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The Ethics of Joy
Spinoza on the Empowered Life

A N D R EW YOU PA

1
 OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS

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© Oxford University Press 2020

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CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978- 0-19- 008602- 2

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Printed by Integrated Books International. Inc., United States of America
 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
List ofAbbreviations xi

Introduction 1
1. Spinoza's Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 10
2. Emotions as Axiological Information 28
3. Spinoza's Moral Realism 40
4. Spinoza and Moral Anti-Realism 61
5. Underivative Goodness and Underivative Badness 82
6. Derivative Goodness and Derivative Badness 100
7. Summum Mentis Bonum 113
8. The Empowered Life: Freedom 126
9. The Empowered Life: Tenacity 142
10. The Empowered Life: Nobility 160
Conclusion: Ethics and the Project of Empowerment 180

Bibliography 185
Index 189
 Acknowledgments

I am fortunate to work in a field that brings me into contact with many won-
derful and talented people, and I am indebted to a number of such people for
their help with this project, including Lilli Alanen, Douglas Anderson, Anne
Margaret Baxley, Eric Brown, Torrie Hester, Susan James, Olli Koistinen,
Ian Leask, Alissa MacMillan, Patricia Marino, Jon Miller, Steven A. Miller,
Peter Myrdal, Christopher Paone, Daniel Selcer, Yasuko Taoka, and Valtteri
Viljanen. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Bartholomew Begley for inviting
and hosting me for the 2015 Spinoza Symposium at University College Cork;
for helping to organize talks for me at Maynooth University and Dublin City
College; and for many stimulating scholarly discussions.
I am grateful to Karolina Hübner for her generosity in organizing and
hosting a workshop for my manuscript at the University of Toronto in 2018.
Meeting with scholars to discuss my manuscript was a fantastic learning
experience for me and a highlight of my journey in writing this book. I am
also grateful to Karolina for her insightful comments on a draft of the full
manuscript.
John Carriero, Matthew Kisner, Sanem Soyarslan, and Justin Steinberg
read and commented on my manuscript for the Toronto workshop. I thank
them for the thoughtfulness with which they handled the task, and for the
many excellent questions and difficulties that they raised for the views I de-
fend. Their engagement with my manuscript in writing and discussions was a
model of Spinozistic friendship.
Over the years Matthew Kisner also read drafts of my chapters and par-
took in numerous philosophical and scholarly discussions with me. Mike
LeBuffe, too, commented on early drafts of chapters as well as the full manu-
script. His feedback was an enormous help, and his encouragement despite
some differences in our views is a model of professionalism. I also wish to
thank my friend and colleague Ryan Netzley for his support, for his help at
every stage of this project, and for providing me invaluable feedback on my
manuscript. I am fortunate to have been able to rely on Ryan’s vast expertise.
I have benefited from the comments and questions of those in attend-
ance at the 2012 Judgment Conference at the University of Turku, the
x Acknowledgments

2012 Human Nature and Agency in Early Modern Philosophy Workshop

at Uppsala University, the Second Annual Seminar on Moral and Political
Contractualism at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, the 2013
Joint Meeting of the Indiana Philosophical Association and the Midwest
Study Group of the North American Kant Society at Indiana University, the
2014 Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association,
the 2015 Spinoza Symposium at University College Cork, a colloquium
with the Department of Philosophy at Maynooth University, a colloquium
at the Mater Dei Institute of Education at Dublin City University, the 2017
South Central Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy at Hendrix College, the
manuscript workshop at the University of Toronto, and all the students who
have been in my Spinoza seminars over the years. I am fortunate for the sup-
port of my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale, and I thank Southern Illinois University Carbondale
for granting me sabbatical leave for the Spring 2016 semester, giving me
much needed time to work on this project.
I would not have gotten far in this endeavor without Steven Nadler’s gen-
erosity, encouragement, and his feedback on early drafts of chapters and on a
draft of the full manuscript. My gratitude to my adviser, Alan Nelson, is not
easy to convey in a few words. I thank Alan for everything he has done for
me, for his instruction and guidance at every step.
My heartfelt thanks to my family and friends, especially my parents, Don
and Carolyn Youpa, to whom I dedicate this book, with love and joy.
 Abbreviations

Translations of Spinoza’s works are from Edwin Curley’s The Collected Works
of Spinoza, Volumes I and II, unless I indicate otherwise. References to
passages in Spinoza’s Ethics cite the part by Arabic numeral, and then I use
the following abbreviations:

a axiom
App appendix
c corollary
d demonstration
l lemma
D definition
DA Part 3 Definitions of the Affects
G Gebhardt edition’s pagination
GDA Part 3 General Definition of the Affects
exp explication
p proposition
post postulate
Pref Preface
s scholium

For example, 4p28d refers to Ethics, Part 4, proposition 28, demonstration.

 Introduction

This book offers a reading of Spinoza’s moral philosophy. Specifically, it is a

philosophical exposition of his masterpiece, the Ethics, that focuses on his
moral philosophy. Central to the reading I defend is the view that there is a
way of life that is best for human beings, and what makes it best is that it is
the way of life that is in agreement with human nature. I begin this study with
Spinoza’s theory of emotions, and I do so because it is one of two doctrines
that fundamentally shape the structure and content of his vision of the way
of life that is best. The other is his view that striving to persevere in being is
the actual essence of a finite thing (3p7). Together these make up the foun-
dation of Spinoza’s moral philosophy, and it is from these two doctrines that
his moral philosophy emerges. In saying this I am not denying that his sub-
stance monism, the doctrines of mind-​body parallelism and identity, the tri-
partite theory of knowledge, and his denial of libertarian free will, among
others, also belong to the foundation of his moral philosophy. Each of these
contributes in its way to the portrait of the best way of life, and they play im-
portant roles in the chapters that follow. But it is his theory of emotions and
the theory of human nature on which it rests that are chiefly responsible for
the structure and content of his moral philosophy.
The reading I offer in this book is the result of my interest in what Spinoza’s
ideas contribute to our understanding of human life and how it should be
lived. It is this interest that informs the approach I take to the Ethics. In taking
this approach I have helped myself at times to philosophical concepts and
terminology from contemporary philosophy that shed light on his views.
Although the language I use is in some cases drawn from contemporary phi-
losophy, the underlying concepts are of much older origin and are at home
in the philosophical tradition. To take one example from the following
chapters, ­chapter 3 is about what I call Spinoza’s “moral realism.” I believe
that Spinoza is a moral realist in an important and illuminating sense of the
term “moral realist.” I do not think we can claim to understand his moral
philosophy unless we understand the type of realism on which it rests. Still,
talk of Spinoza’s moral realism may strike some readers as out of place and

The Ethics of Joy. Andrew Youpa, Oxford University Press (2020) © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190086022.001.0001
2 The Ethics of Joy

might raise concerns about anachronism. My goal is to get Spinoza right. I do

not wish to place his views in a framework for which they are ill suited, even
if that framework might make his thought appear more fashionable (or less
unfashionable) than it is. While I have sought to avoid the pitfall of anachro-
nism, I have also sought to avoid treating Spinoza’s moral philosophy merely
as a chapter in the history of ethics. I apply contemporary terms to Spinoza,
but I do so only when they best enable me to explain his views and demon-
strate their enduring relevance.
Throughout this book I use the phrase “moral philosophy” to refer to the
practical project that is contained in the Ethics. Here, at the outset, I wish to
clarify how I use this phrase and to explain how I use the word “moral” in
reference to Spinoza’s practical doctrines. It is important to see that Spinoza’s
moral philosophy does not fit within a framework that takes accountability
as an essential function of morality. An ethics of accountability is about what
a person deserves. It is a system for taking account of an individual’s moral
worth, and its currency is praise and blame, and reward and punishment.
An ethics of accountability nicely fits an economic model of morality. On
this model an essential feature of morality is that it assigns credit and debt to
individuals for their contributions in the economy of good and evil.
If a requirement for being a moral philosophy is acceptance of the view
that accountability is an essential function of morality, Spinoza’s Ethics does
not contain a moral philosophy. The ethics of the Ethics is not about what
a person deserves. Its focus is not what makes a person praiseworthy and
blameworthy, morally or otherwise. Rather, it is about how to live joyously
and lovingly, not sadly and hatefully. But I am not convinced that accounta-
bility is an essential function of morality, and I see no good reason to restrict
our conception of moral philosophy to the accountability project. On the
contrary, moral thinking is assisted by encountering perspectives that chal-
lenge us and help us overcome the moral blindness that accompanies dog-
matism and complacency. A broader conception of moral philosophy assists
moral thinking more effectively than a conception restricted exclusively to
the accountability project. In this book I use “moral philosophy” in a broad
sense that includes the accountability project and the type of project of which
Spinoza’s is an instance, and I use the word “moral” to refer to doctrines that
compose such projects.
Instead of an ethics of accountability, Spinoza’s is an ethics of joy. By this
I mean that it is centered on what, with respect to mental and physical well-
ness, deserves our attention and what, with respect to mental and physical
 Introduction 3

wellness, does not deserve our attention. Spinoza’s ethics of joy reminds us
that every way of life enacts and embodies a system of triage in its allocation
of care to ourselves, care to others, and care to things in the world around
us. Not every system of triage—​not every way of life—​is arranged such that
it expresses mental and physical wellness and such that it promotes mental
and physical wellness in oneself and others and at the same time alleviates
mental and physical illness in oneself and others. Some ways of life do the op-
posite: they impair and degrade us mentally and physically and they impair
and degrade our loved ones mentally and physically. Spinoza’s moral philos-
ophy is a framework for a system of triage that promotes mental and physical
wellness and that alleviates mental and physical illness. Spinoza’s ethics of
joy belongs to a philosophical tradition that follows a medical model of mo-
rality.1 Accordingly, the purpose of morality is not to assign credit and debt
in the economy of good and evil. Its purpose is to heal the sick and empower
the vulnerable, which is to say it is for each and every one of us.
The overriding concerns for Spinoza’s project are one’s way of life and
how one allocates one’s attention. In contrast, an ethics of accountability is
concerned with choices and actions, and less so with one’s way of life. An
ethics of accountability gravitates toward a decision procedure that we can
use in every circumstance to give us the single right choice and right ac-
tion, and there can, it seems, be only one correct decision procedure owing
to the demands of accounting. Multiple procedures that issue in sometimes
conflicting decisions and actions would create a problem for calculating a
person’s moral worth. Unlike an ethics of accountability, Spinoza does not
offer a decision procedure. Furthermore, Spinoza’s moral philosophy is plu-
ralistic in that there are as many good ways of life as there are ways of living
joyously and lovingly. There is a variety of empowered ways of life and there
is a variety of disempowered ways of life.
It is not that Spinoza has nothing to say about and nothing to contribute to
an ethics of accountability. However, the accountability project is, in Spinoza’s
view, the primary function of the state. The rules and standards that set out
what a person deserves is a function of the state and the common agreements
that constitute the basis of the state. Spinoza’s view is that the norms by which

1 In this regard Spinoza’s moral philosophy can be seen as a descendant of the Hellenistic phil-

osophical tradition. In ­chapter 5, I maintain that Spinoza’s moral philosophy can also be seen as a
naturalistic ancestor of our contemporary fields of biology, psychology, and medicine. Regarding
the centrality of the medical model of moral philosophy in the Hellenistic philosophical tradition,
see Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton
University Press, 1994).
4 The Ethics of Joy

we judge what an individual deserves are artificial.2 They are created by a

social contract and enforced by the state apparatus by means of a system of
rewards and punishments. For Spinoza, a theory of the accountability project
belongs to a treatise on political philosophy. His Theological-​Political Treatise
and the unfinished Political Treatise contain his thoughts on the foundation
of the accountability project, the form it should take in the constitution of the
state, and its limits.
An important feature that accountability projects and way of life projects
have in common is that they are normative, although normativity takes dif-
ferent shapes in these distinct projects. Normativity for the accountability
project standardly takes the form of claims about what a person morally
ought to do and morally ought not to do. In a way of life project, normativity
standardly takes the form of claims about what virtue calls for and what a
model human being would do. While normativity takes different shapes in
these types of projects, both are normative in the sense that their doctrines
constitute standards of success and failure. Just as it is possible to fail to do
what one morally ought to do, it is possible to fail to do what virtue calls for
and what the model person would do. Neither the accountability project nor
the way of life project takes an exclusively descriptive, anthropological ap-
proach to human life. They are action-​guiding. They are intended to guide
the actions and lives of rational agents insofar as we are rational.
A key doctrine in the foundation of Spinoza’s moral philosophy is the
conatus doctrine (i.e., 3p6). This much is uncontroversial. While scholars
agree that the conatus doctrine is pivotal, scholars have not always agreed
on how to understand it, and divergent understandings of the conatus doc-
trine lead to diverse readings of his moral philosophy. An important passage
for my understanding of the conatus doctrine is 4D8: “By virtue and power

