What is a virtuous life? Spinoza says “the first and only foundation of virtue or of the manner of living rightly is to pursue what is useful to oneself.” He doesn’t say “reduce noxious toxins of deleterious self-derision” or “love your mother and honour your father.” He says to pursue what reason tells us is useful unto oneself. For he is all about reason, and learning to conquer the emotions with reason. It’s almost like emotions are unwanted in Spinoza, a species of raucous rascal. In time to come the Romantic movement would privilege emotion over reason, but not for Spinoza. Romantics in general arraigned and inveighed against rationality, and Spinoza was an early rationalist thinker; but strangely enough his pantheistic idea that there is no substance that is separate from God foresees and informs Romanticism. The Enlightenment came between Spinoza and Romanticism, and Spinoza foreshadowed the Enlightenment, with its thinkers such as Locke, Kant and Hume. I’m surprised Spinoza doesn’t include things like treating others as you treat yourself, and living moderately and within your means, and not envying your neighbour’s wife, and doing one’s fair share of work, in his system. All these things he didn’t include would be in my system if I had one, but I can’t even work out whether I think God is not extrinsic to matter, or whether compared with God, matter is error, which are diametrically opposed positions… I also can’t work out whether I think the mind is part of the body or not. Both these age-old questions are treated in Spinoza, and I feel like a bit of a Tourist when it comes to philosophy comparatively.
The farmer gets up early and works in the rain. His is a more noble profession than being a writer, but his life is not touched by, say, Wittgenstein. My father saw writing as indulgent - that there were too many writers in the world and they just wanted a license to get smashed and avoid work, slide out of responsibility. Lazy layabouts, he would call them, or rather us. His idea of a virtuous life would include getting up with the sun. Then you’d need to crash your face into water. Then you’d need to eat wholesome breakfast food like muesli or porridge before you insufflate the vapid fume of your Vape pen, or have any nicotine. This he would call “positive self-messaging” and then he’d go out and work in the garden, go up trees with a chainsaw despite having liver disease. His sin if you can call it that was smoking soft, Moroccan pollen, because he was a hippy but when it transpired that my own mental health was affected by drugs, he resolved to pack in everything on the spot and stick to it and did. He knew his own mind, did my dad, too, and though he was allergic to Labour governments, we forgive him for it.
His energy was so depleted by the Hep C that he couldn’t earn money anymore, and nor were there any jobs in the valley, so my mother went out and worked hard in Care for next to nothing to pay the bills. She would say life is not about being a genius but about hard work, day in day out. TS Eliot says “the lot of Man is ceaseless labour/ or ceaseless idleness which is still harder.” He says idleness is harder than work, and that may be because work sets us free. Also, as Rimbaud said, Hell is lethargy. Time is an energy thief; and that leads to Hell. I think, furthermore, of the man in Heart of Darkness who still starches his shirts deep into the jungle, and how he upkeeps a work ethic and a sense of principle. I find myself a little like that for still upkeeping a work ethic in the semi-wilderness here, in a state of mental illness, but then again who would call what I do work? I do pull my weight when it comes to things like washing up or getting wood for the fire and I do pay my way on Benefits and award myself very few luxuries, by which I mean I no longer smoke or drink. And signed off work with mental illness, I still harbour academic dreams. It’s like my brother Dr. Robert says: Man will even make work when there is none available. He will move a pile of rubble just so that he can move it back next week if there is nothing else to do. I think of putting my degree to good use. I got a good degree, a First from Lancaster which was a top ten University, in English, Creative Writing and Practice; but we all knew an English degree was a pointless activity. At least in the marketplace where they trade soft and hard skills, it is useless. I imagine philosophy equally so, in terms of finding employment, unless you want to stick to the corridor of your department and teach.
Of course this is cue to say that to become well-read is not a pointless activity because you become enriched in the soul, and enlivened in the mind, and more prepared for life, and more confident about tackling difficult issues. There is also science behind becoming well-read, for neuro-scientists say “if it fires it wires” meaning the brain branches out with new synapses when it reads. Yes, I still think reading is part of the virtuous life, and in Spinoza’s terms, I suppose that it is then “useful for oneself.” As a writer, I suppose all reading is useful to me therefore virtuous. I suppose my degree was useful, in my becoming a writer, so therefore virtuous, if Spinoza is right.
