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Spinozistic Moral Imperatives [draft of a draft of a draft]
Michael LeBuffe
Spinoza’s accounts of commands of reason (rationis dictamina) in the Ethics provide the
resources for a distinctive and appealing theory of moral imperatives. The theory has two
elements. First, it emphasizes the presence to mind of moral imperatives. They are
associated closely with those features of the external world that we continuously regard
as present in sense perception. Second, it emphasizes incrementalism. Imperatives vary
incrementally in the extent to which they are known and in the kinds of circumstances in
which they apply. To be a command of reason, on this theory, is not to be different in
kind from all other moral imperatives but to occupy extremes of both ranges: moral
imperatives are known to all agents and apply in all circumstances.
In this essay, I present this theory of moral imperatives and advertise its appeal.
The presentation emphasizes the theory’s two elements as they arise out of the account of
reason in Part 2 of the Ethics. The Spinozistic theory of moral imperatives draws upon
this account of reason more than Spinoza himself does, but it does so in a way—I will
argue—that is consonant with the accounts of reason, the commands of reason, and other
accounts of the value of action in the Ethics. In advertising the theory, I will describe the
attractive and unusual accounts implicit in it of the universality of morality, of
responsibility and cooperation, and of the relation between morality and motivation.
1. Reason and its Commands in the Ethics
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Part Four of the Ethics includes several commands of reason. The most general of these
may be found at 4p18s:
Because reason demands nothing contrary to nature, it therefore demands
this: that each person love himself; seek his own advantage, what is
certainly to his advantage; want what certainly leads man to greater
perfection; and, absolutely, that each person should strive, as far as it is in
him, to preserve his own being.1
Other claims describing the guidance of reason, actions from reason, or human affects
that agree with reason demand a short interpretative leap from description to prescription,
but may probably be classified as commands of reason as well. For example, Spinoza
argues at 4p65 that under the guidance of reason we follow the greater of two goods; at
4p66, that this is true regardless of time at which the goods might be obtained; at 4p63,
that doing good in order to avoid evil is not an action from reason; and at 4p53 that
humility does not arise from reason. It is a short leap to read into such descriptions a view
on which reason commands that we pursue the greater of two goods; that we do so
regardless of when the goods arise; that we not do good in order to avoid evil; and that
we not fall under the influence of humility.
1
In this essay, I will frequently refer, as here, in an abbreviated form to the formal
apparatus of the Ethics. For example, “4p18s” abbreviates Ethics, Part 4, Proposition 18,
Scholium. I refer to passages in Spinoza’s work outside of the formal apparatus of his
Ethics using the volume number, page number and line number of Carl Gebhardt, ed.,
Spinoza Opera (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1972). For example, “Spinoza 1972, II/222 1721” abbreviates volume II, page 222, lines 17 to 21 of Gebhardt. All translations in this
essay are my own.
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What these commands have in common is their source, reason (ratio), which
unsurprisingly is for Spinoza a technical term. At 2p40s2 of the Ethics, Spinoza defines
three varieties of cognition: imagination, reason, and intuition. Ideas of reason, he writes
there, are “common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things (2p38c, 2p39,
2p39c, and 2p40).” The use of ‘reason’ in the practical parts of the Ethics, Parts 4 and 5,
and the 2p40s2 account is univocal. This is evident from the fact that in Parts 4 and 5
Spinoza frequently depends upon his claims about reason in general and especially upon
his claims about the “common notions” at 2p38 and its corollary. Three examples of this
connection, which is frequently overlooked in scholarly work on Spinoza, are notable. I
introduce them here not to explicate them fully—the common notions will be the subject
of much of the discussion below—but only to show that in the context of discussing the
role of reason in human action, Spinoza continues to use ‘reason’ in the technical sense
familiar from his epistemology and philosophy of mind.
At 4p35, Spinoza argues that men necessarily agree in nature only to the extent
that they live from the guidance of reason. The demonstration depends upon 3p3, a
proposition fundamental to Spinoza’s intellectualism in which he associates a mind’s
actions with its adequate ideas. The adequate ideas that Spinoza cites explicitly in the
demonstration to 3p3 are, however, a particular kind of adequate idea: they are the
common notions introduced at 2p38c. Where Spinoza writes about “men who live from
the guidance of reason” at 4p35, then, he refers to reason as it is characterized in Part 2
and invoked at 3p3: to live under the guidance of reason is to be motivated by the
common notions.
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A second important example is 4p66, in which Spinoza argues that from the
guidance of reason, we seek the greater future good before the lesser present one and the
lesser present evil before the greater future one. This indifference to time derives from
2p44c2 (via 4p62), the claim that it is the nature of reason to perceive things from the
standpoint of eternity. Spinoza defends 2p44c2 by referring to 2p38. Briefly his view is
that because the properties understood in the common notions are always present in
sensation time cannot be relevant to them.
Finally, in describing the power that minds have to resist the influence of passion
at 5p7 Spinoza argues that because ideas of reason are always present to mind they are
pro tanto more powerful than other kinds of ideas, including passions, that may or may
not be present. The demonstration depends upon 2p38 once again. It is the ideas
discussed at 2p38 and later included among ideas of reason at 2p40s2 that are pro tanto
more powerful than other ideas.2
The reason that demands certain actions and helps us to resist passion in Parts 4
and 5 of the Ethics, then, just is the reason that is introduced in Part 2 of the Ethics. The
features that I take to be distinctive of Spinoza’s account of moral imperatives, presence
to mind and incrementalism, have their source and frequently their clearest expression in
that earlier, general discussion of ideas of reason. Here I will rely heavily upon Part 2 of
the Ethics, then, in describing these features of reason and in building a Spinozistic
theory of moral imperatives.
2
I offer a more detailed account of the relation between the second kind of knowledge
and the commands of reason in, “Necessity and the Commands of Reason,” forthcoming
in Andrew Youpa and Matthew Kisner, eds., Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
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1.1 Presence to Mind
Ideas of reason inherit presence to mind from the first kind of knowledge, imagination.
