Fighting Tyranny with Joy—Affective Love and Love of God in Spinoza’s Philosophy

1. Introduction

In his comprehensive study on the history of the philosophy of love, Simon May (2022) defends the overarching thesis that ‘Western’ culture¹ in general and philosophy in particular increasingly came to measure human love (in all its romantic, parental, and friendly guises) according to the standards set by the love of God. Given that the belief in God has waned in large swaths of contemporary ‘Western’ societies, it might be surprising that the standards set by the traditional notion of love of God are still shaping the expectations of lovers in those societies. In a world without God, human love is expected to deliver what only divine love can. As May puts it, ‘human love has usurped a role that only God’s love used to play’ (May 2011: 3). Human love is expected to be: unconditional, i.e., independent of the good or bad qualities of the loved one; selfless, i.e., provide a motivation to further the interests of the loved one without regard to the lover’s interests; eternal, i.e., last as long as the lover lives, and perhaps live on in some way after the lover’s death; redeem losses and suffering, i.e., give meaning to the lover’s loss of great goods and show that the loss of value is only apparent; and serve as the ultimate source of meaning and happiness, i.e., to show how the lover can achieve a state in which all goods harmoniously coexist under the messy conditions of earthly life. Even though the techniques of love, especially of romantic love, have changed dramatically over the last hundred years, the expectations raised for love haven’t changed significantly, which sets up any human love for failure, in May’s diagnosis.²

May sees the significance of Spinoza’s philosophy of love in his monist claim that God is nature, which makes the distinction between a ‘heavenly’, or transcendent, and earthly love obsolete. Also, Spinoza’s identification of mind and body makes any distinction between spiritual and physical love obsolete; for him, all kinds of love (romantic, parental, friendly, etc.) are also physical (May 2011: 143–151). The aim of this paper is to argue that the way in which Spinoza links the role of human love in the political and the private domains makes him relevant to the contemporary context.

Spinoza counters the modern tendency to conflate human love with love of God, diagnosed by May.³ For Spinoza, human love usurping the place of divine love enables political tyranny and deforms human relations. Expecting another person or a collective rather than one’s own conatus (a part of divine power acting in oneself) and knowledge of God to be the ultimate source of happiness gives rise to addiction, which destroys the individual and makes them prone to supporting oppressive politics. While May only emphasizes that adopting a notion of human love based on love of God is prudentially unwise because it sets up the human love for failure, thereby frustrating the human lover’s individual projects, Spinoza shows that it is also unwise because it supports and promotes exploitative political institutions, thereby frustrating collective projects. Therefore, rejecting the notion of human love modeled on divine love is the condition of both political freedom and personal flourishing. In the contemporary context, Spinoza’s account of love can be read as an invitation to reconceive intimate and political relations with the help of a new concept of human love.

The paper consists of six sections, followed by a conclusion. As the first section argues, Descartes conceives love of humans, the sovereign, and God as a unified phenomenon. In all its guises, love is the will of the lover to consider themselves as part of a whole formed with the loved one. The more perfect the loved one is relative to the lover, the more proper it is for the lover to sacrifice themselves and their interests for the loved one. In the cases of God and the sovereign, the much less perfect lover accepts whatever is God’s and the sovereign’s will and finds meaning and happiness in it.

The second section examines Spinoza’s implicit rejection of Descartes’s assessment of the political role of love. The citizens selflessly fighting for the interest of the sovereign are unfree and deceived by the monarch. Free citizens fight for their own interests motivated by their love of freedom, not the love of the monarch, the country, or external rewards.

As the third section argues, this implicit rejection of Descartes’s view on the role of love in politics is underwritten by Spinoza’s implicit rejection of Descartes’s definition of the affect of love. For Spinoza, love is a species of the basic affect of joy rather than of desire or will. Spinoza subverts Descartes’s definition, arguing that the lover’s ability to conceive their love as expressing their own interest is a necessary property of love.

The fourth section turns to Spinoza’s intellectual love of God and shows it to be distinct from affective love. Love of God involves appraising events in one’s life from the perspective of the whole. Unlike the affect of love, the intellectual love of God fulfills the function that traditional accounts assign to love of God.

The intellectual love of God’s fit to the traditional might make one wonder: does the affect of love has any positive role to play in Spinoza’s philosophy, or is it merely an imperfect version of the love of God tainted by inadequate ideas?

The fifth section argues that active affective love is an example of a collectively determined relation that still expresses autonomy, i.e., a relation that can be understood as following from the lover’s nature alone. This is because the joyfulness of the loved one’s effect on the lover can be understood as following from the lover’s nature alone; the lover experiences the loved one’s effect on them as joyful because it responds to their own nature. By understanding the joyfulness of the loved one’s effect on the lover being conditioned on the lover’s nature, active affective love can be a reliable source of empowerment and joy that serves as a means to the lover’s persevering in being. For Spinoza, the proper attitude to love entails different expectations toward the love of God and human love; if human love is expected to deliver what only the love of God can, jealousy, hate, and tyranny arise. The sixth section counters some objections to the proposed reading.

Due to space considerations, only Spinoza’s mature philosophy—understood as articulated in the Theological-Political Treatise, the Political Treatise, and the Ethics—will be considered in this paper.⁴

2. Descartes’s Definition of Love

Descartes presents his definition of love in §79 of the Passions of the Soul:⁵

Love is an emotion of the soul caused by a movement of the spirits, which impels the soul to join itself willingly (se voluntate jungendum) to objects that appear to be agreeable to it. (CSM I 356/AT XI 387/PAL 35; translation modified.)

Descartes’s definition describes love as a passion that makes the lover join themselves willingly to the loved one. Descartes elaborates on this definition in his letter to Chanut of 1 February 1647 by explaining that love combines a bodily and an intellectual element. The intellectual element consists in the mind’s appreciation of the goodness of the object of love, and the bodily element is the motion of the animal spirits that disposes the mind to have that intellectual element. For example, under the influence of the motion of animal spirits, the mind can—by an intellectual act—appraise an object positively that it would, under other conditions, appraise negatively (CSMK III 306–307/AT IV 602–604).

In §80 of the Passions, Descartes clarifies what it means to be joined willingly to the object of love:

[I]n using the word ‘willingly’ I am not speaking of desire (cupiditas), which is a completely separate passion relating to the future. I mean rather the assent (consensus) by which we consider ourselves henceforth as joined with what we love in such a manner that we imagine a whole, of which we take ourselves to be only one part, and the thing loved to be the other. (§80 CSM I 356/AT XI 387/PAL 36.)

Descartes distances himself from the possible misunderstanding that the volitional part of love is a desire for the loved one. Rather, the volitional part consists of the lover’s assent to consider themselves as part of a larger whole, of which the lover and the loved ones are but parts. Of course, Descartes does not deny that desire has something to do with love. However, desire does not constitute love; it is an effect of some instances of love, as he describes in the next paragraph:

A distinction is commonly made between two sorts of love, one called ‘benevolent love’, which prompts us to wish for the well-being of what we love, and the other called ‘concupiscent love’, which makes us desire the things we love. But it seems to me that this distinction concerns only the effects of love and not its essence. For as soon as we have joined ourselves willingly to some object, whatever its nature may be, we feel benevolent towards it—that is, we also join to it willingly the things we believe to be agreeable to it: this is one of the principal effects of love. And if we judge that it would be beneficial to possess an object or to be associated with it in some manner other than willingly, then we desire it: and this, too, is one of the most common effects of love. (§81 CSM I 356/AT XI 388/PAL 36.)

Descartes argues that all forms of love involve benevolence. One cannot join oneself willingly to the object of love without willing that the object of love has what is agreeable to it. However, in some cases, the lover has the additional judgment that they not only want to join themselves willingly to the loved one, but also to possess it or join themselves physically to it, which characterizes concupiscent love.

