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Descriptive

The God of the philosophers

On the axis: Existence of God · God

"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the learned": is the God whose existence reason demonstrates, prime mover, ground or substance, still the one people pray to, or does proof only ever reach an impersonal principle?

Philosophers' positions

Spinoza

Major
−0.5
Agnosticism (Huxley)
Justification

God exists necessarily, but is not the personal, transcendent God of classical theism: it is the single, infinite substance, identical with Nature (pantheism). Lacking providence or anthropomorphic will, this God is so remote from ordinary theism that Spinoza was charged with atheism; hence an intermediate value on the theist side, affirming a God while flagging its impersonal nature.

Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.Ethics, I, prop. 15

Ethics, I, prop. 11 (God necessarily exists) · Ethics, I, props. 14-15 (single substance)

Aristotle

−0.5
Agnosticism (Huxley)
Justification

Aristotle demonstrates the existence of a , pure actuality and final cause that moves the world as the beloved moves the lover, without being moved. This is a form of theism, but of an impersonal god that does not create, exercises no providence and does not know particulars, hence a value held well back from the extreme.

Thought thinks itself in grasping the intelligible, and its thinking is a thinking of thinking.Metaphysics, XII (Lambda).9 (1074b)

Metaphysics, XII (Lambda).7 and 9 · Physics, VIII.6

Anchors: Pascal · Spinoza · Aristotle