interpretation is that since there is only one substance, it is impossible for this substance to be acted on, regardless of whether it is corporeal or divisible.30 Because it is passibility, not divisibility as such, that is supposed to be unworthy of the divine nature, this move is sufficient to block the conclusion that corporeality or extension cannot be an attribute of God. Clearly, Spinoza cannot accept that immanent causation implies undergoing if this interpretation of Spinoza’s reply to the Passibility Objection is correct. If Spinoza is asserting that substance monism rules out the possibility of substance undergoing anything, then he must maintain that something can be acted on only if there exists some other thing that can act on it. This assumption of course would entail that it is metaphysically impossible for the one, divine, substance to be acted on by itself. Moreover, on this interpretation, Spinoza accepts that God’s perfection entails that God cannot be said to undergo anything, so some other interpretation of God’s immanent causation must be given. By the same token, this interpretation of Spinoza’s reply makes his use of ‘undergoing’ consistent with the definition of undergoing as partial causation in E IIId2. If undergoing requires the action of an external thing, then what happens cannot be understood through the nature of the ‘patient’ alone. Hence, if this reading is correct, Spinoza’s reply to the Passibility Objection supports the contrary hypothesis that the only sense of ‘undergoing’ in the Ethics is that defined at E IIId2.

30 This way of reading the reply is reflected in how certain English translators render the first part of the last sentence of the passage. E.g., White (p. 18) has, “Therefore in no way whatever can it be asserted that God suffers from anything”; and Willis (p. 429) has, “With no semblance of reason, therefore, may it be shown that God can be affected, influenced, or made to suffer by anything.” Cf. Heunemann 2004: 32, whose interpretation runs along similar lines.

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There is another way to interpret Spinoza’s Reply to the Passibility Objection, however. To reject that corporeal substance is unworthy of the divine nature, Spinoza could allow that corporeal substance is in some sense capable of undergoing if he were to deny that passibility as such constitutes an imperfection. Prima facie, it is more plausible to read Spinoza as adopting this strategy. Presumably the reason one would have for supposing that the divisibility of corporeal substance entails its passibility is that being actually divided is something that a divisible thing would have to undergo. So understood, the inference seems difficult to deny. As a result, it is unclear how Spinoza could genuinely grant that corporeal substance is divisible if he is arguing, in effect, that (given substance monism) corporeal substance cannot undergo division.31 In order for his argument to succeed as a piece of per impossibile reasoning, therefore, it makes more sense to understand Spinoza as granting that corporeal substance is not only divisible but capable of undergoing as well.32 In that case, his appeal to substance monism is intended to explain why the manner in which corporeal substance would be capable of undergoing if it were divisible is not unworthy of the divine nature. The passage itself offers a few textual clues that point towards this alternative interpretation, as we will see in a moment. But the strongest evidence in its favor comes from the ‘draft’ version of Spinoza’s reply found in the Short Treatise. In KV I.2, Spinoza raises the Divisibility Objection and the Passibility Objection in much the same form as in the Ethics.33 This is what he says in reply to the Passibility Objection: [W]e have already said, and will say again, that outside God there is nothing, and that he is an immanent cause [inblyvende oorzaak]. But being acted on, when the agent and the one acted on are different, is a palpable imperfection. For the one acted on must necessarily depend on

31 The oddity here is no different in Latin: how can corporeal substance be considered divisibile if pati divisionem non potest? 32 Pace Huenemann, I do not think Spinoza can admit that God has “the mere potentiality of being acted on” when “necessarily there is no being other than God to act upon him,” if one assumes (as Huenemann appears to do) that there is no other way for God to be acted on (Huenemann 2004: 32). 33 KV I.2§18. Note that this version of the Passibility Objection contains the line, "when extension is divided, it is acted on [als de uytgebreidheid word gedeelt zoo isse lydende]" (G I 24, emphasis added), which supports my point above about how to understand the inference from divisibility to passibility.

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what, outside him, has produced this state of being acted on. In God, who is perfect, this cannot happen. Further, one can never say of such an agent, which acts in himself, that he has the imperfection of being acted on, because he is not acted on by another; similarly, the intellect, as the Philosophers also say, is a cause of its concepts. But since it is an immanent cause, who would dare say that it is imperfect when it is acted on by itself [van zig zelven lyd34]? Finally, substance, because it is the principle of all its modes, can with much greater right be called an agent, rather than one acted on. (KV I.2§§23-25)

In this passage, Spinoza clearly argues against the supposition that undergoing as such is an imperfection. As Spinoza sees it, the genuine imperfection at issue is dependence on another. He distinguishes between the sort of undergoing that involves such dependence, and the sort of undergoing that does not. He explicitly equates the latter with being an immanent cause. As long as undergoing does not imply dependence on another, it does not involve any imperfection;35 and hence there is no problem attributing the capacity to undergo to a supremely perfect being. The Ethics version of Spinoza’s reply is not as explicit as the Short Treatise version, but the same distinction between two kinds of undergoing can be detected. Compare his reply to his original description of the Passibility Objection in the Ethics: For God, they say, since he is a supremely perfect being, cannot be acted on. (Ip15s G II 58).

[O]utside God no substance can be given by which it would be acted on…. So it cannot be said in any way that God is acted on by another [ab alio]. (Ip15s G II 60, emphasis added)

Seen in the light of its parallel in the Short Treatise, Spinoza’s insertion of the phrase ab alio signals that he regards only the kind of undergoing that involves dependence on another as being unworthy of the divine nature. It is only this kind of undergoing, not

34 In the Latin original, the phrase would have been “a se ipse patiatur,” as Van Vloten (p. 32-34) has it. 35 It might be objected that it is possible to become less perfect by being acted on by oneself, as for example when someone deliberately injures himself. But Spinoza would say that in such cases, the supposed ‘agent’ is necessarily under the sway of destructive external forces (cf. E IVp20s); hence, they are not genuine cases of immanent causation, because they do in fact involve dependence on another.

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undergoing as such, that the doctrine of substance monism rules out. In essence, what Spinoza is saying is that it does not matter whether corporeal substance is divisible, because the only way it could undergo division would be by causing itself to be divided.36 Since undergoing in this fashion is not an imperfection (because it does not involve dependence on another), the Passibility Objection can be set aside.37 So understood, Spinoza’s reply to the Passibility Objection has very different implications for understanding the relation between action and immanent causation. Spinoza does not accept that all undergoing involves dependence on another, nor, consequently, does he hold that undergoing as such is unworthy of the divine nature. Instead, he admits that God is capable of undergoing, provided that he is acted on by himself. Given that Spinoza also thinks that God cannot be the partial cause of anything, this admission should be regarded as strong evidence that Spinoza is working not only with the sense of undergoing as partial causation as stipulated in E IIId2, but with another sense of the term as well. I will call this the ‘generic’ sense of undergoing (or being acted on) because it is possible in this sense of the term to be acted on by oneself or by another. To be an immanent cause is just to be acted on by oneself in the generic sense, as the Short Treatise version of Spinoza’s reply makes clear.

