Benedict de Spinoza

Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2014

A classic study of the Ethics, guided by a healthy "no non-sense" attitude toward Spinoza, the great philosopher, coupled with a somewhat less impressive impatience (and occasionally inattentiveness) to Spinoza's text and terminology.

An accessible short introduction to Spinoza's Ethics

Spinoza -- Ethics on Substance

Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory, 2014

"Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory" is a collection of original essays by leading scholars in the field today. These essays address a wide range of issues concerning Spinoza's ethical theory and, in doing so, deepen our understanding of this relatively neglected but richly rewarding facet of his system. Given its importance to his philosophical ambitions, it is surprising that his ethics has, until recently, received relatively little scholarly attention. Anglophone philosophy has tended to focus on Spinoza’s contribution to metaphysics and epistemology, while philosophy on the continent has tended to show greater interest in his political philosophy. This tendency is problematic not only because it overlooks a central part of Spinoza’s project, but also because it threatens to present a distorted picture of his philosophy. Moreover, Spinoza’s ethics, like other branches of his philosophy, is complex, difficult, and, at times, paradoxical. The essays in this volume advance our understanding of his ethics and also help us to appreciate his ethics as the centerpiece of his system. In addition to resolving interpretive difficulties and longstanding debates, these essays point the direction for future research. Spinoza’s enduring contribution to the development of ethical theory and to early modern philosophy—and to early modern history generally—provide us with good reason to follow the lead of these essays.

International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2013

A re-introduction to the Augustine you thought you knew, focusing on his contributions to ethics, especially the ways in which his ideas about divine grace and human agency led him to challenge the eudaimonism of his day.

An overview of this topic

The Routledge Companion to Ethics, edited by John Skorupski, 2010

Descartes (1596-1650), Spinoza (1632-77), and Leibniz (1646-1716) are commonly , and rightly, considered to belong to a single school of thought in metaphysics and epistemology. Although they arrive at different conclusions, they share a set of concerns and methodological principles. Each is interested in proving the existence of God and describing God's relation to the world; in giving an account of the human being; and in describing the nature and limits of knowledge. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz differ among themselves about what the most basic principles of reason are and how they are rightly applied. However , it is also generally true that each approaches these subjects as ones that can be understood better by means of human reason rather than by uncritical trust in the senses. For these purposes, then, the label "rationalist" can be a useful and tolerably accurate one. That label is probably not as useful in ethics. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz do hold some ethical views in common. Moreover, some of their most interesting differences do arise from their positions in metaphysical and epistemological debates. These philosophers' aims and influences in ethics also vary in many respects, however, and it would be misleading to underemphasize this point here. Descartes's moral theory shows the influence of Stoicism, and recasts ancient views about the passions and their control in light of his own account of the human being, human physiology, and psychology. The views that Descartes expresses are tempered by a reverence for ecclesiastical and civil authority together with a well-justified concern that his enemies would be very likely to find in a complete ethical theory, and, in particular, in a detailed normative ethics, effective means of damaging his reputation and security. As a result, even his most complete moral work, The Passions of the Soul, leaves one with the sense that some important consequences of the theory are left unwritten. Spinoza addresses Descartes and the Stoics in his own account of the passions and their control in the Ethics. However, Spinoza also clearly addresses a number of authors, notably Hobbes, Maimonides, and Aristotle. The themes of Spinoza's moral theory include Cartesian themes, but only as an important part of the whole view. Spinoza, moreover, states his view in a bold, uncompromising, and thorough treatise: his moral theory is much better developed than the views of either Descartes or Leibniz. Leibniz, although his remarks on ethics show careful attention to Spinoza and Descartes, addresses other traditions as well, especially the tradition of natural law theory. Leibniz does give accounts of virtue, happiness, and perfection that, while quite short and unsystematic, clearly respond to concerns of the sort that also moved Descartes and Spinoza. His most distinctive and important ethical ideas, however, the notions of charity and of the moral community of minds, which he calls the City of God, address a moral concern – how we should act toward others – that is only a passing concern for Spinoza and that Descartes entrusts to higher authorities. There is, then, a common set of themes addressed in these theories. The authors’ various concerns and perspectives suggest, however, that these similarities amount to an interesting development of the tradition of virtue ethics rather than to a single, readily defined school of rationalist ethical thought.

