Analysis Of Margaret Cavendish s Baruch Spinoza A...

There was another philosopher in the seventeenth century who has a similar system and a possibly more coherent system then Margaret Cavendish. Baruch Spinoza has a very unique monistic system. Spinoza lays out a system consisting of one infinite substance with infinite attributes. The two attributes which we can know are thought and extension. I will argue that the attribute of thought and the attribute of extension correlate well with Cavendish’s animate and inanimate matter. I will argue that Spinoza’s system is more coherent than Cavendish’s and solves some of her system’s issues. If it is that case that we desire a system similar to Cavendish’s then Spinoza’s system is a step in the right direction. Spinoza has a very unique style. He starts with clear definitions and axioms. The definition and axioms he lays out are things to which most philosophers in Europe at the time would have assented. He moves from these definitions and axioms to propositions and proofs. He will state a proposition, and he will immediately follow that with a proof of that proposition given the definitions, axioms, and already proven propositions. The part of Spinoza with which we are concerned is his argument for monism. The argument takes place in propositions one through fourteen. His ultimate goal is proposition fourteen: â€Å"There can be, or be conceived, no other substance but God.† By this he means that everything that exists, from humans to stars, are God. Spinoza does not assent to the