Rationalist Moral Philosophy

Transcription

1 andrew youpa 16 Rationalist Moral Philosophy ANDREW YOUPA 302 Introduction Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are best known today for their contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, but they were also deeply interested in moral philosophy and such traditional ethical questions as how one should live and what is the supreme good. In fact, all three treat their proposed solutions to these questions as the fruit of their labor in the more abstract, less practical investigations they undertake. So, if they are metaphysicians first, it is because they maintain that the correct way to philosophize is to begin with what is most fundamental in reality and build up from there, crowning their systems with a recipe, or blueprint, for the good life. Not surprisingly, the proper exercise of one s faculty of knowledge is a key ingredient in the recipe each puts forward. A qualification in Descartes ethics notwithstanding (to be discussed shortly), the three giants of modern rationalism place as much confidence in reason s unaided power to reveal and lead to the good life as they do in its unaided power to reveal the fundamental order and content of reality. The overarching structure of the ethical theories put forward by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz is eudaimonistic. As moral philosophers, they aim chiefly to discover the most surefire path to true happiness. The word eudaimonism comes from the Greek word for happiness, flourishing, or wellbeing. Generally speaking, classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophers take reflection on how to lead a flourishing human life as the starting point of ethical inquiry. That which above all makes a life go well is called the highest good, or summum bonum, as it later came to be known in Latin. Thus, central to a eudaimonistic theory is the identification and characterization of a good (or goods) that is (are) necessary, sufficient, or necessary and sufficient for human flourishing. In line with a prominent school of ethical thought within the eudaimonistic tradition, the rationalists subscribe to moral perfectionism. This is the view that the highest good consists in the cultivation and perfection of a characteristic or a set of characteristics that is fundamental to what we are. Such a characteristic in a cultivated state is called a perfection or virtue. Clearly, there can be as many distinct forms of moral perfectionism as there are legitimate candidates for being a fundamental characteristic and as there are combinations of them, but two principal characteristics are the faculty of choice (i.e., the will) and the faculty of knowledge (i.e., the intellect). As might

2 rationalist moral philosophy be expected, the rationalists maintain that an essential element of happiness involves the cultivation of one s faculty of knowledge. But it will become apparent in what follows that not only do they differ in interesting ways on the role they assign to the will, emotions, and desires in a flourishing human life, but also regarding the limits of knowledge as a guide for action. Before looking closely at the perfectionist theories of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, it will prove helpful to note another sense of the word perfectionist that also picks out an important feature of their theories. That is, in addition to subscribing to moral perfectionism, they also subscribe to what may be called metaphysical perfectionism. This is perhaps easiest to see by simply looking at some passages where it is expressed in their works. In what is known as the Geometrical Exposition of the Second Replies appended to the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes sixth axiom is: There are various degrees of reality or being: a substance has more reality than an accident or a mode; an infinite substance has more reality than a finite substance (CSM 2: 117). Although the full meaning of this Cartesian axiom cannot be ascertained independent of his views concerning the nature of substances and modes and of the relation between them, for now it is enough to see that he takes it as self-evident that there are degrees of reality, that an infinite substance has more reality than a finite substance, and that a finite substance has more reality than its particular modifications. Similarly, in definition six of Part Two of the Ethics, Spinoza says: By reality and perfection I mean the same thing (2def.6), and the scholium of proposition 11 of Part Three begins: We see then that the mind can undergo considerable changes, and can pass now to a greater perfection, now to one of lesser perfection (3p11s). Since reality has the same meaning as perfection, an individual s mind can undergo increases in reality as well as decreases in reality, indicating that Spinoza shares Descartes view that reality comes in degrees. This view is also one that Leibniz clearly accepts. For instance, in the Monadology he says: From this it follows that God is absolutely perfect perfection being nothing but the magnitude of positive reality considered as such, setting aside the limits or bounds in the things which have it. And here, where there are no limits, that is, in God, perfection is absolutely infinite (Leibniz 1989: 218). For Leibniz, to say that God s perfection is infinite is equivalent to saying that God s magnitude of positive reality is infinite. And this is so, according to Leibniz, because God has no limits. God s creatures, however, are necessarily limited, which means that they have a finite amount of perfection, or positive reality. In his Theodicy, Leibniz explains: For God could not give the creature all without making of it a God; therefore there must needs be different degrees in the perfection of things, and limitations also of every kind (Leibniz 1985: 31). Like Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz is suggesting that things have varying degrees of perfection or reality and holds that the supreme being has the most perfection indeed, infinite perfection. It is important to keep the idea of moral perfectionism distinct from the idea of metaphysical perfectionism not only because Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz happen to subscribe to both doctrines, but also, and more importantly for our purpose, because in the ethical theories of Spinoza and Leibniz metaphysical perfection is in an important sense the characteristic that is fundamental to what we are and which we therefore ought to cultivate. Thus their ethical theories are perfectionist in two 303

