Spinoza's cognitive affects and their feel

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Notes

¹I follow convention in translating Spinoza's term affectus as ‘affect’, though ‘emotion’ would be acceptable in the context of this article. In other contexts, however, affectus is not well rendered as ‘emotion’, since affectus refers to a phenomenon both mental and physical, as well as one either passive or active, while ‘emotion’ may connote a mental state one undergoes, which is closer to Spinoza's term passio, which is only one kind of affectus. See The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) 625. Note also that a similar convention exists in German and French, where affectus is translated as das Affekt and l'affect, rather than as das Gefühl or l'emotion. See, for example, Wolfgang Bartushat's and Bernard Pautrat's translations: Ethik (Hamburg: Meiner, 1992) 223 and Spinoza: Éthique (Éditions du Seuil, 1999) 203.

²Hume's view may in fact be more complex than this. For Hume, passions are not propositional, though they may perhaps have intentional objects. In the case of pride, for example, the passion takes as its intentional objects the thing in which one takes pride and oneself. The passion has such objects in virtue of its being a complex mental state involving both a non-representational passion and representational ideas. For a related discussion of the cognitive nature of pride, see Donald Davidson, ‘Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride’, Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976) No. 19: 744–56. For an opposing view, see Annette Baier, ‘Hume's Analysis of Pride’, Journal of Philosophy, 75 (1978) No. 1: 27–40. For Hume's claim that the intellect is not involved in the passions, which bear no truth value, see Hume, Treatise, Book II, Part iii, Section 3 and Book III, Part i, Section 1.

³William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950 [1890]) Vol. 2, p. 449.

⁴Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 114.

⁵According to Robert Solomon, ‘emotions are a kind of judgment’, as he says in a variety places, for example, ‘Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings’, Thinking About Feeling, edited by Robert Solomon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 76. Although Spinoza's view is superficially very similar to Solomon's in that both take emotions to be judgements, I would not attribute to Spinoza the details of Solomon's theory, which involves a sophisticated explanation of emotion as a nexus of certain kinds of judgement, intention and desire.

⁶For more contemporary discussion of this issue, see Solomon's Thinking About Feeling volume, as well as Philosophy and the Emotions, edited by Anthony Hatzimoysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

⁷Michael Della Rocca, ‘Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 243. See also Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind–Body Problem in Spinoza (Representation) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) 7f, where he also argues this point.

⁸Don Garrett, ‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 275. R. J. Delahunty agrees as well in his Spinoza (London: Routledge, 1985) 244. See also Charles Jarrett, ‘Teleology and Spinoza's Doctrine of Final Causes’, Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, edited by Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999) 13. Jonathan Bennett also agrees that Spinoza ‘is trying to make the attribute of thought as cognitive as possible’ in his treatment of the emotions in A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, (Study) (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984) 256.

⁹This may be what Edwin Curley has in mind when he says, ‘… I think it is an overgeneralization to suppose that all emotions must include a cognitive element, and that the cognitive element must always cause the non-cognitive element in the emotion’ (Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) 169, fn56). He does not explain what he means by ‘non-cognitive element’.

¹⁰Gideon Segal, ‘Beyond Subjectivity: Spinoza's Cognitivism of the Emotions’ (‘Cognitivism’) British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (2000) No. 1: 1–19.

¹¹For discussions of this identification, see Jonathan Bennett, Study, 162–7; R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza, 33–6; and Henry Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) 119–23. See especially Michael Della Rocca, ‘The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will’ (‘Power of an Idea’), Noûs 37 (2003) 200–31, who argues this point in great detail. My discussion here owes much to Della Rocca's and Bennett's work.

