Spinoza's Arguments for the ·Existence of God

In this paper I have approached Spinoza's arguments for the existence of God from a somewhat unusual angle. In philosophy it is customary to consider an argument and give reasons for accepting or rejecting it in part or wholly. If I were to fall in line with the traditional method of discussing philosophical problems I would be content to point out that, in my opinion, Spinoza's arguments fail to prove the existence of God. But, in that case, I wol).ld be concerned only with Spinoza's explicit intention in presenting his arguments and the sense in which Spinoza thought that his arguments were convincing. The true worth, . and what I may be /ermitted to call the occult intention of the arguments, woul . remain unnoticed. To IT!.ake these explicit is a difficult task, particu,larly as Spinoza himself was not .aware of the real force of his arguments. He thought. they proved the existence of God more geometrico, i.e. in the same way and with the same kind of inevitableness as reasoning in geometry establishes a theorem. In this he was, I think, mistaken. The real significance of his arguments, unsuspected, I repeat, by Spinoza himself, requires to be brought out in the light of what philosophical, as distinct from mathematical, reasoning is or should be. If we can penetrate behind the external form of . the arguments into their· underlying intention, felt at most only vaguely and subconsciously by Spinoza but not brought to the level of selfconsciousness, we shall perhaps understand that rather puzzling phenomenon df an argument appearing to be conclusive and almost self-evidently valid to one philosopher and to ·another as inconclusive or even obviously fallacious. In such cases the disagreement does not arise because either philosopher possesses less of the critical faculty or intellectual iritegrity than the other. There is a genuine philosophical impasse, and so long as the real nature of the argument is not uncovered a discussion between the two contending parties would amount to nothing better than talking at cross-purposes. I suspect that in a good many philosophical discussions, specially of the polemical kind, philosophers talk at cross-purposes and are not