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[Not for quotation or reproduction without permission. For the final version

see “Rationalist Moral Philosophy,” in A Companion to Rationalism, edited

by Alan Nelson, Blackwell Publishing, 2005.]

Rationalist Moral Philosophy

Andrew Youpa

Southern Illinois University

1. Introduction

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz are best known today for their

contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, but they were also deeply

interested in moral philosophy and such traditional ethical questions as, how

should one live? And, what is the supreme good? In fact, all three treat

their proposed solutions to these questions as the fruit of their labor in the

more abstract, less practical investigations they undertake. So, if they are

metaphysicians first, it is because they maintain that the correct way to

philosophize is to begin with what is most fundamental in reality and build

up from there, crowning their systems with a recipe, or blueprint, for the

good life. Not surprisingly, the proper exercise of one’s faculty of

knowledge is a key ingredient in the recipe each puts forward. A

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qualification in Descartes’ ethics notwithstanding (to be discussed shortly),

the three giants of modern rationalism place as much confidence in reason’s

unaided power to reveal and lead to the good life as they do in its unaided

power to reveal the fundamental order and content of reality.

The overarching structure of the ethical theories put forward by

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz is eudaimonistic. As moral philosophers,

they aim chiefly to discover the most surefire path to true happiness. The

word “eudaimonism” comes from the Greek word for happiness, flourishing,

or wellbeing. Generally speaking, classical Greek and Hellenistic

philosophers take reflection on how to lead a flourishing human life as the

starting point of ethical inquiry. That which above all makes a life go well is

called the highest good, or summum bonum, as it later came to be known in

Latin. Thus central to a eudaimonistic theory is the identification and

characterization of a good (or goods) that is (are) necessary, sufficient, or

necessary and sufficient for human flourishing.

In line with a prominent school of ethical thought within the

eudaimonistic tradition, the rationalists subscribe to moral perfectionism.

This is the view that the highest good consists in the cultivation and

perfection of a characteristic or a set of characteristics that is fundamental to

what we are. Such a characteristic in a cultivated state is called a perfection

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or virtue. Clearly there can be as many distinct forms of moral

perfectionism as there are legitimate candidates for being a fundamental

characteristic and as there are combinations of them, but two principal

characteristics are the faculty of choice (i.e., the will) and the faculty of

knowledge (i.e., the intellect). As might be expected, the rationalists

maintain that an essential element of happiness involves the cultivation of

one’s faculty of knowledge. Yet it will become apparent in what follows

that they differ in interesting ways on the role they assign to the will,

emotions, and desires in a flourishing human life as well as regarding the

limits of knowledge as a guide for action.

Before looking closely at the perfectionist theories of Descartes,

Spinoza, and Leibniz, it will prove helpful to note another sense of the word

“perfectionist” that also picks out an important feature of their theories.

That is, in addition to subscribing to moral perfectionism, they also

subscribe to what may be called metaphysical perfectionism. This is perhaps

easiest to see by simply looking at some passages where it is expressed in

their works. In what is known as the “Geometrical Exposition” of the

Second Replies appended to the Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes’

sixth axiom is, “There are various degrees of reality or being: a substance

has more reality than an accident or a mode; an infinite substance has more

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reality than a finite substance” (CSM 2 117). Although the full meaning of

this Cartesian axiom cannot be ascertained independent of his views

concerning the nature of substances and modes and of the relation between

them, for now it is enough to see that he takes it as self-evident that there are

degrees of reality, that an infinite substance has more reality than a finite

substance, and that a finite substance has more reality than its particular

modifications. Similarly, in definition six of Part Two of the Ethics,

Spinoza says, “By reality and perfection I mean the same thing” (2def.6),

and the scholium of proposition 11 of Part Three begins, “We see then that

the mind can undergo considerable changes, and can pass now to a greater

perfection, now to one of lesser perfection” (3p11s). Since “reality” has the

same meaning as “perfection,” an individual’s mind can undergo increases

in reality as well as decreases in reality, indicating that Spinoza shares

Descartes’ view that reality comes in degrees.

This view is also one that Leibniz clearly accepts. For instance, in the

Monadology, he says, “From this it follows that God is absolutely perfect—

perfection being nothing but the magnitude of positive reality considered as

such, setting aside the limits or bounds in the things which have it. And

here, where there are no limits, that is, in God, perfection is absolutely

infinite” (Philosophical Essays, p. 218). For Leibniz, to say that God’s

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perfection is infinite is equivalent to saying that God’s magnitude of positive

reality is infinite. And this is so, according to Leibniz, because God has no

limits. God’s creatures, however, are necessarily limited, which means that

they have a finite amount of perfection, or positive reality. In his Theodicy,

Leibniz explains, “For God could not give the creature all without making of

it a God; therefore there must needs be different degrees in the perfection of

things, and limitations also of every kind” (Theodicy, 31, p. 142). Like

Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz is suggesting that things have varying

degrees of perfection or reality and holds that the supreme being has the

most perfection—indeed, infinite perfection.

It is important to keep the idea of moral perfectionism distinct from

the idea of metaphysical perfectionism not only because Descartes, Spinoza,

and Leibniz happen to subscribe to both doctrines, but also, and more

importantly for our purpose, because in the ethical theories of Spinoza and

Leibniz metaphysical perfection is in an important sense the characteristic

that is fundamental to what we are and which we therefore ought to

cultivate. Thus their ethical theories are perfectionist in two different but

connected senses. First, human fulfillment resides in the perfection of a

fundamental characteristic. Second, the characteristic we ought to perfect is

metaphysical perfection. This does not mean, however, that metaphysical

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perfection can and ought to be cultivated in any way that happens to give us

the right results. Instead, for Spinoza and Leibniz, perfecting the intellect by

increasing one’s knowledge is, as we shall see, constitutive of the cultivation

of one’s metaphysical perfection.

2. Descartes’ Ethics

The last book Descartes published in his lifetime, The Passions of the

Soul (1649), is a work in psychology and ethics. The psychological theory is

developed and presented there in the service of the eudaimonistic ethical

goal of providing an account of happiness and the essential elements

contained in the happy life. But it is not only eudaimonism that dictates the

structure of Descartes’ ethics. Also contributing to its structure is his vision

of philosophy as a unified system of knowledge. For example, in the

Preface to the Principles of Philosophy, he says,

Thus the whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics and morals. By ‘morals’ I understand the highest and most perfect moral system, which presupposes a complete knowledge of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom.

Now just as it is not the roots or the trunk of a tree from which one gathers the fruit, but only the ends of the branches, so the principal benefit of philosophy depends on those parts of it which can only be learnt last of all. (AT IXB 14, CSM 1 186)

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For Descartes, philosophy is a unified system, and it is hierarchically

structured with the most important knowledge at the top of the structure.

This does not mean that the knowledge beneath the uppermost level is

unimportant. On the contrary, the highest knowledge depends on the lower

orders of knowledge but not vice versa, and so the former can be acquired

only after knowledge at the lower levels has been reached. Metaphysics,

physics, and psychology are therefore valuable as the necessary means for

reaching the ultimate level of wisdom.

