The secularization of the religious affects in Spinoza’s works: hope and fear, love and generosity

Authors

  • Gábor Boros Univerdad Nicolaita

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2447-9012.espinosa.2009.89366

Keywords:

Emotion, Morality, Secularism, Love, Generosity

Abstract

Positioning himself as «natural philosopher» in the treatment of the passions, Descartes initiates a secularization of affects or emotions. Surely with regard to this he is followed by Spinoza. In both cases, the philosophical approach of affection is to release them from a moral perspective, secularizing in this manner the emotions: separated from morality, their explanations are no more attached to religion, since the moral is based on the idea of transcendent God. At this point, Spinoza goes further than Descartes at the secularization of emotions, because in Spinoza God is naturalized, God sive natura. Generosity, for example, does not depend on a God endowed with good will, but on the natural exercise of human reasoning as part of the rationalized Nature. So that even the intellectual love of God would not be a substitute for religious moral impulse: to Spinoza, this love, as well as generosity and friendship, is in necessary order of nature, neither depending on a divine free will, nor being reducible to human will exclusively.

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Author Biography

  • Gábor Boros, Univerdad Nicolaita
    Professor Associado da Universidade Eötvös, Budapeste, Hungria.

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Published

2009-12-15

Issue

No. 21 (2009)

Section

Artigos

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How to Cite

Boros, G. (2009). The secularization of the religious affects in Spinoza’s works: hope and fear, love and generosity. Cadernos Espinosanos, 21, 11-40. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2447-9012.espinosa.2009.89366