C I

SPINOZA AND HUMAN FREEDOM

by

RICHARD CHARLES LINDLEY

B.A., University o f Oxford, 1971

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

i n the Department

of

PHILOSOPHY

We accept this thesis as conforming to the

required standard

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

September, 1973
In presenting t h i s thesis i n p a r t i a l fulfilment of the requirements for

an advanced degree at the University of B r i t i s h Columbia, I agree that

the Library s h a l l make i t freely available for reference and study.

I further agree that permission for extensive copying of t h i s thesis

for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or

by his representatives. It i s understood that copying or publication

of t h i s thesis for f i n a n c i a l gain s h a l l not be allowed without my

written permission.

Department of

The University of B r i t i s h Columbia

Vancouver 8, Canada
 ABSTRACT

This thesis provides a c r i t i c a l account o f Spinoza's philosophy o f human

freedom as presented i n his ETHICS. Rather than being a scholarly work on

Spinoza, t h i s essay uses Spinoza as a vehicle f o r shedding l i g h t on problems

regarding the nature o f human freedom, and i t s a t t a i n a b i l i t y and d e s i r a b i l i t y .

A f t e r the introduction, the thesis begins with an introductory sketch

of Spinoza's metaphysics. This sketch i s designed to acquaint the reader

with Spinoza's terminology, and to l a y out the framework into which h i s

philosophy o f freedom was squeezed.

Chapter Two and Three present Spinoza's theories of human bondage and

human freedom, which, i t i s maintained, are i n many respects, j u s t one theory.

These chapters take the form, almost o f a commentary on Parts Four and Five

of ETHICS. The c r i t i c i s m s of Spinoza which are introduced here are, on the

whole, s p e c i f i c c r i t i c i s m s o f arguments used by him, rather than broad

criticisms o f h i s whole enterprise.

The l a s t chapter discusses a recent attack on the d e s i r a b i l i t y and

r a t i o n a l i t y o f pursuing a Spinozist path to freedom. The attack i s a general

attack on Spinozism about freedom as such. I t i s argued that the attack does

contain v a l i d c r i t i c i s m s of Spinozism as expounded by Spinoza i n ETHICS.

However, a truncated form o f Spinoza's p r e s c r i p t i o n f o r freedom i s defended,

a l b e i t rather t e n t a t i v e l y , from this attack.

i.
 //'

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE: SPINOZA'S METAPHYSICS - A SKETCH 5

1. SPINOZA'S ONTOLOGY 5

2. SPINOZA'S THEORY OF CAUSATION. ITS HISTORICAL

CONTEXT 14

3. SPINOZA'S THEORY OF CAUSATION. THE THEORY

ITSELF 22

4. SPINOZA'S THEORY OF CAUSATION. THE THEORY

AT WORK 28

CHAPTER TWO: THE BONDAGE OF HUMAN BEINGS 36

5. THE SOURCE OF SPINOZA'S DETERMINISM 36

6. THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW 41

7. THE SPECIAL TREATMENT OF HUMAN BEINGS 42

8. THE NATURE OF HUMAN BONDAGE 44

9. ESSENCES AND INNER DRIVES 46

10. THE AFFECTS. PART ONE 51

11. ADEQUACY 56

CHAPTER THREE: THE FREEDOM OF HUMAN BEINGS 66

12. INTELLECT AND REASON 66

13. SELF-PRESERVATION • 70

14. FREEDOM THROUGH ADEQUATE IDEAS 82

15. THE AFFECTS. PART TWO 91

CHAPTER FOUR: REASON, EMOTIONS AND HUMANITY 100

16. TO WHAT EXTENT SHOULD WE ABANDON OUR EMOTIONS . 100

17. REACTIVITY 105

BIBLIOGRAPHY 123
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

There are many people without whose help I would have not been able to

write this thesis. I am grateful to them a l l . In particular I am indebted

to my supervisor, Jonathan Bennett, for his encouragement and invaluable

suggestions; to Peter Remnant for his very useful c r i t i c i s m s ; to Bonnie

Johnson, Leonard Angel and Steve Johnson; and f i n a l l y to Andrew Levine, with-

out whose method this thesis would s t i l l be somewhere i n i t s embryonic form.

August 1973.
 SPINOZA AND HUMAN FREEDOM

INTRODUCTION

The great Seventeenth Century Rationalist philosophers, Descartes,

Leibniz and Spinoza, were a l l devoted system-builders. They were epistem-

ological optimists, and firmly believed, as the name 'Rationalist' suggests,

that the basis for this optimism lay i n reason i t s e l f . Each t r i e d to con-

struct a deductively interrelated metaphysical edifice. This makes i t very

d i f f i c u l t to discuss just one aspect of the work of any of these philosophers.

The problem i s even more acute on account of the use of an unfamiliar termin-

ology i n many of t h e i r writings. Wittgentein said that philosophy, far from

changing anything, leaves everything as i t i s . In the face of apparently

w i l d and implausible claims about the world made by Rationalists, one must be

p a r t i c u l a r l y careful to make sure that the author was not making a familiar

claim about the world, using unfamiliar language. There i s thus a more press-

ing need for cross-references to other parts of the author's work than i s re-

quired i n studies of English-speaking philosophers.

Of the great Rationalists Spinoza made the most remorseless attempt to

erect a unified metaphysical system. His major work, ETHICS, was written i n

'geometrical order'. This device was adopted mainly for i t s heuristic value,

but has actually deterred many from even reading Spinoza's philosophy. When

a reader, who i s used to interpreting prose i s confronted with ETHICS, set

out i n geometrical order, with d e f i n i t i o n s , axioms and propositions, he can

easily be overawed, and even more easily discouraged. The different aspects

of Spinoza's philosophy seem to be even more inextricably connected than

those of his two Rationalist r i v a l s .

 2.

In view of these f a c t s , i t might appear bold, or just foolhardy, to

attempt a r e l a t i v e l y short work on Spinoza's theory o f human freedom. This

suspicion could e a s i l y be reinforced by the f a c t that the sections on human

bondage and freedom occur i n ETHICS at the end of what i s supposed to be a

giant deduction, embracing a vast metaphysic, the discussion o f which would

l i e w e l l beyond the scope of an essay such as t h i s . There are two things I

would l i k e to say i n this connection to j u s t i f y my study; one i s about Spinoza,

and the other i s about my approach to h i s philosophy.

Spinoza pursued philosophy with the prime aim o f discovering a way o f

l i f e which would accord anyone who followed i t , true and l a s t i n g happiness,

leaving aside f o r now what that state might be. Thus the t i t l e of h i s major

work i s no coincidence. One can perhaps get one o f the best i n s i g h t s into

Spinoza's interests from looking at the beginning o f the fragment DE

INTELLECTUS EMENDATIONE.

A f t e r experience has taught me that a l l the usual

surroundings of s o c i a l l i f e are v a i n and f u t i l e ;
seeing that none o f the objects o f my fears
contained i n themselves anything e i t h e r good or
bad, except i n so f a r as the mind i s affected by
them, I f i n a l l y resolved to inquire whether there
might be some r e a l good having power to communi-
cate i t s e l f , which would a f f e c t the mind s i n g l y ,
to the exclusion o f a l l e l s e ; whether, i n f a c t ,
there might be anything o f which the discovery
and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous,
supreme, and unending happiness.

Wild: SPINOZA SELECTIONS, p . l .

This 'unending happiness' i s the f i n a l achievement of someone who under-

stands and acts on ETHICS - at l e a s t according to Spinoza. What the e a r l i e r

sections o f ETHICS, which supposedly e n t a i l the theory of freedom, a c t u a l l y

do, apart from anything e l s e , i s to j u s t i f y Spinoza's i n s i g h t f u l views about

 3.

freedom. I t i s not simply that these l a t t e r views stem from the former. One

should not assume that the theory of freedom arose for Spinoza out of an

independently conceived metaphysics. I t i s quite possible for a modern

reader to accept much of the theory of freedom whilst rejecting a l o t of the

metaphysical doctrines of the e a r l i e r parts of ETHICS.

Spinoza's giant edifice i s not as monolithic as i t at f i r s t appears, or

as i t was intended to be. I t i s supported by several towers, which have t h e i r

own foundations, some more shaky than others. In short one does not, despite

appearances which were deliberately generated by Spinoza, have to accept or

reject his philosophy i n i t s entirety.

There are two d i s t i n c t , though overlapping approaches to the history of

philosophy, which r e f l e c t differences of emphasis.

The f i r s t approach i s the more purely h i s t o r i c a l . I t involves finding

out as much as possible about the ideas of the author i n question. One would

t y p i c a l l y try to connect up a l l the ideas of the philosopher with each other

and with those of other thinkers, and then to put him or her on the historico-

philosophical map. One's prime concern would be with what the author actually

said, irrespective of i t s philosophical importance. I t i s a prerequisite for

this scholarly approach that one be able and prepared to go back to m u l t i f a r i -

ous o r i g i n a l documents, including the lesser works of the author, and the

works of his contemporaries and philosophical ancestors.

The other approach concentrates on a philosophical problem, and uses an

h i s t o r i c a l figure to shed l i g h t on the discussion. Here one's prime concern

is with the philosopher's work as an attempt to answer a problem or problems

 4.

with which one i s independently interested.

Whilst stressing the differences between these approaches to history of

philosophy, I want to emphasize that the two concerns are not fundamentally

opposed. Indeed one could hardly use a philosopher to shed l i g h t on a

philosophical problem without finding out what he said. S i m i l a r l y , one who

sought to understand what a philosopher was r e a l l y saying, could not succeed

without having a grasp of the problems which the philosopher was trying to

solve.

For the purposes of this essay I s h a l l be adopting the second approach.

I enter the discussion not primarily as a Spinoza scholar, but as a philosopher

concerned with problems about the nature and p o s s i b i l i t y of human freedom, who

believes that Spinoza said much of these matters which i s p a r t i c u l a r l y thought-

provoking, penetrating, and surprisingly i n s i g h t f u l .

Notwithstanding my primary interest i n the problems with which Spinoza's

ethical writings deal, I now confess that a study of Spinoza's philosophy of

freedom ought to include at least some consideration of his metaphysical views.

In order to understand the l a t t e r sections of ETHICS one must have some

f a m i l i a r i t y and understanding of the e a r l i e r ones, apart from anything else,

to familiarise oneself with the terminology.

After writing a f a m i l i a r i s i n g sketch we s h a l l investigate and c r i t i c i z e

Spinoza's ideas about human bondage and freedom. F i n a l l y a modified Spinozist

view about human freedom w i l l be defended against one l i n e of attack from the

Twentieth Century.
 CHAPTER ONE

SPINOZA'S METAPHYSICS - A SKETCH

In a work of this magnitude i t w i l l be impossible to expound f u l l y

Spinoza's extremely elaborate and obscure metaphysics, l e t alone to provide

a c r i t i c a l account of i t . In this Chapter I s h a l l attempt nothing so bold.

What I s h a l l t r y to do i s to set the scene, so to speak, f o r my discussion

of Spinoza's account of human freedom by presenting a sketch of the sort of

world view which accompanied, and, i n Spinoza's view, led to h i s theory of

freedom.

1. SPINOZA'S ONTOLOGY

Rationalism i s i n i t s nature given to extremes. As Rationalists permit

themselves to use only reason for the establishment of their metaphysics,

they make the most of i t by constructing systems which follow one l i n e of

reasoning to i t s l o g i c a l conclusion. To the extent that a philosopher wavers

from this he ceases to be r a t i o n a l i s t i c . Descartes, for example, who was the

least consistently r a t i o n a l i s t i c of the three great Rationalists was the one

who pursued the most lines of reasoning the shortest distance along the way

to their l o g i c a l conclusions. Leibniz took his l i n e of reasoning to the

extreme of believing that r e a l i t y consisted ultimately of an i n f i n i t y of non-

extended 'monads'; Spinoza took his to the opposite extreme, and held that

r e a l i t y consisted ultimately of a single i n f i n i t e l y extended 'substance' - he

was a monist.
 6.

It i s i n t e r e s t i n g that Leibniz's monadism and Spinoza's monism should

have followed from t h e i r respective d e f i n i t i o n s o f 'substance'.

Spinoza's b a s i c way o f d i v i d i n g up r e a l i t y was into the substantial and

the modal. Thus at the very beginning o f ETHICS we f i n d the following:

By substance, I understand that which i s i n i t s e l f

and i s conceived through i t s e l f ; i n other words,
that, the conception o f which does not need the
conception o f another thing from which i t must be
formed.

By mode, I understand the affections o f substance,

or that which i s i n another thing through which
also i t i s conceived.

Everything which i s , i s e i t h e r i n i t s e l f or i n
another.

That which cannot be conceived through another must

be conceived through i t s e l f .

E.I. DEF. I I I . § V., § AXIOMS I . , § I I .

The common-sense view o f what i s r e a l l y r e a l , i f there be such a view at

a l l , i s that there are a l o t o f substances, such as tables and c h a i r s , animals,

plants, people, b i c y c l e s , e t c . , and that connected with these fundamentally

r e a l substances, are t h e i r states, a f f e c t i o n s , or modes. To take a human ex-

ample, l e t us consider a blush. Should we include i n our d e s c r i p t i o n o f what

i s r e a l l y r e a l i n the world, blushes? The l i n e o f reasoning which i n c l i n e s

us to say 'No' i n answer to t h i s question begins with the recognition that one

could give a complete l i s t o f the contents o f the world, without making any

reference to blushes at a l l . Suppose that Tom i s blushing. To say, awkward

though i t may sound, that Tom has a blush on h i s face, i s not to make any

existence claims f o r some thing on Tom's face, as to say that Tom had a f l y on

his face would be. In the former case one i s merely describing Tom. In this
 7.

sense the blush i s a state, affection, or mode of Tom, and cannot be conceived

without him. I f Tom ceased to be, so would his blush, just as one would have

expected the Cheshire cat's grin to have disappeared with the cat.

This view of the relation between substances and modes i s quite handy for

everyday purposes. Substances e x i s t , so to speak, i n their own r i g h t , and

modes have merely a secondary, or quasi-existence, as the states or affections

of substances. We can 'muddle through' our daily routine with these concepts.

The d i f f i c u l t i e s arise as soon as we s t a r t to lean at a l l heavily on the con-

cept of 'substance'. Both Leibniz and Spinoza believed that 'substance' was

the term by which to characterize the fundamental unit of r e a l i t y . Our notion

of 'substantial' i s roughly equivalent to 'not adjectival on anything'.

Spinoza and Leibniz both accepted t h i s , but pushed t h e i r respective equivalents

of 'not adjectival on anything' to their l o g i c a l extremities.

Leibniz believed that to be not adjectival on anything entailed being

absolutely simple, that i s i n d i v i s i b l e . For i f anything i s d i v i s i b l e i t i s

possible to describe the world without reference to the thing, t a l k i n g only

about the parts. As a Rationalist he was not content with there being some-

thing merely physically i n d i v i s i b l e as the basis of the r e a l i t y of d i v i s i b l e

things. Rather he sought something which was conceptually i n d i v i s i b l e , and

believed that there must be such things, as there are obviously non-simple

things, which are, necessarily, aggregates of simple things. As anything

extended i s at least conceptually d i v i s i b l e , Leibniz held that the r e a l l y real

things were non-extended, and that a l l extended things were ultimately adject-

i v a l on these non-extended 'monads', or simple substances. He believed that

there were i n f i n i t e l y many monads. This seems to be one extreme result of

 8.

trying to push the notion of 'substance' to a l o g i c a l conclusion.

Spinoza defined 'substance' as 'that which i s i n i t s e l f and i s conceived

through i t s e l f . 'Being i n i t s e l f means something l i k e 'existing completely

independently of everything else'. So i f something i s i n i t s e l f i t s existence

necessarily could not be threatened by anything outside i t s e l f . As long as

there i s something outside or other than a substance candidate, the candidate

i s not a substance, for i t would be l o g i c a l l y possible for this external thing

to destroy the candidate. God or Nature i s the only being which can pass these

extremely rigorous tests for substantiality. God or Nature i s equivalent to

the Universe - a l l that there i s . This alone has nothing other than i t , and

thus alone i s ' i n i t s e l f .

The t r i c k for both Leibniz and Spinoza lay i n stretching, i n the one case

'simple', and i n the other 'being i n i t s e l f to their l o g i c a l conclusions,

that i s , pushing a l i n e of reasoning as far as i t w i l l go.

Spinoza believed that substance was 'absolutely i n f i n i t e ' , a Spinozist

notion which i s contrasted with ' i n f i n i t e i n i t s own kind'. Space i s i n f i n i t e

i n i t s own kind, since there i s nothing spatial beyond (the whole of) space.

On the other hand i t i s not absolutely i n f i n i t e , because there are things

other than the whole of space, which ' l i m i t ' i t , such as thoughts.

As Spinoza believed that there i s only one substance, and God i s defined

as:

Being absolutely i n f i n i t e , that i s to say, substance

consisting of i n f i n i t e attributes, each one of which
expresses eternal and i n f i n i t e essence.
E.I. DEF. VI.
 9.

God and Substance must be identical. So one could characterize Spinoza as

a pantheist. In a sense he believed that God i s i n everything a l l the time,

more s p e c i f i c a l l y that God i s the whole of r e a l i t y , that i s , Nature. The

doctrine which i s l a i d out i n Part One of ETHICS, however, seems to have

much more i n common with atheism than with any kind of theism whatsoever;

i t i s only towards the end of his magnum opus that Spinoza's latent mystical

s t r a i n i s rendered e x p l i c i t . Nevertheless, as far as Part One of ETHICS i s

concerned i t i s to a l l intents and purposes irrelevant whether or not we

construe Spinoza as a pantheist or an atheist. One thing he i s absolutely

clear on, though, i s that the universe was not created by something or some-

body outside i t , and most emphatically, that i t was not created by someone

i n whose image human beings have been fashioned.

Probably the most fundamental d i s t i n c t i o n between things i n Spinoza i s

that between the absolutely i n f i n i t e and the rest. This coincides with the

d i s t i n c t i o n between substance and the rest. I stress the notion of absolute

i n f i n i t y , because i t i s this that distinguishes substance from 'attributes'

which do share with substance the property of being conceived through them-

selves.

Bearing i n mind the l o g i c a l connexion between 'substance* and 'absolute

non-adjectivalness', we can construe Spinoza as maintaining that i n a subject-

predicate sentence anything which qualifies for the characterization 'substance'

must appear on the 'subject' side of the sentence. We cannot predicate 'sub-

stance' of anything.

After substance i n the hierarchy of r e a l i t y , come the 'attributes'. He

 10.

defines 'attribute' as follows:

By attribute, I understand that which the i n t e l l e c t

perceives of substance, as ( i f ) constituting i t s
essence.

E.I. DEF. IV.

There i s some controversy regarding Spinoza's use of each of the terms

'substance', 'attribute' and 'mode'. I t i s , however, at i t s height i n connex-

ion with the second of these. This i s f o r a number of reasons, not least of

which i s that Spinoza does not use the term consistently, or should we say

that he altered i t s meaning. In a l e t t e r to De Vries he writes:

By substance I mean that which i s i n i t s e l f and i s

conceived through i t s e l f , that i s , whose conception
does not involve the conception of some other thing.
I mean the same by attribute with respect to the
i n t e l l e c t , which attributes such and such a nature
to substance.

SPINOZA.: LETTER IX.

This suggests strongly that substance and attribute are i d e n t i c a l . However,

i n other places he talks of substance as 'consisting of i n f i n i t e attributes',

which suggests that substance i s the sum t o t a l of the attributes. The two

examples of attributes which Spinoza gives are thought and extension. So he

believed that both thought and extension express i n f i n i t e and eternal essence,

and, i t appears, that thought plus extension plus the other attributes what-

ever they might be, add up to God or substance. Perhaps the best clue as to

what Spinoza probably meant most of the time, throughout ETHICS at any rate,

comes from his d i s t i n c t i o n between 'absolutely i n f i n i t e ' and ' i n f i n i t e i n

suo genere'. He says that the attributes are i n f i n i t e i n suo genere. The

best way of interpreting this i s to conceive of attributes as being the 'summa

genera' on the predicative side. Everything can be predicated of the attributes,

except of course substance. However, only mental predicates can be predicated

 11.

of the attribute of thought, and only physical ones of that of extension.

This i s the best way of construing the notion that the attributes are i n -

f i n i t e merely ' i n suo genere'. They are the fundamental categories i n which

substance expresses i t s e l f , and i t i s only through these categories that sub-

stance can be described, since to characterize i t i n any other way would i n -

volve predicating i t of something, which i s impossible. This provides an

explanation of Spinoza's saying words to the effect that substance i s nothing

over and above i t s attributes.

The t h i r d member of Spinoza's ontological t r i l o g y i s the mode. A mode

i s an 'affection' of substance, or 'that which i s i n another thing through

which also i t i s conceived'. Thus, to revert to our common-sense example,

modes stand to substance, for Spinoza, as blushes, grins, etc., stand, f o r us,

to people. Spinoza i s maintaining i n ETHICS that a l l the things i n the world

are modes. Modes are 'in' substance, and through i t are conceived. To say

this i s to deny the independent r e a l i t y of such 'substantial' things as people,

tables, chairs and the l i k e . These things are a l l just 'expressions' of sub-

stance, and have their existence solely as such.

There i s another important d i s t i n c t i o n , however, which cuts across the

substance-mode boundary, and this i s the d i s t i n c t i o n between i n f i n i t e and

finite. Substance consists of:

... i n f i n i t e attributes, each one of which expresses

eternal and i n f i n i t e essence ...

E.i.ll.
but among the modes there are i n f i n i t e and f i n i t e modes. The i n f i n i t e modes

are not, of course, absolutely i n f i n i t e , but merely i n f i n i t e i n their own

kinds, and:
 12.

That thing i s c a l l e d f i n i t e i n i t s own kind ( i n suo

genere) which can be l i m i t e d by another thing o f
the same nature. For example, a body i s c a l l e d
f i n i t e , because we always conceive another which i s
greater. So a thought i s l i m i t e d by another thought; ...

E.i.D.3.

Modes such as ordinary bodies, and thoughts more p u z z l i n g l y , are s a i d to be

f i n i t e , because they can be l i m i t e d by another thing o f the same category. I

take this to mean i n the case o f bodies that no matter what body we conceive

we could always conceive o f another body, which would be e i t h e r l a r g e r than i t ,

or i f not that, at l e a s t outside i t , and which would therefore ' l i m i t ' i t i n

the relevant sense.

Between the a t t r i b u t e s , which j o i n t l y constitute substance, and these

f i n i t e modes are the s o - c a l l e d i n f i n i t e modes. The two o f the a l l e g e d l y i n -

f i n i t e numbers o f a t t r i b u t e s which constitute substance, o f which we, f i n i t e

modes as we are, can conceive, are Thought and Extension. According to Spinoza

these a t t r i b u t e s are expressed i n a number o f ways, giving r i s e to the f i n i t e

modes, which are the expressions. There are c e r t a i n rules f o r the expression

of these a t t r i b u t e s , which i n the case o f the a t t r i b u t e of extension, we would

c a l l the basic laws o f science. One such r u l e i s that everything extended

must be e i t h e r i n motion or at r e s t . In Spinoza's terminology Motion and Rest

i s an i n f i n i t e and eternal mode o f the a t t r i b u t e o f extension. Not only t h i s ,

but i t i s an immediate i n f i n i t e and eternal mode, because i t follows d i r e c t l y

from the a t t r i b u t e o f extension. There are other i n f i n i t e modes, which are

rather mysterious - the s o - c a l l e d mediate i n f i n i t e modes, which one f o r the

a t t r i b u t e o f extension i s 'the face o f the whole universe'. Spinoza gives

examples o f these two types o f mode i n the following l e t t e r to Schuller:

 13.

L a s t l y , the examples f o r which you ask are; o f the

f i r s t kind, i n Thought, absolutely i n f i n i t e under-
standing, but i n Extension, motion and r e s t ; o f
the second kind, the face o f the whole Universe
which although i t varies i n i n f i n i t e modes, y e t re-
mains always the same; ...

LETTER LXIV to G.H. Schuller.

Spinoza does not say much to c l a r i f y h i s notion o f 'the face o f the whole

Universe'. Stuart Hampshire goes some way to explaining i t i n h i s book on

Spinoza.

We may ..., i f we go on ad i n f i n i t u m , conceive the

whole o f nature as one i n d i v i d u a l , the parts of
which (that i s to say a l l bodies) change i n i n f i n i t e
ways without any change o f the whole i n d i v i d u a l .

( E . i i . LEM. VII. Note) This highest-order i n d i v i d u a l

Spinoza c a l l s 'the face o f the whole Universe' ...;
i n the hierarchy o f h i s system o f modes, i t has the
t i t l e o f 'a mediate i n f i n i t e and e t e r n a l mode' under
the a t t r i b u t e o f extension. I t i s 'mediate' because
i t i s l o g i c a l l y dependent on the immediate mode o f
motion and r e s t , which i s the primary, or l o g i c a l l y
p r i o r , feature o f extension; i t i s ' i n f i n i t e ' and
'eternal' because the f a c t that Nature as a whole,
conceived as a s p a t i a l system, remains thus s e l f -
i d e n t i c a l follows d i r e c t l y from the conception o f
motion-and-rest as the necessary feature o f the extend-
ed world.

STUART HAMPSHIRE: SPINOZA p.74.

I think that 'the face o f the whole Universe' r e f e r s to the whole o f

physics. Probably Spinoza believed that a l l the laws o f physics followed

from the b a s i c laws of motion. There i s a further element i n 'the face of

the whole Universe' which i s worth mentioning b r i e f l y . Spinoza believed

that the unchangeableness o f the whole Universe followed from the laws o f

motion and rest. This i s connected with the view that a l l motion and rest

is relative. I think that one o f the reasons why Spinoza believed that the

universe i s wholly unchangeable i s that he believed that a l l change was

 14.

r e l a t i v e to something other than the thing that i s said to change. It i s

easy to i n f e r erroneously from this b e l i e f , that the universe as a whole

cannot change. There i s no doubt that a l o t of work needs to be done to

c l a r i f y the r e l a t i o n s between the i n f i n i t e modes, p a r t i c u l a r l y the mediate

ones, and a t t r i b u t e s , and f i n i t e modes, but I cannot here undertake this

probably arduous task.