5. Undergoing in the generic sense Of course, in order for the apparent tension between Spinoza’s concepts of action and immanent causation to be given a satisfactory resolution, we need to be able to say what it means for something to ‘undergo’ in the generic sense. Only then will we know what is being attributed to God in virtue of his being the immanent cause of all things,

36 One could think of Spinoza’s denial of the possibility of a vacuum in his reply to the Divisibility Objection as making a similar point: no foreign element can alter the character of extension (in this case, by ‘puncturing’ it). Thanks to Charlie Huenemann for this suggestion. 37 I take it that in his reply Spinoza has something like the following in mind. If his opponents cannot accept that extended substance is indivisible, they must be confusing the modes of extension for parts out of which extended substance is composed. But as long as they can be convinced that there is only one, infinite, substance, this error is relatively benign, because then what they describe as corporeal substance ‘undergoing division’ is really just the articulation of extended substance into its modes. This articulation is something that the substance (i.e., God) undergoes, since God is the immanent cause of all things. Hence, Spinoza thinks that his opponents are not entirely wrong to attribute passibility to corporeal substance, even though their reasons for doing so are confused.

5. Spinoza on Action and Immanent Causation 191 and how this relates to God’s being the adequate cause of all things as well. In this section I argue that to undergo in the generic sense of the term for Spinoza is just to be the metaphysical subject, or recipient, of an effect.38 As I will show, Spinoza could have counted on his readers’ familiarity with this conception of undergoing, since it was widely shared in the seventeenth century. I draw on the scholastic roots of this conception of undergoing in order to elucidate what it means to be a ‘subject’ in the metaphysical sense. With this conception of undergoing in hand, I explain how we should understand the relation between God’s immanent causation and God’s adequate causation (i.e., God’s action in the technical sense). Some understanding of the generic sense of undergoing can be gleaned from Spinoza’s examples of immanent causes in the Hebrew Grammar. Spinoza writes, We will call this the reflexive verb [Verbum Reciprocum], because, as we have already said, by it we express that the agent is acted on by itself, or rather, because the case after the verb refers to the same thing as the nominative, as when it is said that a man sees himself [homo se visitat], refreshes himself [recreat], that he guards himself [sibi cavet], etc. (CGH 20 G I 361)

Spinoza’s examples indicate that immanent causation (i.e., being acted on by oneself) involves (a) something performing an action and (b) that same thing being what is affected by that action. For instance, someone who “refreshes himself” is refreshed as a result of his own act of refreshing. In short, an immanent cause is an agent that does something to itself. (This explains why Spinoza thinks that an immanent cause is expressed by reflexive verbs.) We can see then what undergoing in the generic sense contributes to the concept of an immanent cause. While ‘acting’ covers the doing of an action, ‘undergoing’ covers the being affected by the action. In other words, to be a ‘patient’ or to undergo is to be configured in a certain way as a result of the action of some agent. In this sense of the term, something can be said to be acted on ‘by itself’ or ‘by another,’ depending on whether the action is performed by itself or by something else. This use of the terms ‘acting’ and ‘undergoing’ contrasts with Spinoza’s technical

38 I refer to this concept of subjecthood as ‘metaphysical’ in order to distinguish it from the logical or grammatical concept of a subject of predicates.

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definition of these terms in E IIId2 insofar as here only ‘acting’ is understood in terms of being the efficient cause of some effect (i.e., whatever results from its action). ‘Undergoing’ is rather a matter of receiving such an effect, which is to say, of being its subject. I take it that this generic sense of undergoing has its roots in scholasticism, where all normal efficient causation (i.e., excluding God’s supernatural act of creation ex nihilo) was thought to consist in the production of an effect in a subject.39 In so-called ‘substantial’ change, the patient is some matter which receives a substantial form and thereby forms a new substance, as when sperm and ovum take on a rational soul to become a human being. In ‘accidental’ change, the patient is a substance which acquires a new accident, such as when fire causes wood to become hot.40 And while the patient depends causally on the agent for its configuration (in both kinds of cases), it is also true that the agent is so able to act only because the patient has the relevant capacity to undergo. (Fire can burn only flammable things, for example.) On this view, only God has the ability to produce effects without needing a pre-existing subject to receive them. The Aristotelian-scholastic model of efficient causation was very common in Spinoza’s seventeenth-century context. It is certainly what Burgersdijk and Heereboord have in mind when they say that an immanent cause is acted on by itself.41 For them, immanent causation is just a special kind of accidental change, i.e., where the substance acquiring the accident is also the agent producing it, such as when someone thinks a thought.42 The same conception can also be found among non-scholastic authors of the period. For example, in The Passions of the Soul, Descartes refers to the patient as “the

39 For more on the scholastic conception of acting and undergoing and its relevance to early modern philosophy, see Des Chene 1996: 40-51; and James 1997: part I. 40 Even so-called ‘corrupting’ changes were thought to conform to this model, inasmuch as the loss of any form by the patient was thought to coincide with some form being gained. For example, heating can actually be classified as a corrupting change because it results in the destruction of the contrary form of ‘coldness’. Similarly, any destruction of a substance coincides with the resurgence of latent substantial forms in its matter or parts. 41 See Burgersdijk, IL I.8 (pp. 34-35); Heereboord, HL I.8 (pp. 57-58). Note their definition of undergoing as “the receiving of an agent’s effect” and their regular use of the phrase, patiens sive subjectum. 42 They do not think it is possible for something to cause itself to undergo substantial change. The reason for this difference is essentially that a substance is ontologically prior to its accidents, but it is not ontologically prior to itself.

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subject to which [something] happens” and to the agent as “that which makes it happen.”43 Similarly, in De Corpore, Hobbes defines acting and undergoing as follows. A body is said to act upon that body in which it generates or destroys some accident, while it is said to be acted on by that which causes some accident to be generated or destroyed in it. For example, a body that causes motion in another body by pushing it is called an agent, while that in which the motion is generated by the push is called the patient; or fire, which warms a hand, is called the agent, while the hand, which is warmed, is called the patient. The accident that is generated in the patient is called the effect.44

The examples of Descartes and Hobbes show that it was possible to make use of these notions of acting and undergoing without committing to substantial forms or other pieces of the Aristotelian-scholastic ontology wholesale.45 Spinoza of course goes so far as to reject the scholastics’ basic assumption that there are multiple substances in the universe which causally interact with one another. Nevertheless, the generic conception of undergoing is still relevant for him insofar as he accepts that there are causal interactions within the one, infinite substance, both from the substance itself to the modes of that substance as well as from one mode to another. Spinoza’s infrequent uses of the term ‘subject’ [subjectum] bear this out. The most important example is found in Spinoza’s distinction between two kinds of change in CM II.4, which parallels the scholastic distinction between accidental and substantial change.46 As Spinoza writes, the term ‘change’ [mutatio] can refer either to “whatever variation there can be in some subject while the very essence of the subject remains intact,” or to the “transformation of the subject” itself (G I 255, emphasis added). The same distinction is also found in the Ethics,47 where Spinoza often uses the phrase ‘to

43 AT XI 328 CSM I 328. 44 De Corpore II.9.1 (OP I.106-07), my translation (cf. EW I.120). 45 See James 1997: chap. 4. 46 Another example is Spinoza's claim that two contrary things cannot exist “in the same subject” (E IIIp5&d; E Va1; Ep. 23 G IV 151). Spinoza’s use of this proposition and axiom makes clear that singular things can be considered subjects, even though they are not substances. Cf. D. Garrett 2002: 139. 47 For instance, in the Physical Digression after E IIp13s, Spinoza explains “how a composite Individual can be affected in many ways, and still preserve its nature” (G II 101), which corresponds to the first kind of change. For the second sort of change, see, e.g., the definition of bodily death and the story of the Spanish Poet in E IVp39s. For more on these passages, see Matson 1977.

