Why Spinoza Tells People To

Why Spinoza Tells People to Try to Preserve Their Being 119
Why Spinoza Tells People to

0Try
to Preserve Their Being*0
by Michael LeBuffe (Texas)
Abstract: It is puzzling that Spinoza both urges people to seek to preserve themselves
and also holds that, as a matter of fact, people do strive to preserve themselves.
I argue that the striving for self-preservation that characterizes all individuals
grounds, for Spinoza, the claim that human beings seek only whatever they antici-
pate will lead to pleasure (laetitia). People desire ends other than self-preservation
because they anticipate pleasure in those ends, and Spinoza urges people to seek to
preserve themselves because he thinks such desires misguided: the anticipation of
pleasure in any end that does not conduce to self-preservation is mistaken.
“We must grant that Spinoza does not show himself to be very much interested in
telling people to seek the preservation of their being. There would not be much
point in prescribing a course of conduct people will necessarily follow anyway,
and Spinoza is not one to waste words.” E. M. Curley1
Although the Ethics notoriously lacks normative language, Spinoza
does, after a fashion, tell people to try to preserve their being. He tells
them reason demands this at Ethics IVp18s, a passage Curley empha-
sizes: “Reason demands […] absolutely that everyone, as much as it is in
him, should strive to preserve his own being.”2 Later, at Vp10s, Spinoza
indicates that he associates his own normative ethics with the demands
of reason by writing that his program for the moderation of the affects
has as its aim bringing one’s actions into line with the command of rea-
son. Spinoza recommends striving to preserve one’s being in different
moral language also, in terms of virtue. At IVp24d he describes action
*0 I thank Dick Arneson, David Brink, Edwin Curley, Nick Jolley, Paul Hoffman,
Donald Rutherford, and Gideon Yaffe for all of their help with my work on Spi-
noza’s psychology. Thanks also to the junior faculty reading group at Texas
A&M, to two anonymous readers for the journal, and to Don Garrett for helpful
comments on this essay.
1 Curley 1973, 371.
2 Quotations of Spinoza are my own translations, made from Gebhardt 1925 in
consultation with the translations of Curley 1985 and Shirley 1992. Passages
from the Ethics are cited here in the conventional way: e.g., IVp18s means Part
IV, Proposition 18, Scholium.
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120 M i c h a e l L e B u ff e
from virtue as nothing else in human beings but following reason in act-
ing, living, and preserving our being.
These recommendations are an important part of Spinoza’s ethics
because Spinoza holds that people too often do otherwise than seek to
preserve themselves. There is a sense, of course, in which Curley is right
that, for Spinoza, people do necessarily seek to preserve themselves:
IIIp9 tells us that minds strive to persevere in being. It would only be a
waste of words for Spinoza to tell people to seek to preserve their being,
though, if everybody were already doing so exclusively or if each person
were already doing it, as IVp18s requires “as much as it is in him”. It is
not clear that Spinoza holds either of these views.
Several passages in the Ethics suggest that some people seek things
other than self-preservation. IVp20 suggests that people, to varying de-
grees, neglect to preserve themselves:
The more anyone strives and is able to seek what is useful for him, that is, to pre-
serve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue; and, on the other hand, the
more anyone neglects what is useful for him, that is, to preserve his own being, to
that extent he lacks power.
IVp44s offers accounts of profit and esteem, objects different from self-
preservation that people commonly pursue. A defender of the interpre-
tation of Spinoza on which all people seek only to preserve themselves
might suggest that wherever Spinoza explicitly mentions objects of de-
sire different from self-preservation, he implicitly describes a kind of in-
strumental reasoning at work in agents. People desire profit or esteem,
on this suggestion, because they believe it will lead to self-preserva-
tion.3 IVp44s, though, rules out instrumental reasoning. How could
a reader understand Spinoza’s claim that the greedy man thinks of no
other thing besides money (“cum avarus de nulla alia re, quam de lucro
[…] cogitet”) at IVp44s to imply anything other than that such people
desire these ends for their own sakes?4 Surely someone who desired
money for the sake of self-preservation would desire self-preservation
as well.
At IIIp56d Spinoza presents his general view about the variety of
human desire. The affects, including desire, are produced by desiring
3 Other important passages in which Spinoza suggests that people seek objects
other than self-preservation include: IIIp39s; III, Definition of the Affects,
XLVIII; IVp20s; and IV, Appendix XXVIII.
4 A similar discussion in Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
(Gebhardt, II/6, 7–12) makes this point, the point that people might seek ends
such as wealth and honor for their own sakes, still more explicitly.

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agents’ own natures and the natures of the external objects which inter-
act with these agents, so there are indefinitely many kinds of desire, at
least as many as there are species of objects that affect agents with de-
sire. Even if we should take Spinoza to hold that people who, like the
monomaniacs described in IVp44s, do not seek self-preservation at all
(that is, who do not at least hold self-preservation even as one desirable
object among others) are mad, still Spinoza’s descriptions of mono-
maniacs and his emphasis at IIIp56s on the variety of possible objects
of desire suggest that ordinary people who do seek to preserve them-
selves may also seek other things quite a bit.5 So ordinary people, even
if they do seek self-preservation among other ends, are not seeking it as
far as it is in them, in the spirit of IVp18s. They can do better, in Spino-
za’s view, and they should.
I shall argue here that Spinoza’s psychology provides an account of
the circumstances in which people seek things other than self-preserva-
tion and a basis for the recommendation that people strive from reason
to preserve themselves. Spinoza’s conatus doctrine, which has its per-
fectly general statement at IIIp6 and its particularly human version at
IIIp9, concerns the effects that human beings have insofar as they are
efficient causes: whenever I am a total efficient cause, the effect I have is
that of my own perseverance in being; when I am a mere partial efficient
cause, the effects I have in combination with other partial causes have
an indefinite variety. (This will be the thesis of Section 1.) Human
beings are conscious of conatus but not necessarily veridically; that is,
they are not necessarily conscious of their striving to persevere in being
as a striving to persevere in being. So the conatus doctrine is not a the-
ory of conscious desire. It is not true that, as we necessarily strive to
persevere in being, so we necessarily consciously desire to persevere in
being (Section 2). In order to understand the project of the Ethics and,
in particular, why Spinoza recommends what he recommends, however,
we require some account of what on Spinoza’s view people do desire
consciously. After all, where Spinoza turns to an account of the means
to freedom, especially at Vp10s, he is almost exclusively concerned with
providing us techniques for organizing our conscious thoughts and im-
ages, techniques that we are to follow in order to gain some control over
the affects. Our conscious desires, then, are clearly of great importance
5 IV Appendix XXVIII, for example, suggests that most people seek money
more than any other thing. See also the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intel-
lect, II/5 26–61, which, as Curley notes in his translation, echoes Aristotle’s Ni-
comachean Ethics, 1095a20–25.

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to our freedom (Section 3). Spinoza provides the required account of

conscious desire at IIIp28 and the propositions that follow it: we con-
sciously desire whatever we consciously anticipate will lead to laetitia
(roughly, pleasure); we consciously desire to avoid or destroy whatever
we consciously anticipate will lead to tristitia (roughly, suffering); and
we do not consciously desire anything else. Although we might con-
sciously desire any variety of objects, one of these expectations will at-
tach to any conscious desire. Thus the greedy man anticipates laetitia
or the avoidance of tristitia in wealth; the ambitious in esteem; and so
on (Section 4). These monomaniacs, and the ordinary people who re-
semble them to the extent that they sometimes succumb to passionate
desires similar to those that obsess monomaniacs, err in associating
laetitia with the wrong objects. According to Spinoza, laetitia associ-
ates itself systematically only with those objects which increase agents’
power to persevere in being, and tristitia associates itself systematically
only with those objects which decrease the same power. So Spinoza tells
people to try to preserve themselves just because he knows that this is
the best way to attain laetitia, the end that people, together with Spi-
noza himself (IIIp39s), judge to be valuable (Section 5).
1. Striving in the Human Mind
The proposition of central importance to this paper is IIIp9. It contains

Spinoza’s formal characterization of the activity of the human mind,
and it is also the proposition in which Spinoza asserts that the mind is
conscious of its activity. The proposition consists of three distinct
claims which I number in my translation:
IIIp9: [1] The mind, both insofar as it has clear and distinct ideas and also insofar
as it has confused ideas, strives to persevere in being; [2] it does so for an indefinite
duration; and [3] it is conscious of this, its striving.
1, I shall argue in this section, is a two-part thesis about the effects

human minds have insofar as they are efficient causes. I shall try to es-
tablish that part of the meaning of 1 is a bold thesis about human ac-
tivity:
The Human Activity Thesis: Wherever a human mind is a total cause of some ef-
fect, or in other words, wherever it has an effect which follows from ideas clear and
distinct in it, that effect will be its own perseverance in being.

