Ethics (Penguin Classics)

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In E3p4, which he references in his argument for egoism, Spinoza argued, “No thing can be destroyed except through an external cause. For if we join the image of a wrong to the imagination of this maxim, it will always be ready for us…when wrong is done to us. Hence the concepts “by which ordinary people are accustomed to explain Nature…do not indicate the nature of anything, only the constitution of the imagination” (E1app, G II/83). Therefore, moral qualities are not objective, in the sense that they “indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves” (ibid).

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. In so far as it has adequate ideas it is necessarily active, and in so far as it has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive. Without intelligence there is not rational life: and things are only good, in so far as they aid man in his enjoyment of the intellectual life, which is defined by intelligence. This article discusses four of them: the moral permissibility of suicide, of lying, and of causing harm to animals or to the environment. The object of such an affect is “necessarily related to the common properties of things” (E5p7d), which are pervasive features of reality, such as the property of being extended.

Further, there is no difference between contemplating an idea and thinking that it is true, and there is no freedom of the will at all. He also endorsed a version of ethical egoism, according to which everyone ought to seek their own advantage; and, just as it did for Thomas Hobbes, this in turn led him to develop a version of contractarianism. By a logical contradiction, if something is non-contradictory, there is no reason that it should not exist.

Spinoza, in numerous passages in the Ethics and earlier works, denies that there are any such moral qualities. He thus subscribes to a desire-satisfaction theory of value: what is ultimately of value is the satisfaction of desire; things become valuable only by virtue of their being desired, or their serving to satisfy some desire.If there is any difference at all between "Substance" and "the Attributes", as Spinoza uses these terms, it is only the difference between the Attributes conceived as an organic system and the Attributes conceived (but not by Spinoza) as a mere sum of detached forces. Galilean physics tended to regard the whole world of physical phenomena as the result of differences of motion or momentum. Spinoza’s initial argument for the claim that reason demands that everyone seek his own advantage is brief: “Since reason demands nothing contrary to Nature, it demands that everyone…seek his own advantage… This, indeed, is as necessarily true as that the whole is greater than its part” (E4p18s).

His frequent use of geometrical illustrations affords no evidence at all in support of a purely logico- mathematical interpretation of his philosophy; for Spinoza regarded geometrical figures, not in a Platonic or static manner, but as things traced out by moving particles or lines, etc. It is based upon the power that he believes the human mind has to intentionally join two ideas to one another by frequently thinking about them in unison, so that when the first idea occurs, the second idea is naturally aroused in the mind as well. Because of our need for one another’s aid—whether to study philosophy or gain security—we have reason to live together with others in society.

Spinoza agrees that we need this distinction, but holds that our judgments about what is genuinely good for us are based upon an “idea of man” we have formed “as a model of human nature” (E4pref, G II/208). But this is inconceivable: such a possibility supposes that there is a goal or standard that nature has fallen short of, yet there is no such goal or standard: “The reason why…God, or Nature, acts and the reason why it exists, are one and the same.