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15th Imp Shannon Dea Peirce-And Spinozas Pragmaticist Methaphysics
15th Imp Shannon Dea Peirce-And Spinozas Pragmaticist Methaphysics
1. Peirce on Spinoza
Pre-1904
Peirces considerations of Spinoza spanned his career as a philosopher. He writes that he began
reading metaphysics as a teenager, and that the first metaphysicians he studied were Spinoza,
Kant and Hegel.2
Peirces first public mention of Spinoza occurs in an 1863 address he gave to the
Cambridge High School Association.3 He includes him several times in his unfinished 1883-84
Johns Hopkins study of great men.4 In later years, he discusses Spinoza in his reviews for The
Nation of a number of Spinozist and other early modern texts, including Fullertons The
Philosophy of Spinoza in 1892,5 Hale Whites translation of the Ethics in 1894,6 and Joachims A
Study of the Ethics of Spinoza in 1902.7
As well, Peirce was the uncredited author of the entry on Spinozism for the Century
Dictionary (1891).8 Here it is in its entirety:
Spinozism (spi-no zizm), n. [< Spinoza (see def.) + -ism.] The metaphysical doctrine
of Baruch (afterward Benedict) de Spinoza (1632-1677), a Spanish Jew, born at
Amsterdam. Spinozas chief work, the Ethics, is an exposition of the idea of the
absolute, with a monistic theory of the correspondence between mind and matter, and
applications to the philosophy of living. It is an excessively abstruse doctrine, much
misunderstood, and too complicated for brief exposition. The style of the book, an
imitation of Euclids Elements, is calculated to repel the mathematician and
logician, and to carry the attention of the ordinary reader away from the real meaning,
while conveying a completely false notion of the mode of thinking. Yet, while the
form is pseudomathematical, the thought itself is truly mathematical. The main
principle is, indeed, an anticipation in a generalized form of the modern geometrical
conception of the absolute, especially as this appears in the hyperbolic geometry,
where the point and plane manifolds have a correspondence similar to that between
Spinozas worlds of extension and thought. Spinoza is described as a pantheist; he
identifies God and Nature, but does not mean by Nature what is ordinarily meant.
Some sayings of Spinoza are frequently quoted in literature. One of these is omnis
determinatio est negatio, all specification involves exclusion; another is that
matters must be considered sub specie ternitatis, under their essential aspects.
Spinozist (spi-no zist), n. [< Spinoza + -ist.] A follower of Spinoza.
Spinozistic (spi-no-zis tik), a. [< Spinozist + -ic.] Of, pertaining to, or
characteristic of Spinoza or his followers: as, the Spinozistic school; Spinozistic
pantheism.9
the obscurity of Spinozas thought, and about the degree to which Spinoza has been
misunderstood by scholars. These are related to his oft-repeated complaint that the so-called
geometrical method of the Ethics is particularly responsible for philosophers misinterpretations
of Spinoza. However, Peirce vacillates on the question of why Spinoza chose the geometrical
method for the Ethics. In his 1894 review of Hale Whites translation of the Ethics, he writes that
Spinoza himself did not understand his own thought, but that this, far from being a fault, marks
Spinoza as a great philosopher:
Paradoxical as it may seem, it may be maintained that none of the very great
philosophers understood themselves. Crystal clearness, such as we justly require
in mathematics, in law, in economics, is in philosophy the characteristic of the
second-rates. The reason is that the strongest men are able to seize an allimportant conception long before the progress of analysis has rendered it possible
to free it from obscurities and difficulties. If Kant had waited, before he wrote the
Critic of the Pure Reason, [sic] until the ideas with which it chiefly deals had
been accurately dissected, he might, had he lived have been pottering over it today. But of Spinoza this is true in a much higher degree. Not only has he not
mastered an altogether distinct apprehension of his own thought, but he has a
positively mistaken view of it. He thinks that he reasons after the style of Euclid,
and perhaps there is some truth in that; but he thinks that his reasoning has the
form which Euclid understood his own to have, and that is a complete delusion.