Ideas of imagination on Spinoza’s account include any ideas—including notably our
sensory ideas, our passions, and our memories—that have partial causes external to the
self. Ethics 2p17 and its scholium introduces these ideas together with presence to mind
as a distinctive feature:
2p17: If the human body is affected with a mode that involves the nature
of some external body, the mind will regard that same external body as
actually existing, or as present to it, until the body is affected by a mode
that precludes the existence, or presence, of that body.
Scholium [excerpt]: The affections of the human body, the idea of which
represent external bodies as though present to us, we shall call the images
of things, even if they do not reproduce the figures of things. And when
the mind regards bodies in this way, we shall say that it imagines.
To take the paradigm case of sense perception, Spinoza takes the visual sensation of the
sun to arise when the human body interacts with the sun in such a way that there is a
change in the human body. This is the “mode that involves the nature” of the sun. When
the human body changes, the mind does also: it now possesses an idea in which the
external body, the sun, is thought to be present to it.
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Ideas of reason represent their objects as present to mind just because they are
components of ideas of imagination. This point is clearest in the demonstration to the
proposition that introduces the common notions and that arises so frequently in
discussions of reason later in the Ethics, 2p38:
2p38: Those things that are common to all and that are equally in the part
and in the whole cannot be conceived except adequately.
Dem.: Let A be a thing that is common to all bodies and is equally in the
part and in the whole of each body. I say that A cannot be conceived
except adequately. For its idea (2p7c) will necessarily be adequate in God,
both to the extent that he has the idea of the human body and also to the
extent that he has ideas of its affections, which (2p16, 2p25, 2p27) involve
in part (ex parte involvunt) the nature both of the human body and also of
the external bodies. That is (2p12, 2p13), the idea will necessarily be
adequate in God to the extent that he constitutes the human mind or to the
extent that he has the ideas that are in the human mind. The mind therefore
(2p11C) necessarily perceives A adequately both to the extent that it
perceives itself and also to the extent that it perceives its own or any
external body, nor can A be perceived in any other way.
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Cor.: From this it follows that there are certain ideas or notions common to
all men. For (2l2) all bodies agree in certain things, which (2p38) must be
perceived adequately, or clearly and distinctly, by all.
As Spinoza notes in his definition of imagination at 2p17s, ideas of imagination may fail
to “reproduce the figures of things”: we may not fully understand what we see and this
failure can lead to error. Nevertheless, he argues at 2p38, if there is a property common
to all bodies—including notably the human body and the external body with which it
interacts—any imaginative idea that results will include an adequate understanding of
that property in the external body. (Ideas of reason are therefore a principal source of our
knowledge of the external world in Spinoza.) If the property in question is, for example,
being either at motion or at rest, then a person looking at the sun, however much he might
mistake the sun’s size or distance, will not mistake and indeed may be said to know in the
experience that the object seen is either at motion or at rest. Such knowledge, as a
component of an idea of imagination, will also be present to mind in the same way that
the idea itself is present to mind. Because every external body and every human body
have the common properties that are the objects of the common notions, moreover,
knowledge of common properties will be continuously present to all human minds.
Indeed, although Spinoza emphasizes human minds in Part 2, the argument of the Ethics
suggests that because every body has these properties and there is an idea of every body,
all minds whatever have this knowledge in this robustly conscious way.3
3
This unusual feature of Spinoza’s theory of mind has challenged sympathetic
commentators. I return to it in my defense of the appeal of Spinozism in Section 2.4
below.
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Spinoza’s discussion of reason at 5p7 shows both that he takes presence to mind
to be an important feature of ideas of reason for human beings and also why he takes it to
be so:
5p7: Affects that arise from or are intensified by reason are, if we take
account of time, more powerful than those that are related to singular
things that we consider to be absent.
Dem.: We consider a thing to be absent not because of the affect by means
of which we imagine it, but because of this, that our body is affected by
another affect, that precludes the thing’s existence (2p17). Therefore an
affect which is related (refertur) to a thing that we consider to be absent is
not of such a nature that it surpasses the rest of a man’s actions and power
(see 4p6); but, to the contrary, its nature is such that it can be checked in
some way by those affections that preclude the existence of its external
cause (4p9). An affect, however, that arises from reason, is related
necessarily to the common properties of things (see the definition of
reason in 2p40s2), which we also consider to be present (for there can be
nothing that precludes their present existence) and which we always
imagine in the same way (2p38). Therefore, such an affect will always
remain the same, and consequently (5a1), affects that are opposed to it and
that are not reinforced (foventur) by their external causes, must adapt
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themselves more and more to it, until they are no longer opposed. To that
extent, an affect that arises from reason is more powerful.
An idea that is continuously present to mind, Spinoza argues here, is pro tanto more
powerful than one that is not. Presence to mind is a kind of robust consciousness
characteristic of sensation. Although other ideas may be present to mind from time to
time, ideas of the common notions, just because they are ideas of properties possessed by
all bodies, are present to mind continuously. As influences over a person’s activity,
Spinoza argues at 5p7, ideas of the common notions are in virtue of their continuous
presence to mind pro tanto more powerful motives than other ideas.
1.2 Incrementalism
Incrementalism, the doctrine that important explanatory properties are pervasively
present to greater or lesser degrees rather than being simply present or absent, is
characteristic of Spinoza’s philosophy.4 It is most evident, perhaps, in his discussions of
the place of human beings in nature. To insist that human beings are not a kingdom
within a kingdom is for Spinoza to insist that we are not conscious, active, or passionate
in ways that are different in kind from other things in nature. Instead we are—or tend to
be—conscious, active, and passionate to a different degree from other things and from
one another.
4
This definition of ‘incrementalism’ is adapted from Don Garrett, “Representation and
Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination,” in Interpreting
Spinoza: Critical Essay, edited by Charlie Huenemann (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 18. I am indebted to the same work for drawing my attention to
the importance of incrementalism for Spinoza.
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Ideas of reason also are present in different minds to different degrees. The ideas
introduced at 2p38, the common notions, are ideas of properties common to all bodies.