In the next paragraph, Descartes provides examples of both kinds of love. Examples of concupiscent love are ‘the passions which an ambitious man has for glory, a miser for money, a drunkard for wine, a brutish man for a woman he wants to violate’ (§82 CSM I 357/AT XI 388–389/PAL 36.). In these cases, the lovers

have love only for the possession of the objects to which their passion is related, and not for the objects themselves: for these objects they have merely desire mingled with other particular passions. (§82 CSM I 357/AT XI 389/PAL 36–37.)

By contrast, an example of the first case is ‘the love of a good father for his children’, which

is so pure that he desires to have nothing from them, and he wants neither to possess them otherwise than he does, nor to be joined to them more closely than he already is. He regards them, rather, as other parts of himself, and seeks their good as he does his own, or even more assiduously. For he imagines that he and they together form a whole of which he is not the better part, and so he often puts their interests before his own and is not afraid of sacrificing himself in order to save them. (§82 CSM I 357/AT XI 389/PAL 37.)

Descartes’s claim in §82 that the concupiscent lover has love only for the possession of the loved one and not for the lover sits awkwardly with his own previous claim in §81 that benevolent and concupiscent love are distinguished by the effects of love and not the love itself.⁶ The benevolent lover offers a much clearer case because they truly wish to further the interests of the loved one. The good father imagines himself to be the lesser part of the whole that he and his child form, and he is ready to do anything that is in the interest of the better part, his child, without consideration of his own interests—even to the point of sacrificing himself to save his child.

While the example of the good father might give the impression that benevolent love is always selfless, i.e., the lover always considers the interests of the loved one without considering their own interests, Descartes quickly clarifies in the next paragraph that there are three different species of benevolent love based on how much esteem (aestimatio)⁷ the lover has for the loved one relative to the esteem the lover has for themselves. If the lover esteems the object of love less than themselves, the love is simple affection (propensio) that humans feel toward flowers, birds, and horses. If the lover esteems themselves and the loved one equally, the love is friendship (amicitia), which humans feel toward other humans. Finally, if the lover esteems themselves less than the loved one, the love is devotion (devotio), which humans feel primarily toward God, but also toward ‘our sovereign, our country, our town, and even for a particular person when we have much more esteem for him than for ourselves’. (§83 CSM I 357/AT XI 390/PAL 37.)

In each case, the less esteemed part can be sacrificed for the sake of preserving the better part. One is ready to sacrifice one’s horse for the sake of saving oneself, just as one is ready to sacrifice oneself for the sake of saving one’s sovereign (the former example is my own; the latter is Descartes’s). Sacrificing one’s horse for the sake of saving oneself does not qualify as a case of concupiscent love. Since the horse is properly esteemed less than its owner, it is proper for the horse to sacrifice itself for the better part of the union formed by it and its owner, just as it is proper for the owner to expect the sacrifice. Descartes characterizes the readiness of the lesser part to sacrifice itself for the better part in his letter to Chanut as follows:

It is the nature of love to make one consider oneself and the object loved as a single whole of which one is but a part; and to transfer the care one previously took of oneself to the preservation of this whole. One keeps for oneself only a part of one’s care, a part which is great or little in proportion to whether one thinks oneself a larger or smaller part of the whole to which one has given one’s affection. (CSMK III 311/AT IV 611–612.)

It is clear from the context of the letter that the religious notion of love of God is at the center of Descartes’s consideration. In the case of God, the object of love is infinitely better than the lover, so love of God makes the lover join themselves willingly to God in a way that one wishes nothing but God’s will to be done. This goes to the extreme: if one realizes that one’s death follows from God’s will, one does not wish to alter God’s will, even if one could, per impossibile, do so, because one’s love of God makes one wish that His will be done, whatever that will is.⁸

Analogously in the political context, Descartes insists that it is proper for the citizen to go to certain death willingly if that is the sovereign’s will. Being ready to sacrifice oneself for the object of one’s devotion is the perfection of one’s love, not its corruption (CSMK III 311/AT IV 612). It can be the expression of the citizen’s love for the sovereign to sacrifice themselves to save the sovereign, just as it can be the expression of the sovereign’s love for the citizens to sacrifice them to save themselves. As the citizen has already transferred the care they previously took of themselves to the whole they formed with the sovereign, it is proper for the citizen to fight for the preservation of the sovereign as if they were fighting for their own preservation, just as it is proper for the sovereign to make use of the citizens.⁹

That the political example given by Descartes for devotion is not just an accident becomes clear if we take into account the scarce claims he made about political philosophy. Reconstructing his position on the basis of these remarks is beyond the scope of this paper, so I rely on Delphine Antoine-Mahut’s (2019) erudite analysis, according to which Descartes considers the political community as a whole, the chief part of which is the sovereign. Descartes claims that the affect of love makes functioning political communities possible at all because it is through love for their sovereign that individuals can stop seeking their own self-interest and pursue the interest of the political community:

The problem, then, is the following: how to bring it about that people find it in their interest to unite together within a whole without this degenerating into a perpetual clash of parts, each more concerned than others to secure the best position, or at least not to occupy the lowest place. […] It is necessary, first of all, for human beings to take on the necessary and difficult task of decentering themselves in order to associate themselves with a whole, or with the main part of it, by adopting its ends as their own. In Descartes’s anthropology, it is the passion of love that assumes this function. (Antoine-Mahut 2019: 246)

Descartes’s account of the political role of love grounds his views on politics that are conservative and monarchist: the chief part of the political whole, the ends of which citizens should adopt as their own, is the sovereign defined by birthright.¹⁰

3. Spinoza’s Rejection of the Political Consequences of Descartes’s Account

If Descartes’s account of love implies the claim that the citizen’s love for the sovereign is the basis of political communities, a rejection of the implication is at the same time a rejection of the account itself. In this section, I argue that Spinoza’s political philosophy indeed rejects the implication. For Spinoza, it is a sign of unfreedom and deception if the citizens are willing to selflessly sacrifice themselves out of their love for the sovereign. Free citizens fight selfishly for their own interests out of their love of freedom.

A basic distinction at the heart of Spinoza’s political philosophy is between free citizens who are under their own right (sui juris) and obedient citizens who are under the right of the state.¹¹ Both types of citizens act ideally in a way that is in line with the common interest of the political community. Free citizens do so by their own judgment, whereas obedient citizens do it out of fear or hope.¹² Spinoza holds that love can play a motivational role for both types of citizens, but the object of their love is different:

For a state which provides only fear as the motive for men’s actions will lack vices rather than possess virtue. Men must be so led that they seem to themselves not to be led, but to live according to their own mentality (ingenium) and from their free decision, so that they’re restrained only by love of freedom, the desire to increase their possessions, and the hope of achieving honors. Portraits, triumphs, and other incentives to virtue are signs of bondage, not freedom. Rewards for virtue are decreed for slaves, not free men. (TP X.8 III/356/24–31)

In this passage, Spinoza distinguishes between the obedient citizens who are motivated by fear to conduct the right action and free citizens who are motivated by love of freedom. Obedient citizens lack vice because they do the right action. Yet, they do not possess virtue because they do not do the right action from an inner motivation, from their own right. Instead, they are motivated by their love for external goods—portraits, triumphs, etc.—that they hope to achieve by acting obediently, i.e., not under their own right. These external goods are desirable and can serve as rewards because they give rise to joy. As we will see in more detail in the next section, Spinoza defines love as joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause. Following this definition, the joy caused by the external rewards constitutes a love for the source of the rewards: a love for the sovereign and the state. This love makes the citizen dependent on—or addicted to—the source of the rewards. In order to keep the rewards flowing, they have to do everything to remain in the good graces of the one who provides those rewards.¹³

By contrast, free citizens possess virtue because they conduct the right action from the right motivation. They are motivated by their love for the internal good of freedom, which they achieve by acting under their own right. Since the motivation is internal rather than dependent on the possession of external goods, love of freedom does not make the citizen dependent on external causes and thus does not give rise to the citizen being addicted to the source of external rewards.

