Skip to main content
Duke University Libraries
DukeSpace Scholarship by Duke Authors
  • Login
  • Ask
  • Menu
  • Login
  • Ask a Librarian
  • Search & Find
  • Using the Library
  • Research Support
  • Course Support
  • Libraries
  • About
View Item 
  •   DukeSpace
  • Theses and Dissertations
  • Duke Dissertations
  • View Item
  •   DukeSpace
  • Theses and Dissertations
  • Duke Dissertations
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Affect before Spinoza: Reformed Faith, Affectus, and Experience in Jean Calvin, John Donne, John Milton and Baruch Spinoza

Thumbnail
View / Download
22.6 Mb
Date
2009
Author
Leo, Russell Joseph
Advisors
Khanna, Ranjana
Shannon, Laurie
Repository Usage Stats
1,529
views
2,623
downloads
Abstract

Affects are not reducible to feelings or emotions. On the contrary, Affect Before

Spinoza investigates the extent to which affects exceed, reconfigure and reorganize

bodies and subjects. Affects are constitutive of and integral to dynamic economies of

activity and passivity. This dissertation traces the origins and histories of this definition

of affect, from the Latin affectus, discovering emergent affective approaches to faith,

devotional poetry and philosophy in early modernity. For early modern believers across

confessions, faith was neither reducible to a dry intellectual concern nor to a personal,

emotional appeal to God. Instead, faith was a transformative relation between humans

and God, realized in affective terms that, in turn, reconfigured theories of human agency

and activity. Beginning with John Calvin and continuing through the work of John

Donne, John Milton, and Baruch Spinoza, Affect Before Spinoza posits affectus as a basis

of faith in an emergent Reformed tradition as well as a term that informs disparate

developments in poetry and philosophy beyond Reformed Orthodoxy. Calvin's

configuration of affect turns existing languages of the passions and of rhetorical motives

towards an understanding of faith and certainty. In this sense, Calvin, Donne, Spinoza

and Milton use affectus to pose questions of agency, will, tendency, inclination, and

determinism.

Type
Dissertation
Department
Literature
Subject
Literature, Comparative
Philosophy
Religion, History of
Affect
Calvin
Donne
Milton
Reformation
Spinoza
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1356
Citation
Leo, Russell Joseph (2009). Affect before Spinoza: Reformed Faith, Affectus, and Experience in Jean Calvin, John Donne, John Milton and Baruch Spinoza. Dissertation, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1356.
Collections
  • Duke Dissertations
More Info
Show full item record
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Rights for Collection: Duke Dissertations


Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info

Make Your Work Available Here

How to Deposit

Browse

All of DukeSpaceCommunities & CollectionsAuthorsTitlesTypesBy Issue DateDepartmentsAffiliations of Duke Author(s)SubjectsBy Submit DateThis CollectionAuthorsTitlesTypesBy Issue DateDepartmentsAffiliations of Duke Author(s)SubjectsBy Submit Date

My Account

LoginRegister

Statistics

View Usage Statistics
Duke University Libraries

Contact Us

411 Chapel Drive
Durham, NC 27708
(919) 660-5870
Perkins Library Service Desk

Digital Repositories at Duke

  • Report a problem with the repositories
  • About digital repositories at Duke
  • Accessibility Policy
  • Deaccession and DMCA Takedown Policy

TwitterFacebookYouTubeFlickrInstagramBlogs

Sign Up for Our Newsletter
  • Re-use & Attribution / Privacy
  • Harmful Language Statement
  • Support the Libraries
Duke University