SPINOZA, IMAGINATION AND CHAOS* Mark Sheldon Indiana University-Furdue University

R. G. Blair writes: In his recently published paper, “Spinoza’s Account of Imagination,”

Spinoza’s system cannot teach us much today if it is taken as a whole. Philosophy, as he understands it, is no more. From his point of view, human experience has become chaotic; nature is no longer a coherent whol? His God inevitably does not exist, and the world is not a determined part of that God.

I intend to suggest that, on the contrary, it is precisely because “Human experience has become chaotic” that Spinoza’s account of imagination is so important and interesting. 1 shall also suggest that it is possible to wonder whether nature was ever a coherent whole for Spinoza, though I will not depend on the correctness of this conjecture in terms of what I suggest concerning Spinoza’s theory of imagination. I shall discuss Blair’s paper, as well as a paper by David Savan titled “Spinoza and Language.”

In Spinoza, Stuart Hampshire argues that Spinoza considered imagination and intellect entirely distinct. He claims that the whole purpose of the geometrical method in the Ethics was to free language of imagination and establish it in its strict logical relation to intellect or reason. Language would then be capable of expressing adequate ideas clearly and distinctly. It is not that the exercise of imagination leads to error necessarily, but that error must be consciously avoided. Hampshire writes:

1 can be said to have . . . a clear idea of God insofar as the ‘God‘ is not indissolubly connected in my mind with any particular image or images . . ., but stands for a notion or concept which is logically connected with other ideas. . .,exactly as the concept of a three- angled figure is logically connected with the idea of a three-sided figure.’

I will not discuss this at length, but will concede that Hampshire’s claim is correct if imagination is considered within the strict terms of his view. In this paper, however, 1 will focus on certain significant aspects of Spinoza’s theory of imagination suggesting a somewhat different perspective.

David Savan, in “Spinoza and Language,” argues ,against Hampshire’s almost universally accepted position, and claims to derive very different views concerning Spinoza’s account of language in relation to philosophy and the literal expression of intellect. Savan writes :

Mark Sheldon received an A . B. from Shimer Colleae. was a Sachar Fellow at Oxford University, and received the Ph. D.]rom Brandeis University. He has published orticies in such journals as The Philosophical Forum and the Journal of Social Philosophy in the areas of aesthetics, ethics and moral education. and is presently at work on a book dealing with imagination and metaphor. He is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University-Atrdue University at Fort Wayne.

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Spinoza holds that both language and mathematics are fundamentally inadequate to the formulation or direct expression of philosophical truths. . . . Spinoza’s views on words and language make it impossible for him to hold that his writings (or anyone else’s) can be a direct or literal exposition of philosophical truth.’

He goes on to argue that, for Spinoza, words arise from responses of the human body to the action upon it of external bodies; and a word will only be understood in conjunction with ideas of external motions which induced it. Words, then, arise from experience and refer to experience, and the imaginative, general and confused character of words cannot be eliminated. On the level of language imagination cannot be made distinct from reason. Savan writes:

The imaginative, general, and confused character of words is, in Spinoza’s view, not contingent or accidental. It is not the result of ignorance and cannot be eliminated by knowledge. It is rather the necessary consequence of the action of external bodies upon our body. In the same way we necessarily continue to imagine the sun as near even after we know its true distance.‘

And,

Hovering in the wings, only just offstage, when Spinoza speaks of words, is the image of sleeping and dreaming. While words are joined through syntax, the material flow of language and speech is conceived by him as a kind of dreaming. Speech, fiction, error, and madness are ranges-perhaps there are others-of a dream con t in~a l .~

Savan goes on to develop for Spinoza a position which one might, with some caution, ascribe to G. E. Moore in Principia Ethica. For instance, Savan claims: ”. . . Spinoza opposes true ideas to words. An idea is not an image and does not consist of words.”6 This does not seem to be very far from Moore’s view when he writes, “My business is solely with that object or idea, which I hold, rightly or wrongly, that the word is generally used to stand for. What I want to discover is the nature of that object or idea. . .’” Of course, Moore’s view, concerning the proper approach to language when doing philosophy, is very different from the position Savan attributes to Spinoza, but the objects of interest seem similar.

