All language subtitles for Spinoza

If you’ve ever wanted a complete
scientific roadmap for how to live,

a modern philosophy to go by, a lens through
which to understand a complex world, a foundation,

the 17th century Dutch philosopher
Baruch Spinoza is as good as you'll find.

Today, you’ll discover how to see
yourself as part of something bigger,

something infinite and awe-inspiring.
How to see the world scientifically.

What this means for reducing negative emotions,
leading a more content, fulfilled, rational,

meaningful, and joyful life. He asked questions
like: why are we so dogmatic? What makes us

irrational? Why do we live as slaves to our
emotions and others opinions. We’ll find out

why some of the most influential thinkers to
have lived admired Spinoza. Einstein said if

he believed in god it was ‘Spinoza’s god’ and
Hegel said that “ You are either a Spinozist

or not a philosopher at all.’ We’ll look at what
made Spinoza one of the first truly modern and

radical thinkers, why he was the first modern
psychologist, and how he revolutionised how we

think about concepts like god and nature. In
short, and I think this is no exaggeration,

the world we inhabit now would have not
have taken the path it has without Spinoza.

This is also the story of a man,
lost in the forest, searching for

the way out.

Life

I don’t want to dwell too much on Spinoza’s life.
Accept to say he has good claim on being one of

the most consequential philosophers to have ever
lived, but he was also, as Bertrand Russell wrote,

‘the noblest and most lovable
of the great philosophers.’

He was one of the first Enlightenment advocates
for real democracy, and was the first to really

criticise the bible as just a text. He
was vilified for his perceived atheism and

execommunicated from the Jewish community where he
lived who said that‘The Lord will not spare him;

the anger and wrath of the Lord will rage against
this man, and bring upon him all the curses’ –

Despire being ostracised, he searched his
entire life for what he called the ‘true good.’

He wanted to find out how to live an ideal and
virtuous life. How, ultimately, to be free.

Spinoza’s Universe

Before we get into the juicy bits, we have to do
the grunt work. We have to map out Spinoza’s idea

of the universe. Then we can understand our place
in it. It’s might sound a bit complicated at

first, but bare with me – if you get this, or
just let it wash over you, and stick with it,

it will change how you think. Give me a few
minutes to get through the complicated stuff

and then we’ll get to the interesting
stuff – and it should all come together.

If you could condense Spinoza’s metaphysics
– his first principles - into one sentence

it would be this: being is one.
Put another way, the many is one.

What that means is actually quite
simple: everything – us, the forest,

animals, the stars, and the laws of physics
are many things part of one thing: nature.

We forget this, of course. We think of ourselves
as independent, as separate. But we also know

we’re not - especially in the modern period. We
know we’re made of atoms, we know we need food,

water, oxygen, energy from outside us to sustain
those atoms. We know that we rely on wood, and

tools, and gravity, and, of course, each other. We
know about the circle of life, the interdependent

ecosystem that the animal kingdom lives within,
and we know that one thing affects another –

in short we know that everything is connected.

This is Spinoza’s foundation. But he goes further.

He reminds us that this should
actually change how we think.

So how does he understand this ‘many
things’ in ‘one nature’ truth? Well,

He wants to lay it out logically
and represent it in a kind of

mathematical pattern so that we can use
it to build more complex ideas with.

So instead of many things and one nature, he
says there are three parts to the universe:

substance, attributes, and modes.

We usually think of substances as the
different things in the universe – air,

deer, wood, us, plasticine. Its
just the stuff things are made of.

Attributes are the ways we experience substances.

Spinoza says there are two
attributes that we know of:

extension and thought – we have actual material
trees and the ideas of trees in our heads.

A mode is the form or shape the substance
takes. The substance wood, for example,

takes the shape of oaks or chairs or doors.
Its the substance of wood in different modes.

But wait, Spinoza wants to be more specific.

A substance, he says, if its to be defined
properly, should be an independent thing.

