Abstract

I conceive of Spinoza’s substance monism as a response to Aristotle’s prohibition against actual infinity for one key reason: nature, being all things, is necessarily infi nite. Spinoza encapsulates his substance monism with the phrase, “Deus sive Natura,” implying that there is only one infinite substance, which also possesses an infi nity of attributes, of which we are but modes. These logical delineations of substance never actually break up God’s reality. Aristotle’s well-known argument against the reality of an actual infinity in his Physics prohibits the existence of an actually infinite bodily substance because it would necessarily “destroy” (Physics 204b26-27) all other elements or bodies. On Aristotle’s view, there is a fundamental and concrete distinction between things: each substance is primarily a this (Categories 3b10). I maintain that Spinoza’s rationalism and radicalization of the principle of sufficient reason lends him greater explanatory potential than Aristotle to justify the (non) existence of actual infinity.