On Spinoza's Philosophy Of Happiness

Spinoza's philosophy enjoys an important historical position in the history of western philosophy and ethics.As He Lin pointed out in the "Translator's Preface" of Spinoza's "Ethics"(Chinese version)published in the late 1950 s,Spinoza 's philosophy is one of the highest achievements of European bourgeois ideology in the 17 th century,mainly because of the atheistic factor in his philosophical world view and the dialectical factor in his epistemology.The reflection upon these two Spinoza's ideological achievements reveals the understanding and evaluation of the studies on Spinoza reached in academia long time ago(by the last century).However,more extensive and profound researches on Spinoza implemented in the recent years make the above understanding and evaluation extremely simple and obviously less comprehensive.What's worse,the significant value of Spinoza's ethics and happiness philosophy has not yet been fully revealed.In the Chinese version “Spinoza's Short Treatise on God,Man & His Well-being”(2012),Hong Handing revealed the fundamental purpose of Spinoza's philosophy in his “Translator's Preface”—to use rational knowledge to hold emotions so as to achieve the highest and most complete happiness.This expresses a new perspective for the recent study of Spinoza's theory—the philosophical theory of happiness.In accordance,the major theme of this dissertation is to explore the theoretical achievements of Spinoza's philosophy of happiness and carry out critical study on some dilemmas due to the above mentioned deficiencies in his theoretical works.Based on the intensive reading of Spinoza's primary works and the critical study of the latest research findings on Spinoza's thoughts,this dissertation further explores the reasons why Spinoza's philosophical thoughts prevailed with dazzling brilliance in the era of European humanism revival and rational enlightenment.Firstly,in that era,only Spinoza's philosophy actually regarded the issues of human ethics and secular happiness as the main theme and subject of philosophy.Secondly,he took the highest good into blessing and internally united ethics and life philosophy with the ontology of the world view and methodological epistemology by use of naturalistic principles,which provided a more complete theoretical and logical basis for the philosophy of happiness.Thirdly,he carried forward the scientific spirit of the Enlightenment era,constructing his own philosophy of happiness with rationalism and geometric methods to resist the emotionalized and vulgarized tendency toward happiness and freedom.However,as any great thinker has its time limitations,his theoretical method of "geometry" left certain definitions of some basic concepts in his philosophy of happiness unclear and some of his logical deduction from axioms to propositions far-fetched as well.The achievements of contemporary western philosophy of semantics and analysis can be used to make up some of his theoretical deficiencies and provide guidance for our further understanding and discussion in the life issues concerning happiness.This doctoral dissertation is composed of an introduction,four chapters,and a conclusion.In the introduction,we demonstrated the theoretical value and practical significance of the thesis,discussed the contemporary research results of Spinoza's philosophical thoughts at home and abroad,and introduced the generation of our further thinking as well as our own research methods,overall ideas and preliminary conclusions of this paper.In Chapter One,we reviewed ethics and happiness theories of ancient Greek philosophers and medieval philosophers,such as Epicurus,Socrates,Plato,Aristotle,Augustine and etc.Certain fundamental deficiencies of their theories were addressed upon discussion,including their negligence of the central position that ethics and happiness are supposed to occupy in philosophy,or their separation of the ethical or happiness issues from the world view and epistemological issues in their theoretical logic,or their deified or dehumanized subjects of happiness.In Chapter Two,we presented Spinoza's ontological thinking of the world view with "substance" as the core and his epistemological thinking with "true ideas" as the core,based on the introduction and analysis of Spinoza's philosophical works.These two aspects ultimately lay the theoretical foundation for the highest theme of his philosophy—human ethics and philosophy of happiness,which reflects Spinoza's theoretical logic that internally unifies ontology,epistemology,and ethics.Chapter Three focused on how Spinoza's ethical and happiness issues,on the one hand,adhere to the naturalist theory of human nature;and on the other hand,how these issues show the rationalization of the concept of happiness.Chapter Four revealed Spinoza's application of geometric methods as its methodological principle.In particular,his unclear definition of some important concepts and illogical inferences of some important propositions inevitably led to certain controversies.Some of the problems have been solved through the semantic analysis method in modern Western philosophy,which can advance and deepen our understanding of the problem of happiness.In the concluding part,we made a brief review of the theoretical content and research conclusions of the whole paper and reflected the issues that are not fully addressed in this dissertation for our further consideration and future research concern.