{"id":215,"date":"2010-08-01T11:38:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T16:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/schizosoph.wordpress.com\/?p=215"},"modified":"2010-08-01T11:38:19","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T16:38:19","slug":"eternity-and-duration-in-spinoza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffreyabell.net\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"Eternity and Duration in Spinoza"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the context of Spinoza\u2019s famous letter to Lodewijk Meyer (Letter 12) where Spinoza lays forth the differences, as he sees it, between the infinite and the finite, substance and modes, Spinoza makes an important distinction between eternity and duration:<\/p>\n

The difference between Eternity and Duration arises from this. For it is only of Modes that we can explain the existence by Duration. But [we can explain the existence] of Substance by Eternity, i.e., the infinite enjoyment of existing, or (in bad Latin) of being.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This letter is important for many reasons, but it helps to make sense of Spinoza\u2019s ethical concerns that were covered in an earlier post (here<\/a>). As we saw, Spinoza\u2019s concern was to overcome misery and suffering, and to do so, as he ended the first paragraph of TIE, by determining whether \u2018there was something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity.\u2019 Now we find Spinoza equating substance both with eternity and \u2018the infinite enjoyment of existing,\u2019 or being [I resist here the temptation to argue for Spinoza as a precursor to Heidegger\u2019s understanding of the disclosedness of being as the temporalization of the temporal]. For this reason, among many others, this letter serves as an important bridge between the TIE and the Ethics<\/em>. In particular, what has caused so many commentators fits in their attempts to understand the final half of Part 5 of the Ethics is that our singular mind itself seems to be understood to be both eternal and unchanging and becomes increasingly eternal as it knows more of God. Among the many propositions of Part 5 that cause problems is P23: \u2018The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal.\u2019 To resolve this difficulty it is important to differentiate between the something of the mind that remains and the mind that Spinoza defines as being nothing but the idea of the body, and hence the mind that would be destroyed with the body. With this differentiation we bring into play the eternity\/duration distinction. Thus the Demonstration to P23 reads:<\/p>\n

In God there is necessarily a concept, or idea, which expresses the essence of the human Body (by P22), an idea, therefore, which is necessarily something that pertains to the essence of the human mind (by 2P13). But we do not attribute to the human Mind any duration that can be defined by time, except insofar as it expresses the actual existence of the Body, which is explained by duration, and can be defined by time, i.e. (by 2P8C), we do not attribute duration to it except while the Body endures. However, since what is conceived, with a certain eternal necessity, through God\u2019s essence itself (by P22) is nevertheless something, this something that pertains to the essence of the Mind will necessarily be eternal, q.e.d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To restate this drawing from earlier posts<\/a>, the human Mind that is eternal is not the determinate, identifiable mind, but rather the immanent condition for the possibility of such a determinate identification; it is, in short, the infinite power of self-ordering becoming (the \u2018infinite enjoyment of existing\u2019) that allows for the possibility of determinate, singular bodies, and for the determinate singular minds that are the ideas of these bodies. We can also clarify another of Spinoza\u2019s late propositions: \u2018He who has a Body capable of a great many things has a Mind whose greatest part is eternal.\u2019 Following from Spinoza\u2019s claim, discussed in an earlier post, that \u2018God\u2019s power is his essence\u2019 (1P34), namely the infinite power and enjoyment of existing, we can see that the more one is \u2018capable of a great many things\u2019 with one\u2019s body, and hence the less one needs to select against differences, then the more one expresses God\u2019s power and can embrace and affirm the coming into being of other, determinate identities. Much as a political State in Spinoza\u2019s mind is strengthened by allowing for the freedom to philosophize since this freedom better facilitates the possibility of allowing for the immanent order of nature (or God) to become determinate and known, similarly for Spinoza the more one is able to do with one\u2019s body, the more one allows for the possibility that the order immanent to self-ordering becoming can become known and determinate. So when Deleuze asks the question, \u201cwhat can a body do?\u201d he too is tapping into the heart of Spinoza\u2019s ethical concerns.<\/p>\n

But how does all this help us in overcoming our attachment to things that are \u2018liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess\u2019? If I were to add biking and swimming to my regular runs and become, like some of my good friends, a triathlete, would I become more eternal? The short answer to this question is no. A full answer would entail returning to Letter 12 and to the discussion of the difference between substance and modes. But to end this post with a few suggestions, and to recall the notion of Deleuzian supervenience sketched in an earlier post, it would be a mistake for Spinoza if we were to equate the eternity with the precise, determinate activities of the body. This would be to confuse modes with substance, and hence not rightly understand substance; or it would be to confuse the axiomatic with the problematic upon which the axiomatic supervenes, and likewise fail to grasp the inseparability of problems from their solutions. As Deleuze argued, the problematic, or minor science, would be nothing if it were not for major science and the axiomatic, just as major science would be nothing without the problematic. Similarly for Spinoza, the question \u2018what can a body do?\u2019 is to be understood as the problematic that requires the modifications and affections of determinate bodies and minds to be anything just as our determinate bodies and minds require the problematic as the \u2018infinite enjoyment of existing.\u2019 To overcome our attachment to things that are \u2018liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess\u2019 thus entails a move from the actual and determinate, to what this body is actually doing or has done, to the problematic and the virtual, the body as an eternity that is not to be confused with the determinate and which is indeed subject to many variations and which we can never fully possess. Much more needs to be said to clear up a host of problems that still persist. Most notably, what is the epistemological status of the third kind of knowledge? And can this knowledge be understood in a way that doesn\u2019t reintroduce transcendence and consequently undermine Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s claim in What is Philosophy? that Spinoza is perhaps \u2018the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the context of Spinoza\u2019s famous letter to Lodewijk Meyer (Letter 12) where Spinoza lays forth the differences, as he sees it, between the infinite and the finite, substance and modes, Spinoza makes an important distinction between eternity and duration: The difference between Eternity and Duration arises from this. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spinoza"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t