THIRD PART OF THE ETHICS OF THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE AFFECTS

PREFACENB: Most who write about how to live treat man not as part of Nature, treating morality as something outside of Nature [e.g. Kant, Plato…], a kingdom within a kingdom [“imperium in imperio”], since they attribute free will to man and conceive of man as disturbing the order of Nature. Hence, they moan and complain, distain and curse man’s impotence. No one has sufficiently examined the nature and power of the affects, nor how to moderate them. But, since the laws and rules of Nature are always and everywhere the same [they are eternal truths] and contain no defect, then we can understand all of the affects through these eternal truths.

D1: I call that cause adequate whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it. But I call it partial, or inadequate, if its effect cannot be understood through it alone.NB: Such adequate causes with respect to things is the correlate of adequate ideas in the attribute of Thought.Notice that this reverses Descartes’ procedure in which he infers causes from their effects [for example, from the ideas of external bodies as effects, Descartes infers the existence of those bodies as causes]. Spinoza treats this as inadequate. The only way to have an adequate understanding of a cause (and for the cause, correspondingly, to be adequate) is to understand the effect through its cause, i.e. to understand causes as sufficient reasons for their effects.

D2: I say that we act when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is (by Dl), when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone. On the other hand, I say that we are acted on when something happens in us, or something follows from our nature, of which we are only a partial cause.NB: This definition distinguishes our actions from our passions; we act when we are the adequate cause of our action, i.e. when we are free; we are passive when we are affected by something of which we are not the adequate cause. We are only a partial cause when we are acted upon since by IIP16 “The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same time the nature of the external body.”

D3: By affect I understand 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 affections.

Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the affect an action; otherwise, a passion.A mode has affections by the power of a certain capacity to be affected [notice that this is a positive capacity of a mode, a feature of the mode’s composition and power, not the effect of something else on the mode, i.e. not a lack, absence, or passivity].

We have two kinds of affections, active affections and passive affections or passions. But, God’s essence is his absolutely infinite power (potentia); God thereby has an infinite capacity to be affected in infinite ways a (potestas). God is the cause of all of his affections and so explicates all of his affections, and so God only has active affections never passive affections, i.e. God’s affections are the modes, but only insofar as God, as Natura Naturans, actively produces those modes. The modes are affections of God, but are completely explicated by God’s own essence (since God is Substance and cause of all things) and not anything else; so God is never passive with respect to his affections, the modes.

Existing finite modes have an essence, a degree of power, and so have a capacity to be affected in a great many ways; so long as a finite mode exists [has duration] this capacity is always necessarily exercised under the action of external modes [the action of external modes is needed, since we only know the mind, the body, and external things through affections of our own body, IIP19, IIP23, IIP26].

So, existing finite modes will always be passive with respect to the actions of modes external to them – an affection is only a passion when it cannot be explicated by the nature of the affected body; an affection is active, i.e. an action, when it can be completely explicated by the nature of the affected body.Thus there are affections of two kinds: ideas of the states of the body (affections, affectio, of the body) and ideas of the changes in states of the body (affects, affectus, of the changes of the body). Affects are ideas [feelings] of the increases or diminishments in the power of acting of a body, of what a body can do [see IIIP2S].

POSTULATESPost. 1: The human body can be affected in many ways in which its power of acting is increased or diminished, and also in others which render its power of acting neither greater nor less.NB: This is the basis of ethical action, viz. that which increases our power of acting is a good for us, that which decreases our power of acting is bad for us.“Our bodies are not just passively moved by external forces. They have their own momentum – their own characteristic force for existing. But this is not something that individuals exert of their own power alone. For an individual to preserve itself in existence…is precisely for it to act and be acted upon in a multiplicity of ways.” Lloyd and Gatens.

Post. 2: The human body can undergo many changes, and nevertheless retain impressions, or traces, of the objects (on this see II Post. 5), and consequently, the same images of things. (For the definition of images, see IIPI7S.)NB: Consequently, the human body can undergo many changes without ceasing to exist, i.e. without changing the characteristic relation of movement and rest that determines its perseverance as an individual.

IIIP1-IIIP10Theme: What follows from ideas, affections, or feelings. Conatus as determined by such affections.Consequence: The distinction of two sorts of affections, active and passive: actions follow from adequate ideas and passions from inadequate ideas.Expressive concept: Second individual modal triad: essence, capacity to be affected, the affections that exercise this capacity.

P1: Our mind does certain things [acts] and undergoes other things, namely, insofar as it has adequate ideas, it necessarily does certain things, and insofar as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily undergoes other things.NB: This treats (see IIP49S) ideas as active, either insofar as adequate ideas are in us as they are in God, and thereby exercise our power of acting, or insofar as we have inadequate ideas [ideas which are inadequate in us, even though they are adequate in God who also has adequate ideas of things outside us] which exercise our capacity to be affected insofar as something else affects us and we react to that other thing and undergo passions, i.e. insofar as we are passive.

Cor: From this it follows that the mind is more liable to passions the more it has inadequate ideas, and conversely, is more active the more it has adequate ideas.NB: The ethical question is how (or to what extent) we can attain active affections, and so how can we maximize our joyful passions so as to come into our power of acting. Along with this striving to become active comes a denunciation of the sad passions, including not only fear and hate, but humiliation, guilt, resentment, asceticism [compare Nietzsche]. All that is sad is bad, enslaves us, and expresses tyranny [see IVP45S2, IVP50S, IVP63S, IVP67, VP10S]. Inadequate ideas, myth, mystification, and superstition, which it is philosophy’s task to denounce, are what cut us off from our power of acting and continually diminish it. Fear and other sad passions are the source of these myths, mystifications, and superstitions (notice, again, the connection between ideas and activity, here in the form of something else determining our power of acting, our capacity to be affected). What is opposed to Nature is not the state of reason, culture, nor even the civil or political State, but rather myth, mystification, and superstition.“The secret of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight as bravely for their servitude as if it were their freedom and count it no shame, but the highest honor to spend their blood and their lives for the glorification of one man.” Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, Preface 5.

NB: The terms adequate and inadequate at first apply to ideas, but then to causes (see IID4 definition of adequate idea, IIID1 definition of adequate cause).We are passive, i.e. we are only the inadequate cause of our affections, insofar as the cause of our actions are external to us. An adequate idea is one of which we are the adequate cause.It might, at first, seem as though human beings can only be passive and only have passive affections and inadequate ideas. [See IIIP3] The sense in which an adequate idea is active is that the mind that forms the idea is the adequate cause of the idea.

P2: The body cannot determine the mind to thinking, and the mind cannot determine the body to motion, to rest, or to anything else (if there is anything else).

NB: This follows from IIP6 and IIP11 that modes of an attribute can only be caused by other modes of the same attribute.Scholium: This is also a direct consequence of IIP7S which says that the mind and the body are one and the same thing conceived under different attributes. So that when the mind is active, the body is active and when the mind is passive, the body is passive (and vice versa).

The illusion of free will is a practical parallel to the speculative (theoretical) illusion of the image of the size of the sun (in IIP35S) in that the experience is genuine [of something positive], but we fail to understand because we fail to understand the causes that determine the experience. Even if we acquire this knowledge the illusion does not disappear.

The Scholium, moreover, poses the ethical question by saying that“no one has yet determined what the body can do, that is, experience has not yet taught anyone what the body can do…” from consideration of its nature alone.“For no one has yet come to know the structure of the body so accurately that he could explain all its function…”A body’s structure is the composition of its characteristic relation of motion and rest, and thereby its capacity to be affected. What a body can do corresponds to the nature and limits of its capacity to be affected [its many degrees of motion, i.e. degrees of freedom]. This also means we do not even know of what affections we are capable, nor the extent of our power.Nietzsche, we stand amazed before consciousness, but "the truly surprising thing is rather the body ... ” [see Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, Deleuze, pp. 17-18]

IIIP2 entails that the mind has no dominion over the body and the body has no dominion over the mind. This is a statement of a rigorous parallelism, more specifically that the mind and body are the same thing considered under different attributes.Such a parallelism has a profoundly ethical import, in that it denies not only the priority of the mind over the body, but also denies that the mind and body are in conflict, that (in Kantian terms) reason and inclination (passive affections and the passions) are at odds with one another.

