Akrasia in Spinoza's Ethics - Eugene Marshall

AKRASIA IN SPINOZA'S ETHICS

by

Eugene Marshall

A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

(Philosophy)

at the

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

2006

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

UMI Number: 3245610

Copyright 2006 by

Marshall, Eugene

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A dissertation entitled

Akrasia in Spinoza's Ethics

submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by

Eugene Marshall

Date of Final Oral Examination: December 6, 2006

Month & Year Degree to be awarded: December 2006 May August

Approval Signatures of Dissertation Committee

ISignature, Dean of Graduate School

4


AKRASIA IN SPINOZA’S ETHICS

Eugene Marshall

Under the Supervision o f Professor Steven Nadler

At the University o f Wisconsin-Madison

Spinozai has a fascinating account o f akrasia. Locating it is well worth the labor involved,

however. First, his theory is o f historical significance, because it involves certain views normally

thought to originate in Hume. So Spinoza, whom Hume read, should be given some o f the credit

for these novelties. Second, Spinoza’s theory combines several intuitive aspects o f positions

generally thought to be mutually exclusive. In this regard, Spinoza’s theory o f akrasia is conceptually

unique, a coherent hybrid view that may capture the good o f the opposing views while avoiding

their pitfalls. Finally, his theory o f akrasia is plausible and satisfying, capturing those intuitions we

want in a theory o f akrasia. It presents akratic action as it must be understood — as freely and

intentionally performed, irrational action against our better judgment.

The thrust o f this work can be stated as follows: Spinoza has an interesting and viable

account o f akrasia. That account is a weak judgment intemalism that resembles Aristode’s and Alfred

Mele’s, though it also appeals to certain Humean intuitions. Specifically, according to Spinoza,

akrasia occurs for an agent S just when the power o f As irrational desire for j , which involves an

irrational judgment th a tj is a good course o f action, will surpass the power o f S s rational desire for

x , which involves a rational judgment that x is the better course o f action; this account o f akrasia is

plausible and superior to its competitors, in that it better accommodates our intuitions concerning

akratic conduct.

After discussing competing theories o f Socrates, Plato, Aristode, David Hume, Donald

Davidson, and Alfred Mele, I survey Spinoza’s affective psychology and thoughts on human


bondage. In the final chapter, I evaluate Spinoza’s theory o f akrasia vis-a-vis the competing theories.

I conclude that his account captures the heart o f strict akrasia - that we can affirm contradictory

judgments and feel conflicting desires. And so, strict akrasia is easily explainable. O f course, it is still

irrational, because it involves acting against our better judgment which, for Spinoza, means acting

against our universal principles in favor o f some inadequately known particular.

UWMN GRADUATE SCH OOL

DEC 0 2 0 0 6


Table of Contents

Introduction0.1. Akrasia and Spinoza0.1.1. A Very Brief History of Akrasia0.1.2. Why Spinoza?0.2. An Outline of the Work 0.3. A Survey of the Literature

Chapter One: Theories of Akrasia1.1. Theories of Akrasia1.1.1. Socrates1.1.2. Plato1.1.3. Aristotle1.1.4. Hume1.1.5. Davidson1.1.6. Alfred Mele1.2. Summary of Views1.2.1. Strong Intemalism1.2.2. Extemalism1.2.3. Weak Intemalism1.2.4. Conclusion

Chapter Two: Spinoza's Affective Psychology2.0. Introduction2.1. Ideas2.1.1. The Three Kinds of Knowledge: An Overview2.1.2. The Account of Adequate Ideas2.1.3. Common Notions2.1.4. The Idea of God's Essence2.2. Affects2.2.1. Introduction2.2.2. On the Nature of Ideas2.2.3. The Affects2.2.4. Affects are Cognitive2.2.5. Spinoza's Janus-Faced Psychology2.3. The Rejection of the Faculties2.3.1. Introduction2.3.2. On Faculties2.3.3. Spinoza's Rejection of the Faculties of Will and Intellect2.3.4. Ideas and Volitions2.3.5. Affects and Ideas2.4. The Conatus2.4.1. The Faculties, Redux


2.4.2. Conatus and Desire Chapter Three: Spinoza on Akrasia, An Exegesis

3.1. On Human Bondage3.1.1. Introduction3.1.2. Akrasia and Parts of the Soul3.1.3. On Freedom and Bondage3.2. Conatus and Akrasia3.2.1. The Conatus and Egoism3.2.2. Selfless and Self-Destructive Behavior3.3. Akrasia in Spinoza3.3.1. Akrasia in Spinoza: A First Pass3.3.2. How Particular Instances of Akrasia May Occur3.3.3. The Relation Between Bondage and Akrasia3.4. Conclusions

Chapter Four: Spinoza's Theory of Akrasia4.1. Intemalism and Extemalism in Spinoza4.1.1. Spinoza Contra the Strong Internalists4.1.2. Spinoza Is Not an Externalist4.1.3. Spinoza and the Weak Internalists4.1.4. Spinoza and Mele4.1.5. Spinoza's Unique Weak Intemalism4.2. Challenges to the Spinozist Account4.2.1. How are Spinozist akratic actions free and intentional?4.2.2. Intentionality4.2.3. Against Our Better Judgment4.3. An Evaluation of Spinoza's Account of Akrasia


1

Introduction

0.1. Akrasia and Spinoza

Strictly speaking, 'akrasia' refers to a state of character and 'akratic action' refers

to actions in which an agent exhibits akratic characteristics. Nevertheless, when I speak

of akrasia in what follows, I refer to akratic action, not to a state of character. Akratic

action is free, intentional action performed against our better judgment. It occurs only

when we intentionally do what we know is not best. Some theorists deny this can ever

occur, but most accept that this psychological phenomenon is possible and therefore

attempt to explain it.

Any discussion of akrasia must address two overarching kinds of questions: first,

how is akrasia conceptually possible? How could agents intentionally do something

against their better judgment? Some thinkers find this to be incoherent. Those who

take akrasia to be conceptually possible m ust thereafter answer this second question:

how does akrasia actually occur? This question is answered by reference to psychological

mechanisms, hum an tendencies, and behaviors. A variety of different explanations

have been presented, of course.


0.1.1. A Very Brief History of Akrasia

Aicpaaia, or akrasia, is a Greek term that means, roughly, a lack of self-rule. In

the history of philosophy, the term 'akrasia' makes its most famous appearances in Plato,

particularly Protagoras, where he rejects it, and the Republic, where he accepts it, and in

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, where Aristotle offers his famous explanation of it. The

theory has been discussed by a variety of later thinkers; indeed, most of the Ancients

and Medievals had a theory of akrasia. Yet the topic seemed to fall out of favor in the

early m odem period, with many thinkers spending only little time on it, if any at all.

Only in the 20th Century was the topic revived, largely because of the seminal

work by R.M. Hare. According to his prescriptivism, our judgment "I ought to do x"

motivates us to do x. He suggests that when I assent to the statement, "1 ought to do x,"

I am in fact issuing a prescription or imperative to myself, "do x." So, when I judge that

I ought to do x, I will in fact do x, unless I am unable to do so. Hare presents this in the

context of explaining what happens when an agent seems to make a judgment that

something would be best yet fails to do it. According to Hare, whenever an agent

appears to fail to follow through on his practical judgment, knowingly following the

lesser of two available courses of action, either (a) he does not in fact judge that he

ought to do x (perhaps he only recognizes that convention requires it), or (b) he cannot

physically or psychologically do x. Thus, strictly speaking, akrasia is impossible for

Hare. As we shall see, Hare's position is similar in certain ways to Socrates' and Donald

Davidson's. More importantly for us, Hare's way of approaching the problem - as


turning on the relation between judgment and motivation - will set the stage for the

work done in these pages.

Since Hare, theorists have primarily addressed this question: how can we judge

that one course of action x is better than some other, incompatible course of action y, yet

nevertheless freely and intentionally choose to pursue y against our better judgment?

In fact, akrasia is now more often called weakness of will. And when Aristotle is

translated into English, aKpaoia is often rendered as incontinence. In what follows,

these three phrases will be used interchangeably.

Spinoza uses none of these phrases. In fact, he does not explicitly address the

issue in these terms at all. Instead, he investigates what he calls bondage, a state in

which a person lacks self-rule and is instead passive, a slave to his passions. This state

is related to weakness of will, but is not identical to it. One task I shall undertake,

below, is to clarify the relation between bondage and akrasia.

0.1.2. Why Spinoza?

Despite not discussing it directly, Spinoza does have a theory of akrasia. To locate

it, however, some work is required, since the theory is only implicit in his affective

psychology and his discussion of bondage. Only by a careful investigation of his

thoughts on ideas, affects, and desire, among other things, may we uncover Spinoza's

thoughts on the question of weakness of will.

This excavation will be well worth the labor involved. For Spinoza's account of

akrasia is a marvelously interesting theory. First of all, his theory is of historical


significance, because it involves certain central and novel views that are normally

thought to originate in Hume. So it seems that Spinoza, whom Hume read, should

perhaps be given some of the credit for these novelties. Second of all, Spinoza's theory

combines several intuitive aspects of positions generally thought to be mutually

exclusive. In this regard, Spinoza's theory of akrasia is conceptually unique, a coherent

hybrid view that may capture the good of the opposing views while avoiding their

pitfalls. Third and finally, his theory of akrasia is plausible and philosophically

satisfying. It captures those intuitions we want a theory of akrasia to capture. It

presents akratic action as it must be understood - as freely and intentionally performed

action against our better judgment. And it explains the irrationality of akrasia. Very few

theories of akrasia manage to do all of these things and, thus, Spinoza's own account

could be seen as a useful contribution to our philosophical understanding of the

phenomenon of weakness of will.

The thrust of this work can be stated, first briefly and then in more detail, as

follows: Spinoza has an interesting and viable account of akrasia. That account is a weak

judgment intemalism that resembles Aristotle's and Alfred Mele's, though it also appeals

to certain Humean intuitions. Specifically, according to Spinoza, akrasia occurs for an

agent S just when the power of S's irrational desire for y, which involves an irrational

judgment that y is a good course of action, will surpass the power of S's rational desire

for x, which involves a rational judgment that x is the better course of action; this

account of akrasia is plausible and superior to its competitors, in that it better

accommodates our intuitions concerning akrasia. The meaning of these terms - "weak


judgment internalist," "rational desire," "irrational desire," "rational judgment," and

"irrational judgment" - will be explained in what follows.

0.2. An Outline of this Work

In the first chapter, I will introduce six theories of akrasia, those of Socrates, Plato,

Aristotle, David Hume, Donald Davidson, and Alfred Mele. I shall then place these six

theorists into classes: strong intemalism, weak intemalism, and extemalism. This

categorization will be made based on how each theory answers the following question:

What is the relation between practical judgments and motivation? Doing so will allow

us to compare Spinoza with these other thinkers in informative ways.

In the second chapter, I shall begin to present Spinoza's own account. Before I

can dive into his account of bondage to find his implicit theory of akrasia, however, I

m ust first establish the fundamental principles of Spinoza's psychology that I shall use

in the subsequent chapter. I begin this preliminary work by exploring his thoughts on

ideas, including the three kinds of knowledge and adequacy. Next, I turn to affect,

which will play an essential role in the account of akrasia. In discussing affects, I must

establish their relation to ideas, if we are to understand Spinoza's theory of akrasia.

Finally, I shall look at Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus, which is often interpreted in

ways that would influence his account of akrasia.

In the third chapter, I turn to Spinoza's account of bondage itself. I begin by

looking into several aspects of Spinoza's system that differentiate him from the other

theorists discussed herein. So, for example, I start with Spinoza's rejection of a parts of


the soul doctrine, a rejection that distinguishes his theory from Plato's. I also

investigate Spinoza's thought on the conatus and egoism, which should allow us to see

how Spinoza parts ways with Socrates. Most importantly, however, are his thoughts on

bondage and akrasia. As I trace Spinoza's ideas through these sections, a coherent

picture will emerge. As we shall see, Spinoza's theories most resemble Mele's, though

there are aspects of Aristotle and Hume present as well. I finish the chapter with a

discussion of the relation between bondage and akrasia.

Chapter Four brings all that has preceded it together. In that chapter, I take the

Spinozist theory as presented in Chapters Two and Three and compare it to the other

six theorists presented in Chapter One. I then review where Spinoza falls in our three

fold classification. This comparative and classificatory process will subsequently allow

us to investigate Spinoza's theory of akrasia on its own terms. At that point, I will be

able to formulate Spinoza's theory of akrasia more carefully and discover what

fundamental assumptions lie behind it. Once the theory has been formulated, I will

investigate whether akrasia, in Spinoza's theory, meets the criteria any successful

account must meet - that akratic action is freely and intentionally performed against

our better judgment. Finally, I shall issue an evaluation of the worth of Spinoza's

theory of akrasia.

0.3. A Survey of the Literature

Despite the passions' prominent role in the Ethics, they have received relatively

little attention from scholars.1 Spinoza's concern with the threat of akrasia has received


even less.2 In fact, in the Spinoza secondary literature, akrasia only receives extended

attention in a handful of articles or book chapters.

In his contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Michael Della Rocca

discusses akrasia and several surrounding issues in passing as part of his sweeping

overview of Spinoza's psychology in general.3 Della Rocca's primary concern

throughout most of this hefty chapter is Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus and the

specific terms that Spinoza employs in 3p6 and its demonstration.

One of Della Rocca's aims in this essay is to interpret the conatus as allowing

future-oriented hum an reasoning. This is important because Spinoza is usually

interpreted as denying that any kind of teleological reasoning is possible, which would

preclude an future-directed planning. Yet people clearly perform such reasoning, so we

must reinterpret the conatus to allow it.

I do not find the problem to be as pressing as some, however. Spinoza is

concerned to banish teleological explanation as found in the Scholastic tradition, where

the sleep-inducing nature of opium is explained by reference to "the dormitive virtue."

Spinoza is not saying that hum an beings cannot make plans for the future. All he

wishes to do is to deny final causation and to assert the universality of efficient

causation. Just as a sophisticated behaviorist can easily explain seemingly teleological

behavior by reference to a complex network of stimuli and impulses, so too can Spinoza

explain future-oriented planning by using only efficient causation. In short, Della

Rocca's worry leads him to focus on issues quite distinct from those that interest us here.


When Della Rocca turns to discuss akrasia, he carries this project of

accommodating future-oriented states with him. He therefore attempts to explain

akrasia by positing a doctrine of anticipation. In fact, this doctrine of anticipation is the

heart and soul of his interpretation of akrasia. According to Della Rocca, when the mind

is in this state of anticipation, the body is in the state that would occur if the state of

affairs anticipated were to obtain. That is, when we anticipate some pleasure or pain,

the body actually feels the anticipated pleasure or pain before the fact.

He then qualifies this and says that the anticipation-state is weaker than the

realization-state. In response, one might ask the following: (a) on what textual basis

does Della Rocca attribute this discussion of anticipation? In fact, Spinoza has a

detailed account of hope and fear, one that seems underutilized here, (b) If I anticipate

my death, in what state is my body?

Della Rocca has not sufficiently motivated his interpretation. He aims at

addressing what he takes to be a standing problem with Spinoza's theory, when in fact

the existence of that problem is questionable. It seems that Della Rocca's attempt to

explain akrasia in Spinoza rests on dubious ground. Why would we need to speak of a

special, forward-looking anticipatory feature to mental states?

Consider the following case. Say that my wife tells me that there will be a

birthday party for me tomorrow, at which time I will eat chocolate cake. My

experiences in the past with chocolate cake have caused me joy; that joy is revived by

the belief that I will soon have chocolate cake again. Here, it is not the pleasure of the

future, but the pleasure of the past that is involved in my anticipation. It is past


experience that causes the impulses that direct our actions. In other words, past

experiences, memories, and the desires they cause can explain akrasia. We do not need

to posit an additional, anticipatory mental state in which we actually feel in the present

what we expect to feel in the future.

Consider another case. Say now that my wife tells me that we shall eat rhubarb

pie. Since I have never eaten rhubarb pie, I cannot revive an old feeling of pleasure.

How can I feel an anticipatory joy in this case? In fact, I will not feel such a tingle unless

I also believe that rhubarb pie is tasty. Perhaps I ask my wife what rhubarb pie is like

and she says that it is like strawberry, but more tart. Since I have enjoyed strawberries

and tart fruit in the past, I feel those old pleasures again in my anticipation for rhubarb

pie. And if I choose to come home early from work in order to eat the pie, which is

teleological behavior (coming home early is aimed at the future pie eating), the stimuli

of the past will be driving me to do so. No theory of future-oriented anticipation is

necessary.

In his recent article, "Spinoza's Account of Akrasia," Martin Lin attempts to

elaborate on Della Rocca's account.4 In so far as his account simply adopts Della

Rocca's anticipation interpretation, Lin's account also suffers. Beyond Della Rocca, Lin

locates three principles as the basis for how akrasia works in Spinoza. First, stated at

4pl0, Spinoza asserts that the farther an event is believed to be in the future, the weaker

our affects concerning the event. Second, stated in 4pl5, desires based on knowledge of

the good can be overpowered. And third, stated in 4pl6, desires regarding knowledge


10

of future goods can be easily overcome. The third of these is the intersection of the

previous two, of course.

These principles are aspects of Spinoza's theory of akrasia, to be sure. Yet these

principles are not fundamental, nor is this list exhaustive of relevant Spinozist principles

contributing to akrasia. For example, Lin does not explain why knowledge of good and

evil can be overpowered. As we shall show below, this principle can be explained

through more fundamental psychological principles. And Lin makes no mention of the

essential 4p60, where Spinoza says, "a Desire arising from either a Joy or a Sadness

related to one, or several, but not to all parts of the Body, has no regard for the

advantage of the whole man."5 This principle is certainly relevant to at least some

explanations of akrasia.

On the other hand, Lin rightly understands Spinoza's theory of mind as one of a

spiritual automaton, saying:

By the seventeenth century, the paradigm that encompassed faculty psychology

was widely viewed as regressive, both conceptually and empirically. Spinoza

aspires to what could be described as a mechanistic psychology, parallel under

the attribute of thought to the mechanistic physics he endorses under the

attribute of extension, and which portrays the mind as an "automa spirituale." His

account of akrasia is fully consistent with that goal. (28)

This mechanistic view of Spinoza's theory of mind is one for which I will argue at length

below. Lin is right to accept it and this acceptance could strengthen his argument. On

the next page, however, Lin asserts a problematic claim, saying:


11

Instead of identifying the rational and governing aspect of an individual with

some subset of its parts, he holds that all innate tendencies are rational. Only

desires that are alien, i.e., those the existence of which is owed in part to an

external cause, are irrational, and require domination. (29)

This claim is false. Lin overlooks 3p9, where Spinoza explicitly includes irrationality in

the hum an essence. This is one of the fundamental psychological principles that Lin -

like most other commentators - does not discuss.

Olli Koistinen presents an interpretation of Spinoza that is an alternative to Della

Rocca's.6 Koistinen presents an interesting discussion, claiming that Spinoza accepts

the principles normally found only in those thinkers who deny that akrasia is possible.

Yet Spinoza accepts akrasia. Thus, Koistinen reasons, Spinoza's thought represents a

uniquely desirable theory - one that begins with the allegedly plausible premises of

Socrates yet ends with the intuitive acceptance of akrasia.

Unfortunately, Koistinen's entire argument turns on his assertion that Spinoza

affirms what he calls a "one-goal theory," a view that has its locus classicus in Plato's

Protagoras. According to the one-goal theory, all hum an desires aim at the same, single

end. In Spinoza's case - as well as Socrates' - that same, single end is increasing our

pleasure. I f Spinoza were in fact to accept this one-goal theory, then Koistinen's

argument would carry weight.

Spinoza does not accept the one-goal theory, however. According to the one goal

theory, all our desires reduce to a single, fundamental desire for the good. This means

that all desires are reducible and thus commensurable. Yet Spinoza follows Plato and


Aristotle on this point. Plato rejects the Socratic one-goal theory, noting that thirst is not

the desire for good - it is desire for drink. And one desire can oppose and be contrary to

another. If we adopt the one-goal theory, however, it is very difficult to see how desires

could be fundamentally opposed to one another. For if all desires aim at the same goal,

psychological conflict will occur only between competing means to that goal. Thus, the

only psychological conflict we should experience is between relative cause-effect beliefs.

In short, then, if we accept the one-goal theory, we must reject any real affective or

emotional conflict. And this is a view strongly foreign to Spinoza's mechanistic,

affective psychology, as we shall see below.


13

Chapter One:

Theories of Akrasia

1.1. Theories of Akrasia

Since the beginning, philosophers have discussed akrasia. Socrates himself took

akrasia very seriously and, since his time, many prominent thinkers have weighed in

with their own views on the topic. In this chapter, six of the most prominent views of

akrasia will be sketched.

We shall begin, appropriately enough, with Socrates' famous denial of the

possibility of akrasia. He believed that no one could willingly and intentionally choose

against one's better judgment. Like all the thinkers discussed here, Socrates' views on

akrasia grow out of his notions of practical reasoning and desire.

In the later Platonic dialogues, especially the Republic, Plato takes a new position

on akrasia. Instead of denying its possibility, he offers a model of the mind that

accommodates the phenomenon. Whereas Socrates' agent was a unified, rational mind

single-mindedly pursuing its own good, Plato's agent is a divided soul, containing


14

various competing parts. According to Plato, when our passionate soul overpowers our

rational soul, we may suffer akrasia.

Aristotle rejects Plato's account of akrasia, in part because he finds many

problems in Plato's division of the soul. According to Aristotle, the single, unitary

rational soul is responsible for both rational and akratic acts. His account of akrasia is

based in his theory of practical reasoning. When we reason, he argues, we form a

practical syllogism, which involves a major, universal and a minor, particular premise.

Sometimes, however, we feel a strong, bodily passion for the particular involved in the

practical syllogism. This passion leads us to attend solely to the particular in a way that

leads us to act against the conclusion of the practical syllogism. Thus, we have

knowledge of the conclusion of the practical syllogism, but we do not use that

knowledge, instead acting from the passion for the particular.

Many centuries later, David Hume presented a significant challenge to these

views. Before Hume, philosophers generally believed that akrasia involved a seeming

paradox: how could reason dictate that we act one way, but desire direct us to act

another way? This problem gets off the ground only if our practical judgments are

motivating. Hume rejected this fundamental premise, arguing instead that reason is the

slave to the passions. For Hume, judgments concerning what action would be best do

not entail desires to perform that action. Instead, Hume suggested, such judgments are

inert, incapable of moving us to act without the presence of some independent desire.

For Hume, the problem of akrasia is no problem at all.


15

In the 20th Century, many philosophers have presented versions of historical

these positions.7 Perhaps most renowned among them is Donald Davidson. Davidson

presents the problem of akrasia as he sees it and then argues that it is indeed possible in

his sense and explainable. Davidson accounts for the seeming contradiction by positing

two kinds of judgment. One is a conditional judgment concerning what would be best

for us to do all-things-considered. The other is an unconditional judgment concerning

whether this particular action is good or not. Akratic action occurs, according to

Davidson, just when an agent acts on an unconditional judgment that contravenes a

conditional judgment of the agent. So, when we act on a particular judgment that runs

contrary to some prior all-things-considered judgment we have made, we act akratically.

The final thinker I shall discuss here is Alfred Mele. Mele is perhaps the

preeminent theorist of akrasia writing today. Since his landmark 1987 book Irrationality:

An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception and Self-Control, he has wrestled with the problem of

weakness of will.8 Here, the outlines of his view will be presented. Indeed, Mele's view

is of particular interest, because it is the theory that most resembles Spinoza's own.

After having discussed these six thinkers, I shall begin to explore Spinoza's own theory

of akrasia.

1.1.1. Socrates

Socrates famously denies the possibility of akrasia.9 Perhaps the most prominent

text in which Socrates denies the possibility of akrasia is in the Protagoras, especially 351-

7. There, Socrates and his interlocutors investigate the nature of courage. Along the


16

way, however, the question of whether pleasure is a good arises. Protagoras protests

that it is not always good, for it sometimes leads us to choose the lesser good over the

greater. According to Socrates' reconstruction of Protagoras' view, pleasure can even

drag around our knowledge of the good and lead us to choose some pleasure that is in

fact not a good at all. Socrates then sets out to investigate whether this can occur; can

pleasure lead us to do what we know to be bad? In other words, can we suffer from

akrasia?

Socrates begins his argument that akrasia is impossible by laying out the two

opposing views, saying,

Most people think this way about it, that [knowledge] is not a powerful thing,

neither a leader nor a ruler...while knowledge is often present in a man, what

rules him is not knowledge but rather anything else - sometimes desire,

sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain...they think of knowledge as being utterly

dragged around by all these other things as if it were a slave...or does it seem to

you that knowledge is a fine thing capable of ruling a person, and if someone

were to know what is good and what is bad, then he would not be forced by

anything to act otherwise than knowledge dictates, and intelligence would be

sufficient to save a person? (352bl-352c5)

According to Socrates, most people believe that we are ruled by desires, perhaps to

pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and that our knowledge of the good does not rule us.

When these ruling desires run counter to our knowledge of the good, so much the

worse for our knowledge, most people believe.


17

Socrates describes the alleged weakness of knowledge, saying, "most

people...maintain that most people are unwilling to do what is best, even though they

know what it is and are able to do it. And when I have asked them the reason for this,

they say that those who act that way do so because they are overcome by pleasure or

pain..." (352d2-352el). Pleasure is said to overcome or overpower us, preventing us

from acting on our knowledge.

Opposed to that is Socrates' view that knowledge is capable of ruling us,

according to which, if we have knowledge of the good and the bad, we will necessarily

pursue the good. Socrates begins his argument by first arguing for hedonism, according

to which the good is pleasure and the bad pain. The good is not just immediate pain or

pleasure, however, but overall pain and pleasure. Thus, surgery, though painful in the

short run, is a good in the long run because it brings a net positive amount of pleasure.

Similarly, too much drink may be pleasurable now, but in the long run has a net

negative amount of pleasure. Thus, too much drink is bad. In short, Socrates claims

that we are able to distinguish something that may be temporarily pleasant from the

overall good, which is what is pleasant overall.

Socrates rejects the possibility of akrasia, claiming that if one accepts his

understanding of the good then, he says, "your position will become absurd, when you

say frequently that a man, knowing the bad to be bad, nevertheless does that very thing,

when he is able not to do it, having been driven and overwhelmed by pleasure" (355bl-

255b3). Socrates describes the akratic as one who does the bad knowing it to be bad


18

because he is overcome by pleasure. But if pleasure is identical to the good, then this

means the akratic does the bad because he is overcome by the good, which is absurd.

He then reverses the substitution, replacing good and bad with pleasure and

pain. Thus the akratic does painful things, knowing them to be painful, on account of

being overcome by pleasant things that clearly do not outweigh the painful things. If

the pleasure were known to outweigh the pain, then we would not describe this person

as akratic, for he would be employing good judgment. But to say that someone

knowingly chooses the more painful thing because he is overwhelmed by a lesser

pleasant thing is also absurd.

Socrates also rejects the argument from temporal bias. According to this

argument, the akratic agent chooses a lesser present good over a greater good in the

future, usually because he is short-sighted. Socrates replies by saying that the only way

to evaluate relative pleasures and pains is to weigh them against one another. And a

proper weighing will always result in a preference for the one that brings greater

pleasure, regardless of temporal considerations.

Present lesser goods only appear to overshadow future greater goods, in much

the same way that smaller objects that are near appear larger than farther objects that, in

reality, are actually larger. If we judge according to appearances, indeed, we may

mistakenly act as though the nearer building were larger. And if we pass judgment

according to appearances, then perhaps we would choose the lesser present good over

the greater future good. As Socrates says,


19

While the power of appearance often makes us wander all over the place in

confusion, often changing our minds about the same things and regretting our

actions and choices with respect to things large and small, the art of

measurement in contrast, would make the appearances lose their power by

showing us the truth, would give us peace of mind firmly rooted in the truth and

would save our life. (356dl-356el)

He then concludes that the results of this measurement are a kind of knowledge. When

we lack such knowledge, our mind is at the mercy of appearance, which causes us to

wander all over the place, changing our minds regularly. In other words, in ignorance,

we may suffer a vacillation of the mind that makes choosing more difficult.10 Note that

in this vacillation of mind, we vacillate between two judgments as to what would be

best overall for us, not between our overall good and some temporary pleasure or desire.

And this vacillation is also not between conflicting desires, but between two judgments

as to which means to happiness is best.

Knowledge guarantees that we evaluate our goods truly, Socrates holds. Now,

Protagoras had originally claimed that akrasia was possible and that it involved even

our knowledge being ruled by pleasure. But, Socrates says,

...those who make mistakes with regard to the choice of pleasure or pain, in

other words, with regard to good and bad, do so because of a lack of

knowledge...so this is what "being overcome by pleasure" is - ignorance in the

highest degree... (357d3-357e3)

In short, then, there can be no akratic actions. When we err, we are simply in ignorance.


20

Socrates' denial of akrasia involves three claims, which are as follows:

(1) All hum an action aims at the good, where the good is our maximum possible

pleasure, or happiness, in the long-run;

(2) knowledge is stable, while appearance is fluctuating.

Socrates' denial of akrasia lie in (1). (2) is offered as an alternative explanation for the

phenomenon named akrasia. According to (1), all hum an action has as its motivation

knowledge of belief that the action will bring about our good.11 Thus, whenever we act,

we do so in pursuit of our overall, long-term good. And (2) offers an explanation as to

how we can suffer something that seems to be akrasia. For, when we operate only on

appearances, our mind is liable to vacillation. And when faced with certain choices, our

mind may flip-flop between appearances of the good, giving the impression of conflict.

In sum, Socrates believes that all hum an action is motivated by a singular,

fundamental desire - the desire for our overall, long-term happiness. Since all actions

aim at this one goal, we choose only the means by which to arrive at that goal. Our

choice of means is determined not by desires, for those all aim at the same end, but by

our beliefs. And in our desire for the good, we are all the same, as Socrates elsewhere

says, "Surely wanting the good belongs to everyone, and in this no one person is better

than any other."12

It is not our desire, for Socrates, but our beliefs, that determine whether we

pursue the true good or not. Therefore, we cannot ever be in a situation where our

beliefs or knowledge about our good are overcome by a conflicting desire, for all of our

desires in fact aim at that very good. The only conflict that can arise is between


21

competing means toward the same end. When we appear to suffer akrasia, we are in

fact experiencing vacillation of mind between competing means toward the same end.

And when we act based on mere appearance and not knowledge, we are especially

vulnerable to such vacillations.

In Terry Penner's terms, Socrates denies the possibility of synchronic akrasia,

where that is understood as action that is simultaneously represented as both desirable

and not in our best interest. Instead, he interprets Socrates as allowing only diachronic

akrasia, where that is understood as action that occurs during a period of flip-flopping

between representations, one that the action performed is the best means to our

happiness, and the other that the action performed is not the nest means to our

happiness. We feel conflicted because we cannot decide whether this course of action is

or is not best. When we act from appearances, we act in the midst of such vacillation. It

is to be expected, then, that such action may be preceded and followed by judgments

that such an action is not in our best interest. Thus, in retrospect, we mistakenly believe

we suffered synchronic akrasia, when in fact we did not.

Because he believed all hum an motivation reduces to our desire for happiness,

Socrates could not countenance synchronic akrasia. As opposed to Socrates, all of the

theorists I will discuss subsequently accept its possibility. Their challenge is to account

for how a human agent could choose a course of action while representing that course of

action as less desirable than another course of action that the agent judges to be

available. As part of this account, they must explain how these supposedly competing

desires could result in intentional or deliberate action and not compelled behavior or a


22

choice made out of ignorance. In other words, if our better judgment really is overcome

by some passion in akratic action, how are we responsible for that action?

1.1.2. Plato

In the later dialogues, especially the Republic, Plato presents a theory of human

action that resembles Socrates' in some respects, but one that departs from his on

certain key points.13 Most importantly, the later Plato denies Socrates' reduction of all

desires to a singular desire for the good, which is expressed in (1), above. For Plato,

desires are distinguished by their objects and, thus, can be directed at a variety of

different and perhaps competing things. Also important is Plato' division of the soul

into three parts, a rational soul, a passionate or spirited soul, and a desiring or sensitive

soul. Though Plato may offer an alternative explanation that allows for something like

synchronic akrasia, his account fails to explain how these actions could count as

deliberate, intentional actions. Further, his account of the agent is in danger of

incoherence.

In the Republic, Plato argues that each of the parts of the soul has its own desires,

which can come into conflict. This conflict of desires can result in akrasia, which occurs

when the desires of the spirited or desirous souls overpower the desires of the rational

soul. Plato argues for his parts of the soul doctrine by pointing to inner psychological

conflict. This is an interesting departure from Socrates, who took it upon himself to

explain away such conflict as being only apparent; such apparent conflict is in fact


23

vacillation. As opposed to this approach, Plato just begins with the acceptance of the

reality of this conflict.

Consider what he says in the Republic at 436b, where he says, "It is obvious that

the same thing will not be willing to do or undergo opposites in the same part of itself,

in relation to the same thing, at the same time. So, if we ever find this happening in the

soul, we'll know that we aren't dealing with one thing but many."14 He then argues

that "assent and dissent, wanting to have something and rejecting it" are pairs of

opposites.15 Next, he argues that having an appetite for something, such as hunger for

food and thirst for drink, can also be opposites, for we can want to have food and we

can also want not to have food.

Now, if a single person both wants and does not want the same thing at the same

time, it must be that these desires are not in the same part of him. As an example, Plato

considers a thirsty man who does not want to drink. He says:

Now, would we assert that sometimes there are thirsty people who don't wish to

drink? -Certainly, it happens often to many different people.

What, then, should one say about them? Isn't it that there is something in their

soul, bidding them to drink, and something different, forbidding them to do so,

that overrules the thing that bids? - 1 think so.

Doesn't that which forbids in such cases come into play - if it comes into play at

all - as a result of rational calculation, while what drives and drags them to drink

is a result of feelings and diseases? -Apparently.


24

Hence it isn't unreasonable for us to claim that they are two, and different from

one another. We'll call the part of the soul with which it calculates the rational

part and the part with which it lusts, hungers, thirsts, and gets exciting by other

appetites the irrational appetitive part...(439cl-d5; Plato, Complete Works, p. 1071)

Insofar as he is thirsty, he wants drink, but insofar as he wishes not to drink, he wants

not to drink. As Plato has argued, these two wants are opposites and cannot exist in the

same part at the same time. Thus, they m ust exist in the man in different parts of him.

Thus, when a man desires drink and at the same time judges that he should not drink,

he feels the conflict of two parts of his soul.

Plato's account suggests competing desires, one in the rational part of the soul

and the other in the desirous, appetitive part of the soul. According to Plato, these two

desires, the rational and the appetitive, cannot each be reduced to a fundamental desire

for the good, as Socrates had argued. Instead, Plato argues, each desire is conditioned

by its object. Plato says:

Now, insofar as it is thirst, is it an appetite in the soul for more than that for

which we say that it is the appetite? For example, is thirst thirst for hot drink or

cold, or much drink or little, or, in a word, for drink of a certain sort? Or isn't it

rather that, where heat is present as well as thirst, it causes the appetite to be for

something cold as well, and where cold for something hot...But thirst itself will

never be for anything other than what it is in its nature to be for, namely, drink

itself, and hunger for food...(437d3-el)


25

So, the objects of our desire condition and define our desires. When we thirst, we desire

drink and this desire must be understood as a desire for drink.

From this conclusion, Plato then argues, "hence the soul of the thirsty person,

insofar as he's thirsty, doesn't wish anything else but to drink...Therefore, if something

draws it back when it is thirsting, w ouldn't that be something different in it from

whatever thirsts and drives it like a beast to drink?" (439a5-b2). This amounts to the

rejection of the Socratic claim that all desires are really just the desire for our own long

term, overall happiness. Plato flatly denies that move here, arguing that each particular

desire is a desire for some particular object and not for anything more than that. Further,

when we experience a seeming conflict of desire, as when we thirst but desire not to

drink, we must be experiencing two distinct desires. For surely, Plato argues, that which

draws us away from drinking must be something different from that which draws us to

drink. Thus these desires cannot at root be the same thing; instead, they must be

different.

In other words, Plato rejects Socrates' theory by positing irreducible and

incommensurable desires that can oppose one another. Like Socrates, however, he does

not allow that an agent could at the same time both pursue a course of action and try to

refrain, so he divides the agent into parts, one of which pursues and the other of which

tries to refrain.

Plato's account has certain advantages and disadvantages compared to Socrates'.

First of all, Plato's account includes synchronic akrasia, because we can simultaneously

both want to drink and want to refrain from drink. On the other hand, Plato's


26

explanation comes at a cost, for his account threatens the akratic nature of the act.

Remember, for an act x to be akratic, it must (a) be intentional or deliberate and (b) be

performed by an agent who knows that x is not the best available course of action. If we

take Plato's account seriously, either (a) or (b) may be in jeopardy. When the desire to

drink, which derives from the appetitive part of the soul, overwhelms the desire to

refrain, found in the rational part of the soul, the agent seems to drink either

unintentionally or unknowingly.

Consider the desire causing the drinking behavior. On the one hand, we could

say that the rational agent is overpowered by a foreign desire originating in his body. If

this is the case, then the rational agent does not drink deliberately. Instead, the

drinking behavior comes over him like an irrepressible sneeze, despite his best attempts

to refrain. On the other hand, we could say that the appetitive agent simply follows his

own desire and does not actually want to refrain, the desire to refrain being just as

foreign to this appetitive agent as the desire to drink was to the rational agent. The real

problem lies in explaining how one agent may have both the desire to drink and the

desire to refrain.

Thus, in addition to the vexing metaphysical problems that arise from his theory,

Plato's tripartite nature of the soul also is problematic as a solution to the problem of

akrasia. As we shall see, Plato's student Aristotle addressed this difficulty head on.

1.1.3. Aristotle


27

Aristotle presents an account of akrasia seated in a larger theory of practical

reasoning. That account is to be found in Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics. He begins

in section 2 of that book by introducing and criticizing Socrates' denial of akrasia.

According to Aristotle, Socrates holds that "our action conflicts with what is best only

because we are ignorant."16 Aristotle denies this is the case because, when someone acts

from a false belief, we do not blame them, whereas we do not pardon vices such as

incontinence or akrasia.

Aristotle argues against Socrates by appealing to our moral intuitions. Because

of the way we blame and excuse, Aristotle argues, Socrates' account cannot be correct.

Aristotle says:

Some people concede some of [Socrates' points], but reject some of them. For

they agree that nothing is superior to knowledge, but they deny the claim that no

one's action conflicts with what has seemed better to him. That is why they say

that when the incontinent person is overcome by pleasure he has only belief, no

knowledge.

If however, he has belief, not knowledge, and the supposition that resists is not

strong, but only a weak one, such as people have when they are in doubt, we will

pardon failure to abide by these beliefs against strong appetites. In fact, however,

we do not pardon vice, or any other blameworthy condition [and incontinence is

one of these]. (1145b32-1146a4; bracketed phrases in Irwin's translation; p. 101)

When we are ignorant, we are not held to be blameworthy if we are unable to resist

strong desires. And when we have weak or doubtful belief, we are similarly excused.


28

However, when we are incontinent and suffer akrasia, we are not excused, but held

accountable, as we should be. Because of this important moral distinction between

acting against the good from ignorance or weak belief and acting against the good from

incontinence, Aristotle suggests, incontinence cannot be the same as acting from weak

or doubtful belief. Thus, Socrates' explanation of akrasia as being the result of weak or

doubtful belief is false, Aristotle argues.

In the following section, Aristotle takes up the question again and offers his own

account of akrasia. He has suggested in the previous section that Socrates' account, that

akrasia is nothing but ignorance, is false. Thus he must explain in what way the akratic

agent possesses knowledge of the good when he acts akratically. He explains how this

occurs with the help of his theory of practical reason.

Aristotle begins by making an important distinction between incontinence and

intemperance. The intemperate person, Aristotle says, "acts on decision when he is led

on, since he thinks it is right in every case to pursue the pleasant thing at hand; the

incontinent person, however, thinks it wrong to pursue this pleasant thing, yet still

pursues it."17 Thus, incontinent or akratic action involves pursuing, i.e., choosing, the

course of action that one knows or believes to be wrong. And the question of whether

the akratic action contravenes knowledge or mere firm belief is irrelevant, Aristotle says.

In order to account for akrasia, Aristotle introduces a distinction in ways of

knowing. He says,

But we speak of knowing in two ways; we ascribe it both to someone who has it

without using it and to someone who is using it. Hence it will matter whether


29

someone has the knowledge that his action is wrong, without attending to his

knowledge, or he both has it and attends to it. For this second case seems

extraordinary, but wrong action where he does not attend to his knowledge does

not seem extraordinary. (1146b31-36; Irwin, 103)

We may have knowledge of some good and act on that knowledge, or we may possess

such knowledge, but act from some other motivation. The account Aristotle is

establishing here is this: when the akratic agent acts, he does not primarily attend to his

knowledge that this action is bad - he does not act from that knowledge, but from

something else.

The details of this account turn on Aristotle's theory of the practical syllogism. A

practical syllogism contains a universal, or major, premise and a particular, or minor,

premise, the conclusion of which issues in an action. Aristotle says,

Further, since there are two types of premises, someone's action may well

conflict with his knowledge if he has both types of premises, but uses only the

universal premise and not the particular premise. For it is particulars that are

achievable in action... (1147al-4)

Imagine a person who believes the following universal premise: 'a dieter ought not to

eat cake.' Then say that this person also affirms the following particular premises: 'I am

a dieter' and 'this is cake.' Now, these premises entail the conclusion, 'I ought not to eat

this.' However, if I do not use or attend to some aspects of this syllogism, then this

conclusion either does not follow or is not in use.


30

According to Aristotle, one might fail to attend to this practical syllogism

because the particular in the minor premise may occupy your attention. The particular

being generally sensory, it is perceptual and thus resistant to rationality, according to

Aristotle. He says,

Further, we may also look at the cause [of akrasia] in the following way, referring

to [human] nature. For one belief is universal; the other is about particulars, and

because they are particulars, perception controls them... Suppose, then that

someone has the universal belief hindering him from tasting; he has the second

belief, that everything sweet is pleasant and this is sweet, and this belief is active;

but it turns out that appetite is present in him. The belief, then, tells him to avoid

this, but appetite leads him on... (1147a25-1147a36; Irwin, 1043-4)

We may indeed be aware that we ought not eat this cake. If we also have appetite,

however, this appetite can lead us to reason poorly and act in a different manner. Let

us return to our example. Say that a person forms the following practical syllogism:

Major premise: a dieter ought not to eat sweet things;

Minor premises: I am a dieter; this is cake, which is sweet;

Conclusion: thus, I ought not eat this.

Now say that the person also has this belief:

this cake, being sweet, is pleasant.

The first practical syllogism above should direct the person not eat the cake. But,

Aristotle says, if the person also feels the appetite of hunger, then the person might fail

to follow through and act on this practical syllogism. For when they consider the


31

practical syllogism, they have to consider the particular, the cake. And this is when

their appetite causes them to divert their attention from the practical syllogism to the

alternative line of reasoning that focuses simply on the pleasantness of the cake.

Aristotle describes just what is in opposition when akrasia occurs and we choose

to pursue some particular that our judgment has forbidden, saying,

The result, then, is that in a way reason and belief make him act incontinently.

The [second] belief is contrary to the correct reason, but only coincidentally, not

in its own right. For the appetite, not the belief, is contrary [in its own right to the

correct reason]. That is also why beasts are not incontinent, because they have no

universal supposition, but [only] appearance and memory of particulars.

(1147bl-6; Irwin, 104)

If I form the practical syllogism laid out above, I will reason from the universal premise

that a dieter ought to avoid sweet things. Now, when no contrary appetite is present, I

normally form the minor premise as well, that this thing before me, a dieter, is a sweet

cake, which leads me to conclude that I ought not to eat it. However, when I feel the

pull of appetite, I may return to the minor premise and dwell on the particular piece of

cake and its sweetness. I know that the cake, being sweet, would be pleasant to eat.

The appetite then causes me to employ this particular not in the context of the universal

premise and the practical syllogism, but merely to act from the pleasantness of the

particular. Thus I eat the cake, even though my mind contains the knowledge that I

ought not eat the cake. At the very moment of choice, my mind contains the universal


32

premise and the particular premise, but my mind does not attend to the universal

premise, only the particular one. Thus I act incontinently, or akratically.

Let me summarize the account. According to Aristotle, our actions normally

stem from deliberation and practical syllogisms that involve a universal and particular

premise. The major premise, being universal, contains an abstract principle, while the

minor premise, being particular, contains a perception. Now, perceptions are

necessarily bodily things, for Aristotle. If the body becomes disturbed by a strong bodily

passion, however, such as hunger or lust, the m ind's conception of that particular can

become skewed or unstable. This instability sometimes leads the mind to focus only on

the particular, attending to its pleasantness or unpleasantness, and not attending to the

universal premise that accompanies it. Thus, under pressure from certain bodily

passions, our practical reasoning may function defectively, so that it issues actions that

run contrary to our judgments, thus resulting in akratic action.

Several further features of Aristotle's account require comment. To begin, the

account just given concerns only in cases of sensual desire, such as lust or hunger.

These cases, which are called weak or passionate akrasia, involve our practical

deliberations being short-circuited, if you will, by the strength of a bodily passion or

appetite. Thus, this account of akrasia does not include cases where an agent acts

akratically as a result of a calm deliberative process, which we may call calm akrasia.

In calm akrasia, the agent performs a rational deliberation, but arrives at

conclusions that seem to rim counter to reason. For example, say that a person has

excessive love of country. This person may reason as follows:


33

Major premise: one ought to love one's country and so one ought to do whatever

one can to aid one's country;

Minor premise: I could aid my country by carrying out torture on these terror

suspects;

Conclusion: I will carry out this torture, even though it generally runs against

other principles I may affirm.

This kind of character is one who may calmly and rationally deliberate about what

would be best to do. But sometimes, as in this case, these conclusions may be abhorrent

and rim contrary to his principles. Yet in some cases, he may carry them out anyway.

And he may do so simply because he has an excessive love of country. This passion

colors and skews his practical reasoning, causing him to value some things too highly.

According to Aristotle, this is not a case of akrasia, strictly speaking, because no bodily

appetite has prevented my from acting on universal principles. Instead, I am guilty of faulty

reasoning, Aristotle would say. And this is exactly the same conclusion that Socrates

would reach. In other words, Aristotle's account agrees with Socrates' except in cases

of bodily appetites. Like Plato and unlike Socrates, Aristotle holds that bodily appetites

can overcome reason and cause us to act akratically.

Aristotle's theory is not without problems. This account of akrasia may be

vulnerable to one of the charges leveled against the Platonic account, which is the

charge that akratic action fails to be deliberate or intentional. For, if akratic action is the

result of our reason being blinded or bound by a physical impulse or appetite, how can

we be said to choose that action intentionally, or to perform that action deliberately? It


34

is not quite clear how we can say this. Perhaps the Platonic origins of Aristotle's

account lend it this difficulty.

As opposed to Plato, however, the problem of multiple agents does not as readily

arise for Aristotle, because his account of the practical reasoning integrates the

competing motivations into a single practical syllogism. After all, passionate akratic

action occurs when one agent entertains a single practical syllogism, but attends too

carefully to one aspect and disregards the other. This kind of account makes a parts-of-

the-soul doctrine impossible. On the other hand, Aristotle's bodily appetites seem

steadfastly anti-cognitive. They involve only the brute perceptions of particulars, which

is the same kind of cognition that Aristotle ascribes to animals. Thus, for Aristotle,

akratic action occurs when a rational animal allows his bestial appetites to direct his

practical reasoning, so that he disregards the distinctly rational aspects of that reasoning,

namely, the universal principles. Akrasia, then, is the trium ph of the bodily perceived,

corporeal particular over the cognitively apprehended universal, abstract principle.