Savan carries the above claim quite far: “So sharply does Spinoza separate words from adequate ideas that it is difficult to make out for language any useful philosophical function at all.”’ In fact, Savan argues that, in his writings, Spinoza repeatedly points to the inadequacy of language. The very arrangement of the Ethics in geometrical form would seem to support this view. This last remark is interesting, of course, in that it is usually made by individuals arguing for the conventional view-that is, that Spinoza thought that language, by being arranged geometrically, would express philosophical views more adequately.

Savan argues finally that Spinoza’s theory of language is inadequate, that Spinoza, after associating words and language so thoroughly with imagination, makes no theoretical provision for explaining how language can function in a philosophically meaningful way. Savan

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points out, however, that Spinoza did, as expressed explicitly in his correspondence, hold a general theory of “entities of rea~on.”~ This general theory underlies his method in the Ethics. These entities have no independent status, and certain of these “philosophical entities of reason such as the distinction of God’s essence from God’s existence, power, . . . the modalities . . .--all these arise through verbal comparisons of modes given to us through the imagination.”” At this point, Savan explains that Spinoza thought philosophers were mistaken in primarily two ways: 1) they gave inappropriate descriptions of their entities of reason, and 2) by not distinguishing imagination from intellect thoroughly enough, they regarded the words they employed as standing for entities existing outside the intellect, independently. If, however, the entities of reason were properly viewed as abstractions and not as independently extant, these entities “may serve the philosopher (as they do the mathematician) as eyes, as it were, through which the intellect may see more clearly what is presented confusedly in the imagination.”” At this point, it is not necessary for my purpose to discuss Savan’s argument further. But I would like to quote from the end of Savan’s paper:

A large part of the task of the Erhics is to show philosophers how many of their errors originate in the confusion of entities of reason with entities existing outside the intellect, that is, in confusing the intellect with the imagination. The positive task of the Ethics is to show that once the limitations of language are recognized we can conceive of substance and its modes through their own living ideas.”

Language may be used, therefore, to express philosophical truth, “. . . just as one may dream of gray elephants as well as of pink elephants. But in order to know what is true and what is false in one’s dreams one must first wake and understand that dreams have their own laws.”I3

All of the above is interesting and provocative, and understood to reflect Kantian considerations concerning the limits of reason and from those movements in contemporary philosophy anxious about the limits of language. The importance of Savan’s article consists in the way in which he enlarges the significance of imagination for Spinoza, making it, at the very least, a problem as to whether it can be so easily set within definable, conventional bounds, as Hampshire suggests.

To compare the direction interpretation of Spinoza moved in the past, much more reserved in freeing Spinoza from his conventionally recognized rationalistic underpinnings (and yet in one sense a great deal in agreement with Savan), I would like to quote from John Wild in his introduction to the Ethics:

. . . reason for Spinoza is nor the narrow geometrical process he sometimes makes it, but the whole man’s inner life. It is by means of the self-com lete spirit that we must interpret the universe, not merely by one of its abstract phases. r: He goes on to say that “. . . the universe is rational in the sense of being assimilable by the human mind . . . .** The sense in which Wild agrees

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with Savan lies in the move he makes toward emphasizing the independence of Spinoza’s philosophical perspective from geometry and formal axioms. Yet, the marked way in which Wild differs is that once he has made that move he argues that Spinoza holds reason, as a faculty capable of linguistic expression, to be the articulator of that autonomy, not the imagination.

It is worth mentioning that it is precisely Spinoza’s concern with autonomy that, I think, makes a contemporary philosopher such as Hampshire so much interested in the Ethics. Hampshire sees in it the possibility of being both a fruitful description of human freedom, and a basis for viewing as primitive the freedom of the individual, rather than as a means to some other end. Hampshire claims that an individual’s “. . . only means of achieving . . . distinctness as an individual, . . . freedom in relation to the common order of nature, is the power of the mind freely to follow in its thought an intellectual order.”16 And this, Hampshire argues, leads to “. . . a natural basis for the insistence on freedom as a supreme value in politics . . . . The pursuit of any incompatible end will only lead to conflict and violence.”’

At this point I would like to return to Blair’s article, “Spinoza’s Account of Imagination.” Before I discuss the earlier passage quoted, that Spinoza’s system cannot teach us much today if it is taken as a whole . . . human experience has become chaotic; nature is no longer a coherent whole,”” I want to argue that Blair’s understanding of Spinoza’s account is mainly incorrect. His is an interpretation which, 1 think, illegitimately leaves Spinoza’s theory of imagination with few interesting possibilities for development.

