Spinoza's Monism: A Critique of the Guéroult - Loeb Interpretation

Spinoza founded his controversial metaphysics on his demonstration of monism, and because of its centrality to his philosophical enterprise, it has become a subject of intense scrutiny. Some have pointed out that a contradiction arises from the first few propositions of his Ethics, making Spinoza’s demonstration invalid. Mark Kulstad, however, in his article “Spinoza’s Demonstration of Monism: A New Line of Defense,” attempts to show that Spinoza can be rescued from the purported invalidity by adopting a certain conception of Spinoza’s God and the relationship between substance and attribute. In this paper, I will demonstrate that Kulstad unsuccessfully resolves the contradiction since his interpretation of Spinoza’s God and the nature of attributes leads to a host of contradictions with other crucial propositions in the first part of the Ethics. In the first part, I will trace out the purported invalidity in Spinoza’s argument. In the second and third parts, I will reconstruct Kulstad’s argument and show how it attempts to resolve the contradiction. And in the fourth part, I will argue against Kulstad’s solution by drawing out inconsistencies that arise from his interpretation of Spinoza’s God.