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Reconceiving Spinoza
Reconceiving
Spinoza
Samuel Newlands
1
3
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© Samuel Newlands 2018
Excerpt from Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. Copyright © 2014 by VanderMeer Creative, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Excerpt from The Frege Reader, edited by Michael Beaney. Copyright © 1997 by Blackwell
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For Kristina Marie
Acknowledgments
When my colleague Karl Ameriks gets a new book, he usually reads the index and
bibliography first. (Seriously.) I often jump straight to the acknowledgements, as I like
to get a sense of the author’s conversation network. I also like to be reminded of how
our little inner lives are so richly sustained by colleagues, friends, and families. I’ve
been thinking, talking, and writing about Spinoza for more than a decade now, which
means that my own debts have piled higher than I can possibly recount here in detail.
So to all those with whom I’ve chatted about Spinoza over the years, thank you for lis-
tening and responding.
Several people played a more direct role in shaping this book. I was fortunate to have
a reading group work through early drafts of several chapters. Thanks to Karl Ameriks,
Katie Finley, Tobias Flattery, John Grey, Lynn Joy, Michael Rauschenbach, Jesse
Schupack, Aaron Wells, and especially Eric Watkins for sustained feedback and
encouragement. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jeff McDonough, who read through
the manuscript and offered enormously helpful and insightful feedback. Jeff is an ideal
reader and philosophical discussion partner, and I encourage everyone reading this to
send him your book manuscripts (unsolicited) for comment. Michael Rauschenbach
worked as my research assistant, and he was stunningly good at quickly sorting through
material, tracking down references and catching more mistakes than I thought a single
document could contain. I am also thankful to two anonymous referees for providing
both detailed and big-picture suggestions for improvements. Though I’m sure I won’t
have satisfied them fully, I am confident that the book improved greatly due to their
feedback. The remaining errors in what follows are, alas, all on me.
I was blessed with phenomenally good teachers in philosophy, two of whom I want
to mention here. My undergraduate advisor, Charles Lewis, recently retired from Wake
Forest after forty-eight years of teaching. He inspired in his students a love for higher
things, and I have still never seen his equal in a classroom setting. Michael Della Rocca
was the Platonic ideal of a graduate advisor, and his love for all things Spinoza was
infectious. Although I have followed the time-tested tradition in philosophy of
honoring my mentor by objecting repeatedly to his views, it will be obvious in what
follows how deeply indebted I am to Michael.
Early research was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities. I am thankful for their early support of my career and for their patience as
I brought this project to completion. I am also grateful to Peter Momtchiloff and the
philosophy team at Oxford University Press for their assistance and encouragement.
Parts of chapters three and nine appeared, respectively, in “Another Kind of Spinozistic
Monism,” Noûs (2010) and “Thinking, Conceiving, and Idealism in Spinoza,” Archiv
viii Acknowledgments
für Geschichte der Philosophie (2012). Thanks to Wiley and De Gruyter for permission
to use and expand on that material.
While working on this project, I received more unconditional love and support
from my family than I could possibly deserve. My parents and in-laws have given me
endless encouragement. My daughters, Sophia and Anna, are constant sources of
joy, pride, and much-needed perspective. Above all, I am deeply thankful to my wife,
Kristy, who listened in the dark to my doubts and fears and drew me back into the light.
It is to her that I dedicate this book.
Contents
Introduction 1
1. Spinoza Studies Today 2
2. A Quick Plunge 4
3. A Roadmap 10
1. The Desiderata of Perfection 14
1. Lust’s Challenge 14
2. Parsimony 16
3. Plenitude 18
3.1 The Nature of Attributes, Modes, and Expressing 19
3.2 Intra-Attribute Mode Plenitude 24
4. The Limits of the PSR 29
5. The Metaphysics of Perfection, Then and Now 33
2. Spinoza’s Conceptualist Strategy 42
1. Trouble in the Spinozistic Paradise 42
2. The Conceptual to the Rescue 44
3. A Pernicious Relativism? 55
3. Conceptual Dependence Monism 57
1. The Task of Metaphysics 59
2. The Case for CDM 64
2.1 Causation 65
2.2 In 70
2.3 Following-from 74
2.4 Conceptual Involvement 78
2.5 Eliminativism and the Nature of Grounding 79
2.6 Collapsing Causation and Inherence 81
3. Motivating CDM 85
4. Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Modality 90
1. Warm-up: Contingency, Necessity, and Conceptual Sensitivity 92
2. Spinoza’s Conceptualist Account of Modality 95
2.1 The Nature of God’s Necessity 96
2.2 The Nature of Modality for Modes 99
3. The Distribution of Modality 101
4. Spinoza’s Modal Pessimism 106
5. A Conceptualist Account of Essences 112
1. Essences as Explanatory Powers 113
2. Spinoza’s Either/Or 119
3. A “Hopeless” Problem and Spinoza’s Conceptualist Solution 122
x Contents
3.1 The Essences of Substance 123

3.2 The Essences of Modes Across Attributes 127
3.3 The Essences of Modes Within an Attribute 129
6. Elusive Individuals 136
1. Individuals, Parts, and Wholes 137
2. Spinoza’s Causal Answers 142
3. A Conceptual Condition 150
4. Too Much of a Good Thing? 160
7. Ethics, Motivation, and Egoism 169
1. Spinoza’s Psychological Ethics 170
1.1 Desires and Values 172
1.2 The Guidance of Reason 175
1.3 Models and Ethical Instruction 177
2. Moral Motivation 182
3. Egoism Reconceived 189
8. Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence 201
1. Spinoza’s Practical Privileging 202
2. Moral Transformation Reconceived 209
3. The New You! 217
9. The Nature of the Conceptual 233
1. The Threat of Idealism 234
2. Rejecting Mentalism 239
3. Attribute Neutrality 245
4. Spinoza’s Unfinished Task 249
Bibliography 257
Index of Subjects 269
Index of Ethics Citations 279
Introduction
But there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental.
You still see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost
in your thoughts in part from the panic of realizing the size of that imagined
leviathan.
–Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation, 93.
Before achieving literary fame, T.S. Eliot published an article in The Monist comparing
the philosophical systems of Leibniz and Bradley. He closed with a lovely prediction
about their respective legacies:
Mr. Bradley is a much more skillful, a much more finished philosopher than Leibniz . . . He has
expounded one type of philosophy with such consummate ability that it will probably not
survive him. In Leibniz there are possibilities. He has the permanence of the pre-Socratics, of
all imperfect things.1
Bradley is just too clear and polished to last, Eliot suggests—unlike the vague but
suggestive Leibniz, who keeps our puzzled attention. Eliot’s prediction turned out to
be correct, although excessive clarity was probably not the main cause of Bradley’s
eclipse. Even so, Eliot’s observation that a little indeterminacy ensures interest by
future generations of scholars applies at least as well, if not better, to Spinoza.
Spinoza’s philosophy is also “unfinished” in the sense that it leaves open large spaces
of interpretive possibility. It is both a blessing and a curse that Spinoza’s surviving
corpus can be held comfortably in one hand. For all the power and scope of his philo-
sophical vision, Spinoza is often frustratingly short on details and elucidations. Even
when friendly correspondents wrote for clarifications, Spinoza often simply repeated
himself and chastised the inquirer for asking. Just read what I said again and think harder!
So perhaps Spinoza himself is partly responsible for attracting a bewildering array
of interpretive labels over the past 350 years. He has been presented as a radicalized
Cartesian. No, another camp argues, he’s a Jewish mystic. A God-forsaken atheist. No,
a God-drunken pantheist. A proto-idealist. A proto-physicalist. Rationalist. Humanist.
Naturalist. Postmodernist. Liberal democrat. Communitarian. Libertarian. The list
1
Eliot, “Leibniz’s Monads and Bradley’s Finite Centers,” 576.
2 Reconceiving Spinoza
goes on. (My personal favorite: in a review of an off-Broadway play about Spinoza’s
excommunication, Spinoza is characterized as “perky and adorable,” which I like to
think of as the real Spinoza.2) Entire generations of Spinoza studies have swung between
some of these interpretive poles, shifts that probably reveal more about the dominant
ethos of the interpreters’ intellectual culture than about Spinoza’s views.
But if Eliot is correct, the fact that Spinoza’s writings leave open so many possibil-
ities is also an indication of the imperfection of the views themselves. Or perhaps, more
charitably, it points to the insufficiencies of these categories for exhaustively capturing
Spinoza’s rich and imaginative philosophical vision. Either way, I will not be offering a
new “Spinoza the ____” in this book. Whether the fault lies with Spinoza, his readers, or
the categories themselves, a new label would likely fall as short as so many others have.
Instead, I will provide a systematic reading of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysical and
ethical projects that tries to do justice to his innovative doctrines, while also treating him
as an illuminating conversation partner for contemporary philosophical discussions.
Spinoza was a bold philosopher, and bold philosophers deserve bold interpretations.
This book attempts to capture some of the bold, visionary nature of Spinoza’s system,
while also exploring the subtle and penetrating richness that distinguishes Spinoza’s
boldness from mere craziness.
Spinoza’s compressed writing style presents a steep interpretive challenge. Nevertheless,
Spinoza’s theories, properly understood, provide important and distinctive alterna-
tives to contemporary views. As such, the philosophically rich payout makes overcom-
ing these interpretive challenges well worth the effort. I hope the result of this study is
an interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy that, while drawing on the interpretive
advances of others, is ultimately as bold, innovative, and subtle as Spinoza himself
intended it to be.
1. Spinoza Studies Today

After centuries of derision and castigation, Spinoza has come to occupy a central
place in philosophical, historical, religious, and political narratives of the early
modern period. Ours is the golden age of Spinoza studies, and the great enthusiasm
for all-things-Spinoza shows little signs of waning. Once the exclusive province of
philosophers, Spinoza now attracts the attention of intellectual historians, political
theorists, religious scholars, playwrights, and even contemporary neuroscientists.
Within academic philosophy, articles, books, and volumes on Spinoza appear fre-
quently and regularly in top presses. Nor is philosophical interest in Spinoza limited
to early modern specialists. There has been an increasing awareness that Spinoza’s
views on, for instance, mind–body relations, representationalist theories of the mind,
the imagination, modality, teleology, political organizations, ontological dependence,
2
Isherwood, “So, Young Mr. Spinoza,” E1.
introduction 3
and philosophical naturalism can provide important contributions to contemporary

philosophical projects.
Although this boon of interest in Spinoza has been good for those of us laboring in
the field—one shudders at the career prospects of a Spinoza specialist seventy years
ago—it has not been cost-free. Attempts to offer grand re-readings of Spinoza’s Ethics
are increasingly rare. Compartmentalized into journal-length articles and driven by a
cadre of specialists and tenure demands, analytically driven Spinoza studies in par-
ticular are in danger of devolving into a technocratic affair in which bits of the Ethics
are simply rearranged in a dialect of Spinoza-ese that renders the whole affair dull to
outsiders and insiders alike.
Previous generations of interpreters resisted this insularity impulse by connecting
Spinoza’s views to their own contexts. Efforts to draw Spinoza into the orbit of British
idealism led to a revitalization of Spinoza studies at the turn of the twentieth century.
Similar renaissances in Spinoza studies occurred on both sides of the Channel in the
mid twentieth century, as Spinoza was read through the lens of then-current analytic
philosophy and French structuralism. Although it is obviously not the only contem-
porary context, speculative metaphysics has emerged as a leading research area in
Anglo-American philosophy over the past four decades, and this flourishing of ana-
lytic metaphysics provides another occasion to wrestle with Spinoza’s claims in fresh
and exciting ways.3
To pick on myself: it is fine and well to try to figure out Spinoza’s views on metaphys-
ical dependence relations through a close reading of dense texts, but unless that can be
integrated into contemporary philosophical interests as well as Spinoza’s own broader
project, those of us working on this topic will be in danger of both domesticating a
truly bold philosopher and closing ourselves off to vibrant parts of our own philo-
sophical communities. That would be a loss both for Spinoza studies and our fellow
philosophers. Although I undoubtedly fall short, I offer an integrated account of
Spinoza’s metaphysical and ethical projects that is relevant to my own context in ana-
lytic philosophy and that challenges fellow interpreters to wrestle anew with Spinoza’s
big, bold, hubristic, swing-for-the-fences ideas. If, in the end, we still miss the interpretive
mark, let us at least miss with gusto.
In this way, I will treat Spinoza like any fruitful philosophical conversation partner.4
As a good dialogue partner, Spinoza can challenge contemporary paradigms and pro-
vide rich alternatives. At the same time, his claims can be understood within present
frameworks; they are not wholly other. This enables us to both challenge and be chal-
lenged by Spinoza. We need not be passive before his texts, unwilling to philosophically
wrestle with his views on our own terms and acknowledge the presence of mistakes
or confusions. But neither are we so uncharitable that we approach his texts with
3
For good examples of engaging Spinoza within other contemporary contexts, see Vardoulakis, Spinoza
Now and Gatens, Feminist Interpretations of Spinoza.
4
Others have used this image as well. See Curley, “Dialogues with the Dead”; Adams, Leibniz: Determinist,
Theist, Idealist; Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead; Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics.
the assumption that his views are almost surely wrong, leaving us the glum task of
enumerating flaws. Like good conversationalists, we ought to employ a generous
hermeneutic of charity—though not as apologists. Rather, we work hard to read
Spinoza in the best possible light in order to learn the most we can from him.
This approach allows us to apply contemporary philosophical categories to Spinoza’s
texts in order to better engage his views. In doing so, we can see how Spinoza fits
into some contemporary frameworks and yet retains distinctive elements that those
categories do not fully capture. This is not the only fruitful approach one might take, of
course. One could try to situate Spinoza more fully in his own historical context
350 years ago, for example. But I have learned the most from Spinoza by approaching
him as an ongoing conversation partner, dancing between the familiar and the original,
and so it is here that I have found him to be the most philosophically engaging. More
than anything, I hope this monograph provides a fresh example of how philosophic-
ally exciting Spinoza can be when approached in this way.
2. A Quick Plunge
Catching a fresh glimpse of Spinoza is difficult in part because he was such a system-
atic thinker. His major work, the Ethics, is a tightly crafted book whose Euclidean
style highlights what he saw as the connections—sometimes surprising—among
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, psychology, philosophy of mind, action theory,
politics, the natural sciences, and even religious beliefs and practices. On Spinoza’s
approach to philosophy, untangling problems in moral philosophy requires attending
to issues in human psychology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind.
Similarly, adequately understanding one’s inner life of beliefs, desires, sensations,
imaginings, and emotions requires a scientifically rigorous exploration of the external
world, a religious examination of the nature of God, and metaphysical scrutiny about
the nature of intentionality. For Spinoza, philosophical investigations are all-or-nothing
affairs. Given what he takes to be the interconnections among these branches of
inquiry, Spinoza concludes that making progress on one philosophical question often
requires making simultaneous advances on many others.
More concretely, Spinoza believes that metaphysics and science together form the
foundation of ethics. In an echo of Descartes’ famed “tree of philosophy” image, Spinoza
writes to a correspondent that ethics “must be founded on metaphysics and physics,”
adding that “knowledge of [metaphysics] must always come first” (Ep27, G IV/161).
Spinoza tries to realize this ambition in the Ethics, in which the path to blessedness and
salvation winds through a carefully crafted metaphysics and, to a lesser extent, a frame-
work for science.5 Spinoza’s metaphysics is highly developed, and his views have been
5
Spinoza’s physics is programmatic at best, and near the end of his life he noted with an air of regret that
with respect to fundamental physics he “had not had the opportunity to arrange in due order anything on
this subject” (Ep 83, G IV/334).
introduction 5
the focus of several excellent studies in recent years. But the general connection between
Spinoza’s speculative metaphysics and his ethical theory has remained elusive.6 In
Reconceiving Spinoza, I return to Spinoza’s self-described foundational project and
provide an integrated interpretation of his metaphysical system and the way in which
his metaphysics shapes, and is shaped by, his moral program.
Spinoza’s systematic approach to philosophy is underwritten by his explanatory
naturalism. “Naturalism” has become a catch-all term in contemporary philosophy, so
widely and regularly applied that it appears, at best, to have several different meanings.
Without trying to disambiguate contemporary usage, I will call Spinoza’s explanatory
naturalism the position he sketches in the Preface to Part III of the Ethics:
Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same,
i.e., the laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one
form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature
of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, namely through the universal laws and
rules of Nature (G II/138).
In this passage, Spinoza makes two important claims about explanation. First, every-
thing can be understood or explained through “the laws and rules of Nature.” This
reminds us of Spinoza’s general commitment to the explicability of all things, a view
captured in his version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): “For each thing,
there must be assigned a cause or reason for its existence, if it exists, as well as for its
non-existence, if it does not exist” (Ip11d). That is already a steep requirement, but
Spinoza’s explanatory commitment is even more demanding. As we will see, Spinoza
demands more than the explanation of every thing; even more abstract matters, includ-
ing metaphysical explanations themselves, require explanation.
Although Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism is consistent with the explanatory
rationalism embodied in the PSR, it goes further than the PSR itself. Explanatory nat-
uralism, as Spinoza’s second point in the Preface passage makes clear, also informs the
scope of proper explanations. Spinoza claims that the explanantia—“the laws and rules
of Nature”—are changeless and universal in the sense that they always apply across all
domains of explananda. Proper explanatory principles, for Spinoza, do not admit of
exception clauses. Spinoza thinks making exceptions to the scope of explanatory
principles is indicative of the failure of those principles to adequately explain. Earlier
in the Preface, Spinoza criticized those who try to make human beings “a dominion
within a dominion.” Presumably he is targeting philosophers like Descartes, who
tried to explain the nature and activity of thinking things using a set of principles that
were not supposed to apply within the purely extended domain of physics. Spinoza
objects that proper explanatory principles are universally applicable. Everything
plays by the same rules.
6
The tendency to neglect or marginalize Spinoza’s ethical theory in analytic circles is waning, however.
See the recent monographs of LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom and Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom,
as well as the fine collection of essays in Kisner and Youpa, Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.
Putting these points together, Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism is the thesis that
each of the most basic explanatory principles applies universally and, taken together,
the basic explanatory principles suffice to explain everything, even God. If, for example,
possessing intentional mental states partly explains God’s activity, then so too will pos-
sessing intentional mental states partly explain the activities of humans, trees, and rocks.
There will, of course, be differences in complexity and degrees among the explananda,
but there are no differences in explanatory scope among the most fundamental expla-
natory principles, according to Spinoza.
Hence, in addition to affirming PSR-style demands for the explanation of everything,
Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism places a high demand on the explanations themselves.
Explanatory principles must be constant, without exception, and applicable across all
domains. This leads Spinoza to seek out principles that can do such work.
One such explanatory principle lies at the heart of this book, so I will highlight it
here. From beginning to end, Spinoza’s Ethics is full of appeals to conceptual relations.
The very opening and closing passages of the Ethics each invoke the conceptual. In
the opening definition of Part I, Spinoza claims that self-causation involves a concep-
tual connection between a thing’s nature and existence. In the book’s final paragraph,
Spinoza appeals to the wise man’s tranquility “insofar as he is considered as such
[quatenus ut talis consideratur]” (Vp42s, G II/308). In the first instance, the concep-
tual relation serves as part of the explanans. In the last, Spinoza qualifies his claim by
appealing to a conceptual relation. While this conceptual bookending of the Ethics
may be interesting in itself, Spinoza invokes the conceptual in similar ways through-
out the Ethics. He regularly appeals to conceptual relations in his explanations, and
he frequently qualifies his views in terms of how things are considered or conceived.
Indeed, once the ubiquity of the conceptual is pointed out, its pervasive presence
throughout the Ethics is striking.
Nevertheless, Spinoza’s frequent references to the conceptual are easily overlooked,
at least judging by the scant attention they have received from his interpreters. One
possible explanation of this neglect is that it is unclear what work these conceptual
appeals are doing in many passages. For example, they might just be innocuous
instances of bad writing. Perhaps when Spinoza refers to “the wise man insofar as he is
considered as such,” this is just a clunky way of referring to the wise man. More gener-
ally, perhaps Spinoza’s references to how things are conceived are just longwinded ways
of referring to how things are, at least when they are conceived truly. If so, readers
could be excused for breezing past such locutions, despite their frequency in the text.
That is one interpretive possibility, but it is not a very convincing one. As we will see,
there are too many passages, such as the opening propositions of Part II of the Ethics, in
which claims about how things are conceived are obviously central to Spinoza’s argu-
ments. There is no plausible way of reading those references to the conceptual as lam-
entable instances of overwriting. But if Spinoza’s appeals to the conceptual are at least
sometimes essential to the views he is defending—as most parties would agree—that
should give us at least a strong prima facie reason to avoid gliding quickly over other,
introduction 7
more innocuous-looking uses of expressions like “conceived as” or “insofar as it is

