Quotation
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“The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, the more he is endowed with virtue.”
Baruch Spinoza · Rationalism · Early modern · 1677
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the proposition as a redefined self-interest: virtue is power to seek one's own advantage, and advantage is perseverance and the growth of understanding, not a victory over others. Reason will say that nothing is more useful to a person than another person living by reason. A rival reading hears the selfishness ethics usually condemns, and stops before those later propositions. Proposition 20 is in part four and depends on the doctrine of striving.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Edwin Curley's translation of Ethics, part four, proposition 20. Advantage is an increase in the power of acting under reason, not a licence to exploit a neighbour. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Ethics IV, proposition 20
Approximate date: 1677.
How to use it
In a pay dispute in a depot in Swindon, seeking one's own advantage can mean taking a shift that leaves a colleague unable to work, or it can mean the conditions under which one's power to act actually grows. Once the book is allowed to continue, Spinoza's word fits the second better than the first. The proposition does not write the rota; It forbids equating virtue with self-neglect, and it forbids equating advantage with mere taking.
A mindset reading
The sentence is a gift to anyone who wants permission to be ruthless, and the gift is counterfeit if the later claims are cut off. Rightly understood, one's own advantage coincides with the advantage of others who live by reason, because isolation is a loss of power. The opposite reading, that any self-concern is already a moral failure, cannot explain why a person would pursue virtue at all.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is virtue, defined as power, a person's essence so far as they can bring about what follows from their nature. Proposition 20 ties that power to seeking one's own advantage under the striving to persevere. Part four then argues that rational self-seeking is not a war of each against each. Curley's English keeps the word advantage, which is easy to mishear and therefore worth leaving visible.
- virtue
- ethics
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the proposition as a redefined self-interest: virtue is power to seek one's own advantage, and advantage is perseverance and the growth of understanding, not a victory over others. Reason will say that nothing is more useful to a person than another person living by reason. A rival reading hears the selfishness ethics usually condemns, and stops before those later propositions. Proposition 20 is in part four and depends on the doctrine of striving.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Edwin Curley's translation of Ethics, part four, proposition 20. Advantage is an increase in the power of acting under reason, not a licence to exploit a neighbour. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Ethics IV, proposition 20 Approximate date: 1677.