The Passions, Power, and Practical Philosophy: Spinozaand
Nietzsche Contra the StoicsAurelia ArmstrongThe Journal of
Nietzsche Studies, Volume 44, Issue 1, Spring 2013,pp. 6-24
(Article)Pubshed by Penn State Unversty PressDOI:
10.1353/nie.2013.0002For additional information about this
articleAccess provided by Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile
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GMT)http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nie/summary/v044/44.1.armstrong.htmlJOURNAL
OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2013.Copyright 2013 The
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.6The Passions,
Power, and Practical PhilosophySpinoza and Nietzsche Contra the
StoicsAURELIA ARMSTRONGABSTRACT: This article reviews the influence
of Stoic thought on the development of Spinozas and Nietzsches
ethics and suggests that although both philosophers follow the
Stoics in conceiving of ethics as a therapeutic enterprise that
aims at human freedom and flourishing, they part company with
Stoicism in refusing to identify flourishing with freedom from the
passions. In making this claim, I take issue with the standard view
of Spinozas ethics, according to which the passions figure
exclusively as a source of unhappiness and bondage from which we
must be liberated. I argue that, in fact, Spinoza anticipates
Nietzsche and breaks with the Stoics in offering a more positive
assessment of the role of pas-sion in a flourishing life. The
reading pursued here takes Spinozas divergence from the Stoic
account of the passions to be a consequence of his insistence on
the immanence of human being in nature. I outline Spinozas and
Nietzsches conception of immanence and suggest that it entails a
common understanding of our nature as dynamic power or desire,
which is simultaneously expressed as a capacity to act and be acted
on, to affect and to be affected. The recogni-tion of the complex
relationship between passive and active power requires a
revaluation of our vulnerability and openness to what can affect us
and leads each philosopher to a consideration of the ways in which
the passions might be made to support our striving to increase our
power and to realize an essentially limited freedom and precarious
flourishing.Thoughsurprisinglylittlehasbeenwrittenabouttherelationshipbetween
Nietzsches and Spinozas practical philosophy, a survey of the
literature reveals general agreement regarding the grounds for a
comparison of their ethical projects. Both are described as
adhering to the idea that the quest for human perfectibility is
only possible within the horizons of immanence. For Yirmiyahu
Yovel, this amounts to their common commitment to an ethics of
self- overcoming, whereby the immanent natural principle (conatus
in Spinoza, will to power in Nietzsche) shapes itself into
something higher than its raw givenness.1 This view is echoed by
Richard Schacht, who sees Spinozas attraction to Nietzsche as lying
in the formers attempt to do justice to our capacity to transcend
our merely natural JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 6 21/04/13 12:42
PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY7existence by way of
its transformation, but without appealing to transcendent values
and without transcending nature.2 In short, the suggestion is that
Nietzsche and Spinoza are committed to a form of ethical
naturalism, one that proceeds by way of practices of self-formation
or self-transformation and that aims at the attainment of an
enhanced form of human life characterized by an affirmative
attitude toward existence, a love of necessity or fate.While the
secondary literature on Nietzsches relation to Spinoza does not go
much beyond identifying this shared ethical ethos, the
characterization of this ethos does reveal its common ancestry in
the ancient Greco-Roman conception of philosophy as therapeia.
Pierre Hadot argues that for the ancients, philosophy is understood
as a way of life or spiritual exercise rather than as a purely
abstract-theoretical activity.3 The exercises recommended by the
philosophies of classical antiquity are oriented to the practical
project of training people to live and to look at the world in a
new way.4 Hadot suggests that with the absorption of philosophia by
Christianity, philosophys role was reduced to that of furnishing
theology with conceptual material and that it is not until
Nietzsche that philosophy becomes once again a concrete attitude
and way of seeing the world.5 In making this claim, however, Hadot
overlooks the early modern revival of the classical con-ception of
philosophy as an approach to life that contributes to human
flourishing and thus as a therapeutic enterprise. This oversight is
especially understandable in Spinozas case. Spinozas intellectual
debts to ancient philosophy are over-looked by the majority of
interpreters, who argue that he was mainly influenced by his
contemporaries, especially Descartes. Among those scholars who have
examined the influence of the Hellenistic tradition on Spinoza,
however, there is general agreement that Spinozas philosophy can be
most fruitfully understood as a reworking of Stoicism. The
recognition of the particular importance of Stoicism to Spinoza
resonates with recent scholarly interest in Nietzsches debt to the
Stoic tradition and points to a common source in light of which it
might be possible to compare and evaluate their respective
approaches to
ethics.ThatSpinozaandNietzscheareunitedintheirendorsementofkeyStoic
themes is readily apparent. There are, in fact, three major themes
identified in the literature as points of convergence between
Spinoza and Nietzsche that suggest the influence of Stoicism on
their thought. The first concerns the Stoic reconcili-ation of a
naturalistic perspective with an ethical perspective, and it
appears in their common acceptance of modified versions of the
Stoic doctrines of radical determinism, or fatalism, and amor fati.
