Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

298 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
But this cannot be all there is to teleology. However much we might realize
that causality is behind our conviction of goal-oriented behaviour, this does not
provide us as such with a better understanding of our own behaviour. Why do we
strive to realize certain things, and try to escape others? What should we strive
for, and why? To answer these questions we need a more precise understanding
of what a causal explanation of human behaviour amounts to. Burgersdijk and
his school regarded affects as modifications of sensitive appetite caused by nonnatural
causes. Affects are in a way the movement of this sensitive appetite,
implying that affects are the prerequisite of any actual appetite, as appetite is the
prerequisite of actual behaviour. This position entailed furthermore that each
affect, being a motivation of behaviour, necessarily contains both bodily and
rational elements. And lastly, they asserted affects to be passions, as far as they did
not concur with the judgement of practical reason, and to be actions as far as they
did concur. The ultimate end of ethics is then to let the affects be in concurrence
with practical reason, and thereby directed at beatitude, that is, the good life.
Ethics is for them the desire for the good life, or eudaimonia.
With this Neostoic, naturalistic ‘theory of behaviour’, Spinoza seems to have
less difficulty than with teleology. Indeed, we find in Spinoza a theory of affects,
of appetite and desire. The Neostoic principle of self-preservation surfaces in the
conatus, the conscious striving of each thing to persevere in its being (E III P9).
We cannot overlook the role of the active-passive distinction in Spinoza, nor the
importance of the body for the conception of action. ‘A great many things
happen from the laws of nature alone’, that is, from the nature of the body,
Spinoza emphasizes in E III P2S where he explains the relative autonomy of
body and mind. Furthermore, Spinoza’s conception of the evolution of passion to
action shares a conviction with Neostoicism: passive affects are not to be
suppressed, but can proceed by natural force to become active. That education
should not be practised by force or punishment, but by admonition and example,
is a point of view that is a complement to this notion of passion.
But it is precisely against this background of shared ideas that in Spinoza’s
philosophical system no function is left for teleology. In this, he is drawing the
naturalism of his predecessors to its full conclusion. The projection onto Nature
of man’s self-experienced goal-directedness is not a sign of action but of
passion. Activity is living according to one’s own nature, i.e. according to one’s
being as a particle in Nature, instead of (passion driven) believing oneself to be
Nature’s master.
What was at issue in the debate on teleology was (and is) the formulation of
practical rules for actual behaviour in the perspective of an ultimate goal. As it is
presumably God’s end for mankind to realize X, man has a duty to act so as to
further X. Velthuysen amends this: God’s end is X, man is provided with means
M, so employing M will by God’s provident ordering of Nature to further X. In
this version M provides in a derivative fashion the criteria for our practical
behaviour. One of Velthuysen’s main criteria is the ‘fundamental law of selfpreservation’.
However, Velthuysen had to accept that M is necessary but not