Crucially, this requires connected more strongly to the needs of the community that supports us. When we find ourselves captured by a passion or belief that does not serve our deeper intentions, then Spinoza says we are finding a deeper passion, the passion to not be constrained, the passion to be free. The act itself is less important than the desires it enflames and is the result of. they may be so impacted by circumstances that the good becomes unattainable, for most of us Spinoza thinks it's possible to make honest mistakes and then learn from them. Some people may be crippled by circumstance, i.e. Regret he thinks is bad for us in that it is a meditation on our limitations, something that cannot lead to us being better able to do what we think is good. If a person can manage by circumstance or education to perceive their best interest then even grave sins should cause no regret since they worked for the greater good, or helped the repentant to better understand the good. The bad action is contrary to nature only in the sense that it displeases us. If whatever we try to do is finding its way to good, then how come it matters if we do one thing and not the other? Is just any kind of acting/living good because it's natural? Is there a good life, and a way to strive for it that is better than some other kind of living? We’re going to work towards an answer by returning to Spinoza’s discussion with Blyenburgh, and then we’re going to let this philosophical meditation on ‘the good’ inform a discussion of the Russian Revolution.įor Spinoza, redemption is a matter of desire. What has been left out of that discussion up to now is what difference in our finite attitude or orientation is needed to progress towards that freedom. We’re really just repeating in a different language what we already covered in the previous discussion of Freedom, the problem of evil and WW1. The better we understand Nature, what is possible for us in it and how we want to act and exist, the closer our thinking is to the general historical act as it races on to completion in the thinking of god/nature. This freedom is the highest passion: it is the passion reason guides us to as we move towards a life we really want to live. Power and righteousness for Spinoza consist in humanity’s striving for a greater understanding of nature, that is for freedom. Whatever “the right” and “the good” are is still being striven for. Whatever a body can do consistent with its necessity is right, but we have no idea what all bodies can do or what is ultimately necessary for them. His point is rather that the action that the physical world presents us with, the arc of history, is something we only see a small part of, somewhere in the middle of it. Spinoza doesn’t think that whatever human beings have done is right and shouldn’t be questioned. What the “might makes right” interpretation of Spinoza misses is that he doesn’t believe that we can know what exactly is possible in Nature, and that by our nature we seem to be constantly expanding that right. Consequently, whatever each man does from the laws of his own nature, he does by the sovereign right of Nature, and he has as much right over Nature as his power extends” [Spinoza, Political Treatise, Collected Works p. So the natural right of Nature as a whole, and consequently the natural right of every individual, is coextensive with its power. “By the right of Nature, then, I understand the laws or rules of Nature in accordance with which all things come to be that is, the very power of Nature. Spinoza is often thought of as the thinker who stated most strongly that might makes right.