ABSTRACT
Proponents of the understanding of Spinoza are of differing sorts. Many are really exponents of the G. Hegelian interpretation in the strict sense; they identify some elements of Hegel’s absolute idealism in Spinoza, whose system is thus seen as a precursor to the more fully developed and coherent version of the doctrine in Hegel. Spinoza wrote that ‘the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things’. The epistemological type of argument is found in the works of J. Clark Murray and Errol E. Harris where they contend that being thought is a necessary condition in the system of Spinoza for anything’s being real. One version of the epistemological argument is based on Spinoza’s insistence that substance and the knowledge of substance are united in thought. Spinoza referred to a second type of idea as the intention of the thinking subject, that is, an attitude of concern.
