Maimonidean and Crescian: Spinoza on moral education and human perfection

Abstract

This article’s question is whether Spinoza understands the highest human perfection – which he equates with both our highest good and the love of God – as a theoretical state, consisting in having knowledge and the perfection of beliefs, or as a practical state, consisting in having virtue and the perfection of action. Consequently, the article is also partly about how Spinoza understands moral education, that is, whether the education necessary for achieving the highest human perfection is fundamentally theoretical or practical in nature. The article answers this question by considering Spinoza’s view of the highest good in the context of Maimonides and Crescas. The article argues that Spinoza adopts elements of both philosopher’s views, including Crescas’s view that the highest good must also be a practical state of virtue, which means that Spinoza must understand moral education as resulting in the perfection of action as well as knowledge.

Education lies at the heart of Spinoza’s philosophy. Spinoza’s primary goals in ethics – for instance, becoming virtuous or attaining the highest good – and in politics – for instance, achieving a tolerant society – require educating people. This education can involve imparting knowledge – whether that be adequate ideas of the nature of reality or pragmatic inadequate ideas from religion – or changing people’s behaviours, for instance, by making them better citizens. Spinoza understands that education is difficult. True knowledge, for Spinoza, is exceedingly difficult to acquire, and imparting even inadequate ideas of the imagination is difficult because their transmission depends on political, historical, religious and cultural factors. Changing behaviour is even more complicated because this involves not only imparting ideas but strengthening ideas so that they become operative in action. Spinoza puts great thought into how ideas (especially his ideas) can be imparted and strengthened, given the natures, capacities and interests of human beings and given the unique history and culture of his audience in the Dutch Republic and Western Europe. Spinoza’s views on these matters, so central to his philosophical aims, counts broadly as a philosophy of education, although he may not have described it in this way.

This article concerns a fundamental question in this philosophy of education, in what sense the education required for humans to attain their highest good counts as moral education. Of course, the knowledge required for the highest good obviously qualifies as moral knowledge in a general sense because attaining the highest good is the ultimate goal of Spinoza’s ethics. But it is not obvious whether achieving the highest good consists in just the perfection of knowledge or also the perfection of action. If it consists in the perfection of action, then achieving the highest good requires a more robust form of moral education because it must instil virtue and transform one’s actions. The answer to this question lies in Spinoza’s view of human perfection. Since Spinoza’s view responds to and draws on the rich tradition of Jewish philosophy, answering this question requires situating Spinoza within this tradition, which means following the example set by Nadler in his contribution to this volume.

At first glance, it may appear that Spinoza and Maimonides take opposite views on our knowledge of God. Maimonides pursues the via negativa approach to theology, which holds that God transcends human concepts, so that we can only describe God negatively, by asserting what God is not. Maimonides regards God’s essence as unknowable. Spinoza, on the contrary, regularly purports to demonstrate positive claims about God. He claims that knowledge of God’s essence is ‘known to all’ (2p47s). ¹ Indeed, he claims that knowledge of God’s essence is contained in all ideas (2p46), so that this knowledge is possessed not only by fools but even by rocks. Despite this difference, Nadler’s article shows that the two figures are not so far apart as it first appears. Maimonides’ metaphor of the palace shows that a select few have far greater knowledge of God. Maimonides characterizes this special knowledge of God as an intellectual love of God, which resembles Spinoza, who also recognizes a division between the ordinary love of God and the rarer intellectual love of God. Furthermore, like Maimonides, Spinoza holds that the intellectual love of God is identical to our best knowledge of God and to the greatest human perfection. Thus, Nadler shows how Spinoza’s view of perfection has roots in Maimonides.

Nadler’s reading may be controversial among scholars of Maimonides – few subjects in Maimonides scholarship are not controversial – but this will not be the focus of my article. I am instead interested in Nadler’s strategy for approaching Spinoza. Nadler’s essay is based on the insight that Spinoza’s sometimes mysterious and opaque claims in Part 5 of the Ethics appear far more comprehensible when they are understood in the context of the Jewish philosophical tradition. This is a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree, and this article follows Nadler’s example by examining Spinoza’s view of the highest perfection in the context of Jewish philosophy. My contribution is to enlarge the conversation by introducing another character, Hasdai Crescas, a fourteenth-century leader of the Jewish community in Aragon. ² While Crescas was generally less influential than Maimonides, he had a significant impact on Spinoza. After Maimonides, Crescas is the Jewish philosopher with whom Spinoza most explicitly engages. Furthermore, Spinoza’s claims about Crescas primarily take the form of praise, unlike his claims about Maimonides, which tend to be critical. ³

