Pierfrancesco Basile - Russel on Spinoza's Substance Monism

Russell on Spinoza’s Substance Monism

Pierfrancesco Basile

Published online: 8 December 2011# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Russell’s critique of substance monism is an ideal starting point fromwhich to understand some main concepts in Spinoza’s difficult metaphysics. Thispaper provides an in-depth examination of Spinoza’s proof that only one substanceexists. On this basis, it rejects Russell’s interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of realityas founded upon the logical doctrine that all propositions consist of a predicate and asubject. An alternative interpretation is offered: Spinoza’s substance is not a bearerof properties, as Russell implied, but an eternally active, self-actualizing creativepower. Eventually, Spinoza the Monist and Russell the Pluralist are at one in holdingthat process and activity rather than enduring things are the most fundamentalrealities.

Keywords Russell . Spinoza . Substance . Monism . Attribute . Power

It was Plato in his later mood who put forward the suggestion, “and I hold thatthe definition of being is simply power.”— A. N. Whitehead (1933:129)

1 Introduction

Bertrand Russell greatly admired Spinoza, whose philosophy he praised as a nobleattempt at liberating men from the slavery of fears and anxieties, passionsincompatible with every kind of wisdom (Russell 1945: 578–580). Still, he hadsignificant reservations about the way the Dutch thinker of Jewish origins hadachieved his grand metaphysical conclusion of the unity of all things. “Spinoza,” hewrote, “is in many ways one of the greatest of philosophers, but his greatness israther ethical than metaphysical” (Russell 1927a: 249). Given that Spinoza’s ethics

Int Ontology Metaphysics (2012) 13:27–41DOI 10.1007/s12133-011-0090-6

P. Basile (*)Department of Philosophy, University of Bern, Längassstrasse 49a, 3000-9 Bern, Switzerlande-mail: [email protected]

can hardly be divorced from his metaphysics (one needs to understand one’s place inthe universe to lead a genuinely virtuous life), this is already a highly suspiciousclaim. But what precisely is wrong with Spinoza’s metaphysics?

2 The Turn to Process: Russell’s Critique of Spinoza

From the time of his research in early modern philosophy that culminated in ACritical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900) to the very end of hiscareer, Russell argues that traditional systems are flawed at a deep logical level. Ifone holds the logical theory that all propositions ascribe a predicate to a subject,one will be led to deny that relations possess any independent logical status. Thecounterpart of the logical theory that all propositions are subject–predicate in formis the metaphysical view that substances are bearers of properties. On this view,there is no place for relations at a basic metaphysical level. “The subject–predicatelogic, which all such philosophers in the past assumed, either ignores relationsaltogether, or produces fallacious arguments to prove that relations are unreal.”(Russell 1945: 595) Thus, the only options open to a philosopher working with theconcept of substance are either a universe of mutually isolated substances or asingle substance of which everything else is a property. These alternatives havefound their paradigmatic formulations in Leibniz’s theory of monads and inSpinoza’s substance monism:

It is a common opinion—often held unconsciously, and employed in argument,even by those who do not explicitly advocate it—that all propositions,ultimately, consist of a subject and a predicate. When this opinion isconfronted by a relational proposition, it has two ways of dealing with it, ofwhich one might be called monadistic, the other monistic…. Of these views,the first is represented by Leibniz and (on the whole) by Lotze, the second bySpinoza and Mr. Bradley. (Russell 1903: 221; cf. also Russell 1956: 324)

As Russell views things, these competing systems provide a reductio adabsurdum of traditional subject–predicate logic: the doctrine that all propositionsascribe a predicate to a subject cannot be true, if it compels us to hold one of twoequally incredible theories. This is just part of Russell’s argument, however, for intruth, Spinoza monism is the only legitimate outcome of the theory that allpropositions are subject–predicate in form. Leibniz’s whole metaphysics can besummarized in the statement “There are many monads.” Where is the subject here?If Leibniz had further developed the implications of the subject–predicate theory ofproposition, he would have seen that the entire world of monads must be anadjective of an underlying subject. Hence, Leibniz’s theory of monads collapses intoSpinoza’s substance monism (Russell 1945: 595); as against this, Russell observes:“Pluralism is the view of science and common sense, and is therefore to be acceptedif the arguments against it are not conclusive. For my part, I have no doubt whateverthat it is the true view, and that monism is derived from a faulty logic inspired bymysticism.” (Russell 1927a: 264) This leaves much to be desired as an argument(among other things, science and common sense do not appear to be alwaysconsistent with one another), yet Russell is satisfied by these brief remarks; in his

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view, they bring his critique of the subject–predicate theory of proposition to asuccessful end.

