Wu Shubo.The Meaning and Constructive Mechanism of Adequate Ideas in Spinoza[J].Journal of Sun Yat-sen University(Social Science Edition),2026,66(02):124-135.
Wu Shubo.The Meaning and Constructive Mechanism of Adequate Ideas in Spinoza[J].Journal of Sun Yat-sen University(Social Science Edition),2026,66(02):124-135. DOI: 10.11714/jsysu.sse.202602012.
Adequate ideas play important role in the philosophy of Spinoza. Yet his reference to these concepts is not only to make up for the deficiencies of true ideas, but to reveal the internal constructive logic of ideas and truth. In the perspective of Spinoza’s parallelism, all ideas necessarily have God’s attribute of thought as their efficient cause, and follows from it in virtue of the necessary order of thought. Therefore, it is only by taking God’s infinite power of thinking and his dynamic mechanism of production as the essential perspective and including into it the productive process of ideas and knowledge in the human mind that we can apprehend the meaning and constructive manner of adequate ideas. On the contrary, it is only with respect to the human mind that inadequate ideas can be produced and interpreted. Thereupon, Spinoza not only distances himself from the subjective narratives about ideas and knowledge in early modern philosophy, but also clearly shows his totalism and dynamics on the level of ideas and truth.