3 andrew youpa different but connected senses. First, human fulfillment resides in the perfection of a fundamental characteristic. Second, the characteristic we ought to perfect is metaphysical perfection. This does not mean, however, that metaphysical perfection can and ought to be cultivated in any way that happens to give us the right results. Instead, for Spinoza and Leibniz, perfecting the intellect by increasing one s knowledge is, as we shall see, constitutive of the cultivation of one s metaphysical perfection. Descartes Ethics The last book Descartes published in his lifetime, The Passions of the Soul (1649), is a work in psychology and ethics. The psychological theory is developed and presented there in the service of the eudaimonistic ethical goal of providing an account of happiness and the essential elements contained in the happy life. But it is not only eudaimonism that dictates the structure of Descartes ethics. Also contributing to its structure is his vision of philosophy as a unified system of knowledge. For example, in the preface to the Principles of Philosophy, he says: 304 Thus the whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals. By morals I understand the highest and most perfect moral system, which presupposes a complete knowledge of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom. Now just as it is not the roots or the trunk of a tree from which one gathers the fruit, but only the ends of the branches, so the principal benefit of philosophy depends on those parts of it which can only be learnt last of all. (AT 9B 14; CSM 1: 186) For Descartes, philosophy is a unified system, and it is hierarchically structured with the most important knowledge at the top of the structure. This does not mean that the knowledge beneath the uppermost level is unimportant. On the contrary, the highest knowledge depends on the lower orders of knowledge but not vice versa, and so the former can be acquired only after knowledge at the lower levels has been reached. Metaphysics, physics, and psychology are therefore valuable as the necessary means for reaching the ultimate level of wisdom. It should therefore not only come as no surprise that his ethical treatise, the Passions, is largely devoted to an investigation of human psychology, but also that it was not written until after he had written and published his works on metaphysics and physics Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and the Principles of Philosophy (1644). This is confirmed in a letter from June 1646 in which he writes: Of course, I agree... that the safest way to find out how we should live is to discover first what we are, what kind of world we live in, and who is the creator of this world...i must say in confidence that what little knowledge of physics I have tried to acquire has been a great help to me in establishing sure foundations in moral philosophy. Indeed I have found it easier to reach satisfactory conclusions on this topic than on many others. (AT 4: 441; CSMK 289)

4 rationalist moral philosophy The most reliable method for arriving at moral knowledge, Descartes maintains, is by first acquiring knowledge of human nature, the natural world, and the divine nature. These three preconditions for moral knowledge are what he tries to supply in the Meditations and the Principles, and it is clear from the above letter that he feels he had some success in reaching moral knowledge on the basis of the secure foundations he had established in those subordinate fields of inquiry. As we know from his correspondence, Descartes concentrated reflection on ethics began in the summer of In July of that year he suggested in a letter to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia that they read Seneca s On the Happy Life together (AT 4: 253; CSMK 256). However, Descartes quickly became dissatisfied with the reading selection due to what he considered insufficient philosophical rigor in the Stoic philosopher s treatment of the subject matter. So he proposed instead to write down his own thoughts on the happy life to share with Elizabeth and receive her feedback. The ethical theory that emerges in his correspondence with the princess is by and large that which is found in a more systematic, though more diluted, form in the Passions. Like Seneca, Descartes approach in ethical inquiry is eudaimonistic, and he agrees with the ancients, and Seneca in particular, that everyone desires to be happy first and foremost (AT 4: 263; CSMK 257). The question is, what is happiness? Happiness, Descartes suggests, is to have a perfectly content and satisfied mind (AT 4: 264; CSMK 257). The happy life is one throughout which a person experiences the pleasure of peace of mind. This does not mean, he points out, that the happy life is the most cheerful one; contentment of mind is not necessarily accompanied by laughter and gaiety, for instance. Rather, he approves of the account of contentment that he takes Epicurus and his school of philosophy to have endorsed: ataraxia, which, in Descartes view, is a stable state of mind untroubled by such emotional disturbances as anxiety and regret (AT 4: 276 7; CSMK 261). Although his conception of happiness as contentment is Epicurean in character, his conception of what is most important in achieving such contentment has an affinity with Stoicism. Indeed, Descartes moral philosophy can be viewed in part as a chapter in the early modern revival of Stoicism, which was ignited in the sixteenth century by the neo-stoic works of Guillaume du Vair ( ) and Justus Lipsius ( ). So it is not just by chance that Descartes ethics appears to combine elements of Epicureanism and Stoicism; Descartes in fact takes himself to have reconciled the key ethical doctrines of the two Hellenistic schools. In a 1647 letter to Queen Christina, in whose service he later died of pneumonia, he says: In this way I think I can reconcile the two most opposed and most famous opinions of the ancient philosophers that of Zeno, who thought virtue and honor the supreme good, and that of Epicurus, who thought the supreme good was contentment, to which he gave the name of pleasure (AT 5: 83; CSMK 325). Whether or not Descartes successfully reconciles Epicurean and Stoic ethics or merely splices them together at the expense of coherence is something we need to consider after looking at his account of virtue in more detail, but clearly his ethics embodies a conscious attempt on his part to fuse the two. Like the ancient Stoics, then, Descartes holds that being virtuous is sufficient for having a happy life. Virtue on his view is a highly developed or perfect condition of the will. What this developed condition of the will consists in, he tells Elizabeth, is a firm and constant resolution to carry out whatever reason recommends without 305

