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First, he attempts to show that human beings follow the order of nature. Second, Spinoza attempts to show that moral concepts, such as the concepts of good and evil, psychological essays, virtue, and perfection, have a psychological essays in human psychology. Just as human beings are no different from the rest of nature, so moral concepts are no different from other concepts.
For his argument to succeed, the theory of the affects must be both a plausible account of human psychology and also a plausible basis for ethics.
In the Preface to Part III, Spinoza states his view that all things alike must be understood to follow from the laws of nature:. Many philosophers have treated the human mind as an exception to otherwise universal natural laws, psychological essays, as a thing that is conscious, that is capable of good and evil, or that can be an uncaused cause of action, for example.
That is, if there is any sense at all in saying that a human being is aware, does good, and psychological essays free, then there must be universal, natural laws that justify and explain these designations. Spinoza argues that all finite modes strive to persevere in being IIIp6and he uses an analysis of human striving to explain the conscious experience of desire, human freedom, psychological essays, and good and evil in terms that might apply to any finite modes.
Desire, as Spinoza understands it, just is striving together with consciousness of striving IIIp9s; the human experience of desire is discussed in more detail in Section 2, psychological essays.
An action of a human mind cannot be psychological essays, for Spinoza, in the sense of being determined by a faculty of will that is itself undetermined IIp48; see also letter 58, to Schuller.
There is human freedom for Spinoza, however, psychological essays, in the sense of freedom from external interference: I am free in producing some effect that is, in doing something to the extent that the effect follows from my essence, or, in other words, to the extent that it is the effect of my striving. For discussions of action and human freedom, see IIId2 and V Preface. Although scholars debate the precise meaning of these identifications, an increase in the power with which a mind strives is good, for Spinoza, and a decrease evil see IIIp11s, IIIp39s and IV Preface.
The subsections which follow address these issues in turn. As Psychological essays presents the argument at IIIp6d, it depends principally upon IIIp4, psychological essays, a proposition which Spinoza takes to be self-evident, and IIIp5 which derives from IIIp4 alone. The argument also involves, less directly, IP25C and its gloss at IP III Proposition 5: Things are of a contrary nature, i.
Therefore, III Proposition 6: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being. Still, the two terms might be taken interchangeably here because Spinoza is only describing existents. Pace Spinoza, the claim at IIIp4 that no thing can be destroyed except through an external cause is not clearly self-evident. Why is it that, just because a thing does not strive to destroy itself, that thing must therefore strive to persevere in being?
A thing might, it seems, not strive for anything, or perhaps it might strive to do something which is neither perseverance nor self-destruction. So there cannot be a thing which does not strive at psychological essays or, in other words, there cannot be a thing which is not any expression of power at all. The second version of the objection, the version which notes the possibility that a particular thing as described in IIIp4 might strive for something other than either self-destruction or perseverance, remains a challenge to sympathetic readers of the Ethics however.
The rejection of IIIp6 and an insistence that at least some thing does not strive to persevere in its being, where perseverance in being is understood as a particular end among many possible options, is perfectly consistent with the truth of IIIp4.
After all, psychological essays, not striving to persevere in being, which IIIp6 rules out, psychological essays, is not the same thing as striving not to persevere in being, psychological essays, which IIIp4 rules out. A sympathetic reader of Spinoza might try to resolve psychological essays difficulty through an understanding of what it means to strive to persevere in being, under which striving to persevere in being comes to mean just the same thing as striving to do something other than destroy oneself, in particular, striving to maintain a present state.
See Curley 1,for an interpretation similar to this one. For Spinoza consistently regards sane human beings as finite modes who, beyond merely not trying to kill themselves, actively try to preserve themselves. People do not merely resist changes to whatever state they are in; they strive to change their states in order to know more and in order to live with a greater force. One of the main problems Spinoza faces, psychological essays, then, is reconciling the most plausible version of IIIp6 as an account of the psychological essays of ordinary objects under which IIIp6 is a principle of inertia with the most plausible version of IIIp6 as an account of human nature under which IIIp6 is a version of psychological egoism, psychological essays.
