Ignoring the Demon? Spinoza's Way with Doubt

Ignoring the Demon? Spinoza's Way with Doubt RICHARD V. MASON SPINOZA'S RESPONSESTO THE Cartesian method of doubt have not impressed commentators. Richard Popkin stated the charge well: Considering how serious 'la crise pyrrhonniene' was in the middle of the seventeenth century, and especially how serious it was for Descartes, it is somewhat surprising to see how calmly Spinoza faced it, and how simple he found it was to dispose of it. Unlike Descartes, who had to fight his way through scepticism to arrive at dogmatic truth, Spinoza simply began with an assurance that his system was true, and anyone who didn't see this was either truth-blind (like color-blind) or was an ignoramus.' The reasons for this are not hard to see. In brief, Spinoza, who was extremely well-acquainted with the work of Descartes, dismissed the doubts of the First Meditation in little more than a few words. His opinion that truth is a standard of itself (and of falsity) looks like an intuitionism that, to a critical reader, can appear as dogmatism. Even a sympathetic commentator like Hubbeling thought that Spinoza had not "really struggled with doubt as for example Descartes did."' Recently, some attempts have been made to argue Spinoza's case, but not, I shall claim, along the most effective lines.3 Historically and philosophically this matters. The epistemology of Descartes presented a challenge to philosophers for three centuries. Spinoza seemed to ignore that challenge, or at least he seemed to produce no interesting response. This must have been one of the main factors which placed him outside the mainstream of the European philosophical canon. ' R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticismfrom Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 239 and 245. 2H. G. Hubbeling, Spinoza'sMethodology(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967), 35. sSee for example M. B. Bohon, "Spinoza on Cartesian Doubt," No~ 19/3 (1985): 379-95; D. Garrett, "Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatusde IntellectusEmendatione,"Studia Spinozana 2 0986): 61-92; W. Doney, "Spinoza on Philosophical Skepticism," in M. Mandelbaum and E. Freeman, eds. Spinoza:Essaysin Interpretation(La Salle: Open Court, 1975), 139-57. [545] 546 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:4 OCTOBER 1993 In this paper I want to show that a response to Cartesian doubt other than dogmatic intuitionism was available to Spinoza. That response, I believe, was and is an interesting one. Along the way, I also want to argue, with rather less certainty, that it was actually adopted by Spinoza, as well as being available to him. Here, my lack of certainty is a product of Spinoza's terseness. What his positions entailed or presupposed seems straightforward logically. The scholarship required to determine how far he followed that logic is not, I think, conclusive. But the case should be stated. 1. First, the challenge. Here is one way to state the thinking of Descartes: (a) Descartes can imagine what is not actual: "Suppose then that I am dreaming, and that these particulars--that my eyes are open, that I am moving my head and stretching out my hands--are not true. Perhaps, indeed, I do not even have such hands or such a body at all."4 (b) Descartes can distinguish his imagination from his "pure understanding"5 or his "clear and distinct conception" (or "perception"). (c) When Descartes clearly and distinctly conceives something, it is not possible at that time for him to be mistaken: "So long as we attend to a truth which we perceive very clearly, we cannot doubt it.''6 (d) Butueven while perceiving a truth--Descartes can present to himself the possibility that he might be mistaken. The introduction of the demon shows this in the First Meditation. More directly (but perhaps the same in practice), we see the use of "an omnipotent God who created us" in the Principles of Philosophy: "... we do not know whether he may have wished to make us beings of the sort who are always deceived even in those matters which seem to us supremely evident; for such constant deception seems no less a possibility than the occasional deception which, as we have noticed on previous...