A Response: The Knowledge of Good and Bad

Lorenzo Vinciguerra

The philosophy of Spinoza begins with the question of good and bad. It is by means of this question that Spinoza comes to philosophy at the beginning of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.¹ Again, it is with the question of the highest good and beatitude that the Ethics ends, after leading the way to it through its demonstrations. Nadler’s contribution also deserves credit for moving beyond where interpreters will often stop, namely, the first stage of Spinoza’s conception of good and bad. We may call this first stage “critical.” It underscores Spinoza’s relativism or subjectivism, according to which the notions of good and bad, as well as the notions of perfection and imperfection, are of a merely relative value: good and bad are only manners of thinking. However, although these notions do not refer to any reality as such, or we may say, although they do not say anything about the intrinsic nature of things, they are not nothing. Nadler is thus right not to be content with the pars destruens of the doctrine, and Spinoza’s refusal to ontologize that which is bad. The critical part is but a decisive propaedeutic. It contributes in the effort to distinguish ethics from morals and to get rid of the problem of radical evil and its justification. Nonetheless, if we hope to understand the position that Spinoza develops on a classical question of philosophy since at least Socrates, it is insufficient.

In other words, what is good and what is bad is not only a matter of opinion or prejudice, nor even a simple expression of desire, even after the relationship of the knowledge of good and human appetite will have been reversed: “It is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it.”² As “qualities,” the notions of good and bad, according to Nadler, would describe a kind of “objective reality,” something “mind-independent.” To make his case, Nadler judiciously expands his field of analysis to accommodate the entirety of the Ethics. He handily relies on a series of excerpts, grouped into nine separate theses, so many arguments taken directly from the text, all of which are intended to cover and even enlarge the scope of a doctrine more articulate than what we habitually believe. Indeed, the anchoring in the affects and in desire makes it possible to think about good and bad in a way which is not simply or only relativistic. The good’s relation to desire opens the field of investigation onto a conception of good involving a certain objectivity, capable of being universalized, since it is based on the possibility of reaching a sure knowledge of what is truly useful to us. Reoriented in this way, the question of good and bad touches on the knowledge of universal laws which govern desire in view of its objects. Taken back up with respect to “the cause of the increase or decrease of an individual’s power of acting,” it is then possible to reread the new definitions of bonum and malum that Spinoza gives at the beginning of Part 4 of the Ethics as opening onto a new, positive doctrine of variations of power. Hence, without referring to an ontological reality unto itself, good and bad cover a relational reality which is equally well an objective reality to the degree that good and bad are mind-independent. In the full sense of the term, good is whatever increases one’s individual power to perfect his nature. Behind the relativity of values, we find here a certain universal objectivity of that which is good and bad.

The following remarks do not call into question either the merits or the interest of this enlightening reading. I have no substantial disagreement with it. I would, rather, look to further reflect on some issues.

Broadly speaking, with regard to the dialogue between the North American and French schools of Spinoza scholarship, it is worth indicating that the rigor of the argumentative method specific to the internalist reading of texts as demonstrated in the approach of Nadler is not foreign to French Spinoza scholarship. The latter, let it be recalled, remains marked by the important commentary of Martial Gueroult3 and the reinterpretation of Spinoza’s system proposed by Alexandre Matheron.⁴ Indeed, Nadler’s individuation of nine theses that illustrate, in miniature, the different aspects of Spinoza’s position would greatly appeal to anyone attentive to the logical structure of a text like the Ethics. Nonetheless, as shown at the beginning of Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, the ethical journey, as it is experienced, is far from being linear or straight. Rather, more often it is tortuous, even labyrinthine. Is it not true that before composing more geometrico his Ethics, Spinoza himself wandered in search of uncertain goods, longing for his salvation? After many deceptions and disappointments, he then finally faced up to the reality of his desire and his incapacity to establish a novum institutum. In Spinoza’s first text, good and bad advanced masked, so to speak, and only unveil themselves once desire and its veritable object have become better known.

But to find one’s path, one must seek after it. To seek it, one must have lost it. Experience seems to lead to such a situation sooner or later, in that it makes us aware of the vanity of our old ways. This quest and its accompanying inquiry are likely to succeed only if they rally all of one’s forces, Spinoza suggested. Such a task cannot be satisfied by mere proofs of thought. It comes with experience, it is forged and molded by an experiential itinerary. Although the temporal and historical dimension is not entirely absent from Nadler’s reflection, it is for the most part left in the background without being really explored or treated thematically. His argument is suspended, so to speak, within the logical framework extracted from Spinoza. However, as is shown by Spinoza’s earliest narrative, the experience of good and bad is a prelude to philosophical life. Good and bad are certainly relative notions, but the affects of sadness and despair, to mention only those two, are entirely real for ethical purposes. Likewise, the nine theses accounted for by Nadler, which are like doctrinal landmarks that help us orient ourselves in the cartography of the Ethics, ought to look to accommodate the temporal and even existential dimension of Spinoza’s thought that accounts for our ethical life from the point of view of its becoming. Such was the approach adopted by Pierre-François Moreau, whose interpretation focuses on the experiential dimension of Spinoza’s philosophy, a philosophy which is indeed as admirable for its coherence as for its power of abstraction.5 The point of such an alternative approach is not to contradict the virtues of the so-called architectonic approach, but, rather, to confirm them in shedding light on Spinoza’s system from within it by appealing to the experience of the person that inhabits it.