considered as.”
One of the overarching theses of this book is that conceptual relations form the
backbone of Spinoza’s explanatory project and perform a surprising amount of work in
his metaphysics and ethics. As I mentioned, Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism extends
not only to things but also to highly abstract metaphysical affairs, such as how things
depend on other things, and even to the nature of explanation itself. Nothing gets a free
explanatory pass for Spinoza, and he often relies on the conceptual to account for many
of the most general categories and principles in his system.
Conceptual relations also serve as Spinoza’s main philosophical tool for consistently
satisfying seemingly inconsistent desiderata. Conceptual relations are the philosophical
grease that keeps the Spinozistic machine running smoothly, allowing him to do every-
thing from reconciling monism with diversity to providing non-prudential grounds
for altruism within an ethical egoist framework. One of my main goals is to exhibit
how much work conceptual relations do for Spinoza and how much seeing this changes
our understanding of his philosophical outlook.
For example, Spinoza’s theory of minds and bodies is one of the better-known places
in which conceptual relations are clearly doing important work. He writes, “The modes
of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the
attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other
attribute” (IIp6). Setting aside the ontological details for now, Spinoza’s basic claim is
that whether or not a thing is caused by God depends in part on how God is considered
or conceived. Conceived one way—as thinking, say—God stands in a causal relation to
a mode; conceived a different way—as extended, say—God does not stand in that
causal relation. Causal facts, we might now put it, are sensitive to how the causal relata
are conceived.
If true, this would be a surprising feature of causation. We typically think that whether
x causes y does not depend on how x and y are conceived or considered. Causation
seems like a concept-independent manner of dependence. Granted, we might use
concepts to represent or describe objects, to make causal ascriptions, or to specify the
causally relevant features of objects, but those guises do not seem to be parts of the
world’s causal structure. Spinoza disagrees, I will argue. Causal relations are fine-grained
affairs, involving not only objects but also some of the ways in which those objects are
conceived. The world’s causal structure is, at least in part, conceptually structured.
Although this is a surprising claim about causation, it is but one example of Spinoza’s
tendency to connect ways of being with ways of being conceived. For another example,
we typically do not treat the modal status of a thing’s existence—whether a thing
exists necessarily or not—as dependent on how that thing is conceived.7 Nonetheless,
7
By “modal status” and similar locutions from here on, I am referring to the modality of a thing’s exist-
ence in contemporary parlance—e.g., whether it exists necessarily or contingently—and not to Spinoza’s
ontological category of modes or modifications.
Spinoza claims that modality too depends on how objects are conceived. Conceived in
certain ways, a thing exists necessarily; conceived in other ways, it exists contingently.
Modality is not a concept-independent matter for Spinoza, I will argue—a conclusion
that resonates with some contemporary anti-essentialist accounts of modality. Indeed,
it will turn out that the essences and even the individuation of things have important
conceptual conditions, according to Spinoza. More generally, the rich metaphysical
structure of the world—which and how things depend on other things—tracks a
rich structure of conceptual dependence for Spinoza. Getting clear on the motivations
and details of all this, as well as the interpretive case for attributing it to Spinoza, is the
focus of the first six chapters of this book.
Introducing all this conceptual sensitivity into metaphysics might seem worrisome
at the outset, independent of the details. Given that we typically do not think of, say,
causal and modal structures as concept sensitive, why does Spinoza think otherwise?
Spinoza’s general defense, I will argue repeatedly, is to explain conceptual sensitivity
with an even stronger thesis of conceptual identification. The causal structure of the
world is sensitive to different ways of conceiving the world because causal relations just
are conceptual relations. Modality is concept sensitive because necessary connections
just are conceptual connections. In other words, lurking behind Spinoza’s invocations
of the conceptual are even bolder identity theories that, if true, explain and justify all
the conceptual sensitivity.
Far from doubling down on the crazy, these identifications follow from Spinoza’s
broader explanatory naturalism, which the mere co-variation of conceptual and causal
or modal relations would violate. Conceptual sensitivity and conceptual variability
themselves cry out for explanation, and Spinoza repeatedly answers with an identity
thesis. (As for what justifies his identity theses . . . well, that turns on Spinoza’s claims
about God, metaphysical perfection, and explanation more generally, as we will see.)
Conceptual sensitivity might seem especially worrisome if it is paired with concep-
tual pluralism, the thesis that there are multiple true ways of conceiving one and the
same thing. This combination appears to generate pairs of predications, such as “x is F”
and “it is not the case that x is F,” which are both true, each under a different way of
conceiving x. (And if that doesn’t seem worrisome in the abstract, substitute “exists
necessarily” or “causes only extended effects” for “is F.”) Even if one tried to build con-
ceptual sensitivity into the semantics of the predicates to avoid outright contradic-
tions, we might still wonder how both predications could be true. Surely one of those
ways of conceiving corresponds better to how things “really are.” Even if modal facts
are concept sensitive, surely there is a unique, privileged way of conceiving the world
that settles the modal facts.
For better or worse, Spinoza is rarely moved by such “surely”s, and this is no excep-
tion. Spinoza endorses an especially strong form of conceptual pluralism, according to
which there are many—infinitely many!—true ways of conceiving the world. He has
important reasons for affirming a kind of expressive plenitude, according to which each
thing can be conceived truly in infinitely many ways along several axes. One axis tracks
introduction 9
different fundamental kinds (e.g., thinking vs. extended); another tracks completeness
(e.g., partial vs. complete causal history). I will argue that none of these myriad ways of
conceiving objects is intrinsically truer than the others, for Spinoza. None of them
better represents the ways things “really are” in themselves. None best describes the sole
privileged standpoint from which all these metaphysical matters are settled. Spinoza’s
expressive plenitude blocks such privileging. But if metaphysical facts about modality,
dependence, essences, power, and individuation vary depending on how things are
conceived, and if there are multiple ways of truly conceiving things—some of which
entail that things have distinct metaphysical features and none of which is intrinsically
privileged over the others—is Spinoza stuck in a quagmire of metaphysical relativism?
Spinoza does not seem to think so, and he repeatedly urges his readers to adopt some
of these ways of conceiving the world over others. For example, he urges us to adopt
especially broad ways of conceiving things, ways that include relations to infinitely
many other things. So conceived, things necessarily exist, and so Spinoza encourages
his readers to adopt necessitarian outlooks on the world. But, given his modal meta-
physics, such exhortations cannot be based on a greater correspondence between these
broader ways of conceiving and the modal status of things independently of how they
are conceived. So why does he privilege some ways over others, if not based on some-
thing like verisimilitude?
Here we begin to discern an important link between Spinoza’s conceptualist meta-
physics and his moral theory. Spinoza thinks we have practical motivations to pursue
broader conceptual vantage points. There is no intrinsic privileging mechanism, but
there are extrinsic ones. Some ways of conceiving the world are better for us to adopt
than others, even though that advantage is not based on better truth-tracking. Grasping
some ways of conceiving the world enables us to be more active and to more reliably
satisfy our fundamental desires. Spinoza identifies these practical advantages with our
individual, self-interested pursuits of greater power, which he thinks lie at the founda-
tions of morality. Hence, Spinoza thinks we will each be more powerful if we conceive
the world in certain ways, and on that basis he urges us to strive do so. (Alas, as we will
see, Spinoza is also fairly pessimistic about our chances of success in this endeavor.)
This practical privileging is one way in which Spinoza’s ethics fill out his metaphys-
ics, but the dependence runs in the other direction as well. For example, I argue in later
chapters that Spinoza’s project of moral transformation centers on improving our
intellects precisely because those improvements allow us to adopt broader ways of con-
ceiving the world. Furthermore, given Spinoza’s metaphysics of individuals, a moral
agent’s interests and even self-identity can vary, relative to some of these different ways
of being conceived. This will have the startling implication that Spinoza’s ethical ego-
ism, when combined with his concept-sensitive metaphysics, is ultimately a call to a
radical kind of self-transcendence. We will thus be challenged to reconceive not only
the world, but also Spinoza’s project, and perhaps even ourselves, along the way.
A final general worry is that all this concept-dependent metaphysics will turn
Spinoza’s system into some kind of idealist playground. I should admit upfront that
I find idealist readings of Spinoza more textually and philosophically defensible than
they are often taken to be these days.8 But in the end, I do not think the general idealist
interpretation of Spinoza, according to which God, attributes, and modes are essen-
tially mind- or thought-dependent, is sustainable.
But if I am correct about both the conceptual dependence and the mind independ-
ence of the bulk of Spinoza’s metaphysics, we seem to be left with an unhappy interpretive
question: which one should he have abandoned? For many years, I thought this grim
choice was unavoidable and that Spinoza himself was ultimately saddled with a deep
and unresolvable tension, even if a philosophically interesting one.
However, I have come to believe that this represents a false choice and that Spinoza
maintains conceptual dependence without mind dependence in a way that fits elegantly
with the rest of his ontology. This solution requires separating the realm of the mental—
ideas, minds, and the attribute of thought—from the realm of the conceptual—concepts,
conceiving, and conceptual dependence—in Spinoza, which is no easy feat. However,
there is good textual evidence for drawing such a distinction, independent of the issue of
conceptual dependence. That doing so also enables Spinoza to affirm both his concept-
laden metaphysics and his anti-idealism provides us with yet another reason to embrace
it as interpreters.
This concludes our quick plunge into the deep end of the Spinozistic pool. I will lay
out the book’s structure in more detail in the next section. I hope, however, that even
this brief overview of some of the promises and pitfalls of this study will encourage
puzzled readers to dig deeper into the details and wrestle with Spinoza’s texts and sys-
tem alongside me. Though deep, the Spinozistic waters are warm and inviting.
3. A Roadmap
Presenting a systematic interpretation poses a challenge similar to one that system
builders must also confront: where to begin? VanderMeer’s haunting warning above
applies here. The hefty bulk of Spinoza’s Ethics casts a hulking shadow across every
claim made about some piece of it. Panic—intellectually speaking—is a fair reaction.
Still, we have to start somewhere. It is tempting to follow Spinoza’s own lead into the
Ethics and begin with a discussion of his substance–mode ontology, but I have decided
against this approach, partly because it has been done so many times before. I have
chosen a different path into Spinoza’s thicket, one that he provides in an earlier work.
Fear not: there will eventually be discussions of Spinoza’s opening definitions, axioms,
and so forth. But I will approach Spinoza’s “imagined leviathan” from a new angle in
order to cast fresh light on the fundamental problems he faces and the solutions he
offers. This approach will also help us to see new resolutions to more familiar, long-
standing interpretive puzzles and debates. We will ultimately circle back around to
8
For further discussion, see Newlands, “More Recent Idealist Readings of Spinoza,” and Newlands,
“Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza.”
introduction 11
where Spinoza himself begins the Ethics, but in the meantime I beg the reader’s for-
bearance. Postpone final judgment on the interpretive parts until the whole has been
dragged into view.
The first chapter, “The Desiderata of Perfection,” opens with a challenge facing
any serious monist, one that Spinoza himself raised. How can a monist account for
the world’s apparent diversity? I argue that Spinoza faces an especially sharp version of
this long-standing question of the One and the Many, given his commitments to
both maximal ontological parsimony and plenitude. After discussing the details of
these ontological commitments, I suggest that they ultimately stem not from the PSR
but from Spinoza’s account of metaphysical perfection, one that is similar to views
held by the young Leibniz and, surprisingly enough, contemporary metaphysician
Jonathan Schaffer.
In chapter two, “Spinoza’s Conceptualist Strategy,” I lay out in general terms how
Spinoza uses the tools of conceptual sensitivity, conceptual variability, and conceptual
identification to satisfy these competing desiderata of perfection. At its core, Spinoza’s
strategy appeals to one of the most interesting features of concepts: one thing can be
truly conceived in a variety of ways, even when the different ways of being conceived
involve distinctive content. This will be the key to Spinoza’s reconciliation project. If
the world’s diversity is conceptually structured in the right ways, then Spinoza will be
able to show how diversity is consistent with the various identity theses he also defends.
We will now be primed to see how and why many of Spinoza’s central metaphysical
views utilize this conceptualist machinery. I focus in chapter two on the more familiar
cases of attribute and causal structure plenitude, but the rest of the book unpacks the
consequences of Spinoza’s conceptualist gambit for his theories of dependence
(chapter three), modality (chapter four), essences (chapter five), individuals (chapter
six), ethics (chapter seven), and moral transformation (chapter eight).
In chapter three, “Conceptual Dependence Monism,” I examine Spinoza’s views on
metaphysical dependence, in which the role of the conceptual is arguably the clearest.
Spinoza uses some twenty-two different terms for dependence in the opening pages of
the Ethics, and a fierce interpretive debate has erupted over how to understand the
relations among these seemingly different forms of dependence. I argue that Spinoza
holds an especially austere view, which I call conceptual dependence monism: there is
exactly one form of metaphysical dependence, and it is conceptual in kind. I defend
this interpretation on both textual and systematic grounds, and I point out some of its
implications for our understanding of other, more familiar Spinozistic doctrines.
Along the way, we will also gain a clearer understanding of Spinoza’s explanatory
requirements in metaphysics.
In fact, I argue in the next chapter, “Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Modality,” that ignoring
a fundamental explanatory question has led previous interpreters to misunderstand
Spinoza’s views on necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility. Although
the scope of Spinoza’s necessitarianism has also been hotly debated, I argue that a
central question has gone largely unasked: just what is modality, according to Spinoza?
By focusing first on his analysis of necessity, we gain insight into more familiar ques-
tions of modal distribution: what exists necessarily, what exists contingently, and so
forth. I argue that Spinoza ultimately endorses a form of what might now be called
anti-essentialism, according to which the modal status of some things depends partly
on how those things are conceived. Hence, Spinoza affirms both the genuine contin-
gency and strict necessity of one and the same thing’s existence, depending on how it
is conceived. After considering Spinoza’s defense of this account of modality, I turn to
why Spinoza thinks we do not, in fact, adopt necessitarian perspectives on the world.
This failure will have important ramifications for Spinoza’s moral theory, considered
in later chapters.
My account of Spinoza’s views on modality naturally raises questions about his
theory of essences, which is the topic of chapter five, “A Conceptualist Account of
Essences.” I argue for two main interpretive theses about Spinoza’s account of essences:
(a) the essence of a thing is its degree of explanatory power and (b) the explanatory
power of a thing can vary, depending on how it is conceived, both across and within
attributes. Putting these two theses together, what constitutes the essence of a thing for
Spinoza is sensitive to the manner in which that thing is conceived, both within and
across attributes. Combined with the results of previous chapters, it follows that each
thing has infinitely many essences, both within and across attributes.
How can one thing have so many essences? Spinoza’s conceptualist strategy was
introduced to show how one and the same individual can be structured by a diversity
of attributes, causal structures, dependence relations, modal profiles, and essences.
But what are these individuals like, such that they can consistently support all this
diversity? The answer proves increasingly elusive, as I argue in chapter six, “Elusive
Individuals.” After looking at Spinoza’s more limited interest in the nature of individuals,
I argue that Spinoza introduces a conceptual condition on the composition and
persistence conditions for individuals. Even individuating bodies in Extension partly
depends on how regions of causal activity are conceived.9 This has widespread implica-
tions for Spinoza’s account of individual finite modes, and it re-raises an old worry
about whether Spinoza was an acosmicist (someone who denies that there are finite
individuals at all). Even worse, Spinoza’s account of finite individuals, when combined
with the results of the previous chapters, threatens to undermine the very conceptu-
alist gambit he introduced in order to secure them in the first place. I diagnose and
discuss this problem in the concluding section, “Too Much of a Good Thing?”
In order to see more clearly how all this metaphysical machinery intersects with
Spinoza’s ethics, I begin chapter seven, “Ethics, Motivation, and Egoism,” with an
overview of what I call Spinoza’s psychological ethics, a series of descriptive claims
about human desires that underwrites his metaethics. I argue that moral motivation
for Spinoza is, in turn, based on an agent’s intrinsic, appetite-based motivation for
9
In what follows, when I refer directly to an attribute without using the description “attribute of,” I will
mark it with a capital letter (“Thought” and “Extension”).
introduction 13
fundamental desire satisfaction. Most importantly, I claim that when this account of
moral motivation is combined with his conceptualist metaphysics, Spinoza has a
distinctive way of showing how moral agents can have self-interested, non-prudential
moral motives to pursue the interests of others. This proposed reconciliation of
Spinoza’s ethical egoism with other-regarding interests turns on his conceptualist
account of how moral agents are individuated, thereby revealing just how deeply his
ethics draws on his conceptualist metaphysics.
In chapter eight, “Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence,” I move in the other
direction to show how Spinoza’s ethics, in turn, completes his conceptualist metaphysics.
I argue that Spinoza privileges some of the plentiful ways of conceiving things over others
on broadly practical grounds: it is in the self-interest of agents to conceive other things, as
well as themselves, in the broadest, most inclusive ways. This gives Spinoza a kind of
practical argument for necessitarianism. At the same time, necessitarianism and other
metaphysical consequences of adopting broader concepts appear to cut against an agent’s
self-interest. We seem to have less power and agency, so conceived.
To understand Spinoza’s reply, I turn to his account of moral improvement, which
again relies on the conceptual. Spinoza thinks that the way to become a more virtuous
agent is to reconceive oneself, a process that results in fundamental changes in an agent’s
self-identity. Drawing on what I see as parallel contemporary work by Harry Frankfurt,
I argue that Spinoza’s call to moral transformation is ultimately a call to a new self-
identity, one that is more stable, more active, and more eternal. The good news from
Spinoza’s ontology is that these better, more powerful selves already exist, waiting to
be adopted as our own. The bad news from his moral psychology is that it is very
unlikely that any of us will get very far in this process of re-identification. Although
Spinoza holds out hope for our salvific transformation, he remains deeply pessimistic
that we will ever enjoy much of it.
In the final chapter, “The Nature of the Conceptual,” I step back from first-order
interpretive details to return to a fundamental question for my interpretation of
Spinoza: just what are these conceptual relations for Spinoza? I argue against a very
tempting answer, according to which conceptual relations are exclusively mental rela-
tions, ways of thinking about or mentally representing things. This answer would
transform Spinoza’s claims about conceptual dependence into claims about mind
dependence, which would commit him to a very robust form of metaphysical ideal-
ism. However, I show how and why Spinoza rejects both idealism and the underlying
mentalistic account of conceptual relations on independent grounds.
This re-raises the question of just what Spinoza thinks conceptual relations are. I high-
light those preciously few passages in which Spinoza hints at a positive, non-mentalistic
answer in terms of attribute neutrality. I show how this extra-mental, structural account
of the conceptual fits elegantly into the rest of Spinoza’s ontology while avoiding the
errors of the idealist interpretations. Given how little Spinoza offers us here, I conclude by
indicating ways future research—both historical and constructive—might try to shed
further light on Spinoza’s account of the conceptual.
1
The Desiderata of Perfection
1. Lust’s Challenge
Although Spinoza is known for his terse, dense writing style, he once tried his hand at
crafting philosophical dialogues. Mercifully, his effort was short-lived. But in spite of
its literary clumsiness, Spinoza’s first dialogue contains an important philosophical
exchange that nicely frames the discussion of this book.
The dialogue is found in Spinoza’s early and unfinished Short Treatise, although
there has been some disagreement about exactly when the dialogue itself was com-
posed. The characters are Lust (Begeerlijkheid, sometimes more chastely translated as
“Desire”), Love, Reason, and Understanding, and they are discussing the world’s per-
fection. Understanding proclaims that Nature alone is supremely perfect and calls on
Reason for support. Reason obliges and confidently explains, “infinite Nature, in which
everything is contained, is an eternal Unity” (KV I.2, G I/28). Spinoza agrees with
Reason, having argued in his own voice that one reason for thinking all the diverse
features of the world are found in “only one, single being” is “because of the unity
which we see everywhere in Nature” (KV I.2, G I/23).
Ever the troublemaker, Lust immediately objects to this line of reasoning, his tone
dripping with sarcasm: “It would be marvelous indeed if this should turn out to be
consistent: that Unity agrees with the Diversity I see everywhere in Nature. But how
could this be?” (KV I.2, G I/28). How indeed? Lust has put his finger on one of the most
significant challenges facing any serious substance monist: how can the world’s appar-
ent diversity be reconciled with its purported containment in a single substance? If
Spinoza has a compelling answer, it must not be an obvious one, since two centuries
later Harold Joachim essentially repeated Lust’s challenge: “There is no principle on
which this variety is intelligible as the variety of the one Substance.”1
As we will see, Spinoza repeatedly runs up against versions of this challenge as he
tries to pack an incredibly diverse and seemingly incompatible array of fundamental
attributes and non-fundamental things, individuals, essences, natures, powers, modi-
fications, and relations into a single substance. In fact, Spinoza affirms more extreme
forms of diversity than even non-monists typically accept. How, then, can a single
substance contain so much diversity without sacrificing its internal unity? Is the notion
of such a substance even coherent?
1
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 103.
the desiderata of perfection 15
The general worry behind Lust’s question can also be expressed in terms of
predications. Elsewhere in the Short Treatise, Spinoza confidently claims, “there must
be an infinite and perfect being, by which nothing else can be understood except
a being of which all in all must be predicated” (KV I.2, G I/21).2 But if everything is
predicated of one thing, how can Spinoza avoid massive and widespread inconsisten-
cies?3 More generally, Spinoza’s ontological packing generates seemingly incompatible
pairs of predications of the form God is F and it is not the case that God is F for many,
many values of F. My desk is brown, my cup is not. Prima facie, Spinoza thereby seems
committed to the claim that God is brown and it is not the case that God is brown. Or
consider a more Spinozistic example. Thinking things do not cause extended effects
and extended things cause only extended effects, according to Spinoza.4 But Spinoza’s
God is both thinking and extended. It seems to follow that God causes no extended
effects and also that God causes only extended effects. God both is and is not the cause
of extended effects. One last example: Spinoza claims that I have an essence or nature
that is distinct in kind from the essence or nature of a horse.5 But if my nature and the
horse’s nature are both in God, it seems to follow that God has the nature of a human
and it is not the case that God has the nature of a human. In sum, the diversity Spinoza
endorses seems incompatible with the monism he defends.
So problematic is Spinoza’s account of the “infinite Nature in which everything is
contained” that even sympathetic interpreters have tended to downplay either the
unity or the diversity of Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura in hopes of achieving greater
coherence. Rather than positing a single divine substance with infinitely many incom-
mensurate attributes, perhaps Spinoza really believed that each of God’s attributes is
sufficiently substance-like in itself, such that “God” names something more like a
collection of substances. On such interpretations, Spinoza’s One becomes an eternal
bundle of the Many.6 At the other extreme, perhaps Spinoza’s God is so internally
unified that the appearance of a multiplicity of attributes and modifications is merely
an appearance, some kind of gross illusion. On these readings, Spinoza’s Many collapses
into a Parmenidean One.7 Although these interpretations disagree on whether the One
or the Many should be sacrificed, together both sides underscore Lust’s objection:
Spinoza cannot reconcile his all-encompassing substance with the world’s diversity.
2
Here and in all of what follows, all underlining for emphasis in quotations is mine. Any italicized emphases
in quotations are original to the author.
3
This objection has a gilded history and has been voiced by the likes of Bayle, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and
various British idealists. For a more recent exchange, see Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 4–28 and Melamed,
“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought.”
4
IIp6–7. 5
See, for example, IVPref, G II/208 and IVp37s1, G II/237.
6
Prominent examples of versions of this include Gueroult, Spinoza I, 51–5, Curley, Behind the Geometrical
Method, 28–30, and Loeb, From Descartes to Hume, 161–6. More recent defenses include Marshall, “The
Mind and the Body as ‘One and the Same Thing’ in Spinoza,” and Smith, “Spinoza, Gueroult, and Substance.”
7
Prominent examples include Hegel, Lectures 281; Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, Vol. 1, 142–56;
and, most recently, Della Rocca, “Rationalism, Idealism, Monism, and Beyond,” and his unpublished 2014
Whitehead Lectures at Harvard University.
However well intentioned, such interpretive solutions water down Spinoza’s bold,
perhaps reckless insistence that he can have it all—maximal unity and maximal
diversity. Although he was not yet able to articulate his solution in the Short Treatise,
Spinoza never backs down from Lust’s challenge. He continues to insist that his form
of monism is consistent with an ontological diversity more wide ranging than even
his pluralistic opponents would accept. But how could this be? we wonder along with
Lust. Is this, as another nineteenth-century interpreter concluded, “a question which
is hopeless of solution”?8
I do not think so, and in a sense unpacking Spinoza’s rejoinder and its wide-ranging
consequences is a primary goal of this study. The philosophical challenges and rewards
of this exploration rest in the details, but in this first chapter I will outline the challenge
Spinoza’s metaphysics faces, before laying out his mostly overlooked solution in the
next. I will begin by showing how Spinoza endorses especially strong versions of both
ontological parsimony and plenitude, the One and the Many. These competing com-
mitments emerge not, I argue, from his acceptance of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,
but instead from Spinoza’s notion of metaphysical perfection. The metaphysically perfect
world, for Spinoza, is a world that maximizes both unity and diversity, identity and
distinction. This will then set the stage for the rest of the book, in which we explore
how Spinoza proposes to consistently maximize both desiderata.
2. Parsimony
Spinoza’s commitment to a form of ontological parsimony is well known. After all, he’s
a substance monist. As he famously claims in his Ethics, “Except God, no substance can
be or be conceived” (Ip14). The next proposition spells out the implications of his
monism for all other existing things: “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be
conceived without God” (Ip15). That is, whatever exists, exists in substance and locates
in substance its causal origins and the grounds for its very intelligibility. I will have
more to say about those dependence relations in chapter three. For now, let us focus on
Spinoza’s insistence that everything that exists is contained, in some metaphysically
robust sense, in a single substance: God. (Given Spinoza’s insistence on reflexive
dependence, this even applies to God. God is self-contained.)
We should not pass too quickly over the fact that the container of all things is itself a
substance, according to Spinoza. He thinks the ontological and explanatory ground of
everything else is a highly unified, consistently structured, and intelligible entity.9
Hence, however rich in kinds, individuals, and properties the world turns out to be,
they all must somehow coexist in that single substance and, conversely, that single sub-
stance must be able to consistently support all that diversity within itself.
8
Martineau, A Study of Spinoza, 185.
9
See, for example, Id3, Id6, Ip11. For more on God’s essence(s), see chapter five.
If true, one obvious implication of Spinoza’s substance monism is that finite

