Spinoza's Ethics System

In order to seek for the approach to human happiness, Spinoza established a complete system of ethnics, ranging the essentiality of nature to the nature of human beings, the enslaved state to the liberal state of mankind, and the natural state to the social state of man.Man is a part of the infinite and eternal nature, which is identical and inevitable. Nature is hypostatic, that is, complete and perfect, whereas the soul of people in real life is not perfect in that human soul does not only contain confusing conceptions, namely incorrect knowledge, but also is easy to be led into mistakes because of man's imagination, all these two results in the weakness of human soul. Being decided by emotions and ardors instead of being guided by reason due to the weakness of human soul its own, therefore it is passive and is controlled by outside factors, but since the basic dharma of things is "the effort to ensure its actual essential existence", therefore the existing human soul is not entirely actual, viz. the soul of man in real life is incomplete and imperfect. Human happiness lies in the completeness and perfection of human soul, which is manifested through the self-contentment of human beings. To reach the state of being complete and perfect in soul, one needs to live a rational life, namely to live according to rational principles whose prerequisite is that emotions and ardors should be controlled by human soul, as passive ardors is the cause of passive soul and only the emotions and ardors that is produced by reason can make the human soul active. After nailing down the human soul and its rationality, emotions and desires, one can live a most perfect life by rationally tidying up the confusing conceptions in the soul to make them clear and systematic, through recognizing and controlling emotions and ardors to free the soul from being mastered by outside factors, and by means of knowing and loving the manito (nature) to achieve the "union of human soul and the entire nature".The significance of Spanoza's theory lies not only in theory, but more important, in practice. It can reduce the affect that hardships have upon human soul, and help to free mankind from outside enslavement,hence to strengthen individual spirit.