Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff

Summary

If one recalls the Cartesian system in its true constitution, then one longs for a better, more beautiful, more reassuring form (Gestalt), which is then at once to be found in Spinozism.

SPINOZA

Spinoza, who can be regarded as pupil and immediate successor of Descartes, born in Amsterdam in 1632, had already, before he set up his real system, worked on the Cartesian system, but in the direction or with the aim of giving it a really objective context. The decisive move to his own system took place when he made what was First in itself into the sole point of departure, but also took no more of this into consideration than could be known with certainty, namely necessary existence. Spinoza retained from the Cartesian concept, in which God was still more than the necessarily existing being (Wesen), no more than this definition; God was for him only the necessarily existing being (Wesen); he cut off all reflections in Descartes which preceded this concept, and began at once with a definition of substance, by which he understood precisely, ad cujus naturam pertinet existere [to whose nature it belongs to exist], or id, quod cogitari non potest nisi existens [that which cannot be thought if it does not exist], that which cannot at all, without there being a contradiction, be thought as not being (nicht seyend).