substances do not exist, pace Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, and nearly everyone else in
the Western philosophical tradition prior to Hume. Spinoza sometimes states this
implication as an identity thesis of one and the same substance across a multiplicity of
fundamental attributes: “The thinking substance and the extended substance are one
and the same substance” (IIp7s). (In the same passage, Spinoza extends this identifi-
cation to any attribute–substance pairing.) That is, one and the same substance has very
different fundamental features or attributes. Indeed, for reasons we will see shortly,
Spinoza thinks substance has infinitely many such fundamental attributes.
However, Spinoza claims that this multiplicity of fundamental features does not by
itself entail that there exists a multiplicity of fundamental things. According to Spinoza,
the non-identity of substances fails to supervene on the non-identity of attributes,
no matter how strongly the distinction between attributes is made: “It is evident that
although two attributes may be conceived to be really distinct (i.e., one may be con-
ceived without the aid of the other), we still cannot infer from that that they constitute
two beings or two different substances” (Ip10, G II/52). In other words, Spinoza takes
substance monism to be consistent with tremendous attribute diversity.
Spinoza’s identification of one substance across a variety of attributes is but one
example of his fondness for surprising identity theories. Not only does the sole sub-
stance exist across multiple attributes, each mode of that substance also exists across
multiple attributes: “So too a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and
the same thing just expressed in two ways” (IIp7s, G II/90).10 Notice the pattern: one
substance, multiple attributes; one mode, multiple attributes. The thinking substance
is identical to the extended substance; a mental mode is identical to an extended mode.
Given that substances, modes, and attributes comprise Spinoza’s basic ontological cat-
egories, we can already discern Spinoza’s tendency to affirm both identity and diversity
in parallel ways across his ontology.
In addition to his substance and mode identity theories, Spinoza also explicitly
identifies items that previous philosophers had treated as distinct: minds and bodies;
ideas and ideas of those ideas; human ideas and God’s parallel ideas; volitions
and ideas; the will and the intellect; volitions and the faculty of willing; ideas and the
faculty of the intellect; power and virtue; power and active essence; power and perfec-
tion.11 One of Spinoza’s most controversial phrases also implies an identity thesis: Deus
sive Natura. I will argue in chapter three that Spinoza also identifies seemingly distinct
forms of metaphysical dependence. Causation, inherence, and conceptual depend-
ence are all one and the same form of dependence. Over and over in the Ethics, what
10
See also IIp21s and IIIp2s. For a full defense of the mode identification thesis, see Della Rocca,
Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza.
11
See, for example, IIp7s (minds and bodies); IIp20 (ideas and ideas of those ideas); IIp11c (human
ideas and God’s parallel ideas); IIp49 (volitions and ideas); IIp49c (the will and the intellect); IIp48s (voli-
tions and the faculty of willing); IIp48s (ideas and the faculty of the intellect); IVd8 (power and virtue); IIp7
(power and active essence); IVPref (power and perfection).
had seemed to others to be distinct kinds, things, and relations are, according to
Spinoza, metaphysically indistinct. As Rebecca Goldstein, a much better writer, puts it,
“Spinoza’s zest for unification is isotropic. He is everywhere intent on dissolving
disparities, reconciling polarities, denying dualities.”12
This is a consistent and widespread tendency in Spinoza’s metaphysics. Whenever
possible and appropriate, reduce seemingly distinct things or features to one and the
same thing or feature. Whenever possible and appropriate, reject bifurcations in
metaphysics. (The reason for the “possible and appropriate” qualification will become
clear later.)
But this preference for identity cannot be the whole story. As we have already
seen, Spinoza accepts at least one kind of rich diversity: each thing is characterized by
infinitely many distinct attributes. Eventually we will need to understand why Spinoza
thinks some forms of diversity are acceptable while others are not, but for now, let us
briefly survey Spinoza’s other appeals to metaphysical diversity that stand alongside
his parsimonious identity theories.
3. Plenitude
Immediately after concluding in Ip15 that everything is contained in God, Spinoza
embraces a stunningly plentiful ontology: “From the divine nature there must follow
infinitely many things in infinitely many ways [modis], (i.e., everything which can fall
under an infinite intellect)” (Ip16, G II/60). Before unpacking this rich proposition, we
need to take a quick look at its standard translation.
Spinoza invokes two dimensions of infinite diversity in this passage, as the Latin
emphasizes: “Ex necessitate divinae naturae, infinita infinitis modis . . . sequi debent.”
The use of “modis” might naturally suggest that “infinitis modis” is a claim about Spinoza’s
ontological category of modes, and that is how Edwin Curley translates the passage:
“From the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many
modes.” But as Curley dutifully points out in a footnote, “modis” might instead have
the less technical sense of “ways,” which I take to be the correct rendering.13 For, if
“modis” referred to Spinoza’s category of modes, it is very unclear what the referent of
“infinita” could be. Curley supplies “things,” and that is fine as a neutral description,
but in the demonstration of Ip16 the referent of infinita is “properties,” which is a clear
reference to Spinoza’s ontological category of modes. “Infinitely many things,” in
other words, refers to infinitely many modes, and it is hard to understand what “infin-
itely many modes in infinitely many modes” could even mean. Hence, I take it that
“infinita infinitis modis” refers to infinitely many modes in infinitely many ways.
What, then, is the referent of “modis,” the “ways,” in this passage? The demonstra-
tion of Ip16 makes this clear as well. Having argued that infinitely many properties
12
Newberger Goldstein, “Explanatory Completeness and Spinoza’s Monism,” 281.
13
C 424n43.
follow from God’s nature (which takes care of the “infinita”), Spinoza then tries to
prove the second dimension of infinite diversity (“infinitis modis”): “But since the
divine nature has absolutely infinite attributes, each of which also expresses an
essence infinite in its own kind . . . ” That is, “infinitely many ways” refers to God’s infinitely
many attributes.14
Putting this together, Ip16 claims that infinitely many modes in infinitely many
attributes follow from the nature of the sole substance. In other words, both mode and
attribute plenitude follow from the nature of God. In fact, although it is pure textual
postulation, I cannot help hearing a “nonetheless” between propositions 15 and 16.
Yes, Spinoza tells us in Ip15, at the ontological ground floor, extreme parsimony—
identity!—holds. There is only one fundamental thing. Nonetheless, he assures us
immediately afterwards, this singular substance actually contains a maximal—infinite!—
diversity of non-fundamental things, properties, kinds, and predicables. With that
assurance, as John Caird puts it, “the colorless blank becomes at a stroke filled up with
rich and varied content.”15 Taken together, Ip15 and Ip16 affirm Spinoza’s commitment
to versions of both maximal parsimony and maximal plenitude.
What sort of ontological diversity is Spinoza committed to? Although we could simply
list the various categories of plenitude in Spinoza (attributes, modes, degrees of power,
essences, and so forth), there is a unifying feature to his plentiful ontology, one hinted at
in Ip16d and quoted above. Spinoza endorses what I will call expressive plenitude about
God or substance: God is expressed in infinitely many ways along multiple axes.
3.1 The Nature of Attributes, Modes, and Expressing

