Emotion (affect) is a bodily modification that increases or diminishes, aids or constrains the body’s active power, together with the ideas of these modifications.

By Baruch Spinoza, from Ethics

Key Arguments

  • An emotion essentially involves a change in the body's 'active power' (increase/diminution, aid/constraint).
  • Emotions are psychophysical: they include 'the ideas of such modifications' in addition to the bodily modifications themselves.

Source Quotes

III. By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications.

Key Concepts

  • By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained,
  • and also the ideas of such modifications.

Context

Ethics, Part III, DEFINITIONS III (lines 1740–1747); baseline definition for the taxonomy of affects in Part III