Spinoza's Metaphysics / La metafísica de Spinoza

Charlie Huenemann

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought, Oxford University Press, 2013, 232 pp.

In this book, Yitzhak Melamed engages critically with recent attempts to reinterpret and refortify Spinoza's metaphysics, and contributes his own set of distinctions and spirited defenses to the project. He is concerned especially with presenting a new interpretation of how the various attributes of God relate to the attribute of thought. This leads to attributing a new flavor of dualism to Spinoza -- a dualism not of mind and body, but of ideas and things.

Part I presents a more general interpretation of Spinoza's monism. Melamed's principal aim here is to argue against Edwin Curley's influential interpretation, and at the same time to defend Spinoza from the objections raised early on by Bayle. In his 1969 book, also entitled Spinoza's Metaphysics, Curley argued that the relation between Spinoza's God and finite things is best understood not according to a substance/property model, but as something akin to the relation between laws of nature and particular facts. Melamed argues this leads to several untoward consequences, including not being able to say Spinoza was a pantheist, not being able to make full sense of critical concepts like immanence and inherence, and having to say that Spinoza's God cannot really know anything. I won't closely review these arguments or possible rejoinders to them, since this kind of objection has been raised many times before, and Curley has been able to supply ready defense. The matter always seems to revolve upon which set of problems an interpreter is least unhappy to face. While Melamed argues with deliberate care and precision in this section, it is the part that most reflects the fact that the book grew out of a doctoral dissertation.

Toward the end of Part I, Melamed offers several insights about the nature of Spinoza's infinite modes, entities practically unheard of outside his metaphysics. Melamed deduces what he can from Spinoza's scattered remarks, but is finally forced to conclude that we simply do not have enough information to say much about them. He does however raise a strategic question well worth pursuing: what would go wrong in Spinoza's metaphysics if he hadn't called forth infinite modes? Melamed's answer is that there would be a motley collection of finite modes, which did not possess any unity or exhibit any global regularities governing changes among them. Membership in an infinite mode constrains the behaviors and natures of finite modes in ways that eventually account for the patterns and lawful regularities we observe in the world.

Spinoza. Tratado teológico-político: Una guía crítica

Theo Verbeek

MELAMED,Yitzhak Y. and ROSENTHAL, Michael A. (eds.). Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, 249 pp.

Apart from the 'geometric version' of Descartes's Principia with an appendix containing 'Metaphysical Thoughts' ('Cogitata metaphysica'), the Tractatus theologico-politicus (TTP) is the only work of Spinoza published during his lifetime. Written in a difficult and elusive style, packed with Biblical quotations, switching on almost every page (sometimes even within a single phrase) from a theological to a philosophical register, badly organized and -- let us admit it -- without a clear and recognizable focus, the work constitutes a great challenge. No one should believe those who claim that in this work Spinoza has a clear message. Even the notion of libertas philosophandi ('freedom to philosophize'), which, according to the full title, would be the book's central concern, is not free from ambiguity. In any case, it is far from obvious in what way that notion provides an organizing principle for the book as a whole. Indeed, one of the questions could be to what extent the book is a whole, given the fact that Spinoza presents the book as a collection of 'some treatises' (aliquot dissertationes). As a result, a 'critical guide' is needed.

One would expect a critical guide to the TTP to provide teachers and students with reading help. More specifically, one would want an overall analysis and a thorough discussion of certain key notions. Preferably there would also be an assessment of the relation to Spinoza's other works, especially the Ethics and the Political Treatise. Particularly one would want information on the context. It is my view indeed that with the TTP Spinoza intervened in certain very specific political debates concerning the relation of Holland to the other provinces, the Dutch political system, the position of the Dutch Reformed Church as a 'public' Church, and the future of the United Provinces, even if large parts of the book were probably written with a different purpose. Finally, a 'critical guide' should contain a critical review of the relevant secondary literature. I am sorry to say that, despite the high level of scholarship displayed throughout this volume and the absolute originality of some of the contributions, this 'critical guide' to the TTP hardly meets those expectations.

Edwin Curley, to whom the volume is dedicated, contributes a fine article on 'Spinoza's exchange with Albert Burgh,' which culminates with a discussion of superstition, concluding that, after all, Spinoza finds it desirable for the state to sponsor a religion he himself believes to be superstitious. In Curley's view the 'universal creed' serves as the common denominator of all religious sects (that is, basically superstitious beliefs) and not as a philosophically purified religion. This is a good point, although it does little to solve the problem of the relation between superstition and 'true religion.' According to Spinoza, superstition is based on hope and fear, and that would mean that a non-superstitious religion must not be based on hope and fear. Accordingly, it would not be the precise contents of a belief that makes it superstitious, but the feelings associated with it. I believe the key concept here is devotion (as, for example, in TTP v, III, 75, 77, 78; vi, III, 90; xii, III, 146^[1]), an emotion essentially different from hope and fear because it is based on love.

La metafísica de Spinoza: Substancia y pensamiento

MELAMED, Yitzhak Y. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought, Oxford University Press, New York, 2013, 256 pp.

Yitzhak Melamed nos ofrece aquí una nueva y sistemática interpretación del núcleo de la metafísica de Spinoza. En la primera parte del libro, nos propone una nueva lectura de la metafísica de la sustancia en Spinoza: sostiene que los modos, para Spinoza, son tanto inherentes a como se predican de Dios. Utilizando una amplia evidencia textual, muestra que Spinoza considera los modos como propiedades de la esencia de Dios. Igualmente, nuestro autor explica qué entiende Spinoza por infinito, las relaciones mereológicas, los modos infinitos y el flujo de las cosas finitas a partir de la esencia de Dios. En la segunda parte del libro, Melamed, apoyándose en esta interpretación de la relación substancia-modo y la naturaleza de los modos infinitos, propone dos tesis interrelacionadas acerca de la estructura del atributo de pensamiento y su papel primordial en la metafísica de Spinoza. Por un lado, muestra que Spinoza no tenía una, sino dos teorías del paralelismo independientes. Por el otro, Melamed afirma, en su tesis principal, que las ideas, para Spinoza, tienen una estructura multifacética (de hecho, infinitamente facética) que permite a una sola y misma idea representar los modos infinitos que son paralelos a los atributos infinitos. Así, el pensamiento resulta ser coextensivo a la totalidad de la naturaleza. Desde luego, Spinoza no podría aceptar una reducción idealista de la extensión al pensamiento debido a su idea sobre la separación conceptual de los atributos. Sin embargo, en la metafísica de Spinoza –según Melamed--, el pensamiento tiene claramente primacía sobre los otros atributos en la medida en que es el único atributo tan complicado, tan complejo y, en algunos sentidos, tan poderoso como Dios o Naturaleza.