02. Spinoza's path to philosophy: What are the costs of conventional success? (Part 2)

I'm Michael Gottlieb and I teach Spinoza at NYU. I'm Claire Colliel and I teach Spinoza at King's College London. Welcome to our podcast where we'll be unraveling Spinoza's philosophy, line by line. In this second episode we'll be discussing the pursuit of happiness. We'll hear Spinoza consider the highs and lows, the ups and downs of striving for success, leading him to question the wisdom of conforming to conventional values. So let's get into it. If you listened to our last episode, you'll remember that we left on a cliffhanger. The young Spinoza was debating whether to pursue wealth, honor and sense pleasure, or to seek a higher good, which would provide intense, reliable joy directly through the mind. Claire, could you remind us of Spinoza's internal thought process? Yeah, so Spinoza told us that on the one hand, these three familiar goods, wealth, honor and sense pleasure, provide real enjoyment, but they're unreliable, they come and go. On the other hand, he's got no idea whether a more lasting, more reliable joy is even possible. So why didn't Spinoza decide to pursue both? Why didn't he try to have the best of both worlds? And try to pursue the higher intense joy also, not giving up the conventional goods of wealth, honor and sense pleasure. Well, that would sound ideal, wouldn't it? But Spinoza found that in his experience, having tried that, the pursuit of those things, wealth, honor and sense pleasure, they're so all-consuming that they just don't allow room for anything else. They don't allow headspace or time or the kind of attention that it would be needed to pursue the higher goods. So, yeah, if you're pursuing those ordinary things, you have to be all in. Right, so let's pick up where we left off. We find Spinoza gives us a deeper dive into the drawbacks, the downsides of wealth, honor and sense pleasure. To remind us we're in the trees on the endation of the intellect's paragraph four. For as far as sense pleasure is concerned, the mind is so caught up in it as if at peace in a true good that it is quite prevented from thinking of anything else. But after the enjoyment of sensual pleasure is passed, the greatest sadness follows. If this does not completely engross, still it thoroughly confuses and delts the mind. So Claire, what do you, what does Spinoza saying here about sense pleasure? Well, he's describing this high and low fluctuation, isn't he? The emotional rollercoaster involved in sense pleasure. Yeah, he says, after the enjoyment of sensual pleasure is passed, the greatest sadness follows. So it's not just that the pleasure doesn't last, but then what goes up must come down, I think is what he's saying, that the loss of that sense pleasure, the fact that it's ended, is itself a sort of sadness. So it's not just that you go from happy to neutral to happy. There's actually not a neutral state here that when the sadness ends, you feel bad, you feel, yeah, you feel like you've lost something. Yeah, I mean, I, I, Spinoza here may be referring back to the ancient doctor Gaelin, you know, the physician Gaelin, and Gaelin has a famous sentence where he says, poise coitum animale triste est, after sex, the animal is sad. And I think this kind of maybe describing this kind of experience of going from a very big high and then to a low. The crash, the crash, the crash, exactly. The come down, the come down, the come down. And I heard it described, I think, on a podcast where they mentioned, they talked about MDMA, you know, the drug ecstasy, and they talked about this incredible high that you have, and then the crash you get later, and they talked about it as borrowing happiness from the future. So there's a way in which when you have this very intense feeling, very often there's a decline afterwards. Interesting. I mean, interestingly, Spinoza isn't that specific here. He's certainly not talking about taking ecstasy, nor is he, nor is he talking about having sex. He's actually talking in quite a general way about central pleasure, which could just be eating, you know, a nice, a nice meal or enjoying a sunny day. So in a way, it's perhaps quite surprising that he puts it so starkly, so vividly, that he seems to be saying that after any enjoyment of sense pleasure, we feel sad and bereft. Yeah, I don't know why he says that. Maybe it's a little bit counter-intuitive. But yeah, he is saying that what goes up must come down, isn't he? Yeah. Well, what do you think? Why do you think he would be saying that? I mean, do you think that's true? Is it true that after every sense pleasure we feel this sadness? I don't think it's true. I wouldn't put it like that myself, but that's not the only point that Spinoid is making here. And of course, he's right that, as you said, there are definitely instances where this can happen. But another point that he's making in this passage is the way that the mind gets so caught up in this, in the pursuit of pleasure. And that rings very true for me, even if it's a fairly moderate pleasure, like enjoying a nice meal, that we get very, we get absorbed in, in that kind of enjoyment, don't we? It seems very natural that we do that. And the fact that Spinoza here is interested in the effect on the mind. I mean, we talked about this last time that he's wanting to say that it's not so much the objects in the outside world that are the problem or the solution, rather, it's how they affect the mind. And he's making that point again here, isn't he? That pursuing pleasure, the mind gets caught up in that, even if it's not completely engrossed, then the pursuit of pleasure confuses and dulls the mind. And remember, he's talking here about his attempt to pursue philosophy. So this is in the context of him