The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, and: Spinoza: The Letters (review)

140 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:1 JANUARY 1997 is at work. Particularly recommended are such contemporary challenges to tradition as Jean-Luc Marion's Sur la th~ologie blanche de Descartes (1980, Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes (1981), Sur le prisme m~taphysiquede Descartes0986), and Questionscart~siennes (199 0, and (at the opposite extreme) Hiram Caton's The Origin of Subjectivity(1973). There are many more studies of Descartes's works than of his life. Rodis-Lewis's biography reminds us that to understand his works, we must also examine his life. Descartes said that truth can be reached by looking within one's own mind. And he once said pointedly, "Je suis un homme." Rodis-Lewis ends her book with descriptions of monuments raised to Descartes. Her book is another such monument. And this leads me to a final word of caution. I once ended a review of a book on Descartes--by an author who hated Descartes--by saying that one should never entirely trust an author who either loves or hates her subject. Genevi/~ve Rodis-Lewis loves Ren6 Descartes. RICHARD A. WATSON Washington University Don Garrett, ed. The CambridgeCompaniontoSpinoza. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv + 465 . Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $17.95. Samuel Shirley, trans. Spinoza: The Letters. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1995. Pp. x + 4o4 . Cloth, $34.95. The "Cambridge Companion" series has been producing some very fine volumes on philosophers of particular historical importance and contemporary interest, and The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza is no exception to the rule. In fact, this is the best collection of essays on Spinoza to appear in quite some time. The chapters cover a wide range of topics--all those one hopes would be covered in a book on Spinoza--in an efficient and accessible manner (with surprisingly little overlap and repetition), and without (for the most part) sacrifice of philosophical depth. Some of the essays are analytically inclined, others tend more towards the historical. Taken together, they present an informative and critical overview of the various elements in Spinoza's philosophical system. Wim Klever's opening essay on Spinoza's life and works is a useful summary by a leading authority on Spinoza's biography of what is known (and also what is not known) about his life, acquaintances, and writings. Jonathan Bennett, in "Spinoza's Metaphysics," then goes right to the heart of some problems of substance in Spinoza, focussing primarily on the questions of what material substances there are and what is the constitution of the mind-body relationship for Spinoza. He defends the modeidentity thesis that he has argued for elsewhere' and offers a persuasive explanation of the mechanics of Spinoza's parallelism. (I should note that Bennett's chapter begins ' SeeJonathan Bennett, A StudyofSpinoza'sEthics(Indianapolis: Hacken, 1984). BOOK REVIEWS 141 with a potentially troubling typographical error: on p. 61, line 3 should read "there is only one extended substance," and not "there is only one substance.") Margaret Wilson's "Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge" takes the reader through Part of the Ethics while insisting on its connections with the other parts. She explains in a particularly clear and illuminating way Spinoza's account of knowledge in the context both of his metaphysical and theological commitments and of his salvationist ethics. Alan Gabbey, in "Spinoza's Natural Science and Methodology," addresses the question of what Spinoza's contribution to "science" was (relatively modest) and examines Spinoza 's employment, elaboration, and occasional correction or modification of Cartesian natural philosophy, as well as the various notions and processes informing his conception of scientific method. In an interesting but sometimes tedious essay, "Spinoza 's Metaphysical Psychology," Michael Della Rocca assesses Spinoza's naturalistic program in psychology. He tries to show how attempts to save the plausibility of various elements of Spinoza's psychology (the accounts of joy, desire, and love, for example) all run afoul of his naturalism by introducing a species-particular element into the phenomena in the human realm, i.e., cognitive states. In "Spinoza's Ethical Theory," Don Garrett, after a general overview of Spinoza's ethics, examines a number of important issues central to moral...