Spinoza’s identification of virtue with persevering in being in his Ethics (E4p24)¹⁴ implies an implicit rejection of Descartes’s view, according to which it is the perfection of the citizen’s love to willingly sacrifice their lives for the beloved sovereign. For Spinoza, the love that makes one a virtuous citizen also promotes one’s persevering in being; the love that makes one promote the sovereign’s interests is the love that makes one an obedient servant.

This implicit polemic against the role played by love in Descartes’s political philosophy is also found in the Preface to the Theological-Political Treatise (Santangelo and Boros 2019: 663):

The greatest secret of monarchic rule, and its main interest, is to keep men deceived, and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for their survival, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting. Nevertheless, in a free republic nothing more unfortunate can be thought of or attempted. For it is completely contrary to the general freedom to fill the free judgment of each man with prejudices, or to restrain it in any way. (III/7/6–13)

In this famous passage,¹⁵ Spinoza contrasts democratic and monarchic polities. Democratic polities are characterized by the free use of judgment, whereas monarchic polities are characterized by manipulation through religious prejudices. These prejudices bring about a radical confusion about the interests of the citizens of monarchic polities. Whereas citizens of democratic polities correctly identify their survival as their own interest, citizens of monarchic polities mistake the sovereign’s interest for their own interest. Since the essence of each citizen is their striving to persevere in being, the confusion of the citizens of monarchic polities is quite radical: in war, citizens are likely to see their true interest radically hindered because they can easily die. Freely going to war and risking one’s life out of love for the sovereign, which was described by Descartes as the perfection of love, is portrayed by Spinoza as the imperfection of love resulting from radical confusion. Doing whatever is the sovereign’s will, even if it leads to the citizen’s death, is not the citizen’s perfection but the sign of the weakness of their mind.

Of course, Spinoza does not deny that sometimes the citizens ought to go to war and that citizens ought to defend their polity. As we learn from E4p73, a free person is freer in an imperfect state than in solitude. In line with the distinction, drawn earlier in TTP XVII, between love of freedom and love of external rewards, the proper reason for a citizen to go to war is their own self-preservation and their love of the internal good of freedom, and not the preservation of the sovereign and their love of external rewards:

For the army’s greatest reward is freedom. In the state of nature each person tries to defend himself as much as he can, simply for the sake of freedom. No one expects any other reward for excellence in fighting than that he should be his own [master] (ut suus sit). Now in the civil state all the citizens collectively ought to be considered as just like a man in the state of nature. So when they all fight for their state, they’re looking out for themselves and devoting themselves to themselves. […] Moreover, in war there can be no more honorable or greater incentive to victory than the image of freedom.¹⁶

In the army of a democratic state, the citizens do not fight out of self-sacrifice but out of pursuing their own interest: they can better persevere in their being as part of the community than individually.¹⁷

The subjects of monarchic states love the sovereign with a love that is a form of addiction to external rewards provided by the sovereign. The sovereign exploits this addiction by motivating the citizens to sacrifice themselves in war, which the citizens happily do in hope of external rewards, as they do not realize that their addiction goes against their own interests. The citizens of democratic states love their freedom with a love that does not constitute a form of addiction, as no external reward causes them joy. Instead, they realize that they can best persevere in their being and preserve their freedom as citizens of a democratic polity, which they defend as the means of their flourishing even at the risk of their lives. The selfless love for the sovereign expressing itself in the citizen’s willingness to die for the sovereign that was implied by Descartes’s account of love is rejected by Spinoza in favor of a selfish love of one’s own freedom.

4. Spinoza’s Subversion of Descartes’s Definition

In the last section, I argued that Spinoza rejects the implication of Descartes’s account of love for political philosophy, which suggests that he also rejects Descartes’s account of love. When we look at Spinoza’s definition of love, this expectation is confirmed.

Spinoza defines love in E3defaff6 as ‘a joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause’ (II/192/19–20). The definition specifies that love consists, for Spinoza, of an affective and a cognitive aspect. The affective aspect is joy, which is, according to E3defaff2, ‘a man’s passage from a lesser to a greater perfection’ (II/191/1–2). Affects are, as defined in E3d3, ‘affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections’ (II/139/13–16). The ideas mentioned in the definition constitute the mind’s perception of the body’s power of acting as increased or diminished. Joy constituting love is thus the increase of the body’s power of acting and the idea of that increase, i.e., the mind’s perception of the increase. The cognitive aspect of love is the idea of an external cause to which this increase in power of acting is attributed. As Spinoza explains in E3p12–13, if the individual imagines someone or something affecting their body in a joyful manner, they will love that person or thing. Whereas the affective aspect of love is infallible, the cognitive aspect can be erroneous: the experience of the increase in power of acting cannot be false, but the identification of the person or thing as the cause of that increase can.¹⁸ As we saw in the second section, Descartes defined love as a volitional state. Spinoza’s definition of love as a species of joy is thus a rejection of Descartes’s definition. Along the same lines, Spinoza’s definition has a different focus. Whereas the whole formed by the lover and the loved one is at the center of Descartes’s definition, Spinoza’s definition does not mention the loved one at all; it only concerns the loved one’s effect on the lover.¹⁹

Given this sizable difference between the two definitions, it is surprising to see that Spinoza quotes Descartes’s definition almost verbatim in the explanation of his definition:

This [i.e., Spinoza’s] definition explains the essence of love clearly enough. But the definition of those authors who define love as a will of the lover to join himself to the thing loved (amorem esse voluntatem amantis se jungendi rei amatae) expresses a property (proprietas) of love, not its essence. And because these authors did not see clearly enough the essence of love, they could not have any clear concept of this property. Hence everyone has judged their definition quite obscure. But it should be noted that when I say it is a property in the lover, that he wills to join himself to the thing loved, I do not understand by will a consent (consensus), or a deliberation (deliberatio) of the mind, or free decision (liberum decretum) (for we have demonstrated that this is a fiction in IIP48). Nor do I understand a desire (cupiditas) of joining oneself to the thing loved when it is absent or continuing in its presence when it is present. For love can be conceived without either of these desires. Rather, by will I understand a satisfaction (acquiescentia) in the lover on account of the presence of the thing loved, by which the lover’s joy is strengthened or at least encouraged. (II/192/22–193/5)

Although Spinoza does not say explicitly who ‘those authors’ are, the wording of the explanation allows us to identify the target of Spinoza’s polemics as Descartes with great confidence.²⁰ The claim that the lover joins themselves willingly to the object loved is an almost verbatim quote from §79 of the Passions of the Soul.²¹ That Spinoza is referring here to Descartes’s definition is further evidenced by his unusual choice of word ‘consent’ (consensus), which Spinoza uses exclusively in political and theological contexts and never in the context of philosophy of mind.²² The fact that Spinoza refers to what he would call ‘affirmation’ (affirmatio) (e.g., in E2p48, cited in the explanation) as consensus indicates that the aim of the text is to attack Descartes’s position.

Spinoza’s critique of Descartes’s definition in this explanation consists of two moves. As a first move, Spinoza accepts Descartes’s definition of love as the description of a necessary property²³ rather than of the essence of love. Traditionally, necessary properties are properties that every instance of a species necessarily possesses because they follow from the species’ essence, although they are not themselves constituents of that essence. For example, under ordinary natural circumstances, no fire can exist without being hot. Nevertheless, heat is not part of the essence of fire, since heatedness is shared by many other objects and therefore cannot explain those effects that are distinctive of fire (Zylstra 2023, 606). Even if Spinoza rejects large parts of the traditional metaphysics, he is referring in the explanation to the claim that one cannot conceive love without the lover’s will to join themselves to the loved one, this property, however, cannot explain the effects of love.

Describing the ‘will of the lover’ as a necessary property of love is surprising given that love is, according to Spinoza’s own definition, a species of joy—i.e., affective rather than volitional. Descartes’s definition cited by Spinoza would suggest that love is a species of will, which is identical to desire, according to E3p9s. Desire and joy are, however, distinct basic affects, for Spinoza. How, then, could love as a species of joy have a volitional affect—the ‘will of the lover’—as its necessary property? Spinoza’s second move in his critique of Descartes’s definition responds to this question by stating that the will, mentioned in E3defaff6, is actually a species of joy, i.e., acquiescentia.

Acquiescentia is defined in E3p30s as ‘joy accompanied by the idea of an internal cause’ (II/163/27–28). Acquiescentia is a peculiar choice for describing the necessary property of love: whereas love is joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause, acquiescentia is joy accompanied by the idea of an internal cause. If so, how can the volitional aspect of love’s effect be described by something that is not volitional and seemingly opposed to love?

As Clare Carlisle notes, Spinoza’s notion of acquiescentia results from rejecting the role Descartes assigned to the proper use of free will. For both Descartes and Spinoza, acquiescentia is the highest affect, which is a joy relating to an action that the person themselves caused. Whereas Descartes describes acquiescentia as the joy originating in the subject who considers the proper use of their own free will, for Spinoza, it is the joy the mind has when considering itself as the cause of that joy (Carlisle 2017: 212–16). Thus, Spinoza’s description of the volitional aspect of Descartes’s definition of love in terms of acquiescentia fits Spinoza’s general project of redescribing the Cartesian definitions of affects without making reference to the free will that, from Spinoza’s perspective, is a mere illusion.²⁴

Spinoza’s claim is that acquiescentia does not belong to the essence of love, but love cannot be conceived without the acquiescentia. This implies that acquiescentia is a necessary property of love in the sense that if acquiescentia is taken away, love is taken away as well.²⁵ Acquiescentia is a joy that the mind takes to follow from its own essence even if, in the case of acquiescentia constituted by the first kind of knowledge, it does not really follow from the mind’s essence (Carlisle 2017: 219–231; cf. 2021). Spinoza’s claim that love has the necessary property of acquiescentia suggests that it is a necessary property of love that the lover thinks of their love as following from their essence, i.e., as furthering their own interests.²⁶ If the lover realizes that this is not the case, and the acquiescentia is taken away, so is the love. No one can love someone or something while believing that their love destroys them, according to Spinoza.

We can now appreciate the extent to which Spinoza subverted Descartes’s definition in this explanation. The debate does not just concern whether love is a species of joy or volition, or whether the volition is understood as consensus or acquiescentia. The most fundamental difference between Descartes’s and Spinoza’s definitions of love concerns the question of whether love can properly²⁷ motivate the lover to actions that lead to the destruction of the lover. The fact that the joy attributed to the effects of one’s own power is a necessary property of love indicates that it is impossible to love someone and knowingly pursue one’s own destruction because of that love. Whereas love is the appreciation of the divine or sovereign will conveying meaning to afflictions, for Descartes (Santangelo and Boros 2019: 672), love is the appreciation of the way in which an external cause responds to who one takes oneself to be, and what one takes to be one’s own interest, for Spinoza. This involves not only a transition from a philosophy of love focused on the role of will in Descartes’s case to a philosophy of love focused on the role of the intellect in Spinoza’s case, but also reflects a transition from assessing the meaning of afflictions from the perspective of the external authority of a whole in Descartes’s account to assessing them from the internal perspective of the lover’s own nature in Spinoza’s account.

Unlike in Descartes’s account, where the lover’s readiness to sacrifice oneself for the whole formed with the loved one is at the focus of his account of love, for Spinoza love can only motivate the lover to destroy themselves due to epistemic confusion, when the lover mistakes the fulfillment of social expectations for pursuing their own interests. This is the unfortunate situation of the subjects of monarchic polities who mistake the sovereign’s interest for their own interest. Even in this case of the lover being confused about their own interest, the lover necessarily believes that their love is in their own interest, as acquiescentia is a necessary property of love; they are just confused about their own interest. The subjects’ self-image is an imaginative idea that makes them think that the social expectations reflect their own interests. Therefore, they experience acquiescentia while sacrificing themselves for the monarch: they experience the joy of furthering their own (misidentified) interests. Spinoza’s political claim that the free citizen fights out of a love of freedom rather than a love of the sovereign is no less underwritten by his account of love than Descartes’s political claim is by Descartes’s account of love. The free citizens of a democratic state are no less motivated by a love accompanied by an acquiescentia than are the subjects of a monarchic state; the former just have a self-image that is a rational idea. Their acquiescentia is a truthful idea: they truly pursue their own interests while defending their state. Therefore, they are justified in experiencing the joy of furthering their own interests.

5. Intellectual Love of God in Spinoza’s Account

In the second section, we saw that Descartes’s account of love presented a unified account of love focused on the lover forming a whole with the loved one. The differences among the love of God, the love of the sovereign, and the love of one’s romantic partner, parent, or child, as well as the love of the citizen of one’s realm and one’s animal, are merely gradual. This might raise the expectation that Spinoza’s account of the love of God also follows his account of love of finite beings.²⁸ Such an expectation might be supported by the observation that Spinoza’s love of God, just as Descartes’s love, provides what May calls ‘ontological rootedness’: it is unconditional because everyone can experience it (E5p20); it is selfless because it is not diminished by the apparent harm caused by the loved one (E5p18cs); it is eternal (E5p34c); it redeems losses and suffering as it shows everything to be necessary, true, and thus desirable (E4app32); and it is the ultimate source of meaning and happiness (E5p36cs). Yet, such an expectation is misplaced. As we will see in this section, love of God differs from affective love because it makes one think from the perspective of the whole—which was the focus of Descartes’s definition of love.²⁹

We should note that Spinoza does not officially formulate a separate definition of the love of God but rather introduces it in the course of the argumentation of the fifth part of the Ethics. The fact that he uses three expressions for love of God: love of God (amor Dei), love toward God (amor erga Deum), and intellectual love of God (amor Dei intellectualis), does not help to clarify what Spinoza means by love of God. Some scholars argue that there is a sharp distinction between love toward God and intellectual love of God (Nadler 2017), while others claim that ‘the distinction between love toward God and intellectual love of God is not clear-cut’.³⁰ Fortunately, this scholarly debate need not be resolved here. In what follows, I use the term ‘love of God’ to refer to all three expressions used by Spinoza, and argue that Spinoza distinguishes the kind of love that the finite mind has for the metaphysical foundation of its being, i.e., the love that the finite mode has for its substance, from the love that the finite mind has for other finite beings. Spinoza’s love of God can provide ontological rootedness: union with the origin of one’s being that renders the love unconditional and the source of meaning and happiness (May 2011: 7–9). In light of May’s analysis, we can say that Descartes’s notion of love allows the individual to be rooted not only in God, but also in the political community or in an intersubjective relationship (friendship, family, romantic love). In this section, I argue that Spinoza’s distinction between affective love and love of God serves to underline that it is only proper for the individual to be rooted in God, not in other finite beings, no matter whether the finite beings are individuals or collectives.

