File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 888


From: Immanuel Smits <ismits-AT-ardron.com>
Subject: PLC: Spinoza's Ethics
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 02:01:48 -0500


Hello,

Some late-nite thoughts:

"If intellect and will do indeed pertain to the eternal essence of God,
one must understand in the case of both these attributes something very
different from the meaning widely entertained.  For the intellect and
will that would constitute the essence of God would have to be vastly
different from the human intellect and will, and could have no point of
agreement except the name.  They could be no more alike than the
celestial constellation of the Dog and the dog that barks."

Here Spinoza's anti-anthropomorphism comes out very clearly:  No term
when applied to God can possibly bear the same meanings it has when
applied to humans.  To understand the nature of God, it is absolutely
crucial to distinguish between the modifications (or modes) of substance
and substance itself, and to avoid using the former as a model or scale
for the latter.

However, if Spinoza's Dog-dog analogy holds, then wouldn't it follow
that we (including Spinoza) cannot say anything meaningful about the
nature of God beyond the assertion that God is infinite?  How can
anything more than this be said, without falling prey to anthropomorphic
projection and imaginative distortion?




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