thinking about this philosophical path, kind of hoping that he can still have his cake and eat it. I can still enjoy sense pleasure, but actually finding that pursuing pleasure is having a negative effect on his mind. It's making it harder to think, maybe making his mind less sensitive. So that's another aspect of the experience he's reporting that's maybe a bit more specific to the particular project of the philosophical life. Yeah, well, I also recall, I recall something from his biography, which is one of the only, or I think the only real romance that we know about from Spendos' life. And he was studying Latin at the School of Francisco's abandoned engine when he was a young man. And they would not only study Latin, but they would also put on plays in Latin. And we find Spendos often quoting from Latin plays and Latin authors like Terrence and others. And Spinoza, the story goes according to his biographer, Colores, who actually, I think, knew Spinoza, he says that Spinoza fell in love with a abandoned engine's daughter Clara. And he fell in love with her. And I guess, had these very kind of intense feelings, but there was a rival for his affections, whose name I think was Thomas Kirkering. And what Colores tells us is that Kirkering gifted Clara a pearl necklace. And that sealed the deal for him and Spinoza. So, you know, we don't really hear about any other romantic encounters in Spinoza's life, and he didn't get married. So, you know, I wonder whether that kind of experience of this disappointment and this, you know, probably intense feelings, you know, may also be one of the experiences that's lying behind this. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting. What Spinoza's not saying in the text isn't it? On the one hand, he's talking in this personal sounding, by a graphical way, he's saying, I, but he's also holding a lot back. He doesn't go into specifics. And I guess, you know, on the one hand, the fact that this is a personal narrative is important. He wants us to relate to the experience, but at the same time, he doesn't want us to get caught up in the details of his story. So, he's writing at this kind of general level. And so, as you say, there's a lot of experience here that's kind of unsaid, but is maybe part of the meaning of the text, actually. Yeah. So, should we go? Should we continue here? Yeah, so that's pleasure. But what about wealth and honor? What Spinoza's going to say about that? The mind is also distracted, not a little, by the pursuit of honors and wealth, particularly when the latter is sought only for its own sake, because it is assumed to be the highest good. But the mind is far more distracted by honor, for this is always assumed to be good through itself, and the ultimate end towards which everything is directed. So, right, what is Spinoza telling us about pursuit of honor and wealth? Well, I think he's actually drawing a contrast here between the two. On the one hand, he's sort of treating them together, separate from sense pleasure, but he's also contrasting them, because he says that's wealthy says as a matter of fact. ac mae'n gweithio'r gweithio gyda'n gweithio gyda'r gweithio gweithio gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio gy o'n gweithio'r yng Nghymru yn gweithio, i'n gweithio yn gweithio, i'n gweithio'r yng Nghymru yn gweithio'r yng Nghymru yn gweithio, i'n gweithio yng Nghymru yn gweithio yng Nghymru yn gweithio yng Nghymru yn gweithio yng Nghymru yn gweithio. Mae'r yw'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gwe if you're naughty, if you don't follow the rules. So when he's talking about honour, he's talking about just that desire, I think most basically, to win approval. Right. Absolutely. And he says that that's something that we're all motivated by. Whereas wealth, you know, some people will say, "Yeah, it's really important to me." Others will say, "No, it's not the most important thing in life." Yeah, yeah, he talks about, in the case of wealth, that people pursue it for different things. Right. He says sometimes it's pursued. Sometimes it's pursued for the sake of honour, social status, sometimes for the sake of sense pleasures. So I can go on more vacations or get better pleasures or get that really fancy $100 pizza or something. I don't know. Or for the sake of health. All right. Or he says, "Or for the advancements of the arts and sciences." And sometimes it's people pursue it for its own sake. It's kind of an odd thing to pursue money for its own sake, who would want to be just living on an island by themselves atop a huge pile of money? Yeah. So he's saying that there's a sort of recognition that money isn't means to some other end, you know, whether it's going holiday or having a nice time or having a nice house or whatever it is, spending time with friends, having a certain amount of freedom. And we understand that about money. But our attitude towards what he calls honour and being thought highly of is very different. We value that as an end in itself, we want to be loved, we want to be liked, we want to be admired. Well, I think that's really kind of the key point that you're making here, is the idea of honour or respect or social status as a substitute for love, right? And that's what really, I think, a very deep motivation for people is, you know, to feel like, you know, a lot of people really feel that, you know, am I really worthwhile? Am I a valuable person? And there's something very isolating that people feel, and when you feel like people respect you or you're famous, there's a sense of, oh my God, that people actually love me, people care about me. And that's, I think, a big draw. Hmm. So should we move on to the next passage we'd like to read out the next little section? Yeah. Yes. Happy to. So honour and wealth have, as