著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.79, pp.31-46, 2019-09-30

---

Once, Schopenhauer had criticized Descartes and Spinoza as holding judgmental (or intellectualist) theories of the will. But, largely, scholars agree that Descartes’ theory of judgment is, in fact, a volitional or voluntaristic one. In this paper, we argue that Spinoza inherits such a volitional theory of judgment, which subordinates judgment to the will instead of subordinating the will to intellectual judgment, from Descartes.It is true that, in his book Ethics, Spinoza criticizes Descartes’ free-will doctrine and two-step theory of judgment, as per which first the intellect provides ideas and then the will asserts or denies them. Nevertheless, Spinoza does identify the intellect with the will, or ideas with judgments, and we can consider his view as a deterministic volitional theory of judgment as well as an identity theory of ideas and volitional judgments. According to this identity theory, every idea necessarily contains volitional and assertive elements and is identical with affirmative or negative judgment.However, such reading may be doubted because the term “will” may have different meanings in his theory of judgment and in the context of practical decisions. One of the scholars who suggests Spinoza’s equivocal use of “will” is Bennett. He insists his reading by referring to Spinoza’s remark in his Ethics Part II, Proposition 48, Scholium. However, we argue that this is not sustainable. Yet, there is another reading which attributes equivocal usage of the term “will” to Spinoza, according to which the term “will” in Spinoza’s theory of judgment denotes a deserted concept used in his previous writing, which happens to be incorporated into Ethics. We also deny this reading and provide a univocal usage of the term “will” in the contexts of both intellectual judgments and practical decisions.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.80, pp.47-63, 2020-03-13

---

Previously, we have argued that Spinoza posited a form of agent-causation theory. This article applies this reading to Spinoza’s theory of ideas to clarify how Spinoza’s theory of ideas and his theory of conatus are interrelated and unified.After reviewing our reading of Spinoza’s theory of causation and action, we asked the question, “What is it like for a human mind to be the idea of its body?” To answer this, we considered the essence of ideas in general in Spinoza’s Ethics. According to this book, the essence of ideas is affirmation. Spinoza also says that conatus is the essence of every particular thing and that a human mind’s first conatus is the affirmation of its body’s existence. In another passage of Ethics, Spinoza says conatus is given to us as will, appetite, or desire. From there, it seems to follow that our will, appetite, or desire constitute the empirical content of the affirmation that our minds perform as the ideas of our bodies.However, it is still unclear how the “affirmation” that constitutes the essence of our minds as ideas, is related to the affirmation that constitutes the essence of the particular ideas we possess. To clarify this matter, we consider Spinoza’s earlier writing, “Metaphysical Thoughts (Cogitata Metaphysica),” which will be referred to as CM below. In this writing, Spinoza argues that our mental affirmation (or negation) is an “action of thought,” and this concept corresponds to the “idea-formation” in his Ethics. Although CM mainly attempts to explicate Cartesian metaphysics, it implies a non-Cartesian conception of volition. Its non-Cartesian element is a thesis according to which volition does not merely approve or disprove of an idea given by intellection but rather volition forms an affirmative or negative idea.This conception of volition or affirmation as idea-formation and “action of thought” allows us to apply Spinoza’s theory of causation and action to his theory of ideas. First, we can conclude that the affirmations of ideas that we make in our mind are our actions to form ideas, which are “affections of our minds” as well as the “ideas of the affections of our bodies.” These “actions of thought” follow from both our conatus as immanent cause together with external determinants as transitive causes. Thus, we can consider the affirmations of ideas in our minds as the consequents from the conatus of our minds.Subsequently, we have clarified how our minds as ideas are related to the ideas in our minds. Nevertheless, it is still not very clear how “aboutness” or intentionality of ideas or its affirmations plays a role in our minds. We shall deal with this problem in our next article, “idea and conatus in Spinoza: III.”