5 andrew youpa being diverted by... passions or appetites (AT 4: 265; CSMK 257 8). Similarly, to Queen Christina, he writes: virtue consists only in the resolution and vigor with which we are inclined to do the things we think good (AT 5: 83; CSMK 325). For Descartes, virtue is a matter of having a firm resolution to do what one judges to be the best thing to do. By firm resolution he means a steadfast motivational disposition or habit that is aligned with reason and the all-things-considered judgments issued by reason. A person of perfect virtue is therefore impervious to what his or her passions and desires present in appearance as worth pursuing before, during, and after practical deliberation that is, after the agent has reached an all-things-considered judgment about what is best to do under the circumstances. Descartes takes virtue in this sense to be sufficient for contentment because being reliably motivated by reason and its all-things-considered judgments ensures that one will never give oneself any legitimate cause for regret, one of the chief obstacles to happiness. Now, in his correspondence with Elizabeth he adds that, in addition to virtue, wisdom is in a sense necessary for happiness (AT 4: 267; CSMK 258). While virtue is the highly developed or perfect condition of the will, wisdom is the cultivated state of the intellect. Early on in the ethical correspondence with Elizabeth, he treats virtue and wisdom as independent conditions of happiness. He says: So virtue by itself is sufficient to make us content in this life. But virtue unenlightened by intellect can be false: that is to say, the will and resolution to do well can carry us to evil courses, if we think them good; and in such a case the contentment which virtue brings is not solid (AT 4: 267; CSMK 258). So virtue as steadfast resolution is sufficient for contentment, but it is not sufficient for making contentment invulnerable. For that, wisdom is required; without correct beliefs, we are susceptible to making incorrect choices, and making an incorrect choice may give rise to feelings of regret. Therefore, for the most solid or invulnerable contentment we can achieve, proper motivation (i.e., virtue) must be conjoined with correct beliefs (i.e., wisdom). Although not published until the late fall of 1649, a draft of his last work, The Passions of the Soul, appears to have been completed in the winter following the summer and fall in which he carried on his correspondence on ethics with Elizabeth (AT 4: 442; CSMK 289). Much of the ethical theory is the same, but a noteworthy difference between the correspondence and that of the Passions is that in the latter Descartes treats steadfast resolution and knowledge as two components that make up one central, all-purpose virtue, which he calls generosity. Generosity is described as the key to all the virtues and a general remedy for every disorder of the passions (AT 11: 454; CSM 1: 388). In addition to being steadfastly motivated by reason, this super virtue involves knowing that nothing truly belongs to him but this freedom to dispose his volitions, and that he ought to be praised or blamed for no other reason than his using this freedom well or badly (AT 11: 446; CSMK 384). Descartes is saying that the knowledge that nothing but one s motives are really up to oneself and that moral responsibility concerns nothing other than what motives one allows to move oneself comprises the wisdom that serves as a component of the virtue of generosity. Knowledge concerning what is truly up to us is one of the most important parts of wisdom, Descartes explains, because it serves as the basis for dignity, for the appropriate amount of respect we owe ourselves and others (AT 11: 445; CSM 1: 384). Every 306

