Spinoza, God, and personhood
 

Carlisle 12: "Spinoza considered us to be 'modes' of [...] one infinite substance"
 
"In his Ethics (1677), Spinoza called the ocean of substance 'God'"
 
13: "When Spinoza tried to specify our relation to God, these were the verbs he reached for: flowing, sharing (or participating), and expressing"
 
14: "Spinoza's conception of a human being is much more dynamic and fluid, its boundaries more porous and provisional, than the everyday notion of selfhood embedded in our grammar, which distinguishes the 'subject' from its own actions and properties as well as from the 'objects' it encounters"
 
recapped on 119: Spinoza taught "his little group of students that they were all modes of substance, conscious and embodied, and interconnected, porous, so that the boundaries between modes can be transcended, one finite being flowing into another"

> from Clare Carlisle's Transcendence for Beginners (2025)

> tagged with #spirituality, #god, #philosophy, #process, #flux, #identity, #personhood

> created August 12, 2026 at 10:21:19 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.


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