Love according to Spinoza

Spinoza's Love

Spinoza’s conception of love is a form of knowledge. He sees it as an intellectual activity that leads to a piece of intuitive understanding. This knowledge does not depend on its objects but on the intellect that composes it. From this, we can see that for Spinoza, love is not something that happens to us unavoidably, but something created by cause and effect. Spinoza’s definitions of this feeling are love, devotion, approbation, over-esteem, compassion, pride, gratitude, dissipation, drunkenness, avarice, and lust.

Desire and pleasure are the beginning feelings of this sensation, which are done away with by virtue and reason.

“By love we merely desire those things which we think pleasant,” Spinoza explains. He also states that one can keep feeling other people’s ‘love’ by trying to fulfill their desires. Therefore, without virtue, this feeling is merely an emotion that people who do not want to let it control them can control.

There are many forms of this sensation, and when he talks about love, he is talking about the most intense passion or emotion for someone or something. By it, he means pleasure, accompanied by the idea of an external cause. As the cause is external, it is impossible to desire to be united with the object of his desire. This desire drives him to seek action and achieve some return to this source of pleasure.

Romantic 'Love'

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
6. Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

This idea closely relates to the romantic notion of ‘love’, even though his definition is a little more scientific. Spinoza does not talk about how he feels about the person or how they make him feel, but how he reacts to the person. This is purely physical and, hence, a cold love because there is no genuine beloved, merely an unobtainable idea or a desire to unify with the beloved.

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.

Spinoza’s definition relates to other things, such as compassion. Compassion is a sense of favoring people who make one feel happy or enlightened because of how he can help them. Compassion is about gaining power over someone else due to their diminished state.

Lust

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

48. Lust is also the desire and love of sexual intercourse.

To Spinoza, lust was simply one of the desires that would arise in men who wanted to please themselves. They wanted sexual intercourse with women and thought it would bring them happiness. Lustful people always want more than they already have, thus being greedy in their passion for sexual intercourse. As Spinoza saw it, Lust brings no happiness to the person who experiences it. It is a form of selfishness that will cause much unhappiness.

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.

So, if we often think about the object of our wonder, we shall cease to wonder at it. So, we see that the emotion of devotion can quickly degenerate into mere affection. According to Spinoza’s view of love, “the more we know [the object of our devotion], the less we adore it.”

Approbation

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

19. Approbation is love toward one who has benefited another

To Spinoza, approval is a reaction to some action in which we see a quality we approve of. Approbation is arbitrary and is valued if it causes us to agree and unite with others. It is also arbitrary if it involves a change of desire and feeling according to the evolution of external cause, as when one thing we like changes into another that we like better. As with all emotions, it is temporary and dependent on the pleasure and power it proffers to the individual.

Gratitude

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

34. Gratitude is the desire or eagerness of love [amoris studium], whereby we endeavor to benefit one who, from a like emotion of love, has bestowed a benefit on us.

Therefore, the more someone benefits us, the greater our gratitude towards them.

This definition is similar to what Spinoza felt about love as a whole. He believed it is natural that all people tend towards gratitude because their environment makes them desire to be happy in the face of a hostile place. Gratitude for Spinoza is thus an innocent thing that is earned and resembles something we feel when we are in need and want to be helped by others. He believed this was important because there would be fewer feelings of happiness or joy without it.

Dissipation

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

45. Dissipation is the immoderate desire, or also love, of sumptuous living

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

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
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

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions

21. Over-esteem is to think too highly of someone by reason of love

According to Spinoza, over-esteem is thinking too highly of someone through love. Even though it may be for a good reason, the over-esteem is usually driven by a desire of some sort.

Spinoza defines this emotion as “desire, accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” He then establishes the idea of ‘love,’ saying that those with this emotion are “eager to unite with other things, thinking them desirable and pleasant.”

In Spinoza’s view, the word ‘love’ is only a product of the imagination.

Pride

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
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

The Ethics, Part 3, Definition of the Emotions
46. Drunkenness is the immoderate desire and love of drinking

This is the opposite of sobriety, which has a sober state of mind. Spinoza defines drunkenness as “a state of mind which proceeds from a preceding excess of drinking; one without moderation.” This can be connected to over-esteem because the desire for alcohol becomes too great and therefore causes one to become drunk and intoxicated and is an escape from the harsh reality of our situation.

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.

Drunkenness is a desire that is acquired through our interactions and experiences. It can be contrasted with the love of wine. Wine is the thing that causes one to become drunk, but it is not an active object in itself.

It only has the power to manifest itself in its different forms. When one drinks wine, they love it because of their interactions with it as a drink and as an event that causes pleasure or pain.

Altruism

Also, altruism (“unselfish love”) is the same as ‘duty.’ It’s a duty born of pity. It is the virtue of acting as if we were not free but determined to do so by forces outside ourselves, like nature. Therefore, we are forced to be altruistic by telling ourselves that we are driven by unselfish love. However, it is not necessarily the case that one is so generous that they have to act. It can just be an idea. Although this seems contradictory, Spinoza believes it makes sense to assert this because it is our way of viewing the world and what we think virtuous behavior is.

This makes Spinoza’s definition of love more physical than one would initially believe. The definition of love is not based on a definition of virtue, like the ancient Greeks would have thought. Instead, the cause of our love, pity, drives us to be virtuous.

The idea that we are forced to be virtuous drives us toward the imagined virtue of being “selfless” or altruistic. Because we often believe that if something were to happen wrong in our life, we would be forced to act out in virtue, we feel it is a duty we must bear. Therefore this action and belief come out of self-interest. Therefore altruism is simply an expression of power. This is why so many wealthy people like being seen as altruists because it enhances their expression of power.

The Ethics

The Ethics (Spinoza) contains many references to love. Its most prominent idea about love is the following: “The third kind of love is the improvement of self through persistent action with conscious awareness.” Spinoza is speaking loosely about the third kind of love here, but it can still be assumed to be part of his philosophy on life and love.

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.”

According to him, all emotions are also found in the body and participate in love and hatred. The body has the ideas of good and evil, or ‘gods,’ which it may or may not believe. This is because both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actions had to be accepted by the mind to influence the degree of pleasure experienced.

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.

Spinoza’s view on the origin of emotions is more clearly presented in “The Ethics.“.

Take a look at this post on Power

Love according to Spinoza

Spinoza's Love

Romantic 'Love'

Compassion

Lust

Devotion

Approbation

Gratitude

Dissipation

Avarice

Over-Esteem

Pride

Drunkenness

Altruism

The Ethics

Love is Power

The Controller

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