It should therefore come as no surprise that his ethical treatise, the

Passions, is largely devoted to an investigation of human psychology. It

should also come as no surprise that it was not written until after he had

written and published his works on metaphysics and physics—Meditations

on First Philosophy (1641) and the Principles of Philosophy (1644). This is

confirmed in a letter from June of 1646 in which he writes,

Of course, I agree . . . that the safest way to find out how we should live is to discover first what we are, what kind of world we live in, and who is the creator of this world . . . I must say in confidence that what little knowledge of physics I have tried to acquire has been a great help to me in establishing sure foundations in moral philosophy. Indeed I have found it easier to reach satisfactory conclusions on this topic than on many others . . . . (AT IV 441, CSMK 289).

The most reliable method for arriving at moral knowledge, Descartes

maintains, is by first acquiring knowledge of human nature, the natural

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world, and the divine nature. These three preconditions for moral

knowledge are what he tries to supply in the Meditations and the Principles,

and it is clear from the above letter that he feels he had some success in

reaching moral knowledge on the basis of the secure foundations he had

established in those subordinate fields of inquiry.

As we know from his correspondence, Descartes’ concentrated

reflection on ethics began in the summer of 1645. In July of that year he

suggested in a letter to Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680) that they

read Seneca’s (c.1-65 AD) On the Happy Life together (AT IV 253, CSMK

256). However, Descartes quickly became dissatisfied with the reading

selection due to what he considered insufficient philosophical rigor in the

Stoic philosopher’s treatment of the subject matter. So, he proposed instead

to write down his own thoughts on the happy life to share with Elizabeth and

receive her feedback. The ethical theory that emerges in his correspondence

with the princess is by and large that which is found in a more systematic,

though more diluted, form in the Passions.

Like Seneca, Descartes’ approach in ethical inquiry is eudaimonistic,

and he agrees with the ancients, and Seneca in particular, that everyone

desires to be happy first and foremost (AT IV 263, CSMK 257). The

question is, what is happiness? Happiness, Descartes suggests, is to have a

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“perfectly content and satisfied mind” (AT IV 264, CSMK 257). The happy

life is one throughout which a person experiences the pleasure of peace of

mind. This does not mean, he points out, that the happy life is the most

cheerful one; contentment of mind is not necessarily accompanied by

laughter and gaiety, for instance. Rather, he approves of the account of

contentment that he takes Epicurus and his school of philosophy to have

endorsed: ataraxia, which, in Descartes’ view, is a stable state of mind

untroubled by such emotional disturbances as anxiety and regret (AT IV

276-277, CSMK 261).

Although his conception of happiness as contentment is Epicurean in

character, his conception of what is most important in achieving such

contentment has an affinity with Stoicism. Indeed, Descartes’ moral

philosophy can be viewed in part as a chapter in the early modern revival of

Stoicism, which was ignited in the sixteenth century by the Neo-Stoic works

of Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621) and Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). So, it is

not just by chance that Descartes’ ethics appears to combine elements of

Epicureanism and Stoicism; Descartes in fact takes himself to have

reconciled the key ethical doctrines of the two Hellenistic schools. In a 1647

letter to Queen Christina, in whose service he later died of pneumonia, he

says, “In this way I think I can reconcile the two most opposed and most

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famous opinions of the ancient philosophers—that of Zeno, who thought

virtue and honour the supreme good, and that of Epicurus, who thought the

supreme good was contentment, to which he gave the name of pleasure” (AT

V 83, CSMK 325). Whether or not Descartes successfully reconciles

Epicurean and Stoic ethics or merely splices them together at the price of

coherence is something we need to consider after looking at his account of

virtue in more detail, but clearly his ethics embodies a conscious attempt on

his part to fuse the two.

Like the ancient Stoics, then, Descartes holds that being virtuous is

sufficient for having a happy life. Virtue on his view is a highly developed

or perfect condition of the will. What this developed condition of the will

consists in, he tells Elizabeth, is a “firm and constant resolution to carry out

whatever reason recommends without being diverted by . . . passions or

appetites” (AT IV 265, CSMK 257-258). Similarly, to Queen Christina, he

writes, “. . . virtue consists only in the resolution and vigour with which we

are inclined to do the things we think good” (AT V 83, CSMK 325). For

Descartes, virtue is a matter of having a firm resolution to do what one

judges to be the best thing to do. By “firm resolution” he means a steadfast

motivational disposition or habit that is aligned with reason and the all-

things-considered judgments issued by reason. A person of perfect virtue is

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therefore impervious to what his or her passions and desires present in

appearance as worth pursuing before, during, and after practical

deliberation—that is, after the agent has reached an all-things-considered

judgment about what is best to do under the circumstances.

Descartes takes virtue in this sense to be sufficient for contentment

because being reliably motivated by reason and its all-things-considered

judgments ensures that one will never give oneself any legitimate cause for

regret, one of the chief obstacles to happiness. Now, in his correspondence

with Elizabeth he adds that, in addition to virtue, wisdom is in a sense

necessary for happiness (AT IV 267, CSMK 258). While virtue is the

highly developed or perfect condition of the will, wisdom is the cultivated

state of the intellect. And, early on in the ethical correspondence with

Elizabeth, he treats virtue and wisdom as independent conditions of

happiness. He says, “So virtue by itself is sufficient to make us content in

this life. But virtue unenlightened by intellect can be false: that is to say, the

will and resolution to do well can carry us to evil courses, if we think them

good; and in such a case the contentment which virtue brings is not solid”

(AT IV 267, CSMK 258). So, virtue as steadfast resolution is sufficient for

contentment, but it is not sufficient for making contentment invulnerable.

For that, wisdom is required; without correct beliefs, we are susceptible to

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making incorrect choices, and making an incorrect choice may give rise to

feelings of regret. Therefore, for the most solid or invulnerable contentment

we can achieve, proper motivation, i.e., virtue, must be conjoined with

correct beliefs, i.e., wisdom.

Although not published until the late fall of 1649, a draft of his last

work, The Passions of the Soul, appears to have been completed in the

winter following the summer and fall in which he carried on his

correspondence on ethics with Elizabeth (AT IV 442, CSMK 289). Much of

the ethical theory is the same, but a noteworthy difference between the

correspondence and that of the Passions is that in the latter Descartes treats

steadfast resolution and knowledge as two components that make up one

central, all-purpose virtue, which he calls generosity. Generosity is

described as the “key to all the virtues and a general remedy for every

disorder of the passions” (AT XI 454, CSM 1 388). In addition to being

steadfastly motivated by reason, this super virtue involves “knowing that

nothing truly belongs to him but this freedom to dispose his volitions, and

that he ought to be praised or blamed for no other reason than his using this

freedom well or badly” (AT XI 446, CSM 1 384). Descartes is saying that

the knowledge that nothing but one’s motives are really up to oneself and

that moral responsibility concerns nothing other than what motives one

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allows to move oneself comprises the wisdom that serves as a component of

the virtue of generosity.

Knowledge concerning what is truly up to us is one of the most

important parts of wisdom, Descartes explains, because it serves as the basis

for dignity, for the appropriate amount of respect we owe ourselves and

others (AT XI 445, CSM I 384). Every individual deserves the same amount

of esteem as anyone else since the capacity for self-directed and virtuous

action is equal in everyone, and there is no other genuine basis for such

regard (AT XI 447, CSM 1 384).

