The Passions, Power, and Practical Philosophy: Spinozaand Nietzsche Contra the StoicsAurelia ArmstrongThe Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Volume 44, Issue 1, Spring 2013,pp. 6-24 (Article)Pubshed by Penn State Unversty PressDOI: 10.1353/nie.2013.0002For additional information about this articleAccess provided by Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile (1 Jul 2015 06:03 GMT)http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nie/summary/v044/44.1.armstrong.htmlJOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2013.Copyright 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.6The Passions, Power, and Practical PhilosophySpinoza and Nietzsche Contra the StoicsAURELIA ARMSTRONGABSTRACT: This article reviews the influence of Stoic thought on the development of Spinozas and Nietzsches ethics and suggests that although both philosophers follow the Stoics in conceiving of ethics as a therapeutic enterprise that aims at human freedom and flourishing, they part company with Stoicism in refusing to identify flourishing with freedom from the passions. In making this claim, I take issue with the standard view of Spinozas ethics, according to which the passions figure exclusively as a source of unhappiness and bondage from which we must be liberated. I argue that, in fact, Spinoza anticipates Nietzsche and breaks with the Stoics in offering a more positive assessment of the role of pas-sion in a flourishing life. The reading pursued here takes Spinozas divergence from the Stoic account of the passions to be a consequence of his insistence on the immanence of human being in nature. I outline Spinozas and Nietzsches conception of immanence and suggest that it entails a common understanding of our nature as dynamic power or desire, which is simultaneously expressed as a capacity to act and be acted on, to affect and to be affected. The recogni-tion of the complex relationship between passive and active power requires a revaluation of our vulnerability and openness to what can affect us and leads each philosopher to a consideration of the ways in which the passions might be made to support our striving to increase our power and to realize an essentially limited freedom and precarious flourishing.Thoughsurprisinglylittlehasbeenwrittenabouttherelationshipbetween Nietzsches and Spinozas practical philosophy, a survey of the literature reveals general agreement regarding the grounds for a comparison of their ethical projects. Both are described as adhering to the idea that the quest for human perfectibility is only possible within the horizons of immanence. For Yirmiyahu Yovel, this amounts to their common commitment to an ethics of self- overcoming, whereby the immanent natural principle (conatus in Spinoza, will to power in Nietzsche) shapes itself into something higher than its raw givenness.1 This view is echoed by Richard Schacht, who sees Spinozas attraction to Nietzsche as lying in the formers attempt to do justice to our capacity to transcend our merely natural JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 6 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY7existence by way of its transformation, but without appealing to transcendent values and without transcending nature.2 In short, the suggestion is that Nietzsche and Spinoza are committed to a form of ethical naturalism, one that proceeds by way of practices of self-formation or self-transformation and that aims at the attainment of an enhanced form of human life characterized by an affirmative attitude toward existence, a love of necessity or fate.While the secondary literature on Nietzsches relation to Spinoza does not go much beyond identifying this shared ethical ethos, the characterization of this ethos does reveal its common ancestry in the ancient Greco-Roman conception of philosophy as therapeia. Pierre Hadot argues that for the ancients, philosophy is understood as a way of life or spiritual exercise rather than as a purely abstract-theoretical activity.3 The exercises recommended by the philosophies of classical antiquity are oriented to the practical project of training people to live and to look at the world in a new way.4 Hadot suggests that with the absorption of philosophia by Christianity, philosophys role was reduced to that of furnishing theology with conceptual material and that it is not until Nietzsche that philosophy becomes once again a concrete attitude and way of seeing the world.5 In making this claim, however, Hadot overlooks the early modern revival of the classical con-ception of philosophy as an approach to life that contributes to human flourishing and thus as a therapeutic enterprise. This oversight is especially understandable in Spinozas case. Spinozas intellectual debts to ancient philosophy are over-looked by the majority of interpreters, who argue that he was mainly influenced by his contemporaries, especially Descartes. Among those scholars who have examined the influence of the Hellenistic tradition on Spinoza, however, there is general agreement that Spinozas philosophy can be most fruitfully understood as a reworking of Stoicism. The recognition of the particular importance of Stoicism to Spinoza resonates with recent scholarly interest in Nietzsches debt to the Stoic tradition and points to a common source in light of which it might be possible to compare and evaluate their respective approaches to ethics.ThatSpinozaandNietzscheareunitedintheirendorsementofkeyStoic themes is readily apparent. There are, in fact, three major themes identified in the literature as points of convergence between Spinoza and Nietzsche that suggest the influence of Stoicism on their thought. The first concerns the Stoic reconcili-ation of a naturalistic perspective with an ethical perspective, and it appears in their common acceptance of modified versions of the Stoic doctrines of radical determinism, or fatalism, and amor fati. We can understand the significance of these related themes in general terms as a way of articulating the dual nature of human being as both an entirely natural, material being, subject to the same necessities as the rest of the natural world, and at the same time as a being capable of transfiguring and even perfecting that nature, precisely through an understand-ing of natural necessity and an acceptance of its own nature as a piece of fate. The second theme that dominates the secondary literature is the Stoic critique JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 7 21/04/13 12:42 PM8AURELIA ARMSTRONGof pity, or the unegoistic emotions, which both Spinoza and Nietzsche endorse and develop in different contexts and which Nietzsche explicitly associates with both Stoicism and Spinoza.6 The final theme, which is the primary focus of this article, concerns the place of the passions in the philosophical therapy that some have claimed both Spinoza and Nietzsche endorse.Accordingtocommentators,SpinozaandNietzschefollowtheStoicsin conceiving of ethics as a form of cognitive psychological therapy that provides techniques and strategies whereby we can change our beliefs, thought processes, andaffectivestatesinordertofreeourselvesfromthefalseevaluationsof external events that are the cause of emotional turmoil. This conception of philo-sophical therapeutics entails a diagnosis of the passions, which are understood by the Stoics to be the primary obstacle to human flourishing, and presents them in terms that evoke their susceptibility to remedy. For the Stoics, it is the passions, or path (literally things that one undergoes in contrast to actions or the things that one does), that are the sole source of human unhappiness and