"I pass now to explaining those things must necessarily follow from the essence of God, or the infinite and eternal being--not, indeed, all of them, for we have demonstrated (1p16) that infinitely many things must follow from it in infinitely many modes, but only those that can lead us, by the hand, as it were, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness" (Spinoza Ethics, preface to II; translated by E. Curley) A few remarks and questions about this little passage:
Are the topics that are deliberately avoided potentially harmful? That is, do they lead us away from highest blessedness? (Assuming that all such things are harms.) If so, then Spinoza's silences are motivated about a substantive views about the Good.
Is Spinoza also claiming that he has exhausted what can be said/written about God (understood as an infinite and eternal being)? For, nowhere does Spinoza indicate that he is leaving stuff out as he does say here about what could be said about modes ("not...all of them") or later about the "definitions of jealousy and the other vacillations of mind" (EIIIp58DefXLVIIIEXP [the wider passage is also relevant]).
This passage clearly looks ahead not just to Part II of the Ethics ("to the knowledge of the human mind"), but also to the last five propositions of Part V, that is, the end of the book. I think this is significant for claims about geometric method in the Ethics--Parts II-V are connected in an ascent to our salvation.
To say that something is "eternal" in Spinoza just means to say that it exists. But this kind of existence has funny properties. [Note: I am committed to the idea that in Spinoza existence is not used univocally.] In particular, it is not existence in time (or space). Rather it is more akin to an eternal (sic) truth. But as letter 10 teaches us, these "do not have any place outside the mind." Given that God is a self-cause and thinks, to say that he is "eternal" just means he has an idea of himself.
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