Nadler’s contribution shows that Spinozist relativism is not exhausted under the heading of “subjectivism.” He further shows that the relativity of desire is based on a kind of qualitative objectivity that is likely to emerge from the diversity of the values and morals that humans can embrace. Despite cultural differences, the question of good and bad remains a universal anthropological query. The multiplicity of uses and customs are not an obstacle to the ethical theory, but, rather, prepare it in virtue of their inherent contradictions. At the same time, once grounded in Spinoza’s philosophy of power, the objectivity of good differs from any abstract universalism. Yet Spinoza conceives an ethical theory that is valid and useful for all humans, anytime and anywhere. Thus, Nadler’s chapter gives us the instruments necessary to distinguish relativism from subjectivism, on the one hand, and objectivity from universality on the other, all the while preparing a possible articulation between the relativism of values and a relational and objective conception of good.

That being said, one must wonder about a proposition that did not entirely find its place in Nadler’s cartography of arguments (the nine theses). I am thinking of Spinoza’s claim that “knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge,”6 furthered by his claim that “if men were born free, they would form no concept of good and evil so long as they remained [essent] free.”⁷ Reading these passages, one is entitled to believe that the experience of freedom is situated beyond good and bad, or that, at the very least, it tends to free us from these notions. It is therefore important to distinguish between the true knowledge of good and bad and the adequate knowledge of good and bad. We can see that they do not amount to the same thing if we keep in mind that “no affect can be restrained by the true knowledge of good and evil [vera boni et mali cognitio] insofar as it is true [quatenus vera],”⁸ as Spinoza was the first to experience, and moreover, if we note that though there can a true knowledge of good and bad, there is, however, no adequate knowledge of bad. For the same reason, one can ask whether we need to dismiss the possibility of an adequate knowledge of good as well. Since this aspect of the question remains hidden in the background, it would be interesting to explore further this difference between true knowledge and adequate knowledge with regard to the good and bad binary, perhaps as a means of trying to free ourselves from the apparent Manichean dualisms in which one fatally ends up finding oneself when opposing relative and the universal, subjective and objective, passive and active, or good and bad. In other words, one might ask if according to the “objectivist” perspective put forward by Nadler it is still possible to maintain a perfect symmetry within the good and bad binary.

In effect, while on the path of ethical progress, would it not be appropriate to positively consider, as much as we can, that which we call “bad,” “sadness,” or a “decrease of power”? Are these not to be treated like so opportunities for us to exercise our understanding and thereby augment our power of acting? In this sense, objectively speaking, there would only be “good,” and bad would remain merely subjective, relative, partial, and, briefly put, imaginative, if not purely imaginary. Everything may not be good, but anything, when related to the totality of substance, expresses a positive degree of its power: “By reality and perfection I understand the same thing.”⁹ Despite this, one might object, should we not consider that insofar as sadness is a transition to a state of lesser perfection, it is still “bad,” and irreducibly so? Doubt can arise, especially in virtue of the fact that relating that which is bad to God as to its cause would imply the possibility to hate God. Spinoza categorically excludes this possibility, just like the love toward God cannot turn into its opposite.¹⁰ Nevertheless, since we understand God as the cause of all things, don’t we thereby consider him as the cause of sadness? To that ultimate question, Spinoza replied: “Insofar as we understand the causes of sadness, it ceases to be a passion, i.e. … to that extent it ceases to be sadness. And so, insofar as we understand God to be the cause of sadness, we rejoice.”11 In other words, “to the degree that” [quatenus], “as long as” [quamdiu], “as much as we can” [quantum potest] account for the production of adequate ideas, there is really only joy, and, in keeping with the terms in use, good. In this way, Spinoza pursues, and renews in his own manner, the tradition of ethical intellectualism, since if we understand things adequately, including our sadness, we are joyful. Not only is there no guilt or responsibility to be found for sadness, but the more it is known by us, the less we suffer from it. This is not a consolation, nor even a promise, but the result of a mathematics of affects.

Notes

Translated by Firmin Havugimana, PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis

1    See TIE §1 [G II 5]: “After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as [my] mind was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself” [“Cum viderem omnia, a quibus, et quae timebam, nihil neque boni, neque mali in se habere, nisi quatenus ab iis animus movebatur, constitui tandem inquirere, an aliquid daretur, quod verum bonum, et sui communicabile esset.”].

2    E3p9s: “constat [ … ] nihil nos conari, velle, appetere, neque cupere, quia id bonum esse judicamus; sed contra nos, propterea aliquid bonum esse, judicare, quia id conamur, volumus, appetimus, atque cupimus.”

3    See Martial Gueroult, Spinoza, 1: Dieu and Spinoza, 2: L’âme (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968 and 1974).

4    See Alexandre Matheron, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969).

5    See Pierre-François Moreau, Spinoza: L’expérience et l’éternité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994).

6    E4p64: “Cognitio mali cognitio est inadaequata.”

7    E4p68: “Si homines nascerentur liberi, nullum boni, et mali formarent conceptum, quamdium liberi essent.” See also E4p68s.

8    E4p14.

9    E2d6: “Per realitatem, et perfectionem idem intelligo.”

10  See E5p18 and E5p18c.

11  See E5p18c and E5p18s.