I was browsing Blackwell’s bookshop when I was student (one of many times) and found a small paperback volume An Introduction to Spinoza by Stuart Hampshire. I had been wondering why Spinoza was not on the history of philosophy syllabus so I bought it and read it in one sitting. I certainly had my answer to the syllabus question.
While most if not all the first philosophers of the Enlightenment were deists and some tried directly and some through a slippage in their logic, to put god into their natural system, Spinoza stood head and shoulders above them in his determination not to falter in his logical case. All we know of the universe comes to us from our senses and nothing is knowable except through our senses. The natural world and the universe as a whole is only knowable through our senses. Therefore god and nature are one and the same thing.
We have come to understand that god may be outside of nature and deists believe he has a hand in the day-to-day of nature but we can never know that. It is purely and absolutely just a belief.
#atheism
#spinoza