All three of these philosophers identify the highest human perfection with a love of God, but they disagree about how to understand this love. For Maimonides, the love of God that represents the highest human perfection is primarily intellectual, consisting in the perfection of beliefs or knowledge. For Crescas, meanwhile, the love of God is primarily practical and moral, consisting in the perfection of deeds or virtue. Crescas criticized Maimonides’ view as not only philosophically wrong but as inconsistent with the Torah and Jewish doctrine. According to Crescas, Judaism teaches that we achieve perfection through salvation, which comes from virtue and deeds, rather than knowledge. Against the backdrop of this disagreement, I will argue that Spinoza aims to chart a middle course, conceiving of the love of God as both intellectual and moral, encompassing both knowledge and virtue. This thesis will reveal an important way that Spinoza departs from Maimonides by conceiving of the highest human perfection as a practical state of virtue. It will also show that Spinoza’s ethics requires a more robust form of moral education, since achieving our highest good involves acquiring knowledge of how to act. This thesis does not disagree with Nadler’s reading but rather offers a further wrinkle in the complicated story of Spinoza’s relation to his Jewish influences.

To make this case, I will first examine Maimonides’s view of moral perfection, arguing that he conceives of moral perfection as separate from and inferior to intellectual perfection. The second section will examine Crescas’s criticism of this view. The final section will show how Spinoza charts a middle course between them.

Maimonides on moral perfection

Nadler shows that Maimonides understands human perfection as intellectual. In other words, human perfection, for Maimonides, consists in having knowledge or correct beliefs, particularly about God and his creation. I am concerned with Maimonides’ view on what I will call moral perfection, that is, practical human perfection, which includes correct actions and virtuous dispositions. Maimonides offers the beginning of an explanation in his discussion of law in Part III, chapter 27 of the Guide, a chapter that figures prominently in Nadler’s article. Maimonides there argues that the law of Moses includes two kinds of laws, one that aims for the welfare of the body and the other for the welfare of the soul. Keeping these laws provides two corresponding perfections of the body and the soul. ‘Man has two perfections: a first perfection, which is the perfection of the body, and an ultimate perfection, which is the perfection of the soul’ (GP III.27, 511).

Maimonides’ distinction between these two kinds of laws and their corresponding perfections indicates his view of moral perfection. Laws aiming at the welfare of the soul command us to ‘acquire correct opinion’ (GP III.27, 510), for instance, that there is only one God. This leads us to a perfection of the soul, which consists in having correct opinion or knowledge, ‘knowing everything concerning all the beings that it is within the capacity of man to know’ (GP III.27, 511). Bodily perfection, on the contrary,

consists in being healthy and in the very best bodily state, and this is only possible through his finding the things necessary for him whenever he seeks them. These are his food and all the other things needed for the governance of this body, such as a shelter, bathing, and so forth. (GP III.27, 511)

Maimonides recognizes that bodily perfection has a political dimension because it ‘cannot be achieved in any way by one isolated individual. For an individual can only attain all this through a political association, it being already known that man is political by nature’ (GP III.27, 511). Maimonides includes morality under the laws that aim for the preservation of the body, which entails that moral perfection is a perfection of the body:

As for the welfare of the body, it comes about by the improvement of their ways of living one with another. This is achieved by two things. One of them is the abolition of their wrongdoing each other. This is tantamount to every individual among the people not being permitted to act according to his will and up to the limits of his power, but being forced to do that which is useful to the whole. The second thing consists in the acquisition by every human individual of moral qualities that are useful for life in society so that the affairs of the city may be ordered. (GP III.27, 510)

According to this view, moral laws contribute to perfection in the same way as other practical prescriptions for caring for the body – for instance, be sure to eat your vegetables and get a good night’s sleep. Moral laws are also lumped together with laws that promote living together in society – for instance, be sure to act in ways that avoid giving offence, say, by not speaking too loudly or disrespecting others.

As this analysis suggests, Maimonides thinks that moral perfection is inferior to the perfection of the soul.

