The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (17 page)

In all these respects it differs from Cartesian clear and distinct perception (see §5 of the previous chapter). Descartes came to regard his clear and distinct perceptions as true by reasoning back from them to a story about their origin, a story involving Divine benevolence. This was a kind of inference to the best explanation, where the explanation was at the same time a vindication. Spinoza, by contrast, insists that we attain to adequate knowledge by reasoning, not from effect to cause, as Descartes did, but from cause to effect, or from explicans to explicandum (e.g.
Treatise
, ¶85).
⁵⁴
Just by carefully attending to one of our adequate ideas, Spinoza believes, we can see it as true, because we can see it as explained by reasons which it itself expresses. The paradigm is the case in which we attend to some mathematical theorem that we have in mind –
as
the conclusion of a piece of mathematical reasoning that we likewise have in mind, the latter implicated in the former.
⁵⁵

There is, however, an obvious concern about this account. What about the ‘first principles’, the axioms and definitions on which the proof of the theorem ultimately rests? In what sense does our acceptance of
them
carry its own credentials with it, if not by enjoying the indubitability of a Cartesian clear and distinct perception?

One possible reply would be that the axioms and definitions are true by stipulation; that it is precisely our acceptance of them that makes them true. Adapted to metaphysics, this reply would chime well with the remarks that I made at the end of §5 of the previous chapter, in opposition to Descartes, concerning my own reasons for regarding metaphysics as a fundamentally creative exercise. It is plain, however, that this reply, at least in any such application, would not be acceptable to Spinoza. In
Letter
9 he makes clear that the grounds of the truth of the axioms and definitions which he himself
provides in the
Ethics
, and to which the same concern applies, need to be altogether more robust than that (cf.
Treatise
, ¶¶95–98). Another possible reply, more suited to the project in the
Ethics
than to mathematics, is that the axioms and definitions are not, after all, ‘first principles’, that they are part of a set of interlocking propositions whose truth consists in their mutual support and overall coherence. Spinoza’s own reply would surely be (and would need to be) something of this sort.
⁵⁶

Be that as it may, we see in mathematical reasoning a model of adequate knowledge. This is knowledge of the second kind. Before we consider what distinguishes knowledge of the third kind from this, let us reflect more generally on the nature and origin of knowledge of the second kind. What enables us to have such knowledge, Spinoza says, is the fact that we have ‘common notions’, where a common notion is an idea of a common property, and where a common property is in turn ‘that which is common to all things … and is equally in the part as in the whole’ (IIp37,p40s2). He gives as examples of common properties the following, shared by all bodies: ‘that they involve the conception of one and the same attribute … and … that they may move at varying speeds, and may be absolutely in motion or absolutely at rest’ (IIp13lem2pf). He then argues that, precisely because these properties are equally in the part as in the whole, our ideas of them, that is to say our common notions, must be adequate. For these notions do not depend on anything beyond us: they carry their own credentials with them (IIpp38,39). We have them, not because of any particular affections of our bodies, but simply because we have bodies, which quite literally incorporate that which is common to all bodies. It is thus that we are able to arrive at knowledge of the second kind, which, we now see, must always be of a highly general character,
⁵⁷
as for instance our knowledge of the fundamental nature of motion. Relatedly, such knowledge must also be invariant from one context to another. This is in contrast to the knowledge a man has, just as he catches a ball, that his hand
is now
moving, which, were it to be exactly replicated in another context, would nevertheless not survive into that context. There he would have different knowledge, knowledge that his hand
was then
moving, perhaps as a result of his catching a quite different ball, or even half a ball.

It might appear now that no knowledge can be both adequate and particular.
⁵⁸
Knowledge of the second kind is adequate; knowledge of the first kind is particular. But the very account of how each is what it is seems to preclude any knowledge’s being both. And if it is true that no knowledge can be both, then the prospects for our approaching the model of human nature discussed in §3, which involves our making maximum possible sense of things, look dim. The summit of our aspirations to freedom, it now seems, is proving mathematical theorems, or reflecting on such highly general features of reality as the fundamental nature of motion.

Yet Spinoza sees much brighter prospects for our approaching the model than that. He believes that we have the power to control both our affections and our affects by making sense, among other things, of
them
; by appropriating their explicantia and ensuring that they (the affections and the affects) are active rather than passive; by, as Spinoza himself says, arranging them and associating them with one another (Vp20s; cf. Vp39pf).

The question, therefore, is how this is possible. For precisely what it requires is knowledge that is both adequate and particular: ‘adequate knowledge of the essence of things’ (IIp40s), where the ‘essence’ of a thing is as particular as the thing itself (IIIp7). It is in answering this question that Spinoza gives his account of knowledge of the third kind. For what knowledge of the third kind
is
is ‘adequate knowledge of the essence of things’.

Spinoza
⁵⁹
believes that knowledge of the second kind can eventually lead to, and include, an adequate (albeit incomplete) idea of substance: that all-embracing, self-sufficient, unified being whose essence each particular expresses in some way, that integrated being in which all particulars are bound together in relations of necessitation (IIp47 and Vp14).
⁶⁰
To arrive at knowledge of the third kind, he argues, we must proceed via this adequate idea of substance. We must see all things, ourselves included, in their essential relation to the whole, ‘
sub specie
æternitatis
’ as Spinoza famously puts it (Vp29). (To see things in that way combats a solipsistic tendency in knowledge of the first kind, and indeed in some knowledge of the second kind. It brings us to a proper realization that we are part of nature.) Still, no amount of knowledge of the second kind, however necessary it may be for securing knowledge of the third kind, can suffice for doing so. For no amount of knowledge of the second kind can issue in knowledge of the essence of any
particular
(IIp37). For a man to proceed from knowledge of the second kind to knowledge of the third kind, or from an adequate idea of substance to an
adequate knowledge of the essence of any given particular
X
, he must as it were take a leap in his mind to
X
.

