Quotation
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“God, or Nature.”
Baruch Spinoza · Rationalism · Early modern · 1677
What does it mean?
There is one substance, and the God of this philosophy is not a person outside the world issuing decrees: God is nature, properly understood. The usual reading takes the Latin phrase as an identification, not as a casual metaphor for the outdoors or for a cosmic friend. A rival reading hears either plain atheism or plain piety, and the book has been accused of both, because a God without human will still stands as the object of the intellectual love described in part five. The phrase belongs to the preface of part four.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The Latin phrase Deus, sive Natura is his, in the preface to part four of the Ethics. It is an identification, not a casual metaphor. He distinguishes natura naturans, nature as cause, from natura naturata, nature as effect. Edwin Curley's translation is the English this library follows.
Where it comes from
Ethics, part IV, preface: Deus, sive Natura
Approximate date: 1677.
How to use it
If the phrase is quoted in a seminar in Oxford, be ready to say which nature is meant, because the woods outside the window are not the definition. He distinguishes nature as cause from nature as the ordered effects that follow. The two words do not license a weekend spirituality, and they do not by themselves settle whether the system still deserves the name God.
A mindset reading
A two-word equation is the most dangerous kind of quotation, since each word arrives already loaded. Read the definition of God in part one before using the phrase as a slogan. People who could not find a personal God called the system atheism; People who stayed for part five found a severe piety; Both reactions are responses to the same identification.
Understand the philosophy
Spinoza's God acts from the necessity of its own nature, not from a will modelled on human choosing. The key term is substance, what exists in itself and is conceived through itself, of which there is only one. Natura naturans names nature as cause, and natura naturata names nature as effect. The phrase Deus sive Natura is his identification of God with that nature, and Curley's translation is the English used here.
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FAQ
What does it mean?
There is one substance, and the God of this philosophy is not a person outside the world issuing decrees: God is nature, properly understood. The usual reading takes the Latin phrase as an identification, not as a casual metaphor for the outdoors or for a cosmic friend. A rival reading hears either plain atheism or plain piety, and the book has been accused of both, because a God without human will still stands as the object of the intellectual love described in part five. The phrase belongs to the preface of part four.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The Latin phrase Deus, sive Natura is his, in the preface to part four of the Ethics. It is an identification, not a casual metaphor. He distinguishes natura naturans, nature as cause, from natura naturata, nature as effect. Edwin Curley's translation is the English this library follows.
Which work is it in?
Ethics, part IV, preface: Deus, sive Natura Approximate date: 1677.