Comments on Ayers ‘Spinoza, Platonism and Naturalism’

This chapter comments on Michael Ayers’ chapter on the strands of Platonism and naturalism in philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s metaphysics. It explains the sources of Spinoza’s Platonism and his departure from Platonism and suggests that Spinoza’s epistemology is deeply subversive of Platonism. It argues that a case can be made for Spinoza’s having a stronger debt to Platonism, even in the area which in which Ayers identified as the least Platonic aspect of his philosophy.