WHAT DID SPINOZA MEAN BY DECLARING IMMORTALITY OF THE INTELLIGENT COMPONENT OF THE HUMAN SOUL?

Abstract

The attention is focused on the presence in V part of the Spinoza’s «Ethics» of what, at first sight, seems to be mutually exclusive statements. On the one hand, it is a statement on the temporal and infinite continuation of the existence of the reasonable component of the human soul after the death of the body and, on the other, on its death together with the body. This mysterious situation is clarified through its correlation with the XXIII chapter of Spinoza's earliest work. There he argues that the mortality of the whole soul of a person is unquestionable, if one has in mind the situation of its connection only with his body. And, taking into account the place of any human individual in the picture of the universe as a whole, the rational component of the human soul is estimated by Spinoza to be an ineradicable and, in this sense, eternal, death-defying condition for the existence of an infinite time sequence of successive human generations.