Know that as between these two aims, one is indubitably greater in nobility, namely, the welfare of the soul – I mean the procuring of correct opinions – while the second aim – I mean the welfare of the body – is prior in nature and time. (GP III.27, 510) ⁴

The perfection of the soul is superior, first, because it is more enduring and permanent. He describes the perfection of the soul as the ‘ultimate perfection’ because it alone contributes to salvation, that is, to the survival of the soul in the afterlife. He writes that the perfection of the soul ‘is indubitably more noble and is the only cause of permanent preservation’ (GP III.27, 511).

The perfection of the soul is superior, second, because it perfects the intellect, which Maimonides regards as a superior power. The perfection of the body perfects our inferior imaginative faculties. This view is evident when Maimonides takes up the question of how we can test the bona fides of commands that are supposedly based on prophetic knowledge (GP II.40). There he claims that those who issue only practical commands directed towards political and moral aims ‘are perfect only in their imaginative faculty’ and, therefore, not genuine prophets (GP II.40, 384). Rather, genuine prophets, issue commands ‘that inculcate correct opinions with regard to God’ (GP II.40, 384), thereby perfecting our rational and intellective powers. Maimonides claims that the only divine laws are the laws issued by those who have perfected their intellectual powers and who issue commands that inculcate correct opinions and the desire to seek out the truth (GP II.40, 384).

Maimonides’ reasoning here strongly suggests that he understands reason as a purely theoretical power. We use reason when we determine the truth, correct opinions and correct beliefs. The activity of commanding correct actions is an activity of imagination, not reason, except insofar as the command relies on prior judgements of correct beliefs. ⁵ While Maimonides is celebrated as an Aristotelian Jewish philosopher, this view of reason is a significant departure from Aristotle, for whom reason is both theoretical and practical. Rather, it reflects a more Platonic view on the division between the intellect and the will. It is important to keep in mind here that Aristotelianism at the time was strongly influenced by Ibn Sina’s synthesis of Aristotle with Platonism and by the Theology of Aristotle, a pseudo-Aristotelian text that was actually authored by Plotinus. ⁶

Maimonides’ view that the perfection of the soul is superior leads him to regard moral perfection as having primarily instrumental value for the more noble perfection of the intellect. Maimonides is clear that the perfection of the soul does not encompass the perfection of the body and, thus, practical or moral perfection. ‘It is clear that to this ultimate perfection there do not belong either actions or moral qualities and that it consists only of opinions towards which speculation has led and that investigation has rendered compulsory’ (GP III.27, 511). ⁷ According to this view, achieving bodily and moral perfection is valuable only as a necessary first step towards the ultimate, most noble perfection. ‘It is also clear that this noble and ultimate perfection can only be achieved after the first perfection has been achieved’ (GP III.27, 511). In Maimonides’ Letter of Moral Instruction to his son, Abraham, he describes the perfection of the body as ‘a key opening the gates of a palace. The major emphasis of ethics is, therefore, on physical well-being and the perfection of moral is designed to open the gates of heaven for you’. ⁸ On this view, moral and bodily perfection contribute only to earthly happiness, not to the ultimate happiness that comes from salvation and union with God.

Maimonides’ view on the relative value of intellectual and moral perfection is reflected in his view on the love of God. As Nadler shows in his article, Maimonides distinguishes two kinds of love of God, which correspond to two degrees of human perfection. In the lesser kind, the love of God is affective, practical and consequent to our knowledge of God. In the highest love of God, the love of God is identical to the knowledge of God and is essentially intellectual. While the highest love of God has an affective component, this affective component is not essential to it. Thus, for Maimonides, the love of God that is our highest perfection is essentially an intellectual state, rather than an affective or practical state. To see how provocative this claim is, compare it with the common Christian view that we love God by loving our neighbour, which we perform through our actions. The difference between Maimonides’ intellectual love of God and the practical Christian love of God would have appeared significant and blatant in Spinoza’s immediate Dutch context.

In summary, Maimonides understands moral perfection as a perfection of the body, on par with the perfection of bodily health. It does not exercise reason and has purely instrumental value in achieving the more noble perfection of the soul, which is the intellectual love of God.

Crescas’s criticism of Maimonides

Crescas criticizes Maimonides’ view of moral perfection in his exposition of the true end of the Torah in the Light of the Lord (Book II, Part VI, chapter 1). Crescas follows the general framework of Hellenistic eudaimonistic ethics by analysing our highest perfection as the realization of our final end, which is the organizing end to which all other ends are directed. Crescas reasons that the final end of human beings should be the end of the Torah. According to Crescas, the Torah recognizes four ends, which are the main candidates for the final end of human beings: the perfection of deeds (moral perfection or virtue), the perfection of views (knowledge), bodily happiness (earthly happiness) and psychic happiness (the happiness of the soul).

