Spinoza’s Ethics: “A Dominion Within a Dominion”

In his Ethics Spinoza attempts to base a vision of the ideal life on metaphysics. He moves from fundamental definitions, axioms, and propositions of the only existing substance (God or Nature) through determinism, naturalism, and the principle of self-preservation, to the portrait of the ideal man and his eternal happiness. I argue that Spinoza failed in this project because the attempt to ground values on metaphysics is bound to fail; different normative systems may be inferred from the same metaphysical principles. The ideal of a free man that Spinoza presents in parts iv and v of the Ethics, is not deduced from the previous parts; indeed, Spinoza himself agrees that ideals are mere modes of thinking. Moreover, as I show, the ideal of a free man clashes with norms that are based on the principle of self-preservation. However, this ideal bears an affinity to the notion of God, the only free and eternal substance, as presented in part i. The free man aspires to the third degree of knowledge that allows him intimate knowledge of God, through which he becomes one with God in eternal love. This affinity may support the claim that in spite of the systematic structure of the Ethics, Spinoza does not arrive at this ideal on the basis of his metaphysics, rather he designed his metaphysics with this ideal of man in mind.