2 For Spinoza, the central notions of the accountability project are disobedience (inobedientia),

obedience (obedientia), sin (peccatum), and merit (meritum), and he holds that these notions have
content only in the civil state where “it is decided by common agreement what is good or what is evil”
(4p37s2). Such notions are empty where is there no common agreement about what is good and what
is evil, such as in the state of nature. This is also true of the notions of just and unjust as these relate to
property norms. Although the accountability project’s norms—​the norms by which an individual is
judged deserving (undeserving) or worthy (unworthy) of praise, blame, rewards, and punishments—​
are established by common agreement and enforced by the state, it does not follow that an ethics of
joy and its notions of good, evil, joy, sadness, freedom, and bondage are artificial. For a reading con-
genial to the view I am putting forward here about Spinoza’s theory of the accountability project, see
Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning,
volume II (Harvard University Press, 1962[1934]), pp. 246‒249; David Bidney, The Psychology and
Ethics of Spinoza: A Study in the History and Logic of Ideas (Yale University Press, 1940), pp. 327‒330;
John Carriero, “The Ethics in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Essays in Spinoza’s Ethical Theory, ed. Mathew J.
Kisner and Andrew Youpa (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 20‒40.
 Introduction 5

I understand the same thing, i.e. (by IIIP7), virtue, insofar as it is related to
man, is the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of
bringing about certain things, which can be understood through the laws of
his nature alone.” The reading I offer in this book is largely a matter of taking
up and running with Spinoza’s identification of an individual’s conatus with
adequate causal power. A finite existent is a finite system of adequate causal
power. Our lives are shaped in part by expressing God’s power directly—​that
is, through the actual essence that is our adequate causal power. Our lives are
also shaped by expressing God’s power indirectly through the causal influ-
ence of finite things whose natures do not entirely agree with human nature.
The best way of life is that which follows from our actual essence. It is the way
of life that follows from God’s power directly.
In ­chapters 1 and 2, I argue that Spinoza believes that emotions qua
mental items are symptomatic representations of changes in the power of the
subject’s body and as such constitute what I call “axiological information.”
An episode of joy is axiological information in the sense that the qualita-
tive character of an episode of joy informs the subject that his body’s power
is increasing. The qualitative character of an episode of sadness informs the
subject that his body’s power is decreasing. In maintaining that emotions
as mental items are symptomatic representations of changes in the power
of the subject’s body, I am not denying that emotions are at the same time
increases and decreases in the mind’s power. There is no question that they
are increases and decreases in the mind’s power. My characterization of
emotions as symptomatic representations is intended to capture Spinoza’s
talk in the “General Definition of the Affects” about how an emotion “affirms
of its Body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing than be-
fore.” It is also meant to capture his claim in the Explication of the “General
Definition of the Affects” that an emotion must “indicate or express a consti-
tution of the Body (or some part of it).” He also uses the word “sign” (4p47s)
to describe this aspect of emotions.
Spinoza’s theory of emotions is relatively foreign to the mainstream of con-
temporary philosophical psychology, but it may be closer to the truth than
the mainstream view. The latter is a descendant of Hume’s theory of emotion,
and Spinoza’s theory stands in sharp contrast to Hume’s view that a passion
is an “original existence.”3 According to Hume, a passion “contains not any

3 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (Oxford

University Press, 2000), 2.3.3, p. 266.

6 The Ethics of Joy

representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or mod-

ification. When I am angry, I am actually possest with the passion, and in
that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am
thirsty, or sick, or more than five foot high.”4 Whereas Hume denies that an
emotion has a representative quality, Spinoza maintains that an emotion, as
it exists in the mind, represents a change in the power of the subject’s body.
Because emotions in Spinoza’s view are representational in the sense that
they inform us about enhancements and impairments to our nature, his
theory of emotions is a bridge to the conception of human nature on which
his moral philosophy is founded. In c­ hapter 3, I argue that Spinoza subscribes
to a type of moral realism, and I show that the source of his moral realism is
the realism in his conception of human nature. Although I borrow the lan-
guage “moral realism” from contemporary philosophy, I do not borrow a
specific conception of moral realism from contemporary philosophy and im-
pose it on Spinoza. I stipulate that “moral realism” is a theory of the way of life
that is best for us as human beings, a theory based on a view on which good-
ness and badness are objective properties. This conception of moral realism
is recognizably moral in that it is about an account of the way of life that is
best for human beings. It is recognizably realist in that it holds that goodness
and badness are objective properties. The main purpose of my discussion of
his moral realism is not to bring Spinoza into dialogue with contemporary
moral philosophers. My goal, as I said, is to get Spinoza right, and I do not
think we get him right unless we understand the foundation of his moral phi-
losophy. On the reading I defend, it is a finite thing’s actual essence—​its ad-
equate causal power—​that serves as the foundation of his moral philosophy.
In his From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence, Michael
LeBuffe defends a reading according to which Spinoza is a type of moral
anti-​realist. I examine LeBuffe’s anti-​realist reading in c­ hapter 4, and I also
examine three passages from the Ethics that appear to conflict with the re-
alist reading I favor. Any broad reading of the Ethics will have its share of
strengths and weaknesses. Any such reading will nicely fit and illuminate
some passages and will be an awkward fit with and obscure other passages.
This is as true for a reading that focuses on his metaphysics as it is for a
reading that focuses on his moral philosophy. Because no reading can avoid
running up against passages that challenge it and raise difficult questions for
it, arriving at the most reasonable view is in part a matter of assessing the

4 Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.3, p. 266.

 Introduction 7

challenges that it faces. In this chapter I argue that the challenges that my
reading faces are less severe than the ones that LeBuffe’s powerful and sophis-
ticated alternative faces.
In ­chapters 5, 6, and 7, I provide a reading of Spinoza’s various statements
about goodness and badness, including his view of the highest good. At
the center of the reading I defend in these chapters is the pair of doctrines
I refer to as the Wellness as Underivative Goodness Doctrine and the Illness as
Underivative Badness Doctrine:

Wellness as Underivative Goodness Doctrine: The goodness of well-

ness is underivative—​that is, enhancements in power are good in and of
themselves.

Illness as Underivative Badness Doctrine: The badness of illness is

underivative—​that is, impairments of power are bad in and of themselves.

These doctrines make up the normative core of Spinoza’s moral philosophy.

What makes our lives good is that we are mentally and physically well; what
makes our lives bad is that we are mentally and physically ill. Further, Spinoza’s
view is that mental and physical wellness is the source of the goodness of our
good deeds; mental and physical illness is the source of the badness of our bad
deeds. Good deeds follow from mental and physical wellness (i.e., joy and love).
Bad deeds follow from mental and physical illness (i.e., sadness and hate).
With respect to external objects, it is their causal contribution to human
wellness and illness that makes them good and bad. Spinoza subscribes to a re-
lational theory of value with respect to external objects. It is relational, but not
relativistic, in the anthropologist’s sense of “relativistic.” External objects are
good insofar as they contribute to increases in human wellness, and they are
bad insofar as they cause increases in human illness. The underivative good-
ness of human wellness and the underivative badness of human illness are the
sources of the goodness and badness of human deeds and of external objects.
Chapter 7 addresses the question whether Spinoza shares Hume’s view
that reason is a slave of the passions. According to Hume, knowledge is
not an independent source of emotions and desires.5 It is not a source of

5 Hume writes, “Since reason alone can never produce any action, or give rise to volition, I infer, that

the same faculty is as incapable of preventing volition, or of disputing the preference with any passion
or emotion. . . . Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any
other office than to serve and obey them” (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.3, p. 266).
8 The Ethics of Joy

emotions and desires independent of preexisting emotions and desires. If

Hume is right, knowledge is motivationally inert. Does Spinoza share this
position? Is it the case that, for Spinoza, knowledge is motivationally inert?
It can seem as if he agrees, for he writes, “From all this, then, it is clear that
we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we
judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good be-
cause we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it” (3p9s). This seems to
suggest that judgments of good and evil are not an independent source of
emotions and desires. Judgments of good and evil arise from emotions and
desires. They do not give rise to emotions and desires. Now, it seems reason-
able to think that if any knowledge is an independent source of emotions
and desires, knowledge of good and evil is such a source. Therefore, if know-
ledge of good and evil is not a source of motivation, knowledge generally, it
seems, is not a source of motivation. In ­chapter 7, I show that this line of rea-
soning does not hold up as an understanding of Spinoza’s view. Knowledge,
for Spinoza, is an independent source of emotions and desires. Metaphysical
knowledge is identical to an enhancement of our power and as such is, or is
accompanied by, joy.
There is considerable debate among early modern scholars about Spinoza’s
view of the type of freedom that human beings can achieve. There is also
debate about whether the free human that appears in propositions 4p67,
4p68, 4p69, 4p70, 4p71, and 4p72 is the model of human nature that Spinoza
mentions in the Preface to Part 4 of the Ethics. In ­chapter 8, I argue for a
specific conception of Spinozistic freedom that I call the “Causal Adequacy
reading,” and I make a case for the view that the free human is, according
to Spinoza, the model of human nature and that actual human beings can
achieve the freedom that the model illustrates. A life of genuine freedom is
not inaccessible to us, contrary to the view of some scholars.
Chapters 9 and 10 take up Spinoza’s theory of virtue and his concrete
doctrines about the best way of life. In these chapters I focus primarily on
Spinoza’s conclusions about living well and less on the arguments by which
he reaches his conclusions. I have two reasons for this approach. First, I am
not convinced that Kantians in ethics are Kantians because of an argument
that Kant or Korsgaard makes. Nor am I convinced that utilitarians are
utilitarians because of an argument that Bentham or Mill or Singer makes.
This is not how moral thinking works, and we miss something important
when we imagine otherwise when engaging with Spinoza’s views. What we
miss is an alternative way of thinking about our lives—​an alternative that is
 Introduction 9

illuminating and insightful. As far as moral thinking is concerned, the pre-

sentation of an illuminating alternative is arguably the best that a philoso-
pher can do.
Second, and relatedly, in c­ hapters 9 and 10, I set aside the geometric appa-
ratus in an effort to get to the heart of Spinoza’s moral philosophy. Careful at-
tention to his demonstrations can be useful for this, but the demonstrations
can also be a hindrance. The geometric method can be a distraction. It can
distract us from Spinoza’s vision of the best way of life. No doubt Spinoza
attempts to establish his vision of the good life through the apparatus of
definitions, axioms, and theorems. But whether we are or are not Spinozists
in ethics has little, if anything, to do with the apparatus by which he attempts
to establish his account of the best way of life. Insofar as we are not Spinozists
in ethics, it is because his ethical doctrines leave us cold and do not ring true
from the standpoint of our moral expertise. Insofar as we are Spinozists, it
is because his ethical doctrines resonate with us and do ring true from the
standpoint of our moral expertise.
My examination of his theory of virtue discloses the importance Spinoza
assigns to friendship and education in the best of way of life. First and fore-
most we need to be friends to ourselves and friends to others. The virtue of
tenacity calls for taking intelligent care of oneself, and the virtue of nobility
calls for taking intelligent care of others. While there is much in the world
that is useful for taking care of ourselves and others, such as nourishing
things to eat, the universe is indifferent to our happiness and misery, and the
number of things that are detrimental to our nature is endless. Our finitude
makes us vulnerable to overwhelmingly powerful causal factors, and it is im-
possible for us to overcome our vulnerability and make ourselves impervious
to external things. Nor is it possible to eliminate every source of human suf-
fering. But despite our limitations and despite the factors that cause suffering,
we can achieve blessedness, the greatest happiness. To achieve blessedness,
it is necessary to intelligently care for ourselves and others no matter what
challenges and hardships we encounter. Intelligently caring for ourselves
and others involves, above all, education. Education is the greatest source
of empowerment and thus the greatest source of joy. The best way of life, in
Spinoza’s view, is a life of learning.
 1
Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory
of Emotions

Introduction

My thesis in this chapter is that Spinoza believes that an emotion—​an episode

of joy, for instance—​represents a change in the power of the subject’s body in
the way that a symptom represents that of which it is symptomatic.1 On the
reading I defend, some emotions symptomatically represent increases in the
power of the subject’s body. Others symptomatically represent decreases in
power. Regardless of whether it is symptomatic of an increase or a decrease,
an episode of an emotion qua mental item is symptomatic of the state of the
power of acting of the subject’s body, and an emotion serves as a symptom,
I argue, in virtue of its qualitative character. It represents a change in power
by virtue of the way it feels to experience an emotion. While an episode of
the qualitative character of joy signals an increase in the body’s power, an
episode of the qualitative character of sadness signals a decrease in its power.