Before offering his own view on the final end, Crescas considers what he takes to be the standard view on the subject in the Jewish philosophical tradition. The standard view is influenced by Arabic and Aristotelian philosophy of the Middle Ages, of which Maimonides is the most prominent example. According to Crescas, the standard view regards the final end as the most enduring end. This implies that psychic happiness must be the final end because it is the end that we attain in the afterlife, unlike bodily happiness, which ends with death. Consequently, the standard view regards psychic happiness as the state of greatest human perfection.

The standard view is bound up with views about the nature of the soul and its survival in the afterlife. While these views are somewhat technical, they are worth explaining because they will prove important to understanding Spinoza’s view. According to Crescas, the standard view hinges on the distinction between the hylic intellect and the acquired intellect. The hylic intellect is just the soul’s intellectual powers or dispositions. The acquired intellect is created by the hylic intellect’s activity of understanding—‘apprehending intelligibles’, in Crescas’s language. The acquired intellect, then, is constituted by ‘what it apprehends of the intelligibles’, in other words, by the content of its understanding (Crescas, 2018: 210). The standard view explains the eternal mind, which survives the death of the body, as the acquired intellect. According to this view, the acquired intellect derives joy from apprehending the intelligibles. Consequently, the acquired intellect derives great happiness from contemplating the intelligibles after death when it unites with God and has the greatest understanding. ‘Eternal happiness resides in the acquired intelligibles. The more concepts we apprehend the greater will our happiness be – and especially when the concepts are in themselves more precious’ (Crescas, 2018: 211). ⁹ According to this view, we attain our highest good (happiness), and our final end and highest perfection in the afterlife.

Crescas (2018: 211) argues that this view of the final end ‘destroys the principles of the Torah and uproots the tradition’. ¹⁰ While he lists many ways that the standard view contradicts Jewish belief, the contradictions are connected by an overarching theme. The standard view treats our highest perfection as a purely intellectual state, the perfection of knowledge, rather than as a practical state, the perfection of our actions or of our practical powers, as in virtue. Since the standard view conceives of the highest human perfection as our salvation in the afterlife, this view implies that salvation is determined entirely by knowledge – by apprehending the intelligibles – not by action. This contradicts Jewish scripture and teachings, which hold that the enduring happiness of a surviving soul, is a reward earned by obedience to God. ‘According to Torah and the tradition, a person secures for himself eternal life by performing commandments’ (Crescas, 2018: 210). ‘The preponderance of delight or suffering of the soul is determined by the preponderance of a person’s merits or transgressions’ (Crescas, 2018: 212). Crescas (2018) argues that it is ‘inconsistent with divine justice for there to be true reward and punishment for anything other than serving God or rebelling against Him’ (p. 213). Furthermore, he argues that Jewish ‘practical prescriptions and proscriptions involve certain notions of reward and punishment that are untenable’ on the standard philosophical views. For instance, the philosophical view cannot make sense of the notion that martyrs are rewarded for ‘sacrificing their lives in sanctification of the Name’ because this sacrifice does not involve having greater knowledge and apprehending more intelligibles (Crescas, 2018: 211).

The foregoing criticisms imply that human perfection has a greater practical and moral dimension than Maimonides and the standard view allow. According to Crescas (2018: 210), the standard view treats virtue and the perfection of deeds merely as a ‘prelude and preparation for the development of the intelligibles’ in the soul. ¹¹ This is consistent with my reading of Maimonides in the previous section, according to which moral perfection is purely instrumental to the ultimate perfection and is not part of the ultimate perfection. Crescas, in contrast, holds that the state of human perfection achieved in the afterlife must be a state of obedience to God and, thus, a practical and moral perfection.

These criticisms lead Crescas to propose an alternative reading of the final end of the Torah and, thus, of the highest human perfection. According to Crescas, the failure of the standard view shows that the final end should not be understood as either the perfection of views or the perfection of deeds. Consequently, in identifying the final end of the Torah, he looks to parts of the Torah that do not focus on one or the other. These passages indicate that our final end and our highest perfection is the love – and also the fear – of God (Crescas, 2018: 214). He defends this conclusion on speculative or philosophical grounds as well (Crescas, 2018: 215). He argues that human beings are spiritual substances that survive the death of the body. The spiritual substance has intellective powers, but it is not essentially constituted by intellection. In other words, intellection is something the soul does, not what it is. Consequently, the spiritual substance is not perfected by intellection or by conceiving intelligibles. Rather, Crescas argues that it is perfected by loving and desiring what is good. He concludes that our highest perfection is loving and desiring God because God is the greatest good. It is worth quoting this argument because it will prove significant when we turn to Spinoza’s view.

