Love, Hatred, and Self-Preservation in Descartes’s Passions of the Soul and Spinoza’s Theory of the Affects

digital

Article

journal	RIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA NEO-SCOLASTICA
issue	RIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA NEO-SCOLASTICA - 2020 - 2. Ethica e Passions de l’âme Spinoza con e contro Descartes
title	Love, Hatred, and Self-Preservation in Descartes’s Passions of the Soul and Spinoza’s Theory of the Affects Love, Hatred, Self-preservation, Perseverance, Agency, Descartes, Spinoza
author	Keith Green
publisher	Vita e Pensiero
format	Article \| Pdf
online since	07-2020
doi	10.26350/001050_000194
issn	00356247 (print) \| 18277926 (digital)
Write a comment for this product

€ 6.00

Ebook format Pdf readable on these devices:

Computer
with Software:
- Adobe PDF Reader
Android
iPhone/Ipad
with App:
- Adobe PDF Reader
E-Book Reader
Ibs Tolino
Kobo

Description Readers' comments
Descartes and Spinoza carry forward elements of a longstanding folk-psychology of love and hatred from the scholastics – that love and hatred are ‘natural’ passions, teleologically ordered, together, to self-preservation (or perseverance). Descartes recasts this psychology of love and hatred, in the Passions of the Soul, in functional terms that already ambiguate the role that hatred plays in self-preservation. Spinoza takes up Descartes reconfiguration of the relationship of love and hatred in the Passions of the Soul, and infers that hatred has no necessary role in securing self-preservation (or perseverance). Spinoza’s dissolution of the necessary coimplication of love and hatred, as it is figured in the longstanding folk-psychology, yields rival images of agency. In Spinoza’s view, hatred is a pathology of agency, a symptom of impotence of ‘animation’, in contrast to the view that hatred is ‘basic’ emotion that is constitutive of agency in that it can motivate resistance to threats to self-preservation and flourishing. keywords Love, Hatred, Self-preservation, Perseverance, Agency, Descartes, Spinoza Author biography East Tennessee State University, Johnson City. Email: greenj@etsu.edu Enter a comment for Love, Hatred, and Self-Preservation in Descartes’s Passions of the Soul and Spinoza’s Theory of the Affects

Description Readers' comments

Descartes and Spinoza carry forward elements of a longstanding folk-psychology of love and hatred from the scholastics – that love and hatred are ‘natural’ passions, teleologically ordered, together, to self-preservation (or perseverance). Descartes recasts this psychology of love and hatred, in the Passions of the Soul, in functional terms that already ambiguate the role that hatred plays in self-preservation. Spinoza takes up Descartes reconfiguration of the relationship of love and hatred in the Passions of the Soul, and infers that hatred has no necessary role in securing self-preservation (or perseverance). Spinoza’s dissolution of the necessary coimplication of love and hatred, as it is figured in the longstanding folk-psychology, yields rival images of agency. In Spinoza’s view, hatred is a pathology of agency, a symptom of impotence of ‘animation’, in contrast to the view that hatred is ‘basic’ emotion that is constitutive of agency in that it can motivate resistance to threats to self-preservation and flourishing.