Bayle's Critique of Spinoza (Part 1)

A bit of philosophy after a lot of politics

I expected my last essay about the conditions under which one should be willing to die to garner a bit more concern (I promise, such concern, had it been offered, would have been unwarranted), but the most concern I got was a comment from a reader who suggested that I seem to actually believe in Spinoza’s pantheism, beyond just using it as a way to think about things, and suggested I consider the arguments of his major critics—Pierre Bayle, George Berkeley and David Hume in particular.

This sounded like a fun diversion from the very shitty state of the world right now, so I decided to start with Bayle and go through his arguments in order. I only deal with the first three here. Provided I manage an unusual level of consistency and politics doesn’t demand too much of my attention, I’ll deal with the others in subsequent posts. I do think Bayle’s objections are useful in that they are based on the most common misunderstandings of Spinoza’s thought, and I enjoyed mulling them over.

I don’t know whether it’s correct to say I believe in Spinoza’s philosophy exactly—I certainly find it satisfying and useful, and I’ve yet to find a philosophical system as coherent and convincing, but I’m not sure it makes sense to say that one believes in a set of philosophical ideas in the same way I believe my cat is in the other room. But that’s a conversation for another day.

Bayle lists the following alleged absurdities of Spinoza’s system:

1. God and Extension are the same thing.

Spinoza asserts that God (or nature) is the only substance, and that extension is an attribute of God—therefore, extension is a single substance. Further, since God is perfect, this substance is simple—it is not a composite composed of parts.¹ Bayle offers a fairly clever proof that Spinoza is forced into this position, but it is unnecessary, since Spinoza quite clearly affirms it himself. Yes, Spinoza’s actual position is that extension is a unity and contains no parts. Bayle objects that Spinoza’s system falls apart in light of the fact that extension is obviously composed of parts and is thus a composite, and each part of that would consist of a distinct substance.

Bayle is of course correct that this conclusion—that extension is undivided, and that there cannot in fact be a muliplicity of substances—is highly unintuitive and appears absurd. This is precisely why Spinoza argues it at length. The question is, do Spinoza’s arguments in favor of unity suffice against Bayle’s arguments for plurality? Unsurprisingly, I believe that they do.

Bayle credits his criteria for distinction from the Scholastics:

When one can affirm of a thing, they tell us, what one cannot affirm of another, they are distinct; things that can be separated from one another with regard to time or place are distinct. Applying these characteristics to the twelve inches of a foot of extension, we will find a real distinction between them. I can affirm of the fifth that it is contiguous to the sixth, and I deny this of the first, the second, and so on. I can transpose the sixth to the place of the twelfth. It can then be separated from the fifth.

But Spinoza, as Bayle allows, does not deny that such distinctions can be made—rather, he denies that these distinctions pertain to substance, but only to its modes. Bayle recognizes this, and thus launches his next attack against this category. I should note, here, that Bayle has not yet actually made an argument against Spinoza, but has rather given a prelude to an argument. He has, however, given a rather odd and, as we will see, problematic criteria for substance.

2. Incompatible modalities require distinct subjects.

Bayle asserts:

Modalities are beings that cannot exist without the substance they modify. It is therefore necessary that there be substance everywhere for modalities to exist. It is also necessary that it multiply itself in proportion as incompatible modifications are multiplied among themselves, so that wherever there are five or six of these modifications, there are five or six substances.

Bayle’s claim takes the Scholastic criteria for distinction mentioned earlier—that if something can be affirmed of one thing and not of another, they must constitute distinct substances—to claim that any mode which is incompatible with another must belong to a distinct substance. He supplies the following example:

It is evident, and no Spinozist can deny it, that a square shape and a round one are incompatible in the same piece of wax. It must necessarily then be the case that the substance modified by the square shape is not the same substance as that modified by a round one. Thus, when I see a round table and a square one in a room, I can assert that the extension that is the subject of the round table is a substance distinct from the extension that is the subject of the other table; for otherwise it would be certain that a square shape and a round one would be at the same time in one and the same subject.

Bayle’s argument seems to be reducible to the following:

1. Substances are substances in virtue of bearing incompatible modes;

2. There are incompatible modes;

3. So there must be a plurality of substances.

The chief problem with this argument is that Bayle is muddying the definition of a substance. (1) defines a substance in terms of its relations²—a substance is a substance in virtue of possessing a property that contradicts something else.

But this does not satisfy anyone’s definition of a substance—neither Spinoza’s³, nor Aristotle’s⁴, nor even Bayle’s. What is sought in the notion of a substance is something that does not depend on other substances to be conceived—in Spinoza’s definition, a substance is “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself.” It is not enough, in other words, to say a table is a substance because it is round and not square, and then to insist that these shapes are mutually exclusive. To define things by their distinctions is in essence to define things by negation, and substance is the one sort of ontological category for which this is not sufficient.

Of course, for Spinoza, this is not problematic, because for Spinoza, there is nothing that is not really substance—all being, considered as a substance, is one and the same. It is true that a table A cannot be both round and square, but it is perfectly fine for extension, insofar as it is modified by table A, to be square, while insofar as it is modified by table B, it is simultaneously round. This is no more contradictory than that the same human body can possess both a right and a left hand.

It will be seen that if we rigorously apply the criteria that a substance is something that is in itself and is conceived through itself—and therefore, not by its relations to other things—then it will follow that whatever is a substance will be common to all, or that which stands in no relation to anything.

It should be noted that this is not some backfilled explanation. This is simply the argument Spinoza makes in Part I Proposition 5 of the Ethics:

1P5.