central pleasure does, repentance as a natural consequence. The more each of these is possessed, the more joy is increased, and hence the more we are spurred on to increase them. But if our hopes should chance be frustrated, we experience the greatest sadness. And finally, honour has this disadvantage. To pursue it, we must direct our lives according to other men's powers of understanding, fleeing what they commonly flee, and seeking what they commonly seek. So here he's giving us a kind of contrast between wealth and honour on the one hand and central pleasure. And what's he saying here? Hmm. Yes, it's quite a complicated passage, actually, there's quite a lot in here. Well, he uses this word repentance, which is an interesting one. So he says that sense, sense pleasure has repentance as a natural consequence. And it's different in this respect, he says, from honour and wealth. I think there are different ways we can interpret this reference to repentance. I mean, to my ears, it sounds quite religious. The idea of, I don't know, atoning for your, for your sins or something like that. So I suppose he's saying, well, you know, we might feel guilty about pursuing pleasure in a way that we don't feel guilty about earning money or pursuing honour. And that might be a comment about just the kind of values of his culture that there might be, and I think this was the case that Spinoza was living in. I mean, we've talked about his Jewish community and his Jewish culture. But by this point, as we know, he'd been cast out of the synagogue and the Jewish community, and so he was in a broadly Christian environment. And the state church at this time in Holland was a Calvinist church. And there's quite a strong puritanical streak in this particular brand of Christianity, where, I mean, this is not straightforward, and I don't want to stereotype too much, but perhaps there's a disapproval of pleasure, the idea of lust being one of the sins, or even the idea that, you know, dancing and music is defrivolous. And so, yeah, so on the one hand, he's making a comment here, I think, about the way we might feel about pleasure and the kind of guilty feelings that might be induced. But he also says that repentance is a natural consequence of pleasure, which makes me wonder if there's something else that he's getting at here, whether it's not just a case of, you know, repentance as a kind of religious concept, and that people have been taught to feel guilty, but that maybe there's a more natural way in that, you know, certainly overindulging in pleasure, might just make you feel bad. So, you know, if you've had too many drinks, if you go out and have, you know, enjoy a bottle of wine the next morning, you're like, oh, you know, that was maybe not a good idea, or if you have that second helping of dessert, you know, you're prioritising your pleasure in the moment, aren't you? But then, after which you think, oh, I actually, you know, feel a bit too full now, or that wasn't a good idea. So, yeah, I think it's kind of ambiguous, actually, as to who's getting at here about repentance. Yeah, that's really great, because I had always kind of connected this, in my mind, with the earlier paragraph where he said, after the enjoyment of central pleasure, the greatest sadness follows. But I think you've really kind of raised a very interesting way of looking at it that I actually hadn't thought about, which I think is great, one of the great things about doing this podcast, and the idea of also the social dimension to it. I think that's really interesting, because I guess also kind of like, from a certain type of Calvinist perspective, actually, wealth is a sign of divine favour, right? wealth is actually not something to be guilty about. It's something to feel good about. And whereas I think maybe perhaps your central pleasure might have a, there might be a different view of that. Yeah, that's right, and because, of course, wealth can be used for good means, as you've mentioned, as Phenosa acknowledges, somebody could earn lots of money and then use it for philanthropic purposes or to provide for your family. And so, yeah, as you say, within his culture, it wasn't looked down on in itself, whereas I think the idea of a kind of hedonism, just pursuing pleasure, was seen as sort of in itself problematic, perhaps. Yeah. But that's just one dimension of what Phenosa is saying here, and I think another point he's making, which is connected to the point about repentance, there's a kind of natural break on pursuing pleasure, like with pursuing pleasure, you'll reach a limit, you'll get to the point where I actually can't eat anymore, that's enough sex for one night or whatever it might be, too long in the sun, that it's time to stop and to rest, and because these are all things to do with the body and the body needs to rest and take a break and gets tired exactly. So, with pursuing pleasure, as I say, there's a kind of natural break that gets put on it, and wealth and honor are not like this, Phenosa, saying he's saying, with these things, you want more and more, even if you've made millions, you want billions, even if you've made billions, you might actually want trillions, yeah, so you win a literary prize, and then you want the next one, and you feel bad if someone else gets the next prize, or you want more and more followers or hearts, so it's got this sensationality to it, and that he says is a real problem. Yeah, no, that's great, and that's really kind of like the brilliance of money, is that you can all always have more of it, because if it was really just about meeting our needs, at certain point, you just stop and there's no reason to push yourself further and further and further. But with money, especially in money, it's kind of also something that's