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258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY
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.
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
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.”
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