Tussen humanum appetitum et cupiditatem bestaat geen verschil

Het slot van de bespreking van James Gibson die ik vijf dagen geleden bracht in mijn 3^e blog over Robert A. Duff, maakte mij nieuwsgierig naar de betreffende tekst. Gibson concludeerde over Spinoza's Political and Ethical Philosophy:

In conclusion, as an illustration of the novelty and illuminating character of some of Mr. Duff's interpretations, I would draw attention to his manner of disposing of a difficulty which has proved a stumbling-block to most of Spinoza's commentators. Having defined cupiditas as appetitus with the consciousness of it, Spinoza proceeds, "Whether a man is conscious of his appetitus or not, the appetitus still remains one and the same."This has, as far as I am aware, been universally held to imply that there is no essential difference between self-conscious human desires and blind propensions. Spinoza's meaning, Mr. Duff contends, is the very opposite of what is supposed. "What Spinoza is contending is not that there is no difference between appetitus in general and human desire, but that there is no difference between a humanum appetitum et cupiditatem." Spinoza's argument is that consciousness is itself part of that essential difference by which man is distinguished from other objects, and that all impulses, whether they are consciously present to the mind or not, are intrinsically different in man from what they are in anything else, and admit of being thought and willed" (p. 79).

Het gaat om de uitleg die Robert A. Duff brengt in het 7^e hoofdstuk van zijn Spinoza's Political and Ethical Philosophy [Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, The Macmillan Co., New. York, I903,  p.76- 92 archive.org].

Daar er nog steeds geworsteld wordt met / gezocht wordt naar Spinoza’s opvatting m.b.t. bewustzijn, breng ik graag deze beschouwing nader onder de aandacht. Ook in een volgend blog zal ik nog een hoofdstuk uit zijn boek brengen. Die beide teksten bijeen geven m.i. een beeld over hoe diepgaand Duff zich met Spinoza heeft bezig gehouden en hoe hij in staat was diens leer goed uit te leggen en er soms een verrassend uitzicht op bood. Het lijkt mij ook in deze tjid nog steeds nuttig van zijn boek kennis te nemen.

CHAPTER VII.
THE ‘CONATUS SESE CONSERVANDI,’ AND THE GOOD.

SPINOZA accepts it as axiomatic that an individual does, under all circumstances, seek his own welfare and happiness, or what he conceives as such. If he ever renounce an apparent good, it can only be in the hope of thereby securing a greater good, or escaping a greater evil, in the future. All action, or forbearance from action, is the effort (conatus) of a man to realise himself. This law holds good of human nature universally, being no less valid of the saint than of the sinner, and exemplified equally by the altruist and the egoist. Self-renunciation, instead of being a virtue, is an impossibility. A man can no more desire what presents itself to him as, on the whole, the lesser of two goods, or the greater of two evils, than he can think a river with the properties of a tree. Thus, though there is a world of difference between the virtuous man and the vicious, the difference is not that the latter is more self-seeking than the former, or that he makes greater claims upon the world for satisfaction. Both alike are seeking what they regard as their happiness.

This impulse toward self-preservation and self-realisation, Spinoza, following the Stoics and other writers, calls the conatus sese conservandi. It is for him the essence of each thing and being. Everything strives to maintain itself in existence, and to resist whatever tends to lessen, or destroy, its being. Thus while each thing is necessarily part of a whole system, it is also a positive self-affirming unity, with its own peculiar life and activity. "For although each [77] thing is determined by another particular thing to exist in a definite way, yet the force by which each thing continues in existence follows from the eternal necessity of God s nature " (Part 2, Prop. 45, Schol.). Thus the existence of a thing cannot be terminated from within, since " each thing endeavours, as far as in it lies, to persevere in its own being" {Ethics, Part 3, Prop. 6). Whatever threatens or destroys it, must come from without, as "the power of each thing, or the conatus by which, either alone, or along with other things, it does, or endeavours to do, anything, is nothing save the given or actual essence of the thing itself" {Ibid., Prop. 7, Dem.). It follows also that "the conatus by which each thing endeavours to continue in its own existence involves no definite but an indefinite time” {Ibid., Prop. 8); that is to say, the duration of its existence cannot be determined simply by considering the thing itself, and its own endeavour to maintain itself in being. To determine this, we must take into account at the same time the relations in which it stands to the other things which may affect its existence and its activity.

