PHIL10003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Marrano, Biblical Criticism, Monism
15 Jun 2018
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Lecture 15: intro to spinoza's substance monism
Why spinoza
• Scandalous!
• "absolute rationalism" -> extreme expression of rationalism
• Radical enlightenment
• Birth of biblical criticism
Conditions of spinozism
• Much free thinking
• A marrano of reason (religion) -> a group of people forced to convert to catholicism -> but
kept up jewish traditions secretly
• Cartesianism
Slogans, concepts, catchphrases
• Substance monism -> against descartes -> ONLY ONE SUBSTANCE
o Substance, attributes, modes
o Each expression of the same substance under the same mode
• Could not be otherwise, necessary for it to be this way
• No metaphysical teleology -> All final causes a fiction -> no 'final cause'
• Principle of sufficient reason -> there can be nothing to exist w/o a reason for its existence
• Reason having to do w thought,
• Deus sive natura -> god, that is, Nature
• Miracles examples of deficits in our understanding -> we don’t understand how it happens
• "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things"
• Bible as a historical doc -> philo and religion as incommensurable, but not necessarily
incompatible
Ethics Book 1: 'on god'
• "By that which is self-caused I mean that whose essence involves existence; or that whose
nature can be conceived only as existing"
• "A think is said to be finite in its own kind when it can be limited by another thing of the
same nature. For example, a body is said to be finite bc we can always conceive another
body greater than it. So, too, a thought is limited by another thought. But body is not
limited by thought, nor thought by body"
• "by substance I mean that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; that is, that the
conception of which does not require the conception of another thing from which it has
to be formed"
o Self caused, no limitations
• "by an attribute I mean that which the intellect perceives of substance"
o Perception not just what you can see
• "by mode I mean the affections of substance; that is, that which is in something else and
is conceived through something else"
o To conceive them you have to conceive them through something else -> depend on
something else to exist
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