Spinoza's Metaphysics: Essays in Critical Appreciation (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 87 Space prevents a full-scale extension of this catalog to other chapters and authors. But as a sample, we may note that after assuring us that "neither logical terminism nor the theology of God's omnipotence was the preserve of any school," Left continues to refer to Burley's "nominalismin logic" (p. 87), when Burley defends his realism against Ockham's conceptualism in De puritate artis logicae! What I have said above should illustrate Left's persistent failure to give precise, accurate statements of the philosophical views he is discussing. It may also be noted that Left's style is frequently turgid and his syntax confused. The book contains six incomplete sentences (pp. 5, 6, 43, 51, and 145) and indeterminatepronoun references beyond numbering. Given the wide circulation that Left's books enjoy, his continual production of such sloppy work is not only a disservice to professionals--necessitating, as it does, replies such as this one--but also it runs the risk of spreading falsehood and confusion about a subject that is already misunderstood enough. MARILYNMcCot~ ADAMS University of California, Los Angeles James B. Wilbur, ed. Spinoza's Metaphysics: Essays in Critical Appreciation. Philosophia Spinozae Perennis, vol. 1. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976. Pp. viii + 163. Paper, Dfl. 37.50. This collection of papers on Spinoza is the fifth to have appeared in English recently,1and it is an expression, Professor Wilbur indicates (preface, p. v), of "the long-standing conviction that [Spinoza's] work repays close attention with a wealth and abundance of insight matched by few other thinkers." The papers included are by Robert N. Beck ("The Attribute of Thought"), Errol E. Harris ("Body-Mind Relation in Spinoza's Philosophy"), Dennis A. Rohatyn ("Spinoza's Emotivism"), Ernest Sherman ("Spinoza and the Divine Cogito: God as 'Self-Performance'"), Stewart Umphrey ("Spinoza's Defense of Human Freedom"), James B Wilbur ("Is Spinoza's God Self-Conscious ?"), William J. Edgar ("Continuity and the Individuationof Modes in Spinoza's Physics"), Robert Pasotti ("Spinoza: The Metaphysician as Healer"), Stanley Rosen ("Hegel, Descartes, and Spinoza"), and Harold J. Allen ("Spinoza's Naturalism and our Contemporary Neo-Cartesians"). Beck maintains (p. 10) that Thought is in some sense prior to the other attributes (and hence, apparently, that Spinoza should have been, but was not, an idealist). His argument (pp. 8-10) relies primarily on Ethics, I, xvii, s; II, vii, c; and II, vii, s,2 in conjunction with a distinction between "active activity" and "passive activity"; but this distinction is not clear, and the passages cited seem to provide no support for the thesis. (On E, I, xvii, s, see below.) Harris attempts to explain Spinoza's position on the mind-body relation, in the course of which he states that the idea or mind of an object is "an active, self-illuminatingawareness" of the object (p. 14), and that the idea of a body "is thus the consciousness which that body has of itself..." (p. 14). The generality of this explanation is threatened, however, by Harris's attempt to explain Spinoza's remark (in E, II, xiii, s) that all individuals are animata. For we are here told (p. 16) t The others (aside from specialissues on Spinozain variousjournals) are: Paul Kashap, ed., Studies in Spinoza: Critical and InterpretiveEssays (Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1972);MarjorieGrene, ed., Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1973); Eugene Freeman and Maurice Mandelbaum,eds., Spinoza:Essays in Interpretation (La Salle, IU.:Open Court, 1973);and J. G. van der Bend, ed., Spinozaon Knowing,Being, and Freedom(Assen:Van Gorcum, 1974). 2The followingabbreviationsystemis used:E for Ethics, whichis cited by part and sectionnumber;"s" for scholium;"c" for corollary;"def." for definition;G for SpinozaOpera,ed. CarlGebhardt,4 vols. (Heidelberg : Carl Winters, 1925),whichis citedby volume,page, and line number. 88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that a stone is not aware of itself and not "worthy of the name of consciousness"--even though it has a mind. It is unclear whether Harris attempts to avoid this apparent contradiction. The further suggestion (pp. 14, 18-19) that the mind and body are identical because there is only one substance is surely mistaken, since the mind...