Thus, Aristotle provides an account of akrasia that is largely Socratic, but one that

accepts the Platonic point that, sometimes, bodily appetites rooted in particulars can

overpower the force of reason. With the exception of an arguably narrow range of cases,

reason will always succeed in directing action. Thus, as long as we can control our

bodily passions, we need only worry about gaining knowledge in order to avoid error

and incontinence.

1.1 A. Hume


35

Over the centuries after Aristotle, various philosophers advocated views that

resembled those of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates in various ways. Except for Spinoza

and perhaps the Stoics, however, no one presented a radically distinct theory of akrasia

until David Hume.18 According to Socrates, if one believes a course of action to be best,

then one will be motivated to pursue that course of action and will attempt to do so.

According to Aristotle and Plato, if one believes a course of action to be best, one will

attempt to pursue that course of action only if passion does not overwhelm or misdirect

our reasoning.

All of these ancient views hold judgment and motivation in intimate connection.

Hume famously split judgment from motivation, claiming that our desires to act

develop independently of our judgments. Indeed, for Hume, "Reason is, and ought

only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to

serve and obey them ."19 Let us turn to Hume's argument for this remarkable

conclusion.

Hume begins by stating what he takes to be the received view, a view that is

reminiscent of Aristotle's, when he says,

Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of

the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert

that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates.

Every rational creature, it is said, is obliged to regulate his actions by reason; and

if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought


36

to oppose it, till it be entirely subdued, or at least brought to a conformity with

that superior principle.20

Aristotle explains akrasia, for example, as a case where the power of a passion causes us

to reason poorly. If we are to be continent and thus virtuous, we must subdue those

passions and assert the supremacy of reason, Aristotle holds. And this is the view that

Hume sketches here - the view that he will endeavor to reject.

According to Hume, when considering an object, we have the potential to expect

pain or pleasure. Reason comes into to play here, because it informs us of the causal

relations the possibly painful or pleasurable object bears to us. This realization will lead

us to flee or pursue the object. So reason does play a role in directing our action, but the

motive to act arises not from our knowledge of cause and effect (i.e., our judgments of

these relations among ourselves and objects), but from the emotions related to pain and

pleasure. Hume says:

But it is evident in this case that the impulse arises not from reason, but is only

directed by it. It is from the prospect of pain or pleasure that the aversion or

propensity arises towards any object: And these emotions extend themselves to

the causes and effects of that object, as they are pointed out to us by reason and

experience. It can never in the least concern us to know, that such objects are

causes, and such others effects, if both the causes and effects be indifferent to us.

(414)

So, when we consider an object, we may feel an emotion. This emotion then will lead

us to react. The direction of this impulse to react is determined by our knowledge of


37

cause and effect. So, for example, say that we see a spider on the floor. The spider

causes fear in us. Only after this fear has arisen do we use our causal knowledge to

determine how to react. Perhaps, after I feel fear of the spider, I will judge that the

spider is venomous and could bite me and that the best way to avoid being bitten is not

to approach the spider. The impulse from fear is then directed by this knowledge to

move me away from the spider. The bodily motion comes from the fear, while the

direction of motion comes from the causal knowledge.

And no further judgment could directly oppose the impulse of fear itself. For,

Hume famously says,

Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a contrary impulse...

But if reason has no original influence, 'tis impossible it can withstand any

principle, which has such an efficacy, or ever keep the mind in suspence a

moment. Thus it appears, that the principle, which opposes our passion, cannot

be the same with reason, and is only called so in an improper sense. We speak

not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of

reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never

pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. (415)

Only an impulse can oppose and overpower another impulse. But reason is not an

impulse, but a judgment. As such, reason cannot impede an emotional impulse at all.

Thus, if something is to oppose a passion, it cannot be reason, for reason serves the

passions. For reason does nothing but point the impulses in particular directions; it

cannot overpower or impede those impulses.


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These passions are not rational things; they are not judgments or ideas. Instead,

they are brute movement. As Hume says, "A passion is an original existence, or, if you

will, modification of existence, and contains not any representative quality."21 And

these passions cannot be opposed by the ideas of reason, for ideas may oppose only

other ideas. So Hume says,

When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion

have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or

more than five foot high. It is impossible, therefore, that this passion can be

opposed by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction

consists in the disagreement of ideas. (Hume, Treatise, 415)

Whereas an emotion, for Aristotle, is conditioned by and in some sense refers to its

object, Hume's emotions are completely without representational content. For Hume,

emotions simply are brute impulses. Thirst is simply a blind drive and not the

judgment that drink would be good, for example.

This non-cognitive account of the passions also means that the passions cannot

strictly be irrational, in the sense that they cannot conflict with reason. Indeed, Hume

argues, these are the two only ways in which emotions can be called irrational. First, if

the emotion arises only as a result of a false belief about something's existence, then it

can be called irrational. For example, if I feel fear as a result of falsely believing there to

be a burglar in my house, I have an irrational emotion. Second, if I act on an emotion

and choose an insufficient means toward my end, I can be called irrational. So, for


39

example, if I fear a burglar and wish to escape him but choose to do so by hiding in a

closet he is likely to search, I have acted irrationally.

From this view of the non-cognitive nature of emotions and their relation to

ideas, Hume rejects the problem of akrasia. That is, he does not find akrasia to be a

problem at all. As he famously says:

T is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the

scratching of my finger. T is not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin,

to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me.

T is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good

to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A

trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what

arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing

more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a

hundred by the advantage of its situation. In short, a passion must be

accompanied with some false judgment, in order to its being unreasonable; and

even then it is not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the

judgment. (416)

Emotions arise as a result of a blind process. These emotions impel me toward or away

from certain things. The specifics of my actions are determined by my ideas, to be sure,

but the emotions themselves are the motivations. And these emotional motivators are

neither rational nor irrational, strictly speaking. Thus, if I desire the lesser of two goods

more than the greater, this is not irrational, Hume says. Just as a lesser weight may


40

raise a greater one in certain circumstances (imagine a lever or pulley system at work),

so too can a lesser good create a greater desire. Only if I choose an insufficient means to

those desired ends, or if I make a mistake concerning the existence of an entity, can I be

said to be irrational in these cases. The emotions themselves afford no such

categorization. Thus, for Hume, akratic action is not irrational.

Motivation to act is completely external to our judgments concerning matters of

fact - even those concerning what would benefit or harm us. We may judge that a

certain course of action is beneficial to us, yet our non-rational desire to follow the lesser

course is greater and, thus, we choose the lesser course.22 As Hume says, "Men often

act knowingly against their interest: For which reason the view of the greatest possible

good does not always influence them."23

Hume rejects the description of akrasia according to which reason and the

passions struggle to determine hum an action. This does not mean that he denies all

psychic struggle, however, for passions may oppose other passions. And that feeling of

inner turmoil, which other thinkers have ascribed to the conflict of reason and passion,

Hume ascribes to the conflict between calm and violent passions. Because one of the

passions involved in calm, the mind may not feel it so strongly and may fail to notice its

presence. When the mind makes this mistake, Hume claims, the mind may mistakenly

ascribe the opposition to the violent passions to reason itself. This is incorrect, however.

So Hume says,

...there are certain calm desires and tendencies, which, though they be real

passions, produce little emotion in the mind, and are more known by their effects


41

than by the immediate feeling or sensation... When any of these passions are

calm, and cause no disorder in the soul, they are very readily taken for the

determinations of reason... Beside these calm passions, which often determine

the will, there are certain violent emotions of the same kind, which have likewise

a great influence on that faculty... What we call strength of mind, implies the

prevalence of the calm passions above the violent. (417-8)

Strictly speaking, Hume denies the possibility of akrasia, if akrasia is taken to be

irrational. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which Hume offers an account of akrasia

here. Akrasia occurs just when a violent passion overwhelms one of our calm passions.

And strength of will occurs when the calm passions overpower the violent ones. The

calm passions, Hume says, are normally those associated with the determinations of

reason, while the violent passions are normally those associated with our lusts, hungers,

angers, and so on.

For Hume, judgments as to what would be the most beneficial course of action

do not entail a desire to carry out that course of action - practical judgments are

independent of motivation. Moral judgments are even further removed from reason,

since they rely on feelings of sympathy in the imagination. In general, then, non-

cognitive desires motivate hum an action, not judgments. And the faculty of reason,

which includes these judgments, cannot oppose or resist these motivations. Any

resistance to a passion must be carried out by another passion. When we say that

someone is weak willed, we really mean that he is ruled by one kind of passion over

another. The strong-willed person is he who is ruled by the calm passions, not the


42

violent ones.24 Indeed, Hume's theory is a bold rejection of the Aristotelian, Socratic,

and Platonic accounts. Despite common opinion, however, Hume was not the first to

carry out so great a revision of moral psychology. For many of the revolutionary

features of Hume's moral psychology were already present in Spinoza.

1.1.5. Donald Davidson

Perhaps the preeminent theorist of akrasia in the 20th Century was Donald

Davidson. In a seminal essay, "How is Weakness of Will Possible?", he presents the

problem of akrasia and proposes to explain how this seemingly paradoxical

phenomenon occurs. I will argue, however, that it is in fact very similar to theories I

have already discussed, especially those of Socrates and Aristotle.

Davidson begins by offering his definition of weakness of will, or incontinence,

saying:

D. In doing x an agent acts incontinently if and only if: (a) the agent does x

intentionally; (b) the agent believes there is an alternative action y open to him;

and (c) the agent believes that, all things considered, it would be better to do y

than to do x.25

Akratic action occurs when an agent intentionally pursues a course of action that he has

judged, all things considered, to be inferior to another course of action available to him.

In short, we act akratically when we intentionally act counter to our best judgment.

After some discussion, Davidson presents the paradox of akrasia as consisting in

the following inconsistent set of three propositions:


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PI. If an agent wants to do x more than he wants to do y and he believes himself

free to do either x or y, then he will intentionally do x if he does either x or y

intentionally.

P2. If an agent judges that it would be better to do x than to do y, then he wants

to do x more than he wants to do y.

P3. There are incontinent actions. (Davidson, 23)

Like Aristotle, Davidson begins with accepting the reality of incontinent actions. Given

that we do in fact sometimes intentionally act contrary to our all-things-considered

judgments, P1-P3 present a paradox. According to P2, if I judge a course of action to be

superior to the others, I will want to do that action more than the others. And PI holds

that I will do whatever action I want to do more, assuming I do anything at all. PI and

P2 come together to form a kind of Socratic conclusion that I will necessarily do what I

judge to be best. Yet P3 shows that the picture is not so clear, because I sometimes seem

to fail to do what I judge to be best.

As Davidson himself notes, P2 is the principle that is most often amended or

rejected. This principle involves a view called internalism, according to which

judgments of value entail wants or desires. Now, most thinkers do not reject

internalism per se, but wish to re-interpret P2 to allow for seeming cases of akrasia. For

example, perhaps those judgments about what would be best in P2 actually concern a

judgment about what is expected of us by our community. If so, then I find no

difficulty in rejecting P2, for people often do not most want to do what they judge their

community to condone. If we follow this line, however, then we do not really consider


44

truly incontinent acts, which involve doing what we judge to be the worse course, not

what our community judges to be the worse course. That is not an incontinent act,

though it may be an unlawful one.

Another way people attempt to dodge this account is by attacking PI. For we

may most want to do some course of action, but we may be overwhelmed by some

other passion. This quasi-Platonic reply is also unsatisfying, however, for it also

involves the denial of true akrasia. In this case, the agent performing the akratic action

does not do so intentionally, for they are at the mercy of this foreign force. So the

paradox remains.

Davidson then turns to Aristotle's own account. Aristotle attempts to solve the

paradox by claiming we can know in two ways: we may know something but fail to use

such knowledge and we may know and use knowledge. When we act akratically,

Aristotle holds, we know that we ought to do otherwise, but do not use that knowledge.

As Davidson points out, Aristotle claims that the man who has but does not use

knowledge is like the drunk or the sleeping man. Davidson criticizes this view, because

it seems to conflate weakness of will with loss of control. In other words, Aristotle's

account of akrasia seems only to apply to cases where we lose control and wildly

succumb to temptation. His account does not allow for calmly succumbing and subtly

and deliberately carrying out our weak willed acts. In short, according to Davidson's

Aristotle, the akratic agent does not employ reasons that lead him to the akratic act;

instead, his passions prevent him from using reason. This appears to render akratic

action unintentional.


45

Davidson continues to criticize Aristotle from another angle. If an akratic act

results from a very strong desire, Davidson reasons, this desire m ust have involved a

judgment that the action was desirable. In this line of argument, Davidson seems to

employ the converse of P2, above, for he reasons that, if an agent wants very much to

perform an action, then he must have judged that action to be very desirable. And if the

agent judged the akratic act to be desirable, he must not have fully appreciated how

much that act was undesirable. Thus, the akratic agent who acts from a strong desire

likely did not realize the undesirability of his action. Yet this is exactly the opposite of

the alleged akratic agent, who performs an action knowing its undesirability.

In other words, if we wish to call the akratic action intentional, then the akratic

agent must have had reasons for his action. Plausibly, a person has a reason to perform

an act just when they judge it to be a good act to perform. Yet this is exactly not what

the akratic agent does. Therefore, the akratic agent seems not to have a reason for his

action. According to Davidson, if an agent does not act for a reason, then the agent

cannot be said to have acted intentionally. Yet this seems just to be what Aristotle

requires, so Davidson rejects the Aristotelian account.

Davidson then offers his own account. Davidson's solution is to make a

distinction between two kinds of judgments. On the one hand, we sometimes make

prima facie, all-things-considered judgments, which does not involve a commitment to the

superiority of the better option. These judgments do not tell us which is better

simpliciter, but only tell us which is better in light of some reason r. They are more like a

hypothesis than a decision. These judgments employ a kind of prima facie operator, as


46

well as a condition based on reason r. So, according to Davidson, they might take the

following form:

P f (y is better than x, given r)

Here, r is the reason why y is better than x. Given r, y is better, prima facie. Note that

this is not the kind of prescription found in Hare and, as such, does not entail a

commitment either to doing y or even to evaluating y to be best unconditionally.26

On the other hand, we also make unconditional evaluative judgments, which

Davidson sometimes calls "evaluative judgments sans phrase." These are simply of the

form ‘x is better than y / Now, PI and P2 only involve unconditional judgments, sans phrase,

and not conditional or prima facie judgments.

According to Davidson, then, we may make a conditional, or all-things-

considered, judgment that y is preferable to x, but then make an unconditional, or sans

phrase, judgment in favor of x, and do x, not y. Our judgment to do y being conditional

on reason r, it does not commit us to doing y. Only the unconditional judgment to do x

commits us to action. Since only unconditional judgments are involved in PI and P2,

and since the only conflict in akrasia is between one conditional and one unconditional

judgment, it follows that akrasia is consistent with PI and P2 and, thus, there is no

problem of akrasia.

First of all, Davidson's account is really not so different from Socrates'. For,

according to Davidson, if someone has made an unconditional judgment that x is better,

they necessarily must do x. They cannot unconditionally evaluate x to be better yet fail

to do x (assuming that they know themselves to be capable of x, of course). In short,


47

then, Davidson's unconditional evaluations are effectively the same as Hare's

prescriptions.

In fact, on Davidson's account of akrasia, here is what really happens. The akratic

judges course y to be best all-things-considered; that is, given some reason r, y is better.

But then the akratic agent makes an unconditional evaluation that x is better and, thus,

acts on x, not y. In short, the judgment that y is better was only hypothetical. So, when we

suffer akrasia, we simply choose to do one thing contrary to some hypothetical judgment

we have made. Or so says Davidson.

But this is unsatisfying, because it relies on what may be an irrelevant distinction,

because it seems simply to deny the possibility of strict akrasia. No final, bottom line,

unconditional, non-hypothetical judgment has been overturned or has failed to obtain.

The only unconditional judgment made was followed through quite consistently. In

this regard, Davidson seems to resemble Socrates more than any other thinker on this

topic. Like Socrates, Davidson denies strict akrasia and tries to offer an alternative

account intended to do away with our intuitions of mental struggle. What we feel is

actually a conflict between two different kinds of judgment, Davidson says. For this

apparent denial of akrasia, Davidson's account is rejected by many writers.27

1.1.6. Alfred Mele

The final theorist reviewed here is Alfred Mele. In his book Irrationality: A n Essay

on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control, Mele offers a robust and detailed account of

the phenomenon of strict akratic action, which occurs when an agent performs an act


48

freely, intentionally, and against his better judgment. This is not Socrates' diachronic

akrasia in which the agent flip-flops between judgments. Strict akratic action occurs in

the face of the better judgment. Mele explains first how the concept of strict akratic

action is possible and then how the event often occurs.

Strict akratic action is, first of all, free action. As Mele points out, this is a serious

challenge to any account of akrasia. When speaking loosely, people often speak of

akratic action as a case where the agent was "carried away with passion," so to speak.

Indeed, no account of akrasia is complete without an explanation of how the akratic

action is free.

The other theories reviewed here that allow for strict akratic action, specifically,

Plato's and Aristotle's theories, struggle to offer such an explanation. For Plato, one acts

akratically when the passions of the lower parts of the soul overpower those of the

highest part of the soul, reason. As Plato explains it, however, it looks as though the

faculty of reason is incapable of resisting the greater power of the lower parts of the soul

at the time of akratic action. Of course, had the agent undergone proper training and

gained sufficient knowledge before the moment of akratic action, the power of the

agent's reason might have been sufficient to resist the irrational desires. Yet at the time

of action, it seems that the agent did not possess the capacity to resist the irrational

desire, though he may possess the capacity to gain such a capacity.

Aristotle's theory may also face this challenge. According to Aristotle, akrasia

occurs when a bodily passion overpowers a rational practical syllogism and leads to

irrational action. The passion somehow renders the agent's practical reasoning


49

defective. The agent reasons and acts not from his universal principles, but out of an

undue attention to the particular present in the minor premise of the practical syllogism.

Once again, we may wonder how the resultant action can be called free. For the passion

seems to overwhelm and prevent the practical syllogism from following through

properly. Does the akratic agent possess the capacity to refrain from the akratic action

at the time of execution? It is not at all clear that he does, in Aristotle's theory.

Mele's own account addresses this challenge head-on. It may be the case that

when faced with the threat of akrasia, the agent is not sufficiently motivated by his

practical judgments to resist the akratic action. However, Mele reasons:

An agent can, for example, refuse, at the time of action, to focus his attention on

the attractive aspects of the envisioned akratic action and concentrate instead on

what is to be accomplished by acting as he judges best. He can attempt to

augment his motivation for performing the action judged best by promising

himself a reward (e.g., a night on the town) for doing so. He can refuse to

entertain second thoughts about the judgment that he has just very carefully

reached. He can practice more sophisticated self-control techniques prescribed

by his behavioral therapist...W hen we ask whether an akratic action was

motivated by an irresistible desire, we should ask whether it was in the agent's

power at the time to augment his motivation to perform the action judged best,

or to decrease his contrary motivation — or, more precisely, it was in his power to

bring it about that the bulk of his motivation lay on the side of his better

judgment. (24)


50

In short, then, the strength of a desire may be sufficient for action, but not be irresistible,

because in most circumstances we could marshal more motivational force by focusing

our attention and other cognitive methods or by relying on non-cognitive techniques.

Mele next takes up an aspect of the Davidsonian denial of the possibility of strict

akratic action. Davidson finds difficulty in seeing how the very concept of akrasia is

even coherent. According to Mele, Davidson's difficulty lies in his identification of

one's unconditional judgment with an intention. Mele argues convincingly that better

judgment is not identical to choice, nor to intention. Something additional is required in

order for any judgment to become a choice to act, or an intention. According to Mele,

we can make what he calls decisive better judgments. The decisive better judgments give

us a motivation to act, but they do not entail that we attempt to do anything at all. Only

forming an intention has that entailment, for Mele. But strict akratic action is not free

and intentional action against another of our intentions. Instead, it is free and

intentional action against one of our better judgments. And this is the mistake Mele

attributes to Davidson: he mistakenly identifies (a kind of) judgment with intention.

By distinguishing best judgment from intention, Mele allows for intentional

action that contravenes best judgment. Since he has already shown how such action can

be free, Mele has therefore shown how free, intentional action against our best

judgment is conceptually possible. After having explained this, he turns to explain how

it is psychologically possible. At root, his explanation boils down to this: "...evaluation

and motivation can be out of line with each other."28 Mele first gives a real-world

example. Consider a biology student who has an assignment to prick his own finger


and place a drop of his own blood on a slide to examine. He evaluates that doing this

assignment is in his interest and so he evaluates pricking his finger as being the best

course of action to do. So, in one sense of the term wants to, the biology student wants

to do prick his finger. But he also fears the pain involved. Now, say he considers the

pain at length and decides that, even given the pain, it is still best for him to proceed

with the pricking. His evaluative judgment concerning what is best to do becomes

decisive. This decisive judgment gives him a motivation to prick his finger. And say

that this motivation leads to his forming an intention to do so. He then picks up the

needle and brings it toward his finger. But at the last moment, he intentionally pauses

and refrains from pricking and he does so while still judging it best to proceed. Now, the

refraining act is intentional, free, and against his better judgment. This is possible for

one of two reasons: First, it may be the case that his motivation to prick his finger

remained, but his motivation to refrain grew as the needle approached his finger. At

the last moment, the motivation to refrain exceeded the motivation to prick and, so, he

refrained. Or perhaps he never had a stronger motivation to prick his finger. In this

case, he had an evaluative judgment that pricking would be better. Thus, in an

evaluative sense, he wanted to prick his finger. But even then, he lacked to motivational

wherewithal to follow through. Either of these explanations could account for the

student's strict akratic action.

Mele has claimed that Davidson's exclusive appeal to reasons are not sufficient

to explain (some) hum an action, especially strict akratic action. To augment what he

takes to be Davidson's too simplistic account, Mele offers several further considerations,


52

beginning with a notion of self-control. Mele describes the self-controlled person as

follows:

In short, a self-controlled person is someone who is appropriately motivated to

conduct himself as he judges best and has the ability to master motivation to the

contrary...And, of course, self-control comes in degrees... (60)

The self-controlled person is one who has a greater motivation to obey his best

judgments, which gives him greater power to resist contrary motivations. This greater

motivation and power come in degrees, of course.29

After having discussed the possibility of strict akratic action (as well as several

related paradoxes), Mele turns to explain how strict akratic action could actually come

about in Chapter 6, section 3 and 4, where he relies on two methods. First, he discusses

the view that our motivation increases as the expected rewards become more proximate.

In other words, hum an beings demonstrate a bias toward the near. That this is so is

supported by psychological research, though this phenomenon cannot by itself explain

strict akratic action. After all, we sometimes exhibit self-control in the face of such

biases. Mele then introduces considerations of attention. If we attend to the desire to eat

the cake instead of the desire to stick to our diet, we may experience an increased

motivation to eat it and thus succumb. In short, then, a bias toward the near and a

certain use of attention can explain how particular cases of strict akratic action occur.

Mele's account captures many of our intuitions; indeed, it may capture more

than any previous thinker. Mele allows that strict akrasia can occur, unlike Socrates and

Davidson. Mele also acknowledges that desires can come apart from our practical


53

judgments, like Hume. Yet Mele also recognizes that practical judgments do motivate.

He also offers a more thorough account than the other theorists of how strict akratic

action is free, intentional, and against our best judgment. As we shall see, Mele's

account resembles Spinoza's own in many of these ways.

1.2. Three Theoretical Positions

Six major theorists of akrasia have been presented, each with their particular

account of how - or whether - akrasia is possible. To aid our understanding of how

these thinkers relate to one another, it is helpful to categorize them according to how

they answer a particular question, which is:

What is the relation between practical judgments and motivation?

Those who say that practical judgments are modally linked to motivation may be called

strong internalists. Those that say that such judgments are only contingently linked to

motivation may be called externalists. And those who hold that such judgments are

modally linked to motivation, but only so linked ceteris paribus, are weak internalists.

These senses of internalism are sometimes called judgment internalism. As we shall see,

our six thinkers may each be placed into one of these three camps.

To be sure, there are many other senses of internalism and extemalism. Indeed,

there is even a related discussion concerning where our moral motivation ultimately

resides that uses these terms differently.30 In what follows, however, internalism is the

view that motivation is 'internal' to practical judgment - that is, when one makes a


54

practical judgment, one necessarily has at least some motivation to act. I will take

extemalism to be the view that practical judgment entails no such motivation.

1.2.1. Strong Internalism

Strong internalism concerning judgment and motivation is the view that practical

judgments are modally linked to motivation. Socrates held this view, as did Donald

Davidson. Davidson expresses strong internalism with his P2 principle:


to do x more than he wants to do y. (Davidson, 23)

According to Davidson's strong internalism, the course of action we judge to be best is

the one we most want to do. Our practical judgment, then, determines our motivation.

If P2 is true, then it is impossible that we might judge y to be a worse course of action

than x yet nonetheless desire to do y more than x.

Of course, for Davidson, we may indeed make conditional judgments to the

contrary. So, we may reason as follows: if we value our long-term health, then action x

is better than action y; indeed, insofar as we have these values, action x is the best action

available to us. Thus, our wanting to do y the most is conditional and not sans phrase.

However, we may thereafter make an unconditional or sans phrase judgment that action y

is best and thus want to do y the most. Concerning our unconditional judgments, P2

holds and, thus, Davidson is a strong internalist.

According to Socrates, hum an beings desire only their own long-term happiness.

Thus, any intentional hum an action will aim at this end. Given that all hum an action


55

aims at the same end, our choices concerning how to act are choices of means towards

that end. The choice of one means over another is a choice based solely in our beliefs

concerning which means is the best to achieve our ends.

Before acting, an agent reviews his beliefs about the various means to happiness

at his disposal and, if he will act, he will reach a conclusion that one is the best action.

The only things that could prevent him from carrying out this acts are if he is prevented

by some external obstacle or if he re-evaluates the means available to him and reaches a

different conclusion. For if he evaluates one means as best, and if he thereafter does not

perform that action but some other action, he either acted for a reason or he did not. If

he did, then he must have later judged that course of action to be preferable to the

formerly chosen action. If he did not act for a reason, then his action is not intentional

and thus he does not suffer akrasia, but compulsion.

Davidson reasons along the same lines, though for somewhat distinct reasons.

For Davidson, all action is done for a reason. So, if an action is to be intentional, it must

be done for a reason. And having a reason to act is, for Davidson, just to have a belief

that this course of action is best. But strict akratic actions seem to go contrary to our

judgments as to what is best, so they do not seem intentional.

For Socrates, all action aims at the same end and, so, all action involves choosing

the best means. So, when we act intentionally, we do so because we have judged that

course of action to be best. But strict akratic action seems to go contrary to the course of

action we have judged to be best and, so, it is difficult to see how we could have chosen


56

such a course of action at all. And so, it is difficult to see how such a course of action is

intentional.

Note that both Davidson and Socrates employ certain assumptions about the

relation between practical judgment and motivation. For Davidson motivation comes

about from reasons, which are judgments concerning what is best to do. For Socrates,

motivation comes from a judgment as to what would be the best means to our shared

end, happiness.

Both thinkers require a kind of totalizing, single judgment concerning the best

course of action in order to engender a motivation to act. Neither thinker, for example,

countenances multiple conflicting motivations, because neither allows multiple

conflicting judgments. Such judgments would have to take the form of 'I judge x to be

the best course of action and I judge x not to be the best course of action.' Davidson and

Socrates reject the possibility of such logically contradictory judgments.

Thus it seems that, implicit in the strong internalist position, is the view that

hum an action results from a totalizing decision process that cannot result in

contradictory motivations, because such a result would require a single mind to affirm

contradictory judgments simultaneously, which the strong internalist takes to be absurd.

As we shall see, many weak internalists attempt to account for multiple competing

motivations and judgments in the same agent, either by allowing a single mind to

affirm contradictory judgments or by positing distinct parts of a mind affirming non

contradictory judgments.


57

Very generally, then, the strong internalist affirms certain theses about the nature

of reason and the mind, namely, that no rational agent may affirm contradictory things

at the same time and that a rational agent possesses a unitary mind, not one composed

of distinct and possibly opposing parts. As we shall see, Spinoza denies these theses.

W hat's more, the strong internalist must deny the possibility of strict akrasia, instead

explaining away instances of akrasia in various ways. For example, Socrates explains

instances of akrasia as being diachronic, involving a vacillation of the mind caused by the

instability of appearances. Davidson claims that the opposition in akrasia is between a

conditional, or prima facie, judgment and an unconditional judgment. But the course of

action judged in the prima facie judgment cannot be detached from its condition, so that

no judgment directly opposes the unconditional, sans phrase judgment.31

1.2.2. Extemalism

Extemalism is the view that practical judgments and motivation are only

contingently connected, if at all. For Hume, our motivations to act are not internal to, or

constituents of, our practical judgments. In this sense, then, Hume is not an internalist,

but an externalist. For, when one makes a practical judgment, one may not necessarily

feel a motivation to act, because motivations, or passions, do not originate in reason.

Hume is considered to be the pioneer of this position, though as we shall see, Spinoza

preceded him in certain important respects.

For Hume, reason is the slave to the passions. This means that the judgments of

reason may not be efficacious except at the command of desire, or passion. Once a


58

passion has arisen w ith regard to some object, only then can reason employ its

judgments. Even then, reason does not move the hum an being to act. Instead, reason

points the way for the passion to expend its energies, serving as guide toward the

means judged to be best suited for satisfying the relevant desire.

Like Socrates, Hume takes the role of practical judgment to be instrumental. That

is, beliefs serve to direct us toward means to our ends, while our desires determine

what those ends are. Reason, therefore, serves only an instrumental function, for it acts

only as a means. Unlike Socrates, however, Hume does not reduce all desires to a

single, fundamental desire for our real and long-term happiness. Instead, Hume's

passions arise in us independently of our reasoned judgments.

To support this claim, Hume provides various examples and makes an appeal to

introspection. One way to understand his insight is this: ideas mirror the world; they

meet the world via the relation of representation. This means that all ideas represent

things - and thus judgments do as well, for Hume takes all cognitions, including

judgments, to be ideas. But the representational relation has the wrong direction of fit

to be the kind of thing that causes action. Desire, on the other hand, has the correct

direction of fit. Ideas conform themselves to the world via the relation of representation.

Desires, on the other hand, attempt to conform the world to themselves. The relation

between desires and the world points toward the world, while the relation between

ideas and the world points toward ideas. This is what it means to say that the direction

of fit for ideas is not appropriate to explain hum an action. And it is this insight that

underlies Hum e's extemalism.


Extemalism also conforms to Hume's picture of the hum an mind. Whereas the

strong internalist adopts what could be called a highly rationalist view of the mind as a

rational, unitary agent, Hume adopts what could be called a mechanist view of the mind,

one that takes the mind to be a complex mechanism containing inter-working parts. So,

desires may arise and overcome other desires just as a one pound weight may move a

one hundred pound weight, given the right situation, position, and so on. Hume

repeatedly presents a picture of the mind as a mechanism and repeatedly presents his

own model of explanation as one akin to Newton's. For Hume, the mind is a

mechanism of interacting forces and psychology is the science of explaining these

mechanical forces and their interactions. If we understand the mind to be such a

mechanism, we may see how desires and passions may arise independently of our will,

indeed, even contrary to our will.

It is also natural that such a view of the mind would include the possibility of

multiple, conflicting and perhaps incommensurate desires and goods. So, unlike the

strong internalist who is generally pressured to deny contradictory judgments and

contrary desires, the Humean externalist feels no such pressure. As such, akrasia does

not pose the problem it does for the strong internalist, for whom strict akrasia seems

impossible. Because the externalist can allow multiple opposing desires and, more

importantly, because the externalist denies that there is a necessary connection between

practical judgments and motivation, the externalist can easily allow that our

motivations may part with our judgments, as when we suffer akrasia. Indeed, akrasia is


60

not only unproblematic, for a Humean externalist, it is not even irrational, strictly

speaking, a rather counterintuitive result.

The externalist faces other problems, however. For the externalist must now deal

with the natural intuition that underlies the strong internalists' principle P2.



The strong internalist adopts this position because it seems natural to say that judging

an action to be better results in wanting to do it. Imagine a person who makes a moral

judgment that doing x is the right or good thing to do. It is implausible that this person

would not therefore want to do x. Indeed, their judgment that x is the best course of

action just is their reason to do x, Davidson might say.

The externalist must deny this intuition. And contemporary externalists do just

that by appealing to a figure they call "the amoralist." The amoralist is a man who

makes moral judgments but simply does not give a damn about morality and, so, feels

no motivation to do those actions he has deemed right or good. An internalist might

cite Hare's counterargument that this amoralist has not in fact made a moral judgment,

but an inverted commas moral judgment. An inverted commas moral judgment occurs

when an agent judges that a course of action is condoned or even demanded by

convention or social mores, but not necessarily by the agent himself. So, the internalist

might say, this alleged amoralist does not make a true moral judgment and, thus, it is to

be expected that he does not feel motivated to act in that way.


61

The externalists merely reply that no, the amoralist does in fact make a real

moral judgment and not simply an inverted commas moral judgment. At this point,

however, the argument breaks down. Some externalists say that the amoralist is a

counterexample to strong internalism, while strong internalists will deny this is so. So,

whereas the strong internalist must finesse his account of akrasia, the externalist must

explain why moral judgments do not entail a motivation to act.

The debate about the amoralist can be duplicated for the case of practical

judgment. Imagine a person who, when he judges that an act would advance his

happiness, feels no desire to perform that act. If such a person is possible, then

motivation must be separate from (or external to) practical judgment. As in the case of

the amoralist, the strong internalist will reject the possibility of such an individual,

while the externalist must explain why it is that, in almost every case in our experience,

we do in fact feel some motivation to act according to our practical judgments. In either

case, the externalist holds that our motivations (Hume's 'passions') have their origin

somewhere other than our judgments, a view the strong internalists deny. Certainly,

both views hold difficulties, to which we shall return.

2.2.3. Weak Internalism

Weak internalism is the view that practical judgments are modally linked to

motivation, but only ceteris paribus (i.e., in the absence of certain intervening conditions

such as a strong passion). This view is an attempt to capture the positive aspects of the

two positions just described, while avoiding their pitfalls. The challenge that faces


62

weak internalism is one of coherence; can the theorist accommodate these disparate

intuitions in an account that explains akratic action as freely and intentionally pursuing

a course of action judged not to be best?

Consider again Davidson's principles:



intentionally.




The weak internalist will generally accept PI and P3, but deny P2 as it stands. Instead,

they affirm a weaker version of P2, which is:

P2': If an agent judges that it would be good to do x, then he wants to do x.

The strong internalist affirms PI and P2. The weak internalist affirms PI and P2'. The

externalist, however, affirms only PI. Generally all weak internalists and externalists

affirm P3 as well. Strong internalists affirm P3, though they must offer an alternative

account of akrasia that is consistent with PI and P2.

Various weak internalists deny either PI or P2, depending on their system.

According to Plato, for example, an agent may form the rational judgment that x is

preferable to y and the rational soul may most want to do x, yet the person may perform

action y instead, if the spirited soul overpowers the rational soul. This seems to be case


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where P2 is affirmed and PI denied. Plato may deny PI because he associates the

agent with the rational soul.

Aristotle allows for P1&P2' but not P1&P2, because it is always possible that the

agent will have a stronger, irrational want, i.e., a bodily passion for x, that overpowers

his practically reasoned judgment that y is best. Thus, there can be cases where P1&P2

fail to obtain.

Alfred Mele is also a weak internalist who denies Davidson's principle of P2.

That he is an internalist is evident by his saying:

"Wanting more" in the evaluative sense does involve motivation; for, as I have

characterized the notion, what are evaluated are objects of wants having

motivational force. (163n9)

In other words, the competing judgments in question already involve motivational

wants. Mele assumes that only those kinds of wants are involved in akrasia. Thus, Mele

is a kind of internalist.

But he is no strong internalist, either. Mele implicitly recognizes and rejects

strong internalism and establishes that he is a weak internalist when he says:

If agents can act akratically even against an unconditional practical judgment,

then practical reasoning does not have the power that some philosophers have

claimed for it. It does not follow from this, of course, that practical reasoning,

reasons, and judgment have no motivational force, but only that other forces

must be taken into account in explaining (some) actions. (41)


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Mele does not mean to deny that agents act for reasons, of course. Indeed, he clarifies

this point a bit later, saying:

Akratic actions do not falsify the claim that havings of reasons are causes of

action. The agent who akratically does A, does A for a reason. That he took his

reason to do a competing action, B, to be a better reason — even if he formed an

intention to do a B — does not show that his having a reason for which he acts is

not a cause of his action. (47)

In short, then, Mele accepts a kind of Davidsonian causal theory of action, according to

which one acts for reasons which are also causes. He does not accept Davidson's

principle P2, however. Mele turns to P2 explicitly, saying:

We may, and should, reject Davidson's P2 -- the claim that any agent who judges

(unconditionally) that it is better to do x than to do y is more strongly motivated

to do x than to do y -- without having to abandon a causal theory of action. P2 is

false. The connection between better judgments and the balance of an agent's

motivation is more complex than Davidson thinks; and this holds as well for the

connection between intention and motivation. The extent to which an agent is

self-controlled is also an important factor. This is not to say, however, that there

is no connection, nor that to explain an intentional action by citing reasons(s) for

which it was intended and performed is not to give a causal explanation of the

action. (49)

So, practical judgment, even unconditional or decisive practical judgment, does not

entail intention, for Mele. Put another way, strength of evaluation does not entail


65

strength of motivation. But judgment or evaluation does entail some motivation or

reason for action, though it may not be efficacious, or the strongest reason or motivation,

for action. And so, Mele is a weak internalist.

1.2.4. Conclusion

Six theorists of akrasia have been introduced: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hume,

Davidson, and Mele. From these competing theories, three positions have been

identified concerning the nature of the relation between practical judgment and

motivation: strong internalism, weak internalism, and extemalism. In what follows,

Spinoza's own thoughts on these questions will be introduced. As with most issues,

Spinoza does not discuss these questions in the terms of those who came before him or

in terms familiar to 20th Century authors. Therefore some care will be taken in the next

chapter to present his thought in his own words. Only after that has been done shall I

place his theory in the context of our six theorists. In so doing, we shall see that Spinoza

is a weak internalist, one that most closely resembles Mele among our six theorists,

though with certain Humean tendencies as well. Indeed, presented in this way, we

shall see how novel and attractive Spinoza's account of akrasia truly is.


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Chapter Two:

Spinoza's Affective Psychology

2.0. Introduction

In the previous chapter, I surveyed six theories of akrasia, as well as three

theoretical camps into which those theories can be divided. Before I turn to Spinoza's

own account of akrasia and our determination of which camp into which he falls, I must

discuss certain more general features of Spinoza's psychological theory. Without

grasping Spinoza's thoughts on ideas, affects, and the conatus, his account of akrasia

cannot be comprehended.

In what follows, I shall discuss the outlines of Spinoza's psychology. I begin

with his theory of ideas. Following that discussion, I will treat the affects and how they

relate to ideas, a topic that bears the utmost significance for the Spinozist account of

akrasia yet to come. I shall end this chapter with a discussion of the conatus, another

central and necessary theoretical component of Spinoza's psychological theory. This

overview will provide the reader with the necessary background to be able to follow


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Spinoza's discussion of the passions, bondage, and akrasia, which I investigate in the

following chapter.

2.1. Ideas

Like most thinkers in the early m odem period, Spinoza employs ideas

throughout his epistemology and psychology. For some thinkers, such as the

Cambridge Platonists, these ideas are ectypes, pale shadows of the archetypes in the

divine mind.32 Others, such as Descartes, worked in the wake of Aristotle and the

Scholastics, taking ideas to be representations of things.33 Like Descartes, Spinoza takes

ideas to be representations. Spinoza's epistemology and psychology cannot be labeled

Cartesian, however. For Spinoza introduces a variety of novel aspects to his theory that

must be understood on their own terms. For example, Spinoza distinguishes between

inadequate and adequate ideas. Descartes employs these terms as well in his Reply to

A m auld's Objection to his Meditations. Yet adequate ideas are absolutely central to

Spinoza's thought, whereas Descartes only mentions them in passing in a reply to

Amauld. In fact, Spinoza's usage seems to depart from Descartes'. Because of its

centrality and importance to his doctrine of ideas, Spinoza's theory of adequacy will be

investigated at length below.

Among the most unusual tenets of Spinoza's epistemology and psychology,

however, is his doctrine of the three kinds of knowledge. Since this doctrine is a

component of his theory of adequate ideas, we shall investigate this doctrine first before

turning to adequacy.


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2.1.1. The Three Kinds of Knowledge: An Overview

The Ethics addresses an age old question: how can a human being gain happiness

in this life? For an answer, one might read his text and reply pithily, "one gains

happiness through knowledge," which is, in fact, largely Spinoza's answer, though this

curt reply is hardly informative. It is especially unhelpful when one discovers that

Spinoza claims there are at least three different kinds of knowledge. Only a close reading

of this obscure trichotomy can reveal what Spinoza's proposed path to happiness is.

The first kind of knowledge in the Ethics is, roughly, knowledge of particulars

from sensation. Such knowledge involves ideas that are inadequate, or incomplete, in

some way.34 Spinoza introduces this kind of knowledge, claiming that it may derive

"from singular things which have been represented to us through the senses in a way

that is mutilated, confused, and without order for the intellect (see p29c); for that reason

I have been accustomed to call such perceptions knowledge from random experience

[experientia vaga]."35 This knowledge is a result of our body physically interacting with

some other body, in which case it can be understood as sense perception. Of course,

knowledge of an object can also come about through means other than perceiving the

object directly; Spinoza describes this origin when he says that such knowledge comes

"from signs, e.g., from the fact that, having heard or read certain words, we recollect

things, and form certain ideas of them, which are like them and through which we

imagine the things."36 In the Ethics, Spinoza claims that the first kind of knowledge can

be derived from two sources; one can perceive some object directly, or one can learn


69

about some object via report or hearsay. Because it is inadequate, knowledge of the first

kind is the source of error, whereas knowledge of the second and third kinds are

adequate and thus true.37 Stated briefly, ideas of things gained from sensation and

report are usually inadequate because we cannot generally understand the cause of the

thing from direct sensation or report and because we gain only a partial perspective on

the thing itself; instead, we must engage in the activity of reason.38 Exactly why this

knowledge is inadequate will become apparent once adequacy has been treated more

fully below.

Concerning the second kind of knowledge, Spinoza says, "we have common

notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things...This I shall call reason and the

second kind of knowledge."39 The second kind of knowledge consists, in part, of

common notions [notiones communes], which are described when Spinoza says, "those

things which are common to all, and which are equally in the part and in the whole, can

only be conceived adequately."40 In other words, common notions are certain universal

properties that we can come to know adequately 41 For example, Spinoza believes that

one can rationally grasp the fundamental laws of motion and rest when one interacts

with bodies in the world. Because I am a body capable of interacting with other bodies,

I can form an adequate conception of the abstract, fundamental laws of motion and rest

that apply to all bodies.42 The common notions will be discussed below.

The third kind of knowledge shares many qualities with the second kind.

Spinoza says, "knowledge of the second and of the third kind is necessarily true."43

This is so because knowledge of the second and third kinds are adequate, whereas


70

knowledge of the first kind can be false.44 Because the second and third kinds are both

adequate, they are both active. That is, the mind is purely active in forming these ideas.

This is apparent when Spinoza says, "our mind does certain things [acts] and

undergoes other things, namely, insofar as it has adequate ideas, it necessarily does

certain things, and insofar as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily undergoes certain

things."45 Here it is clear that both the second and the third kinds of knowledge are a

purely active. These acts are a very different kind from the passive case of being acted

upon embodied in the first kind of knowledge. Thus, the second and third kinds of

knowledge pertain only to adequate ideas and, because of that, they also constitute a

pure mental activity in a way that the first kind of knowledge does not.

In Part 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza presents a method for achieving peace of mind,

which involves replacing confused ideas with adequate ones. He says, "the more the

mind understands things by the second and third kinds of knowledge, the less it is

acted on by affects which are evil, and the less it fears death."46 Both the second and

third kinds of knowledge help to protect the individual from evil affects, that is,

passions. But in the same Part, Spinoza emphasizes the third kind of knowledge when

he says, "the greatest striving of the mind, and its greatest virtue is understanding

things by the third kind of knowledge."47 Here it is clear that some important

differences exist between the second and third kinds of knowledge.

The third kind of knowledge is first set out in 2p40s2, which says, "there is... [a]

third kind, which we shall call intuitive knowledge. And this kind of knowing

proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the


adequate knowledge of the essence of things."48 Spinoza calls this intuitive knowledge

(scientia intuitiva).49 It involves an intuitive mental movement between the essences of

God and a thing. Of the third kind of knowledge, Spinoza says, "because the essence of

our mind consists only in knowledge, of which God is the beginning and foundation

(by lp l5 and 2p47s), it is clear to us how our mind, both with respect to essence and

existence, follows from the divine nature, and continually depends on God."50 Spinoza

claims that our mind, like all things, is dependent on God, citing lp l5 and 2p47s. Ip l5

is Spinoza's formulation of the famous doctrine of monism, which says, "whatever is, is

in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God."51 And in 2p47s, he says,

"and since all things are in God and conceived through God, it follows that we can

deduce a great many things which we know adequately, and so can form that third

kind of knowledge."52 These two propositions, which Spinoza cites in 5p36s, suggest

that knowledge of the third kind is related to the doctrine of monism; we have

knowledge of the third kind when we immediately and adequately grasp that a

particular thing is a mode of God and is dependent on God. I will return to this

discussion below.

Spinoza presents the reader with one example to aid the understanding of the

three kinds of knowledge, which is as follows:

I shall explain all of these with an example. Suppose there are three numbers, and the

problem is to find a fourth which is to the third as the second is to the first. Merchants do

not hesitate to multiply the second by the third, and divide the product by the first,

because they have not yet forgotten what they heard from their teacher without any


72

demonstration, or because they have often found this in the simplest numbers, or from

the force of the demonstration of P19 in Book VII of Euclid, namely, from the common

property of proportionals. But in the simplest numbers none of this is necessary. Given

the numbers 1, 2, and 3, no one fails to see that the fourth proportional number is 6 - and

we see this much more clearly because we infer the fourth number from the ratio which,

in one glance, we see the first number to have with the second. (2p40s2; Curley, 478; Geb

11/122

This example can be understood in the following way. The first two cases represent

two different instances of the first kind of knowledge. In the first case, a merchant

knows how to figure this proportion because of something he was told by his teacher

without demonstration. The merchant who has remembered a dictum from his teacher,

then, can be said to be using the first kind of knowledge from signs. Next in the

example is a merchant who knows how to solve a problem "because [he] has often

found this [proportion] in the simplest numbers." This case is of knowledge from

experientia vaga, the vagaries of experience, since this merchant has the knowledge

through what he has "found."

In the next part of the ratio example, Spinoza claims that some merchants may

know the solution to the problem "form the force of the demonstration of P19 in Book

VII of Euclid, namely, from the common property of proportionals." This must be a

case of the second kind of knowledge, involving a demonstration based on common

notions, especially given that geometers since Euclid have regularly referred to their

axioms as common notions.53


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In the final part of the ratio example, the merchant knows the answer to the

problem not because of some Euclidean proof, which is unnecessary for him, but by

direct intuition. We see the truth of the matter "at a glance" (uno intuitu), intuitively.

