Goff, Philip (ed.). Spinoza
and Monism, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 295 pp.
At its inception, Analytic philosophy had always maintained a
certain distance from Spinoza. In the sense of method, Spinoza’s systematic
rationalism seemed worlds apart from the more positivistic approach of the
Analytic thinkers of the early 20th Century. There was, perhaps, no
element of Spinoza’s philosophy more responsible for this distance than his
radical substance monism. Like the great German mathematician of Spinoza’s day,
Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, Analytic thinkers held in suspect Spinoza’s
claim that “there must follow infinite things in infinite ways [modis]” from a
single substance.(1) Not only did this fly in the face of empirically-grounded
scientific method, but it arguably defied simple, common sense. A. J. Ayer’s
“Solutions of Outstanding Metaphysical Disputes,” provides an excellent example
of the former criticism, prevalent at the time:
What is more, there is a sense in which certain prejudices about Spinoza and monism were carried over from the days of German Idealism—viz., that monism did not just transform the world of finite things into modes but, rather, it abolished their reality altogether. This is clearly visible in Bertrand Russell’s essay, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,” wherein he states:
The assertion that Reality is One, which it is characteristic of a
monist to make and a pluralist to controvert, is nonsensical, since no
empirical situation could have any bearing on its truth. (2)
What is more, there is a sense in which certain prejudices about Spinoza and monism were carried over from the days of German Idealism—viz., that monism did not just transform the world of finite things into modes but, rather, it abolished their reality altogether. This is clearly visible in Bertrand Russell’s essay, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,” wherein he states:
I share the common-sense belief that there are many separate
things; I do not regard the apparent multi-plicity of the world as consisting
merely in phases and unreal divisions of a single indivisible Reality. (3)
While Spinoza has come to play a greater role in the development
of Analytic thought, these early criticisms continue to hold a powerful sway.
Whether from Jonathan Bennett’s critique of the third kind of knowledge, (4) or
Donald Davidson’s conclusion that Spinoza may have indirectly shown us that a
monist psychology was, in fact, “impossible,” (5) one cannot help but wonder if
these are signs of a lingering prejudice against monism.
Philip Goff’s edited volume, Spinoza on Monism, aims to
take up this very question, as well as whether or not this prejudice toward
Spinoza and monism can, or should be, broken. It is the latest publication from
the Palgrave Macmillan series, ‘Philosophers in Depth,’ which is designed to
explore major figures in the tradition of Western philosophy by focusing on
single, pivotal concepts in their thought. Previously released titles include,
for example, ‘Mill on Justice,’ ‘Hegel on Action,’ ‘Sartre on the Body,’ etc.,
with volumes soon to come such as ‘Plato on Art,’ ‘Aristotle on Aesthetics,’
and ‘James on Religion.’ The controversy surrounding Spinoza’s monism is,
indeed, a fitting topic for such a treatment.
The book is divided into two main sections: ‘Monism in
Contemporary Metaphysics’ and ‘Monism in Spinoza.’ That the text is so divided
seems, at first, a bit puzzling. Spinoza is hardly mentioned in Part I; rather,
the essays center around a polemic, starting from Jonathan Schaffer’s “Monism:
The Priority of the Whole,” and Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč’s “Existence
Monism Trumps Priority Monism.” What begins as a debate concerning the
viability of different emergent schools in monist thought—between “priority”
monism (which holds that finite things are real but preceded by the unity of
the cosmos) and “existence” monism (which contends that a discussion of finite
things cannot enter into the “right ontology”)—turns into a larger debate over
whether the right ontology is fundamentally monist or pluralist, as well as
whether monism is more suitable to common sense than Analytic thought has
previously afforded. The essays are meticulously argued, however, at the
conclusion of this section, one has a strong sense that the debate has ended in
a deadlock. Indeed, one wonders if the lines of the debate have been adequately
drawn. It is the second part of the text, in which Spinoza’s thought is
addressed explicitly, that yields to the suspicion that, perhaps, there is
another side to this debate. This is particularly clear in three essays that I
will focus on in particular: Mogens Lærke’s “Spinoza’s Monism? What Monism?”
Yitzhak Melamed’s “Why Spinoza is not an Eleatic Monist (Or Why Diversity
Exists),” and Steven Nadler’s “Spinoza’s Monism and the Reality of the Finite.”
(6)
