The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Berendt and Friedläander - Spinoza's Erkenntnisslehre
Although quite an extensive literature has grown up around Spinoza, comparatively little attention has, hitherto, been devoted to his theory of knowledge. The authors of this book have gone into the subject with characteristic German thoroughness, and the results of their investigation are both novel and suggestive. It is one of the most current conceptions, say they, that Spinoza deals in a priori constructions, and deduces his philosophy from definitions which are not taken from experience. They profess to show that, on the contrary, he is the philosopher of experience (Auschauungsphilosoph) par excellence, and that the current conception is due entirely to his method of presentation (p. ix).
Not less striking than their interpretation is their claim that Spinoza is the philosopher of all time κατ' ἐξοχήν, and that his system furnishes the key to the true understanding of the world. The philosophy which they apply to the problems of our time seems to be that of Schopenhauer, rather than that of Spinoza as usually understood. They maintain, however, that the former reproduced the real thoughts of Spinoza, and confess that it has been mainly through a study of his system that they have reached their present position (pp. xi, 270). In the first two hundred pages of the book, the authors explain in a popular way Spinoza's theory of knowledge, and show its wonderful correspondence with the results of modern natural science. The remaining portion is more technical and polemical, and takes account of the existing literature of the subject. The lack of a table of contents is a serious inconvenience in using the book. The proof reading, too, has been very careless, nearly every page being disfigured by typographical errors.
In a scholium to ii, 40 of the Ethics, Spinoza distinguishes three ways in which our knowledge arises. The first kind of knowledge comes through imagination or opinion, and is either the result of unordered experience (vaga experientia), or of attaching certain meanings to words or symbols which we have heard. Knowledge of the second kind Spinoza names reason, and the third intuition. He has explained very clearly what he means by knowledge of the first kind. "When the mind regards external bodies through the ideas of the modifications of its own bodies we say that it imagines" (ii, xvii, note). This must also be extended to the knowledge the mind has of itself, for we find that when we perceive things "after the common order of nature," the mind has no adequate knowledge of itself, of its own body, or of external bodies. The authors draw more fully the logical consequences of this doctrine and show how completely it is in harmony with the present scientific standpoint.
It is difficult, however, to agree with the authors' assertion that by ratio Spinoza understands knowledge of the natural sciences. He describes this knowledge as, "arising from the fact that we have notions common to all men, and adequate ideas of the properties of things." The authors appear to me to prove conclusively that Spinoza meant by these notiones communes, "the axioms of mathematics and the fundamental conceptions of the sciences" (p. 46). It is not so clear that the method of which Spinoza thought is "that of experiment and exact investigation of things." The example which he himself gives of rational knowledge, of deducing the rule for finding the fourth proportional from a knowledge of the theory, shows clearly that he was not thinking of induction. The passage upon which the authors base their interpretation is the note to ii, 29 of the Ethics. The mind, says Spinoza, has no adequate knowledge when it is determined from without, by the chance play of circumstances to regard this or that; but it has a clear and distinct knowledge when it is determined from within, i.e. by the fact of regarding several things at once to understand their points of agreement, difference, and contrast. The authors assert that this is exactly the method of the natural science which by observation and experiment strive to discover the resemblances and differences of bodies.
It does not seem to me that any such inference is warranted by the passage. The contrast is between determination from without and determination from within, or, as the authors themselves put it, between receptivity and spontaneity. There is no doubt that Spinoza, in common with the other thinkers of his time, regarded mathematical knowledge as the type of rational knowledge. Numerous passages might be quoted, both from the Ethics and from his correspondence, to show that he conceived it to be the task of reason to deduce from the "notions common to all men" the properties of things, in full confidence that "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things."
The artistic way of regarding things is, according to the authors, the method of the third kind of knowledge, which Spinoza names intuition. By means of this power, whether manifested in art, in the drama, or through scientific insight, the mind grasps at once the true character, the eternal essence, of things. Intuition is a knowledge, too, of the essence of individual things, while reason deals only with universals (V, xxxv, note). Wherein, then, does the essence of individual things consist? In Part III, vi-ix, Spinoza tells us that the essence of each thing is its effort to self-preservation, and this effort may either be called will or appetite, according as it is referred solely to the mind, or to the mind and body at the same time. Thus Schopenhauer only repeats Spinoza's thought that the essence of things consists in the "will to live." Spinoza's philosophy, then, is not a mere system of intellectualism which, as has been so often asserted, identifies will and intellect, but it recognizes, as the fundamental essence of each thing, the active principle whereby it perseveres in existing.
But the essence of things must not be confounded with existence in a certain time and place. "Although every single thing is determined by another individual thing to exist in a certain way, nevertheless the force by which it perseveres in existing follows from the necessity of the divine nature" (II, 45). It is when things are seen as contained in God that their real essence is apprehended, and they are said to be known sub æternitatis specie. This conception of essence when applied to man denotes that permanent direction of will which is to be distinguished from single acts of will, and which corresponds to Kant's "intelligible character." The authors, like Kant, seem to imply something more by the conception than mere regularity of action. They assert that besides the laws, there must remain the eternal essence as a permanent element in all changes of phenomena (p. 151). The essence however must continually manifest itself or else it would be an Unding (p. 147). Thus we find the continual reappearance in different times and places of the same persons and states and even of inanimate things. The essence of Achilles reappears many times in history in Alexander, in Cromwell, and even in Prince Bismarck. Rome lives again in modern Prussia.
It appears to me that these surprising and fantastic results by no means follow from Spinoza's system. Granting that essences must always be manifested, we must remember that the essence of an individual thing is only a certain fixed mode which expresses the eternal essence of God. This eternal essence expresses itself in an infinite variety of ways, and there is no reason to suppose that it continually repeats itself. It is through substantializing the individual essence, quite contrary to the spirit of Spinoza, through forgetting that this denotes only a certain mode of divine action, that the authors have been led to this strange speculation. One would like to inquire, too, what a posteriori considerations have determined the authors' views, and what is the metaphysical test of identity which they apply.
Whether or not we may agree with the interpretation given by the authors of Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge, the book is extremely valuable and suggestive. They apply Spinoza's philosophy (which is also their own) to many of the problems of our time, and if they do not succeed in finding any new solutions, the old truths are nevertheless put with a new emphasis. Philosophical students will await with interest the appearance of their promised expositions of the metaphysical and ethical systems of Spinoza.
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