Spinoza's Ethics: I.D1: Self-Caused

Here at the beginning of definitions, we ponder the nature of beginning. Almost everything that exists seems to have a start or a beginning. However, when we reflect on the essence of the things that exist, we are less likely to conceive a beginning. Within these existences and essences, Spinoza says it is inconceivable to imagine a complete nothingness out of which came somethingness. Something was always inherent in the apparent nothingness to create somethingness.

Spinoza defines self-caused under two different angles: the essence of self-caused and the nature of self-caused. These are not redundancies. In fact, taking two different approaches at once does not even seem to follow a geometric method, but he has an important reason for this dual-angled approach. To use contemporary phrasing, Spinoza unfolds our journey of happiness as a “mind-body problem” which requires a different line of reasoning for each component. Here “essence of” addresses the body, while “nature of” addresses the mind.

From the perspective of the body, he defines the essence of self-caused as involving existence. The meaning of existence is clear as there’s nothing to indicate that Spinoza means anything other than our state of existing. But the verb “involves” is not so transparent. When we say “involve,” we mean there are some necessary circumstances as in “my job involves hard work.” Hard work is the necessary circumstance around my job. Taking that approach, it might be appropriate to say that existence is the necessary circumstance of the essence of self-caused. Another way might be to look more closely at the root meaning of the verb.

"Involve” is the English translation of the Latin word involvit. This Latin word come from two Latin words – in meaning “in” and volvere meaning “to roll around.” Combining their components means “to roll around inside.” So, we could envision my job as a core, rolling round inside my hard work. That image graphically and, more importantly, bodily captures what Spinoza is doing here. He is describing the essence of self-caused as rolling around inside existence. This “rolling around inside” is just the first of many times that Spinoza’s abstract ideas, like essence, become immanent in concrete ideas, like existence. Then he shifts from body to mind.

He states that the nature of self-caused cannot be conceived except as existing. Again, the verb is all-important. Spinoza uses “conceive” or concipit as a verb of thinking with the particular sense of having “a view from nowhere” structured by general logic (mathematically delimiting, but non-numerical). He is not using a verb of thinking that is set in a particular time or place. Instead, he is using a verb to describe something which is true for all time. So, in the first aspect, the bodily aspect, it is real, but in this second aspect, it is true. Here is the first definition we are starting to see that what is real for the body is true for the mind.

Per causam sui intellego id cujus essentia involvit existentiam sive id cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens.

Translated as:

By cause of itself, I understand that whose essence involves existence or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing.