Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation.[1]
An idea is the first thing which constitutes the being of the human mind, an idea of something which actually exists.[2] The human mind perceives only what happens in the object of the idea which constitutes it. We neither feel nor perceive anything except bodies or modes of thinking (II, A5). We feel that our body is affected in many ways (II, A4), that is, we have ideas of the affections of the human body. The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body (a certain mode of extension which actually exists) and nothing else (II, P13).[3] Knowledge of the ideas of the affections of the body will imply knowledge (be it adequate or inadequate) of the human mind, that is, we are self-conscious precisely insofar as we perceive these ideas (II, P23).
Now, the essence of each thing, for Spinoza, is that by which it strives to persevere in its own being (III, P7). As per the postulates on the mind, it is through the ideas of the affections of the body that the mind becomes conscious of its own striving, or conatus. The notion of will is arrived at by folding this self-consciousness back onto the mind: the verb ‘to strive’ as pure will. When this striving 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” (III, P9, Sch.).
Later, Spinoza will say that desire is man’s very essence insofar as it is conceived to be determined by any given affection of it (III, def. of the affects, I). Our appetite, as nothing other than our striving to persevere, can be affected in various determinate ways according to its encounters with other bodies, other ideas. Desire thus corresponds to our striving along with consciousness of these determinative affections. We strive, and call it desire when we possess an idea of what we strive towards.[4] But Spinoza also says that there is no actual difference between appetite and desire. A provocative claim thus made by Spinoza’s affect theory is that consciousness has no discernible effect on our appetitive striving (conatus) in itself, and as such it is not a property of the essence of man. Indeed, to desire is to be human, but the greater part of desire is unconscious.
Following his definition of human essence, Spinoza will define virtue as “human power itself.” Virtue is nothing other than the essence of humanity insofar as one is able to act in the world according to the laws of one’s nature alone (IV, D8). The more we strive and are able to persevere in our being, then, the more we are endowed with virtue (IV, P20). The converse of this postulate is that suicide and the array of self-destructive acts that we commonly attribute to human nature are in fact absurd and contrary to our true nature. It is always, and by definition, the influence of external factors which drive a thing to its destruction.[5] And to the extent that one consciously does oneself harm due to an overwhelm of feelings such as guilt or shame, it is to that extent that one is furthest from the truth, most alienated from oneself, and most deeply mired in confused and inadequate ideas. How does this happen?
The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same time the nature of the external body (II, P16).[6] Moreover, these ideas must involve not only the nature of the human body as a whole, but also of its parts. Should the ideas of the affections of the body be related only to the human mind, however, they will necessarily be confused and inadequate (II, P28). Considered in this way they are, as Spinoza says, like conclusions without premises. The idea of an affection of the human body (the basis of self-consciousness) involves the nature of an external body only insofar as that body determines the human body in a certain way (II, P25), and not as an individual in itself. Apply the same analysis with regard to the human body itself, and we find a similar inadequacy (II, P27). So long as the human mind perceives things as they are given to consciousness, that is, so long as it is determined externally from fortuitous encounters with things, it has only a confused and mutilated knowledge of itself, the body, and the world (II, P29). An adequate perspective of the human mind, on the contrary, requires two characteristics: immanence and complexity.
We know that the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body. The human body is composed of a great many individual parts of different natures, each of which is highly composite (II, P13, Post. I). Thus the idea that constitutes the formal being of the human mind is not simple, but complex. Furthermore, thinking substance and extended substance are – and this is the great theoretical thesis of Spinozism – one and the same substance, comprehended under alternate attributes. So, also, a mode of extension (a particular circle in existence) and the idea of that mode (the idea of this particular circle) are one and the same thing, but expressed in alternate ways. The order and connection of ideas is the same, in all its complexity, as the order and connection of things (II, P7); hence the order of actions and passions of our body is at one with the actions and passions of our mind (II, P2, Sch.). The practical significance of this thesis is that the body cannot determine the mind to thinking, and vice versa (II, P2). The one is not responsible for the other, and all transcendent morality which makes claims to the contrary is empty. “Now, all that one needs in order to moralize is to fail to understand.”[7] How, then, might we understand Spinoza’s modal ethics?
Spinoza defines an adequate cause as that whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it alone (and an inadequate cause by the converse; III, D1). Following this, we are said to act when something happens, internally or externally, of which we are the adequate cause, the effect of which can be understood through our essence alone (and we are acted upon, again, by the converse; III, D2). Consequently, our mind can only be said to act insofar as it has adequate ideas (and the converse; III, P1). An affect which is called a passion of the mind is thus a confused and inadequate idea by which the mind is acted upon by something else. We know that all our ideas of external bodies indicate the constitution of our own body, so the form of this affect is an indication or expression of the changing constitution of our body (or some part of it), an alteration of its ‘force of existing.’ When we say that the mind’s power of thinking is increased or diminished, we are saying that the mind has formed an idea of its object (the body) which expresses more or less ‘reality’ (i.e., force of existing, power of acting) than previously (cf. III, General def. of the affects). That passage from lesser to greater we call joy, and the passage from greater to lesser we call sadness (III, def. II, III).
We can see, given our investigations above, how affects of joy or sadness help colour our desires in determining our mind to particular thoughts, but we can also see also how they characterise virtue itself. As Deleuze notes, even if our affective capacity is filled with joyful passions, and even if these passions express an increase in our power to act according to our nature, the affect remains passive and our power remains merely formal or potential, yet to be actualised (28). Virtue is precisely the endeavour to encounter, to the degree that one is able, that which brings us joy (an objective good) so that joy may catalyse, according to the laws of our nature alone, an active mode of existence.
[1] Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, 29.
[2] Baruch Spinoza, Ethics and Other Works, trans. by Edwin Curley, II, P11.
[3] If the object of the idea constituting the human mind were some object other than our body, we would necessarily perceive what happens in and through said object .
[4] “[Consciousness] has only an informational value, and what is more, the information is necessarily confused and distorted” (Deleuze, 21). In other words, we only think that we know what we want.
[5] “Those who do such things are compelled by external causes, which can happen in many ways. Someone may kill himself because he is compelled by another, who twists his right hand (which happened to hold a sword) and forces him to direct the sword against his heart; or because he is forced by the command of a tyrant (as Seneca was) to open his veins, that is, he desires to avoid a greater evil by a lesser; or finally because hidden external causes so dispose his imagination, and so affect his body, that it takes on another nature, contrary to the former, a nature of which there cannot be an idea in the mind” (IV, P20, Sch.).
[6] A corollary of this is that the ideas which we have of external bodies indicate the condition of our own body more than the nature of the external bodies.
[7] Deleuze, 23.