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HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

Volume 20, Number 3, July 2003

SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A


LAW OF NATURE
Jon Miller

I n the early modern period, laws of nature underwent two re


markable changes: first, their role in science and philosophy
was greatly expanded as they became central to investigation
and explanation; and second, ontology (are the laws “real” or
not?) and induction emerged as far and away the most impor-
tant problems of interpretation. The dramatic expansion in the
variety of the laws and their range of application, together with
the emergence of ontology and induction as (the) paramount
problems of interpretation, so revolutionized thinking about
such laws that it is hard for us, nowadays, to conceive of them
in any other terms. For both historical and philosophical rea-
sons, however, it is important that we try: historical, because
as a matter of fact philosophers and scientists did not always
conceive of laws of nature as we do today; philosophical, be-
cause there are ways of conceiving of the laws, different from
the dominant conception nowadays, which, if properly attended
to, might prove instructive.
A number of valuable studies are available to help us in this
endeavor. 1 None of them, however, provides anything like a thor-
ough examination of Spinoza’s views on laws of nature. While
this neglect is not entirely without justification—Spinoza was
not one of the great scientists of the seventeenth century and he
did not exert a strong influence over the subsequent develop-
ment of such laws—on balance it must be seen as unfortunate.
In Spinoza we can find a snapshot of the laws at a mid-point of
their evolution during the early modern period: he encapsulates
many of the possibilities—and reflects much of the general opti-
mism—about how these laws could be conceived and what their
place in philosophy and science should be. Furthermore, laws of

257
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nature (or natural laws, as they shall often be called in this pa-
per) are so crucial to Spinoza’s own system that we cannot
understand it fully without understanding his views on them.
By studying Spinoza’s laws, then, we can hope to learn much
about Spinoza as well as the more general state of philosophy
and science in his day.

I. THE LAWS’ DOMAINS


Civil laws do not apply unrestrictedly to all individuals: the laws
of a city, for example, only protect and enjoin people in that city,
and the laws of a province or state only the people there. Simi-
larly, laws of nature were not automatically thought to be
universally applicable to all beings; instead, they only pertain
to individuals in their domains. 2 Four interpretations can be
given of a natural law’s domain and all were considered during
the early modern period.
On the first level, there might be laws whose domain is re-
stricted to single individuals. 3 In this case, laws would be
correlated to individuals (however individuals be defined) and
the law(s) of individual x would not necessarily apply to indi-
vidual y. Leibniz was one proponent of such laws, as he would
have to be on account of his monadology. If laws were to serve
as explanatory principles in his metaphysics, then given his view
that the ultimate metaphysical substances are isolated individu-
als with no causal or other relations to other members of the
universe, laws must be conceived as exclusive to the individuals
or monads themselves. 4
At the second level, there might be laws of groups of indi-
viduals or species. Here, laws would be relative to species, and
the law (or laws) of species x wouldn’t necessarily apply to spe-
cies y. It is on this level that the connection of the old natural
law tradition of ethics to the new emerging scientific and philo-
sophical discourse about laws was most apparent. 5 The species
whose laws were talked about most often was the human spe-
cies. Many of these discussions occurred in the context of moral
and political philosophy, where thinkers as different as Grotius
and Hobbes used laws of human nature to draw conclusions about
moral obligations, the meaning of moral terms like “good” and
“virtue,” how government can be justified, and so forth. 6
There is a third level of laws for individuals of more than one
species or other natural kind. Various limits can be placed on
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 259

the domain of these laws: they could include individuals of two


species or kinds, or of several, or of all. The most common early
modern interpretation placed no restrictions on the law’s domain,
so that this kind of law included all individuals, whether or not
they are of the same species or kind. Descartes’s two most basic
laws of physics, the laws of conservation and inertia, are tokens
of this type of law. 7 With these two laws, Descartes is able (or
thinks himself able) to explain fully the behavior of all bodies
by first deducing tertiary laws and then deriving conclusions
about how bodies must act from these laws. 8 His project is aided
by his conception of body as extended substance: given that body
is so conceived, any law of nature qua extended substance must
apply to all bodies, not just some and not just bodies of a par-
ticular kind (such as members of a certain species). Of the four
types of domains given to natural laws, this one most resembles
that of our notion of a scientific law and opinion began to coa-
lesce around it by the end of the seventeenth century. 9
Finally, on the fourth level, there could be laws pertaining to
nature taken as a whole. Such a view would be more amenable
to holists who discerned profit in thinking of Nature as a com-
plete system. But of course, this idea was not stigmatized in the
early modern period as it is in ours, and figures from Spinoza to
Newton took it seriously. 10
Now this précis, while not proving anything, does exhibit one
of the main uncertainties with which early moderns struggled—
what the laws’ domains should be. The background is important
because it situates and helps to explain the plurality of domains
of Spinoza’s laws.
Setting aside second-level laws for the time being (we will
return to them shortly), Spinoza’s acceptance of laws with the
other three domains is pretty certain. 11
(1)Like Leibniz, he speaks of and utilizes first-level laws of
individuals. For example, he writes in IVP19, “From the
laws of his own nature, everyone necessarily wants, or is
repelled by, what he judges to be good or evil.” 12 Again, he
says in IVP18S that “virtue (by D8) is nothing but acting
from the laws of one’s own nature [ex legibus propriae
naturae], and no one strives to preserve his being (by IIIP7)
except from the laws of his own nature [nisi ex propriae suae
naturae legibus].” And in IVP2Dem, he says that we are the
partial cause of “something that cannot be deduced from the
laws of our nature alone [ex solis legibus nostrae naturae].”
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(2)Like Descartes, Spinoza employs third-level laws whose


