A Prolegomena to the Foundations of Spinoza's Epistemology

The author in this article tries to put some of the most important modern epistemological questions to this 17th-century rationalist philosopher to organize a systematically comprehensive plan of his epistemological ideas. He reviews the ascending grades of truth (knowledge by vague experience, by general reasoning, and intuitive knowledge), and inquires about validity, reliance, and characteristics of the levels of knowledge in Spinoza’s epistemology.Spinoza’s epistemology speaks of internal and external criteria of truth and divides ideas to complete (regarding the internal criteria) and real ones (regarding external criteria of truth). A complete and real idea should correspond to reality, as well as benefiting from clarity, differentiation, and consistency as internal criteria of truth. Therefore, this theory will come close to two famous epistemological theories of truth, i.e. classical and the coherence theory. The author will compare the three at the end of his discussion.