1 Servitude as a Paradoxical Object of Desire

Why are humans attracted to prejudice and superstition? Why do they fight for their servitude as if it were their salvation? Why does the desire for life so often turn into its opposite, a desire for oppression? This question is only implicit in Spinoza's work. The phrase that humans ‘fight for [their servitude] as they would for their salvation’ is found in a long passage of the Preface to the TTP in which Spinoza contrasts the main interest of a monarchical regime with that of a free Republic, from the point of view of freedom of judgement. To the implicit ‘why’ of the above question we find only a superficial answer: humans have been deceived. The weight of the question, however, demands a more comprehensive explanation – one that relates to the very constitution of human beings, namely desire (cupiditas). Ethics I, App. and Ethics III, 9 Schol. provide us with some elements of this explanation.

‘Appetite, therefore, is nothing but the very essence of [human beings]’ and we therefore ‘judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, and desire it’. The appendix also says that all are

The definition of human beings as desire (cupiditas), the immediate illusion of their freedom (as free will) and their spontaneous finalist behaviour towards the pursuit of their own advantage are the three points of entry into the problem of servitude.

The illusion of freedom – which Spinoza maintains as an immediate fact of consciousness – and the spontaneous finalist behaviour with respect to one's own advantage necessarily determines the orientation of the conatus towards the teleological fiction.