This appratus [sic] of Definitions, Axioms, Problems, and Theorems is in
geometry itself merely a veil over the living thought.11
By contrast, in his Spinozism entry in the Century Dictionary, Peirce seems to attribute
Spinozas geometric style not to a geniuss failure to understand his own work, but rather to a
conscious attempt to dissemble. In a surprising anticipation of Leo Strausss notorious esoteric
reading of the Ethics, Peirce here maintains that the style of the Ethics is calculated to repel the
mathematician and logician, and to carry the attention of the ordinary reader away from the real
meaning. By 1902, however, in his review of Joachim, Peirce abandons the esoteric account,
and argues that Spinozas choice of the geometrical method simply reflected the convention of
his day. However, argues Peirce, while the abridged style of exposition in geometry is
appropriate for a discipline (geometry) in which instinct is more important than argumentation, it
is inadequate for a discipline such as metaphysics, in which arguments can and must be made
explicit:
Spinoza felt himself obliged to imitate Euclid in order to maintain his
pretensions to science. His philosophy was deep, out of the common ways of
thinking, and intelligible only from peculiar points of view so that it would have
been difficult enough to understand had it been ever so lucidly presented. Clothed,
as it is, in the garb of Euclid, the Ethic is one of the most enigmatical books that
ever were written. The most curious circumstance about it is that a logical writing
which Spinoza left unfinished at his death, shows that the Euclidean form of the
Ethic was utterly untrue to the authors own way of thinking. Those assumptions
which, when stated as definitions and axioms, seem to come from nowhere,
bursting upon us like bolts out of the blue, had really been subjected by Spinoza
to the critical examination of a sort of inductive logic.12
Whatever Peirces qualms about Spinozas geometrical form of presentation, he cannot
praise too highly the real meaning that lies beneath the garb of Euclid. Over and over, he
expresses his regret that the style of the Ethics conceals the deep,13 weighty,14 living15
thought of Spinoza. While Peirce is never explicit about what exactly is the living thought that
is concealed by the geometrical method, several of his discussions of Spinoza offer hints. He
argues in a number of texts that the key to a proper understanding of Spinoza resides in reading
the whole of his oeuvre, and not just the Ethics. He hints in his 1902 Joachim review that the
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) offers a truer account of Spinozas thought than
the Ethics. Indeed, on Peirces view, the TIE shows that Spinoza arrived at the definitions and
axioms of the Ethics not a prioristically, but through a process of inductive logic. In two
reviews,16 Peirce emphasizes Hobbess influence upon Spinoza. The review of the Joachim book
also argues at length that, in virtue of living in the Netherlands, Spinoza was influenced not by
the medieval scholastics, as was the case for most philosophers in continental Europe, but by the
Dutch reformed peripatetics, whose doctrine was closer to Aristotles than the scholastics was.
Thus, argues Peirce the main features of his philosophy are consistent with Aristotelianism
slightly modified, and not at all so with the other doctrines which subsequently influenced
him.17
While Peirce deplores the Euclidean form of the Ethics as unmathematical, a further
theme recurs throughout his pre-1904 mentions of Spinoza: this is that there is something deeply
mathematical about Spinozas thought. Indeed, in his 1894 review of Hale Whites translation of
the Ethics, Peirce devotes two whole pages to the history and philosophy of mathematics, a
subject that he maintains is indispensable to the comprehension of Spinoza.18 Both in this
review, and in his Spinozism entry in the Century Dictionary, Peirce maintains that Spinozas
conception of the absolute anticipates the modern mathematical conception of the absolute:
you must penetrate beneath [the geometrical form of the Ethics] if you would
enter the living stream of Spinozas thinking. You then find that he is engaged in
a somewhat mathematical style in developing a conception of the absolute,
strikingly analogous to the metrical absolute of the mathematicians. He thus
appears as a mathematical thinker, not in the really futile, formal way in which he
and his followers conceived him to be, but intrinsically, in a lofty, living, and
valuable sense.19
The Century Dictionary entry invokes the hyperbolic geometry, maintaining that the
point and plane manifolds [of hyperbolic geometry] have a correspondence similar to that
between Spinozas worlds of extension and thought.
Finally, it bears remarking that Peirces early discussions of Spinoza reveal his
thoroughgoing familiarity with historical and contemporary Spinoza scholarship. In his 1894
Ethics review, Peirce praises three translations of the Ethics into English Williss, Drake
Smiths and Whites. Of these, he adjudges the last the best.20 Peirce bemoans the lack of a
thorough English book about Spinoza, but praises Pollocks and Cairds works, which contain
much that is valuable. Peirce regards the Van Vloten and Land edition of Spinozas works to be
the best. He continues that
In regard to the relation of Spinoza to the philosophers who went before him,
much has been done in special directions, one writer urging his indebtedness to
Descartes, another that to scholasticism, a third that to the Jewish philosophy, a
fourth that to Giordano Bruno. But no really good comprehensive view has ever
been published; nor, singularly enough, has anybody remarked, as far as we are
aware, the very obvious indebtedness of Spinoza to Hobbes, to whose wooden
mechanicalism he was naturally inclined.21
The 1902 Joachim review similarly evinces Peirces knowledge of Spinoza scholarship:
Long before the middle of the eighteenth century it had come to be regarded as
settled that Spinoza had merely developed a few ideas that had been thrown out
by Descartes, and that his notions had been definitively exploded. This opinion
received something of a shock when, in 1780, Lessing declared himself a
Spinozist, although mistakenly; and an interesting discussion of Lessings
supposed Spinozism followed between F.H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn.
Then, Herder confessed to a sort of Spinozism, as later did Goethe. The system
could not, after such events, well sink back into obscurity. About 1816 H.C.W.
Sigwart began that more careful and critical study of what Spinoza really did
mean to which many writers have contributed in a fuller and fuller stream of
literature to this day, until the study may now almost take rank as a special branch
of science, Spinozology. Certainly, the last word about it has not yet been said.
Perhaps the problem is insoluble. At any rate, beyond a certain point, any opinion
that can at present be put forth must rank as a merely personal one. In 1852, an
important book by Spinoza was brought to light, together with many significant
letters. Since then, the data of the problem remain unaugmented.22
Peirce continues by generally praising Joachims scholarship, but faulting him for
excluding a number of secondary sources that were well worthy of attention, such as the book
of Berendt, and Friedlnder, that of Hffding, and one or two extremely important papers in the
journals.23
The handwritten index cards on which Peirce collected data for his Spinozism entry in the
Century Dictionary24 list a further ten sources with which Peirce was familiar. In sum, then, even
before Peirce came to identify Spinoza as a fellow pragmati(ci)st, he was exceptionally well-read
in Spinoza scholarship. His remarks on Spinoza were not those of a dilettante.