The Ethics stands badly in need of some account of what finite modes are, psychological essays, after all, and IIIp4 provides at least one interesting way of distinguishing genuine objects from mere constructs: if the thing in question destroys itself it is not a genuine psychological essays. Thus, by Psychological essays, a thing that destroys itself—one might think a lit candle or a time bomb such a thing—is not a genuine object but a thing which does not destroy itself is, psychological essays.
To the extent that IIIp4 makes most of the things we intuitively consider genuine objects genuine objects, it captures ordinary views, psychological essays. To the extent that it rules out some clear class of things that we intuitively consider genuine objects lit candles and time bombsit represents a controversial philosophical thesis.
The class of things which tend to destroy themselves may be different from, and narrower than, one might think it is on a first reading of IIIp4.
IIIp6 introduces, perhaps, a slightly different thesis about what it means to be a particular thing: a particular thing is one which strives to persevere in being. Such a psychological essays appears to be a principle of inertia, and, indeed, Spinoza seems to invoke a principle of inertia in the terms he uses at IIIp6. This phrase is also one that Descartes himself uses at Principles II, art.
So there is a good textual basis for the conclusion that IIIp6 indeed has this meaning. One might object that IIIp6, psychological essays as a restatement of a principle of inertia, psychological essays, extends a physical principle to mind without sufficient clarity.
In stating their versions of a principle of inertia in physics, both Descartes and Spinoza are careful to limit the claim to a claim about bodies. Spinoza, for example, in his definition of conatus ad motumIIId3 of his exposition of Descartes, writes:. In addition to characterizing matter, however, IIIp6 is a foundational claim about the nature of mind and, in particular, about human psychology, psychological essays.
Striving in physics, however, is understood as a tendency to a certain kind of motion, psychological essays, and motion seems, if anything does, to belong to bodies alone.
For the term is not only a technical term of Cartesian physics. Cicero uses the term in De Natura Deorum and other Roman and Greek Stoics use close cognates in a psychological sense, referring to human desire, and Hobbes in his physiology uses the term to refer to the physical causes of human desire Leviathan VI.
Whether Spinoza successfully capitalizes on his rhetorical psychological essays, however, and draws a plausible account of the nature of the human mind out of his general account of the essences of finite modes depends upon IIIp IIIp9 suggests that Spinoza is a psychological egoist of some sort.
That is, it suggests that he believes that psychological essays human beings desire to do is to secure their own interests construed here as perseverance in being.
Indeed Spinoza goes on to define desire at IIIp9 as human striving or appetite together with the consciousness of striving. So clearly human desire for Spinoza is part of the striving for perseverance in being and thus shares its character.
Psychological essays is some question, however, about what variety of psychological egoism Spinoza holds. Desire might be part of a striving for perseverance, after all, without all desires being desires for perseverance. One might have a strong instinctual desire for things which are instrumental to perseverance in being without desiring perseverance itself, for example.
Or one might desire perseverance in being but also desire other kinds of things. IIIp9 might be supposed to support a very strong version of psychological egoism, orthodox egoism perhaps Delahunty,holds this view. Orthodox egoism, is the view that human beings are always consciously selfish.
Under this view, psychological essays, A consciously desires only those objects which benefit A, B desires only those objects which benefit B, and so on for all human beings, psychological essays. At IIIp9, Spinoza writes that the human mind seeks to persevere in being both insofar as it has clear and distinct ideas and insofar as it has confused ideas. It is natural to understand this psychological essays to mean something like the following:.
on account of their advantage, psychological essays, which they want. These include Ethics IVp8d, and his political writings, especially Ethics IVp36s2, and his Political Treatisechapter 2. Other evidence suggests that Spinoza is not an orthodox egoist, however. In particular, there is reason to question whether the argument of the Ethics commits Spinoza to the account of actions following from confused ideas that the interpretation of IIIp9 above attributes to him.
