TY - JOUR
T1 - Spinning Strands into Aspects: Realism, Idealism, and Finite Modes in Spinoza
AU - Shein, Noa
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Michael Della Rocca for being such a generous and gracious interlocutor. Our disagreements as well as points of agreement have proven to be wonderfully stimulating. I am very grateful as well and as always to Alan Nelson and Julie Klein for conversations and detailed comments on previous drafts of this paper as well as continuous encouregment. Likewise, I benefitted greatly from the discussion following the presentation of this paper at the ?Spinoza: New Directions in Research II? conference that took place at the University of Toronto in 2018, and thank my fellow participants deeply. This research was supported by The Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1912/17).
Funding Information:
I would like to thank Michael Della Rocca for being such a generous and gracious interlocutor. Our disagreements as well as points of agreement have proven to be wonderfully stimulating. I am very grateful as well and as always to Alan Nelson and Julie Klein for conversations and detailed comments on previous drafts of this paper as well as continuous encouregment. Likewise, I benefitted greatly from the discussion following the presentation of this paper at the “Spinoza: New Directions in Research II” conference that took place at the University of Toronto in 2018, and thank my fellow participants deeply. This research was supported by The Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1912/17).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - There is a long tradition of reading Spinoza as committed, perhaps unwillingly, to the non-reality of finite modes. While acknowledging that Spinoza does seem to rely on the reality of modes in certain places, Michael Della Rocca has called attention to what he labels an “idealist strand.” As a concluding remark in “Steps Toward Eleaticism in Spinoza's Philosophy of Action,” he claims that faced with these two conflicting strands, which are genuinely to be found in the text, it is better to note both rather than artificially imposing a unity on the text. In this paper, I suggest that one need not admit two conflicting strands in Spinoza, on the one hand, nor arbitrarily disregard one strand, on the other. Rather, I argue for a unified view that diagnoses what gives rise to both seemingly conflicting strands. The key to this enterprise is recognizing that finite modes, paradoxically seeming perhaps at first, are not wholly finite. That is, a finite mode is determined by the totality of finite modes—wherein lies its finite aspect, but at the same time, and equally, partially actively determines this totality—wherein lies its infinite aspect.
AB - There is a long tradition of reading Spinoza as committed, perhaps unwillingly, to the non-reality of finite modes. While acknowledging that Spinoza does seem to rely on the reality of modes in certain places, Michael Della Rocca has called attention to what he labels an “idealist strand.” As a concluding remark in “Steps Toward Eleaticism in Spinoza's Philosophy of Action,” he claims that faced with these two conflicting strands, which are genuinely to be found in the text, it is better to note both rather than artificially imposing a unity on the text. In this paper, I suggest that one need not admit two conflicting strands in Spinoza, on the one hand, nor arbitrarily disregard one strand, on the other. Rather, I argue for a unified view that diagnoses what gives rise to both seemingly conflicting strands. The key to this enterprise is recognizing that finite modes, paradoxically seeming perhaps at first, are not wholly finite. That is, a finite mode is determined by the totality of finite modes—wherein lies its finite aspect, but at the same time, and equally, partially actively determines this totality—wherein lies its infinite aspect.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075454069&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/ejop.12502
DO - 10.1111/ejop.12502
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85075454069
SN - 0966-8373
VL - 28
SP - 323
EP - 336
JO - European Journal of Philosophy
JF - European Journal of Philosophy
IS - 2
ER -