While Peirces pre-1904 reflections on Spinoza suggest potentially fruitful (and
frequently heterodox) avenues of interpretation, there is little evidence that Peirce considered
Spinoza a pragmatist during this period. There are only two hints pre-1904 that Peirce might be
coming to regard Spinoza as a pragmatist. The first occurs over the course of an 1891-1893
dispute that Peirce entered into with Monist editor Paul Carus over necessitarianism and chance.
Early on in the exchange, Carus invoked Spinoza, only to have Peirce claim Spinoza for his own
side of the debate: Now I understand Spinoza to be a realist.25 However, being a realist is
neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being a pragmatist. So, while Peirces claim that
Spinoza was a realist shows that he regarded Spinoza as, to some extent, belonging to his
(Peirces) own camp, there is no reason to think that the particular camp that he had in mind was
pragmatism. The second hint that Peirce might be coming to regard Spinoza as a pragmatist
occurs at the close of his review of Whites translation of the Ethics, where Peirce praises the
practical upshot of Spinozism at some length:
Spinozas ideas are eminently to affect human conduct. If, in accordance with the
recommendation of Jesus, we are to judge of ethical doctrines and of philosophy
in general by its practical fruits we cannot but consider Spinoza as a very weighty
authority; for probably no writer of modern times has so much determined men
towards an elevated mode of life. Although his doctrine contains many things
which are distinctly unchristian, yet they are unchristian rather intellectually than
practically. In part, at least, Spinozism is, after all, a special development of
Christianity; and the practical upshot of it is decidedly more Christian than that of
any current system of theology.26
While Peirce uses practical in praise of Spinoza three times in this passage, he stops short of
calling Spinoza a pragmatist.
Ethics, this time pairing the complaint with a back-handed reference to Spinozas greatness,
writing that the geometrical form of the is the only thing in his books that is ridiculous, the only
thing about the man that is not venerable.30 Also as usual, Peirce observes that Spinoza is
widely misunderstood, but presses this point further, remarking that, while particular elements of
other philosophers work are sometimes misunderstood, with Spinoza, the problem is more
thoroughgoing:
[I]n reference to Spinoza, it is the general attitude of his mind that is in
question; and the general lesson we derive from the leading discussions is that the
commentators have been apt to restrict their studies too much to the one book that
is so formal, that they consider Spinoza too exclusively as a metaphysician, and
that they have not paid sufficient attention to his extraordinary approaches toward
pragmatism. Such had been the conviction of the present reviewer before he took
up this volume of Mr. Duffs, who presses the same opinions much further than
the reviewer had conceived them to be warranted.31
Peirce continues that Spinoza was well on the way to formulating the pragmatic maxim,
and offers Duffs account as evidence of this:
Already, as Mr. Duff points out, Spinoza had thoroughly recognized, as a
fundamental truth, that the substance of what one believes does not consist in any
mere sensuous representation, but in how one would be disposed to behave. How
long, then, could it be before he would come to ask himself, If that is what belief
is, how can a belief relate to anything but behaviour?
Spinoza, according to Mr. Duffs presentation of him, was the last man in
the world to care for abstract speculation. He was animated with the desire to do
his practical part in making men better. How men were practically to be made
better was his problem. In order to solve this problem, it was necessary to begin
by analyzing it, and this drove him perforce to metaphysics. His real study,
however, was ethics; and he understood by ethics an infinitely more practical
science than many writers upon the subject do in the twentieth century.32
It is difficult to understand what it was about Duffs book that affected Peirce so strongly.
As we have already seen, by the time he reviewed Duff, Peirce had been interested in Spinoza
for some forty years. And, significantly, by 1904, Peirce had himself prescribed for interpreters
of Spinoza all of the main lines that we find in Duffs account. It is not at all obvious that Duff
said anything that Peirce hadnt already thought. Whatever it was about Duffs book that so
struck Peirce, this review marks a turning-point in Peirces discussions of Spinoza. Afterwards,
Peirce kept coming back to the idea that Spinoza was a pragmati(ci)st, and, he included Spinoza
in all of his lists of historical pragmati(ci)sts.33
The following year, in an article on pragmati(ci)sm for the Monist, Peirce again linked
Spinoza with pragmati(ci)sm, this time by emphasizing the scientific cast of thinking that led
him (Peirce) to formulate the pragmatic maxim, and listing Spinoza, along with Berkeley and
Kant, as a metaphysician whose work similarly recalls the ways of thinking of the laboratory.34
Circa the same year, in a letter to the Italian pragmatist Mario Calderoni, Peirce wrote that
pragmaticism was not a new way of thinking, but claimed among its early adherents Berkeley,
Locke, Spinoza and Kant.35 His revisited this theme in 1906, writing that any philosophical
doctrine that should be completely new could hardly fail to prove completely false; but the
rivulets at the head of the river of pragmatism are easily traced back to almost any desired
antiquity.36 In the next paragraph, Peirce launched into an extended metaphor of the river of
pragmatism, whose waters flow through the work of such figures as Socrates, Aristotle, Locke,
Berkeley, Kant, Comte, and Spinoza: They run, where least one would suspect them, beneath
the dry rubbish-heaps of Spinoza.37 In 1910, Peirce again referred to Spinozas pragmatism,
writing that pragmatism is an old way of thinking practiced by Spinoza, Berkeley, and
Kant.38
In total, Peirce makes six references each to Kants and Berkeleys pragmati(ci)sm and
five to Spinozas. The only other figure to be mentioned more than once is Locke, whom Peirce
only twice credits with pragmatic tendencies. He only engaged in this practice of listing
pragmatic predecessors during the period spanning 1901-1910. These dates help us to understand
just why Peirce was keen to identify his philosophic progenitors. For, it was during this very
period that he was working most energetically to define his own particular brand of pragmatism,
even renaming it pragmaticism in order to distinguish it from the many nominalistic, and
literary latecomers who were describing themselves as pragmatists. I suggest that Peirce listed
the figures he did (and excluded the figures he did) precisely in order to carve out conceptual
territory for his distinctive version of pragmatism.
