Power quote by Baruch Spinoza

"Ambition is the immoderate desire for power"

About this Quote

Spinoza frames ambition as a passion swollen beyond the bounds of reason, a desire that mistakes domination for genuine strength. Power, for him, is not simply rule or status; it is the capacity to act, to persevere, to understand, potentia rather than mere authority. When desire for this power becomes immoderate, it ceases to be guided by adequate ideas and slides into servitude to the passions. Such ambition seeks to enlarge the self by controlling others, by collecting honors, wealth, and influence, yet it thereby becomes dependent on external things and on the unstable judgments of people. Dependence is weakness, not power.

Spinoza’s ethics distinguishes active from passive affects. Ambition belongs to the passive sort when it is driven by imagination, envy, fear, and comparison. The ambitious person reads their value off a social mirror, chasing signs of superiority as if they were substance. Paradoxically, this chase shrinks one’s true capacity to act because it ties one’s joy to what cannot be controlled. The more one needs others’ submission or admiration, the less one commands oneself.

There is, however, a positive striving at the heart of human nature, the conatus, to persist and enhance one’s power of acting. When informed by reason, this striving becomes fortitude and generosity: the effort to increase one’s own power by increasing the power of others. Cooperation, shared understanding, and mutual benefit expand everyone’s capacity to act. By contrast, immoderate ambition treats others’ power as a threat and so breeds conflict, deception, and insecurity.

Spinoza does not deny aspiration. He warns against its distortion. To grow in power is good when it means deepening understanding, mastering the passions, and participating in relations that augment life for all. It becomes ambition, and therefore a path to bondage, when measure is lost, when the desire to be powerful is confused with the desire to be above. True power is self-mastery within a common world, not mastery over others.

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About the Author

Baruch Spinoza This quote is written / told by Baruch Spinoza between November 24, 1632 and February 21, 1677. He was a famous Philosopher from Netherland, the quote is categorized under the topic Power. The author also have 45 other quotes.
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