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Comment by throw0101b | Hacker News Reader

> One thing about Spinoza I find incredible is his description of how god must be a substance that permeates all nature […]

Standard Thomas Aquinas (and Aristotle?): [Gg]od is Being itself. Do a search for the term ipsum esse subsistens.

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That's not the same thing. The classic formulation is saying that for God, existence is essential, while other beings (not god) do not essentially exist. Spinoza is arguing that God's existence underlies all of existence.

> […] God's existence underlies all of existence.

How is that different than Aquinas/Aristotle?

Most simply, because they aren't addressing existence of things other than god in their formulation. They're making a statement about God's own existence. Spinoza is talking about (the connection between God and) the world.

> Spinoza is talking about (the connection between God and) the world.

And so does Aquinas: "Article 1. Whether God is in all things? […] Article 2. Whether God is everywhere? […]"

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1008.htm

1. I was responding to a comment invoking ipsum esse subsistent, and it remains true that it is not related to the position of Spinoza being discussed here.

2. According to Aquinas (as you linked), God is "present" inasmuch that God acts on all things ("God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works"), and Spinoza was certainly more extreme than that. Spinoza thought the world (and everything in it) is a "mode" of God.

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