God or Natura Naturata? Spinoza on the Numerical Identity Between God’s Essence and all Things in Nature

In this chapter I argue that in the TTP we find overlooked and compelling evidence supporting the reading of Spinoza as a pantheist. The plan is as follows. I begin by laying out, in Section 1, four principal reasons that have been put forward against the reading of Spinoza as a pantheist: (i) the idea that the identification of God and nature lacks textual evidence, (ii) the claim that for Spinoza God is active and nature is passive, (iii) the view that for Spinoza God is independent and nature is dependent, and (iv) the claim that for him whereas God is simple and indivisible, nature is complex and divisible. In Section 2, I contend that in the TTP we find strong evidence that shows that (i) is false and the claim that Spinoza accepts (ii) is incorrect. In Section 3, I turn to reasons (iii) and (iv) against the pantheist interpretation. I argue that when God and nature are understood as two ways of conceiving one and the same thing, as Spinoza posits in the TTP, then reasons (iii) and (iv) are no longer problematic for reading Spinoza as a pantheist. Finally, in Section 4 I show that the identification of God and nature has important advantages of accommodating two claims made by Spinoza: that infinite modes share the propria of substance and that the existence of modes follows necessarily from the existence of God’s attributes.