Spinoza on substance as cause

The dissertation provides a fundamental reconstruction of Spinoza's causal metaphysics, undermining some basic assumptions of contemporary Spinoza scholarship. It contests the widespread premise that we ought to approach Spinoza's philosophy through the prism of the influence of the Early Modern scientific revolution, regarding his metaphysics as a generalization of Cartesian physics. This interpretative approach has two principal consequences, both of which profoundly distort Spinoza's views. The first is the tendency to construe Spinoza's notion of "cause" as the "blind" mechanistic efficient cause. The second is the assumption that his metaphysics has room for finite individuals.;The dissertation aims to provide a more adequate interpretation of concepts central to Spinoza's metaphysics - substance, essence, cause, God, mode, and finitude - than is currently on offer, by inquiring into Spinoza's views on substance as cause. This general problem of the nature of substantial causality in Spinoza's metaphysics can be separated into two distinct questions. First, one can ask about the mode of causality exhibited by substance: what kind of cause is substance? Second, one can ask about that which the substance generates, i.e. both about the nature of its effects, and about the reasons why substance causes anything at all.;The first two Chapters examine the mode of substantial causality. From a historical point of view, to pose this question is to ask where Spinoza's causal metaphysics falls within the context of the Early Modern rejection of the Aristotelian four-part model of causal explanation. Here the dissertation argues is that contrary to contemporary scholarly consensus, according to which Spinoza embraces first and foremost mechanistic or "blind" efficient causes, and makes room for at least some final causes, Spinoza in fact endorses a formal cause model of causation, and unequivocally eliminates all final causes from his metaphysics.;The second part of the dissertation addresses the question of what entities a substance that operates through this kind of causality causes and why. Here the contention is that we must reject now-prevalent readings, and recognize that for Spinoza a true account of Nature has no room for any finite individuals, i.e. that substance is solely the cause of infinite entities.