“By ‘God’ I understand: a thing that is absolutely infinite, i.e. a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.”

Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics is an unsurpassed philosophical work because it applies a pure rationalism. Demonstrated in geometrical order, the Ethics is undoubtedly the most influential philosophical work of the past 350 years. For this reason, Spinoza is the grandfather of modernity: his thought was able to determine decisively the work of philosophers of the stature of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Deleuze, among many others. The whole Spinozian philosophy is held in the causa sui, the cause of itself, that is God. That’s why it is historically acknowledged as pantheistic, as it affirms that understanding is formed by the same substance with which the world is formed. Thus, there is only one substance for all attributes, and that substance is the divine substance. In Spinoza, however, the image of man and the world is not only measured with eternity, but it is configured in the same plane, ie, in the plane of nature. For Spinoza, human actions are affected by the laws of nature and the cosmos: there is one nature for all bodies just as there is only one nature for all individuals. This nature is itself an individual consisting of infinite attributes, and has the ability to vary in infinite ways. Thus, in Spinoza, nature is a common plan that is immanent to its own substance. Continue reading →