But how? And how can such knowledge count as adequate? How can it express its own explicans? Why does this ‘leap’
not mean that whatever idea he has in mind is answerable to something beyond?

No doubt the leap will be facilitated by suitable encounters with
X
itself, issuing in inadequate knowledge of the first kind. The point, however, is this. The knowledge in question, at which he eventually arrives, does not represent
how X
is. Indeed, it is even impervious to
whether X
is. It is knowledge of
what X
is, in the sense that it is knowledge of
what it is
for
X
to be.
⁶¹
It is knowledge of
what
X
can do
. In principle, if not in practice, the subject could have arrived at such knowledge through creative imagination, even if
X
had never existed (Vp29+acc). It is in part a kind of practical knowledge: it includes, though it is not exhausted by, knowledge of how to exploit the possibilities that
X
affords, if ever and whenever the opportunity arises.
⁶²
If the subject himself is
X
, in other words if the knowledge in question is self-knowledge, then its practical part is, in effect, his knowledge of how to do (some of) what he can do. If
X
is different from the subject, then the practical part of the knowledge is, in effect, his knowledge of how to do (some of) what he can do in cooperation with
X
.

Reconsider John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Each of them can arrive at an adequate knowledge of his own essence, whereby he develops his capacity for creativity and performance. But each of them can also, through encounters with the others, arrive at an adequate knowledge of the others’ essences, and ultimately at an adequate knowledge of the group’s essence. This is what enables them to be creative and to perform
as a group
, achieving not only what none of them could ever have achieved solo but what the four of them could never have achieved as four isolated individuals. And if one of the members of the group dies, or simply leaves the group and forces it to disband, the remaining three retain a capacity, through their knowledge of his essence, to perform, not as the original group, which is no longer possible, but not as ‘just another’ group either; rather, as a threesome that would not itself have been possible if he and they had not originally functioned together as a foursome.

Such knowledge is a way of making sense of particulars, including particular affections and particular affects. And it is a way of achieving power over those affections and affects (Vp20s,p39pf). When Paul first hears John perform something, he has certain auditory experiences. These are themselves passive mental affections, no doubt accompanied by various passive
affects, or passions. So are his subsequent memories of them whenever they are triggered (IIp18+acc). But he comes to make sense of these affections, and perhaps also of their attendant passions, in a certain way. He comes to understand why they occur as they do. And thus, to whatever limited extent – Spinoza always acknowledges how severe the limitations are (IIpp3+pf,4+pf and IVApp¶42) – Paul attains to corresponding active affections and affects, through which he is able to make his own creative use of what he has heard John do. In a small way he approaches the model of human nature. (This of course has no implications, pro or contra, for whether he approaches the model in other ways as well, still less for how close he is to it in any of those other ways.)

Knowledge of the third kind, the knowledge which brings us to our highest level of freedom and activity, also brings us to our ‘highest conatus’ and ‘highest virtue’ (Vp25). It leads us to what Spinoza calls ‘an intellectual love of God’ – a kind of joyful affirmation of life
⁶³
– in which both blessedness and virtue consist (Vp36s,p42). In the exhilarating final pages of the
Ethics
Spinoza argues, using resources that unfortunately lie beyond the scope of this chapter, that we also thereby enjoy a kind of eternity (esp. Vpp23+acc,31+acc,39+acc), where by eternity is meant, in Wittgenstein’s words, ‘not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness’ (Wittgenstein (
1961
), 6.4311).
⁶⁴
Knowledge of the third kind is the supreme aim of ethics.

6. Metaphysical Knowledge as Knowledge of the Second Kind

We come at last to the implications of all of this for metaphysics.
⁶⁵
This final section can be brief. Most of the work has already been done.

Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things. In Spinoza’s terms, it is the most general pursuit of knowledge of the second kind. And this is precisely what we find in the main part of the
Ethics
, where Spinoza tries to convey a system of interrelated metaphysical truths. I refer to the ‘main part’ of the
Ethics
because, as Deleuze has persuasively argued (Deleuze (
1990a
), App., and Deleuze (
1995e
)), something rather different
is to be found in the scholia, where Spinoza’s aim is more often to impart knowledge of the first kind. When that is his aim, we find various heuristic props for grasping the metaphysical truths conveyed in the main part of the book, or indications of some of their practical repercussions, or just helpful reformulations of some of them (e.g. IIp8s, IVp37ss1,2, and Vp20s).

In the main part, however, Spinoza tries to impart knowledge of the second kind. But that is not
just
to say, what I have already said, that he tries to convey metaphysical truths. There is more to his trying to impart knowledge of the second kind than that. This is not because there are truths other than metaphysical truths, say general truths about motion, whose knowledge also constitutes knowledge of the second kind, and which he also tries to convey. It is not a question of subject matter at all. (There are
no
truths whose knowledge constitutes knowledge of the second kind, any more than there are truths whose knowledge constitutes having learned something at school. What is known does not dictate how it is known.) The point is this. In trying to convey metaphysical truths, Spinoza might have been content for his readers to accept what he says on trust. Had that been the case, he would have been trying to convey no more than knowledge of the first kind. In fact, of course, it is not the case. Spinoza wants his readers to see the reasons for what he says and to make those reasons their own. He wants his readers to share the knowledge which he himself has. He wants them, like him, to make general sense of things.