1. Emotions as Symptomatic Representations

According to Spinoza, an emotion is a change in a finite thing’s power (3D3,

3p11s). Here and throughout this book I use the term “emotion” in place of

1 There is, comparatively speaking, considerable agreement among scholars that emotions track

increases in power and decreases in power, although among those who accept this view, not much
discussion is devoted to the way that emotions track changes in power. For instance, see C. D. Broad,
Five Types of Ethics Theory (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930), pp. 51‒52; William K. Frankena, “Spinoza
on the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Philosophia 7, no. 1 (March 1977): 23; Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s
Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 200‒208; Michael LeBuffe, From
Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 140‒142;
Matthew J. Kisner, “Spinoza’s Virtuous Passions,” Review of Metaphysics 61, no. 4 (June 2008): 778;
and Kisner’s Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason, Autonomy and the Good life (Cambridge University
Press, 2011), pp. 192‒195; Valtteri Viljanen, Spinoza’s Geometry of Power (Cambridge University
Press, 2011), p. 137.

The Ethics of Joy. Andrew Youpa, Oxford University Press (2020) © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190086022.001.0001
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 11

Spinoza’s term affect (affectus), which he uses broadly to refer to emotions,

desires, and what we call a mood (e.g., cheerfulness, melancholy). I use the
word “emotion” in an equally broad sense. Spinoza believes that all such
states are changes in an individual’s power. They are either increases in power
or decreases in power. An increase is either an increase in a part of an indi-
vidual or it is an increase in the individual’s power as a whole. Likewise, a de-
crease is either a decrease in a part or it is a decrease in an individual’s power
as a whole.
The power that an emotion is a change in is the power to causally produce
effects such that the effects can be understood through the individual’s power
alone. An emotion, in other words, is a change in a thing’s power of acting,
which I will refer to as its adequate causal power.2 God causally produces in-
finitely many effects that can be understood through God’s power alone be-
cause God’s adequate causal power is infinite (1p16, 1p16d). A finite thing
causally produces a finite number of effects that can be understood through
its power because it is a finite expression of adequate causal power (1p36,
1p36d, 3p6, 3p6d).3 A finite thing is a limited system of adequate causal
power. Not every effect to which a finite thing causally contributes can be
understood through its power alone. As a result, a finite thing is not the ad-
equate cause of every effect to which it causally contributes (3D1). In such
instances a finite thing is an inadequate, or partial, cause (3D1).
When an emotion cannot be understood through an individual’s adequate
causal power alone, it is a passive emotion—​that is, a passion (3D1, 3D3).
In contrast, an emotion that can be understood through a finite individual’s
adequate causal power alone is an active emotion (3D1, 3D3). Whether an
emotion is passive or active hinges on whether the causal history of the oc-
currence of an emotion includes something other than a finite thing’s ad-
equate causal power. If the causal history of a particular occurrence of an
emotion includes a factor other than the subject’s adequate causal power, it is
a passion. If not, it is an active emotion.4

2 Each and every finite thing is, at its core, a system of adequate causal power (3p7). Such power

is said to be a finite thing’s “actual essence” (actualem essentiam) (3p7). It is also referred as a thing’s
“given essence” (datâ essentiâ) (3p7d). On the reading I favor, what Spinoza means in part by “ac-
tual essence” and “given essence” is a property that a thing possesses in virtue of expressing God’s
essence. A finite thing’s actual/​given essence is identical to a finite configuration of God’s essence.
Because power is God’s essence (1p34), a finite thing’s actual/​given essence is a finite configuration of
God’s power.
3 I argue for this view in Andrew Youpa, “Spinoza on the Very Nature of Existence,” Midwest

Studies in Philosophy 35 (2011): 310‒334. For further discussion see ­chapter 8, this volume.
4 As I understand Spinoza’s view, passivity and activity are relative to an individual’s mind and

body in the sense that the mind and the body are sources of causal power. What makes a finite mind
12 The Ethics of Joy

The “General Definition of the Affects” gives the following definition of

a passion: “[1]‌An Affect that is called a Passion of the mind is a confused
idea, [2] by which the Mind affirms [affirmat] of its Body, or of some part of
it, a greater or lesser force of existing than before, which, [3] when it is given,
determines the Mind to think of this rather than that.” According to the first
clause of this definition, a passion is a confused idea. The fact that passions
are said to be ideas supports the view that passions are representational in
some sense, and this holds for active emotions too, even though the “General
Definition” is about passions. As manifested in the mind all emotions are
ideas and are, as a result, representational states.
For Spinoza, an emotion is representational in the sense that, according
to the “General Definition,” it is a confused idea “[2]‌by which the Mind
affirms of its Body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing
than before” (GDA, emphasis added). What does this mean? Specifically,
what does it mean to say that an emotion is an idea that “affirms” something
of the body? Some light is cast on the way that an emotion affirms some-
thing of the body in the “Explication” of the “General Definition” where
Spinoza writes,

For all the ideas we have of bodies indicate [indicant] the actual constitution
of our own body (by IIP16C2) more than the nature of the external body. But
this [idea], which constitutes the form of the affect, must indicate [indicare]
or express [exprimere] a constitution of the body (or some part of it), which
the body (or some part of it) has because its power of acting, or force of ex-
isting, is increased or diminished, aided or restrained. (GDA exp)

Here the words “indicate” (indicare) and “express” (exprimere) are used to
clarify the way an episode of joy or sadness affirms the body’s power.5 An

passive is not that its ideas result from causes external to the mind where the mind is regarded as a
storehouse of ideas, some of whose ideas are adequate and some inadequate. Rather, it is passive in
virtue of the fact that its ideas result from causes external to the mind where the mind is a system of
adequate causal power. Similarly, what makes a finite body passive is not that its states and constitu-
tion result from causes that are spatially external to it. It is passive in virtue of the fact that its states
and constitution result from causes that are external to it as a system of adequate causal power.

5 Absent from this explication is 2p49: “In the Mind there is no volition, or affirmation and negation,

except that which the idea involves insofar as it is an idea” (emphasis in original). Rather than invoking
2p49, Spinoza invokes 2p16c2: “It follows, second, that the ideas which we have of external bodies indi-
cate the condition of our own body more than the nature of the external bodies.” It is important to note
that the demonstration of 2p49 does not rely on 2p16c2. I discuss and respond to the potential difficulty
that 2p49 presents for the emotion as symptomatic representation reading in the present chapter.
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 13

emotion affirms an increase in the body’s power or an increase in some

part of the body by indicating and expressing such an increase. But, now,
what does it mean for an emotion to indicate and express an increase or de-
crease in power? This is best understood on the model of a symptom and
the way that a symptom indicates and expresses a condition.6 An emotion
indicates and expresses an increase in the body’s power similar to the way
that a symptom indicates and expresses a condition of the individual who
exhibits the symptom. A particular episode of joy, for example, indicates
and expresses an increase in the body’s power in that it is symptomatic of
an increase in the individual’s power. That is to say, an episode of the quali-
tative feeling of joy is symptomatic of an increase in the power of the joyous
subject’s body like an episode of the qualitative feeling of an abnormally high
body temperature is, in some cases, symptomatic of an infection. Unlike the
qualitative feeling of an abnormally high body temperature, an episode of
joy, in Spinoza’s view, infallibly signals an increase in part of the body’s power
or in the body’s power as a whole.

6 C. D. Broad writes,
There remains one other point of general ethical interest to be mentioned before we leave
Spinoza and pass to Butler. This is the position of pleasure and pain in Spinoza’s ethical
system. He is not a Hedonist, in the strict sense. States of mind and actions are not good
because they are pleasant or conducive to pleasure, nor are they bad because they are
painful or conducive to pain. But pleasure and pain, though they are thus not the ratio
essendi of good and evil, are the ratio cognoscendi thereof. Pleasure is the infallible sign
of heightened vitality, pain is the infallible sign of lowered vitality, and these are the only
ultimate good and evil. (Broad, Five Types of Ethical Theory, pp. 51‒52)
“Pleasure” and “pain” are Broad’s terms for what I, following Curley’s translation, refer to as joy and
sadness, and “vitality” is Broad’s term for the conatus. The reading I am defending is a version of
Broad’s view that joy (pleasure) is a sign of increased vitality and that sadness (pain) is a sign of
decreased vitality. In this chapter I show that episodes of joy (pleasure) and episodes of sadness (pain)
are, in Spinoza’s view, signs in the way that a symptom is a sign.
The reading I defend can be contrasted with the interpretation maintained by commentators
who hold that emotions are propositionally structured ideas. According to this reading, emotions
are propositionally structured judgments about states of the body. There is an extreme version of
this propositionalist reading and a moderate version. According to the extreme propositionalist
reading, emotions are nothing but propositionally structured judgments; they have no phenome-
nologically qualitative features. According to the moderate reading, emotions are propositionally
structured judgments, but it is not the case that they are nothing but propositionally structured
judgments. For a defense of the extreme view, see Gideon Segal’s “Beyond Subjectivity: Spinoza’s
Cognitivism of the Emotions,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2000): 1‒19. See
also Michael Della Rocca’s “The Power of an Idea: Spinoza’s Critique of Pure Will,” Noûs 37, no. 2
(June 2003): 200‒231; Della Rocca, “Rationalism Run Amok,” in Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays,
ed. Charlie Huenemann (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 26‒52; and Della Rocca, Spinoza
(Routledge, 2008), ch. 4. For defenses of the moderate propositionalist reading, see Eugene Marshall’s
“Spinoza’s Cognitive Affects and Their Feel,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16, no. 1
(2008): 1‒23; Justin Steinberg, “Affect, Desire, and Judgement in Spinoza’s Account of Motivation,”
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24, no. 1 (2016): 67‒87; Lilli Alanen, “The Metaphysics
of Affects or the Unbearable Reality of Confusion,” in The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, ed. Michael
Della Rocca (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 314‒342.
14 The Ethics of Joy

