Chapter 6: The Immortality of the
Soul in the ‘Short Treatise upon God, Man, and His Well-Being’ (Chapter 23)
Spinoza writes about the topic of
the soul frequently in what is presumed to be his earliest work, a ‘Short
Treatise upon God, Man, and His Well-Being’, which I shall refer to as his
Short Treatise[i].
This treatise is considered to be a precursor to his later work, the ‘Ethics’
but was only discovered in manuscript form as late as the nineteenth century. I
shall discuss both the older A version and the later B version manuscripts of
the Short Treatise when relevant discrepancies between them occur. Sadly, there
seems to be no copy of a surviving original text of the Short Treatise written
in Spinoza’s handwriting, and he does not refer to it explicitly in his works
or extant letters, so we can only read the Dutch translations of it written out
by other men. Therefore, my analytic methodology used when interpreting his
Short Treatise shall take into account that we do not have his original words
to analyse, so there will be greater limitations when combing through his
philosophy linguistically. Hence, I shall examine how to understand and flesh
out his logic and argumentation on the soul more abstractly, both within this
treatise and how it relates to his other works.
In his Short Treatise[ii],
Spinoza dedicates chapter 23 to the topic of the soul, with a focus on its
immortality, as well as providing an additional appendix on the human soul. He
also mentions the soul regularly throughout the Short Treatise[iii],
showing how it relates to a variety of topics, including the emotions and the
will.
I suggest a good place to start
when getting to grips with Spinoza’s stance on the soul in the Short Treatise
is a passage in his chapter 14 ‘On Grief’, together with its accompanying
footnote[iv],
where he summarises the conclusion he will draw in chapter 23. The usefulness
of using this as a starting point, I maintain, is that it serves as an
overarching guide when following the circumlocutory style of chapter 23,
keeping the reader on track with how Spinoza wants us to understand this chapter
and how it relates to his philosophy. This approach responds to the issue
Nadler[v]
raises about scholarly confusion over how to approach and understand Spinoza on
the immortality of the soul in his Short Treatise. Hence, my proposed solution
to this interpretative problem is to show how, by taking chapter 23 of
Spinoza’s Short Treatise within the context of reading the whole book and
especially chapter 14, with a focus on his stated aims and intentions for his
proof of the immortality of the soul in chapter 23, we can interpret Spinoza on
the soul more effectively. This helps not just in his Short Treatise but across
his entire works, including the Ethics which is Nadler’s main focus for his
paper ‘Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza’s Ethics’[vi].
In this way, I shall work backwards, as it were, from Spinoza’s explicit claims
about the conclusions he draws, to Spinoza’s more general arguments which
include the premises leading up to his conclusions. Then I shall finish by
checking my methodology and logical workings by reconstructing Spinoza’s
arguments forwards, from premise to conclusion myself (see especially P.1-9 and
conclusion, where P stands for premise), to demonstrate and trace how he
expected us to understand his argumentation and claims.
The relevant passage in ‘On
grief’ argues (the asterisks on ‘lastly’ are highlighting this additional word
in the B manuscript which is not included in the A version):
“But, in contrast with all these,
when man comes to love God who always is and remains immutable, then it is
impossible for him to fall into this welter of passions. And for this reason we
state it as a fixed and immovable principle that God is the first and only
cause of all our good and delivers us from all our evil. Hence it is also to be
noted *lastly,* that only Love, &c., are limitless : namely, that as it
increases more and more, so also it grows more excellent, because it is
bestowed on an object which is infinite, and can therefore always go on
increasing, which can happen in the case of no other thing except this alone.
And, maybe, this will afterwards give us the material from which we shall prove
the immortality of the soul, and how or in what way this is possible.”[vii]
The footnote to this which flags
up an alternative reading of this is:
“B: And this will give us the
material from which we shall, in the 23rd chapter, make out a case for, and
prove, the immortality of the Soul.”[viii]
The translator to this edition
I’m using added the following note to point to additional evidence in the
manuscripts to support the view that Spinoza is explicitly linking this passage
in chapter 14 to chapter 23:
So what does this tell us about
chapter 23 and Spinoza’s view of the soul? I suggest that the above passage (together with its accompanying notes) shows that Spinoza did believe in and argue for the existence of the soul
and that his philosophy states that the soul is immortal because both readings
state that he intends to “prove” “the immortality of the soul”[x].
Moreover, Spinoza’s purpose in chapter 23 is to provide this logical proof,
given that both a reading and a marginal note in the older manuscript refer to
chapter 23[xi].
In ‘On grief’, Spinoza anticipates that his argument for the immortality of the
soul will emerge from his claims about how love is “limitless” and is capable
of endlessly “increasing”, including increasing in “excellence”, which follows
from his prior claim that a love of God is a love for something which is
“infinite” and “immutable”[xii].
So how does Spinoza argue for the
immortality of the soul in chapter 23, ‘On the Immortality of the Soul’[xiii]?
Spinoza begins by breaking down
the question of whether the soul is immortal or not by restating it as the exclusive
disjunctive statement “it is mortal or immortal”[xiv].
