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.

Spinoza, Platonism and Naturalism

This chapter examines the strands of Platonism and naturalism in philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s metaphysics. It argues that Spinoza’s hierarchical system of substance, attribute, immediate and mediate infinite modes, and finite modes matches in some surprising respects Neoplatonist accounts of the emanation of the universe from God. It suggests that Spinoza’s perception of universal and necessary principles are more related to that of Thomas Hobbes than to Plato or Rene Descartes.

Plato’s Sun and Descartes’s Stove: Contemplation and Control in Cartesian Philosophy

This chapter examines contemplation and control in Cartesian philosophy and sets out some of the Platonic strands in Descartes’ cosmology, metaphysics and moral theory. It argues that Descartes’ philosophy is deeply imbued with ancient and medieval views of humanity’s place in the divine order, and yet is also the harbinger of a modern conception of a value-neutral and impersonal natural universe. It considers the tension between Descartes’ natural philosophy and account of physical law and suggests that these two mindsets represent a certain opposition within people’s thinking that still needs a resolution.

Introduction

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the relation between the concepts of rationalism, Platonism, and God. This book is intended as a contribution to the exploration and exposition of the common ground of the great early modern rationalist theories. It examines contemplation and control in Cartesian philosophy and analyses the priority of the perfect in the philosophical theology of the continental rationalists. It also provides commentaries on the relevant theories of philosophers Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz.

The Priority of the Perfect in the Philosophical Theology of the Continental Rationalists

This chapter examines the concept of the priority of the perfect in continental rationalists’ philosophical theology. It suggests that the less perfect or complete needs to be understood in terms of what is more perfect and complete and this is called the top-down strategy. It argues that divine knowledge constitutes a kind of perfect ideal or archetype which human knowledge imperfectly resembles or approaches and contends that man’s knowledge and thought could be to God’s rather as a dog’s is to man’s.

Comments on Cottingham ‘Plato’s Sun and Descartes’s Stove’

This chapter comments on John Cottingham’s chapter on Platonism in Rene Descartes’ cosmology, metaphysics, and moral theory. It explains the concept of implicit Platonism as consisting in certain Platonic or Neoplatonic notions, such as the notion of Ideas or Archetypes in the mind of God, and suggests that there is nothing Platonic in Descartes’ philosophy beyond such widely accepted ideas. It also questions Cottingham’s assumption that Platonism does not contain within itself the means of reconciling the controlling and contemplative mindsets.

Comments on Adams ‘The Priority of the Perfect’

This chapter comments on Robert Adams’ chapter on the concept of the priority of the perfect in continental rationalists’ philosophical theology. It identifies the point of the top-down strategy project as a way of establishing that God’s properties are the ontological grounding of the properties of finite things, that that God is the root or ground of all reality, and a conclusion is not available from a bottom-up approach. It considers whether the theologically more promising top-down strategy does not simply beg a crucial question by assuming that we can have some conception of the perfect that is independent of, or prior to, a conception of the imperfect.