The most familiar axis of expressive plenitude is attribute plenitude, the thesis that God’s
nature is expressed by infinitely many attributes. Spinoza even defines God partly in
terms of such expressive plenitude: “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite,
that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eter-
nal and infinite essence” (Id6).16 Although there has been some interpretive debate
about how many attributes Spinoza intends by “infinity,” it is clear that he means by
“infinity” more than the two attributes we are aware of, Thought and Extension.17
Spinoza is especially keen to maintain the maximal or “supreme” plenitude of divine
attributes. As he puts it negatively, “God is an absolutely infinite being, of whom no
attribute which expresses an essence of substance can be denied” (Ip14d). Positively,
14
See also IIp3s. 15
Caird, Spinoza, 144.
16
See also Ip10s, Ip11, Ip14d, Ip16d, IIp1, and IIp7s.
17
Even Jonathan Bennett, one of the main contemporary advocates of the “only” two interpretation of
Spinoza’s attributes, concedes that textually it is clear Spinoza thought there are more than two, even though,
Bennett argues, functionally there are only two attributes for Spinoza (Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics,
75–81 and Bennett, Learning from Six Philosophers, Vol. I, 115–17). It has long been objected that Spinoza
has no good explanation for why we are aware only of two attributes; for a recent version, see Francesca di
Poppa’s claim that it must be a brute, inexplicable fact for Spinoza that our mind represents only our body
(Di Poppa, “Spinoza on Causation and Power,” 303). For a good rejoinder to all such accounts, see Melamed,
“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought.”
God has every possible attribute, each of which expresses a divine essence.18 That is the
primary sense of “plenitude” in attribute plenitude: God has as many attributes as there
can be. But in light of Spinoza’s frequent appeals to infinity in this context, it is also
clear that he thinks the range of possible attributes is quite large.
Attributes are not the only ways of expressing God’s nature, however. Modes also
express God, according to Spinoza: “Particular things are nothing but affections of
God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and
determinate way” (Ip25c). For example, Spinoza defines a body as “a mode that in a
certain and determinate way expresses God’s essence insofar as he is considered as
an extended thing” (IId1). As we have already seen, Spinoza affirms mode plenitude in
Ip16, parallel to attribute plenitude: “From the necessity of the divine nature there
must follow infinitely many [modes] . . . i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite
intellect.” That is, God has every possible modification, each of which expresses a
divine essence in a particular and determinate way and none of which exhaustively
expresses a given essence. If correct, it follows from Spinoza’s mode plenitude thesis
that substance can be consistently expressed in many, many incomplete or partial
ways—as many modes as there are. Putting the two dimensions together, Spinoza’s
expressive plenitude is the thesis that God is expressed by infinitely many attributes
and infinitely many modifications.
Given that modes and attributes play similar expressive roles, how do attributes and
modes differ? (Seeing this will also help us unpack what Spinoza means by “expresses.”)
One key difference between attributes and modes is the manner of their expressive
activity. In a rich letter to John Hudde, Spinoza describes an attribute as “something
that expresses God’s nature in some way” (Ep36, G IV/186).19 He describes this way of
expressing God’s nature as “perfect” and “involving no limitation.” Spinoza makes it
clear that by “perfect,” he means something like complete. Attributes, in other words,
express God in a complete and purely positive way.
However, since God is supposed to have infinitely many attributes, it cannot be that
any one attribute exhaustively expresses God. In fact, Spinoza thinks no attribute
expresses any other attribute, although he denies that attribute isolation is a limitation
or imperfection: “Although Extension, for instance, denies of itself Thought, this is not
an imperfection in it” (Ep36, G IV/185).20 Rather, each attribute is expressively com-
plete in the sense that it fully and positively characterizes an essence of substance.
This raises an important point about Spinoza’s theory of attributes that can easily be
lost in all the other interpretive debates: attributes characterize substances. I mean
18
Ip16d; in chapter five, I defend the claim that Spinoza’s substance has multiple essences.
19
This passage also contains another non-technical use of modus: “aliquid . . . quod aliquot modo Dei
naturam exprimit.”
20
Genevieve Lloyd illustrates this with the relationship between a proposition and its sentential expres-
sions in English and French. The English and French sentences can each completely express the proposition,
even though neither contains nor makes reference to the other (Lloyd, Spinoza and the Ethics, 39).
“characterize” literally: attributes provide substances with a character, a nature.21 Or, if

that sounds too reifying, an attribute just is the character of a substance. As such,
Spinoza’s attributes are best understood as ways of being a substance. Indeed, in light of
their completeness, attributes are fundamental ways of being a substance for Spinoza.
In IIp1d, Spinoza concludes his argument that thought is an attribute of God in this
way: “Therefore, thought is one of God’s infinite attributes, which expresses an eternal
and infinite essence of God, or [sive] God is a thinking thing.” Notice how Spinoza
seamlessly moves from the expressive role of a divine attribute to a claim about the
kind of thing that God is. It is in virtue of having the attribute of thought that a sub-
stance is a thinking thing, and it is precisely through their expressive role that attributes
so characterize or fill out the kinds of things that exist. Put the other way around, with-
out attributes substance would be a bare particular, a qualitative-less thing lacking
intrinsic characteristics.22 Hegel was thus quite correct in his description of what
attribute nihilism would imply for Spinoza’s substance (though wrong that Spinoza
was forced to accept it): a “dark, shapeless abyss, so to speak, in which all determinate
content is swallowed up as radically null and void.”23
By contrast to the perfect expressive capacity of attributes, modes express God in
only a “certain and determinate way.” As Hegel was also fond of pointing out, Spinoza
links determination and negation,24 which makes the contrast clear. Attributes are
complete expressions of a divine essence, whereas modes are merely partial expres-
sions. Each attribute exhaustively expresses one essence of substance, whereas each
mode only partially expresses an essence. But these two degrees of expressive activities
are importantly related, as seen in Spinoza’s claim that modes are “nothing but affec-
tions of God’s attributes” (Ip28d).25 Modes are more localized and determinate expres-
sions of more complete and fundamental expressions. For example, being exactly five
feet tall and being exactly six feet tall are two determinate ways of expressing Extension
or of being an extended substance, although neither exhausts the ways Extension
could be expressed.
Indeed, it is tempting to understand the expressive relation between an attribute and
a mode in Spinoza within a determinable/determinate framework. Modes are deter-
minates of fundamental determinable ways of being a substance; this is precisely the
sense in which modes are modifications of a thing. (Indeed, this is a fairly common way
of understanding the ontological category of modes in contemporary metaphysics.26)
21
In what I think is a similar vein, Deleuze claims that attributes “exprime une essence infinie, c’est-
a-dire une qualité illimitée” (Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème de l’expression, 37).
22
This is counter-possible reasoning since Spinoza denies that a substance ever could exist without its
attributes (Ip10s, under the widespread but lamentable assumption—prior to Leibniz—that always p
entails necessarily p). But this sort of explanatory dependence is consistent with necessary coexistence.
23
Hegel, EL 227. 24
See Ep50 and a related claim in Ip8s1.
25
See also Ip25c and IIp2, cited in the main text above, in which Spinoza makes it clear that modes
express God’s attributes in a particular way.
26
See, for example, Heil, From an Ontological Point of View, 137–50 and Lowe, The Possibility of
Metaphysics, 180–3.
On this construal, attributes are the most general and fundamental determinables of a
substance. There could be a gradation of increasingly determinate features of that sub-
stance between the most general determinable (an attribute) and a fully determinate
mode (a “particular thing”). This fits Spinoza’s description of particular things as
“certain and determinate” expressions of an attribute (Ip25c).
One benefit of this interpretive framework is that it provides a promising account
of the difference between infinite and finite modes, which is a novel but obscure dis-
tinction in Spinoza’s ontology that some interpreters have found endlessly rich and
suggestive. Spinoza claims that infinite modes, unlike finite modes or “particular
things,” are “indeterminate” with respect to various features, such as duration and
particular patterns of motion and rest.27 On the determinable/determinate account,
this distinction makes good sense. Particular bodies have fully determinate features
of more general determinables. A particular pattern of motion and rest is a determinate
of a more general determinable, being in motion and at rest. (“Motion and rest” is
Spinoza’s example of the most “immediate” infinite mode.) Likewise, motion and rest
is the most general determinate of the determinable being extended. This also helps
explain Spinoza’s claim that infinite modes “vary in infinite ways, yet always remain
the same” (Ep64, G IV/278). That is, each infinite mode is a determinable that can
take infinitely many different determinates.28
Such are the promises of interpreting Spinoza’s attribute–mode expressive ontology
within a broadly determinable/determinate framework. There are also dangers, how-
ever. One worry is that by taking attributes to be the most general determinables of a
substance, it will be tempting to treat attributes as pure determinables, akin to the way
in which some scholastics thought prime matter was pure potentiality, a determinable
with no intrinsic qualities of its own.29 This is decidedly not Spinoza’s view of attributes;
they are not intrinsically indeterminate, although they are the most general determinable
ways of being a substance.
A second danger is that it will be tempting to treat the more determinate elements as
more real than or more fundamental than the less determinate.30 Modes would become
27
See Ip22d for indeterminate duration and IIp13sl7 for indeterminate particular patterns of motion
and rest.
28
This account of infinite modes is also rightly neutral about exactly how many degrees of generality there
are between attributes and particular things. Presumably, the number of intermediaries depends on how
physics (for Extension) and psychology (for Thought) turn out. That may be largely an empirical question,
and Spinoza’s recognition that his physics is merely programmatic (IIIp2s and Ep83) would explain why his
account of infinite modes is likewise merely programmatic. This also implies that some interpretive debates
concerning so-called “immediate” vs. “mediate” infinite modes are misguided. This is a prime example of an
interpretive disagreement that, from the outside at least, appears to have lost track of what the debate is about
in non-Spinoza-ese terms.
29
Not that this was the dominant Scholastic view of prime matter; for a helpful overview, see Pasnau,
Metaphysical Themes, 35–76.
30
One Spinozistic way to reach this conclusion is to think that all determinables are merely abstractions
from fully determinate individuals. Given Spinoza’s general disavowal of abstracta as not “real” or mind-
independent (see Newlands, “Spinoza’s Anti-Abstractionism”), it would be easy to then conclude that attributes
more real or more fundamental than attributes in virtue of being more determinate
expressions of them. But this would get the dependence direction backwards for
Spinoza. Substance, the most indeterminate of all, is also the most real or fundamental
(Ip1). Indeed, as we will see in the next section, Spinoza thinks it is a mark of sub-
stance’s maximal reality that it admits of so many different, more determinate expres-
sions of itself. So, for Spinoza at least, a determinate is less fundamental than the
determinable of which it is a determinate. Although I take the direction of dependence
to be independent from the general determinable/determinate framework, if one
insists that the order cannot be reversed without losing the contemporary sense of
determinable/determinate, then I think we are just seeing the limits of reading Spinoza’s
ontology entirely through a single contemporary schema.
This also gives us some general insight into what Spinoza means by “expresses.”
Expressing is a metaphysical relation that involves characterizing or particularizing,
akin to the determinable/determinate relation. Attributes express substance, thereby
characterizing its natures in more determinate ways: as thinking, as extended, etc.
Likewise, modes express attributes, thereby particularizing them in more determinate
ways: as taking up a determinate quantity of volume, etc. In both cases, where x expresses
y, y is more fundamental than x.
However, Spinoza also links expressing with conceptual containment relations,
sometimes moving between “expresses” and “conceives” interchangeably, as if the terms
describe one and the same relation. “The mind neither expresses the actual existence of
its body, nor conceives the body’s affections as actual” (Vp21d). In Ip10s, Spinoza treats
each attribute of a substance being “conceived through itself ” as equivalent to each
attribute “express[ing] the reality or being of a substance.” Similarly, in Ip29s, he
equates being “in itself [and] conceived through itself ” with being an attribute which
“express[es] an eternal and infinite essence” (Ip29s). Spinoza also treats a claim about
one and the same thing being “now comprehended under this attribute, now under
that” as equivalent to a claim about one and the same thing being “expressed in two
ways” (IIp7s).31 More generally, Spinoza writes in the TTP, “it is certain that all things
in nature involve and express the concept of God” (G II/60).
In these passages, whenever x expresses y, x is conceived through y and the feature
of y that x expresses is contained in the concept of y. Indeed, Spinoza seems to closely
associate expressive values with conceptual content. For example, he claims that
attributes, in virtue of being conceived through themselves, “express the reality or being”
as well as the “necessity, or eternity, and infinity” of substance (Ip10s). This moves
are mind-dependent abstractions for Spinoza. Although this conclusion has received some support from
interpreters, I do not think it is Spinoza’s settled view, for reasons I give in chapter nine. The best way to block
this chain of reasoning is right at the beginning: determinables are not abstracta for Spinoza.
31
For other examples, see also IIp1d, IId1, IIp5d, Vp21, Vp22, Ip20d, Ip14d, Ip23d, Ip10s, and Ep64. In
Ip28d, Spinoza even describes modes as “God considered as affected” which is supposed to be parallel to
the relations of Ip25c: “Particular things are nothing but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which
God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way.”
seamlessly between expression as metaphysical characterizing and expression as

containing conceptual content.32
In the final chapter, we will consider whether Spinoza has made a colossal blunder in
squeezing these two kinds of roles together: the metaphysical and the conceptual,
being a determinate of and being conceptually contained in. At this point, it is enough to
notice that Spinoza regularly slides between metaphysical and conceptual versions of
his theses without noting a difference. His own motivation for this slide will become
apparent by the end of the next two chapters. For now, I will let the metaphysical and
conceptual versions stand side-by-side. Hence, Spinoza’s expressive plenitude thesis
is the claim that God can be expressed or conceived in infinitely many more and less
determinate ways.
3.2 Intra-Attribute Mode Plenitude

