Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Self-Determinism and Evil

The Modern Free Will vs. Determinism debate has three main roots: 1. Aristotle's Voluntary-Involuntary distinction, which he attempts to define for modest jurisprudential purposes; 2. The concept of human freedom of choice, posited to absolve a creator of responsibility for the existence of Evil in his creation; 3. The concept of corporeality as a soulless mechanism.  Now, the common misclassification of Spinoza as a Determinist misses his repudiation of the premises of the debate, beginning with #3.  For, he does conceive Corporeality as mechanistic, but as a divine Rational mechanism.  Accordingly, his concept of human behavior, as a Mode of that divine Rational mechanism, is, more accurately, Self-Determining, to a greater or lesser degree, i. e. as more or less Adequate, or, equivalently, as more or less strong.  Furthermore, on that basis, Evil means Harmful, relative to a person.  Now, on that basis, there is a potential for defining the traditional Free Will vs. Determinism debate as derived from an Inadequate concept of Corporeality, or, equivalently, from an expression of relative weakness.  But, while Spinoza never pursues this analysis, Nietzsche does, in Genealogy of Morals, via Beyond Good and Evil, i. e. with Master Morality as Self-Determinism, Slave Morality as deficient Self-Determinism, and Evil = Harmful vs. Evil = Powerful.  Unfortunately, the subsequent hijacking of this work by Nazis has obscured its own actual descendence from Spinoza's heterodoxy.

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