In attacking the subject–predicate theory of proposition, Russell is also making animportant ontological point. It is the very notion of substance as a bearer ofproperties (the metaphysical counterpart of the logical notion of subject ofpredication) that needs to be abandoned:

Spinoza, we may say, had shown that the actual world could not be explainedby means of one substance; Leibniz showed that it could not be explained bymeans of many substances. It became necessary, therefore, to base metaphysicson a notion other than that of substance—a task not yet accomplished. (Russell1900: 126)

This is not the sole attack upon the concept of substance one finds inRussell’s writings. The concept is also said to be inconsistent with thefundamental ontology of modern science: “The concept of substance, uponwhich Spinoza relies,” he says in A History of Western Philosophy, “is one whichneither science nor philosophy can nowadays accept” (Russell 1945: 578).Russell’s point here is that substances have been traditionally conceived as bearersof properties. And since a substance’s properties come and go in a world ofchanging things, a substance has been identified with that which remains identicalthrough change. In this way, traditional metaphysics has explained all changes byreference to the concept of an enduring, permanent substratum. But contemporaryscience has now reversed this traditional explanatory order, making permanencesubordinate to process:

[T]he notion of substance, at any rate in any sense involving permanence, mustbe shut out from our thoughts if we are to achieve a philosophy in any wayadequate…to modern physics. Modern physics, both in the theory of relativityand in the Heisenberg-Schrödinger theories of atomic structure, has reduced“matter” to a system of events, each of which lasts for a very short time. Totreat an electron or a proton as a single entity has become as wrong-headed asit would be to treat the population of London and New York as a single entity.(Russell 1927a: 254)

Although the point is not explicitly developed by Russell, the analogy withthe population of London and New York nicely illustrates his novel ontologicalapproach. In a statement such as “The population of New York has increased inthe last five years” one can hardly identify a subject (“The population”) thatexists prior to its properties. The reality denoted by “The population of NewYork” depends for its existence upon its citizens. There is some elasticity to thekind of dependence that is here at stake, for individual citizens die and new onesare born; still, this does not prevent us from conceiving of “The population ofNew York” as a kind of entity that preserves its identity through change (we saythat a population “grows,” not that it is replaced by another when new membersjoin in). This shows that there are alternative ways of explaining permanenceamid change than substance–property ontology. According to Russell, modernscience has understood that the ontological model adequate for societies can beextended to a larger realm of natural phenomena. Philosophers (and metaphy-

Russell on Spinoza’s Substance Monism 29

sicians in particular) who take science seriously should follow their example:why not speculate that all permanence is grounded in a network of interconnectedindividuals, conceived as occurrences of limited temporal duration, rather than asDemocritean (and ultimately Parmenidean) indestructible atoms? We need not only anew logic, but a new set of basic ontological categories as well; specifically, thetraditional metaphysics of substance has to give way to a new metaphysics ofprocess: as Russell makes the point, “everything in the world is composed of events”(Russell 1927a: 287).

Russell made some significant steps towards the completion of this ambitiousproject in The Analysis of Matter (Russell 1927b), but it was his mathematicalmentor, Alfred North Whitehead, who came closer to developing a metaphysicscentered on the notion of event in his profound yet very difficult book of 1929,Process and Reality (Whitehead 1929). The present paper does not discuss eitherRussell’s investigations into the nature of the physical world or Whitehead’s daringrevisionary metaphysics. Its object is to assess Russell’s appraisal of traditionalmetaphysics by considering his critique of Spinoza. Does Spinoza’s argument for thestartling conclusion that all things are one really rest on a faulty logical theory? Andis Russell right in thinking that Spinoza’s metaphysics fails to do justice to thedynamical nature of things? In what follows, we will address these questions in turn.

3 Spinoza’s Monistic Argument: Attributes as Properties?

To the best of my knowledge, Russell never supports his charges with detailedinterpretations of selected passages in Spinoza’s Ethics. This should not come as asurprise, for he believes that the “common opinion” that all propositions consist of asubject and a predicate is “often held unconsciously, and employed in argument,even by those who do not explicitly advocate it” (Russell 1903: 221). Thispreventively insulates his interpretation from critical attacks, making careful textualexegesis virtually superfluous. As he also says in A History of Western Philosophy,“the detail” of Spinoza’s demonstrations is “not worth mastering” (Russell 1945: 572).On the contrary, a careful look at Spinoza’s argument in support of substance monismwill prove to be a very instructive exercise.

The proof is a way of articulating the very simple intuition that if an infinite Godwere to exist, then it would be so “large” a being that it would occupy all availablespace; nothing else could exist, except God and his states. The argument is cast interms of Spinoza’s own ontological categories of substance and attribute and isbased upon the following two propositions1:

(1) No two substances can share one attribute. (Ip5, “In Nature there cannot be twoor more substances of the same nature or attribute.”)

(2) A substance possessing all attributes necessarily exists. (Ip11, “God, or asubstance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal andinfinite essence, necessarily exists.”)

1 In what follows, the five books of the Ethics are numbered I to V. The abbreviations “p”, “a”, “d”, “c”and “s” stand for “Proposition,” “Axiom,” “Demonstration,” “Corollary” and “Scholium.”

