Throughout the third part of Spinoza’s Ethics, Spinoza address two very serious exigent matters: one, he attempts to illustrate to the reader that humans merely follow nature’s order. According to Spinoza, human beings operate according to their casual nature, which is no different than any other finite modes. Thus, human behavior and the behavior of other ordinary objects are to be understood in the same way. Second, Spinoza maintains that moral concepts such as virtue, vices, good, evil, etc. should be understood only as it relates to psychology. Since human beings are no different than ordinary objects as both follow their casual natures, so too, moral concepts should be understood just as other concepts are.

In the beginning to Part III of Ethics, Spinoza exemplifies his account of the laws of nature: “The laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, viz. through the universal laws of nature.” Spinoza insists that, unlike many other philosophers during his time, humans are not outside nature. That is, when a human being does good, is free, is moral, it is so through the nature of laws and nothing more.

An action, according to Spinoza, cannot be free. However, that does not mean that Spinoza rejects the idea of human freedom. In his understanding of human freedom, it is simply freedom from external interference. For instance, I am free in doing something—producing some effect—if the effect is only from my striving to persevere. Good and evil are descriptions of properties in nature that we can ascribe to both human action and to the actions of other finite modes.

In Book III, Proposition 9, Spinoza further explains that humans desire to secure their own interests. Because he defines desire as human striving together with the consciousness of striving, I do question his narrow definition of desire. I might desire not only my perseverance of being, but I could also desire other kinds of things as well that doesn’t necessarily prescribe to my being’s perseverance. Furthermore, one can desire things that do just the opposite—one could desire to drink himself to oblivion five nights of the week. However, he does account for those who make decisions on confused ideas.

In Book IV, Proposition 44s, Spinoza addresses those who are confused.
…And although men are subject to numerous emotions, and so few are found who are always assailed by one and the same emotion, yet there are some in whom one and the same emotion stays firmly fixed. For sometimes we see men so affected by one object that they think they have it before them even though it is not present. When this happens to a man who is not asleep, we say he is delirious or mad, and no less mad are those though to be who are fired with love, dreaming night and day only of their sweetheart or mistress, for they usually provoke ridicule. But when the miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, and the ambitious man of honour, they are not reckoned as mad, for they are usually unpopular and arouse disgust. But in reality avarice, ambition, lust, etc. are kinds of madness, although they are not accounted as diseases. (p. 179).

Spinoza is describing here many different possible ends of human action in which do not preserve the being. If the greedy man is seeking profit because he mistakenly believes it will lead to perseverance of the being, Spinoza points out that it is one and the same object that obsesses these men.

Even in Book IV, Proposition 20, he states that the more a person endeavors to preserve his own being, the more endowed with virtue he is. Spinoza likens virtue with power, showing that virtue has both a metaphysical and moral connotation to it. In Proposition 44 in the same book, Spinoza explains that consciously trying to preserve one’s being is right whereas neglecting to preserve one’s being is wrong.
It seems then, that Spinoza believes most people, most of the time, strive to satisfy their own interests—persevere their own being. He states in Book 3, Proposition 56, “We endeavor to bring about whatever we imagine to be conducive to pleasure; but we endeavor to remove or destroy whatever we imagine to be opposed to pleasure and conducive to pain.” However, for those who occasionally act from greed or lust or ambition or esteem, those actions are performed due to their confused ideas. It is clear then, that Spinoza believes that humans, for the most part, are egoistic in nature because when we act from clear and distinct ideas, we are acting in order to preserve our being.

I oppose Spinoza’s belief that as one thrives to preserve his own being, he is embarking on becoming a more virtuous one. I understand virtue to be quite different. In order to be virtuous, one must practice virtuous acts. For instance, to possess the virtue of being honest, one must act honest in various instances; to possess the virtue of courage, one must act courageous in various instances; to possess the virtue of wisdom, one must act in wise ways in various instances, and so on and so forth. Characteristics of virtue indeed affects one’s being for the better, but it does so in becoming a better person in ways (at least in most ways, perhaps not in all) that will aid in society as well. Furthermore, if every person thrived to become virtuous in ways I have describe, it will thus result in a more virtuous society as a whole.
As mentioned before, Spinoza disregards the fact that only human behavior can be described in terms of good and evil—it is in fact that all actions belonging to finite modes can be described as such. Spinoza ascribes definitions to good and evil:
As for the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ they likewise indicate nothing positive in things considered in themselves, and are nothing but modes of thinking, or notions which we form from comparing things with one another. For one and the same thing can at the same time be good and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one in the mourning, and neither good nor bad for the deaf (p.153).

