Finalismo, privação e superstição na Ética de Espinosa

The appendix to Ethics I and the preface to Ethics IV examine finalism (considered to be the prejudice on which human superstition is built) and explain how prejudices not only block the comprehension of demonstrations but also keep the superstitious in ignorance. Such an examination is based on the statement that men are conscious of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined to act. The question that arises is how the perception of our own effort and the ignorance of the causes of this constitute the foundations on which the finalist prejudice is built. How does the human mind, in this condition of perception and ignorance, orient itself towards the explanation of final causes and derive other modes of thought from this? The aim of this article is to clarify the conditions in which ignorance and the perception of effort come together and give rise to an obstacle to human understanding itself. We will argue that the examination contained in the Appendix to Ethics I and in the preface to Ethics IV implies a rejection of the privation inherent in the finalist actions of divinity, as well as the privation inscribed in human nature when it does not correspond to the supposed purpose it is meant to fulfil.