Stoic

Psychotherapy in Descartes and Spinoza

Faith and Philosophy 11 (1994), pp. 592-625.i

Derk Pereboom

Penultimate draft

Although the influence of the Stoic outlook on sixteenth and seventeenth century

European culture has been well-documented, it is seldom recalled how, in particular, Stoicism

affects the views of the early modern European philosophers.ii The works of Descartes and

Spinoza supply remarkable illustrations of this impact. Some of the most interesting of these

Stoic influences can be found in their writings on therapy for the passions. Both Descartes and

Spinoza ground their discussions in the psychotherapeutic theory of the Stoics, and their final

views bear the imprint of the Stoic model, although in different respects.

The Stoic theory embraces two controversial claims, each of which gives rise to a

therapeutic strategy. The first claim is that we have much more voluntary control over our

actions and passions than one might ordinarily suppose, and the associated therapeutic strategy

advises that we exercise this control as a means to well-being. The second claim is that the

universe is wholly determined by the providential divine will, which is identical with the laws of

nature, and the correlated therapeutic proposal recommends that we align our concerns with

God's so that we will achieve equanimity even in the most trying of circumstances. Descartes

advocates each of these controversial claims and the associated therapeutic strategies. But

although Spinoza accepts the Stoics' belief about divine determinism, he rejects their

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understanding of our voluntary control over the actions and passions. Nevertheless, Spinoza

attempts to preserve some of the key intuitions behind each of the two therapeutic strategies,

and in this endeavor provides an inventive rethinking of the Stoic conception.

A thorough and persuasive account of the first claim is presented by Brad Inwood in his

Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism.iii According to the Stoic theory, human action has

three main stages. In the first, the possibility of an action is presented to the agent. For

example, the possibility of eating a piece of pie might be presented to you by your seeing it on

the kitchen table. This stage is called phantasia, presentation or impression. Corresponding

to a phantasia is a lekton, a proposition or sayable, for example, it is fitting for me to eat that

piece of pie, which the agent entertains but does not necessarily endorse when she has a

phantasia.

In the second stage, synkatathesis, assent, comes into play. A mature human agent

normally has the power to freely and voluntarily assent to, dissent from, or suspend judgment

with regard to the lekton corresponding to a phantasia. (In the Stoic view, this power is not

possessed by animals or by young children.iv) Its source is the rational, ruling, part of the soul -

- the hêgemonikon. (The other parts of the soul are the five senses, the linguistic part, and the

reproductive part). When an agent dissents or suspends judgment with regard to the initial

lekton, the development of an action ceases. But if the agent assents, the third stage, hormê,

impulse, results. According to Cleanthes and Chrysippus, the mind is made up a pneuma, a

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composite of air and fire, and hormê (which also means shock or attack) is a forceful motion of

this substance that results from assent to a lekton corresponding to a phantasia.v Hormê is a

psychological (as opposed to physical) component of an action; for instance, the setting of

oneself to eat the piece of pie is a hormê. Parallel to (and quite clearly causing) the hormê is a

self-directed judgment, which results from assenting to the lekton corresponding to the

phantasia. In our example, the judgment would be 'Yes, it is fitting for me to eat that piece of

pie,' and if Inwood is right, the hormê is also linked with an imperative like 'Eat that piece of pie!'vi

The Stoics' theory of action is, in part, a subspecies of their theory of judgment. In

general, judgment results from the agent's exercise of its power of assent on the occasion of a

phantasia. According to Chrysippus, the (normal) function of a phantasia is to "reveal itself and

its cause" to its recipient, and hence "the word 'phantasia' is derived from 'phôs,' [light]; just as

light reveals itself and whatever else it includes in its range, so phantasia reveals itself and its

cause."vii Nevertheless, there are both accurate and misleading phantasiai, which the Stoics

called katalêptos (literally, capable of grasping (its object)) and akatalêptos:viii

The cataleptic, which they say is the criterion of things, is that which arises from what is

and is stamped and impressed exactly in accordance with what is. The acataleptic is

either that which does not arise from what is, or from that which is but is not exactly in

accordance with what is: one which is not clear and distinct (mê tranê mêde ektupon).ix

An agent guided by reason would refuse assent upon entertaining an acataleptic phantasia, and

would grant assent only to the cataleptic sort.x In the Stoic view, what is distinctive about a

phantasia that functions as a component of action is that it reveals to the agent something that

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might motivate her, for example, something that would contribute to her health or well-being.

Such a phantasia potentially gives rise to hormê, and hence it is called phantasia hormêtike

(hormetic presentation).xi An agent guided by reason would refuse assent upon considering a

hormetic presentation when, for example, the result would be an action not directed towards

the good.

A prominent feature of the Stoic picture is that passions (given a certain specific

conception of a passion) are a type of hormê, and hence fit into the theory in just the way hormê

does.xii Thus for an agent to experience a passion, she must first have an appropriate phantasia.

She must then assent to a lekton corresponding to the phantasia, perhaps to a lekton such as 'it

is fitting for me to fear my reputation being ruined by the media.' From assent to such a lekton

a hormê of a special type results, one which is identical with the passion. In the Stoic

conception, therefore, passions do not happen to an agent. Rather, whenever an agent has a

passion, it has in a sense been chosen by that agent. And accordingly, an agent can avoid

struggling against passions altogether, because simply by exercising its power of assent, she can

prevent any untoward passion from coming to exist at all.xiii

In the chapter on Zeno of Citium in his Lives of the Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius

recounts the Stoic classification of the passions.xiv In the classical Stoic view, the word 'pathos,'

(which is standardly but often misleadingly translated as 'passion,') always denotes a state to be

avoided, a state upon whose presentation (phantasia) one must never assent. Citing treatises

by Zeno and Hecato,xv both entitled Peri Pathôn, Diogenes observes that for the Stoics there are

four great classes of the pathê: craving (epithumia), fear (phobos), pleasure (hêdonê), and

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distress (lupê). Each of these types of pathos is irrational (alogos). Craving is irrational

appetite (alogos orexis), fear is irrational avoidance (alogos ekklisis), pleasure is irrational elation

or expansion (alogos eparsis), and grief or distress is irrational contraction (alogos sustolê).

Craving and fear are irrational attitudes towards what one thinks to be good and bad respectively,

while pleasure and distress are irrational attitudes towards getting and failing to get what one

wants.xvi

Diogenes Laertuis reports that the Stoics also maintain that there are three classes of

"good passions" (eupatheia, which are not pathê, by the classical Stoic characterization); joy

(chara), caution or watchfulness (eulabeia), and will or wishing (boulêsis). xvii Joy is rational

elation (eulogos eparsis), and thus corresponds to pleasure, caution is rational avoidance

(eulogos ekklisis) and is the counterpart to fear, while will as opposed to craving is rational

appetite (eulogos orexis). (The Stoic classification includes no rational counterpart to grief or

pain -- perhaps they think that mental contraction is never rational.) In certain circumstances

the eupatheiai are appropriately experienced. Joy, for example, is fitting when one

contemplates an excellence that one has achieved:

What then is your own? The use of external presentations (chrêsis phantasiôn).

Therefore, when you are in harmony with nature in the use of external presentations,

then be elated; for then it will be some good of your own at which you will be elated.

(Epictetus, Encheiridion 6)

Hence, joy is appropriate when one's employment of one's power of assent towards external

presentations is in harmony with nature (kata phusin).xviii

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Chrysippus characterizes the pathê as contrary to nature and thereby irrational.xix But

why are they irrational in this sense? Diogenes attributes to Zeno the claim that the pathê are

to be avoided because they are impulses in excess (hormê pleonazousa). By Chrysippus'

analogy (reported by Galen), a pathos is like running as opposed to walking. When one runs,

one cannot stop precisely when one wants to; similarly, once one has a pathos, one cannot cease

having it just by wanting to.xx But a pathos' resistance to voluntary control is not precisely what

makes it bad for an agent. Rather, a pathos is harmful because of its resistance to voluntary

control under the guidance of reason, and further, its tendency to impair one's more general

ability to exercise rational voluntary control.xxi A fragment from Stobaeus illustrates this view:

'Irrational' and 'contrary to nature' are not used in their ordinary senses: 'irrational' is

equivalent to 'disobedient to reason.' Every pathos is overpowering, since people in

states of pathos frequently see that it is not suitable to do this but are carried away by

the intensity, as though by a disobedient horse, and are induced to do it... The sense of

'contrary to nature' in the outline account of pathos is of something that happens

contrary to the right and natural reason. Everyone in states of pathos turns aside from

reason, but not like those who have been deceived in something or other, but in a special

way. For when people have been deceived, for instance over atoms being first

principles, they give up the judgment, once they have been taught that it is not true. But

when people are in states of pathos, even if they realize or are taught to realize that one

should not feel distress or fear or have their soul, quite generally, in states of pathos, they

still do not give these up, but are brought by them to a position of being controlled by

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their tyranny. (LS I 411)

Even if one's reason would proscribe the pathos that one presently has, the pathos will

nevertheless resist and overpower one's capacity for rational voluntary control, and one would

therefore persist in the pathos despite the counsel of reason. Consequently, the wise person,

the sophos, never assents to a lekton corresponding to a presentation of a pathos, and is

accordingly pathêless (apathê).

Inwood illuminates the Stoic theory of the pathê by a fragment from Epictetus:

Presentations in the mind... with which the intellect of man is struck as soon as the

appearance of something which happens reaches the mind are not voluntary or subject

to one's control; but by a force of their own they press themselves on men to be

acknowledged. But the assents... by which the same presentations are acknowledged

are voluntary and are subject to human control. Therefore, when some frightening

sound from the sky or a collapsing building or the sudden announcement of some danger,

or something else of the sort occurs, it is inevitable that even the sage's soul be moved

for a short while and be contracted and grow pale, not because he has formed an opinion

of anything evil but because of certain rapid and unreflective movements which forestall

the proper function of intellect and reason. Soon, though, the sage in question does not

give assent... to such presentations... but rejects and refuses them and judges that there

is nothing in them to be feared.xxii

In the Stoic conception, mere perception of the threat of a dangerous event is causally insufficient

to produce the pathos of fear. Rather, the occurrence of the pathos of fear requires that the

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threatening event cause in the agent a presentation of the pathos, and that he freely assent to a

lekton corresponding to this presentation. The sophos will always refuse to assent upon a

presentation of a pathos, although such a presentation may initially jar his capacity for reasoning.

