Intuition and Reality

A Study of the Attributes of Substance in the Absolute Idealism of Spinoza

Published in 1999, this study focuses on the work of absolute idealist readers of Spinoza's metaphysics, such as John Clark Murray and Leslie Armour. The text is intended to establish a better absolute idealist interpretation of the identity of Spinoza's one substance (reality) with each of its diversity of "attributes". Consideration is given to the interpretations developed by these earlier commentators, who read the attributes as one metaphysical being diversely interpreted. The author finds this disadvantageous in understanding the "parallelism" of the attributes, or Spinoza's doctrine that the same order and connection of things is found in each. This problem can be solved with an alternative absolute idealist reading of the attributes as one order diversely intuited.