Religious affects in Spinoza: A topology of emotions understood as a system of spirituality

With particular attention to his modern and medieval sources and the soteriological framework of his system, this study systematically clarifies in modern, psychodynamic terms the religious meaning behind Spinoza's explanations of all the affect-related terms in Parts 3, 4, and 5 of his Ethics. Chapter 1 provides an overview of emotion theory leading up to Spinoza, and reviews factors accounting for the lack of attention given to his thought in contemporary religion and psychology. Chapter 2 reviews criteria for including and excluding terms, and lists and charts Spinoza's affective terms and his classification of them with detailed textual locations in the Ethics provided. Chapter 3 retranslates and explains all of Spinoza's definitions, and gives detailed explanations of his categories and of the religious and developmental psychology implicit in his affect presentation. Chapter 4 goes into greater detail on spiritual and philosophical insights implicit in Spinoza's definitions and commentary, including evidence for the presence of "grace" in his system. Chapter 5 reconstructs his emotion theory with new charts, and correlates his affect categories with other stage-theory concepts in his writings. Here, the intent is to form both a conventional spirituality--that is, one which can be communicated through normal prose--as well as a "topological" spirituality representing an individual's "affective universe." ("Topology" refers not to the term's formal meaning in mathematics, but more generally to an abstruse realm of speculation involving the manipulation of geometric figures.) In Chapter 6, finally, I compare Spinoza's conventional spirituality to other spiritualities in western and eastern writings, and discuss his possible position in contemporary psychology.