Since the love of the good and pleasure in it are proportional to one’s perfection, it is evident that the degree of perfection is proportional to the degree of the loved good. Therefore, it is established that the love of God who is infinitely good is required for the greatest conceivable perfection of the soul. (Crescas, 2018: 219–220)

Crescas’ view on our highest perfection reverses the standard philosophical view on the value of intellectual perfection and moral perfection. Whereas the standard view regards intellection as essential to our perfection, Crescas disagrees on the grounds that intellection is not essential either to our nature or to loving God. Furthermore, whereas the standard view holds that practical perfection and virtue are not essential to our perfection – they are only a prelude or means to our perfection—Crescas holds that virtue and moral perfection are essential to the highest perfection because loving (and fearing) God is a practical disposition, one that is realized in our deeds.

In summary, Crescas agrees with Maimonides that the highest human perfection is the love of God, but he disagrees with Maimonides about the nature of this love. For Crescas, unlike Maimonides, the love of God is not essentially intellective. Rather, Crescas conceives of the love of God as essentially an affective state, a practical disposition that is realized in actions and a moral state. Consequently, also unlike Maimonides, Crescas’ view is consistent with the Christian view that we love God by loving our neighbour.

Spinoza’s perfection: Intellectual and moral

How does Spinoza understand our highest perfection? Like Crescas, Spinoza’s conception of the highest human perfection owes much to the eudaimonistic ethical tradition. Spinoza conceives of our highest good as blessedness (beatitudo), the standard Latin translation of eudaimonia. He understands blessedness as a state of flourishing that encompasses both our happiness and perfection. For instance, Spinoza writes, ‘in life therefore it is useful above all things to perfect the intellect or reason as much as we can, and the highest happiness or blessedness of a human being consists in this alone’ (4app4).

Like Maimonides, Spinoza holds that our highest good – and, thus, our highest perfection—consists in knowing God. In 4p28, Spinoza asserts that ‘the highest good of the mind is cognition of God’. When summarizing this proposition in the appendix, he adds an important wrinkle. Our highest good and perfection consists in the best cognition of God, which he identifies with the intuitive knowledge of God. ‘Blessedness is nothing other than the very contentment of spirit which arises from an intuitive cognition of God’ (4app4). This claim plays a prominent role in Part 5 of the Ethics. For instance, he writes in 5p27 that ‘anyone who knows things by this kind of cognition passes to the highest human perfection, and consequently is affected by the highest joy’. This claim is an important addition to Spinoza’s theory because he holds that the knowledge of God’s essence is universal, possessed even by fools and rocks. To avoid claiming that all people and all things are blessed – in other words, to conceive of blessedness and happiness as a goal and an arduous one – blessedness must come from a special knowledge of God that is rare and difficult. Intuitive knowledge is this rare knowledge.

Spinoza’s conception of the highest good also follows the Jewish philosophical tradition of Maimonides and Crescas – and the Christian tradition, for that matter – by identifying our highest good and perfection with the love of God. Spinoza defines love as joy accompanied by the idea of the beloved as the cause of joy. According to this definition, the highest joy – that is, the joy that comes from the intuitive knowledge of God – must be a love of God because the joy is identical to our understanding of God as the cause of everything. ¹² He calls this the intellectual love of God. ‘From the third kind of cognition the intellectual love of God necessarily arises’ (5p32c). He refers to this as an intellectual love because it involves intellectual ideas that represent God as eternal and timeless, rather than imaginative ideas that represent God as present and temporal (5p32c).

The Theological-Political Treatise reaches the same conclusion on slightly different grounds. There he argues that our degree of perfection is determined by the degree of perfection of the object of our knowledge and love. Since God is the most perfect being, our knowledge and love of God must be the highest human perfection:

That knowledge of God is our supreme good also follows from the fact that a man is more perfect in proportion to the nature and perfection of the thing which he loves before all others, and conversely. Therefore, the man who is necessarily the most perfect and who participates most in supreme blessedness is the one who loves above all else the intellectual knowledge of God, the most perfect being, and takes the greatest pleasure in that knowledge. Our supreme good, then, and our blessedness come back to this: the knowledge and love of God. (TTP 4/G III 60/128)

It is significant that this is precisely the same argument, previously quoted that Crescas offered to justify why the love of God is our highest good. This provides some evidence that Spinoza’s view on the love of God may have been developed by engaging with Crescas’s views, including Crescas’s critique of Maimonides.

