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4. - Action and Passion

from A

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Chantal Jaquet
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Action (actio) and passion (passio) are technical concepts defined in E3def3. They refer to affects (emotions) and their division into two kinds. Action is a kind of affect which results from an “adequate or total” cause, that is to say, a cause whose nature alone explains the effect, while passion is a kind of affect which results from an “inadequate or partial” cause, that is to say, a cause the effects of which we cannot explain by referring only to its nature but must also refer to the natures of other things.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 11 - 13
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

James, S. (1997). Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaquet, C. (2018). Affects, Actions and Passions in Spinoza: The Unity of Body and Mind, trans. T. Reznichenko. Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Sangiacomo, A., & Nachtomy, O. (2018). “Spinoza’s rethinking of activity: From the Short Treatise to the Ethics.” Southern Journal of Philosophy, 56(1), 101–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sévérac, P. (2005). Le devenir actif chez Spinoza. Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Yovel, Y. (ed). (1999). Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist. Little Room Press.Google Scholar
Wartofsky, M. W. (1979). “Action and passion: Spinoza’s construction of a scientific psychology.” In Wartofsky, , Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding (pp. 183–97). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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