Spinoza's Argument That Existence Belongs To The Nature Of Substance

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Part A
In 1p7 Spinoza asserts that “existence belongs to the nature of substance.” He had clarified the notion of substance earlier as, “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself.” In this conceptualization of substance Spinoza primarily implies that, the conception of substance does not require reference to something else from which a substance must be created. The implication here is that, Spinoza is highlighting an internal derivative in which all the features of a substance are self-referred as opposed to drawing inferences from outside the substance. He goes further and clarifies that, the only substance truly in existence is God. Such is the case owing to the fact that, as a substance, God does not look to another thing from outside his existence to understand his essence. The implication here is that, an understanding of God ideally looks to the essence of God with no outside references. As such, while people are modes of God to the extent that they are affections of substance, that is, that which is in something else and is conceived through something else …show more content…
The contradiction comes in light of the fact that, in his proof of proposition five he highlights that, there is no sharing of attributes. Particularly, Spinoza observes that, if substances are distinguishable from attributes, there cannot be more than one substance of the same attribute. Similarly, if it is distinguishable only by affections, whereby a substance is known to precede its affections which implies that in understanding a substance, its affections are totally disregarded or excluded from consideration, such a substance is not distinguishable from another substance. The implication here is that there is only one substance with certain affections and attributes. These are not shared and retain an absolute identity and fidelity to the