He provides definitions:

‘D3: By ‘substance’ I understand: what is
in itself and is conceived through itself,

i.e. that whose concept doesn’t have to be
formed out of the concept of something else.’

So lets take a leaf, say. Is it a substance? is
only a substance in itself if its independent,

if its conceived through itself, if it doesn’t
have to be formed out of something else. But

it does. Its dependent on the branch, and the
tree. So is the tree a substance? Well, no

because its formed out of the soil, the
air, the birds that disperse its seeds.

A substance should be an independent thing.
Yet thinking through this thought experiment

everything is in some sense determined dependent,
and an extension of on things outside of it.

So if we’re defining substances strictly
it turns out there is only one: Nature.

Trees, people, plants, animals they’re all
different modes, different shapes, of matter.

Spinoza saw nature as god.

In fact, he usually wrote ‘god or
nature’ – they’re one and the same thing

Why is this? Well, He thought of it like this:

God is meant to be this infinite, all-powerful,
omnipresent, omniscient, a law-maker and

law-giver. But if that’s the case he can’t
be outside of nature. If he’s not part of

nature – if he’s not everywhere at once
– he can’t be omnipresent, he can’t be

infinite. He must, to be those things, be part
of everything, with nothing inseparable from him.

God couldn’t be outside of the universe,
Spinoza realised, he was the universe.

The ultimate laws were gravity, mathematics,
the laws of physics, of cause and effect,

so god, knowing all, seeing all,
controlling all, had to not just be

part of those laws but actually be those laws,
as if they were an extension of his body.

Today, this is called pantheism.

Spinoza was writing at the beginning
of the Enlightenment and during the

scientific revolution. He was trying, in some
way, to square an old universe with a new one:

one of science, reason, experimentation.
He saw that all things, if you studied them

carefully, were implicated and affected by
everything else. Everything was part of one

big ordered ecosystem, although he
didn’t have that word to use yet.

It was a revolutionary modern scientific view.

He wrote that ‘In Nature there is nothing
contingent; all things have been caused by

the necessity of the divine nature to exist
and produce an effect in a certain way.’

A storm pushes me one way, the wind pushes
my boat. Berries draw me towards eating them.

The tree grows depending on the rain and the sun,

the deer is frightened in a different direction
when startled. We have desires we can’t control.

We are all like billiard balls,
set off by causes outside of us.

Spinoza’s universe is a description of a
singular fact: everything is connected.

Being is one. To understand ourselves, we must
understand the natural world we are a part of.

The Unfolding Determinism of Lines

There’s a phrase that comes up often in scholars
discussions about Spinoza’s universe: it unfolds.

Cause and effect, cause and effect, cause
and effect – this is the root of everything.

A seed unfolds into a tree, that pang of
hunger unfolds into the making of a meal,

the desire for sex unfolds into a new human life,

this path unfolds through the woods,
and the cloud unfolds in the sky

The universe – since the big bang – has unfolded
into an infinity of different shapes and modes.

Spinoza says that ‘I shall consider
human actions and appetites

as if it were a question of
lines, planes and bodies.”

What does this mean?

That we can conceptualise, trace, and map lines
through our appetites, actions, and ideas – they

are caused by something before them and they
in turn were caused by something before that.

He writes that “‘the infant thinks that he freely
wants the milk, the angry child that he freely

wants vengeance, and the timid one that he freely
wants to flee. The drunkard think it is from a

free decision of the mind that he says things
which when he sobers up he regrets having said.”

This forces us to confront a frightening
proposition: are we free at all?

Spinoza says that all the evidences
points to no: ‘“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.’’

We only think we’re free because our
consciousness sits between one of those causes and

effects – between for example, the pang of hunger
and the decision to eat. But we see the effect

of something like hunger or desire and see that
effect as a volition, as a voluntary action.

Let me explain:

I just heard a lion over there – in the Enligh
countryside – so I decide to go this way. Am I

choosing freely? When moving my leg this way
was caused by the effect of the lions roar.

Everything is cause and effect. However, we
rarely reflect on the long line of causation.