The fragment from Epictetus helps us correct several often-misunderstood features the

Stoic theory of the passions. First, a phantasia that introduces a pathos does not leave the

agent motivationally unaffected. Rather, a presentation of this sort gives rise to an interest in

the agent, and this is the force of classifying it as phantasia hormêtikê. Furthermore, given our

terminology, we might classify such a presentation as a passion. When I discover that someone

has deliberately undermined my interests, we might classify my involuntary emotional response

as the passion of anger. One cannot tell whether the Stoics would agree with this

categorization, since they have no term corresponding to our word 'passion.' The distinctive

claim of the Stoics is that an emotional state that seriously impairs one's capacity for voluntary

rational control -- a pathos -- cannot occur unless one voluntarily assents to a lekton that

corresponds to a presentation that introduces such a state. In addition, they maintain the

optimistic view that since a presentation of this sort occurs involuntarily, it cannot by itself

seriously impair one's capacity for voluntary rational control, and that by exercising one's power

to voluntarily refuse assent, one can avoid altogether states that hinder reason in this way.

The second therapeutic strategy flows from the Stoics' deterministic view of the universe;

"Chrysippus says that fate is a certain everlasting ordering of the whole; one set of things follows

on and succeeds another, and the interconnection is inviolable."xxiii Both Zeno and Chrysippus

maintain that all things are determined by God (Zeus) which is identical to reason (logos),

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providence (pronoia), and nature (phusis). God is a physical substance, apparently identical

either to pneuma, a combination of air and fire, or just to fire, which is in everything as its

principle of order and design:

The Stoics made God out to be intelligent, a designing fire which methodically proceeds

toward creation of the world, and encompasses all the seminal principles according to

which everything comes about according to fate, and a breath (pneuma) pervading the

whole world, which takes on different names owing to the alterations of the matter

through which it passes.xxiv

Chrysippus is willing to speak of many gods; for example, in his view Neptune is the air which

diffuses itself through the sea. But at the time of the periodic conflagration (ekpurôsis) in a

Great Year, all the gods are destroyed except Zeus.xxv Furthermore, according to Chrysippus

the gods are providential, since they are beneficial and friendly toward human beings, and they

"made us for our own sake and for each other, and the animals for our sake."xxvi Hence, Zeus

determines the universe in a manner that is providential for human beings (at least for human

beings generally considered, but apparently not in a way that aims at the good of each individual

human being.)

In the Stoic conception, one should accommodate oneself to the determinism of the

universe by, as Epictetus puts it, seeking to have things happen as they do happen (Encheiridion

8). One should do so even if what happens might be bad from one's personal point of view,

that is, from the perspective of one's ordinary human aspirations for personal survival, happiness,

and success. The Stoic recommendation is that one should cease to appraise the events of

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one's life from one's personal point of view, and to evaluate them instead from the divine

perspective. That is, one should appraise the events of one's life solely by the purposes God

has in creating and preserving the universe, aims which are distinct from, and may conflict with,

one's ordinary personal concerns.

This abstracted stance towards one's life is expressed in the Stoic conception of

reservation (hupexairesis, literally 'exception'). xxvii In our universe, much is not within our

control, and thus we may find ourselves rationally aiming to achieve ends we are not certain to

obtain. This sort of difficulty might result either from our lack of power or from our lack of

knowledge. If a someone aspires to become president, he may not have the capability to

achieve his end, and further, even if he will in fact succeed, he will likely not come to know this

when he forms his intent. One strategy for handling this type of difficulty is to avoid striving for

anything one cannot be assured of acquiring. But the Stoics do not encourage this approach.

Rather, they enjoin acting with reservation.

Whenever one acts, one does so by assenting to a lekton that corresponds to the

presentation of the action. If one is to act in accordance with the will of God, the judgments

one makes as a result of assenting must conform to this will. Thus if one aims to set sail

tomorrow, one should not simply resolve to set sail tomorrow, but as Seneca advises in On

Tranquility, to say "I will set sail tomorrow unless something intervenes," or "if it is so fated." In

the explicitly theological formulation one would resolve "I will set sail tomorrow unless it goes

against the will of God." If the judgment that results from one's assent includes a clause such

as 'unless it goes against the will of God,' a reserved impulse will ensue.xxviii Accordingly, the

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propositional aspect of acting with reservation is matched by a type of mental state. At this

level, reservation involves a degree of psychological detachment from any outcome that is not

up to us. As a result of this detachment we will not be (as) distressed if an attempt to achieve

some end fails. In Seneca's view, "the suffering that comes to the mind from the abandonment

of desire must necessarily be much lighter if you have not certainly promised it success."

More fundamentally, reservation involves assuming the divine perspective on our

successes and failures. It ultimately requires that we evaluate the outcomes of our ventures

from the point of view of God's purposes. If we supplement this stance with the belief that

everything that happens is providentially ordained by God, perhaps we will be able to accept the

result of any endeavor with equanimity, and even to regard any outcome with joy. Marcus

Aurelius recommends an outlook of this sort:

You must consider the doing and perfecting of what the universal Nature (tê koinê physei)

decrees in the same light as your health, and welcome all that happens, even if it seems

harsh, because it leads to the health of the universe (tên tou kosmou hygieian), and the

welfare and well-being of Zeus. For he would not have allotted this to anyone if it were

not beneficial to the Whole (ei mê tôi holôi sunepheren). (Meditations V, 8)

If we align our desires with the good of the Whole, we will welcome anything that happens to us,

even our own impending death, for "cessation of life is no evil to the individual, since ... it is good

if it is timely for the Whole, bringing benefit to it, and benefitted by it" (Meditations XII, 23).xxix

These two Stoic approaches to therapy for the passions, one which affirms the power of

assent, and the other divine determinism, might be thought incompatible, and the early Stoics

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attempted to respond to this sort of challenge. Chrysippus holds that despite universal divine

determinism, assent is voluntary and free. This is possible because events can be determined

to occur in accordance with our free voluntary control: "we contribute much assiduous and

zealous effort with respect to these things because it has been ordained that they occur in

conjunction with our wills".xxx Although upon considering a presentation we have the capacity

to assent, dissent, or suspend judgment, yet whatever our decision turns out to be, it has been

determined by God. As we shall see, Spinoza's rejection of Stoic compatibilism is part of his

motivation to disavow the power of assent and the associated form of therapy, while Descartes'

endorsement of this position is an issue in his correspondence with Elizabeth, to which we now

turn.

II

In 1645 Descartes learns that Princess Elisabeth, with whom he has already enjoyed a

rewarding correspondence, has been ill with a fever for three or four weeks. He diagnoses the

cause of her ailment as sadness and anger, whereupon he advises:

you would be unable to be delivered from all these things, unless, by the force of your

virtue, you render your soul content, despite the disgraces of fortune. (AT IV 201/B119).

A few months later, Descartes proposes that his future correspondence benefit "from the reading

of a certain book, namely, from the book Seneca has written concerning the blessed life..." (to

Elisabeth, 21 July, 1645, AT IV 252-3/B131). That same year Descartes also begins work on The

Passions of the Soul, published in 1649, in which he revises and develops the views he discusses

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with Elisabeth.

The form of therapy Descartes advocates in these writings is clearly Stoical.xxxi In the

following excerpt from the letter to Elisabeth of October 6, 1645, the important distinctions

correspond to those of the Stoics:

(A) Also we sometimes confuse inclinations (inclinations) or habits (habitudes) that

dispose one to some passion with the passion itself, but nevertheless they can easily be

distinguished from the passion. For example, when one announces to a city that

enemies are coming to besiege it, the first judgment (jugement) the inhabitants make

concerning the evil that can happen to them is an action of their soul (action de leur ame),

not a passion. And though this judgment is similarly found in many people, they are

nevertheless not equally moved; rather, some are moved more and others less, according

as they possess a greater or lesser habit or inclination towards fear. And before their

soul receives the excitation (emotion) in which alone the passion consists, it is necessary

that she make this judgment; or else, without judging, that she at least conceive the

danger and imprint the image of it upon the brain (which happens by a different action

called "to imagine")... (AT IV 312/B161)

This passage reflects several central elements of the Stoic theory of the passions. The

judgments the inhabitants of the city make concerning the evil that might occur, which are

actions and precede the passions, seem akin to the judgments that result from assent to lekta

that introduce passions. And the claim that a passion such as fear comes about as a result of

such a judgment is clearly Stoical. Moreover, according to Descartes' Fourth Meditation

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account, a judgment is formed by the will's assenting to a preliminary representation, just as the

Stoics affirmed (AT VII, 52-62). This view is repeated in the Principles:

In order to make a judgement, the intellect is of course required since, in the case of

something which we do not in any way perceive, there is no judgement we can make.

But the will is also required so that, once something is perceived in some manner, our

assent may then be given (Principles I 34/AT VIIIA 18).

We can infer that the judgments Descartes refers to in the letter to Elisabeth also have this

structure, and thus, that a judgement that results in a passion is preceded by a representation to

which the agent voluntarily assents.

Significantly, however, he does allow that a passion might occur without judgment, as

long as the soul "conceive the danger and imprint the image of it upon the brain." In Inwood's

interpretation of classical Stoicism, the pathê, by their very conception, can occur only as a result

of judgment. The Stoics do maintain, however, that in animals and in young children states

analogous to pathê occur without assent and judgment, and they call the process by which an

action or pathos-analogue occurs without assent yielding (eixis). xxxii Descartes could be

allowing that passions might also come about without judgment in adult human beings, but the

excerpt does not specify the circumstances under which this can happen. As we shall see,

however, a departure from the classical Stoic view along these lines is more definite in The

Passions of the Soul.