We can understand the significance of these related themes in
general terms as a way of articulating the dual nature of human
being as both an entirely natural, material being, subject to the
same necessities as the rest of the natural world, and at the same
time as a being capable of transfiguring and even perfecting that
nature, precisely through an understand-ing of natural necessity
and an acceptance of its own nature as a piece of fate. The second
theme that dominates the secondary literature is the Stoic critique
JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 7 21/04/13 12:42 PM8AURELIA ARMSTRONGof
pity, or the unegoistic emotions, which both Spinoza and Nietzsche
endorse and develop in different contexts and which Nietzsche
explicitly associates with both Stoicism and Spinoza.6 The final
theme, which is the primary focus of this article, concerns the
place of the passions in the philosophical therapy that some have
claimed both Spinoza and Nietzsche
endorse.Accordingtocommentators,SpinozaandNietzschefollowtheStoicsin
conceiving of ethics as a form of cognitive psychological therapy
that provides techniques and strategies whereby we can change our
beliefs, thought processes,
andaffectivestatesinordertofreeourselvesfromthefalseevaluationsof
external events that are the cause of emotional turmoil. This
conception of philo-sophical therapeutics entails a diagnosis of
the passions, which are understood by the Stoics to be the primary
obstacle to human flourishing, and presents them in terms that
evoke their susceptibility to remedy. For the Stoics, it is the
passions, or path (literally things that one undergoes in contrast
to actions or the things that one does), that are the sole source
of human unhappiness and bondage. In undergoing passions, we are
subject to external influence, to the vicissitudes of fortune over
which we have little or no control and which are, for that reason,
potential sources of pain, frustration, disappointment, and
emotional instability. The key to Stoic therapy lies in recognizing
that while what fortune metes out is not up to us, the attitude we
adopt toward acts of fortune is.7 Once we realize that the sources
of suffering are not external things and how they happen to affect
us but rather our own irrational judgments about the value of
externals, the way is open to us to refuse assent to those of our
value judgments that are the cause of our passions and irrational
desires and thereby to free ourselves from violent and excessive
emotions and from the false estimation of the value of external
things on which those emotions depend. The Stoic belief that the
good lifethe life of virtue, freedom, and happinessis a life free
from passion is reflected and expressed in the high value that
Stoicism places on psychological independence, tranquility of mind,
self-control, and self-sufficiency. What ground is there for
thinking that Spinoza and Nietzsche endorse Stoic psychotherapy and
thus the view that human flourishing requires the extirpation of
the passions?There does appear to be a profound correspondence
between the central mes-sage of Spinozas Ethicsthat freedom is
achieved by mastering the passionsand the Stoic view. Spinoza
tacitly admits this debt to the Stoic tradition when he describes
human bondage in strongly Stoic terms as mans lack of power
tomoderateandrestraintheaffects,notingthatthemanwhoissubjectto
affects is under the control, not of himself, but of fortune
(EIVpref).8 Firmin DeBrabander argues that Spinoza is like the
Stoics in considering the passions the principal obstacle to human
flourishing and in casting them as amenable to intellectual
therapy.9 Spinoza also agrees with the Stoics that the passions are
inadequate ideas of external things and that, as such, they may be
amended through rational understanding. According to the standard
reading of Spinozas JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 8 21/04/13 12:42
PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY9ethics, then,
Spinozas view is profoundly Stoic in its presentation of rational
understanding as the key to liberation from bondage to passive
affects. Rational understanding of nature is liberating because it
enables us to replace the inad-equate ideas that underpin the
passions with adequate ideas and corresponding active affects that
follow from and depend on our own power rather than the power of
external causes. While passions signal our capacity to be affected
by the external world, our receptivity to external influence, and
thus our passivity, rational understanding makes us more active,
independent, and self-determining. Moreover, because when we act on
the basis of adequate understanding we act in ways that are
reliably self-preserving or empowering, this type of understand-ing
is also experienced as an intense and secure form of joy. Insofar
as we are rational, Spinoza tells us, we are powerful, virtuous,
free and able to enjoy a peace of mind and a species of joy that
are immune from the vagaries of
fortune.EventhisbriefdescriptionofthestandardviewofSpinozistethicsasa
form of psychotherapy makes the parallels with Stoicism obvious and
striking. Indeed, according to Alexandre Matheron, of all the great
classical philosophers Spinoza is the one whose teaching best lends
itself to a point-by-point comparison with Stoicism.10 But although
there is much textual evidence to support a Stoic reading of
Spinozas ethical project, this reading fails, in my view, to
capture the more positive strains in his treatment of the passions
and so fails to grasp how his conception of therapy diverges
decisively from the Stoic model. Before considering the nature of
this divergence, we need to familiarize ourselves briefly with the
way in which Nietzsches more complex and ambivalent relation to
Stoicism has been addressed in the literature. We will then be in a
position to raise the issue of the relationship between their
respective understanding of the nature of the passions and their
approaches to the role of the passions in ethical life.There are at
least two different claims made about Nietzsches Stoicism that are
relevant to the question of how he conceives the passions and their
impact on human flourishing. First, there are those who argue that
Nietzsche appealed to the Stoic tradition primarily as a way of
engaging critically with the deployment of the passions in a
morality of pity. Martha Nussbaum is a key proponent of this
position. She describes Nietzsches project as an effort to bring
about a revival of Stoic values of self-command and self-formation
within a post-Christian and post-Romantic context.11 According to
Nussbaum, Nietzsches critique of pity demonstrates his acceptance
of the full Stoic position regarding the extirpation of passion.12
In fact, she argues that Nietzsche goes even further than the
Stoics by embracing asceticism, which is evident, she claims, in
his rejection of the value of external goods to human flourishing
and in his celebration of a radical, self-protective Stoic hardness
that denies human vulnerability and finitude. This reading is
distinctive in its claim that a commitment to Stoic values is an
abiding feature of Nietzsches thinking. By contrast, Michael Ures
exploration of the Stoic influences on Nietzsches philosophy
identifies significant changes JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 9
21/04/13 12:42 PM10AURELIA ARMSTRONGin Nietzsches attitude toward
Stoicism during different phases of histhinking.13
Urearguesconvincinglythatinthelate1870sNietzschedrawsheavilyon
Stoicism in his efforts to develop a new philosophical therapy for
suffering as an alternative to the failed antinatural strategies
for treating human suffering and vulnerability that he associated
with metaphysics and religion. On Ures account Nietzsche adopts a
conventional form of Stoic therapy in Human, All Too Human and