All action is caused by something external.

Just because we watch over
our own appetites, ideas, and

actions as they enter and leave
our minds, we think we’re free.

The French philosopher Giles Deleuze wrote
that ‘consciousness is only a dream with

one’s eyes open.’ Consciousness,
in other worrds, is being sat

over the top of the waterfall,
watching mental stuff fly over.

Spinoza writes: ‘A body in motion moves
until another body causes it to rest;

and a body at rest remains at rest
until another body causes it to move.’

Now, here’s the interesting bit:

How things – modes, objects, us, ideas, whatever
– are affected by other things depends on the

natures of each thing. The bird affects
the tree in a different way than the rain,

this berry affects me in a different
way to a friend – but everything affects

everything else in some specific way.

What’s the scientifically-minded approach to this:

to understand how things affect other
things. That’s the key to the universe.

As he says ‘it is clear that 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 and fate.’

He says that we have ‘inadequate ideas’ about the

affects of things. The trick of life,
of course, is to have adequate ideas.

Our Relative Inadequate Ideas

Ok, imagine for a moment those lines of cause and
effect running through the universe. Deleuze calls

those lines the plane of immanence. The bird is
something to the tree, the tree to the soil. The

lion to the person running.

There is a line that can be drawn from my first
videos to writing this one to this forest.

When we think in terms of lines, we realise that

everything in the universe it relative
to something else. All is a web.

This, again, has radical consequences that
should change how we think. It means that nothing

is good or bad in itself, but only
relative to something else. The lion

is bad for me so I run from it. The
berry is good for me so I’m drawn to it.

We tend to think of things as
good or bad, beautiful or ugly,

true or not true. We attach properties
to objects and think of them as being

certain things. This is red, its tasty, or
its poisonous. Or that person is cheerful,

intelligent, or interesting. Or
that argument is a good or bad idea.

But we forget that it is always us that’s
attaching the property – the goodness or badness,

the ugly or beautiful, the wise or unwise
- so that these appraisals of objects,

ideas, or people aren’t actually properties
that are in the thing but are descriptions

of a relationship. Everything is relative.

And the consequences of thinking like this
get even more radical: if things can’t be

defined by their properties, but only by
relations, they must be understood only

in their capacities to do things to other things
and or have things done to them by other things.

What Spinoza calls it simply their
‘capacity to affect and be affected.’

Oh look a giraffe – in the English countryside.

Why does it have a long neck? The reason is not
within the giraffe, a property of the giraffe–

but in its relationship to eating from trees, or
drinking water, or fighting with other giraffes.

This applies to everything.

Deleuze writes that

Ok, now things are getting interesting. If
everything is about relationships, capacities

to affect or be affected, cause and effect, then
how should we think about our relationship to

the things around us. What do we want to surround
ourselves with? What do we want to avoid?

The answer is quite simple: we should
want to surround ourselves with

perfection. We should try and
organise our experience of the

world so that we encounter things
that will affect us positively.

The things we call good, the
things that our relationship with

affect us positively, we, of course
like, we approve of, we want more of.

A good shelter has the affect of sheltering
us from the rain – great start. This is why

Spinoza sees goodness and perfection
as synonymous. But more than this,

he says by perfection and goodness he
just means existing. What does this mean?

Well, A house that exists for longer is more
perfect than one that’s destroyed in a storm.

A person that lives longer has a body that’s
more perfect than one that dies from disease.

A plant that gives us more energy is more perfect
than one that doesn’t. God – or nature – is more

perfect because it exists longer than
an individual tree or a single animal.

Things generally want to exist for as long as
possible, so whatever helps that thing achieve

that is more perfect in its relationship
with it than something that doesn’t.

Spinoza says simply: “Whatever helps us to
attain that perfection, we shall call good,

and whatever hinders our attaining it, or
does not assist it, we shall call evil.”