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.84, pp.43-60, 2022-03-10

---

In previous studies, we have shown that for Spinoza, mental representation through ideas is subsidiary to divine self-predication, which is found in every divine attribute. This leads us to reconsider the status of the attribute of thought. This is the aim of this study.In the first section, we consider an internal problem of Spinoza’s theory of “infinitely many attributes.” This problem originates from Spinoza’s account, according to which the attribute of thought contains every idea of every object belonging to every other attribute. This account seems to suggest that the attribute of thought would be as enormous as the totality of every other attribute; however, such asymmetry seems inconsistent with the nature of attributes, which should express the same divine essence equally. Our construal of Spinoza’s theory of ideas solves this problem primarily because we take Spinozistic ideas for mere external signs essentially dependent on divine self-predication within every attribute, including the attribute of extension.This conclusion indicates a possibility that Spinoza’s basic worldview would be purely materialistic and his non-materialistic theory of “infinitely many attributes” would be a non-essential addition to his true system. In the second section, we evaluate this possibility by using an external-contextual approach instead of an internal-textual one and find two plausible motivations behind Spinoza’s invoking the “infinitely many attributes” theory. One is his strategic choice for refuting the Cartesian argument of substantial-dualism from “real distinction” of thought and extension. The other is his demand for a correspondence theory of truth in some adequate form, which, however, we consider to be inessential for his true system.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.82, pp.77-92, 2021-03-15

---

As demonstrated in our previous paper, according to Spinoza’s agent-causation model, a thing’s conatus (striving) to produce or maintain its affectio (act or state) and its determinatio (causal determination) to produce or maintain its affecto are identical. Such conatus/determinatio bears predicational contents and thereby corresponds to the mental affirmation of ideas in the divine infinite intellect that comprises human minds. In this paper, we propose that Spinozistic mental representations are substantially based on the conatus/determinatio viewing a thing’s action or agent-causation as divine self-predication. For example, when a dog runs, the dog divinely selfpredicates its running as its affectio of itself as a subject. Such predication is self-reflexive in two ways: (1) The roles of the “subject term” and the “predicate term” are played by the signified thing and its affectio, respectively, rather than by external signs. (2) The subject of the predicative act is the “subject term” itself. Furthermore, we consider such self-predication as divine owing to two reasons: (1) It is an aspect of the basic causal process of Deus, seu Natura (God, or Nature). (2) The ultimate subject of such predication is Deus, seu Natura itself, and it predicates its affectio of itself. We also propose that such divine self-predication is regulated through a divine syntax, which is identical to the ontological structure existing in the world and the laws of nature. Conversely viewed, this suggests that the Spinozistic ontological structure and causal laws have an intrinsic communicative characteristic, similar to linguistic syntax.The aforementioned considerations have an important implication for the status of ideas. On the one hand, Spinozistic ideas are considered as truthbearers. Unlike general viewpoint, these truthbearers are not abstract propositions; rather, they are propositionally-structured mental acts involving affirmative forces. On the other hand, divine self-predicative acts are truthmakers, which possess propositional structures and predicative forces owing to the conatus/determinatio. Additionally, their common forces, which are indeed the one and same force, play majority of the fundamental roles required for mental representations. Hence, to realize full-fledged mental representations, merely a correlation is required between two different but isomorphic divine attributes, namely thought and extension. Such a correlation can turn mere modes of thought into ideas, but it can only provide a superficial status to them as external signs of bodies.Furthermore, we suggest that the self-reflexive characteristic of divine self-predication provides the foundation for “ideas of ideas,” which will be discussed in detail in our next paper.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.83, pp.41-57, 2021-09-30

---

We have previously shown that Spinoza’s conatus can be characterized as divine self-predication. In this article, we argue that the self-reflexive characteristic of divine self-predication provides the foundation for ideas of ideas or reflexive ideas.In the first section, we show a plausible textual basis in Spinoza’s Ethics for our construction on ideas of ideas. From our reading, it follows that everything that has conatus also has reflexive ideas and that all our ideas or mental acts are accompanied by their reflexive ideas. But the latter implication of our interpretation seems to conflict our everyday experience of selective reflection of our mental acts or states. This is the problem that we are concerned with in the following sections.In the second section, we consider François Recanati’s contemporary account on the self-reflexive characteristic inherent in the verbal signs and Arnould’s ― a contemporary of Spinoza ― binary concepts of the explicit reflection and the implicit refection, which Recanati finds offers the basis for accounting how some reflexive ideas are explicit while others implicit.In the third section, we apply their concepts to Spinoza’s theory of ideas of ideas to address our problem.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.81, pp.27-43, 2020-09-30

