Salvation as a state of mind: The place of Acquiescentia in Spinoza's Ethics

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 7, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 447-473

  Rutherford, Donald ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 60949237304     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608789908571039     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. That Spinoza regards these affects as entailing one another is supported by IVAppIV and VP36S. Unless otherwise noted, all citations refer to the Ethics and follow the conventions of The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. I, ed. and tr. Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), xix. Quotations from the Ethics, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Weil-Being are drawn from Curley's translation. An important exception is the expression 'aquiescentia animi,' which I render consistently as 'contentment of mind' as opposed to Curley's 'peace of mind' and 'satisfaction of mind' (see also note 8 below). The Latin text of Spinoza's writings is cited according to the pagination in Carl Gebhardt, Spinoza Opera (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925). Thus '11/308/23' refers to volume II, page 308, line 23
2. For a classic account, see Harold H. Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), 292-306. Although Spinoza stresses the importance of the love of God throughout his works, the idea of 'union with God' is prominent only in the Short Trea- tise (in particular, bk. II, ch. XXII)
3. In the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza repeatedly states that our 'salvation' and 'blessedness' depend on the knowledge and love of God (ch. 4; III/60-2); however, he also maintains that 'true salvation and blessedness consist in true contentment of mind [vera animi acquiescentia] and we find our true contentment [vere acquiescimus] only in what we understand most clearly' (ch. 7; 111/111/29-31). One of the strongest statements of this view appears in a letter to Willem van Blyenberg of 28 January 1665: And even if I were once to find untrue the fruits which I have gathered from my natural understanding, they would still make me happy; for I enjoy them, and seek to pass my life not in sorrowing and sighing, but in peace [tranquillitate], joy and cheerfulness, and so I ascend a step higher. Meanwhile I realize (and this gives me the greatest satisfaction and peace of mind [mentis tranquillitatem]) that all things come to pass as they do through the power of a most perfect Being and his immutable decree. (Spinoza: The Letters, tr. Samuel Shirley [Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 1995], 152)
4. De tranquilitate animi, II.4. Quoted from Seneca, Moral Essays, vol. 2, tr. John W. Basmore (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 215. For discussions of the Stoic ele- ments in Spinoza's ethics, see Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934)
5. Susan James, 'Spinoza the Stoic', in The Rise of Modem Philosophy, ed. Tom Sorell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 288-316
6. Derk Pere- boom, 'Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza', Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994), 592-623
7. Genevieve Lloyd, Spinoza and the Ethics (London and New York: Routledge, 1996)
8. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 169. It is worth noting that Spinoza's terms for salvation (in Latin 'salus,' in Dutch 'heil') also carry the sense of 'health' or 'well-being'. In the Treatise on the Emen- dation of the Intellect, Spinoza depicts philosophy as a 'remedy for preserving our being' (remedium ad nostrum esse conservandum) (II/7/6) and 'a way of healing the intellect' (modus medendi intellectus) (1119/10) - expressions which recall the important role of medical analogy in Hellenistic ethics. As Wolfson notes (ibid., 263), in conversation with Leibniz, Walther von Tschirnhaus described the last part of the Ethics as about 'blessed- ness or the idea of the perfect human being, the medicine of the mind, and the medicine of the body' (beatitudine seu perfecti hominis idea, de Medicina mentis, de Medicina cor- poris), anticipating the title of his own 1684 Medicina Mentis. For philosophy as animi med- icina, see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations III.3, and for a full discussion of the topic as it relates to Hellenistic ethics, Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton: Prince- ton University Press, 1994)
9. There is no fully satisfactory translation of the phrase in English. Margaret Wilson ('Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge', in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Ed. Don Garrett [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 127) prefers 'self-contentment', which has the advantage of preserving the parallel with 'contentment of mind' (acquiescen- tia animi). Against this, however, Curley's translation makes better sense of the conceptual relations Spinoza establishes in Parts III and IV between acquiescentia in se ipso, humilitas, superbia, and gloria (see Defs. Aff. XXV-XXX and the discussion below), and for this reason I have chosen to retain it. The noun acquiescentia does not occur in classical Latin, although the verb acquiescere is used with the relevant sense of being in a state of mental peace or contentment. The phrase acquiescentia in se ipso appears to enter the philosophi- cal lexicon with the 1650 Latin edition of Descartes's Les Passions de I'Ame, as a translation of the phrase 'satisfaction de soi-meme' (art. 190). On the background to this edition and Spinoza's debt to it, see S. Voss, 'How Spinoza Enumerated the Affects', Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 63 (1981), 167-79; and G. Totaro, ' "Acquiescentia" dans 1a Cinquième Partie de l'"Ethique" de Spinoza', Revue Philosophique de 1a France et de l'Etranger 130 (1994), 65-79
10. Cf. Totaro,' "Acquiescentia" dans 1a Cinquieme Partie de l'Ethique,' 68-9
11. In the original edition of Curley's Collected Works of Spinoza, the last clause of this sen- tence reads, 'and to that extent they involve the eternal and infinite essence of God (as we have shown in IIP45S and P45S)'. The error is corrected in A Spinoza Reader, ed. and tr. Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), from which I quote here
12. For a similar conclusion, and appropriate reservations about how far it takes us, see Wilson, 'Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge', 123,132. Genevieve Lloyd (Spinoza and the Ethics, 122) makes the important point that to conceive finite things under a species of eternity is not to ascribe eternity to them in the technical sense of ID8: 'existence itself, in so far as it is con- ceived to follow necessarily from the definition alone of the eternal thing'. In this sense, eter- nity is a property of God alone. By their nature, finite things possess duration, or 'an indefinite continuation of existing' (IID5), which is rendered determinate through their causal relations to other finite things. When we conceive finite things under a species of eter- nity we conceive them without regard to their determination, in terms of the force or power by which they persevere in existing. Because Spinoza rejects any real distinction between a thing and its essence (IID2), what we conceive in this way is identical to a thing that endures; however, when we possess knowledge of the third kind, we conceive that thing not in terms of its duration but in terms of the force or power by which that duration is sustained - a power which itself 'involves no definite time', but instead is understood as a necessary and eternal expression of God's essence
13. Henry Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 171
14. Yovel, The Marrano of Reason, 169
15. Short Treatise on God, Man and His Weil-Being, Pan II, ch. XXII: 'Of the True Knowledge, Rebirth, Etc.'; ch. XXIII: 'Of the Immortality of the Soul' (The Collected Works of Spinoza, 138-41)
16. For a discussion of this point, see Michael Delia Rocca, 'Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology', in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 206-10
17. The transition is marked by Spinoza's notorious declaration at VP20S, 'With this I have completed everything which concerns the present life . . . . So it is time to pass to those things which pertain to the Mind's duration without relation to the body' (II/294/17-24). For discussions of the problems raised by this passage and references to the earlier literature, see Allison, Benedict de Spinoza, 165-8 and Wilson, 'Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge', 129-30. Reading the subsequent propositions as a thought experiment on Spinoza's part undermines the objection that he is here committing himself to the possibility of the mind's existence apart from the body. For a broader account of Spinoza's employment of 'fictions' in the Ethics, see Genevieve Lloyd, Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza's Ethics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), ch. 4, and Spinoza and the Ethics, chs. 4-5