This uno intuitu must be scientia intuitiva.

Some interpreters take the second kind of knowledge to be an incomplete form of

reasoning, only perfected in the third kind of knowledge. Of the second kind of

knowledge, Henry Allison says,

Knowledge from general principles [the second kind of knowledge] remains ungrounded

ultimately...this mystery can be removed only by grounding the principle in the nature of

God. This grounding, both of principles and their consequences, is achieved by the third

kind of knowledge.54

But in 2p46d, Spinoza says, "the demonstration of the preceding proposition is

universal, and... will involve God's eternal and infinite essence. So what gives

knowledge of an eternal and infinite essence of God is common to all," which suggests

that knowledge may be universal yet still grounded in God's nature. In other words,

the second kind of knowledge is grounded in God's nature, though perhaps in a

different way from the third. I will return to this distinction below.

Yet other interpreters affix an unwarranted kind of mystical insight to the third

kind of knowledge. This mysticism has no grounding in Spinoza's text, but the view

nonetheless seeps in to otherwise exemplary interpretations.55 Of the second and third

kinds of knowledge, Margaret Wilson says, "the second kind of knowledge differs from

the third both in requiring steps of reasoning, as distinct from direct mental vision, and


74

in failing to arrive at the inmost essences of things."56 At its heart, though, her

interpretation leans heavily on her claim that the second kind of knowledge simply

cannot look deeply enough into things. Only the third kind, she asserts, has this power.

Spinoza had no such miraculous insight in m ind.57 For him, the third kind of

knowledge is distinct from the second in that it involves seeing how a particular thing

fits into the causal network of nature. Given Spinoza's monism, that means

understanding a thing in relation to God.58

Though a central doctrine in Spinoza's epistemology, the three kinds of

knowledge will not play a pivotal role in the following discussion. The third kind of

knowledge is pivotal to Spinoza's account of human freedom, but it will not occupy

much of our space here. Instead, we will focus more of our attention on the distinction

between adequate and inadequate ideas, which falls between the first and second kinds

of knowledge.

2.1.2. The Account of Adequate Ideas

Though we have been discussing the outlines of Spinoza's entire epistemology,

our real concern is his notion of adequacy, because the central tenets of his psychology

turn on the adequate/inadequate distinction. As we shall see, Spinoza seems to present

two criteria for adequacy, so it will useful to determine the details of these two criteria

before proceeding. Our attention, however, will be limited to the Ethics, since he does

not present an account of adequacy in the Short Treatise59 and only employs the

adjective adaequatus unevenly in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.60


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In the Ethics, Spinoza offers a definition of adequate ideas.61 The definition alone,

however, does not take us far in determining whether such ideas are available to the

hum an mind, so we m ust look to how Spinoza subsequently uses the term. He offers

an explanation of adequacy that relies upon his doctrine of monism62 at 2p llc , where he

says:

From this it follows that the human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God. Therefore,

when we say that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God,

not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is explained through the nature of the human

mind, or insofar as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, has this or that idea; and

when we say that God has this or that idea, not only insofar as he constitutes the nature of

the human mind, but insofar as he also has the idea of another thing together with the

human mind, then we say that the human mind perceives the thing only partially, or

inadequately. (Curley, 456; Geb 11/94-95)

By the doctrine of monism, the hum an mind is a part of God's infinite intellect. Being

infinite in Spinoza's sense, God's intellect contains all ideas. But the hum an mind itself

is just an idea,63 so God's intellect includes it and its contents as well.

Consider two ideas x and y in God's mind. Say that y is the idea that constitutes

some human mind; say, further, that x is some other idea. If God's idea x is a proper

part of God's idea y, then we may say that mind y has adequate idea x. However, if

God's idea x is only partially within his idea y, then we may say that mind y has idea x

only inadequately, or partially. Call this the containment sense of adequacy:

(CON) Idea x is adequate in mind y, itself a complex idea, iff x in its entirety is a

proper part of y.64


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Thus, in 2p llc , Spinoza seems to equate an idea's being adequate in a mind with its

being completely contained in that mind.65

Elsewhere, however, Spinoza employs a different notion of adequacy, according

to which an adequate idea of x's cause is necessary for an adequate idea of x.66 At

2p24d, Spinoza says:

The idea, or knowledge, of each part [of the body] will be in God (by P3), insofar as he is

considered to be affected by another idea of a singular thing (by P9), a singular thing which

is prior, in the order of Nature, to the part itself...And so, the knowledge of each part

composing the human body is in God insofar as he is affected with a great many ideas of

things, and not insofar as he has only the idea of the human body, that is (by P13), the idea

which constitutes the nature of the human mind. And so, (by PI 1C) the human mind does

not involve adequate knowledge of the parts composing the human body. (Curley, 468-9;

Geb 11/111)

Each part of our body has another, prior body as its cause; similarly, each bodily event

has another, prior bodily event as its cause. Often, these prior, causing bodies are

distinct from our own body. So, for God to have an idea of each part of our body, he

must also have ideas of things besides our body. Thus, God's ideas of our bodily parts

are not wholly contained within the idea in God's mind that constitutes our mind.67

Therefore, our ideas of the parts of our bodies are incomplete, and hence inadequate,

even though God's ideas are not inadequate.

Similarly, in 2p25d, Spinoza argues that an idea of an external body is inadequate

in the mind because that mind does not contain ideas of the external body's causes. He

says:


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We have shown (P16) that the idea of an affection of the human body involves the nature of an

external body insofar as the external body determines the human body in a certain fixed way.

But insofar as the external body is an Individual which is not related to the human body, the idea,

or knowledge, of it is in God (by P9) insofar as God is considered to be affected with the idea of

another thing which (by P7) is prior in nature to the external body itself. So adequate knowledge

of the external body is not in God insofar as he has the idea of an affection of the human body, or

the idea of an affection of the human body does not involve adequate knowledge of the external

body. (Curley, 469; Geb 11/111)

In this quotation, the idea in question is of an affection of the human body caused by an

interaction with an external body - i.e., a bodily sensation of an external object. Because

this kind of sensation involves both our body and an external body, its idea also

involves ideas of both bodies. But an external body, or its motion, are generally caused

by some third body not related to us; thus we do not have an idea of the cause of the

external body involved in our sensation. Because of this lack, Spinoza says, our idea of

these kinds of sensations cannot be considered adequate ideas.

In both of the preceding propositions, Spinoza implies that having an adequate

idea of something requires having an adequate idea of its cause.68 This suggests what I

will call the causal requirement, which is:

(CR) Idea x is adequate in mind y iff y also has an adequate idea of x's cause.69

The argument for CR relies implicitly on la4, which says, "the knowledge of an effect

depends upon, and involves, the knowledge of its cause." This means that a mind that

has knowledge of x m ust also have knowledge of x's cause. But Spinoza generally uses

'has knowledge of' and 'has an idea of' interchangeably.70 So, having an idea of x


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depends upon and involves having an idea of x's cause. CR could be seen as an

elucidation of the nature of this dependence and involvement. Indeed, the causal

requirement, CR, extends the containment criterion to include not only the idea itself,

but the idea of its cause as well.

Therefore, the containment criterion (CON) and the causal requirement (CR)

could be combined, to form this new sense of Adequacy:

(ADQ) Idea x is adequate in mind y iff x and an adequate idea of x's cause is a

proper part of y.

This doctrine suggests that, in order for a mind to contain all of an idea, it must also

know something of that thing's cause. In short, Spinoza thinks, phenomena are to be

understood and explained causally.

But (ADQ) demands not just an idea of x's cause, but ideas of its adequate cause.

This definition seems to establish a vicious regress. For, consider again la4 and the

causal requirement (CR), especially as it is used in 2p25d. Knowledge of a sensation,

say, requires knowledge of an external mode that caused the sensation. But that cause

itself is also an effect of some prior cause. So, to understand the external mode, one

must understand some prior thing, and so on. This suggests that one cannot have

knowledge of a mode unless one has knowledge of a long series of causal antecedents.

This iterated application of la4 seems to be employed in 2p9, when Spinoza says,

The idea of a singular thing which actually exists has God for a cause not insofar as he is infinite,

but insofar as he is considered to be affected by another idea of a singular thing which actually


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exists; and of this [idea] God is also the cause insofar as he is affected by another third [idea], and

so on, to infinity. (Curley, 453; Geb 11/91-92).

One scholar, Michael Della Rocca, interprets this passage as warranting the following

claims: "...the idea of a certain thing is caused by God insofar as God has infinitely

other ideas of particular things...God is the cause of the idea of certain things insofar as

God has the infinitely many ideas that are the causal antecedents of the idea in

question."71 In other words, each singular thing, or finite mode, has an infinite series of

causes and we should consider this entire series as the cause of that mode. So, Della

Rocca suggests, a human mind can have an adequate idea of a singular thing only if

that mind also has an idea of each of its causal antecedents, which is equivalent to

(ADQ). He also suggests that each finite thing has an infinite series of causal

antecedents.72 So, adequate knowledge of any finite mode requires knowledge of an

infinite series of causal antecedents; therefore, Della Rocca may be correct in saying that

we cannot have adequate knowledge of finite things.73

Spinoza has offered two related criteria for adequacy - the containment

requirement (CON) and the causal requirement (CR). These two can be combined to

form (ADQ). In what follows, it will be shown that the common notions and the idea of

God meet (ADQ).

2.2.3. Common Notions

Spinoza's theory of adequacy as just explained does not preclude hum an

possession of adequate knowledge. As mentioned, Spinoza asserts that hum an beings


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have adequate ideas. Among those that he affirms we possess are common notions and

the idea of God.74 Spinoza introduces the common notions at 2p38, saying, "those

things which are common to all, and which are equally in the part and in the whole, can

only be conceived adequately."75 The common notions are adequate ideas that take

certain things, or properties, as their objects.76 These objects are found universally,

"equally in the part and in the whole," further, they can only be conceived adequately.

Spinoza offers 2Lem2 as an example of such a common property. 2Lem2d says,

"all bodies agree in that they involve the concept of one and the same attribute (by Dl),

and in that they can move now more slowly, now more quickly, and absolutely, that

now they move, now they are at rest." The capacity for motion and rest found in all

bodies is a common property and, so, the idea of this capacity is a common notion.

This capacity is also a fundamental principle in Spinoza's quasi-Cartesian

physics. In discussing the nature of bodies, Spinoza begins with the following two

axioms: "all bodies either move or are at rest" and "each body moves now more slowly,

now more quickly."77 Therefore, at least some of the common notions are of

fundamental principles of physics.

Spinoza speaks of these principles in a somewhat different way in a letter to

Georg Hermann Schuller, who has asked on behalf of Ehrenfried Walther von

Tschimhaus the following question, "I should like to have examples of those things

immediately produced by God, and of those things produced by the mediation of some

infinite modification,"78 to which Spinoza replies, "...the examples you ask for of the

first kind are: in the case of thought, absolutely infinite intellect; in the case of extension,


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motion and rest."79 This exchange refers to the doctrine of infinite modes, which is

sketched at lp21-23, where Spinoza says, "all the things which follow from the absolute

nature of any of God's attributes have always had to exist and be infinite, or are,

through the same attribute, eternal and infinite."80 Put briefly, infinite modes are

properties or characteristics that follow directly from a divine attribute. Spinoza says

explicitly that motion and rest is a fundamental feature of Extension. As such, it is an

infinite mode, following directly from the nature of the attribute of Extension.

Common notions are of common properties, which are those found equally in

the part and in the whole; that is, they are found in their entirety in every mode of an

attribute. The capacity for motion and rest is one such common property. This

common property is an infinite mode, something that follows immediately from the

nature of Extension itself.81 Thus, at least some of the common notions are ideas of

infinite modes under Extension, which themselves are fundamental principles of

Spinoza's quasi-Cartesian physics.82

This interpretation of the common notions is borne out in the demonstration to

2p38, where Spinoza says:

P38 Dem.: Let A be something which is common to all bodies, and which is equally in the

part of each body and in the whole. I say that A can only be conceived adequately. For its

idea (by P7C) will necessarily be adequate in God, both insofar as he has the idea of the

human body and insofar as he has ideas of its affections, which (by P16, P25, and P27)

involve in part both the nature of the human body and that of external bodies. That is (by

P12 and P13), this idea will necessarily be adequate in God insofar as he constitutes the

human mind, or insofar as her has ideas that are in the human mind. The mind, therefore (by


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PI 1C), necessarily perceives A adequately, and does so both insofar as it perceives itself and

insofar as it perceives its own or any external body. Nor can A be conceived in another way,

q.e.d. (Curley, 474; Geb II/ 118)

Take A to be the capacity for motion and rest. Being a fundamental feature of Spinoza's

physics, this capacity is present in every part of Extension. Because the common

property is involved in every mode of Extension, that is, in every part and affection of

body, it follows that the common notion will be involved in every idea of those parts or

affections.83 Further, since the common property is completely and wholly present

within each mode of Extension, the common notion is complete within the hum an mind

and its ideas of its bodily affections. In other words, the idea of the common property is

a proper part of the idea of the human body and its affections and, as such, is wholly

contained within the hum an mind. Such containment, it has been established, is one

criterion for adequacy.

Given that all our ideas are of affections of our own body, and given that there

are certain fundamental laws of physics that hold universally of all bodies, we can come

to know these fundamental laws whenever we consider our body or its physical

interactions.84 Because these laws are wholly instantiated in the objects of our ideas, we

can form adequate ideas of them.85

But containment (CON) is only one criterion for adequacy. According to (ADQ),

an idea of something is complete in the mind only when that mind also contains ideas

of that thing's causal antecedents, that is, when it contains an idea of that thing's

adequate cause. For Spinoza, every finite mode has an infinite chain of causal


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antecedents. Infinite modes, however, do not. Some follow directly from God's essence

conceived under a certain attribute, while others follow immediately from some infinite

mode. Thus, at least some infinite modes have finite chains of causal antecedents.

Indeed, some have only a single link in their causal chain, following directly from the

attribute itself. The capacity for motion and rest is one of these immediate infinite

modes.86 In other words, then, our ideas of infinite modes may be adequate yet not

result in an infinite regress, because infinite modes may have only a finite series of

causes.

Thus, the common notions meet the containment criterion for adequacy (CON).

If our idea of a common property is to be adequate, then it must also meet the causal

aspect of (ADQ) expressed in (CR); that is, we must also have an adequate idea of its

cause. The capacity for motion and rest is an infinite mode that has, as its cause, God's

essence conceived under the attribute of Extension. Thus, for this common notion to be

adequate in a mind, that mind must also include an adequate idea of the attribute of

Extension. In order to show this, we must determine whether the mind also has an

adequate idea of the common notion's cause, namely, the idea of God.

2.1.4. The Idea of God's Essence

Concerning the idea of an attribute, Spinoza says, "by attribute I understand

what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence."87 The idea of the

attribute of Extension is just the idea of the divine essence as conceived under that


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attribute. If we have this idea, then our common notions of the infinite modes of

extension are adequate.88

Spinoza asserts that we do in fact have an adequate idea of the essence of God.

In 2p45d, Spinoza says,

.. .singular things (by IP15) cannot be conceived without God - on the contrary, because (by

P6) they have God for a cause insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which the

things are modes, their ideas must involve the concept of their attribute (by IA4), that is (by

ID6), must involve an eternal and infinite essence of God. (Curley, 482; Geb 11/127)

Whenever one forms an idea of any thing or event, one must form that idea under a

certain attribute. In other words, the idea of Thought in general is necessarily a part of

one's idea of something mental, while the idea of Extension is a part of one's idea of

something bodily; one cannot consider a particular body without assuming the general

idea of Extension. But, Spinoza says, having an idea of Extension just is having an idea

of the divine essence.89

Then, in 2p47, Spinoza says, "the hum an mind has an adequate knowledge of

God's eternal and infinite essence."90 This is so because the mind necessarily has ideas

of itself, under Thought, and of its body and external bodies, both under Extension.

Further, given 2p45d, these ideas - of our own body and mind, for example -

necessarily involve the ideas of the attributes of Thought and Extension. Thus, every

hum an mind necessarily has an idea of God's essence, as conceived under those two

attributes.


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Further, Spinoza says, this idea of God's essence is adequate .91 The

demonstration for this claim is important, as it echoes the justification behind the

common notions:

Dem.: The demonstration of the preceding proposition [2p45] is universal, and whether the

thing is considered as a part or as a whole, its idea, whether of the whole or of a part (by

P45), will involve God's eternal and infinite essence. So what gives knowledge of an eternal

and infinite essence of God is common to all, and is equally in the part and in the whole. And

so (by P38) this knowledge will be adequate. (2p46d; Curley, 482; Geb II/127-8)

Spinoza has argued that the idea of every mode must involve the idea of its attribute.

Necessarily, as we do have some ideas, we therefore do have some idea of an attribute.

W hat's more, this necessary connection between the idea of a mode and the idea of its

attribute is a property common to all modes. Thus, Spinoza claims, we all have an

adequate idea of the divine essence for the same reason that we all have adequate

common notions.

Let me reiterate. The hum an mind is just the idea of its body and its bodily

interactions. There are certain common properties in all bodies, which are involved in

every body and bodily interaction. When we form ideas of bodies and bodily

interactions, as we must, our ideas necessarily involve ideas of these common

properties. Because these properties are equally in the part as in the whole, our ideas of

these properties, the common notions, are wholly contained within our minds. Further,

when we form ideas of bodies or of our own mind, we must conceive of these things

under certain attributes. When we do so, our ideas necessarily involve an idea of these

attributes. Like the common notions, the ideas of the attributes are equally in the part


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as in the whole. As such, we necessarily form an idea of these attributes that is wholly

contained within our minds. Thus, both the ideas of the attributes, which are just our

conceptions of God's essence, and the common notions satisfy the containment criterion

(CON), above.

Both common notions and our idea of God's essence meet the causal

requirement (CR) as well. As quoted above, Spinoza asserts that our idea of God's

essence is adequate, but there is another reason for thinking this is so. Concerning God,

or Substance, Spinoza says:

A substance cannot be produced by anything else (by p6c); therefore it will be the cause of

itself, that is (by dl), its essence necessarily involves existence, or it pertains to its nature to

exist. (Ip7d; Curley, 412; Geb 11/49)

God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, ...necessarily exists, ( lp ll; Curley, 417;

Geb 11/52)

God, which Spinoza equates with Substance, necessarily exists; for Spinoza, this means

that God is self-caused.92 Therefore, in having an idea of God, one also has an idea of the

cause of God.93 And Spinoza has defined the attributes as the divine substance as

perceived by the mind. Thus, the attributes are self-caused as well, just as the divine

substance itself is.

So, in having any idea whatsoever, the hum an mind thereby also has an idea of

an attribute. But an attribute is just a conception of the divine essence. And when one

conceives of the divine essence, one also conceives of the cause of the divine essence,

since God is a cause per se. Thus, in having any idea whatsoever, the hum an mind

necessarily contains an idea of God and an idea of the cause of God. And so, in having


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any idea whatsoever, the idea of God in the hum an mind meets both the containment

criterion (CON) and the causal requirement (CR). Thus, the idea of God in the human

mind meets (ADQ) and therefore is adequate.

It has also been established that the hum an mind contains certain common

notions. Further, these common notions have as their objects things that have God as

their cause. And so, since we have an adequate idea of God, the common notions also

meet (ADQ)- Thus, the common notions are also adequate in the hum an mind.

Another way to understand this is to consider the principle of simplicity. In

Letter 12 and elsewhere, Spinoza holds that the divine attributes are not divisible into

parts, even though they are infinite; that is, the divine attributes are not aggregates or

sums of things. On the contrary, he claims, this infinity is a simple and uniform infinity,

as opposed to a numerical infinity. If something is simple, it cannot break down into

parts and, thus, cannot undergo corruption. Thus it is indestructible and eternal. If the

attributes are ontologically simple, however, it may be reasonable to assume they are

conceptually simple as well, especially given Spinoza's doctrine of a parallelism

between bodily modes and ideas.

Now, if something is conceptually simple, one cannot grasp it only in part, for it

is not so composed. Instead, one must grasp it completely, that is, adequately, or not at

all. For example, self-evident notions often are said to display this characteristic of

simplicity. And this seems to be exactly how Spinoza takes the idea of the attributes -

self-evident truths of the highest simplicity. Given these ideas of the attributes,

common notions follow. These common notions themselves have a kind of qualified


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simplicity and eternity of a hypothetical or dependent form, for example, "given

Extension, then certain common notions follow." And what is this simple idea we have of

the divine attribute? I suggest we take seriously what Spinoza says at lp34: "God's

power is his essence itself."94 In other words, God's essence just is power. So, when we

conceive of an attribute, which is said to be God's essence as conceived in a certain way,

we are conceiving power in Extension or power in Thought.95 The idea of a uniform,

infinite power, for Spinoza, is a simple idea, one that is not composed of simpler ideas.

As such, it can only be known adequately or not at all.96

Spinoza's theory of ideas divides ideas into two categories, adequate and

inadequate. The class of inadequate ideas is coextensive with the first kind of

knowledge. The first kind of knowledge, being inadequate, are ideas that are known

only partially and without a full understanding of their causes. The adequate ideas,

however, are further divided into two exhaustive categories, the second and the third

kinds of knowledge. They are grasped in their totality and their causes are understood.

These include the common notions, which involve the laws of nature and logic. The

third kind of knowledge, not discussed in the preceding, is a mental activity connecting

particulars to the divine essence. As it is not directly relevant to our discussion here, it

will be set aside. For what concerns us most is the distinction between adequate and

inadequate ideas. This distinction underlies the opposition between active and passive

affects. And this opposition is essential to understanding Spinoza's account of akrasia.

It is to the affects, then, that we now turn.


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2.2. Affects

2.2.1. Introduction

Spinoza's affective psychology lies literally and figuratively at the center of the

text of his Ethics. Its introduction in Part 3 serves as the transition from Part 2's

epistemology of ideas to the ethics and politics of Parts 4 and 5. Despite their centrality,

however, relatively little has been written on the affects of the mind in Spinoza's

philosophy.97 Spinoza commentators generally agree that affects of the mind in

Spinoza's system involve a kind of cognition, a view sometimes labeled "cognitivism."

Philosophers have applied the term "cognitivism" to a variety of theories.

Cognitivism is often contrasted with the view attributed to Hume that emotions are

brute feelings or sensations that contain no cognitive content,98 as well as that of

William James, who took emotions to be the conscious awareness of physiological

events.99 The exact nature of the cognitive content ascribed to emotions differs from

writer to writer, however. In Martha Nussbaum's usage, for example, emotions are

cognitive in that they bear information in some sense.100 According to Robert

Solomon's sense of cognitivism, emotions are judgments of a certain sort, lying in

certain relations to other mental states.101 Very generally, then, cognitivism is the view

that emotions, or affects, contain some cognitive content, though that content may not

exhaust the nature of the affect, nor may it necessarily be propositional in content.102

Most commentators agree that affects in Spinoza's system are cognitive in some

sense of that term. For example, Michael Della Rocca says, "in general, for Spinoza,

affects are intentional mental states. They are not contentless sensations (as they are in


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Hume), but rather cognitive states directed at particular objects or states of affairs."103

As considered in the mind, affects are representations of some sort. Don Garrett also

agrees, saying, "every affect [of the mind] is at the same time an idea (i.e., a

representation) of a state of the individual's body, and (indirectly) of external bodies

that have contributed to producing that state."104 Affects of the mind, then, are held to

be ideas.

2.2.2. On the Nature of Ideas

Spinoza defines "idea" at 2d3, where he says, "by idea I understand a concept of

the mind which the mind forms because it is a thinking thing."105 In this definition,

Spinoza states that ideas are concepts, by which he means something formed by an

action of mind. Spinoza states why he uses the term "concept" [conceptum] in an

explanation following this definition, where he says, "I say concept rather than

perception, because the word perception seems to indicate that the mind is acted on by

the object. But concept seems to express an action of the mind.106" Spinoza offers this

explanation because he wishes to distinguish his notion of ideas from Descartes', who

holds that perceptions are purely passive, only volitions being active.107

Ideas may be either passive or active for Spinoza, depending on whether they are

inadequate or adequate. He says, "our mind does certain things [acts] and undergoes

other things, namely, insofar as it has adequate ideas, it necessarily does certain things,

and insofar as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily undergoes other things."108 This

may initially seem like a contradiction, for he says in 2d3 that all ideas are mental acts,


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yet 3pl suggests that some ideas are inadequate and thus instances of mental passivity.

With adequate ideas, our mind is wholly active, which means that the mind is an

adequate cause. With inadequate ideas, however, the mind is partially active and

partially passive, which means that the mind is only a partial cause, as he explains in

3dl and 3d2. In both cases, however, the mind is active in some sense, which is

Spinoza's point in 2d3, above. Spinoza takes pains here not to present ideas as purely

passive perceptions; ideas are products of mental acts.109

If Spinoza means to say that ideas are concepts, how ought we to understand

him? At the very least, Spinoza's ideas have cognitive or representative content.110

Spinoza does not explain what he means by a concept here, however. By "concept," he

could mean a psychological entity like a representation or mental act;111 on the other

hand, he could also mean a logical object, such as a proposition.112 Spinoza renders a

uniform logical reading problematic, however, when he equates ideas with particular

affirmations of mind, which are certainly psychological.

Spinoza equates ideas with mental affirmations, or volitions, when he states, "in

the mind there is no volition, or affirmation and negation, except that which the idea

involves insofar as it is an idea."113 In this statement, Spinoza establishes that a volition

is an act of affirmation or negation. Further, there are no volitions in the mind except

those which ideas involve simply because they are ideas. In other words, the only

volitions in the mind are those involved in the essence of ideas.

By identifying volitions and ideas, Spinoza is not claiming that volitions do not

exist because there are only ideas, nor the converse. Instead, we understand that ideas


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can be conceived at least in two ways, one cognitive and one volitional. In other words,

we may refer to modes of thought as ideas or as volitions, one referring to their

cognitive content, the other to their volitional or affirmative nature. Considered

together, however, they are the affirmation of a representation, which can be

understood as a judgment.114

2.2.3. The Affects

Spinoza turns to discuss the affects in Part 3 of the Ethics, where he offers the

following as a definition, saying, "by affect I understand affections of the Body [in]

which the Body's power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at

the same time, the ideas of these affections."115 An affect is an event in which the body

undergoes a change in its power and of which the mind simultaneously forms an idea.

This mirrored relation between bodily events and ideas in the mind is the result of

Spinoza's doctrine of parallelism.116 In this case, however, the relation is between not

just any mode of body and its idea, but between a power-changing affection of body

and its parallel mental affect. Since this affect in the mind is the mental correlate of a

change in the body's power, this very affect must involve a change in the m ind's power

as well. So Spinoza says, "the idea of any thing that increase or diminishes, aids or

restrains, our Body's power of acting, increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our

Mind's power of thinking."117 For, just as a mode of body has its parallel mode of

thought, or idea, and an affection of body has its parallel affect of mind, so too does the

power of the body have its parallel in the power of the mind. Thus, an affect is a change


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in the body's power, which is paralleled in the mind by an idea involving a change in

the m ind's power.118

In the definition in 3d3, "affect" refers both to a change or affection in the body

and the idea of that change, though Spinoza often speaks as though he means only the

mental phenomenon by the term "affect."119 In the "General Definition of the Affects,"

for example, Spinoza says, "an Affect that is called a Passion of the mind is a confused

idea, by which the Mind affirms of its Body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser

force of existing than before..."120 Note, however, that the discussion here is restricted

to affects that are "a Passion of the m ind."121 Thus, one need not conclude from the

definition that all affects are necessarily only ideas. After all, the definition also defines

all affects as passions and confused ideas, even though Spinoza specifically states that

some affects can be active and involve adequate ideas.122

Considered solely as modes of body, affects are the bodily events associated with

certain emotions. Spinoza recognizes this when he says, "as for the external affections

of the body, which are observed in the affects - such as trembling, paleness, sobbing,

laughter, and the like - 1 have neglected them, because they are related to the body only,

without any relation to the m ind."123 So again we see how the term "affect" refers both

to an affection of the body in which its power changes and the idea of that affection.

Because Spinoza is primarily interested in the psychological dimension of the affects,

however, he restricts his discussion to the mental; I will follow this restriction as well,

only addressing affects in the mind. Further, these affects, being ideas, are necessarily

cognitive.


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2.2.4. Affects are Cognitive

Spinoza regularly suggests that affects have cognitive content. Consider 4p8,

where Spinoza says, "the knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of Joy or

Sadness...."124 Spinoza does not mean to reduce knowledge to non-cognitive affect, of

course. Instead, he wishes to suggest that cognitions have an affective dim ension.125

Spinoza repeats this theme at 4pl4 as well, where he states, "no affect can be restrained

by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is

considered as an affect."126 Again we see that one thing - true knowledge in this case -

can be considered as either a cognition or as an affect.127

In his explanation of the General Definition of the Affects, Spinoza asserts that an

affect is not only an idea, but an affirmation. He says,

.. .the Mind passes to a greater or lesser perfection when it happens that it affirms of its body

(or of some part of the body) something which involves more or less reality than before. So

when I said above that the Mind's power of Thinking is increased or diminished, I meant

nothing but that the Mind has formed of its Body (or of some part of it) an idea which

expresses more or less reality than it had affirmed of the Body. (Curley, 543: Geb n/204)

When the mind forms an affect, it affirms something. This act of affirmation involves a

change in the body's power, which in turn involves a change in the m ind's power. One

can consider this mode of thought as a cognition, insofar as it involves some

propositionally structured, representational content. Further, one can consider it as an

affirmation, for this representational content itself involves an affirmation. Finally, if

we consider that the content of an idea involves a change in the power of the body or


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mind, then we consider this idea as an affect. In other words, all modes of thought, or

ideas, are both cognitions and judgments.128 And when those ideas involve a change in

the body's or the m ind's power, these ideas, then, are affects.

So, affects are ideas. It should be evident that Spinoza's theory of the affects is

strongly cognitivist, as it has been labeled by several Spinoza scholars.129 The

appropriateness of this label bears itself out in an examination of the cognitive nature of

the particular affects as well.

All of the affects, according to Spinoza, are derivatives of the three primary

affects,130 which are: pleasure or Joy [laetitia], pain or Sadness [tristitia], and Desire

[cupiditas].131 When we form certain ideas, which are affirmations of representations,

the power of our mind is increased. The increase in power involved in forming this

idea is felt as Joy. When we form other ideas, our mind's power is decreased, thus

feeling Sadness. So, Spinoza says, "by Joy, therefore, I shall understand in what follows

that passion [in] which the M ind passes to a greater perfection. And by Sadness, that passion

[in] which it passes to a lesser perfection."132 Passions are simply passive affects, so what

has been said of affects applies equally to passions.133 Therefore, Joy is a judgment in

which the mind becomes more perfect, which means that the power of the mind

increases. Likewise, Sadness is a judgment in which our mind becomes less perfect,

which means that the m ind's power decreases.

Here is an example that may help to illustrate this point. Say that I believe Peter

harmed me. That is, I affirm a representation of Peter harming me. Next, let us say that

this involves a decrease in my power. This would be a case of a Spinozist affect because


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I affirm some idea, in which the power of my mind to act is reduced. By Spinoza's

lights, my power will have been reduced, which I will feel as sadness. Further, because

I believe Peter to be the cause of this sadness, I will feel this sadness as hate towards

Peter.134 Thus, the very same mode of thought is simultaneously a representation, an

affirmation, and an affect; that is, it is a change in the mind's power involved in a

judgment that is felt in a certain way, namely, as hate.

Finally, concerning desire, Spinoza says, "desire is man's very essence, insofar as

it is conceived to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something."135

When we are affected in a certain way, specifically, so that we are determined to do

something, we have an affect of desire.136 In other words, affects which cause us to act

are instances of desire. So, all affects are really species of Joy and Sadness; those affects

that motivate us to act are desires, whether they be joyful or sad.137 In fact, all affects of

desire are also affects of either Joy or Sadness, both of which are cognitive. As such,

affects of desire are cognitive as well.138

2.2.5. Spinoza's Janus-Faced Psychology

The dual nature of ideas as either cognitive or affective explains an aspect of

Spinoza's thought with which some commentators find difficulties. For example, in the

latter half of the Ethics, Spinoza argues in favor of a life lived in accordance with reason,

offering a kind of cognitive therapy to help free us from the bondage of the passions.139

Jonathan Bennett rightly points out that, for Spinoza, an affect can only be overcome by

an opposing affect; this view is contrary to that of Descartes, who holds that one ought


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to overcome passion w ith reason.140 In other words, Bennett claims, Spinozist reason

seems to be impotent, only affects being able to overcome other affects, a view that

stands in contrast with Descartes' focus on the virtues and strengths of reason. And

Bennett is not alone in raising this concern, as several other prominent interpreters of

Spinoza have voiced similar worries.141 So, does Spinoza demean the power of reason?

Is he a predecessor of Hume on this issue?

I do not believe so. If we understand cognitive therapy as it is found in a

Cartesian psychology, where reason stands on one side and passion or affect on the

other, then reason would indeed by impotent, for Spinoza, and his cognitive therapy

useless. But Spinoza's genius lies in rejecting this very dichotomy; he believes that the

objects of the mind cannot be so divided. So, Lee Rice says:

The true revolution in Spinoza's account of affectivity is to be found not just in his consistent

and thoroughgoing determinism, but also his systematic and consistent denial of "the split

between the cognitive and the emotive or affective, or between faculties of thought and

feeling, or, more sharply, between thought and action."142

For Spinoza, every instance of an affect is itself also a cognition. This principle

underlies his unique psychological theory. For Spinoza, affects are ideas involving

changes in the m ind's power. These changes in the m ind's power may come about

when the mind is purely active, or only partially so. That is, in some cases, we

experience a change in mental power in an action we perform and other times we

experience such a change in undergoing something. As discussed in the previous

chapter, the mind's ideas may be inadequate or adequate. When the mind is an


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adequate cause of its ideas, those ideas are adequate; otherwise, the ideas are

inadequate. Spinoza speaks of affects similarly when he says, "if we can be the

adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the Affect an action;

otherwise, a passion."143 Affects in which the mind is an adequate cause are active

affects and those in which it is not an adequate cause are passive affects, or passions.

Spinoza introduces these active affects when he says, "apart from the Joy and

Desire that are passions, there are other affects of Joy and Desire that are related to us

insofar as we act."144 Given that affects are identical to ideas, it follows that active

affects involve adequate ideas and passive affects involve inadequate ideas. Further,

though our mind may undergo passions of Joy, Sadness, and Desire, it may only

experience active affects of Joy and Desire, as Spinoza establishes when he says,

"among all the affects that are related to the Mind insofar as it acts, there are none that

are not related to Joy or Desire."145 So, we may have either passive or active Joy and

Desire, but only passive Sadness.

To understand this claim, consider Spinoza's doctrine of conatus, according to

which we necessarily strive for what we believe will increase our power of acting.146

Every act we perform will be aimed at what we believe will increase our power. Now,

if a particular act involves adequate knowledge, then that act will be aimed at what

actually increases our power, because in this case our belief is true, being adequate. In

other words, whenever we form an adequate idea, we form an idea that will in fact

increase our power, so it is not possible for our forming an adequate idea to result in a

decrease in our power. Since active affects involve adequate ideas, they too cannot


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involve a decrease in our power. Given that Sadness is a decrease of power felt in the

formation of an idea, we cannot have an active affect of Sadness. It follows, then, that

active affects may only be felt as species of Joy or Desire.

Affects and ideas, including adequate ideas and knowledge, are not different and

opposing classes of mental objects, for affects are simply a certain kind of idea.

Therefore, when Spinoza speaks of the power of the affects, he means to include the

affective power of adequate ideas as well. Notice that whenever Spinoza discusses the

seeming impotence of reason vis-a-vis the affects, he qualifies reason or knowledge in a

particular way. For example, "nothing positive which a false idea has is removed by

the presence of the true insofar as it is true," though it can remove certain false ideas

insofar as it is an affect.1*7 And when Spinoza says, "consequently the true knowledge of

good and evil, insofar as it is true, cannot restrain any affect," he again qualifies

knowledge.148 Thus, Spinoza suggests, knowledge qua knowledge is impotent, but

knowledge qua affect has power.

Spinoza wishes that we live according to our rational, active affects, not

according to the passions, intending his cognitive therapy as a way of achieving this. In

short, we are to employ reason so that our active affects are efficacious. This is not a

case where we try to pit one set of brute, irrational passions against another set, hoping

that the results come out according to the guide of reason, however. No, this is reason

itself employing its force against the passions. To say otherwise is to divide - falsely -

the idea from the affect. Spinoza very literally believes in the power of reason. So

Ursula Goldenbaum says,


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[Spinoza] was misinterpreted as a thinker who stood in the long tradition of those who

understood human freedom as the freedom from affects, i.e., as the reign of reason over

affects. Contrary to this, the achievement of Spinoza was, in my opinion, to show that

human action is always and necessarily determined by affects. Even the free man's acts are

caused by affects - albeit affects that are actions rather than passions.149

The view suggested by Goldenbaum and explained in detail here dissolves this

seemingly contradictory aspect of Spinoza's psychology, according to which he

sometimes opposes reason to the irrational affects and other times claims that all human

action results only from affects.

This is not to say that he holds the power of reason to be superior to the power of

irrational affects, only that reason does have some affective power. Whereas Socrates

and the Stoics take knowledge to be stronger than mere belief, or opinion, Spinoza does

not.150 For Spinoza, knowledge is not more powerful than belief or even false belief, as

he says clearly in the first 17 propositions of Part 4.151 Nevertheless, Spinoza accepts the

rationalist view that knowledge is the m ind's own power, by which one may control the

passions to a degree and gain virtue and happiness. He upheld these rationalist

principles while also advancing an affective psychology, according to which various

modes of the mind interact via efficient causation and the outcomes of their conflicts are

determined solely by their relative strength. This latter aspect also connects Spinoza

with Hume and his naturalist theory of mind.

Thus, in Spinoza's psychology, we find a synthesis of two views usually held to

be opposed, the two faces of Spinoza's Janus psychology - one face looking back to a


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quasi-Cartesian rationalism and the other looking forward to a quasi-Humean

naturalism. That Spinoza managed to combine the two and present a relatively

coherent psychological theory is a significant accomplishment. We cannot divide the

mind into beliefs and desires, for desires are nothing but motivating beliefs. Thus, there

are only ideas, some of which, when formed, increase or decrease the power of our

m inds.152

A major philosophical obstacle to identifying the affects with ideas is Spinoza's

doctrine of parallelism. If affects can be understood as bodily phenomena, how could

they interact with ideas? Della Rocca accurately argues that parallelism actually entails

this view of the affects, saying, "there can be no item in thought, and thus no states of

desire, hope, love, etc., that do not reduce fully to ideas. Any such item would have too

little in common with ideas to be of the same attribute as ideas and to be able to interact

with them ."153 In other words, since affects interact with ideas, both causally and

explanatorily, affects must ultimately reduce to ideas. If this were not so, affects would

represent a violation of Spinoza's parallelism, according to which modes of thought

may interact only with other modes of thought. Because only ideas may cause other

ideas, and because affects causally interact with ideas, it follows that affects m ust be

ideas.

Given that ideas and affects are identical, one might be tempted to reason as

follows:

(i) idea a causes affect b

(ii) affect b causes bodily event c;

(iii) thus, idea a is a cause of bodily event c.


If this way of reasoning were acceptable, Spinoza's strict parallelism would most

certainly be violated in (iii). This problem looms large in any Spinozist explanation of

what looks like mind-body interaction, for example, perception or intentional bodily

action. The account of the affects given above can be consistent with Spinoza's

parallelism, however, as long as one is careful when discussing the causal relations of

the affects. That is, one would need to be careful to speak only of the mental affect or

the physical affect when speaking of causation, even though we may sometimes refer to

the physical affect of Sadness or the mental affect of Sadness. One must reject the move

from (i) to (ii) as turning on an equivocation, because the term 'affect b' in (i) denotes an

affect insofar as it is mental, while the term 'affect b' in (ii) denotes an affect insofar as it

is physical.

The two senses of 'affect' are a result of Spinoza's view that "the Mind and the

Body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of

Thought, now under the attribute of Extension."154 Della Rocca successfully explains

how this view does not violate parallelism by appealing to referential opacity, an

approach that may resolve our difficulty.155 If affects are referentially opaque, we could

not substitute 'affect b insofar as it is an idea' for the identical 'affect be insofar as it is a

bodily mode' in the argument spelled out in (i)-(iii), above, even though they are

identical. This certainly seems to be the kind of approach Spinoza has in mind, though

he of course does not frame it linguistically, as Della Rocca has. Regardless, Spinoza

did hold affects to behave in this way and it would be uncharitable to conclude that he


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simply failed to see that this fundamental theory of his contravened another of his

central doctrines, parallelism.

2.3. The Rejection of the Faculties

The conatus is not real. This claim will shock most readers of Spinoza, to be sure.

In a sense, however, it is true. For the conatus does not play an explanatory or causal

role in particular hum an actions. Instead, the conatus is nothing more than a tendency

that things exhibit, to behave in a certain way, specifically, toward self-preservation.

Indeed, the conatus is nothing but the force with which we behave in this way. These

behaviors are caused by particular desires, however, and not by some reified, essential,

baseline Desire. In other words, Spinoza is not a proto-Freudian. Indeed, Spinoza does

not countenance any such reified and general psychological entities. Just as the conatus

reduces to a set of particular, self-interested desires, so too do the other traditional

psychological faculties reduce to their constituents. For example, the faculty of Will, for

Spinoza, is nothing but a generalization from the particular volitions in a mind.

In what follows, an argument from analogy will be offered in order to advance

this interpretation of the conatus, according to which the Will is to particular volitions

as the conatus is to particular desires. By this analogy, we may understand how

particular ideas and affects can explain hum an action, because particular desires can be

efficacious, leading us to act. Before moving to a discussion of hum an bondage and

action, then, we m ust first investigate Spinoza's reduction of the psychological faculties.


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2.3.1. Introduction

One of the most famous doctrines in Spinoza's corpus is his claim that "each thing,

as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being"156 and that "the

striving...is nothing but the actual essence of the thing."157 Scholars of Spinoza have

written hundreds, likely thousands, of pages concerning the nature of this striving

(conatus, in Latin). Concerning this conatus as it exists in human beings, Spinoza says,

"when this striving is related only to the mind, it is called will; but when it is related to

the mind and body together, it is called appetite...Between appetite and desire there is

no difference, except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious

of their appetite."158 So, when this conatus is considered only with regard to the mind,

it is called Will [voluntas] and when considered with regard to mind and body together,

it is called Appetite [appetitus] or Desire [cupiditas].

Most scholars who wish to investigate the nature of the conatus have focused on

its demonstration and uses in Part 3.159 These are good avenues of investigation, but a

different approach is available, one based on Spinoza's identification of conatus with

the will and desire. Explanations of Spinoza's opinions concerning desire and the will

are valuable in their own right, but such an explanation also leads us to interesting

insights concerning the nature of the conatus. Understanding Spinoza's theory of the

will requires a grasp of the Cartesian theory he was rejecting, however, so that must be

addressed first. Accordingly, Cartesian faculty psychology and Spinoza's rejection of it

will be investigated here.


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2.3.2. On Faculties

Historically, philosophers were of two minds on the composition of the soul.

Some, beginning with Plato, divide the soul into various rational and irrational parts.160

Others, such as Descartes, hold that the soul or mind is a true unity, but has distinct

faculties.161 A faculty of the mind is a power, a capability, to perform a certain kind of

act; these acts are distinguished, in turn, by the objects they produce.162 For this second

group of thinkers, the soul or mind is not divided in its nature but in its activities and

objects; that is, one mental act may involve a cognition, another a volition, and these

two are different in kind.

Traditionally, philosophers identified several faculties, including the intellect, the

will, and the imagination. The intellect forms ideas and understands; the will affirms

and forms volitions; and the imagination receives and forms sensory images. Implicit

in this division is the assumption that understanding, willing, and imagining are

fundamentally different acts. Further, this assumes that the objects of these acts are

similarly distinct.163 Spinoza rejects both the division of the m ind's activities into

distinct faculties and the division of mental objects into distinct classes such as volition,

idea, and image.164

Descartes held that the mind contains distinct faculties of Intellect and Will and

that these two faculties behave in fundamentally different ways. In the Fourth

Meditation, Descartes says, "the scope of the will is wider than that of the intellect."165

In fact, the scope of the will is infinite, in that we have the power to affirm or deny

anything, he claimed; our power of representation, on the other hand, is limited.


106

W hat's more, the will is absolutely free, in that it is not "determined by any external

force."166 Descartes also recommends that "the perception of the intellect should always

precede the determination of the will."167 In other words, the Will and Intellect concern

acts that have different scopes and causes and these acts may be performed at distinct

times. For Descartes, then, the faculties of Intellect and Will are metaphysically distinct

mental activities. Calling two entities or activities "metaphysically distinct" is to deny

that they are only distinct in reason. Descartes himself would call this distinction a

modal distinction.168

Not only does Descartes attribute mental acts to distinct faculties of Intellect and

Will, but he also distinguishes particular mental objects into distinct categories. In the

Third Meditation, he says:

Some of my thoughts are as it were the images of things, and it is only in these cases that the

term 'idea' is strictly appropriate - for example, when I think of a man, or a chimera, or the

sky, or an angel, or God. Other thoughts have various additional forms: thus, when I will, or

are afraid, or affirm, or deny, there is always a particular thing which I take as the object of

my thought, but my thought includes something more than the likeness of that thing. Some

of my thoughts in this category are called volitions or emotions, while others are called

judgments. (AT VH 37; CSMII, 25-6)

Ideas, for Descartes, are representations.169 Sometimes, our mental experiences involve

more than simply an idea, however, but also involve an affirmation or denial, so that

together the two constitute a volition or judgment. Volitions and ideas are distinct, for

Descartes, for one may have ideas without their being affirmed in a volition or

judgment. So, for Descartes, acts of mind are divided in that they are attributed to


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distinct faculties of mind, such as Intellect and Will. Further, objects of mind are

divided into different kinds, such as volitions and ideas. Spinoza rejects both of these

divisions - between distinct faculties and between mental objects - in the strongest

terms.

2.3.3. Spinoza's Rejection of the Faculties of Will and Intellect

Spinoza rejects the assignment of mental acts to distinct faculties, beginning

with one particular faculty - the Will. In 2p48 and its demonstration, he says:

In the mind there is no absolute, or free, will, but the mind is determined to will this or that

by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity.

Dem.: The mind is a certain and determinate mode of thinking (by p ll) , and so (by Ipl7c2)

cannot be a free cause of its own actions, or cannot have an absolute faculty of willing and

not willing, Rather it must be determined to willing this or that (by lp28) by a cause which is

also determined by another, and this again by another, and so on, q.e.d. (2p48; Curley, 483;

Geb 11/129)

In this demonstration, Spinoza refers to Ipl7c2, which states that "God alone is a free

cause," from which he concludes that the mind cannot be a free cause of its volitions.170

This clearly is a rejection of Descartes' claim. Spinoza also cites lp28, which states that

"every singular thing, or any thing which is finite and has a determinate existence, can

neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and

produce an effect by another cause, which is also finite and has a determinate

existence."171 In other words, every finite thing existing in duration is determined by its

cause, which m ust also be a finite and determinate existing thing, and so on, to infinity.


