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Horst Steinke
204
not according to the degree of difficulty with which its truth can
be perceived by reason. For the point at issue is merely the
meaning of the texts, not their truth»
437
(
TTP
, p. 88). This ab-
ruptly introduces an entirely new idea in Chapter 7 up to this
point, and it becomes evident only at the end of the «illustration»
that follows what Spinoza meant by «truth», namely, intuitive
knowledge, knowledge of the third kind.
Spinoza’s distinction between «meaning» and «truth» has re-
ceived much play in Spinoza studies, for good reasons. There is
general agreement that «meaning» essentially has reference to the
authors’ intentions and significations, at least insofar as this part
of his explanation suggests
438
, while «truth» has been the subject
of debate. On one view, «truth» is seen as akin to finding the
truth-value of a proposition, in the sense of its conformity to,
and with, facts
439
. However, other Spinoza readers, while still up-
holding the distinction, and the relational nature of «truth» in
Spinoza, do not leave the matter at the more-or-less formal,
largely vacuous, level, but attribute particular content to it; this
content does not consist of the actual phenomena observed in
the world (of nature and humans), but rather of the insights of
philosophy, and only philosophy
440
. While these two points of
view differ in substantial ways, they can be related nevertheless
from a certain, overarching, perspective, and by doing so, cast
Spinoza’s notion of «truth» into higher relief. The perspective to
which we are making recourse is that of “truth-in-a-model”. The
aim of this expression is to make explicit what is already under-
stood or presupposed in both interpretations of Spinozan
«truth», namely, that its interpretation is relative to something
else, on the one hand, and imbuing it with specific meaning, on
the other hand
441
. The “something else” consists of a framework,
or any kind of state-of-affairs/situation/(possible) world of vary-
ing complexity; it can be, and indeed is often, spoken of as as-
sumptions or presuppositions, however, in the model-theoretic
approach, the preferred term of “theory” preserves the notion of