So to summarize, i n Spinoza's ontology there i s one substance, God or

Nature, which i s absolutely independent, and can never be predicated of

anything. This substance consists o f i n f i n i t e a t t r i b u t e s , each one of which

expresses i n f i n i t e and eternal essence, and i s i n f i n i t e i n suo genere. The

a t t r i b u t e s are the summa genera on the p r e d i c a t i v e side. F i n a l l y there are

the modes, the i n f i n i t e o f which follow l o g i c a l l y from t h e i r own attribute,

and share most of the features o f a t t r i b u t e s , except that they cannot be

conceived through themselves alone; the f i n i t e modes are such things as

thoughts, f e e l i n g s , i n d i v i d u a l minds, bodies and people. These l a s t are

completely dependent e n t i t i e s . I s h a l l say a l i t t l e more about the

r e l a t i o n between modes, attributes and substance i n the next section.

2. SPINOZA'S THEORY OF CAUSATION. ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

Spinoza as perhaps the most r a t i o n a l i s t i c R a t i o n a l i s t of a l l , was a

f i r m b e l i e v e r i n a p r i n c i p l e o f s u f f i c i e n t reason. He d i d not share with

Leibniz the b e l i e f that everything that happens must happen f o r a reason

because God i s the supremely r a t i o n a l person. He took i t as being j u s t an

obvious p r i n c i p l e that r e l i e s on nothing else f o r i t s truth. This p r i n c i p l e

that everything has an explanation i s one of the bastions of Rationalism.

Although the most eminent E m p i r i c i s t once wrote: "I never asserted so absurd
 15.

a p r o p o s i t i o n as that any thing might a r i s e without a cause", one o f the marks

which d i s t i n g u i s h R a t i o n a l i s t s from Empiricists i s the R a t i o n a l i s t s ' b e l i e f

that there i s a s u f f i c i e n t reason f o r everything. When Hume says that he

wouldn't hold such an absurd b e l i e f as that something might a r i s e without a

cause, he has something d i f f e r e n t i n mind from Spinoza when HE says, express-

ing h i s causal maxim:

In nature there i s nothing contingent, but a l l

things are determined from the necessity o f the
divine nature to e x i s t and act i n a c e r t a i n manner.

E.i.22.

Although Hume might have b e l i e v e d that everything has a cause, despite

knocking down arguments i n favour o f the p r o p o s i t i o n , he c e r t a i n l y r e j e c t e d

the claim that i n nature there i s nothing contingent. His c r i t e r i a f o r some-

thing being a cause o f something else e x p l i c i t l y r u l e out the p o s s i b i l i t y o f

cause and e f f e c t being l o g i c a l l y connected.

... as a l l d i s t i n c t ideas are separable from each

other, and as the ideas o f cause and e f f e c t are
evidently d i s t i n c t , ' t w i l l be easy f o r us to con-
ceive any object to be non-existent this moment,
and existent the next, without conjoining to i t
the d i s t i n c t idea o f a cause o r productive
principle.

HUME: TREATISE I. I I . i i i .

This passage seems t o contain a non-sequitur which arises out o f an ambiguity,

f o r when Hume says that the ideas o f cause and e f f e c t are evidently d i s t i n c t

he i s t a l k i n g about the concept o f cause and that o f e f f e c t , but when he writes

that any object may e x i s t at one moment, having been non-existent the previous

one, without there being a relevant productive p r i n c i p l e , he i s maintaining

that causes are d i s t i n c t from e f f e c t s , not j u s t that the concepts are separable

concepts. What I mean by the l a t t e r remark i s that Hume believed that i t i s

quite p o s s i b l e to conceive o f any given e f f e c t without conceiving o f i t s cause.

 16.

There i s no necessary connexion between a cause and i t s e f f e c t . This i s be-

cause the cause and the e f f e c t are f o r Hume j u s t 'brute f a c t s ' . The ideas of

causes and e f f e c t are sensory states which occur at separate times, and d i f f e r -

ent times are d i s t i n c t , inasmuch as what happens at one time i s l o g i c a l l y

independent o f what happens at any other time.

Let us now compare t h i s with Spinoza on cause and e f f e c t .

From a given determinate cause an e f f e c t n e c e s s a r i l y

follows; and, on the other hand, i f no determinate
cause be given, i t i s impossible that an e f f e c t can
follow.

The knowledge o f an e f f e c t depends upon and involves

the knowledge o f the cause.

E.I. A . l £ 3.

These two axioms suggest that the r e l a t i o n between cause and e f f e c t i s

f a r from contingent. Spinoza as a R a t i o n a l i s t believed not j u s t that every-

thing has an explanation i n some weak sense, such as being caused i n a Humean

sense. He believed that everything could u l t i m a t e l y be understood, and his

notion o f understanding incorporates gaining knowledge o f that through which

the thing to be understood has to be conceived.

Those things which have nothing mutually i n common

with one another cannot through one another be
mutually understood, that i s to say, the conception
of the one does not involve the conception o f the
other.

E.i.A.5.

He uses this axiom i n his proof o f E . i . 3 .

I f two things have nothing i n common with one

another, one cannot be the cause o f the other.

I f they have no tiling mutually i n common with one

another, they cannot (Ax.5) through one another
be mutually understood, and therefore (Ax.4) one
 17.

cannot be the cause of the other.

E.i.3. § i t s Dem.

To give a Spinozist cause of something one must give the thing through which

the problematic item has to be conceived. This involves as a necessary con-

d i t i o n giving something which entails the existence of the item i n question.

Only thus w i l l one be able to understand why the thing exists. But the

Rationalist mind i s not s a t i s f i e d with just t h i s , for the question w i l l i n -

evitably arise, or at least could always arise, about the thing which i s the

cause of the f i r s t 'effect'. I f one had a Humean theory of causation, where

the causal relation i s transitive and i r r e f l e x i v e , this chain of causes could

never be completed, f o r one could never reach anything which was self-explana-

tory, or self-caused. This consequence of i r r e f l e x i v e theories of causation,

namely that there cannot be an ultimate or self-explanatory explanation of why

things happen i n the way they do puts strong pressure on a Rationalist to

produce some alternative.

There i s another feature o f Humean theories of causation which cannot be

acceptable to a Rationalist mind, and that i s to do with the causal r e l a t i o n

itself. Humean causes do not provide the right kind of explanation for a

Rationalist, since i t i s always l o g i c a l l y possible, and i s thus possible as

far as the understanding i s concerned, that given a cause any of a number of

effects might follow.

Hume d i d not seek, when looking for the cause of something, for an ultimate

or l o g i c a l l y perfect explanation of wiry that thing occurred, and I think that

he was right i n so not doing. Spinoza, however, would certainly have disagreed

with this markedly empiricist view, and this i s at least partly because he had
 18.

a markedly d i f f e r e n t view o f the nature o f explanation from Hume. I don't

think that his b e l i e f that there are s u f f i c i e n t reasons f o r everything had to

lead him to the b e l i e f that a l l events i n the world are l o g i c a l l y connected

i n that they are a l l part o f one giant causal nexus; f o r Leibniz believed

that there was an ultimate explanation f o r everything that happens, but he

shared Hume's scepticism about there being a l o g i c a l connexion between events.

In Monadology Section 7 Leibniz suggests very strongly that there i s no causal

i n t e r r a c t i o n i n the monadic realm, b a s i c a l l y because o f the contingency o f

events. From t h i s i t i s c l e a r that he had a notion o f cause which i s much

stronger than Humes, and that f o r this reason, given f a i r l y obvious f a c t s

about the world he admitted that there i s no genuine causal i n t e r a c t i o n . In

the d r a f t o f a l e t t e r to Arnauld he a c t u a l l y talks o f cause and e f f e c t as

being merely an i d e a l r e l a t i o n between phenomena. In t h i s sense o f cause

there are o f course causal interactions between things, but f o r Leibniz these

'causes' are not genuine causes since they do not provide a s u f f i c i e n t reason

f o r the occurrence o f the ' e f f e c t ' . Causation as an i d e a l r e l a t i o n i s i n

f a c t very s i m i l a r to Hume's notion o f causation. How can t h i s view o f

events and the denial o f genuine causal interactions be squared with Leibniz's

Rationalism?

Leibniz believed that underlying everything there i s the supreme a l l - w i s e ,

benevolent, all-powerful, anthropomorphically-conceived God. Everything that

happens i n the world i s i n a sense contingent, as r e s t i n g on the w i l l o f God.

But the nature o f God i s such that the only world He, being a l l wise, benevol-

ent, and all-powerful, would create, i s the best o f a l l possible worlds.

Furthermore, He, being the supremely r a t i o n a l being always acts r a t i o n a l l y ,

and thus had to (at l e a s t i n Leibniz's eyes) have a r a t i o n a l motive f o r doing

 19.

anything. Thus the 'true cause' of anything happening, and of anything that

happens i s , according to Leibniz, God's reason for bringing about the partic-

ular thing. Leibniz's God i s such that given His nature and certain facts,

i t follows that A rather than B w i l l occur. He denies that there i s any

entailment r e l a t i o n linking cause and effect i n the vulgar notion of causation.

He i s certainly not denying that there are ultimate explanations for the occur-

rence of things. He i s simply denying that they can be given i n terms of

( e f f i c i e n t or logical) causality.

Descartes was r e a l l y very confused about cause and effect. He adhered to

some form of the 'transfer' theory of causation. Thus, for him, i f A caused B

then A must have transferred some of i t s e l f to something to produce B. For

instance, i f a f i r e i s the cause of a kettle's heating up, then, on Descartes'

view the f i r e must have transferred some o f i t s heat to the k e t t l e , thus

bringing i t about that the kettle i s heated up. The transfer theory i s un-

acceptable as an account of causation, even leaving theological issues out of

the picture, but i t faces insuperable problems regarding the existence and

o r i g i n of God. Like Hume's theory of causation the transfer theory has causat-

ion as an i r r e f l e x i v e relation. With this theory problems arise for any

Rationalist who seeks an explanation for everything, as Descartes does.

Nothing exists concerning which the question may

not be raised: - what i s the cause of i t s existence?
For the question may be asked even concerning God.

DESCARTES: REPLY TO OBJECTIONS I I , HALDANE § ROSS

VOL. II p.55.

Since Descartes, unlike Leibniz and l i k e Spinoza, rejected explanations i n

terms of f i n a l causes, he was presented with a problem i n the form of a dilemma.

He would have either to abandon the Rationalist dogma that everything has a

cause, or to admit that there was something, other than God, who transferred
 20.

some of His power to another source to create God, for i t would surely be

absurd to say that God brought about His own existence, as this would have

involved Him doing something before He existed, a feat which a Rationalist

ought to believe i s beyond even the a b i l i t y of the Gods. In fact i t would

involve the contradiction of God being separate from Himself. Descartes not

surprisingly f a i l s to provide an adequate reply to this objection which was

brought to his attention by Arnauld. He replied to Arnauld that i t i s useful

to talk of God i n language which suggests that He i s the e f f i c i e n t cause of

His own existence, but that this i s not s t r i c t l y true. I t i s necessary to

talk as i f i t were, because otherwise, f r a i l souls that we are, we wouldn't

understand why God exists. I think one could hardly be blamed for s t i l l not

knowing why, even after reading Descartes' reply. A l i t t l e l a t e r on i n this

reply to Amauld he even writes calamatously:

... thus although we do not enquire for an e f f i c i e n t

cause with respect to a thing's essence, nevertheless
we can do so with respect to i t s existence; but i n God
essence and existence are not distinguished; hence we may
enquire about the e f f i c i e n t cause of God.

H. § R. VOL. I I . p.113.

At this point the reader might well wonder what a l l this had to do with

Spinoza, especially i n a work that does not profess to be a study of the views

of his near contemporaries. My j u s t i f i c a t i o n for discussing b r i e f l y Descartes'

views on causation i s that Spinoza's theory can be seen as an attempt to over-

come some of the d i f f i c u l t i e s encountered by the Cartesian theory. I t i s per-

haps a l i t t l e easier to understand Spinoza's motivation for developing his

rather bizarre theory i f we see i t i n this l i g h t . Spinoza was very much i n -

fluenced by the writing of Descartes, and he has on occasion been called the

philosopher who had the courage to take Cartesianism to i t s l o g i c a l conclusion.

Others, such as Leon Roth have argued a contrary thesis on t h i s matter, namely

that the mature philosophy o f Spinoza i s a reaction against Cartesianism.

What i s indisputable i s that Spinoza, who was steeped i n Descartes at an e a r l y

age, was at l e a s t as aware of the shortcomings o f the f i r s t great R a t i o n a l i s t ' s

work as was any o f his contemporaries.

Spinoza, who believed that the vehicle f o r explanation was cause, was

committed to the view that everything that e x i s t s has a cause, f o r to deny

this would be to admit that there i s something i n the universe which i s inex-

p l i c a b l e - a b e l i e f which i s anathema to any R a t i o n a l i s t .

Given any notion o f causation where the r e l a t i o n o f cause and e f f e c t i s

i r r e f l e x i v e , such as Hume's or that o f Descartes, i t i s d i f f i c u l t to maintain

the R a t i o n a l i s t dogma that everything has an explanation, i f by t h i s one

means that i t i s i n p r i n c i p l e possible to answer a l l "why" questions about

the universe. This i s because everything that i s given as an explanatory

cause, i t s e l f stands i n need o f explanation, and not j u s t that, but explana-

t i o n by something e l s e , not already explained, and so on ad i n f i n i t u m .

One route taken by philosophers i s to put God at the end o f the causal

chain, and to admit that God's existence i s uncaused, and that God can,

through His i n f i n i t e power set o f f the e n t i r e chain of causation. Of course

this i s to admit that there i s at l e a s t one mystery about the universe which

cannot, i n p r i n c i p l e be solved by r a t i o n a l inquiry. In order to preserve

his C h r i s t i a n creator-God Descartes was prepared to concede, i n a very humble

manner, that the human i n t e l l e c t , being merely f i n i t e , j u s t couldn't r e a l l y

grasp some o f the mysteries o f God, and that t h i s was why explanations about
 22.

the i n f i n i t e nature o f God seemed to defy reason, or at least much o f Carte-

sian philosophy. Spinoza was completely uncompromising on t h i s matter, and

was c e r t a i n l y prepared to s t i c k by reason even i f the p r i c e was to abandon

the Judaeo-Christian God. In f a c t he d i d not consider that t h i s abandonment

was r e a l l y a p r i c e to pay at a l l , since he rejected t h i s kind o f a God f o r

a number o f reasons, j u s t one o f which was that such a God seemed to him to

be counter to reason. Along with the Judaeo-Christian God Spinoza abandoned

the Cartesian i r r e f l e x i v e r e l a t i o n o f cause and e f f e c t as h i s v e h i c l e f o r

explanation.

3. SPINOZA'S THEORY OF CAUSATION. THE THEORY ITSELF.

The very f i r s t d e f i n i t i o n i n ETHICS i s as follows:

By cause o f i t s e l f , I understand that whose

essence involves existence; or that, whose nature
cannot be conceived unless e x i s t i n g .

E.I. DEF. 1.

What Spinoza means by 'cause o f i t s e l f i s r e a l l y 'something whose existence

i s e n t a i l e d , i n a l o g i c a l sense, by i t s very nature'. Just as a t r i a n g l e

cannot be conceived with more or less than three s i d e s , so something that i s

a 'cause o f i t s e l f cannot be conceived as not e x i s t i n g . In more f a m i l i a r

language, a t r i a n g l e n e c e s s a r i l y has three sides, and i n the same sense o f

'necessarily', a self-caused thing n e c e s s a r i l y e x i s t s . The existence o f a

self-caused thing needs no more explanation than the three-sidedness o f a

triangle.

Spinoza uses this notion o f cause o f i t s e l f i n one o f h i s more

lamentable demonstrations, i n t h i s case regarding the existence o f Substance.

 23.

It pertains to the nature of substance to exist.

There i s nothing by which substance can be pro-

duced (Corol. Prop. 6). I t w i l l therefore be
the cause of i t s e l f , that i s to say (Def. 1),
i t s essence necessarily involves existence, or
i n other words i t pertains to i t s nature to
exist.

E.i.7 § i t s Dem.

The conclusion of this demonstration, that the essence of substance involves

existence, i s used by Spinoza i n his ontological argument for God's existence

i n E.i.12. What i s wrong with the demonstration above quoted i s that i t does

not follow from the proposition that there i s nothing by which substance can

be produced that i t i s the cause of i t s e l f i n the required sense. A l l that

i t shows i s that i f substance exists i t s existence i s attributable solely to

i t s own nature. Apart from this there i s another mistake made by Spinoza i n

connexion with the reflexive 'self-caused' which should be mentioned now.

Spinoza moved from the proposition that something's existence i s not

restricted by space and time, to the proposition that the thing's existence

i s a l o g i c a l necessity. He uses this move i n his proof of the existence of

substance, which i s equated with the universe. His reasoning i s as follows:

The universe as a whole cannot enter into any causal relation with anything

else, since, necessarily, i t i s a l l that there i s . As nothing could have

any causal commerce with the universe, the universe's existence must be i n -

dependent of everything else, and therefore i t must be self-caused, and so,

from E.i.7. Dem., must necessarily exist. This i s simply a confusion between

'unbounded by space and time' and ' l o g i c a l l y necessary'. The mistake crops

up again when Spinoza i s discussing the ' i n f i n i t e and eternal laws of the

universe', where he goes through the following steps: As there i s nothing

which can have any effect on the universe, so nothing can affect i t s governing
 24.

p r i n c i p l e s , or laws. Therefore these laws are i n f i n i t e and e t e r n a l . There-

fore they n e c e s s a r i l y ( l o g i c a l l y ) hold. I s h a l l leave this matter here,

w h i l s t acknowledging that quite a l o t more could be s a i d about i t .

The problem about asking a series o f "why?" questions i s s i m i l a r to

that of the s e r i e s o f questions put to Locke's unfortunate Indian.

The Indian ... who, saying that the world was

supported by a great elephant, was asked what the
elephant rested on; to which h i s answer was -
a great t o r t o i s e : but being pressed to know what
gave support to the broad-backed t o r t o i s e , r e p l i e d -
something, he knew not what.

LOCKE: ESSAY BK. I I . CH.23.

In important respects E m p i r i c i s t s are l i k e the Indian, i n p a r t i c u l a r

with respect to p r o v i d i n g 'ultimate' explanations o f why things are the way

they are. F i r s t o f a l l an E m p i r i c i s t cannot explain why a p a r t i c u l a r causal

r e l a t i o n holds, except by introducing another cause - the cause o f the f i r s t

causal r e l a t i o n ' s holding. The same question can now be asked about the new

causal r e l a t i o n , and so on. Secondly, the E m p i r i c i s t causal r e l a t i o n i t s e l f

i s simply a p a r t i c u l a r kind o f r e g u l a r i t y , which i n e v i t a b l y leaves a dangling

question, which i t cannot answer 'Why i s there any r e g u l a r i t y ? ' By t h i s

question I mean 'Why i s i t that c e r t a i n events always occur only a f t e r c e r t a i n

other events?' I t seems that at some stage, given an obsessive asker o f "Why?"

questions, that an E m p i r i c i s t would be driven to saying something l i k e 'That's

j u s t the way things are, and that's the end o f the matter'.

Spinoza believed that there i s a l o g i c a l end to the s e r i e s of "Why?"

questions, and that this end comes when one reaches substance, whose nature

provides the answer to the question concerning i t s existence. Of any thing

 25.

i n the world we might ask: 'Why does this exist?' and so on. Our answer

w i l l be i n terms of other things, about which the same question might be

asked. However, i f we could eventually trace everything back to substance

we would be able to put an end to the series of questions, because substance

requires no explanation beyond i t s own nature - given i t s nature, i t s exist-

ence i s self-explanatory. Spinoza indeed does trace everything back to sub-

stance:

From the necessity of the divine nature i n -

f i n i t e numbers of things i n i n f i n i t e ways
(that i s to say, a l l things which can be con-
ceived by the i n f i n i t e i n t e l l e c t ) must follow.

Hence i t follows that God i s the e f f i c i e n t

cause of a l l things which can f a l l under the
infinite intellect.

E.i.16 § Corol.

In order to curl the t a i l of the seemingly endless enquiry into why things

e x i s t , so that the enquiry doesn't rely on a dangling and unexplained i n f i n i t e

chain, Spinoza equates the notion of entailment with that of causation. In

the proposition just quoted he i s saying simply that, just as God's existence

follows from His nature, so the existence of everything that can be conceived
follows from His nature as w e l l . God i s the cause of Himself, and also the

cause of everything that e x i s t s , for a l l things which exist must f a l l under

the i n f i n i t e i n t e l l e c t , since ' f a l l i n g under the i n f i n i t e i n t e l l e c t ' means

'being conceivable by an i n f i n i t e i n t e l l e c t ' .

Spinoza has taken the paradigm of a rational explanation - a l o g i c a l argu-

ment - to i t s l o g i c a l conclusion. Every truth i s a necessary truth. Every-

thing that happens has to happen i n precisely the way i t does happen.

Things could have been produced by God i n no

 26.

other manner and i n no other order than that

i n which they have been produced.

E.i.23.

This radical form of determinism stems from Spinoza's entailment theory of

causation, which i s required to provide the epistemological foundation sought

by his r a t i o n a l i s t mind. For i f everything follows l o g i c a l l y from the given

nature of God, then, according to Spinoza, i f anything was i n any way d i f f e r -

ent from the way i t i s , then that from which i t follows, namely God would

have to be d i f f e r e n t , but this i s absurd, since God's nature i s self-evidently

necessary. I t would be a straightforward contradiction to give God a nature

different from the one He has, and so i t i s , i n a strong sense, impossible

that things should have been produced i n a different manner or order. Spinoza

sees a l l the events i n the world as being related as steps i n an argument, or

rather he sees the statements describing events as being the statements of

steps i n an argument. The argument has only one assumption and this assumption

cannot be altered, and everything i n the argument follows from this assumption.

Spinoza believed that i f the steps i n the argument were i n any way different,

and the argument was to remain v a l i d , the assumption would have to change.

But this i s , by hypothesis impossible. Therefore the steps have to be just

the way they are.

The line of reasoning i s i n v a l i d , for one can derive a conclusion from

an assumption i n a number of ways. When one i s trying to prove something

from a given premise, there are a number of different ways one can set about

proving whatever i t i s . Furthermore, one could derive a statement or set of

statements from any of a number of premises. The series might remain the

same, although the i n i t i a t i n g premise might change, and the premise might

change leaving the series the same as i t would have been had the o r i g i n a l
 27.

premise remained. When we are engaging i n logical arguments, we are selective

i n what we take for our argument from the o r i g i n a l premise - there i s no best

order, or only possible order which follows from a given premise. Spinoza

thought there was, and used this to produce his determinism, which i s the way

he expresses his Rationalism about everything having an explanation. As well

as not generating the requisite determinism, the entailment theory has other

i n t r i n s i c demerits. One might, with j u s t i f i c a t i o n , accuse Spinoza of trying

to cast out the speck of sawdust i n other theories of causation, only to i g -

nore the plank i n what he substitutes for them.

The main problem about the entailment theory i s that i t makes the

p o s s i b i l i t y of changing incomprehensible, at least i f the theory i s taken

literally. For i f everything that 'happens' i s entailed by the ' i n f i n i t e

and eternal essence of God', then i t doesn't happen at a l l , for happenings

occur at times, whereas entailments are eternal, or perhaps atemporal. At

least Descartes' theory of causal transfers allows for changes i n time, as

does Hume's, and this i s more important than being able to accomodate an

explanation for the existence of God. Spinoza was able to push his Rational-

ism so far i n the direction of l o g i c a l explanations for everything that he

f a i l e d to recognize the contingency of events i n the world. Leibniz, although

he didn't take time very seriously, managed to recognize the contingency of

happenings. Spinoza also ignored analysing time, perhaps because of the

obvious embarrassment i t creates f o r his radical causal rationalism.^" Fortun-

ately he often doesn't take the causal rationalism absolutely l i t e r a l l y , and

sometimes he pretends i t i s n ' t there at a l l .

. By 'causal rationalism' I mean the doctrine that to say 'A i s the cause
of B' i s to say 'A l o g i c a l l y entails B'.
 28.

4. SPINOZA'S THEORY OF CAUSATION. THE THEORY AT WORK

In f a c t Spinoza does attempt to deal with one o f the problems he has

created f o r himself with his causal rationalism. The problem can be stated

i n the following terms. I f everything follows l o g i c a l l y from the i n f i n i t e

and e t e r n a l essence or nature o f substance, then why are there, as there

obviously are, t r a n s i e n t and f i n i t e things, the f i n i t e modes? Spinoza admits

that everything which follows from the absolute nature o f God must be i n f i n i t e .

A l l things which follow from the absolute nature

of any a t t r i b u t e o f God must f o r ever e x i s t , and
must be i n f i n i t e ; that i s to say, through that
same a t t r i b u t e they are e t e r n a l and i n f i n i t e .

E.i.21.

I f we combine t h i s p r o p o s i t i o n with E.i.16., we should get the conclusion

that everything there i s i s i n f i n i t e and e t e r n a l . This conclusion is, however,

i n obvious d i r e c t c o n t r a d i c t i o n to the S p i n o z i s t doctrine that human beings

are j u s t some o f a whole l o t o f f i n i t e modes. A l s o , E.i.28. i s i n d i r e c t

contradiction to E.i.16.

An i n d i v i d u a l thing, or a thing which i s f i n i t e

and which has a determinate existence, cannot
e x i s t nor be determined to action unless i t be
determined to existence and a c t i o n by another
cause which i s also f i n i t e and has a determinate
existence; and again, t h i s cause cannot e x i s t
nor be determined to a c t i o n unless by another
cause which i s also f i n i t e and determined to
existence and a c t i o n , and so on ad i n f i n i t u m .

E.i.28.

L e i b n i z , who was not noted for h i s generosity to Spinoza or h i s philosophy,

was quick to come up with a very cogent objection to Spinoza's theory o f caus-

ation, which arises out o f there obviously being f i n i t e things i n the world.
 29.

(Spinoza) maintains ... that f i n i t e and temporal

things cannot be produced immediately by an i n -
f i n i t e cause, but that they are produced by other
causes, i n d i v i d u a l and f i n i t e . But how w i l l they
f i n a l l y then spring from God? For they cannot
come from him mediately i n t h i s case, since we
could never reach i n this way things which are
not s i m i l a r l y produced by another f i n i t e thing.
It cannot, therefore, be s a i d that God acts by
mediating secondary causes, unless he produces
secondary causes.

