Simple Wholes and Complex Parts: Limiting Principles in Spinoza

Abstract

One would expect that any thinker exploiting these two pairs of terms, part/whole and simplelcomplex, would correlate them in a manner exactly converse to the expressions in my title. That is, we would normally understand simples in important senses to be also least parts. And we would likewise take complexes in correlated ways to be also most inclusive wholes. Both pairs of terms are critical in Spinoza's philosophy, but my thesis here is that in using them, he correlates them conversely to our normal assumptions, just as I do in my title. That is to say, he understands parts to be also complex, and he understands wholes to be correspondingly simple. In this paper, I wish to urge this redisposition of our normal (and roughly organic) understanding of these two pairs of terms. I shall conclude that only the correlation I allow is viable at any limit, and that one only of these two can serve as ultimate principle. I take it to be clear that both part/whole and simplelcomplex are relative terms having a variety of uses dependent on the mode of consideration or on the viewpoint adopted on a sort of sliding scale. Thus a number of familiar items like human organisms, hands, triangles, communities, and hammers may be considered in diverse ways. We may take any of them to be wholes made up of parts (in relation to elements or aspects) or we may take the same to be parts in some greater whole (in relation to something including them or binding them together). Moreover, this double viewpoint results from the fact that such things stand in intermediate range on a sort of scale. For convenience, I shall call them mid-region beings. Mid-region beings are so positioned that, Janus-like, they may look in either direction toward opposite extremes. That is, we are tempted to characterize them either as wholes in relation to included parts or as parts in relation to included wholes, dependent on their comparison to other items on the scale. Indeed, there is a reflexive