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There is perhaps no great philosopher who presents us, with as much confidence and assurance as Spinoza does, with what have appeared to many commentators, and must appear at first sight to most students, as stark contradictions. Yet they are all deduced with rigorous logic from first principles that Spinoza lays down as indubitable and which a critic would be hard put to controvert with any degree of plausibility. One's first reaction on confronting these apparent conflicts is the conviction that something has gone wrong at some obscure point in the course of the reasoning, but closer examination and more careful consideration of Spinoza's system and his explicit statements will, I believe, show that he remains consistent throughout, at least in most important respects, and that the conflicts in his doctrine are apparent only.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2495-2_3

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