UC San Diego

Spinoza's monistic metaphysical picture is unique in its uncompromising and radical commitments. According to Spinoza, there is one substance—God—of which everything else (trees, humans, and chemical elements) are modes. Thus, all things are causally and conceptually dependent on God, inhere in God, and are effects of God's infinite essence, from which everything necessarily follows. Spinoza is also a committed necessitarian and determinist, according to whom God alone is a free cause, acting, as do all things in nature, from the universal laws of its own nature. According to this view, all finite things are on a metaphysical par, existing as parts of an infinite chain of finite causes as finite and determinate expressions of God’s infinite power.These austere metaphysical commitments have led some readers to question the reality of anything but God and to adopt an acosmist view. Furthermore, according to Spinoza's epistemology, our experience of singular things yields only partial and confused knowledge. His definitions of both individuals and singular things, in turn, cast doubt not only on the existence of finite, singular entities but also on their particular identity and metaphysical stability. In other words, Spinoza's philosophy as a whole does not seem to align with our common-sense understanding of the world and the things within it. While it is relatively clear what substance, or Natura Naturans, is for Spinoza, it is less clear what he takes finite things to be exactly, or what Natura Naturata consists of.This dissertation delivers an account of the metaphysics of the finite in Spinoza, focusing mainly on his Ethics. I argue that singular things are relationally constituted and exist only durationally, and that the identity of each and every singular thing is thus relational. I further argue that singular things' identity is grounded solely in their actual essence, i.e., the conatus, which I understand as a strive to increase in power, necessarily and indispensably involving interactions with others. Thus, I argue that when singular things cooperate with things of the same nature, their identities are genuinely metaphysically united. This dissertation further argues that Spinoza's concept of an individual, defined by a fixed ratio of motion and rest, determines only a thing's kind, yet not its particular identity. It also argues that formal essences, understood as mediate infinite modes and thus as "concrete universals," express such ratios of motion and rest and are shared kind-essences.