domain includes more individuals than just those members
of a particular species or kind. Thus he says in IIIP2S, “ex-
perience has not yet taught anyone what the Body can do
from the laws of nature alone [quid Corpus ex solis legibus
naturae . . . possit agere], insofar as nature is only consid-
ered to be corporeal.” In a letter to Oldenburg he states that
“all variations of bodies come about according to the laws
of mechanics” (Letter 13 [G IV: 66–67]). His extended dis-
cussion of Cartesian physics, while often critical, does not
deny that laws of some sort (just maybe not Descartes’s)
govern all action of bodies. 13 And lastly, he says in the Trea-
tise on the Emendation of the Intellect (henceforth: TdIE),
“everything that happens happens according to the eternal
order, and according to certain laws of Nature [certas
Naturae leges]” (§12).
(3)Finally, there are fourth-level laws governing nature as a
whole, what Spinoza sometimes calls “Deus, sive natura.”
Spinoza proves in IP17 that “God acts from the laws of his
nature alone [ex solis suae naturae legibus], and is compelled
by no one.” These fourth-level laws are distinguished from
third-level ones, described under heading (2), in that they
apply only to unmodified substance or God whereas the
third-level laws apply to modified substance or bodies and
minds in general.
Rather than extend the quotations, it will be more useful to
determine why Spinoza believed in laws with these three do-
mains. When depicting the relationship between something and
its law(s), Spinoza uses different images. In the TdIE, he sug-
gests that these laws are built into the essence of the thing:
The essences of singular, changeable things are not to be drawn
from their series, or [sive] order of existing, since it offers us
nothing but extrinsic denominations, relations, or at most,
circumstances, all of which are far from the inmost essence of
things. That essence is to be sought only from the fixed and
eternal things, and at the same time from the laws inscribed
in these things [simul a legibus in iis rebus . . . inscriptis], as
in their true codes, according to which all singular things come
to be, and are ordered. (§101)
In chapter four of the Theological-Political Treatise (henceforth:
TTP), where he defines “the word law,” he describes the rela-
tionship between a thing and its laws in terms of entailment.
After distinguishing natural law from non-natural or human law,
he says that a natural law is “one which necessarily follows from
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 261

the very nature or definition of the thing [quae ex ipsa rei natura
sive definitione necessario sequitur]” (G III: 57). Whichever way
the relationship is conceived—whether a law is “inscribed” in a
thing or “necessarily follows” from its nature—it seems that for
Spinoza, for something to be, that thing must be law-like. What
this “law-likeness” amounts to will be examined at length in the
next section; in brief and using contemporary terminology, all
beings must exemplify patterns of behavior that are describable
using the vocabulary of laws of nature. What is more important
for the moment than their law-likeness is this: insofar as all
beings are structured by laws specific to themselves, and Deus,
sive Natura, the infinite modes, and the finite modes are all
beings, it follows that there must be laws having God, the infi-
nite modes and finite modes as their domains. 14
Let us now take up the second-level law, which we set aside
above. These laws, whose domains are restricted to species or
other natural kinds, have been saved for last, since Spinoza’s
views on them may seem most doubtful. This is because a spe-
cies is an abstract entity and his attitude toward abstract
entities is in doubt. Here is not the place to enter the debate
over whether Spinoza was a nominalist or realist toward ab-
stract entities; 15 instead, two points will be made about laws
whose domains are species.
First, an observation. Perhaps Spinoza does not endorse the
existence of a human nature in the Ethics and therefore he
doesn’t endorse the law-likeness of human nature. At the same
time, however, he does sometimes talk as if human nature were
real; and when he does so, he does not scruple to say it has laws.
For example, take IVD8:
By virtue and power I understand the same thing, i.e. (by
IIIP7), virtue, insofar as it is related to man, is the very es-
sence, or [seu] nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of
bringing about certain things, which can be understood
through the laws of his nature alone.
English translators (like Curley and Shirley) omit an article be-
fore “man.” They do this because Spinoza is talking about a truth
common to all humans: namely, that the essences of humans
are their powers of acting. Given that all humans have concep-
tually similar essences, it makes sense to speak of laws of human
nature. Maybe those laws would ultimately be reduced to the
laws of the natures of all individual humans; but for argumen-
tative and didactic purposes, this reduction is unnecessary. 16
262 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