Although generosity requires perfection of the will as well as

perfection of the intellect, in the Passions intellectual perfection appears to

be a more modest ideal than the one originally presented in the

correspondence. Earlier we saw that he suggests to Elizabeth that achieving

invulnerable contentment requires that one never make incorrect choices out

of ignorance. But if this were so, true happiness would appear to be

completely inaccessible or, at least, inaccessible to all but a very few who

have God-like wisdom. Spinoza and Leibniz would certainly not consider

this a shortcoming of Descartes’ ethics, but Princess Elizabeth appears to

have viewed it as such and she seems to have brought it to Descartes’

attention (AT IV 291, CSMK 265). What is more, there is internal pressure

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to reduce the ideal of intellectual perfection, internal, that is, to Descartes’

philosophical system. This comes from his theological voluntarism, his

view that all truth and goodness is entirely dependent on God having willed

things to be as they are, which holds as much for what are commonly

thought of as contingent truths as for necessary, or what he refers to as

eternal, truths, such as those contained in arithmetic and geometry (AT II

138, CSMK 103; AT V 159-160, CSMK 343; AT VII 432, CSM II 291). It

follows from this that perfection of the human intellect cannot be anything

like coming to understand things from God’s point of view; for, no matter

how highly cultivated the human intellect comes to be through the

acquisition of knowledge, divine wisdom is different in kind from human

wisdom in virtue of the fact that, as far as we are concerned, there is no

ultimate reason for things being as they are, or for things being at all, other

than God’s will. From this it does not follow that intellectual perfection

cannot be set as high as inherent limitations permit. It is just that in the end

that runs counter to the egalitarian spirit of Descartes’ eudaimonism. So, the

ideal of wisdom is considerably more modest in later correspondence with

the princess, and in the Passions wisdom in the relevant sense is trimmed

down to the two aforementioned items of knowledge concerning what is

truly up to us and what alone we deserve praise and blame for.

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The question remains, does Descartes succeed in reconciling Stoic and

Epicurean ethics in so far as he is able to combine contentment of mind and

the virtue of generosity into a consistent eudaimonistic theory? Putting the

question that way, it seems that he never gets around to reconciling Zeno

and Epicurus but, at best, his Zeno and his Epicurus. Setting that difficulty

aside, the doctrines that he feels call for reconciliation are, on the one hand,

that virtue is the supreme good, and, on the other, that contentment is the

supreme good (AT V 83, CSMK 325). Descartes’ proposed solution is that

virtue and contentment, properly understood, go hand-in-hand: true virtue

necessarily accompanies true contentment and true contentment

accompanies true virtue. So, in the end it makes no difference which is said

to be desired for the sake of which because, in pursuing either, one is also

pursuing the other (AT IV 275, CSMK 261). To use his analogy, an archery

contestant cannot win the prize without aiming at the bull’s-eye, and the

bull’s-eye would not be targeted without the archer seeing that there is a

prize for hitting the bull’s-eye (AT IV 277, CSMK 277). The bull’s-eye and

the prize then are equally deserving of being said to be the contestant’s end.

Similarly, virtue (i.e., perfection of the will and the intellect) and happiness

are inseparable aspects of what each of us is ultimately after. Thus,

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Descartes concludes that they are equally deserving of being considered our

final end.

3. Spinoza’s Ethics

Like Descartes, Spinoza regards philosophy as a unified system of

knowledge and, like his predecessor, views moral knowledge as the highest

level of wisdom in the sense that it depends on knowledge of the divine

nature, the natural world, and human nature. Moral knowledge can therefore

be achieved only after knowledge has been reached in metaphysics, physics,

epistemology, and psychology. However, unlike Descartes, Spinoza does

not hold that knowledge from these other fields of inquiry is valuable merely

as a necessary means for obtaining moral knowledge. Rather, the

knowledge in the other fields plays an essential role in the ideal of

intellectual perfection which serves as Spinoza’s ideal of human nature. So,

it turns out on Spinoza’s view that we must gather the fruit from the roots

and trunk of Descartes’ tree of philosophy or, more precisely perhaps, that

the roots and trunk are the fruit. As a consequence, Spinoza’s ethics does

not share the egalitarian spirit one finds in Descartes’; that is, the

eudaimonistic end of true happiness is less egalitarian in the former in the

sense of being less readily available to everyone equally. After all, if moral

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perfection depends on intellectual perfection and if intellectual perfection

requires acquisition of knowledge in metaphysics, physics, etc., clearly not

everyone is equally well situated for the undertaking. But this is not

something Spinoza would necessarily consider a drawback of his theory.

For, as he famously says in the final line of his masterpiece the Ethics, “All

things excellent are as difficult as they are rare” (5p42s).

The greatest happiness awaiting those with the wherewithal to reach it

Spinoza calls blessedness (beatitudo). “Blessedness,” he tells us, “is not the

reward of virtue, but virtue itself” (5p42). In order to get a sense of what

Spinoza is saying here, it is necessary to take a look at some of the

metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological doctrines that serve as the

basis for its demonstration and the demonstration of the other ethical

theorems in Parts 4 and 5 of the Ethics.

In the introduction above I indicated that, like Descartes and Leibniz,

Spinoza subscribes to metaphysical perfectionism. This is the view that

reality, or perfection, is something that is manifested in different things to

different degrees. Each holds that there is only one thing with infinite reality

and that that thing is properly called God. Furthermore, each maintains that

finite things have a limited amount of reality or perfection. Where Spinoza

and Leibniz part company with Descartes is that they take the further step of

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suggesting that finite things are capable of undergoing increases and

decreases in their amount of reality. This is not held by Descartes, but it is

nevertheless a natural extension of the doctrine of metaphysical

perfectionism.

The power a thing exerts to exist, for Spinoza, is metaphysical

perfection (1p11s, 3p11s). God’s power, being infinite, implies that God

exists necessarily (1p11). The power of a finite thing, such as a particular

human being, being limited, means that it exists for an indefinite period of

time (3p8). The existence of a finite thing involves an indefinite period of

time and not a finite frame of time because a finite thing’s existence would

never come to an end if it never encountered anything external to itself to

bring about its destruction (3p4). Although Spinoza takes this to be self-

evident, some light is cast on what is supposed to make it the case by his

view that the power that a finite thing exerts to exist is a share of the infinite

power of God (3p6p). The object of the power that a finite thing exerts is

therefore nothing but its own continued existence. So long as it encounters

no resistance, a finite thing will continue exerting its share of God’s

unlimited power.

This exertion of power to exist Spinoza calls conatus, which is

translated as striving or endeavor, and this is the essence of a finite thing

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(3p7). It is what makes a thing the particular thing that it is. An individual’s

loss of his or her conatus, then, is equivalent to the destruction of the

individual.