6 rationalist moral philosophy individual deserves the same amount of esteem as anyone else, since the capacity for self-directed and virtuous action is equal in everyone, and there is no other genuine basis for such regard (AT 11: 447; CSM 1: 384). Although generosity requires perfection of the will as well as perfection of the intellect, in the Passions intellectual perfection appears to be a more modest ideal than the one originally presented in the correspondence. Earlier, we saw that he suggests to Elizabeth that achieving invulnerable contentment requires that one never make incorrect choices out of ignorance. But if this were so, true happiness would appear to be completely inaccessible or, at least, inaccessible to all but a very few who have God-like wisdom. Spinoza and Leibniz would certainly not consider this a shortcoming of Descartes ethics, but Princess Elizabeth appears to have viewed it as such and she seems to have brought it to Descartes attention (AT 4: 291; CSMK 265). What is more, there is internal pressure to reduce the ideal of intellectual perfection internal, that is, to Descartes philosophical system. This comes from his theological voluntarism, his view that all truth and goodness is entirely dependent on God having willed things to be as they are, which holds as much for what are commonly thought of as contingent truths as for necessary, or what he refers to as eternal, truths, such as those contained in arithmetic and geometry (AT 2: 138; CSMK 103; AT 5: ; CSMK 343; AT 7: 432; CSM 2: 291). It follows from this that perfection of the human intellect cannot be anything like coming to understand things from God s point of view for, no matter how highly cultivated the human intellect comes to be through the acquisition of knowledge, divine wisdom is different in kind from human wisdom in virtue of the fact that, as far as we are concerned, there is no ultimate reason for things being as they are, or for things being at all, other than God s will. From this it does not follow that intellectual perfection cannot be set as high as inherent limitations permit. It is just that in the end that runs counter to the egalitarian spirit of Descartes eudaimonism. So the ideal of wisdom is considerably more modest in later correspondence with the princess, and in the Passions wisdom in the relevant sense is trimmed down to the two aforementioned items of knowledge concerning what is truly up to us and what alone we deserve praise and blame for. The question remains, does Descartes succeed in reconciling Stoic and Epicurean ethics insofar as he is able to combine contentment of mind and the virtue of generosity into a consistent eudaimonistic theory? Putting the question that way, it seems that he never gets around to reconciling Zeno and Epicurus but, at best, his Zeno and his Epicurus. Setting that difficulty aside, the doctrines that he feels call for reconciliation are, on the one hand, that virtue is the supreme good, and, on the other, that contentment is the supreme good (AT 5 83; CSMK 325). Descartes proposed solution is that virtue and contentment, properly understood, go hand in hand: true virtue necessarily accompanies true contentment and true contentment accompanies true virtue. So, in the end, it makes no difference which is said to be desired for the sake of which because, in pursuing either, one is also pursuing the other (AT 4: 275; CSMK 261). To use his analogy, an archery contestant cannot win the prize without aiming at the bull s-eye, and the bull s-eye would not be targeted without the archer seeing that there is a prize for hitting the bull s-eye (AT 4: 277; CSMK 277). The bull s-eye and the prize then are equally deserving of being said to be the contestant s end. Similarly, virtue (i.e., perfection of the will and the intellect) and happiness are 307

7 andrew youpa inseparable aspects of what each of us is ultimately after. Thus, Descartes concludes that they are equally deserving of being considered our final end. 308 Spinoza s Ethics Like Descartes, Spinoza regards philosophy as a unified system of knowledge and, like his predecessor, views moral knowledge as the highest level of wisdom in the sense that it depends on knowledge of the divine nature, the natural world, and human nature and, therefore, can be achieved only after knowledge has been reached in metaphysics, physics, epistemology, and psychology. However, unlike Descartes, Spinoza does not hold that knowledge from these other fields of inquiry is valuable merely as a necessary means for obtaining moral knowledge. Rather, the knowledge in the other fields plays an essential role in the ideal of intellectual perfection which serves as Spinoza s ideal of human nature. So it turns out on Spinoza s view that we must gather the fruit from the roots and trunk of Descartes tree of philosophy or, more precisely perhaps, that the roots and trunk are the fruit. As a consequence, Spinoza s ethics does not share the egalitarian spirit one finds in Descartes ; that is, the eudaimonistic end of true happiness is less egalitarian in the former in the sense of being less readily available to everyone equally. After all, if moral perfection depends on intellectual perfection and if intellectual perfection requires acquisition of knowledge in metaphysics, physics, etc., clearly not everyone is equally well situated for the undertaking. But this is not something Spinoza would necessarily consider a drawback of his theory. For, as he famously says in the final line of his masterpiece the Ethics, All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare (5p42s). The greatest happiness awaiting those with the wherewithal to reach it Spinoza calls blessedness (beatitudo). Blessedness, he tells us, is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself (5p42). In order to get a sense of what Spinoza is saying here, it is necessary to take a look at some of the metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological doctrines that serve as the basis for its demonstration and the demonstration of the other ethical theorems in Parts 4 and 5 of the Ethics. In the introduction above I indicated that, like Descartes and Leibniz, Spinoza subscribes to metaphysical perfectionism. This is the view that reality, or perfection, is something that is manifested in different things to different degrees. Each holds that there is only one thing with infinite reality and that that thing is properly called God. Furthermore, each maintains that finite things have a limited amount of reality or perfection. Where Spinoza and Leibniz part company with Descartes is that they take the further step of suggesting that finite things are capable of undergoing increases and decreases in their amount of reality. This is not held by Descartes, but it is nevertheless a natural extension of the doctrine of metaphysical perfectionism. The power a thing exerts to exist, for Spinoza, is metaphysical perfection (1p11s, 3p11s). God s power, being infinite, implies that God exists necessarily (1p11). The power of a finite thing, such as a particular human being, being limited, means that it exists for an indefinite period of time (3p8). The existence of a finite thing involves an indefinite period of time and not a finite frame of time because a finite thing s existence would never come to an end if it never encountered anything external to itself to bring

