Spinoza–Alexander: immanent goodness and composition

Spinoza offers a useful but non-identical analogue to Alexander. Both replace an external blueprint with immanent order: Alexander explicitly denies goal-seeking teleology #HTRZHU while Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura acts from its own necessity, not for ends. Alexander’s strengthening of centers within larger wholes #DPKEES #G8D7VX can be compared to Spinoza’s composition of bodies and increase in potentia: a good encounter enables bodies to compose their relations and increases their power of acting, experienced as joy; a bad encounter decomposes relations and produces sadness. The terrace intrusion can thus be described without mere taste as reducing a shared body’s capacities for conversation, play, attention, and repose. Important difference: Spinoza is suspicious of objective beauty and cosmic harmony when these are projections of human imagination, whereas Alexander wants harmony, figural goodness, and beauty to be objective features open to science #VWK7B2 Their strongest common ground is therefore immanent, relational goodness rather than a literal cosmic desire for beauty.