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Spinoza, Baruch - Ethics - Spirit, function and form
Identifier
002442
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Once we start to talk about the quantity of things and can measure things, then we are in the physical realm and things are divisible and ’finite’ in Spinoza’s terms.
But at the functional level – the realm of spirit - we come across entities and functions and not parts but wholes, interrelated functions indivisible in the sense that everything fits together like a vast jigsaw because it is one integrated system of the universe.
Spinoza generally used the term substance to mean spirit. Extended substance is then form as opposed to function.
A description of the experience
Baruch Spinoza – Ethics
If we attend to quantity as it is in the imagination, which we do more easily, it will be found to be finite, divisible and composed of parts, but if we attend to it as it is in the intellect and conceive it insofar as it is a substance, which happens with great difficulty, it will be found to be infinite, unique and indivisible.
It cannot be said that Extended Substance is unworthy of the divine nature … so long as it is granted to be .. infinite