Spinoza developed a highly interesting metaphysical theory of nature and individuality. In this paper, I endeavor to bring forward some ideas on how Spinozistic views on extended substance, physical world, and individuality can be approached using the concept of power as the basis of interpretation. Jonathan Bennett's ‘field metaphysical’ interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of one extended substance has generated much discussion, and forms the other starting point of my paper. I believe that the field metaphysical interpretation enables one to deal (...) with the central questions concerning physical individuation — individuality and the persistence of individual being — in a rather novel way. My main question is this: what follows if physical individuals are seen as parts of a unified field of extended power? (shrink)

Spinoza’s own words seem to commit him to necessitarianism. Nonetheless attempts have been made to make room for contingency in Spinozism. Two impressive arguments of this kind are Curley 1969 and Newlands 2010. Both these arguments appeal to Spinoza’s claim that all finite things are locked in an infinite nexus of causal relations. The question central to this paper is whether contingency can indeed be derived from an infinity of causal ancestors. The goal of the paper is twofold. First, I (...) aim to present an alternative reading of the relation between infinity and Spinoza’s concept of contingency. On my reading, while the infinity of the causal ancestry of finite things does not ground any objective metaphysical contingency on their part, it is a condition which must obtain if they are to appear as contingent. Second, I aim to challenge the derivations of contingency from infinity mentioned above. I will do so by targeting Curley’s assumption that propositions rather than things are the main bearers of modality. On Newlands’ interpretation, the conceivability of things as either contingent or necessary makes the world more perfect than it would otherwise have been. By drawing upon Spinoza’s analysis of “negative” properties, I question whether beliefs about contingency contribute to the perfection of the world in virtue of truly attributing the property of objective contingency to things. (shrink)

The doctrine of the conceptual priority of the perfect (CPP) is the claim that the concept of the perfect is prior to that of the imperfect insofar as possessing the latter presupposes a grasp of the former, but not vice versa. The goals of this study are to provide an account and defense of the Cartesian argument for CPP, to determine the consequences of this priority for the relationship between our concepts of human and divine properties, and to explore its (...) implications for bottom-up accounts of theological concept formation. I argue that the predicates “perfect” or “infinite” in Descartes’ version of CPP are equivalent to “true” or “genuine” and thus function in the same way they would in geometrical examples where the perfection at issue is definitive of the kind and where imperfection constitutes falling short of the kind. I can thus be said to have the idea of a “perfect” circle (of that which is “infinitely” circular, as it were) merely by virtue of having the idea of a circle, yet I cannot apprehend something as imperfect or finite insofar as it resembles but fails to be a circle unless I already possess a concept of the kind in question—a true or perfect circle. CPP thus implies a qualitative distinction between the perfect and imperfect that, when applied to God and creation, is consistent with a theory of analogy. Unlike traditional ‘bottom-up’ theories of analogy, however, CPP entails a ‘top-down’ order of derivation in which concepts of creaturely perfections are derived (via a sort of ‘partial negation’) from concepts of divine ones. The ‘top-down’ order of derivation yields epistemological advantages over the traditional approach, which had always struggled to explain how we can derive analogical concepts of God from creatures. Further, CPP enables its proponents to address the classic anthropomorphism critiques leveled at practitioners of Perfect Being Theology. Though I acknowledge that CPP is not without its own weaknesses, I present a largely sympathetic account of the argument and its relevance for contemporary philosophy of religion. (shrink)

This paper tries to study philosophical standpoints of Shankara and Spinoza in comparative manner. Though these two philosophers are from totally different cultures, their philosophical method has certain similarities.