---

As we have shown, Spinoza presupposes a deterministic agent-causation model, according to which causation between finite beings always requires at least three terms: a finite agent (a subject of causal power) as a transitive cause, a finite agent as an immanent cause, and an affection as their joint-effect, which inheres in the latter. We also suppose that for Spinoza, inherence relation is based on immanent causation qua causal relation, and thus we can talk of another comparable relation between a transitive cause and its effect, which may be called an “externally-belonging relation” (or “ex-herence relation” if permissible). We consider that these dependence relations based on the agent-causal relation explain the representative power or aboutness of ideas of human bodily affections. In Ethics, such aboutness is incorporated in the propositional structure of affirmation, which we have shown to be the essence of every idea. Spinoza used to frame this structure as “affirmare A de B (to affirm A of B),” where A denotes some affection or property and B denotes some subject in which A should inhere. Within this schema, the mentioned causal model grounds the following cognitive process: every idea of human bodily affections affirms the affections of (de) the human body as their immanent cause in which they inhere, as well as affirming the same affections of (de) the external body as their transitive cause to which they externally-belong. Although such affirmation would be very confused, the human mind can emend its state by acquiring various adequate common notions.We think that further ground of this account of aboutness would be found in Spinoza’s earlier writing, Short Treatise. A passage in the writing reads, “the intellect is purely passive.... So it is never we who affirm or deny something of the thing; it is the thing itself that affirms or denies something of itself in us.” In Ethics, although Spinoza insists that the human mind itself affirms something, he can also admit that an external thing does affirm something of itself in us. His refinement of his conception of activity and passivity allows him to hold such a position. According to this refined conception, causal determination in the human mind is not a mere passive affair but it contains some degree of activity. Such causal determination that is ubiquitous in the corporeal world strictly corresponds to mental affirmation bearing particular predicational content, which is also ubiquitous in the infinite intellect, whose part the human mind is. We suggest that such correspondence or parallelism provides us with the deeper ground of aboutness of ideas of bodily affections.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

no.72, pp.59-76, 2015

---

In the first section, we review the outline of Spinoza's project of a naturalistic ethics that does not presuppose any natural teleology. We show that Spinoza's conatus is a non-teleological, inertia-like power (though it is not the same as inertia itself) that plays important roles in hisethical project. We also point out that his project provides several conclusions that are similar to Epicurean hedonist ethics, and this similitude seems to be rooted in their shared non-teleological naturalistic worldview and shared naturalistic view of humanity. In the second section, we begin by analyzing distinct, though related, senses of the concept of contingency in his Ethics. According to Spinoza, "contingent" means "whose causes we are ignorant of." In this sense, contingency amounts to unpredictability, and thus for finite beings,the destiny of each finite being is contingent or unpredictable because of the unpredictability of the course of the "common natural order" on which our destiny depends. On another occasion,Spinoza characterizes our knowledge wiiich depends on the "common natural order" as "fortuitous" with a very negative emphasis. Here, Spinoza shares his negative evaluation of the purposelessness of the natural necessity with teleologists by taking the standpoint of finite individuals that seek naturalistic goodness for their own sake, which is explained by his conatusdoctrine non-teleologically. Doubtlessly, these two overlapping implications of Spinozistic con tingency for finite beings are of a negative or detrimental character, yet it is another Spinozistic conclusion that this unpredictable and fortuitous character of the "common natural order" is the sole source of novelty that can provide finite beings with growth and improvement. This is understandable because such unpredictability and fortuitousness are the very aspects of the divine infinite purpose-free productiveness, and it is here that we find an instance of the creative combination of contingency with necessity in Spinozistic finite beings. In the third section, we find a deeper instance of such a combination of contingency and necessity in the very possibility of the existence of finite complex beings. To make this clear, we look over a few modern Epicurean speculations attempted by La Mettrie and Hume that precedeDarwin. In them we find a combination of: (1) the huge random "trial and error" process done by Nature itself, and (2) the resulting self-subsisting structure. We can find both components in Spinoza's text: (1) Nature is infinitely productive and each individual is contingent in the sense that it does not necessarily exist, and (2) each existent being is self-preserving to some degree. Such considerations solve a puzzling question about Spinoza's theory of complex individuals: namely, why Spinoza does not assign any particular causes that combine constituents into an individual. Lastly, we reconfirm the strong affinity between Spinoza and Epicureans, but notice that there may be disagreement over whether Nature itself is contingent or not.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政哲学会