Peirces 1905 What Pragmatism Is lays out three jointly sufficient conditions for
pragmaticism:
pragmaticism is a species of prope-positivism. But what distinguishes it from
other species is, first, its retention of a purified philosophy; secondly, its full
acceptance of the main body of our instinctive beliefs; and thirdly, its strenuous
insistence upon the truth of scholastic realism So, instead of merely jeering at
metaphysics, like other prope-positivists, whether by long drawn-out parodies or
otherwise, the pragmaticist extracts from it a precious essence, which will serve to
give life and light to cosmology and physics.42
It is not at all clear what counts as purified philosophy. One plausible reading, though, is that
the application of the pragmatic maxim purifies philosophy of ontological metaphysics. If this is
right, then the three key features of pragmaticism seem to be (1) the application of the pragmatic
maxim in reasoning, (2) the acceptance of our instinctive beliefs (which acceptance Peirce
elsewhere terms critical common sensism),43 and (3) insistence upon the truth of scholastic
realism. I think that Peirce saw all three of these conditions as present in Spinozas thought.44
However, Spinozas heuristic for identifying and avoiding hypocrisy is hardly unique. Moreover,
especially for the mature Peirce, it hews rather too closely to Jamess pragmatism in emphasizing
behaviour rather than the growth of concrete reasonableness as the consequence of thought.
In fact, despite Peirces complaints about the Ethics, the most striking anticipation of the
pragmatic maxim in Spinoza arguably occurs in the last proposition of Part 1 of that work, where
Spinoza argues that nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow.47 In
accordance with this principle, Spinoza goes on to use the words cause (causa) and thing
(res) interchangeably, most notably in his E2P9Dem1 and E2P9Dem2 invocations of E2P7s
parallelism. For Spinoza as for Peirce, if we cannot conceive of a thing having any effect, we
cannot even conceive of it as a thing.
E1P36 sits, as it were, on the cusp of Parts 1 and 2 of the Ethics, and thereby serves as an
important bridge between the metaphysics of the first Part and the epistemology of the second.
Ethics Part 1, Concerning God, is Spinozas account of the character of the universe qua
substance.48 It is in this part that we find all of Spinozas central metaphysical theses, including
his thesis of E1P33 that God does not create the universe through an act of will. For Spinoza,
God is not a transcendent creator, but is rather the immanent cause of the universe insofar as
everything in the universe is entailed by his very being. E1P36Dem lays out how this entailment
works: Whatever exists expresses Gods nature or essence in a definite and determinate way
(Cor. Pr. 25); that is (Pr. 34), whatever exists expresses Gods power, which is the cause of all
things, in a definite and determinate way, and so (Pr. 16) some effect must follow from it. So,
according to Spinoza, finite beings are expressions of Gods essence; Gods essence and his
power are the very same thing.49 Therefore, finite beings are expressions of Gods power. Any
expression of power ex hypothesi brings about an effect. Therefore, all beings are causes.
thing is intimately bound up with the possibility of its generating effects. We can think of a thing
without thinking of it as having a particular determinate effect. However, the notion of a thing
without some effect whatever it may be is impossible.52 Moreover, throughout the remainder
of the Ethics, Spinoza uses E1P36 is the foundation for his optimism that the world is knowable,
if not right away, then in the long run. That is, the role that Spinozas pragmatic maxim plays
in underwriting empirical enquiry is of a piece with Peirces conviction that pragmaticism leaves
the way of scientific enquiry open.
