L'intelletto infinito nell'Ethica di Spinoza

The paper focuses on the occourrences, in the Ethica, of the expression «infinite intellect», which Spinoza qualified as the infinite immediate mode in the attribute of thought. From the analysis two apories emerge, related to differences between the infinite immediate mode in the attribute of thought and the infinite immediate mode in the attribute of extension, that Spinoza defined as movement-and-quiet. 1) Only imaginatively it can be said that extension consists of «parts»; finite minds or finite intellects are on the contrary repeatedly referred, in the Ethica, as «parts» of the infinite intellect, which is ultimately defined as «constituted» by the sum of finite intellects. A conclusion which contradicts Spinoza’s doctrine of infinity. 2) Movement-and-quiet implies extension; but modes of thought don’t implie thought, because they are thought. Spinoza shares this last difficulty with Descartes, in so far as they both conceive thought as an act, and not as a faculty.