An earlier passage in this same letter might initially appear to conflict with the Stoic

theory:

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...in man [impressions are formed] by the action of the soul, which has the force to change

the impressions in the brain as, reciprocally, these impressions have the force to excite in

her the thoughts that do not depend upon her will. In consequence of this, one can

generally name 'passions' all the thoughts that are thus excited (qui sont ainsi excitées) in

the soul without the concurrence of her will (sans le concours de la volonté), and

consequently, solely by the impressions in the brain, and without any action that

proceeds from her -- for everything that is not an action is a passion. (AT IV 310/B160)

But there is really no disagreement with Stoicism here. Descartes might at first seem to be

saying that a passion, by its very definition, cannot result from an act of will. But such an initial

impression would be mistaken. Descartes' claim is rather that a passion is never the immediate

effect of the will, but always an immediate effect of impressions in the brain, and thus, in his

terminology, passions are excited without the concurrence of the will. Actions, by contrast, are

immediate effects of the will, and thus occur "with the concurrence of the will." But actions, of

which judgments are a subspecies, can generate passions by causing impressions in the brain

which in turn cause thoughts that do not depend on the will. And thus, in Descartes' view, the

will can mediately cause passions. He provides an illustration of such a process in the passage

that immediately follows (A) above:

...and it is also necessary that, by the same means [i.e. judgment or imagination] the soul

determines the spirits (esprits) that travel from the brain by the nerves into the muscles

to enter those muscles that serve to close the openings of the heart, thus retarding the

circulation of the blood; in consequence, all the body becomes pale, cold, and trembling,

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and the new spirits, which come from the heart to the brain, are agitated in such a manner

that they can assist in forming there those images that excite in the soul the passion of

fear -- all of which events so closely follow each other that it seems but a single operation.

(AT IV 312-3/B161-2)

For the passion of fear to arise, the soul must determine the spirits in the brain either by

judgment or by imagination. Thereupon the spirits cause a physiological change in the body,

which causes new spirits that travel to the brain to be agitated and thereby to assist in forming

images that excite the passion of fear in the soul.

It is noteworthy that the term 'esprits' is derived from 'spiritus,' the Latin equivalent of

'pneuma.' Descartes' view accordingly mirrors the classical Stoic conception insofar as he

maintains that a passion occurs when a judgment causes a movement in the spirits. For

Chrysippus, however, passions, and the judgments that cause them, are actually states of the

pneuma, of which the mind is wholly constituted. For Descartes, by contrast, passions are

states of the immaterial soul, as are the judgments that often occasion them, and the spirits

merely play a causal role in the production of the passions.

In the Elisabeth correspondence Descartes also endorses the central prescriptive

component of the Stoic theory:

...all our passions represent the goods to whose pursuit they incite us as very much

greater than they are; and also, that the pleasures of the body are never so durable as

those of the soul, nor so great when one possesses them as they might appear when one

looks forward to them. We must pay careful attention to this, so that when we feel

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ourselves moved by some passion, we may suspend our judgment (nous suspendions

notre jugement) until the passion is calmed, and so that we do not easily allow ourselves

to be deceived by the false appearances of the goods of the world. (to Elisabeth, 15

September 1645, AT IV 294-5/B153)

Descartes advocates suspending judgment when one is moved by a passion of a certain sort, and

his claim would be altogether Stoical had he not affirmed that "we may suspend judgment until

the passion is calmed." There are two ways to reconcile this assertion with the Stoic view. The

first is to interpret 'passion' as it occurs here as 'presentation that introduces a passion,' or, as

the Stoics sometimes referred to such presentations, as 'preliminary passion' (propatheia).xxxiii

The second is by reading Descartes as extending the Stoic view to a strategy one might adopt

once one is already beset by a debilitating passion. Supposing that the judgment that causes

the passion is still in place after the passion has developed, Descartes could be recommending

that when one is plagued by a harmful passion, one should withdraw one's assent by suspending

one's judgment, because this procedure will allow the passion to subside. In the context of

Descartes' correspondence, this interpretation is plausible, since he believes that Elisabeth is

already troubled by the passions of sadness and anger, and that she therefore needs a way to

eliminate them, and not a method to keep them from arising.

Descartes amplifies several aspects of this theory in his later work, The Passions of the

Soul. In Part I we find a passage that might again initially seem anti-Stoical:

Our passions cannot likewise be directly excited (excitées) or removed (ostées) by the

action of our will, but they can be indirectly by the representation of things which are

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usually joined to the passions we will to have and opposed to the ones we will to reject.

Thus, in order to excite boldness and remove fear in oneself, it is not sufficient to have

the volition to do so -- one must apply oneself to attend to reasons, objects, or precedents

that convince [one] that the peril is not great, that there is always more security in

defence than in flight, that we will have glory and joy from having conquered, whereas

one can expect only regret and shame for having fled, and similar things (I 45/AT XI 362-

3/V43).

As a result, one may "easily overcome the lesser passions, but not the most vigorous and the

strongest, until after the excitation of the blood and spirits has abated" (I 46/AT IX 364/V44).

What might at first appear to conflict with the Stoic conception is Descartes' assertion that our

passions cannot be directly excited or removed by the action of the will. He means to argue

that the will cannot excite or remove a passion simply by willing that it be excited or removed.xxxiv

The Stoics, however, do not claim that a pathos can be directly excited by the will in the sense

that Descartes intends, since they believe that for a pathos to come about, a presentation of the

pathos must first occur. Hence, they might agree with Descartes that passions can only be

indirectly excited "by the representation of things which are usually joined to the passions we

will to have," that is, by entertaining or imagining presentations. Furthermore, the Stoics also

do not maintain that a pathos, once it has come to exist, can be directly removed by the action

of the will. Our inability to remove a pathos directly by the power of assent is one of their

primary reasons for recommending their avoidance, as Chrysippus' analogy to walking and

running suggests. This conception is reflected in Descartes' view that

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...there is one particular reason why the soul cannot readily alter or check its passions,

which has led me to put in their definition above that they are not only caused but are

also maintained and strengthened by some particular movement of the spirits. This

reason is that they are almost all accompanied by some excitation taking place in the

heart, and consequently also throughout the blood and the spirits, so that until this

excitation has ceased they remain present to our thought, in the same way as objects

capable of being sensed are present to it while they are acting upon our sense organs. (I

46/AT XI 363/V44)

Thus Descartes' claims do not conflict with the Stoic theory.

The Passions of the Soul reflects a more mature view about the power the will has to

prevent a passion:

It is also useful to know that although the movements -- both of the gland and of the

spirits and brain -- which represent certain objects to the soul are naturally joined with

those [movements] which excite certain passions in it (soient naturellement joints avec

ceux qui exitent en elle certaines passions), they can nevertheless by habituation be

separated from them and joined with other quite different ones... (I 50/AT XI 369/V48)

Descartes claims that although physiological motions that cause representations of certain

objects may naturally be joined to other physiological motions that excite certain passions in the

soul, motions of the first type do not inevitably result in those passions. We have the ability to

join such motions to states distinct from the passions to which they are naturally joined.

Descartes' picture can be viewed as reflecting two Stoic themes: first, a distinction between a

19
passion proper and a mental state which, like a phantasia, precedes it, and second, our capacity

to avoid the passion usually associated with such a state. That this capacity is a function of the

will is clear from the discussion that immediately precedes the above passage, for there

Descartes repeatedly attributes to the will the ability to combat the passions (I 48-9/AT XI 366-

8/V46-7).

This conception is embellished in Descartes "general remedy for the passions" at the close

of the treatise (III 211/AT XI 485/V132). Although throughout The Passions he maintains that

passions are very often good, he also calls to mind the Stoic conception of the pathê when he

argues that passions are bad when they hinder one's capacity for rational action by causing

certain reasons to seem stronger than they are (III 211/AT IX 486-7/V134).xxxv In an important

respect, however, Descartes now more clearly diverges from the classical Stoic view:

... I have included among these remedies the forethought and skill whereby we can

correct our constitutional deficiencies, in applying ourselves to separate within us the

movements of the blood and spirits from the thoughts to which they are usually joined, I

grant that there are few people who are sufficiently prepared in this way against all sorts

of contingencies, and that these movements, excited in the blood by the objects of the

Passions, immediately follow so swiftly from mere impressions formed in the brain and

from the disposition of the organs, even though the soul may in no way contribute to

them, that there is no human wisdom capable of withstanding them when one is

insufficiently prepared for them. (III 211/AT XI 486/V133-4, emphasis mine)

As we have seen, the Stoics attribute yielding -- a presentation's causing an impulse without the

20
mediation of the power of assent -- to young children and animals, but argue that this process is

not a feature of (normal) adult human psychology. But in this passage Descartes suggests that

passions can arise independently of any contribution on the part of the soul in human beings

considered generally. Thus, by contrast with the Stoics, he now seems to maintain that a

process like yielding may often underlie passions in any human being. And hence, he might well

deny the Stoic doctrine that normally, whenever an adult comes to have a pathos, she must have

assented to lekton that corresponds to a presentation of that pathos.

But even if he deviates from Stoicism in this way, he nevertheless reaffirms that we always

have the power to avoid or (indirectly) to remove a passion by an appropriate act of will:

And those who are strongly inclined by their constitution to the excitations of Joy, Pity,

Fear, or Anger cannot keep from fainting, crying, trembling, or having their blood all

stirred up just as though they had a fever, when their fantasy is greatly affected by the

object of one of these Passions. But what can always be done on such an occasion, and

what I think I can set down here as the most general remedy for all the excesses of the

Passions and the easiest to put into practice, is this: when one feels the blood stirred up

like that, we should take warning, and recall that everything presented to the imagination

tends to deceive the soul, and to make the reasons for favoring the object of its Passion

appear to it much stronger than they are, and those for opposing it much weaker. (III

211/AT IX 486-7/V134)

At this point Descartes distinguishes two sorts of passion. One motivates the agent to a goal

the achievement of which requires delay, and the other motivates the agent to a goal that

21
requires immediate action:

And when the Passion favors only things whose execution admits of some delay, one must

abstain from making any immediate judgment about them (il faut s'abstenir d'en porter

sur l'heure aucun jugement), and to distract oneself by other thoughts until time and rest

shall have completely calmed the excitation in the blood. Finally, when it incites one to

action requiring one to reach some resolution at once, the will must be inclined above all

to take into consideration and to follow the reasons opposed to those the Passion

represents (que la passion represente), even though they appear less strong. As is the

case when one is unexpectedly attacked by some enemy, the situation does not allow one

to spend any time deliberating. (III 211/AT XI 487/V134)

When the blood is agitated by an object of a passion, one can always perform certain acts of will

which allow the agitation to subside. Significantly, in this passage Descartes makes a stronger

claim for the power of the will than any the Stoics maintained, since he argues that even if the

passion is already in place one has the power to suspend judgment until it is calmed.

