Substance, Modification, Diversification

As has been previously discussed, Spinoza's concept of the modification of Substance must be one of self-modification.  Now, corresponding to the existence of multiple Modes must be multiple instances of the process of Substance Self-Modification.  Furthermore, corresponding to differences between Modes must be a principle of differentiation entailed in each instance of Self-Modification.  Indeed, modification is logically equivalent to differentiation of some given.  In other words, Modes must be the products of a principle of Diversification inhering in Substance, or, equivalently, a principle of Self-Diversification.  If so, then Spinoza repeats what is among the commonest errors in the history of Philosophy--abstracting a concept of Individuation from a concept of Diversification.  He thereby also repeats the failure of not providing of a Principle of Sufficient Reason for a Principle of Individuation, i. e. an explanation of why a substance or a deity would create distinct individual entities beyond itself, a significant failure in an erstwhile Rational system.  In contrast, a justification for Diversification has more recently been offered--according to Darwin, Variation has potential Evolutionary value, i. e. qua Mutation.  So, Spinoza's concept of Modification has potentially far-reaching implications that remain unexplored in what has been a general lack of analysis of it.

Substance, Modification, Will to Power, Evolution

What Spinoza means by 'modification' is not completely clear, with 'individuation' one possibility.  But because Substance is the only dynamic principle in his doctrine, the modification of Substance can only be the self-modification of Substance.  On that basis, Self-Modification can be conceived as anticipating two 19th-century principles--Self-Overcoming, i. e. Will to Power, or Evolution.  Accordingly, the conatus of any Mode of Substance must likewise be Self-Overcoming, Will to Power, or Evolution, rather than mere persistence in its being, with Intuition a salient moment of development.  But this far-reaching potential of Spinoza's doctrine, easier to discern in hindsight, gets obscured by his reliance on more contemporary terminology, e. g. 'Thought', 'Extension', and, especially 'God', which is understandably prudent in the context of both Judaic and Christian hostility.

Ethics, Well-Being, Knowledge

At heart, Spinoza's Ethical doctrine is an update of Aristotle's.  The highest good of the doctrine is Well-Being, understood as Health, as much as as Happiness.  Knowledge is an ingredient in the doctrine in two respects.  First, it distinguishes what is truly conducive to Well-Being from what is mistakenly taken to be.  One source of error is Sense-Experience, which is inadequate as an indication of what is truly healthful, e. g. sensory stimulation.  Another is superstition, a main variety of which is Religion, the neutralizing of which is the primary function of the Pantheistic elements of the doctrine.  The application of Bio-Chemistry to Medicine is an example of how Knowledge can conduce to Well-Being.  Now, the source of such Knowledge is Reason.  But, there is a second respect in which Knowledge conduces to Well-Being in Spinoza's doctrine, as well as in Aristotle's, regardless of the scientific advances available to the former.  By applying Knowledge to one's behavior, one is also self-determining, the awareness involved in which is Intuition in Spinoza's doctrine.  So, since self-determining is self-creating, Intuition is constituted by the awareness that one is a Mode of immanent creative Substance, aka 'God', so-called primarily to neutralize the more common use of the term in the promotion of superstition.  So, the more usual classifications of the Ethics as Epistemology, Metaphysics, and/or Theology, tend to distract what the title of the work plainly expresses to be its primary topic.

Rational Psychology, Sentimentalism, Heliocentrism

The standard contemporary focus on Spinoza's Epistemology distracts from what is the perhaps most distinctive element of his Rationalism--the concepts of Pleasure and Pain as indications of an increase or decrease in strength.  This thesis is opposed to a fundamental principle of Empiricism, or, more precisely, of Sentimentalism--the irreducibility of Sense-Data.  In other words, perhaps his Rationalism is most important as not Epistemology or Metaphysics, but as the topic that constitutes much of the Ethics--Psychology.  Furthermore, it is in these passages that his thesis that a Mode instantiates Substance can be perhaps most clearly discerned--the concept of Modal behavior as an instantiating laws of Physics.  Now, Sentimentalism, according to which the fundamental aims of behavior are the seeking of Pleasure and the avoidance of Pain, is thus a variety of Egocentric Psychology.  But Egocentricism underlies Anthropocentrism, which underlies Geocentrism.  Thus, the challenge to Sentimentalism that Spinoza presents in the Ethics is part of his drawing out the Moral implications of the supplanting of Geocentrism by Heliocentrism, i. e. in which Human behavior can no longer be conceived as at the center of the cosmos, e. g. that the World is the arena of the Fall and Redemption of the Human Soul.  Kant's attempt to rescue that centrality in the Critique of Judgment at least recognizes this implication of Spinoza's doctrine, even if his merely a posteriori rejoinder does not suffice.

