The Lone-Transformation of God: Intuition, Identity and Immortality in Guo Xiang and Spinoza

Abstract In light of the publication of Brook Ziporyn’s monograph, Experiments in Mystical Atheism , the present article attempts a philosophical comparison of two key “mystical atheists”: the Chinese neo-Daoist Guo Xiang 郭象 (252–312) and the early modern Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677). Specifically, it argues that Guo and Spinoza both display a core commitment to radical ontological immanence – the idea that reality is an absolute, self-producing system unaffected by transcendent powers or principles. By drawing out the consequences of this commitment through the interlinked fields of epistemology, ethics and soteriology, it aspires to provide a highly compressed comparative analysis of two culturally and historically remote, yet deeply philosophically resonant, critiques of theistic transcendence. By thus revealing the extent of the structural – and spiritual – parallels between two philosophers, born more than a millennium apart on opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass, it hopes to contribute to the ongoing inductive justification of Ziporyn’s overall hermeneutic project, centered on the speculative identification of a cross-cultural tradition of “mystical atheism”. Such an interpretative undertaking has profound implications for ongoing debates on the character of religion in the modern world.