Spinoza's Love
Romantic 'Love'
The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
6. Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.
Compassion
The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
24. Compassion is love insofar as it so affects a man that he rejoices at another’s good and feels pain at another’s hurt.
Lust
Devotion
The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
10. Devotion is love toward one at whom we wonder.
To Spinoza, people can misconstrue devotion as love because he makes it seem that it is a natural force in the world. It is “an overestimation of an object accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” It is an inclination of desire toward something or someone at whom we wonder.
Approbation
Gratitude
Dissipation
This is the opposite of temperance. Spinoza’s idea here is not based on the idea that one should love what one has. It is merely based on the idea of having a dear object with which we wish to have unity. It also points to a need for more and more gratification. So much so that that desire is unsatisfiable.
Spinoza’s argument is this: we start loving something because we love the object. We have something to gain from it. Therefore, we can love it. He then says that if it is a beautiful and good thing, we naturally desire to please it. If they are virtuous, they will return the favor. Thus, in Spinoza’s view, a thing can be loved because of its relation to another good thing.
The point of Spinoza’s definition is that it is not about ‘love’ because he does not feel that it involves a powerful desire for something physical.
Avarice
47. Avarice is the immoderate desire and love of riches
Avarice is not only defined as a greedy desire for money but also as self-preservation. Self-preservation is an attempt to keep alive by employing the things associated with one’s life.
Avarice, like lust, is a self-centred monster. Selfish desire is the basis for avarice, and it causes people to look down upon others as inferior in needs and ways of life. Avarice was thought of by Spinoza as a way for people to gain more power than they already had.
Spinoza felt that people are often driven by the desire for more money, thinking it would give them happiness. Because they realize that money can buy them things like food and clothes, they desire money over everything else and are blind to the possibility that abundance does not satisfy them.
Over-Esteem
Pride
28. Pride is thinking too highly of oneself by reason of self-love
It is simply a belief that one is better than other things. It contradicts the idea of humility and manifests itself in many areas of life, such as in the arts or politics. Pride is the uncontrolled love of oneself. According to Spinoza, pride is an emotion that makes one think he is better than others when this is not indeed the case. They genuinely believe it is true, so there will eventually be a downfall.
This is the problem with over-esteem because they both share a common source of thought, namely, “inclination to excess.” These are the kinds of people who wish to rise in society but fall in the end because of their faults.
Drunkenness
46. Drunkenness is the immoderate desire and love of drinking
People turn to alcohol because of their love for it and are driven by the desire for it, which causes them to become drunk. “If he lacks the drink, then he is sad.” This is an example of Spinoza’s argument that happiness comes from a union with an external object.
Altruism
The Ethics
Spinoza was a materialist. He understood two “contrary” emotions, Love and Hate. He held that all-natural occurrences had effective causes or events that physical principles found in nature could explain. This can cause problems in defining love because it is not a definition of social psychology or cultural behavior but a definition of physics. He said that “the human is a corporeal substance.”
Love is Power
So, the illustrious position we have given love in modern-day society is an illusion. What we feel is simply what we believe to be accurate but is an attribute within ourselves. When Spinoza speaks of love, he speaks not of emotion but passion. He believes that all things in life arise from a root of cause and effect, which explains why he calls the feeling of love a passion and not love itself. All love is internal, as we have learned in daily life.
When Spinoza talks about love, he is talking about the affection one can experience for oneself about other things. He does not believe that one can share a love for another person but that one has a sense of pleasure from what that person or object may bring to his life (namely, enhancing his material wealth and comfort). This is one reason why some philosophers have argued that Spinoza’s conception of love is too rationalistic and scientific.