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undergo change [pati mutationem]’ in reference to the first kind of change.48 This supports the notion that Spinoza not only is committed to the metaphysical concept of a subject, but also conceives of undergoing (in the generic sense) in terms of that concept. More importantly, this conception of undergoing explains why an immanent cause can be described equally well in terms of its having its effects in itself (as in Ep. 73 and E Ip18) or in terms of it being acted on by itself (as in KV I.2§24 and CGH 20). Either way, what is being expressed is the fact that an immanent cause is the metaphysical subject of the very thing of which it is the cause. Hence, Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent cause of all things implies that God is the subject of all things. Certain recent commentators are thus correct to see this claim as lending strong support to the interpretation of the ‘substance-mode’ relation in Spinoza’s system as akin to inherence, i.e., the manner in which accidents exist in a substance in scholastic ontology.49 By the same token, God’s immanent causation should be understood as concerning the substance-mode relation alone, rather than including God’s self-causation as some have thought.50 Since something cannot be the subject of its own effects unless it actually exists, God’s self-causation must be distinct from and ontologically prior to his

48 E IVp4; E IIIpost2; E IIIp9s; and E IVp39s; cf. DPP IIp28d. 49 Melamed 2009: 40-41 / Melamed 2013, 25-27; Melamed 2012: 371-72 / Melamed 2013: 96-97; Nadler 2008: 53-64; and Peterman 2015: 13. These authors however tend to make this inference directly from the analysis of an immanent cause as having its effect in itself, which unfortunately begs the question of the meaning of the term ‘in’ in this context. My argument is rather that the analysis of an immanent cause as a kind of patient establishes that God is the subject of all things, and hence also that the sense in which things are ‘in’ God must be equivalent to inherence. 50 This way of understanding Spinoza’s claim in E1p18 is supported by its placement after E1p16, where Spinoza turns to proving the existence and nature of other things besides God (whose existence is established already at E1p11). In general, when Spinoza speaks of God as the cause of ‘all things’, he is referring to the ‘infinitely many things in infinitely many ways’ which are said to follow from God’s nature at E1p16 (E1p17s G II/62).

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immanent causation.51 This distinction is reflected in the way in which Spinoza routinely distinguishes between God’s existence and his actions in the Ethics.52 The conception of undergoing in the generic sense as being the subject of an effect (i.e., of something resulting from the action of an agent) yields the following solution to the apparent inconsistency between Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent cause of all things, and the claim that God is the adequate cause of all things. The type of undergoing that is implied by God’s immanent causation is the generic sense of undergoing as being the metaphysical subject of an effect. The type of undergoing that is excluded by God’s adequate causation is the technical sense of undergoing as being the partial cause of an effect. The generic sense of undergoing does not imply the technical sense of undergoing, because Spinoza recognizes two different ways something can be the subject of an effect, depending on whether the action by which the effect is being produced is its own or belongs to another. When the action belongs to another, then the subject of the effect will be merely a partial cause of that effect. But when the effect is produced by its own action, then it is the effect’s adequate cause.53 An immanent cause just is this combination of adequate causation and metaphysical subjecthood. And so, Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent cause of all things is not incompatible with his claim that God is the adequate cause of all things—rather, it entails it.

51 E.g., Campos 2012: 34; Hübner 2015: 209 n. 47; and Morrison 2015: 52. The basis for this view is undoubtedly that Spinoza claims that God is both ‘in himself’ [in se] and caused by himself. However, I take it that the inherence interpretation of the substance-mode relation (which is supported by my argument) requires that God is not ‘in’ himself in the same sense that all things are ‘in’ him. Inherence is an asymmetric dependence relation that accidents bear to their substances, so nothing can ‘inhere’ in itself. God’s ‘inseity’ should rather be understood as akin to the scholastic notion of subsistence, which is the property of substances that excludes the possibility of their inhering in anything. See Viljanen 2009. 52 See e.g., E Ip17c2; E IApp G II/77; E IIIp6d; and E IVApp G II/267. Of course, both have God’s essence as their ground, as Spinoza notes at E IVPref G II/206-07. 53 There is some additional textual evidence that Spinoza thinks it is possible for a metaphysical subject to be the adequate cause of what it undergoes. First, in E IVp4, Spinoza seems to allow that human beings can be the adequate cause of some the changes they undergo, even though they cannot be so exclusively (here I agree with Steinberg 2011 against Kisner 2011: 29-30). Second, E IIId2 itself suggests that those things that happen “in us” can have us as an adequate cause.

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6. Are two senses of acting and undergoing necessary? I have argued the consistency of Spinoza’s project depends on a distinction between two senses of the term undergoing. As an interpretive move, the positing of such a distinction might normally be regarded as coming at a high cost, and permissible only as a last resort. I don’t believe that what I have suggested ought to be seen in this way, however. First of all, if one already accepts that Spinoza uses the term ‘acting’ in two senses, then one should expect that he uses ‘undergoing’ in two senses as well, since these terms were typically understood as a contrasting pair. (That’s why Spinoza himself gives an account of both terms under a single “definition” in the Ethics.) Second, the generic senses of the terms that I argue can be found in Spinoza are not idiosyncratic; they are rather what any seventeenth-century reader would understand by them. Third, it matters that Spinoza’s technical definition of acting and undergoing occurs only at the beginning of part III of the Ethics, well after he has already described God as acting (E Ip17) and as the immanent cause of all things (E Ip18). This suggests that in E IIId2 Spinoza is giving the terms acting and undergoing a special, circumscribed sense—one that is specifically for the purposes of his account of human bondage and freedom that follows,54 and that is not necessarily the only sense of those terms he uses, especially not earlier in the text.55 In any case, regardless of whether one would prefer (other things being equal) not to have to posit a distinction between two senses of a term in Spinoza, I have shown why it is necessary. Without it, Spinoza cannot simultaneously hold that God does all things and that God is the immanent cause of all things. Nevertheless, someone might still think it would be advantageous to avoid positing a second sense of undergoing in Spinoza if at all possible. In the rest of this section, I will consider two ways in which someone might try to do this, and explain why these alternative proposals are inadequate. In the first place, perhaps it might be argued that it is possible to explain the sense in which God both does and undergoes all things in the following manner. Spinoza

54 The fact that Spinoza phrases the definition in terms of what “we” do undergo suggests as much. 55 Spinoza does something similar at the beginning of part IV when he distinguishes ‘possible’ and ‘contingent’ (E IVd3&4), even though he had used them interchangeably in part I (E Ip33s1).

