Spinoza's Normative Ethics

I Introduction

Spinoza presents his ethics using a variety of terminologies. Propositions that are, or at least might be taken for, normative include only very few explicit guidelines for action. I will take this claim from Vp10s to be one such guideline:

Vp10s: So that we may always have this rule of reason ready when it is needed, we should think and meditate often about common human wrongs and how and in what way they may best be driven away by nobility.¹

There are, however, several different kinds of claims, which are also much more numerous, that might be thought to imply such guidelines. These include a number of descriptions of what is useful to us, for example, IVp40, or what is good, for example, IVp39:

IVp40: Things that lead to the general association of men, or that cause men to live harmoniously, are useful.²

IVp39: Things that cause the conservation of the ratio of motion and rest that the human body's parts have to one another are good.³

Another group of propositions, which includes IVp26, describes the demands of reason or what we do, strive to do, or ought to do if we are guided by reason. Sometimes, as at IVp53, Spinoza presents these claims as equivalent to claims about virtue:

IVp26: What we strive for from reason is nothing other than to understand; nor does the mind, insofar as it uses reason, judge anything to be useful to it other than what leads to understanding.⁴

IVp53: Humility is not a virtue, or, it does not arise from reason.⁵

Spinoza, though, in some places offers different advice for those who are not virtuous and are not guided by reason. Indeed in a scholium to the very next proposition he offers a qualified recommendation of the same affect that he has just argued is not a part of virtue:

IVp54s: Because men rarely live from the dictate of reason, these two affects, that is, humility and repentance, and also hope and fear, bring more profit than loss; and so, since men must sin, it is better for them to sin in this direction.⁶

Finally, Spinoza includes near the end of Part IV of the Ethics several propositions about the free man, his character, and his actions. IVp72 is one of these propositions that has attracted attention:

IVp72: A free man never acts deceitfully, but always honestly.⁷

My purpose here is to outline a general way of understanding these different kinds of claims. I shall first present, briefly, two points about Spinoza's moral psychology that affect his understanding of the human condition and how it may be improved. Then I shall argue, on the basis of these points, that Spinoza's many different propositions offer, effectively, three different kinds of guidelines for action:

1. 1. Universal Prescriptions for Resisting Passion. These include the only explicit universal prescriptions that Spinoza offers, which are techniques for mastering passion, such as those occurring at Vp10s.

2. 2. Norms for Agents Insofar as They Are Rational. These norms include all of those described in the Appendix to Part IV as making up the 'right way of living': Spinoza's accounts of the good, the useful, virtue, and the demands of reason.

3. 3. Norms for Agents Insofar as They Are Irrational. These norms include Spinoza's remarks about what is better for people insofar as they are not rational.⁸

The most important general point of this typology will be that many of Spinoza's normative claims are not the direct guidelines for action that they may appear to be. Some claims about what is good, and all of Spinoza's claims about what is better for people who are irrational, are not equivalent to unqualified prescriptions requiring the pursuit of the concerned end because the ends described in these claims do not benefit any agent in any circumstances. Many other norms for the rational, which, like IVp39 and IVp40, do describe ends that would benefit any agent in any circumstance, may not be equivalent to unqualified prescriptions for either of two reasons. It...