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Taking (1) and (2) as his premises, Spinoza concludes that:

(3) Only one substance exists. (Ip14, “Except God, no substance can be or beconceived”.)2

Premise (1) is Spinoza’s notorious “No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis” (a denomina-tion introduced by Bennett 1984: 66) and will be considered more fully shortly (see“Sections 4–5”); premise (2) is based upon Spinoza’s version of Anselm’sontological argument and will not be discussed any longer in this paper (for detailedanalyses of this argument, see Doney 1980, Marcus 1993 and Basile 2010); finally,thesis (3) is Spinoza’s monistic conclusion.

The basic concept in this proof is that of attribute, one of the most controversialin Spinoza’s entire metaphysics. One need not know what that concept stands for,however, in order to see that the argument is not valid: (3) would not follow from (1)and (2) if it were possible for a substance to have no attributes. In this case, theexistence of a substance possessing all attributes would not suffice to make theexistence of other substances impossible. Spinoza’s argument requires a supplemen-tary assumption:

(4) A substance needs at least one attribute in order to exist—i.e., there cannot be asubstance that has no attributes. (This is not listed as an official proposition, yetSpinoza says in Ip10d that “nothing is clearer than each being must beconceived under some attribute.”)

Thesis (4) is trivially true if one identifies attributes and properties. A substanceneed not have any specific property, but it needs to have at least some property:otherwise, it would be a bare substratum, hardly distinguishable from a mere“nothing.” As a matter of fact, attributes will have to be interpreted as properties ifRussell’s contention that substance monism is based upon the subject–predicatetheory of proposition were true. But there is no need to speculate here, for Russell isexplicit as to what he takes attributes to be:

To Spinoza, extension and thought did not constitute two separatesubstances, but attributes of the one substance. In Spinoza as in DesCartes [sic], the notion of substance…was not an ultimate simple notion, buta notion dependent, in some undefined manner, upon the purely logicalnotion of subject and predicate. The attributes of a substance are thepredicates of a subject [my emphasis]; and it is supposed that predicatescannot exist without their subject, though the subject can exist without them.(Russell 1900: 41)

However, Spinoza’s attributes can hardly be interpreted as properties of a thing-like substance. On this interpretation, his argument would remain formally valid, yetpremise (1) No two substances can share an attribute would become equivalent to(1*) No two (thing-like) substances can share one property. Proposition (1*) is, tosay the least, a very dubious claim and it is unlikely that Spinoza would have wantedto ground his monism on such a shaky foundation.

2 Spinoza’s claim is stronger than this: Ip14 says that it is necessary that only one substance exists. Thepoint is irrelevant for the purposes of the present article.


Russell’s interpretation also conceals the fact that Spinoza works with alarger set of basic ontological categories than those one might derive from thesubject–predicate theory of proposition. For in Spinoza’s philosophy, substanceshave modes as well as attributes. Here are the relevant definitions:

Id3: By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, thatis, that whose conception does not require the concept of another thing, fromwhich it must be formed.

Id4: By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, asconstituting its essence.

Id5: By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in anotherthrough which it is also conceived.

These definitions are complex and their meaning will be unpacked as thediscussion proceeds. Nevertheless, one easily sees that modes are better candidatesthan attributes for being interpreted as properties. According to Jonathan Bennett,the term “mode” had a double function in seventeenth century philosophy. To callsomething a mode was (a) a way of classifying it as an instance of a quality, as wellas (b) to say that it was dependent for its existence upon something else (Bennett1996: 68; cf. also Curley 1969: 36–43, to which Bennett refers). Spinoza apparentlyretains both senses of the term in his philosophy. But if modes are to be interpretedas properties (a controversial point that can be conceded for the sake of theargument), they will have to be equated with property-instances or tropes rather thanwith universals. But none of this lends any support to Russell’s interpretation: evenif modes are properties, the crucial notion in his monistic argument is that ofattribute. Could it be argued that Spinoza has two kinds of properties, attributes andmodes? If this were so, and given that modes can be construed as particularproperty-instances, attributes would have to be identified with universals. But to be auniversal is to be something that can be had by many. Clearly, such an interpretationwould make Spinoza’s No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis entirely unintelligible.

The strongest piece of textual evidence that could be adduced in support ofRussell’s interpretation is Axiom 1, Spinoza’s claim that only substances and modesexist (“Whatever is, is either in itself [a substance] or in another [a mode]”). Here,Spinoza may indeed seem to be saying that only substances and their propertiesexist. However, Spinoza appeals to this axiom to explain the transition from Ip14,the thesis that there is only substance (“Except God, no substance can be or beconceived”), to Ip15, the thesis that all other things must be modes or affections ofthe only one existing substance (“Whatever is, is in God…”). Thus, Axiom 1 entersthe scene only when the monistic conclusion has been already established.

All this is hard to reconcile with Russell’s claim that Spinoza’s monism dependsupon the logical doctrine that all propositions ascribe a predicate to a subject. Thisalready answers the first of our two questions: all in all, it would seem that one canmake little progress in understanding Spinoza’s proof if one tries to capture it interms of substance–property ontology. Russell can be charged with the fallacyknown as affirming the consequent: the point can be granted that a philosopherholding the subject–predicate theory of proposition will have to be a monist;nevertheless, the fact that Spinoza was a monist does not by itself entails that he heldthat view or that it was the foundation of his metaphysics. The second question now

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remains to be answered. Was Spinoza really oblivious to the active nature of things?In order to answer this question, it will be helpful to devote further attention to thedetails of Spinoza’s proof.