This general principle Spinoza holds to be embodied in man no less than in other objects. For he also is constituted an individual by that conatus sese conservandi which, in each thing, expresses God’s power in a definite and determinate way. But if the general principle is the same, it is the same with a difference. For the conatus of a thing is just the actual essence of that thing. And since, as we have already seen, the essence of a man is different from that of an animal, and still more from that of a stone, so also must his conatus be. A material object in motion or at rest expresses its conatus in suo esse perseverandi by resisting, and reacting upon, whatever would tend to change its state of motion or rest. A plant, also, has its own way of asserting itself against an unsuitable environment, and of making the world subserve the maintenance of its life and growth. So also with an animal, in which the power of maintaining its existence, and exercising capacities is immensely greater. And, in the case of man, the conatus, or will-to-live, is of still greater compass. The life which is open to him is [78] indefinitely richer in content, and more varied in exercise. His endeavour to realise himself involves powers, intellectual, moral, social, and religious, which have been bestowed by Nature upon nothing else. And it deserves to be specially noted that as man consists of a mind as well as of a body, he differs from other things not only in the nature of the conatus in suo esse perseverandi, but also in the fact that he alone is conscious of this self-realising impulse. "The Mind, both in so far as it has clear and distinct ideas, and in so far as it has confused ones, endeavours to persist in its own existence with a certain indefinite duration, and is conscious of this its endeavour" (Part 3, Prop. 9)." All men have an appetitus of seeking their own advantage, and are conscious thereof (Part I, App.).

Instead, however, of following up with keenness this idea, that man has not only a conatus, but is also conscious of it, Spinoza seems to take pains to discount it altogether, and to represent consciousness as an insignificant, or irrelevant, factor in the case. For while Will (voluntas) is defined as the Conatus of the individual’s nature when it is referred to the Mind alone, and Impulse {Appetitus) as this Conatus when it is referred at once to the Mind and the Body; Desire (Cupiditas], we are told, is generally referred to men in so far as they are conscious of their Appetitus, and so should be defined as Appetitus with the consciousness of it (Ethics, Part 3, Prop. 9, Schol.). But such consciousness does not make any real difference, for "whether a man is conscious of his appetitus or not, the appetitus still remains one and the same" (Ibid., Part 3, App., i).

Now the usual interpretation of this language is, that the Conatus which works in man is a blind unconscious force, a will-to-live which makes use of man as its instrument, and which he is powerless to resist or to change. Consciousness is but an accident of its operation, an epi-phenomenon of its activity in a human body. If this view of Spinoza’s teaching be sound, the essence of this univeral conatus can be learned as well from any other object as from man. But it may be contended, it seems to me, that not only is Spinoza’s language susceptible of precisely the opposite interpretation, [79] but also that such an interpretation alone is compatible with the leading principles of his philosophy. To take even the passage last mentioned (Part 3, App., i). What Spinoza is contending is not that there is no difference between appetitus in general and human desire, but that there is no difference between a ‘HUMANUM appetitum et Cupiditatem.’ It would be, he says, a simple tautology to explain cupiditas by appetitus; for appetitus in man is just cupiditas, it either is or may be conscious. "Instead of explaining Cupiditas by appetitus, I preferred to define it so as to include under it all the conatus of human nature, which we signify by the name of appetitus, cupiditas, vel impetus.”

And this definition is (§ I ) that "cupiditas is the very essence of a man in so far as he is conceived as determined to do something, from any given affection of him." Without this last clause, Spinoza says, it would not follow that the Mind can be conscious of its Cupiditas or Appetitus; and so in order to include the cause of this consciousness it was necessary to add it. "Here therefore I understand by Cupiditas all the conatus, impetus, appetitus, and volitiones, which differ according to the changing constitution of the same man, and not seldom are so opposed to one another, that the man is drawn in different directions, and does not know whither to turn."