¹²This is not to say that Spinozist ideas are all-things-considered judgements, by any means. In fact, they need not even be judgements at which we consciously arrive at all. By judgement, I mean nothing more than some proposition that we affirm. Instead of calling Spinozist ideas ‘judgments’, I could have chosen to call them ‘beliefs’. I chose ‘judgement’, however, because it connotes an act of mind more strongly than ‘belief’. This emphasis on mental action better accords with Spinoza's intent, as I will discuss below. This is essentially Descartes's notion of judgement as well, for he holds a judgement to be nothing more than the volitional act in which we assent to some idea. See, for example, Descartes's Principles, I, §34 (CSMK I, 204; AT VIIIA/18). All citations of Descartes are to John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge University Press, 1985) in 2 vols and to Cottingham, Stoothoff, Murdoch and Anthony Kenny, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge University Press, 1991) Vol. 3; all three volumes of which are hereafter cited as CSMK. Original language references are to Adam and Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes (revised edition, Paris: Vrin, 1964–76), hereafter AT.

¹³2d3; Curley, 447; Geb II/84. All citations of Spinoza are taken from The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) I; hereafter cited as ‘Curley’. Original language references are to Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925) in 4 vols, hereafter cited as ‘Geb’. I follow Curley's translation in this essay and employ the notation used by Jonathan Bennett and Michael Della Rocca, which is similar to Curley's. So, 2d3 is Part 3, definition 3 (and ‘p’ for proposition, ‘a’ for axiom, ‘d’ following the final Arabic number for demonstration, ‘s’ for scholium, ‘c’ for corollary).

¹⁴See, for example, Descartes's Letter to Regius, May 1641, (CSMK III, 182; AT III/372) and Passions I, 17 (CSM I, 335; AT XI/342).

¹⁵For a similar view of this definition and its explanation, see Martial Gueroult, Spinoza: II – L'âme (Paris: Aubier, 1974) 21–2. Gueroult also connects Spinoza's emphasis on activity in 2d3 to 2p49, as I do below. For a different view, see Wolfgang Bartuschat, Spinozas Theorie des Menschen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1992) 69, and Wolfgang Röd, Benedictus de Spinoza: Eine Einführung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002) 64f, who both connect this definition to 2p11, where Spinoza defines the human mind as an idea. They both take this emphasis on action in 2d3 to be Spinoza's way of defining the human mind as a res cogitans, since the mind is an idea and ideas are acts of thought. I do not find their arguments for this connection to be persuasive.

¹⁶This view is widely accepted among commentators, as I have mentioned in the Introduction. For example, see Michael Della Rocca, Representation, 7, who says, ‘When Spinoza speaks of ideas, he means psychological items that have content, that are about something’. Della Rocca also rejects the logical interpretation of ideas about to be discussed, as I do.

¹⁷I say ‘representation or mental act’ for the following reason. Among Spinoza's contemporaries, there was a difference of opinion concerning the nature of ideas. Some, such as Malebranche, saw ideas as objects of the mind; others, such as Arnauld, saw ideas as forms of mental actions, such as perception. I will not discuss whether Spinoza takes ideas to be objects created by a mental act or the acts of mind themselves because it is not relevant to my purpose here. For a discussion of this distinction in Descartes, Arnauld and Malebranche, see Steven Nadler, Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) and Nadler, Malebranche and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

¹⁸For an interpretation that takes ideas at least sometimes to be logical entities, see Edwin Curley, Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968) 124f. For a criticism of that interpretation, see Bennett, Study, 50–4, as well as Della Rocca, Representation, 8. According to Bennett, Albert Balz believes that Spinoza's use of ‘idea’ refers to logical entities throughout the Ethics. Curley recognises that the ideas discussed in 2p48 are not logical entities, however, because he believes Spinoza switches from a logical conception to a psychological conception with the introduction of ideas of ideas (see 2p29 for that doctrine).

¹⁹For evidence that Spinoza would reject a non-cognitive account of imaginations, consider what he says in 2p49s, where he claims that our visual imagination of a winged horse involves the affirmation of wings to a horse. In other words, these imaginations are affirmations and are propositional in structure.

²⁰Della Rocca, ‘Power of an Idea’. Gueroult agrees with my reading, glossing 2p49 as follows: ‘Les différents actes d'affirmer ou nier (les volitions) ne sont pas extérieurs aux idées, mais appartiennent à leur essence’ (Gueroult, Spinoza: II – L'âme, 497).

