Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a therapeutic philosopher very much in the tradition of ancient Hellenistic philosophers like the Stoics, Cynics and Epicureans, not to mention the yogi philosophers of India and China. Although he is primarily famous for his theories of God, nature and causality, as well as his radical political thought, all of these things were in fact centered in and motivated by his therapeutic, or ethical philosophy. This is why is magnum opus was called The Ethics1.
Some years ago I wrote an brief introduction to Spinoza which I reposted here together with a guide to the first two books of the Ethics on Medium. These are concerned mostly with the nature of God and of the mind and body. Since then it has bothered me that I have written so little about what Spinoza cared about most and the true point of The Ethics: his ethics.
Now that I have a substack dedicated to therapeutic philosophies I think it’s finally time to sit down and begin writing some essays on the last three books of the ethics. So with that in mind, dear reader, let’s begin with a look at Spinoza’s brilliant and iconoclastic opening of the third books of the Ethics.
No Empire Within An Empire
“Most of those who have written about the emotions and about the manner of living of human beings give the impression that they are discussing things that are outside of nature,” opens Spinoza, “rather than natural things that follow the common laws of nature. In fact, they seem to conceive of man in nature as an empire within an empire. This is because they believe that human beings disrupt rather than follow the order of nature and that they have absolute power over their actions and are wholly self-determining. They then attribute the cause of the powerlessness and inconstancy of human beings not to the common power of nature but to some sort of fault in human nature. As a result they deplore, despise and ridicule human nature, and very often condemn it; and anyone who shows superior eloquence or ingenuity in denouncing the powerlessness of the human mind is regarded as a prophet.”
Spinoza says he wishes to address those who ‘prefer to abuse or ridicule human emotions and actions rather than understand them,” as follows:
“Here is my reasoning. Nothing happens in nature which can be regarded as nature’s fault. Nature is always the same, and everywhere there is one and the same virtue in it, one and the same power of action. That is, the laws and rules of nature by which all things happen and change from one form to another are always and everywhere the same, and therefore there must also be one and the same method of reasoning for understanding the nature of anything whatsoever, namely through the universal laws and rules of nature. Therefore the emotions of hatred, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and virtue of nature as do other particular things. Accordingly they have specific causes by which they are to be understood, and they have specific properties which are as well worth studying as the properties of any other thing that we take pleasure in observing. I will therefore discuss the nature and strength of the emotions and the power of the mind over them using the same method I followed in the previous Parts in discussing God and the mind; I will consider human actions and appetites exactly as if I were studying lines, planes or bodies.”
This might sound forbidding and abstract, but all Spinoza means is that he will study emotions as natural phenomena which arise from causes and conditions, and which can be understood rationally as natural events, and part of the greater fabric of nature in its unfolding just like geometrical shapes, or, for that matter, like rainbows or forest fires. In Spinoza’s time geometry was seen as an eminent example of pure science.
What Spinoza is doing here is radical and profound, and jarringly out of step with most Western philosophical thought whether derived from Graeco-Roman or Christian sources2. From a Christian point of view humans are radically other than the other creatures on the planet, created in the image of God, possessing free will, and meant to live on earth as servants and stewards of God. From the point of view of many Hellenic thinkers, humans are distinct from animals due to the possession of reason3 and free will. Philosophers from both camps often see humans as above nature, and as scandalous creatures living in betrayal of their potential. This perspective runs so deep in our culture that we tend to be blind to its pervasion and its effects, and it is difficult to escape.
Spinoza rebels against this idealized, exceptionalized view of humanity. As we shall see, Spinoza denies free will and sees humans as pointedly not being separate from nature, but rather sees human activities as nothing other than the expression of nature itself. There is no difference, Spinoza is saying, between a flower blooming and a human experiencing rage, between a rainstorm and a human falling in love, between a human having a psychotic episode and a purring kitten. All if these events are equally natural phenomena occurring due to natural laws and due not to human choice but to the power of nature which expresses itself everywhere.
Spinoza is no nihilist, though, and he possesses an exquisite psychology and ethics. Yet at the beginning of book three of his magnum opus he is very concerned to erect his ethics on a totally different foundation than the one people were used to then and are still by and large invested in today.
To do that he begins by dismissing moralism and outrage as simply obscuring the issue, and invites us to understand human beings and our emotions the same way we would study a math problem or the behavior of ravens or of the climate. If I haven’t lost you this far, stay tuned on this substack channel as Spinoza develops his psychology and ethics and points towards what he considers to be the true path of human excellence, one founded in reason, community, joy, and love, but erected in a place far beyond the usual haunts of human self-righteousness, guilt, and blame.
As is true of all of Spinoza’s work in the Ethics, his aim will be to increase our capacity for positive action while freeing us from draining, toxic emotions (the passions) based on confused perceptions and thoughts which only foment anger, self-loathing, and despair. I can’t think of a better philosophical doctor for our times, and I’m looking forward to taking some of his medicine with you.
My new essays on Spinoza’s ethics will be available to paid subscribers going forward, and I plan to publish revised versions of my essays on the first two books of the Ethics here for free at the same time. If you’re not a paid subscriber, I hope those free essays will move you to support my work in making the rest of Spinoza’s masterwork more easily accessible and understandable for a wider audience.
The Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Fashion, in full, and more about this geometrical business later.
Though in fact Spinoza has an incredible affinity for aspects of Stoic and Christian ethics, which we shall see as we go.
As we shall see, Spinoza in fact does think that humans are unique in having reason as the virtue, or excellence, of our natures, but this assertion functions quite differently in the context of the over-all ecology of his thought.
An ambitious undertaking! I look forward to reading more. Perhaps you'll get to it, but I think a deep way to contextualize Spinoza's Ethics is to read it (partly) as a rejoinder and critique of Cartesian thought--which of course involves a kind of splitting that you note in Greek and Judeo-Christian thought.