Spinoza uses the word imagination in a different way than we do in modern culture. It seems like he believes that there is no distinction between “imagining” something as present to myself, in the acknowledgment of it’s affect on my body, and imagining some future or past affect on my body (as present to myself). This is especially clear in the proof of proposition 18, part three; Nature and Origin of the Emotions.
In the note on proposition 44, part two, Spinoza writes something very strange, and really seems only to flesh it out the further I read (a kind of recurring pattern in his work). He writes of how we come to view things as contingent rather than necessary. What he seems to be proposing in the note though is an idea about how we form patterns and beliefs in the world. He says once a body has been affected by two things at once they are forever associated and the mind will imagine both as present to self when only one is. So a thing can cause emotions to be sparked that are only the affect of some thing that is associated with the original thing. This is why we have such complex emotions and feelings, they are really many emotions contradicting one another. This also implies that we grow more and more complex as we experience things, we don’t just grow more aware of these complexities.
