Alongside finite modes, Spinoza distinguishes infinite modes, the study of which may shed more light on God’s creativity. The infinite modes act as intermediaries, as it were, between God and the finite modes. These infinite modes are immediate when they derive absolutely from the nature of God, and mediate when they derive from God through the mediation of immediate infinite modes. For the sake of brevity, I shall only discuss the infinite modes of the attribute of Extension. The immediate infinite mode of Extension is Motion and Rest. Although the Cartesian mechanism explains all things by extension and motion, according to Descartes, extension is inert. From where, then, does motion come? Descartes says that it is transcendental in origin. By asserting that Motion is an infinite mode of God, Spinoza maintains, against Descartes, that it is integral to the essence of extension – which is itself dynamic – and that it is a sort of intrinsic explanation of things. The mediate infinite mode of Extension is the facies totius universi (the face of the whole universe). Indeed, scientific explanation does not proceed, as Descartes would have it, from the parts to the whole. Nature is a ‘total individual’, a ‘concrete whole’ formed out of a hierarchy of more or less complex structures, each of which is defined by a ratio of motion to rest. As a realized totality, the ‘macrocosm’ is analogous to the ‘microcosm’, and there is an analogous unity between them. (from On the Idea of Creation in Spinoza, by Sylvain Zac, in God and Nature: Spinozas Metaphysics, ed. by Yirmiyahu Yovel, Leiden 1991, p.237, spelling slightly modified)
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 10:56:28 +0000
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