Spinoza’s view that the essence of human nature is striving, or

endeavoring, to continue in existence is one of the key doctrines in the

foundation of his ethical theory and one he shares with, among others, his

contemporary, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Given

this common tenet, it is tempting to understand Spinoza’s ethics as having

been, as it were, cut from the same cloth as Hobbes’. That is, it might seem

that Spinoza, like Hobbes, takes the foundation of morality to be its utility in

prolonging an individual’s life, and so whatever is most effective in leading

to this end serves as the basis of a moral precept. However, such a reading, I

believe, is mistaken. An important difference between the foundations of

the ethical theories of the two seventeenth-century naturalists concerns the

self to be preserved in self-preservation. For Hobbes, the self to preserve is

none other than the one each of us for the most part is already deeply

concerned with preserving—the emotional, imaginative, somewhat

credulous one we are familiar with in everyday life. In contrast, Spinoza

holds that the self to preserve is exclusively the rational self, which on his

view is identical with what he calls the intellect or reason (4App4, 5p38s,

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5p40c). And this encompasses none of our passions and imaginings, that is,

none of our passive emotions and imagistic, sense-based thoughts. As one

scholar puts it, at bottom Spinoza adheres to the “primacy of the intellect”

(Delahunty 1985, p. 270).

What the rational, or intellectual, self encompasses will be examined

shortly, but first I want to emphasize that this difference in their views of the

subject to be preserved is in part what accounts for the un-Hobbesean

character of Spinoza’s ethics. For instance, it appears to be in the

background of the following passage from the Appendix of Part 4 of the

Ethics:

Therefore it is of the first importance in life to perfect the intellect [intellectum], or reason [rationem], as far as we can, and the highest happiness or blessedness for mankind consists in this alone. . . . So there is no rational life [vita rationalis] without understanding [intelligentia], and things are good only insofar as they assist a man to enjoy the life of the mind, which is defined by understanding [intelligentia]. Those things only do we call evil which hinder a man’s capacity to perfect reason [rationem] and to enjoy a rational life [rationali vita]. (4App4-5)

Here it is being suggested that perfection of the intellect alone is sufficient

for happiness, and that the meanings of the terms “good” and “evil” are

grounded in nothing but what helps or hinders our achieving such perfection.

All our efforts then should be geared toward developing and preserving our

rational selves above all else.

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Apart from any difference there might be in their views of the self to

be preserved, it might still be thought that prolonging one’s life is the

ultimate basis of morality on Spinoza’s view as well as Hobbes’. It might

seem that the difference, if any, is isolated to Spinoza’s somewhat rarefied

conception of the sort of life that we are supposed to prolong. What is being

said in the passage cited above, after all, is perfectly compatible with the

view that it is of the first importance to perfect the intellect because it so

happens that perfecting the intellect is the most effective means to prolong

one’s life. In addition, even if the text does not bear this strong Hobbesean

reading, it might seem that at the very least Spinoza is committed to the

weaker commonsense view that self-preservation in a mundane sense is a

necessary condition of perfecting the intellect and, therefore, that it is always

permissible for an individual to do whatever it takes to avoid his or her own

death.

Although the strong Hobbesean interpretation and the weak

commonsense reading have some plausibility, neither is entirely accurate.

To see why this is so, we need to take a closer look at Spinoza’s ethics.

As we have seen, a human being is an exertion of power to exist, and

power to exist is metaphysical perfection, or what is also referred to as

reality (2def.6). An increase in power is therefore an increase in

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metaphysical perfection; a decrease constitutes a decrease in perfection

(3p11s). Moreover, increases in an individual’s power give rise to pleasure

or joy (laetitia); decreases produce pain or sadness (tristitia) (3p11s). The

greater an increase in power for an individual as a whole and not just one

part at the expense of others, the stronger the pleasure or joy that is

generated thereby. Likewise, the greater the decrease, the more pain or

sadness produced. Since power is the metaphysical basis for emotions of

pleasure and pain and since they are linked such that increases in overall

power give rise to increases in pleasure while decreases produce increases in

pain, states of pleasure and pain gauge changes in levels of perfection

(reality). Knowledge of good, Spinoza concludes, is the cognition of

emotions of pleasure while knowledge of evil is cognition of pain (4p8; cf.

4p41).

Good things are good, then, by virtue of contributing to an increase in

an individual’s overall power. Bad things are those that diminish overall

power. This might seem to conflict with the Preface to Part 4 where Spinoza

explains that by “good” he means “that which we certainly know to be the

means for our approaching nearer to the model of human nature that we set

before ourselves,” and that by “bad” he means “that which we certainly

know prevents us from reproducing the said model” (SCW, p. 322). But

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here “good” and “bad” are simply being defined in moral perfectionist

terms—in terms of what does and does not contribute (respectively) to an

individual’s realization of an ideal of human nature. This is not inconsistent

with “good” and “bad” as that which does and does not contribute

(respectively) to an increase in an individual’s power because the latter is a

substantive conception whereas the former is merely formal. The formal

account indicates that the highest good is the realization of the ideal of

human nature while the substantive account reveals that power is what the

ideal is an idealization of. Thus the content of the model of human nature is

supplied by Spinoza’s portrait of the highest realization of power: the free

man (4p66s-4p72). The free man just is a representation of an individual

who has achieved the utmost amount of power possible. Also, since virtue

and power mean the same thing (4def.8), it can also be said that the model of

the free man is a representation of an ideally virtuous person.

To say that goodness is whatever increases one’s power to exist and

badness whatever results in its decrease is not yet a fully substantive account

of what is good and bad. It is not yet clear, for instance, whether we should

make it our top priority to acquire an arsenal of weapons or something else

altogether different. That the latter is the case is suggested by the more

substantive but nonetheless incomplete account of the good that we saw

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earlier in the Appendix of Part 4 where he tells us “things are good only

insofar as they assist a man to enjoy the life of the mind, which is defined by

understanding. Those things only do we call evil which hinder a man’s

capacity to perfect reason and to enjoy a rational life” (4App5). This

account is more informative but not yet fully complete since it can be

legitimately asked whether we should make it our top priority to acquire

knowledge of how to acquire and operate an arsenal of weapons or, again,

knowledge of something altogether different. That the latter is the case is

made clear at 4p28: “The mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God, and

the mind’s highest virtue is to know God.” Thus the greatest happiness and

greatest virtue (i.e., power) is knowledge of God or, what is the same thing,

knowledge of nature (1p29s, 4Preface, 4p4p). From the claim that the

greatest happiness and power is knowledge of God-or-Nature, it follows that

such knowledge is not pursued for the sake of anything else, which was

made explicit in 4p26: “Whatever we endeavor according to reason is

nothing else but to understand; and the mind, insofar as it exercises reason,

judges nothing else to be to its advantage except what conduces to

understanding.” Since acquisition of knowledge alone perfects the intellect,

knowledge is pursued for its own sake and not for the sake of some further

end.

25

Now we are in a position to see why, for Spinoza, preserving the self

is not about prolonging one’s life in either its strong Hobbesean sense or its

weak commonsense form. The former, recall, treats the rational life as that

which is most effective in prolonging one’s life. The latter, commonsense

reading considers prolonging one’s life to be a necessary condition of

leading the rational life. However, because, considered as thinking things,

reason is definitive of what we are (4p26p, 4p27), any departure from reason

and reason’s requirements constitutes at least some loss of self. Therefore, it

is never the case that it is advantageous to put longevity ahead of rationality.