In Book III, Proposition 56, he shows that there are a variety of pleasure, pain and desire. In the same book, Proposition 51, he explains that these different kinds of emotions might affect different people (or the same person) at different times and in different ways. Throughout the book, Spinoza demonstrates different passions that are all a kind of pleasure, pain and desire.

Pity, for instance, is a sort of pain that is derived from another’s injury or anguish. Thus, to feel pity, one must experience a decrease in the power to preserve his or her own being. According to Spinoza, humans strive to have perseverance in their own being and thus strive to be virtuous. It follows then; showing pity for another human being is not virtuous. He even states in Book IV, Proposition 50 in the Corollary, “Hence it follows that the man who lives by the dictates of reason endeavors, as far as he can, not to be touched by pity.”

Spinoza defines “pity” in the scholium of Book III, Proposition 22 as “pain arising from another’s hurt.” Through this definition, I deviate from his view of pity being a vice. In Spinoza’s entire account of ethics, to me, it seems to be completely self-seeking since a person’s one and only objective is to preserve his own being, disregarding the being of his fellow neighbors, citizens and human (and animal) kind (which is hardly ethical). I do disagree with his definition of pity. Spinoza’s definition of pity seems to be more similar to the definition of sympathy. I find that pity is an emotion that separates the relationship between one person and another person, group or species. Pity could be more accurately described as a condescending feeling towards another, whereas sympathy is not just one’s own pain arising from another’s pain, but is really sharing in the pain of another.

Another passion that Spinoza describes is self-esteem. Simply, self-esteem is joy joined by the idea of internal cause. Self-esteem (and self-knowledge) is very much relevant to Spinoza’s account of ethics. He suggests that if humans are able to bring about effects that are adequate causes, then we are virtuous or preserving our own being.

Spinoza then explains active joy and active desire. Any thing that follows from a person where that person is an inadequate cause of that thing is a passion, whereas any thing that follows from a person where that person is an adequate cause of that thing is an action. So, active effects, according to Spinoza, have a strong emphasis on the roles of people’s behaviors. It is ethically relevant that a person is active rather than passive.

Thus, as describe earlier in Book III, pleasures and pains are passions. All desires that are derived from pleasure and pain are passive. They result only from a person’s partial cause and ultimately from external forces. Spinoza gives examples of what he deems to be active desires. In Book III, Proposition 59 in the first Scholium, courage and nobility are active because they are emotions that people have that are adequate causes.

Nobility, as it seems, may be the most important action concerning Spinoza’s account of ethics. In the appendix of Book I, he suggests that people are not often altruistic. Furthermore, his ethics, emphasizing self-knowledge appears to be a most individualistic one. He says that the he attains a good, that good is perfection for himself, not for society or the world. Immediately did I see a problem with this account of ethics.

He does offer an argument in Book IV, Proposition 37, contending that the good that one seeks for herself, she will have reason for others to also want the same good. Nobility, then, is an active affect that is related closely to morality and society. This, according to Spinoza, is an active way in joining others in friendship and to aid them in their projects and livelihood as well.

Considering that Spinoza’s interpretation of virtue is seeking to preserve one’s own soul and that to attain this good is to benefit one’s self and not society, I find Spinoza’s account of ethics a weak one. Many different interpretations of ethics reveal that it concerns both the individual and the society. Certain interpretations have the individual as the most important aspect, but unlike Spinoza’s ethics, the individual certainly isn’t the sole aspect of ethics.

Ethics, to me, deals with both the individual and society. Suffice it to say, the individual ought to come first—if I cannot care for myself, I surely cannot help to care for my fellow neighbors, citizens, animals and society as a whole. In addition, Spinoza accounts virtue to be in possession of power. I, however, explain virtue as having possession over certain dispositions of character, not merely power.
Spinoza disregards a very important aspect of ethics—one that which if it is ignored, there is no true account of ethics. Though Spinoza mentions (Book IV, Proposition 37) that his form of ethics will inevitably lead to a virtuous society, the essence of his ethics suggests a more egoistic form. To thrive to be self-seeking (to preserve one’s own soul) is not a true ethics at all.

Furthermore, Spinoza claims that human beings are constrained by nature—they are determined. So, if, according to Spinoza, humans do not have a free will per se, then humans’ actions, insofar as they are related to ethics, are moot. It is not a virtuous act if the act is already determined. To be virtuous, one must have freedom of the will to either choose to commit a virtuous act or a vicious act.

Spinoza, as I see it, does not have a true depiction of ethics. He is missing too many important aspects of what I deem to be a true elucidation of virtue and ethics. I believe the truer definition of ethics lies in virtue ethics, which seems to be quite the opposite of how Spinoza views it. Overall, I see that Spinoza has a rather egoistic view of ethics and to me, egoism speaks very little if anything at all when speaking about ethics and virtue.

April 26th, 2011