In the Ethics Spinoza defines certain traditional virtues such as humility and repentance as species of sadness and denies that they are virtues. He nonetheless holds that they can turn out to be useful as a means towards virtue—in fact, the greatest virtue of blessedness—in the life of someone who is not guided by reason. In this paper, I examine Spinoza’s relatively overlooked claim regarding the usefulness of sad passions as a means towards blessedness. In taking up Spinoza’s treatment of (...) humility as my case study, I show that there is a tension between this claim and his other explicit commitments in the Ethics. More specifically, after considering his views regarding the consequences of humility—including, most notably, its susceptibility to envy—and conditions of achieving blessedness, I show that humility cannot effectively be said to bring about cooperation and push “weak-minded” people in the right direction so that, in the end, they may be free and enjoy blessedness. I conclude by suggesting that if we must rely on passions as a means towards virtue in the Spinozistic universe, we must rely not on debilitating sad passions such as humility, but on joy-based social passions such as love. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract: In the "Ethics" Spinoza denies that humility is a virtue on the grounds that it arises from a reflection on our lack of power, rather than a rational understanding of our power (Part IV, Proposition 53, Demonstration). He suggests that humility, to the extent that it involves a consideration of our weakness, indicates a lack of self-understanding. However, in a brief remark in the same demonstration he also allows that conceiving our lack of power can be conducive to self-understanding (...) and an increase in power, on the condition that we “conceive [it] because [we] understand (intelligit) something more powerful than [ourselves].” Unfortunately, Spinoza does not flesh out this remark, nor does he specify the name of the affect that arises from thus conceiving our weakness. Commentators have not been of much help in this regard either. What does it mean, in the Spinozistic framework, to conceive our weakness because we understand something more powerful than ourselves? And what exactly is the difference between this instance of conceiving our lack of power and the one that is involved in humility? This paper will examine the nature of this difference by analyzing its metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings, as well as its ethical implications within Spinoza’s Ethics. In doing so, it will highlight the ethical importance and epistemological conditions of recognizing our weakness in the Spinozistic universe. Abraham Wolf takes Spinoza’s denial of humility’s virtue in the Ethics to imply that “the rational man should think of what he can do, not of what he cannot do.” While I agree with Wolf’s remark, my reading in this paper will show that as the rational person thinks of her power and what she can do, she never loses sight of her ineliminable weakness as a finite mode. (shrink)

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna lays out three paths of yoga as the means to achieve human perfection: the path of self-less action, the path of knowledge, and the path of devotion. In this paper I will argue for an interpretation of the Gita in which the path of devotion is the last step that leads to moksha. This is not to claim that bhakti yoga is more important than karma and jnana yoga, but rather that the latter two are more (...) elementary. In order to practice bhakti yoga, one must first have practiced karma and jnana yoga. All three forms of yoga are equally important—but there is a prioritized order in which they are to be practiced. On my reading, bhakti is more than having an intense feeling of love for God, because practicing devotion to God is an intellectual love of God that entails an intuitive understanding of the essence of things. My approach is to cross-examine the concept of human perfection as discussed in the Gita and Spinoza’s Ethics. Human perfection is characterized in both texts as a total liberation from being guided by things external to oneself other than one’s own nature. In other words, the aim of life is to liberate oneself by acquiring the right kind of knowledge. The freer one becomes and the more knowledge that one has, the more perfect one becomes. Thus, Spinoza’s idea of the “free man” resembles the self-realized agent in the Gita, because a human being becomes more “perfect” when he expresses God’s power to a greater degree. Bhakti yoga is the last step on the path to attain knowledge of God because in bhakti yoga, one employs the method of intuition to grasp God’s essence. As such, unlike karma and jnana yoga, the knowledge acquired in bhakti yoga is not empirical. In the Gita, rational devotion is a single act of both the mind and the heart, which, in turn, will lead to the practice of self-less actions. (shrink)

In the first half of Part 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza presents his directions for mitigating the passions through reason. He touts his account of the power of reason over the passions as ground-breaking and unique, while positioning himself squarely within the traditional debate of akrasia, or weakness of will. Spinoza claims he is the first to identify the affects through their characteristic effects, and demonstrate the way these effects can be countered by the mind’s activity. It follows that Spinoza’s (...) claim for originality can be explained in (at least) two ways: first, passions themselves have been misunderstood, and second, previous philosophers have misunderstood the relationship between reason and the passions. In the first part of this paper, I place Spinoza’s discussion of the passions and reason’s power over them in a historical context. Next, I present Spinoza’s definition of the affects, and his directions for ‘destroying’ the passions. In the third section I point to the differences between my interpretation and that of recent commentators. Finally, I discuss the way in which Spinoza’s directions for mitigating the passions serve as the psychological basis for his moral theory. (shrink)