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.
Themes
Man Is Part of Nature, Not the Center of It
One of the main ideas of the Ethics is that nature includes all of reality, including human beings, within it. Man must be seen as part of nature and not as standing outside or above it. We must neither put humanity on a pedestal nor treat it with disdain. That we are a part of nature is obvious from the fact that we are subject to forces beyond our control, whether physical or emotional. We are under “bondage” to our emotions and passions, and must seek release from this through our reason, which is also part of nature. In examining human nature, including the way we act and feel, Spinoza implies that he is looking at man the way a scientist studies a specimen or a geometer looks at “lines and planes” (69).
Spinoza’s insistence that we consider man a specimen in nature was closely tied to the new scientific interests of the Age of Reason. The idea would in turn influence later scientific attitudes, like Charles Darwin’s biological theories, that tried to place man in the context of natural evolution. Some later Enlightenment thinkers would view man as something akin to a working machine.
For his part, Spinoza does not believe man is merely a material being. The term “mind” signifies the nonmaterial part of man, which other philosophers and theologians might call “soul.” As a rationalist, Spinoza sees both man and God as primarily “thinking things.” Thinking is the most notable and important activity of both God and man; it is that which shows their greatest power and, in a sense, defines their essence. This capacity for reason shows man to be a “mode” of God and thus part of the entire natural order.
The worldview Spinoza outlines has been characterized as monism, or a theory that all reality is in some sense one. This is reflected in Spinoza’s insistence that God is equivalent to the natural order and that all things are modes of (or participate in) God’s essence.
Although man is part of nature, he is not the center of nature. The laws of nature are essentially blind forces and were not established for man’s sake. Nature does not act for our benefit or for any particular purpose at all. Everything in the universe exists simply because God, being all powerful, necessarily causes everything that an all-powerful being is capable of causing. Accordingly, the universe includes things both friendly and hostile to man’s interests.
This implies that man is not a “special” or privileged part of nature. He must learn to accept everything that happens as part of the way things are. In fact, all things in nature—such as the laws of physics, or our personal abilities and attributes—were predetermined and could not have been any other way. Thus, there is no sense in regretting what might have been or trying to change things that can’t be changed. We must instead accept the way things are and seek to understand all things through reason. This will, ultimately, lead us to peace and happiness.
Knowledge Is Power
For Spinoza, the faculty of reason—the source of knowledge—is the highest and most important part of humanity. It is superior to the emotions because it is an active principle, whereas emotions are passive. Combined with his doctrine that all things strive to preserve themselves and increase their power of acting, Spinoza concludes that virtue involves gaining rational knowledge and, consequently, greater power. Thus, for Spinoza, virtue is closely tied to power and knowledge.
Knowledge and reason are at the center of Spinoza’s view of the good life. Whereas religious doctrine preaches the need for salvation from sin, Spinoza teaches the need for salvation from ignorance. We can achieve true happiness only by increasing our power through knowledge—which includes discarding false beliefs and superstitions. A person who harbors false beliefs is easily controlled by emotions and other external forces external. The man of reason is securely in control of his life and can do more things because he knows so much. Possessing greater knowledge makes one happier, and Spinoza also concludes it also is more virtuous, since virtue consists in following and perfecting one’s nature. This is rooted in Spinoza’s concept of good. For him, what is good is useful (116). What is most useful to us is whatever allows us to preserve our being and increase our power.
Thus, Spinoza connects power and virtue with being. He asserts that the emotions give us more or less power and that our degree of being is actually affected by them. At the end of the book, he says that the ignorant man “ceases to be” as soon as his emotional life comes to an end, whereas the wise and virtuous man has “peace of mind” and “never ceases to be” (181). Spinoza seems to imply that our quality of life is affected by how we act and use our minds. The ignorant man has less being than the wise man because he is not using his God-given faculties to the fullest and is living life on a base level. Similarly, when we have joyful emotions, we have more power or being than we do when we have sad emotions. Living in virtue and happiness thus means building up the self, or achieving self-fulfillment.
God Is the Law of Nature
The religious worldview in which Spinoza and his contemporaries were brought up saw God as creator. As taught in the Bible, God produced the world in a specific act of creation at the beginning of time. He therefore stands outside nature, which is separate and distinct from him. God has personal qualities of will, reason, love, and other traits; indeed, these qualities as they exist in us have their origin in God. God directs all things through his providence—his loving and wise care and guidance.
Spinoza overturns these ideas in his Ethics. God, he argues, is properly understood as the basic substance of the universe and the first cause of all things. God exists from eternity, and all other things naturally follow from his essence; there was no specific act of creation. God embodies the laws and principles that hold the universe together, but he does not have personal qualities like love or will. Although we should strive to love God intellectually—which mostly means understanding his eternal and all-powerful essence—we should not expect God to love us in return. Nor does God reward virtue or punish sin; that is the job of human institutions like the state. Spinoza thinks that his is a more advanced and rational view of God that should replace the older “superstitious” view. Indeed, Spinoza argues that traditional views are merely the result of projecting human qualities onto God.
The idea of God put forth by Spinoza and other early modern philosophers was often criticized as heartless and mechanistic for characterizing God as an abstract force of nature. Yet Spinoza insists that God pervades and permeates all things; he is not merely “up there” in heaven but is “in” all things, just as all things are “in” God. We could say that all things—scientific laws, the structure of the human body, human emotions, etc.—are modes or expressions of God’s essence. All things are thus interconnected in a way that we can understand through reason. Nothing is arbitrary or random; everything makes sense if we just apply our minds to it.