To do so is self-destructive. What is destroyed is one’s rational self. This I

take it is the basis for the otherwise paradoxical claim made at 4p72: “The

free man never acts deceitfully, but always with good faith.” Preserving

oneself requires nothing but living in accordance with reason, and since

reason just is what we fundamentally are, it cannot be overridden by the

prospect of prolonging life. So, in the scholium of 4p72, Spinoza says,

The question may be asked: ‘What if a man could by deception free himself from imminent danger of death? Would not consideration for the preservation of his own being be decisive in persuading him to deceive?’ I reply . . . that if reason urges this, it does so for all men; and thus reason urges men in general to join forces and to have common laws only with deceitful intention; that is, in effect, to have no laws in common at all, which is absurd.

26

This passage maintains that it is contrary to reason to lie in order to avoid

death. Self-preservation, therefore, is not a matter of avoiding death and

thereby prolonging one’s life. Rather, preserving oneself is a matter of

preserving one’s intellect. Self-preservation, it turns out, just is rationality-

preservation.

The following passage from the Theological-Political Treatise

provides a nice summary of Spinoza’s views on all this:

All worthy objects of desire can be classified under one of these three general headings: 1. To know things through their primary causes. 2. To subjugate the passions, i.e., to acquire the habit of virtue. 3. To live in security and good health.

The means that directly serve for the attainment of the first and second objectives, and can be considered as the proximate and efficient causes, lie within the bounds of human nature itself, so that their acquisition chiefly depends on human power alone, i.e., solely on the laws of human nature. . . . But the means that serve for the attainment of security and physical wellbeing lie principally in external circumstances, and are called the gifts of fortune because they mainly depend on the operation of external causes of which we are in ignorance. So in this matter the fool and the wise man have about an equal chance of happiness and unhappiness. (CSW, p. 417-418)

Being wise and virtuous are worthy objects of desire, or goods, that can be

achieved through human power without external assistance. Security,

wellbeing, and things belonging to the same class are worthy objects of

desire, but the problem is that their acquisition does not exclusively depend

27

on human power. In fact, it is largely a matter of fortune, or luck, whether

one possesses such goods. As a result, a fool and a wise person have nearly

the same chances of achieving happiness where this is understood as security

and physical wellbeing. Since the likelihood of a fool and that of a wise

person of obtaining happiness in this sense is about equal, it is therefore

implausible that Spinoza commends the ideal of intellectual perfection

presented in the Ethics for the sake of a happiness that inherently depends on

security and physical wellbeing.

In any event, Spinoza holds that intellectual perfection is the key

ingredient in the good life, but it would be a mistake to conclude that this

requires the complete eradication of the emotive side of our nature. On the

contrary, intellectual perfection on Spinoza’s view is accompanied with a

rich and colorful palette of emotions. The difference between the emotional

palette of a fool and that of a wise person is that that of the former is for the

most part comprised of passive emotions or, simply, passions, whereas the

latter’s is for the most part comprised of active emotions (3p58, 3p59). The

basis for this distinction between passions and active emotions is Spinoza’s

distinction between opinion and imagination, on the one hand, and reason

and intuition, on the other. So it is to his theory of knowledge that we must

now turn.

28

By opinion or imagination Spinoza means the ideas or beliefs

corresponding with the imagistic contents of sense perception, and such

beliefs belong to the lowest grade of knowledge (2p40s2). This inferior

grade of knowledge, Spinoza maintains, is the only source of falsity (2p41).

The reason is that the ideas of sensory contents are inadequate (2p24, 2p25),

and they are inadequate in virtue of being based on the confused and

fragmentary contents of sense perception (2p28, 2p35). What makes the

imagistic deliverances of sense perception confused and fragmentary is that

they are the products of the causal interaction between an individual’s

sensory apparatus and external stimuli (2p16). Our sensory apparatus is not

perfectly transparent and, as a result, systematically distorts what things are

like independent of the way they are perceived (2p16c, 2p25). Therefore,

when we take the ideas of our sensory contents at face value, we view things

in a fragmentary way in the sense that we fail to understand that such ideas

are merely results of causal chains extending into our environment, and that

the stimuli composing our environment make up various links in those

causal chains (2p35s). This, I take it, is what Spinoza is getting at when he

says that our sense-based beliefs “are like conclusions without premises”

(2p28p). As we come to learn more about why things appear to us the way

29

they do—say, by means of the science of optics—the less fragmentary and

more adequate our knowledge comes to be.

An individual who takes his or her ideas of the contents of sense

perception at face value views things in accordance with what Spinoza calls

the “common order of nature” (2p29cs). Viewing things in this fragmentary

way is infused with arbitrariness since the order in which things appear to an

individual is no indication of the way things are causally ordered in reality,

the metaphysical order. The trick is to come to know things in accordance

with the metaphysical order, or the “order of the intellect” (2p18s). To do

so, it is necessary to ascend to the second and third grades of knowledge,

namely, reason and intuition.

The knowledge involved in reason and intuition is necessarily true

(2p41). Reason consists of “common notions and adequate ideas of the

properties of things” and intuitive knowledge “proceeds from an adequate

idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to an adequate

knowledge of the essence of things” (2p40s2). Featured in both grades is

adequate cognition. Reason contains adequate cognition of the common

properties of things, making this knowledge general, whereas intuition

involves adequate cognition of the essence of a particular thing or things

arrived at through the laws of nature.

30

Reason on Spinoza’s view includes two sets of adequate general

ideas. First, common notions are ideas of properties common to all things,

from the relatively simple to the relatively complex (2p38). So, for example,

common to all physical things is the property of being extended in length,

breadth, and depth as well as the property of motion-and-rest (2p13l2p).

Second, adequate ideas of the properties of things are ideas of properties

common to all relatively complex things, such as the human organism and

other complex organisms (2p39). The idea of a fixed pattern of motion and

rest, for example, is an adequate idea of a property shared by all complex

physical entities (2p13l3cdef.). Just as there are properties common to all

things considered under the attribute of extension, there are also properties

common to all things considered under the attribute of thought (2p7). An

interesting suggestion as to what this includes is the laws of logic as a

property common to all relatively simple and complex thinking things and

the laws of psychology as a property shared by all relatively complex

thinking things (Allison 1975, p. 110).

The highest grade of knowledge, intuition, is knowledge of a

particular thing or things through the infinite series of finite causes (i.e.,

prior finite conditions) and the finite series of infinite causes (i.e., the laws

of nature). This is clearly not something that can ever be fully achieved by a

31

finite mind, but it seems that Spinoza must be committed to the view that

some progress in this can be made to a limited extent, for otherwise it would

be impossible even to get a taste of the greatest happiness, blessedness.

As rudimentary as this brief overview of Spinoza’s epistemology

admittedly is, it should suffice for grasping the character of his ideal of

intellectual perfection and, specifically, the space for emotion and correct

motivation in the good life.

