On Grief by Baruch Spinoza (1660)
Grief is defined as a sorrow caused by contemplating a good that has been lost without hope of recovery. Because it arises from attachment to things that may fail, disappear, or become unavailable, it reveals its own imperfection and must be avoided like other forms of sorrow. True Belief or Reason leads to knowledge of good and evil, and the proper use of understanding should prevent people from becoming subject to passions that ought to be rejected, though Reason alone may not free them from every passion. Good passions, such as Love, Desire, and what belongs to love, are necessary to human existence and belong in some manner to human essence. Bad passions, by contrast, are not necessary: people can exist without them and become what they ought to be only when freed from them. Love directed toward an object is the foundation of both good and evil. If people love transient things rather than God, the changes, accidents, and possible annihilation of those objects necessarily produce passions such as hatred and sorrow. Hatred arises when someone takes away what one loves; sorrow follows the loss of it; glory comes from dependence on self-love; favor and gratitude arise when one does not love a fellow-man for God’s sake. Love of God differs from love of transient things because God always is and remains immutable. Whoever loves God cannot be swept into this turmoil of passions. God is therefore the first and only cause of good and the deliverer from evil. Love is limitless when directed toward the infinite object, for it can continually increase and become more excellent; this capacity belongs to no other love.
By Baruch Spinoza · First published 1660 · Genre: Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Emotion · 714 words
First lines
Grief shall be the last of which we shall speak in our treatment of the passions, and with it we will conclude. Now grief is a certain kind of sorrow arising from the contemplation of some good which we have lost, and [lost] in such a way that there is no hope of recovering the same. It makes its imperfection so manifest that as soon as we only examine it we think it bad. For we have already shown above that it is bad to bind and link ourselves to things which may easily, or at some time, fail us, and which we cannot have when we want them. And since it is a certain kind of sorrow, we have to shun it, as we have already remarked above, when we were treating of sorrow.
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On Grief is listed on Textopian as an essay by Baruch Spinoza, dated 1660 CE.
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- Work type: Essay
- Author: Baruch Spinoza
- Date: 1660 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Emotion, Metaphysics, Religious Philosophy
- Length: 714 words
- Structure: 1 section, 7 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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Genres
- Philosophy — A systematic philosophical meditation on grief, sorrow, love, good, evil, reason, and the nature of human passions.
- Ethics — The passage evaluates grief as a harmful passion, argues for freeing oneself from destructive emotions, and identifies rational knowledge and love of God as guides to the good life.
- Philosophy of Emotion — Its central subject is the analysis of grief as a form of sorrow caused by the loss of a valued but irrecoverable good.
- Metaphysics — The argument depends on claims about God as immutable and infinite, the transience of worldly objects, and the possible immortality of the soul.
Tags
philosophy · ethics · emotion · sorrow · human nature · reason · self-knowledge · psychology · existential thought · rationalism · inner life · suffering