Short answer: for Spinoza, God (or Nature) is the one substance; nature and all particular things are modes of God—not the other way around. God is not a mode of nature, and nature is not a separate substance alongside God.
Let me unpack this carefully, because Spinoza’s terminology is precise and easy to invert accidentally.
1. Substance, attribute, mode (Spinoza’s basic ontology)
In Ethics I, Spinoza defines:
Substance: that which is in itself and is conceived through itself
→ needs nothing else to exist or be understood.Attribute: what the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance
→ e.g. thought and extension (the only ones humans know).Mode: that which is in something else and is conceived through something else
→ particular things, states, events, ideas, bodies, affects.
This structure is strictly hierarchical.
2. God = the one substance
Spinoza argues that:
There can be only one substance.
That substance has infinitely many attributes.
This substance is God.
Hence the famous formula:
Deus sive Natura — God, or Nature
This does not mean “God and Nature are two things that happen to coincide.”
It means: there is one reality that can be called either God or Nature.
So:
God is substance
God is not a mode
God is not reducible to anything else
3. Is nature a mode of God?
We need to distinguish two senses of “nature,” which Spinoza himself carefully separates:
Natura naturans vs. Natura naturata
Natura naturans (“nature naturing”):
God insofar as he is active, eternal, self-caused
This is substance itself
Natura naturata (“nature natured”):
The totality of finite things
The system of modes that follow from God’s essence
So:
Natura naturans = God = substance
Natura naturata = modes of God
Therefore:
Nature as productive power is not a mode
Nature as produced effects is entirely modal
4. Are things modes of God? Yes.
Everything finite is a mode of God under some attribute:
Bodies → modes of God under extension
Ideas → modes of God under thought
Affects → modes of ideas (and thus modes of God)
You are not a substance.
Your mind is not a substance.
Your reasoning is not a substance.
All are modes of the one substance.
5. Reason as a “mode of affect”
You’re right to connect reason and affect, but here’s the precise Spinozist picture:
Reason is a kind of idea
Ideas are modes of thought
Affects are modifications of both mind and body
Spinoza explicitly denies a sharp opposition between reason and affect:
Reason itself has affective power
Adequate ideas generate active affects
Inadequate ideas generate passive affects
So reason is not outside the affective economy—it is a more powerful and more adequate way of being affected and acting.
But still:
Reason = a mode
Affect = a mode
Both depend on God as substance
6. Is God what everything is “reducible” to?
Careful: Spinoza is not a reductive materialist or idealist.
Everything depends on God
But modes are not eliminated into God
Each mode has a determinate causal role within an attribute
So:
God is not a “thing behind things”
God is the immanent cause of all things
Things do not disappear into God; they express God
This is why Spinoza rejects both:
Transcendent theism (God outside the world)
Simple reductionism (only one kind of thing exists)
7. Final clarification (directly answering your question)
❌ Nature is not a mode of God and vice versa
✅ God is substance
✅ Nature (in the sense of finite things) is modal
✅ All things are in God and conceived through God
❌ God is not reducible to nature as a collection of things
God is the single substance whose essence is expressed in infinite attributes and whose power is expressed in infinite modes.
If you want, I can also:
Compare this to Descartes’ substance dualism
Explain why Spinoza calls this “pantheism” (and why that label is misleading)
Trace how this leads to his ethics of freedom and joy
This question goes straight to the core of Ethics I. Spinoza’s claim that there must be one substance is not an arbitrary metaphysical preference; it follows from how he defines intelligibility itself. I’ll lay out the argument step by step, and then explain why “only modes” is incoherent within Spinoza’s framework.
1. What a mode is cannot be primary
Recall the definition:
Mode: that which is in another and is conceived through another
This already answers half the question. A mode is ontologically and conceptually dependent. To say “there are only modes” is, for Spinoza, like saying “there are only properties, but no thing that has them.”
A mode:
is in something else
is understood through something else
If there were only modes, there would be:
nothing they are in
nothing through which they are conceived
So the concept of “mode-only reality” collapses at the level of definition.
2. Spinoza’s Principle of Intelligibility
Spinoza accepts a strong rationalist principle:
Nothing exists or is conceived without a sufficient reason.
This applies not only to events, but to concepts.
If something exists, there must be:
an account of what it is
an account of why it exists as it does
Modes fail this test if taken as ultimate.
3. Why infinite regress won’t work
You might try to reply:
“Each mode is in another mode.”