LEIBNIZ: REFUTATION OF SPINOZA, WIENER: LEIBNIZ

SELECTIONS p.497.

In f a c t Spinoza's p o s i t i o n i s n ' t quite as bad as i t seems. First of a l l , i n

answer to the claim that E.i.16 and E.i.21 are simply inconsistent with the

existence o f f i n i t e and temporal modes, one could say the following. When

Spinoza says, i n E.i.16, that everything follows from 'the necessity o f the

divine nature' he means something d i f f e r e n t by 'the necessity o f the divine

nature 1
from what he means by 'the absolute nature o f any a t t r i b u t e o f God'

i n E.i.21. The s i g n i f i c a n t difference l i e s i n the word 'absolute', which

occurs only i n the l a t t e r proposition. One might then read E.i.21 i n the

following way. ' A l l things which follow from the absolute nature o f any

a t t r i b u t e o f God must ...'. One could then interpret the proposition as

asserting that everything that follows immediately from the d e f i n i t i o n of, or

at l e a s t from the essence of, God, i s i n f i n i t e and eternal. This would leave

one room f o r the f i n i t e and temporal, by admitting the existence o f things

which d i d u l t i m a t e l y follow from God, but didn't follow immediately from His

d e f i n i t i o n or essence. But t h i s escape from the f r y i n g pan o f s e l f - c o n t r a d i c -

t i o n seems to lead s t r a i g h t to the f i r e o f Leibniz's objection. Spinoza has

equated the entailment r e l a t i o n with the causal r e l a t i o n . Everything i s

caused by God. Therefore everything i s e n t a i l e d by God. What Spinoza appears

to be s t r i v i n g f o r i s to be able to say the following. The i n f i n i t e and

eternal follow d i r e c t l y from the nature o f God. The f i n i t e and temporal also
 30.

follow from God's nature, but only i n d i r e c t l y . The problem i s : 'How can

the existence o f f i n i t e things, and e s p e c i a l l y temporal things, be l o g i c a l l y

i n f e r r e d from the existence o f an i n f i n i t e and eternal thing?'.

E.M. Curley i n his book SPINOZA'S METAPHYSICS, and Peter Remnant i n a

recent graduate seminar at the U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h Columbia, have independ-

ently provided s i m i l a r accounts o f Spinoza's views on the c a u s a l i t y o f God i n

r e l a t i o n to the world. The Curley-Remnant i n t e r p r e t a t i o n e f f e c t s a p a r t i a l

salvage o f Spinoza's u l t i m a t e l y untenable p o s i t i o n . The i n t e r p r e t a t i o n which

follows i s e s s e n t i a l l y a hybrid o f the views o f Remnant and Curley, which, on

this matter, are very s i m i l a r .

Let us, f o r the sake o f s i m p l i c i t y , concentrate on the a t t r i b u t e o f ex-

tension. We s h a l l f i r s t o f a l l take Spinoza's remarks on t h i s subject as

being r e a l l y statements about facts rather than things. We can then take i t

that the divine a t t r i b u t e o f extension i s a manifestation o f an ultimate law,

or 'basic nomological' law, o f r e a l i t y . One could characterize the a t t r i b u t e

of extension by saying 'Every substance must be extended'.

The immediate i n f i n i t e mode under the a t t r i b u t e o f extension, the mode

of motion-and-rest, follows l o g i c a l l y from the a t t r i b u t e o f extension. This

mode can be characterized thus. 'Everything i s e i t h e r i n motion or at r e s t ' .

I t follows from the a t t r i b u t e o f extension, since the existence o f this

a t t r i b u t e e n t a i l s that everything, that i s 'substance', i s extended. But

anything that i s extended i s , as a matter o f l o g i c e i t h e r i n motion or at

rest. Therefore everything i s e i t h e r i n motion or at r e s t .

 31.

The mediate i n f i n i t e mode under the a t t r i b u t e o f extension, "the face

of the whole universe', which f o r a l l i n t e n t s and purposes, can be equated

w i t h p h y s i c s , i n t u r n follows from the laws o f motion and r e s t .

One should note at t h i s juncture that so f a r a l l the statements which

are i n the deduction are u n i v e r s a l statements o f the form ' A l l x i s ...'.

We s t a r t o f f w i t h something which resembles an e t e r n a l t r u t h , and was c e r t a i n l y

regarded as such by Spinoza, and we end up w i t h another seeming e t e r n a l t r u t h .

Before going f u r t h e r , i t might be worth n o t i n g that already we can see Spinoza's

confusion between 'unbounded by spatiotemporal r e s t r i c t i o n s ' and 'necessary'.

I f i t i s true t h a t any substance must be extended, i t i s true without r e f e r -

ence to any time o r to any p l a c e . I am not sure whether one ought to say

t h a t i t i s n e c e s s a r i l y true t h a t any substance must be extended. I suppose

that given Spinoza's d e f i n i t i o n o f substance, i t i s so. I t a l s o seems reason-

able to say that 'anything extended must be e i t h e r i n motion o r at r e s t ' i s

necessarily true. I t i s a s i m i l a r k i n d o f t r u t h to 'nothing can be red and

green a l l over a t the same time'. The laws o f physics share w i t h the above

two statements, that they are not l i m i t e d by time and space. By t h i s I mean

that the b a s i c laws o f physics are true f o r a l l times and a l l p l a c e s . However

i t i s not the case that these laws are n e c e s s a r i l y true. I t would not involve

a c o n t r a d i c t i o n to deny, say Archimedes' p r i n c i p l e , o r other b a s i c laws o f

physics. Spinoza, however, thought i t would, and to think so i s q u i t e under-

standable.

This a l l f i t s i n w e l l w i t h the entailment theory o f causation. The

'cause' o f the a t t r i b u t e o f e x t e n s i o n i s 'substance' i t s e l f . The nature o f

substance explains why a l l substances must be extended. The 'cause' o f the

 33.

plus certain facts about the f i n i t e tiling i n question and other f i n i t e things.

This i s rather similar to the familiar causal picture, where for instance the

causal law that people who f a l l out of the topmost window of a one hundred

storey building, i f their f a l l i s unimpeded, w i l l die, plus the fact that I

am i n an unimpeded f a l l from the top of a hundred storey building only j o i n t l y

e n t a i l that I w i l l die.

E.i.16 i s stressing that eternal laws cannot be l e f t out of any explana-

tion. E.i.28 i s stressing that when one i s talking about f i n i t e things, one

cannot leave f i n i t e things out of one's explanation. Although the two proposi-

tions l i t e r a l l y do c o n f l i c t , we can reinterpret them and provide a construct-

ive suggestion as to what Spinoza had i n mind i n asserting them.

I would l i k e to say three things about this way of reading Spinoza.

F i r s t of a l l , the idea that the occurrence of an event i s entailed not

solely by a causal law nor by the occurrence of a p r i o r event, but only by a

combination of the two, i s not merely true, but t r i v i a l l y so. This, however,

i s not i n i t s e l f too bad, since i t i s one of the tasks of an innovative meta-

physician to convince his attentive readers that his system can account for

the everyday facts.

The second point i s more important, and i s as follows. Spinoza held i t

to be axiomatic that:

The knowledge of an effect depends upon and

involves the knowledge of the cause.

E.i.Ax.4.
 34.

I f I am not mistaken, this would leave Spinoza open to the charge that his

theory does not enable us to have knov Ledge o f anything except eternal and

i n f i n i t e truths. For o f any two f i n i t e things, A and B, B being the p a r t i a l

cause o f A, I cannot know A unless I know B; but I cannot know B unless

I know i t s cause, part o f which w i l l be the f i n i t e C, and so on ad infinitum.

This i s c e r t a i n l y e n t a i l e d by the Curley-Remnant i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , and i t seems,

at the very l e a s t , to have an a i r o f paradox about i t . However, to t h i s I

would say that i t i s a bad r e f l e c t i o n on Spinoza rather than on the Curley-

Remnant view o f his theory.

In f a c t Spinoza d i d believe that we could not have adequate knowledge o f

f i n i t e things. So an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n which implies t h i s i s not to be rejected

on the grounds that i t saddles Spinoza with this view. As a R a t i o n a l i s t who

unequivocally scorned the senses, i t i s not s u r p r i s i n g that Spinoza should

have held t h i s view that we could not have adequate knowledge o f f i n i t e and

transient things, as such knowledge would have to come v i a the senses. It is

a c t u a l l y part o f h i s l a t e r theory o f freedom that we become free as we cease

f i l l i n g our heads with 'inadequate' ideas o f f i n i t e things. I s h a l l leave

discussion o f this matter u n t i l a l a t e r chapter.

The t h i r d point r e a l l y arises out o f the second one, and i s t h i s .

Spinoza i s not able to answer Leibniz's objection s a t i s f a c t o r i l y . His causal

rationalism forces him to admit that the ordinary everyday world i s not r e a l ,

since the ordinary world i s temporal, and the causal theory cannot accomodate

time. Nevertheless, Spinoza does not abandon h i s causal rationalism, which

reappears i n the l a t e r part o f ETHICS Part Five. Instead he 'forgets' i t

w h i l s t giving his account o f the human condition o f bondage to the ' a f f e c t s ' .
 35.

We can be thankful that he does.

Although there i s obviously much more work which could usefully be done

on the topic of Spinoza's metaphysics, I s h a l l now turn to my main concern

i n this essay - Spinoza's theory of human freedom. I f I have provided some-

thing l i k e the requisite metaphysical background for at least understanding

the context i n which Spinoza's work about human beings was written, then this

chapter w i l l have achieved i t s purpose.

 CHAPTER TWO

THE BONDAGE OF HUMAN BEINGS

5. THE SOURCE OF SPINOZA'S DETERMINISM.

In many of the debates about the freedom of human beings, the main argu-

ment against their freedom has been that everything i s causally determined,

and as this i s so, there i s no room for freedom. Therefore no human beings

are free, and the b e l i e f that they are stems from romantic muddle-headedness.

Spinoza i s famous for being a determinist; he i s also well-known, not entirely

on account of the work of Somerset Maugham, for believing that human-beings

are not free, but i n bondage. However, his b e l i e f that people are not free

does not stem from h i s determinism, but from a different, thought not entirely

unconnected source.

As a Rationalist Spinoza was deeply committed to the view that everything

has an explanation or cause. But so were the other Rationalists, and they

certainly did believe that people are at least free enough to deserve moral

blame f o r their misdeeds. I readily concede that Descartes' account of human

freedom was p a r t i c u l a r l y misguided, but I would l i k e to stress that there i s

an important kind of freedom which i s not incompatible with determinism,

despite being incompatible with any just ascriptions of responsibility to

anything. That Spinoza believed i n some such sort of freedom despite h i s

r a t i o n a l i s t i c determinism i s evident from the following.

That thing i s called free which exists from the

necessity of i t s own nature alone, and i s deter-
mined to action by i t s e l f alone. That thing,
on the other hand, i s called necessary, or rather
 37.

compelled, which by another i s determined to e x i s t -

ence i n a f i x e d and prescribed manner.

E . i . Def. 7.

On this view i t i s quite a l l r i g h t to admit that something i s both causally

determined and f r e e , provided of course that the cause of the free thing's

existence and action i s i t s own nature and not anything e l s e . As substance

i s the only thing that i s completely self-caused, i t i s the only thing that

can be s a i d to be t r u l y free.

On the other hand, a human being i s not self-caused. For Spinoza, i n

order to be f r e e , something has to be completely independent of anything e l s e .

That i s to say, the existence, and action o f a free thing depends e x c l u s i v e l y

on i t s own nature or essence. What defines a human being, or constitutes i t s

'essence' does not e n t a i l the existence of any human beings. In E.i.8.Sch.,

Spinoza argues that

Whenever i t i s possible f o r several i n d i v i d u a l s o f

the same nature to e x i s t , there must n e c e s s a r i l y be
an external cause f o r t h e i r existence.

He proves' t h i s , taking man as a paradigm case of the p o s s i b i l i t y f o r several

i n d i v i d u a l s of the same nature to e x i s t . He assumes that there are j u s t

twenty men i n existence. I f there are j u s t twenty men i n existence, there

must be a cause or reason why there are neither more nor l e s s . This cause

cannot l i e i n human nature i t s e l f :

... since the true d e f i n i t i o n of a man does not i n -

volve the number twenty, and therefore ... the
cause why these twenty men e x i s t , and consequently
the cause why each e x i s t s , must n e c e s s a r i l y l i e out-
side each one; ...

E.i.8.Sch.

Thus according to the d e f i n i t i o n given above of what i t i s to be f r e e , man is

n e c e s s a r i l y unfree. Again, at the beginning of Part Four of ETHICS - that

 38.

e n t i t l e d OF HUMAN BONDAGE, Spinoza writes:

There i s no i n d i v i d u a l thing i n nature which i s not

surpassed i n strength by some other thing, but any
i n d i v i d u a l thing being given, another and stronger
i s also given, by which the former can be destroyed.

E. i v . Axiom.

In Part One o f ETHICS Spinoza launched a f r o n t a l assault on anthropocen-

t r i s m and on orthodox Judaeo-Christian theology. His determinism i s , apart

from anything e l s e , part o f t h i s f r o n t a l assault.

Many people, including Christians and Jews believe that human beings are

importantly unique i n the universe. They maintain that people are s p e c i a l i n

the world, because they can transcend nature. They believe we possess some-

thing which i s loosely c a l l e d ' f r e e - w i l l ' . Such a view o f mankind was to the

R a t i o n a l i s t , scientific-minded Spinoza, prejudiced and i r r a t i o n a l . His main

d i s t i n c t i o n between things was the ' i n f i n i t e and eternal' versus the ' f i n i t e

and temporal'. C l e a r l y , on t h i s count, people have the relevant things i n

common with p l a n t s , animals, tables and c h a i r s , and lack the features o f God

or Nature. I t i s not a b i t s u r p r i s i n g therefore, that Spinoza has i t as an

axiom at the s t a r t o f h i s discussion o f human bondage that any i n d i v i d u a l

thing i n nature i s surpassed i n strength, and can be destroyed by, another.

I s h a l l come back to Spinoza's anti-anthropocentrism i n the next section.

Although anthropocentrism can be maintained by a t h e i s t s , such as the

Humanist group, i t goes hand i n hand with the doctrines o f Judaism and C h r i s t -

ianity. For the sake o f b r e v i t y I s h a l l discuss the Spinozist c r i t i c i s m s only

of C h r i s t i a n i t y . There i s a pressure from orthodox C h r i s t i a n i t y to accept

l i b e r t a r i a n i s m , which i s the b e l i e f that human beings act i n ways which are

 39.

not subject to determining laws. What Spinoza does i s to reject orthodox

C h r i s t i a n i t y , and thereby remove one of the main bases for the b e l i e f i n

libertarianism. He also has independent reasons for rejecting libertarianism,

which doctrine he regards as thoroughly incoherent.

The f i r s t reason for believing i n libertarianism which stems from ortho-

dox C h r i s t i a n i t y , i s that i t seems to be a necessary condition for God's hav-

ing to do anything i n order to create the world i n the f i r s t place. There

would simply be nothing for God to have done unless the creation had something

independent of Him i n i t , for otherwise, i t would a l l be part of Himself. The

obvious candidate for something independent of God i s mankind with the God-

given g i f t of f r e e - w i l l .

The second pressure from Christianity f o r believing i n libertarianism

arises out of the Christian notion of desert. Admittedly there are some

Christians who believe that we are such miserable creatures that we don't

deserve anything. These people believe that we can attain salvation by God's

grace alone, which seems to be l i t t l e more discriminating than a lottery.

However the majority of Christians believe that the way to salvation i s

through freely deciding to do the right thing, or adopt the right way of l i f e ,

namely the Christian way. Christians seek to explain the existence of e v i l i n

the world, by attributing i t to people's freely rejecting God's commandments,

although this attempt cannot succeed. The whole notion of g u i l t and deserv-

ingness which l i e s so near the heart of Christian theology hardly makes sense

unless people have real freedom of choice.

Much of ETHICS Part One i s devoted to showing that the idea of a creator-

God separate from the creation, i s absurd. Spinoza's main argument i s that no
 40.

substance can either be or be conceived besides God, since God i s a being

of which no attribute can be denied. I f there were a substance existing be-

sides God, this would ' l i m i t ' God, but this i s impossible, since God i s an

'absolutely i n f i n i t e ' being. Quite a l o t can be said about Spinoza's

attack on the r a t i o n a l i t y of believing i n a Christian God, but to get into

a discussion of this would take us rather too f a r a f i e l d . What i s important

i s that Spinoza absolutely rejected the view of the world which presents a

creator and a separate creation which i s dependent on the creator.

The rejection of the Christian God removed important reasons for believ-

ing i n libertarianism. As implied above Spinoza also had reasons of a

positive nature for believing i n determinism. He was very against the notion

of ' f r e e - w i l l ' even for God. He writes:

The w i l l cannot be called a free cause, but can

only be called necessary.

E.i.28.

His argument for this i s based on the statement that the w i l l i s only a

certain mode of thought, and as a l l modes are determined by external causes,

the w i l l i s so determined, and hence i s not free. As a corollorary to this

we find:

Hence i t follows ... that God does not act from

freedom of the w i l l .

E.i.33.

When Spinoza says this he r e a l l y means i t and he doesn't attempt to grant

God the freedom of choice accorded to the Christian God by introducing i t

under a different name. For

Things could have been produced by God i n no other

manner and i n no other order than that i n which
they have been produced.

E. i.33.
 41.

We have already come across this proposition i n connection with the discussion

of Spinoza's causal rationalism. His argument f o r the proposition, as we have

seen, i s not a good one, since i t involves ignoring the p o s s i b i l i t y of s e l e c t -

ing any o f a number of conclusions from a given premise. For more discussion

of this proposition and the argument f o r i t I r e f e r the reader to

6. THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.

Spinoza's attack on anthropocentrism i s part of h i s avid insistence upon

being objective and ' s c i e n t i f i c ' i n his writings. The 'scientific' is in

inverted commas because Spinoza's philosophy has been c r i t i c i s e d f o r being

unscientific. We must remember that Spinoza and the other R a t i o n a l i s t s b e l -

ieved that the most respectable s c i e n t i f i c enquiry was a priori. I t stems

from h i s taking h i s Rationalism very s e r i o u s l y that Spinoza writes at the be-

ginning of ETHICS Part Three, about those who regard man i n nature as a king-

dom within a kingdom, that they:

... proceed to a t t r i b u t e the cause of human weakness

and changeableness, not to the common power o f nature,
but to some v i c e of human nature, which they there-
fore bewail, laugh at, mock, or as i s more generally
the case, detest;

E.iii.Intro.

His i n t e n t i o n , he t e l l s us, i s not to s c o f f at the ' a f f e c t s ' , but rather to

understand them, by applying to t h e i r study the geometrical method. 'Under-

standing' i s the key word here. His reason f o r using the geometrical method

for analyzing human ' a f f e c t s ' i s that:

Nothing happens i n nature which can be a t t r i b u t e d to .

any v i c e of nature, f o r she i s always the same, and
her power everywhere one. Her v i r t u e i s always the
same, and her power of acting; that i s to say, her
laws and r u l e s , according to which a l l things are and
are changed from form to form, are everywhere and
 42.

always the same; so that there must also be one and

the same method of understanding the nature of a l l
things whatsoever, that i s to say by the universal
laws and rules of nature.

E.iii.Intro.

Spinoza, then, had a very deep-seated b e l i e f i n the unity of science.

The affects are roughly equivalent to what we would c a l l emotions, and

include hatred, anger and envy amongst other things. The affects, which are

p a r t i a l causes of what we would c a l l actions, are themselves normally caused

by the same necessity as that which necessitates any natural phenomenon.

Thus Spinoza treats human beings as simply being one group amongst many, of

f i n i t e modes. For him there i s no essential difference between people and

other bodies, which would j u s t i f y us i n giving a special 'moral' treatment

of the study of man. Thus he writes at the conclusion to the introduction

to E . i i i :

I s h a l l consider human actions and appetites j u s t

as i f I were considering l i n e s , planes or bodies.
E.iii.Intro.

7. THE SPECIAL TREATMENT OF HUMAN BEINGS.

Having made a l l these disclaimers about the non-speciality of human be-

ings i n the study of nature, Spinoza proceeds with what must be one of the

most i n s i g h t f u l and sympathetic accounts of the human condition. Before

embarking on the discussion of his detailed account of human bondage I would

l i k e to recapitulate the metaphysical basis for his claim that human beings

are inevitably i n bondage. There are two meanings to 'free' - one of them

i s i n d i s t i n c t i o n to 'caused'. In this sense of 'free', freedom i s impossible,

even for an i n f i n i t e , or even absolutely i n f i n i t e being, since 'everything has

 43.

a cause 1
i s , for any good Rationalist, a necessary truth. According to the

other sense of 'free', the Spinozist sense, 'being free' i s i n contradistinc-

tion to 'having an external cause'. Substance i s the only free thing i n

this sense. People are not free, since they depend for their existence on

the co-operation of other things - they are not self-caused. In this respect

they are not different from anything else i n the world.

When Spinoza discusses human bondage i t i s significant that he emphasizes

the mental manifestations of this condition. This i s interesting because a l -

though he doesn't actually attribute minds to the things i n nature apart from

human beings, i t i s one of his f a i r l y fundamental tenets that:

The order and connexion of ideas i s the same as the

order and connexion of things.

E.ii.7.
Many of the propositions of ETHICS express this parallelism between the world

of ideas and the world of extended things. As the mind i s on the 'idea' side

of things, and the body i s i t s analogue on the 'extension' side, one would

expect that an understanding of human beings would involve knowledge of the

human body no less than of the human mind.

Early on i n Part One of ETHICS, Spinoza talks of the connexion between

finitude and lack of freedom. The notion of finitude i s f a i r l y easily under-

stood when applied to physical objects, but less so when applied to minds.

Spinoza writes the following on the subject.

... For example, a body i s called f i n i t e , because

we always conceive another which i s greater. So
a thought i s limited by another thought.

E.i.DEF.2.

It i s easy to understand how a body can be limited by another body, but much
 44.

less so, how a thought, or a mind i s l i m i t e d by another mind. Of course we

can t a l k o f having f i n i t e minds, meaning by this that we cannot, f o r example,

conceive an i n f i n i t y o f things at the same time, but the problem s t i l l re-

mains that we don't have a metric f o r s i z e o f minds, as we do f o r s i z e o f

bodies.

I f human beings were not regarded as s p e c i a l by Spinoza we could have

expected him to have produced a study o f 'the order and connexion' o f the

human body, or human bodies, i n t h e i r commerce with the rest o f the extended

world, and then to invoke E . i i . 7 . to j u s t i f y h i s claim that the mind i s i n

bondage too. The point I am t r y i n g to make i s that Spinoza i s r e a l l y doing

himself an i n j u s t i c e , though he apparently would not have thought so, when

he says that he i s going to consider human actions and appetites as i f he

were studying l i n e s , planes or bodies. I f he r e a l l y followed t h i s through

he would have concentrated on the p h y s i c a l movements o f the bodies o f human

beings, and would have then added the s p e c i f i c a l l y mental content at the end

via E.ii.7. Of course he does t r y to maintain the o b j e c t i v i t y with which one

would normally study l i n e s , planes and the l i k e , but one can detect through-

out the l a t t e r parts o f ETHICS a profound sympathy f o r the human condition,

and i n p a r t i c u l a r f o r the mental anguish suffered by most human beings.

8. THE NATURE OF HUMAN BONDAGE.

The kernel o f Spinoza's theory o f human bondage i s t h i s . People are

nearly always at the mercy o f t h e i r a f f e c t s . This i s made quite e x p l i c i t

not only by the t i t l e o f Part Four o f ETHICS, which i n i t s complete form

reads: "Of Human Bondage or o f the Strength o f the A f f e c t s " , but also by the

opening words o f the introduction to that part.

 45.

... The impotence o f man to govern or r e s t r a i n the

a f f e c t s I c a l l bondage, f o r a man who i s under t h e i r
control i s not his own master, but i s mastered by-
fortune, i n whose power he i s , so that he i s often
forced to follow •the worse, although he sees the
b e t t e r before him ...

E.iv.Preface.

The theory i s b a s i c a l l y that, as most people are f a i r l y weak they are

nearly always at the mercy o f t h e i r a f f e c t s . When one i s at the mercy o f

an a f f e c t , one i s not at the helm i n determining one's course o f action.

A f f e c t s come over one, whether o r not one asks them t o , and i t i s a matter

of chance whether or not they impel one to do what one r e a l l y wants to do,

or what i t i s i n one's true i n t e r e s t to do. I s h a l l amplify t h i s point l a t e r ,

when I discuss the theory o f the a f f e c t s i n d e t i a l .

Despite the seeming i n e v i t a b i l i t y o f our being unfree f o r the reasons

adduced e a r l i e r , Spinoza does t a l k o f there being a d i s t i n c t i o n w i t h i n the

behaviour o f human beings between a c t i v i t y and p a s s i v i t y , which suggests

that our p l i g h t may be not quite as gloomy as at f i r s t appeared.

I say that we act when anything i s done, e i t h e r

within us or without us, o f which we are the
adequate cause, that i s to say (by preceding d e f . ) ,
when from our nature anything follows, e i t h e r w i t h i n
or without us, which by that nature alone can be
c l e a r l y and d i s t i n c t l y understood. On the other hand
I say that we s u f f e r when anything i s done within us, or
when anything follows from our nature, o f which we are
not the cause except p a r t i a l l y .

E.iii.Def.3.

In more modern language one might translate the above d e f i n i t i o n into some-

thing l i k e the following: Whenever the occurrence o f an event can be ex-

plained s o l e l y by reference to the fundamental desire o f a person that person

i s active - or perhaps better i s : We are active when we do something because

 46.

that i s what we, namely our true selves, want to do. On the other hand we

suffer, or are passive, to the extent that what we do i s determined by any-

thing other than our true selves. The question w i l l now, I suspect, arise

i n the reader's mind as to what i s this 'true s e l f . This might well be

coupled with the question 'What i s the connexion between 'fundamental desire'

and 'true s e l f ? They both seem extremely nebulous expressions which c a l l

for explication, and they aren't obviously connected.