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distinguishes between two ways in which God, or Nature, can be conceived: either as Natura Naturans or as Natura Naturata. Natura Naturans is “God, insofar as he insofar as he is considered as a free cause,” while Natura Naturata is “whatever follows from the necessity of God’s nature” (E Ip29s). Perhaps then it could be said that God acts insofar as he is Natura Naturans, and he undergoes (that is, is a partial cause) insofar as he is Natura Naturata.56 One of the things this proposal has going for it is that it eschews the concurrentist model of divine and ‘creaturely’ action that we rejected earlier. Nevertheless, while I agree that it is correct to say, without any inconsistency, that God acts qua Natura Naturans, and that God is a partial cause qua Natura Naturata, the proposal still falls flat as an account of God’s immanent causation. Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata together make up a composite consisting of the one, divine substance and its infinitely many modes. They are in that respect distinct beings; God qua substance is not identical with any mode, or, for that matter with the set of all modes. To be sure, they are not really distinct, since they do not constitute two distinct substances, but they are still modally distinct.57 But immanent causation requires that the agent and patient must be identical (“one and the same,” says Spinoza [CGH 12 G I 342]). Hence, if God acts qua Natura Naturans, then if God is the immanent cause of what he does, God must undergo qua Natura Naturans as well. The same goes for any immanent causation that goes on at the level of Natura Naturata. If the person who ‘guards himself’ is an immanent cause, then he is guarded qua human being and is guarding qua human being—not qua substance.58 Otherwise it would not be one and the same thing that both acts and undergoes. A second proposal for avoiding committing Spinoza to two senses of undergoing is the following. One could hold that Spinoza admits only a single concept of undergoing, but one which can be related to two kinds of relata: Spinoza’s definition at E IIId2 assumes one kind of relatum, i.e., where something is acted on by another, while

56 Thanks to the audience in East Lansing for pressing this objection. 57 Cf. E Ip15s G II 59 and CM II.4 G I 257. 58 Cf. E IIp10.

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the concept of an immanent cause involves the other kind, i.e., where something is acted on by itself. But the relation of undergoing itself is the same in both partial causation and immanent causation.59 I believe this proposal should be regarded as a friendly amendment since it concedes the crucial point that not everything that undergoes is a partial cause for Spinoza. In fact, I don’t believe it contradicts anything I have said so far. The distinction I have been arguing for is at the level of Spinoza’s language: the term ‘undergoing’ is used in two different senses. The sense that he gives the term at E IIId2 cannot be the only sense, for otherwise it would be impossible for it to be said that God, an adequate cause, undergoes. This argument is consistent with holding that at the metaphysical level, there is just a single relation that both senses of the term undergoing refer to. Although this proposal is plausible, I think that it must ultimately be rejected. If it were true that there is a single relation common to ‘undergoing’ in the technical sense and to immanent causation, that relation would have to be metaphysical subjecthood with respect to some effect. It would follow that undergoing in the technical sense (i.e., partial causation) must be equivalent to being acted on by another, i.e., to being the subject of an effect that is caused by another. And while our normal manner of speaking makes it intuitive to think that something must be the subject of what it undergoes (in any sense), this seems to limit the scope of undergoing in the technical sense in a way that Spinoza does not accept. Spinoza seems to think rather that the sort of dependence on another that is involved in partial causation is manifested not only in our own mental and physical constitution but also in how we affect the world outside us. Consider the following passage: Insofar as a man is determined to act [ad agendum] because he has inadequate ideas, to that extent, (by IIIp1) he undergoes [patitur], i.e., (by IIId1 and IIId2), he does something [aliquid agit], which cannot be perceived through his essence alone…. But insofar as he is determined to do something [ad aliquid agendum] because he understands, to that extent, (by IIIp1) he acts [agit], i.e., (by IIId2), does something [aliquid agit], which is perceived through his essence alone. (E IVp23d)

59 Thanks to Karolina Hübner for suggesting this objection.

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I take it that Spinoza’s point in this passage is something like the following. When we act on the basis of inadequate ideas, we are not the true source of our actions; we are letting outside forces determine our behavior. We are only truly ‘active’—which is to say, self-determined—when we act on the basis of complete knowledge.60 Since freedom is just self-determination for Spinoza, in this passage he is in effect distinguishing between compelled [coacta] and free [libera] action.61 Seen in this light, there is no reason to expect that everything that undergoes in the technical sense of being a partial cause of some effect must be the metaphysical subject of that effect. To the extent that many of our actions that affect things outside of ourselves are compelled, Spinoza is willing to say that we ‘undergo’ there, too. By extending the term counterintuitively in this fashion, Spinoza continues his polemic against the supposition that we have what he calls an “absolute power over our actions” (E IIIPref). For Spinoza, then, the two senses of undergoing can come apart in two different ways, because they refer to two different metaphysical relations. Undergoing in the technical sense is fundamentally a kind of efficient causation (i.e., compelled efficient causation); that’s why it is defined in terms of having an effect. Meanwhile, undergoing in the generic sense refers not to causing an effect but to being the subject of an effect. Hence, someone who is an immanent cause can be said to ‘undergo without undergoing’ inasmuch as she is the subject of an effect of which she is not the partial cause (because she is its adequate cause). But someone who does something outside of herself on the basis of inadequate ideas could also be said to ‘undergo without undergoing,’ inasmuch as she is a partial cause of some effect of which she is not the subject. Of course, when someone is acted on by another, then that person will undergo in both senses of the term.

60 It is of course a long-standing question among Spinoza scholars how it is possible that human beings can be considered the adequate cause of their actions (or free), given that Spinoza insists they are a part of Nature. Cf. Kisner 2011: chap. 1; and Marshall 2014. 61 Cf. Spinoza’s definitions of ‘free’ and ‘compelled’ at E Id7. Spinoza explicitly distinguishes between free and compelled actions in the TTP, e.g., “He who does [agit] good from a true cognition and love of the good acts freely and with a constant heart [libere & constanti animo agit], whereas he who [does good] from fear of evil is compelled [coactus] by evil, acts like a slave [serviliter agit], and lives under the command of another” (TTP IV.11/38 G III 66, emphasis added; see also TTP IV.2/7 G III 59 and TTP XVII.2/7 G III 202).

