Abstract

Spinoza and Hume employ widely different methodologies. However, both believe that moral concepts have their bases in human psychology; both are “affective” theorists who make desire central to their accounts of human motivation and value; and both are naturalists. I aim to show here that their views of desire have some perhaps unexpected commonalities as well: first, that for each, desire is in a sense fundamental to their respective theories of the passions; and second, more surprisingly, that each’s view of desire is teleological, rather than thoroughly hedonistic.