“…when men say that this or that action of the body arises from the mind, which has dominion over the body, they do not know what they are saying…”In saying this, it is said that the mind commands and the body obeys, in which case this is not really about the mind’s power (potentia) but about the mind having a finality and eminence over the body in accord with a “higher duty,” and the body’s power becomes either the power of execution of the mind’s command or the power to lead us astray from its duties. For that view presupposes that the mind can be active while the body is passive (reason can rule over the inclinations – passions) and the mind can be passive while the body is active (the inclinations – passions, passive affections). This distinguishes Ethics from Morality and the Ethical vision of the world from the Moral vision of the world (see Deleuze “How the Ethics Differs from a Morality” and Bernard Williams on the Morality System, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy).

But, given IIIP2, whenever the mind is active the body is active and vise versa, and whenever the mind is passive the body is passive and vise versa.“the order of actions and passions of our body is, by nature, at one with the order of actions and passions of the mind.”This excludes any eminence of the soul over the body, any moral finality (final cause), any transcendent God who might determine one series over the other. This is not only opposed to any real action of the mind on the body or vice versa, but also any pre-established harmony (Leibniz), or occasionalism (Malebranche).To know of what the body is capable, i.e. of what affections the body is capable, i.e. its capacity to be affected, is also to know of what the mind is capable. [So, the mind is to be understood on the model of the body.]

See IIP13S, p.124 which says:

“to determine what is the difference between the human mind and the others, and how it surpasses them, it is necessary for us, as we have said, to know the nature of its object, that is, of the human body… I say this in general, that in proportion as a body is more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once. And in proportion as the actions of a body depend more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in acting, so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly.”

To think in terms of power, we consider this in relation to the model of the body; this does not devalue Thought in relation to Extension, but rather devalues consciousness in relation to thought.This is the Ethical vision of the world which stands opposed to the Moral vision of the world. What a body can do is its “natural right.”TTP “…the rights of an individual extend to the utmost limits of his power as it has been conditioned.”We, body and mind, strive for what is useful. If one encounters a body that can combine with one’s own in a useful relation (affecting one with joy), one strives (i.e., the affection determines one’s conatus) to combine with it.But, if one encounters a body whose relation is incompatible with one’s own body’s relation (affecting it with sadness) one strives (i.e. the affection determines one’s conatus) to avoid or destroy the body encountered.The latter has the result that,

“…often we see the better and follow the worse…”

P3: The actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone; the passions depend on inadequate ideas alone.NB: So, the ethical question now becomes how can we have adequate ideas, i.e. how can we become active?Scholium: “We see, then, that the passions are not related to the mind except insofar as it has something which involves a negation…”In this respect, the passions contain nothing positive, we are passive only insofar as we involve some imperfection, i.e. insofar as we are affected by other things.Our power of acting is positive, and passive affections are limitations on that power of acting. Our power of acting is the only real, positive, and affirmative form of our capacity to be affected.

For existing modes, their essence is their power of acting. which is the same as a mode’s capacity to be affected.It may seem that we are doomed to only having inadequate ideas, since we only have ideas of our affections, which only give us inadequate ideas of external things or even of our own body or mind [IIP23, IIP24, IIP25].

However, we can have adequate ideas insofar as we have common notions, since from our inadequate ideas of our affections [through which we know something of that which affects us as well as know something of our body and our mind] we can form the idea of what is in common between us and that which affects us.Ideas that we form of what is common are ideas in us (in us, as part, as they are in the whole composed of both ourselves combined with that which we encounter) and which is explicated by our power of thinking as its cause. This latter means that we are active insofar as we form common notions.

P4: No thing can be destroyed except through an external cause.NB: The essence of something is always affirmed, i.e. modal essences exist even when the mode does not exist (see IIP8 “The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God's infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God's attributes.”).

So, the only way an existing mode can cease to exist is if the characteristic relation (which expresses that essence in extensive parts and which were brought together by fortuitous encounters) between the modes extrinsic parts is dissolved.But, that dissolution can only happen in the common order of nature, i.e. in the order of encounters, under circumstances in which some cause in the common order of nature destroys the characteristic relation in which those extensive parts form that singular thing, since modes are determine to exist or not by the laws of composition and decomposition in the common order of nature, i.e. insofar as a mode encounters something else.

P5: Things are of a contrary nature, that is, cannot be in the same subject, insofar as one can destroy the other.NB: The demonstration uses the term “subject” (the term only appears one other time in the text in VA1), but subject, here, only means the same thing generally (it is not a reference to subjectivity) and may be understood as the subject of an idea, i.e. the individual about which something can be thought (or said as with the subject of a predication in a judgment). The point here is that in an encounter between things, a thing cannot be combined with something else which can destroy that thing.

P6: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.See Def. Aff. I – “Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something.” p. 188This closely connects desire to striving, i.e. conatus, but adds to conatus that things not only strive (conatus) to persevere in their being, but also that the conatus is determined from affections to act, i.e. do something or other (which may or may not actually contribute to the things perserverance in being).

This proposition prepares for the identification or the striving to persevere in its being (conatus) with the essence or power of a thing in IIIP7.Desire is defined as appetite together with consciousness of that appetite.This striving defines the thing (gives its essence as a capacity to be affected, i.e. as its power of acting – see IIIP7), and as such will form the basis of (ethical/political) evaluation of what is good or bad for that thing.This striving is inherent in the power of acting of a thing, i.e. the thing insofar as it expresses its essence. So, insofar as an existing thing expresses its power of acting (in a definite and determinate way – i.e. determined to do something from some given affection), it strives to continue to exercise that power of acting and opposes anything that could destroy that existing power of acting (IIIP4 implies that no thing can be destroyed except by an external cause).

P7: The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.NB: This is the first mention of the conatus or striving to persevere in being as the essence of a thing (this proposition will serve as a premise in many later propositions). The conatus – striving – is the essence of the actually existing thing (i.e. the conatus is the mode’s degree of power once the mode has begun to exist, see IIIP8 with respect to duration, the conatus is the affirmation of a mode’s essence in the mode’s existence).

The conatus is not itself a tendency towards movement, it is the striving to preserve the characteristic relation of movement and rest belonging to a body [or mode of some attribute], to renew parts that enter into that characteristic relation (for example, in nutrition) and to preserve the mode’s capacity to be affected in very many ways (regardless of whether those affections are active or passive, see IIIP9). See IVP38-IVP39.

The conatus is identical with our power of acting, but that power of acting varies dynamically as our conatus is determined by various affections (see IIIP57, III Gen Def Affects, and IVP24 “acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing)”).

P8: The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being involves no finite time, but an indefinite time.NB: The duration, i.e. the continued existence, of a thing is determined by chance encounters in the common order of Nature, i.e. by what sorts of encounters the thing has with other things, and since the thing can only be destroyed by bad encounters (IIIP4) and since each thing by its essences strives to continue in its existence (IIIP6 and IIIP7), there can be no definite duration that could follow from the nature, essence, of that thing. Moreover, there are modes, the infinite modes, which do not involve a duration, i.e. a finite time (the use of the term “time” tempus here is meant to convey this point, not to refer to time in the narrow sense of present, past, and future, for which see IIIP18).

P9: Both insofar as the mind has clear and distinct ideas, and insofar as it has confused ideas, it strives, for an indefinite duration, to persevere in its being and it is conscious of this striving it has.NB: We are determined to act, insofar as we are affected by something which determines our conatus. But, we must distinguish what determines us to act from that action to which we are thereby determined, since the latter involves our power of acting [see IIIP54], even in the case of passive affections.Our striving may be to repel an affection we do not like or to hold onto one we do like. While passive affections cut us off from our power of acting, they still involve our power of acting to some, perhaps small, degree, since our power of acting is our capacity to be affected and anything which affects us must to some degree engage our capacity to be affected.

Here Spinoza distinguishes between will, appetite, and desire: Will is our striving to persevere in our being insofar as it is referred to the mind alone. Appetite is that same striving when referred to the mind and body together. Desire is identical with appetite insofar as one is conscious of that appetite [See Def. Aff. I – “Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something.” ].

Appetite, since it is the striving to persevere in our being, is identical with our essence, since essence is our power of acting.Ethically, it follows from this that we do not strive for something because we judge something to be good (since that confuses effects with causes, erroneously and confusedly introducing final causes), but that we judge something to be good because we strive for it. [On this point and the meaning of good and bad see IIIP39.]

P10: An idea that excludes the existence of our body cannot be in our mind, but is contrary to it.NB: This follows from our finitude and the identity between modes of Thought and corresponding modes of Extension. We can only be destroyed (IIIP4) by some external cause, and the idea of that cause cannot be in us, The laws of composition and decomposition of finite modes exclude our combining with that body, so the idea of that body, insofar as it is contrary to our continued existence, cannot be part of our mind.

P11-P57Theme: The distinction between two sorts of affections, active and passive, should not lead us to overlook the distinction between two sorts of passive affections, joyful and sad.Consequence: The two lines of joy and sadness: their developments, variations and interactions.

Expressive concept: Augmenting and diminishing the power to act.

P11: The idea of any thing that increases or diminishes, aids or restrain, our body’s power of acting, increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our mind's power of thinking.NB: This follows from the parallelism of the order and connection of ideas and bodies (IIP7) and that the mind is more capable as the body is can be affected in more ways (IIP14).Scholium: Def. Aff. II – “Joy is a man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection.”

“By joy…I shall understand…that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection…”Def. Aff. III – “Sadness is a man's passage from a greater to a lesser perfection.

Exp: I say a passage. For joy is not perfection itself. If a man wereborn with the perfection to which he passes, he would possess it without an affect of joy.” [See explication pp. 188-189]

“…by sadness [I shall understand] that passion by which it passes to a lesser perfection.”

Desire, joy, and sadness are the primary affects from which all others arise.Here Spinoza discusses pleasure, pain, cheerfulness, and melancholy which he omits from the Definitions of the Affects at the end of the chapter (see p. 189). Pain and pleasure are ascribed when some parts of a person are affected more than another, while cheerfulness, and melancholy are ascribed when all parts are affected equally.The cause of an idea ceasing to affirm the existence of the body cannot be either the body ceasing to exist (even when it does cease to exist) because the body cannot cause anything in the mind (IIP6), nor the mind itself, since (IIIP4) it can only be destroyed by an external cause. Therefore, the cause of an idea ceasing to affirm the existence of the body must be a cause external to the mind and must itself be an idea, so it must be another idea which excludes the existence of the body and so excludes the existence of the corresponding idea.

Pl2: The mind as far as it can, strives to imagine those things that increase or aid the body's power of acting.NB: Encounters involve the nature of an external body. As long as the mind imagines that external body and insofar as that body increases the body’s power of acting, the image of that body (IIIP11) thereby increases the mind’s power of thinking and so (IIIP6 or IIIP9) the mind strives to imagine that external body. This, again, points out that when the body is active, the mind is also active.“From the perspective of the mode, the imagination is our navigation system, our ability to, and means by which we, constitute and grasp much of the world of modes. We feel our power being augmented or diminished, and we respond either by continuing to conjoin with a mode, or continuing to have an idea, or we remember an idea that excludes the existence of the diminishing idea, and correspondingly alters our body so that it ceases to diminish in power.” Aaron V. Garrett, Meaning in Spinoza’s Method, p. 186

This proposition agrees with Nietzsche (contrary to Nietzsche’s own reading of Spinoza, WP 688) that we strive not only to persevere in our being, in the sense of merely preserving or maintaining our existence, i.e. mere self-preservation, but in addition to (and built upon our striving to persevere in and maintain our existence) we (and all things) strive to increase our power of acting [see also IIIP54].

P13: When the mind imagines those things that diminish or restrain the body’s power of acting, it strives, as far as it can, to recollect things which exclude their existence.NB: The mind will continue to imagine something which diminishes the minds power of acting, i.e. the mind will continue to think that thing is present, until another idea which excludes that thing’s existence is imagined. The mind, striving to perserve in its being, i.e. maintain and increase its power of acting, will then strive to imagine or recollect such an idea.

Cor: From this it follows that the mind avoids imagining those things that diminish or restrain its or the body's power.NB: Sadness (no less than joy) determines our striving, i.e. our conatus (essence, power of acting, desire, i.e. striving to persevere in our existence), so out of sadness arise hate and other sad affects. Even when the body’s power is diminished it still involves our power of acting, and our conatus strives for what is useful for preserving or increasing our power of acting. So, we are determined to ward off sadness and to strive to destroy the object which causes that sadness [see IIIP28 and IIIP37].Def. Aff. VI – “Love is a joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause.” [See explication p. 189-190]Def. Aff. VII – “Hate is a sadness with the accompanying idea of an external cause.”One will strive to preserve and have present things one loves and remove and destroy things one hates. In this way, love and hate are ethically, politically, and even ecologically important.

P14: If the mind has once been affected by two affects at once, then afterwards, when it is affected by one of them, it will also be affected by the other.NB: This gives an account (through memory of traces) of association. In imagination, the mind indicates the affects of the body (increases and decreases of the body’s power of acting) more than the nature of that by which the body is affected. This leaves traces that remain in the body unless some contrary affection alters them, and so two affects (even if one increases and the other decreases the body’s power of acting) affecting the body at once will impose traces such that if the body is affected by one it will be predisposed to have the other affect as well.IIP14 is also important because it implies that more complex affects can arise from combinations of other affects [see IIIP17].

P15: Any thing can be the accidental cause of joy, sadness, or desire.NB: This draws on the account of association (IIIP14), and insofar as the mind is affected by an idea that neither increases nor diminishes its power of acting and which is associated in memory with another idea, (which is not the true cause of the affect) that does increase or decrease the mind’s power of acting, the mind will be affected with joy or sadness respectively, and in either case the former idea will awaken a desire to retain or remove the associated idea. But, such an association is accidental since it arises from past encounters in which the latter affect was not the cause .Def. Aff. VIII – “Inclination is a joy accompanied by the idea of a thing which is the accidental cause of joy.”Def. Aff. IX – “Aversion is a sadness accompanied by the idea of something which is the accidental cause of sadness.”

Cor: From this alone – that we have regarded a thing with an affect of joy or sadness, of which it is not itself the efficient cause, we can love it or hate it.NB: We can come to love or hate things which are not the cause of the corresponding affects of joy or sadness.Scholium: The practical question of the Ethics is to ask what one must do to be affected by a maximum of joyful passions, so that we can thereby come to achieve active joys, i.e. come into our full power of acting. We can come to be affected by a maximum of joyful passions through forming common notions (see IIIP3S), and come into our power of acting when we understand God as the cause of those common notions.

P16: From the mere fact that we imagine a thing to have some likeness to an object which usually affects the mind with joy or sadness, we love it or hate it, even though that in which the thing is like the object is not the efficient cause of these affects.NB: When things are similar, we tend to associate them, since the similar thing is the accidental cause of our affect, even though it is not the efficient cause of our affect of joy or sadness, love or hate. So, we come to have similar affects even when the resembling thing has not caused the affect.

