Will, God, Humpty Dumpty

Despite its originality and idiosyncrasies, e. g. its Pantheism and its Parallelism, Spinozism exemplifies a traditional paradigm that has been previously called here 'Humpty Dumptyism'--a program of first demeaning, and then overcoming, fragmentation. The pattern is evinced by Spinoza's diagnosis of corporeal individuality as the source of human suffering, with the mental integration with the rest of God/Nature as the cure. Implicit in that diagnosis is the judgment that the differentiation of Substance into discrete physical Modes constitutes a cosmic deterioration--i. e. substance is perfect, while Modes are imperfect--if not a calamity, a judgment shared by most systems, 'Eastern' and 'Western', Ancient and Modern. A more pious alternative would respect that differentiation as a positive cosmic development, a respect expressible in an associated ethical program by a cultivation of variation, not an escape from or a suppression of it. For example, here, the Material Principle, i. e. Becoming-Diverse, is equiprimordial and equi-valent with the Formal Principle, i. e. Becoming-the-Same, so the ethical program involved promotes a balanced combination of Will and Comprehension, the Material and Formal Principles, respectively, of the sphere of Personhood. An adjustment of Spinozism along analogous lines would begin with the recognition that the divine attribute Extension, understood as the dynamic process of Extending, is such a Material Principle.