²¹Spinoza does not specify the nature of this ‘involvement’ between mode of thought and idea, which is what allows the ‘standard reading’ its plausibility, though Della Rocca gives definitive reasons to reject it. As I have suggested, I believe 2p49 itself implies that the involvement in question is an essential connection. Consider 1a7, which says, ‘If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence’ (my emphasis; Curley, 410; Geb II/47). I take this to be something like ‘… its essence does not contain existence’ or ‘its essence is not identical to its existence’, as is the case with Substance, as explained by Spinoza in 1p7. Similarly, if we say that the essence of an idea involves a volition, I take that to mean that ideas essentially have a volitional nature, i.e. ideas essentially are volitions. Ideas are cognitions that have a volitional nature; a volition is a psychological affirmation of a cognition. I take the French and German translations to follow my interpretation, rendering involvere as envelopper and einschließen or in sich schließen, which all translate roughly as ‘to contain’ or ‘to include’. See, for example, Bartushat's and Pautrat's translations: Ethik, 199 and Spinoza: Éthique, 185. For the relation between cause and essence, see Della Rocca, Representation, Chapters 4 and 5.

²²See, for example, Edwin Curley, ‘Descartes, Spinoza and the Ethics of Belief’, Spinoza: Essays in Interpretation, Eugene Freeman and Maurice Mandelbaum, eds. (LaSalle: LaSalle University Press, 1975) 159–89, reprinted in Spinoza: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, edited by Genevieve Lloyd (London: Routledge, 2004) 193–218 (all pages references here are to the 2004 reprinting), especially 201f. Of the latter half of this demonstration, Bennett, Study, 167, says, ‘[Spinoza] asserts without argument … It is puzzling that we should be expected to swallow this whole, if “affirmation” means “belief”’. Bennett and Della Rocca (‘Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 202) both recognise and condemn this shortcoming in 2p49d. Bennett explains this lapse by claiming that Spinoza confounded two theses: that ideas are propositionally structured and that ideas are beliefs. Della Rocca disagrees, defending Spinoza as intending to offer an interesting theory of belief. I agree with Della Rocca that Spinoza certainly takes ‘affirmation’ to mean something like ‘belief’ or perhaps ‘judgement’. I am not so sure, however, that Spinoza's account is viable. For a related discussion, see Margaret Wilson, ‘Spinoza's Theory of Knowledge’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 89–141, especially 123–6.

²³It may be that Spinoza was working with the unstated assumption that we must affirm that which we see clearly to be the case. This is reminiscent of Descartes, who says, ‘I could not but judge that something which I understood so clearly was true’ (Meditations 4; CSM II, 41; AT VII, 58). Descartes's exchange with Arnauld over a remarkably similar issue concerning our idea of the triangle makes an interesting contrast to Spinoza's treatment here. See the Fourth Objections (CSMK II, 141–2; AT VII/201–202) and Replies (CSMK II, 155–9; AT VII/221–7).

²⁴Like ‘involve’ (involvere), ‘pertain’ (pertinere) receives no explicit definition from Spinoza. Another place he employs it is in 1p7, where he says: ‘It pertains to the nature of substance to exist’ (Curley 412; Geb II/49), a doctrine that could be restated as ‘existence belongs to or is a part of the essence of substance’. Again the French and German translations suggest this understanding, taking pertinere as appartenir and gehören, both of which translate as ‘to belong’. See Pautrat's L'Éthique, 185 and Bartushchat's Ethik, 201.

²⁵If Spinoza felt justified in the case of the triangle, however, he would naturally make this generalization, given that he intends to treat human psychology as though it were ‘a question of lines, planes, and bodies’ (3 Preface; Curley, 492; Geb II/138).

²⁶Curley's ‘Descartes, Spinoza and the Ethics of Belief’ is an excellent discussion of this issue. For a view even more critical of Spinoza, see also John Cottingham, ‘Spinoza's Critique of Descartes's, Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (1988) 239–57.

