Reason and Ecology

Likely responding to Descartes' thesis that non-human corporeal beings are soulless machines, Spinoza asserts, in II, xiii of the Ethics, that "the propositions we have advanced hitherto have been entirely general, applying not more to men than to other individual things, all of which, though in differing degrees, are animated."  Now, in those preceding passages, he establishes that any such individual possesses a Mind, i. e.  is constituted by an Idea in God/Substance/Nature.  It, thus, seems to follow, though he does not explore the consequences, that non-human Nature consists of living beings that are, to varying degrees, Rational, i. e. 'Metabiology' better characterizes the genre of his project than does 'Metaphysics'.  Accordingly, there is an undeveloped Rational basis in his system for a concept of Ecology that is in the purview of both Ethics and Political Philosophy--in which animals are, to some degree, fellow Rational beings, and the Environment possesses at least some Political Rights.  So, Spinoza's system has the resources to provide some current practices with a Rational ground that is perhaps impossible in the kind of Dualism that Cartesianism exemplifies.