For Spinoza, as for Peirce, doubt is an irritation that we experience when our beliefs do
not cohere, and that is removed when they are brought into agreement.55 To feign a doubt or
posit a brute fact is to block the way of inquiry. Not surprisingly, then, in the TIE, Spinoza
emphasizes the situatedness and evolution of understanding in a way that the methods of, for
instance, Locke and Descartes do not:
an idea is situated in the context of thought exactly as is its object in the context
of reality. Therefore, if there were something in Nature having no interrelation
with other things, and if there were also granted its objective essence (which must
agree entirely with its formal essence), then this idea likewise would have no
interrelation with other ideas; that is, we could make no inference regarding it. On
the other hand, those things that do have interrelation with other things as is the
case with everything that exists in Nature will be intelligible, and their objective
essences will also have that same interrelation; that is, other ideas will be deduced
from them, and these in turn will be interrelated with other ideas, and so the tools
for further progress will increase.56
Indeed, just before this passage, Spinoza makes explicit his view that we come by our
initial instincts legitimately and that these instincts are appropriate starting-points for enquiry. To
work iron, writes Spinoza, requires a hammer, but to make a hammer, one needs other tools, and
so on to infinity. But, no one would ever claim that this infinite regress means that human beings
cannot work iron today. Rather, we know that the first human tools were, in a sense, in-born.
Using these rustic tools, early humans produced slightly better tools, and, with these, slightly
better ones in turn, until they reached the point where they could make very many complex
things with little labour.57 Likewise, writes Spinoza, the intellect by its inborn power makes
intellectual tools for itself by which it acquires other powers for other intellectual works, and
from these works still other tools and thus makes steady progress until it reaches the summit of
wisdom.58
For Spinoza, as for Peirce, the honest philosopher uses the very good tools that are
naturally at her disposal, improving them as she is able, but never simply throwing them away in
order to begin the process of tool manufacture, as it were, from scratch.
existents about which we can think first intentionally. However, we are also able to conceive of
these natures abstracted from the particular individuals in which they inhere.
The mechanism which allows Scotus to posit the common nature as a mediating third
between extra-mental objects and second-intentional concepts such as universals61 is his subtle
development of the Thomistic distinction between real and logical existence. Scotus subdivides
real existence into physical and metaphysical, then allocates common natures to the realm of the
metaphysical, thus attributing to them a greater than logical but less than physical ontological
status. That is, common natures are real, but they are not physical. For Scotus, the reality of the
common nature is inextricably bound up with its indeterminacy. It is precisely because the nature
requires determination by an individual haecceity or by an intellectual act in order to be properly
individual or universal that we can see it as ontologically prior to both physical individuals and
thoughts, and hence, real. Consequently, any science that has as its subject-matter common
natures is a first-intentional in other words, a real science.
This picture accords rather strikingly with both Spinozas and Peirces ontologies. For all
three philosophers, the universe is not a collection of determinate atoms, but rather a single
continuum, of which any portion is intrinsically indeterminate, and is only rendered determinate
through its relation with other portions of the continuum. There are no intrinsic individuals.
Rather, individuals exist extrinsically in virtue of relations between regions of the continuum.
Peirce held that nominalism and substantival individualism are co-extensive since, when the
nominalist denies that there are real connections between things, she fails to apprehend the
relational nature of all reality:
The heart of the dispute lies in this. The [nominalists] recognize but one mode
of being, the being of an individual thing or fact, the being which consists in the
objects crowding out a place for itself in the universe, so to speak, and reacting
by brute force of fact, against all other things. I call that existence.62
For what we might term modal monists, who recognize only existent beings as real, if
the laws of nature are real, then these laws must themselves exist as entities or individuals. Peirce
held that even Platonism (which he termed nominalistic Platonism63) falls prey to this, in that
the Forms are simply another class of individuals in the Platonic ontology. Thus, the failure to
accept any mode of being outside of existence forces philosophers either to reject the idea that
there are real laws or commonalities connecting things, or to posit these laws or commonalities
as themselves entities.
Like Scotus, both Peirce and Spinoza escape this dilemma by holding that reality has a
broader scope than existence, and thereby clearing a space for real laws and commonalities that
are not themselves entities.
Casting Spinozas metaphysics in Scotuss terms, we can see that what Spinoza terms
common notions, those things that are common to all things and are equally in the part as in
the whole [and] can be conceived only adequately, 64are first intentional entia rationis unlike
our abstract ideas about universals and transcendentals, which are second intentional. Scotuss
haecceities, what Peirce termed things hereness and nowness, are, on Spinozistic terms, just
particular determinations of substance as finite modes determinations that at once individuate
and instantiate substance as individual existents.65 For Spinoza, as for Scotus, common notions
(for Scotus, common natures) have no existence apart from individuals since commonalities are
indeterminate and only determinate things have existence. However, common notions and
individuals (in Scotuss terms, common natures and haecceities) are not numerically identical
since numerical identity, once again, applies only to individuals those things that are
susceptible of enumeration.
None of the foregoing is intended as an argument that Spinoza was influenced by Duns
Scotus. Spinoza himself never mentions him, nor do most of his major commentators. Wolfson,
who mounts the most extensive argument about the medieval influences upon Spinoza,
occasionally discusses Scotus in connection with him. However, he does so only in passing and
by way of illustration, and seems not to consider Scotus a significant influence on Spinoza.66
However, there are clear similarities between Scotus and Spinoza that Peirce who knew both of
them well might reasonably have discerned, and would have regarded as congenial.
