ABSTRACT
The chapter compares Descartes’ and Spinoza’s conceptions of love. In the first section it is showed that the view of love suggested by Spinoza at the end of the third part of the Ethics in fact comes much closer to the Cartesian view suggested in article 79 of The Passions of the Soul than scholars have so far recognized. The second section then proceeds to consider some of the possible differences that still remain between the two views. In particular, the following two questions are discussed: (1) Both Descartes and Spinoza make a distinction between two forms of love, love as a passion and intellectual love; but how could this distinction have the same sense for the two philosophers, given that for Descartes it is tied to the distinction between body and soul, which it is not for Spinoza? (2) Spinoza assimilates love to a form of joy, while Descartes considers love and joy as two different even two primitive passions. But how could one then identify Cartesian love with a Spinozian joy?
