THE PROBLEM OF MONISM IN SPINOZA

Abstract

Through the exegesis of Spinoza's text itself, we aim to highlight the difficulty it generates about the conciliation between the one and the multiple, or diverse, that is, between the divine substance and its attributes. Starting from the reasoning through which, in Ethics, Spinoza demonstrates the monism of his philosophy, or the existence of God, as single, or only substance, in order to criticize one of its assumptions, namely the existence of God as a substance consisting of infinite attributes. Our exegesis will concentrate on the arguments and principles which allows Spinoza to demonstrate, or justify, that more than one feature can be attributed to one substance, and therefore, that to an absolutely infinite substance must be attributed infinite features. The problem we aim to point out is generated from the fact, according to the interpretation we propose, that the arguments and principles in question do not seem to accomplish its intention, leaving us the difficulty to understand in which way Spinoza can overcome the autonomy of the attributes, given by its perseity, in such a way that they, in place of being conceived as autonomous substances, should be said attributes of the same and only substance. Far from proposing a solution for such difficulty, or to analyze some solutions presented by the tradition of commentators, we pretend to expose the problem, in light of what Spinoza himself exposes in his masterpiece, so that such exposition may serve as a lever to the analysis of the difficult relationship that Spinoza’s philosophy establishes between the divine substance and its attributes, including the examination of what is, indeed, a divine attribute.