The points of this argument seem to me to be (i) that all human endeavour, or the conatus in suo esse perseverandi, in so far as it applies to man, is Cupiditas, whether it be called a conatus, an appetitus, a volitio, or an impetus. All the impulses by which man is moved are ultimately of one kind. And (2) Of every cupiditas a man is, or at least may be, conscious, since it springs not simply from the essence of his nature, but from the essence of his nature as determined from some affection of it, and such an affection can exist only as he is aware of it. "There is no affection of the Body, of which we cannot form a clear and distinct conception " (Part 5, Prop. 4).

This interpretation, moreover, is alone consistent with ideas that have already been explained. The conatus of each thing differs as much from that of another as the [80] essence of each does. It is, in fact, the essence of the thing finding expression for itself. Thus, if the appetitus of a man were the same as that of an animal or a stream, consciousness would make no difference to the content or character of this conatus, and would be merely an epi-phenomenon. Spinoza’s argument, on the other hand, is that consciousness is itself part of that essential difference by which man is distinguished from other objects, and that all impulses, whether they are consciously present to the mind or not, are intrinsically different in man from what they are in anything else, and admit of being thought and willed. For man consists of Mind as well as Body (Part 2, Prop. 1 3, Coroll.), and it is the essence of the Mind to think, or to have ideas. Further, as the order and connexion of ideas is the same as the order and connexion of things, there can be nothing taking place in the body of which there is not an idea in the mind. In deed, "the Mind does not know itself except in so far as it apprehends the ideas of the affections of the body" (Part 2, Prop. 23). And to have ideas, is to exercise an essential activity, seeing that ideas are not made for but by the Mind. "By an idea I understand a conception of the Mind, which the Mind forms because it is a thinking thing. I say a conception rather than a perception, because the name perception seems to indicate that the Mind is affected in a passive way by the object, while a conception seems to express the activity of the Mind " (Part 2, Def. 3). This power of forming ideas, it is to be noted further, is primary and fundamental; for while (Axiom 3) there may be an idea in the Mind without emotions, such as love, desire, etc., these, on the other hand, could not exist unless there were in the same Individual the idea of the object loved, desired, etc.

It seems then a necessary deduction from this, that there can be no desire in a man of which he has not some consciousness. His idea of it may not be adequate or sufficient, but inadequate or confused. He may not have such a reflexive knowledge of it as unites him with the object of his knowledge. But all human desires, whether we call them impulses, appetites, instincts, or volitions, involve [80] and express thought in some form. To Spinoza all spiritual activities are modes of thought. Self- consciousness, or ‘thinking our thoughts’ is not essentially different from the apprehension of a flower, but only a fuller knowledge of what this apprehension involves.

Thus the conatus sese conservandi which works in all things, works in man through thought; it takes the form of Cupiditas, or of appetitus with the consciousness of it. It is a striving through a body which is necessarily the object of a Mind, and through a Mind which cannot but know the affections of the body.

This is corroborated by the idea already noticed, that the virtue or excellence of a thing depends on the nature of the thing. And as the highest virtue of a man is to know, the conatus which constitutes him must be at least an effort to understand, or a mental activity (see Ethics, Part 4, Prop. 26).

Hence to Spinoza the thinking of an impulse, or the consciousness of the conatus sese conservandi is a necessary condition of its operation in man. Man not only desires and wills, but is conscious of these desires and volitions. And he can be conscious of a desire only as he finds himself in it. The object of desire is always a form of self-satisfaction, or something which appeals to the individual as promoting his welfare. The end of all desire is within and not without. "By the end for the sake of which we do anything I under stand appetitus" (Part 4, Def. 7). "No one seeks to preserve his being for the sake of any other thing" (Part 4, Prop. 25).

This may cast light on two other points in Spinoza’s teaching, namely, that he draws no distinction between Desire and Will, and that he prefers to speak of the utile rather than of the bonum as the end of human desire. The first is explained by his opposition to all separation of faculties in human nature, as well as by his antagonism to the popular doctrine that the will is free and undetermined, while desire is necessitated. What he seeks to bring out is, that there is no general power of Will, but only particular volitions, and (2) that these particular volitions are simply desires in which the Mind realises itself. Human desires, whether we call [82] them appetites, longings, or volitions, are essentially of the same nature. They are conatus of self-realisation.