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I shall argue that the other part of the meaning of 1, however, the
part which concerns human passivity, is quite vague:
The Human Passivity Thesis: Wherever a human mind is a partial cause of some
effect, or in other words, wherever it has an effect which follows from ideas confused
in it, that effect will follow from an activity, which, if the mind were a total cause,
would have the effect of its perseverance in being.
An account of the effects a human mind actually has insofar as it is
partial cause would of course be much more helpful than this counter-
factual account. In the absence of some further account of what activity
that would, in other circumstances, bring about perseverance in being is
like, the Human Passivity Thesis fails to provide any meaningful char-
acterization of the effects of human activity where agents are partial
causes.
I understand 1 to concern the causal nature of the human mind, but Spinoza only
writes at IIIp9 about striving for perseverance and about ideas. Spinoza’s Ethics is
notorious for the strings of equivalences and near equivalences which run through it
and for the confusion that these equivalences cause for readers when one of the terms
is substituted for another in referentially opaque or ambiguous contexts. At the be-
ginning of Part III, three sets of equivalences reveal the fact that IIIp9 concerns the
human mind’s causal nature. The relationship between the first two pairs of equival-
ences and the third requires especially careful explanation. Inadequate ideas are not
equivalent to inadequate causes (and, similarly, adequate ideas and adequate causes
are not equivalent), but they are closely related:
clear and distinct idea = adequate idea (clara et distincta idea = adaequata idea)
confused and mutilated idea = inadequate idea (mutilata et confusa idea = inadae-
quata idea)
inadequate cause = partial cause (inadaequata causa = causa partialis)
‘Clear and distinct idea’ and ‘adequate idea’ and, likewise, ‘confused and muti-
lated idea’ and ‘inadequate idea’ are nearly universally interchangeable terms in Spi-
noza’s use.6 He freely substitutes members of the pairs of terms for their counterparts
6 I write “nearly universally” because Spinoza to my knowledge never attributes

clear and distinct ideas to God, although he repeatedly claims that all ideas are
adequate in God. To attribute clear and distinct ideas to God, then, may violate
Spinoza’s use and smooth over difficult questions about Spinoza’s account of
ideas, such as, “are all ideas, even those which are in no human minds, con-
scious?”
It seems appropriate to say, however, that for the present purposes, that is, in re-
spect to a discussion of ideas in human minds, the terms are equivalent and so
may be freely substituted for one another. IIp36, to which Curley refers in his
glossary, is the best evidence for the equivalence. In the proposition itself, Spi-

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in the argument leading up to IIIp9, notably here at IIIp1d, without, so far as I can
see, any philosophical motivation for doing so:
In each human mind some ideas are adequate but some are mutilated and con-
fused (IIp40s). However, ideas in some person’s mind that are adequate, are ad-
equate in God insofar as he constitutes the essence of that mind (IIp11C), and, in
the next place, those that are inadequate in that mind are also adequate in God
(IIp11C) […].
There may be, however, some rhetorical motivation for using the terms ‘adequate
idea’ and ‘inadequate idea’ if these terms make the purported association between
adequate idea and adequate cause and, likewise, inadequate idea and inadequate
cause more palatable to the reader. It is this association, the association between a
kind of idea and a kind of cause, which involves something more than labels.
The equivalences between the causal terms are established primarily at IIId1:
“I call a cause adequate whose effects can be clearly and distinctly perceived through
it [alone]. I call a cause inadequate, or [seu] partial, however, whose effects cannot be
understood through it alone.” Spinoza also depends upon this equivalence explicitly
at IIId2 and IIIp3. One might, and I do, presume that adequate causes, likewise, are
total causes for Spinoza.7 Spinoza, however, never to my knowledge uses the term
‘total cause’ in the Ethics.
The relationship between the terms for ideas and the terms for causes
in the Ethics is the most difficult to understand. Although, as I have
mentioned, Spinoza associates them, adequate ideas and adequate
causes are surely not simply universally equivalent for him.8 IIIp1d sug-
gests that, even insofar as we are concerned with ideas exclusively, we
should not take adequate ideas to be equivalent to adequate causes.
Rather, the possession of an adequate idea makes a mind an adequate
cause of any effects that “follow from” (sequitur) that idea, and the
mind is only the adequate cause of those effects that follow from ideas
adequate in it. At IIIp1d Spinoza writes that if any effect follows from
ideas adequate in a particular human mind, then that mind (by impli-
cation, not that idea) is the adequate cause of the effect. On the other
noza writes “ideae inadaequatae et confusae eadem necessitate consequuntur, ac

adaequatae, sive clarae ac distinctae ideae.” (“Inadequate and confused ideas fol-
low with the same necessity as adequate or clear and distinct ideas.”) The use of
sive suggests that ‘clear and distinct’ is simply another label for adequate. The
correlate use of ‘et’ does not itself suggest a similar equivalence. Most translators
take ‘nec’ at IIp36d to indicate equivalence however.
7 Schrijvers 1999 discusses this point, 64f.
8 I am concerned here primarily with ideas, but one might argue this interpretative
point by referring to extended adequate causation in Spinoza. IIp6 suggests that
God is the cause of extended modes only insofar as he is considered under the at-
tribute of extension.

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hand, I presume, if an effect follows from an idea that is inadequate in a

particular mind, then that mind (not that idea) is an inadequate cause
of that effect.9 So, for Spinoza it is not the case that every particular ad-
equate idea is identical to the adequate cause of the effects which follow
from it. Nevertheless, the effects that follow from the adequate ideas of
the mind (namely, perseverance in being) just are the same as the effects
which that mind produces as an adequate cause.
1 then, despite the fact that ideas and striving, and not causes or
effects, are mentioned in the proposition, amounts to a claim about
the effects which follow from the human mind. The argument depends
principally upon Spinoza’s conatus doctrine, IIIp6, and ultimately
upon IIIp4, the proposition that nothing except an external cause can
destroy a thing. IIIp6d is an argument by elimination purporting to
show that, if a thing insofar as it is not affected by external causes can-
not destroy itself, the effect that is left for the thing to produce is that of
its own perseverance in being.10 IIIp3d purports to show that whatever
the human mind does insofar as it is affected by external causes (i.e., as
a partial cause) it does by means of inadequate ideas and that whatever
9 It is unclear what makes some collection of ideas a particular mind, for Spinoza.
For human beings it may be the unity of the human body of which the mind is the
idea. But, IIIp1d suggests that, if we allow that there can be minds within minds,
we should also allow that there be more than one adequate cause of some effects.
After all, if an idea is adequate in a particular person’s mind, then it will also be
adequate in God’s mind, so the particular person’s mind and God’s mind will
both be adequate causes of the effect. Spinoza’s formal definition of adequate
causes (IIId1), quoted in the main text, depends upon the explanatory power of
causes. Thus, presumably a mind which is the adequate cause of an effect is the
mind which contains whatever ideas are necessary for a clear and distinct under-
standing of the effect. If some limited understanding is sufficient for understand-
ing a particular effect, though, it does follow that a more comprehensive under-
standing will also be sufficient for understanding that effect. To make the point
as simply as possible: if A is sufficient for understanding C, then A & B will also
be sufficient for understanding C.
10 Criticizing IIIp6d is not my focus here. For detailed criticisms of the argument,
which focus most effectively upon the implausibility of IIIp4 as a basis for IIIp6,
see: Matson 1977; Bennett 1984, 240f.; and Della Rocca 1996, 194f. For more
sympathetic interpretations of the argument see Curley 1988, 109, and Garrett
2002.
Here is a summary of the argument by elimination of IIIp6, as I understand it.
Spinoza takes it as a premise that a mode must persevere, do nothing, or destroy
itself. It cannot do nothing because each thing is an expression of God’s power;
each thing acts. It cannot destroy itself in acting however by IIIp4. Thus, or so
runs the reasoning of IIIp6d, the only action a thing can take is perseverance in
being.