bondage. In undergoing passions, we are subject to external influence, to the vicissitudes of fortune over which we have little or no control and which are, for that reason, potential sources of pain, frustration, disappointment, and emotional instability. The key to Stoic therapy lies in recognizing that while what fortune metes out is not up to us, the attitude we adopt toward acts of fortune is.7 Once we realize that the sources of suffering are not external things and how they happen to affect us but rather our own irrational judgments about the value of externals, the way is open to us to refuse assent to those of our value judgments that are the cause of our passions and irrational desires and thereby to free ourselves from violent and excessive emotions and from the false estimation of the value of external things on which those emotions depend. The Stoic belief that the good lifethe life of virtue, freedom, and happinessis a life free from passion is reflected and expressed in the high value that Stoicism places on psychological independence, tranquility of mind, self-control, and self-sufficiency. What ground is there for thinking that Spinoza and Nietzsche endorse Stoic psychotherapy and thus the view that human flourishing requires the extirpation of the passions?There does appear to be a profound correspondence between the central mes-sage of Spinozas Ethicsthat freedom is achieved by mastering the passionsand the Stoic view. Spinoza tacitly admits this debt to the Stoic tradition when he describes human bondage in strongly Stoic terms as mans lack of power tomoderateandrestraintheaffects,notingthatthemanwhoissubjectto affects is under the control, not of himself, but of fortune (EIVpref).8 Firmin DeBrabander argues that Spinoza is like the Stoics in considering the passions the principal obstacle to human flourishing and in casting them as amenable to intellectual therapy.9 Spinoza also agrees with the Stoics that the passions are inadequate ideas of external things and that, as such, they may be amended through rational understanding. According to the standard reading of Spinozas JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 8 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY9ethics, then, Spinozas view is profoundly Stoic in its presentation of rational understanding as the key to liberation from bondage to passive affects. Rational understanding of nature is liberating because it enables us to replace the inad-equate ideas that underpin the passions with adequate ideas and corresponding active affects that follow from and depend on our own power rather than the power of external causes. While passions signal our capacity to be affected by the external world, our receptivity to external influence, and thus our passivity, rational understanding makes us more active, independent, and self-determining. Moreover, because when we act on the basis of adequate understanding we act in ways that are reliably self-preserving or empowering, this type of understand-ing is also experienced as an intense and secure form of joy. Insofar as we are rational, Spinoza tells us, we are powerful, virtuous, free and able to enjoy a peace of mind and a species of joy that are immune from the vagaries of fortune.EventhisbriefdescriptionofthestandardviewofSpinozistethicsasa form of psychotherapy makes the parallels with Stoicism obvious and striking. Indeed, according to Alexandre Matheron, of all the great classical philosophers Spinoza is the one whose teaching best lends itself to a point-by-point comparison with Stoicism.10 But although there is much textual evidence to support a Stoic reading of Spinozas ethical project, this reading fails, in my view, to capture the more positive strains in his treatment of the passions and so fails to grasp how his conception of therapy diverges decisively from the Stoic model. Before considering the nature of this divergence, we need to familiarize ourselves briefly with the way in which Nietzsches more complex and ambivalent relation to Stoicism has been addressed in the literature. We will then be in a position to raise the issue of the relationship between their respective understanding of the nature of the passions and their approaches to the role of the passions in ethical life.There are at least two different claims made about Nietzsches Stoicism that are relevant to the question of how he conceives the passions and their impact on human flourishing. First, there are those who argue that Nietzsche appealed to the Stoic tradition primarily as a way of engaging critically with the deployment of the passions in a morality of pity. Martha Nussbaum is a key proponent of this position. She describes Nietzsches project as an effort to bring about a revival of Stoic values of self-command and self-formation within a post-Christian and post-Romantic context.11 According to Nussbaum, Nietzsches critique of pity demonstrates his acceptance of the full Stoic position regarding the extirpation of passion.12 In fact, she argues that Nietzsche goes even further than the Stoics by embracing asceticism, which is evident, she claims, in his rejection of the value of external goods to human flourishing and in his celebration of a radical, self-protective Stoic hardness that denies human vulnerability and finitude. This reading is distinctive in its claim that a commitment to Stoic values is an abiding feature of Nietzsches thinking. By contrast, Michael Ures exploration of the Stoic influences on Nietzsches philosophy identifies significant changes JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 9 21/04/13 12:42 PM10AURELIA ARMSTRONGin Nietzsches attitude toward Stoicism during different phases of histhinking.13 Urearguesconvincinglythatinthelate1870sNietzschedrawsheavilyon Stoicism in his efforts to develop a new philosophical therapy for suffering as an alternative to the failed antinatural strategies for treating human suffering and vulnerability that he associated with metaphysics and religion. On Ures account Nietzsche adopts a conventional form of Stoic therapy in Human, All Too Human and Daybreak, which turns on the Stoic insight that the sources of misery are not external but internal, and he proposes as the cure for this mis-ery the Stoic strategy of changing our value judgments. This mainly positive appraisal of Stoic therapeutics gives way, in the early 1880s, to a more critical stance, which Ure interprets as a sign of Nietzsches growing misgivings about the Stoic idea that eudaimonia turns on the achievement of apatheia.14 On the basis of his reading of The Gay Science, Ure sees Nietzsches increasingly critical attitude toward Stoicism as a sign of his rejection of the Stoic ideal of flourishingasrequiringfreedomfrompassion.Thesetworeadingsprovide strong evidence that Nietzsche accepted central tenets of the Stoic theory of the passions and experimented with a Stoic model of therapy in his efforts to give new meaning to human suffering, even if, on the second reading, he ultimately rejects the conventional Stoic model.15IfwefollowthestandardreadingofSpinozasethics,accordingtowhich passive affects or passions figure exclusively as sources of human unhappiness and bondage from which we must be delivered, then we might naturally be led to conclude that Nietzsches increasingly critical attitude toward the Stoics on just this point must include Spinoza and that Nietzsche breaks with his philosophical forbears in his more positive assessment of the role of passion in a flourishing life. Without denying the importance of the Stoic ideal of human flourishing to the development of Spinozas and Nietzsches views, I nevertheless argue