Associate professor of the International University of Imam Khomeini, Qazvin, group of philosophy.
Abstract
The famous European philosopher of the new era, Spinoza, has quite elaborately spoke of God in his most important book, i.e. “Ethics”. He believes God is an essence who has infinite attributes and the nature is a mode of His infinite attributes. Therefore, according to Spinoza, essence, attribute and mode are the three main elements of reality. The most important issue in the philosophy of Spinoza is his idea on whether God transcended nature or not. In other words, is nature – which is a sum of the system of God’s modes – the same as God or not; is God – in addition to His manifestation in modes – a reality which is transcendental over them all {or not}? In the third words, does Spinoza believe in “pantheism” according to which God is the sum of nature and everything is a part of it, or he believes God has an existence that transcends the nature? Relying on the text of Spinoza’s speech, this article shows that his pantheism is rejected; it is also proved that his argument on God’s existence is the same as the Anselm existential argument; rather it is the Seddiqin argument according to which God is mere existence and therefore has a necessary existence.
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