Second, one could argue for the attribution to Spinoza of the


conditional: if there is such a thing as “human nature” or “human
species,” then it has laws. 17 This attribution is defensible be-
cause, in the numerous places where Spinoza speaks of “human
nature” and the “human species,” he often employs the language
and concept of laws. For example, he writes in the Political Trea-
tise (henceforth: TP), a man “can be called free only in so far as
he has the power to exist and to act in accordance with the laws
of human nature [humanae naturae leges]” (II.7). Slightly later
in the same work he argues, “that which our reason declares to
be evil is not evil in respect of the order and laws of universal
Nature, but only in respect of our own particular nature [ sed
tantum solius nostrae naturae legum respectu]” (II.8). And in
TTP Four, he offers the following illustration of his definition of
“the word law”: “the fact that a man, in remembering one thing,
forthwith calls to mind another like it, or which he has seen
along with it, is a law that necessarily follows from the nature
of man [quae ex natura humana necessario sequitur].” 18 Here it
is alleged that the “nature of man” necessarily entails certain
laws. For the alleged entailment to hold in all instances, it must
be the case that all humans have something in common; this
commonality would be part or all of “human nature.”
Generally speaking, given the deductive character of Spinoza’s
political philosophy, 19 it is hardly surprising that he would be-
lieve in such things as “human nature” and “the laws of human
nature.” He needs material as the initial premises of his argu-
ments; since his topic is politics, an obvious candidate would be
something to do with human beings. Since he intends to prove
conclusions that are perfectly general, applicable to all humans
regardless of their personal differences, it would hardly do to
take the natures of individual humans as this material. Instead,
his argument requires that certain propositions be generically
true of all humans. In fact, Spinoza seems fully aware of this
imperative, for he writes at the beginning of the TP: “Therefore
in turning my attention to political theory it was not my pur-
pose to suggest anything that is novel or unheard of, but only to
demonstrate by sure and conclusive reasoning such things as
are in closest agreement with practice, deducing them from hu-
man nature as it really is [ a u t e x i p s a h u m a n a e n a t u r a e
conditione deducere].” 20
Now, the point of stating the relationship between human
nature and laws conditionally (“if there is a human nature, it is
lawful”) is that it permits the avoidance of the problem posed by
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 263

abstract entities. For present purposes, all that is being said—


and all that is needed for the argument—is that Spinoza
frequently spoke of a common human nature; and that often and
for good reason, when he did so, he described it as structured by
laws. Since there is no evidence from his remarks on such laws
that make them seem any different from the laws with the other
domains—there does not seem to be any equivocation in the term
“law” as applied to species versus individuals or Deus, sive
Natura—it follows that if there are laws of human nature, they
differ only in reference and not in sense from the other laws. 21
Moving on, the relationship among the laws themselves de-
serves brief comment. It is not a simple case of nesting: that is,
not all lower-level laws are located within the domains of higher-
level ones. It is true that within modified nature—what Spinoza
sometimes calls “natura naturata”—beings are governed by both
the laws inherent in their own natures and the laws of the na-
tures of higher-level beings. For example, as a finite mode,
Thoreau’s acorn (see note three) will be structured by a set of
laws that pertain just to itself. In addition, there will be higher-
level laws setting limits on its movements: the law of gravity,
say, prevents it from floating off the ground. Yet, the law(s) in-
herent in the acorn will not affect the law of gravity; this is part
of what is involved in the asymmetry between higher- and lower-
level laws. The situation is complicated when we try to relate
natura naturata with natura naturans, modified nature with
unmodified nature or God. As stated above, there are laws that
apply only to Deus, sive Natura. As such, they can be said to be
the highest-level of all laws. Yet, since they are unique to God,
other laws are not nested within them. This reflects the basic
distinction between purely active versus partially passive natures. 22

II. THE LAWS’ SENSES


If the argument to this stage is sound, it has established that Spi-
noza recognized four basic types of natural laws, differing in domain
only. Little has been said about his characterization of these laws,
the intensional properties he assigned to them and explanatory
role(s) he made them perform. Debates over these and related is-
sues in contemporary philosophy of science focus largely on the
ontological status of the laws and whether or not they necessarily
govern the objects in their domains. These topics will be fruitful
starting points for our discussion of the senses of Spinoza’s laws
but (as we shall see) we won’t want to end with them.
264 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

The text with which this investigation ought to begin is TTP


Four. 23 In the first paragraph, Spinoza gives the following defi-
nition of a law: “The word law, taken in its absolute sense, means
that according to which each individual thing . . . [acts] in one
and the same fixed and determinate manner [Legis nomen abso-
lute sumptum significat id, secundum quod unumquodque
individuum, . . . eademque certa ac determinata ratione agunt]”
(G III: 57). 24 This is a definition of “the word law” in its broadest
sense, including both human and natural laws. The analysis of
natural laws in particular begins with this pair of examples:
For example, the fact that all bodies colliding with smaller
bodies lose as much of their own motion as they impart to other
bodies is a universal law governing all bodies, and follows from
Nature’s necessity. Similarly, the fact that a man, in remem-
bering one thing, forthwith calls to mind another like it, or
which he has seen along with it, is a law that necessarily fol-
lows from the nature of man. (G III: 57–58) 25
In the last section, attention was drawn to the importance of
the entailment or inscription of laws from or in a being’s nature
for explaining why Spinoza thought there are laws with differ-
ent types of domains. Since there are several different types of
beings—Deus, sive natura, the infinite modes, finite modes—
and since laws are inscribed in or follow from a being’s nature,
it follows that there must be laws with several different types of
domains. Here, the same idea can be used to draw an important
conclusion about one of the laws’ intensional properties. To see
what this is, take the case of the laws found in the modes that
first modify universal Nature, the immediate infinite modes.
Now, insofar as they are modes, the immediate infinite modes
are genuine metaphysical items: they are God’s attributes, only
modified. Unless we are prepared to say that modifications are
illusory, 26 we must conceive of the immediate infinite modifica-
tions of God’s attributes as real. What exactly it means to say
that these modes are “real” may be uncertain, but the uncer-
tainty surrounding such statements will be no greater than the
uncertainty about statements of the reality of other modes. At
minimum, it means that from the perspective of the human in-
tellect, the modes will appear as entities we discover and do not
create. Since the immediate infinite modes entail or have in-
scribed within themselves laws, it is not possible for the modes
to exist or be without their laws. Thus, since or to the extent
that the immediate infinite modes are “real,” so too must be their
laws. This conclusion about the laws of immediate infinite modes
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 265