Two pieces of circumstantial evidence further support this possibility. First, recall
Peirces 1891-93 exchange with Carus where, in response to Caruss having obliquely claimed
Spinoza as a nominalist, Peirce castigates his opponent for falling into the nominalistic
absurdity of talking of single facts, or individual generals. Yet Dr. Carus says that natural laws
describe the facts of nature sub specie aeternitatis. Now I understand Spinoza to be a realist.67
That Peirce here contrasts Spinozas realism with nominalistic Platonism makes clear that the
variety of realism Peirce is attributing to Spinoza is scholastic realism.68 Then, in a 1903 diatribe
against early modern nominalists, Peirce lists Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant
and others as nominalists.69 Spinoza is conspicuously absent from the list.
Conclusion
There are, it is clear, a great many affinities between Spinozism and pragmaticism. However, a
rather large question remains unanswered. Namely, was Peirce right to regard Spinoza as a
pragmaticist?
Kerr-Lawson, one of an extremely small group of philosophers to specialize in both
Spinoza and Peirce, held that the two mens projects were, in fact, very different.70 While both of
them were motivated by the question of how to make our ideas clear, he argues, Peirces answer
to the question resides in his theory of meaning. By contrast, Spinoza held that the best way to
make our ideas clear is to control our emotions, and thereby to unite our minds with God,
understanding the universe sub specie ternitatis.
However, I think that it was just this view of Spinoza that Peirce wanted to stand on its
head. When Peirce wrote in the Duff review that Spinozas commentators consider Spinoza
too exclusively as a metaphysician, I think that what he had in mind was that the ultimate goal
of Spinozism is not the metaphysical project of describing the character of the universe under the
form of eternity. Rather, it is blessedness itself, the union of our minds with God, that is its goal.
That is, Peirces Spinoza is not arguing that, by achieving blessedness, we thereby make our
ideas clear, but rather that, by making our ideas clear, we thereby achieve blessedness. Spinoza
himself says as much in the TTP: Since our intellect forms the better part of us, it is evident
that, if we wish to seek what is definitely to our advantage, we should endeavour above all to
perfect it as far as we can, for in its perfection must consist our supreme good.This, then, is the
sum of our supreme good and blessedness, to wit, the knowledge and love of God.71 Here, in a
passage that clearly impressed Peirce, is how Duff puts it:
If Spinozas nature was purely speculative to an extent that is probably unique,
it was only speculative in the sense that he spared no pains to know the truth
regarding human nature, and its place in the cosmos, to the end that he might
reveal wherein mans happiness and goodness consist. And it was only because
the perfecting of the intelligence is essential to the realisation of this most
practical end, that is to say, because a man cannot love the good unless he knows
it, that he was interested in speculative problems at all.it is the recognition of
those relations toward their fellow-men, in which God has placed their happiness,
as Gods law for them, that is mens bliss.72
I propose that it is the particular relationship between the speculative and the practical in
Spinozas and Peirces work that most closely ties these two men together. Many people continue
to associate pragmatism with the positivistic tenet that (in Ayers words) all metaphysical
assertions are nonsensical.73 For Peircean pragmaticism, nothing could be further from the truth.
As should be abundantly clear by now, the mature Peirce took metaphysical questions extremely
seriously. Peirces metaphysical writing on such topics as mind, chance, being and cosmology
were (like much of Spinozas work) speculative to an extent that is probably unique. However,
he was also the founder of a doctrine deeply concerned with practical outcomes. For Peirce, the
two went hand in hand.
Peirce regarded metaphysical doctrines to have important ethical and political
consequences. With respect to the problem of universals, he argued that
though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of
logic, its branches reach about our life. The question whether the genus homo has
any existence except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of
any more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual
aspirations, and individual life. Whether men really have anything in common, so
that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the
relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental practical question in
regard to every public institution the constitution of which we have it in our
power to influence.74
He took a similar position in connection with synechism, maintaining that the synechist
must reject the view that
I am altogether myself, and not at all you. If you embrace synechism, you must
abjure this metaphysics of wickedness. In the first place, your neighbors are, in a
measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in
psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like to attribute to
yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarest delusion of vanity. In the second place,
all men who resemble you and are in analogous circumstances are, in a measure,
yourself, though not quite in the same way in which your neighbors are you.75
For Peirce, ideals for reasoning and ideals for conduct are so closely intertwined that they cannot
be separated.
Indeed, Spinozas and Peirces equal emphases on speculation and practice are typical of
the two philosophers broader willingness to straddle traditional divisions. For both Spinoza and
Peirce, when we make our ideas clear through the use of reason, we put ourselves in the best
possible position from which to explore the real connections that hold in the universe, and
indeed, that hold in us as parts of the universe. Peirce shares Spinozas view that two things
necessarily connected are intrinsically not two things at all but one. This is at the very heart of
pragmaticism (as distinct from pragmatism), but it is a view that owes everything to Peirces
application in metaphysics of the pragmatic method. It is also the most distinctive aspect of
Spinozas doctrine. For Peirce, rationalism (on some conception of same) just is realism. And, it
is realism/rationalism that underwrites empirical science. Thus, there can be no tension between
rationalism and (some sense of) empiricism for him. It is in this spirit that Peirce wrote in his
response to Carus that my method has neither been in theory purely empirical, nor in practice
mere brain-spinning.76 The same might well be said of Spinoza. In the final analysis, what is
arguably most distinctive about Spinoza and Peirce is their shared willingness to be empiricists
in theory and rationalists in practice. In a discipline that from Platos account in the Sophist of
the interminable battle of the gods and the giants to Isaiah Berlins fox and hedgehog is forever
sorting itself into two camps, Peirce and Spinoza are two of the very few who manage to elude
binary categorization.77
Shannon Dea
University of Waterloo
Works Cited
Ayer, A.J. Language, Truth and Logic. London: Victor Gollancz, 1960.
