Deus sive Natura

        Both of the non-textbook readings touched on Spinoza briefly while also having some implicit engagement with his thought, as Hill mentions "if one believes that a divine force is immanent in all nature, then too one might have reason to care for more than sentient things." which summarizes the Spinozist maxim of God or Nature pretty well and has certainly affected my "religious" and ecological outlook. (p.100) Spinoza says simply yet confoundingly that the substance (the immanent material) of all things is God or Nature. This substance gets extended into modes or finite things, which express attributes of God or Nature, somewhat like an ecological niche, as the body of Gods attributes must strive toward survival or conatus, a collective and particular survival closer to care than Darwinian competition, for each thing to "persist in its own being" in a perhaps nonhumanist understanding of necessity contra to Kant and Aristotle. 

    In looking at Aristotlean virtue ethics, I found the functional teleology of "organisms and artifacts" to be interesting, an example I remember from Aristotle of turning virtuous nature into virtuous activity has to do with a horse rider realizing their nature as a horse rider as they have a somewhat natural appetite and capacity to functionally integrate with the horse and create a conjoined relationship with both the animal(s) and the art of the riding, helping realize or actualize their own nature, the natures of adjoined crafts, and the horse's nature all at once. While categorical virtues would certainly go against care ethicists' wont to evade principles, given the necessity of context-dependence and non-prescription to prevent regimented good© care that lacks authentic empathy and relationality, this image could be a useful metaphor for imagining care as a type of empathic symbiosis with other organisms or the material world. 

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