²⁷Delahunty, employing an idea from Geach, states that, for Spinoza, ideas are both propositional in structure and assertoric in force. When we discuss ideas, then, we refer to their propositional content. When we refer to volitions, we refer to their assertoric force (see Spinoza, 33–5). Curley also makes reference to Geach on this point (‘Descartes, Spinoza, and the Ethics of Belief’, 208). Perhaps similarly, Della Rocca, in ‘Power of an Idea’, claims that ideas are individual expressions of the mind's power, each bearing a kind of psychic force.

²⁸3d3; Curley, 493; Geb II/139. I prefer to translate ‘quibus’ as ‘in which’, rather than Curley's ‘by which’. Bennett agrees saying,

In p59d Spinoza implies that pleasure and unpleasure [his translations of laetitia and tristitia]cause the upward and downward movements, but his usual view is that they are those movements. (That is why I render d3 with ‘in which the body's power’ etc. rather than ‘by which the body's power’).

(Study, 254)

²⁹‘The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things’ (2p7; Curley, 451; Geb II/89). Spinoza applies this to particular modes, including ideas, saying, ‘So also a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways’ (2p7s; Curley, 451; Geb II/90). See also 3p2s, where Spinoza says, ‘the Mind and the Body are one and the same thing, which is now conceived under the attribute of Thought, now under the attribute of Extension. The result is that the order, or connection, of things is one …’ The exact nature of Spinoza's parallelism or the nature of this ‘expression’ need not concern us here; all that is relevant is how it applies to affects.

³⁰So Spinoza says, ‘The idea of any thing that increase or diminishes, aids or restrains, our Body's power of acting, increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our Mind's power of thinking’ (3p11; Curley, 500; Geb II/148).

³¹Spinoza speaks in this manner in the ‘General Definition of the Affects’, among other places, where he connects the power of the mind to the power of the body, as I have here. See Part 3, ‘General Definition of the Affects’; Curley, 542; Geb II/203. Bennett speaks of the changes in power involved in the affects very generally, not attributing them to the body or the mind, preferring instead to speak of the health of the individual as a whole (Study, 254).

³²For a discussion of the relevant terms ‘affection’ (affectio) and ‘affect’ (affectus), and how they are to be understood with regard to body and mind, see Jean-Marie Beyssade, ‘Nostri Corporis Affectus: Can an Affect in Spinoza be “of the Body”?’Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, 113–28. Beyssade argues that the exact nature of an affect depends in part on how we interpret the phrase ‘at the same time’ (et simul) in this definition.

³³Beyssade agrees. See ‘Nostri Corporis Affectus: Can an Affect in Spinoza be “of the Body”?’, 118–19.

³⁴3p58: ‘Apart from the Joy and Desire that are passions, there are other affects of Joy and Desire that are related to us insofar as we act’ (Curley, 529; Geb II/187). See the demonstration to that proposition for the specific mention of adequate ideas.

³⁵Spinoza's setting aside of the purely bodily aspect of emotions is reminiscent of Seneca's Stoic rejection of the relevance of the bodily aspect of emotions as well. Seneca says,

For if any one supposes that pallor, falling tears, prurient itching or deep-drawn sigh, a sudden brightening of the eyes, and the like, are an evidence of passion and a manifestation of the mind, he is mistaken and fails to understand that these are disturbances of the body.

(See On Anger, II.iii.2 in Seneca, Moral Essays: Book One, translated by John Basore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928) 173.)

The question of the nature of the relation between Seneca's and Spinoza's theories of the emotions is an interesting one, although beyond the scope of this paper. For more on this connection, see Don Rutherford, ‘Salvation as a State of Mind: The Place of Acquiescentia in Spinoza's Ethics’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1999) 447–73, as well as his forthcoming book.

³⁶Allison agrees, citing both 4p8 and 4p14; see Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, 145–7.

³⁷Garrett also suggests that affects and ideas are related in the same way as I argue here. Garrett says, ‘Spinoza construes the affective and the representational as two aspects of the same mental events or entities’ (‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 296).