It is worth mentioning here that Spinoza makes an additional claim about the love of God, one that neither Maimonides nor Crescas would accept because it rests on Spinoza’s pantheism. ¹³ Spinoza claims that our highest good and blessedness is identical not only to the love of God but also to God’s love for us; ‘the love of God for human beings and the mind’s intellectual love for God are one and the same thing’ (5p36c). This is because Spinoza holds that God is all things, including human beings, which entails that our love of God can be understood as God’s love for himself and, furthermore, as God’s love for us, since we are God.

Where does Spinoza stand in the debate between Maimonides and Crescas over moral perfection? While Spinoza’s identification of our highest perfection with the intellectual love of God resembles Maimonides’ view in a variety of ways, which Nadler’s article explains with characteristic aplomb, this article’s contribution is to point out that Spinoza’s view also sides with Crescas against Maimonides. This is because Spinoza identifies our highest perfection, the intellectual love of God with a state of practical and moral perfection. ¹⁴ Spinoza could not accept Maimonides’ view that virtue or moral perfection is a kind of bodily perfection that is inferior to the highest human perfection. Spinoza’s parallelism doctrine identifies minds and bodies as the same things understood in different ways, which rules out any strict distinction between the perfection of the soul and the body. For Spinoza, there is only one perfection with both mental and bodily aspects. Neither can be greater than the other.

Furthermore, Spinoza departs from Maimonides by conceiving of our highest perfection as encompassing moral perfection or virtue. Spinoza signals this explicitly and frequently. When he first introduces our highest good, he equates it with our highest virtue. ‘The highest good of the mind is cognition of God, and the highest virtue of the mind is to know God’ (4p28). He also claims that ‘the third kind of cognition’, that is, intuitive knowledge, is the mind’s ‘highest virtue’ (5p25). There are many reasons why Spinoza identifies the intellectual love of God with virtue, some of which I will explain in the coming pages. Most prominently, Spinoza conceives of virtue as activity, which means that understanding is virtuous because he regards understanding as an activity, indeed, the state of our greatest activity. ‘Blessedness consists in love for God, a love which arises from the third kind of cognition. Therefore, this love must be related to the mind insofar as it acts; and accordingly, it is virtue itself’ (5p42d).

At this point, one might question how deep the similarity to Crescas runs. While ‘virtue’ is a traditional term for moral and practical perfection, Spinoza famously uses traditional terms in unorthodox ways. Spinoza defines virtue as identical to power, which is not obviously an ethical or practical notion. Given his understanding of the term, perhaps Spinoza’s insistence that our highest perfection is also our highest virtue does not imply that our highest perfection is practical or moral. However, it is important to recognize that Spinoza claims that our highest good is also our highest virtue in a discussion of virtue, where the term is consistently used in an ethical sense to refer to praiseworthy practical dispositions (see 4p18 to 4p28). For instance, in this discussion, he argues that the foundation of virtue is the striving for self-preservation (4p22c). In making this claim, Spinoza intends to take up the long-standing question about the moral value of self-preservation and, thus, uses the term ‘virtue’ to refer to praiseworthy practical dispositions.

In determining whether Spinoza conceives of the highest perfection and love of God as practical and moral, it will only take us so far to examine Spinoza’s understanding of the term virtue. This is because Spinoza sometimes uses the term in an ethical sense to refer to praiseworthy practical dispositions (e.g. 4p36d, 4p37s1) and sometimes in a non-ethical sense as equivalent to our power (e.g. 1p11s). Rather than analysing Spinoza’s use of the term virtue, we can make more progress by examining Spinoza’s specific ethical claims about the highest human perfection, which show that he conceives of the highest human perfection as practical and moral. I will examine three claims.