connected with social status, then it's not just about having, I mean, who could ever spend a billion dollars, but with money, it has also this, it's really also this kind of like comparative elements, and it's always about, it's not just having more than I could ever spend, it's all about having more relative to another person, and that's infinite, right? Yes, yes. That competition is infinite. Yeah, and I think that point about competition is really important, I mean, Spinoza is not exactly making it explicit here, but he does, he will make it explicit elsewhere, certainly when we read the ethics, because this honor is a kind of good where there's only, yeah, there's a sort of finite number of prizes to go around, or not everyone's going to get the top marks, or not everyone's going to win the football match, just sort of by the nature of it, so this is a kind of pursuit of good that pits people against each other, and that itself, Spinoza, says, makes us anxious, and actually makes us quite troublesome to each other. And quite anti-social, even though, even though honor is, in a way, the most social kind of value is to do with being a part of a community and our natural desire to be liked, admired, there's also the potential to be quite anti-social in your pursuit of these things. Yeah, and he talks about, and this word, and he said, talks about, there are hopes being frustrated, right, we want a certain thing, we want a certain award, we want a certain income, and as long as we get it, it's fine, but when we're not getting it, then there's something very, this feeling of frustration, which all of us have experienced, and it's a real downside, like people talk about all the great things about having a lot of money and getting a lot of honors, they don't mention as much the downsides of what happens when you don't get it, and all the negative feelings that you have when you don't get it. The disappointment, envy, resentments, right, right, yeah, you don't see that as much on the commercials or on the, no, they advertise once they don't talk about that, yeah. And on top of this downside, he adds, well, more doesn't he, at the end of this passage, so he says, finally, honor has this great disadvantage. To pursue it, we must direct our lives according to other men's powers of understanding, fleeing what they commonly flee and seeking what they commonly seek. Yeah. Why is this a bad thing? What's wrong with directing your life according to other people's powers of understanding? Yeah, well, I think we could understand this in terms of our need for authenticity and need to be true to ourselves, our desire to really seek what's really true, not just what other people say. And the problem with pursuing honor is you need applause, and you have to conform to what the tastes of the public. And the problem with that is that the tastes are always changing. So the most successful person at some level who's really wants to seek honor has to be almost like a shapeshifter. They always have to be changing as the mood of the public changes, because what the public likes, two years ago, my kids will say, oh, that's so 2024. If I'm trying to be cool or something and say something, some trend, they're like, oh, that was two years ago. And yeah, yeah. What do you think about it, Claire? Well, yes. So I mean, I like the way he puts it at the end when he says, fleeing what they commonly flee and seeking what they commonly seek. So fleeing and seeking, he's, again, he's talking about values, he's talking about desires. And he's describing a life that's really following and imitating others, isn't he? You like something because someone else likes it, and so you just sort of like it as well, you value it as well. And I mean, stepping back for a moment, this is very much just sort of, it's the kind of thing I suppose I'm quite used to hearing in enlightenment philosophers say, yeah, that it's really important to think for yourself, to not be dictated to by other people, by external authorities, but to follow something within yourself. And I mean, you talked about the idea of authenticity being true to yourself. I mean, I think Spinoza and Descartes also would want to say following your own reason, rather than just accepting the beliefs, the opinions about what's important and about what matters that's been handed down to you. So there's some idea that you're, I suppose, unfree, actually, if you're kind of blindly following the values of your culture, there's something you're missing out on. And so, I mean, I mentioned earlier that when he talked about sense pleasure, confusing and dulling the mind, this is a particular problem if you're trying to do philosophy. And I think that's, it's a bit like that here as well, it's particularly, if you're doing philosophy, if you're really wanting to seek the truth and, and use your reason, which for Spinoza is a really important part of doing philosophy, then just kind of following along with other people's opinions and beliefs is actually going to get in the way. And in this respect, he's, he's echoing Descartes, yeah, this is exactly the message of Descartes at the beginning of his meditations, which I mentioned last week is one of the, is one of the models for this text where Descartes describes himself kind of at a certain point in life, realizing that he's just accepted what everybody else taught him. And it's time for him to learn to think for himself and to question what he's been taught. And so there's, there's a version of that going on here, but for Spinoza, it's much more about questioning values and questioning, what we most deeply desire, not just questioning sort of beliefs in a more kind of epistemic kind of way. Absolutely agree with that. I mean, and this is because this is, it's, it's really