ATTRIBUTE. - In grammar, it is an accidental element of the proposition and may be a pronoun, numeral, participle, and, more often, an adjective. In logic, it judgment (v.) and is identified with the predicate. With regard to 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: by the principle of identity, every judgment whose attribute is contained in the idea of the subject is true and legitimate; by that of contradiction, every judgment whose attribute contradicts the idea of the subject is false and absurd.
For Spinoza, “the attribute is that which the intellect perceives in substance as constituting its essence” (Ethica, parte 1a, dim. della prop. 10). In every theodicy or rational study of God, the attribute is a divine perfection: for example, infinity, immensity, omniscience (v. A. DIVINI). It was probably precisely the expression “attribute of God” that gave rise to the Spinozist meaning of the term (cf. G. T. Richter, Spinoza's Philosophische Terminologie, Lipsia 1913, p. 26). Giuseppe Maiolo