Blair begins his essay with what 1 believe is a mistaken assumption: “It did not occur to Spinoza that the ideal of the perspicuous insight into the nature of reality as a whole might represent an incoherent demand.”19 Against this, I think, it is possible to develop three different positions. The first, which I have already discussed, is very ably argued by David Savan. Due to the inability of distinguishing imagination ultimately from intellect, language has particular limitations. A philosophical view aware of these limitations could not base coherence on insight into the nature of reality as a whole. For Savan, there does not seem to be a sense in which Spinoza sees into “reality” beyond the limits of his language and thought.

The second position is expressed by H. A. Wolfson in “Behind the Geometrical Method,” the first chapter in The Philosophy of Spinoza. Wolfson discusses the fact that the Ethics is a peculiar piece of writing, but he points out that it is peculiar not because of what might be expected, that is, that it is laid out very much as geometry with axioms, propositions, demonstrations and proofs. Rather, he claims that it is peculiar because of the “manner in which it makes use of language. It uses language not as a means of expression but as a system of mnemonic symbols. Words do not stand for simple ideas but for complicated trains of thought. Arguments are not fully unfolded but are merely hinted at by

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suggestion.”*” It is significant that this phenomenon is quite similar to that described by Savan, though Savan sees various contradictions in the work, as well. But it is important that the presence of ambiguous, suggestive and problematic language is recognized, even though Wolfson admits that this realization is apparent only after long study. It adds to the view that it is not so clear, as Blair suggests, that Spinoza thought possible, “perspicuous insight into the nature of reality as a whole . . .” Wolfson writes, “If there is anything arbitrary in our interpretation it is the initial assumption [my emphasis] that Spinoza thought out his philosophy in a logical, orderly, and coherent manner, and that he wrote it down in a work which is logical, orderly, and coherent, and in a language which is self-explanatory.”” Wolfson points out that the Ethics is not logical, orderly, or coherent, but he differs from Savan in that he attributes this not so obviously to a conscious theory of language on Spinoza’s part, but to the circumstances of Spinoza’s life and to his education. Wolfson points out that Spinoza was isolated. He had no students to ask him questions which would have forced him to develop further his statements and arguments. He lived among businessmen, medical students and others not equipped or interested enough to deal in a critical way with his writings. Also, Spinoza was cautious in his communications with others. He had been excom- municated from the Jewish community when he had expressed his thoughts fully.22 So his writing remained compressed, compact and turgid. Wolfson writes, “So long had the thoughts of this book been simmering in his uncommunicative mind that it was boiled down to a concentrated essence, and it is this concentrated essence that we are served in the form of propositions. The Ethics is not a communication to the world: it is Spinoza’s communication with himself.”23

Spinoza, Wolfson points out, had been brought up on Talmudic and rabbinic writings. Therefore, Wolfson recommends that we approach the Ethics as “old rabbinic scholars”24 and make certain that we are well aware of the author’s entire literary background so that we hear his allusions, elliptic nods to authority, and departures from authority. He will be understood to express more than what he wrote on the page. And this, certainly, to return to the original point which I am trying to urge, is a theory of language much more subtle than Blair attributes to the author of the Ethics.

Finally, the third position possible to develop against Blair’s assumption, that, “It did not occur to Spinoza that the ideal of this perspicuous insight into the nature of reality as a whole might represent an incoherent demand,” follows from Part 11, Propositions 1 and 11. Proposition I reads, “Thought is an attribute of God . . rr2S and Proposition I1 reads: “Extension is an attribute of God . . .’**j6 In the proof of Proposition I Spinoza claims that “Thought is one of the infinite attributes of God . . .’*’I The proof for Proposition 11 is similar to Proposition I, which means that extension is one of the infinite attributes of God. Thought and extension, therefore, are two of the

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infinite attributes of God, and thought and extension are the two attributes under which human beings perceive substance. Spinoza writes, “By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.992s This would mean that God’s essence is perceived by the intellect as “thought,” and, also, God’s essence is perceived (again by the intellect) as “exten~ion .”~~ Spinoza writes, “By God, 1 mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite e~sentiality.”~~ It is possible that Blair interprets this to mean that as long as we perceive substance or God under even one attribute it means that we have “perspicuous insight” into substance as a whole. Yet this would mean that under one attribute we perceive that substance has infinite attributes, and this does not follow. Therefore, that substance or God has infinite attributes is not perceived by “perspicuous insight.” Also, that “thought” is “extension” is not perceived by “perspicuous insight.” These conclusions are logically deduced, not produced by “insight.” Indeed, it is difficult to understand in the context of Spinoza’s argument what “perspicuous insight” could mean, especially, if one considers the amount of care which seems to have been given to the structuring of arguments.

