Piešťany Letter 56: To your [Hugo Boxel] question of whether I have as clear a vision of God as of a triangle, I answer in the affirmative. But if you ask me if I have as clear a spiritual image of God as I do of a triangle, I answer in the negative. We cannot imagine God, but we can understand Him by the intellect. It should also be noted here that I do not claim to have a complete knowledge of God, but that I understand some of his qualities – not really all or most – and it is certain that my ignorance of very many attributes does not prevent me from having knowledge of some of them. When I studied Euclid`s elements, I understood very early on that the three angles of a triangle are two right angles, and I clearly perceived this quality of triangle, even if I did not know many others. A very important characteristic in terms of attributes is defined in 2P7 and its scholium, which the literature sometimes calls “the doctrine of parallelism”. However, as stated in point 1.9.2, this nomenclature is laden with considerable distortion of interpretation and the term is nowhere to be found in ethics itself. It is therefore advisable to stay away from it and simply qualify it as a “2P7 doctrine”. 2P7 says, “The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things” (“ordo, &connexio idearum idem est, ac ordo &connexio rerum”). Spinoza explains this thesis in the scholium: 2P7 and its scholium play a crucial role in Spinoza`s system, as they lay the foundation for solving or solving the mind-body problem. Therefore, the understanding of the nature of the union of mind and body depends on the interpretation of Spinoza`s theory of attributes and in particular of 2P7 and its scolastium. (For the discussion of issues relating to the unification of mind and body, see section 1.9.4). The interpretation of the metaphysical structure of what is expressed in 2P7 and its schocholium is strongly influenced by the number of attributes believed to be present in Spinoza`s system and how to understand the relationship between attributes and substance.
The general description of 2P7 and its scholium is explained above in point 1.6. From a broader point of view, the main positions are generally considered classifiable: extreme realism, nominalism (sometimes simply called “antirealism” with regard to universalities) [6], moderate realism and idealism. Extreme realists postulate the existence of independent and abstract universalities to explain the concordance of attributes. Nominalists deny the existence of universalities and argue that they are not necessary to explain the conformity of attributes. Conceptualists postulate that universalities exist only in the mind or when they are conceptualized, denying the independent existence of universalities, but accepting that they have a foundation in Re. . . .