Then again it would be virtuous for me to wash up right now but there is no use to my self involved. I think there is more to a virtuous life than simply doing what is useful unto oneself. I think it also involves doing what is useful unto others. It involves, that is, putting oneself second not first. If there is only one slice of bread left and I have already eaten but my brother not, it is virtuous to let him have it, which is the opposite of being useful unto oneself. Spinoza uses the word “virtue” to mean “power” and says “to act from virtue absolutely is simply to act by the laws of one’s nature.” He says virtue “is the very essence of a human being.” He also says to live virtuously is nothing but to act “by the command of reason.” I reasoned that studying English, Creative Writing And Practice was my best bet because the subject I excelled most at, and by Spinoza’s logic it is therefore more virtuous for me to have done that than to have studied, say, astrophysics. That my studies were useful to me has been discussed in terms of enriching the soul, diversifying the mind, broadening the horizons, but that use is not to be confused with financial gain. So it seems in terms of the marketplace my degree was both virtuous and not useful, but in terms of becoming a good human being, which some say the business of studying literature is all about, the degree was both virtuous and useful.
Reading Spinoza was virtuous and useful (if they are the same). It was useful in expanding my mind, in broadening my knowledge, in richening my soul, and therefore virtuous. But cleaning the kitchen would be useful for my brother if he wants to cook, and not to me, and yet would still be virtuous, so there must by something of a virtuous life that looks outside the self into the realm of co-imagination perhaps, and the collective good. I would rephrase Spinoza as saying the virtuous life focusses on what is useful for the self or the collective of which one is a part. Maybe this difference between us is down to the word “virtue” having a slightly modified meaning between then and now, but this is just speculation and conjecture. I would deem it that anything supererogatory is virtuous but Spinoza’s definition cuts that out. I have a friend who says “there is no virtue beyond fashion,” and I don’t like that at all, even though it seems part of an atheistic pragmatism I was once involved in. There must be something beyond fashion, but here we incur the problem of Nietzsche who says all morality is inherent in the idea of God and once you do away with God there is no more morality. What I mean is, if there is virtue beyond fashion (and how can fashion be virtuous?) it might tie in with there being a God therefore subjugated morality systems. What I might mean is that even if there is no God, there is still virtue and it involves giving of oneself beyond what is useful unto oneself. Kindness for instance is a virtue. If a friend and I have collaborated on a song, and I done most of the work, and he wants the song on his own solo album, and asks me if he can and I let him I have been kind and therefore virtuous in a way that is not useful unto my self or my own self-preservation. Therefore Spinoza is not entirely right in his definition of the virtuous life.
In Prep School maths we were shown the difference between a vicious and virtuous cycle. We all understand what is meant by being in a vicious cycle. The virtuous cycle by contrast had 4 Points of Difference: luck, which leads to success, which leads to happiness, which leads to confidence, which leads to further luck. Apparently you can enter the virtuous cycle at any point and find it self-perpetuating. Virtue in that sense is less about “doing good deeds” and more about winning the game. Spinoza’s definition too seems a bit, well, cut-throat, capitalistic, Darwinian in competitiveness. Here I wish I had read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins but alas have not. If you act in a way that eschews another’s happiness for the sake of your own can that action really be said to be virtuous? Spinoza would say yes, I think, and leave us in a world where one person’s loss is another’s gain. And yet he was a philosopher famous for believing in compassion, mercy and forgiveness, those Christian values… he was cursed and exiled and responded with compassion. That seems valid enough to base a philosophical system on. Spinoza’s claim that the first and only foundation of a virtuous life is to pursue what is useful unto oneself could be best taken in a diagnostic rather than remedial sense.
I think Spinoza felt that once he had aligned God and Nature, everything follows with a mute precision. He felt that his philosophy too should have the clarity and inevitability of trigonometry. What I still find surprising though is that he appears to be saying to be virtuous, just do what you want. I would, as stated, argue there are virtuous actions which are the opposite of that. Nevertheless what Spinoza is getting at is that there is an overall Cosmic Order, and one’s actions should fit into that scheme. On that front at least I agree with him.
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