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Natural Passions, Reason and Religious Emotion in Hobbes and Spinoza I. Some Stage-Setting
Passions were a hot topic in the seventeenth century. And part of what made them
hot was the hope of explaining them in fully naturalistic terms. Most important
seventeenth century philosophers1 adopted a naturalist stance towards the passions that
committed them to accounting for the passions in ways continuous with the best available
natural sciences. Above all, they treated them as amenable to the explanatory tools and
approaches, particularly causes, they recognized as applicable in the new “mechanical”
philosophy. This approach was furthered by Descartes’s pivotal decision to count the
passions as perceptions (rather than, e.g., appetitions). Although not all followed
Descartes’s example, subsequent early modern philosophers tended to understand the
passions as passive, receptive states2 that were either identical with, or based in bodily
states and events. As such body-based states, the passions are both caused and shaped in
ways susceptible to mechanical explanation. This naturalist approach may go some way
toward explaining why many of the same philosophers entertained great suspicions
towards supposedly special religious affects, particularly those that claimed their source
in some divine inspiration, often derided as “enthusiasm”.3 This suspicion was furthered
by the demand to submit any resulting knowledge-claims to the tribunal of natural reason.
1I particularly have in mind Descartes, Hobbes, Malebranche and Spinoza. There are exceptions, such as the Cambridge Platonists and perhaps Pascal. 2This is one of the central themes of S. James, Passion and Action: the Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 3For obvious historical reasons, mid-seventeenth-century British philosophers were particularly sensitive to the dangers of “enthusiasm”, with philosophers from Hobbes to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More rating it a form of mental illness, or plain hypocrisy. See R. Shaver, “Enthusiasm”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy On-Line, ed. E. Craig (London: Routledge Publishing, 1998), http://www.rep.routledge.com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/article/DB027 (accessed December 16, 2008).
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The emphasis on rational explicability goes hand in hand with the general naturalism,
whether because naturalism itself was taken to meet the demands of natural reason or
because both our rational and our affective dispositions were taken to belong to the
dominion of nature and thus must be as intelligible as nature itself.
The naturalist conception of passions as bodily-based receptive states was
exploited by both Descartes and Malebranche, who nonetheless maintained roughly
functionalist accounts,4 in which the passions serve various goods of the embodied
human. In this respect, Hobbes and Spinoza were even more uncompromisingly
naturalistic, refusing to countenance so much as a whisper of final causes and working
relentlessly to produce a thoroughly forward-driving picture of causation. One result is
the centrality of the notion of “endeavor”, “striving”, or in the Latin, conatus, which both
use to individuate “singular things” within the world. Conatus is the basis of all animal
motion, and in Spinoza’s hands, the basis for all motion in general, whereas “affects”5 of
various sorts are the fuel of volitional motion. For both Hobbes and Spinoza, such
passions and affects determine what counts as “good” and evil”, and so even fully
voluntary actions are more pushed by the affects than pulled by antecedent conceptions
4In Malebranche’s case, the functionalist approach is filtered through his Augustinian insistence on the pervasive corrupting effects of original sin; the Fall perverted our passionate dispositions from their functional course to hold us in their dysfunctional thrall. Nonetheless, Malebranche shares the view with Descartes that the passions and our other dispositions and faculties serve our good as embodied creatures. For an account of how Descartes’s functionalism could be reconciled with the rejection of final causation in physics, see A. Schmitter, “How to Engineer a Human Being: Passions and Functional Explanation in Descartes”, in A Companion to Descartes, ed. J. Broughton and J. Carriero (NY: Blackwell, 2007), esp. 427-8. For discussion of the relation between Malebranche’s neo-Augustinian commitments and his conception of the function of the passions, see P. Hoffman, “Three Dualist Theories of the Passions”, Philosophical Topics 19 (1991): 153-200, and S. Greenberg, “Malebranche on the Passions: Biology, Morality and the Fall”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy (forthcoming). 5Because of Spinoza’s important distinction between passion and affect (to be explained further below), I will use “affect” as the generic term, even though Hobbes makes no such distinction and does not use the term.
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of the good. The passions and affects, then, are where large-scale physical explanation
meets the account of our behavior.
It is, I maintain, the explanatory constraints imposed by the commitment to
austere naturalism that motivate Hobbes and Spinoza to locate the affects within their
overall psychic economy as they do. These commitments also play a role in their
approach to the old canard opposing reason to emotion, for on the view they share,
operations of both are driven by a blind conative striving that defies description in
functionalist terms. What is true of the affects in general should also hold in particular
cases, and so both adopt a similarly naturalist attitude towards religious emotions. Yet,
curiously enough, they end up with opposing evaluations of the rationality, indeed the
very possibility, of distinctively religious affects directed toward God: Hobbes has no
truck with them, insisting that the only appropriate passions to feel for God are the same
in kind (if not in degree) as those directed at the Sovereign of one’s Commonwealth.
They follow in both cases from the recognition of power: “From internal honour,
consisting in the opinion of power and goodness, arise three passions: love (which hath
reference to goodness) and hope, and fear (that relate to power) [ . . . ]”.6 In contrast,
Spinoza devotes the closing sections of the Ethics to a discussion of how the third kind of
knowledge (a “scientia intuitiva”) simultaneously produces an “intellectual love of God”
(“amor Dei intellectualis”), “blessedness” (“beatitudo”) and supreme contentment
(“summa acquiscentia”), affects that are sui generis in Spinoza’s taxonomy.7 How could
6T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. E. Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994), 31.9: 238. All subsequent references will appear in the text, citing this edition as L, followed by chapter, paragraph and page. 7See Spinoza’s Ethics VP32c, VP33s, VP27, respectively. All translations used subsequently will come from B. Spinoza, Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. 1, trans. E. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); they will be cited in the text as E, followed by Part, and when appropriate, component and sub-component, or section; in this scheme, “P” stands for proposition, “D” stands for definition, “d” for
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a shared naturalism produce such contrasting conclusions about the very possibility of
theocentric affects?