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it does insofar as it is not affected by external causes (i.e., as a total

cause) it does by means of adequate ideas. So IIIp4 and IIIp6, in light of
IIIp3d, characterize the human mind, as a particular thing, in the fol-
lowing way (I label these theses the Human Activity Thesis* and the
Human Passivity Thesis* to mark rudimentary forms of those theses):
The Human Activity Thesis*: Wherever the mind causes effects by means of ade-
quate ideas, i.e., as a total cause, it perseveres in being.
and
The Human Passivity Thesis*: Wherever the mind causes effects by means of in-
adequate ideas, i.e., as a partial cause, it may be destroyed.
The Human Activity Thesis* implied by IIIp6 is already equivalent

IIIp9’s Human Activity Thesis. So Spinoza’s account of the mind’s ef-
fects insofar as it is an adequate cause is complete already at IIIp6.
What is new at 1 is an account of the mind’s striving insofar as it is an
inadequate, or partial, cause. Spinoza attempts, in the argument follow-
ing IIIp6, to provide more information about what the human mind
does insofar as it is a partial cause by incorporating his account of
human essence into his striving doctrine. Since, by IIIp3d, the essence
of the mind is made up adequate and inadequate ideas and since, by
IIIp7, the striving by which a particular thing strives to persevere in
being is nothing but the essence of the thing, Spinoza uses a substitu-
tion of equivalents at IIIp9d to show that, insofar as it has inadequate
ideas as well as adequate ideas, the mind strives to persevere in being.
Given what Spinoza has established at IIIp6 about what it means to
strive to persevere in being, however, this result, insofar as it character-
izes those of the mind’s effects which follow from inadequate ideas,
amounts to a counterfactual claim that is, on the face of it, quite unin-
formative. The Human Activity Thesis is informative because it con-
cerns adequate ideas, and adequate ideas, after all, are those by which
the mind acts as a total cause. So to say that the mind has the effect of
perseverance in being insofar as it has adequate ideas is to make a bold
claim: if the mind ever is the total cause of some effect (in Spinoza’s
terms, if it ever really acts), then that effect will be its own perseverance
in being. The Human Passivity Thesis, however, specifically concerns
those cases in which the mind has effects insofar as it has inadequate
ideas. To say, as IIIp9 does, that the results of IIIp6 apply to the human
mind insofar as it has inadequate ideas is just to say that, where it is af-
fected by external causes (this is what it means to have effects from in-
adequate ideas) the mind acts in such a way that its effects, were it not

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affected by external causes, would be its own perseverance in being (this

is what it means to strive to persevere in being). In other words, IIIp9
only describes the mind’s action, where it is a partial cause, in terms
of the effects it would have had if it had been a total cause. It does not
describe any of the mind’s actual effects as a partial cause at all. The
Human Passivity Thesis* at least tells us one effect that the mind might
produce insofar as it is a partial cause: it might, with help from an ex-
ternal cause, produce its own destruction. The Human Passivity Thesis
does not, on the face of it, even convey this much. IIIp9 leaves the
effects of mind as a partial cause wholly undefined. What Spinoza
requires in order to make the Human Passivity Thesis informative is
some account of the human mind’s inadequate ideas under which in-
formation of the sort the thesis does provide, information that the
human mind’s activity where it has inadequate ideas is the same kind of
activity it has where it has adequate ideas, reveals some further definite
characterization of the mind insofar as it is passive. I believe that he
provides such an account in later propositions of Part III of the Ethics.
In Section 5, I will be in a position to show the importance of The Pas-
sivity Thesis to Spinoza’s ethical project.
2. IIIp9 and Conscious Desire
IIIp9 is not a comprehensive theory of conscious desire for Spinoza.

One might mistake 1 for such a theory if it were read out of context.
After all, one natural reading of ‘strives’ (conatur) is “consciously de-
sires.” We have already seen, however, in a detailed examination of the
context of 1, that this reading is inappropriate. Striving, in the argu-
ment leading up to IIIp9, has a great deal to do with efficient causation
and nothing to do with conscious desire. Indeed Spinoza does not men-
tion consciousness at all in Part III until the third thesis of IIIp9 itself.
3, then, is a much better candidate for a comprehensive theory of con-
scious desire or, what at least approaches that, a theory of conscious-
ness of desire:
3 The mind is conscious of this its striving.
Perhaps it is 3 that Curley relies on in claiming that, for Spinoza, telling people to
seek to preserve themselves would be a waste of words. Curley’s interpretation
requires, recall, not merely that people seek the preservation of their being as an end
among others or as an occasional object of desire – I grant this point on the strength
of IVp44s in which Spinoza calls insane those who exclusively seek objects other than
their own preservation – but also that people seek it “as far as they can”. Otherwise,

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there would still be a point to Spinoza recommending that people seek the preserva-
tion of their being. If 3 were a theory of conscious desire it would come close to fit-
ting Curley’s bill, for 3 on this reading amounts to the claim that as we strive, so do
we consciously desire, and 1 has already established that all of our striving, albeit
often in the weak, counterfactual sense of the Human Passivity Thesis, is a striving
for perseverance in being.
I shall argue here, however, that 3 is not a theory of conscious desire

either, and, in particular, that it should not be read as the claim that all
human conscious desire is necessarily a desire for perseverance in being.
It is a much more modest claim, the claim that all human minds are
conscious of their strivings in some way and not necessarily veridically.
In other words, striving affects consciousness, but it does not reproduce
itself there. I shall attempt to establish first that the interpretation I pro-
pose is a possible one, that is, that ‘conscius’ at IIIp9 might, given Spi-
noza’s other uses of the term, mean what I take it to mean. Then I shall
argue that the interpretation I propose is the best among the interpre-
tative options.
One natural reading, perhaps the most natural reading of the English
translation of the sentence in question, “the mind is conscious of this,
its striving”, would suggest an interpretation of 3 that supports Curley’s
view: in striving to persevere in being, the mind consciously thinks
about its striving for perseverance or desires to persevere, or, perhaps,
it knows itself to strive in this way. I shall call uses of ‘conscius’ in this
sense, intensional uses, uses which make consciousness cognitive, i.e.,
related to the subject’s knowledge of or beliefs about the object of con-
sciousness:
The Intensional Use: ‘X is conscious of Y’ implies that X knows or has beliefs
about Y.
One way in which a mind may know or have beliefs about striving,
one might suppose, is by consciously desiring the object of striving. Spi-
noza’s definition of desire as human striving together with conscious-
ness of it at IIIp9s is consistent with such a supposition. So, if Spinoza’s
use of ‘conscius’ is an intensional use, then 3 might be a theory of con-
scious desire.
The alternative reading I propose is one on which, by asserting that
the mind is conscious of its striving, Spinoza means that striving causes
some of the contents of the mind’s conscious awareness. If Spinoza uses
‘conscious’ in this way, then his use is extensional:
The Extensional Use: ‘X is conscious of Y’ does not imply that X knows or has be-
liefs about Y.

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Where extensional uses of ‘conscious’ occur in English, they occur in

discussions very like Spinoza’s here, in the context of discussions of the
causal sources of a perceiving agent’s cognitive states. Brandt and Kim,
for example, describe an agent who is conscious (intensional use) of a
blue patch.11 The sensation is caused by a square patch in front of the
agent reflecting light of particular wavelengths. The agent is conscious,
in some sense, of a square patch reflecting light of particular wave-
lengths, but, of course the agent may never have heard of wavelengths.
So he is conscious of the square patch reflecting light of particular
wavelengths in an extensional sense only. On the view of 3 as an exten-
sional use of ‘conscious’, Spinoza’s definition of desire associates
human conscious desires with striving, but does not necessarily make
striving the content of any cognitive states: even if I strive for self-pres-
ervation and that striving affects my conscious desires in some way, it is
not necessarily true that I have any knowledge of or beliefs about striv-
ing. In particular, it is not necessarily true that the object of striving,
self-preservation, is the object of my conscious desire.
There is no definite trend in Spinoza’s use of ‘conscius’ that requires taking ‘con-
scius’ in one or the other sense at 3. Some of Spinoza’s uses of ‘conscius’ and a similar
term ‘conscientia’ are best understood as intensional uses. The clearest such use is in
a phrase that Spinoza uses repeatedly to stress, what is a theme of this paper, the dis-
junction between what people are conscious of in desiring and acting and what really
causes them to desire and act: “They are conscious certainly of their actions and ap-
petites, but they are ignorant of the causes by which they are determined to want
something.” (“Sunt suarum quidem actionem et appetitum conscii, sed ignari causa-
rum, a quibus ad aliquid appetendum determinantur.”)12 Here the explicit distinction
Spinoza draws between the cause of agents’ conscious appetites and what they are
conscious of in appetition requires taking his use of ‘conscius’ as an intensional use.
Other intensional uses include some in which he uses the terms to introduce indirect
speech, IVApp32 and IIIp30d. At IVApp32 Spinoza writes, “if we are conscious that
we have done our duty” (“si conscii simus, nos functos nostro officio fuisse”). At
IIIP30d, he writes, using ‘conscientia’, that an affect of a man is connected with the
consciousness of himself as a cause (“laetitia cum conscientia sui tanquam causa”). In
these propositions, clearly, the content of the mental states of the agents described is
an awareness of having done his duty or an awareness of the self as a cause. However
other uses of ‘conscius’ in the Ethics are clearly extensional, referring to the causes of
our conscious states of which we may or may not have knowledge or belief. At Vp34s,
11 I adopt the distinction between ‘intensional’ and ‘extensional’ from Brandt and
Kim 1967, 334f.
12 See Ethics, I Appendix, IIp35s, IIIp2s, IV Preface, and Letter LXII, addressed to
G.H. Schuller, October, 1674 for instances of this phrase.