At the heart of Spinoza’s moral psychology is the distinction he draws

between passions and active emotions. Passions are emotions and desires

that result from opinion—the inadequate ideas of the confused and

fragmentary contents of sensory perception (3def.3, 3p3, 5p4s). Active

emotions and desires, on the other hand, arise from the knowledge arrived at

by reason and intuition (3p58, 4p59, 4p61, 5p4s). Active emotions and

desires, in other words, are rational. Now, just as someone who takes the

deliverances of the senses at face value draws arbitrary causal connections

among appearances, this same individual is arbitrarily assailed by various

and often conflicting passions. Passions are arbitrary in the same way

sensory contents are: they result from an individual’s fortuitous encounters

with external stimuli, disconnected from the metaphysical order that reason

and intuition reveal (4p4c). Those of us who are dominated by passions,

32

Spinoza tells us, “are in many respects at the mercy of external causes and

are tossed about like the waves of the sea when driven by contrary winds,

unsure of the outcome and of our fate” (3p59s). An individual who is at the

mercy of external causes is governed by his or her passions and is therefore

unfree (4 Preface). Hence Spinoza calls such a person a slave in

contradistinction to the free man, the ideal of human nature (4p66s).

A life dominated by passions on Spinoza’s view is a life of bondage,

but his view is not that all passions are painful. Some are emotions of

pleasure. However, in addition to arising from an increase in perfection in

one part of an individual independent of the person as a whole, passive

emotions of pleasure are transitory and often preceded or followed by

painful emotions. For instance, hope, according to Spinoza, is an emotion of

pleasure, but it is “inconstant pleasure arising from the idea of a thing future

or past, of whose outcome we are in some doubt” (Definitions of the

Emotions 12). Not only is hope inconstant, it is also always accompanied by

a painful emotion since “there cannot be hope without fear” (4p47p), and

fear is a painful emotion (Definitions of the Emotions 13). So, just as

inadequate ideas comprise the lowest grade of knowledge, passive emotions

of pleasure constitute the lowest grade of pleasure.

33

What is more, conflicts among different individuals as well as internal

psychological conflicts arise from the transitory and variable nature of

passions (4p32, 4p33, 4p44). With respect to the same object, conflicting

emotional reactions among different people engender disagreement about

the value or disvalue of the object, and such disagreements tend to lead to

skepticism and ultimately to unhappiness (1Appendix, 4p35c1). A similar

sort of phenomenon can arise within one and the same person who is subject

to conflicting passions. At one moment something might meet with strong

approval which a short while later meets with strong disapproval, dividing

the person against himself and, as a consequence, rendering an individual

unhappy. To provide remedies for the passions, the source of interpersonal

and psychological conflicts, is one of Spinoza’s primary aims.

He proposes six therapeutic remedies (5p6, 5p20s). First, he suggests

that in simply coming to know why one has the passions one does, one

thereby gets an upper-hand on them and, as a result, they cease being passive

emotions (5p4). The second proposed remedy involves detaching the

affective aspect of a passion from the object of the emotion by coming to see

that the object is at best merely part of the total explanation for one’s

feelings about it (5p2, 5p4s). The third and fourth are based on his view

concerning the superior durability of active emotions over passions (5p7,

34

5p8). The idea is that emotions arising from knowledge are firmly anchored

in reality and are therefore much less transitory than passions that come and

go with any change in oneself or one’s immediate environment (5p9, 5p11).

Fifth, by means of repeated cognitive conditioning an individual can come to

have different emotional reactions to things that previously had given rise to

obsessive or otherwise excessive feelings (5p10, 5p12-14). Spinoza says,

For example, if anyone sees that he is devoted overmuch to the pursuit of honor, let him reflect on its proper function, and the purpose for which it ought to be pursued, and the means by which it can be attained, and not on its abuse and hollowness and the fickleness of mankind and the like, on which nobody reflects except from a morbid disposition. It is by thoughts like these that the most ambitious especially torment themselves when they despair of attaining the honor that they covet, and in vomiting forth their anger they try to make some show of wisdom. (5p10s)

As this indicates, Spinoza maintains that by focusing one’s attention on

certain thoughts rather than on others, one is capable of re-programming

oneself so that after a certain point one is less disposed to have certain

emotional reactions to a stimulus of a certain type. The sixth and final

therapeutic remedy is a matter of subscribing to a strong form of

determinism which Spinoza defends early on in the Ethics (1p33). Dubbed

necessitarianism by scholars, this says that events could have turned out in

no other way than the way they have and do. An alternative formulation of

this thesis is to say that the actual universe with its actual history is the only

35

possible universe with the only possible history. By viewing things in this

light, Spinoza believes that we will be less susceptible to having passive

emotional reactions to whatever events we observe (5p6).

These six cognitive therapies are meant to serve as ways of

empowering whoever takes up any or all of them. As such, they are not

techniques for eradicating all emotions, only those that prevent us from

achieving true virtue and happiness. Virtue, as we saw earlier, is power, and

true power consists in being motivated and guided by reason (3p3, 4p37s1).

True happiness, for Spinoza, is blessedness, and this is the emotive aspect of

the cognitive condition that is equivalent to the state of having reached a

level of complete metaphysical perfection (5p33s, 5p36s). Since power is

metaphysical perfection, it follows that blessedness is the emotive aspect of

the highest realization of true power. Thus, in the last theorem of the Ethics,

Spinoza concludes, “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue

itself” (5p42). Having taken a closer look at Spinoza’s ethical theory, it

might now seem that this final proposition is somewhat of an overstatement

in that it seems an exaggeration to say that blessedness is identical with

virtue. But I take it that what Spinoza is up to is similar to what we saw

earlier in Descartes. Recall that Descartes suggests that, because true virtue

is necessarily conjoined with true happiness, these are in reality just two

36

aspects of one and the same thing. So each can with equal accuracy be

considered our final end. Spinoza, it seems, can be understood as making a

similar point: blessedness is virtue itself in the sense that blessedness, the

greatest emotion of pleasure, and virtue, the highest realization of power, are

essential and inseparable aspects of our final end, the knowledge of God-or-

Nature.

4. Leibniz’s Ethics

Like Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz is a moral perfectionist—he

subscribes to the doctrine that true happiness consists in the development

and perfection of a characteristic or a set of characteristics fundamental to

our nature. Moreover, like Spinoza, Leibniz holds that intellectual

perfection is the primary ingredient in the good life and yet that this does not

require the complete eradication of the emotive side of our nature. Indeed,

he shares Spinoza’s view that intellectual perfection is accompanied by

motivational perfection because proper motivation results from correct

cognition. Leibniz says, “The Stoics took the passions to be beliefs: thus for

them hope was the belief in a future good, and fear the belief in a future evil.

But I would rather say that the passions are not contentments or displeasures

or beliefs, but endeavors—or rather modifications of endeavor—which arise

37

from beliefs or opinions and are accompanied by pleasure or displeasure”

(New Essays, 167; cf. Theodicy, Preface, p. 52). An emotion, for Leibniz, is

a particular state of an individual’s endeavor toward metaphysical

perfection, and a particular state of this endeavor is the effect of the

individual’s perceptual or representational states, his or her beliefs or

opinions.

