Abstract

One of the central issues of Spinoza scholarship focuses on the status of the attributes. The issue has divided scholars into two groups, which I shall call the objectivists and the subjectivists. Objectivists maintain that the attributes in fact constitute the essence of Substance and that our ideas of these attributes comprise an adequate knowledge of that essence. Subjectivists hold that the attributes are merely inventions of the human intellect which we ascribe to Substance as if they constitute its essence, although our ideas of the attributes do not conform to the actual nature of Substance. The issue is quite complex, and the long history of its discussion has seen the development of a host of arguments for each side. It is not my purpose here to review the entire debate, in part because such a review would be beyond the scope of an article and in part because a very insightful sketch of the most basic arguments has already been produced. Professor Haserot has provided us with a battery of forceful reasons for preferring the objectivist interpretation. In this note I shall merely discuss two heretofore unmentioned arguments from the Short Treatise which corroborate the evidence assembled by the objectivists and which seem to constitute decisive evidence against the subjectivist interpretation.