Spinoza’s Actualist Model of Power

In Juhani Pietarinen & Valtteri Viljanen (eds.), The World as Active Power: Studies in the History of European Reason. Leiden: Brill. pp. 213–228 (2009)
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Abstract

In addition to the notion of power (potentia), Spinoza employs the notion of power of acting (agendi potentia), especially in the Ethics. This raises the question, if Spinoza uses both ‘power’ and ‘power of acting’, what is the difference between the two? What else could power be, for Spinoza, but power of acting? What is the relationship between power and activity in his system? This essays aims at giving answers to these questions; thereby emerges what may be called an actualist model of God’s power.

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Valtteri Viljanen
University of Turku

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