In Note I1 to Proposition XL (Part 11, Ethics) Spinoza discusses the three levels of knowledge. They are “opinion or imagination . . . reason . . . intuition.”” He states that he will give an example which “will illustrate all three kinds of knowledge. . .”32 The example chosen is the following problem: ‘Three numbers are given for finding a fourth, which shall be to the third as the second is to the first.”33 The problem is dealt with in terms of the first two levels of knowledge, and then, concerning the third level Spinoza writes, ‘‘. . . one, two, three, being given, everyone can see that the fourth propositional is six; and this is much clearer, because we infer the fourth number from an intuitive grasping of the ratio, which the first bears to the This passage supports my claim, that “intuition” and so-called “perspicuous insight” have different capacities. “Intuition” grasps the ratio or relation, but does not provide insight into the whole. It may be that in Spinoza’s view one may make an effort to bring the intellect, consisting of ideas of the modifications of the finite mode of the body, into proper alignment with nature as a whole, but this is not “perspicuous insight into reality as a whole.”

It would be helpful, 1 think, to digress briefly in order to discuss what Spinoza means by “modes.” Substance, as 1 mentioned above, is revealed under the two infinite attributes, Thought and Extension. Everything that exists is conceived or is understood as a modification of Substance. A mode is the manner in which Substance is conceived. There are infinite and finite modes. Motion-and-rest is the infinite and eternal mode under which the attribute of Extension is conceived. A mode is infinite or finite depending on its logical relation to Substance. Particular things or bodies are finite modes. The individual human body

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is a finite mode of Extension, and the human intellect is a finite mode of Thought. It is in this context that Spinoza differentiates eventually between active and passive emotions, and discusses the endeavor of a thing to be what it is more completely. Again, this would seem to justify further my concern that, if a human being is a finite mode of substance, endeavoring, as Spinoza emphasizes, to be itself more completely, it is very difficult to understand the meaning of ”perspicuous insight into the nature of reality as a whole.”

When Blair presents his argument, concerning “perspicuous insight,” it might be that he has in mind the distinction expressed by Marjorie Grene in her Introduction to Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays. She writes, “AS Atomism, the effort to explain the whole of reality through its least parts, recurs from time to time as a style of metaphysical thinking, so, if more rarely, does Spinozism, the effort to understand the parts of reality in terms of the ultimate nature of the whole.”3s She goes on to remind us of Kant’s remark, that, “If it were not for the distinction between appearances and things in themselves we would all be Spinozist~.”’~ It is unfortunate, 1 think, that Spinoza has come to be seen, conventionally, in this manner. Savan’s article contributes much to dispelling this conception. The so-called “Spinozism,” pointed out by Professor Grene, should be regarded, if anything, as methodological and not metaphysical. H. D. Aiken argues in part, I think, for this view when he writes that “[Spinoza] employed the same geometrical method used by Euclid precisely because he believed it to be the method by which scientific knowledge of any subject matter can be obtained.”” This is a definite suggestion that it is possible to distinguish a particular method from the statements derived as a result of utilizing the method.

Another general problem with Blair’s discussion of Spinoza’s theory of imagination is that Blair characterizes Spinoza’s account as, ultimately, a description of a physiological process. He writes, “According to Spinoza, to have an image is to undergo a bodily process or to be in a particular bodily state. It is a passive affection of the body to which it succumbs for h sical reasons, and this produces an image as an idea in the mind.”3H)ie also refers to the proof of Corollary XVII, where Spinoza discusses “fluid” and “softer” parts of the body: “When external bodies determine the fluid parts of the human body, so that they often imginge on the softer parts, they change the surface of the last names . . .n3 However, while it may be true that a physiological description seems to be the basis for the way Spinoza deals with imagination, I do not think that such a description in any sense exhausts his view or account. It is true that On The Improvement of Human Understanding includes an almost thoroughly physiological account of imagination, but in the Ethics, a new element appears. This is not to say, of course, that Spinoza did not also develop the physiological aspect of his account further in the Ethics. However, Spinoza does develop in the Ethics a much fuller account of imagination, actually referring to it as a

