Two Ethical Ideals in Spinoza’s "Ethics": The Free Man and The Wise Man

Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (3):357-370 (2019)
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Abstract

According to Steven Nadler's novel interpretation of Spinoza's much discussed ‘free man’, the free man is not an unattainable ideal. On this reading, the free man represents an ideal condition not because he is passionless, as has often been claimed, but because even though he experiences passions, he ‘never lets those passions determine his actions’. In this paper, I argue that Nadler's interpretation is incorrect in taking the model of the free man to be an attainable ideal within our reach. Furthermore, I show that Spinoza's moral philosophy has room for another ideal yet attainable condition, which is represented by the wise man. On my reading, becoming a wise man consists not in surmounting human bondage, but in understanding ourselves as finite expressions of God's power and, thereby, coming to terms with the ineliminability of bondage for us due to our very human or modal condition in the Spinozistic universe.

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Sanem Soyarslan
North Carolina State University

Citations of this work

The power and limits of friendship in Spinoza’s Ethics.Sanem Soyarslan - 2023 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (5):932-949.
Spinoza and the Possibility of Adequate Ideas.Thaddeus Robinson - 2022 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 4 (1):8.

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References found in this work

Spinoza and consciousness.Steven Nadler - 2008 - Mind 117 (467):575-601.
Behind the Geometrical Methode. A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics.Edwin Curley - 1991 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 181 (1):92-93.
Spinoza's account of akrasia.Martin Lin - 2006 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (3):395-414.

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