Michael Della Rocca - God Quotes

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Spinoza thinks that God must be understood in terms of contentful, explanatorily basic features. This is in keeping with his rationalist commitment to the intelligibility of all things, including God.

Michael Della Rocca

According to Spinoza's system, all reality flows with strict necessity from the nature of God. With the geometrical method, Spinoza captures the structure of this reality by deducing philosophical conclusions about reality from definitions which express the nature of God.

Michael Della Rocca

As always with Spinoza, it is helpful to begin with God. The system of ideas that are parallel to modes of extension constitutes God's infinite intellect.

Michael Della Rocca

For Spinoza, my mind is simply an idea in God's intellect; in particular it is God's idea of my body.

Michael Della Rocca

The final major difference between Spinoza's ontology and Descartes's ontology that I want to focus on is Spinoza's denial of Descartes's view that a substance can have only one attribute. For Spinoza, a substance can have more than one attribute; indeed, for him, the one substance, God, has infinitely many different attributes. How can this be so in light of the Cartesian reasons for limiting each substance to one attribute?

Michael Della Rocca