Response to Schweitzer's view of Spinoza's ethics

The relation between Spinoza and Judaism and the ethics of the Greeks. Altruism and egoism.

Spinoza rejects the achievement of modern ethics as influenced by Christianity, viz. the regarding of altruism as something that belongs to the essence of ethics, and confines himself to the thought that in the last resort all ethical action aims at our own interests, though it may be at our highest spiritual ones. In order to avoid thinking anything which is not a necessity of thought, he goes back of his own free will into the captivity in which ancient ethics lives. (Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, tr. Campion, 2nd rev. ed. (1929), Chapter 10, p. 118)

Whether an act or intention is classified as selfish or altruistic is not a question of fact, but of a way of looking at it: the same facts may be classified either way. But only within limits.

Is whether we say that altruism is essential to ethics or that it is instead one's own interests ("thinking egoism" (ibid. p. 119)) that is essential -- are those both those claims merely ways of looking at things, not questions of fact? It may be very difficult -- or possibly nonsense -- to regard some acts as altruistic (e.g. self sacrifice, kindness), and some others as unselfish (greed, envy, etc.), but if, as Schweitzer adds, "though it may be at our highest spiritual interests", then nothing can be excluded from being regarded as a selfish act.

The Greek Ethics

Schweitzer says: "the captivity in which ancient ethics lives". What was this "captivity"? The Greeks asked: what is the good for man? And answered: existence in accord with the excellence that is proper and unique to man, which Socrates identifies as rational moral virtue. Spinoza, in contrast, identifies that excellence as caring for oneself alone, for one's own individual soul. Does the thoroughgoing reasoning of philosophy allow us to go no further than Spinoza?

Plato seems to say that when he says that the good man withdraws into his own affairs, like a traveller sheltering behind a wall from a storm, trying to preserve his own soul in the midst of men intent on viciousness (Republic 496c-d). But that is not what the historical Socrates did -- and it is very far from all that Plato has to say about ethics.

Among the excellences (moral virtues) Plato identifies justice or "doing one's duty towards other men" (Gorgias 507b). What is this duty (or correct conduct)? Plato contrasts what the good man does with what the bad man does, using a simple method of tautologies, asking if the good man does that, e.g. harms his enemies, then what does the evil man do? And he concludes that the good man not only harms no one, but benefits even his enemies. Is altruism a specific excellence that is proper and unique to man? Plato says just that in Republic 335d.

Judaism's Ethics

[According to Spinoza] whatever good [a man] does to others he never does for their sakes, but always for his own. (Schweitzer, p. 118)

So much then for Spinoza's inheritance from Judaism, because he does what Judaism always refused to do -- namely, to separate love of neighbor from love of God -- by claiming that the good for man consists in loving God (i.e. in loving Spinoza's pantheistic God = Nature) only. The parable of the merciful Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37) is the highest expression of that inheritance, applying 'neighbor' to the whole of humanity, not only to one's own tribe (thus not "loving only those who also love you"). Schweitzer, indeed, thought that if Spinoza "could let himself go, he would ... conduct a campaign against the morality of love and duty" (p. 118), but Spinoza is cautious not to go that far, already facing opposition both from the civil authorities and the synagogue (p. 118-119).

"... but always for his own sake." As with India's doctrine of reincarnation. If one helps the wretched, it is not for their sakes -- they deserve to be wretched for they are being punished for wrongs they committed in past lives. One helps them only for one's own sake, so that one's next reincarnation may be higher than one's present one.

Whatever is Natural is Rightful

Source: Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume IV: Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Leibniz (1958), xiv, 1.

[To say that] large fish have "the right" to devour small fish is simply to say that large fish can devour fish and that they are so made that they do so, given the occasion. "For it is certain that Nature, taken in the abstract, has sovereign right to do anything she can; in other words, her right is co-extensive with her power." The rights of any individual, therefore, are limited only by the limits of his power. And the limits of his power are determined by his nature.

Whether a given individual is led by enlightened reason or by the passions, he has a sovereign right to seek and to take for himself whatever he thinks useful, "whether by force, cunning, entreaty or any other means". The cause of this is that Nature is not limited by the laws of human reason, which aims at man's preservation .... natural right is limited only by desire and power and that desire and power are conditioned by the nature of a given individual.

Since every man has a natural impulse to self-maintenance and self-preservation, he is, therefore, naturally entitled to take any means which he thinks will help him to preserve himself. And he is entitled to treat as an enemy anyone who hinders the fulfillment of this natural impulse. Indeed, as they are very liable to the passions of anger, envy and hatred in general, "men are naturally enemies" .... just and unjust, sin and merit are "merely extrinsic notions" ... In the state of nature it is "just" for me to take whatever I think useful for my preservation and welfare: "justice" is measured simply by desire and power.

In organized society ... terms like 'just', 'unjust' and 'right' are given definite meanings. When understood in this way they are "merely extrinsic notions", referring not to properties of actions considered in themselves but to actions considered in relation to norms and rules set up by and resting on [social] agreement. One can add that the binding force of agreements rests on the power to enforce them. In the state of nature a man who has made an agreement with another is entitled "by nature" to break the agreement directly he comes to think, rightly or wrongly, that it will be advantageous to him to do so. This doctrine is simply a logical application of Spinoza's theory that, if we look at things simply from the point of view of Nature at large, the only limits of "right" are desire and power.

That sounds very like Callicles in Plato's Gorgias and Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic. Spinoza's view that "Nature has sovereign right to do anything within her power" is very like Wittgenstein's view that "the good is whatever God commands" (and of course one should do what is good, i.e. conform to the will of God = Nature). No view of "Nature" could be more different from my own than Spinoza's, for in my view the values displayed by "Nature" are not to be submitted to -- but rebelled against, as only man "knowing good and evil" is able to. What is amoral cannot teach man morality.

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