ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors give a brief, and admittedly sketchy, presentation of Spinoza's metaphysical structure leading up to his main ethical conclusions and claims. They focus on those aspects of Spinoza's metaphysical structure that — based on the review of the Reports in the previous chapter — seem to resonate with and provides further clarifications of their expressed claims for building an alternative to the anthropocentric metaphysical platform to which human kind so far has adhered. The authors look at how this starting point leads to a rather curious epistemological framework. They show how the path delineated by Spinoza from a changed ontological perspective to a new way of understanding and evaluating knowledge must also mean a redefinition of ethical virtue and the human highest good. Anyone familiar with Spinoza's metaphysics knows that he builds his entire explanation of the world and being on the idea of one single, self-causing, ever acting and all-encompassing substance.