9. ESSENCES AND INNER DRIVES.

Spinoza, as I think has been said e a r l i e r , distinguishes 'existence'

from 'essence'. In connexion with his arguments about God, he says that

God's essence involves existence, just as the essence of a triangle involves

the triangle's having three sides. According to this notion of essence, an

object's essence may be equated roughly with i t s definition. We know that a

triangle w i l l have three sides as this fact i s contained i n the d e f i n i t i o n

or 'essence' of a triangle. S i m i l a r l y , the argument goes, with God - that

God exists i s part of the d e f i n i t i o n or 'essence' of God. I t would be s e l f -

contradictory to deny existence to God, just as i t would be self-contradictory

to deny three-sidedness to a triangle.

Notwithstanding a l l t h i s , Spinoza has something else i n mind when he

talks of essences other than a simple equation of 'essence' and 'definition'.

He does have a d i s t i n c t i o n between 'essence' and 'actual essence', which i s

not s p e c i f i c a l l y acknowledged by him, but i s nonetheless important.

He defines 'essence' i n the following way at the beginning of ETHICS

Part Two:
 47.

I say that to the essence of anything pertains that,

which being given, the tiling i t s e l f i s n e c e s s a r i l y
posited, and being taken away, the thing i s necessar-
i l y taken; or, i n other words, that without which the
thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which i n
i t s turn cannot be nore be conceived without the thing.

E.ii.Def.2.

Here 'essence' i s defined as something s i m i l a r to what we might c a l l 'defin-

ing c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s ' . This was a f a i r l y common i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of 'essence'.

The essence of a thing consists of i t s e s s e n t i a l properties. So, f o r any

thing, i f i t s e s s e n t i a l properties are i n s t a n t i a t e d the thing i s s a i d to

exist. S i m i l a r l y , i f the thing e x i s t s the e s s e n t i a l properties must be i n -

s t a n t i a t e d , and so on.

This d e f i n i t i o n does not, as might appear on a f i r s t reading, commit

Spinoza to an o n t o l o g i c a l argument f o r the existence o f a l l things, f o r i t

does not assert that the essence of a thing causes i t s existence. However,

i t i s true that the i n s t a n t i a t i o n of the e s s e n t i a l properties of a thing

'causes' i t s existence, as t h i s i n s t a n t i a t i o n e n t a i l s the existence of the

thing. In order to get the o n t o l o g i c a l argument out o f E.ii.Def.2., one

would need the premise that 'existence' i s a defining or e s s e n t i a l property

of everything, which Spinoza does not accept.

The d e f i n i t i o n above i s s l i g h t l y p u z z l i n g because Spinoza implies i n i t

that the essence of a thing i s responsible f o r two a c t i v i t i e s . I t f i r s t of

a l l enables the thing to e x i s t , and secondly enables i t to be conceived, as

i f these were two separate feats. They are a c t u a l l y intimately r e l a t e d , f o r

i f something i s inconceivable i t could not e x i s t , whereas the d e f i n i t i o n

suggests, by the words "neither be nor be conceived", that something could be,

and yet not be conceivable. Perhaps one should not make too much of t h i s .
 48.

Spinoza had two different things i n mind when he talked of essences,

even though he might have been misled by his causal rationalism into equating

them. The second type of 'essence' has much more to do with an inner dynamic

force which keeps things going, than with the defining or essential properties

of the o r i g i n a l d e f i n i t i o n . In the part of ETHICS which i s devoted to ex-

plaining the nature and o r i g i n of the affects Spinoza says the following:

The e f f o r t by which each thing endeavours to persevere

i n i t s own being i s nothing but the actual essence of
the thing i t s e l f .

E.iii.7

The 'actual essence' of a thing i s here something l i k e the inner drive which

holds i t together, or, i n the case of people, the basic motivational force.

This i s a f a r cry from the rather abstract essential properties of the

o r i g i n a l account of 'essence', although the word 'essential' could j u s t i f i a b l y

be applied to both sets of properties. More w i l l be said on this controver-

s i a l subject of drives, when I talk i n more d e t a i l about motivation.

So I contend that i n E.ii.Def.2., Spinoza i s confused between 'formal'

essences or definitions and 'actual' essences, or inner-driving forces, and

his confusion stems d i r e c t l y from his causal rationalism.

What interests me here i s the second sense of 'essence'. Spinoza

believes that human beings are passive or i n bondage when what they do does

not follow from their drive for self-preservation. The actual essence of

each person i s something very akin to the Freudian notion of the ' i d ' . The

main difference i s that Spinoza rather implausibly attributes this fundamental

endeavour for self-preservation, or 'conatus' as i t i s commonly c a l l e d , to a l l

things, animate or inanimate. This 'conatus' doctrine i s f a i r l y well-known,

not least for i t s being very d i f f i c u l t to defend, especially i n the face of

 49.

such self-destructive 'tilings' as activated time bombs.

I s h a l l not try to defend the 'conatus' doctrine, but would l i k e to say

that i t i s a doctrine which has far more p l a u s i b i l i t y when applied to human

beings and other animate objects, than when applied to l i f e l e s s things.-

This i s a feature common to many of Spinoza's doctrines despite his vehement

anti-anthropocentricism.

His anti-anthropocentrism came from two directions. He t r i e d to close

the gap between people and things f i r s t of a l l by saying that people are far

more l i k e things than they think. He also maintained that things are far

more l i k e people than we think. Thus he demotes human beings and elevates

non-human beings. These two strains i n Spinoza's anti-anthropocentrism are

closely p a r a l l e l l e d by his wavering between a cold s c i e n t i f i c view of the

universe, and a reverent pantheism. Despite this he never manages quite to

escape his deep commitment to understanding the human condition.

In fact Spinoza does, whilst discussing the 'conatus' doctrine make

relevant d i s t i n c t i o n between people and, say, inanimate objects. He makes

the d i s t i n c t i o n as i f i t i s not p a r t i c u l a r l y important, although i t turns

out to have great significance. Talking of the e f f o r t or endeavour of any-

thing to persevere i n i t s own being he writes:

This e f f o r t , when i t i s related to the mind alone,

i s c a l l e d w i l l , but when i t i s related at the same
time both to the mind and the body, i s c a l l e d
appetite, which i s therefore nothing but the very
essence of man, from the nature of which necessarily
follow those things which promote his preservation,
and thus he i s determined to do those things. Hence
there i s no difference between appetite and desire,
unless i n this p a r t i c u l a r , that desire i s generally
related to men and i t may therefore be defined as
 50.

appetite of which we are conscious.

E.iii.9.Sen.

Human beings are different from ordinary tilings, because we have conscious-

ness of our desires. Spinoza acknowledged t h i s , but he could not adequately

accomodate i t into his theory o f psycho-physical parallelism, for he maintain-

ed that the:

... idea of the mind i s united to the mind i n the

same way as the mind i t s e l f i s united to the body.

E.ii.21.

According to his o r i g i n a l theory every physical state has i t s mental counter-

part. He i s now asserting that i n the same way every mental state has, be-

sides a physical counterpart, a higher order mental state, which i t i s d i f f i -

cult to see as other than something l i k e our notion of self-consciousness.

The problem with this i s that, along with the o r i g i n a l p a r a l l e l i s m , i t would

e n t a i l that everything i s self-conscious, or that there are ideas of the

ideas of say stones. Yet clearly there are mental states without s e l f -

consciousness, even i f one were to grant that a l l things have mental states.

Moreover i t i s obvious, amongst other things, from E . i i i . 9 . S c h . , that Spinoza

realized t h i s . In fact, i n his theory of human freedom, our capacity for re-

f l e c t i v e awareness, something not attributed to things other than people, i s

c r u c i a l f o r the escape from bondage.

I t seems f a i r l y clear from this why Spinoza, i n his t a l k about human be-

ings i s f a r more concerned with their mental aspect. Thoughts were somewhat

of an embarrassment to him i n his metaphysical talk about f i n i t e and i n f i n i t e ;

bodies are the embarrassment when he talks about the p o s s i b i l i t y of human

freedom, since we have such obviously f i n i t e bodies.

 SI.

I pass now to a discussion of the stumbling blocks to human freedom,

the affects.

10. THE AFFECTS. PART ONE.

'Affect' i s defined i n the following way:

By affect I understand the affections of the body,

by which the power of acting of the body i t s e l f i s
increased, diminished, helped, or hindered, together
with the ideas of these affections.

E.iii.Def.3.

One has affects only when there i s some change i n the 'power of acting of

the body i t s e l f . The nearest equivalent i n our language to an affect i s ,

I think, an emotion, although this i s not more than an approximation. The

main difference may stem less from Spinoza meaning something different by

'affect' from what we mean by 'emotion', and more from the fact that he held

unfamiliar views about our f a m i l i a r emotions.

Affects are a species of 'affection' of the body plus the idea of that

affection. An affection i s a change i n the state of a body. Some affections

leave the body's power of acting unchanged, whilst others constitute a change

i n power. An affect i s an affection which constitutes a change i n a body's

power of acting plus the corresponding idea of t h i s change. When Spinoza

talks of our bondage to the affects he i s concerned mainly with affects such

as sorrow, rage, joy and so on, rather than with the changes which occur i n

one's power of acting when one suffers direct physical affronts such as being

h i t on the head by a stone and the corresponding pain, although this would

technically-speaking be an affect.
 52.

Spinoza does sometimes talk as i f the affects cause rises and f a l l s i n

the power of bodies. What one might sa; to explain this i s that an affect
r

not only constitutes a change i n the power of acting of a body, but also

causes a further r i s e or f a l l .

A c t i v i t y was believed by Spinoza to be more desirable than passivity.

In fact he equated 'power' with 'virtue'. 'Power' i n this context means

'power of a c t i v i t y ' , 'activity' here being a technical term to be explained

later.

The affects of sorrow mark a change from the more to the less active.

These affects are therefore i n themselves bad. For these negative affects

constitute and bring about a diminution i n the power of the body. They also

diminish the power of the mind, f o r :

I f anything increases, diminishes, helps, or l i m i t s

our body's power of action, the idea of that thing
increases, diminishes, helps, or l i m i t s our body's
power of thought.

E.iii.11.
These, as I c a l l them, 'negative' affects, cannot stem from our own nature or

actual essence, since our own nature i s constantly s t r i v i n g for s e l f - r e a l i z a -

tion which i s equated with a c t i v i t y . Our minds are, for instance, described

i n the following way:

The mind endeavours as much as possible to imagine

those things which increase or assist the body's
power of acting.

E.iii.12.

When one i s having a negative affect, one's mind i s not imagining that which

w i l l increase the body's power of action, but on the contrary, i s dwelling on

the loss of power of the body. These thoughts cannot stem from our own nature,
 53.

then. Therefore, to the extent that we have such affects we are not active,

according to the d e f i n i t i o n given above.

In ETHICS Part Three Spinoza says that there are three primary affects,

which are joy, sorrow, and desire. The l a s t of these causes problems of

interpretation, since 'desire' i s not only associated with the already

alluded to 'conatus', but i s reintroduced as something which arises from

joys and sorrows. Spinoza even writes:

There are as many kinds of desires, ... as there are

kinds of joy, sorrow, love §c...

E. iii.56.Dem.

These individual desires can increase or diminish the power of acting of

their possessors, whereas the conatus inevitably involves an increase.

Spinoza certainly ought to have distinguished the 'conatus-desire' from the

'affect-desire', as these are, although related, different. The desires

which arise out of joys and sorrows are affects from which a free person w i l l

be free, whereas a free person w i l l have an extremely powerful conatus.

The other two primary affects are defined i n the following way:

By joy, ... I s h a l l understand the passion by which the

mind passes to a greater perfection; by sorrow, ... the
passion by which i t passes to a less perfection.

E.iii.ll.Sch.

Sorrow and joy are called 'passions' because they do not, t y p i c a l l y , arise

simply from the essence of the j o y f u l or sorrowful person. These affects,

along with 'desire' are the basic ones. Affects t y p i c a l l y involve joy, sorrow,

or desire, plus the accompanying idea of some external thing, that i s , of some-

thing other than the owner of the affect. For instance the affect of hatred

i s defined as:
 54.

Sorrow, with the accompanying idea of an external

cause.

E. Def.8. of the Affects.

Joy and the affects of joy are i n themselves good, whereas sorrow and i t s

affects are i n tJ mselves bad, for:

Joy ... i s an affect by which the body's power of

action i s increased or assisted. Sorrow on the
other hand, i s an affect by which the body's power
of action i s lessened or restrained.

E.iv.41.Dem.

In more familiar language one might say that feeling sorrowful i s a

bad thing, since when one feels l i k e that one i s severely limited from doing

things. Spinoza believed that sorrow was a psycho-physical condition which

constitutes both a physical and a psychological diminution of power of the

sorrowful person. This i s true of a l l the affects of sorrow. Consider, for

instance, someone who feels extremely jealous. I f one feels extremely

jealous of somebody, then i t i s l i k e l y that one w i l l be severely inhibited

from doing the things which one r e a l l y wants to do. Often when one feels

jealous, remorseful, resentful, or any of a host of other things, one i s not

only somehow 'taken over' by feelings which one did not invite to come upon

one, but also one would very much l i k e i t i f the feelings would go away.

Many of these feelings simply interfere with one's purposes when one i s sub-

ject to them. The most obvious area where this i s the case i s i n the f i e l d

of concentration. One just cannot seem to concentrate on anything, except of

course one's sorrow, i f one i s i n subjection to a sorrow. On the other hand,

i f one i s feeling f u l l of joy, one i s very often able to do a l o t of things -

get a l o t done. Feelings of joy are not t y p i c a l l y i n h i b i t i n g . Moreover,

people do not, as a rule, wish that they did not have the feelings of joy to

which they are subject. So, although both joy and sorrow are passions i n the
 55.

sense that they t y p i c a l l y come upon us through causes external to ourselves,

we are i n less bondage i f we are subject to the emotions of joy than i f we

are subject to sorrows.

Spinoza writes i n a note at the bottom of the d e f i n i t i o n of 'affect':

I f ... we can be the adequate cause of any of these

affections, I understand the affect to be an action,
otherwise i t i s a passion.

E.iii.Def.3.

So Spinoza does allow the p o s s i b i l i t y of having affects, and being active i n

so doing. In as much as the affects we have constitute a c t i v i t i e s rather

than p a s s i v i t i e s , they must be affects of either joy or desire, although

c l e a r l y , being such an affect i s not a s u f f i c i e n t condition for being an

'active' one. Nevertheless I would l i k e to say that i t i s not at a l l clear

that the passions of sorrow, as they are c a l l e d , universally make us unfree

to a greater extent than some of the passions of joy. Sometimes people keep

going i n the depths of adversity, driven on by a hatred of t h e i r oppressors.

I have heard of people who survived the most t e r r i b l e ordeals i n the Nazi

concentration camps, driven on by a hatred of the Nazis, which helped to give

them the single-mindedness to put up with the most appalling hardships, which

broke many people, who had, perhaps, less strong emotions, and were, hence

more 'free'. I f bondage i s the lack of self-determination, and i f self-deter-

mination i s acting solely from the motive of self-preservation, then Spinoza's

claim about the extremity of bondage to the affects of sorrow would seem at

most true as a r u l e , and not a universal truth.

I s h a l l now pass on, f o r the time being, from the affects as such,

although there i s quite a l o t more to be said by way of elucidation, expansion

and c r i t i c i s m . I s h a l l resume this discussion i n my next chapter.

 56.

11. ADEQUACY.

There i s one c r u c i a l aspect of Spinoza's account of the bondage of human

beings which I have so far l e f t completely alone, and this i s his notion of

adequacy. Adequacy crops up i n two guises. Spinoza talks of 'adequate

causes' and of 'adequate ideas'.

In E . i i i . D e f . 3 . , above quoted, Spinoza i s saying that we are active i f

we are the 'adequate cause' o f an affect. He defines 'adequate cause' as

follows:

I c a l l that an adequate cause whose effect can be

clearly and d i s t i n c t l y perceived by means of the
cause. I c a l l that an inadequate or p a r t i a l cause
whose effect cannot be understood by means of the
cause alone.

E.iii.Def.l.

As i s strongly implied by the note at the end of E . i i i . D e f . 3 . , Spinoza cert-

ainly believed that i t i s possible f o r us to be active, some of the time, at

any rate. This immediately generates problems for him, given his theory that

we are active inasmuch as we are the adequate cause of how we f e e l , and of

what we do. The most natural.way to interpret 'adequate cause', i n the l i g h t

of Spinoza's causal rationalism i s to take i t that adequacy i s an a l l or

nothing matter. Either a cause i s completely adequate, or i t i s completely

inadequate. What E . i i i . D e f . l . appears to be saying i s that a cause i s

adequate i f and only i f i t entails i t s effect no matter what else i s the cause.

Thus God can be described as the adequate cause of a l l conceivable things,

since a l l things follow from the nature of God. An adequate cause, then, i s

something l i k e a l o g i c a l l y s u f f i c i e n t condition. The problem with this inter-

pretation of 'adequate cause' i s that i t would render our bondage or passivity

absolutely irremediable which i s certainly not what Spinoza intended. I t

 57.

would make our passivity absolutely incurable because we are individual

things i n nature, and:

There i s no individual thing i n nature which i s not

surpassed i n strength and power by some other thing,
but any individual thing b^ing given, another and a
stronger i s also given, by which.'the former can be
destroyed.

E.iv.Axiom.

As I could be destroyed at any time by a number of things outside of myself,

every time I do anything or feel anything part of the cause of my feeling

the thing I feel or of my doing the thing I do i s that I am being enabled to

do or feel whatever i t i s by the suitable interaction of the things that

could destroy me, of which there are an i n f i n i t e number. Fully to understand

why I do what I do, or feel the way I f e e l , i t i s necessary to understand,

amongst other things, why I exist. As I am not the adequate cause of my own

existence I could not be the adequate cause of what presupposes i t , namely

my feelings and actions and so on.

So i t seems that we are forced to construe 'adequate causation as being

a matter of degree. I f we give i t this interpretation then we can at least

allow there to be degrees of a c t i v i t y . We might wish to say that someone who

i s doing something because that i s what he r e a l l y wants to do, and not because

he i s , say, suffering from a compulsion, or because someone else i s making

him, i s more of an adequate cause of his action than the slave and the klepto-

maniac. This would y i e l d the right answer as far as our intuitions are con-

cerned with regard to the relative freedom or degree of a c t i v i t y of the v a r i -

ous people. The slave and the kleptomaniac are paradigm examples of people

who are r e l a t i v e l y speaking very unfree, and passive, at least with regard

to their slaving and stealing.

 58.

However, this escape doesn't l e t Spinoza o f f the hook, at least i f he

i s to maintain his causal rationalism. The problem i s that of establishing

a scale f o r degrees of adequacy. I f adequacy i s a matter of degree one would

have to make comparisons between inadequate causes i n order to say which i s

the more adequate. Given a causal r a t i o n a l i s t idea of 'cause' this would

amount to having to make statements of the following form. 'X i s a more

adequate cause of Y than P i s of Q. For X comes nearer to entailing Y than

P does to e n t a i l i n g Q.'. But the only sense i n which there can be these

'degrees of entailment' yields only three 'degrees'. Either A entails B, or

i t i s consistent with, but doesn't, by i t s e l f e n t a i l B, or i t i s inconsistent

with B. The 'degrees of adequacy' would have to be developed within the

second of my three categories, and i n this context there i s simply no room

there for such a development. As f a r as the entailment of events i s concerned

a miss i s as good as a mile.

I f he gave up the causal rationalism there would be hope of at least

some salvage. When we talk of the cause of a happening we aren't usually

concerned with a l l the things which had to conspire i n order for the event to

have occurred. For instance i f a car crashes, and we want to find out the

cause we don't say that i t was caused by gravity, although the law of gravity's

holding at the time of the crash would have been a necessary condition of the

accident. We would also not be p a r t i c u l a r l y interested i n some of the p a r t i c -

ular facts of the situation which might have been necessary conditions for the

crash having occurred, such as the fact that the road was less than f i f t y

yards wide, or the fact that the wind was blowing at a rate of less than two

hundred miles per hour. When we are looking f o r the cause of something's

happening we assume that something unusual happened, and was a factor i n the

happening. To pursue the 'crash' story further, we would probably assume

 59.

that the accident would not have happened i f the driver had not been

negligent, or i f the car's tyres had not been bald, or i f the camber of the

road had been normal, or ... . When we pick out the cause of an event we

pick out the thing of a l l the causes which seems to be special to the p a r t i c -

ular case. In the crash case we wouldn't say that the cause of the crash was

the force of gravity, since the force of gravity i s present on the roads at

a l l times, and yet crashes happen f a i r l y infrequently. One might say to this

that people's car's often have bald tyres etc. I quite agree that none of

the causes i s l o g i c a l l y s u f f i c i e n t to guarantee the event. However, we do,

with some j u s t i f i c a t i o n talk of important and less important factors i n some-

thing's happening. The most important cause i s the one which i s regarded as

being p a r t i c u l a r l y special to the case. We might say that the most important

factor i n , or cause of, the crash was the driver's negligence, since the road

was normal, the car's tyres were i n good condition ... .

We can relate this to human beings and their actions and psychic states.

When we explain the occurrence of something we pick out that of the causally

relevant factors which are special to the case. So we could easily say of a

human being that he or she was the cause of an action. This would be tanta-

mount to saying that i n the action, what was special to the case was the

person's real desires, as opposed to the w i l l of another, or a compulsion, or

a number of things external to the agent's 'essence'. Of the things one does,

one i s r e a l l y the driving force behind some, though not others. Also a person

might be one of the most important, though not the most important factor be-

hind a certain thing taking place. According to this model there i s some hope

of establishing a scale. We can talk of being a more or less special causal

factor i n our actions, as the actions emanate to a large extent from our own

selves, or from extraneous factors.

 60.

This i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s , I think, i n the s p i r i t o f Spinoza's account o f

freedom. I t i s c l e a r at t h i s point j u s t how much the causal r a t i o n a l i s m i s

an embarrassment to Spinoza's philosophy. I s h a l l take up the discussion

of 'being the cause o f our psychic states' i n the next chapter.

The other r o l e i n which 'adequacy' appears i s i n the notion o f 'adequate

ideas'. That the d i s t i n c t i o n between adequate and inadequate ideas i s

important f o r Spinoza's theory o f human bondage i s suggested r i g h t at the

beginning o f ETHICS Part Three.

Our mind acts and at times s u f f e r s : i n so f a r as

i t has adequate ideas, i t n e c e s s a r i l y a c t s , and
i n so f a r as i t has inadequate ideas, i t necessar-
i l y suffers.

E.iii.l.

I wrote e a r l i e r that Spinoza's theory o f human bondage and freedom was essen-

t i a l l y about mental bondage and freedom. Here he i s saying that we are f r e e ,

or a t l e a s t our mind a c t s , to the extent that we have adequate ideas. What

then i s an 'adequate idea'? Spinoza's d e f i n i t i o n at the beginning o f Part

Two i s not i n i t s e l f very h e l p f u l .

By adequate idea, I understand an idea which i n

so f a r as i t i s considered i n i t s e l f , without
reference to the object, has a l l the properties
or i n t e r n a l signs o f a true idea.

EXPLANATION: I say i n t e r n a l , so as to exclude

that which i s external, the agreement, namely,
of the idea with i t s object.

E.ii.Def.4.

According to this d e f i n i t i o n and i t s explanation, then, an adequate idea i s

one which has the properties o f a true idea, whatever that may be, without

any reference to the agreement o f the idea with i t s object, whatever that may

mean. Spinoza wishes to exclude 'the agreement o f the idea with i t s object',

because according to his theory o f t r u t h and f a l s i t y , a l l ideas agree with

 61.

t h e i r objects. But t h i s , f o r anyone with a correspondence theory of t r u t h ,

i s to admit that there i s no such thing as f a l s i t y . In the d e f i n i t i o n

Spinoza implies that there i s such a tiling as a f a l s e idea, but he i s never

able to say exactly how something can be f a l s e . In the d e f i n i t i o n he im-

p l i e s that an adequate idea i s one which can be seen to be true without

having to r e l y on knowledge about the world - i t can be known to be true

from i t s own i n t e r n a l structure alone. But he cannot say i n what f a l s i t y

consists, and without t h i s he cannot explain what t r u t h or any species o f

t r u t h might be. He does define ' f a l s i t y ' , i n the following way:

F a l s i t y consists i n the p r i v a t i o n o f knowledge,

which inadequate, that i s to say, mutilated and
confused ideas involve.

E.ii.35.

Any account o f what f a l s i t y i s must be i n terms o f what i t i s to make a f a l s e

judgement. I t must be able to explain what i t i s f o r someone to believe that

something i s the case which i s n ' t i n f a c t the case. Spinoza does not have

any adequate account o f judgement or o f b e l i e f , and so cannot give an adequate

account o f f a l s i t y . There i s i n f a c t strong evidence to suggest that what

Spinoza c a l l s ' f a l s i t y ' and 'truth' i s a completely d i f f e r e n t thing from what

we mean by the terms. What he cannot do i s to explain the p o s s i b i l i t y o f hav-

ing f a l s e b e l i e f s on our notion o f f a l s i t y . There i s obviously much more to

be s a i d about Spinoza's theory o f f a l s i t y which one cannot discuss i n a work

of t h i s scope and subject-matter. Any account o f f a l s i t y must be i n terms o f

'false judgments*. Spinoza's account being j u s t i n terms of ideas cannot

y i e l d an adequate account o f what a f a l s e judgment, or indeed o f what a

judgment, may be.

Despite t h e i r t h e o r e t i c unsatisfactoriness Spinoza's d e f i n i t i o n s o f

'adequate idea' and o f ' f a l s i t y ' do contain i n t e r e s t i n g elements, which can

 62.

be e x t r a c t e d from the unsalvageable wreck o f the theory o f f a l s i t y .

There i s some sense i n which we can t a l k o f ideas as being 'inadequate 1

or 'mutilated'. I n t h i s sense an 'inadequate' idea i s one which gives a d i s -

t o r t e d p i c t u r e o f what i t i s supposedly an idea of. One analogy which might

e l u c i d a t e t h i s i s that o f a camera and i t s photographs. Cameras always t e l l

the t r u t h , f o r they take p i c t u r e s only o f what i s a c t u a l l y before them. How-

ever photographs are notorious f o r g i v i n g d i s t o r t e d views o f the f a c t s o f a

situation. Sometimes the impression one gets from a photograph i s very mis-

l e a d i n g v i s - a - v i s what a c t u a l l y occurred when the photo was taken. At best

one gets a camera-eye view o f what went on, and there i s always a b i t o f read-

ing i n t o the photo which has to be done i f one i s t o get an accurate i d e a o f

what r e a l l y happened, was r e a l l y like.