Daybreak, which turns on the Stoic insight that the sources of
misery are not external but internal, and he proposes as the cure
for this mis-ery the Stoic strategy of changing our value
judgments. This mainly positive appraisal of Stoic therapeutics
gives way, in the early 1880s, to a more critical stance, which Ure
interprets as a sign of Nietzsches growing misgivings about the
Stoic idea that eudaimonia turns on the achievement of apatheia.14
On the basis of his reading of The Gay Science, Ure sees Nietzsches
increasingly critical attitude toward Stoicism as a sign of his
rejection of the Stoic ideal of
flourishingasrequiringfreedomfrompassion.Thesetworeadingsprovide
strong evidence that Nietzsche accepted central tenets of the Stoic
theory of the passions and experimented with a Stoic model of
therapy in his efforts to give new meaning to human suffering, even
if, on the second reading, he ultimately rejects the conventional
Stoic
model.15IfwefollowthestandardreadingofSpinozasethics,accordingtowhich
passive affects or passions figure exclusively as sources of human
unhappiness and bondage from which we must be delivered, then we
might naturally be led to conclude that Nietzsches increasingly
critical attitude toward the Stoics on just this point must include
Spinoza and that Nietzsche breaks with his philosophical forbears
in his more positive assessment of the role of passion in a
flourishing life. Without denying the importance of the Stoic ideal
of human flourishing to the development of Spinozas and Nietzsches
views, I nevertheless argue that it is Spinoza who first challenges
the Stoic traditions conception of the nature and goals of therapy
and that he does so in ways that reveal a deep affinity with
Nietzschesphilosophicalperspective.Thebasisofthisaffinityisashared
commitment to the principle of the immanence of human being in
nature. On
Yovelsaccount,thisprincipleimpliesthreebasicconceptualcommitments:
(1)Immanence[orthis-worldlyexistence]istheonlyandoverallhorizon of
being; (2) it is equally the only source of value and normativeness
and (3) absorbing this recognition into ones life is a preludeand
preconditionfor whatever liberation (or, emancipation) is in store
for humans.16Since Stoic philosophy also embraces these principles
and has been described as belonging to a tradition of immanence, we
need to begin with a brief exposition of Stoic ethics, as well as
the metaphysics on which it is based, in order to grasp the
conceptual grounds for Spinozas criticisms of Stoicism. These
criticisms, I argue, turn on the claim that Stoic ethics falls foul
of the version of immanence that Spinoza and Nietzsche endorse.JNS
44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 10 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY11Stoic Therapy: Virtue as ApatheiaThe Stoic
ideal of virtue is founded on a particular metaphysics of nature.17
To be virtuous is to live in agreement with nature. In the Stoic
conception, nature, or fate, is rationally ordered, necessitarian,
providential, and divine. To live in accordance with nature is to
actively accept what happens as necessary, as fated, as the will of
God. Moreover, since nature unfolds according to a divinely
ordained providential plan, which is rational and, therefore,
beneficial, every-thing that occurs can be understood not only as
teleologically ordered but as ultimately ordered for the benefit of
human beings, who may thus be said to enjoy a privileged place in
the cosmos. This privilege, however, is not apparent from the
perspective of ones ordinary human aspirations for personal
survival, happiness, and success. Much of what happens is not
within our control and may conflict with personal goals and
desires. The Stoics thus suggest that detach-ing ourselves from
this limited personal perspective and appraising our lives from the
standpoint of the whole are central to the attainment of virtue. It
is by evaluating what happens from the universal point of view that
we bring our will into alignment with the will of fate. The
acceptance of what happens as fated, which is supported by the
conception of nature as providentially ordered, brings freedom from
the passions that poison the lives of those who remain attached to
external things and who therefore desire things to be other than
they actually are. The Stoic sage can endure the assaults of
fortune in a way that the
passion-atemancannotbecausehissoulisinharmonywiththecosmosthatis,he
rationally pursues the ends that nature prescribes in the knowledge
that its ends are ultimately appropriate to his rational nature,
considered as part of the whole. Marcus Aurelius nicely sums up the
attitude of detachment that is central to this therapeutic
strategy: You must consider the doing and perfecting of what the
universal Nature decrees in the same light as your health, and
welcome all that happens, even if it seems harsh, because it leads
to the health of the universe, and the welfare and well-being of
Zeus. For he would not have allotted this to anyone if it were not
beneficial to the Whole.18For the Stoics, as we have seen, the
passionsdefined as excessive impulses to seek or avoid somethingare
the primary obstacle to our telos, or agree-ment with nature. To be
in the grip of a passion is to accord excessive value to things
that make no contribution to our virtue. That we may be in the grip
of passions raises the question of what power we have to bring
about our own
virtueandhappiness.TheStoicresponsetothisquestion,asIhavenoted,
istoappealtothedistinctionbetweenthatwhichisafunctionofourfree
rational choice, and thus our own doing, and that which is not. As
Epictetus explains, Some things are up to us, while others are not
up to us. Up to us are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and,
in a word, everything that is our own doing; not up to us are our
body, our property, reputation, office, and, in JNS
44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 11 21/04/13 12:42 PM12AURELIA ARMSTRONGa
word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things
up to us are by nature free, unhindered, unimpeded; while the
things not up to us are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and
not our own.19Epictetuss distinction between what is up to us and
not up to us is framed in terms of the distinction between the
rational soul and everything external to it, above all the body and
the web of dependencies in which it is caught. Our capacity to
determine ourselves depends on the power of the rational soul to
freely assent to or withhold assent from impressions. It is this
cognitive power that enables the soul to exert control over passion
and, indeed, in the case of the sage, to ensure that no passion
ever takes root in it. As Derk Pereboom explains, in the Stoic
conception, passions do not happen to an agent. Rather, whenever an
agent has a passion, it has in a sense been chosen by that agent.
And accord-ingly, an agent can avoid struggling against passions
altogether, because simply by exercising its power of assent, she
can prevent any untoward passion from coming to exist at all.20The
Stoics thus propose two therapeutic strategies for extirpating the
passions, one that affirms our power of voluntary, rational assent
and one that affirms divine determinism. Each strategy stages the
relation between self and world slightly differently. To affirm the
power of voluntary assent as the source of freedom from the
passions is to accord to the soul, but not the body, a power to
transcend its determination by the external world. In Epictetuss
formulation, the body is associated with that which is external,
alien, and superfluous to the self. The true locus of the self is
the active, rational soul, which must struggle for inner purity and
intellectual liberation from body, world, passivity, and pas-sion.
