Courage and Self-affirmation: Spinoza
Stoicism retired into the background when faith in cosmic salvation replaced the courage of cosmic renunciation. But it returned when the medieval system which was dominated by the problem of salvation began to disintegrate. And it became decisive again for an intellectual elite which rejected the way of salvation without however replacing it with the Stoic way of renunciation. Because of the impact of Christianity on the Western world the revival of the ancient schools of thought at the beginning of the modern period was not only a revival but also a transformation. This is true of the revival of Platonism as well as of that of Skepticism and Stoicism; it is true of the renewal of the arts, of literature, of the theories of the state, and of the philosophy of religion. In all these cases the negativity of the late-ancient feeling toward life is transformed into the positiveness of the Christian ideas of creation and incarnation, even if these ideas are either ignored or denied. The spiritual substance of Renaissance humanism was Christian as the spiritual substance of ancient humanism was pagan, in spite of the criticism of the pagan religions by Greek humanism and of Christianity by modern humanism. The decisive difference between both types of humanism is the answer to the question whether being is essentially good or not. While the symbol of creation implies the classical Christian doctrine that “being as being is good” (esse qua esse bonum est) the doctrine of the “resisting matter” in Greek philosophy expresses the pagan feeling that being is necessarily ambiguous insofar as it participates in both creative form and inhibiting matter.
This contrast in the basic ontological conception has decisive consequences. While in later antiquity the various forms of metaphysical and religious dualism are tied up with the ascetic ideal—the negation of matter—the rebirth of antiquity in the modern period replaced asceticism by active shaping of the material realm. And while in the ancient world the tragic feeling toward existence dominated thought and life, especially the attitude toward history, the Renaissance started a movement which was looking at the future and the creative and new in it. Hope conquered the feeling of tragedy, and belief in progress the resignation to circular repetition.
A third consequence of the basic ontological difference is the contrast in the valuation of the individual on the part of ancient and modern humanism. While the ancient world valued the individual not as an individual but as a representative of something universal, e.g. a virtue, the rebirth of antiquity saw in the individual as an individual a unique expression of the universe, incomparable, irreplaceable, and of infinite significance. It is obvious that these differences created decisive differences in the interpretation of courage. It is not the contrast between renunciation and salvation to which I am referring now. Modern humanism is still humanism, rejecting the idea of salvation. But modern humanism also rejects renunciation. It replaces it by a kind of self-affirmation which transcends that of the Stoics because it includes the material, historical, and individual existence. Nevertheless, there are so many points in which this modern humanism is identical with ancient Stoicism that it may be called Neo-Stoicism. Spinoza is its representative. In him as in nobody else the ontology of courage is elaborated. In calling his main ontological work Ethics he indicated in the title itself his intention to show the ontological foundation of man’s ethical existence, including man’s courage to be. But for Spinoza—as for the Stoics—the courage to be is not one thing beside others. It is an expression of the essential act of everything that participates in being, namely self-affirmation.
The doctrine of self-affirmation is a central element in Spinoza’s thought. Its decisive character is manifest in a proposition like this: “The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question” (Ethics iii. prop. 7). The Latin word for endeavor is conatus, the striving toward something. This striving is not a contingent aspect of a thing, nor is it an element in its being along with other elements; it is its essentia actualis. The conatus makes a thing what it is, so that if it disappears the thing itself disappears (Ethics ii, Def. 2). Striving toward self-preservation or toward self-affirmation makes a thing be what it is. Spinoza calls this striving which is the essence of a thing also its power, and he says of the mind that it affirms or posits (affirmat sive ponit) its own power of action (ipsius agendi potentiam) (iii. prop. 54).
