The Diversity of the Attributes

The diversity of the attributes can be taken in three senses: the conceptual independence of the attributes; the diversity of the subject of thought and its object in extension; and the infinite numerical diversity of the attributes. ‘The problem’, R. J. Delahunty remarks, is to reconcile this implication with ElPlOSchol, ‘which declares that the attributes are conceived of as really distinct from one another’. In a study of Spinoza’s doctrine of the attributes as a theory of expression, Gilles Deleuze explores the suggestion, developing the formal distinction of Duns Scotus in response to the attributes problem. On another formulation of the problem, the attributes are said to be diverse in the same ways as the subject of thought and its object in extension. Self-determination is a form of self-reflection, and this is a sense of teleology compatible with Spinoza’s determinism; however, on this view of the attributes the relational reality of self-determination is itself determined through the attributes as qualities of being.