that it is Spinoza who first challenges the Stoic traditions conception of the nature and goals of therapy and that he does so in ways that reveal a deep affinity with Nietzschesphilosophicalperspective.Thebasisofthisaffinityisashared commitment to the principle of the immanence of human being in nature. On Yovelsaccount,thisprincipleimpliesthreebasicconceptualcommitments: (1)Immanence[orthis-worldlyexistence]istheonlyandoverallhorizon of being; (2) it is equally the only source of value and normativeness and (3) absorbing this recognition into ones life is a preludeand preconditionfor whatever liberation (or, emancipation) is in store for humans.16Since Stoic philosophy also embraces these principles and has been described as belonging to a tradition of immanence, we need to begin with a brief exposition of Stoic ethics, as well as the metaphysics on which it is based, in order to grasp the conceptual grounds for Spinozas criticisms of Stoicism. These criticisms, I argue, turn on the claim that Stoic ethics falls foul of the version of immanence that Spinoza and Nietzsche endorse.JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 10 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY11Stoic Therapy: Virtue as ApatheiaThe Stoic ideal of virtue is founded on a particular metaphysics of nature.17 To be virtuous is to live in agreement with nature. In the Stoic conception, nature, or fate, is rationally ordered, necessitarian, providential, and divine. To live in accordance with nature is to actively accept what happens as necessary, as fated, as the will of God. Moreover, since nature unfolds according to a divinely ordained providential plan, which is rational and, therefore, beneficial, every-thing that occurs can be understood not only as teleologically ordered but as ultimately ordered for the benefit of human beings, who may thus be said to enjoy a privileged place in the cosmos. This privilege, however, is not apparent from the perspective of ones ordinary human aspirations for personal survival, happiness, and success. Much of what happens is not within our control and may conflict with personal goals and desires. The Stoics thus suggest that detach-ing ourselves from this limited personal perspective and appraising our lives from the standpoint of the whole are central to the attainment of virtue. It is by evaluating what happens from the universal point of view that we bring our will into alignment with the will of fate. The acceptance of what happens as fated, which is supported by the conception of nature as providentially ordered, brings freedom from the passions that poison the lives of those who remain attached to external things and who therefore desire things to be other than they actually are. The Stoic sage can endure the assaults of fortune in a way that the passion-atemancannotbecausehissoulisinharmonywiththecosmosthatis,he rationally pursues the ends that nature prescribes in the knowledge that its ends are ultimately appropriate to his rational nature, considered as part of the whole. Marcus Aurelius nicely sums up the attitude of detachment that is central to this therapeutic strategy: You must consider the doing and perfecting of what the universal Nature decrees in the same light as your health, and welcome all that happens, even if it seems harsh, because it leads to the health of the universe, and the welfare and well-being of Zeus. For he would not have allotted this to anyone if it were not beneficial to the Whole.18For the Stoics, as we have seen, the passionsdefined as excessive impulses to seek or avoid somethingare the primary obstacle to our telos, or agree-ment with nature. To be in the grip of a passion is to accord excessive value to things that make no contribution to our virtue. That we may be in the grip of passions raises the question of what power we have to bring about our own virtueandhappiness.TheStoicresponsetothisquestion,asIhavenoted, istoappealtothedistinctionbetweenthatwhichisafunctionofourfree rational choice, and thus our own doing, and that which is not. As Epictetus explains, Some things are up to us, while others are not up to us. Up to us are conception, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything that is our own doing; not up to us are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 11 21/04/13 12:42 PM12AURELIA ARMSTRONGa word, everything that is not our own doing. Furthermore, the things up to us are by nature free, unhindered, unimpeded; while the things not up to us are weak, servile, subject to hindrance, and not our own.19Epictetuss distinction between what is up to us and not up to us is framed in terms of the distinction between the rational soul and everything external to it, above all the body and the web of dependencies in which it is caught. Our capacity to determine ourselves depends on the power of the rational soul to freely assent to or withhold assent from impressions. It is this cognitive power that enables the soul to exert control over passion and, indeed, in the case of the sage, to ensure that no passion ever takes root in it. As Derk Pereboom explains, in the Stoic conception, passions do not happen to an agent. Rather, whenever an agent has a passion, it has in a sense been chosen by that agent. And accord-ingly, an agent can avoid struggling against passions altogether, because simply by exercising its power of assent, she can prevent any untoward passion from coming to exist at all.20The Stoics thus propose two therapeutic strategies for extirpating the passions, one that affirms our power of voluntary, rational assent and one that affirms divine determinism. Each strategy stages the relation between self and world slightly differently. To affirm the power of voluntary assent as the source of freedom from the passions is to accord to the soul, but not the body, a power to transcend its determination by the external world. In Epictetuss formulation, the body is associated with that which is external, alien, and superfluous to the self. The true locus of the self is the active, rational soul, which must struggle for inner purity and intellectual liberation from body, world, passivity, and pas-sion. This strategy assumes a rigid boundary between self and world, one that isolates and insulates the (mental) self in such a way as to allow it psychologi-cal independence and self-sufficiency unperturbed by the distractions of the body.21 What counts as the self is thus radically narrowed, and it is set against a hostile external world whose assaults it must heroically endure. This opposi-tion between self and world is overcome, however, in the selfs identification with the whole. Since it is only from the perspective of the part, or particular individual, that things appear as external forces, as hindrances to the realization of personal desires, identification with the whole promises a total liberation from external determination and, thus, from the very possibility of passion. In effect, the full realization and affirmation of the rational wills deeper unity with the rationality of nature dissolves the boundary between the will and fate and with it the distinction between internal and external causes, which is the conceptual precondition for the experience of external determination, passivity, and passion.John Sellars has argued that these two strategies represent, in fact, two distinct stages on the path of philosophical progression toward the ideal of the sage, and he associates the final stage of Stoic ethicswhich consists indissolving the boundary between oneself and the rest of nature by identifying ones own will JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 