Spinoza's Metaphysics

Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza''s metaphysics. In the first part of the book he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God''s propria. He goes on to clarify Spinoza''s understanding of infinity mereological relations infinite modes and the flow of finite things from God''s essence. In the second part of the book Melamed relies on this interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in Spinoza''s metaphysics. First he shows that Spinoza had not one but two independent doctrines of parallelism. Then in his final main thesis Melamed argues that for Spinoza ideas have a multifaceted (in fact infinitely faceted) structure that allows one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet within Spinoza''s metaphysics Thought clearly has primacy over the other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is as elaborate as complex and in some senses as powerful as God.