Spinoza rejects this for two reasons:
(a) Conceptual regress
If A is conceived through B, and B through C, and so on forever, then nothing is ever conceived through itself. The entire chain lacks explanatory grounding.
Spinoza thinks explanation must terminate in something:
that is in itself
and conceived through itself
That terminating point is substance.
(b) Ontological regress
Modes are affections—determinate ways something is. An infinite regress of determinations with no determinate thing being determined is unintelligible.
Again: “only modes” = “only modifications, but no modifier.”
4. Why there can’t be many substances
Once you accept that some substance must exist, Spinoza then argues:
Substances are distinguished only by attributes
Two substances with the same attribute would be indistinguishable
Therefore, only one substance per attribute
God has all attributes
Therefore, only one substance absolutely
This is why Spinoza doesn’t just argue for “at least one substance,” but for exactly one.
5. Why modes cannot be self-caused
Another key claim:
Substance is causa sui (cause of itself)
Modes are caused by something else
If everything were a mode, then:
nothing would be self-caused
everything would depend on something else
but there would be no ultimate cause
For Spinoza, that violates the demand that reality be fully intelligible immanently, not by appeal to mystery.
6. “Why not brute modes?”
You might push back:
“Why can’t modes just exist brute-factly?”
This is precisely what Spinoza rejects. His system assumes:
intelligibility is not optional
explanation does not stop arbitrarily
This is not a neutral assumption; it’s a methodological commitment inherited from Euclidean geometry and rationalist science.
So the answer is not “because modes can’t exist without substance in general,” but:
Given Spinoza’s definitions and his rationalist demand for explanation, a mode-only ontology is incoherent.
7. A helpful analogy (Spinoza-friendly)
Think of:
Curvature without a surface
Motion without something that moves
Predicates without a subject
Spinoza thinks “modes without substance” are exactly like these.
8. Final formulation
So, in Spinoza’s terms:
Modes presuppose substance by definition
Infinite regress of modes explains nothing
Intelligibility requires something conceived through itself
That something must exist necessarily
That something is substance
And only one such substance can exist
If you’d like, we can:
Contrast this with Hume’s acceptance of brute facts
Show how Spinoza’s argument anticipates later grounding debates
Or examine whether Spinoza’s rationalist premise is defensible at all
Good—this is a serious and precise objection, and it gets to where Spinoza’s system actually stands or falls.
You are right to notice that nothing logical prevents us, in general, from positing properties without substances. Contemporary trope theory, bundle theory, and even some readings of Hume do exactly that. So the issue is not whether your proposal is coherent simpliciter. The issue is whether it is coherent within Spinoza’s framework and whether it preserves what his definitions are doing.
Let’s be very careful.
1. You are changing the definition of “mode”
Spinoza’s definition is:
Mode: that which is in another and is conceived through another
Crucially, he does not say:
“in another mode”
He leaves “another” deliberately open—but it is constrained by how conception works elsewhere in the Ethics.
To be “conceived through another” means:
the definition of X presupposes the definition of Y
Y does not presuppose X in return
This is asymmetric dependence.
If you redefine modes as:
“that which is in another mode and conceived through another mode”
you have symmetrized dependence. That move is not innocent: it removes the asymmetry that Spinoza is using to ground explanation.
2. Why Spinoza needs asymmetric dependence
Spinoza’s system is built on the idea that explanation must terminate in something that is:
conceived through itself
whose concept does not involve the concept of another
This is not smuggled in later; it is already present in the definition of substance.
If every mode is:
conceived through another mode
and there is no non-modal terminus
then no concept is self-intelligible. Every concept defers explanation.
Spinoza’s objection is not “this is impossible,” but:
this does not explain anything.
For Spinoza, explanation is not optional.
3. Why infinite modal chains are not explanatory (for Spinoza)
Suppose we accept your proposal:
Mode A is in Mode B
Mode B is in Mode C
Mode C is in Mode D
… ad infinitum
Spinoza’s response is:
You have given:
determination
relation
dependence
But you have not given:
being
necessity
why there is this chain rather than none
In other words, you have redescribed dependence without grounding it.
This is why he insists on something that is:
in itself (not in another)
conceived through itself (not through another)
That is what “substance” means for him—nothing more mystical than that.
4. “Properties without things” vs Spinoza’s commitments
You are absolutely right that properties without substances are philosophically respectable in other systems.
