After reading this I went back to my notes on Bayle and realized I had confused Bayle's somewhat lackluster critique of Spinoza which you discuss here with his very skillful critique of Descartes/Malebranche in the articles on Pyrrho and Zeno of Elea. I do think that Bayle's worth a little more than what is said here, and I'll (lazily) copy the quotation and commentary I made, since I don't have the book in front of me. (Especially the part where you said Bayle doesn't comment on Spinoza's definition of substance) "Having once set forth that substance is that which exists by itself, as independently of every efficient cause as of every material one or every subject of inhesion, he could not say that either matter or men's souls were substances. [And he did not] And since, according to the usual view, he divided being into only two species, namely substance and modification of substance, he had to say that matter and men's souls were only modifications of substance. [Not quite: because ‘between’ substance and mode there is attribute] No orthodox person will disagree with him that, according to this definition of substance, there is only one single substance in the universe, and that substance is God. It will only be a question of knowing whether he subdivides the modification of substance into two species. [By this species he will refer to the attributes] In case he makes use of this subdivision and means that one of those two species is what the Cartesians and other Christian philosophers call "created substance," and the other species what they call "accident" or "mode," there will be only a dispute about words between him and them; and it will be very easy to bring his whole system back to orthodoxy and to make his sect vanish; for a person is only inclined to be a Spinozist because he believes that Spinoza has completely overturned the Christian philosophers' system of the existence of an immaterial God governing all things with a perfect liberty. [Spinoza’s mode considers the “created substance”, and the “accident” or “mode” of the scholastics has no metaphysical analogue. I.e. circularity or squareness is not a mode of an object in Spinoza, the object itself is a mode, and it is either a “circular object” or a “square object”—in the sense that those would be human-made descriptions, not metaphysical properties.] From which we can conclude in passing that the Spinozists and their adversaries agree completely about the meaning of the phrase "modification of substance." [Perhaps—but Spinoza’s argument is tacitly that letting things like extension be called “substance” makes no sense.] They both believe that Spinoza employed this term only to designate a being that has the same nature as what the Cartesian philosophers call "modes," and that he never understood by this term a being that had the properties or nature of what we call "created substance."” [Which is wrong of Bayle—Spinoza would not allow for Cartesian modes, and by mode he meant created substance.]
Later: “...I will admit my mistake with the greatest pleasure in the world if it is the case that Spinoza actually was a Cartesian but had been more careful than Descartes in employing the word "substance," and that all of the impiety attributed to him consists only in a misunderstanding.” To be honest I don't fully know what to think of this; I do think Spinoza was more careful than employing "substance" than Descartes, but I don't know how large Bayle thinks the umbrella of "Cartesianism" is, so I don't know what Bayle would have to think Spinoza believes, in order for it "to be the case Spinoza actually was a Cartesian."
I think the right way (and the historical way) to criticize Spinoza is just to critique innate ideas in general (like Locke, Berkeley, Hume), and if you want anything remotely resembling an innate idea back, you have to look to Kant. It would be interesting to get your thoughts on Kant. In my head I just remembered that Bayle's skeptical attacks on rationalism were pretty powerful and inspired Berkeley/Hume, but forgot that his specific attack on Spinoza missed the point of his system.
I'm a bit baffled by Bayle's attempt to give Spinoza a way back into the Cartesian umbrella in this quote-if I understand him correctly it relies on Spinoza using the term "mode" equivocally, which would be incredibly out of form for him and especially strange given the importance of modes in his system.
For what it's worth, my own feeling is that Descartes was actually much more a Spinozist than Spinoza was a Cartesian, the difference being that Descartes was much more cautious in his work to appear pious, but to a large degree Spinoza was just saying the quiet part out loud. This is a bit Straussian of me, but Descartes also gives us good reason to think he was hiding his real views.
I agree with your point that the best critique is against innate ideas in general, and while my reading of Kant is very incomplete, from what I have read so far, the similarities are remarkable. I think it's very hard to read Kant's exposition of pure intuition and not get something quite analogous to Spinoza's attributes. I've been meaning to spend a lot more time on Kant (not to mention the British empiricists), I've just been waylaid.
But to take a stab at the issue: apart from a history of philosophy perspective, I personally find Spinoza's view compelling largely because his parallelism is such an elegant solution to the mind-body problem-and it's through his parallelism that he justifies the existence of innate ideas.
If I recall correctly the logic in Part 2 of the Ethics is that some modes/ideas will necessarily be universal, and therefore will belong to all minds (a mind being a set of ideas to Spinoza), such that no mind can exist without an adequate knowledge of them. Might be worth writing a post on that.
Yeah, his attempt to reconcile Spinoza with doesn't capture the spirit of Spinoza's philosophy, and the two use "mode" differently. I wouldn't say Descartes was a Spinozist, because I think he did truly believe in a literal God creating two literal substances of mind and body, and I do think Descartes is very cautious to appear pious, which leads to him stressing certain points of his system and quickly passing over others, but I tend to doubt, in general, claims that major philosophers wrote things that they didn't believe. I'm unaware of the "Straussian" position or the "good reason" if you could explain that.
Spinoza is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem, and that's a big reason I'm partial to him, but IMO the course of enlightenment philosophy shows the mind-body problem to be secondary to epistemological difficulties.
It sounds right that he argued for universal ideas/modes of thought, especially given his panpsychism. I'm more interested in your thoughts on empiricism, though...
