LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mendelssohn
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[W]hile some of these criticisms of Spinoza may be compelling, they do not, Mendelssohn recognizes, carry the day for a refined Spinozist or pantheist such as Lessing. Reconstructing the sort of rebuttal that Lessing might have made, Mendelssohn observes that the Spinozist's inability to explain how movement and values derive from the attributes of the one, infinite substance does not automatically establish the theist explanation. Moreover, the refined Spinozist might wonder how different the positions are since the theist purports to explain these seemingly recalcitrant phenomena merely by appealing to the divine will. A refined pantheist might accept the difference between the world (thought) and God (thinker) at a certain level, but insist that, in the end, it is a level of mere abstraction since thinking and thought can only be distinguished as long as one is not actually thinking. After all, "who is to tell us that we ourselves and the world surrounding us have something more to them than the thoughts of God and modifications of his original power?" (Gesammelte Schriften, 3/2, p. 116).
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