On Fear. Perception and Strategies of Control in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy

The volume considers the theories of the passions in Hobbes, Descartes and Spinoza. Particular attention is given to the passion of fear, highlighting how these three writers consider fear as both an individual and a collective affect . Cerrato underlines the characteristics, relevance and usefulness of fear, together with the strategies of control used to prevent its transformation into a passion that can inhibit rational action. Together with Descartes and Spinoza, Cerrato recalls 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.