The Intellectual Love of God in Spinoza

One of the most famous and identifiable of Spinoza's ideas is his amor Dei intellectualis (the intellectual love of God). It has been argued that this concept is somewhat alien to the main tenets of the Ethics, especially since it is reminiscent of more orthodox religious relations to God, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of philosophical studies : IJPS 2022-08, Vol.30 (4), p.420-437
Main Author: Ayalon, Noa L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
affectivity
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Epistemology
eros
Ethics
God
intellectual love of god
Love
Nonrational
philia
Philosophy
Plato (427-347 BC)
rationlism
Spinoza
Spinoza, Benedictus de (1632-1677)
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Summary:One of the most famous and identifiable of Spinoza's ideas is his amor Dei intellectualis (the intellectual love of God). It has been argued that this concept is somewhat alien to the main tenets of the Ethics, especially since it is reminiscent of more orthodox religious relations to God, and has a certain mystical (and so, nonrational) quality.In this paper, I will show that it is a consistent development of Spinoza's interconnected and elaborate theories of knowledge and the affects. Spinoza discusses three kinds of love: passionate love, friendship and the intellectual love of God.The intellectual love of God is nothing but a necessary outcome of Spinoza's rationalistic project as a whole. Moreover, by culminating his ethical theory with such a concept, Spinoza is placing himself in a rich tradition of thinkers who develop epistemological and ethical systems that put love (either as eros or philia) as the backbone of their philosophy. In order to illustrate the similarities between Spinoza's philosophical use of love and that of his predecessors, I will address salient features of Plato's and Aristotle's thought, emphasizing the relationship between love and ethics, as well as the nature of the philosophical impulse.
ISSN:0967-2559
1466-4542
DOI:10.1080/09672559.2022.2136734