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Spinoza writes that some people “are conscious certainly of the eternity of their
mind, but they confuse this with duration” (“eos suae mentis aeternitatis esse quidem
conscios, sed ipsos eandem cum duratione confundere”). Eternity of the mind, as it is
described in this passage, certainly has something to do with the agent’s cognitive
states. Perhaps, as in the case of the square patch, it affects conscious awareness. Spi-
noza, however, specifically states that these agents have beliefs about something
different from eternity when they are conscious of eternity. When they are (exten-
sionally) conscious of eternity of the mind, they are (intensionally) conscious of du-
ration. IIIp30d is another instance of an extensional use. Spinoza writes there that
“man is conscious of himself through his affects” (“Homo sui sit conscius per affec-
tiones”). Spinoza implies by emphasizing the mediating function of the affects that
one’s experience of oneself may not be veridical. In fact, he supplies a description of
the cognitive contents of conscious experience later in the sentence, in the passage
I have already cited above as an intensional use: man is intentionally conscious of
himself as a cause. He believes himself to be a cause. Then, in the scholium to the
proposition, Spinoza emphasizes the fact that a person may be mistaken in thinking
himself a cause of another’s laetitia. The cause of the man’s conscious experience,
himself, where he is not a cause of another’s laetitia must in these cases be different
from what the man believes, namely that he is a cause of another’s laetitia. Spinoza’s
detailed description in IIIp30d and its scholium of the various ways, some veridical
some erroneous, in which a man might regard himself when he is conscious of himself
would be unnecessary if the use of ‘conscius’ were already an intensional use.
So Spinoza uses the term in both senses in the Ethics, and we must
rely upon a reading of IIIp9 and its demonstration to determine the
most likely meaning of ‘conscious’ in 3. Attention to the demonstration
of IIIp9 strongly suggests that we read the occurrence of ‘conscious’ at
3 as an extensional use. At IIIp9d Spinoza relies upon IIp23 for evi-
dence that mind is necessarily conscious of its striving. If IIp23 were to
support a reading of 3 as containing an intensional use, under which
consciousness of one’s striving to persevere amounts to consciously de-
siring to persevere, it would have to be a very robust doctrine, establish-
ing that the mind’s experience of itself is veridical. IIp23, though, is a
far more modest doctrine which explicitly states the limitations of our
self-knowledge: “The mind does not know itself except insofar as it per-
ceives ideas of conditions [affectionum] of the body.” Because, by IIp19,
one’s knowledge of one’s own body is limited and susceptible to error,
IIp23’s finding that a mind’s knowledge of itself is limited by its knowl-
edge of body suggests that one’s knowledge of one’s own mind will also
be limited and susceptible to error.13 Such a proposition could hardly
13 Margaret Wilson’s discussion of self-knowledge in Spinoza influences this dis-

cussion. Wilson 1996, 100.

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be the source of a doctrine on which the mind’s perception of its striv-

ing to persevere is veridical.
Moreover, Spinoza’s reference at 3 back to these propositions in
part II constitutes positive evidence that 3 is a thesis about the causes of
our conscious desires. IIp19’s reliance upon IIp7, Spinoza’s famous
doctrine of causal parallelism between mind and body, and IIp23’s ref-
erence to the causal nature of body (by way of IIp16) both suggest that
Spinoza is relying upon a point about the causal effects of body on
body, and using IIp7 to show us the implications of that view for our
understanding of the causal effects of mind on mind. Because the lan-
guage of IIp23 and the propositions it depends upon is causal, the use
of IIp23 at IIIp9 suggests that IIIp9 likewise concerns the cause, not the
cognitive content of conscious states. 3, then, is the claim that mind per-
ceives its striving in the same sense that, by IIp23 it perceives any of the
ideas which constitute it: striving affects conscious awareness, but the
mind does not necessarily have knowledge of, or even beliefs about,
striving. IIIp9 relates striving to the content of human conscious desire
in some way, but IIIp9 does not amount to an account of any of the
cognitive states an agent has in desiring. It does not describe what ob-
jects people consciously desire or how they conceive of those objects in
desiring them. It only describes the cause of those desires, whatever
their objects should turn out to be.
3. The Importance of Conscious States to Spinoza’s Ethical Theory
Even if it cannot be found at 3, some account of the causal connection

between striving and the cognitive states of desiring agents is absolutely
required for an understanding of Spinoza’s ethics. Spinoza’s ethical
argument includes an account of the right way of living (Part IV, es-
pecially the Appendix) and an account of how people should go about
mitigating the passions (Part V, especially Vp10s). This normative por-
tion of Spinoza’s project relies upon descriptions of the goods by which
people may attain higher virtue and the means to those goods, both of
which are, at least in significant part, conscious. I shall emphasize in ar-
guing this point the highest good for Spinoza, knowledge of God.
Knowledge of God is of primary importance to the right way of living,
and I shall argue that, for human beings, it is, in the context of Spino-
za’s discussion of the right way of living, an occurrent, conscious men-
tal state. Moreover, the means by which, on Spinoza’s account at the
beginning of Part V, we keep knowledge of God present to mind – pri-

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marily “connecting ideas”, “ordering ideas”, and “applying maxims” –

are also activities we are to take up consciously. So conscious thoughts
and desires affect and are affected by striving. This must be the case
in Spinoza’s view. He positively relies on such connections, for he pre-
scribes the seeking of knowledge and the continual application of
maxims as means to virtue, and virtue cannot be conceived for Spinoza
independently of striving (IVp22c).
The first point, that the highest good, the knowledge of God, is a
conscious mental state, can be shown most clearly by means of a com-
parison between two passages of central importance to Spinoza’s ethi-
cal theory, IVp52d and IV App. 4. At IVp52d, Spinoza writes that ac-
quiescentia in se ipso (roughly, self-satisfaction) arises in a man while he
considers (contemplatur) himself and his power of acting, and (a point
that will be of importance later) that the greatest acquiescentia in se ipso
arises when a man, while he contemplates himself (dum se ipsum con-
templatur), clearly and distinctly perceives (percipit) what follows from
his power of acting. Spinoza’s choice of words suggests that he de-
scribes conscious, occurrent mental states in this demonstration: con-
templating and perceiving consciously and at some particular time is
what gives rise to acquiescentia. At IV App. 4, Spinoza gives the knowl-
edge of God a role identical, or nearly identical, to that he gives to con-
templating and perceiving oneself at IVp52d. He writes at IV App. 4
that blessedness is nothing but that same acquiescentia animi that arises
out of the intuitive knowledge of God and then, among all possible ob-
jects of knowledge that might be part of the knowledge of God, Spi-
noza names specifically only knowledge of oneself as part of the knowl-
edge, thereby emphasizing its importance and reinforcing the similarity
of this passage to IVp52d.14 Consideration of one’s own power of act-
ing, then, is at least an important kind of knowledge of God; because
14 See Totaro 1994, 68f. and Rutherford 1999, 458f. Totaro and Rutherford have
raised the question of whether the affects described in these different passages are
different. I do not think that they are. I think that Spinoza simply emphasizes dif-
ferent senses of the same affect by using different terms: acquiescentia animi is the
same affect as acquiescentia in se ipso under a strictly mental description. However,
I have included the different terms in order not to gloss over a possible distinction.
I do not think, at any rate, that the point I make here stands or falls with the ques-
tion of whether Spinoza has different varieties of acquiescentia. Even if they are dif-
ferent, it remains nonetheless true that in one case, where Spinoza describes an
affect arising out of knowledge, that knowledge is clearly an occurrent, conscious
mental state: a considering. If the other case concerns a slightly different kind of
affect, it should be nonetheless clear that by knowledge in that case Spinoza means,
likewise, an occurrent, conscious mental state.

