Spinoza on the Non-Existence of Good and Bad.

Good and bad are relative to our position and circumstances, but that relativity does not mean that good and bad do not exist: relativity is not nihilism. For if a person has been injured or attacked, that action is bad for that person, absolutely bad as it implies suffering and pain. We could translate good and bad as pleasure and pain to see the meaning of the words more clearly. Now, Spinoza denies that good and bad exist in nature. He affirms this in the Short Treatise (Part I, Chapter X) by saying that they are only in our understanding not in nature (paragraph 1), that those moral categories of good and bad are not things but relations (paragraph 2), that we form then by comparison. Thus, Spinoza says, good is something we know because we compare it with something that is bad: a good apple is our idea, not in nature, because we relate it with the relative idea of a bad apple. Good and bad are general ideas created by us through comparison (paragraph 3), not particular ideas, and as general ideas they do not exist. The apple is a particular idea, but the bad apple is a general idea. It is clear that a bad apple does not exist in nature, says Spinoza, and I agree. The rotten apple can be bad for me and good for a fly. He concludes the argument by saying that all things in nature are things or actions, and that a good or bad person cannot be defined by himself, but through a comparison, a relation, a general idea, not a particular one. I agree that the definition of a bad person is relative to me, and my feelings.

The argument, then, is that morality is relative, not absolute, in nature. But Spinoza is equating relativity with nihilism. I cannot agree with this. So, what will happen if we translate good and bad as pleasure and pain? Do those terms, subjective terms, depend on a relation? No, I should say. Take the example of the apple. Now we are not going to define the apple in itself, but the pleasure or the pain the apple gives us. If one person eats a venomous apple and feels pain, suffering and torment, the argument would be for that person: “I am suffering and for me this pain is not good, but bad.” Notice that there is no relation with another thing here; the essence of the pain, the particular idea, is clear and perfect: pain is bad for me now, the particular idea I feel is bad. It is absolutely, utterly bad for that person, and no one is going to convince that person that this badness, this suffering, this pain of his is not real, but a relation, a general idea, a comparison. “Pain and pleasure (good and bad) are general terms, my friend. Just think right and you will stop feeling bad.”

To see how Spinoza destroys human feelings with a logical argument based on the physical reality of nature, it is enough to read Santayana. In The Sense of Beauty (1896, Introduction), he writes: “Man has a prejudice against himself: anything which is a product of his mind seems to him to be unreal or comparatively insignificant. We are satisfied only when we fancy ourselves surround by objects and laws independent of our nature … We have still to recognise in practice that from our despised feelings the great world of perception derives all its value. Things are interesting because we care about them, and important because we need them. Had our perceptions no connexion with our pleasures, we should soon close our eyes on this world; if our intelligence were of no service to our passions, we should come to doubt, in the lazy freedom of reverie, whether two and two make four.” Yes, feelings are important, they make us move, get into action, appreciate life. That is what Nicholas Humphrey told us (Soul Dust, 2012) is the adaptative function of human consciousness: to make us care about life, to make life matter to us. Now, why Spinoza denies that this feeling of pain and pleasure (good and bad) does not exist should be considered a corollary of his logical system, where nature is the most powerful thing and, therefore, the most perfect, virtuous thing in existence. It is clear that from this proposition of absolute essence and absolute perfection, good and bad, being relative, cannot be caused by that most perfect of essences, nature or God: infinite Substance is amoral, it acts through its infinite power. Fair enough.

But here Santayana offers us another window on this argument. He writes in The Life of Reason (“Reason in Common Sense,” 1905, Chapter II, ʻIntrinsic pleasure in existenceʼ): “The polemic which certain moralists have waged against pleasure and in favour of pain is intelligible when we remember that their chief interests is edification, and that ability to resist pleasure and pain alike is a valuable virtue in a world where action and renunciation are the twin keys to happiness. But to deny that pleasure is a good and pain an evil is a grotesque affectation; it amounts to giving ʻgoodʼ and ʻevilʼ artificial definitions and thereby reducing ethics to arbitrary verbiage … An experience good or bad in itself remains so for ever, and its inclusion in a more general order of things can only change the totality proportionately to the ingredient absorved, which will infect the mass, so far as it goes, with its own colour. The more pleasure a universe can yield, other things being equal, the more beneficient and generous is its general nature; the more pains its constitution involves, the darker and more malign is its total temper. To deny this would seem impossible, yet it is done daily; for there is nothing people will not maintain when they are slaves to superstition; and candour and a sense of justice are, in such a case, the first things lost.”

In Spinoza, as with the Stoics, the absolute swallows the injustice of so much suffering we see in daily life, as anyone can see by studying Biology or Evolutionary Psychology. With Epicurus the things are different. He was seeing the universe from the correct perspective: that pleasure and pain, good and bad, exist in us, in every sentient being. The universe cannot be excluded from this reality, from these feelings. Epicurus is said to have written these verses:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither willing, nor able? Then why call him God?

Nature is amoral and you cannot call it good or bad in itself. But we are moral, and we can say, by the amount of suffering and pain and torments we see around us every day, that evolution by natural (and sexual and kin) selection creates a huge amount of pain, and thus, a huge amount of evil. Why call nature, the absolute Substance, perfect? Spinoza says: because it is the most poweful thing that exists. So be it. But we do not love power* but goodness. We do not love God because it is the cause of all that exists. We call it nature, and as humans, we call it evil from our perspective, our human perspective, our subjective perspective. The perspective in which resides the feelings of pain and suffering and love and pleasure. These feelings are not relative to another thing, or actions. They are feelings (ideas) in the mind. The feeling of pain is intense, real, absolutely real from my subjective, relative, perspective. Feelings are particular ideas. No Absolute can excuse this fact. You cannot blame nature, as it is amoral, but you cannot love it either. Unless you deny this because you are a slave to power, as Spinoza was, and forget your human sense of justice.



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* A character like Conan loves not power, but being in power. When he was a slave he did not love his powerful master, but feared him and obeyed him, as can be seen in the movie. Next time you hear a power idolater telling you how power is good and lovable, tell him or her to let them be subjected to your own power to confirm their love. Check out the results of the experiments.