12 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY13with the will of the cosmos or fatewith the affirmative ethics of Spinoza and Nietzsche.22 While it is true that Spinoza envisages progress in ethical perfection as a matter of gaining an understanding of ourselves as parts of a more encom-passing whole and that he views this process as involving an expansion of the boundaries of atomic individuality, his affirmation of the strict immanence of human being in nature precludes the possibility of a total liberation from external determination and, therefore, from the passions.23 It is this aspect of the Stoic view, which he aligns with Descartess position, that Spinoza singles out for criticism in his only explicit reference to Stoicism in the Ethics. The Stoics, he says, imagine that the affects depend entirely on our will, and that we can com-mand them absolutely. But experience cries out against this (EVpref). What follows from such voluntarism, as Spinoza astutely observes, is a tendency to treat the passions as vices or diseases of human nature, which moralists there-fore bewail, or laugh at, or disdain, or (as usually happens) curse (EIIIpref). To suppose that human beings can acquire an absolute freedomthat man has absolutepoweroverhisactions,andthatheisdeterminedonlybyhimself (EIIIpref)istoconceiveofmaninnatureasadominionwithinadomin-ion (EIIIpref). Against this anthropomorphic position, Spinoza insists that it is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his own nature alone, and of which he is the adequate cause (EIVp4). The strict integration of human being in nature means that we are necessarily acted on by external forces and therefore necessarily subject to passions. In sum, Spinoza charges Stoic ethics with falling foul of the principle of immanence in at least two respects. In identifying virtue with apatheia, or total freedom from passion, it elevates the virtuous person above nature, and in imagining the attainment of virtue as a function of the rational souls voluntary control over its affects, it accords to the soul, but not the body, a power to transcend determination and so both denies the souls natural status and problematically restricts what counts as the self to the active, rational soul or mind.Spinozasrefusalofhumanexceptionalismisthoroughlyendorsedby Nietzsche. Like Spinoza, Nietzsche rejects soul atomism (BGE 12) and vol-untarism as manifestations of a metaphysics that abstractly opposes man and world(seeGS346).NietzschemountshiskeenestcriticismsoftheStoics, however, against their account of suffering. In advocating measured endurance and rational indifference toward the external world, which is experienced as the source of unwanted suffering, Stoic ethics reveals itself to be motivated by the desire to escape vulnerability and pain. When interpreted in terms of this desire, the Stoic ideal of apatheia appears as a denial of the fundamental character of life as productive struggle and growth. I suggest that for Nietzsche, openness toward the world and increased capacity for being acted on and affected are the marks of a healthy, life-affirming form of existence and therefore that he must JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 13 21/04/13 12:42 PM14AURELIA ARMSTRONGreject not only a Stoic ethic of heroic endurance but also the dissolution of the boundary between self and world on the same grounds because both postures express a negative evaluation of our capacity to be affected. In turning now to consider the alternative metaphysics and ethics that Spinoza and Nietzsche put forward,I arguethattheirethicisdistinguished fromaStoicethicby virtue of its incorporation of a positive assessment of the value of the capacity to be affected into its ideal of human freedom and flourishing.Joyful Passions as a Condition of Flourishing: SpinozaSpinoza and Nietzsche are united in their insistence on the radical immanence of human beings in nature (see BGE 230). For both, nature is to be understood in terms of a single principle of dynamic powerconatus in Spinoza and will to power in Nietzsche a striving or desire for expansion and growth, an effort to develop ones cognitive and corporeal forces in the direction of increasing the power to act, that is necessarily conditioned by the activity of other things. Inotherwords,theactivityandgrowthofparticularindividualsinnatureis alwaysafunctionofbothactingandbeingactedon,ofaffectingandbeing affected. To exist, to be a living thing, is to strive to increase ones power in and through (affective) exchanges with an environment. The principle of the radical immanence of the human in nature thus entails the impossibility of transcending ones relations, in other words, the impossibility of eradicating passivity and, therefore, the passions, since these are the affective and ideational markers of our susceptibility to being affected by the external world. It is on the basis of this theoretical foundation that Spinoza and Nietzsche develop their ethics or practical philosophy. For both, ethics provides guidance for maximizing power or activity; that is, for realizing an essentially limited but expandable freedom for a self conceived as necessarily embodied and embedded in a natural and social environment within which it strives more or less effectively for self-development and growth. An ethics that focuses on power enhancement rather than on the achievement of a fully realized freedom or psychological independence from external determination opens up the possibility of a more positive assessment of the passions, insofar as it allows for a distinction to be made between that which promotes onespowerandthatwhich diminishesit.Interms of these criteria, only those passions that harm us, that deplete our power, that prevent us from becoming more active will count as bad. To the extent that certain kinds of passivity and passion are the condition for activity or help to augment it, they can be good.24This idea of a special cooperation between activity and passivity is at the heart ofSpinozasrethinkingoftheaffectsandtheirroleinethicallife.Although Spinoza follows the Stoics in drawing a distinction between rational action as JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 14 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY15self-caused activity and passion as external determination, he makes it clear that in the strict sense God alone is a free cause. For God alone exists only from the necessity of his nature . . . and acts from the necessity of his nature (EIp17cor2). All other beings, or finite modes, are determined to exist and act by another and to produce an effect in a certain and determinate manner (EIp17). God (or nature) alone, as an infinite being, is completely self-determining because there is nothing outside him that could limit him (EIp17). In claiming that finite beings are subject to strict determinism, Spinoza is not denying them a limited freedom and activity. He is claiming, rather, that the capacity of finite modes to exist and to act is necessarily conditioned by the activity of other existing things.25 We can understand Spinozas position here as an attempt to unsettle the false dichotomy between total passivity on the one hand and activity as self-origination and con-trol on the other. For Spinoza, finite beings are neither completely active nor completely passive. Rather, their activity is caused both by the action of other things on them and by their own power of acting, that is, by the immanent power of God or nature, which acts through each thing. It is because the essence of natural individuals is potentia agendi et patiendi that human power is expressed