Spinoza’s discussion of shame and pity strongly supports this reading: “The
things which must be noted about Shame are easily inferred from what we said
about Compassion and Repentance. I add only this, that like Pity, Shame, though
not a virtue, is still good insofar as it indicates [indicat], in the man who blushes
with Shame, a desire to live honorably. In the same way pain [dolor] is said to
be good insofar as it indicates [indicat] that the injured part is not yet decayed”
(4p58s, emphasis added). This makes clear that these emotions—​shame and
pity—​indicate a condition similar to the way that a symptom indicates a con-
dition. Just as pain indicates that the damaged part of the body is not yet com-
pletely decayed (putrefactam), an episode of shame indicates that an individual
still has a desire, however feeble, to live honorably.
Further support for this reading is found in the scholium to 4p57 where he
says, “For as I said in the Preface of Part III, I consider men’s affects and properties
just like other natural things. And of course human affects, if they do not indicate
[indicant] man’s power, at least indicate [indicant] the power and skill of nature,
no less than many other things we wonder at and take pleasure in contemplating”
(4p57s). It is evident that Spinoza is talking about passive emotions and active
emotions alike: active emotions are included in the reference to affects that “indi-
cate man’s power” while passive emotions are those that “indicate the power and
skill of nature.” Emotions disclose the status of the power of the subject’s body.
Regarding hope and fear Spinoza writes, “We may add to this that these
affects show [indicant] a defect of knowledge and a lack of power in the Mind.
For this reason also Confidence and Despair, Gladness and Remorse are signs
[signa] of a mind lacking in power” (4p47s, emphasis added). The word “sign”
(signa) is used in this passage to make the very same point as he makes using
“indicate” (indicant), and so it stands to reason that the terms have the same
meaning in this context. An episode of any particular one of these emotions
indicates a condition of the body, that is, it signals the status of the power of
the subject’s body. Just as episodes of hope and fear indicate a lack of power,
confidence, despair, gladness, and remorse indicate a lack of power also.
Emotions are not cognitively empty. They carry information. They
carry information about the status of the power of the subject’s body.
An episode of joy, for example, carries information about the status of
the subject’s power: it signals that the subject’s power is increasing.7 An

7 As William K. Frankena puts it, “It [a joy or pleasure] is or involves a cognition, however con-

fused, of a certain fact, and is not simply a blind feeling, as emotivists and hedonists usually conceive
it to be.” See Frankena, “Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” p. 24.
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 15

episode of sadness carries information: it signals that the subject’s power

is decreasing. As we have seen, Spinoza uses variants of the terms “affirm,”
“indicate,” “express,” and “signal.” These do not refer to four distinct and in-
dependent aspects of an emotion. Nor are they four oblique ways of talking
about judgment. Rather, they are four essentially equivalent descriptions
of the way an emotion carries information. An emotion affirms (indicates,
expresses, signals) changes in the body’s power similar to the way that a
symptom carries information about the condition of the subject who
exhibits the symptom.
It is important to see that the reading I am defending is about the repre-
sentational character of emotions. My characterization of an emotion as a
symptomatic representation of an increase or decrease in the body’s power is
intended as a way of understanding the claim in the “General Definition of
the Affects” that an emotion “affirms of it Body, or of some part of it, a greater
or lesser force of existing than before” and the claim in the “Explication” that
an emotion must “indicate or express a constitution of the Body.” No doubt
an emotion in the mind is a change in the mind’s power (3D3, 3p11s, DA II,
DA III, DA III exp). Yet there is also a way an emotion represents greater or
lesser power in the body. For the purpose of investigating Spinoza’s moral
philosophy, in this chapter and the next I am foremost concerned with the
way emotions are representational and with their specific type of represen-
tational content, not with the metaphysical structure of emotions. It is their
representational character that illuminates the structure of Spinoza’s moral
philosophy.
Emotions are changes in the mind’s power and they represent the status
of the body’s power, but it is not simply as increases and decreases in power
that emotions represent the body’s power. Increases and decreases in
power have distinctive phenomenological qualities, and it is an emotion’s
phenomenologically qualitative character—​what it is like to experience
an emotion—​that indicates the status of the body’s power. The distinctive
way it feels to experience joy is an aspect of an increase in power. When
someone’s body undergoes an increase in power and thereby experiences
the buoyant feeling that is joy, this buoyant feeling indicates that the power
of the subject’s body is increasing. It is an indicator that is accessible to
the subject. The same holds for sadness. The way a decrease in power
first-​personally feels is an aspect of a decrease in power. When someone
undergoes a decrease in power and thereby experiences the oppressive
feeling of sadness, the oppressive feeling indicates that the power of the
16 The Ethics of Joy

subject’s body is decreasing.8 Increases and decreases in the power of the

subject’s body are revealed to a subject through the phenomenologically
qualitative character of his emotions.
A human mind, according to Spinoza, is the idea of the human body
(2p13). A human body is a system of interacting bodies of various sizes,
shapes, motions, and various degrees of hardness and softness (2p13cs post
1, post 2). The composite system of bodies that constitutes an individual’s
body is mirrored in the composite system of ideas that constitutes the mind
(2p15). The ideas that compose the mind are ideas of the individual’s body,
of its parts, and of changes in the power of the parts and changes in the
power of the individual’s body as a whole (2p14, 2p15d). Ideas that constitute
emotions “indicate or express a constitution [constitutionem] of the Body (or
of some part of it)” (GDA exp). The constitution of a human body varies due
to varying increases and decreases in the power of the parts of the body and
in the body’s power as a whole. As the idea of the body, the mind has ideas of
the varying increases and decreases in the power of the parts of a body and in
the body’s power as a whole. At the same time, the mind’s ideas of increases
and decreases in the body’s power are themselves increases and decreases in
the mind’s power. An emotion as a mental item is an idea of a change in the
power of a part of the subject’s body or in the body’s power as a whole, and
it is a change in the mind’s power, a change that is the mind’s counterpart to
the body’s change in power. An emotion’s phenomenal feel is the idea of the
change in the body’s power. In the case of emotions for which a subject is
an inadequate cause, an emotion’s distinctive phenomenal feel is a confused
idea of an increase or decrease in the body’s power. It is an idea whose causal
history includes a factor or set of factors other than the individual’s adequate
causal power.
In the “Definitions of the Affects” joy is said to be an individual’s “passage
from a lesser to a greater perfection” and that sadness is a “passage from a
greater to a lesser perfection” (DA II and III), and this might be interpreted

8 In “The Metaphysics of Affects or the Unbearable Reality of Confusion,” Lilli Alanen opposes a

reading of Spinoza according to which emotions are nothing but propositionally structured ideas and
have no qualitative features. Alanen argues that, as transitions from one grade of power of acting to
another, emotions “must be something more than mere representations” (p. 323). The reading I de-
fend in this chapter is in agreement with Alanen’s view that emotions are something more than mere
representations when “representation” is understood as propositional representation. I believe that
my view differs from Alanen’s concerning what the something more is that constitutes an emotion.
Whereas I maintain that the qualitative character of an emotion is the something more, Alanen holds
that the transition between grades of power is that something more. See Alanen, “The Metaphysics of
Affects or the Unbearable Reality of Confusion.”
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 17

as suggesting that the qualitative character of emotions is eliminated from

the mind. It might be understood as supporting that joy and sadness are
nothing but propositional representations.9 However, when Spinoza says
that joy and sadness are passages to greater and lesser states of perfection, his
point is not that emotions are nothing but passages between propositionally
structured ideas and have no qualitative character. On the contrary, every
change in an individual’s power has a qualitative character. There is a way
that it feels to experience an emotion. This is strongly supported by 4p14 and
its demonstration:

P14: No affect can be restrained by the true knowledge [cognitio] of good and
evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect.
Dem.: An affect is an idea by which the Mind affirms of its Body a greater
or lesser force of existing than before (by the general Definition of the
Affects). So (by P1), it has nothing positive which could be removed by the
presence of the true. Consequently the true knowledge of good and evil, in-
sofar as it is true, cannot restrain any affect.
But insofar as it is an affect (see P8), it can restrain the affect, if it is
stronger than it (by P7), q.e.d. (emphasis in original)

In the proposition itself (i.e., 4p14) an emotion considered as an emotion

is contrasted with true knowledge (cognitio) of good and evil, and an emo-
tion considered as an emotion is an “idea by which the Mind affirms of its
Body a greater or less force of existing than before” and, as a consequence,
“it has nothing positive which could be removed by the presence of the true.”
From this it is evident that an emotion qua affirmation of the body’s greater
or lesser power cannot be restrained or removed by knowledge considered as

9 Michael Della Rocca argues for a reading of Spinoza according to which emotions are proposi-

tional representations and nothing but propositional representations. On this reading, an emotion
can be true or false, justified or unjustified, and, as Della Rocca puts it, “there is nothing in affects that
cannot be evaluated for truth or falsity, nothing that is not subject to justification or lack of justifica-
tion” (Della Rocca, “Rationalism Run Amok,” p. 31). Emotions, according to Della Rocca’s reading,
are propositional representations and have no qualitative features. They do not have any qualitative
features because they do not have any non-​representational features.
I agree that emotions have no non-​representational features, but I disagree with the view that an
emotion’s qualitative character is non-​representational. For Spinoza, emotions are representations in
virtue of their qualitative features. In countenancing the qualitative character of emotions Spinoza
does not violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason, as Della Rocca argues would be the case if the
mind contained non-​representational features. In virtue of what is an emotion’s qualitative character
a feature of the mind? It is in virtue of being representational or, as I think best captures Spinoza’s
view, it is in virtue of being informative. Also see Della Rocca’s “The Power of an Idea.”
18 The Ethics of Joy

knowledge. Knowledge as such does not have the qualitative character of an

affirmation of a change in the body’s power. Unlike an episode of joy, know-
ledge as knowledge has no qualitative character. Knowledge can restrain an
emotion only if it has strength, and it has strength only when it is considered
as an emotion. This strongly supports that, for Spinoza, emotional strength
belongs to the qualitative character of an emotion, not to the logical or epis-
temological character of a belief or judgment.
An increase in the body’s power is signaled in the mind by the specific
qualitative character of an emotion, and its qualitative character differs from
the qualitative character that signals a decrease in power. Love, for example,
is an increase in the body’s power, and the qualitative feeling of love symp-
tomatically represents an increase in the body’s power. Hate is a decrease in
power, and its qualitative character signals a decrease in the body’s power.
The qualitative character of different types of emotion varies, and the dis-
tinctive qualitative character of a type of emotion is that which signals an
increase or decrease in the body’s power.
On the basis of the confused idea clause of the “General Definition,” there
is reason to think that emotions are representational, but it does not follow
that an emotion is nothing but a propositional representation. In addition to
the “Explication” of the “General Definition of the Affects,” there is evidence
against an extreme propositionalist reading following the discussion of the
sensory idea of the sun in the scholium to 4p1:10

And so it is with the other imaginations by which the Mind is deceived,

whether they indicate [indicant] the natural constitution of the Body, or
that its power of acting is increased or diminished: they are not contrary to
the true, and do not disappear on its presence.
It happens, of course, when we wrongly fear some evil, that the fear
disappears on our hearing news of the truth. But on the other hand, it also
happens, when we fear an evil that is certain to come, that the fear vanishes
on our hearing false news. So imaginations do not disappear through the
presence of the true insofar as it is true, but because there occur others,
stronger than them, which exclude the present existence of the things we
imagine, as we showed in IIP17. (4p1s)

10 For a defense of the extreme propositionalist view, see Segal’s “Beyond Subjectivity.” See also

Della Rocca’s “The Power of an Idea,” “Rationalism Run Amok,” and his Spinoza, ch. 4.
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 19

The view that sensory ideas and emotions are “not contrary to the true, and
do not disappear on its presence” strongly supports that sensory ideas and
emotions are not simply propositional representations. This is because sen-
sory ideas and emotions do not conflict with ideas that are true insofar as
they are true. According to Spinoza, this is the reason that our sensory idea
of the sun does not change or disappear after we learn the truth about the
sun’s distance from us. If our sensory idea of the sun were nothing more than
a propositional representation, it presumably would, or at least could, disap-
pear after we learn the truth about the sun’s distance from us. But it does not
disappear and cannot disappear because the sensory idea indicates the con-
stitution of the body in the way that a symptom represents that of which it is
symptomatic.11
Like our sensory idea of the sun, an episode of fear is not contrary to
the true and does not disappear in its presence. This is because fear—​that
is, an episode of the qualitative feeling of fear—​indicates a decrease in the
body’s power of activity, and as an indication of a state of our power it is as
impossible for fear to be contrary to the true as it is, say, for a body temper-
ature of 104˚F (40˚C) to be contrary to the true. The qualitative feel of an
abnormally high body temperature is not a propositional representation of
a state of affairs. It therefore cannot be contrary to the true and it does not
disappear in its presence. But this does not mean that the qualitative mental
correlates of body temperatures and emotions are “mute pictures on a panel”
(2p49cd, II/​132 10; cf. 2p43s). They are not mute because they are not non-​
representational states. Like all ideas, emotions are representations. An epi-
sode of joy represents an increase in the body’s power. An episode of sadness
represents a decrease in power. Nevertheless, emotions, like sensory ideas, in
and of themselves “involve no error” (2p49cd, II/​134 30) and are “not con-
trary to the true.” How can something be representational, involve no error,
and not be contrary to the true? Something can be such when it represents
in the way that the qualitative feel of an abnormally high body temperature
represents an infection and in the way that pain represents that the damaged
part of the body is not completely decayed.