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considering oneself is clearly a conscious, occurrent considering, we

should consider the knowledge of God also at least in part, an con-
scious, occurrent considering. Spinoza’s highest good, then, is, at least
in part, a conscious thought with a particular kind of cognitive content,
including as an important part knowledge of one’s own causal powers.
The means by which people can come to resist the passions and make
possible self-knowledge and the knowledge of God are likewise con-
scious. Generally, Spinoza thinks that passion can be resisted by “or-
dering and connecting” affections of the body, by which he principally
means associating thoughts and images (Vp10s). Spinoza calls the rules
for ordering and connecting affections “maxims of life”. Two maxims
he mentions, for example, are that hate is to be conquered by love and
fear by tenacity. We are to come to feel love, tenacity and other positive
affects by means of conscious techniques that help us to keep the rules
in mind. At Vp10s, Spinoza writes:
The best thing, therefore, that we can do while we do not have perfect knowledge
of our affects is to conceive of […] sure maxims of life, to commit them to memory,
and to apply them continually to particular cases we frequently meet in life, so
that our imagination will be affected by them extensively, and they will always be
manifest [in promptu] to us.15
Surely conceiving of maxims, applying them, and committing them to

memory are conscious processes. These processes, on Spinoza’s view,
increase our virtue or, at least, prevent our virtue from being decreased
by the influence of the passions. They do so moreover by affecting the
imagination.16 Here is the end of Vp10s:
15 My translation may be controversial here. One might, and Curley and Shirley
both do, render ‘in promptu’ in such a way that one might think that Spinoza does
not insist that we always be thinking of the maxims and will be content so long as
we can recall them readily. Curley uses, simply, ‘ready’; Shirley uses ‘ready to
hand’. In my opinion, Spinoza’s reference to imagination, which is always con-
scious for him, warrants a stronger translation: he thinks it would be best if we
were always consciously thinking of the maxims. This is the means by which we
resist passions, which, after all, are liable to strike at any moment and render an
agent incapable of using resources that he has when not under their influence. Of
course, even when we are consciously aware of the good, we may still be over-
whelmed by passion.
16 ‘Imaginor’ and forms of that term invariably refer to the content of conscious
mental states for Spinoza. IIIp52D, which forms part of the basis for Spinoza’s
discussion of the maxims for living in Part V, is a revealing example: “At the same
time that we imagine [imaginamur] an object which we have seen with others, we
will also immediately bring back to mind the others, and so from the viewing
[contemplatione] of the one, we immediately come to view the other.”

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One who takes pains to moderate his affects and appetites solely from the love of
liberty, will endeavor [nitetur] to the extent he can, to learn the virtues and their
causes, and to fill his mind with the joy that arises from the true knowledge of
them – but will contemplate men’s vices, disparage men, and rejoice at the false ap-
pearance of liberty as little as possible. One who observes these maxims carefully
(indeed they are not troublesome) and practices them, will in a short time be able
to direct his actions for the most part according to the command of reason.
Conscious mental states, then, are important to Spinoza’s normative
ethics. What will cause us to attain more virtue is (veridically) to con-
sider ourselves, our power of action, and other causal properties that
Spinoza associates with God. What will help us to do this continually, is
to apply maxims continually, so that they continually affect our imagin-
ation, while at the same time avoiding other passion-laden thoughts.17
In order to see why Spinoza believes that these kinds of conscious
thoughts can make us virtuous, we must know his view about the causal
powers certain kinds of conscious thoughts have. In particular, because
desire is striving together with consciousness of it, and because Spinoza
defines virtue in terms of a person’s striving, we require first and fore-
most an account of the causal powers of conscious desire.
In proposing that conscious desire affects and is affected by striving for Spinoza,
I do not mean to suggest that it is not itself also an element of striving. Spinoza’s
initial definition of desire at IIIp9s clearly shows that it is: “Desire is appetite
together with consciousness of the same.” (Spinoza reserves the term ‘appetite’ for
striving related to mind and body.) Also, in the first of his Definitions of the Affects
at the end of Part III, Spinoza de-emphasizes the importance of the distinction and
allows that the term desire (‘cupiditas’) may refer to any of a person’s strivings. Of
course this is permissible because, by 3 and IIIp9s we are, in desiring, (extensionally)
conscious of our striving, so by referring to any particular desire, Spinoza also refers
to a particular appetite and vice-versa. Admission of the identity of desire and striv-
ing, though, should not lead to the conclusion that consciousness is not important to
Spinoza’s accounts of desire, the passions, and their control.18
17 See also Vp11–16, and Vp20. In these propositions, Spinoza speaks specifically
of images (imagines), which makes it plain that he describes the content of con-
scious experience. Vp15, in particular, is important, as it reemphasizes the con-
nection between God and the knowledge of oneself that IV App. 4 has intro-
duced.
18 See Della Rocca 1996, 216 and Bennett 1984, 259. I am uncertain how precisely
to understand Della Rocca’s proposal to understand desire in terms of striving.
Striving is after all something of which we are conscious, so he need not, necess-
arily, in making this proposal, downplay the importance of consciousness to Spi-
noza’s psychology. From his functional descriptions of desire, which emphasize
what people do as opposed to what people consciously think in acting, however,

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Perhaps those interpreters who think consciousness unimportant to Spinoza

worry about any view that distinguishes particular desires from particular strivings.
Indeed, it would be odd, given Spinoza’s definition of desire, to suggest that, on Spi-
noza’s view, in changing our conscious states alone and without changing our uncon-
scious states we can change our striving because that would amount to attributing to
Spinoza a claim about the causal power of an impossible change. A change to a con-
scious state necessarily just is a change to oneself, for Spinoza; in particular, a change
in one’s conscious desire, for Spinoza, surely involves a change in one’s striving. But
I do not suggest otherwise.
I suggest only that, on Spinoza’s view, in changing a conscious desire (and so
changing oneself) a person can resist and change other desires (other features of one-
self). As Spinoza writes in the same Definition of the Affects, people are often in a
state in which they have various conflicting strivings. All striving is, in part con-
scious, so all striving can be described as a desire in the sense of IIIp9s. It should not
seem odd to suggest that, for Spinoza, by changing one of one’s various strivings one
can affect others. That is precisely what I suggest, and I emphasize that this is to be
done for Spinoza by means of techniques that we apply consciously to our conscious
desires. The techniques are effective just because our conscious desires are also our
strivings, but to understand why Spinoza thinks that they are effective, we must know
what sort of systematic relationship he finds between the cognitive content of our
conscious desires and striving. To discount the importance of conscious desire in the
Ethics is simply to abandon the attempt to understand how Spinoza thinks his nor-
mative ethics can help people to attain virtue.
4. The Content of Conscious Desire
Spinoza offers a thesis concerning the cognitive content of conscious

desires at IIIp28:
We strive to promote the occurrence of anything which we imagine to be condu-
cive to laetitia; but we strive to avert or destroy whatever we imagine to be incom-
patible with this thing or [sive] whatever is conducive to tristitia.
I suspect that he means to do so. Bennett is more explicit: “Spinoza says that con-
sciousness is relevant to whether ‘desire’ is the right word, but has no substantive
import.” This seems wrong to me. What has no substantive import for Spinoza
is whether we use the term ‘appetite’ or the term ‘desire’. Since people are con-
scious of their strivings by 3, they will be conscious, in the sense of 3, of all of
their appetites, and so all of their appetites will be desires. Spinoza does not write
anything to suggest, as Bennett claims he does, that consciousness itself has no
substantive import; his specific reference to consciousness in 3 and his extensive
appeal to the importance of our conscious states in Parts IV and V shows that he
would be unlikely to endorse such a view.

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IIIp28 characterizes desires in terms of properties, rightly understood

relational properties, that human beings anticipate in the objects of de-
sires.19 Human beings will desire any object if they imagine that, in the
presence of that object, they will experience laetitia; conversely, they
will be averse to any object if they imagine that, in the presence of that
object, they will experience tristitia. I shall argue here that IIIp28, al-
though it may not initially appear to be so, is an exhaustive character-
ization of desire for Spinoza. This view accommodates the finding of
IVp44s that there are no restrictions on the possible objects of con-
scious human desire, while, at the same time, it characterizes how desir-
ing agents conceive of those objects.20 If it is exhaustive, IIIp28 accom-
19 I draw this point, that, on Spinoza’s view, laetitia and tristitia are mistakenly
thought to be properties of objects whereas they are in fact relational properties
that emerge from the causal interaction of objects with human agents, from I Ap-
pendix and IIIp39s. At I Appendix, Spinoza writes that ignorant people call the
nature of a thing “good” or “evil” when in fact these ideas only reflect the way in
which the imagination is affected. I understand this to mean that people take
good and evil to be properties that things possess inherently whereas, in fact, they
are only relational properties: e.g., aspirin is not good; it is good for particular
people in particular situations. At IIIp39s, Spinoza identifies good and evil in
human beings’ own uses of those terms with laetitia and tristitia. Thus, in think-
ing some object “good” or “evil”, an ignorant agent anticipates laetitia or tristi-
tia in it. A knowledgeable agent, on the hand, will presumably recognize that
good and evil are relational properties, or (if he is also knowledgeable about the
identity of value terms and primary affects), will recognize that laetitia and tris-
titia are relational.
20 Compare, Butler IV, paragraph 7. Spinoza shares Butler’s insight about the dis-
tinction between psychological egoism, which is a theory restricting the objects
of possible desire, and an unrestrictive form of psychological hedonism, which
characterizes desires as yielding gratification in their attainment without restrict-
ing possible objects of desire: “Every particular affection, even the love of our
neighbor, is as really our own affection as self-love; and the pleasure arising from
its gratification is as much my own pleasure as the pleasure self-love would have
from knowing I myself should be happy some time hence, would be my own
pleasure […]. There is then [despite a verbal confusion under which a psychologi-
cal theory of self-love might be confused with a psychological theory of pleasure
arising from the gratification of desire] a distinction between [1] the cool prin-
ciple of self-love or general desire of our own happiness, as one part of our nature
and one principle of action and [2] the particular affections toward particular ex-
ternal objects, as another part of our nature and another principle of action.
How much soever therefore is to be allowed to self-love, yet it cannot be allowed
to be the whole of our inward constitution, because, you see, there are other parts
or principles which come into it.” Similarly, for Spinoza, whatever part of our de-
sires is aimed at self-preservation, there are other desires which aim at other ob-
jects. Still, human beings expect all desires of whatever kind to yield laetitia or
the avoidance of tristitia in their attainment.

