The intellectual love of God

This apparent quandary of “love” as a passive affect and then as an active affect can be effaced if we refer to P56 part III of the ethics where Spinoza lays out how there can be many species of joy sadness and desire and hence, as of love as an affect composed of joy. Insofar as love is considered as an affect accompanied by the idea of an external cause, it will be a passion of the mind, a confused idea by which the mind is acted upon for we do not love it’s essence and nature of a thing but only a delimited property of the object or person (X) loved. The idea of the property we have of X maybe circumscribed, or may have more or less reality than its actual constitution. This is highly possible because as seen from P17 part II of the ethics, only when a nugatory effect strikes the body can the mind alter its representational idea of an already existing idea of X. Otherwise, the mind will continue to imagine and regard the external object or body as existing. In other words, referring back to IIIP56, insofar as we are affected with an affect that involves the nature of our body and the nature of an external body, we will necessarily have inadequate ideas for X may change while our mind still has a archaic representational idea of it. The corollary of what is said above is then an affirmation that love is a passive affect wholly based on inadequate knowledge – loving the property and not the essence of X (which can be grasped wholly only by understanding the efficient causal nexus in nature or God). So, also, insofar as love is dependent on an external cause contingently, depending on the nature of the object of love, it can produce different effects. Out of love for X (a certain configuration or properties of its being at some moment in time e.g. X being a rape victim), our love might cause jealousy, anger – a desire spurred by hate or cruelty – desire to do evil to someone (all of which are species of sadness that causes man’s passage to move from a lesser to greater perfection).

Yet “love” in part V of the ethics is used as an active affect. I think the crucial point to note here is that Spinoza’s emphasis is that affects or passions of the mind are confused ideas (derived by; shown above) by which our mind affirms of its body a greater or lesser force of existing than before [Gen def pp. 196] after being affected by an object that disposes the mind to think of this or that. Hence, in VP3, Spinoza also writes that an affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it and most importantly, it is in the capacity of the power of our minds to do it as shown in VP2 i.e. that we can separate emotions or affects from an external cause (which gives us inadequate ideas as shown above) and join them to other thoughts or understand them through the idea of God or nature. Moreover, in VP4, Spinoza makes the move to say that there is no affection of the body of which we cannot form a clear and distinct concept of and in P14, Spinoza proffers that our mind can bring it about that all the body’s affects are related to the idea of God. In other words, through a reasoning process we are empowered to order and connect affections of the body according to the order of intellect. By this reasoning and ordering process, we can get at the third kind of knowledge i.e. intuitive knowledge which proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the formal essence of things [IIP40 Schol 2: IV]. By understanding everything from the third kind of knowledge, the formal essence of things, the mind necessarily knows more things or in other words, can have a greater and more extensive comprehension of the efficient causes of things. This striving for the third kind of knowledge i.e. to know God and to comprehend things under a species of eternity (the very essence of God) will as Spinoza argues only give us joy and pleasure. The reason Spinoza takes on this line of argument is because insofar as we imagine or have inadequate representational ideas of things, we will always be acted upon and have a paucity of control over passions. Through the intellectual love of God then, we can gain a greater understanding of our passions, review, re-order and re-classify our understanding of things thereby producing a cathartic effect and hence, joy. Yet more importantly, it is also because insofar as our mind inheres an idea of our “body” and its very essence of it (which is the source of all our affects of external ideas and objects), it will be fettered by passions. By understanding things from the third kind of knowledge (intellectual love of God), we consider things under the eternal necessity (God’s essence itself) and hence consider the essence of our mind and the thing in relation to the essence of our mind as necessarily eternal. We are hence freed from our bodies – tied down by duration and affects that bequeaths inadequate ideas to us.

Hence, love insofar as it is understood caused by an external object or body is always inadequate and understood under a species of eternity (third kind of knowledge and intellectual love of God) caused by the idea of God and knowing nature itself, is always adequate. Both types of love can help man move from a lesser to greater perfection i.e. it is a joy. But the latter kind of joy and love is different. It is “blessedness” consisting in the fact that the mind is endowed with perfection itself. Hence when the mind contemplates itself in such a way, it is equally endowed with the perfection of God (i.e. eternity) since when the mind conceives things under a species of eternity, the mind is eternal. It gains a joy out of the perfection and greater satisfaction of knowing the essence of things through God which is distinct from the joy or love out of just a mere property or properties of things. Also perhaps, this sort of love of God (rational thinking and knowledge) as an active passion also frees man from the harmful thoughts and connotations of death [VP38].