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7. Conclusion: Spinoza versus the scholastics on essence, perfection, and the capacity to undergo On my interpretation, Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent cause of all things exemplifies the continuing influence of the Aristotelian-scholastic model of efficient causation as the modification or transformation of some patient. In a sense, Spinoza can be seen as merely applying this model more consistently than the scholastics. That is, he refuses to allow for the possibility of creation ex nihilo and insists that even God cannot act without modifying something.62 However, the fact that Spinoza thinks it is intelligible to say that God, a supremely perfect being, is capable of undergoing reveals some fundamental differences between how he and the scholastics think about the nature of efficient causation. Let me close by discussing these differences and their implications for thinking about Spinoza’s metaphysics. For the scholastics, the action of a normal efficient cause, or agent, consists in ‘reducing’ some patient from potentiality to actuality. A thing’s capacity to undergo therefore depends on its lacking some actuality that it could possess. This privation- based account of undergoing implies that the patient is rendered more perfect, or complete, by the agent’s action. This holds even in immanent causation, where the patient and agent are identical; for example, the intellect actualizes its own potential, and hence becomes more perfect, by forming ideas. In general, every substance is actualized and perfected by its accidents, regardless of whether they are caused by itself or by another. Given this privation-based account, it is unlikely that a scholastic would be convinced by Spinoza’s argument that while dependence on another is unworthy of the divine nature, the capacity to undergo itself is not. The scholastic would reply that God can be acted on by himself only if God were able to render himself more perfect. In that case, God’s nature would have to be lacking in some respect, and not supremely perfect. The analogy that Spinoza draws between God and the intellect as an immanent cause would likewise be regarded as a poor one. Again, because God is supremely perfect,

62 For a longer discussion of this aspect of Spinoza’s thought, see the conclusion after this chapter.

5. Spinoza on Action and Immanent Causation 201 there is no potentiality in God’s nature that could be actualized by his being the subject of accidents.63 This means that God’s ideas, like any other perfection God possesses, must be part of his very essence. In Spinoza’s terms, they are included in God’s self-causation, rather than being the products of immanent causation.64 Spinoza of course agrees that God’s essence is supremely perfect and does not lack anything.65 The fact that he thinks that God is capable of undergoing therefore reveals that he rejects the scholastics’ privation-based account in favor of what might be called an expression-based account. That is, for Spinoza, the effects of which God is the subject, i.e., God’s modes, do not actualize some perfection that God’s nature has only potentially; rather, they express whatever perfection, or ‘reality’ (E4def6), God’s nature ‘already’ has actually.66 Spinoza can thus concede that if God did not undergo, God would not be supremely perfect. Since God’s modes are produced as a necessary consequence of God’s own nature, that nature would have to be different in order for them not to exist.67 But Spinoza sees the order of dependence between undergoing and perfection as the reverse of what the scholastics think it would have to be. It is not because God undergoes that God is perfect; rather, it is because God is perfect that God undergoes.68

63 As Burgersdijk says, “Accidents are things added to finite essences in order to supply them with what they lack on account of their finitude. Therefore, that which lacks nothing, and from whom no perfection is missing, does not require accidents, and so neither can it have any.” Burgersdijk, IM II.7.7 (p. 269). Cf. Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 1, disp. 21, th. 3 (p. 79); Ibid., Pneumatica II.4 (pp. 53-58). 64 As Heereboord says, “If God’s knowledge [scientia] were not the same as his essence or substance, God would be related to his knowledge as a perfectible subject to that which perfects it, and so he would be imperfect. But this is absurd.” Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 1, disp. 29, th. 3 (p. 108). 65 In fact, Spinoza denies the existence of any privation in nature whatsoever; see E IVPref G II 207- 08; and Ep. 21 G IV 128-29; see also Carriero 2005: 126-30. 66 Cf. E Ip25c and later citations of it, esp. E Ip36d. 67 See E Ip16. The dominant view among commentators is that Spinoza is a necessitarian; for dissent, see Curley 1969: chap. 3; Curley and Walski 1999; and Martin 2010. 68 Interestingly, Burgersdijk mentions this rival view, saying, “[Some] concede that there is composition in God from the divine essence and God’s internal acts; but [they say that] this composition is not evidence of any imperfection, because those decrees and other internal acts exist in God, not in order to make him more perfect [ut perfectior sit], but because he is most perfect [quia est perfectissimus]” (Burgersdijk, IM II.7.13 [p. 272], emphasis added). His arguments against this position would not be dialectically effective against Spinoza.

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We can say, then, that for Spinoza, the capacity to undergo (in the generic sense of being the subject of an effect) is a positive property that a thing has in virtue of its essence, and, in principle, the more it undergoes, the more perfection it expresses.69 This is especially clear if we look at things under the attribute of thought. According to Spinoza, “The more things a thinking thing can think, the more reality, or perfection, we conceive it to contain” (E IIp1s). He also holds that thinking is a matter of forming ideas.70 All things being equal, then, the more ideas by which a thinking thing is affected, the more perfection it expresses.71 If a being were to undergo the ideas of “infinitely many things in infinitely many ways,” it would express infinite perfection under the attribute of thought.72 Spinoza thus has no reason to deny, and every reason to affirm, that God is modified by his ideas, just like we are.73 Insofar as God is conceived by the scholastics and others as a simple essence that is incapable of undergoing (in the generic sense), he is a kind of fictitious being, devoid of any reality.

69 This point has been emphasized by Deleuze, who refers to this capacity as the ‘power of being affected’. I do not think that Deleuze’s contention that Spinoza reserves the term potestas for this power is supported by the textual evidence, however (see Deleuze 1988: 97-104; and Deleuze 1990: 93-95 and 217- 26; cf. CW I:651 and II:650). 70 See Hübner 2016b: 25-26. 71 Ceteris paribus conditions apply because the relative adequacy of a thing’s ideas also affects how much perfection it expresses. 72 As Spinoza continues in E IIp1s, “Therefore, a being that can think infinitely many things in infinitely many ways is necessarily infinite in its power of thinking.” 73 Note that in E Ip17s, Spinoza rejects the view that God’s intellect is identical with his essence and has nothing in common with ours; see CW I.426-27 n. 49; Gueroult 1968: 277-95; and Koyré 2015.

CONCLUSION

The present study began with the question of how Spinoza’s substance-mode ontology differs from the creator-creation ontology of traditional theism. What does it mean for Spinoza to deny that individual things like you and I are substances, and to classify them instead as ‘modes’? And in what sense is there a causal relation between God and things, if things are understood to be ‘in God’? I suggested that Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things offers some traction for answering these kinds of questions. The promise of considering the philosophical history of the distinction was that we would be able to understand more deeply the nature of immanent causation in Spinoza, and thereby to draw conclusions about the ontological standing of things in virtue of their being immanently caused by God. The last two chapters have already delivered on this promise to some degree, but in this conclusion, I want to consider in more detail how Spinoza’s understanding of the substance-mode relation differs from the more traditional creator-creature relation. Doing so will give us the opportunity to explore briefly a question that arises from the scholastic debate over the nature of immanent action that we explored back in chap. 1. Recall that the scholastics disagreed as to whether immanent actions should be understood as productions, i.e., whether such actions result in a terminus distinct from themselves in the agent. Analogously, then, we can ask whether Spinoza’s immanent cause should be understood as having a product distinct from its action. While I cannot develop a full response to this question here, I would like to close the present study by pointing in a direction for future research: I want to suggest that, for Spinoza, there is no distinction between the effects and the actions of an immanent cause. Accordingly, Spinoza’s modes, which of course include all finite things, such as you and I, can be considered God’s very actions. This interpretation of the nature of Spinoza’s modes is attractive, I believe, partly because of the way it would seem both to highlight and to unify various important aspects

