Essay on a Short Passage from Spinoza’s Ethics. – HUP-243 – Craig Rivers
Proposition 5: In Nature there cannot be two or more substances having the
same nature or attribute.
If there were two or more distinct substances, they would have to be
distinguished from one another by a difference either in their attributes or in their
states (by 4). If they are distinguished only by a difference in their attributes, then
any given attribute can be possessed by only one of them. Suppose, then, that
they are distinguished by a difference in their states. But a substance is prior in
nature to its states (by 1), so we can set the states aside and consider the
substance in itself; and then there is nothing left through which one substance
can be conceived as distinguished from another, which by 4 amounts to saying
that we don’t have two or more substances ·with a single attribute·, but only one.
In this passage Spinoza lays the groundwork for later establishing that
there can be only one God, since different forms of substance can only be
distinguished by attributes. This essay will examine the definitions Spinoza is
using to define substance, attributes and modes; and investigate how these
definitions are used to support his notion of God. Further, a potential response
to a critique against the fifth proposition from his contemporary philosopher
Leibnitz via modern commentator Nadler, will be proposed. An examination of
ways Spinoza’s theory is debated among modern interpretations will be
discussed, along with how these ideas may have relevance to modern theories
of consciousness. In conclusion a case will be made that Spinoza’s definition of
God is circular in nature, due to an incoherence in his definition of substance.
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