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Abstract
This dissertation is an investigation into the nature and role of imagination in the philosophy of Spinoza. The motivation for the research is the apparent paradox that occurs when Spinoza's monism is combined with a negative interpretation of his theory of imagination in which ideas of imagination are considered only as sources of mistakes and as ideas that have no real being. If there is only a single infinite and self-caused substance that is perfect where everything that follows from it is also perfect, then everything that there is, including imaginations, is real and true. However, imaginations do not give the essence of things and the objects they refer sometimes do not exist. If this is the case, either it is false that everything that follows from the substance is perfect or there is some kind of perfection and virtue in imaginations. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that the second option is the case. The dissertation has two parts. First, I show that Spinoza's notion of imagination is, in fact, a complex theory that was being carefully constructed since his early works. In the second part, I present the paradoxes of monism and imagination in the Ethics. I suggest that imagination is best understood if addressed as an activity that has causes in the body and causes in the mind. By dividing imagination into its expression in extension and in thought, it becomes possible to analyze further the various objects it produces such as images, ideas of affects, fictions, and beings of reason. I conclude by showing that all of these objects are positively existing beings and that each of them has a distinctive role in knowledge.