203 Conclusion 204

of Spinoza’s ontology, such as his emphasis on modes as expressions of divine power;1 his claim that the conatus of each thing is its very essence;2 his view of ideas as intrinsically involving affirmation or denial;3 and his rejection of the Cartesian view of extended things as inherently passive.4 In addition, it can be seen as establishing a bridge between two popular interpretations of Spinoza’s ontology. (To some degree, then, some of the argumentative support for this view can already be found in the defences of these interpretations.) On the one hand, the claim that modes are actions that God does within himself entails that the so-called inherence interpretation of modes is true: modes are non-essential properties of God, existing in him in the manner that Aristotelian accidents inhere in a substance. After all, immanent actions are a species of accident on the scholastic view. On the other hand, the view of modes as divine actions also has certain affinities with the interpretation of Spinoza’s substance-mode metaphysics as an ‘ontology of power’5 or even as a kind of process ontology.6 While many of these authors regard their interpretation as an alternative to the inherence interpretation, I believe that seeing modes as divine actions shows how these interpretations are essentially compatible. It is a mistake to think that the inherence interpretation requires that modes are fundamentally static entities, as for example the modes of shape and position are on the Cartesian scheme. Let’s consider anew Spinoza’s relation to the traditional doctrine of creation, then. It seems clear enough that Spinoza’s claim that God is not the transeunt cause of all things is intended, at least in part, as a repudiation of this doctrine. Because creation was understood to be ex nihilo, the very concept implies that there is no metaphysical subject of God’s action—certainly God himself is not the subject. Strictly speaking, then, to call

1 E.g., E Ip36d; and E IIIp6d. 2 E IIIp7. 3 E IIp49. See Della Rocca 2003b: 205-08 for a more detailed defence of the notion that ideas are actions for Spinoza. 4 See Ep. 81 G IV 332; and Ep. 83 G IV 334. 5 See, e.g., Deveaux 2007; Lærke 2009; Lærke 2011b; Lærke 2013; Macherey 1991; Macherey 1992; Martin 2015; Matheron 1991; Sangiacomo and Nachtomy 2018; and Viljanen 2011. Some of these authors argue specifically that God’s immanent causation is identical to the activity of modes, which can in a sense be accepted if there is no distinction between the action and product of immanent causation. 6 See e.g., Basile 2012 and Di Poppa 2010 for explicit attempts to understand Spinoza as a process philosopher. Conclusion 205 something ‘created’ implies not only that it depends causally on God, but also that it exists outside of God.7 This is likely the reason for the noticeable absence of the terms ‘create’ [creare], ‘creation’ [creatio], and ‘creature’ [creatura] from the deduction of all things from God’s nature in the second half of part I of the Ethics.8 And of course, to the extent that the doctrine of creation implies an external production, it can be translated into a claim about God being the transeunt cause of all things. For instance, Heereboord explicitly classifies what he calls a ‘creating cause’ [causa creans] as that subspecies of transeunt cause which produces an external effect ex nihilo, rather than from pre-existing matter.9 On the doctrine of creation, we can think of God’s production of all things as having two ‘steps’: ‘first’ God conceives and wills the universe, and ‘then’ the universe exists outside of God as the result. The relation between the two, i.e., God’s intellectual act and the creature, is similar to the manner in which an architect’s conception of a house in her mind is both distinct from and causally prior to the actual existence of that

7 In the Metaphysical Thoughts, where Spinoza writes under a Cartesian guise, he treats ‘created things’ as extensionally equivalent to ‘things outside of God’ (see, e.g., CM II.7 G I 264). 8 These terms appear only in the scholia and Appendices of the Ethics, and only in contexts where Spinoza is engaging dialectically with others’ views. Here are two of the most striking examples: If someone maintains that a substance is created, he maintains at the same time that a false idea has become true. (E Ip8s2, emphasis added)

But to those who ask ‘why God did not create all men so that they would be governed by the command of reason?’ I answer only ‘because he did not lack material to create all things, from the highest degree of perfection to the lowest;’ or, to speak more properly, ‘because the laws of his nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all things which can be conceived by an infinite intellect’. (E IApp G II 83, emphasis added). The other occurrences are found at: E Ip33s2, E IApp G II 80, 82; E IIp10cs; and E IVp68s. In addition, the associated concepts of divine conservation or concurrence make no appearance in the Ethics whatsoever. 9 “A transeunt cause is that which produces its effect outside itself. And it does so either ex nihilo, … in which case it is one that creates; or, it does so from preexisting apt matter, in which case it one that causes change. [Transiens, quae producit effectum extra se: idque, vel ex nihilo, … estque creans, vel ex praecedente materia habili, estque immutans].” Heereboord, MP, Disputationes ex philosophia selectae vol. 2, disp. 23 (p. 229). Conclusion 206 house in reality.10 For Christians in particular, this two-step model explicitly contrasts with the manner in which the person of the Son ‘proceeds’ from the Father within God, which was compared to the intellectual act of thinking a thought.11 At root, the problem with this two-step model is that the second step is fundamentally mysterious. Unlike the architect, God does not have access to any external materials to arrange according to his ideas. The very precondition for making an exterior product is absent. As have seen,12 Spinoza holds that there can be no action without something that is affected by the action. The very idea that God could produce an effect outside of himself ex nihilo is incomprehensible. As Spinoza sees it, it violates the principle that rationalist principle that ‘nothing comes from nothing.’13 If there is nothing outside of God prior to God’s action, it would seem that God can only act on himself.

