About (Deus sive Natura)

A NOTE ON SPINOZA'S GOD

As we shall see, Spinoza's conception of God is not the usual one. He identifies the word as identical to the totality of the laws, processes and products of nature. For Spinoza God and Nature are identical. He uses the Latin phrase (Deus sive Natura) (God or Nature).

Exercising an author's prerogative I will henceforth change the translated word God to (Deus sive Natura), when it refers to Spinoza's concept. I hope that this will not upset the reader. I believe it will be helpful because the word God carries such a strong image that trying to remember Spinoza's revision when the word appears in the text often breaks the thought and when the revision is not brought to mind it does violence to Spinoza's meaning.