Affect (from Latin affectus or adfectus) is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience.
For Spinoza, as discussed in Parts Two and Three of his Ethics, affects are states of mind and body that are related to (but not exactly synonymous with) feelings and emotions, of which he says there are three primary kinds: pleasure or joy (laetitia),[1] pain or sorrow (tristitia)[1] and desire (cupiditas) or appetite.
In Part III, "Definitions of the Emotions/Affects", Spinoza defines 48 different forms of affect, including love and hatred, hope and fear, envy and compassion.
[14] The translator of Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Canadian political philosopher Brian Massumi, has given influential definitions of affect (see above) and has written on the neglected importance of movement and sensation in cultural formations and our interaction with real and virtual worlds.
[17] Researchers such as Mog Stapleton, Daniel D. Hutto and Peter Carruthers[18][19][20] have pointed to the need to investigate and to develop the notions of affect and emotion.