A disjunction, generally speaking, is a way of setting out an either or
statement in logic. In the context of Spinoza’s argumentation in chapter 23[xv],
the main purpose is to discover which of the two contradictory statements is
true and which is false. This type of proof is commonly called denying a disjunct
or process of elimination, which is a valid argument structure by its nature. In
this chapter 23[xvi],
Spinoza intends to resolve this tension through a robust definition of the
soul. This may be because he wants his proof to not only be logically valid but
also sound and true. The way to achieve this is to try to make sure all the
premises are true. This guarantees both a sound argument and a true conclusion
because when an argument is valid and has true premises then it qualifies as a
sound argument and its soundness and validity means that the true premises
produce a true conclusion. Nevertheless, before making his argument by
elimination, Spinoza includes many additional statements, perhaps premises,
into his argumentation. I suggest this may be because he wishes to show the
reader why he thinks his premises are true rather than just state them as brute
facts (defined as inexplicable factual statements).
Spinoza draws on and restates his
earlier concise definition of the soul as “an Idea” “in the thinking thing”[xvii].
He reminds his readers that this emerges from “the reality of a thing which
exists in Nature”[xviii].
Simply put, reality is such that there exists in Nature thinking things which
possess an idea which is a soul. Logically, I think one could think of this as
something like the statement: In the domain of existence (depicted as the green
circle, see figure 1), there exists living thinking things with a soul (which
is an Idea within them/their body/mind and depicted as red dots contained
within the bounds of the green circle because otherwise it would refer to
non-existent thinking things).
 |
| Figure 1 In the domain of existence, there exists living thinking things with souls |
κ±x
(which reads as: there exists
thinking things which have souls, where κ± stands for ‘there exists’ and the x
represents ‘thinking things with souls’)
This also can be expressed as a complex
claim amounting to a premise such as:
P1. (Necessarily), there exists
in Nature thinking things which possess an Idea which is a soul.
Then Spinoza deduces from this
that it logically “follows that” “the duration and change of the soul” will
track “the duration and change of the” thinking “thing” in which it resides[xix].
This could be expressed as the following premise:
P2. It follows from premise 1
that the duration and changes of the soul are in accordance with those in the
thinking thing existing in Nature in which it resides.
Now Spinoza puts forward the
following statement:
“the Soul can become united either with the body of which it
is the Idea, or with God, without whom it can neither be, nor be known.”[xx]
This claim contains several ideas
so I shall break them down to uncover any potentially suppressed premises
otherwise it can feel as though there is a leap in the deductive argument. These
suppressed premises are perhaps suppressed because Spinoza is now assuming
knowledge from earlier in the Short Treatise so he is avoiding repeating
himself while using it to build on, however, I shall not be assuming prior
knowledge in this chapter. First, there is the implicit assumption that the
soul depends on God for its existence and for our knowledge of it. Second,
there is the implicit assumption that thinking things, their body and idea,
depend on God for their existence. So the background context is that,
irrespective of whether the soul is united with the body or God, it relies on
God for its existence. This means that, either way, the soul remains inside the
domain of existence (green circle, see figure 2), just in two different ways,
namely, united to a thinking thing’s body (red dots) or united to God (blue
dots).
 |
| Figure 2 In the domain of existence, there exists living thinking things with souls and the souls of the bodily dead thinking things |
Thus, I suggest that, although
Spinoza seems to be setting up an exclusive either/or disjunction, he is making
an inclusive statement which is demonstrating how the soul can exist both
united to the body and to God, albeit at different points in time, namely
before and after death, making it immortal. Since Spinoza is not yet presenting
his conclusion, it does not matter that he is using an inclusive disjunction
which cannot reach a conclusion. Indeed, as I shall show, at the end of this
argument, he switches to an exclusive disjunction to generate his main
conclusion. Perhaps all this can be reflected in my premises reconstructing his
argument:
P3. The soul exists and is known
through God
P4. At T1 the soul is
united to the body & at T2 the soul is united with God (T1
reads as time one and T2 as time two. Here, I’m using it to simplify
and demarcate different time spans to illustrate a sense of before and after,
in this case, death)
From all this, Spinoza draws a
disjunctive sub-conclusion (consisting of two conditional statements drawn from
earlier premises) which unpacks potential remaining tensions in the argument
and shows the truth of the premises.
P5. From P2, if the soul is always
united with the body only, then it will die with the body
Spinoza expands on this premise
by citing a non-materialistic reason why the soul would die with the body when
he adds that the body is “the foundation of its love”[xxi].
P6. From P2 & 3, if the soul
is united with God, then it is “unchangeable” and “lasting”[xxii]
just as God is
This premise reconstruction incorporates
both the A and B versions of the manuscripts because “lasting”[xxiii]
is an additional word added in the B text. I have included it because I think
it is in keeping with Spinoza’s overall argument and conclusion which addresses
not only the changeability of the soul but also its duration, the latter being
especially pertinent to the topic and chapter title of immortality. Restated in
this way, my P5 and P6 uncover the underlying structure of the latter stages of
Spinoza’s argument for the immortality of the soul. I suggest that my P5 and P6
set up the disjunction P7:
P7. From P5, either the soul is
only united with the body and dies with it so is not immortal,
or, from P6, it “becomes united
with” something “unchangeable”, “lasting” through which it cannot die[xxiv]
This reveals the logical language
and argument structure Spinoza uses when making these statements when he writes
“(1)….But (2)….Consequently”[xxv]
in the A version of the manuscript.
