Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the concept of desire in the ethical project of Spinoza. On the first part, the pathway to the concept of desire is recovered, leading to the preposition nine of the third part of Ethics, in which the concept of desire is defined as the essence of human being. On the second part, taking into consideration the partial results of a research developed in the field of mental health that aims to understand the motives of internment of children and adolescents in a psychiatric institution with the characteristics of an asylum, it will be developed an analysis of two distinct dimensions of this study considering the concepts of Spinoza’s Ethic.