This strategy assumes a rigid boundary between self and world, one
that isolates and insulates the (mental) self in such a way as to
allow it psychologi-cal independence and self-sufficiency
unperturbed by the distractions of the body.21 What counts as the
self is thus radically narrowed, and it is set against a hostile
external world whose assaults it must heroically endure. This
opposi-tion between self and world is overcome, however, in the
selfs identification with the whole. Since it is only from the
perspective of the part, or particular individual, that things
appear as external forces, as hindrances to the realization of
personal desires, identification with the whole promises a total
liberation from external determination and, thus, from the very
possibility of passion. In effect, the full realization and
affirmation of the rational wills deeper unity with the rationality
of nature dissolves the boundary between the will and fate and with
it the distinction between internal and external causes, which is
the conceptual precondition for the experience of external
determination, passivity, and passion.John Sellars has argued that
these two strategies represent, in fact, two distinct stages on the
path of philosophical progression toward the ideal of the sage, and
he associates the final stage of Stoic ethicswhich consists
indissolving the boundary between oneself and the rest of nature by
identifying ones own will JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 12 21/04/13
12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY13with the
will of the cosmos or fatewith the affirmative ethics of Spinoza
and Nietzsche.22 While it is true that Spinoza envisages progress
in ethical perfection as a matter of gaining an understanding of
ourselves as parts of a more encom-passing whole and that he views
this process as involving an expansion of the boundaries of atomic
individuality, his affirmation of the strict immanence of human
being in nature precludes the possibility of a total liberation
from external determination and, therefore, from the passions.23 It
is this aspect of the Stoic view, which he aligns with Descartess
position, that Spinoza singles out for criticism in his only
explicit reference to Stoicism in the Ethics. The Stoics, he says,
imagine that the affects depend entirely on our will, and that we
can com-mand them absolutely. But experience cries out against this
(EVpref). What follows from such voluntarism, as Spinoza astutely
observes, is a tendency to treat the passions as vices or diseases
of human nature, which moralists there-fore bewail, or laugh at, or
disdain, or (as usually happens) curse (EIIIpref). To suppose that
human beings can acquire an absolute freedomthat man has
absolutepoweroverhisactions,andthatheisdeterminedonlybyhimself
(EIIIpref)istoconceiveofmaninnatureasadominionwithinadomin-ion
(EIIIpref). Against this anthropomorphic position, Spinoza insists
that it is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature,
and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which
can be understood through his own nature alone, and of which he is
the adequate cause (EIVp4). The strict integration of human being
in nature means that we are necessarily acted on by external forces
and therefore necessarily subject to passions. In sum, Spinoza
charges Stoic ethics with falling foul of the principle of
immanence in at least two respects. In identifying virtue with
apatheia, or total freedom from passion, it elevates the virtuous
person above nature, and in imagining the attainment of virtue as a
function of the rational souls voluntary control over its affects,
it accords to the soul, but not the body, a power to transcend
determination and so both denies the souls natural status and
problematically restricts what counts as the self to the active,
rational soul or
mind.Spinozasrefusalofhumanexceptionalismisthoroughlyendorsedby
Nietzsche. Like Spinoza, Nietzsche rejects soul atomism (BGE 12)
and vol-untarism as manifestations of a metaphysics that abstractly
opposes man and
world(seeGS346).NietzschemountshiskeenestcriticismsoftheStoics,
however, against their account of suffering. In advocating measured
endurance and rational indifference toward the external world,
which is experienced as the source of unwanted suffering, Stoic
ethics reveals itself to be motivated by the desire to escape
vulnerability and pain. When interpreted in terms of this desire,
the Stoic ideal of apatheia appears as a denial of the fundamental
character of life as productive struggle and growth. I suggest that
for Nietzsche, openness toward the world and increased capacity for
being acted on and affected are the marks of a healthy,
life-affirming form of existence and therefore that he must JNS
44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 13 21/04/13 12:42 PM14AURELIA
ARMSTRONGreject not only a Stoic ethic of heroic endurance but also
the dissolution of the boundary between self and world on the same
grounds because both postures express a negative evaluation of our
capacity to be affected. In turning now to consider the alternative
metaphysics and ethics that Spinoza and Nietzsche put forward,I
arguethattheirethicisdistinguished fromaStoicethicby virtue of its
incorporation of a positive assessment of the value of the capacity
to be affected into its ideal of human freedom and
flourishing.Joyful Passions as a Condition of Flourishing:
SpinozaSpinoza and Nietzsche are united in their insistence on the
radical immanence of human beings in nature (see BGE 230). For
both, nature is to be understood in terms of a single principle of
dynamic powerconatus in Spinoza and will to power in Nietzsche a
striving or desire for expansion and growth, an effort to develop
ones cognitive and corporeal forces in the direction of increasing
the power to act, that is necessarily conditioned by the activity
of other things.
Inotherwords,theactivityandgrowthofparticularindividualsinnatureis
alwaysafunctionofbothactingandbeingactedon,ofaffectingandbeing
affected. To exist, to be a living thing, is to strive to increase
ones power in and through (affective) exchanges with an
environment. The principle of the radical immanence of the human in
nature thus entails the impossibility of transcending ones
relations, in other words, the impossibility of eradicating
passivity and, therefore, the passions, since these are the
affective and ideational markers of our susceptibility to being
affected by the external world. It is on the basis of this
theoretical foundation that Spinoza and Nietzsche develop their
ethics or practical philosophy. For both, ethics provides guidance
for maximizing power or activity; that is, for realizing an
essentially limited but expandable freedom for a self conceived as
necessarily embodied and embedded in a natural and social
environment within which it strives more or less effectively for
self-development and growth. An ethics that focuses on power
enhancement rather than on the achievement of a fully realized
freedom or psychological independence from external determination
opens up the possibility of a more positive assessment of the
passions, insofar as it allows for a distinction to be made between
that which promotes onespowerandthatwhich diminishesit.Interms of
these criteria, only those passions that harm us, that deplete our
power, that prevent us from becoming more active will count as bad.
To the extent that certain kinds of passivity and passion are the
condition for activity or help to augment it, they can be
good.24This idea of a special cooperation between activity and
passivity is at the heart
ofSpinozasrethinkingoftheaffectsandtheirroleinethicallife.Although
Spinoza follows the Stoics in drawing a distinction between
rational action as JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 14 21/04/13 12:42
PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY15self-caused
activity and passion as external determination, he makes it clear
that in the strict sense God alone is a free cause. For God alone
exists only from the necessity of his nature . . . and acts from
the necessity of his nature (EIp17cor2). All other beings, or
finite modes, are determined to exist and act by another and to
produce an effect in a certain and determinate manner (EIp17). God
(or nature) alone, as an infinite being, is completely
self-determining because there is nothing outside him that could
limit him (EIp17). In claiming that finite beings are subject to
strict determinism, Spinoza is not denying them a limited freedom
and activity. He is claiming, rather, that the capacity of finite
modes to exist and to act is necessarily conditioned by the
activity of other existing things.25 We can understand Spinozas
position here as an attempt to unsettle the false dichotomy between
total passivity on the one hand and activity as self-origination
and con-trol on the other. For Spinoza, finite beings are neither
completely active nor completely passive. Rather, their activity is
caused both by the action of other things on them and by their own
power of acting, that is, by the immanent power of God or nature,
which acts through each thing. It is because the essence of natural
individuals is potentia agendi et patiendi that human power is
expressed as conatus, that is, as the inherent striving of the
individual for self-maintenance, expansion, and growth through
exchanges with an environment. That is, the activ-ity of finite
individuals is a function of being affected in order to affect
(i.e., to act). What Spinoza denies is that our powers of acting
and thinking could ever be unconditioned and therefore that an
individual could ever be the originating or sole cause of any
activity. For Spinoza, we can produce the effects of which we are
capable or develop those powers of thinking and acting that follow
from our nature or essence only in collaboration with other
individuals to whom we are related as parts of larger wholes. And
this is because our power as individu-als is infinitely surpassed
by the power of external forces, so that if we are to persist and
thrive, we must augment our powers through cooperative and mutually
empowering interactions with external things.This vital interplay
between our capacity to act and be acted on, to affect and be
affected, is one of the most strikingly original aspects of
Spinozas ethics. For Spinoza, our receptivity, or openness to what
can affect us, both leaves us vulnerable to those passions that
undermine the striving for self-determination and increases our
power of acting. As Hans Jonas observes, although our capacity to
be affected may expose us to disempowering, destructive passions
and desires, it is nevertheless the case that only by being
sensitive can life be active, only by being exposed can it be
autonomous.26 It is in his theory of the affects that Spinoza
articulates the link between the power of acting and affectivity.