is generalizable for laws of the other three types of beings: the


laws of the other three types of beings are also inscribed on or
follow from the natures of these beings. As a result, all four levels
of laws must be said to have been conceived by Spinoza in real-
istic and not instrumentalistic terms. 27
Turning to the question of necessity, various texts show that
natural laws are thought by Spinoza to be real necessities. In
TTP Six he writes, “whatever occurs does so through God’s will
and eternal decree; that is, as we have already shown, all that
happens does so in accordance with laws and rules which in-
volve eternal necessity and truth” (G III: 83). In TTP Three he
says much the same thing: “the universal laws of Nature ac-
cording to which all things happen and are determined are
nothing but God’s eternal decrees, which always involve eternal
truth and necessity” (G III: 46). Since the “universal laws of
Nature” are “God’s eternal decrees” and since God’s decrees “in-
volve eternal truth and necessity,” the universal laws of Nature
also involve eternal truth and necessity.
In general, God (IP11) and the things he produces (IP29) are
necessary; because there is nothing apart from God and the
things he produces (IP16), everything is necessary. Given the
connection (discussed above) between a being’s essence and its
laws, it follows that the laws of all beings are necessary, too.
Since there are no laws apart from the laws of some being, all
laws must be necessary.
Of course, the modal status of the laws themselves must be
distinguished from the effects of those laws. On the latter issue,
we learn from the texts that Spinoza took the laws to necessi-
tate the actions of individuals within their domains. For example,
“the fact that all bodies colliding with smaller bodies lose as
much of their own motion as they impart to other bodies is a
universal law governing all bodies, and follows from Nature’s
necessity” (TTP Four (G III: 57)). Or, to take a “law” of psychol-
ogy, “He who hates someone will strive to do evil to him, unless
he fears that a greater evil to himself will arise from this; and
on the other hand, he who loves someone will strive to benefit
him by that same law” (IIIP39).
There are two reasons why Spinoza thought that laws neces-
sitate the actions of individuals within their domains. The first
is that he was probably influenced by Descartes, who believed
that changes occur “by” or “because of” natural laws. 28 It may
seem strange to us to think of laws as causes. The strangeness
266 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

might be diminished, however, by reflecting that for Spinoza


(and, for similar reasons, perhaps also for Descartes), 29 laws are
real members of the world and they (along with the series of
causes of which all finite modes are members) directly deter-
mine all that comes to happen or exist.
The second reason pertains to Spinoza’s conception of the place
of laws in natural events. He writes,
Nature’s order . . . necessarily follows from her eternal laws. . . .
Nothing, then, can happen in Nature to contravene her own
universal laws, nor yet anything that is not in agreement with
these laws or that does not follow from them. For whatever
occurs does so through God’s will and eternal decree; that is,
as we have already shown, all that happens does so in accor-
dance with laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and
truth. (TTP Six [G III: 83])
Natural laws set the limits on what can come to pass; nothing
can happen which contravenes the laws. By themselves, the laws
are not sufficient for the occurrence of natural events; the causal
series to which all members of the universe belong is also re-
quired. Given the cause, however, the laws ensure that a specific
effect will follow. The necessity of the laws, together with their
place in natural events, helped Spinoza think of them as neces-
sitating causally or intensionally/logically 30 the entities that
come to pass in accordance with them.
Closely related to these questions of necessity and necessita-
tion is the question of regularity—i.e., whether the laws are
probabilistic or strictly deterministic. As we learn from the texts,
there is little doubt but that Spinoza favored the deterministic
answer. The plainest evidence of this can be found in his analy-
sis of conatus or self-preservation, hailed as “the supreme law
of nature [lex summa Naturae]” in TTP Sixteen (G III: 189). As
formulated in the Ethics, conatus states that “Each thing, as
far as it can by its own power [ quantum in se est], strives to
persevere in its being” (IIIP6). In the Propositions immediately
following IIIP6, Spinoza makes it plain that this “striving” is
not occasional or incidental but rather constant (IIIP8) and es-
sential (IIIP7). The law of nature which leads all beings to
preserve their existence is fundamental and animates all of their
actions. As interpreted by Spinoza, then, conatus determines a
being’s action in precisely the way we would expect a determin-
istic law of nature to do.
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 267

Conatus may be thought to represent a special case. Further


proof of the determinism or exceptionlessness of Spinoza’s laws,
however, can be found in passages such as the following, where
he discusses specific laws:
Now it is a universal law of human nature that nobody rejects
what he judges to be good except through hope of a greater
good or fear of greater loss, and that no one endures any evil
except to avoid a greater evil or to gain a greater good. . . .
This law is so deeply inscribed in human nature that it should
be counted among the eternal truths universally known [quas
nemo ignorare potest]. Now from this law it necessarily fol-
lows that nobody is going to promise in all good faith to give
up his unrestricted right, and in general nobody is going to
keep any promises whatsoever, except through fear of a greater
evil or hope of a greater good. (TTP Sixteen [G III: 191–192])
The entailment from the law to the behavior of individual hu-
mans is comprehensive: “nobody” (nemo) is going to act in ways
contrary to the law; this “necessarily follows” (necessario sequi-
tur) from the law. Both general laws of Nature 31 and specific
laws of human psychology are exceptionless generalizations uni-
versally applicable to all beings within their scope. Laws always
and everywhere condition the actions of those things they gov-
ern in exactly the same manner—nothing within a law’s domain
is exempt from its purview.
The next and last property of natural laws to highlight con-
cerns their value. Spinoza did not think of laws as barren
principles of interest only to science and other abstract pursuits.
Rather, for two main reasons, he believed they were extremely
important to concrete human political and moral affairs. First,
because following nature’s laws is essential to acting in accor-
dance with nature and it is only by acting in accordance with
nature that we can achieve our summum bonum. 32 Second, be-
cause the laws are practical—they must be reckoned in any
analysis of what we do. The former thought is an old one, dating
to ancient times and because of its antiquity, quite familiar. The
latter is deducible from what has already been said but may re-
quire a bit more explanation.
Take the passage in IIIPref where Spinoza announces his in-
tention to understand the “Affects and actions of men” and not
“curse or laugh at [them]” like his adversaries. To achieve this
understanding, he must identify the laws of nature, since “the
268 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind,