As did the Stoics, Descartes advocates consulting reason when confronted with a

passionate attitude towards an object or an inclination towards such a passion. For him, the

appropriate role of the will in this type of situation is to initiate consideration of reasons against

having the passionate attitude. Reflection of this sort involves recalling the tendency of the

agitation of the blood to make reasons for having the passion seem stronger than they are, and

reasons against seem weaker. Sometimes such deliberation should lead us to suspend

judgment, so that the agitation in the blood will be calmed. At other times, when one does not

22
have the time to allow the agitation to abate, the consideration of contrary reasons can permit

one to refrain from performing actions that the passion inclines one to perform.xxxvi Cultivating

the habit of considering contrary reasons makes such restraint possible.

In summary, Descartes' theory is similar to its Stoic counterpart in several core respects.

Like the Stoics, he maintains a distinction between representations that precede and incline one

towards a passion and the passions themselves. Furthermore, in his correspondence with

Elisabeth he seems to favor the Stoic view that in the typical case, a passion results only when an

appropriate judgment is made, where a component essential to any judgment is the will's assent

upon entertaining a preliminary representation. And, although in The Passions of the Soul

Descartes suggests that passions can occur without judgment, still he does claim that a passion

can always be avoided by an act of will. And finally, adopting a position more radical than the

traditional Stoic view, he argues that even when one is already in the grip of a passion, that

passion can be eliminated by the voluntary act of suspending judgment, whereby it is allowed to

subside.xxxvii

III

In his correspondence with Elisabeth Descartes also develops the second Stoic

therapeutic strategy for the passions, together with its theological underpinning. In his letter

of October 6, 1645, he advances the view that God is the cause of every effect:

...it seems to me that all the reasons that prove the existence of God, and that he is the

first and immutable cause of all the effects that do not depend upon the free decision of

23
men, likewise prove in the same way that he is also the cause of all those that do depend

on it. For one could not demonstrate that God exists save by considering him as a being

sovereignly perfect; and God could not be sovereignly perfect if something could happen

in the world that did not come entirely from him... philosophy alone suffices to give us

the knowledge that the least thought cannot enter the mind of man if God had not wished

and willed from all eternity that it enter therein. (AT IV 313-4/B162)

God is the cause of everything that exists or happens; he is the total cause (cause totale) of

everything, whether it is something that depends on a free decision or whether it is not, and

"thus nothing can happen without his will" (AT IV 314/B163). Descartes later indicates to

Elisabeth that he believes the infinitude of divine power to entail God's being the cause of

everything, and that in his view, if human actions did not depend on God's will, his power would

be finite (to Elisabeth, 3 November, 1645, AT IV 332/B169).

In the letter of October 6 Descartes also claims that no change can occur in God's decrees

on the occasion of some free decision on our part. He then points out a consequence of this

claim for the proper objective of prayer. We should not pray "that we might teach [God] what

we have need of, nor that we might try to persuade him to change something in the order

established by his providence from all eternity: both would be blameworthy." Rather, "we pray

only so that we might obtain what he has wished from all eternity to be obtained by our prayers"

(AT IV 316/B163-4). Descartes is recommending, in effect, that in prayer the perspective we

take on our lives should not be the one we might ordinarily have, but rather the divine

perspective. We should pray only for what God has wanted for us from all eternity, and indeed,

24
only for what God has wanted for us from all eternity to be obtained by our prayers.

The passage that most dramatically advocates his version of the second Stoic strategy

occurs in a letter to Chanut, the French ambassador to Sweden. Descartes intended this letter

to reach Christina, the queen of Sweden, by whom he was later employed. In this excerpt, he

sets out "the path one ought to follow to arrive at the love of God":

But if, in addition, we heed the infinity of his power, through which he has created so

many things, of which we are the least part; the extension of his providence that makes

him see in one thought alone everything that has been, is, shall be, and could be; the

infallibility of his decrees (decrets), which, although they do not disturb our free will (libre

arbitre), nevertheless cannot in any fashion be changed; and finally, if, on the one hand,

we heed our insignificance, and if, on the other hand, we heed the grandeur of all created

things, by noting the manner in which they depend on God and by considering them in a

fashion that has a relationship to his omnipotence, without confining them in a globe, as

do they who think the world finite: meditation upon all this so abundantly fills the man

who hears it with such extreme joy that, realizing he would have to be abusive and

ungrateful toward God to wish to occupy God's place, he thinks himself as already having

lived sufficiently because God has given him the grace to reach such knowledge (il pense

déja avoir assez vécu de ce que Dieu luy a fait la grace de parvenir à de telles

connoissances); and willingly and entirely joining himself to God, he loves God so perfectly

that he desires nothing more in the world than that God's will be done. That is the

reason he no longer fears either death, or pains, or disgraces, because he knows that

25
nothing can happen to him save what God shall have decreed; and he so loves this divine

decree, esteems it so just and so necessary, knows he ought so entirely to depend upon

it, that even when he awaits death or some other evil, if per impossibile he could change

that decree, he would not wish to do so. But if he does not refuse evils or afflictions,

because they come to him from divine providence, he refuses still less all the goods or

licit pleasures one can enjoy in this life, because they too issue from that providence; and

accepting them with joy, without having any fear of evils, his love renders him perfectly

happy. (to Chanut, 1 February, 1647, AT IV 608-9/B206-7).xxxviii

In this passage, Descartes advocates abstraction from the personal point of view, from the

perspective of one's ordinary human aspirations for personal survival, happiness, and success,

just as Marcus Aurelius does. In Descartes' understanding, if our love for God were of the right

sort, our identification with the divine perspective would be so complete that even if we could,

we would not refuse our own death or other evils, since they proceed from the decree of God.

In this letter to Chanut, Descartes' picture of how we identify with the divine perspective

does differ in an important respect from the classical Stoic view. One of the most pressing

issues for the Stoic therapeutic theory is to provide reason and motivation for making this

identification. The doctrine of reservation and Marcus Aurelius' injunctions suggest that we

align ourselves with the divine point of view so that we will enjoy equanimity no matter what

happens, even if what happens conflicts with the good as conceived from the personal point of

view. One might doubt whether such a reason is sufficient to motivate many of us; Thomas

Nagel remarks that normally "one is supposed to behold and partake of the glory of God, for

26
example, in a way in which chickens do not share in the glory of coq au vin."xxxix By analogy,

imagine that one's ruler has a utilitarian concern for the aggregate community which is seldom

disappointed, but her scheme causes one to be poverty-stricken so that many others might be

well-off. Trapped in this situation, one might consider assuming the sovereign's concerns while

abandoning one's personal perspective on the good, for the reason that making these

psychological moves would result in one's achieving equanimity. But very few of us are capable

of being motivated by this reason in such circumstances. Consequently, for Descartes' version

of the second strategy to be feasible, we need another proposal for a reason that might motivate

us to align ourselves with the divine purposes as he conceives them.

In his letter to Elisabeth of 15 September 1645, Descartes argues that "it is necessary to

prefer always the interests of the whole, of which one is a part, to the interest of one's own

person in particular," although "this is to be done with measure and discretion." He points out

that one is sometimes motivated to behave accordingly; "by considering oneself as part of the

public, one takes pleasure in doing good to everyone," and as a result, one does not even fear to

risk one's life to save others. Descartes then claims:

One is naturally led to act from such a consideration when one knows and loves God as

one ought: for then, abandoning oneself completely to his will, one rids oneself of one's

particular interest (on se despouille de ces propres interests) and has no other passion

save to do what one believes to be agreeable to him; in consequence of which one has

satisfaction of mind and contentments incomparably more valuable than all the small

fleeting joys that depend upon the senses. (to Elisabeth, 15 September, 1645, AT IV

27
294/B152)

Love may be what most commonly provides reason and motivation for other-regarding actions

and attitudes, and perhaps it is therefore plausible for Descartes to advocate love for God as the

reason and motivation for identifying with the divine point of view.xl

But the love required for the second strategy must be a very powerful sort, since it must

be capable of causing a person to resign her personal concerns to the extent that Descartes

envisions. Developing a love of this strength would seem unlikely if one were aware that God,

despite his capacities, had no special regard for one's personal good, and all the more so if one

had no hope of his attitude ever changing. There are people who on occasion develop a self-

sacrificing love for someone who, although he could, has no regard for the lover's personal good.

Sometimes such love arises even toward someone who shows no sign of developing such a

concern. But we would not want to model love for God on such pathological cases. In non-

pathological situations, a love so powerful requires that one believe that the person one loves,

supposing he is able, has a genuine concern for one's personal good.xli

It is surprising that Descartes does not here advocate the Pauline Christian conception by

which God's concern is directed toward the good of each individual who loves God; "for in all

things God works for the good of those that love him" (Romans 8:28), and even towards the good

of each individual "as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (I Corinthians 15:22).xlii

Rather, just as in Marcus Aurelius's understanding, in the picture Descartes advances in his letters

to Elisabeth and Chanut the divine conception of the good need make little concession to the

good as conceived from any individual's personal perspective. We might draw the following

28
contrast. By the Pauline idea, one's personal good is also a concern of God's, and thus, although

one might have to renounce mistaken conceptions of one's personal good in order to assume the

divine point of view, one need not disengage from any personal conception of one's good

whatsoever. According to the Stoic and Cartesian picture, one must abandon one's personal

conception of the good -- one's ordinary human aspirations for survival, happiness, and success

-- and adopt instead the divine vision of the good, which may not have such a personal conception

as a component. The persistent problem for the Stoic and Cartesian view is that we lack a

satisfying model by which human beings, given their psychological character, will have reason

and motivation to make the sort of identification it advocates.xliii

IV

The stark compatibilism of this set of Stoic beliefs presents a challenge for Descartes, as

it did for Chrysippus. If God causes everything, how can we have the power to assent, dissent,

or suspend judgment upon entertaining a presentation? When Elisabeth confronts Descartes

with this issue, he responds with an illustration.xliv Imagine a king who has condemned duelling,

but who knows that there are two gentlemen in his kingdom who would duel if they met. The

king gives each gentleman travelling instructions so that the two will assuredly meet on the road.

Descartes argues that although the king's will (and arrangement of events) results in the

gentlemen duelling, they still freely do so, and consequently they can justly be punished (AT IV

352-3/B174-5). But in this illustration the role of the king is disanalogous with the part God

plays in the Cartesian universe, where he is the cause of every effect, whether it be dependent

29
on human free decisions or not. Thus if the king's role were comparable to God's, the king

would, in addition, cause the gentlemen to be motivated as they are, and if that were so, our

intuition that the gentlemen act freely would be jeopardized.