4 Getting Started: Attributes as Principles of Individuation

What are attributes, then, if they are not properties? One main way to understand aphilosophical concept is to see it at work. One might therefore hope to answer thisquestion by considering Spinoza’s demonstration of the No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis, i.e., the claim that “In Nature there cannot be two or more substances of thesame nature or attribute” (Ip5). Here is Spinoza’s explanation:

If there were two or more distinct substances, they would have to bedistinguished from one another either by a difference in their attributes, or by adifference in their affections (by p4). If only by a difference in their attributes,then it will be conceded that there is only one of the same attribute. But if by adifference in their affections, then since a substance is prior in nature to itsaffections (by p1), if the affections are put to one side and [the substance] isconsidered in itself, that is (by d3 and a6), considered truly, one cannot beconceived to be distinguished from another, that is (by p4), there cannot bemany, but only one [of the same nature or attribute]. (Ip5d)

Spinoza’s reasoning in this dense passage can be outlined as follows:

(1) Spinoza believes that “What cannot be conceived through another, must beconceived through itself” (Ia2). This is tantamount to saying that there isnothing in reality that lacks an explanation: either a thing can be explained byreference to something else, or it is self-explanatory. (Stated in Leibnizianterminology, Spinoza endorses the Principle of Sufficient Reason, therationalistic belief that there are no “brute facts”.)

(2) It follows from this that if two substances S1 and S2 are numerically different,there must be a way of accounting for their non-identity. (What makes twodistinct substances distinct? This might seem a silly question to ask, like Plato’squestion in Parmenides (132a1–5) as to what it is that makes two similar thingssimilar. But it must be recognized as genuine by anyone who believes in thePrinciple of Sufficient Reason. Why should one hold to the Principle? Since thePrinciple is not a Leibnizian Truth of Reason (i.e., its negation does not yield aself-contradiction), it is not immediately obvious that it can be introduced as anaxiom. How does Spinoza know that the Principle expresses an ultimatemetaphysical truth?)

(3) Given Spinoza’s threefold ontology of substance, attributes and modes, theexplanation of why two substances differ must be provided either in terms ofattributes or in terms of modes. “Two or more distinct things are distinguishedfrom one another, either by a difference in the attributes or by a difference intheir affections.” (Ip4) Spinoza now argues that modes cannot possibly explainwhy two substances differ. Why? This is because “a substance is prior in natureto its affections,” as Spinoza succinctly makes the point in the explanation


quoted previously. Substances explain modes, not vice versa: this followsimmediately from Spinoza’s definition of a mode in Id5, where a mode is saidto be “that which is in another through which it is also conceived [myemphasis].” (But the point is also intuitively clear: it is because Spinoza wasSpinoza, i.e., it is because he was the man he was, that he could write theEthics; it is surely not his having written the Ethics that turned him intoSpinoza.)

Once modes are ruled out as principles of individuation, one knows that therequired explanation of why two numerically distinct substances differ must beprovided in terms of attributes:

(4) The non-identity of two substances must be explained by reference to theirattributes—that is, different substances (if there are any) must necessarily havedifferent attributes.

Although this is the conclusion of Spinoza’s reasoning, (4) is not identical to theNo-Shared-Attributes-Thesis. If a substance could have no more than one attribute,and if one assumes two substances S1 and S2 of attributes A and B respectively, then(4) would make it impossible for A and B to be identical, for it is attributes that aresupposed to differentiate substances from one another. But we cannot rule out thepossibility of two substances being differentiated by different collections ofattributes, while Spinoza gladly admits that a substance may possess more thanone attribute (God, for instance, possesses all of them.) At this point, we still lack anunderstanding of why Spinoza believes that two substances with many attributescannot have one attribute in common. Notoriously, this is a question that wasoriginally posed by Leibniz: “There seems to be a concealed fallacy here. For twosubstances can be distinguished by their attributes and still have some commonattribute, provided they also have others peculiar to themselves in addition.”(Leibniz 1999, VI.4b: 1768)

This charge is sometimes regarded as unanswerable (see Nadler 2006: 62), andthereby as a conclusive refutation of Spinoza’s argument. As will be argued in thenext section, however, this view is unduly pessimistic. In order to answer Leibniz’schallenge, Spinoza needs another proposition (as noted by Sprigge 2001: 270):

(5) If two substances have one attribute in common, they have all attributes incommon.

On this assumption, it becomes impossible to differentiate two substances S1and S2 with one common attribute on the basis of their overall collections. Andsince attributes are the sole principles of individuation for substances (modesbeing unfit for this role, as shown in (3)), S1 and S2 will have to benumerically identical.

No doubt, Leibniz would ask why (5) should be granted. In his explanationof the No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis, Spinoza says that if two substances aredistinguished “only by a difference in their attributes, then it will be concededthat there is only one of the same attribute,” which is precisely what stands inneed of elucidation. Spinoza’s reticence suggests that the truth of the No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis must be evident from the concept of an attribute alone.

