Everything in Its Right Place

Scholarship in the history of philosophy can take many wrong turns, many of which can be induced by professional pressures. New cutting-edge scholarship is supposed to be creative and original. This pushes historians of philosophy to formulate creative and original but sometimes utterly implausible interpretations. Another common misstep involves charity. Interpretation requires us to assume, insofar as we can, that the figure we are interpreting is reasonable. But it sometimes appears that the profession has misunderstood the nature of interpretative charity and thinks that the job of the historian of philosophy is to rescue the historical figure from error at any cost. This can produce bizarre and unnatural interpretations.But perhaps the single most common failing among historians of philosophy is to lose touch with the heart and soul of the philosopher being studied. This is especially common when they're studying a philosopher whose big ideas are well expressed and subsequently widely discussed. Instead of making yet another contribution to that discussion, scholars often take on under-discussed issues on the margins. There is nothing very wrong with this. Philosophical research is a cooperative enterprise, and small contributions can eventually add up to big ones. But focusing exclusively on the small game at the expense of the big can eventually lead to a desiccated and distorted picture of a philosopher being reflected in the scholarly literature. In many cases, if contemporary scholarship were the only exposure we had to a historically important philosopher's ideas—and thankfully we have, in most cases, the primary texts—we would probably wonder why the philosopher was being discussed at all. All of these flaws can be seen as symptoms of the professionalization of philosophy in general and the history of philosophy in particular.Joseph Almog's recent book on Spinoza, Everything in Its Right Place: Spinoza and Life by the Light of Nature, has none of these flaws of professionalization. He writes not as a professional historian of philosophy but as a passionate seeker after truth who has found, in Spinoza, a like-minded compatriot. His approach has many virtues. The book fairly pulsates with the energy and excitement of discovery and philosophical wonder. Big-picture questions are front and center. And yet the book has serious flaws that make you realize that the norms of professional scholarship are on balance good things, despite the dangers that some of them might pose.These flaws are principally methodological. What is Almog's methodology? First of all, he self-consciously avoids Spinoza's own terminology, preferring instead to explicate Spinoza's ideas in “the vernacular.” This impulse is laudable. Too many scholars bandy about Spinozistic terminology and casually cite definitions, axioms, and demonstration by number alone without elaboration. This can make them resemble prisoners who have lived together for so long in a single cell that they can crack each other up merely by citing, for example, joke #12, in lieu of actually telling the joke. It's refreshing to read something about Spinoza that doesn't fall prey to such temptation.But Almog goes both too far and not far enough. He goes too far by eschewing the text itself as well as Spinoza's terminology. He writes, “But my own project is not to presuppose what Spinoza says in the Ethics using ‘substance’ and ‘attribute’ and ‘mode’ and ‘essence’ and ‘idea’ and then derive a picture-model(s) from this, as if doing model theory, interpreting his axioms/definitions and looking for possible models. Not at all. I start with the intended model and develop it in ordinary language” (22). In keeping with this plan, Almog rarely tries to show that his interpretation coheres with the text. How can an interpretation of a historical figure (or anyone really) not presuppose the text? What possible reason could we have for thinking that what results is an interpretation rather than some new independent bit of philosophy? If he won't justify his interpretation by reference to the text, what does justify it? He says that rather than formulating arguments, you can simply “sit and wait for Spinoza's subject matter—the nature of Nature and all that is in it—to open up before you” (128). I have to confess to being skeptical that this is an effective method for the interpretation of a historical figure.At the same time, Almog doesn't go far enough. It would be nice to read a work on Spinoza that explained things in simple language unencumbered by jargon. But while Almog's book is relatively unencumbered by Spinoza's jargon, it is not, by any means, genuinely jargon-free. Apart from his liberal, not to say random, use of hyphens (for example, “Spinoza's description-of-nature” [4]), there are many passages that fail to live up to Almog's ambition to write in simple ordinary language: “As each new singularity, each new local being, arises by symmetry break, what sustains the transformative processes are the Nature-invariants. Every being—simply as such—has, in order to come into being, to be a development of the Ur-being” (43). I'm not sure such prose marks much of an advance, if any, over Spinoza's own.Almog's suspicion of argument and his self-professed admiration for “intuitions” and “gestalts” (vii)1 become troublesome when his interpretation is at its most provocative. For example, he says of Spinoza's argument for the claim that it pertains to the nature of a substance to exist (that is, substances are necessary beings) that it is a logical truth (39).What could he mean by this? Spinoza's argument for the claim depends on four axioms and three definitions.2 The axioms are (1) everything is either in itself or in another, (2) the idea of an effect involves and depends upon the idea of its cause, (3) things that have nothing in common cannot be understood through one another, and (4) a true idea must agree with its object. The definitions are (1) something is self-caused just in case it pertains to its nature to exist, (2) something is a substance just in case it is in itself and conceived through itself, and (3) something is a mode just in case it is in another through which it is conceived.I suppose that one could insist that all of the above are logical truths and so 1p7 is a logical truth. But that is not Almog's approach. Instead, in a footnote to his claim that the necessary existence of substance is a logical truth, he reminds us that he is ignoring Spinoza's arguments for his claims: “I ignore Spinoza's proof theory” (128n10). Instead, he declares that it is an axiom.It is a bit odd that Almog justifies his calling it an axiom by defiantly reiterating his commitment to ignoring Spinoza's own words as there is a textual basis for such a claim. Spinoza himself says in 1p8s2 that 1p7 is more truly an axiom than a theorem, and he only attempts to prove it because he expects his readers to be confused about the true nature of substance. But this alone does not make it a logical truth. There are many axioms in the Ethics that no one could reasonably regard as logical truths. “We feel a certain body is affected in many ways” (2a4). “We neither feel nor perceive any singular things except bodies and modes of thinking” (2a5). “Each body moves now more slowly, now more quickly” (a2′). So observing that Spinoza thinks that 1p7 ought to be counted as an axiom tells us nothing about its logical status. Why does Almog think it is a logical truth? He doesn't tell us. Unfortunately, this reticence is typical of Almog's efforts here.Despite my reservations about Almog's methodology, I must confess that I did find it rewarding to read the book. Almog paints with a broad brush. A picture emerges. Certain doctrines are highlighted and abstracted away from possibly distracting and irrelevant detail. Do these doctrines have a genuinely Spinozistic basis? Are the details lost in the process of abstraction essential or are they ultimately unimportant? My own experience of thinking about such questions was that it helped me to see Spinoza in a new light or at least opened up new pathways to understanding his philosophy, and I expect many readers would experience similar benefits.That the book has such value is in no way in tension with my criticisms of its methodology. Of course, “intuitions” and “gestalts” can be useful in the process of philosophy and interpretation. But surely they are not enough, and it is necessary to move on to the difficult work of defending them. It would be unfair to say that Almog falls short in this respect. Rather, he doesn't even try

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