And we try to arrange our ideas
of the world in this way as

well. in such a way as to achieve this perfection:

‘After men began to form universal ideas, and
devise models of houses, buildings, towers, etc.,

and to prefer some models of things to others,
it came about that each one called perfect what

he saw agreed with the universal idea he had
formed of this kind of thing, and imperfect.’

Affections and Emotions

Ok, so lines of cause and effect run
through everything and everything has

different capacities to be affected by and affect
other things. Lets think about those affections.

Look – a gorilla, in the English country side. I
hear, the gorilla, see the gorilla feel fear, the

gorilla’s capacity to beat me in an arm wrestle
affects me, and I’m pushed – affected - into run.

Spinoza says that: ‘Unpleasure is a man’s
passing from a greater perfection to a lesser.’

Now, again, this applies to everything. Our
sad, angry, fearful, hungry, annoyed, stressed,

anxious, frustrated feelings about things
are signals that something is affecting us

in a negative way. That we’re passing
into a lesser state of perfection.

Think about hunger. You’re literally
decomposing. So the hunger pushes you

to eat for sustenance. Stress is
based on the fear that, I don’t know,

if you don’t finish this task you’ll be judged
poorly by others and it will hurt your career.

On the other hand, he says, ‘Pleasure is a man’s
passing from a lesser perfection to a greater.’

Like the term ‘unfolding’ for the universe, and
the ‘lines’ of cause and effect, our emotions

and feelings are signals of a potential
‘passage’ to a better or worse condition,

a reaction to objects we encounter.

Spinoza calls feelings, emotions, and passions,
‘the affects’ – because they affect us.

He thinks that all emotions boil down to
three, from which all the others derive:

Joy, sadness, and desire .

And they’re all related to Spinoza’s idea of
perfection: joy is the experience of our condition

being improved. Sadness our condition worsening.
Anger, fear, hunger, feeling cold are all ‘sad

affects’. Whereas ‘love’ or ‘confidence’
are examples of the ‘joyful affects’.

But remember, everything is relative. The
affects are always about something – in

that line of cause and effect. So he says that
‘a full account of the nature of each passion

must bring in the nature of the external object by
which the person having the passion is affected.’

Again, its the relationship we have to focus on.

We try to organise our lives rationally around
how often we’ll encounter, use, or avoid

these things. We want the shelter for more
warmth and less rain, we want the good ideas

about raising our child or choosing new hobbies,
we want to avoid the things that make us sick.

So how does this relate to Spinoza’s
big idea, the thing he spent his

entire life trying to discover: finding what
he called the ‘true good’ of being free?

The Rational Joy of Conatus

Ok, so we’re affected by things, we
want to be affected by good things,

we want to become more
‘perfect’ in Spinoza’s words,

everything’s a relationship. How do
we begin to bring all this together?

First Spinoza is an ‘ethical egoist’. That
means that what is good and bad for us,

individually, guides us in what
we do, how we think and act.

He said that reason “demands that everyone
love himself, seek his own advantage…and

absolutely, that everyone should strive to
preserve his own being as far as he can.’

He called this an organism’s
‘conatus’, which he defines in

various ways at various times as the
organisms ‘striving’, ‘endeavour’,

‘tendency’, ‘force’, and ‘power of acting.’ It
applies to the plant as much as to our ideas

Every organism strives to increase
its conatus – to exist for longer,

to achieve a better state of perfection.

He says simply that ‘Each thing, as far as it can
by its own power, tries to stay in existence.’

Because of our conatus, we have a desire for
things that increase our well-being – food, sex,

love, shelter, good ideas – and an aversion
to those things that decrease it – poison,

violence, lions, and gorillas.

But how does our conatus guide us in
doing this? What are we doing? Of course,

we have those natural urges, of course some
things are better for us and others not.

But as usual with Spinoza, he
takes the insight one step further:

in knowing that the lion is bad for us and
the berry good we’re doing something else too:

we’re understanding those lines – the affections
– the causes and effects in the world.

The conatus needs to understand,

to comprehend, so as to increase its power
of doing the right thing to live longer.