Spinoza believes that a reconciliation between divine determinism and the free and

voluntary power of assent is impossible, and he therefore denies that we have such a power.

Noting that by the will he understands "a faculty by which the mind affirms or denies something

true or something false, and not the desire by which the mind wants a thing or avoids it" (II/129-

130), he claims

IIP48: In the Mind there is no absolute, or free, will (In Mente nulla est absoluta, sive libera

voluntas), but the Mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also

determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity. (II/129)

The crucial element in the proof of this proposition is divine determinism, that "all things have

been predetermined by God, not from freedom of the will or absolute good pleasure, but from

God's absolute nature, or infinite power" (I Appendix, II/77). Spinoza later affirms, by way of

explanation, that "experience itself, no less clearly than reason, teaches that men believe

themselves to be free because they are conscious of their own actions and ignorant of the causes

by which they are determined" (IIIP2s, II/143).

Spinoza also rejects another fundamental element of the first strategy. According to the

Stoic and Cartesian view, one's assent, dissent, or suspension of judgment is an act distinct from

entertaining the proposition to which one directs the act of will. This claim is crucial because

the first strategy requires that one's assent, dissent, or suspension of judgment be subsequent

30
to (and thus distinct from) entertaining the proposition that expresses the possibility of a passion.

Spinoza argues, however, that in general acts of will are not distinct from acts of entertaining

propositions; "The will and the intellect are one and the same," and this is because "the will and

the intellect are nothing apart from the singular volitions and ideas themselves" and "the singular

volitions and ideas are one and the same" (IIP49C, II/131). In Spinoza's understanding, the will

and the intellect are identical because every token idea is identical to a token volition, and every

token volition is identical to a token idea. It turns out that for him the assent that results in a

passion would not be distinct from one's entertaining the proposition to which the assent is

granted.

Spinoza's demonstration of the thesis that there is no distinction between token volitions

and token ideas assumes the following principle: A and B are token-identical just in case A cannot

be conceived without B, and B cannot be conceived without A (IIP49d). xlv His illustration

features the token idea that the sum of the measures of the internal angles of a triangle is 180°

(m=180°, for short), and token the affirmation that m=180°. First, Spinoza plausibly claims that

the token affirmation that m=180° cannot be conceived without the token idea that m=180°.

But then, more controversially, he argues that the token idea that m=180° cannot be conceived

without the token affirmation that m=180°. One might object to this view on the grounds that

in general one can entertain an idea without affirming it. Indeed, Spinoza's own

counterexample expresses this objection: "someone who feigns a winged horse does not on that

account grant that there is a winged horse; i.e., he is not on that account deceived unless he at

the same time grants that there is a winged horse" (IIP49s, II/132-3).

31
But Spinoza responds by arguing that the absence of affirmation in such cases results

either from background ideas or from the perception that one's idea is inadequate (i.e. lacks

some intrinsic qualities of a true idea, such as internal consistency and not from an idea-

independent act of will (IID4, II/134)). xlvi When one is in possession of one's faculties and

imagines a winged horse, one also has background ideas that undermine the affirmation-aspect

of the idea of the winged horse. Nevertheless, there is no voluntary act of dissent or suspension

of judgment, occasioned by these background ideas, and distinct from any idea, that accounts

for the absence of affirmation. On the contrary, it is explained solely by the causal influence of

the background ideas themselves.

Spinoza's response is interesting, but even if his theory is plausible for belief, this

plausibility does not clearly extend to action and passion. He believes it does, for he concludes

his discussion of the triangle example by remarking: "...what we have said concerning this volition

(since we have selected it at random), must also be said concerning any volition, viz. that it is

nothing apart from the idea" (IIP49d, II/130). Spinoza believes that to will an action is to

perceive it in a certain way, perhaps as one's best available option for action. By this

conception, my deciding to eat a piece of pie would not be distinct from my entertaining the

proposition that eating it is my best available course of action. Spinoza illustrates his view by

claiming that someone "who perceives nothing but thirst and hunger, and such food and drink as

are equally distant from him... will perish of hunger and thirst." Presumably Spinoza believes

this because the person does not perceive any one course of action as better than every other

(II/135). Since there is no act of will distinct from something's being perceived in a certain way,

32
the person will not act in one way rather than the other.

If Spinoza has shown that we have no free will, and that assenting to a proposition is not

distinct from entertaining it, then he has undermined the foundation for the first therapeutic

strategy as the Stoics conceived it. And this is precisely what he believes he has done. At the

outset of Part V of the Ethics, Spinoza reproaches the Stoics for thinking that the affects "depend

entirely on our will, and that we can command them absolutely" (II/277), and he subsequently

criticizes Descartes' similar claim (II/278).

But if the first Stoic strategy has been undermined, must we abandon any hope of

controlling our passions? Spinoza thinks not. While the will may not be the source of such

control, the intellect is:

Therefore, because the power of the Mind is defined only by the understanding (sola

intelligentia definitur), as I have shown above, we shall determine by the Mind's

knowledge alone (sola Mentis cognitione determinabimus) the remedies for the affects.

(II/280)

Since he maintains that we cannot keep passions from arising by exercise of the will, Spinoza

looks instead to the intellect for a therapeutic technique. xlvii And as I shall now argue, his

scheme can be viewed as an attempt to develop wholly intellectual analogues for the two main

Stoic strategies.

The Stoics maintain that the power of assent gives us absolute control over whether or

33
not we will have pathê. Spinoza proposes that the intellect provides us with a similar kind of

absolute control:

An affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct

idea of it. (Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio, simulatque ejus claram, &

distinctam formamus ideam.) (VP3, II/282)

There is no affection of the Body of which we cannot form a clear and distinct concept.

(Nulla est Corporis affectio, cujus aliquem clarum, distinctum non possumus formare

conceptum.) (VP4, II/282)

Together, VP3 and VP4 entail that one has the ability to form a clear and distinct idea of any of

one's passions, thereby eliminating what makes them passions. xlviii And hence, Spinoza is

arguing that not our will, but rather our intellect has the power to keep us entirely free from

passions.

To understand the claim of VP3, we must consult Spinoza's definitions of terms. Let us

first consider 'clear and distinct idea' and 'adequate idea.' At IP8s2 Spinoza characterizes a clear

and distinct idea as a true idea (II/50), and in IA6 he states that "a true idea must agree with its

object" (II/47). Subsequently, he defines an adequate idea as "an idea which, insofar as it is

considered in itself, without relation to its object, has all the properties, or intrinsic

denominations, of a true idea" (IID4, II/85). In his explication of this definition, Spinoza remarks:

"I say intrinsic to exclude what is extrinsic, viz. the agreement of the idea with its object." One

might conclude that in his picture an idea is clear and distinct just in case it has the extrinsic

denomination of a true idea, i.e. it agrees with its object, and an idea is adequate just in case it

34
has the intrinsic denominations of a true idea, such as internal consistency. But for all that,

perhaps we need to keep in mind only that each of these notions is somehow closely tied to

veridicality. For as Bennett argues, Spinoza often conflates them, and in fact he appears to do

so in the arguments we are about to consider.xlix

In the summary of the definitions of Part III Spinoza distinguishes actions from passions

in the following way:

...if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the Affect

an action (tum per Affectum actionem intelligo); otherwise a passion (alias passionem).

(II/139)

A cause is adequate "whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it" (IIID1,

II/139). By contrast, a cause is partial or inadequate "if its effect cannot be understood through

it alone" (IIID1; II/139). Thus an affect is an action of A just in case it can be clearly and distinctly

understood (or perceived) through A alone. Correlatively, an affect is a passion of A just in case

it cannot be clearly and distinctly understood through A alone (cf. IIID2, II/139). Spinoza

maintains that we have passions in virtue of being causally affected by other natural things

(IVP2).l Accordingly, it would seem that a passion can be clearly and distinctly understood only

through the other natural things that contribute to its genesis.

Given these characterizations, we can now exhibit a difficulty for the claim that one has

the ability to form a clear and distinct idea of any of one's passions, and thereby to eliminate

whatever makes it a passion. What Spinoza has in mind is that if I clearly and distinctly

understand my passion, it will be transformed into an action. The definitions of Part III entail

35
that for my present passion to become an action, I would have to become the adequate cause of

a state of which I am not now the adequate cause. And for this to occur, I would have to clearly

and distinctly understand my passion through my nature alone. But this would seem impossible

given Spinoza's view that we have passions because we are affected by other things in nature.

My clear and distinct understanding would reveal rather than eliminate the external causes of

my passion, and hence could not make it any less true that I am not the adequate cause of it.

As Bennett suggests, the distinction between passion and action turns on causal history, and

coming to understand the causal history of a passion will not change that causal history.li

The justification Spinoza cites for the crucial step in the proof of VP3 is

IIIP3: The actions of a Mind arise from adequate ideas alone; the passions depend on

inadequate ideas alone.

a claim which figures prominently throughout Part V. This proposition, by Spinoza's account,

depends for its justification on

IIIP1: Our Mind does certain things [acts] and undergoes other things, viz. insofar as it has

adequate ideas, it necessarily does certain things, and insofar as it has inadequate ideas,

it necessarily undergoes other things. (II/140)

In his proof for this last proposition Spinoza assumes that "from any given idea some effect must

necessarily follow (IP36)." He then claims

(1) but if God, insofar as he is affected by an idea that is adequate in someone's Mind, is

the cause of an effect, that same Mind is the effect's adequate cause (by IIP11C)

and

36
if something necessarily follows from an idea that is adequate in God, not insofar as he

has in himself the Mind of one man only, but insofar as he has in himself the Minds of

other things together with the Mind of that man, that man's Mind (by the same IIP11C) is

not its adequate cause, but its partial cause.

