Necessity and Nature in Spinoza's Philosophy

Abstract

Spinoza’s guiding commitment to the thesis that nothing exists or occurs outside of the scope of nature and its necessary laws makes him one of the great seventeenth-century exemplars of both philosophical naturalism and explanatory rationalism. Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy brings together for the first time eighteen articles by Don Garrett on Spinoza’s philosophy, ranging over the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political philosophy. Taken together, they provide a comprehensive analysis of Spinoza’s theories of substance, thought and extension, causation, truth, knowledge, individuation, representation, consciousness, conatus, teleology, emotion, freedom, responsibility, virtue, contract, the state, and eternity—and of the deep interrelations among them. Each article aims to resolve problems in the interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy in such a way as to make evident both his reasons for his views and the enduring value of his ideas. At the same time, they elucidate the relations between his philosophy and those of such predecessors and contemporaries as Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz. The book also offers four important and substantial new replies to leading critics on four crucial topics: the necessary existence of God (Nature), substance monism, necessitarianism, and consciousness.