This is why Spinoza is a rationalist:
understanding is the key to everything.

Understanding is the key to freedom.

Act as if you’re a free person/ The Free Person

How can Spinoza argue that we’re all pushed
around by affections out of our control,

and argue that we can be free?

Remember, he says ‘it is clear that 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 and fate.’

It’s that tossing about that he wants to address.

The affects, passion, and emotions are passive,
they happen to us. Like the wind hitting a sail,

a wave crashing over the ship. I see a
cake and my mouth salivates and I eat it.

I feel like an idea is a good one so I
do it. I think the sound is bad so I run.

But often our ideas are mistaken about
whether those affects are really helping us.

What we want to do is understand the
real causes and effects of what we do.

We want to know what really caused that
sound that sound in the woods before we run,

if that cake is really what I want to improve
my condition, if that idea really is accurate.

Spinoza says that just relying on feelings
and affects is basically a state of

slavery because were pushed around by them,
not understanding and choosing for ourselves.

Instead of being passive we want to be active

He writes that ‘‘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 things he knows to be
the most important in life, and therefore

desires very greatly. Hence, I call the
former a slave, but the latter, a free man.’

Ok, so what does being active actually entail?

Someone who is active is guided by their contaus
– the desire for longevity, joy, and perfection -

and they should be what Spinoza calls the adequate
or sufficient cause of what they’re doing.

To do this we use our reason to study the causes
and effects of those relationships between things.

We want to understand those affects on us, and
the effect they in turn have in the future.

Adequate ideas are ‘clear and distinct’
knowledge about what increases a person’s

conatus because a person has studied
the causes and effects of things.

Ok, an example. Inadequate knowledge is
eating because you desire to, because

you’re hungry. It might have a good effect, it
might not. This berry might actually poison me.

Adequate knowledge, however,
is eating in a rational way,

knowing the nutrients, where
it grows and what goes into it,

and the effect it has in the long-term, how it
contributes to health, when you’ve had too much.

Spinoza writes that ‘when a rational being
is truly active insofar as he is moved by

the knowledge he possesses, the things he
does are guided by a true understanding

of what is in his own best interest and thus
bring about an improvement in his condition.’

In other words, the free, active, reasonable
person is driven by ‘self-determination.’

Being active and reasonable requires
thinking through the causes and effects

of things sufficiently enough to be able to
overcome our simple passions and emotions.

In knowing that I’m hungry, or that I can
store them, that this berry contributes to my

vitamin C intake, I’ve done the
research, I know how much I need,

then I’m acting, in picking and
eating it, actively not passively.

An adequate idea of what to do takes into
account all the factors – if we do this

reason will overcome weaker
impulses or misguided ideas.

Deleuze writes that ‘once we
have attained adequate ideas,

we connect effects to their true causes, and
consciousness, having become a reflection

of adequate ideas, is capable
of overcoming its illusions,

forming clear and distinct ideas of the
affections and affects it experiences’.

Spinoza scholar Steven Nadler
gives the example of the choice

between staying home and studying
or going out partying with friends.

In the moment, going out might have
a stronger affect on your desire.

But if we consider all the factors about our
finances, or the job we get from the effect

of staying in studying, we might come to the
decision that its more rational to stay in

and study. Alternatively, We might decide we
need a night off, because we’re over worked.

Spinoza is not saying one thing is better
than an other: only that we have to consider

our options and really understand the effects
of our choices. We have to use our heads.

Nadler writes that: ‘A person is therefore
free when his adequate ideas are more powerful,

affectively speaking, than his
passions or inadequate ideas.’

For Spinoza, freedom is about reason,

and someone who is free is someone who
acts ‘according to the dictate of reason’

He says that ‘the only thing that reason
makes us try to get is understanding.’

Reasoning your way to Nature and God

Spinoza spends a lot of time in his Ethics
commenting on virtue, vice, emotions, and feelings

and trying to understand their relationship
to reason. He is a rationalist, after all; he

wants to make the case that using our reason will
direct us without error along the correct path.

