ABSTRACT
Spinoza is conscious of his undoubted originality, but not less of his debts to his predecessors. ‘Very eminent men have not been wanting, to whose labour and industry we confess ourselves much indebted, who have written many excellent things about the right conduct of life, and who have given mortals counsels full of prudence; but no-one so far as I know has determined the nature and strength of the emotions, and what the mind is able to do towards controlling them.’ In particular, he singles out Descartes: ‘I remember, indeed, that the celebrated Descartes, although he believed that the mind is absolute master over its own actions, tried nevertheless to explain by their first causes human emotions, and at the same time to show the way by which the mind could obtain absolute power over them; but in my opinion he has shown nothing but the acuteness of his great intellect.’ The work of Descartes to which Spinoza is primarily referring in his Passions of the Soul, which grew out of his correspondence with the Princess Elizabeth. (cf. VI, 2). In order to understand Spinoza, we must have the outlines of the Cartesian theory of the passions before us. These are readily discerned.
