Passion: a kind of concept - not particularly Romance. More to the point - a passion is an emotional state: innate and biologically driven. Examples: anger, lust, greed - thus: sins are passions, even though not all passions are sins. Passions can lead to: social ills or benefits. Like what?: God's punishment, Hobbes' state of nature, karma. Passions are foils - foils to what?: the pursuit of reason, virtue, or faith. Some indulge the passions: Hedonism and Nihilism. Some moderate the passions: Epicureanism or conventional Religion. Some extinguish the passions: Stoicism, Buddhism, Monasticism.
Spinoza and the passions: to be contrasted with action. When does a passion happen?: when external events affect us. In what way?: if we have confused ideas about the events and whatever caused them. What is a passive state?: occurs when we have a certain emotion - call it 'passivity of the soul'. When this happens, the body's power diminishes. An emotion is this: a bodily change coupled with an idea about that change, an idea that can help or hurt the body. When we have emotions, this happens: bodily changes are caused by either external or internal/external forces. We - as persons - should be the only cause of our bodily changes. And we should always base our acts on an understanding of cause and effect coupled with this: ideas of such bodily changes logically related to one another and the world. If one does this, one is active. Most of the time this doesn't happen: that's why Spinoza thought the emotions were more powerful than reason.
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