P17: If we imagine that a thing which usually affects us with an affect of sadness is like another which usually affects us with an equally great affect of joy, we shall hate it and at the same time love it.NB: In encounters between bodies, the constant interplay between extrinsic relations producing joy or sadness, so that a single object (due to the complexity of things, see IIP13SA’’ and IIIP14) can be the cause of both joy and sadness, and we can love and hate the same object, by virtue of the complexity of the relations which compose both ourselves and other things (see IIP13SA’’). This is exacerbated by the similarity between a thing and something we love when there is also a similarity with something we hate .The complexity of the relations which compose us is such that, for example, in an encounter with another thing the sadness arising from a thing we love may interrupt or destroy our joy.

Scholium: Our sadness, due to something we hate, may be interrupted by the destruction or sadness of the object which is its cause (see also IIIP20 and IIIP23).Vacillation of mind arises from being affected by contrary affects. Generally, vacillation of mind occurs when two things actually affect us such that they are the cause of contrary affects, but can also occur when one is only the accidental cause of one of the affects.For the body is composed of many individuals (parts) and can be affected in a great many ways, hence the same thing can affect us in contrary ways by affecting the body differently with respect to different parts, or by affecting the same (complex) part in different ways.So, one and the same object can be the cause of multiple affects which may be contrary to one another.

P18: Man is affected with the same affect of joy or sadness from the image of a past or future thing as from the image of a present thing.NB: The affect produced by an affection will be the same regardless of the temporality of the image the affection produces, i.e. whether the image is regarded as past, present, or future. The content of the image and the type of the affect are features of the affection regardless of whether the image is regarded as past, present, or future.

Scholium 1: As long as one continues to be affected by an image, it is regarded as present – another image which excludes the presence of thing imagined is necessary for the image to cease to be regarded as present and come to be regarded as past – an image is regarded as past so long as the image is joined with an image of a past time. An image is regarded as future insofar as it is anticipated through association and resemblance [see IIP44S].Something is called past or future insofar as one has been affected or will be affected by it. This is a view of the past, present, future series as belonging to encounters, the common order of Nature, and known through the first kind of knowledge; it also makes these temporal determinations local to this or that encounter.Images of the past (or future) are not as constant and are more doubtful than images of something present (where no image excludes the things presence). Time [past, present, future] therefore differs from both duration and eternity [see ID8 and IID5].

What Spinoza calls time corresponds to the first kind of knowledge it arises in the common order of Nature in encounters between finite modes.  Finite modes do not encounter one another or affect one another (cause affections in one another) in all their parts together, but only in some of their parts followed by other parts while perhaps ceasing to cause affections in some of the parts in which they had affected one another at first [i.e. when excluded by some other image].As always it is helpful to conceive of the mind on the model of the body (Part II, prop 13 lemmas).  From the point of view of the mind, the affections produced in one body by another are experienced as images and produce affects. The successive images and the changing affects that correspond to the successive encounters between (extensive) parts are perceived as past, present, and future, i.e., as time.

It must be insisted that this past, present, future ordering of time is purely local and that there is no single past, present, future ordering for the whole of modal existence.In this respect, Spinoza's conception is more like Boltzman's conception of local times (due to the distribution of local entropic features) than it is like a McTaggart A-series (a single indefinite – abstract – series transitioning from future to present to past).Since, the past, present, future ordering occurs differently in different encounters, it is not possible to abstract a single abstract past, present, future line that extends through the whole of Nature or even the through the totality of finite modes.

Scholium 2: Def. Aff. XII – “hope is…an inconstant joy which has arisen from the image of a future or past thing whose outcome we doubt;Def. Aff. XIII – fear…is an inconstant sadness, which has also arisen from the image of a doubtful thing.”Def. Aff. XIV, XV – “confidence, and despair [are respectively] a joy or sadness which has arisen from the image of a thing we feared or hoped for [with the doubt removed].

Def. Aff. XVI – “…gladness is a joy which has arisen from the image of a past thing whose outcome we doubted.Def. Aff. XVII – remorse is a sadness which is opposite to gladness.”

P19: He who imagines that what he loves is destroyed will be saddened; but be who imagines it to be preserved, will rejoice.NB: This follows from the definition of love plus that the mind strives to imagine what will increase its power of acting [IIIP13], and to exclude what decreases its power of acting.P20: He who imagines that what be hates is destroyed will rejoice.NB: This is just the complementary proposition to IIIP19.

P21: He who imagines what he loves to be affected with joy or sadness will also be affected with joy or sadness; and each of those affects will be greater or lesser in the lover as they are greater or lesser in the thing loved.NB: Imagining a thing loved affected with joy or sadness is to imagine it transitioning to increase or decrease its power of acting. Since what one loves is regarded insofar as combination with it will increase or decrease one’s own power of acting.

P22: If we imagine someone to affect with joy a thing we love, we shall be affected with love toward him. If, on the other hand, we imagine him to affect the same thing with sadness, we shall also be affected with hate toward him.If someone affects a thing we love with joy or sadness we will also be affected by joy or sadness.Scholium: Def. Aff. XVIII – Pity is a sadness which arises from injury to another.Def. Aff. XIX – Favor is love toward him who has done good to another.”Def. Aff. XX – Indignation is hatred toward him who has done evil to another.” We pity not only those we have loved, but also those to whom we have been indifferent. We favor those who helped someone like us, and are indignant at those who injure those who are like us.

P23: He who imagines what he hates to be affected with sadness will rejoice; if, on the other hand, he should imagine it to be affected with joy, he will be saddened. And both these affects will be the greater or lesser, as its contrary is greater or lesser in what he hates.NB: This is parallel to IIIP22 with respect to a hated thing.Scholium: This gives rise to complicated affects since rejoicing in the sadness of another gives rise to conflicting joy and sadness, since one is both rejoicing in considering the sadness of the one hated, since the hated thing is considered as decreasing its power of acting, but still affected by their sadness and to that extent is saddened by their being saddened. Similarly, if the hated thing is affected by joy, this will both sadden one because the hated thing is considered as increasing its power of acting, and joyful insofar as one is imagining something like oneself affected with joy.

P24: If we imagine someone to affect with joy a thing we hate, we shall be affected with hate toward him also. On the other hand, if we imagine him to affect the same thing with sadness, we shall be affected with love toward him.NB: This follows from IIIP22.Def. Aff. XXIII – Envy is hate, insofar as it is considered so to dispose a man that he is glad at another's ill fortune and saddened by his good fortune.P25: We strive to affirm, concerning ourselves and what we love, whatever we imagine to affect with joy ourselves or what we love. On the other hand, we strive to deny whatever we imagine affects with sadness ourselves or what we love.NB: Affirmation and denial are activities of ours arising from the identity of will and intellect [IIP49C]. Here the ideas are the affects which are also the activities of the will in affirming or denying.

P26: We strive to affirm, concerning what we hate, whatever we imagine to affect it with sadness, and on the other hand, to deny whatever we imagine to affect it with joy.NB: This is the complementary to IIIP25, following from IIIP23 as does IIIP25 from IIIP 21. Again the affirmation and denial are activities arising from the identity of will and intellect.Scholium: “From these propositions we see that it easily happens that a man thinks more highly of himself and what he loves than is just, and on the other hand, thinks less highly than is just of what he hates.”Def. Aff. XXVIII – Pride is a joy produced when someone thinks more highly of themselves than is just.Def. Aff. XXIX – “Despondency is thinking less highly of oneself than is just, out of sadness.”Def. Aff. XXI – Overestimation is Joy born of the fact that a man thinks more highly of another than is justDef. Aff. XXII – Scorn stems from thinking less highly of another than is just.

P27: If we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no affect, to be affected with some affect, we are thereby affected with a like affect.NB: It is odd that this proposition does not come with IIIP23 (IIIP23 is used in the part of the demonstration regarding hating something like us, but the demonstration otherwise needs only much earlier propositions, IIP16 and IIP17S).

Scholium: Def. Aff. XVIII – Pity is a sadness, accompanied by the idea of something bad which has happened to another whom we imagine to be like us.Notice that pity is a sad passion, and so Spinoza [like Nietzsche, and many other philosophers] will denounce pity along with his denunciation of the sad passions generally.Def. Aff. XXXIII – Emulation is imitation of the affects, when it is related to desire…the desire for a thing which is generated in us from the fact that we imagine others like us to have the same desire.”

Cor. 1: If we imagine that someone toward whom we have had no affect affects a thing like us with joy, we shall be affected with love toward him. On the other hand, if we imagine him to affect it with sadness, we shall be affected with hate toward him.NB: This merely specifies the consequences of IIIP27 with respect to love and to hate, i.e. with regard to the likeness of the object of someone else’s joy or sadness.Cor. 2: We cannot hate a thing we pity from the fact that its suffering affects us with sadness.NB: If we could hate something because we pity that thing, then we would have to rejoice in its sadness, but that is contrary to the claim that we pity that thing, since pity is a sadness which arises from injury to another.Cor. 3: As far as we can, we strive to free a thing we pity from its suffering.NB: This is benevolence.Def. Aff. XXXV – Benevolence is a desire to benefit one whom we pity.

P28: We strive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to joy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to sadness.NB: This proposition will be used in many later demonstrations. This follows from the parallel between striving to imagine what will lead to joy (and that we strive to destroy what we imagine will lead to sadness, i.e. something we hate) and the mind’s striving, its power of thinking, which is equal to the body’s striving, its power of acting (IIP17C - Although the external bodies by which the human body has once been affected neither exist nor are present, the mind will still be able to regard them as if they were present, and IIIP11 - The idea of any thing that increases or diminishes, aids or restrain, our body’s power of acting, increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our mind's power of thinking.).See IIIP13 above “When the mind imagines those things that diminish or restrain the body’s power of acting, it strives, as far as it can, to recollect things which exclude their existence.”See also, IIIP37 below “The desire which arises from sadness or joy, and from hatred or love, is greater, the greater the affect is.”

P29: We shall strive to do also whatever we imagine men to look on with joy, and on the other hand, we shall be averse to doing what we imagine men are averse to.The image of what men look on with joy or aversion is necessarily a confused image [see IIP48S and IIP49S p. 151] and so what we praise and blame is, with respect to men generally, is necessarily confused.Scholium:Def. Aff. XLIV – Ambition is a striving to do something (and also to omit doing something) solely to please men, especially when we strive so eagerly to please the people that we do or omit certain things to our own injury, or another's.Def. Aff. XLIII – In other cases, it is usually called human kindness.Praise is the joy with which we imagine the action of another by which he has striven to please us.Blame is the sadness with which we are averse to his action.Neither praise nor blame appear in the Def. Aff. But they do play roles with respect to some latter propositions (IIIP30, IIIP55, Def Aff. XXXI Shame, and especially IVP37S1).

P30: If someone has done something which he imagines affects others with joy, he will be affected with joy accompanied by the idea of himself as cause, or he will regard himself with joy. If, on the other hand, he has done something which he imagines affects others with sadness, he will regard himself with sadness.NB: A person “is conscious of himself through the affections by which he is determined to act.” (IIP19 and IIIP23) So, to one comes to esteem oneself or is humiliated only through one’s imagining of the affections one has on others. Esteem an shame are social affects which provoke or restrain our actions with respect to how our actions affect others.Scholium:Def. Aff. XXX – Love of esteem [recognition, glory] is a joy accompanied by the idea of an internal cause, i.e. the idea of some action of ours which we imagine others praise.Def. Aff. XXXI – Shame is a sadness accompanied by the idea of an internal cause, i.e. the idea of some action of ours which we imagine others blame.

P31: If we imagine that someone loves, desires, or hates something we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereby love, desire, or hate it with greater constancy. But if we imagine that he is averse to what we love, or the opposite [NS: that he loves what we hate], then we shall undergo vacillation of mind.NB: Since we imitate other’s affects, if we already love, desire, or hate something and imagine someone else has the same affects, that will increase the constancy with which we love, desire, or hate that thing, or if we imagine the other’s affect as contrary to ours, it will increase our vacillation. Social affects are reinforced by imitation [NB: Gabriel Tarde].Cor: …each of us strives, so far as he can, that everyone should love what he loves, and hate what he hates.Scholium: “As lovers, let our hopes and fears be alike,

Insensitive is he who loves what another leaves.” Ovid

We all strive, i.e. have the ambition, that others love and praise what we do and hate and blame what we do. “each of us, by his nature, wants the others to live according to his temperament; when all alike want this, they are alike an obstacle to one another, and when all wish to be praised, or loved, by all, they hate one another.”

P32: If we imagine that someone enjoys some thing that only one can possess, we shall strive to bring it about that he does not possess it.NB: If someone else loves something so shall we, but if they are an obstacle to our joy, we will strive that they will not have it.Scholium: “…men pity the unfortunate and envy the fortunate, and envy them with greater hate the more they love the thing they imagine the other to possess. We see, then, that from the same property of human nature from which it follows that men are compassionate [that people love what others love, but in the case of compassion, one is glad of the other’s joy and saddened by the other’s sadness], it also follows that the same men are envious and ambitious.”Def. Aff. XXIV – “Compassion is love, insofar as it so affects a man that he is glad at another's good fortune, and saddened by his ill fortune.”So, compassion can be either a joyful passion or a sad passion.

“…we find from experience that children, because their bodies are continually, as it were, in a state of equilibrium, laugh or cry simply because they see others laugh or cry. Moreover, whatever they see others do, they immediately desire to imitate it. And finally, they desire for themselves all those things by which they imagine others are pleased…” [This is due to the mimetic character of children not necessarily the desire for recognition and esteem as Hegel claims, i.e. the desire to put themselves in the place of the thing the other desires. Unlike Hegel, Spinoza explicates the striving to possess what others have, not by a desire for esteem or recognition, but rather from love of the thing the other has along with imitation.]

See also the Exp. to Def. Aff. XXXIII – Emulation is imitation of the affects, when it is related to desire…the desire for a thing which is generated in us from the fact that we imagine others like us to have the same desire.”

P33: When we love a thing like ourselves, we strive, as far as we can, to bring it about that it loves us in return.NB: “If a thing is like us…we shall strive, as far as we can, to bring it about that the thing we love is affected with joy, accompanied by the idea of ourselves as cause.” The striving to be loved by what we love is a social desire that strives to draw individuals together to form composite (e.g. social) individuals [such as in bonds of friendship].P34: The greater the affect with which we imagine a thing we love to he affected toward us, the more we shall exult at being esteemed.NB: This adds that an increase in the degree that our being loved by something else (IIIP33) will increase the degree of our joy in their love.Affects can differ not only with respect to their vacillation or constancy, but also with respect to their degrees of intensity.

P35: If someone imagines that a thing he loves is united with another by as close, or by a closer, bond of friendship than that with which he himself, alone, possessed the thing, he will be affected with hate toward the thing he loves, and will envy the other.NB: That another is loved by someone else this is imagined as contrary to that other’s love of oneself, leading to hate the one he loves and envy [saddened by his joy and glad at his ill-fortune] the one the other loves.Scholium: Def. Aff. end where Spinoza passes over vacillations of the mind such as jealousy, “which is a vacillation of mind born of love and hatred together, accompanied by the idea of another who is envied.”Jealousy often arises with respect to sexual love where the lover will come to react differently to the jealous lover, which will increase the sadness. The complex affect is a vacillation of mind because it combines love and hate.

P36: He who recollects a thing by which he was once pleased desires to possess it in the same circumstances as when he first was pleased by it.NB: This is again a matter of association, i.e. of having the memory associated with the image of same circumstances.Cor: Therefore, if the lover has found that one of those circumstances is lacking, he will be saddened.NB: Imagining the lack of some circumstance excludes the existence of the desired thing.Def. Aff. XXXII (see Exp. p. 194) – Longing is a desire, or appetite, to possess something which is encouraged by the memory of that thing, and at the same time restrained by the memory of other things which exclude the existence of the thing wanted.”

P37: The desire which arises from sadness or joy, and from hatred or love, is greater, the greater the affect is.NB: Insofar as an encounter increases our power of acting, it determines us to do and imagine what will preserve this joy and the object which produces this joy. So, passive joys increase our power of acting, but never to the degree that we become active, i.e. to the degree that we become the adequate cause of the affections that exercise our capacity to be affected. [see IIIP13 that we strive to recollect what excludes the existence of things that diminish or restrain our power of acting, and IIIP28 that we strive to to further the occurrence of things that give us joy and destroy those that lead to saddness].

Desire can also be greater or less and differ both in degree of constancy and degree of intensity.

P38: If someone begins to hate a thing he has loved, so that the love is completely destroyed, then (from an equal cause) he will have a greater hate for it than if he had never loved it, and this hate will be the greater as the love before was greater.NB: “more of his appetites will be restrained than if he had not loved it [the thing he now hates].” “For love is a joy (by P13S), which the man, as far as he can (by P28), strives to preserve; and (by the same scholium) he does this by regarding the thing he loves as present, and by affecting it, as far as he can, with joy (by P21).”This also clarifies, in part, how one can preserve a joy. Striving to preserve a joy necessarily requires that one affect the thing loved with joy, so that such joys are necessarily social.

P39: He who hates someone will strive to do evil to him, unless he fears that a greater evil to himself will arise from this; and on the other hand, he who loves someone will strive to benefit him by the same law.NB: Demonstration: Even if one hates something, if one fears retaliation, one will strive harder to abstain from doing something bad to the thing one hates. If one loves someone, one will strive to benefit the beloved unless he fears an evil will result from doing so. Caute!Scholium: Here we have the explicit identification of something that brings joy with something good and something that saddens with something bad. So, each one evaluates things from his own affect (See text for examples). Again (see IIIP9S), one calls something good because one desires it, one does not desire it because it is good.

This means that “evil” or bad only amount to what reduces or restrains one’s power of acting or decomposes one’s characteristic relation of extrinsic parts (this is why the translation of malus should be “bad” and not “evil” since badness is a matter of degree, while good/evil is usually considered a simple dichotomy – there is no reason Curley should translate malus as evil in one place and as bad in another).

Hence, something is bad only insofar as it is bad from the perspective of this or that existing mode, useful or harmful for that mode. There is no Good nor Evil in Nature in general (see also IVP8 “The knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of joy or sadness, insofar as we are conscious of it.”). What is bad is always a bad encounter between existing finite modes which involves a restraint or reduction in a mode’s power of acting or a decomposition of its characteristic relation, for example, by ingesting a poison [what is bad can be understood generally on the analogy with poisoning and what is good on analogy with nutrition].

From the point of view of the order of characteristic relations (and the second kind of knowledge), what is bad is nothing at all; there is nothing in the order of characteristic relations except composition, any combination is good from the point of view of the order of characteristic relations. When a poison decomposes a body it merely makes that body take on a new characteristic relation.That which is bad is also nothing in the order of essences; a mode’s existing is a matter of a characteristic relation between extrinsic extensive parts, but when that relation is dissolved, that does nothing to the modal essences. Once a mode exists its conatus strives to preserve its existence, but modal essences do not determine the existence of finite modes nor their duration (see IIP8 re: duration, and IVPreface re: the independence of the reality, of a mode from its duration “the essence of each thing insofar as it exists and produces an effect, having no regard to its duration.”)

In letters 19 and 22 to Blyenbergh, Spinoza argues that God told Adam that eating the fruit was bad for him. So, God only told Adam an eternal truth concerning the the result of an encounter between the characteristic relations of Adam and the fruit such that the fruit was capable of destroying Adam’s body and decomposing his characteristic relation. But, Adam misunderstood this eternal truth as God forbidding him from eating the fruit, i.e. Adam took this knowledge as a command. Hence, Adam’s understanding was like a child’s (see IVP68 “If men were born free, they would form no concept of good and evil so long as they remained free.”, V39S “He who has a body capable of a great many things has a mind whose greatest part is eternal.”), God did not forbid Adam anything, but merely told him the fruit was a poison, and Adam misunderstood the natural relation between an act and its consequence as if it were a command or moral law and like a child disobeyed, and since he had not developed reason through a long formative process, and was only minimally rational (see IVP68S).Instead, the so called “laws of nature” are norms, i.e. patterns or rules, of life – relating to the power of acting and the striving to persevere in ones existence – eternal truths rather than moral commands, orders, or prohibitions.

We do not desire something because it is good, but call it good because we desire it [IIIP9S]. Each of us judges what is good and what bad, what is better and what worse what is useful and what is useless from our own affects.Def. Aff. XXXIX – Timidity is fear insofar as a man is disposed by it to avoid an evil he judges to be future by encountering a lesser evil. [“if the evil he is timid toward is shame, then the timidity is called a sense of shame.”]

Def. Aff. XXXI – Shame [guilt???] is a sadness, accompanied by the idea of some action [NS: of ours] which we imagine that others blame. (see Exp. p. 193-194, and see IIIP55S on humility)

Def. Aff. XLII – Consternation is the desire to avoid a future evil is restrained by timidity regarding another evil, so that he does not know what he would rather do, i.e. consternation is “a desire to avoid an evil which desire is restrained by [a senseless] wonder at the evil he fears.” or “a fear which keeps a man senseless or vacillating so that he cannot avert the evil.”

P40: He who imagines he is hated by someone, and believes he has given the other no cause for hate, will hate the other in return.NB: This follows because one imagines no cause of the other hating one except the person who hates one.Scholium: If one, instead, imagines that one has done something to provoke the other’s hatred, then one will feel shame, but this is rare! Because (IIIP25) one strives to deny what affects one with sadness.

Cor. 1: He who imagines one he loves to be affected with hate toward him will be tormented by love and hate together.NB: That one can both love and hate the other is possible because (a) this is understood through the imagination and so one can have a confused idea, and(b) because we can be affected in different parts in different ways [since we can be affected in a great many ways] we can have contrary affects in relation to the same object [see also IIIP17 “If we imagine that a thing which usually affects us with an affect of sadness is like another which usually affects us with an equally great affect of joy, we shall hate it and at the same time love it.” and IIIP17S with respect to vascillation of mind].

Cor. 2: If someone imagines that someone else, toward whom he has previously had no affect, has, out of hatred, done him some evil, he will immediately strive to return the same evil.NB: The first thing one imagines, in this circumstance, is the bad that was done to one.Scholium:Def. Aff. XXXVI – Anger is the striving to do evil to him we hate. Def. Aff. XXXVII – Vengeance is the striving to return an evil done us.

P41: If someone imagines that someone loves him, and does not believe he has given any cause for this, he will love [that person] in return.Def. Aff. XXXIV – Gratitude or thankfulness is a reciprocal love, along with a consequent striving to benefit one who loves us, and who strives to benefit us.Cor: He who imagines he is loved by one he hates will be torn by hate and love together.If in this conflict between loving and hating the other, the hate prevails then one reacts with cruelty.Def. Aff. XXXVIII –Cruelty or severity is a desire by which someone is roused to do evil to one whom we love or pity.“Exp: To cruelty is opposed mercy, which is not a passion, but a power of t.b,e mind, by which a man governs anger and vengeance.”

P42: He who has benefited someone - whether moved to do so by love or by the hope of esteem – will be saddened if he sees his benefit accepted in an ungrateful spirit.NB: Sadness arises out of longing for one’s love to be returned, since however, he also imagines the ingratitude which excludes the existence of the love to be returned.P43: Hate is increased by being returned, but can be destroyed by love.NB: This is important ethically since it makes it clear that returning love for hate can destroy the hate. If one imagines that someone one hates is affected with love toward one, then insofar as one imagines this, one will experience joy and will strive not to hate the other and not to affect the other with sadness. Whether the love overcomes the hate will be a matter of degree.

P44: Hate completely conquered by love passes into love, and the love is therefore greater than if hate had not preceded it.Scholium: No one will strive to be affected by sadness in order to have a greater joy (e.g. no one will become ill in order to have the joy of recovery. This is why it is a joke that someone is hitting themselves with a hammer because it feels so good when it stops [see IIIP6 “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.”)

P45: If someone imagines that someone like himself is affected with hate toward a thing like himself which he loves, he will hate that [person].

NB: This follows straightforwardly, and is important because one can increase one’s power of acting by combining one’s characteristic relation with a thing one loves, but will also take on, if it was not already the case, sad passions with respect to others hatred of things one loves by dint of that combination.

P46: lf someone has been affected with joy or sadness by someone of a class, or nation, different from his own, and this joy or sadness is accompanied by the idea of that person as its cause, under the universal name of the class or nation, he will love or hate, not only that person, but everyone of the same class or nation.NB: [see IIIP16 “From the mere fact that we imagine a thing to have some likeness to an object which usually affects the mind with joy or sadness, we love it or hate it, even though that in which the thing is like the object is not the efficient cause of these affects.”]

This is an explanation of ethnocentrisms, racisms, etc. which do not arise from the hated other as their efficient cause.

P47: The joy which arises from our imagining that a thing we hate is destroyed, or affected with some other evil, does not occur without some sadness of mind.NB: This shows how complicated the affects can be, in that the joy that arises from hatred is still a sadness which the joy taken in that hatred masks but cannot eliminate. (see III44 “…the sadness hate involves…”). The sadness remains because:

(a) one is saddened when we imagine something like us being sad, and(b) one remembers (has an image of) past sadnesses which still affect one with sadness even if the image is accompanied with the idea of something that excludes its existence.

This means that schadenfreud [delight in others’ misfortunes] is a sad passion and that such joys remain held captive by saddness.

P48: Love or hate – say, of Peter – is destroyed if the sadness the hate involved or the joy the love involves, is attached to the idea of another cause, and each is diminished to the extent that we imagine that Peter was not its only cause.NB: If one comes to understand that Peter is not the cause of one’s sadness or joy, but that something else is the cause, then one’s hatred or love comes to be directed to that cause and not to Peter. For love and hate are joy or sadness accompanied with the idea of the cause of the respective affect.

P49: Given an equal cause of love, love toward a thing will be greater if we imagine the thing to be free than if we imagine it to be necessary. And similarly for hate.NB: A free cause is one that acts solely from its own nature. So, in imagining some thing as a free cause, one imagines it as the sole cause, whereas imagining it as necessary is to imagine it as itself compelled by something else. In imagining the thing as compelled our affect toward it is lessened, but in imagining it as a free cause, one attributes the cause of our affect (joy or sadness) solely to that thing, thereby increasing our affect.Scholium: “because men consider themselves to be free, they have a greater love or hate toward one another than toward other things.” This means that one benefits from the freedom of others.

P50: Anything whatever can he the accidental cause of hope or fear.Scholium: We easily believe the things we hope for and have difficulty believing in the things we fear. So, we tend to overestimate or underestimate them, and this is a source of superstitions and belief in omens.Moreover, there is no fear without hope and no hope without fear, so these affects make us vacillate, and hope while it is a joyful passion, since it is an inconstant joy (and its outcome is doubtful) will always have an admixture of sadness, and to that degree be a sad passion. For similar reasons, fear will always have some admixture of joy in it.

Spinoza will come back to this in IVP54S and it will play a role in the IVPref with regard to hope and fear as ethical guides for those who do not live by the guidance of reason.

P51: Different men can be affected differently by one and the same object; and one and the same man can be affected differently at different times by one and the same object.NB: Modes (different people, a fish, a horse…) with different capacities to be affected are not affected by the same things nor in the same way. A body can be affected in a great many ways, and so can be affected differently in different of its parts, and affected differently at different times by the same object, since the complexity of the body’s capacity to be affected (its proportions of actions and passions) may change as can the parts of the body affected at different times.

Scholium: See text for examples in which different people can be affected in different ways and we judge them differently with respect to our own affects and compare people [or ourselves with other people] we distinguish them only by the relative differences between different affects.Someone can often be the cause of their own affects of joy, sadness, or combination of joy and sadness Def. Aff. XL – Daring is a desire by which someone is spurred to do something dangerous which his equals fear to take on themselves.Def. Aff. XLI – Cowardice is ascribed to one whose desire is restrained by timidity regarding a danger which his equals dare to take on themselves.Def. Aff. XXVII – Repentance is sadness accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.Def. Aff. XXVI – Self-esteem is joy accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.These affects are very violent because people believe they are free (see IIIP49 “Given an equal cause of love, love toward a thing will be greater if we imagine the thing to be free…”).

P52: If we have previously seen an object together with others, or we imagine it has nothing but what is common to many things, we shall not consider it so long as one which we imagine to have something singular.NB: When we see something along with other things we not only see what is in common between them, we imagine the two to be the same in the sense of only having commonalities and we do not focus on those things as much as we do on singular things which grab our attention because of their singularity. For, we do not already have in our minds anything that we associate with this singularity.Scholium: The names of the affects we have been using are conventional and do not arise from a genuine knowledge of the affects, so there will be many [often very complex] affects for which we have no names.

Def. Aff. IV – Wonder is the imagination of a singular thing, insofar as it is alone in the mind.

Dread is wonder at a man's anger, envy, and the like.Def. Aff. V – Disdain (which is opposed to wonder) is an imagination of a thing which touches the mind so little that the thing's presence moves the mind to imagining more what is not in it than what is.Def. Aff. V – Veneration is wonder at a man's prudence, diligence, or something else of that kind, because we consider him as far surpassing us in this.Def. Aff. V – Contempt stems from disdain for folly.Def. Aff. X – Devotion is love joined to wonder, or veneration.Def. Aff. X – Disdain is an imagination of a thing which touches the mind so little that the thing's presence moves the mind to imagining more what is not in it than what is.Def. Aff. XI – Mockery is a joy born of the fact that we imagine something we disdain in a thing we hate or fear.

P53: When the mind considers itself and its power of acting, it rejoices, and does so the more, the more distinctly it imagines itself and its power of acting.NB: The reflective mind will be affected with joy because it imagines (the mind knows itself reflectively through its affections) its own power of acting. While this is a joy and increases the more distinctly the mind images its own power of acting, it is still a passion [contrast this with IIIP58 and IIIP59].

Cor: This joy is more and more encouraged the more the man imagines himself to be praised by others.NB: Praise is the joy with which we imagine the action of another by which he has striven to please us. This is a joy accompanied with the idea of oneself as cause. So, praise will increase the joy one takes in one’s own power of acting.

P54: The mind strives to imagine only those things which posit its power of acting.NB: This striving is a striving to increase our power of acting. The mind has this striving because it affirms [posits] its own essence insofar as it is active. This striving takes the form of imagining things which take note of the mind’s power of acting.This proposition agrees with Nietzsche that we strive not only to persevere in our being, but to increase our power of acting [see IIIP12 “The mind as far as it can, strives to imagine those things that increase or aid the body's power of acting.”].

P55: When the mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it.NB: Imagining one’s own impotence separates one from what one can do [as Nietzsche also insists, in this way the doer is separated from the deed] and so occupies one’s capacity to be affected with a decrease in one’s power of acting.Cor: This sadness is more and more encouraged if we imagine ourselves to be blamed by others.NB: Blame is the sadness with which we are averse to the action of another, and so the more we are blamed the more sad passions we have decreasing our power of acting.

Def. Aff. XXVI – Humility is a sadness, accompanied by the idea of our own lack of power, or weakness.Def. Aff. XXV – Self-love or self-esteem is joy arising from considering ourselves and our own power of acting.Def. Aff. Exp XXVIII – “Since this is renewed as often as a man considers his virtues, or his power of acting, it also happens that everyone is anxious to tell his own deeds, and show off his powers, both of body and of mind and that men, for this reason, are troublesome to one another.”

This is troublesome because we are saddened by the virtues, powers, of those who are equals, and are glad of their weakness [so, for example, “rich” means “richer than him!”]. So, we are naturally inclined to envy and hatred.Relating our powers to the universal idea of human being reduces our gladness of their weakness, but if one imagines one is weaker than others one’s sadness will increase [see IIP40S1 p. 140 with respect to common notions in contrast with universal notions].

Education makes this worse since parents use honor and envy to motivate their children.

Cor: No one envies another's virtue unless he is an equal.NB: This explains why we venerate other’s power, viz. they are not our equals [IIIP49S1: “For the universal is said equally of one, a great many, or infinitely many individuals.”], but we venerate those whose power of acting is peculiar to them (and so is not comparable with our own).

P56: There are as many species of joy, sadness, and desire, and consequently of each affect composed of these (like vacillation of mind) or derived from them (like love, hate, hope, fear, etc.), as there are species of objects by which we are affected.NB: “the joy arising from A involves the nature of object A, that arising from object B involves the nature of object B, and so these two affects of joy are by nature different, because they arise from causes of a different nature… as his nature is constituted in one way or the other, so his desires vary and the nature of one desire must differ from the nature of the other as much as the affects from which each arises differ from one another.”Affects are distinguished by their objects insofar as the body is affected by those objects. This means that affects arise out of openness onto the world, and that the world is not external to the mind, since the affects have no identity except in relation to the objects that affect it.

“moderation, which we usually oppose to gluttony, sobriety which we usually oppose to drunkenness, and chastity; which we usually oppose to lust, are not affects or passions, but indicate the power of the mind, a power which moderates these affects.”Def. Aff. XLV – “Gluttony is an immoderate desire for and love of eating.”Def. Aff. XLVI – “Drunkenness is an immoderate desire for and love of drinking.”Def. Aff. XLVII – “Greed is an immoderate desire for and love of wealth.”Def. Aff. XLVIII – “Lust is also a desire for and love of joining one body to another.”Passive affections determine the affects [see IIID3], but the mind, itself, has the power to moderate these affects, i.e. the affects of guttony, drunkenness, and lust do not have opposite affects, but moderation, sobriety, and abstinence are not affects but [positive] powers of the mind, i.e. parts of our power of acting itself.

P57: Each affect of each individual differs from the affect of another as much as the essence of the one from the essence of the other.“A1": All modes by which a body is affected by another body follow both from the nature [essence] of the body affected and at the same time from the nature of the affecting body, so that one and the same body may be moved differently according to differences in the narure of the bodies moving it. And conversely, different bodies may be moved differently by one and the same body.”Desire, or appetite, is the essence of each individual thing, and so as individual essences differ so do individual desires.A joyful passion arises when an external cause increases a body’s power of acting, a sad passion arises when an external cause decreases a body’s power of acting.With respect to joy and sadness, these are passions by which things strive to persevere in their being and so are desire insofar as it increases or diminishes a thing’s power of acting through its being affected by external causes. “…joy and sadness are the desire, or appetite, itself insofar as it is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, by external causes…”

Scholium: Animals [contra Descartes] have affects [feelings]. Animals and men have desires and joys which are different in nature.“Both the horse and the man are driven by a lust to procreate; but the one is driven by an equine lust, the other by a human lust. So also the lusts and appe- tites of insects, fish, and birds must vary.”

Similarly, the desires and passions of the drunk and the philosopher will differ.The man insofar as he is acted on differs from the man who acts!

P58-P59Theme: Possibility of an active joy, distinct from passive joy: possession of the power to act.Consequence: The critique of sadness.Expressive concept: The full concept of joy.

P58: Apart from the joy and desire which are passions, there are other affects of joy and desire which are related to us insofar as we act.

(1) When the mind conceives itself and its power of acting, it rejoices.(2) The mind necessarily conceives itself when it conceives an adequate idea.(3) The mind conceives some adequate ideas.(4) The mind, insofar as it has adequate ideas, acts.

Therefore, the mind rejoices insofar as it (has adequate ideas) acts.

If our power of acting increases to the extent that we come to possess it fully, we would only be affected by active joys.“When the mind conceives itself and its power of acting, it rejoices…[the mind] rejoices insofar as it conceives adequate ideas, that is, insofar as it acts.”Active joy is, therefore, a different affect from joyful passion.

(1) The mind strives to persevere in its being.(2) Striving to persevere in one’s being (our essence, or conatus) is desire.(4) The mind acts, insofar as it has adequate ideas [reasons].Therefore, desire is related to us (our essence or power of acting) insofar as we have adequate ideas [reasons], i.e. insofar as we act.

P59: Among all the affects which are related to the mind insofar as it acts, there are none which are not related to joy or desire.NB: This means that actions are always joyful and related to desire as the essence of any thing, and since sadness diminishes our power of acting, only joy can be active.“…no affects of sadness can be related to the mind insofar as it acts…” In addition to the practical question how one can increase our joyful passions, a second practical question arise, namely, how does one produce active affections in oneself (and so come into our power of acting)? A mere accumulation of joyful passions will not do so, since they are still passions, in relation to which we are still acted upon by something else, and while they engage our power of acting they still do not amount to an action, i.e. produce affections of which we are the adequate (sole) cause.

“All actions that follow from affects related to the mind insofar as it understands I relate to strength of character, which I divide into tenacity and nobility.”

Tenacity is the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to preserve his being.Nobility is the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to aid other men and join them to him in friendship.Tenacity aims at the agent’s advantage, while nobility aims at the advantage of others.This implies that actions are not the same as passions, and so neither tenacity nor nobility are listed in the Def. Aff. since they arise solely from understanding and reason and not from being affected by some external cause.So we must understand these affects as actions and not as passions, Nevertheless, we are also inevitably driven by external causes which produce many conflicts and vacillations of mind.

“…about love: very often it happens that while we are enjoying a thing we wanted, the body acquires from this enjoyment a new constitution, by which it is differently determined, and other images of things are aroused in it; and at the same time the mind begins to imagine other things and desire other things.”(For example, desires for food when the food is consumed a new constitution of the body and of desire arises – disgust ).

This shows that we have the potentiality of coming into our own power of acting such that we are not determined by any external cause by means of changes in our constitution producing changes in our striving (essence or conatus).

Definition of Desire: Note that Spinoza uses the phrase “affection of the human essence” and since the human essence is its power of acting, its power of acting can be affected in many ways, both by increasing its power or by reducing it to a minimum through passive affections. Also see IIP17S where Spinoza says that the power of the imagination is a virtue (power) not a vice insofar as the power of imagination depends solely on its own nature (essence) – error always arises from outside from a negation, i.e. a lack of an idea.All affections, whether active or passive, are affections of essence insofar as they exercise the capacity to be affected in which the essence expresses itself. However, passive affections are adventitious [fortuitous], since they are produced from something else, and active affections are innate, since they are explicated by one’s essence (and one’s power of understanding).

GENERAL DEFINITIONS OF THE AFFECTS“An affect which is called a passion of the mind is a confused idea, by which the mind affirms of its body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing [power of acting, joy and sadness] than before, which, when it is given, determines the mind to think of this rather than that. [desire]”

“the idea which constitutes the form of the affect affirms of the body something which really involves more or less of reality than before.”“…the excellence of ideas and the [mind's] actual power of thinking are measured by the excellence of the object.”

GENERAL DEFINITION OF THE AFFECTS“…when I say a greater or lesser force of existing than before, I do not understand that the mind compares its body's present constitution with a past constitution, but that the idea which constitutes the form of the affect affirms of the body something which really involves more or less of reality than before.”Part of the point here is that Spinoza does not hold an intellectualist position, feelings, affects, are ideas which involve the changes of an existing mode continuous through its duration.

Definition of sadness: Sadness does not consist in privation of a greater perfection that one has, since sadness is an act and not nothing while a privation is nothing.