Throughout the history of metaphysics the question, What is? has always been answered in an incomplete,unsatisfactory or complicated manner, but Spinoza tried to answer this question in an exceptional way simply by describing God and His essence. Based on Spinoza’s views, God’s qualities can be referred to as attributes and modes are merely affections of a substance. This paper will provide a detailed view of Spinoza’s key ontological definition of God as the only substance, his attributes, and their co-relations. The study goes further to explore the major scholarly argument between Spinoza and Descartes, in regard to their view of substance, and its attributes.
Descartes and Spinoza appear to hold different perceptions in regard to the existence of substance. However, both scholars have some comparable perceptions of the same in some aspects. They both refer to God as the primary substance. One thing that both Spinoza and Descartes seem to agree in general is the definition of substance. According to Spinoza, a substance is nothing but a thing that subsists in a manner that it does not depend on any other thing for its survival. In the introduction of his work, Ethics, Spinoza illustrates substance as 'what it is conceived through itself and in itself'. He elaborated this to mean that a substance does not require a sense of anything else to exist, which also seem to coincide with Aristotle's interpretations of how a substance exists, that it is independent of all other things. (1).
The fundamental feature of substance, as expressed by Spinoza, is its independence. Spinoza defines God as a substance that is completely unbounded, or a substance "comprising of infinity of attributes", of which every one of them illustrates an in...
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In this paper I shall consider Spinoza’s argument offered in the second Scholium to Proposition 8, which argues for the impossibility of two substances sharing the same nature. I shall first begin by explaining, in detail, the two-step structure of the argument and proceed accordingly by offering a structured account of its relation to the main claim. Consequently I shall point out what I reasonably judge to be a mistake in Spinoza’s line of reasoning; that is, that the definition of a thing does not express a fixed number of individuals under that definition. By contrast, I hope to motivate the claim that a true definition of a thing does in fact express a fixed number of individuals that fall under that definition. I shall then present a difficulty against my view and concede in its insufficiency to block Spinoza’s conclusion. Finally, I shall resort to a second objection in the attempt to prove an instance by which two substances contain a similar attribute, yet differ in nature. Under these considerations, I conclude that Spinoza’s thesis is mistaken.
This means that if Descartes’s premises are true, then the conclusion must necessarily be true. Descartes has two premises in order to explain how substance dualism comes to be true. Descartes uses the Principle of Identity to explain his first premise; Descartes’s first premise is that if I can exist without a body, then I am not a body. Hence, I can exist in a realm where I am not present without my body. Consequently, the second premise Descartes argues is that I can exist without a body because conceiving a characteristic I posses. Therefore, I am not a body and I can go into a spiritual realm without the characteristics of a body. Nevertheless, the mental substance can exist without a body because I can conceive that I exist without a body, and conceiving something makes something possible Descartes concludes that substance dualism is true because I can be present in the moment without a physical appearance. We have the ability to think and the ability to move and these two qualities define substance
God is by defined as, “a substance consisting of infinite attributes” in Proposition 11. Spinoza presents 3 Axioms based off his definitions to prove God’s existence. They are as follows: “(e)verything that exists, exists either in itself or in something else”, “(t)hat which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived though itself”, and “(t)hat from a given definite cause an effect necessarily follows”. He uses these, along with his Propositions and Definitions to argue God’s existence in four steps.
Leibniz’s conception of infinitely many simple substances and denial of mind/body interaction was developed in response to Spinoza’s claim that there is only one substance and his idea of parallelism, which states that thought and extension express the sa...
Spinoza is a modern thinker who explains God as a cause as well. Spinoza is a monist who believes everything is one. Therefore, he believes God is the only substance and existence there is. Spinoza states that "by God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of an inf...
Outline and assess Descartes' arguments for the conclusion that mind and body are distinct substances.
Over the years, there have been various interpretations given on what Descartes really meant in his ontological argument. However, most of given interpretations only examines the simple meaning of existence but Descartes arguments looks at existence in relation to the perfection of God. In short, what Descartes is claiming is that there is no any other way that he can examine the context of G...
Traditionally, metaphysics was viewed as consisting of three distinct but related components: cosmology, ontology and theology. Cosmology dealt with the being of the natural world conceived as a universe whereas ontology dealt with the being of the particular thing in the cosmos qua its own being. Theology was the investigation of the being of God naturaliter, that is, without exclusively appealing to the truths of Revelation. In his masterful work, God Without Being, Jean-Luc Marion launches a profound challenge to the tradition of metaphysics in general, and more specifically, to the related field of metaphysical theology. Marion claims that God must no longer be thought of in terms of the traditional category "Being", for that reduces God to an all too human concept which he calls "Dieu". In a sense, a violence is done to God and our understanding of God, for we seriously delimit that which by nature is indeterminable. Drawing upon an Heideggerian-inspired notion of the phenomenological Destruktion, Marion maintains that God must be thought outside the ontological difference and outside the very question of Being itself. In so doing, we free ourselves from an idolatry wherein we reduce God to our own all too narrow conceptual schemes. Marion urges us to think God in light of St. John’s pronouncement that "God is love" (1 Jn 4,8). He believes that love has not been thought through in the metaphysical tradition. Thinking ‘love’ through will lead the philosopher to a more accurate understanding of God as unlimited giver/gift.