10 See, e.g., the discussion of the relation between God’s immanent acts and what God creates in Aquinas, SCG II.1, which explicitly appeals to the architect example. I should note that although the emanational accounts of creation given by al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and others in the Arabic tradition diverge in some important ways from what I have been calling the ‘traditional’ account of creation, they too can be seen as embodying the same ‘two-step’ model insofar as they hold that what emanates from the First Cause’s act of thought is distinct from the First Cause itself. On their theories, see (inter alia) Davidson 1992. 11 E.g., Giles of Rome writes, in a passage that is clearly indebted to Aquinas, ST I.27.1 (quoted in chap. 1, sec. 1 above), We may say therefore that there is a certain [kind of] divine action that remains [manens] in the agent, and this is God’s very understanding and his very willing himself, either of which is identical to God’s very being. The other [kind] is a divine action crossing over [transiens] into exterior matter, and that is creation itself. Things are produced through either of these actions. Through the non-transeunt divine action, the [divine] persons are produced, as the Father by understanding produces the Son, and the Father and the Son by loving each other produce the Holy Spirit; while through the transeunt action, creatures are produced. [Dicemus ergo quod quaedam est actio divina manens in agente et hoc est ipsum intelligere divinum et ipsum suum velle quorum quodlibet est idem quod ipsum divinum esse. Alia est actio divina transiens in exteriorem materiam et ipsa est ipsa creatio. Per quamlibet autem istarum actionum producuntur aliqua (lege aliquae), ut per actionem divinam non transeuntem producuntur personae, ut pater intelligendo producit filium, pater autem et filius diligendo se producunt spiritum sanctum, per actionem vero transeuntem producuntur creaturae.] Giles of Rome, QEE, q. 7 (fol. 13ra). 12 See chap. 5, secs. 6 and 7 above. 13 Spinoza gives versions of this principle (which can of course, be considered an expression of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) in DPP Ia7 and DPP IIa1. Spinoza seems to think that violations of this principle end up treating ‘nothing’ as if it were something substantial. E.g., in DPP Ip7s, Spinoza mentions as contradictory the possibility that “someone can bring it about that nothing is acted on, and can use it as a material from which to produce something” (G I 162). Similarly, when discussing creation in the Metaphysical Thoughts, he writes, “We omit those words which the philosophers commonly use, viz. ex nihilo, as if nothing was the matter from which things were produced.” (CM II.10 G I 268). Conclusion 207

For Spinoza, this problem with the two-step model is exacerbated by the typical assumption that at least some of the things God creates are of a fundamentally different nature (or in Spinoza’s terms, attribute) than the immanent acts by which he creates them, in exactly the same way that the house the architect builds differs from her conception of that house: one is a material thing while the other is a mental one.14 On the surface, this assumption appears to give us a good explanation of why there is an additional ‘step’ involved in creation beyond God’s intellectual act itself. In fact, however, it makes the model even more mysterious. That’s because it entails that the effect possesses some positive feature (i.e., materiality) that cannot be explained through its cause (cf. E Ia4). As Spinoza says, “they maintain that it [extension] has been created by God. But by what divine power could it be created? They are simply ignorant of that. And this shows clearly that they do not understand what they themselves say” (E Ip15s G II 57). Spinoza’s claim that God is the immanent and not the transeunt cause of all things should therefore be seen as replacing the doctrine of creation’s two-step model of God’s production of all things with a single-step model. For Spinoza, we can say, God’s act of producing all things is comparable to the architect’s act of conceiving a house; nothing further is made in virtue of this act. There is some precedent for this model in the Cartesian tradition; as Daniel Garber has pointed out, prior to Spinoza, Johannes Clauberg already had argued that the best analogy for God’s act of creation is the mental act of thinking a thought.15 But Spinoza goes so far as to make this analogy literal. In the attribute of thought, individual minds are nothing over and above God’s thoughts (or in Spinoza’s terms, ideas). This is why Spinoza claims that the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God (E2p11c).16 The same immediate, immanent-causal relation between all minds and God’s power of thinking is present between every mode and the

14 Of course, Spinoza himself would give a different account of the relation between an architect and her building consistent with his so-called parallelism doctrine. 15 Garber 2000; thanks to Raphael Krut-Landau for bringing this article to my attention. As Deborah Black has pointed out to me, al-Fārābī and Avicenna think of creation along similar lines in the Arabic tradition (but see n. 10 above). 16 Notably, in the Short Treatise Spinoza goes so far as to call this intellect “a Son” of God (KV1.9§3). The implication then seems to be that we (or our minds) stand to God in the same way that the Son stands to the Father in traditional Christian theology; rather than being subordinated to God's intellect (which was identified with the Son), we are parts of that intellect. Conclusion 208 attribute it falls under; as Spinoza puts it, “The formal being of things which are not modes of thinking does not follow from the divine nature because [God] has first known the things; rather the objects of ideas follow and are inferred from their attributes in the same way and by the same necessity as that with which we have shown ideas to follow from the attribute of thought” (E IIp6c). This single-step model suggests that any attempt to draw a distinction between the products that God produces, and the actions by which God produces them involves an act of abstraction. There is only one kind of entity, the mode, which is an immanent act expressing the perfection and power of God’s essence.17 Hence, we can say that while modes (i.e., ‘all things’) can be understood as products or effects produced by God, they can equally be identified as the very actions that God does. This would seem to be borne out by Spinoza’s own manner of speaking in the Ethics. Sometimes, he makes claims such as, “Things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced” (E Ip33). But there are other passages where he refers to things as what God does. For instance, he writes, Perfecting the intellect is nothing but understanding God, his attributes, and his actions, which follow from the necessity of his nature. (E IVApp, cap. IV)

The last phrase is a clear echo of Spinoza’s claim in E Ip16: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many ways [infinita infinitis modis].” It’s just that Spinoza has substituted “God’s actions” for infinita infinitis modis. Since the latter phrase is equivalent to the set of all modes,18 this passage suggests that Spinoza thinks that every mode is nothing but an action of God.19 We can think of this view of modes as falling out of Spinoza’s commitment to the emanative character of immanent causation as well. Recall20 that within the scholastic

17 See E Ip36d. 18 Cf. E Ip17s G II 62 (quoted in chap. 4, sec. 2 above), which includes the phrase, “infinita infinitis modis, i.e., all things.” I explain why I think ‘all things’ is restricted to the domain of modes, and does not include God’s own existence, in chap. 5, sec. 5 above. 19 Another important passage is E IIp3s, where Spinoza says that “God does [agat] infinitely many things in infinitely many ways [infinita infinitis modis]” (G II 87, emphasis added). 20 See chap. 1, sec. 3 above. Conclusion 209 tradition, those who denied that immanent actions can be productive often concluded that immanent actions actually belong in the category of quality, rather than action. In opposition to this view, Francisco Suárez argued that these ‘immanent acts [actus]’ actually involve both actions and qualities. When the soul produces a quality in itself, it does so by means of a true action which is modally distinct from the quality itself. For example, an act of understanding is produced by the intellect’s action. In this fashion, Suárez maintains that immanent actions (in the strict sense) are inherently productive. Later,21 we saw how Franco Burgersdijk takes up Suárez’s theory in his attempt to distinguish immanent causation from mere emanation. For Burgersdijk, a true immanent cause, such as the intellect with respect to its thoughts, produces its effect by means of an action just as Suárez proposes, while an internal emanative cause, such as a substantial form with respect to its necessary accidents, produces its effect immediately. But Spinoza, I have argued,22 ignores Burgersdijk’s distinction between an immanent cause and an internal emanative cause. He is equally willing to say that all things flow from God’s nature (E Ip17s), and that God acts (E Ip17). This strongly suggests that Spinoza does not distinguish between the action and the effect of immanent causation; rather, he regards them as one and the same thing.23 In this fashion, Spinoza’s understanding of immanent causation can be seen as a kind of return to the more straightforwardly Aristotelian view of the relation between a substance and its immanent actions.24 On the Suárezian/Burgersdijkian model that Spinoza abandons, an immanent action is not a perfection of a substance in and of itself; rather, the result of that action—i.e., the quality (to which the action is oriented as means

