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6. - Affect

from A

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Gwendolyn Marshall
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

In E3def3, Spinoza defines the term “affect” (affectus), claiming, “By affect I understand affections of the body in which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.” Affects are affections of the body by which or in which (the Latin, quibus, is ambiguous) the body’s power changes. The first notable feature of the affects is an event in the body that alters its power of acting, increasing or decreasing it. This state of the body, and the idea of this state, is an affect.

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Chapter
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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 17 - 19
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Bennett, J. (1984). A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Hackett.Google Scholar
Della Rocca, M. (2003). The power of an idea: Spinoza’s critique of pure will. Noûs, 37(2), 200–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, D. (2002). Spinoza’s conatus argument. In Koistinen, O. and Biro, J. (eds.), Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes (pp. 127–58). Oxford.Google Scholar
Garrett, D. (2009). Spinoza on the essence of the human body. In Koistinen, O. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (pp. 284–302). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, S. (1997). Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kisner, M. J. (2011). Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason, Autonomy and the Good Life. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeBuffe, M. (2009). The anatomy of the passions. In Koistinen, O. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (pp. 188–222). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, M. (2009). The power of reason in Spinoza. In Koistinen, O. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (pp. 223–48). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, G. (formerly Eugene). (2008). Spinoza’s cognitive affects and their feel. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 16(1), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, G. E. (2013). The Spiritual Automaton: Spinoza’s Science of the Mind. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

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