A vice, for example, is ‘an immoderate love

or desire for eating, drinking,
sexual union, wealth and esteem.”

The might bring pleasure in the short-term
but are harmful over a longer period.

Fortitude, for Spinoza, is a
virtue above all others. He says:

‘“from the guidance of reason we want a greater
future good in preference to a lesser present one,

and a lesser present evil in
preference to a greater future one.”

Fortitude is the act of working hard,
looking forward, thinking broadly,

investing our time in understanding how the
world works so that we can reap future rewards.

But here’s the beautiful bit. Everything in
Spinoza connects. Remember how for Spinoza god is

nature. God is in everything. And god is perfect.
Nature just is. It’s the unfolding line of cause

and effect that runs through everything, its the
fact that the many are one, all is one substance.

He says to overcome and choose the rational
thing, to live with fortitude, we must

look to god – to Nature – to see what lasts,
what works, whats most perfect and most

beautiful to increase our own conitus as a
species in relationship with the rest of nature.

He wants to look from what he describes
as the ‘perspective of eternity;’

Think about how people give up smoking when
they have kids. Or maybe get more humble

and tolerant from travelling the world. The
wider the view the more long term orientated

you become. You look at causes over the
perspective of a longer period of time.

Looking to eternity is the most godly way of
thinking, looking at everything from a gods

eye view, the perspective of eternity.
AT what causes what over the longterm.

He says ‘Perfecting the intellect
is nothing but understanding God,

his attributes, and his actions, which
follow from the necessity of his nature.’

To take one more example. Think about growing
a plant to eat. We learn from god – nature- by

watching, by experiencing, seeing
what happens when it rains, what

soil it grows best in, which nutrients and
what amount of sunlight.Or in building a house

we look for the strongest wood that’s
the best insulator and lasts the longest.

Spinoza says simply that everything
in life works in the same way.

He says: ‘“He who understands himself
and his affects clearly and distinctly

loves God, and does so the more, the more
he understands himself and his affects.”

Scotism and Virtue

Spinoza says a few things about
the ‘free person’s character’,

and talks at length about different virtues,
emotions, and vices, but fundamentally,

the person led by reason and guided
by nature will have two things:

Strength of character: that’s the fortitude,
the striving, the will to understand the world.

And they’ll be active – choosing by reason
– not passive – pushed by affections

Spinoza was influenced by the Stoics of
Ancient Greece and Rome. Instead of relying on

capricious and unpredictable joys like sensual
pleasure and fears or anger, ultimate freedom,

he says, is grounded in reason. And from
this will come a joyful serenity that arises

from knowledge that doing the rational
correct thing should pay off in the end.

Joy remember, is the feeling of, an
increase in our conatus, an increase

in power. So Spinoza’s ethics is grounded in
increasing an active, in control, rational joy.

But because we’re part of the universe,

we’ll also take joy from seeing the affections
and relationships of the world for what they are.

He says ‘A person who sees the necessity of things
regards their passage with calm and composure.’

Getting frustrated and angry at the
universe is the result of seeing

the world through the lens of inadequate
ideas. Imagine getting angry with the lion,

blaming the lion for wanting to eat you. It’s
not the lions choice, not her fault, shes not

morally responsible. Spinoza says we should
look at the rest of the world in this way too.

Seeing from the ‘perspective of eternity’
means looking at how different affections,

different causes and effects, affect
things with different levels of

power. HE says “The power of an effect has
its limits set by the power of its cause”

So the power of the lion biting your leg has
cause in the lions hunger. We don’t get angry,

upset, or frustrated with the lion personally.

Now imagine asking for directions in the
street and the person ignores us. We get a

little frustrated. But then we discover
the person speaks a different language,

or is deaf, or is scared of us because
they were harassed on the street last week.

There are causes we didn’t consider that have
a powerful affect on the person. And when

we look from the ‘perspective of eternity’ it
becomes difficult for us to direct our negative

emotions at single people, ideas,
or objects. It becomes unreasonable.

