39 pages • 1 hour read
Baruch SpinozaEthics
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1677A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4 Summary: “Of Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects”
In this section Spinoza discusses man’s “bondage” to the affects, which exercise a power over man that he must escape if he is to be free and happy.
Spinoza starts with a metaphysical discussion. He argues that natural things cannot be called “perfect” or “imperfect” because everything in nature is determined and necessary. All things follow from the existence of God, and God does not exist for the sake of any end. Therefore, things in nature do not happen for any end—certainly they do not happen to benefit us—but flow necessarily from the nature of God. Thus, perfection and imperfection are not inherent realities but only useful “modes of thinking” (115).
This leads Spinoza to stake an important claim: Good and bad, or good and evil, are not inherent in things but are only ways of thinking about reality. “Good” simply means “what we certainly know to be useful to us,” and evil means “what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good” (116). Appetite, then, is “the end for the sake of which we do something” (117). Virtue means man’s power of bringing about certain things and “acting from the laws of one’s own nature” (125). The things we call good and evil are things that enhance or diminish our power.
From this is follows that our knowledge of good and evil is an affect; we judge good and evil from how things enable or hinder us, and we feel joy or sadness accordingly. The affects’ hold on us is so powerful that an affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an opposite or stronger affect—and not by a true knowledge of good and evil.
Affects consist of our being affected or acted upon. When we are acted on, we are not the cause of what happens to us; it is beyond our control. Thus, man is subject to natural forces. Man must always be regarded as part of nature and subject to its influence. External causes far surpass man’s faculty of self-preservation. This is proven by the fact that human beings die.
Spinoza next defines the dictates of reason. First, reason demands nothing contrary to nature. Thus, it follows that reason demands that we strive to preserve our own being. Self-preservation, then, is the foundation of virtue. Virtue is to act according to our nature, and this equates to power. A lack of virtue is to allow our actions to be determined by external things, not our intrinsic nature, and this equates to a lack of power. Virtue is desirable for its own sake and not for the sake of getting a reward.
In Spinoza’s view, since our nature demands that we preserve our being, it follows that those who commit suicide are “weak-minded” and have allowed their minds to be conquered by external causes.
Man is not self-sufficient; he requires things outside himself for his perfection and preservation. The most useful of these external things are those that agree with his nature, namely other people; “to man, then, there is nothing more useful than man” (125-26). The ideal would be for all people to live united by common interest. In fact, reason teaches us that we should desire the same things for other people that we desire for ourselves.
From these principles Spinoza draws several more. Only reason and adequate knowledge are the sources of human action. Acting from virtue means acting on reason for the sake of one’s own advantage—starting with the basic desire for self-preservation, which follows from our very nature. Because adequate knowledge or understanding is the source of action, it follows that we do not certainly know anything to be good or evil except what contributes to or prevents our knowledge. The greatest thing we can know or understand is God. Therefore, Spinoza states this major principle: “Knowledge of God is the mind’s greatest good; its greatest virtue is to know God” (129).
Insofar as things agree with our nature, they are necessarily good. That which is contrary to our nature is contrary to good and is therefore evil. The more a thing agrees with our nature, the more useful and good it is. The frequent source of conflict between people is division sowed by passions that are contrary to one another. If people live according to reason instead of passion, they will agree among themselves and live in harmony—because they are united by what they have in common rather than what divides them.
These speculations lead Spinoza to state two definitions. First, religion is our desire to act insofar as we have the idea of God. Second, morality is our desire to do good by virtue of living according to the guidance of reason. From this second principle, man is bound to join others to himself in friendship, and this is “honorableness.” Spinoza declares that these principles are the foundation of the state.
The state, or human government, allows human beings to live in harmony. In joining the state, people agree to give up some rights to show that they will not harm others. The state enforces right and wrong not through reason but through threats and punishment. Thus, concepts like sin, justice, and injustice are external constructs set up by the state, not intrinsic notions that relate to man’s nature.
The remainder of Part 4 consists of various observations about affects. Spinoza argues that humility, pity, and repentance are not virtues; they are affects, and evil ones at that, because they are not the result of rational reflection. Indeed, they are sometimes the result of fear. Spinoza balances this by saying that excessive pride is also bad and makes one “highly liable to affects” (145).
The goal of a moral life is to be “free”—guided by reason alone, not influenced by affects. A man so guided will “conceive adequately both himself and all things which can fall under his understanding” (155). Indeed, the perfection of our intellect or reason constitutes “man’s highest happiness, or blessedness,” which Spinoza defines as “that satisfaction of mind which stems from the intuitive knowledge of God” (155).
In forming societies, human beings should associate themselves with people who agree with their (virtuous, rational) nature; otherwise, they will be changed and will compromise their principles. Even so, in society we must have tolerance for others’ failings and try to “bring men together in harmony and friendship” (157), with respect for justice and honor. Some tasks, like relieving poverty, are too large for an individual to accomplish and must fall to society as a whole.
