Quantity, Integral Parts, and Boundaries

This chapter focuses on an aspect of Suárez’s metaphysics that is especially relevant to the non-scholastic identification of matter with extension in early modern thought, namely, his account of the nature of the Aristotelian accident of “continuous quantity.” The chapter begins with Suárez’s contribution to a debate within medieval scholasticism between “realist” and “nominalist” views of quantity. One distinctive feature of this contribution is Suárez’s insistence that this accident bears a special relation to impenetrability. There is then a consideration of Suárez’s contribution to a scholastic debate over the mereological relation between wholes and their “integral parts” that pits anti-reductionists against reductionists. The chapter ends with an examination of Suárez’s contribution to scholastic debates over the ontological status of the “indivisible” boundaries of parts, namely, points, lines, and surfaces. Suárez adopts a “moderate realism” that takes boundaries to be really distinct from the parts they limit.

Material Monism and Bodily Parts

This chapter addresses the question of whether Spinoza’s reference to finite bodies as “parts” that compose an infinite material nature is compatible with the implication of his monism that extended substance is indivisible. There is particular emphasis on the distinctively Spinozistic notion of a “modal part.” It is argued that though Spinoza requires that substantial quantity is indivisible, he holds that quantity can also be conceived to be a modal whole that is divisible into modal parts. The account of this latter sort of quantity is related to Spinoza’s view that nature as a whole can be considered to be an infinite mode that is itself an “individual” that comprises all finite bodily individuals as its parts. The chapter closes with a consideration of the implication of Spinoza’s mereology that the relation of parts to the wholes they compose is weaker than the relation of modes to what they modify.

Epilogue

These brief concluding remarks return to Bayle’s critique of Spinoza. The assessment of his objection that Spinoza’s God cannot be immutable insofar as extended substance is the subject of changing modes draws on the history of the notion of a mode that starts with Suárez, proceeds through Descartes, and ends in Spinoza. The assessment of Bayle’s objection that Spinoza’s God cannot be indivisible insofar as extended substance is composed of distinct parts focuses rather on a line of thought that starts with Suárez’s conception of accidental quantity. It turns out that the substantial quantity that Spinoza posits is at some remove not only from the composite though unified quantity that functions as a fundamental accident in Suárez, but also from the collection of substantial parts that plays the role of Descartes’s extended substance.

Metaphysical Themes from Descartes

This chapter explores certain metaphysical themes from Descartes that serve to link his views to those of Spinoza. It is argued that Spinoza appropriated and revised the substance-mode metaphysics found in Descartes in the service of defending a material monism very different from Descartes’s material pluralism. There is an initial consideration of the distinctive Spinozistic claim that only a causa sui can be a substance, and that there is a single substance that possesses infinitely many attributes. Then there is an examination of the “mode” portion of Spinoza’s metaphysics that emphasizes his identification of finite modes with determinate “expressions” of God’s power. The chapter ends with a reading of Spinoza’s account of the relation of the attribute of extension to its “infinite mode” of motion and rest that draws on his own “power ontology.”

Material Pluralism and Ordinary Bodies

This chapter addresses the question of whether Descartes adopts the “pluralist” view that the material world is composed of distinct substantial parts, or rather the “monist” view that there is a single extended substance, of which all bodies are modes. The defense here of a pluralist reading of Descartes highlights the result in the Synopsis to the Meditations that the realm of extension is composed of distinct substantial and incorruptible “bodies-taken-in-general.” This result is considered in relation to Spinoza’s argument that the Cartesian rejection of a vacuum in nature requires a monistic account of extended substance. Finally, there is an examination of the question of whether the view in the Synopsis allows room at a fundamental level for bodies distinct from bodies-taken-in-general. It is argued that though Descartes perhaps has room at this level for human bodies, he does not have room for other ordinary bodies.

Metaphysics and Material Modes

This chapter concerns the metaphysical basis for Suárez’s account of the material world. It begins with his “analogical” metaphysics, which constitutes a distinctive contribution to the medieval scholastic debate over the applicability of the notion of “being” to God and creatures. Then there is a consideration of Suárez’s introduction into the scholastic theory of distinctions of a modal distinction intermediate between the real and rational distinctions. This new intermediate distinction yields the first clear instance of the early modern notion of a mode. The chapter ends with an examination of the two material modes that are most important for Suárez, namely, the substantial mode of union, which serves to unite substantial form and prime matter, and the accidental mode of inherence, which accounts for the connection between a material substance and its “real accidents.”

Metaphysical Themes from Suárez

This chapter considers three metaphysical themes from Suárez that are reflected in Descartes’s account of the material world. The first theme involves the Suárezian conception of a mode, which had a direct influence on Descartes’s mature metaphysics. The other two themes indicate not a direct influence of Suárez on Descartes, but rather the presence of certain issues in Descartes that Suárez’s work serves to highlight. One of these themes concerns the relation of quantity to impenetrability. Descartes’s discussion of this relation reveals that he needs some version of the Suárezian distinction between quantified and unquantified extension. The final theme concerns the ontological status of surfaces. Descartes adopts a “modal realist” view of such entities that draws on Suárez’s notion of mode, but that also differs from Suárez’s own “moderate realist” view of the indivisibles.

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.