But Spinoza explicitly rejects:
brute facts
ungrounded structures
self-sustaining relational webs
His rationalism includes the principle:
If something exists, there must be a reason in its nature or in another.
A mode-only ontology violates this as he understands reason, because:
every reason refers onward
nothing contains the reason for its own existence
So the disagreement is not logical, but methodological.
5. Why redefining “mode” collapses Spinoza’s distinctions
If modes can be conceived only through other modes, then:
the distinction between substance and mode disappears
the notion of attribute loses its function
God ceases to be causa sui
necessity becomes external rather than immanent
At that point, you no longer have Spinoza’s metaphysics—you have a different one, closer to:
Humean regularity
structural realism
or Deleuzian ungrounded difference (ironically!)
That may be preferable—but it is no longer Spinoza.
6. Where Spinoza would press you hardest
Spinoza would not ask:
“Why can’t there be only modes?”
He would ask:
“What makes this totality of modes necessary rather than contingent?”
If your answer is:
“it just is”
then you have rejected Spinoza’s core axiom:
Nothing is without a reason.
And that is the real point of divergence.
7. Bottom line
Yes, properties without things are coherent
Yes, a mode-only ontology is philosophically viable
No, it is not compatible with Spinoza’s definitions
And no, Spinoza is not begging the question—he is making a substantive rationalist commitment
So the dispute is not about coherence, but about what counts as explanation.
If you want, next we can:
Compare this directly to bundle theory
Show why Spinoza thinks necessity cannot emerge from relations alone
Or examine whether his demand for a self-conceived terminus is defensible at all
Good. Here is Spinoza’s argument, stripped of rhetoric and presented as tightly as possible. I’ll show why, for him, relations alone cannot generate necessity, and why he thinks necessity must be immanent rather than structural.
I’ll proceed in four steps.
1. What “necessity” means for Spinoza
Spinoza’s necessity is not:
statistical
nomological in the Humean sense
imposed by external laws
Necessity means:
that whose non-existence or non-being-thus is inconceivable.
Something is necessary if its concept itself explains why it exists and why it is as it is.
This is why Spinoza defines substance as causa sui:
its essence involves existence
it cannot fail to be
Necessity must therefore be internal to what a thing is, not something added later.
2. Why relations presuppose relata
A purely relational ontology says:
all that exists are relations among entities
nothing is self-subsisting
Spinoza’s objection is simple but deep:
A relation cannot explain its own necessity unless the relata already have determinate natures.
Why?
A relation tells you:
how things are ordered
how they depend on one another
But it does not tell you:
why this relation exists rather than another
why there is any relational structure at all
If every term in the structure is defined only by relations, then the whole structure is underdetermined with respect to necessity.
3. Why infinite relational closure does not help
You might reply:
“The entire relational system is necessary as a whole.”
Spinoza’s response:
Necessity cannot arise from closure alone.
Why not?
Because closure only means:
nothing external determines the system
But necessity requires:
that the system’s essence involves its existence
A closed relational web can still be:
conceivable as absent
conceivable as different
There is nothing in “relations all the way down” that forbids non-existence.
Spinoza’s test is conceptual, not empirical:
Can you conceive this whole relational structure as not existing?
If yes, it is not necessary.
4. Why dependence cannot produce necessity
This is the key move.
Every relation of dependence has the form:
X is because of Y
If everything is a relation, then:
everything is “because of something else”
But “because of something else” never yields necessity—only conditionality.
Even an infinite chain of “because of” statements gives you:
determination
order
explanation relative to other things
But it never gives:
explanation of existence as such
Spinoza’s claim:
Necessity cannot be inherited; it must be possessed.
That is, something cannot be necessary because of another unless that other is necessary in itself.
5. Why laws or structures won’t do the job
Suppose you say:
“The relations are governed by laws.”
Spinoza replies:
Laws are either descriptions or expressions
If they describe, they do not explain
If they explain, they express the nature of something
But if laws express a nature, then you have reintroduced substance under another name.
For Spinoza:
laws do not float free
they are expressions of essence
No essence → no genuine law → no necessity.
6. Why necessity must be immanent
This is why Spinoza insists on immanent causation:
God does not impose necessity from outside
God does not choose relations
Things follow from what God is
Necessity emerges because:
substance’s essence = power to exist and act
modes follow from that essence with the same necessity as geometrical truths
Relations among modes express this necessity—but they do not generate it.