This document is a chapter-by-chapter summary (23 pages) of my dissertation. This dissertation examines Michel Foucault’s critique of the present through his analysis of our hidden but still active historical legacies. His works from the Eighties are the beginning of what he called a “genealogy of the desiring subject,” in which he shows that practices such as confession—in its juridical, psychological, and religious forms—have largely dictated how we think about our ethical selves. This constrains our notions of ethics to legalistic forbidden/required dichotomies, and requires that we engage in a hermeneutics of the self which consistently fails to discover its imagined secret self, or to find the happiness and freedom promised by contemporary ethics. In order to think the modern self in different terms, Foucault’s later works analyzed Classical and Hellenistic ethical sources, emphasizing their distance from today. He hoped doing so would allow us to rethink our current assumptions about ethical matters, the truth of oneself, and the relation to others. While Foucault’s genealogical descriptions critically diagnosed contemporary ills such as these, he did not prescribe a cure, preferring to let his readers experiment with new practices of their own design. My dissertation attempts such an experiment, supplying concrete solutions to our ethical ills, because I believe that philosophy should help us improve, as well as understand, our ethical selves. In order to do so, I demonstrate that a form of subjectivity based on Benedict Spinoza’s ethical and political works avoids the pitfalls of modern "desiring subjectivity" as diagnosed by Foucault. Additionally, the practices of the self found in Spinoza can be used to directly counter and displace each central element of “desiring subjectivity,” and thus supplies the kind of effective positive move which should follow after genealogical critique. In order to mobilize Spinoza in this way, I first had to use Foucault's ethical grid of intelligibility (the little-analyzed four "modes of subjectivation" from the opening pages of The Use of Pleasure). I explained Classical, Hellenistic, and early Patristic Christian ethics through these four modes of subjectivation, as well as the desiring subjectivity of the present moment, and how Spinoza, in each of these four modes, directly counters the dangers of contemporary ethical subjectivity.

Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics_ A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (1997, Routledge)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2005

According to Spinoza, all human beings are to some degree in bondage, subject to the passions, and at the mercy of the fortunes. 2 However, in so far as an individual is virtuous he is able to avoid and overcome dangers 3 , and bear calmly those misfortunes he lacks the wherewithal to escape. 4 The source of this power 5 over the passive affects is understanding. 'A man', Spinoza says, 'cannot be said to act from virtue in so far as he is determined to do something because he has inadequate ideas, but only in so far as he is determined because he understands'. 6 All adequate knowledge is not, however, equal. While both ratio (reason or the second kind of knowledge) and intuitus (intuition or the third kind of knowledge) are adequate, intuitus has greater power over the passionate affects than ratio. 7 Ratio is not impotent, it is effective and useful as far as it goes 8 , but 'the greatest striving of the mind, and its greatest virtue is understanding things by the third kind of knowledge' 9 because 'of how much more powerful it is than.. .knowledge of the second kind'. 10 The distinction between the second and third kinds of 1 I would like to thank Steven Nadler, Judith Crane, and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments and suggestions. 2 Ethics, 4p4. Unless indicated otherwise, all Ethics, Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, and Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect quotations are from Edwin Curley's translation in The Collected Works of Spinoza: Volume I (Princeton, 1985). 3 Ethics, 4p69. 4 Ibid., 4ap32. 5 Spinoza identifies virtue with power in Ibid. 4d8. 6 Ibid., 4p23. This follows directly from 3p1. See also 4p24, 4p26, 4p27, and The Preface to Book Five. 7 Ibid., 2p40s2. Spinoza refers to intuitus as scientia, and ratio as cognitionem.