ATTRIBUTE. — In grammar it is an accidental element of the proposition and can be a pronoun, a numeral, a participle and, more often, an adjective. In logic it is an element of judgment (v. JUDGMENT) and is identified with the predicate. Regarding the extension of the attribute, logic maintains, despite Hamilton’s objections, the two axioms: 1) in every affirmative proposition the attribute is particular; 2) in every negative proposition the attribute is universal. The position of the attribute is important in the analytic judgments with which formal logic is concerned: according to the principle of identity, every judgment whose attribute is contained in the idea of the subject is true and legitimate; according to the principle of contradiction, every judgment whose attribute is contradictory to the idea of the subject is false and absurd.
For Spinoza, “the attribute is what the intellect perceives in the substance as constitutive of its essence” (Ethica, part 1, demonstration of prop. 10). In every theodicy or rational study of God, the attribute is a divine perfection: for example, infinity, immensity, omniscience (v. DIVINE ATTRIBUTES). It was probably the very expression “attribute of God” that gave rise to the Spinozistic sense of the term (cf. G. T. Richter, Spinoza’s Philosophische Terminologie, Leipzig 1913, p. 26).