Will and Adequacy

Spinoza's definition of an 'adequate' idea is seemingly paradoxical--such an idea has "all the marks of a true idea", independently of any correspondence to its object, which is the mark of a 'true' idea, according to the first book of the Ethics. Some prominent interpretations of this definition, e. g. Wolfson's and Deleuze's, speculate that the marks of adequacy are internal features such as certainty, clarity, distinctiveness, or expressiveness. However, none of these seems relevant to the distinctive internal structure of at least one example of an adequate idea that Spinoza presents--the genetic definition of Circle. Furthermore, those interpretations seem to ignore a fundamental respect in which an idea is 'true' in Spinoza's system--as an aspect of God's creativity. Accordingly, the distinctive mark of a true idea in a genetic definition is its formational role in the production of an object, a role which is independent of any correspondence to that object. So, since such production requires Motility, to which the formulation applies, one mark of a true idea in a Spinozistic adequate idea is its applicability to Will, the principle of Motility.