as conatus, that is, as the inherent striving of the individual for self-maintenance, expansion, and growth through exchanges with an environment. That is, the activ-ity of finite individuals is a function of being affected in order to affect (i.e., to act). What Spinoza denies is that our powers of acting and thinking could ever be unconditioned and therefore that an individual could ever be the originating or sole cause of any activity. For Spinoza, we can produce the effects of which we are capable or develop those powers of thinking and acting that follow from our nature or essence only in collaboration with other individuals to whom we are related as parts of larger wholes. And this is because our power as individu-als is infinitely surpassed by the power of external forces, so that if we are to persist and thrive, we must augment our powers through cooperative and mutually empowering interactions with external things.This vital interplay between our capacity to act and be acted on, to affect and be affected, is one of the most strikingly original aspects of Spinozas ethics. For Spinoza, our receptivity, or openness to what can affect us, both leaves us vulnerable to those passions that undermine the striving for self-determination and increases our power of acting. As Hans Jonas observes, although our capacity to be affected may expose us to disempowering, destructive passions and desires, it is nevertheless the case that only by being sensitive can life be active, only by being exposed can it be autonomous.26 It is in his theory of the affects that Spinoza articulates the link between the power of acting and affectivity. Spinoza defines affects as affections of the Body, by which the Bodys power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections. Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the affect an action; otherwise a passion (EIIIdef3).JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 15 21/04/13 12:42 PM16AURELIA ARMSTRONGSpinozadistinguishesherebetweenactivityandpassivityintermsofthe distinction between adequate and partial causation. We are said to act or to be active when we are the adequate cause of our thoughts, actions, and emotions, that is, when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, and can be understood through it alone (EIIIdef2). We are, on the other hand, said to be passive when what we do, think, and feel is not explicable solely in terms of our own nature but must also be explained by the influence of external causes. This distinction between actions and passions is complicated, however, by a division internal to the category of passive affects, between those that correspond to an increase in the bodys power of acting and those that involve a decrease in this power. Spinoza develops this distinction in terms of the primary affects of joy and sadness. He defines joy as that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection and sadness as that passion by which it passes to a lesser perfec-tion. Spinoza understands by perfection the essence of a thing (EIVpref). The essence of the mind consists in its activity, that is, in the fact that it thinks adequately or understands (EIVp26d). So, in the case of joyful passions, which are the affective indicator of an increase in power or perfection brought about by an external cause, the power of thinking adequately is augmented by external things. If the path of ethical perfection is understood in terms of the transition from relative passivity to increased activity, then we can say that anything that reliably promotes our joy and protects us from sadness would be regarded by Spinozaascontributingtowhateveractivity,perfection,orvirtue(theseare synonyms for Spinoza) we are capable of achieving. Thus, against the Stoics and their rejection of the value of external things to human flourishing, Spinoza is able to assert not only that we can never bring it about that we require noth-ing outside ourselves to preserve out being but furthermore that our intellect would of course be more imperfect if the mind were alone and did not understand anything except itself. There are, therefore, many things outside us which are useful to us, and on that account to be sought (EIVp18schol).But it is not just the minds increased perfection and activity that concerns Spinoza. Or, rather, in a move that further distances him from the Stoics, Spinoza asserts that physical well-being and increased perfection are the preconditions for an individuals securing an increased capability for being affected and affect-ing and therefore of thinking.27 This contention follows from his understanding of the substantial identity of mind and body. For Spinoza, mind is the idea of body and monitors in awareness the series of states of its body object (EIIp11). Themorecomplexthebody,thegreateritscapacitytobeaffectedbyother bodies. A defining feature of highly complex and powerful bodies is, therefore, a capacity for being acted on in many ways at once (EIIp13schol). Spinoza linksthebodysincreasedcapacityforbeingaffectedandaffectingwithan increase in the minds powers of perception and thought (EIVp38dem). If we want to perfect our intellect, we must do more than simply provide the body JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 16 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY17with basic necessities: Indeed, the human body is composed of a great many parts ofdifferent natures, which require continuous and varied food so that the whole body may be equally capable of doing everything which can follow from its nature, and consequently, so that the mind may also be equally capable of conceiving many things (EIVappXXVII).It is by expanding a bodys favorable, empowering contacts with its environ-ment so that it has more things in common with other bodies that the mind related to this body becomes more capable of thinking adequately, that is, of forming adequate ideas of its affections and affects.28 And it is because Spinozas eth-ics is concerned with the empowerment and liberation of the whole person as a union of mind and body that he rejects the Stoic reification of mind. For Spinoza, liberation cannot be conceived in purely psychological terms, cannot be thought of simply as a mental liberation from the passions, for the simple reason that our minds are not separable from our desires, bodies, and situatedness. On the con-trary, our minds are determined by desires that express our bodys material and social relations. As a consequence, cognitive therapy alone cannot liberate us. Or, more precisely, the transformation of our desires, values, and beliefs entails the transformation of material conditions, since they are in fact expressions of the same reality. It is for this reason that Spinoza presents the path of ethical liberation as realized in a process of increasing our power through broadening our cognitive and corporeal engagements with the world. It is on the basis of a diverse and rich set of relations with other beings in nature that we become capable of deepening our understanding of the affective relations that determine us as parts of a more encompassing whole. While Spinoza agrees with the Stoics in affirming independence of mind as the goal of therapy, he departs from the Stoics in refusing to construe independence as a function of transcending our affective attachments and relations with the world.29Spinozasrecognitionoftheinterdependenceofpassiveandactivepower andofhowanincreaseintheoneentailsanincreaseintheotherimpliesa revaluation of our vulnerability, receptivity, and openness to what can affect usa revaluationthatappearsespeciallyinhisconsiderationofthewaysin