8 rationalist moral philosophy about its destruction (3p4). Although Spinoza takes this to be self-evident, some light is cast on what is supposed to make it the case by his view that the power that a finite thing exerts to exist is a share of the infinite power of God (3p6p). The object of the power that a finite thing exerts is therefore nothing but its own continued existence. So long as it encounters no resistance, a finite thing will continue exerting its share of God s unlimited power. This exertion of power to exist Spinoza calls conatus, which is translated as striving or endeavor, and this is the essence of a finite thing (3p7). It is what makes a thing the particular thing that it is. An individual s loss of his or her conatus, then, is equivalent to the destruction of the individual. Spinoza s view that the essence of human nature is striving, or endeavoring, to continue in existence is one of the key doctrines in the foundation of his ethical theory and one he shares with, among others, his contemporary, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes ( ). Given this common tenet, it is tempting to understand Spinoza s ethics as having been, as it were, cut from the same cloth as Hobbes. That is, it might seem that Spinoza, like Hobbes, takes the foundation of morality to be its utility in prolonging an individual s life, and so whatever is most effective in leading to this end serves as the basis of a moral precept. However, such a reading, I believe, is mistaken. An important difference between the foundations of the ethical theories of the two seventeenth-century naturalists concerns the self to be preserved in selfpreservation. For Hobbes, the self to preserve is none other than the one each of us for the most part is already deeply concerned with preserving the emotional, imaginative, somewhat credulous one we are familiar with in everyday life. In contrast, Spinoza holds that the self to preserve is exclusively the rational self, which on his view is identical with what he calls the intellect or reason (4App4, 5p38s, 5p40c). And this encompasses none of our passions and imaginings, that is, none of our passive emotions and imagistic, sense-based thoughts. As one scholar puts it, at bottom Spinoza adheres to the primacy of the intellect (Delahunty 1985: 270). What the rational, or intellectual, self encompasses will be examined shortly, but first I want to emphasize that this difference in their views of the subject to be preserved is in part what accounts for the un-hobbesean character of Spinoza s ethics. For instance, it appears to be in the background of the following passage from the appendix to Part 4 of the Ethics: Therefore it is of the first importance in life to perfect the intellect [intellectum], or reason [rationem], as far as we can, and the highest happiness or blessedness for mankind consists in this alone... So there is no rational life [vita rationalis] without understanding [intelligentia], and things are good only insofar as they assist a man to enjoy the life of the mind, which is defined by understanding [intelligentia]. Those things only do we call evil which hinder a man s capacity to perfect reason [rationem] and to enjoy a rational life [rationali vita]. (4App4 5) Here it is being suggested that perfection of the intellect alone is sufficient for happiness, and that the meanings of the terms good and evil are grounded in nothing but what helps or hinders our achieving such perfection. All our efforts then should be geared toward developing and preserving our rational selves above all else. 309

9 andrew youpa Apart from any difference there might be in their views of the self to be preserved, it might still be thought that prolonging one s life is the ultimate basis of morality on Spinoza s view as well as Hobbes. It might seem that the difference, if any, is isolated to Spinoza s somewhat rarefied conception of the sort of life that we are supposed to prolong. What is being said in the passage cited above is perfectly compatible with the view that it is of the first importance to perfect the intellect because it so happens that perfecting the intellect is the most effective means to prolong one s life. In addition, even if the text does not bear this strong Hobbesean reading, it might seem that at the very least Spinoza is committed to the weaker commonsense view that self-preservation in a mundane sense is a necessary condition of perfecting the intellect and, therefore, that it is always permissible for an individual to do whatever it takes to avoid his or her own death. Although the strong Hobbesean interpretation and the weak commonsense reading have some plausibility, neither is entirely accurate. To see why this is so, we need to take a closer look at Spinoza s ethics. As we have seen, a human being is an exertion of power to exist, and power to exist is metaphysical perfection, or what is also referred to as reality (2def.6). An increase in power is therefore an increase in metaphysical perfection; a decrease constitutes a decrease in perfection (3p11s). Moreover, increases in an individual s power give rise to pleasure or joy (laetitia); decreases produce pain or sadness (tristitia) (3p11s). The greater an increase in power for an individual as a whole and not just one part at the expense of others, the stronger the pleasure or joy that is generated thereby. Likewise, the greater the decrease, the more pain or sadness produced. Since power is the metaphysical basis for emotions of pleasure and pain, and since they are linked such that increases in overall power give rise to increases in pleasure, while decreases produce increases in pain, states of pleasure and pain gauge changes in levels of perfection (reality). Knowledge of good, Spinoza concludes, is the cognition of emotions of pleasure, while knowledge of evil is cognition of pain (4p8; cf. 4p41). Good things are good, then, by virtue of contributing to an increase in an individual s overall power. Bad things are those that diminish overall power. This might seem to conflict with the preface to Part 4, where Spinoza explains that by good he means that which we certainly know to be the means for our approaching nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves, and that by bad he means that which we certainly know prevents us from reproducing the said model (Spinoza 2002: 322). But here good and bad are simply being defined in moral perfectionist terms that is, in terms of what does and does not contribute (respectively) to an individual s realization of an ideal of human nature. This is not inconsistent with good and bad as that which does and does not contribute (respectively) to an increase in an individual s power, because the latter is a substantive conception whereas the former is merely formal. The formal account indicates that the highest good is the realization of the ideal of human nature, while the substantive account reveals that power is what the ideal is an idealization of. Thus the content of the model of human nature is supplied by Spinoza s portrait of the highest realization of power: the free man (4p66s 4p72). The free man just is a representation of an individual who has achieved the utmost amount of power possible. Also, since virtue and power mean the 310

