as Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, in The Collected Works of Spinoza , volume 1, Edwin Curley ... would be the one to then subject to the best arguments for and against the existence of God and other ... Baruch Spinoza ’s view of “ God , or Nature” (Deus sive natura) is often deemed a pantheism,[22] though ...

Baruch (de) Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677), also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin who was born and lived in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of th Th… Spinoza defined God as "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence", and since "no cause or reason" can prevent such a being from existing, it must exist. This is a form of the ontological argument, which is claimed to prove the existence of God, but Spinoza went further in stating that it showed that only God exists. Accordingly, he stated that "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God". This means that God is identical with the universe, an idea which he encapsulated in the phrase "Deus sive Natura" ('God or Nature'), which some have interpreted as atheism or pantheism. God can be known by humans through either the attribute of extension or the attribute of thought, though there are many more such attributes. Thought and extension represent giving complete accounts of the world in mental or physical terms. To this end, he says that "the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension". After stating his proof for God's existence, Spinoza addresses who "God" is. Spinoza believed that God is "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator". Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences and then demonstrating that God is a "substance" with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. This view was described by Charles Hartshorne as Classical Pantheism. Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case". Therefore, concepts such as 'freedom' and 'chance' have little meaning. This picture of Spinoza's determinism is illuminated in Ethics: "the infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the breast; the angry boy believes that by free will…

Owing to the central role of the concept of nature in Spinoza’s philosophical framework, his thought is often characterised as ‘naturalism.’ The primacy of the natural element in his system leads to the identification of God with nature, whereby God is almost entirely subsumed within a naturalistic model of the universe. Spinoza conceptualises nature as a unified domain governed by universal laws applicable to all entities. Within this framework, four methodological principles – or operators for constructing the world-system – are identified as essential to his naturalistic paradigm: the geometrical, logical, causal, and metaphysical. These principles are not merely tools for constructing a system of rigorous proofs but also reflect the objective order of nature as articulated in his Ethics. This conception of the universe, which has profound historical antecedents and is echoed in various religious and philosophical traditions, stands in contrast to the equally influential Platonic tradition. Platonism posits a hierarchical structure of existence, characterised by distinct orders of reality and corresponding laws specific to each stratum. At the same time, Platonic metaphysics incorporates elements that align it with both theistic and pantheistic conceptions of reality, which have significantly influenced the nature of Spinoza’s pantheism. The author highlights the tension between naturalism and Platonism within Spinoza’s doctrine. The naturalistic framework encounters significant challenges in explaining the genesis of the modal sphere, as the metaphysical assumptions of Platonism hinder the consistent realisation of Spinoza’s foundational naturalistic project. The resulting contradictions between these two constructive principles are mediated through the intervention of God’s power (vis) and might (potentia), which serve to reconcile irrational discontinuities within the order of being. Thus, Spinoza’s system navigates the interplay between naturalistic and Plato А.