Spinoza’s Ethics
Spinoza was one of the great Jewish philosophers, whom the Jewish community excommunicated, for his ideas were revolutionary and contrary to the traditional Jewish religion. One of his ideas was an abstract kind of definition of God, as fixed and unchangeable order of
nature, a diffused consciousness that animates the world and here begins the Pantheism and Determinism. One of his major works is Ethics.
Spinoza’s Ethics can be classified into four categories, that being Nature and God, Matter and
Mind, Intelligence and Morals and Religion and Immortality (according to Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy).
The first part ‘Nature and God’ expostulates that all events are mechanical operations and fixed laws. Any product of Nature must obey these laws and subjective interference should not and cannot collide with these laws. This is a World of Determinism, not design or creation of God. God is Nature.
‘Matter and Mind’ according to me is the beginning of Behavioral Psychology. He says “Nothing can happen to the body which is not perceived by mind”. Of course this statement of his manifest for, anger (emotion) initiates or corresponds with bodily changes (chemical change). But he said Mind is “Ideas” itself. To him Intellect is series of ideas (mind), Will is series of
action (matter) and
desire is duration of a particular
idea. Now this theory simplified will be,
Instinct + Desire (Idea) = Action = Organic Process
{Note: Desire is duration of an idea, if the idea changes, action changes accordingly}.
So everything in this world is mechanical, determined.
In the section Intelligence and Morals, he says, effort to understand is the only virtue. The process described here is,
Instinct + Desire + Passion +
Thought + Reason =
Intelligence/Virtue/Morality
Passion, according to him is inadequate idea – an idea cut short. When desire, duration of an idea is there in the mind for a long time, it becomes Thought and when Thought becomes Action, it is Reason.
To Spinoza, Knowledge is power as well as Virtue.
Immortality is only a Thought – Immortality is thought because Thought is at once Past, Present, and Future – Eternal – Thought is itself Eternal. This is his conclusion on the last section Religion and Immortality
{Note: for views on religion refer to Nature and God}.
Ethics has its influence even today.
More reviews about the Spinoza’s Ethics