After reading this I went back to my notes on Bayle and realized I had confused Bayle's somewhat lackluster critique of Spinoza which you discuss here with his very skillful critique of Descartes/Malebranche in the articles on Pyrrho and Zeno of Elea. I do think that Bayle's worth a little more than what is said here, and I'll (lazily) copy the quotation and commentary I made, since I don't have the book in front of me. (Especially the part where you said Bayle doesn't comment on Spinoza's definition of substance) "Having once set forth that substance is that which exists by itself, as independently of every efficient cause as of every material one or every subject of inhesion, he could not say that either matter or men's souls were substances. [And he did not] And since, according to the usual view, he divided being into only two species, namely substance and modification of substance, he had to say that matter and men's souls were only modifications of substance. [Not quite: because ‘between’ substance and mode there is attribute] No orthodox person will disagree with him that, according to this definition of substance, there is only one single substance in the universe, and that substance is God. It will only be a question of knowing whether he subdivides the modification of substance into two species. [By this species he will refer to the attributes] In case he makes use of this subdivision and means that one of those two species is what the Cartesians and other Christian philosophers call "created substance," and the other species what they call "accident" or "mode," there will be only a dispute about words between him and them; and it will be very easy to bring his whole system back to orthodoxy and to make his sect vanish; for a person is only inclined to be a Spinozist because he believes that Spinoza has completely overturned the Christian philosophers' system of the existence of an immaterial God governing all things with a perfect liberty. [Spinoza’s mode considers the “created substance”, and the “accident” or “mode” of the scholastics has no metaphysical analogue. I.e. circularity or squareness is not a mode of an object in Spinoza, the object itself is a mode, and it is either a “circular object” or a “square object”—in the sense that those would be human-made descriptions, not metaphysical properties.] From which we can conclude in passing that the Spinozists and their adversaries agree completely about the meaning of the phrase "modification of substance." [Perhaps—but Spinoza’s argument is tacitly that letting things like extension be called “substance” makes no sense.] They both believe that Spinoza employed this term only to designate a being that has the same nature as what the Cartesian philosophers call "modes," and that he never understood by this term a being that had the properties or nature of what we call "created substance."” [Which is wrong of Bayle—Spinoza would not allow for Cartesian modes, and by mode he meant created substance.]
Later: “...I will admit my mistake with the greatest pleasure in the world if it is the case that Spinoza actually was a Cartesian but had been more careful than Descartes in employing the word "substance," and that all of the impiety attributed to him consists only in a misunderstanding.” To be honest I don't fully know what to think of this; I do think Spinoza was more careful than employing "substance" than Descartes, but I don't know how large Bayle thinks the umbrella of "Cartesianism" is, so I don't know what Bayle would have to think Spinoza believes, in order for it "to be the case Spinoza actually was a Cartesian."
I think the right way (and the historical way) to criticize Spinoza is just to critique innate ideas in general (like Locke, Berkeley, Hume), and if you want anything remotely resembling an innate idea back, you have to look to Kant. It would be interesting to get your thoughts on Kant. In my head I just remembered that Bayle's skeptical attacks on rationalism were pretty powerful and inspired Berkeley/Hume, but forgot that his specific attack on Spinoza missed the point of his system.
I'm a bit baffled by Bayle's attempt to give Spinoza a way back into the Cartesian umbrella in this quote-if I understand him correctly it relies on Spinoza using the term "mode" equivocally, which would be incredibly out of form for him and especially strange given the importance of modes in his system.
For what it's worth, my own feeling is that Descartes was actually much more a Spinozist than Spinoza was a Cartesian, the difference being that Descartes was much more cautious in his work to appear pious, but to a large degree Spinoza was just saying the quiet part out loud. This is a bit Straussian of me, but Descartes also gives us good reason to think he was hiding his real views.
I agree with your point that the best critique is against innate ideas in general, and while my reading of Kant is very incomplete, from what I have read so far, the similarities are remarkable. I think it's very hard to read Kant's exposition of pure intuition and not get something quite analogous to Spinoza's attributes. I've been meaning to spend a lot more time on Kant (not to mention the British empiricists), I've just been waylaid.
But to take a stab at the issue: apart from a history of philosophy perspective, I personally find Spinoza's view compelling largely because his parallelism is such an elegant solution to the mind-body problem-and it's through his parallelism that he justifies the existence of innate ideas.
If I recall correctly the logic in Part 2 of the Ethics is that some modes/ideas will necessarily be universal, and therefore will belong to all minds (a mind being a set of ideas to Spinoza), such that no mind can exist without an adequate knowledge of them. Might be worth writing a post on that.
Yeah, his attempt to reconcile Spinoza with doesn't capture the spirit of Spinoza's philosophy, and the two use "mode" differently. I wouldn't say Descartes was a Spinozist, because I think he did truly believe in a literal God creating two literal substances of mind and body, and I do think Descartes is very cautious to appear pious, which leads to him stressing certain points of his system and quickly passing over others, but I tend to doubt, in general, claims that major philosophers wrote things that they didn't believe. I'm unaware of the "Straussian" position or the "good reason" if you could explain that.
Spinoza is an elegant solution to the mind-body problem, and that's a big reason I'm partial to him, but IMO the course of enlightenment philosophy shows the mind-body problem to be secondary to epistemological difficulties.
It sounds right that he argued for universal ideas/modes of thought, especially given his panpsychism. I'm more interested in your thoughts on empiricism, though...