Spinoza and liberal naturalism

Was Spinoza a liberal naturalist? Liberal naturalism is defined by a rejection of supernatural entities – entities that can violate the laws of nature. Spinoza certainly rejects supernatural entities, holding that all things must be bound by the same unvarying order of nature. Before concluding that he is a liberal naturalist, however, we should consider how he thinks of the order of nature. He does not appear to mean an order of laws discovered by the natural sciences. Rather, he conceives of the order of nature as something akin to a system of mathematical objects, whose connections are established through deductive reasoning. In fact his position suggests a type of Pythagoreanism that treats all real objects as mathematical abstracta. If the ontologies of Parmenides and the Neoplatonists do not qualify as liberal naturalism, as De Caro and Voltolini have argued, then Spinoza’s ontology should not either.