The mind gains greater power over the emotions and becomes less subject to them in proportion as it understands things as necessary; applying this necessity to particulars mitigates painful affects.

By Baruch Spinoza, from Ethics

Key Arguments

  • “The mind understands all things to be necessary (I. xxix.) and to be determined to existence and operation by an infinite chain of causes”
  • Therefore, “it thus far brings it about, that it is less subject to the emotions arising therefrom, and (III. xlviii.) feels less emotion towards the things themselves.”
  • Note example: “the pain arising from the loss of any good is mitigated, as soon as the man who has lost it perceives, that it could not by any means have been preserved.”
  • Note example: “no one pities an infant, because it cannot speak, walk, or reason … because infancy would … be looked on as a state natural and necessary”

Source Quotes

VI. The mind has greater power over the emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary. Proof.—The mind understands all things to be necessary (I. xxix.) and to be determined to existence and operation by an infinite chain of causes; therefore (by the foregoing Proposition), it thus far brings it about, that it is less subject to the emotions arising therefrom, and (III. xlviii.) feels less emotion towards the things themselves.
Q.E.D. Note.—The more this knowledge, that things are necessary, is applied to particular things, which we conceive more distinctly and vividly, the greater is the power of the mind over the emotions, as experience also testifies. For we see, that the pain arising from the loss of any good is mitigated, as soon as the man who has lost it perceives, that it could not by any means have been preserved. So also we see that no one pities an infant, because it cannot speak, walk, or reason, or lastly, because it passes so many years, as it were, in unconsciousness.

Key Concepts

  • The mind has greater power over the emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary.
  • the pain arising from the loss of any good is mitigated, as soon as the man who has lost it perceives, that it could not by any means have been preserved.

Context

Part V, PROPOSITIONS, Prop. VI and Note (lines 4165–4292): necessitarian understanding as affective therapy.