10 rationalist moral philosophy same thing (4def.8), it can also be said that the model of the free man is a representation of an ideally virtuous person. To say that goodness is whatever increases one s power to exist and badness whatever results in its decrease is not yet a fully substantive account of what is good and bad. It is not yet clear, for instance, whether we should make it our top priority to acquire an arsenal of weapons or something else altogether different. That the latter is the case is suggested by the more substantive but nonetheless incomplete account of the good that we saw earlier in the appendix to Part 4, where he tells us things are good only insofar as they assist a man to enjoy the life of the mind, which is defined by understanding. Those things only do we call evil which hinder a man s capacity to perfect reason and to enjoy a rational life (4App5). This account is more informative but not yet fully complete, since it can be legitimately asked whether we should make it our top priority to acquire knowledge of how to acquire and operate an arsenal of weapons or, again, knowledge of something altogether different. That the latter is the case is made clear at 4p28: The mind s highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind s highest virtue is to know God. Thus the greatest happiness and greatest virtue (i.e., power) is knowledge of God or, what is the same thing, knowledge of nature (1p29s, 4Preface, 4p4p). From the claim that the greatest happiness and power is knowledge of God-or-Nature, it follows that such knowledge is not pursued for the sake of anything else, which was made explicit in 4p26: Whatever we endeavor according to reason is nothing else but to understand; and the mind, insofar as it exercises reason, judges nothing else to be to its advantage except what conduces to understanding. Since acquisition of knowledge alone perfects the intellect, knowledge is pursued for its own sake and not for the sake of some further end. Now we are in a position to see why, for Spinoza, preserving the self is not about prolonging one s life in either its strong Hobbesean sense or its weak commonsense form. The former, recall, treats the rational life as that which is most effective in prolonging one s life. The latter, commonsense reading considers prolonging one s life to be a necessary condition of leading the rational life. However, because, considered as thinking things, reason is definitive of what we are (4p26p, 4p27), any departure from reason and reason s requirements constitutes at least some loss of self. Therefore, it is never the case that it is advantageous to put longevity ahead of rationality. To do so is self-destructive. What is destroyed is one s rational self. This I take it is the basis for the otherwise paradoxical claim made at 4p72: The free man never acts deceitfully, but always with good faith. Preserving oneself requires nothing but living in accordance with reason, and since reason just is what we fundamentally are, it cannot be overridden by the prospect of prolonging life. So, in the scholium of 4p72, Spinoza says: The question may be asked: What if a man could by deception free himself from imminent danger of death? Would not consideration for the preservation of his own being be decisive in persuading him to deceive? I reply... that if reason urges this, it does so for all men; and thus reason urges men in general to join forces and to have common laws only with deceitful intention; that is, in effect, to have no laws in common at all, which is absurd. This passage maintains that it is contrary to reason to lie in order to avoid death. Self-preservation, therefore, is not a matter of avoiding death and thereby prolonging 311

11 andrew youpa one s life. Rather, preserving oneself is a matter of preserving one s intellect. Selfpreservation, it turns out, just is rationality-preservation. The following passage from the Theological-Political Treatise provides a nice summary of Spinoza s views on all this: 312 All worthy objects of desire can be classified under one of these three general headings: 1 To know things through their primary causes. 2 To subjugate the passions, i.e., to acquire the habit of virtue. 3 To live in security and good health. The means that directly serve for the attainment of the first and second objectives, and can be considered as the proximate and efficient causes, lie within the bounds of human nature itself, so that their acquisition chiefly depends on human power alone, i.e., solely on the laws of human nature... But the means that serve for the attainment of security and physical wellbeing lie principally in external circumstances, and are called the gifts of fortune because they mainly depend on the operation of external causes of which we are in ignorance. So in this matter the fool and the wise man have about an equal chance of happiness and unhappiness. (Spinoza 2002: ) Being wise and virtuous are worthy objects of desire, or goods, that can be achieved through human power without external assistance. Security, wellbeing, and things belonging to the same class are worthy objects of desire, but the problem is that their acquisition does not exclusively depend on human power. In fact, it is largely a matter of fortune, or luck, whether one possesses such goods. As a result, a fool and a wise person have nearly the same chances of achieving happiness where this is understood as security and physical wellbeing. Since the likelihood of a fool and that of a wise person of obtaining happiness in this sense is about equal, it is therefore implausible that Spinoza commends the ideal of intellectual perfection presented in the Ethics for the sake of a happiness that inherently depends on security and physical wellbeing. In any event, Spinoza holds that intellectual perfection is the key ingredient in the good life, but it would be a mistake to conclude that this requires the complete eradication of the emotive side of our nature. On the contrary, intellectual perfection on Spinoza s view is accompanied with a rich and colorful palette of emotions. The difference between the emotional palette of a fool and that of a wise person is that that of the former is for the most part comprised of passive emotions or, simply, passions, whereas the latter s is for the most part comprised of active emotions (3p58, 3p59). The basis for this distinction between passions and active emotions is Spinoza s distinction between opinion and imagination, on the one hand, and reason and intuition, on the other. So it is to his theory of knowledge that we must now turn. By opinion or imagination Spinoza means the ideas or beliefs corresponding with the imagistic contents of sense perception, and such beliefs belong to the lowest grade of knowledge (2p40s2). This inferior grade of knowledge, Spinoza maintains, is the only source of falsity (2p41). The reason is that the ideas of sensory contents are inadequate (2p24, 2p25), and they are inadequate in virtue of being based on the confused and fragmentary contents of sense perception (2p28, 2p35). What makes the imagistic

