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.
From this follows Spinoza’s famous doctrine of parallelism: “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” Everything that happens in the realm of bodies has an exact counterpart in the realm of ideas, because both are the same events expressed under different attributes. The mind does not cause the body to move, nor the body cause the mind to think - there is no causal traffic between the attributes at all. Rather, every mental event and its bodily counterpart unfold in perfect step, because they are the same event twice told. The hand rises and the volition to raise it occur together not because one pushes the other, but because they are one act read under two attributes.
We have the one substance, its attributes, and its modes. But how do particular finite things - this oak, that storm, your present thought - arise from infinite God? Spinoza’s answer is that they follow by necessity, in an endless chain. Directly from God’s absolute nature follow the infinite modes: under extension, the basic laws of motion and rest that govern all bodies; under thought, the infinite intellect of God. These are the universal, eternal features of each attribute. Then, from these infinite modes together with other finite things, follow the finite modes - the particular bodies and ideas - each determined to exist and act by another finite mode, and that by another, in a chain stretching back without end.
The upshot is a thoroughly determined universe. Every finite thing is caused to be exactly what it is, and to do exactly what it does, by an unbroken chain of prior causes, all ultimately expressing the necessity of the divine nature. Nothing is contingent; nothing could have been otherwise. “In nature there is nothing contingent,” Spinoza writes, “but all things are determined by the necessity of the divine nature to exist and act in a definite way.” This is the metaphysical engine behind everything that follows in the Ethics - his account of the emotions, of human bondage, and of freedom. If all is necessary, then freedom cannot mean escaping necessity; it can only mean understanding it. We are about to see what that costs, and what it offers.
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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