In the second place, why does Spinoza prefer to describe the end of human action as Utility rather than the Good? The consideration of this throws, I think, much light on his point of view, and we must work it out with some fulness. It furnishes an effectual answer to the contention, that the Conatus sese conservandi is a blind unconscious force working itself out in man as in any other object.

We have seen that the conatus sese conservandi is the essence of each thing and being. It is thus the deepest principle to which any action or desire in man can be referred.

"It is the first and sole foundation of virtue; for no other principle can be conceived as prior to this, and apart from it no virtue is conceivable” (Part 4, Prop. 22, Coroll.). "As Reason requires nothing contrary to Nature, it requires that each love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really for his advantage, and desire all that which really raises man to greater perfection, and, to speak generally, it requires that each endeavour to maintain his own being as far as possible. This is as necessarily true, as that the whole is greater than its part. Again, as virtue is nothing else than action from the laws of one s own nature, and as no one endeavours to preserve his being except according to the laws of his own nature, it follows in the first place that the foundation of virtue is the very conatus of preserving one s own being, and that happiness consists in this, that the man is able to preserve his own being" (Part 4, Prop. 18, Schol.).

Thus a man’s utility or advantage consists in whatever enables him to maintain his existence, to develop his powers, and attain the highest perfection of which his nature is capable.

From this point of view, Spinoza s ethical teaching may justly be called Utilitarian. He recognises no higher, or other, end from which an individual may act, than the apprehension of what is of advantage (utile) for himself, for, in whatever he does, or leaves undone, he is seeking his own welfare as it presents itself to him. Yet Spinoza s Utilitarianism has little save the name in common with theories like those of J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer. For the characteristic feature of the so-called Utilitarian school is not its recognition of human utility or advantage, either individual [83] or social, as the end of action, a recognition which is to be found in every great moralist, but its estimation of utility in terms of the pleasure it affords. Spinoza, on the contrary, like Grotius, employs Utility in the general sense of human welfare, and he does not admit that this is synonymous with its pleasure-giving value. He allows, indeed, an important place to Laetitia. But then Laetitia is not pleasure in the ordinary meaning of the term. It is at once less, and more, restricted. And even if the terms were synonymous, Laetitia is not for Spinoza man’s happiness or the end of human life. It is the passing from a lesser perfection to a greater, but it is not perfection or felicity itself. For "if Laetitia consist in passing to a greater perfection, Beatitudo must consist in the Mind being endowed with perfection itself" (Part 5, Prop. 33, Schol.).

Thus while Spinoza is a Utilitarian, his Utilitarianism gets its distinctive character from the interpretation which he gives to the Utile. And if the principle that each man should seek his own advantage, or welfare, appeals to him as indubitable, it is because, instead of leading to impiety and immorality, it is the foundation of both religion and morals. The impulse of self-assertion is itself the divine energy in man, and what ever fosters and develops it is lawful and pious. Religion, which has already presented itself to us as absolute dependence upon God, is now seen to be also complete self-affirmation, the sense of power through the knowledge and love of God. It is superstition alone which prompts men "to think that good which produces sadness, and that bad which brings gladness. . . . Gladness which is controlled by a true regard for our advantage (utilitas) can never be bad" (Part 4, App., 31). " No Deity, nor any but an envious being, will find pleasure in my impotence and harm, or account as virtuous my tears, sighs, fear, and other things of that sort, which are the signs of a weak spirit ; on the contrary, the greater the gladness with which we are affected, the greater the perfection to which we pass, that is, the more do we necessarily participate in the divine nature " (Part 4, Prop. 45, SchoL). "How can we," he asks in the Short Treatise (Part 2, Ch. 18), "fear God who is himself the supreme good, and from whom all things that have any reality are what they are, and in whom we also live?" [84]     

There is no writer, perhaps, who has given a more im pressive rendering to the truth that true religion is the maximising of human life, the liberation of man’s energies, the enlargement of his vision, the highest acquiescentia animi.