Spinoza defines affects as affections of the Body, by which the
Bodys power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or
restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.
Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these
affections, I understand by the affect an action; otherwise a
passion (EIIIdef3).JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 15 21/04/13 12:42
PM16AURELIA
ARMSTRONGSpinozadistinguishesherebetweenactivityandpassivityintermsofthe
distinction between adequate and partial causation. We are said to
act or to be active when we are the adequate cause of our thoughts,
actions, and emotions, that is, when something in us or outside us
follows from our nature, and can be understood through it alone
(EIIIdef2). We are, on the other hand, said to be passive when what
we do, think, and feel is not explicable solely in terms of our own
nature but must also be explained by the influence of external
causes. This distinction between actions and passions is
complicated, however, by a division internal to the category of
passive affects, between those that correspond to an increase in
the bodys power of acting and those that involve a decrease in this
power. Spinoza develops this distinction in terms of the primary
affects of joy and sadness. He defines joy as that passion by which
the mind passes to a greater perfection and sadness as that passion
by which it passes to a lesser perfec-tion. Spinoza understands by
perfection the essence of a thing (EIVpref). The essence of the
mind consists in its activity, that is, in the fact that it thinks
adequately or understands (EIVp26d). So, in the case of joyful
passions, which are the affective indicator of an increase in power
or perfection brought about by an external cause, the power of
thinking adequately is augmented by external things. If the path of
ethical perfection is understood in terms of the transition from
relative passivity to increased activity, then we can say that
anything that reliably promotes our joy and protects us from
sadness would be regarded by
Spinozaascontributingtowhateveractivity,perfection,orvirtue(theseare
synonyms for Spinoza) we are capable of achieving. Thus, against
the Stoics and their rejection of the value of external things to
human flourishing, Spinoza is able to assert not only that we can
never bring it about that we require noth-ing outside ourselves to
preserve out being but furthermore that our intellect would of
course be more imperfect if the mind were alone and did not
understand anything except itself. There are, therefore, many
things outside us which are useful to us, and on that account to be
sought (EIVp18schol).But it is not just the minds increased
perfection and activity that concerns Spinoza. Or, rather, in a
move that further distances him from the Stoics, Spinoza asserts
that physical well-being and increased perfection are the
preconditions for an individuals securing an increased capability
for being affected and affect-ing and therefore of thinking.27 This
contention follows from his understanding of the substantial
identity of mind and body. For Spinoza, mind is the idea of body
and monitors in awareness the series of states of its body object
(EIIp11).
Themorecomplexthebody,thegreateritscapacitytobeaffectedbyother
bodies. A defining feature of highly complex and powerful bodies
is, therefore, a capacity for being acted on in many ways at once
(EIIp13schol). Spinoza
linksthebodysincreasedcapacityforbeingaffectedandaffectingwithan
increase in the minds powers of perception and thought (EIVp38dem).
If we want to perfect our intellect, we must do more than simply
provide the body JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 16 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE
PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY17with basic necessities:
Indeed, the human body is composed of a great many parts
ofdifferent natures, which require continuous and varied food so
that the whole body may be equally capable of doing everything
which can follow from its nature, and consequently, so that the
mind may also be equally capable of conceiving many things
(EIVappXXVII).It is by expanding a bodys favorable, empowering
contacts with its environ-ment so that it has more things in common
with other bodies that the mind related to this body becomes more
capable of thinking adequately, that is, of forming adequate ideas
of its affections and affects.28 And it is because Spinozas eth-ics
is concerned with the empowerment and liberation of the whole
person as a union of mind and body that he rejects the Stoic
reification of mind. For Spinoza, liberation cannot be conceived in
purely psychological terms, cannot be thought of simply as a mental
liberation from the passions, for the simple reason that our minds
are not separable from our desires, bodies, and situatedness. On
the con-trary, our minds are determined by desires that express our
bodys material and social relations. As a consequence, cognitive
therapy alone cannot liberate us. Or, more precisely, the
transformation of our desires, values, and beliefs entails the
transformation of material conditions, since they are in fact
expressions of the same reality. It is for this reason that Spinoza
presents the path of ethical liberation as realized in a process of
increasing our power through broadening our cognitive and corporeal
engagements with the world. It is on the basis of a diverse and
rich set of relations with other beings in nature that we become
capable of deepening our understanding of the affective relations
that determine us as parts of a more encompassing whole. While
Spinoza agrees with the Stoics in affirming independence of mind as
the goal of therapy, he departs from the Stoics in refusing to
construe independence as a function of transcending our affective
attachments and relations with the
world.29Spinozasrecognitionoftheinterdependenceofpassiveandactivepower
andofhowanincreaseintheoneentailsanincreaseintheotherimpliesa
revaluation of our vulnerability, receptivity, and openness to what
can affect usa
revaluationthatappearsespeciallyinhisconsiderationofthewaysin which
the passions themselves might be made to support our striving to
increase our power.30 He suggests that by building on and
optimizing joyful pleasures
anddesireswemayincreaseourpower,perfection,andvirtue.Considerin
this regard his claim that the greater the joy with which we are
affected, the greater the perfection towards which we pass
(EIVP45schol), so that if a man affected with Joy were led to such
a great perfection that he conceived himself and his actions
adequately, he would be capableindeed more capableof the same
actions to which he is now determined from affects which are
passions (EIVP59dem). Although passive joys and desires are an
increase of our power brought about by an external cause, Spinoza
nevertheless recommends a
thera-peuticstrategythatbuildsonandredirectssuchpleasuresanddesiresrather
JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 17 21/04/13 12:42 PM18AURELIA
ARMSTRONGthan advocating an approach that would restrict, control,
or eliminate them. He can do so because he understands joy as an
increase in activity, an increase in our striving. Desires arising
from joy are strengthened by joyful affects, by the power of
external causes. Because human power is augmented by the power of
an external cause in the experience of joy, Spinoza is able to
accord a role to passive joy in his account of the transition to
freedom. It is not surprising,
therefore,tofindjoyemphasizedinSpinozassummaryofhisremediesfor
passivity in the final part of the Ethics, where he exhorts us to
attend to those things which are good in each thing so that in this
way we are always determined to acting from an affect of joy
(EVp10schol). That Spinoza diverges decisively from the Stoics in
according value to human passivity is ultimately confirmed in his
theory of the highest good. For Spinoza, our highest good is to
know and love God. As Matthew Kisner explains, such knowledge
counts as a kind of joy because knowing God increases our power,
and as a kind of love because it comes about, at least partly, from
an external cause, God, expressed as the prior modes that are the
ultimate source of all our power. In this way, Spinoza claims that
the thing of greatest value and the goal of an ethical life is an
understanding of ourselves as dependent on and passive to God.31 In
the understanding and affirmation of our passivity and our
determination by the whole we become as powerful, active, and
joyful as we can be.The Value of Suffering: NietzscheLike Spinoza,
Nietzsche recognizes and affirms the complex interplay between the
capacity to affect and to be affected as fundamental to life, to
growth in power, and to health. It is in just these terms that he
frames his criticisms of the Stoic therapeutic model. When he
claims that the Stoics were consistent when they [. . .] desired as
little pleasure as possible, in order to get as little displeasure
as possible out of life, he makes it clear that his own instincts
tend in the opposite direction: To this day you have the choice:
either as little displeasure as pos-sible, painlessness in brief .
