Cartesian Vs Spinoza Research Paper

Cartesian versus Spinozan Philosophy

Throughout history one of the grand debates has been centered around a seemingly simple question: does God exist and if so, where? Renowned philosophers such as Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza took the task of answering this question into their own hands during the 1600’s. While the question of where God exists is simple to ask, it is not so simple to answer when things such as certain knowledge, dualism, and monism force their way into the picture. However, in the end, Rene Descartes has a more sound argument and reason for not only the existence of God in itself but where God exists as well. A direct line of descent can be traced from Plato to St. Augustine to Rene Descartes. Plato introduced the

He believed that truth must be able to be clearly and distinctly perceived, or that it must not be able to be doubted or proven false. Descartes doubted everything there was to doubt in the world and came to the conclusion that even sense perception should be doubted because when one dreams their experiences feel like reality, therefore how can one tell what is dream and what is reality? He built his own foundation for philosophy by breaking everything down and finding building blocks which he could prove to be true, eventually coming to the conclusion ¨I think, therefore I am¨, on which his foundation was

God--or nature-- manifests itself either as thought or as extension.¨ (247)

He believed that God had an infinite number of manifestations but that humans were aware of only these two and their modes, or particular manners of the attributes. To Spinoza, God existed everywhere, in everything, and everyone; the human mind was simply aware of him in only two of his attributes. Of the two arguments, Descartes’s is the strongest in answering the question of where God exists. While both of them identify where, only Descartes identifies ‘how’ in order to back up his answer for ‘where’. Descartes’s argument is more sound and believable than Spinoza’s because it is much easier to understand a world in which there are two separate realities where God and human are completely separate (Descarte) than one in which there is only one reality where God is in everything, including humans (Spinoza). The idea of the existence of a perfect entity which created the world and stepped back is easier to grasp than the idea of a substance or God which did not simply create everything but exists in