On the ethical side the same principle finds application. "The more each man endeavours and is able to seek his own advantage, that is, to preserve his own being, the more is he endowed with virtue; and on the other hand, in so far as a man neglects to maintain his own advantage, that is, his own being, he is thus far impotent" (Part 4, Prop. 20). "To attain the reality of that which we assert to be our welfare and our peace, no other principle is necessary, save that we should seek our own advantage a principle very natural to all things" {Short Treatise, Part 2, Ch. 26, 5). Spinoza accepts this principle in the fullest sense. Nothing that is for a man s advantage can be at variance with morality. The conatus of the moral life is simply the effort to make the most of one’s nature, under the conditions and relations which that nature necessarily involves. The good man is the strong man, the man who understands what is possible for him, and knows wherein his activity can find expression. Thus virtus is always a potentia (Part 4, Def. 8), a capacity, an energy. And all power of acting is virtus. Hatred and ignorance are not virtues, because they are not powers, but the absence of power. Even repentance, humility, and shame, though they have a certain value, are not themselves virtues. They express a man’s consciousness of his weakness and incapacity, rather than the sense of his power of acting. At most, they are signs, like the pain of a wound, that the vital forces are not extinguished.

Self-mortification, then, can have no value, except as it is not really self-mortification, but the means to a greater self-satisfaction. It is never virtuous to renounce our own good or to stint ourselves of that which will further it; though it may be virtuous to postpone a present enjoyment for a greater or better in the future, or to refuse to gratify a personal inclination at the cost of social ties which are the condition of our true welfare. But some such justification there must be for every act of self-denial, since mere self-denial [85] assuming it to be possible instead of being the essence of virtue, would cut the root of all virtue, or self-activity. Of the merely negative side of human life, of pain, weakness, sorrow, ignorance, the evil passions, and death, Spinoza has little to say. And this omission is not accidental. It is a deliberate attempt to turn the stream of moral theory into another channel. Many had written eloquently of the vices and miseries of human existence. But few had sought to discover the nature and measure of human power and virtus, or to lay bare the causes of the weakness and wretchedness they deplored. They had exhausted their genius in satire and depreciation, and by leading men to think meanly of themselves, they had made them mean. Spinoza sets himself to counteract this tendency of thought, and to bring into relief the strength of human nature its power to control passion, to conquer ignorance, to provide against its own inconstancy, and even to bid defiance to death itself. I dwell little, he says, upon human impotence and much upon human power; I wish men "bene agere et laetari." Not that he is blind to the place of the negative element in life, as we shall see later. But the negative is not, he maintains, the truth of human life. It is not the distinctive activity in which man’s nature reveals itself. It exists only to be overcome, and whatever value it has comes from its function as contributory to a positive self-affirmation.

"He who desires to assist others to enjoy the highest good . . . will beware of harping upon the vices of men, and he will be careful to speak only sparingly of human impotence. But he will enlarge upon human virtus or potentia, and the way in which it can be perfected. For thus men will seek to live not from fear or aversion, but, under the influence of the emotion of gladness alone, will endeavour to live as far as possible according to the rule of Reason" (Part 4, App., 25).

Thus the end of human endeavour can only be the unfolding of the individual s immanent energies. Man is what he can do; while his impotence or passivity is not to be understood through his own nature, but only through the nature of other things and beings. His power is what constitutes his essence, and in the exercise of this power his virtus consists. The explication of this power [86] occupies Spinoza in the 4th and 5th Books of the Ethics, and the main point he proves is that it is the power of thinking, of knowing oneself, and things, and God. This is the highest activity of which man is capable. It is at once its own end, and the end of all other desires. For it endows man with the power of transforming all, or almost all, that can happen to him into material for his own self-realisation ; it enables him to make the world the instrument of his will, and to transmute the passions which vex him into spiritual energies which enlarge the sphere of his existence.

From this two conclusions can be drawn, (i) Virtue is a self-complete end, desirable in and for itself. (2) Whatever contributes to this end, that is, whatever tends to develop and maintain man s energies, it it lawful for him, nay it is his duty, to seek.