. . or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth
of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been
relished yet (GS 12). Here Nietzsche hints at two therapeutic
strategies for deal-ing with the pain and suffering that are the
inevitable lot of vulnerable, natural creatures. The Stoic
strategy, of which Nietzsche is largely critical in The Gay
Science, is characterized by its negative evaluation of our
capacity to be affected: it recommends a general loss of
sensitiveness as the remedy for pain and suffer-ing. But this
leads, Nietzsche argues, not to the augmentation of lifes forces,
to joy and activity, but to their depletion and impoverishment. The
reduction of our capacity for suffering also reduces our capacity
for joy. Nietzsche elaborates on these criticisms of the Stoic
account of suffering in a companion note from 1881:JNS
44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 18 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY19I believe that we do not understand Stoicism
for what it really is. Its essential feature as an attitude of the
soulwhich is what it originally was before being taken over by
philosophyis its comportment toward pain and representations of the
unpleasant: an intensification of a certain heaviness and weariness
to the
utmostdegreeinordertoweakentheexperienceofpain.Itsbasicmotifsare
paralysis and coldness, hence a form of anesthesia. The principal
aim of Stoic
edificationistoeliminateanyinclinationtoexcitement,continuallytolessen
the number of things that might offer enticement, to awaken
distaste for and to belittle the value of most things that offer
stimulation, to hate excitement as an enemy; indeed, to hate the
passions themselves as if they were a form of disease or something
entirely unworthy; for they are the hallmark of every despicable
and painful manifestation of suffering. In summa: turning oneself
into stone as a weapon against suffering and in future conferring
all worthy names of divine-like virtues upon a statue. [. . .] If a
Stoic attains the character he seeksfor the
mostparthealreadypossessesthischaracterandthereforechoosesthisphi-losophythe
loss of feeling reached is the result of the pressure of a
tourniquet. I am very antipathetic to this line of thought. It
undervalues the value of pain (it is as useful and necessary as
pleasure), the value of stimulation and suffering. It is finally
compelled to say: everything that happens is acceptable to me;
nothing is to be different. There are no needs over which it
triumphs because it has killed the passion for needs. (KSA
9:15[55], pp. 65253)32In articulating the reasons for his antipathy
to the Stoic strategy of extirpation, Nietzsche reiterates his view
that Stoicism undervalues pain, stimulation, and suffering. Peter
Groff argues that this criticism is potentially misleading insofar
as it serves to cover over a deeper affinity between Nietzsche and
the Stoics. To see this affinity we need, Groff says, to
distinguish between eliminating suffering and banishing sorrow.
While suffering can be understood as an inescapable fact of
embodied existence[,] . . . sorrow is merely one optional
interpretation of that experience. In other words, sorrow and joy
both have to do with ones interpretation and evaluation of the
meaning and value of suffering.33 Groff argues that the Stoics and
Nietzsche are actually united in their acknowledgment of the
impossibility of eliminating suffering but not sorrow.No one could
argue with Groffs claim that Nietzsches fundamental orienta-tion
toward existence is not one of recoiling, sadness, or regret, but
rather one of affirmation, gaiety, cheerfulness, and joy or, in
other words, that Nietzsche refuses to interpret suffering as an
objection to existence.34 A close reading of the 1881 note,
however, reveals that, contra Groff, Nietzsche does believe that
aStoicattitudetowardexistenceconstitutesaneffectivewayofminimizing
existential suffering and that it also expresses a sorrowful rather
than a joyful or life-affirming interpretation of existence.
Moreover, it is clear from what Nietzsche says both in this
unpublished note and in published comments that he does not object
to Stoic therapy on the grounds that it works to deaden painful
affects. On the contrary, he recognizes that under certain
circumstances resorting to radical measures like anesthesia and
extirpation in the struggle against unbear-able suffering or
debilitating passions like fear is an essential expedient for the
JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 19 21/04/13 12:42 PM20AURELIA
ARMSTRONGpreservation of life (see GS 306). The fact that Nietzsche
does not criticize Stoic therapy as a way of managing the passions
under conditions of duress helps to clarify the real target of his
criticism. For Nietzsche, the folly of Stoic ethics is in turning a
useful strategy for dealing with destructive or debilitating
passions into an ideal of human flourishing. It is the Stoic ideal
of virtue as freedom from passion, along with the interpretation
and evaluation of existence that undergirds this ideal, that
Nietzsche calls into question.Nietzsche evaluates this ideal from
the perspective of promoting the enhance-ment and growth of human
power. For Nietzsche, power is essentially a mat-ter of growth and
expansion, a matter of increase and becoming more. In a remarkable
echo of Spinoza, Nietzsche characterizes happiness as [t]he feeling
that power increases, that resistance is overcome (A 53).35 In
other words, hap-piness or joy is the affective marker of
successful striving to increase power against resistance, whether
internal (other drives and affects) or external. This conception of
the mechanism of power increase is clearly at play in Nietzsches
objections to the Stoic ideal of virtue. In denying value to
stimulation, suffering, and passion, Stoicism also denies what is
for Nietzsche a fundamental condi-tion for growth in activity and
joy; namely, openness to being affected. Insofar as Stoic ethics
advocates withdrawal, endurance, and indifference toward the world,
it closes the door to valuable sources of stimulation and struggle,
thus impeding rather than promoting human freedom and
flourishing.We can deepen our understanding of Nietzsches critique
of Stoic ethics if
weconsiderthewayhecharacterizesthedesirethatanimatesit.Thedesire
forredemptionfromaworldthatisexperiencedasthesourceofunwanted
suffering is typical, Nietzsche claims in GS 370, of those who
suffer from the
impoverishmentoflife.Thoselackinginstrengthandvitalitytypicallyseek
either enclosure in optimistic horizons as a means of insulating
the self from a world perceived as the source of suffering or some
form of affective discharge that serves to numb pain. The need for
such measures betrays an incapacity to affirm growing and
struggling life (GS 370), or life in its character as growth and
struggle. The selection of radical expedients like extirpation in
the struggle against a desire or passion is characteristic of those
who are too weak-willed, too degenerate to impose moderation upon
it (TI Morality as Anti-Nature, 2). By contrast, openness towards
pain and suffering, perceived as necessary for growth and
production is the mark of healthy, strong natures that enjoy an
excess of life, that are strong enough to be open to the
contingencies of the world, that are strong enough to be porous
rather than hard.36 In this light, Stoic insensitiv-ity,
detachment, and self-control no longer seem to be valuable
attributes, to represent heroism or strength. On the contrary, they
appear as signs of weakness, as forms of self-protection that
express a fear of the world and its contingencies. Insofar as the
Stoic ideal of virtue gives expression to a desire to be free from
passion and suffering, Nietzsche pronounces it hostile to life.JNS
44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 20 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY21Herman Siemens argues that Nietzsches
distinction between impoverishment and excess serves to distinguish
a bad from a good form of therapy. The differ-ence between the two
does not turn on the criterion of effectiveness as pain relief but
rather is determined by the degree to which a particular
therapeutic strategy exhibits an ability to affirm life as it is.