Spinoza's philosophy had a practical aim. What he wanted to do was to show the way to perfect peace of mind and joy offered by the life of reason. The Ethics is written as a guidebook to a happy, intellectually flourishing life. Basic in Spinoza's thought is the simple observation that we all want to live well but do not know the way to a happy life. He wanted to give us the instructions which include principles about how to guard us from the power of passions which prevent the mind from understanding. In this paper my aim is to consider how well founded Spinoza's techniques against the passions are. I will do this by concentrating on Jonathan Bennett's criticism of Spinozistic psychotherapy. Bennett finds from the Ethics three central techniques of freeing oneself from passions: (i) reflecting on determinism; (ii) separating and joining; and (iii) turning passions into actions. Bennett believes that all these techniques are in some sense flawed. My contention is that Bennett offers good criticism against 'reflecting on determinism'-technique but that his criticism against 'separating and joining'-technique as well as against 'turning passions into actions'-technique is not well-founded. The paper devotes most space to the 'turning passions into actions'-technique. However, before considering Bennett's view of Spinoza's psychotherapy, I will give an overview of Spinoza's theory of activity and passivity.
In the beginning of the course of unraveling 17th and 18th century profound philosophers we became acquainted with Descartes dualism, by analyzing that extension according to Descartes are two of God’s distinct features in which we ought to perceive. Not only did Spinoza toss the conception that God actively alters the earth through Descartes proclaimed “natural laws”, but unlike Descartes he believed God to be the only definite substance. For Spinoza God and God’s creation weren’t two diverse, distinctive substances instead only god or as he phrased nature is the sole true substance. This paper will entail why he takes a monist stance and rejects traditional religious views through the building blocks of
This paper will attempt to state and explain the Cartesian Ontological Argument, its most promising lines of objection and some of the replies to these objections. Before studying the argument, it is important to notice that this type argument, unlike causal or teleological arguments, tries to be based on reason alone, not observation. Descartes considers that his a priori claims can derive the existence of God from the very concept of God.
Descartes was born 1596 in France. At eight years old he was already in college. Descartes was a scientist and was also known as the father of modern Western Philosophy. He is famous for his book “The mediations of philosophy,” first published in 1641. He is much like me because he refused to stem off other philosophers thought. Instead, he created his philosophy. He is most famous for his quote “I think therefore I am.” This paper will include Descartes doubt, Descartes the cogito, his knowledge of the material world. The principles of the Cartesian epistemology. The “light of nature.”
Descartes suggests that there is a gland inside the brain in charge of the ‘interaction between the non-physical and physical substance, he maintains that “from there it radiates through the rest of the body by means of the animal spirits” (Descartes, 1649/1984, p.341). In other words, Descartes suggests that it is in the pineal gland of the brain that both substances interact. But this explanation does not successfully address the problem of interaction; however, although controversial, the Cartesian’s concepts of ideas, mind, material bodies, the Cartesian plane or person, are still very influential notions in philosophy today. P.F. Strawson reacted against the view of a person that results from this Cartesian view, and proposed quite a different sort of
However, only a few in a life time choose not to be satisfied with only just survival rather they assume the yoke of redefining life for themselves and for others. In philosophy of religion, pantheism is usually in conflict with traditional religious authority, which claims that the pantheistic belief is nothing more than a blasphemous form of idolatrous worship. A man by the name Benedictus (Baruch) Spinoza took it upon his shoulders to construct an explainable theory of this deistic belief and as a result earned the name of the father of Pantheism. I, George Meza, had the privilege of investigating the life of this rational genius as he struggled along the path of enlightenment in a society that was as different to him as his theory of ethics was to the Synagogue and the Church. Spinoza’s works ranged from the political to the theistic, from the mathematical, to even the intellectual. I ask the question what trials and troubles in the life of Baruch Spinoza could birth such a passion for what was known at the time as heretical theology. What was the impact of Spinoza’s work on our technologically advanced society that has put aside terms such as G-d and ethic and has attempted to redefine the term free will?
...ranscendence of God, and ascription of free will to human beings and to God. According to Spinoza, this features made the world unintelligible.