On Spinoza's View Of Happiness And Its Inherent Contradiction

People have made consensus on that freedom should cover the contents of happiness, although understanding on happiness may differ for different times or different people. Ethics, in a sense, is a knowledge of searching human happiness. In the history of mankind, many thinkers have developed in the problem of happiness and made a remarkable contribution to human being's freedom, civilization as well as development. Spinoza, a distinguished Holland moralist, is one represent of them.On the whole, the contents of Spinoza's ethical happiness thoughts cover three aspects:the first is the foundation of happiness. Spinoza considered that self-preserving is the foundation of human happiness. Human has the nature of self-preserving, and each of us should preserve his or her self-existing. This is the natural right of human. This self-preserving power is the power of God. The second aspect is the block factor of happiness. In Spinoza's opinion, passive emotions is the most important factor that blocks us from acquiring our happiness. He divided emotions into active emotions and passive emotions. When people are restricted to passive passions, there is no freedom to say, thus there is no happiness to say. Only with the appropriate method can we restrain the passive influence of passive passions and can we get our happiness. The second aspect is the method of getting happiness. Spinoza considered the method of restricting the passive emotions was reaching to the knowledge of nature. Knowledge is quite important for people to get happiness. Knowledge can be divided into three types:the first kind is perceptual knowledge, i.e. opinions or representation, the second is the rational knowledge, the third is the intuitive knowledge. When people reach to intuitive knowledge, he or she will get freedom and happiness.Although Spinoza systematically puts forward his own view of happiness, after carefully sorting and analyzing, we can still found Spinoza's view of happiness actually contains multiple contradictions in his theories scope. This mainly can be explained as follows:the first is the contradiction between "necessity" and "freedom", the second is the contradiction between "freedom" and self-discipline, the third is the contradiction between egoism and altruism.Further analyzing these contradictions in Spinoza's view of happiness, we can see the being of these contradictions is related to his whole philosophy system. Naturalization tendency of unique substance, relative meaning of "good" and his geometrical method all caused these contradictions. All these contradictions make his ethical thinking being divorced from reality and lack of feasibility. Of course, although there are several contradictions in Spinoza's view of happiness, but Spinoza's ethics still have a significant impact in the history of thought in western ethics, particularly his practicing philosophy character is greatly respected and makes him receive high praise. Researching Spinoza's philosophy is very important for us to establish a correct philosophy of life and build a harmonious society.