11 Although sensory ideas and emotions cannot be contrary to the true, as indications of the con-

stitution of the body they can mislead us into forming propositional representations that are contrary
to the true. For example, someone who, ignorant of the sciences of optics and astronomy, uncritically
accepts his sensory idea of the sun will, as a result, believe that the sun’s distance from him is approx-
imately two hundred feet (2p35s, 4p1s). This is a case where the sensory idea causally contributes to
the formation of a propositional representation, a representation that turns out to be false.
20 The Ethics of Joy

So far I have been defending a reading of Spinoza’s claim that an emotion

“affirms [affirmat] of its Body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force
of existing than before” (GDA). According to this reading, what Spinoza
means by “affirms” in this context is that the qualitative character of an emo-
tion symptomatically represents a change in the body’s power. Symptomatic
representation is not a propositionally structured representation. When
someone deepens his knowledge and understanding of God, for example,
there is a joy that accompanies this acquisition of knowledge that is not
merely a propositional representation of an increase in power. However, this
is not to say that an episode of an emotion’s qualitative character does not
have a propositional representation as a necessary consequence. A prop-
ositional representation necessarily follows from an emotion’s qualitative
character.12 By “propositional representation” I mean a belief or judgment,
and when talking about a propositional representation following from an
emotion’s qualitative character I mean an evaluative belief or evaluative judg-
ment, such as, for example, the judgment, “The warmth of this fire in the
fireplace is good.” Spinoza’s view is that a change in the power of a subject’s
body and the idea in the mind that is the way this change qualitatively feels is
accompanied by an evaluative judgment. He writes,

P8: The knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of joy or sadness,
insofar as we are conscious of it.
Dem.: We call good, or evil, what is useful to, or harmful to, preserving
our being (by D1 and D2), that is (by IIIP7), what increases or diminishes,
aids or restrains, our power of acting. Therefore (by the definitions of joy
and sadness in IIIP11S), insofar as we perceive that a thing affects us with
joy or sadness, we call it good or evil. And so knowledge of good and evil
is nothing but an idea of joy or sadness which follows necessarily from the
affect of joy or sadness itself (by IIP22). (4p8, 4p8d, emphasis in original)

In isolation from the demonstration, this proposition might seem to say

that knowledge (cognitio) of good and evil is one and the same thing as an

12 As I stated earlier, I am bracketing issues concerning an emotion’s metaphysical structure. My

main concern in this chapter and the next is with an emotion’s representational character. I believe
that, for Spinoza, in the case of the emotions of adult humans a propositional representation follows
from an episode of an emotion’s qualitative character and can therefore be said to be a component of
an emotion, but I am not convinced that Spinoza holds that the same is true of the emotions of ani-
mals and infants. Nevertheless, a defense of a reading of Spinoza’s metaphysics of emotions is tangen-
tial to my main purpose.
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 21

emotion of joy or sadness, but this reading does not stand up under close in-
spection; for a premise of the demonstration states that “knowledge of good
and evil is nothing but an idea of joy or sadness which follows necessarily from
the affect of joy or sadness itself (by IIP22)” (4p8d, emphasis added). If such
knowledge were strictly identical to an emotion, it would make no sense to
claim, as Spinoza does, that knowledge of good and evil follows necessarily
from joy or sadness. Thus he is best understood as maintaining that know-
ledge of good and evil is a necessary consequence of an emotion’s qualitative
character and that it therefore necessarily accompanies an emotion. An in-
crease in the body’s power is symptomatically represented in the mind by the
qualitative character of joy, and an episode of the qualitative character of joy
necessarily gives rise to knowledge of goodness in the sense that someone
who experiences joy judges that the apparent source of his joy is good. For
example, someone whose body’s power of acting increases as a result of
eating an orange will have in his mind a feeling of joy (i.e., the symptomatic
representation of this particular increase in his body’s power), and the judg-
ment “This orange is good” follows necessarily from the feeling of joy. An
instance of an evaluative judgment of this type illustrates at least in part what
Spinoza has in mind when he refers to the knowledge (cognitio) that follows
from an emotion.
Furthermore, when he says that “knowledge of good and evil is nothing
but an idea of joy or sadness which follows necessarily from the affect of Joy
or Sadness itself ” (4p8d), his point, I believe, is that an occurrent evaluative
judgment follows necessarily from an occurrent episode of joy. An individual
X occurrently judges “This orange is good” as a result of an occurrent episode
of the qualitative joy that the orange causes when it increases X’s power. But
it is not the case that an occurrent emotion is the immediate cause of every
evaluative judgment that an individual might make. For example, supersti-
tious people believe that “the good is what brings Sadness, and the evil, what
brings Joy” (4App XXXI). It would be a mistake to conclude from this that
superstitious people are an exception to the view that a judgment about what
is good follows from an episode of joy and that a judgment about what is
bad follows from an episode of sadness. Under normal circumstances, the
superstitious, like everyone else, obtain joy from eating an orange. An orange
causes an increase in power and thereby joy even in an individual who is su-
perstitious and believes that goodness is what brings sadness. In such a case
the superstitious person has two conflicting evaluative judgments: one that
results from the joy that the orange causes (i.e., “This orange is good”) and a
22 The Ethics of Joy

second that results from his superstitious beliefs about goodness and badness
(i.e., “This orange is evil”). A case of this type falls under what Spinoza calls
“vacillation of mind” (3p17s), although in the case at hand the second eval-
uative judgment, the one that results from superstition, does not necessarily
directly follow from an emotion that is a decrease in the individual’s power.
Superstitious evaluative judgments are not grounded in an individual’s na-
ture as a system of adequate causal power and, as a consequence, do not nec-
essarily result from increases and decreases in an individual’s power.
Superstitious evaluative judgments are not the only evaluative judgments
that are not a direct consequence of emotions. Consider an evaluative judg-
ment about hatred. Suppose Peter believes that hatred is bad, and sup-
pose that in a conversation Peter says to Paul, “Hatred is bad.” When Peter
expresses this evaluative judgment it is not necessarily the case that the
judgment results from an occurrent decrease in Peter’s power. When Peter
expresses the judgment about hatred it is not necessarily the case that he is
undergoing any decrease in power at all. There is no reason to think that
Spinoza is committed to the view that a true belief, such as “Hatred is bad”
(true, that is, in Spinoza’s view; cf. 4p45, 4p45c1, 4p46d), is invariably a nec-
essary consequence of an occurrent emotion. No doubt Spinoza holds that
hatred is a decrease in power. And no doubt the fact that hatred is a decrease
in power is the basis for the truth of the judgment that hatred is bad. What
makes the evaluative judgment about hatred true, in other words, is that an
episode of hatred is a decrease in power.13 But from this it does not follow
that an individual’s judgment that hatred is bad is, in every case, a direct con-
sequence of an occurrent decrease in power. For Spinoza, it is not necessary
presently to undergo an episode of joy or sadness to make an evaluative judg-
ment, although all evaluative judgments and thus all knowledge of good and
evil presuppose prior changes in power (4p68, 4p68d).

13 What makes an evaluative judgment true is that it accurately corresponds to increases or

decreases in power that we have undergone, are undergoing, or will undergo. If, contrary to the
usual state of affairs, oranges were poisonous to humans and caused severe decreases in our power,
someone who ate an orange would judge that the orange is bad, and in fact it would be bad. It would
be bad because it caused a decrease in the orange eater’s power, not simply because the orange eater
judged it so. Likewise, if contrary to Spinozistic fact hatred were an increase in our power, someone
who experienced hatred would judge that it is good and, indeed, hatred would be good, not because
the hater judged it so, but because it is (in this fictional universe) an increase in the hater’s power.
In dealing with the representational character of emotions I cannot avoid touching on issues that
I cannot adequately clarify and defend in the present chapter. I discuss Spinoza’s moral realism in
­chapter 3, this volume, and I discuss the goodness and badness of emotions in ­chapter 5, this volume.
 Spinoza’s Symptomatic Theory of Emotions 23

It is therefore useful to make a distinction, one that Spinoza does not make
explicit, between evaluative judgments that directly result from episodes of
joy and sadness, on the one hand, and evaluative judgments that do not nec-
essarily directly result from episodes of joy and sadness, on the other. The
former I will refer to as “basic evaluative judgments.” The latter I call “non-​
basic evaluative judgments.” Every episode of joy and its variants and every
episode of sadness and its variants is accompanied by an evaluative judg-
ment. Such judgments are basic in the sense that they are direct and imme-
diate consequences of episodes of the qualitative character of emotions. In
contrast, a non-​basic evaluative judgment is not the direct and immediate
effect of an increase or decrease in power. As I have discussed, in some cases
superstitious evaluative judgments fall into this category, such as when the
superstitious judgment is rooted in metaphysical fictions and is not directly
grounded in a change in human power. Also, evaluative judgments that are
universal in scope are not necessarily basic, such as the judgment “Hatred
is bad.” While unconfused evaluative judgments are based on changes in
human power that we experience as emotions, it is not the case that every
unconfused evaluative judgment must be the direct and immediate result of
such a change. For instance, an unconfused evaluative judgment can follow
from the premises of a demonstration.
On this reading the qualitative characters of emotions are in effect
barometers for changes in the body’s power: joy and species of joy sympto-
matically represent increases in the body’s power while sadness and species of
sadness symptomatically represent decreases in power.14 Moreover, judgments
of good and evil (i.e., basic evaluative judgments) necessarily follow from and
accompany episodes of the qualitative character of emotions. “Love,” Spinoza
says, “is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause”
(3p13cs, emphasis in original). Love is an episode of the qualitative character
of joy that is accompanied by the idea of someone who, or something that, is
regarded as the cause of love. Similarly, the emotion that Spinoza calls “self-​
esteem” (acquiescentia in se ipso) is a “species of Love” and a state of joy that
is “accompanied by the idea of an internal cause” (3p30s; cf. DA XXV). Self-​
esteem is a type of joy and it has oneself as its object. Love and self-​esteem, as