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modates the demand of Spinoza’s normative ethics for some account of

the cognitive content of conscious desire.
IIIp28 appears to characterize human desires toward all objects
which affect us in particular ways: whenever we imagine that a thing
will bring laetitia, we strive for that thing, and whenever we imagine
that a thing will bring the opposite of laetitia, tristitia, we are averse to
that thing. But one might fairly ask whether IIIp28 characterizes all
human desires. The proposition, after all, is silent on objects in which
we anticipate neither laetitia nor tristitia. Nor does Spinoza say at
IIIp28 whether we may not also strive for objects in which we anticipate
tristitia or whether we may not also be averse to objects in which we an-
ticipate laetitia. I shall argue though that Spinoza intends, with one no-
table caveat, to rule out these other possibilities. On Spinoza’s view, we
desire all and only those objects that we imagine will bring laetitia and
we are averse to all and only those object that we imagine will bring tris-
titia.
There are some very general reasons for thinking that IIIp28’s ac-
count of desire is exhaustive. At IIIp56d, Spinoza writes that there are
as many kinds of desire as there are species of the passions of laetitia
and tristitia. This suggests that each kind of desire will also involve
some variety of one of these passions, and IIIp28 has already described
how passion is involved in desire: desire (or aversion) involves the an-
ticipation of laetitia (or tristitia) in some object. So IIIp56d supports
the view that there is no human conscious desire (or aversion) other
than those in which we desire (or are averse to) an object in which we
anticipate laetitia (or tristitia). IIIp57d goes even further. There, Spi-
noza identifies desire in an individual insofar as that individual is af-
fected by external causes with laetitia and tristitia. This suggests that
where striving involves some external object, such as an object of con-
scious desire, striving will also involve laetitia and tristitia. Spinoza’s
general accounts of the affects, and these passages in particular, involve
some very difficult problems, however, and it may be impossible to draw
a satisfactorily coherent account of the affects out them.21 At the very
least, it will be helpful to discuss other, clearer passages.
21 One problem, emphasized in Bennett 1984, 257f., is that IIIp57 and, to a lesser
degree, IIIp56 depend upon taking all varieties of laetitia to be passive, whereas
IIIp58 describes active joys and desires. For me, the specific form of this problem
is that IIIp57 gives me no basis for claiming that active forms of desire – bravery,
spiritedness, and nobility (IIIp59s) – necessarily involve laetitia. I try to address
this problem in the main text. Another problem, which Hoffman 1991, 174 de-

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Spinoza’s various accounts of particular kinds of desire in Part III

show that IIIp28 is an exhaustive account of desire. In the Ethics, every
detailed description of a type of desire includes in the account the
anticipation of either laetitia or tristitia. This fact at least suggests
strongly that all desires do involve one or the other.22 IIIp13 and its
scholium present a good example. In the scholium, Spinoza defines
hate (odium) as a kind of tristitia in which a person, in addition to ex-
periencing the passion, has an idea about the origin of that tristitia in
an external cause. The striving which results from that hate, Spinoza ar-
gues, is a striving to remove and destroy the hated thing and so presum-
ably to avert or remove the tristitia it is thought to have caused. The
proposition itself reports the content of the agent’s thoughts in this
case: “When the mind imagines things which depress or restrain the
body’s power of acting, it strives, as far as it can, to bring back things
that exclude their existence.” The description conforms closely to
IIIp28.
Many of Spinoza’s definitions of varieties of desire include some form of laetitia or
tristitia in the definition. These include: benevolence (associated with pity, a form of
tristitia), IIIp27c3s; ambition or humaneness (associated with the anticipation of
love or hate, forms of laetitia and tristitia respectively, in the attainment of whatever
other people love or hate), IIIp29s; anger and vindictiveness (associated with hate, a
form of tristitia), IIIp40c2s; graciousness or gratitude (associated with love, a form
of laetitia), IIIp41d; cruelty (associated with hatred toward one who loves us),
IIIp41cs; and the various forms of desire Spinoza associates with particular kinds of
objects at IIIp56s, such as gluttony, lust and greed (all associated with immoderate
love). All of these types of desire conform neatly to IIIp28. Those forms of desire that
Spinoza defines without mentioning some form of laetitia or tristitia explicitly in the
definition, do, I think, refer to some form implicitly. One such desire is emulation, a
desire for something because someone else has a similar desire (IIIp27). There is no
particular form of laetitia or tristitia associated with emulation, but, if all other de-
scribes well, is that IIIp57’s identification of desire with laetitia and tristitia ef-
fectively makes desire equivalent to changes in desire (since that is how they are
defined at IIIp11s). This problem in Spinoza does not undermine my interpre-
tation of IIIp57 itself; but it does raise the question of how in general IIIp57 is to
be understood and of whether we should regard it as somehow anomalous within
the rest of Spinoza’s account of the affects in Part III.
22 IIIp56 shows that Spinoza does not think his catalogue of desires in the Ethics
to be exhaustive. I do not think, however, that the proposition invites a reader
to think that there might be varieties of desire unrelated to the anticipation
of laetitia or tristitia. Spinoza here passes over particular species of affects
that he has defined generally, not affects wholly different from those that he does
define.

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sires involve laetitia or tristitia, then the desires of others that we might emulate will
also, barring unusual circumstances.23
The other desires which do not include some form of laetitia in their definition are
the active desires defined at IIIp59s: bravery, spiritedness, nobility and their varieties.
These types of desires he defines solely in terms of their source, reason, and their ob-
jects. The objects of spiritedness and nobility are preservation of being and joining in
friendship with other respectively. In Spinoza’s discussions of particular instances of
active desiring, however, the desires at least resemble strongly desires as they are de-
scribed at IIIp28. One good general example involves nobility. Spinoza argues at
IVp46 that a person who lives by the command of reason will repay another’s hatred,
etc., toward him with nobility. In other words, this person will desire to join in friend-
ship with those who hate him. Spinoza describes why a person might desire to do this
by referring to the varieties of tristitia that the noble person will avoid by acting in
this way: he will not himself be affected by hate (IVp46d); he does not want to live
miserably (IVp46s). In short, he will join in friendship with those who hate him, as
IIIp28 suggests, in order to avoid tristitia. In another discussion of one of these forms
of desire, Spinoza describes an instance of spiritedness at IVp69. In this passage,
reminiscent of Plato’s Laches in its emphasis on the close relationship between
knowledge and virtue, Spinoza argues that the spirited man may choose flight in
avoiding danger. He then describes danger as the cause of tristitia or some particular
forms of it. So, at least in this example, the free man desires to flee an object in order
to avoid tristitia; the case fits IIIp28 exactly. So, although Spinoza neglects to men-
tion in the definitions of the types of active desires that they also involve the con-
scious seeking of laetitia and aversion to tristitia, his accounts of particular instances
of active desire nevertheless conform to IIIp28.
On this basis, I conclude that IIIp28 is for Spinoza an exhaustive de-
scription of the contents of conscious desire. The only candidates for
exceptions to the universality of IIIp28 are, possibly, the desire to emu-
late another, which I have already discussed, and Spinoza’s maximiza-
tion clauses, IVp65 and IVp66, in which he argues that we should pur-
sue some evils and forgo some goods out of considerations of our own
long term interests. Spinoza associates laetitia and tristitia with good
and evil respectively (IIIp39s). So, in effect, he appears to suggest in
these propositions that it is sometimes rational to desire something one
knows to bring tristitia. And, if he thinks it rational, he must also think
23 One might imagine, I suppose, a kind of Iliadic scenario, in which Achilles wants
Briseis simply because he imagines that Agamemnon wants her and Agamemnon
want Briseis simply because he imagines that Achilles wants her, and in which
neither’s desire incorporates the anticipation of any sort of joy in having Briseis.
Such a case would be possible under Spinoza’s definition of emulation; but it is
not, it seems to me, what Spinoza has in mind. At any rate, it would make only a
very rare exception to the universality of IIIp28.

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it possible. So IVp65 and IVp66 present apparent exceptions to IIIp28.