In E5p15, Spinoza states that understanding leads to love of God. God is the principle of knowledge; therefore, knowing something adequately amounts to knowing it in relation to God. But an increase in adequate knowledge increases the mind’s power of acting and is thus accompanied by joy. Since this joy of increased knowledge is related to God, it is a love of God. While the way in which Spinoza introduces the love of God might suggest that it is a special case of affective love, it soon becomes clear that this is not the case. There are three reasons for which love of God cannot be an affect of love.

The first reason is that Spinoza tells us God does not have affects, but love of God is also the love with which God loves. In E5p36, we learn:

The mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explained by the human mind’s essence, considered under a species of eternity; that is, the mind’s intellectual love of God is part of the infinite love by which God loves himself. (II/302/12–16)

However, Spinoza told us in E5p17c: ‘Strictly speaking, God loves no one, and hates no one. For God (by P17) is not affected with any affect of joy or sadness. Consequently (by Defs. Aff. VI, VII), he also loves no one and hates no one.’ (II/291/15–18) Spinoza’s reference to the definition of the affect of love (E3defaff6), discussed in the previous section, suggests that he means ‘strictly speaking’ to refer to the affect of love defined there.³¹ This is further supported by E5p17d, where Spinoza shows that God cannot have affective love because God cannot experience joy. Joy is an increase in the power of acting, i.e., a change. Change is, however, excluded by immutability, which is a property Spinoza ascribed to God in E1p20c2. This indicates that God is without change. If the affect of love is an affect, having an affect entails a change, and God is without change; therefore, God cannot have the affect of love. If God cannot have the affect of love, but the human mind’s intellectual love of God (the love arising from understanding) is identical to the love with which God loves himself, then the intellectual love of God is not an affect of love.³²

The second reason for love of God not being an affect of love is that affective love and love of God have contrary properties: the affect of love can be destroyed by external causes, whereas love of God cannot. As Spinoza states in E5p37: ‘There is nothing in nature which is contrary to this intellectual love, or which can take it away.’ (II/303/27–28) The intellectual love of God follows from the mind’s nature insofar as the mind’s nature is considered as an eternal truth (E5p37d). Therefore, something contrary to intellectual love would be contrary to the truth. This is not the case for affective love. The power of affective love is determined by the power of the nature of the human mind if it is active, and by the comparison of the power of external causes to the power of the nature of the human mind if it is passive.³³ Since the power of affective love is determined by the power of finite modes, the power of affective love cannot be infinite. Since the power of affective love cannot be infinite, it can be destroyed by more powerful external causes. It falls under the scope of E4a1, according to which there is no singular thing in nature that cannot be overpowered and destroyed by a more powerful one. By contrast, the love of God is explicitly exempted from the scope of E4a1 in E5p37s and cannot be defeated by external causes.³⁴ Having finite power, entailing corruptibility, and infinite power, entailing eternity, are contrary properties. If love of God has infinite power and is eternal, whereas the affect of love has finite power and is corruptible, love of God is not an affect of love.

The third reason for love of God not being an affect of love is that love of God is underwritten by a metaphysical relation between the lover and the loved one that justifies the lover’s radical care for the loved one, which is not the case for the affect of love. Love of God consists in the appreciation of the metaphysical dependence relation between the human mind and its metaphysical foundation, God. God is not just any odd object of love; God is the cause of the finite mind’s essence and existence (E1p25). As Spinoza points out in E5p36cs, the foundation of the intellectual love of God is the third kind of knowledge, which amounts to the appreciation of the way in which the mind depends both for its essence and its existence on God.³⁵ Thus, love of God is constituted by the dependence relation of the lover, who cannot be, and cannot be conceived, without the loved one. By contrast, affective love is not a dependence relation: the lover and the loved one can be conceived and can exist independently of each other.³⁶

Because of the different metaphysical relation between the lover and the loved one, love of God, unlike affective love, can lead to the lover appraising positively what would normally constitute harm to them. As we have seen, in the case of affective love, the lover ceases to love as soon as they realize that their love is harmful to them. By contrast, should the lover of God realize that their sadness is caused by the object of their love—by God—they cease to be sad and experience joy instead. Spinoza describes this scenario in E5p18c&s:

Love toward God cannot be turned into hate.

Schol.: But, it can be objected, while we understand God to be the cause of all things, we thereby consider God to be the cause of sadness. To this I reply that insofar as we understand the causes of sadness, it ceases (by P3) to be a passion, that is (by IIIP59), to that extent it ceases to be sadness. And so, insofar as we understand God to be the cause of sadness, we rejoice. (II/291/28–292/5)

Insofar as the human mind experiences a decrease in its power of acting, it experiences sadness. This decrease follows necessarily from God’s essence because everything follows necessarily from God’s essence. However, instead of hating God for causing such a decrease, the mind rejoices.³⁷ This can only happen because the mind considers itself as a mode of God and transfers the care it normally takes of itself to God, just as was the case in Descartes’s notion of love.³⁸ The mind ceases to consider the local decrease in power of acting in its body as harm but rather considers it as the benefit of the whole, of which it is but a part.³⁹

That Spinoza attributes to intellectual understanding the ability to transform the negative appreciation of a loss into joy is further supported by E4app32, where he writes:

But human power is very limited and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. So we do not have an absolute power to adapt things outside us to our use. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things which happen to us contrary to what the principle of our advantage demands, if we are conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we have could not have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of Nature, whose order we follow. If we understand (intelligere) this clearly and distinctly, that part of us which is defined by understanding, that is, the better part of us, will be entirely satisfied with this, and will strive to persevere in that satisfaction (acquiescentia). For insofar as we understand, we can want nothing except what is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfied with anything except what is true. Hence, insofar as we understand these things rightly, the striving of the better part of us agrees with the order of the whole of Nature.⁴⁰

Spinoza argues that one’s power being defeated does not necessitate sadness. If one has the intellectual understanding that one is part of the whole of nature, one can experience acquiescentia, even if things happen contrary to one’s advantage.

In the description of E4app32, acquiescentia does not arise because one understands something as happening according to one’s interest (following from one’s own nature) but because one understands oneself as part of the whole. What happens is assessed to be necessary and to follow from the nature of the whole. That one can rejoice by seeing an event that is contrary to one’s interest as following from the essence of the whole, i.e., being in the interest of the whole, implies an identification of the mind with the whole of nature. The mind perceives the event both as following from the nature of the whole and as its own doing. Such an identification resembles Descartes’s description of love of God. Just as love of God makes the human being think of themselves as part of a whole formed by them and God, which can motivate the human subject to joyfully execute God’s will even if that goes against their own interests in Descartes’s account, the intellectual understanding that what goes against the human subject’s interests follows from the whole formed by the subject and nature gives rise to a joy in Spinoza’s account.

This suggests that, in an extreme case, love of God can lead to the scenario at the center of Descartes’s notion of love, where the lover willingly goes to death because of their love for the supreme being. If one sees that the destruction of one’s body inevitably follows from God’s infinite essence, one presumably rejoices, according to E5p18cs.⁴¹ This sets love of God clearly apart from affective love that can never lead to the lover positively appraising manifest harm to them. Whereas love of God makes one appraise the limitation of one’s power by the loved one positively, by redescribing that limitation as the furthering of the interests of the whole, affective love is destroyed if one understands that the loved one causes a limitation to one’s power and is a source of sadness (cf. E3p40c1).

