Spinoza <3

I forgot how much I loved Spinoza!

Check this out (it’s from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Spinoza, if you’re curious — and if you’re like me, you’ll get lost in the SEP rather like normal people get lost in Wikipedia!):

This proof that God — an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible being — is the only substance of the universe proceeds in three simple steps. First, establish that no two substances can share an attribute or essence (Ip5). Then, prove that there is a substance with infinite attributes (i.e., God) (Ip11). It follows, in conclusion, that the existence of that infinite substance precludes the existence of any other substance. For if there were to be a second substance, it would have to have some attribute or essence. But since God has all possible attributes, then the attribute to be possessed by this second substance would be one of the attributes already possessed by God. But it has already been established that no two substances can have the same attribute. Therefore, there can be, besides God, no such second substance.

If God is the only substance, and (by axiom 1) whatever is, is either a substance or in a substance, then everything else must be in God. "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God" (Ip15).

As soon as this preliminary conclusion has been established, Spinoza immediately reveals the objective of his attack. His definition of God — condemned since his excommunication from the Jewish community as a "God existing in only a philosophical sense" — is meant to preclude any anthropomorphizing of the divine being. In the scholium to proposition fifteen, he writes against "those who feign a God, like man, consisting of a body and a mind, and subject to passions. But how far they wander from the true knowledge of God, is sufficiently established by what has already been demonstrated." Besides being false, such an anthropomorphic conception of God can have only deleterious effects on human freedom and activity.

Not bad for the 16th century, eh?

I wrote a paper on Spinoza’s proof of God last year, and it was one of the most fun I’ve ever written. Part of what’s fun about it is, using plain-old Cartesian logic, he actually does manage to prove that God must exist … it’s just that in doing so, he has to (and obviously means to) sacrifice everything people assume about God. The God that must exist, and that is the subject of that wonderful sentence, "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God", can’t be anything other than a substance with infinite attributes.

*sigh* Just tickles me to death, that proof. Fun stuff!