雑誌

法政哲学 = HOSEI TETSUGAKU : BULLETIN OF HOSEI SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY (ISSN:13498088)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.15, pp.70, 2019-03-30

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

日本イギリス哲学会

雑誌

イギリス哲学研究 (ISSN:03877450)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.22, pp.5-19, 1999-03-27 (Released:2018-04-25)

---

In 1957, Howard Warrender published an influential and controversial work, The Political Philosopy of Hobbes, which gives so-called “religionist interpretation” of Hobbes's “natural law” theory. We critically evaluate Warrender's claim that God plays an essential role in the foundation of Hobbes's rational/natural law theory. This examination mainly deals with chapter 31 of Leviathan, “of the Kingdom of God by Nature”, on which Warrender's claim is based. After having examined the Hobbesian topic in the chapter, “natural punishments”, we conclude that Warrender's “religionist interpretation” is unsustainable.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政哲学会

雑誌

法政哲学 (ISSN:13498088)

巻号頁・発行日

no.12, pp.1-12, 2016

著者

加地 大介 桜井 徹 木島 泰三 犬塚 元 大久保 正健 篠原 久 島内 明文 児玉 聡 山根 明大 桑島 秀樹 生越 利昭 山田 園子 伊勢 俊彦 柘植 尚則 藤田 祐

出版者

日本イギリス哲学会

雑誌

イギリス哲学研究 (ISSN:03877450)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.34, pp.65-95, 2011-03-20 (Released:2018-03-30)

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

no.80, pp.47-63, 2020-03-13

---

Previously, we have argued that Spinoza posited a form of agent-causation theory. This article applies this reading to Spinoza's theory of ideas to clarify how Spinoza's theory of ideas and his theory of conatus are interrelated and unified.After reviewing our reading of Spinoza's theory of causation and action, we asked the question, "What is it like for a human mind to be the idea of its body?" To answer this, we considered the essence of ideas in general in Spinoza's Ethics. According to this book, the essence of ideas is affirmation. Spinoza also says that conatus is the essence of every particular thing and that a human mind's first conatus is the affirmation of its body's existence. In another passage of Ethics, Spinoza says conatus is given to us as will, appetite, or desire. From there, it seems to follow that our will, appetite, or desire constitute the empirical content of the affirmation that our minds perform as the ideas of our bodies.However, it is still unclear how the "affirmation" that constitutes the essence of our minds as ideas, is related to the affirmation that constitutes the essence of the particular ideas we possess. To clarify this matter, we consider Spinoza's earlier writing, "Metaphysical Thoughts (Cogitata Metaphysica)," which will be referred to as CM below. In this writing, Spinoza argues that our mental affirmation (or negation) is an "action of thought," and this concept corresponds to the "idea-formation" in his Ethics. Although CM mainly attempts to explicate Cartesian metaphysics, it implies a non-Cartesian conception of volition. Its non-Cartesian element is a thesis according to which volition does not merely approve or disprove of an idea given by intellection but rather volition forms an affirmative or negative idea.This conception of volition or affirmation as idea-formation and "action of thought" allows us to apply Spinoza's theory of causation and action to his theory of ideas. First, we can conclude that the affirmations of ideas that we make in our mind are our actions to form ideas, which are "affections of our minds" as well as the "ideas of the affections of our bodies." These "actions of thought" follow from both our conatus as immanent cause together with external determinants as transitive causes. Thus, we can consider the affirmations of ideas in our minds as the consequents from the conatus of our minds.Subsequently, we have clarified how our minds as ideas are related to the ideas in our minds. Nevertheless, it is still not very clear how "aboutness" or intentionality of ideas or its affirmations plays a role in our minds. We shall deal with this problem in our next article, "idea and conatus in Spinoza: III."

