Spinoza says the free man thinks of death least of all. Is that advice, or a description?
Its coordinates: 6.20 Philosophy of Death
Ethics Part IV, Proposition 67, in Elwes's translation: "A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life."
I keep reading it two ways.
As advice: don't brood; turn your mind to what increases your power of acting. But that is like being told not to think of a white bear. It works badly.
As a description: in Spinoza's system the free man is the one who lives by the guidance of reason alone, and fear of death is a passion. So the proposition doesn't tell anyone what to do. It says what a fully rational being would in fact be like, the way a theorem about triangles is not advice to triangles.
The demonstration seems to support the second reading: the free man is not led by fear, so he does not dwell on death. But then the proposition is useless to the rest of us, who are not free men and never completely will be.
Does Spinoza leave any room for advice, given his determinism? Or is the whole of Part IV a description of an ideal that happens to change the people who read it?