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Spinoza’S Formal Essence, Christopher Martin

Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events

Spinoza stipulates in E2def2, his definition of the essence of a thing, that the essence of each particular can neither exist nor, even, be conceived, except alongside its particular. Yet a mere eight propositions later states that God maintains an idea of the essence of nonactual particulars “in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things are contained in God’s attributes” (E2p8). While there are known interpretive controversies with each of these claims, I argue that according to E2def2, essences of particulars can only be and can only be conceived alongside the actual existence of their particular, …