While this overview of Spinoza’s expressive plenitude provides a nice organization of
his basic ontological categories of substance, attributes, and modes, it remains incom-
plete. In addition to attribute and mode plenitude, there is yet another dimension of
expressive plenitude in Spinoza’s ontology. Just as each mode expresses or is conceived
through each of infinitely many different attributes, so too each mode can be expressed
or conceived in infinitely many ways within each attribute.
This third dimension of plenitude, what I will call intra-attribute mode pleni-
tude, is easily overlooked, but it will be incredibly important for answering Lust’s
challenge. I will introduce the basics here, but the machinery will become both more
complex and more fleshed out in later chapters.
To begin, notice how Spinoza sometimes distinguishes between finite things
considered more narrowly, “conceiving their essence alone,” and those same objects
conceived more broadly, considered in relation to “the whole order of nature.” For
example, in CM Spinoza compares the modal status of a thing “if we consider only
[its] essence” with its modal status “if we were to conceive the whole order of nature”
(CM I.3, G I/240–2).33 Similarly, in the Appendix to Part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza
distinguishes desires that can be “understood through [our nature] alone, as through
their proximate cause” and those that can be understood only “insofar as we are a
part of Nature, which cannot be conceived adequately through itself without other
individuals” (IVApp1, G II/266).
Unlike the difference between a mode conceived under Thought and the same mode
conceived under Extension, the main difference between these two ways of conceiving
32
Deleuze makes a similar point in his account of expression in Spinoza (Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème
de l’expression, 11–13), noting that expression is both a thing’s explication into a more determinate multi-
plicity (which I describe here as metaphysical characterizing) and the involvement or implication of that
thing’s nature in that which expresses it (which I identify as conceptual containment).
33
See a similar distinction in IVd3–4. For a discussion of the actual content of these claims, see chapter
four. For a sampling of other places in which Spinoza makes this distinction, see IIId1–2, TIE 57, G I/21–2;
Ep12, G IV/55; Ep32, G IV/171–2.
one and the same mode lies in the extent to which relations to external causes within an
attribute are included. For example, Spinoza contrasts singular things “insofar as . . . we
attend only to their essence” and “the same singular things . . . insofar as . . . we attend
to the causes from which they must be produced” (IVd3–4). Since Spinoza thinks the
causal network of things extends infinitely in either direction,34 it follows that each mode
can be conceived in infinitely many distinct ways within each attribute, depending on
which, if any, of infinitely many external causal relations are included.
At one extreme, there will be a very narrow concept (NC) of a mode that includes
only a thing’s intrinsic properties. At the other extreme, there will be a very broad con-
cept (BC) that includes relations to infinitely many other things. To put it somewhat
simplistically for now, each existing finite mode can be conceived solely in terms of its
essence (NC), or in terms of its essence and its immediate efficient cause, or in terms of
its essence, its immediate cause, and the immediate cause of its immediate cause . . . and
so forth, ad infinitum. The broadest way of conceiving a finite thing (BC) will therefore
include relations to infinitely many other finite things.35
Spinoza also distinguishes between clear and distinct ways of conceiving things and
“confused and mutilated” ways of conceiving things.36 One might expect Spinoza to
treat every less than fully broad way of conceiving modes as confused or mutilated
solely in virtue of being incomplete. But—and this will become very important for later
chapters—Spinoza rejects this inference in at least some cases. He claims that at least
some narrower ways of conceiving things are not intrinsically confused or mutilated.
For example, he writes, “if we consider only [a thing’s] essence, we can conceive it
clearly and distinctly without existence” (CM I.3, G I/241).37
Similarly, it is not the case that every narrower concept, solely in virtue of its incom-
pleteness, is false for Spinoza. According to an early text, for example, conceptual fal-
sity “consists only in this: that something is affirmed of a thing that is not contained in
the concept we have formed of a thing” (TIE 72, G II/27). The root of conceptual fal-
sity here is not incompleteness per se, even though conceptual incompleteness may
be a necessary condition for making false conceptual judgments. Incompleteness is
not sufficient for falsity, however. To make a false conceptual judgment, I also must
affirm something of a thing that is not contained in its narrower concept (which pre-
sumably happens when I rely on mutilated and confused concepts). That may make
34
Ip28.
35
As we will see in later chapters, NC and BC also include relations to non-finite things (such as God
and certain infinite modes), but what primarily distinguishes them from each other involves relations to
other finite things. In chapter five, we will also see that what Spinoza calls a thing’s essence can include more
than just its intrinsic properties. Spinoza will sometimes use “essence” as shorthand for just the intrinsic
properties of a thing (as I have here), but when he is laying out his theory of essences more carefully, he
will distinguish essence from just the properties of a thing included in its NC. When it becomes significant,
I will characterize NC as ranging over a thing’s intrinsic properties rather than its essence.
36
See, for examples, Vp20, IVp59s, IIp35, IIp40s, IIp28, IIp29, IVp1s. Another contrast class is adequate
vs. inadequate, which I discuss in chapter four, as it involves complications that would take us too far afield
in this opening chapter.
37
We will see more examples of this in chapter four, where it becomes especially salient.
relying on less than BCs cognitively dangerous, and so we might be well advised to
use BCs whenever possible, but the more limited point here is that, at least in this
early text, making judgments based on less than BCs by itself does not entail making
false judgments, for Spinoza.
This should at least give us pause before interpreting Spinoza as always inferring
falsity from narrower ways of conceiving a thing solely in virtue of conceptual incom-
pleteness. But does Spinoza ever affirm the truth of at least some less than BCs? In an
interesting thought experiment in that same early text, Spinoza positively concludes
about some narrower ways of conceiving a burning candle, “Here there is no fiction, but
true and pure assertions.”38 Similarly, in the passage from the Appendix to Ethics Part IV
quoted above, Spinoza claims that some desires can be “understood” through an object
conceived more narrowly, a success term that presupposes that at least some narrower
ways of conceiving things are true. So even if Spinoza thinks that every confused and
mutilated way of conceiving a thing is partial, incomplete, and false, it is not the case
that every partial and incomplete way of conceiving is confused, mutilated, and false.
In the Ethics, Spinoza teases these biconditionals apart in his usual tortured writing
style, which makes them easy to misread. In IIp34, he affirms what amounts to a parallel
inference from BC to truth: “Every idea which in us is absolute, or adequate and perfect,
is true” (IIp34).39 In the next proposition, he explains falsity in terms of a feature that
some narrower ways of representing things have: “Falsity consists in the privation of
knowledge [cognitionis privatione], which inadequate or mutilated and confused, ideas
involve” (IIp35). I read this passage as claiming that mutilated and confused ideas involve
a kind of cognitive failure that constitutes falsity. This reinforces the tight association of
falsity and confusion, and it suggests that all false ideas will involve confused and
incomplete representations, but it does not license an inference from representational
incompleteness per se to falsity.40 Applying both passages to concepts more broadly, we
see that Spinoza’s inferences are unidirectional. BCs entail truth and falsity implies
incompleteness, but in these passages Spinoza does not state the converse directions
from truth to BC or incompleteness per se to falsity. While perfect expressive complete-
ness might entail clarity and truth, and confusion and falsity might entail expressive
incompleteness, Spinoza does not accept biconditional versions.41
38
TIE 57, G II/21–2. By “pure” (merae), Spinoza means unalloyed or unconfused, not “mere” as in “a mere
assertion.”
39
At the start of IIp43d, Spinoza does appear to move in the opposite direction, at least from truth to
adequacy, an inference that Curley chastises as an unmotivated “equivocation” on Spinoza’s part (Curley,
“Spinoza on Truth,” 5). In chapter four, I will say more about the relation between adequacy, BC, and truth,
so here I simply note the possibility of a textual counter-example.
40
See also IIp41, which restates IIp25. Although the details are more complicated, I would say some-
thing similar about passages like IIp29c, in which Spinoza infers that our ideas of ourselves, our bodies, and
external bodies are confused not because they are representationally incomplete per se but because they
conflate (i.e., con-fuse) what are in fact distinct representational objects, as per IIp16. (I am grateful to an
anonymous referee for pressing me to say something about some of these Ethics passages here.)
41
Here I disagree with, inter alia, Gueroult, Spinoza I, 95, though this difference stems from a larger
difference about how to read Ia4, which I take up shortly.
Given how much weight I will eventually place on this dimension of expressive
plenitude, this point is worth emphasizing. Not every less than fully broad way of con-
ceiving things is confused, mutilated, or false for Spinoza, even if many of them are.
A more general way of seeing this is to recall the expressive character of modes them-
selves. Modes, I claimed above, are incomplete expressions of an attribute. The features
of an attribute that they express are not the only such features that it has. In conceptual
terms, modes are partial ways of conceiving an essence of God. However, Spinoza had
better not think that such incomplete expressions of God’s attributes are mutilated or
false simply in virtue of their incomplete expressive capacity. That line of reasoning
leads to acosmicism, the view that modes are ultimately unreal or illusory for Spinoza.
Although Hegel famously claimed that acosmicism was indeed the logical conse-
quence of Spinoza’s theory, I will argue later that this is (mostly) incorrect.42 Spinoza
has principled reasons for affirming mode plenitude.
If so, then we should resist inferring falsity solely from conceptual or expressive
incompleteness, in which case we also should not infer that an intra-attribute way of
conceiving a mode is false or confused simply from the fact that it is partial or less than
maximal. Indeed, Spinoza’s mode plenitude doctrine is just a way of claiming that
God’s nature is so rich as to be conceived or expressed in infinitely many partial and
incomplete ways, “from the highest degree of perfection to the lowest” (IApp, G II/83),
a point that applies equally well to expressions of a mode within an attribute.
One might also worry that Spinoza’s causal theory precludes the possibility of NC, a
way of conceiving that includes only the essence of a thing. After all, Spinoza claims,
“the cognition of an effect depends on and involves the cognition of its cause” (Ia4).
But if a mode’s NC contains no reference to any causes, and cognition of a mode requires
grasping its cause, how can using NCs ever produce knowledge or understanding, by
Spinoza’s own lights? Answering this concern will also provide more details about this
dimension of plenitude.
First, I do not think Ia4 is meant to be iterative, such that the cognition of an object
requires not only cognizing its cause but also the cause of its cause, the cause of the
cause of its cause, and so forth ad infinitum.43 Spinoza does not apply the axiom in this
way, and he often makes what he takes to be true assertions about objects considered
independently of at least some of their causal histories.44 Those assertions would be
false if Ia4 entails the highly implausible thesis that cognition of one thing requires
cognition of every one of its infinitely many indirect causes. So even if Spinoza rejected
NCs on the basis of Ia4, there will still be infinitely many ways of conceiving a mode
within an attribute short of BC, and most of the interesting conceptual sensitivity we
42
For discussion of Hegel’s charge of acosmicism, see Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza”
and Melamed, “Acosmicism or Weak Individuals?”
43
For helpful discussions, see Wilson, “Spinoza’s Causal Axiom” and Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics,
127–31.
44
See Ip3; Ip25; IIp5–7; IIp16; IIp45; and Vp22. Given Spinoza’s pessimism about our chances of ever
grasping any BCs, we would likely be in a state of perpetual and complete ignorance if Ia4 were iterative.
will encounter turns on the differences between BC and anything narrower than BC,
not NC and something broader.
That sounds a bit defensive; here is a more proactive reply. Presumably, Ia4 applies to
cognition of substances as well as of modes. If so, the causal relations that must be
included in all genuine ways of conceiving things need not be external causal relations.
After all, Spinoza’s God has no external relations, even though God remains genuinely
conceivable for Spinoza. How is this consistent with Ia4? I think Spinoza’s answer is that
while God has no external causes through which God must be conceived, God does
have internal causes, what we might describe as “self-causal” relations. (In a letter to
Tschirnaus, Spinoza states, “I take it that an efficient cause can be both internal as well as
external” (Ep60, G IV/271).) That alone implies that we should not read the word “exter-
nal” into Ia4 if it is not there, especially given Spinoza’s fondness for internal relations.
Now consider the case of a finite mode. Which properties are included in its NC, the
narrowest way of conceiving that mode? Spinoza is somewhat vague here. The closest
description he gives of such intrinsic properties is just what we would expect: he
describes them as the “internal cause [causam internam]” of a mode (CM I.3, G I/241).
That is, modes are, to some non-zero degree, self-caused in the sense that they have
some internal explanatory structure, essence, or power that Spinoza describes in
terms of an internal causal relation.45 But just as substance can be conceived through
its internal relational properties and still satisfy Ia4, so too finite modes can be conceived
through their “internal causes,” their intrinsic structures, and satisfy Ia4.
So far, I have claimed that in addition to being genuinely conceivable under infinitely
many attributes, each mode can also be genuinely and truly conceivable within each
attribute in infinitely many ways—infinities within infinities. More interestingly, we
will see in later chapters that just as Spinoza believes that some metaphysical features
of modes vary depending on which attribute a mode is conceived through, he also
believes that other metaphysical features of a mode vary depending on how that mode
is conceived with respect to its external environment within an attribute.
We have now seen that Spinoza endorses an incredibly rich, multi-axis diversity
alongside his more parsimonious identity theories. One substance expressed by infinitely
many attributes. Each of infinitely many attributes is expressed by infinitely many
modes, and each mode also expresses each of those infinitely many attributes. Each of
the infinitely many modes of substance, in turn, is expressed in infinitely many ways
within each of those infinitely many attributes. Talk about plenitude!46 In the next section,
I will zoom back out to consider what might motivate Spinoza’s commitment to both
parsimony at the fundamental level of substance and plentiful expressive diversity at
the non-fundamental level.
45
See also IIp13L4 for a slightly richer account of this structure in extended terms, although it is still
fairly programmatic.
46
Deleuze identifies what he calls a “second level” of expression in Spinoza (Deleuze, Spinoza et le problème
de l’expression, 10). But if I am correct, there is something like a third level of expression here: the expressions
of expressions of expressions, which corresponds to broad and narrow concepts of modes of substance.
4. The Limits of the PSR

