Friday, December 20, 2019

Creativity and Creator

As has been previously discussed, the object of Spinoza's Intuition poses an unchallenged counter-example to the standard concept of an incorporeal, transcendent deity.  Now, Spinoza seems to imply that that concept is an Inadequate Idea, but he does not present a detailed derivation of it from his concept of an immanent deity.  One possible approach to such a derivation begins with a distinction that Spinoza only briefly entertains--between Naturing Nature and Natured Nature--which, as has been previously proposed, can conceived as Creating vs. Created.  On that basis, the concept of a Creator that transcends its Creations is an expression of a Created-perspective that is alienated from its Creating correlate.  Now, the recovery of an ever-present but latent perspective is one of the most venerable of Philosophical projects, e. g. from the 'forgetting' of Plato, to the 'forgetting' of Heidegger.  But in all these cases, what has been lost is an Epistemological, perhaps inert, standpoint, whereas in the case of Spinoza, it is a source of Creativity.  Consequently, while the goal of those projects is Enlightenment, that of Spinoza's doctrine is Empowerment.  Thus, the 'forgetting' that has given rise to the standard concept of a transcendent deity is actually a weakening that is expressed by the powerlessness of its corresponding creations in the standard associated Theology.

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