  Spinoza finds that the designation of a thing as good follows from a person’s conative state: Martha is averse to music and therefore she calls it evil. Should the music become good to another person, or perhaps Martha herself in different circumstances, it would not be because the music has changed, but because the person’s conative state is different: she desires the music. (This analysis of the good is similar to Hobbes’s at Leviathan VI. Maimonides, another of Spinoza’s influences, also has a similar analysis: Guide of the Perplexed, III, 13.)