Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Deity and Skill

In the Preface to Part V of the Ethics, Spinoza distinguishes between 1. Ethics--which concerns "how far the reason can control the emotions"; 2. Logic--"the true method and means whereby the understanding may be perfected"; and 3. Medicine--"the skill whereby the body may be so tended, as to be capable of the due performance of its functions".  So, since the purview of Logic is the Mind alone, and the scope of Ethics includes phases of human weakness, it is Medicine that best illustrates the Thought-Extension unity of "God's power of thinking" with "his power of realized action" (II, vii)--but not insofar as its object is the body, rather, insofar as it is a 'skill'.  In other words, it follows from II, vii that Know-How is an expression of Deity in a Mode, with respect to which the idea of a disembodied Mode, which is the focus of a lot of Spinoza's subsequent attention in V, seems problematic, at minimum.  Now, Skill may be poor evidence of a divine presence in Theism, according to which a Deity only occasionally intervenes in human affairs, but not in Pantheism, according to which a Deity is eternally ubiquitous.

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