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level of knowledge, and introduces the concept of “association” as a basic element of imagination. 1 will return to this topic when 1 consider the important elements of Spinoza’s account of imagination. At this moment, however, I would like to point out still another general problem with Blair’s essay. Blair explains that he will deal with “imagination” in the following sense:

The word ‘imagination’ is inherently ambiguous. I shall be concerned not with imagination as a faculty which is exercised by an inquiring original mind, but with a simple ability to produce visual or other sensory images . . .40

There are, however, two problems with this statement: First, Blair gives no further argument to convince us that there is actually a distinction between “imagination as a faculty which is exercised by an inquiring original mind” and “the simple ability to produce visual or other sensory images.” The second problem with the statement is that Spinoza’s own account of imagination involves more than the simple ability to produce images. Yet, Blair’s paper, as he makes quite clear, is addressed specifically to “imagination” as the simple ability to produce images, and he argues that Spinoza cannot provide a definite means of distinguishing an experienced percept from an experienced image. Blair quotes Proposition XVll from Part 11: “If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard this said external body as actually existing, or as present to itself, until the human body be affected in such a way as to exclude the existence or the presence of the said external body.”41 Blair thinks there is something very wrong about this account. He writes, “Firstly, it is not true that we need suppose that any idea which enters our heads is of a real object. We do not naturally ‘posit the existence,’ as Spinoza claims, of ideas which are in our minds. And secondly it is false that we need either to perform psychological experiments or reason from them in order to tell the difference between images and percepts. No reflection is required, and no experimentation. The difference is given absolutely in the feel of the experience itself.”42

Before I discuss my criticism of Blair’s objections, 1 would like to point out again that it is misleading for Blair to concern himself with “imagination” in such a limited sense. While it is true that Spinozadoes deal directly with images as particular phenomena, they are not isolated from the larger account he gives of imagination. This is an important point, and one to which 1 will return shortly.

Even if we do consider “imagination” in Blair’s restricted sense, that is, as the simple ability to produce images, we do find serious problems with his arguments. For instance, consider his straightforward statement that Spinoza’s view, at least in terms as characterized by Blair, “simply misrepresents the experience of imagining.”43 To support this statement he argues two points:

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1) . . . it is not true that we need suppose that any idea which enters our heads is ofa real object . . .

2) . . . it is false that we need either to perform psychological experiments or reason from them in order to tell the difference between images and percepts. No reflection is required . . . . The experience is given absolutely in the feel of the experience itself.“

A few paragraphs later, Blair claims that, “This account does not allow us to conceive of one possible way in which it might be reconciled with our obvious ability to know an image for an image instantaneously.’45

Considering Blair’s two objections first, one might point out that we do “posit the existence’’ in some broad sense of ideas which are in our mind, and in some broad sense we must reflect on our thoughts, in order to distinguish images from percepts. Has not the latter, in fact, been one of the major undertakings of philosophy? “Exist” is the sort of ambiguous term which makes it very difficult to determine whether or not we can accept or reject Blair’s argument. Another ambiguity involved in Blair’s objection is that he claims Spinoza’s account misrepresents the experience of “imagining.” It seems that only one paragraph before he was discussing “images.” He has not shown that images have anything to do with “imagining.”

Concerning Blair’s assertion that we have the ability to know an image for an image instantaneously, it is possible to ask whether we do have this ability. Before we can claim to know an image instantaneously, it is possible to wonder whether we even know what an image is after several minutes, or several years. What is an image? What can be said about those people who claim not to have images? If Blair is actually discussing “imagining,” then don’t we often sit around wondering whether we are imagining, in some broad sense of the term, which is the sense that concerns Spinoza? That Blair is actually concerned with imagination in this broad sense is evidenced by the following, though again he criticizes Spinoza: “There is also no account of the characteristic feeling that imagination is free from all external influences which, as we shall see, Spinoza himself regards as being in a certain sense very i m p ~ r t a n t . ” ~ ~ To this statement it is possible to address two questions: 1) Is there such a feeling? And 2) Does Spinoza recognize such a feeling and regard it as important?

