Immanent Causation in Spinoza and Scholasticism

Spinoza is well-known for his claim that God is the only substance that exists, and that everything else is a mere “mode” of that substance. At the same time, Spinoza maintains that all things depend causally on God for their being. But if all of reality is in some sense identical with God, in what manner can God be its cause? Spinoza’s answer is found in his claim that “God is the immanent, and not the transeunt, cause of all things.” In this thesis, I investigate the scholastic roots of this distinction and its implications for understanding the fundamental features of Spinoza’s monistic ontology. The scholastics commonly distinguish between two kinds of activities, one which “remains” in the subject doing it and the other which “passes” outside. Those classified as immanent were primarily mental operations like thinking and willing. The first part of this thesis examines how the scholastics disagree over whether this kind of activity ought to be construed as a kind of production; the nature of its relation to its subject; and whether it is produced by means of ‘emanation’. The concept of an immanent cause emerges within this context. In the second part of this thesis, I bring this research to bear on our understanding of Spinoza’s metaphysics. First, I support the interpretation that Spinoza’s immanent cause emanates its effects within itself, in the manner that the properties of a thing follow from its essence. Contrary to what some scholars have suggested, however, this entails neither that it is a form of formal causation, nor that Spinoza’s conception of immanent causation is fundamentally discontinuous with the scholastic tradition. Second, I look at how Spinoza’s claim that an immanent cause undergoes what it does can be reconciled with the apparent impossibility of God undergoing anything on Spinoza’s system. I argue that we should distinguish between two senses of undergoing in Spinoza: God cannot undergo in the sense of being determined by external causes. But as the immanent cause of all things, God undergoes in the sense of being the thing that is affected by his own action.Ph.D