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To have a genuine grasp of the concept of attribute is to see why attributescannot be shared. This may seem a very modest result, but this examination ofSpinoza’s explanation of Ip15 has not been in vain. For we now know what toexpect from any viable interpretation of the concept of attribute. Specifically, thisshould: (a) account for the truth of the No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis (in a way thatmakes it appear obviously true); (b) explain why identity of one attribute entailsidentity of all attributes (the claim Spinoza needs to counter Leibniz’s objection);and (c) explain how attributes can function as principles of individuation in thefirst place (given that, according to (4), they must do so). Clearly, (c) is the mostimportant point, as it directly touches upon the question of the relation between asubstance and its attributes.

5 Satisfying the Requirements: Attributes as Revelations of a Substance’s Essence

In Id4 Spinoza defines an attribute as “what the intellect perceives of a substance, asconstituting its essence.” Two ways of reading this definition come immediately tothe mind, and they have both found their advocates in scholarly literature. SinceSpinoza says that attributes are perceived “to constitute” a substance’s essence, andsince he acknowledges that a substance can have more than one attribute, attributesmight be interpreted as a substance’s constituent parts. According to Curley(1969:16), “Spinoza…does identify substance…with the totality of its attributes;”this view of substance as a “composite” or “bundle,” however, strongly contrastswith Spinoza’s belief that God (the only substance there is) is an indivisible unity.Spinoza makes the point thus in Ip12: “No attribute of a substance can be trulyconceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided.” And elsewhere,he writes: “A substance which is absolutely infinite [and Spinoza’s God is absolutelyinfinite] is indivisible” (Ip13). Moreover, the bundle-theory of substance conflictswith the very definition of substance as “what is in itself” (Id3); paradoxicallyenough, since a whole needs its parts in order to exist, a substance turns out not to beontologically independent on this interpretation.

According to the so-called subjective interpretation (a classical version of whichis in Wolfson 1962: 146–56), attributes are a substance’s appearances. WhenSpinoza says that an attribute is what the intellect perceives of a substance “asconstituting its essence,” he really meant “as if” it constituted its essence. Thispreserves the unity of substance (all plurality being a matter of the multiple ways inwhich the one substance is subjectively apprehended), but at the cost of turningSpinoza’s God into an unknowable “thing in itself.” This runs contrary to the spiritof the Ethics. Would a rationalist ever hold that substance differs from what theintellect perceives it to be? In principle, everything in Spinoza’s universe istransparent to the inquiring mind. Another major shortcoming of the subjectiveinterpretation is that it makes Spinoza into an idealist of sorts, for the very existenceof an attribute/appearance now depends upon the existence of an apprehendingmind. In this way, the interpretation grants ontological priority to the attribute ofthought, whereas Spinoza clearly holds that attributes are independent from oneanother. As he has it in Ip10, “Each attribute of a substance must be conceivedthrough itself.”


An alternative characterization of the concept of attribute is provided in premise(2) of the monistic argument sketched in “Section 3”: “God, or a substanceconsisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence,necessarily exists” (Ip11). Spinoza characterizes the relation between the substanceand its attributes in terms of the concept of expression in several other places, forexample in Id6 (“By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substanceconsisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal andinfinite essence”) and Ip19d (“…by God’s attributes are to be understood what…expresses an essence of the divine substance, that is, what pertains to substance”; allemphases are mine). Thus, an attribute is neither a constituent nor an appearance of asubstance, but one of its essence’s expressions.

How does the concept of expression differ from the concept of appearance? Theanswer must be that an expression manifests or reveals what a substance truly is (itsessence), whereas appearances hide a substance’s real nature. At the same time, thenotion of expression need not carry any idealistic implication. Spinoza’s attributesare “what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence.” Thiscould simply mean that a substance’s essence will become manifest to any intellectthat satisfies the requirement of a perfected rationality. On this reading, a substance’sattribute would have to be knowable in principle, but it would not need to be actuallyapprehended in order to exist. This wholly agrees with Spinoza’s belief that God’sattributes are infinite in number, although we are acquainted solely with the twoattributes of thought and extension. The others are up for grabs, available to intellectsgreater than ours. (Cf. Sprigge 2006: 33–36 and Phemister 2006: 95 for recentinterpretations along these lines.)

An understanding of the concept of attribute in terms of the concept of expressionsatisfies all requirements identified at the end of the previous section. (a) Since attributesare revelatory of a substance’s essence, if two substances had one attribute in common,they would have the same essence. And since an essence is what makes a thing the thingthat it is, the two substances would not be two after all, but the very same substance. Thisexplains why Spinoza holds the No-Shared-Attributes-Thesis, the view that no twosubstances (if they really are two) can share one attribute. (b) Furthermore, if twosubstances having one attribute in common are the same substance, then, trivially, alltheir manifestations will be identical. This explains why two substances having oneattribute in common must have all attributes in common, thereby answering Leibniz’schallenge. (c) Lastly, and most importantly, this interpretation explains why attributesare capable of functioning as principles of individuation. They are capable of doingthis in virtue of their privileged relation to essence.