must also be the same, viz. through the universal laws and rules
of nature [nempe per leges, & regulas naturae universales].”
Spinoza’s analysis of the passions is predicated on the assump-
tion that the emotional lives of humans are fully determined by
the laws of nature. As he writes, “The Affects, therefore, of hate,
anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the same
necessity and force of nature as the other singular things” (ibid.).
Understanding hate or love is a matter of understanding how
the laws of nature inevitably lead people to have these passions.
What is true about the passions is generalizable to other effects
of nature’s laws (such as, say, the intensional/logical relations
among ideas, or physical relations among bodies): all events,
actions or implications are determined by the laws that govern
them. As a result, laws help to produce states of affairs. Like
many of his day, Spinoza believed that understanding requires
knowledge of causes (IA4), where causes are interpreted broadly
to include reasons as well as causes in the strict sense. So, if we
want to understand how states of affairs come into being, we need
to understand the laws which govern those states and how they
contribute causally or intensionally/logically to their existence.
We will return to the utility of laws in the next section. For
now, a general point about the foregoing needs to be taken up.
It has been argued that Spinoza’s laws are necessary, necessi-
tating, deterministic or exceptionless and of practical import.
But in the previous section we learned that he recognized laws
with four different domains. Is it not possible that not all of these
properties belong to all of Spinoza’s laws? Or—if they do—is it
not possible that the properties should be interpreted differently
in each case?
Curley thinks this is the case with respect to one of the
properties:
There will, on this view, be three species of necessity. The first
is that possessed by the most general nomological facts, those
constituting the nature of the divine attributes. These, since
they do not and cannot owe their existence to anything else,
possess a necessity which is absolute, unconditional, and
atemporal. The necessity of the less general nomological facts,
by contrast, is relative and conditional but still atemporal.
They do owe their existence to something else, but that to
which they owe their existence, the most general facts, is some-
thing which is itself absolutely necessary. The necessity of the
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 269

singular facts is both relative or conditional and temporal. For


they always owe their existence both to nomological facts,
whose existence is not subject to temporal variation, and to
other singular facts, which come into being and pass away as
the conditions of their existence are and are not realized. 33
Here Curley argues that the necessity of some laws (the most
general ones) differs from the necessity of other laws (the less
general ones). If so, then there is one instance of intensional
variation among laws. Even if no other variations exist, this one
is enough to destroy the interpretation offered in this paper. So
some argument is needed in defense of it.
Two replies: one theoretical, one textual. First, the theoreti-
cal. In an important paper, 34 Charles Jarrett attempted to define
the formal properties of some of Spinoza’s modalities. One of his
conclusions is that in at least some texts, Spinoza’s modalities
are best captured by the modal system S5. In this system, the
necessity of a proposition is transferred to any proposition it
necessarily implies. If Spinoza’s modalities are indeed captured
by modal system S5, then the necessity transferred from Deus,
sive Natura to the infinite modes and thence to the causal se-
ries and finite modes is intensionally equivalent in all cases.
That the immediate infinite modes are (in Curley’s words) “con-
ditioned by” the divine attributes is irrelevant; so too are the
“conditioning” and “temporality” of finite modes and their laws.
It may be true that the immediate infinite modes are conditioned
by or dependent on God’s attributes, just as it is true that finite
modes are temporal and conditioned by both other finite modes
and the infinite modes. But this is a red herring; it distracts us
from the real issue, which is the nature of the necessity in all
three cases. If God’s attributes are necessary and they neces-
sarily entail their infinite modes, then the infinite modes are
necessary. And if the infinite modes and the infinite causal se-
ries of finite modes are necessary, and they together necessarily
entail finite modes, then finite modes are necessary. Talk of “ab-
solute” versus “conditioned” necessity etc. sounds attractive but
makes no modal sense.
Next, the textual reply. This is not targeted specifically
against Curley but against the more general worry about whether
all of Spinoza’s laws have all the same intensional properties.
The problem with this worry is that it directly contradicts the
part of TTP Four with which our investigation into the senses of
Spinoza’s laws began. Here, again, is the relevant passage:
270 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

The word law, taken in its absolute sense, means that accord-
ing to which each individual thing—either all in general or
those of the same kind—act in one and the same fixed and
determinate manner, this manner depending either on
Nature’s necessity or on human will. (G III: 57)
Here Spinoza does not say that laws with domain w have prop-
erty x, and laws with domain y have property z. Instead, he
simply states that a law is that whereby a thing acts “in one and
the same fixed and determinate manner.” Maybe it is wrong to
attribute laws with four types of domains to Spinoza; maybe
there are more or less than four. Whatever the actual number
turns out to be, however, those laws will be alike in requiring
the objects in their domain to act “in one and the same fixed and
determinate manner.” That is, all laws will have whatever in-
tensional properties are required to make things act “in one and
the same fixed and determinate manner.”