I claimed in the introduction that Spinoza’s explanatory naturalism requires principled
explanations for everything, including general metaphysical features of the world. We
have now encountered one such general feature: ontological parsimony at certain levels
(substance monism, mode identity theory) and ontological plenitude at others (both
within and across attributes). What, if anything, explains Spinoza’s acceptance of both
parsimony and plenitude in this particular configuration? Is there a more general prin-
ciple that explains both commitments? Or was Joachim right to conclude, “We are left
with no rational answer to the question ‘How—on what principle—can Substance, in
spite of its unity, reveal itself in an order of diverse states?’ ”47
One tempting interpretive answer these days is the Principle of Sufficient Reason
(PSR), roughly the thesis that there are no brute facts and that everything can, in prin-
ciple, be explained. More than anyone else, Michael Della Rocca has argued that the
PSR is the “key” to explaining many if not all of Spinoza’s most central views.48 So if
there is a general principle behind Spinoza’s commitment to both identity theories and
plenitude, then the PSR seems like a promising place to look first.
On the parsimony side, Della Rocca has argued that the PSR plays a central role
in Spinoza’s arguments for his identity theories, including substance monism and
mind–body identity. In particular, Della Rocca claims that Spinoza relies on the PSR to
establish what I will characterize as the rationalist reduction:
Rationalist reduction: Necessarily, for all x and y, the existence of some
explanatory grounds for the identity of x and y and the lack of any principled
explanatory grounds for the non-identity of x and y entails the identity of x and y.49
The basic idea of the rationalist reduction is that the PSR is inconsistent with brute or
inexplicable identity and non-identity. According to this very strong version of the
PSR, non-identity supervenes on explanatory differences and all appeals to primitive
non-identity should be rejected on grounds of inexplicability. (Typically the most
salient explanatory grounds for identity and non-identity in the rationalist reduction
will be facts about overall similarity.)
Della Rocca argues that Spinoza relies on the rationalist rejection to help establish
many of his identity theses. According to Della Rocca, Spinoza’s basic pattern of
reasoning is that in the relevant cases, non-identity would be brute or inexplicable;
hence, by the PSR, identity follows. For example, in the case of substance monism, if
there are no non-primitive grounds for distinguishing the thinking substance from the
extended substance, and there are some grounds for identifying them in terms of their
overall similarity (say, their isomorphic causal relations), then the PSR entails the
identity of the thinking and extended substance. Della Rocca thinks Spinoza makes a
47
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 108. 48
Della Rocca, Spinoza, ix.
49
In this formulation, x and y can range quite widely, including over types and tokens of objects, powers
of objects, and relations between objects.
similar move for every case in which Spinoza identifies things or features that others
had taken to be distinct.50
In a similar vein, I have argued previously that the PSR might be used to generate
at least a generic Principle of Ontological Plenitude (POP).51 A generic POP states that
the fullest, or maximal, range of compossible existents exists. Actuality, as it were, is as
filled up as it can be. By this principle of plenitude, if there were an internally consistent
object that did not exist, such nonexistence could be explained only by an incompati-
bility between it and the maximal compossible set of existents. On the other hand, a
positive reason for the existence of anything internally consistent will be the fact that
there is nothing in the maximal series of compossible objects that prevents or excludes
its existence. The fact that there is nothing in the maximally full series preventing its
existence is a positive reason for its existence. Thus, if there is ontological space to be
filled, it will be filled. Why? Because, by reductio, if there were unfilled ontological
space (pace POP), there would be something which had no reason for not existing, but
which nonetheless did not exist. As in the rationalist reduction case, this fact of nonex-
istence would be an unexplained brute fact, something ruled out by Spinoza’s PSR.
Thus, Spinoza’s conclusion would run, from the PSR we have some version of POP. As
Leibniz nicely puts the basic point:
But my principle is: whatever can exist and is compatible with others, exists. For the sole
reason for limiting existence, for all possibles, must be that they are not compatible. So the sole
reason for limitation is that those things should preferably exist which involve the greatest
amount of reality (DSR 105).
These twin drives of the PSR pull in opposite directions, but perhaps not incompatibly
so. Loosely combined, the PSR implies that there is identity when there are no prin-
cipled reasons for diversity, and diversity when there are no principled reasons for
identity. Of course, there would be an incompatibility if there were a case in which
there were no principled reasons for identity or for diversity, or a case with principled
reasons for both identity and diversity. But until an actual example of such a case is
provided, a stout-hearted advocate of the PSR will insist that neither of these scenarios
is possible precisely because of their incompatibility with the PSR.
However, although I agree that the PSR plays a role in Spinoza’s arguments for some
of his particular identity and plenitude theses, I do not think it can do all the explanatory
work Spinoza needs here.52 For one, an over-reliance on the PSR generates a worrisome
50
Although this interpretive strategy occurs repeatedly in Della Rocca’s papers, its most wide-ranging
application is found in Della Rocca, Spinoza.
51
Newlands, “The Harmony of Spinoza and Leibniz,” 70–1.
52
There has been a growing pushback against Della Rocca’s hyper PSR-driven account of Spinoza. In
addition to my own objections (see, for example, Newlands, “Another Kind of Spinozistic Monism”), see di
Poppa, “Spinoza on Causation and Power”; Melamed, “The Sirens of Elea”; and Garber, “Superheroes in the
History of Philosophy.” For Della Rocca’s reply to some of these worries, see Della Rocca, “Interpreting
Spinoza.” For an account of the genesis of some of these PSR-based interpretations of Spinoza, see Laerke,
“Spinoza et le Principe de raison Suffisante.”
epistemic gap. The PSR is not indexed to human intellectual capacity. It is not the
principle that reality is thoroughly intelligible to us, only that it is thoroughly intelli-
gible in principle. Hence, when applying the rationalist reduction to a given case, the
PSR generates only conditionals. If there are no principled reasons for non-identity,
then the thinking and extended substance are identical. But simply because we cannot
fathom any reasons for non-identity, it does not follow that there are no such reasons.53
Unless Spinoza can demonstrate that our rational capacities render intelligibility sim-
pliciter and intelligibility to us coextensive, he cannot rely on the rationalist reduction to
generate non-conditional conclusions. And in light of Spinoza’s pessimism about the
reach of human cognition,54 it is unlikely that Spinoza would accept such a coextensive
thesis. Yet, Spinoza reaches non-conditional conclusions about the identity of the think-
ing and extended substance.55 Therefore, it seems uncharitable to attribute the PSR-based
rationalist reduction argument to Spinoza, as it would fail by Spinoza’s own lights.
A second worry is that the rationalist reduction will too often beg the question
against pluralist opponents. We will see a concrete example of this in chapter three, in
which I argue that Spinoza’s case for the identification of causation, inherence, and
conceiving cannot, on pains of becoming question begging, rest on an assertion of the
rationalist reduction, pace Della Rocca’s account. However, we can already see this
worry by reflecting on the role that the “principled” qualification plays in the rational-
ist reduction.
According to the formula I offered above, some bifurcations are acceptable,
namely those that are principled. But it is hard to see, on neutral grounds, how to
distinguish principled from non-principled cases of bifurcation. For example,
dependence pluralists claim that there is a principled reason to distinguish causation
from inherence, namely in virtue of the fact that they are not coextensive relations.
Some things are causally dependent on others without inhering in them, dependence
pluralists like Leibniz believe. Although Spinoza arguably rejects the distinction
between causation and inherence, it would be unsatisfying for him to reply to Leibniz
that there can be no distinction between causation and inherence because, by the
PSR, that would represent an unprincipled bifurcation. Surely non-coextensiveness
is a very principled reason for distinguishing relations! More generally, according to
the PSR itself, there ought to be a principled explanation of the difference between
principled and non-principled bifurcations, but it is difficult to see what such a general
principled account could look like that does not first assume a verdict on particular
disputes between identity and non-identity theorists.
Even worse, Della Rocca acknowledges that Spinoza treats some cases of non-
identity as explained through themselves, such as the non-identity of the attributes
of thought and extension. That is, sometimes the principled basis for non-identity can
53
Elisabeth of Bohemia makes a similar objection to Descartes’ conceivability argument (E 72, AT 4.2).
54
For example, see IIp24–31.
55
See IIp7s and the next chapter for a fuller discussion of this particular identity thesis.
be self-explanatory.56 But if attribute diversity is sufficiently principled by virtue of

self-explanatory distinctions, we ought to wonder why other cases of non-identity, such
as the non-identity of causation and inherence, could not similarly be explained through
themselves. (And again, were Spinoza to insist without further explanation that some
distinctions are just acceptable while others are not, he would be violating the very
explanatory demands that he complains everyone else fails to respect.) So, as with the
first objection, the PSR-based rationalist reduction does not allow Spinoza to legitim-
ately reach some of his monistic conclusions; therefore, charitable readers should look
elsewhere than the PSR for ways to overcome pluralists’ positions.
A final and more significant concern about over-reliance on the PSR for interpreting
Spinoza is that the PSR fails to generate Spinoza’s particular ontological picture.
I argued in the previous two sections that Spinoza structures his ontology around a
single fundamental thing expressed in infinitely many different ways. Parsimony rules
at the fundamental ontological level, plenitude at the derivative level. One substance,
infinitely many attributes. However, the PSR alone is consistent with an even more
parsimonious alternative: one substance, one attribute. Perhaps even one substance,
one mode. But for Spinoza, attribute and mode plenitude cannot be so quickly sacrificed,
even at the altar of the mighty PSR.57
One might appeal to versions of POP to argue that, by the PSR, there are no
principled reasons for limiting attribute and mode diversity. There are two problems
with this appeal, however. First, the POP supported by the PSR establishes only that
every intrinsically possible element exists. In this context, it entails only that every
possible attribute and every possible mode exists. But why think that the range of pos-
sible attributes and modes is infinitely large, rather than zero, one, or two? To conclude
that Spinoza lacks a satisfying answer is, in effect, to echo the conclusions of Hegel and
other idealist interpreters: Spinoza asserts more attribute and mode diversity than he
can actually defend. As Joachim complains, again echoing Lust,
In his conception of Attributes, Spinoza has attempted to reconcile the absolute unity of Reality
with its absolute fullness of content . . . It will not do, therefore, to conceive [God’s] nature as
exhausted in any one or two or finite number of [attributes] . . . But to the question “How?” we
can find no answer in Spinoza: he merely asserts the fact.58
The infinite plenitude of attributes does appear to be a mere assertion for Spinoza if it is
based on the PSR. But as we will see in the next section, there may be another basis for
56
Admittedly, the distinction between an unprincipled lack of explanation and a principled case of self-
explanation is thin, but Spinoza repeatedly relies on cases of self-explanation to satisfy his explanatory
naturalism. Indeed, were self-explanations ruled out by Spinoza, his explanatory demands would face an
insurmountable regress problem.
57
For an argument, attributed to Samuel Clarke, that the PSR is outright inconsistent with any diversity
for Spinoza, given God’s absolutely necessary nature, see Yenter, “Clarke Against Spinoza on the Manifest
Diversity of the World.”
58
Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, 102–3. For more on this line of objection (including other
versions), see Newlands, “Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza” and “More Recent Idealist Readings of
Spinoza.”
Spinoza’s commitment to attribute plenitude that, if true, might make it more defensible.
Hence, once again on grounds of charity, we should look elsewhere than the PSR for an
account of Spinoza’s plentiful ontology.
A second reason Spinoza needs more than the PSR to generate attribute and mode
diversity is that the rationalist reduction generates attribute diversity only if it also gen-
erates substance diversity. After all, the PSR-based grounds for attribute diversity are
on par with the grounds a substance pluralist could invoke for substance diversity.
Spinoza’s attributes are formally and functionally similar to each other to the same
degree as substances are similar to each other on a substance pluralist’s account. As
I suggested previously, if Spinoza can invoke a self-explanatory basis for distinguishing
attributes it seems at least open to a substance pluralist to do the same with respect to
distinguishing substances. So if the rationalist reduction is consistent with attribute
diversity, it ought to be consistent with substance diversity as well.59
My general concern is that the PSR alone fails to ground the particular identity–
diversity package Spinoza accepts: parsimony at the fundamental level and plenitude
at the derivative level. Of course, the PSR might still be important in Spinoza’s reasoning.
If true, the PSR might even provide Spinoza with powerful resources to defend his
ontology against rivals, as Della Rocca has also argued. But I think we must look else-
where to discern the general grounds of Spinoza’s striking Many-in-the-One ontology.60
5. The Metaphysics of Perfection, Then and Now

Rather than relying on the PSR, Spinoza settles on his particular ontology based on a
twofold view about perfection: (1) the metaphysically perfect world maximizes parsi-
mony at the fundamental level and plenitude at the derivative level and (2) ours is the
metaphysically perfect world. Some readers might wonder if that sentence contains a
typo: “Did he mean to say ‘Leibniz’ instead of ‘Spinoza’ there?” Spinoza is not usually
read as someone who reasons in metaphysics from principles of perfection in the way
Leibniz clearly does.
However, I believe that this interpretive tendency is incorrect. True, Spinoza does
not write about perfection in quite the explicit and ubiquitous ways Leibniz did (if he
had, this would hardly be a novel thesis worth defending!). But I believe that there is
sufficient textual evidence, assembled in the right light, to conclude that Spinoza
59
Somewhat ironically, in recent work Della Rocca appears to accept this conclusion and has begun to
argue that any kind of diversity is inconsistent with the PSR, leading to a form of Parmenidean existence
monism that Della Rocca acknowledges is not Spinoza’s. (This is a theme of his unpublished 2014 Whitehead
Lectures at Harvard University.) But if, by Della Rocca’s own light, Spinoza does not accept what Della Rocca
takes to be the ultimate conclusions of the PSR, that gives us a further reason to doubt that the PSR is playing
the role in Spinoza’s reasoning that Della Rocca once assigned it.
60
I am hardly alone in looking elsewhere. For two other recent searches for the grounds of diversity in
Spinoza, see Melamed, “Why Spinoza is not an Eleatic Monist,” and Hübner, “Spinoza’s Thinking Substance
and the Necessity of Modes.”
reasons in this way. He thinks one particular combination of ontological parsimony

and plenitude is maximally perfect. He then reasons from this optimal satisfaction
to robust conclusions about the ontological structure of the world. That is, Spinoza
treats metaphysical perfection as an explanatory principle. It is because perfection
involves one thing instantiating a multiplicity of states that God, the most perfect
being, exemplifies this structure to such an incredible degree: one thing with infinitely
many diverse states. That might sound overly teleological for Spinoza, but explanatory
claims need not import purpose or ends-directedness. God’s metaphysical perfection
explains the plenitude of divine states in the same non-purposive sense in which, for
example, God’s essence explains God’s existence for Spinoza.
Before unpacking and defending this interpretation further, it is worth noting
that Spinoza is not alone in treating what I am calling “metaphysical perfection” as a
structural measurement of the world’s diversity to its underlying unity.61 For a nearby
seventeenth-century example, this gloss on metaphysical perfection is very much
like what the young Leibniz describes as harmony: “Similarity in variety, that is,
diversity compensated by identity.”62 For Leibniz, this account was inspired in part
by developments in mathematics, especially algebraic geometry, in which highly—
even infinitely—complex figures could be generated by following relatively simple
formulas.63 Leibniz sometimes even describes the mathematical version in quasi-
aesthetic terms:
Harmony and discord consist in the ratio of identity to diversity, for harmony is unity in
multiplicity, and it is the greatest in the case where it is a unity of the greatest number of things
disordered in appearance and reduced, unexpectedly, by some wonderful ratio to the greatest
symmetry (CP 43–5).64
According to these passages, harmony is the ratio of identity to diversity. Leibniz