With this understanding of attributes in place, Spinoza’s argument for theNo-Shared-Attributes-Thesis can be stated in the form of a reductio:

(1) Let S1 and S2 be two numerically different substances that share one commonattribute. (Thesis to be rejected.)

(2) Since attributes are expressions/revelations/manifestations of a substance’sessence, if S1 and S2 have a common attribute, then they have the sameessence.

(3) Since a substance’s essence is what makes a substance the substance that it is, ifS1 and S2 have the same essence, then they are the same substance.

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Hence:

(4) Two numerically different substances S1 and S2 sharing a common attributewould both be (since they have the same essence) and not be (since exhypothesi they are two) the very same substance—which is impossible.

Premises (2) and (3) are true in virtue of the very concepts of attribute andessence; hence, it is the very possibility of a situation like that envisaged in (1) thatmust be rejected.

6 Spinoza’s Turn to Process: Attributes as Manifestations of Power

As it has just been shown, interpreting attributes as revelatory of a substance’sessence has major interpretative advantages. But Spinoza’s position now appears tobe threatened by an internal incoherence. How could the same substance be extendedas well as mental, given that these attributes are so radically different from oneanother? The problem does not arise on the subjective interpretation. On that view,attributes are relative to apprehending minds; each attribute represents a perspectiveon a substance’s essence, yet this remains hidden from view. This way out of thedifficulty is not available if thought and extension are revelatory of a substance’snature. Clearly, the notion that attributes are expressions requires further elaborationto become fully intelligible.

Greater clarity can be achieved by considering the concept of expression in lightof Spinoza’s Ip34, “God’s power is his essence itself.” This is a striking propositionthat can be interpreted in either of two ways: (a) Spinoza might be stating that God isa subject of activity or, much more radically, (b) that God is infinite power itself. Theway Ip34 is formulated surely favors the latter interpretation (Spinoza also uses thelocution “God’s supreme power, or infinite nature” in Ip17d), a point that can bereinforced by considering Spinoza’s definition of essence in IId2. This definition hastwo parts, the first of which goes as follows:

I say that to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thingis [also] necessarily posited and which, being taken away, the thing isnecessarily [also] taken away….

The essence of a thing, Spinoza says here, accounts for the very existence of thething it is an essence of. Accordingly, if the essence of God is infinite creativepower, it is this power that grounds God’s existence. In his demonstration of Ip34Spinoza refers to God’s power as that “by which he and all things are and act [myemphasis];” again, God’s creative power is presented as grounding God’s veryexistence, which suggests that God’s power is the ultimate metaphysical fact. In thesecond part of IId2, however, Spinoza reverses the order of explanation. To “theessence of any thing” it now belongs

… that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which canneither be nor be conceived without the thing [my emphasis].

Instead of merely affirming the dependence of a thing upon its essence, Spinozanow says that an essence depends upon the thing it is the essence of. But if God’s


essence is power, then power appears to depend upon God as a subject of power.How is this surprising turn in Spinoza’s definition to be explained? The answer mustbe that things and essences are identical; hence, if all there is to God’s essence ispower, this is all there is to God himself. Otherwise, Spinoza would be affirming thepriority of the essence in the first part of the definition while denying this in thesecond, which is too blatant a contradiction. Moreover (and independently of thequestion of the role played by the concept of power in his metaphysics), the claimthat things are prior to their natures is by itself a hardly intelligible one. Hence, onemust read the second part of IId2 as a convoluted way of affirming the identitybetween things and their essences.

In sum, there is good textual evidence in support of the view that Spinoza’ssubstances are not substrata, as Russell argued, but substantial powers. Contrary toRussell’s interpretation, Spinoza is all but oblivious to the dynamical side of things.He even defines the pivotal concepts of his ontology (the correlated notions ofsubstance and attribute) in terms of agency. Is there anything in this interpretation ofGod as being infinite power rather than as having it that conflicts with Spinoza’sofficial definition of substance “as what is in itself and is conceived through itself,that is, that whose conception does not require the concept of another thing, fromwhich it must be formed” (Id3)? Clearly, if there were any inconsistencies here, thisinterpretation would have to be rejected.

The point one might want to seize upon is Spinoza’s claim that the concept of asubstance does not require “the concept of another thing, from which it must beformed.” How can there be “free floating” powers, such that do not require anunderlying subject? The very notion of a subject-less power is offensive to commonsense (not, of course, to Russell, who believes the world to consist of events). Now,Spinoza speaks of power as dependent upon the subject exercising it, as in the veryphrase “the power of God.” But this is no proof that he held subjects to be prior topowers. Russell observed that the conception of substance as a bearer of propertiesacquired his hold upon philosophers partly “through a hasty transition to reality ofideas derived by grammar” (Russell 1927a: 253; cf. also Russell 1945: 595). Wemight find Spinoza’s notion that power requires no ontologically prior agent (powerbeing that agent) difficult to grasp solely because ordinary language embodies a setof basic metaphysical presuppositions contrary to those he is trying to articulate. Butsurely, a violation of grammar need not be a metaphysical impossibility.3