Another analogy which helps e x p l a i n what an 'inadequate idea' might be

i s one I heard from Jonathan Bennett. L e t us consider someone watching a

c r i c k e t match through a narrow v e r t i c a l s l i t . What the observer w i l l perceive

i s a s e r i e s o f r a t h e r disconnected people and b a l l movements. What he sees

w i l l be seen out o f context, and could n o t enable him to understand e x a c t l y

what was going on, a t l e a s t unless he could connect up what he saw w i t h other

c r i c k e t matches which he had seen, and understood, under more favourable con-

ditions. Suppose that the s l i t enables the observer t o see only the l i n e

across the middle o f the p i t c h . Then a l l he w i l l see i s the b a l l coming

through h i s f i e l d o f v i s i o n every so o f t e n , and people p e r i o d i c a l l y running

towards him o r away from him. In t h i s case the observer cannot discover from

his l o o k i n g what the causes o f h i s perceptions a r e , or r a t h e r what the causes

of the ball-movements are, and he therefore cannot understand them. Similarly

Spinoza b e l i e v e d that we could not p r o p e r l y understand an inadequate idea.

 63.

In i l l u s t r a t i n g t h i s feature t h i s analogy i s o f more help than the other.

What Spinoza i s t r y i n g t o get out o f the n o t i o n o f 'adequate idea' i s

something p r o p o s i t i o n a l , such as 'a sentence which i s true i n v i r t u e o f i t s

i n t e r n a l c o n s t r u c t i o n o r l o g i c a l form'. He b e l i e v e d that t o have an adequate

idea was t o have i n one's mind a necessary t r u t h . Of course h i s theory didn't

allow him t o say t h i s , but i t i s f a i r l y c l e a r that t h i s i s what he had i n mind.

Spinoza, then, b e l i e v e d that a l l ideas represented r e a l i t y i n some way.

Some i d e a s , however, give an incomplete, o r d i s t o r t e d p i c t u r e o f what the

nature o f r e a l i t y i s l i k e . These are the s o - c a l l e d ' f a l s e ideas', and they

include the ideas we have o f ordinary p a r t i c u l a r things. I n contrast w i t h

these ideas are the 'adequate ideas' which provide an accurate, non-subject-

ive picture o f r e a l i t y . Spinoza b e l i e v e d that i n r e a l i t y the connexions be-

tween things were l o g i c a l , and t h a t the only r e a l knowledge there i s i s 'adequate

knowledge'. To have an adequate idea i s t o perceive something i n i t s true

l i g h t , under the aspect o f e t e r n i t y .

We can now l i n k Spinoza's statement that we are i n bondage to our

passions w i t h h i s statement t h a t we are passive to the extent that we have

inadequate i d e a s , where p a s s i v i t y i s tantamount t o bondage. According to

Spinoza when we s u f f e r a passion we n e c e s s a r i l y have an inadequate, o r d i s t o r t -

ed i d e a o f the cause o f our own sorrow o r joy.

There i s one more feature o f an adequate i d e a which might be worth mention-

ing b r i e f l y , and t h a t i s the f o l l o w i n g . Adequate ideas are something l i k e

Descartes' ' c l e a r and d i s t i n c t ' ideas. They d i f f e r from them i n t h i s respect.

According t o Spinoza one can never be deceived i n t o t h i n k i n g that one has an

 64.

adequate idea when one doesn't actually have one.

He who has a true idea knows at the same time that

he has a true idea, nor can he doubt the truth of
the thing.

E.ii.43.

Then he writes, more poetically i n E.ii.43.Sch.:

Just as l i g h t reveals both i t s e l f and the darkness,

so truth i s the standard o f i t s e l f and of the false.

E.ii.43.Sen.

This provides an answer, at least to those c r i t i c s of Cartesian 'clear and

d i s t i n c t ' ideas, who maintain that we can be duped into thinking a non-clear-

and-distinct idea i s such.

I t i s also interesting i n the l i g h t of Spinoza's believing that v a c i l l a -

tion i s one of the important ingredients of human bondage. What he i s saying

i s that when one i s on the right path, so to speak, one certainly knows one

i s , and w i l l not have any doubts about the matter.

Spinoza's account of human freedom i s , as one might expect, intimately

connected with the theory of bondage. I have t r i e d up t i l l now to concentrate

on the 'bondage' side of his account. I realize that i n elucidating human

bondage, one has to contrast i t with human freedom, and vice versa. There

are some aspects, however, of the theory of freedom which can be rejected

whilst the basic account of bondage i s accepted. Although the theories are

two sides of the same coin, one side of the coin has more designs on i t than

the other. The next chapter w i l l be ostensibly on the freedom of human beings.

I would j u s t l i k e to make i t clear that the d i v i s i o n of the account of the

 65.

human condition into chapters on bondage and freedom i s rather a r t i f i c i a l ,

given the content of each chapter. In dividing the chapters up i n this way

I am following Spinoza, and also acknowledging that there are aspects o f the

account of freedom which are independent of the account of bondage, or at

least deserve an independent treatment. In any event the next chapter w i l l

t i e up a number of loose ends remaining out of the discussion of human

bondage.
 LL

CHAPTER THREE

THE FREEDOM OF HUMAN BEINGS

12. INTELLECT AND REASON.

Although Spinoza's account of human liberty doesn't o f f i c i a l l y begin

until ETHICS Part Five, he talks about i t at some length i n the section on

human bondage. In the ensuing discussion I shall draw on both Parts. Just

as Part Four is called *0f Human Bondage OR THE STRENGTH OF THE AFFECTS' so

Part Five i s called 'Of THE POWER OF THE INTELLECT, or of Human Liberty'

(my capitals). In the Preface to Part Five Spinoza t e l l s us how he i s going

to show us the 'method or way which leads to liberty'. He says that i n order

to do this he w i l l :
... treat of the power of reason, showing how much
reason i t s e l f can control the affects, and then what
is freedom of mind or blessedness.

It i s interesting that already his account of human liberty i s i n terms

of 'freedom of mind', rather than 'freedom of body and mind', or some such

thing. I have already mentioned my conjecture as to why, when he is talking

about human beings and their liberty, Spinoza is so shy of the body. The

main reason for this i s that as Spinoza has defined freedom so that finitude

rules out freedom, i t would be absurd to suggest that one could make one's

body free. We should take Spinoza's o f f i c i a l reason for ignoring the body i n

the discussion of freedom, or rather, for not working out i n detail the body's

freedom, with a pinch of salt. He says that he won't occupy himself with how

the body can best perform i t s functions, as this i s a task for medicine.
 67.

He a l s o says that he i s not going to concern h i m s e l f w i t h how to render

the i n t e l l e c t p e r f e c t , despite the t i t l e o f P a r t F i v e , f o r t h i s i s a matter

for logic. This i s p u z z l i n g to say the l e a s t . What i s r e l e v a n t here i s the

d i s t i n c t i o n between the second and t h i r d kinds of knowledge which are some-

what obscurely introduced i n P a r t Two. I s h a l l now t u r n to a b r i e f d i s -

cussion o f the kinds o f knowledge as they are brought i n i n P a r t Two.

Spinoza does not mean by 'knowledge' ('scientia') what we mean by the

term, f o r according to him, c o n f e r r i n g the t i t l e of knowledge upon something

i s not to give i t an epistemic c e r t i f i c a t e . Thus he t a l k s o f u n c e r t a i n or

inadequate knowledge, whereas we would not c a l l anything 'knowledge' which

was e p i s t e m i c a l l y inadequate, o r about whose t r u t h we were u n c e r t a i n .

The f i r s t k i n d o f knowledge corresponds more or l e s s to our ordinary

e m p i r i c a l knowledge, and includes what we 'know' from having been t o l d , and

what we 'know' from making sensory observations. The second k i n d o f know-

ledge i s supposed to d e r i v e from our 'possessing common notions and adequate

ideas o f the p r o p e r t i e s o f t h i n g s ' . What I t h i n k he means here i s something

l i k e 'knowledge o f the k i n d which comes v i a l o g i c a l deduction'. The third

k i n d o f knowledge, the famous ' s c i e n t i f i a i n t u i t i v a ' , i s described i n the

f o l l o w i n g manner:

This k i n d o f knowing advances from an adequate idea

o f the formal essence o f c e r t a i n a t t r i b u t e s o f God
to the adequate knowledge o f the essence o f things.

E . i i . 4 0 (Schol.2)

This i s r e a l l y r a t h e r mysterious, and i s 'explained' by the n o t o r i o u s l y un-

h e l p f u l example o f d i f f e r e n t ways o f f i n d i n g the f o u r t h p r o p o r t i o n a l . Spinoza

has already s a i d that one might f i n d the f o u r t h p r o p o r t i o n a l , given three

numbers, because one remembers, i n the p a r t i c u l a r case, that the f o u r t h

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proportional of, f o r instance, 2, 4 and 6, i s 12, i n which case one's know-

ledge i s o f the f i r s t kind; or one might f i n d i t by applying the relevant

rule from 'Euclid', understanding the r u l e for deducing proportionals, i n

which case one's knowledge would be of the second kind. He continues:

But with the simplest numbers there i s no need of a l l

t h i s . I f the numbers 1, 2, 3, f o r instance be given,
every one can see that the fourth proportional i s 6
much more c l e a r l y than by any demonstration, because
from the r a t i o i n which we see by one i n t u i t i o n that
the f i r s t stands to the second we conclude the fourth.

E.ii. (Schol.2)

Both knowledge of the t h i r d and of the second kind are e p i s t e m i c a l l y guaran-

teed by Spinoza, since both involve 'adequate ideas', which are meant to be

the ideas of what we would c a l l 'necessary truths'. There i s , however, a

difference between the two kinds o f knowledge, which i s reminiscent o f a d i s -

t i n c t i o n o f Descartes. Both philosophers distinguished i n t u i t i v e from deduc-

t i v e knowledge. The l a t t e r involves a chain of reasoning. Thus i n a piece

of deductive reasoning one passes from the premise or premises to the conclu-

s i o n , as i t were step by step, f o r instance by applying a r u l e to the o r i g i n a l

premise. In i n t u i t i v e reasoning on the other hand, one sees i t a l l at one go.

In Spinoza's example one does not reach the conclusion that the fourth propor-

t i o n a l of 1, 2, 3, i s 6 by applying any r u l e s . One passes s t r a i g h t from the

o r i g i n a l premise to the conclusion. There i s i n t h i s l a t t e r case no movement

from premises to conclusion, as i s required i n a deduction. Descartes, w r i t -

ing of the d i s t i n c t i o n between i n t u i t i o n and deduction says:

Hence we d i s t i n g u i s h this mental i n t u i t i o n from deduc-

t i o n by the fact that i n t o the conception of the l a t t e r
there enters a c e r t a i n movement or succession, i n t o
that of the former there does not.

Descartes: RULES POR THE DIRECTION OF THE MIND, RULE 2.

Haldane and Ross, Vol.1, p.8.

We can thus l i n k Spinoza's example quite w e l l with the Cartesian d i s t i n c t i o n .

 69.

The problem now remains of interpreting the characterization of the t h i r d

kind of knowledge which occurs before the example, and has already been

quoted here. There i s an important clue i n E.ii.47. (Schol.), which casts

rather a new l i g h t on the whole matter, despite i t s obscurity.

Hence we see that the i n f i n i t e essence and the

eternity of God are known to a l l ; and since a l l things
are i n God and are conceived through Him, i t follows
that we can deduce from this knowledge many things
which we can know adequately, and that we can thus
form that t h i r d sort of knowledge mentioned i n
E. i i . 4 0 . (Schol.2), of whose excellence and value
the F i f t h Part w i l l be the place to speak.

F. i i . 4 7 .
The interpretation here put upon Spinoza's 'scientia i n t u i t i v a ' must remain

somewhat tentative. I t i s a fundamental b e l i e f of Spinoza that we cannot

have adequate knowledge of ordinary empirical objects. However we can, i t

now appears, get knowledge of something p a r t i c u l a r , i n virtue of our know-

ledge of the i n f i n i t e essence of (some of the attributes of) God. This some-

thing p a r t i c u l a r i s the essence of individual things. The knowledge i s the

true knowledge of reason, the knowledge of the t h i r d kind, 'scientia i n t u i t i v a ' .

There are some truths which we know to be true i n t u i t i v e l y , for instance

the truth that one plus one equals two. We cannot explain why this i s so i n

terms of something simpler, but must remain content with saying something

l i k e : ' I f you know what i s meant by "one" and "two", then i t ' s just obvious,

that i s i t ' s indubitable'. One might be able to do s l i g h t l y better than that,

but to do so i s not the present concern. I t i s just worth considering the

sort of feeling one has about such statements as 'One plus one i s two'. If

we combine Spinoza's i l l u s t r a t i o n of 'scientia i n t u i t i v a ' with i t s d e f i n i t i o n

and what i s said about i t i n E.ii.47. (Schol.), i t emerges that Spinoza be-

lieved i t to be i n p r i n c i p l e possible to have knowledge about individual

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essences which i s qualitatively similar to the sort of knowledge we have of

the simplest mathematical truths.

Knowledge of both the t h i r d and the second kinds i s adequate, unlike the

knowledge of the f i r s t kind. However Spinoza i s primarily concerned with that

of the t h i r d kind. This, I believe, i s because knowledge of the t h i r d kind i s

involved i n the attainment of that of the second kind. This i s , admittedly,

in apparent c o n f l i c t with the way Spinoza sets up his distinctions between

kinds of knowledge, which implies that the t h i r d kind i s something which only

a few people attain, although many attain that of the second kind. In reply

to this one could say that r e a l l y Spinoza has two things going at the same

time, and refers to them both as 'scientia i n t u i t i v a ' , for the obvious reason

that they involve immediate i n t u i t i o n s . The two things are the straightforward

obvious necessary truths such as 'one plus equals two', and the rather mysteri-

ous knowledge of the essence of individual things. One could then say that the

f i r s t of these i s required i n any deduction, that i s any deduction has to i n -

clude some i n t u i t i v e jump. For instance any l o g i c a l argument requires the use

of ' i n t u i t i v e ' l o g i c a l laws. The other kind of 'scientia i n t u i t i v a ' i s some-

thing which i s elusive, to be revered and i s not presupposed by knowledge of

the second kind. The argument here offered i s that Spinoza rather misleadingly

c a l l s these two species of 'scientia i n t u i t i v a ' 'knowledge of the t h i r d kind'.

13. SELF-PRESERVATION

There are many facets to Spinoza's notion of what constitutes a c t i v i t y .

Many of them have to do with the 'conatus' doctrine which was introduced into

the discussion i n the previous chapter. The ensuing discussion i s basically

an extension of that discussion. The 'conatus' doctrine i s stated b r i e f l y as

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follows:

Each thing, i n so far as i t i s i n i t s e l f , endeavours

to persevere i n i t s being.

E.ii.6.

Human beings, as things, endeavour to persevere i n their own being. From

E . i i i . 6 . , one can i n f e r that i f something i s not persevering i n i t s own be-

ing, whatever that may mean, i t i s , i n virtue of that, not ' i n i t s e l f . If

something i s not 'in i t s e l f , Spinoza would say, I believe, that i t i s

neither self-determined, nor active, nor free. Although the implication

arrow goes only from 'being i n i t s e l f to 'endeavouring to persevere i n i t s

being', there i s no reason to believe that Spinoza would object to i t s going

the other way as w e l l - ' I f something i s endeavouring to persevere i n i t s be-

ing, i t i s , i n virtue of that, ' i n i t s e l f . I f this were so we could find

out what human freedom consists of by discovering what i t i s for a human be-

ing to endeavour to persevere i n i t s being. When we are talking about human

beings we could translate 'endeavouring to persevere i n i t s own being' as

acting out of the motive of self-preservation'. The question now i s 'What

i s the motive of self-preservation?'.

The f i r s t impression one gets from reading Spinoza on this subject i s

that he means something which resembles a common sense notion of self-preser-

vation by 'endeavour to perservere i n i t s own being'. He not only says that

a person who commits suicide i s , i n virtue of t h i s , obviously not active or

free, but governed by external factors; he also writes the following:

... a free man avoids danger by the same virtue as

that by which he seeks to overcome i t .

... By danger, I understand anything which may be

the cause of sorrow, hatred, discord, or any other
e v i l l i k e them.

E.iv.49 (Dem. f, Corol.)

 72.

This notion of self-preservation doesn't seem different from our ordinary-

notion of keeping out of trouble, and doesn't appear to have anything partic-

u l a r l y Spinozist about i t . The notion of 'self-preservation' i n this con-

text i s remarkably similar to any common or garden concept of 'self-interest'.

Spinoza i s , i n effect, saying that a free man i s one who i s self-interested.

He also equates virtue and power, and i n i t s turn, power and freedom.

So a powerful person i s one who i s free, and a free person i s one who i s

virtuous. I f v i r t u e , power and freedom are the same thing, and i f freedom

i s acting out of the motive of s e l f - i n t e r e s t , then i t follows that i t i s

virtuous to act out of s e l f - i n t e r e s t . But isn't this quite contrary to what

we understand by virtue? For we frequently distinguish virtuous people from

non-v:i rtuous people on the grounds that the former and not the l a t t e r are pre-

pared to s a c r i f i c e their own s e l f - i n t e r e s t f o r other people. Being s e l f -

interested i s not only not the c r i t e r i o n of v i r t u e , i t seems to be fundamentally

opposed to i t . Isn't Spinoza, then, hopelessly wrong on this matter? How can

we take at a l l seriously any moral theory which advocates universal selfishness?

Although Spinoza i s vehemently against much of the psychology behind

fundamental Christian ethics, he i s not i n f a c t , advocating that we should

never care about anybody or anything other than ourselves. Much of ETHICS

Part Four i s actually devoted to showing how acting i n one's real s e l f - i n t e r -

est involves abiding by most of the principles of a morality of mutual caring

for people, such as that advocated by Christianity. What he i s attempting to

do i s to free people from the bondage of not r e a l l y understanding why they do

what they do. He i s p a r t i c u l a r l y concerned with why people do what they do,

rather than with the content of t h e i r actions, although the two are obviously

interrelated. His basic strategy begins by defining 'good' and ' e v i l ' i n a
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technical way for the purposes of ETHICS Part Four. The definitions are quite

revealing.

By good, I understand that which we certainly know i s

useful to us.

By e v i l , on the contrary, I understand that which we

certainly know hinders us from possessing anything
that i s good.

E.iv. Defs. 1 § 2.

Having defined as 'good' that which we know to be useful to us, one might

think that he would naturally take i t to be e v i l to make any sacrifices f o r

anyone else. In p a r t i c u l a r , i t would seem to be the height of e v i l to lay

down one's l i f e for anyone or anything. However, this view i s not held even

by Spinoza.

There i s i n Spinoza's work the basis for a d i s t i n c t i o n between what i n

more recent discussions would be c a l l e d 'crude s e l f - i n t e r e s t ' and 'enlight-

ened s e l f - i n t e r e s t ' , although this d i s t i n c t i o n i s not made e x p l i c i t by him,

and i s i n fact sometimes belied by the text. I f we are not guided by reason

we might w e l l think that our best interest would be served by trying to get

one up on our fellow human beings, or at least by rarely considering the needs

of others, except where some direct benefit would accrue to one through one's

'benevolence'. For instance we would think that our self-interest would be

better served by l i s t e n i n g to an enjoyable opera, than by looking after an

a i l i n g grandmother. One might think i t would be virtuous to look after the

grandmother, but i t would certainly not be i n one's s e l f - i n t e r e s t to do so,

unless one was anticipating being l e f t a l o t of money by her, or i f , f o r

some reason, one found looking after her more enjoyable than l i s t e n i n g to

opera. Spinoza might w e l l agree that looking after the grandmother would be

virtuous, and we should not forget that he believed acting virtuously and
 74.

acting out of s e l f - i n t e r e s t to be the same thing. How does he come to such

a p o s i t i o n on the grandmother case?

His f i r s t move i s to assert that nothing can be e v i l i n so f a r as i t

i s s i m i l a r to our nature. But nothing i s more s i m i l a r to each of our

natures than another person. As anything that i s not e v i l i s good, from

the l a s t two sentences i t follows that f o r any person another person i s good.

Other people are, i n the s p e c i a l Spinozist sense o f 'useful', very u s e f u l to

us. He writes:

There i s no single thing i n nature which i s more

p r o f i t a b l e to man than a man who l i v e s according
to the guidance of reason. For that i s most
p r o f i t a b l e to man which most agrees with h i s own
nature ...

E.iv.35. ( C o r o l l . l )

The L a t i n word 'convenire' means 'to agree' both i n the sense of 'to have

things i n common with' and that o f 'to be s u i t a b l e ' , so one might accuse

Spinoza of e i t h e r d e l i b e r a t e l y or inadvertently punning on the word 'con-

venit' to e s t a b l i s h h i s conclusion, f o r i t i s almost a tautology that those

things which agree with us i n the l a t t e r sense o f 'agree with' are ' p r o f i t -

able' to us. However, whether or not there i s some punning going on here,

i t i s c l e a r that Spinoza would have stuck to E.iv.35. ( C o r o l l . l ) even with

the former i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of 'convenit'.

According to t h i s doctrine people are more p r o f i t a b l e to a person than

any other thing i s p r o f i t a b l e , because they have more i n common with each

other than they have with other things. However, when people are not govern-

ed by reason, what they do does not follow from t h e i r essence or nature, and

what they have i n common with each other becomes obscured. When people are

not guided by reason they are ruled by t h e i r passions, and:

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In so f a r as men are agitated by a f f e c t s which are

passions can they be contrary to one another.

E.iv.34.

It i s quite c l e a r that Spinoza has to struggle to reconcile his theory

that power and v i r t u e are the same with something which resembles a humanis-

t i c morality. This i s because of the rather g l a r i n g f a c t that people do

have genuine c o n f l i c t s o f i n t e r e s t , and that one person's power, or w e l l -

being at any rate, seems to be attainable sometimes only at the cost o f

another's. Furthermore this i s not simply because o f people's not being

governed by reason. Suppose, f o r example that we are back i n ancient Rome

at the time o f the gladiators. I f two men had been ordered t o f i g h t to the

death, or else both be k i l l e d by being fed to the l i o n s , and i f the v i c t o r

of the f i g h t would c e r t a i n l y be freed, then the two combatants would have a

genuine c o n f l i c t o f i n t e r e s t , and i t would be unquestionably f a l s e to say

that they could seek t h e i r own s e l f - p r e s e r v a t i o n , that i s act r a t i o n a l l y ,

and not t r y to k i l l the other person i n combat. This i s so even though the

two people would probably have more i n common than most people. But one

doesn't have to go to b i z a r r e examples to see the c o n f l i c t that i n e v i t a b l y

arises from one strand o f Spinoza's philosophy o f freedom. He equates the

'good' with 'that which we c e r t a i n l y know i s u s e f u l to us', as we have seen.

He then writes:

Whatever i s e f f e c t i v e to preserve the proportion o f

motion and r e s t which the parts o f the human body
bear to each other i s good, and, on the contrary,
that i s e v i l which causes the parts o f the human
body to have a d i f f e r e n t proportion o f motion and
rest to each other.

and:

Whatever conduces to the universal fellowship o f men,

that i s to say, whatever causes men to l i v e i n harmony
with one another, i s u s e f u l , and, on the contrary,
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whatever brings d i s c o r d i n t o the State i s e v i l .

E.iv.39, § E.iv.40.

From the d e f i n i t i o n s o f 'good' and ' e v i l ' and E.iv.39. i t follows that what-

ever causes the p a r t s o f the human body t o have a d i f f e r e n t p r o p o r t i o n o f

motion and r e s t t o each other i s harmful t o us, f o r i f t h i s p r o p o r t i o n i s

not preserved the body w i l l , on Spinoza's theory o f bodies, be destroyed.

On ther other hand, 'whatever conduces t o the u n i v e r s a l f e l l o w s h i p o f men'

i s u s e f u l t o us. But i t i s q u i t e c l e a r t h a t i n some circumstances i t might

w e l l serve the ' u n i v e r s a l f e l l o w s h i p o f men' t o l a y down one's l i f e , that

i s t o see t o i t , o r a t l e a s t not t r y i n g t o stop i t from happening, that the

parts o f one's body do not maintain the same proportions o f motion and r e s t .

An example o f t h i s would be the case o f Socrates, who l e t us suppose, r a t i o n -

a l l y gave up h i s l i f e f o r the b e n e f i t o f h i s f e l l o w human beings. Someone

who d i e d as a r e s u l t o f r e s i s t i n g the Nazi oppression might w e l l have been

s e r v i n g the u n i v e r s a l f e l l o w s h i p o f mankind. Yet such people would c e r t a i n l y

be doing something 'harmful' a t the same time - namely b r i n g i n g about t h e i r

own deaths.

There are s e v e r a l ways i n which Spinoza might e x p l a i n away the apparent-

l y c o n t r a d i c t o r y consequences o f h i s theory. The f i r s t would be t o say t h a t

he i s r e a l l y t a l k i n g about tendencies. This would amount t o a s o r t o f 'rule

Spinozism'. Such a v e r s i o n would say that g i v i n g up one's l i f e i s always

harmful, w h i l s t s e r v i n g the u n i v e r s a l f e l l o w s h i p o f mankind only tends to be

useful. Then one could admit that i n c e r t a i n circumstances i t would not be

u s e f u l t o serve the u n i v e r s a l f e l l o w s h i p o f mankind. On t h i s account many

of the statements about the u t i l i t y and d i s u t i l i t y o f various things o r act-

i o n s , are meant only as guidelines f o r a c t i o n . As i t i s not always p o s s i b l e

to know the true consequences o f a p a r t i c u l a r course o f a c t i o n , we have these

 77.

secondary principles to guide us. We could accept the principle 'Do always

that which is useful', and when there i s a conflict between helping humanity

and saving our lives, we just choose to save our l i f e . The trouble with this

interpretation i s that i t quite against the s p i r i t of Spinoza's writing.

Spinoza l a i d out his propositions as an archetypal Rationalist. He did not

believe that his statements about people being useful to one another etc.,

were of the order of secondary principles; he saw them as being necessary-

consequences of necessary and eternal truths. He just would not have allowed

for exceptions.

