Ethics

Part 5 details how we can overcome our bondage to the affects using our mind.

All of us have the power to master our affects and passions, to limit their influence over us. To do this, we must “take special care to know each affect clearly and distinctly” (164). Mentally separating a passion from its external cause is a good step toward destroying the passion. In this way, greater knowledge and understanding—the use of reason—helps us overcome our bondage.

An affect is evil only insofar as it prevents the mind from thinking clearly. An affect that prevents us from thinking clearly is contrary to our nature and thus evil. As long as an affect is not of this type, we retain our ability to think and understand things while under the influence of the affect.

An affect that causes us to think about many things is better than an affect that makes us obsess over one thing. Since we do not have control over all our affects, the best course of action is to live by “a correct principle of living, or sure maxims of life,” and “apply them constantly to the particular cases frequently encountered in life” (167). This way, “our imagination will be extensively affected by them, and we shall always have them ready” (167).