Spinoza’s Ethics and Social Alienation: The Pantheistic Approach to Non-Anthropocentrism

From the work 'Ethics' by Baruch Spinoza (1756), we propose a new comprehension of social alienation, where common notions between individuals create extensive metaphysical ideas affecting the physical in actuality, thus creating virtual distances between subjects and objects. Such a sociological take on this pantheistic philosophical stance enables comprehending all there is as the physical extension of an anthropomorphic divinity to and within which all relational causes, affects, and affection occurs. In a raw and simplified definition, alienation is the distancing from an established point in actuality-virtuality. Two points are mainly relevant to this theoretical perspective on social alienation: the non-anthropomorphic God and the causation of all there is in mind, in our words and our images, in which all will is equal to understanding, and vice-versa. Therefore, comprehension generates reality and will; by imagining a humanized transcendent God, by addressing him with name, words, and emotions, humanity has paved the way to anthropocentrism by posing an anthropomorphic god filled with intention and plans. This traditional mindset provides the contextual setting for ecological alienation, where humanity distances itself from Nature. Such a fact should explain why tribal, ancestral, and pre-European knowledge becomes closer to a context of de-alienation (as in comparison to the alienated modernity). The second crucial point is artificiality, which is all that is produced by the human mind. By accepting an immanent internal divinity, as opposed to a transcendental exteriorized god, Nature becomes the cause of its creation, with the human species included, yet never exclusive. By considering humans a natural step in nature’s evolution, what is created by the human mind would be far from artificial. It is mandatory to distance oneself from what is natural and divine (both nature and god) so you can outperform traces of modern religion characterized by guilt, repentance, and subservience.