which the passions themselves might be made to support our striving to increase our power.30 He suggests that by building on and optimizing joyful pleasures anddesireswemayincreaseourpower,perfection,andvirtue.Considerin this regard his claim that the greater the joy with which we are affected, the greater the perfection towards which we pass (EIVP45schol), so that if a man affected with Joy were led to such a great perfection that he conceived himself and his actions adequately, he would be capableindeed more capableof the same actions to which he is now determined from affects which are passions (EIVP59dem). Although passive joys and desires are an increase of our power brought about by an external cause, Spinoza nevertheless recommends a thera-peuticstrategythatbuildsonandredirectssuchpleasuresanddesiresrather JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 17 21/04/13 12:42 PM18AURELIA ARMSTRONGthan advocating an approach that would restrict, control, or eliminate them. He can do so because he understands joy as an increase in activity, an increase in our striving. Desires arising from joy are strengthened by joyful affects, by the power of external causes. Because human power is augmented by the power of an external cause in the experience of joy, Spinoza is able to accord a role to passive joy in his account of the transition to freedom. It is not surprising, therefore,tofindjoyemphasizedinSpinozassummaryofhisremediesfor passivity in the final part of the Ethics, where he exhorts us to attend to those things which are good in each thing so that in this way we are always determined to acting from an affect of joy (EVp10schol). That Spinoza diverges decisively from the Stoics in according value to human passivity is ultimately confirmed in his theory of the highest good. For Spinoza, our highest good is to know and love God. As Matthew Kisner explains, such knowledge counts as a kind of joy because knowing God increases our power, and as a kind of love because it comes about, at least partly, from an external cause, God, expressed as the prior modes that are the ultimate source of all our power. In this way, Spinoza claims that the thing of greatest value and the goal of an ethical life is an understanding of ourselves as dependent on and passive to God.31 In the understanding and affirmation of our passivity and our determination by the whole we become as powerful, active, and joyful as we can be.The Value of Suffering: NietzscheLike Spinoza, Nietzsche recognizes and affirms the complex interplay between the capacity to affect and to be affected as fundamental to life, to growth in power, and to health. It is in just these terms that he frames his criticisms of the Stoic therapeutic model. When he claims that the Stoics were consistent when they [. . .] desired as little pleasure as possible, in order to get as little displeasure as possible out of life, he makes it clear that his own instincts tend in the opposite direction: To this day you have the choice: either as little displeasure as pos-sible, painlessness in brief . . . or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet (GS 12). Here Nietzsche hints at two therapeutic strategies for deal-ing with the pain and suffering that are the inevitable lot of vulnerable, natural creatures. The Stoic strategy, of which Nietzsche is largely critical in The Gay Science, is characterized by its negative evaluation of our capacity to be affected: it recommends a general loss of sensitiveness as the remedy for pain and suffer-ing. But this leads, Nietzsche argues, not to the augmentation of lifes forces, to joy and activity, but to their depletion and impoverishment. The reduction of our capacity for suffering also reduces our capacity for joy. Nietzsche elaborates on these criticisms of the Stoic account of suffering in a companion note from 1881:JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 18 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY19I believe that we do not understand Stoicism for what it really is. Its essential feature as an attitude of the soulwhich is what it originally was before being taken over by philosophyis its comportment toward pain and representations of the unpleasant: an intensification of a certain heaviness and weariness to the utmostdegreeinordertoweakentheexperienceofpain.Itsbasicmotifsare paralysis and coldness, hence a form of anesthesia. The principal aim of Stoic edificationistoeliminateanyinclinationtoexcitement,continuallytolessen the number of things that might offer enticement, to awaken distaste for and to belittle the value of most things that offer stimulation, to hate excitement as an enemy; indeed, to hate the passions themselves as if they were a form of disease or something entirely unworthy; for they are the hallmark of every despicable and painful manifestation of suffering. In summa: turning oneself into stone as a weapon against suffering and in future conferring all worthy names of divine-like virtues upon a statue. [. . .] If a Stoic attains the character he seeksfor the mostparthealreadypossessesthischaracterandthereforechoosesthisphi-losophythe loss of feeling reached is the result of the pressure of a tourniquet. I am very antipathetic to this line of thought. It undervalues the value of pain (it is as useful and necessary as pleasure), the value of stimulation and suffering. It is finally compelled to say: everything that happens is acceptable to me; nothing is to be different. There are no needs over which it triumphs because it has killed the passion for needs. (KSA 9:15[55], pp. 65253)32In articulating the reasons for his antipathy to the Stoic strategy of extirpation, Nietzsche reiterates his view that Stoicism undervalues pain, stimulation, and suffering. Peter Groff argues that this criticism is potentially misleading insofar as it serves to cover over a deeper affinity between Nietzsche and the Stoics. To see this affinity we need, Groff says, to distinguish between eliminating suffering and banishing sorrow. While suffering can be understood as an inescapable fact of embodied existence[,] . . . sorrow is merely one optional interpretation of that experience. In other words, sorrow and joy both have to do with ones interpretation and evaluation of the meaning and value of suffering.33 Groff argues that the Stoics and Nietzsche are actually united in their acknowledgment of the impossibility of eliminating suffering but not sorrow.No one could argue with Groffs claim that Nietzsches fundamental orienta-tion toward existence is not one of recoiling, sadness, or regret, but rather one of affirmation, gaiety, cheerfulness, and joy or, in other words, that Nietzsche refuses to interpret suffering as an objection to existence.34 A close reading of the 1881 note, however, reveals that, contra Groff, Nietzsche does believe that aStoicattitudetowardexistenceconstitutesaneffectivewayofminimizing existential suffering and that it also expresses a sorrowful rather than a joyful or life-affirming interpretation of existence. Moreover, it is clear from what Nietzsche says both in this unpublished note and in published comments that he does not object to Stoic therapy on the grounds that it works to deaden painful affects. On the contrary, he recognizes that under certain circumstances resorting to radical measures like anesthesia and extirpation in the struggle against unbear-able suffering or debilitating passions like fear is an essential expedient for the JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 19 21/04/13 12:42 PM20AURELIA ARMSTRONGpreservation of life (see GS 306). The fact that Nietzsche does not criticize Stoic therapy as a way