If you want
to teach Spinoza’s thought, you can start from his actual passions’ theory
because your students could believe that passions are like a monster which
beats their minds and their souls or more superficially, they could think that
only love and hate are meaningful passions or feelings. But, how about fear or
anxiety or joy or the unique wonder which moves your mind into the universe and
its enigma in order to discover it and to rebuild its rational structure? Yes,
passions for the author are not only natural but they also have a reason to exist
and to imbue our existence. The secret is to know them and their effect on us
in order to comprehend their damage on our behaviour if they are negative such
as hate or anger which can destroy and people around you or their positive affection
if they are positive such as love or joy or wonder. If you are joyful, you can
infect of it all around you and colour the world of rainbow.
So, speak
with your students about joy and you can fill the air of magic. Use music such
as a natural drug and look about the effects on them and at the end of the
process, put Spinoza’s explanation about passion in their mind and the abstract
theory will be clear to all of them.