14 In his “Spinoza’s Virtuous Passions,” Kisner writes, “Since the passions serve as a barometer of

our power, they would help us to increase our power by indicating whether an activity increases our
power” (p. 778). I agree with Kisner and would add that active emotions are also barometers of the
subject’s power. In c­ hapter 2, I argue that passive emotions and active emotions not only carry infor-
mation, they carry axiological information. The information they carry is about enhancements and
impairments to a subject’s power.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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for the construction of good pavements of the several standard kinds,
and it is assumed that the engineer will be able to, and will enforce them.
It is, however, not infrequently the case that the engineer will be called
upon to prepare specifications for new, or patented, or proprietary
pavements advocated by their promoters, the value or usefulness of
which have not been sufficiently established by experience, and for
which the data for detailed, definite specifications are not yet available.
In such cases the wisest course to follow is to confine the precise
specifications to the general or standard parts of the work, while
stipulating only the results to be attained with regard to those features of
the work that are proprietary or questionable, thus placing upon the
promoter or his contractors full responsibility for such results as are
promised or guaranteed. This applies to new or comparatively untried
materials or processes, whether patented or not.
A proposed form of general specifications to cover such cases is
offered herein.
It is usually unwise to adopt or to incorporate in the municipal
specifications those prepared or offered by the promoter or patentee,
which are often brief, incomplete, and indefinite, and are sometimes
carefully, and even cunningly, drawn to evade final responsibility.
No attempt has been made to submit specifications for proprietary or
patented pavements, or those composed wholly or in part of materials
which are patented or protected by trade-marks. The owners or
contractors engaged in constructing these pavements, often, if not
usually, claim the right to dictate the material parts of the specifications
under which such work shall be done, and the municipal engineer who is
called upon to construct such pavements, must, in each case, determine
whether the specifications offered are adequate and satisfactory, and the
extent to which he feels justified in accepting responsibility for the
results. Naturally, the contractor or promoter, even if competent to
prepare specifications, cannot be expected to bind himself within closer
limits than he thinks necessary to secure the work. In many such cases
the form of general specifications for “untried or experimental
pavements” given herein might appropriately be used.
The engineer is, in common with all men, fallible, and he can hardly
hope, in the preparation of specifications, to make them perfect; to cover
every item and particular; or to escape some ambiguities of expression,
and some degree of indefiniteness. The writer can only claim that he has
aimed, in the light of a considerable experience, to set out as fully and
definitely as practicable the requirements for the proper construction of
high-class street pavements, and has endeavored to avoid loose or
obscure terms and expressions. The ideal specification is one that
furnishes a wholly sufficient guide to the accomplishment of the desired
purpose; that provides for every possible contingency which may arise,
and is couched in language which not only means exactly what it was
intended to mean, but is incapable of any other interpretation. It is
needless to say that no example of such a perfect specification can be
instanced as a model.
It has been the aim to make these specifications fair and just to the
contractor; that is, to require of him no impracticable or indefinite
service, or the assumption by him of risks other than those fairly
involved in the business conduct of the work.
If the plans and specifications for any work which a contractor bids
upon are so full, specific, and clear, that he may know exactly what he
will be expected to do, and if they do not require him to assume unusual
chances and risks, he may intelligently name prices which he believes
will compensate him for the service. Having done so, his proposal having
been accepted, and a contract entered into accordingly, the engineer and
the municipality have a right both in law and equity to demand that he
will do exactly and fully what he has contracted to do. No excuses on his
part can be valid and none should be accepted. He may in all fairness
and justness be required to “toe the mark” strictly. To the neglect to
recognize and enforce these principles is chargeable the greater part of
the poor and unsatisfactory work so common in street pavement work in
our cities. Unexpected contingencies may, of course, arise where some
changes and concessions may be proper and just, but these should be,
and usually are, very rare. On the other hand, sweeping general clauses
in contracts and specifications intended to catch the contractor “goin’ or
comin’,” unnecessarily stringent stipulations which were never intended
to be strictly enforced, but were put into the specifications with the idea
that they would help hold the contractor up to a high standard, and
“one-sided” contracts intended to give the municipality an unfair
advantage over the contractor, are as inadvisable in policy as they are
wrong in principle. Nothing should be put in a specification that is not
clearly essential to secure the results aimed at, and, this having been
done, every requirement should be enforced. The existence in
specifications of requirements that are not intended to be enforced, gives
the contractor a pretext for neglecting others that may be important.
 In these specifications will be found a number of details that are often
not regarded as important and which, when found in paving
specifications, the contractor is frequently allowed to ignore. In the
writer’s opinion, based upon his experience in street paving, every one of
these requirements is essential to the production of high-class work,
which, it is hardly necessary to argue, is, in the end, the most economical
work from the standpoint of the municipality.
It may be argued that the adoption and enforcement of these
specifications would have the effect of raising prices. In many cases this
would doubtless prove true. Contractors are entitled to a fair and
reasonable compensation for their services. It is admitted that in some
cities the prevailing prices for some kinds of pavements are below the
actual cost of the work if it were done in a proper manner, conforming
strictly to the specifications. Illogical as it undoubtedly is, the low price
at which work is taken is sometimes considered a sufficient reason for
accepting work below standard. The consequence is that bidders not
only count upon concessions and lax enforcement of the specifications,
but bid lower and lower, expecting that further concessions will enable
them to get out with an undeserved profit. This is one of the most serious
evils in the paving business to-day, and the highest public interests
demand a thorough reform. Low first cost, desirable as it may be, is the
poorest economy if it be secured at the sacrifice of the quality of the
work. If one pavement costs twenty per cent. more than another, but
renders forty per cent. more service, it is obviously the cheaper of the
two.
Contractors are prone to contend that this or that provision in a
specification is unusual, unnecessary or unfair. In dealing with them the
engineer should bear in mind that no requirement of a specification that
is clearly and definitely stated, so that the bidder may understand exactly
what it means and what he will be expected to do, and may frame his
prices accordingly, can be unreasonable or unfair to the contractor.
Unusual or unnecessary requirements may result in unwarrantably
increasing the cost of the work, and this may raise a question between
the engineer and the municipality employing him, but it can furnish no
occasion for questions of fairness or unfairness between the contractor
and the engineer.
The relations that should exist between the contractee and the
contractor, and the attitude of the engineer toward the contractor have
been widely discussed and are quite well understood from both the
ethical and legal standpoint.
 It is well to bear in mind that when a contract is duly entered into,
both the parties thereto are equal before the law. Neither can impose
upon the other terms or conditions that are not clearly included in or to
be fairly inferred from the contract itself. The assumption that either
party has superior or extra rights not expressed or to be fairly inferred
from the written agreement, or in accordance with the established
rulings of the courts, is wholly without warrant. The smallest contractor
is, in this respect, upon an equal footing with the largest city government
for which he may undertake to do contract work. It is not infrequently
the case that the city assumes a superior and dictatorial attitude not in
harmony with these principles, and it is too common for the contractor
to seek to evade or to escape from clear contractural obligations. In
neither case is the action warranted by fairness, justice, or law.
It should be needless to say that the attitude of the engineer toward
the contractor should be one of unyielding and uncompromising
requirement that the contract and specifications shall be fully and
faithfully complied with, but at the same time one of absolute fairness
and even helpfulness to the contractor. The ideal relation, which should
be more commonly attainable than it appears to be, is that of helpful
cooperation to bring about the results the contract and specifications
were intended to secure.
In line with the principles here outlined some observations upon the
preparation of contracts and specifications are appropriate.
It is the general practice to include in and make a part of “The
Contract” (herein for convenience called The General Contract) all the
various documents that are supposed to relate directly to the transaction
as a whole. The separate parts of such a general contract may vary in
number or character, but the principal ones are the following:
1. The advertisement for proposals.
2. Instructions to bidders.
3. The proposal submitted.
4. The contract proper.
5. The specifications.
Each of these should be drawn to cover fully and clearly its
appropriate purpose or function but nothing more. It is not unusual to
find, even in the instructions to bidders, stipulations that properly
belong in the contract or specifications, and it is quite common to find in
the contract proper a lot of matter that properly belongs in the
specifications only. In such cases there is liable to be more or less
confusion as to the actual meaning or requirements of the general
contract as a whole, which may lead to serious misunderstandings and
complications between the parties thereto. The several documents
composing the general contract are likely to be prepared by different
persons, looking at the transaction from different points of view, and
often not wholly familiar with the scope, intent and language of the other
documents. There is therefore a possibility, at least, of indefinite, if not
of conflicting expressions which are open to different interpretations,
particularly in the light of special or unexpected conditions that may
arise during the progress of the work or the settlement therefor. It would
tend to eliminate or avoid the possibility of such complications if each of
the several documents confined itself strictly to its appropriate function
in the general contract.
Advertisements for proposals may be divided into two general classes.
The one is brief in form and substance, simply stating that proposals for
a certain named work will be received at a stated place and time, and
referring those interested to documents on file at a stated place for all
further information. This is the general form adopted by the United
States War Department for the many projects carried out by contract
under its direction. A sample advertisement taken from a current
technical journal is as follows;
TREASURY DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF the Supervising Architect,
Washington, D. C., October 10, 1912. Sealed Proposals will be received
at this office until 3 o’clock p. m. on the 1st day of November, 1912, and
then opened, for an electric passenger elevator in the United States
post office, Bellingham, Wash., in accordance with the drawing and
specification, copies of which may be had at this office at the discretion
of the Supervising Architect. OSCAR WENDEROTH, Supervising
Architect.
The other general class of advertisement, very commonly used by
municipal corporations, is much longer and more elaborate, giving a
condensed statement of the character of the work to be done, the
conditions under which proposals are invited and will be received, and a
schedule of the quantities of work involved, together with other
particulars. A typical example of such an advertisement, taken from the
same periodical, is here given:
PUMPING MACHINERY—ROSELAND PUMPING STATION

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS

 Chicago, Ill., October 2, 1912.

Sealed proposals will be received by the City of Chicago until 11 A.

M. Wednesday, October 30, 1912, at Room 406, City Hall, for
furnishing and erecting at Roseland Pumping Station one vertical
triple expansion crank and fly wheel pumping engine of a capacity of
twenty-five million (25,000,000) gallons per day against a normal
head of one hundred and forty feet (140′). This proposal also includes
the dismantling of a similar engine now at Lake View Pumping Station,
transporting and erecting it at Roseland Pumping Station, together
with the furnishing and erection of certain auxiliaries and
appurtenances, according to plans and specifications on file in the
office of the Department of Public Works of said city, Room 406, City
Hall.
Proposals must be made out upon blanks furnished at said office,
and be addressed to said Department, indorsed “Proposals for
Pumping Machinery, Roseland Pumping Station,” and be accompanied
with Five Thousand ($5,000) Dollars in money or a certified check for
the same amount on some responsible bank located and doing
business in the City of Chicago and made payable to the order of the
Commissioner of Public Works.
The Commissioner of Public Works reserves the right to reject any
or all bids. A deposit of One Hundred Dollars ($100) will be required
to insure safe return of the plans.
No proposal will be considered unless the party offering it shall
furnish evidence satisfactory to the Commissioner of Public Works of
his ability, and that he has the necessary facilities together with
sufficient pecuniary resources to fulfill the conditions of the Contract
and Specifications, provided such Contract should be awarded to him.
Companies or firms bidding will give the individual names as well as
the name of the firm with their address.

