Spinoza’s Benevolence: The Rational Basis for Acting to the Benefit of Others

This paper is concerned with Spinoza’s treatment of a problem in early modern moral philosophy: the potential conflict between the pursuit of happiness and virtue. The problem is that people are thought to attain happiness by pursuing their self-interest, whereas virtue requires them to act with benevolence, for the benefit of others. Given the inevitability that people will have different and often competing interests, how can they be both virtuous and happy and, where the two are in conflict, which should they prefer? While there were an array of treatments of the problem, most agreed on the general strategy of arguing that people’s true interests—as revealed through reason—are not in competition; rather, they coincide, such that promoting the interests of others promotes people’s own interests and vice versa. Such a response aims to show that people’s happiness is best served by being virtuous and their virtue is best served by making themselves happy.

Spinoza agreed with the general outline of this solution, equating virtue with power, thereby defining virtuous behavior as the pursuit of one’s own interests. Since, for Spinoza, happiness arises from increasing one’s power, happiness and virtue are necessarily connected. Furthermore, he does not equate virtue and happiness at the expense of benevolence. This point may be overlooked since Spinoza’s single comment in the Ethics on benevolentia is denigrating: he defines benevolence as a desire arising from pity (3p27c3s) and “in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, pity in itself is useless and bad” (4p50d).¹ However, we should distinguish Spinoza’s benevolentia, a kind of piteous desire, from a common notion of benevolence as acting to the benefit of others, which he defends, though he does not call it benevolence. Indeed, his complaint against benevolentia is that we should act for the benefit of others on the basis of reason, rather than pity (4p50). Spinoza’s argument for the value of benefiting others runs from 4p30 to 4p37 of the Ethics, culminating in the claim that people should seek for others the same good that they seek for themselves.² Spinoza’s reasoning is that pursuing our own advantage requires us to cultivate rationality in others, which involves acting in their best interests.³

To understand why Spinoza’s treatment of this problem merits particular interest, we should say something about how it is different from other responses. Arguments connecting one’s own happiness and interests with those of others tended to fall into one of two categories: a posteriori and a priori. The a posteriori argument supposes that our own interests are best served through the peaceful cooperation of others, which is best achieved by promoting their interests.⁴ Consequently, our own happiness requires us to act with benevolence. The a posteriori argument is well positioned to explain why reason would lead us to act to the benefit of others. For instance, according to Hobbes, reason is a power for determining causes, by which one identifies the course of action that best satisfies her desires. Reason leads us to act with benevolence, then, because it identifies benevolence as the best means to satisfy our own desires. A weakness in this sort of argument is that, because it is empirical, whether benevolence is in our best interests depends upon the particulars of the situation. In situations where helping others cannot lead to beneficial consequences for us, this argument can offer no justification for why we should do so.⁵ In this respect, the argument runs counter to the ordinary moral intuition that certain acts are intrinsically right or wrong, regardless of their consequences.

In contrast, a priori arguments appeal to a metaphysical basis for supposing that our happiness requires us to act with benevolence. While there are many versions, this argument usually revolves around the divine will: since obedience to God’s law requires us to be virtuous, claiming that we could be happy without being virtuous admits the unacceptable conclusion that God rewards disobedience to his law with happiness. It...