Baruch Spinoza, being well versed in the highly influential philosophical writings of such contemporaries as Descartes and Hobbes, devotes much of his efforts in the Ethics to new interpretations of then-current prominent debates. Part I of this text, “Concerning God”, investigates the nature of existence and definition of “substance”. The questions he explores in doing this revolve around what the core constituents of reality are and how everything else relies on them to be. Spinoza lays out a rather strict set of criteria concerning what qualifies as substance and concludes through a series of proofs that there is fact only one; he names it God or nature and uses the terms interchangeably. All further conclusions in this section depend on …show more content…
He also preemptively responds to possible criticisms of his picture on these points. Spinoza begins by entertaining another line of reasoning that would result in the same conclusion of God being a free uncaused cause: there are many things created by God, but He could have not created them as well. In this way, everything is within God's power and not vice versa. Thus, God is unrestricted in action. Spinoza, however, relies on the idea that anything God created could not otherwise be. Although God is the sole necessary being in the universe, it must follow that He is the cause of all existence; it cannot be that any observable thing could have not been created. Holding this view is tantamount to saying God is not infinite or does not entirely embody his infinite nature. Here Spinoza reminds his reader that it has already been demonstrated that an infinity of things must follow necessarily from God's infinite essence expressed in an infinite number of ways. This is intended to depict God in a more perfect form than any other had proposed up to that time. Those of the opinion that God cannot create all the things He is possible of contemplating because to do so would exhaust all the possibilities for creation and thus imply a limitation to his power are mistaken in Spinoza's opinion. Rather, he insists, God has more creative powers if he unrestrictively expresses his infinite nature. The contrary view implies a limit to God's power in that he must always refrain from complete