L. E. McGANN,
Commissioner of Public Works.

Such advertisements as this may be required by statutes or

ordinances, and in that case are, of course, proper and necessary. Even
where not so required they may be considered advantageous, because
they give prospective bidders more complete information as to the
character and magnitude of the work, and may enable them to decide at
once whether they care to pursue the matter further. But on the whole,
the shorter form of advertisement, if permissible, seems preferable,
because it refers the enquirer directly to the original and official sources
of information, the forms to be used, the contract, specifications and
estimated quantities of work, exactly as they will and must be presented
to all bidders, and as they will appear in the subsequent stages of the
transaction, and leaves, therefore, no room for possible confusion of
statements between the advertisement and the other documents.
Furthermore, the cost of the shorter form of advertisement is much less,
and this is often a matter of some importance.
Instructions to bidders should be confined strictly to such information
and directions as the bidder may need to properly and intelligently make
up and submit his proposal in accordance with the requirements relating
thereto. This should include primarily, a reference to the contract and
specifications for all general and detailed information about the work to
be done, but should carefully avoid any statements or language that
might be construed to add to, take from, limit or modify the contract or
specifications. Perhaps the briefest and best statement of what this
document should or should not contain is that it should be so framed
that, except as a matter of record, its office and usefulness should
absolutely end with the award and signing of the contract.
No one who is not a lawyer can presume to say just what the contract
proper should contain or cover, particularly as this may vary with the
requirements of statutes and ordinances in force in a given city. It would
seem logical and proper, however, to separate the special functions of
contracts and specifications in such a way that each should cover a
distinct field of its own, and be free from encroachment upon the proper
domain of the other. With such a conception of the proper domain of
each, one might safely say that the contract should undertake to set out
only the legal and contractural relations of the parties thereto, and
should refer to the plans and specifications for all detailed instructions
as to the actual performance of the work and the results to be secured.
In the preparation of specifications for any public work the main
points to be kept in mind are fulness, definiteness, and exact expression.
While brevity and conciseness are desirable qualities in any document,
they should not be secured at the expense of completeness and precision
of statement. Even the frequent repetition of words, phrases and
sentences throughout a document, where it is necessary to avoid the
possibility of misunderstanding or ambiguity, should be resorted to
freely. Exact description and definition are more important than literary
style, though they may often be successfully combined. Of course, it is
not possible or necessary to go into minute detail with regard to every
part of the work. Certain things may be safely assumed to be required by
established practice or trade usage. If, for instance, it is specified that
certain lumber shall be “dressed” this word has a well-understood
meaning in the trade and it is unnecessary to stipulate how the dressing
shall be done or its character or quality, though it may be necessary to
say whether it is to be dressed on one or more sides.
The proper preparation of specifications for any work involves a clear,
distinct and complete conception, determination and design of what is to
be done; of the conditions that are likely to be met with in carrying it
out; and of alternate plans that these conditions may necessitate. This
may not always be possible, for the engineer is not omniscient. But
careful study and maturity of design will enable him to avoid the great
majority of such indefinite expressions as “or in such other manner as
the engineer may direct,” “in accordance with the instructions of the
engineer,” etc. A great many of the items to which such expressions are
intended to and do apply in practice, could be definitely settled before
the specifications are prepared and thus all uncertainty on the part of
both engineer and contractor be avoided. To illustrate: specifications for
block pavement commonly stipulate that the blocks shall be set in rows
running at right angles to the axis of the street, except at street
intersections, where the engineer may direct them to be laid at a
different angle. There is usually no good reason why the engineer should
not determine beforehand at which, if any, street intersections the
general rule should be changed and so state in the specifications. These
may be and usually are unimportant matters which may not much affect
one way or the other the cost to the contractor. But they often prove
otherwise, and the contractor is entitled to know when he submits his
proposal just what he will be required to do. Of course it may develop
during the progress of the work that changes from the original plan will
become necessary, but these should be provided for in some such
definite and previously stipulated manner as outlined in Sect. 3 of the
following specifications.
The practice of inserting, either in the specifications or the contract, a
clause making the engineer judge and arbiter in any differences that may
arise between the city and the contractor, and providing that his decision
in all such cases shall be final, is as unwise as it is often illegal. Such
clauses are based on the assumption that the engineer is a competent as
well as a disinterested party in the transaction, an assumption that is
usually wholly wrong, though to their honor it may be said that the
confidence thus reposed in engineers is seldom abused. But the fact is
that the engineer is never actually a disinterested party. He is employed
and paid by the city to look after its interests, and is under no obligations
to the contractor other than those named in the contract and
specifications and his sense of justice, propriety and professional honor.
He would be recreant to his duty if in all nicely balanced matters of
doubt he did not espouse the side of his employer. Moreover, his
personal interests are often involved. Having prepared the plans,
specifications and estimates for the work, he is naturally and properly
anxious that it shall be successful and that the cost shall not exceed that
estimated. Under all these conditions it is hardly possible for any human
being to be a wholly disinterested and unprejudiced judge. No broad-
minded and conscientious engineer desires to be placed in such a
difficult position, and it is as unfair as it is unwise and improper to
require him to assume it.
There are, however, a number of matters of fact in reference to which
it is proper and necessary to make the judgment and decision of the
engineer controlling and final, unless it may be shown that his decision
is clearly erroneous or affected by improper motives, or by fraud. Some
one must necessarily be made the immediate and final judge as to
whether the quality of materials and workmanship is in accordance with
the requirements of the plans and specifications, and as to the quantity
of work actually performed, and these duties and responsibilities are
very properly placed upon the engineer.
It not infrequently occurs that specifications are not drawn as clearly
as they should be in the matters of methods of measuring the work and
of applying contract unit prices, and indefiniteness and carelessness in
this regard are often a source of misunderstanding and dispute between
the engineer and the contractor. It is a good practice, followed by many
able engineers, after specifying how a certain part of the work shall be
done, to state how it shall be measured and paid for at the contract unit
prices.
In many respects it is desirable that all the work to be done under
contract should be quite fully itemized, and a unit price named for each
kind of work. It is the custom in many cities to name only certain leading
items of the work to be done under a paving contract, as for the
pavement complete, furnishing and setting new curbing, redressing and
resetting old curbing, and possibly a few other leading items, and to
require that all necessary incidental work shall be done by the contractor
without cost to the city; or, in other words, he must take this possible
extra work into consideration in naming his unit prices for the leading
items of the work. As the quantity of this incidental work is often not
stated, and the contractor has no means of ascertaining it, he must
guess, as intelligently as he may be able, how much he should add to his
unit prices to cover its cost. If he is a prudent contractor he will be sure
to add enough to prevent any possible loss on this account. In most cases
the quantities of this incidental work can be determined and scheduled
by the engineer with the more important items, and the contractor may
be required to name unit prices for it. True, there are likely to develop
during the progress of the work some items that could not be foreseen or
that were overlooked. In some cities such contingencies are provided for
by a clause in the contract or specifications scheduling, by name, all the
incidental minor items of work that experience has shown are likely to be
met with in street paving contracts, and naming fair unit prices which
the contractor will be paid for each, should it occur. The contractor may
then feel assured that however much the quantity of such incidental
work may vary, he will receive compensation proportionate thereto, and
he may name his prices for the main items with more confidence. Under
such conditions it is reasonable to expect closer figures than he would be
willing to name if an unknown quantity of incidental work for which no
separate pay is provided had to be taken into consideration.
Sub-division of unit prices is also desirable in order that the engineer
may be able to analyze and record the elements that make up the
aggregate cost of the work. Thus, in the case of the construction of a new
sheet asphalt pavement it is common to ask for a single price for the
pavement complete, including a five year guarantee. Now the work will
consist of several distinct operations or kinds of work for each of which a
separate price might be named:
1. The grading of the street and preparation of the sub-grade. The
quantity of this work will vary on different streets and is best reckoned
by the cubic yard of material excavated.
2. A price, either per cubic yard or per square yard for the concrete
foundation.
3. A price per square yard for the asphalt pavement proper. This
might, if desired, be sub-divided into separate prices for the base-course
and the surface-course.
4. A price per square yard for guaranteeing the pavement for five
years.
 Such sub-division would, it is true, increase the work of final
computation but if of no other value, the detailed costs would be a great
aid to the engineer in estimating the reasonable cost of future work
where the relative quantity of these detailed parts varied.
 SPECIFICATIONS

For Grading and Paving, or Repaving

with.. ........ ........ .............. .... Pavement

on a... ......... .......... ...... Foundation, the Roadway
of..... ........ ........... ............ . ............
Street, from...... .......... ............. .............
to. ....... ....... ........... ............ ........
together with work incidental thereto.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF WORK

The work embraced in and to be done under this contract consists of

grading the entire street from curb to curb between the limits named,
including the removal or readjustment of the pavement now on the
roadway, setting and resetting curbing, laying or relaying sidewalks
where required, furnishing all new material and performing all the labor
required for paving the roadway, together with all incidental work
necessary to complete the whole in a proper manner, in accordance with
the contract, the plans on file in the office of the City Engineer, these
Specifications and the instructions of the City Engineer, herein referred
to as the Engineer, or his authorized agents.