7. Final formulation
Spinoza’s position can be stated cleanly:
Necessity means inconceivability of non-existence.
Relations explain how things depend, not why there is something rather than nothing.
Dependence cannot ground necessity; it presupposes it.
Only something whose essence involves existence can be necessary.
Therefore, necessity must originate in something self-conceived.
Relations alone cannot supply this.
So when Spinoza denies that necessity can emerge from relations alone, he is not making a metaphysical prejudice. He is enforcing a strict criterion:
If necessity is real, it must be readable off the concept of something.
Relations, by themselves, never meet that standard.
If you want, next we can:
Test whether Spinoza’s criterion for necessity is defensible
Compare this to modern structural realism
Or show exactly where a Humean would reject his argument
Good — this is exactly the pressure point. You’re not missing something obvious; you’re rejecting a Spinozist constraint on explanation, and you’re doing it coherently. What I need to do now is not repeat the earlier claim, but show why Spinoza thinks your scaling-up move fails, even if it feels natural (and even if many modern philosophers would accept it).
I’ll respond directly to your points, then isolate the precise axiom Spinoza is relying on.
1. “Why can’t relations determine relations all the way up?”
You say:
If terms are determined by relations then this would scale up to the whole structure.
Spinoza’s reply is subtle: determination is not the same as necessity.
From relations you can get:
why this relation follows from others
why the structure has this form rather than another given that it exists
But Spinoza insists that this still leaves open:
whether the whole structure exists at all
whether it exists necessarily or contingently
In other words, relational explanation is always conditional:
If the structure exists, then this relation must exist.
But necessity, for Spinoza, is:
The impossibility of the structure not existing.
No amount of internal articulation removes that modal gap.
2. Why internal coherence ≠ necessity (for Spinoza)
Here is the key Spinozist move:
Even a perfectly self-consistent, self-determining relational system can be conceived as absent.
You can fully understand:
Euclidean geometry
group theory
a complete causal network
And still intelligibly ask:
Why does this structure exist at all?
For Spinoza, the very intelligibility of that question shows the structure is not necessary in itself.
Necessity must be visible in the concept alone, not inferred from completeness or closure.
3. “But we can explain why there is a structure at all”
You suggest:
In principle, we could figure out why there is a relational structure at all by understanding the structures.
Spinoza’s response would be:
If the explanation appeals to:
another structure → regress
a meta-structure → same problem
laws governing structures → those laws require grounding
brute fact → rejection of PSR
Every such explanation either:
defers necessity
or abandons it
What you call “understanding the structure” never yields:
its non-existence is inconceivable
And that criterion is doing all the work.
4. Why scaling up doesn’t cross the modal threshold
Here’s the formal problem Spinoza sees:
Let:
R₁…Rₙ be relations
S be the total structure they form
You can show:
R₁ follows from R₂…Rₙ
S is internally determined
But you cannot show:
¬S is contradictory
Unless:
S’s essence includes existence
Relations, as relations, never include existence in their essence. They describe how, not that.
So the scale-up never crosses from:
determined given existence
to
existence is necessary
5. Where modern physics does diverge
You’re right to note:
we know now that indeterminacy is baked into nature
Spinoza would reject this outright — not because he denies randomness phenomenologically, but because:
indeterminacy signals inadequate knowledge
necessity remains at the level of substance
probability reflects modal ignorance, not ontological looseness
This is a deep clash with post-quantum metaphysics. You are right that Spinoza cannot absorb fundamental indeterminacy without giving up his system.
So yes: from a modern standpoint, his necessity requirement looks excessive.
6. The real disagreement (now fully explicit)
At this point, the disagreement is not technical. It is axiomatic.
Spinoza assumes:
A thing is necessary only if its essence makes its non-existence inconceivable.
You are assuming:
A thing can be necessary if it is fully determined by relations, even if its existence is not conceptually self-entailing.
Once that assumption is granted, relational necessity is possible.
Spinoza simply refuses it.
7. Final diagnosis
So the correct conclusion is not:
“You are missing Spinoza’s point.”
It is:
You are explicitly rejecting Spinoza’s criterion for necessity — and that is exactly where his argument lives or dies.
Everything else follows from that.
If you want, next we can:
Translate this disagreement into modern modal logic
Compare Spinoza to structural realism or ontic structuralism
Ask whether Spinoza’s criterion for necessity is too strong, even by rationalist standards.
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