III. CONCLUSION: THE LAWS’ USE


While some questions about Spinoza’s laws have (hopefully) been
answered, many remain. One of these—the question of what the
laws are good for—arose obliquely toward the end of last section,
when the laws’ practicality was noted. Let us conclude by asking
this question directly. A full answer isn’t possible but the two points
that can be made will reveal the enthusiasm with which Spinoza
embraced the laws and hint at the novel use he made of them.
The first point can be made using TTP Seven:
Now in examining natural phenomena we first of all try to
discover those features that are most universal and common
to the whole of Nature, to wit, motion-and-rest and the laws
and rules governing them which Nature always observes and
through which she constantly acts; and then we advance gradu-
ally from these to other less universal features. (G III: 102)
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there may not have
been many scientists and philosophers who would have identi-
fied laws of nature as part of the material with which scientific
and philosophical reasoning ought to begin. 35 By the beginning
of the eighteenth, however, laws had become so firmly ensconced
that Newton was able to open his Principia by famously declar-
ing, “moderns, dismissing substantial forms and occult qualities,
have endeavored to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws
of mathematics.” 36 In TTP Seven Spinoza shows himself to be a
man of his times, making laws basic to science and philosophy.
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 271

Yet TTP Seven also shows that Spinoza was a man ahead of
his times. The quotation just given might make it seem that he
restricts laws to the examination of physical phenomena. But
this is not the case. In that very same passage Spinoza says that
the method and order which should be used for “the task of in-
vestigating the meaning of the prophets and the Holy Spirit” is
akin to that used for interpreting nature. Since the method and
order for interpreting nature essentially involves natural laws,
the method and order for correct Biblical exegesis must essen-
tially involve laws, too. Of course, the laws will be different from
one arena to the next; as the subject matter changes, so will the
laws. The basic methodology, however, will be the same in each
case: it will be deductive-nomological. Few people in the seven-
teenth century—or, for that matter, in the twentieth—were willing
to naturalize philosophy, much less theology, to this extent.
The second point concerns the laws’ relation to possibility and
involves another sharp contrast between Spinoza and most phi-
losophers. Take Descartes: he thought that possibility and
conceivability are closely linked. 37 In the Second Replies, for
example, he endorses “‘whatever does not conflict with our hu-
man concepts’” as one meaning for “possible” (CSM II: 107; AT
VII: 150). If we can conceive an idea, then that idea is possible;
impossibility occurs “when we make the mistake of joining to-
gether mutually inconsistent ideas” (CSM II: 108; AT VII: 152).
This conception of possibility as conceivability is rejected by
Spinoza: “Nature’s bounds are set not by the laws of human rea-
son, whose aim is only man’s true interest [ utile] and
preservation, but by infinite other laws which have regard to
the eternal order of the whole of Nature, of which man is but a
tiny part” (TP II.8). According to Spinoza, “nature’s bounds” are
not set by “the laws of human reason”; our ability to form a con-
cept doesn’t show that it is a real possibility. Instead, something
is possible if and only if it falls within the limits of the laws of
“the whole of Nature.” Such conception of possibility makes it
entirely nomological: the possible is what is compossible with
the laws of nature. 38 Spinoza’s use of natural laws to define the
possible is testament to how deeply ingrained they are in his
thought: whereas others before him and since have used logic
and conceivability as tests of the possible, Spinoza is one of the
very few in the history of philosophy to invoke the laws of na-
ture for this purpose. 39

Queen’s University
272 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

NOTES

1. Some of the more important general studies are: John R. Milton, “The
Origin and Development of the Concept of the ‘Law of Nature,’ ” Archives
Européennes de Sociologie, vol. 22 (1981); J. R. Milton, “Laws of Nature,” in
The Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. Daniel
Garber and Michael Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
Steven Nadler, “Doctrines of Explanation,” in Garber and Ayers (1998);
Francis Oakley, “Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise
of the Concept of the Laws of Nature,” Church History, vol. 30 (1961); Jane
E. Ruby, “The Origins of Scientific ‘Law,’ ” Journal of the History of Ideas,
vol. 47 (1986); Friedrich Steinle, “The Amalgamation of a Concept—Laws
of Nature in the New Sciences,” in Laws of Nature: Essays on the Philo-
sophical, Scientific and Historical Dimensions, ed. Friedel Weinert (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1995); Edgar Zilsel, “The Genesis of the Concept of Physi-
cal Law,” Philosophical Review, vol. 51 (1942).
Of the more focused studies, the most useful include: Brian Ellis, “The
Origin and Nature of Newton’s Laws of Motion,” in Beyond the Edge of
Certainty, ed. Robert G. Colodny (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1965); Gisela Loeck, Der cartesische Materialismus, Maschine, Gesetz und
Simulation (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986); J. E. McGuire, “Boyle’s
Conception of Nature,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 33 (1972); J.
Russell, “Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, 1609–66,” British Journal for
the History of Science, vol. 1 (1964); Catherine Wilson, “From Limits to
Laws: The Transformation of Ancient Atomism in Early Modern Philoso-
phy” (forthcoming).
2. The analogy to civil laws is meant only to clarify a feature of natural
laws, not to imply anything about their origins (such as that they derive
from civil laws). The origins of seventeenth-century laws of nature remains
a matter of scholarly dispute; see, e.g., Zilsel (1942) followed by Oakley
(1961) and Ruby (1986).
In general, a distinction must be drawn between the origins of natural
laws and their formulation. One might think, for example, that the laws are
a result of divine action without simultaneously thinking that this reveals
anything about their propositional content. Little will be said in this paper
about the origins of the laws; instead, the focus will be on their formulation.
3. Although such a law might seem unintelligible to philosophers and
scientists nowadays, it was not to philosophers and scientists in the seven-
teenth century and for long after to people outside those fields. Compare
this example from Henry David Thoreau: “I perceive that, when an acorn
and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way
for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flour-
ish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man” (“Civil
Disobedience,” in The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode (New York: Penguin
Books, 1982), 127). The connection between laws and a plant’s nature makes
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 273