Part 4 Analysis
Spinoza’s view of the human condition is that we are enslaved to our passions; he proposes that we can use reason to break this bondage. Part 4 contains some of the most controversial statements and arguments of the text.
Spinoza begins by explaining his metaphysical view of good and evil. It is here that he makes some of his most startling assertions. He says that good and evil are not inherent realities but merely “modes of thinking” (115) that we use to compare different things. In reality, “good” simply indicates whatever is useful to us, and “bad” or “evil” denotes whatever hinders us in attaining good. To some extent, Spinoza is equating goodness with utility or what will increase our power and advantage. At bottom, “good” and “evil” are concepts rooted in human psychology and emotion rather than in reality.
Virtue, in Spinoza’s view, consists not so much in morality as in knowledge; the highest life is the “life of the mind” (155-56). As a rationalist, Spinoza’s uses the intellectual categorizes of true and false rather than the moral categories of good and evil. Our chief good resides in the intellect and in understanding reality to the full. In place of the religious concept of salvation from sin, Spinoza posits salvation from ignorance through the use of reason. The more we know, the more power we have to act, and the less we are acted upon by external forces; hence, the happier we will be. Although “good” and “evil” are merely conventional fictions, they are useful and necessary to us because they convey the ideal that we should aim for. Thus, Spinoza asserts that we should keep these concepts.
Similar to his argument about good and evil, Spinoza argues against the idea that things have final causes. Classical philosophy (e.g., Aristotle) teaches that all things come into being by a series of causes, with the final cause being the purpose or end for which something is done. Spinoza rejects this idea because, for him, nature flows from the eternal nature of God and has no particular purpose or end. Because nature does not act for any purpose or end, and because man is a part of nature, there is no final cause to anything. The factor motivating all our actions is simply appetite.
Despite his emphasis on reason, Spinoza does not argue that reason can directly overcome passions. Instead, a passion can only be taken away by an opposite and stronger affect. This is because “man is necessarily always subject to passions [and] follows and obeys the common order of Nature” (110). Moreover, the body and the mind each obey their own laws and cannot force each other to act a certain way. Thus, direct knowledge of right and wrong is not enough to banish a bad emotion; instead, we must convert the knowledge of right and wrong into an emotion. Spinoza even argues that we are only conscious of the knowledge of good and evil as an emotion, not as intellectual knowledge. Good and evil are merely in our mind, not in things themselves.
Spinoza’s entire theory of virtue could be stated like this: Because man, being part of nature, is motivated by appetite rooted in his instinct for self-preservation, and since good is that which is most useful to our self-preservation, it follows that virtue (or right action) involves striving to preserve ourselves as much as we can, which means seeking to increase our power of acting and thinking. Thus, virtue is pursuing our self-interest and increasing our ability and power by various means.
This does not mean that virtue is wholly selfish, however. Because the rational man is best served by having other people like himself around him, he strives to spread his gifts to others so that they will become rational and virtuous like him. Thus, Spinoza is able to affirm something like the golden rule: “men who are governed by reason […] want nothing for themselves which they do not desire for other men” (126). Thus, also, the rational man will have qualities that we commonly associate with virtue: He will be “just, honest, and honorable” (126).
Just as unorthodox is Spinoza’s argument that humility, pity, and repentance are not virtues. He sees humility as a lack of power and pity as a sad affect that we should shun; repentance also shows weakness and a lack of power. Essentially, Spinoza sees these affects as not being virtues because they have no rational usefulness. At the same time, he allows that these affects have value in that they can lead people to a life of virtue.
Spinoza rejects a pessimism about the ethical life brought by religious teachings that claim we naturally find joy in evil rather than good, and that to be moral one must punish and despise oneself. On the contrary, Spinoza affirms that virtue brings joy and allows us to “participate more in the divine nature” (160). We should not do good out of fear or to avoid punishment because such constraint is not worthy of a free person. Rather, we should practice virtue for its own sake. We should do good things out of joy, accentuating the positive.
Several social and political consequences follow from these ethical ideas. Human beings, unfortunately, do not always live by the guidance of reason. Therefore, the state is established to ensure that pursuit of self-interest does not get out of hand. In a civil state citizens give up certain natural rights to ensure that they will not harm others. Because not all people are rational and virtuous, the state must enforce right and wrong, not through reason but through threats and punishment. This may be seen to reflect Spinoza’s doctrine that an affect can be restrained only by another affect, not by reason.
One of the most unusual passages in the Ethics occurs on Pages 151 and 152. Here Spinoza makes one of his few references to the Bible. He attempts to assimilate biblical teaching into his own system of philosophy, to show that the Bible agrees with his teachings. Spinoza interprets the Genesis account of the Fall of Man as implying that man in the state of nature had no concept of good and evil. As soon as he ate from the tree of knowledge, Adam was immediately ruled by fear of dying instead of joy in living. Thus, man’s original sin is this fall into fear and bondage. The Jewish patriarchs, culminating in Christ, began to bring about a recovery of man’s freedom. Spinoza believes that the Genesis story demonstrates his idea that a free man—a man guided by reason—has no concept of good and evil but simply does good naturally.
