Notes on Spinoza

In Spinoza’s naturalistic and monistic metaphysics, matter and mind are
two attributes of the one substance, and everything can be understood as
 corporeal, as well as mental1. Looking at nature in its corporeal
 attribute, ultimately everything is made up of simple bodies which “are
 distinguished from one another by reason of motion and rest, speed and
 slowness” (Ethics II.L1). A composite body or “individual” is a “union of
 bodies” formed when a number of simple bodies “are so constrained by other
 bodies that they lie upon one another, or if they so move … that they
 communicate their motions to each other in a certain fixed manner”
 (II.A2”). Thus a human body, for example, is in fact a composite of many
 layers of smaller bodies, bound together ultimately by proportions (ratio)
 or patterns of movement and rest. There are composites of composites, and
 so on to infinity: indeed, “the whole of nature” (which is to say, “God”),
 is “one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite
 ways, without any change of the whole individual” (II.L7).

 Spinoza says that two bodies agree with one another if they could come
 together to form a sustainable composite body, i.e., they would not
 destroy one another (III.P5) if so joined together . The opposite of
 agreement is to be of “contrary nature”: two bodies of contrary nature
 cannot form a composite body, as they would destroy each other. Mutual
 destruction sets out the negative limit case of disagreement. At the other
 extreme, in the ideal case: “we can think of none more excellent than
 those which agree entirely with our nature. For if, for example, two
 individuals of entirely the same nature are joined to one another, they
 compose an individual twice as powerful as each one.” This is the ideal
 human community in which all “so agree in all things that the minds and
 bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and body” in which “all
 strive together, as far as they can, to preserve their being” and seek
 “the common advantage of all” (IVp18s).

 But while here Spinoza cites the human community in general as an ideal,
 he also recognises that some human bodies can agree more than others (IV
 appendix VII) – and indeed some people “may not agree at all” with a
 particular individual’s nature. Between the two limit cases of mutual
 destruction and perfect union, we can suppose a spectrum of alliances in
 which bodies agree or disagree more or less well. These are relations of
 bodies of different but in some sense complementary natures – thus, for
 example, the human body needs food, and also forms of affective and
 spiritual nourishment (IVp45s), which it can only get through contact with
 external bodies of various kinds. In general, we can say, two bodies are
 in agreement to the extent that a relation between them increases their
 power; or in disagreement to the extent that it decreases their power,
 weakens them.

 Now we need to think about what Spinoza mean by power (potentia). There
 are two main ways in which Spinoza understands and explains this term.
 First, a body’s potentia is its “power of acting” (III general def; IIID3;
 IIIp54, IIIp55, and more …). Spinoza also uses the term “a greater or
 lesser perfection” to refer to a body with more or less power: “insofar as
 we attribute something to them which involves negation, like a limit, and
 end, lack of power, and so on, we call them imperfect” (IVpreface).
 Spinoza famously defines joy as “that passion by which the mind passes to
 a greater perfection”, or increased power, with sadness the corresponding
 affect of decrease (IIIp11).

 An affect, in fact, is just “an affection of the body by which the body’s
 power of acting is increased or diminished is increased or diminished,
 aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections”
 (IIId3). There are two kinds of affects, called “actions” and “passions”.
 An action is where the body itself is what Spinoza calls an “adequate
 cause” – or as some contemporary commentators write, the “complete cause”
 – of this affection or change. That is: “its effect can be clearly and
 distinctly perceived through it [alone]” (III.D1). A passion, on the other
 hand is the affect we experience where our own body is only a “partial
 cause” of a change, in conjunction with other bodies.

 Nature (or God) as a whole, considered as one infinite composite body, is
 always the adequate or complete cause of its own affections2– they are
 all actions. Smaller bodies such as ours have finite, limited, powers of
 acting, and are often acted upon: “we are acted upon when something arises
 in us of which we are only the partial cause, that is, something which
 cannot be deduced from the laws of our nature alone (IV.P2).”

 Can we then say, simply, that a body’s power to act is greater the more
 that body is independent of, unaffected by, other bodies? It is impossible
 for a human body to be completely independent of the external world –
 indeed, “there are … many things outside us which are useful to us, and on
 that account to be sought” (IV.P18s). But perhaps, within these limits, we
 can aspire to an increasing attainment of independence.