12 rationalist moral philosophy deliverances of sense perception confused and fragmentary is that they are the products of the causal interaction between an individual s sensory apparatus and external stimuli (2p16). Our sensory apparatus is not perfectly transparent and, as a result, systematically distorts what things are like independent of the way they are perceived (2p16c, 2p25). Therefore, when we take the ideas of our sensory contents at face value, we view things in a fragmentary way in the sense that we fail to understand that such ideas are merely results of causal chains extending into our environment, and that the stimuli composing our environment make up various links in those causal chains (2p35s). This, I take it, is what Spinoza is getting at when he says that our sense-based beliefs are like conclusions without premises (2p28p). As we come to learn more about why things appear to us the way they do say, by means of the science of optics the less fragmentary and more adequate our knowledge comes to be. An individual who takes his or her ideas of the contents of sense perception at face value views things in accordance with what Spinoza calls the common order of nature (2p29cs). Viewing things in this fragmentary way is infused with arbitrariness, since the order in which things appear to an individual is no indication of the way things are causally ordered in reality, the metaphysical order. The trick is to come to know things in accordance with the metaphysical order, or the order of the intellect (2p18s). To do so, it is necessary to ascend to the second and third grades of knowledge, namely, reason and intuition. The knowledge involved in reason and intuition is necessarily true (2p41). Reason consists of common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things and intuitive knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things (2p40s2). Featured in both grades is adequate cognition. Reason contains adequate cognition of the common properties of things, making this knowledge general, whereas intuition involves adequate cognition of the essence of a particular thing or things arrived at through the laws of nature. Reason on Spinoza s view includes two sets of adequate general ideas. First, common notions are ideas of properties common to all things, from the relatively simple to the relatively complex (2p38). So, for example, common to all physical things is the property of being extended in length, breadth, and depth as well as the property of motion-and-rest (2p13l2p). Second, adequate ideas of the properties of things are ideas of properties common to all relatively complex things, such as the human organism and other complex organisms (2p39). The idea of a fixed pattern of motion and rest, for example, is an adequate idea of a property shared by all complex physical entities (2p13l3cdef.). Just as there are properties common to all things considered under the attribute of extension, there are also properties common to all things considered under the attribute of thought (2p7). Interesting suggestions as to what this includes are the laws of logic (as a property common to all relatively simple and complex thinking things) and the laws of psychology (as a property shared by all relatively complex thinking things) (Allison 1975: 110). The highest grade of knowledge, intuition, is knowledge of a particular thing or things through the infinite series of finite causes (i.e., prior finite conditions) and the finite series of infinite causes (i.e., the laws of nature). This is clearly not something that can ever be fully achieved by a finite mind, but it seems that Spinoza 313