Г. Гаджикурбанов. Бог и Природа в метафизике Спинозы 75 Ключевые слова: Спиноза, натурализм, Бог, универсум, платонизм, коллизия натура- лизма и платонизма, метафизика, натуралистический проект, конструктивный прин - цип, иррациональный сценарий, сила, могущество. Ссылка для цитирования: Гаджикурбанов А.Г. Бог и Природа в метафизике Спино - зы // Философия религии: аналит. исслед. / Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches. 2025. Т. 9. № 1. С. 74–92. God and Nature in Spinoza’s Metaphysics Aslan G. Gadzhikurbanov Lomonosov Moscow State University. 27-4 Lomonosovsky av., GSP-1, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation; e-mail: gadzhikurbanov@yandex.ru ORCID: 0000-0003-2398-0008 Owing to the central role of the concept of nature in Spinoza’s philosophical framework, his thought is often characterised as ‘naturalism.’ The primacy of the natural element in his sys - tem leads to the identification of God with nature, whereby God is almost entirely subsumed within a naturalistic model of the universe. Spinoza conceptualises nature as a unified do - main governed by universal laws applicable to all entities. Within this framework, four methodological principles – or operators for constructing the world-system – are identified as essential to his naturalistic paradigm: the geometrical, logical, causal, and metaphysical. These principles are not merely tools for constructing a system of rigorous proofs but also reflect the objective order of nature as articulated in his Ethics. This conception of the uni - verse, which has profound historical antecedents and is echoed in various religious and philosophical traditions, stands in contrast to the equally influential Platonic tradition. Pla - tonism posits a hierarchical structure of existence, characterised by distinct orders of reality and corresponding laws specific to each stratum. At the same time, Platonic metaphysics in - corporates elements that align it with both theistic and pantheistic conceptions of reality, which have significantly influenced the nature of Spinoza’s pantheism. The author high - lights the tension between naturalism and Platonism within Spinoza’s doctrine. The natura - listic framework encounters significant challenges in explaining the genesis of the modal sphere, as the metaphysical assumptions of Platonism hinder the consistent realisation of Spinoza’s foundational naturalistic project. The resulting contradictions between these two constructive principles are mediated through the intervention of God’s power (vis) and might (potentia), which serve to reconcile irrational discontinuities within the order of be - ing. Thus, Spinoza’s system navigates the interplay between naturalistic and Platonic influ - ences, ultimately relying on the divine to resolve inherent tensions within his philosophical architecture. Keywords: Spinoza, naturalism, God, universe, Platonism, collision of naturalism and Pla - tonism, metaphysics, naturalistic project, constructi ve principle, irrational scenario, force, power. Citation: Gadzhikurbanov A.G. “ God and Nature in Spinoza’s metaphysics ”, Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches, 2025, V ol. 9, No. 1, pp. 74–92. 92 Понятия и категории Kant, I. Kritika sposobnosti suzhdeniya [The Critique of Judgment], in: Sochineniya v 8 t. [Works in 8 vols]. Ed. by A.V . Gulyga. V ol. 5. Moscow: Choro Publ., 1994. (In Russian) Losev, A.F. Istoriya antichnoj estetiki. Pozdnij ellinizm [History of Ancient Aesthetics. Late Hellenism]. Moscow: Iskusstvo Publ., 1980. (In Russian) Losskij, V .N. Ocherk misticheskogo bogosloviya V ostochnoj cerkvi. Dogmaticheskoe bo- goslovie [An Essay on the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic Theology]. Mos - cow: Centr “SEI” Publ., 1991. (In Russian) Mejendorf, I. Vizantijskoe bogoslovie [Byzantine Theology], transl. by V .G. Marutik. Minsk: Luchi Sofii Publ., 2007. (In Russian) Sokolov, V .V . Spinoza [Spinoza], in: Novaya filosofskaya enciklopediya: v 4 t. [New Philosophical Encyclopedia

