Affection is a "disposition or rare state of mind or body"
[1] that is often associated with a feeling or type of
love. It has given rise to a number of branches of
philosophy and
psychology concerning: emotion (popularly: love, devotion etc.); disease; influence; state of being (philosophy)
[2]; and
state of mind (psychology). "Affection" is popularly used to denote a feeling or type of
love, amounting to more than goodwill or
friendship. Writers on
ethics generally use the word to refer to distinct states of feeling, both lasting and spasmodic. Some contrast it with
passion as being free from the distinctively sensual element.
More specifically, the word has been restricted to
emotional states, the object of which is a person. In the former sense, it is the Greek "
pathos" and as such it appears in the writings of
French philosopher
René Descartes,
Dutch philosopher
Baruch Spinoza, and most of the writings of early British ethicists. However, on various grounds (e.g., that it does not involve anxiety or excitement and that it is comparatively inert and compatible with the entire absence of the sensuous element), it is generally and usefully distinguished from passion. In this narrower sense the word has played a great part in ethical systems, which have spoken of the social or parental
affections as in some sense a part of moral obligation. For a consideration of these and similar problems, which depend ultimately on the degree in which the affections are regarded as voluntary, see
H. Sidgwick,
Methods of Ethics pp. 345–349.
