Ethics Review

Ever since I learned about Kant’s “something is only right insofar as it can be desired to become universal law,” I’ve been intrigued by the notion that there could be a kind of universal, fundamental morality, derivable and immutable as the laws of physics.  Perhaps it would even apply to truly alien aliens, although that seems a stretch.  You might reasonably suppose, therefore, that I would applaud Spinoza’s Ethics, which strives toward a proximal objective, and perhaps I would if Spinoza hit a little closer to the target.

Back when I read Euclid’s Elements, I noted the kind of thinking that geometric proofs embody, and wondered why we do not apply such rigorous methods to other fields.  So did Spinoza, and he attempted to create a philosophical version of that fundamental geometry text, employing reasoning techniques parallel to those contained in geometric proofs.  His book is filled with definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs, corollaries, and lemmas.  If only his “proofs” adequately proved his propositions.  They do not, in almost all cases.  Not only because I don’t accept all of Spinoza’s assumptions, but because his logic itself is lacking in vigor.

In geometry, and other mathematical disciplines, it is possible to present fundamental definitions and principles upon which everyone can agree, and that is possible because mathematics are both an outgrowth of natural phenomena, and something that humanity invented.  Counting, and the properties of mathematical functions, are formalizations of inescapable natural properties, but math itself is a human invention.  Philosophy, or most any other discipline, even many fields of science, cannot be treated in the same way as mathematics because they do not share this peculiar nature.

We can all agree that a triangle is a triangle because we defined it as a shape with three sides.  For it to be anything else or have some other meaning is preposterous, and all of the other properties of a triangle can be shown to follow inevitably from that initial premise.  No so in other fields, even, say, biology.  Not only are definitions in other fields less agreed upon and self-evident, but also the derived properties are rather less inevitable.  Returning to philosophy, again, it is clear that the notion of applying a proof in the geometric sense, suited to mathematics, will encounter issues.

That is not to say that Ethics is devoid of interest and insight.  While the first parts are somewhat vague and little address ethics, the latter parts do explore moral ideas, although Spinoza believes that ethics are more like a kind of personal optimization that is as much a part of us as a species’ other evolved traits.  This conveniently brings him to elevate the “wise man’s” life, much akin to that described by his antecedents, which reads as rather contrived, making apparent that his methodology could be used to “prove” any number of conclusions with equal ease and apparent logical consistency, never mind the possible invalidity of several of his founding assumptions.

Ethics was considered controversial at its time and for several decades after, mostly because of its conception of God.  Some people argue that Spinoza misapplies the word “God” when he should be saying “nature.”  I disagree with these detractors.  Spinoza’s God is similar to nature, and embodies nature, but remains more than nature.  This God is no anthropomorphized deity, and in fact is closer to how I conceive of a divine Create who exists beyond and is the universe, and of whom we cannot properly conceive because of our limited perspective.

Between the flaws in its arguments and the limited discussion of actual morality/ethics, I don’t consider Spinoza’s Ethics a must-read piece of philosophy to place in the pantheon of words like Plato’s Dialogues or Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.  It is certainly not introductory, and I would recommend that you tackle Aristotle, Plato, and at least one other “great” philosophy from a different region/time/tradition before you worry about Spinoza.  Also, Euclid’s Elements is required reading to understand what Spinoza is even attempting.  That means that I can only recommend Ethics to a few of you, but I am glad that I got around to it.