The notion of power as an independent ontological principle is not new in thehistory of metaphysics. Aristotle’s God in Metaphysics Λ (1071b3/1072a18) is pureact because it is pure form: deprived of matter (the locus of potentialities) God canonly be thinking activity per se. Spinoza too denies that there are any non-actualizedpotentialities in God (and since according to Ip15, “Whatever is, is in God,”anywhere else in the universe). The concept of an attribute as an “expression ofpower” reverses the notion of “unexpressed potentialities:” expressed power simplyis actualized power. Spinoza’s God is a power that manifests itself in all possibleways; as such, it exists only as expressed, i.e., as revealed in its realizations.

3 One important question remains open: how could the revisionary metaphysician ever hope to transcendthe limitations of ordinary language without talking nonsense? This is a real difficulty, but it cannot bedealt with here at any length; cf. Simons (1998) for an insightful treatment of this issue.

38 P. Basile

Several interpreters have recognized the significance the concept of power playsin Spinoza’s metaphysics (most recently, Deveaux 2007: 77–78), but it would behard to find better words than those of Harold Joachim to characterize the relationbetween a substance and its attributes. In A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (1901)Joachim first defines attributes dynamically as “lines of force” in which “God’somnipotence manifests its free causality to an intelligence”. Then, he goes on to say:

God in his free causality, as “natura naturans” is absolute power which isalways in action in all ways. It is his “actuosa essentia” which all thingsexpress—or rather, are—in various determinate forms…. The Attributes orforms of God’s omnipotence are not consequences of God’s nature—they arethat nature: and each Attribute expresses the whole nature of God…. (Joachim1901: 66–67)

This truly goes to the heart of Spinoza’s view: God has an active essence (actuosaessentia) and each attribute expresses that essence entirely (not just in part); this iswhy two substances cannot have even a single attribute in common.

In this passage, Joachim also mentions another way of interpreting attributes.Why could not attributes be consequences of God’s nature, rather than itsexpressions? Clearly, attributes cannot be said to be “consequences” in any ordinarysense of the word in a monistic universe. Spinoza’ God could not create anothersubstance or act upon one already in existence. But even if per impossibile theuniverse could contain more than one substance, Spinoza would have to hold thatsuch substances cannot interact. The reason is that two distinct substances cannothave any attribute in common; hence, any two numerically distinct substances willhave to belong to different ontological types. This makes them as causallydisconnected as are a mental and an extended substance in Descartes’ philosophy.On Spinoza’s basic ontological commitments, a pluralistic universe would closelyresemble a Leibnizian world of self-enclosed, causally independent substances.4

This is in a sense a very trivial discovery. The very definition of substance as“what is in itself” (Id3) entails that, if there are many substances, they will not haveto rely on one another in order to exist. But it sheds new light on the notion thatattributes are expressions of substantial power. Once causation between differentsubstances has been rejected, what sort of creative power can be ascribed to God?According to Ip18, “God is the immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things.” Allthat God’s active essence can bring about are his manifestations (i.e., the attributesand their concrete specifications, the modes).

An interpretation of Spinoza’s conception of substance in terms of power hassignificant interpretative advantages. It is because substance is power that exists onlyin its actual expressions that Spinoza can use “attributes” and “substance” as if theywere synonymous, as he occasionally does. There is no mention of attributes inAxiom 1 (“Whatever is, is either in itself [a substance] or in another [a mode]”), forexample, which makes one initially wonder why Spinoza should deny that they haveany place in reality. Most intriguingly, substances (!) too disappear from view at onepoint, as when Spinoza writes that “an actual intellect, whether finite or infinite,

4 It would closely resemble Leibniz’s universe, but the two worlds would not be identical: Leibniz’sspiritual monads are all of the same ontological type.


must comprehend God’s attributes and God’s affections [my emphases], and nothingelse” (Ip30d). Clearly, if this is to be made consistent with Axiom 1, then a substanceand its attributes will have to be the same thing. And indeed, this is what they are onthe present interpretation: if power is necessarily actualized, then a substance(power) and its attributes (expressions) cannot be distinguished in reality, but onlyconceptually; in a way, to mention the one is already to have mentioned the other.

Furthermore, we have seen in “Section 3” that Spinoza needs the premise thatthere cannot be a substance that has no attributes in order for his monistic argumentto be valid. As he has it in a passage that has already been quoted there: “nothing isclearer than each being must be conceived under some attribute” (Ip10d). But ifsubstantial powers are necessarily actualized, then a Spinozistic substance (which isnothing but power) cannot exist without expressing itself. This is equivalent tosaying that a substance (a power) requires at least one attribute (an expression) inorder to be. And finally, if attributes are expressions of substantial power, greaterpowers must be expected to manifest themselves in a greater number of ways. Notsurprisingly from the standpoint of the present interpretation, this is exactly whatSpinoza says in Ip9: “The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributesbelong to it.”

