Will, Necessity, Causality

For Spinoza, the Necessity that governs the conceiving of a collective ideal is, following Hobbes, individual self-preservation. For Kant, that Necessity is Reason, though the inclusion of a rewarding God in that ideal has seemed to some to reduce the ideal to merely a more effective means to individual self-preservation. Regardless, the very disputably of what Necessity effects is a reminder that Plato characterizes such ideals as 'inventions', which implies that indeterminacy is a factor in their emergence. Such indeterminacy expresses not a contingent inadequacy in some concept of Necessity, but an intrinsic feature of any such concept. For, insofar as Necessity is conceived as governing a causal sequence, an essential lacuna in the chain is suppressed--the difference between some element in the chain qua effect, and the same element qua subsequent cause. That lacuna introduces an indeterminacy into the sequence that is the ground of inventiveness. Accordingly, here, Material Causality, i. e. Becoming-Diverse, replaces Efficient Causality, which cannot recognize emergent indeterminacy, with Will as the personal Material Principle. Hence, Will is at least part of the parentage of the inventions of Spinoza and Kant.