Substance, nature, and necessity › An affect is more than a feeling to suppress

Part III, definition III defines an affect through changes that increase or diminish, help or hinder, the body's power of acting, together with the ideas of those changes. Spinoza distinguishes actions, of which we are adequate causes, from passions, of which we are only partial causes. Proposition 1 connects mental activity with adequate ideas and passivity with inadequate ideas.

This vocabulary makes "active" and "passive" more precise than energetic and inactive. Someone angrily sending messages can be busy while passive in Spinoza's sense. Someone carefully understanding a problem can be active without much outward movement. The distinction concerns how an event is explained through the person's understanding, not how vigorous the behavior looks.

In the scholium to III.11, joy and sadness are transitions toward greater and lesser perfection, connected with changes in the power of acting. Love and hatred, in the definitions of the affects, involve joy and sadness accompanied by the idea of an external cause. These are components of Spinoza's explanatory scheme; using the words does not establish a modern measurement of emotional health.

His account also recognizes conflict. IV.7 says that an affect can be restrained or removed only by a contrary, stronger affect. IV.14 adds that true knowledge of good and evil cannot restrain an affect merely because it is true, but only insofar as that knowledge is itself considered as an affect. Knowing a correct sentence is consequently not presented as a guarantee that a powerful passion will disappear.

Return to the apparently contemptuous message. Learning its context may alter the recipient's understanding and response. But an accurate explanation need not immediately remove anger or produce calm. The illustration expresses a possible difference between reacting through a confused interpretation and responding through better understanding. It does not promise a therapeutic outcome or imply that a person should tolerate mistreatment.