The first of these ideas Spinoza works out in several connections. He points out, for example, that virtue is not, as the crowd suppose, a bondage by which the individual is constrained to something alien to his own nature. "Men in general think themselves free in so far as they are at liberty to obey their lusts, and regard themselves as yielding up their rights, in so far as they are bound to live after the rule of the divine law" (Part 5, Prop. 41, Schol). But this is the very opposite of the truth. Virtue is not bondage but liberty; it is activity, energy, self-expression, not subjection to outward causes. Therefore the only reward open to the virtuous man is virtue itself, for this is to his soul what wholesome food is to his body. "Beatitudo is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself" (Ibid., Prop. 42). And on the other hand the only punishment of fools is their folly. The bad are afflicted only through their badness. No one has conceived or expressed more clearly than Spinoza the principle that the rewards of right living are not externally attached to it, but necessary consequences of it, and that right living alone makes a man his own master, and enables him to enjoy the highest acquiescentia animi.

It is another aspect of the same truth which he brings out when he says that "he who is led by fear and does the good in order to escape the evil, is not led by Reason . . . and [87] that those who, instead of guiding men by Reason, wish so to constrain them that they will avoid evil rather than love virtue, are simply trying to make others as wretched as themselves" (Part 4, Prop. 63). A desire which springs from Reason makes us, on the contrary, avoid the evil, because we love the good.

This means that in a sense all true virtue is disinterested, but only in a sense. Spinoza does not believe that virtuous action involves the sacrifice of anything which would heighten or maintain the individual s activity ; that is, it does not involve the sacrifice of anything that would contribute to his welfare. On the contrary, virtue is his interest. Only for this reason is it better, or more worth choosing, than vice. The good man differs from the bad in knowing himself, and, therefore what is good for him. The bad man does not know his own interest, because he is ignorant of himself, and of the conditions of his life. Thus a man s devotion to virtue can be disinterested, only in the sense that this end has for him no interest outside of itself, for the sake of which he chooses it ; and it can be interested only if it is willed as a means to some end external to it. A disinterested devotion to the good of others as opposed to a devotion to our own, Spinoza always regards as an illusory idea, and an illusion no less fatal to the welfare of the others than to that of the self. The very antithesis on which it rests, as we shall see immediately, runs counter to the whole tenor of his thought. For no one, as he puts it, is so useful to other men as he who knows his own advantage and seeks it.

The second conclusion mentioned above adds force to this argument. Whatever tends to expand or maintain a man s capacities as a whole, it is lawful and a duty for him to seek and to enjoy. Nothing is wrong for him to do, except that which is bad for him. He does not sin against God, or man, unless he sins against himself. And only that is bad which tends to restrain the exercise of his powers, or to prevent their development. In this respect Spinoza seems to breathe the spirit and temper of the Greek race rather than that of his own. For asceticism he has no admiration. To afflict one s body in atonement for the sin of one s soul is to [88] make oneself twice wretched, for " the more things the body is fit for the higher is the soul s endowment."[1]  Thus all that will contribute in any way to the good health and vitality of the human soul, or body, it is the part of the wise man to strive after.

"It is the duty of a wise man to make use of things, and to get as much enjoyment from them as he can (not indeed to enjoy them ad nauseam, for this would not be the enjoyment of them). It is, I repeat, the duty of the wise man to refresh and recreate himself with moderate and pleasant food and drink, with the sweet smells and attractions of growing plants, with ornamentation, music, games, plays, and other things of this kind, of which any one can make use without doing harm to another. For the human body is composed of a great many parts, differing in their nature from one another, which stand in constant need of fresh and varied nourishment if the Body as a whole is to be equally fitted for all the activities which can follow from its nature, and if, consequently, the Mind also is to be equally fitted for comprehending many things at once" (Part 4, Prop. 45, Schol.).

Nothing then can be unlawful for man to possess and enjoy so long as it is a positive furtherance of his essential activities.

