God or Nature
According to Spinoza, God is Nature and Nature is God. This is his Pantheism. In his previous book, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza discussed the inconsistencies that result when God is assumed to have human characteristics. In the third chapter of that book, he stated that the word "God" means the same as the word "Nature". He wrote: "Whether we say…that all things happen according to the laws of nature, or are ordered by the decree and direction of God, we say the same thing." He later qualified this statement in his letter to Oldenburg by abjuring Materialism. Nature, to Spinoza, is a metaphysical Substance, not physical matter. In this posthumously published book Ethics, he equated God with nature by writing “God or Nature” four times. “…or Spinoza, God or Nature—being one and the same thing—just is the whole, infinite, eternal, necessarily existing, active system of the universe within which absolutely everything exists. This is the fundamental principle of the Ethics….”
Read more about this topic: Ethics (book)
Famous quotes containing the words god and/or nature:
““Who can forgive sins but God alone?””
—Bible: New Testament, Mark 2:7.
Asked after Jesus had forgiven the paralytic’s sins.
“Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment.”
—Michel Guillaume Jean De Crevecoeur (1735–1813)