Virtue (virtus) and power are the same; in humans, virtue is one’s nature or essence insofar as it has power.
By Baruch Spinoza, from Ethics
Key Arguments
- He explicitly equates virtue with power.
- He grounds the human case in essence as power, with a cross-reference to III.vii.
Source Quotes
By an end, for the sake of which we do something, I mean a desire. VIII. By virtue (virtus) and power I mean the same thing; that is (III. vii), virtue, in so far as it is referred to man, is a man's nature or essence, in so far as it has the power of
Key Concepts
- VIII. By virtue (virtus) and power I mean the same thing; that is (III. vii), virtue, in so far as it is referred to man, is a man's nature or essence, in so far as it has the power of
Context
Ethics, Part IV, Definitions (lines 2981–3000): foundational ethical identification of virtue with power; the sentence continues beyond the provided excerpt