Such ideas meet the condition stipulated for the adequate knowledge of a property in the
imagination of an external body—that the property in question be wholly in the human
body and in the external body—in all cases. That is, every human body and every
external body has the properties in question in the right way. As a result the ideas will be
adequate in every mind or known to all. They will be true of all external objects. And, in
any case of acquaintance in sensation, a mind will possess its understanding in the
relevant way, as it applies to the external object with which the person interacts at the
moment. As ideas of common properties, however, the common notions are an extreme,
one end of a range of cases in which human minds might know external objects in
sensation. If there are less abundant properties, properties common to some human bodies
and some external objects, then those properties might be known in the imaginative ideas
of some minds in the same way that the properties common to all bodies are known to all
minds.
At 2p39 Spinoza introduces this incrementalism. He argues that there are other
properties that meet the stipulated condition in some cases; that is, there are properties
that are common to some human bodies and some external bodies and so are known less
perfectly and reflect truths that are less universal. The proposition, demonstration and
corollary allow for the more or less frequent possession of shared properties that are
otherwise similar to those described in 2p38. Spinoza’s incrementalism about reason
emerges clearly in the corollary:
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2p39: The idea of a thing, which is common to the human Body and
external bodies that usually affect the human Body, and which is equally
in the part and in the whole of each, will be adequate in the human Mind.
Dem.: Let A be a thing that is common to and a property of the human
body and certain external bodies and that is equally in the human body and
in the same external bodies and, finally, that is equally in the part and in
the whole of each external body. An adequate idea of A will be given in
God (2p7c) both insofar as he has an idea of the human body and also
insofar as he has ideas of those external bodies. Suppose now that the
human body is affected by an external body through this that they have in
common, that is, through A, the idea of this affection will involve the
property, A (2p16), and therefore (2p7c) the idea of this affection insofar
as it involves A will be adequate in God insofar as he is affected with the
idea of the human body, that is, insofar as he constitutes the nature of the
human mind (2p13). Therefore (2p11), this idea is also adequate in the
human mind.
Cor.: From this is follows that a mind whose body has more in common
with other bodies is more able to perceive more things adequately.
By 2p38, all minds at all times have robustly conscious, adequate ideas of properties
common to all bodies in their ideas of the common notions. Moreover, by 2p39, some
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minds have robustly conscious, adequate ideas of some other kinds of properties. The
number and kind of such ideas that minds possess vary incrementally, depending upon
the constitution of the human bodies and the abundance of the relevant properties in the
external bodies with which the human bodies interact.
The corollary to 2p39 indicates the importance of this result to Spinoza’s
epistemology and moral philosophy: the existence of properties that are similar to but less
abundant than common properties suggests that minds may take advantage of such
properties to gain more knowledge of the external world. Where such ideas have affective
components, such knowledge will also help a mind to master passions by means of ideas
that possess the same pro tanto advantage, though to a lesser degree, as the common
notions. Affects arising from the common notions, on the argument of 5p7, will be more
powerful than any idea that is not present in all of a mind’s imaginations just insofar as
they are continuously present. Similarly, any affects arising from the sorts of ideas
described in 2p39 will be both present to mind and adequate, and they will be possess
something close to the pro tanto advantage of affects arising from the common notions to
the extent that the property in question is present in the external bodies with which the
human body interacts.
1.3 Spinoza and Spinozism about Imperatives
Spinoza does not explicitly identify the commands of reason with ideas of reason, and it
is not clear in the Ethics what precisely the relation is. Perhaps the commands of reason
require those actions that we perform when we are motivated by ideas of reason? Perhaps
they are themselves ideas that we have that arise from ideas of reason but they are not
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themselves ideas of reason. Perhaps they just are a variety of idea of reason. As an
interpretative question, each option presents puzzles. I will not attempt to resolve the
question here. That is one respect—there will be others—in which the theory here is not
properly regarded as Spinoza’s own theory. I will consider it to be characteristic of
Spinozistic moral imperatives that they are ideas similar to the common notions: adequate
ideas that are powerfully present to mind in the same way that common notions are, that
is, continuously and in ways appropriate to a particular situation. By “appropriate” I
mean that, just as ideas of reason in sensation are knowledge of universally common
properties as those properties occur in the objects of sensation, so the commands of
reason include their own interpretations that are, in some sense, correct.
If it is not clear that this is Spinoza’s own view, I think that it is nevertheless
appropriate to find the view Spinozistic because of the emphasis that Spinoza puts on the
presence of moral ideas in imagination. In addition to 5p7, this emphasis is clear in the
scholium to 5p10, where Spinoza urges us to resist the influence of harmful passions by
doing what we can to make commands of reason more robustly present in imagination:
The best thing, therefore, that we can do while we do not have perfect
knowledge of our affects is to conceive of…sure maxims of life, to
commit them to memory, and to apply them continually to particular cases
we frequently meet in life, so that our imagination will be affected by
them extensively, and they will always be manifest (in promptu) to us. For
example, we have asserted as a maxim of life (see 4p46 and 4p46s) that
hate should be conquered by love, or nobility, not however by reciprocal
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hatred. So that we may always have this rule of reason ready when it is
needed, however, we should think and meditate often about common
human wrong and how and in what way they may best be driven away by
nobility. Thus, we will join the image of an injury to the imagination of
this rule and (2p18) it will always be at hand when an injury is done to
us... ...We should think about tenacity in the same way in order to set aside
fear; that is, we should recount in detail and frequently imagine the
common dangers of life, and how, by presence of mind and by strength of
character they may best be avoided and overcome.
This passage is not textual evidence one way or the other for the interpretative thesis that
commands of reason are continuously present to mind in the same way that ideas of
reason are. It might be taken to indicate that they are not continuously present to mind,
and that this is the problem the moral sage ought to remedy. Or it might be taken to
indicate that the moral sage can build on the advantage that the commands of reason
already have by working to make their presence to the imagination still greater than it is
already. On either reading, however, 5p10s does indicate that Spinoza associates robust
awareness in imagination, the mental faculty that he associates with sensation, with the
motivational influence of moral imperatives. That association justifies understanding
moral imperatives that are present to mind in a manner similar to that in which minds
know properties of objects in sensation to be Spinozistic moral imperatives.
