The Metaphysics of the Material World Suárez, Descartes, Spinoza

In The Metaphysics of the Material World, Tad M. Schmaltz traces a particular development of the metaphysics of the material world in early modern thought. The route Schmaltz follows derives from a critique of Spinoza in the work of Pierre Bayle. Bayle charged in particular that Spinoza's monistic conception of the material world founders on the account of extension and its "modes" and parts that he inherited from Descartes, and that Descartes in turn inherited from late scholasticism, and ultimately from Aristotle. After an initial discussion of Bayle's critique of Spinoza and its relation to Aristotle's distinction between substance and accident, this study starts with the original re-conceptualization of Aristotle's metaphysics of the material world that we find in the work of the early modern scholastic Suárez. What receives particular attention is Suárez's introduction of the "modal distinction" and his distinctive account of the Aristotelian accident of "continuous quantity." This examination of Suárez is followed by a treatment of the connections of his particular version of the scholastic conception of the material world to the very different conception that Descartes offered. Especially important is Descartes's view of the relation of extended substance both to its modes and to the parts that compose it. Finally, there is a consideration of what these developments in Suárez and Descartes have to teach us about Spinoza's monistic conception of the material world. Of special concern here is to draw on this historical narrative to provide a re-assessment of Bayle's critique of Spinoza.

Tad M. Schmaltz is Professor of Philosophy and James B. and Grace J. Nelson Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in early modern philosophy, and is the author of Malebranche's Theory of the Soul (OUP 1996), Radical Cartesianism (2002), Descartes on Causation (OUP 2008), and Early Modern Cartesianisms (OUP 2017). In addition, he has edited or co-edited Receptions of Descartes (2005), Integrating History and Philosophy of Science (2012), Efficient Causation: A History (OUP 2014), The Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (2015), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy (OUP 2017), and The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism (OUP 2019).

Tables and Figures
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Prologue

1. Bayle's Narrative
1.1. Bayle's Aristotelian Critique of Spinoza
1.2. Aristotle's Metaphysics of the Material World

Part I: Suárez
2. Metaphysics and Material Modes
2.1. Analogical Metaphysics
2.2. Theory of Distinctions I
2.3. The Metaphysics of Material Modes
3. Quantity, Integral Parts and Boundaries
3.1. Quantity and Impenetrability I
3.2. Mereology and Integral Parts
3.3. Boundaries as Indivisible Constituents

Part II: Descartes
4. Metaphysical Themes from Suárez
4.1. Theory of Distinctions II
4.2. Quantity and Impenetrability II
4.3. The Metaphysics of Surfaces
5. Material Pluralism and Ordinary Bodies
5.1. The Synopsis and Bodies-Taken-In-General
5.2. Incorruptibility and the Vacuum
5.3. Ordinary Bodies, Human and Otherwise

Part III: Spinoza
6. Metaphysical Themes from Descartes
6.1. The Nature of Substance/Attributes
6.2. The Nature of Modes
6.3. From Extension to Motion-and-Rest
7. Material Monism and Bodily Parts
7.1. Modal Parts and Divisible Quantity
7.2. The Mereology of the Infinite Individual
7.3. Parts, Modes and Material Monism

Epilogue

Works cited
Index