6. Two Kinds of Active Love

That love of God and affective love of finite beings are underwritten by different metaphysical relations between the lover and the loved one suggests that only love of God and not affective love can provide ontological rootedness. Against the background of Descartes’s account of love, this might be taken as evidence for the reading that Spinoza did not reject Descartes’s account completely; he just restricted the scope of active love to the love of God (I will come back to the terminology of active love in a moment). This might be seen as supported by Descartes’s distinction between rational and passionate love in his letter to Chanut of 1 February 1647. Rational love is an intellectual appreciation of real goodness, eventually giving rise to the affect of love in this life. In the case of passionate love, the bodily changes cause the mind to consider something as good that might not be a real good.⁴² Following Descartes’s account, one might read Spinoza as restricting the scope of rational or active love to love of God (i.e., love constituted by adequate ideas that follow from the mind’s nature alone); Spinoza’s rejection of the political consequences of Descartes’s account would be compatible with such a reading.⁴³

Still, I argue in this section that this is not Spinoza’s position. Descartes’s account is underwritten by a metaphysics of hierarchy. For Descartes, God is at one end of the great chain of being, plants and animals are on the other end; the sovereign and nobles are somewhere nearer to God, and commoners are closer to animals. The gist of Spinoza’s critique of Descartes is the rejection of such a hierarchy between finite beings, motivating Descartes’s distinction between affection, friendship, and devotion.⁴⁴ For Spinoza, every finite being should be esteemed equally; the finite mind should esteem only God higher than itself. Putting oneself above or below other finite beings is violence promoting tyranny and hate. Hence his democratic attitude toward human love: no finite object of love can be properly sacrificed or demand sacrifice from the lover. Readiness to sacrifice oneself and demanding sacrifice from others are signs of an inflated or deflated self-image, an epistemic confusion about one’s own nature.⁴⁵ In this section, I will show that Spinoza does not restrict rational love to love of God but rather specifies different criteria for the rationality of love of the infinite and love of finite beings. Affective love can be rational if it involves adequate knowledge of its causes and an acknowledgment of its finitude, and thus can be a reliable source of knowledge even if it doesn’t last forever.

I begin by concentrating on Spinoza’s concept of active affects (actiones), which he differentiates from passive affects (passiones). As Spinoza states in E3p58–59, desire and joy come in active and passive varieties, whereas sadness is always passive. Active affects are constituted by adequate ideas, whereas passive affects are constituted by inadequate ideas.⁴⁶ An active affect expresses the subject’s own interest and thus cannot motivate actions that would harm the subject, whereas a passive affect can lead to self-harming or even self-destructive behavior. In addition to these conditions, Spinoza’s description of activity implies that an active affect can be conceived through the nature of the subject’s mind alone.⁴⁷

Love is a species of joy, which indicates that it also comes in active and passive varieties. However, the characterization of active affects as caused by the mind’s nature alone gives rise to a puzzle when applied to the affect of love. Love is defined as joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause, which seems to be in conflict with the definition of active affects as being caused by the nature of the mind alone. This might suggest that love of God is the only kind of active love. Since an adequate idea of God is involved in every idea that the human mind has, one might see love of God as having an object internal to the mind (E2p45). Thus, one can love God by a love that is both partially determined by the object of love and completely follows from the lover’s nature.⁴⁸ Accordingly, some authors read Spinoza as claiming that no finite being is an appropriate object of love. Since no finite object has the properties God has, if one tries to love a finite being, one sets oneself up for disappointment and sadness: sooner or later the object of love either disappears or stops being a source of joy. This position is labeled as ‘misamorist’ in the literature.⁴⁹

The misamorist reading fits well with the general trend of the history of Western philosophies of love identified by May, according to which human love is measured by the standards of divine love. Some argue against the misamorist view by claiming that loving finite beings can be prudentially good even if it can never satisfy the strict requirements of active love set by love of God. Unlike love of God, loving a finite being is risky, as it can lead to the lover’s destruction. But it is a risk worth taking given its potential benefits.⁵⁰ However, Spinoza makes many claims that indicate that the finite human mind can experience active love.⁵¹ This suggests that Spinoza allows for active affective love on the part of finite beings, not just a prudentially good but passive love.

Assuming that Spinoza indeed allows for active affective love toward finite beings, such a love has to fulfill two requirements. Active love must be partially determined by its object to qualify as an affect of love at all, and active love also has to follow from the lover’s nature alone to qualify as an active affect. The first requirement amounts to the claim that active love is not completely solipsistic, which would be the case if the object of love would not make a difference to the affect of love. The second requirement amounts to the claim that active love does not motivate actions that lead to the lover’s harm or destruction. The tension between the two requirements arises because it is not immediately clear how the lover’s love can follow from the lover’s nature alone if the lover’s love is partially determined by the loved one. Loving entails entering into a relation that is not determined by the lover alone, but by all participants together.⁵² The question about the possibility of active affective love is thus the question whether it is possible to enter into such collectively determined relations with finite beings, according to Spinoza, without giving up one’s autonomy.⁵³

To see how this is possible according to Spinoza, let’s take a second look at Spinoza’s formulation in E3defaff6e:

But it should be noted that when I say it is a property in the lover, that he wills to join himself to the thing loved, […] by will I understand a satisfaction (acquiescentia) in the lover on account of the presence of the thing loved, by which the lover’s joy is strengthened or at least encouraged. (II/192/28–193/5)

In his subversion of Descartes’s definition of love, Spinoza is reinterpreting the lover’s will to form a whole with the loved one in Descartes’s account as an acquiescentia. Although the definition of acquiescentia does not make reference to an external cause but to an internal cause, Spinoza here emphasizes that this is an acquiescentia that the lover experiences on account of (ob) the presence of the loved one. This indicates that the experience of the acquiescentia is not solipsistic; it has to do with the presence of the loved one, even if the reference to the loved one is not part of the content of acquiescentia (which, by its definition, cannot have reference to an external cause). The way in which the presence of the loved one is related to the experience of acquiescentia is indicated in the last part of the sentence: the presence of the loved one—the loved one affecting the lover—gives rise to the lover’s joy.

Although Spinoza does not spell out the relationship between acquiescentia and the external object in detail, it is plausible to assume that he describes by the terms ‘love’ and ‘acquiescentia’ two different ways in which the same joy—the lover’s increase in the power of acting due to the loved one’s effect on the lover—is attributed to two different causes. Insofar as it is attributed to the external cause—to the loved one—the joy constitutes love, which is joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause. The same joy is, however, attributed to an internal cause, to the lover’s nature, and constitutes acquiescentia when describing the way in which the lover willingly joins themselves to the loved one. I propose to read Spinoza’s claim, following Carlisle’s analysis of acquiescentia, as stating that the cause for the lover experiencing joy rather than some other affect is the lover’s self-image. It is due to who the lover takes themselves to be that they experience joy upon being affected by the loved one. Joy is an increase in one’s power, which is one’s essence. Thus, one has to understand one’s joy through one’s self-image, what one takes to be one’s own essence (Carlisle 2017).

What the subject takes their nature to be explains what the subject takes to be joyful for them. As Spinoza explains in E3p57s, it is the difference in nature between the drunkard and the philosopher that explains the difference in the species of joy they experience. The drunkard enjoys alcohol because they take that to agree with their nature, just as the philosopher takes knowledge to agree with their nature.⁵⁴ Alcohol’s effect on the human body is, arguably, similar for both, but whether this effect is perceived by the subject as a species of joy depends on the subject’s idea of their own nature rather than on the external cause. The philosopher can get no less intoxicated than the drunkard, but they perceive this as a hindrance on their way to wisdom rather than as the desired bliss; they experience it as sadness rather than joy.⁵⁵ Spinoza’s claim in E3defaff6e is that understanding the affect of joy as following from the lover’s own nature is the acquiescentia that is the necessary property of love. The lover sees the loved one’s effect on them as joyful because it responds to what the lover takes themselves to be; the lover conceives the joyfulness of the loved one’s effect on them as following from their own nature. Love is active if the acquiescentia is an adequate idea, i.e., it arises from the lover’s rational self-image. In this case, the loved one’s effect on the lover responds to who the lover really is. By contrast, if the acquiescentia is an inadequate idea, the lover can (falsely) think of a passive joy as following from their own nature. In this case, the loved one’s effect on the lover responds to whom the lover takes themselves to be rather than to who the lover really is. In both cases, the lover experiences the loved one’s effect on them as joyful and thus loves the loved one because the lover takes the loved one to help the lover become who they really want to be. The difference is that in the passive case the lover is deeply mistaken about who they are and who they want to be. This explains the possibility of passive affective love being harmful for the lover. The deceived lover can think that loving the loved one allows them to become who they want to be, even though doing so actually frustrates their real interests and causes them harm.

