Abstract

Spinoza’s Ethics has a robust and underappreciated theory of love. In this paper, I show that Spinoza’s discussion of love, which stands at a crossroads between his ethics and his epistemology, details the metamorphosis of love in the philosopher’s mind – from passionate love to intellectual love of God, and from imagination or opinion to scientia intuitiva. This metamorphosis is responsible for the closely interrelated philosopher’s morality and the perfection of their understanding, which are closely linked. Reading Spinoza’s guide to ethical and philosophical progress through the prism of his theory of love holds the key to understanding some of the most perplexing issues presented in the second half of Part 5, namely, the nature of the intellectual love of God and the object of the third kind of knowledge.