Thursday, May 9, 2019

Parallelism and Soul Salvation

'A and B are parallel' means both 1. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the parts of A and the parts of B, and 2. A and B do not interact.  Thus, Spinoza's doctrine is often characterized as Parallelism, because in it, he posits that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the parts of Thought and the parts of Extension, and that there is no interaction between Thought and Extension.  However, he is more consistent with the second than with the first, because in part V of the Ethics, he attempts, with arguable success, to explain how a Mind can survive the death of the Body to which it corresponds.  But, without that instance of #1, his Parallelism threatens to lapse into a variety of Ontological, and, hence, Theological, Dualism from which his Pantheism presumably diverges.  Furthermore, as has been previously discussed, he conceives a Mode as having a relation to God that is independent of the existence of other Modes.  Thus, despite the apparent radical heterodoxy of his Immanent Pantheism, in violation of one of its premises, he accepts the possibility of the fundamental thesis of a Theological doctrine which his seems otherwise to repudiate--the Salvation of an Individual Soul from a divinely cursed Species.

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