 One of Spinoza’s most fundamental epistemological and methodological commitments is a commitment to universal intelligibility. In his most influential treatise, the Ethics, Spinoza expresses this commitment in two ways: first, as the axiom that there is nothing that cannot be “conceived”, either “through itself” or through “another thing” (Ethics [= E] 1ax2); second, as the claim that there is a “reason or [i.e.] cause” for the “existence or nonexistence” of every thing (E1p11atld1).