Bennett, J. A Study of Spinozas Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984.
The Century Dictionary, 10 vols. William D. Whitney, Ed. New York: Century, 1895.
Dea. S. Peirce and Spinozas Surprising Pragmaticism. Diss. Western University, 2007.
---. Firstness, Evolution and the Absolute in Peirce's Spinoza, Transactions of the Charles S.
Peirce Society 44.4 (2008) 603-628.
---. The Infinite and the Indeterminate in Spinoza, Dialogue 50.3 (2011) 603-21.
---. The River of Pragmatism, Peirce in His Own Words, Eds. Torkild Thellefsen and Bent
Srensen. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Forthcoming 2014.
Duff, R.A. Spinozas Political and Ethical Philosophy. New York: A.M. Kelley, 1970.
Robin, Richard. Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce. Amherst: U of
Massachussetts P, 1967.
Peirce, C.S. Unpublished manuscripts housed at the Houghton Library at Harvard University. MS
numbers correspond to Robins (1967) catalogue of the Peirce papers.
---. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. 1-8. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. Burks,
Eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1931-58.
---. Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to The Nation, 4 vols. Kenneth Laine Ketner and James
Cook, Eds. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 1975-87.
---. The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, 4 vols. in 5 books. Carolyn Eisele, Ed.
The Hague: Mouton, 1976.
---. Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Max Fisch, Christian Kloesel, Nathan
Houser, et al, Eds. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982-.
---. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, 2 vols. Nathan Houser, Christian Kloesel,
and the Peirce Edition Project, Eds. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992-98.
Peirce, J.M. The Character and Philosophy of Malebranche. Ms. HUG 1680.608F. Harvard
University Archives, Cambridge, MA, 1854.
---. The Character and Philosophy of Malebranche. Monthly Religious Magazine 15 (1856)
375-399.
Wolfson, H.A. The Philosophy of Spinoza. Cleveland: World, 1958.
Spinoza, B. Complete Works. Michael L. Morgan, Ed. Samuel M. Shirley et al, Trans.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002.
Pragmaticism is the term Peirce coined in 1905 (CP 5.414.) for his own particular doctrine.
He makes clear that the pragmaticism is a species of pragmatism. Thus, all pragmaticists are
pragmatists, but not all pragmatists are pragmaticists. After 1905, he uses both terms to describe
Spinoza (and his own thought). Throughout, use both terms, as appropriate, but also (alas) the
infelicitous pragmati(ci)sm when it is not clear which term is more apt (or in cases where both
terms are apt).
2
MS CSP 823, qtd. NEM III/1, 129n.1. Indeed, Peirce was not the only one in his family who
was reading Spinoza at this time. In the very same period, Peirces elder brother, James Mills
(Jem) Peirce was himself taking an interest in Spinoza. In 1854, Jem, a student at the Harvard
Law School, won Harvards prestigious Bowdoin Prize for a Resident Graduate for his essay,
The Character and Philosophy of Malebranche. The article includes a lengthy, sophisticated
passage presenting Spinozas position as a foil to Malebranche. The original manuscript of this
paper is housed at the Harvard University Archives under call number MS HUG 1680.608F. The
essay was published two years later in Monthly Religious Magazine (15, 375-399); this was J.M.
Peirces first scholarly publication.
3
W 1.103.
4
W 5.30, 34, 37.
5
N 1.163-65.
6
N 2.83-87.
7
N 3.76-78.
8
C 5837. Peirce was the author of Century Dictionary entries concerning philosophy, mechanics,
mathematics, astronomy, astrology, weights and measures and universities, as well as a number
on psychology. See CP 1.106n.1, CP 6.482, N 1.75-78. In his personal copy of that work (now
held at Harvards Houghton Library), he marked the entries for which he was responsible with a
coloured pencil. This, combined with the twelve hand-written index cards concerning Spinozism
among Peirces research materials for the Century Dictionary (also at Houghton Library, under
call number MS CSP *1596) identify him as the author of the Spinozism entry.
9
C 5837.
10
See, for example, N 3.77.
11
N 2.84. Peirce reiterated his view that the geometrical form of the Ethics is untrue to Spinozas
thought in his 1901 review for The Nation of Alfred Caldecotts The Philosophy of Religion in
England and America. Comparing Samuel Clarkes demonstrations to Spinozas, Peirce writes
that the difference between those two writers was that with Spinoza the living thought did not
pursue that erroneous method, which, in his case, was merely the garb in which it was clad after
it was full-grown and even then only imperfectly, since it does not accurately conform to the
logical rules which it acknowledges (N 3.42).
12
N 3.76.
13
N 3.76.
14
NEM III/2 956.
15
N 2.84.
16
N 2.87, N 3.77.
17
N 3.78.
18
N 2.86.
19
N 2.86.
20
N 2.87.
21
N 2.87.