If commands of reason follow ideas of reason with respect to presence of mind,
do they do so with respect to incrementalism as well? Spinoza does not offer commands
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that are limited in scope in the same way that, at 2p39, he describes ideas of reason that
represent properties shared by some but not all bodies. (Indeed even his invocation of
ideas of reason at 5p7 does not refer to the ideas described at 2p39. The demonstration
suggests that ‘reason’ ought to be understood to concern common properties alone.) I
think, however, that there is again a good basis in the Ethics, for taking a Spinozistic
theory of imperatives to include such commands. One reason to find the view Spinozistic
is that Spinoza’s normative ethics tends to make action from knowledge a condition of
reasonable and right action. For example, he argues at 4p63C that by a desire from
reason, a person directly pursues the good and flees evil only indirectly. The implication
of this view, since all forms of emotion arising from the apprehension of evil are harmful
passions on Spinoza’s account, is that rational action does not arise from the
apprehension of evil but from knowledge of the good. He goes on to illustrate his position
in a scholium: “The sick man eats what disgusts him because he fears death; the healthy
man, on the other hand, enjoys eating and so also enjoys life more than he would if he
feared death and directly desired to avoid it.” The point is that eating healthy good from
knowledge and positive love for it is a good action, but that the same action from an
inadequate idea and the wrong passion is wrong. This position suggests that if there are
ideas of reason that are known only by some minds and in some circumstances, those
ideas might be the basis for right action in those circumstances alone: many moral
imperatives we might devise on Spinoza’s behalf will have a scope limited by
circumstances and, in particular, by the agent’s knowledge.
A second reason for taking a Spinozistic theory of imperatives to incorporate the
incrementalism of Spinoza’s account of reason is that Spinoza frequently does emphasize
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the importance of particular situations—which minds contemplating which actions in
what circumstances—for understanding the rightness and the rationality of action. At
4p59 he argues for something like this point, with respect to minds, generally: “To every
action to which we are determined to act from a passion, we can be determined without it,
from reason.” More important, perhaps, Spinoza’s infrequent, strong absolute
recommendations of certain kinds of actions are best interpreted as diagnostic tools.
Notably, he writes at 4p72 that the free man always acts honestly and never acts
deceptively. This proposition is difficult to reconcile with Spinoza’s emphasis on selfpreservation if it is taken itself, after the fashion of a Kantian categorical imperative, as
exceptionless. Scholars have found instead that the proposition describes what a free man
does and so tells us whether we might be free in a particular situation, for example, if we
have acted dishonestly, whether we have acted wholly freely.5 If general normative
claims are to be used to diagnose what is good or not good to do in particular situations,
though, that suggests that what is good or not good varies as particular situations vary. A
localized view of right action such as this one is consonant with an account of practical
reason that is sensitive to the particular states of agents and their surroundings and so can
ground it.
To take stock, the Spinozistic account of imperatives that I have presented here
emphasizes presence to mind and incrementalism. The most basic imperatives, the limit
case analogous to Spinoza’s commands of reason, are present to all minds continuously
5
For an influential account of 4p72, see Don Garrett, “ ‘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-François Moreau (Leiden:
Brill, 1990), 221-38. I have discussed this issue as well. See, “Spinoza’s Normative
Ethics,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:3 (2007), 371-392 and in From Bondage to
Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence (New York: Oxford, 2010), 175-193.
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and bind in all circumstances. They are a kind of common sense.6 Other imperatives are
similar to the limit case in the way that they are known when they are known, but they
are present only to some minds at some times and, because the relevant practical
knowledge is a condition on right action, bind only in some circumstances. They are
incrementally less common. Finally, there are imperatives similar to the imperatives of
Part 5 of Ethics: know your passions! keep nobility present to mind! This last class of
imperatives may indeed bind in all circumstances, but they are not related closely to
reason and are not known in experience. They are not common sense, which we all share
to a greater or lesser degree. Instead they are part of the wisdom of the sage.
2 Spinozism, Imperatives, and Morality
Spinoza’s emphasis on the presence of practical reason in experience and his incremental
naturalism are striking, distinctive, and appealing features of his account of imperatives.
The attraction of Spinozism, generally, may be shown by a comparison to Kantian
conceptions of practical reason and moral imperatives. Kant distinguishes sharply
between the moral and the natural good whereas Spinoza identifies them. This contrast is
most starkly evident, perhaps, in the philosophers’ accounts of the highest good. Spinoza
closely associates the highest good, the knowledge of God, the highest degree of virtue,
and the highest degree of human happiness, self-contentment.7 Kant, however, makes the
highest good consist in virtue and happiness. That is, Kant takes the natural good of
6
[Cite common sense passage from the TTP.]
Spinoza introduces the highest good at 4p28. Other important passages include 4p52, 4
Appendix 4, 5p15, and 5p20. One indication of Spinoza’s association of reason with
imagination is his emphasis on knowledge of the third kind in discussions of the
knowledge of God after 5p20, in the part of the Ethics concerning mind without
imagination. Note LeBuffe and Rutherford.
7
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human being to be something that can be added to the good that a person possesses as a
moral and so extra-natural being.8 Turning to imperatives, Spinoza, as we have seen,
places morality seamlessly in nature. He finds in our human bodies and the objects
around us a source of obligation. Notably, facts about the world—properties that are
common to our bodies and the external objects with which we interact and that are known
in our experience of those objects—yield practical guidance. Kant, however, finds a
source of obligation outside of and above nature. The ground of obligation in moral laws,
he insists in the Preface to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (44-45 or
Akademie 4:389), “must not be sought in the nature of the human being or in the
circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in the concepts of
pure reason; [any] precept, which is based upon principles of mere experience—even if it
is universal in a certain respect—insofar as it rests in the least part on empirical grounds,
perhaps only in terms of a motive, can indeed be called a practical rule but never a moral
law.” Experience can inform our deliberation about how to meet our obligations, but no
fact about the world that is the least part empirical can for Kant be a ground of obligation.