Spinoza says: ‘If we separate an emotion-affect
from the thought of an external cause and join

it to other thoughts, then the love or hate
toward the external cause is destroyed,

as is the mental instability
arising from these affects.’

Powerfully, we should think of all of the causes
of things – again, giving us a gods-eye view,

but also lessening the blame or negative
emotion we feel towards one thing or one person.

As Steven Nadler writes ‘this view serves to
distribute the causal responsibility for the

affect widely and dilute its power
significantly, perhaps taking away

its strength altogether. The intensity of
the affect is weakened as it becomes less

focused on one particular individual and more
on a long sequence of necessitating causes.’

The same applies to our own negative emotions,
our own problems. We must have knowledge about

their causes, and their effects, otherwise
we are slaves to them. Because, ultimately,

we want to increase the joyful affects
and decrease the negative ones.

HE says ‘So someone who is led solely by his
love of freedom to moderate his affects and

appetites will try his hardest to come to know
the virtues and their causes, and to fill his mind

with the joy that comes from the true knowledge
of them; he will not think about men’s vices,

or disparage men, or take pleasure from
putting up a show of being a free man.

If you observe these carefully (they aren’t
difficult) and regularly put them into practice,

you will soon be able to direct most of your
actions according to the command of reason. ‘

Morality & Benevolence

If you follow his advice, Spinoza says,

you’ll find your way out from the confusion of the
forest of affects. You’ll be able to see the wood

through the trees. You’ll see the bigger picture,
the one from eternity, the gods eye view.

You’ll have perspective. And Spinoza’s ethics
have been applied to many areas and I've only

scratched the surface but it boils down
to this – reflect on the causes of things.

But, you may be wondering what has this got to do
with morality? His most famous work is called the

ethics after all. Spinoza’s picture of the
world seems to be quite self-centered. So

before we end I want to touch on what Spinoza
says about community, morality, and benevolence.

For Spinoza, morals can only be
grounded on the simple fact that

every organism and being wants
to increase their own conatus

Spinoza's morality (or benevolence) is
based on the idea that its rationally

wise to surround oneself with
people who are also rational – as

rational people, he says, will want
the same things as one another.

He says ‘there is nothing more useful
to a man than a man. Men, I repeat,

can wish for nothing more helpful to
their staying in existence than that

all men should be in such harmony
that the minds and bodies of them all

would be like one mind and one body; that all
together should try as hard as they can to stay

in existence; and that all together should seek
for themselves the common advantage of all.’

The opposite to a joy grounded in understanding
and an increase in contatus are a life

lived under the influence of the sad passions. So
it’s only logical to want to minimise negativity.

We assemble the world rationally
in order to avoid the sad passions.

We create assemblages of medicines,
technologies, norms and values,

entertainment, information, family and
friends -we have a species ‘common ideas.’

He says ‘the body has been affected most
forcefully by what is common ·to all the men·, ‘

We all want to preserve the
things that are good for our

nature. And many of those
things are common to us all.

And If we’re arguing, angry, suspicious,
and fearful rather than joyful, calm and

rational we’re increasing the sad passions, and
that shouldn’t be anyone’s foundational goal.

Moreover, two heads are better than one when
it comes to tasks, and the rational person

should always want to convince the other
to their own cause, to be rational too.

Take the example of working
out how to grow an apple tree.

The more people working on the problem,
with the same goal, the better it will be.

Scholars have been critical of Spinoza's view
here, but I think his point is that we should come

together positivity and ground that any debate
or competition in joy rather than negativity.

I’m not going to summarise, its impossible to.
I’ll leave you with the last few lines of the

Ethics: ‘The road to these things that
I have pointed out now seems very hard,

but it can be found. And of course something
that is found so rarely is bound to be hard.

For if salvation were ready to hand and could
be found without great effort, how could it

come about that almost everyone neglects it?
But excellence is as difficult as it is rare.’