O PROBLEMA DA UNICIDADE DIVINA NO BREVE TRATADO DE ESPINOSA

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the reasons through which Spinoza justifies divine uniqueness in the Short Treatise, aiming to understand under which principles the philosopher claims to have established the existence of God, that is, of a being of whom everything is affirmed, namely, infinite attributes, each of which is infinitely perfect in its kind. We propose to argue that, in said work, by granting attributes the explicit treatment of substances, young Spinoza faces the challenge of (i) overcoming the ontological autonomy of attributes; (ii) reconciling the substantial multiplicity that attributes entail within the same being; (iii) demonstrating that such a being has real existence, or, in other words, possesses its own ontological status. Based on this interpretation, it seeks to show that Spinoza sets the beginning of the Ethics in a way to overcome the ontological obstacles of his early philosophy, defining attribute as what constitutes the essence of substance, not as a substance itself, which allows him to establish divine uniqueness, not as a mere secondary notion of set, but as the conciliation of an infinite diversity of genres, in the same and unique substance.