On the Spinoza’s naturalism

Abstract

The article attempts to determine the extents to which Spinoza’s method- ology for the analysis of phenomena of human existence meets the criteria of the naturalistic approach. The author shows that the idea of «universal laws and rules of nature», presented by Spinoza as a basic principle of knowledge related to the nature of things, does not have unambiguous connotations and includes elements of scholastic metaphysics, geometric axioms and, oddly enough, theology, that are connected to three hyposta- ses of first principle in the doctrine of Spinoza — a substance, nature and God. This heterogeneous composition treated as a concept of "natural law" can not be a reliable tool for the study of human nature.