Whitehead on Descartes and Spinoza

Whitehead proposes that the fundamental relation between Descartes and Spinoza is that the latter provides a more coherent framework for the principles of the former, citing Spinoza's unification of Descartes' two substances as parallel attributes of the same subject. The same interpretation also seems to apply to Descartes' other significant dualism--Creator and Created--which Spinoza recasts as Substance and Mode, respectively. A further innovation of Spinoza's also follows from this second synthesis--since Mode is not independent of Substance, as a Creature is of its Creator, then the purported free will of a Cartesian existent is illusory. However, Whitehead's hypothesis does not seem to accommodate the most explicit of Spinoza's radicalizations--that the resultant system is an 'Ethics'. In particular, Whitehead does not explain how Cartesian enlightenment becomes Spinozistic empowerment, i. e. how Cartesian freedom from sensory cognition becomes Spinozistic freedom from emotional motivation. In other words, Cartesian Mind is essential cognitive, while Spinoza's is practical, a distinction that Whitehead's own system seems incapable of recognizing.