File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9801, message 94


Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 16:07:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Kelly Timothy Lynch <ktlynch-AT-vex.net>
Subject: Inkonsequenz Spinozas (5 of 11)


(5 of 11)
(II cont)

Nietzsche also speaks of the necessity of falsity,
at least for us, as a condition of life, and as
necessarily determined by our nature and by our
perspective within nature as a whole (see, eg.,
sections 4, 10, and 11 of _Beyond_Good_and_
Evil_).  We should, however, be very careful here;
for Nietzsche is not Spinoza.

In the demonstration of propostion 7 in _Ethics_ III
Spinoza equates the power of a thing with its conatus
and refers to the previous proposition.  In the
demonstration of proposition 6 the power of a thing
is not explicitly spoken of; instead, the power of God
is spoken of and we are referred to proposition 34
of Part I.  Proposition 34, which opens a small group
of propositions concluding Part I, equates the power
of God with God's essence.  Although Spinoza does 
not define the term "power", despite the rigorous
geometric method, the immediate context of proposition 34
tells us a bit about the meaning of this term.  The
demonstration of proposition 34 is based on God's 
necessary and infinite causality; propositions  35 and 36
stress two fundamental aspects of this infinite causality,
namely its absolute necessity and its active productivity.
These two aspects are again mentioned in the opening
sentence of the demonstration of proposition 7 in
Part III, which speaks of the productive causality of
things (referring in fact to Part I, Prop. 36) and the
necessity of this causality.  What a thing does, what
it can do, and what it endeavours to do necessarily
depend on its power, which is the thing's essence
or conatus.

At the level of power, all appearance of final causality
seems to disappear.  All things--we are almost tempted
to say "all powers"--in nature necessarily draw their
consequences at each moment; but nature has no end
in view.  Outside of Deus sive Natura there is and can
be nothing.

Here we should note, however, that the wording of
proposition 6 of Part III contains a qualification:
each thing endeavours to persevere in its being
"to the degree that it is in itself" ("quantum in se est").
Strictly speaking, no finite thing is in itself absolutely;
for all things are, in one way or another, dependent
on other things.  Hence its being in itself is a matter
of degree.  From this it follows that not everything
which a thing actually does is a consequence
of its power or canatus, that is, its essence.
This is the point of Spinoza's important distinction
between "action" and "passion" in definition 2 of
Part III.  To the degree that what a thing does is
a consequence of its own power, conatus, or
essence, it is active and powerful; to the degree
that what a thing does is a consequence of the
power of other things, it is passive or powerless.
Thus the power of a thing, in Spinoza's sense,
must not be confused with, say, brute physical
strength.  As his definition of "affect" (Part III,
Def. 3) indicates clearly enough, this point is
crucial for understanding his psychology, not to
mention his ethics.  A vulgar mind will read
Spinoza--or, for that matter, Nietzsche--in a
vulgar way, thereby failing to understand
their thought.


[Note added Jan 1998:  It may be of interest
to some that the short Spinoza quotation in
my sig is in fact _Ethics_ I, prop. 34.]


     Kelly Timothy Lynch     ||    "Dei potentia est
       ktlynch-AT-vex.net       ||  ipsa ipsius essentia."
   Toronto, Ontario, Canada  ||         Spinoza



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