I shall demonstrate this by
formulating this section of his argument within the logical structure of the
process of elimination, namely, (1) or (2), not the first so the second. Or in
other words:
QvR
~Q
ⱡ R
(read as:
Q or R
not Q
therefore R)
This will match up with my
premises as:
P7: P5vP6
(and P8 from P3)
P9: (so) not P5
Conclusion: Hence, P6
Within these premises I’ve set
out, this translates into P7 (which states the disjunction P5 or P6), P9 (not
P5 thereby denying this disjunct because it contradicts other statements and is
false) so Conclusion (from P6, the true disjunct). This is because P8 states
that, given P3, the soul does not exist through itself or the body but through
God and this shows it to be contradictory and a false disjunct. Hence, given P6
and 7, (necessarily), it is true that the soul becomes united to God and is
immortal. This can be stated as:
P8. And, from P3, the soul exists
and is known through God not the body or itself
P9. So not P5 (it is not true
that the soul is always/remains united to the body and dies with the body and
so is mortal)
Conclusion. Hence/ “Consequently”[xxvi],
P6 the soul becomes united with God through whom it exists and has already been
brought into existence, so the soul is unchanging, everlasting, does not die
and is thus immortal
Further to this, Spinoza fleshes
out the conclusion of his proof:
“Consequently, that thing which
alone is the cause of its existence, must also (when it is about to perish) be
the cause of its non-existence, because it happens to change itself or to
perish.”[xxvii]
Here, I suggest that Spinoza is
pointing out that which causes something to exist is the same thing which
causes it to go out of existence. So, when the soul is on the brink of either
dying with the body or changing to being united to God, it does the latter,
Hashem willing (Hashem being a neutral term for God in Hebrew, here forming
part of the phrase meaning: it’s up to God). This is because, just as it is up
to God to bring us into existence, so it is up to God whether we go out of existence
or not. The later B version of the manuscript equally concludes that “that
which alone is the cause” of something existing, would also have to be the
cause of its “non-existence” when it suffers a change, death, or annihilation[xxviii].
This could be expressed as the conditional, if-then statement:
If it is true that “that which
alone is the cause of the existence of a thing”, then it is true that it is
also “the cause of its non-existence, simply because itself is changing or
passing away; or” it “must be able to annihilate itself”[xxix]
Again, as with the A version, I think there is the
underlying logical structure of not the first so the second in his argument in
support of the immortality of the soul in version B:
If something is not able to “begin to exist through itself
when it does not yet exist” then it is not able to “change or perish through itself,
now that it does exist.”[xxx]
In this way, the B version of the
Short Treatise also stays in keeping with the A manuscript in that it argues
that, just as a thing cannot bring itself into existence, so it is incapable of
going out of existence by changing or dying “through itself”[xxxi].
Spinoza’s proof of the soul being immortal, rather than mortal, involves the
outcome that God is the only cause of our existence. Thus, Spinoza logically
compels us to conclude that uniting to God is how a thinking thing’s soul
achieves immortality.
[i] Benedict de Spinoza, Spinoza’s Short
Treatise on God, Man & His Wellbeing, ed. and trans. Abraham Wolf
(London: A. & C. Black, 1910), https://archive.org/details/spinozasshorttre00spinuoft/page/n7.
[ii] Spinoza.
[iii] Spinoza.
[iv] Spinoza, 100–101.
[v] Steven Nadler, ‘Eternity and Immortality
in Spinoza’s Ethics’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXVI, no. 1 (2002):
225, footnote 5, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4975.261064.
[vi] Nadler, ‘Eternity and Immortality in
Spinoza’s Ethics’.
[vii] Spinoza, Short Treatise, 100
(lines 29-34)-101 (lines 1-3).
[viii]
Spinoza, 101.
[ix] Spinoza, 101.
[x] Spinoza, 101.
[xi] Spinoza, 101.
[xii] Spinoza, 100.
[xiii]
Spinoza, 136–37.
[xiv] Spinoza, 136.
[xv] Spinoza, 136–37.
[xvi] Spinoza, 136–37.
[xvii]
Spinoza, 136.
[xviii]
Spinoza, 136.
[xix] Spinoza, 136.
[xx] Spinoza, 136.
[xxi] Spinoza, 136.
[xxii]
Spinoza, 136.
[xxiii]
Spinoza, 136.
[xxiv]
Spinoza, 136.
[xxv] Spinoza, 136.
[xxvi]
Spinoza, 137.
[xxvii]
Spinoza, 137.
[xxviii]
Spinoza, 136.
[xxix]
Spinoza, 136.
[xxx] Spinoza, 136.
[xxxi]
Spinoza, 136.