Spinoza’s view that the pursuit of tristitia is only rational when one
foresees greater good or lesser evil in the long run provides an instruc-
tive basis for a response to this problem, however. It suggests that the
person who rationally desires evil has a complex conscious psychologi-
cal state, in which he pursues an object in the distant future, a greater
good for example, by means of an object in the immediate future, a
lesser evil, for example. Such a person, then, would have an expectation
of laetitia or avoiding tristitia then even while passing over present
laetitia or accepting present tristitia: “For an evil, which is supposed to
be lesser, is in such a case really good, and the good, on the other hand,
evil” (IVp65c, my emphasis). Such desires, reconstrued in this way, con-
form to IIIp28. Nor is there reason to suppose that Spinoza’s tacit ad-
mission of the possibility of pursuing tristitia when it is rational to do
so, i.e., when one is really pursuing laetitia or avoiding worse tristitia,
amounts to an admission that it is also possible in other circumstances.
To the contrary, Spinoza seems at IVp65 and IVp66 to advertise as one
of the marks of rationality an ability that those who are less rational
markedly lack, a kind of discipline which allows one to undertake pres-
ent tristitia or forgo present laetitia.24
5. Laetitia, Tristitia, and the Power to Persevere in Being
Spinoza provides a universal characterization of the content of human

conscious desires in terms of the affects agents anticipate in desiring
only: agents desire only any object that they imagine will bring laetitia
24 As Donald Rutherford has suggested to me in conversation, it may be useful to

compare Spinoza to the Cyrenaics on this point. Spinoza, as I understand him,
does not think it rational (or even possible) that people might pursue any object
in which they anticipate, on balance, tristitia. In this respect, he is like the Cyre-
naics. However, Spinoza thinks it rational to accept present tristitia as a compo-
nent of a complex object of desire, in which, on balance, the agent expects laeti-
tia. Moreover, Spinoza at least thinks it possible that an agent may anticipate
(even rationally anticipate) laetitia in the distant future and he distinguishes be-
tween degrees of laetitia, in valuing acquiescentia above for example. In these re-
spects, he would differ from the Cyrenaics. The root of the difference, I think, is
that Spinoza has a conception of laetitia and tristitia which admits of a variety of
quality and intensity in the affects whereas the Cyrenaics operate on a univocal
concept of pleasure. Thus, for Spinoza, it makes sense to say that a person is, at a
single point in time, suffering in one way but thriving in another. But for the
Cyrenaics it does not make sense. For them there is only the question of the pres-
ence or absence of a single kind of feeling.

Authenticated
and they are averse to only any object they imagine will bring tristitia.
He does not restrict the possible objects of desire. Agents might desire
any object from one of these bases; indeed in some passages it seems as
though Spinoza holds that agents might desire any object on either of
these bases.25 But it does not follow from the fact that one can imagine
that any object will bring laetitia that any object may in fact do so.
I shall argue here that the only objects that bring laetitia, on Spinoza’s
view, are those that increase the mind’s striving to persevere in being
(and the only objects which bring tristitia are those that decrease the
same power). The greedy and the ambitious may indeed desire wealth
and esteem because they associate them with laetitia, then, but when-
ever these objects fail to help them persevere in being, they do not get
what they imagined they would in getting what they desire. The corre-
spondence between the experience of laetitia and tristitia and an in-
crease and decrease in striving, respectively, is the connection between
our conscious desires and the striving to persevere in being that Spi-
noza requires in order to build an ethics based upon maxims agents
apply consciously. Spinoza can support rules concerning the objects of
conscious desire because a desire in which the expectation of laetitia is
warranted will be one which, if the object of desire is attained, increases
the agent’s striving to persevere in being.
In order to establish the identity of laetitia with an increase the mind’s striving to
persevere in being, I have to resort, once again, to a chain of identities in the Ethics (a
similar chain might establish the identity of tristitia with a decrease in the mind’s
striving):
25 IIIp51 makes a point that suggests this view in Spinoza: a single object can affect
different men, and even one man at different times, differently. IVp63 makes a
similar point with specific reference to conscious desires and aversions as motives
for action. There Spinoza suggests that one may do many things, such as eat
healthy food (second scholium), from an aversion to death rather than from a de-
sire for life. In this case, of course, the two agents are not affected in opposite
ways by the same object; the second is not averse to life. But they do have funda-
mentally different kinds of motives which move them to pursue the same object.
Whether IIIp51 holds for any object at all, which the view in question would
require, is unclear to me. The interpretation of IVp20s is of central importance
here. Death seems a good candidate for an object that one could not (sanely) de-
sire on Spinoza’s view. Yet, if one interprets Spinoza’s account of Seneca’s death
as an example of virtue given difficult circumstances, then it would seem that Spi-
noza does allow that one might seek death-at-one’s-own-hand as a means of
avoiding something worse (death-at-another’s-hand). And, it seems to follow
that, if this sort of reasoning is possible for human agents, then it, like any other
object of desire, should involve the imagination either of laetitia or of tristitia.

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Laetitia = a passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection.

A passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection = whatever increases
the mind’s power of thinking.
Whatever increases the mind’s power of thinking = whatever increases the mind’s
striving to persevere in being.
Therefore, Laetitia = whatever increases the mind’s striving to persevere in being.
Spinoza introduces laetitia and tristitia at IIIp11s in terms of changes in the mind’s
perfection: “By laetitia I shall understand in what follows a passion, by which the
mind passes to a greater perfection. By tristitia, however, a passion by which the same
passes to a lesser perfection.” The proposition preceding the scholium refers, how-
ever, not to the mind’s changeable perfection, but to its changeable power: “Whatever
increases or decreases, aids or represses, our body’s power of acting, the idea of this
same thing increases or decreases, aids or represses, our mind’s power of thinking.”
So there is reason to suppose that the perfectionist language of IIIp11s simply rede-
scribes an increased power of thinking as a greater perfection and a decreased power
of thinking as a lesser perfection. IIIp59s and Spinoza’s “Definitions of the Affects”
at the end of Part III substantiate this supposition. At IIIp59d Spinoza refers back to
IIIp11 and its scholium in terms of power rather than perfection: “By tristitia we
understand that which decreases or represses the mind’s power of thinking.” And in
the “Definitions of the Affects, III,” in discussing tristitia, he explicitly identifies pas-
sing to a lesser perfection with the decrease or repression of an agent’s power of act-
ing: “[Tristitia is a] passing to a lesser perfection, that is, an action by which a man’s
power of acting is decreased or repressed.” A final step in the chain can be made on
the basis of IIIp57d where Spinoza again refers to IIIp11 and IIIp11s, this time
equating power with the striving to persevere: “Laetitia and tristitia are passions by
which each person’s power or [seu] striving to persevere in being is increased or di-
minished, aided or repressed (IIIp11 and IIIp11s).” A number of interpretative diffi-
culties arise in trying to understand how Spinoza thinks of each of the elements in
the chain of identities and why he thinks them equivalent.26 However, the prominence
26 Prominent among these problems are the seemingly changing relationship be-
tween mind and body with respect to passion across the equivalences; the as-
sumed equivalence of one’s power of action with one’s striving to persevere in the
face of the seemingly explicit rejection of the equivalence at IV Preface; and the
equivalence of perfection with any of these other things in the face of the seem-
ingly conventional notion of perfection at IV Preface and elsewhere.
The relationship between mind and body with respect to striving at III57d is, on
the face of it at least, different from that same relationship with respect to power
as it originally stands at IIIp11 and its scholium. In these earlier passages, Spi-
noza reserves the terms laetitia and tristitia for affects of the mind (see the defi-
nitions quoted in the main text above). They are, presumably by IIIp11, ideas of
corporal affects. But at IIIp57d, Spinoza relates laetitia and tristitia to changes in
appetite and so to changes of mind and body. The use, like the use of ‘desire’ (‘cu-
piditas’) itself by this point in the Ethics is no longer exclusively mental. Perhaps