These ideas enable us to solve a difficulty which inevitably presents itself to a student of Spinoza. The difficulty is, that the ethical categories ‘good and bad’ are said in some passages to be only modes of thinking, and to express nothing real in the nature of things; while, in other places, they are treated as of the highest significance. For example, in the Preface to Part 4 of the Ethics we are told, that "Good and Bad indicate nothing positive in things, considered that is to say in themselves, nor are they anything but modes of thought, or notions which we form from a comparison of things with one another." And yet the greater part of the Ethics is occupied with a careful analysis of the distinction between the Good and the Bad, while the true [89] good is constantly contrasted with other so-called goods, and the summum bonum is presented as the only object which affords a wholly adequate satisfaction of human desire. Is there not an evident contradiction here? How can one hold that Good and Bad are nothing real in the nature of things, and yet maintain moral distinctions, and even write a treatise on their significance?

The answer to this difficulty will emerge, if we note why Spinoza generally speaks of the end of human endeavour as the utile rather than as the bonum. The fact that he does so, cannot be doubted. For while he makes frequent use of the terms ‘good,’ ‘true good,’ ‘supreme good,’ his use of the terms ‘utile,’ ‘utilius,’ ‘summum utile’ is much more frequent; and when he does employ the former set of phrases he generally hastens to add ‘seu utile.’ Moreover, the formal definitions of the Good which he gives, are in terms of the utile. As instances of many similar passages, we may quote the following:

"To act from virtue is in us nothing else than, according to the guidance of Reason, to act, to live, to preserve one s being (these three phrases have the same meaning) from the motive of seeking our own advantage (utile)" (Part 4, Prop. 24). "There is no particular object in the nature of things which is of more advantage (utilius) to a man than the man who lives after the guidance of Reason. For that is of most service (utilissimum) to a man which most agrees with his own nature, that is a man" (Part 4, Prop. 35, Cor. i.). "Those things which conduce to a common society of men, or which bring it about that they live in harmony, are advantageous (utilia), and those, on the other hand, are bad which produce discord in the State " (Part 4, Prop. 40). Again we are told, in alternative phrase, that "he summum utile sive bonum of the Mind is the knowledge of God" (Part 4, Prop. 28, Dem.), that "whatever we judge to be bonum sive utile for preserving our being and for enjoying the life of Reason, that it is lawful for us to take for our use, and to make use of in any way we please" (Part 4, App., 8) ; and that a free man directly desires "the good, that is to act, to live, and to maintain his being from the motive of seeking his own advantage (utile} (Part 4, Prop. 67, Dem.) Similarly, Spinoza says in the 1st Definition of Part 4, "By good I shall understand that which we know assuredly to be of service (utile) to us"; and in Prop. 26 of Part 4 he declares that "the Mind in so far as it makes use of Reason judges nothing to be utile for it save that which conduces to understanding." [90]

Thus, not only does Spinoza treat the good as synony mous with the utilel but he has a preference for the latter as the more suggestive term. On what grounds? Mainly because it better brings into relief the relativity of the good. Nothing is good or bad in itself: its goodness, or badness, depends on the particular things to which it is referred.   It is to be noted," we are told, near the beginning of the Tract, de IntelL Emend., " that good and bad are only used to express a relation; and so, one and the same thing can be, in different relations, called good and bad." “One and the same thing can be at the same time good and bad and also indifferent. For example, Music is good for a melancholy man, bad for a sorrowful one, while for a deaf man it is neither good nor bad " (Ethics, Part 4, Pref). Good in fact always means good for, and we cannot pronounce upon the goodness or badness of anything unless we specify at the same time for what it is good or bad.

Thus things are not good or bad considered in themselves. By considered in themselves Spinoza does not mean things taken apart from their relations, but things conceived in all their relations, or in their place in the Universe, or as they are in God. When so conceived they are necessary, but neither good nor bad. The latter predicates are applicable to them only if we think of them in some, particular relation. Fire may be good, or useful, for hardening clay, and bad for hardening wax, but considered in itself in the above sense, that is in its own essential nature, it is neither good nor bad.

