ABSTRACT

In the Ethics, Spinoza famously wrote, “we do not seek or desire anything, because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavor it, will it, seek it and desire it.” This passage is widely recognized as asserting some of Spinoza's most important claims about the good, but the precise meaning of the passage is unclear, as interpreters have offered a wide variety of interpretations, often without noting (or even noticing) their disagreements. The central interpretive question is what the key passage has to say about the relationship between desires and judgments of the good. At stake in this question is not just how we understand Spinoza's theory of the good—and by extension, much of his ethical theory – but also how we understand the reception of the scholastic Aristotelian notion that desiring something involves perceiving or thinking it to be good, the “guise of the good thesis”. This paper offers an interpretation of the passage that emphasizes differences between Spinoza and a Hobbesian view of judging the good. Rather, I show – perhaps surprisingly – that Spinoza is closer to the scholastic-Aristotelian tradition.

摘要

斯宾诺莎在《伦理学》中写道：“我们不会寻求或渴望任何东西，因为我们认为它是好东西。相反，我们认为一件事情是好的，因为我们努力，愿意，寻求和渴望它。” 人们普遍认为这段话断言了斯宾诺莎关于商品的一些最重要的主张，但是这段话的确切含义还不清楚，因为口译员提供了各种各样的解释，通常没有注意到（甚至没有注意到）他们的分歧。中心的解释性问题是，关于欲望与对商品的判断之间的关系，关键段落必须说些什么。这个问题不仅关系到我们如何理解斯宾诺莎的善良理论，而且引伸而言，他的许多道德理论–以及我们如何理解对学术上的亚里斯多德主义观念的接受，即想要某种事物涉及感知或认为它是好的，即“好的论文的幌子”。本文提供了对这段经文的解释，该经文强调了斯宾诺莎和霍布斯论善的观点之间的差异。相反，我表明-也许令人惊讶-斯宾诺莎更接近经院的亚里士多德传统。