NOTE SULL’IDEA DI MALE NELLA QUARTA PARTE DELL’ETICA DI SPINOZA

Simonetta Orlandini

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the centrality of the idea of evil in the path toward freedom from the slavery of passions, as expressed in the final section of the fourth part of Etica more geometrico demonstrata, starting from Prop. 64 that enounces the cognitive and ontological inconsistency of the concept of evil. In a comparison with Stoic thought, the research interprets Spinoza’s philosophical thought as a modern re-proposition of the ancient experience of philosophy as “care of the self”; the adoption of meditatio fosters the liberation of individuals from imaginative knowledge, the origin of their passivity, saddening, weakening and therefore inability to comprehend true good, which results, at a social level, into hate and conflict. In short, into being destined to unhappiness. Through the practice of a non-ascetic askesis, Spinoza’s philosophy aims to equip for the encounter/clash with reality, opening the way toward a freedom compatible with reality’s necessity.