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of the result in the ethical argument which builds on the psychology of Part III shows
that it is Spinoza’s considered position: it is Spinoza’s tendency to treat the affects as
increases or decreases in a mind’s striving to persevere in being.
Agents, then, will only be warranted in expecting laetitia in what
helps them to persevere. This point sheds some light on a problem I in-
troduced in Section 1. The problem was that, on the face of it, the
Human Passivity Thesis*, which follows from an analysis of the argu-
ment of Part III up to IIIp6, appears to be more informative than the
Human Passivity Thesis, which presumably incorporates new general
premises such as, most importantly, the premise from IIIp3d and IIIp7
the problem may be addressed in the same way as the problem in the use of ‘de-
sire’: laetitia just is an increase in striving, although the agent experiencing laeti-
tia may not be aware of this fact. Thus Spinoza may refer to the affect by either
term but may also reserve the term with a specialized mental sense for an agent’s
own conscious experience of the affect.
The question of whether Spinoza does or does not identify an agent’s power of
action with his striving to persevere is, in the absence of a solution like Bennett’s
in which we simply discount anything Spinoza writes at IV Preface, must depend
upon distinctions that I simply cannot draw clearly. At the end of IV Preface, Spi-
noza reiterates his identification of an increased perfection with a greater power
of acting and then denies that a thing’s perfection, which is changeable in this
way, is related to the force with which the thing perseveres in existing. For a dis-
cussion of this problem, see Hoffman 1991, 173f. One might attempt to distin-
guish between the striving to persevere in being and force with which a thing
perseveres in existing, either by distinguishing between striving (conatus) and
force (vis, an unusual term in Part III), or, by distinguishing between being (esse)
and existence (existere). Because the end of IV Preface involves the duration of
life whereas being involves something over and above that, for Spinoza, I think
the latter a more promising route. However, in claiming that people strive to
persevere in being, Spinoza certainly means as a part of that thesis, that people
strive to continue to live (as his Hobbesian political propositions in Part IV make
clear). So I do not see why Spinoza should argue that people’s striving to exist
cannot change when their striving to persevere can. Moreover, there is substan-
tial textual evidence suggesting that Spinoza does not distinguish between exist-
ence and being. III, General Definition of the Affects and IVp14, which refers
back to that definition, describe the passions in terms of existence, and IVp26
refers to striving generally, that is, to IIIp6, in terms of existence rather than
being.
Finally, Spinoza’s identification of an increase and decrease in perfection with,
respectively, an increase or decrease in striving seems at least premature in the ar-
gument. Up until IV Preface in the argument of the Ethics perfectionism seems
something like an unfortunate artifact of human psychology. Then, in IV Preface
and IVD1 and D2, Spinoza postulates a conventional definition of perfection.
His use of perfectionist terms in Part III, then, seems to attribute to nature some-
thing which, elsewhere, Spinoza denies it.

Authenticated
that the mind strives insofar as it has inadequate as well as adequate

ideas, in order to show something new about human striving:
The Human Passivity Thesis*: Wherever the mind causes effects by
means of inadequate ideas, i.e., as a partial cause, it may be destroyed.
The Human Passivity Thesis: Wherever a human mind is a partial
cause of some effect, i.e., wherever it has an effect which follows from
ideas confused in it, that effect will also follow from a characteristic ac-
tivity, which, if the mind were a total cause, would have the effect of its
perseverance in being.
The Human Passivity Thesis* identifies at least one effect that may
follow from a situation of which the human mind is a partial cause, its
own destruction, whereas the Human Passivity Thesis tells us only that
the effects of the human mind as a partial cause follow from an activity
which, in circumstances specifically ruled out of present consideration,
would have the effect of perseverance in being. In the absence of an ac-
count of the sense in which the human mind strives from inadequate
ideas in the same way it strives from adequate ones, the Human Passiv-
ity Thesis’s counterfactual finding is uninformative. Spinoza’s psycho-
logical theses which follow IIIp9, in particular the account of the
content of conscious desire he provides at IIIp28 together with the as-
sociation he posits between the affects and striving at IIIp11s and re-
lated propositions, provide the required account. Striving for self-pres-
ervation from inadequate ideas is the same as striving from adequate
ideas in that striving in all cases involves the expectation either of laeti-
tia or the avoidance of tristitia.
The inadequate ideas involved in striving are inadequate at least in
that the desiring agents’ expectations are not warranted. To take one of
the cases of central concern here, the greedy man’s expectation of laeti-
tia (or perhaps the avoidance of tristitia) in wealth is unwarranted be-
cause wealth cannot itself and independent of particular circumstances
produce the anticipated affect in the mind. It may do so where it helps
the agent to persevere, but the greedy man who desires wealth exclu-
sively either does not know that wealth does this (if it does in a particular
case) or does not desire it with the further end of perseverance in view.
He desires wealth for its own sake. So his expectation of laetitia in
wealth is unwarranted. Striving from adequate ideas, on the other
hand, will be desiring objects in which the expectation of laetitia is war-
ranted. These objects will be those that do help agents to persevere in
being, or, in other words, do increase striving.

Authenticated
Spinoza tells people to try to preserve their being, then, just because
they may, in some cases, not be trying to do so, and, if they are not, they
are likely to be miserable. All people always do try to gain laetitia and
they all identify laetitia with the good, but people may be to different
extents ignorant or incognizant of the fact that laetitia consists exclu-
sively in what preserves one’s being. So they may imagine, mistakenly,
that wealth or esteem or some other kind of object will always bring
them laetitia. Their desires for these other things will prevent them
from desiring self-preservation or, at least, distract them from pursuing
self-preservation to the extent that they should.
Aristotle 1985. Nicomachean Ethics, transl. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis.

Bennett, J. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Indianapolis.
Brandt, R. and Kim, J. 1967. “The Logic of Identity Theory”. The Journal of Philos-
ophy, vol. 64.
Butler, J. 1983. Five Sermons, ed. Stephen Darwall. Indianapolis.
Curley, E. 1973. “Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy”. In Spinoza, ed. Marjorie Grene.
Garden City.
Curley, E. 1988. Behind the Geometrical Method. Princeton.
Della Rocca, M. 1996. “Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology”. In The Cambridge
Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett. Cambridge.
Garrett, D. 2002. “Spinoza’s Conatus Argument”. In Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes,
ed. Olli Koistinen and John Biro. Oxford.
Hoffman, P. 1991. “Three Dualist Theories of the Passions”. Philosophical Topics,
vol. 19, No. 1.
Matson, W. 1977. “Death and Destruction in Spinoza’s Ethics”. Inquiry, vol. 20.
Rutherford, D. 1999. “Salvation as a State of Mind: The Place of Acquiescientia in
Spinoza’s Ethics”. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 7(3).
Schrijvers, M. 1999. “The Conatus and the Mutual Relationship Between Active and
Passive Affects in Spinoza”. In Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, ed. Yir-
miyaho Yovel. New York.
Spinoza, B. 1925. Spinoza Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt. 4 volumes. Heidelberg. Ab-
breviations from the Ethics follow the standard form. Translations from the Ethics
are my own. I have consulted the following translations:
Spinoza, B. 1985. The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol. I, ed. and transl. Edwin Cur-
ley. Princeton.
Spinoza, B. 1992. Ethics. transl. Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis.
Totaro, G. 1994. “Acquiescentia dans la Cinquième Partie de l’‘Ethique’ de Spi-
noza”. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, vol. 130.
Wilson, M. 1996. “Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge”. In The Cambridge Companion
to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett. Cambridge.

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Why Spinoza Tells People To

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Why Spinoza Tells People to Try to Preserve Their Being 119

Why Spinoza Tells People to

Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie 86. Bd., S. 119–145

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to our freedom (Section 3). Spinoza provides the required account of

1. Striving in the Human Mind

The proposition of central importance to this paper is IIIp9. It contains

1, I shall argue in this section, is a two-part thesis about the effects

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6 I write “nearly universally” because Spinoza to my knowledge never attributes

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noza writes “ideae inadaequatae et confusae eadem necessitate consequuntur, ac

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hand, I presume, if an effect follows from an idea that is inadequate in a

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it does insofar as it is not affected by external causes (i.e., as a total

The Human Activity Thesis* implied by IIIp6 is already equivalent

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affected by external causes, would be its own perseverance in being (this

2. IIIp9 and Conscious Desire

IIIp9 is not a comprehensive theory of conscious desire for Spinoza.

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I shall argue here, however, that 3 is not a theory of conscious desire

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Where extensional uses of ‘conscious’ occur in English, they occur in

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13 Margaret Wilson’s discussion of self-knowledge in Spinoza influences this dis-

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be the source of a doctrine on which the mind’s perception of its striv-

3. The Importance of Conscious States to Spinoza’s Ethical Theory

Even if it cannot be found at 3, some account of the causal connection

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marily “connecting ideas”, “ordering ideas”, and “applying maxims” –

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considering oneself is clearly a conscious, occurrent considering, we

Surely conceiving of maxims, applying them, and committing them to

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Perhaps those interpreters who think consciousness unimportant to Spinoza

4. The Content of Conscious Desire

Spinoza offers a thesis concerning the cognitive content of conscious

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IIIp28 characterizes desires in terms of properties, rightly understood

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modates the demand of Spinoza’s normative ethics for some account of

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Spinoza’s various accounts of particular kinds of desire in Part III

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it possible. So IVp65 and IVp66 present apparent exceptions to IIIp28.

5. Laetitia, Tristitia, and the Power to Persevere in Being

Spinoza provides a universal characterization of the content of human

24 As Donald Rutherford has suggested to me in conversation, it may be useful to

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Laetitia = a passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection.

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that the mind strives insofar as it has inadequate as well as adequate

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Aristotle 1985. Nicomachean Ethics, transl. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis.