Is Wonder a Remedy against the Passions? Spinoza's Struggle with Descartes's Legacy in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and in the Ethics

This chapter reconstructs Spinoza's ambivalent treatment of wonder across his works. I argue that in the TTP, Spinoza took into serious consideration Descartes's own account and his suggestion that wonder can play the role of a remedy against other, more dangerous passions. Nonetheless, I also maintain that this solution is dismissed in the Ethics. Here, affects are more or less useful or dangerous depending on whether and how they foster agreement in nature among individuals. Spinoza's account of agreement in nature builds on the bodily aptitude to be affected in a great many ways at the same time by external causes. Since wonder results from affections produced by isolated and exceptional objects, it tends to produce fixation and hinders the bodily ability to be affected in a great many ways. Spinoza considers the fixation as a threat to the bodily capacity to foster the body's agreement with external causes.