Monday 28 September 2009

Immortality in Spinoza

We accept, indeed largely share, that God, or Nature, i.e. overall existence, has two (inseparable) parallel aspects: (physical) things, and the (non-physical) way in which things exist, i.e. how they are or become, i.o.w. act, over time, ranging, say, from molecular patterns to cognition and the human intellect (indeed, sometimes capable of viewing reality samadhically sub specie aeternitatis). "Substance thinking [thought] and substance extended [things] are one and the same substance, comprehended now through one attribute, now through the other" (EIIP7S). We do not accept, however, that apart from the human mode of extension itself, anything at all in existence displays anything like the human intellect or mind and, above all, that a part of this changing human intellect might moreover be in any way non-temporal or non-durational and soul-like as implied in the last propositions of the Ethics - we totally reject the idea of an essence of non-existence to accomodate such parts. The writer wonders, in fact, whether these few concluding propositions of the Ethics (which astonish so many) might not be apocryphal. What say you? (from the Advayavada Buddhism website)

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