To support the view that Spinoza regarded the feeling as important, Blair quotes from the Scolium XVII, Part 11 of the Ethics. 1 give the passage Blair refers to in full since this translation differs somewhat from Euell’s translation which appears on Pages 99-100, in the note to the proof of Corollary XVII.

In order that we may retain the customary phraseology, we will give to those affections of the human body, the ideas of which represent to us external bodies as if they were present, the name of images ofrhings, although they do not actually reproduce the forms of the things. When the mind contemplates bodies in this way, we will say that it imagines. Here I wish it to be observed, in order that 1 may begin to show what error is, that these imaginations of the mind, regarded by themselves, contain no error, and the mind is not in error because it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered as wanting in an idea which

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excludes the existence of those things which it imagines as present. For if the mind, when it imagines non-existent things to be present, could at the same time know that those things did not really exist, it would think its power of imagination to be a virtue of its nature and not a defect, especially if this faculty of imagining depended upon its own nature alone, that is to say, if this faculty of the mind were free.4’

Since Blair chose the above passage to support his view, I think one would have to say that he misread or misinterpreted the passage. In the first place, the sense of “imagination” which concerns Spinoza is quite different from that which interests Blair, that is, the “simple ability to produce visual or other sensory images.” As Spinoza indicates the name images will be given to “the ideas of which represent to us external bodies as if they were present [my emphasis] . . . when the mind contemplates bodies in this way, we will say that it imagines.” The images derived by “the simple ability to produce images”do not involve the presence of that which images are images of. Spinoza, then, has given a very clear sense of what he means by “imagine,” and it very definitely involves the sense of the thing (for which the image appears) being present. This supports what I suggested earlier, that Blair’s argument is directed against a sense of “imagination” which does not interest Spinoza. That is, Spinoza is speaking of a different sort of image, and not one that logically can be recognized instantaneously as an image. Another obvious point about the paragraph is that it is not so clear that Spinoza recognizes the “characteristic feeling that imagina- tion is free from all external influences,” which Blair considers an undeniable aspect of any description of imagination. Spinoza points out that imaginations of the mind, in themselves, contain no error: the mind is not in error because it imagines, but because it believes that that, which it imagines, actually exists. If the mind does realize that that which it imagines does not exist, then there is no error. However, concerning the possibility of the imagination functioning freely, Spinoza does not really allow for this. In the final sentence of the passage which Blair quotes, Spinoza does say that if the mind is aware that its imaginings do not exist, it would consider its ability to imagine a valuable addition to its nature, and not a detriment, especially if imagining were not a function of mind, but imagination itself. The idea that freedom follows from a thing being dependent on itself, is, of course, the Spinozistic conception of freedom. Still, nothing in the passage suggests that Spinoza thought there is a “characteristic feeling” that imagination is free of all external influences. Therefore, it is not something for which he need account. Imagination, for Spinoza, is not free, not on an ordinary level, nor on a metaphysical level. Clearly, in this last sentence in the passage quoted by Blair, Spinoza predicates the entire possibility on “if.” Quite clearly, the mind, imagining things present to it, cannot at the same time know that they do not exist. Imagining, for Spinoza, logically includes the possibility of this occurrence. Therefore, when Blair argues, “For surely the mind, when it imagines, can at the same time know that those things (which it

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imagines) do not really it becomes apparent, again, that he has not concerned himself with imagination in the same sense that Spinoza has. That is, Spinoza is not interested simply in images as isolated phenomena.

Blair does say that Spinoza's account of imagination seems to have interested followers in modem psychology. One psychologist, in particular, Blair suggests, has dealt in a very acceptable manner with involuntary images. It is significant, 1 think, that Blair says this, in that I do think the involunatry aspect of imagination is quite important and is recognized as such by Spinoza.

