Two Possible Concepts of Truth in Spinoza’s Ethics

The objective of this paper is to reflect on the concept of truth exposed in Spinoza’s Ethics. For this purpose, this paper is divided into four parts. First, two different positions are considered: A reading that defends a theory of truth by correspondence and a reading that defends a truth by coherence. Truth by correspondence implies a distinction between a mind in the world that enables conformity between idea and object. By introducing the concept of parallelism, problems emerge in maintaining the mind-world distinction proper to the theory of truth by correspondence. Second, the definition of “adequate idea” is studied and its characterization of intrinsic quality is emphasized, in order to relate it to the concept of truth. Third, the concept of falsehood is estimated to be in accordance with the questions arising from the parallelism and appropriateness of ideas. Fourth, the discussion of part one is revisited to ask whether a reconciliation between the two possible theories of truth is possible.