As we saw, this happens in the case of tyrannical regimes, where the obedient servant experiences joy because they assess their actions through social expectations set by the sovereign. The deception of tyrannical regimes shapes what subjects love because the way in which they think of themselves determines what effects they enjoy. The subjects love the tyrant because the monarchic society makes them conceive of themselves as seekers of rewards provided by the sovereign for acting on the sovereign’s interest, which makes them experience joy upon receiving those rewards. Furthering the sovereign’s interests and being rewarded for it, the deceived lover experiences joy thinking that they have grown into who they want to be. As Spinoza’s Preface to the Theological-Political Treatise suggests, a free citizen of a democratic state would experience shame rather than joy if being rewarded by a tyrant (III/7/11–12). The free citizen of a democratic state would experience shame because they have a self-image that is an idea of the second or third kinds of knowledge and know that it does not follow from their nature to act in the tyrant’s interest but rather to pursue their own self-interest. Their love and their concomitant acquiescentia are thus active. Since they can correctly identify which effects respond to their true nature, i.e., which joys are in their own interest, their love cannot harm them.⁵⁶ As we saw, in democratic societies, the free citizen experiences joy because of their love of freedom, i.e., because they experience the joy of expressing their own power, their own conatus.

For Spinoza, affective love can both be a relation over which no single party has absolute control and an expression of the lover’s autonomy because these two conditions refer to two different aspects under which the same joy is considered. On the one hand, the lover cannot control their love because the love is joy that has an external cause. The loved one’s effect on the lover is partially determined by the loved one’s nature: the lover cannot love anything unless the loved one has an impact on the lover. One cannot love what lacks agency, that is, what cannot affect one. On the other hand, the affect of love can be the expression of the lover’s autonomy if the lover has rational insight into the reasons for which they experience the lover’s effect on them as joyful. In the case of active love, the lover appreciates that the loved one’s effect responds to their own nature, not to the nature the sovereign or society expects them to have. This rational insight into the nature empowered by the loved one’s effect on the lover allows the lover to distinguish instances of active joy, which empower the lover and are truly in their interest, from passive joys, which empower someone else and are not really in their interest. The ability to distinguish these joys allows the lover to stop loving if it is not in their own interest. What the loved one’s impact is on the lover is not up to the lover; whether the lover loves the loved one for that impact is up to the lover.

7. Countering Objections

As I expect some resistance to my reading of active affective love in Spinoza’s philosophy, let me counter two possible objections to this reading. The first objection is that Spinoza explicitly denies the possibility of active affective love in E5p20s. The second objection is that if Spinoza had allowed for active affective love, he surely would have said that explicitly.⁵⁷

The first objection comes from a passage in E5p20s that might be read as evidence against my reading:

Next, it should be noted that sickness of the mind and misfortunes take their origin especially from too much love toward a thing which is liable to many variations and which we can never fully possess. For no one is disturbed or anxious concerning anything unless he loves it, nor do wrongs, suspicions, and enmities arise except from love for a thing which no one can really fully possess. […] Insofar as the affects are passions, if clear and distinct knowledge does not absolutely remove them (see P3 and P4S), at least it brings it about that they constitute the smallest part of the mind (see P14). And then it begets a love toward a thing immutable and eternal (see P15), which we really fully possess (see IIP45), and which therefore cannot be tainted by any of the vices which are in ordinary love, but can always be greater and greater (by P15), and occupy the greatest part of the mind (by P16), and affect it extensively. (II/293/35–294/17)

On the face of it, this passage seems to support the misamorist reading, according to which the love of finite beings is always passive and should give way to the love of God that is the only kind of active love. However, I argue that Spinoza presents a simplified version of his account in this passage, leaving active affective love out of the picture in order to argue more easily for the superiority of the love of God.⁵⁸ Spinoza’s argument is that love of finite beings cannot serve as an undefeatable and immutable source of happiness because finite beings cannot be possessed fully. By contrast, God is an immutable source of joy that can be fully possessed. This aligns well with Spinoza’s correlation between infinitude and nonscarcity, on the one hand, and finitude and scarcity, on the other hand. For Spinoza, infinite goods, such as knowledge and love of God, are non-exclusive goods because they are not scarce. This sets them apart from finite goods that are exclusive because they are scarce. Other people receiving joy through love of God does not diminish the amount of joy one can receive from loving God. By contrast, a finite human being has limited capacity to affect others with joy; others receiving joy from loving the same person thus necessarily affects the amount of joy one can receive from loving the same person.

The above passage might suggest that love always aims at full possession of its object. This, however, can only succeed in the case of love of God because only he can be possessed by everyone at the same time. In the case of finite modes, full possession will inevitably lead to conflict with others also trying to possess fully the same finite mode and also with the finite mode itself, as it will try to possess itself rather than being possessed fully by others. As I have argued in this paper, such a model of love aiming at full possession is aligned with Descartes’s definition of love aiming at forming a whole with the other in which one’s individual interests disappear. Therefore, I propose reading this passage not as describing the necessary failure of loving finite modes but rather as describing the necessary failure of loving finite modes as if they were God, i.e., with a love aiming at full possession. This is the gist of Spinoza’s criticism of Descartes’s definition of love: the kind of love that aims at forming a whole with the loved one cannot be properly directed at a finite object and gives rise to tyranny in the political context.

Trying to treat human love according to the standards of divine love, attempting to replace love of God with a love of finite beings, gives rise to a dependence relation that is incompatible with the love being active. Spinoza’s claim aligns well with May’s diagnosis discussed in the first section that conceiving the love of finite beings according to the standards set by love of God leads to the failure of affective love. Both passive affective love and love of God make the mind addicted to the source of joy (cf. Sangiacomo 2020: 160–164), but this addiction is necessary and good only in the latter case. The mind depends on God as the foundation of its being; it is thus proper for the mind to be fixed on God and seek to be continuously affected with joy by God (Sangiacomo 2025: 98). This is why love of God can provide ontological rootedness.

Affective love can only be active if it is aware that it cannot provide ontological rootedness and does not aspire to provide what only love of God can provide. If affective love can avoid making the mind addicted to the source of joy and give up the expectation that the object of affective love will affect the lover continuously with joy, affective love can become active. Active affective love aims to enjoy the presence of finite beings without aspiring to form a whole with them, knowing that this enjoyment is transitory. Each finite being sooner or later changes or gets destroyed; therefore, the joy they provide does not last forever. This is, however, not a reason not to enjoy the presence of finite beings and to love them as such.

The prudence of actively enjoying the presence of finite beings is supported by Spinoza’s claim in E4p45c2s:

It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. (II/244/26–30)

Even the wise person, who has exclusively adequate ideas or is led by reason,⁵⁹ can enjoy the presence of external objects that bring them joy. Knowing that these objects bring the wise person joy constitutes a love toward them, according to the definition of E3defaff6. Since the wise person has only adequate ideas, this love must be active. As long as the wise person does not imagine that they form a whole with the object of their love, they know that the object of their love will not affect them with joy indefinitely. Since the wise person’s love is constituted by an adequate idea, i.e., they know the reason why the object, under the current circumstances, affects them with joy, they can stop loving as soon as the circumstances change so that the object starts affecting them with sadness, or demand such behavior on their part that would lead to their destruction.

