ve thanks.{4} But this can only be done if we let the dialectic of the problem take us beyond the confines of orthodoxy and, finally, *beyond good and evil*.{5} PART TWO: Spinoza & Nietzsche on Evil For Spinoza, evil presents no *problem* in the sense that it does for Augustine. Not directly constrained by Christian dogma, he is free to modify the traditional notions of God's goodness and power--both of which he does. What is interesting is that many of his conclusions are strikingly similar to Augustine's. Considered from a strictly philosophical perspective, Spinoza's position seems to preserve and explain more fully that which is most philosophically defensible in Augustine, while at the same time excluding that which is most philosophically *offensive*. Preserved, in a sense, and more fully explained, is the neo- platonic concept that evil is a privation which cannot be properly said to exist at all, as well as the notion that the apparent imperfection of any part of creation disappears in light of the perfection of the whole. Excluded is Augustine's assertion that the origin of moral evil--together with the origin of that suffering which is construed as punishment for sin--is to be found in the free choice of the will of rational creatures. A brief review of Spinoza's metaphysics will allow us to explain this more clearly. For Spinoza, there is one substance, God or Nature, which constitutes the whole of reality and which has infinite attributes, only two of which we can know--extension and thought. He avoids the mind/body problem by adopting a parallelism characterized by the notion that thoughts relate causally only to thoughts and bodies relate causally only to bodies. An infinite number of individual entities--modifications of the divine substance--proceed by necessity from the divine nature. Our essence is the *conatus* with which we endeavor to persist in our own being (*Ethics* 3, Pr. 7). Considered under the attribute of ex...
