Abstract

In Spinoza's work there are two alternative metaethics. The first is a subjective and relativistic one, reducing "good" and "evil" to prejudices of imagination; according to the second, judgements on the "true good" (and then also "virtues", and the whole pattern of a "free man") are formed by reason. The aim of this paper is to understand how they can be reciprocally compatible. The solution can be found in the distinction between two different senses of "metaethics": as a psychological explication of evaluations current among common people, and as a philosophical justification of true evaluations. In the latter sense, Spinoza's metaethics is cognitivistic. The gulf between factual presuppositions and ethic evaluations is by-passed through the way of definitions.