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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.