22
N 3.77.
23
N 3.77.
24
MS CSP *1596.
25
CP 6.593.
26
N 2.86-87.
27
Duff, 4-7.
28
As Peirce well knew, early modern philosophers regarded the analytic method as the order of
discovery and the synthetic method as the order of demonstration; this was not distinctive to
Spinoza. Nor was Spinozas use of both methods in his writing unique to him. Descartes (among
others) did the same.
29
N 3.177.
30
N 3.177.
31
N 3.178.
32
N 3.178-79.
33
There is one possible exception to this claim. C. 1911, in his A Sketch of Logical Critics,
Peirce claimed that he had always fathered [his] pragmaticism upon Kant, Berkeley, and
Leibniz (EP 2. 457). However, he does not there claim that these three figures were
themselves pragmaticists. Indeed, since Peirce many times over the years discussed his
admiration for and indebtedness to Leibniz without ever describing the latter as a pragmati(ci)st,
it seems unlikely that he intended this c. 1911 list as a list of pragmaticists.
34
CP 5.412.
35
CP 8.206.
36
CP 5.11.
37
CP 5.11. It bears observing that Spinoza is not the only target of Peirces gentle mockery in
this passage. He also makes fun of Berkeleys use of tar-water, and of Kants and Comtes habit
of mingling these sparkling waters [of pragmatism] with a certain mental sedative.
38
N 3.36.
39
Dea 2014.
40
EP 2.457.
I discuss Spinoza on Zeno in Dea 2011.
42
CP 5.423. In Issues of Pragmaticism, the next article in the same Monist series as What
Pragmatism Is, Peirce describes Critical Common-Sensism and Scholastic Realism not as
conditions or aspects of pragmaticism, but rather as consequences of it. EP 2.346. Whether they
are jointly sufficient conditions of pragmaticism or important consequences of it is beyond the
scope of this paper. Either way, it seems that if Spinoza is a pragmaticist, he should hew to these
positions.
43
EP 2.346-53.
44
Even if I am wrong that Peirces remark about purified philosophy points to the pragmatic
maxim, it is nonetheless obvious that to count as a pragmaticist Spinoza must at least implicitly
accept some version of the pragmatic maxim.
45
TTP P/393.
46
TTP 7/456.
47
E1P36.
48
Famously, Spinoza uses the terms God, Nature and substance interchangeably.
49
E1P34.
50
Bennett, 134.
51
An elaboration of these arguments is beyond the scope of this paper, but see Dea 2007 (76-86).
In essence, all three of these arguments effectively deny a gap between the knower and then
known and thereby underscore Spinozas optimism that the world is in principle knowable to us.
52
It is appropriate that the notion of effect in E1P36 (on this reading) is possible effect; this
accords with the tight connection that Peirce draws between pragmaticism and scholastic
realism.
53
Christopher Hookway expressed the matter in this felicitous way at the Peirce reading group,
University of Sheffield, October 3, 2013.
54
TIE 48. Spinozas reference here to automata, completely lacking in mind is particularly
acid; this was, after all, the very description that the Cartesians used for non-human animals.
55
TIE 47-48, 77, 78.
56
TIE 41.
57
TIE 31.
58
TIE 31.
59
For convenience, I here use the term as it is commonly employed. Peirce did not use
particular in quite this way. However, that matter is well beyond the scope of this paper.
60
Dea 2008.
61
The scholastics distinguished between first intentional concepts, which refer to the real world,
and second intentional concepts, which refer to first intentions. I first intentionally notice that the
sun is shining outside my office window, and I second intentionally think about the proposition
that the sun is shining outside my office window. While both types of concepts are, as
concepts, entia rationis, the first type refers to entia reale, whereas the second merely refers to
another ens rationis. Where, therefore, biology is a first intentional science, grammar is a second
intentional science. In denying the first intentionality of any science concerned with universals,
nominalism effectively relegates metaphysics and physics to the status of the trivium.
62
CP 1.21.
41
63
Nominalistic platonism is Peirces term for the metaphysical position that accepts the reality
of generals, but regards them as a variety of individuals. See CP 5.503.
64
E2P38Dem.
65
Spinoza discusses this at E2P8S using an analogy with a circle in which the very act of
drawing renders the angles contained in the circle existent and countable.
66
Wolfson, 40, 78, 223, 382.
67
CP 6.593.
68
Indeed, two paragraphs before his reference to Spinoza in his reply to Carus, Peirce remarks
that upon the realistic theory, the fact that identity is a relation of reason does not in the least
prevent it from being real (CP 6.593). This helps to explain how he thought that Spinoza (and
Peirce himself) avoided nominalistic platonism. For Peirce, relations are Thirds, but only
Seconds are actual individuals. So, nominalistic platonists regard generals as varieties of
Seconds, whereas scholastic realists like Peirce and Spinoza regard them as Thirds.
69
CP 1.19.
70
Kerr-Lawson raised this objection at a talk I gave at University of Waterloo in 2007.
71
TTP 4/427-28.
72
Duff, 234, 244. The quote at the beginning of the passage is from Erdmann.
73
441.
74
CP 8.38.
75
CP 7. 571.
76
CP 6.604.
77
In memory of Angus Kerr-Lawson.