Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

282 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
34 In his Introduction to Logic, p. 101, Copi calls such definitions ‘theoretical
definitions’ and points out how, in the course of the history of science, ‘one
definition is replaced by another as our knowledge and theoretical understanding
increase’.
35 The major premise is ‘All bodies near the earth are bodies that shine steadily’, the
minor premise is ‘All planets are bodies near the earth’, giving the conclusion ‘All
planets are bodies that shine steadily’.
36 Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part II (CSM i, 119); Regulae, No. 10 (CSM i,
37).
37 Spinoza’s formal definition of the essence of a thing in E II D2 is much more
complex. I have discussed it in Cover and Kulstad, op. cit., pp. 58–62.
38 See, for example, John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (London,
Routledge, 1983), pp. 98–101.
39 For Leibniz’s views about the ontological argument, cf. G.H.R.Parkinson, Logic
and Reality in Leibniz’s Metaphysics (Oxford, Clarendon, 1965; reprinted, New
York, Garland, 1985), pp. 77–85.
40 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Pt 3, sec. 2; Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, B 247–8.
41 The rationalist theory of causality is also implicit in E I P16 and its three
corollaries, where Spinoza begins (E I P16) by speaking of certain things as
‘necessarily following from’ the divine nature, and then goes on to describe the
various ways in which God is a cause.
42 An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature: see Hume, An Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding, ed. A.G.N.Flew (La Salle, Ill., Open Court, 1988), p. 34;
cf. A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Pt 3, sec. 3.
43 There is indeed no evidence that Hume had read Spinoza at all; his views about
Spinoza appear to be derived from a well-known article in Bayle’s Dictionary (cf.
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Pt 4, sec. 5). Of this dictionary, Flew says (op.
cit., p. 186, n. 121) that it was, in some version or other, ‘in every gentleman’s
library throughout the eighteenth century’.
44 cf. Nicholas Jolley, Chapter 11 of this volume, pp. 385–6.
45 This is not to say that Spinoza ignores the second problem, but his answer to it
involves, not his concept of substance, but his concept of an ‘individual’. See p.
288.
46 Though Spinoza’s assertion that a substance must be conceived through itself could
hardly be accepted by Aristotle. For Aristotle (though not for Spinoza) Socrates
would be a substance; but Aristotle would say that Socrates is not ‘conceived
through himself, in that Socrates has to be conceived through various genera and
species.
47 The argument appears to rest on E I P8 and E I P11. E I P8 says in effect that, if
there is a substance, then it is infinite; E I P11 asserts that there is such a substance
—namely, God.
48 The reference to ‘created’ thinking substance serves to distinguish minds such as
ours from the mind of God, the uncreated substance.
49 E I P10S, P11, P16, P19, P29S.
50 For a very thorough survey of the issue, see F.S.Haserot, ‘Spinoza’s definition of
attribute’, in Kashap [8.36], 28–42.
51 Though there is a hint of this in E I P14C2.