Thus stated in very general terms, and subject of course to a great deal of
interpretation, Spinoza’s position simply looks better than Kant’s. Of course the way that
the world and we happen to be and what we know about the world from experience is the
source of knowledge of what we ought to do. Without doubt it is difficult to say precisely
in what way nature and our knowledge of it inform practical reason. That difficulty does
not change the fact that it is necessary for the praiseworthiness of an action that the world
8
See Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason in Practical Philosophy, edited and translated
by Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 228-229 (or Volume 5,
110-111 of the Akademie edition).
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in which one acts is a certain way rather than some other way. Kant, I think, does not do
enough to acknowledge the strength of his rejection of this position. He does famously
concede that the categorical imperative will require us to tell the truth even the
circumstances of the world in some case are such that doing so will have disastrous
consequences. The position of the Preface, however, requires much more: we should do
what the categorical imperative requires of us even if all circumstances are such that
disastrous consequences always follow. This separation of practical reason from
experience is as mistaken as it could be. Spinoza, by contrast, has a very appealing
general conception of the relationship between experience and practical reason: we ought
to do just what we know from experience to do. Some conclusions about what to do will
be general because they are known in all experience; others, just as important perhaps,
will fall short of perfect generality because they are known in and so ought to be done in
only some circumstances.9 In this section, I will try to build on the appeal of Spinoza’s
view for some fundamental questions about morality.
2.1 Universality and Morality
An imperative of morality is frequently thought to be universal in at least two senses,
applying to agents and to circumstances: everybody should heed it and in all cases.
Kant’s categorical imperatives, for example, clearly have both senses and perhaps are
stronger still: all possible agents should follow them in all possible circumstances. An
imperative of morality is sometimes thought to be universal in a third, epistemic sense as
9
[Soften the criticism of Kant by noting the consequentialist stuff from other writings.
But emphasize the basic structure of Kant’s commitments and the importance to
contemporary ethics, to Kantianism, of the Groundwork.]
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well: everybody might know any genuine moral imperative, that is, it is available to
reason. Kant guarantees this kind of access to the content of morality as well, I think,
making it something like a condition of agency.10
In defending more modest theories of moral imperatives, for example theories of
morality on which moral imperatives are hypothetical imperatives of a certain sort,
authors typically seek to show that the imperatives they find really are moral just by
showing that they are universal in something like these senses. J.W.N. Watkins, for
example, defended an influential interpretation of Hobbes on which Hobbesian moral
imperatives were hypothetical but universal in the sense that they described universal
means to ends that are universally desired: We all want to survive; and keeping covenant
is the best means to survival; therefore we all ought always to keep our covenants.11 It is
not emphasized in Watkins’s account, but the third sense of universality is clearly present
in this interpretation of Hobbes as well. The imperatives under discussion Hobbes clearly
takes to be known by all rational men. They are the laws of nature, “of which no man,
that pretends but reason enough to govern his private family, ought to be ignorant.”12
Universality is a feature of morality for Spinoza as well. Indeed a prominent
commentator has defended an interpretation of Spinoza’s commands of reason under
which their universality is like that of Watkins’s Hobbesian laws of nature.13 I think,
however, that the place of universality in Spinozism is different and, although all three
types of universality contribute to the important functions of imperatives that have them,
10
[ Cite a passage or two in Kant. And Locke and Hobbes]
[Cite Watkins]
12
Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Noel Malcolm (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012) 3: 1139,
ll 3-4.
13
[Curley—and say why I disagree and cite my own discussion of Curley.]
11
21
none is necessary to morality. Genuine moral imperatives may fail to be universal in any
of the three senses.
Under Spinozism, the commands of reason, those imperatives that arise from the
common notions, are indeed universal in the sense that they bind us all in all cases. The
scholium to 4p18 suggests, for example, that all of us ought to seek perseverance in being
in all circumstances. It is also clear from Spinoza’s account of the source of such
commands in the common notions that the commands are readily known in a way that is
distinctive of reason, that is, they are known by all in all experience. Incrementalism in
Spinoza suggests, however, that none of these three sorts of universality are distinctive of
moral imperatives. There are, for example, imperatives that are not known through reason
and that belong only to the sage who has attained an unusual degree of mastery of the
passions. There are also acts that we ought to do from those of our ideas of reason that
are related to properties shared by our bodies and some but not all other bodies. Only
those who know such imperatives and only the circumstances in which they are known
have the kind of obligation that the commands of reason always carry.
So universality in Spinozistic ethics is a kind of limit case. An important set of
imperatives, the commands of reason, are universal in the agent, circumstantial, and
epistemic senses. Perhaps in the best circumstances—in which bodies were maximally
powerful and Spinoza was maximally successful in the project with which his begins the
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, of bringing “as many people as possible, as
easily and securely as possible” to the greatest happiness and the best understanding of
nature—the other imperatives of reason would be known by and applicable to all and
everyone would have the sage’s wisdom robustly present to mind just as the commands
22
of reason are. In actual circumstances, however, genuine imperatives, although similar in
kind to the commands of reason in some ways, nevertheless fall short of universality in
one or more of the three senses.
2.2 Local Imperatives of Reason
The Spinozistic distinction between those ideas that are known to all and apply in all
circumstances and those that are not universally known or applicable is important for
what it is not: a distinction between imperatives that require the pursuit of ends without
qualification or for its own sake and imperatives that require the pursuit of an end for the
sake of some further end. The common notions give rise to commands, the commands of
reason, that are known to all in all circumstances and so apply in all circumstances.
Supposing that ideas of reason present in some but not all minds give rise to commands
as well, the knowledge in which those commands consist is not different in kind from the
knowledge that is a common notion. As Spinoza would say of an idea of the sort
described at 2p39, it is still an idea of reason. It is simply less common. So local
imperatives need not differ in kind from universal imperatives. Just as I must without
qualification pursue the greater of two goods if that is a command arising from a common
notion, so I must without qualification keep left if that is a command arising from a less
common idea of reason.
