However, insofar as we are concerned for the well-being of ourselves and other humans, and we recognize that well-being to depend upon the environment, it will be rational for us to preserve the environment—not for its sake, but for ours. He rejected the specious simplicity obtainable by denying the reality of Matter, or of Mind, or of God. The fact that we ordinarily believe ourselves capable of acting otherwise is an illusion produced by our ignorance of both the physical and psychological forces influencing us, as well as of our own nature (E3p2s). As a result, Spinoza conceives of God as a being that is absolute and perfect by its very nature; humans, by contrast, are dependent and imperfect by their very nature.

Unlike many other authors in this period, however, Spinoza was strongly opposed to anthropocentrism and had no commitment whatsoever to traditional theological views. In the course of developing his moral theory, Spinoza sometimes applies it in passing to what he recognizes are traditional moral problems. That is, the passion of love is a composite idea, and its parts are (i) joy, and (ii) the representation of something external as producing that joy. In his previous book, Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza discussed the inconsistencies that result when God is assumed to have human characteristics.He starts with the proposition that "there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute. Spinoza gives a detailed analysis of the whole gamut of human feelings, and his account is one of the classics of psychology. It is worth mentioning a second argument that comes shortly after, but appears to have very different motivations: “As far as good and evil are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves… For one and the same thing can, at the same time, be good, and bad, and also indifferent. In this perspective, human beings are part of nature, and hence they can be explained and understood in the same way as everything else in nature.

His version of contractarianism is heavily influenced by Hobbes, from whom Spinoza appears to have drawn a number of key ideas. Thus, to strip away the confusion from a passion would require one somehow to strip away some of its causes. How Spinoza came to influence Schopenhauer is not clear, but one might speculate: it could have come from his exposure to Fichte's lectures, from his conversations with Goethe or simply from being caught up in the post- Kantian attempt to rethink the critical philosophy. Hence being guided by pity is inevitably worse than being guided by reason: “a man who lives according to the dictate of reason strives, as far as he can, not to be touched by pity” (E4p50c).And because, in Spinoza’s view, other humans are more useful to us to the extent that they are rational (E4p35c1), it is entirely to our benefit when others pursue the same good—understanding—that we ourselves seek; for detailed exposition of Spinoza’s argument that it is to our benefit to pursue the good of others, see Della Rocca (2004, 125–8), Kisner (2009), and Grey (2013). Accepting such favors or gifts is liable to be dangerous, for the irrational gift-giver will inevitably value them more highly than the free man; the free man reserves his gratitude for the friendship of other rational people (E4p71), insofar as such friendship aids him in his pursuit of greater understanding. In such cases, we can destroy the passion by mentally separating the idea of the external cause that it includes. At the next stage, the stage of "reason", the characteristic feature of the human mind, its intelligence, asserts itself, and helps to emancipate him from his bondage to the senses and external allurements. At the lowest stage of knowledge, that of "opinion", man is under the dominant influence of things outside himself, and so is in the bondage of the passions.

In practice no actual human could live exactly as the free man does, for (as mentioned in part one above) only a substance can be fully rational and active, and humans are not substances. The second premise entails psychological egoism, for it entails that each person will seek his own advantage at all times.Since the model is an idealization, the judgment that something is good or evil does not involve any commitment to objective, mind-independent qualities of goodness or evilness. The conception of the good just outlined is so strikingly focused on human intellectual life that the resulting moral theory may seem far removed from ordinary moral matters. The reason for this is that although his aim is to set forth “the right way of living” (E4app, G II/266) and to explain “what freedom of mind, or blessedness, is” (E5pref, G II/277), his accounts of these things depend upon certain key metaphysical principles that he feels must be established first. Moreover, pity always involves sadness, a form of disempowerment, so considered in itself, it is evil.