The Desiderata of Perfection
The first chapter opens with a challenge that any serious monist must face, one that Spinoza himself raised: how can a monist account for the world’s apparent diversity? It argues that Spinoza faces an especially sharp version of this long-standing question of the One and The Many, given his commitments to both maximal ontological parsimony and plenitude. After discussing the details of these ontological commitments, it is suggested that they ultimately stem not from the Principle of Sufficient Reason but from Spinoza’s account of metaphysical perfection, one that is similar to views held by the young Leibniz and, surprisingly enough, contemporary metaphysician Jonathan Schaffer.