108

Therefore, Spinoza reasons, no particular volition can have an absolutely free, Cartesian

mental faculty as its cause, because every volition must have an infinite chain of

particular things as its cause. The requirement of an infinite chain of things renders an

appeal to a free, Cartesian faculty of Will impossible.172 In short, Spinoza's determinism

precludes the possibility of a libertarian freedom of the Will, as is often attributed to

Descartes.173

Spinoza extends this argument against the Cartesian faculty of Will to the other

faculties of mind in the scholium to 2p48, where he says:

In this same way it is also demonstrated that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of

understanding, desiring, loving, and the like. From this it follows that these and similar

faculties are either complete fictions or nothing but metaphysical beings, or universals,

which we are used to forming from particulars. So intellect and will are to this or that idea, or

to this or that volitions as 'stone-ness' is to this or that stone, or man to Peter or Paul. (Curley,

483; Geb 11/129)

Here Spinoza suggests that just as his determinism make a Cartesian free faculty of Will

impossible, so too does it exclude the possibility of any "absolute faculty." But this

extension of 2p48d to other faculties is curious, because the argument it contains applies

only to faculties understood as free causes. Descartes' faculties of Intellect and

Imagination, for example, are not free causes, so it seems that the argument of 2p48 does

not apply to them. It may be that, by "absolute faculty," Spinoza has "a faculty that is a

free cause" in mind. If so, then Spinoza is right that 2p48d can be extended to include a

rejection of such faculties as the Intellect and the Imagination, though perhaps trivially

so, since no thinker posits any absolutely free faculties except the Will.


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What of faculties considered as determined modes of thought? If there are no

free faculties of mind, Spinoza suggests, then faculties are "either complete fictions or

nothing but metaphysical beings, or universals." That is, if faculties are not absolutely

free causes, then they are not real. If they are not real, then either there are no such

things as faculties, or at best they are nothing more than an abstraction from particular

mental entities - mere beings of reason. So, Spinoza claims, if the Will and Intellect are

not absolutely free, then they are either fictitious or abstractions.

Spinoza makes this assertion because a fully determined faculty of Intellect or

Will is gratuitous in his system; all that is required to explain the advent of a particular

finite idea or volition is some previous particular finite idea or volition. Any reference

to faculties is thus rendered unnecessary for psychological explanation. To see why this

is so for Spinoza, consider the following example. Sally conceives of a rock flying

toward a window, followed by the idea of the window breaking. Now, if we are to

include a faculty of Intellect in this explanation, we must say this: Sally forms an idea of

the rock in her Intellect; this idea's presence in the Intellect then leads Sally to form the

idea of the breaking window. It is not at all clear, however, what explanatory role the

faculty of Intellect would play here over and above the ideas themselves.

This explanation again runs afoul of Spinoza's general metaphysical

commitments. For, Spinoza says, every particular mode of thought has another

particular mode of thought as its cause and is required by his parallelism.174 The

inclusion of a faculty of Intellect here is otiose. In short, then, the only kind of thing that


110

could be the cause of Sally's idea of a window breaking is something like her idea of the

flying rock, and not a faculty at all.

The elliptical argument given in this scholium is an echo of one given at greater

length in 2p40sl, where Spinoza argues that universals such as Man and Horse are

artificial creations of the mind, abstracted from a set of particular ideas of men or horses.

He says:

Those notions they call Universal, like Man, Horse, Dog, and the like have arisen.. .because so

many images (e.g., of men) are formed at one time in the human body that they surpass the

power of imagining - not entirely, of course, but still to the point where the mind can

imagine neither slight differences of the singular [men] (such as the color and size of each

one, etc.) nor their determinate number, and imagines distinctly only what they all agree

in ...175

Spinoza here rejects abstract ideas, such as man and horse; for similar reasons, he will

reject the faculties of Intellect and Will. All of these universal ideas are confused

abstractions from particular cases and not clear or true ideas at all. Most importantly,

however, is this - these confused universal ideas are not of any universal nature at all.

Thus Spinoza notes that one person's 'universal' idea of man will be different from

another's, especially if they draw their universal generalizations from different groups

of people.176 Likewise, the idea of the Will is nothing but an abstraction from our ideas

of particular volitions; similarly, our idea of a faculty of Intellect is nothing but an

abstraction from our ideas of our ideas. Our ideas of these faculties of the Will and

Intellect are indeterminate, confused ideas formed out of the combination of more

particulars than our minds can grasp at once.


I l l

In short, then, Spinoza rejects faculties of the mind such as those Descartes

proposed, including the Intellect and the Will. Because psychological faculties are not

free causes, they cannot by themselves cause or explain modes of thought; thus, any

explanation of a mode of thought must appeal to particular modes of thought besides

faculties, specifically, ideas. Since modes of thought are caused and explained by other

modes of thought, faculties cannot be anything over and above such modes. And if

faculties are nothing over and above particular modes of thought, then faculties are

really just abstractions from these particular modes, and thus do not really exist at all in

their own right.177 Thus, faculties are, at most, nothing but universals, which for

Spinoza amount to confused abstractions from particulars.178

2.3.4. Ideas and Volitions

Ideas, for Spinoza, are mental acts, not the purely passive perceptions of

Descartes.179 Spinoza's ideas may be either passive or active, depending on whether

they are adequate or inadequate. Ideas are not just acts of cognition, however; they are

also acts of volition.180 In 2p48s, Spinoza claims:

.. .we must investigate, I say, whether there is any other affirmation or negation in the mind

except that which the idea involves, insofar as it is an idea - on this see the following

proposition and also 3D3 - so that our thought does not fall into pictures. For by ideas I

understand, not the images which are formed at the back of the eye.. .but concepts of thought.

(Curley, 484; Geb 11/130)

In 2d3, Spinoza has emphasized the activity involved in ideas. He repeats that

emphasis here, contrasting ideas with mere pictures passively formed in the eye.


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Spinoza is not making a distinction here between two kinds of ideas, one an

imagination and the other an active conception. Instead, he wishes simply to explain

that all modes of thought involve acts of the mind, including those that are visual

representations. Spinoza makes reference to images formed at the back of the eye as a

paradigm of passive idea formation, a view he wishes to reject in its entirety.181 Once

again we see Spinoza distinguishing his view of ideas as active mental entities from that

of Descartes. Spinoza wishes to discover whether ideas involve a particular activity,

that of affirmation and negation, solely on account of their being ideas. In short, he

wishes to ask whether ideas, by their very nature, are also affirmations.

Spinoza states, "in the mind there is no volition, or affirmation and negation,

except that which the idea involves insofar as it is an idea."182 In so doing, he

establishes that volitions are acts of affirmation or negation and that there are no

volitions in the mind except those which ideas qua ideas involve. In other words, the

only volitions in the mind are those involved in the essence of ideas.183

In his article on this identification of volition and idea, Della Rocca focuses

largely on the demonstration for 2p49, arguing against what he calls the "standard

reading" of that proposition, according to which it merely states that all affirmations

must be accompanied by an idea, not identical with one. Though this may be a possible

reading of Spinoza's text at 2p49d, I believe such a reading does violence to the

proposition at 2p49 itself, as well as to the end of the scholium immediately before it.

On the "standard reading," Spinoza's phrase "that which the idea involves insofar as it

is an idea" m ust be taken simply as "that which is necessary for an idea." A more


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natural reading, I suggest, takes this phrase to mean "that which the idea involves

solely in virtue of being an idea" or, better, "that which an idea involves essentially."184

After having argued for the identity of ideas and their affirmations, Spinoza

concludes 2p49d, saying, "so (by d2) this affirmation pertains to the essence of the idea

of the triangle and is nothing beyond it."185 That is, the affirmation pertains to the idea

of the triangle and vice versa; thus, all ideas are volitions and all volitions, ideas.186 In

other words, Spinoza believes, every conception involves a predication or assertive

stance and every volition or affirmation involves a cognition.

Despite his argument that volitions and ideas are the same, Spinoza sometimes

speaks as though they are distinct.187 This suggests that Spinoza's identification of

volitions with ideas is not necessarily eliminative. In other words, by claiming that

volitions and ideas are the same, Spinoza is not claiming that volitions do not exist

because there are only ideas, nor the converse. Instead, we may refer to modes of

thought as ideas or as volitions, one referring to their cognitive content, the other to

their volitional or affirmative force.188 Further, ideas may be considered in a third way,

as affects.

2.3.5. Affects and Ideas

We have seen that Spinoza holds all mental affects to be ideas. It does

necessarily not follow, however, that all ideas, in turn, are affects. This is so because,

Spinoza says, "the hum an Body can be affected in many ways in which its power of

acting is increased or diminished, and also in others which render its power of acting


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neither greater nor less."189 But affects only involve increases or decreases in power,

thus excluding those cases where our power remains the same. In other words, there

seems to be a class of ideas that correspond to events in the body that do not change its

power and, thus, are not affects.

However, Spinoza also claims that any even seemingly inert ideas can change

our power. For Spinoza holds that ideas may become connected through accidental

association.190 Spinoza specifically applies this principle of the association to those

ideas that formerly had no affective dimension, when he says,

3pl5: Any thing can be the accidental cause of Joy, Sadness, or Desire.

Dem.: Suppose the Mind is affected by two affects at once, one of which neither increases nor

diminishes it (see Post. 1). From pl4 it is clear that when the Mind is afterwards affected with

the former affect as by its true cause, which (by hypothesis) through itself neither increases

nor diminishes its power of thinking, it will immediately be affected by the latter also, which

increase or diminishes its power of thinking, i.e. (by p i Is), with Joy, or Sadness. And so the

former thing will be the cause of Joy or Sadness - not through itself, but accidentally. And in

the same way it can easily be shown that that thing can be the accidental cause of Desire,

q.e.d. (Curley, 503; Geb 11/151-152)

Any idea can be associated with joy or pain, even those that did not previously involve

an increase or decrease in power.191 In other words, all ideas have the capacity to

become affects, though not all in fact do.

Spinoza's use of terms here is not entirely consistent. In 3d3, Spinoza offers a

definition of affect [affectus], claiming that affects must involve an increase or decrease

in power. In 3pl5d, however, his use implies that "affect" [affectus again] includes


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changes that involve neither an increase nor a decrease in power. If we take the second

sense to be the rule, then all ideas are affects. If we follow the first sense, the one from

his definition, then only some ideas are affects, though all may become affects by

association. I suspect that Spinoza simply was not careful in his use of these terms,

sliding between a broader and narrower sense of the term "affect." In any event, we

may say that all ideas either are or may become affects.

Thus we see, first, that ideas and volitions are identical and, second, that all

affects are ideas and all ideas may be affects. These conclusions lend support to the

claim that ideas have a tripartite nature, according to which they may be considered in

three ways: as cognitions, as volitions, and as affects.192

The bulk of the exegetical work just presented has built to this pivotal conclusion.

This result is important for us because the uniqueness of Spinoza's account of akrasia

turns on his identification of affects and judgments. The other central feature of

Spinoza's psychology is his doctrine of the conatus.

2.4. The Conatus

In the simplest terms, the conatus is a fundamental tendency each individual

exhibits to act in ways that preserve or increase its power. The tendency may be seen in

everyday physical objects such as tables and chairs as inertia and cohesion. These

physical tendencies, Spinoza implies, are fundamental to the object as an individual. In

the hum an being, this tendency takes on a different, psychological tendency as well,

because the hum an being can act on desires in a way that tables and chairs cannot.


116

Nonetheless, both the inertia of the table and the desire of the hum an being exhibit this

tendency, Spinoza believes. Since this tendency is often believed to play a significant

explanatory role in psychological phenomena, it is necessary to investigate it if we wish

to understand that most vexing of psychological phenomena, akrasia.

2.4.1. The Faculties, Redux

One was to understand the conatus is as a power or capacity of the mind. If we

consider it as such, we may be considering it as a relative of other psychological powers,

such as the power of cognition and the power of volition. As we shall see, however,

Spinoza countenances neither these psychological faculties nor the conatus as a real

power of the mind.

The mental modes cannot be divided into distinct classes such as idea and affect.

Further, the psychological faculties are nothing but abstractions from these particular

modes of thought. If the faculties are nothing over and above their constituents, and if

the ideas of the Intellect and volitions of the Will are identical, then the faculties of

Intellect and Will should be identical as well. And this is exactly what Spinoza says in a

corollary to 2p49, where he states, "the will and the intellect and one and the same." He

then considers some Cartesian objections to this claim in the scholium.

In defense of his distinction between Intellect and Will, Descartes has claimed

that our power of affirming is infinite, because we may affirm anything, but our power

of perception is finite. Referring to this Cartesian doctrine, Spinoza says:


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I deny that the will extends more widely than perceptions, or the faculty of conceiving...For

just as we can affirm infinitely many things by the same faculty of willing (but one after

another...), so also can we sense, or perceive, infinitely many bodies by the same faculty of

sensing (viz. one after another... (2p49s; Curley, 487-8; Geb 11/133)

Spinoza argues that we cannot have a greater power to affirm things than we do to

perceive or represent things. We must represent whatever we affirm, so the scope of

these two faculties must be identical. Unlike Descartes, Spinoza's Intellect and Will

have the same scope.

Descartes also claims that the Will and Intellect are distinct because we

experience a power to suspend the judgment, a power we do not have with regard to

perception. Of this alleged power Spinoza says,

...I [deny] that we have a free power of suspending judgment. For when we say that

someone suspends judgment, we are saying nothing but that he sees that he does not

perceive the thing adequately. Suspension of judgment, therefore, is really a perception, not

[an act of] free will. (2p49s; Curley, 488; Geb 11/134)

Spinoza explains this experience as an awareness that one of our perceptions is

confused or inadequate. This explanation is consistent with Spinoza's view that

volitions are not free causes, but are wholly determined. For Spinoza, the faculties of

Intellect and Will are nothing but abstractions from particular ideas and volitions,

respectively, which are identical, thus rendering the Intellect and the Will also identical.

In other words, the faculties of Intellect and Will are nothing but beings of reason that

refer to one or another aspect of the same set of modes of thought.


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It seems that, for Spinoza, the mind performs one action, that of forming

affirmative ideas. Further, these ideas may also be considered as affects. In explaining

any particular mental act or decision, one need only refer to ideas; no reference to

faculties or other phenomena is necessary.

Given this seemingly complete account of mental phenomena, what are we to

make of Spinoza's claim that hum an beings have a striving, or conatus? When

considered solely in relation to the mind, the conatus is just the Will. When considered

in relation to mind and body together, it is Desire. Does the conatus upset this austere

picture of a mind wholly constituted by ideas and nothing but ideas?

2.4.2. Conatus and Desire

Spinoza introduces the conatus at 3p6, saying, "each thing, as far as it can by its

own power, strives to persevere in its being."193 In one way or another, every entity

strives in some way to persevere. In fact, Spinoza says in 3p7, "the striving by which

each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the

thing."194 Every existing entity has an actual essence, which is its striving to persevere.

Human beings also exhibit this universal tendency, as Spinoza explains when he

introduces his theory of desire, which he introduces at 3p9s, saying:

When this striving [conatus] is related only to the Mind, it is called Will; but when it is

related to the Mind and Body together, it is called Appetite. This Appetite, therefore, is

nothing but the very essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things

that promote his preservation. And so man is determined to do these things. Between

appetite and desire there is no difference, except that desire is generally related to men


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insofar as they are conscious of their appetite. So desire can be defined as appetite together with

consciousness of the appetite. (3p9s; Curley, 500; Geb 11/147-148)

Spinoza restates and clarifies this definition when he defines the affect of desire in the

Definitions of the Affects at the end of Part 3, where he says:

Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any given

affection of it, to do something.

Exp.: We said above, in P9S, that Desire is appetite together with the consciousness of it. And

appetite is the very essence of man, insofar as he is determined to do what promotes his

preservation. But in the same Scholium I also warned that I really recognize no difference

between human appetite and Desire...Here, therefore, by the word Desire I understand any

of a man's strivings, impulses, appetites, and volitions, which vary as the man's constitution

varies, and which are not infrequently so opposed to one another that the man is pulled in

different directions and knows not where to turn. (Def. Aff. I; Curley, 531; Geb 11/190)

According to Spinoza’s explanation of this definition, Desire is a catch-all term that

includes the collection of m an's strivings, impulses, appetites, and volitions. This

collection is man's essence.

From these two definitions, we can draw certain conclusions about the nature of

Desire and conatus. Both Desire and the Will are "nothing but" the very essence of a

hum an being. In other words, a person's Will and his Desire are both ways in which

we can understand his essence, or conatus. When we consider the essence of a hum an

being solely under the attribute of Thought, we conceive of his Will. Of course, we may

also conceive of this essence solely under the attribute of Extension, in which case we

conceive the person's bodily conatus, about which Spinoza does not concern himself in


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the Ethics.195 Nonetheless, when we conceive of that essence under both Thought and

Extension, we conceive of his Desire.

Since Desire is distinct from the Will only in that Desire is considered in

conjunction with the body, it follows that this essential Desire, like the Will, is an

abstraction and nothing over and above its particular constituents. So, Desire is nothing

over and above particular desires. The constituents of the Will are volitions, or ideas.

These constituents may also be considered as affects. Particular desires are affects as

well. Thus, our essential Desire is nothing over an above our collection of ideas

considered in a certain way. And so, our essential Desire is nothing more than our

collection of affects.196

A human being is nothing but a collection of modes that are related in a certain

way. These modes can be considered as either ideas or volitions with regard to the

mind. They may also be conceived as particular affects with regard to the hum an being.

Similarly, the body is a collection of modes of extension, which are individuated only in

their tendency toward self-preservation. Thus, the conatus, in all cases, is simply a

relation that unites the aggregate of modes; it is a collective tendency toward

perseverance.

Dan Garber claims that this tendency for an aggregate body to preserve itself has

its foundation in the constituent bodies' persistence in their states of motion or rest.

This bodily force is inertia. Extrapolating from Garber's view on bodily conatus, we can

speculate on the nature of the conatus in the mind and human being as well.


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The inertia of individual bodies explains their tendency to maintain their

individuating motion and rest, while a collective, collaborative inertia helps to maintain

the motion and rest that individuates an aggregate. Only when the individual inertias

of a group function as an inertial principle for the whole collective can the collective be

considered as an entity itself. Otherwise it is simply a collection; such is the distinction

between a listless crowd and an army marching in formation.197 That is not to say that

this inertial principle of the aggregate is anything over and above the inertial principles

of the constituent parts; indeed, the inertial tendency of an aggregate entity does

nothing that is not in fact a result of individual forces of inertia.198

Regardless of whether the speculation just offered is correct, our explanations of

particular hum an behavior need not involve abstractions such as Intellect, Will, Desire,

or conatus unless it is understood that such terms are abstractions and themselves bear

no causal efficacy beyond the efficacy of their constituents. Thus, the following kind of

explanation is incomplete: Jones believes there is water in the fridge that he needs to

drink to survive; as with all things, Jones' conatus directs him to do whatever he must

to survive; therefore he drinks the water. Such an explanation reveals very little,

because the appeal to the conatus here obscures the real causal interaction, which

happens at the level of particular modes.

Thus, the appeal to belief-desire pairs, for example, may be somewhat

misleading, since both relata could be described as ideas. Instead, one might say that

Jones has an idea of water in the fridge and that this idea has a positive affective quality,

such that we may say that he desires the water. This idea and affect, by virtue of its


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own affective force, may be sufficient to drive Jones to act to drink the water. This is

Spinoza's mechanistic view of hum an action.

This is not to say that the conatus is impotent or that this doctrine is of no use in

a Spinozist study of psychology. On the contrary, the conatus doctrine is a principle

that represents a universal tendency that all beings exhibit. As such, it can play an

explanatory role at a general level. All creatures do in fact strive to persevere in their

own being, as the conatus doctrine suggests. But this striving is to be explained by

reference to particular desires for apparent goods, not by a general Desire or

fundamental im pulse.199

As we shall see, our affects can come into conflict and our judgments can as well.

Some of those judgments and desires will be rational, others irrational. Yet there is no

overarching faculty of volition to assent to some judgments and reject others. Further,

there is no fundamental desire to which all other desires can be reduced. Finally, both

inadequate and adequate ideas are a part of the hum an essence. These tenets of

Spinoza's psychology will play a significant role in what he has to say about bondage

and what we can take away from that discussion about akrasia.


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Chapter Three:

Spinoza on Akrasia, An Exegesis

3.1. On Human Bondage

Spinoza does not discuss akrasia itself at length. Instead, he couches his theory of

akrasia in his larger ethical theory of bondage and freedom. In fact, aside from a few

references to feelings of being tom by the passions and a telling quote from Medea,

Spinoza does not discuss akrasia directly at all. Nevertheless, Spinoza does have a novel

and interesting theory of akrasia, one well worth excavating from his larger system. In

order to do that, however, we must first explore his theory of bondage and freedom.

We have seen that ideas can be either adequate or inadequate. The affects, which

are really just ideas, can be active or passive, according to whether they involve

inadequate or adequate ideas. Further, affects and ideas are all we really need to

consider when trying to understand psychological phenomena in Spinoza's system.

This is the case for understanding bondage to the passions as well.

3.1.1. Introduction


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Spinoza titled Part 4 of his Ethics "On Human Bondage, or the Powers of the

Affects," a title so memorable as to have inspired Somerset Maugham to name his great

novel after it. Within Part 4, Spinoza explains how reason can be overcome by the

passions. Being in bondage, we are vulnerable to cases of weak will, in which we

knowingly pursue ends contrary to our own interest and good. Spinoza indicates that

our bondage to the passions leads to the classical problem of weakness of will, or akrasia,

when he explains our bondage by quoting Ovid's Medea, who says, "I see and approve

the better, but follow the worse."200 Spinoza's concern with our bondage to the passions

extends beyond Part 4, however, as he titles Part 5 "On the Power of the Intellect, or on

Human Freedom." There he offers a solution to the bondage of the passions by which

we can gain a degree of hum an freedom.

In fact, our bondage to the passions concerns Spinoza throughout the Ethics. In

the Preface to Part 2, Spinoza announces his intent to investigate "only those [things]

that can lead us, by the hand, as it were, to the knowledge of the hum an Mind and its

highest happiness,201" a reference to hum an freedom.202 He arrives at this goal in Part 5,

only after laying the necessary groundwork. There, he provides his promised avenue to

hum an freedom from the passions, also known as happiness. W ithout doubt, then,

Spinoza's doctrine of the passions demands close scrutiny.

Despite the passions' prominent role in the Ethics, however, his account has

received relatively little attention.203 Spinoza's concern with the threat of akrasia has

received even less.204 Spinoza does not fully explain the relationship between bondage

to the passions and weakness of will, though the existence of some relationship is


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apparent. In what follows, this relation will, it is hoped, become clear. In order to

succeed, we will need to review several aspects of Spinoza's psychological theory,

including his rejection of faculties. A bit later we shall also return to his doctrine of the

conatus.

3.1.2. Akrasia and Parts of the Soul

As discussed, the mind cannot be divided into distinct faculties, nor its objects

into distinct classes. This raises an interesting question, however, since some writers

believe that a division of the mind is necessary for the possibility of akrasia.205 In his

classic account in the Republic, Plato explains akrasia by positing distinct parts of the soul

that come into conflict.206 Only by positing distinct parts or activities of the mind in

conflict, it may initially appear, is akrasia explainable. Against this view, Edmund

Henden has argued that a partitioned mind is not necessary for the occurrence of

akrasia.207 After reviewing several reasons for believing that the mind must be

partitioned in order to explain weakness of will, Henden concludes that this

"partitioning claim" is without merit. According to Henden, a bias toward the near and

cognitive dissonance are likely candidates to explain weakness of will, even in the

absence of any divisions in the mind. Cognitive dissonance, for example, posits

conflicting beliefs in one mind, not distinct parts of the mind, nor distinct activities or

faculties, in conflict.208 Though conflicting beliefs involve a distinction between aspects

of the m ind's contents, this distinction is certainly not the metaphysical partition one

might find in Plato.


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Terry Penner has also argued against the necessity of partitioning the soul in

order to explain akrasia.209 Penner proposes that akrasia occurs when the mind vacillates

between alternative representations in a unitary mind, calling this "diachronic belief-

akrasia." His use of this idea in the Socratic case may serve as a model to explain akratic

acts in Spinoza's psychology as well.210 At the very least, Penner shows that one need

not divide the mind in order to explain weakness of will.

Another theorist who is often taken to advance the partitioning claim is Sigmund

Freud. Freud invoked mental partitioning as well, though his doctrine was offered in

an attempt to explain repression and self-deception. How, Freud wondered, could a

mind be said to know something yet not have conscious awareness of it? He attempted

to explain this phenomenon by positing distinct parts of the mind, such that one part of

the mind conceals knowledge from another part, in some sense. Sartre criticizes Freud's

partitioning, claiming that he does not explain the phenomenon at all, but merely

internalizes an interpersonal conflict and thus merely pushes the dilemma one step

backwards.211 Sartre's alternative explanation is his theory of bad faith, which does not

rely on a need for partitions.212 Though Sartre's rebuttal of Freud is valuable, his

alternative offers little of use in understanding Spinoza.

Spinoza certainly allows for akrasia, though he does not partition the mind is

these ways. Though few have held such a position in the history of philosophy,

Spinoza may not be alone in rejecting a division of the soul, while still accepting the

possibility of akrasia. Some of the Stoics also denied such partitioning, while


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nonetheless allowing for weakness of will. Attributing an account of akrasia to the

Stoics is controversial, however, and lies outside the scope of our investigation.213

Spinoza denies the strong sense of partitioning that Plato adopts, in that he does

not see distinct parts in the mind. As opposed to Descartes, Spinoza also denies the

division of the m ind's activities into distinct faculties, in that Spinoza sees the m ind's

activity to be singular. This is not to say that Spinoza takes the mind to be an absolutely

simple unity, however, because the mind is a complex idea composed of constituent

ideas and affects, just as the body of which it is an idea is also a complex, aggregate

entity. These constituents may come into conflict, resulting in the kind of cognitive

dissonance to which Henden refers.214 Our vulnerability to such dissonance is part of

our bondage to the passions.

3.2.3. On Freedom and Bondage

Spinoza claims that all hum an beings are to some degree or other in bondage to

their passions.215 To be in bondage is, generally speaking, to lack freedom in some

sense. Making matters more complex, however, is the fact that Spinoza seems to utilize

two distinct senses of freedom in the Ethics.216 He defines freedom at the beginning of

Part 1, saying:

That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined

to act by itself alone. But a thing is called necessary, or rather, compelled, which is

determined by another to exist and to produce an effect in a certain and determinate manner.

(Id7; Curley, 409; Geb 11/46)


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Here freedom is a state in which one's existence and action is wholly self-determined,

that is, self-caused. Call this absolute freedom, for which there are two criteria. First, (1)

an absolutely free being is one that does not depend on another for its existence.

Second (2), such a being is also determined to act only by its own nature.217 Only God,

Spinoza argues, qualifies as absolutely free, saying, "God alone is a free cause."218

Further, Spinoza argues, God is the efficient cause of both the essence and the existence

of all things.219

This line of argument culminates in Spinoza's strong statement of determinism,

which states:

Every singular thing...can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is

determined to exist and produce an effect by another cause...and so on, to infinity. (Ip28;

Curley, 432; Geb 11/69)

In this absolute sense of freedom, no hum an being may ever achieve freedom at all,

because every human action has an infinite chain of modes as its cause. Further, every

hum an being depends on an external cause for his existence. Thus, in the absolute

sense of freedom, hum an beings are, without question, unfree.

Later in the Ethics, however, a second, hum an sense of freedom emerges, one

contrasted not with being the cause of one's own existence, but with bondage. Spinoza

introduces this notion of bondage in the Preface to Part 4, where he says,

Man's lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects I call Bondage. For the man who is

subject to affects is under the control, not of himself, but of fortune, in whose power he so

greatly is that often, though he sees the better for himself, he is still forced to follow the

worse. (4 Preface, Curley, 543; Geb n/205)


129

Being in bondage, it seems, is a lack of self-control, or rather, a lack of self-determination

in action. We lack this self-rule whenever we are under the control of affects deriving

in fortune or, as he suggests later on, in affects deriving from experientia vaga - the

vagaries of experience. Further, being in this state may result in our seeing the better

course of action, but following the worse. It should begin to be clear how Spinoza's

theory of bondage will relate to his account of akrasia.

Spinoza returns to the opposition of freedom and bondage again in Part 4. After

having discussed the power of the passions over hum an beings, Spinoza says:

.. .we shall easily see what the difference is between a man who is led only by an affect, or by

opinion, and one who is led by reason. For the former, whether he will or no, does those

things he is most ignorant of, whereas the latter complies with no one's wishes but his own,

and does only those thing he knows to be the most important in life, and therefore desires

very greatly. Hence I call the former a slave [servum], but the latter, a free man [liberum].

(4p66s; Curley, 584; Geb 11/260)

In this passage, freedom seems to be acting in accordance with one's wishes, or doing

what one knows to be best. Note that one may do what one wants or judges best, while

nonetheless being determined by an external cause.220 That is, one may lack freedom in

the first, absolute sense while having freedom in the second, hum an sense. This second

sense of freedom initially resembles Hobbes' thought, in that it presents freedom as

consisting in the ability to do what one wants. For example, in his debate with

Bramhall, Hobbes defines freedom by saying,

For he is free to do a thing, that may do it if he have the will to do it, and may forbear if he

have the will to forbear.. ,221


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For Hobbes, to be at liberty is just to be able to do what one desires. Like Hobbes,

Spinoza sometimes describes freedom as the absence of constraint. On the other hand,

this quasi-Hobbesian view is not exactly what Spinoza intends, because not just any

desire is relevant to hum an freedom. Instead, he suggests that those whose behavior is

determined by irrational desires, i.e., by inadequate ideas, do not act freely, in this

second sense. One who is determined by passions is a slave and in bondage in a way

that the rational person is not. Therefore, simply doing what one desires is not

sufficient; one has hum an freedom just when one acts on one's rational desires.

Spinoza identifies this hum an freedom with reason again in the Preface to Part 5,

where he says:

I pass, finally, to the remaining Part of the Ethics, which concerns the means, or way, leading

to Freedom [libertatem]. Here, then, I shall treat of the power of reason, showing what it can

do against the affects, and what Freedom of Mind [libertas mentis], or blessedness [beatitudo]

is. From this we shall how much more the wise man can do than the ignorant. (Part 5

Preface; Curley, 594; Geb 11/277)

Here, Spinoza refers to "freedom of mind," which functions in the same way that the

hum an freedom does. Spinoza also implies that this freedom of mind involves the

power of reason against the affects. This power of reason over the affects entails that

the wise man is more capable of doing things than the ignorant man. When Spinoza

talks of reason combating the affects, he means active affects combating passive ones -

that is to say, adequate ideas versus inadequate ones. In other words, Spinoza suggests

here that having adequate ideas empowers reason in its fight against the passions. So,


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the more our action is determined by adequate ideas, the more freedom of mind we

gain.222

As is evident from these passages, Spinoza sometimes slides from human

freedom, that is, freedom of the human being generally to do certain things, to freedom

of the mind, that is, the mind's freedom in forming ideas. This shift parallels Spinoza's

shift from human striving to the striving of the mind, as found in propositions such as

4p26, for example, where Spinoza says,

What we strive for from reason is nothing but understanding; nor does the Mind, insofar as it

uses reason, judge anything else useful to itself except what leads to understanding. (4p26;

Curley, 559; Geb 11/227)

This is not a bias in favor of the mental aspect of hum an beings at the expense of their

corporeal aspect, however.223 For, given parallelism, the striving of the body, of the

mind, and of the hum an being in general are all one and the same striving, if

understood in different ways. In other words, hum an action, when understood solely

under the attribute of Thought, is nothing other than the formation of ideas. Similarly,

hum an freedom, when understood solely under the attribute of Thought, is conceived

as freedom of the mind. In short, Spinoza takes hum an freedom and freedom of the

mind to be synonymous.224

It is also useful here to remember that Spinoza is no ascetic. He believes that

whatever is really harmful to the overall, long-term health of the body could not be

beneficial to the overall, long-term health of the mind.225 Because he identifies the

striving of the mind with that of the body, he cannot allow for a lifestyle that would, all


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things considered, benefit the mind at the expense of the body. W hat's more, given that

Spinoza wishes to show the relative impotence of reason in the first part of Part 4 and

its role in hum an freedom in Part 5, it is reasonable that his discussion would focus on

this understanding of human existence.

There may also be another reason for his shift from human freedom to freedom

of the mind. Spinoza would likely agree that, for any instance of adequate knowledge,

there is some adequate cause in the body. However, his anatomical and physiological

theories are not sufficiently developed to allow him to discuss the bodily aspect of

chains of reasoning, for example. Given the weakness of his physical theory, then, he

cannot avoid talking in a primarily psychological sense if he wishes to discuss our

bondage, activity, and freedom. Nevertheless, he must allow that our bodies can

contain adequate causes that parallel those cases in which our mind is an adequate

cause, i.e., when our mind forms adequate ideas.226

At first blush, this second account of freedom, called either hum an freedom or

freedom of the mind, appears to be a new and distinct account from the one provided

in Part 1. This reading is not quite accurate, however, because hum an freedom is in fact

a derivative and limited form of absolute freedom.227 According to the Part 1 definition

of absolute freedom, something is free just when (1) its existence is self-caused and (2)

its action has its own nature as its cause. As discussed, the nature, or essence, of each

thing is its conatus. According to the conatus doctrine, each thing strives to maintain or

increase its power of acting.228 Therefore, if a thing's action has its striving to increase

power as its cause, then it satisfies condition (2), which is necessary for freedom.229


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Spinoza claims that the m ind's essence is a striving for perseverance and an

increase in its power. When this is occurs through reason, it is a striving for

understanding. So he says:

What we strive for from reason is nothing but understanding; nor does the Mind, insofar as it

uses reason, judge anything else useful to itself except what leads to understanding. (4p26;

Curley, 559; Geb 11/227)

When the mind uses reason, it strives only for understanding. Further, he explains,

"the essence of reason is nothing but our Mind, insofar as it understands clearly and

distinctly."230 When the mind uses reason, then, it understands clearly and distinctly -

that is, it has adequate ideas. So, when the mind forms adequate ideas, it strives from

reason for understanding; this striving is the m ind's essence. Therefore, insofar as the

mind forms adequate ideas and acts from them, the mind strives from its own essence,

or nature. In other words, when the mind forms and acts from adequate ideas, it is

determined to act by its own nature, which was condition (2) for freedom.

Thus we see that, in forming and acting from adequate ideas, the hum an mind

fulfills one of the necessary requirements, (2), for attaining a degree of freedom.

However, only God may meet the requirement (1), because human beings are modes of

the divine Substance. As any mode of a substance is dependent on the substance for its

existence, so human beings are necessarily dependent on God and thus cannot meet the

other necessary condition, (1), for absolute freedom.


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The claim that no hum an being, indeed, nothing finite at all, can be absolutely

free also has echoes in Hobbes. Like Spinoza, Hobbes distinguishes between two senses

of freedom, only one of which can apply to humans. He says,

.. .the distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation I acknowledge.

For to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terror be not the cause of his will to do

it.. .But free from necessitation, I say, no man can be.231

Like Spinoza, Hobbes denies that any hum an action can be absolutely free, though he

accepts that humans may be free in the sense of lacking external causal influence. Again,

this is not to say that Spinoza's understanding of freedom is straightforwardly

Hobbesian - it is not. Yet both thinkers do affirm determinism with regard to human

action, but allow for a sense of hum an freedom - they resemble each other in their

compatibilism.

Human freedom, then, is not a completely new sense of freedom, nor is it the

same freedom discussed in Part 1. Instead, it is a less robust version of absolute

freedom. For only God is an absolutely free cause, in that only God can meet both

conditions. Hum an beings, however, may meet condition (2) when they form adequate

ideas and act on them. When the hum an mind forms and acts from adequate ideas, it

strives from understanding. When it does so, it is determined solely by its own nature,

thus meeting condition (2). Therefore, forming and acting from adequate ideas brings

us that limited, hum an freedom.

This is not to say that we could ever attain total hum an freedom, because no

finite mind may possess all and only adequate ideas.232 This is so because man can


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never not be a part of nature. Because of this fact, the hum an mind necessarily contains

inadequate ideas. As such, the hum an mind may achieve even the more limited,

hum an freedom only to a degree.233 Further, even if one does succeed in forming

adequate ideas, they may be overcome by opposing passions in the phenomenon of

akrasia. In other words, the more adequate ideas the mind forms, and the more that the

actions of the mind are determined by adequate ideas, the more free one will become.

One can never be wholly free, however, in either sense of freedom 234

One final clarification is required before moving on. One reading of Spinoza's

theory of human bondage is this: we are in bondage to the extent that we have

inadequate ideas and free to the extent that we have adequate ones, full-stop. This

reading fails to account for akrasia, however. Indeed, we are most in bondage when we

form adequate ideas bu t fail to behave according to them. This suggests that our bondage

and freedom is not just a function of forming inadequate or adequate ideas, but also of

living according to them. It may be that having our behavior be governed by the right

ideas is really what concerns Spinoza. Of course, forming adequate ideas is necessary

for behaving in this way, but not sufficient.235

Jonathan Bennett, for example, falls prey to this misreading. He interprets

Spinoza as saying that we should avoid sensory perception, since they are inadequate

ideas. In fact, he even suggests that this view serves as a reductio for the entire

argument of Part 4.236 Bennett overlooks several important considerations, however.237

First, though the individual guided solely by reason is said to lack all passivity and thus

would lack all sensation, this free individual is an impossible ideal, not one we aim to


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achieve or even imitate.238 The living hum an being is expected only to minimize the

passions and try to focus on reason instead of dwelling in the senses - a standard

position of rationalists, as well as Stoics. Second, the mind comes to grasp common

notions in having sensory perception. In that regard, sensation is necessary for our

becoming more free.

One m ust remember that Spinoza is ultimately interested in the question of which

ideas determine our actions. So, though we may necessarily have sensations and thus

inadequate ideas, we may still be free if our actions come not from inadequate ideas,

but from reason. Remember the example Spinoza gives of the sun 239 Spinoza says:

For example, when we look at the sun, we imagine it to be about 200 feet away

from us, In this we are deceived so long as we are ignorant of its true distance;

but when its distance is known, the error is removed, not the imagination, i.e.,

the idea of the sun, which explains its nature only so far as the Body is affected

by it. And so, though we come to know the true distance, we shall nevertheless

imagine it as near us. (4pls; 4pls; Curley, 547-8; Geb 11/211)

When we see the sun, we have an inadequate idea representing the sun as relatively

small and near. When we have adequate knowledge via astronomy, we know that the

sim is actually very large and far. Yet the presence of this adequate knowledge may

coexist in the mind with our visual sensation. As long as we behave according to the

adequate knowledge, however, the inadequate knowledge does not truly bind us. In short,

then, hum an freedom is not to be contrasted with absolute causal self-sufficiency as

much as with bondage, our lack of self-determination in our actions. Though we still have


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a degree of passivity and thus bondage simply in virtue of having the inadequate ideas

of sensation, we can minimize our passivity and bondage both by forming the adequate

idea and by acting according to it, which is how Spinoza tells us to proceed.

Human freedom really just boils down to being determined by one's own

rational nature. Similarly, being in bondage just is the failure to be self-determined. We

fail to be self-determined in mere ignorance as well as when we suffer akrasia, that is,

when our adequate ideas fail to be efficacious. It should be noted, however, that these

two states are not the same. We have a greater degree of freedom when we form an

adequate idea but fail to act on it than when we are completely ignorant. For in the first

case we are to some degree active, but to a greater degree passive, while in the second

we almost entirely passive.

In sum, human bondage is simply the state of being determined by something

other than one's own rational nature, either in forming ideas or in acting more generally.

In other words, human bondage is either forming inadequate ideas or, worse, forming

them and acting from them. And hum an freedom is the state of being determined by

one's own nature, either in forming adequate ideas or, more importantly, in acting from

them. That is to say, we lack hum an freedom to the degree that our ideas and behaviors

are determined by passions, rather than reason, or adequate ideas. As discussed in the

previous chapters, however, adequate ideas oppose the passions only insofar as they

are affective. Thus, we are free from bondage to the extent that our ideas and our

behavior are not determined by passions, but by active affects.


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3.2. Conatus and Akrasia

Clearly, being in bondage is not a desirable state. Spinoza vividly describes the

experience of undergoing passive affects when he says, "we are driven about in many

ways by external causes, and that, like waves on the sea, driven by contrary winds, we

toss about, not knowing our outcome or fate."240 Despite this unpleasant experience,

we still often behave passionately, not rationally. Given that we essentially pursue our

own interest, however, this may seem contradictory. This raises the following question:

how can Spinoza affirm an egoistic psychology that involves hum an beings knowingly

acting against their own interest, as they do when they act passionately in the face of

opposing knowledge?

3.2.1. The Conatus and Egoism

Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus undergirds his versions of ethical and

psychological egoism.241 Like most aspects of Spinoza's psychology, his egoism has its

basis deep in his metaphysics and epistemology.242 He begins with his definition of

activity at 3d2, where he says:

I say that we act when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate

cause, i.e. (by Dl), when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be

clearly and distinctly understood through it alone. On the other hand, I say that we are acted

on when something happens to us, or something follows from our nature, of which we are

only a partial cause. (3d2; Curley, 493; Geb 11/139)

That is, insofar as we are active, we are an adequate cause. Next he says:


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...our Mind does certain things [acts] and undergoes other thing, viz. insofar as it has

adequate ideas, it necessarily does certain things, and insofar as it has inadequate ideas, it

necessarily undergoes other things. (3pl; Curley, 493; Geb 11/140)

That is, our mind is an adequate cause just when we have adequate ideas. In other

words, when our behavior is determined by inadequate ideas, we cannot be said to act,

strictly speaking, but only to undergo certain things. That is to say, when we have

inadequate ideas, we do not perform actions, but undergo passions, even though we

may be exhibiting some agent-like behavior.

Adequate ideas, on the other hand, are active affects, as Spinoza affirms when he

says, "apart from the Joy and Desire that are passions, there are other affects of Joy and

Desire that are related to us insofar as we act."243 Further, these active affects may only

be related to Joy and Desire, but not Sadness or pain. For, insofar as we act, our power

increases, while Sadness occurs only when our power decreases. Spinoza explains this

in 3p59, saying, "among all the affects that are related to the Mind insofar as it acts,

there are none that are not related to Joy or Desire."244 Therefore, because we cannot

have active affects in which our power decreases, we cannot have adequate ideas in

which our power decreases. This means, in turn, that we cannot be an adequate cause

in which our power decreases. And so, insofar as we are active in Spinoza's narrow

sense, our power cannot decrease. Thus, when we act in this sense, we necessarily act

in a way that maintains or increases our power; that is, we necessarily act in our own

interest.245


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Spinoza employs this technical sense of the term 'to act/ according to which a

hum an being is said to act only from adequate ideas. In this technical sense of action, it

is impossible to act irrationally. For a person's irrational action can only involve

inadequate ideas, in which case the person does not act, strictly speaking, but is acted

upon. Therefore, one cannot act against one's interest. Thus, Spinoza affirms

psychological egoism.

In fact, if Spinoza intends only this strict sense of action, then he is committed to

a thesis even stronger than psychological egoism, as it is traditionally understood. For,

when we act in this strict sense, we only act for what is truly in our interest. Strictly

speaking, we only act when we are determined by adequate ideas, which, being

adequate, are true representations. Given the conatus doctrine, it follows that any time

adequate ideas determine us to act, we will act toward what is truly good for us.

Whereas psychological egoism has traditionally been construed as the view that people

always act toward what they perceive to be good, Spinoza here asserts that people

always and only act for what they really know to be good. Spinoza's doctrine, then, is

psychological egoism of the strongest kind - at least, it is so when we consider

Spinoza's narrow sense of action just described.

In the beginning of Part 3 and elsewhere, Spinoza restricts the use of the term 'to

act' [agere] to cases of adequate knowledge. For example, after having presented a

myriad of passions, Spinoza turns to the active affects, which involve adequate ideas.

There he makes a distinction between "the affects that are related to man insofar as he is

acted on [patitur]" and "those that are related to him insofar as he acts [agzf]."246


At other times, however, he uses the verb with regard to inadequate ideas. For

example, Spinoza defines ambition, saying, "this striving to do [conatus aliquid agendi]

something...solely to please men is called Ambition, especially when we strive so

eagerly to please the people that we do [agamus] or omit certain things to our own

injury..."247 Here Spinoza uses the word 'act' in a broader sense, meaning, simply, to

do something or to behave in a certain way, though Curley translates agere in this

passage as 'to d o / not 'to act.' Later, Spinoza says, "he who strives, only because of an

affect, that others should love what he loves, and love according to his temperament,

acts [agit] only from impulse and is hateful." 248 In this passage Spinoza

straightforwardly employs agit in a context of inadequate ideas; these passages suggest

that Spinoza did not use agere consistently. In fact, Spinoza once uses agere in both

senses in the same paragraph, when he says,

Insofar as a man is determined to act [agendum] from the fact that he has inadequate ideas, he

is acted on [patitur] (by 3pl), i.e. (by 3dl and d2), he does [agit] something, which cannot be

perceived through his essence alone...But insofar as he is determined to do something from

the fact that he understands, he acts [agit] ... (4p23d; Curley, 558; Geb 11/226)

In his first two uses of agere in this passage, Spinoza refers to a behavior determined by

inadequate ideas, while in the third use he refers to one determined by adequate ideas.

In short, like the term affectus, Spinoza employs the term agere and its derivatives in two

senses, one broad the other narrow.

In general, then, Spinoza recognizes two senses of hum an action. In the narrow

sense, he often reserves agere for those cases involving adequate ideas. Nevertheless, he


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allows that human beings may act irrationally, even though such behavior does not

meet the criteria for action in the narrow sense.249 Yet even in passions we are "partial

causes."250 Though we do undergo something in the passions and we are in some ways

passive when we have inadequate ideas, we are nonetheless a partial cause and thus

partially active. Indeed, our essence is thus partially active even with inadequate ideas,

which is just what Spinoza establishes in 3p9. And so, our conatus is involved in both

adequate and inadequate ideas; that is, we may be said to act in the broad sense even

when we do so from inadequate ideas.

Consider Spinoza's admonition to try to persevere in our being. Now, given that

our conatus necessarily directs us to do so, this would seem unnecessary. As Michael

LeBuffe argues, however, Spinoza in fact exhorts us to do what will actually allow us to

persevere, not merely what we perceive will do so. In other words, when Spinoza tells

us to try to persevere in our being, he is exhorting us to a life of reason.251 That is, he is

urging us to live so that our conatus acts more often from adequate ideas than

inadequate ideas. Spinoza's entire project works under the assumption that some

people act against their interest some of the time.

Where does that leave Spinoza's psychological egoism? When 'to act' is taken in

the narrow sense, Spinoza's theory is a strong psychological egoism, for every act we

perform is not only toward our perceived good, but toward our actual good as well.

Even in the broad sense of action, Spinoza is still a psychological egoist, despite his

allowance that we sometimes act against our real interest in favor of an apparent good.

Whether or not we act from adequate or inadequate ideas, we necessarily pursue


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something we represent to ourselves as good for us. Spinoza even allows for cases of

akrasia, where we know what is good for us, but instead follow some irrational desire

for a merely apparent good that overwhelms our knowledge.