Here we encounter Spinoza's fundamental error. In the last analysis, this demonstration is the

one that is supposed to underwrite the claim that when one forms a clear and distinct idea of

one's passion, it ceases to be a passion. More precisely, if Spinoza's attempt to establish VP3

were to be successful, (1) would have to entail

(2) A person cannot have an adequate (= clear and distinct) idea of a passion,

that is, a person cannot form a clear and distinct idea of a passion and it remain a passion. But

(1) provides no support for (2). Even if a Mind is the adequate cause of an effect whenever God

is the cause of that effect insofar as he is affected by an adequate idea in that Mind, it does not

follow that a Mind is the adequate cause of an effect whenever it simply has an adequate idea of

that effect. For although it may be impossible for an effect not to be wholly caused by an

adequate idea in a Mind if God is the cause of that effect insofar as he is affected by that adequate

idea, it is still possible for an effect not to be wholly (or even partially) caused by an adequate

idea in a Mind if God is not the cause of that effect insofar as he is affected by that adequate idea

in that Mind. It might be, for example, that an effect of which a Mind has an adequate idea is

partially caused by the Mind and partially caused by natural things external to that Mind. Given

Spinoza's view that passions are partially externally caused, this is precisely the situation one

would expect to obtain when a Mind forms a clear and distinct idea of a passion. Hence,

37
Spinoza's reasoning fails to secure VP3.lii

Although taken together VP3 and 4 suggest that we can actually form clear and distinct

ideas of any of our passions, and thereby eliminate whatever makes them passions, Spinoza's

claim in VP4s is more guarded:

We must, therefore, take special care to know each affect clearly and distinctly (as far as

this is possible), so that in this way the Mind may be determined from an affect to thinking

those things which it perceives clearly and distinctly, and with which it is fully satisfied, so

that the affect itself may be separated from the thought of an external cause and joined

to true thoughts. (II/283, emphasis mine)

Spinoza now seems to admit that there may be a limit to understanding one's affects clearly and

distinctly. Furthermore, he appears to be suggesting that by forming clear and distinct ideas

we separate affects from their external causes, rather than eliminating these external causes.liii

Perhaps Spinoza's view is that if one acquires clear and distinct ideas of one's passions, one's

attention will be directed towards one's own causal role in the production of these passions, and

this, in turn, will result in one's ignoring their external causes. But why would such a procedure

be therapeutic?

Stuart Hampshire has suggested that Spinoza's strategy foreshadows Freudian theory.liv

But although Spinoza and Freud do share the view that acquiring knowledge of one's affects is

therapeutic, we find no analogue in Freud to Spinoza's aversion to external causes. I suggest

that here Spinoza is attempting to secure a benefit of the first Stoic strategy despite having

challenged its theoretical foundations. An important feature of this first strategy is that it

38
encourages us to hold ourselves causally responsible for our pathê despite their external

triggering causes. Given Stoic psychology, such a stance can be reasonable. I can reasonably

consider myself causally responsible for my pathê, for no matter what the external

circumstances, I can keep myself from having pathê by dissenting or suspending judgment upon

entertaining their presentations. But taking this stance can have a benefit that we have not yet

encountered. The following passage from Epictetus suggests what this benefit might be:

It is not the things themselves that disturb humans, but their judgements (dogmata)

about these things. For example, death is nothing dreadful, or else Socrates too would

have thought so, but the judgement that death is dreadful, this is the dreadful thing.

When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never blame anyone

but ourselves, that is, our own judgments. It is the part of an uneducated person to blame

others where he himself fares ill; to blame himself is the part of one whose education has

begun; to blame neither another nor his own self is the part of one whose education is

complete. (Encheiridion 5, cf. 20)

Among the more harmful passions are those that involve absorption in negative attitudes

towards others. Anger and fear might be the principal examples. Thinking of oneself as

causally responsible for one's anger, however, could undermine the inclination to hold an

external agent responsible for it, and hence might decrease one's tendency to be absorbed in

negative attitudes towards that agent. Perhaps this type of benefit can be achieved by

acquiring clear and distinct ideas of one's passions, if, as Spinoza believes, this would occasion

one's attention to be directed towards one's own part in the production of one's passions, which

39
would in turn cause one to disregard their external causes. Such a strategy might diminish one's

preoccupation with the other's causal role, and thereby mitigate the debilitating power of the

passions.lv This, I suggest, is the process Spinoza envisions.

VI

In Part V of the Ethics Spinoza also advances a view that has the outline of the second

Stoic strategy. He claims that "the greatest satisfaction of Mind there can be results from

having the third kind of knowledge" (VP27), knowledge that "proceeds from an adequate idea of

certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things (VP25). To have

the third kind of knowledge is to understanding things as following from the necessity of the

divine nature, which is to conceive them sub specie aeternitatis, from the point of view of eternity

(VP29s). But "the more the Mind understands things by the second and third kind of

knowledge, the less it is acted on by affects which are evil, and the less it fears death" (VP38; the

second kind of knowledge is "from the fact that we have common notions and adequate ideas of

the properties of things" (IIP40s2). And thus, identifying with the divine point of view (and also

acquiring other types of knowledge) provides a form of therapy for the passions.

But just as rejecting the Stoics' theory of the will precludes Spinoza from endorsing their

version of the first strategy, so disavowing their conception of God prevents him from advocating

a genuinely Stoic second strategy. The crucial feature of Stoic theology he rejects is the view

that God acts for the sake of ends and concerns (I Appendix, II/77-83). Spinoza argues that if

God acted for the sake of an end, he would not be perfect, for he would then want something he

40
lacked (II/80). Consequently, Spinoza would also claim that since divine providence involves

God's acting for the well-being of the universe (as the Stoics maintain), or for the benefit of

human beings, there is no divine providence. Thus, identifying with the divine perspective

cannot amount to evaluating events that occur by the standard of God's purposes, because he

has none. And furthermore, we cannot be motivated to identify with God's point of view by

reflecting on divine providence, because there is no such thing.

As an alternative, Spinoza advocates an intellectualized version for the second Stoic

strategy, parallel to what he did for the first. Let us briefly summarize Spinoza's argument. As

we have seen, Spinoza affirms that "the greatest satisfaction of Mind there can be arises from

this third kind of knowledge" (VP27, II/297). This is because understanding things by the third

kind of knowledge is the greatest virtue of the Mind, and therefore "he who knows things by this

kind of knowledge passes to the greatest human perfection." Spinoza then claims that by his

definition of joy -- "a man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection" (III Definitions of the

Affects II, II/190) -- it follows that a person who understands things by the third kind of knowledge

will be affected by the greatest joy, and that given that this joy is accompanied by the idea of

oneself and one's virtue, this person will experience the greatest satisfaction of Mind (III Def.

Aff.XXV). And because one can conceive of oneself through God's essence, i.e. sub specie

aeternitatis (VP30), one can understand that the joy and satisfaction that issue from having the

third kind of knowledge are caused by God (VP32). Since love is "a joy, accompanied by the

idea of an external cause" (III Def. Aff. VI), one will therefore love God. For the reason that this

affect is not love of God "insofar as we imagine him to be present, but insofar as we understand

41
him to be eternal," Spinoza calls it intellectual love of God (amor intellectus Dei) (VP32).

Further, Spinoza argues that there is something that pertains to the essence of the human

Mind which is eternal, in the sense that no temporal predicates correctly apply to it ("eternity

can neither be defined by time nor have any relation to time" (VP23s)). For there is an idea

which expresses the essence of the human body sub specie aeternitatis, "with a certain eternal

necessity" through the essence of God, and because the object of the idea constituting the

human Mind is the human body (IIP13), it follows that this idea is something eternal which

pertains to the essence of Mind (VP23d). Spinoza then affirms that the more the Mind knows

things by the second and third kind of knowledge, the more of it that remains and is eternal

(VP38d,s). But to the extent that our Mind is eternal it cannot be touched by affects contrary

to our nature (VP38d). Hence, the more of the Mind that is eternal, the less it can be harmed

by affects, like harmful passions, whose causal genesis involves things external to us.

As several commentators have persuasively argued, Spinoza's attempt to confirm this

picture is less than successful.lvi For example, in addition to the problem with the argument for

the eternity of some aspect of the human mind, one might fault his derivation of love for God

from the third kind of knowledge. Even if one acquires joy from the third kind of knowledge

(and this is not a foregone conclusion -- one can imagine acquiring such knowledge as a result of

classroom coercion and therefore failing to obtain joy), Spinoza's God may seem too impersonal

to be a proper subject of love. If we discovered that an inanimate machine produced and

causally determined the universe, coming to know how this machine produced things would not

lead us to love this machine, even if we deeply enjoyed acquiring this knowledge and we realized

42
that our learning itself was caused by the machine.

Still, Spinoza has a certain vision of our identification with God which can be expressed

without his rigid formalism. Spinoza, just as the Stoics, is a pantheist. In his view, God or

Nature (Deus sive Natura) is the only substance, and we are modes of God. But although God

is eternal, our existence seems thoroughly temporally qualified. Our temporality allows us to

be vulnerable to things that are contrary to our nature, and therefore we can be affected by

debilitating passions. We can also die. Nevertheless, there may be a respect in which we are

eternal as God is, and if so, then in this respect we are exempt from the harmful passions and

from death. Everything that exists follows from the divine essence. Since by reason we can

come to know how things follow from the divine essence, reason allows us to identify, in our

metaphorical sense, with the divine point of view. The intellectual love occasioned by this

employment of reason can reinforce our identification with the divine perspective. But to the

extent that we so align ourselves with God, we are actually, non-metaphorically, identical with

aspects of his essence:

The Mind's intellectual Love of God is the very Love 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 sub specie aeternitatis; i.e. the Mind's intellectual Love of God is part of the

infinite Love by which God loves himself (VP36, II/302).

Spinoza seems here to advocate an intellectualized form of the Neo-Platonic vision of mystical

union with The One. And in his view, to the extent that we are fused with the divine essence,

we are eternal, and because it makes no sense for something to be contrary to the nature of an

43
eternal entity (VP37, VP38d), to the degree we are eternal we are immune from the harmful

passions and from death.

VII

Each of the two strategies for psychotherapy, in their original Stoic formulations, has a

radical aspect. The first embraces an extreme view about the range of our voluntary rational

control, while the second prescribes an alignment with the divine perspective that is

exceptionally difficult to attain. Descartes and Spinoza manage these radical features of the

Stoic picture in different ways. While Descartes endorses them and redevelops the surrounding

theory, Spinoza rejects them to produce a new conception that nevertheless preserves some of

the main therapeutic intuitions of the Stoic view. As we have now seen, both of these

philosophers adhere to a Stoic model despite serious difficulties for their resulting theories, and

this attests to the tenacity of the Stoic influence on the seventeenth-century European

imagination.

