Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy -- History
c. When Spinoza passes on to individual things, especially to
self-consciousness, to the freedom of the ‘I,’ he expresses himself in
such a way as rather to lead back all limitations to substance than
to maintain a firm grasp of the individual. Thus we already found the
attributes not to be independent, but only the forms in which the
understanding grasps substance in its differences; what comes third,
the modes, is that under which for Spinoza all difference of things
alone falls. Of the modes he says (Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXXII. Demonst. et
Coroll. II. p. 63): In every attribute there are two modes; in extension,
these are rest and motion, in thought they are understanding and will
(_intellectus et voluntas_). They are mere modifications which only exist
for us apart from God; therefore whatever refers to this difference and
is specially brought about by it, is not absolute, but finite. These
affections Spinoza sums up (Ethices, P. I. Prop. XXIX. Schol. pp. 61, 62)
under the head of _natura naturata_: “_Natura naturans_ is God regarded
as free cause, in so far as He is in Himself and is conceived by Himself:
or such attributes of substance as express the eternal and infinite
essence. By _natura naturata_, I understand all that follows from the
necessity of the divine nature, or from any of the attributes of God,
all modes of the divine attributes, in so far as they are regarded as
things which are in God, and which without God can neither exist nor be
conceived.” From God proceeds nothing, for all things merely return to
the point whence they came, if from themselves the commencement is made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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