Guide to Spinoza`s Ethics:

1.Part I : BEING,SUBSTANCE,GOD,NATURE
-our knowledge and experience is of CONCRETE THINGS,not of ABSTRACT BEING AS SUCH
-Spinoza belives that we need to start with BEING(because it is not a conceptual abstraction)-it is the CONCRETE GROUND OF
ALL REALITY
(*) BASIC IDEA-Being is ONE,that being is equivalent to GOD and the individual beings we experience are MODES of
being(modes of God)
The 17th century Common-sense View:
-combination of the Aristotelian principles as basis of science and metaphysics&philosophy of minds and bodies recently proposed by
Descartes
Aristotelian principles:-the most basic is the idea that the universe is made up of SUBSTANCES
and their ATTRIBUTES
-substances-independently existing things
-attributes-their changeable properties
-attributes depends on substances for their existance,substances depends
logically on nothing
-"human body" as a substance does not logically require the existence of anything else to be what
it is
-"weight" logically require the existence of the substance in order to exist
-"weight" as ATTRIBUTE requires existance of the "human body"(SUBSTANCE)
DESCARTES:-agrees with Aristotle in case of inummerable substances with changeable properties
-but,underlying those changeable properties,every substance has ONE
FUNDAMENTAL PROPERTY THAT IS ESSENTIAL TO IT
-those are "PRINCIPAL ATTRIBUTES"-extension and thinking-->not changeable
-changeable properties are the MODES OF THOSE ATTRIBUTTES
-substances are either"EXTENDED SUBSTANCES"(bodies) or "THINKING SUBSTANCES"(minds)-->FUNDAMENTALLY
DIFFERENT SUBSTANCES
GOD-necessarily existing infinite thinking substance,who creates and sustains the existence of all these substances