Thus the manner in which an individual’s endeavor toward perfection

is channeled in a particular case depends on the level of distinctness of the

individual’s perception. Endeavor is channeled actively in so far as an

individual’s perception is distinct or is becoming more distinct. It is in a

passive state to the extent that perception is confused or is becoming more

confused. According to Leibniz,

But if we take ‘action’ to be an endeavour towards perfection, and ‘passion’ to be the opposite, then genuine substances are active only when their perceptions (for I grant perceptions to all of them) are becoming better developed and more distinct, just as they are passive only when their perceptions are becoming more confused. Consequently, in substances which are capable of pleasure and pain every action is a move towards pleasure, every passion a move towards pain. (New Essays, 210)

An action and active emotion for Leibniz results from an increase in the

distinctness of perception. An increase in confusion gives rise to passive

behavior and passions. Since on his view there are no other types of

motivation besides active and passive motivational states, cognition alone is

38

the source of the particular modifications of an individual’s endeavor toward

metaphysical perfection.

Given that Leibniz holds that cognition motivates via the

representation of an object in a favorable light, there is no such thing as

weakness of will in the sense of choosing and acting against one’s better

judgment (New Essays, 185-187). Such a psychological phenomenon is not

possible because motivation is a consequence of cognition, which influences

the will by presenting its objects under an aspect of goodness. “The will,”

Leibniz says, “is never prompted to action save by the representation of the

good, which prevails over the opposite representations” (Theodicy, 45, p.

148). It follows that the phenomenon commonly called weakness of will

turns out to be a defect in the intellect. Weakness is nothing over and above

ignorance or error, and these have their basis in confusion and, ultimately,

finitude, i.e., a lack of metaphysical perfection. Distinct perception therefore

constitutes our power or “dominion,” whereas bondage is a state of being

submerged in confusion (Theodicy 64, p. 158; 289, p. 303).

Furthermore, increases in metaphysical perfection cause pleasure and

decreases cause pain. Leibniz thus also agrees with Spinoza that awareness

of pleasure is a perception of perfection while awareness of pain is a

perception of imperfection. He says, “I believe that fundamentally pleasure

39

is a sense of perfection, and pain a sense of imperfection, each being notable

enough for one to become aware of it” (New Essays, 194; cf. Political

Writings, p. 83). Pleasure is the sense perception or knowledge of perfection

and pain is the perception or knowledge of imperfection. This is so because

it is perfection that brings about pleasure and imperfection that produces

pain in rational creatures.

Pleasures of the senses are merely confused perceptions of perfection

(Political Writings, p. 83). The pleasure taken, for example, in listening to

music is a sense pleasure and therefore a confused perception of perfection,

but Leibniz takes the pleasure we derive from listening to music to

approximate a purely intellectual pleasure. Since pleasures are nothing but

perceptions of perfection and these differ in degree on a scale from

confusion to distinctness, it follows that pleasures of the senses do not differ

in kind from intellectual pleasures. Rather, pleasures of the senses are

simply low-grade intellectual pleasures. Ultimately, then, “. . . pleasures of

the senses reduce to intellectual pleasures known confusedly” (Philosophical

Essays, p. 212).

So, metaphysical perfection and its increase is the source of active

emotions, pleasure, and freedom; imperfection and decreases in

metaphysical perfection is the source of passions, pain, and a life of

40

bondage. True happiness, according to Leibniz, is nothing other than a

lasting state of pleasure (Political Writings, p. 83; New Essays, 194). Since

pleasure is caused by metaphysical perfection and its increases, and since it

is the distinctness of cognition that is responsible for the maintenance and

increase of metaphysical perfection, intellectual perfection constitutes

Leibniz’s ideal of human nature. The highest realization of metaphysical

perfection is the highest realization of intellectual perfection. God alone

possesses absolute metaphysical perfection, and though finite things enjoy a

limited amount of perfection, all of a finite being’s efforts are geared toward

becoming more like God.

Virtue Leibniz defines as “the habit of acting according to wisdom”

(Political Writings, p. 83). Nevertheless, since on his view there is no such

thing as weakness of will, wisdom is doing all the work in Leibniz’s analysis

of virtue. Without the possibility of moral weakness, a habit of acting

according to wisdom comes to a habit of being wise, which in turn boils

down to simply being wise. A similar consequence follows from the

account Leibniz gives of what he takes to be the most important virtue:

justice. Justice he defines as the “charity of the wise man” (Political

Writings, p. 171). He describes charity as a habit of loving others and

willing their good (Political Writings, p. 83, p. 171). Since love, like all

41

emotions, arises from cognition and it is impossible to choose and act

against one’s better judgment, being just first and foremost requires the

acquisition of wisdom. Having acquired wisdom, love and charity

necessarily follow.

From all this then it may seem that Leibniz’s ethics does not differ

significantly from Spinoza’s. That, however, would be an

oversimplification. There is certainly substantial overlap in their ethical

theories. Both, for instance, offer highly intellectualized conceptions of the

good life. True happiness wholly depends on virtue, but virtue, they hold, is

intellectual perfection; proper motivation being a product of correct

cognition. Despite such important similarities, however, there are also deep

differences, perhaps the most fundamental of which is their conception of

metaphysical perfection. In fact, Leibniz’s conception of metaphysical

perfection sets his ethics apart from Spinoza’s as well as from Descartes’

ethics.

All three maintain that reality is manifested in different things to

different degrees. Yet, Descartes and Spinoza treat metaphysical perfection

as a matter of ontological independence and dependence. A thing has more

perfection or reality than another if and only if the former is more

ontologically independent than the latter. Leibniz, on the other hand, takes a

42

Platonist approach and ties metaphysical perfection to order and harmony.

On his view, the more order or harmony manifested in a particular thing, the

more metaphysical perfection that thing can be said to possess. So, like

Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz subscribes to metaphysical perfectionism,

but, unlike them, he treats perfection as a function of metaphysical harmony.

In a letter to Christian Wolff (1679-1754), Leibniz explains, “ . . . pleasure is

the sensation of perfection. Perfection is the harmony of things, or the state

where everything is worthy of being observed, that is, the state of agreement

[consensus] or identity in variety; you can even say that it is the degree of

contemplatibility [considerabilitas]. Indeed, order, regularity, and harmony

come to the same thing” (Philosophical Essays, pp. 233-234). So, by

“harmony” Leibniz means agreement, or unity, in variety. This is a set of

circumstances wherein many different things are governed by a general rule,

like terrestrial and celestial objects being governed by Newton’s law of

gravitation. Since the perception of harmony, no matter how confusedly, is

inherently pleasurable to some extent, a universe containing the most

harmony is potentially the most pleasing for a finite thinking thing. A

maximally harmonious world is best in virtue of being the most pleasing to a

perfectly rational mind, which is why it can also be described as the most

worthy of contemplation.

43

The perfection-as-harmony doctrine has at least two important

consequences for his ethics that set it apart from the ethical theories of

Descartes and Spinoza. First, it provides Leibniz with some philosophical

basis for suggesting that there is an afterlife where none of the deeds we

perform in this life go unrewarded or unpunished. Order and harmony, he

holds, would be vitiated if a good action went unrewarded or a bad action

unpunished. Therefore, given that this world is maximally rich in harmony,

we can be assured that things are organized such that in the end happiness

and unhappiness is perfectly proportioned to merit. This moral order within

the universe Leibniz calls the “city of God” (Philosophical Essays, p. 224),

evidencing his indebtedness to St. Augustine (354-430).