The following are the particular aspects of Spinoza's theory which seem to me to be especially significant: (1) emphasis on individual things or individuals, (2) arbitrary causality of individual things, (3) arbitrary causality outside body, (4) passivity of soul, and (5) words. These phrases, perhaps, sound quite meaningless without being given some coherence. I intend to develop this coherence shortly, but before doing so I will simply quote particular passages which reflect and set incontext the above isolated aspects. In On the Improvement of Human Understanding Spinoza writes, ". . . ideas fictitious, false, and the rest, originate in the imagination-that is, in certain sensations fortuitous (so to speak) and disconnected, arising not from the power of the mind, but from external causes, according as the body, sleeping or waking, receives various motions."49 This passage suggests aspects (2) and (3), that there is a fixed association of phenomena, but fixed without necessity, and that this is of origin external to the body. Spinoza continues in On the Improvement of Human Understanding with what he seems to think is an extremely important point: ". . . one may take any view one likes of the imagination so long as one acknowledges that it is different from the understanding, and that the soul is passive with regard to it . . . . We now know that the operations, whereby the effects of imagination are produced, take place under other laws quite different from the laws of the understanding, and that the mind is entirely passive with regard to them."s0 While Spinoza regards this as the most important point that he makes concerning imagination in On the Improvement of Human Understanding, it is not a point which he expresses directly in the Ethics. Immediate involvement with individuals is emphasized, but through a certain element of passivity which 1 shall discuss further.

In On the Improvement of Human Understanding Spinoza also discusses the fifth aspect listed above: words. He writes, with an ambiguity which seems never to have been satisfactorily resolved by Hampshire, Savan, or any other contemporary commentators, that ". . . since words are a part of the imagination-that is, since we form many conceptions in accordance with confused arrangements of words in the memory, dependent on particular bodily conditions,-there is no doubt that words may, equally with imagination, be the cause of many and great errors . . . . Moreover, words are formed according to

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popular fancy and intelligence, and are, therefore, signs of thin s as existing in the imagination, not as existing in the ~nderstanding.”~~The ambiguity which seems apparent in the above is that, on the one hand, words are designated as part of the imagination, and yet, on the other, Spinoza suggests that there is a basis for distinguishing them in some sense. The phrase which suggests the latter is “. . . words may, equally with the imagination, be the cause of many and great errors.” Yet I do think Savan, as I suggested earlier, is correct to argue that words ultimately are an aspect and function of the imagination. The statement which confirms this view appears in the Ethics, Part 11, note to Proposition XLIX: ‘‘. . . an idea (being a mode of thinking) does not consist in the image of anything, nor in words. The essence of words and images is put together b bodily motions, which in no use involve the conception of thought.”” The statement differentiates the categories quite clearly, yet it is possible to understand the ambiguous source of the conventional view ascribed, by Savan, to Hampshire, that language can and should be separated from imagination in order to allow for adequate articulation of philosophical truth.

The one aspect not yet reflected by a quote is the second, that is, the importance Spinoza attached to the notion of things or individuals, rather than ideas. This, 1 believe, is of utmost importance. He writes, “. . . the modifications of the human body, of which the ideas represent external bodies as present to us, we will call the images of things, though they do not recall the figures of things. When the mind regards bodies in this fashion we say that it imagines.”53 Shortly afterwards, he writes, “. . . every man will follow this or that train of thought, according as he has been in the habit of conjoining and associating the mental images of things in this or that manner.’’s4 Towards the end of Part I1 of the Ethics, Spinoza writes, “I . . . warn my readers to make an accurate distinction between an idea, or conception of the mind, and the images of the things which we imagine. It is further necessary that they should distinguish between idea and words, whereby we signify things. These three-name- ly, images, words, and ideas-are by many persons either entirely confused together, or not distinguished with sufficient accuracy. . . an idea (being a mode of thinking) does not consist in the image of anything, nor in words.”55

This aspect of things as reflected in images and words, rather than thoughts, seems to me to be of central significance, from which the other aspects follow. Once things and individuals are recognized as the fundamental point of focus in accounts of the imagination, the rest of the aspects listed cohere meaningfully. That which is indicative of imagination is the direct concern with things (in the very broadest sense of the term) and individuals, as opposed to thoughts. There is no thought or idea, except in terms of things or individuals, in imagination. From this follows the arbitrariness mentioned above, since necessary thought is not involved; thought is contingent in terms of things. The aspect of passivity is also understood to follow from the fact that if

