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| 4852 | Both virtue and happiness are based on the preservation of one's own being [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one's own being, and happiness consists in man's power of preserving his own being. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza never actually says so, but this seems to me to point to a Hobbesian social contract account of virtue - that is, that virtue is not an ideal, but a strategy. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian view, that it is an ideal revealed to us by nature. |