Spinoza’s “Ontological” Argument
Proposition 11 of Part 1 of Spinoza’s Ethics states that God necessarily exists. Although his demonstration of the proposition is often said to constitute his ontological argument for the existence of God, and to report an essentially private “rational perception” of God’s existence, he provides four distinct “proofs” for the proposition. This chapter analyzes the four proofs and the relations among them. Like ontological arguments, they depend crucially on a definition of God that is intended, when grasped, to show that God necessarily exists; but like most cosmological arguments, they also depend crucially on a principle of sufficient reason. The last two proofs can be seen to address an objection, concerning the principle that substances cannot share attributes, that might otherwise be raised to the first two proofs.