The Stoic view about the passions has an effect on our imagination as well, although its

force has diminished considerably since the time of Descartes and Spinoza. The type of control

the Stoics advocated, if employed to relieve the relatively minor irritations that plague us, would

undoubtedly improve our lives. But the Stoics advocated a much more ambitious conception:

With everything that entertains you, is useful, or of which you are fond, remember to say

to yourself, beginning with the very least things, "What is its nature?" If you are fond of

a jug, say, "I am fond of a jug"; for when it is broken you will not be disturbed. If you

44
kiss your own child or wife, say to yourself that you are kissing a human being; for when

it dies you will not be disturbed. (Epictetus, Encheiridion 3)

When the Stoic recommendations are applied to grief upon the death of one's child, or to anger

that results from serious abuse or torture, the likelihood of self-deception and subsequent failure

to deal with one's emotions is considerable. This excessive character of Stoic psychotherapy is

at times reflected in the views of Descartes and Spinoza. If one is tempted by their advice, one

would do best to proceed with caution.lvii

45
NOTES

i. Abbreviations for works cited:

The Stoics:

Encheiridion: Epictetus, in The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, The Manual, and the Fragments, with a

translation by W. A. Oldfather, in two volumes, Loeb Classical Library, (London: New York: Putnam and

Sons, 1928).

LP: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, with an English translation by R. D. Hicks, in two

volumes, Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970).

LS: The Hellenistic Philosophers, A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1987). Translations of the principal sources with philosophical commentary, in two volumes. Volume

1 contains translations and commentary, volume 2 the original texts.

Meditations: Marcus Aurelius; citations are from G. M. A. Grube's translation, (Indianapolis: Hackett,

1985). The original text can be found in The communings with himself of Marcus Aurelius Antonius,

Emperor of Rome, with an English translation by C. R. Haines, Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1987).

SVF: Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, H. von Arnim, ed. (Stuttgart: 1903-5).

Descartes' Works:

AT: Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by Ch. Adam and P. Tannery (revised edition, Paris: Vrin/C.N.R.S., 1964-

76. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of Descartes' works are from The Philosophical Writings of

Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 3 volumes,

46
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

B: Descartes: His Moral Philosophy and Psychology, translated, with an introduction and conceptual index

by John J. Blom, (New York: New York University Press, 1978).

V: The Passions of the Soul, translated and annotated by Stephen Voss, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989).

Spinoza's Works:

Translations are from The Collected Works of Spinoza, volume 1, edited and translated by E. M. Curley,

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). References to passages are given by volume and page

numbers provided in the margins of Curley's edition, taken from Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt,

4 volumes (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925). For citations from Spinoza's Ethics, VP4s, for example, refers

to Part V, Proposition 4, Scholium; 'A' indicates an axiom, 'D' a definition, 'd' a demonstration, 'c' a

corollary.

Citations of the various translations include some alterations.

ii. Stoic influences on Descartes' moral theory did not go unnoticed by his contemporaries. In Adrien

Baillet's La Vie de Monsieur Descartes (Paris: Chez Daniel Horthemels, 1691) we find the claim that

"D'autres Sçavans ont crû que nôtre Philosophe avoit voulu faire revivre la Morale des Stoiciens dans la

sienne" (volume 2, p. 534). The marginal reference is to Leibniz, it would appear to a letter to Molanus

from around 1679, in which he argues that Descartes often borrowed ideas from other philosophers. For

example, he claims that

Descartes wants us to follow reason, or else to follow the nature of things, as the Stoics said,

something with which everybody will agree. He adds that we should not trouble ourselves with

things that are not in our power. That is precisely the Stoic doctrine; it places the greatness and
47
freedom of their much-praised wise men in his strength of mind to do without the things that do

not pertain to us, and endure things when they come in spite of ourselves. (From G.W. Leibniz,

Philosophical Essays, translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989),

pp. 240-5, at p. 241; in Gerhard, G. W. Leibniz, Die Philosophischen Schriften, (Hildesheim: Georg

Olms, 1965), v. IV, pp. 297-303, at p. 298; see also the remainder of the letter)

A fine account of the effect of Stoicism on French moral theory in the late sixteenth and the first half of

the seventeenth centuries can be found in Anthony Levi's French Moralists, (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1964). For further descriptions of the Stoic influence in this period, see, for example, Gerhard

Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), and

Mark Morford, Stoics and Neostoics: Rubens and the Circle of Lipsius, (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1991).

iii. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985, see pp. 42-101 for the account of the theory of action. The founder

of Stoicism was Zeno of Citium (336-265 B.C.), Cleanthes (331-232 B.C.) was the second head of the Stoic

school, Chrysippus (279-206 B.C.) the third. None of the works of these philosophers of the Old Stoa

survives in complete form, but it is known that Chrysippus wrote voluminously; Diogenes Laertius reports

that there are more than 705 items in the list of his writings (LP 7.180). The main philosophers of the

Middle Stoa were Panaetius (185-109 B.C.) and Posidonius (135-50 B.C.). The most prominent Stoics of

the Roman period were Seneca (5-65), Epictetus (50-130), and Marcus Aurelius (121-180).

iv. Inwood, pp. 66-91.

v. Contrary to Inwood's suggestion, it is not clear that hormê can always be the setting of oneself to do

48
something, since, as he himself point out, pathê like distress and pleasure are also hormê. Perhaps,

then, hormê is essentially a forceful motion of pneuma caused by assent to a phantasia. Such a forceful

motion can have different psychological manifestations, and the setting of oneself to do something and

the various pathê are among them.

vi. Inwood, pp. 46-8, 60-6; for a discussion of Inwood's view, see Gisela Striker's critical notice of Ethics

and Human Action in Early Stoicism in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy 19 (March 1989), pp. 91-100,

at pp. 96-7.

vii. From Aetius, SVF 2.54/LS I 237.

viii. Discussed by Long and Sedley, LS I 250.

ix. From Diogenes Laertius, LP 7.46 (SVF 2.53), translation from LS I 242, cf. LS I 236-259.

x. LS I 254-6, e.g. from Plutarch

[Fate]... frequently produces impressions (phantasiai), in matters of very great importance, which

are at variance with one another and pull the mind in opposite directions. On these occasions

the Stoics say that those who assent to one of them and do not suspend judgment are guilty of

error; that they are precipitate if they yield to unclear impressions, deceived if they yield to false

ones, and opining if they yield to ones which are incognitive quite generally. (SVF 2.993/LS I 255)

Some of the main elements of the Stoic theory of judgment are also discussed by Cicero in his Academica:

Here first of all [Zeno] made some new pronouncements about sensation itself, which he held to
49
be a combination of a sort of impact offered from outside (which he called phantasia and we may

call a presentation (visum) ...) well, to these presentations received by the senses he joins the

act of mental assent which he makes out to reside within us and to be a voluntary act. He held

that not all presentations are trustworthy but only those that have a 'manifestation,' peculiar to

themselves, of the objects presented; and a trustworthy presentation, being perceived as such by

its own intrinsic nature, he termed 'graspable' -- will you endure these coinages?" "Indeed we

will," said Atticus, "for how else could you express 'catalêpton'? (Academica I, xi, 40-1; translated

by H. Rackham, in Cicero, De Natura Deorum and Academica, Loeb Classical Library, (London:

William Heinemann, 1933).

xi. Inwood, pp. 55-6, who cites Stobaeus' Anthology.

xii. "They [the Stoics] say that passion is impulse which is excessive and disobedient to the dictates of

reason..." (Stobaeus 2.88,8/SVF 3.378/LS I 410; cf. Galen SVF 3.462/LS I 413; SVF 3.466/LS I 416; Seneca,

On anger 2.3.1-2.4/LS I 419.) My summary of the Stoic theory of the passions is adapted largely from

Inwood, pp. 127-181.

xiii. See, for example, Cicero Academica (I, x, 38-9), Tusculan Disputations (Book IV, esp. iv-x), and

Diogenes Laertius 7.117

xiv. LP 7.111-114, cf. LS I 410-412.

xv. Hecato was a Stoic from the middle period, a pupil of Panaetius of Rhodes and an associate of

50
Posidonius.

xvi. Inwood, p. 146; cf. from Andronicus, SVF 3.391/LS I 411/II 405. Each of these passions has a number

of subspecies; for example, according to Diogenes Laertius, under craving the Stoics classified "want,

hatred, contentiousness, anger, love, wrath, and resentment" (LP 7.113).

xvii. LP 7.116. See also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations IV, vi, 12-14.

xviii. For the Stoics, for something to be in harmony with nature is for it to be in accordance with the will

of God, which is equivalent to its being rational.

xix. SVF 4.2.10-18, LS I 413.

xx. Inwood, pp. 155-6, cf. Galen, SVF 4.2.10-18, 4.5.21-5 translated in LS I 413-4.)

xxi. Galen's interpretation of the analogy of running is "when someone has the impulse he is not obedient

to reason." (SVF 4.2.10-18, LS I 414)

xxii. Inwood, p. 177, preserved by Gellius, in Noctus Atticae (P.K. Marshall, OCT, 1968) 19.1.14-20 = fr.

