On mastering the passions

The context: On therapies in general

For Spinoza, reason can triumph over affects thereby being able to understand, moderate and restrain them. Yet Spinoza’s solution is radically different from Descartes notion of mastering the passions through “willing” the mind. For Descartes, passions are excited by external objects that stimulate the senses [CSM I, pp. 349] causing agitation of the animal spirits that moves the pineal gland in our brains in certain ways producing or disposing our souls in certain ways i.e. to feel joy or anger. Thus, it is Descartes’s belief that ‘nature has joined every movement of the gland to certain of our thoughts’ [CSM pp. 348] which produces certain passions but as ‘free willing men’, we have the power or will to we can still separate and or join (via habituation) these movements that represent objects to the soul to movements that produce passions in the soul.

Spinoza’s solution however is radically different from Descartes’s – based on the ‘willingness’ to correct movements – for his is grounded in reason and knowledge. For Spinoza, insofar as we are in nature, we are always acted upon [IV4P2] i.e. insofar as we have inadequate ideas and know less of the nexus of efficient causes. But man has the power (virtue) when he understands and gains knowledge things under the laws of nature via reason. This is so since affects are passions i.e. confused ideas that we can through reason correct it i.e. understand that it is related to common properties of things (more adequate ideas: IV4P38). Since the latter is necessarily related to common properties of things which we will always regard as present, it is a stronger affect that can render nugatory the evil affects that can inhibit our understanding of life under laws of nature. Hence, based on our intellect, we can create a right connection and order of things under the laws of nature (God) and can have knowledge itself of the affects.




The case of sadness

If we understand perhaps sadness under the laws of nature (God), then we understand that there should not be any idea of sadness at all since God or nature is wholly adequate and perfect and there is nothing in nature or God that indicates ‘sadness’. This kind of understanding is in Spinoza’s terms, understanding or knowing from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things i.e. the Third kind of intuitive knowledge. Hence, we will not feel remorseful anymore if we understand that remorse is just a sadness – an idea of something that has already passed which turned out worse than we hope for. By understanding it under the laws of nature, we understand that the event has already passed and since also one of the laws of man living in nature, is to strive for a greater perfection and power of acting that uplifts their well-being, we will rejoice for we know we ought not to be sad about a past thing which cannot be rectified. In Spinoza’s terms, we can understand this as the passion of sadness (remorse) being negated by a more powerful idea of God.