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Spinoza study guide PHI th th Century Philosophy Spring Study Guide to help you review Spinoza ? s Ethics Ethics Part I Spinoza is concerned with the nature of existence or ? being ? what is substance What are the basic constituents of reality and how do

PHI th th Century Philosophy Spring Study Guide to help you review Spinoza ? s Ethics Ethics Part I Spinoza is concerned with the nature of existence or ? being ? what is substance What are the basic constituents of reality and how do other less basic things depend on them Substance is de ?ned as ??in itself ? i e it is ontologically basic in the sense that it doesn ? t depend for its existence on something else ??as e g qualities do and also as ??conceived through itself ? ??meaning that it can be understood or explained without reference to anything else Def I For Spinoza relations between ideas re ect relations of dependence in the world In this case X is a substance is not dependent on anything else if you don ? t need to look outside the idea of X in order to explain it Because substances are by de ?nition conceptually independent they are also ontologically independent in the sense that their essence involves existence Prop I so that they are self-caused Each substance is characterized by its attributes what the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of a substance Def I In light of the correspondence between ideas and reality an attribute is not just a subjective aspect of a substance but really does constitute its essence Furthermore a substance may have more than one attribute ??i e a substance may be conceptualized in di ?erent completely independent ways The ordinary things we encounter do not satisfy this very stringent criterion for what it takes to be a substance For example since any of us can be conceived of as not existing we owe the explanation for our existence to something outside ourselves Spinoza will classify them as modes a mode is something which cannot exist independently but only in some other thing on which it depends Def I According to this very broad de ?nition not only are properties and relations modes but also individual things not to mention facts and processes Spinoza argues that there can be only one substance ??it consists ??of in ?nite attributes each of which expresses eternal and in ?nite essence ? ?? which he calls God Props I I Of particular interest is his second proof of Prop I in which he argues from the possibility of God ? s existence to God ? s necessary existence The familiar ? substances ? we encounter in our everyday lives must all be ??in ? God Prop I Hence they are not in fact independent substances at all but depend on God for their existence they are merely modes of substance This is not the personal God of Judaeo-Christian tradition however and Spinoza makes light of those who anthropomorphize God See the appendix to Part I The universe is an expression of God ? s nature Prop I and God is its immanent cause Prop I This means that God is identical with the universe not something