REFERENCES

The numbered divisions of these specifications are herein designated

as “sections,” each being referred to by the number standing at its
beginning. Where reference is herein made to any such section number
it shall be considered equivalent to a quotation of that section.
The plans and drawings relating to this work, on file in the office of the
City Engineer are designated as ...
 1. Authority.—Wherever, in these specifications, the words, the City,
are used, they shall be understood to refer to the duly constituted
municipal government of the city of ... or its authorized agents, acting
within the authority specifically conferred upon them by the said
municipal government.[1]
Wherever, in these specifications, the words, the Engineer, shall be
used, they shall be understood to refer to the City Engineer of said city,
or his deputies or assistants, acting within the authority conferred upon
them by the City Engineer.
But no agent of the city shall have power to revoke, alter, enlarge or
relax the stipulations or requirements of these specifications, except in
so far as such authority may be specifically conferred in or by the
specifications themselves, without the formal authorization so to do,
conferred by the contract of which these specifications are a part, or by
ordinance, resolution or other usual official action of the city.[2]
2. Interpretation.—In case of any actual or alleged disagreement or
discrepancy between the contract, these specifications, and the plans for
the work on file in the office of the Engineer, the language and
provisions of the contract shall take precedence and prevail; and the
Engineer shall determine in each case whether the specifications or the
plans shall be followed.
3. The Engineer shall have the right to make such changes in the plans
and specifications of the work as he may deem necessary or desirable or
to provide for unexpected conditions or contingencies that may develop
at any time after the signing of the contract, or during the progress, or
before the final acceptance of the work; provided that all such changes
do not involve an aggregate increase or decrease in the cost of the work,
as shown by his estimates, of more than ten (10) per cent. The contractor
shall accept such changes when made, as a part of the original contract
and specifications, subject to all the provisions and conditions thereof.
But before any such changes shall become valid and before the
contractor shall begin the particular work involved in such changes, the
increased or decreased cost of the work by reason of such changes, above
or below what it would have been under the original plans and
specifications, shall be agreed upon in writing between the engineer and
the contractor. And when the whole work, including such changes, shall
have been completed and accepted by the engineer, the sum or sums so
agreed upon shall be added to or deducted from the sum that would have
been due the contractor if no such changes had been made.
 4. Quality of Material and Work.—The judgment and decision of
the Engineer as to whether the materials supplied and the work done
under this contract comply with the requirements of these specifications,
shall be conclusive and final. No material shall be used in the work until
it has been examined and approved by the Engineer, or his authorized
agents. All rejected material must be promptly removed from the work
and replaced with that which is acceptable to the Engineer, and all
improper or defective work must be corrected, and, if necessary,
removed and reconstructed so as to comply with these specifications and
the instructions of the Engineer.
In all matters of detail not specifically covered by the specifications the
work shall be well and skillfully done in accordance with the best trade
or art customs and standards for work of like character and purpose.
5. Inspection.—The Engineer may provide for the inspection, by
assistants and inspectors under his direction, of all materials used and
all work done under this contract. Such inspection may extend to all or
any part of the work, and to the preparation or manufacture of materials
to be used, whether within the limits of the work on the street, or at any
other place. The Engineer and his inspectors shall have free access to all
parts of the work, including mines, quarries, manufactories, or other
places where any part of the materials to be used is procured,
manufactured or prepared. The Contractor shall furnish the Engineer all
information relating to the work and the material therefor which the
Engineer may deem necessary or pertinent, and with such samples of
materials as may be required. The Contractor shall, at his expense,
supply inspectors with such labor and assistance as may be necessary in
the handling of materials for proper inspection. Inspectors shall have
authority to reject defective material and to suspend any work that is
being improperly done, subject to the final decision of the Engineer.
Inspectors shall have no authority to permit deviations from, or to relax
any of the provisions of these specifications without the written
permission or instruction of the Engineer; nor to delay the Contractor by
failure to inspect materials and work with reasonable promptness.
The payment of any compensation, whatever may be its character or
form, or the giving of any gratuity, or the granting of any valuable favor,
by the Contractor to any inspector, directly or indirectly, is strictly
prohibited, and any such act on the part of the Contractor will constitute
a violation of these specifications.[3]
6. Injuries to Persons and Property.—The Contractor shall be
held alone responsible for all injuries to persons, and for all damages to
the property of the city or others, caused by or resulting from the
negligence of himself, his employees or agents, during the progress of, or
connected with the prosecution of the work, whether within the limits of
the work, or elsewhere. He must restore all injured property, including
sidewalks, curbing, sodding, pipes, conduits, sewers and other public or
private property to a condition as good as it was when he entered upon
the work.
7. Sanitary Conveniences; Nuisances.—The Contractor shall
provide all necessary privy accommodations for the use of his employees
on the street, and shall maintain the same in a clean and sanitary
condition. He shall not create nor permit any nuisance to the public or to
residents in the vicinity of the work.
8. Public Convenience.—No material, or other obstruction shall be
placed within five feet of fire hydrants, which must be at all times readily
accessible to the Fire Department.
During the progress of the work the convenience of the public and of
the residents along the street must be provided for as far as practicable.
Convenient access to driveways, houses and buildings along the street
must be maintained wherever possible. Temporary approaches to and
crossings of intersecting streets and sidewalks must be provided and
kept in good condition, wherever practicable.
9. Barriers, Lights, Watchmen.—The Contractor shall provide
and maintain such fences, barriers, “street closed” signs, red lights, and
watchmen as may be necessary to prevent avoidable accidents to
residents and to the public.
10. Disorderly Employees.—Disorderly, intemperate, or
incompetent persons must not be employed, retained, or allowed upon
the work. Foremen or workmen who neglect or refuse to comply with the
instructions of the Engineer, shall, at his request, be promptly
discharged, and shall not thereafter be re-employed without his consent.
11. Order and Progress of Doing Work.—The work under this
contract shall be prosecuted at as many different points, at such times,
and in such sections along the line of the work, and with such forces as
the Engineer may from time to time deem necessary, and direct, to
secure its completion within the contract time. Not more than one
thousand (1,000) linear feet of the street shall be torn up, obstructed or
closed to travel at any one time without the written permission of the
Engineer. Completed portions of the pavement shall be opened to travel
as directed by the Engineer, but such opening shall not be construed as
an acceptance by the City of the work done. Where thus opened to public
travel by the direction of the Engineer, the Contractor will not be held
responsible for injuries to the work caused by such travel or public use,
pending the final completion and acceptance of the whole work.
12. Grade and Contour of Pavement.—Roadway pavements shall
be laid to such grades, crown and contour of surface as the plans may
show or the Engineer may direct, and the surface of the completed
pavement shall conform accurately to such grades, crown and contour.
The designed surface of the completed pavement shall be considered as
the datum or plane of reference in fixing the location or level of the sub-
grade, of the pavement foundation, and of structures connected
therewith. It will be hereafter referred to in these specifications as “The
pavement datum.”
13. City Monuments or Stakes.—The Contractor must carefully
protect from disturbance or injury all city monuments, stakes and
benchmarks, and shall not excavate nearer than five feet to any of them
without the permission of the Engineer; or until they have been
removed, witnessed, or otherwise disposed of by the Engineer.
14. Old Material.—All material or structures removed from the
street and not required for the new construction, but which the city may
desire to reserve, shall be delivered and neatly piled up in a corporation
yard or elsewhere, by the Contractor, as the Engineer may direct. Such
reserved material shall be considered in the custody of the Contractor
until delivered at the place designated, and he will be held responsible
for its care and protection, and must make good any losses occasioned by
damage, theft, or misappropriation while it is on the street or en route to
the place of storage. If the Contractor shall be required to haul such
reserved material more than one-half mile, he shall be paid a reasonable
price, to be agreed upon in advance, for the haul exceeding that distance.
Material taken from the work which is to be used in the new
construction shall be compactly piled where it will least obstruct the
sidewalks or adjoining sections of the street, and properly protected by
the Contractor until it is required for use.
All old material removed from the work, including the material
excavated in preparing the sub-grade, not reserved by the City nor to be
used again in the work, shall belong to the Contractor and must be
removed by him from the street as promptly as possible. It must not be
placed on the sidewalks or adjacent streets, nor on any other street or
property belonging to the City, nor on the property of private owners,
without the written consent of the Engineer, or the owner of the
property.
15. Storage of New Material.—The material for construction when
brought upon the street shall be neatly piled so as to cause as little
obstruction to travel as possible, and so that it may be conveniently
inspected.
16. Rebuilding and Adjusting Street Structures.—Catch basins,
manhole, sewer and water frames and covers, sewer inlets, water pipes
and other conduits, belonging to the City and within the limits of the
work, shall, if necessary, be reset to the new lines and grades of the street
and for this purpose good brick masonry of the original thickness, laid in
Portland cement mortar shall be used. Great care must be taken to set all
such structures as project through the pavement exactly to the grade and
contour of the new street surface, and any defects in the conformity of
such structures to the pavement datum, discovered at the time, or during
the progress of the work, or during the guaranty period, stipulated in
Sec. 25 shall be promptly remedied by the Contractor.
17. Clean Sidewalks.—During the progress of the work, the
sidewalks and portions of the street adjoining the work, or in its vicinity,
must not be obstructed or littered more than may be absolutely
necessary, and the adjacent sidewalks must be kept clean.
18. Connection With Existing Pavements or Streets.—
Wherever a new pavement joins or abuts against an existing pavement of
a different kind, or an unpaved street, either at the end of the new
pavement or at cross or intersecting streets, a line of stone headers shall
be provided and set. The stone shall be of sound, hard limestone,
sandstone, granite or bluestone, free from injurious imperfections. The
separate stones shall be not less than three (3) feet long, at least eighteen
(18) inches deep, not less than four and one-half (4½) inches wide at the
top, nor less than three (3) inches wide at the bottom. The top shall be of
uniform width for each line of headers, and shall be dressed square and
even. The ends shall be dressed to secure a joint not wider than one-half
(½) inch for a depth of six inches from the top, and the sides dressed so
as to secure good contact and close jointing with the pavement. The
stones shall be set accurately with their tops at the pavement datum, on
a bed of concrete nine (9) inches wide and six (6) inches deep, and after
being set the trench shall be filled and rammed full of gravel or crushed
stone.
All existing pavements adjoining or abutting against the new
pavement, with their crosswalks, curbs, and gutters, shall be adjusted, or
taken up and relaid, to conform to and connect with the pavement
datum, to such an extent as the Engineer may direct.
Where the new and adjoining pavement are of the same kind, and
headers are not used, the new and the old pavement must be properly
joined and connected, as the Engineer may direct.
Stone headers will be paid for by the linear foot at the contract price
for that item, and the other work embraced in this section will be paid
for at the contract prices for the several items, where such contract
prices are provided; otherwise the work shall be considered as incidental
work and shall be done at the expense of the Contractor.
19. Curbing to be Completed in Advance.—The setting of all new
curbing and guttering and the redressing, resetting or readjustment of
all old curbing must be completed at least 100 feet in advance of the
construction of the street foundation.
20. Final Cleaning Up.—Immediately after the completion of the
work or any consecutive portion of it, the Contractor shall remove from
it all unused material, refuse and dirt placed by him on, or in the vicinity
of the work, or resulting from its prosecution, and restore the street to a
condition as clean as before the work was begun; and the new pavement
shall be properly cleaned.
21. Measurements and Computations.—Unless otherwise
distinctly provided in the contract and specifications, measurements,
computations and payments will be based upon the actual quantities of
completed work, customary or conventional methods of measurement
and computation to the contrary notwithstanding.
The area of street pavement shall be reckoned in square yards of
completed pavement surface, deducting manholes, inlets and other
openings in the surface of the pavement having an area of over three (3)
square feet. Unless separately paid for under the contract, stone headers
and crosswalks will be measured as a part of the pavement surface.
22. The price for the pavement per square yard shall, unless otherwise
stated herein, include the preparation of the sub-foundation, the
construction of the foundation, the cushion course, and the pavement
complete, including all the materials and labor required therefor.
23. Incidental Work at Contractor’s Expense.—All the work to
be done by the Contractor for which specific unit prices are not named in
the contract, specified and enumerated in Sections 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13,
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20, as well as any minor details of work not
specifically mentioned in the specifications, but obviously necessary for
the proper completion of the work, shall be considered as incidental, and
as being a part of and included with the work for which prices are named
in the contract. The Contractor will not be entitled to any extra or
additional compensation therefor.
24. Extra Work.—The City may require the Contractor to furnish
such additional materials and to do such additional work, not provided
for in the contract and these specifications, but which may be found
necessary or pertinent to the proper prosecution and completion of the
work embraced in the contract, at prices to be agreed upon in writing, in
advance. But no work other than that included in the contract and these
specifications and which is covered by and to be paid for at the prices
named in the contract, shall be done by the Contractor except upon a
written order from the Engineer, which order shall describe the work to
be done and name the compensation agreed upon therefor. In the
absence of such written order from the Engineer the Contractor will not
be entitled to payment for any such additional or extra work.
In the same manner the city may omit or dispense with items or parts
of the work, by previous agreement with the contractor, and a like
written order by the engineer. But such additions, omissions or
alterations shall not together increase or decrease the aggregate cost of
the whole work more than fifteen per cent. (15%). Any changes in the
plans, specifications, character of material used or method of doing the
work that may increase or decrease the aggregate cost of the work more
than fifteen per cent. (15%) may be authorized and validated only by a
formal, supplemental contract, regularly executed by all the parties to
the original contract.[4]
25. Guaranty.[5]—The Contractor shall guarantee that all the
materials used and all the work done under this contract shall fully
comply with the requirements of these specifications, the plans herein
before referred to and the instructions of the Engineer. Any defects in
the completed work, or any part of it, or any failure of the work to fully
perform or endure the service for which it was intended, which, in the
opinion of the Engineer, are attributable to the use of materials, skill, or
workmanship not in compliance with the said specifications, plans and
instructions, within a period of ... years after the date of the certificate of
completion and acceptance, shall be regarded as prima facie and
conclusive evidence that the Contractor has failed to comply with the
said specifications, plans and instructions. And the Contractor shall, at
his own expense, at such time and in such manner as the Engineer may
direct, repair or take up and reconstruct any such defective work, in full
compliance with the original specifications, plans and instructions. And
as surety for the performance of this guaranty the Contractor’s bond,
required by the contract, shall remain in full force until the expiration of
the period of ... years above stipulated in this section.

PREPARING THE SUB-GRADE

26. Grading.—The whole area to be occupied by the pavement and

its foundation shall be excavated or filled up to a sub-grade at such an
elevation that after being compacted by the roller, the surface will be ...
inches below the pavement datum, and truly parallel thereto. In
excavating, the earth must not be disturbed below the sub-grade.
Plowing will not be permitted where the depth of earth to be removed is
less than five (5) inches, and in no case must the plow be allowed to
penetrate to within less than one inch of the sub-grade. Places that are
found to be loose, or soft, or composed of unsuitable material, below
sub-grade, must be dug out and refilled with sand, or other material as
good as the average of that found on the street.
Where the natural surface of the ground shall be below the sub-grade,
or shall become so by the removal of old pavement or other structures, it
must be filled to the sub-grade in layers not exceeding five inches in
depth, and each layer shall be thoroughly rolled or rammed before the
next layer is placed upon it, and when the filling is completed the filled
area must be properly trimmed and compacted by rolling or ramming to
the true sub-grade, as in excavation. The material excavated from the
street may be used for such filling, provided it be of suitable quality.
Where it cannot be thus procured from the street it must be obtained by
the Contractor elsewhere, in which case the actual quantity so obtained,
measured after it is compacted in the street, will be paid for at the
contract price for “earth filling.” The price bid for “earth excavation” will
be paid for all material excavated above the sub-grade, measured in
place on the street, which price includes the cost of disposing of the
excavated material, whether as waste or filling, and of trimming and
rolling or ramming the sub-grade, and of making it ready for the
pavement foundation.
After the excavation is completed and the surface neatly trimmed, the
whole area shall be well compacted by rolling with a roller weighing not
less than five tons. Areas inaccessible to the roller shall be rammed until
they are as well compacted as the rolled surface. When the rolling is
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