Accepting akrasia certainly does not entail the rejection of egoism, by any means,

because every desire we form is one aimed at something perceived to be in our own

interest. For Spinoza, akrasia occurs when we choose something perceived to be

desirable in the short-term over our long-term good, or something that is good for us in

one respect but not overall. In short, Spinoza's particular explanation of akrasia leaves

his egoism intact. W hat's more, Spinoza's system may even allow for self-sacrificing

and self-destructive behavior, which are even stronger challenges to psychological

egoism.252

Spinoza's ethical egoism253 follows from the conatus doctrine as well, for he

defines virtue as being equivalent to increasing one's power when he says:

By virtue and power I understand the same thing, i.e. (by IIIP7), virtue, insofar as it is related

to man, is the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of bringing about

certain things, which can be understood through the laws of his nature alone. (4d8; Curley,

547; Geb 11/210)

Spinoza reaffirms the identity of virtue and power at 4p20, where he says: "the more

each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, i.e., to preserve his being, the

more he is endowed with virtue; conversely, insofar as each one neglects his own

advantage, i.e., neglects to preserve his being, he lacks power."254 So, seeking one's

own advantage and increasing one's power is virtuous behavior, for Spinoza. This


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understanding is consistent with Spinoza's definition of good and evil as well, which he

states in 4d l and 4d2, saying:

4dl: By good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us.

4d2: By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters

of some good. (Curley, 546; Geb 11/209)

Once again, the good for Spinoza is just the good for us, which is what brings us an

increase in power.255 And so pursuing the good, in this sense, increases our power;

therefore, acting to increase our power is acting virtuously.256 What remains to be seen

is if Spinoza's system can account for two challenges commonly raised against theories

of psychological egoism: self-destructive and altruistic behavior. Furthermore, seeing

how Spinoza's egoism can resist these challenges sets the stage for how he believes

akrasia to occur.

3.2.2. Selfless and Self-Destructive Behavior

In 3p9, Spinoza establishes that the hum an mind strives, from its essence, both

insofar as it has desires involving adequate ideas and desires involving inadequate

ideas.257 He says:

3p9: Both insofar as the mind has distinct ideas, and insofar as it has confused ideas, it strives,

for an indefinite duration, to persevere in its being and it is conscious of this striving it has.

Dem.: The essence of the Mind is constituted by adequate and inadequate ideas (as we have

shown in p3). So (by p7) it strives to persevere in its being both insofar as it has inadequate

ideas and insofar as it has adequate ideas. (Curley, 499; Geb E/147)


145

Since the essence of the mind involves both adequate and inadequate ideas, it follows

that our mind's essential striving will also involve both kinds.258 Similarly, both our

rational and irrational desires exemplify our tendency to pursue those things we take to

be good for us, that is, both rational and irrational desires are a part of our conatus.

And so, it is hum an nature to be moved both from reason and from passion.259 In 4p65,

Spinoza claims that the principle of choosing the greater of two goods or the lesser of

two evils is a principle of reason. In other words, it is not something we do simply

because of the striving of our conatus. Instead, it is a rational principle we may or may

not follow. Though everything that we desire is an apparent good, to be sure, not

everything that we desire is always in fact in our best interest.

In principle, if a hum an being were to possess only adequate ideas, then any

behavior that lessens her power to persevere would be inconsistent with her conatus.

Humans are not such beings, however, since their essence is an appetite directed by

both adequate and inadequate ideas. This fact, stated clearly in the often overlooked

3p9, would help to explain how suicide is possible, which has long been taken as a

counterexample to Spinoza's doctrine of conatus.260

A suicidal person is one whose inadequate ideas and irrational desires have

gained such prominence that his mind has become largely passive - i.e., his rational

desires are almost entirely inefficacious. At that point, whatever he does is likely to be

against his interest. Whether he slowly drinks himself to death or hangs himself, for

example, is simply a matter of which inadequate ideas he has. He is still behaving

consistently with his conatus when he is determined by his irrational desires, even those


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that may lead to his destruction.261 Therefore, when the suicidal person makes his choice

toward suicide, his behavior is simply determined by some irrational desire.262 Seneca

acted similarly when he chose suicide, though his choice was guided by reason, not

passion. In Seneca's case, he faced torture and execution, so he chose rationally to

commit a painless suicide. As just mentioned, reason directs us to choose the lesser of

two evils; therefore, reason would direct Seneca to do what he did. It should be clear

how self-destructive behavior can be explained in Spinoza's egoist psychology.

Similar things could be said about seemingly altruistic behavior.263 If we have

inadequate ideas about the afterlife, say, that direct us to sacrifice our life for another,

we behave in accordance with our conatus, even though we are significantly passive in

this event. Of course, this might not qualify as altruistic self-sacrifice at all, since we aim

for a reward in heaven. Say, however, that one has the adequate idea "one should

return hate with love," which is one of Spinoza's common notions.264 If acting on this

principle endangers or even ends one's life, has one acted against the conatus? Perhaps

not. Above all, though, the conatus does not favor the rational over the irrational,

necessarily, but is determined solely by their relative affective force.

Perhaps this is what Spinoza means when he denies teleology of the conatus.265

He says, "we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we

judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive

for it, will it, want it, and desire it."266 The conatus does not favor reason over the

passions, nor does it value our all-things-considered, long-term interests over our short


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term, heat-of-the-moment desires. Instead, we merely act from the strongest desire,

only consequently recognizing objects of desire to be goods.

Two further points are relevant here. First, if Seneca's rational suicide is

consistent with the doctrine of conatus, then an irrational suicide can also be consistent

with that doctrine, given that the conatus involves being determined equally from both

adequate and inadequate ideas. In the case of both irrational and rational suicides, the

desire for a perceived good determines action, despite the fact that a rational suicide

involves more hum an freedom than an irrational suicide. Both, however, are consistent

with the conatus.

One need not resort to extreme examples of altruism to challenge egoism.

Consider the simple act of giving money to a beggar. Even so great an egoist as Thomas

Hobbes is reported to have done just so and to have seen such behavior as in

accordance with egoism. John Aubrey reports as follows:

One time, I remember, going into the Strand, a poor and infirm old man craved his alms. He

beholding him with eyes of pity and compassion, put his hands in his pocket, and gave him

6d. Said a divine (that is Dr Jasper Mayne) that stood by - 'Would you have done this, if it

had not been Christ's command?' 'Yes,' said he. 'Why?' said the other. 'Because,' said he, 'I

was in pain to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my alms, giving

him some relief, doth also ease me.'267

This anecdote does not win the case for the egoist, nor does the Lieutenant Edens

example, above. On the other hand, both show that such behaviors can be explained by

an egoist psychology. As opposed to many other egoists, however, Spinoza grounds

his psychology in his metaphysics, viz. the conatus doctrine, and his theory of mind


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generally. If those grounds have independent plausibility, then his egoism ought to

have such plausibility as well. In that case, the theory need only account for possible

counterexamples, which is just what it seems to be capable of doing.

On the other hand, Spinoza's system could not easily accommodate altruistic or

self-destructive behavior if we understand the conatus to be, simply, that we necessarily

do either what really is in our interest or what we believe to be in our long-term, all-

things-considered interest. We do neither, of course, instead acting from particular

appetites and desires (3p9s), some of which are rational, some of which are irrational

(3p9). We can reason and form beliefs about the future and the future effects of our

actions, to be sure. But only insofar as these beliefs about the future engender particular

desires in the present can they determine our behavior. Lieutenant Edens believes that,

if he rims now, his body may survive but his personality will be destroyed in the future,

in some sense. More importantly, he believes that, if he remains and fights, he will

likely die, but he will be doing what he really wants to do. His beliefs about the future

engender self-interested desires in the present, which cause him to behave in the way he

does, a behavior that from outside appears altruistic.

Can Spinoza's theory account for a desire that takes as its goal one's personal

destruction? For example, Freud's death drive (der Todestrieb) is not simply a desire for

death or destruction that arises from the accidental acquisition of some false

information. Rather, for Freud, der Todestreib is a life force, a drive comparable to eros.

Similarly, the destrudo impulse that der Todestreib engenders is, like the libido, a

fundamental impulse.268 Though Spinoza's thought can accommodate self-destructive


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desires, he cannot countenance that such a desire could come from our essence in the

same way as our adequate ideas. Though Spinoza can accommodate self-destructive

desire, he rejects the claim that humans might be fundamentally or essentially self

destructive, or that they contain two competing tendencies in their essence, one toward

life and another toward death.

For Spinoza, our conatus is nothing but our way of striving to persevere. For

hum an beings, this striving manifests in our being determined by particular desires to

pursue things we believe to be good. If we feel that the continuation of our life would

be worse than its end, then we will believe death to be a good for us and so we will

desire to die and may even be determined to pursue it, as Seneca did. It is more likely,

however, that we are determined to avoid something else, rather than actively pursuing

death and self-destruction. The suicidal person usually seeks suicide not out of love of

self-destruction and death but only secondarily, as a means of escaping some present

pain or fear. In short, then, most suicides are like a man who jumps from a high story of

a burning building. They do not seek to die by falling, but to avoid the nearer and

presently more fearful death by burning. So, their desire to avoid the fire is greater than

their desire not to fall from the building, so they jump. At least, this seems to be what

Spinoza's system entails. If Spinoza is correct here, then a suicidal person is so because

he has an inadequate idea that death will bring less pain than life. And this behavior is

perfectly in accord with our interpretation of the conatus. And of course, the rational

suicide of Seneca, who wisely chose a painless suicide over a painful death by torture,

raises no problem whatsoever for this interpretation. After all, Seneca's rational choice


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is explained in the same way as the irrational suicide, the only difference being the fact

that whereas Seneca's choice was rational and admirable, the choice of irrational suicide

is not.

A final point is required in order to give an explanation of how akrasia could

occur. In every inadequate idea, the mind is partially passive, which means that every

inadequate idea has some cause external to the mind. The strength of an inadequate

idea, as well as the strength of its associated irrational desire, is determined not by our

mind but by the strength of the external cause of the inadequate idea. Spinoza says,

"the force and growth of any passions, and its perseverance in existing, are not defined

by the power by which we strive to persevere in existing, but by the power of an

external cause compared with our own."269 This explains how a passion could be

stronger than one of our rational desires, since external causes can always be stronger

than our own power 270

3.3. Akrasia in Spinoza

3.3.1. Akrasia In Spinoza: A First Pass

There are a variety of different kinds of akrasia.271 For example, some very weak

cases of akrasia involve acting against one's beliefs or suspicions, while other, more

interesting cases involve acting against one's knowledge of the better option. This

distinction is irrelevant for Spinoza, because he does not divide cognitions in this way.

For our purposes, then, we shall consider only cases in the latter category - acting

against our knowledge of our good.


Instances of akrasia may also be synchronic or diachronic (synchronic akrasia

corresponds to what has been called strict akrasia). Synchronic, or strict, akrasia occurs

when an agent makes a judgment that doing one action is more desirable than doing

another, yet at the same time intentionally performs the less desirable action.272 In

diachronic akrasia, on the other hand, the mind vacillates between two appearances of

the good, but acts while considering only the appearance of the less desirable option 273

In other words, the judgment that one option is better than the other and the

performance of the action do not occur simultaneously, but in succession. Sometimes,

this kind of akrasia appears as a rash or impulsive action. For example, say that I know I

shouldn't eat cake because it will spoil my diet. In a moment in which I am not

focusing on that judgment, I instead consider the mouthwatering appearance of a slice

of cake and then succumb. In this case, I act rashly, choosing to eat the cake at the

moment when I was considering its desirability and not my prior judgment of what

would be best overall. In other words, in synchronic akrasia, the mind vacillates

between the rational desire to refrain and the momentary, irrational desire to eat. Then

the mind acts at the moment when it is considering only the irrational desire.

Spinoza recognizes this phenomenon, in which the mind vacillates between

several representations, when he says:

This constitution of the Mind which arises from two contrary affects is called vacillation of

the mind .. .From this we can easily conceive that one and the same object can be the cause of

many and contrary affects. (3pl7s; Curley, 504; Geb 11/153)


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Spinoza explains how this vacillation arises by reference to the fact that different

aspects of the object in question can cause different desires in us; further, being complex

things ourselves, the same objects can cause different desires in us as well. In

considering the object, then, the mind will vacillate among these several affects, or

desires. It may be that one of these desires is rational and another irrational. On which

desire we act is a function of the relative strengths of the desires.

Spinoza accepts the possibility of synchronic, or strict, akrasia as well. In fact, the

first 17 propositions in Part 4 are hard to understand unless they refer to synchronic

akrasia. According to Spinoza there, an irrational desire or passion overpowers or

restrains a rational desire or active affect, which involves knowledge of our good. In

other words, the cases with which Spinoza is concerned here are those in which two

representations of our good coexist in the mind, yet only one, the more powerful one, is

efficacious. This does not seem to be a case of the mind attending to one desire over

another or vacillating between two representations.274 Indeed, the entire language of

power used to analyze the affects suggests that one affect meets another head-on and

overpowers it, as occurs only in synchronic akrasia. After having explained that our

knowledge of the good is not very powerful and can easily be restrained by passions,

Spinoza quotes Ovid at 4pl7s, saying, "I see and approve the better, but follow the

worse."275 This is best understood as a kind of synchronic, or strict, akrasia.276

In any event, Spinoza does not distinguish these two species of akrasia, instead

considering only the genus. For Spinoza, in a case of akrasia, the mind contains two

desires, one a rational desire to do A and the other an irrational desire to do B. The


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rational desire involves an adequate idea that truly represents action A as being in our

interest, while the irrational desire involves an inadequate idea that falsely represents

doing B as in our interest. That is, A presents something as good for us that really is so,

while B presents something as good for us when that is not in fact so. Perhaps A, the

true representation, takes into account our long-term interests, while B, the false

representation, focuses only on the here and now and thus misrepresents the overall

value of some pleasurable behavior. Regardless, the two are competing desires

presenting opposing views of the good in this situation. According to Spinoza, the

stronger desire will determine the mind to act, regardless of the ideas' adequacy or

inadequacy.

In fact, the mere presence of an idea - even an adequate idea - that action B is not

in our interest is not sufficient for removing a desire to do B. For we may also have

some other, inadequate idea according to which B appears, on the contrary, to be

desirable in some way. If we perceive some behavior to be harmful or dangerous in

some way, it may still appear to be desirable - and we will pursue the stronger of the

two appearances, or rather, behave according to their resulting desires.277 Spinoza

affirms this claim when he says, "no affect can be restrained by the true knowledge of

good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect."278

That is, our irrational desires cannot be overcome simply by true knowledge of our

good; only as a desire can our knowledge of the good overcome these irrational desires.

If our rational desires are weaker than our irrational ones, however, we are vulnerable

to suffering akrasia.279


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3.3.2. How Particular Instances of Akrasia M ay Occur

Here, then, is how akrasia occurs. First, the mind must contain two ideas of

objects, a and b, both of which we are represented as providing joy [laetitia] to the

individual. Further, say having both a and b is impossible. Given our essential nature

as desirous beings, we will form desires for each of these objects. Thus, from ideas of a

and b will arise desires A and B. Given the incompatible nature of having both objects,

however, we cannot act on both A and B. Now, say that idea of a is adequate and idea

of b is inadequate. Desire A is rational, because a is adequate, while desire B is irrational,

because b is inadequate. The strength of desires A and B is determined by the strength

of the causes of ideas a and b, respectively. So, if the cause of idea b is stronger than the

cause of idea a, then desire B will be stronger than desire A, in which case we will act on

B, not A. Therefore, we will act on desire B, while still knowing it is not the best course

of action (knowledge embodied in idea a). So, we will act knowingly against our

interest. We do this because our conatus does not distinguish between our rational and

irrational desires, instead tending us toward whatever desire happens to be the

strongest, which is a matter contingent on the relative strength of the causes involved.

Spinoza offers a detailed explanation of our bondage to the passions, showing

how and why akrasia occurs in particular circumstances.280 He begins by establishing

that, as natural beings, we must always suffer passions to some degree. He restates this

commitment to a naturalistic view of hum an nature, saying:


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It is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to

undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his own nature alone,

and of which he is the adequate cause. (4p4; Curley, 548; Geb 11/212)

The metaphysics behind this claim are rooted in the doctrine of monism, according to

which each hum an being is a mode of Substance, the larger system of divine nature.

Being such modes, humans have a limited and finite power, such that they may always

be acted on by external forces. Spinoza has already announced this view in the Preface

to Part 3, where he denies that man in nature is "a dominion within a dominion."281

Spinoza elucidates this view in a corollary, saying, "from this it follows that man is

necessarily always subject to passions, that he follows and obeys the common order of

Nature."282 Since a passion is the result in the hum an mind when the hum an body is

affected from without, and given that the hum an body must be so affected, it follows

that the mind must be subject to the passions.

Spinoza then addresses this question: Given that passions are inadequate ideas,

can knowledge remove a passion? He answers this question, saying, "nothing positive

which a false idea has is removed by the presence of the true insofar as it is true."283 In

the subsequent scholium, he explains this with his aforementioned analogy of seeing

the sun. The appearance of the sun in the sky as a small relatively proximate orb is an

inadequate idea, because in fact it is much larger and more distant than it appears to the

eye. Even after our having learned these astronomical facts, however, the sun still

appears to us in the same way. The relative smallness and seeming proximity of the

stm in our sensory perception are not dispelled by knowing the truth.


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Now consider another case. Say I see a spider and become unduly afraid.

Further, say that I happen to know that this species of spider is harmless to hum ans and

cannot cause me any pain. Spinoza's theory plausibly suggests that this knowledge

may not remove the feeling of fear. Because the cause of the inadequate idea, namely,

the sensory stimulus, remains, the inadequate idea remains as well, side by side with

the adequate rational idea, which is different in kind. And, just as in the case of the sun,

the inadequate sensory ideas remain because their causes continue to act on us.

Next, say that the spider is on the floor, in a doorway through which I wish to

pass. How I act in this situation depends on how strong the emotion of fear is

compared to how strong my desire is to get through the door. In other words, my

knowledge that the spider cannot really hurt me will not remove the fear I feel, nor

allow me simply to overcome the fear and pass through the doorway. Only if I also

have some further emotional motivation to do so, such as hunger for the food in the

kitchen beyond the doorway, for example, may I be able to overcome my fear.

This account of the interaction of truth and the passions culminates in 4p7, where

Spinoza says, "an affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite

to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained."284 This principle undergirds Spinoza's

mechanistic psychology, according to which the passions interact according to efficient

causation, as constituent parts in a mechanism.285 Each affect in the mind is the idea of

a bodily affection or change. Yet no modification in a body may occur except through

interaction with another body as an efficient cause. And the idea of this efficient cause,


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being an idea of a change in a body, is itself an affect. Therefore, affects cannot be

removed except by other affects.

This is a model of the mind worth considering at greater length. The mind is a

complex idea, Spinoza says, composed of myriad constituent ideas, all of which are

interrelated such that they exhibit a tendency to persevere in their being. With a

complex physical being like the hum an body, the constituent parts together exhibit a

tendency to cohere spatially in such a way that the whole retains its individuating

character. In other words, hum an bodies have a distinctive conatus; the hum an body

generally tends toward self-preservation. Any physical collection that fails to do so also

fails to be an entity over and above its constituent parts.286

Spinoza holds the mind to be the idea of the body 287 In the case of the mind,

therefore, its constituent ideas are related in such a way that they exhibit conatus as

well; these ideas interact in a way analogous to the bodily mechanism, composing a

kind of spiritual automaton.288 This interaction within the spiritual automaton is a

matter of efficient causation, as in the bodily automaton, because Spinoza rejects formal,

final, and other kinds of causation. These ideas interacting in the mental automaton

have a tripartite nature - they are cognitions, volitions, and affects. In 4pl through 4p7,

Spinoza establishes that modes of the mind are causally efficacious only insofar as they

are affects. This is what Spinoza means when he says that an idea cannot effect change

in the mind insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is an affect.289 Akrasia occurs as a

result of this aspect of the mind; our affects drive our actions, not our knowledge of the

good per se.


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Spinoza reiterates this view later in Part 4, where he says, "no affect can be

restrained by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar

as it is considered as an affect"290 and "a Desire which arises from a true knowledge of

good and evil can be extinguished or restrained by many other Desires which arise

from affects by which we are tormented."291 An idea's being true, even its being true

knowledge of our good, does not entail that this idea will be efficacious, since the

strength of an affect is determined by the strength of its cause, not by its cognitive

content 292 Similarly, whether desires based on knowledge of our good are efficacious is

a function of the strength of the desire's affective cause, not the cognition on which it is

based.

After having established the basis for the conflict of the affects, Spinoza proceeds

to explain the principles according to which they interact. Those affects whose causes

we imagine as present will, ceteris paribus, be stronger than those whose causes we

imagine as absent. So Spinoza says, "an affect whose cause we imagine to be with us in

the present is stronger if we did not imagine it to be with us."293 The reason for this is

simple enough; Spinoza takes an idea considered in isolation of all other ideas to be an

idea in which we imagine something as existing. Spinoza introduces the foundation for

this principle in Part 2, where he says,

If the human Body is affected with a mode that involves the nature of an external body, the

human Mind will regard the same external body as actually existing, or as present to it, until

the Body is affected by an affect the excludes the existence or presence of that body. (2pl7;

Curley, 463-4; Geb 11/104)


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In Spinoza's rudimentary account of bodily affections, sensory perception is a process

according to which some external body imprints itself onto our sense organs in some

way, such that our brains will represent the external body as present until something

else mars or removes the imprint.

Since the affects are ideas of bodily affections, it follows that affects in which we

imagine something will function as though the object is present as well, unless there is

some other idea present that counts against that existence. He makes this principle

explicit in Part 3, where he says, "so long as a man is affected by the image of a thing, he

will regard the thing as present, even if it does not exist..."294 This principle can be

found in Descartes, who says, "existence is contained in the idea or concept of every

single thing, since we cannot conceive of anything except as existing."295 For Spinoza,

to imagine something not present is to have two ideas, one that posits the existence and

nature of the thing and another idea that posits a state of affairs that excludes the

presence of the thing in question.296

Each of these affects has a certain amount of affective force, as it were. Therefore,

the case in which I have a sole affective idea that posits the existence of x will be

stronger than a case in which I have an idea positing x and another idea denying the

existence of x. Since these latter two are opposite in a certain way, the unopposed affect

will have a greater effect on me than the opposed and thus weakened one. Therefore,

given that having an affect toward some object involves imagining the object to be

present, it follows that the addition of a second idea denying the presence of the object


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would weaken the affect toward the object. After all, if we fear spiders, we will feel

more fear in the absence of a belief that there are none present.

Spinoza provides other principles concerning affective strength. So, he says, "we

are affected more intensely by a future thing which we imagine will be quickly present,

than if we imagined the time when it will exist to be further from the present."297 That

is, we feel more strongly about things that are nearer to us than those that are farther.

Similarly, those things that we imagine as necessary affect us more strongly than those

imagined as contingent. For to imagine something as necessary is to imagine it as

always existing, while to imagine something as contingent is to imagine something that

may be non-existent or absent.

Finally, Spinoza says:

A Desire which arises from a true knowledge of good and evil, insofar as this knowledge

concerns the future, can be quite easily restrained or extinguished by a Desire for the

pleasures of the moment. (4pl6; Curley, 554; Geb 11/220)

Here, Spinoza combines what he has said about the relative weakness of true

knowledge of good with the relative weakness of our affects toward future states of

affairs. Our desires to do certain things that we believe will bring about our good in the

future are weak for several reasons. First, the strength of this desire is not a function of

the truth or cognitive content of the ideas involved and so this desire is at no advantage

over other, less rational desires we might have. Second, this desire concerns our good

in the future; as such, it is weakened because its object is imagined as not existing in the

present. Therefore, other things being equal, our desires for the pleasures of the present


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will be stronger than our desire for our good in the future, even when that future-

directed desire is based on true knowledge.

Later in Part 4, Spinoza explains a final way in which we are in bondage to the

passions and thus may suffer akrasia. Whereas the previous principles involve the

affective nature of desire versus its truth value or our natural bias toward the near, the

following principle involves a bias toward particular aspects of ourselves at the expense

of the whole. He says, "a Desire arising from either a Joy or a Sadness related to one, or

several, but not to all parts of the Body, has no regard for the advantage of the whole

man."298 This straightforwardly applies to the passions of lust and gluttony, wherein

one acts in the interest of parts of our body or brain, but perhaps at the expense of the

whole.

Yet it could be applied more metaphorically as well. Imagine a man who takes

great pleasure in music, to such an extent that he spends no time pursuing other

knowledge or, more generally, tending to other necessities in his life. This would be

one who favors certain desires at the expense of the good of the whole. This example is

not farfetched, for, in a scholium to the above proposition, Spinoza says,

Therefore, since Joy is generally (by p44s) related to one part of the body, for the most part

we desire to preserve our being without regard to our health as a whole. To this we may add

that the Desires by which we are most bound (by p9c) have regard only to the present and

not the future. (4p60s; Curley, 581; Geb 11/256)


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In short, then, desires very often lead us astray because they exhibit some sort of

irrational bias, either toward the present or the near future over the long-term, or

toward a part of our bodies, or our lives, at the expense of the whole.

With these statements, Spinoza believes that he has shown how Ovid's Medea

might have been led to say, "...video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor."299 Spinoza

describes how reason prescribes us to act, given that we will pursue our own interests.

These dictates of reason, as Spinoza calls them, may serve as a guide to the life of reason,

for they represent true knowledge of good and evil. As just explained, however, simply

knowing these dictates does not entail that one will follow them. And this is Spinoza's

account of akrasia.

3.3.3. The Relation Between Bondage and Akrasia

Bondage is the degree to which we lack hum an freedom, yet it is in akrasia that

w e feel our bondage most keenly. For here we see that even in the face of knowledge of

our good, we nonetheless are determined by passions. Yet when we lack this

knowledge completely and take the world at face value, so to speak, relying solely on

our inadequate ideas, we do not become aware that a better avenue might be available.

But when we act akratically, we realize that one action really is better for us, yet we are

driven to behave in some other way. When two passions compete for our attention, on

the other hand, we merely wish we could do both. Only in akrasia do we come to

recognize that one perception misleads us, while the other is preferable.


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When we perceive that something is good for us, we desire it. So, if we reflect on

our experiences of akrasia themselves, we may perceive that reason is good for us,

because it illuminates our true goods and reveals that some of our other, inadequate

ideas are not to be trusted. After all, Spinoza says, "knowledge of the second and third

kinds, and not of the first kind, teaches us to distinguish the true from the false."300

When we see that the true is useful to us, we desire it. So Spinoza says, "the Striving, or

Desire, to know things by the third kind of knowledge cannot arise from the first kind

of knowledge, but can indeed arise from the second."301 In fact, the desire to know

things by the second and third kinds of knowledge is self-perpetuating.

In short, then, akrasia can serve a productive role for hum an beings, because it

can alert us to the fact that our passions threaten our well-being. Given our egoism, it

follows that we will desire to increase our knowledge. However, this desire may not

aim at knowledge in general, nor at theoretical knowledge, necessarily. For it may aim

primarily at knowledge of what is useful to us, since this is what is at issue when we

suffer akrasia. Now, Spinoza defines the good just as those things that are useful to us.

So, when we suffer akrasia, we may form a desire for rational knowledge of our good.

This rational desire to know what is useful to us may initially suggest a

distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge. For, if we have a desire only

for what is useful to us, we may not desire knowledge of quantum physics or some

other topic we judge as useless. Such judgments are surely what guide people to

pursue some aims as opposed to others, but these judgments may turn on a false

dichotomy. For this opposition between theoretical and practical knowledge is not


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entirely accurate. Spinoza says, "we know nothing to be certainly good or evil, except

what really leads to understanding or what can prevent us from understanding."302 In

other words, the good of the mind is nothing but knowledge itself. Put another way,

the only thing truly useful to the mind is knowledge simpliciter. Knowledge in general,

then, strengthens the mind. Thus, the striving of the mind for understanding does not

distinguish between more or less useful reasoning.

This should come as no surprise, because the mind and the body are one thing

understood in two ways. Spinoza establishes this when he says, "a mode of extension

and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways"303

and "the object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body, or a certain mode

of Extension which actually exists, and nothing else."304 Given that understanding is

the m ind's activity and knowledge its power, and given that the mind and body are two

ways of understanding the same hum an being, it follows that my striving toward

understanding is the same as my striving toward increasing my power and persevering

in my being more generally.

However, it may be that certain kinds of adequate knowledge are more useful

than others for controlling the passions. Certainly, knowledge of quantum physics

strengthens the mind, brings understanding and lessens our bondage, but knowledge of

the causes of the affects may allow us to remove the passions more effectively. As such,

this knowledge, knowledge of the causes of the passions, is very desirable indeed.

Appropriately, this is the kind of knowledge that Spinoza pursues to escape bondage

into freedom.


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And so we see that bondage is a state that makes our performing akratic action

more likely. Bondage is, in a sense, dispositional akrasia. In this regard, then, Spinoza's

concept of bondage resembles akrasia in its original sense - a state of character. A

person with an akratic character is one more likely to perform akratic action. And this

trait is characterized by ignorance and submission to the passions.

3.4. Conclusions

All told, Spinoza divides ideas in several ways. They can be adequate or

inadequate. They may also be one of the three kinds of knowledge. If they are

adequate, they originate in the nature of the mind itself, while if they are inadequate, an

external cause acts upon us to give us the idea.

Similarly, Spinoza tells us that affects can be either passive or active. When

active, they involve adequate ideas and, when passive, inadequate ideas. When our

mind is active in adequate ideas, our power increases, and is felt as an active affect.

When our mind is passive in inadequate ideas, it is felt as a passion, or passive affect.

These affects can be felt as varieties of joy, sadness, or desire. Together, our desires

constitute our conatus, which is our general tendency to pursue our own interest, that is,

to pursue what we believe will increase our power and thus cause us joy. This conatus

is not a separate, real faculty, but rather is a being of reason abstracted from our

particular desires, just as our Will is abstracted from our particular volitions.

When we are passive in our inadequate ideas, or rather, when we undergo

passions, we are not self-determined. As such, we are not free, but in bondage. Even


though the conatus directs us to pursue our own interest, this tendency does not favor

rational over irrational desires. Therefore, we often choose the worse of two options,

even when we perceive the better. That is to say, we can act akratically. Our desires,

both rational and irrational, determine our actions based solely on their affective power.

As we shall see in the final chapter, from Spinoza's affective psychology, his

concept of human bondage, and, most importantly, his discussion of issues surrounding

of akrasia as just explained, we can draw a powerful, novel, and fascinating theory of

weakness of will. This theory compares favorably with those of the six theorists

presented in Chapter One.


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Chapter Four:

Spinoza's Theory of Akrasia

4.1. Intemalism and Extemalism in Spinoza

We have now surveyed enough of Spinoza's system to compare his account of

akrasia to the other theories we introduced in Chapter One. There, our theorists were

divided into several camps: strong intemalism, weak intemalism, and extemalism. The

principle according to which the theorists were so categorized concerns how they

answer this question, posed in Chapter One, which was: What is the relation between

practical judgments and motivation? Spinoza has a clear and unique answer. He holds

them not only to be linked modally, but to be identical. More accurately, they are two

aspects of the same mental mode. When we judge that something would be the best

course of action (usually because it would benefit us), we also feel a desire to pursue

that course of action. Desire, which for Spinoza fulfills the role of motivation, is the

affective aspect of a practical judgment.

As we shall see, Spinoza's is in fact a novel kind of weak internalist. He does hold

a modal connection between judgment and motivation, which makes him an internalist.


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He allows that strength of motivation and judgment may diverge, however, in that we

do not always most want to do what we judge to be best. Sometimes, Spinoza believes,

our desire to do what we have judged to be not the best course of action is stronger than

our rational desire to do what we have judged best. And it is in this phenomenon,

akrasia, that the richness and uniqueness of Spinoza's psychology is on display. In what

follows, Spinoza's account of akrasia will be contrasted with the six thinkers discussed

in Chapter One and the exact nature of Spinoza's weak intemalism will become clear.

4.1.1. Spinoza Contra the Strong Internalists

The primary reason why Spinoza cannot be a strong internalist is that he accepts

the reality of akrasia, as is evidenced by his citation of Medea's "I see and approve the

better, but follow the worse."305 Spinoza certainly does not mean to refer here to the

diachronic akrasia of the strong internalist, for Spinoza describes that phenomenon as a

vacillation of the mind, which he takes to be a distinct phenomenon from our acting

from passion against our better judgment. As we shall see, Spinoza's account differs in

several other important respects from the strong internalists we have reviewed.

The first strong internalist discussed was Socrates. Like Socrates, Spinoza

believes that a perfectly rational agent will desire only those things which most increase

his well-being overall and in the long-run. Unlike Socrates, however, Spinoza does not

reduce all desires, rational and irrational, to this desire for happiness or one's good.

Indeed, despite his doctrine of the conatus and his strong commitment to egoism,

Spinoza countenances conflicting desires. This is so because, like Plato, he believes that


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desires are conditioned by their objects and, thus, we may possess incommensurable

desires.

Each desire, on Socrates' view, contains an all-things-considered judgment. That is,

each desire concerns what would be best to do, not merely what would be good or

pleasurable. Spinoza, on the other hand, takes desires merely to concern the object at

hand and not to involve any such global considerations. Though behavior toward

maximizing our good/pleasure may be a general tendency in Spinoza's system, desires

need not be global judgments of this sort at all. Desires include a judgment, to be sure,

but that judgment is of something's goodness, usefulness, or pleasantness, not

necessarily whether it is best or not. Essential to Spinoza's view is the claim that the

hum an essence or conatus works on both adequate and inadequate ideas. So, for

Spinoza, we may act on either our good or our bad judgments as well as our rational or

irrational desires.

For Spinoza, desires also involve a kind of judgment. If I desire something, I

judge it to be useful or pleasurable. Note, however, that this judgment does not involve

an implicit evaluation of the relevant alternatives. This desire is a mechanical response

to a certain stimulus, which will not necessarily cause any such evaluation. Further,

this stimulus may create a desire in us that aims solely at a short-term good. Indeed, it

may aim us at something we believe to be bad in the long-run - or even in the short rim.

Imagine three different kinds of stimuli, one which causes us to believe that A is

better for us than B, one that impels us toward A and one that impels us toward B.

Further, say that the stimulus impelling us toward B is stronger that the other two


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stimuli combined. We can therefore simultaneously know that A is better yet act

toward B. We are being "impelled," yet this impulsion is no different from when we

are impelled by stimuli and antecedent conditions toward something we judge to be

good. Indeed, if we adequately judge that A is good for us, we will by that very fact

desire A. If we then act toward A , we do so from our own knowledge, yet we are

nevertheless "impelled." This is a natural result of Spinoza's mechanist, determinist

view of the mind.

Thus, for Spinoza, it is not just "the skill of measurement" that is the key to our

salvation, as it is for Socrates. Instead, we must cultivate desires that accord with the

judgments of that skill. In other words, our salvation lies in having the strongest

possible rational desires, not just in rational beliefs. For rational beliefs may not involve

powerful enough desires to overcome the passions. So Spinoza's account is much more

Aristotelian than Socratic.

On the Socratic view, making an accurate measurement removes any contrary

judgments. If I measure what good will result from an action, I thereby remove any

judgments that reach a different conclusion. So, if I judge x to be bad, I cannot at the

same time desire x. Spinoza disagrees. I can know that the sun is huge and distant yet

still experience its appearance as small and relatively near. The knowledge of the sun's

true distance and size do not cancel out or do away with the suspicion that it is

relatively small and near, given to us in sensation. Similarly, I can judge that something

is bad yet still experience the appearance of it as desirable or good. As long as the two


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distinct causes, or stimuli, of these mental states are present, they can coexist in the

mind.

In short, then, Spinoza differs from Socrates in that he allows incommensurate

desires and coexisting contradictory judgments. These aspects of his system allow him

to accept strict, synchronic akrasia and exclude him from being a Socratic strong

internalist.

The other strong internalist discussed was Donald Davidson. Spinoza's view

differs from Davidson's in ways similar to how it differs from Socrates. Like Mele,

Spinoza would deny Davidson's P2, that "if an agent judges that it would be better to

do x than to do y, then he wants to do x more than he wants to do y." For Spinoza,

motivation and evaluation are simply not so intimately connected. This is what

Spinoza means when he distinguishes (i) that affects, not ideas determine action and (ii)

that affects gain their strength from their causes, which are other affects, not from the

judgments with which they are involved.

Davidson locates the explanation of hum an action in reasons. People act on

account of having reasons, which are the causes of their actions. Akrasia is a problem

for a reasons theorist like Davidson, because akrasia seems to be a case where an agent

has a better reason to do one thing than another, but still does the other from a less

convincing reason. How can one have reason to act against one's reason? If we explain

hum an action using desire instead of reason, the oddness of this opposition seems to be

alleviated. If everyone acts from some desire, then the akratic agent acts against a

'rational' desire. The akratic agent has a desire to act that is contrary to another of his


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desires, where the two desires are simply opposing. This seems like less of a conceptual

problem. For surely people can desire things in different ways - we may desire x for its

long-term benefits and y for its immediate pleasure, and so on. But to say that we have

good reasons to do x and a less convincing reason to do y but our reasons lead us to do

y is admittedly strange. And that is why Davidson comes up with his two kinds of

judgments, i.e., two kinds of reasons, only one of which can issue in action.

For Davidson, conditional and unconditional judgments seem to conflict, though

in fact only unconditional, or sans phrase, judgments lead to action. For Spinoza, on the

other hand, rational and irrational desires, and their constituent evaluative judgments,

really do conflict. One impedes the efficacy of the other. Since the affective force of the

competing desires determines which is efficacious, however, we may indeed act based

on a reason that we take to be inferior. We do act for a reason, but not for the best

reason, in these cases.

So, Spinoza's account differs from Davidson's because Spinoza allows for a mind

to contain contrary reasons, or judgments, in a way that Davidson does not. Whereas

Davidson could not accept that we both judge one thing to be the best course of action

and yet still have an efficacious reason to do something else, Spinoza can allow this

kind of irrationality to occur. In short, then, Davidson attributes a greater degree of

rationality to the agent than Spinoza and it is this irrationality - the coexistence of

contradictory judgments in the mind - that allows Spinoza to accept synchronic or strict

akrasia.


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It is clear that Spinoza is not a strong internalist. In investigating w hy he is not a

strong internalist, however, several fundamental Spinozist principles have been

emphasized. First, Spinoza allows a single hum an agent to affirm contradictory

judgments and thus be irrational to a greater degree than most strong internalists

would likely allow. Put another way, Spinoza includes irrationality in the essence of

the hum an mind. Second, Spinoza accepts incommensurable desires that can lead

toward competing, mutually exclusive courses of action. Being incommensurable, these

desires cannot be reduced to a single motivation for happiness or pleasure. Spinoza's

allowance of contradictory and incommensurable desires and judgments lies at the very

heart of his account of akrasia and is key to understanding his psychology in general.

This is not to say that Spinoza rejects internalism in its entirety, however. As we

shall see, Spinoza is not straightforwardly an externalist, either.

4.1.2. Spinoza Is Not an Externalist

Hume begins his discussion of akrasia by laying out a traditional and long

standing view of hum an psychology.

Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of

the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert

that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates.

Every rational creature, it is said, is obliged to regulate his actions by reason; and

if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought


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to oppose it, till it be entirely subdued, or at least brought to a conformity with

that superior principle.306

In other words, Hume takes his predecessors to have advanced a two-fold view

according to which (i) reason opposes and is different from the passions AND (ii) the

power of reason is and ought to be superior. As we have seen in Chapter One, of

course, Hume famously rejects (ii), saying, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of

the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."307

Crucially, however, Hume accepts a version of (i). He believes that reason involves only

inert ideas that represent things, while passion contains the motive forces of the mind.

That is, Hume takes judgment and motivation to be utterly distinct, not only in their

function but also in their ontology. Ideas and passions work differently from one

another because they are, fundamentally, different kinds of things.

Unlike Hume, Spinoza holds that judgment and motivation are intimately

connected. Reason ought not to be the slave to the passions, for Spinoza, though it may

be so in the case of the person in bondage. Indeed, the language of slavery and

bondage fit well together. For Spinoza, judgments and motivations are ontologically

identical. Just as the motion of the arrow and the arrow in motion are conceptually or

perhaps modally distinct but not really distinct, so too are the static, representative

features of a mental mode related to the dynamic, affective features of a mental mode.

When we judge something to be good, we must be desiring it.

In this difference lies Spinoza's rejection of extemalism. As it is usually

understood, judgment extemalism is the view that practical judgments and motivation


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are modally distinct; they are, to use Hume's phrase, distinct existences. As he says, "A

passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence, and contains

not any representative quality."308

For Spinoza, this is exactly false; judgments and motivation are not distinct

existences, but in fact are identical. Further, for the externalist, judgments concerning

what would be the best course of action may not entail any motivation to pursue that

course of action. For Spinoza, on the other hand, all judgments of the good will be

caused by a desire for that thing. As Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus makes clear,

hum an beings tend to pursue that which will benefit them. So, when we judge

something to benefit us, we must also be desiring that thing. Of course, this desire may

not be very strong at all and may be easily overpowered by other modes of the mind.

Nevertheless, we do feel some motivation to pursue that course of action we judge to be

in our interest, or good.

On the other hand, Hum e's affective psychology strongly resembles Spinoza's in

certain ways. Hume says, "Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion, but a

contrary im pulse..."(415) And this is so, Hume says, because:

When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion

have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or

more than five foot high. It is impossible, therefore, that this passion can be

opposed by, or be contradictory to truth and reason; since this contradiction

consists in the disagreement of ideas. (Hume, Treatise, 415)


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In other words, passions, being non-cognitive, brute forces, are simply not the right

kind of thing to oppose ideas, which are representations. Because the two things are

fundamentally different in kind, one cannot oppose the other in any true sense. The

only thing that can oppose an affect is another affect. For Hume, mental conflict must

occur between affects, as he mentions, saying, "...there are certain calm desires and

tendencies, which, though they be real passions, produce little emotion in the mind, and

are more known by their effects than by the immediate feeling or sensation..." (417)

These calm passions oppose other, violent passions and lead to the feeling of mental

conflict we mistakenly associate with the battle between reason and passion.

Like Hume, Spinoza explains hum an psychological conflict by positing two

kinds of affective states. What Hume calls the violent and calm passions Spinoza calls

the passive and active affects. Hume's and Spinoza's understandings of these

dichotomies are not the same, however, as Spinoza's affects are aspects of cognitions,

while Hume's are brute, non-cognitive mental states. And it is here, in his cognitive

theory of the affects, that Spinoza most noticeably departs from Hum e's theory. In

many other regards, however, the two theories are similar. Both employ a mechanistic

view of the psyche, in that psychological phenomena are to be explained by the

interacting forces of mental parts. And they are both naturalists, in that they hope to

offer a psychology analogous to the physics of their days. Hume models his

psychology after the Newtonian physics and Spinoza models his after his version of the

Cartesian physics.


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Hume's distinctive non-cognitivism explains how he can accept akratic action

and deny that it is, strictly speaking, irrational. Indeed, according to one interpretation

of Hume, akratic action, like all action, is not properly a matter of rationality or

irrationality at all. Being a result of non-rational passions, action is non-rational in this

sense. As opposed to this view, Spinoza's affects are cognitions. As such, Spinoza can

label some affects rational, when they involve adequate ideas, and others irrational,

when they involve inadequate ideas. So, Spinoza's account of akrasia retains the

irrationality of akrasia, while Hum e's does not. This could be considered a m ark in

favor of the Spinozist theory, since akrasia is in fact practical irrationality.

W hat's more, non-cognitivists need not be externalists, nor must all externalists

deny the irrationality of akrasia. Indeed, this is far from the case. For example, there are

some expressivists who take moral judgments to be nothing but expressions of emotion.

Yet they take these judgments to be intrinsically motivational and so they are non-

cogntivist internalists. Like these expressivists, Spinoza takes motivation to be literally

constitutive of normative beliefs. Unlike the expressivists, however, Spinoza's

normative beliefs are cognitive and bear truth values.

In sum, then, Spinoza cannot be an externalist because he posits an identity

relation between judgment and motivation. Whenever an agent judges a course of

action to be best, that agent will also desire to pursue that course of action, though that

desire may not be efficacious. The position just described in weak intemalism and it is

to that which we now turn.


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4.1.3. Spinoza and the Weak Internalists

The first weak internalist we surveyed was Plato. For Plato, our better

judgments lead to a motivation to act on those judgments, but it is a defeasible

motivation. Our rational motivation is defeasible, for Plato, because we may have other

motivations that overpower our rational motivation.

Like Spinoza, Plato allows that a hum an being may contain contradictory and

incommensurable motivations. Unlike Spinoza, however, and like Socrates, Plato

seems to disallow that such contradictory impulses could coexist in the same locus of

agency. And so, Plato posits multiple subsystems from which distinct motivations may

originate.309 This is his parts of the soul doctrine. In short, then, Plato and Spinoza both

accept that the hum an being may have incommensurable desires. They both also accept

that a human being may exhibit akratic action. But they differ with regard to whether a

single agent may contain contradictory judgments.

Spinoza rejects this solution in the strongest of terms, as he should, because

Plato's answer to the Socratic rejection of synchronic akrasia is unacceptable on its own

terms. For Plato, it seems the agent that matters is the rational soul. If this is the case,

then the agent does not freely and intentionally perform akratic acts, because the

rational soul is overpowered by the other parts of the soul in those cases.

Spinoza's own system does not fall into this trap. Though we sometimes may

talk as though parts of us are in conflict, this is figurative. Instead, specific elements of

the hum an mind may conflict, such as differing judgments and desires. This conflict is

sufficient to explain akrasia; no drastic partitioning is necessary. If I desire to stay in my


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room and study because I judge it to be best but I also desire to go for a walk across the

quad, my desire to take a walk can speak for itself; if it speaks loudly enough, it will be

efficacious and my rational desire will not be.310 No distinct parts to contain these

conflicting desires need be postulated; no independent subsystems are required.

Indeed, Spinoza rejects portioning the soul into parts just as he rejects medieval faculty

psychology.

Plato's student, Aristotle, took up the same question that Plato did and

attempted to provide a different weak internalist answer. As we shall see, however,

Aristotle met with more success, proposing one with which Spinoza has some

agreement.

Aristotle has said that akrasia occurs when our passionate, sensual desires lead us

to focus only on the pleasantness of certain particulars, as opposed to our universal

principles. Aristotle also claims that people can reason poorly, due to emotional biases,

and thus act angrily or ambitiously and so on. And so, Aristotle in fact offers two

distinct theories. In cases of bodily passion, we may perform strict akratic actions. We

may be aware of the conclusions of our practical syllogisms, yet act on a conclusion

drawn solely from the minor premise and, thus, act against the conclusion relying on

the major and minor premises together. In other words, we may act from a particular

against our practical reasoning based on universal principles.

With regard to this first theory, Aristotle's view accords with Spinoza's in certain

important ways. We suffer akrasia when an irrational desire, which involves an

inadequate idea, overcomes a rational desire, which involves an adequate idea. For


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Spinoza, inadequate ideas are usually ideas of sensation and not universal principles of

reason. Further, like Aristotle's, Spinoza's rational desires derive from some universal

principles, or common notions. When we suffer akrasia, for Spinoza, the inadequate

idea (which is generally an idea of sensation and particular), overcomes the practical

syllogism, rendering the common notion ineffective. Finally, like Aristotle, Spinoza also

allows that we might reason poorly due to the interference of the passions. This is

bondage, for Spinoza.