To appreciate this puzzle, we should recognize that Spinoza does not merely
resemble Hobbes: he owes Hobbes an enormous intellectual debt. That debt stands
despite a sharp split between Spinoza’s “parallelism” about thinking and extension8 and
Hobbes’s reductionist materialism. Such ontological differences aside, Spinoza borrows
many tenets of his political philosophy from Hobbes.9 And what allows him to do so is
the shared methodological and explanatory approach exacted by their naturalist
commitments, particularly for their understanding of human rationality and its relation to
the passions. Within this context of common commitments and approaches, seemingly
slight differences in their conceptions of the relation between whole and part, and
between activity and passivity produce opposing views on the possibility of individual
rationality. I will argue that whether one can aspire to a robust and developed rationality
as an individual, and not simply as a member of a tightly organized collectivity, is the
difference that makes a difference for their divergent attitudes towards religious affects.
II. Passions contra Reason
Let us examine one bit of the terrain shared between Hobbes and Spinoza: each
philosopher opposes passion to “reason,” on the grounds that the passions interfere with
demonstration, “s” for scholium, “Pref” for Preface, “Def.Aff” for Definition of the Affects, and “App.” for Appendix. Citations to Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise will refer to B. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. R.H.M. Elwes (New York: Dover Publications, 1951), cited in the text as TPT, followed by page. 8I describe Spinoza’s parallelism so, rather than glossing it as a matter of the mind-body relation, because its basic tenet is that “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (E IIP7: 451). That claim derives from the fundamental identity of the infinite attributes of thinking and extension (and all other such attributes) as aspects of the single substance. Although parallelism also obtains between the minds and bodies of singular persons, establishing it requires several additional premises about the nature of finite modes. 9This is widely recognized; see, e.g., H. Gilden, “Spinoza and the Political Problem,” in Spinoza: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. M. Grene (NY: Doubleday Books, 1973), 377.
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and degrade our reasoning processes. Hobbes expresses the view colorfully: “the
understanding is by the flame of the passions, never enlightened, but dazzled (L 19.5:
12010). But this is an odd position to find in either philosopher. Hobbes, for instance, is a
thoroughgoing materialist, who takes passions to be identical with specific motions in
matter. As the title of Chapter VI of Leviathan puts it, they are “the Interiour Beginnings
of Voluntary Motions [ . . . ]” (L 6: 27).11 Together with the imagination, the passions
arise at the point where the general motions that circulate throughout the world and in
animal bodies are channeled into voluntary animal motion; they anchor the interior chain
of motions that produce appetites and aversions, and eventually actions. For this reason,
they can largely be identified with the will. But thought itself is simply motion, more
specifically, animal motion. Reasoning is a form of thought, and understood as
“deliberation”, it issues volitions. As such, acts of reasoning are driven by passions, just
as all animal motions are; indeed, they may even be identified with passions. So
ultimately, it’s passions all the way down. For these reasons, Hobbes maintains an
analogy between the force and degree of passion and reason. The motion of “greater”
passions correlates with greater ambition and greater intelligence. Likewise, a “defect” of
passion produces “dulnesse”. “Wit” in general is driven by desires, which all reduce to
“desire of power” (L 8.13-15: 40-1). Moreover, our desires not only spur our thinking
into action, they hold it on course:
10 See also L. 26.21: 180; 27.4: 191; 27.18: 195, inter alia. 11Hobbes sometimes gives a slightly more restrictive sense to the passions, e.g., Elements of Law distinguishes between the motions in the brain that constitute sense and imagination and the continuation of those motions to the heart that are passions proper. For further discussion of these and related issues, see A. Schmitter, “Hobbes on the Emotions,” in “Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Theories of Emotions,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 edition), ed. E. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/emotions-17th18th/.
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For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies, to range abroad and
find the way to the things desired; all steadiness of the mind’s motion, and all
quickness of the same, proceeding from thence [ . . . ] (L 8.16: 41).
Thinking appears as a product of passionate drives and an expression of our basic
“endeavour”. So what sense is there in maintaining that the passions are opposed to
reason?
Even if we could make sense of this opposition, Hobbes seems to give us no way
to act on it, for a reason isolated from passion would seem utterly inert. Time and time
again, he insists that passions can only be restrained by other passions (see, e.g., L.
14.31: 87-88). This may simply reflect their status as motions, for within Hobbes’s
general mechanistic physics, only motions can affect other motions.12 Perhaps “reason”
could be identified with some distinct set of motions other than those constituting the
passions, but if so, Hobbes never mentions what those motions might be, or how they
could arise independently of the imagination-passion-volition-action cycle. We seem
faced with a dilemma: either reason cannot be opposed to the passions in toto, or it must
be utterly ineffectual.
Spinoza also supposes our thinking needs a moving force, although he locates it in
what he calls the “affects”. “Desire” (“cupiditas”13), in particular, is identified with the
conatus, or striving, that constitutes all our action, including our mental action.14 Because
12See, e.g., T. Hobbes, Elements of Law: Human Nature and de Corpore Politico with Three Lives (with selections from de Corpore, chapters I, VI and XXV), ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1994), chapter 9.7. 13Spinoza notably does not use the term libido for the general type, but restricts it to a species of desire (translated by Curley as “lust”, e.g., E III P56d: 527). But Latin Stoics often used libido as one of the four basic perturbatione. This may indicate Spinoza’s rather different evaluation of desire as a whole, despite his close affiliations with various stripes of stoicism. 14See E IIIP9s: 500. Although Spinoza identifies “appetite” (“appetitus”) with the striving (“conatus”), holding that “desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite”, human beings will typically have some idea of the appetite clear and distinct enough to count as conscious. So Spinoza insists that “between appetite and desire there is no difference”, and in the “Definitions of the Affects” that
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Spinoza uses the notion of “passion” more restrictively than does Hobbes, he does not
make our reasoning passion-driven. Nonetheless, he finds other grounds for insisting that
the passions are an inescapable part of the human condition. Because we are finite
creatures, we are always subject to being affected by external things, that is, those things
lying outside our boundaries as “singular things”, but still within the conditioned causal
chain of finite modes. And so, “we are acted on, insofar as we are a part of nature” (E
IVP2: 548). Moreover, “the force by which a man perseveres in existing is limited, and
infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes” (E IVP3: 548). That means that we
are always subject to passions, for passions constitute our reactions to what impinges on
us for better or worse: indeed, “the force and growth of any passion, and its perseverance
in existing, are not defined by the power by which we strive to persevere in existing, but
by the power of an external cause compared with our own” (E IVP5: 549).
This point follows directly from Spinoza’s official definitions of passions and
affects. Spinoza makes passions a species of affects. More precisely, he declares:
an affect that is called a Passion [“pathema”] of the mind is a confused idea
by which the mind affirms of its Body, or some part of it, a greater or lesser
power of existing [“existendi vis”] than before, which, when it is given
determines the Mind to think of this rather than that (E III Gen.Def.Aff.:
542).
Affects in general are “affections of the Body by which the Body’s power of acting is
increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these
concludes Part III, reiterates that “I really recognize no difference between human appetite and Desire” (E III Def.Aff: 531).
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affections” (E IIID3: 493). The mind itself is just the idea(s) of the body.15 As such, it is
largely constituted by its affects, since any idea that involves a change in conatus counts
as an affect. Now, Spinoza holds that ideas that require external causes – those for which
we are not “adequate”, or full and sufficient causes – count as confused, mutilated, and
“inadequate”. The upshot is that passions are simply passive affects.
Since we are always subject to being acted upon (and acted upon by forces greater
than we are), we will always be subject to passions, and the conceptual confusions they
involve. Spinoza does not leave us with quite the same conundrum as we found with
Hobbes in contrasting reason to the passions. But the outlook for achieving rationality
with such forces lined up in opposition does not look bright. Moreover, Spinoza – like
Hobbes – remains committed to the view that only an affect can combat another affect:
“an affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and
stronger than, the affect to be restrained” (E IVP7: 550). Here again, Spinoza’s
distinction between “passion” and “affect” moderates his position greatly, for he can
allow that a particular (passive) passion may be restrained by a particular (active) affect,
although we have no hope of actively overcoming our susceptibility to passions in toto.
Still, while he maintains that only affective techniques for overcoming the “bondage” of
the passions are effective, the opposition between reason and passion strikes an odd note:
what role could be left to reason? At best, it would seem epiphenomenal, since “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” (E IVP14: 553).
III. Passion-Driven Conflict
15 See E IIIP13: 502: “the object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body [ . . . ] and nothing else”.
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In short, the general position embraced by both philosophers looks like a recipe
for despair. On the one hand, our passions are painted as exuberantly and violently
irrational; on the other, our very ability to reason depends on the driving force of affect.
And reason itself seems to have no power to constrain our emotions, no matter how
irrational they may be. As we will see, all is not lost, but it is important to realize how
dangerous the effects of unbridled passions appear to both Hobbes and Spinoza. For they
identify the causes of social conflict in general in the clash of individuals’ passions.
Hobbes famously sees the condition of war as “necessarily consequent [. . . ] to the
natural passions of men” (L 17.1: 106), particularly to glory. That they sow discord is one
of the main reasons for counting such passions as irrational. Reason is the same for all,
and ipso facto cannot generate conflict: “For all men by nature reason alike, and well,
when they have good principles” (L 5.16: 25).
What is true of social conflict in general is true of religious conflict: it is driven by
the passions of individuals, operating as a force of unreason. Indeed, some religious
conflict simply enacts the opposition pitting reason against passion. The sorts of religious
conflicts whose causes and nature most concern Hobbes are intra-societal religious
disagreements between established, conformist religion and dissenters, which he
understands as a conflict between established, rational forces and irrational schismatics.
The connection between established religion and reason is so strong that Hobbes makes it
a test for the truth of prophecy. For there can be “nothing contrary to” reason in God’s
word (L 32.2: 246), even if some aspects of God’s will may not be accessible to our
unassisted natural reason without pronouncements or positive laws enunciated by special
messengers. Still, we have only our natural reason to determine whom to trust. Reason
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proposes two individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for trusting those
claims that reason cannot discover itself: the performance of miracles (which gives
evidence of power) and “the not teaching any other religion than that which is already
established” (L 32.7: 248). In contrast, religious conflict often arises from innovation,
motivated by the excessive and superstitious “opinion of inspiration, called “commonly
“private spirit, [ . . . by which a person styles himself] as being in the special grace of
God Almighty, who hath revealed the same to them supernaturally, by his Spirit” (L 8.22:
42). Such claims to “inspiration” or “enthusiasm” are rationally insupportable; they also
can spur social upheaval. Consider the following indictment:
[Although] the effect of folly in them that are possessed of an opinion of
being inspired be not visible always in one man by any very extravagant
action that proceedeth from such passion, yet when many of them conspire
together, the rage of the whole multitude is visible enough (L 8.21: 42).
The passage is somewhat opaque, but Hobbes clearly goes on to identify this “folly” as
“private spirit”. It’s notable that he is willing to consider it “private”, even though it may
be widespread through a multitude, and even though its appearance may be symptomatic
of large-scale social distress, such that the “singular passions [of a few] are parts of the
seditious roaring of a troubled nation”. Hobbes seems to evaluate the passions as
“singular” and the roaring as “seditious” because they depart from what is broadly
accepted and established in and by a commonwealth. They do not issue from the unified
whole, but from disparate individuals. And since “to have stronger and more vehement
passions for anything than is ordinarily seen in others is what men call MADNESS (L 8.16:
41), they constitute a madness on the part of individuals, of which “that very arrogating
such inspiration to themselves is argument enough” (L 8.21: 42). So, here we can see
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several ways in which Hobbes attributes religious conflict to the passions: first,
inspiration itself counts as a passion; second, a (false) opinion of inspiration is proof of
madness, 16 which Hobbes identifies with the “passions that produce strange and unusual
behavior” (L 8.20: 41-2). All of these features combine in one of the most dangerous
characteristics of enthusiasts – their claim to religious exceptionalism, insofar as they
hold inspiration to be a source for religious and moral imperatives that depart from what
is available to natural reason and approved by the body and brains of the commonwealth.
Instead, Hobbes tends to attribute such assertions of exceptionalism – whether a matter of
special contact with God, or of special kinds of religious emotion – to a rationally
insupportable presumption that constitutes either passion-driven madness, or mere cant.
And since chicanery might be driven by excessive vainglory, or an overweening desire
for some form of power, it too could count as impassioned madness. In no case does the
purported enthusiast experience any passions distinctive in kind, but at most pathological
excesses of run-of-the-mill passions.
As might be expected, Spinoza seems less distressed by the possibility of
dissidents’ inciting religious conflict. But in many respects, he is just as impatient of
supposed religious exceptionalism as Hobbes, attributing it to superstition – of which he
is perhaps even more impatient. Superstition is a form of unwarranted credulity and
unreason. It generates “inconsistency” and variability, and this inconsistency makes it
immensely difficult “to maintain in the same course men prone to every form of
credulity”. That means it is a source of social unrest: “the cause of many terrible wars and
revolutions” (TPT: 5). In its inconsistency, and unpredictability, Spinoza likens 16It is also often likened to intoxication of various sorts. See L 8.23-25: 42-3, as well as the discussion of the superstitious religions of the Gentiles and the insignificant speeches of “enthusiastic” madmen, L. 12.19: 68-9.
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superstition to “mental hallucinations and emotional impulses”. Indeed, superstition in
general “springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion”.
And the passions it springs from are not only powerful, but particularly disruptive, for it
is “engendered, preserved and fostered by fear” and “can only be maintained by hope,
hatred, anger, and deceit” (TPT: 4-5). Such passions are commonplace, but nonetheless
divisive, representing particularly extreme ways in which “men disagree in nature”.
Spinoza explains: “men can disagree in nature insofar as they are torn by affects which
are passions; and to that extent also one and the same man is changeable and inconstant”
(E IVP33: 561); indeed, “insofar as men are torn by affects which are passions, they can
be contrary to one another” (E IVP34: 562), which is why “hate can never be good” (E
IVP45: 571). Spinoza adds: “he who is guided by Fear, and does good to avoid evil, is
not guided by reason” (E IVP63: 582). Here, as elsewhere, Spinoza contrasts the socially
divisive passions with reason and its effects, for “only insofar as men live according to
the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature” (E IVP35: 563). Superstition,
however, incites a kind of passionate pathology, maintaining “that the good is what
brings Sadness, and the evil, what brings Joy [ . . . ]” (E IV, App. XXXI: 593). It is both
the result of, and an impetus to violently irrational passions.
It is true that Spinoza sometimes allows that peculiar religious rites and
ceremonies promote social solidarity, even though the injunctions of “ceremonial law”
have no intrinsic rational value. Unlike divine law, ceremonial law is not “intimately
deduced from human nature [so] that it must be esteemed innate, and, as it were,
ingrained in the human mind (TPT: 69). But Spinoza does not seem to consider
ceremonial law to constitute full-blown superstition: although not fully rational, neither is
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it fully irrational. Without being based in the sound strictures of reason, “ceremonies are
no aid to blessedness”. Still, they do “have reference to the temporal prosperity of the
kingdom” (TPT: 70). That is, they do not perfect our health or liberty, but they promise
“security of rule, prosperity and temporal happiness” (TPT: 71). They do so through
“commands especially adapted to the understanding and character of [ . . . a] people”
(TPT: 70) at a particular time and in a particular context – commands that address their
characteristic passions to harness them for cooperative ends. Thus the extreme strictures
of the Mosaic law were suited to the condition of the Jews just released from slavery, for
which it was appropriate that they “should always act under external authority” (TPT: 75-
6); for similar reasons, Christian rites “were instituted as external signs of the universal
church [ . . . ] ordained for the preservation of a society” (TPT: 76).
Yet important as obedience and cooperation are, Spinoza insists that neither is
well-served by fear:
so long as men act simply from fear they act contrary to their inclinations,
taking no thought for the advantages or necessity of their actions, but simply
endeavouring to escape punishment or loss of life. They must needs rejoice in
any evil which befalls their ruler, [ . . . ] and must long for and bring about
such evil by every means in their power (TPT: 74).
In contrast to Hobbes, Spinoza insists that whatever social cooperation might be
promoted through threat of punishment and the resultant fear will by highly unstable.
Instead, he recommends instituting laws that work so “that people should be kept in
bounds by the hope of some greatly-desired good, rather than fear” (TPT: 74). Soldiers
are motivated more effectively by “a thirst for glory” than the terror of threats, and people
better urged to “do their duty from devotion rather than fear” (TPT: 75). Hope, the thirst
for glory and devotion are all passions, but they are passions by which other passions can
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be harmonized and calibrated with each other, so as to work towards the same ends.
Ceremonies and other human laws that are socially beneficial will incite these passions.
In contrast, Spinoza insists that superstition is based primarily on fear, and that is at least
part of what makes it irrational.
For all its usefulness, though, the warrant of ceremonial law remains wholly
prudential and wholly relative to context. Thus, Christian rites are not binding on those
who live alone or in countries where they are forbidden; indeed, residents of such
countries are positively bound to abstain from them (TPT: 76). Nor are the Jews bound
by the Mosaic law after the destruction of their kingdom, any more than they “had been
before it had begun, while they were still living among other peoples [ . . . ] and were
subject to no special law beyond the natural law, and also doubtless, the law of the state
in which they were living [ . . . ] “ (TPT: 72). Spinoza takes enormous pains to show that
scriptural injunctions to ceremonial law are part of the primary appeal of scripture to the
“understanding of the masses”, “whose intellect is not capable of perceiving things
clearly and distinctly” (TPT: 77, 78). But anyone who knows God’s existence by natural
reason and thus “has a true plan of life” has all that is required for blessedness. Such a
truly “free man” has no intrinsic need of ceremonial law. He may act in conformity with
ceremonial laws to comply with his neighbors, but out of understanding the big-picture
reasons, and not because he is bound by passion to obey such laws. The actions may be
the same, but their basis is utterly different: “to every action to which we are determined
from an affect which is a passion, we can be determined by reason, without that affect”
(E IVP59: 579). A free person acts from reason, and ideally is not moved by passion at
all (see E VP3: 598).
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Thus, a society of free persons would have absolutely no need of such laws and
the other devices that appeal to our passions to promote social harmony. Moreover, the
free person “desires [the good] for other men” (E IVP37: 564-5) – namely, that they
achieve freedom and the perfection of their reason found in knowledge of the Divine law.
That means that she strives to bring everybody to such a pitch of rational perfection and
knowledge that they have no need to keep their passions in check with particular
ceremonies and rites. Thus a society of such free individuals would have no need for
ceremonial law and the like “to keep the common laws of the state” (E IVP73dem: 587).
Indeed, there would be no need for any sort of partisan religion. On Spinoza’s view,
Divine Law is just what is “revealed” by our natural reason; it is “natural Divine Law”
and is “comprehended solely by the consideration of human nature”, so that it is
“universal or common to all men” (TPT: 61, my emphasis). And living according to
Divine law suffices for freedom, perfection and “blessedness;” it “does not demand the
performance of ceremonies, [ . . . ] [for] the natural light of reason does not demand
anything which it is itself unable to supply”. And that is because “the highest reward of
the Divine law is the law itself”, or as Spinoza puts it at the very end of the Ethics,
“blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself” (E VP42: 616). Much of
Spinoza’s scriptural exegesis is directed at making this point: whatever pertains to
morality, salvation or, blessedness is universally applicable, and whatever seems to
address a particular audience is only a device for negotiating partisan passions, so we can
live “in security and [ward] off the injuries of our fellow-men, and even of beasts” (TPT:
46).17
17Even prophecies reveal no truths unavailable to natural reason, but only choose forms of address that appeal vividly to the imagination; see, e.g., TPT: 24-9.
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IV. Private Passions and the Rational Common Measure
We are now in a position to understand the important – but nonetheless superficial
– contrast between passion and reason that both philosophers make. What worries them is
not affectivity as such, but passions that are idiosyncratic, partisan, and thus divisive. For
all their different conceptions of “passion”, both Hobbes and Spinoza think that there is
something about the passion-driven actions of unorganized individuals that tends to put
them at cross-purposes. Left to their own devices, such passions motivate individuals to
engage in zero-sum conflicts and worse. It is this tendency towards partisan splintering
that Hobbes and Spinoza deem irrational, even though the force that so tends also fuels
our thinking and reasoning. For instance, we can find Hobbes declaring that when
humans judge good and evil “by their own passions”, this “private measure” is “not only
vain, but also pernicious to the public state” (L 46.32: 464). More generally, he contrasts
the “faculty of solid reasoning [ . . . ] grounded upon the principles of truth” with “the
passions and interests of men (which are different and mutable)” (L R&C.1: 489).
Spinoza is even more explicit: “Men can disagree in nature insofar as they are torn by
affects which are passions; and to that extent also one and the same man is changeable
and inconstant” (E IVP33: 561), and so they “can be contrary to one another” (E IVP34:
562). But “men [who] live according to the guidance of reason [ . . . ] agree in nature” (E
IVP35: 563). So, the opposition between reason and the passions is founded upon a
contrast between what is common, shared, public – and thus stable – and what is
idiosyncratic, partial, private – and thus mutable and inconstant.
This, then, is the conceptual difficulty we face: Hobbes and Spinoza hold
simultaneously 1. that individuals’ passions tend to drive them towards conflict; 2. that
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all our actions (including thinking) are set into motion by affects (including passions); 3.
that conflict is eo ipso irrational; yet also 4. that rational action is possible. Indeed, both
philosophers remain hopeful that we can escape the worst excesses of individual passions
run amok. The trick is to find some way of resisting, blocking, or redirecting the tendency
of our private passions to drive us into conflict; doing so would constitute a “remedy for
the passions”, bringing our private passions into accord with the shared dictates of
reason. But Hobbes and Spinoza have rather different conceptions of what is involved in
achieving détente between private passions and public reason. Hobbes seeks techniques
for managing the passions, so that the individual actions they incite will not run at cross-
purposes. Spinoza takes over much of Hobbes’s machinery for this management of the
passions (E IVP37s2: 566-8). But such management is only an interim measure, for
Spinoza directs us ultimately towards transforming the passions – converting them into
active affects, of which we will be the adequate causes. Despite this considerable
difference, both take the view that only affective “remedies” will be effective in
restraining and retraining the passions. This is so even though both insist that we must
find some “common measure” to restrain and coordinate the passions. Again, that
common measure is identified with reason – producing the rather odd consequence that
reason both contrasts with and is fueled by the passions, so that it is simultaneously true
that reason restrains the passions, and that passions are only restrained by their own kind.
There is no affectless force of reason on an equal, but opposite footing with the passions.
Rather, the affects themselves are harnessed by other affects to produce an outcome that
is in accord with reason. And the common measure of reason appears as an effect of
properly aligning the affects.
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Here again it is important to recall Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s shared naturalism and
restriction of explanation to efficient causation alone. It is, I maintain, their shared stance
about how the passions drive individual action from behind that frames their view of the
problem with the supposed “irrationality” of passion. Because the passions determine
their ends unilaterally, and hence somewhat blindly, individuals can come into conflicts
harmful to their well-being, even though what fuels their actions is simply the “relentless
striving after power” of each individual. That relentless striving works only as an
efficient cause (see E IVPref: 544-545), and so cannot be understood to possess any ends
intrinsically. Since there are no ends for our basic activity, how our actions conform to
rational norms cannot be understood in terms of such ends. Instead, Hobbes and Spinoza
propose understanding the rationality of our actions by the degree of their calibration to
the actions of others. Reason constitutes the “common measure”, the metric by which to
measure calibration, and in measuring it, provides another motive to calibration. As such,
affects that conform to and uphold the common measure count as “rational”. For Hobbes,
passions that support the common measure are simply coordinated ones. The situation
will be a bit more complicated for Spinoza, because of his distinction between passion
and active affects. But even he will count the coordination of our motives, and the affects
that constitute our motives, as an important effect and measure of rational action.