The result, I think, is a strong and interesting account of etiquette. Two familiar
views about etiquette—both of which are strengthened by the identification of moral
imperatives with categorical imperatives and imperatives of etiquette with hypothetical
imperatives—are suspicious: the requirements of etiquette can never provide an equal or
23
stronger reason for action than the requirements of morality; and etiquette and morality
can sometimes conflict. If we identify the common notions as the source of moral
imperatives and the ideas of reason described in 2p39 as the source of imperatives of
etiquette, Spinozism provides strong responses to both views.
First, because ideas of the same sort—adequate ideas—are the source of both
morality and etiquette, it will not be the case that the commands of morality always
provide a stronger reason for action than the commands of etiquette. Morality requires
honesty, suppose, and etiquette requires keeping left. We may view the demands of
etiquette as quite as strong as the demands of morality for cases like this one: surely some
instances failing to keep left are worse than some instances of dishonesty. Spinozism
vindicates that insight by making morality’s commands and the commands of etiquette
similar in kind.
Second, some social conventions that are known as etiquette might indeed seem
to conflict with morality. In Central Texas, conventions of diet might seem suggest that,
by etiquette, a person should eat one hundred pounds of meat every year. If animal
suffering, self-abuse, and environmental degradation are morally wrong, though, morality
may seem under this assumption to conflict with etiquette in this case: morally speaking,
a person should eat less meat, perhaps none. Spinozism suggests a different and more
appealing way of presenting the example. Etiquette is similar in kind to morality in its
basis and the strength of its demands and different only in the extent to which it is present
in minds. We may therefore draw on familiar arguments for the impossibility of moral
conflict to undermine supposed examples, like this one, of the conflict between etiquette
24
and morality.14 In the terminology of the Ethics, we should say that all adequate ideas are
consistent, and that the common notions (introduced at 2p38), therefore, are consistent
with other, local truths of reason (introduced at 2p39). Likewise, commands of reason
will not conflict with local commands. Undoubtedly there is a localized convention that
meat should be eaten in Central Texas. If that convention conflicts with morality,
Spinozism suggests, that is an indication that it is not genuine and respectable etiquette
there, as perhaps keeping right is. In short, because etiquette is rational under it,
Spinozism has the resources to distinguish between valuable and respectable social
conventions—genuine etiquette—and those that are not valuable and may perhaps be
against reason. A true, if local, demand of reason would not conflict with a universal
imperative.
Of course these features of Spinozism are related. One reason to think that the
commands of reason are stronger than the commands of etiquette is that, in cases of
conflict between morality and etiquette, it seems clear that morality should prevail: it
offers a better reason, and, in the case of well-adjusted person, a stronger motive. Once
we identify etiquette with local commands of reason and therefore give ourselves a
means of distinguishing genuine etiquette from valueless or harmful convention, which is
not rational, this basis for drawing a distinction in kind between morality and etiquette
also vanishes. Genuine etiquette may offer reasons and motives just as strong as or
stronger than those supplied by morality. It is part of morality, even if it lacks
universality. Since etiquette and morality do not conflict, however, this fact never implies
that the less moral action is sometimes best.
14
Note literature on moral conflict, perhaps Brink.
25
2.3 Responsibility and Cooperation
There is good reason to conceive of the distinction between the commands associated
with the common notions and commands that arise from the ideas of reason described in
2p39 as a distinction between moral imperatives and genuine imperatives of etiquette. As
we have seen, the former have and the latter lack much of the universality that is usually
taken to be characteristic of morality. Because the common notions belong to all minds
whatever the commands of reason are universal in the familiar sense of binding all
rational beings in all circumstances.15 Commands arising from localized ideas of reason
are not and so do not.
Although local commands—the commands of etiquette—might be quite as
binding as universal commands in the sense that they are rational requirements to just the
same extent, the presence of reason to imagination gives universal commands, the
commands of reason, a much greater social importance, which may be understood in
terms of responsibility and social cooperation. Supposing that we take a person to be
responsible for wrongdoing whenever she violates a known requirement of reason, the
presence of reason in imagination suggests that persons are always responsible for
15
Understanding which beings are rational beings in this sense, that is, which beings are
capable of practical deliberation under Spinozism, is difficult. Spinoza does offer a
restrictive sense of action—causing something as an adequate cause—which one might
hope could serve as a basis for an account of agency. Making the capacity to act in this
sense of action a necessary condition on agency may be too strong. The argument of
Ethics 5pp7-10 suggests that those deeply influenced by passion are bound by but
regularly fail to follow the commands of reason. That is, they are regulated by commands
that in some sense they cannot follow. On the other hand, it seems clear that the capacity
for action in the narrow sense is sufficient for agency on Spinoza’s own account. We
might say, for example, that an elephant or a computer is an agent if it ever does act as an
adequate cause. Indeed, in some passages, Spinoza also suggests that this condition is
sufficient for being a genuine thing [CITE].
26
violations of the commands of reason. The commands of reason follow from the common
notions, ideas of reason present in all minds. So we may be sure that an agent violating a
command of reason knew consciously at the time of action that she was doing so. Any
violation of them may be understood to be a product of conscious deliberation in which
the moral rule was considered and the decision to violate it explicit. Supposing that it
would be just as wrong, in a given circumstance, to fail to keep left as to act dishonestly,
then, there remains a difference between the two wrongs: the person who fails to drive on
the left may truthfully claim not to know that she should have done so but the person who
fails to act honestly cannot make such a claim. The familiar conviction that moral
violations are worse than violations of etiquette—one sense of which we have already
discredited—can be recast, then, in epistemological terms: moral violations are those in
which the law breaker certainly acted in the knowledge that the action was wrong;
violations of etiquette may or may not be instances of knowingly doing wrong. Of course,
just as ideas of reason that are not ideas of common properties vary incrementally, so
commands that are not moral imperatives may approach universality more or less closely,
such that judgments about responsibility in violating norms of etiquette may likewise
vary.