On the other hand, Aristotle's account of akrasia in cases of non-bodily passion,

such as in actions motivated by ambition or greed, does not sit comfortably with

Spinoza's theory. For Aristotle holds that, when we act from these non-bodily passions,

we merely reason poorly. Thus, our misdeeds are to be explained solely by reference to

bad reasoning. We acted in a way we had judged to be best, though we had reached

that conclusion based on bas reasoning. In short, action from non-bodily passion does

not really count as strict akrasia at all, according to Aristotle.

Unlike Aristotle, Spinoza does not limit akrasia to cases of bodily passions such as

hunger or thirst. Instead, akrasia can involve any passion, including anger and ambition.

Perhaps more importantly, Spinoza denies the Aristotelian divide between reason and

passion. Spinoza does accept the Aristotelian claim that particulars often trump

universals in akrasia, since akrasia can involve irrational desires based in the first kind of

knowledge overpowering those rational desires based in the second kind. Nevertheless,

he diverges from Aristotle when he claims that even the bodily passions and desires are

cognitive.


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Both Spinoza and Aristotle countenance opposing, contrary judgments to coexist

in the same mind. So, an agent may form a practical syllogism that he ought not to eat

the cake. Due to his hunger, however, he may focus unduly on the particular and

conclude that this cake looks delicious and so he will eat it. So, the agent's mind may be

said to contain opposing judgments, for Aristotle. Also like Aristotle, Spinoza denies

that all deliberate action is driven by a singular, fundamental desire to maximize our

overall good. He follows Aristotle in holding that desire is simply the pursuit of

something seen as a good, not necessarily the best. This allows for longer term

considerations to be swept aside by passions.

In short, Spinoza accepts the Aristotelian rejection of Socrates, where the

passions can 'overwhelm' our rational deliberations and prevent them from being

efficacious. But he applies this intuition to his own mechanistic, deterministic picture of

the mind. Because of this, the passionate desires are much more like their rational

brethren than they are in Aristotle. For, in Aristotle, we act from reason as a result of a

properly formed practical syllogism, while desire is usually something that simply

prevents us from forming such a syllogism. For Spinoza, on the other hand, desires

operate on both sides, for reason and for passion, and in much the same way. They are

all simply efficient causes applying a degree of force on the mechanism, which is the

only kind of efficacy Spinoza's philosophy of mind can countenance.

Aristotle locates the source of our passionate akratic acts in the body, thus

establishing a mind versus body dichotomy that Spinoza cannot accept. Further, on one

interpretation, Aristotle can allow strict akratic action only in cases of bodily, passionate


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akrasia. In other circumstances, for example, those involving greed or ambition,

Aristotle explains akrasia in a Socratic manner, denying strict, synchronic akrasia and

instead attributing the seemingly akratic action to ignorance or poor reasoning. And on

this point Spinoza also diverges strongly from Aristotle. For Spinoza, we may act

akratically from any desire, not just from a bodily desire of hunger or lust. These

divergences, along with Spinoza's disregard for a more general theory of practical

reasoning like Aristotle's syllogistic theory, set Spinoza's account of akrasia apart from

Aristotle's in significant ways. Indeed, the theorist whose account of akrasia most

closely resembles Spinoza's is Alfred Mele's.

4.1.4. Spinoza and Mele

Consider the other major weak internalists we have considered, Plato and

Aristotle. Plato's partitioning is problematic and a method Spinoza rejects. Aristotle's

explanation is similar to Spinoza's is certain ways, but affect is opposed to reason for

Aristotle in a way that it is not for Spinoza. Indeed, Aristotle's account seems to rely on

an opposition between the decisions of the mind and the urges of the body, a

dichotomy that Spinoza also rejects.

The distinctive feature of Spinoza's system is his theory of the affects -- mental

modes can be judgments and desires at the same time, though the strength of desires

are determined by the strength of their causes, not by the validity or persuasiveness or

certitude of the judgment in question. In short, the evaluative and motivational aspects

of modes of thought operate independently, for Spinoza. And this is just the feature of


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our psychology that Mele locates as explaining akrasia as well. Two of Mele's main

points can be stated as follows:

(1) judgment does not entail intention; pu t another way, strength of evaluation

does not entail strength of motivation;

(2) But judgm ent/evaluation does entail some m otivation/reason for action,

though it may not be an efficacious or strongest reason/m otivation for action.

The Spinozist can basically accept (1) and (2), though he must clarify what intentions

are and also what the "other forces" involved that determine the power of motivation

are. Both of these requirements will now be addressed.

The closeness of Mele's and Spinoza's account can be seen by considering one of

Mele's examples. Recall the biology student who has an assignment to prick his own

finger and place a drop of his own blood on a slide to examine. He judges that doing so

is the best course of action and, so, wants to prick his finger. In fact, a moment before

picking up the needle, he wants to prick his finger more than not prick his finger;

indeed, he wants to prick his finger enough to lead him to take up the needle and

attempt to do so. But at the last moment, he intentionally pauses and refrains from

pricking and he does so while still judging it best to proceed. Mele offers two possible

explanations for this example of weakness of will. First, his desire not to prick his finger

may have increased so as to overpower at the last moment his desire to do so. Second,

he may never had had sufficient motivation to prick his finger, though he believed

himself to have such a motivation.


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This second case is similar to a man who desires to move a piano and intends to

do so, but discovers he does not have the physical strength to do so after several failed

attempts. Similarly, the biology student most desires to prick his finger and intends to

do so, only to discover he lacks the motivational strength to do so. This second

explanation brings to light what I take to be the defining feature of both Spinoza's and

Mele's accounts - evaluation, though connected to strength of motivation, is not

determined by it. That is, we may evaluate one course of action to be best, but be more

motivated to pursue another.

Mele explains how this can occur by presenting a more complex view of human

psychology, one in which judgments play a role, but do not tell the whole story.

Whether or not we will be motivated to pursue what we judge to be best is a function of

whether or not we are self-controlled. Mele describes the self-controlled person as

follows:

In short, a self-controlled person is someone who is appropriately motivated to

conduct himself as he judges best and has the ability to master motivation to the

contrary...And, of course, self-control comes in degrees... (60)

The self-controlled person is one who has a greater motivation to obey his best

judgments, which gives him greater power to resist contrary motivations. This greater

motivation and power come in degrees as well.

In many ways, Spinoza's free man, the man not in bondage to the passions, is

similar to Mele's perfectly self-controlled man. The free man, for Spinoza, is he whose

actions are wholly self-determined; he is the adequate cause of all of is actions.


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Practically speaking, the free man will always most want to do what he judges to be best.

In this regard at least, Mele's perfectly self-controlled man is similar, for the self

controlled person will also always most want to do what he judges to be best. Just as

actual human beings attain only a degree of freedom, however, so too do we attain only

a degree of self-control. We are more likely to want to do what we judge best, ceteris

paribus, the more free, or in self-control, we find ourselves. And so, in agreement with

Mele's theory, Spinoza's theory can only explain strict akratic action by reference to the

relative degree of self-control, self-determination, and freedom an individual possesses.

Both Mele and Spinoza accept that hum an beings may possess incommensurable

desires. Further, they both affirm that the hum an mind may contain incompatible

judgments. And both Mele and Spinoza deny that one needs to partition the mind in

order to explain akrasia. And Mele's explanation for how particular cases of akrasia

occur also resembles Spinoza's in certain ways.

Mele turns to explaining akratic action as it truly occurs in Chapter 6, section 3

and 4. He relies on two observations about hum an psychology to explain akrasia. First,

he discusses the view that our motivation increases as the expected rewards become

more proximate. According to Mele, experimental evidence has led psychologists to

conclude that hum an beings are likely to choose a lesser but immediate reward over a

greater but delayed reward. So, hum an beings will sometimes knowingly and

intentionally choose the lesser good over the greater when the lesser good is perceived

to be nearer at hand. More importantly, this explanation is arguably Spinoza's most


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prominent explanation of akrasia as well, a feature of hum an psychology I have called

Spinoza's bias toward the near.

The observation that hum an beings prefer immediate gratification to delayed

satisfaction will likely not surprise anyone, nor is it enough for us to claim that Mele's

account is the same as Spinoza's, of course. Appropriately, then, Mele points out that

this is not sufficient to explain cases of akrasia. So he also introduces considerations of

attention. If we attend to the desire to eat the cake instead of the desire to refrain, we

may experience an increased motivation to eat it and thus succumb. Or if we attend to

the pleasurable qualities of this cake before us instead of our commitment to our diet,

we may succumb.

Unfortunately, Spinoza does not employ attention in his account of akrasia.

Indeed, Spinoza's thought completely lacks such an account and is the poorer for it.

However, Spinoza offers another explanation of akrasia, one that has its own virtues.

He notes that people often are motivated by a desire that serves some part of them as

opposed to one that serves them overall. When we are motivated in this way, we do

not act form a desire for our overall good, but instead from one that is good for us only

in a certain respect. So, for example, we may desire the food because it will provide us

with a certain gustatory pleasure, though it will not provide us with the pleasures of

health and self-satisfaction. Yet the desire that serves us only in a certain respect may

be more powerful than those that serve our overall well-being. Indeed, these partial

desires may overwhelm our overall desires in just the same way that our short-term

desires may overwhelm our long-term ones. This is an aspect of Spinoza's explanatory


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scheme that differs from Mele's, though it is not a point of fundamental disagreement, I

think.

Yet there are significant points of disagreement between the two thinkers. For

example, Spinoza's psychology is affective and mechanistic in a way that Mele's is not.

For Spinoza, every single hum an action must be explained by some affect, either active

or passive. W ithout a doubt, Spinoza's affective, mechanistic psychology places him

closer to Hume than Mele and perhaps closer to Hume than anyone else.

Indeed, Spinoza's entire psychological system, with its emphases on activity

versus passivity and adequacy versus inadequacy finds no analogue in Mele's thought.

And of course, Mele would likely reject Spinoza's parallelism, his pantheism, his quasi-

Cartesian physics, and perhaps even his strong cognitivism. And unlike Mele,

Spinoza's thought is entirely lacking considerations of rationality, practical reasoning,

intentionality, and so on, all of which are features of Mele's thought. So it would

certainly be incorrect to say that Mele is some sort of Spinozist.

On the other hand, Spinoza's account of akrasia resembles Mele's more than it

does any other thinker. Both are weak internalists. They both see a connection between

evaluation and motivation. Yet neither believe that this connection is strongly modal,

instead wishing to qualify it. Unlike other weak internalists such as Plato, Pears or the

later Davidson, neither Mele nor Spinoza partition the mind in order to explain akrasia.

And unlike Aristotle, they do not pit the body against the mind. W hat's more, they

both explain akrasia by pointing to a more general feature of hum an psychology - the

relative independence of evaluative strength and motivational strength. For both Mele


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and Spinoza, we may very well make judgments that one course of action is best, yet be

more motivated to pursue another. And what determines whether our judgment and

motivation come apart is also a point of similarity between the two thinkers. For Mele,

the degree to which one has self-control determines the degree to which evaluation and

motivation diverge. For Spinoza, the degree of freedom, or self-determination,

determines this. And both thinkers rely on notions of a bias toward the near in their

explanations of the mechanism by which cases of akrasia arise.

Thus we see that Spinoza's theory of akrasia remarkably resembles Mele's.

Though Spinoza does not develop his theory of akrasia into a book-length study, as Mele

does, their accounts are sufficiently close that a Spinozist would likely accept most of

Mele's conclusions. Indeed, Spinoza's weak intemalism resembles Mele's more than

any other thinker's we have examined. However, his weak intemalism is unlike Mele's

and, indeed, unlike any other thinker's in several ways. Let us now turn to a discussion

of the fine details of Spinoza's unique weak intemalism.

4.1.5. Spinoza's Unique Weak Intemalism

Spinoza's weak intemalism is unique because it incorporates externalist

intuitions into a weak internalist framework. Spinoza believes that emotions are moral

judgments, so he cannot be said to be an externalist in the sense that emotions are not

modally linked to moral judgments. On the other hand, the affective force of an emotion

is only contingently linked to the cognitive content of the judgment. In that sense,

Spinoza resembles the externalists.


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Recall that, for Hume, motivations (passions) are not internal to or constituents

of practical judgment. In this specific sense, Hume is an externalist. So, whereas

Hum e's extemalism holds judgments and motivating desires to be independent

existences, Spinoza denies this. But, like Hume, Spinoza holds that emotions function

independently from judgments. For the strength of an affect is not determined by the

content of its judgment, but of the force of its cause. Inadequate ideas engender

irrational desires, the strength of which is determined by the force of the external cause

responsible for the idea. And adequate ideas engender rational desires, the strength of

which is determined by our own strength. And in that sense, the emotional aspect

functions independently from its cognitive aspect. And so, Spinoza resembles a

peculiar kind of externalist in this regard.

But his view is also unavoidably internalist. For, if the mind has formed a moral

judgment, it necessarily also has some desire, though the strength of that desire is not

determined by that judgment. Consider Davidson's principles:



intentionally.




Spinoza accepts PI and P3, but accepts a weaker version of P2, which is:

P2': If an agent judges that it would be good to do x, then he wants to do x.


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Spinoza affirms P2', but denies P2. The strong internalist affirms PI and P2. The weak

internalist affirms PI and P2'. The externalist affirms only PI. Generally all weak

internalists and externalists affirm P3 as well. Only some strong internalists (Davidson,

Hare) affirm P3, though they must offer an explanation of how it is possible, given its

prima facie inconsistency with PI and P2.

A complete explanation of Spinoza's account of akrasia m ust take Spinoza's

commitment to parallelism into consideration. This doctrine certainly adds an

additional wrinkle to this story, one which I will attempt to elucidate here by way of an

example. Say I am at the dinner table and I see the piece of cake. Now, my body,

having a certain constitution, interacts physiologically with the cake via perception.

This interaction, or affection, results in my body's increasing in power in a certain way

at the sight of the cake. This particular kind of increase in power is one that brings an

initial movement toward the cake. In the mind, I see the cake and consider it, which

brings me a kind of pleasure, the kind that signals I will feel more pleasure upon eating

the cake. This is a pleasure that is also motivating, since I feel this pull toward the cake.

Let's break this down into steps:

Body: Mind:

1 .1 perceive the cake. I conceive of the cake.

2 .1 feel a tingling of pleasure. I delight in seeing it. (affect)

I judge it to be attractive (idea)

3 .1 feel a pull toward the cake. I desire the cake (affect)

I judge the cake good to eat (idea)


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Depending on what other motions are in my body and what other affects are in my

mind, this pull/desire may be strong enough to move me to eat the cake. But it also

may not be, in which case I will refrain.

While this transpires, say I also have a judgment in mind that I ought not eat the

cake. This judgment is really the judgment that eating the cake would not be good for

me, given Spinoza's ethical egoism. So, my mind possesses an idea that eating the cake

would be bad for me. Given Spinoza's psychological egoism and the affective nature of

practical judgments, I then also have a desire not to eat the cake. And so, my body

contains a motion away from the cake. In this scenario, then, we have the following

states within us:

Body: Mind:

1. A motion toward the cake. A judgment that it would be good to eat,

which is also a desire to eat the cake.

2. A motion away from the cake. A judgment that the cake would be bad

to eat, which is also a desire to refrain.

The strength of the motions and their parallel desires are determined by the strength of

their causes. Let us say that the judgment that we ought to refrain from eating the cake

is based on adequate knowledge and, thus, this desire is rational. Further, let us say that

the judgment that cake would be good to eat is based on inadequate ideas. Thus, the

desire to eat the cake is a passion.

The strength of the rational desire is determined by the power of its cause, which

is our power of reason. That is, the rational desire is only as strong as we are, so to


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speak. The strength of the passion, however, is determined by how strongly the

perception of the cake has affected us. And that is determined by facts both about our

body and the cake. So, for example, if we are hungry or predisposed to like cake, then

the perception of the cakes will affect us more strongly than if we are not. And if the

cake appears expertly made, then it may also affect us more strongly.

Now, if the strength of the passion is greater than the strength of the active affect,

we will act on the passion. The motion toward the cake in our bodies will overpower

the motion away from the cake and we will eat the cake. In our minds, we will

experience akrasia, for we will act on a desire that is less rational or less in our interest,

because we desire it more strongly.

So, we act for a reason - namely, our judgment that the cake would be good to

eat. But we do not act for the best reason, since we have also judged that the cake would

be bad to eat and that judgment was based on reason, not inadequate ideas. Thus, our

motivating reason has deviated from the normative reason. And this is possible only

because the strength of our desires comes apart from the cognitive content of our

judgments, even though those judgments do give us some motivation to act in that way.

This is a weak internalist position.

Different theorists describe weak judgment intemalism differently, of course. For

example, consider the following statements of weak judgment intemalism:

- Practical judgment and motivation are modally linked;

- Practical judgment entails motivation; i.e., judgment is sufficient for motivation;

Motivation is internal to or constitutive of moral judgments;


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- the motivational efficacy of moral judgment is a conceptual truth.

Since Spinoza holds that affect and judgment are identical, he must hold that judgment

and desire (or motivation) are modally linked and that judgment entails motivation.

Further, given that they are identical, motivation is internal to judgment, or vice versa.

He does not hold that moral judgment is motivationally efficacious, however, where that

is understood as resulting in action. For we may have conflicting motivations, only one

of which may result in action. Therefore, the statement that moral judgments are

motivationally efficacious m ust mean only that moral judgments succeed in

engendering motivation, not that the motivation will necessarily succeed in leading to

action. And so, on all of the above descriptions of weak judgment intemalism, Spinoza

qualifies as a weak internalist.

As we have seen, several central tenets in Spinoza's psychology contribute to his

unique account of akrasia. Perhaps most important is his doctrine that affects and ideas

are identical. One part of that doctrine, that concerning desire, however, is most

relevant to his account of akrasia. I now discuss that theory of desire more carefully and

use it to formulate a rigorous statement of Spinoza's account of akrasia.

Spinoza's cognitive theory of desire can be stated as follows:

S makes a practical judgment that x is good for S to do (i.e., in S's interest) iff S

desires to x.

This view can be restated in simpler form as follows:

S judges x is good for S to do iff S desires to do x


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This is one way to state Spinoza's cognitive theory of desire, to be sure. Another, more

accurate way to state it is as follows, however:

S's judgment that x is good for S to do is identical to S's desire to x.

If we assume that the identity relation is a necessary one, we may thus state Spinoza's

cognitive theory of desire:

Necessarily, S judges x to be good for S to do iff S desires to x.

Of course, this biconditional necessarily obtains because the desire and judgment in

question are identical, or rather, they are two aspects of the same thing. From this

biconditional, we may infer the following conditional:

Necessarily, if S judges x to be good for S to do, S desires to do x.

Further, I suggest the following:

If S desires to do x, then S is motivated to do x (though this may be a defeasible

motivation)

This plausible principle holds that desiring to do x means we have a motivation to do x

(namely, to fulfill our desire). In other words, desiring to do something is a synonym

for being (defeasibly) motivated to do it. From the previous two statements, the

following statement of judgment intemalism follows:

Nec., if S judges that x is good for her to do, then S is motivated to do x.

And this is so, for Spinoza, because the judgment that x is good for one to do is identical

with one's desire to do x. As long as this motivation is understood to be defeasible,

then Spinoza is a weak internalist.


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Now let us try to formulate some principles of Spinoza's psychology that capture

the core of this weak intemalism. Doing so should also allow us to see how his theory of

akrasia grows out of his weak intemalism. We begin with the statement of intemalism

just formulated:

Nec., if S judges that x is right for her to do, then S is motivated to do x.

This is a statement of intemalism, to be sure, but not yet weak intemalism. Spinoza also

holds the following principles about the affects:

- Passive affects (passions) have external causes that determine their strength.

- Our mind causes rational affects and determines their strength.

- Often the power of external causes surpasses the power of individual agents.

What makes an affect passive is the involvement of an inadequate idea, which has been

defined as an idea not wholly contained in and caused by the mind in question.

Therefore, at least some of the cause of an inadequate idea lies outside the mind and,

thus, its strength is determined by matters external to the mind. Active affects, however,

involve adequate ideas, which are wholly contained in and caused by the mind. Since

these adequate ideas are wholly caused by the mind in question, the strength of that

mind determines the strength of the adequate idea and thus the active affect.

Furthermore, the power or strength of external causes always can surpass the power or

strength of an individual agent.

When we take the statement of Spinoza's intemalism, above, and apply it to the

affects and ideas discussed in these principles of Spinoza's affective psychology, we can

derive the following results:


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1. If S rationally desires to do x, then the power of S's mind determines the power

of S's desire to do x.

2. If S irrationally desires to do y, then the power of the external cause determines

the power of S's desire to do y.

3. Thus, sometimes, the power of S's irrational desire to y will surpass the power

of S's rational desire to x.

4. S does whatever action S has the strongest desire to do.

5. So, sometimes, S acts on her irrational desire to do y over her rational desire to

do x.

This description of psychological phenomena captures Spinoza's weak intemalism and

provides a picture of how akrasia may occur, because we act on either rational or

irrational affects. When we act on rational affects, we act for our own long-term good,

while our passionate behaviors tend to go against our long-term interests and often

overwhelm our rational desires. In many ways, this account sounds like Hume, who

describes the struggle in hum an psychology as one between calm, rational passions and

turbulent, vulgar passions.

This talk all seems plausible when we focus on desire. But what about when we

speak of our motivations to act as judgments?

la. If S rationally judges that x is right for her to do, then the power of S's mind

determines the power of S's judgment that x is right for her to do.

2a. If S irrationally judges that y is right for her to do, then the power of the

external cause determines the power of S's judgment that y is right for her to do.


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3a. Thus, sometimes, the power of S's irrational judgment that y is better will

surpass the power of S's rational judgment that x is better.

4a. S does whatever action S has the strongest judgment in favor of.

5a. So, sometimes, S acts on her irrational judgment that y is better over her

rational judgment that x is better.

In the above description, S considers two judgments, one rational because properly

grounded in rational principles, the other irrational because not grounded in rational

principles but in experientia vaga - that is, based in sensory perception. So, when we

suffer weakness of will, we follow a weaker line of reasoning that is motivationally

stronger, one based on sensory perception.

On this explanation of the account, Spinoza sounds like Aristotle. For Aristotle,

we form practical syllogisms based on universal principles; for Spinoza, we form

rational judgments based on universal common notions. For Aristotle, we may also

form practical judgments based on our sensations and we may do so for Spinoza as well.

And for Aristotle, those sensory judgments may sometimes overwhelm the rational

judgments and lead us to act akratically. Likewise, for Spinoza, we may be persuaded

by the sensory judgment over the rational one.

So we see again Spinoza's Janus-faced psychology. Here in weakness of will, the

hum an being may be described in quasi-Aristotelian terms, acting for various

competing reasons, some of which will be more compelling than others, even when

those less compelling reasons are rational and the more compelling ones are irrational.

Thus, when we act rationally, our practical judgments will always lead to act accordingly.


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And, always, our practical judgments give us a reason to act, if not the reason. In this

picture, the mind is a deliberator of reasons, one that can be rational ideally, if not really.

And likewise, the mind may also be described as a mechanism of competing

forces. Each force is fully determined by its causes and, so, akrasia occurs when the

mind causes one motion within itself, but that motion is overpowered by another

internal motion that has been caused by an external force. These forces meet as

calm /active/rational affects, on the one hand, and turbulent/passive/irrational affects

on the other hand. This Humean picture is of the mind as a mechanism in which forces

or desires compete to determine human action.

What does the Janus-faced nature of Spinoza's psychology mean for the

intemalism/extemalism debate? With regard to existence, Spinoza is an internalist.

Necessarily, if someone judges that one course of action is best, he will desire to pursue

that course of action. So, practical judgment entails a defeasible desire. With regard to

efficacy, however, Spinoza resembles the externalist. The strength, or efficacy, of a

judgment is independent of the strength, or efficacy, of a desire. Thus, we may judge

that one course of action is best, all-things-considered, but nonetheless feel a stronger

desire to pursue another course of action and, so, carry out that action instead.

In order to capture both ways of speaking and thus to present Spinoza's theory

in all of its complexity, one should say:

lb. If S rationally judges that x is right for her to do, then S rationally desires to do

x, and the power of S's mind determines the power of S's desire to do x.


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2b. If S irrationally judges that y is right for her to do, then S irrationally desires to

do y, then the power of the external cause determines the power of S's desire to

do y.

3. Thus, sometimes, the power of S's irrational desire to y will surpass the power

of S's rational desire to x.

4. S does whatever action S has the strongest desire to do.

5. So, sometimes, S acts on her irrational desire to do y over her rational desire to

do x.

And so:

6. Thus, sometimes, the power of S's irrational desire, which involves an

irrational judgment that y is better, will surpass the power of S's rational desire,

which involves a rational judgment that x is better.

Thus we see how Spinoza's unique weak intemalism explains strict akratic action. For

here, we are motivated to act on our practical judgments, ceteris paribus, specifically, as

long as an opposing and overpowering irrational desire is not present. Before making a

final evaluation of this fascinating account of akrasia, however, we will take up some

challenges that could be raised against it.

4.2. Challenges to the Spinozist Account

Mele and others claim that an agent's action qualifies as strictly akratic if and

only if (i) the agent performs the act freely and intentionally and (ii) against the agent's


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better judgment. In what follows, Spinoza's account of akrasia will be evaluated to see

whether it meets these conditions.

4.2.1. How are Spinozist akratic actions free and intentional?

Any account that accepts strict akrasia must explain how akratic acts are different

from compelled acts. As we have seen, in one sense, Spinozist actions from inadequate

ideas and passions are not free, because we are free just to the extent that we have and

act on adequate ideas. And when we act akratically, we act from passion, not adequate,

rational desire. Thus, in the narrow sense of action discussed above, so-called akratic

acts are compelled. But there is another sense in which Spinoza may say that we act. For

our passions and inadequate ideas are as much a part of us as our rational desires and

adequate ideas, as 3p9 makes clear and I discuss above. Thus, we are the ones

performing the akratic acts, just as we are the ones performing the enkratic acts.

But this does not by itself solve the problem; we have not yet distinguished

compelled acts from akratic or enkratic ones. For, if akratic acts involve passions

overwhelming our reason and determining our action, then how is akrasia different

from being compelled? Take the following as a paradigm example of compelled

behavior. Say that a sailor goes above deck during a storm, perhaps because he wishes

to see the sublimity of the force of nature. While rapt in his aesthetic experience, a wave

washes across the deck and knocks the sailor overboard, where he drowns. Though he

may be guilty of negligence for going above deck during a storm, we would not say he


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freely went overboard, nor that he intentionally drowned. Instead, the sailor was

forced overboard. The sailor's going overboard was a matter of compulsion.

Our explanation of strict akratic action must not have the same structure as this

paradigm case of compulsion. To see an example of a weak internalist account that fails

to meet this challenge, consider again Plato's account. When we suffer akrasia, in his

account, the rational soul is overwhelmed by an irresistible external power, namely, the

power of the spirited or sensitive soul. When the rational soul is overpowered by the

spirited soul, it is wholly passive in the same way that the sailor is passive with regard

to being washed overboard. Thus, Plato's account of akrasia seems not to meet this first

criterion.

In order to see how Spinoza avoids this pitfall, we must return to his conception

of desire as it relates to hum an action. Spinoza accepts the dictum that, if we can be

said to do something intentionally, we can be said to have done it for a reason. As we

have discussed, the reasons people act, for Spinoza, are desires. In fact, Spinoza defines

desire as the affect involved in hum an action. So, if we perform a behavior that is not

caused by a pleasurable or painful desire, then we cannot be said to act intentionally. In

other words, if we are not driven by the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain,

then our behavior is not something we do intentionally, for Spinoza. So, if a wave

washes us overboard, we are not performing an intentional act, because our going

overboard is not (normally) caused by our desire to do so.

If his conception of intentional action is stated this crudely, Spinoza seems forced

to include some cases that are often excluded from intentional action. If we have a strong


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desire that we cannot resist, such as a strong addiction, and if this addiction drives us to

partake in a harmful substance against all of our other wishes, Spinoza must still say

that we act, in his broader sense, and do so intentionally, because we are moved by one

of our own desires. Unless an account can be offered according to which this addiction

is not one of our desires, then it seems the addictive behavior against our will is

intentional.

This is not entirely satisfying. Consider the agoraphobic who simply cannot go

outside remain inside, even though he wishes he could. Does he remain inside

intentionally, even when he wants so much to be able to go outside? It is not entirely

clear that his remaining inside is intentional. We could perhaps construct an account

according to which the physiological disease and its attendant 'desire' is not a part of us,

in some sense, but a kind of foreign body, like a flu. If this is so, then the behaviors it

engenders are not our desires at all and so these acts are not intentional.

A better avenue of approach may be found in Mele's reply to this challenge. In

response to this concern, Mele says:

When we ask whether an akratic action was motivated by an irresistible desire,

we should ask whether it was in the agent's power at the time to augment his

motivation to perform the action judged best, or to decrease his contrary

motivation — or, more precisely, it was in his power to bring it about that the

bulk of his motivation lay on the side of his better judgment. (24)

This line of argument could work for someone who is not committed to

necessitarianism. For an agent may undergo two classes of passions - those that, had


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he followed Spinoza's therapeutic advice in Part 5, he could have resisted, and those he

could not have resisted even with the aid of those therapeutic methods. In a sense, then,

the agent could have resisted the desires in the first class but not those in the second.

Yet this questions raises another, thornier issue. For Spinoza seems committed to

the thesis of necessitarianism - the view that the actual world is the only possible one. In

that sense, then, no being has any power or force that it does not actually exert. In other

words, agents always bring about precisely what it is in their power to bring, for they

have no power that they do not in fact use. If the actual world is the only possible

world, then there is no possible world in which the agent exerts more power than he

does in the actual world. And thus, we cannot say that the agent could have exerted

more power to resist this desire. And so, any desire an agent suffers is irresistible.

Therefore, for the necessitarian, it seems that instances of akratic action are not free.

Three options remain at this point. First, one may reject the possibility of akratic

action. Yet our intuitions very strongly suggest that such action is possible. Second, we

may amend our definition of akratic action so that freedom is not a necessary condition.

If we do this, however, we shall have a difficult time distinguishing between akrasia and

compulsion. Third and finally, we may question necessitarianism. Indeed, myriad

reasons for rejecting necessitarianism present themselves upon reflection. Given the

serious problems with necessitarianism, then, this third option seems preferable. Given

the complexity and obscurity of Spinoza's thought on necessity and possibility,

however, I will not delve further into this question here. In what follows, I will assume


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that a counterfactual analysis of resistable desire is open to us, even if that means

choosing a Spinozist theory over Spinoza's own.

In short, then, the strength of a desire may be sufficient for action, but not be

irresistible, because in most circumstances we could marshal more motivational force

by focusing our attention, by employing other cognitive methods, or by relying on non-

cognitive techniques.

4.2.2. Intentionality

Spinoza can meet the challenge and thus his account satisfies the first condition.

But what exactly is the nature of intention here? After all, Spinoza employs no concept

of intentionality. This fact could lead one to believe that he follows Davidson in simply

identifying unconditional judgments with intentions. Such an attribution does Spinoza

a disservice, however. According to Davidson, intentionally acting against our

unconditional judgment is impossible, because it would involve intentionally acting

against our intention, which is absurd. And if Spinoza were to identify unconditional

judgments with intentions, then he would fall into this very paradox, which Davidson

uses to justify his strong intemalism.

Mele avoids the Davidsonian paradox by positing a distinction between what he

calls decisive judgments and intentions. This distinction allows the possibility of strict

akrasia. To be sure, Spinoza does not posit a distinct mental entity like an intention. It

may be, however, that desires can fulfill this function in certain circumstances and thus


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provide Spinoza the same avenue of escape from the Davidsonian paradox that Mele

takes.

Spinoza defines any affect that leads us to act as a desire. We are free to the

extent that we are ruled by active desire, and in bondage to the extent that we are ruled

by passionate desire. Merely forming adequate ideas is not the whole story of human

freedom, however; these ideas must engender active desires that overcome their

opposing passionate desires.

Since forming adequate ideas alone does not mean that we will act on them, it

follows that merely forming adequate ideas is not sufficient for hum an freedom.

Remember, Spinoza defines the free man as the one "led by reason" versus one "who is

led only by an affect."311 Only when we are led to act by adequate ideas or, more

accurately, active desire, are we free. Unfortunately, Spinoza does not explain the

details of how hum an action results from our ideas and desires. Here is a Spinozist

speculation about how hum an action occurs.

When two desires oppose one another and one is more powerful, the stronger

will win out and determine our action. At this point, one may wonder how the

strongest desire determines our action, given that Spinoza has no account of intention

formation. Spinoza has provided the necessary framework for answering this question.

Remember, the mind forms ideas and nothing else, all of which are affirmative.

Further, each idea has, or may have, an affective aspect. The strength of this affect

relative to opposing affects in the mind determines whether or not it will be efficacious


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in any given situation. Only those desires with enough strength at the end of the day,

so to speak, will result in hum an action.

Consider again the mind that contains desires A and B, both of which aim at

something perceived to be good for us. Further, these desires, A and B, are opposed in

some way and B is stronger than A. Now say that the mind considers these desires at

the same time, such that the power of B is diminished, but the power of A is eliminated.

If the two desires were the same in power, then the mind would vacillate between the

two. If, after opposing A, desire B still retains more power, then B becomes an executive

desire. That is, desire B will be sufficient to cause the hum an mind to form ideas

involved in pursing B's object. These ideas will be parallel to events in the body that

bring the body toward B's object.

Other scholars have noted that Stoic psychology resembles Spinoza's in several

ways.312 Like Spinoza, many Stoics do not affirm the existence of an independent

faculty of will that forms volitions to act.313 Both Spinoza and these Stoics, then, must

provide an alternative explanation for how ideas and desires bring about human action.

Though Spinoza provides no details in his account, the Stoics do. In fact, their account

of action is surprisingly consistent with Spinoza's own moral psychology. According to

these Stoics, we act from the conclusion of a process of practical reason. The premises

and conclusion of a process of practical reason are each an impulse [horme], which

involves a representation of something as good or evil for us. These representational

impulses involved in an instance of practical reasoning end at some concluding impulse.

This final impulse on which our mind rests becomes an executive impulse.314 This is


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similar to the view we attribute to Spinoza above, where one of our affects becomes an

executive affect.

For example, say that I have an idea that represents some sushi in the

refrigerator. Further, say that this (complex) idea represents my eating the sushi as

being pleasurable or useful. Affectively speaking, I want some sushi from the fridge.

However, I also have an idea of remaining at my desk and continuing my work, an idea

which represents that state of affairs as being useful also. Therefore, I also have a desire

to remain seated at my desk. If the desire for the sushi is strong enough to overcome

my desire to stay seated, my desire for the sushi will become an executive desire and

lead me to get up and get it. The last desire standing after their conflict will be

executive and will therefore result in hum an action, as long as it is sufficient to

overcome my desire to remain in my current state, in this case, seated at my desk.

And so, any practical judgment can become an intention, as long as its related

desire is strong enough to defeat its competitors and overcome our natural inertia. Yet

this result should not surprise us. After all, we have already shown that all ideas are

not only representations and affects, but also volitions. Each idea, or affect, has the

potential to be a deciding volition leading to action, as long as it is the strongest desire

or volition in the mind at the moment.

Another way to put this is as follows. Modes of mind express propositions that

are logically related in chains of practical reasoning. In this regard, modes of mind are

cognitions, or ideas. But modes of mind are also related causally, in that they interact in

the spiritual automaton to bring about action. In this regard, modes of mind are affects.


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Given that the affective aspect of an idea is a function of its power, it is reasonable to

assert that modes of mind are causally efficacious only insofar as they are affective, not

cognitive.

This description resembles in certain ways at least one formulation of a m odem

causal theory of action. So Dennis Stampe says,

So this practical syllogism represents the causal (psychological) process of rational decision

making, or intention-formation, by means of a configuration of logically related propositions,

representing logically connected states of affairs contained in those causally related states of

mind.315

In other words, propositions logically related by practical syllogism are represented by

mental states of affairs, which in turn are causally related states of mind. This is not to

say that Spinoza's action theory is a m odem causal theory or that it resembles Stampe's

account in other ways. Indeed, in almost all of its detail, Spinoza's psychology differs

from these views. Yet in its outlines, its commitment to naturalism, and its distinction

between the causal/affective and representational/cognitive dimensions of mental

modes, Spinoza's system bears an interesting resemblance to Stampe's.

According to the explanation just presented, an intention is nothing but a

judgment or desire of sufficient strength to move us. But can this be correct? What

about when we sneeze, say? Surely this is not an intentional action.

On the other hand, this event does not involve a judgm ent/desire. But it is a

movement in the body and so, one would think, would require a parallel movement in


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the mind. And such a movement in the mind would be an idea and affect -- that is, it

would be a judgment or desire, according to Spinoza.

But this is an overly simplistic account of Spinoza's parallelism. For the human

mind does not consciously represent every event that occurs in the body as an idea or

desire, such as digestion or a sneeze. Unfortunately, Spinoza does not give us an

account of consciousness. So let me simply write an IOU for such an account, the likes of

which would require far more space than I have here. In short, then, there is a subset of

our ideas/affects that qualify as conscious judgments/desires. Only those conscious

judgm ent/desires can lead to intentional action.

Let us state this Spinozist account of intentional action in some more detail here,

so that we can better evaluate it.

An agent S forms an intention I to act if and only if S has a conscious belief and

desire D that is sufficiently strong to overcome any competing belief/desires as

well as our natural inertia.

Many questions need to be answered in order to flesh out the details of this sketch, of

course, especially the use of the concept of a conscious belief or desire. Regardless of

whether we attribute such a theory of intentional action to Spinoza or simply recognize

that executive desires may fulfill a similar function, hoever, the Spinozist has the

wherewithal to distinguish intentional from unintentional action.

4.2.3. Against Our Better Judgment


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The second condition for an agent's action to be strictly akratic is for the agent to

perform it against his better judgment. This condition is less an obstacle for Spinoza

than the previous one. All we need to do is establish some criterion by which some

judgments are considered better than others.

For Spinoza, various desire, or judgments, may compete in an agent's mind. A

desire or judgment D functions as an intention if and only if D is stronger than any

competing desires or judgments and D is strong enough to move us to act. D is strong

enough to move us to act if and only if D is stronger than our natural inertia. In other

words, that desire that is stronger than any competitor, as well as being stronger than

our inertia, functions as an intention in the Spinozist psychology.

We may form judgments, and thus feel desires, for a variety of things. These

desires may compete, in the sense that they may aim at mutually incompatible states of

affairs, such that we cannot do both. According to the Spinozist, when a judgment

involves inadequate ideas, our judgment is inadequate and thus our desire is irrational.

In most cases, these inadequate judgments concern only a partially understood

particular that is perceived through sensation. And when our judgment involves an

adequate idea, our judgment is adequate and our desire rational. These adequate

judgments usually are based on universal truths and carry a degree of certainty with

them. In other words, those beliefs grounded in reason and those judgments reached

rationally will involve rational desires and those beliefs that lack justification and those

judgments reached only through the misuse (or lack of use) of reason will involve

irrational desires.


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Our better judgments are those that are made rationally. These judgments are

made based on universal principles that are known sub specie aeternitatis and, as such,

generally aim at the best (i.e., what is best for the agent), not merely focusing on this

particular thing at this moment in time. But the strength of our motivation to act is

determined by the strength of the cause of our beliefs and desires and not by our choice.

So, sometimes, we may form a rational judgment, that is, a better judgment, yet we may

not act on it, because a competing irrational judgment may have a stronger motivational

force. After we subtract the opposing strength of the rational desire, the irrational desire,

being stronger, will still retain some of its force. Now, if that remaining force is

sufficient to overcome our natural inertia, then we will intentionally act on that irrational

desire against our better judgment. However, if the force of the irrational desire exceeds

the competing rational desire but NOT the overall strength of the agent, then the desire

could have been resisted, had the agent attempted to do so. Thus the irrational action is done

freely. Thus, Spinoza's theory of akrasia is a well-developed account of action done

freely, intentionally, and against our better judgment.

4.3. An Evaluation of Spinoza's Account of Akrasia

Spinoza's account of strict akratic action meets the criteria of being free,

intentional, and against our better judgment. In this regard his account is conceptually

satisfactory. His account also manages to incorporate our most convincing intuitions on

this issue. Unlike the strong internalists, Spinoza does not deny our intuition that strict


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akratic action is possible. Indeed, the challenge of explaining akrasia plays a major role

in his psychological theory.

Spinoza also accommodates the intuition that practical judgments entail

motivation. Unlike the externalist, who denies this connection, Spinoza and the other

internalists accept that our judging a course of action to be best results in our desiring to

pursue that course of action. The internalists may claim that when we judge that

something would benefit us and bring us pleasure, we have therefore have at least some

motivation to pursue that thing - a claim the externalist must reject.

The title of this subsection describes Spinoza's view as unique. Whether or not

Spinoza's theory is entirely unique, it is at the very least highly unusual. And one way

to see how this is so is to compare briefly Spinoza's views with those held by

metaethicists on the topics of judgment intemalism and non-cognitivism. Russ Shafer-

Landau argues that, nowadays, most internalists are non-cognitivists and most cognitivists

are externalists.316 Shafer-Landau offers the following as the general reason why

intemalism usually leads to non-cognitivism. He says:

1. Necessarily, if one sincerely judges an action right, then one is motivated to

some extent to act in accordance w ith that judgment.

2. When taken by themselves, beliefs neither motivate nor entail any

motivationally efficacious states.

3. Therefore moral judgments are not beliefs. (Shafer-Landau, 270)

(1) is weak judgment intemalism and (3) is moral non-cognitivism. Humean

sentimentalists and expressivists are satisfied by this result, of course. But it is not


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Spinoza's view. For Spinoza denies (2), which most people would take as a

straightforward observation of fact.

The Spinozist should deny (2) because it presents a false dichotomy. On the

Spinozist view, all beliefs are judgments of a sort and so the divide between judgment

and belief is misleading. Instead, we ought to talk of practical beliefs versus non-

practical beliefs. Practical beliefs - i.e., beliefs concerning what is in one's interest -

motivate, while non-practical beliefs do not.

If we adopt this understanding of belief and judgment, then (3) does not follow,

because moral judgments are cognitive, just as our other beliefs are. The only difference

is that those things that are generally called moral judgments concern beliefs about

benefits and harms to us.

One reason that Spinoza is able to combine moral judgment and belief is his

reductive ethical egoism. He reduces good and bad, which are moral concepts, to

beneficial and harmful, which are factual concepts. So moral judgment reduces to

practical judgment. And practical judgments are judgments concerning matters of fact

that are relevant to our well-being. Of course, Shafer-Landau discusses and rejects

judgment intemalism with regard only to moral judgments, not to practical judgments,

which is, in effect, Spinoza's view. As such, Shafer-Landau's arguments are not

directed against a view like Spinoza's, which is not really a view about moral

judgments at all. Indeed, Shafer-Landau's argument for externalism is based on the

virtues of cognitivism, which he takes not to be easily compatible with intemalism.


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And so, though Shafer-Landau's arguments against intemalism cut deeply against non-

cognitive internalists, they do not really undermine Spinoza's view.

Here are some considerations that add some plausibility to this view of belief

and judgment. First of all, belief is generally taken to be involuntary, in most everyday

cases. I do not choose to believe that I am writing at the moment - 1 simply do believe it.

Of course, if I make a conscious effort, I may be able to withhold affirmation to some

things. Similarly, when presented with certain evidence, I cannot but judge in favor of

one result over another, in most cases. Say I am judging what to eat and I survey the

contents of my fridge. Upon doing so, one things looks most desirable and it is healthy

to boot. I will therefore judge it to be best and it is hard for me to judge otherwise. Of

course, there may be other considerations, but when the evidence points at one

judgment it is difficult to avoid. In fact, I would argue, this normally automatic nature

of judgment and belief suggest that we form the two in a similar fashion. When

provided with the right data or stimuli, we simply do believe or judge things to be a

certain way, in most cases.

Second of all, some beliefs can act as practical judgments in some cases and not

in others. Consider the following: a man comes to believe that there is a vial of anti

venom in his medicine cabinet. This representation is not at one time motivating,

because he has no need for anti-venom. As such, it is nothing but a belief. After having

been bitten by a poisonous snake, however, this belief relates to his well-being and, as

such, this belief is practical. And if we follow Spinoza in rejecting a power of assent

that is distinct from our power to form beliefs, then the practical belief, by its very


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practicality, is motivating. And so, the same mental state is at one time called a belief,

but at another time called a motivating practical judgment.

The above considerations have been suggested only to show what it is Spinoza

says and to lend that view some plausibility. To establish this view as entirely

successful would require significantly more and different work from what has been

offered here. Nevertheless, this Spinozist view is interesting, especially because it

seems to reconcile two attractive positions that are usually seen as being irreconcilable,

namely, moral cognitivism and motivational judgment intemalism.

In fact, Spinoza's view is unusual in another regard. Most judgment internalists,

Shafer-Landau says, "defend the idea that moral judgments, which in their eyes are just

moral beliefs, are capable of motivating agents without the existence of antecedently

existing desires. However, motivational judgment internalists need to show that moral

beliefs must motivate, not (just) that they can."317 Spinoza the judgment internalist does

have an argument for why practical judgments, which he equates with moral judgments,

must motivate. And that argument is, of course, his identification of practical judgment

and desire. Because practical judgments are identical with desires, it follows that, if we

make such a judgment, we must feel some desire - that is, we m ust be motivated to

some extent. And this is just the argument Shafer-Landau claims is absent from most

contemporary internalist views.318

Spinoza's view must be defended from another, related argument. Some

externalists justify their extemalism by pointing to a thought-experimental character

called the amoralist. The amoralist, these externalists say, makes genuine moral


judgments, but feels no motivation to act morally. If this kind of person is possible,

then intemalism is false, because moral judgment is not modally connected to

motivation. Internalists often reply that the amoralist does not, in fact, make genuine

moral judgments, but instead makes only inverted-commas moral judgments. In other

words, for the internalist, the amoralist simply isn 't using the normative concepts, but

some other ones, perhaps based on social convention or law. Many people find some

initial plausibility to the amoralist case, however. This amoralist may be a challenge for

most kinds of intemalism. But Spinoza's is unusual in that his moral judgments are

really self-interested judgments. For Spinoza, x is a good action for S to do iff doing x will

increase S's power. That is, Spinoza is an ethical egoist. Though it may be quite easy to

imagine the amoralist that externalists often cite, it is not so easy to imagine a Spinozist

amoralist. That would be someone who judges that x would most benefit him, but

nonetheless feels no desire to do x. That is hard to conceive. And an egoist internalist

can plausibly deny such a figure.

And so, Spinoza can accommodate the internalist intuition that evaluation is

connected to motivation while avoiding the externalist critique of that view. W hat's

more, Spinoza even can adhere to the intuition at the heart of extemalism. For the

internalists, reasons, or practical judgments, cause actions, because reasons engender

motivations to act. Hume and the externalists believe this to be false, for emotions and

ideas do not have this "direction of fit." That is, ideas simply represent things; they try

to mirror themselves to the world. Ideas do not try to make the world mirror them. It


217

is desire and affect that does that, Hume claims. For Hume, it is not reasons but affects

that cause action.

Spinoza would agree with the spirit of this externalist intuition, for he believes

that it is not our beliefs that cause action, but our desires. So, Spinoza is like Hume in

identifying emotion, not representation, as the cause of action. For Spinoza, active

affects explain hum an action when we act rationally and passive affects explain hum an

action when we act irrationally. Akrasia occurs when the irrational desires overpower

the rational ones. All cases of hum an action, however, akratic and continent, all result

from some affective desire or other. Though each of these desires is also a judgment, it

is the affective aspect of this mental state that explains action, not the cognitive aspect.

