Paura. Forme della percezione e strategie di governo ne "Les Passions de l’âme" e nell’ "Ethica"

Fear. Form of Perception and Government Strategies in Les Passions de l’ âme and in Ethica My paper focuses on the analysis of the terms «dread» and «fear» both in The Passions of the Soul, where Descartes respectively indicates them as Crainte and Peur, and in Spinoza’s Ethics, where the author uses the words timor and metus. First of all, I underline the characteristics, the relevance and the usefulness of these affections, together with the strategies of control used to prevent their transformation into passions that inhibit rational action. I will then expose the divergence of views in Descartes and Spinoza pertaining the delineation of these affective conditions, as well as, in the second part of my paper, I focus on the analogies concerning the rational strategies the human being can assume in order to handle dread and fear. Besides Descartes e Spinoza, it is necessary to recall Hobbes’s Leviathan, since this work is a consistent and relevant source for Spinoza, as far as the conception of fear as a peculiar perception of past and present is concerned.