Essence, Proximate Causes, and the Rationalist Method:

The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect begins with a discussion of the method by which the “true good” may be found (1). The true good is the means of the perfection of man’s nature (13). For sake of attaining this good we must make a calculated and reasoned intellectual effort. To this end we must recognize how we come to know about things in the world (18), and which methods beget true knowledge, or understanding, of the “essence” of a thing. Spinoza recognizes an understanding which comes of knowing a things “proximate causes” as the method of knowing above all others (29). The method of proximate causes is superior to knowing a thing through report, through random sense perception, or through an understanding derived from a things effects (19). The priority of knowledge through proximate causes makes this form of knowing Spinoza’s candidate for the foundation of his method for the pursuit of the "true good".

Spinoza’s claims that to know something via its essence or proximate causes is the only intellectual method that “... comprehends the adequate essence of the thing and is without danger of error.” (29). In making this claim, defended only by an illustration of a persons’s geometric understanding of the concept of parallelism(24), Spinoza opens the floodgates to numerous objections. The first of which might come from an empiricists, who would doubt that the priority given to knowledge through proximate causes holds when we discuss those kinds of things which exist in the natural world, as opposed to those which have only intellectual existence, such as geometrical concepts.

This objection is especially relevant today, when the natural sciences have departed so far from the realm of the intellect. It is hard to imagine that knowledge of such things as the laws which govern quantum mechanics could have been known in any way other than the empirical (inferential) means by which they were discovered.* A Spinozist might object and argue that the essence of the objects of the quantum world is not found in these laws, and that this essence is not yet known to us. This leaves us with a need to investigate what is meant in Spinoza's work by "essence".

Regarding the nature of essence Spinoza is silent. In this we are left to our own devices. We may start by asking ourselves, in what does the essence of an electron consist; in the subatomic particles which compose it, or in the laws of its behavior, whereby we understand electricity. If it is indeed the former, as S. would insist, we will have to wonder, could such a reductionist approach to understanding the essence of the natural world ever deliver to us any knowledge of the true good, as Spinoza imagines it?

These questions represent one of the fundamental discussions of Spinoza’s time, namely, whether the world can be best understood rationally or empirically. Similarly, we may wonder what, if any, the role of science and the reductionist method is in questions of moral philosophy. Finally, we might ask if Spinoza can support any meaningful discussion of the method by which the true good may be pursued on such weak premises as the priority of knowledge through proximate causes and the existence of essence.

* This reference to quantum mechanics is used to illustrate a scientific truth alien to our usual conception of reason or S.'s conception of the intellect. I do not mean to use the all too common philosophical escape route of referencing quantum mechanics, and making wild claims as to its significance, that is often employed when someone is faced with a situation in which he or she has nothing to say.