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

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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.