V. Fear and Coordination
One of the places where Spinoza borrows most heavily from Hobbes is in the
vision of how sovereign power coordinates our passions. Instituting a sovereign power
alters the conditions under which we each seek “to preserve our own life” while
reckoning for our future felicity (as Hobbes puts it), or to “pursue our own advantage” (as
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Spinoza would have it) so that our strivings do not jointly result in prisoners’ dilemma-
like conflicts. But although the results are the same as those that would occur if we
surveyed possible outcomes and chose the actions with the biggest payoff, the technique
works by bearing on our passions: altering the conditions to which we respond generates
different passions, which themselves incite actions congruent with the actions of others,
rather than at cross purposes. This much is shared territory between Hobbes and Spinoza,
even though they recommend rather different forms for instantiating sovereign power,
and even though they recommend inciting rather different passions in order to push the
other passions in line.
Hobbes – notoriously – relies on the passion of fear to force our other passions
into line in ways that reason can approve. Not only is fear for one’s life an important and
sufficient motive to enter into a commonwealth by submitting to its sovereign power, fear
oils all the workings of commonwealth. Hobbes does take it that persons are duty-bound
by the natural law to “perform their covenants made”. Doing so conforms to the third
Law of Nature, which enjoins justice (L 15.1: 89). But he also deems “the bonds of words
[ . . . ] too weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the
fear of some coercive power” (L.14.18: 84). That coercive power resides in the
sovereign, which wields threats both civil and ecclesiastical, to incite the fear that will
push subjects into cooperative behavior. Its deployment of fear is, in fact, a condition for
the very possibility of covenants (especially those that are not immediately beneficial to
both parties), and hence of justice itself (L 15.4: 89). The sovereign is, in turn, itself
subject to those natural laws that enjoin justice, equity, perspicuity, mercy, prudence,
publicity, the promotion of education, and the like (see L. 15, 30: 89-100, 219-33). Those
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natural laws, like all natural laws, are discoverable by reason, and thus binding on anyone
who finds herself in the appropriate conditions where they apply. But even the sovereign
power is moved to obey them by the passion of fear – although not fear of any human, or
artificial power. There is no earthly power to which the sovereign is subject; nor can the
sovereign power be subject to any law other than the natural law. Rather, the sovereign
power is motivated as we all are – by fear of God, and even more, fear of the
consequences for breaking natural laws that God has ordained. Those consequences are
consequences inimical to preserving one’s own lives. Fear, then, inspires prudential
behavior, and constitutes the most widespread motive to lawful behavior (L 27.19: 196).
It’s true that Hobbes admits several variants of fear, of which some, e.g.,
superstition or panic terror, are unlikely to serve the proper management of the passions
(L 6.36-37: 31). But the kind of fear that does most of the work for Hobbes is of another
flavor, and might better be understood as respect, for it is typically directed at an object
with regard to its power. That object can equally be the object of fear and love, for both
being loved and feared are “arguments of power” (L 10.37-38). As such, love and fear are
essentially connected to honoring and valuing (L 10.24: 52); fear, in particular, involves
“confession of power” (L 31.33: 241), while to honor is to acknowledge power,
consisting “in the inward thought and opinion of the power and goodness of another” (L
31.8: 237). For these reasons, the passions appropriate to direct at God are “love (which
hath reference to goodness), and hope and fear (that relate to power)” (L 31.9: 238).
These passions do honor to their object, and when outwardly expressed, constitute
worship. They are also fitting passions in the face of the sovereign power; that is, they
express the honor due to the sovereign’s power, and are part of the obedience due the
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sovereign by virtue of its power. What’s more, power is just the grounds for God’s
dominion over us: “the right of nature whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth
those that break his laws, is to be derived, not from his creating them [ . . . ], but from his
irresistible power (L 31.5: 235). Hobbes makes the analogy between Divine power and
political power explicit in declaring the Commonwealth, of which the Sovereign power is
the “soul” (L. Intro.1: 3), “that Mortal God [ . . . ] under the Immortal God” (L 17.13:
109), the object of “civil worship” comparable to “divine worship” (L 45.13: 443). This
analogy holds even though “there is nothing to be compared to God in power”, and we
must grant God infinite value (L 45.12: 443). The degree of value, honor and worship we
grant to God and to the sovereign may be incommensurable in degree, but are founded on
passions the same in kind.
As we have already seen, Spinoza does not share this evaluation of fear.18 In
particular, he rejects Hobbes’s views of the effectiveness of threat. Although the
sovereign may use fear of punishment to coordinate our passions and actions, the
cooperation it engenders is unstable, for fear motivates not just cooperation, but actions
to remove the source of the fear. And even if fear may occasionally be useful, it is not
advisable for the long run: “fear is an inconstant Sadness, born of the idea of a future or
past thing whose outcome we to some extent doubt, (E III Def.Aff. xiii: 534). Sadness
always indicates a transition to a lesser degree of power, a weakening of conatus. But
Spinoza makes an even stronger case against the appropriateness of fear of God, for he
18In part, this may be because he does not share Hobbes’s conception of fear; Spinoza typically uses the term “metus”, or more rarely, “timor” to express fear. Hobbes’s notion of fear might be captured as well by “cautio”, which some Latin Stoics permitted to a sage. At the 30th Annual Claremont Philosophy of Religion Conference, Thandeka suggested that the differences between Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s evaluations of fear reflected their Christian and Jewish backgrounds (Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA, 13 February 2009). Her suggestion is intriguing, but the most obvious source for the difference, I think, lies in their very different commitments to neo-Stoicism.
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argues it is impossible. Proposition 18 of Part V of the Ethics explicitly rules out feeling
hate towards God, and much the same reasoning applies to fear. As a species of sadness,
fear expresses a reduction in power, and as such always requires an external cause. To
feel fear in the face of God would require that God be a (partial) cause of a decrease in
perfection, which is metaphysically impossible: “there can be no Sadness accompanied
by the idea of God” because “insofar as we consider God, we act” (E VP18: 604). In
short, the very act of considering God is performatively incompatible with passions such
as fear or hate. Instead, Spinoza insists that the understanding of God can only inspire
love. The love that it inspires, however, is distinctive both in degree and in kind: it is
amor Dei intellectualis.