sometimes loosens the criteria for harmony, appealing to “unity” or “simplicity” or
“similarity” rather than identity as the relevant term. Even so, identity is the limit case
of unity and similarity, such that perfection or harmony would be highest if identity
was combined in the right way with maximal diversity.
61
The contrast with “metaphysical” perfection is some sort of axiological notion of perfection, an alter-
native that Spinoza does reject pace Leibniz.
62
Leibniz, CP 29. Leibniz uses “harmony” in many different ways and contexts. The sort of Leibnizian
harmony I will focus on is the one he uses in his early writings to describe the contours of metaphysical
perfection. For identical formulations made roughly around the same time, see also Ak VI.ii.283, L 150 and
several passages in Elements of Natural Law (esp. Ak VI.i.484). At Ak VI.i.477, he reverses the ordering of
identity and diversity; and at Ak VI.i.479, he refers to diversity that is “reduced to identity.” For an appeal to
similarity, see Ak II.i.164; for simplicity, see DSR 113.
63
Other prominent early modern advocates of such a formula include Malebranche (TNG I.38, I.17–18
and I.24) and Wolff (TN II.6). Indeed, one has to wait until the early Kant for a note of disagreement,
though he admits that this view is quite widespread: “The reason [for not referring to ‘perfection’] is not
that I thought all reality was the same as all perfection, or that perfection consisted in the highest degree of
harmony in one. I have weighty reasons for strongly disagreeing with this widely held opinion” (OPB 134).
64
For further discussions, see Rescher, Leibniz’s Metaphysics of Nature; Rutherford, Leibniz and the
Rational Order of Nature; and Strickland, Leibniz Reinterpreted.
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"Perhaps," he suggested, "monsieur can show his papiers d'identité."
"Although it is somewhat unusual to produce one's credentials on the
doorstep when paying a private visit," replied his lordship, with
unaltered good humour, "I have not the slightest objection. Here is
my passport, here is a permis de séjour granted to me in Paris, here
my visiting-card, and here a quantity of correspondence addressed
to me at the Hôtel Meurice, Paris, at my flat in Piccadilly, London, at
the Marlborough Club, London, and at my brother's house at King's
Denver. Is that sufficiently in order?"
The servant perused the documents carefully, appearing particularly
impressed by the permis de séjour.
"It appears there is some mistake," he murmured dubiously; "if
monsieur will follow me, I will acquaint monsieur le comte."
They disappeared through the folding doors at the back of the hall,
and Bredon was left alone.
"Quite a little boom in Richmonds to-day," he observed, "each of us
more unscrupulous than the last. The occasion obviously calls for a
refined subtlety of method."
After what he judged to be a hectic ten minutes in the count's library,
the servant reappeared, searching for him.
"Monsieur le comte's compliments, and would monsieur step this
way?"
Bredon entered the room with a jaunty step. He had created for
himself the mastery of this situation. The count, a thin, elderly man,
his fingers deeply stained with chemicals, sat, with a perturbed
expression, at his desk. In two arm-chairs sat the two Wimseys.
Bredon noted that, while the Wimsey he had seen in the train (whom
he mentally named Peter I) retained his unruffled smile, Peter II (he
of the Renault) had the flushed and indignant air of an Englishman
affronted. The two men were superficially alike—both fair, lean, and
long-nosed, with the nondescript, inelastic face which predominates
in any assembly of well bred Anglo-Saxons.
"Mr. Bredon," said the count, "I am charmed to have the pleasure of
making your acquaintance, and regret that I must at once call upon
you for a service as singular as it is important. You have presented to
me a letter of introduction from your cousin, Lord Peter Wimsey. Will
you now be good enough to inform me which of these gentlemen he
is?"
Bredon let his glance pass slowly from the one claimant to the other,
meditating what answer would best serve his own ends. One, at any
rate, of the men in this room was a formidable intellect, trained in the
detection of imposture.
"Well?" said Peter II. "Are you going to acknowledge me, Bredon?"
Peter I extracted a cigarette from a silver case. "Your confederate
does not seem very well up in his part," he remarked, with a quiet
smile at Peter II.
"Monsieur le comte," said Bredon, "I regret extremely that I cannot
assist you in the matter. My acquaintance with my cousin, like your
own, has been made and maintained entirely through
correspondence on a subject of common interest. My profession," he
added, "has made me unpopular with my family."
There was a very slight sigh of relief somewhere. The false Wimsey
—whichever he was—had gained a respite. Bredon smiled.
"An excellent move, Mr. Bredon," said Peter I, "but it will hardly
explain——Allow me." He took the letter from the count's hesitating
hand. "It will hardly explain the fact that the ink of this letter of
recommendation, dated three weeks ago, is even now scarcely dry
—though I congratulate you on the very plausible imitation of my
handwriting."
"If you can forge my handwriting," said Peter II, "so can this Mr.
Bredon." He read the letter aloud over his double's shoulder.
"'Monsieur le comte—I have the honour to present to you my friend
and cousin, Mr. Death Bredon, who, I understand, is to be travelling
in your part of France next month. He is very anxious to view your
interesting library. Although a journalist by profession, he really
knows something about books.' I am delighted to learn for the first
time that I have such a cousin. An interviewer's trick, I fancy,
monsieur le comte. Fleet Street appears well informed about our
family names. Possibly it is equally well informed about the object of
my visit to Mon Souci?"
"If," said Bredon boldly, "you refer to the acquisition of the de Rueil
formula for poison gas for the British Government, I can answer for
my own knowledge, though possibly the rest of Fleet Street is less
completely enlightened." He weighed his words carefully now,
warned by his slip. The sharp eyes and detective ability of Peter I
alarmed him far more than the caustic tongue of Peter II.
The count uttered an exclamation of dismay.
"Gentlemen," he said, "one thing is obvious—that there has been
somewhere a disastrous leakage of information. Which of you is the
Lord Peter Wimsey to whom I should entrust the formula I do not
know. Both of you are supplied with papers of identity; both appear
completely instructed in this matter; both of your handwritings
correspond with the letters I have previously received from Lord
Peter, and both of you have offered me the sum agreed upon in
Bank of England notes. In addition, this third gentleman arrives
endowed with an equal facility in handwritings, an introductory letter
surrounded by most suspicious circumstances, and a degree of
acquaintance with this whole matter which alarms me. I can see but
one solution. All of you must remain here at the château while I send
to England for some elucidation of this mystery. To the genuine Lord
Peter I offer my apologies, and assure him that I will endeavour to
make his stay as agreeable as possible. Will this satisfy you? It will?
I am delighted to hear it. My servants will show you to your
bedrooms, and dinner will be at half-past seven."
"It is delightful to think," said Mr. Bredon, as he fingered his glass

and passed it before his nostrils with the air of a connoisseur, "that
whichever of these gentlemen has the right to the name which he
assumes is assured to-night of a truly Olympian satisfaction." His
impudence had returned to him, and he challenged the company
with an air. "Your cellars, monsieur le comte, are as well known
among men endowed with a palate as your talents among men of
science. No eloquence could say more."
The two Lord Peters murmured assent.
"I am the more pleased by your commendation," said the count, "that
it suggests to me a little test which, with your kind co-operation, will, I
think, assist us very much in determining which of you gentlemen is
Lord Peter Wimsey and which his talented impersonator. Is it not
matter of common notoriety that Lord Peter has a palate for wine
almost unequalled in Europe?"
"You flatter me, monsieur le comte," said Peter II modestly.
"I wouldn't like to say unequalled," said Peter I, chiming in like a well-
trained duet; "let's call it fair to middling. Less liable to
misconstruction and all that."
"Your lordship does yourself an injustice," said Bredon, addressing
both men with impartial deference. "The bet which you won from Mr.
Frederick Arbuthnot at the Egotists' Club, when he challenged you to
name the vintage years of seventeen wines blindfold, received its
due prominence in the Evening Wire."
"I was in extra form that night," said Peter I.
"A fluke," laughed Peter II.
"The test I propose, gentlemen, is on similar lines," pursued the
count, "though somewhat less strenuous. There are six courses
ordered for dinner to-night. With each we will drink a different wine,
which my butler shall bring in with the label concealed. You shall
each in turn give me your opinion upon the vintage. By this means
we shall perhaps arrive at something, since the most brilliant forger
—of whom I gather I have at least two at my table to-night—can
scarcely forge a palate for wine. If too hazardous a mixture of wines
should produce a temporary incommodity in the morning, you will, I
feel sure, suffer it gladly for this once in the cause of truth."
The two Wimseys bowed.
"In vino veritas," said Mr. Bredon, with a laugh. He at least was well
seasoned, and foresaw opportunities for himself.
"Accident, and my butler, having placed you at my right hand,
monsieur," went on the count, addressing Peter I, "I will ask you to
begin by pronouncing, as accurately as may be, upon the wine which
you have just drunk."
"That is scarcely a searching ordeal," said the other, with a smile. "I
can say definitely that it is a very pleasant and well-matured Chablis
Moutonne; and, since ten years is an excellent age for a Chablis—a
real Chablis—I should vote for 1916, which was perhaps the best of
the war vintages in that district."
"Have you anything to add to that opinion, monsieur?" enquired the
count, deferentially, of Peter II.
"I wouldn't like to be dogmatic to a year or so," said that gentleman
critically, "but if I must commit myself, don't you know, I should say
1915—decidedly 1915."
The count bowed, and turned to Bredon.
"Perhaps you, too, monsieur, would be interested to give an opinion,"
he suggested, with the exquisite courtesy always shown to the plain
man in the society of experts.
"I'd rather not set a standard which I might not be able to live up to,"
replied Bredon, a little maliciously. "I know that it is 1915, for I
happened to see the label."
Peter II looked a little disconcerted.
"We will arrange matters better in future," said the count. "Pardon
me." He stepped apart for a few moments' conference with the
butler, who presently advanced to remove the oysters and bring in
the soup.
The next candidate for attention arrived swathed to the lip in
damask.
"It is your turn to speak first, monsieur," said the count to Peter II.
"Permit me to offer you an olive to cleanse the palate. No haste, I
beg. Even for the most excellent political ends, good wine must not
be used with disrespect."
The rebuke was not unnecessary, for, after a preliminary sip, Peter II
had taken a deep draught of the heady white richness. Under Peter
I's quizzical eye he wilted quite visibly.
"It is—it is Sauterne," he began, and stopped. Then, gathering
encouragement from Bredon's smile, he said, with more aplomb,
"Château Yquem, 1911—ah! the queen of white wines, sir, as what's-
his-name says." He drained his glass defiantly.
The count's face was a study as he slowly detached his fascinated
gaze from Peter II to fix it on Peter I.
"If I had to be impersonated by somebody," murmured the latter
gently, "it would have been more flattering to have had it undertaken
by a person to whom all white wines were not alike. Well, now, sir,
this admirable vintage is, of course, a Montrachet of—let me see"—
he rolled the wine delicately upon his tongue—"of 1911. And a very
attractive wine it is, though, with all due deference to yourself,
monsieur le comte, I feel that it is perhaps slightly too sweet to
occupy its present place in the menu. True, with this excellent
consommé marmite, a sweetish wine is not altogether out of place,
but, in my own humble opinion, it would have shown to better
advantage with the confitures."
"There, now," said Bredon innocently, "it just shows how one may be
misled. Had not I had the advantage of Lord Peter's expert opinion—
for certainly nobody who could mistake Montrachet for Sauterne has
any claim to the name of Wimsey—I should have pronounced this to
be, not the Montrachet-Aîné, but the Chevalier-Montrachet of the
same year, which is a trifle sweeter. But no doubt, as your lordship
says, drinking it with the soup has caused it to appear sweeter to me
than it actually is."
The count looked sharply at him, but made no comment.
"Have another olive," said Peter I kindly. "You can't judge wine if your
mind is on other flavours."
"Thanks frightfully," said Bredon. "And that reminds me——" He
launched into a rather pointless story about olives, which lasted out
the soup and bridged the interval to the entrance of an exquisitely
cooked sole.
The count's eye followed the pale amber wine rather thoughtfully as
it trilled into the glasses. Bredon raised his in the approved manner
to his nostrils, and his face flushed a little. With the first sip he turned
excitedly to his host.
"Good God, sir——" he began.
The lifted hand cautioned him to silence.
Peter I sipped, inhaled, sipped again, and his brows clouded. Peter II
had by this time apparently abandoned his pretensions. He drank
thirstily, with a beaming smile and a lessening hold upon reality.
"Eh bien, monsieur?" enquired the count gently.
"This," said Peter I, "is certainly hock, and the noblest hock I have
ever tasted, but I must admit that for the moment I cannot precisely
place it."
"No?" said Bredon. His voice was like bean-honey now, sweet and
harsh together. "Nor the other gentleman? And yet I fancy I could
place it within a couple of miles, though it is a wine I had hardly
looked to find in a French cellar at this time. It is hock, as your
lordship says, and at that it is Johannisberger. Not the plebeian
cousin, but the echter Schloss Johannisberger from the castle
vineyard itself. Your lordship must have missed it (to your great loss)
during the war years. My father laid some down the year before he
died, but it appears that the ducal cellars at Denver were less well
furnished."
"I must set about remedying the omission," said the remaining Peter,
with determination.
The poulet was served to the accompaniment of an argument over
the Lafitte, his lordship placing it at 1878, Bredon maintaining it to be
a relic of the glorious 'seventy-fives, slightly over-matured, but both
agreeing as to its great age and noble pedigree.
As to the Clos-Vougeôt, on the other hand, there was complete
agreement; after a tentative suggestion of 1915, it was pronounced
finally by Peter I to belong to the equally admirable though slightly
lighter 1911 crop. The pré-salé was removed amid general applause,
and the dessert was brought in.
"Is it necessary," asked Peter I, with a slight smile in the direction of
Peter II—now happily murmuring, "Damn good wine, damn good
dinner, damn good show"—"is it necessary to prolong this farce any
further?"
"Your lordship will not, surely, refuse to proceed with the
discussion?" cried the count.
"The point is sufficiently made, I fancy."
"But no one will surely ever refuse to discuss wine," said Bredon,
"least of all your lordship, who is so great an authority."
"Not on this," said the other. "Frankly, it is a wine I do not care about.
It is sweet and coarse, qualities that would damn any wine in the
eyes—the mouth, rather—of a connoisseur. Did your excellent father
have this laid down also, Mr. Bredon?"
Bredon shook his head.
"No," he said, "no. Genuine Imperial Tokay is beyond the
opportunities of Grub Street, I fear. Though I agree with you that it is
horribly overrated—with all due deference to yourself, monsieur le
comte."
"In that case," said the count, "we will pass at once to the liqueur. I
admit that I had thought of puzzling these gentlemen with the local
product, but, since one competitor seems to have scratched, it shall
be brandy—the only fitting close to a good wine-list."
In a slightly embarrassing silence the huge, round-bellied balloon
glasses were set upon the table, and the few precious drops poured
gently into each and set lightly swinging to release the bouquet.
"This," said Peter I, charmed again into amiability, "is, indeed, a
wonderful old French brandy. Half a century old, I suppose."
"Your lordship's praise lacks warmth," replied Bredon. "This is the
brandy—the brandy of brandies—the superb—the incomparable—
the true Napoleon. It should be honoured like the emperor it is."
He rose to his feet, his napkin in his hand.
"Sir," said the count, turning to him, "I have on my right a most
admirable judge of wine, but you are unique." He motioned to Pierre,
who solemnly brought forward the empty bottles, unswathed now,
from the humble Chablis to the stately Napoleon, with the imperial
seal blown in the glass. "Every time you have been correct as to
growth and year. There cannot be six men in the world with such a
palate as yours, and I thought that but one of them was an
Englishman. Will you not favour us, this time, with your real name?"
"It doesn't matter what his name is," said Peter I. He rose. "Put up
your hands, all of you. Count, the formula!"
Bredon's hands came up with a jerk, still clutching the napkin. The
white folds spurted flame as his shot struck the other's revolver
cleanly between trigger and barrel, exploding the charge, to the
extreme detriment of the glass chandelier. Peter I stood shaking his
paralysed hand and cursing.
Bredon kept him covered while he cocked a wary eye at Peter II,
who, his rosy visions scattered by the report, seemed struggling
back to aggressiveness.
"Since the entertainment appears to be taking a lively turn,"
observed Bredon, "perhaps you would be so good, count, as to
search these gentlemen for further firearms. Thank you. Now, why
should we not all sit down again and pass the bottle round?"
"You—you are——" growled Peter I.
"Oh, my name is Bredon all right," said the young man cheerfully. "I
loathe aliases. Like another fellow's clothes, you know—never seem
quite to fit. Peter Death Bredon Wimsey—a bit lengthy and all that,
but handy when taken in instalments. I've got a passport and all
those things, too, but I didn't offer them, as their reputation here
seems a little blown upon, so to speak. As regards the formula, I
think I'd better give you my personal cheque for it—all sorts of
people seem able to go about flourishing Bank of England notes.
Personally, I think all this secret diplomacy work is a mistake, but
that's the War Office's pigeon. I suppose we all brought similar
credentials. Yes, I thought so. Some bright person seems to have
sold himself very successfully in two places at once. But you two
must have been having a lively time, each thinking the other was
me."
"My lord," said the count heavily, "these two men are, or were,
Englishmen, I suppose. I do not care to know what Governments
have purchased their treachery. But where they stand, I, alas! stand
too. To our venal and corrupt Republic I, as a Royalist, acknowledge
no allegiance. But it is in my heart that I have agreed to sell my
country to England because of my poverty. Go back to your War
Office and say I will not give you the formula. If war should come
between our countries—which may God avert!—I will be found on
the side of France. That, my lord, is my last word."
Wimsey bowed.
"Sir," said he, "it appears that my mission has, after all, failed. I am
glad of it. This trafficking in destruction is a dirty kind of business
after all. Let us shut the door upon these two, who are neither flesh
nor fowl, and finish the brandy in the library."
THE LEARNED ADVENTURE OF THE
DRAGON'S HEAD
"Uncle Peter!"
"Half a jiff, Gherkins. No, I don't think I'll take the Catullus, Mr.
Ffolliott. After all, thirteen guineas is a bit steep without either the title
or the last folio, what? But you might send me round the Vitruvius and
the Satyricon when they come in; I'd like to have a look at them,
anyhow. Well, old man, what is it?"
"Do come and look at these pictures, Uncle Peter. I'm sure it's an
awfully old book."
Lord Peter Wimsey sighed as he picked his way out of Mr. Ffolliott's
dark back shop, strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of many libraries.
An unexpected outbreak of measles at Mr. Bultridge's excellent
preparatory school, coinciding with the absence of the Duke and
Duchess of Denver on the Continent, had saddled his lordship with
his ten-year-old nephew, Viscount St. George, more commonly
known as Young Jerry, Jerrykins, or Pickled Gherkins. Lord Peter was
not one of those born uncles who delight old nurses by their
fascinating "way with" children. He succeeded, however, in earning
tolerance on honourable terms by treating the young with the same
scrupulous politeness which he extended to their elders. He therefore
prepared to receive Gherkins's discovery with respect, though a
child's taste was not to be trusted, and the book might quite well be
some horror of woolly mezzotints or an inferior modern reprint
adorned with leprous electros. Nothing much better was really to be
expected from the "cheap shelf" exposed to the dust of the street.
"Uncle! there's such a funny man here, with a great long nose and
ears and a tail and dogs' heads all over his body. Monstrum hoc
Cracoviæ—that's a monster, isn't it? I should jolly well think it was.
What's Cracoviæ, Uncle Peter?"
"Oh," said Lord Peter, greatly relieved, "the Cracow monster?" A
portrait of that distressing infant certainly argued a respectable
antiquity. "Let's have a look. Quite right, it's a very old book—
Munster's Cosmographia Universalis. I'm glad you know good stuff
when you see it, Gherkins. What's the Cosmographia doing out here,
Mr. Ffolliott, at five bob?"
"Well, my lord," said the bookseller, who had followed his customers
to the door, "it's in a very bad state, you see; covers loose and nearly
all the double-page maps missing. It came in a few weeks ago—
dumped in with a collection we bought from a gentleman in Norfolk—
you'll find his name in it—Dr. Conyers of Yelsall Manor. Of course, we
might keep it and try to make up a complete copy when we get
another example. But it's rather out of our line, as you know, classical
authors being our speciality. So we just put it out to go for what it
would fetch in the status quo, as you might say."
"Oh, look!" broke in Gherkins. "Here's a picture of a man being
chopped up in little bits. What does it say about it?"
"I thought you could read Latin."
"Well, but it's all full of sort of pothooks. What do they mean?"
"They're just contractions," said Lord Peter patiently. "'Solent quoque
hujus insulæ cultores'—It is the custom of the dwellers in this island,
when they see their parents stricken in years and of no further use, to
take them down into the market-place and sell them to the cannibals,
who kill them and eat them for food. This they do also with younger
persons when they fall into any desperate sickness."
"Ha, ha!" said Mr. Ffolliott. "Rather sharp practice on the poor
cannibals. They never got anything but tough old joints or diseased
meat, eh?"
"The inhabitants seem to have had thoroughly advanced notions of
business," agreed his lordship.
The viscount was enthralled.
"I do like this book," he said; "could I buy it out of my pocket-money,
please?"
"Another problem for uncles," thought Lord Peter, rapidly ransacking
his recollections of the Cosmographia to determine whether any of its
illustrations were indelicate; for he knew the duchess to be strait-
laced. On consideration, he could only remember one that was
dubious, and there was a sporting chance that the duchess might fail
to light upon it.
"Well," he said judicially, "in your place, Gherkins, I should be inclined
to buy it. It's in a bad state, as Mr. Ffolliott has honourably told you—
otherwise, of course, it would be exceedingly valuable; but, apart
from the lost pages, it's a very nice clean copy, and certainly worth
five shillings to you, if you think of starting a collection."
Till that moment, the viscount had obviously been more impressed by
the cannibals than by the state of the margins, but the idea of figuring
next term at Mr. Bultridge's as a collector of rare editions had
undeniable charm.
"None of the other fellows collect books," he said; "they collect
stamps, mostly. I think stamps are rather ordinary, don't you, Uncle
Peter? I was rather thinking of giving up stamps. Mr. Porter, who
takes us for history, has got a lot of books like yours, and he is a
splendid man at footer."
Rightly interpreting this reference to Mr. Porter, Lord Peter gave it as
his opinion that book-collecting could be a perfectly manly pursuit.
Girls, he said, practically never took it up, because it meant so much
learning about dates and type-faces and other technicalities which
called for a masculine brain.
"Besides," he added, "it's a very interesting book in itself, you know.
Well worth dipping into."
"I'll take it, please," said the viscount, blushing a little at transacting so
important and expensive a piece of business; for the duchess did not
encourage lavish spending by little boys, and was strict in the matter
of allowances.
Mr. Ffolliott bowed, and took the Cosmographia away to wrap it up.
"Are you all right for cash?" enquired Lord Peter discreetly. "Or can I
be of temporary assistance?"
"No, thank you, uncle; I've got Aunt Mary's half-crown and four
shillings of my pocket-money, because, you see, with the measles
happening, we didn't have our dormitory spread, and I was saving up
for that."
The business being settled in this gentlemanly manner, and the
budding bibliophile taking personal and immediate charge of the
stout, square volume, a taxi was chartered which, in due course of
traffic delays, brought the Cosmographia to 110A Piccadilly.
"And who, Bunter, is Mr. Wilberforce Pope?"