 In the second sense of potentia, it is equivalent to a body’s “conatus” or
 “striving to persevere in being” (IIIp7), its “force of existing” (III
 general def). Conatus is the essential motion or activity of a body, which
 the human mind experiences as the basic affect of desire. All activity or
 motion of a body, insofar as it is in fact acting, rather than being acted
 upon, can be seen as an expression of this basic striving to maintain
 itself (III.P7). In fact this sense of power is closely tied to the first.
 The link is Spinoza’s proposition that “no thing can be destroyed except
 through an external cause” (III.P4). An independent body, which is not
 acted upon by others, will never be destroyed. To increase one’s
 independence from other bodies, then, is to increase one’s ability to
 persevere.

 Being acted upon is, then, the source of danger to a body. But it is not
 always a bad thing. Some encounters with other bodies are harmful to us
 and threaten destruction but, as we saw above, some encounters with other
 bodies are useful — that is, they actually increase our power to act
 (independently). This is what we experience when we feel joyful passions.
 The aim, then, of Spinozist ethics is not an unattainable complete
 independence and immortality, but, as it were, to maximise the body’s
 independence within finite limits.

 These limits are defined by a body’s nature or essence. To become more
 powerful is to live more in accord with one’s own nature. Through reason
 we come to understand our body’s nature, learn to form relations with
 other bodies which agree with one’s nature, and avoid encounters with
 bodies which are harmful to us. “No one … avoids food or kills himself
 from the necessity of his own nature” (IV.P20). Those who appear to harm
 their own bodies are really being acted upon by external causes, whether
 obvious or “hidden”.

 Essence and proportion

 What is the essence of a body? Recall that a complex individual body such
 as that of a human is a composition of many layers of sub-bodies, right
 down to the simple bodies which are distinguished only by their “motion
 and rest”. The essence or form of any composite body is the organisational
 structure of this composition. As Spinoza puts it: “that its parts
 communicate their motions to each other in a certain fixed proportion
 [ratio] (IV.P39)”. As commentators such as xx have pointed out, by ratio
 here we really need to understand something more than a proportion of
 quantities, the composite body’s form here is the complex and
 multi-layered characteristic pattern in which the “motion and rest” of its
 many component parts is arranged. To say that two composite bodies agree
 then means: their forms harmonise and reinforce each other, allowing their
 characteristic patterns of motion and rest to continue in being. When two
 contrary bodies meet, on the other hand, their characteristic patterns are
 in disharmony, and the encounter results in at least some of their
 structuring being altered or destroyed. And thus: “those things are good
 which bring about the preservation of the proportion of motion and rest
 the human body’s power have to each other” (IV.P39).

 Though, of course, we are far too ignorant of the workings of complex
 human bodies to perform such, as it were, micro level analyses for real.
 Rather, we have to work with a macro understanding of bodies and their
 relations: we know from our experience, and from applied reasoning, that
 certain (complex) bodies are useful or harmful for each other. That is: we
 see that a relation between two bodies leads to one or other being
 empowered or destroyed.

 Now, on the micro level, we can see Spinoza as holding something like a
 principle of conservation of energy (or of “simple bodies” in motion). For
 a composite body to be destroyed means for its parts to be reorganised,
 perhaps scattered and separated. The motion of these simple bodies is
 redirected, the ratio which holds them together is broken.

 Note that a body may persevere despite certain changes: for example, it
 might grow by adding more simple bodies in such a way as to maintain the
 body’s proportions or structure. Or, as we have seen, it may change in
 certain ways so as to increase or diminish its power (IV preface). Such
 changes leave untouched the ratio of its components. But if changes are
 such that a body’s essential ratio is transformed, that body can be said
 to be destroyed. For a composite body to cease to exist is the same as for
 it “to be changed into another form” (IV.P20s). When a human body dies,
 for example, the simple bodies which comprise its matter disperse and are
 absorbed into new bodies. “For example, a horse is destroyed as much if it
 is changed into a man as if it is changed into an insect” (IV preface).

 Now we can try to understand the idea of “conatus” or the striving for
 self-preservation in this context. It is not, in fact, that a composite
 body is always striving to persevere: some bodies do in fact do things
 that harm themselves. The point is that a body strives to persevere
 insofar as it acts, rather than being acted upon. And its striving to
 persevere is a striving to remain unchanged as a composite body, with the
 same essence or form. Sometimes a body strives to persevere (i.e., acts,
 is led by its conatus) and sometimes it moves in other ways which may
 threaten to harm its composition (i.e., it is acted upon by external
 bodies in ways which diminish its power). To say that a body is powerful
 is to say that it tends more towards the first alternative. So we can now
 understand a series of Spinozist equivalences: power = acting = striving
 to persevere (conatus) = maintaining essence.