Following Spinoza, Nietzsche suggests that to affirm life as it is
means affirming the belonging together of pleasure and displeasure,
of health and sickness: the simultaneous growth in passive and
active power. An ethic of self-control that emphasizes the
attainment of a fixed and final second nature, of a health and
activity definitively freed from sickness and passion, cannot be
life affirming. It would, thus, as R. O. Elveton observes, be a
mistake to read Nietzsche as offering a new version of an ethics of
self-control.37 Elveton sees Nietzsches opposition to the mastery
of self-control recommended by Stoicism as entailing a rejection of
the Stoic erection of a fixed boundary between a clearly
identifiable mine and not-mine.38 While
Stoicself-controldependsontheassumptionoftheexternalityoftheworld
and consequently imagines self-realization as independence,
self-sufficiency, and retreat into the inner citadel, Elveton reads
Nietzsche as urging acceptance of the world that is as a world that
profoundly extends into my own depths,
challengingmetorethinkandreinterpretmyinteriorlife.39Toacceptthe
world as extending into ones depths is, I would argue, to expand
the boundaries of the self to encompass its affective relations
with the world, which is exactly what Nietzsche does. Nietzsche
follows Spinoza in conceiving of the self as inclusive of its
desires, drives, and affects. The self is not a doer behind the
deed, not a thing that thinks, desires, and feels, but is the
activity of thinking, desiring, and feeling. What Nietzsche adds to
this Spinozist view is an apprecia-tion of the internal
multiplicity of the self, which he expresses in terms of the
metaphor of the soul as the social structure of the drives and the
emotions in their relations to one another (BGE 12). This process
of internalization of affect and subsequent expansion of the inner
world ironically owes something to the Stoic insight that our
affects depend on our judgments about the value of things. This
dependence of the affects on cognition internalizes my relations to
the world and, for the Stoics, enables me to assume responsibility
for my affec-tive responses. But while Nietzsche follows the Stoics
in conceiving of affects as felt inclinations and aversions that,
as such, express judgments of value, he also embraces Spinozas
denial of the existence of a faculty of the will, distinct from
intellect and desire, that would allow us to manipulate or control
our affects. We are left, then, with an internal multiplicity of
often conflicting drives and affects that we cannot surmount,
transcend, or ultimately control. On these seemingly unpromising
grounds Nietzsche develops an alternative account of flourishing as
self-mastery. The virtue we are now called on to exercise is that
of creatively
shapingandtransformingtheinnerworld.Forthisformofself-creativityto
result in the enhancement of power, in growth and fertility, it
must not weaken JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 21 21/04/13 12:42
PM22AURELIA ARMSTRONGor excise the passions. Instead, Nietzsche
exhorts us to put the passions, those
impetuoustorrentsofthesoulthataresooftendangerousandoverwhelm-ing
(KSA 13:14[163]), into service and subject them to a protracted
tyranny (KSA 12:1[122]), so that they may be turned to our
advantage, becoming sources of strength and vitality instead of
suffering.40 Creation is, thus, the great redemp-tion from
suffering (Z II: On the Blissful Islands).University of
Queenslanda.armstrong@uq.edu.auNOTESIwouldliketothankKeithAnsell-PearsonandMichaelUrefortheirencouragementandfor
critical feedback on this paper. I am also grateful to Tom Gibson
for invaluable editorial assistance and suggestions, and to Juliana
Mercon and John Atkins for thoughtful comments.1. Yirmiyahu Yovel,
Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 190.2.
RichardSchacht,TheSpinoza-NietzscheProblem,inDesireandAffect:Spinozaas
Psychologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press,
1999), 213.3. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual
Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1995),
102.4. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 107.5. Hadot, Philosophy
as a Way of Life, 108.6. See, for example, GM P:5. In this article,
I cite the following translations of Nietzsches
works:CarolDiethestranslationofOntheGenealogyofMorality(Cambridge:Cambridge
UniversityPress,1994);WalterKaufmannstranslationsofTheGayScience(NewYork:
Vintage, 1974), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: Penguin, 1978),
and Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Vintage, 1966); Kaufmanns and
R. J. Hollingdales translation of The Will to Power (New York:
Vintage, 1968); and Hollingdales translation of The Twilight of the
Idols, in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (New York:
Penguin, 1968).7.
Epictetus,Handbook1.13,quotedinJohnSellars,AnEthicsoftheEvent:Deleuzes
Stoicism, Angelaki 11. 3 (2006): 162.8.
IciteEdwinCurleystranslationoftheEthicsfromTheCollectedWorksofSpinoza
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). When referring
to the Ethics I use the standard abbreviations: a Roman numeral to
refer to the part, D for definition, A for axiom, p
plusanArabicnumeralforaproposition,corforcorollary,demfordemonstration,
schol for scholium, pref for preface.9. Firmin Debrabander, Spinoza
and the Stoics: Power, Politics and the Passions (London:
Continuum,2007),17.OnSpinozasrelationshiptoStoicism,seealsoP.O.Kristeller,Stoic
andNeoplatonicSourcesofSpinozasEthics,HistoryofEuropeanIdeas5.1(1984):115,
Susan James, Spinoza the Stoic, in The Rise of Modern Philosophy,
ed. Tom Sorrell (Oxford,
UK:ClarendonPress,1993),289316,andAlexandreMatheron,Lemomentstociende
l'thique de Spinoza, in Le stoicisme aux XVIe et XVIIe sicles, ed.
