An individual thing acts, or is active, to the extent that what occurs can be explained or understood through its own nature (i.e., its selfpreservatory mechanism) alone; it is passive to the extent that what happens must be explained through the nature of other forces impinging on it. Thus, every thing, to whatever extent it can, actively strives to persevere in its existence; and whatever aids this self-preservation constitutes that individual’s advantage.
Spinoza’s specifically human psychology is an application of this more general doctrine of conatus. That application is made through appeal to several specific characteristics of human beings: they form imagistic representations of other individuals by means of their senses; they are sufficiently complex to undergo increases and decreases in their capacity for action; and they are capable of engaging in reason. The fundamental concepts of his psychology are desire, which is conatus itself, especially as one is conscious of it as directed toward attaining a particular object; pleasure, which is an increase in capacity for action; and pain, which is a decrease in capacity for action. He defines other emotions in terms of these basic emotions, as they occur in particular combinations, in particular kinds of circumstances, with particular kinds of causes, and/or with particular kinds of objects. When a person is the adequate cause of his or her own emotions, these emotions are active emotions; otherwise, they are passions. Desire and pleasure can be either active emotions or passions, depending on the circumstances; pain, however, can only be a passion. Spinoza does not deny the phenomenon of altruism: one’s self-preservatory mechanism, and hence one’s desire, can become focused on a wide variety of objects, including the well-being of a loved person or object – even to one’s own detriment. However, because he reduces all human motivation, including altruistic motivation, to permutations of the endeavor to seek one’s own advantage, his theory is arguably a form of psychological egoism. Ethics. Spinoza’s ethical theory does not take the form of a set of moral commands. Rather, he seeks to demonstrate, by considering human actions and appetites objectively – ‘just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies’ – wherein a person’s true advantage lies. Readers who genuinely grasp the demonstrated truths will, he holds, ipso facto be motivated, to at least some extent, to live their lives accordingly. Thus, Spinozistic ethics seeks to show how a person acts when ‘guided by reason’; to act in this way is at the same time to act with virtue, or power. All actions that result from understanding – i.e., all virtuous actions – may be attributed to strength of character (fortitudo). Such virtuous actions may be further divided into two classes: those due to tenacity (animositas), or ‘the Desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to preserve his being’; and those due to nobility (generositas), or ‘the Desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to aid other men and join them to him in friendship.’ Thus, the virtuous person does not merely pursue private advantage, but seeks to cooperate with others; returns love for hatred; always acts honestly, not deceptively; and seeks to join himself with others in a political state. Nevertheless, the ultimate reason for aiding others and joining them to oneself in friendship is that ‘nothing is more useful to man than man’ – i.e., because doing so is conducive to one’s own advantage, and particularly to one’s pursuit of knowledge, which is a good that can be shared without loss. Although Spinoza holds that we generally use the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ simply to report subjective appearances – so that we call ‘good’ whatever we desire, and ‘evil’ whatever we seek to avoid – he proposes that we define ‘good’ philosophically as ‘what we certainly know to be useful to us’, and ‘evil’ as ‘what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good’. Since God is perfect and has no needs, it follows that nothing is either good or evil for God. Spinoza’s ultimate appeal to the agent’s advantage arguably renders his ethical theory a form of ethical egoism, even though he emphasizes the existence of common shareable goods and the (instrumental) ethical importance of cooperation with others. However, it is not a form of hedonism; for despite the prominence he gives to pleasure, the ultimate aim of human action is a higher state of perfection or capacity for action, of whose increasing attainment pleasure is only an indicator.
A human being whose self-preservatory mechanism is driven or distorted by external forces is said to be in bondage to the passions; in contrast, one who successfully pursues only what is truly advantageous, in consequence of genuine understanding of where that advantage properly lies, is free. Accordingly, Spinoza also expresses his conception of a virtuous life guided by reason in terms of an ideal ‘free man.’ Above all, the free man seeks understanding of himself and of Nature. Adequate knowledge, and particularly knowledge of the third kind, leads to blessedness, to peace of mind, and to the intellectual love of God. Blessedness is not a reward for virtue, however, but rather an integral aspect of the virtuous life. The human mind is itself a part of the infinite intellect of God, and adequate knowledge is an eternal aspect of that infinite intellect. Hence, as one gains knowledge, a greater part of one’s own mind comes to be identified with something that is eternal, and one becomes less dependent on – and less disturbed by – the local forces of one’s immediate environment. Accordingly, the free man ‘thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death.’ Moreover, just as one’s adequate knowledge is literally an eternal part of the infinite intellect of God, the resulting blessedness, peace of mind, and intellectual love are literally aspects of what might be considered God’s own eternal ’emotional’ life. Although this endows the free man with a kind of blessed immortality, it is not a personal immortality, since the sensation and memory that are essential to personal individuality are not eternal. Rather, the free man achieves during his lifetime an increasing participation in a body of adequate knowledge that has itself always been eternal, so that, at death, a large part of the free man’s mind has become identified with the eternal. It is thus a kind of ‘immortality’ in which one can participate while one lives, not merely when one dies. Politics and philosophical theology. Spinoza’s political theory, like that of Hobbes, treats rights and power as equivalent. Citizens give up rights to the state for the sake of the protection that the state can provide. Hobbes, however, regards this social contract as nearly absolute, one in which citizens give up all of their rights except the right to resist death. Spinoza, in contrast, emphasizes that citizens cannot give up the right to pursue their own advantage as they see it, in its full generality; and hence that the power, and right, of any actual state is always limited by the state’s practical ability to enforce its dictates so as to alter the citizens’ continuing perception of their own advantage. Furthermore, he has a more extensive conception of the nature of an individual’s own advantage than Hobbes, since for him one’s own true advantage lies not merely in fending off death and pursuing pleasure, but in achieving the adequate knowledge that brings blessedness and allows one to participate in that which is eternal. In consequence, Spinoza, unlike Hobbes, recommends a limited, constitutional state that encourages freedom of expression and religious toleration. Such a state – itself a kind of individual – best preserves its own being, and provides both the most stable and the most beneficial form of government for its citizens. In his Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza also takes up popular religion, the interpretation of Scripture, and their bearing on the well-being of the state. He characterizes the Old Testament prophets as individuals whose vivid imaginations produced messages of political value for the ancient Hebrew state. Using a naturalistic outlook and historical hermeneutic methods that anticipate the later ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible, he seeks to show that Scriptural writers themselves consistently treat only justice and charity as essential to salvation, and hence that dogmatic doxastic requirements are not justified by Scripture. Popular religion should thus propound only these two requirements, which it may imaginatively represent, to the minds of the many, as the requirements for rewards granted by a divine Lawgiver. The few, who are more philosophical, and who thus rely on intellect, will recognize that the natural laws of human psychology require charity and justice as conditions of happiness, and that what the vulgar construe as rewards granted by personal divine intervention are in fact the natural consequences of a virtuous life. Because of his identificaton of God with Nature and his treatment of popular religion, Spinoza’s contemporaries often regarded his philosophy as a thinly disguised atheism. Paradoxically, however, nineteenth-century Romanticism embraced him for his pantheism; Novalis, e.g., famously characterized him as ‘the God-intoxicated man.’ In fact, Spinoza ascribes to Nature most of the characteristics that Western theologians have ascribed to God: Spinozistic Nature is infinite, eternal, necessarily existing, the object of an ontological argument, the first cause of all things, all-knowing, and the being whose contemplation produces blessedness, intellectual love, and participation in a kind of immortality or eternal life. Spinoza’s claim to affirm the existence of God is therefore no mere evasion. However, he emphatically