Will, God, Writing

According to Spinoza, every adequate idea has causal efficacy, and, so, initiates some action. Hence, his highest good, the intuition of God, is no terminal moment of disembodied contemplation, as he sometimes seems to suggest, and as he is sometimes interpreted as asserting. Rather, some action must ensue from that intuition, and, in Spinoza's case, it is likely that that action is the process of the writing of the Ethics, which is, thus, a product of that peak experience, and not a mere extrinsic representation of it. Now, a process of writing is impossible without what Spinoza calls 'Extension', or what here is the principle of Motility, Will. Hence, the Ethics demonstrates that the highest good consists in empowerment, not in enlightenment, i. e. consists in the performance of an action that has the characteristics of a divine performance, which would explain why a deity is sometimes credited with the writing of religious scripture. Of course, Spinoza is a unique Mode, so the writing of the Ethics is only one example of divinely-inspired action. More generally, the intuition of God transforms a Mode into an active participant in a divine/natural work-in-progress.