Ethics (Penguin Classics)

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Spinoza was engaging with a tradition that held: God exists outside of the universe; God created the universe for a reason; and God could have created a different universe according to his will. Man, according to Spinoza, is active or free in so far as any experience is the outcome solely of his own nature; he is passive, or a bondsman, in so far as any experience is due to other causes besides his own nature. In the course of developing his moral theory, Spinoza sometimes applies it in passing to what he recognizes are traditional moral problems.

This conclusion is primarily a result of the conatus doctrine, since that doctrine forces Spinoza to deny that anyone can kill himself, strictly speaking. Spinoza considers how the affects, ungoverned, can torment people and make it impossible for mankind to live in harmony with one another. This article deals only briefly with those aspects of Spinoza’s contractarianism that bear upon morality; see the article on Spinoza’s Political Philosophy for more information about this topic. If so, to follow the dictates of reason is just to be caused to behave in certain ways, which sits awkwardly alongside the thought that such dictates are prescriptive in any ordinary sense. Each of these "substances" he regarded as infinite of its kind (that is, as exhaustive of all the events of its own kind), and as irreducible to the other, or any other, substance.Spinoza next links up his ethics with his theory of knowledge, and correlates the moral progress of man with his intellectual progress. The solution appeared to him more perplexing than the problem, and rather unscientific in spirit as involving a break in continuity. So far, Spinoza’s moral theory might not appear to be capable of answering the practical questions it is ordinarily hoped such a theory will answer.

In June 1678 —just over a year after Spinoza's death—the States of Holland banned his entire works, since they “contain very many profane, blasphemous and atheistic propositions.

Each Attribute, however, expresses itself in its finite modes not immediately (or directly) but mediately (or indirectly), at least in the sense to be explained now. Though Spinoza rejects this account of moral judgment, one of its benefits is that it allows us to distinguish between what is desired and what is genuinely desirable. A better understanding of his own place in the cosmic system and of the place of all the objects of his likes and dislikes, and his insight into the necessity which rules all things, tend to cure him of his resentments, regrets and disappointments.

In his characterization of the “free man” at the end of part of the Ethics, Spinoza argues that a perfectly rational being “always acts honestly, not deceptively” (E4p72).

By training ourselves to react in ways that, in our calmer, dispassionate moments, we recognize to be rational, we will be prepared to respond appropriately even when we lack time for reflection. To see why Spinoza thinks this, we need to understand this “good” that is desired by “everyone who seeks virtue. Again, just as in his earlier discussion, Spinoza’s denial of the objectivity of moral qualities is based upon his rejection of natural teleology. Because humans are unable to live peacefully with one another so long as they retain their natural right to act as they please, it is in each person’s best interest to give up that right to the state, on the condition that everyone else does the same.