display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 17180 | Everything is in God, and nothing exists or is thinkable without God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: Presumably atheists are not very good at conceiving, because they don't understand properly. This is the pantheism for which Spinoza became famous, or notorious. Critics said he was a closet atheist. |
| 17181 | God is the efficient cause of essences, as well as of existences [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is not only the efficient cause of the existence of things, but also of their essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 25) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Leibniz's view that the so-called 'laws of nature' are not imposed by God from outside, but are rooted with nature, in the essences of what has been created (which is modern scientific essentialism). |
| 4829 | The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between being a part of something which totally fails to communicate with the whole, and being separate from the whole? Spinoza's proposal strikes me as daft. |
| 12757 | That God is the substance of all things is an ill-reputed doctrine [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That God is the very nature or substance of all things is the sort of doctrine of ill repute which a recent writer, subtle indeed, though profane, either introduced to the world or revived. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I) by Gottfried Leibniz - On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) §08 | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a comment on Spinoza. Leibniz seems to have spent his whole life in shock after his meeting with Spinoza. |
| 7836 | In Spinoza, one could substitute 'nature' or 'substance' for the word 'God' throughout [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza's 'Ethics' one can substitute the word "Nature" (or "Substance", or even simply an X) for God throughout, and the logic of the argument changes little, if at all. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: This claim, if correct, is the clearest statement of why we should really consider Spinoza one of the first atheists, despite his endless use of the word 'God'. |