I’d like now to discuss Spinoza's account of the emotions as they relate to the topics that we have broached so far. The word ‘emotion’ is a somewhat controversial translation, I suppose. The Latin is de affectibus or De origine et natura affectuum. That is sometimes rendered ‘affects’, but there really is no such word, so it doesn't help very much. I think ‘On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions’ is alright, particularly in view of what Spinoza is doing in this Part. It doesn't particularly matter if the notions which Spinoza discusses in this part don't correspond precisely to what we would normally call emotions, because Spinoza's aim, anyway, is not (and he explicitly says this) to give an account of what we ordinarily understand by the various terms that come under discussion. That's to say, Spinoza's interest isn't in rendering explicit what we ordinarily understand either by the term ‘emotion’ or by the particular emotion terms which fall into that category. Thus, Spinoza's attitude towards the emotions is in fact nuanced. One might be tempted to say that for Spinoza, the emotions are the manifestation of human confusion par excellence. That's to say, the emotions precisely arise from the fact that men are subject to confused and inadequate ideas. But that is too quick. Emotions are only the manifestation of confusion insofar as we are considering what he calls ‘passive emotions’. Spinoza does recognise the existence of active emotions as well, and this is important. Although most of what he says in Part III has to do with emotions he would regard as passive, in part this a necessary propaedeutic for the shift from passivity to activity in the subject. Thus, he deploys terms in ways which are unusual but which remain closely enough rooted in our ordinary ways of speaking for them to have an elucidatory effect: