Bayle’s Narrative
This chapter begins with a preliminary consideration of the “Aristotelian” critique of Spinoza in the work of Pierre Bayle. The critique is so labeled to highlight Bayle’s claim that the substance-mode metaphysics that Descartes adopted from scholasticism, and that is purportedly an important source of the downfall of Spinoza’s substance monism, derives ultimately from Aristotle. The main result of the second part of the chapter, however, is the negative one that Aristotle’s accidents differ substantially from the modes that Suárez later introduced into scholasticism. Such a result indicates the crucial importance of later scholastic revisions of Aristotle’s own views for a consideration of the metaphysics of the material world in early modern thought.