 We can ask a further question: why, or when, is a body more likely to
 follow its conatus? What determines whether a body acts or is acted upon?
 Again, it might help to examine this question at the micro level of simple
 bodies. To say that a composite body strives to maintain its form is to
 say that the simple bodies which compose it continue to move in accordance
 with the essential ratio or pattern. Why should they do so? Here we touch
 on highly contested areas in Spinoza scholarship, but I will sketch a
 possible answer. Spinoza’s account of bodies is based on a principle of
 inertia: a simple body will continue to move in the same way until it is
 re-directed by an encounter with another body (II.L3). A composite body
 can be viewed as a complex dynamic system, and the essential ratio is then
 a certain pattern of motion which holds as a more or less stable
 equilibrium. The stability of a dynamic system means its ability to resist
 perturbations or “shocks”. If some encounter with an external body throws
 the system out of balance, will it return to this equilibrium pattern, or
 will it break down or fly apart? Conatus, on these terms, could be taken
 to stand for stabilising — indeed, homeostatic – tendencies or properties
 of the system.3

 A body will persevere, then, so long as its conatus is strong enough to
 re-establish the form of its component bodies after a harmful encounter.
 In a harmful encounter, the motions of Body B’s components interfere with
 or disrupt the motion of Body A’s components, disturbing the system as a
 whole. In an encounter between bodies which agree, on the other hand, the
 motions of the two bodies’ reinforce each other, supporting the systems’
 inherent stabilising forces.

 4. Nietzsche contra Spinoza

 Nietzsche sees his thesis of will to power as a rebuttal of Spinoza’s
 theory of conatus. “A living being desires above all to vent its strength
 – life as such is will to power – : self-preservation is only one of the
 indirect and most frequent consequences of it (BGE13).” The error here,
 says Nietzsche, stems from “Spinoza’s inconsistency”.

 Why “inconsistency”? Nietzsche does not expand on the point, but we can
 build on the discussion above to suggest an interpretation. We can start
 by noting the considerable agreement in the two theories. Both are
 theories of the composition of bodies, in which a complex body such as
 that of a human individual or group is a composition of many smaller
 bodies or forces. In Nietzsche, we saw these sub-individual parts as,
 primarily, the drives, with their activity. In Spinoza, the ultimate
 components are “simple bodies”, with their motion. In both theories, we
 can understand the activity of a complex body by paying attention
 (although, all the while, acknowledging our ignorance) to the micro-level
 relations of these smaller components. The nature or activity – and the
 power, in various senses — of the complex body is effectively an outcome
 of its internal structuring or composition, as well as of its encounters
 with external bodies. While Spinoza and Nietzsche define power quite
 differently, we can also note another key parallel: for both, the powerful
 body is one that acts, and does so, in some sense, independently from
 determination by outside forces.

 With almost all the elements then in place to arrive at the theory of will
 to power, Spinoza’s error, for Nietzsche, is to exaggerate the importance
 of self-preservation in the dynamic life of bodies. It may well be that
 many bodies are composed in such a way that they evidence tendencies or
 “strivings” towards self-preservation.4 But, even so, conatus is a special
 case which we can explain as arising from more general principles
 governing the complex dynamic systems which are bodies. Spinoza’s
 over-statement of conatus is inconsistent with his general understanding
 of these principles.

 There is a further point which we might read as implicit in Nietzsche’s
 critique of Spinoza. Not only does the privileging of conatus create an
 internal inconsistency in Spinoza’s system, and serve to hide the
 centrality of will to power, but it also prevents Spinozism from
 accounting for the transformation – or, we might say, the evolution – of
 bodies. If a body’s power is defined in terms of its ability to keep its
 form unchanged, such a concept of power cannot help us to understand how a
 body can be trans-formed.

 Even without stepping outside of Spinoza’s terms and objects of inquiry,
 this appears to create some problems. For example, how can Spinoza
 understand the transformative growth or maturation of body that ages? At
 one point (IV.P39s) the theory of conatus leads Spinoza to a curious
 discussion on human growth: as the forms of infant and an adult humans are
 so different, growing up seems like a kind of death, and “no reason
 compels me to maintain that the body does not die unless it is changed
 into a corpse.” Spinoza then breaks off the discussion rather than
 “provide the superstitious with material.”5 But if maturation is a problem
 for Spinoza, he might have more problems still to understand evolutionary
 change in biological lineages of bodies, or, perhaps, dynamic change in
 social or political bodies. Accounts of transformative change cannot be
 given in terms of conatus.

 For Nietzsche, will to power plays the role that conatus cannot. In the
 first place, it provides an adequate general principle for the dynamics of
 bodies and their encounters. Furthermore, it enables an account of the
 transformations or becomings of bodies. But, I will maintain, at least if
 we conceive will to power in terms of domination, both these claims are
 questionable.