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Within its metaphysics of "Nature," and with its approach to emotional bondage and self-realization, Spinoza's Ethics can be read as a manual for psychological coherence, a state marked by the stable expression of innate freedoms and the flourishing of mental life beyond imaginative fancy. In the twentieth century, Spinoza's work provides a robust philosophical foundation for deep ecological thinking, because of its influence upon and comparison with contemporary systems theory, holistic and multidisciplinary approaches, integrative scientific reasoning, and methods toward reaching productive and beneficial realizations of the relation of self to nature. Spinoza spoke with the Ethics to his time and social context, but glimmers of contemporary contentions, arguments, and conceptual systems can be glimpsed today in his articulation of the human path to emotional and cognitive self-realization. He referred to an active love of "Nature or God", two words overtly interchangeable in the text, and in this respect compares to new age environmentalism, which sometimes ponders that all life and creation is part of a natural yet sacred unity. At the same time, uniquely, Spinoza and contemporary thinkers support the pursuit of active freedom in emotional expression and a disposition to intuitive, conscious interrelation of the self with other entities inside nature. Spinoza associated these virtues of sustained, positive relations with the development of "adequate ideas" or the reasonably and reliably ascertained knowledge of the constitution of the self and nature, and they are increasingly needed for humanity.
At this juncture of human development, in this world with its issues, the words of a preeminent ecological writer hold so much weight: "the transition to a sustainable future is no longer a technical nor a conceptual problem. It is a problem of values and political will."1 In Spinozist language, it is a problem of "passive emotions": of endeavouring to fulfil desires that are based in inadequate imaginings and a lack of interconnected, well rooted, or conscious values. In The Hidden Connections, Director for the Centre of eco-literacy Fritjof Capra extends an emerging contemporary theory of life systems "to the social domain" by presenting "a conceptual framework that integrates life's biological, cognitive and social dimensions".2 The framework constitutes a systems-oriented, interconnectionist, holistic, and ecological perspective of biological life, consciousness, and the feedback between...