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"Self-Identity in Spinoza's Account of Finite Individuals"
In this essay, I argue that, I argue, should be interpreted as a quantitative --- rather than as a qualitative --- formal cause. Drawing from the work of Alexandre Matheron, I contend that this quantitative formal cause can be understood as akin to a Euclidean anthyphairetic ratio. Like Aristotelian formal-causal theorists, Spinoza treats forms as necessary for the account of the way in which a certain individual persists in spite of changes in its component parts as well as for the non-arbitrariness of its component parts. Like Cartesian mechanist theorists, however, Spinoza maintains that the body can only be determined in mathematizable terms. He combines elements of both causal schemas such that one must read his account as a hybrid model of formal causation that is quantitative in nature; the Euclidean anthyphairetic ratio being one possible way of interpreting this model.