We could then help Spinoza out here by saying that he actually slipped

up on his statement about that which conduces to the universal fellowship of

man. We could perhaps persuade a spokesman for Spinoza to drop the 'univer-

sal fellowship' principle, and to substitute something more complex. It is

useful on the whole to an individual to act i n a way which promotes the

universal fellowship of mankind, as doing so helps people, including the

agent, to live i n accordance with reason, that i s , to be free or active.

This i s not always the case, however, and when i t isn't the case, e.g. be-

cause acting i n such a way would cause the agent's death, then i t would not

be rational or useful to act thus. I f one adopted this strategy one would

have to relegate E.iv.39., to a scholium. One might think that this would

at least preserve most of Spinoza's doctrine about power and virtue. How-

ever, this line is blocked by Spinoza himself. We find him saying:

If i t be asked whether, i f a man by breach of faith

could escape from the danger of instant death,
reason does not counsel him, for the preservation
of his baling, to break faith; I reply i n the same
way, that i f reason gives such counsel she gives i t
to a l l men, and reason therefore counsels men to
make no agreements for uniting their strength and
possessing laws i n common except deceitfully, that
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is to say, to have i n r e a l i t y no common laws,

which i s absurd.
E.iv.72. (Schol.)

This statement seems to be very near something l i k e one of Kantian

u n i v e r s a l i s a b i l i t y . On the face of i t what i s recommended to the person i n

the dilemma i s to give up h i s l i f e - to abandon his self-preservation, and

moreover, to do i t whilst acting i n accordance with reason, that i s , freely.

Spinoza's argument involves the unfair adoption of a more extreme principle

than i s required to j u s t i f y the agent i n saving his own l i f e . The principle

which Spinoza adopts, as being necessary for j u s t i f y i n g the escape i s 'Never

make any agreements f o r uniting your strength and for having common laws ex-

cept deceitfully.'. In fact no such principle i s required to j u s t i f y the

escape; a l l that would be needed would be something l i k e : 'When an agreement

has been made i t is a l l right to break i t i f not doing so would cost you your

life.'. The adoption of this principle i s certainly not inconsistent with

keeping a l l kinds of agreements.

The other point that needs making about Spinoza's Kantian move i s that

what he i s saying i s that breaking the agreement to save one's l i f e could

not be recommended to a person governed by reason, because acting i n this

way would commit the person to the acceptance of a principle which would

have disastrous consequences. But, i f we return to the "'good' equals 'use-

f u l ' (to the agent)" doctrine we can clearly see that what i s here recommend-

ed i s i n direct c o n f l i c t with this e a r l i e r doctrine. I t could hardly be

more useful to the potential escaper to keep the agreement under those circum-

stances, unless he would be better o f f destroyed, a supposition which Spinoza

could not allow. The course of action recommended by Spinoza i n E.iv.72.

(Schol.) i s certainly commendable, but i t certainly doesn't seem to be at a l l

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a rational thing to do on Spinoza's central notion of r a t i o n a l i t y .

This i s at any rate the way i t f i r s t appears. However Spinoza was very

keen to maintain both of these aspects of his moral philosophy - that i t i s

always rational to serve one's fellow human beings, on account of this being

'useful', and that i t i s always i r r a t i o n a l to do something which leads to

one's self-destruction, or i n fact, anything which harms one. The only way

he could maintain both of these doctrines i n the l i g h t of the conflicts

which arise between looking after oneself and serving the interests of others

would be to deny the psycho-physical parallelism which plays such a prominent

part i n the e a r l i e r sections of ETHICS. I f he were to do this he could say

that when we are talking of self-preservation we are r e a l l y interested i n

something psychological rather than physical. To act r a t i o n a l l y one has to

preserve one's essence, or rather, to be trying to do so. I f one's essence

i s a psychical entity then the fact that helping one's fellow human beings

might result i n physical harm or even physical death f o r the agent i s s t r i c t l y

irrelevant to the r a t i o n a l i t y of the action. I t i s clear that Spinoza did

move towards abandoning his parallelism i n the last Part of ETHICS, although

of course he would never admit i t . Thus we f i n d him writing revealingly:

The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with

the body, but something of i t remains which i s eternal.

... this something which pertains to the essence of

the mind w i l l necessarily be eternal.

E.v.23. § i t s Dem.

Certainly when Socrates d i d not prevent his death he was quite convinced

that physical death would not destroy his essence; i n fact he went rejoicing

to his death, for he believed that his s p i r i t would, at death, f i n a l l y be

liberated, though i t must be stressed that he did not die i n order to reach
 80.

this state of s p i r i t u a l liberation. However this l i n e of defence i s r e a l l y

not a let-out for Spinoza's moral theory. For one thing, this new view

cannot be reconciled with the parallelism, which states e x p l i c i t l y that:

I f anything increases, diminishes, helps, or l i m i t s

our body's power of action, the idea of that thing
increases, diminishes, helps, or l i m i t s our mind's
power of thought.

E.iii.11.

There i s also another d i f f i c u l t y . I f the parallelism i s rejected then

Spinoza might argue that i t can be psychologically b e n e f i c i a l to someone to

lose a limb, or give up his or her l i f e for the fellowship of mankind; but

sometimes the c a l l of service to humanity might lead to one's psychic de-

struction as w e l l . Suppose one was being tortured, and that by holding out

one would not merely not betray the v i t a l secrets, but would also go com-

p l e t e l y insane so that one could not longer form 'adequate ideas'. Someone

who held out i n these circumstances would certainly be harming his 'mental'

as w e l l as his physical s e l f . I f this would not be harming his essence

then i t i s d i f f i c u l t to see just what would. I f the essence of a person can

not be harmed then i t seems to be pointless to spend one's time trying to

preserve i t or prevent i t from coming to harm.

The rejection of parallelism seems to be a good way of j u s t i f y i n g

Spinoza's b e l i e f that altruism and self-preservation don't c o n f l i c t , but i t

i s ultimately unsatisfactory. Apart from the reasons we have given, concern-

ing the continuance of counter-examples even i f the p a r a l l e l i s m i s abandoned,

Spinoza quite adamantly sticks to his parallelism. I t i s reaffirmed i n one

of i t s forms after the controversial E.v.23.

He who possesses a body f i t for many things possesses

a mind of which the greater part i s eternal.

E.v.39.
 81.

Spinoza's theory that one i s a c t i v e , free or v i r t u o u s , i f one i s a c t i n g

from the motive of s e l f - p r e s e r v a t i o n i s not as s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d l y incompatible

w i t h a l t r u i s m as i t at f i r s t appears, f o r according to the theory, a free

person w i l l behave i n an a l t r u i s t i c f a s h i o n , where ' a l t r u i s t i c ' i s taken to

mean something l i k e ' g i v i n g up one's own pleasure f o r the sake of someone

else'. He can admit t h i s because there i s a d i f f e r e n c e between crudely s e l f i s h

behaviour, which u s u a l l y i s a c t u a l l y against the true i n t e r e s t s of the agent,

and enlightened s e l f i s h behaviour, which involves the r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t the

best chance a person has of f u l f i l l i n g h i m s e l f i s through ' u n s e l f i s h ' r e l a t i o n -

ships w i t h other people, i n p a r t i c u l a r people w i t h whom one has a l o t i n common.

The pursuing o f such r e l a t i o n s h i p s o f t e n requires the f o r f e i t i n g o f one's

apparent i n t e r e s t s . One can then, r a t i o n a l l y decide t o r e s t r i c t some of one's

m o t i v a t i n g d e s i r e s , f o r the sake of true r e a l i s a t i o n or f u l f i l l m e n t . Notwith-

standing a l l t h i s the d o c t r i n e cannot be defended to i t s l o g i c a l conclusion.

We have already seen that s e r v i n g the i n t e r e s t s of humanity might a c t u a l l y be

against one's s e l f - i n t e r e s t , even i f ' s e l f - i n t e r e s t ' i s construed very broad-

l y ; i t i s a l s o s u r e l y the case t h a t two r a t i o n a l i n d i v i d u a l s might have a

genuine c o n f l i c t o f i n t e r e s t . This i s not allowed f o r by Spinoza's theory o f

r a t i o n a l i t y and s e l f - p r e s e r v a t i o n .

We can now recognize one o f the fundamental tensions i n the philosophy

of Spinoza. I t seems to be o f the same genus as one which confronted Kant

i n h i s s t r u g g l e f o r a theory of human freedom against a fundamental theory

that we could have knowledge only of the phenomenal world which i s thoroughly

d e t e r m i n i s t i c i n a sense which r u l e s out the p o s s i b i l i t y o f freedom. He had

a fundamental respect f o r the d i g n i t y of man, but allowed no room f o r i t i n

h i s metaphysics, and so ended up w i t h a p a i n f u l attempt to incorporate human

freedom which was bound to f a i l . Spinoza l i k e w i s e , i n f a c t more e x p l i c i t l y ,

 82.

and more r a d i c a l l y , argued against the special dignity of human beings. In

his metaphysics, as we have seen, human beings are nothing special i n the

universe, and we should study them with the precision and detachment with

which we study l i n e s , planes and bodies. However i t i s obvious that Spinoza

was a deeply humanistic person. I t i s perhaps i r o n i c a l that a philosopher

who went so f a r out of his way to attack anthropocentrism should have

written i n such depth about the human mind and i t s l i b e r a t i o n . Spinoza, i n

ETHICS Part Five, transgresses his own metaphysical principles i n an attempt

to j u s t i f y crediting at least some people with the dignity of freedom; for

i t i s quite clear that the body can i n no way be rendered free. Thus we can

understand why, as Parts Four and Five progress, Spinoza talks ever increas-

ingly about the human mind. At the end of E.v.20., he writes;

I t i s time ... that I should pass to the consideration

of those matters which appertain to the duration of the
mind without the body.

There i s a further motivation f o r this concentration on the mental aspect

of human beings to the neglect of the physical, which w i l l be discussed l a t e r .

This further motivation arises out of Spinoza's undoubted musticism. The

mystical s t r a i n reaches i t s peak, and Spinoza's w r i t i n g i s i t s most obscure,

when he i s talking of the blessedness of the i n t e l l e c t u a l love of God. An

essay of this nature i s probably not the place to write a critique of this

aspect of Spinoza's work. Fortunately one can discuss much of his theory of

freedom without bringing i n his mystical doctrines, whose value I do not

here c a l l into question, but whose s u s c e p t i b i l i t y to discussion I do.

14. FREEDOM THROUGH ADEQUATE IDEAS.

I turn now to a more direct discussion of Spinoza's views about freeing

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the mind of i t s bondage to the emotions. In the previous chapter i n the dis-

cussion of 'adequacy', i t was asserted that Spinoza believed that we are un-

free to the extent that we have inadequate ideas i n our minds. Inadequate

ideas include a l l our ideas about individual bodies, though not about their

essences, a l l our ideas about anything temporal, and i n p a r t i c u l a r , a l l our

ideas which we would characterize as emotions. What does a l l this amount to

in practice?

There i s an uncharitable interpretation of E . i i i . l . , which makes Spinoza's

theory of freedom through adequate ideas seem thoroughly misguided, and there

is another which makes i t interesting though highly problematic and mysterious.

E . i i i . l . , as we have seen, states that:

Our mind acts at times and at times suffers: i n so far as i t

has adequate ideas, i t necessarily acts; and i n so far as i t
has inadequate ideas, i t necessarily suffers.

E.iii.l.

An adequate idea i s s t r i c t l y speaking defined as one which involves knowledge

of an eternal and necessary truth. So, on a l i t e r a l interpretation of the

above proposition i t follows that the mind's a c t i v i t y follows from i t s hav-

ing ideas of necessary and eternal truths. But what are the paradigm examples

of eternal and necessary truths? Likely candidates are the laws of logic and

the tautologies which follow from them. This doctrine appears to lead rapidly

to the absurdity that one becomes increasingly active as one's head becomes

f i l l e d up with tautologies. A person would be quite active i f he or she

could constantly be thinking 'A black cat i s black', 'A black cat i s a cat',

'A white cat i s a cat' and so on ad nauseam. I t i s clear that on any

reasonable theory of freedom such a fate as that of endless tautology-repeat-

ing could not be the paradigm of freedom, and certainly not of a c t i v i t y . Any

theory which affirms that such a person would be active, or one which entails
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i t , ought to be rejected on that ground alone. One might argue that this

interpretation i s unduly harsh on Spinoza, as i t i s quite clearly not what

he had i n mind when he propounded his theory of mental a c t i v i t y and passivity.

It certainly doesn't do justice to Spinoza's intentions on the subject, but

i t does follow from what he actually said. What then were his intentions

here?

To answer this question i t i s necessary to return to Spinoza's determin-

i s t i c causal rationalism. He believed that eveything that happens has a

cause, and that the causal relation i s one of entailment. I t follows from

these b e l i e f s that knowledge of r e a l i t y , or 'true knowledge', involves know-

ledge of a series of entailments. I f we can get an objective perspective on

the world, we s h a l l see everything as being necessarily connected, that the

statement describing any state of a f f a i r s i s entailed by another statement,

and so on, as was shown i n Chapter One of the present essay. Now i n the case

of ordinary physical objects i n the world, the series of entailments i s i n -

f i n i t e , and so we can never have complete knowledge of the s e r i e s , and so our

ideas of ordinary physical things must be inadequate, since one cannot have

an adequate idea of something unless one has an adequate idea of i t s cause.

Spinoza then certainly does intend to say at any rate that we cannot be act-

ive and therefore cannot be free, as long as our mind contains ideas of

ordinary physical things, that i s , as long as we are thinking about particular

physical objects.

This corresponds with what he says about the three kinds of knowledge.

Our ordinary empirical knowledge - that of the f i r s t kind - i s necessarily i n -

adequate. On the other hand, our knowledge of the second and t h i r d kinds i s

necessarily adequate.
 85.

The knowledge of the second kind i s the knowledge which we get from do-

ing syllogisms, and i n fact from engaging i n any deductive reasoning. The

knowledge that a l l black cats are black i s of this kind since i t can be de-

duced from the i n t u i t i v e fundamental law of l o g i c , which can be expressed

as 'A § B entails A . 1
Clearly going around with such tautologies i n one's

head i s not the path to freedom. There i s , however, a further aspect to the

knowledge of the second kind, and this would be the sort of knowledge one

gets when one solves a chess problem. One would be active, because one would

have adequate ideas i n one's mind, i f one were doing a chess problem. Simil-

arly i f one were following any mathematical series, such as counting sheep,

one would be active. In both of these a c t i v i t i e s , though not i n the constant

repetition of t r i v i a l tautologies, one i s , i n a legitimate sense, active.

One's mind i s not allowed to wander, and i s kept by one from the external

distractions of the world.

The t h i r d kind of knowledge involves intuitions into r e a l i t y , which are

immediate i n the sense that one can 'see' the objects of this knowledge d i r -

e c t l y , quite c l e a r l y , and without carrying out any deductions. This kind of

knowledge involves such things as simple mathematical i n t u i t i o n s , and know-

ledge of the fundamental laws of logic which are presupposed i n thinking,

such as the law of non-contradiction. Although having such knowledge i n one's

mind seems to be a l i t t l e more active than having knowledge of what can be

immediately derived from i t , this i s certainly not what one would think a

mentally active person would have his mind f u l l of. There i s , however, more

to the t h i r d kind of knowledge than merely knowledge of these fundamental

l o g i c a l and mathematical truths. Spinoza, as we saw i n the previous chapter,

believed that we could attain knowledge of the essences of ordinary empirical

objects, and that this knowledge would be knowledge of the t h i r d kind. The
 86.

bulk of ETHICS Part Five i s concerned with this p a r t i c u l a r kind of knowledge

and i t s accompanying adequate ideas. What i s meant by the obscure notion of

'knowledge of the individual essences of things' w i l l be discussed shortly.

When Spinoza i s discussing the nature of human freedom i n ETHICS Part

Five, he deliberately does not discuss ' i n what manner and i n what way the

i n t e l l e c t should be rendered perfect', as this i s simply a matter for logic.

We can then exonerate Spinoza from the charge that he believed that the path

to freedom l i e s i n doing syllogisms and i n enumerating l o g i c a l truths, a l -

though this i s actually entailed by his theory. This leaves us with such

adequate ideas as one might have whilst doing chess problems and the l i k e ,

and with the adequate ideas which y i e l d knowledge of the essences of individ-

ual things. I t i s with the l a t t e r that Spinoza concerned himself, and i t i s

to them that we now turn.

Spinoza, as a Seventeenth Century Rationalist believed not only that the

i n t e l l e c t or understanding and the senses constitute two f a c u l t i e s , but that

the former i s active and the l a t t e r passive. In his opinion the understanding

deals solely with eternal and necessary truths. He subscribed, however, to

the view that not a l l necessary truths are essentially contentless. This i s

captured partly by his d i s t i n c t i o n already alluded to, between formal essences,

which are something l i k e definitions, and actual essences which constitute the

conatus of individual things. The knowledge of the t h i r d kind involves,

amongst other things, i n t u i t i v e knowledge of the actual essences of individuals.

Spinoza i s extremely unclear about exactly what he means by 'essence'. He

uses the term without p r e f i x i n g i t with 'formal' or 'actual', and s l i p s and

slides between the two uses. What he seems to be trying to say i s that the

self-preserving tendency of a l l things i s r e a l l y the essence of God or Nature.

 87.

This needs a l o t of explaining, which w i l l be attempted presently. In t h i s

explanation the language w i l l sometimes be rather metaphorical. This i s

deemed necessary because of the obscurity of the doctrine to be explained.

Many people have believed that the universe i s inhabited by some

s p i r i t u a l force - a l i f e - g i v i n g force. Certain Christians would subscribe

to t h i s doctrine, and would contend that the l i f e - g i v i n g force which perme-

ates the universe i s the force o f love. Some Eastern r e l i g i o n s and philoso-

phies, maintain that there i s an i n f i n i t e source of energy which a c t u a l l y

constitutes the universe. This might be best summarized by the slogan:

'One l i g h t , but many lamps'. On this view there i s one supreme essence

which pervades the universe. Everything which exists would not e x i s t i f i t

was not pervaded by this force. This essence i s a creative force. It is

l i k e l y that Spinoza was very much influenced i n this matter by the mystical

Neo-platonists such as Bruno, although Bruno himself opened the way more

f o r L e i b n i z i a n monads than f o r Spinozist monism. In view of h i s not having

been d i r e c t l y influenced by Buddhist w r i t i n g s , i t is_ i n t e r e s t i n g to mention

i n passing the s t r i k i n g s i m i l a r i t i e s between t h e i r b e l i e f that a l l d u a l i t i e s

represent i l l u s i o n and Spinoza's own monism - that there i s r e a l l y j u s t one

i n f i n i t e and eternal essence, and that everything there i s follows from

this essence, and partakes of i t . That Spinoza s e r i o u s l y believed such a

view can be seen i n Part Five of ETHICS, and by reading Part One i n the

l i g h t of Part Five.

I t f i t s i n w e l l with his view that everything that can be conceived by

an i n f i n i t e - i n t e l l e c t follows from the necessity of the divine nature.

Remember that Spinoza maintained from the beginning of ETHICS that a cause
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must have something i n common with i t s e f f e c t . The paver o f God, or God's

essence has caused my existence and, i n f a c t has caused the existence o f

everything. Therefore a l l things have something i n common with God. This

thing i n common i s t h e i r 'conatus' o r 'actual essence'. This conatus, as

Spinoza w r i t e s , 'does not involve f i n i t e but i n d e f i n i t e time'. The essence

of God 'involves i n d e f i n i t e time', and so does that which we have i n common

with i t . What i s meant by ' A l l d u a l i t i e s are fundamentally unreal' i s that

although we can see the universe i n a number o f ways, that i s divide i t up

conceptually i n a number o f ways, the correct way o f viewing i t i s as one

homogeneous, i n d i v i s i b l e whole.

One could go on f o r a very long time t r y i n g to make c l e a r what 'essences'

r e a l l y are, but to do so would be to wander o f f the track o f t h i s essay, so i t

won't be attempted here. However, the b r i e f sketch j u s t given provides us

with an important clue f o r the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Spinoza's statement that the

mind i s active i n so f a r as i t has adequate ideas, and passive i n so f a r as

i t has inadequate ones. Let us consider the following p r o p o s i t i o n i n the

l i g h t o f the above exposition.

The more we understand i n d i v i d u a l objects, the

more we understand God.

E.v.24.

In ETHICS Part Five, Spinoza says that the ultimate state o f l i b e r a t i o n f o r a

human being i s one where the person has an ' i n t e l l e c t u a l love o f God'. This

love i s tantamount to an ' i n t u i t i v e ' understanding o f the nature o f the uni-

verse. The L a t i n verb ' i n t e l l e g e r e ' means 'to understand', and so the

' i n t e l l e c t u a l love o f God' i s one which comes through understanding, and

should not be confused with something l i k e 'love which only i n t e l l e c t u a l s

have'.
 89.

I f the essences of i n d i v i d u a l things a l l are a manifestation of the nature or

essence of God, then the more one understands t h i s thing i n each object the

more one w i l l understand God's essence. This i s not altogether without

plausibility.

I t i s not at a l l easy to characterize the t h i r d kind of knowledge, and

the following should be regarded as an attempt which may appear as abject

nonsense to some readers, but be i n t e r e s t i n g l y suggestive to others.

This kind of knowledge - o f essences - i s not ordinary perceptual know-

ledge, f o r essences are not v i s i b l e , tangible, or odorous, and so on. It i s

also not the knowledge one gets from doing syllogisms, chess problems, or

mathematics. The knowledge i s of what 'makes things t i c k ' , can only be

attained ' i n t u i t i v e l y ' , and i s r e a l l y more akin to what we would c a l l

'understanding'. To a t t a i n this s o r t of understanding about things i s pre-

c i s e l y what the r e l i g i o n s o f the East would c a l l 'enlightenment'. I f we have

such an understanding we are t r u l y f r e e , and have reached a state of peace

of mind. This involves simply regarding things i n t h e i r 'true' l i g h t , that

i s 'sub specie aeternitas', and therefore having 'adequate ideas'. This

i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of Spinoza i s supported quite strongly by the text, f o r instance

i n the following propositions:

The highest e f f o r t of the mind and i t s highest v i r t u e

i s to understand things by the t h i r d kind of knowledge.

E.v.25.

From this t h i r d kind of knowledge a r i s e s the highest

possible peace of mind.

E.v.27.

It i s not easy to know quite what to say i n c r i t i c i s m of this doctrine

 90.

about the third kind of knowledge. The main problem seems to be that concern-

ing the doctrine's v e r i f i a b i l i t y . According to our ordinary empiricist

c r i t e r i a for v e r i f i a b i l i t y , assuming that there are any such, the claim that

there are i n a l l things imperceptible, though real 'essences' which manifest

the l i f e - f o r c e of the universe, i s not subject to v e r i f i c a t i o n or f a l s i f i c a -

t i o n , and so i s apparently untestable. I f a theory i s untestable i t i s

usually summarily dismissed as 'unscientific'. The case of Spinoza's theory

of essences, and the t h i r d kind of knowledge i s , however, a d i f f i c u l t case,

since there are people who certainly would claim to have something l i k e an

' i n t u i t i v e understanding' of the true nature of the universe.

Moreover, these people very often have a serenity which would undoubted-

l y lead one to say that they have achieved 'the highest possible peace of

mind'. They can explain why most people haven't reached this state of enlight-

enment or highest consciousness, by arguing that to reach these levels requires

a very arduous training of the mind, which only a few people are able or w i l l -

ing to undertake. Spinoza obviously believed something similar to this.

I f the way which, as I have shown, leads hither (to

eternal peace of mind), seem very d i f f i c u l t , i t can
nevertheless be found. I t must indeed be d i f f i c u l t
since i t i s so seldom discovered; for i f salvation
lay ready to hand and could be discovered without
great labour, how could i t be possible that i t should
be neglected almost by everybody? But a l l noble
things are as d i f f i c u l t as they are rare.

E.v.42. (Schol.)

There are undoubtedly severe epistomological problems with this view of human

freedom, and although the theory i s very interesting and suggestive, there

w i l l be no arguments produced here which purport to prove that i t i s true;

for i f the doctrine i s true i t s truth could be understood only by someone

who had already had this kind of experience to believe i n i t s value; i t i s

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probably impossible so to persuade a r a t i o n a l person by r a t i o n a l arguments

alone. A f o r t i o r i i t i s an e n t e r p r i s e t o t a l l y unsuited to demonstration

'more geometrico'. We s h a l l now descend from these l o f t y metaphysical

heights t o the more mundane area of the a f f e c t s .

15. THE AFFECTS PART TWO.

Before proceeding f u r t h e r , a few remarks about the p i c t u r e being o f f e r -

ed here o f the interconnections between the various p a r t s o f Spinoza's theory

of freedom would be appropriate. Spinoza b e l i e v e d t h a t he had e s s e n t i a l l y

one theory which had d i f f e r e n t mutually supporting p i l l a r s . In h i s o p i n i o n

these p i l l a r s d i d more than simply add e x t r a support to the anyway reasonably

s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t , s e l f - s u p p o r t i n g d o c t r i n e s ; he b e l i e v e d t h a t no p a r t o f the

e d i f i c e could stand up independently o f the other p a r t s - the system had to

be r e j e c t e d or accepted as a whole. We have already shown t h a t one aspect o f

h i s theory o f freedom cannot be defended by r a t i o n a l argument. What w i l l be

attempted here i s an examination of the other aspects o f the theory on t h e i r

own m e r i t s . We can do t h i s p a r t l y because these p s y c h o l o g i c a l views about

human bondage and freedom are r e a l l y views on how to prepare f o r the u l t i m a t e

s t a t e of 'blessedness'. I f the arguments about freedom are seen as forming a

pyramid, what has been done so f a r i s to remove the top of the pyramid.

Spinoza would not have had i t t h a t the top could have been removed without

shaking the foundations, f o r he b e l i e v e d t h a t the 'blessedness' theory was

e n t a i l e d by the p s y c h o l o g i c a l theory. I f one accepted t h i s one could not r e -

j e c t the 'blessedness' theory, or w i t h o l d judgment on i t without doing so to

the p s y c h o l o g i c a l theory. The entailment c l a i m i s here r e j e c t e d , and so we

proceed to a d i s c u s s i o n of the p s y c h o l o g i c a l theory on i t s own m e r i t s .

 92.

