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Spinoza on Pantheism & the Universe as Necessary
by
Kenneth Shouler, Ph.D.
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- Spinoza said God is the only substance
- Spinoza believed God’s existence is necessary
- Spinoza called the universe “necessary”
In the first part of Spinoza’s Ethics he takes up the subject of the divine nature. Spinoza is investigating the ultimate nature of reality, or practicing metaphysics. He calls the first principle of the universe God, sometimes substance.
Since Aristotle had said that only substance is capable of independent existence, Spinoza inferred that only God filled such a bill. No other being possessed such infinite attributes. Since only substance is self-caused, free, and infinite, God must be the only substance. He exists necessarily.
Spinoza argues that the nature of such a substance cannot be divided, nor can a second such substance even be conceived. Then Spinoza turns to a statement about his best-known doctrine: whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God.
In Book I of his Ethics, Spinoza develops his doctrine of necessity. On the one hand, nothing outside of his own nature restricts God’s activity, and in this sense he is free. So God is the only free agent in the universe. Nature on the other hand—whether trees, or stars, or rivers—consists of nothing contingent, but everything is necessarily determined by factors outside its own nature. Nothing could have been produced in any other manner than how it is now or was in the past.
The appendix to Book I includes Spinoza’s discussion of the world and God’s nature. It also includes his famous refutation of theology. Christian doctrine depicts God as acting purposefully to achieve certain ends. But Spinoza denies this picture of things.
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