While both the drunkard mentioned in E3p57s and the wise person enjoy a pleasant drink, they do so differently. The drunkard has a passive affective love for alcohol. They try to love alcohol in the way in which they are supposed to love God alone—which is why their love is idolatrous, to use Rorty’s (2009) term. They try to form a whole with alcohol, whereby they show their misunderstanding of who they are, and get addicted to alcohol by giving up their actual interests in pursuing the enjoyment of alcohol no matter what. By contrast, the wise person loves their drink with an active affective love. They know how and to what extent the effects of alcohol can be empowering them. They know that the joy provided by the drink is transitory, and they only love it insofar as it aligns with their projects and interests. They do not pursue the drink at all costs, only as long as it is rational to do so because it brings them joy and is thus in their own interest. Since they know that they love the alcohol for bringing them joy, if they realize that this is not the case (for example, because the drink starts to cost too much money that could be spent on other things bringing them more joy or it starts to take a toll on their health), they can stop loving it and start looking for other sources of joy.

While I argued that E4p45c2 can be read as implying Spinoza’s commitment to the possibility of active affective love, one might further object that if Spinoza had really allowed for active affective love, he would certainly have discussed it somewhere. I argue that he indeed did that in E4app19&20:

XIX. A purely sensual love, moreover, that is, a lust to procreate which arises from external appearance (forma), and absolutely, all love which has a cause other than freedom of mind, easily passes into hate—unless (which is worse) it is a species of madness. And then it is encouraged more by discord than by harmony. See IIIP31.

XX. As for marriage, it certainly agrees with reason, if the desire for physical union (cupiditas miscendi corpora) is not generated only by external appearance (forma) but also by a love of begetting children and educating them wisely, and moreover, if the love of each, of both the man and the woman, is caused not by external appearance (forma) only, but mainly by freedom of mind. (II/271/17–272/4)

Here, Spinoza distinguishes between two kinds of sexual love, which is a species of affective love. One is based on forma only and is easily turned into hate. Curley translates ‘forma’ as ‘external appearance’, but given the systematic significance of this term, it could just as well be read as ‘essence’ or—with some interpretive latitude—‘personality’.⁶⁰ This love can turn into hate because the change in the state of the lover’s or the loved one’s constitution can bring it about that the loved one no longer affects the lover with joy.

By contrast, there is also a sexual love that is not caused by forma only but also by the freedom of mind. Spinoza describes, first, rational marriage, for which both active affective love and a rational attitude to sexual procreation are necessary, i.e., the lovers should not follow their ‘lust for procreation’ described in E4app19 blindly but have a desire and commitment to raise their children properly.⁶¹ Then he goes on to describe rational sexual love as being caused by the loved one’s effect on the lover and also by the freedom of mind, i.e., by the lover’s adequate self-knowledge.⁶² Although the lover needs the presence of the other person to love them, the lover loves the loved one because of who the lover is: the joyfulness of the loved one’s presence follows from the lover’s own nature alone.

8. Conclusion

At the beginning of this paper, we saw Simon May’s argument that the history of ‘Western’ philosophies of love centers on the tendency of measuring human love by the standards of love of God. May argues that the peril of modern loving relations is the expectation that human love can live up to the expectations set by love of God. In his view, love of God gives us ontological rootedness by linking one to one’s origin. This rootedness turns love into an unconditional, selfless, and eternal feeling capable of redeeming losses and suffering, as well as serving as the ultimate source of meaning and happiness. Descartes’s philosophy is guilty of using the standards of divine love to measure human love: for him, all forms of love make one think of oneself as part of a greater whole, which entails that either the lover or the loved one can be expected to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the whole. Spinoza, however, rejects Descartes’s account by bifurcating his notion of love into love of God and human affective love, and then bifurcating affective love further into active and passive affective love.

Love of God provides ontological rootedness: it is unconditional because everyone can experience it (E5p20); it is selfless because it is not diminished by the apparent harm caused by the loved one (E5p18cs); it is eternal (E5p34c); it redeems losses and suffering as it shows everything to be necessary, true, and thus desirable (E4app32); and it is the ultimate source of meaning and happiness (E5p36cs). By contrast, affective love cannot provide ontological rootedness. It is not unconditional because the lover stops loving once they cannot understand their love to be in their own interest. It is not selfless because it is the expression of the lover’s interest. It is not eternal but transitory and contingent. It does not redeem losses and suffering; it is a form of joy easily defeated by a contrary, more powerful affect. It is not the ultimate source of meaning and happiness; it is at best one of the many joyful affects that can help the mind on its way toward its ultimate goal, knowledge and love of God.

One might think that Spinoza’s notion of active affective love is a caricature of love, perhaps characterized by an extreme fear of intimacy and commitment. How plausible is it that one should abandon one’s love for one’s country, one’s family, one’s friends, and one’s romantic partner once these become difficult and sources of sadness? Would anyone want to enter into a loving relation with a Spinozist if one knows that one can only expect abandonment in the face of challenges? While none of these concerns is obviously unfounded, I would like to conclude by arguing that they result from a clash between Spinoza’s rational argumentation and the traditional conception of human love.⁶³

As May’s analysis shows, the contemporary expectation of what human love should be and should provide is a historical product that emerged once love of God could not provide ontological rootedness. As he argues, this historical product is not worth sticking to, as it sets up modern love for failure: if human love is expected to provide what only love of God can provide, humans are bound to be saddened. My claim is that this is precisely Spinoza’s point when separating love of God and affective love. Passive affective love is, for him, the result of trying to relate to finite beings the way it is only proper to relate to God. His philosophy can be seen as a radical attempt to rethink human love outside of this modern tradition, as a love that does not aim to usurp the place of love of God but sits content on a different metaphysical plane. Perhaps this puts Spinoza’s philosophy more in line with an ancient or medieval tradition that saw love of God, rather than human love, as the source of ontological rootedness.

For Spinoza, it is possible to love both God and finite beings in a way that is not based on the misrecognition of the nature of these relations but results in two different forms of love.⁶⁴ For Spinoza, it is the appreciation of the fact that love of finite beings can never provide the finite mind with its ultimate happiness that eases the mind’s fixation on finite beings and opens up the possibility of an active affective love that acknowledges the fragility and temporality of every finite love. It is precisely by realizing that only love of God brings salvation that the human being can love finite beings without expecting them to bring salvation, i.e., without expecting to be able to depend on their loved one for their being or to be affected with joy by their loved one indefinitely.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the DFG-Project (549333036) ‘Conatus, Trieb und die Erkenntnis der Freiheit: Spinozas Einfluss auf Hegels praktische Philosophie’. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Conference of the British Society for History of Philosophy at King’s College London, at the Oxford Spinoza Conference, at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, at the NYC Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin, at the ESEMP Congress at FernUniversität Hagen, and the 7th Finnish-Hungarian Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy at CEU Vienna. I would like to thank the participants of these events, especially Antonio S. Borge, Alexander Douglas, Arthur Duhé, Sandra Field, Michael V. Griffin, Stephen Harrop, Mogens Lærke, Ian MacLean-Evans, Leonardo Moauro, Ruben Noorloos, Ursula Renz, Stephan Schmid, Ariane Schneck, Catherine Wilson, and Boxiang Yu. Julia Peters and Frans Svensson read an earlier version of this paper, and I would like to thank them for their generous comments and feedback. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous and helpful comments and suggestions.

Competing Interests

The author has no competing interests to declare.