April 6

Jacob Lettie (JHU)

Spinoza's Account of Essence and the Triviality Problem

Abstract: Spinoza spells out what it is for something to belong to the essence of something else in a definition in Part 2 of the Ethics (E2d2). However, said definition, combined with Spinoza's necessitarianism, seems to pose a triviality problem for Spinoza's account of essence. Specifically, the worry is that Spinoza's definition has the consequence that everything belongs to the essence of every other thing. Of course, this is not what Spinoza had in mind; in an example appearing not long after the definition (E2p10cs), Spinoza claims that God does not belong to the essence of singular things. This presentation will explore a variety of formal candidate readings of E2d2, with the goal of evaluating in detail the capacity for different readings of Spinoza's definition of essence to be reconciled with the anti-triviality example in E2p10cs.

Jacob Lettie is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University with interests in metaphysics, logic, and history of philosophy.

A recording of the session will be made available for some time following the event.

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