9./cf. LS I 419.

xxiii. From Gellius, SVF 2.1000/LS I 336, cited by Josiah B. Gould, in The Philosophy of Chrysippus (Leiden,

E. J. Brill, 1971), p. 143; cf. LS I 333-343.

51
xxiv. From Aetius, SVF 2.1027/LS I 274-5; cf. LS I 274-277.

xxv. SVF 2.1049, cited by Gould; cf. LS I 275-7.

xxvi. SVF 2.1152/LS I 329, cited by Gould, p. 156; cf. SVF 2.1163, 2.1169-70/LS I 328-9.

xxvii. See Inwood, pp. 119-126; for some criticisms of Inwood's account, see Striker's critical notice of

Inwood's Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, pp. 98-9, (cf. my note 6).

xxviii. This account, and the quotations from On Tranquility, are from Inwood, pp. 119-122.

xxix. Marcus Aurelius speculates as to why one's death might benefit the Whole:

If souls live on, how has the air of heaven made room for them through eternity? How has the

earth made room for such a long time for the bodies of those who are buried in it? Just as on

earth, after these bodies have persisted for a while, their change and decomposition makes room

for other bodies, so with the souls which have migrated into the upper air. After they have

remained there for a certain time, they change and are dissolved and turned into fire as they are

absorbed into creative Reason, and in this way make room for additional souls who come to share

their dwelling place. (Meditations IV, 21)

xxx. SVF 2.998, cited by Gould, pp. 150-1; cf. Cicero, On fate, esp. 28-30, LS I 339-40.

xxxi. The Stoic theory of judgment, action, and passion was available to Descartes through numerous

writings, and was very much in the air during his education at La Flèche. An encyclopedic account of the
52
Stoical influence on French moral philosophy of this period can be found in Anthony Levi, French Moralists,

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). Some of the most important of sources of Stoic views for

Descartes' contemporaries are Cicero's Academica (I, xi, 40-1) for the theory of judgment, his On Fate

(xviii, 41-2) for theory of action, and the Academica (I, x, 38-9) and the Tusculan Disputations (Book IV,

esp. iv-x) for the theory of the passions. (In addition to the theories of judgment and the passions that

Descartes comes to adopt, we find in Cicero's Academica an account of the skeptical argument from the

unreliability of the senses (II, xxv, 75-80), a discussion of the dream argument (II, xxvii, 88), mention that

Chrysippus "carefully sought out all the facts that told against the senses and their clarity and against the

whole of common experience and against reason" before answering himself (II, xxvii, 87), and these

remarks about the size of the sun: "What can be bigger than the sun, which the mathematicians declare

to be nineteen times the size of the earth? How tiny it looks to us! to me it seems about a foot in

diameter" (II xxvi, 82; translation of Academica passages are by H. Rackham, in Cicero, De Natura Deorum,

Academica (London: Wiliam Heinemann, 1933).) Furthermore, the Stoic theory of the passions had

undergone a significant revival beginning in the last half of the sixteenth century. Two of the then-

prominent works in this area that display thorough Stoical influence are Justus Lipsius' Manuductio (1604)

and Saint Francis de Sales Traité de l'Amour de Dieu (1616). For comments on which works Descartes is

likely to have read see Levi, p. 271, n.3, and Geneviève Rodis-Lewis's introduction to Stephen Voss'

translation of The Passions of the Soul (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989) pp. xvi-xvii, n.6.

In the Principles of Philosophy Descartes presents of rudimentary theory of the passions. His

view in this work reflects a Stoic conception, despite his caricature of one Stoic thesis:

In the same way, when we hear good news, it is first of all the mind which makes a judgement

about it and rejoices with that intellectual joy which occurs without any bodily disturbance and

which, for that reason, the Stoics allowed that the man of wisdom could experience <although
53
they required him to be free of all passion>. But later on, when the good news is pictured in the

imagination, the spirits flow from the brain to the muscles around the heart and move the tiny

nerves there, thereby causing a movement in the brain which produces a feeling of animal joy.

(Principles IV 190, AT VIIIA 317)

It was common then, as it is now, to claim that for the Stoics the sophos is without passion in a more

familiar sense of 'passion,' (not in the technical sense of the Stoic's pathos) despite clear

counterindications, for example, in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations IV, vi-vii, and in Diogenes Laertius' Lives

of the Philosophers 7.117.

xxxii. See Inwood, pp. 72-81.

xxxiii. See Inwood, pp. 175-181.

xxxiv. See Paul Hoffman's discussion of this issue in "Three Dualist Theories of the Passions, Philosophical

Topics 19 (Spring 1991), pp. 153-200, at p. 167-8.

xxxv. See Paul Hoffman's discussion at p. 166.

xxxvi. Descartes continues by saying:

But it seems to me that what those who are accustomed to reflect on their actions can always do

when they feel themselves to be seized with fear, is to try to turn their thoughts away from the

consideration of danger by representing to themselves the reasons which prove that there is

much more certainty and honour and resistance than in flight. And on the other hand, when

54
they feel that the desire of vengeance and anger incites them to run thoughtlessly towards those

who attack them, they will recollect that it is imprudence to lose their lives when they can without

dishonour save themselves, and that, if the match is very unequal, it is better to beat an

honourable retreat or to ask quarter, than to expose oneself doggedly to certain death. (III 211/AT

XI 487-8)

xxxvii. In addition, Descartes' claim in II 144 of the Passions is very similar to Epictetus' Encheiridion 1:

"And it seems to me that the error most commonly committed in connection with Desires is to fail to

distinguish sufficiently the things that depend entirely on us from those that do not depend on us." (AT XI

436; cf. Voss' note 70, V97).

xxxviii. The end of the Third Meditation (AT VII 52) reflects some of the ideas in the letter to Chanut, as

does a passage from II 146 of The Passions of The Soul (AT XI 439).

xxxix. Thomas Nagel, "The Absurd," in Mortal Questions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979),

p. 16.

xl. In the letter to Chanut of 1 February, 1647, Descartes takes care to indicate that the notion of love he

has in mind is significantly independent of the senses. "To represent the truths that excite this love in her,

the soul must detach herself very much from dealings with the senses..." (AT IV 609/B207). But he also

maintains that the appropriate type of love involves having a passion. From the independence of this

love from the senses

it seems to follow [that the soul] cannot communicate it to the imaginative faculty to make a
55
passion of it. But nonetheless I have no doubt that she does communicate it. For although we

cannot imagine anything in God, who is the object of our love, we can imagine our love itself,

which consists in the fact that we wish to unite ourselves to a certain object, that is to say, as

regards God, to consider ourselves as a very small part of the entire immensity he has created;

because, according as the objects are diverse, one can unite oneself with them or join them to

oneself in different ways (on se peut unir avec eux, ou les joindre à foy en diverses facons); and

the single idea of that union suffices to excite warmth around the heart and to cause a very strong

passion. (AT IV 610/B207-8)

In this way identification with the divine perspective can be assisted by our affective nature.

xli. For discussions of self-disregarding love of God, see Robert M. Adams, "Pure Love," The Journal of

Religious Ethics 8 (Spring 1980), pp. 83-99; reprinted in his The Virtue of Faith, (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1987), pp. 174-192, and William E. Mann, "Hope," in Reasoned Faith, edited by Eleanor Stump,

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 251-280.

xlii. cf. Romans 5:18, Romans 11:32, Colossians 1:20; but see also II Thessalonians 1:8-9. Descartes does

affirm the immortality of the soul (e.g. Second Replies, AT VII 153-4) but it seems to play no role in his of

views on identification with the divine perspective, at least as this issue is discussed in the letters to

Elisabeth and Chanut.

xliii. See also the criticisms of Descartes' conception of God in Leibniz's letter to Molanus of ca. 1679 (Ariew

and Garber, p. 242/Gerhard IV, p. 299, cf. my note 2 for references).

56
xliv. Elisabeth argues that

It necessarily follows from his sovereign perfection that he could be the cause of these effects,

which is to say, he would be capable of not having given free decision to men; but since we feel

we have it, it seems to me contradictory to common sense to believe that free deciding is

dependent upon God in its operations as it is in its being. (to Descartes, 28 October, 1645, AT IV

322-3)

xlv. Here Spinoza cites IID2

...to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, is necessarily posited and which,

being taken away, the thing is necessarily taken away; or that without which the thing can neither

be nor be conceived, and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing. (II/85)

xlvi. ...for if the Mind perceived nothing else except the winged horse, it would regard it as present to

itself, and would not have any cause of doubting its existence, or any faculty of dissenting, unless

either the imagination of the winged horse were joined to an idea which excluded the idea of he

same horse, or the Mind perceived that its idea of the winged horse was inadequate. (IID4, II/134)

xlvii. Spinoza's view on when affects are bad reflects the Stoic conception: "An affect is only evil, or

harmful, insofar as it prevents the Mind from being able to think" (VP9d, II 286/C I 601).

xlviii. Alan Donagan, however, argues that this conclusion fails to follow because VP4 is not about affects

as kinds but about affects as individuals. His reason is that the proof of VP4 depends on the premise

that those things common to all can only be conceived adequately. Donagan reads VP3,4 as claiming
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that "while the mind has little or no power to form an adequate idea of the individual affect that is a

passion, it has unlimited power to form adequate ideas of the various kinds of affect, and that gives it

limited power over individual affects." (Spinoza, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 186.

xlix. See Bennett, p. 335, cf. pp. 175-184; see also my note 52.

l. In addition, since

it is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to undergo

no changes except those which can be understood through his own nature alone, and of which

he is the adequate cause. (II/212)

it would seem to follow that it is impossible for us to avoid having passions.

li. See Bennett, pp. 333-337, and also R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985),

pp. 215-220.

lii. On Bennett's alternative analysis, Spinoza typically ignores Part II's definitions of 'adequate idea' and

'inadequate idea' in favor of causal characterizations of these notions. He claims to find in IIP24d the

view that an idea of mine is inadequate if it is caused from outside my mind, and he argues that

correlatively, an idea of mine is adequate when it is caused from within my mind (pp. 177-8). One

problem with this interpretation is that it would render the complex demonstration of the crucial IIIP1

unnecessary. As Bennett makes clear, it is also true that these causal characterizations would make

Spinoza's attempt to establish VP3 quite obviously unsuccessful. Since my passions are by definition

partially caused from outside me, and if my forming a clear and distinct idea of A entails that A is caused

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from within me, it would seem to follow that I cannot form clear and distinct ideas of my passions (pp.

335-6). See also Hoffman's discussion at p. 181.

liii. This move connects the discussion of VP3,4 to VP2:

If we separate emotions, or affects, form the thought of an external cause, and join them to other

thoughts, then Love, or Hate, toward the external cause is destroyed, as are the vacillations of

mind arising from these affects. (II/281)

liv. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza, (London: Faber and Faber, 1961; first published by Penguin, London, in

1951), p. 106,

lv. Nevertheless, a risk accompanies this strategy, for as a result, one might come pathologically to regard

oneself as blameworthy for one's anger and envy. Perhaps, then, this strategy corroborates Epictetus'

observation that "to blame himself is the part of one whose education has begun." The strategy of divine

determinism, however, may illustrate his claim that "to blame neither another nor his own self is the part

of one whose education is complete." Spinoza believes that reflection on the nature of God will lead

one to believe that no one is ever to blame, because everything that happens follows from the divine

essence.

lvi. See, for example, Bennett, pp. 357-375, Delahunty, pp. 279-305, but also Donagan, pp. 190-207.

lvii. This paper is largely a result of a seminar I taught during the summer of 1989 on Hellenistic influences

in early modern European philosophy. I wish to thank the participants of this seminar, as well as Marilyn

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Adams, Robert Adams, David Christensen, Jeremy Hyman, Hilary Kornblith, Don Loeb, and J. D. Pereboom,

for helpful comments and discussion.

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