The idea that true happiness is available only on the supposition that

there is an afterlife where pleasure and pain harmonize with merit is an

apparent departure from the ethics of Descartes and Spinoza in particular

and from eudaimonism generally. Traditionally, a eudaimonistic ethical

theory gives an account of the happy life where “life” means the natural life

of a human being. This is Descartes’ exclusive concern, and although in the

second half of Part 5 of the Ethics Spinoza reaches some conclusions about a

sense in which true happiness can be enjoyed even after the destruction of

the body, he clearly does not take any of this to undermine or even diminish

44

the importance of his recipe for achieving happiness during our natural lives

(5p41s). Leibniz’s account of true happiness, in contrast, extends beyond

our natural lives, which makes characterizing him as a eudaimonistic moral

philosopher somewhat tenuous. Still, even if Leibniz’s ethics does not fit

neatly within the eudaimonistic tradition because it is not restricted to the

happiness available in our natural lives, consideration must also be given to

the fact that what is ordinarily meant by “natural life” undergoes

considerable expansion in Leibniz’s metaphysics. That is, on Leibniz’s

view, an individual’s so-called natural life is merely the temporary

emergence of conscious awareness sandwiched between two long periods of

stupor—one prior to and leading up to birth and the other taking place after

what is ordinarily but mistakenly regarded as an individual’s death

(Philosophical Essays, p. 208 & p. 214). This expanded view of life thus

strongly mitigates the significance of his apparent departure from his

rationalist predecessors in particular and the eudaimonistic tradition as a

whole.

Nevertheless, the perfection-as-harmony doctrine does serve as the

basis for what Leibniz himself takes to be a key difference between

Descartes’ and Spinoza’s ethics in comparison with his own. This concerns

their conception of happiness. From Leibniz’s point of view, the happiness

45

analyzed in the ethical theories of Descartes and Spinoza amounts to nothing

more than mere patience. Against what he calls the “sect of the new Stoics,”

Leibniz says,

If they knew that all things are ordered for the general good and for the particular welfare of those who know how to make use of them, they would not identify happiness with simple patience. . . . In fact, these are Spinoza’s views, and there are many people to whom Descartes appears to be of the same opinion. Certainly, he made himself very suspect by rejecting the search for final causes, by maintaining that there is no justice nor benevolence, nor even truth, except because God has determined them in an absolute way . . . (Philosophical Essays, p. 282; cf. Theodicy, 254, pp. 282-283).

Here Leibniz complains that the Neo-Stoics, among whom he includes

Descartes and Spinoza, endorse a second-rate conception of happiness. It is

not even real happiness they endorse, but patience, meaning that their ethical

theories teach at best only how to calmly bear misfortune. This is the most

their ethical theories are capable of offering, he explains, because the

metaphysics on which they rest are axiologically neutral in the sense that, for

Descartes and Spinoza, the metaphysical order is not designed with any

consideration given to the wellbeing of its inhabitants. This latter point is

precisely what Leibniz sees as allowing him to claim a superior conception

of happiness and, as a consequence, a moral philosophy superior to

Descartes’ and Spinoza’s.

46

5. Conclusion

As mentioned at the outset, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz treat their

proposed solutions to ethical questions as outgrowths of the results of their

more abstract investigations into the fundamental structure and content of

reality. Metaphysical inquiry for them is not an end in itself. Instead, it is

undertaken for the sake of the practical advantages such knowledge may

ultimately bring, that is, for the sake of the light it casts on the path to true

happiness. The following from Leibniz nicely encapsulates their shared

outlook: “On the other hand, everything is relevant to our happiness, and so

could be included within practical philosophy. As you [Philalethes] know,

theology is rightly regarded as a practical science; and jurisprudence, and

medicine too, are not less so. So that the study of human happiness or of our

well- or ill-being, if it deals adequately with all the ways of reaching the goal

which reason sets before itself, will take in everything we know” (New

Essays, 522). Like Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz’s view is that every

branch of knowledge subserves practical philosophy. Metaphysics, in other

words, just is metaphysics of morals. Although this vision of philosophy as

a system unified under practical philosophy came under attack not long after

Leibniz’s death in the first half of the eighteenth century and again in the

first half of the twentieth century, today’s students of the moderns are guilty

47

of an anachronism in so far as we fail to appreciate the interdependence of

theory and practice in rationalism.

ANDREW YOUPA

Bibliography

Allison, Henry E. Benedict de Spinoza. Twayne Publishers, 1975. Bidney, David. The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza. Yale University Press, 1940. Brown, Gregory. “Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz. Edited by Nicholas Jolley. Cambridge University Press, 1995. Curley, Edwin. “Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy.” In Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays. 1973. Edited by Marjorie Grene. University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. Curley, Edwin. Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. Princeton University Press, 1988.

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Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Volumes I and II. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge University Press, 1985, 1984. Descartes, Rene. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch and Anthony Kenny. Volume III. Cambridge University Press, 1991. Delahunty, R. J. Spinoza: The Arguments of the Philosophers. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. Donagan, Alan. Spinoza. The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Garrett, Don. “‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively’: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics.” In Spinoza: Issues and Directions. Edited by Edwin Curley and Pierre-Francois Moreau. Brill, 1990. Garrett, Don. “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory.” In The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Edited by Don Garrett. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Gueroult, Martial. Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons, Volume II: The Soul and the Body. Translated by Roger Ariew. University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Hostler, John. Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1975. Jarrett, Charles. “Spinoza on the Relativity of Good and Evil.” In Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes. Edited by Olli Koistinen and John Biro. Oxford University Press, 2002. Leibniz, Gottfried. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil. Translated by E. M. Huggard. Edited by Austin Farrer. Open Court, 1985. Leibniz, Gottfried. Political Writings. Translated and edited by Patrick Riley. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

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Leibniz, Gottfried. G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays. Translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Hackett Publishing, 1989. Leibniz, Gottfried. New Essays on Human Understanding. Translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Marshall, John. Descartes’s Moral Theory. Cornell University Press, 1998. Parkinson, G. H. R. Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge. Clarendon Press, 1954. Riley, Patrick. Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise. Harvard University Press, 1996. Rutherford, Donald. Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature. Cambridge University Press, 1995. Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Shapiro, Lisa. “Cartesian Generosity.” Acta Philosophica Fennica, 64, 1999. Spinoza, Baruch. Spinoza: Collected Works. Translated by Samuel Shirley. Edited by Michael L. Morgan. Hackett Publishing, 2002. Williston, Byron and André Gombay, editors. Passion and Virtue in Descartes. Humanity Books, 2003. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. “Transcending Mere Survival: From Conatus to Conatus Intelligendi.” In Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist. Edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel. Little Room Press, 1999.

Further Reading

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Bidney, David. The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza. Yale University Press, 1940. Cottingham, John. Philosophy and the Good Life. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Curley, Edwin. Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. Princeton University Press, 1988. Hampshire, Stuart. “Two Theories of Morality.” In Morality and Conflict. Harvard University Press, 1983. Hostler, John. Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1975. Marshall, John. Descartes’s Moral Theory. Cornell University Press, 1998. Riley, Patrick. Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise. Harvard University Press, 1996. Schneewind, J. B. The Invention of Autonomy. Cambridge University Press, 1998.