³⁸In his Introduction to his edited volume, Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, Yirmiyahu Yovel supports my conclusion that ideas have a tripartite nature, that is, that they may be considered in three ways, as a representation, an affirmation, and an affect, when he says, ‘Just as an idea is at once an act of judgement – the affirmation of its own content – so it is also an emotive event. Ideas and emotions are not separate entities, but aspects of the same; the cognitive content is inseparable from an affective event in which it resonates’ (Yovel, Desire and Affect, xiv). Interestingly, Della Rocca claims that what I argue for here – that all objects and acts of the mind are in fact ideas, including volitions and affects – is implicit in 2a3 (‘There are no modes of thinking … unless there is in the same Individual the idea of the thing loved, desired, etc. …’ (Curley, 448; Geb II/85)). See his ‘The Power of an Idea’, 204. Note, further, that 2a3 specifically names passions of love and desire. If Della Rocca is right to trace these doctrines to 2a3, then it must be the case that all passions are really ideas simply from 2a3, as Della Rocca notes (222). I am not certain that all of this is implicit in 2a3, however.

³⁹Amihud Gilead, who applies the term to Spinoza, says, ‘It is clear that the basic affects, and consequently all the affects, depend on and follow from cognition …’ in ‘Affects’Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, 172. Segal follows him in using this label. Neither discusses the current uses of the term ‘cognitivism’, however.

⁴⁰3p11s: ‘… apart from these three I do not acknowledge any other primary affect. For I shall show in what follows that the rest arise from these three’ (Curley, 501; Geb II/149).

⁴¹Bennett argues that joy and sadness are too narrow to render laetitia and tristitia (Study, 253–4). Though I am sympathetic to his concern, I am not sure that his ‘pleasure’ and ‘unpleasure’ are significantly better. I have elected to follow Curley's translation.

⁴²3p11s; Curley, 500–1; Geb II/149. For reasons similar to those cited above in footnote 28, I prefer to translate ‘quâ mens … transit’ as ‘in which the mind passes’. See Bennett, Study, 254. The German translation accords with my preference in this passage, rendering ‘quâ’ here as ‘in denen’, which means ‘in which’. Inconsistently, however, Bartuschat renders the ‘quibus’ in 3d3 as ‘von denen’, which means ‘by which’. See Bartuschat's translation, Ethik, 223 and 245. The French generally translate the ‘quâ’ as ‘par lesquelles’, however, which means ‘by which’. See Pautrat's translation, Spinoza: Éthique, 223.

⁴³‘Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the Affect an action; otherwise, a passion’ (3d3; Curley, 493; Geb II/139).

⁴⁴Spinoza's definition of hate is to be found at Definition of the Affects VII (Curley, 533; Geb II/193) and 3p13s (Curley, 502; Geb II/151).

⁴⁵I will not address the claim that desire is the essence of man in some sense or another, a claim related to Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus. See 3p6 and 3p7 for that doctrine. See also Bennett, Study, Chapters 9 and 10, and Della Rocca, ‘Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza.

⁴⁶This claim, that desire is simply a motivating Joy or Sadness, accords with Bennett's treatment of desire. He finds that desire has no place in Spinoza's psychology that Joy and Sadness do not fill themselves (Study, 259). Someone might claim that the Joy we take in something and any desire it might engender are phenomenologically distinct, though I see no reason why that must entail that they are ontologically distinct. They could be two phenomenologically distinct aspects of the same complex idea, or affect.

⁴⁷Spinoza says, ‘we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it’ (3p9s; Curley, 500; Geb II/148). My understanding of desire is consistent with this passage. For our judgement that something is good is consequent on our taking Joy in something, which, on my account, would be identical with our desiring more of it. Or perhaps we are given the idea of something we do not yet have, yet this idea brings us some Joy. This Joy we take in the idea is identical with our desire for the object the idea represents. Consequent to feeling this Joy and forming this desire, we may judge the thing to be good. Desire, on this account, is intentional, but not strongly teleological, because the desire is formed as a result of a present Joy, not a future goal. I suspect that Spinoza may have employed more than one sense of desire in the Ethics, however. For more on this debate, see Bennett, Study, Chapter 9 and pp. 261–2, and Jarrett, ‘Teleology and Spinoza's Doctrine of Final Causes’, Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist.

