Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:25:50.682Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two Ethical Ideals in Spinoza's Ethics: The Free Man and The Wise Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2019

SANEM SOYARSLAN
SANEM SOYARSLAN*
Affiliation:
NC STATE UNIVERSITYsanemsi@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

According to Steven Nadler's novel interpretation of Spinoza's much discussed ‘free man’, the free man is not an unattainable ideal. On this reading, the free man represents an ideal condition not because he is passionless, as has often been claimed, but because even though he experiences passions, he ‘never lets those passions determine his actions’. In this paper, I argue that Nadler's interpretation is incorrect in taking the model of the free man to be an attainable ideal within our reach. Furthermore, I show that Spinoza's moral philosophy has room for another ideal yet attainable condition, which is represented by the wise man. On my reading, becoming a wise man consists not in surmounting human bondage, but in understanding ourselves as finite expressions of God's power and, thereby, coming to terms with the ineliminability of bondage for us due to our very human or modal condition in the Spinozistic universe.

Keywords

early modern philosophySpinozaethical idealsfree manwise man
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , Fall 2019 , pp. 357 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Carlisle, Clare. (2015) ‘Spinoza on Eternal Life’. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 89, 69–96.Google Scholar
Carlisle, Clare. (2017) ‘Spinoza's Acquiescentia’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 55, 209–36.Google Scholar
Curley, Edwin. (1988) Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Della Rocca, Michael. (2003) ‘The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will’. Nous, 37, 200–31.Google Scholar
Garber, Daniel. (2005) ‘A Free Man Thinks of Nothing Less Than of Death’. In Mercer, C. and O'Neill, E. (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter, and Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 103–18.Google Scholar
Garrett, Don. (2009) ‘Spinoza on the Essence of Human Body and the Part of the Human Mind That Is Eternal’. In Koistinen, Olli (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 284–303.Google Scholar
Hübner, Karolina. (2014) ‘Spinoza on Being Human and Human Perfection’. In Kisner, Matthew and Youpa, Andrew (eds.), Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 124–42.Google Scholar
LeBuffe, Michael. (2010) ‘Theories about Consciousness in Spinoza's Ethics’. Philosophical Review, 119, 531–63.Google Scholar
Lin, Martin. (2006) ‘Spinoza's Account of Akrasia’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 44, 395–414.Google Scholar
Marshall, Eugene. (2008) ‘Spinoza on the Problem of Akrasia’. European Journal of Philosophy, 18, 41–59.Google Scholar
Mason, Richard. (1986) ‘Spinoza on Modality’. Philosophical Quarterly, 36, 313–42.Google Scholar
Miller, Jon. (2001) ‘Spinoza's Possibilities’. Review of Metaphysics, 54, 779–814.Google Scholar
Nadler, Steven. (2001) Spinoza's Heresy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nadler, Steven. (2006) Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nadler, Steven. (2008) ‘Spinoza and Consciousness’. Mind, 117, 575–601.Google Scholar
Nadler, Steven. (2015) ‘On Spinoza's “Free Man”’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1, 103–20.Google Scholar
Parchment, Steven. (2000) ‘The Mind's Eternity in Spinoza's Ethics’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 38, 349–82.Google Scholar
Primus, Kristin. (2017) ‘Scientia intuitiva in the Ethics’. In Melamed, Yitzhak (ed.), Spinoza's Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 169–86.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Donald. (1999) ‘Salvation as a State of Mind: The Place of Acquiescentia in Spinoza's Ethics’. British Journal of the History of Philosophy, 7, 447–73.Google Scholar
Soyarslan, Sanem. (2014a) ‘The Susceptibility of Intuitive Knowledge to Akrasia in Spinoza's Ethical Thought’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 22, 725–47.Google Scholar
Soyarslan, Sanem. (2014b) ‘From Ordinary Life to Blessedness: The Power of Intuitive Knowledge in Spinoza's Ethics’. Kisner, In Matthew and Youpa, Andrew (eds.), Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 236–57.Google Scholar
Spinoza, Benedictus. (1985) The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol. 1. Translated and edited by Curley, Edwin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Spinoza, Benedictus. (1999) Éthique. Présenté et traduit par Pautrat, Bernard, Bilingue Latin/Grec-Français. Paris : Éditions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Diane. (1981) ‘Spinoza's Theory of the Eternity of the Human Mind’. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 11, 155–68.Google Scholar
Wilson, Margaret. (1999) ‘Objects, Ideas and “Minds”: Comments on Spinoza's Theory of Mind’. In Wilson, Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press), 166–77.Google Scholar