Jacqueline Lagre (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1994),
14762.10. Alexandre Matheron, Le moment stocien de l'thique de
Spinoza, 147.11.
MarthaNussbaum,PityandMercy:NietzschesStoicism,inNietzsche,Genealogy,
Morality: Essays on Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals, ed.
Richard Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),
140.JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 22 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS,
POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY2312. Nussbaum, Pity and Mercy,
154.13.
MichaelUre,NietzschesFreeSpiritTrilogyandStoicTherapy,JournalofNietzsche
Studies, no. 38 (2009): 6084.14. Ure, Nietzsches Free Spirit
Trilogy and Stoic Therapy, 72.15.
OnNietzschesrelationshiptoStoicism,seeThomasBrobjer,NietzschesReading
ofEpictetus,Nietzsche-Studien32(2003):42934,R.O.Elveton,NietzschesStoicism:
TheDepthsareInside,inNietzscheand
Antiquity,ed.PaulBishop(Rochester,NY:Camden House, 2004), 192203,
Peter S. Groff, Al-Kindi and Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of
Banishing Sorrow, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, no. 28 (2004):
13973, Donald Rutherford, Freedom as a Philosophical Ideal:
Nietzsche and His Antecedents, Inquiry 54.5 (2011): 51240, and
Michael
Ure,NietzschesTherapy:Self-CultivationintheMiddleWorks(Lanham,MD:Lexington
Books, 2008).16. Yovel, The Adventures of Immanence, xi.17.
ThefollowingsummaryofStoicmetaphysicsandethicsisdrawnfromanumberof
sources,includingDerkPereboom,StoicPsychotherapyinDescartesandSpinoza,Faith
andPhilosophy11.4(1994):592625,MarthaNussbaum,The TherapyofDesire:
Theoryand Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994), esp. chaps. 9 and 10, and John Sellars,
Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).18.
MarcusAurelius,TheMeditations,trans.G.M.A.Grube(Indianapolis,IN:Hackett,
1983), 40.19. Epictetus, Handbook, 1.13, quoted in Sellars, An
Ethics of the Event 162.20. Pereboom, Stoic Psychotherapy in
Descartes and Spinoza, 615.21. Sellars, An Ethics of the Event,
163.22. Sellars, An Ethics of the Event, 164.23.
ForadiscussionofthewayinwhichSpinozastreatmentoftheselfasinclusiveofits
relations challenges atomic individualism, see Aurelia Armstrong,
Autonomy and the Relational Individual in Spinoza and Feminism, in
Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza, ed. Moira Gatens
(College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 4363.
See also Michael Collier,
TheMaterialityofMorals:Mind,Body,andInterestsinSpinozasEthics,StudiaSpinozana
7 (1991): 285308, and Heidi M. Ravven, Spinozas Individualism
Reconsidered: Some Lessons fromtheShort TreatiseonGod,Man,andHis
Well-Being,inSpinoza:Critical Assessmentsof Leading Philosophers,
vol. 1, ed. Genevieve Lloyd (London: Routledge, 2001), 387410.24.
MatthewKisner,inSpinozaonHumanFreedom:Reason,
AutonomyandtheGoodLife (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), claims that Spinozas ethics is best understood
asdirectedatexpandinghumanfreedomandpowerratherthanasexclusivelyconcernedwith
psychological liberation from the passions. On his reading,
achieving the ethical goal of freedom requires evaluating the
passions according to whether they harm or promote human
activity.25.
SeeSpinozasstatementofdeterminisminEIp28:Anythingwhichisfiniteandhas
adeterminateexistence,canneitherexistnorbedeterminedtoproduceaneffectunlessit
isdeterminedtoexistandproduceaneffectbyanothercause,whichisalsofiniteandhasa
determinate existence, and so on.26. Hans Jonas, Spinozas Theory of
Organism, in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Marjorie
Grene (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973), 273.27.
FortheStoics,asNussbaumexplains,itemsthatarenotfullyunderthecontrolofthe
agentsuch as health, wealth, freedom from pain, the good
functioning of bodily facultieshave
nointrinsicworth,noristheircausalrelationshiptoeudaimoniaeventhatofaninstrumental
necessary condition. At best, such items are preferred indifferents
that make no contribution to virtue (The Therapy of Desire,
35960.)Foranexcellentdiscussionofhowphysicalwell-beingandincreasedperfectionare
prerequisitesofouraffectingandbeingaffected,seeUrsulaGoldenbaum,TheAffectsas
JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 23 21/04/13 12:42 PM24AURELIA ARMSTRONGa
Condition of Human Freedom in Spinozas Ethics, in Spinoza on Reason
and the Free Man, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (New York:
Little Room Press, 2004), 155.28.
SeeE11p39whereSpinozaobservesthatthemindisthemorecapableofperceiving
many things adequately as its body has many things in common with
other bodies.29. See Heidi Ravven, Spinozas Ethics of the
Liberation of Desire, in Women and Gender
inJewishPhilosophy,ed.HavaTirosh-Samuelson(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress,
2004), 81.30.
ThecontroversialclaimthatSpinozaenvisagesaroleforthepassionsinalifeofvirtue
isdefendedbyGoldenbauminTheAffectsasaConditionofHumanFreedominSpinozas
EthicsandalsobyMatthewKisnerinSpinozasVirtuousPassions,ReviewofMetaphysics
61.4 (2008): 75983.31. Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom, 240.32.
Quoted in Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 200.33. Groff, Al-Kindi and
Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow, 154.34. Groff,
Al-Kindi and Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow,
154.35. See also Nietzsches characterization of freedom in TI
Expeditions of an Untimely Man
38:Howisfreedommeasured,inindividualsasinnations?Bytheresistancewhichhastobe
overcome. [. . .] One would have to seek the highest type of free
man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome.36.
HermanW.Siemens,NietzschesAgonwithRessentiment:TowardsaTherapeutic
Reading of Critical Transvaluation, Continental Philosophy Review
34.1 (2001): 73.37. Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 201.38. Elveton,
Nietzsches Stoicism, 201.39. Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 201.40.
Translated as The Will to Power, 383, 384.JNS
44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 24 21/04/13 12:42 PM