Abstract
Part II of Cogitata Metaphysica and Its Importance in terms of Spinoza’s Theory of Attributes
In 1663, Spinoza wrote Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy (PPC) for Casearius. In his foreword for the work, L. Meyer writes that Spinoza transferred Descartes’ ideas directly and didn’t make any changes. Despite this comment, he also writes that Spinoza had to make additions on issues that Descartes never discussed. This inconsistency of the foreword author creates ambiguity about how readers should read the work. In order to resolve such ambiguities, the entire work and its appendix Cogitata Metaphysica (CM) should be read along with Descartes’ related work, In this way, it is possible to determine the extent to which Descartes’ ideas are contained in the work or whether Spinoza presents his own ideas deviating from Descartes’ thoughts. To this end, we limited the present study to examine only the first nine chapters of the second part of CM using content analysis. Because the “Part II” of CM, on the divine attributes is valuable because it is an indication of the transition of attributes from traditional theologies to Descartes' thought and the way it is received and transformed by Spinoza. In this framework, we studied this part of the work in terms of the metaphysics of Spinoza generally, and the theory of attributes specifically.
Keywords
Cogitata Metaphysica, attribute, mode, extension, thought, life, understanding, will, power.