⁴⁸Other commentators who address the cognitive nature of the affects omit or expressly set aside desire, due to its difficult position in Spinoza's system. See, for example, Segal, ‘Cognitivism’, 2n2, and Gilead, ‘Affects’, passim.

⁴⁹For discussion of this aspect of Spinoza's thought, see Garrett, ‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory’, Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, Chapter 5, and Delahunty, Spinoza, chapter 8.

⁵⁰Bennett, Study, 286. Spinoza says, ‘No affect can be restrained by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect’ (4d14; Curley, 553; Geb II/219). Bennett specifically quotes Descartes's Passions§48, where Descartes says,

Some people … never let their will fight with its own weapons, but only with ones which some passions provide as a defense against other passions. What I call its own weapons are firm and determinate judgements concerning the knowledge of good and bad, with which the will has resolved to regulate the actions of this life.

⁵¹Delahunty makes a similar complaint (Delahunty, Spinoza, 245–6). In fact, this criticism is over a century old at least, having been raised by H. Joachim (Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901, 258–9), as well as by David Bidney, The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940) 252.

⁵²So, Lee Rice, quoting an earlier article by Marx Wartofsky, says,

The true revolution in Spinoza's account of affectivity is to be found not just in his consistent and thoroughgoing determinism, but also his systematic and consistent denial of ‘the split between the cognitive and the emotive or affective, or between faculties of thought and feeling, or, more sharply between thought and action’.

(Lee Rice, ‘Action in Spinoza's Account of Affectivity’, Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, 164).

⁵³This is not to say that he holds this power to be superior to the power of irrational affects, only that reason does have some affective power. Indeed, one important point that distinguishes Spinoza from a Stoic or Socratic rationalism is the view that knowledge is not more powerful than belief or even false belief, as he says clearly in the first seventeen propositions in Part 4.

⁵⁴Gueroult agrees that ideas or beliefs do not cause desires via transuent causation, i.e. where the cause is external to the effect. Instead, he suggests, ideas and desires are essentially connected, so that ideas are causally related to desires as follows: ‘elle se l'incorpore au lieu de le susciter du dehors’ (Gueroult, Spinoza: II – L'âme, 494).

⁵⁵See, for example, Principles II, 4, where Descartes says, ‘The nature of body consists not in weight, hardness, color, or the like, but simply in extension’ (CSMK I, 224; AT VIIIA/42). See also Dan Garber, ‘Descartes’ Physics', Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 286–334: 294. For more on the Cartesian dimension of Spinoza's physics, see Alan Gabbey, ‘Spinoza's natural science and methodology’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza.

⁵⁶For Spinoza's doctrine of common notions, see 2p38. Edwin Curley argues that the common notions are of the infinite modes, which are the laws of physics in Behind the Geometric Method (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 45f). Bennett affirms this view as well (Study: 107). See also Yirmiyahu Yovel's discussion in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989: 161) and Gueroult, Spinoza: II – L'âme, 328–34.

⁵⁷Descartes's physics famously lacks any notion of power or force. Leibniz made much of this, showing by way of a simple thought experiment how this lack leads Cartesian physics into absurdity in an article in Acta Eruditorum in 1686. For discussion, see Dan Garber, ‘Lebniz: Physics and Philosophy’, Cambridge Companion to Leibniz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 270–352, especially section 4.3.

⁵⁸ Spinoza: Complete Works, translated by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002) 956. I am indebted to Michael Della Rocca's work in his article in Nôus, ‘The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will’, for demonstrating the relevance of these letters to Spinoza's psychology. See also the physical digression appearing after 2p13 in the Ethics.

⁵⁹Letter 83, to Tschirnhaus; Shirley, p. 958.

⁶⁰‘God's power is his essence itself’, 1p34; Curley, 439; Geb II/76.

⁶¹Della Rocca also makes this point in ‘Power of an Idea’, 224–6.

⁶²Segal believes that Spinoza has no grounds by which to distinguish affects from non-affective ideas. He says,

Our experience of being aware to the cognitive content that constitutes an emotion is specific to each occurrence of an emotion, but it is not of a special kind distinguished from our experience or awareness to any other cognitive content, which as such is necessarily accompanied by the inner experience of it.