Spinoza, we r e c a l l , b e l i e v e d that we are a c t i v e inasmuch as we have

adequate i d e a s , and p a s s i v e inasmuch as we have inadequate ones. From t h i s

alone, one might t h i n k that i t wouldn't make any d i f f e r e n c e to our a c t i v i t y ,

and therefore t o our 'power' o r ' v i r t u e ' , whether the inadequate ideas are

inadequate f o r one reason o r f o r q u i t e d i f f e r e n t ones. There i s n ' t appar-

e n t l y much room f o r concern f o r d i s t i n c t i o n s w i t h i n the realm o f inadequate

ideas. I n a c t u a l f a c t there are c r u c i a l d i s t i n c t i o n s t o be made w i t h i n t h i s

realm. Spinoza does make some o f these d i s t i n c t i o n s , the f i r s t o f which i s

made w i t h i n the area o f passions. He says that we s u f f e r passions t o the

extent that the ideas i n our mind which are the mental aspect o f our a f f e c t s ,

are n o t adequate. However passions are many-edged.

There are s e v e r a l S p i n o z i s t reasons why passions such as h a t r e d cannot

be good. Spinoza o f f e r s the f o l l o w i n g reason:

The man whom we hate we endeavour t o destroy ...

that i s t o say ... we endeavour t o do something
which i s e v i l .

E.iv.45. (Dem.)

The reason given f o r the e v i l o f d e s t r o y i n g another human being i s that noth-

ing i s more u s e f u l t o one person than another person. We can i n t e r p r e t the

demonstration as s a y i n g that h a t i n g someone has bad e f f e c t s inasmuch as i t

leads one t o d e s i r e , o r r a t h e r i n v o l v e s d e s i r i n g , c e r t a i n things t o b e f a l l

the person, the occurrence o f which would be harmful to the h a t e r .

The second reason f o r s a y i n g that h a t r e d i s e v i l i s that i t n e c e s s a r i l y

i n v o l v e s sorrow. Sorrow i s e v i l because i t c o n s t i t u t e s apart from anything

e l s e , a d i m i n u t i o n i n the power o f a c t i o n o f the mind and body. This, at

any r a t e i s a S p i n o z i s t view o f the emotion. I t i s , as i t stands, l i t e r a l l y

f a l s e ; f o r i f we count h a t r e d as a species o f sorrow, i t i s n o t the case t h a t

 93.

'sorrow' i n e v i t a b l y diminishes i t s possessor's power o f a c t i o n . Sometimes,

as we s t a t e d e a r l i e r , people are motivated t o r e l i n q u i s h t h e i r i n e r t i a by

the hatred o f someone o r something. However Spinoza does have an i n t e r e s t i n g

and important i n s i g h t here, even though i t i s not e x p l i c i t l y made on t h i s

subject. I t i s q u i t e true that there are emotions which do seem t o c o n s t i t u t e

an i n h i b i t i o n on one's a c t i v i t i e s . There are two b a s i c forms o f these. The

f i r s t i s where one i s , say f e e l i n g r e s e n t f u l towards somebody, and consequent-

l y j u s t cannot concentrate on what one i s doing, because the o b j e c t o f one's

p a s s i o n i s ever-present t o one i n an o f f e n s i v e and i n t r u d i n g manner. Such a

' s u f f e r e r ' may f i n d h i m s e l f c o n s t a n t l y d w e l l i n g on the i n j u r i e s which have

been i n f l i c t e d on him, and thus not be able t o concentrate f u l l y on any one

thing. The second form o f ' i n h i b i t i n g ' emotion i s the one where one j u s t

f e e l s , so t o speak, deadened. This u s u a l l y i n v o l v e s , a t some l e v e l , s e l f -

h a t r e d , and i s o f t e n caused by the suppression o f the expression o f h o s t i l e

f e e l i n g s t o somebody who has caused one p a i n . These emotions, i f one wants

to c a l l them t h a t , tend towards depression, and c o u l d w e l l be named 'depressive

emotions'. The emotions which are i n c l u d e d i n t h i s category are j u s t those

which l e a d t o o r encompass the s t a t e o f depression, which i n v o l v e s f e e l i n g so

awful t h a t one cannot summon up the energy t o do anything, even those things

which the depressed person most wants t o do. For example, someone who r e a l l y

wants t o w r i t e a book may, i f he i s i n the g r i p o f a 'depressive' emotion, be

unable t o face working on the p r o j e c t . The current conjecture i s that there

i s a group o f emotions which a c t u a l l y do i n h i b i t one's a c t i v i t y , e i t h e r by

s c a t t e r i n g one's concentration o r by deadening one's v i t a l i t y . Of course the

former might w e l l lead t o the l a t t e r , and the l a t t e r would almost c e r t a i n l y

i n v o l v e one's a b i l i t y t o concentrate being broken. These emotions, which I

s h a l l h e r e a f t e r c a l l 'depressive', are harmful t o t h e i r bearers because they

l i m i t t h e i r a c t i v i t y i n the more f a m i l i a r sense o f ' a c t i v i t y ' as w e l l as i n

 94.

Spinoza's rather esoteric sense.

The t h i r d reason for regarding the emotions of sorrow as being, at least

not untarnished by e v i l , i s that they are a l l necessarily passions. A l l

emotions of sorrow are passions, because they constitute restrictions of act-

i v i t y for their bearers, and therefore mark the overpowering of the bearer's

conatus by external factors, which i s an undesirable state for someone to be

in.

This i s closely linked to the fourth reason for saying that the emotions

of sorrow are e v i l , and that i s that they involve inadequate ideas of a par-

t i c u l a r kind. Inadequate ideas include not merely those ideas which we would

say were ideas of contingent truths, but also of falsehoods. The passions

involve inadequate ideas of the 'falsehood' type. For instance, i f one hates

someone, one w i l l , according to Spinoza's theory, feel sorrow with the accom-

panying idea of the object of hatred as the true cause of the sorrow.

Suppose someone stole one's favourite record - just before some friends were

coming over for the evening to l i s t e n to i t . Let us also suppose that the

c u l p r i t i s found, and that he just doesn't care at a l l about causing trouble

to people, and i n particular to oneself. I t i s quite l i k e l y that one would

feel hatred towards such a person. According to Spinoza this would involve

the primary sorrow of having one's evening ruined, with the accompanying idea

of an 'external cause' - namely the thief. This b e l i e f about the cause of

the sorrow must be mistaken, given Spinoza's view, much discussed above, of a

causally r a t i o n a l i s t i c determinist universe. There i s an i n f i n i t e l y long

series of causes for the occurrence of anything i n the world of f i n i t e modes.

When we regard someone as the cause of our sorrow we are not simply viewing

the person as something which i s , along with i n f i n i t e l y many other things,

 95.

causally relevant to the occurrence of the state; rather, what we are doing

i s regarding the object of hatred as a self-caused cause of our sorrow.

This i s to have a false, inadequate idea, and i s therefore ' e v i l ' .

As well as passions of sorrow, there are passions which arise i n us out

of desire and those which arise out of joy. The following discussion w i l l

be r e s t r i c t e d essentially to the passions of joy. The passions of joy share

some relevant features with those of sorrow, and d i f f e r i n important ways

too.

The passions of joy are different from at least some of those of sorrow

i n that they do not involve destructiveness. When one has a joyous passion,

such as unselfish love, one tends, i n virtue of the feeling, to be well-dis-

posed towards one's fellow human-beings. As the well-being of one's fellow

human beings i s good, so i s that which promotes i t , for instance a passion of

joy, for this promotes our true s e l f - i n t e r e s t .

Secondly, the passions of joy do not, unlike some of their counterparts

on the sorrow side, lead to the i n h i b i t i o n of one's power of acting, but

rather have the reverse tendency. Spinoza has the following to say on this

matter:

Joy i s not d i r e c t l y e v i l , but good; sorrow, on the

other hand, i s d i r e c t l y e v i l .

Joy ... i s an affect by which the body's power of

action i s increased or assisted. Sorrow, on the
other hand, i s an affect by which the body's power of action
is lessened, and, therefore joy i s d i r e c t l y good ...

E.iv.41 $ Dem.

It might be worth noting here that Spinoza s p e c i f i c a l l y talks i n terms of the

body's power of action. I take him, i n doing so, to be talking about something
 96.

rather like what we would describe as 'ability to do a wide range of things'.

We would then be able to say that the affects of joy are directly good be-

cause their possession enables their possessor to do a wide range of things,

that i s , to be more active.

On this matter, Spinoza i s , as i n the case of the passions of sorrow,

l i t e r a l l y wrong. It i s not true that a l l emotions of joy do increase our

body's power of action i n any sense that i s not purely tautological. For

instance the feeling of joy which one might get from lazing i n a deck chair

on a warm summer's afternoon, i s certainly not a feeling which either con-

stitutes or directly leads to an increase i n the body's power of action. On

the contrary, i f one feels really pleasant i n such a situation, one's power

of action i s certainly diminished, for one would almost certainly want to do

as near to nothing as possible.

Nevertheless, as before with the sorrows, Spinoza does have a point.

When one i s feeling cheerful or joyous, one i s far more able to do what one

wants to do than i f one i s feeling depressed or sorrowful. It i s d i f f i c u l t

to find a word which encapsulates this kind of feeling. The closest approxim-

ation i s probably 'cheerfulness'. 'Cheerfulness' i s not completely accurate.

What i s being sought i s the opposite of 'depression'. The distinction i n

question i s f a i r l y well described as that between feeling optimistic, and

feeling pessimistic. The affects of joy have a logical connexion with feel-

ing, broadly speaking, optimistic. When one feels optimistic about one's

existence, i t is much easier for one to get down to doing things, thus in-

creasing 'the body's power of action'. The nearest Spinoza actually comes

to spelling this out is i n his distinction between 'cheerfulness' and

'melancholy'.
 97.

Cheerfulness ... i s joy, which, i n so far as i t i s

related to the body, consists i n t h i s , that a l l the
parts of the body are equally affected, that i s to
say ... the body's power of action i s increased or
assisted, so that a l l the parts acquire the same
proportion of motion and rest to each other.
Cheerfulness, therefore ... i s always good, and can
never be excessive. But melancholy ... i s sorrow,
which i n so f a r as i t i s related to the body, con-
s i s t s i n t h i s , that the body's power of action i s
absolutely lessened or restrained, and melancholy,
therefore ... i s always e v i l .

E.iv.42. (Dem.)

I f we don't take too l i t e r a l l y the talk about imbalances i n the proportions

of motion and rest i n the body, we are l e f t with the basic 'feeling good',

and 'feeling bad', which we were looking for. Although Spinoza's talking

about proportions of motion and rest i n the body leaves much to be desired

as an account of how different emotions affect us, he does have a point when

he talks of the excesses of joy. I f , for instance, one absolutely adored

someone, the love one had for the person might be excessive, f o r i t would,

as i t were, throw one completely out of equilibrium, and cause one to have a

f i x a t i o n on the person loved which would i n h i b i t one's overall power of act-

ion. 'Cheerfulness' and 'melancholy' are overall emotional states of a per-

son, and thus have a more direct relation to the actual power of action of a

person, than do emotions such as anger.

The passions of joy do share i n common with those of sorrow their not

being cause solely by the essence of the bearer of the passion. Also they

do not involve adequate ideas. I f one loves someone i n an ordinary way, one

i s , on Spinoza's view, feeling joy with the accompanying idea of the person

loved as the cause of the joy. This, as we saw i n the case of the passions

of sorrow, involves having a distorted or incomplete way of seeing things.

 98.

Anyway, we can say this, that even though a l l the passions are manifes-

tations of a person's unfreedom, which i s a bad state, some of them are not

as harmful as others, and are in fact, i n the Spinozist sense, 'useful'

to us. He gives several reasons as to why the passions of sorrow are 'harm-

f u l ' to us, and several why those of joy are 'useful'. However, i t is not

the case that a l l the passions of sorrow are harmful i n the same ways, or

at least in a l l the same ways. For instance the passion of hatred is harm-

ful because i t leads to destructive tendencies which are against the true

self-interest of the person who hates. Sadness is harmful because i t makes

i t d i f f i c u l t for one to do what one might otherwise be able to do. But hatred

often raises one's power of activity, and sadness does not have an inbuilt

element of destructiveness. One could produce a similar account of the

passions of joy. The point which i s being made here is that Spinoza's account

of the passions of joy and sorrow, although containing valuable insights, i s

an oversimplification. It i s not true that a l l the passions of joy are 'good'

in his sense of the word, just as i t isn't true that a l l those of sorrow are

'evil', and this i s something more than simply a matter of the possible ex-

cesses of joy, which Spinoza talks of.

Pleasurable excitement may be excessive and an e v i l ,

and pain be good i n so far as pleasurable excitement
or joy i s e v i l .

E.iv.43.

Spinoza does acknowledge that some passions are more harmful than others.

However, a l l the passions are ultimately undesirable, for i t is a necessary

truth that having a passion involves having inadequate ideas i n one's mind,

and that having such ideas constitutes being unfree mentally, and that be-

ing mentally unfree i s harmful. It follows from this that i t i s ultimately

useful or virtuous for us to give up our passions, or at least to take steps

 99.

w h i c h e n a b l e us t o cease b e i n g s u b j e c t t o them. Does t h i s mean t h a t i t i s

u l t i m a t e l y u s e f u l t o do w i t h o u t emotions a l t o g e t h e r ? I t i s d i f f i c u l t to say

e x a c t l y what S p i n o z a t h o u g h t on t h i s m a t t e r , because on i t he i s n o t o n l y

obscure, b u t a l s o says t h i n g s w h i c h i m p l y c o n t r a r y p o s i t i o n s .

I n t h e n e x t c h a p t e r t h e r e w i l l be a d i s c u s s i o n o f S p i n o z a ' s v i e w s on

the d i s p e n s a b i l i t y o f e m o t i o n s , and o f t h e n e c e s s i t y o f d i s p e n s i n g w i t h them,

for the f r e e l i f e o f reason. I n a m o d i f i e d and t r u n c a t e d f o r m t h e main

S p i n o z i s t p o s i t i o n w i l l be d e f e n d e d f r o m what c o u l d be a s e r i o u s challenge

from the Twentieth Century.

 loo

CHAPTER FOUR

REASON, EMOTIONS AND HUMANITY

16. TO WHAT EXTENT SHOULD WE ABANDON OUR EMOTIONS?

The nearest thing to an emotion which Spinoza talks about i s ' a f f e c t ' .

Part Four of ETHICS i s c a l l e d 'Of Human Bondage or o f the strength o f the

Affects'. This implies that our bondage consists i n having a f f e c t s , and

that l i b e r a t i o n would i n e v i t a b l y involve no longer being subject to them.

Furthermore, the l i f e that Spinoza advocates i s a l i f e o f reason. He con-

s t a n t l y talks about what someone who l i v e d i n accordance with reason would

do. He equates acting i n accordance with reason with acting v i r t u o u s l y , or

being f r e e . People often oppose reason to, amongst other things, emotions.

I f one i s a c t i n g 'emotionally', one i s not acting 'reasonably'. The r a d i c a l

i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f Spinoza's views about the d i s p e n s a b i l i t y o f emotions would

be the one which has him advocating a complete abandonment o f a l l emotions.

Despite the attractions o f this way o f i n t e r p r e t i n g Spinoza, there are b e t t e r

reasons f o r r e j e c t i n g the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n as not doing j u s t i c e to h i s main

theory.

One o f the reasons f o r b e l i e v i n g that the emotions ought to be given up

i s that we seem to be passive whenever we have an emotion. However, i f

Spinoza d i d mean by 'affect' what we mean by emotion, he d i d not believe t h i s ,

for he w r i t e s :

Besides the joys and desires which are passions, there

are other affects o f joy and desire which are r e l a t e d
to us i n so f a r as we act.

E.iii.58.
 101.

The argument for the p o s s i b i l i t y of 'active' joys i s that the mind rejoices

when i t conceives i t s power of acting, and that when i t has adequate ideas

i t conceives i t s e l f and i t s power of acting, and so i t rejoices when i t i s

active. Moreover, the having of adequate ideas i s caused by one's own essence

alone, and so one i s , when one has adequate ideas, the cause of the ensuing

r e j o i c i n g , since i t follows from something of which one i s the cause oneself.

This argument i s not used by Spinoza i n h i s demonstration of the proposition,

but i t e a s i l y could have been.

In the f i n a l paragraph of ETHICS Part Four there i s more evidence for

rejecting the radical view. Talking about 'the brave man', whom one can take

as being someone who i s free or governed by reason, Spinoza writes:

... his chief effort i s to conceive things as they are

i n themselves, and to remove the hindrances to true
knowledge such as hatred, anger, envy, derision and
pride, and other of this kind, which we have before
noticed; and so he endeavours, as we have said, as
much as possible to do w e l l and rejoice.
E.iv.73. (Schol.)

This i s p a r t i c u l a r l y interesting because the examples which are given, of the

hindrances to knowledge, are a l l emotions which lead to what we would c a l l

wrongdoing; at least they are a l l emotions or attitudes which most people dis-

courage. Such affects as 'pity', 'hope', 'confidence' and 'gladness' are not

included; and this i s s i g n i f i c a n t , f o r according to Spinoza's c r i t e r i a , those

affects are obstacles to true knowledge, and involve passivity i n the same

way as do the other less reputable affects.

Spinoza's r i g i d causal rationalism did not allow him to have a theory of

how we might progress from our state of confused, passive, unfreedom into the

state of freedom or blessedness, for he couldn't have an adequate theory of

 102.

change. However, a close reading of Spinoza w i l l reveal that he did believe

there was a path from bondage to freedom.

There are some emotions which are especially harmful, as they not only

involve the bearer of the emotion being i n bondage, but they also promote

the continuing bondage of that person and others. Such emotions are pride,

anger, derision, and others of the same i l k , as mentioned i n E.iv.73. (Schol.).

Spinoza urges anybody who i s seeking freedom to give up, as a matter of immed-

iate p r i o r i t y , such negative and destructive emotions.

Although Spinoza i s against such feelings as p i t y , remorse, and other

'softnesses', because they do not stem from reason, but run.counter to i t , he

does grant that they have their purposes.

... l i k e p i t y , so shame, although i t i s not a virtue,
i s nevertheless good, i n so f a r as i t shows that a
desire of l i v i n g uprightly i s present i n the man who
i s possessed with shame ...

E.iv.58. (Schol.)

... he who i s moved neither by reason nor p i t y to be

of any service to others i s properly called inhuman.

E.iv.50.
These 'soft' emotions, then are intermediately 'useful', for i n our 'unliber-

ated' state, i f we did not have them we would be 'inhuman', and would be i n

an extremely 'primitive' state of development.

'Pity' i s also not too good, because i t i s a 'sorrow'; this distinguishes

i t from the passions of joy, passions though even these l a t t e r be. Passions

of joy are regarded as reasonably a l l right i n as much as they involve a tendency

to increased a c t i v i t y or virtue on the part of the bearer. However, even these

ultimately should go, f o r :

 103.

A l l of these (desires from a f f e c t s of joy and sorrow) ...

i n so f a r as they are begotten i n us of a f f e c t s which
are passions, are b l i n d ... nor would they be of any
use i f men could be e a s i l y persuaded to l i v e according
to the dictates of reason alone ...

E.iv.58. (Schol.)

The trouble with a l l the passions, whether they are 'positive' or 'negative'

i s that we have them whether or not we want t o , and also whether or not i t

i s i n our i n t e r e s t to have the p a r t i c u l a r passion at a p a r t i c u l a r time. In

respect to our passions, when we are i n a state o f unfreedom, we have no more

control than leaves i n the wind have over t h e i r l o c a t i o n - both are deter-

mined by external f a c t o r s .

I f we are f e e l i n g p a r t i c u l a r l y good on account o f something pleasant

that has happened to us, i t i s quite on the cards that this w i l l turn to

f e e l i n g rotten i f the circumstances change. What Spinoza means by 'freedom'

i n i t s human context e n t a i l s ' f e e l i n g good i n any circumstance'. This i n -

volves looking at the world, i n c l u d i n g oneself and one's p o s i t i o n i n the world

'under the aspect of e t e r n i t y ' . This i s c e r t a i n l y what Spinoza thought freedom

consisted of, but i t i s not c l e a r whether or not he thought i t attainable.

E a r l y i n ETHICS Part Four Spinoza asserts what implies that freedom i s

unattainable f o r human beings.

We s u f f e r i n so f a r as we are a part of nature,

which part cannot be conceived by i t s e l f nor with-
out the other parts.

E.iv.2.

I t i s impossible that a man should not be a part of

nature ...

E.iv.4.

However, i n Part Five he c e r t a i n l y suggests that i t i s p o s s i b l e , though

 104.

admittedly d i f f i c u l t , to reach the state of freedom, that i s the l i f e of

reason.

In summary, then, the doctrine which w i l l be discussed here i s the

following. The state of freedom i s one which i t would be ultimately desir-

able to a t t a i n , although i t i s extremely unlikely that i t can be achieved

by any given human being. In order to achieve complete freedom, one would

have to be completely unmoved by what was going on around one, that i s , one

would never feel things about what was happening, except what i s t r u l y

appropriate. The same feeling i s always appropriate to a free person, because,

i n r e a l i t y nothing actually changes. This feeling i s a feeling of b l i s s , joy,

or a special kind of love or reverence. There i s a graduated series of

barriers to the attainment of this state. These barriers are the things which

cause us to see the world i n other than i t s true l i g h t . The source of the

f a i l u r e to see things accurately i s our having inadequate ideas, a sub-spec-

ies of which are the ideas contained i n passions. In order, then, to attain

freedom, we must set about eliminating these passions. Within the realm of

passions there are some which must be eliminated i f the pursuer of freedom i s

to make any headway at a l l ; these emotions are the ones which involve hatred,

envy, and the l i k e - the emotions which have an i n b u i l t tendency to destruc-

tion and those which tend towards 'depression' as i t was explicated e a r l i e r .

These emotions get i n the way of any further development, and that i s why

they must be eliminated early. The emotions which tend towards cheerfulness

are much better. The main problems with at least most of them are that one

has no control over whether or not one has them, at least when one i s an

ordinary 'unfree' human being. The state of freedom involves being free of

them too. I t i s ambiguous just what i s involved i n being free of these

'positive' attitudes and feelings. The ambiguity can be expressed as follows.

 105.

I f one i s free of the affect of 'gladness' i s i t the case that one never feels

'glad', or that one can control whether or not one feels 'glad'? It is

assumed that Spinoza i s here r e a l l y concerned with having control over one's

affects - that i s the control of being able to decide whether or not one i s

going to have a p a r t i c u l a r feeling. For after a l l he does maintain that

there are affects which are actions. After a person has f i n a l l y conquered

the passions, he or she w i l l also have an 'objective' view of the universe,

and w i l l possess 'the i n t e l l e c t u a l love of God'.

17. REACTIVITY.

This section w i l l deal with an objection to the Spinozist programme for

freedom which comes from Professor P.F. Strawson i n his B r i t i s h Academy

lecture "Freedom and Resentment". This lecture i s a contribution to the

debate between the hard and soft determinists. Hart determinists believe

that an acceptance of the truth of determinism would force us to give up our

b e l i e f that i t i s sometimes j u s t i f i e d to hold a person morally responsible

for an action. The soft determinists believe that j u s t i f i e d ascriptions of

moral responsibility are quite compatible with an acceptance of the truth of

determinism.

Strawson believes that the acceptance of hard determinism as above asc-

ribed would force us to adopt 'the obscure and panicky metaphysics of l i b e r -

tarianism', for i t i s i n some sense inconceivable that we should abandon our

b e l i e f that sometimes people are morally responsible for their actions. So

the issue becomes one between soft determinism with the p o s s i b i l i t y of accept-

ing the truth of determinism, and libertarianism, which appears to be counter-

i n t u i t i v e or at any rate unscientific. What Strawson does i s to examine the

 106.

source of our ascriptions of moral responsibility, and i n so doing to attempt

to show that our notion of moral responsibility stems from roots quite other

than a b e l i e f that some people are sometimes free i n a sense of 'free' which

i s incompatible with 'determined'. This i s i n direct c o n f l i c t with Spinoza's

view on this matter.

... and because (man) supposes himself to be free,

notions l i k e those of praise and blame, s i n and
merit have arisen.

E . i . Appendix.

I t i s quite common for a correct philosophical position to be rejected be-

cause the arguments which are adduced i n i t s favour are poor. This i s what,

according to Strawson, has happened to the doctrine .of soft determinism.

One such argument i s that put forward by, amongst others, Moritz Schlick,

who writes about the related notion of punishment:

Punishment i s concerned only with the i n s t i t u t i o n of

causes, of motives of conduct, and this alone i s i t s
meaning. Punishment i s an educative measure, and as
such i s a means to the formation of motives, which
are i n part to prevent the wrongdoer from repeating
the act (reformation) and i n part to prevent others
from committing a similar act (intimidation).
Analogously, i n the case of reward we are concerned
with an incentive.

M. Schlick. PROBLEMS OF ETHICS, p.152.

What i s objectionable to this sort of j u s t i f i c a t i o n for punishment or reward

i s that i t ignores one very important component of our punishing or rewarding

someone, and that i s the element of resentment or hurt i n the former, and

that of gratitude i n the l a t t e r . I f i t did not matter whether or not these

elements were present, there would be no d i s t i n c t i o n between 'corrective

therapy' and punishment.

Strawson sheds l i g h t on this problem i n an interesting way through a

d i s t i n c t i o n he makes, which i s not always clear, between 'reactive attitudes'

 107.

and 'the objective attitude'. He writes of the l a t t e r :

To adopt the objective attitude to another human being

i s to see him, perhaps, as an object of social policy;
as a subject for what, i n a wide range of sense, might
be called treatment; as something certainly to be taken
account of, perhaps precautionary account, of; to be
managed or handled or cured or trained; ...

P.79.

This i s to be contrasted with reactive attitudes.

... i t cannot include the range of reactive feelings

and attitudes which belong to involvement or p a r t i c i p -
ation with others i n inter-ersonal human relationships;
i t cannot include resentment, gratitude, forgiveness,
anger, or the sort of love which two adults can some-
times be said to f e e l reciprocally, for each other.

P.79. 1

Strawson argues that i t i s these reactive attitudes which provide the basis

for our notions of moral responsibility and so on. He says that the personal

reactive attitudes have a vicarious analogue; for instance the reactive

attitude of resentment has i t s vicarious analogue i n 'moral indignation',

or 'resentment on behalf of another'. This i s s l i g h t l y misleading, since

one of the features of the personal reactive attitudes was simply the fact

that they were reactions to the good or i l l - w i l l of somebody to oneself.