one through fifteen of Part One, Spinoza presents the basic elements of his picture of God . God is the ... outside of God constrains him to bring it into existence . But Spinoza does deny that God creates the world ... about the extent of Spinoza ’s identification of God with Nature is not really to the point when the question ...

Perhaps Spinoza's Ethics is the most austere text in Western philosophy: axioms, definitions, propositions, demonstrations, arranged with the composure of a Euclidean proof. Yet readers who persist report something closer to exhilaration than to the satisfaction of verification. This paper asks why. Drawing on Sontag and Cleto, I argue that camp (not subcultural taste but stylised excess performed with affectionate seriousness) names a structural property of the geometric method itself. The more geometrico is so committed to deductive rigour that the commitment becomes performative, generating the very laetitia (joy as the passage to greater power to act) it theorises. I call this device Euclidean drag: drag as an inhabited role whose apparatus becomes luminous, and as the accumulated pull of proof drawing the reader into expanded capacity. The reading offers an account of reason as joyful, connective, and non-moralising. Drawing on Sedgwick's reparative reading, I argue that camp's political force (converting what excludes into what sustains) survives this extension because the structural operation, not the subcultural origin, does the work. The account is consequential for nursing and for any practice whose practitioners inhabit formal protocols under conditions where structure might invite competence rather than compel compliance, and for what this special issue names the politics of seriousness. The following terms appear throughout this paper in Spinoza's sense, which is often not the obvious one. 2.1. God Substance itself. The single infinite reality of which everything that exists is an expression. Spinoza was excommunicated for this. 2.2. Substance That which exists in itself and is conceived through itself. There is only one of it, and it is everything. 2.3. Affect Any change in the body's capacity to act and think. Joy, sadness, desire — these are affects. So is the feeling of a proof clicking into place. 2.4. Laetitia Joy, understood specifically as the body's passage to greater power of acting. Augmentation as a process rather than happiness as a mood. 2.5. This becomes a story of capacities; what bodies have the capacity to do, how and why their capacities to affect and be affected change. On this reading, the passions are affects to be understood, composed, and where possible strengthened (Deleuze 1988 , pp. 17–29). Deleuze's earlier study of Spinoza (1968/1990) develops an account of expression that bears on my argument: substance The gap between the modesty of delivery and the magnitude of what is being said is the teaching. The reader registers the claim and registers that it has been slipped in under the geometric radar; this double registration creates the attention the work demands. Consider Proposition 11 of Part I, where the camp device is most immodest to his contemporaries. Spinoza's God is not the God of theology, not a creator who stands outside the world and judges it. God, as the Ethics defines the term, is substance itself: the single, infinite reality of which everything that exists is an expression. The move scandalised Spinoza and saw him excommunicated from his synagogue; it remains disorienting for some now. Having redefined God in this way, Spinoza provides not one but three demonstrations of God's existence, each departing from a different starting point, as though once were not enough, or more precisely, as though the proposition deserved the full treatment. The first proof works by contradiction: substance's non‐existence contradicts its own definition, and the assumption collapses within a few steps (Spinoza 1996 , Ethics I P7; Ethics I P11 Dem.). The reader who follows Spinoza's derivation of an infinite being from three axioms does not feel diminished; they have followed each step, grasping how it works, and could reconstruct it, teach it to someone else, take it further. The joy is a passage to greater power, not a recognition of powerlessness. The sublime says: how vast. Camp says: look how much we can do with this. The same device operates at the other end of the affective scale. In Part III, Proposition 35, Scholium, Spinoza treats jealousy as a geometric theorem (Spinoza 1996 , Ethics III P35 Schol.). Allon White's phrase for what academic discourse made of reason, the “dismal sacred word” (White 1993 , p. 124), names what Spinoza refuses. On Spinoza's own epistemology, whether Euclidean drag belongs to the text or to the reader is a distinction without a difference: adequate ideas are relational, produced in the encounter between bodies, and the text's camp is realised in the reading as the reading is shaped by the text ( Ethics II P13–P16). The method is so straight it bends. What happens when you read the Ethics from Part I through Part V in one sitting? The accumulation creates a logical vertigo. Part V, On the Power of the Intellect, opens by announcing its subject as “the way or method leading to freedom” (Spinoza 1996 , Ethics V Preface), then delivers it through the same geometric apparatus that diagrammed jealousy in Part III. Proposition 23 demonstrates that the mind cannot be entirely destroyed with the body; Proposition 36 concludes that the intellectual love of God is eternal. These are not modest claims, and the geometric composure with which they arrive is itself the teaching: the most extraordinary conclusions are delivered with the same architectural discipline as the most mundane definitions. What makes this specifically queer is the structural kinship between Spinoza's refusal and the queer refusal of strict binaries; both inhabit a dominant form with such thoroughness that the form's possibilities exceed what its gatekeepers intended. Butler ( 1990 , pp. 136–141) argued that gender is constituted through repeated performative acts rather than expressed from an interior essence; camp identifies an analogous operation in form, where repeated stylised excess makes the form visible as form and available for reworking.

This book is the fullest study in English for many years on the role of God in Spinoza's philosophy. Spinoza has been called both a 'God-intoxicated man' and an atheist, both a pioneer of secular Judaism and a bitter critic of religion. This book is the fullest study in English for many years on the role of God in Spinoza's philosophy. Spinoza has been called both a 'God-intoxicated man' and an atheist, both a pioneer of secular Judaism and a bitter critic of religion. He was born a Jew but chose to live outside any religious community. He was deeply engaged both in traditional Hebrew learning and in contemporary physical science. He identified God with nature or substance: a theme which runs through his work, enabling him to naturalise religion but - equally important - to divinise nature. He emerges not as a rationalist precursor of the Enlightenment but as a thinker of the highest importance in his own right, both in philosophy and in religion.