The Melancholy of the Philosopher: Hume and Spinoza on Emotions and Wisdom

Abstract

Spinoza and Hume each exemplify a specifically modern view of the classical idea that the practice of philosophy leads to the moderation of man’s passionate nature. Both integrate this conception of ‘doing philosophy’ as a search for wisdom into a science which is in harmony with a modern ateleological worldview. But they diverge fundamentally when they spell out how exactly philosophy can lead to wisdom and in what this wisdom consists. In his Ethics Spinoza presents the study of the relation between God and man, passion and virtue, following the more geometrico method, as a form of medicina mentis. The new philosophy which investigates human actions and desires as though it was concerned with “lines, planes and solids” (E 3, intro) thus leads to nothing less than the liberation of man from his enslavement to the emotions. True philosophy forms the way to freedom and virtue or, more precisely, Spinoza sees the unfolding of this (striving for) wisdom as identical with virtue. It may be very hard to achieve this perfection of reason in practice, but for Spinoza the intrinsic interwoveness of knowledge and virtue is indisputable. Insofar as wisdom merges, in its utter perfection, with the Amor Dei intellectualis, it even transcends human finitude and becomes a form of salvation (Beatitudo). A century after Spinoza Hume is less optimistic about this idea of philosophy understood as a medicina mentis. In the famous conclusion to Book I of his Treatise, having established the antimetaphysical framework of the science of human nature, he indicates how the desire for knowledge can lead to a deep

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