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In part one of his ethics, Spinoza lays out a framework for what his ontology consists of. One of the primary claims that he makes is that there cannot be more than one substance of the same nature. Thus, in Scholium 2 that occurs after proposition 8 in the text, he presents an argument in support of that claim. Before arguing specifically for the existence of a unique substance, he lays down several propositions which are necessary to build the foundation for the argument, this foundation consists of:
To explain the premises of this this argument, it is important to remember that he is basing this argument off of what the definition of a thing is. Essentially, if the definition of a thing is simply the nature of the thing, then it cannot include any sense of how many of the thing there is. This is so since the quantity of a thing is something separate from the nature of the thing. While not completely applicable, it makes sense when put into the Aristotelian sense of what a thing is, for the nature of man, which is to be a rational animal, says nothing about how many men there. The 4th and 6th premises of this essentially state that everything has to have a cause and there are two ways that this caused can be explained. The first is that existence is in the nature of the thing, thus it is self-caused, and the second is that something external to the thing is the cause of that things existence.
After setting out this basic foundation of his argument, Spinoza applies it to two separate cases, one for the existence of multiple individuals of the same kind and another for the existence of a substance, the following arguments are outlined as follows:
Spinozas the worst I guess I better get to actually finishing this paper now.
To explain the premises of this this argument, it is important to remember that he is basing this argument off of what the definition of a thing is. Essentially, if the definition of a thing is simply the nature of the thing, then it cannot include any sense of how many of the thing there is. This is so since the quantity of a thing is something separate from the nature of the thing. While not completely applicable, it makes sense when put into the Aristotelian sense of what a thing is, for the nature of man, which is to be a rational animal, says nothing about how many men there. The 4th and 6th premises of this essentially state that everything has to have a cause and there are two ways that this caused can be explained. The first is that existence is in the nature of the thing, thus it is self-caused, and the second is that something external to the thing is the cause of that things existence.
After setting out this basic foundation of his argument, Spinoza applies it to two separate cases, one for the existence of multiple individuals of the same kind and another for the existence of a substance, the following arguments are outlined as follows:
Spinozas the worst I guess I better get to actually finishing this paper now.
