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3 - The genesis of all things

Charlie Huenemann
Charlie Huenemann
Affiliation:
Utah State University
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Summary

I think I have shown clearly enough that from God's supreme power, or infinite nature, infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, i.e., all things, have necessarily flowed, or always follow, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles.

(Ethics IP17S)

GEOMETRICAL NECESSITY

Substance monism amounts to the claim that the teeming population of seemingly discrete, finite, changing things is in fact embedded in some unified, infinite, unchanging substance. One further feature of this embedding is also supposed to be perfectly clear, according to Spinoza: the changing things are wholly necessitated by the very nature of the unchanging substance.

Any alternative is unthinkable. Any hint of slippage between the fixtures of the one substance and the existence of finite particulars would constitute a breach of the supreme principle of Spinoza's method for metaphysics, the principle of sufficient reason. If the totality of finite particulars were one set rather than another, or if the totality were one way rather than another, there would have to be some explanation for that fact, and (given the nature of Spinoza's God) the explanation could not be in terms of God's preferences, or in terms of blind chance. God has no preferences, and there is no chance.

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Spinoza's Radical Theology
The Metaphysics of the Infinite
 , pp. 59 - 80
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2013

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