"I do not think we know the gentleman, my lord. He is asking to see
your lordship for a few minutes on business."
"He probably wants me to find a lost dog for his maiden aunt. What it
is to have acquired a reputation as a sleuth! Show him in. Gherkins, if
this good gentleman's business turns out to be private, you'd better
retire into the dining-room."
"Yes, Uncle Peter," said the viscount dutifully. He was extended on
his stomach on the library hearthrug, laboriously picking his way
through the more exciting-looking bits of the Cosmographia, with the
aid of Messrs. Lewis & Short, whose monumental compilation he had
hitherto looked upon as a barbarous invention for the annoyance of
upper forms.
Mr. Wilberforce Pope turned out to be a rather plump, fair gentleman
in the late thirties, with a prematurely bald forehead, horn-rimmed
spectacles, and an engaging manner.
"You will excuse my intrusion, won't you?" he began. "I'm sure you
must think me a terrible nuisance. But I wormed your name and
address out of Mr. Ffolliott. Not his fault, really. You won't blame him,
will you? I positively badgered the poor man. Sat down on his
doorstep and refused to go, though the boy was putting up the
shutters. I'm afraid you will think me very silly when you know what
it's all about. But you really mustn't hold poor Mr. Ffolliott responsible,
now, will you?"
"Not at all," said his lordship. "I mean, I'm charmed and all that sort of
thing. Something I can do for you about books? You're a collector,
perhaps? Will you have a drink or anything?"
"Well, no," said Mr. Pope, with a faint giggle. "No, not exactly a
collector. Thank you very much, just a spot—no, no, literally a spot.
Thank you; no"—he glanced round the bookshelves, with their rows
of rich old leather bindings—"certainly not a collector. But I happen to
be er, interested—sentimentally interested—in a purchase you made
yesterday. Really, such a very small matter. You will think it foolish.
But I am told you are the present owner of a copy of Munster's
Cosmographia, which used to belong to my uncle, Dr. Conyers."
Gherkins looked up suddenly, seeing that the conversation had a
personal interest for him.
"Well, that's not quite correct," said Wimsey. "I was there at the time,
but the actual purchaser is my nephew. Gerald, Mr. Pope is interested
in your Cosmographia. My nephew, Lord St. George."
"How do you do, young man," said Mr. Pope affably. "I see that the
collecting spirit runs in the family. A great Latin scholar, too, I expect,
eh? Ready to decline jusjurandum with the best of us? Ha, ha! And
what are you going to do when you grow up? Be Lord Chancellor,
eh? Now, I bet you think you'd rather be an engine-driver, what,
what?"
"No, thank you," said the viscount, with aloofness.
"What, not an engine-driver? Well, now, I want you to be a real
business man this time. Put through a book deal, you know. Your
uncle will see I offer you a fair price, what? Ha, ha! Now, you see, that
picture-book of yours has a great value for me that it wouldn't have
for anybody else. When I was a little boy of your age it was one of my
very greatest joys. I used to have it to look at on Sundays. Ah, dear!
the happy hours I used to spend with those quaint old engravings,
and the funny old maps with the ships and salamanders and 'Hic
dracones'—you know what that means, I dare say. What does it
mean?"
"Here are dragons," said the viscount, unwillingly but still politely.
"Quite right. I knew you were a scholar."
"It's a very attractive book," said Lord Peter. "My nephew was quite
entranced by the famous Cracow monster."
"Ah yes—a glorious monster, isn't it?" agreed Mr. Pope, with
enthusiasm. "Many's the time I've fancied myself as Sir Lancelot or
somebody on a white war horse, charging that monster, lance in rest,
with the captive princess cheering me on. Ah! childhood! You're living
the happiest days of your life, young man. You won't believe me, but
you are."
"Now what is it exactly you want my nephew to do?" enquired Lord
Peter a little sharply.
"Quite right, quite right. Well now, you know, my uncle, Dr. Conyers,
sold his library a few months ago. I was abroad at the time, and it was
only yesterday, when I went down to Yelsall on a visit, that I learnt the
dear old book had gone with the rest. I can't tell you how distressed I
was. I know it's not valuable—a great many pages missing and all
that—but I can't bear to think of its being gone. So, purely from
sentimental reasons, as I said, I hurried off to Ffolliott's to see if I
could get it back. I was quite upset to find I was too late, and gave
poor Mr. Ffolliott no peace till he told me the name of the purchaser.
Now, you see, Lord St. George, I'm here to make you an offer for the
book. Come, now, double what you gave for it. That's a good offer,
isn't it, Lord Peter? Ha, ha! And you will be doing me a very great
kindness as well."
Viscount St. George looked rather distressed, and turned appealingly
to his uncle.
"Well, Gerald," said Lord Peter, "it's your affair, you know. What do
you say?"
The viscount stood first on one leg and then on the other. The career
of a book-collector evidently had its problems, like other careers.
"If you please, Uncle Peter," he said, with embarrassment, "may I
whisper?"
"It's not usually considered the thing to whisper, Gherkins, but you
could ask Mr. Pope for time to consider his offer. Or you could say
you would prefer to consult me first. That would be quite in order."
"Then, if you don't mind, Mr. Pope, I should like to consult my uncle
first."
"Certainly, certainly; ha, ha!" said Mr. Pope. "Very prudent to consult a
collector of greater experience, what? Ah! the younger generation,
eh, Lord Peter? Regular little business men already."
"Excuse us, then, for one moment," said Lord Peter, and drew his
nephew into the dining-room.
"I say, Uncle Peter," said the collector breathlessly, when the door
was shut, "need I give him my book? I don't think he's a very nice
man. I hate people who ask you to decline nouns for them."
"Certainly you needn't, Gherkins, if you don't want to. The book is
yours, and you've a right to it."
"What would you do, uncle?"
Before replying, Lord Peter, in the most surprising manner, tiptoed
gently to the door which communicated with the library and flung it
suddenly open, in time to catch Mr. Pope kneeling on the hearthrug
intently turning over the pages of the coveted volume, which lay as
the owner had left it. He started to his feet in a flurried manner as the
door opened.
"Do help yourself, Mr. Pope, won't you?" cried Lord Peter hospitably,
and closed the door again.
"What is it, Uncle Peter?"
"If you want my advice, Gherkins, I should be rather careful how you
had any dealings with Mr. Pope. I don't think he's telling the truth. He
called those wood-cuts engravings—though, of course, that may be
just his ignorance. But I can't believe that he spent all his childhood's
Sunday afternoons studying those maps and picking out the dragons
in them, because, as you may have noticed for yourself, old Munster
put very few dragons into his maps. They're mostly just plain maps—
a bit queer to our ideas of geography, but perfectly straight-forward.
That was why I brought in the Cracow monster, and, you see, he
thought it was some sort of dragon."
"Oh, I say, uncle! So you said that on purpose!"
"If Mr. Pope wants the Cosmographia, it's for some reason he doesn't
want to tell us about. And, that being so, I wouldn't be in too big a
hurry to sell, if the book were mine. See?"
"Do you mean there's something frightfully valuable about the book,
which we don't know?"
"Possibly."
"How exciting! It's just like a story in the Boys' Friend Library. What
am I to say to him, uncle?"
"Well, in your place I wouldn't be dramatic or anything. I'd just say
you've considered the matter, and you've taken a fancy to the book
and have decided not to sell. You thank him for his offer, of course."
"Yes—er, won't you say it for me, uncle?"
"I think it would look better if you did it yourself."
"Yes, perhaps it would. Will he be very cross?"
"Possibly," said Lord Peter, "but, if he is, he won't let on. Ready?"
The consulting committee accordingly returned to the library. Mr.
Pope had prudently retired from the hearthrug and was examining a
distant bookcase.
"Thank you very much for your offer, Mr. Pope," said the viscount,
striding stoutly up to him, "but I have considered it, and I have taken a
—a—a fancy for the book and decided not to sell."
"Sorry and all that," put in Lord Peter, "but my nephew's adamant
about it. No, it isn't the price; he wants the book. Wish I could oblige
you, but it isn't in my hands. Won't you take something else before
you go? Really? Ring the bell, Gherkins. My man will see you to the
lift. Good evening."
When the visitor had gone, Lord Peter returned and thoughtfully
picked up the book.
"We were awful idiots to leave him with it, Gherkins, even for a
moment. Luckily, there's no harm done."
"You don't think he found out anything while we were away, do you,
uncle?" gasped Gherkins, open-eyed.
"I'm sure he didn't."
"Why?"
"He offered me fifty pounds for it on the way to the door. Gave the
game away. H'm! Bunter."
"My lord?"
"Put this book in the safe and bring me back the keys. And you'd
better set all the burglar alarms when you lock up."
"Oo—er!" said Viscount St. George.
On the third morning after the visit of Mr. Wilberforce Pope, the
viscount was seated at a very late breakfast in his uncle's flat, after
the most glorious and soul-satisfying night that ever boy experienced.
He was almost too excited to eat the kidneys and bacon placed
before him by Bunter, whose usual impeccable manner was not in the
least impaired by a rapidly swelling and blackening eye.
It was about two in the morning that Gherkins—who had not slept
very well, owing to too lavish and grown-up a dinner and theatre the
evening before—became aware of a stealthy sound somewhere in
the direction of the fire-escape. He had got out of bed and crept very
softly into Lord Peter's room and woken him up. He had said: "Uncle
Peter, I'm sure there's burglars on the fire-escape." And Uncle Peter,
instead of saying, "Nonsense, Gherkins, hurry up and get back to
bed," had sat up and listened and said: "By Jove, Gherkins, I believe
you're right." And had sent Gherkins to call Bunter. And on his return,
Gherkins, who had always regarded his uncle as a very top-hatted
sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an
undeniable automatic pistol.
It was at this point that Lord Peter was apotheosed from the state of
Quite Decent Uncle to that of Glorified Uncle. He said:
"Look here, Gherkins, we don't know how many of these blighters
there'll be, so you must be jolly smart and do anything I say sharp, on
the word of command—even if I have to say 'Scoot.' Promise?"
Gherkins promised, with his heart thumping, and they sat waiting in
the dark, till suddenly a little electric bell rang sharply just over the
head of Lord Peter's bed and a green light shone out.
"The library window," said his lordship, promptly silencing the bell by
turning a switch. "If they heard, they may think better of it. We'll give
them a few minutes."
They gave them five minutes, and then crept very quietly down the
passage.
"Go round by the dining-room, Bunter," said his lordship; "they may
bolt that way."
With infinite precaution, he unlocked and opened the library door, and
Gherkins noticed how silently the locks moved.
A circle of light from an electric torch was moving slowly along the
bookshelves. The burglars had obviously heard nothing of the
counter-attack. Indeed, they seemed to have troubles enough of their
own to keep their attention occupied. As his eyes grew accustomed
to the dim light, Gherkins made out that one man was standing
holding the torch, while the other took down and examined the books.
It was fascinating to watch his apparently disembodied hands move
along the shelves in the torch-light.
The men muttered discontentedly. Obviously the job was proving a
harder one than they had bargained for. The habit of ancient authors
of abbreviating the titles on the backs of their volumes, or leaving
them completely untitled, made things extremely awkward. From time
to time the man with the torch extended his hand into the light. It held
a piece of paper, which they anxiously compared with the title-page of

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3.1 The Essences of Substance 123

1. Spinoza Studies Today

and philosophical naturalism can provide important contributions to contemporary

more innocuous-looking uses of expressions like “conceived as” or “insofar as it is

If true, one obvious implication of Spinoza’s substance monism is that finite

3.1 The Nature of Attributes, Modes, and Expressing

“characterize” literally: attributes provide substances with a character, a nature.21 Or, if

seamlessly between expression as metaphysical characterizing and expression as

3.2 Intra-Attribute Mode Plenitude

4. The Limits of the PSR

be self-explanatory.56 But if attribute diversity is sufficiently principled by virtue of

5. The Metaphysics of Perfection, Then and Now

reasons in this way. He thinks one particular combination of ontological parsimony

According to these passages, harmony is the ratio of identity to diversity. Leibniz

"It is delightful to think," said Mr. Bredon, as he fingered his glass

"And who, Bunter, is Mr. Wilberforce Pope?"

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