In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.

Demonstration. If there were two or more distinct substances, they must be distinguished one from the other by difference of attributes or difference of affections (1P4). If they are distinguished only by the difference of attributes, it will be granted that there is but one substance of the same attribute. But if they are distinguished by difference of affections, since substance is prior by nature to its affections (1P1), the affections therefore being placed on one side, and the substance being considered in itself, or, in other words (1D3,1Ax6), truly considered, it cannot be conceived as distinguished from another substance, that is to say (1P4), there cannot be two or more substances, but only one possessing the same nature or attribute.

It is notable that Bayle never addresses this argument or comments on Spinoza’s definition of substance, but takes it for granted that we can distinguish substances by a difference of affections.

It will follow that any supposedly incompatible objects we can compare, there will always be at least one respect in which they are the same, and that is their mutual existence in space. And thus, space will inevitably be something which can only be conceived through itself. This will suit Spinoza’s purposes, since for Spinoza space is an attribute of God, and is therefore substance, with any supposed “part” of substance constituting a mode which can only be conceived through the substance of which it is a modification.

Of course, it remains to clarify in what meaningful sense a mode differs from a part, and Bayle’s next objection will require that we do so.

3. The immutability of God is incompatible with the nature of extension. Matter actually allows for the division of its parts.

Bayle’s next objection is as follows:

If it is absurd to make God extended because this would divest him of his simplicity and make him consist of an infinite number of parts, what will we say when we consider that this is reducing him to the condition of matter, the lowest of all beings, and the one that almost all ancient philosophers placed immediately above nonbeing? He who speaks of matter speaks of the theater of all sorts of changes, the battlefield of contrary causes, the subject of all corruptions and all generations, in a word, the being whose nature is the most incompatible with the immutability of God. The Spinozists, however, maintain that it allows for no division, but they support this claim by the most frivolous and lowest chicanery that can be imagined.

They contend that for matter to be divided it is necessary that one of its portions be separated from the others by empty spaces, which never happens. It is most certain that this is a very bad way of defining division.

Both Spinoza and Bayle accept the popular view at the time that a perfect vacuum is impossible, and that no extended space is truly empty.⁵ Thus, Bayle accepts that he cannot appeal to empty spaces to provide a total division of substances by which we could consider one as distinct from another. Instead, he asserts the following principle:

We are as actually separated from our friends when the interval that separates us is occupied by other men ranged in a file as if it were full of earth.

Bayle’s view of division is that if a substance A is separated from a substance C by a third substance B, then the substances A and C are as separate as if they were separated by empty space.

But this view clearly begs the question, in that it presupposes that we have already delineated substances A and B from the sandwiched substance B. But how shall we do this? By this criteria, it would require minimally that there is a substance between substances A and B, and another substance between substances B and C.

It’s probably obvious where I’m going here: Bayle is committed to an infinite regress of substances to establish a grounds for real division. It may be tempting to accept this price in return for being allowed to speak of things as discrete individuals, and I certainly share this temptation, since I obviously want to be able to talk about these things myself. So, presumably, does Spinoza. And it’s not even that Spinoza would object to an infinite regress—he happily allows that there are infinite modes (indeed, an infinity of infinite modes). Both views would appear to leave us adrift in a sea of metaphysical entities. But this is where the value of Spinoza’s use of the concept of a mode arises.

The virtue of speaking of modes instead of substances when we refer to objects, people, qualities, or ideas, is precisely that we do not have to affirm that the divisions between one mode or another are real, because a mode doesn’t involve the demand for explanatory self-sufficiency that is demanded of a substance. When speaking of modes⁶, we can acknowledge that there is no real, absolute boundary between one and any other—all are rather conceptions of substance modified by other such conceptions, and this frees us from the conceptual confusion of trying to speak of something which is entirely self-explanatory (substance) as if it were in the same ontological category as things which are necessarily explained by reference to something beyond themselves (modes).

1. “No attribute of substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that substance can be divided.” (Ethics, IP12)

2. As Michael Della Rocca demonstrates in The Parmenidean Ascent, intractable philosophical problems arise when one drills in on this notion of a “substance-making relation.” I will not repeat those arguments here, but they are essential reading for any discussion about monism.

3. “By substance, I understand that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing from which it must be formed.” (Ethics, 1D3)

4. “Substance, in its strictest, first, and chief sense, is that which is neither predicated of any subject, nor is in any; as ‘a certain man’ or ‘a certain horse.’” (Aristotle, Categories, Chapter 5)

5. As a philosophically-inclined math student, I’m not equipped to take a scientific position on this—that being said, it seems like it’s generally accepted that a perfect vacuum doesn’t exist because of the cosmological constant, the energy density of space that results from quantum mechanics. In other words, all space has energy, and is thus not truly empty, even if that energy doesn’t take the form of matter. Someone who knows more about this is welcome to explain this to me with greater clarity, and perhaps I’m totally wrong (and definitely out of my league), but for now it seems like Spinoza’s view that truly empty space does not exist at least doesn’t contradict, and may actually predict, contemporary physics.

6. Spinoza’s definition of mode is “the affections of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived.” (Ethics, ID5).

To me, the most important feature of this definition is the use of the word “conceived” (concipio)—a word Spinoza says he uses in Part 2 Definition 3 because it “seems to express the action of the mind.” In other words, whereas a substance is asserted to have an objective and self-sufficient reality (it is in itself and conceived through itself), a mode always involves the conception of substance, but also of other modes, ad infinitum.