I t i s an important feature of these attitudes that one sees the object of

the attitude as having done something f o r or against one personally. It is

possible to feel this so-called 'resentment on behalf of another' without i t

mattering who the victim of the moral outrage might be. Anyway, this i s a

parenthetical remark, as I s h a l l not question Strawson's claim that these two

kinds of reactive attitude and a t h i r d kind, which i s the analogue of the

other two which i s held towards oneself, and includes remorse, are a l l

'humanly' connected.

P.F. Strawson (ed.) Studies In The Philosophy of Thought and Action.

 108.

I t i s maintained i n "Freedom and Resentment" that anyone who questions,

after reading the early parts of the paper, the r a t i o n a l i t y of maintaining

the reactive attitudes i n the face of a b e l i e f i n the truth of determinism

'has wholly f a i l e d to grasp' what Strawson has said on the subject. The

argument Strawson has for this i s twofold. The f i r s t argument i s that when

we decide to suspend our reactive attitudes towards somebody this i s not

because we see their behaviour as caused i n a way i n which other people's

i s not caused, so what attitudes we take up are taken up independently of

beliefs about the truth of determinism. The second argument i s that i t i s

impossible f o r us to give up on a r e l a t i v e l y permanent basis our reactive

attitudes. I f this were so, and as 'ought' implies 'can', i t would be i n -

appropriate to question the r a t i o n a l i t y of continuing these practices, since

to do so would be to imply that we, perhaps ought to do what, ex hypothesi,

we can't.

I t i s precisely these two statements of Strawson's position which are

i n direct c o n f l i c t with Spinoza's programme for human l i b e r t y . Spinoza

believed that i f we could r e a l l y see people's behaviour as being causally

determined, we would no longer have these feelings of resentment, gratitude,

Strawson's special kind of love between adults, hatred, anger, jealousy,

envy, etc. Secondly Spinoza, as we have seen, believed that i t i s possible

for people to give up their passions, which are very close to Strawson's

'reactive attitudes'. A l l the reactive attitudes would be called 'passions'

by Spinoza, though some of the 'passions' would not be called 'reactive

attitudes or feelings' by Strawson.

Let us now investigate Strawson's claim that the r a t i o n a l i t y of our con-

tinuing to have reactive attitudes cannot j u s t i f i a b l y be questioned because

 109.

having them i s an inevitable, and desirable part of the human condition.

Strawson equates 'ordinary inter-personal relationship' with 'relationship

where the people involved are prone to having reactive attitudes towards

one another*. Words l i k e 'ordinary' are dangerous i n contexts such as these,

as they are ambiguous. Does 'ordinary' mean ' s t a t i s t i c a l l y l i k e l y ' , or

'normal-in-the-sense-of-functioning-as-it-should'? I f the l a t t e r , i t i s

pretty-well tautologous that we ought not to give up our reactive attitudes,

as this would involve our never having the kind of relationships which we

should have, and i t i s very strange indeed to t e l l someone that he ought to

adopt a style of l i f e which would preclude him having the kind of relation-

ships he ought to have. I t i s undoubtedly true that relationships which

involve the range of reactive attitudes are s t a t i s t i c a l l y normal, but i t i s

not at a l l as obvious that they are a manifestation of well-functioning

human beings. I f they are this l a t t e r , an argument i s certainly required to

show i t . I t i s notoriously d i f f i c u l t to produce an argument that i s anything

l i k e plausible about such a fundamental aspect of 'human nature'. Strawson

doesn't r e a l l y provide a satisfactory one. What he does i s to try to show

how a world where we did not feel reactive attitudes would be somewhat inhuman,

and thus undesirable. This w i l l be discussed shortly. In the meantime l e t us

pass to Strawson's more radical claim - that we could not give up having

reactive attitudes.

Strawson leans rather heavily on the 'normality' of relationships, with

reactive attitudes being the order of the day, or at least of most days. He

writes:

But i t cannot be consequence of any thesis which i s not s e l f -

contradictory, that abnormality i s the universal condition.

2
Ibid. p.81.
 110.

He then asks whether the acceptance of determinism could lead us to look at

one another i n tliis way: 'Could the acceptance of the truth of determinism

lead to the "decay or repudiation of participant reactive attitudes"?' From

the way this question has been set up by Strawson the odds are stacked

against an affirmative answer being given, and i t i s not surprising that he

writes:

I t does not seem to be self-contradictory to suppose

that this (the repudiation of participant reactive
attitudes) might happen. So I suppose we must say
that i t i s not absolutely inconceivable that i t should
happen. But I am strongly inclined to think that i t i s ,
for us as we are, p r a c t i c a l l y inconceivable that i t
should happen.3

This i s Strawson at his most elusive. He has two things going on at once

here. The f i r s t i s that he has some argument which has purported to show

that determinism i s irrelevant to our adoption of objective or reactive

attitudes to one another. I t i s not clear whether he means above that what

i s not quite self-contradictory, but 'practically inconceivable' i s that we

should give up reactive attitudes simply because we had a theoretical con-

v i c t i o n that determinism was true, or that we should relinquish them for

good under any circumstances. I f he means the former one might say that

although the b e l i e f i n determinism would not on i t s own a l t e r our reactive

attitudes, i t would help us to become free of some of them. I t i s certainly

true that i f we consciously regard someone's adverse behaviour as being the

upshot of a series of causes which were not subject to his control, i t i s

much easier for us not to feel anger towards him. I f we can view our sorrows

as having an i n f i n i t e number of causes we are l i k e l y to be less fixated on a

single 'cause'. Believing i n determinism i s a way of ceasing to regard one

person or thing as the cause of one's pain or pleasure. This certainly helps

^ Ibid. p.82.
 111.

to reduce one's proneness to at least certain reactive attitudes. This i s a

fact about human psychology.

I f Strawson i s making the more radical of the two claims - that i t i s

'practically inconceivable' that we should give up our reactive attitudes

for any reason, then this requires much more j u s t i f i c a t i o n than i s given.

I t seems to be the case that Strawson i s making the bolder claim. For later

i n the lecture he says of the commitment to 'inter-personal attitudes', which

I take to be 'reactive attitudes':

This commitment i s part of the general framework of

human l i f e , not something that can come up for re-
view within this general framework.4

Strawson i s well-known for his use of the transcendental form of argument with

respect to our knowledge of what the world i s l i k e . Instead of trying to

prove d i r e c t l y that the sceptic i s contradicting himself, f o r i t isn't obvious

that he must be, what Strawson does i s to show that what the sceptic must say

describes a situation which i s u n i n t e l l i g i b l e . We can be reasonably sure that

we shan't give up our b e l i e f that we are i n a world of objective p a r t i c u l a r s ,

for we cannot r e a l l y conceive of a world where we could judge that there

weren't any. In connection with this type of dispute one would have expected

a remark from Strawson similar to that made i n the above quotation. He

certainly i s basing his claim that we could not give up our reactive attitudes

on a moral analogue of the epistemological transcendental argument. This ex-

plains his curious use of 'practically inconceivable', which I , rather specula-

t i v e l y , take to be i n contrast with the Kantian 'theoretically' inconceivable.

In his book INDIVIDUALS Strawson characterizes what he i s going to be doing

4
Ibid. p.84.
 i.U.

in the book i n the following way:

... there i s a massive central core of human think-

ing which has no history - or none recorded i n
histories of thought; there are categories and con-
cepts which, i n their most fundamental character,
change not at a l l ; and are yet the indispensable
core of the conceptual equipment of the most sophist-
icated human beings. I t i s with these, their inter-
connexions, and the structure that they form, that a^
descriptive metaphysics w i l l be primarily concerned.

Strawson implies that he believes that our having reactive attitudes i s a

moral analogue of our having concepts of objective particulars i n our under-

standing of r e a l i t y . This i s an extremely dubious claim to make, p a r t i c u l a r l y

in view of i t being possible to describe without any inconsistency what i t

would be l i k e to know that one was l i v i n g i n a world where there was an

absence of reactive attitudes amongst the people, including oneself. One can

reduce a sceptic who i s prepared to l i s t e n to one's arguments to give up his

position or to remain s i l e n t about i t , but there i s no such channel available

to one to dispose of someone who disagrees with one's views about what a t t i t -

udes people can or cannot adopt to one another. There i s l i t t l e pressure on

the Spinozist to accept Strawson's 'descriptive metaphysical' claim that:

The existence of the general framework of attitudes

i t s e l f i s something we are given with the fact of
human society. As a whole i t neither c a l l s for, nor
permits an essential 'rational' j u s t i f i c a t i o n .

I f the Spinozist is_ going to deny that the matter of what attitudes one

can have can be settled a p r i o r i , which i s i n effect the assertion made here,

then he must accept that this undercuts his own enterprise. Both Strawson

and Spinoza were wrong i n attempting, to varying degrees, a p r i o r i psychology.

D
P.F. Strawson, INDIVIDUALS, p.10.
6 P.F. Strawson, STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOUGHT AND ACTION, p.94.
 113.

Spinoza i s arguing that i t i s necessarily desirable to give up one's reactive

attitudes, and therefore that i t i s conceivable that one should do so;

Strawson i s saying that i t i s inconceivable that one should do so, or at

least 'practically inconceivable', and that i f one could do so, i t would be

an undesirable thing to do anyway. How i s such a dispute to be settled?

Spinoza and Strawson both retreat towards the p r i o r i , but this i s misguided,

as what people want, or the sort of l i f e that i s good for them, i s something

which i t i s possible to ascertain only by self-observation and the sensitive

observation of others. I t i s an empirical issue. What i s available to

Spinozists and to Strawson i s to shed more l i g h t on what the alternative

views e n t a i l . In doing this one can try to persuade the l i s t e n e r that one

or the other view i s more attractive. What i t i s possible for human beings

to f e e l or not feel towards one another i s i n this instance a matter of

empirical psychology. What the philosopher can do i s to show what the alter-

native: views r e a l l y are, and to provide reasons for believing that one of the

styles of l i f e i s preferable to the other, whilst conceding that these reasons

w i l l not have the compelling nature of l o g i c a l reasons for believing something.

I f we can focus attention away from the arguments for the necessity of one

view or the other we can then see where the real interest of the debate l i e s .

The basic dichotomy seems to be t h i s . Spinoza believed that emotions

are a stumbling block to people i n their quest, for true happiness, which i s

what people r e a l l y want. He saw a l i f e of reason as the ultimate goal which

people ought to pursue. Strawson, on the contrary, believes that the reactive

attitudes are a natural expression of our humanity, and that even i f we could

give them up, this would not be desirable, as i t would mean that a l l personal

relationships would break down, these being an extremely important part of

our lives without which l i f e would r e a l l y be not worth l i v i n g .

 114.

Spinoza, we r e c a l l , believed that there are distinctions to be made

within the realm of the passions. The most important of these i s that be-

tween the passions of joy and those of sorrow. The l a t t e r are i n themselves

harmful, the former, useful. This i s basically because the former heighten

our level of a c t i v i t y and also lead us to do things which w i l l have consequenc-

es conducive to heightened a c t i v i t y . Other things being equal, even i f one i s

not a Spinozist, i t i s clear that the feelings of joy are better than those of

sorrow. When one i s feeling 'negative' emotion, i t hurts, and, i f one i s re-

f l e c t i v e , one would almost certainly wish to be free of the emotion. Spinoza

had special Spinozist reasons for recommending the abandonment of the feelings

or rather passions of joy - to do with his rather esoteric notion of a c t i v i t y .

He also had more down to earth arguments for the d e s i r a b i l i t y of becoming

free of the 'negative' emotions.

The position to be taken up here i s one which defends the d e s i r a b i l i t y

of continued proneness to positive reactive attitudes, whilst rejecting that

of s u s c e p t i b i l i t y to the negative ones. I t i s to be contended that this

position i s able to cope with the main point made by Strawson i n defence of

both kinds of reactive attitude. I t i s essentially a modified Spinozist

position.

Strawson's main argument i n defence of the d e s i r a b i l i t y of being subject

to reactive attitudes i s that they are somehow required for genuine human

relationships. In a world where, for example, nothing one could do could

ever cause anyone to feel resentful one would be starved, i t i s alleged, of

real human contact. As human contact i s what makes l i f e worthwhile, a world

which did not allow for this would be h o r r i b l e , and without any worth. I f

one could not have genuine human contact one would be leading an empty l i f e .
 115.

In fact a l l that i s needed i s the weaker claim, that a l i f e with human con-

tact i s l i k e l y to be more worthwhile than a l i f e without i t , or rather at

least s u f f i c i e n t l y more worthwhile to outweigh the pain that i s caused by

human contact.

The argument i s not stated i n this form by Strawson, but i t i s clear

that this i s the argument which underlies the Strawsonian position on reactive

attitudes. The mistake occurs when one passes from 'Reactive attitudes are

required f o r genuine human contact, which i s obviously desirable' to 'The com-

plete range of reactive attitudes i s required f o r genuine human contact ...'.

When he i s setting up the problem about the relation between the acceptance

of determinism and reactive attitudes, Strawson writes:

What effect would, or should, the acceptance of the

truth of a general thesis of determinism have upon
these reactive attitudes? More s p e c i f i c a l l y , would,
or should, the acceptance of the truth of the thesis
lead to the decay or the repudiation of a l l such
attitudes? Would, or should, i t mean the end of
gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness; of a l l recip-
rocated adult loves; of a l l the essentially personal
antagonisms?

The argument Strawson uses i s that we hold each other morally responsible for

our actions because we f e e l , i n certain circumstances offended by, or grateful

for, the actions of people towards us. He argues that moral accountability

comes d i r e c t l y from feelings of resentment towards anyone who displays i l l -

w i l l towards the person who, as a result of this display,feels resentful.

Strawson implies that i f the truth of determinism i s going to have an i n h i b i t -

ing effect on our reactive attitudes towards each other, i t must do so to a l l

of them or to none at a l l . This i s a mistake.

Ibid. p.80.
 116.

It i s not controversial to say that the negative reactive attitudes

such as resentment are i n themselves unpleasant. When one feels resentful

i t i s uncomfortable and nearly always i n h i b i t i n g . One way of getting over

one's feelings of resentment towards someone is_by seeing the person's be-

haviour as being the outcome of a long series of causes. The main reason

for hanging on to resentment stems from people's fears about what i t would

be l i k e i f one's nearest and dearest would never feel resentment towards one-

self. One has the impression that i f , no matter what one did or said to

someone, the person would never feel resentment, then the person would not

r e a l l y care about one. The basic attraction of maintaining the ' i n s t i t u t i o n '

of feelings of resentment and jealousy and a host of other unpleasant f e e l -

ings i s that we see them as being the inevitable accompaniments of genuine

positive feelings f o r someone. There i s a tendency to believe, for example,

that i f a husband cannot be made jealous by his wife's sleeping with another

man, then he cannot r e a l l y love her. What i s r e a l l y important to human re-

lationships i s the a b i l i t y of the parties to feel for each other's position.

What we seek i s to be loved and understood i n a way other than a purely

i n t e l l e c t u a l one. We have a very profound tendency to believe that i t i s

impossible to have these positive aspects of a human relationship without

the accompanying negative ones. Let us examine this b e l i e f b r i e f l y .

The two paradigm cases of reactive attitudes which w i l l be discussed now

are resentment and gratitude. The claim t a c i t l y made by Strawson i s that i t

i s impossible that we could be prone to feelings of gratitude without being

prone to those of resentment. I t i s admittedly impossible to prove that this

i s incorrect; by the same token i t i s impossible to prove that i t i s correct.

A l l that can be done i s to t r y to explain why we feel these things when we

do, and thereby to spell out what either answer to the problem of their
 117.

independence entails. Feelings of resentment usually occur when one's s e l f -

esteem i s offended by someone. I t i s when one has expectations of someone

which are not realized, that one feels resentful. When does one f e e l g r a t i t -

ude? I t i s usually when someone has done more for one than one expected. To

feel resentful, i t i s necessary that one see one's feelings of 'self-special-

ness' injured; however, i n the case of gratitude, i t i s not necessary that one

should have these feelings at a l l . The essential asymmetry between resentment

and gratitude i s that the former, though not the l a t t e r presupposes expecta-

tions of the other person. Although i t i s quite true that gratitude i s approp-

r i a t e where expectations are exceeded, and resentment where they are f a l l e n

short of, there i s the following difference between them, which I s h a l l repeat

for emphasis - namely that one can f e e l gratitude towards somebody even though

one had no expectations about that person, whereas without expectations one

could not f e e l resentful.

Let us suppose that we manage to keep our expectations about people down

to a ndnimum. This would involve not expecting, or taking i t for granted,

though the two are not quite the same thing, that even those we love w i l l
show especial concern about our well-being. I f we could do t h i s , then i t

would be possible for us to be prone to feelings of gratitude, whilst not

being s i m i l a r l y prone to resentment. Could we ever achieve this state?

One reason for answering this question i n the negative stems from the

b e l i e f , held by Spinoza as w e l l as Strawson, that the passions either stand

or f a l l together. Spinoza certainly believed that i t i s possible, though

very d i f f i c u l t , for a person to attain a state where he had no expectations

about the good or i l l w i l l of others towards himself, and i t does seem to

be right that we could, at least minimize our expectations i n this respect.

 118.

However, Spinoza believed that the state one has to reach i f one i s to be

free i s one where one i s independent of the i l l and good w i l l of others to-

wards oneself. In this state one would not be subject to negative feelings

which are unpleasant, certainly destructive and often i n h i b i t i n g , but one

would also not f e e l the positive human emotions. This i s seen by Spinoza as

an automatic accompaniment of seeing things 'under the aspect of eternity'.

The apparent i n e v i t a b i l i t y of giving up one's positive emotions i n the

face of seeing things 'sub specie aeternitas' turns many people away from

accepting Spinozism, f o r we are very reluctant to countenance a theory which

advocates the abandonment of human sympathy, or human love, which most people

do f e e l to be an essential part of the human situation.

The following plausible argument f o r this radical Spinozism might lead

a reader to reject the whole enterprise and revert to a Strawsonian accept-

ance of a l l reactive attitudes. I f one should (rationally) give up feeling

resentful towards others when they injure one, because being resentful im-

p l i e s that one thinks they were causally special i n one's being injured,

when nothing ever i s , i n the i n f i n i t e causal chain which precedes any event,

then i t would be equally i r r a t i o n a l for one to f e e l grateful when someone

does something for one. Spinoza could have gladly accepted this argument,

as he advocated the abandonment of a l l reactive attitudes, but most people

feel that any b e l i e f which makes i t i r r a t i o n a l to continue feeling positive

reactive attitudes must be wrong. So perhaps we should just reject the ante-

cedent of the argument, as Strawson would do. In any event, the argument

requires some examination.

Strawson would reject the antecedent of the above on the grounds that
 119.

feeling resentful i s quite appropriate i n situations where someone has demon-

strated h i s i l l w i l l towards oneself, provided the person i s not, say, a

small c h i l d or a mentally i l l individual, and that the truth or f a l s i t y of

determinism i s irrelevant to this. Spinoza believed that the truth of deter-

minism l o g i c a l l y commits one to accepting that having passions i s i r r a t i o n a l .

Strawson believes that the truth of determinism i s irrelevant to the approp-

riacy of having reactive attitudes; he does not allow for questions to arise

concerning the actual r a t i o n a l i t y of having such attitudes. They seem to be

both wrong i n t h e i r views of the connection between the truth of determinism

and our having reactive attitudes, which, we r e c a l l , are a sub-species of

passion.

I f one does believe i n the truth of determinism, then i t i s that much

easier f o r one to avoid feeling the negative reactive attitudes. However,

a b e l i e f i n determinism i n no way warrants that one w i l l be less prone to

any feelings. What i s required, i f one i s to become free of certain negative

reactive attitudes to people who have injured one i s that one understand the

causes of one's injury. I f one i s able to discover the causes of the offend-

ing person's behaviour, then i t i s very l i k e l y that one's negative reactive

attitudes towards the person would be either eliminated, or at least reduced

i n t h e i r intensity. I t i s certainly rational to seek to understand the causes

of people's behaviour when they do things to hurt one. There are two reasons

for t h i s . The f i r s t i s that doing so i s therapeutically b e n e f i c i a l , as i t

helps one to escape the i n h i b i t i n g and destructive influence of these feelings -

i t . helps one to get on with what one wants to do. Secondly, there i s a sense

i n which i t i s always rational to seek out the reasons and causes of events.

In this sense of 'rational' i t i s almost tautologous that i t i s rational to

increase one's understanding of what goes on.

 120.

As far as the positive reactive attitudes are concerned, there i s

certainly not the same 'therapeutic' pressure for seeking out the causes, of

really understanding, why someone has done something kind for us. This i s

basically because the positive reactive attitudes are, as a rule, pleasant

and uninhibiting. Of course, i n the other sense of 'rational', i t i s obvious

that i t would be irrational for us not to seek out the causes of people's

amicable behaviour towards us, no less than i t is rational to seek to under-

stand hostile behaviour.

These remarks can be connected up with Strawson's 'objective attitude'.

When one is seeking to understand the causes of someone's adverse behaviour,

one i s not, typically, reacting to the behaviour.Although believing i n the

truth of determinism does not mean that one w i l l never react to one's being

injured by someone, i t does make i t easier not to do so, as i t i s a pre-

requisite for seeking to understand the causes of the behaviour i n question.

But What i s really important here i s that one appreciate what the causes are,

rather than simply to acknowledge that there are causes.

It isn't the truth of determinism alone which makes having negative

reactive attitudes irrational, although believing i n determinism could

certainly make i t easier for one to overcome one's bondage to negative

reactive attitudes. As believing i n determinism i s not by i t s e l f sufficient

to help limit one's negative reactive attitudes, so i t isn't vis-a-vis the

positive ones.

What i s suggested here is trying to see the hostile things people do to

one i n their broadest perspective. It i s desirable to do this, because doing

so enables one to shake off the undesirable burden of certain negative reactive
 121.

attitudes. Insofar as one i s able to control how broad a perspective one

sees things i n , there i s not the same incentive to see the pleasant things

people do for one i n this perspective, although this i s certainly what a

S p i n o z i s t i c a l l y free person would undoubtedly do.

As there are very few people who are, could be, or would want to be,

completely free i n this sense, an intermediate proposal, between Strawsonian

abandonment to the complete range of reactive attitudes and Spinozist com-

g
plete abandonment of them, has been tentatively suggested.

In propounding this hypothesis about the r a t i o n a l i t y of rejecting or

accepting the d e s i r a b i l i t y of having certain reactive attitudes, one must

not forget the Strawsonian point that deciding to abandon or have reactive

attitudes i s not just a straightforward decision about what one i s going to

do, where one has two choices, for the reactive attitudes are reactions.

One can, however, through time, work to change the way one i s going to react

to situations of a l l sorts, including to the good or i l l - w i l l of one's fellow

human-beings. To undertake this i s , nevertheless, a very radical a c t i v i t y ,

which can be achieved, i f at a l l , only with d i f f i c u l t y . ,

A problem with pursuing this approach to one's l i f e i s that i t i s very

easy to confuse not having the negative reactive attitudes with suppressing

them. One of the reasons for feeling rather sceptical about people who talk

of not feeling resentful when someone close lets them down i s that we

automatically suspect that the person who i s claiming not to f e e l resentment

i s r e a l l y b i t i n g his or her l i p and i s simply suppressing negative feelings.

The above argument raises a number of deep issues which time and space
do not permit the author to discuss f u l l y i n this essay.
 122.

A l l that can be said here i s thai" the two are different, and should not be

confused, for the suppression of one's feelings i s certainly one of the main

causes of people's feeling depressed.

Spinoza advocated the t o t a l abandonment of passions as a prerequisite

for human freedom. Strawson has argued that we are inevitably subject to

some passions, namely the reactive attitudes. In this chapter we have i n -

vestigated the r i v a l claims and have produced a proposal for people f o r

whom complete 'freedom' i s out of range. The substance of the compromise i s

to acknowledge the Strawsonian point that our feelings are of great import-

ance to us, and that giving them up i s not a matter to be taken l i g h t l y . On

the other hand, the suggestion that we cannot give up at least some of them,

and moreover that i t would not be reasonable to do so, i s rejected. I f one

accepts the Spinozist point that some of our emotions are harmful because

they hurt us and others, then there i s a good prima facie case for trying to

avoid our subjection to them." I t has also been argued, though somewhat

tentatively, that i t i s possible but very d i f f i c u l t , to achieve t h i s , with-

out at the same time renouncing the positive reactive attitudes, which are

i n themselves 'useful' to us and others. There has deliberately been no dis-

cussion of the further step advocated by Spinoza, of giving up even one's

positive passions. This can be avoided, without jeopardy to the rest of the

discussion, because i t i s , as i t were, the f i n a l jewel on the crown of

Spinoza's philosophy, and involves the radically altered state of conscious-

ness which i s called 'the i n t e l l e c t u a l love of God', which i s not a subject

for c r i t i c a l discussion i n an essay such as t h i s , mainly because of the

d i f f i c u l t y of understanding what such a state would be l i k e .

 123.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Curley, Edwin, M. Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay i n Interpretation.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Feuer, Lewis, S. Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, Boston: Beacon Press.

Hampshire, Stuart. Spinoza.

Hampshire, Stuart Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom, B r i t i s h Academy Pro-

ceedings, 1960.

Joachim, Harold H. A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, Oxford: Clarendon

Press.

Kashap, S. Paul. (Editor) Studies i n Spinoza, C r i t i c a l and Interpretative

Essays, Berkeley: University of C a l i f o r n i a Press.

Parkinson, George H.R. Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge, Oxford: Clarendon

Press.
Pollock, S i r Frederick. Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, London:
Kegan Paul and Co.
Roth, Leon. Spinoza, London: Ernest Benn Limited.

Roth, Leon. Spinoza, Descartes and Maimonides, New York: Russell and
Russell.

Strawson, Peter F. Freedom and Resentment, B r i t i s h Academy Proceedings, 1962.

Wolfson, Harry, A. The Philosophy of Spinoza, Unfolding the Latent Process

of His Reasoning, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press.

WORKS OF SPINOZA

Gebhardt, Carl. .(Editor) Spinoza Opera, Heidelberg.

S t i r l i n g , Amelia, H., § White, W. Hale. (Editors and translators)

Spinoza Selections, Charles Scribner's and Sons.
Wolf, A. (Editor and translator) The Correspondence of Spinoza
London: F. Cass.