13 andrew youpa must be committed to the view that some progress in this can be made to a limited extent, for otherwise it would be impossible even to get a taste of the greatest happiness, blessedness. As rudimentary as this brief overview of Spinoza s epistemology admittedly is, it should suffice for grasping the character of his ideal of intellectual perfection and, specifically, the space for emotion and correct motivation in the good life. At the heart of Spinoza s moral psychology is the distinction he draws between passions and active emotions. Passions are emotions and desires that result from opinion the inadequate ideas of the confused and fragmentary contents of sensory perception (3def.3, 3p3, 5p4s). Active emotions and desires, on the other hand, arise from the knowledge arrived at by reason and intuition (3p58, 4p59, 4p61, 5p4s). Active emotions and desires, in other words, are rational. Now, just as someone who takes the deliverances of the senses at face value draws arbitrary causal connections among appearances, so this same individual is arbitrarily assailed by various and often conflicting passions. Passions are arbitrary in the same way sensory contents are: they result from an individual s fortuitous encounters with external stimuli, disconnected from the metaphysical order that reason and intuition reveals (4p4c). Those of us who are dominated by passions, Spinoza tells us, are in many respects at the mercy of external causes and are tossed about like the waves of the sea when driven by contrary winds, unsure of the outcome and of our fate (3p59s). An individual who is at the mercy of external causes is governed by his or her passions and is therefore unfree (4 Preface). Hence, Spinoza calls such a person a slave in contradistinction to the free man, the ideal of human nature (4p66s). A life dominated by passions on Spinoza s view is a life of bondage, but his view is not that all passions are painful. Some are emotions of pleasure. However, in addition to arising from an increase in perfection in one part of an individual independent of the person as a whole, passive emotions of pleasure are transitory and often preceded or followed by painful emotions. For instance, hope, according to Spinoza, is an emotion of pleasure, but it is inconstant pleasure arising from the idea of a thing future or past, of whose outcome we are in some doubt (Definitions of the Emotions 12). Not only is hope inconstant, it is also always accompanied by a painful emotion, since there cannot be hope without fear (4p47p) and fear is a painful emotion (Definitions of the Emotions 13). So, just as inadequate ideas comprise the lowest grade of knowledge, passive emotions of pleasure constitute the lowest grade of pleasure. What is more, conflicts among different individuals as well as internal psychological conflicts arise from the transitory and variable nature of passions (4p32, 4p33, 4p44). With respect to the same object, conflicting emotional reactions among different people engender disagreement about the value or disvalue of the object, and such disagreements tend to lead to skepticism and ultimately to unhappiness (1Appendix, 4p35c1). A similar sort of phenomenon can arise within one and the same person who is subject to conflicting passions. At one moment something might meet with strong approval which a short while later meets with strong disapproval, dividing the person against himself and, as a consequence, rendering an individual unhappy. To provide remedies for the passions, the source of interpersonal and psychological conflicts, is one of Spinoza s primary aims. 314

14 rationalist moral philosophy He proposes six therapeutic remedies (5p6, 5p20s). First, he suggests that in simply coming to know why one has the passions one does, one thereby gets an upper-hand on them and, as a result, they cease being passive emotions (5p4). The second proposed remedy involves detaching the affective aspect of a passion from the object of the emotion by coming to see that the object is at best merely part of the total explanation for one s feelings about it (5p2, 5p4s). The third and fourth are based on his view concerning the superior durability of active emotions over passions (5p7, 5p8). The idea is that emotions arising from knowledge are firmly anchored in reality and are therefore much less transitory than passions that come and go with any change in oneself or one s immediate environment (5p9, 5p11). Fifth, by means of repeated cognitive conditioning an individual can come to have different emotional reactions to things that previously had given rise to obsessive or otherwise excessive feelings (5p10, 5p12 14). Spinoza says: For example, if anyone sees that he is devoted overmuch to the pursuit of honor, let him reflect on its proper function, and the purpose for which it ought to be pursued, and the means by which it can be attained, and not on its abuse and hollowness and the fickleness of mankind and the like, on which nobody reflects except from a morbid disposition. It is by thoughts like these that the most ambitious especially torment themselves when they despair of attaining the honor that they covet, and in vomiting forth their anger they try to make some show of wisdom. (5p10s) As this indicates, Spinoza maintains that by focusing one s attention on certain thoughts rather than on others, one is capable of reprogramming oneself so that after a certain point one is less disposed to have certain emotional reactions to a stimulus of a certain type. The sixth and final therapeutic remedy is a matter of subscribing to a strong form of determinism, which Spinoza defends early on in the Ethics (1p33). Dubbed necessitarianism by scholars, this says that events could have turned out in no other way than the way they have and do. An alternative formulation of this thesis is to say that the actual universe with its actual history is the only possible universe with the only possible history. By viewing things in this light, Spinoza believes that we will be less susceptible to having passive emotional reactions to whatever events we observe (5p6). These six cognitive therapies are meant to serve as ways of empowering whoever takes up any or all of them. As such, they are not techniques for eradicating all emotions, only those that prevent us from achieving true virtue and happiness. Virtue, as we saw earlier, is power, and true power consists in being motivated and guided by reason (3p3, 4p37s1). True happiness, for Spinoza, is blessedness, and this is the emotive aspect of the cognitive condition that is equivalent to the state of having reached a level of complete metaphysical perfection (5p33s, 5p36s). Since power is metaphysical perfection, it follows that blessedness is the emotive aspect of the highest realization of true power. Thus, in the last theorem of the Ethics, Spinoza concludes: Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself (5p42). Having taken a closer look at Spinoza s ethical theory, it might now seem that this final proposition is somewhat of an overstatement, in that it seems an exaggeration to say that blessedness is identical with virtue. But I take it that what Spinoza is up to is similar to what 315