Anthropomorphism, Anthropocentrism, Mind-Body

The repudiation of Geocentrism by Heliocentrism entails the repudiation of Anthropocentrism, and, hence, threatens a Theology according to which the World is the stage for a Human drama.  Thus, one of the tasks of most Modern Philosophy, still under the influence of Medieval Theology in some regard, is to recover Anthropocentrism in some respect, the one notable exception being Spinoza's doctrine.  Now, a dimension of Anthropocentrism is Anthropomorphism, according to which the structure of the perceived World is derived from that of Human perception, a dimension that is not fully recognized as such until Kant.  But, Spinoza implicitly recognizes it, when he re-conceives Descartes' Anthropomorphic concept of the Mind-Body relation, aptly characterized by Ryle as 'ghost in the machine', as derived from the Thought-Extension relation of Attributes of Substance, perhaps as that of Form-Matter.  So, his allowing the possibility of a Modal Mind surviving the death of its corresponding Body undermines the premise of a Thought-Extension correspondence.  Instead, it does derive easily from Descartes' plainly Anthropocentric methodology, thereby suggesting a lapse from an Ethical doctrine that otherwise seems to aim at an adjustment to the new Heliocentrism.

Parallelism and Soul Salvation

'A and B are parallel' means both 1. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the parts of A and the parts of B, and 2. A and B do not interact.  Thus, Spinoza's doctrine is often characterized as Parallelism, because in it, he posits that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the parts of Thought and the parts of Extension, and that there is no interaction between Thought and Extension.  However, he is more consistent with the second than with the first, because in part V of the Ethics, he attempts, with arguable success, to explain how a Mind can survive the death of the Body to which it corresponds.  But, without that instance of #1, his Parallelism threatens to lapse into a variety of Ontological, and, hence, Theological, Dualism from which his Pantheism presumably diverges.  Furthermore, as has been previously discussed, he conceives a Mode as having a relation to God that is independent of the existence of other Modes.  Thus, despite the apparent radical heterodoxy of his Immanent Pantheism, in violation of one of its premises, he accepts the possibility of the fundamental thesis of a Theological doctrine which his seems otherwise to repudiate--the Salvation of an Individual Soul from a divinely cursed Species.

Free Will, Determinism, Intuition

Spinoza's illustration of the belief that there is 'free will' as an image of a falling stone believing it is flying, seems inconsistent with his thesis that bodies have the capacity to move themselves, thereby suggesting a distinction between Free Will and Self-Determination.  Regardless, a different image is suggested by Intuition, i. e. the realization that one is a Mode of Substance, which is the peak experience of his doctrine.  That image is of a finger realizing that it is an extension of a hand, not a discrete entity, with relative, but not absolute, freedom of movement.  The image also illustrates a shortcoming of his doctrine.  For, the realization of a finger that it is part of a hand includes the realization that other fingers are also part of the same hand, and likewise, that movements of all have a ground that can coordinate them to varying degrees.  But, Spinoza does not include in Intuition the realization that others are also Modes of Substance, and inherently related as such.  On the basis of that realization, his concept of Nature as a concatenation of Atoms gets replaced by that of Nature as an Organism.  Similarly, the foundation of his Political Philosophy would be commonality of origin, rather than Individual Right.  In any case, at minimum, the image illustrates that exhaustive rigidity of the alternatives of absolute Free Will and absolute Determinism falsifies the range of Volition that is revealed in Intuition.