Geocentrism and Moral Relativism

• The repudiation of Geocentrism entails the repudiation of Anthropocentrism, and, while Kant tries to salvage the latter via his Reflective Judgment faculty, Spinoza considers the implication of the repudiation for Moral Values.  The result is a replacement of Absolutism with a variety of Relativism--'Good' and 'Evil' are no longer ingredient in the cosmos, but signify 'Healthful' and 'Unhealthful', respectively, relative to some subject.  Who the subject is varies--an individual person, a group of people with common characteristics, perhaps even the entire species.  Now, contrary to some common confusions, 'relative' in this case connotes Objectivity, not Subjectivity, i. e. whether or not some food is Healthful depends on e.g. its nutritional value.  In contrast, Utilitarianism is Subjectivist, i. e. with a private datum, Pleasure or Pain, the determining factor of the value of something.  So, in Spinoza's doctrine, Knowledge is an important factor in establishing whether or not something is Good, with Pleasure and Pain inadequate as sources of Knowledge. One seemingly unusual implication of this Axiology of the Ethics is that Virtue and Goodness are not necessarily related.  For, Virtue is an intra-personal characteristic, i. e. consisting in the achievement of Self-Control, whereas Goodness, as a characteristic of a person, is inter-personal, i. e. one is 'Good' insofar as one benefits another.  The two may coincide, e. g. when under the guidance of Reason, one helps another, but either can obtain in the absence of the other.  So, Spinoza's development of Moral Relativism is another feature of his drawing out the consequences of the repudiation of Geocentrism, again further than most of his peers of the era.