of managing the passions under conditions of duress helps to clarify the real target of his criticism. For Nietzsche, the folly of Stoic ethics is in turning a useful strategy for dealing with destructive or debilitating passions into an ideal of human flourishing. It is the Stoic ideal of virtue as freedom from passion, along with the interpretation and evaluation of existence that undergirds this ideal, that Nietzsche calls into question.Nietzsche evaluates this ideal from the perspective of promoting the enhance-ment and growth of human power. For Nietzsche, power is essentially a mat-ter of growth and expansion, a matter of increase and becoming more. In a remarkable echo of Spinoza, Nietzsche characterizes happiness as [t]he feeling that power increases, that resistance is overcome (A 53).35 In other words, hap-piness or joy is the affective marker of successful striving to increase power against resistance, whether internal (other drives and affects) or external. This conception of the mechanism of power increase is clearly at play in Nietzsches objections to the Stoic ideal of virtue. In denying value to stimulation, suffering, and passion, Stoicism also denies what is for Nietzsche a fundamental condi-tion for growth in activity and joy; namely, openness to being affected. Insofar as Stoic ethics advocates withdrawal, endurance, and indifference toward the world, it closes the door to valuable sources of stimulation and struggle, thus impeding rather than promoting human freedom and flourishing.We can deepen our understanding of Nietzsches critique of Stoic ethics if weconsiderthewayhecharacterizesthedesirethatanimatesit.Thedesire forredemptionfromaworldthatisexperiencedasthesourceofunwanted suffering is typical, Nietzsche claims in GS 370, of those who suffer from the impoverishmentoflife.Thoselackinginstrengthandvitalitytypicallyseek either enclosure in optimistic horizons as a means of insulating the self from a world perceived as the source of suffering or some form of affective discharge that serves to numb pain. The need for such measures betrays an incapacity to affirm growing and struggling life (GS 370), or life in its character as growth and struggle. The selection of radical expedients like extirpation in the struggle against a desire or passion is characteristic of those who are too weak-willed, too degenerate to impose moderation upon it (TI Morality as Anti-Nature, 2). By contrast, openness towards pain and suffering, perceived as necessary for growth and production is the mark of healthy, strong natures that enjoy an excess of life, that are strong enough to be open to the contingencies of the world, that are strong enough to be porous rather than hard.36 In this light, Stoic insensitiv-ity, detachment, and self-control no longer seem to be valuable attributes, to represent heroism or strength. On the contrary, they appear as signs of weakness, as forms of self-protection that express a fear of the world and its contingencies. Insofar as the Stoic ideal of virtue gives expression to a desire to be free from passion and suffering, Nietzsche pronounces it hostile to life.JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 20 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY21Herman Siemens argues that Nietzsches distinction between impoverishment and excess serves to distinguish a bad from a good form of therapy. The differ-ence between the two does not turn on the criterion of effectiveness as pain relief but rather is determined by the degree to which a particular therapeutic strategy exhibits an ability to affirm life as it is. Following Spinoza, Nietzsche suggests that to affirm life as it is means affirming the belonging together of pleasure and displeasure, of health and sickness: the simultaneous growth in passive and active power. An ethic of self-control that emphasizes the attainment of a fixed and final second nature, of a health and activity definitively freed from sickness and passion, cannot be life affirming. It would, thus, as R. O. Elveton observes, be a mistake to read Nietzsche as offering a new version of an ethics of self-control.37 Elveton sees Nietzsches opposition to the mastery of self-control recommended by Stoicism as entailing a rejection of the Stoic erection of a fixed boundary between a clearly identifiable mine and not-mine.38 While Stoicself-controldependsontheassumptionoftheexternalityoftheworld and consequently imagines self-realization as independence, self-sufficiency, and retreat into the inner citadel, Elveton reads Nietzsche as urging acceptance of the world that is as a world that profoundly extends into my own depths, challengingmetorethinkandreinterpretmyinteriorlife.39Toacceptthe world as extending into ones depths is, I would argue, to expand the boundaries of the self to encompass its affective relations with the world, which is exactly what Nietzsche does. Nietzsche follows Spinoza in conceiving of the self as inclusive of its desires, drives, and affects. The self is not a doer behind the deed, not a thing that thinks, desires, and feels, but is the activity of thinking, desiring, and feeling. What Nietzsche adds to this Spinozist view is an apprecia-tion of the internal multiplicity of the self, which he expresses in terms of the metaphor of the soul as the social structure of the drives and the emotions in their relations to one another (BGE 12). This process of internalization of affect and subsequent expansion of the inner world ironically owes something to the Stoic insight that our affects depend on our judgments about the value of things. This dependence of the affects on cognition internalizes my relations to the world and, for the Stoics, enables me to assume responsibility for my affec-tive responses. But while Nietzsche follows the Stoics in conceiving of affects as felt inclinations and aversions that, as such, express judgments of value, he also embraces Spinozas denial of the existence of a faculty of the will, distinct from intellect and desire, that would allow us to manipulate or control our affects. We are left, then, with an internal multiplicity of often conflicting drives and affects that we cannot surmount, transcend, or ultimately control. On these seemingly unpromising grounds Nietzsche develops an alternative account of flourishing as self-mastery. The virtue we are now called on to exercise is that of creatively shapingandtransformingtheinnerworld.Forthisformofself-creativityto result in the enhancement of power, in growth and fertility, it must not weaken JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 21 21/04/13 12:42 PM22AURELIA ARMSTRONGor excise the passions. Instead, Nietzsche exhorts us to put the passions, those impetuoustorrentsofthesoulthataresooftendangerousandoverwhelm-ing (KSA 13:14[163]), into service and subject them to a protracted tyranny (KSA 12:1[122]), so that they may be turned to our advantage, becoming sources of strength and vitality instead of suffering.40 Creation is, thus, the great redemp-tion from suffering (Z II: On the Blissful Islands).University of Queenslanda.armstrong@uq.edu.auNOTESIwouldliketothankKeithAnsell-PearsonandMichaelUrefortheirencouragementandfor critical feedback on this paper. I am also grateful to Tom Gibson for invaluable editorial assistance and suggestions, and to Juliana Mercon and John Atkins for thoughtful comments.1. Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 190.2. RichardSchacht,TheSpinoza-NietzscheProblem,inDesireandAffect:Spinozaas Psychologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999), 213.3. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1995), 102.4. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 107.5. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 108.6. See, for example, GM P:5. In this article, I cite the following translations of Nietzsches works:CarolDiethestranslationofOntheGenealogyofMorality(Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress,1994);WalterKaufmannstranslationsofTheGayScience(NewYork: Vintage, 1974), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (New York: Penguin, 1978), and Beyond Good and Evil (New York: Vintage, 1966); Kaufmanns and R. J. Hollingdales translation of The Will to Power (New York: Vintage, 1968); and Hollingdales translation of The Twilight of the Idols, in Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (New York: Penguin, 1968).7. Epictetus,Handbook1.13,quotedinJohnSellars,AnEthicsoftheEvent:Deleuzes Stoicism, Angelaki 11. 3 (2006): 162.8. IciteEdwinCurleystranslationoftheEthicsfromTheCollectedWorksofSpinoza (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). When referring to the Ethics I use the standard abbreviations: a Roman numeral to refer to the part, D for definition, A for axiom, p plusanArabicnumeralforaproposition,corforcorollary,demfordemonstration, schol for scholium, pref for preface.9. Firmin Debrabander, Spinoza and the Stoics: Power, Politics and the Passions (London: Continuum,2007),17.OnSpinozasrelationshiptoStoicism,seealsoP.O.Kristeller,Stoic andNeoplatonicSourcesofSpinozasEthics,HistoryofEuropeanIdeas5.1(1984):115, Susan James, Spinoza the Stoic, in The Rise of Modern Philosophy, ed. Tom Sorrell (Oxford, UK:ClarendonPress,1993),289316,andAlexandreMatheron,Lemomentstociende l'thique de Spinoza, in Le stoicisme aux XVIe et XVIIe sicles, ed. Jacqueline Lagre (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1994), 14762.10. Alexandre Matheron, Le moment stocien de l'thique de Spinoza, 147.11. MarthaNussbaum,PityandMercy:NietzschesStoicism,inNietzsche,Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsches On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Richard Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 140.JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 22 21/04/13 12:42 PMTHE PASSIONS, POWER, AND PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY2312. Nussbaum, Pity and Mercy, 154.13. MichaelUre,NietzschesFreeSpiritTrilogyandStoicTherapy,JournalofNietzsche Studies, no. 38 (2009): 6084.14. Ure, Nietzsches Free Spirit Trilogy and Stoic Therapy, 72.15. OnNietzschesrelationshiptoStoicism,seeThomasBrobjer,NietzschesReading ofEpictetus,Nietzsche-Studien32(2003):42934,R.O.Elveton,NietzschesStoicism: TheDepthsareInside,inNietzscheand Antiquity,ed.PaulBishop(Rochester,NY:Camden House, 2004), 192203, Peter S. Groff, Al-Kindi and Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, no. 28 (2004): 13973, Donald Rutherford, Freedom as a Philosophical Ideal: Nietzsche and His Antecedents, Inquiry 54.5 (2011): 51240, and Michael Ure,NietzschesTherapy:Self-CultivationintheMiddleWorks(Lanham,MD:Lexington Books, 2008).16. Yovel, The Adventures of Immanence, xi.17. ThefollowingsummaryofStoicmetaphysicsandethicsisdrawnfromanumberof sources,includingDerkPereboom,StoicPsychotherapyinDescartesandSpinoza,Faith andPhilosophy11.4(1994):592625,MarthaNussbaum,The TherapyofDesire: Theoryand Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. chaps. 9 and 10, and John Sellars, Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).18. MarcusAurelius,TheMeditations,trans.G.M.A.Grube(Indianapolis,IN:Hackett, 1983), 40.19. Epictetus, Handbook, 1.13, quoted in Sellars, An Ethics of the Event 162.20. Pereboom, Stoic Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza, 615.21. Sellars, An Ethics of the Event, 163.22. Sellars, An Ethics of the Event, 164.23. ForadiscussionofthewayinwhichSpinozastreatmentoftheselfasinclusiveofits relations challenges atomic individualism, see Aurelia Armstrong, Autonomy and the Relational Individual in Spinoza and Feminism, in Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza, ed. Moira Gatens (College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 4363. See also Michael Collier, TheMaterialityofMorals:Mind,Body,andInterestsinSpinozasEthics,StudiaSpinozana 7 (1991): 285308, and Heidi M. Ravven, Spinozas Individualism Reconsidered: Some Lessons fromtheShort TreatiseonGod,Man,andHis Well-Being,inSpinoza:Critical Assessmentsof Leading Philosophers, vol. 1, ed. Genevieve Lloyd (London: Routledge, 2001), 387410.24. MatthewKisner,inSpinozaonHumanFreedom:Reason, AutonomyandtheGoodLife (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), claims that Spinozas ethics is best understood asdirectedatexpandinghumanfreedomandpowerratherthanasexclusivelyconcernedwith psychological liberation from the passions. On his reading, achieving the ethical goal of freedom requires evaluating the passions according to whether they harm or promote human activity.25. SeeSpinozasstatementofdeterminisminEIp28:Anythingwhichisfiniteandhas adeterminateexistence,canneitherexistnorbedeterminedtoproduceaneffectunlessit isdeterminedtoexistandproduceaneffectbyanothercause,whichisalsofiniteandhasa determinate existence, and so on.26. Hans Jonas, Spinozas Theory of Organism, in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Marjorie Grene (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973), 273.27. FortheStoics,asNussbaumexplains,itemsthatarenotfullyunderthecontrolofthe agentsuch as health, wealth, freedom from pain, the good functioning of bodily facultieshave nointrinsicworth,noristheircausalrelationshiptoeudaimoniaeventhatofaninstrumental necessary condition. At best, such items are preferred indifferents that make no contribution to virtue (The Therapy of Desire, 35960.)Foranexcellentdiscussionofhowphysicalwell-beingandincreasedperfectionare prerequisitesofouraffectingandbeingaffected,seeUrsulaGoldenbaum,TheAffectsas JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 23 21/04/13 12:42 PM24AURELIA ARMSTRONGa Condition of Human Freedom in Spinozas Ethics, in Spinoza on Reason and the Free Man, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (New York: Little Room Press, 2004), 155.28. SeeE11p39whereSpinozaobservesthatthemindisthemorecapableofperceiving many things adequately as its body has many things in common with other bodies.29. See Heidi Ravven, Spinozas Ethics of the Liberation of Desire, in Women and Gender inJewishPhilosophy,ed.HavaTirosh-Samuelson(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 2004), 81.30. ThecontroversialclaimthatSpinozaenvisagesaroleforthepassionsinalifeofvirtue isdefendedbyGoldenbauminTheAffectsasaConditionofHumanFreedominSpinozas EthicsandalsobyMatthewKisnerinSpinozasVirtuousPassions,ReviewofMetaphysics 61.4 (2008): 75983.31. Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom, 240.32. Quoted in Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 200.33. Groff, Al-Kindi and Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow, 154.34. Groff, Al-Kindi and Nietzsche on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow, 154.35. See also Nietzsches characterization of freedom in TI Expeditions of an Untimely Man 38:Howisfreedommeasured,inindividualsasinnations?Bytheresistancewhichhastobe overcome. [. . .] One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome.36. HermanW.Siemens,NietzschesAgonwithRessentiment:TowardsaTherapeutic Reading of Critical Transvaluation, Continental Philosophy Review 34.1 (2001): 73.37. Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 201.38. Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 201.39. Elveton, Nietzsches Stoicism, 201.40. Translated as The Will to Power, 383, 384.JNS 44.1_02_Armstrong.indd 24 21/04/13 12:42 PM