ABSTRACT
There seems to be a growing consensus about how Spinoza's distinction between rational knowledge (ratio) and intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva) is to be understood. In the Treatise the primary contrast between reason and intuition seemed to be that, whereas reason involved an inadequate, because inferential, knowledge of the essences of things, intuition involved an adequate and immediate knowledge of their essences. Turning to the Treatise, this chapter suggests that the crux is not that rational knowledge is inferential and that intuitive knowledge is not. Since the ultimate cause of everything is to be found in substance, or God, intuitive knowledge must have its source in attributes of God, Rational knowledge arises when we infer from the nature of dependent things and not from the nature of substance. If intuitive knowledge is of individuals, this would explain why Spinoza curiously tacks on intuitive knowledge without numbering it as a fourth way in which we perceive many things and form universal ideas.