(‘Cognitivism’, 3)

I of course disagree for the reasons stated below, namely, that affects have a felt power that non-affective ideas lack, a felt power which Spinoza accounts for and in fact on which his system depends.

⁶³Consider 2a3:

There are no modes of thinking, such as love, desire, or whatever is designated by the word affects of mind, unless there is in the same individual the idea of the thing loved, desired, and the like. But there can be an idea, even though there is no other mode of thinking.

In other words, affects necessarily involve an idea, though we may have some non-affective ideas also. Further, any idea that changes our power will necessarily involve some love, desire, or affect of the mind, according to 3p11s. In short, then, an affect such as love or desire is necessary and sufficient for an idea that changes our power. Thus, they are essentially the same modes of thought, in the same way volitions and ideas are.

⁶⁴Strictly speaking, all Spinozist bodies have a certain degree of power and, by parallelism, all Spinozist ideas do as well. See Della Rocca, ‘Power of an Idea’. In other words, all ideas have power, but only those that change the overall power of the individual are felt as affects. Similarly, only those bodies whose individual power changes the overall power of the individual count as bodily affections of the sort described in 3d3. My enterprise in this essay is not to explain the details of Spinoza's affective psychology, but to show that Spinoza can and does include the felt power of the affects in his system.

⁶⁵Unfortunately, Spinoza does not provide a more robust physics or psychology. Without these, the details of the parallelism between Spinoza's physics and psychology must remain unstated. To say more risks advancing my own Spinozist theory in place of an interpretation of Spinoza.

⁶⁶See Part 2, axiom ‘1’, which appears after 2p13 in the ‘Physical Digression;’ Curley, 460; Geb II/99.

⁶⁷I grant that Spinoza does not offer these common notions of psychology, but Segal's implies that he could not. Instead, Spinoza only discusses the fundamental principles of physics. Yet, in accordance with his parallelism, he takes both psychology and physics to be fundamental sciences, based on universal and general common notions. Obviously some of these common notions must reference the fact that any being having its power reduced will find such an experience unpleasant, especially given the fact that every being has as its very essence a desire or striving to increase its power. See, for example, 3p4–3p7. For a discussion of psychology as a basic science in Spinoza, see Donald Davidson, ‘Spinoza's Causal Theory of the Affects’Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, 95–112, especially 107–9. Davidson argues that Spinoza's attempt to create a rigorous psychology to match his physics may be doomed to failure. Regardless, this seems to be the project Spinoza undertakes, as he announces in the Preface to Part 3, where he declares he will deal with the affects in the same way that he deals with lines, planes and bodies. In this way, Spinoza's project presages Hume's.

⁶⁸In fact, even if a being had only adequate ideas, that is, even if a being's mind contained a complete and true representation of the world, that idea would be joyously felt, for adequate knowledge is felt as a kind of Joy. See 3p58 for the active affects – i.e. those that accompany adequate knowledge – as well as 5p15ff for Spinoza's account of perfect knowledge as a kind of joy, namely, love. Finally, consider what Spinoza says at 5p23s: ‘For the mind feels those things that it conceives in understanding no less than those it has in the memory’ (5p23s; Curley, 608; Geb II/296).

⁶⁹For more evidence of the unique character of Spinoza's theory, consider how it compares to William James's decidedly non-cognitivist theory. To justify his position that emotions are not constituted by beliefs, James asks what would happen to fear if we removed from the belief in danger the physiological source of the fear. He believed we would be left only with a dispassionate evaluation of a situation in which we were in danger. In other words, James suggests, the emotion lies in the physiological event, not in the idea. But Spinoza the cognitivist can agree with James here. For Spinoza, fear is an idea of some danger that decreases our mind's and body's power. If one withdraws the physiological event, i.e. the change in power, then one is left with a dispassionate idea about our situation, one in which our power does not change. Yet Spinoza holds that affects are constituted by beliefs. Thus, Spinoza's cognitivist theory does not fall neatly onto one side of the debate as James saw it. See James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, 449–54.