The universal presence in imagination of moral imperatives, in Spinoza’s account,
also serves to justify our expectations that others will be moral. It is likely that a great
number of laws and other conventions in a given society will be a matter of etiquette, and
a person can understand those conventions more or less comprehensively. A complete
stranger, however, can be confident both that others will—if not always act on the
commands of reason—at least know them, be generally guided by them and also that
27
others will expect that her own actions will be similarly governed. So understood the
commands of reason are core social values. Every society will include them, and, just
because of their importance to responsibility, they might be expected hold a special status
in each society. They do not guarantee cooperation because we do not always act
rationally. They do, however, describe what cooperation in society should be. Spinoza
himself defends these points at 4p37s2:
If men lived under the guidance of reason, each might hold [the right of
nature] without any harm to another (4p35c1). However because they are
vulnerable to affects (4p4c), which far surpass human power, or virtue
(4p6), they are often drawn in different directions (4p33) and oppose one
another (4p34) even while they stand in need of each other’s aid (4p35s).16
Just as one may distinguish between genuine etiquette and mere convention by
reference to the consistency of local imperatives and moral imperatives, one may also
distinguish different spheres and subspheres of society by reference to different
imperatives of etiquette characteristic of them. Our attributions of responsibility and
expectations for conformity to etiquette will vary to the extent that we understand each
sphere and take others to belong or not to belong to a given sphere.
2.4 Morality and Motivation
16
A similar passage opens the Theological Political Treatise: “It is far from true that
everyone can always be led under the guidance of reason alone. For each is drawn by his
own delight, and the mind is so often filled with avarice, ambition, envy, anger and so on
that no place remains for reason” (Spinoza 1972, 3/193 1-4).
28
Spinoza’s intellectualism incorporates a close association between activity and belief. In
each adequate idea that a mind has, it is also active; each inadequate idea in a mind
reflects in part the activity of external things on the mind, and a mind may be less active
to the extent that the activity of external things opposes its own activity. Because of this
close association, the contribution of Spinoza to the question of the relation between
morality and motivation may seem to fall largely outside of the main lines of debate.17
Many of the philosophers debating the question, calling themselves Humean, distinguish
sharply between belief and desire and so do not consider a position like Spinoza’s to
contribute to the debate.18 Such a conclusion would be hasty. Presence to mind in
Spinoza’s theory of moral imperatives is a positive account of motivation associated with
morality that is available to Humeans and anti-Humeans alike. It suggests, following 5p7,
that moral convictions are pro tanto more powerful than other motives because and to the
extent that they are more robustly conscious.
Even supposing that belief and desire are different, it is clear that belief can
contribute to motivation, that is, to the production of action. Beliefs arising in sensation
are especially good candidates because they are prominent in consciousness in the right
way. For example, suppose that I have two desires that are equally strong: I want to fold
my clothes and I want to read the latest issue of the journal. Suppose also that I have
forgotten about both desires. Neither is strong enough to be gripping. Pacing with little to
17
For a defense of the importance of Spinoza’s close association of activity and belief,
see Don Garrett, “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 295-297.
18
For a classic, accessible discussion of the various positions that one might take on the
relation between morality and motivation, see Michael Smith, The Moral Problem
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 4-13. Smith might characterize Spinoza, with some good
company, as an anti-Humean theorist of motivation, 12-13.
29
do one afternoon, I come across a sticky note: “Fold your clothes!” Although, other
things being equal, my desires are equally likely to produce action, this experience tips
the balance. I fold my clothes.
Presence to mind in Spinozism suggests that experience is full of similar
reminders to actions. Elements of what I sense remind me continuously of my projects,
interests, likes, and dislikes. The reminders may be construed as solely cognitive and not
desires themselves. (Spinoza does not construe the relevant ideas of reason in this way.)
Under such a conception they still contribute to my activity. Spinoza’s universal moral
imperatives, the commands of reason, are particularly prominent in experience. Wherever
I turn my attention, 2p38 suggests, an element of experience serves as a sticky note
saying, “a lesser good now is not as valuable as a greater good later.” As a result of their
prominence in experience, as Spinoza argues at 5p7, motives that I have to act on the
commands of reason will be systematically more efficacious than other motives. It can
happen that we fail to act on the commands of reason, but we can never fail to know them
in acting. Imperatives of etiquette, as presented in 2.3, are not universally present in
experience. In some regions, however, they may be quite prominent. The account of the
sticky note is not a metaphor. It is an example.19 Other examples may include signs; the
behavior of others, and regional instances of properties that have practical consequences
just as the common notions are universal properties that have the same practical
consequences everywhere.
The Spinozistic view on which the motivation characteristic of morality is a
function of the prominence of reminders to moral behavior in ongoing experience is
19
The close association of etiquette and public signs may be clearer in French.
‘Étiquette’means both etiquette and, more commonly, label.
30
consistent with many varieties of internalism, the conception of the relation between
morality and motivation on which whenever I understand an action to be morally
required I also have a motive (on some strong versions, an overriding motive) to perform
that action. However, this element of Spinozism is perhaps more important to
externalists, those who deny that such understanding always includes a motive. For
externalists widely hold that we usually have motives to do what we think right and that
there are some circumstances in which we nevertheless lack such motives. The presence
to mind of moral imperatives both explains why moral motives are typically very strong
and also describes the circumstances in which we might fail to be guided by them. We
typically have a strong motive to act morally because a moral command is reinforced in
experience whereas other potential motives—desires, perhaps, of which we are not
currently aware—are not. Commands of reason, notably, are always reinforced in
experience. When we fail to act on the commands of reason, a strong reading of 5p7
suggests, it is because our other desires are reinforced in a similar way. Present
temptation belongs to experience, although perhaps only to present experience, in the
same way that a moral command does. A weaker reading of 5p7 suggests that we may
have desires that are not moral and not reinforced in experience but are nevertheless very
strong and can override the desire to act well. On either interpretation of 5p7, Spinoza
holds that our motivation to act on imperatives of reason will retain a pro tanto greater
strength than other motives in virtue of its presence in experience. The moral knowledge
that is practical reason in Spinoza is occurrent knowledge.
