The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Seligkowitz - Causa sui, causa prima, et causa essendi
Schopenhauer in his Satz vom zureichenden Grunde (S. 32, 3te Aufl.), in identifying Spinoza's causa sui with causa prima, confuses two notions. The notion causa sui with Spinoza presents many difficulties. Hegel developed the notion and built his system on it, by creating out of it the notion of evolution. Spinoza, however, gives this notion an entirely different meaning. He defines causa sui as that cuius essentia involvit existentiam. The determination of this notion, then, is concerned chiefly with the inseparability of essence and existence. In the interpretation of the notion of substance, which is determined by causa sui, there are two possibilities: either the inner character of substance is fixed and unchangeable, on all sides from eternity complete and accordingly incapable of further development, or we must regard it as living and capable of development. Spinoza seems to take the first view, which involves the difficult question, how essence, then, can furnish a basis for existence, in view of the fact that, according to his premise, essence can at no time be conceived without existence. A further difficulty is how substance comes to let both the attributes of extensio and cogitatio go out from infinity and pass over into modi; the more so, as the system admits of no consequent development. Schopenhauer, by bringing together the two notions causa sui and causa prima, which Spinoza sharply distinguished, creates a new difficulty, in that he applies contradictio in adiecto of the causa prima also to causa sui. L. Busse characterizes Spinoza's essence and existence as parallel with Kant's 'Sein an sich' and 'Erscheinungen'; the author goes a step further. He asserts that the causa ultima or conditio sine qua non of Spinoza in point of the validity of this notion corresponds to the Kantian category of causality. If with Spinoza we deny to substance all self-consciousness, all living personality which works toward an end, there remain in re the relationship between world and substance, as above, two possibilities: either the essential character of God is fixed and unchangeable, in all directions from eternity complete, or it is living, changeable, and capable of development. The first way, which Spinoza seems to take, would regard the relationship between substance and modi exclusively as the existence of a logical bond of cause and consequence between the 'Seinsmomenten' of substance. Accordingly, there would be neither in substance nor in modi a principle of change. The second view conflicts with a formalistic explanation of substance in Spinoza's system. There is only one way to avoid this difficulty. As Schopenhauer employs the will as the creative principle in the world, while in and for itself it is fixed and unchangeable, so with Spinoza the thinking understanding. Schopenhauer (id., S. 32) in his criticism of Wolf’s notion of causa essendi is under a further misunderstanding. This criticism is seen to be erroneous, when we translate into Wolfian language the relation between cause and effect. Wolf in his ontology teaches that simple substances are endowed with forces. Every force consists in the continuous tendency to work, to produce change; the essence of simple substances consists in activity. These force-units, which are the vehicles of objective reality, from the fact of being indivisible and unextended, are to be identified neither with the property of extension nor with that of motion. The specific character of the reacting of force-units Wolf conceived as causa essendi.