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政哲学会

雑誌

法政哲学 = 法政哲学 (ISSN:13498088)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.11, pp.43-46, 2015-03-20

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

日仏哲学会

雑誌

フランス哲学・思想研究 (ISSN:13431773)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, pp.231-234, 2022-09-01 (Released:2022-10-01)

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.65, pp.31-48, 2012-10

---

In another article, I proposed an interpretation of Spinoza’s view on causality, according to which Spinoza conceived every kind of causation as a peculiar type of agent causation, namely, deterministic agent causation. And in this paper, I will apply this reading to Spinoza’s theory of complex bodies and reconsider its conceptual structure from the point of my Spinoza-as-agent-causalist interpretation. Agent causation is a kind of causation in which an agent is the cause and its action is the effect. In Spinoza, the substance or God is the agent-cause and the "modes" are its effects, and again, the modes - which are the "affections" of God and amount to particular individuals such as human bodies or other bodies - are the agent-causes and (at least some of)their affections are their effects. Namely, both of God and his modes are the causes of their affections. In Spinoza’s terminology, such kind of cause is called "immanent cause". In the case of modes, they are also "transient causes" that have their effects outside them. And in causation between modes, both of immanent cause and transient cause have their own causal contribution in the effect. We saw this model of causation has at least three levels of causal terms: substance, modes and affections of modes. Now one can ask whether there are more levels, for example, affections of affections of modes. I reply to this question affirmatively. Indeed, these levels are so many as the number of the levels of complex bodies. Above structure of causation must be preserved in the production of complex bodies, e.g. human bodies, by other individuals. In the case of a human body, the transient causes of it are the external bodies which are necessary for production and preservation of the body. And its immanent causes are its composing bodies collectively determined to compose the body. Therefore, a human body is causally dependent on its components wholly, just as the modes on God or the bodily affections on its body. Again, these composing bodies are caused immanently by bodies composing these composing bodies, and so forth until most basic particulars or the "simplest bodies". So, the simplest bodies are the first order modes, and every other (complex) body is caused immanently and determined by the simplest bodies. This conclusion we got may sound very similar to the reductionist view of human body (or human mind). But it also has similarity to the emergentist view as well. For, it acknowledges distinct reality of human bodies or composed individuals generally, because they have immanent causal powers.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.72, pp.59-76, 2016-03-30

---

In the first section, we review the outline of Spinoza's project of a naturalistic ethics that does not presuppose any natural teleology. We show that Spinoza's conatus is a non-teleological, inertia-like power (though it is not the same as inertia itself) that plays important roles in his ethical project. We also point out that his project provides several conclusions that are similar to Epicurean hedonist ethics, and this similitude seems to be rooted in their shared non-teleological naturalistic worldview and shared naturalistic view of humanity. In the second section, we begin by analyzing distinct, though related, senses of the concept of contingency in his Ethics. According to Spinoza, "contingent" means "whose causes we are ignorant of." In this sense, contingency amounts to unpredictability, and thus for finite beings, the destiny of each finite being is contingent or unpredictable because of the unpredictability of the course of the "common natural order" on which our destiny depends. On another occasion, Spinoza characterizes our knowledge wiiich depends on the "common natural order" as "fortuitous" with a very negative emphasis. Here, Spinoza shares his negative evaluation of the purposelessness of the natural necessity with teleologists by taking the standpoint of finite individuals that seek naturalistic goodness for their own sake, which is explained by his conatus doctrine non-teleologically. Doubtlessly, these two overlapping implications of Spinozistic con tingency for finite beings are of a negative or detrimental character, yet it is another Spinozistic conclusion that this unpredictable and fortuitous character of the "common natural order" is the sole source of novelty that can provide finite beings with growth and improvement. This is understandable because such unpredictability and fortuitousness are the very aspects of the divine infinite purpose-free productiveness, and it is here that we find an instance of the creative combination of contingency with necessity in Spinozistic finite beings. In the third section, we find a deeper instance of such a combination of contingency and necessity in the very possibility of the existence of finite complex beings. To make this clear, we look over a few modern Epicurean speculations attempted by La Mettrie and Hume that precedeDarwin. In them we find a combination of: (1) the huge random "trial and error" process done by Nature itself, and (2) the resulting self-subsisting structure. We can find both components in Spinoza's text: (1) Nature is infinitely productive and each individual is contingent in the sense that it does not necessarily exist, and (2) each existent being is self-preserving to some degree. Such considerations solve a puzzling question about Spinoza's theory of complex individuals: namely, why Spinoza does not assign any particular causes that combine constituents into an individual. Lastly, we reconfirm the strong affinity between Spinoza and Epicureans, but notice that there may be disagreement over whether Nature itself is contingent or not.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政哲学会

