{In honor of this conference a blog about some of Clarke's interesting arguments against Spinoza.--ES} Samuel Clarke is now best known for his correspondence with Leibniz. This is a shame because it is not his finest performance that does no justice to his philosophic acumen nor to Newton's views. Clarke's (1705) A Demonstration of the being and attributes of God: more particularly in answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza and their followers is full of terrific arguments and also extremely subtle readings of Spinoza (and a book I like to blog about). In preparing this post, I have found a remarkable authority for this claim (about which more some other time)!!!
Now together with other English (Newtonian) critics of Spinoza, Clarke focuses on Spinoza's rather un-sophisticated treatment of motion to argue against Spinoza's system (and argue for an alternative physics, metaphysics, and theology). Here I discuss two of these arguments: “if [motion] was of itself necessary and self-existent, then it follows that it must be a contradiction in terms to suppose any matter to be at rest.” Now, when Clarke charges a "contradiction," one ought to read it as "this is problematic." This particular claim is, of course, question-begging against Spinoza (cf. Ethics 2p13A1’: “All bodies either move or are at rest”). But the spirit behind Clarke's argument may well be Spinozistic. Let me briefly explain.
There is obviously no contradiction in terms between self-existing or necessary motion and matter at rest. But it is the case that according to Spinoza, given the existence of motion, from the ‘infinite past’ there must be some motion in the universe (e.g., E1p28). Moreover, if we accept something like a principle of sufficient reason (PSR) then it does seem arbitrary that if we accept that motion can be self-existent that at any given time matter can be at rest. Something like this intuition informs Clarke’s best (other) arguments against Spinoza. (Of course, in his correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz would use something like this intuition with devastating effectiveness against Clarke’s claims on behalf of a Voluntarist God.)
In correspondence Daniel Schneider has offered an alternative, promising construal of Clarke’s argument here: if motion is necessary and self-existent it must be like a substance, that is, in a certain sense unlimited. Motion would fall under the definition of self-cause offered in E1D1 and not under the definition of things that can be delimited (offered in E1D2). Hence, if motion is self-existent there could not be rest anywhere. (This assumes that following Descartes’ approach, motion and rest are treated as contraries in Spinoza’s system, something suggested as a plausible gloss on E2p13A1’ in correspondence by our very own Dennis Des Chene.) In my view there is little textual evidence for the idea that Spinoza is committed to the claim that motion is self-existent if by this is meant without requiring anything else (i.e., substance).
But it is possible that Clarke does read Spinoza in Schneider's way. For Clarke's next claim is that “Because the determination of this self-existent motion must be every way at once, the effect of it could be nothing else but a perpetual rest.” I am unsure why Clarke thinks this. It seems to presuppose that the universe is finite, but I do not understand why Clarke would have attributed that to Spinoza (or, given his Newtonian cosmology, thought so himself) . Daniel Schneider sees “Clarke’s argument here as relying yet again on the unlimited nature of a self-existent being. If motion is caused by itself, then it will be unlimited motion (i.e. motion in all directions), and thus it will be motion in no directions and thus perpetual rest.”
I like Schneider's idea, but I do not see why in Spinoza the inference, "unlimited motion/motion in all directions" --> "motion in no directions," follows. In response, Schneider thinks that “unlimited motion would be motion along all paths--and this cancels out the motion and entails rest.” I doubt this follows in an infinite universe. I also suspect that on Schneider’s construal we need to attribute to Clarke’s reading of Spinoza a kind of tacit symmetry principle (such that the motions cancel out), and with it, perhaps, the PSR. I think Clarke does read Spinoza as holding the PSR and some such symmetry principal, but about that some other time more.
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