First, Spinoza claims that the highest good can be shared by all, which he takes to imply that the highest human perfection involves moral qualities (4p36). Spinoza contrasts our highest good to scarce or competitive goods, where one person possessing the good thing prevents others from possessing it. Material goods like money or food are obvious examples, as are social status and privilege, which are often valued precisely because they are exclusive and confer advantages over others. Spinoza’s point is that knowledge of God does not work in this way. My knowing God does not take away from your ability to know God, nor is knowing God beneficial because it confers advantage over others. On the contrary, it is easier for me to know God and to achieve the highest good when I am surrounded by others who know it as well. Consequently, Spinoza holds that reason prescribes spreading the knowledge to others. ‘The good that everyone who follows after virtue wants for himself, he will also desire for other men, and all the more, the greater the cognition he has of God’ (4p37).

Spinoza thinks this rational prescription is important to understanding our love of God and, thus, the highest human perfection. Since the love of God is best shared – indeed, the love of God consists in the knowledge that it is best shared – the love of God cannot be tainted by the vicious emotions of envy or jealousy (5p20). On this basis, Spinoza argues that the love of God is incorruptible, immune to destruction by contrary, negative emotions. ‘There is no emotion that is directly contrary to this love by which it can be destroyed’ (5p20s). According to Spinoza, this makes the love of God the most constant and enduring emotion. Thus, Spinoza concludes that the highest human perfection is a moral state in the sense that it is immune to vicious emotions and promotes virtuous emotions, the constant and enduring contentment of the wise.

This first moral claim about the highest human perfection is partly the basis for Spinoza’s second claim, which is also the climactic final proposition of the Ethics: the highest human perfection is virtuous because it restrains harmful passions (5p42). Spinoza’s reasoning here is that the love of God – being identical to knowing God – is a state of activity, which excludes the passivity of harmful passions. Spinoza describes these passions as lust (5p42d). ‘Lust’ here does not refer specifically to sexual desire, although sexual desire is a good example of it. Rather, lusts are the attractions and repulsions brought about by the actions of external things on us. They bring us under their power, in the worst case, enslaving us. Furthermore, since these external things are generally scarce and competitive goods, our attraction to them brings us into conflict with others and renders our happiness hostage to fate.

In making this second claim, Spinoza adamantly opposes the notion that blessedness is a separate state from virtue. ‘Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; and we do not enjoy it because we restrain lusts; on the contrary we are able to restrain lusts precisely because we enjoy it’ (5p42). In making this claim, Spinoza rejects Maimonides’ conception of virtue as a prelude or passage leading to the highest state of human perfection. Rather, he sides with Crescas by claiming explicitly that the highest human perfection is constituted by the virtuous activity of restraining lusts and harmful passions.

Now to the third claim. Spinoza asserts that following practical and moral laws is constitutive of the highest human perfection. This view is stated most forcefully in chapter 4 of the Theological-Political Treatise. There Spinoza claims that our knowledge of the highest good implies practical prescriptions, namely to take whatever means to promote our highest good and perfection, the knowledge and love of God. He describes these prescriptions as divine laws.

We can call the means required by this end of all human actions – i.e., God, insofar as his idea is in us – God’s commands, because God himself, insofar as he exists in our mind, prescribes them to us, as it were. So, the principle of living which aims at this end is quite properly called a Divine law. But what these means are, and what principle of living this end requires, and how the foundations of the best republic and the principle of living among men follow from this, these matters all pertain to a universal Ethics. (TTP 4/G III 60/128)

This passage stands in stark contrast to Maimonides’ characterization of the divine law as primarily laws for correct opinions, commanded by those who have perfected their intellectual faculties, as discussed in the ‘Maimonides on moral perfection’ section. Rather, Spinoza’s divine laws are ethical and, as Spinoza intimates in the passage above, set down in the Ethics, where they are described as reason’s dictates or commands (4p18s). According to this view, the highest human perfection is not just a condition of knowledge, but rather a condition of virtue, in which reason directs us to actions that promote our highest good. To use Crescas’s language, the highest human perfection involves not only a perfection of views but also a perfection of deeds. Thus, for Spinoza, loving God means keeping the divine law and, consequently, acting with virtue. It is important to note that reason’s commands include acting for the good of others by helping them to attain their highest good, the knowledge and love of God (4p37). Thus, in contrast to Maimonides, Spinoza’s conception of the love of God delivers on the traditional Christian notion that we love God by loving our neighbour, for loving God involves following reason’s practical commands, including the command to benefit others.

