spinoza's ethics, prop xxxiii
Prop XXXIII. Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.
[…]
I confess, that the theory which subjects all things to the will of an indifferent deity, and asserts that they are dependent on his fiat, is less far from the truth than the theory of those, who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good. For these latter persons seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God in acting looks to as an exemplar, or which he aims at as a definite goal. This is only another name for subjecting God to the dominion of destiny, an utter absurdity in respect to God, whom we have shown to be the first and only free cause of the essence of all things and also of their existence. I need, therefore, spend no more time in refuting such wild theories.
Spinoza, the Ethics, Concerning God, Proposition XXXIII and accompanying note. (Translation by R.H.M Elwes)
What’s at stake in the assertion that things could not be any other way than how they are? To imagine the world as one possibility among others is to foreground it as a sort of positive “shape” standing out against the background or “negative space” of pure possibility. When we eliminate the background, the world loses its shape; it has no more edges or absolute boundaries. Moreover, I must admit that I am “within” this world, or that I am an integral and inextricable part of it, and that it is no more possible for me to step outside of it and see it from afar than it is for me to step outside of my own body. Or if I do see it from afar, then I am precisely that world gazing upon itself.
As the illusion of background recedes, what was formerly the foreground hardens -- infinitely, absolutely. To feel the force of this, it is perhaps not ridiculous to try the following: grasp any small object and consider that it would have been impossible for this object to be any different than it is right now. If it is scratched or dented, every scratch and every dent is as much an integral and inevitable part of the universe as the law of gravity itself. If it is painted, it could not have been painted any other color. While Spinoza may be perfectly at home with such meditations, the insistence of the question of why (why these dents and scratches, but no others? why this color and not another? why something instead of nothing?) may increase in direct proportion to the petrifaction of the existent such that, at the limit, the question becomes the endlessly permeable material from the which the world’s inevitability has been fashioned.
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Good stuff. I note two things. First, that Spinoza admits that God will seem somewhat "indifferent" on this view. So he may not care very much about the scratches on your small object. He loves all things great and small, let us say, scratched or dented makes no difference to Him.
This offers a space of quite ordinary freedom, just as the governments of totalitarian societies, in so far as these obtain, can't control everything in the sense of every last little detail, while at the same time being in charge of the whole show. It's the cheap victory of the dictator to announce that he allowed even your resistance to happen, I know, but it is also the infinite generosity of God not to notice that you masturbate, or whatever you do. God is watching over you; he is not watching you.
Second, when I pick up this small object and behold its dents and scratches it is, indeed, impossible that it is otherwise, assuming it is thus. The question is whether it makes sense to say "would have been" here. It is (only) necessary that the actual be possible.
Would have been? When?
Spinoza is here talking about the radical irrelevance of "would have been", since God is outside of the temporality that allows us to think, say, "Tsk, tsk, this scratch could have been avoided." Yes it "could have been", in some sense, but it is, in exactly that sense (on the precise logic of that sense) "too late", and God simply has no time for that sort of trivial shit.
I think (I'm told) there is a deep affinity between Deleuze and Spinoza on precisely this point, which appears in the former's elbaoration of "the virtual".
(PS, I always blush at reading your kind words about my blog. Thanks.)
Thanks, as always, for your thoughts, Thomas.
While I agree that, in Spinoza's view, God doesn't care about the dents and scratches, I think it's because he doesn't care about them as dents and scratches (imperfections). Looked at as a whole, being is infinite, eternal, indivisible, and good. Moreover, because this whole encompasses what we perceive in the form of a temporal unfolding, it's important not only that things are the way they are, but that they could not have been otherwise.
Then there is, I think, another sense in which the "could have been" is anything but irrelevant. I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, but my intuition is that it has something to do with possibility and the collapse of foreground/background distinctions - if something could have been different, then what exists right now is still only one possiblity among many. You say that "it is (only) necessary that the actual be possible", but I think Spinoza asserts the opposite. The actual needn't be grounded in possibility or anything at all other than itself (or God).
Suppose the object is red and we say, "This object could have been blue." I want to say that all we ever mean by this is, "This object may yet be blue," and there is nothing in that sort of possibility to contradict Spinoza. But since God is looking at being "as a whole", it does not make sense to ask, "What colour does God think it is?" meaning, "What colour is it necessarily?" And this tells us two things. (1) Colour does not participate in eternity (colour cannot be seen sub specie aeternitatis) and (2) colours are not necessary (just like dents and scratches). One simple way to notice the contingency (non-necessity) of colour is to paint an object (i.e., colour it, not draw it). What God knows about the object you have just painted is indifferent to the change you have made.
As always, my point here isn't especially sophisticated, but nor (I hope) is God. "What exists right now is still only one possiblity among many," you say. I agree completely. Tomorrow will bring other possibilities. But what is happening right now (in this moment) is happening the only way it can.
This bears one of my favourite aphorisms (among the ones I tell myself I came up with on my own). God is doing all he can. A sort of response to the theodicy problem.
Hmmm . . . I think you may have misunderstood me (or I may have been unclear). Although I did say "what exists right now is still only one possibility among many", I presented it as the consequence of "if something could have been different." Spinoza states that things could not have been different; hence, I think Spinoza's claim is the opposite of yours -- the world isn't one possiblity among many. The actual is, so to speak, "ontologically prior" to possibility. In this sense, then, I may be able to get away with saying that, in Spinoza's view, God is very much concerned with color of the object; what he doesn't care about is whether or not we like it (i.e., that we say "it could have been different" is a consequence of our limited understanding).
Thanks for this discussion, Jay. I think you're right that there is something I've misunderstood (my Spinoza is virtually defunct). Looking back at the original post, I think you're definitely on to something about the relative hardness of the material which becomes "the question".
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