Spinoza's Argument For Monism

Spinoza’s argument for monism is notoriously involved: In the opening definitions and axioms and first 14 propositions of book one of his Ethics, Spinoza seeks to prove, not just decisively but geometrically, the existence of God. His substance monism is this God, and the rest of the Ethics is based on it. Rather than tackle the argument in its entirety, I hope to single out a few key propositions and the discussion and objections regarding them. This paper will be roughly divided into two sections. In the first, I will outline Spinoza’s argument for monism, explain the main components of his metaphysical system. In the second section, I will consider two major objections and, in providing answers, thereby show some of the subtleties of how Spinoza’s argument functions. Different ways of representing Spinoza’s argument for monism differ in interpretation, emphases, and credulity. Jonathan Bennett for example insists …show more content…
The proof for 1p5 argues that if two substances shared an attribute, they would not be distinguishable and would therefore be identical. The proof, then, turns on the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). Many scholars have observed 1p5 seems to apply only to substances of one attribute. While this proof holds decently for such substances, Leibniz rightly observed, that Spinoza elsewhere explicitly argues for substances of multiple attributes. The natural question, then, is whether this proposition holds for substances of multiple attributes as well as it holds for those of just one attribute. Leibniz proposed considering two substances, substance A and substance B, such that A had attributes X and Y and B had attributes Y and Z. Then they would share an attribute but would still be discernible by the unshared attributes; by PII, they would still be distinct substances and thus 1p5 fails to

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