1st Edition

Intuition and Reality A Study of the Attributes of Substance in the Absolute Idealism of Spinoza

By James Thomas Copyright 1999
    146 Pages
    by Routledge

    146 Pages
    by Routledge

    Published in 1999, this study focuses on the work of absolute idealist readers of Spinoza's metaphysics, such as John Clark Murray and Leslie Armour. The text is intended to establish a better absolute idealist interpretation of the identity of Spinoza's one substance (reality) with each of its diversity of "attributes". Consideration is given to the interpretations developed by these earlier commentators, who read the attributes as one metaphysical being diversely interpreted. The author finds this disadvantageous in understanding the "parallelism" of the attributes, or Spinoza's doctrine that the same order and connection of things is found in each. This problem can be solved with an alternative absolute idealist reading of the attributes as one order diversely intuited.

    Part 1: The Identity and Diversity of the Attributes  1. The Uniqueness of Substance  2. The Identity of Substance and Attribute  3. The Diversity of the Attributes  Part 2: The Perspectival Theory of the Attributes and the Absolute Idealist Spinoza  4. The Arguments for an Absolute Idealist Spinoza  5. Two Accounts of the Independence and Parallelism of the Attributes  Part 3: The Intuitionist Theory  6. Conceptual Independence  7. Thought and its Object in Extension  8. The One and the Many.

    Biography

    James Thomas