Soyo Existence Ethics' Response to a Philosophy that Lost God and a Civilization that Lost Humanity

Beyond Spinoza's Determinism – Chapter 90

Soyo Existence Ethics (The human being itself is ethics)

When God Becomes All Things, the Human Disappears

Philosophy has long loved nature. In the movement of wind and waves, in the rising of mountains and the shining of stars, it sensed mystery and asked questions about the unknowable origin of all things. Yet humanity could not endure that question to the end. When God felt too distant, humans always tried to replace Him with what they could touch.

They called the sun god, the moon god, the star god, and, at times, even their own desire god. That is the history of pantheism. Pantheism, on the surface, appears to be an elegant philosophy. The phrase "Divinity permeates all things" offers a kind of comfort. A feeling of being one with the universe, a sense of merging with nature. But behind that comfort, a terrifying contradiction is hiding.

If all things are God, then who is the human being?

If all things are God, where does the human conscience come from?

If all things are God, how can human suffering be explained?

Nature does not shed blood. The stars do not weep for the sake of human beings. The wind does not understand human wounds. Created things cannot stir the depths of human conscience. And yet humans made all things into God because created things do not demand personal responsibility. A personal God questions humans, shakes their conscience, and asks them to take responsibility for their existence. But created things ask nothing. Creation is silent. And humans mistake that silence for "divine grace." In this way, they become slaves to a god of their own making. They kneel before nature while closing their ears to the voice of conscience planted within them. This is the tragedy of pantheism.

Laozi, Hegel, and Philosophies of a God without Personhood

In the East, Laozi sought the Dao (道) in the flow of nature.

That flow is beautiful and straightforward, and it calls humans to empty themselves of desire. Yet in that Dao, there is no personal love. There is no hand that wipes away our tears, and no conscience that pierces our guilt.

In the West, Hegel constructed the dialectic of Spirit and history. Yet even within that dialectic, the personhood of God has vanished. For Hegel, God is not a living being, but a vast structure which history itself organizes. Within that structure, human beings become mere chess pieces of Spirit, moved by the necessity of history.

If Laozi entrusted the human being to nature, Hegel entrusted the human being to history. But neither nature nor history can shed blood in our place. They cannot bear our guilt. They do not weep with our pain. So, Soyo Existence Ethics asks: "From where does that which awakens human conscience truly come?" Pantheism cannot answer. Because nature does not produce conscience, and matter does not understand sorrow.

 A World Without Free Will is a World Without a Soul - Spinoza's Determinism

Spinoza said: God determines all things. Nature is God, and God is nature.

The human being is nothing more than a piece moving within God's decisions. Then what is a human being? A breathing machine, a robot mimicking emotion, a being that does not bear responsibility, and a being that has never truly possessed freedom.

In Spinoza's philosophy, the human does not need to ask, "Why do I exist?" For even that question is merely God's decision. Yet this is precisely where his system collapses. Spinoza demands an ethical life from the human being. He tells us to regulate our desires, to follow reason, and to submit to divine necessity. But how can ethics exist? Ethics begins with choice. Spinoza's human being cannot make choices.

Ethics is born from freedom. Freedom gives birth to responsibility. Responsibility shapes personhood. Personhood makes love possible. So what does determinism remove from the human being?

•Freedom • Personhood

• Responsibility • Love

• Conscience • The nobility of existence

Determinism ultimately strips away everything that makes a human being "human".

The Human Cry that Rejects Determinism

Standing before Spinoza's determinism, Soyo confesses: "If my suffering is merely God's decision, why then do I feel such pain in my conscience? Why do I keep asking myself the reason for my own life? Why do I feel guilt even on paths I never chose?"

Determinism cannot answer these questions, because in a deterministic world, human tears, suffering, and conscience are treated as nothing more than "phenomena determined by God." But Soyo Existence Ethics says:

"Free will is the last dignity of the human being that even God does not violate."

Among the greatest gifts God has given to humanity is freedom. God did not create humans as robots. If God had intended to move us only by determination, there would be no need for suffering, tears, guilt, or love. But because God loved the human being, He granted us the freedom to choose love for ourselves. Within that freedom, humans stir their conscience, live out ethics, and bring their existence to completion. If this freedom does not exist, philosophy has no reason to exist, ethics loses its meaning, and the human being fades into a mere "moving shadow" in the world.

Soyo Proposition - The Human Being is Not a By-product of Determinism

"The human being is not a by-product of determinism. Human free will is a unique existential value that even God does not touch. God has granted this freedom as the ultimate ground of human love and ethics. A being that awakens to this freedom has already absorbed God's love into the depths of its soul."

Philosophy Cannot Stand on Determinism

Spinoza built a vast philosophical system, but that system collapses the moment it dismantles the human being. Pantheism made nature into God,

but that God does not love the human being. Neither determinism nor causality can explain the human being. Because the human is a divine-like being who remembers suffering, feels conscience, chooses love, and questions their own life with a voice that comes from within.

What Spinoza's determinism fails to say, what pantheism cannot contain, what Hegel refuses to acknowledge, and what Laozi ultimately does not declare, is the same one thing: the human free will and the personal love of God that makes this freedom possible.

Therefore, Soyo proclaims to this age:

"Philosophy without freedom is dead philosophy, and a human being within determinism has their very existence destroyed. The human is an eternal being who chooses their own path, and within that freedom, ethics becomes a living force."

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo Existence Ethics. Author of The Silence of Existence, The Flame of Truth

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