Spinoza’s Hatchet and the Ethics of Objecthood

Spinoza’s Hatchet and the Ethics of Objecthood  

By Richard Mather 

“For the only perfection and the final purpose [...] of an instrument is to duly fulfil the duties that are assigned to them. For instance, when a carpenter finds himself best served by his hatchet in the construction of a piece of work, then has his hatchet attained its end and perfection; but if he were to think, ‘This hatchet has now served me so well that I will let it rest and not require any more service of it’, just at that moment the hatchet would be diverted from its purpose and would no longer be a hatchet.” — Spinoza, Short Treatise. 

Now then, Baruch Spinoza.  

Let us reason. 

A hatchet is an object.  

An obvious assertion, I think. 

But is it really only a hatchet  

when a carpenter finds it  

“of excellent service”? 

Or does it retain its hatchetness  

when not in use?  

What’s more, Baruch, 

what about when it is in use? 

When you hew wood,  

are you swinging a hatchet  

or an object-in-its-own-right? 

Answer me this, Baruch Spinoza. 

Isn’t its object condition worthy 

of consideration? And if so, 

isn’t it worth asking 

if this hatchet is independent 

of its properties and relations? 

Or shall we be like Adam –  

that supreme royal subject –  

who, in his garden of many things, 

objectified objects without  

actually granting them  

objecthood?

The poem “Spinoza’s Hatchet” stages a dialogue with the philosopher whose theory of finite modes evolved between the writing of Short Treatise (written in the early 1660s) and Ethics (completed by 1675). At first glance, the poem’s meditation on the hatchet seems deceptively simple: What of the hatchet itself? Does its identity depend on the human purposes it serves, as Spinoza himself suggests in Short Treatise? Or does it align more closely with Spinoza’s mature philosophy, which ponders the metaphysical and ethical status of  objects?  

For the early Spinoza, the hatchet is perfect only when it serves the carpenter well. And at first glance, the Spinoza of Ethics seems to agree: “Reality and perfection I understand to be the same”, he writes, thereby implying that the hatchet’s function is at its most real, at its most adequate, only when it conforms to expectations.  

But a closer look at Ethics suggests something different. The fundamental claim of Spinoza’s masterpiece is that there is only one infinite substance — God or Nature — of which all finite things are modes. The hatchet, then, is not primarily a tool; it is a finite mode expressing the infinite substance through the attribute of extension (via the infinite mode of motion and rest). In other words, the hatchet is one way in which the substance of God/Nature manifests. 

Thus, when the poem asks whether the hatchet retains its identity in periods of disuse, Spinoza, in his mature philosophy, would answer: ‘Yes’. Its existence does not depend on human recognition or utility; rather, it endures as a mode of infinite being, regardless of whether a carpenter wields it. This calls to mind Spinoza’s theory of conatus (‘endeavor’, ‘tendency’, ‘striving’), which is an innate inclination of a thing to continue “to persist in its own being”. So long as the hatchet isn’t destroyed by an external force, it will exist indefinitely. Conatus is not simply a feature of a hatchet, it is its “power” or “actual essence”. The same power of being that gives the hatchet weight and heft to chop wood is the same power that perpetuates its very existence. 

There is nothing contingent about the hatchet; it is determined by the necessity of the divine nature to exist and embodies a continuity of being that transcends immediate function. As such, its identity is not erased by disuse. To see the hatchet only as a tool “of excellent service” is to impose a final cause (itself an imposition of a “human appetite”) and is to perceive it inadequately. Once we understand that the hatchet is not ‘for’ the man, just as the tree is not ‘for’ the hatchet, and once we see that all things act according to their own divine necessity, we recognise that all things have a right to existence irrespective of human desires.  

If the hatchet is not merely a tool of service, nor simply a name, but a mode of being that flows necessarily from God’s attribute of extension, then it places upon us an ethical demand. Do we diminish objects into mere instruments of human will — disposable tools to be used and discarded — or do we recognise them as manifestations of the same divine substance that shapes human beings? The disposable nature of modern life – fast fashion, clothing that is thrown into landfill after only a few wears, single-use plastic, appliances with built-in obsolescence — reveal our addiction to consumption over stewardship, our aversion to repair and reverence. Appreciation of an object is to perceive it not as a thing bound to a moment or perspective, but as an eternal expression of being-itself. Seen sub specie aeternitatis — under the aspect of eternity — the object discloses its timeless essence. And in that act of understanding, the mind that apprehends it also partakes in eternity: “The mind is eternal in so far as it conceives things under the species of eternity”, says Spinoza. Indeed, perceiving all of existence sub specie aeternitatis, rather than through the narrow prism of mere utility, is what true freedom means. “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding”, Spinoza asserts, “because to understand is to be free”. 

The poem’s dialogue with Spinoza ultimately asks us to reconsider how we relate to the world of objects. As such, the poem can be seen as a meditation on care. The ethical relation to objects requires us to see them as modes of infinite being, not as slaves to human projects. Thus, the poem insists that ethical relation requires us to see objects not as tools, but as expressions of infinite being.  Where Spinoza used the hatchet in Short Treatise to illustrate perfection through utility, the poem reclaims it as a figure of resistance to reduction. Being neither tool nor an inert thing awaiting human use, the hatchet becomes a metaphor for all beings whose essence exceeds imposed tasks. Ethics shows us that an object’s reality lies not in serving the carpenter but in being a necessary mode of substance, expressing the infinite in its finite form. To recognise this is to move beyond Man’s dominion, beyond objectification, toward a Spinozist ethics of recognition: One in which every thing is seen as part of the same divine order. 

Bibliography

Mather, Richard. “Spinoza’s Hatchet.” On the Presence of Being Everywhere. 

Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order. Tr. Andrew Boyle and revised G.H.R. Parkinson. J.M. Dent & Sons (1989). 

Spinoza, Baruch. Short Treatise on God, Man and Human Welfare. Tr. Lydia Gillingham Robinson. Open Court Publishing (1909).