Abstract

This work aims to understand the affective dimension that permeates human relationships and the variation that characterizes their forms. The concepts presented here aim to situate man in relation to these two poles of his existence, servitude and freedom, which are urgent for us to reflect on the subject of ethics today. Considering instability as a constitutive mark of the affective field through which man relates, we will resort to concepts which will support and illustrate the idea which we intend to present, namely the economic nature of the bodily forces which motivate and intervene in such relations which pass, as they are established, to a configuration of power. From the philosophical concepts of affection, servitude and freedom, according to Spinoza, it is possible to understand the existential and ethical dimension that runs through human life. The Freudian concepts of herd instinct, identification and love can be understood as affections belonging to the soul of the herd which, in its psychic process, leads man to his state of servitude. From these foundations, one can think about human freedom and how man can, through sublimatory processes, become the cause of himself, and thus show new possibilities, outlets that man has under his own power to make his life more joyful and, in this way, not to live at the mercy of external causes that result in shocks, condemning him to the bondage of his own passions. This research brings these questions to reflection to show how the traditional way of thinking directly impacts man in his way of relating, freely or not, to the world and, finally, how another perspective of understanding this which constitutes its nature allows a new posture in the face of desire itself.