Abstract

Spinoza has told us that knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of nature is the true and highest good. That union consists in the body’s being the object of the idea constituting the mind; or as stated slightly differently, the mind’s being the idea itself or the knowledge of the human body. If to interpret this cryptic pronouncement we appeal to the definition of idea as “a conception of the mind which the mind forms because it is a thinking thing,” then mind turns out to be a conception which the mind forms of the body. This looks deplorably circular. Let us go at it more obliquely.