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thought is to be in terms of things it must acquiesce, coalesce with things without intermediate thought. As Spinoza says, in effect, imagination is the thinking one does with the body (which is a thing and individual), through the body, in terms of things, that is, other individuals. It is not the thinking one does with images, but with images of things thought to exist. Essentially, I am trying to suggest that a central aspect of imagination is that the individual is engaged individually, that is, without an inte%ediary. The child, imagining himself to be a bear (in Ryle’s example), is not simply thinking of bears or thoughts of bears, but he is thinking in terms of bears, or “in bears.” He is not, as Ryle argues, “pretending” to be a bear: he is a bear. This, 1 admit, may be a peculiar point, but it is an important one. E. H. Gombrich, 1 think, makes the same point in “Meditations on a Hobby Horse” when, discussing Reynold’s theory of representation, Gombrich suggests that the real attitude of the child toward the hobby-horse is as follows: “The stick is neither a sign signifying the concept horse nor is it a portrait of an individual horse. By its capacity to serve as a ‘substitute’ the stick becomes a horse in its own right, it belongs in the class of ‘gee-gees’ and may even merit a proper name of its

Enough arguments and objections, 1 think, have now been given to suggest that Spinoza’s account of imagination is not so limited and uninteresting as Blair would claim, that Savan is correct to enlarge the scope of Spinoza’s view of imagination and, with it, the function of language.’

NOTES

1 want to thank Stuart Hampshire for his comments on this paper, and Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne for the support of a faculty summer research grant.

R. G. Blair, “Spinoza’s Account of Imagination,” Spinoza, ed. by Marjorie Grene (Gfrgen City, New York: Anchor, 1973), p. 324.

Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1951). p. 19. ’ David Savan, “Spinoza and Language,” Spinoza, ed. by Marjorie Grene (New York: Ayhor, 1973), pp. 60-72.

’ Ibid., p. 62.

’ G. E. Moore, Principia Erhica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903). p. 6. ’ David Savan, op. cir., p. 63.

I ‘ Ibid.

David Savan, op. cir., pp. 60-61.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 69.

Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., pp. 71-72.

I‘ John W-ild, Spinoza: Selections(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930). p. xxvii. Ibid. Stuart Hampshire, “Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom,” op. cir., pp. 206-207. 16

I ’ Ibid., p. 208. I * R. G. Blair, op. cir., p. 324. l9 Ibid., p. 318.

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H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy o/Spinozu (New Y ork: Schocken Books, 1934). Vol. 20

I , p. 22. -‘ Ibid.

2 3 H. A. Wolfson, op. cif., pp. 23-24.

” Benedict De Spinoza, “Ethics,” The Chiej Works ojtknedicr De Spinozu, trans. by R.

26 Ibid., p. 84. Ibid., p. 83. Benedict De Spinoza, op. cit., p. 45.

The intellect is a modification of substance as”thought,”and body is a modification of

Spinoza, op. cif., p. 45.

Political complications, not religious issues, precipitated this.

Ibid., p. 24.

22

H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1951). Vol. 11, p. 83.

28

29

substance as ?extension.” 30

” Ibid., p. 113. 32 Ibid. ” Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 114.

Marjorie Grene, lntroduction to Spinozu, ed. by M. Grene (New York: Anchor, 1972). p. xvi.

Ibid. Henry D. Aiken, The Age o j Ideology (New York: A Mentor Book, 1956), p. 22. ’* R. G. Blair, op. cif., p. 320. Benedict De Spinoza, “Ethics,” op. cit.. p. 99.

“ R. G. Blair, op. cir., pp. 318-19. I ’ Benedict De Spinoza, “Ethics,” op. cir., p. 98. 42 R. G. Blair, op. cif., p. 321. ” Ibid. “ Ibid. ” Ibid., p. 322.

4i Ibid.. D. 324.

35

3 1

3Y

R. G. Blair, op. cif., p. 323. 46

48 Ibid.; p. 325. Benedict De Spinoza, “On the Improvement of Human Understanding,” The Chief

Works o/&nedict De Spinozu, trans. by R. H. M. Elwes(New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1951). Vol. 11, p. 32.

Ibid.. DD. 32-33.

49

” Ibid.; p: 33. Benedict De Soinoza. “The Ethics,” op. cit., p. 122. S2

” Ibid., p. 100. s4 Ibid., p. 106. 5 s Ibid., pp. 121-22.

Gilbert Ryle, The Concept ofMind(New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1970). p. 259. ’‘ E. H. Gombrich, “Meditations on a Hobby Horse or the Roots of Artistic Form.” ”See the author’s article titled “Metaphor,” The Phi/osophicd Forum, Vol. VII. No. I ,

$6

1975, pp. 56-70, for fyrther discussion of related issues in imagination and language.

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