And in this regard, Spinoza presages Hume.

This is what I have described as the Janus-faced nature of Spinoza's psychology.

He incorporates the rationalist view that we should attempt to act from reason, not

passion, and that we succeed in doing so through gaining more knowledge. According

to the rationalist side of Spinoza's theory, when we have more inadequate ideas, we are

in greater bondage and thus more likely to suffer akrasia. This aspect of Spinoza's

psychological theory looks backward to the ancient Greeks and his other predecessors.

Another aspect of Spinoza's psychology, however, is quite different. In his

affective psychology, Spinoza looks forward to Hume and other sentimentalist thinkers.

For Spinoza also believes that affect and desire explain hum an action in a way

knowledge and belief cannot. Because the mind is a mechanism, as is the body, we

must explain mental phenomena in a way analogous to bodily ones. In this regard,


218

then, Spinoza resembles Hume. And in this great synthesis may lie Spinoza's genius.

He can accommodate the primary intuitions of the weak internalist as well as those of

the externalist. In so doing, he presents a psychological theory that includes both

Humean and more rationalist aspects. This theory of his depends upon several key

assertions, which are:

(1) A cognitivist theory of the emotions: affects and judgments are two aspects of

one mental mode.

(2) Doctrine of incommensurable desires: desires are motivational affective states

that are conditioned by their objects; as such, they may be incommensurable.

These two allow Spinoza to hold the following principle, which involves his theory of

akrasia:

(3) Spinozist theory of hum an nature: Irrationality is a fundamental aspect of the

human mind; we are able to affirm contradictory judgments and feel opposing

desires at the same time and, sometimes, the irrational desires are stronger than

and thus overpower the rational ones.

In summary, let us consider these three fundamental assertions. Spinoza's cognitivist

theory of the emotions precludes Spinoza from truly being an externalist, because

practical judgments will always be accompanied by motivation. And his theory of

desire precludes his ever being a strong internalist, because we can have conflicting and

irreducible desires. And finally, because Spinoza allows that hum an beings can affirm

adequate and inadequate ideas at the same time about the same things, Spinoza


219

encounters no conceptual difficulties in affirming the reality of strict, or synchronic,

akrasia.

Spinoza's theory of desire is not unusual; indeed, those who reject it and instead

posit that all desires are reducible to one fundamental desire, as Socrates does, are in the

minority. Spinoza's peculiar theory of the relation between affects and judgments is

unique, to be sure, but in its function it is quite similar to cognitivist theories of the

emotions, such as Robert Solomon's, who holds that emotions are a certain kind of

judgment.

Finally, the claim that human beings are irrational is not at all difficult to accept

for many people. Specifically, Spinoza believes that we are able to affirm contradictory

judgments at the same time. This will be difficult to accept for some. Consider again

Spinoza's example of the sun, however:

for example, when we look at the sun, we imagine it to be about 200 feet away

from us, In this we are deceived so long as we are ignorant of its true distance;

but when its distance is known, the error is removed, not the imagination, i.e.,

the idea of the sun, which explains its nature only so far as the Body is affected

by it. And so, though we come to know the true distance, we shall nevertheless

imagine it as near us. (4pls; Curley, 547-8; Geb 11/211)

In other words, the human mind makes judgments just when it is caused to do so. And

when the causes of our judgments persist, our judgments will persist as well. And

when those judgments are contradictory yet caused by two distinct, coexisting states of

affairs, then we will simultaneously affirm two contradictory judgments.


220

Let us state this another way. Spinoza believes that we may sometimes hold two

contradictory judgments, one of which may be rational and the other irrational. So, for

example, I may at the very same time find the piece of cake before me attractive and

desirable, because it looks quite tasty, and also find it undesirable, because I know what

it will do to my weigh-in tomorrow, as well as to my self-satisfaction. Thus, I can

simultaneously judge the cake to be desirable and undesirable, good to eat and bad to

eat. I can hold these two simultaneously because the cake, being a complex thing, can

affect me in a complex way, since I too am a complex thing. I have various

incommensurable desires, after all, and one aspect of the cake may satisfy one desire

while another aspect of the cake may foil another of my desires. In this case, the

apparent sweetness of the icing appeals to my desire for sweets, but the probable high

fat content of the cake contravenes my desire to diet. And so, my two desires speak up

and the one that speaks the loudest will prevail. Further, I am a being capable of reason,

so I may evaluate these competing desires and judge that, in the long run, I am best

served by refraining. This judgment accompanies my desire to refrain and, if it is

strong enough, it will overpower my desire to eat the cake. Indeed, I may even have an

additional desire to be strong-willed and consistent; perhaps I made a promise to

someone to diet and I desire to keep my promise. Regardless, after all the desires on

each side have spoken up, the side with the heavier weight, or loudest voices, wins.

From where I stand, this account captures the heart of what happens in strict

akrasia. And this is, roughly, Spinoza's thesis that we can affirm contradictory

judgments and feel conflicting desires. And so, strict akrasia is easily explainable. Of


221

course, it is still irrational, because it involves acting against our better judgment which,

for Spinoza, means acting against our universal principles in favor of some

inadequately known particular.

Thus, once we excavate Spinoza's account of akrasia from its surroundings, we

find a plausible and commonsensical account. Indeed, we find one that captures all of

our important intuitions on the issue: we experience strict akrasia, practical judgment

has some connection to motivation, and desire has the right direction of fit to explain

action. Only Spinoza's theory of akrasia can accommodate all three of these quite

plausible intuitions.

And when we review Spinoza's account of akrasia in its philosophical context, we

find a rich and unique metaphysical and ethical account of akrasia, one according to

which akrasia is a special case of bondage to the passions. If we can gain more

knowledge, especially self-knowledge, and follow certain of Spinoza's cognitive

therapies, we gain freedom and reduce our vulnerability to akrasia. And so, considered

in isolation or in its philosophical context, Spinoza's theory of akrasia is fascinating and

compelling indeed.


222

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1 Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics ([Indianapolis, IN]: Hackett Pub. Co., 1984), chapter 14,

Michael Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology," in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed.

Don Garrett (New York: Cambridge Univ Pr, 1996), Don Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory," in The

Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (New York: Cambridge Univ Pr, 1996), Olli Koistinen,

"Weakness of Will in Spinoza's Theory of Human Motivation," in North American Spinoza Society

Monograph (1996), Martin Lin, "Memory and Personal Identity in Spinoza," Canadian Journal of Philosophy

(forthcoming), Anthony Savile, "Spinoza, Medea, and Irrationality in Action," Dialogue: Canadian

Philosophical Review 42, no. 4 (2003).

2 For general overviews that are consistent with my work here, see Henry E. Allison, Benedict De Spinoza :

A n Introduction, Rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), chapter 5, Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza

and Other Heretics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), chapter 6.

3 Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology."

4 Martin Lin, "Spinoza's Account of Akrasia," Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (2006).

5 4p60; Curley, 580; Geb 11/255.

6 Koistinen, "Weakness of Will in Spinoza's Theory of Human Motivation."

Notes to Chapter One

7 For a critical survey of recent work on the problem of weakness of will, see Arthur F. Walker, "The

Problem of Weakness of Will," Nous.

8 Alfred Mele, Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception and Self-Control (New York: New York

University Press, 1987).

9 For one of several good accounts of Socrates' views on akrasia, see James J. Walsh, "The Socratic Denial

of Akrasia.” Another useful source is


230

10 This is a somewhat controversial interpretation of Socrates, however. I take this interpretation from

Terry Penner. See Terry Penner, "Socrates on the Strength of Knowledge: Protagoras 351b-357e," Archiv

fiir Geschichte der Philosophie 79, no. 2 (1997).

11 Another question concerns whether, as Penner holds, we aim for the actual good, whatever it may be,

or, as others hold, we aim merely for the perceived good. I will not address this issue. See Santas [1979]

12 Meno, 78b4-6. This translation is Terry Penner's. See also Plato, Plato: Complete Works, John Cooper ed.

(Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 877.

13 For a discussion of akrasia in Plato, see Christopher Bobonich, "Akrasia and Agency in Plato's Laws and

Republic," Archiv fuer Geschichte der Philosophie 76, no. 1 (1994).

14 Plato, Plato: Complete Works, 1067.

15 437b; Ibid., 1068.

161145b; Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), 101.

171146b23-24; Ibid., 102.

18 Perhaps the sole important exception to this is the Stoics, who adopted a quasi-Socratic view that

included one critical new feature - assent. According to the Stoics, the mind receives various

presentations, which represent what would be best, or fitting, for us to do. The mind then is free to assent

to one of them. When these presentations are mere appearance and if the mind is untrained, the

presentations may come fast a furious and the mind may assent prematurely or improperly. With proper,

rigorous mental training, however, the mind can learn to withhold assent from dubious presentations

and it can learn to form veridical presentations as well. This theory of assent was injected into an

otherwise Aristotelian account by Scholastics such as Aquinas and Scotus, though those two differed over

the relative contributions of the presenting faculty and the assenting faculty. The details of the Stoics

account are complex and largely irrelevant to the Spinozist account, however, so the Stoics have been

omitted here.


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19 Hume, Part III, Book II, Section iii; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge and

P. H. Nidditch, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 415.

20 Ibid., III.2.iii, 413.

24 Ibid., 415.

22 I here interpret Hume as an instrumentalist about practical reasoning, which is the view that our

practical reasoning concerns choosing the means to reach some given ends. Those ends are provided by

our desires, which themselves are not amendable by practical reasoning. This view is often called

Humeanism in the contemporary literature. Another way of interpreting Hume is as a nihilist about

practical reasoning, however. A nihilist about practical reasoning holds that there are no legitimate

practical inferences and, thus, no such thing as practical reasoning. One might advance this position if

one believes that practical judgments are nothing but expressions of non-cognitive, brute emotions. If this

is all practical judgments are, then practical reasoning is impossible. Whether or not Hume should be

read as in instrumentalist or a nihilist is a question I do not address here. For more on this debate, see... ?

23 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 417.

24 This view also has an ancestor in the Stoics, who held that all human action comes about as a result of a

horme, which is motivating judgment. Unlike Hume's desires, these Stoic motivators are cognitive. Like

Hume's psychology, however, rational action results from calm, positive affects and emotions, while

irrational action results from passionate, turbulent affects. For example, the pleasure that the wise man

feels in knowledge Cicero and Seneca call gaudium and the Greek Stoics called eupatheia. See Cicero,

Tusculan Disp, 4.6.14 and "De Constantia," in Book I of Seneca, Moral Essays, trans. John W. Basore, 3 vols.

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928). See also Tad Brennan, "Stoic Moral Psychology," in

Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, ed. Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

25 "How is Weakness of the Will Possible?" in Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, 2nd ed.

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 21.

26 Reference Hare here.


232

27 For cin evaluation of Davidson that accords with mine, see the Introduction of Sarah Stroud, and

Christine Tappolet, ed., Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003),

5.

28 Mele, Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception and Self-Control, 37.

29 “Akrasia and enkrateia [strength of will] lie on a continuum whose endpoints are, on the one hand, the

agent who is totally lacking in self-control (qua ability) and wholly without motivation to act as he judges

best and, on the other, the perfectly and ideally self-controlled person. Both sorts of agent, is not

philosophers' fictions, are very rare indeed." (60-61)

30 So, for example, see Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in Rational Action, ed. Ross

Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Williams discusses intemalism and

extemalism in very different terms. For a discussion of the dizzying and utterly contradictory ways in

which these terms have been used, see John Robertson, "Intemalism, Practical Reason, and Motivation,"

in Varieties of Practical Reasoning, ed. Elijah Millgram (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). All of those

discussions focus exclusively or primarily on moral judgment and its relation to motivation. In recent

years, attention has turned to the more general question of how practical judgments relate to motivation. I

follow the usage used in that discussion. See, for example, Russ Shafer-Landau, "A Defense of

Motivational Extemalism," Philosophical Studies 97, no. 3 (2000).

31 Other internalists include R.M. Hare, who advocated a doctrine of prescriptivism. Hare argued that

moral judgments are prescriptions, which are imperatives to oneself to do that action judged to be good.

These imperatives necessarily result in attempted action.

Notes to Chapter Two

32 "For as the mind of God, which is the archetypical intellect, is that whereby he always actually

comprehends himself, and his own fecundity, or the extent of his own infinite goodness and power - that

is the possibility of all things - so all created intellects being certain ectypal models, or derivative


233

compendiums of the same." Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, trans.

Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For commentary, see Sarah Hutton, "The

Cambridge Platonists," in A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (Oxford: Blackwell,

2002).

33 This is, of course, an oversimplification. For more on the theory of ideas in Descartes and the early

modem period generally, see Michael Ayers, "Ideas and Objective Being," in The Cambridge History of

Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Daniel and Michael Ayers Garber (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998).

34 In Spinoza's early work, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TdlE), he lays out four "modes of

perception," which he later develops into the three kinds of knowledge found in the Ethics, putting the

first two modes of perception under the heading of the first kind of knowledge. The Tractatus de Intellectus

Emedatione was an early work, written between 1660 and 1662. For a discussion of Spinoza's kinds of

knowledge as they are found in the TdlE and the Short Treatise (the Korte Verhandlung [KV], another of

Spinoza's early works), see E. M. Curley, "Experience in Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge," in Spinoza: A

Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Marjorie Grene (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973).

The doctrine of the four kinds of perception can be found at TdlE §19f.

35 2p40s2; Curley, 477; Geb 11/122.

36 2p40s2; Curley, 477; Geb 11/122.

37 What Spinoza calls "the first kind of knowledge," we might call "false belief;" Spinoza's

contemporaries would likely call it "opinion." It is not clear whether knowledge of the first kind is

necessarily false, or merely the source of error. If we were to say that the first kind of knowledge were

exclusively false belief, however, there would be no room in Spinoza's system for true belief that falls

short of knowledge.


234

38 For a discussion of the first kind of knowledge, see Amihud Gilead, "The Indispensability of the First

Kind of Knowledge," in Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human M ind, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (Leiden: Brill,

1994).

39 2p40s2; Curley, 478; Geb 11/122.

« 2p38; Curley, 474; Geb 11/118.

41 The second kind of knowledge has its predecessor in the TdlE in the third mode of perception, which

Spinoza defines in saying, "there is the Perception that we have when the essence of a thing is inferred

from another thing, but not adequately. This happens, either when we infer the cause from some effect, or

when something is inferred from some universal, which some property always accompanies" (TdlE, 19;

Curley, 13; Geb 11/10). Interestingly, this kind of universal knowledge is not adequate in the TdlE, though

it is so in the Ethics.

42 Yovel offers a novel interpretation of this ability to grasp common notions, calling it an "inborn power

(vis nativa) to perceive these uniformities [laws of Nature] directly." He claims that the mind simply has

such a power to grasp these modes in the world, describing this mental action as "grasping law-like

patterns inscribed in the universe." See Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 98. This view is essentially

Wolfson's as well; Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza; Unfolding the Latent Processes of His

Reasoning (New York: Harvard University Press, 1934), Vol. 2, p. 155. Yovel's account understates the fact

that we are able to grasp common notions in the modes of extension and thought only because we ourselves

are modes of these attributes. Therefore, our experience of coming to hold a common notion is not so much

one of an inborn power grasping some truth out in the cosmos as it is one of recognition, or at least

similarity, where we see some property in an object of experience that is equally embodied in our own

body or mind. Essentially, we can know about other bodies in the world because we are bodies ourselves.

Spinoza says, in la5, "things that have nothing in common with one another also cannot be understood

through one another," and in lp3, "if things have nothing in common with one another, one of them

cannot be the cause of the other."


235

« 2p41; Curley, 478; Geb 11/122.

44 For Spinoza's unusual account of falsity, see Wim Klever, "The Truth of Error: A Spinozistic Paradox,"

in Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human M ind, ed. Yirmiahu Yovel (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

« 3pl; Curley, 493; Geb 11/140.

46 5p38; Curley, 613; Geb 11/304.

47 5p25; Curley, 608; Geb 11/296.

48 2p40s2; Curley, 478; Geb 11/122.

49 The third kind of knowledge has the fourth mode of perception as its predecessor in the TdlE, where

Spinoza says, "finally, there is the Perception we have when a thing is perceived through its essence

alone, or through knowledge of its proximate cause" (TdlE, §19; Curley, 13; Geb 11/10). Like the third

mode of perception, the fourth mode differs in important respects from its analogue in the Ethics. For

example, the fourth mode of perception is the only form of adequate knowledge. It is also the only form

of knowledge that reasons from cause to effect. Both of these features will change in the Ethics to include

the second kind of knowledge.

so 5p36s; Curley, 612-613; Geb 11/303.

51 lpl5; Curley, 420; Geb 11/56.

52 2p47s; Curley, 482; Geb 11/128.

53 The phrase Euclid himself uses to name the axioms at the beginning of Book One of his Elements is

"koinai ennoiai," or common notions. Descartes uses it in a similar sense at Principles of Philosophy, Part II,

§64 (CSMK 1,247; AT VHIA/78).

54 Allison, Benedict De Spinoza : An Introduction, 117-8.

55 For a refutation of the alleged mysticism of Spinoza's Ethics, see Steven Nadler, "Spinoza and Philo: The

Alleged Mysticism in the Ethics," in Hellenistic and Early M odem Philosophy, ed. Jon Miller (Cambridge:

Cambridge Univ Pr, 2003).


236

^Margaret Wilson, "Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge," in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don

Garrett (New York: Cambridge Univ Pr, 1996), 118.

57 Frankly, I suspect that some interpreters of Spinoza are mystified by the "mystery" of grasping the

inmost essence of a thing. They interpret this cognitive activity in way more akin to what Robert

Heinlein's protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, in A Stranger in a Strange Land does, which Heinlein calls

grokking. Upon encountering some new object or idea, Smith would go into a deep trance for days until,

as if by magic, he would awake with an absolute understanding of the thing or idea, a mystical

understanding of the subject that would surpass that of the expert.

58 There is a further question about the three kinds of knowledge that has concerned scholars, specifically,

knowledge of particulars. All agree that the first and third kinds of knowledge may concern particulars -

indeed, the third kind must do so. Whether the second also may concern particulars is controversial,

however. For example, Edwin Curley says, "reason is knowledge of.. .the attributes and infinite modes of

the Ethics. Intuition is knowledge of...the finite modes." Curley, "Experience in Spinoza's Theory of

Knowledge," 56-7. Spencer Carr responds well to this issue, saying, "Spinoza's arrangement of the types

of knowledge strongly suggests that the description of rational knowledge is meant to contrast more

tellingly with that of imagination or opinion. Both reason and imagination or opinion deal with our

experience of objects; the demand that reason involve common notions and adequate ideas of properties

is a demand that in working from experience we take care to stick to what may be adequate." Spencer

Carr, "Spinoza's Distinction between Rational and Intuitive Knowledge," Philosophical Review 78, no. 2

(1978): 247-8. Several recent scholars have adopted Carr's view. For examples, see Syliane Malinowski

Charles, "The Circle of Adequate Knowledge: Notes on Reason and Intuition in Spinoza," in Oxford

Studies in Early M odem Philosophy, Volume 1, ed. Steven M. Nadler and Daniel Garber (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 2003), Ronald Sandler, "Intuitus and Ratio in Spinoza's Ethical Thought," British Journal for the

History of Philosophy 13, no. 1 (2005). In my opinion, the second kind of knowledge is derived from

particular finite modes; further, it may be the major premise in practical and theoretical syllogisms in


237

which the minor premise concerns particular finite modes, but the second kind of knowledge is not of

particular finite modes, strictly speaking, but of infinite modes and the idea of God. I will return, briefly,

to this question in the first section of the final chapter.

59 Spinoza seems to have a related concept in mind in several places, e.g., Short Treatise, n, xv, 5-6 (Curley,

120-121; Geb 1/79-80).

60 The first use of it is at TdlE, §19: "est perceptio, ubi essentia rei ex alia re concluditur, sed non adaequate"

(Geb 11/10). Here Spinoza describes the "third mode of perception," which roughly corresponds to the

second kind of knowledge in the Ethics. Spinoza also employs it in describing the fourth mode of

perception, which roughly corresponds to the third kind of knowledge, when he says: "solus quartus

modus comprehendit essentiam rei adaequatam, et absque erroris periculo" (TdlE, §29; Geb 11/13). In this

case, adaequata modifies essentiam, suggesting not that the knowledge is comprehended adequately but

that the essence comprehended is adequate. Again, this usage does not map clearly onto anything in the

Ethics, though Spinoza's description of the fourth mode of perception as "without danger of error" does

match his later notion of adequate knowledge. The other two instances of adaequatus in the TdlE suggest

certainty (§35) and truth (§73).

61 "By adequate idea I understand an idea that, insofar as it is considered in itself without relation to the

object, has all the properties or intrinsic denominations of a true idea. I say intrinsic, so that I may

exclude that which is extrinsic, specifically the agreement of an idea with its object" (2def4; Curley, 447;

Geb 11/85). In Letter 60 to Tschimhaus from January 1675, Spinoza says: "between a true and an adequate

idea I recognize no difference but this, that the word 'true' has regard only to the agreement of the idea

with its object (ideatum), whereas the word 'adequate' has regard to the nature of the idea in itself. Thus

there is no real difference between a true and an adequate idea except for this extrinsic relation" See

Spinoza, Letter 60; Benedictus de Spinoza, Complete Works, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis, IN:

Hackett Pub., 2002), 912-13. In short, then, the definition in Part 2 tells us that adequate ideas are true;

that to call an idea adequate is to refer to an intrinsic denomination and not to refer to its correspondence


238

to its object; and that an adequate idea has all the properties of a true idea. For help on the last point, one

must look to lax6, which states, "a true idea must agree with its object" (Curley, 410:Geb 11/47). Spinoza

establishes how an idea agrees with its object by the doctrine of parallelism, which requires that the order

and connection of ideas agree with the order and connection of causes.

62 "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God" (lpl5; Curley, 420; Geb

11/56). In the following passage, Spinoza simply applies this doctrine to the human mind. Since the mind

is a mode of thought, it is in God as God is understood under the attribute of thought.

63 "The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, or a certain mode of extension which

actually exists, and nothing else" (2pl3; Curley, 457; Geb 11/96).

64 This could also be stated as follows: Idea x is adequate in mind y iff God's idea x is a proper part of

God's idea y. Idea x is inadequate in mind y iff God's idea x is only partially in y. This may be why Spinoza

sometimes refers to inadequate ideas as mutilated. Further questions remain; for example, is that part of x

that is wholly contained in y adequate? Spinoza does not provide answers, in part because he expands his

notion of adequacy shortly after 2pllc. For more on the view of adequacy as containment, see Wilson,

"Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge," 99-100.

65 The containment thesis as expressed in 2p llc may be more complex than CON admits, however, since

2p llc can be understood in two distinct ways, so that idea x is adequate in mind y iff either (1) mind y

wholly contains idea x or (2) the body of mind y wholly contains the object of idea x. One might expect

these two to be equivalent, by parallelism, but the picture is not so simple. Spinoza does not identify the

body with its parts, but with a ratio of motion and rest, that is, an organization, among the parts; doing so

allows the body to gain and lose parts yet retain its identity. This principle of bodily individuation leads

Spinoza at 2p24 to say that the mind has inadequate ideas of its own parts, even though those parts are

contained in the body. Clearly, then, given this account of the body, something's being contained in the

body is not sufficient for our having an adequate idea of it in the mind. So, sense (2) of the containment


239

thesis is rejected. But sense (1), I believe, may be retained, depending on how one construes the mind-

body relationship. Any more investigation into this issue would take us too far afield, however.

66 The source of this doctrine can be found in 2p9, which states, "the idea of a singular thing which

actually exists has God for a cause not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is considered to be

affected by another idea of a singular thing which actually exists" (Curley, 453; Geb 11/91-92). That is, the

idea of each finite mode is an affect caused by the idea of another finite mode. Spinoza continues this line

of thought at Axiom 1" (following Lemma 3), where he states, "all modes by which a body is affected by

another body follow both from the nature of the body affected and at the same time from the nature of

the affecting body..." (Curley, 460; Geb 11/99). Whenever two bodies interact, a bodily affection occurs;

the nature of this affection follows from the nature of the bodies that caused it. Further, by parallelism,

the idea of that bodily affection will involve the ideas of both bodies that caused the affection.

67 See also 2pl3 and its demonstration.

68 For more on this causal requirement for adequacy, see Wilson, "Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge," 105-7.

69 Jonathan Bennett believes that this causal notion of adequacy is the reigning sense of adequacy found

in the Ethics and the containment sense expressed in 2p llc is dropped after it. See Bennett, A Study of

Spinoza's Ethics, 177f. I agree that Spinoza generally relies on the sense of adequacy presented in 2p24d,

but the two are not unrelated, in my opinion. According to CON, the mind must contain the entire idea of

x in order to have adequate knowledge of x. According to CR, the mind must contain an idea of x's cause

in order to have adequate knowledge of x. If the nature of x's cause were a constituent part of the nature

of x, then it would follow that CON entails CR. For example, see 3pld, where Spinoza relies on 2p llc to

explain adequacy. For the connection between causes and essences, see Michael Della Rocca,

Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapters 4

and 5.

70 See 2pl2 and 12d, for example, where Spinoza equates the mind's perceiving x, the mind's having an

idea of x, and the mind's having knowledge of x.


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71 Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 55.

72 lp28; see note 9, above.

73 According to Della Rocca, the use of 2p9 in 2p24d and 25d suggests that the infinite series of causes

behind every finite thing prevents us from having adequate ideas of any sort about them, but I am not so

sure this claim is warranted. Certainly our ideas of the duration of singular things are in principle

inadequate due to the infinite complexity of the causes of duration, as Spinoza says in 2p31d and I will

discuss below. However, neither 2p9 itself nor Spinoza's use of it in 2p24d and 25d seem to require

knowledge of the infinite series of causal antecedents in the case of sensation, but only knowledge of its

proximate cause; the fact that this proximate cause is not contained in the human body is sufficient for the

idea's inadequacy. It may also be the case that knowledge of only the proximate cause is necessary for

adequate knowledge. I agree with Della Rocca's conclusion that ideas of sensation must be inadequate,

but I am not convinced that this is so because of the mind's inability to grasp an infinite series of causes.

Instead, these ideas are inadequate because a single necessary idea - the idea of the proximate cause - is

outside our minds. I will grant this point, however, since it is irrelevant to my aim in this essay.

74 Before Spinoza, the phrase "common notions" was used in conjunction with geometry, as mentioned.

Additionally, Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury, argued in his De Veritate (1624) that human reason

contains innate common notions that the mind may discover if it employs its faculties correctly; we will

know these common notions by our natural instinct, the light of nature, he says. Only from these

common notions, Herbert argues, may we derive certainty. Further, these rational common notions are

the fundamental principles of science and religion. Interestingly, Herbert held that the same five common

notions underlie all true religions, though Christianity matches them the best, he said. See Edward

Herbert of Cherbury, De Veritate, Prout Distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibili, Et a Falso, Editio

tertia. ed. (Londini: [s.n.], 1645). Similarly, Descartes held certain notions to be universal and innate, such

as the idea of God and substance, as well as the laws of logic. See, for example, Rules for the Direction of the


241

M ind, Rule §12 (CSMK I, 44-45; AT X/419-420) and Principles of Philosophy, Part I, §13 (CSMK I, 197; AT

VHIA/9).

75 2p38; Curley, 474; Geb 11/118. Of the common notions, Bennett says, "the enormously obscure p38d has

defeated me;" Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics.

761 will speak of the objects of the common notions as "properties." In this usage I follow Spinoza himself,

who describes modes held in common among bodies as properties in 2p39 and refers to properties in

2p40s2, among other places. I intend the term in as unobtrusive a way as possible and will try not to rely

on any particular metaphysical account of properties in my argument.

77 2axl' and 2ax2'. For more on the Cartesian dimension of Spinoza's physics, see Alan Gabbey,

"Spinoza’s Natural Science and Methodology," in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett

(New York: Cambridge Univ Pr, 1996), 101 and 09.

78 Letter 63,25 July 1675. See Spinoza, Complete Works, 917.

79 Letter 64,29 July 1675. Ibid., 919.

80 lp21; Curley, 429; Geb 11/65.

81 Edwin Curley argues that the common notions are of the infinite modes, which are the laws of physics.

See E. M. Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method : A Reading of Spinoza’s Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1988), 45f. Bennett affirms this view as well; see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 107.

See also Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 161.

82 Not only are Spinoza's first principles of physics Cartesian, but they are also derived in a Cartesian

way. In Principle 37 of Part 2 of his Principles, Descartes says, "the first law of nature: each and every thing, in

so far as it can, always continues in the same state; and thus what is once in motion always continues to move.

From God's immutability we can also know certain rules or laws of nature, which are the secondary and

particular causes of the various motions we see in particular bodies." Principles of Philosophy, II, §37

(CSMK I, 240; AT VIH/A, 62). Note that, according to Descartes, we infer the laws of nature from God's

nature. This is exactly what Spinoza suggests we do when he claims we may infer motion and rest from


242

Extension, which is the divine essence conceived in a certain way. I would not say that Spinoza's physics

are completely Cartesian, however, because Spinoza attributes power to bodies, which Descartes does not.

83 Note that I say that the common notion is involved both in the idea of each part of the body and in the

idea of each affection in the body. Spinoza says we do not know the parts of the body, except through

ideas of its affections. See 2pl9. According to Spinoza, in sensation, we know more about the modes of

our own bodies than those of external bodies (2pl6c2); thus our knowledge of those external bodies is

woefully incomplete. In Ch. 6 of his book, Della Rocca gives a novel account of falsity in Spinoza, arguing

that we err in sensation because we conflate two different things in one idea. That is, we identify our own

sensations - the way things seem to us - with the external object, when these two are really distinct.

When we consider the common property of motion and rest that arises from our body interacting with an

external body, however, this problem does not occur, because the common property is the same both in

our bodies and in the external body. So, if we identify the property in our body and the property in the

external body, we do not err, for our idea is an accurate representation of the property in both bodies.

Further, we thereby have both an idea of a property of an affection of our own body and an idea of that

property in the cause of our affection, even though the cause is an external body.

84 In the letter to Schuller quoted above, Spinoza also refers to infinite modes of Thought. There is no

reason to believe that we cannot form common notions about fundamental laws of psychology as well as

of physics. In this discussion I refer primarily to laws of physics and motion and rest because Spinoza

himself primarily discusses common notions in terms of Extension, not Thought.

85 This is another way in which Spinoza follows Descartes. Both thinkers believe that the laws of physics

are deducible from common experience. Wilson also notes this similarity; see Wilson, "Spinoza's Theory

of Knowledge," 116.

86 lp23: "Every mode which exists necessarily and is infinite has necessarily had to follow either form the

absolute nature of some attribute of God, or from some attribute, modified by a modification which exists

necessarily and is infinite." Spinoza here refers to two kinds of infinite mode, one that follows


243

immediately from God's attribute and one the follows in turn from this immediate infinite mode. This

distinction and between the mediate and immediate infinite modes is obscure and irrelevant for our

purposes.

87 ld4; Curley, 408; Geb 11/45.

88 By parallelism, our common notions of thought - our ideas of the fundamental laws of psychology -

are grounded in the attribute of Thought; so, if we have an idea of that attribute, our common notions of

the infinite modes of thought would also be adequate.

89 This is not to say that we are consciously aware of the idea of Extension when we consider a body,

though this idea must be implicit, Spinoza believes. Only through analysis of our concepts and similar

cognitive labor are these ideas made explicit. Descartes exemplifies the kind of labor that Spinoza might

have in mind in his discussion of the wax in Meditation Two. This theme will recur again below.

*> 2p47; Curley, 482; Geb 11/128.

91 "The knowledge of God's eternal and infinite essence which each idea involves is adequate and

perfect" (2p46; Curley, 482; Geb 1/127).

92 For a discussion of God as a causa sui, see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, 73-4.

93 It should be apparent at this point that the argument that we have adequate ideas of the divine

attributes of God is structurally very similar to the argument that we have adequate common notions. But

the common notions are the paradigms of Spinoza's second kind of knowledge. I believe that the

adequate ideas of the divine essence/attributes also should be considered as knowledge of the second

kind (only when we consider finite essences in relation to that idea of the divine essence do we have

knowledge of the third kind). Edwin Curley agrees; see Curley, "Experience in Spinoza's Theory of

Knowledge," 57.

94 Curley, 439; Geb 11/76.


244

95 For more on this understanding the divine essence, see Sherry Deveaux, "The Divine Essence and the

Conception of God in Spinoza," Synthese: An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and

Philosophy of Science 135, no. 3 (2003).

96 A vexing problem related to this discussion concerns how we become aware of these ideas. What I have

attempted to establish here is that we have adequate ideas in the mind. This is not the same claim as

saying that we have conscious awareness of these ideas. Wilson notes this problem as well - Wilson,

"Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge," 137n37. Delahunty addresses this seeming contradiction, suggesting

that adequate ideas may be like intuitions available only after hard mental labor; see R. J. Delahunty,

Spinoza, Arguments of the Philosophers (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 23f. One place where

Spinoza discusses this issue is at 2p47s. After having asserted that all humans have an adequate idea of

God, Spinoza then states that most people lack clear knowledge of God. Spinoza claims this is so because

they have associated the word 'God' with anthropomorphic images, for example. Thus, though all people

have an adequate idea that corresponds to God, i.e., the idea of absolute power, most people do not

recognize that idea to be of God. In other words, all have an adequate idea of God, but for most people

that idea is not associated with the term 'God/ which gets associated with some anthropomorphic image.

Part of Spinoza's program of rational self-improvement, I imagine, would be to connect the term 'God' to

that adequate idea of God in our minds. I am not sure more can be said on this topic without some

account of consciousness in Spinoza, however, with which we could explain the status of ideas in the

mind of which we are not aware. On the absence of an account of consciousness in Spinoza, also see

Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 188-91.

97 I follow convention in translating Spinoza's term affectus as "affect," though "emotion" would be

acceptable in the context of this article. In other contexts, however, affectus is not well rendered as

"emotion," since affectus refers to a phenomenon both mental and physical, as well as one either passive

or active, while "emotion" may connote a mental state one undergoes, which is closer to Spinoza's term

passio, which is only one kind of affectus. See Benedictus de Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, trans.


245

E. M. Curley (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 625. Note also that a similar convention

exists in German and French, where affectus is translated as das Affekt and Vaffect, rather than as das Gffiihl

or I'emotion. See, for example, Benedictus de Spinoza, Ethik in Geometrischer Ordnung Dargestellt, trans.

Wolfgang Bartuschat (1999), 223, Benedictus de Spinoza, tth ique - Bilingue, trans. Bernard Pautrat

(Editions de Seuil, 1999), 203.

98 Hume's view may in fact be more complex than this. For Hume, passions are not propositional, though

they may perhaps have intentional objects. In the case of pride, for example, the passion takes as its

intentional objects the thing in which one takes pride and oneself. The passion has such objects in virtue

of its being a complex mental state involving both a non-representational passion and representational

ideas. For a related discussion of the cognitive nature of pride, see Donald Davidson, "Hume's Cognitive

Theory of Pride," Journal of Philosophy 73, no. 4 (1976). For an opposing view, see Annette Baier, "Hume's

Analysis of Pride," Journal of Philosophy 75, no. 1 (1978). For Hume's claim that the intellect is not involved

in the passions, which bear no truth value, see Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, , Book II, Part iii,

Section 3 and Book III, Part i, Section 1.

99 William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York,: H. Holt and Company, 1890), Vol. 2,449.

100 Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001), 114.

101 According to Robert Solomon, "emotions are a kind of judgment," as he says in a variety places. See,

for example, Robert Solomon, "Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings," in Thinking About Feeling, ed. Robert

Solomon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 76. Though Spinoza's view is superficially similar to

Solomon's in that both take emotions to be judgments, I would not attribute to Spinoza the details of

Solomon's theory, which involves a sophisticated explanation of emotion as a nexus of certain judgments,

intentions, and desires.


246

102 For more contemporary discussion of this issue, see Solomon's Thinking About Feeling volume, as well

as Anthony Hatzimoysis, Philosophy and the Emotions, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement; 52 (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2003).

103 Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology," 243. See also Della Rocca, Representation and the

Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 71.

104 Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory," 275. Delahunty agrees as well; see Delahunty, Spinoza, 244. See also

Charles Jarrett, "Teleology and Spinoza's Doctrine of Final Causes," in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as

Psychologist (Papers Presented at the Third Jerusalem Conference), ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little

Room Press, 1999), 13. Jonathan Bennett also agrees that Spinoza "is trying to make the attribute of

thought as cognitive as possible" in his treatment of the emotions; see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics,

256.

los 2d3; Curley, 447; Geb 11/84.

106 2d3 explicatio; Curley, 447; Geb II/84-5.

107 See, for example, Descartes' Letter to Regius, May 1641, (CSMK III, 182; AT III/372) and Passions I, 17

(CSM 1,335; AT XI/342).

los 3pl; Curley, 493; Geb 11/140.

109 For a similar view of this definition and its explanation, see Martial Gueroult, Spinoza (Hildesheim: G.

Olms, 1968), Vol. 2, 21-22. Gueroult also connects Spinoza's emphasis on activity in 2d3 to 2p49, as I do

below. For a different view, see Wolfgang Bartuschat, Spinozas Theorie Des Menschen (Hamburg: F.

Meiner Verlag, 1992), 69. See also Wolfgang Rod, Benedictus Se Spinoza: Eine Einfiihrung (Stuttgart:

Reclam, 2002), 64f. Both Bartuschat and Rod connect this definition to 2 p ll, where Spinoza defines the

human mind as an idea. They take this emphasis on action in 2d3 to be Spinoza's way of defining the

human mind as a res cogitans, since the mind is an idea and ideas are acts of thought. I do not find their

arguments for this connection to be persuasive.

n° This view is widely accepted among commentators, as I have mentioned in the Introduction to this

chapter. For example, Della Rocca, says, "when Spinoza speaks of ideas, he means psychological items


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that have content, that are about something." See Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in

Spinoza, 7. Della Rocca also rejects the logical interpretation of ideas about to be discussed, as I do.

1111 say "representation or mental act" for the following reason. Among Spinoza's contemporaries, there

was a difference of opinion concerning the nature of ideas. Some, such as Malebranche, saw ideas as

objects of the mind; others, such as Amauld, saw ideas as forms of mental actions, such as perception. I

will not discuss whether Spinoza takes ideas to be objects created by a mental act or the acts of mind

themselves because it is not relevant to my purpose here. For a discussion of this distinction in Descartes,

Amauld, and Malebranche, see Steven Nadler, Am auld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1989), Steven Nadler, Malebranche and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1992).

112 For an interpretation that takes ideas at least sometimes to be logical entities, see E. M. Curley,

Spinoza's Metaphysics: A n Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge,: Harvard University Press, 1969), 124f. For a

criticism of that interpretation, see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 50-54, Della Rocca, Representation

and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, 8. According to Bennett, Albert Balz believes that Spinoza's use of

"idea" refers to logical entities throughout the Ethics. Curley recognizes that the ideas discussed in most

of the passages cited in this chapter are not logical entities, however, because he believes Spinoza

switches from a logical conception to a psychological conception with the introduction of ideas of ideas

(see 2p29 for that doctrine).

2p49; Curley, 484; Geb 11/130.

114 This is not to say that Spinozist ideas are all-things-considered judgments, by any means. In fact, they

need not even be judgments at which we consciously arrive at all. By judgment, I mean nothing more

than some proposition that we affirm. Instead of calling Spinozist ideas "judgments," I could have chosen

to call them "beliefs." I chose "judgment," however, because it connotes an act of mind more strongly

than "belief." This emphasis on mental action better accords with Spinoza's intent, as I will discuss

below. This is essentially Descartes' notion of judgment as well, for he holds a judgment to be nothing


248

more than the volitional act in which we assent to some idea. See, for example, Descartes" Principles, I,

§34 (CSMK 1,204; AT VIIIA/18).

115 3d3; Curley, 493; Geb 11/139. I prefer to translate "quibus" as "in which," rather than Curley's "by

which." Bennett agrees saying, "In p59d Spinoza implies that pleasure and unpleasure [his translations of

laetitia and tristitia] cause the upward and downward movements, but his usual view is that they are those

movements. (That is why I render d3 with 'in which the body's power' etc. rather than ‘b y which the

body's power'...)" Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 254.

116 "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things" (2p7; Curley,

451; Geb 11/89). Spinoza applies this to particular modes, including ideas, saying, "so also a mode of

extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways" (2p7s;

Curley, 451; Geb 11/90). See also 3p2s, where Spinoza says, "the Mind and the Body are one and the same

thing, which is now conceived under the attribute of Thought, now under the attribute of Extension. The

result is that the order, or connection, of things is one..." The exact nature of Spinoza's parallelism or the

nature of this "expression" need not concern us here; all that is relevant is how it applies to affects.

117 3p ll; Curley, 500; Geb 11/148.

118 Spinoza speaks in this manner in the General Definition of the Affects, among other places, where he

connects the power of the mind to the power of the body, as I have here. See Part 3, General Definition of

the Affects; Curley, 542; Geb 11/203. Bennett speaks of the changes in power involved in the affects very

generally, not attributing them to the body or the mind, preferring instead to speak of the health of the

individual as a whole Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 254.

119 For a discussion of the relevant terms "affection" [affectio] and "affect" [affectus], and how they are to

be understood with regard to body and mind, see Jean Marie Beyssade, "Nostri Corporis Affectus: Can an

Affect in Spinoza Be 'of the Body'?," in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist (Papers Presented at the

Third Jerusalem Conference), ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999). Beyssade argues


249

that h ow w e understand the nature of an affect depends in part on how w e interpret the phrase "at the

same time" [et simul] in this definition.

120 3, General Definition of the Affects; Curley, 542; Geb 11/203.

121 Beyssade agrees. See Beyssade, "Nostri Corporis Affectus: Can an Affect in Spinoza Be 'of the Body1?,"

118-19.

122 3p58: "Apart from the Joy and Desire that are passions, there are other affects of Joy and Desire that

are related to us insofar as we act" (Curley, 529; Geb 11/187). See the demonstration to that proposition

for the specific mention of adequate ideas.

1233p59s; Curley, 530; Geb n/189. Spinoza's setting aside of the purely bodily aspect of emotions is

reminiscent of Seneca's Stoic rejection of the relevance of the bodily aspect of emotions as well. Seneca

says, "for if any one supposes that pallor, falling tears, prurient itching or deep-drawn sigh, a sudden

brightening of the eyes, and the like, are an evidence of passion and a manifestation of the mind, he is

mistaken and fails to understand that these are disturbances of the body." See "On Anger," Seneca, Moral

Essays, 173. The question of the nature of the relation between Seneca's and Spinoza's theories of the

emotions is an interesting one, though more than can be addressed here. For more on this connection, see

Donald Rutherford, "Salvation as a State of Mind: The Place of Acquiescentia in Spinoza's Ethics," British

Journal for the History of Philosophy 7, no. 3 (1999).

124 4p8; Curley, 550: Geb 11/215.

125 Allison agrees, citing both 4p8 and 4pl4; see Allison, Benedict De Spinoza : An Introduction, 145-7.

i*> Curley, 553; Geb 11/219.

127 Garrett also suggests that affects and ideas are related in the same way as I argue here. Garrett says,

"Spinoza construes the affective and the representational as two aspect of the same mental events or

entities;" see Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory," 296.

128 Interestingly, Della Rocca claims that what I argue for here - that all objects and acts of the mind are in

fact ideas, including volitions and affects - is implicit in 2a3 ("there are no modes of thinking...unless


250

there is in the same Individual the idea of the thing loved, desired, etc..." [Curley, 448; Geb 11/85]). See

Michael Della Rocca, "The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will," Nous 37, no. 2 (2003): 204.

Note, further, that 2a3 specifically names passions of love and desire. If Della Rocca is right to trace these

doctrines to 2a3, then it must be the case that all passions are really ideas simply from 2a3, as Della Rocca

notes. I am not certain that all of this is implicit in 2a3, however.

129 Amihud Gilead, who applies the term to Spinoza, says, "it is clear that the basic affects, and

consequently all the affects, depend on and follow from cognition..." See Amihud Gilead, "Human

Affects as Properties of Cognitions in Spinoza's Philosophical Psychotherapy," in Desire and Affect: Spinoza

as Psychologist (Papers Presented at the Third Jerusalem Conference), ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little

Room Press, 1999), 172.

Segal follows him in using this label. Neither discusses the current uses of the term "cognitivism,"

however.

130 3plls: "...apart from these three I do not acknowledge any other primary affect. For I shall show in

what follows that the rest arise from these three" (Curley, 501; Geb 11/149).

131 Bennett argues that joy and sadness are too narrow to render laetitia and tristitia; Bennett, A Study of

Spinoza’s Ethics, 253-4. Though I am sympathetic to his concern, I am not sure that his "pleasure" and

"unpleasure" are significantly better. I expect the reader to be able to distinguish Spinoza's use of "joy"

and "sadness" from our everyday common uses of those terms. As such, I have elected to follow

Curley's translation.

1323plls; Curley, 500-1; Geb 11/149. For reasons similar to those cited above in footnote 39, I prefer to

translate "qua mens...transit" as "in which the mind passes." Ibid., 254. The German translation accords

with my preference in this passage, rendering “qua" here as "in denen," which means "in which."

Inconsistently, however, Bartuschat renders the “quibus" in 3d3 as "von denen," which means "by which."

See Bartuschat's translation, Spinoza, Ethik in Geometrischer Ordnung Dargestellt, 223 and 45. The French


251

generally translate the "qua" as "par lesquelles," however, which means "by which." See Pautrat's

translation, Spinoza, tth ique - Bilingue, 223.

133 "Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the Affect an

action; otherwise, a passion." (3d3; Curley, 493; Geb 11/139).

134 Spinoza's definition of hate is to be found at Definition of the Affects VII (Curley, 533; Geb 11/193) and

3pl3s (Curley, 502; Geb 11/151).

135 Definition of the Affects I; Curley, 531; Geb 11/190.

136 In this chapter, I will not address the claim that desire is the essence of man in some sense or another, a

claim related to Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus. See 3p6 and 3p7 for that doctrine. See also Bennett, A

Study of Spinoza's Ethics, chapters 9 and 10, Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology." I take up

this issue in the following chapter, however.

137 This claim, that desire is simply a motivating Joy or Sadness, accords with Bennett's treatment of

desire. He finds that desire has no place in Spinoza's psychology that Joy and Sadness do not fill

themselves; see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 259. Someone might claim that the Joy we take in

something and any desire it might engender are phenomenologically distinct, though I see no reason why

that must entail that they are ontologically independent. They could be two phenomenologically distinct

aspects of the same complex idea, or affect. Unfortunately, Spinoza gives us very little with which to

understand desire in his system.

138 Other commentators who address the cognitive nature of the affects omit or expressly set aside desire,

due to its difficult position in Spinoza's system. See, for example, Gilead, "Human Affects as Properties of

Cognitions in Spinoza's Philosophical Psychotherapy," passim, Gideon Segal, "Beyond Subjectivity:

Spinoza's Cognitivism of the Emotions," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2000): 2n2.

139 For discussion of this aspect of Spinoza's thought, see Allison, Benedict De Spinoza : An Introduction,

chapter 5, Delahunty, Spinoza, chapter 8, Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory."


252

140 Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 286. Spinoza says, "no affect can be restrained by the true

knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect" (4dl4;

Curley, 553; Geb 11/219). Bennett specifically quotes Descartes" Passions §48, where Descartes says, "some

people.. .never let their will fight with its own weapons, but only with ones which some passions provide

as a defense against other passions. What I call its own weapons are firm and determinate judgments

concerning the knowledge of good and bad, with which the will has resolved to regulate the actions of

this life."