21 See chap. 3, sec. 3 above. 22 See chap. 4, sec. 3 above. 23 We can think of Spinoza as holding a ‘geared-down’ version of the Suárezian ontology (I owe this suggestion, and the phrase, to Stephan Schmid). On the Suárezian ontology, the real accidents of a substance, such as its qualities, are things [res] in their own right; in that respect they have the same ontological status as the substances in which they inhere. Actions have a lower ontological status; they are modes of things. Hence, on the Suárezian ontology, an immanent quality is really distinct from the substance in which it inheres and modally distinct from the action by which it is produced. By eliminating the category of ‘real accidents,’ Spinoza downgrades the things inhering in substance to the ontological status of modes, such that they are merely modally distinct from substance (cf. E Ip15s G II 60). This means that the actions by which modes are produced by God can be only conceptually distinct from the modes themselves. Ontologically, they are identical. 24 Cf. Macherey 1991; and Macherey 1992. Conclusion 210

to end)—is the perfection. This means that the substance is not perfected insofar as it does the action, but only insofar as it receives the effect of the action. It would be equally perfect if it did not act at all and God simply produced the same effect in it supernaturally. But on the more traditional Aristotelian view of immanent actions as non-productive, what is received is just the action. There is only one thing, the immanent action itself, which perfects the ‘agent’ immediately. In a similar fashion, we can say, for Spinoza, it is not the case that God acts in order to bring about some further thing that expresses his nature, such that his actions themselves do not express his nature.25 Rather, because God’s very nature is his power (E Ip34), it is expressed by acting itself. It is because modes are nothing other than God’s actions that they express God’s nature.

25 Cf. chap. 5, sec. 7 above. ABBREVIATIONS

Any abbreviations of primary sources which are not listed here refer to a specific edition which is listed in the bibliography. The abbreviation is given in brackets after the bibliographic entry.

A. TITLES OF ARISTOTLE’S WORKS

Cat. Categories Met. Metaphysics Nic. Eth. Nicomachean Ethics Phys. Physics Post. Anal. Posterior Analytics

B. ELEMENTS OF SCHOLASTIC WORKS

ad reply to objection a(a). article(s) arg. argument cap(s). chapter(s) comm. commentary (commentaries) disp. disputation(s) d. distinction fol(s). folio(s) lec. lecture lib. book n(n). note(s) or number(s) p(p). page(s) prob. problem q(q). question(s) r recto sec. section(s) tab. table t(s). title(s) text. text th. thesis (theses) or theorem(s) v verso vol(s). volume(s)

Upper-case Roman numerals refer to the book of the work, except in the case of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae and commentaries on it, when they designate the part. Any Arabic numerals that follow refer to the next-highest level of division of the work (e.g., chapter, article, or section).

211 Abbreviations 212

D. TITLES OF DESCARTES’S WORKS

PP Principles of Philosophy (Principia Philosophiae) Med. Meditations on First Philosophy (Meditationes de Prima Philosophia)

E. TITLES OF SPINOZA’S WORKS

CGH Hebrew Grammar (Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae) CM Metaphysical Thoughts (Cogitata Metaphysica) DPP Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy (Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I & II) E Ethics (Ethica) Ep. Letters (Epistolae) KV Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being (Korte Verhandeling van Gott, de Mensch, en des zelfs Welstand) TIE Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione) TTP Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus)

F. ELEMENTS OF SPINOZA’S WORKS

App Appendix a axiom c corollary d definition (before Arabic numeral) or demonstration (after Arabic numeral) Dial. Dialogue lem. lemma p proposition post postulate Pref Preface s scholium

Upper-case Roman numerals refer to the part of the work, while Arabic numerals immediately following a title refer to the chapter of the work or (following ‘Ep.’) the letter number as in the Gebhardt edition [G].

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. PRIMARY SOURCES

1550 serves as the rough and arbitrary dividing line for listing authors by first name (prior to 1550) or by last name (after 1550). Exceptions are for any pre-modern authors known primarily by a single name (e.g., Augustine). Arabic authors are listed by their Latinized names. Early modern editions are listed with the city and year of publication. Later (post- 1800) editions are listed with the editor and publisher as well. When Latin authors are quoted in English, the full Latin text is given only where no published translation was consulted/available.

ALSTED, JOHANN HEINRICH

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ARISTOTLE

Translations are based on those in The Complete Works of Aristotle, except where noted. Please see the list of abbreviations for Aristotle’s individual works.

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The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Ethica Nicomachea. Edited by J. Bywater. Oxford: Clarendon, 1894.

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AVERROES [IBN RUSHD]

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Please see the list of abbreviations for Descartes’s individual works.

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HERVAEUS NATALIS

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HOBBES, THOMAS

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JOHN CAPREOLUS

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JOHN DUNS SCOTUS

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KECKERMANN, BARTHOLOMÄUS

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MARTINI, JACOB

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PETRUS RAMUS

Dialecticae libri duo. Paris, 1556. [Dialectica]

RUBIO [RUVIUS], ANTONIO

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SCALIGER, JULIUS

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SCHARFF, JOHANN

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SONCINAS, PAULUS [PAULUS BARBUS]

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SPINOZA, BENEDICTUS DE [BARUCH]

Translations are based on The Collected Works of Spinoza, except where noted. Please see the list of abbreviations for Spinoza’s individual works. The Latin text is taken from the Gebhardt edition [G]; page numbers from that edition are provided only where the reference would otherwise be insufficiently fine-grained.

Abrégé de grammaire hébraïque. Translated and with an introduction and notes by Joël Askénazi and Jocelyne Askénazi-Gerson. Paris: J. Vrin, 1968. [Askénazi/Askénazi-Gerson]

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Ethic Demonstrated in Geometrical Order and Divided into Five Parts, Which Treat (1) Of God; (2) Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind; (3) Of the Nature and Origin of the Affects; (4) Of Human Bondage, or of the Strength of the Affects; (5) Of the Power of the Intellect, or of Human Liberty. Translated by William Hale White. London: Trübner & Co., 1883. [White]

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Ethics. Translated by George Eliot. Edited by Thomas Deegan. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1981. [Eliot]

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Hebrew Grammar. Edited and translated by Maurice J. Bloom. New York: Philosophical Library, 1962. [Bloom]

Opera quae supersunt omnia supplementum. Edited by J. van Vloten. Amsterdam: Muller, 1862. [Van Vloten]

Spinoza Opera, 4 vols. Edited by Carl Gebhardt. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925. Electronic edition, Charlottesville: Intelex, 2003. [G]

STAHL, DANIEL

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SUÁREZ, FRANCISCO

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Disputationes metaphysicae. In Opera Omnia, vols. 25-26. [DM]

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THOMAS AQUINAS

The English translation on which any quotation is based is listed below, as part of a single entry with the Latin text. Citations in text are given just to the elements of the work, not to the page numbers of the editions. The Latin texts can be found at the Corpus Thomisticum, , while the English translations can be accessed via Thérèse Bonin’s bibliography, “Thomas Aquinas in English,” available at .

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