What about the objection that was raised at the beginning of this section,according to which two attributes as diverse as thought and extension could not berevelatory of an identical essence? Spinoza addresses precisely this difficulty whenhe says that “it is far from absurd to attribute many attributes to one substance”(Ip10d). As he goes on to explain,

…it is evident, that although two attributes may be conceived to be reallydistinct (i.e., one may be conceived without the aid of the other), we stillcannot infer from that that they constitute two beings, or two differentsubstances. (Ip10s)

Spinoza is here suggesting that the objection can be answered by reversing thelogic that underlies it; what the heterogeneity of the two attributes shows is that thereis nothing in extension that conflicts with thought, not that they cannot coexist asattributes of the same substance. This is a strongly anti-Cartesian point: by itself,mere conceptual diversity (i.e., the fact that “one may be conceived without the aidof the other”) provides neither a reason for affirming identity of substance nor fordenying it (cf. Della Rocca 2008: 54–55 for an insightful articulation of this point).But an interpretation in terms of power bears an additional benefit, for it makes theview that substance can have heterogeneous attributes more intuitively accessible.Surely, we find no difficulty in the notion that a person’s creative powers mightmanifest themselves in radically different ways as in sport, dance, music, literature,ordinary human intercourse, social action, family life, and—who knows?—perhapseven in philosophy.

7 Conclusion

An interpretation of Spinoza’s concept of substance in terms of pure power wouldrequire a more extended analysis of his Ethics to be fully established. Nevertheless,

40 P. Basile

what has been said suffices as a refutation of Russell’s interpretation of Spinoza’stheory of substance as naively modeled upon the subject–predicate theory ofproposition. Russell thinks that metaphysics must abandon the philosophicaltradition he takes Spinoza to be a prominent exponent of and that makes all activitysubordinate to permanence. As it has been argued, we can make better sense ofSpinoza’s proof (and perhaps even of his overall metaphysical position) if weinterpret him as a radically revisionary thinker whose basic ontology already liesoutside of that tradition.5

Acknowledgments Thanks to Leemon McHenry for comments on a previous version of this paper.

References

Basile, P. (2010) Kant, Spinoza, and the metaphysics of the ontological proof. In: Metaphysica 11:17–37.Bennett, J. (1984) A study of Spinoza’s ethics. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.Bennett, J. (1996) Spinoza’s metaphysics. In: Garrett, D. (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Spinoza.

Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.Curley, E. (1969) Spinoza’s metaphysics: an essay in interpretation. Harvard University Press. Cambridge,

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Spinoza. The Catholic University of America Press. Washington, D.C.Joachim, H. (1901) A study of the ethics of Spinoza. Clarendon Press. Oxford.Leibniz, G. W. (1999) Sämtliche Schrifte und Briefe. Akademie Verlag. Berlin.Marcus, R. B. (1993) Spinoza and the ontological proof. In: Modalities: philosophical essays. Oxford

University Press. Oxford.Nadler, S. (2006) Spinoza’s ethics: an introduction. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.Phemister, P. (2006) The rationalists: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. Polity. Cambridge.Rescher, N. (1996) Process metaphysics. An introduction to process philosophy. State University of New

York Press. Albany.Rescher, N. (2003) Process philosophy and monadological metaphysics. In: On Leibniz. Pittsburgh

University Press. Pittsburgh: 232–241.Russell, B. (1900) A critical exposition of the philosophy of Leibniz. George Allen & Unwin. London.Russell, B. (1903) The principles of mathematics. George Allen & Unwin. London.Russell, B. (1927a) An outline of philosophy. Unwin Books. London.Russell, B. (1927b) The analysis of matter. Keegan Paul. London.Russell, B. (1945) A history of Western philosophy. Simon and Schuster. New York.Russell, B. (1956) Logical atomism. In: Logic and knowledge. Edited by Robert Charles Marsh.

Routledge. London: 323–343.Simons, P. (1998) Metaphysical systematics: a lesson from Whitehead. In: Erkenntnis, XLVIII: 377–93.Spinoza, B. (1996) Ethics. Edited and translated by Edwin Curley. Penguin. London.Sprigge, T.L.S. (2001) The mind of Spinoza’s God. In: Iyyun. The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly. 50:

253–272.Sprigge, T.L.S (2006) The God of metaphysics. Clarendon Press. Oxford.Whitehead, A. N. (1929) Process and reality: an essay in cosmology. Free Press. New York.Whitehead, A. N. (1933) Adventures of ideas. Free Press. New York.Wolfson, H. A. (1962) The philosophy of Spinoza: unfolding the latent process of his reasoning. Harvard

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5 The one philosopher who has made the most to vindicate the process point of view in recent years isNicholas Rescher, especially in Process Metaphysics (Rescher 1996). In this book Rescher provides asurvey of great process thinkers of the past from Heraclitus to Whitehead, yet he does not mention eitherRussell or Spinoza. Quite different is his estimate of Leibniz (cf. also Rescher 2003).


Pierfrancesco Basile - Russel on Spinoza's Substance Monism

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