176 / 298
Horst Steinke
176
rhetoric would be to have no rhetoric at all. Thought becomes a private, or
even an “antisocial enterprise”, in W. J. Ong,
Ramus: Method, and the Decay of
Dialogue. From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason
, Cambridge, Mass., Har-
vard University Press, 1958, p. 291; see also M. Mooney,
The Primacy of Lan-
guage in Vico
, in
Vico and Contemporary Thought,
cit., Part 1, pp. 191-210, p. 198.
336
A.V. Garrett,
Meaning in Spinoza’s Method
, cit., p. 1.
337
The phrase, in the translation by S. Shirley, reads: «[…] therefore I call
such perceptions “knowledge from casual experience”». See
The Essential Spi-
noza: Ethics and Related Writings
, ed. by M. L. Morgan, with the translations of
S. Shirley, Indianapolis-Cambridge, Hackett Publishing, 2006, p. 50.
338
Due to this subdivision, Cristofolini speaks of four kinds of knowledge
in total (Id.,
La scienza intuitiva di Spinoza
, Naples, Morano, 1987, p. 210).
339
Ethics
, Part II, Proposition XL, Note II; italics original. The Shirley
translation uses quotation marks to alert the reader to Spinozan usage of
terms such as “knowledge of the first kind’, “opinion”, “imagination”, “rea-
son”, “knowledge of the second kind”, “intuition”.
In
TdIE
, §§ 19-29, Spinoza outlines four «modes of perceiving (
modi percip-
iendi
)», which can be “mapped” onto the three kinds of knowledge as follows:
1
st
and 2
nd
mode: perception from hearsay (second-hand), perception from
casual experience (first-hand) = 1
st
kind of knowledge; 3
rd
mode: inference of
cause from effect, without danger of error, yet not in itself means of acquiring
perfection = 2
nd
; 4
th
mode: perceived through essence alone of a thing = 3
rd
.
It seems that Spinoza intends the «modes of perceiving» to be synonymous
with the «kinds of knowledge», as in § 29 he terms the fourth mode of per-
ceiving «this kind of knowledge», and in § 30 he adds, epexegetically, with re-
spect to the fourth mode of perceiving, «now that we know what kind of
knowledge is necessary for us […]». Also, in
Ethics
, he introduces the three
kinds of knowledge as forms of perception. N. Maull wrote that
TdIE
was
«echoed later in the
Ethics
» (Id.,
Spinoza in the Century of Science
, in
Spinoza and
the Sciences
, ed. by M. Grene and D. Nails, Dordrecht-Boston-Lancaster-
Tokyo, D. Reidel Publishing, 1986, pp. 3-13, p. 8). Maybe it would be more
accurate to consider both passages as being apposite to each other.
340
Among the three kinds of knowledge, intuitive knowledge, appropriate-
ly, has received the overwhelming share of attention in Spinoza studies,
among which we will mention here only Garrett,
Meaning in Spinoza’s Method
,
cit., pp. 181-223, introducing the topic, saying: «The
scientia intuitiva
has pride
of place among Spinoza’s three kinds of knowledge due both to its im-
portance and difficulty» (
ibid.
, p. 181).
341
According to W. Röd, it is «unmittelbare[r] Einsicht in das Wesen der
Wirklichkeit als ganzer (unmediated insight into the nature of reality as a who-