Spinoza’s association of presence to mind with the motivation to act well at 5p7
makes a valuable point about publicity. The publication of law clearly has the benefits of
31
responsibility and cooperation: only if a law is known can we hold law breakers
responsible and expect to gain the benefits of cooperation. If the law is a good one,
Spinoza’s argument at 5p7 establishes that publication also makes citizens better. The
presence to mind of a good law typically contributes to the motivation to follow that law
and therefore makes knowledge of the rule more robust (contributing to a person’s
character) and action more frequently right.
2.5 Aspirational Morality
Several aspects of Spinoza’s discussions of the commands of reason characterize them in
ways that may place them out of reach. First (from 1.1), Spinoza’s initial presentation of
the common notions in the Ethics suggests that they are present in the experience of all
minds whatever, not only the minds of human agents, and for Spinoza it is probably
correct to say that all singular things have minds. Because the commands of reason arise
from the common notions, this point suggests, wildly, that all singular things are bound
by the commands of reason and know them continually in experience.20 Second (from
2.1), incrementalism in Spinozistic accounts of imperatives suggest that the universality
of the commands of reason is a limit case. A wide range of imperatives are known only to
some minds, are robustly conscious only in some minds, and applicable only in some
cases. The commands of reason, on the other hand, are few, and their derivation from the
20
I think that this is the most pressing problem for the attribution to Spinoza of an
interesting theory of consciousness. Invocations of incrementalism (of power or
complexity) typically help sympathetic readers to argue that, in a sense, pears and frying
pans “think” about their surroundings; because they are so simply, they are just very
badly confused and the thinking that they do is primitive. Ideas of reason, however, are
adequate in all minds just as the common properties are present in all bodies. Pears and
frying pans have adequate ideas of the common properties, then, and they know them and
regard them as present in any bodies with which they interact.
32
common notions is not clear. Third (from 2.3 and 2.4), although it does seem right that
responsibility and cooperation in society depend upon the assumption that others know
what is required in some circumstances of action, the rosy picture of universal, occurrent
knowledge may seem overly optimistic; moral requirements are known more or less
widely and robustly, but none are known universally and in all sensation, even by human
agents. These points suggest that there are not any imperatives known to all and binding
to all in all circumstances, whatever Spinoza himself might argue. It is not clear,
however, that this is a problem for Spinozism, however, and it may be a strength.
The independent rational authority of local imperatives in Spinoza, together with
his incrementalism, suggests that there need not be imperatives like the commands of
reason described in the Ethics. Sometimes local imperatives of morality are thought to
depend upon imperatives that are universal in two or all three senses for their rational
authority. Kant is perhaps best understood in this way: the addition of empirically learned
considerations yields hypothetical imperatives recommending the means to an end
derived from pure practical reason.21 Such a view requires universal imperatives, then, if
there are to be any moral imperatives at all. The independent rational authority of local
imperatives (from 2.2) in Spinozism avoids this requirement. Local imperatives have the
same basis in Spinoza’s account of reason as that possessed by the commands of reason.
If it is true, then, that despite Spinoza’s own arguments on behalf of commands of reason
there are not any, that does not mean that local imperatives lack authority. The Spinozist
21
The interpretation of Kant’s hypothetical imperatives remains a vexed question. In
recommending this account, I follow Mark Schroeder, “The Hypothetical Imperative,”
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005): 357-372.
33
may hold that there are only local imperatives and may make use of the resources of
coherentism to understand their justification and structure.22
We might nevertheless want to work towards universality in our imperatives. One
important reason for doing so is social. In the spirit of Spinoza remarks at 4p37s2, the
more frequently we can understand each other’s motives and predict each other’s actions,
the better we can cooperate. Perfect cooperation, as Spinoza admits, is beyond reach in
any case; we are too often moved to act against what we know to be best. The admission
that there are in fact no fully universal commands of reason reveals another barrier
between the ideal of perfect cooperation and the actual world. We will cooperate reliably
only insofar as we are rational, and rationality has only local bases, which we must
expand in order to realize the benefits of society more fully. Another reason for working
toward universality is a consideration of the good of each person. Any step toward
universality in the agent sense contributes to the practical rationality of those who are
brought under the scope of a local moral imperative. Despite being local, such an
imperative will be adequate (that is, it will be rational to act on it) and be present to mind
in those who possess it. So, like all ideas of reason, it will help that person both to resist
irrational motives and also to be better.
The independence of local moral imperatives in Spinozism permits a shift in our
understanding of the universal in morality from a kind of ground of practical reason to an
aspiration. As I have acknowledged, this is a departure from Spinoza’s own conception of
reason in human practice. Spinoza derives commands of reason solely from the common
22
David Brink, Moral Realism and Foundation of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), Chapter 5 informs this discussion. Brink defends a coherentist
account of justification in his argument for moral realism.
34
notions, universal truths of reason, and he does not derive any commands of reason from
the local truths of reason described at 2p39. Nevertheless, I think that it is a small
departure. Spinoza himself does not offer many commands of reason and they are not
central to the moral themes of the Ethics. Incrementalism and presence to mind, however,
resonate with both Spinoza’s emphasis on situational ethics and his accounts of
cooperation in society. The project of building local moral imperatives towards
universality lends a clear and specific sense to the project, which is pursued throughout
his writing but stated most elegantly perhaps in the Treatise on the Emendation of
Intellect:
I aim, therefore, at this end: to acquire such a nature and to strive that
many others might acquire it with me. It is for my happiness that I work so
that many others will understand in the same way that I do, so that their
intellects and desires unite harmoniously with my intellect and desire. So
that this might happen, it is necessary to understand as much about nature
as is necessary for the attainment of such a nature, and, next, to form a
society of the desired kind, so that as many people as possible, as easily
and securely as possible, may attain it. (Spinoza 1972, 2/8 28-2/9 3)