Benedict de Spinoza · Philosophy
God has infinitely many attributes, but the human mind knows only two: thought and extension. Spinoza explains how one substance can be expressed as both mind and matter, and how all finite things follow from God by necessity.
If there is only one substance, why does the world look so varied - full of minds and bodies, thoughts and things? Spinoza’s answer turns on the idea of an attribute. He defines an attribute as “that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance”. An attribute is a fundamental way in which the one substance is, and is understood - a basic kind of reality through which the infinite being expresses itself. And because God is absolutely infinite, Spinoza argues, God must have infinitely many attributes, each expressing eternal and infinite essence. The single substance is not bare and featureless; it is infinitely rich, manifesting itself in endlessly many basic forms.
But here is the humbling twist: of these infinitely many attributes, the human mind can perceive only two. We know God-or-Nature under the attribute of thought (the substance as a realm of ideas and minds) and under the attribute of extension (the substance as a realm of bodies in space). The other infinity of attributes is utterly closed to us - we cannot so much as imagine what they would be like, any more than a creature without eyes could imagine colour. This is a startling claim: reality vastly exceeds what we can grasp, and the world of minds and bodies we inhabit is just the small sliver of infinite Nature that happens to be open to human understanding.
The two attributes we know - thought and extension - give Spinoza an elegant solution to the problem that had defeated Descartes: how mind and body relate. For Descartes, mind and body were two distinct substances, and it was a mystery how an immaterial mind could move a material body or feel its injuries. Spinoza dissolves the mystery. Mind and body are not two things at all; they are one and the same thing, expressed now under the attribute of thought (as a mind, a set of ideas) and now under the attribute of extension (as a body in space). Your mind is the idea of your body; your body is the extended expression of your mind. They are like a single shape that can be described in words or drawn as a figure - one reality, two descriptions.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that for Spinoza God-or-Nature is expressed through infinitely many attributes , of which the human mind perceives only thought and extension . Explain what an attribute is, and why mind and body are the same thing under two attributes.
Leads to Rene Descartes.
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