Will, Subjectivism, Relativism, Comparativism

Spinoza vacillates, seemingly unwittingly, between two Axiological positions that can be called 'Subjectivism' and 'Relativism'. He expresses the first when he defines 'X is good' as 'I desire X', and the second, when he defines it as 'I know that X is useful to me'. Within his system, the latter, but not necessarily the former, is an adequate idea. Thus, his defense of the hypothesis that someone 'born free' would form no concept of either 'good' or 'evil', on the basis of the classification of any idea of 'evil' as inadequate, is Subjectivistic, not Relativistic. However, on either theory, Spinoza has no way to express the difference between a more useful thing and a less useful thing, i. e. each of which would be deemed to be 'good'. In contrast, here, as has been previously discussed, the quantification of the exercise of Will, i. e. in terms of 'Vols', can accommodate such a distinction. In other words, aside from the Axiological positions Subjectivism and Relativism, there is also Comparativism, i. e. according to which, value judgments are fundamentally in terms of 'better vs. worse', rather than of 'good vs. evil', or of 'good vs. bad'.