雑誌

法政哲学 = 法政哲学 (ISSN:13498088)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, pp.1-12, 2016-03-20

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

no.79, pp.31-46, 2019

---

Once, Schopenhauer had criticized Descartes and Spinoza as holding judgmental (or intellectualist) theories of the will. But, largely, scholars agree that Descartes' theory of judgment is, in fact, a volitional or voluntaristic one. In this paper, we argue that Spinoza inherits such a volitional theory of judgment, which subordinates judgment to the will instead of subordinating the will to intellectual judgment, from Descartes.It is true that, in his book Ethics, Spinoza criticizes Descartes' free-will doctrine and two-step theory of judgment, as per which first the intellect provides ideas and then the will asserts or denies them. Nevertheless, Spinoza does identify the intellect with the will, or ideas with judgments, and we can consider his view as a deterministic volitional theory of judgment as well as an identity theory of ideas and volitional judgments. According to this identity theory, every idea necessarily contains volitional and assertive elements and is identical with affirmative or negative judgment.However, such reading may be doubted because the term "will" may have different meanings in his theory of judgment and in the context of practical decisions. One of the scholars who suggests Spinoza's equivocal use of "will" is Bennett. He insists his reading by referring to Spinoza's remark in his Ethics Part II, Proposition 48, Scholium. However, we argue that this is not sustainable. Yet, there is another reading which attributes equivocal usage of the term "will" to Spinoza, according to which the term "will" in Spinoza's theory of judgment denotes a deserted concept used in his previous writing, which happens to be incorporated into Ethics. We also deny this reading and provide a univocal usage of the term "will" in the contexts of both intellectual judgments and practical decisions.

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

日本倫理学会 ; 1952-

雑誌

倫理学年報 (ISSN:04830830)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, pp.101-115, 2013

著者

木島 泰三

出版者

法政大学文学部

雑誌

法政大学文学部紀要 = Bulletin of Faculty of Letters, Hosei University (ISSN:04412486)

巻号頁・発行日

no.65, pp.31-48, 2012

---

In another article, I proposed an interpretation of Spinoza's view on causality, according to which Spinoza conceived every kind of causation as a peculiar type of agent causation, namely, deterministic agent causation. And in this paper, I will apply this reading to Spinoza's theory of complex bodies and reconsider its conceptual structure from the point of my Spinoza-as-agent-causalist interpretation.Agent causation is a kind of causation in which an agent is the cause and its action is the effect. In Spinoza, the substance or God is the agent-cause and the "modes" are its effects, and again, the modes - which are the "affections" of God and amount to particular individuals such as human bodies or other bodies - are the agent-causes and (at least some of)their affections are their effects. Namely, both of God and his modes are the causes of their affections. In Spinoza's terminology, such kind of cause is called "immanent cause". In the case of modes, they are also "transient causes" that have their effects outside them. And in causation between modes, both of immanent cause and transient cause have their own causal contribution in the effect.We saw this model of causation has at least three levels of causal terms: substance, modes and affections of modes. Now one can ask whether there are more levels, for example, affections of affections of modes. I reply to this question affirmatively. Indeed, these levels are so many asthe number of the levels of complex bodies.Above structure of causation must be preserved in the production of complex bodies, e.g. human bodies, by other individuals. In the case of a human body, the transient causes of it are the external bodies which are necessary for production and preservation of the body. And itsimmanent causes are its composing bodies collectively determined to compose the body. Therefore, a human body is causally dependent on its components wholly, just as the modes on God or the bodily affections on its body. Again, these composing bodies are caused immanently bybodies composing these composing bodies, and so forth until most basic particulars or the "simplest bodies". So, the simplest bodies are the first order modes, and every other (complex) body is caused immanently and determined by the simplest bodies.This conclusion we got may sound very similar to the reductionist view of human body (or human mind). But it also has similarity to the emergentist view as well. For, it acknowledges distinct reality of human bodies or composed individuals generally, because they have immanentcausal powers.