In the same way God cannot with strict propriety be called good in himself. For, properly speaking, only that can be good which may also be bad, and in this case the latter is impossible. Neither can aught be called good save in comparison with something else which is not so good. And what in this instance can we put on the same level with a view to a comparison, or what else is there with which the principle of all reality can be contrasted? Neither can it be said that God always acts with a view to the good. He acts from the immanent necessity of his nature, but there is no absolute good other than himself to which his energies might be directed. [91]

If then we do call God good, it must be in relation to the particular things and beings which ‘live and move’ only in him. He is their good, or good to them. "God is called good, because he conducit to all things." "No one can hate God," since no one can will his own impotence, or refuse what presents itself to him as his good. Thus while we may speak of the knowledge and love of God as man’s supreme good, we have to remember that this is a characterisation of God from a particular point of view, or in a particular relation.

The Good, then, is not for Spinoza, as it is for Plato, an ultimate category of reality. For him Good means good for man, or what is advantageous in this particular relation. It is not an ideal end outside of, or determinable apart from, human nature. And if we speak of it as the law ordained by God for men, this can only mean that it is the law imposed by man’s nature upon itself, or the conditions of existence which are involved in the human constitution. Thus it depends upon, or is determined by, or is relative to, the distinctive activities of man, for the content of the good depends necessarily on the nature of that for which it is good.

Spinoza, however, works out the idea of the relativity of the Good to a further result. We have already had occasion to note his distrust of universal conceptions, his insistence that it is particulars and not universals which are the objects of God s knowledge, and his exaltation of the conatus sese conservandi as the principle which imparts to each object its own peculiar nature. It is a natural corollary from this train of thought, that human good must be relative, not merely to human nature in general, but to the nature of each man. Only that is good, or binding, which is good for me, or which is for my advantage. No individual can will, or seek, anything, save that which he judges will satisfy his desires, or expand his powers.

Not only, therefore, is all human good the good of individuals, but it exists only as it is willed or desired by them as their good. This idea finds expression, from different sides, in two sets of passages which appear at first sight at variance with one another. [92]

In Part 3 of the Ethics (Prop. 9, Schol.) we are told that we do not seek, will, desire or long for anything because we judge it good, but that on the contrary we judge anything to be good because we seek, will, desire and long for it. And a little later (Prop. 39, Schol.), the same idea is thus stated, "By good I here understand every kind of Laetitia, and whatever conduces thereto, and especially that which satisfies desire, of whatever kind that be. And by bad every kind of Tristitia, and especially that which frustrates desire. For we have already shown that we desire nothing because we judge it to be good, but on the contrary we call that good which we desire ; and so that which we dislike we call bad." But in Part 4 of the Ethics (Prop. 19) the opposite view is propounded, "Each man in accordance with the laws of his own nature necessarily desires or is averse to that which he judges to be good or bad."

The explanation of this discrepancy seems to be that in the former case what Spinoza denies is that anything is good or bad in itself, and to be desired for itself; that only is good which is good for us, or good as satisfying some desire, or self-realising effort, in us. While what he affirms in both cases is that to judge anything to be good for us, and to desire it, are two phrases which mean the same thing.

From the consequences of this doctrine he does not shrink. He recognises that it makes each man s good relative to him, and constitutes each the judge of his own advantage.

"Every man judges, or estimates, according to his own ruling passion (ex suo affectu) what is good, bad, better, worse, best, or worst. Thus the avaricious man judges plenty of money the best thing, and the want of it the worst. The ambitious man desires nothing so much as glory, and shame is what he most fears. Again, the envious man knows no greater pleasure than another man s unhappiness, while nothing distresses him so much as another s happiness. Thus each man according to his own ruling passion judges a thing to be good or bad, useful or hurtful " (Part 3, Prop. 39, Schol.). Further, "as each man judges ex suo affectu what is good, bad, better, and worse, it follows that men can differ from one another as much in their judgments as they do in their emotions" (Ibid., Prop. 5 1, Schol.).

---

[1] “He who has a Body like an infant or a child fitted for very few tasks, and very much dependent upon outward causes, has a Mind which, considered in itself alone, knows almost nothing of itself or God or things ; and, on the other hand, he who has a Body fit for very many activities has a Mind which, considered in itself alone, knows much of itself, and God, and things " (Part 5, Prop. 39, Schol.). Thus to change the body of infancy into a body of manifold activities is (from one side at least) the whole task of human life.