VI. Instantiating Reason:
Now as we saw before, both Hobbes and Spinoza took reason to be the “common
measure”, in which people “agree in nature”, in contrast to the idiosyncratic and divisive
passions. But for all these similarities, Hobbes and Spinoza diverge in their understanding
of how this common measure can be instantiated. Hobbes’s view is particularly
demanding, for he requires that any robust form of reason worthy of governing our
actions be instantiated in a public entity – namely, in the sovereign power – which
determines what constitutes right reason, as well as enforcing it. In the absence of such an
entity to provide the common measure, we may be proto-rational, and even capable of
various kinds of reckoning, but we will not be, I maintain, fully rational.
That the “common measure” must be set by a public entity may not be obvious at
first blush because of the importance Hobbes gives to means-end calculations, of which
both humans and animals are capable to some degree. Desire and passions play an
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indispensable role in such thinking, driving the “regulated” “mental discourse” whereby
we seek the means to produce some effect (L 3.4-5: 13), and for which we can exercise
the virtue of prudence (see L 3.7,9: 14). But whereas such instrumental trains of thought
are within the natural abilities of individuals, others require art and “proceed all from the
invention of words and speech” (L 3.11: 15). This is true of everything Hobbes dubs
“reason”, which he first introduces by declaring that “REASON, in this sense, is nothing
but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names
agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts” (L 5.2: 22-23). Nonetheless,
Hobbes allows that such marking (rather than signifying) of consequences is something
we do when “we reckon by ourselves”. So, there does seem a weak sense of reason as an
instrumental “reckoning”, which is accessible to us individually, at least if we already
possess language.
But along with this reckoning, Hobbes interjects another, seemingly substantive
kind of reason. For there must be some way for “good” and “evil” to be determined
publicly, and thus provide a common measure that is shared and stable. Without such
public determination of the common measure, good and evil are measured simply by
private passions. In order to settle the controversies that arise when individuals rely only
on the yardsticks of their own passions, Hobbes proposes that the parties must “set up for
right reason the reason of some arbitrator or judge to whose sentence they will both
stand” (L 5.3: 23, my emphasis). Although it is unclear how it can be reconciled with the
official account of reckoning,19 “right reason” occupies an important place in Hobbes’s
19For a lively debate about the nature and number of Hobbes’s notions of reason, see, e.g., J. Deigh, "Reason and Ethics in Hobbes's Leviathan," Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996): 33-60; M. Murphy, "Desire and Ethics in Hobbes's Leviathan: A Response to Professor Deigh," Journal of the History of Philosophy38 (2000): 259-68; K. Hoekstra, “Hobbes on Nature, Law and Reason,” Journal of the
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thought. For one, he invokes it in treating how reason discovers the dictates established
by God (L 31.3: 235) as natural law (L 14.3: 79). Then too, he makes it central to the
stability of our thinking: we must submit to the common measure of right reason, since
indulging “every of [our] passions as it comes to bear sway” would be “as intolerable in
the society of men as it is in play, after trump is turned, to use for trump on every
occasion that suit whereof [we] have most in [our] hand” (L 5.3: 23).20 These roles merge
if we take right reason to settle “good” and “evil” not only for ends, but also for means.
Indeed, when Hobbes turns to how the sovereign power functions as a public
reason, he stresses that it determines good and evils of all kinds. The sovereign power is
established by receiving the “right of nature”, wielded by every person “in the condition
of mere Nature” as “the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself
for the preservation of his own nature, [ . . . ] and consequently of doing anything which,
in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto” (L
14.1: 79, my emphasis). Although people can transfer their right, they cannot simply
exempt themselves from the laws of nature, and so Hobbes does not suppose the state of
nature to be utterly irrational. But only the first and second laws of nature get any real
purchase in the absence of a sovereign power; they instruct us on the value and means for
instituting a commonwealth, or if that should prove impossible, command us to defend
ourselves by any means possible. Without a common measure, all judgments about such
means are left to the liberty of the individual. And those judgments will be driven by History of Philosophy 41 (2003): 111-20. What I am arguing here is not really captured by any of these accounts, but my argument does not depend on deciding what Hobbes’s ultimate account of reason is, as long as we acknowledge the role of the sovereign in determining “right reason” in the case of conflicts. See also B. Gert, “Hobbes on Reason,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001): 243-57. 20Michael Ridge, following David Gauthier, makes a similar point, although I do not agree with the rest of his account, see M. Ridge, “Hobbesian Public Reason,” Ethics 108 (1998): 544-6, but also cf., D. Gauthier, “Public Reason,” Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (1992): 24-32. For a particularly strong view of the extent of public reason, see also A. Baier, “Commodious Living” Synthese 72 (1987): 163-6.
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passions without any requirement of consistency even with other passions of the same
individual across time. But in establishing a commonwealth, individuals transfer the right
of nature to the sovereign, and thereby make themselves subject to its determinations of
the means apt to preserving our lives. The standard and measure then lie outside of
private individuals, where it is capable of imposing normative demands on both their
passions and their reckonings. And so, individuals become fully rational only by
submitting to the determinations of a public reason instantiated in the sovereign power.
This is why the remedy for the irrationality of the passions must come from the top down,
and no moral philosophy can be a science without recognition of the role of political
authority. The downfall of Aristotle and other practitioners of “darknesse from vain
philosophy” lies in their failure to see that there is no internal guide – not even passions
moderated by reason – that will provide an appropriate common measure in the absence
of a sovereign authority (L 46.32: 464)
In contrast, Spinoza allows each individual a share of the common measure of
reason. On his view, not only are the norms of reason common to all humans, the object
and content of reason is what is common in the nature of things: “common notions”,
necessary truths, and aspects of the “eternal and infinite essence of God” that are in each
thing (E II P40s2, P44, P45: 478, 480-2). This is a robust vision of reason, but one that
Spinoza thinks in the grasp of every individual, for each of us “has common notions and
adequate ideas of the properties of things” (E IIP40s2: 478). What makes it universally
available is its universal instantiation: reason deals in the common nature of things, and
what is common to all is “equally in the whole and in the part”. We are parts of nature,
and so these genuinely common aspects of nature are in us as much as in anything else.
