SPINOZA ON DEFINITION AND ESSENCE by John A. Brandau A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland September 2016 © 2016 John Brandau All Rights Reserved Abstract Spinoza on Definition and Essence John A. Brandau 2016 The first two chapters of this dissertation address questions concerning Spinoza’s views on the nature of definitions and how they relate to essences. I explain the nature of Spinoza’s distinction between real and stipulative definitions in historical context. I show that the metaphysical assumptions of this distinction explain his criticisms of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, his unique justification of the notion that stipulative definitions require no defense, and the distinction between definitions and axioms. I also offer a proposal for how this distinction could be further developed in accord with Spinoza’s mature views on ideas and representation in the Ethics. I also construct detailed interpretations and explanations of Spinoza’s criteria for satisfactory definitions, with special attention paid to his adoption of the classical distinction between a thing’s essence and its properties, and to the requirement that definitions include the cause of the thing. In chapters three and four, I demonstrate that Spinoza is committed to the Principle of Unique Causes (PUC), the thesis that each thing has one and only one possible adequate cause. I show that the PUC is independent of Spinoza’s Parallelism and the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and that it follows from his causal axiom (E1a4) when Spinoza’s conception of “involvement” is properly understood. Through an original interpretation of Spinoza’s modal semantics, I show that the PUC is true in virtue of the nature of essences. I argue that it belongs to the essence of each thing to have the specific ii procreative cause that it does. I refute the most prominent alternative to my interpretation as it emerges from the combined works of Edwin Curley, Michael Della Rocca, and Don Garrett. In the process of doing so, I also develop and defend my own interpretation of the relationship between a thing’s eternal essence and its actual existence, the relationship between essences and the laws of nature, and how essences play a key role in Spinoza’s elusive views on empirical methods. Committee Members: Yitzhak Melamed Eckart Förster Dean Moyar Paola Marrati John Marshall iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank those who have made this dissertation possible. Over the past several years I have benefited tremendously from my teachers in the Johns Hopkins University Philosophy Department and especially those in the history of philosophy, including Richard Bett, Dean Moyar, Eckart Förster, and Yitzhak Melamed. I am indebted to Mogens Laerke, John Morrison, and Don Garrett for their insightful comments and criticisms of previous versions of this dissertation. They contributed to many of its virtues and none of its vices. I appreciate the generosity of Paola Marrati, John Marshall, Hent de Vries, and Peter Achinstein, who offered their valuable time to read and discuss this dissertation. I am deeply grateful to Yitzhak Melamed, who has been a constant source of compassionate support, encouragement, and wisdom. His mentorship has been of inestimable value, and it has provided me with a model of not only how to philosophize, but how to live. Most of all, this dissertation would have been impossible without the support of my wife, Anne, whom I love, and with whom I therefore necessarily will to be united (E3defaff6exp). iv Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Spinoza on the Nature of Definitions in General .....................................................5 Section 1.1: Introduction ...........................................................................................................5 Section 1.2: Real and Nominal Definitions................................................................................8 Section 1.2.1: De Vries’s Inquiry ...............................................................................................8 Section 1.2.2: Previous Examples of the Distinction between Real and Nominal Definitions ..................................................................................................11 Section 1.2.3: Spinoza’s Agreement with Tradition.................................................................16 Section 1.2.4: Spinoza’s Innovation: The Metaphysics of Definitions and the Grounds for the Incontestability of Stipulative Definitions ...............................................26 Section 1.3: Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Definitions and His Critique of Borelli ......................29 Section 1.3.1: Views Shared with Borelli.................................................................................29 Section 1.3.2: Spinoza’s Criticisms of Borelli .........................................................................34 Section 1.4: Spinoza on the Metaphysics of Definitions and Axioms ......................................38 Section 1.4.1: The Mystery of Missing Definitions in the Geometrical Appendix of the Short Treatise .................................................................................................38 Section 1.4.2: Spinoza on Axioms and Common Notions ........................................................39 Section 1.5: Questions of Consistency with Spinoza’s Mature Views: Refining the Distinction between Real and Nominal Definitions ................................48 Section 1.5.1: Conceiving and Conceiving as True .................................................................49 Section 1.5.2: The Will and the Intellect ..................................................................................53 Section 1.5.3: The Epistemic Certainty of Mental Content .....................................................55 Section 1.6: Conclusion ...........................................................................................................58 Chapter 2: Spinoza’s Criteria for Adequate Definitions ..........................................................62 Section 2.1: Introduction .........................................................................................................62 Section 2.2: Condition 1: Intellectual Affirmation ..................................................................64 v Section 2.3: Conditions 2 and 3: Essence and Properties .......................................................76 Section 2.3.1: The Distinction between Essence and Properties ............................................76 Section 2.3.2: The Properties of God.......................................................................................94 Section 2.3.3: The Properties of Human Beings and Their Affects .........................................99 Section 2.4: Condition 4: Definitions, Causes, and Geometrical Figures ............................108 Section 2.5: Spinoza on Genetic Definitions over the Course of His Philosophical Career .............................................................................................................120 Section 2.5.1: Early and Late Views on Definitions and Causes...........................................120 Section 2.5.2: Pluralism and Singularism Concerning Genetic Definitions .........................129 Section 2.6: Conclusion .........................................................................................................135 Chapter 3: The Principle of Unique Causes ...........................................................................138 Section 3.1: Introduction ......................................................................................................138 Section 3.2: Causation and Explanatory Methodology ........................................................142 Section 3.3: Common Properties and Possible Causes .......................................................144 Section 3.4: Parallelism, E1a4, and Possible Causes ..........................................................147 Section 3.5: Necessitarianism, the PSR, and the Principle of Unique Causes ....................153 Section 3.6: “Involves” and the Principle of Unique Causes ..............................................168 Section 3.7: Spinoza’s Modal Semantics ..............................................................................172 Section 3.8: Conclusion ........................................................................................................179 Chapter 4: Causes, Essences, and the Laws of Nature ..........................................................183 Section 4.1: Introduction .......................................................................................................183 Section 4.2: The Cause as Essential ......................................................................................185 Section 4.3: Narrowing the Field of Causes ..........................................................................187 Section 4.3.1: Introduction ....................................................................................................187 Section 4.3.2: Immanent and Transitive Causation ...............................................................188 Section 4.3.3: Procreative and Conservative Causation .......................................................197 Section