everything depends on this. This isn't some kind of minor thing. He's told us that the conventional goods that people want money, sense pleasure and honor. These are things which give us that have a lot of downsides, right? And if you are kind of just stuck in convention, you are not going to be able to pursue the true good, the one that the good that is going to give you this everlasting happiness. It's almost like you're, it's, it's really like Plato's cave. You're just caught in the cave and you're just pursuing what everyone's pursuing. And yet there's some good to that. There's a lot of downsides. And now you have no freedom to, to really find the true happiness, the truth that's going to give you the true true joy. That's great. I think yeah, you're right. Plato's cave is such an important reference point here. It's very, it's really a very similar kind of vision, I think, that, that Spinoza is exploring. And it's raising similar questions about how the philosopher is supposed to live in the world, live with other human beings, how do you navigate that, that, that conflict between being a part of the conventional world and wanting to escape, wanting to be free, wanting to seek something higher. Yes. And he's going to address this, I think, more explicitly in a few couple of pages, right? Yes. So I think we've got time to read one more passage before we finish. Michael, do you want to read the next bit? Yes. Let's get to it. Since I saw that all these things stood in the way of my working towards this new goal, indeed we're so opposed to it that one or the other must be given up, I was forced to ask what would be more useful to me, for as I say, I seem to be willing to lose the certain good for the uncertain one. But after I'd considered the matter a little, I first found that if I devoted myself to this new plan of life and gave up the old, I would be giving up a good by its nature uncertain for one uncertain, not by its nature, but only in respect to its attainment. So Spinoza, right, he seems to be weighing up the pros and cons of seeking these conventional goods versus this higher good. Like, how do you understand him, this calculation is mine. I mean, it's, again, it's a complicated passage here. One thing that I enjoyed about this passage is seeing Spinoza do something that philosophers love to do, which is making a distinction. He's, he's, he's joined. He's for a good distinction. He's joined a distinction here between two ways in which something can be uncertain. So the conventional enjoyment values he's been describing, pursuing are uncertain in the sense that they're unreliable. So he's saying that these goods are by their nature uncertain and that they're unreliable. They don't deliver happiness, pursuing those things. And then he says that this other higher, true or good he's seeking is uncertain, not by its nature, but only in respect of its attainment. So what he's saying there is that it's, this would be something that was reliable. Once you got it, you could be sure of it, yeah, because it would be lasting. But it's still uncertain in respect of whether you could actually get it in the first place. So on the one hand, we're certain that we can get the goods of wealth on essential pleasure. But when we do get them there, they tend to be unreliable. By contrast, lasting joy would be reliable where we get it. The problem there is, yeah, he doesn't actually, because he's not yet experienced it. There's this quest he's seeking whether it's possible in the first place. That's kind of what he's set out to discover. But one thing that is, for sure, is that he's again returning to this question of certainty and uncertainty. And it's a theme. It's a theme that we talked about it in the last show I mentioned, that it was also a big theme for Descartes. Descartes is famous as a philosopher who's in quest of certainty and using a philosophical method to reach certainty. And again, we can see Spinoza, kind of riffing on this theme of certainty and uncertainty and making some quite subtle points about it and distinguishing between different ways in which something might be uncertain. So he has reached this point where at the beginning he thought, well, the conventional goods are certain. And why would I give up something certain for something uncertain? Well, I don't even know if I could get this higher good. And now when he reflects on it further, he says, well, actually they're both uncertain. They're both uncertain in different ways. And so now he's kind of, it seems he's still back to the question of, should he pursue this highest good? And we're still at the cliffhanger because we still don't have a resolution of will he do it or will he not? Right? Spinoza remains uncertain what to do. And we find Spinoza now his life is hanging on the razor's edge and we're waiting to find out what he's going to decide. Will he abandon his search for the paradise of unceasing joy and peace of mind? Or is he going to give this up as a pipe dream, return to the realistic, responsible path of becoming a respectable, successful businessman? Or maybe a respectable, successful, philosophy professor? How will he make this life-changing decision? I'll have to tune in next time to find out. Thanks again for listening to Spinoza Unraveled, produced by Roger Bynon. This episode is sponsored by Spaw, Scarsdale Psychology Associates, with beautiful offices in Scarsdale, New York, Greenwich, Connecticut, Manhattan, and Viatel Therapy. At Spaw you'll be thoughtfully matched with a compassionate therapist. Feel cared for from beginning to end at Scarsdale Psychology Associates. If you would like to read along with us, order a Spinoza reader edited by Edwin Curley, direct from Princeton University Press, and use code Spinoza all caps for 40% off.