The Ambiguity of Affects in Spinoza's Ethics

The purpose of this article is to show the ambiguity that characterizes the definition of the affects that Spinoza presents at the beginning of book III of his Ethics with regard to the adverbial locution et simul that appears in it. The problem here is to clarify to what extent and in what sense Spinoza might consider that there are affects of the body, and affects of the soul, purely. This study seeks to add arguments, based on Spinoza's considerations of pleasure and pain, that support the hypothesis of the existence of affects of the body, but making that hypothesis compatible with Spinoza's monistic approach.