it clear that the laws which the acorn must obey include laws located in the
individual itself and not just its species.
4. For one text where Leibniz posits individual laws, see “A New System
of Nature,” §14. It is true that Leibniz also formulates more general laws
in his dynamics and physics—for example, there are the laws of impact
discussed in many passages—but these are thought to be less real, since
they do not pertain to “true substance” but rather to extended so-called
substance. Cf. Milton (1998), 697, and Robert Merrihew Adams, Leibniz:
Determinist, Theist, Idealist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994),
Chap. 3, Sect. 1.
5. For more on the connections between natural law ethics and the new
science, see Wilson (forthcoming).
6. For Grotius, see, e.g., De iure praedae commentarius, chapter two.
One Hobbesian text (there are many) is Leviathan, I,14. For discussion of
Grotius, see Richard Tuck, “Grotius and Selden,” in The Cambridge His-
tory of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For an excellent recent
discussion of Hobbes, see David Gauthier, “Hobbes: The Laws of Nature,”
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 82 (2001).
7. Cf. Principia part 2, Articles 37, 39–40. For discussion, see Daniel
Garber, “Descartes’ Physics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes,
ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
8. Cf. Garber (1992), p. 313.
9. It should be emphasized that the formation of consensus on this issue
was gradual and by no means complete by the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Cf. Milton (1998), p. 692.
10. We will examine Spinoza’s views presently. For Newton, see, e.g.,
the “General Scholium” of the second (1713) edition of the Principia and
the untitled manuscript discussed by J. E. McGuire in “Newton on Place,
Time, and God: An Unpublished Source,” British Journal for the History of
Science, vol. 11 (1978). For commentary, see the exchange between McGuire
and John Carriero in Philosophical Perspectives on Newtonian Science, ed.
Phillip Bricker and R. I. G. Hughes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990).
11. A methodological note: Zilsel (1942) simply assumed that Spinoza’s
Theological-Political Treatise is a philosophical work on par with the Eth-
ics; see esp. pp. 270–271. I think Zilsel is right, though I do not think (as he
seems to) that this is obviously so. One commentator who denies the philo-
sophical significance of the political writings is Jonathan Bennett (see A
Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 7). For a response
to Bennett, see Edwin Curley, “Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece (II): The
Theological-Political Treatise as a Prolegomenon to the Ethics,” in Central
Themes in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. J. A. Cover and Mark Kulstad
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990). My argument assumes that Curley is basi-
cally correct and that ideas found in Spinoza’s political writings can be
used to illuminate his metaphysical and epistemological thought.
274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

12. The Latin is: “Id unusquisque ex legibus suae naturae necessariò
appetit, vel aversatur, quod bonum, vel malum esse iudicat.” Standard ab-
breviations are used when citing the Ethics, where a Roman numeral stands
for the part, “D” followed by an Arabic numeral for a definition, “A” fol-
lowed by an Arabic numeral for an axiom, “P” followed by an Arabic numeral
for the proposition, “Dem” for a demonstration, “Pref” for preface, “App” for
appendix, etc. Thus, “IVP19” means “Part IV, Proposition 19.”
These translations are used: For his letters and political writings, those
by Samuel Shirley: Spinoza: The Letters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995);
Theological-Political Treatise (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998); Political Trea-
tise (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000). For everything else, those by Edwin
Curley in The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol.1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1985). Since an in-text citation will usually precisely fix
the reference, most of the time the cited text and translation will not be
footnoted. Where it helps to locate exactly the passage being cited, refer-
ences are provided to the Spinoza Opera, vols. I–V, ed. Carl Gebhardt
(Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925). These references will be “G” followed by
the volume and page numbers. Finally, translations have occasionally been
slightly altered.
13. E.g., see Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, Part One, Propositions
14–19.
14. This interpretation clashes with one Curley advances in his influ-
ential book, Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969). There he acknowledges only third-
level laws and argues that God’s infinite modes are meant to model,
metaphysically, these laws (59ff). According to my reading of Spinoza, this
is close but not quite right. It is true that the infinite modes are fundamen-
tally law-like and that any attempt to describe these modes must make
reference to their lawfulness; but the modes themselves are not laws.
Rather, the infinite modes are beings, described by Spinoza in Letter 64 as
absolutely infinite intellect and motion-and-rest. Like all other beings, they
are governed by laws that are part of their natures.
15. This issue has been much discussed in the secondary literature. For
a useful list of references as well as a forceful (if not, in my opinion, ulti-
mately successful) nominalist interpretation, see the pair of articles by Lee
C. Rice: “Tanquam naturae humanae exemplar: Spinoza on human nature,”
The Modern Schoolman, vol. 68 (1991), pp. 291–303; and “Le Nominalisme
de Spinoza,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 24 (1994), pp. 19–32.
16. For an argument that such a reduction is not only unnecessary but
also unjustified, see Diane Steinberg, “Spinoza’s Ethical Doctrine and the
Unity of Human Nature,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 22 (1984).
17. Of course, this begs the question for those favoring the nominalist
interpretation, who would just deny the antecedent. However, most com-
mentators would agree that Spinoza’s position on the problem of abstract
entities has yet to be decisively established. As a result, it is worthwhile
SPINOZA AND THE CONCEPT OF A LAW OF NATURE 275