This third claim makes a decisive break from Maimonides in several ways. ¹⁵ First, it implies that moral perfection is constitutive of the highest human perfection, rather than a prelude or means to attaining our highest perfection. Second, Spinoza’s view of the divine law holds that ethical and practical principles originate from reason, rather than from the imagination, as Maimonides holds. This is connected to the third difference that is apparent from Spinoza’s view of the divine law. Spinoza, unlike Maimonides, regards reason as a practical power that issues practical commands. Spinoza’s conception of reason as a practical power is built into his very theory of ideas, which conceives of human volitional powers as the power of our ideas, specifically, the power by which we affirm the contents of our ideas as true (2p49). According to this view, human cognitive and apprehensive powers are inseparable from our conative powers of volition, inclination and desire. This is because conative and cognitive powers are ultimately reducible to the same basic power of our ideas. ¹⁶

Spinoza’s Crescian conception of human perfection as encompassing moral perfection is also evident in his views on salvation. Spinoza famously accounts for some notion of salvation, albeit a weak one. ‘The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body; but something of it remains, and that is eternal’ (5p23). Considering the historical background helps us to see how the issue of salvation is connected to the issue of human perfection. For Maimonides and Crescas, human perfection realizes the powers that are most enduring, those that survive in the afterlife. In other words, the thing that survives the death of the body is the thing that is most perfect in human beings. In Maimonides, this is the acquired intellect, which implies an intellectualist view of human perfection. In Crescas, it is the immaterial substance, which implies a more practical and moral view of human perfection.

Commentators today find Spinoza’s doctrine of the eternity of the mind mysterious because his parallelism appears to close off the possibility of the mind surviving the body. Why would he allow for such a possibility, especially when he did not seem particularly beholden to traditional religious views? Attending to the historical background explains that Spinoza would be inclined to wade into these waters because they are so closely connected to questions of human perfection, which greatly concern him. It may be that Spinoza is interested in defending the eternity of the mind not because he is interested in accounting for some notion of salvation in an afterlife but rather in engaging with traditional views about human perfection. Spinoza’s view of the eternity of the mind agrees with Maimonides and Crescas that the highest human perfection is the development and realization of the human powers that are most enduring, the eternal part of the mind. Spinoza writes that the ‘part of the mind that remains, however great it may be, is more perfect than the rest’ (5p40c). He also agrees with Maimonides and Crescas that the eternal part of the mind and, thus, the state of human perfection that constitutes our salvation should be understood as the love of God. ‘We clearly understand from all this what our salvation or blessedness or freedom consists in, namely in a constant and eternal love for God’ (5p36cs).

For the present purposes, the important point is that Spinoza’s view of salvation reflects his Crescian commitment to the notion that our highest perfection – and, thus, the eternal part of the mind – is a state of virtue. The disagreement between Crescas and Maimonides concerned whether our salvation is secured through knowledge or virtue. Since Spinoza conceives of the love of God as a state of virtue, as we have seen, it follows that he conceives of salvation as a state of virtue. Spinoza confirms this when he claims that the eternal part of the mind is the active part (5p40) and the part that is strengthened by bodily power and capability: ‘anyone who has a body that is capable of very many things has a mind whose greatest part is eternal’ (5p39). In making this claim, Spinoza agrees with Crescas that salvation is practical and secured by virtue, although Spinoza is quick to point out that we have reason to be virtuous even if it did not lead to salvation (5p41) and that seeking salvation is not a virtuous motive (5p42). In insisting that salvation comes from virtue, Crescas takes himself to be disagreeing with Maimonides. Consequently, Spinoza may also take himself to be disagreeing with Maimonides, if he read Maimonides in the same way that Crescas did. Unfortunately, Maimonides’ views on salvation are too complex and opaque to assess here. ¹⁷

Despite Spinoza’s differences with Maimonides on the highest human perfection, Spinoza accepts aspects of Maimonides’ view as well. Spinoza holds that the eternal part of the mind is a state of knowledge and, thus, that any salvation available to humans comes from the perfection of beliefs. Furthermore, Spinoza echoes Maimonides when he claims that the eternal part of the mind is the intellect, whereas the imagination dies with the body and, consequently, is less enduring and, in this respect, inferior.

It follows from this that the part of the mind that remains, however great it may be, is more perfect than the rest. For the eternal part of the mind is the intellect, through which alone we are said to act. That part which we have shown to perish is the imagination itself through which alone we are said to be acted on. Therefore the former part, however great it may be, is more perfect than the latter (5p40c).

Thus, Spinoza’s view of the eternity of the mind, like his view of the highest human perfection, agrees with both Crescas and Maimonides: the love of God, which is our highest perfection and our salvation, is both a state of perfect knowledge and of perfect virtue.