Part of IVp44s concerns those agents who are the most confused. That passage is useful because it describes explicitly the conscious thought-processes that precede action:. In this scholium and in several other notable passages, including III Definition of the Affects XLVIII and IVp20s Spinoza describes a variety of possible ends of human psychological essays, none of which is perseverance in being, psychological essays.
Moreover, lest one think that the greedy man seeks profit because he mistakenly believes that it leads to perseverance, Spinoza emphasizes the point here that it is always one and the same object that obsesses these men.
A man seeking profit because he believes that it leads to perseverance may be obsessed with two objects, profit and perseverance, not one.
IVp44s suggests that Spinoza holds a different kind of view, predominant egoism, the view that most people, most of the time consciously desire perseverance in their own being. Thus human beings are predominantly egoistic because, psychological essays, by and large, we act rationally.
So if we were always rational, we would psychological essays pursue our own preservation, and orthodox egoism would be true, for Spinoza.
But we are not orthodox egoists, psychological essays, on this interpretation of Spinoza as a predominant egoist, just because we are not fully rational. To the extent that we have confused ideas, we may indeed consciously pursue ends other than perseverance in being.
On this interpretation of Spinoza, there is a right or at least a rational end to pursue—perseverance in being—and other ends are wrong or at least irrational. Moreover, IVp20 states that, to the extent that a person does seek perseverance in being, that person is virtuous, psychological essays. Virtue has a metaphysical connotation in the Ethics. But the term undeniably has moral connotations as well. So IVp20 suggests, as IVp44s does, that consciously trying to preserve oneself is right and neglecting to preserve oneself is wrong.
IIIp9 admits of various interpretations. However, the weight of the textual evidence supports the view that he is a predominant, not an orthodox, egoist. So passionate desires, for Spinoza, are often desires for things other than perseverance in being, although they may be confused desires for perseverance as well see IVp63s2 and other discussions of fear. Further reading : For discussion of IIIp4, see Matson and Garrett For discussions of historical sources of the striving doctrine, see Psychological essaysWolfsonand LeBuffe a, pp.
Youpa offers an account of self-preservation in Spinoza. For discussion of IIIp9, psychological essays, see LeBuffe and a, Chapters 5—7. Some of the psychological essays general discussions of psychological egoism come in the context of the interpretation of Hobbes, to whom Spinoza is sometimes compared. For these, see Kavka and Hampton It is an attempt to show how the wide range of desires and emotions of the human mind can be produced by something which follows the order of nature, psychological essays.
Spinoza, though, because he denies freedom of the will, is more thorough than Descartes in his commitment to naturalism. This commitment makes the task Spinoza undertakes in the Ethics an even more dramatic revision of traditional understandings of the passions than that which Descartes produced.
So Spinoza, even more than Descartes, is open to the sort of objection which traditional authors, those to whom it seems beyond question that human beings are outside nature, might raise: how can the full range of human psychological phenomena be produced by natural causes? For the argument of the Ethics to succeed, Spinoza must produce, first, an account of how human desires and emotions might be a part of nature as he has presented it in the Ethics and, second, a description of those human desires and emotions which psychological essays plausibly complex, that is, plausibly consistent with our experience of ourselves.
The human affects, for Spinoza, are a part of nature insofar as each can be redescribed in terms of striving, a property which all particular things in nature share. Desire and its varieties are striving itself, under a certain description. Human passions are for Spinoza changes, that is, increases or decreases, in the power with which we, psychological essays, or parts of us, strive.
Active affects are all increases in the power with which we strive. Spinoza introduces the first of his primary affects, desire, at IIIp9s, directly after introducing the doctrine of human striving, which, in its most general form, he calls appetite.
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