Ethics Ip11 and the Necessary Existence of God

Abstract

A standard reading of the argumentation for Ethics Ip11 has Spinoza contending that because there is no reason or cause for the non-existence of God, God exists, Here I grant that in Ip11 Spinoza is appealing to the claim that there is no reason or cause for the non-existence of God. However, I argue that he is assuming that the existence of God is obvious from Ip7 and Ip8s2 and then positing that because there is nothing that could impede or annul the existence of God, God is a necessary existent. I begin with a discussion of Descartes’s view that the necessary existence of God is independent existence and then I move on to a discussion of the view as it appears in Ip11.