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Moreover, “those things which are common to all, and which are equally in the part and
in the whole, can only be conceived adequately” (E IIP38: 474). An adequate conception
is one that is not partial or mutilated. Thus, any common notion, or idea of those things
equally in the whole or in the part, can only be conceived completely and adequately. In a
sense, then, the reason Spinoza proposes is every bit as commonly available as that
sketched by Hobbes, perhaps even more so. But that is not because it is embodied only in
a public entity; rather, it is because this reason permeates the fabric of the universe.
VII. Activity and Affectivity in Spinozistic Love of God:
The difference that makes a difference to this conception of a universally
distributed measure of reason lies in Spinoza’s basic metaphysics of activity and
passivity. Spinoza takes it that we have adequate ideas – and only adequate ideas – of
common notions. We are capable of acting as adequate causes for those ideas that are
adequate in us. Such ideas can exist in us whole and complete because their objects are
instantiated in us. That means that we have all the resources sufficient to act as the causes
of those ideas within us, which is to say, that we can be their adequate causes, and thus
fully active agents. Now, Spinoza does not think that we play no causal role when we are
acted on, only that we are merely a partial cause of the state we find ourselves in then. By
parallelism, such passive states are both states of the body and ideas of the mind. Passive
ideas, i.e., passions, are responses to what impacts us from outside, but because they
involve external forces, we have only a partial idea of the causes of our perceptions. And
so passions are characteristically confused. In contrast, when we reason, we have
adequate ideas, for which we can be adequate causes. This entails that insofar as we
reason, we are capable of experiencing only active affects, without being torn by the
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passions. Reasoning for Spinoza thus exhibits our capacity to be genuinely active, by
which we deploy what is common to us and the universe: to act is, in a sense, to act
universally.
This sort of genuine activity on our part is not something Hobbes thinks is
possible. Hobbes’s most general account of a passion, or passive faculty, is “power
limited by somewhat else” (L 31.25: 240). We are always passive in this sense, for what
we are is endeavor, and a restless seeking after power. But our endeavor is always limited
by other things, and so our agency, is both bounded by and dependent on what lies
outside it. On Hobbes’s conception, we appear as nodes of motion that can be
individuated from the rest of the matter in motion constituting the universe by our
endeavor. But we are also immersed in the whole universe, and ultimately set in motion
by it. The only thing that can be accounted fully active is God; for this reason, Hobbes
insists that it would be a sign of dishonour to attribute a passion of any kind to God (L
31.25: 240). But Hobbes is equally adamant that we have no real conception of God: that
God is the “divine and incomprehensible nature” (L 46.23: 462). In the face of God’s
incomprehensibility, we can only do honor to Its infinite power, and offer signs of the
passions of love, hope and fear evoked by such incomprehensible power.
Here too is a stark contrast with Spinoza, who allows not only that we can be
active when we reason, but points to yet another, “third kind of knowledge” that goes
beyond reasoning by means of common notions. This is the scientia intuitiva, which is
simultaneously an intellectual love of God, blessedness or beatitude, and supreme
contentment. It is also a hard nut to crack, and I will not attempt any sort of
comprehensive explanation of this baffling scientia. But a few points relevant to the
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issues under discussion seem clear enough. First, it seems possible to arrive at this
scientia intuitiva by working our way through the rationally discovered, necessary
connections between the properties of things, the task of the second kind of knowledge,
until we achieve a vision of the whole, the third kind of knowledge. Doing so means that
we gain a maximally large set of adequate ideas, since the holistic nature of this vision,
removes the partiality and mutilation of ideas received piecemeal from outside. As such,
the process of working our way towards this intuitive knowledge involves converting our
passions to active affects, a process that increases our power and is therefore joyful. Now,
the third kind of knowledge is holistic in nature, but Spinoza thinks God just is the whole
(conceived as active), so “the more we understand things in this way, the more we
understand God” (E VP25d: 608). This combination of joy in coming to understand, and
taking God as the object of our understanding and cause of our joy means that scientia
intuitiva entails love of God (E VP15, P32: 603, 611). But this is a special and especially
active affect, “the intellectual love of God”. As such, it generates the “greatest
satisfaction of Mind”, in which the mind is affected with the greatest Joy as it passes to
the greatest human perfection (E VP27: 609). The mind thereby also achieves
“blessedness”, which “consists in Love of God [ . . . ] a Love which arises from the third
kind of knowledge [ . . . ] [and] must be related to the mind insofar as it acts” (E VP42d:
616). This is a distinctive and impressive package of affects, arising out of the “remedy”
of transforming our passions into active affects and thereby gaining insight into the
necessary, eternal, interconnected and unified nature of Deus sive Natura. Although
many of the affects that accompany this package are recognizable ones, such as joy, and
love, the entire set must be considered completely distinctive in kind, only related to
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ordinary love and joy by a kind of loose analogy. For Spinoza also tells us: “The Mind’s
intellectual Love of God is the very Love of God by which God loves himself, [ . . . ] i.e.,
the Mind’s intellectual Love of God is part of the infinite Love by which God loves
himself” (E VP36: 612). For this reason, such love cannot be a passion. Ultimately, it
may not even qualify as an affect in Spinoza’s sense, for an affect signals a change in our
conatus, an increase or decrease in our power of acting.21 If the mind’s love is part of
God’s infinite love, then it should already be complete, perfect and immutable. So, it
seems neither affect, nor passion, but once again something utterly distinctive in kind.22
21For a discussion of this point, and for the nature of the mind that can engage in such love, see D. Rutherford, “Salvation as a State of Mind: the Place of Acquiescentia in Spinoza’s Ethics,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1999): 463-5. 22I’d like to thank the audience at the 30th Annual Claremont Philosophy of Religion Conference (Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA, 13-14 February 2009), for a lively and fruitful discussion; I am particularly grateful to Ingolf Dalferth and Michael Rodgers for organizing and hosting a very successful meeting.