to show one conclusion that would follow if he should turn out to be some
kind of realist.
18. G III: 58. Compare with TdIE §83, Ethics IIP18S.
19. Spinoza does not employ the mos geometricus in his political phi-
losophy; as a result, his political philosophy is not axiomatic. It does not
follow, however, that his political philosophy is not deductive in some sense
of that word. As the texts cited in the next note show, it is plain that Spi-
noza himself took it to be such.
20. I.4. See also III.18: “all those things I have demonstrated follow
from the most essential feature of human nature [ex naturae humanae
necessitate].”
21. More will be said on the question of the intensional equivalence of
Spinoza’s laws in the next section.
22. The most important text on nesting is Letter 32. See also IP17, P21–
2 and TTP Sixteen (at G III: 189).
23. In his more metaphysical works (e.g., the Ethics) Spinoza uses but
does not define the concept of law. There is one text which might have been
even more useful for learning about the laws than TTP Four—the projected
chapter on laws in the fragmentary TP. Unfortunately, Spinoza died before
he was able to write it. For speculation on the possible content of this chap-
ter, see Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics (London: Verso, 1998), esp.
chapter three and pp. 86ff.
24. The error in the Latin (“agunt” for “agit”) is in Gebhardt’s text.
25. This is as good a place as any to note that Spinoza was well aware of
the metaphor involved in natural “law.” He writes, “it seems to be by anal-
ogy [per translationem] that the word law is applied to natural phenomena,
and ordinarily ‘law’ is used to mean simply a command which men can ei-
ther obey or disobey” (TTP Four (G III: 58); see also Chap. 12 (G III: 162)).
Nevertheless, he is willing to employ the locution, following a convention
well-established by his day.
26. Some commentators have been prepared to say as much. The most
famous of these is Hegel; a more analytical argument is given by Harold H.
Joachim, Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione: A Commentary
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940). In whatever form, such a view has been
refuted by Martial Gueroult, Spinoza: Dieu (Ethique I), (Paris: Aubier, 1968),
pp. 462–468.
27. This interpretation reads Spinoza similarly to Adams’s (1994) read-
ing of Leibniz. Arguing that Leibniz “rejects the assumption that causal
laws and relations are imposed from the outside on individuals,” Adams
says instead Leibniz thought that “the laws are internal to individual sub-
stances and that they are permanent and unchanging throughout the
substance’s history” (81). For an excellent general discussion of instrumen-
talism versus realism in the seventeenth century, see Steinle (1995).
276 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

28. Descartes writes in chapter seven of Le Monde that “The rules by


which” changes in matter take place are “‘the laws of nature’“ (translation
by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch in The Philosophical Writ-
ings of Descartes, vol. I [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985],
93; henceforth “CSM I”). And in the Principia, he says that “laws of nature”
are “the secondary and particular causes of the various motions we see in
particular bodies” (Part II, Article 37; CSM I, 240). (The primary cause of
motion is God; see Part II, Article 36.) For discussion, see Loeck (1986), 115f.
29. So Paul Hoffman has argued in an unpublished paper (“Descartes’s
Spinning Top: A New Look at the Reconceptualization of Motion Underly-
ing Descartes’s and Newton’s Laws of Inertia”). According to Hoffman, laws
are real members of the world for Descartes, in the sense that they are
embedded in bodies themselves.
30. This awkward phrase is used in a perhaps vain attempt to capture
the nature of the influence laws exert over thought. In addition to the pat-
terns of inference and implication that obtain among ideas, the laws also
govern the intensional operations of thought that do not fall under the do-
minion of logic. For another commentator’s resistance to assimilating all
relations among ideas to logical relations, see Genevieve Lloyd, Routledge
Philosophy Guidebook to Spinoza and the Ethics (London: Routledge, 1996),
pp. 52–54.
31. Cf. TTP Four: “If we now consider the nature of the natural Divine
Law as we have just explained it, we shall see . . . it is of universal applica-
tion, or common to all mankind” (G III: 61).
32. On the connection between happiness and conformity to nature, see,
e.g., IVP18S and IVAppIV–VI. A good commentary on Spinoza’s conception
of happiness can be found in Lloyd (1996), p. 87ff.
33. Curley (1969), p. 116.
34. “Spinoza’s Ontological Argument,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy,
vol. 6 (1976).
35. The status of laws at the beginning of the century remains murky.
For the latest opinion, see Steinle (1995).
36. First Preface to the Principia. Translation (slightly modified) by An-
drew Motte, revised by Florian Cajori (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1934).
37. This account relies on Jonathan Bennett, “Descartes’ Theory of Mo-
dality,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 88 (1979).
38. For more, see Richard Mason, “Spinoza on Modality,” The Philosophi-
cal Quarterly, vol. 35 (1986); and Jon Miller, “Spinoza’s Possibilities,” The
Review of Metaphysics, vol. 54 (2001).
39. John Carriero, Brad Inwood, and Calvin Normore read and re-
sponded to early versions of this paper. In addition, an anonymous referee
of this journal and its editor provided valuable comments on the penultimate
draft. Many thanks to all.

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