Spinoza In Plain English Book 2, Propositions 20–48: Understanding and Will
This is the latest post in my quixotic attempt to write an accessible commentary on all of Spinoza’s Ethics. See here for An Introduction To Spinoza or start the series at the beginning with Spinoza In Plain English pt.1: Substance.
This essay is my last on book two. I’ve chosen to pass by some of Spinoza’s technical discussion of aspects of knowing and acting here for now in order to focus on what I think are the remaining two key ideas he makes before the final three books of The Ethics. The last three books focus, finally, on what we normally call ethics, or how a human being should act. For Spinoza this means how a human being attains virtue and freedom (which for Spinoza are, as we shall see, the same thing). I hope to wrote a commentary on the last three books as well in the future.
In Propositions 32 to 35 Spinoza says that falsity basically consists of understanding something in a mutilated or partial way. The more clearly and holistically we understand something the more truth is contained in our mind: the more Godly it is (the more Reality it encompasses); and therefore the more adequate it is.
God understands things with both perfect clarity and a total holistic grasp, as should be clear by now. The more we understand the causal nexus that any thing or event exists in- the more deep and broad our sense of the holistic web that brings it into being- the more our understanding approaches that of God’s, and the more “adequate” (in Spinoza’s terminology) it gets.
We can see how polarizing and destructive simplistic thinking is. It leads us to identify one cause, or the wrong cause, for an event instead of understanding the full range of realities that cause it. If we don’t understand the causal web behind something we are trying to change or bring into being then we cannot act effectively- and we are also more likely to become obsessively or prejudicially focused on something (or someone) we blame for ills or falsely assign godlike powers to.
For Spinoza, it is of the nature of reason to regard things not as contingent but as necessary (Proposition 44). This follows from the above: the intensity of our understanding increases as it comprehends more of the true causes of a thing. Therefore the clearer our understanding, the more we understand that anything which happens is not contingent but had to arise given its causes. If you fully understand why something happened, you understand that it could not have happened otherwise- and you also understand what causes you need to bring into being in the future if you want it not to happen again.
Will and Freedom
The will is not separate from ideas and is not free.
The common-sense view of the relationship between will and ideas is that one has ideas and then one chooses which one to follow. Spinoza regarded this picture as sloppy.
In proposition 48 Spinoza argues that there is no absolute or free will in the mind; but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which also is determined by another cause, and this in turn by another, and so on ad infinitum.
As he argues, the mind… cannot be the free cause of its own actions, or it cannot have an absolute faculty of willing and not willing, but must be determined to will either this thing or that thing by a cause, which also is determined by another cause, and this in turn by another…
This is of a piece with what Spinoza has said earlier about causal determinism. It rules events in the mind like everything else. In Proposition 49 though, Spinoza takes his thoughts on psychic determinism deeper in a brilliant way. He does this by arguing that there is no will apart from ideas:
There is no volition, or affirmation and negation, in the mind, except that which an idea, insofar as it is an idea, involves.
In other words, every idea contains within it an affirmation, from the sky is blue to stealing this orange would be good. What Spinoza is saying is that the mind is a causally determined ecology of ideas. Each of these ideas has a physical correlate, and a strongly affirming idea has a physical correlate which determines the body to act. If one believes that stealing is an orange is good than one will steal it unless another idea intervenes, like except right now or no, actually it is not good or, of course, except I can’t get ahold of an orange at the moment.
Ideas flow through our mind and when one wins out over another we will do what it affirms. There is no power of will hovering in the background. We cannot will that we act in accordance with an idea we do not affirm, or not in keeping with an idea that we do affirm (unless that is because another idea, which we affirm, says that we should). For example, we might not really believe that Jesus is present in the wafer and wine, but we might take communion anyway because we think it’s a wholesome ceremony or to get ahead in our community.
There is no separate will or willer, there are only ideas jostling with each other and determining action in accordance with the one which is strongest or most compelling.
What transforms people, then, is not “willpower” (which doesn’t really exist) but understanding. A person will not be transformed by an idea that cannot win out in the ecology of ideas that is their mind. You might be familiar with this from Facebook.
Let’s look at addiction to understand this better. We may know that a glass of whisky is bad for us because we are prone to overdo it. Yet the idea that a glass of whisky will relieve our pain in the present might be much stronger and more compelling in our mind, and thus it will win out. Only if we are able to summon up ideas about the damage it will cause, and make these vivid and compelling in our own minds, will we be able to resist. Alternately, something else we desire- like the esteem of a new lover- might win out over the idea that a whisky would feel good. Spinoza will go into more detail on these issues in the books to come.
The other implication of this, which Spinoza will develop soon, is that we are not separate from nature- our minds are part of the great ecology of ideas that is nature and there is no independent ruler (no “Kingdom within a kingdom”) within us considering which ideas to affirm or not to affirm.
Spinoza is teaching this so that we better understand how our own mind works (and how to change our own minds, which he will focus on much more parts 3, 4 and 5 of the Ethics). For Spinoza, understanding is itself change because it changes the mind and because it directly motivates action. If we are not acting as we know we should, it is because of a derangement of ideas in the moment that we are acting.
Spinoza concludes Book 2 with a discussion of why he thinks what he has had to say about understanding and will are helpful thus far:
It remains finally to show how useful cognition of this doctrine is to our lives, and we shall easily see this from the following.
First it is useful insofar as it teaches that we act solely at the behest of God and that we share in the divine nature, and that we do so more and more, the more perfect our actions are and the more we understand God. Apart therefore from giving peace to the spirit in every way, this doctrine also has the advantage of teaching us what our highest happiness or blessedness consists in; it consists solely in the cognition of God, which leads us to do only those things that love and piety urge us to do.
We see clearly from this how far people are from a true valuing of virtue if they expect God to requite them with the greatest rewards for their virtue and excellent actions as though a return for extreme servitude, as if virtue itself and servitude to God were not in themselves happiness and the highest freedom.
Secondly, it is useful insofar as it teaches us how we ought to conduct ourselves in the face of fortune or things that are not within our abilities, i.e. in the face of things that do not follow from our nature.
It teaches us to expect and to bear both faces of fortune with equanimity, because of course all things follow from the eternal decree of God by the same necessity as it follows from the essence of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles.
Thirdly, this doctrine contributes to social life, insofar as it teaches us not to hate anyone nor to despise or ridicule them or get angry with them or envy them.
Spinoza also argues that what he has set out also motivates us to help others and to create a society of free people, two assertions which seem obscure here but will become clearer as we move into the remaining parts of the work where he shows just that.
With this I have completed what I set out to do in this scholium, and with it I come to the end of this my second Part, in which I think I have clearly explained the nature of the human mind and its properties extensively enough as far as the difficulty of the subject allows; and I believe that many noble things can be deduced from what I have said which are useful in the highest degree and very much need to be known. This will become clear in part from what follows.