141 Delahunty makes a similar complaint; see Delahunty, Spinoza, 245-6. In fact, this criticism is over a

century old at least, having been raised by H Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1901), 258-9. See also David Bidney, The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza; a Study in the

History and Logic of Ideas (New Haven: Yale university press, 1940), 252.

142 Lee C. Rice, "Action in Spinoza's Account of Affectivity," in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist

(Papers Presented at the Third Jerusalem Conference), ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press,

1999), 164. The quote is from Max Whartovsky.

3d3; Curley, 493; Geb 11/139.

144 3p58; Curley, 529; Geb 11/187.

148 3p59; Curley, 529; Geb 11/188.

146 3p6: "Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being." Curley, 498; Geb

II/146. The conatus will be discussed at greater length in the following chapter.

442 4pl; Curley, 547; Geb 11/210.

148 4pl4d; Curley, 553; Geb 11/219.

149 Ursula Goldenbaum, "The Affects as a Condition of Human Freedom in Spinoza's Ethics," in Spinoza on

Reason and the Free Man, ed. Yirmiahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 2004).

150 According to Cicero, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, said that belief was like an open hand, while

knowledge was like a fist. See Academica in Cicero, De Natura Deorum. Academica, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb


253

Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 2.145. A Socratic statement of this

view can be found at Protagoras 351B to 357E. See Plato, Plato: Complete Works, 781-86. See also the

discussion of Spinozist action theory at the end of Chapter 4.

151 Gueroult agrees. See Gueroult, Spinoza, Vol. 2,494. Contrast Spinoza's circumspect and limited view of

the power of reason against the passions with Seneca, for example, who says, "I will assert this - that the

wise man is not subject to any injury. It does not matter, therefore, how many darts are hurled against

him, since none can pierce him...the spirit of the wise man is impregnable." De Constantia, iii.5; Seneca,

Moral Essays, p. 57.

152 Gueroult agrees that ideas or beliefs do not cause desires via transuent causation, i.e., where the cause

is external to the effect. Instead, he suggests, ideas and desires are essentially connected, so that ideas are

causally related to desires as follows: "elle se l'incorpore au lieu de le susciter du dehors" Gueroult,

Spinoza, Vol. 2,494.

153 Della Rocca, "The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will," 220. According to Della Rocca, all

mental objects must reduce fully to ideas, for, if there were some non-cognitive mental object, it would be

so different from ideas that it could not causally interact with them. This, Della Rocca suggests, would be

a violation of parallelism; that is, there cannot be causal interaction between distinct kinds of entity. So,

just as all matter is at root of a homogenous kind, so too must the mental realm entirely reduce to ideas.

154 3p2d; Curley, 494; Geb 11/141.

155 See Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, chapters 7 and 8.

156 3p6; Curley, 498; Geb 11/146.

157 3p7; Curley, 499; Geb 11/146.

158 3p9s; Curley, 500; Geb II/147-8.

159 For excellent studies of the conatus, see Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 231-51, Della Rocca,

"Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology," 192-266. Another notable study is Daniel Garber, "Descartes and

Spinoza on Persistence and Conatus," Studia Spinozana 10 (1995). Like my approach in this chapter,


254

Garber's paper can be read as an attempt to understand the conatus from the perspective of Part 2 of the

Ethics. Whereas I focus on Spinoza's treatment of ideas and faculties, however, Garber looks to Spinoza's

physical theory and his doctrine of inertia, as well as offering a useful comparison of Spinoza's

understanding of that doctrine to Descartes' use of the same term.

160 In Part IV of the Republic, Plato divides the soul into three parts, a rational, a spirited, and an appetitive

soul, or part; see Republic, Part IV in Plato, Plato: Complete Works, 435e-39e. Plato may have a somewhat

different view in Republic VIII, however. Gassendi may fall into this category as well, since he posits that

humans have both a rational and a corporeal soul. See Gassendi, Syntagma, The Physics, Section I, Book

IV, Chapter 8, in Gassendi, The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, trans. Craig Brush (New York: Johnson

Reprint, 1972), 413. For a different way of partitioning the soul, one that has much in common with

Descartes' division of the mind into distinct activities or faculties, see Aristotle's De Anima II. Aristotle,

The Basic Works of Aristotle, trans. Richard McKeon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941).

161 Descartes distinguishes between the intellect and will in a variety of places. For a paradigm case, see

his discussion of error in the fourth Meditation. See also Passions I, §§17-20 (CSMK I, 335; AT XI/342).

Descartes rejected the kind of partitioning carried out by Plato and Aristotle, however. See Descartes,

Meditation 6 (CSMK II, 59; AT VII/86). For more on that rejection, see Steven Wagner, "Descartes on

Parts of the Soul," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45, no. 1 (1984).

162 For example, Aquinas claims that the five genera of powers of the soul are distinguished by five

distinct operations of the soul. These operations are distinguished by their objects; see Thomas Aquinas,

Summa Theologiae (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964-6), Prima Pars, Q. 78, art. I ad 6 .1 do not wish to

attribute to Aquinas or Descartes an overly simplistic faculty psychology, however. For example, despite

suggesting that the distinct powers of mind pick out distinct souls in the above referenced passage,

Aquinas elsewhere explains that the man performs these acts, not the faculties; see Aquinas, Summa

Theologiae, Prima Secundae Partis, Q. 17, art. I ad 2. Descartes also emphasizes the unity of the soul


255

(Meditation 6; CSMK II, 59; AT VII/86), both thinkers instead distinguishing its actions and objects into

distinct categories of volition and cognition. Regardless, Spinoza rejects even this, as I will argue below.

163 For more on the complexities of medieval faculty psychology, see Edward P. Mahoney, "Sense,

Intellect, and Imagination in Albert, Thomas, and Siger," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval

Philosophy, ed. Kenny Kretzmann, and Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

164 For more on the Scholastic background to 17th Century faculty psychology, see Gary Hatfield, "The

Cognitive Faculties," in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. Dan Garber and

Michael Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

165 Descartes, Meditations, Fourth Meditation (AT VII, 58; CSMII, 40).

166 Descartes, Meditations, Fourth Meditation (AT VII, 57; CSM II, 40).

167 Descartes, Meditations, Fourth Meditation (AT VII, 60; CSM II, 41).

168 Descartes recognizes three kinds of distinction: a real distinction, which exists only between

substances, such that one can be conceived clearly and distinctly without the other and vice versa; a

modal distinction, which exists between two distinct modes of the same substance, such that the two

modes may be conceived separately from one another, but neither may be conceived without also

conceiving of their substance (a modal distinction also exists between a substance and its mode); and a

conceptual distinction, which exists between a substance and its primary attribute, such that one cannot

be conceived clearly without the other and vice versa. For Descartes, the Intellect and the Will can each

be conceived without the other, for one can imagine the power of representation without imagining the

power of affirmation and vice versa. An act of affirmation, on the other hand, cannot be conceived apart

from some act of representation; but the power to affirm may perhaps be considered without considering

the power of representation. Neither the Intellect nor Will can be conceived apart from a Mind, however.

So, for Descartes, the distinction between Intellect and Will is a modal distinction, according to his

understanding of that distinction. Thus, the Intellect and Will are distinct faculties of mind.; see Principles


256

I, 60-62 (CSMK I, 213-214; AT VIIIA/28-30). See also the Letter to Gibieuf, 19 January 1642 (CSMK III,

201-204; AT III/473-480).

169 Note that Descartes describes ideas as "images of things". He also claims that they are wholly passive.

It is against this view of ideas that Spinoza will aim his own account, discussed below.

179 Curley, 425; Geb 11/61.

™ Curley, 432; Geb 11/69.

1721 have suggested that the function of 2p48 is to distinguish Spinoza's psychology from Descartes' and

others. Wolfgang Bartuschat suggests that 2p48 serves another purpose in addition; see Bartuschat,

Spinozas Theorie Des Menschen, 126. Bartuschat notes that 2p48 comes directly after Spinoza's discussion of

adequate knowledge, which, for Spinoza, is the source of the mind's activity and freedom. By denying

the freedom of the will immediately after this discussion, Spinoza clarifies the nature of this activity and

freedom, suggesting that the activity and freedom of adequate ideas must be understood solely in the

context of a necessary causal order. In other words, Bartuschat perhaps rightly sees 2p48 as playing a role

in Spinoza's denial of a libertarian freedom of the will.

1731 say "often attributed," of course, because there is some controversy over whether Descartes himself

truly was what today might be called a Cartesian libertarian with regard to the Will. There are several

passages that suggest Descartes was a kind of compatibilist and not a libertarian at all. So, for example,

Descartes says, "the more I incline in one direction - either because I clearly understand that reasons of

truth and goodness point that way, or because of a divinely produced disposition of my inmost thoughts

- the freer is my choice" (Meditations 4; CSMK II, 40; AT VII/58). In other words, the more strongly

determined his choice is by his dispositions, beliefs, or, perhaps, by divine grace, the freer his action. In

general, Descartes rejected what is called "liberty of contrariety" but accepted "liberty of contradiction."

For this distinction, see Eustachius a Sancto Paolo, Summa Philosophiae Quadrapartita (1609), First part,

treatise I, discourse 1, question 3. See also John Cottingham Roger Ariew, and Tom Sorell, ed., Descartes'

Meditations: Background Source Materials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 78.


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174 lp28: "Every singular thing, or any thing which is finite and has a determinate existence, can neither

exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and produce an effect by

another cause, which is also finite and has a determinate existence." (Curley, 432; Geb 11/69)

175 2p40sl; Curley, 477; Geb 11/121.

176 Spinoza's brief argument against abstraction is reminiscent of Berkeley's argument in the Introduction

to his Principles of Human Knowledge, though Berkeley's is more thorough, certainly. See the Introduction

to the Principles in George Berkeley, Works of George Berkeley, trans. A. A. Luce and T.E. Jessop (London:

Thomas Nelson, 1948-57). For more on Spinoza's nominalism, see Lee Rice, "Le Nominalisme De

Spinoza," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24, no. 1 (1994). For more on Berkeley's argument against

abstraction, see Ken Winkler, "Berkeley on Abstract Ideas," Archivfuer Geschichte der Philosophie 65 (1983).

177 Compare Spinoza's argument here to Locke's discussion of faculties. He says, "for if it be reasonable to

suppose and talk of Faculties, as distinct Beings, that can act (as we do, when we say the Will orders, and

the Will is free,) 'tis fit that we should make a speaking Faculty, and a walking Faculty, and a dancing

Faculty, .. .as well as make the Will and Understanding to be Faculties." John Locke, An Essay Concerning

Human Understanding, Peter H. Nidditch ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), II.xxi.17; p. 242.

178 For a discussion of Spinoza's rejection of universals as presented in 2p40sl, see Bennett, A Study of

Spinoza's Ethics, 180-82. For a different view, see Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in

Spinoza, 59-64.

179 See, for example, Descartes' Letter to Regius, May 1641, (CSMK III, 182; AT III, 372) and Passions I, 17

(CSM 1,335; AT XI, 342). See also the passage quoted from Meditation 3, above.

iso por discussions of this identification, see Allison, Benedict De Spinoza : An Introduction, 119-23, Bennett,

A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 162-7, Delahunty, Spinoza, 33-6. See especially Della Rocca, "The Power of an

Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will." Della Rocca argues this point in great detail. My discussion in this

section owes much to his work.


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181 For evidence that Spinoza would reject a non-cognitive account of imaginations, consider what he says

in 2p49s, where he claims that our visual imagination of a winged horse involves the affirmation of wings

to a horse. In other words, these imaginations involve affirmations that are propositional in structure.

182 2p49; Curley, 484; Geb D/130.

183 Spinoza's view that every cognition involves an affirmation may strike some as odd, though it has

some historical precedent. According to a widely held Scholastic view, for example, when the mind forms

propositions, it affirms some predicate of a subject. So Scipion Dupleix presents his interpretation of

Aristotle's view that the understanding performs three actions and thus has three faculties. The first is the

mere grasping of concepts, such as 'man' and 'rational.' The second is the "enunciative faculty," in which

the mind predicates one concept of another, such as "man is rational," thus forming propositions. The

third is the "rational faculty," in which man reasons using several propositions. Dupleix advances this

view in his Physics (Book 8, ch. 23, §12), published in his textbook, TheCorpus of Philosophy. See Roger

Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell, ed., Descartes' Meditations: Background Source Materials

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 129, Scipion Dupleix, Corps De Philosophie (1623).

Similarly, in their influential Port Royal Logic, Amauld and Nicole identify the mind's forming a

proposition with its making a judgment. They say, "this is called affirming or denying, and in general

judging. This judgment is also called a proposition."Part 2, ch. 3, in Antoine and Pierre Nicole Amauld,

Logic, or the A rt of Thinking, trans. Jill Vance Buroker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 82.

Concerning even simple apprehension, Descartes claims that we cannot conceive of a thing unless we

conceive of it as existing. Descartes says, "existence is contained in the idea or concept of every single

thing, since we cannot conceive of anything except as existing" (Second replies; CSMK II, 117; AT

Vn/166). In other words, even in the first act of the understanding, simple apprehension, we make an

affirmation by predicating existence to the subject being apprehended. And similarly, Gassendi believes

that to conceive of a concept, such as "horse," is really to conceive "a horse exists." In other words, to

conceive of something is to conceive of it as existing (Second replies; CSMK II, 117; AT VII/166). Perhaps


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Spinoza is following Descartes and Gassendi in holding that even simple apprehension to be an act of

affirmation. Accordingly, in the first act of mind, we affirm existence of some thing, for example, "man

exists." In the second act, we predicate one of the other, as explained above, and so on with the third. In

other words, then, all the acts of the understanding involve affirmations of some sort or other, either the

attribution of a predicate to a subject, or the attribution of existence to a subject. See Book II, Exercise 4,

Article 4 in his Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos, 1624; Ariew, ed., Descartes' Meditations:

Background Source Materials, 174.When Spinoza proceeds to justify his identification of volition and idea,

however, he does not rely on Aristotelian or even Cartesian notions of idea and predication, however.

Indeed, he presents his own theory as a rejection of these views.

184 Della Rocca, "The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will." Gueroult agrees with my reading,

glossing 2p49 as follows: "les differents actes d'affirmer ou nier (les volitions) ne sont pas exterieurs aux

idees, mais appartiennent a leur essence." Gueroult, Spinoza, Vol. 2,497.

185 2p49d; Curley, 484-5; Geb 11/130.

186 Like 'involve' [involvere], 'pertain' [pertinere] receives no explicit definition from Spinoza. Another

place he employs it is in lp7, where he says: "it pertains to the nature of substance to exist," (Curley 412;

Geb 11/49) a doctrine that could be restated as 'existence is a part of the essence of substance' or 'in

substance, essence and existence are identical.' Again the French and German translations suggest this

understanding, taking pertinere as appartenir and gehoren, both of which translate as "to belong." See

Spinoza, Ethik in Geometrischer Ordnung Dargestellt, 201, Spinoza, tth ique - Bilingue, 185.

187 See, for example, the explanation given of the definition of the affect of desire in the Definitions of the

Affects, where Spinoza refers to volitions.

188 Delahunty, employing an idea from Geach, states that, for Spinoza, ideas are both propositional in

structure and assertoric in force. When we discuss ideas, then, we refer to their propositional content.

When we refer to volitions, we refer to their assertoric force; see Delahunty, Spinoza, 33-35. Curley also

makes reference to Geach on this point; see E. M. Curley, "Descartes, Spinoza, and the Ethics of Belief," in


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Spinoza: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, ed. Genevieve Lloyd (London: Routledge, 2004), 208.

Perhaps similarly, Della Rocca claims that ideas are individual expressions of the mind's power, each

bearing a kind of psychic force in Della Rocca, "The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will."

189 3 Postulate 1; Curley, 493; Geb 11/139. By parallelism, this postulate may be restated in terms of the

mind, as Spinoza does at 3 p ll, saying, "the idea of any thing that increases or diminishes, aids or

restrains, our Body's power of acting, increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our Mind's power of

thinking" (Curley, 500; Geb 11/148).

190 3pl4: "If the Mind has once been affected by two affects at once, then afterwards, when it is affected by

one of them, it will also be affected by the other" (Curley, 502; Geb 11/151). This doctrine can be found in

Locke and Berkeley but was most famously put to use by Hume in the next century. See, for example,

Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.l.iv. Its origin may lie in Aristotle, however. See De Memoria et

Reminiscentia in the Parva Naturalia, 451b5-452a5; Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, 612-13.

191 For more on Spinoza's use of these terms, see Beyssade, "Nostri Corporis Affectus: Can an Affect in

Spinoza Be 'of the Body'?."

192 In his Introduction to his edited volume, Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, Yirmiyahu Yovel

supports my conclusion that ideas have a tripartite nature, that is, that they may be considered in three

ways, as a representation, an affirmation, and an affect, when he says, "just as an idea is at once an act of

judgment - the affirmation of its own content - so it is also an emotive event. Ideas and emotions are not

separate entities, but aspects of the same; the cognitive content is inseparable from an affective event in

which it resonates;" see Yirmiyahu Yovel, Desire and A ffect: Spinoza as Psychologist; Papers Presented at the

Third Jerusalem Conference (Ethica lii), Spinoza by 2000; V. 3 (New York: Little Room Press ; Distributed by

Fordham University Press, 1999), xiv.

193 Curley, 498; Geb 11/146.

194 Curley, 499; Geb 11/146.


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195 Spinoza discusses this aspect of the human being briefly in the physical digression after 2pl3. Dan

Garber correctly identifies the value of this digression for a larger understanding of the conatus. As

Garber argues, the general structures of the conatus of the body are paralleled by analogous structures in

the mind. In addition, I would argue that these two structures would also find a parallel in an analysis of

human appetites and desires. This aspect of Spinoza's parallelism underlies his attempt to provide a

mechanistic account of psychology and his assumption that the mind operates in a way analogous to

physical bodies. See Garber, "Descartes and Spinoza on Persistence and Conatus."

196 Gueroult accords a great significance to the relation between desire and will in 3p9s. In his discussion

of the will, Gueroult says, "en effet, toute idee, enveloppant son affirmation, envelope par la meme un

effort pour perseverer dans cette affirmation et un desir pour toute chose qui favorise celle-ci. Cette chose

est en consequence representee comme bonne, et cette representation du bon, accompagnant

necessairement le desir, est, de ce fait, concjue comme sa cause, alors qu'elle en est l'effet" (Gueroult,

Spinoza, 494.) I am not sure whether the relation between will and desire implicit in 2p49 is sufficient to

explain Spinoza's denial of teleology, as Gueroult implies, but it may be an essential part of that denial.

Certainly it is relevant to understanding the conatus, as I argue above.

197 See Garber, "Descartes and Spinoza on Persistence and Conatus." Though Spinoza does not explicitly

discuss mereology, he is committed to the view that a collection of modes may be considered as an

aggregate mode only if the collective have some shared ratio of motion and rest, such that the aggregate

tends toward its own perseverance. A collection of modes that lacks this coherence cannot qualify as an

entity in its own right. Or so one might infer from Spinoza's laconic statements on the issue.

198 If every composite entity is individuated by its component parts, it would seem, there must be some

fundamental particles or bodies that are not composite and that have their own principle of

individuation. It is likely that Spinoza intends there to be simplest bodies, individuated only by a certain

degree of motion or rest, not by a ratio among parts. So, after presenting his basic laws of motion, Spinoza

says, "this will be sufficient concerning the simplest bodies, which are distinguished from one another


262

only by motion and rest, speed and slowness" (Part 2, Axiom 2"; Curley, 460; Geb 11/99). Spinoza does

not provide enough on which to make any strong attributions, but Bennett has provided a fascinating

speculation on how Spinoza's physics might work, arguing that Spinoza in fact employs a "field

metaphysic." See Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, chapter 4.

199 For Spinoza, the cognitive content of a desire for x is, arguably, the belief that “x is desirable" or, more

accurately, "x would be good to have." This resembles Anscombe's discussion of desire as well. See G. E.

M. Anscombe, Intention (New York: Blackwell, 1958), §37. For an argument that this account of desire is

not sufficient to explain human action, see Dennis W. Stampe, "The Authority of Desire," Philosophical

Review 96, no. 3 (1987). This topic will be discussed at greater length near the end of chapter 4, where a

clear statement of Spinoza's moral psychology is attempted.

Notes to Chapter Three

200 Ethics, 4pl7s; Curley, 554; Geb 11/221.

201 2 Preface; Curley, 446; Geb n/84.

202 So Stuart Hampshire says, "the order of Spinoza's thought and the whole structure of his philosophy

cannot be understood unless they are seen as culminating in his doctrine of human freedom and

happiness and in his prescription of the right way of life." Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 25.

203 Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, chapter 14, Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology.",

Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory.", Koistinen, "Weakness of Will in Spinoza's Theory of Human

Motivation.", Lin, "Memory and Personal Identity in Spinoza.", Savile, "Spinoza, Medea, and Irrationality

in Action."

204 In the above mentioned works, Della Rocca discusses only how akrasia could follow from more basic

Spinozist principles; Savile and Lin concern themselves with the same question, in effect responding to

and building on Della Rocca's explanation. Koistinen defends yet another interpretation of Spinoza's


263

account of how akrasia happens. Bennett discusses Spinoza's solutions to the problem of akrasia for ten

pages of his lengthy work and is largely dismissive. Don Garrett discusses Spinoza's solutions to akrasia,

though he is primarily interested in Spinoza's ethical thought. For general overviews that are consistent

with my work here, see Allison, Benedict De Spinoza : An Introduction, chapter 5, Yovel, Spinoza and Other

Heretics, chapter 6.

205 See, for example, David Pugmire, "Perverse Preference: Self-Beguilement or Self-Division?," Canadian

Journal of Philosophy 24, no. 1 (1994).

2°6 por discussion of Plato's account of akrasia in the Republic and the distinct account in the Lazos, see

Bobonich, "Akrasia and Agency in Plato's Laws and Republic."

207 Edmund Henden, "Weakness of Will and Divisions of the Mind," European Journal of Philosophy 12, no.

2 (2004).

208 The cognitive dissonance theory of modem psychology, on the other hand, generally concerns an

inconsistency between behavior and belief. The original statement of this theory is in Leon Festinger, A

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957).

209 Terry Penner, "Plato and Davidson: Parts of the Soul and Weakness of Will," Canadian Journal of

Philosophy (1990).

210 Penner, "Socrates on the Strength of Knowledge: Protagoras 351b-357e."

211 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 92-95.

212 For an extended discussion of self-deception, see Alfred Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 2000). Mele argues against views that explain self-deception in terms of

interpersonal deception, which he calls agency views, instead favoring what he calls a deflationary view.

213 See Richard Joyce, "Early Stoicism and Akrasia," Phronesis 40, no. 3 (1995). Joyce provides an account of

early Stoic thought according to which the mind is unitary yet may suffer akrasia. Joyce focuses on

Chrysippus as the representative of Stoicism, but also discusses other major figures. For another account

of the Stoics affirming akrasia, see Justin Gosling, "The Stoics and Akrasia," Apeiron 20 (1987).


264

214 Spinoza's view, roughly, is that different complex ideas may represent different and mutually

incompatible goods, such that we develop incompatible desires, which then come into conflict. In some

cases, a desire arising from a false belief may overpower a rational desire, such that we are led to act

against what we know to be better, as will be discussed below. In some ways, Spinoza's view resembles

David Pears' homuncular explanation of akrasia, according to which separate clusters of belief-desire

combinations come into conflict. See David Pears, "Motivated Irrationality, Freudian Theory," in

Philosophical Essays on Freud, ed. Richard Wollheim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). See

also Donald Davidson, "Deception and Division," in Actions and Events, ed. E. LaPore (Oxford: Blackwell,

1985).

215 For a nice overview of passion and action in the 17th Century, see Susan James, Passion and Action: The

Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). See especially

James' discussion of the passions in Spinoza at pp. 145-56 and pp. 200-205.

216 Lenn Goodman also finds two senses of freedom in Spinoza's Ethics - absolute and human freedom, as

I do below. See Lenn Goodman, "Determinism: Spinoza, Maimonides, Aristotle," in Responsibility,

Character, and the Emotions, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 125-

26.

217 Don Garrett's treatment of ld7 omits criterion (1), focusing exclusively on (2). Because of this, he

mistakenly attributes a univocal account of freedom to Spinoza. See Don Garrett, The Cambridge

Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 286. Garrett also

mistakenly locates Spinoza’s definition of freedom at ld8, not ld7. Bennett may also be guilty of this

error.

2is Ipl7c2; Curley, 425; Geb 11/61.

219 lp25: "God is the efficient cause, not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence." (Curley,

431; Geb 11/67)


265

220 For more on the relation between determinism and freedom in the 17th Century, see Robert Sleigh,

Vere Chappell, and Michael Della Rocca, "Determinism and Human Freedom," in The Cambridge History of

Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Dan Garber and Michael Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998). Like most scholars, Sleigh, Chappell, and Della Rocca describe Spinoza as a compatibilist.

221 Thomas Hobbes, & John Bramhall, Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, trans. Vere Chappell

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 16.

222 This view of human freedom is similar to one that Leibniz attributes to the Stoics, saying, "the freedom

of the will is also understood in two different senses: one of them stands in contrast with the imperfection

or bondage of the mind, which is an imposition or constraint, though an inner one like that which the

passions impose; and the other sense is employed when freedom is contrasted with necessity. Employing

the former sense, the Stoics said that only the wise man is free; and one's mind is indeed not free when it

is possessed by a great passion, for then one cannot will as one should, i.e. with proper deliberation. It is

in this way that God alone is perfectly free, and that created minds are free only in proportion as they are

above passion; and this is a kind of freedom which pertains strictly to our understanding." Gottfried

Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett,

Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 175.

223 In other words, Spinoza may seem to identify the person with the faculty of reason, but in fact he does

not do so to the exclusion of the body. Contrast this view with the view expressed in the widely used late

Scholastic textbooks; cf. Paolo, Summa Philosophiae Quadrapartita, Third part, treatise IV, discourse I,

question 2. Excerpt translated in Roger; Cottingham Ariew, John; Sorell, Tom, Descartes' Meditations :

Background Source Materials, Cambridge Philosophical Texts in Context (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1998).

224 The details of the relation between ideas and action in Spinoza's system will be discussed in a

subsequent section, below.


266

225 For a statement of Spinoza's anti-ascetic attitude, see 4p45s, where he says: "it is the part of a wise

man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with

the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind,

which anyone can use without injury to another." (4p45s; Curley, 572; Geb 11/244) This scholium will be

revisited in the final chapter.

226 One result of Spinoza's parallelism is that physics and psychology are both basic sciences. Psychology

cannot in principle be reduced to physics. For more on this, see For a discussion of psychology as a basic

science in Spinoza, see Donald Davidson, "Spinoza's Causal Theory of the Affects," in Desire and Affect:

Spinoza as Psychologist, ed. Yirmiahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999), especially 107-09.

227 Bennett seems to make the same mistake that Garrett does. He says, "my being free in the ld7 sense is

my being the cause of all that happens in me..." Yet ld7 says, "that thing is called free which exists from

the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone." Clearly, Bennett represents ld7

as only involving the second half of this definition. From this misrepresentation, he concludes, "so we can

get from the 'freedom' which opens Part 1 to the 'freedom' which closes Part 4, and back again, through a

chain of Spinozistic biconditionals. Two of them (linking self-caused with adequate, and that with reason)

are doctrines of Spinoza's; the third (linking use of reason with living by its guidance) is not an

announced doctrine, but it controls all Spinoza's arguments about living by the guidance of reason."

Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 316-17. Other than this mistake, however, Garrett and Bennett

generally agree with my discussion here.

228 For example: "the Mind, as far as it can, strives to imagine those things that increase or aid the Body's

power of acting" (3pl2; Curley, 502; Geb 11/150). See also 4p8d, where Spinoza refers to the conatus

doctrine in 3p7 as concerning our striving to increase our power. This move is not without some

justification. In the first formulation, the conatus is our striving to persevere in our being. In the second,

the conatus strives to maintain or increase our power of acting. First, Spinoza equates our power of acting

with our ability to persevere, which is a plausible equation. Second, Spinoza slides from a striving for


267

mere perseverance or maintenance of power to the striving for an increase in power. This slide is justified,

given the rest of Spinoza's psychology, for the following reason. The human conatus is just appetite, or

desire. But the mind's desires are for that which brings Joy or pleasure, which in turn are things that

increase our power. At least in the case of human beings, then, we manifest our striving to persevere in

our being in a striving to increase our power. Therefore the slide from perseverance to increase in power

is reasonable.

229 Delahunty agrees, saying, "but although Spinoza would deny that free will enters into assenting, he

would nonetheless allow an important sense in which it remained true that assent could be called free or

unfree. For when I an drawn to affirm that p by an adequate perception of the truth of 'p', I am maximally

free, since true freedom is nothing other than to be determined to a certain response by the perception of

compelling rational justification for that response." See Delahunty, Spinoza, 35.

230 4p26d; Curley, 559; Geb 11/227.

231 Hobbes, Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, 30.

232 See 4p4 and its corollary.

233 Again, Bennett agrees, saying, "...Spinoza must be talking about degrees of freedom: when he says that

a free man is F, he must mean that a man is F to the extent that he is free. Part 4 tells us how to move

toward greater freedom, whereas Part 1 reminds us that we cannot go the whole way." See Steven L.

Barbone and Lee Rice, "Spinoza and the Problem of Suicide," International Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 2

(1994): 317. See also Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism, 107-08.

234 For a similar discussion of the relation between freedom and passion, see Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s

Heresy : Immortality and the Jewish M ind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 133-39.

235 Certain Scholastics, for example Suarez, distinguished between mental acts and bodily acts, where

mental acts included the formation of an intention. For more on this background, see Thomas Pink,

"Suarez, Hobbes and the Scholastic Tradition in Action Theory," in The Will and Human Action: From

A ntiquity to the Present Day, ed. M.W.F Stone, and Thomas Pink (London: Routledge, 2003).


268

236 Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 324f.

237 Ron Sandler also argues forcefully that Spinoza can admit sensations and the first kind of knowledge

in his unpublished dissertation. See Ronald Sandler, "Spinoza’s Ethical Theory," (University of

Wisconsin, 2001).

238 For a conclusive argument that the free man is not an ideal we try to emulate, see Daniel Garber, "Dr.

Fischelson's Dilemma: Spinoza on Freedom and Sociability," in Spinoza on Reason and The "Free Man", ed.

Yirmiahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 2004). As Garber argues, the real motivator for human

beings is to act from reason, not to emulate the ideal of the perfectly free man. Both Bennett and Garber

suggest that this free man, which plays a real role in Spinoza's Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,

plays no role in the Ethics.

239 This discussion may be influenced by a similar discussion in Descartes, in the Third Meditation (CSMK

II, 27; AT VII/39).

240 3p59s; Curley, 530; Geb 11/189.

241 For a discussion of Spinoza's egoism, see Michael Della Rocca, "Egoism and the Imitation of Affects in

Spinoza," in Spinoza on Reason and the Free Man, ed. Yirmiahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 2004).

See also Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory," 302-04. One of the earliest discussions of Spinoza's ethical

egoism is Charlie Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory (Patterson, NJ: Littlefield-Adams, 1959).

242 For a criticism of psychological egoism from a contemporary evolutionary perspective, see Elliott

Sober, and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). For an argument in favor of egoism, see Scott Berman,

"A Defense of Psychological Egoism," in Desire, Identity, and Existence: Essays in Honor of T.M. Penner, ed.

Naomi Reshotko (Edmonton, CA: Academic Print and Publishing, 2003).

243 3p58; Curley, 529; Geb 11/187.

244 3p59; Curley, 529; Geb 11/188.


269

245 For an account of Spinozist action in the context of his determinism, see Rice, "Action in Spinoza's

Account of Affectivity."

246 3p57s; Curley, 528-9; Geb 11/187.

247 3p29s; Curley, 510; Geb 11/162.

248 4p37s; Curley, 565; Geb 11/236.

249 See 4pl7, where Spinoza quotes Ovid's Medea.

Interestingly, however, Spinoza often uses terms other than 'to act' in cases of passionate behavior.

3d2; Curley, 493; Geb 11/139.

251 For an excellent discussion of this seeming contradiction, see Michael LeBuffe, "Why Spinoza Tells

People to Try to Preserve Their Being," Archiv fuer Geschichte der Philosophie 86, no. 2 (2004).

252 Somewhat similarly, Andrew Youpa argues that the length of one's life is not the aim of Spinoza’s

egoism, but its quality. See Andrew Youpa, "Spinozistic Self-Preservation," Southern Journal of Philosophy

41, no. 3 (2003).

253 It is common to claim that psychological egoism and the 'ought implies can' principle together entail

ethical egoism. For a dissenting view, see Terrance McConnell, "The Argument from Psychological

Egoism to Ethical Egoism," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 56, no. May (1978).

254 4p20; Curley, 557; Geb 11/224. See also 4pl8s.

255 For a discussion of Spinoza's moral concepts, see Garrett, "Spinoza's Ethical Theory," 285-95.

256 To complicate matters, Spinoza provides a variant of this understanding of the good in the Preface to

Part 4, where he says, "I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we may

approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we have set before ourselves" (Curley, 545;

Geb 11/208). Bennett takes the reference to a model of human nature to be a relic of an earlier draft. See

Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 296.

257 In addition to the LeBuffe article, see also John Carriero's excellent article John Carriero, "Spinoza on

Final Causality," in Oxford Studies in Early M odem Philosophy, Vol. 2, ed. Steven Nadler and Daniel Garber


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(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). As far as I can tell, only LeBuffe seems to appreciate the

importance of 3p9 for understanding Spinoza's doctrine of self-preservation.

258 For an in depth discussion of this issue, see LeBuffe, "Why Spinoza Tells People to Try to Preserve

Their Being," 141n25. For a roughly similar yet less developed interpretation, see Garrett, "Spinoza's

Ethical Theory," 302-05. For competing interpretations, see Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical

Psychology," 200-10, Mitchell Gabhart, "Spinoza on Self-Preservation and Self-Destruction," Journal of the

History of Philosophy 37, no. 4 (1999).

259 An interesting contrast can be found here between Spinoza and other thinkers concerning how to

account for human weakness. Spinoza's naturalism, specifically, the view that humans are a part of the

natural order, dictates that humans will always be acted upon, so that they will always suffer passions.

So, the fact that humans are a part of nature is Spinoza's explanation for human weakness. Descartes, on

the other hand, explains human weakness by reference to our dual nature. Our embodied state involves

animal spirits constantly striking our pineal gland, such that our mind is inevitably filled with

perceptions and passions. For Descartes, like Platonists before him, human weakness is caused by our

bodily nature. Pascal, Calvin, and others offer a postlapsarian explanation, citing the Fall of Man. See, for

example, Spinoza's Preface to Part 5, where he criticizes Descartes on these grounds. See also Passions of

the Soul, I, §34 (CSMK 1,341; AT XI/354). Finally, see Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (New

York: Penguin Books, 1966), §45.

260 For a discussion of suicide in Spinoza, see Gabhart, "Spinoza on Self-Preservation and Self-

Destruction.", Jon Miller, "Stoics and Spinoza on Suicide," in Der Einfluss Des Hellenismus A u f Die

Philosophie Der Frtihen Neuzeit, ed. Gabor Boros (Flarrassowitz, 2005). See also his unpublished

dissertation, Jon Miller, "Spinoza and the Stoics," (University of Toronto, 2002).

261 Contrast this view with that of Hobbes, who says, "a Law of Nature is a precept or general rule, found

out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or taketh away the

means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved." In other


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words, nature dictates that we pursue our own interest. For example, for Hobbes, "that every man ought

to endeavour peace" is such a law. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan : With Selected Variants from the Latin

Edition of 1668, trans. E. M. Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1994), Part I, Ch.xiv, pp. 79 & 80.

262 This view may at first appear to be the denial of intentional suicide. For suicide or death by falling may

not even cross the mind of the man who jumps from the burning building. Indeed, his mind could wholly

be occupied by fear of the flames. This case is clearly not a problem for Spinoza, but neither is the case

where the man realizes that jumping will bring his death. In the latter case, Spinoza would say, the man's

desire to avoid the flames simply overwhelms his knowledge that jumping will bring his death.

263 Garrett's discussion of seemingly altruistic acts in Spinoza accords with my own. See Garrett,

"Spinoza’s Ethical Theory," 302ff.

264 Spinoza presents this principle as a dictate of reason in 4p46, where he says, "he who lives according

to the guidance of reason strives as far as he can, to repay the other's Hate, Anger, and Disdain toward

him, with Love, or Nobility." (Curley, 572; Geb 11/245)

265 Note as well that Spinoza makes this famous claim - which amounts to the denial of a kind of

teleology in human psychology - in the same scholium as where he has equated the conatus with desire.

Much has been written about the allegedly non-teleological nature of Spinoza's conatus. Bennett takes

desire to be completely non-teleological, neither representational ideas nor affects being efficacious; only

the formal being of an idea is causally efficacious, he says. Against this, Della Rocca claims that both the

formal and objective being of an idea is involved in mental causation. That is, the cognitive content of the

idea is causally efficacious. I disagree with both authors, taking the affective aspect of an idea to be what

determines its causal efficacy, not its representational content, nor its formal being. I would argue that my

understanding of desire and the conatus could provide a new understanding of teleology in Spinoza,

though that is a task for another day. See Jonathan Bennett, "Spinoza and Teleology: A Reply to Curley,"

in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, ed. E. M. Curley and Pierre-Fran^ois Moreau (Leiden: Brill, 1990),

Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, chapter 9 and pp. 261-62, E. M. Curley, "On Bennett's Spinoza: The


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Issue of Teleology," in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, ed. E. M. Curley and Pierre-Fran^ois Moreau (Leiden:

Brill, 1990), Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology," 252-56, Jarrett, "Teleology and Spinoza's

Doctrine of Final Causes."

2“ 3p9s; Curley, 500; Geb 11/148.

267 John Aubrey and Oliver Lawson Dick, Brief Lives (Ann Arbor,: University of Michigan Press, 1957),

157.

268 Introduced in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud developed the notion of Todestreib in Civilization and

Its Discontents. See Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York:

W.W. Norton, 1938).

269 4p5; Curley, 549; Geb 11/214.

270 So Spinoza says in the Axiom to part 4: "there is no singular thing in nature than which there is not

another more powerful and stronger. Whatever one is given, there is another more powerful by which

the first can be destroyed." (Curley, 547; Geb 11/210)

271 Speaking generally of several thinkers in the 17th Century including Spinoza, Susan James says of the

passions, "while they incite us to pursue our advantage, they do not enable us to make fine

discriminations between beneficial and harmful states of affairs and often dispose us to bring about ends

which are actually detrimental to our well-being. They are consequently described as arbitrary,

unpredictable, enslaving, uncontrollable, and even pathological." She cites the Stoics as the origin of this

view, specifically Stobaeus, and mentions Hobbes, Glanvill, Charleton, and Pascal as other 17th Century

thinkers who hold this view. Susan James, "The Passions in Metaphysics and the Theory of Action," in The

Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. Dan Garber and Michael Ayers (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998), 914. See also A. A. Long, and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 410-11.

272 See Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 21-2. In

some formulations, another necessary condition for an instance of strict akrasia is this: S is or believes


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himself to be able to perform action x at time t. Spinoza does not discuss cases in which we fail to choose

an action in our interest out of a mistaken belief that we are incapable of said action. Further, this clause is

really peripheral to what is most interesting in cases of strict akrasia, which is action in the face of contrary

knowledge. As such, this additional condition will not concern us here.

273 For a discussion of the distinction between synchronic and diachronic akrasia in the context of a

Socratic action theory, see Penner, "Socrates on the Strength of Knowledge: Protagoras 351b-357e."

274 Also conspicuously absent from Spinoza's discussion here is stability. This suggests that the experience

of akrasia is not just a function of unstable beliefs and opinions, though Spinoza's discussion of vacillation

suggests that he also allows for that to occur. Instead, in 4pl7 and the surrounding propositions, Spinoza

is dealing only with strict akrasia. In Part 5, Spinoza does discuss the constancy of adequate knowledge, in

that it is knowledge sub specie aetemitatis, but more on that in next chapter.

275 4pl7s; Curley, 5543; Geb 11/221.

276 Spinoza's account is not as fine-grained as any contemporary accounts in many ways. For example,

strict akrasia is said to occur in an "all-things-considered judgment." The modifier "all-things-considered"

does not fit well with Spinoza’s theory of mind, however, because it implies a theory of selective

attention, which Spinoza does not have. To develop Spinoza's account further would require

extrapolating from his text significantly, such that the account being given would no longer be Spinoza's

but a contemporary Spinozist reconstruction. See note 73 for another way in which Spinoza's account

does not make distinctions found in contemporary theories. For a reconstruction of Spinoza's action

theory that does go beyond the text, see Section 8.

277 See also Koistinen, who makes a similar point, though his discussion is significantly different from my

own. Koistinen, "Weakness of Will in Spinoza's Theory of Human Motivation," 16-18.

278 4pl4; Curley, 553; Geb n/219.

279 Alfred Mele raises an important challenge for any theory that allows for akrasia: how are we to

determine a case of akrasia from one of compulsion? Alfred Mele, "Akratics and Addicts," American


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Philosophical Quarterly 39, no. 2 (2002). Spinoza does not take up this question, so it is not clear how or

even whether he could make this distinction. Lin tries to offer other grounds for distinguishing between

akratic action and compelled action, though I believe he fails in that regard. Lin, "Memory and Personal

Identity in Spinoza."

280 As Michael Della Rocca has already discussed these details at length, I will largely follow him here. See

Della Rocca, "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology."

281 3 Preface; Curley, 491; Geb 11/137. See also the Appendix to Part 1, as well as Bennett, A Study of

Spinoza's Ethics, 35-38. The aspect of Spinoza's naturalism at play here is both metaphysical and

explanatory. That is, he holds that all things are a part of Nature and that all events have natural causes

and explanations. There may be strains of Spinoza's thought that are anti-naturalistic, however, such as

his geometric method and his traditional placement of theology and metaphysics as the foundations of

knowledge. For example, Spinoza's naturalism seems to contrast with Locke's view, according to which

philosophers are epistemological under-laborers to the sciences. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human

Understanding, 10. For a modem expression of a naturalism that would reject these aspects of Spinoza's

system, see the Introduction to David Papineau, Philosophical Naturalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).

According to Papineau, holding that "first philosophy" must rest on something firmer than empirical

science is anti-naturalistic.

282 4 p4 c- Curley, 549; Geb 11/213. in many ways, this corollary expresses Spinoza's commitment to a

certain kind of human weakness or fallibility. See also note 58 on human weakness, the Fall, and

postlapsarianism.

288 4pl; Curley, 547; Geb 11/211.

284 4p7; Curley, 550; Geb 11/214.

285 For more on Spinoza's mechanistic psychology, see Allison, Benedict De Spinoza : An Introduction, 108,

Davidson, "Spinoza's Causal Theory of the Affects."


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286 gee the end of the previous chapter, as well as the already discussed Garber, "Descartes and Spinoza

on Persistence and Conatus." For more on individuation in Spinoza, see Steven L. Barbone, "What Counts

as an Individual for Spinoza?," in Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, ed. Olli Koistinen (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002), Lee Rice, "Spinoza on Individuation," in Spinoza: Essays in Interpretation, ed.

Eugene Freeman and Maurice Mandelbaum (LaSalle: Open Court Press, 1975).

287 "The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body..." (2pl3; Curley, 457; Geb 11/96).

288 por more on the notion of the mind as a spiritual automaton in Spinoza and subsequent thinkers, see

Lia Levy, Uautomate Spirituel (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000).

289 See Chapter Two for more discussion on the affective aspect of cognitions and section 8, below.

290 4 pi 4 ; Curley, 553; Geb 11/219.

291 4pl5; Curley, 553; Geb 11/220.

292 As commentators have noted, the term "true knowledge" sounds pleonastic, but it is meant to

distinguish between adequate and inadequate ideas, both of which Spinoza calls kinds of knowledge.

These terms are perhaps better translated as cognition, since the Latin for the three kinds of knowledge is

cognitio primi, secundi, et tertii generis.

293 4p9; Curley, 551; Geb 11/216.

294 3pl8d; Curley, 504; Geb 11/154.

295 Second Replies, CSMKII, 117; AT VII/166.

296 Della Rocca explains the interaction of affects in Spinoza by reference to an account of anticipation that

captures the spirit of Spinoza's enterprise. This account is not in the text, however. Spinoza himself rooted

the interaction of the affects in his rudimentary account of perception and imagination, as I have

explained. Della Rocca's 'anticipation' may be a useful way to talk about this aspect of Spinoza's theory,

without getting into the details of Spinoza's crude physical explanation of imagination. See Della Rocca,

"Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology," 227-30.

297 4pl0; Curley, 551; Geb 11/217.

298 4p60; Curley, 580; Geb 11/255.


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299 4pl7s; Curley, 554; Geb 11/221.

300 2p42; Curley, 478; Geb 11/123.

301 5p28; Curley, 609; Geb 11/297.

302 4p27; Curley, 559; Geb 11/227.

303 2p7s; Curley, 451; Geb 11/90)

304 2pl3; Curley, 457; Geb 11/96.

Notes to Chapter Four

305 Ethics, 4pl7s; Curley, 554; Geb 11/221.

306 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, HI.2.iii, 413.

307 Hume, Part III, Book II, Section iii; Ibid., 415.

308 ibid.

309 In this regard, Plato's solution has descendents in Davidson's later work on akrasia, as well as David

Pears' work in the early 80s. [Citation here]

310 The example and way of speaking here is inspired by an example from Mele, p. 83.

3114p66s; Curley, 584; Geb 11/260; my emphasis.

312 For discussion of similarities and differences between Spinoza's moral psychology and that of various

Stoics, see Firmin DeBrabander, "Psychotherapy and Moral Perfection: Spinoza and the Stoics on the

Prospect of Happiness," in Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, ed. Steven K. Strange and Jack Zupko

(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Pr, 2004), Susan James, "Spinoza the Stoic," in The Rise of M odem Philosophy,

ed. Tom Sorell (Clarendon Press, 1993), Jon Miller, "Stoics, Grotius, and Spinoza on Moral Deliberation,"

in Hellenistic and Early M odem Philosophy, ed. Jon Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Pr, 2003), Derk

Pereboom, "Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of

Christian Philosophers 11, no. 4 (1994). I will return briefly to the Stoic aspect of Spinoza's thought in the

final chapter.


277

313 See, for example, Epictetus, who asserts that the faculty of reason forms judgments, not a separate

faculty. Epictetus, Discourses, trans. W.A. Oldfather (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), 1.1.

314 For an excellent overview of this aspect of Stoic action theory, see Brennan, "Stoic Moral Psychology."

315 Stampe, "The Authority of Desire," 380.

316 As Shafer-Landau points out, however, many cognitivists, such as Nagel and Wiggins, call themselves

internalists. This is due, in part, to variant uses of the term intemalism. For more the current state of the

debate on these issues, see Shafer-Landau's excellent article. Shafer-Landau, "A Defense of Motivational

Extemalism."

317 Ibid.: 279.i

318 Shafer-Landau's challenge that the internalist must show not only that judgment can lead to

motivation, but that it must is accepted by Michael Brady. He argues for a conceptual connection between

judgment and motivation. See Michael Brady, "Valuing, Desiring, and Normative Priority," The

Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003).


Akrasia in Spinoza's Ethics - Eugene Marshall

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