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    Carmelics

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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Spinoza's model of determination cannot capture individuals as other than parts of a greater whole.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Spinoza's method models itself on Plato's method of division, dividing a genus concept into species by differentiating properties.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.This top-down division treats individuals only as parts resulting from the division of a prior whole.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.For Spinoza, finite modes are determined solely by their external relations to other modes within the one infinite substance.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.A thing determined entirely by relations external to it has no immanent principle of individuation — it is constitutively dependent on the whole.
      ?

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    • 3.What lacks an immanent principle of individuation cannot be genuinely individual but only a functionally demarcated region of a greater totality.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Spinoza's conatus doctrine defines each mode's essence as a striving to persist, but this striving is itself a finite expression of God's infinite power.
      ?

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    • 2.If a mode's defining activity is merely a bounded quantum of the whole substance's power, its apparent individuality is ontologically derivative, not self-grounding.
      ?

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    • 3.Hegel's Logic demonstrates that any determination that is wholly negative — being X by not being Y — collapses into identity with what it negates, precluding stable individuation.
      ?

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