Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editors’ Introduction
- Winch, Spinoza and the Human Body
- Note on the Text
- List of Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Method and Judgement
- Chapter 2 Substance and Attributes
- Chapter 3 Negation, Limitation and Modes
- Chapter 4 Mind and Body
- Chapter 5 The Emotions, Good and Evil
- Chapter 6 The Life of Reason
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - The Life of Reason
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editors’ Introduction
- Winch, Spinoza and the Human Body
- Note on the Text
- List of Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Method and Judgement
- Chapter 2 Substance and Attributes
- Chapter 3 Negation, Limitation and Modes
- Chapter 4 Mind and Body
- Chapter 5 The Emotions, Good and Evil
- Chapter 6 The Life of Reason
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I’d like now to turn to an issue which is fundamental to Spinoza's project, namely showing how the life of reason is possible. Demonstrating this is the goal of the last part of the Ethics. Remember that the identity of the body, which is the object of a given idea, presupposes the idea of which it is the object, just as much as does the identity of the idea presuppose its extended object. It's quite important to realise this in thinking in connection with what Spinoza says in Part IV about the life of reason.
As we have seen, the notion of virtue is defined primarily in terms of the powers of an individual, so that a man's virtue is identical with his powers. This leads to a certain egocentrism in both Spinoza's psychology and his ethics. Yet, at the same time, Spinoza does seem to want to have the word ‘virtue’ carry ethical force. He wants to retain the notion of a virtuous life, so that his idea is that the man is, as it were, living a virtuous life insofar as he is developing his proper virtues, in other words: his proper powers.
Now, what that amounts to depends entirely on what conception you have of the identity of him whose virtue is in question. A lot of Spinoza's discussion does give the impression that the identity in question is physical, especially in the early stages, for example, in Part II where there is that long quasiphysiological digression concerning the nature of the human body. But there is another strand in Spinoza's thinking – on which the identity of a human body isn't to be conceived on a biological model. It isn't that which a doctor would call the same living body from birth to death which constitutes what Spinoza would call ‘the body’ of a given man, the man whose mind is the idea of that body. No – as I understand Spinoza, a man's identity is to be understood in terms of a certain coherence in the way that he lives.
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- Spinoza on Ethics and Understanding , pp. 121 - 138Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2020