Spinoza's Concept of Method

Distinguishing true knowledge from the inadequate variants of knowledge, Spinoza concentrates on how we can gain access to this supreme form of knowledge. Spinoza defines true knowledge as the knowledge which is acquired by comprehending things through their essence or proximate cause. For Spinoza, method has no external existence from the knowledge, nor is it a road to the true knowledge. Method, rather, is the way through which knowledge reflects upon itself (13). In this post (covering the latter half of the TDIE), I'll try to explicate Spinoza's concept of philosophical method and its place within his theory of knowledge.

Spinoza begins by epistemically differentiating the true idea from the object which it supposedly represents. The idea of an object, thus, constitutes a knowable entity of its own. That means the idea itself can become the idea-essence of another idea. In order to grasp the essence of an object I need not know that I am knowing its idea. The true idea of an object designates the essence of that object, rather than designating the idea-essence of the idea (which is a distinct object). True idea is its own justification. It requires, Spinoza stresses, no justification by method.  

Dispelling the Cartesian approach (which sees method as the structure upon which knowledge stands), Spinoza places knowledge before the method. Method doesn't lead thought to the truth. It has no autonomous existence. In Spinoza's succinct words: " Knowledge must exist before there can be knowledge of knowledge, there will be no methodology unless knowledge exists first" (13). Philosophical method consists in coordinating human mind with the anterior knowledge. Spinoza pinpoints two different parts of the method. Firstly, the reflection on the innate true ideas enables the mind to distinguish between true ideas and others. For clearly grasping this point, we need to link it with Spinoza's treatment of infinite regress in knowledge. What justifies the best-ness of the best method? A second method can justify the first method, a third method does the second one and so on. Since Spinoza posits a first inborn knowledge which is its own justification, he could cut through this apparent deadlock (15). This innate knowledge helps to discover other true knowledge by reflecting upon itself. And this very form of reflection is what we can call the method. Secondly, the growing knowledge of nature redefines the methodological process. By integrating the knowledge of the order of things, the philosophical method eschews useless queries. 

Young Spinoza's conception of method, so to speak, stands at odd with the common-place criticism of him as a philosopher who prioritized formal method over the philosophical content. Hegel famously said that Spinoza's method, being indifferent to the specificity of objects, misconceives the very nature of philosophical knowledge (Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 283). Against the grain of such reading, this early reflection of Spinoza on method makes it clear that method doesn't mechanically produce knowledge; it doesn't either determine any regulative approach to knowledge. Coming as it does from the very reflection of knowledge upon itself, Spinozist method denies any methodological precondition of knowledge. In so doing, I would claim, Spinoza radically constructed a preemptive critique of the primacy of method in subsequent theories of knowledge.   

* I used the Joseph Katz translation of TDIE (1958, translated as "On the improvement of the understanding") for the citation.