Spinoza on Pride and Ambition

Ethics, Part III, Notes from Propositions 25 to 31

Spinoza so clearly nails the state of modern politics that he needs no commentary. Who, in your estimation best fits this description?

"This endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt: in other cases it is generally called kindliness.

"This endeavour to bring it about, that our own likes and dislikes should meet with universal approval, is really ambition (see III. xxix. note); wherefore we see that everyone by nature desires (appetere), that the rest of mankind should live according to his own individual disposition: when such a desire is equally present in all, everyone stands in everyone else's way, and in wishing to be loved or praised by all, all become mutually hateful. 

"Thus we see that it may readily happen, that a man may easily think too highly of himself, or a loved object, and, contrariwise, too meanly of a hated object. This feeling is called pride, in reference to the man who thinks too highly of himself, and is a species of madness, wherein a man dreams with his eyes open, thinking that he can accomplish all things that fall within the scope of his conception, and thereupon accounting them real, and exulting in them, so long as he is unable to conceive anything which excludes their existence, and determines his own power of action. Pride, therefore, is pleasure springing from a man thinking too highly of himself.

"Again, as it may happen (II. xvii. Coroll.) that the pleasure, wherewith a man conceives that he affects others, may exist solely in his own imagination, and as (III. xxv.) everyone endeavours to conceive concerning himself that which he conceives will affect him with pleasure, it may easily come to pass that a vain man may be proud and may imagine that he is pleasing to all, when in reality he may be an annoyance to all."

Ethics, Book III, Notes to Propositions 26 to 30 

The day after posting "Three Kinds of Good," I had a run that felt far from good.

I had recently signed up for a marathon and was following a pretty stringent training schedule. That day I was supposed to run seven miles easy, with seven strides.

The whole seven miles it never felt easy. I struggled with form. My legs felt heavy. Everything felt like a struggle.

I guess what is good, even what is good in itself, doesn't always feel good. If we went by feelings we'd always do what is pleasurable rather than what is good.

Three Kinds of Good

In Book Three of The Republic, Glaucon tries to trick Socrates by insisting that there are three kinds of goods:

1.    “some which we welcome for their own sakes, and independently of their consequences, as, for example, harmless pleasures and enjoyments, which delight us at the time, although nothing follows from them,” and
2.  “also a second class of goods, such as knowledge, sight, health, which are desirable not only in themselves, but also for their results?” and
3.   “third class, such as gymnastic, and the care of the sick, and the physician's art; also the various ways of money-making --these do us good but we regard them as disagreeable; and no one would choose them for their own sakes, but only for the sake of some reward or result which flows from them.”

Glaucon wishes to argue that “justice,” which has been the object of discussion so far is of the third class: “that justice is to be reckoned in the troublesome class, among goods which are to be pursued for the sake of rewards and of reputation, but in themselves are disagreeable and rather to be avoided.”

As a runner, I might draw an analogy between gymnastics, which Glaucon also places in the third class, and justice. I started running, as Glaucon says, for the good that came from it. There were times I found it tedious and unpleasant. I doubt that I would have continued had it continued to be nothing more than an unpleasantness that I had to get through in order to get to something else. Eventually, it had to become an end in itself, though not simply the first class, something pleasant an insignificant, but the second class, something that is good in itself, and also has good results. 

When I run I run in order to run. I want nothing more. I know that later I will feel more alive, more in tune with life and with myself. I might run for that feeling if it wasn’t that I would have never discovered that feeling unless I started running for the sheer joy of running preceded those feelings. 

Is there are parallel to justice? Can it proceed in a similar way, practicing (or pretending to be) just for the benefits, finding that just eventually becomes an end in itself, then gives the benefits that were originally sought? An interesting aspect of this analogy is that when I originally started running I did it for health reasons. Now, as much as I appreciate the health benefits, I run for the more direct benefits, much of which I can only incompletely attach a name to. In other words, what I originally ran for, while recognizably beneficial, I don’t see as significant as what I now run for. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it is a counterfeit, but it isn’t what keeps me going. I can say that about justice. Those first benefits mentioned by Glaucon, “rewards and reputation” are counterfeit justice, and do not deserve the name.

Knowledge vs True Opinion in Meno

Below are a few select statements from Socrates comparing knowledge with true opinion. Given the distrust of opinion in academia, one might expect Socrates to value knowledge more than opinion. His two qualifiers are worth noting: he is only comparing knowledge to "true" opinion, and he is only identifying them as equal in terms of being useful, either for "proper action" (virtue) or "the right course of action for their cities" (deliberative rhetoric, or to use Plato's term, "advisory" rhetoric). 

"So true opinion is in no way an inferior guide to action than knowledge. This is what we overlooked in our investigation of the nature of virtue, when we said only knowledge can culminate in proper action; for true opinion can do just as well.

"True opinion, then, is neither inferior to knowledge nor does less good in action, no does the man who has true opinion in lieu of knowledge come off the worse.

Therefore, if it isn’t through knowledge, the only alternative is that it is through true

opinion that statesmen settle on the right course for their cities. As regards knowledge,

they are no different from seers and prophets. They too say many true things when the

divine inspiration strikes them, but they don’t actually know what they are talking about."